exhibited, when he talked of eating the young ones." Johnson.

The name of Isaac Hawkins Browne is written in the margin, and it is added that the young sparrows were eaten in a pie.

"DEAR SIR, Communicate your letters regularly. Your father's inexorability not only grieves but amazes me. He is your father. He was always accounted a wise man; nor do I remember any thing to the disadvantage of his good nature; but in his refusal to assist you, there is neither good nature, fatherhood, nor wisdom."-Johnson.

I think you will be surprised to hear that this so serious letter should have been written to the crazy fellow, of whom a ludicrous story is told in the "Anecdotes ": Joe Simson, as Dr. Johnson called him, when he related the ridiculous incidents of his marriage, his kept mistress, his footman, and himself; all getting so drunk with the nuptial bowl of punch, purchased with borrowed money, that the hero of the tale tumbled down stairs and broke his leg or arm, I forget which, and sent for Dr. Johnson to assist him. He had another friend of much the same description, though this gentleman was a lawyer: the other a poet.

Boyce was the author of some pretty things in the "Gentleman's Magazine," and Johnson showed me the following verses in manuscript, which I translated: but which are not half so pleasant as was his account of Mr. Boyce lying a-bed: not for lack of a shirt, because he seldom wore one, supplying the want with white

paper wristbands: but for want of his scarlet cloak, laced with gold, his usual covering, which lay unredeemed at the pawnbroker's. The verses were addressed to Cave, of St. John's Gate, who saved him from prison that time at least :

"Hodie, teste Cœlo summo,
Sine pane, sine nummo;
Sorte positus infeste

Scribo tibi dolens mæste :

Fame, bile, tamet jecur,
Urbane! mitte opem precor:

Tibi enim cor humanum
Non à malis alienum ;

Mihi mens nec male grato,

Pro a te favore dato.

Ex gehennâ debitoria,
Vulgò, domo spongiatoria."

Oh witness Heaven for me this day
That I've no pelf my debts to pay:
No bread, nor halfpenny to buy it,
No peace of mind or household quiet.
My liver swell'd with bile and hunger
Will burst me if I wait much longer.
Thou hast a heart humane they say,
Oh then a little money - pray.
Nor further press me on my fate
And fix me at the begging gate:

Sufficient in this hell to souse
Vulgarly called a sponging house.

Of this curious creature I have heard Johnson tell how he remained fasting three whole days: and at the end when his consoling friend brought him a nice beefsteak, how he refused to touch it till the dish (he had no plate) had been properly rubbed over with shalot. "What inhabitants this world has in it!”

"You were kind in paying my forfeits at the club; it cannot be expected that many should meet in the summer, however they that continue in town should. keep up appearances as well as they can. I hope to be again among you."-Johnson.

There is a story of poor dear Garrick, whose attention to his money-stuff never forsook him relating that when his last day was drawing to an end, he begged a gentleman present to pay his club forfeits, "and don't let them cheat you," added he, "for there cannot be above nine, and they will make out ten."

At the end of the second volume of "Letters" are printed several translations from Boëthius, the joint performances of Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Piozzi. She has written on the last leaf:

Book 3rd, Metre 7, being completely my own, I would not print, though Dr. Johnson commended my doing it so well, and said he could not make it either more close or more correct:

That pleasure leaves a parting pain
Her veriest votaries maintain;

Soon she deposits all her sweets,
Soon like the roving bee retreats,

Hasty, like her, she mounts on wing,

And, like her, leaves th' envenomed sting.

In reference to the second line in this couplet:

Fondly view'd his following bride,

Viewing lost, and losing died,—

she remarks:

:

And this beautiful line, which I saw him compose, 66 you will find," said I, " in Fletcher's Bonduca." "Impossible," replies Dr. Johnson, "I never read a play of Beaumont and Fletcher's in my life." This passed in Southwark: when we went to Streatham Park, I took down the volume and showed him the line.

There is an allusion to this incident in the "Thraliana," and the entry is an additional illustration of the variety of her knowledge and the tenacity of her memory. It refers to Dr. Parker's complimentary verses describing an imaginary request of Apollo to the Graces and Muses to admit her of their number, and concluding with these lines :

"Henceforth acknowledge every pen

The Graces four, the Muses ten.”

For a long time (she writes) I thought this conceit original, but it is not. There is an old Greek epigram only of two lines which the doctor has here spun into

G+

length (vide "Anthol." lib. 7), and there is some account of it too in Bonhours.

What, however, is much more extraordinary, is that the famous Tristram Shandy itself is not absolutely original; for when I was at Derby in the summer of 1744, I strolled by mere chance into a bookseller's shop, where however I could find nothing to tempt curiosity but a strange book about Corporal Bates, which I bought and read for want of better sport, and found it to be the very novel from which Sterne took his first idea. The character of Uncle Toby, the behaviour of Corporal Trim, even the name of Tristram itself, seems to be borrowed from this stupid history of Corporal Bates, forsooth. I now wish I had pursued Mr. Murphy's advice of marking down all passages from different books which strike, by their resemblance to each other, as fast as they fell in my way; for one forgets again in the hurry and tumult of life's cares and pleasures, almost everything that one does not commit to paper.

The verses written by Bentley upon Learning, and published in Dodsley's Miscellanies, how like they are to Evelyn's verses on Virtue, published in Dryden's Miscellanies! yet I do not suppose them a plagiarism. Old Bentley would have scorned such tricks; besides, what passed once between myself and Mr. Johnson should cure me of suspicion in these cases.