Part 11 (1/2)

I could raise fifty of them within four-and-twenty hours I have raised ratify an unreasonable or insolent demand, and _up starts a patriot_”

DR JOHNSON'S CRITICISMS

Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not like a legislator

He never examined foundations where a point was already ruled His whole code of criticisave a precedent or authority, but rarely troubled his He judged of all works of the i his own contereater ht the aeneid to have been a greater poeht so; for he preferred Pope's _Iliad_ to Homer's

He pronounced that after Hoole's translation of _Tasso_, Fairfax's would hardly be reprinted He could see no lish ballads, and always spoke with thecontereat original works which appeared during his time, Richardson's novels alone excited his admiration He could see little or no merit in _Tom Jones_, in _Gulliver's Travels_, or in _Tristram Shandy_ To Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_ he vouchsafed only a line of cold commendation--of commendation much colder than what he has bestowed on _The Creation_ of that portentous bore, Sir Richard Blackmore Gray was, in his dialect, a barren rascal Churchill was a blockhead The contempt which he felt for Macpherson was, indeed, just; but it e suspect, just by by chance He criticized Pope's epitaphs excellently

But his observations on Shakspeare's plays, and Milton's poems, seem to us as wretched as if they had been written by Rymer himself, e take to have been the worst critic that ever lived

GIBBON'S HOUSE, AT LAUSANNE

The house of Gibbon, in which he completed his ”Decline and Fall,” is in the lower part of the town of Lausanne, behind the church of St

Francis, and on the right of the road leading down to Ouchy Both the house and the garden have been ed The wall of the Hotel Gibbon occupies the site of his summer-house, and the _berceau_ walk has been destroyed toover the lake, and a few acacias, rereat labour is very iht, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last line of the last page, in a su down my pen, I took several turns in a _berceau_, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waves, and all nature was silent”

At a little inn at Morges, about two miles distant from Lausanne, Lord Byron wrote the _Prisoner of Chillon_, in the short space of _two days_, during which he was detained here by bad weather, June 1816: ”thus adding one more deathless association to the already immortalized localities of the Lake”

ORIGIN OF ”BOZ” (dickENS)

A fellow passenger with Mr dickens in the _Britannia_ steam-shi+p, across the Atlantic, inquired of the author the origin of his signature, ”Boz” Mr dickens replied that he had a little brother who resembled so much the Moses in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, that he used to call hiirl, who could not then articulate plainly, was in the habit of calling him Bozie or Boz This simple circumstance made him assume that name in the first article he risked to the public, and therefore he continued the name, as the first effort was approved of

BOSWELL'S ”LIFE OF JOHNSON”

Sir John Malcols, as a contemporary and companion of Dr Johnson and Boswell, as his real estis, ”it is the _dirtiest_ book in , he added: ”I kneell intimately; and I well remember, when his book first made its appearance, Bosas so full of it, that he could neither think nor talk of anything else; so h Parliaet to the House of Lords, where an important debate was expected, for which he was already too late, Boswell had the temerity to stop and accost him with ”Have you read est curses, ”every word of it; I could not help it”

PATRONAGE OF AUTHORS

In the reigns of Williareve and Addison could scarcely have been able to live like gentles But the deficiency of the natural demand for literature was, at the close of the seventeenth, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, ement--by a vast system of bounties and premiums

There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid--at which men who could write well found such easy adhest honours of the state The chiefs of both the great parties into which the kingdom was divided, patronized literature with ereve, when he had scarcely attained his majority, was rewarded for his first comedy with places which made him independent for life Roas not only poet laureate, but land-surveyor of the Customs in the port of London, clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and secretary of the Presentations to the Lord Chancellor Hughes was secretary to the Coe of the Prerogative Court in Ireland Locke was Commissioner of Appeals and of the Board of Trade Neas Master of the Mint Stepney and Prior were enity and importance Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk-ation at five-and-twenty It was to a poem on the death of Charles II, and to ”the City and Country Mouse,” that Montague owed his introduction into public life, his earldoarter, and his auditorshi+p of the Exchequer Swift, but for the unconquerable prejudice of the queen, would have been a bishop Oxford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through the crowd of his suitors to welcos Steele was a Commissioner of Sta was a Commissioner of the Customs, and Auditor of the Imprest Tickell was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland Addison was Secretary of State