a sermon, as the people required more an example for the one than the other; it being much easier for them to hear a sermon, than to fix their minds

on prayer.

On Monday, April 6., I dined with him at Sir Alexander Macdonald's, where was a young officer in the regimentals of the Scots Royal, who talked with a vivacity, fluency, and precision so uncommon, that he attracted particular attention. He proved to be the Honourable Thomas Erskine, youngest brother to the Earl of Buchan, who has since risen into such brilliant reputation at the bar in Westminster Hall. (1)

Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "He was a blockhead ;" and upon my expressing my astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, "What I mean by his being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal." BOSWELL. "Will you not allow, Sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" JOHNSON. " Why, Sir, it is of very Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed

low life.

(1) Born in 1748; entered the navy as a midshipman in 1764, and the army as an ensign in the Royals in 1768. He was called to the bar in 1779; appointed a King's counsel in 1783; and, in 1806, Lord Chancellor of England, and created a baron by the title of Lord Erskine. He died in 1823. Neither his conversation (though, even to the last, remarkable for fluency and vivacity), nor his parliamentary speeches, ever bore any proportion to the extraordinary force and brilliancy of his forensic eloquence. Those who only knew him in private, or in the House of Commons, had some difficulty in believing the effect he produced at the bar. During the last years of his life, his conduct was eccentric to a degree that justified a suspicion, and even a hope, that his understanding was impaired. — C.

he was an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all 'Tom Jones.' (1) I, indeed, never read Joseph Andrews." ERSKINE. "Surely, Sir, Richardson is very tedious." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." I have already given my opinion of Fielding; but I cannot refrain from repeating here my wonder at Johnson's excessive and unaccountable depreciation of one of the best writers that England has produced. "Tom Jones" has stood the test of public opinion with such success, as to have established its great merit, both for the story, the sentiments, and the manners, and also the va

(1) Johnson's severity against Fielding did not arise from any viciousness in his style, but from his loose life, and the profligacy of almost all his male characters. Who would venture to read one of his novels aloud to modest women? His novels are male amusements, and very amusing they certainly are. — Fielding's conversation was coarse, and so tinctured with the rank weeds of the Garden [Covent Garden], that it would now be thought only fit for a brothel.- BURNEY.

The vices and follies of Tom Jones are those which the world soon teaches to all who enter on the career of life, and to which society is unhappily but too indulgent; nor do we believe, that, in any one instance, the perusal of Fielding's novel has added one libertine to the large list, who would not have been such had it never crossed the press. And it is with concern we add our sincere belief, that the fine picture of frankness and generosity, exhibited in that fictitious character, has had as few imitators as the career of his follies. Let it not be supposed that we are indifferent to morality, because we treat with scorn that affectation, which, while in common life it connives at the open practice of libertinism, pretends to detest the memory of an author, who painted life as it was, with all its shades, and more than all its lights, which it occasionally exhibits, to relieve them. SIR WALTER SCOTT, Lives of Novelists.

rieties of diction, so as to leave no doubt of its having an animated truth of execution throughout.

A book of travels, lately published under the title of Coriat Junior, and written by Mr. Paterson (1), was mentioned. Johnson said, this book was in imitation of Sterne (2), and not of Coriat, whose name Paterson had chosen as a whimsical one. "Tom Coriat," said he, "was a humourist about the court of James the First. He had a mixture of learning, of wit, and of buffoonery. He first travelled through Europe, and published his travels. (3) He afterwards travelled on foot through Asia, and had made many remarks; but he died at Mandoa, and his remarks were lost."

We talked of gaming, and animadverted on it with severity. JOHNSON. "Nay, gentlemen, let us not aggravate the matter. It is not roguery to play

(1) Mr. Samuel Paterson, eminent for his knowledge of books.-B. He was the son of a woollen-draper: he kept a bookseller's shop, chiefly for old books, and was afterwards an auctioneer; but seems to have been unsuccessful in all his attempts at business. He made catalogues of several celebrated libraries. He died in 1802, ætat. 77.

C.

(2) Mr. Paterson, in a pamphlet, produced some evidence to show that his work was written before Sterne's "Sentimental Journey" appeared.

(3) Under the title of "Crudities, hastily gobbled up in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, Helvetia, &c." Coriat was born in 1577, educated at Westminster school and Oxford, and died in 1617, at Surat.-C.- [The following account of his death is given by Mr. Edward Terry, in his "Voyage to East India, 1655." "Hearing, on a certain occasion, that King James I. spoke slightingly of him, and fearing at the same time that he should not reach home to give an account of his second wanderings, he actually sunk down in a swoon; and being, not long after, at Surat, and indulging too freely, for an abstemious man, in drinking sack, it increased a flux under which he laboured, and death at length overtook this traveller in December, 1617."]

with a man who is ignorant of the game, while you are master of it, and so win his money; for he thinks he can play better than you, as you think you can play better than he; and the superior skill carries it." ERSKINE." He is a fool, but you are not a rogue." JOHNSON. "That's much about the truth, Sir. It must be considered, that a man who only does what every one of the society to which he belongs would do, is not a dishonest man. In the republic of Sparta it was agreed, that stealing was not dishonourable if not discovered. I do not commend a society where there is an agreement that what would not otherwise be fair, shall be fair; but I maintain, that an individual of any society, who practises what is allowed, is not a dishonest man." BOSWELL. "So then, Sir, you do not think ill of a man who wins perhaps forty thousand pounds in a winter?" JOHNSON. "Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good. Trade gives employment to numbers, and so produces intermediate good."

Mr. Erskine told us that, when he was in the island of Minorca, he not only read prayers, but preached two sermons to the regiment. (1) He

(1) Lord Erskine was fond of this anecdote. He told it to me the first time that I had the honour of being in his company, and often repeated it, with a boast that he had been a sailor and a soldier, and a lawyer and a parson. The latter he affected to think the greatest of his efforts, and to support that opinion would quote the prayer for the clergy in the liturgy, from the expression of which he would (in no commendable spirit of jocularity) infer, that the enlightening them was one of the "greatest marvels" which could be worked.

C.

seemed to object to the passage in scripture, where we are told that the angel of the Lord smote in one night forty thousand Assyrians. (1) "Sir," said Johnson, " 'you should recollect that there was a supernatural interposition; they were destroyed by pestilence. You are not to suppose that the angel of the Lord went about and stabbed each of them with a dagger, or knocked them on the head, man by man."

After Mr. Erskine was gone, a discussion took place, whether the present Earl of Buchan, when Lord Cardross, did right to refuse to go secretary of the embassy to Spain, when Sir James Gray, a man of inferior rank, went ambassador. Dr. Johnson said that, perhaps in point of interest he did wrong; but in point of dignity he did well. Sir Alexander insisted that he was wrong; and said that Mr. Pitt intended it as an advantageous thing for him. "Why, Sir," said Johnson, " Mr. Pitt might think it an advantageous thing for him to make him a vintner, and get him all the Portugal trade: but he would have demeaned himself strangely, had he accepted of such a situation. Sir, had he gone secretary while his inferior was ambassador, he would have been a traitor to his rank and family." (2)

(1) One hundred and eighty-five thousand. xxxvii. 36., and 2 Kings, xix. 35. — M.

See Isaiah,

(2) If this principle were to be admitted, the young nobility would be excluded from all the professions; for the superiors in the profession would frequently be their inferiors in personal rank. Would Johnson have dissuaded Lord Cardross from entering on the military profession, because at his outset he must have been commanded by a person inferior in personal rank?