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he lies, his neighbour tells him-he lies; if one gives his neighbour a blow, his neighbour gives him a blow but in a state of highly polished society, an affront is held to be a serious injury. It must, therefore, be resented, or rather a duel must be fought upon it; as men have agreed to banish from society one who puts up with an affront without fighting a duel. Now, Sir, it is never unlawful to fight in self-defence. He, then, who fights a duel, does not fight from passion against his antagonist, but out of self-defence; to avert the stigma of the world, and to prevent himself from being driven out of society. I could wish there was not that superfluity of refinement; but while such notions prevail, no doubt a man may lawfully fight a duel."

"Let it be remembered, that this justification is applicable only to the person who receives an affront. All mankind must condemn the aggressor." (1)

The General told us, that, when he was a very young man, I think only fifteen, serving under Prince Eugene of Savoy, he was sitting in a company at table with a prince of Wirtemberg. The prince took up a glass of wine, and, by a fillip, made some of it fly in Oglethorpe's face. Here was a nice dilemma. To have challenged him instantly, might have fixed a quarrelsome character upon the young soldier to have taken no notice of it, might have

(1) The frequent disquisitions on this subject bring painfully to recollection the death of Mr. Boswell's eldest son, Sir Alexander, who was killed in a duel, at Auchterpool, arising from a political dispute, on the 26th of March, 1822, by Mr. Stuart, of Dunearn.-C. [This conversation on duelling was quoted by Mr. Jeffrey, the counsel for Mr. Stuart.]

been considered as cowardice. Oglethorpe, therefore, keeping his eye upon the prince, and smiling all the time, as if he took what his highness had done in jest, said "Mon Prince,-" (I forget the French words he used; the purport however was), "that's a good joke; but we do it much better in England;" and threw a whole glass of wine in the prince's face. An old general, who sat by, said, "Il a bien fait, mon prince, vous l'avez commencé :” and thus all ended in good humour."

Dr. Johnson said, "Pray, general, give us an account of the siege of Belgrade." Upon which the general, pouring a little wine upon the table, described every thing with a wet finger: "Here we were; here were the Turks," &c. &c. Johnson listened with the closest attention.

A question was started, how far people who disagree in a capital point can live in friendship together. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the idem velle atque idem nolle―the same likings and the same aversions. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke: I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party."(1) GOLDSMITH. "But, Sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard: You may

(1) Of which Mr. Burke was a leading member.-C.

look into all the chambers but one.' But we should have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject." JOHNSON (with a loud voice). "Sir, I am not saying that you could live in friendship with a man from whom you differ as to some point; I am only saying that I could do it. You put me in mind of Sappho in Ovid." (1)

Goldsmith told us, that he was now busy in writing a Natural History (2); and, that he might have

(1) Mr. Boswell's note here being rather short, as taken at the time (with a view, perhaps, to future revision), Johnson's remark is obscure, and requires to be a little opened. What he said, probably was, " You seem to think that two friends, to live well together, must be in a perfect harmony with each other; that each should be to the other, what Sappho boasts she was to her lover, and uniformly agree in every particular: but this is by no means necessary," &c. The words of Sappho alluded to, are, omnique à parte placebam." Ovid. Epist. Sapp. ad Phaonem. i. 45. — M.

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I should rather conjecture that the passage which Johnson had in view was the following, l. 45. :—

"Si, nisi quæ facie poterit te digna videri,

Nulla futura tua est; nulla futura tua est."

His reasoning and its illustration I take to be this: - If you are determined to associate with no one whose sentiments do not universally coincide with your own, you will by such a resolution exclude yourself from all society; for no two men can be found who, on all points, invariably think alike. So Sappho in Ovid tells Phaon, that if he will not unite himself to any one who is not a complete resemblance of himself, it will be impossible for him to form any union at all. The lines which I have quoted are thus expanded in Pope's Paraphrase; which, to say the truth, I suspect was at this moment more in Johnson's recollection than the original ::

"If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign
But such as merit, such as equal thine,

By none, alas! by none, thou canst be moved,

Phaon alone by Phaon must be loved."-J. BOSWELL, jun.

(2) Published, in 1774, in eight volumes, 8vo, under the title of a "History of the Earth and of Animated Nature."- C.

full leisure for it, he had taken lodgings at a farmer's house, near to the six mile-stone, on the Edgewareroad, and had carried down his books in two returned post-chaises. He said, he believed the farmer's family thought him an odd character, similar to that in which the Spectator appeared to his landlady and her children: he was The GentleMr. Mickle (1), the translator of “The Lusiad," and I, went to visit him at this place a few days afterwards. He was not at home; but, having a curiosity to see his apartment, we went in, and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals, scrawled upon the wall with a black-lead pencil.

man.

The subject of ghosts being introduced, Johnson repeated what he had told me of a friend of his (2), an honest man, and a man of sense, having asserted to him that he had seen an apparition. Goldsmith told us, he was assured by his brother, the Reverend Mr. Goldsmith, that he also had seen one. General Oglethorpe told us, that Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marlborough's army, had mentioned to many of his friends, that he should die on a particular day; that upon that day a battle took place with the French; that after it was over,

(1) William Julius Mickle, the son of a Scotch clergyman, was born at Langholm, Dumfriesshire, in 1734. He lived the life that poets lived in those days; that is, in difficulties and distress, till 1779, when, being appointed secretary to Commodore Johnson, he realised by prize agencies a moderate competence. He retired to Forest Hill, near Oxford, where he died in 1788. His translation of the Lusiad is still read: his original pieces are almost all forgotten.-C.

(2) Mr. Cave. See antè, p. 213.

and Prendergast was still alive, his brother officers, while they were yet in the field, jestingly asked him, where was his prophecy now? Prendergast gravely answered, "I shall die, notwithstanding what you see." Soon afterwards, there came a shot from a French battery, to which the orders for a cessation of arms had not yet reached, and he was killed upon the spot. Colonel Cecil, who took possession of his effects, found in his pocket-book the following solemn entry:

[Here the date.] "Dreamt or · (1) Sir John Friend meets me:" (here the very day on which he was killed was mentioned.)

Prendergast had been connected with Sir John Friend, who was executed for high treason. General Oglethorpe said, he was with Colonel Cecil, when Pope came and inquired into the truth of this story, which made a great noise at the time, and was then confirmed by the colonel.

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(1) Here was a blank, which may be filled up thus: - was told by an apparition;" -the writer being probably uncertain whether he was asleep or awake, when his mind was impressed with the solemn presentiment with which the fact afterwards happened so wonderfully to correspond.-B.

My friend, Sir Henry Hardinge, Secretary at War, is so kind as to inform me, that it appears that Colonel Sir Thomas Prendergast, of the twenty-second foot, was killed at Malplaquet, August 31. 1709; but no trace can be found of any Colonel Cecil in the army at that period. The well-known Jacobite, Colonel William Cecil, who was sent to the Tower in 1744, could hardly have been, in 1709, of the age, rank, and station which Oglethorpe's anecdote seems to imply. Is it not very strange, if this story made so great a noise, we should read of it no where else? and, as so much curiosity was excited, that the paper should not have been preserved, or, at least, so generally shown as to be mentioned by some other witness? - C.