When Boswell asserts that Johnson ’was particularly resolute in not giving countenance to men whose writings he considered as pernicious to society,’ he forgets that that very summer of 1783 he had been willing to dine at Wilkes’s house (ante, p. 224, note 2).

Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, ed. 1833, iii. 157) wrote to Dr. Price in 1784:—­’It is said that scarce anybody but yourself and Dr. Priestley possesses the art of knowing how to differ decently.’  Gibbon (Misc.  Works, i. 304), describing in 1789 the honestest members of the French Assembly, calls them ’a set of wild visionaries, like our Dr. Price, who gravely debate, and dream about the establishment of a pure and perfect democracy of five and twenty millions, the virtues of the golden age, and the primitive rights and equality of mankind.’  Admiration of Price made Samuel Rogers, when a boy, wish to be a preacher.  ’I thought there was nothing on earth so grand as to figure in a pulpit.  Dr. Price lived much in the society of Lord Lansdowne [Earl of Shelburne] and other people of rank; and his manners were extremely polished.  In the pulpit he was great indeed.’  Rogers’s Table Talk, p. 3.

The full title of the tract mentioned by Boswell is, A small Whole-Length of Dr. Priestley from his Printed Works.  It was published in 1792, and is a very poor piece of writing.

Johnson had refused to meet the Abbe Raynal, the author of the Histoire Philosophique et Politique du Commerce des Deux Indes, when he was over in England in 1777.  Mrs. Chapone, writing to Mrs. Carter on June 15 of that year, says:—­

’I suppose you have heard a great deal of the Abbe Raynal, who is in London.  I fancy you would have served him as Dr. Johnson did, to whom when Mrs. Vesey introduced him, he turned from him, and said he had read his book, and would have nothing to say to him.’  Mrs. Chapone’s Posthumous Works, i. 172.

See Walpole’s Letters, v. 421, and vi. 444.  His book was burnt by the common hangman in Paris.  Carlyle’s French Revolution, ed. 1857, i. 45.

APPENDIX C.

(Page 253.)

Hawkins gives the two following notes:—­

’DEAR SIR,

’As Mr. Ryland was talking with me of old friends and past times, we warmed ourselves into a wish, that all who remained of the club should meet and dine at the house which once was Horseman’s, in Ivy-lane.  I have undertaken to solicit you, and therefore desire you to tell on what day next week you can conveniently meet your old friends.

’I am, Sir,

’Your most humble servant,

‘SAM.  JOHNSON.’

‘Bolt-court, Nov. 22, 1783.’

’DEAR SIR,

’In perambulating Ivy-lane, Mr. Ryland found neither our landlord Horseman, nor his successor.  The old house is shut up, and he liked not the appearance of any near it; he therefore bespoke our dinner at the Queen’s Arms, in St. Paul’s Church-yard, where, at half an hour after three, your company will be desired to-day by those who remain of our former society.