Some one wished for Mr. Dyer’s opinion, which he gave with his usual strength and accuracy.  “Why,” said Goldsmith, turning round to Dyer, whom he had scarcely noticed before, “you seem to know a good deal of this matter.”  “If I had not,” replied Dyer, “I should not, in this company, have said a word upon the subject."’ Burke described him as ’a man of profound and general erudition; his sagacity and judgment were fully equal to the extent of his learning.’  Prior’s Malone, pp. 419, 424.  Malone in his Life of Dryden, p. 181, says that Dyer was Junius.  Johnson speaks of him as ’the late learned Mr. Dyer.’ Works, viii. 385.  Had he been alive he was to have been the professor of mathematics in the imaginary college at St. Andrews.  Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 25.  Many years after his death, Johnson bought his portrait to hang in ’a little room that he was fitting up with prints.’  Croker’s Boswell, p. 639.

[38] Memoirs of Agriculture and other Oeconomical Arts, 3 vols., by Robert Dossie, London, 1768-82.

[39] See ante, ii. 14.

[40] Here Lord Macartney remarks, ’A Bramin or any cast of the Hindoos will neither admit you to be of their religion, nor be converted to yours;—­a thing which struck the Portuguese with the greatest astonishment, when they first discovered the East Indies.’  BOSWELL.

[41] See ante, ii. 250.

[42] See ante, Aug. 30, 1780.

[43] John, Lord Carteret, and Earl Granville, who died Jan. 2, 1763.  It is strange that he wrote so ill; for Lord Chesterfield says (Misc.  Works, iv. Appendix, p. 42) that ’he had brought away with him from Oxford, a great stock of Greek and Latin, and had made himself master of all the modern languages.  He was one of the best speakers in the House of Lords, both in the declamatory and argumentative way.’

[44] Walpole describes the partiality of the members of the court-martial that sat on Admiral Keppel in Jan. 1779.  One of them ’declared frankly that he should not attend to forms of law, but to justice.’  So friendly were the judges to the prisoner that ’it required the almost unanimous voice of the witnesses in favour of his conduct, and the vile arts practised against him, to convince all mankind how falsely and basely he had been accused.’  Walpole, referring to the members, speaks of ‘the feelings of seamen unused to reason.’  Some of the leading politicians established themselves at Portsmouth during the trial. Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 329

[45] See ante, ii. 240.

[46] In all Gray’s Odes, there is a kind of cumbrous splendour which we wish away....  The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence.  “Double, double, toil and trouble.”  He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tip-toe.  His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease and nature.’  Johnson’s Works, viii. 484-87.  See ante, i. 402, and ii. 327, 335.