[47] One evening, in the Haymarket Theatre, ’when Foote lighted the King to his chair, his majesty asked who [sic] the piece was written by?  “By one of your Majesty’s chaplains,” said Foote, unable even then to suppress his wit; “and dull enough to have been written by a bishop."’ Forster’s Essays, ii. 435.  See ante, i. 390, note 3.

[48] Bk. v. ch. 1.

[49] See ante, ii. 133, note 1; Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 27, and Oct. 28.

[50] The correspondent of The Gentleman’s Magazine [1792, p. 214] who subscribes himself SCIOLUS furnishes the following supplement:—­

’A lady of my acquaintance remembers to have heard her uncle sing those homely stanzas more than forty-five years ago.  He repeated the second thus:—­

     She shall breed young lords and ladies fair,
     And ride abroad in a coach and three pair,
     And the best, &c. 
     And have a house, &c.

And remembered a third which seems to have been the introductory one, and is believed to have been the only remaining one:—­

     When the Duke of Leeds shall have made his choice
     Of a charming young lady that’s beautiful and wise,
     She’ll be the happiest young gentlewoman under the skies,
     As long as the sun and moon shall rise,
     And how happy shall, &c.

It is with pleasure I add that this stanza could never be more truly applied than at this present time.  BOSWELL.  This note was added to the second edition.

[51] See ante, i. 115, note 1.

[52] See ante, i. 82.

[53] Baretti, in a MS. note on Piozzi Letters, i. 121, says:—­’Johnson was a real true-born Englishman.  He hated the Scotch, the French, the Dutch, the Hanoverians, and had the greatest contempt for all other European nations; such were his early prejudices which he never attempted to conquer.’  Reynolds wrote of Johnson:—­’The prejudices he had to countries did not extend to individuals.  In respect to Frenchmen he rather laughed at himself, but it was insurmountable.  He considered every foreigner as a fool till they had convinced him of the contrary.’  Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 460.  Garrick wrote of the French in 1769:—­’Their politesse has reduced their character to such a sameness, and their humours and passions are so curbed by habit, that, when you have seen half-a-dozen French men and women, you have seen the whole.’ Garrick Corres. i. 358.

[54] ‘There is not a man or woman here,’ wrote Horace Walpole from Paris (Letters iv. 434), ’that is not a perfect old nurse, and who does not talk gruel and anatomy with equal fluency and ignorance.’