Hammond. Elegy, v.  In Boswell’s Hebrides (Sept. 29), he said
‘Hammond’s Love Elegies were poor things.’

[62] Perhaps Lord Corke and Orrery. Ante, iii. 183.  CROKER.

[63] Colman assumed that Johnson had maintained that Shakespeare was totally ignorant of the learned languages.  He then quotes a line to prove ’that the author of The Taming of the Shrew had at least read Ovid;’ and continues:—­’And what does Dr. Johnson say on this occasion?  Nothing.  And what does Mr. Farmer say on this occasion?  Nothing.’  Colman’s Terence, ii. 390.  For Farmer, see ante, iii. 38.

[64] ’It is most likely that Shakespeare had learned Latin sufficiently to make him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an easy perusal of the Roman authors.’  Johnson’s Works, V. 129.  ’The style of Shakespeare was in itself ungrammatical, perplexed, and obscure.’ Ib. p. 135.

[65]

     ’May I govern my passion with
        an absolute sway,
      And grow wiser and better, as
        my strength wears away,
      Without gout or stone by a
        gentle decay.’

The Old Man’s Wish was sung to Sir Roger de Coverley by ’the fair one,’ after the collation in which she ate a couple of chickens, and drank a full bottle of wine. Spectator, No. 410.  ’What signifies our wishing?’ wrote Dr. Franklin.  ’I have sung that wishing song a thousand times when I was young, and now find at fourscore that the three contraries have befallen me, being subject to the gout and the stone, and not being yet master of all my passions.’  Franklin’s Memoirs, iii. 185.

[66] He uses the same image in The Life of Milton (Works, vii. 104):—­’He might still be a giant among the pigmies, the one-eyed monarch of the blind.’  Cumberland (Memoirs, i. 39) says that Bentley, hearing it maintained that Barnes spoke Greek almost like his mother tongue, replied:—­’Yes, I do believe that Barnes had as much Greek and understood it about as well as an Athenian blacksmith.’  See ante, iii 284.  A passage in Wooll’s Life of Dr. Warton (i. 313) shews that Barnes attempted to prove that Homer and Solomon were one and the same man.  But I. D’Israeli says that it was reported that Barnes, not having money enough to publish his edition of Homer, ’wrote a poem, the design of which is to prove that Solomon was the author of the Iliad, to interest his wife, who had some property, to lend her aid towards the publication of so divine a work.’ Calamities of Authors, i. 250.

[67] ’The first time Suard saw Burke, who was at Reynolds’s, Johnson touched him on the shoulder and said, “Le grand Burke."’ Boswelliana, p. 299.  See ante, ii. 450.

[68] Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 279, 288) says that Langton told her father that he meant to give his six daughters such a knowledge of Greek, ’that while five of them employed themselves in feminine works, the sixth should read a Greek author for the general amusement.’  She describes how ’he would get into the most fluent recitation of half a page of Greek, breaking off for fear of wearying, by saying, “and so it goes on,” accompanying his words with a gentle wave of his hand.’