See several more in The Gent.  Mag., 1785.  The Editor of that Miscellany, in which Johnson wrote for several years, seems justly to think that every fragment of so great a man is worthy of being preserved.  BOSWELL.  In the original MS. in the British Museum, Your in the third paragraph of this note is not in italics.  Johnson writes his correspondent’s name Nichols, Nichol, and Nicol.  In the fourth paragraph he writes, first Philips, and next Phillips.  His spelling was sometimes careless, ante, i. 260, note 2.  In the Gent.  Mag. for 1785, p. 10, another of these notes is published:—­’In reading Rowe in your edition, which is very impudently called mine, I observed a little piece unnaturally and odiously obscene.  I was offended, but was still more offended when I could not find it in Rowe’s genuine volumes.  To admit it had been wrong; to interpolate it is surely worse.  If I had known of such a piece in the whole collection, I should have been angry.  What can be done?’ In a note, Mr. Nichols says that this piece ’has not only appeared in the Works of Rowe, but has been transplanted by Pope into the Miscellanies he published in his own name and that of Dean Swift.’

[132] He published, in 1782, a revised edition of Baker’s_ Biographia Dramatica_.  Baker was a grandson of De Foe. Gent.  Mag. 1782, p. 77.

[133] Dryden writing of satiric poetry, says:—­’Had I time I could enlarge on the beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are as requisite in this as in heroic poetry itself; of which the satire is undoubtedly a species.  With these beautiful turns I confess myself to have been unacquainted, till about twenty years ago, in a conversation which I had with that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he asked me why I did not imitate in my verses the turns of Mr. Waller, and Sir John Denham. ...  This hint, thus seasonably given me, first made me sensible of my own wants, and brought me afterwards to seek for the supply of them in other English authors.  I looked over the darling of my youth, the famous Cowley.’  Dryden’s Works, ed. 1821, xiii.  III.

[134] In one of his letters to Nichols, Johnson says:—­’You have now all Cowley.  I have been drawn to a great length, but Cowley or Waller never had any critical examination before.’ Gent.  Mag. 1785, p.9.

[135] Life of Sheffield.  BOSWELL.  Johnson’s Works, vii. 485.

[136] See, however, p.11 of this volume, where the same remark is made and Johnson is there speaking of prose.  MALONE.

[137]

     ’Purpureus, late qui splendeat unus et alter
      Assuitur pannus.’

     ’...  Shreds of purple with broad lustre shine
     Sewed on your poem.’

FRANCIS.  Horace, Ars Poet. 15.

[138] The original reading is enclosed in crochets, and the present one is printed in Italicks.  BOSWELL.