[193] Johnson had not wished to write Lyttelton’s Life.  He wrote to Lord Westcote, Lyttelton’s brother, ’My desire is to avoid offence, and be totally out of danger.  I take the liberty of proposing to your lordship, that the historical account should be written under your direction by any friend you may be willing to employ, and I will only take upon myself to examine the poetry.’—­Croker’s Boswell, p.650.

[194] It was not Molly Aston (ante i. 83) but Miss Hill Boothby (ib.) of whom Mrs. Thrale wrote.  She says (Anec. p.160):—­’Such was the purity of her mind, Johnson said, and such the graces of her manner, that Lord Lyttelton and he used to strive for her preference with an emulation that occasioned hourly disgust, and ended in lasting animosity.’  There is surely much exaggeration in this account.

[195] Let not my readers smile to think of Johnson’s being a candidate for female favour; Mr. Peter Garrick assured me, that he was told by a lady, that in her opinion Johnson was ‘a very seducing man.’  Disadvantages of person and manner may be forgotten, where intellectual pleasure is communicated to a susceptible mind; and that Johnson was capable of feeling the most delicate and disinterested attachment, appears from the following letter, which is published by Mrs. Thrale [Piozzi Letters, ii. 391], with some others to the same person, of which the excellence is not so apparent:—­

’TO MISS BOOTHBY.  January, 1755.

DEAREST MADAM,

Though I am afraid your illness leaves you little leisure for the reception of airy civilities, yet I cannot forbear to pay you my congratulations on the new year; and to declare my wishes that your years to come may be many and happy.  In this wish, indeed, I include myself, who have none but you on whom my heart reposes; yet surely I wish your good, even though your situation were such as should permit you to communicate no gratifications to, dearest, dearest Madam, Your, &c.  SAM JOHNSON.’ (BOSWELL.)

[196] Horace, Odes, iv. 3.2, quoted also ante, i.352, note.

[197] The passage which Boswell quotes in part is as follows:—­’When they were first published they were kindly commended by the Critical Reviewers; [i.e. the writers in the Critical Review.  In some of the later editions of Boswell these words have been printed, critical reviewers; so as to include all the reviewers who criticised the work]; and poor Lyttelton, with humble gratitude, returned, in a note which I have read, acknowledgements which can never be proper, since they must be paid either for flattery or for justice.’ Works, viii.491.  Boswell forgets that what may be proper in one is improper in another.  Lyttelton, when he wrote this note, had long been a man of high position.  He had ‘stood in the first rank of opposition,’ he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and when he lost his post, he had been ‘recompensed with a peerage.’  See ante, ii. 126.