[239] Mr. Thrale had removed, that is to say, from his winter residence in the Borough.  Mrs. Piozzi has written opposite this passage in her copy of Boswell:—­’Spiteful again!  He went by direction of his physicians where they could easiest attend to him.’  Hayward’s Piozzi, i. 91.  There was, perhaps, a good deal of truth in Boswell’s supposition, for in 1779 Johnson had told her that he saw ’with indignation her despicable dread of living in the Borough.’ Piozzi Letters, ii.92.  Johnson had a room in the new house.  ‘Think,’ wrote Hannah More, ’of Johnson’s having apartments in Grosvenor-square! but he says it is not half so convenient as Bolt-court.’  H. More’s Memoirs, i.2O7.

[240] See ante, iii. 250.

[241] Shakspeare makes Hamlet thus describe his father:—­

’See what a grace was seated on this brow:  Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald, Mercury, New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man.! [Act iii. sc. 4.]

Milton thus pourtrays our first parent, Adam:—­

     ’His fair large front and eye sublime declar’d
      Absolute rule; and hyacinthin locks
      Round from his parted forelock manly hung
      Clus’tring, but not beneath his shoulders broad.’
     [P.L. iv. 300.] BOSWELL.

[242] ’Grattan’s Uncle, Dean Marlay [afterwards Bishop of Waterford], had a good deal of the humour of Swift.  Once, when the footman was out of the way, he ordered the coachman to fetch some water from the well.  To this the man objected, that his business was to drive, not to run on errands.  “Well, then,” said Marlay, “bring out the coach and four, set the pitcher inside, and drive to the well;”—­a service which was several times repeated, to the great amusement of the village.’  Rogers’s Table-Talk, p.176.

[243] See ante, ii. 241, for Johnson’s contempt of puns.

[244] ‘He left not faction, but of that was left.’ Absalom and Achitophel, l. 568.

[245] Boswell wrote of Gibbon in 1779:—­’He is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our Literary Club to me.’ Letters of Boswell, p.242.  See ante, ii.443, note 1.

[246] The schools in this sense means a University.

[247] See ante, ii.224.

[248] Up to the year 1770, controverted elections had been tried before a Committee of the whole House.  By the Grenville Act which was passed in that year they were tried by a select committee. Parl.  Hist. xvi. 902.  Johnson, in The False Alarm (1770), describing the old method of trial, says;—­’These decisions have often been apparently partial, and sometimes tyrannically oppressive.’ Works, vi. 169. In The Patriot (1774), he says:—­’A disputed election is now tried with the same scrupulousness and solemnity as any other title.’ Ib. p.223.  See Boswell’s Hebrides, Nov.10.