[352] Next day I endeavoured to give what had happened the most ingenious turn I could, by the following verses:—­

To THE HONOURABLE Miss MONCKTON.

     ‘Not that with th’ excellent Montrose
        I had the happiness to dine;
      Not that I late from table rose,
        From Graham’s wit, from generous wine.

      It was not these alone which led
        On sacred manners to encroach;
      And made me feel what most I dread,
        JOHNSON’S just frown, and self-reproach.

      But when I enter’d, not abash’d,
        From your bright eyes were shot such rays,
      At once intoxication flash’d,
        And all my frame was in a blaze.

      But not a brilliant blaze I own,
        Of the dull smoke I’m yet asham’d;
      I was a dreary ruin grown,
        And not enlighten’d though inflam’d.

      Victim at once to wine and love,
        I hope, MARIA, you’ll forgive;
      While I invoke the powers above,
        That henceforth I may wiser live.’

The lady was generously forgiving, returned me an obliging answer, and I thus obtained an Act of Oblivion, and took care never to offend again.  BOSWELL.

[353] See ante, ii. 436, and iv. 88, note I.

[354] On May 22 Horace Walpole wrote (Letters, viii. 44):—­’Boswell, that quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in, which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it.  After tapping many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he vented his errand.  “Had I seen Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets?” I said slightly, “No, not yet;” and so overlaid his whole impertinence.’

[355] See ante, iii. 1.

[356] See ante, ii. 47, note 2; 352, note I; and iii. 376, for explanations of like instances of Boswell’s neglect.

[357] See ante, i. 298, note 4.

[358] ‘He owned he sometimes talked for victory.’  Boswell’s Hebrides, opening pages.

[359] The late Right Hon. William Gerard Hamilton.  MALONE.

[360] Dr. Johnson, being told of a man who was thankful for being introduced to him, ’as he had been convinced in a long dispute that an opinion which he had embraced as a settled truth was no better than a vulgar error, “Nay,” said he, “do not let him be thankful, for he was right, and I was wrong.”  Like his Uncle Andrew in the ring at Smithfield, Johnson, in a circle of disputants, was determined neither to be thrown nor conquered.’  Murphy’s Johnson, p. 139.  Johnson, in The Adventurer, No. 85, seems to describe his own talk.  He writes:—­’ While the various opportunities of conversation invite us to try every mode of argument, and every art of recommending our sentiments, we are frequently betrayed to the use of such as are not in themselves strictly defensible;