[581] See ante, ii. 96

[582] ’"Well,” said he, “we had good talk.”  BOSWELL.  “Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons."’ Ante, ii. 66.

[583] Dr. J. H. Burton says of Hume (Life, ii. 31):—­’No Scotsman could write a book of respectable talent without calling forth his loud and warm eulogiums.  Wilkie was to be the Homer, Blacklock the Pindar, and Home the Shakespeare or something still greater of his country.’  See ante, ii. 121, 296, 306.

[584] The Present State of Music in France and Italy, I vol. 1771, and The Present State of Music in Germany, &c., 2 vols. 1773.  Johnson must have skipped widely in reading these volumes, for though Dr. Burney describes his travels, yet he writes chiefly of music.

[585] Boswell’s son James says that he heard from his father, that the passage which excited this strong emotion was the following:—­

     ’Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more: 
       I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you;
     For morn is approaching, your charms to restore,
       Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with dew;
     Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn;
       Kind Nature the embryo blossom will save: 
     But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn? 
       O when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?’

[586] Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 338) mentions this book at some length.  On March 13, 1780, he wrote:—­’Yesterday was published an octavo, pretending to contain the correspondence of Hackman and Miss Ray that he murdered.’  See ante, iii. 383.

[587] Hawkins (Life, p. 547), recording how Johnson used to meet Psalmanazar at an ale-house, says that Johnson one day ’remarked on the human mind, that it had a necessary tendency to improvement, and that it would frequently anticipate instruction.  “Sir,” said a stranger that overheard him, “that I deny; I am a tailor, and have had many apprentices, but never one that could make a coat till I had taken great pains in teaching him."’ See ante, iii. 443.  Robert Hall was influenced in his studies by ’his intimate association in mere childhood with a tailor, one of his father’s congregation, who was an acute metaphysician.’  Hall’s Works, vi. 5.

[588] Johnson had never been in Grub-street. Ante, i. 296, note 2.

[589] The Honourable Horace Walpole, late Earl of Orford, thus bears testimony to this gentleman’s merit as a writer:—­’Mr. Chambers’s Treatise on Civil Architecture is the most sensible book, and the most exempt from prejudices, that ever was written on that science.’—­Preface to Anecdotes of Painting in England.  BOSWELL.  Chambers was the architect of Somerset House.  See ante, p. 60, note 7.