There are, indeed, in this Dedication, several sentences constructed upon the model of those of Johnson.  But the imitation of the form, without the spirit of his style, has been so general, that this of itself is not sufficient evidence.  Even our newspaper writers aspire to it.  In an account of the funeral of Edwin, the comedian, in The Diary of Nov. 9, 1790, that son of drollery is thus described:  ’A man who had so often cheered the sullenness of vacancy, and suspended the approaches of sorrow.’  And in The Dublin Evening Post, August 16, 1791, there is the following paragraph:  ’It is a singular circumstance, that, in a city like this, containing 200,000 people, there are three months in the year during which no place of publick amusement is open.  Long vacation is here a vacation from pleasure, as well as business; nor is there any mode of passing the listless evenings of declining summer, but in the riots of a tavern, or the stupidity of a coffee-house.’

I have not thought it necessary to specify every copy of verses written by Johnson, it being my intention to, publish an authentick edition of all his Poetry, with notes.  BOSWELL.  This Catalogue, as Mr. Boswell calls it, is by Dr. Johnson intitled Designs.  It seems from the hand that it was written early in life:  from the marginal dates it appears that some portions were added in 1752 and 1753.  CROKER.

[1171] On April 19 of this year he wrote:  ’When I lay sleepless, I used to drive the night along by turning Greek epigrams into Latin.  I know not if I have not turned a hundred.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 364.  Forty-five years earlier he described how Boerhaave, ’when he lay whole days and nights without sleep, found no method of diverting his thoughts so effectual as meditation upon his studies, and often relieved and mitigated the sense of his torments by the recollection of what he had read, and by reviewing those stores of knowledge which he had reposited in his memory.’ Works, vi. 284.

[1172] Mr. Cumberland assures me, that he was always treated with great courtesy by Dr. Johnson, who, in his Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p. 68 thus speaks of that learned, ingenious, and accomplished gentleman:  ’The want of company is an inconvenience:  but Mr. Cumberland is a million.’  BOSWELL.  Northcote, according to Hazlitt (Conversations of Northcote, p. 275), said that Johnson and his friends ’never admitted C——­[Cumberland] as one of the set; Sir Joshua did not invite him to dinner.  If he had been in the room, Goldsmith would have flown out of it as if a dragon had been there.  I remember Garrick once saying, “D—­n his dish-clout face; his plays would never do, if it were not for my patching them up and acting in them."’

[1173] See ante, p. 64, note 2.

[1174] Dr. Parr said, “There are three great Grecians in England:  Porson is the first; Burney is the third; and who is the second I need not tell"’ Field’s Parr, ii. 215.