[80] See ante, iv. 27, where Burke said:—­’It is enough for me to have rung the bell to him [Johnson].’

[81] See ante, vol. iv, May 15, 1784.

[82] Prior (Life of Burke, pp.31, 36) says that ’from the first his destination was the Bar.’  His name was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747, but he was never called.  Why he gave up the profession his biographer cannot tell.

[83] See ante, ii. 437, note 2.

[84] See ante, i. 78, note 2.

[85] That cannot be said now, after the flagrant part which Mr. John Wesley took against our American brethren, when, in his own name, he threw amongst his enthusiastick flock, the very individual combustibles of Dr. Johnson’s Taxation no Tyranny; and after the intolerant spirit which he manifested against our fellow-christians of the Roman Catholick Communion, for which that able champion, Father O’Leary, has given him so hearty a drubbing.  But I should think myself very unworthy, if I did not at the same time acknowledge Mr. John Wesley’s merit, as a veteran ‘Soldier of Jesus Christ’ [2 Timothy, ii. 3], who has, I do believe, ’turned many from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan to the living GOD’ [Acts, xxvi. 18].  BOSWELL.  Wesley wrote on Nov. 11, 1775 (Journal, iv. 56), ’I made some additions to the Calm Address to our American Colonies.  Need any one ask from what motive this was wrote?  Let him look round; England is in a flame! a flame of malice and rage against the King, and almost all that are in authority under him.  I labour to put out this flame.’  He wrote a few days later:—­’As to reviewers, news-writers, London Magazines, and all that kind of gentlemen, they behave just as I expected they would.  And let them lick up Mr. Toplady’s spittle still; a champion worthy of their cause.’ Journal, p. 58.  In a letter published in Jan. 1780, he said:—­’I insist upon it, that no government, not Roman Catholic, ought to tolerate men of the Roman Catholic persuasion.  They ought not to be tolerated by any government, Protestant, Mahometan, or Pagan.’  To this the Rev. Arthur O’Leary replied with great wit and force, in a pamphlet entitled, Remarks on the Rev. Mr. Wesley’s Letters.  Dublin, 1780.  Wesley (Journal, iv. 365) mentions meeting O’Leary, and says:—­’He seems not to be wanting either in sense or learning.’  Johnson wrote to Wesley on Feb. 6, 1776 (Croker’s Boswell, p. 475), ’I have thanks to return you for the addition of your important suffrage to my argument on the American question.  To have gained such a mind as yours may justly confirm me in my own opinion.  What effect my paper has upon the public, I know not; but I have no reason to be discouraged.  The lecturer was surely in the right, who, though he saw his audience slinking away, refused to quit the chair while Plato staid.’

[86] ‘Powerful preacher as he was,’ writes Southey, ’he had neither strength nor acuteness of intellect, and his written compositions are nearly worthless.’  Southey’s Wesley, i. 323.  See ante, ii. 79.