and the other prowling for prey.  He defied any one to produce a classical book written in Scotland since Buchanan.  Robertson, he said, used pretty words, but he liked Hume better; and neither of them would he allow to be more to Clarendon than a rat to a cat.  “A Scotch surgeon may have more learning than an English one, and all Scotland could not muster learning enough for Lowth’s Prelections."’ See ante, ii. 363, and March 30, 1783.

[170] The poem is entitled Gualterus Danistonus ad Amicos.  It begins:—­

     ‘Dum studeo fungi fallentis munere vitae’

Which Prior imitates:—­

     ‘Studious the busy moments to deceive.’

Sir Walter Scott thought that the poem praised by Johnson was ’more likely the fine epitaph on John, Viscount of Dundee, translated by Dryden, and beginning Ultime Scotoruml’ Archibald Pitcairne, M.D., was born in 1652, and died in 1713.

[171] My Journal, from this day inclusive, was read by Dr. Johnson.  BOSWELL.  It was read by Johnson up to the second paragraph of Oct. 26.  Boswell, it should seem, once at least shewed Johnson a part of the Journal from which he formed his Life.  See ante, iii. 260, where he says:—­’It delighted him on a review to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.’

[172] See ante, ii. 20, note 4.

[173] Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning, published in 1759, says, (ch. x):—­’When the great Somers was at the helm, patronage was fashionable among our nobility ...  Since the days of a certain prime minister of inglorious memory [Sir Robert Walpole] the learned have been kept pretty much at a distance. ...  The author, when unpatronised by the Great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller.  There cannot be perhaps imagined a combination more prejudicial to taste than this.  It is the interest of the one to allow as little for writing, and of the other to write as much as possible; accordingly tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavours.’

[174] In the first number of The Rambler, Johnson shews how attractive to an author is the form of publication which he was himself then adopting:—­’It heightens his alacrity to think in how many places he shall have what he is now writing read with ecstacies to-morrow.’

[175] Yet he said ’the inhabitants of Lichfield were the most sober, decent people in England.’ Ante, ii. 463.

[176] At the beginning of the eighteenth century, says Goldsmith, ‘smoking in the rooms [at Bath] was permitted.’  When Nash became King of Bath he put it down.  Goldsmith’s Works, ed. 1854, iv. 51.  ‘Johnson,’ says Boswell (ante, i. 317), ’had a high opinion of the sedative influence of smoking.’

[177] Dr. Johnson used to practise this himself very much.  BOSWELL.