[630] Horace Walpole, writing of 1758, says:—­’Prize-fighting, in which we had horribly resembled the most barbarous and most polite nations, was suppressed by the legislature.’ Memoirs of the Reign of George II, iii. 99.  According to Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 5), Johnson said that his ’father’s brother, Andrew, kept the ring in Smithfield (where they wrestled and boxed) for a whole year, and never was thrown or conquered.  Mr. Johnson was,’ she continues, ‘very conversant in the art of boxing.’  She had heard him descant upon it ’much to the admiration of those who had no expectation of his skill in such matters.’

[631] See ante, ii. 179, 226, and iv. 211.

[632] See ante, p. 98.

[633] See ante, i, 110.

[634] See ante, i. 398, and ii. 15, 35, 441.

[635] Gibbon, thirteen years later, writing to Lord Sheffield about the commercial treaty with France, said (Misc.  Works, ii. 399):—­’I hope both nations are gainers; since otherwise it cannot be lasting; and such double mutual gain is surely possible in fair trade, though it could not easily happen in the mischievous amusements of war and gaming.’

[636] Johnson (Works, viii. 139), writing of gratitude and resentment, says:—­’Though there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will never be wanting multitudes that will indulge an easy vice.’

[637] Aul.  Gellius, lib. v. c. xiv.  BOSWELL.

[638] ‘The difficulties in princes’ business are many and great; but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind.  For it is common with princes, saith Tacitus, to will contradictories. Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, et inter se contrariae.  For it is the solecism of power to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean.’  Bacon’s Essays, No. xix.

[639] Yet Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 30:—­’I am now no longer pleased with the delay; you can hear from me but seldom, and I cannot at all hear from you.  It comes into my mind that some evil may happen.’ Piozzi Letters, i. 148.  On Oct. 15 he wrote to Mr. Thrale:—­’Having for many weeks had no letter, my longings are very great to be informed how all things are at home, as you and mistress allow me to call it....  I beg to have my thoughts set at rest by a letter from you or my mistress.’ Ib. p. 166.  See ante, iii. 4.

[640] Sir Walter Scott thus describes Dunvegan in 1814:—­’The whole castle occupies a precipitous mass of rock overhanging the lake, divided by two or three islands in that place, which form a snug little harbour under the walls.  There is a court-yard looking out upon the sea, protected by a battery, at least a succession of embrasures, for only two guns are pointed, and these unfit for service.  The ancient entrance rose up a flight of steps cut in the rock, and passed into this court-yard through