When the first edition of my Journal was passing through the press, it occurred to me that a peculiar delicacy was necessary to be observed in reporting the opinion of one literary lady concerning the performance of another; and I had such scruples on that head, that in the proof sheet I struck out the name of Mrs. Thrale from the above paragraph, and two or three hundred copies of my book were actually printed and published without it; of these Sir Joshua Reynolds’s copy happened to be one.  But while the sheet was working off, a friend, for whose opinion I have great respect, suggested that I had no right to deprive Mrs. Thrale of the high honour which Dr. Johnson had done her, by stating her opinion along with that of Mr. Beauclerk, as coinciding with, and, as it were, sanctioning his own.  The observation appeared to me so weighty and conclusive, that I hastened to the printing-house, and, as a piece of justice, restored Mrs. Thrale to that place from which a too scrupulous delicacy had excluded her.  On this simple state of facts I shall make no observation whatever.  BOSWELL.  This note was first published in the form of a letter to the Editor of The Gazetteer on April 17, 1786.

[678] See ante, p. 215, for his knowledge of coining and brewing, and post, p. 263, for his knowledge of threshing and thatching.  Now and then, no doubt, ‘he talked ostentatiously,’ as he had at Fort George about Gunpowder (ante, p. 124).  In the Gent.  Mag. for 1749, p. 55, there is a paper on the Construction of Fireworks, which I have little doubt is his.  The following passage is certainly Johnsonian:—­’The excellency of a rocket consists in the largeness of the train of fire it emits, the solemnity of its motion (which should be rather slow at first, but augmenting as it rises), the straightness of its flight, and the height to which it ascends.’

[679] Perhaps Johnson refers to Stephen Hales’s Statical Essays (London, 1733), in which is an account of experiments made on the blood and blood-vessels of animals.

[680] Evidence was given at the Tichborne Trial to shew that it takes some years to learn the trade.

[681] Not the very tavern, which was burned down in the great fire.  P. CUNNINGHAM.

[682] I do not see why I might not have been of this club without lessening my character.  But Dr. Johnson’s caution against supposing one’s self concealed in London, may be very useful to prevent some people from doing many things, not only foolish, but criminal.  BOSWELL.

[683] See ante, iii. 318.

[684] Johnson defines airy as gay, sprightly, full of mirth, &c.

[685] ‘A man would be drowned by claret before it made him drunk.’ Ante, iii. 381.

[686] Ante, p. 137.

[687] See ante ii. 261.