’In Pope I cannot read a line
      But with a sigh I wish it mine;
      When he can in one couplet fix
      More sense than I can do in six.’

P. CUNNINGHAM.

[923] He is described by Walpole in his Letters, viii. 5.

[924] ’The night came on while we had yet a great part of the way to go, though not so dark but that we could discern the cataracts which poured down the hills on one side, and fell into one general channel, that ran with great violence on the other.  The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough musick of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before.’  Johnson’s Works, ix. 155.  He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—­’All the rougher powers of nature except thunder were in motion, but there was no danger.  I should have been sorry to have missed any of the inconveniencies, to have had more light or less rain, for their co-operation crowded the scene and filled the mind.’ Piozzi Letters, i. 177.

[925] I never tasted whiskey except once for experiment at the inn in Inverary, when I thought it preferable to any English malt brandy.  It was strong, but not pungent, and was free from the empyreumatick taste or smell.  What was the process I had no opportunity of inquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant.’  Johnson’s Works, ix. 52.  Smollett, medical man though he was, looked upon whisky as anything but poison.  ’I am told that it is given with great success to infants, as a cordial in the confluent small-pox.’ Humphry Clinker.  Letter of Sept. 3.

[926] Regale in this sense is not in Johnson’s Dictionary.  It was, however, a favourite word at this time.  Thus, Mrs. Piozzi, in her Journey through France, ii. 297, says:—­’A large dish of hot chocolate thickened with bread and cream is a common afternoon’s regale here.’  Miss Burney often uses the word.

[927] Boswell, in answering Garrick’s letter seven months later, improved on this comparison.  ‘It was,’ he writes, ’a pine-apple of the finest flavour, which had a high zest indeed among the heath-covered mountains of Scotia.’ Garrick Corres. i. 621.

[928] See ante, p. 115.

[929] See ante, i. 97.

[930] ‘Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane.’ Macbeth, act v. sc. 8.

[931]

     ’From his first entrance to the closing scene
      Let him one equal character maintain.’

FRANCIS.  Horace, Ars Poet. l. 126.

[932] I took the liberty of giving this familiar appellation to my celebrated friend, to bring in a more lively manner to his remembrance the period when he was Dr. Johnson’s pupil.  BOSWELL.

[933] See ante, p. 129.

[934] Boswell is here quoting the Preface to the third edition of his Corsica:—­’Whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy.’