on Sept. 18, 1771:—­’I have just been enjoying the very great happiness of a visit from my illustrious friend, Pascal Paoli.  He was two nights at Auchinleck, and you may figure the joy of my worthy father and me at seeing the Corsican hero in our romantic groves.’ Garrick Corres. i. 436.  Johnson was not blind to Cromwell’s greatness, for he says (Works, vii. 197), that ’he wanted nothing to raise him to heroick excellence but virtue.’  Lord Auchinleck’s famous saying had been anticipated by Quin, who, according to Davies (Life of Garrick, ii. 115), had said that ’on a thirtieth of January every king in Europe would rise with a crick in his neck.’

[1040] See ante, p. 252.

[1041] James Durham, born 1622, died 1658, wrote many theological works.  Chalmers’s Biog.  Dict.  In the Brit.  Mus.  Cata.  I can find no work by him on the Galatians; Lord Auchinleck’s triumph therefore was, it seems, more artful than honest.

[1042] Gray, it should seem, had given the name earlier.  His friend Bonstetten says that about the year 1769 he was walking with him, when Gray ’exclaimed with some bitterness, “Look, look, Bonstetten! the great bear!  There goes Ursa Major!” This was Johnson.  Gray could not abide him.’  Sir Egerton Brydges, quoted in Gosse’s Gray, iii. 371.  For the epithet bear applied to Johnson see ante, ii. 66, 269, note i, and iv. 113, note 2.  Boswell wrote on June 19, 1775:—­’My father harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think, how shockingly erroneous!), and wandering (or some such phrase) to London.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 207.

[1043] It is remarkable that Johnson in his Life of Blackmore [Works, viii. 42] calls the imaginary Mr. Johnson of the Lay Monastery ‘a constellation of excellence.’  CROKER.

[1044] Page 121.  BOSWELL.  See also ante, iii. 336.

[1045] ‘The late Sir Alexander Boswell,’ wrote Sir Walter Scott, ’was a proud man, and, like his grandfather, thought that his father lowered himself by his deferential suit and service to Johnson.  I have observed he disliked any allusion to the book or to Johnson himself, and I have heard that Johnson’s fine picture by Sir Joshua was sent upstairs out of the sitting apartments at Auchinleck.’ Croker Corres. ii. 32.  This portrait, which was given by Sir Joshua to Boswell (Taylor’s Reynolds, i. 147), is now in the possession of Mr. Charles Morrison.

[1046] ‘I have always said that first Whig was the devil.’ Ante, iii. 326

[1047] See ante, ii. 26.