[1144] In justice both to Sir William Forbes, and myself, it is proper to mention, that the papers which were submitted to his perusal contained only an account of our Tour from the time that Dr. Johnson and I set out from Edinburgh (p. 58), and consequently did not contain the elogium on Sir William Forbes, (p. 24), which he never saw till this book appeared in print; nor did he even know, when he wrote the above letter, that this Journal was to be published.  BOSWELL.  This note is not in the first edition.

[1145] Hamlet, act iii. sc. 1.

[1146] Both Nonpareil and Bon Chretien are in Johnson’s Dictionary; Nonpareil, is defined as a kind of apple, and Bon Chretien as a species of pear.

[1147] See ante, p. 311.

[1148] See ante, iv. 9.

[1149] ’Dryden’s contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied.’  Johnson’s Works, vii. 245.  See ante, iii. 71.

[1150]

     ’Before great Agamemnon reign’d
      Reign’d kings as great as he, and brave
      Whose huge ambition’s now contain’d
      In the small compass of a grave;
      In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown,
      No bard had they to make all time their own.’

FRANCIS.  Horace, Odes, iv. 9. 25.

[1151] Having found, on a revision of the first edition of this work, that, notwithstanding my best care, a few observations had escaped me, which arose from the instant impression, the publication of which might perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of a strict decorum, I immediately ordered that they should be omitted in the subsequent editions.  I was pleased to find that they did not amount in the whole to a page.  If any of the same kind are yet left, it is owing to inadvertence alone, no man being more unwilling to give pain to others than I am.

A contemptible scribbler, of whom I have learned no more than that, after having disgraced and deserted the clerical character, he picks up in London a scanty livelihood by scurrilous lampoons under a feigned name, has impudently and falsely asserted that the passages omitted were defamatory, and that the omission was not voluntary, but compulsory.  The last insinuation I took the trouble publickly to disprove; yet, like one of Pope’s dunces, he persevered in ‘the lie o’erthrown.’ [Prologue to the Satires, l. 350.] As to the charge of defamation, there is an obvious and certain mode of refuting it.  Any person who thinks it worth while to compare one edition with the other, will find that the passages omitted were not in the least degree of that nature, but exactly such as I have represented them in the former part of this note, the hasty effusion of momentary feelings, which the delicacy of politeness should have suppressed.  BOSWELL.  In the second edition this note ended at the first paragraph, the latter part being added in the third.  For the ’few observations omitted’ see ante, pp. 148, 381, 388.