Johnson on the advantages of having a profession or business.

(Vol. iii, p. 309, n. 1.)

’Dr. Johnson was of opinion that the happiest as well as the most virtuous persons were to be found amongst those who united with a business or profession a love of literature.’  —­Seward’s Biographiana, p. 599.

Johnson’s trips to the country.

(Vol. iii, p. 453.)

I have omitted to mention Johnson’s visit to ’Squire Dilly’s mansion at Southill in June, 1781 (ante, iv. 118-132).

Citations of living authors in Johnson’s Dictionary.

(Vol. iv, p. 4, n. 3.)

Johnson cites Irene under impostures, and Lord Lyttelton under twist.

Dr. Parrs evening with Dr. Johnson.  (Vol. iv, p. 15.)

The Rev. John Rigaud, B.D., Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, has kindly sent me the following anecdote of the meeting of Johnson and Parr:—­

’I remember Dr. Routh, the old President of Magdalen, telling me of an interview and conversation between Dr. Johnson and Dr. Parr, in the course of which the former made use of some expression respecting the latter, which considerably wounded and offended him.  “Sir,” he said to Dr. Johnson, “you know that what you have just said will be known in four-and-twenty hours over this vast metropolis.”  Upon which Dr. Johnson’s manner altered, his eye became calm, and he put out his hand, and said, “Forgive me, Parr, I didn’t quite mean it.”  “But,” said the President, with an amused and amusing look, “I never could get him to tell me what it was Dr. Johnson had said!” He spoke of seeing Dr. Johnson going up the steps into University College, dressed, I think, in a snuff-coloured coat.’

Dr. Martin Joseph Routh, who was President of Magdalen College for sixty-four years, was born in 1755 and died on December 22, 1854.

‘Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.’

(Vol. iv, p. 181, n. 3.)

Malone’s note on The Rape of Lucrece must have been, not as I conjectured on line 1111, but on lines 1581-2:—­

  ’It easeth some, though none it ever cured,
  To think their dolour others have endured.’

With these lines may be compared Satan’s speech in Paradise Regained, Book i, lines 399-402:—­

  ’Long since with woe
  Nearer acquainted, now I feel by proof,
  That fellowship in pain divides not smart,
  Nor lightens aught each man’s peculiar load.’

Richard Baxter’s rule of preaching.

(Vol. iv, p. 185.)

The Rev. J. Hamilton Davies [See ante, p. xlix.] has furnished me with the following extract from Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. 1696, p. 93, in illustration of Johnson’s statement:—­