retaining occurrences.  Of this vacillation and vagrancy of mind I impute a great part to a fortuitous and unsettled life, and therefore purpose to spend my life with more method.

’This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial.  Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other.  I did not forget thee yesterday.  Couldst thou have lived!  I am now, with the help of God, to begin a new life.’

Dr. Hill prints an interesting letter of Mr. Jowett’s, in which occur the following observations: 

’It is a curious question whether Boswell has unconsciously misrepresented Johnson in any respect.  I think, judging from the materials, which are supplied chiefly by himself, that in one respect he has.  He has represented him more as a sage and philosopher in his conduct as well as his conversation than he really was, and less as a rollicking “King of Society.”  The gravity of Johnson’s own writings tends to confirm this, as I suspect, erroneous impression.  His religion was fitful and intermittent; and when once the ice was broken he enjoyed Jack Wilkes, though he refused to shake hands with Hume.  I was much struck with a remark of Sir John Hawkins (excuse me if I have mentioned this to you before):  “He was the most humorous man I ever knew."’

Mr. Jowett’s letter raises some nice points—­the Wilkes and Hume point, for example.  Dr. Johnson hated both blasphemy and bawd, but he hated blasphemy most.  Mr. Jowett shared the doctor’s antipathies, but very likely hated bawd more than he did blasphemy.  But, as I have already said, the point is a nice one.  To crack jokes with Wilkes at the expense of Boswell and the Scotch seems to me a very different thing from shaking hands with Hume.  But, indeed, it is absurd to overlook either Johnson’s melancholy piety or his abounding humour and love of fun and nonsense.  His Prayers and Meditations are full of the one, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale and Madame D’Arblay are full of the other.  Boswell’s Johnson has superseded the ‘authorized biography’ by Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. Hill did well to include in these Miscellanies Hawkins’ inimitable description of the memorable banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of 1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox’s first novel.  What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though it was till long after dawn.  Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in 1804, at the age of eighty-three.  Could Johnson but have lived he would have lent her his helping hand.  He was no fair-weather friend, but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being able to unite narrow means and splendid munificence.

I must end with an anecdote: 

   ’Henderson asked the doctor’s opinion of Dido and its author. 
   “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “I never did the man an injury.  Yet he
   would read his tragedy to me."’