George Selwyn says I may, if I please, write historic doubts on the present Duke of Grafton too.  Indeed, they would be doubts, for I know nothing certainly.

Will you be so kind as to look into Leslie De Rebus Scotorum, and see if Perkin’s Proclamation is there, and if there, how authenticated.  You will find in Speed my reason for asking this.  I have written in such a hurry, I believe you will scarce be able to read my letter—­and as I have just been writing French, perhaps the sense may not be clearer than the writing.  Adieu!

(1006) Gray, in a letter to Mr. Walpole, of the 14th, had said—­ “I have heard it objected, that you raise doubts and difficulties, and do not satisfy them by telling us what is really the case.  I have heard you charged with disrespect to the King of Prussia; and above all, to King William and the Revolution.  My own objections are little more essential:  they relate chiefly to inaccuracies of style, which either debase the expression or obscure the meaning.  As to your argument@ most of the principal parts are made out with a clearness and evidence that no one would expect, where materials are so scarce.  Yet I still suspect Richard of the murder of Henry the Sixth.”  Works, vol. iv. p. 105.-E.

(1007) To this Gray, on the 25th, replied—­“To what you say to me so civilly, that I ought to write more, I answer in your own words, (like the Pamphleteer, who is going to refute you out of your own mouth,) what has one to do, when turned fifty, but really to think of finishing?  However, I will be candid (for you seem to be so with me), and avow to you, that, till fourscore and ten, whenever the humour takes me, I will write, because I like it; and because I like myself better when I do so.  If I do not write much, it is because I cannot.”  Works, vol. iv. p. 111.-E.

(1008) “I found him close with Swift.”—­“Indeed?”—­“No doubt,” Cries prating Balbus, “something will come out.”  Pope.

(1009) Keate’s “Ferney; an Epistle to M. Voltaire."-E.

(1010) His burlesque Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day; with the humour of which Dr. Johnson was much diverted, and used to repeat this passage—­

“In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join,
And clattering and battering and clapping combine,
With a rap and a tap, while the hollow side sounds,
Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds.-E.

(1011) “Your history,” wrote Dr. Johnson to Boswell, “is like other histories, but your journal is, in a very high degree, curious and delightful:  there is between them that difference which there will always be found between notions borrowed from without and notions generated within.  Your history was copied from books; your journal rose out of your own experience and observation.  I know not whether I could name any narrative by which curiosity is better excited or better gratified."-E.