“1776.
“This year I acquaintance began with the Thrales,
Where I met with great talents ’mongst females and males:
But the best thing that happen’d from that time to this,
Was the freedom it gave me to sound the abyss,
At my ease and my leisure, of Johnson’s great mind,
Where new treasures unnumber’d I constantly find.
Huge Briareus’s head, if old bards have not blunder’d,
Amounted in all to the sum of one hundred;
And Johnson,—so wide his intelligence spreads,