[380] Ib. iii. 381.
[381] Eight days is, I suppose, one of Hume’s Gallicisms.
[382] Letters of Hume to Strahan, p. 116.
[383] Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works, ii. 110.
[384] Letters of Boswell to Temple, p. 151.
[385] Dr. Carlyle’s Autobiography, p. 276.
[386] Hume’s Letters to Strahan, p. xl.
[387] If we can trust the description of one of Hume’s autograph letters (No. 1105) in Messrs. Puttick and Simpson’s catalogue for July 30, 1886, Johnson was once Hume’s guest. The compilers of auction catalogues, however, are not infallible as editors, and often make strange mistakes.
[388] Boswell’s Johnson, ii. 453.
[389] The charge for a chaise and pair was ninepence a mile; in some districts more. There was a duty on each horse of one penny per mile. The driver expected a shilling or eighteen pence for each stage of ten or twelve miles, and always found good reasons for asking for more. The tolls paid at the turnpikes amounted to a considerable sum in a long journey. The duty was subsequently increased. See Mostyn Armstrong’s Actual Survey, etc., p. 4, and Paterson’s British Itinerary, vol. i. preface, p. vii.