[622]. The best known is Cowper’s, in Table Talk, ll. 384, 385—
“The inestimable Estimate of Brown
Rose like a paper-kite and charmed the town.”
See also Chesterfield, to the Bishop of Waterford, April 14, 1758. Chesterfield was no Bottom, but, being melancholy at the time, he was tickled.
[623]. London, 1757, 8vo.
[624]. London, 1763, 4to.
[625]. Newcastle, 1764, 8vo.
[626]. His birth-year was 1709; Thomson’s 1700; Dyer’s perhaps the same; Shenstone’s 1714; Gray’s 1716. Lady Winchelsea had been born as far back as 1660.
[627]. He was perhaps the last man of very great power who entertained the Renaissance superstition of Latin. He was horrified at the notion of an English epitaph; and in the first agony of his stroke in 1783 he rallied and racked his half-paralysed brains to make Latin verses as the best test of his sanity.
[628]. Let it be noted, however, that in Johnson, as in most strong men, there were certain leanings to the other side, certain evidences of the “identity of contradictories.” His sense of mystery, his religiosity, his strong passions, his tendency to violence in taste and opinions—were all rather Romantic than Classical.