[774] In the original Yet mark.
[775] In the original Toil.
[776] In his Dictionary he defined patron as 'commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery.' This definition disappears in the Abridgement, but remains in the fourth edition.
[777] Chesterfield, when he read Johnson's letter to Dodsley, was acting up to the advice that he had given his own son six years earlier (Letters, ii. 172):—'When things of this kind [bons mots] happen to be said of you, the most prudent way is to seem not to suppose that they are meant at you, but to dissemble and conceal whatever degree of anger you may feel inwardly: and, should they be so plain, that you cannot be supposed ignorant of their meaning, so join in the laugh of the company against yourself; acknowledge the hit to be a fair one, and the jest a good one, and play off the whole thing in seeming good humour; but by no means reply in the same way; which only shows that you are hurt, and publishes the victory which you might have concealed.'
[778] See post, March 23, 1783, where Johnson said that 'Lord Chesterfield was dignified, but he was insolent;' and June 27, 1784, where he said that 'his manner was exquisitely elegant.'
[779]
'Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits,
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.'
Pope's Dunciad, iv. 90.
'A true choice spirit we admit;
With wits a fool, with fools a wit.'
Churchill's Duellist' Book iii.