[1177] In the impudent Correspondence (pp. 63, 65) which Boswell and Andrew Erskine published this year, Boswell shows why he wished to enter the Guards. 'My fondness for the Guards,' he writes, 'must appear very strange to you, who have a rooted antipathy at the glare of scarlet. But I must inform you, that there is a city called London, for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress…. I am thinking of the brilliant scenes of happiness, which I shall enjoy as an officer of the guards. How I shall be acquainted with all the grandeur of a court, and all the elegance of dress and diversions; become a favourite of ministers of state, and the adoration of ladies of quality, beauty, and fortune! How many parties of pleasure shall I have in town! How many fine jaunts to the noble seats of dukes, lords, and members of parliament in the country! I am thinking of the perfect knowledge which I shall acquire of men and manners, of the intimacies which I shall have the honour to form with the learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary anecdotes which I shall pick up,' etc. Boswell, in his Hebrides (Aug. 18, 1773), says of himself:—'His inclination was to be a soldier; but his father, a respectable Judge, had pressed him into the profession of the law.'
[1178] A row of tenements in the Strand, between Wych Street and Temple Bar, and 'so called from the butchers' shambles on the south side.' (Strype, B. iv. p. 118.) Butcher Row was pulled down in 1813, and the present Pickett Street erected in its stead. P. CUNNINGHAM. In Humphry Clinker, in the letter of June 10, one of the poor authors is described as having been 'reduced to a woollen night-cap and living upon sheep's-trotters, up three pair of stairs backward in Butcher Row.'
[1179] Cibber was poet-laureate from 1730 to 1757. Horace Walpole describes him as 'that good humoured and honest veteran, so unworthily aspersed by Pope, whose Memoirs, with one or two of his comedies, will secure his fame, in spite of all the abuse of his contemporaries.' His successor Whitehead, Walpole calls 'a man of a placid genius.' Reign of George II, iii. 81. See ante, pp. 149, 185, and post, Oct. 19, 1769, May 15, 1776, and Sept. 21, 1777.
[1180] The following quotations show the difference of style in the two poets:—
COLLEY GIBBER.
'When her pride, fierce in arms,
Would to Europe give law;
At her cost let her come,
To our cheer of huzza!
Not lightning with thunder more terrible darts,
Than the burst of huzza from our bold British hearts.'
Gent. Mag. xxv. 515.
WM. WHITEHEAD.
'Ye guardian powers, to whose command,
At Nature's birth, th' Almighty mind
The delegated task assign'd
To watch o'er Albion's favour'd land,
What time your hosts with choral lay,
Emerging from its kindred deep,
Applausive hail'd each verdant steep,
And white rock, glitt'ring to the new-born day!'
Ib. xxix. 32.