Enough, enough, I have no ear for more.'
[1188] So, less than two years later, Boswell opened his mind to Paoli. 'My time passed here in the most agreeable manner. I enjoyed a sort of luxury of noble sentiment. Paoli became more affable with me. I made myself known to him.' Boswell's Corsica, p. 167.
[1189] See ante, p. 67.
[1190] See post, Sept. 22, 1777.
[1191] See post, March 30, 1778, where in speaking of the appearance of spirits after death he says:—'All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.' See also ante, p. 343, and post, April 15, 1778, under May 4, 1779, April 15, 1781, and June 12, 1784.
[1192] The caricature begins:—
'Pomposo, insolent and loud
Vain idol of a scribbling crowd,
Whose very name inspires an awe
Whose ev'ry word is Sense and Law.'
Churchill's Poems, i. 216.
[1193] The chief impostor, a man of the name of Parsons, had, it should seem, set his daughter to play the part of the ghost in order to pay out a grudge against a man who had sued him for a debt. The ghost was made to accuse this man of poisoning his sister-in-law, and to declare that she should only be at ease in her mind if he were hanged. 'When Parsons stood on the Pillory at the end of Cock Lane, instead of being pelted, he had money given him.' Gent. Mag. xxxii. 43, 82, and xxxiii. 144.
[1194] Horace Walpole, writing on Feb. 2, 1762 (Letters, iii. 481), says:—'I could send you volumes on the Ghost, and I believe, if I were to stay a little, I might send its life, dedicated to my Lord Dartmouth, by the Ordinary of Newgate, its two great patrons. A drunken parish clerk set it on foot out of revenge, the Methodists have adopted it, and the whole town of London think of nothing else…. I went to hear it, for it is not an apparition, but an audition, … the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one Hackney-coach: it rained torrents; yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in.' See post, April 10, 1778.