[1352] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 23.
[1353] Virgil, Eclogues, i. 5. Johnson, when a boy, turned the line thus:—'And the wood rings with Amarillis' name.' Ante, p. 51.
[1354] Boswell said of Paoli's talk about great men:—'I regret that the fire with which he spoke upon such occasions so dazzled me, that I could not recollect his sayings, so as to write them down when I retired from his presence.' Corsica, p. 197.
[1355] More passages than one in Boswell's Letters to Temple shew this absence of relish. Thus in 1775 he writes:—'I perceive some dawnings of taste for the country' (p. 216); and again:—'I will force a taste for natural beauties' (p. 219).
[1356] Milton's L'Allegro, 1. 118.
[1357] See post, April 2, 1775, and April 17, 1778.
[1358] My friend Sir Michael Le Fleming. This gentleman, with all his experience of sprightly and elegant life, inherits, with the beautiful family Domain, no inconsiderable share of that love of literature, which distinguished his venerable grandfather, the Bishop of Carlisle. He one day observed to me, of Dr. Johnson, in a felicity of phrase, 'There is a blunt dignity about him on every occasion.' BOSWELL.
[1359] Wordsworth's lines to the Baronet's daughter, Lady Fleming, might be applied to the father:—
'Lives there a man whose sole delights
Are trivial pomp and city noise,
Hardening a heart that loathes or slights
What every natural heart enjoys?'
Wordsworth's Poems, iv. 338.