[121] Pr. and Med., pp. 77 and 78. BOSWELL.
[122] Pr. and Med., p. 73. BOSWELL. On Aug. 17, he recorded:—'By abstinence from wine and suppers I obtained sudden and great relief, and had freedom of mind restored to me, which I have wanted for all this year, without being able to find any means of obtaining it.' Ib p. 74.
[123] Hawkins, in his second edition (p. 347) assigns it to Campbell, 'who,' he says, 'as well for the malignancy of his heart as his terrific countenance, was called horrible Campbell.'
[124] See ante, i. 218.
[125] The book is as dull as it is indecent. The 'drollery' is of the following kind. Johnson is represented as saying:—'Without dubiety you misapprehend this dazzling scintillation of conceit in totality, and had you had that constant recurrence to my oraculous dictionary which was incumbent upon you from the vehemence of my monitory injunctions,' &c. p. 2.
[126] Pr. and Med., p. 81. BOSWELL. 'This day,' he wrote on his birthday, 'has been passed in great perturbation; I was distracted at church in an uncommon degree, and my distress has had very little intermission…. This day it came into my mind to write the history of my melancholy. On this I purpose to deliberate; I know not whether it may not too much disturb me.' See post, April 8, 1780.
[127] It is strange that Boswell nowhere quotes the lines in The Good-Natured Man, in which Paoli is mentioned. 'That's from Paoli of Corsica,' said Lofty. Act v. sc. i.
[128] In the original, 'Pressed by.' Boswell, in thus changing the preposition, forgot what Johnson says in his Plan of an English Dictionary (Works, v. 12):—'We say, according to the present modes of speech, The soldier died of his wounds, and the sailor perished with hunger; and every man acquainted with our language would be offended with a change of these particles, which yet seem originally assigned by chance.'
[129] Boswell, writing to Temple on March 24, says:—'My book has amazing celebrity; Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Walpole, Mrs. Macaulay, and Mr. Garrick have all written me noble letters about it. There are two Dutch translations going forward.' Letters of Boswell, p. 145. It met with a rapid sale. A third edition was called for within a year. Dilly, the publisher, must have done very well by it, as he purchased the copyright for one hundred guineas. Ib, p. 103. 'Pray read the new account of Corsica,' wrote Horace Walpole to Gray on Feb. 18, 1768 (Letters, v. 85). 'The author is a strange being, and has a rage of knowing everybody that ever was talked of. He forced himself upon me at Paris in spite of my teeth and my doors.' To this Gray replied:—'Mr. Boswell's book has pleased and moved me strangely; all, I mean, that relates to Paoli. He is a man born two thousand years after his time! The pamphlet proves, what I have always maintained, that any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.' In The Letters of Boswell (p. 122) there is the following under date of Nov. 9, 1767:—'I am always for fixing some period for my perfection, as far as possible. Let it be when my account of Corsica is published; I shall then have a character which I must support.' In April 16 of the following year, a few weeks after the book had come out, he writes:—'To confess to you at once, Temple, I have since my last coming to town been as wild as ever.' (p. 146.)
[130] Boswell used to put notices of his movements in the newspapers, such as—'James Boswell, Esq., is expected in town.' Public Advertiser, Feb. 28, 1768. 'Yesterday James Boswell, Esq., arrived from Scotland at his lodgings in Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly.' Ib March 24, 1768. Prior's Goldsmith, i. 449.