[243] Boswell, only a couple of years before he published The Life of Johnson, in fact while he was writing it, had written to Temple:—'I was the great man (as we used to say) at the late Drawing-room, in a suit of imperial blue, lined with rose-coloured silk, and ornamented with rich gold-wrought buttons.' Letters of Boswell, p. 289.
[244] Miss Reynolds, in her Recollections (Croker's Boswell, p. 831), says, 'One day at Sir Joshua Reynolds's Goldsmith was relating with great indignation an insult he had just received from some gentleman he had accidentally met. "The fellow," he said, "took me for a tailor!" on which all the company either laughed aloud or showed they suppressed a laugh.'
[245] In Prior's Goldsmith, ii. 232, is given Filby's Bill for a suit of clothes sent to Goldsmith this very day:—
Oct. 16.— £ s. d.
To making a half-dress
suit of ratteen, lined
with satin 12 12 0
To a pair of silk stocking
breeches 2 5 0
To a pair of _bloom-coloured
ditto 1 4 6
Nothing is said in this bill of the colour of the coat; it is the breeches that are bloom-coloured. The tailor's name was William, not John, Filby; Ib i. 378, Goldsmith in his Life of Nash had said:—'Dress has a mechanical influence upon the mind, and we naturally are awed into respect and esteem at the elegance of those whom even our reason would teach us to contemn. He seemed early sensible of human weakness in this respect; he brought a person genteelly dressed to every assembly.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 46.
[246] 'The Characters of Men and Women are the product of diligent speculation upon human life; much labour has been bestowed upon them, and Pope very seldom laboured in vain…. The Characters of Men, however, are written with more, if not with deeper thought, and exhibit many passages exquisitely beautiful…. In the women's part are some defects.' Johnson's Works, viii. 341.
[247] Mr. Langton informed me that he once related to Johnson (on the authority of Spence), that Pope himself admired those lines so much that when he repeated them his voice faltered: 'and well it might, Sir,' said Johnson, 'for they are noble lines.' J. BOSWELL, JUN.
[248] We have here an instance of that reserve which Boswell, in his Dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds (ante, i. 4), says that he has practised. In one particular he had 'found the world to be a great fool,' and, 'I have therefore,' as he writes, 'in this work been more reserved;' yet the reserve is slight enough. Everyone guesses that 'one of the company' was Boswell.
[249] Yet Johnson, in his Life of Pope (Works, viii. 276), seems to be much of Boswell's opinion; for in writing of The Dunciad, he says:—'The subject itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to know that one or another scribbler was a dunce?'
[250] The opposite of this Johnson maintained on April 29, 1778.