[490] See ante, i. 26, and post, April 11, 1773.
[491] 'Mr. Ruffhead says of fine passages that they are fine, and of feeble passages that they are feeble; but recommending poetical beauty is like remarking the splendour of sunshine; to those who can see it is unnecessary, and to those who are blind, absurd.' Gent. Mag. May, 1769, p. 255. The review in which this passage occurs, is perhaps in part Johnson's.
[492] See ante, i. 448.
[493] See post, April 5, 1775.
[494] It was Lewis XIV who said it. 'Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mecontens et un ingrat.' Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV, ch. 26. 'When I give away a place,' said Lewis XIV, 'I make an hundred discontented, and one ungrateful.' Johnson's Works, viii. 204.
[495] See post, May 15, 1783.
[496] This project has since been realized. Sir Henry Liddel, who made a spirited tour into Lapland, brought two rein-deer to his estate in Northumberland, where they bred; but the race has unfortunately perished. BOSWELL.
[497] Dr. Johnson seems to have meant the Address to the Reader with a KEY subjoined to it; which have been prefixed to the modern editions of that play. He did not know, it appears, that several additions were made to The Rehearsal after the first edition. MALONE. In his Life of Dryden (Works, vii. 272) Johnson writes:—'Buckingham characterised Dryden in 1671 by the name of Bayes in The Rehearsal…. It is said that this farce was originally intended against Davenant, who in the first draught was characterised by the name of Bilboa…. It is said, likewise, that Sir Robert Howard was once meant. The design was probably to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he might be. Much of the personal satire, to which it might owe its first reception, is now lost or obscured.'
[498] 'The Pantheon,' wrote Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 489), a year later than this conversation, 'is still the most beautiful edifice in England.' Gibbon, a few weeks before Johnson's visit to the Pantheon, wrote:—'In point of ennui and magnificence, the Pantheon is the wonder of the eighteenth century and of the British empire.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, ii. 74. Evelina, in Miss Burners novel (vol. i. Letter xxiii.) contrasts the Pantheon and Ranelagh:—'I was extremely struck on entering the Pantheon with the beauty of the building, which greatly surpassed whatever I could have expected or imagined. Yet it has more the appearance of a chapel than of a place of diversion; and, though I was quite charmed with the magnificence of the room, I felt that I could not be as gay and thoughtless there as at Ranelagh; for there is something in it which rather inspires awe and solemnity than mirth and pleasure.' Ranelagh was at Chelsea, the Pantheon was in Oxford-street. See ante, ii. 119, and post, Sept. 23, 1777.
[499] Her husband, Squire Godfrey Bosville, Boswell (post, Aug. 24, 1780), calls 'my Yorkshire chief.' Their daughter was one of the young ladies whom he passes in review in his letters to Temple. 'What say you to my marrying? I intend next autumn to visit Miss Bosville in Yorkshire; but I fear, my lot being cast in Scotland, that beauty would not be content. She is, however, grave; I shall see.' Letters of Boswell, p. 81. She married Sir A. Macdonald, Johnson's inhospitable host in Sky (ante, ii. 157).