Goldsmith had said that people to live in friendship together must have the same likings and aversions. Johnson thereupon calls to mind Sappho, who had shown that there could be love where there was little likeness.
[537] It was not published till after Goldsmith's death. It is in the list of new books in the Gent. Mag. for Aug. 1774, p. 378. See post, under June 22, 1776, the note on Goldsmith's epitaph.
[538] 'Upon my opening the door the young women broke off their discourse, but my landlady's daughters telling them that it was nobody but the Gentleman (for that is the name that I go by in the neighbourhood as well as in the family), they went on without minding me.' Spectator, No. 12.
[539] The author also of the Ballad of Cumnor Hall. See Scott's _Introduction to Kenilworth. Bishop Horne says that 'Mickle inserted in the Lusiad an angry note against Garrick, who, as he thought, had used him ill by rejecting a tragedy of his.' Shortly afterwards, he saw Garrick act for the first time. The play was Lear. 'During the first three acts he said not a word. In a fine passage of the fourth he fetched a deep sigh, and turning to a friend, "I wish," said he, "the note was out of my book."' Horne's Essays, ed. 1808, p. 38. See post, under Dec. 24, 1783, and Garrick's letter in Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 23,1773.
[540] The farmer's son told Mr. Prior that 'he had felt much reluctance in erasing during necessary repairs these memorials.' Prior's Goldsmith, ii. 335.
[541] See ante, ii. 178.
[542] Here was a blank, which may be filled up thus:—'was told by an apparition;'—the writer being probably uncertain whether he was asleep or awake, when his mind was impressed with the solemn presentiment with which the fact afterwards happened so wonderfully to correspond. BOSWELL. 'Lord Hardinge, when Secretary at War,' writes Mr. Croker, 'informed me, that it appears that Colonel Sir Thomas Prendergast, of the twenty-second foot, was killed at Malplaquet, Aug. 31, 1709; but no trace can be found of any Colonel Cecil in the army at that period. Colonel W. Cecil, who was sent to the Tower in 1744, could hardly have been, in 1709, of the age and rank which Oglethorpe's anecdote seems to imply.' Prendergast, or Prendergrass, in the year 1696, informed the government of the plot to assassinate William III., in which Friend was one of the leaders. Macaulay (Hist. of Eng. chap. 21), calls Prendergrass 'a Roman Catholic gentleman of known courage and honour.' Swift, attacking Prendergast's son, attacks Prendergast himself:—
'What! thou the spawn of him who shamed our isle,
Traitor, assassin, and informer vile.'
Swift's Works, xi. 319.
[543] Locke says:—'When once it comes to be a trial of skill, contest for mastery betwixt you and your child, you must be sure to carry it, whatever blows it costs, if a nod or words will not prevail.' He continues:—'A prudent and kind mother of my acquaintance was, on such an occasion, forced to whip her little daughter, at her first coming home from nurse, eight times successively the same morning, before she could master her stubbornness, and obtain a compliance in a very easy and indifferent matter…. As this was the first time, so I think it was the last, too, she ever struck her.' Locke on Education (ed. 1710), p. 96.