[659] James Harris, father of the first Earl of Malmesbury, born 1709, died 1780. Two years later Boswell wrote to Temple: 'I am invited to a dinner at Mr. Cambridge's (for the dinner, see post, April 18, 1773), where are to be Reynolds, Johnson, and Hermes Harris. "Do you think so?" said he. "Most certainly, said I." Do you remember how I used to laugh at his style when we were in the Temple? He thinks himself an ancient Greek from these little peculiarities, as the imitators of Shakspeare, whom the Spectator mentions, thought they had done wonderfully when they had produced a line similar:—
"And so, good morrow to ye, good Master Lieutenant."'
Letters of Boswell, p. 187. It is not in the Spectator, but in Martinus Scriblerus, ch. ix. (Swift's Works, 1803, xxiii, 53), that the imitators of Shakspeare are ridiculed. Harris got his name of Hermes from his Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar. Cradock (Memoirs, i, 208) says that, 'A gentleman applied to his friend to lend him some amusing book, and he recommended Harris's Hermes. On returning it, the other asked how he had been entertained. "Not much," he replied; "he thought that all these imitations of Tristram Shandy fell far short of the original."' See post, April 7, 1778, and Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 3, 1773.
[660] Johnson suffers, in Cowper's epitaph on him, from the same kind of praise as Goldsmith gives Harris:—
'Whose verse may claim, grave, masculine and strong,
Superior praise to the mere poet's song.'
Cowper's Works, v. 119.
[661] See ante, 210.
[662] Cave set up his coach about thirty years earlier (ante, i, 152, note). Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, iii, 172) wrote to Mr. Straham in 1784:—'I remember your observing once to me, as we sat together in the House of Commons, that no two journeymen printers within your knowledge had met with such success in the world as ourselves. You were then at the head of your profession, and soon afterwards became a member of parliament. I was an agent for a few provinces, and now act for them all.'
[663] 'Hamilton made a large fortune out of Smollett's History.' Forster's Goldsmith, i, 149. He was also the proprietor of the Critical Review.
[664] See ante, i, 71.