[686] See ante, i. 167.
[687] Johnson refers, I believe, to Temple's Essay Of Heroic Virtue, where he says that 'the excellency of genius' must not only 'be cultivated by education and instruction,' but also 'must be assisted by fortune to preserve it to maturity; because the noblest spirit or genius in the world, if it falls, though never so bravely, in its first enterprises, cannot deserve enough of mankind to pretend to so great a reward as the esteem of heroic virtue.' Temple's Works, iii. 306.
[688] See post, Sept. 17, 1777.
[689] In an epitaph that Burke wrote for Garrick, he says: 'He raised the character of his profession to the rank of a liberal art.' Windham's Diary, p. 361.
[690] 'The allusion,' as Mr. Lockhart pointed out, 'is not to the Tale of a Tub, but to the History of John Bull' (part ii. ch 12 and 13). Jack, who hangs himself, is however the youngest of the three brothers of The Tale of a Tub, 'that have made such a clutter in the work' (ib. chap ii). Jack was unwillingly convinced by Habbakkuk's argument that to save his life he must hang himself. Sir Roger, he was promised, before the rope was well about his neck, would break in and cut him down.
[691] He wrote the following letter to Goldsmith, who filled the chair that evening. 'It is,' Mr. Forster says (Life of Goldsmith, ii. 367), 'the only fragment of correspondence between Johnson and Goldsmith that has been preserved.'
'April 23, 1773.
'SIR,—I beg that you will excuse my absence to the Club; I am going this evening to Oxford.
'I have another favour to beg. It is that I may be considered as proposing Mr. Boswell for a candidate of our society, and that he may be considered as regularly nominated.
'I am, sir,