[709] Johnson said to Boswell:—'Sir, they knew that if they refused you they'd probably never have got in another. I'd have kept them all out. Beauclerk was very earnest for you.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773.
[710] Garrick and Jones had been elected this same spring. See ante, i. 481, note 3.
[711] Mr. Langton, in his Collection (post, 1780), mentions an ode brought by Goldsmith to the Club, which had been recited for money.
[712] Dr. Johnson's memory here was not perfectly accurate: Eugenio does not conclude thus. There are eight more lines after the last of those quoted by him; and the passage which he meant to recite is as follows:—
'Say now ye fluttering, poor assuming elves, Stark full of pride, of folly, of—yourselves; Say where's the wretch of all your impious crew Who dares confront his character to view? Behold Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and be no more.'
Mr. Reed informs me that the Author of Eugenio, a Wine Merchant at Wrexham in Denbighshire, soon after its publication, viz. 17th May, 1737, cut his own throat; and that it appears by Swift's Works that the poem had been shewn to him, and received some of his corrections. Johnson had read Eugenio on his first coming to town, for we see it mentioned in one of his letters to Mr. Cave, which has been inserted in this work; ante, p. 122. BOSWELL. See Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xix. 153, for his letter to this wine merchant, Thomas Beach by name.
[713] These lines are in the Annus Mirabilis (stanza 164) in a digression in praise of the Royal Society; described by Johnson (Works, vii. 320) as 'an example seldom equalled of seasonable excursion and artful return.' Ib p. 341, he says: 'Dryden delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle…. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew; and sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which perhaps he was not conscious.' He then quotes these lines, and continues: 'They have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley on another book—
"'Tis so like sense, 'twill serve the turn as well."'
Cowley's line is from his Pindarique Ode to Mr. Hobs:—
''Tis so like truth, 'twill serve our turn as well.'