[798] See ante, i. 437. The decision was given on Feb. 22 against the perpetual right. 'By the above decision near 200,000£. worth of what was honestly purchased at public sale, and which was yesterday thought property, is now reduced to nothing…. The English booksellers have now no other security in future for any literary purchase they may make but the statute of the 8th of Queen Anne, which secures to the authors assigns an exclusive property for 14 years, to revert again to the author, and vest in him for 14 years more.' Ann. Reg. 1774, i. 95.
[799] Murphy was a barrister as well as author.
[800] Mr. Croker quotes a note by Malone to show that in the catalogue of Steevens's Library this book is described as a quarto, corio turcico foliis deauratis.
[801] A manuscript account drawn by Dr. Webster of all the parishes in Scotland, ascertaining their length, breadth, number of inhabitants, and distinguishing Protestants and Roman Catholicks. This book had been transmitted to government, and Dr. Johnson saw a copy of it in Dr. Webster's possession. BOSWELL.
[802] Beauclerk, three weeks earlier, had written to Lord Charlemont:—'Our club has dwindled away to nothing. Nobody attends but Mr. Chambers, and he is going to the East Indies. Sir Joshua and Goldsmith have got into such a round of pleasures that they have no time.' Charlemont's Life, i. 350. Johnson, no doubt, had been kept away by illness (ante, p. 272).
[803] Mr. Fox, as Sir James Mackintosh informed me, was brought in by Burke. CROKER.
[804] Sir C. Bunbury was the brother of Mr. H. W. Bunbury, the caricaturist, who married Goldsmith's friend, the elder Miss Horneck—'Little Comedy' as she was called. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 147.
[805] Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 23) tells how Dr. Fordyce, who sometimes drank a good deal, was summoned to a lady patient when he was conscious that he had had too much wine. 'Feeling her pulse, and finding himself unable to count its beats, he muttered, "Drunk by G—." Next morning a letter from her was put into his hand. "She too well knew," she wrote, "that he had discovered the unfortunate condition in which she had been, and she entreated him to keep the matter secret in consideration of the enclosed (a hundred-pound bank-note)."'
[806] Steevens wrote to Garrick on March 6:—'Mr. C. Fox pays you but a bad compliment; as he appears, like the late Mr. Secretary Morris, to enter the society at a time when he has nothing else to do. If the bon ton should prove a contagious disorder among us, it will be curious to trace its progress. I have already seen it breaking out in Dr. G——[Goldsmith] under the form of many a waistcoat, but I believe Dr. G—— will be the last man in whom the symptoms of it will be detected.' Garrick Corres. i. 613. In less than a month poor Goldsmith was dead. Fox, just before his election to the club, had received through one of the doorkeepers of the House of Commons the following note:—'SIR,—His Majesty has thought proper to order a new commission of the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not perceive your name. NORTH.'
[807] See Boswell's answer, post, May 12.