[1021] 'The booksellers of London are denominated the trade' (post, April 15, 1778, note).
[1022] Bibliopole is not in Johnson's Dictionary.
[1023] The Literary Club. See ante, p. 330, note 1. Mr. Croker says that the records of the Club show that, after the first few years, Johnson very rarely attended, and that he and Boswell never met there above seven or eight times. It may be observed, he adds, how very rarely Boswell records the conversation at the club, Except in one instance (post, April, 3, 1778), he says, Boswell confines his report to what Johnson or himself may have said. That this is not strictly true is shewn by his report of the dinner recorded above, where we find reported remarks of Beauclerk and Gibbon. Seven meetings besides this are mentioned by Boswell. See ante, ii. 240, 255, 318, 330; and post, April 3, 1778, April 16, 1779, and June 22, 1784. Of all but the last there is some report, however brief, of something said. When Johnson was not present, Boswell would have nothing to record in this book.
[1024] Travels through Germany, &c., 1756-7.
[1025] Travels through Holland, &c. Translated from the French, 1743.
[1026] See post, March 24, 1776, and May 17, 1778.
[1027] Description of the East, 1743-5.
[1028] Johnson had made the same remark, and Boswell had mentioned Leandro Alberti, when they were talking in an inn in the Island of Mull. Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 14, 1773.
[1029] Addison does not mention where this epitaph, which has eluded a very diligent inquiry, is found. MALONE. I have found it quoted in old Howell. 'The Italian saying may be well applied to poor England:—"I was well—would be better—took physic—and died."' Lett. Jan. 20, 1647. CROKER. It is quoted by Addison in The Spectator, No. 25:—'This letter puts me in mind of an Italian epitaph written on the monument of a Valetudinarian: Stavo ben, ma per star meglio sto qui, which it is impossible to translate.'
[1030] Lord Chesterfield, as Mr. Croker points out, makes the same observation in one of his Letters to his Son (ii. 351). Boswell, however, does not get it from him, for he had said the same in the Hebrides, six months before the publication of Chesterfield's Letters. Addison, in the preface to his Remarks, says:—'Before I entered on my voyage I took care to refresh my memory among the classic authors, and to make such collections out of them as I might afterwards have occasion for.'