[1031] See ante, ii. 156.
[1032] 'It made an impression on the army that cannot be well imagined by those who saw it not. The whole army, and at last all people both in city and country were singing it perpetually, and perhaps never had so slight a thing so great an effect.' Bumet's Own Time, ed. 1818, ii. 430. In Tristram Shandy, vol. i. chap. 21, when Mr. Shandy advanced one of his hypotheses:—'My uncle Toby,' we read, 'would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument than that of whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lilliburlero.'
[1033] See ante, ii. 66.
[1034] 'Of Gibbon, Mackintosh neatly remarked that he might have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind, without his missing it.' Life of Mackintosh, i. 92. It is worthy of notice that Gibbon scarcely mentions Johnson in his writings. Moreover, in the names that he gives of the members of the Literary Club, 'who form a large and luminous constellation of British stars,' though he mentions eighteen of them, he passes over Boswell. Gibbon's Misc. Works, i.219. See also post, April 18, 1775.
[1035] We may compare with this Dryden's line:—
'Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.'
Absalom and Achitophel, l. 179. Hawkins (Life, p. 506) says that 'to party opposition Johnson ever expressed great aversion, and of the pretences of patriots always spoke with indignation and contempt.' He had, Hawkins adds, 'partaken of the short-lived joy that infatuated the public' when Walpole fell; but a few days convinced him that the patriotism of the opposition had been either hatred or ambition. For patriots, see ante, i. 296, note, and post, April 6, 1781.
[1036] Mr. Burke. See ante, p. 222, note 4.
[1037] Lord North's ministry lasted from 1770 to 1782.
[1038] Perhaps Johnson had this from Davies, who says (Life of Garrick, i. 124):—'Mrs. Pritchard read no more of the play of Macbeth than her own part, as written out and delivered to her by the prompter.' She played the heroine in Irene (ante, i. 197). See post under Sept. 30, 1783, where Johnson says that 'in common life she was a vulgar idiot,' and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.