[1296] 'Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fili, et tamquam faciem honesti vides, "quae si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores" ut ait Plato, "excitaret sapientiae."' Cicero, De Off. i. 5.
[1297] Of Beattie's attack on Hume, he said:—'Treating your adversary with respect, is striking soft in a battle.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15.
[1298] When Gibbon entered Magdalen College in 1752, the ordinary commoners were already excluded. 'As a gentleman commoner,' he writes, 'I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal; their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth; and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 53. In Jesse's edition of White's Selborne, p. ii, it is stated that 'White, as long as his health allowed him, always attended the annual election of Fellows at Oriel College, where the gentlemen-commoners were allowed the use of the common-room after dinner. This liberty they seldom availed themselves of, except on the occasion of Mr. White's visits; for such was his happy manner of telling a story that the room was always filled when he was there.' He died in 1793.
[1299] 'So different are the colours of life as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past, and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side…. One generation is always the scorn and wonder of the other; and the notions of the old and young are like liquors of different gravity and texture which never can unite.' The Rambler, No. 69.
[1300] 'It was said of a dispute between two mathematicians, "malim cum Scaligero errare quam cum Clavio recte sapere" that "it was more eligible to go wrong with one than right with the other." A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the perusal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's discourses.' Johnson's Works, vii. 303.
[1301] 'There is evidence of Phil. Jones's love of beer; for we find scribbled at the end of the college buttery-books, "O yes, O yes, come forth, Phil. Jones, and answer to your charge for exceeding the batells." His excess, perhaps, was in liquor.' Dr. Johnson: His Friends, &c., p. 23.
[1302] See post, iii. 1.
[1303] Dr. Fisher, who was present, told Mr. Croker that 'he recollected one passage of the conversation. Boswell quoted Quern Deus vult perdere, prius dementat, and asked where it was. A pause. At last Dr. Chandler said, in Horace. Another pause. Then Fisher remarked that he knew of no metre in Horace to which the words could be reduced: and Johnson said dictatorially, "The young man is right."' See post, March 30, 1783. For another of Dr. Fisher's anecdotes, see ante, p. 269. Mark Pattison recorded in his Diary in 1843 (Memoirs, p. 203), on the authority of Mr. (now Cardinal) Newman:—'About 1770, the worst time in the University; a head of Oriel then, who was continually obliged to be assisted to bed by his butler. Gaudies, a scene of wild license. At Christ Church they dined at three, and sat regularly till chapel at nine.' A gaudy is such a festival as the one in the text.
[1304] The author of the Commentary on the Psalms. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, note.
[1305] See ante, pp. 279, 283.