[1339] Dr. Johnson said to me, 'Percy, Sir, was angry with me for laughing at The Sugar-cane: for he had a mind to make a great thing of Grainger's rats.' BOSWELL. Johnson helped Percy in writing a review of this poem in 1764 (ante, i. 481).
[1340] In Poems by Christopher Smart, ed. 1752, p. 100. One line may serve as a sample of the whole poem, Writing of 'Bacchus, God of hops,' the poet says:—
''Tis he shall gen'rate the buxom beer.'
[1341] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22.
[1342] Henley in Arden, thirteen miles from Birmingham.
[1343] Mr. Hector's house was in the Square—now known as the Old Square. It afterwards formed a part of the Stork Hotel, but it was pulled down when Corporation Street was made. A marble tablet had been placed on the house at the suggestion of the late Mr. George Dawson, marking the spot where 'Edmund Hector was the host, Samuel Johnson the guest.' This tablet, together with the wainscoting, the door, and the mantelpiece of one of the rooms, was set up in Aston Hall, at the Johnson Centenary, in a room that is to be known as Dr. Johnson's Room.
[1344] My worthy friend Mr. Langton, to whom I am under innumerable obligations in the course of my Johnsonian History, has furnished me with a droll illustration about this question. An honest carpenter, after giving some anecdote in his presence of the ill-treatment which he had received from a clergyman's wife, who was a noted termagant, and whom he accused of unjust dealing in some transaction with him, added, 'I took care to let her know what I thought of her.' And being asked, 'What did you say?' answered, 'I told her she was a scoundrel.' BOSWELL.
[1345] 'As to the baptism of infants, it is a mere human tradition, for which neither precept nor practice is to be found in all the Scripture.' Barclay's Apology, Proposition xii, ed. 1703, p. 409.
[1346] John iii. 30. BOSWELL.
[1347] Mr. Seward (Anec. ii. 223) says that 'Dr. Johnson always supposed that Mr. Richardson had Mr. Nelson in his thoughts when he delineated the character of Sir Charles Grandison.' Robert Nelson was born in 1656, and died in 1715.