'Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.'
Pope, Sat. Ep. i. 135.
[152] Johnson refers to Jenyns's View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion, published this spring. See post, April 15, 1778. Jenyns had changed his view, for in his Origin of Evil he said, in a passage quoted with applause by Johnson (Works, vi. 69), that 'it is observable that he who best knows our formation has trusted no one thing of importance to our reason or virtue; he trusts to our vanity or compassion for our bounty to others.'
[153] Mr. Langton is certainly meant. It is strange how often his mode of living was discussed by Johnson and Boswell. See post, Nov. 16, 1776, July 22, and Sept. 22, 1777, March 18, April 17, 18, and 20, May 12, and July 3, 1778.
[154] Baretti made a brutal attack on Mrs. Piozzi in the European Mag. for 1788, xiii. 313, 393, and xiv. 89. He calls her 'the frontless female, who goes now by the mean appellation of Piozzi; La Piozzi, as my fiddling countrymen term her; who has dwindled down into the contemptible wife of her daughter's singing-master.' His excuse was the attacks made on him by her in the correspondence just published between herself and Johnson (see Piozzi Letters, i. 277, 319). He suspected her, and perhaps with reason, of altering some of these letters. Other writers beside Baretti attacked her. To use Lord Macaulay's words, grossly exaggerated though they are, 'She fled from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown.' Macaulay's Writings and Speeches, ed. 1871, p. 393. According to Dr. T. Campbell (Diary, p. 33) Baretti flattered Mrs. Thrale to her face. 'Talking as we were at tea of the magnitude of the beer vessels, Baretti said there was one thing in Mr. Thrale's house still more extraordinary; meaning his wife. She gulped the pill very prettily—so much for Baretti.' See post, Dec. 21, 1776.
[155] Likely enough Boswell himself. On three other occasions he mentions Otaheité; ante, May 7, 1773, post, June 15, 1784 and in his Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773. He was fond of praising savage life. See ante, ii. 73.
[156] Chatterton said that he had found in a chest in St. Mary Redcliffe Church manuscript poems by Canynge, a merchant of Bristol in the fifteenth century, and a friend of his, Thomas Rowley. He gave some of these manuscripts to George Catcot, a pewterer of Bristol, who communicated them to Mr. Barret, who was writing a History of Bristol. Rose's Biog. Dict. vi. 256.
[157] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22.
[158] See ante, i. 396.
[159] 'Artificially. Artfully; with skill.' Johnson's dictionary.