[327] See ante, ii. 272, note 2.
[328] Mr. Joseph Cooper Walker, of the Treasury, Dublin, who obligingly communicated to me this and a former letter from Dr. Johnson to the same gentleman (for which see vol. i. p. 321), writes to me as follows: —'Perhaps it would gratify you to have some account of Mr. O'Connor. He is an amiable, learned, venerable old gentleman, of an independent fortune, who lives at Belanagar, in the county of Roscommon; he is an admired writer, and Member of the Irish Academy.—The above Letter is alluded to in the Preface to the 2nd edit, of his Dissert, p. 3.'—Mr. O'Connor afterwards died at the age of eighty-two. See a well-drawn character of him in the Gent. Mag. for August 1791. BOSWELL.
[329] Mr. Croker shows good reason for believing that in the original letter this parenthesis stood:—'if such there were.'
[330] See ante, i. 292.
[331] 'Johnson had not heard of Pearce's Sermons, which I wondered at, considering that he wrote all the Life published by the Chaplain Derby, except what his Lordship wrote himself.' Letters of Boswell, p. 242. See ante, March 20, 1776.
[332] Boswell, it seems, is here quoting himself. See his Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 201 (Sept. 13, 1773), where, however, he lays the emphasis differently, writing 'fervour of loyalty.'
[333] 'An old acquaintance' of the Bishop says that 'he struggled hard ten years ago to resign his Bishopric and the Deanery of Westminster, in which our gracious King was willing to gratify him; but upon a consultation of the Bishops they thought it could not be done with propriety; yet he was permitted to resign the Deanery.' Gent. Mag. 1775, p. 421.
[334] 'This person, it is said, was a stay-maker, but being a man of wit and parts he betook himself to study, and at a time when the discipline of the inns of court was scandalously lax, got himself called to the Bar, and practised at the quarter-sessions under me, but with little success. He became the conductor of a paper called The Public Ledger and a writer for the stage, in which he met with some encouragement, till it was insinuated that he was a pensioner of the minister, and therefore a fit object of patriotic vengeance.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 518. See ante, ii. 48 note, and post, 1784, in Mr. Nichols's account of Johnson's last days.
[335] 'This address had the desired effect. The play was well received.' Murphy's Garrick, p. 302. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield, 'Lucy [his step-daughter] thinks nothing of my prologue for Kelly, and says she has always disowned it.' Piozzi Letters, i. 352.
[336] It was composed at a time when Savage was generally without lodging, and often without meat. Much of it was written with pen and ink that were borrowed, on paper that had been picked up in the streets. The unhappy poet 'was obliged to submit himself wholly to the players, and admit with whatever reluctance the emendations of Mr. Cibber, which he always considered as the disgrace of his performance.' When it was brought out, he himself took the part of Overbury. 'He was so much ashamed of having been reduced to appear as a player, that he always blotted out his name from the list when a copy of his tragedy was to be shown to his friends.' Johnson's Works, viii. 110-112.