[507] Ecclesiasticus, ch. xxxviii. verse 25. The whole chapter may be read as an admirable illustration of the superiority of cultivated minds over the gross and illiterate. BOSWELL.
[508] Passages in Johnson's Letters to Mrs. Thrale are to the same effect. 'Aug. 3, 1771. Having stayed my month with Taylor I came away on Wednesday, leaving him, I think, in a disposition of mind not very uncommon, at once weary of my stay, and grieved at my departure.' Piozzi Letters, i. 52. 'July 13, 1775. Dr. Taylor and I spend little time together, yet he will not yet be persuaded to hear of parting.' Ib. p. 276. 'July 26, 1775. Having stayed long enough at Ashbourne, I was not sorry to leave it. I hindered some of Taylor's diversions, and he supplied me with very little.' Ib p. 287.
[509] The second volume of these Sermons, which was published in 1789, a year after the first, contains the following addition to the title:—'To which is added a Sermon written by Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., for the Funeral of his Wife.' 'Dr. Taylor had,' writes Murphy (Life, p. 171), 'The LARGEST BULL in England, and some of the best Sermons.'
[510] If the eminent judge was Lord Mansfield, we may compare with Boswell's regret the lines in which Pope laments the influence of Westminster Hall and Parliament:—
'There truant Windham every muse gave o'er,
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more.
How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast!
How many Martials were in Pulteney lost!'
The Dunciad, iv. 167.
[511] Boswell's brother David had been settled in Spain since 1768. (Boswelliana, p. 5.) He therefore is no doubt the son, and Lord Auchinleck the father.
[512] See ante, ii. 129, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, 1773.
[513] 'Jack' had not shown all his manners to Johnson. Gibbon thus describes him in 1762 (Misc. Works, i. 142):—'Colonel Wilkes, of the Buckinghamshire militia, dined with us. I scarcely ever met with a better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge; but a thorough profligate in principle as in practice, his life stained with every vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and indecency. These morals he glories in—for shame is a weakness he has long since surmounted.' The following anecdote in Boswelliana (p. 274) is not given in the Life of Johnson:—'Johnson had a sovereign contempt for Wilkes and his party, whom he looked upon as a mere rabble. "Sir," said he, "had Wilkes's mob prevailed against government, this nation had died of phthiriasis. Mr. Langton told me this. The expression, morbus pediculosus, as being better known would strike more."'
[514] See ante, p. 79, note 1.