It is strange that Boswell should not have discovered that these lines were from Dante. The following is Wright's translation:—
'That truth which bears the semblance of a lie,
Should never pass the lips, if possible;
Tho' crime be absent, still disgrace is nigh.'
Infern. xvi. 124. CROKER.
[647] See ante, i. 7, note 1.
[648] See ante, i. 405.
[649] 'Of John Wesley he said:—"He can talk well on any subject."' Post, April 15, 1778. Southey says that 'his manners were almost irresistibly winning, and his cheerfulness was like perpetual sunshine.' Life of Wesley, i. 409. Wesley recorded on Dec. 18, 1783 (Journal, iv. 258):—'I spent two hours with that great man Dr. Johnson, who is sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.'
[650] 'When you met him in the street of a crowded city, he attracted notice, not only by his band and cassock, and his long hair white and bright as silver, but by his pace and manner, both indicating that all his minutes were numbered, and that not one was to be lost. "Though I am always in haste," he says of himself, "I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit."' Southey's Wesley, ii. 397.
[651] No doubt the Literary Club. See ante, ii. 330, 345. Mr. Croker says 'that it appears by the books of the Club that the company on that evening consisted of Dr. Johnson president, Mr. Burke, Mr. Boswell, Dr. George Fordyce, Mr. Gibbon, Dr. Johnson (again named), Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Upper Ossory, and Mr. R. B. Sheridan.' E. no doubt stands for Edmund Burke, and J. for Joshua Reynolds. Who are meant by the other initials cannot be known. Mr. Croker hazards some guesses; but he says that Sir James Mackintosh and Chalmers were as dubious as himself.
[652] See Langhorne's Plutarch, ed. 1809, ii. 133.
[653] 'A man came in balancing a straw upon his nose, and the audience were clapping their hands in all the raptures of applause.' The Citizen of the World, Letter xxi. According to Davis (Life of Garrick, i. 113), 'in one year, after paying all expenses, £11,000 were the produce of Mr. Maddocks (the straw-man's agility), added to the talents of the players at Covent Garden theatre.'