[1138] 'Three men,' writes Horace Walpole, 'were especially suspected, Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and W. G. Hamilton. Hamilton was most generally suspected.' Memoirs of George III, iii. 401. According to Dr. T. Campbell (Diary, p. 35) Johnson in 1775 'said that he looked upon Burke to be the author of Junius, and that though he would not take him contra mundum, yet he would take him against any man.'
[1139] Sargeant Bettersworth, enraged at Swift's lines on him, 'demanded whether he was the author of that poem. "Mr. Bettesworth," answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who knowing my disposition to satire advised me that if any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, Are you the author of this paper? I should tell him that I was not the author; and therefore I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines."' Johnson's Works, viii. 216. See post, June 13, 1784.
[1140] Mr. S. Whyte (Miscellanea Nova, p. 27) says that Johnson mistook the nature of the compliment. Sheridan had fled to France from his debtors. In 1766 an Insolvent Debtors' Relief Bill was brought into the House in his absence. Mr. Whyte, one of his creditors, petitioned the House to have Sheridan's name included. A very unusual motion was made, 'that petitioner shall not be put to his oath; but the facts set forth in his petition be admitted simply on his word.' The motion was seconded by an instantaneous Ay! Ay! without a dissenting voice. Sheridan wrote to Mr. Whyte:—'As the thing has passed with so much credit to me, the whole honour and merit of it is yours'.
[1141] In The Rambler, No. 39, he wrote of this kind of control:—'It may be urged in extenuation of this crime which parents, not in any other respect to be numbered with robbers and assassins, frequently commit, that, in their estimation, riches and happiness are equivalent terms.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'There wanders about the world a wild notion which extends over marriage more than over any transaction. If Miss —— followed a trade, would it be said that she was bound in conscience to give or refuse credit at her father's choice? … The parent's moral right can arise only from his kindness, and his civil right only from his money.' Piozzi Letters, i. 83. See ante, i. 346.
[1142] See p. 186 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[1143] He refers to Johnson's letter of July 3, 1778, ante, p. 363.
[1144] See ante, iii. 5, 178.
[1145] 'By seeing London,' said Johnson, 'I have seen as much of life as the world can show.' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 11. 'London,' wrote Hume in 1765, 'never pleased me much. Letters are there held in no honour; Scotmen are hated; superstition and ignorance gain ground daily.' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 292.
[1146] See ante, i. 82.
[1147] 'I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations … many brought thither by the desire of living after their own manner without observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a city populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.' Rasselas, ch. xii. Gibbon wrote of London (Misc. Works, ii. 291):—'La liberté d'un simple particulier se fortifie par l'immensité de la ville.'