[1156] See ante ii 249.
[1157] 'Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put 'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick, and cried, "Down wantons, down!"' King Lear, act ii. sc. 4.
[1158] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, where Johnson, speaking of claret, said that 'there were people who died of dropsies, which they contracted in trying to get drunk.'
[1159] 'If,' wrote Johnson in one of his Debates (Works xi. 392), 'the felicity of drunkenness can be more cheaply obtained by buying spirits than ale, it is easy to see which will be preferred.' See post, March 30, 1781.
[1160] Dempster, to whom Boswell complained that his nerves were affected, replied:—'One had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep company with such a man.' Ante, i. 434.
[1161] Marquis of Graham, afterwards third Duke of Montrose. In The Rolliad (ed. 1795) he is thus attacked:—
'Superior to abuse
He nobly glories in the name of Goose;
Such Geese at Rome from the perfidious Gaul
Preserved the Treas'ry-Bench and Capitol.'
He was one of the Lords of the Treasury. See also The Rolliad, p. 60
[1162] Johnson, however, when telling Mrs. Thrale that, in case of her husband's death, she ought to carry on his business, said:—'Do not be frighted; trade could not be managed by those who manage it if it had much difficulty. Their great books are soon understood, and their language,
"If speech it may be called, that speech is none
Distinguishable in number, mood, or tense,"