[406] He wrote a Life of Watts, which Johnson quoted. Works, viii.
382.
[407] See ante, iii. 422, note 6.
[408] In the first two editions formal.
[409] Johnson maintains this in The Idler, No. 74. 'Few,' he says, 'have reason to complain of nature as unkindly sparing of the gifts of memory ... The true art of memory is the art of attention.' See ante, iii. 191.
[410]The first of the definitions given by Johnson of to remember is to bear in mind anything; not to forget. To recollect he defines to recover to memory. We may, perhaps, assume that Boswell said, 'I did not recollect that the chair was broken;' and that Johnson replied, 'you mean, you did not remember. That you did not remember is your own fault. It was in your mind that it was broken, and therefore you ought to have remembered it. It was not a case of recollecting; for we recollect, that is, recover to memory, what is not in our mind.' In the passage ante, i. 112, which begins, 'I indeed doubt if he could have remembered,' we find in the first two editions not remembered, but recollected. Perhaps this change is due to euphony, as collected comes a few lines before. Horace Walpole, in one of his Letters (i. 15), distinguishes the two words, on his revisiting his old school, Eton:—'By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound—I recollect so much, and remember so little.'
[411] He made the same boast at St. Andrews. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19. He was, I believe, speaking of his translation of Courayer's Life of Paul Sarpi and Notes, of which some sheets were printed off. Ante, i. 135.
[412] Horace Walpole, after mentioning that George III's mother, who died in 1772, left but £27,000 when she was reckoned worth at least £300,000, adds:—'It is no wonder that it became the universal belief that she had wasted all on Lord Bute. This became still more probable as he had made the purchase of the estate at Luton, at the price of £114,000, before he was visibly worth £20,000; had built a palace there, another in town, and had furnished the former in the most expensive manner, bought pictures and books, and made a vast park and lake.' Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 19.
[413] To him Boswell dedicated his Thesis as excelsae familiae de Bute spei alterae (ante, ii. 20). In 1775, he wrote of him:—'He is warmly my friend and has engaged to do for me.' Letters of Boswell, p. 186
[414] He was mistaken in this. See ante, i. 260; also iii. 420.