[525] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 85) says that 'Dr. Johnson, commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, kept his numerous family in Fleet-street upon a settled allowance; but returned to them every Saturday to give them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us on the Monday night.'

[526] Lord North's Ministry lasted from 1770, to March, 1782. It was followed by the Rockingham Ministry, and the Shelburne Ministry, which in its turn was at this very time giving way to the Coalition Ministry, to be followed very soon by the Pitt Ministry.

[527] I have, in my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides [p. 200, Sept. 13], fully expressed my sentiments upon this subject. The Revolution was necessary, but not a subject for glory; because it for a long time blasted the generous feelings of Loyalty. And now, when by the benignant effect of time the present Royal Family are established in our affections, how unwise it is to revive by celebrations the memory of a shock, which it would surely have been better that our constitution had not required. BOSWELL. See ante, iii. 3, and iv. 40, note 4.

[528] Johnson reviewed this book in 1756. Ante, i. 309.

[529] Johnson, four months later, wrote to one of Mrs. Thrale's daughters:—'Never think, my sweet, that you have arithmetick enough; when you have exhausted your master, buy books. ... A thousand stories which the ignorant tell and believe die away at once when the computist takes them in his gripe.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 296. See post, April 18, 1783.

[530] See ante, p. 116; also iii. 310, where he bore the same topic impatiently when with Dr. Scott.

[531] See ante, ii. 357.

[532]

'See nations, slowly wise and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust.'
Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.

[533] He was perhaps, thinking of Markland. Ante, p. 161, note 3.