They have their name thence, coarse complexions
And cheeks of sorry grain have leave to ply
The sampler, and to tease the housewife’s wool.
What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that,
Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn?”
Reynolds.
MISS RIDGE.
But now there was a stir and a re-grouping at the far end of the room, and Clare saw a remarkable figure enter. It was that of an elderly man of great bulk, but the character of whose head and countenance was such, as to make you oblivious of his corpulence. He wore a brown suit of clothes and black worsted stockings, ill drawn up, and an unpowdered wig, slightly too small for him. You must ask your Mother to take you to see his picture in the National Portrait Gallery; it gives the forceful expression so well. This person was none other than Doctor Johnson, who made the Dictionary, wrote the “Lives of the Poets,” and “Rasselas,” famous in his own day, and ours, for the extraordinary power and precision of his speech.
He was followed by a gentleman to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude, for he kept a faithful, and painstaking diary, in which he recorded the sayings of Doctor Johnson. And this is one of the books you will learn to treasure when you are older, nor find its six volumes a word too long. This man’s name was James Boswell, of Auchinlech.