three times.  All the way up Holborn the crowd was so great, as at every twenty or thirty yards to obstruct the passage; and wine, notwithstanding a late good order against that practice, was brought the malefactors, who drank greedily of it.  After this the three thoughtless young men, who at first seemed not enough concerned, grew most shamefully daring and wanton.  They swore, laughed, and talked obscenely.  At the place of execution the scene grew still more shocking; and the clergyman who attended was more the subject of ridicule than of their serious attention.  The psalm was sung amidst the curses and quarrelling of hundreds of the most abandoned and profligate of mankind.  As soon as the poor creatures were half-dead, I was much surprised to see the populace fall to haling and pulling the carcases with so much earnestness as to occasion several warm rencounters and broken heads.  These, I was told, were the friends of the persons executed, or such as for the sake of tumult chose to appear so; and some persons sent by private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection.’  The psalm is mentioned in a note on the line in The Dunciad, i. 4l, ’Hence hymning Tyburn’s elegiac lines:’—­’It is an ancient English custom,’ says Pope, ’for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn.’

[594] The rest of these miscellaneous sayings were first given in the Additions to Dr. Johnson’s Life at the beginning of vol.  I of the second edition.

[595] Hume (Auto. p. 6) speaks of Hurd as attacking him ’with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility which distinguish the Warburtonian school.’  ‘Hurd,’ writes Walpole, ’had acquired a great name by several works of slender merit, was a gentle, plausible man, affecting a singular decorum that endeared him highly to devout old ladies.’ Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 50.  He is best known to the present generation by his impertinent notes on Addison’s Works.  By reprinting them, Mr. Bohn did much to spoil what was otherwise an excellent edition of that author.  See ante, p. 47, note 2.

[596] The Rev. T. Twining, one of Dr. Burney’s friends, wrote in 1779:—­’You use a form of reference that I abominate, i.e. the latter, the former.  “As long as you have the use of your tongue and your pen,” said Dr. Johnson to Dr. Burney, “never, Sir, be reduced to that shift."’ Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the XVIIIth Century, p. 72.

[597] ’A shilling was now wanted for some purpose or other, and none of them happened to have one; I begged that I might lend one.  “Ay, do,” said the Doctor, “I will borrow of you; authors are like privateers, always fair game for one another."’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 212.

[598] See ante, i. 129, note 3.

[599] See post, June 3, 1784, where he uses almost the same words.