[600] What this period was Boswell seems to leave intentionally vague.  Johnson knew Lord Shelburne at least as early as 1778 (ante, iii. 265).  He wrote to Dr. Taylor on July 22, 1782:—­’Shelburne speaks of Burke in private with great malignity.’ Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462.  The company commonly gathered at his house would have been displeasing to Johnson.  Priestley, who lived with Shelburne seven years, says (Auto. p. 55) that a great part of the company he saw there was like the French philosophers, unbelievers in Christianity, and even professed atheists:  men ’who had given no proper attention to Christianity, and did not really know what it was.’  Johnson was intimate with Lord Shelburne’s brother. Ante, ii. 282, note 3.

[601] Johnson being asked his opinion of this Essay, answered, ’Why, Sir, we shall have the man come forth again; and as he has proved Falstaff to be no coward, he may prove Iago to be a very good character.’  BOSWELL.

[602] A writer in the European Magazine, xxx. 160, says that Johnson visited Lord Shelburne at Bowood.  At dinner he repeated part of his letter to Lord Chesterfield (ante, i. 261).  A gentleman arrived late.  Shelburne, telling him what he had missed, went on:-’I dare say the Doctor will be kind enough to give it to us again.’  ’Indeed, my Lord, I will not.  I told the circumstance first for my own amusement, but I will not be dragged in as story-teller to a company.’  In an argument he used some strong expressions, of which his opponent took no notice, Next morning ’he went up to the gentleman with great good-nature, and said, “Sir, I have found out upon reflection that I was both warm and wrong in my argument with you last night; for the first of which I beg your pardon, and for the second, I thank you for setting me right."’ It is clear that the second of these anecdotes is the same as that told by Mr. Morgann of Johnson and himself, and that the scene has been wrongly transferred from Wickham to Bowood.  The same writer says that it was between Derrick and Boyce—­not Derrick and Smart—­that Johnson, in the story that follows, could not settle the precedency.

[603] See ante, i. 124, 394.

[604] See ante, i. 397.

[605] What the great TWALMLEY was so proud of having invented, was neither more nor less than a kind of box-iron for smoothing linen.  BOSWELL.

[606]

     ’Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi,
     Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat,
     Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti,
     Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes.’

     Aeneid, vi. 660.

     ’Lo, they who in their country’s fight
       sword-wounded bodies bore;
     Lo, priests of holy life and chaste,
       while they in life had part;
     Lo, God-loved poets, men who spake
       things worthy Phoebus’ heart,
     And they who bettered life on earth
       by new-found mastery.’