[700] ’When a tree is falling, I have seen the labourers, by a trivial jerk with a rope, throw it upon the spot where they would wish it should lie.  Divines, understanding this text too literally, pretend, by a little interposition in the article of death, to regulate a person’s everlasting happiness.  I fancy the allusion will hardly countenance their presumption.’  Shenstone’s Works, ed. 1773, ii. 255.

[701] Hazlitt says that ’when old Baxter first went to Kidderminster to preach, he was almost pelted by the women for maintaining from the pulpit the then fashionable and orthodox doctrine, that “Hell was paved with infants’ skulls.’” Conversations of Northcote, p. 80.

[702] Acts, xvii. 24.

[703] Now the celebrated Mrs. Crouch.  BOSWELL.

[704] Mr. Windham was at this time in Dublin, Secretary to the Earl of Northington, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.  BOSWELL.  See ante, p.200.

[705] Son of Mr. Samuel Paterson.  BOSWELL.  See ante, iii.90, and post, April 5, 1784.

[706] The late Keeper of the Royal Academy.  He died on Jan. 23 of this year.  Reynolds wrote of him:—­’He may truly be said in every sense, to have been the father of the present race of artists.’  Northcote’s Reynolds ii.137.

[707] Mr. Allen was his landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court. Ante, iii. 141.

[708] Cowper mentions him in Retirement:—­

     ’Virtuous and faithful Heberden! whose skill
      Attempts no task it cannot well fulfill,
      Gives melancholy up to nature’s care,
      And sends the patient into purer air.’

      Cowper’s Poems, ed. 1786, i. 272.

He is mentioned also by Priestley (Auto. ed. 1810, p.66) as one of his chief benefactors.  Lord Eldon, when almost a briefless barrister, consulted him.  ’I put my hand into my pocket, meaning to give him his fee; but he stopped me, saying, “Are you the young gentleman who gained the prize for the essay at Oxford?” I said I was.  “I will take no fee from you.”  I often consulted him; but he would never take a fee.’  Twiss’s Eldon, i. 104.

[709] How much he had physicked himself is shewn by a letter of May 8.  ‘I took on Thursday,’ he writes, ’two brisk catharticks and a dose of calomel.  Little things do me no good.  At night I was much better.  Next day cathartick again, and the third day opium for my cough.  I lived without flesh all the three days.’ Piozzi Letters, ii.257.  He had been bled at least four times that year and had lost about fifty ounces of blood. Ante, pp.142, 146.  On Aug. 3, 1779, he wrote:—­’Of the last fifty days I have taken mercurial physick, I believe, forty.’ Notes and Queries, 6th S. v.461.

[710] An exact reprint of this letter is given by Professor Mayor in Notes and Queries, 6th S. v.481.  The omissions and the repetitions ‘betray,’ he says, ‘the writer’s agitation.’  The postscript Boswell had omitted.  It is as follows:—­’Dr. Brocklesby will be with me to meet Dr. Heberden, and I shall have previously make (sic) master of the case as well as I can.’