[763] See ante, i. 242.

[764] See ante, i. 242.

[765] Nos. 26 and 29.

[766] Piozzi Letters, i. 334.  See ante, p. 75.

[767] He strongly opposed the war with America, and was one of Dr. Franklin’s friends.  Franklin’s Memoirs, ed. 1818, iii. 108.

[768] It was of this tragedy that the following story is told in Rogers’s Table-Talk, p. 177:—­’Lord Shelburne could say the most provoking things, and yet appear quite unconscious of their being so.  In one of his speeches, alluding to Lord Carlisle, he said:—­“The noble Lord has written a comedy.”  “No, a tragedy.”  “Oh, I beg pardon; I thought it was a comedy."’ See ante, p. 113.  Pope, writing to Mr. Cromwell on Aug. 19, 1709, says:—­’One might ask the same question of a modern life, that Rich did of a modern play:  “Pray do me the favour, Sir, to inform me is this your tragedy or your comedy?"’ Pope’s Works, ed. 1812, vi. 81.

[769] Mrs. Chapone, when she was Miss Mulso, had written ’four billets in The Rambler, No. 10.’ Ante, i. 203.  She was one of the literary ladies who sat at Richardson’s feet.  Wraxall (Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 155) says that ’under one of the most repulsive exteriors that any woman ever possessed she concealed very superior attainments and extensive knowledge.’  Just as Mrs. Carter was often called ’the learned Mrs. Carter,’ so Mrs. Chapone was known as ‘the admirable Mrs. Chapone.’

[770] See ante, iii. 373.

[771] A few copies only of this tragedy have been printed, and given to the authour’s friends.  BOSWELL.

[772] Dr. Johnson having been very ill when the tragedy was first sent to him, had declined the consideration of it.  BOSWELL.

[773] Johnson refers, I suppose, to a passage in Dryden which he quotes in his Dictionary under mechanick:—­’Many a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in mathematicks, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanick operation.’

[774]

     ’I could have borne my woes; that stranger Joy
      Wounds while it smiles:—­The long imprison’d wretch,
      Emerging from the night of his damp cell,
      Shrinks from the sun’s bright beams; and that which flings
      Gladness o’er all, to him is agony.’  BOSWELL.

[775] Lord Cockburn (Life of Lord Jeffrey, i. 74) describing the representation of Scotland towards the close of last century, and in fact till the Reform Bill of 1832, says:—­’There were probably not above 1500 or 2000 county electors in all Scotland; a body not too large to be held, hope included, in Government’s hand.  The election of either the town or the county member was a matter of such utter indifference to the people, that they often only knew of it by the ringing of a bell, or by seeing it mentioned next day in a newspaper.’