[783] ‘The author himself,’ wrote Gibbon (Misc.  Works, i. 220), ’is the best judge of his own performance; no one has so deeply meditated on the subject; no one is so sincerely interested in the event.’

[784] Mickle, speaking in the third person as the Translator, says:—­ ’He is happy to be enabled to add Dr. Johnson to the number of those whose kindness for the man, and good wishes for the Translation, call for his sincerest gratitude.’  Mickle’s Lusiad, p. ccxxv.

[785] A brief record, it should seem, is given, ante, iii. 37.

[786] See ante, iii. 106, 214.

[787] The author of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr, Johnson says (p. 153) that it was Johnson who determined Shaw to undertake this work.  ‘Sir,’ he said, ’if you give the world a vocabulary of that language, while the island of Great Britain stands in the Atlantic Ocean your name will be mentioned.’  On p. 156 is a letter by Johnson introducing Shaw to a friend.

[788] ‘Why is not the original deposited in some publick library?’ he asked.  Boswell’s Hebrides, Nov. 10.

[789] See ante, i. 190.

[790] See Appendix C.

[791] ’Dec. 27, 1873.  The wearisome solitude of the long evenings did indeed suggest to me the convenience of a club in my neighbourhood, but I have been hindered from attending it by want of breath.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 340.  ’Dec. 31.  I have much need of entertainment; spiritless, infirm, sleepless, and solitary, looking back with sorrow and forward with terrour.’ Ib, p. 343.

[792] ’"I think,” said Mr. Cambridge, “it sounds more like some club that one reads of in The Spectator than like a real club in these times; for the forfeits of a whole year will not amount to those of a single night in other clubs."’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 290.  Mr. Cambridge was thinking of the Two-penny Club. Spectator, No. ix.

[793] I was in Scotland when this Club was founded, and during all the winter.  Johnson, however, declared I should be a member, and invented a word upon the occasion:  ‘Boswell (said he) is a very clubable man.’  When I came to town I was proposed by Mr. Barrington, and chosen.  I believe there are few societies where there is better conversation or more decorum.  Several of us resolved to continue it after our great founder was removed by death.  Other members were added; and now, above eight years since that loss, we go on happily.  BOSWELL.  Mr. Croker says ‘Johnson had already invented unclubable for Sir J. Hawkins,’ and refers to a note by Dr. Burney (ante, i. 480, note I), in which Johnson is represented as saying of Hawkins, while he was still a member of the Literary Club:—­’Sir John, Sir, is a very unclubable man.’  But, as Mr. Croker points out (Croker’s Boswell, p. 164), ’Hawkins was not knighted till long after he had left the club.’  The anecdote, being proved to be inaccurate in one point, may be inaccurate in another, and may therefore belong to a much later date.