[830] Son of Mr. Samuel Paterson.  BOSWELL.  In the first two editions after ‘Paterson’ is added ‘eminent for his knowledge of books.’  See ante, iii. 90.

[831] Humphry, on his first coming to London, poor and unfriended, was helped by Reynolds.  Northcote’s Reynolds, ii. 174.

[832] On April 21 he wrote:—­’After a confinement of 129 days, more than the third part of a year, and no inconsiderable part of human life, I this day returned thanks to God in St. Clement’s Church for my recovery.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 365.

[833] On April 26 he wrote:—­’On Saturday I showed myself again to the living world at the Exhibition; much and splendid was the company, but like the Doge of Genoa at Paris [Versailles, Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV, chap, xiv.], I admired nothing but myself.  I went up the stairs to the pictures without stopping to rest or to breathe,

     “In all the madness of superfluous health.”

[Pope’s Essay on Man, iii. 3.] The Prince of Wales had promised to be there; but when we had waited an hour and a half, sent us word that he could not come.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 367.  ’The first Gentleman in Europe’ was twenty-one years old when he treated men like Johnson and Reynolds with this insolence.  Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, ii. 244) says that it was at this very dinner that ’Johnson left his seat by desire of the Prince of Wales, and went to the head of the table to be introduced.’  He does not give his authority for the statement.

[834] Mr. Croker wrote in 1847 that he had ’seen it very lately framed and glazed, in possession of the lady to whom it was addressed.’  Croker’s Boswell, p. 753.

[835] Shortly before he begged one of Mrs. Thrale’s daughters ’never to think that she had arithmetic enough.’ Ante, p. 171, note 3.  See ante, iii. 207, note 3.

[836] Cowper wrote on May 10 to the Rev. John Newton:—­’We rejoice in the account you give us of Dr. Johnson.  His conversion will indeed be a singular proof of the omnipotence of Grace; and the more singular, the more decided.’  Southey’s Cowper, xv. 150.  Johnson, in a prayer that he wrote on April 11, said:—­’Enable me, O Lord, to glorify Thee for that knowledge of my corruption, and that sense of Thy wrath, which my disease and weakness and danger awakened in my mind.’ Pr. and Med. p. 217.

[837] Mr. Croker suggests immediate.

[838] ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’ St. James, v. 16.

[839] Upon this subject there is a very fair and judicious remark in the life of Dr. Abernethy, in the first edition of the Biographia Britannica, which I should have been glad to see in his life which has been written for the second edition of that valuable work.  ’To deny the exercise of a particular providence in the Deity’s government of the world is certainly impious:  yet nothing serves the cause of the scorner more than an incautious forward zeal in determining the particular instances of it.’