[853] Kennel is a strong word to apply to Burke; but, in his jocularity, he sometimes ‘let himself down’ to indelicate stories.  In the House of Commons he had told one—­and a very stupid one too—­not a year before. Parl.  Hist, xxiii. 918.  Horace Walpole speaks of Burke’s ‘pursuit of wit even to puerility.’ Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 443.  He adds (ib. ii. 26):—­’Burke himself always aimed at wit, but was not equally happy in public and private.  In the former, nothing was so luminous, so striking, so abundant; in private, it was forced, unnatural, and bombast.’  See ante, p. 104, where Wilkes said that in his oratory ‘there was a strange want of taste.’

[854] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, third edition, p. 20 [post, v. 32.] BOSWELL.  See also ante, i. 453, and iii. 323.

[855] I have since heard that the report was not well founded; but the elation discovered by Johnson in the belief that it was true, shewed a noble ardour for literary fame.  BOSWELL.  Johnson wrote on Feb. 9:—­’One thing which I have just heard you will think to surpass expectation.  The chaplain of the factory at Petersburgh relates that the Rambler is now, by the command of the Empress, translating into Russian, and has promised, when it is printed, to send me a copy.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 349.  Stockdale records (Memoirs, ii. 98) that in 1773 the Empress of Russia engaged ’six English literary gentlemen for instructors of her young nobility in her Academy at St. Petersburgh.’  He was offered one of the posts.  Her zeal may have gone yet further, and she may have wished to open up English literature to those who could not read English.  Beauclerk’s library was offered for sale to the Russian Ambassador. Ante, iii. 420.  Miss Burney, in 1789, said that a newspaper reported that ’Angelica Kauffmann is making drawings from Evelina for the Empress of Russia.’  Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, v. 35.

[856]

     ’—­me peritus
      Disect Iber, Rhodanique potor.’

     ’To him who drinks the rapid Rhone
      Shall Horace, deathless bard, be known.’

      FRANCIS.  Horace, Odes, ii. 20. 19.

[857] See ante, iii. 49.

[858] See post, June 12, 1784.

[859] See ante, p. 126.

[860] H. C. Robinson (Diary, i. 29) describes him as ’an author on an infinity of subjects; his books were on Law, History, Poetry, Antiquities, Divinity, Politics.’  He adds (ib. p. 49l):—­’Godwin, Lofft, and Thelwall are the only three persons I know (except Hazlitt) who grieve at the late events’—­the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.  He found long after his death ’a MS. by him in these words:—­“Rousseau, Euripides, Tasso, Racine, Cicero, Virgil, Petrarch, Richardson.  If I had five millions of years to live upon this earth, these I would read daily with increasing delight."’ Ib. iii. 283.