[934] Johnson said ‘Milton was a Phidias, &c.’ Ante, p. 99, note 1.  In his Life of Milton (Works, vii. 119) he writes:—­’Milton never learnt the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a Lion_ that had no skill in dandling the kid.’

     [’Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
       Dandled the kid.’

       Paradise Lost, iv. 343.]

[935] Cardinal Newman (History of my Religious Opinions, ed. 1865, p. 361) remarks on this:—­’As to Johnson’s case of a murderer asking you which way a man had gone, I should have anticipated that, had such a difficulty happened to him, his first act would have been to knock the man down, and to call out for the police; and next, if he was worsted in the conflict, he would not have given the ruffian the information he asked, at whatever risk to himself.  I think he would have let himself be killed first.  I do not think that he would have told a lie.’

[936] See ante, iii. 376.

[937] Book ii. 1. 142.

[938] The annotator calls them ‘amiable verses.’  BOSWELL.  The annotators of the Dunciad were Pope himself and Dr. Arbuthnot.  Johnson’s Works, viii. 280.

[939] Boswell was at this time corresponding with Miss Seward.  See post, June 25.

[940] By John Dyer. Ante, ii. 453.

[941] Lewis’s Verses addressed to Pope were first published in a Collection of Pieces on occasion of The Dunciad, 8vo., 1732.  They do not appear in Lewis’s own Miscellany, printed in 1726.—­Grongar Hill was first printed in Savage’s Miscellanies as an Ode, and was reprinted in the same year in Lewis’s Miscellany, in the form it now bears.

In his Miscellanies, 1726, the beautiful poem,—­’Away, let nought to love displeasing,’—­reprinted in Percy’s Reliques, vol. i. book iii.  No. 13, first appeared.  MALONE.

[942] See ante, p. 58.

[943] See ante, i. 71, and ii. 226.

[944] Captain Cook’s third voyage.  The first two volumes by Captain Cook; the last by Captain King.

[945] See ante, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 49.

[946]

     ‘—­quae mollissima fandi Tempora.’
     ‘—­time wherein the word May softliest be said.’

    MORRIS.  Virgil, Aeneids, iv. 293.

[947] See ante, i. 71.

[948] See ante, i. 203, note 6.

[949] Boswell began to eat dinners in the Inner Temple so early as 1775. Ante, ii. 377, note 1.  He was not called till Hilary Term, 1786.  Rogers’s Boswelliana, p. 143.

[950] Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Jones wrote two years earlier (Life, p. 268):—­’Whether it be a wise part to live uncomfortably in order to die wealthy, is another question; but this I know by experience, and have heard old practitioners make the same observation, that a lawyer who is in earnest must be chained to his chambers and the bar for ten or twelve years together.’