[964] ’All general reflections upon nations and societies are the trite, thread-bare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so have recourse to common-place.’  Chesterfield’s Letters, i. 231.

[965] See vol. ii. p. 126.  BOSWELL

[966] ’"That may be so,” replied the lady, “for ought I know, but they are above my comprehension.”  “I an’t obliged to find you comprehension, Madam, curse me,” cried he,’ Roderick Random, ch. 53. ’"I protest,” cried Moses, “I don’t rightly comprehend the force of your reasoning.”  “O, Sir,” cried the Squire, “I am your most humble servant, I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too."’ Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 7.

[967] In the first edition, ’as the Honourable Horace Walpole is often called;’ in the second edition, ‘as Horace, now Earl of Orford, &c.’  Walpole succeeded to the title in Dec. 1791.  In answer to congratulations he wrote (Letters, ix. 364):—­’What has happened destroys my tranquillity....  Surely no man of seventy-four, unless superannuated, can have the smallest pleasure in sitting at home in his own room, as I almost always do, and being called by a new name.’  He died March 2, 1797.

[968] In The Rambler, No. 83, a character of a virtuoso is given which in many ways suits Walpole:—­’It is never without grief that I find a man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this secondary class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of gratifying his desire of eminence by expense rather than by labour, and known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness and the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and trinkets for arguments and principles.’

[969] Walpole says:—­’I do not think I ever was in a room with Johnson six times in my days.’ Letters, ix. 319.  ’The first time, I think, was at the Royal Academy.  Sir Joshua said, “Let me present Dr. Goldsmith to you;” he did.  “Now I will present Dr. Johnson to you.”  “No,” said I, “Sir Joshua; for Dr. Goldsmith, pass—­but you shall not present Dr. Johnson to me."’ Journal &c. of Miss Berry, i. 305.  In his Journal of the Reign of George III, he speaks of Johnson as ’one of the venal champions of the Court,’ ‘a renegade’ (i. 430); ‘a brute,’ ’an old decrepit hireling’ (ib. p. 472); and as ’one of the subordinate crew whom to name is to stigmatize’ (ib. ii. 5).  In his Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 297, he says:—­’With a lumber of learning and some strong parts Johnson was an odious and mean character.  His manners were sordid, supercilious, and brutal; his style ridiculously bombastic and vicious, and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster.’

[970] See ante, i. 367.