[984] In the original yet.

[985]

     ’Sis pecore et multa dives tellure licebit,
        Tibique Pactolus fluat.’ 
     ’Though wide thy land extends, and large thy fold,
      Though rivers roll for thee their purest gold.’

FRANCIS.  Horace, Epodes, xv. 19.

[986] See Macaulay’s Essays, ed. 1843, i. 404, for Macaulay’s appropriation and amplification of this passage.

[987] See ante, ii. 168.

[988] Mr. Croker suggests the Rev. Martin Sherlock, an Irish Clergyman, ’who published in 1781 his own travels under the title of Letters of an English Traveller translated from the French.’ Croker’s Boswell, p. 770.  Mason writes of him as ’Mister, or Monsieur, or Signor Sherlock, for I am told he is both [sic] French, English, and Italian in print.’  Walpole’s Letters_, viii. 202.  I think, however, that Dr. Thomas Campbell is meant.  His Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland Boswell calls ’a very entertaining book, which has, however, one fault;—­that it assumes the fictitious character of an Englishman.’ Ante, ii. 339.

[989] See ante, iv. 49.

[990] This anecdote is not in the first two editions.

[991] See ante, in. 369.

[992] ‘I have heard,’ says Hawkins (Life, p. 409), ’that in many instances, and in some with tears in his eyes, he has apologised to those whom he had offended by contradiction or roughness of behaviour.’  See ante, ii. 109, and 256, note 1.

[993] Johnson (Works, viii. 131) describes Savage’s ’superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets ...  The intrusion or omission of a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour of a single letter as a heavy calamity.’

[994] Compositor in the Printing-house means, the person who adjusts the types in the order in which they are to stand for printing; and arranges what is called the form, from which an impression is taken.  BOSWELL.

[995] This circumstance therefore alluded to in Mr. Courtenay’s Poetical Character of him is strictly true.  My informer was Mrs. Desmoulins, who lived many years in Dr. Johnson’s house.  BOSWELL.  The following are Mr. Courtenay’s lines:—­

     ’Soft-eyed compassion with a look benign,
      His fervent vows he offered at thy shrine;
      To guilt, to woe, the sacred debt was paid,
      And helpless females blessed his pious aid;
      Snatched from disease, and want’s abandoned crew,
      Despair and anguish from their victims flew;
      Hope’s soothing balm into their bosoms stole,
      And tears of penitence restored the soul.’

[996] The Cross Readings were said to be formed ’by reading two columns of a newspaper together onwards,’ whereby ’the strangest connections were brought about,’ such as:—­