’This morning the Right Hon. the Speaker was convicted of keeping a disorderly house.  Whereas the said barn was set on fire by an incendiary letter dropped early in the morning.  By order of the Commissioners for Paving An infallible remedy for the stone and gravel.  The sword of state was carried before Sir John Fielding and committed to Newgate.’

The New Foundling Hospital for Wit, i. 129.  According to Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 217), ’Dr. Goldsmith declared, in the heat of his admiration of these Cross Readings, it would have given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had ever published of his own.’  Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 30) writes:—­ ’Have you seen that delightful paper composed out of scraps in the newspapers?  I laughed till I cried.  I mean the paper that says:—­

“This day his Majesty will go in great state to fifteen notorious common prostitutes."’

[997] One of these gentlemen was probably Mr. Musgrave (ante, ii. 343, note 2), who, says Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 295), when ’once he was singularly warm about Johnson’s writing the lives of our famous prose authors, getting up and entreating him to set about the work immediately, he coldly replied, “Sit down, Sir."’ Miss Burney says that ’the incense he paid Dr. Johnson by his solemn manner of listening, by the earnest reverence with which he eyed him, and by a theatric start of admiration every time he spoke, joined to the Doctor’s utter insensibility to all these tokens, made me find infinite difficulty in keeping my countenance.’  Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 85.  The other gentleman was perhaps Dr. Wharton. Ante, ii. 41, note 1.

[998] Probably Dr. Beattie.  The number of letters in his name agrees with the asterisks given a few lines below. Ante, iii. 339, note 1, and post, p. 330.

[999] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines conge d’elire as the king’s permission royal to a dean and chapter in time of vacation, to choose a bishop. When Dr. Hampden was made Bishop of Hereford in 1848, the Dean resisted the appointment.  H. C. Robinson records, on the authority of the Bishop’s Secretary (Diary, iii. 311), that ’at the actual confirmation in Bow Church the scene was quite ludicrous.  After the judge had told the opposers that he could not hear them, the citation for opposers to come forward was repeated, at which the people present laughed out, as at a play.’

[1000] This has been printed in other publications, ’fall to the ground.’  But Johnson himself gave me the true expression which he had used as above; meaning that the recommendation left as little choice in the one case as the other.  BOSWELL.  One of the ’other publications is Hawkins’s edition of Johnson’s Works.  See in it vol. xi. p. 216.

[1001] They are published in vol. xi. of Hawkins’s edition of Johnson’s Works. 1787, and are often quoted in my notes.  It should be remembered that Steevens is not trustworthy.  See ante, iii. 281, and iv. 178.