[1018] I trust that THE CITY OF LONDON, now happily in unison with THE COURT, will have the justice and generosity to obtain preferment for this Reverend Gentleman, now a worthy old servant of that magnificent Corporation.  BOSWELL.  In like manner, Boswell in 1768 praised the Rev. Mr. Moore, Mr. Villette’s predecessor.  ’Mr. Moore, the Ordinary of Newgate, discharged his duty with much earnestness and a fervour for which I and all around me esteemed and loved him.  Mr. Moore seems worthy of his office, which, when justly considered, is a very important one.’ London Mag. 1783, p. 204.  For the quarrel between the City and the Court, see ante, iii. 201.

[1019] See ante, i. 387.

[1020] Knox in Winter Evenings, No. xi. (Works, ii. 348), attacks Johnson’s biographers for lowering his character by publishing his private conversation.  ‘Biography,’ he complains, ’is every day descending from its dignity.’  See ante, i. 222, note 1.

[1021] Piozzi Letters, ii. 256.

[1022] Johnson wrote on April 15:—­’I am still very weak, though my appetite is keen and my digestion potent. ...  I now think and consult to-day what I shall eat to-morrow.  This disease likewise will, I hope, be cured.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 362.  Beattie, who dined with Johnson on June 27, wrote:—­’Wine, I think, would do him good, but he cannot be prevailed on to drink it.  He has, however, a voracious appetite for food.  I verily believe that on Sunday last he ate as much to dinner as I have done in all for these ten days past.’  Forbes’s Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 315.  It was said that Beattie latterly indulged somewhat too much in wine. Ib. p. 432.

[1023] Horace Walpole wrote in April 1750 (Letters, ii. 206):—­’There is come from France a Madame Bocage who has translated Milton:  my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors.  She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord’s approbation.’  It was this lady who bade her footman blow into the spout of the tea-pot. Ante, ii. 403.  Dr. J. H. Burton writes of her in his Life of Hume, ii. 213:—­’The wits must praise her bad poetry if they frequented her house.  “Elle etait d’une figure aimable,” says Grimm, “elle est bonne femme; elle est riche; elle pouvait fixer chez elle les gens d’esprit et de bonne compagnie, sans les mettre dans l’embarras de lui parler avec peu de sincerite de sa Colombiade ou de ses Amazones."’

[1024] It is the sea round the South Pole that she describes in her Elegy (not Ode).  The description begins:—­