My readers will probably be surprised to hear that the great Dr. Johnson could amuse himself with so slight and playful a species of composition as a Charade.  I have recovered one which he made on Dr. Barnard, now Lord Bishop of Killaloe; who has been pleased for many years to treat me with so much intimacy and social ease, that I may presume to call him not only my Right Reverend, but my very dear Friend.  I therefore with peculiar pleasure give to the world a just and elegant compliment thus paid to his Lordship by Johnson[609].

CHARADE.

’My first[610] shuts out thieves from your house or your room,
 My second[611] expresses a Syrian perfume. 
 My whole[612] is a man in whose converse is shar’d,
 The strength of a Bar and the sweetness of Nard.’

Johnson asked Richard Owen Cambridge, Esq., if he had read the Spanish translation of Sallust, said to be written by a Prince of Spain[613], with the assistance of his tutor, who is professedly the authour of a treatise annexed, on the Phoenician language.

Mr. Cambridge commended the work, particularly as he thought the Translator understood his authour better than is commonly the case with Translators:  but said, he was disappointed in the purpose for which he borrowed the book; to see whether a Spaniard could be better furnished with inscriptions from monuments, coins, or other antiquities which he might more probably find on a coast, so immediately opposite to Carthage, than the Antiquaries of any other countries.  JOHNSON.  ’I am very sorry you was[614] not gratified in your expectations.’  CAMBRIDGE.  ’The language would have been of little use, as there is no history existing in that tongue to balance the partial accounts which the Roman writers have left us.’  JOHNSON.  ’No, Sir.  They have not been partial, they have told their own story, without shame or regard to equitable treatment of their injured enemy; they had no compunction, no feeling for a Carthaginian.  Why, Sir, they would never have borne Virgil’s description of Aeneas’s treatment of Dido, if she had not been a Carthaginian[615].’

I gratefully acknowledge this and other communications from Mr. Cambridge, whom, if a beautiful villa on the banks of the Thames, a few miles distant from London, a numerous and excellent library, which he accurately knows and reads, a choice collection of pictures, which he understands and relishes, an easy fortune, an amiable family, an extensive circle of friends and acquaintance, distinguished by rank, fashion and genius, a literary fame, various, elegant and still increasing, colloquial talents rarely to be found[616], and with all these means of happiness, enjoying, when well advanced in years, health and vigour of body, serenity and animation of mind, do not entitle to be addressed fortunate senex![617] I know not to whom, in any age, that expression could with propriety have been used.  Long may he live to hear and to feel it!