[372] See _ post_, Sept. 13 and 28.

[373] Mr. Trevelyan (Life of Macaulay, ed.1877, i. 6) says:  ’Johnson pronounced that Mr. Macaulay was not competent to have written the book that went by his name; a decision which, to those who happen to have read the work, will give a very poor notion my ancestor’s abilities.’

[374]

     ‘The thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman.’

Macbeth, act i. sc. 3.

[375] According to Murray’s Handbook, ed. 1867, p. 308, no part of the castle is older than the fifteenth century.

[376] See post, Nov. 5.

[377] The historian. Ante, p. 41.

[378] See ante, iii. 336, and post, Nov. 7.

[379] See post, Oct. 27.

[380] Baretti was the Italian.  Boswell disliked him (ante, ii. 98 note), and perhaps therefore described him merely as ’a man of some literature.’  Baretti complained to Malone that ’the story as told gave an unfair representation of him.’  He had, he said, ’observed to Johnson that the petition lead us not into temptation ought rather to be addressed to the tempter of mankind than a benevolent Creator.  “Pray, Sir,” said Johnson, “do you know who was the author of the Lord’s Prayer?” Baretti, who did not wish to get into any serious dispute and who appears to be an Infidel, by way of putting an end to the conversation, only replied:—­“Oh, Sir, you know by our religion (Roman Catholic) we are not permitted to read the Scriptures.  You can’t therefore expect an answer."’ Prior’s Malone, p. 399.  Sir Joshua Reynolds, on hearing this from Malone, said:—­’This turn which Baretti now gives to the matter was an after-thought; for he once said to me myself:—­“There are various opinions about the writer of that prayer; some give it to St. Augustine, some to St. Chrysostom, &c.  What is your opinion? “’ Ib. p. 394.  Mrs. Piozzi says that she heard ’Baretti tell a clergyman the story of Dives and Lazarus as the subject of a poem he once had composed in the Milanese district, expecting great credit for his powers of invention.’  Hayward’s Piozzi, ii. 348.

[381] Goldsmith (Present Slate of Polite Learning, chap. 13) thus wrote of servitorships:  ’Surely pride itself has dictated to the fellows of our colleges the absurd passion of being attended at meals, and on other public occasions, by those poor men who, willing to be scholars, come in upon some charitable foundation.  It implies a contradiction for men to be at once learning the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves; at once studying freedom and practising servitude.’  Yet a young man like Whitefield was willing enough to be a servitor.  He had been a waiter in his mother’s inn; he was now a waiter in a college, but a student also.  See my Dr. Johnson:  His Friends and his Critics, p. 27.