[382] Dr. Johnson did not neglect what he had undertaken.  By his interest with the Rev. Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was educated for some time, he obtained a servitorship for young M’Aulay.  But it seems he had other views; and I believe went abroad.  BOSWELL.  See ante, ii. 380.

[383] ‘I once drank tea,’ writes Lamb, ’in company with two Methodist divines of different persuasions.  Before the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to say anything.  It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also.  His reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less importance he made answer that it was not a custom known in his church.’ Essay on Grace before Meat.

[384] He could not bear to have it thought that, in any instance whatever, the Scots are more pious than the English.  I think grace as proper at breakfast as at any other meal.  It is the pleasantest meal we have.  Dr. Johnson has allowed the peculiar merit of breakfast in Scotland.  BOSWELL.  ’If an epicure could remove by a wish in quest of sensual gratification, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland.’  Johnson’s Works, ix. 52.

[385] Bruce, the Abyssinian Traveller, found in the annals of that region a king named Brus, which he chooses to consider the genuine orthography of the name.  This circumstance occasioned some mirth at the court of Gondar.  WALTER SCOTT.

[386] See ante, ii. 169, note 2, and post, Sept. 2.  Johnson, so far as I have observed, spelt the name Boswel.

[387] Sir Eyre Coote was born in 1726.  He took part in the battle of Plassey in 1757, and commanded at the reduction of Pondicherry in 1761.  In 1770-71 he went by land to Europe.  In 1780 he took command of the English army against Hyder Ali, whom he repeatedly defeated.  He died in 1783.  Chalmers’s Biog.  Dict. x. 236.  There is a fine description of him in Macaulay’s Essays, ed. 1843, iii. 385.

[388] See ante, iii. 361.

[389] Reynolds wrote of Johnson:—­’He sometimes, it must be confessed, covered his ignorance by generals rather than appear ignorant’ Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 457.

[390] ’The barracks are very handsome, and form several regular and good streets.’  Pennant’s Tour, p. 144.

[391] See ante, p. 45.

[392] Here Dr. Johnson gave us part of a conversation held between a Great Personage and him, in the library at the Queen’s Palace, in the course of which this contest was considered.  I have been at great pains to get that conversation as perfectly preserved as possible.  It may perhaps at some future time be given to the publick.  BOSWELL.  For ’a Great Personage’ see ante, i. 219; and for the conversation, ii. 33.