Putting as much contempt as I could Into my look and tone, I said, “Dr. Johnson don’t—­humph!”—­and with that monosyllable ended our interview.  After the Doctor’s death, Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Boswell sent an ambling circular-letter to me, begging subscriptions for a monument for him—­the two last, I think, impertinently; as they could not but know my opinion, and could not suppose I would contribute to a monument for one who had endeavoured, poor soul! to degrade my friend’s superlative poetry.  I would not deign to write an answer; but sent down word by my footman, as I would have done to parish officers with a brief, that I Would not subscribe.  In the two new volumes Johnson says, and very probably did, or is made to say, that ’Gray’s poetry is dull, and that he was a dull man!(798) The same oracle dislikes Prior, Swift, and Fielding.  If an elephant could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy ungraceful animal.  Pass to a better chapter!

Burke has published another pamphlet(799) against the French Revolution, in which he attacks it still more grievously.  The beginning is very good; but it is not equal, nor quite so injudicious as parts of its predecessor; is far less brilliant, as well as much shorter:  but, were it ever so long, his mind overflows with such a torrent of images, that he cannot be tedious.  His invective against Rousseau is admirable, just, and new.(799) Voltaire he passes almost contemptuously.  I wish he had dissected Mirabeau too; and I grieve that he has omitted the violation of the consciences of the clergy, nor stigmatized those universal plunderers, the National Assembly, who gorge themselves with eighteen livres a-day; which to many of them would, three years ago, have been astonishing opulence.

When you return, I shall lend you three volumes in quarto of another Work,(800) With which you will be delighted.  They are state-letters in the reigns of Henry the Eighth, Mary, Elizabeth, and James; being the correspondence of the Talbot and Howard families, given by a Duke of Norfolk to the Herald’s-office; where they have lain for a century neglected, buried under dust, and unknown, till discovered by a Mr. Lodge, a genealogist, who, to gratify his passion, procured to be made a poursuivant.  Oh! how curious they are!  Henry seizes an alderman who refused to contribute to a benevolence:  sends him to the army on the borders; orders him to be exposed in the front line; and if that does not do, to be treated with the utmost rigour of military discipline.  His daughter Bess is not less a Tudor.  The mean, unworthy treatment of the queen of Scots is striking; and you will find Elizabeth’s jealousy of her crown and her avarice were at war, and how the more ignoble passion predominated.  But the most amusing passage is one in a private letter, as it paints the awe of children for their parents a little differently from modern habitudes.  Mr. Talbot, second son