too, of an Italian improvisatore, when the Duke of
Modena ran away from the comet in the year 1742 or 1743:

"Se al venir vestro i principi sen' vanno,
Deh venga ogni di --- durate un anno;"

"which," said he, "would do just as well in our language thus:

"'If at your coming princes disappear,
Comets! come every day--and stay a year.'"

When some one in company commended the verses of M. de Benserade a son
Lit:

"Theatre des ris et des pleurs,
Lit! on je nais, et ou je meurs,
Tu nous fais voir comment voisins
Sont nos plaisirs et nos chagrins."

To which he replied without hesitating--

"'In bed we laugh, in bed we cry,
And born in bed, in bed we die;
The near approach a bed may show
Of human bliss to human woe.'"

The inscription on the collar of Sir Joseph Banks's goat, which had been
on two of his adventurous expeditions with him, and was then, by the
humanity of her amiable master, turned out to graze in Kent as a
recompense for her utility and faithful service, was given me by Johnson
in the year 1777, I think, and I have never yet seen it printed:

"Perpetui, ambita, bis terra, premia lactis,
Haec habet altrici Capra secunda Jovis."

The epigram written at Lord Anson's house many years ago, "where," says
Mr. Johnson, "I was well received and kindly treated, and with the true
gratitude of a wit ridiculed the master of the house before I had left it
an hour," has been falsely printed in many papers since his death. I
wrote it down from his own lips one evening in August, 1772, not
neglecting the little preface accusing himself of making so graceless a
return for the civilities shown him. He had, among other elegancies
about the park and gardens, been made to observe a temple to the winds,
when this thought naturally presented itself _to a wit_:

"Gratum animum laudo; Qui debuit omnia ventis,
Quam bene ventorum, surgere templa jubet!"

A translation of Dryden's epigram, too, I used to fancy I had to myself:

"Quos laudet vates, Graius, Romanus, et Anglus,
Tres tria temporibus secla dedere suis:
Sublime ingenium, Graius,--Romanus habebat
Carmen grande sonans, Anglus utrumque tulit.
Nil majus natura capit: clarare priores
Quae potuere duos, tertius unus habet:"

from the famous lines written under Milton's picture:

"Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn;
The first in loft