ay on the Study of Literature_]
were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were
neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the
Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the
three royal societies of Paris; the new appellation of _Erudits_ was
contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon; and
I was provoked to hear (see M. d'Alembert, _Discours preliminaire a
l'Encyclopedie_) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit,
had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the
judgment.'
--_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1827, i. 104.

_A Synod of Cooks_.

(Vol. i, p. 470.)

When Johnson spoke of 'a Synod of Cooks' he was, I conjecture, thinking
of Milton's 'Synod of Gods,' in Beelzebub's speech in Paradise Lost,
book ii. line 391.

_Johnson and Bishop Percy_.

(Vol. i, p. 486.)

Bishop Percy in a letter to Boswell says: 'When in 1756 or 1757 I
became acquainted with Johnson, he told me he had lived twenty years
in London, but not very happily.'
--Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 307.

_Barclay's Answer to Kenrick's Review of Johnson's
'Shakespeare.'_

(Vol. i, p. 498.)

Neither in the British Museum nor in the Bodleian have I been able to
find a copy of this book. _A Defence of Mr. Kenricks Review_, 1766,
does not seem to contain any reply to such a work as Barclay's.

_Mrs. Piozzi's 'Collection of Johnson s Letters.'_

(Vol. ii, p. 43, n. 2.)

MR. BOSWELL TO BISHOP PERCY.
'Feb. 9, 1788.

'I am ashamed that I have yet seven years to write of his life. ... Mrs.
(Thrale) Piozzi's Collection of his letters will be out soon. ... I saw
a sheet at the printing-house yesterday... It is wonderful what avidity
there still is for everything relative to Johnson. I dined at Mr.
Malone's on Wednesday with Mr. W. G. Hamilton, Mr. Flood, Mr. Windham, Mr.
Courtenay, &c.; and Mr. Hamilton observed very well what a proof it was
of Johnson's merit that we had been talking of him all the afternoon.'
--Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 309.

_Johnson on romantic virtue_.

(Vol. ii, P. 76.)

'Dr. Johnson used to advise his friends to be upon their guard against
romantic virtue, as being founded upon no settled principle. "A plank,"
said he, "that is tilted up at one end must of course fall down on the
other."
'--William Seward, _Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_, ii. 461.'

_'Old' Baxter o