vicious, and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the
gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster.'

[970] See _ante_, i. 367.

[971] On May 26, 1791, Walpole wrote of Boswell's _Life of Johnson
(Letters_ ix. 3l9):--'I expected amongst the excommunicated to find
myself, but am very gently treated. I never would be in the least
acquainted with Johnson; or, as Boswell calls it, I had not a just value
for him; which the biographer imputes to my resentment for the Doctor's
putting bad arguments (purposely out of Jacobitism) into the speeches
which he wrote fifty years ago for my father in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_; which I did not read then, or ever knew Johnson wrote till
Johnson died.' Johnson said of these Debates:--'I saved appearances
tolerably well; but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the
best of it.' _Ante_, i. 504. 'Lord Holland said that whenever Boswell
came into a company where Horace Walpole was, Walpole would throw back
his head, purse up his mouth very significantly, and not speak a word
while Boswell remained.' _Autobiographical Recollections of C. R.
Leslie_, i. 155. Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 44) says:--'Boswell, that
quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in,
which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tapping
many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he
vented his errand.'

[972] Walpole wrote (_Letters_, vi. 44):--'If _The School for Wives_
and _The Christmas Tale_ were laid to me, so was _The Heroic Espistle_.
I could certainly have written the two former, but not the latter.' See
_ante_, iv. 113.

[973] The title given by Bishop Pearson to his collection of Hales's
Writings is the _Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable John Hales of
Eaton College, &c_. It was published in 1659.

[974] I _Henry IV_, act ii. sc. 4. 'Sir James Mackintosh remembers that,
while spending the Christmas of 1793 at Beaconsfield, Mr. Burke said to
him, 'Johnson showed more powers of mind in company than in his
writings; but he argued only for victory; and when he had neither a
paradox to defend, nor an antagonist to crush, he would preface his
assent with "Why, no, Sir."' CROKER. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 768.

[975]

Search then the ruling passion: There alone
The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
The fool consistent, and the false sincere;
Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.'
Pope,