_Moral Essays_, i. 174.

'The publick pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are
counterfeit.' _The Idler_, No. 18.

[976] _Ante_, ii. 241, and iii. 325.

[977] Boswell refers to Cicero's _Treatise on Famous Orators_.

[978] Boswell here falls into a mistake. About harvest-time in 1766,
there were corn-riots owing to the dearness of bread. By the Act of the
15th of Charles II, corn, when under a certain price, might be legally
exported. On Sept. 26, 1766, before this price had been reached, the
Crown issued a proclamation to prohibit the exportation of grain. When
parliament met in November, a bill of indemnity was brought in for those
concerned in the late embargo. 'The necessity of the embargo was
universally allowed;' it was the exercise by the Crown of a power of
dispensing with the laws that was attacked. Some of the ministers who,
out of office, 'had set up as the patrons of liberty,' were made the
object 'of many sarcasms on the beaten subject of occasional
patriotism.' _Ann. Reg._ x. 39-48, and Dicey's _Law of the
Constitution_, p. 50.

[979] _St. Mark_, ii. 9.

[980] _Anecdotes_, p. 43. BOSWELL. The passage is from the _Speech on
Conciliation with the Colonies_, March 22, 1775. Payne's _Burke_, i.
173. The image of the angel and Lord Bathurst was thus, according to
Mrs. Piozzi, parodied by Johnson:--'Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to
Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent Whigs of the last
age, the devil had, not with great impropriety, consented to appear.'
See _ante_, iii. 326, where Johnson said 'the first Whig was the Devil.'

[981] Boswell was stung by what Mrs. Piozzi wrote when recording this
parody. She said that she had begged Johnson's leave to write it down
directly. 'A trick,' she continues, 'which I have seen played on common
occasions of sitting steadily [? stealthily] down at the other end of
the room to write at the moment what should be said in company, either
by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in
another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery
in this conduct, that, were it commonly adopted, all confidence would
soon be exiled from society.' See _post_, under June 30, 1784, where
Boswell refers to this passage.

[982]

'Who'er offends, at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.'

Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, 2 Satires, i. 78.

[983] On March 14, 1770, in a debate on the licen