e was also tutor to the
Peterborough family. Pray, my Lord, do you recollect any particulars
that he told you of Lord Peterborough? He is a favourite of mine, and is
not enough known; his character has been only ventilated in party
pamphlets[1030].' Lord Eliot said, if Dr. Johnson would be so good as to
ask him any questions, he would tell what he could recollect.
Accordingly some things were mentioned. 'But, (said his Lordship,) the
best account of Lord Peterborough that I have happened to meet with, is
in _Captain Carleton's Memoirs_. Carleton was descended of an ancestor
who had distinguished himself at the siege of Derry[1031]. He was an
officer; and, what was rare at that time, had some knowledge of
engineering[1032].' Johnson said, he had never heard of the book. Lord
Eliot had it at Port Eliot; but, after a good deal of enquiry, procured
a copy in London, and sent it to Johnson, who told Sir Joshua Reynolds
that he was going to bed when it came, but was so much pleased with it,
that he sat up till he had read it through[1033], and found in it such
an air of truth, that he could not doubt of its authenticity[1034];
adding, with a smile, (in allusion to Lord Eliot's having recently been
raised to the peerage,) 'I did not think a _young Lord_ could have
mentioned to me a book in the English history that was not known to
me[1035].'

An addition to our company came after we went up to the drawing-room;
Dr. Johnson seemed to rise in spirits as his audience increased. He
said, 'He wished Lord Orford's pictures[1036], and Sir Ashton Lever's
Museum[1037], might be purchased by the publick, because both the money,
and the pictures, and the curiosities, would remain in the country;
whereas, if they were sold into another kingdom, the nation would indeed
get some money, but would lose the pictures and curiosities, which it
would be desirable we should have, for improvement in taste and natural
history. The only question was, as the nation was much in want of money,
whether it would not be better to take a large price from a
foreign State?'

He entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition
and sagacity; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a
circuitous process; one he observed was the _eye_ of the mind, the other
the _nose_ of the mind[1038].

A young gentleman[1039] present took up the argument against him, and
maintained that no man ever thinks of the _nose of the mind_, not
adv