772:--'Charles Fox is commenced patriot, and
is already attempting to pronounce the words, _country_, _liberty_,
_corruption_, &c.; with what success time will discover.' Forty years
before Johnson begged not to meet patriots, Sir Robert Walpole said:--'A
patriot, Sir! why patriots spring up like mushrooms. I could raise fifty
of them within the four-and-twenty hours. I have raised many of them in
one night. It is but refusing to gratify an unreasonable or an insolent
demand, and up starts a patriot. I have never been afraid of making
patriots; but I disdain and despise all their efforts.' Coxe's
_Walpole_, i. 659. See _ante_, ii. 348, and iii. 66.

[287] He was tried on Feb. 5 and 6, 1781. _Ann. Reg._ xxiv. 217.

[288] Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 210) records a dinner on a Tuesday in
this year. (Like Mrs. Thrale and Miss Burney, she cared nothing for
dates.) It was in the week after Thrale's death. It must have been the
dinner here mentioned by Boswell; for it was at a Bishop's (Shipley of
St. Asaph), and Sir Joshua and Boswell were among the guests. Why
Boswell recorded none of Johnson's conversation may be guessed from what
she tells. 'I was heartily disgusted,' she says, 'with Mr. Boswell, who
came up stairs after dinner much disordered with wine.' (See _post_, p.
109). The following morning Johnson called on her. 'He reproved me,' she
writes, 'with pretended sharpness for reading _Les Pensees de Pascal_,
alleging that as a good Protestant I ought to abstain from books written
by Catholics. I was beginning to stand upon my defence, when he took me
with both hands, and with a tear running down his cheeks, "Child," said
he, with the most affecting earnestness, "I am heartily glad that you
read pious books, by whomsoever they may be written.'"

[289] On Good-Friday, in 1778, Johnson recorded:--'It has happened this
week, as it never happened in Passion-week before, that I have never
dined at home, and I have therefore neither practised abstinence nor
peculiar devotion' _Pr. and Med._ p. 163.

[290] No. 7.

[291] See _ante_, iii. 302.

[292] Richard Berenger, Esq., many years Gentleman of the Horse, and
first Equerry to his present Majesty. MALONE. According to Mrs. Piozzi
(_Anec._ p. 156), he was Johnson's 'standard of true elegance.'

[293] See _ante_, iii. 186.

[294] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 449) thus describes Addison's 'familiar
day,' on the authority of Pope:--'He studied all morning; then dined at
a tavern