table rose,
From Graham's wit, from generous wine.

It was not these alone which led
On sacred manners to encroach;
And made me feel what most I dread,
JOHNSON'S just frown, and self-reproach.

But when I enter'd, not abash'd,
From your bright eyes were shot such rays,
At once intoxication flash'd,
And all my frame was in a blaze.

But not a brilliant blaze I own,
Of the dull smoke I'm yet asham'd;
I was a dreary ruin grown,
And not enlighten'd though inflam'd.

Victim at once to wine and love,
I hope, MARIA, you'll forgive;
While I invoke the powers above,
That henceforth I may wiser live.'

The lady was generously forgiving, returned me an obliging answer, and I
thus obtained an _Act of Oblivion_, and took care never to offend
again. BOSWELL.

[353] See _ante_, ii. 436, and iv. 88, note I.

[354] On May 22 Horace Walpole wrote (_Letters_, viii. 44):--'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. "Had I seen Dr. Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_?" I
said slightly, "No, not yet;" and so overlaid his whole impertinence.'

[355] See _ante_, iii. 1.

[356] See _ante_, ii. 47, note 2; 352, note I; and iii. 376, for
explanations of like instances of Boswell's neglect.

[357] See _ante_, i. 298, note 4.

[358] 'He owned he sometimes talked for victory.' Boswell's _Hebrides_,
opening pages.

[359] The late Right Hon. William Gerard Hamilton. MALONE.

[360] Dr. Johnson, being told of a man who was thankful for being
introduced to him, 'as he had been convinced in a long dispute that an
opinion which he had embraced as a settled truth was no better than a
vulgar error, "Nay," said he, "do not let him be thankful, for he was
right, and I was wrong." Like his Uncle Andrew in the ring at
Smithfield, Johnson, in a circle of disputants, was determined neither
to be thrown nor conquered.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 139. Johnson, in
_The Adventurer_, No. 85, seems to describe his own talk. He writes:--'
While the various opportunities of conversation invite us to try every
mode of argument, and every art of recommending our sentiments, we are
frequently betrayed to the use of such as are not in themselves stric