, viii. 391),
'complained that Mantuan's Bucolicks were received into schools, and
taught as classical. ... He was read, at least in some of the inferiour
schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present
[eighteenth] century.'

[572] See _ante_, i. 368.

[573] See _ante_, i. 396.

[574] I am happy, however, to mention a pleasing instance of his
enduring with great gentleness to hear one of his most striking
particularities pointed out:--Miss Hunter, a niece of his friend
Christopher Smart, when a very young girl, struck by his extraordinary
motions, said to him, 'Pray, Dr. Johnson, why do you make such strange
gestures?' 'From bad habit,' he replied. 'Do you, my dear, take care to
guard against bad habits.' This I was told by the young lady's brother
at Margate. BOSWELL. Boswell had himself told Johnson of some of them,
at least in writing. Johnson read in manuscript his _Journal of a Tour
to the Hebrides_. Boswell says in a note on Oct. 12:--'It is remarkable
that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own
peculiar habits, without saying anything on the subject, which I hoped
he would have done.'

[575] See _ante_, ii. 42, note 2, and iii. 324.

[576] Johnson, after stating that some of Milton's manuscripts prove
that 'in the early part of his life he wrote with much care,'
continues:--'Such reliques show how excellence is acquired; what we hope
ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.'
_Works_, vii. 119. Lord Chesterfield (_Letters_, iii. 146) had made the
same rule as Johnson:--'I was,' he writes, 'early convinced of the
importance and powers of eloquence; and from that moment I applied
myself to it. I resolved not to utter one word even in common
conversation that should not be the most expressive and the most elegant
that the language could supply me with for that purpose; by which means
I have acquired such a certain degree of habitual eloquence, that I must
now really take some pains if I would express myself very inelegantly.'

[577] 'Dr. Johnson,' wrote Malone in 1783, 'is as correct and elegant in
his common conversation as in his writings. He never seems to study
either for thoughts or words. When first introduced I was very young;
yet he was as accurate in his conversation as if he had been talking to
the first scholar in England.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 92. See _post_,
under Aug. 29, 1783.

[578] See _ante_, iii. 216.

[579] See _ante_, ii. 323.

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