cy upon you! Christ have mercy upon you!" which
last words the bell-man repeats three times. All the way up Holborn the
crowd was so great, as at every twenty or thirty yards to obstruct the
passage; and wine, notwithstanding a late good order against that
practice, was brought the malefactors, who drank greedily of it. After
this the three thoughtless young men, who at first seemed not enough
concerned, grew most shamefully daring and wanton. They swore, laughed,
and talked obscenely. At the place of execution the scene grew still
more shocking; and the clergyman who attended was more the subject of
ridicule than of their serious attention. The psalm was sung amidst the
curses and quarrelling of hundreds of the most abandoned and profligate
of mankind. As soon as the poor creatures were half-dead, I was much
surprised to see the populace fall to haling and pulling the carcases
with so much earnestness as to occasion several warm rencounters and
broken heads. These, I was told, were the friends of the persons
executed, or such as for the sake of tumult chose to appear so; and some
persons sent by private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection.' The
psalm is mentioned in a note on the line in _The Dunciad_, i. 4l, 'Hence
hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines:'--'It is an ancient English custom,'
says Pope, 'for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution
at Tyburn.'

[594] The rest of these miscellaneous sayings were first given in the
_Additions to Dr. Johnson's Life_ at the beginning of vol. I of the
second edition.

[595] Hume (_Auto_. p. 6) speaks of Hurd as attacking him 'with all the
illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility which distinguish the
Warburtonian school.' 'Hurd,' writes Walpole, 'had acquired a great name
by several works of slender merit, was a gentle, plausible man,
affecting a singular decorum that endeared him highly to devout old
ladies.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 50. He is best known
to the present generation by his impertinent notes on Addison's _Works_.
By reprinting them, Mr. Bohn did much to spoil what was otherwise an
excellent edition of that author. See _ante_, p. 47, note 2.

[596] The Rev. T. Twining, one of Dr. Burney's friends, wrote in
1779:--'You use a form of reference that I abominate, i.e. the latter,
the former. "As long as you have the use of your tongue and your pen,"
said Dr. Johnson to Dr. Burney, "never, Sir, be reduced to that shift."'
_Recreations