ials which the industry of that gentleman has
procured, and with others which, it it is believed, are yet preserved in
manuscript, he would, without doubt, have produced a most valuable and
curious history of Cromwell's life.' BOSWELL.

[731] See _ante_, ii.358, note 3.

[732] _Short Notes for Civil Conversation_. Spedding's _Bacon_, vii.109.

[733] 'When I took up his _Life of Cowley_, he made me put it away to
talk. I could not help remarking how very like he is to his writing, and
how much the same thing it was to hear or to read him; but that nobody
could tell that without coming to Streatham, for his language was
generally imagined to be laboured and studied, instead of the mere
common flow of his thoughts. "Very true," said Mrs. Thrale, "he writes
and talks with the same ease, and in the same manner."' Mme. D'Arblay's
_Diary_, i. 120. What a different account is this from that given by
Macaulay:--'When he talked he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible
and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write
for the public, his style became systematically vicious.' Macaulay's
_Essays_, edit. 1843, i.404. See _ante_, ii.96, note; iv.183; and
_post_, the end of the vol.

[734] See _ante_, ii.125, iii.254, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 14.

[735] Hume said:--'The French have more real politeness, and the English
the better method of expressing it. By real politeness I mean softness
of temper, and a sincere inclination to oblige and be serviceable, which
is very conspicuous in this nation, not only among the high, but low; in
so much that the porters and coachmen here are civil, and that, not only
to gentlemen, but likewise among themselves.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_,
i. 53.

[736] This is the third time that Johnson's disgust at this practice is
recorded. See _ante_, ii.403, and iii.352.

[737] See _ante_, iii.398, note 3.

[738] 'Sept. 22, 1783. The chymical philosophers have discovered a body
(which I have forgotten, but will enquire) which, dissolved by an acid,
emits a vapour lighter than the atmospherical air. This vapour is
caught, among other means, by tying a bladder compressed upon the body
in which the dissolution is performed; the vapour rising swells the
bladder and fills it. _Piozzi Letters_, ii.310. The 'body' was
iron-filings, the acid sulphuric acid, and the vapour nitrogen. The
other 'new kinds of air' were the gases discovered by Priestley.

[739] I do not wonder at Johnso