f always aimed at
wit, but was not equally happy in public and private. In the former,
nothing was so luminous, so striking, so abundant; in private, it was
forced, unnatural, and bombast.' See _ante_, p. 104, where Wilkes said
that in his oratory 'there was a strange want of taste.'

[854] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, third edition, p. 20 [_post_,
v. 32.] BOSWELL. See also _ante_, i. 453, and iii. 323.

[855] I have since heard that the report was not well founded; but the
elation discovered by Johnson in the belief that it was true, shewed a
noble ardour for literary fame. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote on Feb. 9:--'One
thing which I have just heard you will think to surpass expectation. The
chaplain of the factory at Petersburgh relates that the _Rambler_ is
now, by the command of the Empress, translating into Russian, and has
promised, when it is printed, to send me a copy.' _Piozzi Letters,_ ii.
349. Stockdale records (_Memoirs,_ ii. 98) that in 1773 the Empress of
Russia engaged 'six English literary gentlemen for instructors of her
young nobility in her Academy at St. Petersburgh.' He was offered one of
the posts. Her zeal may have gone yet further, and she may have wished
to open up English literature to those who could not read English.
Beauclerk's library was offered for sale to the Russian Ambassador.
_Ante,_ iii. 420. Miss Burney, in 1789, said that a newspaper reported
that 'Angelica Kauffmann is making drawings from _Evelina_ for the
Empress of Russia.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary,_ v. 35.

[856]

'--me peritus
Disect Iber, Rhodanique potor.'

'To him who drinks the rapid Rhone
Shall Horace, deathless bard, be known.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Odes_, ii. 20. 19.

[857] See _ante_, iii. 49.

[858] See _post_, June 12, 1784.

[859] See _ante_, p. 126.

[860] H. C. Robinson (_Diary_, i. 29) describes him as 'an author on an
infinity of subjects; his books were on Law, History, Poetry,
Antiquities, Divinity, Politics.' He adds (_ib_. p. 49l):--'Godwin,
Lofft, and Thelwall are the only three persons I know (except Hazlitt)
who grieve at the late events'--the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. He
found long after his death 'a MS. by him in these words:--"Rousseau,
Euripides, Tasso, Racine, Cicero, Virgil, Petrarch, Richardson. If I had
five millions of years to live upon this earth, these I would read daily
with increasing delight."' _Ib_. iii. 283.

[861] Dunciad, iv. 394, note.

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