on, the publication of which might
perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of a strict decorum, I
immediately ordered that they should be omitted in the subsequent
editions. I was pleased to find that they did not amount in the whole to
a page. If any of the same kind are yet left, it is owing to
inadvertence alone, no man being more unwilling to give pain to others
than I am.

A contemptible scribbler, of whom I have learned no more than that,
after having disgraced and deserted the clerical character, he picks up
in London a scanty livelihood by scurrilous lampoons under a feigned
name, has impudently and falsely asserted that the passages omitted were
_defamatory_, and that the omission was not voluntary, but compulsory.
The last insinuation I took the trouble publickly to disprove; yet, like
one of Pope's dunces, he persevered in 'the lie o'erthrown.' [_Prologue
to the Satires_, l. 350.] As to the charge of defamation, there is an
obvious and certain mode of refuting it. Any person who thinks it worth
while to compare one edition with the other, will find that the passages
omitted were not in the least degree of that nature, but exactly such as
I have represented them in the former part of this note, the hasty
effusion of momentary feelings, which the delicacy of politeness should
have suppressed. BOSWELL. In the second edition this note ended at the
first paragraph, the latter part being added in the third. For the 'few
observations omitted' see _ante_, pp. 148, 381, 388.

The 'contemptible scribbler' was, I believe, John Wolcot, better known
by his assumed name of Peter Pindar. He had been a clergyman. In his
_Epistle to Boswell (Works_, i. 219), he says in reference to the
passages about Sir A. Macdonald (afterwards Lord Macdonald):--'A letter
of severe remonstrance was sent to Mr. B., who, in consequence, omitted
in the second edition of his _Journal_ what is so generally pleasing to
the public, viz., the scandalous passages relative to that nobleman.' It
was in a letter to the _Gent. Mag._ 1786, p. 285, that Boswell
'publickly disproved the insinuation' made 'in a late scurrilous
publication' that these passages 'were omitted in consequence of a
letter from his Lordship. Nor was any application,' he continues, 'made
to me by the nobleman alluded to at any time to make any alteration in
my _Journal_.'

[1152]

'Nothing extenuate
Nor set down aught in malice.'

_Othello_, act v. sc. 2.