believe, have been useless to his scholars.'

[287] 'Boswell was very angry that the Aberdeen professors would not
talk.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 118. Dr. Robertson and Dr. Blair, whom
Boswell, five years earlier, invited to meet Johnson at supper, 'with an
excess of prudence hardly opened their lips' (_ante_, ii. 63). At
Glasgow the professors did not dare to talk much (_post_, Oct. 29). On
another occasion when Johnson came in, the company 'were all as quiet as
a school upon the entrance of the headmaster.' _Ante_, iii. 332.

[288] Dr. Beattie says that this printer was Strahan. He had seen the
letter mentioned by Gerard, and many other letters too from the Bishop
to Strahan. 'They were,' he continues, 'very particularly acquainted.'
He adds that 'Strahan was eminently skilled in composition, and had
corrected (as he told me himself) the phraseology of both Mr. Hume and
Dr. Robertson.' Forbes's _Beattie_, ed. 1824, p. 341.

[289] An instance of this is given in Johnson's _Works_, viii.
288:--'Warburton had in the early part of his life pleased himself with
the notice of inferior wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope.
A letter was produced, when he had perhaps himself forgotten it, in
which he tells Concanen, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of
leisure, and Pope for want of genius; Milton out of pride, and Addison
out of modesty."'

[290] 'Goldsmith asserted that Warburton was a weak writer. "Warburton,"
said Johnson, "may be absurd, but he will never be weak; he flounders
well."' Stockdale's _Memoirs_, ii. 64. See Appendix A.

[291] _The Doctrine of Grace; or the Office and Operations of the Holy
Spirit vindicated from the Insults of Infidelity and the Abuses of
Fanaticism_, 1762.

[292] _A Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester, occasioned by his Tract on
the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit_, by John Wesley, 1762.

[293] Malone records:--'I could not find from Mr. Walpole that his
father [Sir Robert] read any other book but Sydenham in his retirement.'
To his admiration of Sydenham his death was attributed; for it led him
to treat himself wrongly when he was suffering from the stone. Prior's
_Malone_, p. 387. Johnson wrote a _Life of Sydenham_. In it he ridicules
the notion that 'a man eminent for integrity _practised Medicine by
chance, and grew wise only by murder_.' _Works_, vi. 409.

[294] All this, as Dr. Johnson suspected at the time, was the immediate
invention of his own lively imagin