was only a transient cloud.'

[738] Boswell has recorded this saying, _ante_, iv. 194.

[739] In 1755 an English version of this work had been published. _Gent.
Mag_. 1755, p. 574. In the Chronological Catalogue on p. 343 in vol. 66
of Voltaire's _Works_, ed. 1819, it is entered as _'Histoire de la
Guerre de_ 1741, fondue en partie dans le _Precis du siecle de
Louis XV_.'

[740] Boswell is here merely repeating Johnson's words, who on April 11
of this year, advising him to keep a journal, had said, 'The great thing
to be recorded is the state of your own mind.' _Ante_, ii. 217.

[741] This word is not in his _Dictionary_.

[742] See _ante_, i. 498.

[743] See _ante_, ii. 61, 335; iii. 375, and _post_, under Nov. 11.

[744] Beattie had attacked Hume in his _Essay on Truth_ (_ante_, ii. 201
and v. 29). Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an
Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his _Essay_ under his arm. 'The angel
of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy,
Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at
his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact
likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very
indignant at it, and said:--"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence
and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to
wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as
Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of
ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your
allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your
disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 300. Another of
the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes
(_Life of Beattie_, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that
Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire. Beattie's _Essay_
is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I
believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his _Life of Hume_.
Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie's side:--

'Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung
His _Minstrel_ lays;
Or tore, with noble ardour stung,
The _Sceptic's_ bays.'

(_The Vision_, part ii.)

[745] See _ante_, ii. 441.

[746] William Tytler published in 1759 an _Examination of the Histories
of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume with respect