dmire each other's good qualities. Whatever had been the intercourse
between them, Johnson was naturally annoyed when the dignified noble
published two articles in the _World_--a periodical supported by such
polite personages as himself and Horace Walpole--in which the need of a
dictionary was set forth, and various courtly compliments described
Johnson's fitness for a dictatorship over the language. Nothing could be
more prettily turned; but it meant, and Johnson took it to mean, I
should like to have the dictionary dedicated to me: such a compliment
would add a feather to my cap, and enable me to appear to the world as a
patron of literature as well as an authority upon manners. "After making
pert professions," as Johnson said, "he had, for many years, taken no
notice of me; but when my _Dictionary_ was coming out, he fell a
scribbling in the _World_ about it." Johnson therefore bestowed upon the
noble earl a piece of his mind in a letter which was not published till
it came out in Boswell's biography.

"My Lord,--I have been lately informed by the proprietor of the _World_
that two papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public,
were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour
which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know
not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

"When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address; and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself, _le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_--that I might obtain that regard for
which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little
encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue
it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted
all the arts of pleasing which a wearied and uncourtly scholar can
possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have
his all neglected, be it ever so little.

"Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward
rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, and one smile
of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron
before.