320 Anecdotes by George Steevens.
received, and afterwards, when he related this circumstance, added, * I hope I shall be pardoned, if for once I deserted the service of God for that of man V
On the night before the publication of the first edition of his Shakespeare 2 , he supped with some friends in the Temple, who kept him up, ' nothing loth 3 / till past five the next morning. Much pleasantry was passing on the subject of commentatorship ; when, all on a sudden, the Doctor, looking at his watch, cried out ' This is sport to you, gentlemen ; but you do not con sider there are at most only four hours between me and criticism/
Previous to this convivial meeting, Mr. Tonson 4 had desired a gentleman to ask our Author if he could ascertain the number of his subscribers? * No,' replied the Doctor; 'two material reasons forbid even a guess of mine on the subject I have lost all the names, and spent all the money. It came in small portions, and departed in the same manner 5 / There were afterwards receipts for near a thousand copies carried in to Tonson 6 .
- I have seldom met with a man whose colloquial ability
exceeded that of Mallet 7 . I was but once in Sterne's company, and then his only attempt at merriment consisted in his display of a drawing too indecently gross to have delighted even in a brothel 8 . Colman never produced a luckier thing than his first Ode in ridicule of Gray. A considerable part of it may be numbered among those felicities which no man has twice
1 He was in church, Boswell says, 7 'His conversation was elegant when a later letter of Dodd's reached and easy. The rest of his character him. ' He stooped down and read may, without injury to his memory, it, and wrote when he went home the sink into silence.' Works, viii. 468 ; following letter for Dr. Dodd to the Life, i. 268, n. I.
King.' Life, iii. 144. 8 In Murray's Johnsoniana, ed.
2 Life, i. 496. 1836, p. 133, Sterne is changed into
3 Paradise Lost, ix. 1039. Hume. 'JOHNSON. "The man Sterne,
4 Life, i. 227, n. 3. I have been told, has had engagements
- Ib. iv. in. for three months." GOLDSMITH.
6 For each copy Johnson, I believe, " And a very dull fellow." JOHNSON.
received a guinea. Letters, i. 68 , " Why no, Sir." ' Life, ii. 222. 124, n. 2.
attained
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