less. Let me particularly lament the Reverend Thomas Warton, and Reverend Dr. Adams. Mr Warton, amidst his great variety of genius and learning, was an excellent Biographer. His contributions to my Collection are highly estimable; and asv he had a true relish of my tour to the Hebrides, I trust I should now have been gratified with a larger share of his kind approbation. Dr. Adams, eminent as Head of a College as a writer[1]and as a most amiable man, had known Johnson from his early years, and was his friend through life. What reason I had to hope for the countenance of that venerable Gentleman to this Work, will appear from what he wrote to me upon a former occasion from Oxford, November 17, 1785:—'Dear Sir, I hazard this letter, not knowing where it will find you, to thank you for your very agreeable Tour, which you have depicted our friend so perfectly to my fancy, in every attitude, every scene and situation, that I have thought myself in the company, and of the party almost throughout. It has given very general satisfaction; and those who have found they could not help going through, and being entertained with the whole. I wish, indeed some few gross expressions had been softened, and a few of our hero's foibles had been a little more shaded; but it is useful to see the weaknesses incident to great minds; and you have given us Dr. Johnson's authority that in history all ought to be told[2]
Such a sanction to my faculty of giving a just representation of Dr. Johnson I could not conceal. Nor will I suppress my satisfaction in consciousness, that by recording so considerable a portion of wisdom and wit of 'the brightest
- ↑ He had published and answer to Hume's Essay on miracles. see Post. March 20. 1776.
- ↑ Macleod asked if it was not wrong in Orrery to expose the defects of a man [Swift] with whom he lived in intimacy. Johnson "Why no, Sir, after a man is dead; for then it is done historically"' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, 1773. see also Post, Sept, 17, 177,
