APPENDIX C.
Johnson at Cambridge.
(Page 563.)
The following is the full extract of Dr. Sharp's letter giving an account of Johnson's visit to Cambridge in 1765:—
'As to Johnson, you will be surprised to hear that I have had him in the chair in which I am now writing. He has ascended my aërial citadel. He came down on a Saturday evening, with a Mr. Beauclerk, who has a friend at Trinity. Caliban, you may be sure, was not roused from his lair before next day noon, and his breakfast probably kept him till night. I saw nothing of him, nor was he heard of by any one, till Monday afternoon, when I was sent for home to two gentlemen unknown. In conversation I made a slrango. faux pas about Burnaby Greene's poem, in which Johnson is drawn at full length[1]. He drank his large potations of tea with me, interrupted by many an indignant contradiction, and many a noble sentiment. He had on a better wig than usual, but, one whose curls were not, like Sir Cloudesly's[2] formed for 'eternal buckle[3].' Our conversation was chiefly on books, you may be sure. He was much pleased with a small Milton of mine, published in the author's lifetime, and with the Greek epigram on his own effigy, of its being the picture, not of him, but of a bad painter[4]. There are many manuscript stanzas, for aught I know, in Milton's own handwriting, and several interlined hints and fragments. We were puzzled about one of the sonnets, which
- ↑ Burnaby Greene had just published The Laureat, a poem, in which Johnson is abused. It is in the February list of books in the Gent. Mag. for 1765.
- ↑ "Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument is thus mentioned by Addison in The Spectator, No. 26:— 'It has very often given me great offence; instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state.'
- ↑ That live-long wig, which Gorgon's self might own,
Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.'Pope's Moral Essays, iii. 295. - ↑ Milton's Epigram is in his Sylvarum Liber, and is entitled In Effigiei ejus Sculptorem.
