by Miss Reynolds.
��reading on, in one breath, as if he had made a resolution not to respire till he had closed the sentence J .
Some lines also he used to repeat in his best manner, written in memory of Bishop Boulter, which I believe are not much known :
' Some write their wrongs in marble : he, more just, Stoop'd down serene and wrote them in the dust; Trod under foot, the sport of every wind, Swept from the earth, and blotted from his mind. There, secret in the grave, he bade them lie, And grieved they could not 'scape the Almighty's eye 2 .'
A lady, who had learnt them from Dr. Johnson, thought she had made a mistake, or had forgotten some words, as she could not make out a reference to the particle there> and mention'd
��1 The following passage she has scored out : ' His sonorous voice, so judiciously emphatical, the apost- lick [sic] dignity of his aspect, his look, his manner, when repeating any sublime passages, either of poetry or of prose, gave a double force to the words he utter'd. But this indeed can only be said of him when reading grand or solemn subjects, for in read ing common prose his manner, or rather his tone of voice, was as dis gusting as vice versa it was enchant ing, proportionally so as the subject was common and familiar, which all his acquaintance must certainly remem ber, especially if they ever heard him read an [szc] newspaper, magazine, letters,' &c.
For his reading poetry see ante, i. 347, 45 7 , and Life, v. 1 1 5. When he read a passage in The Spectator Boswell recorded : ' He read so well that everything acquired additional weight and grace from his utterance.' Life, ii. 212.
2 From Boulter's Monument by Samuel Madden. See ante, ii. 212, for Johnson's castigation of that work. Swift had found 'one comfortable circumstance' in the appointment of
��Boulter to the primacy. He would be opposed to Wood's half-pence.
- Money,' he wrote, 'the great divider
of the world, has by a strange revo lution been the great uniter of a most divided people. Who would leave a hundred pounds a year in England (a country of freedom) to be paid a thousand in Ireland out of Wood's exchequer? The gentleman they have lately made primate would never quit his seat in an English House of Lords and his preferments at Oxford and Bristol, worth twelve hundred pounds a year, for four times the denomination here, but not half the value.' Swift's Works, xii. 162. Hawkins writes : ' Dr. Mad den some years afterwards, being mindful to republish the poem, sub mitted it to Johnson's correction, and I found among his books a copy of the poem, with a note in a spare leaf thereof, purporting that the author had made him a visit, and for a very few remarks and alterations of it had presented him with ten guineas. Hawkins, p. 391. In the British Museum there are two copies of the poem, one printed in Dublin and one in London, both published the
it
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