that they excel
them in knowledge, and easily overtop them in Abilities, the People
will be tempted to turn Preachers themselves, and think that they have
learnt all that the Ministers can teach them, and are as wise as
they------). And this I did also to increase their knowledge; and
also to make Religion pleasant to them, by a daily addition to their
former Sight, and to draw them on with desire and Delight.'

_Opposition to Sir Joshua Reynolds in the Royal Academy_.

(Vol. iv, p. 219, n. 4.)

'JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ., TO BISHOP PERCY.
'12 March, 1790.

'Sir Joshua has been shamefully used by a junto of the Academicians.
I live a great deal with him, and he is much better than you would
suppose.'
--Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 313.

_Richard Baxter on the possible salvation of a Suicide_.
(Vol. iv, p. 225.)

The Rev. J. Hamilton Davies writes to me that 'Dr. Johnson's quotation
about suicide must surely be wrong. I have no recollection in any of
Baxter's _Works_ of such a statement, and it is in direct contradiction
to all that is known of his sentiments. 'Mr. Davies sends me the following
passage, which possibly Johnson might have very imperfectly remembered:--

'The commonest cause [of suicide] is melancholy, &c. Though there
be much more hope of the salvation of such as want the use of their
understandings, because so far it may be called involuntary, yet it
is a very dreadful case, especially so far as reason remaineth in any
power.'
--Baxter's _Christian Directory, edited by Orme, part iv, p. 138.

_Haslitt's report of Baxter's Sermon_.

(Vol. iv, p. 226, n. 2.)

The Rev. J. Hamilton Davies tells me that he 'entirely disbelieves that
Baxter said, "Hell was paved with infants' skulls." The same thing, or
something very like it, has been said of Calvin, but I could never,'
Mr. Davies continues, 'find it in his Works.' He kindly sends me the
following extract from _Reliquiae Baxterianae_, ed. 1696, p. 24:--

'Once all the ignorant Rout were raging mad against me for preaching
the Doctrine of Original Sin to them, and telling them that Infants
before Regeneration had so much Guilt and Corruption, as made them
loathsome in the Eyes of God: whereupon they vented it abroad in the
Country, That I preached that God hated, or loathed Infants; so that
they railed at me as I passed through the streets. The next Lord's Day,
I cleared and confirmed it, and shewed them that if this were not true,
t