had read Petrarch "when but a boy."' As Petrarch
wrote chiefly in Latin, it is quite possible that Johnson did not
acquire his knowledge of Italian so early as I had thought.

_Johnson's deference for the general opinion_.

(Vol. i, p. 200.)

Miss Burney records an interesting piece of criticism by Johnson. 'There
are,' he said, 'three distinct kinds of judges upon all new authors or
productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce
entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who
know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above
the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them
rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed
by the rules.'--_Mine. D'Arblay's Diary_, i. 180. Later on she writes:
--'The natural feelings of untaught hearers ought never to be slighted;
and Dr. Johnson has told me the same a thousand times;' ib. ii. 128.

_Johnson in the Green Room_.

(Vol. i, p. 201.)

Mr. Richard Herne Shepherd, in _Watford's Antiquarian_ for January,
1887, p. 34, asserts that the actual words which Johnson used when
he told Garrick that he would no longer frequent his Green Room were
indecent; so indecent that Mr. Shepherd can only venture to satisfy
those whom he calls students by informing them of them privately. For
proof of this charge against the man whose boast it was that 'obscenity
had always been repressed in his company' (_ante_, iv. 295) he brings
forward John Wilkes. The story, indeed, as it is told by Boswell, is
not too trustworthy, for he had it through Hume from Garrick. As it
reaches Mr. Shepherd it comes from Garrick through Wilkes. Garrick, no
doubt, as Johnson says (_ante_, v. 391), was, as a companion, 'restrained
by some principle,' and had 'some delicacy of feeling.' Nevertheless,
in his stories, he was, we may be sure, no more on oath than a man is
in lapidary inscriptions (_ante_, ii. 407). It is possible that he
reported Johnson's very words to Hume, and that Hume did not change
them in reporting them to Boswell. Whatever they were, they were spoken
in 1749 and published in 1791, when Johnson had been dead six years,
Garrick twelve years, and Hume fourteen years. It is idle to dream that
they can now be conjecturally emended. But it is worse than idle to
bring in as evidence John Wilkes. What entered his ear as purity itself
might issue from his mouth as the grossest ob