th the statesmen. There is first of all Shelburne, who
was Prime Minister the year before Johnson died; the most mysterious
figure in the politics of that day, George III's Jesuit of Berkeley
Square, the "Malagrida" of the pamphleteers, to whom Goldsmith {237}
made his well-known unfortunate remark, "I never could conceive the
reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort
of man." But for all this sinister reputation he was certainly an able
and interesting man. He was a great patron of the arts, a princely
collector of manuscripts, and an unusually enlightened student of
politics if not a great statesman. How intimately Johnson knew him is,
like almost everything about Shelburne, uncertain; but it is known that
they used to meet in London and that Johnson once at least was
Shelburne's guest at Bowood. A greater man who was never Prime
Minister was a much more intimate friend. Fox talked little before
Johnson; and the two men were as different in many ways as men could
be. Of the two it was certainly not the professed man of letters who
was the greater lover of literature. But Fox was a member of "The
Club," and an intimate friend of Burke and Reynolds, and in these ways
he and Johnson often met. In spite of all differences each made a
great impression on the other. Fox indignantly defended Johnson's
pension in the House of Commons so early as 1774, and the last book
read to him, except the Church Service, was Johnson's _Lives of the
Poets_. Johnson was like the rest of the world dazzled by the daring
{238} parliamentary genius of Fox, and said that he had "divided the
kingdom with Caesar so that there was a doubt whether the nation should
be ruled by the sceptre of George III or the tongue of Fox." He was
for the King against Fox, because the King was his "master," but for
Fox against Pitt because "Fox is my friend."

Another contemporary statesman who was intimate with Johnson was the
cultivated and high-minded William Windham. No one had a greater
reverence for Johnson. The most scrupulous of men, he was probably
attracted to Johnson most of all by his character, and sought in him a
kind of director for his conscience. Johnson, however, disapproved of
scruples, and when Windham expressed, as Boswell says, "some modest and
virtuous doubts" whether he ought to accept the post of Secretary to
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland because of the dubious practices
supposed to be necessary