erful, the pleasant,
the inimitable biographer of his illustrious friend"), thus relates Dr.
Johnson's wish to become acquainted with Mr. Barrington:--"Soon after he
had published his excellent Observations on the Statutes, Johnson
waited on that worthy and learned gentleman, and having told him his
name, courteously said, 'I have read your book, Sir, with great
pleasure, and wish to be better known to you.' Thus began an
acquaintance which was continued with mutual regard as long as Johnson
lived." John Harris, Esq. the learned author of Philological Enquiries,
thus speaks of Mr. Barrington's Observations on the Statutes:--"a
valuable work, concerning which it is difficult to decide, whether it is
more entertaining or more instructive."

JOSEPH CRADOCK, Esq. whose "Village Memoirs" display his fine taste in
landscape gardening. This feeling and generous-minded man, whose gentle
manners, polite learning, and excellent talents, entitled him to an
acquaintance with the first characters of the age, died in 1826, at the
great age of eighty-five. This classical scholar and polished gentleman,
who had (as a correspondent observes in the Gentleman's Magazine for
January, 1827) "the habit of enlivening and embellishing every thing
which he said with a certain lightning of eye and honied tone of voice,"
shone in the first literary circles, and ranked as his intimate and
valued friends (among many other enlightened persons), David Garrick,
and Warburton, Hurd, Johnson, Goldsmith, Percy, and Parr. Dr. Johnson
called him "a very pleasing gentleman." Indeed, he appears from every
account to have been in all respects an amiable and accomplished person.
He had the honour of being selected to dance a minuet with the most
graceful of all dancers, Mrs. Garrick, at the Stratford Jubilee. It was
to Mr. Cradock, that Dr. Farmer addressed his unanswerable Essay on the
Learning of Shakspeare. In acts of humanity and kindness, he was
surpassed by few. Pope's line of _the gay conscience of a life well
spent_, might well have been applied to Mr. Cradock. When in
Leicestershire, "he was respected by people of all parties for his
worth, and idolized by the poor for his benevolence." This honest and
honourable man, depicted his own mind in the concluding part of his
inscription, for the banks of the lake he formed in his romantic and
picturesque grounds, in that county:--

_Here on the bank Pomona's blossoms glow,
And finny myriads sparkl