h
obloquy and envy.'

Talking of the great difficulty of obtaining authentick information for
biography, Johnson told us, 'When I was a young fellow I wanted to write
the Life of Dryden, and in order to get materials, I applied to the only
two persons then alive who had seen him; these were old Swinney, and
old Cibber. Swinney's information was no more than this, "That at Will's
coffee-house Dryden had a particular chair for himself, which was set
by the fire in winter, and was then called his winter-chair; and that
it was carried out for him to the balcony in summer, and was then called
his summer-chair." Cibber could tell no more but "That he remembered him
a decent old man, arbiter of critical disputes at Will's." You are
to consider that Cibber was then at a great distance from Dryden, had
perhaps one leg only in the room, and durst not draw in the other.'
BOSWELL. 'Yet Cibber was a man of observation?' JOHNSON. 'I think not.'
BOSWELL. 'You will allow his Apology to be well done.' JOHNSON. 'Very
well done, to be sure, Sir. That book is a striking proof of the justice
of Pope's remark:

"Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand."'

BOSWELL. 'And his plays are good.' JOHNSON. 'Yes; but that was his
trade; l'esprit du corps: he had been all his life among players and
play-writers. I wondered that he had so little to say in conversation,
for he had kept the best company, and learnt all that can be got by the
ear. He abused Pindar to me, and then shewed me an Ode of his own, with
an absurd couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle's wing. I told him
that when the ancients made a simile, they always made it like something
real.'

Mr. Wilkes remarked, that 'among all the bold flights of Shakspeare's
imagination, the boldest was making Birnamwood march to Dunsinane;
creating a wood where there never was a shrub; a wood in Scotland!
ha! ha! ha!' And he also observed, that 'the clannish slavery of the
Highlands of Scotland was the single exception to Milton's remark of
"The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty," being worshipped in all hilly
countries.'--'When I was at Inverary (said he,) on a visit to my old
friend, Archibald, Duke of Argyle, his dependents congratulated me on
being such a favourite of his Grace. I said, "It is then, gentlemen,
truely lucky for me; for if I had displeased the Duke, and he had wished
it, there is not a Campbell among you but would have