Chapter 8

[195] See _ante_, i. 485.

[196] He was at this time 'employed by Congress as a private and confidential agent in England.' Dr. Franklin had arranged for letters to be sent to him, not by post but by private hand, under cover to his brother, Mr. Alderman Lee. Franklin's _Memoirs_, ii. 42, and iii. 415.

[197] When Wilkes the year before, during his mayoralty, had presented An Address, 'the King himself owned he had never seen so well-bred a Lord Mayor.' Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 484.

[198] Johnson's _London, a Poem_, v. 145. BOSWELL--

'How when competitors like these contend, Can surly virtue hope to fix a friend.'

[199] See _ante_, ii. 154.

[200] Johnson had said much the same at a dinner in Edinburgh. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 10, 1773. See _ante_, March 15, 1776, and _post_, Sept. 21, 1777.

[201] 'To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.' _The Rambler_, No. 93.

[202] Foote told me that Johnson said of him, 'For loud obstreperous broadfaced mirth, I know not his equal.' BOSWELL.

[203] In Farquhar's _Beaux-Stratagem_, Scrub thus describes his duties: --'Of a Monday I drive the coach, of a Tuesday I drive the plough, on Wednesday I follow the hounds, a Thursday I dun the tenants, on Friday I go to market, on Saturday I draw warrants, and a Sunday I draw beer.'