Lord Hailes's recollection, if he is right as to the occasion when this talk took place, certainly tends to confirm one part of Forbes's anecdote the company did stumble upon kings. Nevertheless, I doubt much the story. In the first place, Forbes, it is clear, was not at the dinner himself. Whatever was said reached him second-hand. A nonjuror would eagerly catch at any report against a Hanoverian King. His
- willingness to believe' he would easily have 'advanced to conviction.'
The stories told in Scotland against Johnson required sifting. They were often set afloat by those whose national pride he had offended by his wit. In the second place, had Johnson called the GREAT PER SONAGE an idiot, there would have been, as regards this one utterance, no ' evaporation into oblivion ' on Boswell's part. He might, indeed, have suppressed the word 'idiot/ as he suppressed the words used by his ' honoured father ' and his ' respected friend ' when as ' intellectual gladiators ' they contended in the library at Auchinleck ; that there was a suppression he would certainly have let his readers know. He would have lamented that from 'the spirit of contradiction,' no longer ' tempered by the reverential awe ' which had been felt in the interview with the King, the great moralist ' had grown so outrageous ' as to apply to his Majesty a term ' which it would be very unbecoming in me to report.' Johnson spoke roughly enough, no doubt, of the first two Hanoverian Kings. ' George the First (he said), knew nothing, and desired to know nothing ; did nothing, and desired to do nothing. ... He roared with prodigious violence against George the Second.' Life, ii. 342. Even after the third George had been two-and-twenty years on the throne he said to Boswell, having first lowered his voice, 'Sir, this Hanoverian family is isolee here.' Ib. iv. 165. Nevertheless, of the King personally, so far as his biographers show, he always spoke with respect. ' Sir,' he said, 'they may talk of the King as they will; but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen.' Ib. ii. 40.
My disbelief of Forbes's anecdote, however, is based, not so much on the improbability of Johnson calling George III an idiot, as on the impossibility of Boswell passing over such an outburst in silence.
(JW.ii.43-)
Dr. Thomas Campbell, in his account on this page of a dinner at Mr.Thrale's in March, 1775, says that 'the two first courses were served in massy plate.' The abundance of the plate in this house, which the kindness of its master and mistress 'allowed Johnson to call his home' (Letters, i. 129), is shown in the Sale Catalogue of Mrs. Piozzi's Library,
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