280 Anecdotes.
��* What good are we doing with all this ado (would he say) ? dearest Lady, let's hear no more of it ! ' I have however more than once in my life forced him on such services, but with extreme difficulty.
We parted at his door one evening when I had teized him for many weeks to write a recommendatory letter of a little boy to his school-master ; and after he had faithfully promised to do this prodigious feat before we met again Do not forget dear Dick, Sir, said I, as he went out of the coach : he turned back, stood still two minutes on the carriage-step 'When I have written my letter for Dick, I may hang myself, mayn't I ? ' and turned away in a very ill humour indeed x .
Though apt enough to take sudden likings or aversions to people he occasionally met, he would never hastily pronounce upon their character ; and when seeing him justly delighted with Solander's 2 conversation, I observed once that he was a man of great parts who talked from a full mind * It may be so (said Mr. Johnson), but you cannot know it yet, nor I neither : the pump works well, to be sure! but how, I wonder, are we to decide in so very short an acquaintance, whether it is supplied by a spring or a reservoir ? ' He always made a great difference in
am certain that a more active friend Captain Cook in his first voyage
has rarely been found in any age.' round the world. Life, v. 328. Pro-
Life, iv. 344. ' Johnson,' says Murphy fessor Siidenberg of the University
(Essay, &., p. 96), ' felt not only of Lunde tells me that Solander is
kindness but zeal and ardour for his an artificially formed name after a
friends.' fashion still common in Sweden,
1 ' Dick ' was no doubt Richard when a man of humble origin rises Burney. Boswell says that in 1778, to a learned profession. Probably ' Dr. Johnson not only wrote to Solander or his father had a name Dr. Joseph Warton in favour of which began with Sol, to which was Dr. Burney's youngest son, who was added the Greek termination ander. to be placed in the college of Win- Professor Siidenberg gave me the Chester, but accompanied him when following instance of this usage. A he went thither.' Life, iii. 367. See clergyman whom he knows is named also Early Diary of Frances Burney, Evander. He came from the parish ii. 284. of Efocslof. /"he changed into Ev,
2 Dr. Solander was a Swede who, and added ander. with Joseph Banks, accompanied
his
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