362 A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Johnson
��Casaubon, Magliabechi, or "Bentley *. But he belonged to the world at large. Talking on the topic of what his inclinations or faculties might have led him to have been, had he been bred to the profession of the law, he has said he should have wished for the Office of Master of the Rolls 2 . He gave into this idea in table-talk, partly serious and partly jocose, for it was only a manner he had of describing himself to his friends without vanity of his parts (for he was above being vain) or envy of the honourable stations engaged by other men of merit. He would correct any compositions of his friends (habes confitentem) 3 , and dictate on any subject on which they wanted information 4 . He could have been an orator, if he would 5 . On account of his intimacy with Dr. Dodd, for whom he made a bargain with the booksellers for his edition of the Bible, he wrote a petition to the Crown for mercy, after his condemnation 6 . The letter he com posed for the translator of Ariosto, that was sent to Mr. Hastings in Bengal, is esteemed a master-piece 7 . Dr. Warton, of Win-
��1 Casaubon was King's Librarian in Paris, and Bentley in London ; Magliabecchi was the Grand Duke's Librarian at Florence.
2 ' Sir William Scott informs me, that upon the death of the late Lord Lichfield, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford, he said to Johnson, " What a pity it is, Sir, that you did not follow the profession of the law. You might have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, and attained to the dignity of the peer age ; and now that the title of Lich field, your native city, is extinct you might have had it." Johnson, upon this, seemed much agitated ; and, in an angry tone, exclaimed, "Why will you vex me by suggesting this, when it is too late ?" ' Life, iii.
309.
3 Ante, i. 332 ; ii. 7. Tyers was the author of two or three books.
- That great man [Dr. Johnson] has
acknowledged behind his back that 1' Tyers always tells him something
��he did not know before." ' Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, viii. 88 n.
4 See Life, ii. 183, 196, 242, 372-3 ; iii. 200 ; iv. 74, 129, for legal argu ments dictated to Boswell.
5 ' When Sir Joshua Reynolds told him that Mr. Edmund Burke had said, that if he had come early into par liament, he certainly would have been the greatest speaker that ever was there, Johnson exclaimed, " I should like to try my hand now." . . . Sir William Scott mentioned that John son had told him that he had several times tried to speak in the Society of Arts and Sciences, but " had found he could not get on." ' Ib. ii. 138.
6 Dodd published in 1771 a Com mentary on the Old and New Testa ment. Johnson had been but once in Dodd's company, and that was in 1750. Life, iii. 140. It is most un likely that he made any bargain for him. For his petition see ib. iii. 142 ; ante, i. 432 ; ii. 282.
7 Life, iv. 70.
Chester
�� �
