��Minor Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson.
��vehemently attacked a dish of stewed carp, using his fingers only in feeding himself 1 .
Bishop Percy was at one time on a very intimate footing with Dr. Johnson, and the Doctor one day took Percy's little daughter upon his knee, and asked her what she thought of Pilgrim's Progress' 2 '* The child answered, that she had not read it. ' No ! ' replied the Doctor ; ' then I would not give one farthing for you ; ' and he set her down and took no further notice of her.
My venerable friend, Dr. Fisher, of the Charter-house, now in his eighty-fifth year, informs me (says Mr. Croker) that he was one of the party who dined with Dr. Johnson at University College, Oxford, in March, IJJ6 3 . There were present, he says, Dr. Wetherell, Johnson, Boswell, Coulson, Scott, Gwynn, Dr. Chandler the traveller, and Fisher, then a young Fellow of the College 4 . He recollects one passage of the conversation at dinner : Boswell quoted ' Quern Deus vult perdere prius de- mentat 3 ,' and asked where it was. After a pause Dr. Chandler
��1 ' I took the liberty to observe to Dr. Johnson, that he always eat fish with his fingers. " Yes," said he ; " but it is because I am short-sighted, and afraid of bones, for which reason I am not fond of eating many kinds of fish, because I must use my fingers." ' Life, v. 206.
2 Ante, i. 332.
3 Life, ii. 445.
4 For Dr. Wetherell, the Master of the College, see ib. ii. 440, and for Coulson, Letters, i. 325. Scott should mean William Scott (Lord Stowell) who had not yet left Oxford for London ; but ' he was gone to the country.' Life, ii. 440. John Scott (Earl of Eldon), who had been in 1774-5 Fisher's colleague as a tutor, but was married and settled in London, says he was at the dinner. Twiss's Eldon, ed. 1846, i. 65. For Gwynn, seeZz/?,ii. 438. Of Chandler's
��Travels Johnson wrote : ' Do not buy them ; they are duller than Twiss's.' Letters, i. 321.
5 The ' learned friend ' mentioned in my note on this passage (Life, iv. 181) was the late Professor Chandler, Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Burton quotes the saying as ' Quos Jupiter perdit dementat.' Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. 1660, p. 6.
In a letter in the Gentleman' 's Magazine, 1771, p. 262, signed W. W. (perhaps William Warburton), For- tuna quern vult perdere stultumfacit is quoted as a fragment of Publius Syrus.
Dryden translates it : 4 For those whom God to ruin has
designed
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.'
The Hind and the Panther, Part iii. 1. 2387.
said
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