good articles in this branch can be had any longer in England, I took the watch from him, intending to have it appraised by my own jeweller, a very honest and expert artificer, and, in so doing, to have bought it as cheap as I could for myself, let it cost what it would. Upon my signifying this my intention to Frank, the impudent Negro said, " he plainly saw there was no good intended for him x ; " and in anger left me. He then posted to my colleagues, the other executors ; and there being in the people of this country a general propensity to humanity, notwith and otherwise ; this being the case, I say, he had found means to prepossess them so entirely in his favour that they snubbed me, and insisted with me that I should make restitution. Finally, though perhaps I should not have been made amenable to any known judicature by keeping the watch, I consented, being com pelled thereto, to let this worthless fellow retain that testimony of his master's ill-directed benevolence in extremis V
Malone wrote to Lord Charlemont on Nov. 7, 1787: 'You perhaps have not heard of a very curious fact. Sir John wanted to cheat poor Frank, Johnson's servant, of a gold watch and cane, and Frank, not choosing to lose them, from that time became as black again as he was before.' Hist. MSS. Com., Thirteenth Report, App. viii. 62.]
��THERE dwelt at Lichfield a gentleman of the name of Butt, the father of the reverend Mr. Butt, now a King's Chaplain 4 , to whose house on holidays and in school -vacations Johnson was ever welcome. The children in the family, perhaps offended with the rudeness of his behaviour, would frequently call him
house.' Person implies that in such 2 ' See Sir John's proofs that every
a search as this a man's watch might prisoner ought to be convicted, and
be carried off. See Annual Register, every convict hanged. Ib. pp. 521-3.'
1763, i. 135; Almon's Memoirs of Note by For son.
WilkeS)\. 107; Boswell's/0^z.$wz, ii. 3 A quotation from Hawkins, pp.
72, and Letters of Hume to Strahan, 599, 605.
p. 207. 4 A Rev. Mr. Butt attended John-
1 A quotation from Hawkins, p. son's funeral. Letters ii. 434. 604 n.
G 2, the
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