��laugh one day, because I had received a remarkably fine Stilton cheese as a present from some person who had packed and directed it carefully, but without mentioning whence it came. Mr. Thrale, desirous to know who we were obliged to, asked every friend as they came in, but no body owned it : * Depend upon it, Sir (says Johnson), it was sent by Junius?
The False Alarm, his first and favourite pamphlet 1 , was written at our house between eight o'clock on Wednesday night and twelve o'clock on Thursday night ; we read it to Mr. Thrale when he came very late home from the House of Commons 2 : the other political tracts followed in their order. I have for gotten which contains the stroke at Junius ; but shall for ever remember the pleasure it gave him to have written it. It was however in the year 1775 that Mr. Edmund Burke made the famous speech in parliament, that struck even foes with admira tion, and friends with delight 3 . Among the nameless thousands who are contented to echo those praises they have not skill to invent, / ventured, before Dr. Johnson himself, to applaud, with rapture, the beautiful passage in it concerning Lord Bathurst and the Angel 4 ; which, said our Doctor, had I been in the house, I would have answered thus :
said, " How the arrows of Junius of them did you think the best ? "
were sure to wound and likely to BOSWELL. " I liked the second best."
stick." " Yes, sir," replied Dr. John- JOHNSON. " Why, Sir, I liked the first
son ; " yet let us distinguish between best ; and Beattie liked the first best,
the venom of the shaft and the vigour Sir, there is a subtlety of disquisition
of the bow." At which expression in the first, that is worth all the fire
Mr. Hamilton's countenance fell in of the second." ' Life, ii. 147.
a manner that to me betrayed the 2 He was member for South wark
author. Johnson repeated the ex- from December, 1765, till the disso-
pression in his next pamphlet and lution in 1780. Par/. Hist. xv. 1089 ;
Junius wrote no more.' Hayward's Life, iii. 442.
Piczzi, 2nd ed., ii. 106. For John- 3 On Conciliation with America,
son's repetition of this expression see March 22, 1775.
Works, vi. 205. Junius, however, 4 Burke, describing ' the growth of
continued to write. our national prosperity ' through our
1 ' We talked of his two political trade with America, continues : ' It
pamphlets, The False Alarm, and hashappened within sixty-eight years.
Thoiights concerning Falkland's There are those alive whose memory
Islands. JOHNSON. "Well, Sir, which might touch the two extremities.
- Suppose
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