��Anecdotes.
��Gratum animum laudo; Qui debuit omnia ventis, Quant bene ventorum surgere templet jubet x /
A translation of Dryden's epigram too, I used to fancy I had to
myself.
Quos laudet vates, Grains, Romanus, et Anglus, Tres tria temporibus secla dedere suis : Sublime ingenium Graiusj Romanus habebat Carmen grande so nans ; Anglus utrumque tulit. Nil majus natura capit; clarare priores Quae potuere duos tertius units habet 2 .
from the famous lines written under Milton's picture :
Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpast, The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go, To make a third she join'd the former two.
One evening in the oratorio 3 season of the year 1771, Mr. John son went with me to Covent-Garden theatre ; and though he was for the most part an exceedingly bad playhouse companion, as his person drew people's eyes upon the box, and the loudness of his voice made it difficult for me to hear any body but himself; he sat surprisingly quiet, and I flattered myself he was listening to the music 4 . When we were got home however he repeated
��1 A grateful mind I praise ! All to
the winds he owed ; And so upon the winds a temple
he bestowed.
Horace Walpole wrote on June 18, 1744 (Letters, i. 306): 'Anson is returned with vast fortune, sub stantial and lucky. He has brought the Acapulca ship into Portsmouth, and its treasure is at least computed at five hundred thousand pounds. He escaped the Brest squadron by a rnist.'
A photograph of the Temple is given in R. Bayne's Moor Park, 1871, p. 99.
2 This translation Johnson made at Oxford, I suppose in his under
��graduate days. Life, v. 86.
3 Oratorio is not in Johnson's Dictionary. In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1733, p. 173, mention is made of a man 'who had contrived a thing that was better than an opera called an oratorio.'
4 Boswell thus describes Johnson at Mrs. Abington's benefit at Drury Lane in 1775 : 'He sat on the seat directly behind me ; and as he could neither see nor hear at such a dis tance from the stage, he was wrapped up in grave abstraction, and seemed quite a cloud, amidst all the sun shine of glitter and gaiety.' Life, ii. 324-
these
�� �
