��ever cordially love Mr. Pepys, though he respected -his abilities.
- I knew the dog T was a scholar (said he, when they had been
disputing about the classics for three hours together one morning at Streatham) ; but that he had so much taste and so much knowledge I did not believe : I might have taken Barnard's word though, for Barnard 2 would not lie.'
We had got a little French print among us at Brighthelm- stone, in November 1782, of some people skaiting, with these lines written under :
Sur un mince cristal fhiver conduit leurs pas,
Le precipice est sous la glace / Telle est de nos \vos\ plaisirs la tegere surf ate j
Glissez, mortels, rtappuyez pas 3 .
And I begged translations from every body : Dr. Johnson gave
me this ;
O'er ice the rapid skaiter flies,
With sport above and death below; Where mischief lurks in gay disguise, Thus lightly touch and quickly go.
He was however most exceedingly enraged when he knew that in the course of the season I had asked half a dozen acquaint ance to do the same thing, and said, it was a piece of treachery, and done to make every body else look little when compared to my favourite friends the Pepyses, whose translations were un questionably the best. I will insert them, because he did say so. This is the distich given me by Sir Lucas, to whom I owe mere solid obligations, no less than the power of thanking him for the life he saved 4 , and whose least valuable praise is the correctness of his taste :
O'er the ice as o'er pleasure you lightly should glide;
Both have gulphs which their flattering surfaces hide.
1 For instances of Johnson's use word. The reproach is often mixed
of dog see Life, vi. 298, to which I with good humour,
must add ' the dog was never good 2 Ante, p. 168.
for much ' (said of his imperfect eye), 3 * Un charmant quatrain e'crit par
ib. i. 41, n. 2. The definition in his le poete Roy au has d'une gravure
Dictionary of dog, in its third sense, de Larmessin.' Grammaire Lit-
as a reproachful name for a man, ttraire par P. Larousse, 1880, p. 101.
does not cover all his uses of the 4 Pepys knew that her illness in
This
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