Anecdotes by George Steevens.
��attained 1 . Gray was the very Torre 2 of poetry. He played his coruscations so speciously, that his steel-dust is mistaken by many for a shower of gold.'
At one period of the Doctor's life, he was reconciled to the bottle 3 . Sweet wines, however, were his chief favourites- When none of these were before him, he would sometimes drink Port, with a lump of sugar in every glass 4 . The strongest liquors, and in very large quantities, produced no other effect on him than moderate exhilaration. Once, and but once, he is known to have had his dose 5 ; a circumstance which he himself discovered, on finding one of his sesquipedalion words hang fire. He then started up, and gravely observed ' I think it time we should go to bed 6 .' After a ten years' forbearance
��1 ' The Odes to Obscurity and Ob livion, in ridicule of "cool Mason and warm Gray," being mentioned, Johnson said, " They are Colman's best things." ' Life, ii. 334.
Gray wrote of them in July, 1760 :
- I believe his Odes sell no more than
mine did, for I saw a heap of them lie in a bookseller's window, who recommended them to me as a very pretty thing.' Gray's Works, ed. 1858, iii. 250.
- Gray (to whom nothing is want
ing to render him, perhaps, the first poet in the English language but to have written a little more) is said to have been so much hurt by a foolish and impertinent parody of two of his finest odes, that he never afterwards attempted any considerable work.' Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. 1801, i. 255.
2 See Life, iv. 324, for Johnson's going to see ' the celebrated Torre's fireworks at Marybone Gardens.'
3 Ib. i. 103, n. 3 ; ante, i. 217.
4 It is not to be supposed that when * University College witnessed him drink three bottles of port with out being the worse for it' (ib. iii.
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��245), he put a lump of sugar into every one of his thirty-six glasses. No Oxford common-room would have stood it. Boswell, who drank port with him till either the wine made his head ache, or the sense his friend put into it (ib. iii. 381), makes no mention of this sugar.
5 ' Dose is often used of the utmost quantity of strong liquor that a man can swallow. He has his dose, that is, he can carry off no more.' John son's Dictionary.
6 ' Sir Joshua informed a friend that he had never seen Dr. Johnson intoxicated by hard drinking but once, and that happened at the time that they were together in Devon shire, when one night after supper Johnson drank three bottles of wine, which affected his speech so much that he was unable to articulate a hard word, which occurred in the course of his conversation. He at tempted it three times but failed ; yet at last accomplished it, and then said, " Well, Sir Joshua, I think it is now time to go to bed.'" North- cote's Life of Reynolds, ii. 161.
Johnson did not say * Sir Joshua,'
of
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