have told him that there were no woods to make tremble with kisses, which would have been quite as great a blunder.
“I met Bowles once at Rogers’s, and thought him a pleasant, gentlemanly man—a good fellow, for a parson. When men meet together after dinner, the conversation takes a certain turn. I remember he entertained us with some good stories. The reverend gentleman pretended, however, to be much shocked at Pope’s letters to Martha Blount.
“I set him and his invariable principles at rest. He did attempt an answer, which was no reply; at least, nobody read it. I believe he applied to me some lines in Shakspeare.[1] A man is very unlucky who has a name that can be punned upon; and his own did not escape.
“I have been reading ‘Johnson’s Lives,’ a book I am very fond of. I look upon him as the profoundest of
- ↑ “I do remember thee, my Lord Biron,” &c.
