Note 190 — BOSWELLIANA.

Boswell’s allusion to Frederick the Great is evidently founded on a remark of Dr. Johnson’s. Conversing with Dr. Robertson, the historian, in 1778, Johnson remarked, “The true strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small. Now I am told the King of Prussia will say to a servant, ‘Bring me a bottle of such a wine, which came in such a year; it lies in such a corner of the cellar.’ I would have a man great in great things, and elegant in little things.”