Note 354 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 2)
Reading edition
On May 22 Horace Walpole wrote (Letters, viii. 44):—'Boswell, that quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in, which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tapping many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he vented his errand. "Had I seen Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets?" I said slightly, "No, not yet;" and so overlaid his whole impertinence.'