Note 997 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 6)

One of these gentlemen was probably Mr. Musgrave (ante, ii. 343, note 2), who, says Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 295), when 'once he was singularly warm about Johnson's writing the lives of our famous prose authors, getting up and entreating him to set about the work immediately, he coldly replied, "Sit down, Sir."' Miss Burney says that 'the incense he paid Dr. Johnson by his solemn manner of listening, by the earnest reverence with which he eyed him, and by a theatric start of admiration every time he spoke, joined to the Doctor's utter insensibility to all these tokens, made me find infinite difficulty in keeping my countenance.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 85. The other gentleman was perhaps Dr. Wharton. Ante, ii. 41, note 1.