A DR. JOHNSON QUOTATION SIR,--Mr. J. H. Plumb begins his
review of The Attorney in Eighteenth-Century England (by Mr. Robert Robson) with the very apposite quotation of Dr. Johnson's saying that 'He did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney.' But he introduces it as something that 'Johnson told Boswell.'
No: it is one of the obiter dicta—poured out with no attempt at arrangement as regards sequence or context—in the series of Collectanea which Boswell inserts to fill a gap in his own notes for the year 1770, and which he acknowledges as having been furnished to him by 'the Rev. Dr. Maxwell. formerly Assistant- Preacher at the Temple,' who had been a 'social friend of Johnson' since 1754—more than eight years before Boswell first met him. Maxwell himself com- pares his scraps to 'the filings of diamonds'; it was be and not Bozzy who picked them up as they fell from the Doctor's mouth.—Yours faithfully, 10b Merchiston Avenue, Edinburgh
A. F. GILES
Previous page
