This may be
laughed at as too trifling to record; but it is a small characteristick
trait in the Flemish picture which I give of my friend, and in which,
therefore, I mark the most minute particulars. And let it be remembered,
that _AEsop at play_ is one of the instructive apologues of antiquity.
I mentioned an old gentleman of our acquaintance whose memory was
beginning to fail. JOHNSON. 'There must be a diseased mind, where there
is a failure of memory at seventy. A man's head, Sir, must be morbid, if
he fails so soon.'[544] My friend, being now himself sixty-eight, might
think thus: but I imagine, that _threescore and ten_, the Psalmist's
period of sound human life in later ages, may have a failure, though
there be no disease in the constitution.
Talking of Rochester's Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens
to castrate for the edition of the poets, to which he was to write
Prefaces. Dr. Taylor (the only time I ever heard him say any thing
witty)[545] observed, that 'if Rochester had been castrated himself, his
exceptionable poems would not have been written.'[546] I asked if Burnet
had not given a good Life of Rochester.
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