' BOSWELL. 'I like Ogden's
_Sermons on Prayer_ very much, both for neatness of style and subtilty
of reasoning.' JOHNSON. 'I should like to read all that Ogden has
written.'[703] BOSWELL. 'What I wish to know is, what sermons afford the
best specimen of English pulpit eloquence.' JOHNSON. 'We have no sermons
addressed to the passions that are good for any thing; if you mean that
kind of eloquence.' A CLERGYMAN: (whose name I do not recollect.) 'Were
not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions?' JOHNSON. 'They were
nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may.'
At dinner, Mrs. Thrale expressed a wish to go and see Scotland. JOHNSON.
'Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England. It is seeing
the flower gradually fade away to the naked stalk. Seeing the Hebrides,
indeed, is seeing quite a different scene.'
Our poor friend, Mr. Thomas Davies[704], was soon to have a benefit at
Drury-lane theatre, as some relief to his unfortunate circumstances. We
were all warmly interested for his success, and had contributed to it.
However, we thought there was no harm in having our joke, when he could
not be hurt by it. I proposed that he should be brought on to speak a
Prologue upon the occasion; and I began to mutter fragments of what it
might be: as, that when now grown _old_, he was obliged to cry, 'Poor
Tom's _a-cold_[705];'--that he owned he had been driven from the stage by
a Churchill, but that this was no disgrace, for a Churchill[706] had beat
the French;--that he had been satyrised as 'mouthing a sentence as curs
mouth a bone,' but he was now glad of a bone to pick.
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