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Boswell, James, 1740-1795

"1776-1780"

..
... As my will
Concurred not to my being,' &c.
_Paradise Lost_, x. 743.
[170] See _ante_, April 10, 1775.
[171] Fielding in the _Covent Garden Journal_ for June 2, 1752 (_Works_,
x. 80), says of the difficulty of admission at the hospitals:--'The
properest objects (those I mean who are most wretched and friendless)
may as well aspire at a place at Court as at a place in the Hospital.'
[172] 'We were talking of Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton. "He was the
only man," says Mr. Johnson quite seriously, "that did justice to my
good breeding; and you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of
needless scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not observing the
amazement of his hearers, "no man is so cautious not to interrupt
another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others
are speaking; no man so steadily refuses preference on himself, or so
willingly bestows it on another, as I do; no man holds so strongly as I
do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the
breach of it; yet people think me rude; but Barnard did me justice."'
Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 36. On p. 258, Mrs. Piozzi writes:--'No one was
indeed so attentive not to offend in all such sort of things as Dr.


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