tumblers. Everything about him-his coat, his
wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus?s
dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eyes, his insatiable
appetite for fish sauce and veal pie with
plums, his mysterious practice of treasuring up
scraps of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his
saw a man led by a bear!? So romantic and
fervid was his admiration of Johnson, that he tells
us he added A500 to the fortune of one of his
daughters, Veronica, because when a baby she was
not frightened by the hideous visage of the lexicographer.
LORD SEMPLE?S HOUSE, CASTLE HILL.
midnight disputations, his contortions, his mutterings,
his gruntings, his puffings, his vigorous,
acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic Wit, his
vehemence and his insolence, his fits of tempestuous
rage,? &e, all served to make it a source of
wonder to Mrs. Boswell that her husband could
abide, much less worship, such a man. Thus, she
once said to him, with extreme warmth, ?I have
seen many a bear led by a man, bur I never before
?
Among those invited to meet him at James?s
Court was Margaret Duchess of Douglas, a lady
noted among those of her own rank for her illiteracy,
and whom Johnson describes as ?talking
broad Scotch with a paralytic voice, as scarcely
understood by her own countrymen ; ? yet it was
remarked that in that which we would term now a
spirit of ?? snobbery,? Johnson reserved his attentions
during the whole evening exclusively for the
