On a subsequent occasion we are informed:—
“In a conversation a few days ago with Dr. Johnson (April 24th, 1784), I asked him whether he was personally acquainted with Mr. Colley Cibber. He said he had not lived in any intimacy with him, but had sometimes been in his company; and that he was much more ignorant even of matters relating to his own profession, than he could well have conceived any man to be who had lived nearly sixty years with players, authors, and the most celebrated characters of the age.
“I asked also whether he could recollect all the pieces written by him since he first came to London? He said he believed he could; but this I doubt very much. I mentioned his proposals for a translation of Father Paul’s History of the Council of Trent, He said such a thing had been agitated, but he very soon relinquished the design. However, Mr. Henry, partner with the late Mr. Cave, Johnson’s first employer and patron, positively says that he saw six sheets of it actually printed, as Mr. Nichols, Henry’s present partner, informed me.”
Amid patriotic fervours nearly at the boiling point, yet with all the good nature that made them amusing, Lord Charlemont found time for a letter on those graceful and peaceful pursuits calculated to smooth even the rugged front of political contention. Thus he writes from his beautiful villa on Dublin Bay:—
Marino, October 4th, 1782.
