mus.”[1] Such a portrait, pictorial or literary, prefixed to his letters, would have gone far to extinguish all taste for his principles!
And why should not such men and their peculiarities be noted? Yet I have lately heard the practice censured in the very scene of enjoyment—a London dinner-table—by one of our highest authorities in rank and letters. The occasion was a few memoranda in the Memoirs of Thomas Moore. What the poet put down, though now not of the slightest moment, was condemned as breach of confidence and the reserve due to private society. In vain I adduced the example of Boswell—what the world would have lost had he been as idle or indifferent to what was said as his then more celebrated associates. In reply, it was said he was an exception for a purpose—that he was destined for a biographer, and but pursued his calling in amassing materials.
In the Life of Jeffrey it is stated in one of his letters that something similar in character took place at Holland House. The noble owner had assented to notices being made of the chat of the parties in the manner of Boswell. Curiosity or comparison formed the motive—but the emphatic remark is made, “It would not do.” Why, we are not told. Dulness or grossness in such society is not to be supposed. If too much tinctured by party spirit, or secret history, or scandal, or of questionable authenticity, or with disclosures likely to pain or injure the living, those are circumstances wide of the purpose
- ↑ Memoirs of George II., vol. i. p. 96. 1848. Edited by Rt. Hon. J. W. Croker.
