addressed to the Creator, the prayer of which was that so long as the Almighty should suffer him to live, he should be pleased to allow him the enjoyment of his understanding; that his intellectual powers and his body should expire together,—a striking instance of fortitude, piety, and resignation!
On one of Sir J. Reynolds’s friends observing to Dr. Johnson (who had long lived in great intimacy with that excellent painter) that it was extraordinary the King should have taken so little notice of him, having on all occasions employed Ramsay, West, &c., in preference to Sir Joshua, he said he thought it a matter of little consequence,—“His Majesty’s neglect could never do him any prejudice; but it would reflect eternal disgrace on the King not to have employed Sir Joshua Reynolds.”
The following sarcastic lines on William III. (which I believe have never appeared in print) are so much in the manner of Swift, and agree so exactly with his political Tory principles, that I strongly suspect him to have been the author of them:—
Here lives a man, who, by relation,
Depends upon predestination;
For which the learned and the wise
His understanding much despise;
But I pronounce with loyal tongue
Him in the right, them in the wrong;
For how should such a wretch succeed,
But that alas! it was decreed?
Vita Ambrogii Commandolensis, par l'Abbe Mahus, printed at Florence, in folio, in 1772, contains, as
