1831.] Paragraphs from a Portfolio. 407 



Rome shall taste what I liave tasted to-day ; and on the third you will 

 be erecting in every street of Rome, statues to the great discoverer." 

 All w^s so said and so done, and the Beefsteak was immortalized. 



" The noble lord in the blue ribbon," said Fox, in one of his nervous 

 attacks on Lord North, " I see, carries the concentrated majesty of the 

 government in his person. But however it may have been in other 

 times, he shall not be counted for his cabinet ; he shall go for nothing 

 more than he is worth, in the settlement of this question." 



Fox's reference was probably to the very curious, and very lucky, 

 mistake, in casting up the votes in the celebrated 31st of Charles II. 

 Lord Grey, one of the tellers, a man of pleasantry, on seeing a very 

 corpulent peer just entering the house, said, laughing, " My lord, I can- 

 not count you for less than ten," and went on counting accordingly. 

 The other teller. Lord Harris, a moody and careless man, took the 

 telling for granted, which Lord Grey, in the hurry of the moment, for- 

 getting what he had done, gave in. This decided the majority for the 

 Ayes, and the bill, one of the most important to the freedom of Eng- 

 land, the right to bail before trial, was made part and parcel of the 

 law. 



The world is flooded with anecdotes of Johnson. Let me record an 

 anecdote of one of his hearers. He and Burke were one evening, 

 I believe, at the iMisses Cotterell's, when the conversation turned 

 upon the great poets of antiquity. At length, it was settled on the 

 comparative merits of Homer and Virgil. Johnson was for Homer, 

 Burke for Virgil. Johnson poured out a prodigious quantity of 

 thought upon the vividness, originality, and grandeur of the Greek. 

 Burke delighted in the sustained majesty, the mingled pathos and 

 vigour, and the mellifluous eloquence of the Roman. The argument 

 went on for hours, while no one present thought of interrupting 

 so noble a display of genius on both sides. At length, a young lady's 

 eye glanced on her watch, and to her surprise, finding that it was 

 pa&t midnight, slie whispered the hour to her mother. " Child," said 

 the mother, indignant at being disturbed, " tell me that the house is 

 on fire, for nothing else can be an excuse for leaving such conver- 

 sation." 



A party, among whom were Arthur JMurphy and some of the " Wits 

 about Town," were dining at a tavern in Fleet-street, when two of them 

 oddly began to quarrel about two poems which they were on the point 

 of publishing. To appease the controversy. Murphy recommended a 

 deputation to Johnson, to decide a bet, as to which was the superior 

 work. 



The deputation waited on the doctor, who, though surprised at dinner, 

 was at lengtli induced to listen to the statement of the affair. " What 

 depends on my decision ?" said he. " Five guineas," was the answer. 

 " Give me the poems," said Johnson. He ran his eye down them, 

 and reckoning the lines, made his award. " Gentlemen," said he, 

 solemnly, " poetry does not always differ from real life. It is a right 

 l)rincij)le, oi" two evils to choose the lesser. Both poems are as bad as 

 poems can be ; therefore the shorter has won the wager." 



