" Alluding to Boswell's Life he continued, "Mine should have
been, not the droppings of his lips, but the history of his mind."'
Field's _Life of Parr_, i. 164.
In the epitaph that he first sent in were found the words 'Probabili
Poetae.'
'In arms,' wrote Parr, 'were all the Johnsonians: Malone, Steevens, Sir
W. Scott, Windham, and even Fox, all in arms. The epithet was cold. They
do not understand it, and I am a Scholar, not a Belles-Lettres man.'
Parr had wished to pass over all notice of Johnson's poetical character.
To this, Malone said, none of his friends of the Literary Club would
agree. He pointed out also that Parr had not noticed 'that part of
Johnson's genius, which placed him on higher ground than perhaps any
other quality that can be named--the universality of his knowledge, the
promptness of his mind in producing it on all occasions in conversation,
and the vivid eloquence with which he clothed his thoughts, however
suddenly called upon.' Parr, regardless of Johnson's rule that 'in
lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath' (_ante_, ii. 407),
replied, that if he mentioned his conversation he should have to mention
also his roughness in contradiction, &c.
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