Victim at once to wine and love,
I hope, MARIA, you'll forgive;
While I invoke the powers above,
That henceforth I may wiser live.'
The lady was generously forgiving, returned me an obliging answer, and I
thus obtained an _Act of Oblivion_, and took care never to offend
again. BOSWELL.
[353] See _ante_, ii. 436, and iv. 88, note I.
[354] On May 22 Horace Walpole wrote (_Letters_, viii. 44):--'Boswell,
that quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in,
which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tapping
many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he
vented his errand. "Had I seen Dr. Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_?" I
said slightly, "No, not yet;" and so overlaid his whole impertinence.'
[355] See _ante_, iii. 1.
[356] See _ante_, ii. 47, note 2; 352, note I; and iii. 376, for
explanations of like instances of Boswell's neglect.
[357] See _ante_, i. 298, note 4.
[358] 'He owned he sometimes talked for victory.' Boswell's _Hebrides_,
opening pages.
[359] The late Right Hon.
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