Dr.
Barnard made it the subject of a copy of pleasant verses, in which he
supposed himself to learn different perfections from different men. They
concluded with delicate irony:--
'Johnson shall teach me how to place
In fairest light each borrow'd grace;
From him I'll learn to write;
Copy his clear familiar style,
And by the roughness of his file
Grow, like _himself, polite_.'
I know not whether Johnson ever saw the poem, but I had occasion to find
that as Dr. Barnard and he knew each other better, their mutual regard
increased. BOSWELL. See Appendix A.
[374] See _ante_, ii. 357, iii. 309, and _post_, March 23, 1783.
[375] 'Sir Joshua once asked Lord B---- to dine with Dr. Johnson and the
rest, but though a man of rank and also of good information, he seemed
as much alarmed at the idea as if you had tried to force him into one of
the cages at Exeter-Change.' Hazlitt's _Conversations of Northcote_,
p. 41.
[376] Yet when he came across them he met with much respect. At Alnwick
he was, he writes, 'treated with great civility by the Duke of
Northumberland.
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