Grampian Club > Boswelliana

BOSWELLIANA. 317
unmindful of medio tutissimus ibis! Sir George answered, very
justly, 'That is a maxirii I think he did not understand.' "
" My friends are to me like the cinnamon tree, which pro-
duces nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon ; not only do I get wisdom
and worth out of them, but amusement. I use them as the
Chinese do their animals ; nothing is lost ; there a very good
dish is made of the poorest parts. So I make the follies of my
friends serve as a dessert after their valuable qualities."
" It is very disagreeable to hear a man going about a subject
and about it, and hesitating, while one perceives what he
means to say. Mental stammering hurts one as much as a
stammering in speech."
Mrs. Boscawen,* 17th May, 1784.
" I was observing at Mr. Dilly's how terrible an idea it was
when Mr. Perry was going to the East Indies for ten years in
quest of languages. Dr. Johnson said, with his wonderful
* Mrs. Boscawen was daughter of "William Evelyn Glanville, Esq.,
and wife of Admiral Edward Boscawen, a distinguished commander,
and sometime a Lord of the Admiralty. In 1761 she became a
widow. Her only son succeeded as third Viscount Falmouth ; and of
her two daughters, Frances, the elder, married Admiral John Leveson
Gower, brother of the first Marquess of Stafibrd; Elizabeth, the
younger daughter, married Henry, fifth Duke of Beaufort. In her
poem entitled " Sensibility," Miss Hannah More remarks of Mrs.
Boscawen that she —
" Views enamoured in her beauteous race
All Leveson's sweetness and aU Beaufort's grace."
In the " Life of Johnson," Boswell, in allusion to having met the Hon.
Mrs. Boscawen at dinner at Allan Eamsay's (29th April, 1778),
writes : " Of whom, if it be not presumptuous in me to praise her, I
would say that her manners are the most agreeable, and her conversa-
tion the bfest, of any lady with whom I ever had the happiness to be
ac([uainted."