' [_Prologue
to the Satires_, l. 350.] As to the charge of defamation, there is an
obvious and certain mode of refuting it. Any person who thinks it worth
while to compare one edition with the other, will find that the passages
omitted were not in the least degree of that nature, but exactly such as
I have represented them in the former part of this note, the hasty
effusion of momentary feelings, which the delicacy of politeness should
have suppressed. BOSWELL. In the second edition this note ended at the
first paragraph, the latter part being added in the third. For the 'few
observations omitted' see _ante_, pp. 148, 381, 388.
The 'contemptible scribbler' was, I believe, John Wolcot, better known
by his assumed name of Peter Pindar. He had been a clergyman. In his
_Epistle to Boswell (Works_, i. 219), he says in reference to the
passages about Sir A. Macdonald (afterwards Lord Macdonald):--'A letter
of severe remonstrance was sent to Mr. B., who, in consequence, omitted
in the second edition of his _Journal_ what is so generally pleasing to
the public, viz., the scandalous passages relative to that nobleman.' It
was in a letter to the _Gent. Mag._ 1786, p. 285, that Boswell
'publickly disproved the insinuation' made 'in a late scurrilous
publication' that these passages 'were omitted in consequence of a
letter from his Lordship.
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