She, and Boswell, and their Hero, are the joke of the public. A Dr.
Walcot, _soi-disant_ Peter Pindar, has published a burlesque eclogue,
in which Boswell and the Signora are the interlocutors, and all the
absurdest passages in the works of both are ridiculed. The
print-shops teem with satiric prints in them: one in which Boswell,
as a monkey, is riding on Johnson, the bear, has this witty
inscription, 'My Friend _delineavit_.' But enough of these
mountebanks."
What Walpole calls the absurdest passages are precisely those which
possess most interest for posterity; namely, the minute personal
details, which bring Johnson home to the mind's eye. Peter Pindar,
however, was simply labouring in his vocation when he made the best
of them, as in the following lines. His satire is in the form of a
Town Eclogue, in which Bozzy and Madame Piozzi contend in anecdotes,
with Hawkins for umpire:
BOZZY.
"One Thursday morn did Doctor Johnson wake,
And call out 'Lanky, Lanky,' by mistake--
But recollecting--'Bozzy, Bozzy,' cry'd--
For in _contractions_ Johnson took a pride!"
MADAME PIOZZI.
"I ask'd him if he knock'd Tom Osborn down;
As such a tale was current through the town,--
Says I, 'Do tell me, Doctor, what befell.'--
'Why, dearest lady, there is nought to _tell_;
'I ponder'd on the _proper'st_ mode to _treat_ him--
'The dog was impudent, and so I beat him!
'Tom, like a fool, proclaim'd his fancied wrongs;
'_Others_, that I belabour'd, held their tongues.
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