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"Cum Petri nihil efficiant ad proelia claves, Auxilio Pauli forsitan ensis erit." "Since the keys of Peter profit not for battle, perchance, with the aid of Paul, the sword will answer." Julius was the first of the Popes of recent times to allow his beard to grow, and Raphael's noble portrait of him shows what dignity it gave to his strongly marked face.
On the present occasion he said that he would give to Robertson the advice offered by an old college tutor to a pupil; "read over your compositions, and whenever you meet with a passage which you think particularly fine, strike it out." A good anecdote of Goldsmith followed. Johnson had said to him once in the Poet's Corner at Westminster, Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.
Walking one day with Goldsmith, in Westminster Abbey, among the tombs of monarchs, warriors, and statesmen, they came to the sculptured mementos of literary worthies in Poets' Corner. Casting his eye round upon these memorials of genius, Johnson muttered in a low tone to his companion, "Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."
From a far corner of the waggon came a voice quoting a line of Virgil. "Forsitan et illis olim meminisse juvabit." It is a common tag, of course, but I did not expect to hear it then and there. The speaker was a boy, smooth-faced, gentle-looking. In what school of what remote province did he learn to construe and repeats bits of the Æneid?
His last recorded words were to a young lady who had begged for his blessing: "God bless you, my dear." The same day, December 13th, 1784, he gradually sank and died peacefully. He was laid in the Abbey by the side of Goldsmith, and the playful prediction has been amply fulfilled: Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.
Romaine and I within the chaise and Rowley perched upon the dickey I told the lawyer of our progress from Aylesbury to Kirkby-Lonsdale. He took snuff. "Forsitan et hæc olim that Rowley of yours seems a good-hearted lad, and less of a fool than he looks. The next time I have to travel post with an impatient lover, I'll take a leaf out of his book and buy me a flageolet."
when we got to Temple-bar he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered me, "Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS."* * In allusion to Dr. Johnson's supposed political principles, and perhaps his own. Boswell. Johnson praised John Bunyan highly.
But when he goes on as they did to Temple Bar, he will find that ancient monument retired into the country and certainly nothing whatever to remind him of the Jacobite heads still mouldering on it, which gave occasion to Goldsmith's witty turning of his Tory friend's quotation "Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS." But on that holy ground the Johnsonian will hardly miss even Temple Bar.
But the impartial historian owes a duty likewise to obscure merit, and my solicitude to render a tardy justice is perhaps quickened by my having known those who, had their own field of labour been less secluded, might have found a readier acceptance with the reading publick. I could give an example, but I forbear: forsitan nostris ex ossibus oritur ultor.
Goldsmith treasured up the intimated hope, and shortly afterward, as they were passing by Temple bar, where the heads of Jacobite rebels, executed for treason, were mouldering aloft on spikes, pointed up to the grizzly mementos, and echoed the intimation, "Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."
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