Johnson being accused of tergiversation, has a right to be heard in his own case. Much censured for accepting a pension which many a censurer would have taken with the utmost alacrity, ‘Why, Sir,’ said he with a hearty laugh, ‘it is a mighty foolish noise that they make. I have accepted a pension as a reward which has been thought due to my literary merit; and now that I have the pension, I am the same man in every respect that I have ever been. I retain the same principles. It is true that I cannot now curse (smiling) the House of Hanover, nor would it be decent of me to drink King James’s health in the wine that King George gives me money to pay for. But, Sir, I think that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover and drinking King James’s health, are amply overbalanced by 300_l._ a year.’ To this may be added Boswell’s assurance that Johnson had little confidence in the rights claimed by the Stuarts, and that he felt, in course of time, much abatement of his own Toryism. ◆[Sidenote: _HIS DEFINITION OF A JACOBITE._]◆ It was in his early days that he talked _fierce_ Jacobitism, at Mr. Langton’s, to that gentleman’s niece, Miss Roberts. The Bishop of Salisbury (Douglas) and other eminent men were present. Johnson, taking the young lady by the hand, said, ‘My dear, I hope you are a Jacobite.’ Her uncle was a Tory without being a Jacobite, and he angrily asked why Johnson thus addressed his niece? ‘Why, Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘I meant no offence to your niece, I mean her a great compliment. A Jacobite, Sir, believes in the Divine Right of kings. He who believes in the Divine Right of kings believes in a Divinity. A Jacobite believes in the Divine Right of bishops. He that believes in the Divine Right of bishops believes in the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion. Therefore, Sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig, for Whiggism is a negation of all principle.’ [Sidenote: _DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND._] Be this as it may, Jacobitism was as surely dying out as he was who had crushed the hopes of Jacobites at Culloden. The victor on that field, and even now in the prime of life, died in 1765, of what Walpole called a ‘rot among princes.’ He was a ton of man, unwieldy, asthmatic, blind of one eye, nearly so of the other, lame through his old Dettingen wound, half breathless from asthma, half paralysed by an old attack, able to write a letter, yet not able to collect his senses sufficiently to play a game of piquet. On the 30th of October, he went to Court, and received Lord Albemarle to dine with him, at his house in Grosvenor Street. Unable to attend a Cabinet Council in the evening, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Northington called on him. As they entered the room, one of his valets was about to bleed him, at his own request. Before the operation could be performed, the duke murmured, ‘It is all over!’ and fell dead in Lord Albemarle’s arms.