[Reprinted, with the Author’s permission, from _The Century Magazine_.]
In the appendix to Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson, one finds this anecdote:
_Cato’s Soliloquy._—One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat
to him [Doctor Samuel Johnson] Cato’s Soliloquy, which she went
through very correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the child—
“What was to bring Cato to an end?”
She said it was a knife.
“No, my dear, it was not so.”
“My aunt Polly said it was a knife.”
“Why, Aunt Polly’s knife _may do_, but it was a _dagger_, my dear.”
He then asked her the meaning of “bane and antidote,” which she was
unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said—
“You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such
words.”