FOOTNOTES:
[1] See ante, March 15, 1776.
[2] Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 176. BOSWELL. 'It is,' he said, 'so very difficult for a sick man not to be a scoundrel.' Ib. p. 175. He called Fludyer a scoundrel (ante, March 20, 1776), apparently because he became a Whig. 'He used to say a man was a scoundrel that was afraid of anything. "Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is," he said, "a scoundrel."' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 199, 211. Mr. Croker points out that 'Johnson in his Dictionary defined knave, a scoundrel; sneakup, a scoundrel; rascal, a scoundrel; loon, a scoundrel; lout, a scoundrel; poltroon, a scoundrel; and that he coined the word scoundrelism' (Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 25, 1773). Churchill, in The Ghost, Book ii. (Poems, i. 1. 217), describes Johnson as one
'Who makes each sentence current pass,
With puppy, coxcomb, scoundrel, ass.'
Swift liked the word. 'God forbid,' he wrote, 'that ever such a scoundrel as Want should dare to approach you.' Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xviii. 39.
[3] See ante, i. 49, for Johnson's fondness for the old romances.
[4] Boswell, ante, i. 386, implies that Sheridan's pension was partly due to Wedderburne's influence.
[5] See ante, i. 386.
[6] Akenside, in his Ode to Townshend (Book ii. 4), says:—
'For not imprudent of my loss to come,
I saw from Contemplation's quiet cell
His feet ascending to another home,
Where public praise and envied greatness dwell.'
He had, however, no misgivings, for he thus ends:—
'Then for the guerdon of my lay,
This man with faithful friendship, will I say,
From youth to honoured age my arts and me hath viewed.'
[7] We have now more knowledge generally diffused; all our ladies read now 'which is a great extension.' Post, April 29, 1778.
[8] See post, April, 28, 1783.
[9] See post, March 22, 1783.
[10] See post, March 18, 1784.
[11] Newbery, the publisher, was the vendor of Dr. James's famous powder. It was known that on the doctor's death a chemist whom he had employed meant to try to steal the business, under the pretence that he alone knew the secret of the preparation. A supply of powders enough to last for many years was laid in by Newbery in anticipation, while James left an affidavit that the chemist was never employed in the manufacture. He, however, asserted that James was deprived of his mental faculties when the affidavit was made. Evidence against this was collected and published; the conclusion to the Preface being written by Johnson. A Bookseller of the Last Century, p. 138. See ante, i. 159.
[12] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on the birth of a second son who died early:—'I congratulate you upon your boy; but you must not think that I shall love him all at once as well as I love Harry, for Harry you know is so rational. I shall love him by degrees.' Piozzi Letters, i. 206. A week after Harry's death he wrote:—'I loved him as I never expect to love any other little boy; but I could not love him as a parent.' Ib. p. 310.
[13] Johnson had known this anxiety. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Ashbourne on July 7, 1775:—'I cannot think why I hear nothing from you. I hope and fear about my dear friends at Streatham. But I may have a letter this afternoon—Sure it will bring me no bad news.' Ib. i. 263. See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 21, 1773.
[14] See ante, ii. 75.
[15] ante, April 10, 1775.
[16] See ante, March 21, 1776, and post, Sept. 19, 1777.
[17] The phrase 'vexing thoughts,' is I think, very expressive. It has been familiar to me from my childhood; for it is to be found in the Psalms in Metre, used in the churches (I believe I should say kirks) of Scotland, Psal. xliii. v. 5;
'Why art thou then cast down, my soul?
What should discourage thee?
And why with vexing thoughts art thou
Disquieted in me?'
Some allowance must no doubt be made for early prepossession. But at a maturer period of life, after looking at various metrical versions of the Psalms, I am well satisfied that the version used in Scotland is, upon the whole, the best; and that it has in general a simplicity and unction of sacred Poesy; and in many parts its transfusion is admirable. BOSWELL.
[18] 'Burke and Reynolds are the same one day as another,' Johnson said, post, under Sept. 22, 1777. Boswell celebrates Reynolds's 'equal and placid temper,' ante, i. I. On Aug. 12, 1775, he wrote to Temple:—'It is absurd to hope for continual happiness in this life; few men, if any, enjoy it. I have a kind of belief that Edmund Burke does; he has so much knowledge, so much animation, and the consciousness of so much fame.' Letters of Boswell, p. 212.
[19] ante, i. 446.
[20] Baretti says, that 'Mrs. Thrale abruptly proposed to start for Bath, as wishing to avoid the sight of the funeral. She had no man-friend to go with her,' and so he offered his services. Johnson at that moment arrived. 'I expected that he would spare me the jaunt, and go himself to Bath with her; but he made no motion to that effect.' European Mag. xiii. 315. It was on the evening of the 29th that Boswell found Johnson, as he thought, not in very good humour. Yet on the 30th he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, and called on Mr. Thrale. On April 1 and April 4 he again wrote to Mrs. Thrale. He would have gone a second time, he says, to see Mr. Thrale, had he not been made to understand that when he was wanted he would be sent for. Piozzi Letters, i. 309-314.
[21] Pope, Essay on Man, iv. 390. Boswell twice more applies the same line to Johnson, post, June 3, 1781, and under Dec. 13, 1784.
[22] Imlac consoles the Princess for the loss of Pekuah. 'When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled; yet a new day succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease. But they who restrain themselves from receiving comfort do as the savages would have done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark.' Rasselas, ch. 35. 'Keep yourself busy,' wrote Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 'and you will in time grow cheerful. New prospects may open, and new enjoyments may come within your reach.' Piozzi Letters.
[23] See ante, i. 86. It was reprinted in 1789.
[24] See Boswell's Hebrides under Nov. 11, 1773.
[25] See post, under April 29, 1776.
[26] In like manner he writes, 'I catched for the moment an enthusiasm with respect to visiting the Wall of China.' post April 10, 1778. Johnson had had some desire to go upon Cook's expedition in 1772. ante, March 21, 1772.
[27] Mme. D'Arblay (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 284) describes 'the perfect case with which Omai managed a sword which he had received from the King, and which he had that day put on for the first time in order to go to the House of Lords.' He is the 'gentle savage' in Cowpers Task, i. 632.
[28] See ante, ii. 50.
[29] Voltaire (Siècle de Louis XV, ch. xv.), in his account of the battle of Fontenoy, thus mentions him:—'On était à cinquante pas de distance…. Les officiers anglais saluèrent les Français en ôtant leurs chapeaux…. Les officiers des gardes françaises leur rendirent le salut, Mylord Charles Hay, capitaine aux gardes anglaises, cria:—Messieurs des gardes françaises, tirez. Le comte d'Auteroche leur dit a voix haute:—Messieurs, nous ne tirons jamais les premiers; tirez vous-mêmes.'
[30] See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. Hay was third in command in the expedition to North America in 1757. It was reported that he said that 'the nation's wealth was expended in making sham-fights and planting cabbages.' He was put under arrest and sent home to be tried. Gent. Mag. 1758, p. 170. Mr. Croker says that 'the real state of the case was that he had gone mad, and was in that state sent home.' He died before the sentence of the court-martial was promulgated. Croker's Boswell, p. 497.
[31] In Thoughts on the Coronation of George III (Works, v. 458) he expressed himself differently, if indeed the passage is of his writing (see ante, i. 361). He says: 'It cannot but offend every Englishman to see troops of soldiers placed between him and his sovereign, as if they were the most honourable of the people, or the King required guards to secure his person from his subjects. As their station makes them think themselves important, their insolence is always such as may be expected from servile authority.' In his Journey to the Hebrides (ib. ix. 30) he speaks of 'that courtesy which is so closely connected with the military character.' See post, April 10, 1778.
[32] 'It is not in the power even of God to make a polite soldier.' Meander; quoted by Hume, Essays, Part i. 20, note.
[33] In Johnson's Debates for 1741 (Works, x. 387) is on the quartering of soldiers. By the Mutiny Act the innkeeper was required to find each foot-soldier lodging, diet, and small beer for fourpence a day. By the Act as amended that year if he furnished salt, vinegar, small-beer, candles, fire, and utensils to dress their victuals, without payment, he had not to supply diet except on a march. Ib. pp. 416, 420. The allowance of small-beer was fixed at five pints a day, though it was maintained that it should be six. Lord Baltimore, according to Johnson, said that 'as every gentleman's servants each consumed daily six pints, it surely is not to be required that a soldier should live in a perpetual state of warfare with his constitution.' Ib. p. 418. Burke, writing in 1794, says:—'In quarters the innkeepers are obliged to find for the soldiers lodging, fire, candle-light, small-beer, salt and vinegar gratis.' Burke's Corres. iv. 258. Johnson wrote in 1758 (Works, vi. 150):—'The manner in which the soldiers are dispersed in quarters over the country during times of peace naturally produces laxity of discipline; they are very little in sight of their officers; and when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard are suffered to live every man his own way.' Fielding, in Tom Jones, bk. ix. ch. 6, humourously describes an innkeeper's grievances.
[34] This alludes to the pleadings of a Stoic and an Epicurean for and against the existence of the Divinity in Lucian's Jupiter the Tragic. CROKER.
[35] 'There is a time when every man is weary of raising difficulties only to ask himself with the solution and desires to enjoy truth without the labour or hazard of contest.' Johnson's Works, vi. 497. See ante May 7, 1773, and post, April 3, 1779, where he says, 'Sir, you are to a certain degree hurt by knowing that even one man does not believe.' Hume, in his Essay Of Parties in General, had written:—'Such is the nature of the human mind, that it always takes hold of every mind that approaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified and corroborated by an unanimity of sentiments, so is it, shocked and disturbed by any contrariety.' 'Carlyle was fond of quoting a sentence of Novalis:—"My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it."' Saturday Review, No. 1538, p. 521. 'The introducing of new doctrines,' said Bacon, 'is an affectation of tyranny over the understandings and beliefs of men.' Bacon's Nat. Hist., Experiment 1000.
[36] 'We must own,' said Johnson, 'that neither a dull boy, nor an idle boy, will do so well at a great school as at a private one.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22, 1773. See ante, under Dec. 5, 1775. On June 16, 1784, he said of a very timid boy:—'Placing him at a public school is forcing an owl upon day.' Lord Shelburne says that the first Pitt told him 'that his reason for preferring private to public education was, that he scarce observed a boy who was not cowed for life at Eton; that a public school might suit a boy of a turbulent forward disposition, but would not do where there was any gentleness.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 72.
[37] 'There are,' wrote Hume in 1767, 'several advantages of a Scots education; but the question is, whether that of the language does not counterbalance them, and determine the preference to the English.' He decides it does. He continues:—'The only inconvenience is, that few Scotsmen that have had an English education have ever settled cordially in their own country; and they have been commonly lost ever after to their friends.' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 403.
[38] He wrote to Temple on Nov. 28, 1789:—'My eldest son has been at Eton since the 15th of October. You cannot imagine how miserable he has been; he wrote to me for some time as if from the galleys, and intreated me to come to him.' Letters of Boswell, p. 314. On July 21, 1790, he wrote of his second son who was at home ill:—'I am in great concern what should be done with him, for he is so oppressed at Westminster School by the big boys that I am almost afraid to send him thither.' Ib. p. 327. On April 6, 1791, he wrote:—'Your little friend James is quite reconciled to Westminster.' Ib. p. 337. Southey, who was at Westminster with young Boswell, describes 'the capricious and dangerous tyranny' under which he himself had suffered. Southey's Life, i. 138.
[39] Horace, Satires, i. 6. 65-88.
[40] Dr. Adam Smith, who was for some time a Professor in the University of Glasgow, has uttered, in his Wealth of Nations [v. I, iii. 2], some reflections upon this subject which are certainly not well founded, and seem to be invidious. BOSWELL.
[41] See ante, ii. 98.
[42] Gibbon denied this. 'The diligence of the tutors is voluntary, and will consequently be languid, while the pupils themselves, or their parents, are not indulged in the liberty of choice or change,' Misc. Works, i. 54. Of one of his tutors he wrote:—'He well remembered that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to perform.' Ib. p. 58. Boswell, post, end of Nov. 1784, blames Dr. Knox for 'ungraciously attacking his venerable Alma Mater.' Knox, who was a Fellow of St. John's, left Oxford in 1778. In his Liberal Education, published in 1781, he wrote:—'I saw immorality, habitual drunkenness, idleness and ignorance, boastingly obtruding themselves on public view.' Knox's Works, iv. 138. 'The general tendency of the universities is favourable to the diffusion of ignorance, idleness, vice, and infidelity among young men.' Ib. p. 147. 'In no part of the kingdom will you meet with more licentious practices and sentiments, and with less learning than in some colleges.' Ib. p. 179. 'The tutors give what are called lectures. The boys construe a classic, the jolly young tutor lolls in his elbow-chair, and seldom gives himself the trouble of interrupting the greatest dunce.' Ib. p. 199. 'Some societies would have been glad to shut themselves up by themselves, and enjoy the good things of the cook and manciple, without the intrusion of commoners who come for education.' Ib. p. 200. 'The principal thing required is external respect from the juniors. However ignorant or unworthy a senior fellow may be, yet the slightest disrespect is treated as the greatest crime of which an academic can be guilty.' Ib. p. 201. The Proctors gave far 'more frequent reprimands to the want of a band, or to the hair tied in queue, than to important irregularities. A man might be a drunkard, a debauchee, and yet long escape the Proctor's animadversion; but no virtue could protect you if you walked on Christ-church meadow or the High Street with a band tied too low, or with no band at all; with a pig-tail, or with a green or scarlet coat.' Ib. p. 159. Only thirteen weeks' residence a year was required. Ib. p. 172. The degree was conferred without examination. Ib. p. 189. After taking it 'a man offers himself as a candidate for orders. He is examined by the Bishop's chaplain. He construes a few verses in the Greek testament, and translates one of the articles from Latin into English. His testimonial being received he comes from his jolly companions to the care of a large parish.' Ib. p. 197. Bishop Law gave in 1781 a different account of Cambridge. There, he complains, such was the devotion to mathematics, that 'young men often sacrifice their whole stock of strength and spirits, and so entirely devote most of their first few years to what is called taking a good degree, as to be hardly good for anything else.' Preface to Archbishop King's Essay on the Origin of Evil, p. xx.
[43] According to Adam Smith this is true only of the Protestant countries. In Roman Catholic countries and England where benefices are rich, the church is continually draining the universities of all their ablest members. In Scotland and Protestant countries abroad, where a chair in a university is generally a better establishment than a benefice, by far the greater part of the most eminent men of letters have been professors. Wealth of Nations, v. i. iii. 3.
[44] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773.
[45] Dr. Goldsmith was dead before Mr. Maclaurin discovered the ludicrous errour. But Mr. Nourse, the bookseller, who was the proprietor of the work, upon being applied to by Sir John Pringle, agreed very handsomely to have the leaf on which it was contained cancelled, and re-printed without it, at his own expence. BOSWELL. In the second edition, published five years after Goldsmith's death, the story remains. In a foot-note the editor says, that 'he has been credibly informed that the professor had not the defect here mentioned.' The story is not quite as Boswell tells it. 'Maclaurin,' writes Goldsmith (ii. 91), 'was very subject to have his jaw dislocated; so that when he opened his mouth wider than ordinary, or when he yawned, he could not shut it again. In the midst of his harangues, therefore, if any of his pupils began to be tired of his lecture, he had only to gape or yawn, and the professor instantly caught the sympathetic affection; so that he thus continued to stand speechless, with his mouth wide open, till his servant, from the next room, was called in to set his jaw again.'
[46] Dr. Shebbeare (post, April 18, 1778) was tried for writing a libellous pamphlet. Horace Walpole says:—'The bitterest parts of the work were a satire on William III and George I. The most remarkable part of this trial was the Chief Justice Mansfield laying down for law that satires even on dead Kings were punishable. Adieu! veracity and history, if the King's bench is to appreciate your expressions!' Memoirs of the Reign of George II, iii. 153.
[47] What Dr. Johnson has here said, is undoubtedly good sense; yet I am afraid that law, though defined by Lord Coke 'the perfection of reason,' is not altogether with him; for it is held in the books, that an attack on the reputation even of a dead man, may be punished as a libel, because tending to a breach of the peace. There is, however, I believe, no modern decided case to that effect. In the King's Bench, Trinity Term, 1790, the question occurred on occasion of an indictment, The King v. Topham, who, as a proprietor of a news-paper entitled The World, was found guilty of a libel against Earl Cowper, deceased, because certain injurious charges against his Lordship were published in that paper. An arrest of Judgment having been moved for, the case was afterwards solemnly argued. My friend Mr. Const, whom I delight in having an opportunity to praise, not only for his abilities but his manners; a gentleman whose ancient German blood has been mellowed in England, and who may be truely said to unite the Baron and the Barrister, was one of the Counsel for Mr. Topham. He displayed much learning and ingenuity upon the general question; which, however, was not decided, as the Court granted an arrest chiefly on the informality of the indictment. No man has a higher reverence for the law of England than I have; but, with all deference I cannot help thinking, that prosecution by indictment, if a defendant is never to be allowed to justify, must often be very oppressive, unless Juries, whom I am more and more confirmed in holding to be judges of law as well as of fact, resolutely interpose. Of late an act of Parliament has passed declaratory of their full right to one as well as the other, in matter of libel; and the bill having been brought in by a popular gentleman, many of his party have in most extravagant terms declaimed on the wonderful acquisition to the liberty of the press. For my own part I ever was clearly of opinion that this right was inherent in the very constitution of a Jury, and indeed in sense and reason inseparable from their important function. To establish it, therefore, by Statute, is, I think, narrowing its foundation, which is the broad and deep basis of Common Law. Would it not rather weaken the right of primo-geniture, or any other old and universally-acknowledged right, should the legislature pass an act in favour of it? In my Letter to the People of Scotland, against diminishing the number of the Lords of Session, published in 1785, there is the following passage, which, as a concise, and I hope a fair and rational state of the matter, I presume to quote: 'The Juries of England are Judges of law as well as of fact, in many civil, and in all criminals trials. That my principles of resistance may not be misapprehended and more than my principles of submission, I protest that I should be the last man in the world to encourage Juries to contradict rashly, wantonly, or perversely, the opinion of the Judges. On the contrary, I would have them listen respectfully to the advise they receive from the Bench, by which they may be often well directed in forming their own opinion; which, "and not anothers," is the opinion they are to return upon their oaths. But where, after due attention to all that the judge has said, they are decidedly of a different opinion from him, they have not only a power and a right, but they are bound in conscience to bring in a verdict accordingly.' BOWELL. The World is described by Gifford in his Baviad and Marviad, as a paper set up by 'a knot of fantastic coxcombs to direct the taste of the town.' Lowndes (Bibl. Man. ed. 1871, p. 2994) confounds it with The World mentioned ante, i. 257. The 'popular gentleman' was Fox, whose Libel Bill passed the House of Lords in June 1792. Parl. Hist. xxix. 1537.
[48] Nobody, that is to say, but Johnson. Post, p. 24, note 2.
[49] Of this service Johnson recorded:—'In the morning I had at church some radiations of comfort.' Pr. and Med. p. 146.
[50] Baretti, in a marginal note on Piozzi Letters, i. 311, says:— 'Mr. Thrale, who was a worldly man, and followed the direction of his own feelings with no philosophical or Christian distinctions, having now lost the strong hope of being one day succeeded in the profitable Brewery by the only son he had left, gave himself silently up to his grief, and fell in a few years a victim to it.' In a second note (ii. 22) he says:—'The poor man could never subdue his grief on account of his son's death.'
[51] A gentleman, who from his extraordinary stores of knowledge, has been stiled omniscient. Johnson, I think very properly, altered it to all-knowing, as it is a verbum solenne, appropriated to the Supreme Being. BOSWELL.
[52] Mrs. Thrale wrote to him on May 3:—'Should you write about Streatham and Croydon, the book would be as good to me as a journey to Rome, exactly; for 'tis Johnson, not Falkland's Islands that interest us, and your style is invariably the same. The sight of Rome might have excited more reflections indeed than the sight of the Hebrides, and so the book might be bigger, but it would not be better a jot.' Piozzi Letters, i 318.
[53] Hawkins says (Life, p. 84) that 'Johnson was never greedy of money, but without money could not be stimulated to write. I have been told by a clergyman with whom he had been long acquainted, that, being (sic) to preach on a particular occasion, he applied to him for help. "I will write a sermon for thee," said Johnson, "but thou must pay me for it."' See post, May 1, 1783. Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 150) records an anecdote that he had from Hawkins:—'When Dr. Johnson was at his work on his Shakespeare, Sir John said to him, "Well! Doctor, now you have finished your Dictionary, I suppose you will labour your present work con amore for your reputation." "No Sir," said Johnson, "nothing excites a man to write but necessity."' Walpole then relates the anecdote of the clergyman, and speaks of Johnson as 'the mercenary.' Walpole's sinecure offices thirty-nine years before this time brought him in 'near, £2000 a year.' In 1782 he wrote that his office of Usher of the Exchequer was worth £1800 a year. Letters, i. lxxix, lxxxii.
[54] Swift wrote in 1735, when he was sixty-seven:—'I never got a farthing by anything I writ, except one about eight years ago, and that was by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me.' Works, xix. 171. It was, I conjecture, Gulliver's Travels. Hume, in 1757, wrote:—'I am writing the History of England from the accession of Henry VII. I undertook this work because I was tired of idleness, and found reading alone, after I had often perused all good books (which I think is soon done), somewhat a languid occupation.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 33.
[55] This Mr. Ellis was, I believe, the last of that profession called Scriveners, which is one of the London companies, but of which the business is no longer carried on separately, but is transacted by attornies and others. He was a man of literature and talents. He was the authour of a Hudibrastick version of Maphæsus's Canto, in addition to the Æneid; of some poems in Dodsley's Collections; and various other small pieces; but being a very modest man, never put his name to anything. He shewed me a translation which he had made of Ovid's Epistles, very prettily done. There is a good engraved portrait of him by Pether, from a picture by Fry, which hangs in the hall of the Scriveners' company. I visited him October 4, 1790, in his ninety-third year, and found his judgment distinct and clear, and his memory, though faded so as to fail him occasionally, yet, as he assured me, and I indeed perceived, able to serve him very well, after a little recollection. It was agreeable to observe, that he was free from the discontent and fretfulness which too often molest old age. He in the summer of that year walked to Rotherhithe, where he dined, and walked home in the evening. He died on the 31st of December, 1791. BOSWELL. The version of Maphæsus's 'bombastic' additional Canto is advertised in the Gent. Mag. 1758, p. 233. The engraver of Mr. Ellis's portrait in the first two editions is called Peffer.
[56] 'Admiral Walsingham boasted that he had entertained more miscellaneous parties than any other man in London. At one time he had received the Duke of Cumberland, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Nairne the optician, and Leoni the singer. It was at his table that Dr. Johnson made that excellent reply to a pert coxcomb who baited him during dinner. "Pray now," said he to the Doctor, "what would you give, old gentleman, to be as young and sprightly as I am?" "Why, Sir, I think," replied Johnson, "I would almost be content to be as foolish."' Cradock's Memoirs, i. 172.
[57] 'Dr. Johnson almost always prefers the company of an intelligent man of the world to that of a scholar.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 241.
[58] See J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 174, for an account of him.
[59] Lord Macartney, who with his other distinguished qualities, is remarkable also for an elegant pleasantry, told me, that he met Johnson at Lady Craven's, and that he seemed jealous of any interference: 'So, (said his Lordship, smiling,) I kept back.' BOSWELL.
[60] See ante, i. 242.
[61] There is an account of him in Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson. BOSWELL. Hawkins (Life, p. 246) records the following sarcasm of Ballow. In a coffee-house he attacked the profession of physic, which Akenside, who was a physician as well as poet, defended. 'Doctor,' said Ballow, 'after all you have said, my opinion of the profession of physic is this. The ancients endeavoured to make it a science, and failed; and the moderns to make it a trade, and have succeeded.'
[62] See ante, i. 274.
[63] I have in vain endeavoured to find out what parts Johnson wrote for Dr. James. Perhaps medical men may. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 159. Johnson, needing medicine at Montrose, 'wrote the prescription in technical characters.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773.
[64] Horace Walpole, writing of May in this year, says that General Smith, an adventurer from the East Indies, who was taken off by Foote in The Nabob, 'being excluded from the fashionable club of young men of quality at Almack's, had, with a set of sharpers, formed a plan for a new club, which, by the excess of play, should draw all the young extravagants thither. They built a magnificent house in St. James's-street, and furnished it gorgeously.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 39.
[65] He said the same when in Scotland. Boswell's Hebrides, under Nov. 22, 1773. On the other hand, in The Rambler, No. 80, he wrote:—'It is scarcely possible to pass an hour in honest conversation, without being able, when we rise from it, to please ourselves with having given or received some advantages; but a man may shuffle cards, or rattle dice, from noon to midnight, without tracing any new idea in his mind, or being able to recollect the day by any other token than his gain or loss, and a confused remembrance of agitated passions, and clamorous altercations.'
[66] 'Few reflect,' says Warburton, 'on what a great wit has so ingenuously owned. That wit is generally false reasoning.' The wit was Wycherley. See his letter xvi. to Pope in Pope's Works. Warburton's Divine Legation, i. xii.
[67] 'Perhaps no man was ever more happy than Dr. Johnson in the extempore and masterly defence of any cause which, at the given moment, he chose to defend.' Stockdale's Memoirs, i. 261.
[68] Burke, in a letter that he wrote in 1771 (Corres. i. 330), must have had in mind his talks with Johnson. 'Nay,' he said, 'it is not uncommon, when men are got into debates, to take now one side, now another, of a question, as the momentary humour of the man and the occasion called for, with all the latitude that the antiquated freedom and ease of English conversation among friends did, in former days, encourage and excuse.' H.C. Robinson (Diary, iii. 485) says that Dr. Burney 'spoke with great warmth of affection of Dr. Johnson, and said he was the kindest creature in the world when he thought he was loved and respected by others. He would play the fool among friends, but he required deference. It was necessary to ask questions and make no assertion. If you said two and two make four, he would say, 'How will you prove that, Sir?' Dr. Burney seemed amiably sensitive to every unfavourable remark on his old friend.
[69] Patrick Lord Elibank, who died in 1778. BOSWELL. See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 12, 1773.
[70] Yet he said of him:—'Sir, there is nothing conclusive in his talk.' See post, p. 57.
[71] Johnson records of this Good Friday:—'My design was to pass part of the day in exercises of piety, but Mr. Boswell interrupted me; of him, however, I could have rid myself; but poor Thrale, orbus et exspes, came for comfort, and sat till seven, when we all went to church.' Pr. and Med. p. 146.
[72] Johnson's entries at Easter shew this year, and some of the following years, more peace of mind than hitherto. Thus this Easter he records, 'I had at church some radiations of comfort…. When I received, some tender images struck me. I was so mollified by the concluding address to our Saviour that I could not utter it.' Pr. and Med. pp. 146, 149. 'Easter-day, 1777, I was for some time much distressed, but at last obtained, I hope from the God of peace, more quiet than I have enjoyed for a long time. I had made no resolution, but as my heart grew lighter, my hopes revived, and my courage increased.' Ib. p. 158. 'Good Friday, 1778. I went with some confidence and calmness through the prayers.' Ib. p. 164.
[73] 'Nunquam enim nisi navi plenâ tollo vectorem.' Lib. ii. c. vi. BOSWELL.
[74] See ante, i. 187.
[75] See ante, i. 232.
[76] See ante, ii, 219.
[77] Cheyne's English Malady, or a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of All Kinds, 1733. He recommended a milk, seed, and vegetable diet; by seed he apparently meant any kind of grain. He did not take meat. He drank green tea. At one time he weighed thirty-two stones. His work shews the great change in the use of fermented liquors since his time. Thus he says:—'For nearly twenty years I continued sober, moderate, and plain in my diet, and in my greatest health drank not above a quart, or three pints at most of wine any day' (p. 235). 'For near one-half of the time from thirty to sixty I scarce drank any strong liquor at all. It will be found that upon the whole I drank very little above a pint of wine, or at most not a quart one day with another, since I was near thirty' (p. 243). Johnson a second time recommended Boswell to read this book, post, July 2, 1776. See ante, i. 65. Boswell was not the man to follow Cheyne's advice. Of one of his works Wesley says:—'It is one of the most ingenious books which I ever saw. But what epicure will ever regard it? for "the man talks against good eating and drinking."' Wesley's Journal, i. 347. Young, in his Epistles to Pope, No. ii. says:—
'—three ells round huge Cheyne rails at meat.'
Dr. J. H. Burton (Life of Hume, i. 45) shews reason for believing that a very curious letter by Hume was written to Cheyne.
[78] '"Solitude," he said one day, "is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue; pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember (continued he) that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 106.
[79] The day before he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Mr. Thrale's alteration of purpose is not weakness of resolution; it is a wise man's compliance with the change of things, and with the new duties which the change produces. Whoever expects me to be angry will be disappointed. I do not even grieve at the effect, I grieve only at the cause.' Piozzi Letters, i. 314. Mrs. Thrale on May 3 wrote:—'Baretti said you would be very angry, because this dreadful event made us put off our Italian journey, but I knew you better. Who knows even now that 'tis deferred for ever? Mr. Thrale says he shall not die in peace without seeing Rome, and I am sure he will go no-where that he can help without you.' Ib. p. 317.
[80] See ante, i. 346.
[81] See post, July 22, 1777, note, where Boswell complains of children being 'suffered to poison the moments of festivity.'
[82] Boswell, post, under March 30, 1783, says, 'Johnson discovered a love of little children upon all occasions.'
[83] Johnson at a later period thought otherwise. Post, March 30, 1778.
[84] Pope borrowed from the following lines:—
'When on my sick bed I languish,
Full of sorrow, full of anguish;
Fainting, gasping, trembling, crying,
Panting, groaning, speechless, dying—
Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say,
Be not fearful, come away.'
Campbell's Brit. Poets, p. 301.
[85] In Rochester's Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the First Book of Horace.
[86] In the Monthly Review for May, 1792, there is such a correction of the above passage, as I should think myself very culpable not to subjoin. 'This account is very inaccurate. The following statement of facts we know to be true, in every material circumstance:—Shiels was the principal collector and digester of the materials for the work: but as he was very raw in authourship, an indifferent writer in prose, and his language full of Scotticisms, Cibber, who was a clever, lively fellow, and then soliciting employment among the booksellers, was engaged to correct the style and diction of the whole work, then intended to make only four volumes, with power to alter, expunge, or add, as he liked. He was also to supply notes, occasionally, especially concerning those dramatick poets with whom he had been chiefly conversant. He also engaged to write several of the Lives; which, (as we are told,) he, accordingly, performed. He was farther useful in striking out the Jacobitical and Tory sentiments, which Shiels had industriously interspersed wherever he could bring them in:—and, as the success of the work appeared, after all, very doubtful, he was content with twenty-one pounds for his labour beside a few sets of the books, to disperse among his friends.—Shiels had nearly seventy pounds, beside the advantage of many of the best Lives in the work being communicated by friends to the undertaking; and for which Mr. Shiels had the same consideration as for the rest, being paid by the sheet, for the whole. He was, however, so angry with his Whiggish supervisor, (He, like his father, being a violent stickler for the political principles which prevailed in the Reign of George the Second,) for so unmercifully mutilating his copy, and scouting his politicks, that he wrote Cibber a challenge: but was prevented from sending it, by the publisher, who fairly laughed him out of his fury. The proprietors, too, were discontented, in the end, on account of Mr. Cibber's unexpected industry; for his corrections and alterations in the proof-sheets were so numerous and considerable, that the printer made for them a grievous addition to his bill; and, in fine, all parties were dissatisfied. On the whole, the work was productive of no profit to the undertakers, who had agreed, in case of success, to make Cibber a present of some addition to the twenty guineas which he had received, and for which his receipt is now in the booksellers' hands. We are farther assured, that he actually obtained an additional sum; when he, soon after, (in the year 1758,) unfortunately embarked for Dublin, on an engagement for one of the theatres there: but the ship was cast away, and every person on board perished. There were about sixty passengers, among whom was the Earl of Drogheda, with many other persons of consequence and property. [Gent. Mag. 1758, p. 555.]
'As to the alledged design of making the compilement pass for the work of old Mr. Cibber, the charges seem to have been founded on a somewhat uncharitable construction. We are assured that the thought was not harboured by some of the proprietors, who are still living; and we hope that it did not occur to the first designer of the work, who was also the printer of it, and who bore a respectable character.
'We have been induced to enter thus circumstantially into the foregoing detail of facts relating to The Lives of the Poets, compiled by Messrs. Cibber and Shiels, from a sincere regard to that sacred principle of Truth, to which Dr. Johnson so rigidly adhered, according to the best of his knowledge; and which we believe, no consideration would have prevailed on him to violate. In regard to the matter, which we now dismiss, he had, no doubt, been misled by partial and wrong information: Shiels was the Doctor's amanuensis; he had quarrelled with Cibber; it is natural to suppose that he told his story in his own way; and it is certain that he was not "a very sturdy moralist." [The quotation is from Johnson's Works, ix. 116.] This explanation appears to me very satisfactory. It is, however, to be observed, that the story told by Johnson does not rest solely upon my record of his conversation; for he himself has published it in his Life of Hammond [ib. viii. 90], where he says, "the manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession." Very probably he had trusted to Shiels's word, and never looked at it so as to compare it with The Lives of the Poets, as published under Mr. Cibber's name. What became of that manuscript I know not. I should have liked much to examine it. I suppose it was thrown into the fire in that impetuous combustion of papers, which Johnson I think rashly executed, when moribundus.' BOSWELL. Mr. Croker, quoting a letter by Griffiths the publisher, says:—'The question is now decided by this letter in opposition to Dr. Johnson's assertion.' Croker's Boswell, p. 818. The evidence of such an infamous fellow as Griffiths is worthless. (For his character see Forster's Goldsmith, i. 161.) As the Monthly Review was his property, the passage quoted by Boswell was, no doubt, written by his direction. D'Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, vi. 375) says that Oldys (ante, i. 175) made annotations on a copy of Langbaine's Dramatic Poets. 'This Langbaine, with additions by Coxeter, was bought by Theophilus Cibber; on the strength of these notes he prefixed his name to the first collection of the Lives of Our Poets, written chiefly by Shiels.'
[87] Mason's Memoirs of Gray's Life was published in 1775. Johnson, in his Life of Gray (Works, viii. 476), praises Gray's portion of the book:—'They [Gray and Horace Walpole] wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's Letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey.' 'The style of Madame de Sévigné,' wrote Mackintosh (Life, ii. 221), 'is evidently copied, not only by her worshipper Walpole, but even by Gray; notwithstanding the extraordinary merits of his matter, he has the double stiffness of an imitator and of a college recluse.'
[88] See ante, ii. 164.
[89] This impartiality is very unlikely. In 1757 Griffiths, the owner of the Monthly, aiming a blow at Smollett, the editor of the Critical, said that The Monthly Review was not written by 'physicians without practice, authors without learning, men without decency, gentlemen without manners, and critics without judgement.' Smollett retorted:— 'The Critical Review is not written by a parcel of obscure hirelings, under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who presume to revise, alter, and amend the articles occasionally. The principal writers in the Critical Review are unconnected with booksellers, un-awed by old women, and independent of each other.' Forster's Goldsmith, i. 100. 'A fourth share in The Monthly Review was sold in 1761 for £755.' A Bookseller of the Last Century, p. 19.
[90] See ante, ii. 39.
[91] Horace Walpole writes:—'The scope of the Critical Review was to decry any work that appeared favourable to the principles of the Revolution.' Memoirs of the Reign of George II, iii. 260.
[92] 'The story of this publication is remarkable. The whole book was printed twice over, a great part of it three times, and many sheets four or five times. The booksellers paid for the first impression; but the charges and repeated operations of the press were at the expense of the author, whose ambitious accuracy is known to have cost him at least a thousand pounds. He began to print in 1755. Three volumes appeared in 1764, and the conclusion in 1771. Andrew Reid undertook to persuade Lyttelton, as he had persuaded himself, that he was master of the secret of punctuation; and, as fear begets credulity, he was employed, I know not at what price, to point the pages of Henry the Second. When time brought the History to a third edition, Reid was either dead or discarded; and the superintendence of typography and punctuation was committed to a man originally a comb-maker, but then known by the style of Doctor. Something uncommon was probably expected, and something uncommon was at last done; for to the Doctor's edition is appended, what the world had hardly seen before, a list of errors in nineteen pages.' Johnson's Works, viii. 492. In the first edition of The Lives of the Poets 'the Doctor' is called Dr. Saunders. So ambitious was Lord Lyttelton's accuracy that in the second edition he gave a list of 'false stops which hurt the sense.' For instance, the punctuation of the following paragraph:—'The words of Abbot Suger, in his life of Lewis le Gros, concerning this prince are very remarkable,' he thus corrects, 'after prince a comma is wanting.' See ante, ii. 37.
[93] According to Horace Walpole, Lyttelton had angered Smollett by declining 'to recommend to the stage' a comedy of his. 'He promised,' Walpole continues, 'if it should be acted, to do all the service in his power for the author. Smollett's return was drawing an abusive portrait of Lord Lyttelton in Roderick Random.' Memoirs of the Reign of George II, iii. 259.
[94] Spectator, No. 626. See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection, near the end.
[95] When Steele brought The Spectator to the close of its first period, he acknowledged in the final number (No. 555) his obligation to his assistants. In a postscript to the later editions he says:—'It had not come to my knowledge, when I left off The Spectator, that I owe several excellent sentiments and agreeable pieces in this work to Mr. Ince, of Gray's Inn.' Mr. Ince died in 1758. Gent. Mag. 1758, p. 504.
[96] Spectator, No. 364.
[97] Sir Edward Barry, Baronet. BOSWELL.
[98] 'We form our words with the breath of our nostrils, we have the less to live upon for every word we speak.' Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, ch. i. sec. 1.
[99] On this day Johnson sent the following application for rooms in Hampton Court to the Lord Chamberlain:—
'My Lord, Being wholly unknown to your lordship, I have only this apology to make for presuming to trouble you with a request, that a stranger's petition, if it cannot be easily granted, can be easily refused. Some of the apartments are now vacant in which I am encouraged to hope that by application to your lordship I may obtain a residence. Such a grant would be considered by me as a great favour; and I hope that to a man who has had the honour of vindicating his Majesty's Government, a retreat in one of his houses may not be improperly or unworthily allowed. I therefore request that your lordship will be pleased to grant such rooms in Hampton Court as shall seem proper to
'My Lord,
'Your lordship's most obedient and most faithful humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'April 11, 1776.'
'Mr. Saml. Johnson to the Earl of Hertford, requesting apartments at Hampton Court, 11th May, 1776.' And within, a memorandum of the answer:—'Lord C. presents his compliments to Mr. Johnson, and is sorry he cannot obey his commands, having already on his hands many engagements unsatisfied.' Prior's Malone, p. 337. The endorsement does not, it will be seen, agree in date with the letter. Lord C. stands for the Lord Chamberlain.
[100] Hogarth saw Garrick in Richard III, and on the following night in Abel Drugger; he was so struck, that he said to him, 'You are in your element when you are begrimed with dirt, or up to your elbows in blood.' Murphy's Garrick, p. 21. Cooke, in his Memoirs of Macklin, p. 110, says that a Lichfield grocer, who came to London with a letter of introduction to Garrick from Peter Garrick, saw him act Abel Drugger, and returned without calling on him. He said to Peter Garrick: 'I saw enough of him on the stage. He may be rich, as I dare say any man who lives like him must be; but by G-d, though he is your brother, Mr. Garrick, he is one of the shabbiest, meanest, most pitiful hounds I ever saw in the whole course of my life.' Abel Drugger is a character in Ben Jonson's Alchemist.
[101] See post, under Sept. 30, 1783.
[102] Lord Shelburne in 1766, at the age of twenty-nine, was appointed Secretary of State in Lord Chatham's ministry. Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, ii. 1. Jeremy Bentham said of him:—'His head was not clear. He felt the want of clearness. He had had a most wretched education.' Ib. p. 175.
[103] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:—'I hope you have no design of stealing away to Italy before the election, nor of leaving me behind you; though I am not only seventy, but seventy-one…. But what if I am seventy-two; I remember Sulpitius says of Saint Martin (now that's above your reading), Est animus victor annorum et senectuti cedere nescius. Match me that among your young folks.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177.
[104] Lady Hesketh, taking up apparently a thought which Paoli, as reported by Boswell, had thrown out in conversation, proposed to Cowper the Mediterranean for a topic. 'He replied, "Unless I were a better historian than I am, there would be no proportion between the theme and my ability. It seems, indeed, not to be so properly a subject for one poem, as for a dozen."' Southey's Cowper, iii. 15, and vii. 44.
[105] Burke said:—'I do not know how it has happened, that orators have hitherto fared worse in the hands of the translators than even the poets; I never could bear to read a translation of Cicero.' Life of Sir W. Jones, p. 196.
[106] See ante, ii. 188.
[107] See ante, ii. 182.
[108] See post, under date of Dec. 24, 1783, where mention seems to be made of this evening.
[109] See ante, note, p. 30. BOSWELL
[110] 'Thomson's diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, such as may be said to be to his images and thoughts "both their lustre and their shade;" such as invest them with splendour, through which, perhaps, they are not always easily discerned.' Johnson's Works, viii. 378. See ante, i. 453, and ii. 63.
[111] A Collection of Poems in six volumes by several hands, 1758.
[112] Ib. i. 116.
[113] Mr. Nicholls says, 'The Spleen was a great favourite with Gray for its wit and originality.' Gray's Works, v. 36. See post, Oct. 10, 1779, where Johnson quotes two lines from it. 'Fling but a stone, the giant dies,' is another line that is not unknown.
[114] A noted highwayman, who after having been several times tried and acquitted, was at last hanged. He was remarkable for foppery in his dress, and particularly for wearing a bunch of sixteen strings at the knees of his breeches. BOSWELL.
[115] Goldsmith wrote a prologue for it. Horace Walpole wrote on Dec. 14, 1771 (Letters, v. 356):—'There is a new tragedy at Covent Garden called Zobeide, which I am told is very indifferent, though written by a country gentleman.' Cradock in his old age published his own Memoirs.
[116] '"Dr. Farmer," said Johnson {speaking of this essay}, "you have done that which never was done before; that is, you have completely finished a controversy beyond all further doubt." "There are some critics," answered Farmer, "who will adhere to their old opinions." "Ah!" said Johnson, "that may be true; for the limbs will quiver and move when the soul is gone."' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 152. Farmer was Master of Emanuel College, Cambridge (ante, i. 368). In a letter dated Oct. 3, 1786, published in Romilly's Life (i. 332), it is said:—'Shakespeare and black letter muster strong at Emanuel.'
[117] 'When Johnson once glanced at this Liberal Translation of the New Testament, and saw how Dr. Harwood had turned Jesus wept into Jesus, the Saviour of the world, burst into a flood of tears, he contemptuously threw the book aside, exclaiming, "Puppy!" The author, Dr. Edward Harwood, is not to be confounded with Dr. Thomas Harwood, the historian of Lichfield.' Croker's Boswell, p. 836.
[118] See an ingenious Essay on this subject by the late Dr. Moor, Greek Professor at Glasgow. BOSWELL.
[119] See ante, i. 6, note 2.
[120] 'Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!' Job xix. 23.
[121] 'The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor's conviction, and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him, are so artfully natural, that, though it will perhaps not be said of him as he says of himself, that he is "a man not easily jealous," yet we cannot but pity him, when at last we find him "perplexed in the extreme."' Johnson's Works, v. 178.
[122] Of Dennis's criticism of Addison's Cato, he says:—'He found and shewed many faults; he shewed them indeed with anger, but he found them with acuteness, such as ought to rescue his criticism from oblivion.' Ib. vii. 457. In a note on 'thunder rumbling from the mustard-bowl' (The Dunciad, ii. 226) it is said:—'Whether Mr. Dennis was the inventor of that improvement, I know not; but is certain that, being once at a tragedy of a new author, he fell into a great passion at hearing some, and cried, "S'death! that is my thunder."' See D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, i. 135, for an amplification of this story.
[123] Sir James Mackintosh thought Cumberland was meant. I am now satisfied that it was Arthur Murphy. CROKER. The fact that Murphy's name is found close to the story renders it more likely that Mr. Croker is right.
[124] 'Obscenity and impiety,' Johnson boasted in the last year of his life, 'have always been repressed in my company.' Post, June 11, 1784. See also post, Sept. 22, 1777.
[125] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 18.
[126] See ib. Aug. 15.
[127] See post, April 28, 29, 1778.
[128] See ante, Jan. 21, 1775, note.
[129] See post, April 28, 1778. That he did not always scorn to drink when in company is shewn by what he said on April 7, 1778:—'I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it. University College has witnessed this.'
[130] Copy is manuscript for printing.
[131] In The Rambler, No. 134, he describes how he had sat deliberating on the subject for that day's paper, 'till at last I was awakened from this dream of study by a summons from the press; the time was now come for which I had been thus negligently purposing to provide, and, however dubious or sluggish, I was now necessitated to write. To a writer whose design is so comprehensive and miscellaneous that he may accommodate himself with a topick from every scene of life, or view of nature, it is no great aggravation of his task to be obliged to a sudden composition.' See ante, i. 203.
[132] See ante, i. 428.
[133] We have here an involuntary testimony to the excellence of this admirable writer, to whom we have seen that Dr. Johnson directly allowed so little merit. BOSWELL. 'Fielding's Amelia was the most pleasing heroine of all the romances,' he said; 'but that vile broken nose never cured [Amelia, bk. ii. ch. 1] ruined the sale of perhaps the only book, which being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 221. Mrs. Carter, soon after the publication of Amelia, wrote (Corres. ii. 71):—'Methinks I long to engage you on the side of this poor unfortunate book, which I am told the fine folks are unanimous in pronouncing to be very sad stuff.' See ante, ii. 49.
[134] Horace Walpole wrote, on Dec, 21, 1775 (Letters, vi. 298):— 'Mr. Cumberland has written an Ode, as he modestly calls it, in praise of Gray's Odes; charitably no doubt to make the latter taken notice of. Garrick read it the other night at Mr. Beauclerk's, who comprehended so little what it was about, that he desired Garrick to read it backwards, and try if it would not be equally good; he did, and it was.' It was to this reading backwards that Dean Barnard alludes in his verses—
'The art of pleasing, teach me, Garrick;
Thou who reversest odes Pindaric,
A second time read o'er.'
See post, under May 8, 1781.
[135] Mr. Romney, the painter, who has now deservedly established a high reputation. BOSWELL. Cumberland (Memoirs, i. 384) dedicated his Odes to him, shortly after 'he had returned from pursuing his studies at Rome.' 'A curious work might be written,' says Mr. Croker, 'on the reputation of painters. Hayley dedicated his lyre (such as it was) to Romney. What is a picture of Romney now worth?' The wheel is come full circle, and Mr. Croker's note is as curious as the work that he suggests.
[136] Page 32 of this vol. BOSWELL.
[137] Thurlow.
[138] Wedderburne. Boswell wrote to Temple on May 1:—'Luckily Dr. Taylor has begged of Dr. Johnson to come to London, to assist him in some interesting business, and Johnson loves much to be so consulted and so comes up.' Letters of Boswell, p. 234. On the 14th Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Mr. Wedderburne has given his opinion today directly against us. He thinks of the claim much as I think.' Piozzi Letters, i. 323. In Notes and Queries, 6th S., v. 423, in a letter from Johnson to Taylor, this business is mentioned.
[139] Goldsmith wrote in 1762:—'Upon a stranger's arrival at Bath he is welcomed by a peal of the Abbey bells, and in the next place by the voice and music of the city waits.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 57. In Humphry Clinker (published in 1771), in the Letter of April 24, we read that there was 'a peal of the Abbey bells for the honour of Mr. Bullock, an eminent cow-keeper of Tottenham, who had just arrived at Bath to drink the waters for indigestion.' The town waits are also mentioned. The season was not far from its close when Boswell arrived. Melford, in Humphry Clinker, wrote from Bath on May 17:—'The music and entertainments of Bath are over for this season; and all our gay birds of passage have taken their flight to Bristol-well [Clifton], Tunbridge, Brighthelmstone, Scarborough, Harrowgate, &c. Not a soul is seen in this place, but a few broken-winded parsons, waddling like so many crows along the North Parade.' Boswell had soon to return to London 'to eat commons in the Inner Temple.' Delighted with Bath, and apparently pleasing himself with the thought of a brilliant career at the Bar, he wrote to Temple, 'Quin said, "Bath was the cradle of age, and a fine slope to the grave." Were I a Baron of the Exchequer and you a Dean, how well could we pass some time there!' Letters of Boswell, pp. 231, 234.
[140] To the rooms! and their only son dead three days over one month!
'That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two.'
Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.
[141] No doubt Mr. Burke. See ante, April 15, 1773, and under Oct. 1, 1774, note, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15.
[142] Mr. E.J. Payne, criticising this passage, says:—'It is certain that Burke never thought he was deserting any principle of his own in joining the Rockinghams.' Payne's Burke, i. xvii.
[143] No doubt Mrs. Macaulay. See ante, i. 447. 'Being asked whether he had read Mrs. Macaulay's second volume of the History of England, "No, Sir," says he, "nor her first neither."' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 205.
[144] 'Of this distinguished Epilogue the reputed author was the wretched Budgel, whom Addison used to denominate "the man who calls me cousin" [Spence's Anecdotes, ed. 1820, p. 161]; and when he was asked how such a silly fellow could write so well, replied, "The Epilogue was quite another thing when I saw it first." [Ib. p. 257.] It was known in Tonson's family, and told to Garrick, that Addison was himself the author of it, and that, when it had been at first printed with his name, he came early in the morning, before the copies were distributed, and ordered it to be given to Budgel, that it might add weight to the solicitation which he was then making for a place.' Johnson's Works, viii. 389. See ante, i. 181.
[145] See post, Jan. 20, 1782.
[146] On May 10, 1768, on which day the new parliament met, a great body of people gathered round the King's Bench prison in St. George's Fields in expectation that Wilkes would go thence to the House of Commons. Some kind of a riot arose, a proclamation was made in the terms of the Riot-Act, and the soldiers firing by order of Justice Gillam, killed five or six on the spot. The justice and one of the soldiers were on the coroner's inquest brought in guilty of wilful murder, and two other soldiers of aiding and abetting therein. With great difficulty the prisoners were saved from the rage of the populace. They were all acquitted however. At Gillam's trial the judge ruled in his favour, so that the case did not go to the jury. Of the trial of one of the soldiers 'no account was allowed to be published by authority.' Ann. Reg. 1768, pp. 108-9, 112, 136-8, 233. Professor Dicey (Law of the Constitution, p. 308) points out that 'the position of a soldier may be both in theory and practice, a difficult one. He may, as it has been well said, be liable to be shot by a court-martial if he disobeys an order, and to be hanged by a judge and jury if he obeys it.' The remembrance of these cases was perhaps the cause of the feebleness shewn in the Gordon Riots in June 1780. Dr. Franklin wrote from London on May 14, 1768 (Memoirs, iii. 315):—'Even this capital is now a daily scene of lawless riot. Mobs patrolling the streets at noon-day, some knocking all down that will not roar for Wilkes and liberty; courts of justice afraid to give judgment against him; coal-heavers and porters pulling down the houses of coal-merchants that refuse to give them more wages; sawyers destroying saw-mills; sailors unrigging all the outward-bound ships, and suffering none to sail till merchants agree to raise their pay; watermen destroying private boats, and threatening bridges; soldiers firing among the mobs and killing men, women, and children.' 'While I am writing,' he adds (ib. p. 316), 'a great mob of coal-porters fill the street, carrying a wretch of their business upon poles to be ducked for working at the old wages.' See also ib. p. 402. Hume agreed with Johnson about the 'imbecility' of the government; but he drew from it different conclusions. He wrote on Oct. 27, 1775, about the addresses to the King:—'I wish they would advise him first to punish those insolent rascals in London and Middlesex, who daily insult him and the whole legislature, before he thinks of America. Ask him, how he can expect that a form of government will maintain an authority at 3000 miles' distance, when it cannot make itself be respected, or even be treated with common decency, at home.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 479. On the 30th of this month of April—four days after the conversation in the text—John Home recorded:—'Mr. Hume cannot give any reason for the incapacity and want of genius, civil and military, which marks this period.' Ib. p. 503.
[147] See Dr. Johnson, His Friends, &c., p. 252.
[148] It was published in 1743.
[149] I am sorry that there are no memoirs of the Reverend Robert Blair, the author of this poem. He was the representative of the ancient family of Blair, of Blair, in Ayrshire, but the estate had descended to a female, and afterwards passed to the son of her husband by another marriage. He was minister of the parish of Athelstanford, where Mr. John Home was his successor; so that it may truely be called classick ground. His son, who is of the same name, and a man eminent for talents and learning, is now, with universal approbation, Solicitor-General of Scotland. BOSWELL. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 94) describes Blair 'as so austere and void of urbanity as to make him quite disagreeable to young people.'
[150] In 1775 Mrs. Montagu gave Mrs. Williams a small annuity. Croker's Boswell, pp. 458, 739. Miss Burney wrote of her:—'Allowing a little for parade and ostentation, which her power in wealth and rank in literature offer some excuse for, her conversation is very agreeable.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 325. See post, April 7, 1778, note.
[151]
'Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.'
Pope, Sat. Ep. i. 135.
[152] Johnson refers to Jenyns's View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion, published this spring. See post, April 15, 1778. Jenyns had changed his view, for in his Origin of Evil he said, in a passage quoted with applause by Johnson (Works, vi. 69), that 'it is observable that he who best knows our formation has trusted no one thing of importance to our reason or virtue; he trusts to our vanity or compassion for our bounty to others.'
[153] Mr. Langton is certainly meant. It is strange how often his mode of living was discussed by Johnson and Boswell. See post, Nov. 16, 1776, July 22, and Sept. 22, 1777, March 18, April 17, 18, and 20, May 12, and July 3, 1778.
[154] Baretti made a brutal attack on Mrs. Piozzi in the European Mag. for 1788, xiii. 313, 393, and xiv. 89. He calls her 'the frontless female, who goes now by the mean appellation of Piozzi; La Piozzi, as my fiddling countrymen term her; who has dwindled down into the contemptible wife of her daughter's singing-master.' His excuse was the attacks made on him by her in the correspondence just published between herself and Johnson (see Piozzi Letters, i. 277, 319). He suspected her, and perhaps with reason, of altering some of these letters. Other writers beside Baretti attacked her. To use Lord Macaulay's words, grossly exaggerated though they are, 'She fled from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown.' Macaulay's Writings and Speeches, ed. 1871, p. 393. According to Dr. T. Campbell (Diary, p. 33) Baretti flattered Mrs. Thrale to her face. 'Talking as we were at tea of the magnitude of the beer vessels, Baretti said there was one thing in Mr. Thrale's house still more extraordinary; meaning his wife. She gulped the pill very prettily—so much for Baretti.' See post, Dec. 21, 1776.
[155] Likely enough Boswell himself. On three other occasions he mentions Otaheité; ante, May 7, 1773, post, June 15, 1784 and in his Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773. He was fond of praising savage life. See ante, ii. 73.
[156] Chatterton said that he had found in a chest in St. Mary Redcliffe Church manuscript poems by Canynge, a merchant of Bristol in the fifteenth century, and a friend of his, Thomas Rowley. He gave some of these manuscripts to George Catcot, a pewterer of Bristol, who communicated them to Mr. Barret, who was writing a History of Bristol. Rose's Biog. Dict. vi. 256.
[157] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22.
[158] See ante, i. 396.
[159] 'Artificially. Artfully; with skill.' Johnson's dictionary.
[160] Mr. Tyrwhitt, Mr. Warton, Mr. Malone. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote on May 16:—'Steevens seems to be connected with Tyrwhitt in publishing Chatterton's poems; he came very anxiously to know the result of our inquiries, and though he says he always thought them forged, is not well pleased to find us so fully convinced.' Piozzi Letters, i. 326.
[161] Catcot had been anticipated by Smith the weaver (2 Henry VI. iv. 2)—'Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.'
[162] Horace Walpole says (Works, iv. 224) that when he was 'dining at the Royal Academy, Dr. Goldsmith drew the attention of the company with an account of a marvellous treasure of ancient poems lately discovered at Bristol, and expressed enthusiastic belief in them; for which he was laughed at by Dr. Johnson, who was present…. You may imagine we did not at all agree in the measure of our faith; but though his credulity diverted me, my mirth was soon dashed; for, on asking about Chatterton, he told me he had been in London, and had destroyed himself.'
[163] Boswell returned a few days earlier. On May 1 he wrote to Temple: —'Luckily Dr. Taylor has begged of Dr. Johnson to come to London, to assist him in some interesting business; and Johnson loves much to be so consulted, and so comes up. I am now at General Paoli's, quite easy and gay, after my journey; not wearied in body or dissipated in mind. I have lodgings in Gerrard Street, where cards are left to me; but I lie at the General's, whose attention to me is beautiful.' Letters of Boswell, p. 234. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 6:—'Tomorrow I am to dine, as I did yesterday, with Dr. Taylor. On Wednesday I am to dine with Oglethorpe; and on Thursday with Paoli. He that sees before him to his third dinner has a long prospect.' Piozzi Letters, i. 320.
[164] See ante, May 12, 1775.
[165] In the Dramatis Personæ of the play are 'Aimwell and Archer, two gentlemen of broken fortunes, the first as master, and the second as servant.' See ante, March 23, 1776, for Garrick's opinion of Johnson's 'taste in theatrical merit.'
[166] Johnson is speaking of the Respublicæ Elzevirianæ, either 36 or 62 volumes. 'It depends on every collector what and how much he will admit.' Ebert's Bibl. Dict. iii. 1571. See ante, ii. 7.
[167] See post, under Oct. 20, 1784, for 'the learned pig.'
[168] In the first edition Mme. de Sévigné's name is printed Sevigné, in the second Sevigé, in the third Sevigne. Authors and compositors last century troubled themselves little about French words.
[169] Milton had put the same complaint into Adam's mouth:—
'Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? …
… As my will
Concurred not to my being,' &c.
Paradise Lost, x. 743.
[170] See ante, April 10, 1775.
[171] Fielding in the Covent Garden Journal for June 2, 1752 (Works, x. 80), says of the difficulty of admission at the hospitals:—'The properest objects (those I mean who are most wretched and friendless) may as well aspire at a place at Court as at a place in the Hospital.'
[172] 'We were talking of Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton. "He was the only man," says Mr. Johnson quite seriously, "that did justice to my good breeding; and you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not observing the amazement of his hearers, "no man is so cautious not to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking; no man so steadily refuses preference on himself, or so willingly bestows it on another, as I do; no man holds so strongly as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the breach of it; yet people think me rude; but Barnard did me justice."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 36. On p. 258, Mrs. Piozzi writes:—'No one was indeed so attentive not to offend in all such sort of things as Dr. Johnson; nor so careful to maintain the ceremonies of life; and though he told Mr. Thrale once, that he had never sought to please till past thirty years old, considering the matter as hopeless, he had been always studious not to make enemies by apparent preference of himself.' See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 27, 1773, where Johnson said:—'Sir, I look upon myself as a very polite man.'
[173] The younger Colman in his boyhood met Johnson and Gibbon. 'Johnson was in his rusty brown and his black worsteds, and Gibbon in a suit of flowered velvet, with a bag and sword. He condescended, once or twice in the course of the evening, to talk with me;—the great historian was light and playful, suiting his matter to the capacity of the boy; but it was done more sua [sic]; still his mannerism prevailed; still he tapped his snuff-box; still he smirked, and smiled, and rounded his periods with the same air of good-breeding, as if he were conversing with men. His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was a round hole, nearly in the centre of his visage.' Random Records, i. 121.
[174] Samuel Sharp's Letters from Italy were published in 1766. See ante, ii. 57, note 2, for Baretti's reply to them.
[175] It may be observed, that Mr. Malone, in his very valuable edition of Shakspeare, has fully vindicated Dr. Johnson from the idle censures which the first of these notes has given rise to. The interpretation of the other passage, which Dr. Johnson allows to be disputable, he has clearly shown to be erroneous. BOSWELL. The first note is on the line in Hamlet, act v. sc. 2—
'And many such like as's of great charge.'
Johnson says:—'A quibble is intended between as the conditional particle, and ass the beast of burthen.' On this note Steevens remarked:—'Shakespeare has so many quibbles of his own to answer for, that there are those who think it hard he should be charged with others which perhaps he never thought of.' The second note is on the opening of Hamlet's soliloquy in act iii. sc. i. The line—
'To be, or not to be, that is the question,'
is thus paraphrased by Johnson:—'Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be.'
[176] See post, March 30, April 14 and 15, 1778, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 25.
[177] Wesley wrote on Jan. 21, 1767 (Journal, iii. 263):—'I had a conversation with an ingenious man who proved to a demonstration that it was the duty of every man that could to be "clothed in purple and fine linen," and to "fare sumptuously every day;" and that he would do abundantly more good hereby than he could do by "feeding the hungry and clothing the naked." O the depth of human understanding! What may not a man believe if he will?' Much the same argument Johnson, thirty-three years earlier, had introduced in one of his Debates (Works, xi. 349). He makes one of the speakers say:—'Our expenses are not all equally destructive; some, though the method of raising them be vexatious and oppressive, do not much impoverish the nation, because they are refunded by the extravagance and luxury of those who are retained in the pay of the court.' See post, March 23, 1783. The whole argument is nothing but Mandeville's doctrine of 'private vices, public benefits.' See post, April 15, 1778.
[178] See ante, iii. 24.
[179] Johnson no doubt refers to Walpole in the following passage (Works, viii. l37):—'Of one particular person, who has been at one time so popular as to be generally esteemed, and at another so formidable as to be universally detested, Mr. Savage observed that his acquisitions had been small, or that his capacity was narrow, and that the whole range of his mind was from obscenity to politicks, and from politicks to obscenity.' This passage is a curious comment on Pope's lines on Sir Robert—
'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power.'
Epilogue to the Satires, i. 29.
[180] Most likely Boswell himself. See ante, March 25, 1776, and post, April 10, 1778, for Johnson's dislike of questioning. See also ante, ii. 84, note 3.
[181] See ante, April 14, 1775.
[182] See ante, May 12, 1774.
[183] A Gallicism, which has it appears, with so many others, become vernacular in Scotland. The French call a pulpit, la chaire de vérité. CROKER.
[184] As a proof of Dr. Johnson's extraordinary powers of composition, it appears from the original manuscript of this excellent dissertation, of which he dictated the first eight paragraphs on the 10th of May, and the remainder on the 13th, that there are in the whole only seven corrections, or rather variations, and those not considerable. Such were at once the vigorous and accurate emanations of his mind. BOSWELL.
[185] It is curious to observe that Lord Thurlow has here, perhaps in compliment to North Britain, made use of a term of the Scotch Law, which to an English reader may require explanation. To qualify a wrong, is to point out and establish it. BOSWELL.
[186]
'Quaeque ipse miserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.'
'Which thing myself unhappy did behold,
Yea, and was no small part thereof.'
Morris, Aeneids, ii. 5.
[187] In the year 1770, in The False Alarm, Johnson attacked Wilkes with more than 'some asperity.' 'The character of the man,' he wrote, 'I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill of him, of whom no man speaks well.' He called him 'a retailer of sedition and obscenity;' and he said:—'We are now disputing … whether Middlesex shall be represented, or not, by a criminal from a gaol.' Works, vi. 156, 169, 177. In The North Briton, No. xii, Wilkes, quoting Johnson's definition of a pensioner, asks:—'Is the said Mr. Johnson a dependant? or is he a slave of state, hired by a stipend to obey his master? There is, according to him, no alternative.—As Mr. Johnson has, I think, failed in this account, may I, after so great an authority, venture at a short definition of so intricate a word? A pension then I would call a gratuity during the pleasure of the Prince for services performed, or expected to be performed, to himself, or to the state. Let us consider the celebrated Mr. Johnson, and a few other late pensioners in this light.'
[188] Boswell, in his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 70), mentions 'my old classical companion, Wilkes;' and adds, 'with whom I pray you to excuse my keeping company, he is so pleasant.'
[189] When Johnson was going to Auchinleck, Boswell begged him, in talking with his father, 'to avoid three topicks as to which they differed very widely; whiggism, presbyterianism, and—Sir John Pringle.' Boswell's Hebrides, Nov 2, 1773. See also ib. Aug 24. 'Pringle was President of the Royal Society—"who sat in Newton's chair, And wonder'd how the devil he got there."' J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 165. He was one of Franklin's friends (Franklin's Memoirs iii. III), and so was likely to be uncongenial to Johnson.
[190] No 22. CROKER. At this house 'Johnson owned that he always found a good dinner.' Post, April 15, 1778.
[191] This has been circulated as if actually said by Johnson; when the truth is, it was only supposed by me. BOSWELL.
[192] 'Don't let them be patriots,' he said to Mr. Hoole, when he asked him to collect a city Club. Post, April 6, 1781.
[193] See p. 7 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[194] 'Indifferent in his choice to sleep or die.' Addison's Cato, act v. sc. 1.
[195] See ante, i. 485.
[196] He was at this time 'employed by Congress as a private and confidential agent in England.' Dr. Franklin had arranged for letters to be sent to him, not by post but by private hand, under cover to his brother, Mr. Alderman Lee. Franklin's Memoirs, ii. 42, and iii. 415.
[197] When Wilkes the year before, during his mayoralty, had presented An Address, 'the King himself owned he had never seen so well-bred a Lord Mayor.' Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 484.
[198] Johnson's London, a Poem, v. 145. BOSWELL—
'How when competitors like these contend,
Can surly virtue hope to fix a friend.'
[199] See ante, ii. 154.
[200] Johnson had said much the same at a dinner in Edinburgh. See Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 10, 1773. See ante, March 15, 1776, and post, Sept. 21, 1777.
[201] 'To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.' The Rambler, No. 93.
[202] Foote told me that Johnson said of him, 'For loud obstreperous broadfaced mirth, I know not his equal.' BOSWELL.
[203] In Farquhar's Beaux-Stratagem, Scrub thus describes his duties: —'Of a Monday I drive the coach, of a Tuesday I drive the plough, on Wednesday I follow the hounds, a Thursday I dun the tenants, on Friday I go to market, on Saturday I draw warrants, and a Sunday I draw beer.' Act iii. sc. 3.
[204] See ante, i. 393, note 1.
[205] See post, April 10, 1778, and April 24, 1779.
[206] See ante, i. 216, note 2.
[207] See ante, March 20, 1776, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22.
[208] Dryden had been dead but thirty-six years when Johnson came to London.
[209] 'Owen MacSwinny, a buffoon; formerly director of the play-house.' Horace Walpole, Letters, i. 118. Walpole records one of his puns. 'Old Horace' had left the House of Commons to fight a duel, and at once 'returned, and was so little moved as to speak immediately upon the Cambrick Bill, which made Swinny say, "That it was a sign he was not ruffled."' Ib. p. 233. See also, ib. vi. 373 for one of his stories.
[210] A more amusing version of the story, is in Johnsoniana (ed. 1836, p. 413) on the authority of Mr. Fowke. '"So Sir," said Johnson to Cibber, "I find you know [knew?] Mr. Dryden?" "Know him? O Lord! I was as well acquainted with him as if he had been my own brother." "Then you can tell me some anecdotes of him?" "O yes, a thousand! Why we used to meet him continually at a club at Button's. I remember as well as if it were but yesterday, that when he came into the room in winter time, he used to go and sit by the fire in one corner; and in summer time he would always go and sit in the window." "Thus, Sir," said Johnson, "what with the corner of the fire in winter and the window in summer, you see that I got much information from Cibber of the manners and habits of Dryden.'" Johnson gives, in his Life of Dryden (Works, vii. 300), the information that he got from Swinney and Cibber. Dr. Warton, who had written on Pope, found in one of the poet's female-cousins a still more ignorant survivor. 'He had been taught to believe that she could furnish him with valuable information. Incited by all that eagerness which characterised him, he sat close to her, and enquired her consanguinity to Pope. "Pray, Sir," said she, "did not you write a book about my cousin Pope?" "Yes, madam." "They tell me t'was vastly clever. He wrote a great many plays, did not he?" "I have heard of only one attempt, Madam." "Oh no, I beg your pardon; that was Mr. Shakespeare; I always confound them."' Wooll's Warton, p. 394.
[211] Johnson told Malone that 'Cibber was much more ignorant even of matters relating to his own profession than he could well have conceived any man to be who had lived nearly sixty years with players, authors, and the most celebrated characters of the age.' Prior's Malone, p. 95. See ante, ii. 92.
[212] 'There are few,' wrote Goldsmith, 'who do not prefer a page of Montaigne or Colley Cibber, who candidly tell us what they thought of the world, and the world thought of them, to the more stately memoirs and transactions of Europe.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 43.
[213] Essay on Criticism, i. 66.
[214] 'Cibber wrote as bad Odes (as Garrick), but then Gibber wrote The Careless Husband, and his own Life, which both deserve immortality.' Walpole's Letters, v. 197. Pope (Imitations of Horace, II. i. 90), says:—
'All this may be; the people's voice is odd,
It is, and it is not, the voice of God.
To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,
And yet deny The Careless Husband praise,
Or say our fathers never broke a rule;
Why then, I say, the public is a fool.'
See ante, April 6, 1775.
[215] See page 402 of vol. i. BOSWELL.
[216] Milton's L'Allegro, 1. 36.
[217] 'CATESBY. My Liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken. RICHARD. Off with his head. So much for Buckingham.' Colley Gibber's Richard III, iv. I.
[218] _Ars Poetica, i. 128.
[219] My very pleasant friend himself, as well as others who remember old stories, will no doubt be surprised, when I observe that John Wilkes here shews himself to be of the WARBURTONIAN SCHOOL. It is nevertheless true, as appears from Dr. Hurd the Bishop of Worcester's very elegant commentary and notes on the 'Epistola ad Pisones.'
It is necessary to a fair consideration of the question, that the whole passage in which the words occur should be kept in view:
'Si quid inexpertum scenae committis, et audes
Personam formare novam, servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.
Difficile est propriè communia dicere: tuque
Rectiùs Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
Quàm si proferres ignota indictaque primus,
Publica materies privati juris erit, si
Non circa vilem patulumque moraberis orbem,
Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus
Interpres; nee desilies imitator in artum
Unde pedem proferre pudor vetat aut operis lex.'
The 'Commentary' thus illustrates it: 'But the formation of quite new characters is a work of great difficulty and hazard. For here there is no generally received and fixed archetype to work after, but every one judges of common right, according to the extent and comprehension of his own idea; therefore he advises to labour and refit old characters and subjects, particularly those made known and authorised by the practice of Homer and the Epick writers.'
The 'Note' is,
'Difficile EST PROPRIE COMMUNIA DICERE.' Lambin's Comment is, 'Communia hoc loco appellat Horatius argumenta fabularum à nullo adhuc tractata: et ita, quae cuivis exposita sunt et in medio quodammodo posita, quasi vacua et à nemine occupata.' And that this is the true meaning of communia is evidently fixed by the words ignota indictaque, which are explanatory of it; so that the sense given it in the commentary is unquestionably the right one. Yet, notwithstanding the clearness of the case, a late critick has this strange passage: 'Difficile quidem esse propriè communia dicere, hoc est, materiam vulgarem, notam et è medio petitam, ita immutare atque exornare, ut nova et scriptori propria videatur, ultra concedimus; et maximi procul dubio ponderis ista est observatio. Sed omnibus utrinque collatis, et tum difficilis, tum venusti, tam judicii quam ingenii ratione habitá, major videtur esse gloria fabulam formare penitùs novam, quàm veterem, utcunque mutatam, de novo exhibere. (Poet. Prael. v. ii. p. 164.) Where, having first put a wrong construction on the word comnmnia, he employs it to introduce an impertinent criticism. For where does the poet prefer the glory of refitting old subjects to that of inventing new ones? The contrary is implied in what he urges about the superiour difficulty of the latter, from which he dissuades his countrymen, only in respect of their abilities and inexperience in these matters; and in order to cultivate in them, which is the main view of the Epistle, a spirit of correctness, by sending them to the old subjects, treated by the Greek writers.'
For my own part (with all deference for Dr. Hurd, who thinks the case clear,) I consider the passage, 'Difficile est propriè communia dicere,' to be a crux for the criticks on Horace.
The explication which My Lord of Worcester treats with so much contempt, is nevertheless countenanced by authority which I find quoted by the learned Baxter in his edition of Horace: 'Difficile est propriè communia dicere, h.e. res vulgares disertis verbis enarrare, vel humile thema cum dignitate tractare. Difficile est communes res propriis explicare verbis. Vet. Schol.' I was much disappointed to find that the great critick, Dr. Bentley, has no note upon this very difficult passage, as from his vigorous and illuminated mind I should have expected to receive more satisfaction than I have yet had.
Sanadon thus treats of it: 'Propriè communia dicere; c'est à dire, qu'il n'est pas aisé de former à ces personnages d'imagination, des caractêres particuliers et cependant vraisemblables. Comme l'on a eté le maitre de les former tels qu'on a voulu, les fautes que l'on fait en cela sont moins pardonnables. C'est pourquoi Horace conseille de prendre toujours des sujets connus tels que sont par exemple ceux que l'on peut tirer des poèmes d'Homere.'
And Dacier observes upon it, 'Apres avoir marqué les deux qualités qu'il faut donner aux personnages qu'on invente, il conseille aux Poêtes tragiques, de n'user pas trop facilement de cette liberté quils ont d'en inventer, car il est três difficile de reussir dans ces nouveaux caractêres. Il est mal aisé, dit Horace, de traiter proprement, c'st à dire convenablement, des sujets communs; c'est à dire, des sujets inventés, et qui n'ont aucun fondement ni dans l'Histoire ni dans la Fable; et il les appelle communs, parce qu'ils sont en disposition à tout le monde, et que tout le monde a le droit de les inventer, et qu'ils sont, comme on dit, au premier occupant.' See his observations at large on this expression and the following.
After all, I cannot help entertaining some doubt whether the words, Difficile est propriè communia dicere, may not have been thrown in by Horace to form a separate article in a 'choice of difficulties' which a poet has to encounter, who chooses a new subject; in which case it must be uncertain which of the various explanations is the true one, and every reader has a right to decide as it may strike his own fancy. And even should the words be understood as they generally are, to be connected both with what goes before and what comes after, the exact sense cannot be absolutely ascertained; for instance, whether propriè is meant to signify in an appropriated manner, as Dr. Johnson here understands it, or, as it is often used by Cicero, with propriety, or elegantly. In short, it is a rare instance of a defect in perspicuity in an admirable writer, who with almost every species of excellence, is peculiarly remarkable for that quality. The length of this note perhaps requires an apology. Many of my readers, I doubt not, will admit that a critical discussion of a passage in a favourite classick is very engaging. BOSWELL. Boswell's French in this tedious note is left as he printed it.
[220] Johnson, after describing Settle's attack on Dryden, continues (Works, vii. 277):—'Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is the prevalence of fashion, that the man whose works have not yet been thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shows for fairs … might with truth have had inscribed upon his stone:—
"Here lies the Rival and Antagonist of Dryden."'
Pope introduces him in The Dunciad, i. 87, in the description of the
Lord Mayor's Show:—
'Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces,
Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners and broad faces.
Now night descending the proud scene was o'er,
But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.'
In the third book the ghost of Settle acts the part of guide in the
Elysian shade.
[221] Johnson implies, no doubt, that they were both Americans by birth. Trecothick was in the American trade, but he was not an American. Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 184, note. Of Beckford Walpole says:—'Under a jovial style of good humour he was tyrannic in Jamaica, his native country.' Ib. iv. 156. He came over to England when young and was educated in Westminster School. Stephens's Horne Tooke, ii. 278. Cowper describes 'a jocular altercation that passed when I was once in the gallery [of the House], between Mr. Rigby and the late Alderman Beckford. The latter was a very incorrect speaker, and the former, I imagine, not a very accurate scholar. He ventured, however, upon a quotation from Terence, and delivered it thus, Sine Scelere et Baccho friget venus. The Alderman interrupted him, was very severe upon his mistake, and restored Ceres to her place in the sentence. Mr. Rigby replied, that he was obliged to his worthy friend for teaching him Latin, and would take the first opportunity to return the favour by teaching him English.' Southey's Cowper, iii. 317. Lord Chatham, in the House of Lords, said of Trecothick:—'I do not know in office a more upright magistrate, nor in private life a worthier man.' Parl. Hist. xvi. 1101. See post, Sept. 23, 1777.
[222]
'Oft have I heard thee mourn the wretched lot
Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot,
Who, might calm reason credit idle tales,
By rancour forged where prejudice prevails,
Or starves at home, or practises through fear
Of starving arts which damn all conscience here.'
Churchill's Prophecy of Famine, Poems, i. 105.
[223] For Johnson's praise of Lichfield see ante, March 23, 1776. For the use of the word civility, see ante ii. 155.
[224] See ante, i. 447.
[225] See ante, April 18, 1775.
[226] See post, April 15, 1778.
[227] It would not become me to expatiate on this strong and pointed remark, in which a very great deal of meaning is condensed. BOSWELL.
[228] 'Mr. Wilkes's second political essay was an ironical dedication to the Earl of Bute of Ben Jonson's play, The Fall of Mortimer. "Let me entreat your Lordship," he wrote, "to assist your friend [Mr. Murphy] in perfecting the weak scenes of this tragedy, and from the crude labours of Ben Jonson and others to give us a complete play. It is the warmest wish of my heart that the Earl of Bute may speedily complete the story of Roger Mortimer."' Almon's Wilkes, i. 70, 86.
[229] Yet Wilkes within less than a year violently attacked Johnson in parliament. He said, 'The two famous doctors, Shebbeare and Johnson, are in this reign the state hirelings called pensioners.' Their names, he continued, 'disgraced the Civil List. They are the known pensioned advocates of despotism.' Parl. Hist. xix. 118. It is curious that Boswell does not mention this attack, and that Johnson a few months after it was made, speaking of himself and Wilkes, said:—'The contest is now over.' Post, Sept 21, 1777.
[230] The next day he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'For my part, I begin to settle and keep company with grave aldermen. I dined yesterday in the Poultry with Mr. Alderman Wilkes, and Mr. Alderman Lee, and Counsellor Lee, his brother. There sat you the while, so sober, with your W——'s and your H——'s, and my aunt and her turnspit; and when they are gone, you think by chance on Johnson, what is he doing? What should he be doing? He is breaking jokes with Jack Wilkes upon the Scots. Such, Madam, are the vicissitudes of things.' Piozzi Letters, i. 325.
[231] See ante, March 20, 1776.
[232] If he had said this on a former occasion to a lady, he said it also on a latter occasion to a gentleman—Mr. Spottiswoode. Post, April 28, 1778. Moreover, Miss Burney records in 1778, that when Johnson was telling about Bet Flint (post, May 8, 1781) and other strange characters whom he had known, 'Mrs. Thrale said, "I wonder, Sir, you never went to see Mrs. Rudd among the rest." "Why, Madam, I believe I should," said he, "if it was not for the newspapers; but I am prevented many frolics that I should like very well, since I am become such a theme for the papers."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 90.
[233] Pope, Essay on Man, ii. 2.
[234] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 14 (Tuesday):—'——goes away on Thursday, very well satisfied with his journey. Some great men have promised to obtain him a place, and then a fig for my father and his new wife.' Piozzi Letters, i. 324. He is writing no doubt of Boswell; yet, as Lord Auchinleck had been married more than six years, it is odd his wife should be called new. Boswell, a year earlier, wrote to Temple of his hopes from Lord Pembroke:—'How happy should I be to get an independency by my own influence while my father is alive!' Letters of Boswell, p. 182. Johnson, in a second letter to Mrs. Thrale, written two days after Boswell left, says:—'B—— went away on Thursday night, with no great inclination to travel northward; but who can contend with destiny? … He carries with him two or three good resolutions; I hope they will not mould upon the road.' Piozzi Letters, i. 333.
[235] 1 Corinthians, xiii. 5.
[236] This passage, which is found in Act iii, is not in the acting copy of Douglas.
[237] Malone was one of these gentlemen. See post, under June 30, 1784. Reynolds, after saying that eagerness for victory often led Johnson into acts of rudeness, while 'he was not thus strenuous for victory with his intimates in tête-à-tête conversations when there were no witnesses,' adds:—'Were I to write the Life of Dr. Johnson I would labour this point, to separate his conduct that proceeded from his passions, and what proceeded from his reason, from his natural disposition seen in his quiet hours.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 462.
[238] These words must have been in the other copy. They are not in that which was preferred. BOSWELL.
[239] On June 3 he wrote that he was suffering from 'a very serious and troublesome fit of the gout. I enjoy all the dignity of lameness. I receive ladies and dismiss them sitting. Painful pre-eminence.' Piozzi Letters, i. 337. 'Painful pre-eminence' comes from Addison's Cato, act iii. sc. 5. Pope, in his Essay on Man, iv. 267, borrows the phrase:—
'Painful pre-eminence! yourself to view,
Above life's weakness and its comforts too.'
It is humorously introduced into the Rolliad in the description of the
Speaker:—
'There Cornewall sits, and oh! unhappy fate!
Must sit for ever through the long debate.
Painful pre-eminence! he hears, 'tis true,
Fox, North, and Burke, but hears Sir Joseph too.'
[240] Dean Stanley (Memorials of Westminster Abbey, p. 297) says:— 'One expression at least has passed from the inscription into the proverbial Latin of mankind—
"Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit."'
In a note he adds:—'Professor Conington calls my attention to the fact that, if this were a genuine classical expression, it would be ornaret. The slight mistake proves that it is Johnson's own.' The mistake, of course, is the Dean's and the Professor's, who did not take the trouble to ascertain what Johnson had really written. If we may trust Cradock, Johnson here gave in a Latin form what he had already said in English. 'When a bookseller ventured to say something rather slightingly of Dr. Goldsmith, Johnson retorted:—"Sir, Goldsmith never touches any subject but he adorns it." Once when I found the Doctor very low at his chambers I related this circumstance to him, and it instantly proved a cordial.' Cradock's Memoirs, i. 231.
[241] According to Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, i. 1), he was born on Nov. 10, 1728. There is a passage in Goldsmith's Bee, No. 2, which leads me to think that he himself held Nov. 12 as his birth-day. He says; 'I shall be sixty-two the twelfth of next November.' Now, as The Bee was published in October 1759, he would be, not sixty-two, but just half that number—thirty-one on his next birth-day. It is scarcely likely that he selected the number and the date at random.
[242] Reynolds chose the spot in Westminster Abbey where the monument should stand. Northcote's Reynolds, i. 326.
[243] For A. Chamier, see ante, i. 478, note 1; and post, April 9, 1778: for P. Metcalfe, post, under Dec. 20, 1782. W. Vachell seems only known to fame as having signed this Round Robin, and attended Sir Joshua's funeral. Who Tho. Franklin was I cannot learn. He certainly was not Thomas Francklin, D.D., the Professor of Greek at Cambridge and translator of Sophocles and Lucian, mentioned post, end of 1780. The Rev. Dr. Luard, the Registrar of that University, has kindly compared for me six of his signatures ranging from 1739 to 1770. In each of these the c is very distinct, while the writing is unlike the signature in the Round Robin.
[244] Horace Walpole wrote in Dec. of this year:—'The conversation of many courtiers was openly in favour of arbitrary power. Lord Huntingdon and Dr. Barnard, who was promised an Irish Bishopric, held such discourse publicly.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 91.
[245] He however upon seeing Dr. Warton's name to the suggestion, that the Epitaph should be in English, observed to Sir Joshua, 'I wonder that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool.' He said too, 'I should have thought Mund Burke would have had more sense.' Mr. Langton, who was one of the company at Sir Joshua's, like a sturdy scholar, resolutely refused to sign the Round Robin. The Epitaph is engraved upon Dr. Goldsmith's monument without any alteration. At another time, when somebody endeavoured to argue in favour of its being in English, Johnson said, 'The language of the country of which a learned man was a native, is not the language fit for his epitaph, which should be in ancient and permanent language. Consider, Sir; how you should feel, were you to find at Rotterdam an epitaph upon Erasmus in Dutch!' For my own part I think it would be best to have Epitaphs written both in a learned language, and in the language of the country; so that they might have the advantage of being more universally understood, and at the same time be secured of classical stability. I cannot, however, but be of opinion, that it is not sufficiently discriminative. Applying to Goldsmith equally the epithets of 'Poetae, Historici, Physici,' is surely not right; for as to his claim to the last of those epithets, I have heard Johnson himself say, 'Goldsmith, Sir, will give us a very fine book upon the subject; but if he can distinguish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of his knowledge of natural history.' His book is indeed an excellent performance, though in some instances he appears to have trusted too much to Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the science on which he wrote so admirably. For instance, he tells us that the cow sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable errour, which Goldsmith has faithfully transferred into his book. It is wonderful that Buffon, who lived so much in the country, at his noble seat, should have fallen into such a blunder. I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer. BOSWELL. Goldsmith says:—'At three years old the cow sheds its horns and new ones arise in their place, which continue as long as it lives.' Animated Nature, iii. 12. This statement remains in the second edition. Johnson said that the epitaph on Sir J. Macdonald 'should have been in Latin, as everything intended to be universal and permanent should be.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 5, 1773. He treated the notion of an English inscription to Smollett 'with great contempt, saying, "an English inscription would be a disgrace to Dr. Smollett."' Ib. Oct. 28, 1773.
[246] Beside this Latin Epitaph, Johnson honoured the memory of his friend Goldsmith with a short one in Greek. See ante, July 5, 1774. BOSWELL.
[247] See ante, Oct. 24, 1775.
[248] Upon a settlement of our account of expences on a Tour to the Hebrides, there was a balance due to me, which Dr. Johnson chose to discharge by sending books. BOSWELL.
[249] See post, under Nov. 29, 1777.
[250] Baretti told me that Johnson complained of my writing very long letters to him when I was upon the continent; which was most certainly true; but it seems my friend did not remember it. BOSWELL.
[251] See ante, iii. 27.
[252] See ante, i. 446, for Johnson's remedies against melancholy.
[253] It was not 'last year' but on June 22, 1772, that the negro, James Somerset—who had been brought to England by his master, had escaped from him, had been seized, and confined in irons on board a ship in The Thames that was bound for Jamaica, and had been brought on a writ of Habeas Corpus before the Court of King's Bench was discharged by Lord Mansfield. Howell's State Trials, xx. 79, and Lofft's Reports, 1772, p. 1. 'Lord Mansfield,' writes Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chief Justices, ii. 418), 'first established the grand doctrine that the air of England is too pure to be breathed by a slave.' According to Lord Campbell, Mansfield's judgment thus ended:—'The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it. Every man who comes into England is entitled to the protection of English law, whatever oppression he may heretofore have suffered, and whatever may be the colour of his skin:
'"Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses."
'Let the negro be discharged.'
Where Lord Campbell found this speech, that is to say if he did not put it together himself, I cannot guess. Mansfield's judgment was very brief. He says in the conclusion:—'The only question before us is, whether the cause on the return [to the writ of habeas corpus] is sufficient. If it is, the negro must be remanded; if it is not, he must be discharged. Accordingly the return states that the slave departed, and refused to serve; whereupon he was kept to be sold abroad. So high an act of dominion must be recognised by the law of the country where it is used. The power of a master over his slave has been extremely different in different countries. The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political…. It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. Whatever inconveniences therefore may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.' Lofft's Reports, 1772, p. 19. 'The judgment of the court,' says Broom (Constitutional Law, 1885, p. 99), 'was delivered by Lord Mansfield, C.J., after some delay, and with evident reluctance.' The passage about the air of England that Campbell puts into Mansfield's mouth is found in Mr. Hargrave's argument on May 14, 1772, where he speaks of England as 'a soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to breathe in.' Lofft's Reports, p. 2. Mr. Dunning replied:—'Let me take notice, neither the air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe in, nor the laws of England have rejected servitude.' Ib. p. 12. Serjeant Davy rejoined:—'It has been asserted, and is now repeated by me, this air is too pure for a slave to breathe in. I trust I shall not quit this court without certain conviction of the truth of that assertion.' Ib. p. 17. Lord Mansfield said nothing about the air. The line from Virgil, with which Lord Campbell makes Mansfield's speech end, was 'the happily chosen motto' to Maclaurin's published argument for the negro; Joseph Knight, post, under Nov. 29, 1777.
[254] The son of Johnson's old friend, Mr. William Drummond. (See vol. ii. pp. 26-29.) He was a young man of such distinguished merit, that he was nominated to one of the medical professorships in the College of Edinburgh without solicitation, while he was at Naples. Having other views, he did not accept of the honour, and soon afterwards died. BOSWELL.
[255] In the third and subsequent editions the date is wrongly given as the 16th.
[256] A Florentine nobleman, mentioned by Johnson in his Notes of his Tour in France [ante, Oct. 18, 1775]. I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with him in London, in the spring of this year. BOSWELL. Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson from Bath on May 16:—'Count Manucci would wait seven years to come with you; so do not disappoint the man, but bring him along with you. His delight in your company is like Boniface's exultation when the squire speaks Latin; for understand you he certainly cannot.' Piozzi Letters, i. 328. It was not the squire, but the priest, Foigard, who by his Latin did Boniface good. The Beaux Strategem, act iii. sc. 2.
[257] Pr. and Med. p. 151.
[258] St. James, i. 17.
[259] See ante, ii. 175. Seven and even eight years later Paterson was still a student in need of Johnson's recommendation. Post, June 2, 1783, and April 5, 1784.
[260] See ante, p. 58.
[261] Why his Lordship uses the epithet pleasantly, when speaking of a grave piece of reasoning, I cannot conceive. But different men have different notions of pleasantry. I happened to sit by a gentleman one evening at the Opera-house in London, who, at the moment when Medea appeared to be in great agony at the thought of killing her children, turned to me with a smile, and said, 'funny enough.' BOSWELL.
[262] Dr. Johnson afterwards told me, that he was of opinion that a clergyman had this right. BOSWELL.
[263] Johnson, nearly three years earlier, had said of Granger:—'The dog is a Whig. I do not like much to see a Whig in any dress; but I hate to see a Whig in a parson's gown.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 24, 1773.
[264] 'I did my utmost,' wrote Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 168), 'to dissuade Mr. Granger from the dedication, and took especial pains to get my virtues left out of the question.'
[265]
'In moderation placing all my glory,
While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.'
Pope, Imitations of Horace, Bk. ii Sat. I. 1. 67.
[266] 'One of the dippers at Brighthelmstone, seeing Mr. Johnson swim in the year 1766, said:—"Why, Sir, you must have been a stout-hearted gentleman forty years ago."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 113. Johnson, in his verses entitled, In Rivum a Mola Stoana Lichfeldiæ diffluentem (Works, i. 163), writes:—
'Errat adhuc vitreus per prata virentia rivus,
Quo toties lavi membra tenella puer;
Hic delusa rudi frustrabar brachia motu,
Dum docuit blanda voce natare pater.'
[267] For this and Dr. Johnson's other letters to Mr. Levett, I am indebted to my old acquaintance Mr. Nathaniel Thomas, whose worth and ingenuity have been long known to a respectable, though not a wide circle; and whose collection of medals would do credit to persons of greater opulence. BOSWELL.
[268] Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale shew the difference between modern Brighton and the Brighthelmstone of his days. Thus he writes:— 'Ashbourne, Sept. 27, 1777. I know not when I shall write again, now you are going to the world's end [i.e. Brighton]. Extra anni solisque vias, where the post will be a long time in reaching you. I shall, notwithstanding all distance, continue to think on you.' Piozzi Letters, i. 387. 'Oct. 6, 1777. Methinks you are now a great way off; and if I come, I have a great way to come to you; and then the sea is so cold, and the rooms are so dull; yet I do love to hear the sea roar and my mistress talk—For when she talks, ye gods! how she will talk. I wish I were with you, but we are now near half the length of England asunder. It is frightful to think how much time must pass between writing this letter and receiving an answer, if any answer were necessary.' Ib. ii. 2.
[269] Boswell wrote to Temple on Nov. 3, 1780:—'I could not help smiling at the expostulation which you suggest to me to try with my father. It would do admirably with some fathers; but it would make mine much worse, for he cannot bear that his son should talk with him as a man. I can only lament his unmelting coldness to my wife and children, for I fear it is hopeless to think of his ever being more affectionate towards them. Yet it must be acknowledged that his paying £1000 of my debt some years ago was a large bounty. He allows me £300 a year.' Letters of Boswell, p. 255.
[270] See ante, Aug. 27, 1775, note.
[271] See ante, p. 48, note 4.
[272] 'He said to me often that the time he spent in this Tour was the pleasantest part of his life, and asked me if I would lose the recollection of it for five hundred pounds.' Boswell's Hebrides, under Nov. 22, 1773.
[273] Chap. viii. 10. A translation of this work is in Bibliotheca Pastorum, ed. J. Ruskin, vol. i.
[274] 'The chief cause of my deficiency has been a life immethodical and unsettled, which breaks all purposes, confounds and suppresses memory, and perhaps leaves too much leisure to imagination.' Pr. and Med. p. 136.
[275] Johnson wrote to Boswell (ante, June 12, 1774):—'I have stipulated twenty-five for you to give in your own name.' The book was published early in 1775. On Feb. 25, 1775, he wrote:—'I am sorry that I could get no books for my friends in Scotland. Mr. Strahan has at last promised to send two dozen to you.' It is strange that not far short of two years passed before the books were sent.
[276] Boswell had 'expressed his extreme aversion to his father's second marriage.' Letters of Boswell, p. 255—On Sept. 2, 1775, he thus described his step-mother:—'His wife, whom in my conscience I cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I don't know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet.' Ib. p. 216.
[277] See ante, Jan. 19 and May 6, 1775.
[278] See ante, p. 86.
[279] See ante, May 27, 1775.
[280] Macquarry was the chief of Ulva's Isle. 'He told us,' writes Boswell, 'his family had possessed Ulva for nine hundred years; but I was distressed to hear that it was soon to be sold for payment of his debts.' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct 16, 1773.
[281] See ante, March 24, 1776.
[282] Mrs. Thrale gives a long but scarcely credible account of her quarrel with Baretti. It is very unlikely that he used to say to her eldest daughter 'that, if her mother died in a lying-in which happened while he lived here, he hoped Mr. Thrale would marry Miss Whitbred, who would be a pretty companion for her, and not tyrannical and overbearing like me.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 336. No doubt in 1788 he attacked her brutally (see ante, p. 49). 'I could not have suspected him,' wrote Miss Burney, 'of a bitterness of invective so cruel, so ferocious.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, iv. 185. The attack was provoked. Mrs. Piozzi, in January, 1788, published one of Johnson's letters, in which he wrote—at all events she says he wrote:—'Poor B——i! do not quarrel with him; to neglect him a little will be sufficient. He means only to be frank, and manly, and independent, and perhaps, as you say, a little wise. To be frank he thinks is to be cynical, and to be independent is to be rude. Forgive him, dearest lady, the rather because of his misbehaviour I am afraid he learnt part of me. I hope to set him hereafter a better example.' Piozzi Letters, i. 277. Malone, in 1789, speaks of 'the roughness for which Baretti was formerly distinguished.' Prior's Malone, p. 391. Mrs. Thrale thus describes his departure: 'My daughter kept on telling me that Mr. Baretti was grown very old and very cross, would not look at her exercises, but said he would leave this house soon, for it was no better than Pandæmonium. The next day he packed up his cloke-bag, which he had not done for three years, and sent it to town; and while we were wondering what he would say about it at breakfast, he was walking to London himself, without taking leave of any one person, except it may be the girl, who owns they had much talk, in the course of which he expressed great aversion to me and even to her, who, [sic] he said, he once thought well of.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 339. Baretti, in the Eur. Mag. xiii. 398, told his story. He said:—'Madam took it into her head to give herself airs, and treat me with some coldness and superciliousness. I did not hesitate to set down at breakfast my dish of tea not half drank, go for my hat and stick that lay in the corner of the room, turn my back to the house insalutato hospite, and walk away to London without uttering a syllable.' In a marginal note on Piozzi Letters, i. 338, he says he left Streatham on June 4, 1776. 'I had,' he writes, 'by that time been in a manner one of the family during six years and a-half. Johnson had made me hope that Thrale would at last give me an annuity for my pains, but, never receiving a shilling from him or from her, I grew tired at last, and on some provocation from her left them abruptly.' It should seem that he afterwards made it up with them, for in a note on vol. ii. p. 191, he says of the day of Mr. Thrale's death, 'Johnson and I, and many other friends, were to dine with him that day.' The rest of the note, at all events, is inaccurate, for he says that 'Mrs. Thrale imparted to Johnson the news [of her husband's death],' whereas Johnson saw him die.
[283] Mrs. Piozzi says that this money was given to Baretti as a consolation for the loss of the Italian tour (ante, iii. 6). Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 337.
[284] The Duke of York was present when Foote had the accident by which he lost his leg (ante, ii. 95). Moved by compassion, he obtained for him from the King a royal patent for performances at the Haymarket from May 14 to Sept. 14 in every year. He played but thrice after his retirement. Forster's Essays, ii. 400, 435.
[285] Strahan showed greater sagacity about Gibbon's Decline and Fall, which had been declined by Elmsly. 'So moderate were our hopes,' writes Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 223), 'that the original impression had been stinted to five hundred, till the number was doubled by the prophetic taste of Mr. Strahan.' Carrick called Strahan 'rather an obtuse man.' Post, April 9 1778.
[286] See post, Sept. 19, 1777, and April 20, 1781.
[287] Johnson, I believe, at this time suffered less than usual from despondency. See ante, iii. 25, note 1. The passage in which these words are found applies to one day only. It is as follows:—'March 28. This day is Good Friday. It is likewise the day on which my poor Tetty was taken from me. My thoughts were disturbed in bed. I remembered that it was my wife's dying day, and begged pardon for all our sins, and commended her; but resolved to mix little of my own sorrows or cares with the great solemnity. Having taken only tea without milk I went to church; had time before service to commend my wife, and wished to join quietly in the service, but I did not hear well, and my mind grew unsettled and perplexed. Having rested ill in the night I slumbered at the sermon, which, I think, I could not as I sat perfectly hear…. At night I had some ease. L.D. [Laus Deo] I had prayed for pardon and peace.' Pr. and Med. p. 153. Hawkins, however (Life, p. 532), says, perhaps with considerable exaggeration, that at this time, 'he sunk into indolence, till his faculties seemed to be impaired; deafness grew upon him; long intervals of mental absence interrupted his conversation, and it was difficult to engage his attention to any subject. His friends concluded that his lamp was emitting its last rays, but the lapse of a short period gave them ample proofs to the contrary.' The proofs were The Lives of the Poets. Johnson himself says of this time:—'Days and months pass in a dream; and I am afraid that my memory grows less tenacious, and my observation less attentive.' Pr. and Med. 160.
[288]
'Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.'
Pope's Essay on Man, i. 99.
[289] '"I inherited," said Johnson, "a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober."' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 16, 1773. See ante, i. 65, and post, Sept. 20, 1777.
[290] Pr. and Med. p. 155. BOSWELL.
[291] Pr. and Med. p. 158. BOSWELL.
[292] He continues:—'I passed the afternoon with such calm gladness of mind as it is very long since I felt before. I passed the night in such sweet uninterrupted sleep as I have not known since I slept at Fort Augustus.' See post, Nov. 21, 1778, where in a letter to Boswell he says:—'The best night that I have had these twenty years was at Fort Augustus.' In 1767 he mentions (Pr. and Med. p. 73) 'a sudden relief he once had by a good night's rest in Fetter Lane,' where he had lived many years before. His good nights must have been rare indeed.
[293] Bishop Percy says that he handed over to Johnson various memoranda which he had received from 'Goldsmith's brother and others of his family, to afford materials for a Life of Goldsmith, which Johnson was to write and publish for their benefit. But he utterly forgot them and the subject.' Prior successfully defends Johnson against the charge that he did not include Goldsmith's Life among the Lives of the Poets. 'The copy-right of She Stoops to Conquer was the property of Carnan the bookseller (surviving partner of F. Newbery); and Carnan being "a most impracticable man and at variance with all his brethren," in the words of Malone to the Bishop, he refused his assent, and the project for the time fell to the ground.' But Percy clearly implies that it was a separate work and not one of the Lives that Johnson had undertaken. See Prior's Goldsmith, Preface, p. x. Malone, in a note on Boswell's letter of July 9, 1777, says:—'I collected some materials for a Life of Goldsmith, by Johnson's desire.' He goes on to mention the quarrel with Carnan. It should seem then that Johnson was gathering materials for Goldsmith's Life before the Lives of the Poets were projected; that later on he intended to include it in that series, but being thwarted by Carnan that he did nothing.
[294] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 24, 1773.
[295] 'I have often desired him not to call me Goldy.' Ib. Oct. 14.
[296] 'The Duke of Argyle was obliging enough to mount Dr. Johnson on a stately steed from his grace's stable. My friend was highly pleased, and Joseph [Boswell's Bohemian servant] said, "He now looks like a bishop."' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 26.
[297] See ante, ii. 196.
[298] Even Burke falls into the vulgarism of 'mutual friend.' See his Correspondence, i. 196, ii. 251. Goldsmith also writes of 'mutual acquaintance.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 48.
[299] He means to imply, I suppose, that Johnson was the father of plantations. See ante, under Feb. 7, 1775. note.
[300] For a character of this very amiable man, see Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 36. [Aug. 17.] BOSWELL.
[301] By the then course of the post, my long letter of the 14th had not yet reached him. BOSWELL.
[302] History of Philip the Second. BOSWELL.
[303] See ante, Jan. 21, 1775.
[304] See ante, iii. 48.
[305] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Jan. 15, 1777, that he had had about twelve ounces of blood taken, and then about ten more, and that another bleeding was to follow. 'Yet I do not make it a matter of much form. I was to-day at Mrs. Gardiner's. When I have bled to-morrow, I will not give up Langton nor Paradise. But I beg that you will fetch me away on Friday. I do not know but clearer air may do me good; but whether the air be clear or dark, let me come to you.' Piozzi Letters, i. 344. See post, Sept. 16, 1777, note.
[306] See ante, i. 411, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 24, 1773.
[307] Johnson tried in vain to buy this book at Aberdeen. Ib. Aug. 23.
[308] See ante, May 12, 1775.
[309] No doubt her Miscellanies. Ante, ii. 25.
[310] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22.
[311] John_son_ is the most common English formation of the Sirname from John; John_ston_ the Scotch. My illustrious friend observed that many North Britons pronounced his name in their own way. BOSWELL. Boswell (Hebrides, Oct. 21, 1773) tells of one Lochbuy who, 'being told that Dr. Johnson did not hear well, bawled out to him, "Are you of the Johnstons of Glencro, or of Ardnamurchan?"'
[312] See post, under Dec. 24, 1783.
[313] Johnson's old amanuensis. Ante, i. 187. Johnson described him as 'a man of great learning.' Croker's Boswell, p. 654.
[314] On account of their differing from him as to religion and politicks. BOSWELL. See post, April 13, 1778. Mr. Croker says that 'the Club had, as its records show, for many of his latter years very little of his company.'
[315] See ante, i. 225 note 2, July 4, 1774, and March 20, 1776.
[316] Boswell was no reader. 'I don't believe,' Johnson once said to him, 'you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable yourself to borrow more.' Ante, April 16, 1775. Boswell wrote to Temple on March 18, 1775:—'I have a kind of impotency of study.' Two months later he wrote:—'I have promised to Dr. Johnson to read when I get to Scotland, and to keep an account of what I read. I shall let you know how I go on. My mind must be nourished.' Letters of Boswell, pp. 181, 195.
[317] Chesterfield's Letters to his Son were published in 1774, and his Miscellaneous Works, together with Memoirs and Letters to his Friends, early in 1777.
[318] 'Whatso it is, the Danaan folk, yea gift-bearing I fear.' Morris, Æneids, ii. 49.
[319] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on March 19, 1777:—'You are all young, and gay, and easy; but I have miserable nights, and know not how to make them better; but I shift pretty well a-days, and so have at you all at Dr. Burney's to-morrow.' Piozzi Letters, i. 345.
[320] A twelfth was born next year. See post, July 3, 1778.
[321] It was March 29.
[322] Pr. and Med. p. 155. BOSWELL
[323] See ante, i. 341, note 3.
[324] See ante, i. 439.
[325] Johnson's moderation in demanding so small a sum is extraordinary. Had he asked one thousand, or even fifteen hundred guineas, the booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would doubtless have readily given it. They have probably got five thousand guineas by this work in the course of twenty-five years. MALONE.
[326] See post, beginning of 1781.
[327] See ante, ii. 272, note 2.
[328] Mr. Joseph Cooper Walker, of the Treasury, Dublin, who obligingly communicated to me this and a former letter from Dr. Johnson to the same gentleman (for which see vol. i. p. 321), writes to me as follows: —'Perhaps it would gratify you to have some account of Mr. O'Connor. He is an amiable, learned, venerable old gentleman, of an independent fortune, who lives at Belanagar, in the county of Roscommon; he is an admired writer, and Member of the Irish Academy.—The above Letter is alluded to in the Preface to the 2nd edit, of his Dissert, p. 3.'—Mr. O'Connor afterwards died at the age of eighty-two. See a well-drawn character of him in the Gent. Mag. for August 1791. BOSWELL.
[329] Mr. Croker shows good reason for believing that in the original letter this parenthesis stood:—'if such there were.'
[330] See ante, i. 292.
[331] 'Johnson had not heard of Pearce's Sermons, which I wondered at, considering that he wrote all the Life published by the Chaplain Derby, except what his Lordship wrote himself.' Letters of Boswell, p. 242. See ante, March 20, 1776.
[332] Boswell, it seems, is here quoting himself. See his Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 201 (Sept. 13, 1773), where, however, he lays the emphasis differently, writing 'fervour of loyalty.'
[333] 'An old acquaintance' of the Bishop says that 'he struggled hard ten years ago to resign his Bishopric and the Deanery of Westminster, in which our gracious King was willing to gratify him; but upon a consultation of the Bishops they thought it could not be done with propriety; yet he was permitted to resign the Deanery.' Gent. Mag. 1775, p. 421.
[334] 'This person, it is said, was a stay-maker, but being a man of wit and parts he betook himself to study, and at a time when the discipline of the inns of court was scandalously lax, got himself called to the Bar, and practised at the quarter-sessions under me, but with little success. He became the conductor of a paper called The Public Ledger and a writer for the stage, in which he met with some encouragement, till it was insinuated that he was a pensioner of the minister, and therefore a fit object of patriotic vengeance.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 518. See ante, ii. 48 note, and post, 1784, in Mr. Nichols's account of Johnson's last days.
[335] 'This address had the desired effect. The play was well received.' Murphy's Garrick, p. 302. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield, 'Lucy [his step-daughter] thinks nothing of my prologue for Kelly, and says she has always disowned it.' Piozzi Letters, i. 352.
[336] It was composed at a time when Savage was generally without lodging, and often without meat. Much of it was written with pen and ink that were borrowed, on paper that had been picked up in the streets. The unhappy poet 'was obliged to submit himself wholly to the players, and admit with whatever reluctance the emendations of Mr. Cibber, which he always considered as the disgrace of his performance.' When it was brought out, he himself took the part of Overbury. 'He was so much ashamed of having been reduced to appear as a player, that he always blotted out his name from the list when a copy of his tragedy was to be shown to his friends.' Johnson's Works, viii. 110-112.
[337] It was not at Drury-lane, but at Covent Garden theatre, that it was acted. MALONE.
[338] Part First, Chap 4. BOSWELL. See ante ii. 225.
[339] Life of Richard Savage, by Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL.
[340] See ante, i. 387, and post, May 17, 1783.
[341] Sheridan joined the Literary Club in March, 1777. The Rivals and The Duenna were brought out in 1775; The Trip to Scarborough on Feb. 24, 1777, and The School for Scandal in the following May. Moore (Life of Sheridan, i. 168), speaking of The Duenna, says, 'The run of this opera has, I believe, no parallel in the annals of the drama. Sixty-three nights was the career of The Beggar's Opera; but The Duenna was acted no less than seventy-five times during the season.' The Trip to Scarborough was a failure. Johnson, therefore, doubtless referred to The Rivals and The Duenna.
[342] The date is wrongly given. Boswell says that he wrote again on June 23 (post, p. 120), and Johnson's letter of June 28 is in answer to both letters. The right date is perhaps June 9.
[343] See Boswell's Hebrides, under Nov. 11, 1773.
[344] See pp. 29, 30, of this volume. BOSWELL.
[345] Johnson, describing 'the fond intimacy' of Quin and Thomson, says (Works, viii. 374):—'The commencement of this benevolence is very honourable to Quin, who is reported to have delivered Thomson, then known to him only for his genius, from an arrest by a very considerable present; and its continuance is honourable to both, for friendship is not always the sequel of obligation.'
[346] See ante, ii. 63, and post, June 18, 1778.
[347] Formerly Sub-preceptor to his present Majesty, and afterwards a Commissioner of Excise. MALONE.
[348] The physician and poet. He died in 1779.
[349] Boswell nine years earlier (ante, ii. 63) had heard Johnson accuse Thomson of gross sensuality.
[350] 'Savage, who lived much with Thomson, once told me he heard a lady remarking that she could gather from his works three parts of his character, that he was a great lover, a great swimmer, and rigorously abstinent; but, said Savage, he knows not any love but that of the sex; he was perhaps never in cold water in his life; and he indulges himself in all the luxury that comes within his reach.' Johnson's Works, viii. 377.
[351] Dr. Johnson was not the editor of this Collection of The English Poets; he merely furnished the biographical prefaces. MALONE. See post, Sept. 14, 1777.
[352] See ante, under April 18, 1775.
[353] One letter he seems to have sent to him from this spot. See ante, ii. 3, note 1.
[354] Dr. Johnson had himself talked of our seeing Carlisle together. High was a favourite word of his to denote a person of rank. He said to me, 'Sir, I believe we may at the house of a Roman Catholick lady in Cumberland; a high lady, Sir.' I afterwards discovered he meant Mrs. Strickland, sister of Charles Townley, Esq., whose very noble collection of pictures is not more to be admired, than his extraordinary and polite readiness in shewing it, which I and several of my friends have agreeably experienced. They who are possessed of valuable stores of gratification to persons of taste, should exercise their benevolence in imparting the pleasure. Grateful acknowledgments are due to Welbore Ellis Agar, Esq., for the liberal access which he is pleased to allow to his exquisite collection of pictures. BOSWELL.
[355] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 11, 1773.
[356] It is no doubt, on account of its brevity that Boswell in speaking of it writes:—'What is called The Life.'
[357] See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct, 29, 1773.
[358] See ante, under Feb. 7, 1775.
[359] See post, p. 139.
[360] See ante, i. 494.
[361] From Prior's imitation of Gualterus Danistonus ad Amicos; the poem mentioned by Boswell in his Hebrides, Aug. 18, 1773.
[362] Copy is manuscript for printing.
[363] Hawkins (Life, p. 521) says that the jury did not at the trial recommend Dodd to mercy. To one of the petitions 'Mrs. Dodd first got the hands of the jury that found the bill against her husband, and after that, as it is supposed, of the jury that tried him.' Ib. p. 527. He says that the public were at first very little interested in his fate, 'but by various artifices, and particularly the insertion of his name in public papers, with such palliatives as he and his friends could invent, never with the epithet of unfortunate, they were betrayed into such an enthusiastic commiseration of his case as would have led a stranger to believe that himself had been no accessory to his distresses, but that they were the inflictions of Providence.' Ib. p. 520. Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor on May 19:—'Poor Dodd was sentenced last week…. I am afraid he will suffer. The clergy seem not to be his friends. The populace, that was extremely clamorous against him, begins to pity him. Notes and Queries, 6th S., v. 423.
[364] Horace Walpole says 'the criminal was raised to the dignity of a confessor in the eyes of the people—but an inexorable judge had already pronounced his doom. Lord Mansfield, who never felt pity, and never relented unless terrified, had indecently declared for execution even before the judges had given their opinion. An incident that seemed favourable weighed down the vigorous [qu. rigorous] scale. The Common Council had presented a petition for mercy to the king. Lord Mansfield, who hated the popular party as much as he loved severity, was not likely to be moved by such intercessors. At Court it grew the language that the king must discountenance such interposition.' Walpole adds that 'as an attempt to rescue Dodd might be apprehended, two thousand men were ordered to be reviewed in Hyde Park during the execution.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 125.
[365] Johnson, in the 'Observations inserted in the newspapers' (post, p. 142), said 'that though the people cannot judge of the administration of justice so well as their governors, yet their voice has always been regarded. That if the people now commit an error, their error is on the part of mercy; and that perhaps history cannot shew a time in which the life of a criminal, guilty of nothing above fraud, was refused to the cry of nations, to the joint supplication of three and twenty thousand petitioners.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 528. Johnson's earnestness as a petitioner contrasts with the scornful way in which he had spoken of petitions. 'There must be no yielding to encourage this,' the minister might have answered in his own words. Ante, ii. 90.
[366] The king signs no sentences or death warrants; but out of respect to the Royal perogative of mercy, expressed by the old adage, 'The King's face gives grace,' the cases of criminals convicted in London, where the king is supposed to be resident, were reported to him by the recorder, that his Majesty might have an option of pardoning. Hence it was seriously doubted whether a recorder's report need or, indeed, could be made at Windsor. All his Majesty did on these occasions was, to express verbally his assent or dissent to or from the execution of the sentence; and, though the King was on such occasions attended by his Ministers and the great legal Privy Councillors, the business was not technically a council business, but the individual act of the King. On the accession of Queen Victoria, the nature of some cases that it might be necessary to report to her Majesty occasioned the abrogation of a practice which was certainly so far unreasonable that it made a difference between London and all the rest of the kingdom. CROKER. 'I was exceedingly shocked,' said Lord Eldon, 'the first time I attended to hear the Recorder's report, at the careless manner in which, as it appeared to me, it was conducted. We were called upon to decide on sentences affecting no less than the lives of men, and yet there was nothing laid before us to enable us to judge whether there had or had not been any extenuating circumstances; it was merely a recapitulation of the judge's opinion and the sentence. I resolved that I never would attend another report, without having read and duly considered the whole of the evidence of each case, and I never did.' Twiss's Eldon, i. 398.
[367] Under-Secretary of State and a member of the Literary Club. Ante, i. 478.
[368] Johnson does not here let Boswell know that he had written this address (post, p. 141). Wesley, two days before Dodd's execution, records (Journal, iv. 99):—'I saw Dr. Dodd for the last time. He was in exactly such a temper as I wished. He never at any time expressed the least murmuring or resentment at any one; but entirely and calmly gave himself up to the will of God. Such a prisoner I scarce ever saw before; much less such a condemned malefactor. I should think none could converse with him without acknowledging that God is with him.' In earlier years Wesley was more than once refused admittance to a man under sentence of death who was 'earnestly desirous' to speak with him. Wesley's Journal, ed. 1827, i. 255, 292, 378.
[369] Between the Methodists and the Moravians there was no good-will. In 1749 the Moravians published a declaration that 'whosoever reckons that those persons in England who are usually called Moravians, and those who are called Methodists, are the same, he is mistaken.' Thereupon Wesley recorded in his Journal, ii. l20:—'The Methodists, so called, heartily thank Brother Louis for his Declaration; as they count it no honour to be in any connexion either with him or his Brethren.'
[370] Since they have been so much honoured by Dr. Johnson I shall here insert them:
'TO MR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
'MY EVER DEAR AND MUCH-RESPECTED SIR,
'You know my solemn enthusiasm of mind. You love me for it, and I respect myself for it, because in so far I resemble Mr. Johnson. You will be agreeably surprized when you learn the reason of my writing this letter. I am at Wittemberg in Saxony. I am in the old church where the Reformation was first preached, and where some of the reformers lie interred. I cannot resist the serious pleasure of writing to Mr. Johnson from the Tomb of Melancthon. My paper rests upon the gravestone of that great and good man, who was undoubtedly the worthiest of all the reformers. He wished to reform abuses which had been introduced into the Church; but had no private resentment to gratify. So mild was he, that when his aged mother consulted him with anxiety on the perplexing disputes of the times, he advised her "to keep to the old religion." At this tomb, then, my ever dear and respected friend! I vow to thee an eternal attachment. It shall be my study to do what I can to render your life happy: and, if you die before me, I shall endeavour to do honour to your memory; and, elevated by the remembrance of you, persist in noble piety. May GOD, the Father of all beings, ever bless you! and may you continue to love,
'Your most affectionate friend, and devoted servant,
'JAMES BOSWELL.'
'Sunday, Sept. 30, 1764.'
'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
'Wilton-house, April 22, 1775.
'My DEAR SIR,
'Every scene of my life confirms the truth of what you have told me, "there is no certain happiness in this state of being."—I am here, amidst all that you know is at Lord Pembroke's; and yet I am weary and gloomy. I am just setting out for the house of an old friend in Devonshire, and shall not get back to London for a week yet. You said to me last Good-Friday, with a cordiality that warmed my heart, that if I came to settle in London, we should have a day fixed every week, to meet by ourselves and talk freely. To be thought worthy of such a privilege cannot but exalt me. During my present absence from you, while, notwithstanding the gaiety which you allow me to possess, I am darkened by temporary clouds, I beg to have a few lines from you; a few lines merely of kindness, as—a viaticum till I see you again. In your Vanity of Human Wishes, and in Parnell's Contentment, I find the only sure means of enjoying happiness; or, at least, the hopes of happiness. I ever am, with reverence and affection,
'Most faithfully yours,
'JAMES BOSWELL.'
[371] William Seward, Esq., F.R.S., editor of Anecdotes of some distinguished persons, etc., in four volumes, 8vo., well known to a numerous and valuable acquaintance for his literature, love of the fine arts, and social virtues. I am indebted to him for several communications concerning Johnson. BOSWELL. Miss Burney frequently mentions him as visiting the Thrales. 'Few people do him justice,' said Mrs. Thrale to her, 'because as Dr. Johnson calls him, he is an abrupt young man; but he has excellent qualities, and an excellent understanding.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 141. Miss Burney, in one of her letters, says:—'Mr. Seward, who seems to be quite at home among them, appears to be a penetrating, polite, and agreeable young man. Mrs. Thrale says of him, that he does good to everybody, but speaks well of nobody.' Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 89. He must not be confounded with the Rev. Mr. Seward of Lichfield.
[372] See post, under date of June 18, 1778.
[373] In the list of deaths in the Gent. Mag. for 1779, p. 103, we find, 'Feb. 8. Isaac de Groot, great-grandson to the learned Grotius. He had long been supported by private donations, and at length was provided for in the Charterhouse, where he died.'
[374] The preceding letter. BOSWELL.
[375] This letter was addressed not to a Mr. Dilly, but to Mr. W. Sharp, Junior. See Gent. Mag. 1787, p. 99. CROKER.
[376] See ante, i. 312.
[377] See ante, p. 101.
[378] See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 16.
[379] See ante, p. 86, and post, under Nov. 29, 1777.
[380] Johnson gives both epocha and epoch in his Dictionary.
[381] Langton. See ante, p. 48, and post, Sept. 22, 1777.
[382] This very just remark I hope will be constantly held in remembrance by parents, who are in general too apt to indulge their own fond feelings for their children at the expence of their friends. The common custom of introducing them after dinner is highly injudicious. It is agreeable enough that they should appear at any other time; but they should not be suffered to poison the moments of festivity by attracting the attention of the company, and in a manner compelling them from politeness to say what they do not think. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 28.
[383] Gibbon wrote to Garrick from Paris on Aug. 14:—'At this time of year the society of the Turk's-head can no longer be addressed as a corporate body, and most of the individual members are probably dispersed: Adam Smith in Scotland; Burke in the shades of Beaconsfield; Fox, the Lord or the devil knows where, etc. Be so good as to salute in my name those friends who may fall in your way. Assure Sir Joshua, in particular, that I have not lost my relish for manly conversation and the society of the brown table.' Garrick Corres. ii. 256. I believe that in Gibbon's published letters no mention is found of Johnson.
[384] See ante, ii. 159, and post, April 4, 1778. Of his greatness at the Bar Lord Eldon has left the following anecdote;—'Mr. Dunning, being in very great business, was asked how he contrived to get through it all. He said, "I do one third of it, another third does itself, and the remaining third continues undone."' Twiss's Eldon, i. 327.
[385] It is not easy to detect Johnson in anything that comes even near an inaccuracy. Let me quote, therefore, a passage from one of his letters which shews that when he wrote to Mrs. Boswell he had not, as he seems to imply, eaten any of the marmalade:—'Aug. 4, 1777. I believe it was after I left your house that I received a pot of orange marmalade from Mrs. Boswell. We have now, I hope, made it up. I have not opened my pot.' Piozzi Letters, i. 350.
[386] See ante, March 19, 1776.
[387] What it was that had occured is shewn by Johnson's letter to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 4:—'Boswell's project is disconcerted by a visit from a relation of Yorkshire, whom he mentions as the head of his clan [see ante, ii. 169, note 2]. Boszy, you know, make a huge bustle about all his own motions and all mine. I have inclosed a letter to pacify him, and reconcile him to the uncertainties of human life.' Piozzi Letters, i. 350.
[388] When she was about four months old, Boswell declared that she should have five hundred pounds of additional fortune, on account of her fondness for Dr. Johnson. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773. She died, says Malone, of a consumption, four months after her father.
[389] See ante, March 23, 1776.
[390] By an odd mistake, in the first three editions we find a reading in this line to which Dr. Johnson would by no means have subscribed, wine having been substituted for time. That error probably was a mistake in the transcript of Johnson's original letter. The other deviation in the beginning of the line (virtue instead of nature) must be attributed to his memory having deceived him. The verse quoted is the concluding line of a sonnet of Sidney's:—
'Who doth desire that chast his wife should bee,
First be he true, for truth doth truth deserve;
Then be he such, as she his worth may see,
And, alwaies one, credit with her preserve:
Not toying kynd nor causelessly unkynd,
Nor stirring thoughts, nor yet denying right,
Nor spying faults, nor in plaine errors blind,
Never hard hand, nor ever rayns (reins) too light;
As far from want, as far from vaine expence,
Th' one doth enforce, the t'other doth entice:
Allow good companie, but drive from thence
All filthie mouths that glorie in their vice:
This done, thou hast no more but leave the rest
To nature, fortune, time, and woman's breast.'
MALONE.
[391] 2 Corinthians, iv. 17.
[392] Boswell says (ante, i. 342):—'I am not satisfied if a year passes without my having read Rasselas through.'
[393] It appears that Johnson, now in his sixty-eighth year, was seriously inclined to realise the project of our going up the Baltick, which I had started when we were in the Isle of Sky [Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 16]; for he thus writes to Mrs. Thrale; Letters, vol. i. p. 366:—
'Ashbourne, Sept. 13, 1777.
'BOSWELL, I believe, is coming. He talks of being here to day: I shall be glad to see him: but he shrinks from the Baltick expedition, which, I think, is the best scheme in our power: what we shall substitute I know not. He wants to see Wales; but, except the woods of Bachycraigh, what is there in Wales, that can fill the hunger of ignorance, or quench the thirst of curiosity? We may, perhaps, form some scheme or other; but, in the phrase of Hockley in the Hole, it is a pity he has not a better bottom.'
Such an ardour of mind, and vigour of enterprise, is admirable at any age: but more particularly so at the advanced period at which Johnson was then arrived. I am sorry now that I did not insist on our executing that scheme. Besides the other objects of curiosity and observation, to have seen my illustrious friend received, as he probably would have been, by a Prince so eminently distinguished for his variety of talents and acquisitions as the late King of Sweden; and by the Empress of Russia, whose extraordinary abilities, information, and magnanimity, astonish the world, would have afforded a noble subject for contemplation and record. This reflection may possibly be thought too visionary by the more sedate and cold-blooded part of my readers; yet I own, I frequently indulge it with an earnest, unavailing regret. BOSWELL. In The Spectator, No. 436, Hockley in the Hole is described as 'a place of no small renown for the gallantry of the lower order of Britons.' Fielding mentions it in Jonathan Wild, bk. i. ch. 2:— 'Jonathan married Elizabeth, daughter of Scragg Hollow, of Hockley in the Hole, Esq., and by her had Jonathan, who is the illustrious subject of these memoirs.' In The Beggar's Opera, act i. Mrs. Peachum says to Filch: 'You should go to Hockley in the Hole, and to Marylebone, child, to learn valour. These are the schools that have bred so many brave men.' Hockley in the Hole was in Clerkenwell. That Johnson had this valour was shewn two years earlier, when he wrote to Mrs. Thrale about a sum of £14,000 that the Thrales had received: 'If I had money enough, what would I do? Perhaps, if you and master did not hold me, I might go to Cairo, and down the Red Sea to Bengal, and take a ramble in India. Would this be better than building and planting? It would surely give more variety to the eye, and more amplitude to the mind. Half fourteen thousand would send me out to see other forms of existence, and bring me back to describe them.' Piozzi Letters, i. 266. To the 'King of Sweden' late was added in the second edition; Gustavus III having been assassinated in March 1792. The story is somewhere told that George III, on hearing the news, cried out, 'What, what, what! Shot, shot, shot!' The Empress of Russia was Catherine II.
[394] It so happened. The letter was forwarded to my house at Edinburgh. BOSWELL. Arthur Young (Tour through the North of England, iv. 431-5) describes, in 1768, some of the roads along which Boswell was to travel nine years later. 'I would advise all travellers to consider the country between Newcastle-under-Line and Preston as sea, and as soon think of driving into the ocean as venturing into such detestable roads. I am told the Derby way to Manchester is good, but further is not penetrable.' The road from Wigan to Preston he calls 'infernal,' and 'cautions all travellers, who may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one they break their necks or their limbs. They will here meet with ruts which I actually measured four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer; what therefore must it be after a winter?'
[395] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 15, 1777:—'Last night came Boswell. I am glad that he is come. He seems to be very brisk and lively, and laughs a little at —— [no doubt Taylor].' Piozzi Letters, i. 368. On the 18th he wrote:—'Boswell is with us in good humour, and plays his part with his usual vivacity.' On this Baretti noted in his copy:—'That is, he makes more noise than anybody in company, talking and laughing loud.' On p. 216 in vol. i. he noted:—'Boswell is not quite right-headed in my humble opinion.'
[396] In the Gent. Mag. for 1777, p. 458, it is described as a 'violent shock.'
[397] 'Grief has its time' he once said (post, June 2, 1781). 'Grief is a species of idleness,' he wrote to Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi Letters, i. 77). He constantly taught that it is a duty not to allow the mind to prey on itself. 'Gaiety is a duty when health requires it' (Croker's Boswell, p. 529). 'Encourage yourself in bustle, and variety, and cheerfulness,' he wrote to Mrs. Thrale ten weeks after the death of her only surviving son (Piozzi Letters, i. 341). 'Even to think in the most reasonable manner,' he said at another time, 'is for the present not useful as not to think.' Ib i. 202. When Mr. Thrale died, he wrote to his widow:—'I think business the best remedy for grief, as soon as it can be admitted.' Ib. ii 197. To Dr. Taylor Johnson wrote:—'Sadness only multiplies self.' Notes and Queries, 6th S., v. 461.
[398] 'There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved, nor will by me at least be thought worthy of esteem.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 198. Against this Baretti has written in the margin:— 'Johnson never grieved much for anything. His trade was wisdom.' See ante, ii. 94.
[399] See ante, iii 19. Mr. Croker gives a reference to p. 136 of his edition. Turning to it we find an account of Johnson, who rode upon three horses. It would seem from this that, because John=Jack, therefore Johnson=Jackson.
[400] Mr. Croker remarks on this:—'Johnson evidently thought, either that Ireland is generally mountainous, or that Mr. Burke came from a part which was: but he was mistaken.' The allusion may well be, not to Burke as a native of Ireland, but to him as a student of national politics and economy, to whom any general reflections on the character of mountaineers would be welcome. In Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 201, it is stated that 'it was the philosophy of the book that Burke thought well of.'
[401] Mr. Langley, I have little doubt, is the Mr. L—— of the following passage in Johnson's letter, written from Ashbourne on July 12, 1775:—'Mr. L—— and the Doctor still continue at variance; and the Doctor is afraid and Mr. L—— not desirous of a reconciliation. I therefore step over at by-times, and of by-times I have enough.' Piozzi Letters, i. 267.
[402] See ante, ii. 52.
[403] George Garrick. See Murphy's Johnson, p. 141.
[404] See ante, March 26, 1776, and post, Sept. 21, 1777.
[405] 'While Lord Bathurst held the Great Seal, an attempt was in vain made to corrupt him by a secret offer to Lady Bathurst of three thousand guineas for the living of St. George's, Hanover Square. The offer was traced to the famous Dr. Dodd, then a King's Chaplain, and he was immediately dismissed.' Campbell's Chancellors, v. 464. See Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 298.
[406] Horace Walpole, who accompanied Prince Edward to a service at the Magdalen House in 1760, thus describes the service (Letters, iii. 282): —'As soon as we entered the chapel the organ played, and the Magdalens sung a hymn in parts. You cannot imagine how well. The chapel was dressed with orange and myrtle, and there wanted nothing but a little incense to drive away the devil,—or to invite him. Prayers then began, psalms and a sermon; the latter by a young clergyman, one Dodd, who contributed to the Popish idea one had imbibed, by haranguing entirely in the French style, and very eloquently and touchingly. He apostrophised the lost sheep, who sobbed and cried from their souls: so did my Lady Hertford and Fanny Pelham, till, I believe, the city dames took them both for Jane Shores. The confessor then turned to the audience, and addressed himself to his Royal Highness, whom he called most illustrious prince, beseeching his protection. In short, it was a very pleasing performance, and I got the most illustrious to desire it might be printed.' Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 503) heard Dodd preach in 1769. 'We had,' he says, 'difficulty to get tolerable seats, the crowd of genteel people was so great. The unfortunate young women were in a latticed gallery, where you could only see those who chose to be seen. The preacher's text was, "If a man look on a woman to lust after her," &c. The text itself was shocking, and the sermon was composed with the least possible delicacy, and was a shocking insult on a sincere penitent, and fuel for the warm passions of the hypocrites. The fellow was handsome, and delivered his discourse remarkably well for a reader. When he had finished, there were unceasing whispers of applause, which I could not help contradicting aloud, and condemning the whole institution, as well as the exhibition of the preacher, as contra bonos mores, and a disgrace to a Christian city.' Goldsmith in 1774 exposed Dodd as a 'quacking divine' in his Retaliation. He describes Dr. Douglas as a 'The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks,' and he continues,—
'But now he is gone, and we want a detector,
Our Dodds shall be pious, our Kenricks shall lecture.'
See post, April 7, 1778.
[407] The fifth earl, the successor of the celebrated earl. On Feb. 22, 1777, Dodd was convicted of forging a bond for £4,200 in his name; Ann. Reg. xx. 168. The earl was unfortunate in his tutors, for he had been also under Cuthbert Shaw (ante, ii 31 note 2).
[408] Mr. Croker quotes the following letter of Dodd, dated 1750:—'I spent yesterday afternoon with Johnson, the celebrated author of The Rambler, who is of all others the oddest and most peculiar fellow I ever saw. He is six feet high, has a violent convulsion in his head, and his eyes are distorted. He speaks roughly and loud, listens to no man's opinions, thoroughly pertinacious of his own. Good sense flows from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders it disagreeable and dissatisfactory. In short it is impossible for words to describe him. He seems often inattentive to what passes in company, and then looks like a person possessed by some superior spirit. I have been reflecting on him ever since I saw him. He is a man of most universal and surprising genius, but in himself particular beyond expression.' Dodd was born in 1729.
[409] 'One of my best and tenderest friends,' Johnson called him, post, July 31, 1784. See post, April 10, 1778.
[410] The Convict's Address to his Unhappy Brethren: Being a Sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Dodd, Friday, June 6, 1777, in the Chapel of Newgate, while under sentence of death, for forging the name of the Earl of Chesterfield on a bond for £4,200. Sold by the booksellers and news-carriers. Price Two-pence. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield on Aug. 9:—'Lucy said, "When I read Dr. Dodd's sermon to the prisoners, I said Dr. Johnson could not make a better."'
Piozzi Letters, i. 352. See post, p. 167.
[411] 'What must I do to be saved?' Acts xvi. 30.
[412] 'And finally we must commend and entrust our souls to Him who died for the sins of men; with earnest wishes and humble hopes that He will admit us with the labourers who entered the vineyard at the last hour, and associate us with the thief whom he pardoned on the cross.' p. 14.
[413] The Gent. Mag. for 1777 (p. 450) says of this address:—'As none but a convict could have written this, all convicts ought to read it; and we therefore recommend its being framed, and hung up in all prisons.' Mr. Croker, italicising could and suppressing the latter part of the sentence, describes it as a criticism that must have been offensive to Johnson. The writer's meaning is simple enough. The address, he knew, was delivered in the Chapel of Newgate by a prisoner under sentence of death. If, instead of 'written' he had said 'delivered,' his meaning would have been quite clear.
[414] Having unexpectedly, by the favour of Mr. Stone, of London Field, Hackney, seen the original in Johnson's hand-writing, of 'The Petition of the City of London to his Majesty, in favour of Dr. Dodd,' I now present it to my readers, with such passages as were omitted in-closed in crotchets, and the additions or variations marked in Italicks.
'That William Dodd, Doctor of Laws, now lying under sentence of death in your Majesty's gaol of Newgate, for the crime of forgery, has for a great part of his life set a useful and laudable example of diligence in his calling, [and as we have reason to believe, has exercised his ministry with great fidelity and efficacy,] which, in many instances, has produced the most happy effect.
'That he has been the first institutor, [or] and a very earnest and active promoter of several modes of useful charity, and [that] therefore [he] may be considered as having been on many occasions a benefactor to the publick.
'[That when they consider his past life, they are willing to suppose his late crime to have been not the consequence of habitual depravity, but the suggestion of some sudden and violent temptation.]
'[That] Your Petitioners therefore considering his case, as in some of its circumstances unprecedented and peculiar, and encouraged by your Majesty's known clemency, [they] most humbly recommend the said William Dodd to [his] your Majesty's most gracious consideration, in hopes that he will be found not altogether [unfit] unworthy to stand an example of Royal Mercy.' BOSWELL.
[415] His Speech at the Old Bailey, when found guilty. BOSWELL.
[416] In the second edition he is described as 'now Lord Hawkesbury.' He had entered public life as Lord Bute's private secretary, and, according to Horace Walpole, continued in it as his tool.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 70, 115. Walpole speaks of him as one of 'the Jesuits of the Treasury' (Ib. p. 110), and 'the director or agent of all the King's secret counsels. His appearance was abject, his countenance betrayed a consciousness of secret guilt; and, though his ambition and rapacity were insatiate, his demeanour exhibited such a want of spirit, that had he stood forth as Prime Minister, which he really was, his very look would have encouraged opposition.' Ib. p. 135. The third Earl of Liverpool wrote to Mr. Croker on Dec. 7, 1845: —'Very shortly before George III's accession my father became confidential secretary of Lord Bute, if you can call secretary a man who all through his life was so bad a penman that he always dictated everything, and of whom, although I have a house full of papers, I have scarcely any in his own hand.' Croker Corres. iii. 178. The editor is in error in saying that the Earl of Liverpool who wrote this was son of the Prime Minister. He was his half-brother.
[417] Burke wrote to Garrick of Fitzherbert:—'You know and love him; but I assure you, until we can talk some late matters over, you, even you, can have no adequate idea of the worth of that man.' Garrick Corres. i. 190. See ante, i. 82.
[418] 'I remember a man,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Synonomy, i. 2l7), 'much delighted in by the upper ranks of society, who upon a trifling embarrassment in his affairs hanged himself behind the stable door, to the astonishment of all who knew him as the liveliest companion and most agreeable converser breathing. "What upon earth," said one at our house, "could have made—[Fitzherbert] hang himself?" "Why, just his having a multitude of acquaintance," replied Dr. Johnson, "and ne'er a friend."' See ante, ii. 228.
[419] Dr. Gisborne, Physician to his Majesty's Household, has obligingly communicated to me a fuller account of this story than had reached Dr. Johnson. The affected Gentleman was the late John Gilbert Cooper, Esq., author of a Life of Socrates, and of some poems in Dodsley's Collection. Mr. Fitzherbert found him one morning, apparently, in such violent agitation, on account of the indisposition of his son, as to seem beyond the power of comfort. At length, however, he exclaimed, 'I'll write an Elegy.' Mr. Fitzherbert being satisfied, by this, of the sincerity of his emotions, slyly said, 'Had not you better take a postchaise and go and see him?' It was the shrewdness of the insinuation which made the story be circulated. BOSWELL. Malone writes:—'Mr. Cooper was the last of the benevolists or sentimentalists, who were much in vogue between 1750 and 1760, and dealt in general admiration of virtue. They were all tenderness in words; their finer feeling evaporated in the moment of expression, for they had no connection with their practice.' Prior's Malone, p. 427. See ante, ii. 129. This fashion seems to have reached Paris a few years later. Mme. Riccoboni wrote to Garrick on May 3, 1769:—'Dans notre brillante capitale, où dominent les airs et la mode, s'attendrir, s'émouvoir, s'affliger, c'est le bon ton du moment. La bonté, la sensibilité, la tendre humanité sont devenues la fantaisie universelle. On ferait volontiers des malheureux pour goûter la douceur de les plaindre.' Garrick Corres. ii. 561.
[420] Johnson had felt the truth of this in the case of 'old Mr. Sheridan.' Ante, i. 387.
[421] Johnson, in his letters from Ashbourne, used to joke about Taylor's cattle:—'July 23, 1770. I have seen the great bull, and very great he is. I have seen likewise his heir apparent, who promises to enherit all the bulk and all the virtues of his sire, I have seen the man who offered an hundred guineas for the young bull, while he was yet little better than a calf.' Piozzi Letters, i. 33. 'July 3, 1771. The great bull has no disease but age. I hope in time to be like the great bull; and hope you will be like him too a hundred years hence.' Ib. p. 39. 'July 10, 1771. There has been a man here to-day to take a farm. After some talk he went to see the bull, and said that he had seen a bigger. Do you think he is likely to get the farm?' Ib. p. 43. 'Oct. 31, 1772. Our bulls and cows are all well; but we yet hate the man that had seen a bigger bull.' Ib. p. 61.
[422] Quoted by Boswell in his Hebrides, Aug. 16, 1773.
[423] In the letters that Boswell and Erskine published (ante, 384, note) are some verses by Erskine, of very slight merit.
[424] Horace, Odes, ii. 4.
[425]
'The tender glance, the red'ning cheek,
O'erspread with rising blushes,
A thousand various ways they speak
A thousand various wishes.'
Hamilton's Poems, ed. 1760, p. 59.
[426] In the original, Now. Ib. p. 39.
[427] Thomson, in The Seasons, Winter, 1. 915, describes how the ocean
'by the boundless frost Is many a fathom to the bottom chain'd.'
In 1. 992, speaking of a thaw, he says,
'The rivers swell of bonds impatient.'
[428] See ante March 24, 1776.
[429] Johnson wrote of Pope (Works, viii. 309):—'The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness required had taught him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary man.'
[430] When he was ill of a fever he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'The doctor was with me again to-day, and we both think the fever quite gone. I believe it was not an intermittent, for I took of my own head physick yesterday; and Celsus says, it seems, that if a cathartick be taken the fit will return certo certius. I would bear something rather than Celsus should be detected in an error. But I say it was a febris continua, and had a regular crisis.' Piozzi Letters, i. 89.
[431] Johnson must have shortened his life by the bleedings that he underwent. How many they were cannot be known, for no doubt he was often bled when he has left no record of it. The following, however, I have noted. I do not know that he was bled more than most people of his time. Dr. Taylor, it should seem, underwent the operation every quarter.
Dec. 1755. Thrice. 54 ounces. Croker's Boswell, p. 100.
Jan. 1761. Once. Ib. p. 122.
April 1770. Cupped. Pemb. Coll. MSS.
Winter of 1772-3. Three times. Ante, ii. 206, and Pemb. Coll. MSS.
May 1773. Two copious bleedings. Pr. and Med. 130.
1774. Times not mentioned. 36 ounces. Piozzi Letters, i. 209.
Jan. 1777. Three bleedings. 22 ounces in first two. Ib. i. 343.
Jan. 1780. Once. Post, Jan. 20, 1780.
June 1780. Times not mentioned. Croker's Boswell, p. 649.
Jan. and Feb. 1782. Thrice. 50 ounces. Post, Feb. 4 and March 20, 1782.
May 1782. At least once. Post, under March 19, 1782, and Piozzi
Letters, ii. 240.
Yet he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, 'I am of the chymical sect, which holds phlebotomy in abhorrence.' Ib. ii. 240. 'O why,' asks Wesley, who was as strongly opposed to bleeding as he was fond of poulticing, 'will physicians play with the lives of their patients? Do not others (as well as old Dr. Cockburn) know that "no end is answered by bleeding in a pleurisy, which may not be much better answered without it?"' Wesley's Journal, ii. 310. 'Dr. Cheyne,' writes Pope, 'was of Mr. Cheselden's opinion, that bleeding might be frequently repeated with safety, for he advised me to take four or five ounces every full moon.' Elwin and Courthope's Pope's Works, ix. 162.
[432] 'It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature.' _Sir Thomas Browne _quoted in Johnson's Works, vi. 485. See post, April 15, 1778, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 12, 1773.
[433] In the last number of The Idler Johnson says:—'There are few things not purely evil of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last…. The secret horrour of the last is inseparable from a thinking being whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful.'
[434] In the first edition for scarce any man we find almost no man. See ante, March 20, 1776, note.
[435] Bacon, in his Essay on Death, says:—'It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him.' In the De Aug. Sci. vi. 3. 12, he says:—'Non invenias inter humanos affetum tam pusillum, qui si intendatur paullo vehementius, non mortis metum superet.'
[436] Johnson, in his Lives of Addison and Parnell (Works, vii. 399, 449), mentions that they drank too freely. See post, under Dec. 2, 1784.
[437] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. 3d edit. p. 240 [Sept. 22]. BOSWELL.
[438] In the Life of Addison (Works, vii. 444) he says:—'The necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent monuments and records; but Lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost for ever. What is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it might be told, it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of conduct, are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice, obstinacy, frolick and folly, however they might delight in the description, should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives is now bringing me among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself "walking upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished," and coming to the time of which it will be proper rather to say "nothing that is false, than all that is true."' See ante, i. 9, and 30.
[439] Dr. Taylor was very ready to make this admission, because the party with which he was connected was not in power. There was then some truth in it, owing to the pertinacity of factious clamour. Had he lived till now, it would have been impossible for him to deny that his Majesty possesses the warmest affection of his people. BOSWELL. See post, March 21, 1783.
[440] The Duke of York in 1788, speaking in the House of Lords on the King's illness, said:—'He was confident that his Royal Highness [the Prince of Wales] understood too well the sacred principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain ever to assume or exercise any power, be his claim what it might, not derived from the will of the people, expressed by their representatives, and their lordships in parliament assembled.' Parl. Hist. xxvii. 678.
[441] See ante, i. 430.
[442] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 18, 1773, and post, under date of Sept. 9, 1779, note.
[443] 'The return of my birth-day,' he wrote in 1773, 'if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.' Piozzi Letters, i. 134. In 1781 he viewed the day with calmness, if not with cheerfulness. He writes:—'I rose, breakfasted, and gave thanks at church for my creation, preservation and redemption. As I came home, I thought I had never begun any period of life so placidly. I have always been accustomed to let this day pass unnoticed, but it came this time into my mind that some little festivity was not improper. I had a dinner; and invited Allen and Levet.' Pr. and Med. p. 198. In 1783 he again had 'a little dinner,' and invited four friends to keep the day. Croker's Boswell, p. 739. At Streatham the day, it would seem, was always kept. Mrs. Piozzi writes (Anec. p. 211):—'On the birthday of our eldest daughter, and that of our friend, Dr. Johnson, the 17th and 18th of September, we every year made up a little dance and supper to divert our servants and their friends.'
[444] The son of a Mr. Coxeter, 'a gentleman,' says Johnson, 'who was once my friend,' enlisted in the service of the East India Company. Johnson asked Mr. Thrale to use his influence to get his discharge. Piozzi Letters, i. 33.
[445] The bookseller whom Johnson beat, ante, i. 154.
[446] 'When a well-known author published his poems in the year 1777, "Such a one's verses are come out," said I: "Yes," replied Johnson, "and this frost has struck them in again. Here are some lines I have written to ridicule them; but remember that I love the fellow dearly now—for all I laugh at him.
'Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new;
Endless labour all along,
Endless labour to be wrong;
Phrase that time has flung away;
Uncouth words in disarray,
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.'"'
Piozzi's Anec. p. 64.
Thomas Warton in 1777 published a volume of his poems. He, no doubt, is meant.
[447] In The Rambler, No. 121. Johnson, twenty-six years earlier, attacked 'the imitation of Spenser, which, by the influence of some men of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age…. They seem to conclude that, when they have disfigured their lines with a few obsolete syllables, they have accomplished their design, without considering that they ought, not only to admit old words, but to avoid new. The laws of imitation are broken by every word introduced since the time of Spenser.'
[448] Warton's Ode on the First of April is found a line which may have suggested these two lines:—'The morning hoar, and evening chill.'
[449] 'Collins affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry.' Johnson's Works, viii. 404. Goldsmith, eleven years earlier, said in his Life of Parnell (Misc. Works, iv. 22):—'These misguided innovators have not been content with restoring antiquated words and phrases, but have indulged themselves in the most licentious transpositions and the harshest constructions, vainly imagining that the more their writings are unlike prose, the more they resemble poetry.' Collins and Warton might have quoted by way of defence the couplet in Milton's L'Allegro.—
'While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin.'
[450] As some of my readers may be gratified by reading the progress of this little composition, I shall insert it from my notes. 'When Dr. Johnson and I were sitting tête-à-tête at the Mitre tavern, May 9, 1778, he said "Where is bliss," would be better. He then added a ludicrous stanza, but would not repeat it, lest I should take it down. It was somewhat as follows; the last line I am sure I remember:
"While I thus cried,
The hoary seer reply'd,
Come, my lad, and drink some beer."
In spring, 1779, when in better humour, he made the second stanza, as in the text. There was only one variation afterwards made on my suggestion, which was changing hoary in the third line to smiling, both to avoid a sameness with the epithet in the first line, and to describe the hermit in his pleasantry. He was then very well pleased that I should preserve it.' BOSWELL.
[451] When I mentioned Dr. Johnson's remark to a lady of admirable good sense and quickness of understanding, she observed, 'It is true, all this excludes only one evil; but how much good does it let in?'—To this observation much praise has been justly given. Let me then now do myself the honour to mention that the lady who made it was the late Margaret Montgomerie, my very valuable wife, and the very affectionate mother of my children, who, if they inherit her good qualities, will have no reason to complain of their lot. Dos magna parentum virtus. BOSWELL. The latter part of this note was first given in the second edition. The quotation if from Horace:—
'Cos est magna parentium Virtus.'
'The lovers there for dowry claim
The father's virtue and the mother's fame.'
FRANCIS, Horace, Odes, iii. 24. 21.
[452] He saw it in 1774 on his way to Wales; but he must, I think, have seen it since, for it does not appear from his Journal of a Tour into Wales that he then saw Lord Scarsdale. He met him also at Dr. Taylor's in July 1775. Piozzi Letters, i. 267.
[453] I do not find the description in Young's Six Months' Tour through the North of England, but in Pilkington's Present State of Derbyshire, ii. 120.
[454]
'Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?'
'What place, what land in all the earth but with our grief is stored?'
Morris, Æneids, i. 460.
[455] See ante, March 21 and 28, 1776.
[456] At Derby.
[457] Baretti in his Italy, i. 236, says:—'It is the general custom for our authors to make a present of their works to booksellers, who in return scarcely give a few copies when printed.' The Venetian bookseller to whom Metastasio gave his cleared, Baretti says, more than £10,000. Goldoni scarcely got for each of his plays ten pounds from the manager of the Venetian theatre, and much less from the booksellers. 'Our learned stare when they are told that in England there are numerous writers who get their bread by their productions only.'
[458] I am now happy to understand, that Mr. John Home, who was himself gallantly in the field for the reigning family, in that interesting warfare, but is generous enough to do justice to the other side, is preparing an account of it for the press. BOSWELL. Dr. A. Carlyle, who knew Home well, says (Auto. p. 295):—'All his opinions of men and things were prejudices, which, though it did not disqualify him for writing admirable poetry, yet made him unfit for writing history.' See ante, i. 225, for Boswell's projected works.
[459] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale the next day:—'The finer pieces [of the Derby china] are so dear that perhaps silver vessels of the same capacity may be sometimes bought at the same price; and I am not yet so infected with the contagion of china-fancy as to like anything at that rate which can so easily be broken.' Piozzi Letters, i. 380.
[460] See ante, April 14, 1775.
[461] See Hutton's History of Derby, a book which is deservedly esteemed for its information, accuracy, and good narrative. Indeed the age in which we live is eminently distinguished by topographical excellence. BOSWELL. According to Hutton the Italians at the beginning of the eighteenth century had 'the exclusive art of silk-throwing.' Lombe went to Italy, and by bribery got admittance into the works. Having mastered the secret he returned to England with two of the workmen. About the year 1717 he founded a great silk-mill at Derby. He died early, being poisoned, it was asserted, by an Italian woman who had been sent over to destroy him. In this mill, Hutton, as a child, 'had suffered intolerable severity.' Hutton's Derby, pp. 193-205.
[462] 'I have enlarged my notions,' recorded Johnson in his Journal of a Tour into Wales (Aug. 3, 1774), after he had seen some iron-works.
[463] Young. BOSWELL.
'Think nought a trifle, though it small appear.'
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles life.'
Love of Fame, Satire vi.
[464] 'Pray, Sir, don't leave us;' said Johnson to an upholder of Berkeley's philosophy, 'for we may perhaps forget to think of you, and then you will cease to exist.' Post, 1780, in Langton's Collection. See also ante, i. 471.
[465] Perhaps Boswell is thinking of Gray's lines at the close of the Progress of Poesy:—
'Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate.'
[466] Goldsmith wrote:—'In all Pope's letters, as well as in those of Swift, there runs a strain of pride, as if the world talked of nothing but themselves. "Alas," says he in one of them, "the day after I am dead the sun will shine as bright as the day before, and the world will be as merry as usual." Very strange, that neither an eclipse nor an earthquake should follow the loss of a poet!' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 85. Goldsmith refers, I suppose, to Pope's letter to Steele of July 15, 1712, where he writes:—'The morning after my exit the sun will rise as bright as ever, the flowers smell as sweet, the plants spring as green, the world will proceed in its old course, people will laugh as heartily, and marry as fast as they were used to do.' Elwin's Pope's Works, vi. 392. Gray's friend, Richard West, in some lines suggested by this letter, gives a pretty turn to Pope's thoughts where he says:—
'For me, whene'er all-conquering Death shall spread
His wings around my unrepining head,
I care not; tho' this face be seen no more,
The world will pass as cheerful as before;
Bright as before the day-star will appear,
The fields as verdant, and the skies as clear.'
Mason's Gray, ed. 1807, i. 152.
[467] See post, April 12, 1778.
[468] A brother of Dodd's wife told Hawkins that 'Dodd's manner of living was ever such as his visible income would no way account for. He said that he was the most importunate suitor for preferment ever known; and that himself had been the bearer of letters to great men, soliciting promotion to livings, and had hardly escaped kicking down stairs.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 435.
[469] Hawkins (Life, p. 523) says that a Mr. Selwin, who just missed being elected Chamberlain of the City, went by request to see a man under sentence of death in Newgate, 'who informed him that he was in daily expectation of the arrival of the warrant for his execution; "but," said he, "I have £200, and you are a man of character, and had the court-interest when you stood for Chamberlain; I should therefore hope it is in your power to get me off." Mr. Selwin was struck with so strange a notion, and asked, if there were any alleviating circumstances in his case. The man peevishly answered "No;" but that he had enquired into the history of the place where he was, and could not find that any one who had £200 was ever hanged. Mr. Selwin told him it was out of his power to help him, and bade him farewell—"which," added he, "he did; for he found means to escape punishment."'
[470] Dodd, in his Dedication of this Sermon to Mr. Villette, the Ordinary of Newgate, says:—'The following address owes its present public appearance to you. You heard it delivered, and are pleased to think that its publication will be useful. To a poor and abject worm like myself this is a sufficient inducement to that publication.'
[471] See ante, p. 97. 'They have,' says Lowndes (Bibl. Man.), 'passed through innumerable editions.' To how many the book-stalls testify, where they are offered second-hand for a few pence.
[472] Goldsmith was thirty when he published An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe; thirty-six when he published The Traveller; thirty-seven when he published The Vicar of Wakefield, and thirty-nine when he brought out The Good-Natured Man. In flowering late he was like Swift. 'Swift was not one of those minds which amaze the world with early pregnancy; his first work, except his few poetical Essays, was the Dissentions in Athens and Rome, published in his thirty-fourth year.' Johnson's Works, viii. 197. See post, April 9, 1778.
[473] Burke, I think, is meant.
[474] This walking about his room naked was, perhaps, part of Lord Monboddo's system that was founded 'on the superiority of the savage life.' Ante, ii. 147.
[475] This regimen was, however, practised by Bishop Ken, of whom Hawkins (not Sir John) in his life of that venerable Prelate, p. 4, tells us: 'And that neither his study might be the aggressor on his hours of instruction, or what he judged his duty prevent his improvements; or both, his closet addresses to his GOD; he strictly accustomed himself to but one sleep, which often obliged him to rise at one or two of the clock in the morning, and sometimes sooner; and grew so habitual, that it continued with him almost till his last illness. And so lively and chearful was his temper, that he would be very facetious and entertaining to his friends in the evening, even when it was perceived that with difficulty he kept his eyes open; and then seemed to go to rest with no other purpose than the refreshing and enabling him with more vigour and chearfulness to sing his morning hymn, as he then used to do to his lute before he put on his cloaths.' BOSWELL.
[476] See ante, under Dec. 17, 1775.
[477] Boswell shortened his life by drinking, if, indeed, he did not die of it. Less than a year before his death he wrote to Temple:—'I thank you sincerely for your friendly admonition on my frailty in indulging so much in wine. I do resolve anew to be upon my guard, as I am sensible how very pernicious as well as disreputable such a habit is! How miserably have I yielded to it in various years!' Letters of Boswell, p. 353. In 1776 Paoli had taken his word of honour that he would not taste fermented liquor for a year, that he might recover sobriety. Ib. p. 233. For a short time also in 1778 Boswell was a water-drinker, Post, April 28, 1778.
[478] Sir James Mackintosh told Mr. Croker that he believed Lord Errol was meant here as well as post, April 28, 1778. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 24, 1773.
[479] 'Must give us pause.' Hamlet, act iii. sc. 1.
[480] 'He was the first,' writes Dr. T. Campbell (Survey of the South of Ireland, p. 373), 'who gave histories of the weather, seasons, and diseases of Dublin.' Wesley records (Journal, iv. 40):—'April 6, 1775. I visited that venerable man, Dr. Rutty, just tottering over the grave; but still clear in his understanding, full of faith and love, and patiently waiting till his change should come.'
[481] Cowper wrote of Johnson's Diary:—'It is certain that the publisher of it is neither much a friend to the cause of religion nor to the author's memory; for, by the specimen of it that has reached us, it seems to contain only such stuff as has a direct tendency to expose both to ridicule.' Southey's Cowper, v. 152.
[482] Huet, Bishop of Avranches, born 1630, died 1721, published in 1718 Commentarius de rebus ad eum pertinentibus. Nouv. Biog. Gene. xxv. 380.
[483] When Dr. Blair published his Lectures, he was invidiously attacked for having omitted his censure on Johnson's style, and, on the contrary, praising it highly. But before that time Johnson's Lives of the Poets had appeared, in which his style was considerably easier than when he wrote The Rambler. It would, therefore, have been uncandid in Blair, even supposing his criticism to have been just, to have preserved it. BOSWELL.
[484] Johnson refers no doubt to the essay On Romances, An Imitation, by A. L. Aikin (Mrs. Barbauld); in Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, by J. and A. L. Aikin (1773), p. 39. He would be an acute critic who could distinguish this Imitation from a number of The Rambler.
[485] See post, under Dec. 6, 1784.
[486] Id est, The Literary Scourge.
[487] See ante, ii. 236, where Johnson attacks 'the verbiage of Robertson.'
[488] 'We were now treading that illustrious island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be such rigid philosophy, as may conduct us, indifferent and unmoved, over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery or virtue. The [That] man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.' Had our Tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage, the world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain. Sir Joseph Banks, the present respectable President of the Royal Society, told me, he was so much struck on reading it, that he clasped his hands together, and remained for some time in an attitude of silent admiration. BOSWELL. See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 19, 1773, and Johnson's Works, ix. 145.
[489] 'He that thinks with more extent than another will want words of larger meaning.' Ante, i. 218.
[490] In the original island.
[491] See ante, ii. 203, note 3.
[492] In this censure which has been carelessly uttered, I carelessly joined. But in justice to Dr. Kippis, who with that manly candid good temper which marks his character, set me right, I now with pleasure retract it; and I desire it may be particularly observed, as pointed out by him to me, that 'The new lives of dissenting Divines in the first four volumes of the second edition of the Biographia Brittanica, are those of John Abernethy, Thomas Amory, George Benson, Hugh Broughton the learned Puritan, Simon Browne, Joseph Boyse of Dublin, Thomas Cartwright the learned Puritan, and Samuel Chandler. The only doubt I have ever heard suggested is, whether there should have been an article of Dr. Amory. But I was convinced, and am still convinced, that he was entitled to one, from the reality of his learning, and the excellent and candid nature of his practical writings.
'The new lives of clergymen of the Church of England, in the same four volumes, are as follows: John Balguy, Edward Bentham, George Berkley Bishop of Cloyne, William Berriman, Thomas Birch, William Borlase, Thomas Bott, James Bradley, Thomas Broughton, John Brown, John Burton, Joseph Butler Bishop of Durham, Thomas Carte, Edmund Castell, Edmund Chishull, Charles Churchill, William Clarke, Robert Clayton Bishop of Clogher, John Conybeare Bishop of Bristol, George Costard, and Samuel Croxall.—"I am not conscious (says Dr. Kippis) of any partiality in conducting the work. I would not willingly insert a Dissenting Minister that does not justly deserve to be noticed, or omit an established Clergyman that does. At the same time, I shall not be deterred from introducing Dissenters into the Biographia, when I am satisfied that they are entitled to that distinction, from their writings, learning, and merit."'
Let me add that the expression 'A friend to the Constitution in Church and State,' was not meant by me, as any reflection upon this reverend gentleman, as if he were an enemy to the political constitution of his country, as established at the revolution, but, from my steady and avowed predilection for a Tory, was quoted from Johnson's Dictionary, where that distinction is so defined. BOSWELL. In his Dictionary a Tory is defined as 'one who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England.' It was on the Biographia Britannica that Cowper wrote the lines that end:—
'So when a child, as playful children use,
Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news,
The flame extinct he views the roving fire,
There goes my lady, and there goes the squire,
There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark,
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.'
Cowper's Works, viii. 320.
Horace Walpole said that the 'Biographia Britannica ought rather to be called Vindicatio Britannica, for that it was a general panegyric upon everybody.' Prior's Malone, p. 115.
[493] See ante, p. 99.
[494]
'Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.'
Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, 1, 163.
[495] Observations on Insanity, by Thomas Arnold, M.D., London, 1782. BOSWELL.
[496] We read in the Gospels, that those unfortunate persons who were possessed with evil spirits (which, after all, I think is the most probable cause of madness, as was first suggested to me by my respectable friend Sir John Pringle), had recourse to pain, tearing themselves, and jumping sometimes into the fire, sometimes into the water. Mr. Seward has furnished me with a remarkable anecdote in confirmation of Dr. Johnson's observation. A tradesman, who had acquired a large fortune in London, retired from business, and went to live at Worcester. His mind, being without its usual occupation, and having nothing else to supply its place, preyed upon itself, so that existence was a torment to him. At last he was seized with the stone; and a friend who found him in one of its severest fits, having expressed his concern, 'No, no, Sir, (said he) don't pity me: what I now feel is ease compared with that torture of mind from which it relieves me.' BOSWELL.
[497] See ante, i. 446. 'Johnson was a great enemy to the present fashionable way of supposing worthless and infamous persons mad.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 203.
[498] See post, April 1, 1779.
[499] See post, April 7, 1778.
[500] 'Reynolds,' writes Malone, 'was as fond of London as Dr. Johnson; always maintaining that it was the only place in England where a pleasant society might be found.' Prior's Malone p. 433. Gibbon wrote to Holroyd Misc. Works, ii 126:—'Never pretend to allure me by painting in odious colours the dust of London. I love the dust, and whenever I move into the Weald it is to visit you and my Lady, and not your trees.' Burke, on the other hand, wrote (Corres. iii 422):—'What is London? clean, commodious, neat; but, a very few things indeed excepted, and endless addition of littleness to littleness, extending itself over a great tract of land.' 'For a young man,' he says, 'for a man of easy fortune, London is the best place one can imagine. But for the old, the infirm, the straightened in fortune, the grave in character or in disposition, I do not believe a much worse place can be found.' Ib. iv. 250.
[501]
'Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine captos
Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse sui.'
Ovid, Ep. ex Ponto, i. 3. 35.
[502] 'In the morn and liquid dew of youth.' Hamlet, act i. sc. 3.
[503] Now, at the distance of fifteen years since this conversation passed, the observation which I have had an opportunity of making in Westminster Hall has convinced me, that, however true the opinion of Dr. Johnson's legal friend may have been some time ago, the same certainty of success cannot now be promised to the same display of merit. The reasons, however, of the rapid rise of some, and the disappointment of others equally respectable, are such as it might seem invidious to mention, and would require a longer detail than would be proper for this work. BOSWELL. Boswell began to eat his dinners in the Inner Temple in 1775. Ante, p. 45 note 1, and Letters of Boswell, p. 196. In writing to Temple he thus mentions his career as a barrister. 'Jan. 10, 1789. In truth I am sadly discouraged by having no practice, nor probable prospect of it; and to confess fairly to you, my friend, I am afraid that, were I to be tried, I should be found so deficient in the forms, the quirks and the quiddities, which early habit acquires, that I should expose myself. Yet the delusion of Westminster Hall, of brilliant reputation and splendid fortune as a barrister, still weighs upon my imagination.' Ib. p. 267. 'Aug. 23, 1789. The Law life in Scotland amongst vulgar familiarity would now quite destroy me. I am not able to acquire the Law of England.' Ib. p. 304. 'Nov. 28, 1789. I have given up my house and taken good chambers in the Inner Temple, to have the appearance of a lawyer. O Temple! Temple! is this realising any of the towering hopes which have so often been the subject of our conversations and letters? … I do not see the smallest opening in Westminster Hall but I like the scene, though I have attended only one day this last term, being eager to get my Life of Johnson finished.' Ib. p. 314. 'April 6, 1791. When my book is launched, I shall, if I am alone and in tolerable health and spirits, have some furniture put into my chambers in the Temple, and force myself to sit there some hours a-day, and to attend regularly in Westminster Hall. The chambers cost me £20 yearly, and I may reckon furniture and a lad to attend there occasionally £20 more. I doubt whether I shall get fees equal to the expense.' Ib. p. 335. 'Nov. 22, 1791. I keep chambers open in the Temple, I attend in Westminster Hall, but there is not the least prospect of my having business.' Ib. p. 344. His chambers, as he wrote to Malone, were 'in the very staircase where Johnson lived.' Croker's Boswell, p. 830.
[504] Sunday was the 21st.
[505] See ante, March 26, 1776, and post, under Nov. 17, 1784.
[506] In Notes and Queries for April, May, and June 1882, is a series of Johnson's letters to Taylor, between June 10, 1742 and April 12, 1784. In the first Johnson signs himself:—'Your very affectionate,' (p. 304). On Nov. 18, 1756, he writes:—'Neither of us now can find many whom he has known so long as we have known each other…. We both stand almost single in the world,' (p. 324). On July 15, 1765, he reproaches Taylor with not writing:—'With all your building and feasting you might have found an hour in some wet day for the remembrance of your old friend. I should have thought that since you have led a life so festive and gay, you would have [invited] me to partake of your hospitality,' (p. 383). On Oct. 19, 1779, he says:—'Write to me soon. We are both old. How few of those whom we have known in our youth are left alive!' (p. 461). On April 12, 1784, he writes:—'Let us be kind to one another. I have no friend now living but you and Mr. Hector that was the friend of my youth,' (p. 482, and post, April 12, 1784). See ante, p. 131, for his regret on the death of his school-fellow, Henry Jackson, who seemed to Boswell (ante, under March 22, 1776) to be a low man, dull and untaught. 'One of the old man's miseries,' he wrote, (post, Feb. 3, 1778), 'is that he cannot easily find a companion able to partake with him of the past.' 'I have none to call me Charley now,' wrote Charles Lamb on the death of a friend of his boyhood (Talfourd's Lamb, ed. 1865, p. 145). Such a companion Johnson found in Taylor. That, on the death of his wife, he at once sent for him, not even waiting for the light of morning to come, is a proof that he had a strong affection for the man.
[507] Ecclesiasticus, ch. xxxviii. verse 25. The whole chapter may be read as an admirable illustration of the superiority of cultivated minds over the gross and illiterate. BOSWELL.
[508] Passages in Johnson's Letters to Mrs. Thrale are to the same effect. 'Aug. 3, 1771. Having stayed my month with Taylor I came away on Wednesday, leaving him, I think, in a disposition of mind not very uncommon, at once weary of my stay, and grieved at my departure.' Piozzi Letters, i. 52. 'July 13, 1775. Dr. Taylor and I spend little time together, yet he will not yet be persuaded to hear of parting.' Ib. p. 276. 'July 26, 1775. Having stayed long enough at Ashbourne, I was not sorry to leave it. I hindered some of Taylor's diversions, and he supplied me with very little.' Ib p. 287.
[509] The second volume of these Sermons, which was published in 1789, a year after the first, contains the following addition to the title:—'To which is added a Sermon written by Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., for the Funeral of his Wife.' 'Dr. Taylor had,' writes Murphy (Life, p. 171), 'The LARGEST BULL in England, and some of the best Sermons.'
[510] If the eminent judge was Lord Mansfield, we may compare with Boswell's regret the lines in which Pope laments the influence of Westminster Hall and Parliament:—
'There truant Windham every muse gave o'er,
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more.
How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast!
How many Martials were in Pulteney lost!'
The Dunciad, iv. 167.
[511] Boswell's brother David had been settled in Spain since 1768. (Boswelliana, p. 5.) He therefore is no doubt the son, and Lord Auchinleck the father.
[512] See ante, ii. 129, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, 1773.
[513] 'Jack' had not shown all his manners to Johnson. Gibbon thus describes him in 1762 (Misc. Works, i. 142):—'Colonel Wilkes, of the Buckinghamshire militia, dined with us. I scarcely ever met with a better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge; but a thorough profligate in principle as in practice, his life stained with every vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and indecency. These morals he glories in—for shame is a weakness he has long since surmounted.' The following anecdote in Boswelliana (p. 274) is not given in the Life of Johnson:—'Johnson had a sovereign contempt for Wilkes and his party, whom he looked upon as a mere rabble. "Sir," said he, "had Wilkes's mob prevailed against government, this nation had died of phthiriasis. Mr. Langton told me this. The expression, morbus pediculosus, as being better known would strike more."'
[514] See ante, p. 79, note 1.
[515] See ante, p. 69.
[516] See ante, i. 402.
[517] See ante, i. 167.
[518] See post, under Sept. 30, 1783.
[519] See post, ib., where Johnson told Mrs. Siddons that 'Garrick was no declaimer.'
[520] Hannah More (Memoirs, ii. 16) says that she once asked Garrick 'why Johnson was so often harsh and unkind in his speeches both of him and to him:—"Why," he replied, "it is very natural; is it not to be expected he should be angry that I, who have so much less merit than he, should have had so much greater success?"'
[521] Foote died a month after this conversation. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Did you see Foote at Brighthelmstone? Did you think he would so soon be gone? Life, says Falstaff, is a shuttle [Merry Wives of Windsor, act v. sc. 1]. He was a fine fellow in his way; and the world is really impoverished by his sinking glories. Murphy ought to write his life, at least to give the world a Footeana. Now will any of his contemporaries bewail him? Will genius change his sex to weep? I would really have his life written with diligence.' This letter is wrongly dated Oct. 3, 1777. It was written early in November. Piozzi Letters, i. 396. Baretti, in a marginal note on Footeana, says:—'One half of it had been a string of obscenities.' See post, April 24, 1779, note.
[522] See ante, i. 447.
[523] To pit is not in Johnson's Dictionary.
[524] Very likely Mr. Langton. See ante, ii. 254.
[525] Two months earlier Johnson had complained that Langton's table was rather coarse. Ante, p. 128.
[526] See post, April 13, 1781, where he again mentions this advice. 'He said of a certain lady's entertainments, "What signifies going thither? There is neither meat, drink, nor talk."' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 207.
[527] William, third Duke of Devonshire, who died in 1755. Johnson (post, April 1, 1779) 'commended him for a dogged veracity.' Horace Walpole records of him a fact that 'showed a conscientious idea of honesty in him. Sometime before his death he had given up to two of his younger sons £600 a-year in land, that they might not perjure themselves, if called upon to swear to their qualifications as Knights of the Shire.' Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ii. 86.
[528] Philip Francis wrote to Burke in 1790:—'Once for all, I wish you would let me teach you to write English. To me who am to read everything you write, it would be a great comfort, and to you no sort of disparagement. Why will you not allow yourself to be persuaded that polish is material to preservation?' Burke's Corres, iii. 164.
[529] Edit. 2, p. 53. BOSWELL.
[530] This is a mistake. The Ports had been seated at Islam time out of mind. Congreve had visited there, and his seat, that is the bench on which he sometimes sat, used to be shown. CROKER. On the way to Islam, Johnson told Boswell about the dedication of his Plan to Lord Chesterfield. Ante, i. 183, note 4.
[531] See ante, i. 41.
[532] 'I believe more places than one are still shown in groves and gardens where he is related to have written his Old Bachelor.' Johnson's Works, viii. 23.
[533] Page 89. BOSWELL.
[534] See Plott's History of Staffordshire, p. 88, and the authorities referred to by him. BOSWELL.
[535] See ante, ii. 247, and post, March 31, 1778.
[536] See ante, i. 444.
[537] Mrs. Piozzi records (Anec. p. 109):—'In answer to the arguments urged by Puritans, Quakers, etc. against showy decorations of the human figure, I once heard him exclaim:—"Oh, let us not be found, when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues! … Alas! Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one."' See ante, i, 405.
[538] Campbell, who was an exciseman, had in July, 1769, caught a favourite servant of Lord Eglintoune in smuggling 80 gallons of rum in one of his master's carts. This, he maintains, led to an ill-feeling. He had a right to carry a gun by virtue of his office, and from many of the gentry he had licences to shoot over their grounds. His lordship, however, had forbidden him to enter his. On Oct. 24, 1769, he passed into his grounds, and walked along the shore within the sea-mark, looking for a plover. Lord Eglintoune came up with him on the sea-sands and demanded his gun, advancing as if to seize it. Campbell warned him that he would fire if he did not keep off, and kept retiring backwards or sideways. He stumbled and fell. Lord Eglintoune stopped a little, and then made as if he would advance. Campbell thereupon fired, and hit him in the side. He was found guilty of murder. On the day after the trial he hanged himself in prison. Ann. Reg. xiii. 219. See ante, ii. 66, and Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 1.
[539] See ante, p. 40.
[540] See ante, ii. 10.
[541] Boswell here alludes to the motto of his Journal:—
'Oh! while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame;
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?'
Pope's Essay on Man, iv. 383.
[542]
'His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.'
Gray's Elegy.
[543] Johnson, a fortnight or so later, mentions this waterfall in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, after speaking of a pool that Mr. Thrale was having dug. 'He will have no waterfall to roar like the Doctor's. I sat by it yesterday, and read Erasmus's Militis Christiani Enchiridion.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 3.
[544] See post, April 9 and 30, 1778. At the following Easter he recorded: 'My memory is less faithful in retaining names, and, I am afraid, in retaining occurrences.' Pr. and Med. p. 170.
[545] I am told that Horace, Earl of Orford, has a collection of Bon-Mots by persons who never said but one. BOSWELL. Horace Walpole had succeeded to his title after the publication of the first edition of this book.
[546] See Macaulay's Essays, i. 370.
[547] Johnson (Works, vii. 158) tells how 'Rochester lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness; till, at the age of one and thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced himself to a state of weakness and decay.' He describes how Burnet 'produced a total change both of his manners and opinions,' and says of the book in which this conversion is recounted that it is one 'which the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.' In Johnson's answer to Boswell we have a play on the title of this work, which is, Some passages of the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester.
[548] In the passages from Johnson's Life of Prior, quoted ante, ii. 78, note 3, may be found an explanation of what he here says. A poet who 'tries to be amorous by dint of study,' and who 'in his amorous pedantry exhibits the college,' may be gross and yet not excite to lewdness. Goldsmith, in 1766, in a book entitled Beauties of English Poetry Selected, had inserted two of Prior's tales, 'which for once interdicted from general reading a book with his name upon its title-page.' Mr. Forster hereupon remarks 'on the changes in the public taste. Nothing is more frequent than these, and few things so sudden.' Of these changes he gives some curious instances. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 4.
[549] See ante, iii. 5.
[550] See ante, i. 428.
[551] Horace, Odes, ii. 14.
[552] I am informed by Mr. Langton, that a great many years ago he was present when this question was agitated between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke; and, to use Johnson's phrase, they 'talked their best;' Johnson for Homer, Burke for Virgil. It may well be supposed to have been one of the ablest and most brilliant contests that ever was exhibited. How much must we regret that it has not been preserved. BOSWELL. Johnson (Works, vii. 332), after saying that Dryden 'undertook perhaps the most arduous work of its kind, a translation of Virgil,' continues:—'In the comparison of Homer and Virgil, the discriminative excellence of Homer is elevation and comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is grace and splendour of diction. The beauties of Homer are therefore difficult to be lost, and those of Virgil difficult to be retained.' Mr. E.J. Payne, in his edition of Burke's Select Works, i. xxxviii, says:— 'Most writers have constantly beside them some favourite classical author from whom they endeavour to take their prevailing tone. Burke, according to Butler, always had a "ragged Delphin Virgil" not far from his elbow.' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, note.
[553] According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Mr. Burke, speaking of Bacon's Essays, said he thought them the best of his works. Dr. Johnson was of opinion that their excellence and their value consisted in being the observations of a strong mind operating upon life; and in consequence you find there what you seldom find in other books.' Northcote's Reynolds, ii. 281.
[554] Mr. Seward perhaps imperfectly remembered the following passage in the Preface to the Dictionary (Works, v. 40):—'From the authors which rose in the time of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. If the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost to mankind for want of English words in which they might be expressed.'
[555] Of Mallet's Life of Bacon, Johnson says (Works, viii. 465) that it is 'written with elegance, perhaps with some affectation; but with so much more knowledge of history than of science, that when he afterwards undertook the Life of Marlborough, Warburton remarked, that he might perhaps forget that Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher.'
[556] It appears from part of the original journal in Mr. Anderdon's papers that the friend who told the story was Mr. Beauclerk and the gentleman and lady alluded to were Mr. (probably Henry) and Miss Harvey. CROKER. Not Harvey but Hervey. See ante, i. 106, and ii. 32, for another story told by Beauclerk against Johnson of Mr. Thomas Hervey.
[557] Johnson, in his Dictionary, gives as the 17th meaning of make, to raise as profit from anything. He quotes the speech of Pompey in Measure for Measure, act iv. sc. 3:—'He made five marks, ready money.' But Pompey, he might reply, was a servant, and his English therefore is not to be taken as a standard.
[558] Idea he defines as mental imagination.
[559] See post, May 15, 1783, note.
[560] In the first three editions of Boswell we find Tadnor for Tadmor. In Dodsley's Collection, iv. 229, the last couplet is as follows:—
'Or Tadmor's marble wastes survey,
Or in yon roofless cloister stray.'
[561] This is the tune that William Crotch (Dr. Crotch) was heard playing before he was two years and a half old, on a little organ that his father, a carpenter, had made. Ann. Reg. xxii 79.
[562] See ante, under Dec. 17, 1775.
[563] In 1757 two battalions of Highlanders were raised and sent to North America. Gent. Mag. xxvii. 42, 333. Boswell (Hebrides, Sept. 3, 1773) mentions 'the regiments which the late Lord Chatham prided himself in having brought from "the mountains of the north."' Chatham said in the House of Lords on Dec. 2, 1777:—'I remember that I employed the very rebels in the service and defence of their country. They were reclaimed by this means; they fought our battles; they cheerfully bled in defence of those liberties which they attempted to overthrow but a few years before.' Parl. Hist. xix. 477.
[564]
'Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee.'
Line 154.
[565] See ante, ii. 168. Boswell, when a widower, wrote to Temple of a lady whom he seemed not unwilling to marry:—'She is about seven-and-twenty, and he [Sir William Scott] tells me lively and gay— a Ranelagh girl—but of excellent principles, insomuch that she reads prayers to the servants in her father's family every Sunday evening.' Letters of Boswell, p. 336.
[566] Pope mentions [Dunciad, iv. 342],
'Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair.'
But I recollect a couplet quite apposite to my subject in Virtue an Ethick Epistle, a beautiful and instructive poem, by an anonymous writer, in 1758; who, treating of pleasure in excess, says:—
'Till languor, suffering on the rack of bliss,
Confess that man was never made for this.' BOSWELL.
[567] See post, June 12, 1784.
[568] See ante, p. 86.
[569] 'For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.' Romans, x. 2.
[570] Horace Walpole wrote:—'Feb. 17, 1773. Caribs, black Caribs, have no representatives in Parliament; they have no agent but God, and he is seldom called to the bar of the House to defend their cause.' Walpole's Letters, v. 438. 'Feb. 14, 1774. 'If all the black slaves were in rebellion, I should have no doubt in choosing my side, but I scarce wish perfect freedom to merchants who are the bloodiest of all tyrants. I should think the souls of the Africans would sit heavy on the swords of the Americans.' Ib. vi. 60.
[571] See ante, ii. 27, 312.
[572] 'We are told that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear,' etc. Works, vi. 262. In his Life of Milton (ib. vii. 116) he says:—'It has been observed that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.'
[573] See page 76 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[574] The address was delivered on May 23, 1770. The editor of Rogers's Table Talk quotes, on p. 129, Mr. Maltby, the friend of Rogers, who says:—'Dr. C. Burney assured me that Beckford did not utter one syllable of the speech—that it was wholly the invention of Horne Tooke. Being very intimate with Tooke, I questioned him on the subject. "What Burney states," he said, "is true. I saw Beckford just after he came from St. James's. I asked him what he had said to the King; and he replied, that he had been so confused, he scarcely knew what he had said. But, cried I, your speech must be sent to the papers; I'll write it for you. I did so immediately, and it was printed forthwith."' Tooke gave the same account to Isaac Reed. Walpole's Letters, v. 238, note. Stephens (Life of Horne Tooke, i. 155-8) says, that the King's answer had been anticipated and that Horne had suggested the idea of a reply. Stephens continues:—'The speech in reply, as Mr. Horne lately acknowledged to me, was his composition.' Stephens does not seem to have heard the story that Beckford did not deliver the reply. He says that Horne inserted the account in the newspapers. 'No one,' he continues, 'was better calculated to give copies of those harangues than the person who had furnished the originals; and as to the occurrences at St. James's, he was enabled to detail the particulars from the lips of the members of the deputation.' Alderman Townshend assured Lord Chatham that Beckford did deliver the speech. Chatham Corres. iii. 460. Horne Tooke's word is not worth much. He did not resign his living till more than seven years after he wrote to Wilkes:—'It is true I have suffered the infectious hand of a bishop to be waved over me; whose imposition, like the sop given to Judas, is only a signal for the devil to enter.' Stephens's Horne Tooke, i. 76. Beckford, dying in his Mayoralty, is oddly connected with Chatterton. 'Chatterton had written a political essay for The North Briton, which, though accepted, was not printed on account of Lord Mayor Beckford's death. The patriot thus calculated the death of his great patron:—
£ s. d.
Lost by his death in
this Essay 1 11 6
Gained in Elegies £2.2
in Essays £3.3
——
5 5 0
——————-
Am glad he is dead by £3 13 6
D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, i. 54.
[575] At the time that Johnson wrote this there were serfs in Scotland. An Act passed in 1775 (15 Geo. III. c. 22) contains the following preamble:—'Whereas by the law of Scotland, as explained by the judges of the courts of law there, many colliers and salters are in a state of slavery and bondage, bound to the collieries or saltworks where they work for life, transferable with the coalwork and salteries,' etc. The Act was ineffectual in giving relief, and in 1779 by 39 Geo. III. c. 56 all colliers were 'declared to be free from their servitude.' The last of these emancipated slaves died in the year 1844. Tranent and its Surroundings, by P. M'Neill, p. 26. See also Parl. Hist. xxix. 1109, where Dundas states that it was only 'after several years' struggle that the bill was carried through both Houses.'
[576] See ante, ii. 13.
[577] 'The Utopians do not make slaves of the sons of their slaves; the slaves among them are such as are condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime.' Sir T. More's Utopia—Ideal Commonwealths, p. 129.
[578] The Rev. John Newton (Cowper's friend) in 1763 wrote of the slave-trade, in which he had been engaged, 'It is indeed accounted a genteel employment, and is usually very profitable, though to me it did not prove so, the Lord seeing that a large increase of wealth could not be good for me.' Newton's Life, p. 148. A ruffian of a London Alderman, a few weeks before The Life of Johnson was published, said in parliament:—'The abolition of the trade would destroy our Newfoundland fishery, which the slaves in the West Indies supported by consuming that part of the fish which was fit for no other consumption, and consequently, by cutting off the great source of seamen, annihilate our marine.' Parl. Hist. xxix. 343.
[579] Gray's Elegy. Mrs. Piozzi maintained that 'mercy was totally abolished by French maxims; for, if all men are equal, mercy is no more.' Piozzi's Synonymy, i. 370. Johnson, in 1740, described slavery as 'the most calamitous estate in human life,' a state 'which has always been found so destructive to virtue, that in many languages a slave and a thief are expressed by the same word.' Works, v. 265-6. Nineteen years later he wrote of the discoveries of the Portuguese:—'Much knowledge has been acquired, and much cruelty been committed; the belief of religion has been very little propagated, and its laws have been outrageously and enormously violated.' Ib. p. 219. Horace Walpole wrote, on July 9, 1754, (Letters, ii. 394), 'I was reading t'other day the Life of Colonel Codrington. He left a large estate for the propagation of the Gospel, and ordered that three hundred negroes should constantly be employed upon it. Did one ever hear a more truly Christian charity than keeping up a perpetuity of three hundred slaves to look after the Gospel's estate?' Churchill, in Gotham, published in 1764 (Poems, ii. 101), says of Europe's treatment of the savage race:—
'Faith too she plants, for her own ends imprest,
To make them bear the worst, and hope the best.'
[580]
'With stainless lustre virtue shines,
A base repulse nor knows nor fears;
Nor claims her honours, nor declines,
As the light air of crowds uncertain veers.'
FRANCIS. Horace Odes, iii. 2.
[581] Sir Walter Scott, in a note to Redgauntlet, Letter 1, says:— 'Sir John Nisbett of Dirleton's Doubts and Questions upon the Law especially of Scotland, and Sir James Stewart's Dirleton's Doubts and Questions resolved and answered, are works of authority in Scottish jurisprudence. As is generally the case, the Doubts are held more in respect than the solution.'
[582] When Boswell first made Johnson's acquaintance it was he who suffered from the late hours. Ante, i. 434.
[583] See ante, ii. 312.
[584] Burke, in Present Discontents, says:—'The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength and far less odium, under the name of Influence.' Influence he explains as 'the method of governing by men of great natural interest or great acquired consideration.' Payne's Burke, i. 10, 11. 'Influence,' said Johnson,' must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 18. To political life might be applied what Johnson wrote of domestic life:—'It is a maxim that no man ever was enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.' Notes and Queries, 6th S., v. 343.
[585] Boswell falls into what he calls 'the cant transmitted from age to age in praise of the ancient Romans.' Ante, i. 311. To do so with Johnson was at once to provoke an attack, for he looked upon the Roman commonwealth as one 'which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind.' Ib. Moreover he disliked appeals to history. 'General history,' writes Murphy (Life, p. 138), 'had little of his regard. Biography was his delight. Sooner than hear of the Punic War he would be rude to the person that introduced the subject.' Mrs. Piozzi says (Anec. p. 80) that 'no kind of conversation pleased him less, I think, than when the subject was historical fact or general polity. 'What shall we learn from that stuff?' said he. 'He never,' as he expressed it, 'desired to hear of the Punic War while he lived.' The Punic War, it is clear, was a kind of humorous catch word with him. She wrote to him in 1773:—'So here's modern politics in a letter from me; yes and a touch of the Punic War too.' Piozzi Letters, i. 187. He wrote to her in 1775, just after she had been at the first regatta held in England:—'You will now find the advantage of having made one at the regatta…. It is the good of public life that it supplies agreeable topics and general conversation. Therefore wherever you are, and whatever you see, talk not of the Punic War; nor of the depravity of human nature; nor of the slender motives of human actions; nor of the difficulty of finding employment or pleasure; but talk, and talk, and talk of the regatta.' Ib. p. 260. He was no doubt sick of the constant reference made by writers and public speakers to Rome. For instance, in Bolingbroke's Dissertation upon Parties, we find in three consecutive Letters (xi-xiii) five illustrations drawn from Rome.
[586] It is strange that Boswell does not mention that on this day they met the Duke and Duchess of Argyle in the street. That they did so we learn from Piozzi Letters, i. 386. Perhaps the Duchess shewed him 'the same marked coldness' as at Inverary. Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 25.
[587] At Auchinleck he had 'exhorted Boswell to plant assiduously.' Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 4.
[588] See ante, i. 72. In Scotland it was Cocker's Arithmetic that he took with him. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 31. He was not always correct in his calculations. For instance, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Ashbourne less than a fortnight after Boswell's departure: 'Mr. Langdon bought at Nottingham fair fifteen tun of cheese; which, at an ounce a-piece, will suffice after dinner for four-hundred-and-eighty thousand men.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 2. To arrive at this number he must have taken a hundredweight as equal to, not 112, but 100, pounds.
[589] Johnson wrote the next day:—'Boswell is gone, and is, I hope, pleased that he has been here; though to look on anything with pleasure is not very common. He has been gay and good-humoured in his usual way, but we have not agreed upon any other expedition.' Piozzi Letters, i. 384.
[590] He lent him also the original journal of his Hebrides, and received in return a complimentary letter, which he in like manner published. Boswell's Hebrides, near the end.
[591] 'The landlord at Ellon said that he heard he was the greatest man in England, next to Lord Mansfield.' Ante, ii. 336.
[592] See ante, under March 15, 1776, where Johnson says that 'truth is essential to a story.'
[593] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Boswell kept his journal very diligently; but then what was there to journalize? I should be glad to see what he says of *********.' Piozzi Letters, i. 390. The number of stars renders it likely that Beauclerk is meant. See ante, p. 195, note 1.
[594] See ante, ii. 279.
[595] Mr. Beauclerk. See ante, p. 195.
[596] Beauclerk.
[597] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Boswell says his wife does not love me quite well yet, though we have made a formal peace.' Piozzi Letters, i. 390.
[598] A daughter born to him. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker says that this daughter was Miss Jane Langton, mentioned post, May 10, 1784.
[599] She had already had eleven children, of whom seven were by this time dead. Ante, p. 109. This time a daughter was born, and not a young brewer. Post, July 3, 1778.
[600] Three months earlier Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'We are not far from the great year of a hundred thousand barrels, which, if three shillings be gained upon each barrel, will bring us fifteen thousand pounds a year.' Piozzi Letters, i. 357. We may see how here, as elsewhere, he makes himself almost one with the Thrales.
[601] See ante, p. 97.
[602] Mrs. Aston. BOSWELL.
[603] See State Trials, vol. xi. p. 339, and Mr. Hargrave's argument. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 87.
[604] The motto to it was happily chosen:—
'Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses.'
I cannot avoid mentioning a circumstance no less strange than true, that a brother Advocate in considerable practice, but of whom it certainly cannot be said, Ingenuas didicit fideliter artes, asked Mr. Maclaurin, with a face of flippant assurance, 'Are these words your own?' BOSWELL. Sir Walter Scott shows where the humour of this motto chiefly lay. 'The counsel opposite,' he writes, 'was the celebrated Wight, an excellent lawyer, but of very homely appearance, with heavy features, a blind eye which projected from its socket, a swag belly, and a limp. To him Maclaurin applied the lines of Virgil:—
'Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses,
O formose puer, nimium ne crede colori.'
['Though he was black, and thou art heavenly fair,
Trust not too much to that enchanting face.'
DRYDEN. Virgil, Eclogues, ii. 16.] Mr. Maclaurin wrote an essay against the Homeric tale of 'Troy divine,' I believe, for the sole purpose of introducing a happy motto,—
'Non anni domuere decem non mille carinæ.'
[Æneid, ii. 198.] Croker's Boswell, p. 279.
[605] There is, no doubt, some malice in this second mention of Dundas's Scottish accent (see ante, ii. 160). Boswell complained to Temple in 1789 that Dundas had not behaved well to himself or his brother David. 'The fact is, he writes, 'on David's being obliged to quit Spain on account of the war, Dundas promised to my father that he would give him an office. Some time after my father's death, Dundas renewed the assurance to me in strong terms, and told me he had said to Lord Caermarthen, "It is a deathbed promise, and I must fulfil it." Yet David has now been kept waiting above eight years, when he might have established himself again in trade…. This is cruel usage.' Boswell adds:—'I strongly suspect Dundas has given Pitt a prejudice against me. The excellent Langton says it is disgraceful; it is utter folly in Pitt not to reward and attach to his Administration a man of my popular and pleasant talents, whose merit he has acknowledged in a letter under his own hand.' Letters of Boswell, p. 286.
[606] Knight was kidnapped when a child and sold to a Mr. Wedderburne of Ballandean, who employed him as his personal servant. In 1769 his master brought him to Britain, and from that time allowed him sixpence a week for pocket money. By the assistance of his fellow-servants he learnt to read. In 1772 he read in a newspaper the report of the decision in the Somerset Case. 'From that time,' said Mr. Ferguson, 'he had had it in his head to leave his master's service.' In 1773 he married a fellow-servant, and finding sixpence a week insufficient for married life, applied for ordinary wages. This request being refused, he signified his intention of seeking service elsewhere. On his master's petition to the Justices of Peace of Perthshire, he was brought before them on a warrant; they decided that he must continue with him as formerly. For some time he continued accordingly; but a child being born to him, he petitioned the Sheriff, who decided in his favour. He thereupon left the house of his master, who removed the cause into the Court of Session.' Ferguson maintained that there are 'many examples of greater servitude in this country [Scotland] than that claimed by the defender, i.e. [Mr. Wedderburne, the plaintiff]. There still exists a species of perpetual servitude, which is supported by late statutes and by daily practice, viz. That which takes place with regard to the coaliers and sailers, where, from the single circumstance of entering to work after puberty, they are bound to perpetual service, and sold along with the works.' Ferguson's Additional Information, July 4, 1775, pp. 3; 29; and Maclaurin's Additional Information, April 20, 1776, p. 2. See ante, p. 202.
[607] See ante, p. 106.
[608] Florence Wilson accompanied, as tutor, Cardinal Wolsey's nephew to Paris, and published at Lyons in 1543 his De Tranquillitate Animi Dialogus. Rose's Biog. Dict. xii. 508.
[609] When Johnson visited Boswell in Edinburgh, Mrs. Boswell 'insisted that, to show all respect to the Sage, she would give up her own bed-chamber to him, and take a worse.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 14. See post, April 18, 1778.
[610] See ante, Dec. 23, 1775.
[611] Fielding, in his Voyage to Lisbon (p. 2), writes of him as 'my friend Mr. Welch, whom I never think or speak of but with love and esteem.' See post, under March 30, 1783.
[612] Johnson defines police as the regulation and government of a city or country, so far as regards the inhabitants.
[613] At this time Under-secretary of State. See ante, i. 478, note 1.
[614] Fielding, after telling how, unlike his predecessor, he had not plundered the public or the poor, continues:—'I had thus reduced an income of about £500 a-year of the dirtiest money upon earth to little more than £300; a considerable proportion of which remained with my clerk.' He added that he 'received from the Government a yearly pension out of the public service money.' Voyage to Lisbon, Introduction.
[615] The friendship between Mr. Welch and him was unbroken. Mr. Welch died not many months before him, and bequeathed him five guineas for a ring, which Johnson received with tenderness, as a kind memorial. His regard was constant for his friend Mr. Welch's daughters; of whom, Jane is married to Mr. Nollekens the statuary, whose merit is too well known to require any praise from me. BOSWELL.
[616] See ante, ii. 50. It seems from Boswell's words, as the editor of the Letters of Boswell (p. 91) points out, that in this case he was 'only a friend and amateur, and not a duly appointed advocate.' He certainly was not retained in an earlier stage of the cause, for on July 22, 1767, he wrote:—'Though I am not a counsel in that cause, yet I am much interested in it.' Ib. p. 93.
[617] Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, humorously observed, that Levett used to breakfast on the crust of a roll, which Johnson, after tearing out the crumb for himself, threw to his humble friend. BOSWELL. Perhaps the word threw is here too strong. Dr. Johnson never treated Levett with contempt. MALONE. Hawkins (Life, p. 398) says that 'Dr. Johnson frequently observed that Levett was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday.' Johnson's roll, says Dr. Harwood, was every morning placed in a small blue and white china saucer which had belonged to his wife, and which he familiarly called 'Tetty.' See the inscription on the saucer in the Lichfield Museum.
[618] See this subject discussed in a subsequent page, under May 3, 1779. BOSWELL.
[619] On Feb. 17, Lord North 'made his Conciliatory Propositions.' Parl. Hist. xix. 762.
[620] See ante, ii 111.
[621] See ante, ii. 312.
[622] Alluding to a line in his Vanity of Human Wishes, describing Cardinal Wolsey in his state of elevation:—
'Through him the rays of regal bounty shine.' BOSWELL.
[623] See ante, p. 205.
[624] 'In my mind's eye, Horatio.' Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.
[625] Mr. Langton. See ante, p. 48.
[626] See ante, May 12, 1775.
[627] Daughter of Dr. Swinfen, Johnson's godfather, and widow of Mr. Desmoulins, a writing-master. BOSWELL.
[628] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Montagu on March 5:—'Now, dear Madam, we must talk of business. Poor Davies, the bankrupt bookseller, is soliciting his friends to collect a small sum for the repurchase of part of his household stuff. Several of them gave him five guineas. It would be an honour to him to owe part of his relief to Mrs. Montagu.' Croker's Boswell, p. 570. J. D'Israeli says (Calamities of Authors, i. 265):—'We owe to Davies beautiful editions of some of our elder poets, which are now eagerly sought after; yet, though all his publications were of the best kinds, and are now of increasing value, the taste of Tom Davies twice ended in bankruptcy.' See post, April 7, 1778.
[629] See ante, i. 391. Davies wrote to Garrick in 1763:—'I remember that during the run of Cymbeline I had the misfortune to disconcert you in one scene of that play, for which I did immediately beg your pardon, and did attribute it to my accidentally seeing Mr. Churchill in the pit, with great truth; and that was the only time I can recollect of my being confused or unmindful of my business when that gentleman was before me. I had even then a more moderate opinion of my abilities than your candour would allow me, and have always acknowledged that gentleman's picture of me was fair.' He adds that he left the stage on account of Garrick's unkindness, 'who,' he says, 'at rehearsals took all imaginable pains to make me unhappy.' Garrick Corres. i. 165.
[630] He was afterwards Solicitor-General under Lord Rockingham and Attorney-General under the Duke of Portland. 'I love Mr. Lee exceedingly,' wrote Boswell, 'though I believe there are not any two specifick propositions of any sort in which we exactly agree. But the general mass of sense and sociality, literature and religion, in each of us, produces two given quantities, which unite and effervesce wonderfully well. I know few men I would go farther to serve than Jack Lee.' Letter to the People of Scotland, p. 75. Lord Eldon said that Lee, in the debates upon the India Bill, speaking of the charter of the East India Company, 'expressed his surprise that there could be such political strife about what he called "a piece of parchment, with a bit of wax dangling to it." This most improvident expression uttered by a Crown lawyer formed the subject of comment and reproach in all the subsequent debates, in all publications of the times, and in everybody's conversation.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 97. In the debate on Fox's India Bill on Dec. 3, 1783, Lee 'asked what was the consideration of a charter, a skin of parchment with a waxed seal at the corner, compared to the happiness of thirty millions of subjects, and the preservation of a mighty empire.' Parl. Hist. xxiv. 49. See Twiss's Eldon, i. 106-9, and 131, for anecdotes of Lee; and ante, ii. 48, note 1.
[631] 'For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face.' I Corinthians, xiii. 12.
[632] Goldsmith notices this in the Haunch of Venison:—
My friend bade me welcome, but struck me quite dumb
With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not come;
For I knew it (he cried), both eternally fail,
The one with his speeches, and t'other with Thrale.'
CROKER. See ante, i. 493.
[633] See post, April 1, 1781. 'Johnson said:—"He who praises everybody praises nobody."' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 216.
[634] See ante, p. 55.
[635] Johnson wrote in July 1775:—'Everybody says the prospect of harvest is uncommonly delightful; but this has been so long the summer talk, and has been so often contradicted by autumn, that I do not suffer it to lay much hold on my mind. Our gay prospects have now for many years together ended in melancholy retrospects.' Piozzi Letters, i. 259. On Aug. 27, 1777, he wrote:—'Amidst all these little things there is one great thing. The harvest is abundant, and the weather à la merveille. No season ever was finer.' Ib. p. 360. In this month of March, 1778, wheat was selling at 5s. 3d. the bushel in London; at 6s. 10d. in Somerset; and at 5s. 1d. in Northumberland, Suffolk, and Sussex. Gent. Mag. xlviii. 98. The average price for 1778 was 5s. 3d. Ann. Reg. xxi. 282.
[636] See post, iii. 243, Oct. 10, 1779, and April 1, 1781.
[637] The first edition was in 1492. Between that period and 1792, according to this account, there were 3600 editions. But this is very improbable. MALONE. Malone assumes, as Mr. Croker points out, that this rate of publication continued to the year 1792. But after all, the difference is trifling. Johnson here forgot to use his favourite cure for exaggeration—counting. See post, April 18, 1783. 'Round numbers,' he said, 'are always false.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 198. Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 300), after making a calculation, writes:—'I may err in my calculations, for I am a woeful arithmetician; but no matter, one large sum is as good as another.'
[638] The original passage is: 'Si non potes te talem facere, qualem vis, quomodo poteris alium ad tuum habere beneplacitum?' De Imit. Christ. lib. i. cap. xvi. J. BOSWELL, Jun.
[639] See p. 29 of this vol. BOSWELL.
[640] Since this was written the attainder has been reversed; and Nicholas Barnewall is now a peer of Ireland with this title. The person mentioned in the text had studied physick, and prescribed gratis to the poor. Hence arose the subsequent conversation. MALONE.
[641] See Franklin's Autobiography for his conversion from vegetarianism.
[642] See ante, ii. 217, where Johnson advised Boswell to keep a journal. 'The great thing to be recorded, is the state of your own mind.'
[643] 'Nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and, once uttered, are sullenly supported.' Johnson's Works, viii. 23.
[644] Literary Magazine, 1756, p. 37. BOSWELL. Johnson's Works, vi. 42. See post, Oct. 10, 1779.
[645]
'Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'
'For while upon such monstrous scenes we gaze,
They shock our faith, our indignation raise.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. 1. 188. Johnson speaks of 'the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder.' Works, vii. 2. 'Wonders,' he says, 'are willingly told, and willingly heard.' Ib. viii. 292. Speaking of Voltaire he says:—'It is the great failing of a strong imagination to catch greedily at wonders.' Ib. vi. 455. See ante, i. 309, note 3, ii. 247, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 19, 1773. According to Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 137) Hogarth said:—'Johnson, though so wise a fellow, is more like King David than King Solomon; for he says in his haste that all men are liars.'
[646] The following plausible but over-prudent counsel on this subject is given by an Italian writer, quoted by 'Rhedi de generatione insectarum,' with the epithet of 'divini poetæ:'
'Sempre a quel ver ch'ha faccia di menzogna Dee l'uom chiuder le labbra quanto ei puote; Però che senza colpa fa vergogna.' BOSWELL.
It is strange that Boswell should not have discovered that these lines were from Dante. The following is Wright's translation:—
'That truth which bears the semblance of a lie,
Should never pass the lips, if possible;
Tho' crime be absent, still disgrace is nigh.'
Infern. xvi. 124. CROKER.
[647] See ante, i. 7, note 1.
[648] See ante, i. 405.
[649] 'Of John Wesley he said:—"He can talk well on any subject."' Post, April 15, 1778. Southey says that 'his manners were almost irresistibly winning, and his cheerfulness was like perpetual sunshine.' Life of Wesley, i. 409. Wesley recorded on Dec. 18, 1783 (Journal, iv. 258):—'I spent two hours with that great man Dr. Johnson, who is sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.'
[650] 'When you met him in the street of a crowded city, he attracted notice, not only by his band and cassock, and his long hair white and bright as silver, but by his pace and manner, both indicating that all his minutes were numbered, and that not one was to be lost. "Though I am always in haste," he says of himself, "I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit."' Southey's Wesley, ii. 397.
[651] No doubt the Literary Club. See ante, ii. 330, 345. Mr. Croker says 'that it appears by the books of the Club that the company on that evening consisted of Dr. Johnson president, Mr. Burke, Mr. Boswell, Dr. George Fordyce, Mr. Gibbon, Dr. Johnson (again named), Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Upper Ossory, and Mr. R. B. Sheridan.' E. no doubt stands for Edmund Burke, and J. for Joshua Reynolds. Who are meant by the other initials cannot be known. Mr. Croker hazards some guesses; but he says that Sir James Mackintosh and Chalmers were as dubious as himself.
[652] See Langhorne's Plutarch, ed. 1809, ii. 133.
[653] 'A man came in balancing a straw upon his nose, and the audience were clapping their hands in all the raptures of applause.' The Citizen of the World, Letter xxi. According to Davis (Life of Garrick, i. 113), 'in one year, after paying all expenses, £11,000 were the produce of Mr. Maddocks (the straw-man's agility), added to the talents of the players at Covent Garden theatre.'
[654] See ante, i. 399.
[655] 'Sir' said Edwards to Johnson (post, April 17, 1778), 'I remember you would not let us say prodigious at College.'
[656] 'Emigration was at this time a common topick of discourse. Dr. Johnson regretted it as hurtful to human happiness.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773.
[657] In 1766 Johnson wrote a paper (first published in 1808) to prove that 'the bounty upon corn has produced plenty.' 'The truth of these principles,' he says, 'our ancestors discovered by reason, and the French have now found it by experience. In this regulation we have the honour of being masters to those who, in commercial policy, have been long accounted the masters of the world.' Works, v. 323, 326, and ante, i. 518. 'In 1688 was granted the parliamentary bounty upon the exportation of corn. The country gentlemen had felt that the money price of corn was falling. The bounty was an expedient to raise it artificially to the high price at which it had frequently been sold in the times of Charles I. and II.' Smith's Wealth of Nations, book I. c. xi. The year 1792, the last year of peace before the great war, was likewise the last year of exportation. Penny Cyclo. viii. 22.
[658]
'Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote.'
Goldsmith's Retaliation.
Horace Walpole says of Lord Mansfield's speech on the Habeas Corpus Bill of 1758:—'Perhaps it was the only speech that in my time at least had real effect; that is, convinced many persons.' Reign of George II, iii. 120.
[659] Gibbon, who was now a member of parliament, was present at this dinner. In his Autobiography (Misc. Works, i. 221) he says:—'After a fleeting illusive hope, prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute…. Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice. But I assisted at the debates of a free assembly; I listened to the attack and defence of eloquence and reason; I had a near prospect of the character, views, and passions of the first men of the age…. The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian.'
[660] Horace, Odes, iii. 24, 46.
[661] Lord Bolingbroke, who, however detestable as a metaphysician, must be allowed to have had admirable talents as a political writer, thus describes the House of Commons, in his 'Letter to Sir William Wyndham:' —'You know the nature of that assembly; they grow, like hounds, fond of the man who shews them game, and by whose halloo they are used to be encouraged.' BOSWELL. Bolingbroke's Works, i. 15.
[662] Smollett says (Journey, i. 147) that he had a musquetoon which could carry eight balls. 'This piece did not fail to attract the curiosity and admiration of the people in every place through which we passed. The carriage no sooner halted than a crowd surrounded the man to view the blunderbuss, which they dignified with the name of petit canon. At Nuys in Burgundy, he fired it in the air, and the whole mob dispersed, and scampered off like a flock of sheep.'
[663] Smollett does not say that he frightened the nobleman. He mistook him for a postmaster and spoke to him very roughly. The nobleman seems to have been good-natured; for, at the next stage, says Smollett, 'observing that one of the trunks behind was a little displaced, he assisted my servant in adjusting it.' His name and rank were learnt later on. Journey, i. p. 134.
[664] The two things did not happen in the same town. 'I am sure, writes Thicknesse (Travels, ii. 147), 'there was but that single French nobleman in this mighty kingdom, who would have submitted to such insults as the Doctor says he treated him with; nor any other town but Sens [it was Nuys] where the firing of a gun would have so terrified the inhabitants.'
[665] Both Smollett and Thicknesse were great grumblers.
[666] Lord Bolingbroke said of Lord Oxford:—'He is naturally inclined to believe the worst, which I take to be a certain mark of a mean spirit and a wicked soul; at least I am sure that the contrary quality, when it is not due to weakness of understanding, is the fruit of a generous temper and an honest heart.' Bolingbroke's Works, i. 25. Lord Eldon asked Pitt, not long before his death, what he thought of the honesty of mankind. 'His answer was, that he had a favourable opinion of mankind upon the whole, and that he believed that the majority was really actuated by fair meaning and intention.' Twiss's Eldon, i. 499.
[667] Johnson wrote in 175l:—'We are by our occupations, education, and habits of life, divided almost into different species, which regard one another, for the most part, with scorn and malignity.' The Rambler, No. 160. In No. 173 he writes of 'the general hostility which every part of mankind exercises against the rest to furnish insults and sarcasm.' In 1783 he said:—'I am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.' Post, under Aug. 29, 1783.
[668] Johnson thirty-four years earlier, in the Life of Savage (Works, viii. 188), had written:—'The knowledge of life was indeed his chief attainment; and it is not without some satisfaction that I can produce the suffrage of Savage in favour of human nature.' On April 14, 1781, he wrote:—'The world is not so unjust or unkind as it is peevishly represented. Those who deserve well seldom fail to receive from others such services as they can perform; but few have much in their power, or are so stationed as to have great leisure from their own affairs, and kindness must be commonly the exuberance of content. The wretched have no compassion; they can do good only from strong principles of duty.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 199.
[669] Pope thus introduces this story:
'Faith in such case if you should prosecute,
I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit,
Who send the thief who [that] stole the cash away,
And punish'd him that put it in his way.'
Imitations of Horace, book II. epist. ii. [l. 23]. BOSWELL.
[670] Very likely Boswell himself. See post, July 17, 1779, where he put Johnson's friendship to the test by neglecting to write to him.
[671] No doubt Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, afterwards Bishop of Killaloe. See ante, p. 84.
[672] The reverse of the story of Combabus, on which Mr. David Hume told Lord Macartney, that a friend of his had written a tragedy. It is, however, possible that I may have been inaccurate in my perception of what Dr. Johnson related, and that he may have been talking of the same ludicrous tragical subject that Mr. Hume had mentioned. BOSWELL. The story of Combabus, which was originally told by Lucian, may be found in Bayle's Dictionary. MALONE.
[673] Horace Walpole, less than three months later, wrote (Letters, vii. 83):—'Poor Mrs. Clive has been robbed again in her own lane [in Twickenham] as she was last year. I don't make a visit without a blunderbuss; one might as well be invaded by the French.' Yet Wesley in the previous December, speaking of highwaymen, records (Journal, iv. 110):—'I have travelled all roads by day and by night for these forty years, and never was interrupted yet.' Baretti, who was a great traveller, says:—'For my part I never met with any robbers in my various rambles through several regions of Europe.' Baretti's Journey from London to Genoa, ii. 266.
[674] A year or two before Johnson became acquainted with the Thrales a man was hanged on Kennington Common for robbing Mr. Thrale. Gent. Mag. xxxiii. 411.
[675] The late Duke of Montrose was generally said to have been uneasy on that account; but I can contradict the report from his Grace's own authority. As he used to admit me to very easy conversation with him, I took the liberty to introduce the subject. His Grace told me, that when riding one night near London, he was attacked by two highwaymen on horseback, and that he instantly shot one of them, upon which the other galloped off; that his servant, who was very well mounted, proposed to pursue him and take him, but that his Grace said, 'No, we have had blood enough: I hope the man may live to repent.' His Grace, upon my presuming to put the question, assured me, that his mind was not at all clouded by what he had thus done in self-defence. BOSWELL.
[676] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, for a discussion on signing death-warrants.
[677] 'Mr. Dunning the great lawyer,' Johnson called him, ante, p. 128. Lord Shelburne says:—'The fact is well known of the present Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (Lord Loughborough, formerly Mr. Wedderburne) beginning a law argument in the absence of Mr. Dunning, but upon hearing him hem in the course of it, his tone so visibly [sic] changed that there was not a doubt in any part of the House of the reason of it.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, iii. 454.
[678] 'The applause of a single human being,' he once said, 'is of great consequence.' Post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection.
[679] Most likely Boswell's father, for he answers to what is said of this person. He was known to Johnson, he had married a second time, and he was fond of planting, and entertained schemes for the improvement of his property. See Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 4 and 5, 1773. Respectable was still a term of high praise. It had not yet come down to signify 'a man who keeps a gig.' Johnson defines it as 'venerable, meriting respect.' It is not in the earlier editions of his Dictionary. Boswell, in his Hebrides (Oct. 27), calls Johnson the Duke of Argyle's 'respectable guest,' and post, under Sept. 5, 1780, writes of 'the respectable notion which should ever be entertained of my illustrious friend.' Dr. Franklin in a dedication to Johnson describes himself as 'a sincere admirer of his respectable talents;' post, end of 1780. In the Gent. Mag. lv. 235, we read that 'a stone now covers the grave which holds his [Dr. Johnson's] respectable remains.' 'I do not know,' wrote Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 43) of Hampton Court, 'a more respectable sight than a room containing fourteen admirals, all by Sir Godfrey.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, ii. 487), congratulating Lord Loughborough on becoming Lord Chancellor, speaks of the support the administration will derive 'from so respectable an ally.' George III. wrote to Lord Shelburne on Sept. 16, 1782, 'when the tie between the Colonies and England was about to be formally severed,' that he made 'the most frequent prayers to heaven to guide me so to act that posterity may not lay the downfall of this once respectable empire at my door.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, iii. 297. Lord Chesterfield (Misc. Works, iv. 308) writing of the hour of death says:—'That moment is at least a very respectable one, let people who boast of not fearing it say what they please.'
[680] The younger Newbery records that Johnson, finding that he had a violin, said to him:—'Young man, give the fiddle to the first beggar man you meet, or you will never be a scholar.' A Bookseller of the Last Century, pp. 127, 145. See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 15.
[681] When I told this to Miss Seward, she smiled, and repeated, with admirable readiness, from Acis and Galatea,
'Bring me a hundred reeds of ample growth,
To make a pipe for my CAPACIOUS MOUTH.' BOSWELL.
[682] See post, June 3, 1784, where Johnson again mentions this. In The Spectator, No. 536, Addison recommends knotting, which was, he says, again in fashion, as an employment for 'the most idle part of the kingdom; I mean that part of mankind who are known by the name of the women's-men, or beaus,' etc. In The Universal Passion, Satire i, Young says of fame:—
'By this inspired (O ne'er to be forgot!)
Some lords have learned to spell, and some to knot.'
Lord Eldon says that 'at a period when all ladies were employed (when they had nothing better to do) in knotting, Bishop Porteous was asked by the Queen, whether she might knot on a Sunday. He answered, "You may not;" leaving her Majesty to decide whether, as knot and not were in sound alike, she was, or was not, at liberty to do so.' Twiss's Eldon, ii. 355.
[683] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 23.
[684] See post, p. 248.
[685] Martin's style is wanting in that 'cadence which Temple gave to English prose' (post, p. 257). It would not be judged now so severely as it was a century ago, as the following instance will show:—'There is but one steel and tinder-box in all this commonwealth; the owner whereof fails not upon every occasion of striking fire in the lesser isles, to go thither, and exact three eggs, or one of the lesser fowls from each man as a reward for his service; this by them is called the Fire-Penny, and this Capitation is very uneasy to them; I bid them try their chrystal with their knives, which, when they saw it did strike fire, they were not a little astonished, admiring at the strangeness of the thing, and at the same time accusing their own ignorance, considering the quantity of chrystal growing under the rock of their coast. This discovery has delivered them from the Fire-Penny-Tax, and so they are no longer liable to it.'
[686] See ante, p. 226.
[687] Lord Macartney observes upon this passage, 'I have heard him tell many things, which, though embellished by their mode of narrative, had their foundation in truth; but I never remember any thing approaching to this. If he had written it, I should have supposed some wag had put the figure of one before the three.'—I am, however, absolutely certain that Dr. Campbell told me it, and I gave particular attention to it, being myself a lover of wine, and therefore curious to hear whatever is remarkable concerning drinking. There can be no doubt that some men can drink, without suffering any injury, such a quantity as to others appears incredible. It is but fair to add, that Dr. Campbell told me, he took a very long time to this great potation; and I have heard Dr. Johnson say, 'Sir, if a man drinks very slowly, and lets one glass evaporate before he takes another, I know not how long he may drink.' Dr. Campbell mentioned a Colonel of Militia who sat with him all the time, and drank equally. BOSWELL.
[688] See ante, i. 417.
[689] In the following September she is thus mentioned by Miss Burney: —'Mrs. Thrale. "To-morrow, Sir, Mrs. Montagu dines here, and then you will have talk enough." Dr. Johnson began to see-saw, with a countenance strongly expressive of inward fun, and after enjoying it some time in silence, he suddenly, and with great animation, turned to me and cried; "Down with her, Burney! down with her! spare her not! attack her, fight her, and down with her at once! You are a rising wit, and she is at the top; and when I was beginning the world, and was nothing and nobody, the joy of my life was to fire at all the established wits, and then everybody loved to halloo me on."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 117. 'She has,' adds Miss Burney, 'a sensible and penetrating countenance and the air and manner of a woman accustomed to being distinguished and of great parts. Dr. Johnson, who agrees in this, told us that a Mrs. Hervey of his acquaintance says she can remember Mrs. Montagu trying for this same air and manner.' Ib. p. 122. See ante, ii. 88.
[690] Only one volume had been published; it ended with the sixteenth chapter.
[691] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 462) says:—'She did not take at Edinburgh. Lord Kames, who was at first catched with her Parnassian coquetry, said at last that he believed she had as much learning as a well-educated college lad here of sixteen. In genuine feelings and deeds she was remarkably deficient. We saw her often in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, and in that town, where there was no audience for such an actress as she was, her natural character was displayed, which was that of an active manager of her affairs, a crafty chaperon, and a keen pursuer of her interest, not to be outdone by the sharpest coal-dealer on the Tyne; but in this capacity she was not displeasing, for she was not acting a part.'
[692] What my friend meant by these words concerning the amiable philosopher of Salisbury, I am at a loss to understand. A friend suggests, that Johnson thought his manner as a writer affected, while at the same time the matter did not compensate for that fault. In short, that he meant to make a remark quite different from that which a celebrated gentleman made on a very eminent physician: 'He is a coxcomb, but a satisfactory coxcomb.' BOSWELL. Malone says that the celebrated gentleman was Gerard Hamilton. See Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 3, where Johnson says that 'he thought Harris a coxcomb,' and ante, ii. 225.
[693] Hermes.
[694] On the back of the engraving of Johnson in the Common Room of University College is inscribed:—'Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in hac camera communi frequens conviva. D.D. Gulielmus Scott nuper socius.' Gulielmus Scott is better known as Lord Stowell. See ante, i. 379, note 2, and iii. 42; and post, April 17, 1778.
[695] See ante, under March 15, 1776.
[696] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 31.
[697] See ante, p. 176.
[698] See ante, i. 413.
[699] Eminent is the epithet Boswell generally applies to Burke (ante, ii. 222), and Burke almost certainly is here meant. Yet Johnson later on said, 'Burke's talk is the ebullition of his mind. He does not talk from a desire of distinction, but because his mind is full.' Post, March 21, 1783.
[700] Kames describes it as 'an act as wild as any that superstition ever suggested to a distempered brain.' Sketches, etc. iv. 321.
[701] See ante, p. 243.
[702] 'Queen Caroline,' writes Horace Walpole, 'much wished to make Dr. Clarke a bishop, but he would not subscribe the articles again. I have often heard my father relate that he sat up one night at the Palace with the Doctor, till the pages of the backstairs asked if they would have fresh candles, my father endeavouring to persuade him to subscribe again, as he had for the living of St. James's. Clarke pretended he had then believed them. "Well," said Sir Robert, "but if you do not now, you ought to resign your living to some man who would subscribe conscientiously." The Doctor would neither resign his living nor accept the bishopric.' Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 8. See ante, i. 398, post, Dec. 1784, where Johnson, on his death-bed, recommended Clarke's Sermons; and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 5.
[703] Boswell took Ogden's Sermons with him to the Hebrides, but Johnson showed no great eagerness to read them. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15 and 32.
[704] See ante, p. 223.
[705] King Lear, act iii. sc. 4.
[706] The Duke of Marlborough.
[707] See Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, i. 330.
[708] See ante, p. 177.
[709] 'The accounts of Swift's reception in Ireland given by Lord Orrery and Dr. Delany are so different, that the credit of the writers, both undoubtedly veracious, cannot be saved but by supposing, what I think is true, that they speak of different times. Johnson's Works, viii. 207. See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. Lord Orrery says that Swift, on his return to Ireland in 1714, 'met with frequent indignities from the populace, and indeed was equally abused by persons of all ranks and denominations.' Orrery's Remarks on Swift, ed. 1752, p. 60. Dr. Delany says (Observations, p. 87) that 'Swift, when he came—to take possession of his Deanery (in 1713), was received with very distinguished respect.'
[710] 'He could practise abstinence,' says Boswell (post, March 20, 1781), 'but not temperance.'
[711] 'The dinner was good, and the Bishop is knowing and conversible,' wrote Johnson of an earlier dinner at Sir Joshua's where he had met the same bishop. Piozzi Letters, i. 334.
[712] See post, Aug 19, 1784.
[713] There is no mention in the Journey to Brundusium of a brook. Johnson referred, no doubt, to Epistle I. 16. 12.
[714]
'Ne ought save Tyber hastning to his fall
Remaines of all. O world's inconstancie!
That which is firme doth flit and fall away,
And that is flitting doth abide and stay.'
Spenser, The Ruines of Rome.
[715] Giano Vitale, to give him his Italian name, was a theologian and poet of Palermo. His earliest work was published in 1512, and he died about 1560. Brunet, and Zedler's Universal Lexicon.
[716]
'Albula Romani restat nunc nominis index,
Qui quoque nunc rapidis fertur in aequor aquis.
Disce hinc quid possit Fortuna. Immota labascunt,
Et quae perpetuo sunt agitata manent.'
Jani Vitalis Panormitani De Roma. See Delicia C.C. Italorum Poetarum, edit. 1608, p. 1433, It is curious that in all the editions of Boswell that I have seen, the error labescunt remains unnoticed.
[717] See post, June 2, 1781.
[718] Dr. Shipley was chaplain to the Duke of Cumberland. CROKER. The battle was fought on July 2, N.S. 1747.
[719]
'Inconstant as the wind I various rove;
At Tibur, Rome—at Rome, I Tibur love.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Epistles, i. 8. 12. In the first two editions Mr.
Cambridge's speech ended here.
[720]
'More constant to myself, I leave with pain,
By hateful business forced, the rural scene.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Epist., I. 14. 16.
[721] See ante, p. 167.
[722] Fox, it should be remembered, was Johnson's junior by nearly forty years.
[723] See ante, i. 413, ii. 214, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 2.
[724] See ante, i. 478.
[725] 'Who can doubt,' asks Mr. Forster, 'that he also meant slowness of motion? The first point of the picture is that. The poet is moving slowly, his tardiness of gait measuring the heaviness of heart, the pensive spirit, the melancholy of which it is the outward expression and sign.' Forster's Goldsmith, i. 369.
[726] See ante, ii. 5.
[727] Essay on Man, ii. 2.
[728] Gibbon could have illustrated this subject, for not long before he had at Paris been 'introduced,' he said, 'to the best company of both sexes, to the foreign ministers of all nations, and to the first names and characters of France.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 227. He says of an earlier visit:—'Alone, in a morning visit, I commonly found the artists and authors of Paris less vain and more reasonable than in the circles of their equals, with whom they mingle in the houses of the rich.' Ib. p. 162. Horace Walpole wrote of the Parisians in 1765, (Letters, iv. 436):—'Their gaiety is not greater than their delicacy—but I will not expatiate. [He had just described the grossness of the talk of women of the first rank.] Several of the women are agreeable, and some of the men; but the latter are in general vain and ignorant. The savans—I beg their pardon, the philosophes—are insupportable, superficial, overbearing, and fanatic.'
[729] See post, under Aug. 29, 1783, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 14.
[730] See post, April 28, 1783.
[731] See ante, p. 191.
[732] [Greek: 'gaerusko d aiei polla didaskomenos.'] 'I grow in learning as I grow in years.' Plutarch, Solon, ch. 31.
[733]
''Tis somewhat to be lord of some small ground
In which a lizard may at least turn around.'
Dryden, Juvenal, iii. 230.
[734] Modern characters from Shakespeare. Alphabetically arranged. A New Edition. London, 1778. It is not a pamphlet but a duodecimo of 88 pages. Some of the lines are very grossly applied.
[735] As You Like it, act iii. sc. 2. The giant's name is Gargantua, not Garagantua. In Modern Characters (p. 47), the next line also is given:—'Tis a word too great for any mouth of this age's size.' The lines that Boswell next quotes are not given.
[736] Coriolanus, act iii. sc. 1.
[737] See vol. i. p. 498. BOSWELL.
[738] See ante, ii. 236, where Johnson charges Robertson with verbiage. This word is not in his Dictionary.
[739] Pope, meeting Bentley at dinner, addressed him thus:—'Dr. Bentley, I ordered my bookseller to send you your books. I hope you received them.' Bentley, who had purposely avoided saying anything about Homer, pretended not to understand him, and asked, 'Books! books! what books?' 'My Homer,' replied Pope, 'which you did me the honour to subscribe for.'—'Oh,' said Bentley, 'ay, now I recollect—your translation:—it is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope; but you must not call it Homer.' Johnson's Works, viii. 336, note.
[740] 'It is certainly the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication must therefore be considered as one of the great events in the annals of Learning.' Ib. p. 256. 'There would never,' said Gray, 'be another translation of the same poem equal to it.' Gray's Works, ed. 1858, v. 37. Cowper however says, that he and a friend 'compared Pope's translation throughout with the original. They were not long in discovering that there is hardly the thing in the world of which Pope was so utterly destitute as a taste for Homer.' Southey's Cowper, i. 106.
[741] Boswell here repeats what he had heard from Johnson, ante, p. 36.
[742] Swift, in his Preface to Temple's Letters, says:—'It is generally believed that this author has advanced our English tongue to as great a perfection as it can well bear.' Temple's Works, i. 226. Hume, in his Essay Of Civil Liberty, wrote in 1742:—'The elegance and propriety of style have been very much neglected among us. The first polite prose we have was writ by a man who is still alive (Swift). As to Sprat, Locke, and even Temple, they knew too little of the rules of art to be esteemed elegant writers.' Mackintosh says (Life, ii. 205):—'Swift represents Temple as having brought English style to perfection. Hume, I think, mentions him; but of late he is not often spoken of as one of the reformers of our style—this, however, he certainly was. The structure of his style is perfectly modern.' Johnson said that he had partly formed his style upon Temple's; ante, i. 218. In the last Rambler, speaking of what he had himself done for our language, he says:—'Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence.'
[743] 'Clarendon's diction is neither exact in itself, nor suited to the purpose of history. It is the effusion of a mind crowded with ideas, and desirous of imparting them; and therefore always accumulating words, and involving one clause and sentence in another.' The Rambler, No. 122.
[744] Johnson's addressing himself with a smile to Mr. Harris is explained by a reference to what Boswell said (ante, p. 245) of Harris's analytic method in his Hermes.
[745] 'Dr. Johnson said of a modern Martial [no doubt Elphinston's], "there are in these verses too much folly for madness, I think, and too much madness for folly."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 61. Burns wrote on it the following epigram:—
'O thou whom Poetry abhors,
Whom Prose has turned out of doors,
Heard'st thou that groan—proceed no further,
'Twas laurell'd. Martial roaring murder.'
For Mr. Elphinston see ante, i. 210.
[746] It was called The Siege of Aleppo. Mr. Hawkins, the authour of it, was formerly Professor of Poetry at Oxford. It is printed in his Miscellanies, 3 vols. octavo. BOSWELL. 'Hughes's last work was his tragedy, The Siege of Damascus, after which a Siege became a popular title.' Johnson's Works, vii. 477. See ante, i. 75, note 2. Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 200) mentions another Siege by a Mrs. B. This lady asked Johnson to 'look over her Siege of Sinope; he always found means to evade it. At last she pressed him so closely that he refused to do it, and told her that she herself, by carefully looking it over, would be able to see if there was anything amiss as well as he could. "But, Sir," said she, "I have no time. I have already so many irons in the fire." "Why then, Madame," said he, quite out of patience, "the best thing I can advise you to do is to put your tragedy along with your irons."' Mrs. B. was Mrs. Brooke. See Baker's Biog. Dram. iii. 273, where no less than thirty-seven Sieges are enumerated.
[747] That the story was true is shewn by the Garrick Corres. ii. 6. Hawkins wrote to Garrick in 1774:—'You rejected my Siege of Aleppo because it was "wrong in the first concoction," as you said.' He added that his play 'was honoured with the entire approbation of Judge Blackstone and Mr. Johnson.'
[748] The manager of Covent Garden Theatre.
[749] Hawkins wrote:—'In short, Sir, the world will be a proper judge whether I have been candidly treated by you.' Garrick, in his reply, did not make the impertinent offer which he here boasts of. Hawkins lived in Dorsetshire, not in Devonshire; as he reminds Garrick who had misdirected his letter. Garrick Corres. ii. 7-11.
[750] See ante, i. 433.
[751] 'BOSWELL. "Beauclerk has a keenness of mind which is very uncommon." JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir; and everything comes from him so easily. It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing." BOSWELL. "You are loud, Sir, but it is not an effort of mind."' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21. See post, under May 2, 1780.
[752] Boswell seems to imply that he showed Johnson, or at least read to him, a portion of his journal. Most of his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides had been read by him. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 18, and Oct. 26.
[753] Hannah More wrote of this evening (Memoirs, i. 146):—'Garrick put Johnson into such good spirits that I never knew him so entertaining or more instructive. He was as brilliant as himself, and as good-humoured as any one else.'
[754] He was, perhaps, more steadily under Johnson than under any else. In his own words he was 'of Johnson's school.' (Ante, p. 230). Gibbon calls Johnson Reynolds's oracle. Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 149.
[755] Boswell never mentions Sir John Scott (Lord Eldon) who knew Johnson (ante, ii. 268), and who was Solicitor-General when the Life of Johnson was published. Boswell perhaps never forgave him the trick that he and others played him at the Lancaster Assizes about the years 1786-8. 'We found,' said Eldon, 'Jemmy Boswell lying upon the pavement—inebriated. We subscribed at supper a guinea for him and half-a-crown for his clerk, and sent him next morning a brief with instructions to move for the writ of Quare adhæsit pavimento, with observations calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it. He sent all round the town to attornies for books, but in vain. He moved however for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge was astonished and the audience amazed. The judge said, "I never heard of such a writ—what can it be that adheres pavimento? Are any of you gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?" The Bar laughed. At last one of them said, "My Lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhæsit pavimento. There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement."' Twiss's Eldon, i. 130. Boswell wrote to Temple in 1789:—'I hesitate as to going the Spring Northern Circuit, which costs £50, and obliges me to be in rough, unpleasant company four weeks.' Letters of Boswell, p. 274. See ante, ii. 191, note 2.
[756] 'Johnson, in accounting for the courage of our common people, said (Works, vi. 151):—'It proceeds from that dissolution of dependence which obliges every man to regard his own character. While every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts; he may always have wages for his labour, and is no less necessary to his employer than his employer is to him.'
[757] He says of a laird's tenants:—'Since the islanders no longer content to live have learned the desire of growing rich, an ancient dependant is in danger of giving way to a higher bidder, at the expense of domestick dignity and hereditary power. The stranger, whose money buys him preference, considers himself as paying for all that he has, and is indifferent about the laird's honour or safety. The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego.' Ib. ix. 83.
[758] 'Every old man complains … of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age, which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.' The Rambler, No. 50.
[759] Boswell, perhaps, had in mind The Rambler, No. 146:—'It is long before we are convinced of the small proportion which every individual bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn how few can be interested in the fortune of any single man; how little vacancy is left in the world for any new object of attention; to how small extent the brightest blaze of merit can be spread amidst the mists of business and of folly.'
[760] See ante, ii. 227.
[761]
'Fortunam reverenter habe, quicumque repente
Dives ab exili progrediere loco.'
Ausonius, Epigrammata, viii. 7.
Stockdale records (Memoirs, ii. 186), that Johnson said to him:—'Garrick has undoubtedly the merit of an unassuming behaviour; for more pains have been taken to spoil that fellow than if he had been heir apparent to the Empire of India.'
[762] A lively account of Quin is given in Humphry Clinker, in the letters of April 30 and May 6.
[763] See ante, i. 216.
[764] A few days earlier Garrick wrote to a friend:—'I did not hear till last night that your friends have generously contributed to your and their own happiness. No one can more rejoice at this circumstance than I do; and as I hope we shall have a bonfire upon the occasion, I beg that you will light it with the inclosed.' The inclosed was a bond for £280. Garrick Corres. ii. 297. Murphy says:—'Dr. Johnson often said that, when he saw a worthy family in distress, it was his custom to collect charity among such of his friends as he knew to be affluent; and on those occasions he received from Garrick more than from any other person, and always more than he expected.' Life of Garrick, p. 378. 'It was with Garrick a fixed principle that authors were intitled to the emolument of their labours, and by that generous way of thinking he held out an invitation to men of genius.' Ib. p. 362. See ante, p. 70, and post, April 24, 1779.
[765] When Johnson told this little anecdote to Sir Joshua Reynolds, he mentioned a circumstance which he omitted to-day:—'Why (said Garrick) it is as red as blood.' BOSWELL. A passage in Johnson's answer to Hanway's Essay on Tea (ante, i. 314) shews that tea was generally made very weak. 'Three cups,' he says, 'make the common quantity, so slightly impregnated that, perhaps, they might be tinged with the Athenian cicuta, and produce less effects than these letters charge upon tea.' Works, vi. 24.
[766] To Garrick might be applied what Johnson said of Swift:—'He was frugal by inclination, but liberal by principle.' Works, viii. 222.
[767] See post, under March 30, 1783. In Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, ii. 329, is a paper by Lord Shelburne in which are very clearly laid down rules of economy—rules which, to quote his own words (p. 337), 'require little, if any, more power of mind, than to be sure to put on a clean shirt every day.' Boswell records (Hebrides, Aug. 18) that Johnson said:—'If a man is not of a sluggish mind, he may be his own steward.'
[768] 'Lady Macbeth urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a glittering idea which has dazzled mankind from age to age, and animated sometimes the housebreaker, and sometimes the conqueror.' Johnson's Works, v. 69.
[769] Smollett, who had been a ship's doctor, describes the hospital in a man-of-war:—'Here I saw about fifty miserable distempered wretches, suspended in rows, so huddled one upon another, that not more than fourteen inches space was allotted for each with his bed and bedding; and deprived of the light of the day as well as of fresh air; breathing nothing but a noisome atmosphere … devoured with vermin.' &c. The doctor, when visiting the sick, 'thrust his wig in his pocket, and stript himself to his waistcoat; then creeping on all fours under their hammocks, and forcing up his bare pate between two, kept them asunder with one shoulder until he had done his duty.' Roderick Random, i. ch. 25 and 26.
[770] See ante, ii. 339.
[771] 'The qualities which commonly make an army formidable are long habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline, and great confidence in the commander … But the English troops have none of these requisites in any eminent degree. Regularity is by no means part of their character.' Johnson's Works, vi. 150.
[772] See ante, i. 348.
[773] In the Marmor Norfolciense (Works, vi. 101) he describes the soldier as 'a red animal, that ranges uncontrolled over the country, and devours the labours of the trader and the husbandman; that carries with it corruption, rapine, pollution, and devastation; that threatens without courage, robs without fear, and is pampered without labour.' In The Idler, No. 21, he makes an imaginary correspondent say:—'I passed some years in the most contemptible of all human stations, that of a soldier in time of peace.' 'Soldiers, in time of peace,' he continues, 'long to be delivered from the tyranny of idleness, and restored to the dignity of active beings.' Ib. No. 30, he writes:—'Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warriour and relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.' Many years later he wrote (Works, viii. 396):—'West continued some time in the army; though it is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or much neglected the pursuit of learning.'
[774] See ante, p. 9.
[775] See post, March 21, 1783.
[776] The reference seems to be to a passage in Plutarch's Alcibiades, where Phaeax is thus described:—'He seemed fitter for soliciting and persuading in private than for stemming the torrent of a public debate; in short, he was one of those of whom Eupolis says:—"True he can talk, and yet he is no speaker."' Langhome's Plutarch, ed. 1809, ii. 137. How the quotation was applied is a matter only for conjecture.
[777] 'Was there,' asked Johnson, 'ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and The Pilgrim's Progress?' Piozzi's Anec. p. 281.
[778] See ante, i. 406.
[779] See ante, March 25, 1776.
[780] In the Gent. Mag. for 1776, p. 382, this hulk seems to be mentioned:—'The felons sentenced under the new convict-act began to work in clearing the bed of the Thames about two miles below Barking Creek. In the vessel wherein they work there is a room abaft in which they are to sleep, and in the forecastle a kind of cabin for the overseer.' Ib. p. 254, there is an admirable paper, very likely by Bentham, on the punishment of convicts, which Johnson might have read with advantage.
[781] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 25.
[782] Malone says that he had in vain examined Dodsley's Collection for the verses. My search has been equally in vain.
[783] Johnson (Works, vii. 373) praises Smith's 'excellent Latin ode on the death of the great Orientalist, Dr. Pocock.' He says that he does not know 'where to find it equalled among the modern writers.' See ante, ii. 187, note 3.
[784] See ante, p. 7.
[785] See post, April 15, 1781.
[786] See ante, ii. 224.
[787] 'Thus commending myself and my eternal concerns into thy most faithful hands, in firm hope of a happy reception into thy kingdom; Oh! my God! hear me, while I humbly extend my supplications for others; and pray that thou wouldst bless the King and all his family; that thou wouldst preserve the crown to his house to endless generations.' Dodd's Last Prayer, p. 132.
[788] See ante, iii. 166.
[789] See ante, i. 413.
[790] 'I never knew,' wrote Davies of Johnson, 'any man but one who had the honour and courage to confess that he had a tincture of envy in him. He, indeed, generously owned that he was not a stranger to it; at the same time he declared that he endeavoured to subdue it.' Davies's Garrick, ii. 391.
[791] Reynolds said that Johnson, 'after the heat of contest was over, if he had been informed that his antagonist resented his rudeness, was the first to seek after a reconcilation.' Taylor's Reynolds, 11. 457. See ante, 11. 109.
[792] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, edit. 3, p. 221 [Sept. 17]. BOSWELL.
[793] See this accurately stated, and the descent of his family from the Earls of Northumberland clearly deduced in the Reverend Dr. Nash's excellent History of Worcestershire, vol. ii. p. 318. The Doctor has subjoined a note, in which he says, 'The Editor hath Seen and carefully examined the proofs of all the particulars above-mentioned, now in the possession of the Reverend Thomas Percy.' The same proofs I have also myself carefully examined, and have seen some additional proofs which have occurred since the Doctor's book was published; and both as a Lawyer accustomed to the consideration of evidence, and as a Genealogist versed in the study of pedigrees, I am fully satisfied. I cannot help observing, as a circumstance of no small moment, that in tracing the Bishop of Dromore's genealogy, essential aid was given by the late Elizabeth Duchess of Northumberland, Heiress of that illustrious House; a lady not only of high dignity of spirit, such as became her noble blood, but of excellent understanding and lively talents. With a fair pride I can boast of the honour of her Grace's correspondence, specimens of which adorn my archives. BOSWELL.
[794] 'The gardens are trim to the highest degree, and more adapted to a villa near London than the ancient seat of a great Baron. In a word, nothing except the numbers of unindustrious poor that swarm at the gate excites any one idea of its former circumstances.' Pennant's Scotland, p. 31.
[795] Mr. Croker quotes a passage from The Heroic Epistle, which ends:—
'So when some John his dull invention racks
To rival Boodle's dinners, or Almack's,
Three uncouth legs of mutton shock our eyes,
Three roasted geese, three buttered apple pies.'
[796] Johnson saw Alnwick on his way to Scotland. 'We came to Alnwick,' he wrote, 'where we were treated with great civility by the Duke: I went through the apartments, walked on the wall, and climbed the towers.' Piozzi Letters, i. 108.
[797] 'When Reynolds painted his portrait looking into the slit of his pen and holding it almost close to his eye, as was his custom, he felt displeased, and told me he would not be known by posterity for his defects only, let Sir Joshua do his worst. I said that the picture in the room where we were talking represented Sir Joshua holding his ear in his hand to catch the sound. "He may paint himself as deaf, if he chooses," replied Johnson, "but I will not be blinking Sam."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 248.
[798] 'You look in vain for the helmet on the tower, the ancient signal of hospitality to the traveller, or for the grey-headed porter to conduct him to the hall of entertainment. Instead of the disinterested usher of the old times, he is attended by a valet to receive the fees of admittance.' Pennant's Scottland, p. 32.
[799] It certainly was a custom, as appears from the following passage in Perce-forest, vol. iii. p. 108:—'Fasoient mettre au plus hault de leur hostel un heaulme, en signe que tous les gentils hommes et gentilles femmes entrâssent hardiment en leur hostel comme en leur propre.' KEARNEY.
[800] The title of a book translated by Dr. Percy. BOSWELL. It is a translation of the introduction to l'Histoire de Danemarck, par M. Mallet. Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. 1871, p. 1458.
[801] He was a Welshman.
[802] This is the common cant against faithful Biography. Does the worthy gentleman mean that I, who was taught discrimination of character by Johnson, should have omitted his frailties, and, in short, have bedawbed him as the worthy gentleman has bedawbed Scotland? BOSWELL.
[803] See Dr. Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands, 296 [Works, ix. 124];—see his Dictionary article, oats:—and my Voyage to the Hebrides, first edition. PENNANT.
[804] Mr. Boswell's Journal, p. 286, [third edition, p. 146, Sep. 6.] PENNANT.
[805] See ante, ii. 60.
[806] Percy, it should seem, took offence later on. Cradock (Memoirs, i. 206) says:—'Almost the last time I ever saw Johnson [it was in 1784] he said to me:—"Notwithstanding all the pains that Dr. Farmer and I took to serve Dr. Percy in regard to his Ancient Ballads, he has left town for Ireland without taking leave of either of us."' Cradock adds (p. 238) that though 'Percy was a most pleasing companion, yet there was a violence in his temper which could not always be controlled.' 'I was witness,' he writes (p. 206), 'to an entire separation between Percy and Goldsmith about Rowley's [Chatterton's] poems.'
[807] Sunday, April 12, 1778. BOSWELL.
[808] Johnson, writing of the uncertainty of friendship, says: 'A dispute begun in jest upon a subject which, a moment before, was on both sides regarded with careless indifference, is continued by the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into enmity. Against this hasty mischief I know not what security can be obtained; men will be sometimes surprised into quarrels.' The Idler, No. 23. See ante, ii. 100, note 1.
[809] Though the Bishop of Dromore kindly answered the letters which I wrote to him, relative to Dr. Johnson's early history; yet, in justice to him, I think it proper to add, that the account of the foregoing conversation and the subsequent transaction, as well as some other conversations in which he is mentioned, has been given to the publick without previous communication with his Lordship. BOSWELL. This note is first given in the second edition, being added, no doubt, at the Bishop's request.
[810] See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection.
[811] Chap. xlii. is still shorter:—'Concerning Owls.
'There are no owls of any kind in the whole island.'
Horrebow says in his Preface, p. vii:—'I have followed Mr. Anderson article by article, declaring what is false in each.' A Member of the Icelandic Literary Society in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, dated May 3, 1883, thus accounts for these chapters:—'In 1746 there was published at Hamburg a small volume entitled, Nachrichlen von Island, Grönland und der Strasse Davis. The Danish Government, conceiving that its intentions were misrepresented by this work, procured a reply to be written by Niels Horrebow, and this was published, in 1752, under the title of Tilforladelige Efterretninger om Island; in 1758, an English translation appeared in London. The object of the author was to answer all Anderson's charges and imputations. This Horrebow did categorically, and hence come these Chapters, though it must be added that they owe their laconic celebrity to the English translator, the author being rather profuse than otherwise in giving his predecessor a flat denial.'
[812] See ante, p. 255.
[813] 'A fugitive from heaven and prayer,
I mocked at all religious fear,
Deep scienced in the mazy lore
Of mad philosophy: but now
Hoist sail, and back my voyage plough
To that blest harbour which I left before.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Odes, i. 34. 1.
[814] See ante, i. 315, and post, p. 288.
[815] Ovid, Meta. ii. 13.
[816] Johnson says (Works, viii. 355):—'The greater part of mankind have no character at all, have little that distinguishes them from others equally good or bad.' It would seem to follow that the greater part of mankind have no style at all, for it is in character that style takes its spring.
[817] 'Dodd's wish to be received into our society was conveyed to us only by a whisper, and that being the case all opposition to his admission became unnecessary.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 435.
[818] See note, vol. iii. p. 106. BOSWELL. See post, p. 290, for Johnson's violence against the Americans and those who sided with them.
[819] The friend was Mr. Steevens. Garrick says (Corres. ii. 361) that Steevens had written things in the newspapers against him that were slanderous, and then had assured him upon his word and honour that he had not written them; that he had later on bragged that he had written them, and had said, 'that it was fun to vex me.' Garrick adds:—'I was resolved to keep no terms with him, and will always treat him as such a pest of society merits from all men.' 'Steevens, Dr. Parr used to say, had only three friends—himself, Dr. Farmer, and John Reed, so hateful was his character. He was one of the wisest, most learned, but most spiteful of men.' Johnstone's Parr, viii. 128. Boswell had felt Steevens's ill-nature. While he was carrying the Life of Johnson through the press, at a time when he was suffering from 'the most woeful return of melancholy,' he wrote to Malone,—'Jan 29, 1791. Steevens kindly tells me that I have over-printed, and that the curiosity about Johnson is now only in our own circle…. Feb. 25. You must know that I am certainly informed that a certain person who delights in mischief has been depreciating my book, so that I fear the sale of it may be very dubious.' Croker's Boswell, p. 828. A certain person was, no doubt, Steevens. See ante, ii. 375, and post, under March 30, 1783, and May 15, 1784.
[820]
'I own th' indulgence—Such I give and take.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. 1. II.
[821]
'We grant, altho' he had much wit,
H' was very shy of using it,
As being loth to wear it out.'
Hudibras, i. I. 45.
[822] 'Among the sentiments which almost every man changes as he advances into years is the expectation of uniformity of character.' The Rambler, No. 70. See ante, i. 161, note 2.
[823] See ante, iii. 55.
[824] After this follows a line which Boswell has omitted:—'Then rises fresh, pursues his wonted game.' Cato, act i. sc. 4.
[825] Boswell was right, and Oglethorpe wrong; the exclamation in Suetonius is, 'Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet.' Calig. xxx.—CROKER.
[826] 'Macaroon (macarone, Italian), a coarse, rude, low fellow; whence, macaronick poetry, in which the language is purposely corrupted.' Johnson's Dictionary. 'Macaroni, probably from old Italian maccare, to bruise, to batter, to pester; Derivative, macaronic, i.e. in a confused or mixed state (applied to a jumble of languages).' Skeat's Etymological Diet.
[827] Polemo-middinia, as the Commentator explains, is Proelium in sterquilinio commissum. In the opening lines the poet thus calls on the Skipperii, or Skippers:—
'Linquite skellatas botas, shippasque picatas,
Whistlantesque simul fechtam memorate blodeam,
Fechtam terribilem, quam marvellaverat omnis
Banda Deûm, quoque Nympharum Cockelshelearum.'
[828] In Best's Memorials, p. 63, is given another of these lines that Mr. Langton repeated:—'Five-poundon elendeto, ah! mala simplos.' For Joshua Barnes see post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection.
[829] See ante, iii. 78.
[830] Dr. Johnson, describing her needle-work in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. i. p. 326, uses the learned word sutile; which Mrs. Thrale has mistaken, and made the phrase injurious by writing 'futile pictures.' BOSWELL. See post, p. 299.
[831] See ante, ii. 252, note 2.
[832] The revolution of 1772. The book was published in 1778. Charles Sheridan was the elder brother of R.B. Sheridan.
[833] See ante, i. 467.
[834] As Physicians are called the Faculty, and Counsellors at Law the Profession; the Booksellers of London are denominated the Trade. Johnson disapproved of these denominations. BOSWELL. Johnson himself once used this 'denomination.' Ante, i. 438.
[835] See ante, ii. 385.
[836] A translation of these forged letters which were written by M. de Caraccioli was published in 1776. By the Gent. Mag. (xlvi. 563) they were accepted as genuine. In The Ann. Reg. for the same year (xix. 185) was published a translation the letter in which Voltaire had attacked their authenticity. The passage that Johnson quotes is the following:—'On est en droit de lui dire ce qu'on dit autrefois a l'abbé Nodot: "Montrez-nous votre manuscript de Pétrone, trouvé a Belgrade, ou consentez à n'être cru of de personne."' Voltaire's Works, xliii. 544.
[837] Baretti (Journey from London to Genoa, i. 9) says that he saw in 1760, near Honiton, at a small rivulet, 'an engine called a ducking-stool; a kind of armed wooden chair, fixed on the extremity of a pole about fifteen feet long. The pole is horizontally placed on a post just by the water, and loosely pegged to that post; so that by raising it at one end, you lower the stool down into the midst of the river. That stool serves at present to duck scolds and termagants.'
[838] 'An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind.' Much Ado about Nothing, act iii. sc. 5.
[839] See ante, ii. 9.
[840] 'One star differeth from another star in glory.' I Cor. xv. 41.
[841] See ante, iii. 48, 280.
[842] 'The physicians in Hogarth's prints are not caricatures: the full dress with a sword and a great tye-wig, and the hat under the arm, and the doctors in consultation, each smelling to a gold-headed cane shaped like a parish-beadle's staff, are pictures of real life in his time, and myself have seen a young physician thus equipped walk the streets of London without attracting the eyes of passengers.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 238. Dr. T. Campbell in 1777, writing of Dublin to a London physician, says:—'No sooner were your medical wigs laid aside than an attempt was made to do the like here. But in vain.' Survey of the South of Ireland, p. 463.
[843] 'Jenyns,' wrote Malone, on the authority of W.G. Hamilton, 'could not be made without much labour to comprehend an argument. If however there was anything weak or ridiculous in what another said, he always laid hold of it and played upon it with success. He looked at everything with a view to pleasantry alone. This being his grand object, and he being no reasoner, his best friends were at a loss to know whether his book upon Christianity was serious or ironical.' Prior's Malone, p. 375.
[844] Jenyns maintains (p. 51) that 'valour, patriotism, and friendship are only fictitious virtues—in fact no virtue at all.'
[845] He had furnished an answer to this in The Rambler, No. 99, where he says:—'To love all men is our duty so far as it includes a general habit of benevolence, and readiness of occasional kindness; but to love all equally is impossible…. The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate. Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.' See ante, i. 207, note 1.
[846] Galatians, vi. 10.
[847] St. John, xxi. 20. Compare Jeremy Taylor's Measures and Offices of Friendship, ch. i. 4.
[848] In the first two editions 'from this amiable and pleasing subject.'
[849] Acts of the Apostles, ix. i.
[850] See ante, ii. 82.
[851] If any of my readers are disturbed by this thorny question, I beg leave to recommend, to them Letter 69 of Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes; and the late Mr. John Palmer of Islington's Answer to Dr. Priestley's mechanical arguments for what he absurdly calls 'Philosophical Necessity.' BOSWELL. See post, under Aug. 29, 1783; note.
[852] See ante, ii. 217, and iii. 55.
[853] 'I have proved,' writes Mandeville (Fables of the Bees, ed. 1724, p. 179), 'that the real pleasures of all men in nature are worldly and sensual, if we judge from their practice; I say all men in nature, because devout Christians, who alone are to be excepted here, being regenerated and preternaturally assisted by the divine grace, cannot be said to be in nature.'
[854] Mandeville describes with great force the misery caused by gin— 'liquid poison' he calls it—'which in the fag-end and outskirts of the town is sold in some part or other of almost every house, frequently in cellars, and sometimes in the garret.' He continues:—'The short-sighted vulgar in the chain of causes seldom can see further than one link; but those who can enlarge their view may in a hundred places see good spring up and pullulate from evil, as naturally as chickens do from eggs.' He instances the great gain to the revenue, and to all employed in the production of the spirit from the husbandman upwards. Fable of the Bees, p. 89.
[855] 'If a miser, who is almost a plum (i.e. worth £100,000, Johnson's Dictionary), and spends but fifty pounds a year, should be robbed of a thousand guineas, it is certain that as soon as this money should come to circulate, the nation would be the better for the robbery; yet justice and the peace of the society require that the robber should be hanged.' Ib. p. 83.
[856] Johnson, in his political economy, seems to have been very much under Mandeville's influence. Thus in attacking Milton's position that 'a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would set up our ordinary commonwealth,' he says, 'The support and expense of a court is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick, by which money is circulated, without any national impoverishment.' Works, vii. 116. Mandeville in much the same way says:—'When a covetous statesman is gone, who spent his whole life in fattening himself with the spoils of the nation, and had by pinching and plundering heaped up an immense treasure, it ought to fill every good member of the society with joy to behold the uncommon profuseness of his son. This is refunding to the public whatever was robbed from it. As long as the nation has its own back again, we ought not to quarrel with the manner in which the plunder is repaid.' Ib. p. 104.
[857] See ante, ii. 176.
[858] In The Adventurer, No. 50, Johnson writes:—'"The devils," says Sir Thomas Brown, "do not tell lies to one another; for truth is necessary to all societies; nor can the society of hell subsist without it."' Mr. Wilkin, the editor of Brown's Works (ed. 1836, i. liv), says:—'I should be glad to know the authority of this assertion.' I infer from this that the passage is not in Brown's Works.
[859] Hannah More: see post, under date of June 30, 1784.
[860] In her visits to London she was commonly the guest of the Garricks. A few months before this conversation Garrick wrote a prologue and epilogue for her tragedy of Percy. He invested for her the money that she made by this play. H. More's Memoirs, i. 122, 140.
[861] In April 1784 she records (ib. i. 319) that she called on Johnson shortly after she wrote Le Bas Bleu. 'As to it,' she continues, 'all the flattery I ever received from everybody together would not make up his sum. He said there was no name in poetry that might not be glad to own it. All this from Johnson, that parsimonious praiser!' He wrote of it to Mrs. Thrale on April 19, 1784:—'It is in my opinion a very great performance.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 364. Dr. Beattie wrote on July 31, 1784:—'Johnson told me with great solemnity that Miss More was "the most powerful versificatrix" in the English language.' Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 320.
[862] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 18.
[863] The ancestor of Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street.
[864] See A Letter to W. Mason, A.M. from J. Murray, Bookseller in London; 2d edition, p. 20. BOSWELL.
[865] 'The righteous hath hope in his death.' Proverbs, xiv. 32.
[866] See post, June 12, 1784.
[867] Johnson, in The Convict's Address (ante, p. 141), makes Dodd say:—'Possibly it may please God to afford us some consolation, some secret intimations of acceptance and forgiveness. But these radiations of favour are not always felt by the sincerest penitents. To the greater part of those whom angels stand ready to receive, nothing is granted in this world beyond rational hope; and with hope, founded on promise, we may well be satisfied.'
[868] 'I do not find anything able to reconcile us to death but extreme pain, shame or despair; for poverty, imprisonment, ill fortune, grief, sickness and old age do generally fail.' Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xiv. 178.
[869] 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.' 2 Timothy, iv. 7 and 8.
[870] See ante, p. 154.
[871] 'Inde illud Maecenatis turpissimum votum, quo et debilitatem non recusat, et deformitatem, et novissime acutam crucem dummodo inter haec mala spiritus prorogetur.
"Debilem facito manu,
Debilem pede, coxa;
Tuber adstrue gibberum,
Lubricos quate dentes;
Vita dum superest, bene est;
Hanc mihi vel acuta
Si sedeam cruce sustine."'
Seneca's Epistles, No. 101.
Dryden makes Gonsalvo say in The Rival Ladies, act iv. sc. 1:—
'For men with horrour dissolution meet,
The minutes e'en of painful life are sweet.'
In Paradise Lost Moloch and Belial take opposite sides on this point:—
MOLOCH.
'What doubt we to incense
His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged,
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential; happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being.'
Bk. ii. 1. 94.
BELIAL.
'Who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion?'
1. 146.
Cowper, at times at least, held with Moloch. He wrote to his friend
Newton:—'I feel—I will not tell you what—and yet I must—a wish that
I had never been, a wonder that I am, and an ardent but hopeless desire
not to be.' Southey's Cowper, vi. 130. See ante, p. 153, and
Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 12.
[872] Johnson recorded in Pr. and Med. p. 202:—'At Ashbourne I hope to talk seriously with Taylor.' Taylor published in 1787 A Letter to Samuel Johnson on the Subject of a Future State. He writes that 'having heard that Johnson had said that he would prefer a state of torment to that of annihilation, he told him that such a declaration, coming from him, might be productive of evil consequences. Dr. J. desired him to arrange his thoughts on the subject.' Taylor says that Johnson's entry about the serious talk refers to this matter. Gent. Mag. 1787, p. 521. I believe that Johnson meant to warn Taylor about the danger he was running of 'entering the state of torment.'
[873] Wesley, like Johnson, was a wide reader. On his journeys he read books of great variety, such as The Odyssey, Rousseau's Emile, Boswell's Corsica, Swift's Letters, Hoole's Tasso, Robertson's Charles V., Quintus Curtius, Franklin's Letters on Electricity, besides a host of theological works. Like Johnson, too, he was a great dabbler in physic and a reader of medical works. His writings covered a great range. He wrote, he says, among other works, an English, a Latin, a Greek, a Hebrew, and a French Grammar, a Treatise on Logic and another on Electricity. In the British Isles he had travelled perhaps more than any man of his time, and he had visited North America and more than one country of Europe. He had seen an almost infinite variety of characters. See ante, p. 230.
[874] The story is recorded in Wesley's Journal, ed. 1827, iv. 316. It was at Sunderland and not at Newcastle where the scene was laid. The ghost did not prophesy ill of the attorney. On the contrary, it said to the girl:—'Go to Durham, employ an attorney there, and the house will be recovered.' She went to Durham, 'and put the affair into Mr. Hugill the attorney's hands.' 'A month after,' according to the girl, 'the ghost came about eleven. I said, "Lord bless me! what has brought you here again?" He said, "Mr. Hugill has done nothing but wrote one letter."' On this Wesley writes by way of comment:—'So he [the ghost] had observed him [the attorney] narrowly, though unseen.' See post, under May 3, 1779.
[875] Johnson, with his horror of annihilation, caught at everything which strengthened his belief in the immortality of the soul. Boswell mentions ante, ii. 150, 'Johnson's elevated wish for more and more evidence for spirit,' and records the same desire, post, June 12, 1784. Southey (Life of Wesley, i. 25) says of supernatural appearances:—'With regard to the good end which they may be supposed to answer, it would be end sufficient if sometimes one of those unhappy persons, who looking through the dim glass of infidelity see nothing beyond this life, and the narrow sphere of mortal existence, should, from the established truth of one such story (trifling and objectless as it might otherwise appear), be led to a conclusion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.' See ante, p. 230, and post, April 15, 1781.
[876] Miss Jane Harry. In Miss Seward's Letters, i. 97, is an account of her, which Mr. Croker shows to be inaccurate. There is, too, a long and lifeless report of the talk at this dinner.
[877] See ante, ii. 14, 105.
[878] Mrs. Knowles, not satisfied with the fame of her needlework, the 'sutile pictures' mentioned by Johnson, in which she has indeed displayed much dexterity, nay, with the fame of reasoning better than women generally do, as I have fairly shewn her to have done, communicated to me a Dialogue of considerable length, which after many years had elapsed, she wrote down as having passed between Dr. Johnson and herself at this interview. As I had not the least recollection of it, and did not find the smallest trace of it in my Record taken at the time, I could not in consistency with my firm regard to authenticity, insert it in my work. It has, however, been published in The Gent. Mag. for June, 1791. It chiefly relates to the principles of the sect called Quakers; and no doubt the Lady appears to have greatly the advantage of Dr. Johnson in argument as well as expression. From what I have now stated, and from the internal evidence of the paper itself, any one who may have the curiosity to peruse it, will judge whether it was wrong in me to reject it, however willing to gratify Mrs. Knowles. BOSWELL. Johnson mentioned the 'sutile pictures' in a letter dated May 16, 1776, describing the dinner at Messrs. Dilly's. 'And there,' he wrote, 'was Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker, that works the sutile [misprinted by Mrs. Piozzi futile] pictures. She is a Staffordshire woman, and I am to go and see her. Staffordshire is the nursery of art; here they grow up till they are transplanted to London.' Piozzi Letters, i. 326. He is pleasantly alluding to the fact that he was a Staffordshire man. In the Dialogue in The Gent. Mag. for 1791, p. 502, Mrs. Knowles says that, the wrangle ended thus:—'Mrs. K. "I hope, Doctor, thou wilt not remain unforgiving; and that you will renew your friendship, and joyfully meet at last in those bright regions where pride and prejudice can never enter." Dr. Johnson. "Meet her! I never desire to meet fools anywhere." This sarcastic turn of wit was so pleasantly received that the Doctor joined in the laugh; his spleen was dissipated, he took his coffee, and became, for the remainder of the evening, very cheerful and entertaining.' Did Miss Austen find here the title of Pride and Prejudice, for her novel?
[879] Of this day he recorded (Pr. and Med. p. 163):—'It has happened this week, as it never happened in Passion Week before, that I have never dined at home, and I have therefore neither practised abstinence nor peculiar devotion.'
[880] See ante, iii. 48, note 4.
[881] I believe, however, I shall follow my own opinion; for the world has shewn a very flattering partiality to my writings, on many occasions. BOSWELL. In Boswelliana, p. 222, Boswell, after recording a story about Voltaire, adds:—'In contradiction to this story, see in my Journal the account which Tronchin gave me of Voltaire.' This Journal was probably destroyed by Boswell's family. By his will, he left his manuscripts and letters to Sir W. Forbes, Mr. Temple, and Mr. Malone, to be published for the benefit of his younger children as they shall decide. The Editor of Boswelliana says (p. 186) that 'these three literary executors did not meet, and the entire business of the trust was administered by Sir W. Forbes, who appointed as his law-agent, Robert Boswell, cousin-german of the deceased. By that gentleman's advice, Boswell's manuscripts were left to the disposal of his family; and it is believed that the whole were immediately destroyed.' The indolence of Malone and Temple, and the brutish ignorance of the Boswells, have indeed much to answer for. See ante, i. 225, note 2, and post, May 12, 1778.
[882] 'He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.' The Idler, No. 97.
[883] See ante, ii. 377.
[884] Johnson recorded (Pr. and Med. p. 163):—'Boswell came in to go to Church … Talk lost our time, and we came to Church late, at the Second Lesson.'
[885] See ante, i. 461.
[886] Oliver Edwards entered Pembroke College in June, 1729. He left in April, 1730.
[887] Pr. and Med. p. 164. BOSWELL.
[888] 'Edwards observed how many we have outlived. I hope, yet hope, that my future life shall be better than my past.' Pr. and Med. p. 166.
[889] See post, April 30, 1778.
[890] See ante, p. 221.
[891] 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.' Ante, i. 471.
[892] Johnson said to me afterwards, 'Sir, they respected me for my literature; and yet it was not great but by comparison. Sir, it is amazing how little literature there is in the world.' BOSWELL.
[893] See ante, i. 320.
[894] Very near the College, facing the passage which leads to it from Pembroke Street, still stands an old alehouse which must have been old in Johnson's time.
[895] This line has frequently been attributed to Dryden, when a King's Scholar at Westminster. But neither Eton nor Westminster have in truth any claim to it, the line being borrowed, with a slight change, from an Epigram by Crashaw:—
'Joann. 2,
'Aquæ in vinum versæ.
Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphis?
Qua rosa mirantes tam nova mutat aquas?
Numen, convinvæ, præsens agnoscite numen,
Nympha pudica DEUM vidit, et erubuit.' MALONE.
What gave your springs a brightness not their own?
What rose so strange the wond'ring waters flushed?
Heaven's hand, oh guests; heaven's hand may here be known;
The spring's coy nymph has seen her God and blushed.
[896] 'He that made the verse following (some ascribe it to Giraldus Cambrensis) could adore both the sun rising, and the sun setting, when he could so cleanly honour King Henry II, then departed, and King Richard succeeding.
"Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla sequutaest."'
Camden's Remains (1870), p. 351.
[897] 'When Mr. Hume began to be known in the world as a philosopher, Mr. White, a decent, rich merchant of London, said to him:—"I am surprised, Mr. Hume, that a man of your good sense should think of being a philosopher. Why, I now took it into my head to be a philosopher for some time, but tired of it most confoundedly, and very soon gave it up." "Pray, Sir," said Mr. Hume, "in what branch of philosophy did you employ your researches? What books did you read?" "Books?" said Mr. White; "nay sir, I read no books, but I used to sit whole forenoons a-yawning and poking the fire." Boswelliana, p. 221. The French were more successful than Mr. Edwards in the pursuit of philosophy, Horace Walpole wrote from Paris in 1766 (Letters, iv. 466):—'The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness.'
[898] See ante, ii. 8.
[899] See ante, i. 332.
[900] See ante, i. 468, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 4.
[901] I am not absolutely sure but this was my own suggestion, though it is truly in the character of Edwards. BOSWELL.
[902] Sixty-nine. He was born in 1709.
[903] See ante, i. 75, note 1.
[904]
'O my coevals! remnants of yourselves!
Poor human ruins, tottering o'er the grave!
Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees,
Strike deeper their vile roots, and closer cling,
Still more enamoured of this wretched soil?'
Young's Night Thoughts, Night iv.
[905] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773. According to Mrs. Piozzi 'he liked the expression so well that he often repeated it.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 208. He wrote to her:—'Have you not observed in all our conversations that my genius is always in extremes; that I am very noisy or very silent; very gloomy or very merry; very sour or very kind?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 166. In Mme. D'Arblay's Diary (ii. 310) we read that 'Dr. Johnson is never his best when there is nobody to draw him out;' and in her Memoirs of Dr. Burney (ii. 107) she adds that 'the masterly manner in which, as soon as any topic was started, he seized it in all its bearings, had so much the air of belonging to the leader of the discourse, that this singularity was unsuspected save by the experienced observation of long years of acquaintance.' Malone wrote in 1783:—'I have always found him very communicative; ready to give his opinion on any subject that was mentioned. He seldom, however, starts a subject himself; but it is very easy to lead him into one.' Prior's Malone, p. 92. What Dugald Stewart says of Adam Smith (Life, p. 114) was equally true of Johnson:—'He was scarcely ever known to start a new topic himself, or to appear unprepared upon those topics that were introduced by others.' Johnson, in his long fits of silence, was perhaps like Cowper, but when aroused he was altogether unlike. Cowper says of himself:—'The effect of such continual listening to the language of a heart hopeless and deserted is that I can never give much more than half my attention to what is started by others, and very rarely start anything myself.' Southey's Cowper, v. 10.
[906] In summer 1792, additional and more expensive decorations having been introduced, the price of admission was raised to two shillings. I cannot approve of this. The company may be more select; but a number of the honest commonalty are, I fear, excluded from sharing in elegant and innocent entertainment. An attempt to abolish the one-shilling gallery at the playhouse has been very properly counteracted. BOSWELL.
[907] Regale, as a noun, is not in Johnson's Dictionary. It was a favourite word with Miss Burney.
[908] 'Tyers is described in The Idler, No. 48, under the name of Tom Restless; "a circumstance," says Mr. Nichols, "pointed out to me by Dr. Johnson himself."' Lit. Anec. viii. 81. 'When Tom Restless rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom he takes to be reasoners, as to hear their discourse, and endeavours to remember something which, when it has been strained through Tom's head, is so near to nothing, that what it once was cannot be discovered. This he carries round from friend to friend through a circle of visits, till, hearing what each says upon the question, he becomes able at dinner to say a little himself; and as every great genius relaxes himself among his inferiors, meets with some who wonder how so young a man can talk so wisely.'
[909] 'That accurate judge of human life, Dr. Johnson, has often been heard by me to observe, that it was the greatest misfortune which could befall a man to have been bred to no profession, and pathetically to regret that this misfortune was his own.' More's Practical Piety, p. 313. MARKLAND.
[910] He had wished to study it. See ante, i. 134.
[911] The fourth Earl of Lichfield, the Chancellor of Oxford, died in 1772. The title became extinct in 1776, on the death of the fifth earl. The present title was created in 1831. Courthope's Hist. Peerage, p. 286.
[912] See post, March 23, 1783, where Boswell vexed him in much the same way.
[913] I am not entirely without suspicion that Johnson may have felt a little momentary envy; for no man loved the good things of this life better than he did; and he could not but be conscious that he deserved a much larger share of them, than he ever had. I attempted in a newspaper to comment on the above passage, in the manner of Warburton, who must be allowed to have shewn uncommon ingenuity, in giving to any authour's text whatever meaning he chose it should carry. [Ante, ii. 37, note 1.] As this imitation may amuse my readers, I shall here introduce it:—
'No saying of Dr. Johnson's has been more misunderstood than his applying to Mr. Burke when he first saw him at his fine place at Beaconsfield, Non equidem invideo; miror magis. These two celebrated men had been friends for many years before Mr. Burke entered on his parliamentary career. They were both writers, both members of THE LITERARY CLUB; when, therefore, Dr. Johnson saw Mr. Burke in a situation so much more splendid than that to which he himself had attained, he did not mean to express that he thought it a disproportionate prosperity; but while he, as a philosopher, asserted an exemption from envy, non equidem invideo, he went on in the words of the poet miror magis; thereby signifying, either that he was occupied in admiring what he was glad to see; or, perhaps, that considering the general lot of men of superiour abilities, he wondered that Fortune, who is represented as blind, should, in this instance, have been so just.' BOSWELL. Johnson in his youth had translated
'Non equidem invideo; miror magis'
(Virgil, Eclogues, i. II) by
'My admiration only I exprest,
(No spark of envy harbours in my breast).'
Ante, i. 51.
[914] See ante ii. 136.
[915] This neglect was avenged a few years after Goldsmith's death, when Lord Camden sought to enter The Literary Club and was black-balled. 'I am sorry to add,' wrote Mr. [Sir William] Jones in 1780, 'that Lord Camden and the Bishop of Chester were rejected. When Bishops and Chancellors honour us by offering to dine with us at a tavern, it seems very extraordinary that we should ever reject such an offer; but there is no reasoning on the caprice of men.' Life of Sir W. Jones, p. 240.
[916] Cradock (Memoirs, i. 229) was dining with The Literary Club, when Garrick arrived very late, full-dressed. 'He made many apologies; he had been unexpectedly detained at the House of Lords, and Lord Camden had insisted upon setting him down at the door of the hotel in his own carriage. Johnson said nothing, but he looked a volume.'
[917] Miss. [Per Errata; Originally: Mrs.] Burney records this year (1778) that Mrs. Thrale said to Johnson, 'Garrick is one of those whom you suffer nobody to abuse but yourself; for if any other person speaks against him, you browbeat him in a minute. "Why, madam," answered he, "they don't know when to abuse him, and when to praise him; I will allow no man to speak ill of David that he does not deserve."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 65. See ante, i. 393, note 1.
[918] The passage is in a letter dated Dublin, Oct. 12, 1727. 'Here is my maintenance,' wrote Swift, 'and here my convenience. If it pleases God to restore me to my health, I shall readily make a third journey; if not we must part, as all human creatures have parted.' He never made the third journey. Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xvii. 154.
[919] See ante, ii. 162.
[920] No doubt Percy.
[921] The philosopher was Bias. Cicero, Paradoxa, i.
[922] Johnson recorded of this day (Pr. and Med. p. 164):—'We sat till the time of worship in the afternoon, and then came again late, at the Psalms. Not easily, I think, hearing the sermon, or not being attentive, I fell asleep.'
[923] Marshall's Minutes of Agriculture.
[924] It was only in hay-time and harvest that Marshall approved of Sunday work. He had seen in the wet harvest of 1775 so much corn wasted that he 'was ambitious to set the patriotic example' of Sunday labour. One Sunday he 'promised every man who would work two shillings, as much roast beef and plumb pudding as he would eat, with as much ale as it might be fit for him to drink.' Nine men and three boys came. In a note in the edition of 1799, he says:—'The Author has been informed that an old law exists (mentioned by Dugdale), which tolerates husbandmen in working on Sundays in harvest; and that, in proof thereof, a gentleman in the north has uniformly carried one load every year on a Sunday.' He adds:—'Jan. 1799. The particulars of this note were furnished by the late Dr. Samuel Johnson; at whose request some considerable part of what was originally written, and printed on this subject was cancelled. That which was published and which is now offered again to the public is, in effect, what Dr. Johnson approved; or, let me put it in the most cautious terms, that of which Dr. Johnson did not disapprove.' Marshall's Minutes etc., on Agriculture, ii. 65-70.
[925] Saturday was April 18.
[926] William Duncombe, Esq. He married the sister of John Hughes the poet; was the authour of two tragedies and other ingenious productions; and died 26th Feb. 1769, aged 79. MALONE. In his Life of Hughes (Works, vii. 477), Johnson says 'an account of Hughes is prefixed to his works by his relation, the late Mr. Duncombe, a man whose blameless elegance deserved the same respect.'
[927] See ante, i. 185, 243, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22.
[928] See ante, i. 145.
[929] See Appendix A.
[930] No doubt Parson Home, better known as Home Tooke, who was at this time in prison. He had signed an advertisement issued by the Constitutional Society asking for a subscription for 'the relief of the widows, etc., of our beloved American fellow-subjects, who had been inhumanly murdered by the King's troops at Lexington and Concord.' For this 'very gross libel' he had in the previous November been sentenced to a fine of £200 and a year's imprisonment. Ann. Reg. xx. 234-245. See post, May 13, 1778.
[931] Mr. Croker's conjecture that Dr. Shebbeare was the gentleman is supported by the favourable way in which Boswell (post, May 1781) speaks of Shebbeare as 'that gentleman,' and calls him 'a respectable name in literature.' Shebbeare, on Nov. 28, 1758, was sentenced by Lord Mansfield to stand in the pillory, to be confined for three years, and to give security for his good behaviour for seven years, for a libellous pamphlet intitled A Sixth Letter to the People of England. Gent. Mag. xxviii. 555. (See ante, p. 15, note 3.) On Feb. 7, 1759, the under-sheriff of Middlesex was found guilty of a contempt of Court, in having suffered Shebbeare to stand upon the pillory only, and not in it. Ib. xxix. 91. Before the seven years had run out, Shebbeare was pensioned. Smollett, in the preface to Humphry Clinker, represents the publisher of that novel as writing to the imaginary author:—'If you should be sentenced to the pillory your fortune is made. As times go, that's a sure step to honour and preferment. I shall think myself happy if I can lend you a lift.' See also in the same book Mr. Bramble's Letter of June 2.
[932] See p. 275 of this volume. BOSWELL. Why Boswell mentions this gentleman at all, seeing that nothing that he says is reported, is not clear. Perhaps he gave occasion to Johnson's attack on the Americans. It is curious also why both here and in the account given of Dr. Percy's dinner his name is not mentioned. In the presence of this unknown gentleman Johnson violently attacked first Percy, and next Boswell.
[933] Mr. Langton no doubt. See ante, iii. 48. He had paid Johnson a visit that morning. Pr. and Med. p. 165.
[934] See ante, p. 216.
[935] See ante, i. 494, where Johnson says that 'her learning is that of a schoolboy in one of the lower forms.'
[936] On this day Johnson recorded in his review of the past year:— 'My nights have been commonly, not only restless, but painful and fatiguing.' He adds, 'I have written a little of the Lives of the Poets, I think with all my usual vigour…. This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldest thou have lived!' Pr. and Med. pp. 169, 170.
[937] Mr. Langton. See ante, iii. 48.
[938] Malone was told by Baretti that 'Dr. James picked up on a stall a book of Greek hymns. He brought it to Johnson, who ran his eyes over the pages and returned it. A year or two afterwards he dined at Sir Joshua Reynolds's with Dr. Musgrave, the editor of Euripides. Musgrave made a great parade of his Greek learning, and among other less known writers mentioned these hymns, which he thought none of the company were acquainted with, and extolled them highly. Johnson said the first of them was indeed very fine, and immediately repeated it. It consisted of ten or twelve lines.' Prior's Malone, p. 160.
[939] By Richard Tickell, the grandson of Addison's friend. Walpole's Letters, vii. 54
[940] She was a younger sister of Peg Woffington (ante, p. 264). Johnson described her as 'a very airy lady.' (Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773.) Murphy (Life, p. 137) says that 'Johnson, sitting at table with her, took hold of her hand in the middle of dinner, and held it close to his eye, wondering at the delicacy and the whiteness, till with a smile she asked:—"Will he give it to me again when he has done with it?"' He told Miss Burney that 'Mrs. Cholmondeley was the first person who publicly praised and recommended Evelina among the wits.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 180. Miss Burney wrote in 1778:—'Mrs. Cholmondeley has been praising Evelina; my father said that I could not have had a greater compliment than making two such women my friends as Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Cholmondeley, for they were severe and knowing, and afraid of praising à tort et à travers, as their opinions are liable to be quoted.' Ib. i. 47. To Mrs. Cholmondeley Goldsmith, just before his death, shewed a copy in manuscript of his Retaliation. No one else, it should seem, but Burke had seen it. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 412.
[941] Dr. Johnson is supported by the usage of preceding writers. So in Musarum Deliciae, 8vo. 1656 (the writer is speaking of Suckling's play entitled Aglaura, printed in folio):—
'This great voluminous pamphlet may be said
To be like one that hath more hair than head.'
MALONE.
Addison, in The Spectator, No. 529 says that 'the most minute pocket-author hath beneath him the writers of all pamphlets, or works that are only stitched. As for a pamphleteer he takes place of none but of the authors of single sheets.' The inferiority of a pamphlet is shewn in Johnson's Works, ed. 1787, xi. 216:—'Johnson would not allow the word derange to be an English word. "Sir," said a gentleman who had some pretensions to literature, "I have seen it in a book." "Not in a bound book," said Johnson; "disarrange is the word we ought to use instead of it."' In his Dictionary he gives neither derange nor disarrange. Dr. Franklin, who had been a printer and was likely to use the term correctly, writing in 1785, mentions 'the artifices made use of to puff up a paper of verses into a pamphlet.' Memoirs, iii. 178.
[942] See post, March 16, 1779, for 'the exquisite address' with which Johnson evaded a question of this kind.
[943] Garrick insisted on great alterations being made in The Good Natured Man. When Goldsmith resisted this, 'he proposed a sort of arbitration,' and named as his arbitrator Whitehead the laureate. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 41. It was of Whitehead's poetry that Johnson said 'grand nonsense is insupportable.' Ante, i. 402. The Good Natured Man was brought out by Colman, as well as She Stoops to Conquer.
[944] See ante, ii. 208, note 5.
[945] See ante, i. 416.
[946] 'This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury Lane, and rejected; it being then carried to Rich had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay rich and Rich gay.' Johnson's Works, viii. 66. See ante, ii. 368.
[947] See ante, i. 112.
[948] In opposition to this Mr. Croker quotes Horace:—-
'Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.'
'I'm hissed in public; but in secret blest,
I count my money and enjoy my chest.' Horace, Sat. i. I. 66.
See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 26.
[949] The anecdote is told in Menagiana, iii. 104, but not of a 'maid of honour,' nor as an instance of 'exquisite flattery.' 'M. d'Uzès était chevalier d'honneur de la reine. Cette princesse lui demanda un jour quelle heure il était; il répondit, "Madame, l'heure qu'il plaira à votre majesté."' Menage tells it as a pleasantry of M. d'Uzès; but M. de la Monnoye says, that this duke was remarkable for naïvetés and blunders, and was a kind of butt, to whom the wits of the court used to attribute all manner of absurdities. CROKER.
[950] Horace, Odes, iv. 2. II. The common reading is solutis. Boswell (Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773) says:—'Mr. Wilkes told me this himself with classical admiration.'
[951] See this question fully investigated in the Notes upon my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, edit. 3, p. 21, et seq. [Aug. 15]. And here, as a lawyer mindful of the maxim Suum cuique tribuito, I cannot forbear to mention, that the additional Note beginning with 'I find since the former edition,' is not mine, but was obligingly furnished by Mr. Malone, who was so kind as to superintend the press while I was in Scotland, and the first part of the second edition was printing. He would not allow me to ascribe it to its proper authour; but, as it is exquisitely acute and elegant, I take this opportunity, without his knowledge, to do him justice. BOSWELL. See also ante, i. 453, and post, May 15, 1784.
[952] Horace, Sat. i. I. 106. Malone points out that this is the motto to An Enquiry into Customary Estates and Tenants' Rights, &c., with some considerations for restraining excessive fines. By Everard Fleetwood, 8vo, 1737.
[953] A modus is something paid as a compensation for tithes on the supposition of being a moderate equivalent. Johnson's Dictionary. It was more desirable for the landlord than the Parson. Thus T. Warton, in his Progress of Discontent, represents the Parson who had taken a college living regretting his old condition,
'When calm around the common-room
I puffed my daily pipe's perfume;
…
And every night I went to bed,
Without a modus in my head.'
T. Warton's Poems, ii. 197.
[954] Fines are payments due to the lord of a manor on every admission of a new tenant. In some manors these payments are fixed by custom; they are then fines certain; in others they are not fixed, but depend on the reasonableness of the lord and the paying capacity of the tenant; they are fines uncertain. The advantage of fines certain, like that of a modus in tithes, is that a man knows what he shall get.
[955] Ante, iii. 35.
[956] Mr. P. Cunningham has, I think, enabled us to clear up Boswell's mystery, by finding in the Garrick Corres, ii. 305, May 1778, that Johnson's poor friend, Mauritius Lowe, the painter, lived at No. 3, Hedge Lane, in a state of extreme distress. CROKER. See post, April 3, 1779, and April 12, 1783.
[957] 'In all his intercourse with mankind, Pope had great delight in artifice, and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem." ["Nor take her tea without a stratagem." Young's Universal Passion, Sat. vi.] He practised his arts on such small occasions that Lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that "he played the politician about cabbages and turnips."' Johnson's Works, viii. 311.
[958] Johnson, post, under March 30, 1783, speaks of 'the vain ostentatious importance of many persons in quoting the authority of dukes and lords.' In his going to the other extreme, as he said he did, may be found the explanation of Boswell's 'mystery.' For of mystery—'the wisdom of blockheads,' as Horace Walpole calls it (Letters, iii. 371)—Johnson was likely to have as little as any man. As for Grosvenor-square, the Thrales lived there for a short time, and Johnson had a room in the house (post, March 20, 1781).
[959] Tacitus, Agricola, ch. xxx. 'The unknown always passes for something peculiarly grand.'
[960] Johnson defines toy-shop as 'a shop where playthings and little nice manufactures are sold.'
[961] See ante, ii. 241.
[962] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 237) says that 'the fore-top of all his wigs were (sic) burned by the candle down to the very net-work. Mr. Thrale's valet, for that reason, kept one always in his own hands, with which he met him at the parlour door when the bell had called him down to dinner.' Cumberland (Memoirs, i. 357) says that he wore 'a brown coat with metal buttons, black waistcoat and worsted stockings, with a flowing bob-wig; they were in perfectly good trim, and with the ladies he had nothing of the slovenly philosopher about him.'
[963] See ante, ii. 432.
[964] Here he either was mistaken, or had a different notion of an extensive sale from what is generally entertained: for the fact is, that four thousand copies of that excellent work were sold very quickly. A new edition has been printed since his death, besides that in the collection of his works. BOSWELL. See ante, ii. 310, note 2.
[965] 'In the neighbourhood of Lichfield [in 1750] the principal gentlemen clothed their hounds in tartan plaid, with which they hunted a fox, dressed in a red uniform.' Mahon's Hist. of England, iv. 10.
[966] So Boswell in his Hebrides (Nov. 8), hoping that his father and Johnson have met in heaven, observes, 'that they have met in a place where there is no room for Whiggism.' See ante, i. 431.
[967] Paradise Lost, bk. i. 263. Butler (Miscellaneous Thoughts, 1. 169) had said:—
'The Devil was the first o' th' name
From whom the race of rebels came.'
[968] In the phraseology of Scotland, I should have said, 'Mr. John Spottiswoode the younger, of that ilk.' Johnson knew that sense of the word very well, and has thus explained it in his Dictionary, voce ILK:—'It also signifies "the same;" as, Mackintosh of that ilk, denotes a gentleman whose surname and the title of his estate are the same.' BOSWELL. See ante, ii. 427, note 2.
[969] He wrote to Dr. Taylor on Oct. 19 of the next year:—'There are those still who either fright themselves, or would fright others, with an invasion…. Such a fleet Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 461.
[970] See ante, iii. 42.
[971] It is observed in Waller's Life, in the Biographia Britannica, that he drank only water; and that while he sat in a company who were drinking wine, 'he had the dexterity to accommodate his discourse to the pitch of theirs as it sunk.' If excess in drinking be meant, the remark is acutely just. But surely, a moderate use of wine gives a gaiety of spirits which water-drinkers know not. BOSWELL. 'Waller passed his time in the company that was highest, both in rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude him. Though he drank water, he was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said that "no man in England should keep him company without drinking but Ned Waller."' Johnson's Works, vii. 197.
[972] See ante, iii. 41, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 17.
[973] Pope. Satires, Prologue, 1. 283.
[974] As he himself had said in his letter of thanks for his diploma of Doctor of Laws, 'Nemo sibi placens non lactatur' (ante, ii. 333).
[975]
'Who mean to live within our proper sphere,
Dear to ourselves, and to our country dear.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Epistles, i. 3. 29.
[976] Johnson recommended this before. Ante, p. 169. Boswell tried abstinence once before. Ante, ii. 436, note 1, and iii. 170, note 1.
[977] Johnson wrote to Boswell in 1775:—'Reynolds has taken too much to strong liquor, and seems to delight in his new character.' Ante, ii. 292.
[978] See ante, p. 170, note 2.
[979] At the Castle of the Bishop of Munster 'there was,' writes Temple, 'nothing remarkable but the most Episcopal way of drinking that could be invented. As soon as we came in the great hall there stood many flagons ready charged; the general called for wine to drink the King's health; they brought him a formal bell of silver gilt, that might hold about two quarts or more; he took it empty, pulled out the clapper, and gave it me who (sic) he intended to drink to, then had the bell filled, drunk it off to his Majesty's health; then asked me for the clapper, put it in, turned down the bell, and rung it out to shew he had played fair and left nothing in it; took out the clapper, desired me to give it to whom I pleased, then gave his bell to be filled again, and brought it to me. I that never used to drink, and seldom would try, had commonly some gentlemen with me that served for that purpose when it was necessary.' Temple's Works, ed. 1757, i. 266.
[980] See ante, ii. 450, note 1, and iii. 79.
[981] The passages are in the Jerusalem, canto i. st. 3, and in Lucretius, i. 935, and again iv. 12. CROKER.
[982] See ante, ii. 247, where Boswell says that 'no man was more scrupulously inquisitive in order to discover the truth;' and iii. 188, 229.
[983] See post, under May 8, 1781.
[984] 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his book.' Ante, ii. 53.
[985] 'I was once in company with Smith,' said Johnson in 1763, 'and we did not take to each other.' Ante, i. 427. See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 29.
[986] See ante, ii. 63.
[987] See ante, ii. 84
[988] See ante, p. 3.
[989] This experiment which Madame Dacier made in vain, has since been tried in our own language, by the editor of Ossian, and we must either think very meanly of his abilities, or allow that Dr. Johnson was in the right. And Mr. Cowper, a man of real genius, has miserably failed in his blank verse translation. BOSWELL. Johnson, in his Life of Pope (Works, viii. 253), says:—'I have read of a man, who being by his ignorance of Greek compelled to gratify his curiosity with the Latin printed on the opposite page, declared that from the rude simplicity of the lines literally rendered he formed nobler ideas of the Homeric majesty, than from the laboured elegance of polished versions,' Though Johnson nowhere speaks of Cowper, yet his writings were not altogether unknown to him. 'Dr. Johnson,' wrote Cowper, 'read and recommended my first volume.' Southey's Cowper, v. 171.
[990] 'I bought the first volume of Manchester, but could not read it; it was much too learned for me, and seemed rather an account of Babel than Manchester, I mean in point of antiquity.' Walpole's Letters, vi. 207.
[991] Henry was injured by Gilbert Stuart, the malignant editor of the Edinburgh Magazine and Review, who 'had vowed that he would crush his work,' and who found confederates to help him. He asked Hume to review it, thinking no doubt that one historian would attack another; when he received from him a highly favourable review he would not publish it. It contained a curious passage, where Hume points out that Henry and Robertson were clergymen, and continues:—'These illustrious examples, if any thing, must make the infidel abashed of his vain cavils.' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 469.
[992] Hume wrote to Millar:—'Hamilton and Balfour have offered Robertson [for his Scotland] a very unusual price; no less than £500 for one edition of 2000.' Ib. ii. 42. As Robertson did not accept this offer, no doubt he got a better one. Even if he got no more, it would not have seemed 'a moderate price' to a man whose preferment hitherto had been only £100 a year. (See Dugald Stewart's Robertson, p. 161.) Stewart adds (ib. p. 169):—'It was published on Feb. 1, 1759. Before the end of the month the author was desired by his bookseller to prepare for a second edition.' By 1793 it was in its fourteenth edition. Ib. p. 326. The publisher was Millar; the price two guineas. Gent. Mag. xxix. 84.
[993] Lord Clive. See post, p. 350, and Oct. 10, 1779.
[994] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 286) gives an instance of this 'romantick humour.' 'Robertson was very much a master of conversation, and very desirous to lead it, and to raise theories that sometimes provoked the laugh against him. He went a jaunt into England with Dundas, Cockburn and Sinclair; who, seeing a gallows on a neighbouring hillock, rode round to have a nearer view of the felon on the gallows. When they met in the inn, Robertson began a dissertation on the character of nations, and how much the English, like the Romans, were hardened by their cruel diversions of cock-fighting, bull-baiting, &c.; for had they not observed three Englishmen on horseback do what no Scotchman or—. Here Dundas interrupted him, and said, "What! did you not know, Principal, that it was Cockburn and Sinclair and me?" This put an end to theories, &c., for that day.'
[995] This was a favourite word with Johnson and Mrs. Thrale. 'Long live
Mrs. G. that downs my mistress,' he wrote (Piozzi Letters, ii. 26).
'Did you quite down her?' he asked of another lady (Ib. p. 100).
Miss Burney caught up the word: 'I won't be downed,' she wrote. Mme.
D'Arblay's Diary, i. 252.
[996] See ante, iii. 41, 327.
[997] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 474) tells how Robertson, with one of his pupils, and he, visited at a house where some excellent claret flowed freely. 'After four days Robertson took me into a window before dinner, and with some solemnity proposed to make a motion to shorten the drinking, if I would second him—"Because," added he, "although you and I may go through it, I am averse to it on my pupil's account." I answered that I was afraid it would not do, as our toastmaster might throw ridicule upon us, as we were to leave the island the day after the next, and that we had not proposed any abridgement till the old claret was all done, the last of which we had drunk yesterday. "Well, well," replied the Doctor, "be it so then, and let us end as we began."'
[998] Johnson, when asked to hear Robertson preach, said:—'I will hear him if he will get up into a tree and preach; but I will not give a sanction by my presence to a Presbyterian assembly.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 27. See also Ib. Nov. 7.
[999] Mrs. Piozzi confidently mentions this as having passed in Scotland, Anecdotes, p. 62. BOSWELL. She adds:—'I was shocked to think how he [Johnson] must have disgusted him [Robertson].' She, we may well believe, felt no more shock than Robertson felt disgust.
[1000] See Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. xiv.
[1001] See ante, p. 191.
[1002] See ante, p. 54.
[1003] It was on this day that Johnson dictated to Boswell his Latin translation of Dryden's lines on Milton. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22.
[1004] See ante, ii. 109.
[1005] '"Well, Sir," said he, "we had good talk." BOSWELL. "Yes Sir; you tossed and gored several persons."' Ante, ii. 66.
[1006] Very likely their host. See ante, iii. 48.
[1007] See ante, iii. 97.
[1008] Acts, X. 1 and 2.
[1009] Mr. Croker says, 'no doubt Dr. Robertson;' see post, under June 16, 1784, where Johnson says much the same of 'an authour of considerable eminence.' In this case Mr. Croker says, 'probably Dr. Robertson.' I have little doubt that Dr. Beattie was there meant. He may be meant also here, for the description of the conversation does not agree with what we are told of Robertson. See ante, p. 335. note 1. Perhaps, however, Dr. Blair was the eminent author. It is in Boswell's manner to introduce the same person in consecutive paragraphs as if there were two persons.
[1010] See ante, ii. 256.
[1011] Chappe D'Auteroche writes:—'La douceur de sa physionomie et sa vivacité annonçaient plutôt quelque indiscrétion que l'ombre d'un crime. Tous ceux que j'ai consultés par la suite m'ont cependant assuré qu'elle était coupable.' Voyage en Sibérie, i. 227. Lord Kames says:—'Of whatever indiscretion she might have been guilty, the sweetness of her countenance and her composure left not in the spectators the slightest suspicion of guilt.' She was cruelly knouted, her tongue was cut out, and she was banished to Siberia. Kames's Sketches, i. 363.
[1012] Mr. Croker says:—'Here I think the censure is quite unjust. Lord Kames gives in the clearest terms the same explanation.' Kames made many corrections in the later editions. On turning to the first, I found, as I expected, that Johnson's censure was quite just. Kames says (i. 76):—'Whatever be the cause of high or low interest, I am certain that the quantity of circulating coin can have no influence. Supposing the half of our money to be withdrawn, a hundred pounds lent ought still to afford but five pounds as interest; because if the principal be doubled in value, so is also the interest.' This passage was struck out in later editions.
[1013] 'Johnson had an extraordinary admiration of this lady, notwithstanding she was a violent Whig. In answer to her high-flown speeches for Liberty, he addressed to her the following Epigram, of which I presume to offer a translation:—
'Liber ut esse velim suasiti pulchra Maria
Ut maneam liber pulchra Maria vale,'
Adieu, Maria! since you'd have me free;
For, who beholds thy charms a slave must be.
A correspondent of The Gentleman's Magazine, who subscribes himself SCIOLUS, to whom I am indebted for several excellent remarks, observes, 'The turn of Dr. Johnson's lines to Miss Aston, whose Whig principles he had been combating, appears to me to be taken from an ingenious epigram in the Menagiana [vol. iii. p. 376, edit. 1716] on a young lady who appeared at a masquerade, habillée en Jésuite, during the fierce contentions of the followers of Molinos and Jansenius concerning free-will:—
"On s'étonne ici que Caliste
Ait pris l'habit de Moliniste.
Puisque cette jeune beauté
Ote à chacun sa liberté,
N'est-ce pas une Janseniste?"
BOSWELL.
Johnson, in his Criticism upon Pope's Epitaphs (Works, viii. 355), quotes the opinion of a 'lady of great beauty and excellence.' She was, says Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 162), Molly Aston. Mrs. Piozzi, in her Letters (ii. 383), writes:—'Nobody has ever mentioned what became of Miss Aston's letters, though he once told me they should be the last papers he would destroy.' See ante, i. 83.
[1014] See ante, ii. 470.
[1015] Pope's Essay on Man, iv. 380.
[1016] See ante, i. 294.
[1017] 'March 4, 1745. You say you expect much information about Belleisle, but there has not (in the style of the newspapers) the least particular transpired.' Horace Walpole's Letters, i. 344. 'Jan. 26, 1748. You will not let one word of it transpire.' Chesterfield's Misc. Works, iv. 35. 'It would be next to a miracle that a fact of this kind should be known to a whole parish, and not transpire any farther.' Fielding's Tom Jones, bk. ii. c. 5. Tom Jones was published before the Dictionary, but not so Walpole's Letters and Chesterfield's Misc. Works. I have not found a passage in which Bolingbroke uses the word, but I have not read all his works.
[1018] 'The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own … I have registered as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others against the folly of naturalising useless foreigners to the injury of the natives.' Johnson's Works, v. 31. 'If an academy should be established for the cultivation of our style, which I, who can never wish to see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries, endeavour with all their influence to stop the license of translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.' Ib. p. 49. 'I have rarely admitted any words not authorised by former writers; for I believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent will be able to express his thoughts without further help from other nations.' The Rambler, No. 208.
[1019] Boswell on one occasion used it came out where a lover of fine words would have said it transpired. See Boswell's Hebrides, November 1.
[1020] The record no doubt was destroyed with the other papers that Boswell left to his literary executors (ante, p. 301, note 1).
[1021] See ante, i. 154.
[1022] 'Of Johnson's pride I have heard Reynolds observe, that if any man drew him into a state of obligation without his own consent, that man was the first he would affront by way of clearing off the account.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 71.
[1023] See post, May 1, 1779.
[1024] This had happened the day before (May 11) in the writ of error in Horne's case (ante, p. 314). Ann. Reg. xii. 181.
[1025] 'To enucleate. To solve; to clear.' Johnson's Dictionary.
[1026] In the original me.
[1027] Pope himself (Moral Essays, iii. 25) attacks the sentiment contained in this stanza. He says:—
'What nature wants (a phrase I must distrust)
Extends to luxury, extends to lust.'
Mr. Elwin (Pope's Works, ii. 462) doubts the genuineness of this suppressed stanza. Montezuma, in Dryden's Indian Emperour, act ii. sc. 2, says:—
'That lust of power we from your Godheads have,
You're bound to please those appetites you gave.'
[1028] 'Antoine Arnauld, surnommé le grand Arnauld, théologien et philosophe, né à Paris le 6 février 1612, mort le 6 août 1694 à Bruxelles.' Nouv. Biog. Gén. iii. 282.
[1029] 'It may be discovered that when Pope thinks himself concealed he indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that his book was presented to the King and Queen by the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first distinction.' Johnson's Works, viii. 278.
[1030] Othello, act iii. sc. 3.
[1031] Mr. Langton, I have little doubt. Not only does that which Johnson says of sluggishness fit his character, but the fact that he is spoken of in the next paragraph points to him.
[1032] Mr. Langton. See ante, iii. 48.
[1033] We may wonder whether pasted is strictly used. It seems likely that the wealthy brewer, who had a taste for the fine arts, afforded Hogarth at least a frame.
[1034] See ante, i. 49.
[1035] Baths are called Hummums in the East, and thence these hotels in Covent Garden, where there were baths, were called by that name. CROKER.
[1036] Beauclerk.
[1037] Bolingbroke. Ante, ii. 246.
[1038] Lord Clive. Ante, p. 334.
[1039] Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.
[1040] Johnson, or Boswell in reporting him, here falls into an error. The editor of Chesterfield's Works says (ii. 3l9), 'that being desirous of giving a specimen of his Lordship's eloquence he has made choice of the three following speeches; the first in the strong nervous style of Demosthenes; the two latter in the witty, ironical manner of Tully.' Now the first of these speeches is not Johnson's, for it was reported in The Gent. Mag. for July, 1737, p. 409, nine months before his first contribution to that paper. In spite of great differences this report and that in Chesterfield's Works are substantially the same. If Johnson had any hand in the authorised version he merely revised the report already published. Nor did he always improve it, as will be seen by comparing with Chesterfield's Works, ii. 336, the following passage from the Gent. Mag. p. 411:—'My Lords, we ought in all points to be tender of property. Wit is the property of those who are possessed of it, and very often the only property they have. Thank God, my Lords, this is not our case; we are otherwise provided for.' The other two speeches are his. In the collected works (xi. 420, 489) they are wrongly assigned to Lord Carteret. See ante, i. Appendix A.
[1041] See ante, p. 340.
[1042] These words are quoted by Kames, iii. 267. In his abbreviation he perhaps passed over by accident the words that Johnson next quotes. If Clarendon did not believe the story, he wished his readers to believe it. He gives more than five pages to it, and he ends by saying:— 'Whatever there was of all this, it is a notorious truth, that when the news of the duke's murder (which happened within few months after) was brought to his mother, she seemed not in the least degree surprised; but received it as if she had foreseen it.' According to the story, he had told her of the warning which had come to him through his father's ghost. Clarendon's History, ed. 1826, i. 74.
[1043] Kames maintains (iii. 95) that schools are not needful for the children of the labouring poor. They would be needful, 'if without regular education we could have no knowledge of the principles of religion and of morality. But Providence has not left man in a state so imperfect: religion and morality are stamped on his heart; and none can be ignorant of them, who attend to their own perceptions.'
[1044] 'Oct. 5, 1764. Mr. Elliot brings us woeful accounts of the French ladies, of the decency of their conversation, and the nastiness of their behaviour.' Walpole's Letters, iv. 277. Walpole wrote from Paris on Nov. 19, 1765, 'Paris is the ugliest, beastliest town in the universe,' and describes the nastiness of the talk of French women of the first rank. Ib. p. 435. Mrs. Piozzi, nearly twenty years later, places among 'the contradictions one meets with every moment' at Paris, 'A Countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps, and a dirty black handkerchief about her neck.' Piozzi's Journey, i. 17. See ante, ii. 403, and post, under Aug. 29, 1783.
[1045] See Appendix B.
[1046] His lordship was, to the last, in the habit of telling this story rather too often. CROKER.
[1047] See ante, ii. 194.
[1048] See ante, iii. 178.
[1049] See ante, ii. 153.
[1050] 'Our eyes and ears may convince us,' wrote Wesley, 'there is not a less happy body of men in all England than the country farmers. In general their life is supremely dull; and it is usually unhappy too; for of all people in the kingdom, they are the most discontented, seldom satisfied either with God or man.' Southey's Wesley, i. 420. He did not hold with Johnson as to the upper classes. 'Oh! how hard it is,' he said, 'to be shallow enough for a polite audience.' Ib. p. 419.
[1051] Horne says:—'Even S. Johnson, though mistakenly, has attempted AND, and would find no difficulty with THEREFORE' (ed. 1778, p. 21). However, in a note on p. 56 he says:—'I could never read his preface [to his Dictionary] without shedding a tear.' See ante, i. 297, note 2.
[1052] In Mr. Horne Tooke's enlargement of that Letter, which he has since published with the title of [Greek: Epea pteroenta]; or, the Diversions of Purley; he mentions this compliment, as if Dr. Johnson instead of several of his etymologies had said all. His recollection having thus magnified it, shews how ambitious he was of the approbation of so great a man. BOSWELL. Horne Tooke says (ed. 1798, part i, p. 156) 'immediately after the publication of my Letter to Mr. Dunning I was informed by Mr. S. [Seward], an intimate friend of Dr. Johnson, that he had declared that, if he lived to give a new edition of his Dictionary, he should certainly adopt my derivations.' Boswell and Horne Tooke, says Stephens (Life of Tooke, ii. 438), had an altercation. 'Happening to meet at a gentleman's house, Mr. Boswell proposed to make up the breach, on the express condition, however, that they should drink a bottle of wine each between the toasts. But Mr. Tooke would not give his assent unless the liquor should be brandy. By the time a quart had been quaffed Boswell was left sprawling on the floor.'
[1053] See ante, iii. 314. Thurlow, the Attorney-General, pressed that Horne should be set in the pillory, 'observing that imprisonment would be "a slight inconvenience to one of sedentary habits."' It was during his imprisonment that he wrote his Letter to Mr. Dunning. Campbell's Chancellors, ed. 1846, v. 517. Horace Walpole says that 'Lord Mansfield was afraid, and would not venture the pillory.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 167.
[1054] 'Bulse, a certain quantity of diamonds' (India). Webster's Dictionary.
[1055] 'He raised,' says Hawkins (Life, p. 236), 'the medical character to such a height of dignity as was never seen in this or any other country. I have heard it said that when he began to practise, he was a frequenter of the meeting at Stepney where his father preached; and that when he was sent for out of the assembly, his father would in his prayer insert a petition in behalf of the sick person. I once mentioned this to Johnson, who said it was too gross for belief; but it was not so at Batson's ante, i. 159. Young has introduced him in the second of his Night Thoughts—
'That time is mine, O Mead, to thee I owe;
Fain would I pay thee with eternity.'
Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 260) says 'that he had nothing but pretensions.'
[1056] On Oct. 17, 1777, Burgoyne's army surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga. One of the articles of the Convention was 'that the army should march out of the camp with all the honours of war to a fixed place where they were to deposit their arms. It is said that General Gates [the American Commander] paid so nice and delicate an attention to the British military honour that he kept his army close within their lines, and did not suffer an American soldier to be a witness to the degrading spectacle of piling their arms.' Ann. Reg. xx. 173, 174. Horace Walpole, on Lord Cornwallis's capitulation in 1781, wrote:—'The newspapers on the Court side had been crammed with paragraphs for a fortnight, saying that Lord Cornwallis had declared he would never pile up his arms like Burgoyne; that is, he would rather die sword in hand.' Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 475.
[1057] See ante, i. 342.
[1058] There was a Colonel Fullarton who took an important part in the war against Tippoo in 1783. Mill's British India, ed. 1840, iv. 276.
[1059] 'To count is a modern practice, the ancient method was to guess; and when numbers are guessed, they are always magnified.' Johnson's Works, ix. 95.
[1060] He published in 1714 An Account of Switzerland.
[1061] See ante, ii. 468.
[1062] See Appendix C.
[1063] 'All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future which has not been given us. They are, I think, a crime, because they resign that life to chance which God has given us to be regulated by reason; and superinduce a kind of fatality, from which it is the great privilege of our nature to be free.' Piozzi Letters, i. 83. Johnson (Works, vii. 52) praises the 'just and noble thoughts' in Cowley's lines which begin:—
'Where honour or where conscience does not bind,
No other law shall shackle me;
Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
Nor shall my future actions be confined
By my own present mind.'
See ante, ii. 21.
[1064] Juvenal, Sat. iii. 78. Imitated by Johnson in London.
[1065] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 16, and Johnson's Tour into Wales, Aug. 1, 1774.
[1066] The slip of paper on which he made the correction, is deposited by me in the noble library to which it relates, and to which I have presented other pieces of his hand-writing. BOSWELL. In substituting burns he resumes the reading of the first edition, in which the former of the two couplets ran:—
'Resistless burns the fever of renown,
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown.'
'The slip of paper and the other pieces of Johnson's hand-writing' have been lost. At all events they are not in the Bodleian.
[1067] Johnson (Works, vii. 76), criticising Milton's scheme of education, says:—'Those authors therefore are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of nature to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn was how to do good and avoid evil. "[Greek: hotti toi en megaroisi kakon t agathon te tetuktai]."'
[1068] 'His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious, but his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has done well.' Ib. viii. 386. See ante, i. 312. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 200) says that when 'Johnson would inveigh against devotional poetry, and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble,' she reminded him how 'when he would try to repeat the Dies iræ, dies illa, he could never pass the stanza ending thus, Tantus labor non sit cassus, without bursting into a flood of tears.'
[1069] See ante, ii. 169, note 2.
[1070] Dr. Johnson was by no means attentive to minute accuracy in his Lives of the Poets; for notwithstanding my having detected this mistake, he has continued it. BOSWELL. See post, iv. 51, note 2 for a like instance of neglect.
[1071] See ante, ii. 64.
[1072] See ante, ii. 278.
[1073] 'May 31, 1778. We shall at least not doze, as we are used to do, in summer. The Parliament is to have only short adjournments; and our senators, instead of retiring to horseraces (their plough), are all turned soldiers, and disciplining militia. Camps everywhere.' Horace Walpole's Letters, vii. 75. It was a threat of invasion by the united forces of France and Spain, at the time that we were at war with America, that caused the alarm. Dr. J.H. Burton (Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 399) points out, that while the militia of England was placed nearly in its present position by the act of 1757, yet 'when a proposal for extending the system to Scotland was suggested (sic), ministers were afraid to arm the people.' 'It is curious,' he continues, 'that for a reason almost identical Ireland has been excepted from the Volunteer organisation of a century later. It was not until 1793 that the Militia Acts were extended to Scotland.'
[1074] 'Before dinner,' wrote Miss Burney in September of this year, 'to my great joy Dr. Johnson returned home from Warley Common.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 114. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Oct. 15:—'A camp, however familiarly we may speak of it, is one of the great scenes of human life. War and peace divide the business of the world. Camps are the habitations of those who conquer kingdoms, or defend them.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 22.
[1075] Third Edition, p. 111 [Aug. 28]. BOSWELL. It was at Fort George. 'He made a very good figure upon these topicks. He said to me afterwards that "he had talked ostentatiously."'
[1076] When I one day at Court expressed to General Hall my sense of the honour he had done my friend, he politely answered, 'Sir, I did myself honour.' BOSWELL.
[1077] According to Malone, 'Mr. Burke said of Mr. Boswell that good nature was so natural to him that he had no merit in possessing it, and that a man might as well assume to himself merit in possessing an excellent constitution.' European Mag. 1798, p. 376. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21.
[1078] Langton. See ante, iii. 48.
[1079] No doubt his house at Langton.
[1080] The Wey Canal. See ante, ii. 136. From navigation, i.e. a canal for internal navigation, we have navvy. A canal was the common term for an ornamental pool, and for a time it seemed that navigation and not canal might be the term applied to artificial rivers.
[1081] Langton.
[1082]
'He plunging downward shot his radiant head:
Dispelled the breathing air that broke his flight;
Shorn of his beams, a man to mortal sight.'
Dryden, quoted in Johnson's Dictionary under shorn. The phrase first appears in Paradise Lost, i. 596.
[1083] Mrs. Thrale, this same summer, 'asked whether Mr. Langton took any better care of his affairs. "No, madam," cried the doctor, "and never will. He complains of the ill-effects of habit, and rests contentedly upon a confessed indolence. He told his father himself that he had no turn to economy, but a thief might as well plead that he had no turn to honesty!"' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 75.
[1084] Locke, in his last words to Collins, said:—'This world affords no solid satisfaction but the consciousness of well-doing, and the hopes of another life.' Warburton's Divine Legation, i. xxvi.
[1085] Not the young brewer who was hoped for (ante, iii. 210); therefore she is called 'poor thing.' One of Mr. Thrale's daughters lived to Nov. 5, 1858.
[1086] On Oct. 15 Johnson wrote:—'Is my master [i.e. Mr. Thrale, ante, i. 494, note 3] come to himself? Does he talk, and walk, and look about him, as if there were yet something in the world for which it is worth while to live? Or does he yet sit and say nothing? To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them.' Piozzi Letters. ii. 22. Nine days later he wrote:—'You appear to me to be now floating on the spring-tide of prosperity. I think it very probably in your power to lay up £8000 a-year for every year to come, increasing all the time, what needs not be increased, the splendour of all external appearance. And surely such a state is not to be put into yearly hazard for the pleasure of keeping the house full, or the ambition of out-brewing Whitbread? Piozzi Letters, p. 24.
[1087] See ante, ii. 136. The following letter, of which a fac-simile is given at the beginning of vol. iii. of Dr. Franklin's Memoirs, ed. 1818, tells of 'a difference' between the famous printer of Philadelphia and the King's Printer of London.
'Philada., July 5, 1775.
'Mr. Strahan,
'You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my Country to Destruction.—You have begun to burn our Towns, and murder our People.—Look upon your Hands!—They are stained with the Blood of your Relations! You and I were long friends:—You are now my Enemy,—and
'I am, yours,
'B. FRANKLIN.'
When peace was made between the two countries the old friendship was renewed. Ib. iii. 147.
[1088] On this day he wrote a touching letter to Mr. Elphinston, who had lost his wife (Croker's Boswell, p. 66, note). Perhaps the thoughts thus raised in him led him to this act of reconciliation.
[1089] Dr. Johnson here addresses his worthy friend, Bennet Langton, Esq., by his title as Captain of the Lincolnshire militia, in which he has since been most deservedly raised to the rank of Major. BOSWELL.
[1090] President of the Royal Society.
[1091] The King visited Warley Camp on Oct. 20. Ann. Reg. xxi. 237.
[1092] He visited Coxheath Camp on Nov. 23. Ib. Horace Walpole, writing of April of this year when, in the alarm of a French invasion, the militia were called out, says:—'The King's behaviour was childish and absurd. He ordered the camp equipage, and said he would command the army himself.' Walpole continues:—'It is reported, that in a few days will be published in two volumes, folio, an accurate account of His Majesty's Journeys to Chatham and Portsmouth, together with a minute Description of his numerous Fatigues, Dangers, and hair-breadth Escapes; to which will be added the Royal Bon-mots. And the following week will be published an History of all the Campaigns of the King of Prussia, in one volume duodecimo.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 262, 264.
[1093] Boswell, eleven years later, wrote of him:—'My second son is an extraordinary boy; he is much of his father (vanity of vanities). He is of a delicate constitution, but not unhealthy, and his spirit never fails him. He is still in the house with me; indeed he is quite my companion, though only eleven in September.' Letters of Boswell, p. 315. Mr. Croker, who knew him, says that 'he was very convivial, and in other respects like his father—though altogether on a smaller scale.' He edited a new edition of Malone's Shakespeare. He died in 1822. Croker's Boswell, p. 620.
[1094] See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 30, 1773.
[1095] Ib. Nov. 1.
[1096] Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church. Johnson wrote in 1783:—'At home I see almost all my companions dead or dying. At Oxford I have just left [lost] Wheeler, the man with whom I most delighted to converse.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 302. See post, Aug. 30, 1780.
[1097] Johnson, in 1784, wrote about a visit to Oxford:—'Since I was there my convivial friend Dr. Edwards and my learned friend Dr. Wheeler are both dead, and my probabilities of pleasure are very much diminished.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 371.
[1098] Dr. Edwards was preparing an edition of Xenophon's Memorabilia. CROKER.
[1099] Johnson wrote on the 14th:—'Dr. Burney had the luck to go to Oxford the only week in the year when the library is shut up. He was, however, very kindly treated; as one man is translating Arabick and another Welsh for his service.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 38.
[1100] Johnson three years later, hearing that one of Dr. Burney's sons had got the command of a ship, wrote:—'I question if any ship upon the ocean goes out attended with more good wishes than that which carries the fate of Burney. I love all of that breed whom I can be said to know, and one or two whom I hardly know I love upon credit, and love them because they love each other.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 225. See post, Nov. 16, 1784.
[1101] Vol. ii. p. 38. BOSWELL.
[1102] Miss Carmichael. BOSWELL.
[1103] See Appendix D.
[1104] See ante, ii. 382, note 1.
[1105] See ante, i. 446.
[1106] See ante, iii. 99, note 4.
[1107] It was the collected edition containing the first seven Discourses, which had each year been published separately. 'I was present,' said Samuel Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 18), 'when Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered his last lecture at the Royal Academy. On entering the room, I found that a semicircle of chairs immediately in front of the pulpit was reserved for persons of distinction, being labelled "Mr. Burke," "Mr. Boswell," &c.'
[1108] In an unfinished sketch for a Discourse, Reynolds said of those already delivered:—'Whatever merit they may have must be imputed, in a great measure, to the education which I may be said to have had under Dr. Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to the credit of these Discourses if I could say it with truth, that he contributed even a single sentiment to them; but he qualified my mind to think justly.' Northcote's Reynolds, ii. 282. See ante, i. 245.
[1109] The error in grammar is no doubt Boswell's. He was so proud of his knowledge of languages that when he was appointed Secretary for Foreign Correspondence to the Royal Academy (ante, ii. 67, note 1), 'he wrote his acceptance of the honour in three separate letters, still preserved in the Academy archives, in English, French, and Italian.' The Athenæum, No. 3041.
[1110] The remaining six volumes came out, not in 1780, but in 1781. See post, 1781. He also wrote this year the preface to a translation of Oedipus Tyrannus, by Thomas Maurice, in Poems and Miscellaneous Pieces. (See preface to Westminster Abbey with other Poems, 1813.)
[1111] See ante, ii. 272.
[1112] Life of Watts [Works, viii. 380]. BOSWELL.
[1113] See ante, ii. 107.
[1114] See ante, iii. 126.
[1115] 'Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice.' Johnson's Works, vii. 222.
[1116] Johnson, in his Life of Yalden (Ib. viii. 83), calls the following stanza from his Hymn to Darkness 'exquisitely beautiful':—
'Thou dost thy smiles impartially bestow,
And know'st no difference here below:
All things appear the same by thee,
Though Light distinction makes, thou giv'st equality.'
It is strange that Churchill was left out of the collection.
[1117] Murphy says, though certainly with exaggeration, that 'after Garrick's death Johnson never talked of him without a tear in his eyes. He offered,' he adds, 'if Mrs. Garrick would desire it of him, to be the editor of his works and the historian of his life.' Murphy's Johnson, p. 145. Cumberland (Memoirs, ii. 210) said of Garrick's funeral:—'I saw old Samuel Johnson standing beside his grave, at the foot of Shakespeare's monument, and bathed in tears.' Sir William Forbes was told that Johnson, in going to the funeral, said to William Jones:—'Mr. Garrick and his profession have been equally indebted to each other. His profession made him rich, and he made his profession respectable.' Forbes's Beattie, Appendix CC.
[1118] See ante, i. 456.
[1119] See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 23.
[1120] The anniversary of the death of Charles I.
[1121] See ante, i. 211.
[1122] He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a very handsome present. BOSWELL.
[1123] On March 10 he wrote:—'I got my Lives, not yet quite printed, put neatly together, and sent them to the King; what he says of them I know not. If the king is a Whig, he will not like them; but is any king a Whig?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 43.
[1124] 'He was always ready to assist any authors in correcting their works, and selling them to booksellers. "I have done writing," said he, "myself, and should assist those that do write."' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 202. See ante, ii. 195.
[1125] In The Rehearsal. See ante, ii. 168.
[1126] Johnson wrote on Nov. 21, 1778:—'Baretti has told his musical scheme to B—— and B—— will neither grant the question nor deny. He is of opinion that if it does not fail, it will succeed, but if it does not succeed he conceives it must fail.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 41. Baretti, in a marginal note on his copy, says that B—— is Dr. Burney. He adds:—'The musical scheme was the Carmen Seculare. That brought me £150 in three nights, and three times as much to Philidor. It would have benefited us both greatly more, if Philidor had not proved a scoundrel.' 'The complaisant Italian,' says the Gent Mag. (xlix. 361), 'in compliment to our island chooses "to drive destructive war and pestilence" ad Mauros, Seras et Indos, instead of ad Persas atque Britannos.' Mr. Tasker, the clergyman, went a step further. 'I,' he says in his version of the Carmen,
'Honour and fame prognosticate
To free-born Britain's naval state
And to her Patriot-King.' Ib.
[1127] We may compare with this the scene in Le Misanthrope (Act i. sc. 2), where Oronte reads his sonnet to Alceste; who thrice answers: —'Je ne dis pas cela, mais—.' See ante, iii. 320.
[1128] This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informed me that this portrait is so accurately drawn, that being, some years after the publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know, but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it appeared that he was indeed the author of The Warlike Genius of Britain. CROKER.
[1129] The poet was preparing a second edition of his Ode. 'This animated Pindaric made its first appearance the latter end of last year (1778). It is well calculated to rouse the martial spirit of the nation, and is now reprinted with considerable additions.' Gent. Mag. July, 1779, p. 357. In 1781 he published another volume of his poems with a poetical preface, in which he thus attacks his brother-in-law:—
'To suits litigious, ignorant and raw,
Compell'd by an unletter'd brother-in-law.'
Ib. 1781, p. 227.
[1130] Boswell must have misheard what Johnson said. It was not Anson, but Amherst whom the bard praised. Ode, p. 7.
[1131] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Foote's death:—'Now, will any of his contemporaries bewail him? Will Genius change his sex to weep?' Piozzi Letters, i. 396.
[1132]
'Genius of Britain! to thy office true,
On Cox-Heath reared the waving banners view.
* * * * *
In martial vest
By Venus and the Graces drest,
To yonder tent, who leads the way?
Art thou Britannia's Genius? say.'
Ode, p. 8.
[1133] Twenty-nine years earlier he wrote:—'There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness.' The Rambler, No. 2. In The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xx, George says of his book:—'The learned world said nothing to my paradoxes, nothing at all, Sir…. I suffered the cruellest mortification, neglect.' See ante, ii. 61, 335. Hume said:—'The misfortune of a book, says Boileau, is not the being ill spoke [sic] of, but the not being spoken of at all.' J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 412
[1134] The account given in Northcote's Reynolds (ii. 94-97) renders it likely that Sir Joshua is 'the friend of ours.' Northcote, quoting Mr. Courtenay, writes:—'His table was frequented by men of the first talents. Politics and party were never introduced. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians, lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group.' At one of these dinners Mr. Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, was the first who came. 'On entering, he said, "Well, Sir Joshua, and who [sic] have you got to dine with you to-day? for the last time I dined with you the assembly was of such a sort, that, by G—, I believe all the rest of the world were at peace, for that afternoon at least."' See post, under June 16, 1784, note. Boswell, in his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 95), boasts that he too is 'a very universal man.' 'I can drink, I can laugh, I can converse in perfect humour with Whigs, with republicans, with dissenters, with Independents, with Quakers, with Moravians, with Jews. But I would vote with Tories and pray with a Dean and Chapter.'
[1135] 'Finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I therefore drest up three paradoxes with some ingenuity. They were false, indeed, but they were new.' Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xx. See ante, i. 441, where Johnson says:—'When I was a boy, I used always to choose the wrong side of a debate, because most ingenious things, that is to say, most new things, could be said upon it.' In the Present State of Polite Learning (ch. vii.), Goldsmith says:—'Nothing can be a more certain sign that genius is in the wane than its being obliged to fly to paradox for support, and attempting to be erroneously agreeable.'
[1136] The whole night spent in playing at cards (see next page) may account for part of his negligence. He was perhaps unusually dissipated this visit.
[1137] See ante, ii. 135.
[1138] 'Three men,' writes Horace Walpole, 'were especially suspected, Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and W. G. Hamilton. Hamilton was most generally suspected.' Memoirs of George III, iii. 401. According to Dr. T. Campbell (Diary, p. 35) Johnson in 1775 'said that he looked upon Burke to be the author of Junius, and that though he would not take him contra mundum, yet he would take him against any man.'
[1139] Sargeant Bettersworth, enraged at Swift's lines on him, 'demanded whether he was the author of that poem. "Mr. Bettesworth," answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who knowing my disposition to satire advised me that if any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, Are you the author of this paper? I should tell him that I was not the author; and therefore I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines."' Johnson's Works, viii. 216. See post, June 13, 1784.
[1140] Mr. S. Whyte (Miscellanea Nova, p. 27) says that Johnson mistook the nature of the compliment. Sheridan had fled to France from his debtors. In 1766 an Insolvent Debtors' Relief Bill was brought into the House in his absence. Mr. Whyte, one of his creditors, petitioned the House to have Sheridan's name included. A very unusual motion was made, 'that petitioner shall not be put to his oath; but the facts set forth in his petition be admitted simply on his word.' The motion was seconded by an instantaneous Ay! Ay! without a dissenting voice. Sheridan wrote to Mr. Whyte:—'As the thing has passed with so much credit to me, the whole honour and merit of it is yours'.
[1141] In The Rambler, No. 39, he wrote of this kind of control:—'It may be urged in extenuation of this crime which parents, not in any other respect to be numbered with robbers and assassins, frequently commit, that, in their estimation, riches and happiness are equivalent terms.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'There wanders about the world a wild notion which extends over marriage more than over any transaction. If Miss —— followed a trade, would it be said that she was bound in conscience to give or refuse credit at her father's choice? … The parent's moral right can arise only from his kindness, and his civil right only from his money.' Piozzi Letters, i. 83. See ante, i. 346.
[1142] See p. 186 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[1143] He refers to Johnson's letter of July 3, 1778, ante, p. 363.
[1144] See ante, iii. 5, 178.
[1145] 'By seeing London,' said Johnson, 'I have seen as much of life as the world can show.' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 11. 'London,' wrote Hume in 1765, 'never pleased me much. Letters are there held in no honour; Scotmen are hated; superstition and ignorance gain ground daily.' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 292.
[1146] See ante, i. 82.
[1147] 'I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations … many brought thither by the desire of living after their own manner without observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a city populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.' Rasselas, ch. xii. Gibbon wrote of London (Misc. Works, ii. 291):—'La liberté d'un simple particulier se fortifie par l'immensité de la ville.'
[1148] Perhaps Mr. Elphinston, of whom he said (ante, ii. 171), 'His inner part is good, but his outer part is mighty awkward.'
[1149] Worthy is generally applied to Langton. His foibles were a common subject of their talk. Ante, iii. 48.
[1150] By the Author of The Whole Duty of Man. See ante, ii. 239, note 4. Johnson often quotes it in his Dictionary.
[1151] 'The things done in his body.' 2 Corinthians, v. 10.
[1152]
'Yes I am proud: I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me:
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.
O sacred weapon! left for truth's defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!'
Pope. Satires, Epilogue, ii. 208.
[1153] Page 173. BOSWELL.
[1154] At eleven o'clock that night Johnson recorded:—'I am now to review the last year, and find little but dismal vacuity, neither business nor pleasure; much intended and little done. My health is much broken, my nights afford me little rest…. Last week I published the Lives of the Poets, written, I hope, in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of piety. In this last year I have made little acquisition. I have scarcely read anything. I maintain Mrs. —— [Desmoulins] and her daughter. Other good of myself I know not where to find, except a little charity.' Ib. p. 175.
[1155] Mauritius Lowe, the painter. Ante, p. 324.
[1156] See ante ii 249.
[1157] 'Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put 'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick, and cried, "Down wantons, down!"' King Lear, act ii. sc. 4.
[1158] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, where Johnson, speaking of claret, said that 'there were people who died of dropsies, which they contracted in trying to get drunk.'
[1159] 'If,' wrote Johnson in one of his Debates (Works xi. 392), 'the felicity of drunkenness can be more cheaply obtained by buying spirits than ale, it is easy to see which will be preferred.' See post, March 30, 1781.
[1160] Dempster, to whom Boswell complained that his nerves were affected, replied:—'One had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep company with such a man.' Ante, i. 434.
[1161] Marquis of Graham, afterwards third Duke of Montrose. In The Rolliad (ed. 1795) he is thus attacked:—
'Superior to abuse
He nobly glories in the name of Goose;
Such Geese at Rome from the perfidious Gaul
Preserved the Treas'ry-Bench and Capitol.'
He was one of the Lords of the Treasury. See also The Rolliad, p. 60
[1162] Johnson, however, when telling Mrs. Thrale that, in case of her husband's death, she ought to carry on his business, said:—'Do not be frighted; trade could not be managed by those who manage it if it had much difficulty. Their great books are soon understood, and their language,
"If speech it may be called, that speech is none
Distinguishable in number, mood, or tense,"
is understood with no very laborious application.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 91. See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 18.
[1163] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 26.
[1164] See ante, iii. 88, note 1.
[1165] The Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, with whom she lived seventeen years, and by whom she had nine children. Ann. Reg. xxii. 206. The Duke of Richmond attacked her in the House of Lords as one 'who was supposed to sell favours in the Admiralty for money.' Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 248, and Parl. Hist. xix. 993. It so happened that on the day on which Hackman was hanged 'Fox moved for the removal of Lord Sandwich [from office] but was beaten by a large majority.' Walpole's Letters, vii. 194. One of her children was Basil Montague, the editor of Bacon. Carlyle writes of him:—'On going to Hinchinbrook, I found he was strikingly like the dissolute, questionable Earl of Sandwich; who, indeed, had been father of him in a highly tragic way.' Carlyle's Reminiscences, i. 224. Hackman, who was a clergyman of the Church, had once been in the army. Cradock's Memoirs, i. 140.
[1166] On the following Monday Boswell was present at Hackman's execution, riding to Tyburn with him in a mourning coach. London Mag. for 1779, p. 189.
[1167] At the Club. CROKER. See ante, ii. 345, note 5.
[1168] See ante, p. 281, for a previous slight altercation, and p. 195 for a possible cause of unfriendly feeling between the two men. If such a feeling existed, it passed away, at all events on Johnson's side, before Beauclerk's death. See post, iv. 10.
[1169] This gentleman who loved buttered muffins reappears in Pickwick (ch. 44), as 'the man who killed himself on principle,' after eating three-shillings' worth of crumpets. Mr. Croker says that Mr. Fitzherbert is meant; but he hanged himself. Ante, ii. 228, note 3.
[1170] 'It is not impossible that this restless desire of novelty, which gives so much trouble to the teacher, may be often the struggle of the understanding starting from that to which it is not by nature adapted, and travelling in search of something on which it may fix with greater satisfaction. For, without supposing each man particularly marked out by his genius for particular performances, it may be easily conceived that when a numerous class of boys is confined indiscriminately to the same forms of composition, the repetition of the same words, or the explication of the same sentiments, the employment must, either by nature or accident, be less suitable to some than others…. Weariness looks out for relief, and leisure for employment, and surely it is rational to indulge the wanderings of both.' Johnson's Works, v. 232. See post, iv. 21.
[1171] 'See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept 10, and Johnson's Works, viii. 466. Mallet had the impudence to write to Hume that the book was ready for the press; 'which,' adds Hume, 'is more than I or most people expected.' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 139.
[1172] The name is not given in the first two editions. See ante, i. 82.
[1173] See p. 289 of this vol., and vol. i. p. 207. BOSWELL. The saying is from Diogenes Laertius, bk. v. ch. I, and is attributed to Aristotle —[Greek: ho philoi oudeis philos.]
[1174]
'Love, the most generous passion of the mind,
The softest refuge innocence can find;
The safe director of unguided youth,
Fraught with kind wishes, and secured by truth;
That cordial drop Heaven in our cup has thrown,
To make the nauseous draught of life go down.'
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, A Letter from Artemisia, Chalmers's Poets, viii. 242. Pope (Imitations of Horace, Epist. I. vi. 126) refers to these lines:—
'If, after all, we must with Wilmot own,
The cordial drop of life is love alone.'
[1175] Garrick wrote in 1776:—'Gout, stone, and sore throat! Yet I am in spirits.' Garrick Corres, ii. 138.
[1176] See ante, p. 70.
[1177] In The Life of Edmund Smith (Works, vii. 380). See ante, i. 81.
[1178] Johnson wrote of Foote's death:—'The world is really impoverished by his sinking glories.' Piozzi Letters, i. 396. See ante, p. 185, note 1.
[1179] 'Allowance must be made for some degree of exaggerated praise,' he said in speaking of epitaphs. 'In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.' Ante, ii. 407.
[1180] Garrick retired in January 1776, three years before his death. He visited Ireland in 1742, and again in 1743. Davies's Garrick, i. 57, 91.
[1181] In the original impoverished.
[1182] Certainly not Horace Walpole, as had been suggested to Mr. Croker. He and Johnson can scarcely be said to have known each other (post, under June 19, 1784, note). A sentence in one of Walpole's Letters (iv. 407) shews that he was very unlike the French wit. On Sept. 22, 1765, he wrote from Paris:—'The French affect philosophy, literature, and free-thinking: the first never did, and never will possess me; of the two others I have long been tired. Free-thinking is for one's self, surely not for society.' Perhaps Richard Fitzpatrick is meant, who later on joined in writing The Rolliad, and who was the cousin and 'sworn brother' of Charles Fox. Walpole describes him as 'an agreeable young man of parts,' and mentions his 'genteel irony and badinage.' Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 167 and ii. 560. He was Lord Shelburne's brother-in-law, at whose house Johnson might have met him, as well as in Fox's company. There are one or two lines in The Rolliad which border on profanity. Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 104) said that 'Fitzpatrick was at one time nearly as famous for his wit as Hare.' Tickell in his Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox to the Hon. John Townshend, p. 13, writes:—
'Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit and Stanhope's ease,
And Burgoyne's manly sense unite to please.'
[1183] See ante, i. 379, note 2.
[1184] According to Mr. Wright (Croker's Boswell, p. 630), this physician was Dr. James. I have examined, however, the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th editions of his Dissertation on Fevers, but can find no mention of this. In the 7th edition, published in 1770, he complains (p. 111) of 'the virulence and rancour with which the fever-powder and its inventor have been traduced and persecuted by the vendors of medicines and their abettors.'
[1185] According to Mr. Croker this was Andrew Millar, but I doubt it. See ante, i. 287, note 3.
[1186] 'The Chevalier Taylor, Ophthalmiator Pontifical, Imperial, and Royal,' as he styled himself. Gent. Mag. xxxi. 226. Lord Eldon said that—'Taylor, dining with the barristers upon the Oxford circuit, having related many wonderful things which he had done, was asked by Bearcroft, "Pray, Chevalier, as you have told us of a great many things which you have done and can do, will you be so good as to try to tell us anything which you cannot do?" "Nothing so easy," replied Taylor, "I cannot pay my share of the dinner bill: and that, Sir, I must beg of you to do."' Twiss's Eldon, i 321.
[1187] Pope mentions Ward in the Imitations of Horace_, 2 Epistle, i. 180:—
'He serv'd a 'prenticeship who sets up shop;
Ward try'd on puppies, and the poor, his drop.'
Fielding, in Tom Jones, bk. viii. ch. 9, says that 'interest is indeed a most excellent medicine, and, like Ward's pill, flies at once to the particular part of the body on which you desire to operate.' In the introduction to the Voyage to Lisbon he speaks very highly of Ward's remedies and of Ward himself, who 'endeavoured, he says, 'to serve me without any expectation or desire of fee or reward.'
[1188] 'Every thing,' said Johnson, 'comes from Beauclerk so easily. It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21. See post, under May 2, 1780. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 219) mentions another great-grandson of Charles II. (Commissioner Cardonnel) who was 'the most agreeable companion that ever was. He excelled in story-telling, like his great-grandfather, Charles II., but he seldom or ever repeated them.'
[1189] No doubt Burke. Ante, ii. 222, note 4.
[1190] General Paoli's house, where for some years Boswell was 'a constant guest while he was in London.' Ante, p. 35
[1191] Allan Ramsay's residence: No. 67, Harley-street. P. CUNNINGHAM.
[1192] It is strange that he does not mention their visit in a letter in which he tells Temple that he is lame, and that his 'spirits sank to dreary dejection;' and utters what the editor justly calls an ambiguous prayer:—'Let us hope for gleams of joy here, and a blaze hereafter.' This letter, by the way, and the one that follows it, are both wrongly dated. Letters of Boswell, p. 237.
[1193] See p. 344 of this Volume. BOSWELL.
[1194] 'Johnson's first question was, "What kind of a man was Mr. Pope in his conversation?" His Lordship answered, that if the conversation did not take something of a lively or epigrammatic turn, he fell asleep, or perhaps pretended to do so.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 200. Johnson in his Life of Pope (Works, viii. 309) says that 'when he wanted to sleep he "nodded in company."'
[1195] Boswell wrote to Temple late on this day, 'Let us not dispute any more about political notions. It is now night. Dr. Johnson has dined, drunk tea, and supped with only Mr. Charles Dilly and me, and I am confirmed in my Toryism.' Letters of Boswell, p. 238.
[1196] In the original or. Boswell quotes the line correctly, ante, p. 220.
[1197] 'I do not (says Mr. Malone) see any difficulty in this passage, and wonder that Dr. Johnson should have acknowledged it to be inaccurate. The Hermit, it should be observed, had no actual experience of the world whatsoever: all his knowledge concerning it had been obtained in two ways; from books, and from the relations of those country swains, who had seen a little of it. The plain meaning, therefore, is, "To clear his doubts concerning Providence, and to obtain some knowledge of the world by actual experience; to see whether the accounts furnished by books, or by the oral communications of swains, were just representations of it; [I say, swains,] for his oral or vivá voce information had been obtained from that part of mankind alone, &c." The word alone here does not relate to the whole of the preceding line, as has been supposed, but, by a common licence, to the words,—of all mankind, which are understood, and of which it is restrictive.'
Mr. Malone, it must be owned, has shewn much critical ingenuity in the explanation of this passage. His interpretation, however, seems to me much too recondite. The meaning of the passage may be certain enough; but surely the expression is confused, and one part of it contradictory to the other. BOSWELL. This note is first given in the third edition.
[1198] See ante, p. 297.
[1199] State is used for statement. 'He sate down to examine Mr. Owen's states.' Rob Roy, ed. 1860, viii. 101.
[1200] Johnson started for Lichfield and Ashbourne about May 20, and returned to London towards the end of June. Piozzi Letters, ii. 44, 55. 'It is good,' he wrote, 'to wander a little, lest one should dream that all the world was Streatham, of which one may venture to say, none but itself can be its parallel.' Ib. p. 47. 'None but thyself can be thy parallel' is from Theobald's Double Falsehood. Pope calls it 'a marvellous line,' and thus introduces it in The Dunciad, first edition, iii. 271:—'For works like these let deathless Journals tell, "None but thyself can be thy parallel."'
[1201] See post, Boswell's letter of Aug. 24, 1780, and Johnson's letter of Dec. 7, 1782.
[1202] Boswell, on his way to Scotland, wrote to Temple from this house:—'I am now at Southill, to which place Mr. Charles Dilly has accompanied; it is the house of Squire John Dilly, his elder brother. The family of Dilly have been land-proprietors in this county for two hundred years…. I am quite the great man here, and am to go forward on the North road to-morrow morning. Poor Mr. Edward Dilly is fast a-dying; he cried with affection at seeing me here; he is in as agreeable a frame as any Christian can be…. I am edified here.' Letters of Boswell, p. 239.
[1203] On June 18 in the following year he recorded:—'In the morning of this day last year I perceived the remission of those convulsions in my breast, which had distressed me for more than twenty years. I returned thanks at church for the mercy granted me, which has now continued a year.' Pr. and Med. p. 183. Three days later he wrote:—'It was a twelvemonth last Sunday since the convulsions in my breast left me. I hope I was thankful when I recollected it; by removing that disorder a great improvement was made in the enjoyment of life. I am now as well as men at my age can expect to be, and I yet think I shall be better.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 163.
[1204] From a stroke of apoplexy. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'You really do not use me well in thinking that I am in less pain on this occasion than I ought to be. There is nobody left for me to care about but you and my master, and I have now for many years known the value of his friendship, and the importance of his life, too well not to have him very near my heart.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 56. To him he wrote shortly after the attack, no doubt with a view to give the sick man confidence:—'To shew you how well I think of your health, I have sent you an hundred pounds to keep for me.' Ib. p. 54. Miss Burney wrote very soon after the attack:—'At dinner everybody tried to be cheerful, but a dark and gloomy cloud hangs over the head of poor Mr. Thrale which no flashes of merriment or beams of wit can pierce through; yet he seems pleased that everybody should be gay.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 220. The attack was in June. Piozzi Letters, ii. 47. On Aug. 3, Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor:—'Mr. Thrale has perfectly recovered all his faculties and all his vigour.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 461.
[1205] Which I communicated to him from his Lordship, but it has not yet been published. I have a copy of it. BOSWELL. The few notices concerning Dryden, which Lord Hailes had collected, the authour afterwards gave to Mr. Malone. MALONE. Malone published a Life of Dryden.
[1206] He recorded of his birth-day this year:—'On the 17th Mr. Chamier (ante, i. 478) took me away with him from Streatham. I left the servants a guinea for my health, and was content enough to escape into a house where my birth-day not being known could not be mentioned. I sat up till midnight was past, and the day of a new year, a very awful day, began.' Pr. and Med. pp. 181, 225.
[1207] See ante, ii. 427, note 1.
[1208] In one of his manuscript Diaries, there is the following entry, which marks his curious minute attention: 'July 26, 1768. I shaved my nail by accident in whetting the knife, about an eighth of an inch from the bottom, and about a fourth from the top. This I measure that I may know the growth of nails; the whole is about five eighths of an inch.'
Another of the same kind appears, 'Aug. 7, 1779, Partem brachii dextri carpo proximam et cutem pectoris circa mamillam dextram rasi, ut notum fieret quanta temporis pili renovarentur.'
And, 'Aug. 15, 1773. I cut from the vine 41 leaves, which weighed five oz. and a half, and eight scruples:—I lay them upon my book-case, to see what weight they will lose by drying.' BOSWELL.
In The Idler, No. 31, we have in Mr. Sober a portrait of Johnson drawn by himself. He writes:—'The art is to fill the day with petty business, to have always something in hand which may raise curiosity, but not solicitude, and keep the mind in a state of action, but not of labour. This art has for many years been practised by my old friend Sober with wonderful success…. His chief pleasure is conversation; there is no end of his talk or his attention; to speak or to hear is equally pleasing; for he still fancies that he is teaching or learning something, and is free for the time from his own reproaches. But there is one time at night when he must go home that his friends may sleep; and another time in the morning when all the world agrees to shut out interruption. These are the moments of which poor Sober trembles at the thought. But the misery of these tiresome intervals he has many means of alleviating…. His daily amusement is chymistry. He has a small furnace which he employs in distillation, and which has long been the solace of his life. He draws oils and waters, and essences and spirits, which he knows to be of no use; sits and counts the drops as they come from his retort, and forgets that whilst a drop is falling a moment flies away.' Mrs. Piozzi says (Anec. p. 236):—'We made up a sort of laboratory at Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with drawing essences and colouring liquors. But the danger Mr. Thrale found his friend in one day, when he got the children and servants round him to see some experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment.'
[1209] Afterwards Mr. Stuart Wortley. He was the father of the first Lord Wharncliffe. CROKER.
[1210] Horace Walpole, in April 1778, wrote:—'It was very remarkable that on the militia being ordered out, two of Lord Bute's younger sons offered, as Bedfordshire gentlemen, to take any rank in the militia in that county. I warned Lord Ossory, the Lord Lieutenant, against so dangerous a precedent as admitting Scots in the militia. A militia can only be safe by being officered by men of property in each county.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 252.
[1211] Walpole wrote in Dec. 1778:—'His Majesty complained of the difficulty of recruiting. General Keppel replied aloud, "It is owing to the Scots, who raise their clans in and about London." This was very true; the Master of Lovat had received a Royal gift of £6000 to raise a regiment of his clan, and had literally picked up boys of fifteen in London and Westminster.' Ib. p. 316.
[1212] He made his will in his wife's life-time, and appointed her and Sir William Forbes, or the survivor of them, 'tutors and curators' to his children. Boswelliana, p. 186.
[1213] Head gardener at Stowe, and afterwards at Hampton Court and Windsor. He got his nickname from his habit of saying that grounds which he was asked to lay out had capabilities. Lord Chatham wrote of him:—'He writes Lancelot Brown Esquire, en titre d'office: please to consider, he shares the private hours of—[the King], dines familiarly with his neighbour of Sion [the Duke of Northumberland], and sits down at the tables of all the House of Lords, &c.' Chatham Corres. iv. 178, 430.
[1214] See ante, pp. 334, 350. Clive, before the Committee of the House of Commons, exclaimed:—'By God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.' Macaulay's Essays, iii. 198.
[1215] See ante, p. 216.
[1216] Yet, according to Johnson, 'the poor in England were better provided for than in any other country of the same extent.' Ante, ii. 130.
[1217] See ante, ii. 119.
[1218] See ante, i. 67, note 2.
[1219] The Rev. Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, in the Preface to his valuable edition of Archbishop King's Essay on the Origin of Evil [ed. 1781, p. xvii], mentions that the principles maintained in it had been adopted by Pope in his Essay on Man; and adds, 'The fact, notwithstanding such denial (Bishop Warburton's), might have been strictly verified by an unexceptionable testimony, viz that of the late Lord Bathurst, who saw the very same system of the [Greek: to beltion] (taken from the Archbishop) in Lord Bolingbroke's own hand, lying before Mr. Pope, while he was composing his Essay.' This is respectable evidence; but that of Dr. Blair is more direct from the fountain-head, as well as more full. Let me add to it that of Dr. Joseph Warton; 'The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly assured me that he had read the whole scheme of The Essay on Man, in the hand-writing of Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions, which Pope was to versify and illustrate.' Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, vol. ii. p. 62. BOSWELL. In the above short quotation from Law are two parentheses. According to Paley, the Bishop was once impatient at the slowness of his Carlisle printer. '"Why does not my book make its appearance?" said he to the printer. "My Lord, I am extremely sorry; but we have been obliged to send to Glasgow for a pound of parentheses."' Best's Memorials, p. 196.
[1220] Johnson, defining ascertain in its first meaning as establish, quotes from Hooker: 'The divine law ascertaineth the truth of other laws.'
[1221] 'To those who censured his politicks were added enemies yet more dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his qualifications for a translator of Homer. To these he made no publick opposition; but in one of his letters escapes from them as well as he can. At an age like his, for he was not more than twenty-five, with an irregular education, and a course of life of which much seems to have passed in conversation, it is not very likely that he overflowed with Greek. But when he felt himself deficient he sought assistance; and what man of learning would refuse to help him?' Johnson's Works, viii. 252. Johnson refers, I think, to Pope's letter to Addison of Jan. 30, 1713-14.
[1222] 'That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme regularly drawn and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only transformed from prose to verse, has been reported but can hardly be true. The Essay plainly appears the fabrick of a poet; what Bolingbroke supplied could be only the first principles; the order, illustration and embellishments must all be Pope's.' Works, viii. 287. Dr. Warton (Essay on Pope, ii. 58) says that he had repeatedly heard from Lord Bathurst the statement recorded by Dr. Blair.
[1223] 'In defiance of censure and contempt truth is frequently violated; and scarcely the most vigilant and unremitted circumspection will secure him that mixes with mankind from being hourly deceived by men, of whom it can scarcely be imagined that they mean any injury to him or profit to themselves.' Works, iv. 22.
[1224] See ante, pp. 226, 243.
[1225] Gibbon wrote of Lord Hailes:—'In his Annals of Scotland he has shewn himself a diligent collector and an accurate critic.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 233.
[1226] See ante, ii. 237.
[1227] See ante, ii. 79.
[1228]
'Versate diu quid ferre recusent,
Quid valeant humeri.'
'Weigh with care
What suits your genius, what your strength can bear.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. 1. 39.
[1229] Boswell seems to be afraid of having his head made to ache again, by the sense that Johnson should put into it. See ante, p. 381.
[1230] The Spleen, a Poem. BOSWELL. The author was Matthew Green. Dodsley's Collection, i. 145. See ante, p. 38.
[1231] See ante, i. 182.
[1232] Of Dryden he wrote (Works, vii. 250):—'He began even now to exercise the domination of conscious genius by recommending his own performance.'
[1233] See ante, i. 297.
[1234] Johnson's Works, vii. 95. See ante, i. 111.
[1235]
1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand. [March 1737, ante, i.
103.]
2. Greenwich. [July 1737, ante, i. 107.]
3. Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square. [End of 1737, ante, i. III.]
4. Castle-street, Cavendish-square, No. 6. [Spring and October 1738;
ante, i. 120, and 135, note 1. Castle-street is now called
Castle-street East.]
5. Strand.
6. Boswell-Court.
7. Strand, again. [In Croker's Boswell, p. 44, is a letter dated, 'At
the Black Boy, over against Durham Yard, Strand, March 31, 1741.']
8. Bow-street.
9. Holborn.
10. Fetter-lane. [Johnson mentions in Pr. and Med. p. 73, 'A good
night's rest I once had in Fetter-Lane.']
11. Holborn, again.
12. Gough-square. [In Croker's Boswell, p. 62, is a letter dated
'Goff-square, July 12, 1749.' He moved to Staple Inn on March 23,
1759. Rasselas was written when he was living in Gough-square, and
not in Staple Inn, as has been asserted. Ante, i. 516.]
13. Staple Inn.
14. Gray's Inn. [In Croker's Boswell, p. 118, is a letter dated
'Gray's Inn, Dec. 17, 1759.']
15. Inner Temple-lane, No. 1. [He was here in June 1760, ante, i. 350,
note 1; and on Jan. 13, 1761, as is shewn by a letter in Croker's
Boswell, p. 122. Johnson Buildings now stand where his house stood.]
16. Johnson's-court, No. 7. [See i. 518 for a letter dated
'Johnson's-court, Oct. 17, 1765.']
17. Bolt-court, No. 8. [He was here on March 15, 1776 (ante, ii. 427).
From about 1765 (ante, i. 493) to Oct. 7, 1782 (post), he had
moreover 'an apartment' at Streatham, and from about 1765 to about
the end of 1780, one at Southwark (ante, i. 493). From about the
beginning of 1781 to the spring of 1783 he had a room either in
Grosvenor-square or Argyll-street (post, March 20, 1781 and March
21, 1783.)]
[1236] See ante, ii. 55.
[1237] If, as seems to be meant, the 'gentleman supposed the case' on this occasion, he must have been Boswell, for no one else was present with Johnson.
[1238] A crime that he would have restrained by 'severe laws steadily enforced.' Ante, iii. 18.
[1239] See ante, ii. 105.
[1240] Lord Newhaven was one of a creation of eighteen Irish peers in 1776. 'It was a mob of nobility,' wrote Horace Walpole. 'The King in private laughed much at the eagerness for such insignificant honours.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 58.
[1241] Now the Lady of Sir Henry Dashwood, Bart. BOSWELL.
[1242] See ante, ii. 111.
[1243] The False Alarm. See ante, ii. 111.
[1244] See Collins's Peerage, i. 636, and Hume's England, ed. 1802, iv. 451, for an account, how Henry VIII. once threatened to cut off the head of Edward Montagu, one of the members (not the Speaker as Mr. Croker says), if he did not get a money bill passed by the next day. The bill, according to the story, was passed. Mr. P. Cunningham informed Mr. Croker that Johnson was here guilty of an anachronism, for that heads were first placed on Temple Bar in William III's time.
[1245] Horace Walpole thus describes public affairs in February of this year:—'The navy disgusted, insurrections in Scotland, Wales mutinous, a rebellion ready to break out in Ireland where 15,000 Protestants were in arms, without authority, for their own defence, many of them well-wishers to the Americans, and all so ruined that they insisted on relief from Parliament, or were ready to throw off subjection; Holland pressed by France to refuse us assistance, and demanding whether we would or not protect them: uncertainty of the fate of the West Indian Islands; and dread at least that Spain might take part with France; Lord North at the same time perplexed to raise money on the loan but at eight per cent., which was demanded—such a position and such a prospect might have shaken the stoutest king and the ablest administration. Yet the king was insensible to his danger. He had attained what pleased him most —his own will at home. His ministers were nothing but his tools— everybody called them so, and they proclaimed it themselves.' Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 339. In this melancholy enumeration he passes over the American War.
[1246] See ante, i. 78, note 2.
[1247] Wesley himself recorded in 1739 (Journal, i. 177):—'I have been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.'
[1248] Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 131) talks of some one 'riding on three elephants at once like Astley.' On p. 406 he says:—'I can almost believe that I could dance a minuet on a horse galloping full speed, like young Astley.'
[1249] See ante, i. 458.
[1250] A friend of Wilkes, as Boswell was, might well be supposed to have got over such scruples.
[1251] Mr. Croker says that the '"celebrated friend" was no doubt Burke.' Burke, however, is generally described by Boswell as 'eminent.' Moreover Burke was not in the habit of getting drunk, as seems to have been the case with 'the celebrated friend.' Boswell (ante, p. 245, note 1) calls Hamilton 'celebrated,' but then Boswell and Hamilton were not friends, as is shewn, post, Nov. 1783.
[1252] Corinthians. xv, 33.
[1253] See ante, ii. 121.
[1254] 'Prince Gonzaga di Castiglione, when dining in company with Dr. Johnson, thinking it was a polite as well as gay thing to drink the Doctor's health with some proof that he had read his works, called out from the top of the table to the bottom.—At your health, Mr. Vagabond.' Piozzi's Synonymy, ii. 358. Mme. D'Arblay (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 258) says,—'General Paoli diverted us all very much by begging leave of Mrs. Thrale to give one toast, and then, with smiling pomposity, pronouncing "The great Vagabond."'
[1255] 'Very near to admiration is the wish to admire. Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he receives, and considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of discernment.' Johnson's Works, vii. 396.
[1256] See ante, ii. 461.
[1257] See ante, ii. 465.
[1258] See ante, ib. p. 466
[1259] See ante, ib. p. 467.
[1260] See ante, ib. p. 470.
[1261] See ante, ib. p. 469.
[1262] See ante_, p. 405.
[1263] Bishop Porteus. See ante, p. 279.
[1264] Miss Letitia Barnston. BOSWELL.
[1265] 'At Chester I passed a fortnight in mortal felicity. I had from my earliest years a love for the military life, and there is in it an animation and relish of existence which I have never found amongst any other set of men, except players, with whom you know I once lived a great deal. At the mess of Colonel Stuart's regiment I was quite the great man, as we used to say; and I was at the same time all joyous and gay … I never found myself so well received anywhere. The young ladies there were delightful, and many of them with capital fortunes. Had I been a bachelor, I should have certainly paid my addresses to a Chester lady.' Letters of Boswell, p. 247.
[1266] Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson from Brighton in 1778:—'I have lost what made my happiness in all seasons of the year; but the black dog shall not make prey of both my master and myself. My master swims now, and forgets the black dog.' Johnson replied:—'I shall easily forgive my master his long stay, if he leaves the dog behind him. We will watch, as well as we can, that the dog shall never be let in again, for when he comes the first thing he does is to worry my master.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 32, 37.
[1267] See ante, ii. 202.
[1268] I have a valuable collection made by my Father, which, with some additions and illustrations of my own, I intend to publish. I have some hereditary claim to be an Antiquary; not only from my Father, but as being descended, by the mother's side, from the able and learned Sir John Skene, whose merit bids defiance to all the attempts which have been made to lessen his fame. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 225, note 2, for an imperfect list of Boswell's projected publications, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 23, for a fuller one.
[1269] See ante, iii. 162, and Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 11.
[1270] In the first two editions, we.
[1271] In chaps, xxiv. and xxv. of his Siècle de Louis XV. See ante, i. 498, note 4, for Voltaire's 'catching greedily at wonders.'
[1272] Burton in the last lines of The Anatomy of Melancholy, says:— 'Only take this for a corollary and conclusion; as thou tenderest thine own welfare in this and all other melancholy, thy good health of body and mind, observe this short precept, give not way to solitariness and idleness. "Be not solitary, be not idle."'
[1273] Johnson was in better spirits than usual. The following day he wrote:—'I fancy that I grow light and airy. A man that does not begin to grow light and airy at seventy is certainly losing time if he intends ever to be light and airy.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 73.
[1274] Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit. Juvenal, xiv. 139.
[1275] He had seen it on his Tour in Wales on July 26, 1774. See post, vol. v.
[1276] Dean Percy, ante, p. 365.
[1277] Another son was the first Lord Ellenborough.
[1278] His regiment was afterwards ordered to Jamaica, where he accompanied it, and almost lost his life by the climate. This impartial order I should think a sufficient refutation of the idle rumour that 'there was still something behind the throne greater than the throne itself.' BOSWELL. Lord Shelburne, about the year 1803, likening the growth of the power of the Crown to a strong building that had been raised up, said:—'The Earl of Bute had contrived such a lock to it as a succession of the ablest men have not been able to pick, nor has he ever let the key be so much as seen by which he has held it.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 68.
[1279] Boswell, on Jan. 4, wrote to Temple:—'How inconsiderable are both you and I, in comparison with what we used to hope we should be! Yet your learning and your memoirs set you far above the common run of educated men. And Son pittore anche io. I too, in several respects, have attained to superiority. But we both want solidity and force of mind, such as we observe in those who rise in active life.' Letters of Boswell, p. 249.
[1280]
'For in the mind alone our follies lie,
The mind that never from itself can fly.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Epistles, i. 14. 13.
[1281] Requesting me to inquire concerning the family of a gentleman who was then paying his addresses to Miss Doxy. BOSWELL.
[1282] It is little more than half that distance.
[1283] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Nov. 7:—'My master, I hope, hunts and walks, and courts the belles, and shakes Brighthelmston. When he comes back, frolick and active, we will make a feast, and drink his health, and have a noble day.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 79.
[1284] See page 368. BOSWELL. On Nov. 16 he wrote:—'At home we do not much quarrel; but perhaps the less we quarrel, the more we hate. There is as much malignity amongst us as can well subsist without any thought of daggers or poisons.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 93.
[1285] See ante, i. 187.
[1286] See post, p. 421, and Feb. 27, 1784.
[1287] See ante, i. 260, and post, June 4. 1781.
[1288] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on April 11—'You are at all places of high resort, and bring home hearts by dozens; while I am seeking for something to say about men of whom I know nothing but their verses, and sometimes very little of them. Now I have begun, however, I do not despair of making an end.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 100.
[1289] See ante, ii. 5.
[1290] A writer in Notes and Queries (3rd S., viii. 197) points out that Johnson, writing to a doctor, uses a doctor's language. 'Until very lately solution of continuity was a favourite phrase with English surgeons; where a bone was broken, or the flesh, &c. cut or lacerated, there was a solution of continuity.' See ante, ii. 106, for laceration.
[1291] He died March 11, 1780, aged 40. Gent. Mag. 1780, p. 155.
[1292]
'Animula, vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quæ nunc abibis in loca,
Pallidula, rigida, nudula?
Nec, ut soles, dabis joca.'
Adriani morientis ad animam suam.
'Poor little, pretty, fluttering thing,
Must we no longer live together?
And dost thou prune thy trembling wing,
To take thy flight thou know'st not whither?
Thy humorous vein, thy pleasing folly
Lies all neglected, all forgot;
And pensive, wavering, melancholy,
Thou dread'st and hop'st thou know'st not what.' Prior.
In The Spectator, No. 532, is a letter from Pope to Steele on these 'famous verses which the Emperor Adrian spoke on his death-bed.' See in Pope's Correspondence (Elwin's Pope, vi. 394), this letter to Steele of Nov. 7, 1712, for his version of these lines.
[1293] See ante, ii. 246, note 1.
[1294] Mr. Beauclerk's library was sold by publick auction in April and May 1781, for £5011. MALONE. See post, May 8, 1781.
[1295] By a fire in Northumberland-house, where he had an apartment, in which I have passed many an agreeable hour. BOSWELL.
[1296] See post, iv. 31.
[1297] In 1768, on his birthday, Johnson recorded, 'This day it came into my mind to write the history of my melancholy.' Ante, ii. 45, note 1.
[1298] Johnson had dated his letter, 'London, April 25, 1780,' and added, 'now there is a date; look at it.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 109. In his reply he wrote:—'London, May 1, 1780. Mark that—you did not put the year to your last.' Ib. p. 112.
[1299] An Address to the Electors of Southwark. Ib. p. 106. See post, p. 440.
[1300] The author of the Fitzosborne Letters (post, May 5, 1784, note). Miss Burney thus describes this evening:—'We were appointed to meet the Bishop of Chester at Mrs. Montagu's. This proved a very gloomy kind of grandeur; the Bishop waited for Mrs. Thrale to speak, Mrs. Thrale for the Bishop; so neither of them spoke at all. Mrs. Montagu cared not a fig, as long as she spoke herself, and so she harangued away. Meanwhile Mr. Melmoth, the Pliny Melmoth, as he is called, was of the party, and seemed to think nobody half so great as himself. He seems intolerably self-sufficient—appears to look upon himself as the first man in Bath, and has a proud conceit in look and manner, mighty forbidding.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 348.
[1301] Dr. John Hinchliffe. BOSWELL.
[1302] A kind of nick-name given to Mrs. Thrale's eldest daughter, whose name being Esther, she might be assimilated to a Queen. BOSWELL.
[1303] Mr. Thrale. BOSWELL.
[1304] In Johnson's Dictionary is neither dawling nor dawdling. He uses dawdle, post, June 3, 1781.
[1305] Miss Burney shews how luxurious a table Mr. Thrale kept. 'We had,' she records, in May 1779, 'a very grand dinner to-day, though nothing to a Streatham dinner, at the Ship Tavern [Brighton], where the officers mess, to which we were invited by the major and the captain.' As the major was a man of at least £8,000 a-year, and the captain of £4,000 or £5,000, the dinner was likely to be grand enough. Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 211. Yet when Mr. Thrale had his first stroke in 1779, Johnson wrote:—'I am the more alarmed by this violent seizure, as I can impute it to no wrong practices, or intemperance of any kind…. What can he reform? or what can he add to his regularity and temperance? He can only sleep less.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 49, 51. Baretti, in a MS. note on p. 51, says:—'Dr. Johnson knew that Thrale would eat like four, let physicians preach…. May be he did not know it, so little did he mind what people were doing. Though he sat by Thrale at dinner, he never noticed whether he eat much or little. A strange man!' Yet in a note on p. 49, Baretti had said that Thrale's seizure was caused by 'the mere grief he could not overcome of his only son's loss. Johnson knew it, but would not tell it.' See post, iv. 84, note 4.
[1306] Miss Burney.
[1307] I have taken the liberty to leave out a few lines. BOSWELL. Lines about diet and physic.
[1308] See ante, ii. 61, note 4.
[1309] The author of Fables for the Female Sex, and of the tragedy of The Gamester, and editor of The World. Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning (ch. x.), after describing the sufferings of authors, continues:—'Let us not then aggravate those natural inconveniences by neglect; we have had sufficient instances of this kind already. Sale and Moore will suffice for one age at least. But they are dead and their sorrows are over.' Mr. Foster (Life of Goldsmith, ed. 1871, ii, 484) strangely confounds Edward Moore the fabulist, with Dr. John More the author of Zeluco.
[1310] Line of a song in The Spectator, No. 470. CROKER.
[1311] Hannah More, in 1783 (Memoirs, i. 286), describes 'Mrs. Vesey's pleasant parties. It is a select society which meets at her house every other Tuesday, on the day on which the Turk's Head Club dine together. In the evening they all meet at Mrs. Vesey's, with the addition of such other company as it is difficult to find elsewhere.'
[1312] Second Earl Spencer; the First Lord of the Admiralty under Pitt, and father of Lord Althorp who was leader of the House of Commons under Earl Grey.
[1313] see ante p. 390.
[1314] Her childhood was celebrated by Prior in the lines beginning:— 'My noble, lovely little Peggy.' CROKER.
[1315] Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 510) wrote on Feb. 5, 1781:—'I saw Dr. Johnson last night at Lady Lucan's, who had assembled a blue stocking meeting in imitation of Mrs. Vesey's Babels. It was so blue, it was quite Mazarine-blue. Mrs. Montagu kept aloof from Johnson, like the west from the east.' In his letter of Jan. 14 (ib. p. 497), the allusion to Mrs. Vesey's Babels is explained: 'Mrs. Montagu is one of my principal entertainments at Mrs. Vesey's, who collects all the graduates and candidates for fame, where they vie with one another, till they are as unintelligible as the good folks at Babel.' 'Lady Spencer,' said Samuel Rogers, 'recollected Johnson well, as she used to see him often in her girlhood. Her mother, Lady Lucan, would say, "Nobody dines with us to-day; therefore, child, we'll go and get Dr. Johnson." So they would drive to Bolt Court and bring the doctor home with them.' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 10. 'I told Lady Lucan,' wrote Johnson on April 25, 1780, 'how long it was since she sent to me; but she said I must consider how the world rolls about her. She seemed pleased that we met again.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 107.
[1316] 'I have seen,' wrote Wraxall, 'the Duchess of Devonshire, then in the first bloom of youth, hanging on the sentences that fell from Johnson's lips, and contending for the nearest place to his chair. All the cynic moroseness of the philosopher and the moralist seemed to dissolve under so flattering an approach.' Wraxall's Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 158.
[1317] In Nichols's Lit. Anec. viii. 548, 9, Dr. Barnard is thus described:—'In powers of conversation I never yet knew his equal. He saw infinite variety of characters, and like Shakespeare adopted them all by turns for comic effect. He carried me to London in a hired chaise; we rose from our seat, and put our heads out of the windows, while the postboy removed something under us. He supposed himself in the pillory, and addressed the populace against the government with all the cant of No. 45 and Co. He once told me a little anecdote of the original Parson Adams, whom he knew. "Oh, Sir!" said he to Barnard, almost in a whisper, and with a look of horror, "would you believe it, Sir, he was wicked from a boy;" then going up close to him, "You will be shocked—you will not believe it,—he wrote God with a little g, when he was ten years old!"'
[1318] In Mr. Croker's editions, 'had taken a chair' is changed into 'had taken the chair,' and additional emphasis is given by printing these four words in italics.
[1319] The hostess must have suffered, for, according to Miss Burney, 'Lord Harcourt said, "Mrs. Vesey's fear of ceremony is really troublesome; for her eagerness to break a circle is such that she insists upon everybody's sitting with their backs one to another; that is, the chairs are drawn into little parties of three together, in a confused manner all over the room."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 184. Miss Burney thus describes her:—'She has the most wrinkled, sallow, time-beaten face I ever saw. She is an exceeding well-bred woman, and of agreeable manners; but all her name in the world must, I think, have been acquired by her dexterity and skill in selecting parties, and by her address in rendering them easy with one another.' Ib. p. 244. She heard her say of a gentleman who had lately died:—'It's a very disagreeable thing, I think, when one has just made acquaintance with anybody and likes them, to have them die.' Ib. ii. 290.
[1320] Johnson passed over this scene very lightly. 'On Sunday evening I was at Mrs. Vesey's, and there was inquiry about my master, but I told them all good. There was Dr. Barnard of Eton, and we made a noise all the evening; and there was Pepys, and Wraxall till I drove him away.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 98. Wraxall was perhaps thinking of this evening when he wrote (Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 147):—'Those whom he could not always vanquish by the force of his intellect, by the depth and range of his arguments, and by the compass of his gigantic faculties, he silenced by rudeness; and I have myself more than once stood in the predicament which I here describe. Yet no sooner was he withdrawn, and with him had disappeared these personal imperfections, than the sublime attainments of his mind left their full effect on the audience: such the whole assembly might be in some measure esteemed while he was present.'
[1321] Among the provisions thus relaxed was one that subjected Popish priests, or Papists keeping school, to perpetual imprisonment. Those only enjoyed the benefit of the act who took a very strict test, in which, among other things, they denied the Pope's temporal and civil jurisdiction within this realm. This bill passed both Houses without a single negative. It applied only to England. Scotland was alarmed by the report that the Scotch Catholics were in like manner to be relieved. In Edinburgh and Glasgow the Papists suffered from outrageous acts of violence and cruelty, and government did not think it advisable to repress this persecution by force. The success of these Scotch bigots seems to have given the first rise to the Protestant Association in England. Ann. Reg. xxiii. 254-6. How slight 'the relaxation' was in England is shewn by Lord Mansfield's charge on Lord George Gordon's trial, where we learn that the Catholics were still subject to all the penalties created in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I, Charles II, and of the first ten years of William III. Ib. xxiv. 237. Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 326), four years after the riots, wrote:—'I have had a great many prints, pamphlets, &c., sent me from Rouen; but, unluckily for me, the sender happened to have put a popish prayer-book among my things, which were therefore, by being caught in bad company, all found guilty of popery at Brighthelmstone, and condemned to be burnt to my great regret.' They were burnt in accordance with sect. 25 of 3 Jac. I. c. 4. This act was only repealed in to 1846 (9 and 10. Rep. c. 59. s. i).
[1322] Vol. ii. p. 143, et seq. I have selected passages from several letters, without mentioning dates. BOSWELL.
[1323] June 2. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote on June 9.
[1324] See post, p. 435.
[1325] On this day (June 6) Johnson, writing to Mrs. Thrale at Bath, did not mention the riots. He gives the date very fully—'London, No. 8, Bolt-court, Fleet-street, June 6, 1780,' and adds:—'Mind this, and tell Queency [Miss Thrale].' Piozzi Letters, ii. 141. Miss Burney, who was with the Thrales, writes:—'Dr. Johnson has written to Mrs. Thrale, without even mentioning the existence of this mob; perhaps, at this very moment, he thinks it "a humbug upon the nation," as George Bodens called the Parliament.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 401. When Johnson wrote, the mob had not risen to its height of violence. Mrs. Thrale in her answer, giving the date, 'Bath, 3 o'clock on Saturday morning, June 10, 1780,' asks, 'Oh! my dear Sir, was I ever particular in dating a letter before? and is this a time to begin to be particular when I have been up all night in trembling agitation? Miss Burney is frighted, but she says better times will come; she made me date my letter so, and persists in hoping that ten years hence we shall all three read it over together and be merry. But, perhaps, you will ask, "who is consternated,"? as you did about the French invasion.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 146.
[1326] 'Lord Mansfield's house,' wrote Dr. Franklin from Paris (Memoirs, iii. 62), 'is burnt with all his furniture, pictures, books, and papers. Thus he who approved the burning American houses has had fire brought home to him.'
[1327] Baretti in a marginal note on mass-house, says, 'So illiberal was Johnson made by religion that he calls here the chapel a mass-house…. Yet he hated the Presbyterians. That was a nasty blot in his character.'
[1328] Horace Walpole this night (June 7) wrote:—'Yet I assure your Ladyship there is no panic. Lady Aylesbury has been at the play in the Haymarket, and the Duke and my four nieces at Ranelagh this evening.' Letters, vii. 388. The following Monday he wrote:—'Mercy on us! we seem to be plunging into the horrors of France, in the reigns of Charles VI. and VII.!—yet, as extremes meet, there is at this moment amazing insensibility. Within these four days I have received five applications for tickets to see my house!' Ib. p. 395.
[1329] Written on June 10.
[1330] In the original, 'was this day with a party of soldiers.'
[1331] In the original, 'We are all again.'
[1332] Written on June 12.
[1333] George III told Lord Eldon that at a levee 'he asked Wilkes after his friend Serjeant Glynne. "My friend, Sir!" says Wilkes to the King; "he is no friend of mine." "Why," said the King, "he was your friend and your counsel in all your trials." "Sir," rejoined Wilkes, "he was my counsel—one must have a counsel; but he was no friend; he loves sedition and licentiousness which I never delighted in. In fact, Sir, he was a Wilkite, which I never was." The King said the confidence and humour of the man made him forget at the moment his impudence.' Twiss's Eldon, ii. 356.
[1334] Lord George Gordon and his followers, during these outrages, wore blue ribbands in their hats. MALONE.
[1335] Johnson added:—'All danger here is apparently over; but a little agitation still continues. We frighten one another with a seventy-thousand Scots to come hither with the Dukes of Gordon and Argyle, and eat us, and hang us, or drown us.' Two days later Horace Walpole, after mentioning that Lord George Gordon was in the Tower, continued:—'What a nation is Scotland; in every reign engendering traitors to the State, and false and pernicious to the Kings that favour it the most. National prejudices, I know, are very vulgar; but if there are national characteristics, can one but dislike the soils and climates that concur to produce them?' Letters, vii. 400.
[1336] He died Nov. 19, 1792, and left 'about, £20,000 accumulated not parsimoniously, but during a very long possession of a profitable office.' His father, who was keeper before him, began as a turnkey. Gent. Mag. 1792, p. 1062. Wesley wrote on Jan. 2, 1761:—'Of all the seats of woe on this side hell, few, I suppose, exceed or even equal Newgate. If any region of horror could exceed it a few years ago, Newgate in Bristol did; so great was the filth, the stench, the misery, and wickedness which shocked all who had a spark of humanity left.' He described a great change for the better which had lately been made in the London Newgate. Perhaps it was due to Akerman. Wesley's Journal, iii. 32.
[1337] There were two city prisons so called.
[1338] In the first two editions will. Boswell, in the third edition, corrected most of his Scotticisms.
[1339] In the Life of Savage (Works, viii. 183) Johnson wrote of the keeper of the Bristol gaol:—'Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in that state which makes it most difficult; and therefore the humanity of a gaoler certainly deserves this publick attestation; and the man whose heart has not been hardened by such an employment may be justly proposed as a pattern of benevolence. If an inscription was once engraved "to the honest toll-gatherer," less honours ought not to be paid "to the tender gaoler."' This keeper, Dagge by name, was one of Whitefield's disciples. In 1739 Whitefield wrote:—'God having given me great favour in the gaoler's eyes, I preached a sermon on the Penitent Thief, to the poor prisoners in Newgate.' He began to read prayers and preach to them every day, till the Mayor and Sheriffs forbade Mr. Dagge to allow him to preach again. Tyerman's Whitefield, i. 179.
[1340] Vol. ii. p. 163. Mrs. Piozzi has omitted the name, she best knows why. BOSWELL.
[1341] Now settled in London. BOSWELL.
[1342] I had been five years absent from London. BEATTIE.
[1343] '—sic fata ferebant.' Æneid, ii. 34.
[1344] Meaning his entertaining Memoirs of David Garrick, Esq., of which Johnson (as Davies informed me) wrote the first sentence; thus giving, as it were, the key-note performance. It is, indeed, very characteristical of its authour, beginning with a maxim, and proceeding to illustrate.—'All excellence has a right to be recorded. I shall, therefore, think it superfluous to apologise for writing the life of a man, who by an uncommon assemblage of private virtues, adorned the highest eminence in a publick profession.' BOSWELL.
[1345] Davies had become bankrupt. See ante, p. 223. Young, in his first Epistle to Pope, says:—
'For bankrupts write when ruined shops are shut
As maggots crawl from out a perished nut.'
Davies's Memoirs of Garrick, published this spring, reached its third edition by the following year.
[1346] I wish he had omitted the suspicion expressed here, though I believe he meant nothing but jocularity; for though he and I differed sometimes in opinion, he well knew how much I loved and revered him. BEATTIE.
[1347] The Thrales fled from Bath where a riot had broken out, and travelled about the country in alarm for Mr. Thrale's 'personal safety,' as it had been maliciously asserted in a Bath and Bristol paper that he was a Papist. Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 399.
[1348] On May 30 he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'I have been so idle that I know not when I shall get either to you, or to any other place; for my resolution is to stay here till the work is finished…. I hope, however, to see standing corn in some part of the earth this summer, but I shall hardly smell hay, or suck clover flowers.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 140.
[1349] It will, no doubt, be remarked how he avoids the rebellious land of America. This puts me in mind of an anecdote, for which I am obliged to my worthy social friend, Governour Richard Penn: 'At one of Miss E. Hervey's assemblies, Dr. Johnson was following her up and down the room; upon which Lord Abingdon observed to her, "Your great friend is very fond of you; you can go no where without him."—"Ay, (said she), he would follow me to any part of the world."—"Then (said the Earl), ask him to go with you to America.'" BOSWELL. This lady was the niece of Johnson's friends the Herveys [ante, i. 106]. CROKER.
[1350] Essays on the History of Mankind. BOSWELL. Johnson could scarcely have known that Dunbar was an active opponent of the American war. Mackintosh, who was his pupil, writes of him:—'I shall ever be grateful to his memory for having contributed to breathe into my mind a strong spirit of liberty.' Mackintosh's Life, i. 12. The younger Colman, who attended, or rather neglected to attend his lectures, speaks of him as 'an acute frosty-faced little Dr. Dunbar, a man of much erudition, and great goodnature.' Random Records, ii. 93.
[1351] Mr. Seward (Biographiana, p. 601) says that this clergyman was 'the son of an old and learned friend of his'—the Rev. Mr. Hoole, I conjecture.
[1352] See post, iv. 12, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19.
[1353] Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore. BOSWELL
[1354] Johnson, in 1764, passed some weeks at Percy's rectory. Ante, i. 486.
[1355] See ante, p. 366.
[1356] See ante,, i. 458
[1357] 'O præclarum diem quum ad illud divinum animorum concilium c'tumque profiscar.' Cicero's De Senectute, c. 23.
[1358] See ante, p. 396.
[1359] See ante, ii. 162.
[1360] I had not then seen his letters to Mrs. Thrale. BOSWELL.
[1361] In the Life of Edmund Smith. See ante, i. 81, and Johnson's Works, vii. 380.
[1362] Unlike Walmsley and Johnson, of whom one was a Whig, the other a Tory. 'Walmsley was a Whig,' wrote Johnson, 'with all the virulence and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart. I honoured him, and he endured me.'
[1363] See ante, ii. 169, note 2.
[1364] Miss Burney described an evening spent by Johnson at Dr. Burney's some weeks earlier:—'He was in high spirits and good humour, talked all the talk, affronted nobody, and delighted everybody. I never saw him more sweet, nor better attended to by his audience.' In December she wrote:—'Dr. Johnson is very gay, and sociable, and comfortable, and quite as kind to me as ever.' A little later she wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Does Dr. Johnson continue gay and good-humoured, and "valuing nobody" in a morning?' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 412, 429, 432.
[1365] Pr. and Med. p. 185. BOSWELL.
[1366] See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 27.
[1367] The Charterhouse.
[1368] Macbean was, on Lord Thurlow's nomination, admitted 'a poor brother of the Charterhouse.' Ante, i. 187. Johnson, on Macbean's death on June 26, 1784, wrote:—'He was one of those who, as Swift says, stood as a screen between me and death. He has, I hope, made a good exchange. He was very pious; he was very innocent; he did no ill; and of doing good a continual tenour of distress allowed him few opportunities; he was very highly esteemed in the house [the Charterhouse].' Piozzi Letters, ii. 373. The quotation from Swift is found in the lines On the Death of Dr. Swift:—
'The fools, my juniors by a year,
Are tortured with suspense and fear,
Who wisely thought my age a screen,
When death approached, to stand between.'
Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xi. 246.
[1369] Johnson, in May, had persuaded Mrs. Thrale to come up from Bath to canvass for Mr. Thrale. 'My opinion is that you should come for a week, and show yourself, and talk in high terms. Be brisk, and be splendid, and be publick. The voters of the Borough are too proud and too little dependant to be solicited by deputies; they expect the gratification of seeing the candidate bowing or curtseying before them. If you are proud, they can be sullen. Mr. Thrale certainly shall not come, and yet somebody must appear whom the people think it worth the while to look at.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 114.
[1370] Hawkins's Johnsons Works, xi. 206. It is curious that Psalmanazar, in his Memoirs, p. 101, uses the mongrel word transmogrify.
[1371] Taylor's Life of Reynolds, ii. 459.
[1372] Boswell, when in the year 1764 he was starting from Berlin for Geneva, wrote to Mr. Mitchell, the English Minister at Berlin:—'I shall see Voltaire; I shall also see Switzerland and Rousseau. These two men are to me greater objects than most statues or pictures.' Nichols's Lit. Hist. ed. 1848, vii. 319.
[1373] See post, iv. 261, note 3 for Boswell's grievance against Pitt.