“Nothing,” says Mr. Croker, “can be more unfounded than the assertion that Byng fell a martyr to political party. By a strange coincidence of circumstances, it happened that there was a total change of administration between his condemnation and his death:
(1) III. 52.
(2) III. 368.
(3) IV. 222.
so that one party presided at his trial, and another at his execution: there can be no stronger proof that he was not a political martyr.” (1) Now what will our readers think of this writer, when we assure them that this statement, so confidently made, respecting events so notorious, is absolutely untrue? One and the same administration was in office when the court-martial on Byng commenced its sittings, through the whole trial, at the condemnation, and at the execution. In the month of November, 1756, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke resigned; the Duke of Devonshire became first lord of the treasury, and Mr. Pitt, secretary of state. This administration lasted till the month of April, 1757. Byng’s court-martial began to sit on the 28th of December, 1756. He was shot on the 14th of March, 1757. There is something at once diverting and provoking in the cool and authoritative manner in which Mr. Croker makes these random assertions. We do not suspect him of intentionally falsifying history. But of this high literary misdemeanour we do without hesitation accuse him, that he has no adequate sense of the obligation which a writer, who professes to relate facts, owes to the public. We accuse him of a negligence and an ignorance analogous to that crassa negligentia, and that crassa ignorantia, on which the law animadverts in magistrates and surgeons, even when malice and corruption are not imputed. We accuse him of having undertaken a work which, if not performed with strict accuracy, must be very much worse than useless, and of having performed it as if the difference between an accurate and an inaccurate statement was not worth the trouble of looking into the most common book of reference.
(1) 1. 298.
But we must proceed. These volumes contain mistakes more gross, if possible, than any that we have yet mentioned. Boswell has recorded some observations made by Johnson on the changes which had taken place in Gibbon’s religious opinions. That Gibbon when a lad at Oxford turned Catholic is well known.
“It is said,” cried Johnson, laughing, “that he has been a Mahommedan.”
“This sarcasm,” says the editor, “probably alludes to the tenderness with which Gibbon’s malevolence to Christianity induced him to treat Mahommedanism in his history.” Now the sarcasm was uttered in 1770; and that part of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which relates to Mahommedanism was not published till 1788, twelve years after the date of this conversation, and near four years after the death of Johnson. (1)
“It was in the year 1701,” says Mr. Croker, “that Goldsmith published his Vicar of Wakefield. This
(1) A defence of this blunder was attempted. That the
celebrated chapters in which Gibbon has traced the progress
of Mahommedanism were not written in 1776 could not be
denied. But it was confidently asserted that his partiality
to Mahommedanism appeared in his first volume. This
assertion is untrue. No passage which can by any art be
construed into the faintest indication of the faintest
partiality for Mahommedanism has ever been quoted or ever
will be quoted from the first volume of the History of the
Decline and Fall of the Woman Empire.
To what then, it has been asked, could Johnson allude?
Possibly to some anecdote or some conversation of which all
trace is lost. One conjecture may be offered, though with
diffidence. Gibbon tells us in his memoirs, that at Oxford
he took a fancy for studying Arabic, and was prevented from
doing so by the remonstrances of his tutor. Soon after this,
the young man fell in with Bossuet’s controversial writings,
and was speedily converted by them to the Roman Catholic
faith. The apostasy of a gentleman commoner would of course
be for a time the chief subject of conversation in the
common room of Magdalene. His whim about Arabic learning
would naturally be mentioned, and would give occasion to
some jokes about the probability of his turning Mussulman.
If such jokes were made, Johnson, who frequently visited
Oxford, was very likely to hear of them.
leads the editor to observe a more serious inaccuracy of Mrs. Piozzi, than Mr. Boswell notices, when he says Johnson left her table to go and sell the Vicar of Wakefield for Goldsmith. Now Dr. Johnson was not acquainted with the Thrales till 1765, four years after the book had been published.” (1) Mr. Croker, in reprehending the fancied inaccuracy of Mrs. Thrale, has himself shown a degree of inaccuracy, or, to speak more properly, a degree of ignorance, hardly credible. In the first place, Johnson became acquainted with the Thrales, not in 1765, but in 1764, and during the last weeks of 1764 dined with them every Thursday, as is written in Mrs. Piozzi’s anecdotes. In the second place, Goldsmith published the Vicar of Wakefield, not in 1761, but in 1766. Mrs. Thrale does not pretend to remember the precise date of the summons which called Johnson from her table to the help of his friend. She says only that it was near the beginning of her acquaintance with Johnson, and certainly not later than 1766. Her accuracy is therefore completely vindicated. It was probably after one of her Thursday dinners in 1764 that the celebrated scene of the landlady, the sheriff’s officer, and the bottle of Madeira, took place. (2)