But Lovat’s fate indifferently we view,
True to no King, to no Religion true;
No fair forgets the ruin he has done;
No child laments the tyrant of his son;
No Tory pities, thinking what he was;
No Whig compassions, for he left the cause;
The brave regret not, for he was not brave;
The honest mourn not, knowing him a knave.
For the sake of ‘the cause,’ Johnson could tolerate persons of very indifferent character, always providing they were not fools. Topham Beauclerk was a handsome fellow, of good principles, to which his practices in no wise answered. Boswell calls him lax in both, but Johnson said to Beauclerk himself, ‘Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue.’ And why did Jacobite Johnson love, nay, become fascinated by this other Jacobite? Boswell gives the reason: ‘Mr. Beauclerk, being of the St. Alban’s family, and having in some particulars a resemblance to Charles II., contributed, in Johnson’s imagination, to throw a lustre upon his other qualities; and, in a short time, the moral, pious Johnson, and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk were companions.’
FLORA MACDONALD.