A Georgian Pageant

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Mr. Baretti was an eminently detestable scholar of many parts. He was as detestable as he was learned—perhaps even more so. Learned men are not invariably horrid, unless they are men of genius as well, and this rarely happens.

Baretti had no such excuse, though it must be acknowledged that his capacity for being disagreeable almost amounted to genius. Such a character as his is now and again met with in daily life. A man who feels himself to be, in point of scholarly attainment, far above the majority of men, and who sees inferiority occupying a place of distinction while he remains neglected and, to his thinking, unappreciated, is not an uncommon figure in learned or artistic circles. Baretti was a disappointed man, and he showed himself to be such. He had a grievance against the world for being constituted as it is. He had a grievance against society. He had a grievance against his friends who got on in the world. But the only people against whom he was really malevolent were those who were signally and unaccountably kind to him. He accepted their kindness, and then turned and rent them.

Dr. Johnson met him when they were both working for the booksellers, and when the great dictionary scheme was floated his co-operation was welcomed. Johnson's success in life was largely due to his faculty for discovering people who could be useful to him. It can easily be believed that, knowing something of the scholarship of Baretti, he should be delighted to avail himself of his help. Baretti had an intimate knowledge of several languages and their literature; as a philologist he was probably far superior to Johnson; and possibly Johnson knew this, though he was doubtless too wise ever to acknowledge so much openly. We do not hear that the relations between the two ever became strained while the great work was in course of progress. Shortly after it was completed Baretti returned to his native Italy, and began to reproach Johnson for not writing to him more frequently. We have several examples of the cheerfulness with which Johnson set about exculpating himself from such reproaches. The letters which he wrote to him at Italy are among the most natural that ever came from his pen. They are models of the gossipy style which Johnson could assume without once deviating from that dignity which so frequently became ponderous, suggesting the dignity of the elephant rather than that of the lion. Walpole was a master of the art of being gossipy without being dignified. But Johnson's style was not flexible. We have not Baretti's letters to Johnson, but the references made by the latter to some matters communicated to him by his correspondent let us know something of how Baretti was getting on in the land of his birth. He seems to have set his heart upon obtaining some appointment in Italy, and his aspirations included marriage. He was disappointed in both directions; and it would be too much to expect that his temper was improved by these rebuffs.

It may well be believed that he quarrelled his way through Italy. “I have lately seen Mr. Stratico, Professor of Padua, who has told me of your quarrel with an abbot of the Celestine Order, but had not the particulars very ready in his memory,” Johnson wrote to him at Milan. Any one who could quarrel with an abbot of the Celestine Order would, we fancy, be capable de tout, like the prophet Habakkuk, according to the witty Frenchman. One is not disposed to be hard upon Professor Stratico for his shortness of memory in regard to this particular quarrel; the strain of remembering the details of all the quarrels of Mr. Baretti would be too great for any man.

Of course, Dr. Johnson gave him some excellent advice. It seems that poor Baretti had been at first so well received on his return to Italy that he became sanguine of success in all his enterprises, and when they miscarried he wrote very bitterly to Johnson, who replied as follows:

“I am sorry for your disappointment, with which you seem more touched than I should expect a man of your resolution and experience to have been, did I not know that general truths are seldom applied to particular occasions; and that the fallacy of our selflove extends itself as wide as our interests or affections. Every man believes that mistresses are unfaithful and patrons capricious; but he excepts his own mistress and his own patron. We have all learned that greatness is negligent and contemptuous, and that in Courts life is often languished away in ungratified expectation; but he that approaches greatness or glitters in a Court, imagines that destiny has at last exempted him from the common lot.”

It is doubtful if this excellent philosophy made the person to whom it was addressed more amiable to his immediate entourage; nor is it likely that he was soothed by the assurance that his “patron's weakness or insensibility will finally do you little hurt, if he is not assisted by your own passions.”

“Of your love,” continued Johnson, “I know not the propriety; we can estimate the power, but in love, as in every other passion of which hope is the essence, we ought always to remember the uncertainty of events.” He then hastens to add that “love and marriage are different states. Those who are to suffer the evils together, and to suffer often for the sake of one another, soon lose that tenderness of look, and that benevolence of mind which arose from the participation of unmingled pleasure and success in amusement.”

The pleasant little cynical bark in the phrase “those that are to suffer the evils together,” as if it referred to love and marriage, is, Malone thinks, not Johnson's, but Baretti's. It is suggested that Johnson really wrote “those that are to suffer the evils of life together,” and that Baretti in transcribing the letter for Boswell, purposely omitted the words “of life.” It would be quite like Baretti to do this; for he would thereby work off part of his spite against Johnson for having given him the advice, and he would have had his own sneer against “love and marriage,” the fons et origo of his disappointment.

But of Dr. Johnson's esteem for the attainments of Baretti there can be no doubt. He thought that the book on Italy which he published on his return to England was very entertaining, adding: “Sir, I know no man who carries his head higher in conversation than Baretti. There are strong powers in his mind. He has not, indeed, many hooks; but with what hooks he has he grapples very forcibly.”