Giff Nick should on me ride the stang
To Aberdeen.”
Mr. Dun’s work was still-born. In a letter to Mr. Temple, Boswell regrets that his friend would, by his performance, be “a sad loser.”
While thus abetting the ridicule of the Ayrshire poet, Boswell’s other enterprize was more creditable. He gave assistance in raising funds for a monument to Dr. Johnson in Westminster Abbey. To this undertaking he thus refers in a letter to Mr. Temple, dated the 28th November, 1789:—
“Last Sunday I dined with him (Malone), with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Metcalfe, Mr. Windham, Mr. Courtenay, and young Mr. Burke, being a select number of Dr. Johnson’s friends, to settle as to effectual measures for having a monument erected to him in Westminster Abbey; it is to be a whole-length statue of him, by Bacon, which will cost £600. Sir Joshua and Sir William Scott, his executors, are to send circular letters to a number of people, of whom we make a list, as supposing they will contribute. Several of us subscribed five guineas each, Sir Joshua and Metcalfe ten guineas each, Courtenay and young Burke two guineas each. Will you not be one of us, were it but for one guinea? We expect that the Bench of Bishops will be liberal, as he was the greatest supporter of the hierarchy. That venerable sound brings to my mind the ruffians of France, who are attempting to destroy all order, ecclesiastical and civil. The present state of that country is an intellectual earthquake, a whirlwind, a mad insurrection, without any immediate cause, and therefore we see to what a horrible anarchy it tends.”
The subject of the monument is resumed in Boswell’s letter to Mr. Temple, dated 8th February, 1790:—
“You will have seen that Johnson’s friends have been exerting themselves for his monument, which is to cost six hundred guineas. We have now near to £400 of the money. Can we have no Cornish coin? I wish you could assist us in your neighbourhood. As your character of Gray was adopted by him it would appear well if you sent two guineas. We shall have a great dispute as to the epitaph. Flood, the orator, though a distinguished scholar, says it should be in English, as a compliment to Johnson’s having perpetuated our language; he has compressed his opinion in these lines:—
“No need of Latin, or of Greek to grace
Our Johnson’s memory and inscribe his grave;
His native tongue demands this mournful space,