[1370] They left London early and yet they travelled only 51 miles that day. The whole distance to Harwich is 71 miles. Paterson's Itinerary, i. 323.
[1371] Mackintosh (Life, ii. 162) writing of the time of William III, says that 'torture was legal in Scotland, and familiar in every country of Europe but England. Was there a single writer at that time who had objected to torture? I think not.' In the Gent. Mag. for 1742 (p. 660) it is stated that 'the King of Prussia has forbid the use of torture in his dominions.' In 1747 (p. 298) we read that Dr. Blackwell, an English physician, had been put to the torture in Sweden. Montesquieu in the Esprit des Lois, vi. 17, published in 1748, writing of 'la question ou torture centre les criminels,' says:—'Nous voyons aujourd'hui une nation très-bien policée [la nation anglaise] la rejeter sans inconvénient. Elle n'est donc pas nécessaire par sa nature.' Boswell in 1765 found that Paoli tortured a criminal with fire. Corsica, p. 158. Voltaire, in 1777, after telling how innocent men had been put to death with torture in the reign of Lewis XIV, continues—'Mais un roi a-t-il le temps de songer à ces menus details d'horreurs au milieu de ses fètes, de ses conquêtes, et de ses mattresses? Daignez vous en occuper, ô Louis XVI, vous qui n'avez aucune de ces distractions!' Voltaire's Works, xxvi. 332. Johnson, two years before Voltaire thus wrote, had been shown la chambre de question—the torture-chamber-in Paris. Post, Oct. 17, 1775. It was not till the Revolution that torture was abolished in France. One of the Scotch judges in 1793, at the trial of Messrs. Palmer and Muir for sedition (post, June 3, 1781, note), 'asserted that now the torture was banished, there was no adequate punishment for sedition.' Parl. Hist. xxx. 1569.
[1372] 'A cheerful and good heart will have a care of his meat and drink.' Ecclesiasticus, xxx. 25.
'Verecundari neminem apud mensam decet, Nam ibi de divinis atque humanis cernitur.' Trinummus, act 2, sc. 4.
Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 149) records that 'Johnson often said, "that wherever the dinner is ill got, there is poverty, or there is avarice, or there is stupidity; in short, the family is somehow grossly wrong; for," continued he, "a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner; and if he cannot get that well dressed, he should be suspected of inaccuracy in other things."' Yet he 'used to say that a man who rode out for an appetite consulted but little the dignity of human nature.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 204.
[1373] This essay is more against the practices of the parasite than gulosity. It is entitled The art of living at the cost of others. Johnson wrote to one of Mrs. Thrale's children:—'Gluttony is, I think, less common among women than among men. Women commonly eat more sparingly, and are less curious in the choice of meat; but if once you find a woman gluttonous, expect from her very little virtue. Her mind is enslaved to the lowest and grossest temptation.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 298.
[1374] Hawkins (Life, p. 355) mentions 'the greediness with which he ate, his total inattention to those among whom he was seated, and his profound silence at the moment of refection.'
[1375] Cumberland (Memoirs, i. 357) says:—'He fed heartily, but not voraciously, and was extremely courteous in his commendations of any dish that pleased his palate.'
[1376] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on July 10, 1780:—'Last week I saw flesh but twice and I think fish once; the rest was pease. You are afraid, you say, lest I extenuate myself too fast, and are an enemy to violence; but did you never hear nor read, dear Madam, that every man has his genius, and that the great rule by which all excellence is attained and all success procured, is to follow genius; and 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? And would you have me cross my genius when it leads me sometimes to voracity and sometimes to abstinence?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 166.
[1377] 'This,' he told Boswell, 'was no intentional fasting, but happened just in the course of a literary life.' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 4, 1773. See post, April 17, 1778.