[178] The talk arose no doubt from the general election that had just been held amid all the excitement about Wilkes. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, iii. 307), in a letter dated April 16, 1768, describes the riots in London. He had seen 'the mob requiring gentlemen and ladies of all ranks as they passed in their carriages, to shout for Wilkes and liberty, marking the same words on all their coaches with chalk, and No. 45 on every door. I went last week to Winchester, and observed that for fifteen miles out of town there was scarce a door or window shutter next the road unmarked; and this continued here and there quite to Winchester.'
[179] In his Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, he thus writes:—'If I might presume to advise them [the Ministers] upon this great affair, I should dissuade them from any direct attempt upon the liberty of the press, which is the darling of the common people, and therefore cannot be attacked without immediate danger.' Works, v. 344. On p. 191 of the same volume, he shows some of the benefits that arise in England from 'the boundless liberty with which every man may write his own thoughts.' See also in his Life of Milton, the passage about Areopagitica, Ib vii. 82. The liberty of the press was likely to be 'a constant topic.' Horace Walpole (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ii. 15), writing of the summer of 1764, says:—'Two hundred informations were filed against printers; a larger number than had been prosecuted in the whole thirty-three years of the last reign.'
[180] 'The sun has risen, and the corn has grown, and, whatever talk has been of the danger of property, yet he that ploughed the field commonly reaped it, and he that built a house was master of the door; the vexation excited by injustice suffered, or supposed to be suffered, by any private man, or single community, was local and temporary; it neither spread far nor lasted long.' Johnson's Works, vi. 170. See also post, March 31, 1772. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, iii. 215) wrote to the Abbé Morellet, on April 22, 1787:—'Nothing can be better expressed than your sentiments are on this point, where you prefer liberty of trading, cultivating, manufacturing, &c., even to civil liberty, this being affected but rarely, the other every hour.'
[181] See ante, July 6, 1763.
[182] See ante, Oct. 1765.
[183] 'I was diverted with Paoli's English library. It consisted of:—Some broken volumes of the Spectatour and Tatler; Pope's Essay on Man; Gulliver's Travels; A History of France in old English; and Barclay's Apology for the Quakers. I promised to send him some English books… I have sent him some of our best books of morality and entertainment, in particular the works of Mr. Samuel Johnson.' Boswell's Corsica, p. 169.
[184] Johnson, as Boswell believed, only once 'in the whole course of his life condescended to oppose anything that was written against him.' (See ante, i. 314.) In this he followed the rule of Bentley and of Boerhaave. 'It was said to old Bentley, upon the attacks against him, "why, they'll write you down." "No, Sir," he replied; "depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself."' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 1 1773. Bentley shewed prudence in his silence. 'He was right,' Johnson said, 'not to answer; for, in his hazardous method of writing, he could not but be often enough wrong.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 10, 1773. 'Boerhaave was never soured by calumny and detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them; "for they are sparks," said he, "which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves."' Johnson's Works, vi. 288. Swift, in his Lines on Censure which begin,—
'Ye wise instruct me to endure
An evil which admits no cure.'
ends by saying:—
'The most effectual way to baulk
Their malice is—to let them talk.'
Swift's Works, xi. 58.