[544] Andrew Crosbie, arguing for the schoolmaster, had said:—'Supposing it true that the respondent had been provoked to use a little more severity than he wished to do, it might well be justified on account of the ferocious and rebellious behaviour of his scholars, some of whom cursed and swore at him, and even went so far as to wrestle with him, in which case he was under a necessity of subduing them as he best could.' Scotch Appeal Cases, xvii. p. 214. The judgment of the House of Lords is given in Paton's Reports of Cases upon Appeal from Scotland, ii. 277, as follows:—'A schoolmaster, appointed by the Magistrates and Town Council of Cambelton, without any mention being made as to whether his office was for life or at pleasure: Held that it was a public office, and that he was liable to be dismissed for a just and reasonable cause, and that acts of cruel chastisement of the boys were a justifiable cause for his dismissal; reversing the judgment of the Court of Session…. The proof led before his dismission went to shew that scarce a day passed without some of the scholars coming home with their heads cut, and their bodies discoloured. He beat his pupils with wooden squares, and sometimes with his fists, and used his feet by kicking them, and dragged them by the hair of the head. He had also entered into the trade of cattle grazing and farming—dealt in black cattle—in the shipping business—and in herring fishing.'
[545] These six Methodists were in 1768 expelled St. Edmund's Hall, by the Vice-Chancellor, acting as 'visitor.' Nominally they were expelled for their ignorance; in reality for their active Methodism. That they were 'mighty ignorant fellows' was shown, but ignorance was tolerated at Oxford. One of their number confessed his ignorance, and declined all examination. But 'as he was represented to be a man of fortune, and declared that he was not designed for holy orders, the Vice-Chancellor did not think fit to remove him for this reason only, though he was supposed to be one of "the righteous over-much."' Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics, pp. 51-57. Horace Walpole, Whig though he was, thought as Johnson. 'Oxford,' he wrote (Letters v. 97), 'has begun with these rascals, and I hope Cambridge will wake.'
[546] Much such an expulsion as this Johnson had justified in his Life of Cheynel (Works, vi. 415). 'A temper of this kind,' he wrote, 'is generally inconvenient and offensive in any society, but in a place of education is least to be tolerated … He may be justly driven from a society, by which he thinks himself too wise to be governed, and in which he is too young to teach, and too opinionative to learn.'
[547] Johnson wrote far otherwise of the indulgence shown to Edmund Smith, the poet. 'The indecency and licentiousness of his behaviour drew upon him, Dec. 24, 1694, while he was yet only bachelor, a publick admonition, entered upon record, in order to his expulsion. Of this reproof the effect is not known. He was probably less notorious. At Oxford, as we all know, much will be forgiven to literary merit…. Of his lampoon upon Dean Aldrich, [Smith was a Christ-Church man], I once heard a single line too gross to be repeated. But he was still a genius and a scholar, and Oxford was unwilling to lose him; he was endured with all his pranks and his vices two years longer; but on Dec. 20, 1705, at the instance of all the Canons, the sentence declared five years before was put in execution. The execution was, I believe, silent and tender.' Works, vii. 373-4.
[548] See post, p. 193, note i.
[549] 'Our bottle-conversation,' wrote Addison, 'is infected with party-lying.' The Spectator, No. 507.
[550] Mrs. Piozzi, in her Anecdotes, p. 261, has given an erroneous account of this incident, as of many others. She pretends to relate it from recollection, as if she herself had been present; when the fact is that it was communicated to her by me. She has represented it as a personality, and the true point has escaped her. BOSWELL. She tells the story against Boswell. 'I fancy Mr. B—— has not forgotten,' she writes.
[551] See post, April 11, 1776.
[552] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines manufacturer as a workman; an artificer.
[553] Johnson had no fear of popular education. In his attack on Jenyns's Enquiry (ante, i. 315), he wrote (Works, vi. 56):—'Though it should be granted that those who are born to poverty and drudgery should not be deprived by an improper education of the opiate of ignorance, even this concession will not be of much use to direct our practice, unless it be determined, who are those that are born to poverty. To entail irreversible poverty upon generation after generation, only because the ancestor happened to be poor, is in itself cruel, if not unjust…. I am always afraid of determining on the side of envy or cruelty. The privileges of education may sometimes be improperly bestowed, but I shall always fear to withhold them, lest I should be yielding to the suggestions of pride, while I persuade myself that I am following the maxims of policy.' In The Idler, No. 26, he attacked those who 'hold it little less than criminal to teach poor girls to read and write,' and who say that 'they who are born to poverty are born to ignorance, and will work the harder the less they know.'