[933] He had written to Temple six days earlier:—'Second sight pleases my superstition which, you know, is not small, and being not of the gloomy but the grand species, is an enjoyment; and I go further than Mr. Johnson, for the facts which I heard convinced me.' Letters of Boswell, p. 179. When ten years later he published his Tour, he said (Nov. 10, 1773) that he had returned from the Hebrides with a considerable degree of faith; 'but,' he added, 'since that time my belief in those stories has been much weakened.'
[934] This doubt has been much agitated on both sides, I think without good reason. See Addison's _Freeholder, May 4, 1714. The Freeholder was published from Dec. 1715 to June 1716. In the number for May 4 there is no mention of The Tale of a Tub; An Apology for the Tale of a Tub (Swift's Works, ed. 1803, iii. 20);—Dr. Hawkesworth's Preface to Swift's Works, and Swift's Letter to Tooke the Printer, and Tooke's Answer, in that collection;—Sheridan's Life of Swift;—Mr. Courtenay's note on p. 3 of his Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson; and Mr. Cooksey's Essay on the Life and Character of John Lord Somers, Baron of Evesham.
Dr. Johnson here speaks only to the internal evidence. I take leave to differ from him, having a very high estimation of the powers of Dr. Swift. His Sentiments of a Church-of-England-man, his Sermon on the Trinity, and other serious pieces, prove his learning as well as his acuteness in logick and metaphysicks; and his various compositions of a different cast exhibit not only wit, humour, and ridicule; but a knowledge 'of nature, and art, and life:' a combination therefore of those powers, when (as the Apology says,) 'the authour was young, his invention at the heighth, and his reading fresh in his head,' might surely produce The Tale of a Tub. BOSWELL.
[935] 'His Tale of a Tub has little resemblance to his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images and vivacity of diction such as he afterwards never possessed, or never exerted. It is of a mode so distinct and peculiar that it must be considered by itself; what is true of that is not true of anything else which he has written.' Johnson's Works, viii. 220. At the conclusion of the Life of Swift (ib. 228), Johnson allows him one great merit:—'It was said in a preface to one of the Irish editions that Swift had never been known to take a single thought from any writer, ancient or modern. This is not literally true; but perhaps no writer can easily be found that has borrowed so little, or that in all his excellencies and all his defects has so well maintained his claim to be considered as original.' See ante, i. 452.
[936] Johnson in his Dictionary, under the article shave, quotes Swift in one example, and in the next Gulliver's Travels, not admitting, it should seem, that Swift had written that book.
[937] See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 26, 1773. David Hume wrote of Home's Agis:—'I own, though I could perceive fine strokes in that tragedy, I never could in general bring myself to like it: the author, I thought, had corrupted his taste by the imitation of Shakespeare, whom he ought only to have admired.' J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 392. About Douglas he wrote:—'I am persuaded it will be esteemed the best, and by French critics the only tragedy of our language.' Ib ii. 17. Hume perhaps admired it the more as it was written, to use his own words, 'by a namesake of mine.' Ib i. 316. Home is pronounced Hume. He often wrote of his friend as 'Mr. John Hume, alias Home.' A few days before his death he added the following codicil to his will:—'I leave to my friend Mr. John Home, of Kilduff, ten dozen of my old claret at his choice; and one single bottle of that other liquor called port. I also leave to him six dozen of port, provided that he attests, under his hand, signed John Hume, that he has himself alone finished that bottle at two sittings. By this concession he will at once terminate the only two differences that ever arose between us concerning temporal matters.' Ib ii. 506. Sir Walter Scott wrote in his Diary in 1827:—'I finished the review of John Home's works, which, after all, are poorer than I thought them. Good blank verse, and stately sentiment, but something luke-warmish, excepting Douglas, which is certainly a masterpiece. Even that does not stand the closet. Its merits are for the stage; and it is certainly one of the best acting plays going.' Lockhart's Scott, ix. 100.
[938] Sheridan, says Mr. S. Whyte (Miscellanea Nova, p. 45), brought out Douglas at the Dublin Theatre. The first two nights it had great success. The third night was as usual to be the author's. It had meanwhile got abroad that he was a clergyman. This play was considered a profanation, a faction was raised, and the third night did not pay its expenses. It was Whyte who suggested that, by way of consolation, Sheridan should give Home a gold medal. The inscription said that he presented it to him 'for having enriched the stage with a perfect tragedy.' Whyte took the medal to London. When he was close at his journey's end, 'I was,' he writes, 'stopped by highwaymen, and preserved the medal by the sacrifice of my purse at the imminent peril of my life.'
[939]
'No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims,
Molière's old stubble in a moment flames.'
The Nonjuror was 'a comedy thrashed out of Molière's Tartuffe.' The
Dunciad, i. 253.