'To his first state let him return with speed,
Who sees how far the joys he left exceed
His present choice.' FRANCIS.
Malone says that 'Walpole, after he ceased to be minister, endeavoured to amuse his mind with reading. But one day when Mr. Welbore Ellis was in his library, he heard him say, with tears in his eyes, after having taken up several books and at last thrown away a folio just taken down from a shelf, "Alas! it is all in vain; I cannot read."' Prior's Malone, p. 379. Lord Eldon, after his retirement, said to an inn-keeper who was thinking of giving up business:—'Believe me, for I speak from experience, when a man who has been much occupied through life arrives at having nothing to do, he is very apt not to know what to do with himself.' Later on, he said:—'It was advice given by me in the spirit of that Principal of Brasenose, who, when he took leave of young men quitting college, used to say to them, "Let me give you one piece of advice, Cave de resignationibus." And very good advice too.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 246.
[997] See post, April 10, 1775. He had but lately begun to visit London. 'Such was his constant apprehension of the small-pox, that he lived for twenty years within twenty miles of London, without visiting it more than once.' At the age of thirty-five he was inoculated, and henceforth was oftener in town. Campbell's British Poets, p. 569.
[998] Mr. S. Raymond, Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, published in Sydney in 1854 the Diary of a Visit to England in 1775. by an Irishman (The Rev. Dr. Thomas Campbell,) with Notes. The MS., the editor says, was discovered behind an old press in one of the offices of his Court. The name of the writer nowhere appears in the MS. It is clear, however, that if it is not a forgery, the author was Campbell. In the Edinburgh Review for Oct., 1859, its authenticity is examined, and is declared to be beyond a doubt. Lord Macaulay aided the Reviewer in his investigation. Ib p. 323. He could scarcely, however, have come to his task with a mind altogether free from bias, for the editor 'has contrived,' we are told, 'to expose another of Mr. Croker's blunders.' Faith in him cannot be wrong who proves that Croker is not in the right. The value of this Diary is rated too highly by the Reviewer. The Master of Balliol College has pointed out to me that it adds but very little to Johnson's sayings. So far as he is concerned, we are told scarcely anything of mark that we did not know already. This makes the Master doubt its genuineness. I have noticed one suspicious passage. An account is given of a dinner at Mr. Thrale's on April 1, at which Campbell met Murphy, Boswell, and Baretti. 'Johnson's bons mots were retailed in such plenty that they, like a surfeit, could not lie upon my memory.' In one of the stories told by Murphy, Johnson is made to say, 'Damn the rascal.' Murphy would as soon have made the Archbishop of Canterbury swear as Johnson; much sooner the Archbishop of York. It was Murphy 'who paid him the highest compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for repeating some oaths in the course of telling a story' (post, April 12, 1776). Even supposing that at this time he was ignorant of his character, though the supposition is a wild one, he would at once have been set right by Boswell and the Thrales (post, under March 15, 1776). It is curious, that this anecdote imputing profanity to Johnson is not quoted by the Edinburgh reviewer. On the whole I think that the Diary is genuine, and accordingly I have quoted it more than once.
[999] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 173) says that Johnson spoke of Browne as 'of all conversers the most delightful with whom he ever was in company.' Pope's bathos, in his lines to Murray:—
'Graced as thou art with all the power of words,
So known, so honoured, at the House of Lords,'
was happily parodied by Browne:—
'Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks,
And he has chambers in the King's Bench Walks.'
Pattison's Satires of Pope, pp. 57, 134. See Boswell's Hebrides,
Sept. 5.
[1000] Horace Walpole says of Beckford's Bribery Bill of 1768:—'Grenville, to flatter the country gentlemen, who can ill afford to combat with great lords, nabobs, commissaries, and West Indians, declaimed in favour of the bill.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 159.