[754] He was, perhaps, more steadily under Johnson than under any else. In his own words he was 'of Johnson's school.' (Ante, p. 230). Gibbon calls Johnson Reynolds's oracle. Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 149.
[755] Boswell never mentions Sir John Scott (Lord Eldon) who knew Johnson (ante, ii. 268), and who was Solicitor-General when the Life of Johnson was published. Boswell perhaps never forgave him the trick that he and others played him at the Lancaster Assizes about the years 1786-8. 'We found,' said Eldon, 'Jemmy Boswell lying upon the pavement—inebriated. We subscribed at supper a guinea for him and half-a-crown for his clerk, and sent him next morning a brief with instructions to move for the writ of Quare adhæsit pavimento, with observations calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it. He sent all round the town to attornies for books, but in vain. He moved however for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge was astonished and the audience amazed. The judge said, "I never heard of such a writ—what can it be that adheres pavimento? Are any of you gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?" The Bar laughed. At last one of them said, "My Lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhæsit pavimento. There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement."' Twiss's Eldon, i. 130. Boswell wrote to Temple in 1789:—'I hesitate as to going the Spring Northern Circuit, which costs £50, and obliges me to be in rough, unpleasant company four weeks.' Letters of Boswell, p. 274. See ante, ii. 191, note 2.
[756] 'Johnson, in accounting for the courage of our common people, said (Works, vi. 151):—'It proceeds from that dissolution of dependence which obliges every man to regard his own character. While every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts; he may always have wages for his labour, and is no less necessary to his employer than his employer is to him.'
[757] He says of a laird's tenants:—'Since the islanders no longer content to live have learned the desire of growing rich, an ancient dependant is in danger of giving way to a higher bidder, at the expense of domestick dignity and hereditary power. The stranger, whose money buys him preference, considers himself as paying for all that he has, and is indifferent about the laird's honour or safety. The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego.' Ib. ix. 83.
[758] 'Every old man complains … of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age, which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.' The Rambler, No. 50.
[759] Boswell, perhaps, had in mind The Rambler, No. 146:—'It is long before we are convinced of the small proportion which every individual bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn how few can be interested in the fortune of any single man; how little vacancy is left in the world for any new object of attention; to how small extent the brightest blaze of merit can be spread amidst the mists of business and of folly.'
[760] See ante, ii. 227.
[761]
'Fortunam reverenter habe, quicumque repente
Dives ab exili progrediere loco.'
Ausonius, Epigrammata, viii. 7.