[1132]
'Genius of Britain! to thy office true,
On Cox-Heath reared the waving banners view.
* * * * *
In martial vest
By Venus and the Graces drest,
To yonder tent, who leads the way?
Art thou Britannia's Genius? say.'
Ode, p. 8.
[1133] Twenty-nine years earlier he wrote:—'There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness.' The Rambler, No. 2. In The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xx, George says of his book:—'The learned world said nothing to my paradoxes, nothing at all, Sir…. I suffered the cruellest mortification, neglect.' See ante, ii. 61, 335. Hume said:—'The misfortune of a book, says Boileau, is not the being ill spoke [sic] of, but the not being spoken of at all.' J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 412
[1134] The account given in Northcote's Reynolds (ii. 94-97) renders it likely that Sir Joshua is 'the friend of ours.' Northcote, quoting Mr. Courtenay, writes:—'His table was frequented by men of the first talents. Politics and party were never introduced. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians, lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group.' At one of these dinners Mr. Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, was the first who came. 'On entering, he said, "Well, Sir Joshua, and who [sic] have you got to dine with you to-day? for the last time I dined with you the assembly was of such a sort, that, by G—, I believe all the rest of the world were at peace, for that afternoon at least."' See post, under June 16, 1784, note. Boswell, in his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 95), boasts that he too is 'a very universal man.' 'I can drink, I can laugh, I can converse in perfect humour with Whigs, with republicans, with dissenters, with Independents, with Quakers, with Moravians, with Jews. But I would vote with Tories and pray with a Dean and Chapter.'
[1135] 'Finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I therefore drest up three paradoxes with some ingenuity. They were false, indeed, but they were new.' Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xx. See ante, i. 441, where Johnson says:—'When I was a boy, I used always to choose the wrong side of a debate, because most ingenious things, that is to say, most new things, could be said upon it.' In the Present State of Polite Learning (ch. vii.), Goldsmith says:—'Nothing can be a more certain sign that genius is in the wane than its being obliged to fly to paradox for support, and attempting to be erroneously agreeable.'
[1136] The whole night spent in playing at cards (see next page) may account for part of his negligence. He was perhaps unusually dissipated this visit.
[1137] See ante, ii. 135.