[1020] Knox in Winter Evenings, No. xi. (Works, ii. 348), attacks Johnson's biographers for lowering his character by publishing his private conversation. 'Biography,' he complains, 'is every day descending from its dignity.' See ante, i. 222, note 1.
[1021] Piozzi Letters, ii. 256.
[1022] Johnson wrote on April 15:—'I am still very weak, though my appetite is keen and my digestion potent. ... I now think and consult to-day what I shall eat to-morrow. This disease likewise will, I hope, be cured.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 362. Beattie, who dined with Johnson on June 27, wrote:—'Wine, I think, would do him good, but he cannot be prevailed on to drink it. He has, however, a voracious appetite for food. I verily believe that on Sunday last he ate as much to dinner as I have done in all for these ten days past.' Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 315. It was said that Beattie latterly indulged somewhat too much in wine. Ib. p. 432.
[1023] Horace Walpole wrote in April 1750 (Letters, ii. 206):—'There is come from France a Madame Bocage who has translated Milton: my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord's approbation.' It was this lady who bade her footman blow into the spout of the tea-pot. Ante, ii. 403. Dr. J. H. Burton writes of her in his Life of Hume, ii. 213:—'The wits must praise her bad poetry if they frequented her house. "Elle était d'une figure aimable," says Grimm, "elle est bonne femme; elle est riche; elle pouvait fixer chez elle les gens d'esprit et de bonne compagnie, sans les mettre dans l'embarras de lui parler avec peu de sincérité de sa Colombiade ou de ses Amazones."'
[1024] It is the sea round the South Pole that she describes in her Elegy (not Ode). The description begins:—
|
'While o'er the deep in many a dreadful form, The giant Danger howls along the storm, Furling the iron sails with numbed hands, Firm on the deck the great Adventurer stands; Round glitt'ring mountains hear the billows rave, And the vast ruin thunder on the wave.' |
In the Gent. Mag. 1793, p. 197, were given extracts abusive of Johnson from some foolish letters that passed between Miss Seward and Hayley, a poet her equal in feebleness. Boswell, in his Corrections and Additions to the First Edition (ante, i.10), corrected an error into which he had been led by Miss Seward (ante, i.92, note 2). She, in the Gent. Mag. for 1793, p.875, defended herself and attacked him. His reply is found on p.1009. He says:—'As my book was to be a real history, and not a novel, it was necessary to suppress all erroneous particulars, however entertaining.' (Ante, ii 467, note 4.) He continues:—'So far from having any hostile disposition towards this Lady, I have, in my Life of Dr. Johnson...quoted a compliment paid by him to one of her poetical pieces; and I have withheld his opinion of herself, thinking that she might not like it. I am afraid it has reached her by some other means; and thus we may account for various attacks by her on her venerable townsman since his decease...What are we to think of the scraps of letters between her and Mr. Hayley, impotently attempting to undermine the noble pedestal on which the publick opinion has placed Dr. Johnson?'
[1025] See ante, i.265, and iv. 174.
[1026] 'Johnson said he had once seen Mr. Stanhope at Dodsley's shop, and was so much struck with his awkward manners and appearance that he could not help asking Mr. Dodsley who he was.' Johnson's Works, (1787) xi.209.
[1027] Chesterfield was Secretary of State from Nov. 1746 to Feb. 1748. His letters to his son extend from 1739 to 1768.