Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3
by
Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
Part 11 out of 12
[913] I am not entirely without suspicion that Johnson may have felt a
little momentary envy; for no man loved the good things of this life
better than he did; and he could not but be conscious that he deserved
a much larger share of them, than he ever had. I attempted in a
newspaper to comment on the above passage, in the manner of Warburton,
who must be allowed to have shewn uncommon ingenuity, in giving to any
authour's text whatever meaning he chose it should carry. [_Ante_, ii.
37, note 1.] As this imitation may amuse my readers, I shall here
introduce it:--
'No saying of Dr. Johnson's has been more misunderstood than his
applying to Mr. Burke when he first saw him at his fine place at
Beaconsfield, _Non equidem invideo; miror magis_. These two celebrated
men had been friends for many years before Mr. Burke entered on his
parliamentary career. They were both writers, both members of THE
LITERARY CLUB; when, therefore, Dr. Johnson saw Mr. Burke in a situation
so much more splendid than that to which he himself had attained, he did
not mean to express that he thought it a disproportionate prosperity;
but while he, as a philosopher, asserted an exemption from envy, _non
equidem invideo_, he went on in the words of the poet _miror magis_;
thereby signifying, either that he was occupied in admiring what he was
glad to see; or, perhaps, that considering the general lot of men of
superiour abilities, he wondered that Fortune, who is represented as
blind, should, in this instance, have been so just.' BOSWELL. Johnson in
his youth had translated
'Non equidem invideo; miror magis'
(Virgil, _Eclogues_, i. II) by
'My admiration only I exprest,
(No spark of envy harbours in my breast).'
_Ante_, i. 51.
[914] See _ante_ ii. 136.
[915] This neglect was avenged a few years after Goldsmith's death,
when Lord Camden sought to enter The Literary Club and was black-balled.
'I am sorry to add,' wrote Mr. [Sir William] Jones in 1780, 'that Lord
Camden and the Bishop of Chester were rejected. When Bishops and
Chancellors honour us by offering to dine with us at a tavern, it seems
very extraordinary that we should ever reject such an offer; but there
is no reasoning on the caprice of men.' _Life of Sir W. Jones_, p. 240.
[916] Cradock (_Memoirs_, i. 229) was dining with The Literary Club,
when Garrick arrived very late, full-dressed. 'He made many apologies;
he had been unexpectedly detained at the House of Lords, and Lord Camden
had insisted upon setting him down at the door of the hotel in his own
carriage. Johnson said nothing, but he looked a volume.'
[917] Miss. [Per Errata; Originally: Mrs.] Burney records this year
(1778) that Mrs. Thrale said to Johnson, 'Garrick is one of those
whom you suffer nobody to abuse but yourself; for if any other person
speaks against him, you browbeat him in a minute. "Why, madam," answered
he, "they don't know when to abuse him, and when to praise him; I will
allow no man to speak ill of David that he does not deserve."' Mme.
D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 65. See _ante_, i. 393, note 1.
[918] The passage is in a letter dated Dublin, Oct. 12, 1727. 'Here is
my maintenance,' wrote Swift, 'and here my convenience. If it pleases
God to restore me to my health, I shall readily make a third journey;
if not we must part, as all human creatures have parted.' He never made
the third journey. Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xvii. 154.
[919] See _ante_, ii. 162.
[920] No doubt Percy.
[921] The philosopher was Bias. Cicero, _Paradoxa_, i.
[922] Johnson recorded of this day (_Pr. and Med_. p. 164):--'We sat
till the time of worship in the afternoon, and then came again late,
at the Psalms. Not easily, I think, hearing the sermon, or not being
attentive, I fell asleep.'
[923] Marshall's _Minutes of Agriculture_.
[924] It was only in hay-time and harvest that Marshall approved of
Sunday work. He had seen in the wet harvest of 1775 so much corn
wasted that he 'was ambitious to set the patriotic example' of Sunday
labour. One Sunday he 'promised every man who would work two shillings,
as much roast beef and plumb pudding as he would eat, with as much ale
as it might be fit for him to drink.' Nine men and three boys came. In a
note in the edition of 1799, he says:--'The Author has been informed
that an old law exists (mentioned by Dugdale), which tolerates
husbandmen in working on Sundays in harvest; and that, in proof thereof,
a gentleman in the north has uniformly carried one load every year on a
Sunday.' He adds:--'Jan. 1799. The particulars of this note were
furnished by the late Dr. Samuel Johnson; at whose request some
considerable part of what was originally written, and _printed_ on this
subject was cancelled. That which was published and which is now offered
again to the public is, _in effect_, what Dr. Johnson approved; or, let
me put it in the most cautious terms, that of which _Dr. Johnson did not
disapprove_.' Marshall's _Minutes etc., on Agriculture_, ii. 65-70.
[925] Saturday was April 18.
[926] William Duncombe, Esq. He married the sister of John Hughes
the poet; was the authour of two tragedies and other ingenious
productions; and died 26th Feb. 1769, aged 79. MALONE. In his Life of
Hughes (_Works_, vii. 477), Johnson says 'an account of Hughes is
prefixed to his works by his relation, the late Mr. Duncombe, a man
whose blameless elegance deserved the same respect.'
[927] See _ante_, i. 185, 243, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22.
[928] See _ante_, i. 145.
[929] See Appendix A.
[930] No doubt Parson Home, better known as Home Tooke, who was at
this time in prison. He had signed an advertisement issued by the
Constitutional Society asking for a subscription for 'the relief of the
widows, etc., of our beloved American fellow-subjects, who had been
inhumanly murdered by the King's troops at Lexington and Concord.' For
this 'very gross libel' he had in the previous November been sentenced
to a fine of L200 and a year's imprisonment. Ann. Reg. xx. 234-245. See
_post_, May 13, 1778.
[931] Mr. Croker's conjecture that Dr. Shebbeare was the gentleman is
supported by the favourable way in which Boswell (_post_, May 1781)
speaks of Shebbeare as 'that gentleman,' and calls him 'a respectable
name in literature.' Shebbeare, on Nov. 28, 1758, was sentenced by Lord
Mansfield to stand in the pillory, to be confined for three years, and
to give security for his good behaviour for seven years, for a libellous
pamphlet intitled _A Sixth Letter to the People of England_. _Gent.
Mag_. xxviii. 555. (See _ante_, p. 15, note 3.) On Feb. 7, 1759, the
under-sheriff of Middlesex was found guilty of a contempt of Court, in
having suffered Shebbeare to stand _upon_ the pillory only, and not _in_
it. _Ib_. xxix. 91. Before the seven years had run out, Shebbeare was
pensioned. Smollett, in the preface to _Humphry Clinker_, represents the
publisher of that novel as writing to the imaginary author:--'If you
should be sentenced to the pillory your fortune is made. As times go,
that's a sure step to honour and preferment. I shall think myself happy
if I can lend you a lift.' See also in the same book Mr. Bramble's
Letter of June 2.
[932] See p. 275 of this volume. BOSWELL. Why Boswell mentions this
gentleman at all, seeing that nothing that he says is reported, is
not clear. Perhaps he gave occasion to Johnson's attack on the
Americans. It is curious also why both here and in the account given of
Dr. Percy's dinner his name is not mentioned. In the presence of this
unknown gentleman Johnson violently attacked first Percy, and next
Boswell.
[933] Mr. Langton no doubt. See _ante_, iii. 48. He had paid Johnson a
visit that morning. _Pr. and Med_. p. 165.
[934] See _ante_, p. 216.
[935] See _ante_, i. 494, where Johnson says that 'her learning is that
of a schoolboy in one of the lower forms.'
[936] On this day Johnson recorded in his review of the past year:--
'My nights have been commonly, not only restless, but painful and
fatiguing.' He adds, 'I have written a little of the _Lives of the
Poets_, I think with all my usual vigour.... This year the 28th of March
passed away without memorial. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and
failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldest
thou have lived!' _Pr. and Med_. pp. 169, 170.
[937] Mr. Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48.
[938] Malone was told by Baretti that 'Dr. James picked up on a stall a
book of Greek hymns. He brought it to Johnson, who ran his eyes over
the pages and returned it. A year or two afterwards he dined at Sir
Joshua Reynolds's with Dr. Musgrave, the editor of _Euripides_. Musgrave
made a great parade of his Greek learning, and among other less known
writers mentioned these hymns, which he thought none of the company were
acquainted with, and extolled them highly. Johnson said the first of
them was indeed very fine, and immediately repeated it. It consisted of
ten or twelve lines.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 160.
[939] By Richard Tickell, the grandson of Addison's friend. Walpole's
_Letters_, vii. 54
[940] She was a younger sister of Peg Woffington (_ante_, p. 264).
Johnson described her as 'a very airy lady.' (Boswell's _Hebrides_,
Sept. 23, 1773.) Murphy (_Life_, p. 137) says that 'Johnson, sitting at
table with her, took hold of her hand in the middle of dinner, and held
it close to his eye, wondering at the delicacy and the whiteness, till
with a smile she asked:--"Will he give it to me again when he has done
with it?"' He told Miss Burney that 'Mrs. Cholmondeley was the first
person who publicly praised and recommended _Evelina_ among the wits.'
Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 180. Miss Burney wrote in 1778:--'Mrs.
Cholmondeley has been praising _Evelina_; my father said that I could
not have had a greater compliment than making two such women my friends
as Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Cholmondeley, for they were severe and knowing,
and afraid of praising _a tort et a travers_, as their opinions are
liable to be quoted.' _Ib_. i. 47. To Mrs. Cholmondeley Goldsmith, just
before his death, shewed a copy in manuscript of his _Retaliation_. No
one else, it should seem, but Burke had seen it. Forster's _Goldsmith_,
ii. 412.
[941] Dr. Johnson is supported by the usage of preceding writers.
So in _Musarum Deliciae_, 8vo. 1656 (the writer is speaking of
Suckling's play entitled _Aglaura_, printed in folio):--
'This great voluminous _pamphlet_ may be said
To be like one that hath more hair than head.'
MALONE.
Addison, in _The Spectator_, No. 529 says that 'the most minute
pocket-author hath beneath him the writers of all pamphlets, or works
that are only stitched. As for a pamphleteer he takes place of none but
of the authors of single sheets.' The inferiority of a pamphlet is shewn
in Johnson's _Works_, ed. 1787, xi. 216:--'Johnson would not allow the
word _derange_ to be an English word. "Sir," said a gentleman who had
some pretensions to literature, "I have seen it in a book." "Not in a
_bound_ book," said Johnson; "_disarrange_ is the word we ought to use
instead of it."' In his _Dictionary_ he gives neither _derange_ nor
_disarrange_. Dr. Franklin, who had been a printer and was likely to use
the term correctly, writing in 1785, mentions 'the artifices made use of
to puff up a paper of verses into a pamphlet.' _Memoirs_, iii. 178.
[942] See _post_, March 16, 1779, for 'the exquisite address' with which
Johnson evaded a question of this kind.
[943] Garrick insisted on great alterations being made in _The Good
Natured Man_. When Goldsmith resisted this, 'he proposed a sort of
arbitration,' and named as his arbitrator Whitehead the laureate.
Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 41. It was of Whitehead's poetry that Johnson
said 'grand nonsense is insupportable.' _Ante_, i. 402. _The Good
Natured Man_ was brought out by Colman, as well as _She Stoops to
Conquer_.
[944] See _ante_, ii. 208, note 5.
[945] See _ante_, i. 416.
[946] 'This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was
first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury Lane, and rejected;
it being then carried to Rich had the effect, as was ludicrously said,
of _making_ Gay _rich_ and Rich _gay_.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 66.
See _ante_, ii. 368.
[947] See _ante_, i. 112.
[948] In opposition to this Mr. Croker quotes Horace:---
'Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.'
'I'm hissed in public; but in secret blest,
I count my money and enjoy my chest.' Horace, _Sat_. i. I. 66.
See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 26.
[949] The anecdote is told in _Menagiana_, iii. 104, but not of a
'_maid_ of honour,' nor as an instance of '_exquisite flattery_.' 'M.
d'Uzes etait chevalier d'honneur de la reine. Cette princesse lui
demanda un jour quelle heure il etait; il repondit, "Madame, l'heure
qu'il plaira a votre majeste."' Menage tells it as _a pleasantry_ of M.
d'Uzes; but M. de la Monnoye says, that this duke was remarkable for
_naivetes_ and blunders, and was a kind of _butt_, to whom the wits of
the court used to attribute all manner of absurdities. CROKER.
[950] Horace, _Odes_, iv. 2. II. The common reading is _solutis_.
Boswell (_Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773) says:--'Mr. Wilkes told me this
himself with classical admiration.'
[951] See this question fully investigated in the Notes upon my
_Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, edit. 3, p. 21, _et seq_. [Aug.
15]. And here, as a lawyer mindful of the maxim _Suum cuique tribuito_,
I cannot forbear to mention, that the additional Note beginning with 'I
find since the former edition,' is not mine, but was obligingly
furnished by Mr. Malone, who was so kind as to superintend the press
while I was in Scotland, and the first part of the second edition was
printing. He would not allow me to ascribe it to its proper authour;
but, as it is exquisitely acute and elegant, I take this opportunity,
without his knowledge, to do him justice. BOSWELL. See also _ante_, i.
453, and _post_, May 15, 1784.
[952] Horace, _Sat_. i. I. 106. Malone points out that this is the
motto to _An Enquiry into Customary Estates and Tenants' Rights, &c.,
with some considerations for restraining excessive fines_. By Everard
Fleetwood, 8vo, 1737.
[953] A _modus_ is _something paid as a compensation for tithes
on the supposition of being a moderate equivalent_. Johnson's
_Dictionary_. It was more desirable for the landlord than the Parson.
Thus T. Warton, in his _Progress of Discontent_, represents the Parson
who had taken a college living regretting his old condition,
'When calm around the common-room
I puffed my daily pipe's perfume;
...
And every night I went to bed,
Without a _modus_ in my head.'
T. Warton's _Poems_, ii. 197.
[954] Fines are payments due to the lord of a manor on every admission
of a new tenant. In some manors these payments are fixed by custom; they
are then _fines certain_; in others they are not fixed, but depend on
the reasonableness of the lord and the paying capacity of the tenant;
they are _fines uncertain_. The advantage of _fines certain_, like that
of a _modus_ in tithes, is that a man knows what he shall get.
[955] _Ante_, iii. 35.
[956] Mr. P. Cunningham has, I think, enabled us to clear up Boswell's
mystery, by finding in the _Garrick Corres_, ii. 305, May 1778, that
Johnson's poor friend, Mauritius Lowe, the painter, lived at No. 3,
Hedge Lane, in a state of extreme distress. CROKER. See _post_, April 3,
1779, and April 12, 1783.
[957] 'In all his intercourse with mankind, Pope had great delight in
artifice, and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and
unsuspected methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem." ["Nor
take her tea without a stratagem." Young's _Universal Passion, Sat_. vi.]
He practised his arts on such small occasions that Lady Bolingbroke used
to say, in a French phrase, that "he played the politician about cabbages
and turnips."' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 311.
[958] Johnson, _post_, under March 30, 1783, speaks of 'the vain
ostentatious importance of many persons in quoting the authority of
dukes and lords.' In his going to the other extreme, as he said he did,
may be found the explanation of Boswell's 'mystery.' For of
mystery--'the wisdom of blockheads,' as Horace Walpole calls it
(_Letters_, iii. 371)--Johnson was likely to have as little as any man.
As for Grosvenor-square, the Thrales lived there for a short time, and
Johnson had a room in the house (_post_, March 20, 1781).
[959] Tacitus, _Agricola_, ch. xxx. 'The unknown always passes for
something peculiarly grand.'
[960] Johnson defines _toy-shop_ as 'a shop where playthings and little
nice manufactures are sold.'
[961] See _ante_, ii. 241.
[962] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 237) says that 'the fore-top of all his
wigs were (sic) burned by the candle down to the very net-work. Mr.
Thrale's valet, for that reason, kept one always in his own hands, with
which he met him at the parlour door when the bell had called him down
to dinner.' Cumberland (_Memoirs_, i. 357) says that he wore 'a brown
coat with metal buttons, black waistcoat and worsted stockings, with a
flowing bob-wig; they were in perfectly good trim, and with the ladies
he had nothing of the slovenly philosopher about him.'
[963] See _ante_, ii. 432.
[964] Here he either was mistaken, or had a different notion of an
extensive sale from what is generally entertained: for the fact is,
that four thousand copies of that excellent work were sold very quickly.
A new edition has been printed since his death, besides that in the
collection of his works. BOSWELL. See _ante_, ii. 310, note 2.
[965] 'In the neighbourhood of Lichfield [in 1750] the principal
gentlemen clothed their hounds in tartan plaid, with which they hunted
a fox, dressed in a red uniform.' Mahon's _Hist. of England_, iv. 10.
[966] So Boswell in his _Hebrides_ (Nov. 8), hoping that his father and
Johnson have met in heaven, observes, 'that they have met in a place
where there is no room for Whiggism.' See _ante_, i. 431.
[967] _Paradise Lost_, bk. i. 263. Butler (_Miscellaneous Thoughts_,
1. 169) had said:--
'The Devil was the first o' th' name
From whom the race of rebels came.'
[968] In the phraseology of Scotland, I should have said, 'Mr. John
Spottiswoode the younger, _of that ilk_.' Johnson knew that sense
of the word very well, and has thus explained it in his _Dictionary_,
_voce_ ILK:--'It also signifies "the same;" as, _Mackintosh of that
ilk_, denotes a gentleman whose surname and the title of his estate are
the same.' BOSWELL. See _ante_, ii. 427, note 2.
[969] He wrote to Dr. Taylor on Oct. 19 of the next year:--'There are
those still who either fright themselves, or would fright others, with
an invasion.... Such a fleet [a fleet equal to the transportation of
twenty or of ten thousand men] cannot be hid in a creek; it must be
safely [?] visible; and yet I believe no man has seen the man that has
seen it. The ships of war were within sight of Plymouth, and only within
sight.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 461.
[970] See _ante_, iii. 42.
[971] It is observed in Waller's _Life_, in the _Biographia Britannica_,
that he drank only water; and that while he sat in a company who were
drinking wine, 'he had the dexterity to accommodate his discourse to the
pitch of theirs as it _sunk_.' If excess in drinking be meant, the
remark is acutely just. But surely, a moderate use of wine gives a
gaiety of spirits which water-drinkers know not. BOSWELL. 'Waller passed
his time in the company that was highest, both in rank and wit, from
which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude him. Though he drank
water, he was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten the mirth of
Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said that "no man in England
should keep him company without drinking but Ned Waller."' Johnson's
_Works_, vii. 197.
[972] See _ante_, iii. 41, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 17.
[973] Pope. _Satires_, Prologue, 1. 283.
[974] As he himself had said in his letter of thanks for his diploma of
Doctor of Laws, 'Nemo sibi placens non lactatur' (_ante_, ii. 333).
[975]
'Who mean to live within our proper sphere,
Dear to ourselves, and to our country dear.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Epistles_, i. 3. 29.
[976] Johnson recommended this before. _Ante_, p. 169. Boswell tried
abstinence once before. _Ante_, ii. 436, note 1, and iii. 170, note 1.
[977] Johnson wrote to Boswell in 1775:--'Reynolds has taken too much
to strong liquor, and seems to delight in his new character.' _Ante_,
ii. 292.
[978] See _ante_, p. 170, note 2.
[979] At the Castle of the Bishop of Munster 'there was,' writes Temple,
'nothing remarkable but the most Episcopal way of drinking that could
be invented. As soon as we came in the great hall there stood many
flagons ready charged; the general called for wine to drink the King's
health; they brought him a formal bell of silver gilt, that might hold
about two quarts or more; he took it empty, pulled out the clapper, and
gave it me who (sic) he intended to drink to, then had the bell filled,
drunk it off to his Majesty's health; then asked me for the clapper, put
it in, turned down the bell, and rung it out to shew he had played fair
and left nothing in it; took out the clapper, desired me to give it to
whom I pleased, then gave his bell to be filled again, and brought it to
me. I that never used to drink, and seldom would try, had commonly some
gentlemen with me that served for that purpose when it was necessary.'
Temple's _Works_, ed. 1757, i. 266.
[980] See _ante_, ii. 450, note 1, and iii. 79.
[981] The passages are in the _Jerusalem_, canto i. st. 3, and in
_Lucretius_, i. 935, and again iv. 12. CROKER.
[982] See _ante_, ii. 247, where Boswell says that 'no man was more
scrupulously inquisitive in order to discover the truth;' and iii. 188,
229.
[983] See _post_, under May 8, 1781.
[984] 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his
book.' _Ante_, ii. 53.
[985] 'I was once in company with Smith,' said Johnson in 1763, 'and we
did not take to each other.' _Ante_, i. 427. See Boswell's _Hebrides_,
Oct. 29.
[986] See _ante_, ii. 63.
[987] See _ante_, ii. 84
[988] See _ante_, p. 3.
[989] This experiment which Madame Dacier made in vain, has since been
tried in our own language, by the editor of _Ossian_, and we must either
think very meanly of his abilities, or allow that Dr. Johnson was in the
right. And Mr. Cowper, a man of real genius, has miserably failed in his
blank verse translation. BOSWELL. Johnson, in his _Life of Pope_
(_Works_, viii. 253), says:--'I have read of a man, who being by his
ignorance of Greek compelled to gratify his curiosity with the Latin
printed on the opposite page, declared that from the rude simplicity of
the lines literally rendered he formed nobler ideas of the Homeric
majesty, than from the laboured elegance of polished versions,' Though
Johnson nowhere speaks of Cowper, yet his writings were not altogether
unknown to him. 'Dr. Johnson,' wrote Cowper, 'read and recommended my
first volume.' Southey's _Cowper_, v. 171.
[990] 'I bought the first volume of _Manchester_, but could not read it;
it was much too learned for me, and seemed rather an account of Babel
than Manchester, I mean in point of antiquity.' Walpole's _Letters_,
vi. 207.
[991] Henry was injured by Gilbert Stuart, the malignant editor of the
_Edinburgh Magazine and Review_, who 'had vowed that he would crush his
work,' and who found confederates to help him. He asked Hume to review
it, thinking no doubt that one historian would attack another; when he
received from him a highly favourable review he would not publish it.
It contained a curious passage, where Hume points out that Henry and
Robertson were clergymen, and continues:--'These illustrious examples,
if any thing, must make the _infidel abashed of his vain cavils_.' J.H.
Burton's _Hume_, ii. 469.
[992] Hume wrote to Millar:--'Hamilton and Balfour have offered
Robertson [for his _Scotland_] a very unusual price; no less than L500
for one edition of 2000.' _Ib_. ii. 42. As Robertson did not accept this
offer, no doubt he got a better one. Even if he got no more, it would
not have seemed 'a moderate price' to a man whose preferment hitherto
had been only L100 a year. (See Dugald Stewart's _Robertson_, p. 161.)
Stewart adds (_ib_. p. 169):--'It was published on Feb. 1, 1759. Before
the end of the month the author was desired by his bookseller to prepare
for a second edition.' By 1793 it was in its fourteenth edition. _Ib_.
p. 326. The publisher was Millar; the price two guineas. _Gent. Mag_.
xxix. 84.
[993] Lord Clive. See _post_, p. 350, and Oct. 10, 1779.
[994] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 286) gives an instance of this
'romantick humour.' 'Robertson was very much a master of conversation,
and very desirous to lead it, and to raise theories that sometimes
provoked the laugh against him. He went a jaunt into England with
Dundas, Cockburn and Sinclair; who, seeing a gallows on a neighbouring
hillock, rode round to have a nearer view of the felon on the gallows.
When they met in the inn, Robertson began a dissertation on the
character of nations, and how much the English, like the Romans, were
hardened by their cruel diversions of cock-fighting, bull-baiting, &c.;
for had they not observed three Englishmen on horseback do what no
Scotchman or--. Here Dundas interrupted him, and said, "What! did you
not know, Principal, that it was Cockburn and Sinclair and me?" This put
an end to theories, &c., for that day.'
[995] This was a favourite word with Johnson and Mrs. Thrale. 'Long live
Mrs. G. that _downs_ my mistress,' he wrote (_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 26).
'Did you quite _down_ her?' he asked of another lady (_Ib_. p. 100).
Miss Burney caught up the word: 'I won't be _downed_,' she wrote. Mme.
D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 252.
[996] See _ante_, iii. 41, 327.
[997] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 474) tells how Robertson, with one of
his pupils, and he, visited at a house where some excellent claret
flowed freely. 'After four days Robertson took me into a window
before dinner, and with some solemnity proposed to make a motion to
shorten the drinking, if I would second him--"Because," added he,
"although you and I may go through it, I am averse to it on my pupil's
account." I answered that I was afraid it would not do, as our
toastmaster might throw ridicule upon us, as we were to leave the island
the day after the next, and that we had not proposed any abridgement
till the old claret was all done, the last of which we had drunk
yesterday. "Well, well," replied the Doctor, "be it so then, and let us
end as we began."'
[998] Johnson, when asked to hear Robertson preach, said:--'I will hear
him if he will get up into a tree and preach; but I will not give a
sanction by my presence to a Presbyterian assembly.' Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Aug. 27. See also _Ib_. Nov. 7.
[999] Mrs. Piozzi confidently mentions this as having passed in
Scotland, _Anecdotes_, p. 62. BOSWELL. She adds:--'I was shocked to
think how he [Johnson] must have disgusted him [Robertson].' She, we may
well believe, felt no more shock than Robertson felt disgust.
[1000] See Voltaire's _Siecle de Louis XIV_, ch. xiv.
[1001] See _ante_, p. 191.
[1002] See _ante_, p. 54.
[1003] It was on this day that Johnson dictated to Boswell his Latin
translation of Dryden's lines on Milton. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 22.
[1004] See _ante_, ii. 109.
[1005] '"Well, Sir," said he, "we had good talk." BOSWELL. "Yes Sir;
you tossed and gored several persons."' _Ante_, ii. 66.
[1006] Very likely their host. See _ante_, iii. 48.
[1007] See _ante_, iii. 97.
[1008] _Acts_, X. 1 and 2.
[1009] Mr. Croker says, 'no doubt Dr. Robertson;' see _post_, under
June 16, 1784, where Johnson says much the same of 'an authour of
considerable eminence.' In this case Mr. Croker says, 'probably Dr.
Robertson.' I have little doubt that Dr. Beattie was there meant. He may
be meant also here, for the description of the conversation does not
agree with what we are told of Robertson. See _ante_, p. 335. note 1.
Perhaps, however, Dr. Blair was the eminent author. It is in Boswell's
manner to introduce the same person in consecutive paragraphs as if
there were two persons.
[1010] See _ante_, ii. 256.
[1011] Chappe D'Auteroche writes:--'La douceur de sa physionomie et sa
vivacite annoncaient plutot quelque indiscretion que l'ombre d'un
crime. Tous ceux que j'ai consultes par la suite m'ont cependant assure
qu'elle etait coupable.' _Voyage en Siberie_, i. 227. Lord Kames
says:--'Of whatever indiscretion she might have been guilty, the
sweetness of her countenance and her composure left not in the
spectators the slightest suspicion of guilt.' She was cruelly knouted,
her tongue was cut out, and she was banished to Siberia. Kames's
_Sketches_, i. 363.
[1012] Mr. Croker says:--'Here I think the censure is quite unjust.
Lord Kames gives in the clearest terms the same explanation.' Kames
made many corrections in the later editions. On turning to the first,
I found, as I expected, that Johnson's censure was quite just. Kames
says (i. 76):--'Whatever be the cause of high or low interest, I am
certain that the quantity of circulating coin can have no influence.
Supposing the half of our money to be withdrawn, a hundred pounds lent
ought still to afford but five pounds as interest; because if the
principal be doubled in value, so is also the interest.' This passage
was struck out in later editions.
[1013] 'Johnson had an extraordinary admiration of this lady,
notwithstanding she was a violent Whig. In answer to her high-flown
speeches for _Liberty_, he addressed to her the following Epigram, of
which I presume to offer a translation:--
'_Liber ut esse velim suasiti pulchra Maria
Ut maneam liber pulchra Maria vale_,'
Adieu, Maria! since you'd have me free;
For, who beholds thy charms a slave must be.
A correspondent of _The Gentleman's Magazine_, who subscribes himself
SCIOLUS, to whom I am indebted for several excellent remarks, observes,
'The turn of Dr. Johnson's lines to Miss Aston, whose Whig principles he
had been combating, appears to me to be taken from an ingenious epigram
in the _Menagiana_ [vol. iii. p. 376, edit. 1716] on a young lady who
appeared at a masquerade, _habillee en Jesuite_, during the fierce
contentions of the followers of Molinos and Jansenius concerning
free-will:--
"On s'etonne ici que Caliste
Ait pris l'habit de Moliniste.
Puisque cette jeune beaute
Ote a chacun sa liberte,
N'est-ce pas une Janseniste?"
BOSWELL.
Johnson, in his _Criticism upon Pope's Epitaphs_ (_Works_, viii. 355),
quotes the opinion of a 'lady of great beauty and excellence.' She was,
says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 162), Molly Aston. Mrs. Piozzi, in her
_Letters_ (ii. 383), writes:--'Nobody has ever mentioned what became of
Miss Aston's letters, though he once told me they should be the last
papers he would destroy.' See _ante_, i. 83.
[1014] See _ante_, ii. 470.
[1015] Pope's _Essay on Man_, iv. 380.
[1016] See _ante_, i. 294.
[1017] 'March 4, 1745. You say you expect much information about
Belleisle, but there has not (in the style of the newspapers) the least
particular _transpired_.' Horace Walpole's _Letters_, i. 344. 'Jan. 26,
1748. You will not let one word of it _transpire_.' Chesterfield's
_Misc. Works_, iv. 35. 'It would be next to a miracle that a fact of
this kind should be known to a whole parish, and not _transpire_ any
farther.' Fielding's _Tom Jones_, bk. ii. c. 5. _Tom Jones_ was
published before the _Dictionary_, but not so Walpole's _Letters_ and
Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_. I have not found a passage in which
Bolingbroke uses the word, but I have not read all his works.
[1018] 'The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge
of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own ... I have registered
as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others
against the folly of naturalising useless foreigners to the injury of
the natives.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 31. 'If an academy should be
established for the cultivation of our style, which I, who can never
wish to see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty
will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and
dictionaries, endeavour with all their influence to stop the license of
translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed,
will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.' _Ib_. p. 49. 'I have
rarely admitted any words not authorised by former writers; for I
believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent will
be able to express his thoughts without further help from other
nations.' _The Rambler_, No. 208.
[1019] Boswell on one occasion used _it came out_ where a lover of fine
words would have said _it transpired_. See Boswell's _Hebrides_,
November 1.
[1020] The record no doubt was destroyed with the other papers that
Boswell left to his literary executors (_ante_, p. 301, note 1).
[1021] See _ante_, i. 154.
[1022] 'Of Johnson's pride I have heard Reynolds observe, that if any
man drew him into a state of obligation without his own consent, that
man was the first he would affront by way of clearing off the account.'
Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 71.
[1023] See _post_, May 1, 1779.
[1024] This had happened the day before (May 11) in the writ of error in
Horne's case (_ante_, p. 314). _Ann. Reg_. xii. 181.
[1025] '_To enucleate_. To solve; to clear.' Johnson's _Dictionary_.
[1026] In the original _me_.
[1027] Pope himself (_Moral Essays_, iii. 25) attacks the sentiment
contained in this stanza. He says:--
'What nature wants (a phrase I must distrust)
Extends to luxury, extends to lust.'
Mr. Elwin (Pope's _Works_, ii. 462) doubts the genuineness of this
suppressed stanza. Montezuma, in Dryden's _Indian Emperour_, act ii. sc.
2, says:--
'That lust of power we from your Godheads have,
You're bound to please those appetites you gave.'
[1028] 'Antoine Arnauld, surnomme le grand Arnauld, theologien et
philosophe, ne a Paris le 6 fevrier 1612, mort le 6 aout 1694 a
Bruxelles.' _Nouv. Biog. Gen_. iii. 282.
[1029] 'It may be discovered that when Pope thinks himself concealed he
indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those
distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that his
book was presented to the King and Queen by the right honourable Sir
Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud
that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first
distinction.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 278.
[1030] _Othello_, act iii. sc. 3.
[1031] Mr. Langton, I have little doubt. Not only does that which Johnson
says of sluggishness fit his character, but the fact that he is spoken
of in the next paragraph points to him.
[1032] Mr. Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48.
[1033] We may wonder whether _pasted_ is strictly used. It seems likely
that the wealthy brewer, who had a taste for the fine arts, afforded
Hogarth at least a frame.
[1034] See _ante_, i. 49.
[1035] Baths are called Hummums in the East, and thence these hotels in
Covent Garden, where there were baths, were called by that name. CROKER.
[1036] Beauclerk.
[1037] Bolingbroke. _Ante_, ii. 246.
[1038] Lord Clive. _Ante_, p. 334.
[1039] _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2.
[1040] Johnson, or Boswell in reporting him, here falls into an error.
The editor of Chesterfield's _Works_ says (ii. 3l9), 'that being
desirous of giving a specimen of his Lordship's eloquence he has made
choice of the three following speeches; the first in the strong nervous
style of Demosthenes; the two latter in the witty, ironical manner of
Tully.' Now the first of these speeches is not Johnson's, for it was
reported in _The Gent. Mag_. for July, 1737, p. 409, nine months before
his first contribution to that paper. In spite of great differences this
report and that in Chesterfield's _Works_ are substantially the same. If
Johnson had any hand in the authorised version he merely revised the
report already published. Nor did he always improve it, as will be seen
by comparing with Chesterfield's _Works_, ii. 336, the following passage
from the _Gent. Mag_. p. 411:--'My Lords, we ought in all points to be
tender of property. Wit is the property of those who are possessed of
it, and very often the only property they have. Thank God, my Lords,
this is not our case; we are otherwise provided for.' The other two
speeches are his. In the collected works (xi. 420, 489) they are wrongly
assigned to Lord Carteret. See _ante_, i. Appendix A.
[1041] See _ante_, p. 340.
[1042] These words are quoted by Kames, iii. 267. In his abbreviation
he perhaps passed over by accident the words that Johnson next quotes.
If Clarendon did not believe the story, he wished his readers to believe
it. He gives more than five pages to it, and he ends by saying:--
'Whatever there was of all this, it is a notorious truth, that when the
news of the duke's murder (which happened within few months after) was
brought to his mother, she seemed not in the least degree surprised; but
received it as if she had foreseen it.' According to the story, he had
told her of the warning which had come to him through his father's ghost.
Clarendon's _History_, ed. 1826, i. 74.
[1043] Kames maintains (iii. 95) that schools are not needful for the
children of the labouring poor. They would be needful, 'if without
regular education we could have no knowledge of the principles of
religion and of morality. But Providence has not left man in a state so
imperfect: religion and morality are stamped on his heart; and none can
be ignorant of them, who attend to their own perceptions.'
[1044] 'Oct. 5, 1764. Mr. Elliot brings us woeful accounts of the
French ladies, of the decency of their conversation, and the nastiness
of their behaviour.' Walpole's _Letters_, iv. 277. Walpole wrote from
Paris on Nov. 19, 1765, 'Paris is the ugliest, beastliest town in the
universe,' and describes the nastiness of the talk of French women of
the first rank. _Ib_. p. 435. Mrs. Piozzi, nearly twenty years later,
places among 'the contradictions one meets with every moment' at Paris,
'A Countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps,
and a dirty black handkerchief about her neck.' Piozzi's _Journey_, i.
17. See _ante_, ii. 403, and _post_, under Aug. 29, 1783.
[1045] See Appendix B.
[1046] His lordship was, to the last, in the habit of telling this story
rather too often. CROKER.
[1047] See _ante_, ii. 194.
[1048] See _ante_, iii. 178.
[1049] See _ante_, ii. 153.
[1050] 'Our eyes and ears may convince us,' wrote Wesley, 'there is not
a less happy body of men in all England than the country farmers. In
general their life is supremely dull; and it is usually unhappy too;
for of all people in the kingdom, they are the most discontented, seldom
satisfied either with God or man.' Southey's _Wesley_, i. 420. He did
not hold with Johnson as to the upper classes. 'Oh! how hard it is,' he
said, 'to be shallow enough for a polite audience.' _Ib_. p. 419.
[1051] Horne says:--'Even S. Johnson, though mistakenly, has attempted
AND, and would find no difficulty with THEREFORE' (ed. 1778, p. 21).
However, in a note on p. 56 he says:--'I could never read his preface
[to his _Dictionary_] without shedding a tear.' See _ante_, i. 297,
note 2.
[1052] In Mr. Horne Tooke's enlargement of that _Letter_, which he has
since published with the title of [Greek: Epea pteroenta]; or, the
_Diversions of Purley_; he mentions this compliment, as if Dr. Johnson
instead of _several_ of his etymologies had said _all_. His recollection
having thus magnified it, shews how ambitious he was of the approbation
of so great a man. BOSWELL. Horne Tooke says (ed. 1798, part i, p. 156)
'immediately after the publication of my _Letter to Mr. Dunning_ I was
informed by Mr. S. [Seward], an intimate friend of Dr. Johnson, that he
had declared that, if he lived to give a new edition of his
_Dictionary_, he should certainly adopt my derivations.' Boswell and
Horne Tooke, says Stephens (_Life of Tooke_, ii. 438), had an
altercation. 'Happening to meet at a gentleman's house, Mr. Boswell
proposed to make up the breach, on the express condition, however, that
they should drink a bottle of wine each between the toasts. But Mr.
Tooke would not give his assent unless the liquor should be brandy. By
the time a quart had been quaffed Boswell was left sprawling on the
floor.'
[1053] See _ante_, iii. 314. Thurlow, the Attorney-General, pressed that
Horne should be set in the pillory, 'observing that imprisonment would
be "a slight inconvenience to one of sedentary habits."' It was during
his imprisonment that he wrote his _Letter to Mr. Dunning_. Campbell's
_Chancellors_, ed. 1846, v. 517. Horace Walpole says that 'Lord
Mansfield was afraid, and would not venture the pillory.' _Journal of
the Reign of George III_, ii. 167.
[1054] '_Bulse_, a certain quantity of diamonds' (India). Webster's
_Dictionary_.
[1055] 'He raised,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 236), 'the medical
character to such a height of dignity as was never seen in this or any
other country. I have heard it said that when he began to practise, he
was a frequenter of the meeting at Stepney where his father preached;
and that when he was sent for out of the assembly, his father would in
his prayer insert a petition in behalf of the sick person. I once
mentioned this to Johnson, who said it was too gross for belief; but it
was not so at Batson's [a coffee-house frequented by physicians]; it
passed there as a current belief.' See _ante_, i. 159. Young has
introduced him in the second of his _Night Thoughts_--
'That time is mine, O Mead, to thee I owe;
Fain would I pay thee with eternity.'
Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 260) says 'that he had nothing but
pretensions.'
[1056] On Oct. 17, 1777, Burgoyne's army surrendered to the Americans
at Saratoga. One of the articles of the Convention was 'that the army
should march out of the camp with all the honours of war to a fixed
place where they were to deposit their arms. It is said that General
Gates [the American Commander] paid so nice and delicate an attention
to the British military honour that he kept his army close within their
lines, and did not suffer an American soldier to be a witness to the
degrading spectacle of piling their arms.' _Ann. Reg_. xx. 173, 174.
Horace Walpole, on Lord Cornwallis's capitulation in 1781, wrote:--'The
newspapers on the Court side had been crammed with paragraphs for a
fortnight, saying that Lord Cornwallis had declared he would never pile
up his arms like Burgoyne; that is, he would rather die sword in hand.'
Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 475.
[1057] See _ante_, i. 342.
[1058] There was a Colonel Fullarton who took an important part in the
war against Tippoo in 1783. Mill's _British India_, ed. 1840, iv. 276.
[1059] 'To count is a modern practice, the ancient method was to guess;
and when numbers are guessed, they are always magnified.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 95.
[1060] He published in 1714 _An Account of Switzerland_.
[1061] See _ante_, ii. 468.
[1062] See Appendix C.
[1063] 'All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a
prescience of the future which has not been given us. They are, I think,
a crime, because they resign that life to chance which God has given us
to be regulated by reason; and superinduce a kind of fatality, from
which it is the great privilege of our nature to be free.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 83. Johnson (_Works_, vii. 52) praises the 'just and noble
thoughts' in Cowley's lines which begin:--
'Where honour or where conscience does not bind,
No other law shall shackle me;
Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
Nor shall my future actions be confined
By my own present mind.'
See _ante_, ii. 21.
[1064] Juvenal, _Sat_. iii. 78. Imitated by Johnson in _London_.
[1065] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 16, and Johnson's _Tour into
Wales_, Aug. 1, 1774.
[1066] The slip of paper on which he made the correction, is deposited
by me in the noble library to which it relates, and to which I have
presented other pieces of his hand-writing. BOSWELL. In substituting
_burns_ he resumes the reading of the first edition, in which the former
of the two couplets ran:--
'Resistless burns the fever of renown,
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown.'
'The slip of paper and the other pieces of Johnson's hand-writing' have
been lost. At all events they are not in the Bodleian.
[1067] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 76), criticising Milton's scheme of
education, says:--'Those authors therefore are to be read at schools
that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and
most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by
poets, orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this
digression as pedantic or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me,
I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from
the study of nature to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I
oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think
that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of
the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn was
how to do good and avoid evil. "[Greek: hotti toi en megaroisi kakon t
agathon te tetuktai]."'
[1068] 'His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious,
but his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The
paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity
of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is
sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has
done well.' _Ib_. viii. 386. See _ante_, i. 312. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_.
p. 200) says that when 'Johnson would inveigh against devotional poetry,
and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble,' she
reminded him how 'when he would try to repeat the _Dies irae, dies illa_,
he could never pass the stanza ending thus, _Tantus labor non sit
cassus_, without bursting into a flood of tears.'
[1069] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2.
[1070] Dr. Johnson was by no means attentive to minute accuracy in his
_Lives of the Poets_; for notwithstanding my having detected this
mistake, he has continued it. BOSWELL. See _post_, iv. 51, note 2 for a
like instance of neglect.
[1071] See _ante_, ii. 64.
[1072] See _ante_, ii. 278.
[1073] 'May 31, 1778. We shall at least not doze, as we are used to do,
in summer. The Parliament is to have only short adjournments; and our
senators, instead of retiring to horseraces (_their_ plough), are all
turned soldiers, and disciplining militia. Camps everywhere.' Horace
Walpole's _Letters_, vii. 75. It was a threat of invasion by the united
forces of France and Spain, at the time that we were at war with
America, that caused the alarm. Dr. J.H. Burton (Dr. A. Carlyle's
_Auto_. p. 399) points out, that while the militia of England was placed
nearly in its present position by the act of 1757, yet 'when a proposal
for extending the system to Scotland was suggested (sic), ministers were
afraid to arm the people.' 'It is curious,' he continues, 'that for a
reason almost identical Ireland has been excepted from the Volunteer
organisation of a century later. It was not until 1793 that the Militia
Acts were extended to Scotland.'
[1074] 'Before dinner,' wrote Miss Burney in September of this year,
'to my great joy Dr. Johnson returned home from Warley Common.' Mme.
D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 114. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Oct. 15:--'A
camp, however familiarly we may speak of it, is one of the great scenes
of human life. War and peace divide the business of the world. Camps are
the habitations of those who conquer kingdoms, or defend them.' _Piozzi
Letters_, ii. 22.
[1075] Third Edition, p. 111 [Aug. 28]. BOSWELL. It was at Fort George.
'He made a very good figure upon these topicks. He said to me afterwards
that "he had talked ostentatiously."'
[1076] When I one day at Court expressed to General Hall my sense of the
honour he had done my friend, he politely answered, 'Sir, I did _myself_
honour.' BOSWELL.
[1077] According to Malone, 'Mr. Burke said of Mr. Boswell that good
nature was so natural to him that he had no merit in possessing it, and
that a man might as well assume to himself merit in possessing an
excellent constitution.' _European Mag_. 1798, p. 376. See Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Aug. 21.
[1078] Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48.
[1079] No doubt his house at Langton.
[1080] The Wey Canal. See _ante_, ii. 136. From _navigation_, i.e. a
canal for internal navigation, we have _navvy_. A _canal_ was the
common term for an ornamental pool, and for a time it seemed that
_navigation_ and not _canal_ might be the term applied to artificial
rivers.
[1081] Langton.
[1082]
'He plunging downward shot his radiant head:
Dispelled the breathing air that broke his flight;
Shorn of his beams, a man to mortal sight.'
Dryden, quoted in Johnson's _Dictionary_ under _shorn_. The phrase first
appears in _Paradise Lost_, i. 596.
[1083] Mrs. Thrale, this same summer, 'asked whether Mr. Langton took
any better care of his affairs. "No, madam," cried the doctor, "and
never will. He complains of the ill-effects of habit, and rests
contentedly upon a confessed indolence. He told his father himself that
he had _no turn to economy_, but a thief might as well plead that he had
no _turn to honesty_!"' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 75.
[1084] Locke, in his last words to Collins, said:--'This world affords
no solid satisfaction but the consciousness of well-doing, and the hopes
of another life.' Warburton's _Divine Legation_, i. xxvi.
[1085] Not the young brewer who was hoped for (_ante_, iii. 210);
therefore she is called 'poor thing.' One of Mr. Thrale's daughters
lived to Nov. 5, 1858.
[1086] On Oct. 15 Johnson wrote:--'Is my master [i.e. Mr. Thrale,
_ante_, i. 494, note 3] come to himself? Does he talk, and walk, and
look about him, as if there were yet something in the world for which it
is worth while to live? Or does he yet sit and say nothing? To grieve
for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without
them.' _Piozzi Letters_. ii. 22. Nine days later he wrote:--'You appear
to me to be now floating on the spring-tide of prosperity. I think it
very probably in your power to lay up L8000 a-year for every year to
come, increasing all the time, what needs not be increased, the
splendour of all external appearance. And surely such a state is not to
be put into yearly hazard for the pleasure of _keeping the house full_,
or the ambition of _out-brewing Whitbread_? _Piozzi Letters_, p. 24.
[1087] See _ante_, ii. 136. The following letter, of which a fac-simile
is given at the beginning of vol. iii. of Dr. Franklin's _Memoirs_, ed.
1818, tells of 'a difference' between the famous printer of Philadelphia
and the King's Printer of London.
'Philada., July 5, 1775.
'Mr. Strahan,
'You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has
doomed my Country to Destruction.--You have begun to burn our Towns, and
murder our People.--Look upon your Hands!--They are stained with the
Blood of your Relations! You and I were long friends:--You are now my
Enemy,--and
'I am, yours,
'B. FRANKLIN.'
When peace was made between the two countries the old friendship was
renewed. _Ib_. iii. 147.
[1088] On this day he wrote a touching letter to Mr. Elphinston, who had
lost his wife (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 66, note). Perhaps the thoughts
thus raised in him led him to this act of reconciliation.
[1089] Dr. Johnson here addresses his worthy friend, Bennet Langton,
Esq., by his title as Captain of the Lincolnshire militia, in which he
has since been most deservedly raised to the rank of Major. BOSWELL.
[1090] President of the Royal Society.
[1091] The King visited Warley Camp on Oct. 20. _Ann. Reg_. xxi. 237.
[1092] He visited Coxheath Camp on Nov. 23. _Ib_. Horace Walpole,
writing of April of this year when, in the alarm of a French invasion,
the militia were called out, says:--'The King's behaviour was childish
and absurd. He ordered the camp equipage, and said he would command the
army himself.' Walpole continues:--'It is reported, that in a few days
will be published in two volumes, folio, an accurate account of _His
Majesty's Journeys to Chatham and Portsmouth, together with a minute
Description of his numerous Fatigues, Dangers, and hair-breadth Escapes;
to which will be added the Royal Bon-mots_. And the following week will
be published an _History of all the Campaigns of the King of Prussia_,
in one volume duodecimo.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 262,
264.
[1093] Boswell, eleven years later, wrote of him:--'My second son is an
extraordinary boy; he is much of his father (vanity of vanities). He is
of a delicate constitution, but not unhealthy, and his spirit never
fails him. He is still in the house with me; indeed he is quite my
companion, though only eleven in September.' _Letters of Boswell_, p.
315. Mr. Croker, who knew him, says that 'he was very convivial, and in
other respects like his father--though altogether on a smaller scale.'
He edited a new edition of Malone's _Shakespeare_. He died in 1822.
Croker's _Boswell_, p. 620.
[1094] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 30, 1773.
[1095] _Ib_. Nov. 1.
[1096] Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church. Johnson
wrote in 1783:--'At home I see almost all my companions dead or dying.
At Oxford I have just left [lost] Wheeler, the man with whom I most
delighted to converse.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 302. See _post_, Aug. 30,
1780.
[1097] Johnson, in 1784, wrote about a visit to Oxford:--'Since I was
there my convivial friend Dr. Edwards and my learned friend Dr. Wheeler
are both dead, and my probabilities of pleasure are very much
diminished.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 371.
[1098] Dr. Edwards was preparing an edition of Xenophon's _Memorabilia_.
CROKER.
[1099] Johnson wrote on the 14th:--'Dr. Burney had the luck to go to
Oxford the only week in the year when the library is shut up. He was,
however, very kindly treated; as one man is translating Arabick and
another Welsh for his service.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 38.
[1100] Johnson three years later, hearing that one of Dr. Burney's sons
had got the command of a ship, wrote:--'I question if any ship upon the
ocean goes out attended with more good wishes than that which carries
the fate of Burney. I love all of that breed whom I can be said to know,
and one or two whom I hardly know I love upon credit, and love them
because they love each other.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 225. See _post_,
Nov. 16, 1784.
[1101] Vol. ii. p. 38. BOSWELL.
[1102] Miss Carmichael. BOSWELL.
[1103] See Appendix D.
[1104] See _ante_, ii. 382, note 1.
[1105] See _ante_, i. 446.
[1106] See _ante_, iii. 99, note 4.
[1107] It was the collected edition containing the first seven
_Discourses_, which had each year been published separately. 'I was
present,' said Samuel Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 18), 'when Sir Joshua
Reynolds delivered his last lecture at the Royal Academy. On entering
the room, I found that a semicircle of chairs immediately in front of
the pulpit was reserved for persons of distinction, being labelled "Mr.
Burke," "Mr. Boswell," &c.'
[1108] In an unfinished sketch for a _Discourse_, Reynolds said of those
already delivered:--'Whatever merit they may have must be imputed, in a
great measure, to the education which I may be said to have had under Dr.
Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to the credit
of these _Discourses_ if I could say it with truth, that he contributed
even a single sentiment to them; but he qualified my mind to think
justly.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 282. See _ante_, i. 245.
[1109] The error in grammar is no doubt Boswell's. He was so proud of
his knowledge of languages that when he was appointed Secretary for
Foreign Correspondence to the Royal Academy (_ante_, ii. 67, note 1),
'he wrote his acceptance of the honour in three separate letters, still
preserved in the Academy archives, in English, French, and Italian.'
_The Athenaeum_, No. 3041.
[1110] The remaining six volumes came out, not in 1780, but in 1781. See
_post_, 1781. He also wrote this year the preface to a translation of
_Oedipus Tyrannus_, by Thomas Maurice, in _Poems and Miscellaneous
Pieces_. (See preface to _Westminster Abbey with other Poems_, 1813.)
[1111] See _ante_, ii. 272.
[1112] _Life of Watts_ [_Works_, viii. 380]. BOSWELL.
[1113] See _ante_, ii. 107.
[1114] See _ante_, iii. 126.
[1115] 'Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused
than Pomfret's _Choice_.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 222.
[1116] Johnson, in his _Life of Yalden_ (_Ib_. viii. 83), calls the
following stanza from his _Hymn to Darkness_ 'exquisitely beautiful':--
'Thou dost thy smiles impartially bestow,
And know'st no difference here below:
All things appear the same by thee,
Though Light distinction makes, thou giv'st equality.'
It is strange that Churchill was left out of the collection.
[1117] Murphy says, though certainly with exaggeration, that 'after
Garrick's death Johnson never talked of him without a tear in his eyes.
He offered,' he adds, 'if Mrs. Garrick would desire it of him, to be the
editor of his works and the historian of his life.' Murphy's _Johnson_,
p. 145. Cumberland (_Memoirs_, ii. 210) said of Garrick's funeral:--'I
saw old Samuel Johnson standing beside his grave, at the foot of
Shakespeare's monument, and bathed in tears.' Sir William Forbes was
told that Johnson, in going to the funeral, said to William Jones:--'Mr.
Garrick and his profession have been equally indebted to each other. His
profession made him rich, and he made his profession respectable.'
Forbes's _Beattie_, Appendix CC.
[1118] See _ante_, i. 456.
[1119] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 23.
[1120] The anniversary of the death of Charles I.
[1121] See _ante_, i. 211.
[1122] He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a
very handsome present. BOSWELL.
[1123] On March 10 he wrote:--'I got my _Lives_, not yet quite printed,
put neatly together, and sent them to the King; what he says of them I
know not. If the king is a Whig, he will not like them; but is any king
a Whig?' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 43.
[1124] 'He was always ready to assist any authors in correcting their
works, and selling them to booksellers. "I have done writing," said he,
"myself, and should assist those that do write."' Johnson's _Works_
(1787), xi. 202. See _ante_, ii. 195.
[1125] In _The Rehearsal_. See _ante_, ii. 168.
[1126] Johnson wrote on Nov. 21, 1778:--'Baretti has told his musical
scheme to B---- and B---- _will neither grant the question nor deny_. He
is of opinion that if it does not fail, it will succeed, but if it does
not succeed he conceives it must fail.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 41.
Baretti, in a marginal note on his copy, says that B---- is Dr. Burney.
He adds:--'The musical scheme was the _Carmen Seculare_. That brought me
L150 in three nights, and three times as much to Philidor. It would have
benefited us both greatly more, if Philidor had not proved a scoundrel.'
'The complaisant Italian,' says the _Gent Mag_. (xlix. 361), 'in
compliment to our island chooses "to drive destructive war and
pestilence" _ad Mauros, Seras et Indos_, instead of _ad Persas atque
Britannos_.' Mr. Tasker, the clergyman, went a step further. 'I,' he
says in his version of the _Carmen_,
'Honour and fame prognosticate
To free-born Britain's naval state
And to her Patriot-King.' _Ib_.
[1127] We may compare with this the scene in _Le Misanthrope_ (Act i.
sc. 2), where Oronte reads his sonnet to Alceste; who thrice answers:
--'Je ne dis pas cela, mais--.' See _ante_, iii. 320.
[1128] This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informed me that this
portrait is so accurately drawn, that being, some years after the
publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he
was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know,
but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he
asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it
appeared that he was indeed the author of _The Warlike Genius of
Britain_. CROKER.
[1129] The poet was preparing a second edition of his _Ode_. 'This
animated Pindaric made its first appearance the latter end of last year
(1778). It is well calculated to rouse the martial spirit of the nation,
and is now reprinted with considerable additions.' _Gent. Mag_. July,
1779, p. 357. In 1781 he published another volume of his poems with a
poetical preface, in which he thus attacks his brother-in-law:--
'To suits litigious, ignorant and raw,
Compell'd by an unletter'd brother-in-law.'
_Ib_. 1781, p. 227.
[1130] Boswell must have misheard what Johnson said. It was not Anson,
but Amherst whom the bard praised. _Ode_, p. 7.
[1131] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Foote's death:--'Now, will any of
his contemporaries bewail him? Will Genius change _his sex_ to weep?'
_Piozzi Letters_, i. 396.
[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.
[1138] 'Three men,' writes Horace Walpole, 'were especially suspected,
Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and W. G. Hamilton. Hamilton was most generally
suspected.' _Memoirs of George III_, iii. 401. According to Dr. T.
Campbell (_Diary_, p. 35) Johnson in 1775 'said that he looked upon
Burke to be the author of _Junius_, and that though he would not take
him _contra mundum_, yet he would take him against any man.'
[1139] Sargeant Bettersworth, enraged at Swift's lines on him,
'demanded whether he was the author of that poem. "Mr. Bettesworth,"
answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who
knowing my disposition to satire advised me that if any scoundrel or
blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, _Are you the author of this
paper_? I should tell him that I was not the author; and therefore I
tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines."'
Johnson's Works, viii. 216. See _post_, June 13, 1784.
[1140] Mr. S. Whyte (_Miscellanea Nova_, p. 27) says that Johnson
mistook the nature of the compliment. Sheridan had fled to France from
his debtors. In 1766 an Insolvent Debtors' Relief Bill was brought into
the House in his absence. Mr. Whyte, one of his creditors, petitioned
the House to have Sheridan's name included. A very unusual motion was
made, 'that petitioner shall not be put to his oath; but the facts set
forth in his petition be admitted simply on his word.' The motion was
seconded by an instantaneous Ay! Ay! without a dissenting voice.
Sheridan wrote to Mr. Whyte:--'As the thing has passed with so much
credit to me, the whole honour and merit of it is yours'.
[1141] In _The Rambler_, No. 39, he wrote of this kind of control:--'It
may be urged in extenuation of this crime which parents, not in any
other respect to be numbered with robbers and assassins, frequently
commit, that, in their estimation, riches and happiness are equivalent
terms.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'There wanders about the world a wild
notion which extends over marriage more than over any transaction. If
Miss ---- followed a trade, would it be said that she was bound in
conscience to give or refuse credit at her father's choice? ... The
parent's moral right can arise only from his kindness, and his civil
right only from his money.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 83. See _ante_, i. 346.
[1142] See p. 186 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[1143] He refers to Johnson's letter of July 3, 1778, _ante_, p. 363.
[1144] See _ante_, iii. 5, 178.
[1145] 'By seeing London,' said Johnson, 'I have seen as much of life as
the world can show.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 11. 'London,' wrote Hume
in 1765, 'never pleased me much. Letters are there held in no honour;
Scotmen are hated; superstition and ignorance gain ground daily.' J.H.
Burton's _Hume_, ii. 292.
[1146] See _ante_, i. 82.
[1147] 'I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations ... many brought
thither by the desire of living after their own manner without
observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a
city populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the
gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.' _Rasselas_, ch.
xii. Gibbon wrote of London (_Misc. Works_, ii. 291):--'La liberte d'un
simple particulier se fortifie par l'immensite de la ville.'
[1148] Perhaps Mr. Elphinston, of whom he said (_ante_, ii. 171), 'His
inner part is good, but his outer part is mighty awkward.'
[1149] _Worthy_ is generally applied to Langton. His foibles were a
common subject of their talk. _Ante_, iii. 48.
[1150] By the Author of _The Whole Duty of Man_. See _ante_, ii. 239,
note 4. Johnson often quotes it in his _Dictionary_.
[1151] 'The things done in his body.' 2 _Corinthians_, v. 10.
[1152]
'Yes I am proud: I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me:
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.
O sacred weapon! left for truth's defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!'
Pope. _Satires, Epilogue_, ii. 208.
[1153] Page 173. BOSWELL.
[1154] At eleven o'clock that night Johnson recorded:--'I am now to
review the last year, and find little but dismal vacuity, neither
business nor pleasure; much intended and little done. My health is much
broken, my nights afford me little rest.... Last week I published the
_Lives of the Poets_, written, I hope, in such a manner as may tend to
the promotion of piety. In this last year I have made little
acquisition. I have scarcely read anything. I maintain Mrs. ----
[Desmoulins] and her daughter. Other good of myself I know not where to
find, except a little charity.' _Ib_. p. 175.
[1155] Mauritius Lowe, the painter. _Ante_, p. 324.
[1156] See _ante_ ii 249.
[1157] 'Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put
'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick,
and cried, "Down wantons, down!"' _King Lear_, act ii. sc. 4.
[1158] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 23, where Johnson, speaking of
claret, said that 'there were people who died of dropsies, which they
contracted in trying to get drunk.'
[1159] 'If,' wrote Johnson in one of his _Debates_ (_Works_ xi. 392),
'the felicity of drunkenness can be more cheaply obtained by buying
spirits than ale, it is easy to see which will be preferred.' See
_post_, March 30, 1781.
[1160] Dempster, to whom Boswell complained that his nerves were
affected, replied:--'One had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep
company with such a man.' _Ante_, i. 434.
[1161] Marquis of Graham, afterwards third Duke of Montrose. In _The
Rolliad_ (ed. 1795) he is thus attacked:--
'Superior to abuse
He nobly glories in the name of Goose;
Such Geese at Rome from the perfidious Gaul
Preserved the Treas'ry-Bench and Capitol.'
He was one of the Lords of the Treasury. See also _The Rolliad_, p. 60
[1162] Johnson, however, when telling Mrs. Thrale that, in case of her
husband's death, she ought to carry on his business, said:--'Do not be
frighted; trade could not be managed by those who manage it if it had
much difficulty. Their great books are soon understood, and their
language,
"If speech it may be called, that speech is none
Distinguishable in number, mood, or tense,"
is understood with no very laborious application.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.
91. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 18.
[1163] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 26.
[1164] See _ante_, iii. 88, note 1.
[1165] The Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, with whom she
lived seventeen years, and by whom she had nine children. _Ann. Reg_.
xxii. 206. The Duke of Richmond attacked her in the House of Lords as
one 'who was supposed to sell favours in the Admiralty for money.'
Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 248, and _Parl.
Hist_. xix. 993. It so happened that on the day on which Hackman was
hanged 'Fox moved for the removal of Lord Sandwich [from office] but was
beaten by a large majority.' Walpole's _Letters_, vii. 194. One of her
children was Basil Montague, the editor of _Bacon_. Carlyle writes of
him:--'On going to Hinchinbrook, I found he was strikingly like the
dissolute, questionable Earl of Sandwich; who, indeed, had been father
of him in a highly tragic way.' Carlyle's _Reminiscences_, i. 224.
Hackman, who was a clergyman of the Church, had once been in the army.
Cradock's _Memoirs_, i. 140.
[1166] On the following Monday Boswell was present at Hackman's
execution, riding to Tyburn with him in a mourning coach. _London Mag_.
for 1779, p. 189.
[1167] At the Club. CROKER. See _ante_, ii. 345, note 5.
[1168] See _ante_, p. 281, for a previous slight altercation, and p. 195
for a possible cause of unfriendly feeling between the two men. If such
a feeling existed, it passed away, at all events on Johnson's side,
before Beauclerk's death. See _post_, iv. 10.
[1169] This gentleman who loved buttered muffins reappears in _Pickwick_
(ch. 44), as 'the man who killed himself on principle,' after eating
three-shillings' worth of crumpets. Mr. Croker says that Mr. Fitzherbert
is meant; but he hanged himself. _Ante_, ii. 228, note 3.
[1170] 'It is not impossible that this restless desire of novelty, which
gives so much trouble to the teacher, may be often the struggle of the
understanding starting from that to which it is not by nature adapted,
and travelling in search of something on which it may fix with greater
satisfaction. For, without supposing each man particularly marked out by
his genius for particular performances, it may be easily conceived that
when a numerous class of boys is confined indiscriminately to the same
forms of composition, the repetition of the same words, or the
explication of the same sentiments, the employment must, either by
nature or accident, be less suitable to some than others.... Weariness
looks out for relief, and leisure for employment, and surely it is
rational to indulge the wanderings of both.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 232.
See _post_, iv. 21.
[1171] 'See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept 10, and Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 466. Mallet had the impudence to write to Hume that the book was
ready for the press; 'which,' adds Hume, 'is more than I or most people
expected.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 139.
[1172] The name is not given in the first two editions. See _ante_,
i. 82.
[1173] See p. 289 of this vol., and vol. i. p. 207. BOSWELL. The saying
is from Diogenes Laertius, bk. v. ch. I, and is attributed to Aristotle
--[Greek: _ho philoi oudeis philos_.]
[1174]
'Love, the most generous passion of the mind,
The softest refuge innocence can find;
The safe director of unguided youth,
Fraught with kind wishes, and secured by truth;
That cordial drop Heaven in our cup has thrown,
To make the nauseous draught of life go down.'
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, _A Letter from Artemisia_, Chalmers's
_Poets_, viii. 242. Pope (_Imitations of Horace_, _Epist_. I. vi. 126)
refers to these lines:--
'If, after all, we must with Wilmot own,
The cordial drop of life is love alone.'
[1175] Garrick wrote in 1776:--'Gout, stone, and sore throat! Yet I am
in spirits.' _Garrick Corres_, ii. 138.
[1176] See ante, p. 70.
[1177] In _The Life of Edmund Smith_ (_Works_, vii. 380). See _ante_,
i. 81.
[1178] Johnson wrote of Foote's death:--'The world is really
impoverished by his sinking glories.' Piozzi _Letters_, i. 396. See
_ante_, p. 185, note 1.
[1179] 'Allowance must be made for some degree of exaggerated praise,'
he said in speaking of epitaphs. 'In lapidary inscriptions a man is not
upon oath.' _Ante_, ii. 407.
[1180] Garrick retired in January 1776, three years before his death.
He visited Ireland in 1742, and again in 1743. Davies's _Garrick_,
i. 57, 91.
[1181] In the original _impoverished_.
[1182] Certainly not Horace Walpole, as had been suggested to Mr.
Croker. He and Johnson can scarcely be said to have known each other
(_post_, under June 19, 1784, note). A sentence in one of Walpole's
_Letters_ (iv. 407) shews that he was very unlike the French wit. On
Sept. 22, 1765, he wrote from Paris:--'The French affect philosophy,
literature, and free-thinking: the first never did, and never will
possess me; of the two others I have long been tired. _Free-thinking is
for one's self, surely not for society_.' Perhaps Richard Fitzpatrick is
meant, who later on joined in writing _The Rolliad_, and who was the
cousin and 'sworn brother' of Charles Fox. Walpole describes him as 'an
agreeable young man of parts,' and mentions his 'genteel irony and
badinage.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 167 and ii. 560. He
was Lord Shelburne's brother-in-law, at whose house Johnson might have
met him, as well as in Fox's company. There are one or two lines in _The
Rolliad_ which border on profanity. Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 104) said
that 'Fitzpatrick was at one time nearly as famous for his wit as Hare.'
Tickell in his _Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox to the Hon. John
Townshend_, p. 13, writes:--
'Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit and Stanhope's ease,
And Burgoyne's manly sense unite to please.'
[1183] See ante, i. 379, note 2.
[1184] According to Mr. Wright (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 630), this
physician was Dr. James. I have examined, however, the 2nd, 3rd, 5th,
and 7th editions of his _Dissertation on Fevers_, but can find no
mention of this. In the 7th edition, published in 1770, he complains (p.
111) of 'the virulence and rancour with which the fever-powder and its
inventor have been traduced and persecuted by the vendors of medicines
and their abettors.'
[1185] According to Mr. Croker this was Andrew Millar, but I doubt it.
See ante, i. 287, note 3.
[1186] 'The Chevalier Taylor, Ophthalmiator Pontifical, Imperial, and
Royal,' as he styled himself. _Gent. Mag_. xxxi. 226. Lord Eldon said
that--'Taylor, dining with the barristers upon the Oxford circuit,
having related many wonderful things which he had done, was asked by
Bearcroft, "Pray, Chevalier, as you have told us of a great many things
which you have done and can do, will you be so good as to try to tell us
anything which you cannot do?" "Nothing so easy," replied Taylor, "I
cannot pay my share of the dinner bill: and that, Sir, I must beg of you
to do."' Twiss's _Eldon_, i 321.
[1187] Pope mentions Ward in the Imitations of Horace_, 2 Epistle,
i. 180:--
'He serv'd a 'prenticeship who sets up shop;
Ward try'd on puppies, and the poor, his drop.'
Fielding, in _Tom Jones_, bk. viii. ch. 9, says that 'interest is indeed
a most excellent medicine, and, like Ward's pill, flies at once to the
particular part of the body on which you desire to operate.' In the
introduction to the _Voyage to Lisbon_ he speaks very highly of Ward's
remedies and of Ward himself, who 'endeavoured, he says, 'to serve me
without any expectation or desire of fee or reward.'
[1188] 'Every thing,' said Johnson, 'comes from Beauclerk so easily. It
appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Aug. 21. See _post_, under May 2, 1780. Dr. A. Carlyle
(_Auto_. p. 219) mentions another great-grandson of Charles II.
(Commissioner Cardonnel) who was 'the most agreeable companion that ever
was. He excelled in story-telling, like his great-grandfather, Charles
II., but he seldom or ever repeated them.'
[1189] No doubt Burke. _Ante_, ii. 222, note 4.
[1190] General Paoli's house, where for some years Boswell was 'a
constant guest while he was in London.' _Ante_, p. 35
[1191] Allan Ramsay's residence: No. 67, Harley-street. P. CUNNINGHAM.
[1192] It is strange that he does not mention their visit in a
letter in which he tells Temple that he is lame, and that his 'spirits
sank to dreary dejection;' and utters what the editor justly calls an
ambiguous prayer:--'Let us hope for gleams of joy here, and a _blaze_
hereafter.' This letter, by the way, and the one that follows it, are
both wrongly dated. _Letters of Boswell_, p. 237.
[1193] See p. 344 of this Volume. BOSWELL.
[1194] 'Johnson's first question was, "What kind of a man was Mr. Pope
in his conversation?" His Lordship answered, that if the conversation
did not take something of a lively or epigrammatic turn, he fell asleep,
or perhaps pretended to do so.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 200.
Johnson in his _Life of Pope (Works_, viii. 309) says that 'when he
wanted to sleep he "nodded in company."'
[1195] Boswell wrote to Temple late on this day, 'Let us not dispute any
more about political notions. It is now night. Dr. Johnson has dined,
drunk tea, and supped with only Mr. Charles Dilly and me, and I am
confirmed in my Toryism.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 238.
[1196] In the original _or_. Boswell quotes the line correctly, _ante_,
p. 220.
[1197] 'I do not (says Mr. Malone) see any difficulty in this passage,
and wonder that Dr. Johnson should have acknowledged it to be
_inaccurate_. The Hermit, it should be observed, had no actual
experience of the world whatsoever: all his knowledge concerning it had
been obtained in two ways; from _books_, and from the _relations_ of
those country swains, who had seen a little of it. The plain meaning,
therefore, is, "To clear his doubts concerning Providence, and to obtain
some knowledge of the world by actual experience; to see whether the
accounts furnished by books, or by the oral communications of swains,
were just representations of it; [I say, _swains_,] for his oral or
_viva voce_ information had been obtained from that part of mankind
_alone_, &c." The word _alone_ here does not relate to the whole of the
preceding line, as has been supposed, but, by a common licence, to the
words,--_of all mankind_, which are understood, and of which it is
restrictive.'
Mr. Malone, it must be owned, has shewn much critical ingenuity in the
explanation of this passage. His interpretation, however, seems to me
much too recondite. The _meaning_ of the passage may be certain enough;
but surely the _expression_ is confused, and one part of it
contradictory to the other. BOSWELL. This note is first given in the
third edition.
[1198] See ante, p. 297.
[1199] State is used for statement. 'He sate down to examine Mr. Owen's
states.' Rob Roy, ed. 1860, viii. 101.
[1200] Johnson started for Lichfield and Ashbourne about May 20, and
returned to London towards the end of June. _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 44,
55. 'It is good,' he wrote, 'to wander a little, lest one should dream
that all the world was Streatham, of which one may venture to say,
_none but itself can be its parallel_.' _Ib_. p. 47. 'None but thyself
can be thy parallel' is from Theobald's _Double Falsehood_. Pope calls
it 'a marvellous line,' and thus introduces it in _The Dunciad_, first
edition, iii. 271:--'For works like these let deathless Journals tell,
"None but thyself can be thy parallel."'
[1201] See _post_, Boswell's letter of Aug. 24, 1780, and Johnson's
letter of Dec. 7, 1782.
[1202] Boswell, on his way to Scotland, wrote to Temple from this
house:--'I am now at Southill, to which place Mr. Charles Dilly has
accompanied; it is the house of Squire John Dilly, his elder brother.
The family of Dilly have been land-proprietors in this county for two
hundred years.... I am quite the great man here, and am to go forward on
the North road to-morrow morning. Poor Mr. Edward Dilly is fast a-dying;
he cried with affection at seeing me here; he is in as agreeable a frame
as any Christian can be.... I am edified here.' _Letters of Boswell_,
p. 239.
[1203] On June 18 in the following year he recorded:--'In the morning of
this day last year I perceived the remission of those convulsions in my
breast, which had distressed me for more than twenty years. I returned
thanks at church for the mercy granted me, which has now continued a
year.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 183. Three days later he wrote:--'It was a
twelvemonth last Sunday since the convulsions in my breast left me. I
hope I was thankful when I recollected it; by removing that disorder a
great improvement was made in the enjoyment of life. I am now as well
as men at my age can expect to be, and I yet think I shall be better.'
_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 163.
[1204] From a stroke of apoplexy. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'You
really do not use me well in thinking that I am in less pain on this
occasion than I ought to be. There is nobody left for me to care about
but you and my master, and I have now for many years known the value of
his friendship, and the importance of his life, too well not to have
him very near my heart.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 56. To him he wrote
shortly after the attack, no doubt with a view to give the sick man
confidence:--'To shew you how well I think of your health, I have sent
you an hundred pounds to keep for me.' _Ib_. p. 54. Miss Burney wrote
very soon after the attack:--'At dinner everybody tried to be cheerful,
but a dark and gloomy cloud hangs over the head of poor Mr. Thrale which
no flashes of merriment or beams of wit can pierce through; yet he seems
pleased that everybody should be gay.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 220.
The attack was in June. _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 47. On Aug. 3, Johnson
wrote to Dr. Taylor:--'Mr. Thrale has perfectly recovered all his
faculties and all his vigour.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 461.
[1205] Which I communicated to him from his Lordship, but it has not yet
been published. I have a copy of it. BOSWELL. The few notices concerning
Dryden, which Lord Hailes had collected, the authour afterwards gave to
Mr. Malone. MALONE. Malone published a _Life of Dryden_.
[1206] He recorded of his birth-day this year:--'On the 17th Mr. Chamier
(_ante_, i. 478) took me away with him from Streatham. I left the
servants a guinea for my health, and was content enough to escape
into a house where my birth-day not being known could not be mentioned.
I sat up till midnight was past, and the day of a new year, a very awful
day, began.' _Pr. and Med_. pp. 181, 225.
[1207] See _ante_, ii. 427, note 1.
[1208] In one of his manuscript Diaries, there is the following entry,
which marks his curious minute attention: 'July 26, 1768. I shaved my
nail by accident in whetting the knife, about an eighth of an inch from
the bottom, and about a fourth from the top. This I measure that I may
know the growth of nails; the whole is about five eighths of an inch.'
Another of the same kind appears, 'Aug. 7, 1779, _Partem brachii dextri
carpo proximam et cutem pectoris circa mamillam dextram rasi, ut notum
fieret quanta temporis pili renovarentur_.'
And, 'Aug. 15, 1773. I cut from the vine 41 leaves, which weighed five
oz. and a half, and eight scruples:--I lay them upon my book-case, to
see what weight they will lose by drying.' BOSWELL.
In _The Idler_, No. 31, we have in Mr. Sober a portrait of Johnson drawn
by himself. He writes:--'The art is to fill the day with petty business,
to have always something in hand which may raise curiosity, but not
solicitude, and keep the mind in a state of action, but not of labour.
This art has for many years been practised by my old friend Sober with
wonderful success.... His chief pleasure is conversation; there is no
end of his talk or his attention; to speak or to hear is equally
pleasing; for he still fancies that he is teaching or learning
something, and is free for the time from his own reproaches. But there
is one time at night when he must go home that his friends may sleep;
and another time in the morning when all the world agrees to shut out
interruption. These are the moments of which poor Sober trembles at the
thought. But the misery of these tiresome intervals he has many means of
alleviating.... His daily amusement is chymistry. He has a small furnace
which he employs in distillation, and which has long been the solace of
his life. He draws oils and waters, and essences and spirits, which he
knows to be of no use; sits and counts the drops as they come from his
retort, and forgets that whilst a drop is falling a moment flies away.'
Mrs. Piozzi says (_Anec_. p. 236):--'We made up a sort of laboratory at
Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with drawing essences and
colouring liquors. But the danger Mr. Thrale found his friend in one
day, when he got the children and servants round him to see some
experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment.'
[1209] Afterwards Mr. Stuart Wortley. He was the father of the first
Lord Wharncliffe. CROKER.
[1210] Horace Walpole, in April 1778, wrote:--'It was very remarkable
that on the militia being ordered out, two of Lord Bute's younger sons
offered, as Bedfordshire gentlemen, to take any rank in the militia in
that county. I warned Lord Ossory, the Lord Lieutenant, against so
dangerous a precedent as admitting Scots in the militia. A militia can
only be safe by being officered by men of property in each county.'
_Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 252.
[1211] Walpole wrote in Dec. 1778:--'His Majesty complained of the
difficulty of recruiting. General Keppel replied aloud, "It is owing to
the Scots, who raise their clans in and about London." This was very
true; the Master of Lovat had received a Royal gift of L6000 to raise a
regiment of his clan, and had literally picked up boys of fifteen in
London and Westminster.' _Ib_. p. 316.
[1212] He made his will in his wife's life-time, and appointed her and
Sir William Forbes, or the survivor of them, 'tutors and curators' to
his children. _Boswelliana_, p. 186.
[1213] Head gardener at Stowe, and afterwards at Hampton Court and
Windsor. He got his nickname from his habit of saying that grounds which
he was asked to lay out had _capabilities_. Lord Chatham wrote of
him:--'He writes Lancelot Brown Esquire, _en titre d'office_: please to
consider, he shares the private hours of--[the King], dines familiarly
with his neighbour of Sion [the Duke of Northumberland], and sits down
at the tables of all the House of Lords, &c.' _Chatham Corres_. iv. 178,
430.
[1214] See _ante_, pp. 334, 350. Clive, before the Committee of the
House of Commons, exclaimed:--'By God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I
stand astonished at my own moderation.' Macaulay's _Essays_, iii. 198.
[1215] See _ante_, p. 216.
[1216] Yet, according to Johnson, 'the poor in England were better
provided for than in any other country of the same extent.' _Ante_, ii.
130.
[1217] See _ante_, ii. 119.
[1218] See _ante_, i. 67, note 2.
[1219] The Rev. Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, in the Preface to his
valuable edition of Archbishop King's _Essay on the Origin of Evil_ [ed.
1781, p. xvii], mentions that the principles maintained in it had been
adopted by Pope in his _Essay on Man_; and adds, 'The fact,
notwithstanding such denial (Bishop Warburton's), might have been
strictly verified by an unexceptionable testimony, _viz_ that of the
late Lord Bathurst, who saw the very same system of the [Greek: to
beltion] (taken from the Archbishop) in Lord Bolingbroke's own hand,
lying before Mr. Pope, while he was composing his _Essay_.' This is
respectable evidence; but that of Dr. Blair is more direct from the
fountain-head, as well as more full. Let me add to it that of Dr. Joseph
Warton; 'The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly assured me that he had read
the whole scheme of _The Essay on Man_, in the hand-writing of
Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions, which Pope was to
versify and illustrate.' _Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope_,
vol. ii. p. 62. BOSWELL. In the above short quotation from Law are two
parentheses. According to Paley, the Bishop was once impatient at the
slowness of his Carlisle printer. '"Why does not my book make its
appearance?" said he to the printer. "My Lord, I am extremely sorry; but
we have been obliged to send to Glasgow for a pound of parentheses."'
Best's _Memorials_, p. 196.
[1220] Johnson, defining _ascertain_ in its first meaning as
_establish_, quotes from Hooker: 'The divine law _ascertaineth_ the
truth of other laws.'
[1221] 'To those who censured his politicks were added enemies yet more
dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his
qualifications for a translator of Homer. To these he made no publick
opposition; but in one of his letters escapes from them as well as he
can. At an age like his, for he was not more than twenty-five, with an
irregular education, and a course of life of which much seems to have
passed in conversation, it is not very likely that he overflowed with
Greek. But when he felt himself deficient he sought assistance; and what
man of learning would refuse to help him?' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 252.
Johnson refers, I think, to Pope's letter to Addison of Jan. 30,
1713-14.
[1222] 'That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme
regularly drawn and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only
transformed from prose to verse, has been reported but can hardly be
true. The Essay plainly appears the fabrick of a poet; what Bolingbroke
supplied could be only the first principles; the order, illustration and
embellishments must all be Pope's.' _Works_, viii. 287. Dr. Warton
(_Essay on Pope_, ii. 58) says that he had repeatedly heard from Lord
Bathurst the statement recorded by Dr. Blair.
[1223] 'In defiance of censure and contempt truth is frequently
violated; and scarcely the most vigilant and unremitted circumspection
will secure him that mixes with mankind from being hourly deceived by
men, of whom it can scarcely be imagined that they mean any injury to
him or profit to themselves.' _Works_, iv. 22.
[1224] See _ante_, pp. 226, 243.
[1225] Gibbon wrote of Lord Hailes:--'In his _Annals of Scotland_ he
has shewn himself a diligent collector and an accurate critic.' Gibbon's
_Misc. Works_, i. 233.
[1226] See _ante_, ii. 237.
[1227] See _ante_, ii. 79.
[1228]
'Versate diu quid ferre recusent,
Quid valeant humeri.'
'Weigh with care
What suits your genius, what your strength can bear.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. 39.
[1229] Boswell seems to be afraid of having his head made to ache again,
by the sense that Johnson should put into it. See _ante_, p. 381.
[1230] _The Spleen_, a Poem. BOSWELL. The author was Matthew Green.
Dodsley's _Collection_, i. 145. See _ante_, p. 38.
[1231] See _ante_, i. 182.
[1232] Of Dryden he wrote (_Works_, vii. 250):--'He began even now to
exercise the domination of conscious genius by recommending his own
performance.'
[1233] See _ante_, i. 297.
[1234] Johnson's _Works_, vii. 95. See _ante_, i. 111.
[1235]
1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand. [March 1737, _ante_, i.
103.]
2. Greenwich. [July 1737, _ante_, i. 107.]
3. Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square. [End of 1737, _ante_, i. III.]
4. Castle-street, Cavendish-square, No. 6. [Spring and October 1738;
_ante_, i. 120, and 135, note 1. Castle-street is now called
Castle-street East.]
5. Strand.
6. Boswell-Court.
7. Strand, again. [In Croker's _Boswell_, p. 44, is a letter dated, 'At
the Black Boy, over against Durham Yard, Strand, March 31, 1741.']
8. Bow-street.
9. Holborn.
10. Fetter-lane. [Johnson mentions in _Pr. and Med_. p. 73, 'A good
night's rest I once had in Fetter-Lane.']
11. Holborn, again.
12. Gough-square. [In Croker's _Boswell_, p. 62, is a letter dated
'Goff-square, July 12, 1749.' He moved to Staple Inn on March 23,
1759. _Rasselas_ was written when he was living in Gough-square, and
not in Staple Inn, as has been asserted. _Ante_, i. 516.]
13. Staple Inn.
14. Gray's Inn. [In Croker's _Boswell_, p. 118, is a letter dated
'Gray's Inn, Dec. 17, 1759.']
15. Inner Temple-lane, No. 1. [He was here in June 1760, _ante_, i. 350,
note 1; and on Jan. 13, 1761, as is shewn by a letter in Croker's
_Boswell_, p. 122. Johnson Buildings now stand where his house stood.]
16. Johnson's-court, No. 7. [See i. 518 for a letter dated
'Johnson's-court, Oct. 17, 1765.']
17. Bolt-court, No. 8. [He was here on March 15, 1776 (_ante_, ii. 427).
From about 1765 (_ante_, i. 493) to Oct. 7, 1782 (_post_), he had
moreover 'an apartment' at Streatham, and from about 1765 to about
the end of 1780, one at Southwark (_ante_, i. 493). From about the
beginning of 1781 to the spring of 1783 he had a room either in
Grosvenor-square or Argyll-street (_post_, March 20, 1781 and March
21, 1783.)]
[1236] See _ante_, ii. 55.
[1237] If, as seems to be meant, the 'gentleman supposed the case' on
this occasion, he must have been Boswell, for no one else was present
with Johnson.
[1238] A crime that he would have restrained by 'severe laws steadily
enforced.' _Ante_, iii. 18.
[1239] See _ante_, ii. 105.
[1240] Lord Newhaven was one of a creation of eighteen Irish peers in
1776. 'It was a mob of nobility,' wrote Horace Walpole. 'The King in
private laughed much at the eagerness for such insignificant honours.'
_Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 58.
[1241] Now the Lady of Sir Henry Dashwood, Bart. BOSWELL.
[1242] See _ante_, ii. 111.
[1243] _The False Alarm_. See _ante_, ii. 111.
[1244] See Collins's _Peerage_, i. 636, and Hume's _England_, ed. 1802,
iv. 451, for an account, how Henry VIII. once threatened to cut off the
head of Edward Montagu, one of the members (not the Speaker as Mr.
Croker says), if he did not get a money bill passed by the next day. The
bill, according to the story, was passed. Mr. P. Cunningham informed Mr.
Croker that Johnson was here guilty of an anachronism, for that heads
were first placed on Temple Bar in William III's time.
Back to Full Books
|