[731] He had said this before. _Ante_, ii. 96.
[732]
'Brunetta's wise in actions great and rare,
But scorns on trifles to bestow her care.
Thus ev'ry hour Brunetta is to blame,
Because th' occasion is beneath her aim.
Think nought a trifle, though it small appear;
Small sands the mountains, moments make the year,
And trifles life. Your care to trifles give,
Or you may die before you truly live.'
_Love of Fame_, Satire vi. Johnson often taught that life is made up of
trifles. See _ante_, i. 433.
[733]
"But hold," she cries, "lampooner, have a care;
Must I want common sense, because I'm fair?"
O no: see Stella; her eyes shine as bright,
As if her tongue was never in the right;
And yet what real learning, judgment, fire!
She seems inspir'd, and can herself inspire:
How then (if malice rul'd not all the fair)
Could Daphne publish, and could she forbear?
We grant that beauty is no bar to sense,
Nor is't a sanction for impertinence.
_Love of Fame_, Satire v.
[734] Johnson called on Young's son at Welwyn in June, 1781. _Ante_, iv.
119. Croft, in his _Life of Young_ (Johnson's _Works_, viii. 453), says
that 'Young and his housekeeper were ridiculed with more ill-nature than
wit in a kind of novel published by Kidgell in 1755, called _The Card_,
under the name of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.'
[735] _Memoirs of Philip Doddridge_, ed. 1766, p. 171.
[736] So late as 1783 he said 'this Hanoverian family is isolée here.'
_Ante_, iv. 165.
[737] See _ante_, ii. 81, where he hoped that 'this gloom of infidelity
was only a transient cloud.'
[738] Boswell has recorded this saying, _ante_, iv. 194.
[739] In 1755 an English version of this work had been published. _Gent.
Mag_. 1755, p. 574. In the Chronological Catalogue on p. 343 in vol. 66
of Voltaire's _Works_, ed. 1819, it is entered as _'Histoire de la
Guerre de_ 1741, fondue en partie dans le _Précis du siècle de
Louis XV_.'
[740] Boswell is here merely repeating Johnson's words, who on April 11
of this year, advising him to keep a journal, had said, 'The great thing
to be recorded is the state of your own mind.' _Ante_, ii. 217.
[741] This word is not in his _Dictionary_.
[742] See _ante_, i. 498.
[743] See _ante_, ii. 61, 335; iii. 375, and _post_, under Nov. 11.
[744] Beattie had attacked Hume in his _Essay on Truth_ (_ante_, ii. 201
and v. 29). Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an
Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his _Essay_ under his arm. 'The angel
of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy,
Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at
his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact
likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very
indignant at it, and said:--"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence
and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to
wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as
Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of
ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your
allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your
disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 300. Another of
the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes
(_Life of Beattie_, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that
Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire. Beattie's _Essay_
is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I
believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his _Life of Hume_.
Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie's side:--
'Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung
His _Minstrel_ lays;
Or tore, with noble ardour stung,
The _Sceptic's_ bays.'
(_The Vision_, part ii.)
[745] See _ante_, ii. 441.
[746] William Tytler published in 1759 an _Examination of the Histories
of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume with respect to Mary Queen of Scots_. It
was reviewed by Johnson. _Ante_, i. 354.
[747] Johnson's _Rasselas_ was published in either March or April, and
Goldsmith's _Polite Learning_ in April of 1759.I do not find that they
published any other works at the same time. If these are the works
meant, we have a proof that the two writers knew each other earlier than
was otherwise known.
[748] 'A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of
_Phalaris_; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of
criticism (the _Answer_ to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be
discouraged at this run upon him, for tho' they had got the laughers on
their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a
work of so much merit. To which the other replied, "Indeed Dr. S.
[Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter. For I hold it as certain,
that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."'
_Warburton on Pope_, iv. 159, quoted in Person's _Tracts_, p. 345.
'Against personal abuse,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 348), 'Johnson was
ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:--"Alas!
reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every
concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' He wrote to Baretti:--'A man of
genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.' _Ante_, i. 381. Voltaire
in his _Essay Sur les inconvéniens attachés à la Littérature_ (_Works_,
ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win
the favour of the critics, continues:--'Tous vos soins n'empêchent pas
que quelque journaliste ne vous déchire. Vous lui répondez; il réplique;
vous avez un procès par écrit devant le public, qui condamne les deux
parties au ridicule.' See _ante_, ii. 61, note 4.
[749] However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they
are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he
says:--'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very
slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as
the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to
continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea
of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender
exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' _Tom Jones_,
bk. xi. ch. 1.
[750] It is strange that Johnson should not have known that the
_Adventures of a Guinea_ was written by a namesake of his own, Charles
Johnson. Being disqualified for the bar, which was his profession, by a
supervening deafness, he went to India, and made some fortune, and died
there about 1800. WALTER SCOTT.
[751] Salusbury, not Salisbury.
[752] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, .ii 57) mentions in 1746 his cousin Sir
John Philipps, of Picton Castle; 'a noted Jacobite.'... He thus mentions
Lady Philipps in 1788 when she was 'very aged.' 'They have a favourite
black, who has lived with them a great many years, and is remarkably
sensible. To amuse Lady Philipps under a long illness, they had read to
her the account of the Pelew Islands. Somebody happened to say we were
sending a ship thither; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, "Then
there is an end of their happiness." What a satire on Europe!' _Ib_.
ix. 157.
Lady Philips was known to Johnson through Miss Williams, to whom, as a
note in Croker's _Boswell_ (p. 74) shews, she made a small yearly
allowance.
[753] 'To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate
the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which
are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which,
if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was
first attempted by Casa in his book of _Manners_, and Castiglione in his
_Courtier_; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance.'
Johnson's _Works_, vii. 428. _The Courtier_ was translated into English
so early as 1561. Lowndes's _Bibl. Man_. ed. 1871, p. 386.
[754] Burnet (_History of His Own Time_, ii. 296) mentions Whitby among
the persons who both managed and directed the controversial war' against
Popery towards the end of Charles II's reign. 'Popery,' he says, 'was
never so well understood by the nation as it came to be upon this
occasion.' Whitby's Commentary _on the New Testament_ was published
in 1703-9.
[755] By Henry Mackenzie, the author of _The Man of Feeling. Ante_, i.
360. It had been published anonymously this spring. The play of the same
name is by Macklin. It was brought out in 1781.
[756] No doubt Sir A. Macdonald. _Ante_, p. 148. This 'penurious
gentleman' is mentioned again, p. 315.
[757] Molière's play of _L'Avare_.
[758]
'...facit indignatio versum.'
Juvenal, _Sat_. i. 79.
[759] See _ante_, iii. 252.
[760] He was sixty-four.
[761] Still, perhaps, in the _Western Isles_, 'It may be we shall touch
the Happy Isles.' Tennyson's _Ulysses._
[762] See _ante_, ii, 51.
[763] See _ante_, ii. 150.
[764] Sir Alexander Macdonald.
[765] 'To be or not to be: that is the question.' _Hamlet_, act iii. sc.
1.
[766] Virgil, _Eclogues_, iii. III.
[767] 'The stormy Hebrides.' Milton's _Lycidas_, 1. 156.
[768] Boswell was thinking of the passage (p. xxi.) in which Hawkesworth
tells how one of Captain Cook's ships was saved by the wind falling.
'If,' he writes, 'it was a natural event, providence is out of the
question; at least we can with no more propriety say that providentially
the wind ceased, than that providentially the sun rose in the morning.
If it was not,' &c. According to Malone the attacks made on Hawkesworth
in the newspapers for this passage 'affected him so much that from low
spirits he was seized with a nervous fever, which on account of the high
living he had indulged in had the more power on him; and he is supposed
to have put an end to his life by intentionally taking an immoderate
dose of opium.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 441. Mme. D'Arblay says that these
attacks shortened his life. _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, i. 278. He died on
Nov. 17 of this year. See _ante_, i. 252, and ii. 247.
[769] 'After having been detained by storms many days at Sky we left it,
as we thought, with a fair wind; but a violent gust, which Bos had a
great mind to call a tempest, forced us into Col.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.
167. 'The wind blew against us in a short time with such violence, that
we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest... The
master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties might, perhaps,
have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr. Maclean of Col... piloted
us safe into his own harbour.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 117. Sir Walter
Scott says, 'Their risque, in a sea full of islands, was very
considerable. Indeed, the whole expedition was highly perilous,
considering the season of the year, the precarious chance of getting
sea-worthy boats, and the ignorance of the Hebrideans, who,
notwithstanding the opportunities, I may say the _necessities_, of their
situation, are very careless and unskilful sailors.' Croker's
_Boswell_, p. 362.
[770] For as the tempest drives, I shape my way. FRANCIS. [Horace,
_Epistles_, i. 1. 15.] BOSWELL.
[771]
'Imberbus juvenis, tandem custode remoto,
Gaudet equis canibusque, et aprici gramine campi.'
'The youth, whose will no froward tutor bounds,
Joys in the sunny field, his horse and hounds.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. 161.
[772] _Henry VI_, act i. sc. 2.
[773] See _ante_, i. 468, and iii. 306.
[774] Johnson describes him as 'a gentleman who has lived some time in
the East Indies, but, having dethroned no nabob, is not too rich to
settle in his own country.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 117.
[775] This curious exhibition may perhaps remind some of my readers of
the ludicrous lines, made, during Sir Robert Walpole's administration,
on Mr. George (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, though the figures of the two
personages must be allowed to be very different:--
'But who is this astride the pony;
So long, so lean, so lank, so bony?
Dat be de great orator, Littletony.'