[1214] 'Proinde quum dominus Matth. 6 docet discipulos suos ne in orando
multiloqui sint, nihil aliud docet quam ne credant deum inani verborum
strepitu flecti rem eandem subinde flagitantium. Nam Graecis est [Greek:
battologaesate]. [Greek: Battologein] autem illis dicitur qui voces
easdem frequenter iterant sine causa, vel loquacitatis, vel naturae, vel
consuetudinis vitio. Alioqui juxta precepta rhetorum nonnunquam laudis
est iterare verba, quemadmodum et Christus in cruce clamitat. Deus meus,
deus meus: non erat illa [Greek: battologia], sed ardens ac vehemens
affectus orantis.' Erasmus's _Works_, ed. 1540, v. 927.
[1215] This alludes to Southwell's stanzas 'Upon the Image of Death,' in
his _Maeonia_, [Maeoniae] a collection of spiritual poems:--
'Before my face the picture hangs,
That daily should put me in mind
Of those cold names and bitter pangs
That shortly I am like to find:
But, yet, alas! full little I
Do thinke hereon that I must die.' &c.
Robert Southwell was an English Jesuit, who was imprisoned, tortured,
and finally, in Feb. 1598 [1595] executed for teaching the Roman
Catholic tenets in England. CROKER.
[1216] This work, which Johnson was now reading, was, most probably, a
little book, entitled _Baudi Epistolae_. In his _Life of Milton_
[_Works_, vii. 115], he has made a quotation from it. DUPPA.
[1217] Bishop Shipley had been an Army Chaplain. _Ante_, iii. 251.
[1218] The title of the poem is [Greek: Poiaema nouthetikon]. DUPPA.
[1219] This entry refers to the following passage in Leland's
_Itinerary_, published by Thomas Hearne, ed. 1744, iv. 112. 'B. _Smith_
in K.H.7. dayes, and last Bishop of _Lincolne_, beganne a new Foundation
at this place settinge up a Mr. there with 2. Preistes, and 10. poore
Men in an Hospitall. He sett there alsoe a Schoole-Mr. to teach Grammer
that hath 10._l_. by the yeare, and an Under-Schoole-Mr. that hath
5._l_. by the yeare. King H.7. was a great Benefactour to this new
Foundation, and gave to it an ould Hospitall called Denhall in Wirhall
in Cheshire.'
[1220] _A Journey to Meqwinez, the Residence of the present Emperor of
Fez and Morocco, on the Occasion of Commodore Stewart's Embassy thither,
for the Redemption of the British captives, in the Year 1721_. DUPPA.
[1221] The _Bibliotheca Literaria_ was published in London, 1722-4, in
4to numbers, but only extended to ten numbers. DUPPA.
[1222] By this expression it would seem, that on this day Johnson ate
sparingly. DUPPA.
[1223] 'A weakness of the knees, not without some pain in walking, which
I feel increased after I have dined.' DUPPA.
[1224] Penmaen Mawr is a huge rock, rising nearly 1550 feet
perpendicular above the sea. Along a shelf of this precipice, is formed
an excellent road, well guarded, toward the sea, by a strong wall,
supported in many parts by arches turned underneath it. Before this wall
was built, travellers sometimes fell down the precipices. DUPPA.
[1225] See _post_, p. 453.
[1226] 'Johnson said that one of the castles in Wales would contain all
the castles that he had seen in Scotland.' _Ante_, ii. 285.
[1227] This gentleman was a lieutenant in the Navy. DUPPA.
[1228] Lady Catharine Percival, daughter of the second Earl of Egmont:
this was, it appears, the lady of whom Mrs. Piozzi relates, that 'For a
lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband's seat in
Wales with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had a
rougher denunciation:--"That woman," cried Johnson, "is like sour small
beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she
lives in: like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even
that bad thing is spoiled."' [_Anec_. p. 171.] And it is probably of
her, too, that another anecdote is told:--'We had been visiting at a
lady's house, whom, as we returned, some of the company ridiculed for
her ignorance:--"She is not ignorant," said he, "I believe, of any
thing she has been taught, or of any thing she is desirous to know; and
I suppose if one wanted a little _run tea_, she might be a proper person
enough to apply to.'" [_Ib_. p. 219.] Mrs. Piozzi says, in her MS.
letters, 'that Lady Catharine comes off well in the _diary_. He _said_
many severe things of her, which he did not commit to paper.' She died
in 1782. CROKER.
[1229] Johnson described in 1762 his disappointment on his return to
Lichfield. _Ante_, i. 370.
[1230] 'It was impossible not to laugh at the patience Doctor Johnson
shewed, when a Welsh parson of mean abilities, though a good heart,
struck with reverence at the sight of Dr. Johnson, whom he had heard of
as the greatest man living, could not find any words to answer his
inquiries concerning a motto round somebody's arms which adorned a
tomb-stone in Ruabon church-yard. If I remember right, the words were,
Heb Dw, Heb Dym,
Dw o' diggon.
And though of no very difficult construction, the gentleman seemed
wholly confounded, and unable to explain them; till Mr. Johnson, having
picked out the meaning by little and little, said to the man, "_Heb_ is
a preposition, I believe, Sir, is it not?" My countryman recovering some
spirits upon the sudden question, cried out, "So I humbly presume, Sir,"
very comically.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 238. The Welsh words, which are the
Myddelton motto, mean, 'Without God, without all. God is
all-sufficient.' _Piozzi MS_. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 423.
[1231] In 1809 the whole income for Llangwinodyl, including surplice
fees, amounted to forty-six pounds two shillings and twopence, and for
Tydweilliog, forty-three pounds nineteen shillings and tenpence; so that
it does not appear that Mr. Thrale carried into effect his good
intention. DUPPA.
[1232] Mr. Thrale was near-sighted, and could not see the goats browsing
on Snowdon, and he promised his daughter, who was a child of ten years
old, a penny for every goat she would shew him, and Dr. Johnson kept the
account; so that it appears her father was in debt to her one hundred
and forty-nine pence. Queeny was the epithet, which had its origin in
the nursery, by which Miss Thrale was always distinguished by Johnson.
DUPPA. Her name was Esther. The allusion was to Queen Esther. Johnson
often pleasantly mentions her in his letters to her mother. Thus on July
27, 1780, he writes:--'As if I might not correspond with my Queeney, and
we might not tell one another our minds about politicks or morals, or
anything else. Queeney and I are both steady and may be trusted; we are
none of the giddy gabblers, we think before we speak.' _Piozzi Letters_,
ii. 169. Four days later he wrote:--'Tell my pretty dear Queeney, that
when we meet again, we will have, at least for some time, two lessons in
a day. I love her and think on her when I am alone; hope we shall be
very happy together and mind our books.' _Ib_. p. 173.
[1233] See _ante_, iv. 421, for the inscription on an urn erected by Mr.
Myddelton 'on the banks of a rivulet where Johnson delighted to stand
and repeat verses.' On Sept. 18, 1777, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:
--'Mr. ----'s erection of an urn looks like an intention to bury me
alive; I would as willingly see my friend, however benevolent and
hospitable, quietly inurned. Let him think for the present of some more
acceptable memorial.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 371.
[1234] Johnson wrote on Oct. 24, 1778:--'My two clerical friends Darby
and Worthington have both died this month. I have known Worthington
long, and to die is dreadful. I believe he was a very good man.' _Piozzi
Letters_, ii. 26.
[1235] Thomas, the second Lord Lyttelton. DUPPA.
[1236] Mr. Gwynn the architect was a native of Shrewsbury, and was at
this time completing a bridge across the Severn, called the English
Bridge: besides this bridge, he built one at Acham, over the Severn,
near to Shrewsbury; and the bridges at Worcester, Oxford [Magdalen
Bridge], and Henley. DUPPA. He was also the architect of the Oxford
Market, which was opened in 1774. _Oxford during the Last Century_, ed.
1859, p. 45. Johnson and Boswell travelled to Oxford with him in March,
1776. _Ante_, ii. 438. In 1778 he got into some difficulties, in which
Johnson tried to help him, as is shewn by the following autograph letter
in the possession of my friend Mr. M. M. Holloway:--
'SIR,
'Poor Mr. Gwyn is in great distress under the weight of the late
determination against him, and has still hopes that some mitigation may
be obtained. If it be true that whatever has by his negligence been
amiss, may be redressed for a sum much less than has been awarded, the
remaining part ought in equity to be returned, or, what is more
desirable, abated. When the money is once paid, there is little hope of
getting it again.
'The load is, I believe, very hard upon him; he indulges some flattering
opinions that by the influence of his academical friends it may be
lightened, and will not be persuaded but that some testimony of my
kindness may be beneficial. I hope he has been guilty of nothing worse
than credulity, and he then certainly deserves commiseration. I never
heard otherwise than that he was an honest man, and I hope that by your
countenance and that of other gentlemen who favour or pity him some
relief may be obtained.
'I am, Sir, 'Your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Bolt Court,
Fleet-street, 'Jan. 30, 1778.'
[1237] An ancestor of mine, a nursery-gardener, Thomas Wright by name,
after whom my grandfather, Thomas Wright Hill, was called, planted this
walk. The tradition preserved in my family is that on his wedding-day he
took six men with him and planted these trees. When blamed for keeping
the wedding-dinner waiting, he answered, that if what he had been doing
turned out well, it would be of far more value than a wedding-dinner.
[1238] The Rector of St. Chad's, in Shrewsbury. He was appointed Master
of Pembroke College, Oxford, in the following year. See _ante_, ii. 441.
[1239] 'I have heard Dr. Johnson protest that he never had quite as much
as he wished of wall-fruit except once in his life, and that was when we
were all together at Ombersley.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 103. Mrs. Thrale
wrote to him in 1778:--'Mr. Scrase gives us fine fruit; I wished you my
pear yesterday; but then what would one pear have done for you?' _Piozzi
Letters_, ii. 36. It seems unlikely that Johnson should not at Streatham
have had all the wall-fruit that he wished.
[1240] This visit was not to Lord Lyttelton, but to his uncle
[afterwards by successive creations, Lord Westcote, and Lord Lyttelton],
the father of the present Lord Lyttelton, who lived at a house called
Little Hagley. DUPPA. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1771:--'I would
have been glad to go to Hagley in compliance with Mr. Lyttelton's kind
invitation, for beside the pleasure of his conversation I should have
had the opportunity of recollecting past times, and wandering _per
montes notos et flumina nota_, of recalling the images of sixteen, and
reviewing my conversations with poor Ford.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 42. He
had been at school at Stourbridge, close by Hagley. _Ante_, i. 49. See
Walpole's _Letters_, ix. 123, for an anecdote of Lord Westcote.
[1241] Horace Walpole, writing of Hagley in Sept. 1753 (_Letters_, ii.
352), says:--'There is extreme taste in the park: the seats are not the
best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle, built by
Miller, that would get him his freedom even of Strawberry [Walpole's own
house at Twickenham]: it has the true rust of the Barons' Wars.'
[1242] 'Mrs. Lyttelton forced me to play at whist against my liking, and
her husband took away Johnson's candle that he wanted to read by at the
other end of the room. Those, I trust, were the offences.' _Piozzi
MS._ CROKER.
[1243] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 409) thus writes of Shenstone and the
Leasowes:--'He began to point his prospects, to diversify his surface,
to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such
judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great
and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers
and copied by designers. .... For awhile the inhabitants of Hagley
affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying
to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced
themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which
they could not suppress by conducting their visitants perversely to
inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a
walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily
complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity; and where there
is vanity there will be folly. The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his
eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks; nothing raised his
indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.' See
_ante_, p. 345.
[1244] See _ante_, iii. 187, and v. 429.
[1245] 'He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably
hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing.
It is said that if he had lived a little longer he would have been
assisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more
properly bestowed.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 410. His friend, Mr.
Graves, the author of _The Spiritual Quixote_, in a note on this passage
says that, if he was sometimes distressed for money, yet he was able to
leave legacies and two small annuities.
[1246] Mr. Duppa--without however giving his authority--says that this
was Dr. Wheeler, mentioned _ante_, iii. 366. The _Birmingham Directory_
for the year 1770 shews that there were two tradesmen in the town of
that name, one having the same Christian name, Benjamin, as Dr. Wheeler.
[1247] Boswell visited these works in 1776. _Ante_, ii. 459.
[1248] Burke in the House of Commons on Jan. 25, 1771, in a debate on
Falkland's Island, said of the Spanish Declaration:--'It was made, I
admit, on the true principles of trade and manufacture. It puts me in
mind of a Birmingham button which has passed through an hundred hands,
and after all is not worth three-halfpence a dozen.' _Parl. Hist._
xvi. 1345.
[1249] Johnson and Boswell drove through the Park in 1776. _Ante_, ii.
451.
[1250] 'My friend the late Lord Grosvenor had a house at Salt Hill,
where I usually spent a part of the summer, and thus became acquainted
with that great and good man, Jacob Bryant. Here the conversation turned
one morning on a Greek criticism by Dr. Johnson in some volume lying on
the table, which I ventured (_for I was then young_) to deem incorrect,
and pointed it out to him. I could not help thinking that he was
somewhat of my opinion, but he was cautious and reserved. "But, Sir,"
said I, willing to overcome his scruples, "Dr. Johnson himself admitted
that he was not a good Greek scholar." "Sir," he replied, with a serious
and impressive air, "it is not easy for us to say what such a man as
Johnson would call a good Greek scholar." I hope that I profited by that
lesson--certainly I never forgot it.' Gifford's _Works of Ford_, vol. i.
p. lxii. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 794. 'So notorious is Mr. Bryant's great
fondness for studying and proving the truths of the creation according
to Moses, that he told me himself, and with much quaint humour, a
pleasantry of one of his friends in giving a character of
him:--"Bryant," said he, "is a very good scholar, and knows all things
whatever up to Noah, but not a single thing in the world beyond the
Deluge."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, iii. 229.
[1251] This is a work written by William Durand, Bishop of Mende, and
printed on vellum, in folio, by Fust and Schoeffer, in Mentz, 1459. It
is the third book that is known to be printed with a date. DUPPA. It is
perhaps the first book with a date printed in movable metal type.
_Brunei_, ed. 1861, ii. 904. See _ante_, ii. 397.
[1252] Dr. Johnson, in another column of his _Diary_, has put down, in a
note, 'First printed book in Greek, Lascaris's _Grammar_, 4to,
Mediolani, 1476.' The imprint of this book is, _Mediolani Impressum per
Magistrum Dionysium Paravisinum_. M.CCCC.LXXVI. Die xxx Januarii. The
first book printed in the English language was the _Historyes of Troye_,
printed in 1471. DUPPA. A copy of the _Historyes of Troy_ is exhibited
in the Bodleian Library with the following superscription:--'Lefevre's
_Recuyell of the historyes of Troye_. The first book printed in the
English language. Issued by Caxton at Bruges about 1474.'
[1253] _The Battle of the Frogs and Mice_. The first edition was printed
by Laonicus Cretensis, 1486. DUPPA.
[1254] Mr. Coulson was a Senior Fellow of University College. Lord
Stowell informed me that he was very eccentric. He would on a fine day
hang out of the college windows his various pieces of apparel to air,
which used to be universally answered by the young men hanging out from
all the other windows, quilts, carpets, rags, and every kind of trash,
and this was called an _illumination_. His notions of the eminence and
importance of his academic situation were so peculiar, that, when he
afterwards accepted a college living, he expressed to Lord Stowell his
doubts whether, after living so long in the _great world_, he might not
grow weary of the comparative retirement of a country parish. CROKER.
See _ante_, ii. 382, note.
[1255] Dr. Robert Vansittart, Fellow of All Souls, and Regius Professor
of Law. DUPPA. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Nov. 3, 1773:--'Poor
V------! There are not so many reasons as he thinks why he should envy
me, but there are some; he wants what I have, a kind and careful
mistress; and wants likewise what I shall want at my return. He is a
good man, and when his mind is composed a man of parts.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 197. See _ante_, i. 348.
[1256] See _ante_, ii. 285, note 3.