THE FRIENDS OF JOHNSON
Johnson thought human life in general, and his own in particular, an
unhappy business. Boswell once urged, in reply to his melancholy, that
in fact life was lived upon the supposition of happiness: houses are
built, gardens laid out, places of amusement erected and filled with
company, and these things would not be done if people did not expect to
enjoy themselves. As so often happens in these arguments Boswell
appears to us to be substantially right. But the only reply he drew
from Johnson was, "Alas, sir, these are all only struggles for
happiness." And he went on to give a curious illustration of his
rooted conviction that every man knew himself to be unhappy if he
stopped to {231} think about it. "When I first entered Ranelagh it
gave an expansion and gay sensation to my mind such as I never
experienced anywhere else. But, as Xerxes wept when he viewed his
immense army and considered that not one of that great multitude would
be alive a hundred years afterwards, so it went to my heart to consider
that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid
to go home and think: but that the thoughts of each individual there
would be distressing when alone." What he thought was true of all men
was certainly true of himself. He hated and dreaded to be alone. It
was the pain of solitude quite as much as the pleasure of society that
drove him abroad, and induced him to make a business of keeping alive
old friendships and procuring new, till he had formed as large and as
interesting a circle of acquaintances as any English man of letters has
ever had.
That fact is an important element in his fame. A great talker cannot
exert his talent in solitude; he cannot properly exert it except in a
society of intelligent men who can understand, appreciate, and in some
degree contend with him. Johnson would not have been the wonderful
talker he was if he had lived like Richardson among gaping women and
stupid {232} toadies. He did the very opposite. He lived among men
several of whom possessed powers of mind quite as great as his own,
however different, while their achievements seem to posterity decidedly
greater than his. Our impression of his overwhelming distinction as a
talker is not derived only from our own judgment as we read Boswell's
record of it. It is derived almost as much from the fact that men so
great as those he lived with acknowledged it with one accord. The
primacy of Johnson was among them all an unquestioned article of faith.
Hawkins, who knew him for so many years, says of him that "as Alexander
and Caesar were born for conquest, so was Johnson for the office of a
symposiarch, to preside in all conversations"; and he adds, "I never
yet saw the man who would venture to contest his right." But the
greatest tribute came from the greatest of his friends. When Langton,
walking home one evening with Burke after both had dined in Johnson's
company, regretted that Johnson had seized upon all the topics started
by Burke, so that Burke himself had said little upon them, the reply of
Burke is well known, "Oh, no; it is enough for me to have rung the bell
to him." Such words from such a man are final and unanswerable. And
they are confirmed by every other member of his {233} inner circle, and
indeed by almost every person who knew him and has left any opinion on
the subject. Not the least significant tribute is that of
those--including men no less great than Gibbon and Fox--who had not the
courage to ring that dangerous bell which so often was brought down
upon the head of the ringer. The "wonder and astonishment" he inspired
were universal; and among those who really knew him they were commonly
mingled with love. But whether there were love or not there was
generally some degree of awe, even of actual fear, as apparently in the
case of Gibbon. The unquestioned ascendency he possessed and exercised
over men and women not accustomed to be over-awed is plainly written
all over Boswell's story. The most celebrated of the scenes that prove
or exhibit it is no doubt that of the signing of the "Round Robin" at
Sir Joshua Reynolds's house in 1776, when a company which included,
besides Reynolds himself, Burke, Gibbon, Sheridan, Colman, J. Warton,
and Barnard, afterwards Bishop of Killaloe, were anxious to protest to
Johnson against his proposed Latin Epitaph on Goldsmith; but not one
dared to approach him about it or even to be the first to sign a letter
to be sent to him. So a sailors' Round Robin, drawn up by Burke, was
adopted, and all the {234} signatures ran round it in equal daring.
But the same thing appears perhaps even more curiously in a remark of
Boswell's about a dinner at the house of Allan Ramsay. The company
included Reynolds, Robertson the historian, Lord Binning and Boswell;
and, Johnson being late in coming, they took to discussing him and his
character. Soon, of course, he made his appearance; and then, says
Boswell, "no sooner did he, of whom we had been thus talking so easily,
arrive, than we were all as quiet as a school upon the entrance of the
head-master." The best parallel perhaps to Johnson's position in his
social world is that of the elder Pitt in Parliament. In each case the
awe which was felt was much more than a mere vulgar fear of punishment;
there was that in it, no doubt; but there was also a much rarer and
finer thing; what we can only describe vaguely as a consciousness of
the presence of greatness.
It is worth while to look a little more closely at the composition of
this society in which Johnson reigned as unquestioned king. The most
remarkable thing of all about it is that its inner and most intimate
circle included four men of genius. Johnson had few or no closer
friends than Reynolds, Burke, Goldsmith and Boswell. Of these the
first two were acknowledged as the greatest {235} painter and the
greatest orator then living in England or perhaps in Europe; the third,
when he died, had some claim to be the truest poet; and, what is more
remarkable, the lapse of over a hundred years has found little or
nothing to detract from the fame each won from his contemporaries. Of
Boswell it is enough to repeat that, while he could not compare with
these men in life or action or general powers of mind, and therefore
enjoyed no contemporary fame, he left a book behind him at his death
which every succeeding generation has increasingly recognized as
possessing that uniqueness of achievement which is another phrase for
genius. Four such men alone would make a society such as few men have
lived in. But Johnson's society is as remarkable for the variety and
quantity, as for the quality, of its distinction. No one can look
through the invaluable index of Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition of Boswell
without being struck by this. If one were to make a list of all the
people whom Johnson saw frequently or occasionally in the course of his
life it would include an astonishing number of interesting names. Part
of the fascination of Boswell's book lies in that. It is first and
foremost the portrait of a man, and everything is kept in subordination
to that. But it is also the picture of a whole {236} age and country.
Sir Leslie Stephen remarked that nearly every distinguished man of
letters of that time came into contact with Johnson. He mentions Hume
and Gray as the only exceptions. There may be others, as for instance
Sterne, to be added. But it remains true that Johnson was in
exceptionally close personal touch with the whole literary world of his
day. And Boswell has known how to make use of all that to give
interest and variety to his book. Nor was Johnson ever, as we have
seen, a mere narrow man of letters. He had a universal curiosity about
life and men. He could talk to every one, and every one found his talk
interesting, consequently Boswell's record of his acquaintance is by no
means a mere series of literary portraits. The society is of all the
sorts of men and women that intelligent men can care to meet, the talk
on almost all the subjects which such people can care to discuss.
Let us glance at some of the names that would find places in that list.
We may begin with the statesmen. There is first of all Shelburne, who
was Prime Minister the year before Johnson died; the most mysterious
figure in the politics of that day, George III's Jesuit of Berkeley
Square, the "Malagrida" of the pamphleteers, to whom Goldsmith {237}
made his well-known unfortunate remark, "I never could conceive the
reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort
of man." But for all this sinister reputation he was certainly an able
and interesting man. He was a great patron of the arts, a princely
collector of manuscripts, and an unusually enlightened student of
politics if not a great statesman. How intimately Johnson knew him is,
like almost everything about Shelburne, uncertain; but it is known that
they used to meet in London and that Johnson once at least was
Shelburne's guest at Bowood. A greater man who was never Prime
Minister was a much more intimate friend. Fox talked little before
Johnson; and the two men were as different in many ways as men could
be. Of the two it was certainly not the professed man of letters who
was the greater lover of literature. But Fox was a member of "The
Club," and an intimate friend of Burke and Reynolds, and in these ways
he and Johnson often met. In spite of all differences each made a
great impression on the other. Fox indignantly defended Johnson's
pension in the House of Commons so early as 1774, and the last book
read to him, except the Church Service, was Johnson's _Lives of the
Poets_. Johnson was like the rest of the world dazzled by the daring
{238} parliamentary genius of Fox, and said that he had "divided the
kingdom with Caesar so that there was a doubt whether the nation should
be ruled by the sceptre of George III or the tongue of Fox." He was
for the King against Fox, because the King was his "master," but for
Fox against Pitt because "Fox is my friend."
Another contemporary statesman who was intimate with Johnson was the
cultivated and high-minded William Windham. No one had a greater
reverence for Johnson. The most scrupulous of men, he was probably
attracted to Johnson most of all by his character, and sought in him a
kind of director for his conscience. Johnson, however, disapproved of
scruples, and when Windham expressed, as Boswell says, "some modest and
virtuous doubts" whether he ought to accept the post of Secretary to
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland because of the dubious practices
supposed to be necessary to the holding of that office, all the answer
he got was "a pleasant smile" and "Don't be afraid, sir, you will soon
make a very pretty rascal." But Windham took no discouragements and
was to the end one of Johnson's most devoted disciples. He put such a
value on Johnson's society that he once rode forty miles out of his way
on a journey in {239} order to get a day and a half with him at
Ashbourne: and he was one of the little band of friends who constantly
visited the dying man in the last days of his life. One day when he
had placed a pillow to support the old man's head, Johnson thanked him
and said, "That will do--all that a pillow can do." He was one of the
pall-bearers at the funeral.
A less famous political friend was William Gerard Hamilton, with whom
he at one time engaged in political work of some sort serious enough to
induce him to write a special prayer about it. "Single speech
Hamilton," as he was called, behaved badly to Burke and was, it seems,
widely distrusted; but Johnson maintained a life-long friendship with
him, and had a high opinion of his conversational powers. Hamilton in
return thought that he found in Johnson, when not talking for victory,
a "wisdom not only convincing but overpowering"; and showed his
gratitude by placing his purse at Johnson's disposal when he supposed
him to be in want of money. It was he--a man of public business and
affairs all his life--who said of Johnson's death that it had "made a
chasm which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a
tendency to fill up. Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best:
there is {240} nobody; no man can be said to put you in mind of
Johnson." So also thought another member of Parliament, George
Dempster, whom Burns honoured with his praise. He once told Boswell
not to think of his health, but to sit up all night listening to
Johnson; for "one had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep
company with such a man." Another politician in his circle was
Fitzherbert, a man of whom Burke had the highest opinion, and of whom
Johnson made the curious remark that he was the most "acceptable of men
because his good qualities were negative and he offended no one."
Fitzherbert spoke of Johnson in the House of Commons as his friend and
called him "a pattern of morality."
Two other well-known political figures may be mentioned as
acquaintances of Johnson; both men of more ability than character.
Lord Chancellor Thurlow was a type of the lawyer who fights his way to
success and cares for little else. But he was a true and generous
friend to Johnson, for whose proposed journey to Italy he offered to
provide the means. And if his career allowed any one to think meanly
of his abilities, Johnson's opinion of them would be a sufficient
answer. He always maintained that "to make a speech in a public
assembly is a knack"; it {241} was the question and answer of
conversation, he thought, that showed what a man's real abilities were.
And out of that test Thurlow came so triumphantly that Johnson said of
him, "I would prepare myself for no man in England but Lord Thurlow.
When I am to meet with him I should wish to know a day before." He
paid him the same compliment more than once; and the man to whom he
paid it cannot have been the least interesting element in that
interesting circle. A very different figure was the infidel and
demagogue Wilkes, of whom Johnson had used the most violent language in
public and private, but with whom, under the dexterous management of
Boswell, he came to be on terms of friendly acquaintance. The story of
how Boswell brought them together, of which Burke said that there was
"nothing to equal it in the whole history of the _Corps Diplomatique_,"
is one of the very best things in the _Life_. Of course they never
became friendly, but they met occasionally and Johnson sent Wilkes a
presentation copy of his _Lives_. The acquaintance is one of the most
striking instances of the real tolerance which lay behind Johnson's
outbursts of prejudice. He and Wilkes had nothing in common but quick
brains, witty tongues, social gifts and dislike of the Scotch; but that
was enough. {242} Johnson would have sympathized with the respectable
freeholder of Middlesex who, when canvassed for his vote by Wilkes
replied, "Vote for you, sir! I would rather vote for the devil!" But
he would have sympathized even more with the candidate's reply:
"But--in case your friend does not stand?"
No one will say that a set of acquaintances which stretched from Burke
at one end to Wilkes at the other did not provide strong and varied
political meat for the society to which they belonged. It is just the
same when we look beyond politics. If all Johnson's acquaintances
could have been gathered into one room, the unlikeliest people would
have found themselves together. The saintly John Wesley, for instance,
and the very far from saintly Topham Beauclerk, make a curious pair.
Yet both of them loved and honoured Johnson all their lives and both
were always loved, at any rate, by him; and the one who got the less
honour got the more love. No one could take such liberties with
Johnson as this man who had been the cause of a divorce and was
behaving badly to the wife whom he had stolen. Johnson did not spare
Beauclerk the rebukes he deserved: but he could not resist the
intellectual gifts and social charm of that true descendant of Charles
II. When Beauclerk {243} lay dying Johnson said, "I would walk to the
extent of the diameter of the earth to save Beauclerk"; and when he was
dead, Johnson wrote to Boswell, "Poor dear Beauclerk--_nec, ut soles,
dabis joca_." That he could win the warm affection of such a man as
Beauclerk is one more proof of the breadth of his sympathies. The most
surprising people felt his fascination. Wraxall says that he had seen
the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, "then in the first bloom of youth,
hanging on the sentences that fell from Johnson's lips, and contending
for the nearest place to his chair"; and it is recorded of Kitty Clive
the actress, whom he used to go and see in the green-room, that she
said of him, "I love to sit by Dr. Johnson: he always entertains me."
But neither Duchesses, nor actresses, nor even young men of fashion,
whose conjugal affairs had been the talk of the town, were more than
occasional or single splendours in the Johnsonian heaven: its fixed
stars of ordinary nights were less dazzling persons. Many were
scholars, of course, as befitted a man of books. The greatest, but one
of the least frequent or intimate, was Gibbon. He was a member of "The
Club" and a friend of Reynolds and Fox: but his feeling for Johnson was
apparently one of fear unmingled with love. Though {244} he met them
both fairly often, he never mentions Boswell, and Johnson only once or
twice. The historian who could not talk was not likely to appreciate
the great talker who cared nothing for history: so one is not surprised
to find Johnson dismissed in the famous _Memoirs_ as merely the
"oracle" of Reynolds. A much greater friend was another member of "The
Club," Percy, of the _Reliques of Poetry_, afterwards a Bishop, with
whom he often quarrelled but was always reconciled. Boswell managed
the most important of their reconciliations by obtaining a letter from
Johnson testifying to Percy's merit which so pleased Percy that he
said, "I would rather have this than degrees from all the Universities
in Europe." The whole story is a curious proof of the respect in which
Johnson was held: for Percy's grievance was that Johnson had snubbed
him in the presence of a distinguished member of his own family, "to
whom he hoped to have appeared more respectable by showing how intimate
he was with Dr. Johnson." Johnson laughed at Percy's ballads and would
have been the last person to guess the immense influence the
publication of the _Reliques_ was to have on the development of English
literature in the next century: but he knew his value, and said he
never met him without learning something from him.
{245}
Among other men of interest with whom he may be said to have been
intimate at one time or another in his life may be mentioned his old
pupil David Garrick, the most famous and perhaps the greatest of
English actors, whom he loved and abused and would allow no one else to
abuse: Richardson, the author of _Clarissa_, who once came to his
rescue when he was arrested for debt, and of whose powers he had such a
high opinion that he declared that there was "more knowledge of the
heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all _Tom Jones_"; the two
Wartons, Joseph, the Headmaster of Winchester and editor of Pope, and
Thomas the author of the history of English Poetry and himself Poet
Laureate; both good scholars and critics who partly anticipated the
poetic tastes of the nineteenth century: Paoli, the hero of Boswell and
the Corsicans, with whom Johnson loved to dine: Douglas, Bishop of
Salisbury, who wrote against Hume and edited Clarendon; Savage, the
poet of mysterious birth whose homeless life he sometimes shared and
finally recorded: George Psalmanazar, the converted impostor, an even
more mysterious person, whom Johnson reverenced and said he "sought
after" more than any man: booksellers like Cave and Davies and the
brothers Dilly: scholarly lawyers like Sir William Scott, afterwards
{246} Lord Stowell, whom he made executor to his will, and Sir Robert
Chambers whom he reproved for tossing snails over a wall into his
neighbour's garden till he heard the neighbour was a Dissenter, on
which he said, "Oh, if so, toss away, Chambers, toss away"; and
physicians like Heberden, beloved of Cowper, whom Johnson called
_ultimus Romanorum_, and Laurence, President of the College of
Physicians, to whom he addressed a Latin Ode. All these were men of
interest either in themselves or in their experience of life; all
brought something worth having to the society in which they lived; and
with all of them Johnson may be said to have been on intimate terms.
Nor did he confine his friendship to men. He had a higher opinion of
the intellectual capacities of women than most men of his time, and
many of the most remarkable women of the time enjoyed his intimacy.
Among them may be mentioned Elizabeth Carter, the translator of
Epictetus, whom he thought the best Greek scholar he had known, and
praised for being also a good maker of puddings; Fanny Burney, of whose
novels he was an enthusiastic admirer; Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Macaulay, and
Hannah More, the chief learned ladies of the day, all three women of
real ability; and his own brilliant and witty Mrs. Thrale, who {247}
without being a professed "blue stocking" has for Johnson's sake and
her own quite eclipsed the "blue stockings" in the interest of
posterity. Altogether it is an astonishing list. Johnson never
thought of himself as a man to be envied; but if man is a social being,
and no man was so more than Johnson, there can be few things more
enviable, in possession or in retrospect, than the society, the
friendship, or, as it often was, the love, of such men and women as
these.
If we go further and extend the inquiry to those who can scarcely be
called intimate friends, but with whom he was brought into more or less
frequent social contact, the list becomes, of course, too long to give.
But it may be worth while to mention that it would again include a very
large number of men who had something in them above the ordinary. For
instance, so great a name as that of Hogarth would be found in it,
making with Allan Ramsay whom he also knew well and Reynolds who was
perhaps the most intimate of all his friends, a remarkable trio to
gather round a man who cared nothing for painting. He managed without
that to impress them so much that Reynolds gave the credit of whatever
was best in his _Discourses_ to the "education" he had had under
Johnson: and Hogarth declared that his conversation was to the talk
{248} of other men "like Titian's painting compared to Hudson's." This
outer circle includes also distinguished architects like Sir William
Chambers who built Somerset House, and Gwynn who built Magdalen Bridge
at Oxford and the English bridge at Shrewsbury: bishops like Barnard of
Killaloe, and Shipley the liberal and reforming bishop of St. Asaph:
poets like Collins and Young: historians and divines like Robertson and
Hugh Blair: philosophers and men of science like Adam Smith and Sir
Joseph Banks: with a certain number of intelligent peers like Lord
Orrery the friend of Swift, Lord Marchmont the friend of Pope, and Lord
Elibank whom Smollett praised for his "universal intelligence" and who
said, when he was already seventy, that he would go five hundred miles
to enjoy a day in Johnson's company; besides public men like Lord
Charlemont the Irish statesman and traveller who once went to visit
Montesquieu, and Lord Macartney who had gone as ambassador to Russia
and was soon to go in the same position to Pekin.
It is unnecessary to extend the list. All these men knew Johnson to a
greater or less extent, and added to the interest of his life, as they
add to the interest of Boswell's record of it. Many or most of them
are known to have recognized the greatness of Johnson. {249} The words
of some have been quoted and others might easily be added. Johnson
often appears great in the books he wrote, and often too in the books
which others have written about him: but it seems certain that unlike
most authors he was far greater in bodily presence than he can be in
his own or any one else's books. Even Boswell's magic pen cannot quite
equal the living voice. To the overpowering impression made by that
voice upon those who heard it, sometimes of almost bodily fear, oftener
of a delight that could not have enough, always of amazed astonishment,
the testimonies are not only innumerable, but so strongly worded and so
evidently sincere as to suggest the conclusion that the fortunate
listeners are attempting to relate an experience unique in the world's
history. Even those who had suffered from his rudeness like Wraxall,
the author of the well-known _Memoirs_, give the impression of being
unable to find words strong enough to describe the power of his
presence, so that they use expressions like the "compass of his
gigantic faculties" and "the sublime attainments of his mind" in
speaking of the gap felt by the company when he left a room. The
latter expression at any rate hardly seems to us exactly to fit
Johnson; but no doubt Wraxall uses the word "sublime" because he wants
{250} to imply that there was something in Johnson's talk utterly out
of the reach of ordinary men of ability. In fact it does seem probable
that no recorded man has ever talked with Johnson's amazing freedom and
power. Such an assertion cannot be proved, of course; but it would be
difficult to exaggerate the weight of the evidence pointing in that
direction. We have seen the kind of society in which he lived. In
that society, rich in so many kinds of distinction, he was always
accorded, as his right, a kind of informal but quite undisputed
precedence. And it seems to have been the same among strangers as soon
as he had opened his mouth. Whenever and wherever tongues were moving
his primacy was immediate and unquestioned. The actual ears that could
hear him were necessarily few; no man's acquaintances can be more than
an insignificant fraction of the public. But in his case they were
sufficiently numerous, distinguished and enthusiastic to send the fame
of his talk all over the country. Is he the only man whose "Bon Mots,"
as they were called, have been published in his lifetime? "A mighty
impudent thing," as he said of it, but also an irrefragable proof of
his celebrity.
And on the whole his popularity, then and since, has equalled his fame.
Much is said of his rudeness and violence, but the fact remains {251}
that in all his life it does not appear to have cost him a single
friend except the elder Sheridan. Those who knew him best bear the
strongest testimony to the fundamental goodness of his heart. Reynolds
said that he was always the first to seek a reconciliation, Goldsmith
declared that he had nothing of the bear but his skin, and Boswell
records many instances of his placability after a quarrel. The love
his friends felt for him is written large all over Boswell's pages.
And of that feeling the public outside came more and more to share as
much as strangers could. Even in his lifetime he began to receive that
popular canonization which has been developing ever since. Perhaps the
most curious of all the proofs of this is the fact mentioned by Boswell
in a note, "that there were copper pieces struck at Birmingham with his
head impressed on them, which pass current as halfpence there, and in
the neighbouring parts of the country." Has that ever happened to any
other English writer? Well may Boswell cite it in evidence of
Johnson's extraordinary popularity. It is that and it is more. There
is in it not merely a tribute of affection to the living and speaking
man, there is also an anticipation of the most remarkable thing about
his subsequent fame. That has had all along, as we saw at first, a
{252} popular element in it. It has never been, like that of most
scholars and critics, an exclusively literary thing, confined solely to
people of literary instincts. Rather it has been, more and more, what
the newspapers and the _Johnsoniana_ and these coins or medals already
suggested, something altogether wider. Samuel Johnson was in his
lifetime a well-known figure in the streets, a popular name in the
press. He is now a national institution, with the merits, the defects,
and the popularity which belong to national institutions. His
popularity is certainly not diminished by the fact that he was the
complacent victim of many of our insular prejudices and exhibited a
good deal of the national tendency to a crude and self-confident
Philistinism. These things come so humanly from him that his wisest
admirers have scarcely the heart to complain or disapprove. They laugh
at him, and with him, and love him still. But they could not love him
as they do if he embodied only the weaknesses of his race. The
position he holds in their affection, and the affection of the whole
nation, is due to other and greater qualities. It is these that have
given him his rare and indeed unique distinction as the accepted and
traditional spokesman of the integrity, the humour, and the obstinate
common sense, of the English people.
{253}
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The finest Library Edition of the complete works of Johnson is that
published at Oxford in nine volumes in 1825. Another good one, the
volumes of which are less heavy, is that of 1823 in twelve volumes,
edited by Alexander Chalmers.
Among the very numerous editions of particular works the following may
be mentioned--
_The Six Chief Lives from Johnson's "Lives of the Poets"; with
Macaulay's "Life of Johnson._" Edited, with a Preface by MATTHEW
ARNOLD. 1878.
_History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia_. Edited, with Introduction
and Notes by GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL. 1887.
_Lives of the English Poets_. By SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. Edited by
GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L. In three volumes. 1905.
_Johnson on Shakespeare_. Essays and Notes selected and set forth with
an Introduction. By WALTER RALEIGH. 1908.
_The Letters of Samuel Johnson, LL.D._ Collected and edited by GEORGE
BIRKBECK HILL. In two volumes. 1892. Only a few of the letters are
given in the editions of the complete works. In this edition the
letters already given by Boswell in his _Life_ are not reprinted.
_Select Essays of Dr. Johnson_. Edited by GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL. In
two volumes. 1889. (Temple Library.) These Essays are chiefly from
_The Rambler_ and _The Idler_.
_Wit and Wisdom of Samuel Johnson_. Selected and arranged by GEORGE
BIRKBECK HILL. 1888. This consists of sayings on various subjects
arranged alphabetically, with an interesting introduction.
The main authority for the life of Johnson is, of course, Boswell. His
account is given in two books, the _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
with Samuel Johnson, LL.D._, published in 1785, and the _Life_ which
followed in two volumes in 1791. {254} The best edition of the _Life_
is that edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill in six volumes, one of which is
given to the _Tour to the Hebrides_, published in 1887. No one who has
worked on Johnson since that year can overstate his debt to this book
or his gratitude to its author. The prettiest and pleasantest of all
editions of Boswell is that known as Wright's Croker. It is a revision
by J. Wright of the edition by J. W. Croker, and includes a collection
of Johnsoniana. It consists of ten handy volumes, illustrated by many
steel engravings, and first appeared in 1831.
The most important of the many accounts of Johnson left by other
contemporaries are those given by Mrs. Thrale, Fanny Burney and his
executor, Sir John Hawkins. Mrs. Thrale's is contained in a volume
entitled _Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL. D., during the last
Twenty Years of his Life_. _By Hester Lynch Piozzi_. It was first
published in 1786. Fanny Burney's picture of him is to be found in her
_Diary and Letters_, of which the best edition is that by Austin
Dobson, 1904. Sir John Hawkins prefixed a Life of Johnson to the
edition of his works which he brought out in 1787. Dr. Birkbeck Hill
has reprinted a large collection of biographical matter drawn from a
variety of sources in his two volumes of _Johnsonian Miscellanies_,
1897.
The critical studies of Johnson are of course innumerable. Among the
best are Carlyle's, printed in his _Works_ among the _Miscellaneous
Essays_, Sir Leslie Stephen's volume in the "English Men of Letters"
series, and Sir Walter Raleigh's _Six Essays on Johnson_. The _Life_
written by Macaulay for the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ and reprinted by
Matthew Arnold in his edition of the _Six Chief Lives_ must not be
confused with the essay reprinted in the collected Essays.
Dr. Birkbeck Hill published in 1879 an edition of Boswell's
correspondence with the Hon. A. Erskine, and of his _Journal of a Tour
to Corsica_, reprinted from the original editions. Boswell's Letters
to his and Gray's friend, the Rev. J. W. Temple, were first published
in 1857.
{255}
INDEX
(_Principally of Persons known to Dr. Johnson, or mentioned in his
Writings or Conversation_)
Adams, Dr., 91, 166
Addison, J., 140, 192, 194, 222, 224, 229
Argyll, Duke of, 73, 83, 84, 121, 124
Auchinleck, Lord, 71, 72, 142
Bankes, Sir J., 108, 218, 246
Barclay, Mr., 105
Baretti, J., 89, 113, 218
Barnard, Bishop, 233, 248
Beauclerk, Topham, 55, 108, 115, 242, 243
Berkeley, Bishop, 203, 204
Binning, Lord, 234
Blair, H., 248
Bolingbroke, Lord, 166
Boswell, J., 8 and passim
Boswell, Mrs., 49
Bryant, J., 90
Burke, E., 54, 56, 70, 83, 108, 136,
144-5, 173, 232, 233, 234, 236, 237,
239, 240, 241, 242
Burney, Fanny, 105, 127, 130, 131,
136, 143, 184, 246
Bute, Lord, 103
Butler, Bishop, 120, 138, 248
Carmichael, Miss, 167, 169
Carter, Elizabeth, 246
Cave, E., 245
Chambers, Sir R., 246
Chambers, Sir W., 248
Charlemont, Lord, 248
Charles II, 138
Chatham, Earl of, 81, 95
Chesterfield, Earl of, 86, 88, 124
_Clarissa Harlowe_, 196-7
Clive, Kitty, 243
"Club, The," 37, 47, 54, 67, 83
Collins, W., 177, 220, 224, 227, 248
Colman, G., 108, 233
Corbet, Mr., 91
Cowley, A., 23, 65, 186, 189, 207
Cowper, W., 108, 246
Croker, 38
Davies, Mr., 16, 73, 74, 115, 245
Davies, Mrs., 74
Dempster, G., 240
Derrick, S., 73
Devonshire, Duchess of, 243
Devonshire, Duke of, 18
_Dictionary, The_, 8, 15, 30, 98, 100-2,
124, 147, 187, 202, 207-111
Dilly, C., 164, 245
Dodsley, R., 98
Douglas, Bishop, 245
Dryden, J., 177, 184, 186, 189, 192,
201, 205, 214, 220, 221, 222, 226
Edwards, O., 44
_Elegy_, Gray's, 225
Elibank, Lord, 84, 248
Errol, Lord, 84
_Falkland Islands_, 107
_False Alarm, The_, 107, 188
Fielding, H., 109
Fitzherbert, W., 240
Foote, S., 115-6
Ford, Sarah, 87
Fox, C. J., 83, 145, 161, 233, 236, 237,
238, 243
Frank, 129
Franklin, B., 81
Frederick the Great, 76
Garrick, D., 83, 94, 98, 115, 144, 147,
149, 245
Gentleman, Mr., 73
_Gentleman's Magazine_, 92, 95
George III, 17, 86, 103, 106, 236, 238
Gibbon, E., 54, 68, 83, 138, 184, 201,
233, 242, 243
Gifford, W., 90
Goldsmith, O., 54, 83, 107, 128, 155,
156, 181, 184-5, 233, 234, 236, 243,
250, 251
Gray, T., 16, 17, 66-7, 80, 151, 177,
220, 224, 225, 227, 228, 236
Gwynn, J., 248
Hallam, 83
Hamilton, W. G., 289
Hawking, Sir J., 128, 131, 232
Heberden, Dr., 108, 246
Hervey, H., 94
Hodge, 129
Hogarth, W., 247
Holland, Lord, 80
Hume, D., 81, 138, 236
_Idler, The_, 15, 103, 185, 193-5
_Irene_, 94, 95, 98
Johnson, M., 87, 91
Johnson, Mrs. (mother), 87, 92, 101, 128
Johnson, Mrs. (wife), 92-6, 99-100
_Journey to the Western Islands_, 107,
147, 150, 193
_King Lear_, 177
Langton, B., 89, 113, 115, 232
Laurence, Dr., 246
Law, W., 120, 141
_Letter to Lord Chesterfield_, 86, 88
Levett, R., 108, 183
_Life of Richard Savage_, 96
_Lives of the Poets_, 14, 36, 107, 177,
185, 188, 193, 202, 207, 219 _et seq._
_London_, 95, 96
Lonsdale, Lord, 86
Loudoun, Lord, 84
Lucan, Lord, 104-6
_Lycidas_, 203-4, 224, 226
M'Aulay, Rev. J., 50
Macartney, Lord, 248
Macaulay, Mrs., 20, 246
_Macbeth_, 97, 177
Maclean, Sir A., 112
Macpherson, J., 117, 166
Mallet, D., 192
Marchmont, Lord, 248
Milton, J., 9, 152, 153, 177, 190, 203,
204, 206, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 228
Monboddo, Lord, 84, 149
Montagu, Mrs., 246
Montgomerie, Margaret, 82
More, Hannah, 246
Murphy, A., 109
Newton, Bishop, 166-7
Northumberland, Duke of, 121
_Orlando Furioso_, 89
_Orrery, Lord_, 222, 248
_Ossian_, 117, 166
Paoli, 71, 72, 77, 79, 80, 82, 109, 245
_Paradise Lost_, 204, 228
_Parliamentary Debates_, 95
_Patriot, The_, 107
Percy, Bishop, 244, 249
Pitt, W., 51
Pope, A., 11, 16, 17, 18, 25, 34-5, 59,
65, 96, 102, 177, 180, 181, 182, 220,
221, 222, 225, 226, 229, 248
Porter, Mrs. _See_ Mrs. Johnson
Pot, Mr., 98
_Prayers and Meditations_, 194
Prologues, 98, 107
Psalmanazar, G., 245
Queen Anne, 87
_Rambler, The_, 15, 224, 99-100, 127,
140, 179, 185, 186, 193 _et seq._, 197,
199, 200
Ramsay, A., 234, 247
_Rasselas_, 15, 28, 103, 185, 186, 187,
193, 194, 196-7, 201-3
_Reliques of Poetry_, Percy, 249
Reynolds, Sir J., 44-5, 54, 70, 83,
85, 97, 109, 111, 122, 160, 161, 188,
189, 233, 234, 236, 238, 243, 247,
250, 251
Richardson, S., 196-7, 245
Robertson, W., 145, 146, 150, 234, 248
Rousseau, J. J., 77, 80, 174
_Samson Agonistes_, 204, 228
Savage, R., 96, 245
Scott, Sir W., 245
Settle, E., 189
_Shakespeare_, 7, 9, 14, 15, 31-3, 97,
98, 102, 107, 176, 177, 193, 202,
207, 211 _et seq._, 220
Shelburne, Lord, 124, 236-7
Sheridan, R. B., 197, 233, 250
Sheridan, T., 251
Shipley, Bishop, 246, 248
Siddons, Mrs., 163-4
Smith, Adam, 83, 150, 248
Smollett, T., 103, 248
Sterne, L., 236
Stowell, Lord, 246
Swift, 12, 123, 182, 217, 222, 225
Tate, N., 177
_Taxation no Tyranny_, 66, 107, 126
Taylor, Rev. J., 107, 108
Temple, Rev. W., 56, 81
Thomson, J., 220
Thrale, Mr., 102, 104, 106, 107, 108,
131, 186-7
Thrale, Mrs., 19, 46, 102, 104, 105,
106, 107, 112, 113, 121, 122-3, 125,
127, 131, 133, 134, 140, 246-7
Thurlow, Lord, 47-8, 240-1
_Vanity of Human Wishes_, 99, 182, 183
Voltaire, 76, 77, 90, 138, 173, 174
Waller, E., 205
Warburton, Bishop, 25, 97
Warren, Mr., 92
Warton, J., 233, 245
Warton, T., 245
Wesley, J., 47, 56, 138, 159, 242
Wilkes, J., 148, 164, 188, 241-2
Williams, Mrs., 108
Windham, W., 108, 239
Wraxall, Sir N., 243, 248-9
Young, E., 248