[426] Cockburn (_Life of Jeffrey_, i. 4) says that the High School of
Edinburgh, in 1781, 'was cursed by two under master, whose atrocities
young men cannot be made to believe, but old men cannot forget, and the
criminal law would not now endure.'
[427] Mr. Langton married the Countess Dowager of Rothes. BOSWELL.
[428] From school. See _ante_, ii. 62.
[429] See _ante_, i. 44.
[430] Johnson used to say that schoolmasters were worse than the
Egyptian task-masters of old. 'No boy,' says he, 'is sure any day he
goes to school to escape a whipping. How can the schoolmaster tell what
the boy has really forgotten, and what he has neglected to learn?'
Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 209. 'I rejoice,' writes J. S. Mill
(_Auto_. p. 53), 'in the decline of the old, brutal, and tyrannical
system of teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of
application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of
men who be incapable of doing anything which is disagreeable to them.'
[431] See _ante_, i. 373.
[432] See _ante_, ii. 74.
[433] The ship in which Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander were to have sailed
was the Endeavour. It was, they said, unfit for the voyage. The
Admiralty altered it in such a way as to render it top-heavy. It was
nearly overset on going down the river. Then it was rendered safe by
restoring it to its former condition. When the explorers raised their
former objections, they were told to take it or none. _Ann. Reg_. xv.
108. See also Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 18, 1773.
[434] I suspect that _Raleigh_ is here an error of Mr. Boswell's pen for
_Drake_. CROKER. Johnson had written Drake's _Life_, and therefore must
have had it well in mind that it was Drake who went round the world.
[435] _Romeo and Juliet_, act v. sc. 1.
[436] 'TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
'_Edinburgh_, May 3, 1792.
'MY DEAR SIR,
'As I suppose your great work will soon be reprinted, I beg leave to
trouble you with a remark on a passage of it, in which I am a little
misrepresented. Be not alarmed; the misrepresentation is not imputable
to you. Not having the book at hand, I cannot specify the page, but I
suppose you will easily find it. Dr. Johnson says, speaking of Mrs.
Thrale's family, "Dr. Beattie _sunk upon us_ that he was married, or
words to that purpose." I am not sure that I understand _sunk upon us_,
which is a very uncommon phrase, but it seems to me to imply, (and
others, I find, have understood it in the same sense,) _studiously
concealed from us his being married_. Now, Sir, this was by no means the
case. I could have no motive to conceal a circumstance, of which I never
was nor can be ashamed; and of which Dr. Johnson seemed to think, when
he afterwards became acquainted with Mrs. Beattie, that I had, as was
true, reason to be proud. So far was I from concealing her, that my wife
had at that time almost as numerous an acquaintance in London as I had
myself; and was, not very long after, kindly invited and elegantly
entertained at Streatham by Mr. and Mrs. Thrale.
'My request, therefore, is, that you would rectify this matter in your
new edition. You are at liberty to make what use you please of
this letter.
'My best wishes ever attend you and your family. Believe me to be, with
the utmost regard and esteem, dear Sir,
'Your obliged and affectionate humble servant, J. BEATTIE.'
I have, from my respect for my friend Dr. Beattie, and regard to his
extreme sensibility, inserted the foregoing letter, though I cannot but
wonder at his considering as any imputation a phrase commonly used among
the best friends. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker says there was a cause for the
'extreme sensibility.' 'Dr. Beattie was conscious that there was
something that might give a colour to such an imputation. It became
known, shortly after the date of this letter, that the mind of Mrs.
Beattie had become deranged.' Beattie would have found in Johnson's
_Dictionary_ an explanation of _sunk upon us_--'_To sink. To suppress;
to conceal_. "If sent with ready money to buy anything, and you happen
to be out of pocket, _sink_ the money and take up the goods on
account."' Swift's _Rules to Servants_, _Works_, viii. 256.
[437] See _ante_, i 450.
[438] See _ante_, ii. 10.
[439] See _Post_, April 15, 1778, note, and June 12, 1784.
[440] See ante, i. 405.
[441] _St. John_, xv. 24
[442] See note, p. 51 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[443] See _ante_, ii. 105.
[444] The petition was presented on Feb. 6 of this year. By a majority
thrown of 217 to 71 leave was refused for it to be brought up. _Parl.
Hist_. xvii. 245-297. Gibbon, in a letter dated Feb. 8, 1772 (_Misc.
Works_, ii. 74), congratulates Mr. Holroyd 'on the late victory of our
dear mamma, the Church of England. She had, last Thursday, 71 rebellious
sons, who pretended to set aside her will on account of insanity; but
217 worthy champions, headed by Lord North, Burke, and Charles Fox,
though they allowed the thirty-nine clauses of her testament were absurd
and unreasonable, supported the validity of it with infinite humour. By
the by, Charles Fox prepared himself for that holy war by passing
twenty-two hours in the pious exercise of hazard; his devotion cost him
only about AL500 per hour--in all, AL11,000.' See Boswell's _Hebrides_,
Aug. 19, 1773.
[445] 'Lord George Germayne,' writes Horace Walpole, 'said that he
wondered the House did not take some steps on this subject with regard
to the Universities, where boys were made to subscribe to the Articles
without reading them--a scandalous abuse.' _Journal of the Reign of
George III_, i. 11.
[446] See _ante_, ii. 104.
[447] Burke had thus answered Boswell's proposal:--'What is that
Scripture to which they are content to subscribe? The Bible is a vast
collection of different treatises; a man who holds the divine authority
of one may consider the other as merely human. Therefore, to ascertain
Scripture you must have one Article more, and you must define what that
Scripture is which you mean to teach.' _Parl. Hist_. xvii. 284.
[448] Dr. Nowell (_post_, June 11, 1784) had this year preached the fast
sermon before the House of Commons on Jan. 30, the anniversary of the
execution of Charles I, and received the usual vote of thanks. _Parl.
Hist. xvii_. 245. On Feb. 25 the entry of the vote was, without a
division, ordered to be expunged. On the publication of the sermon it
had been seen that Nowell had asserted that George III was endued with
the same virtues as Charles I, and that the members of the House were
the descendants of those who had opposed that King. _Ib_ p. 313, and
_Ann. Reg_. xv. 79. On March 2, Mr. Montague moved for leave to bring in
a bill to abolish the fast, but it was refused by 125 to 97. _Parl.
Hist_. xvii. 319. The fast was abolished in 1859--thirteen years within
the century that Johnson was ready to allow it. 'It is remarkable,'
writes Horace Walpole, 'that George III had never from the beginning of
his reign gone to church on the 30th of January, whereas George II
always did.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 41.
[449] This passage puzzled Mr. Croker and Mr. Lockhart. The following
extract from the _Gent. Mag_. for Feb. 1772, p. 92, throws light on
Johnson's meaning:--'This, say the opposers of the Bill, is putting it
in the King's power to change the order of succession, as he may for
ever prevent, if he is so minded, the elder branches of the family from
marrying, and therefore may establish the succession in the younger. Be
this as it may, is it not, in fact, converting the holy institution of
marriage into a mere state contract?' See also the Protest of fourteen
of the peers in _Parl. Hist_. xvii. 391, and _post_, April 15, 1773.
Horace Walpole ends his account of the Marriage Bill by saying:--'Thus
within three weeks were the Thirty-nine Articles affirmed and the New
Testament deserted.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 37. How
carelessly this Act was drawn was shown by Lord Eldon, when
Attorney-General, in the case of the marriage of the Duke of Sussex to
Lady Augusta Murray. 'Lord Thurlow said to me angrily at the Privy
Council, "Sir, why have you not prosecuted under the Act of Parliament
all the parties concerned in this abominable marriage?" To which I
answered, "That it was a very difficult business to prosecute--that the
Act had been drawn by Lord Mansfield and _Mr. Attorney-General Thurlow_,
and Mr. Solicitor-General Wedderburne, and unluckily they had made all
parties present at the marriage guilty of felony; and as nobody could
prove the marriage except a person who had been present at it, there
could be no prosecution, because nobody present could be compelled to be
a witness." This put an end to the matter.' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 234.
[450] See _post_, May 9, 1773, and May 13, 1778.
[451] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 25, 1773, where Johnson, discussing
the same question, says:--'There is generally a _scoundrelism_ about
a low man.'
[452] Mackintosh told Mr. Croker that this friend was Mr. Cullen,
afterwards a judge by the name of Lord Cullen. In _Boswelliana_ (pp.
250-2), Boswell mentions him thrice, and always as 'Cullen the mimick.'
His manner, he says, was wretched, and his physiognomy worse than
Wilkes's. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 268) says that 'Cullen possessed
the talent of mimicry beyond all mankind; for his was not merely an
exact imitation of voice and manner of speaking, but a perfect
exhibition of every man's manner of thinking on every subject.' Carlyle
mentions two striking instances of this.
[453] See _post_, May 15, 1776.
[454] 'The prince of Dublin printers,' as Swift called him. Swift's
_Works_ (1803), xviii. 288. He was taken off by Foote under the name of
Peter Paragraph, in _The Orators_, the piece in which he had meant to
take off Johnson (_ante_, ii. 95). 'Faulkner consoled himself (pending
his prosecution of the libeller) by printing the libel, and selling it
most extensively.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 287. See Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Aug. 29.
[455] Faulkner had lost one of his legs. 'When Foote had his accident
(_ante_, ii. 95), "Now I shall take off old Faulkner indeed to the
life," was the first remark he made when what he had to suffer was
announced to him.' Forster's _Essays_, ii. 400.
[456] A writer in the _Monthly Review_, lxxvi. 374 (no doubt Murphy),
says:--'A large number of friends such as Johnson, Mr. Burke, and Mr.
Murphy dined at Garrick's at Christmas, 1760. Foote was then in Dublin.
It was said at table that he had been horse-whipped by an apothecary for
taking him off upon the stage. "But I wonder," said Garrick, "that any
man would show so much resentment to Foote; nobody ever thought it worth
his while to quarrel with him in London." "And I am glad," said Johnson,
"to find that the man is rising in the world." The anecdote was
afterwards told to Foote, who in return gave out that he would in a
short time produce the Caliban of literature on the stage. Being
informed of this design, Johnson sent word to Foote, that, the theatre
being intended for the reformation of vice, he would go from the boxes
on the stage, and correct him before the audience, Foote abandoned the
design. No ill-will ensued.'
[457] See _post_, May 15, 1776, where Johnson says:--'I turned Boswell
loose at Lichfield, my native city, that he might see for once real
_civility_.
[458] In my list of Boswell's projected works (_ante_, i. 225, note 2) I
have omitted this.
[459] See _post_, April 7, 1775.
[460] Boswell visited Ireland in the summer of 1760. Prior's
_Goldsmith_, i. 450.
[461] Puffendorf states that 'tutors and schoolmasters have a right to
the moderate use of gentle discipline over their pupils'--viii. 3-10;
adding, rather superfluously, Grotius's _caveat_, that 'it shall not
extend to a power of death.' CROKER.
[462] The brother of Sir J. Macdonald, mentioned _ante_, i. 449. Johnson
visited him in the Isle of Skye. 'He had been very well pleased with him
in London, but he was dissatisfied at hearing heavy complaints of rents
racked, and the people driven to emigration.' Boswell's _Hebrides_,
Sept. 2, 1773. He reproached him also with meanness as a host.
[463] Lord Campbell (_Lives of the Chancellors_, v. 449) points out that
this conversation followed close on the appointment of 'the incompetent
Bathurst' as Chancellor. 'Such a conversation,' he adds, 'would not have
occurred during the chancellorship of Lord Hardwicke or Lord Somers.'
[464]
'But if at first he minds his hits,
And drinks champagne among the wits,' &c.
Prior's _Chameleon_, 1. 39.
[465] 'Plain truth, _dear Murray_, needs no flowers of speech.' Pope
thus addresses him in Epistle vi. Book i. of his _Imitations of Horace_,
which he dedicated to him.
[466] See _ante_, 386.
[467] See _post_, March 23, 1776.
[468] Afterwards Lord Ashburton. Described by Johnson (_post_, July 22,
1777), as 'Mr. Dunning, the great lawyer.'
[469] 'Having cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation, so as to
be no longer distinguished as a Scot, he seems inclined to disencumber
himself from all adherences of his original, and took upon him to change
his name from Scotch _Malloch_ to English _Mallet_, without any
imaginable reason of preference which the eye or ear can discover. What
other proofs he gave of disrespect to his native country I know not, but
it was remarked of him that he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not
commend.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 464. See _ante_, i. 268, and _post_,
April 28, 1783.
[470] Mr. Love was, so far as is known, the first who advised Boswell to
keep a journal. When Boswell was but eighteen, writing of a journey he
had taken, he says: 'I kept an exact journal, at the particular desire
of my friend, Mr. Love, and sent it to him in sheets every post.'
_Letters of Boswell_, p. 8.
[471] 'That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool
that uses it.' _Hamlet_, iii. 2.
[472] Jeffrey wrote from Oxford, where he spent nine months in
1791-2:--'The only part of a Scotchman I mean to abandon is the
language, and language is all I expect to learn in England.' (Cockburn's
_Jeffrey_, i. 46). His biographer says:--'He certainly succeeded in the
abandonment of his habitual Scotch. The change was so sudden and so
complete, that it excited the surprise of his friends, and furnished
others with ridicule for many years.... The result, on the whole, was
exactly as described by Lord Holland, who said that though Jeffrey "had
lost the broad Scotch at Oxford, he had only gained the narrow
English."' Cockburn, in forgetfulness of Mallet's case, says that 'the
acquisition of a pure English accent by a full-grown Scotchman is
fortunately impossible.'
[473] Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville. See _post_, under Nov.
29, 1777. Boswell wrote to Temple on May 22, 1775:--'Harry Dundas is
going to be made King's Advocate--Lord Advocate at thirty-three! I
cannot help being angry and somewhat fretful at this; he has, to be
sure, strong parts, but he is a coarse, unlettered, unfanciful dog.'
_Letters of Boswell_, p. 195. Horace Walpole describes him as 'the
rankest of all Scotchmen, and odious for that bloody speech that had
fixed on him the nick-name of _Starvation_! _Journal of the Reign of
George III_, ii. 479. On p. 637 he adds:--'The happily coined word
"starvation" delivered a whole continent from the Northern harpies that
meant to devour it.' The speech in which Dundas introduced _starvation_
was made in 1775. Walpole's _Letters_, viii. 30. See _Parl. Hist_.,
xviii. 387. His character is drawn with great force by Cockburn. _Life
of Jeffrey_, i. 77.
[474] The correspondent of Hume. See J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 320.
[475] See _post_, May 12, 1778.
[476] In the _Plan_ (Works, v. 9), Johnson noticed the difference of the
pronunciation of _great_. 'Some words have two sounds which may be
equally admitted as being equally defensible by authority. Thus _great_
is differently used:--
'For Swift and him despised the farce of state,
The sober follies of the wise and great.'--POPE.
'As if misfortune made the throne her seat,
And none could be unhappy but the great.'--ROWE.
In the _Preface to the Dictionary_ (_Works_, v. 25), Johnson says that
'the vowels are capriciously pronounced, and differently modified by
accident or affectation, not only in every province, but in every
mouth.' Swift gives both rhymes within ten lines:--
'My lord and he are grown so great--
Always together, tA¬te-A -tA¬te.'
* * * * *
'You, Mr. Dean, frequent the great, Inform us, will the emperor treat?'
Swift's _Works_ (1803), x. 110.
[477] 'Dr. Henry More, of Cambridge, Johnson did not much affect; he was
a Platonist, and, in Johnson's opinion, a visionary. He would frequently
cite from him, and laugh at, a passage to this effect:--"At the
consummation of all things, it shall come to pass that eternity shall
shake hands with opacity"' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 543.
[478] See _post_, April 17, 1778, and May 19, 1784.
[479] See _ante_, i. 240, and ii. 105.
[480] _Revelations_, xiv. 2.
[481] Johnson, in _The Rambler_, No. 78, describes man's death as 'a
change not only of the place, but the manner of his being; an entrance
into a state not simply which he knows not, but which perhaps he has not
faculties to know.'
[482] This fiction is known to have been invented by Daniel Defoe, and
was added to Drelincourt's book, to make it sell. The first edition had
it not. MALONE. 'More than fifty editions have not exhausted its
popularity. The hundreds of thousands who have bought the silly treatise
of Drelincourt have borne unconscious testimony to the genius of De
Foe.' Forster's _Essays_, ii. 70.
[483] See _ante_, i. 29.
[484] In his _Life of Akenside ( Works_, viii. 475) he says:--'Of
Akenside's _Odes_ nothing favourable can be said.... To examine such
compositions singly cannot be required; they have doubtless brighter and
darker parts; but when they are once found to be generally dull, all
further labour may be spared; for to what use can the work be criticised
that will not be read?' See _post_, April 10, 1776.
[485] See _post_, just before May 15, 1776.
[486] See _post_, Sept. 23, 1777.
[487] The account of his trial is entitled:--'_The Grand Question in
Religion Considered. Whether we shall obey God or Man; Christ or the
Pope; the Prophets and Apostles, or Prelates and Priests. Humbly offered
to the King and Parliament of Great Britain. By E. Elwall. With an
account of the Author's Tryal or Prosecution at Stafford Assizes before
Judge Denton. London.'_ No date. Elwall seems to have been a Unitarian
Quaker. He was prosecuted for publishing a book against the doctrines of
the Trinity, but was discharged, being, he writes, treated by the Judge
with great humanity. In his pamphlet he says (p. 49):--'You see what I
have already done in my former book. I have challenged the greatest
potentates on earth, yea, even the King of Great Britain, whose true and
faithful subject I am in all temporal things, and whom I love and
honour; also his noble and valiant friend, John Argyle, and his great
friends Robert Walpole, Charles Wager, and Arthur Onslow; all these can
speak well, and who is like them; and yet, behold, none of all these
cared to engage with their friend Elwall.' See _post_, May 7, 1773. Dr.
Priestley had received an account of the trial from a gentleman who was
present, who described Elwall as 'a tall man, with white hair, a large
beard and flowing garments, who struck everybody with respect. He spoke
about an hour with great gravity, fluency, and presence of mind.' The
trial took place, he said, in 1726. 'It is impossible,' adds Priestley
(_Works_, ed. 1831, ii. 417), 'for an unprejudiced person to read
Elwall's account of his trial, without feeling the greatest veneration
for the writer.' In truth, Elwall spoke with all the simple power of the
best of the early Quakers.
[488] Boswell, in the _Hypochrondriack_ (_London Mag_. 1783, p. 290),
writing on swearing, says:--'I have the comfort to think that my
practice has been blameless in this respect.' He continues (p. 293):--
'To do the present age justice, there is much less swearing among
genteel people than in the last age.'
[489] 'The _Life of Dr. Parnell_ is a task which I should very willingly
decline, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such
variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always
seemed to do best that which he was doing.... What such an author has
told, who would tell again? I have made an abstract from his larger
narrative, and have this gratification from my attempt, that it gives me
an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of Goldsmith. [Greek:
Togargerasesti Thanonton].' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 398.
[490] See _ante_, i. 26, and _post_, April 11, 1773.
[491] 'Mr. Ruffhead says of fine passages that they are fine, and of
feeble passages that they are feeble; but recommending poetical beauty
is like remarking the splendour of sunshine; to those who can see it is
unnecessary, and to those who are blind, absurd.' _Gent. Mag_. May,
1769, p. 255. The review in which this passage occurs, is perhaps in
part Johnson's.
[492] See _ante_, i. 448.
[493] See _post_, April 5, 1775.
[494] It was Lewis XIV who said it. 'Toutes les fois que je donne une
place vacante, je fais cent mecontens et un ingrat.' Voltaire, _Siecle
de Louis XIV_, ch. 26. 'When I give away a place,' said Lewis XIV, 'I
make an hundred discontented, and one ungrateful.' Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 204.
[495] See _post_, May 15, 1783.
[496] This project has since been realized. Sir Henry Liddel, who made a
spirited tour into Lapland, brought two rein-deer to his estate in
Northumberland, where they bred; but the race has unfortunately
perished. BOSWELL.
[497] Dr. Johnson seems to have meant the Address to the Reader with a
KEY subjoined to it; which have been prefixed to the modern editions of
that play. He did not know, it appears, that several additions were made
to _The Rehearsal_ after the first edition. MALONE. In his _Life of
Dryden_ (_Works_, vii. 272) Johnson writes:--'Buckingham characterised
Dryden in 1671 by the name of Bayes in _The Rehearsal_.... It is said
that this farce was originally intended against Davenant, who in the
first draught was characterised by the name of Bilboa.... It is said,
likewise, that Sir Robert Howard was once meant. The design was probably
to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he might be. Much of the personal
satire, to which it might owe its first reception, is now lost or
obscured.'
[498] 'The Pantheon,' wrote Horace Walpole (_Letters_, v. 489), a year
later than this conversation, 'is still the most beautiful edifice in
England.' Gibbon, a few weeks before Johnson's visit to the Pantheon,
wrote:--'In point of _ennui_ and magnificence, the Pantheon is the
wonder of the eighteenth century and of the British empire.' Gibbon's
_Misc. Works_, ii. 74. Evelina, in Miss Burners novel (vol. i. Letter
xxiii.) contrasts the Pantheon and Ranelagh:--'I was extremely struck on
entering the Pantheon with the beauty of the building, which greatly
surpassed whatever I could have expected or imagined. Yet it has more
the appearance of a chapel than of a place of diversion; and, though I
was quite charmed with the magnificence of the room, I felt that I could
not be as gay and thoughtless there as at Ranelagh; for there is
something in it which rather inspires awe and solemnity than mirth and
pleasure.' Ranelagh was at Chelsea, the Pantheon was in Oxford-street.
See _ante_, ii. 119, and _post_, Sept. 23, 1777.
[499] Her husband, Squire Godfrey Bosville, Boswell (_post_, Aug. 24,
1780), calls 'my Yorkshire _chief_.' Their daughter was one of the young
ladies whom he passes in review in his letters to Temple. 'What say you
to my marrying? I intend next autumn to visit Miss Bosville in
Yorkshire; but I fear, my lot being cast in Scotland, that beauty would
not be content. She is, however, grave; I shall see.' _Letters of
Boswell_, p. 81. She married Sir A. Macdonald, Johnson's inhospitable
host in Sky (_ante_, ii. 157).
[500] In _The Adventurer_, No. 120, Johnson, after describing 'a gay
assembly,' continues:--'The world in its best state is nothing more than
a larger assembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which
they do not feel.' _Works_, iv. 120.
[501] 'Sir Adam Fergusson, who by a strange coincidence of chances got
in to be member of Parliament for Ayrshire in 1774, was the
great-grandson of a messenger. I was talking with great indignation that
the whole (? old) families of the county should be defeated by an
upstart.' _Boswelliana_, p. 283.
[502] See _ante_, ii. 60.
[503] See _ante_, i. 424. Hume wrote of the judgment of Charles I.
(_Hist. of Eng_. vii. 148):--'If ever, on any occasion, it were laudable
to conceal truth from the populace, it must be confessed that the
doctrine of resistance affords such an example; and that all speculative
reasoners ought to observe with regard to this principle the same
cautious silence which the laws in every species of government have ever
prescribed to themselves.'
[504] 'All foreigners remark that the knowledge of the common people of
England is greater than that of any other vulgar. This superiority we
undoubtedly owe to the rivulets of intelligence [i. e. the newspapers]
which are continually trickling among us, which every one may catch, and
of which every one partakes.' _Idler_, No. 7. In a later number (30), he
speaks very contemptuously of news-writers. 'In Sir Henry Wotton's
jocular definition, _an ambassador is said to be a man of virtue sent
abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country. A newswriter is _a
man without virtue, who writes lies at home for his own profit_.'
[505] See _post_, April 3, 1773.
[506] Probably Mr. Elphinston. See _ante_, i. 210, _post_, April 19,
1773, and April i, 1779. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 493) wrote of a
friend:--'He had overcome many disadvantages of his education, for he
had been sent to a Jacobite seminary of one Elphinstone at Kensington,
where his body was starved and his mind also. He returned to Edinburgh
to college. He had hardly a word of Latin, and was obliged to work hard
with a private tutor.'
[507] 'In progress of time Abel Sampson, _probationer_ of divinity, was
admitted to the privileges of a preacher.' _Guy Mannering_, chap. ii.
[508] In his Dictionary he defines _heinous_ as _atrocious; wicked in a
high degree_.
[509] _Ephesians_, v. 5.
[510] His second definition of _whoremonger_ is _one who converses with
a fornicatress_.
[511] It must not be presumed that Dr. Johnson meant to give any
countenance to licentiousness, though in the character of an Advocate he
made a just and subtle distinction between occasional and habitual
transgression. BOSWELL.
[512] Erskine was born in 1750, entered the navy in 1764, the army in
1768, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1776, was called
to the Bar in 1778, was made a King's counsel in 1783, and Lord
Chancellor in 1806. He died in 1823. Campbell's _Chancellors_,
vi. 368-674.
[513] Johnson had called Churchill 'a blockhead.' _Ante_, i. 419. 'I
have remarked,' said Miss Reynolds, 'that his dislike of anyone seldom
prompted him to say much more than that the fellow is a blockhead.'
Croker's _Boswell_, p. 834. In like manner Goldsmith called Sterne a
blockhead; for Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, i. 260) is, no doubt,
right in saying that the author of _Tristram Shandy_ is aimed at in the
following passage in _The Citizen of the World_ (Letter, 74):--'In
England, if a bawdy blockhead thus breaks in on the community, he sets
his whole fraternity in a roar; nor can he escape even though he should
fly to nobility for shelter.' That Johnson did not think so lowly of
Fielding's powers is shown by a compliment that he paid Miss Burney, on
one of the characters in _Evelina_. '"Oh, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith is the
man!" cried he, laughing violently. "Harry Fielding never drew so good a
character!"' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 78.
[514] Richardson wrote of Fielding (_Corres_, vi. 154):--'Poor Fielding!
I could not help telling his sister that I was equally surprised at and
concerned for his continued lowness. Had your brother, said I, been born
in a stable, or been a runner at a sponging-house, we should have
thought him a genius, and wished he had had the advantage of a liberal
education, and of being admitted into good company.' Other passages show
Richardson's dislike or jealousy of Fielding. Thus he wrote:--'You guess
that I have not read _Amelia_. Indeed, I have read but the first volume.
I had intended to go through with it; but I found the characters and
situations so wretchedly low and dirty that I imagined I could not be
interested for any one of them.' _Ib_ iv. 60. 'So long as the world will
receive, Mr. Fielding will write,' _Ib_ p. 285.
[515] Hannah More wrote in 1780 (_Memoirs_, i. 168), 'I never saw
Johnson really angry with me but once. I alluded to some witty passage
in _Tom Jones_; he replied, "I am shocked to hear you quote from so
vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it: a confession which
no modest lady should ever make. I scarcely know a more corrupt work!"
He went so far as to refuse to Fielding the great talents which are
ascribed to him, and broke out into a noble panegyric on his competitor,
Richardson; who, he said, was as superior to him in talents as in
virtue; and whom he pronounced to be the greatest genius that had shed
its lustre on this path of literature.' Yet Miss Burney in her Preface
to _Evelina_ describes herself as 'exhilarated by the wit of Fielding
and humour of Smollett.' It is strange that while Johnson thus condemned
Fielding, he should 'with an ardent and liberal earnestness' have
revised Smollett's epitaph. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 28, 1773.
Macaulay in his _Speech on Copyright_ (_Writings and Speeches_, p. 615)
said of Richardson's novels:--'No writings have done more to raise the
fame of English genius in foreign countries. No writings are more deeply
pathetic. No writings, those of Shakespeare excepted, show more profound
knowledge of the human heart.' Horace. Walpole (_Letters_, iv. 305), on
the other hand, spoke of Richardson as one 'who wrote those deplorably
tedious lamentations, _Clarissa_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_, which are
pictures of high life as conceived by a bookseller, and romances as they
would be spiritualised by a methodist teacher.' Lord Chesterfield says
of _Sir Charles Grandison_, that 'it is too long, and there is too much
mere talk in it. Whenever he goes _ultra crepidam_ into high life, he
grossly mistakes the modes; but to do him justice he never mistakes
nature, and he has surely great knowledge and skill both in painting and
in interesting the heart.' _Ib_ note. See _ante_, ii. 48.
[516] _Amelia_ he read through without stopping. _Post_, April 12, 1776.
Shenstone (_Works_, iii. 70) writes of 'the tedious character of Parson
Adams,' and calls the book 'a very mean performance; of which the
greater part is unnatural and unhumorous.'
[517] Johnson wrote to Richardson of _Clarissa_, 'though the story is
long, every letter is short.' He begged him to add an _index rerum_,
'for _Clarissa_ is not a performance to be read with eagerness, and laid
aside for ever; but will be occasionally consulted by the busy, the
aged, and the studious.' Richardson's _Corres_, v. 281.
[518] 'Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls of
Denbigh, who draw their origin from the Counts of Habsburg, the lineal
descendants of Eltrico, in the seventh century Duke of Alsace. Far
different have been the fortunes of the English and German divisions of
the family of Habsburg: the former, the knights and sheriffs of
Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity of a peerage: the
latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened the
liberty of the old, and invaded the treasures of the new world. The
successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England;
but the romance of _Tom Jones_, that exquisite picture of human manners,
will outlive the palace of the Escurial, and the imperial eagle of the
house of Austria.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 4. Richardson, five years
after _Tom Jones_ was published, wrote (_Corres_, v. 275):--'Its run is
over, even with us. Is it true that France had virtue enough to refuse a
license for such a profligate performance?'
[519] Mr. Samuel Paterson, eminent for his knowledge of books. BOSWELL.
In the first two editions this note does not appear, but Mr. Paterson is
described as 'the auctioneer.' See _post_, Aug. 3, 1776.
[520] Mr. Paterson, in a pamphlet, produced some evidence to shew that
his work was written before Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_
appeared. BOSWELL.
[521] _Coryat's Crudities hastily gobled up in five Moneths Trauells in
France, Sauoy, Italy, etc. London_, 1611.
[522] 'Lord Erskine,' says Mr. Croker, 'was fond of this anecdote. He
told it to me the first time that I was in his company, and often
repeated it, boasting that he had been a sailor, a soldier, a lawyer,
and a parson.'
[523] 185,000. 2 _Kings_, xix. 35.
[524] Lord Chatham wrote on Oct. 12, 1766, to Lord Shelburne that he
'had extremely at heart to obtain this post for Lord Cardross, a young
nobleman of great talents, learning, and accomplishments, and son of the
Earl of Buchan, an intimate friend of Lord Chatham, from the time they
were students together at Utrecht.' _Chatham Corres_. iii. 106. Horace
Walpole wrote on Oct. 26, 'Sir James Gray goes to Madrid. The embassy
has been sadly hawked about it.' Walpole's _Letters_, v. 22. 'Sir James
Gray's father was first a box-keeper, and then footman to James II.'
_Ib_ ii. 366.
[525] See _ante_, ii. 134, for Johnson's attack on Lord Chatham's
'feudal gabble.'
[526] In Boswell's _Hebrides_, on Aug. 25, 1773, Johnson makes much the
same answer to a like statement by Boswell. See _post_, March 21, 1783.
[527] See _ante_, i. 343, 405, and _post_, April 10, 1772.
[528] 'I cannot,' wrote John Wesley, (_Journal_, iv. 74), 'give up to
all Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft, till I give up
the credit of all history, sacred and profane. And at the present time,
I have not only as strong but stronger proofs of this from eye and ear
witnesses than I have of murder; so that I cannot rationally doubt of
one any more the than the other.'
[529] See this curious question treated by him with most acute ability,
_Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 33. [Aug. 16.]
BOSWELL. Johnson, in his _Observations on Macbeth_ (_Works_, v. 55-7),
shews his utter disbelief in witchcraft. 'These phantoms,' he writes,
'have indeed appeared more frequently in proportion as the darkness of
ignorance has been more gross; but it cannot be shewn that the brightest
gleams of knowledge have at any time been sufficient to drive them out
of the world.' He describes the spread of the belief in them in the
middle ages, and adds:--'The reformation did not immediately arrive at
its meridian, and though day was gradually increasing upon us, the
goblins of witchcraft still continued to hover in the twilight.' See
_post_, April 8, 1779 and 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_.
[530] The passage to which Johnson alluded is to be found (I conjecture)
in the _Phoenissae_, I. 1120. J. BOSWELL, JUN.
[531] Boswell (_Letters_, p. 324), on June 21, 1790, described to Temple
the insults of that 'brutal fellow,' Lord Lonsdale, and continued:--'In
my fretfulness I used such expressions as irritated him almost to fury,
so that he used such expressions towards me that I should have,
according to the irrational laws of honour sanctioned by the world, been
under the necessity of risking my life, had not an explanation taken
place.' Boswell's eldest son, Sir Alexander Boswell, lost his life in
a duel.
[532] Johnson might have quoted the lieutenant in _Tom Jones_, Book vii.
chap. 13. 'My dear boy, be a good Christian as long as you live: but be
a man of honour too, and never put up an affront; not all the books, nor
all the parsons in the world, shall ever persuade me to that. I love my
religion very well, but I love my honour more. There must be some
mistake in the wording of the text, or in the translation, or in the
understanding it, or somewhere or other. But however that be, a man must
run the risk, for he must preserve his honour.' See _post_, April 19,
1773, and April 20, 1783, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 19, 1773.
[533] Oglethorpe was born in 1698. In 1714 he entered the army. Prince
Eugene's campaigns against the Turks in which Oglethorpe served were in
1716-17. Rose's _Biog. Dict_. vii. 266 and x. 381. He was not therefore
quite so young as Boswell thought.
[534] In the first two editions _Bender_. Belgrade was taken by Eugene
in 1717.
[535] 'Idem velle atque idem nolle ea demum firma amicitia est.'
Sallust, _Catilina_, xx. 4.
[536] More than one conjecture has been hazarded as to the passage to
which Johnson referred. I believe that he was thinking of the lines--
'Et variis albae junguntur saepe columbae;
Et niger a viridi turtur amatur ave.'
_Sappho to Phaon_, line 37.
'Turtles and doves of differing hues unite,
And glossy jet is paired with shining white.' (POPE.)
Goldsmith had said that people to live in friendship together must have
the same likings and aversions. Johnson thereupon calls to mind Sappho,
who had shown that there could be love where there was little likeness.
[537] It was not published till after Goldsmith's death. It is in the
list of new books in the _Gent. Mag_. for Aug. 1774, p. 378. See _post_,
under June 22, 1776, the note on Goldsmith's epitaph.
[538] 'Upon my opening the door the young women broke off their
discourse, but my landlady's daughters telling them that it was nobody
but the Gentleman (for that is the name that I go by in the
neighbourhood as well as in the family), they went on without minding
me.' _Spectator_, No. 12.
[539] The author also of the _Ballad of Cumnor Hall_. See Scott's
_Introduction to Kenilworth. Bishop Horne says that 'Mickle inserted in
the _Lusiad_ an angry note against Garrick, who, as he thought, had used
him ill by rejecting a tragedy of his.' Shortly afterwards, he saw
Garrick act for the first time. The play was _Lear_. 'During the first
three acts he said not a word. In a fine passage of the fourth he
fetched a deep sigh, and turning to a friend, "I wish," said he, "the
note was out of my book."' Horne's _Essays_, ed. 1808, p. 38. See
_post_, under Dec. 24, 1783, and Garrick's letter in Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Oct. 23,1773.
[540] The farmer's son told Mr. Prior that 'he had felt much reluctance
in erasing during necessary repairs these memorials.' Prior's
_Goldsmith_, ii. 335.
[541] See _ante_, ii. 178.
[542] Here was a blank, which may be filled up thus:--'_was told by an
apparition_;'--the writer being probably uncertain whether he was asleep
or awake, when his mind was impressed with the solemn presentiment with
which the fact afterwards happened so wonderfully to correspond.
BOSWELL. 'Lord Hardinge, when Secretary at War,' writes Mr. Croker,
'informed me, that it appears that Colonel Sir Thomas Prendergast, of
the twenty-second foot, was killed at Malplaquet, Aug. 31, 1709; but no
trace can be found of any _Colonel_ Cecil in the army at that period.
Colonel W. Cecil, who was sent to the Tower in 1744, could hardly have
been, in 1709, of the age and rank which Oglethorpe's anecdote seems to
imply.' Prendergast, or Prendergrass, in the year 1696, informed the
government of the plot to assassinate William III., in which Friend was
one of the leaders. Macaulay (_Hist. of Eng_. chap. 21), calls
Prendergrass 'a Roman Catholic gentleman of known courage and honour.'
Swift, attacking Prendergast's son, attacks Prendergast himself:--
'What! thou the spawn of him who shamed our isle,
Traitor, assassin, and informer vile.'
Swift's _Works_, xi. 319.
[543] Locke says:--'When once it comes to be a trial of skill, contest
for mastery betwixt you and your child, you must be sure to carry it,
whatever blows it costs, if a nod or words will not prevail.' He
continues:--'A prudent and kind mother of my acquaintance was, on such
an occasion, forced to whip her little daughter, at her first coming
home from nurse, eight times successively the same morning, before she
could master her stubbornness, and obtain a compliance in a very easy
and indifferent matter.... As this was the first time, so I think it was
the last, too, she ever struck her.' _Locke on Education_ (ed. 1710),
p. 96.
[544] Andrew Crosbie, arguing for the schoolmaster, had
said:--'Supposing it true that the respondent had been provoked to use a
little more severity than he wished to do, it might well be justified on
account of the ferocious and rebellious behaviour of his scholars, some
of whom cursed and swore at him, and even went so far as to wrestle with
him, in which case he was under a necessity of subduing them as he best
could.' _Scotch Appeal Cases_, xvii. p. 214. The judgment of the House
of Lords is given in Paton's _Reports of Cases upon Appeal from
Scotland_, ii. 277, as follows:--'A schoolmaster, appointed by the
Magistrates and Town Council of Cambelton, without any mention being
made as to whether his office was for life or at pleasure: Held that it
was a public office, and that he was liable to be dismissed for a just
and reasonable cause, and that acts of cruel chastisement of the boys
were a justifiable cause for his dismissal; reversing the judgment of
the Court of Session.... The proof led before his dismission went to
shew that scarce a day passed without some of the scholars coming home
with their heads cut, and their bodies discoloured. He beat his pupils
with wooden squares, and sometimes with his fists, and used his feet by
kicking them, and dragged them by the hair of the head. He had also
entered into the trade of cattle grazing and farming--dealt in black
cattle--in the shipping business--and in herring fishing.'
[545] These six Methodists were in 1768 expelled St. Edmund's Hall, by
the Vice-Chancellor, acting as 'visitor.' Nominally they were expelled
for their ignorance; in reality for their active Methodism. That they
were 'mighty ignorant fellows' was shown, but ignorance was tolerated at
Oxford. One of their number confessed his ignorance, and declined all
examination. But 'as he was represented to be a man of fortune, and
declared that he was not designed for holy orders, the Vice-Chancellor
did not think fit to remove him for this reason only, though he was
supposed to be one of "the righteous over-much."' _Dr. Johnson: His
Friends and his Critics_, pp. 51-57. Horace Walpole, Whig though he was,
thought as Johnson. 'Oxford,' he wrote (_Letters_ v. 97), 'has begun
with these rascals, and I hope Cambridge will wake.'
[546] Much such an expulsion as this Johnson had justified in his _Life
of Cheynel_ (_Works_, vi. 415). 'A temper of this kind,' he wrote, 'is
generally inconvenient and offensive in any society, but in a place of
education is least to be tolerated ... He may be justly driven from a
society, by which he thinks himself too wise to be governed, and in
which he is too young to teach, and too opinionative to learn.'
[547] Johnson wrote far otherwise of the indulgence shown to Edmund
Smith, the poet. 'The indecency and licentiousness of his behaviour drew
upon him, Dec. 24, 1694, while he was yet only bachelor, a publick
admonition, entered upon record, in order to his expulsion. Of this
reproof the effect is not known. He was probably less notorious. At
Oxford, as we all know, much will be forgiven to literary merit.... Of
his lampoon upon Dean Aldrich, [Smith was a Christ-Church man], I once
heard a single line too gross to be repeated. But he was still a genius
and a scholar, and Oxford was unwilling to lose him; he was endured with
all his pranks and his vices two years longer; but on Dec. 20, 1705, at
the instance of all the Canons, the sentence declared five years before
was put in execution. The execution was, I believe, silent and tender.'
_Works_, vii. 373-4.
[548] See post, p. 193, note i.
[549] 'Our bottle-conversation,' wrote Addison, 'is infected with
party-lying.' _The Spectator_, No. 507.
[550] Mrs. Piozzi, in her _Anecdotes_, p. 261, has given an erroneous
account of this incident, as of many others. She pretends to relate it
from recollection, as if she herself had been present; when the fact is
that it was communicated to her by me. She has represented it as a
personality, and the true point has escaped her. BOSWELL. She tells the
story against Boswell. 'I fancy Mr. B---- has not forgotten,'
she writes.
[551] See post, April 11, 1776.
[552] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines _manufacturer_ as a _workman;
an artificer_.
[553] Johnson had no fear of popular education. In his attack on
Jenyns's _Enquiry_ (ante, i. 315), he wrote (_Works_, vi. 56):--'Though
it should be granted that those who are _born to poverty and drudgery_
should not be _deprived_ by an _improper education_ of the _opiate_ of
_ignorance_, even this concession will not be of much use to direct our
practice, unless it be determined, who are those that are _born to
poverty_. To entail irreversible poverty upon generation after
generation, only because the ancestor happened to be poor, is in itself
cruel, if not unjust.... I am always afraid of determining on the side
of envy or cruelty. The privileges of education may sometimes be
improperly bestowed, but I shall always fear to withhold them, lest I
should be yielding to the suggestions of pride, while I persuade myself
that I am following the maxims of policy.' In _The Idler_, No. 26, he
attacked those who 'hold it little less than criminal to teach poor
girls to read and write,' and who say that 'they who are born to poverty
are born to ignorance, and will work the harder the less they know.'
[554] Tacitus's Agricola, ch. xii, was no doubt quoted in reference to
the shortness of the northern winter day.
[555] It is remarkable, that Lord Monboddo, whom, on account of his
resembling Dr. Johnson in some particulars, Foote called an Elzevir
edition of him, has, by coincidence, made the very same remark. _Origin
and Progress of Language_, vol. iii. 2nd ed. p. 219. BOSWELL. See
Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21, note.
[556] On Saturday night Johnson recorded:--'I resolved last Easter to
read within the year the whole Bible, a very great part of which I had
never looked upon. I read the Greek Testament without construing, and
this day concluded the Apocalypse.... Easter Day. After twelve at night.
The day is now begun on which I hope to begin a new course, [Greek:
hosper aph husplaeggon], [as if from the starting-place.]
My hopes are from this time--
To rise early,
To waste less time,
To appropriate something to charity.'
A week later he recorded:--'It is a comfort to me that at last, in my
sixty-third year, I have attained to know even thus hastily, confusedly,
and imperfectly, what my Bible contains. I have never yet read the
Apocrypha. I have sometimes looked into the Maccabees, and read a
chapter containing the question, _Which is the strongest?_ I think, in
Esdras' [I Esdras, ch. iii. v. 10]. _Pr. and Med_. pp. 112-118.
[557] _Pr. and Med_. p. iii. BOSWELL.
[558] 'Perfect through sufferings.' _Hebrews_, ii. 10.
[559] 'I was always so incapable of learning mathematics,' wrote Horace
Walpole (_Letters_, ix. 467), 'that I could not even get by heart the
multiplication table, as blind Professor Sanderson honestly told me,
above three-score years ago, when I went to his lectures at Cambridge.
After the first fortnight he said to me, "Young man, it would be
cheating you to take your money; for you never can learn what I am
trying to teach you." I was exceedingly mortified, and cried; for, being
a Prime Minister's son, I had firmly believed all the flattery with
which I had been assured that my parts were capable of anything.'
[560] Reynolds said:--'Out of the great number of critics in this
metropolis who all pretend to knowledge in pictures, the greater part
must be mere pretenders only. Taste does not come by chance; it is a
long and laborious task to acquire it.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 264.
[561] 'Jemmy Boswell,' wrote John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon), 'called
upon me, desiring to know what would be my definition of taste. I told
him I must decline defining it, because I knew he would publish it. He
continued his importunities in frequent calls, and in one complained
much that I would not give him it, as he had that morning got Henry
Dundas's, Sir A. Macdonald's, and J. Anstruther's definitions. "Well,
then," I said, "Boswell, we must have an end of this. Taste, according
to my definition, is the judgment which Dundas, Macdonald, Anstruther,
and you manifested when you determined to quit Scotland and to come into
the south. You may publish this if you please."' Twiss's _Eldon_, i.
303. See _post_, April 10, 1778, note for Lord Eldon.
[562] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 220) says that 'Swift's delight was in
simplicity. That he has in his works no metaphor, as has been said, is
not true; but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity
than choice. He studied purity.... His style was well suited to his
thoughts.... He pays no court to the passions; he excites neither
surprise nor admiration; he always understands himself, and his reader
always understands him; the peruser of Swift wants little previous
knowledge; it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with common words
and common things; ... [his style] instructs, but it does not persuade.'
Hume describes Swift's style as one which he 'can approve, but surely
can never admire. It has no harmony, no eloquence, no ornament, and not
much correctness, whatever the English may imagine.' J. H. Burton's
_Hume_, ii. 413.
[563] Johnson's Works, v. 146.
[564] Dr. Warton wrote on Jan. 22, 1766:--'Garrick is entirely off from
Johnson, and cannot, he says, forgive him his insinuating that he
withheld his old editions, which always were open to him; nor, I
suppose, his never mentioning him in all his works.' Wooll's _Warton_,
p. 313. Beauclerk wrote to Lord Charlemont in 1773:--'If you do not come
here, I will bring all the club over to Ireland to live with you, and
that will drive you here in your own defence, Johnson _shall spoil your
books_, Goldsmith pull your flowers, and Boswell talk to you: stay then
if you can.' Charlemont's _Life_, i. 347. Yet Garrick had lent Johnson
some books, for Johnson wrote to him on Oct. 10, 1766:--'I return you
thanks for the present of the _Dictionary_, and will take care to return
you [qu. your] other books.' _Garrick Corres_, i. 245. Steevens, who had
edited Johnson's _Shakespeare_, wrote to Garrick:--'I have taken the
liberty to introduce your name, because _I have found_ no reason to say
that the possessors of the old quartos were not sufficiently
communicative.' _Ib_ p. 501. Mme. D'Arblay describes how 'Garrick,
giving a thundering stamp on some mark on the carpet that struck his
eye--not with passion or displeasure, but merely as if from
singularity--took off Dr. Johnson's voice in a short dialogue with
himself that had passed the preceding week. "David! Will you lend me
your _Petrarca_?" "Y-e-s, Sir!" "David! you sigh?" "Sir--you shall have
it certainly." "Accordingly," Mr. Garrick continued, "the book,
stupendously bound, I sent to him that very evening. But scarcely had he
taken it in his hands, when, as Boswell tells me, he poured forth a
Greek ejaculation and a couplet or two from Horace, and then in one of
those fits of enthusiasm which always seem to require that he should
spread his arms aloft, he suddenly pounces my poor _Petrarca_ over his
head upon the floor. And then, standing for several minutes lost in
abstraction, he forgot probably that he had ever seen it."' Dr. Burney's
_Memoirs_, i. 352. See _post_, under Aug. 12, 1784.
[565] The gentleman most likely is Boswell (_ante_, ii. 14, note 1). I
suspect that this anecdote belongs to _ante_, April 14, when 'Johnson
was not in the most genial humour.' Boswell, while showing that Mrs.
Piozzi misrepresented an incident of that evening 'as a personality,'
would be afraid of weakening his case by letting it be seen that Johnson
on that occasion was very personal. Since writing this I have noticed
that Dr. T. Campbell records in his _Diary_, p. 53, that on April 1,
1775, he was dining at Mr. Thrale's with Boswell, when many of Johnson's
'bon-mots were retailed. Boswell arguing in favour of a cheerful glass,
adduced the maxim _in vino veritas_. "Well," says Johnson, "and what
then, unless a man has lived a lie." Boswell then urged that it made a
man forget all his cares. "That to be sure," says Johnson, "might be of
use, if a man sat by such a person as you."' Campbell's account confirms
what Boswell asserts (_ante_, ii. 188) that Mrs. Piozzi had the
anecdote from him.
[566] No. 150. The quotation is from Francis Osborne's _Advice to a
Son_. Swift, in _The Tatler_, No. 230, ranks Osborne with some other
authors, who 'being men of the Court, and affecting the phrases then in
fashion, are often either not to be understood, or appear perfectly
ridiculous.'
[567] See post, May 13, 1778, and June 30, 1784.
[568] Mrs. Piozzi, to whom I told this anecdote, has related it, as if
the gentleman had given 'the _natural history of the mouse_.' _Anec_. p.
191. BOSWELL. The gentleman was very likely Dr. Vansittart, who is
mentioned just before. (See _ante_, i. 348, note 1.) Mrs. Thrale, in
1773, wrote to Johnson of 'the man that saw the mouse.' Piozzi
_Letters_, i. 186. From Johnson's answer (_ib_. p. 197) it seems that
she meant Vansittart. Mr. Croker says 'this proves that Johnson himself
sanctioned Mrs. Piozzi's version of the story--_mouse versus flea_.' Mr.
Croker has an odd notion of what constitutes both a proof and
a sanction.
[569] Lord Shelburne says that 'William Murray [Lord Mansfield] was
sixteen years of age when he came out of Scotland, and spoke such broad
Scotch that he stands entered in the University books at Oxford as born
as Bath, the Vice-Chancellor mistaking _Bath for Perth_.' Fitzmaurice's
_Shelburne_, i. 87.
[570] The asterisks seem to show that Beattie and Robertson are meant.
This is rendered more probable from the fact that the last paragraph is
about Scotchmen.
[571] See _ante_, ii. 51.
[572] Boswell's friend was very likely his brother David, who had long
resided in Valencia. In that case, Johnson came round to Boswell's
opinion, for he wrote, 'he will find Scotland but a sorry place after
twelve years' residence in a happier climate;' _post_, April 29, 1780.
[573] See _ante_, i.443, note 2.
[574] Wilson against Smith and Armour. BOSWELL.
[575] Lord Kames, in his _Historical Law Tracts_. BOSWELL.
[576] 'Covin. A deceitful agreement between two or more to the hurt of
another.' Johnson's _Dictionary_.
[577] Lord Kames (_Sketches of the History of Man_, iv. 168) says:--'The
undisciplined manners of our forefathers in Scotland made a law
necessary, that whoever intermeddled irregularly with the goods of a
deceased person should be subjected to pay all his debts, however
extensive. A due submission to legal authority has in effect abrogated
that severe law, and it is now [1774] scarce ever heard of.' Scott
introduces Lord Kames in _Redgauntlet_, at the end of chap. I of the
_Narrative_:--'"What's the matter with the auld bitch next?" said an
acute metaphysical judge, though somewhat coarse in his manners, aside
to his brethren.' In Boswell's poem _The Court of Session Garland_,
where the Scotch judges each give judgment, we read:--
'Alemore the judgment as illegal blames,
"Tis equity, you bitch," replies my Lord Kames.'
Chambers's _Traditions of Edinburgh_, ii. 161. Mr. Chambers adds (p.
171) that when Kames retired from the Bench, 'after addressing his
brethren in a solemn speech, in going out at the door of the court room,
he turned about, and casting them a last look, cried, in his usual
familiar tone, "Fare ye a' weel, ye bitches."'
[578] At this time there were no civil juries in Scotland. 'But this was
made up for, to a certain extent, by the Supreme Court, consisting of no
fewer than fifteen judges; who formed a sort of judicial jury, and were
dealt with as such. The great mass of the business was carried on by
writing.' Cockbarn's _Jeffery_, i. 87. See _post_, Jan. 19, 1775, note.
[579] In like manner, he had discovered the _Life of Cheynel_ to be
Johnson's. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 17, 1774.
[580] The _Essay on Truth_, published in May, 1770. Beattie wrote on
Sept. 30, 1772:--'The fourth edition of my _Essay_ is now in the press.'
Forbes's _Beattie_, ed. 1824, p. 134. Three translations--French,
Dutch, and German--had, it seems, already appeared. _Ib_ p. 121. 'Mr.
Johnson made Goldsmith a comical answer one day, when seeming to repine
at the success of Beattie's _Essay on Truth_. "Here's such a stir," said
he, "about a fellow that has written one book, and I have written many."
"Ah, Doctor," says he, "there go two and forty sixpences you know to one
guinea."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 179. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct
1, 1773.
[581] See _ante_, ii. 144, 183.
[582] On the same day he wrote to Dr. Taylor:--'Your uneasiness at the
misfortunes of your relations, I comprehend perhaps too well. It was an
irresistible obtrusion of a disagreeable image, which you always wished
away, but could not dismiss, an incessant persecution of a troublesome
thought, neither to be pacified nor ejected. Such has of late been the
state of my own mind. I had formerly great command of my attention, and
what I did not like could forbear to think on. But of this power, which
is of the highest importance to the tranquillity of life, I have been so
much exhausted, that I do not go into a company towards night, in which
i foresee anything disagreeable, nor enquire after anything to which I
am not indifferent, lest something, which I know to be nothing, should
fasten upon my imagination, and hinder me from sleep.' _Notes and
Queries_, 6th S., v. 383. On Oct. 6 he wrote to Dr. Taylor:--'I am now
within a few hours of being able to send the whole _Dictionary_ to the
press [_ante_, ii. 155], and though I often went sluggishly to the work,
I am not much delighted at the completion. My purpose is to come down to
Lichfield next week.' _Ib_ p. 422. He stayed some weeks there and in
Ashbourne. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 55-70.
[583] See _ante_, ii. 141, note 3.
[584] 'While of myself I yet may think, while breath my body sways.'
Morris's Aeneids, iv. 336.
[585] It should seem that this dictionary work was not unpleasant to
Johnson; for Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, ii. 179) that about 1774,
having told him that he had declined to edit a new edition of Chambers's
_Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences_, 'Johnson replied that if I would
not undertake, he would. I expressed my astonishment that, in his easy
circumstances, he should think of preparing a new edition of a tedious,
scientific dictionary. "Sir," said he, "I like that muddling work." He
allowed some time to go by, during which another editor was found--Dr.
Rees. Immediately after this intelligence he called on me, and his first
words were:--"It is gone, Sir."'
[586] He, however, wrote, or partly wrote, an Epitaph on Mrs. Bell, wife
of his friend John Bell, Esq., brother of the Reverend Dr. Bell,
Prebendary of Westminster, which is printed in his _Works_ [i. 151]. It
is in English prose, and has so little of his manner, that I did not
believe he had any hand in it, till I was satisfied of the fact by the
authority of Mr. Bell. BOSWELL. 'The epitaph is to be seen in the parish
church of Watford.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 471.
[587] See _ante_, i. 187. Mme. D'Arblay (_Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, i.
271) says that this year Goldsmith projected a _Dictionary of Arts and
Sciences_, in which Johnson was to take the department of ethics, and
that Dr. Burney finished the article _Musician_. The scheme came
to nothing.
[588] We may doubt Steevens's taste. Garrick 'produced _Hamlet_ with
alterations, rescuing,' as he said, 'that noble play from all the
rubbish of the fifth act' (_ante_, ii. 85, note 7.) Steevens wrote to
Garrick:--'I expect great pleasure from the perusal of your altered
_Hamlet_. It is a circumstance in favour of the poet which I have long
been wishing for. You had better throw what remains of the piece into a
farce, to appear immediately afterwards. No foreigner who should happen
to be present at the exhibition, would ever believe it was formed out of
the loppings and excrescences of the tragedy itself. You may entitle it
_The Grave-Diggers; with the pleasant Humours of Osric, the Danish
Macaroni_.' _Garrick Corres_. i. 451.
[589] A line of an epigram in the _Life of Virgil_, ascribed to Donatus.
[590] Given by a lady at Edinburgh. BOSWELL.
[591] There had been masquerades in Scotland; but not for a very long
time. BOSWELL. 'Johnson,' as Mr. Croker observes, 'had no doubt seen an
account of the masquerade in the _Gent. Mag_. for January,' p. 43. It is
stated there that 'it was the first masquerade ever seen in Scotland.'
Boswell appeared as a dumb Conjurer.
[592] Mrs. Thrale recorded in 1776, after her quarrel with Baretti:--'I
had occasion to talk of him with Tom Davies, who spoke with horror of
his ferocious temper; "and yet," says I, "there is great sensibility
about Baretti. I have seen tears often stand in his eyes." "Indeed,"
replies Davies, "I should like to have seen that sight vastly,
when--even butchers weep."' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 340. Davies said of
Goldsmith:--'He least of all mankind approved Baretti's conversation; he
considered him as an insolent, overbearing foreigner.' Davies, in the
same passage, speaks of Baretti as 'this unhappy Italian.' Davies's
_Garrick_, ii. 168. As this was published in Baretti's life-time, the
man could scarcely have been so ferocious as he was described.
[593] 'There were but a few days left before the comedy was to be acted,
and no name had been found for it. "We are all in labour," says Johnson,
whose labour of kindness had been untiring throughout, "for a name to
Goldy's play." [See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 14, 1773.] What now
stands as the second title, _The Mistakes of a Night_, was originally
the only one; but it was thought undignified for a comedy. _The Old
House a New Inn_ was suggested in place of it, but dismissed as awkward.
Sir Joshua offered a much better name to Goldsmith, saying, "You ought
to call it _The Belle's Stratagem_, and if you do not I will damn it."
When Goldsmith, in whose ear perhaps a line of Dryden's lingered, hit
upon _She Stoops to Conquer_.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 337, and
Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 285. Mr. Forster quotes the line of Dryden as
'But kneels to conquer, and but stoops to rise.'
In Lord Chesterfield's _Letters_, iii. 131, the line is given,
'But stoops to conquer, and but kneels to rise.'
[594] This gentleman, who now resides in America in a publick character
of considerable dignity, desired that his name might not be transcribed
at full length. BOSWELL.
[595] Now Doctor White, and Bishop of the Episcopal Church in
Pennsylvania. During his first visit to England in 1771, as a candidate
for holy orders, he was several times in company with Dr. Johnson, who
expressed a wish to see the edition of his _Rasselas_, which Dr. White
told him had been printed in America. Dr. White, on his return,
immediately sent him a copy. BOSWELL.
[596] Horace. _Odes_, iii. I. 34.
[597] See _post_, Oct. 12, 1779.
[598] Malone had the following from Baretti: 'Baretti made a translation
of _Rasselas_ into French. He never, however, could satisfy himself with
the translation of the first sentence, which is uncommonly lofty.
Mentioning this to Johnson, the latter said, after thinking two or three
minutes, "Well, take up the pen, and if you can understand my
pronunciation, I will see what I can do." He then dictated the sentence
to the translator, which proved admirable, and was immediately adopted.'
Prior's _Malone_, p. 161. Baretti, in a MS. note on his copy of _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 225, says:--'Johnson never wrote to me French, but when he
translated for me the first paragraph of his _Rasselas_.' That Johnson's
French was faulty, is shown by his letters in that language. _Ante_, ii.
82, and _post_, under Nov. 12, 1775.
[599] It has been translated into Bengalee, Hungarian, Polish, Modern
Greek, and Spanish, besides the languages mentioned by Johnson. Dr. J.
Macaulay's _Bibliography of Rasselas_. It reached its fifth edition by
1761. _A Bookseller of the Last Century_, p. 243. In the same book (p.
19) it is mentioned that 'a sixteenth share in _The Rambler_ was sold
for AL22 2s. 6d.'
[600] A motion in the House of Commons for a committee to consider of
the subscription to the Thirty nine Articles had, on Feb. 23 of this
year, been rejected by 159 to 67. _Parl. Hist_. xvii. 742-758. A bill
for the relief of Protestant Dissenters that passed the House of Commons
by 65 to 14 on March 25, was rejected in the House of Lords by 86 to 28
on April 2. _Ib_ p. 790.
[601] See _post_, April 25, 1778, where Johnson says that 'Colman [the
manager] was prevailed on at last by much solicitation, nay, a kind of
force, to bring it on.' Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, ii. 334-6)
writes:--'The actors and actresses had taken their tone from the
manager. Gentleman Smith threw up Voting Marlow; Woodward refused Tony
Lumpkin; Mrs. Abington declined Miss Hardcastle [in _The AthenA|um_, No.
3041, it is pointed out that Mrs. Abington was not one of Colman's
Company]; and, in the teeth of his own misgivings, Colman could not
contest with theirs. He would not suffer a new scene to be painted for
the play, he refused to furnish even a new dress, and was careful to
spread his forebodings as widely as he could.' The play met with the
greatest success. 'There was a new play by Dr. Goldsmith last night,
which succeeded prodigiously,' wrote Horace Valpole (_Letters_, v. 452).
The laugh was turned against the doubting manager. Ten days after the
play had been brought out, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'C----[Colman]
is so distressed with abuse about his play, that he has solicited
Goldsmith to _take him off the rack of the newspapers_.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 80. See _post_, just before June 22, 1784, for Mr.
Steevens's account.
[602] It was anything but an apology, unless _apology_ is used in its
old meaning of _defence_.
[603] Nine days after _She Stoops to Conquer_ was brought out, a vile
libel, written, it is believed, by Kenrick (_ante_ i. 297), was
published by Evans in _The London Packet_. The libeller dragged in one
of the Miss Hornecks, 'the Jessamy Bride' of Goldsmith's verse.
Goldsmith, believing Evans had written the libel, struck him with his
cane. The blow was returned, for Evans was a strong man. 'He indicted
Goldsmith for the assault, but consented to a compromise on his paying
fifty pounds to a Welsh charity. The papers abused the poet, and
steadily turned aside from the real point in issue. At last he stated it
himself, in an _Address to the Public_, in the _Daily Advertiser_ of
March 31.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 347-351. The libel is given in
Goldsmith's _Misc. Works_ (1801), i. 103.
[604] '_Your_ paper,' I suppose, because the _Chronicle_ was taken in at
Bolt Court. _Ante_, ii. 103.
[605] See Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 265, for a possible explanation of
this sarcasm.
[606] Horace Walpole is violent against Dalrymple and the King. 'What
must,' he says, 'be the designs of this reign when George III.
encourages a Jacobite wretch to hunt in France for materials for
blackening the heroes who withstood the enemies of Protestantism and
liberty.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 286.
[607] Mr. Hallam pointed out to Mr. Croker that Johnson was speaking of
Dalrymple's description of the parting of Lord and Lady Russell:--'With
a deep and noble silence; with a long and fixed look, in which respect
and affection unmingled with passion were expressed, Lord and Lady
Russell parted for ever--he great in this last act of his life, but she
greater.' Dalrymple's _Memoirs_, i. 31. See _post_, April 30, 1773, for
the foppery of Dalrymple; and Boswell's _Hebrides_, near the end, for
Johnson's imitation of Dalrymple's style.
[608] See _ante_, i. 334.
[609] See _ante_, ii. 170.
[610] Horace Walpole says:--'It was not Chesterfield's fault if he had
not wit; nothing exceeded his efforts in that point; and though they
were far from producing the wit, they at least amply yielded the
applause he aimed at.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George II_, i. 51.
[611] A curious account of Tyrawley is given in Walpole's _Reign of
George II_, iii. 108. He had been Ambassador at Lisbon, and he 'even
affected not to know where the House of Commons was.' Walpole says
(_Letters_, i. 215, note) that 'Pope has mentioned his and another
ambassador's seraglios in one of his _Imitations of Horace_.' He refers
to the lines in the _Imitations_, i. 6. 120:--
'Go live with Chartres, in each vice outdo
K----l's lewd cargo, or Ty----y's crew.'
Kinnoul and Tyrawley, says Walpole, are meant.
[612] According to Chalmers, who himself has performed this task, Dr.
Percy was the first of these gentlemen, and Dr. John Calder the
second. CROKER.
[613] Sir Andrew Freeport, after giving money to some importunate
beggars, says:--'I ought to give to an hospital of invalids, to recover
as many useful subjects as I can, but I shall bestow none of my bounties
upon an almshouse of idle people; and for the same reason I should not
think it a reproach to me if I had withheld my charity from those common
beggars.' _The Spectator_, No. 232. This paper is not by Addison. In No.
549, which is by Addison, Sir Andrew is made to found 'an almshouse for
a dozen superannuated husbandmen.' I have before (ii. 119) contrasted
the opinions of Johnson and Fielding as to almsgiving. A more curious
contrast is afforded by the following passage in _Tom Jones_, book i.
chap. iii:--'I have told my reader that Mr. Allworthy inherited a large
fortune, that he had a good heart, and no family. Hence, doubtless, it
will be concluded by many that he lived like an honest man, owed no one
a shilling, took nothing but what was his own, kept a good house,
entertained his neighbours with a hearty welcome at his table, and was
charitable to the poor, i.e. to those who had rather beg than work, by
giving them the offals from it; that he died immensely rich, and built
an hospital.'
[614] Boswell says (_Hebrides_, Aug. 26, 1773):--'His recitation was
grand and affecting, and, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, had
no more tone than it should have.' Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 302)
writes:--'His manner of repeating deserves to be described, though at
the same time it defeats all power of description; but whoever once
heard him repeat an ode of Horace would be long before they could endure
to hear it repeated by another.' See _ante_, ii. 92, note 4.
[615] 'Some of the old legendary stories put in verse by modern writers
provoked him to caricature them thus one day at Streatham:--
"The tender infant, meek and mild,
Fell down upon the stone;
The nurse took up the squealing child,
But still the child squeal'd on."
'A famous ballad also beginning--_Rio verde, Rio verde_, when I
commended the translation of it, he said he could do it better himself,
as thus:--
"Glassy water, glassy water,
Down whose current clear and strong,
Chiefs confused in mutual slaughter,
Moor and Christian roll along."
"But, Sir," said I, "this is not ridiculous at all." "Why no," replied
he, "why should I always write ridiculously?"' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 65.
See _ante_, ii. 136, note 4. Neither Boswell nor Mrs. Piozzi mentions
Percy by name as the subject of Johnson's ridicule.
[616] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 4, 1773.
[617] Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 88) said that 'Fox considered Burnet's
style to be perfect.'
[618] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 96) quotes; 'Dalrymple's observation, who
says "that whenever Burnet's narrations are examined, he appears to be
mistaken."' Lord Bolingbroke (_Works_, iv. 151) wrote of party pamphlets
and histories:--'Read them with suspicion, for they deserve to be
suspected; pay no regard to the epithets given, nor to the judgments
passed; neglect all declamation, weigh the reasoning, and advert to
fact. With such precautions, even Burnet's history may be of some use.'
Horace Walpole, noticing an attack on Burnet, says (_Letters_, vi.
487):--'It shows his enemies are not angry at his telling falsehoods,
but the truth ... I will tell you what was said of his _History_ by one
whose testimony you yourself will not dispute. That confessor said,
"Damn him, he has told a great deal of truth, but where the devil did he
learn it?" This was St. Atterbury's testimony.'
[619] The cross-buns were for Boswell and Levet. Johnson recorded (_Pr.
and Med_. p. 121):--'On this whole day I took nothing of nourishment but
one cup of tea without milk; but the fast was very inconvenient. Towards
night I grew fretful and impatient, unable to fix my mind or govern my
thoughts.'
[620] It is curious to compare with this Johnson's own record:--'I found
the service not burdensome nor tedious, though I could not hear the
lessons. I hope in time to take pleasure in public works.' _Pr. and
Med_. p. 121.
[621] In the original _in_.
[622] Afterwards Charles I. BOSWELL.
[623] See _ante_, ii. 47.
[624] See _post_, April 9, 1778, where Johnson said:-'Goldsmith had no
settled notions upon any subject; so he talked always at random.'
[625] The next day Johnson recorded:--'I have had some nights of that
quiet and continual sleep which I had wanted till I had almost forgotten
it.' _Pemb. Coll. MSS_.
[626] See _ante_, ii. 11.
[627] We have the following account of Johnson's kitchen in 1778: 'Mr.
Thale.--"And pray who is clerk of your kitchen, Sir?" Dr. J.--"Why, Sir,
I am afraid there is none; a general anarchy prevails in my kitchen, as
I am told Mr. Levet, who says it is not now what it used to be." Mr.
T.--"But how do you get your dinners drest?" Dr. J.--"Why, Desmouline
has the chief management, for we have no jack." Mr. T.--"No jack? Why,
how do they manage without?" Dr. J.--"Small joints, I believe, they
manage with a string, and larger one done at the tavern. I have some
thoughts (with a profound gravity) of buying a jack, because I think a
jack is some credit to a house." Mr. T.--"Well, but you'll have a spit
too?" Dr. J.--"No Sir, no; that would be superfluous; for we shall never
use it; if a jack is seen, a spit will be presumed."' Mme. D'Arblay's
_Diary_, i. 115.
[628] See _ante_, i. 418.
[629] See _ante_, i. 252.
[630] 'By inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so
much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the
publick, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve
the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may
be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected
piety.' BOSWELL.
[631] See an account of this learned and respectable gentleman, and of
his curious work in the _Middle State, Journal of a Tour to the
Hebrides_, 3rd edition. p. 371. [Oct. 25.] BOSWELL. See _post_, June
9, 1784.
[632] See _ante_, i. 225, for Boswell's project works, and i. 211.
[633] 'When the efficiency [of men and women] is equal, but the pay
unequal, the only explanation that can be given is custom.' J. S. Mill's
_Political Economy_, Book ii. ch. xiv. 5.
[634] The day before he told Boswell this he had recorded:--'My general
resolution, to which I humbly implore the help of God, is to methodise
my life, to resist sloth. I hope from this time to keep a journal.' _Pr.
and Med_. p. 124. Four times more he recorded the same resolution to
keep a journal. See _ante_, i. 433, and _post_, Apr. 14,1775.
[635] See _post_, March 30, 1778, where Johnson says:--'A man loves to
review his own mind. That is the use of a diary or journal.'
[636] 'He who has not made the experiment, or who is not accustomed to
require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how much a
few hours take from certainty of knowledge and distinctness of imagery
... To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of
travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive. They trusted
to memory what cannot be trusted safely but to the eye, and told by
guess what a few hours before they had known with certainty.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 144.
[637] Goldsmith, in his dedication to Reynolds of the _Deserted
Village_, refers no doubt to Johnson's opinion of luxury. He writes:--'I
know you will object (and indeed _several of our best and wisest
friends_ concur in the opinion) that the depopulation it deplores is
nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in
the poet's own imagination.... In regretting the depopulation of the
country I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here also I
expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty
years past it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the
greatest national advantages.' See _post_, April 15, 1778.
[638] Johnson, in his _Parl. Debates_ (_Works_, x. 418), makes General
Handasyd say:--'The whole pay of a foot soldier is sixpence a day, of
which he is to pay fourpence to his landlord for his diet, or, what is
very nearly the same, to carry fourpence daily to the market ...
Twopence a day is all that a soldier had to lay out upon cleanliness and
decency, and with which he is likewise to keep his arms in order, and to
supply himself with some part of his clothing. If, Sir, after these
deductions he can, from twopence a day, procure himself the means of
enjoying a few happy moments in the year with his companions over a cup
of ale, is not his economy much more to be envied than his luxury?'
[639] The humours of Ballamagairy. BOSWELL.
[640]
'Ah me! when shall I marry me?
Lovers are plenty; but fail to relieve me.
He, fond youth, that could carry me,
Offers to love, but means to deceive me.
But I will rally and combat the ruiner:
Not a look, nor a smile shall my passion discover;
She that gives all to the false one pursuing her,
Makes but a penitent and loses a lover.'
Boswell, in a letter published in Goldsmith's _Misc. Works_, ii. 116,
with the song, says:--'The tune is a pretty Irish air, call _The Humours
of Ballamagairy_, to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to
adapt words; but he has succeeded very happily in these few lines. As I
could sing the tune and was fond of them, he was so good as to give me
them. I preserve this little relic in his own handwriting with an
affectionate care.'
[641] See _ante_, i. 408, and _post_ April 7, 1776.
[642] See _ante_, ii. 74.
[643] See _ante_, i. 429.
[644] See ante, ii. 169, for Johnson's 'half-a-guinea's worth of
inferiority.'
[645] Boswell (_ante_, i. 256) mentions that he knew Lyttelton. For his
_History_, see _ante_, ii. 37.
[646] Johnson has an interesting paper 'on lying' in _The Adventurer_,
No. 50, which thus begins:--'When Aristotle was once asked what a man
could gain by uttering falsehoods, he replied, "Not to be credited when
he shall tell the truth."'
[647] Johnson speaks of the past, for Sterne had been dead five years.
Gray wrote on April 22, 1760:--'_Tristram Shandy_ is still a greater
object of admiration, the man as well as the book. One is invited to
dinner where he dines a fortnight beforehand.' Gray's _Works_, ed.
1858, iii. 241.
[648] 'I was but once,' said Johnson, 'in Sterne's company, and then his
only attempt at merriment consisted in his display of a drawing too
indecently gross to have delighted even in a brothel.' Johnson's _Works_
(1787), xi. 214.
[649] Townshend was not the man to make his jokes serve twice. Horace
Walpole said of his _Champagne Speech_,--'It was Garrick writing and
acting extempore scenes of Congreve.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George
III_, iii. 25. Sir G. Colebrooke says:--'When Garrick and Foote were
present he took the lead, and hardly allowed them an opportunity of
shewing their talents of mimicry, because he could excel them in their
own art.' _Ib_ p. 101, note. '"Perhaps," said Burke, "there never arose
in this country, nor in any country, a man of a more pointed and
finished wit."' Payne's _Burke_, i. 146.
[650] The 'eminent public character' is no doubt Burke, and the friend,
as Mr. Croker suggests, probably Reynolds. See Boswell's _Hebrides_,
Aug. 15, 1773, for a like charge made by Johnson against Burke. Boswell
commonly describes Burke as 'an eminent friend of ours;' but he could
not do so as yet, for he first met him fifteen days later. (_Post_,
April 30.)
[651] 'Party,' Burke wrote in 1770 (_Thoughts on the Present
Discontents_), 'is a body of men united for promoting by their joint
endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which
they are all agreed. For my part I find it impossible to conceive that
any one believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any
weight, who refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into
practice.' Payne's _Burke_, i. 86.
[652] On May 5, and again on Nov. 10, the play was commanded by the King
and Queen. Prior's _Goldsmith_, ii. 394.
[653] _Absalom and Achitophel_, part i. l. 872.
[654] Paoli perhaps was thinking of himself. While he was still 'the
successful rebel' in Corsica, he had said to Boswell:--'The arts and
sciences are like dress and ornament. You cannot expect them from us for
some time. But come back twenty or thirty years hence, and we'll shew
you arts and sciences.' Boswell's _Corsica_, p. 172.
[655] 'The Duke of Cumberland had been forbidden the Court on his
marriage with Mrs. Horton, a year before; but on the Duke of
Gloucester's avowal of his marriage with Lady Waldegrave, the King's
indignation found vent in the Royal Marriage Act: which was hotly
opposed by the Whigs as an edict of tyranny. Goldsmith (perhaps for
Burke's sake) helped to make it unpopular with the people: "We'll go to
France", says Hastings to Miss Neville, "for there, even among slaves,
the laws of marriage are respected." Said on the first night this had
directed repeated cheering to the Duke of Gloucester, who sat in one of
the boxes.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 358. See _ante_, ii. 152.
[656] _Stenography_, by John Angell, 1758.
[657] See _post_, April 10, 1778.
[658] See _ante_, ii.
[659] James Harris, father of the first Earl of Malmesbury, born 1709,
died 1780. Two years later Boswell wrote to Temple: 'I am invited to a
dinner at Mr. Cambridge's (for the dinner, see _post_, April 18, 1773),
where are to be Reynolds, Johnson, and Hermes Harris. "_Do you think
so?" said he. "Most certainly, said I_." Do you remember how I used to
laugh at his style when we were in the Temple? He thinks himself an
ancient Greek from these little peculiarities, as the imitators of
Shakspeare, whom the _Spectator_ mentions, thought they had done
wonderfully when they had produced a line similar:--
"And so, good morrow to ye, good Master Lieutenant."'
_Letters of Boswell_, p. 187. It is not in the _Spectator_, but in
_Martinus Scriblerus_, ch. ix. (Swift's _Works_, 1803, xxiii, 53), that
the imitators of Shakspeare are ridiculed. Harris got his name of Hermes
from his _Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal
Grammar_. Cradock (_Memoirs_, i, 208) says that, 'A gentleman applied to
his friend to lend him some amusing book, and he recommended Harris's
_Hermes_. On returning it, the other asked how he had been entertained.
"Not much," he replied; "he thought that all these imitations of
_Tristram Shandy_ fell far short of the original."' See _post_, April 7,
1778, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 3, 1773.
[660] Johnson suffers, in Cowper's epitaph on him, from the same kind of
praise as Goldsmith gives Harris:--
'Whose verse may claim, grave, masculine and strong,
Superior praise to the mere poet's song.'
Cowper's _Works_, v. 119.
[661] See _ante_, 210.
[662] Cave set up his coach about thirty years earlier (_ante_, i, 152,
note). Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_, iii, 172) wrote to Mr. Straham in
1784:--'I remember your observing once to me, as we sat together in the
House of Commons, that no two journeymen printers within your knowledge
had met with such success in the world as ourselves. You were then at
the head of your profession, and soon afterwards became a member of
parliament. I was an agent for a few provinces, and now act for
them all.'
[663] 'Hamilton made a large fortune out of Smollett's _History_.'
Forster's _Goldsmith_, i, 149. He was also the proprietor of the
_Critical Review_.
[664] See _ante_, i, 71.
[665] See _ante_, ii, 179, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 19, 1773.
Horace Walpole wrote of the year 1773:--'The rage of duelling had of
late much revived, especially in Ireland, and many attempts were made in
print and on the stage to curb so horrid and absurd a practice.'
_Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 282.
[666] Very likely Boswell. See _Post_, April 10, 1778, where he
says:--'I slily introduced Mr. Garrick's fame and his assuming the airs
of a great man'.
[667] In the _Garrick's Corres_ up to this date there is no letter from
Lord Mansfield which answers Boswell's descriptions. To Lord Chatham
Garrick had addressed some verses from Mount Edgecumbe. Chatham, on
April 3, 1772, sent verses in return, and wrote:--'You have kindly
settled upon me a lasting species of property I never dreamed of in that
enchanting place; a far more able conveyancer than any in Chancery-land.
_Ib_ i, 459.
[668]
'Then I alone the conquest prize,
When I insult a rival's eyes:
If there's, &c.'
Act iii, sc. 12.
[669]
'But how did he return, this haughty brave,
Who whipt the winds, and made the sea his slave?
(Though Neptune took unkindly to be bound
And Eurus never such hard usage found
In his Aćolian prison under ground).'
Dryden, _Juvenal_, x. 180.
[670] Most likely Mr. Pepys, a Master in Chancery, whom Johnson more
than once roughly attacked at Streatham. See _post_, April 1, 1781, and
Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 46.
[671] See _ante_, ii. 73.
[672] 'Jan. 5, 1772. Poor Mr. Fitzherbert hanged himself on Wednesday.
He went to see the convicts executed that morning; and from thence in
his boots to his son, having sent his groom out of the way. At three his
son said, Sir, you are to dine at Mr. Buller's; it is time for you to go
home and dress. He went to his own stable and hanged himself with a
bridle. They say his circumstances were in great disorder.' Horace
Walpole's _Letters_, v. 362. See _ante_, i. 82, and _post_, Sept.
15, 1777.
[673] Boswell, in his _Hebrides_ (Aug. 18, 1773) says that, 'Budgel was
accused of forging a will [Dr. Tindal's] and sunk himself in the Thames,
before the trial of its authenticity came on.' Pope, speaking of
himself, says that he--
'Let Budgel charge low Grub-street on his quill,
And write whate'er he pleas'd, except his will.'
_Prologue to the Satires_, 1, 378.
Budgel drowned himself on May 4, 1737, more than two years after the
publication of this Prologue. _Gent. Mag_. vii. 315. Perhaps the verse
is an interpolation in a later edition. See _post_, April 26, 1776.
[674] See _post_, March 15, 1776.
[675] On the Douglas Cause. See _ante_, ii. 50, and _post_, March 26,
1776.
[676] I regretted that Dr. Johnson never took the trouble to study a
question which interested nations. He would not even read a pamphlet
which I wrote upon it, entitled _The Essence of the Douglas Cause_;
which, I have reason to flatter myself, had considerable effect in
favour of Mr. Douglas; of whose legitimate filiation I was then, and am
still, firmly convinced. Let me add, that no fact can be more
respectably ascertained than by the judgement of the most august
tribunal in the world; a judgement, in which Lord Mansfield and Lord
Camden united in 1769, and from which only five of a numerous body
entered a protest. BOSWELL. Boswell, in his Hebrides, records on Oct.
26, 1773:--'Dr. Johnson roused my zeal so much that I took the liberty
to tell him that he knew nothing of the [Douglas] Cause.' Lord Shelburne
says: 'I conceived such a prejudice upon the sight of the present Lord
Douglas's face and figure, that I could not allow myself to vote in this
cause. If ever I saw a Frenchman, he is one.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_,
i. 10. Hume 'was struck,' he writes, 'with a very sensible indignation
at the decision. The Cause, though not in the least intricate, is so
complicated that it never will be reviewed by the public, who are
besides perfectly pleased with the sentence; being swayed by compassion
and a few popular topics. To one who understands the Cause as I do,
nothing could appear more scandalous than the pleadings of the two law
lords.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 423. In Campbell's _Chancellors_, v.
494, an account is given of a duel between Stuart and Thurlow that arose
out of this suit.
[677] The Fountains. _Works_, ix. 176.
[678] See _ante_, ii. 25.
[679] It has already been observed (_ante_, ii. 55), that one of his
first Essays was a Latin Poem on a glow-worm; but whether it be any
where extant, has not been ascertained. MALONE.
[680] 'Mallet's works are such as a writer, bustling in the world,
shewing himself in publick, and emerging occasionally from time to time
into notice, might keep alive by his personal influence; but which,
conveying little information and giving no great pleasure, must soon
give way, as the succession of things produces new topicks of
conversation and other modes of amusement.' Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 468.
[681] Johnson made less money, because he never 'traded' on his
reputation. When he had made his name, he almost ceased to write.
[682] 'May 27, 1773. Dr. Goldsmith has written a comedy--no, it is the
lowest of all farces. It is not the subject I condemn, though very
vulgar, but the execution. The drift tends to no moral, no edification
of any kind. The situations, however, are well imagined, and make one
laugh, in spite of the grossness of the dialogue, the forced witticisms,
and total improbability of the whole plan and conduct. But what disgusts
me most is, that though the characters are very low, and aim at low
humour, not one of them says a sentence that is natural or marks any
character at all. It is set up in opposition to sentimental comedy, and
is as bad as the worst of them.' Horace Walpole's _Letters_, v. 467.
Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 286) says that Goldsmith gave him an
order to see this comedy. 'The next time I saw him, he inquired of me
what my opinion was of it. I told him that I would not presume to be a
judge of its merits. He asked, "Did it make you laugh?" I answered,
"Exceedingly." "Then," said the Doctor, "that is all I require."'
[683] Garrick brought out his revised version of this play by Beaumont
and Fletcher in 1754-5. Murphy's _Garrick_, p. 170. The compliment is in
a speech by Don Juan, act v. sc. 2: 'Ay, but when things are at the
worst, they'll mend; example does everything, and the fair sex will
certainly grow better, whenever the greatest is the best woman in
the kingdom.'
[684] _Formular_ is not in Johnson's _Dictionary_.
[685]
'On earth, a present god, shall Caesar reign.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Odes_, iii. 5.2.
[686] See _ante_, i. 167.
[687] Johnson refers, I believe, to Temple's Essay _Of Heroic Virtue_,
where he says that 'the excellency of genius' must not only 'be
cultivated by education and instruction,' but also 'must be assisted by
fortune to preserve it to maturity; because the noblest spirit or genius
in the world, if it falls, though never so bravely, in its first
enterprises, cannot deserve enough of mankind to pretend to so great a
reward as the esteem of heroic virtue.' Temple's _Works_, iii. 306.
[688] See _post_, Sept. 17, 1777.
[689] In an epitaph that Burke wrote for Garrick, he says: 'He raised
the character of his profession to the rank of a liberal art.' Windham's
_Diary_, p. 361.
[690] 'The allusion,' as Mr. Lockhart pointed out, 'is not to the _Tale
of a Tub_, but to the _History of John Bull_' (part ii. ch 12 and 13).
Jack, who hangs himself, is however the youngest of the three brothers
of _The Tale of a Tub_, 'that have made such a clutter in the work'
(_ib_. chap ii). Jack was unwillingly convinced by Habbakkuk's argument
that to save his life he must hang himself. Sir Roger, he was promised,
before the rope was well about his neck, would break in and cut
him down.
[691] He wrote the following letter to Goldsmith, who filled the chair
that evening. 'It is,' Mr. Forster says (_Life of Goldsmith_, ii. 367),
'the only fragment of correspondence between Johnson and Goldsmith that
has been preserved.'
'April 23, 1773.
'SIR,--I beg that you will excuse my absence to the Club; I am going
this evening to Oxford.
'I have another favour to beg. It is that I may be considered as
proposing Mr. Boswell for a candidate of our society, and that he may be
considered as regularly nominated.
'I am, sir,
'Your most humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
If Johnson went to Oxford his stay there was brief, as on April 27
Boswell found him at home.
[692] 'There are,' says Johnson, speaking of Dryden (_Works_, vii. 292),
'men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and whose
intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation.' See also _ante_, i.
413. 'No man,' he said of Goldsmith, 'was more foolish when he had not a
pen in his hand, or more wise when he had;' _post_, 1780, in Mr.
Langton's _Collection_. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 560), who 'knew
Hume personally and well,' said, 'Mr. Hume's writings were so superior
to his conversation, that I frequently said he understood nothing till
he had written upon it.'
[693] The age of great English historians had not long begun. The first
volume of _The Decline and Fall_ was published three years later.
Addison had written in 1716 (_Freeholder_, No. 35), 'Our country, which
has produced writers of the first figure in every other kind of work,
has been very barren in good historians.' Johnson, in 1751, repeated
this observation in _The Rambler_, No. 122. Lord Bolingbroke wrote in
1735 (_Works_, iii. 454), 'Our nation has furnished as ample and as
important matter, good and bad, for history, as any nation under the
sun; and yet we must yield the palm in writing history most certainly to
the Italians and to the French, and I fear even to the Germans.'
[694] Gibbon, informing Robertson on March 26, 1788, of the completion
of _The Decline and Fall_, said:--'The praise which has ever been the
most flattering to my ear, is to find my name associated with the names
of Robertson and Hume; and provided I can maintain my place in the
triumvirate, I am indifferent at what distance I am ranked below my
companions and masters.' Dugald Stewart's _Robertson_, p. 367.
[695] 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'if Robertson's style be faulty, he owes it
me; that is, having too many words, and those too big ones.' _Post_,
Sept. 19, 1777. Johnson was not singular among the men of his time in
condemning Robertson's _verbiage_. Wesley (_Journal_, iii. 447) wrote of
vol. i. of _Charles the Fifth_:--'Here is a quarto volume of eight or
ten shillings' price, containing dry, verbose dissertations on feudal
government, the substance of all which might be comprised in half a
sheet of paper!' Johnson again uses _verbiage_ (a word not given in his
_Dictionary_), _post_, April 9, 1778.
[696] See _ante_, ii. 210.
[697] See _post_, Oct. 10, 1779.
[698] 'Vertot, nA(C) en Normandie en 1655. Historien agrA(C)able et A(C)lA(C)gant.
Mort en 1735.' Voltaire, _SiA"cle de Louis XIV_.
[699] Even Hume had no higher notion of what was required in a writer of
ancient history. He wrote to Robertson, who was, it seems, meditating a
History of Greece:--'What can you do in most places with these (the
ancient) authors but transcribe and translate them? No letters or state
papers from which you could correct their errors, or authenticate their
narration, or supply their defects.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 83.
[700] See _ante_, ii. 53. Southey, asserting that Robertson had never
read the Laws of Alonso the Wise, says, that 'it is one of the thousand
and one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue as long as his
volumes last.' Southey's _Life_, ii. 318.
[701] Ovid. de Art. Amand. i. iii. v. 13 [339]. BOSWELL. 'It may be that
our name too will mingle with those.'
[702] The _Gent. Mag_. for Jan. 1766 (p. 45) records, that 'a person was
observed discharging musket-balls from a steel crossbow at the two
remaining heads upon Temple Bar.' They were the heads of Scotch rebels
executed in 1746. Samuel Rogers, who died at the end of 1855, said, 'I
well remember one of the heads of the rebels upon a pole at Temple Bar.'
Rogers's _Table-Talk_, p. 2.
[703] In allusion to Dr. Johnson's supposed political principles, and
perhaps his own. BOSWELL.
[704] 'Dr. Johnson one day took Bishop Percy's little daughter upon his
knee, and asked her what she thought of _Pilgrim's Progress_. The child
answered that she had not read it. "No!" replied the Doctor; "then I
would not give one farthing for you:" and he set her down and took no
further notice of her.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 838. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_.
p. 281) says, that Johnson once asked, 'Was there ever yet anything
written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting
_Don Quixote_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and The _Pilgrim's Progress_?'
[705] It was Johnson himself who was thus honoured. _Post_, under Dec.
20, 1784.
[706] Here is another instance of his high admiration of Milton as a
Poet, notwithstanding his just abhorrence of that sour Republican's
political principles. His candour and discrimination are equally
conspicuous. Let us hear no more of his 'injustice to Milton.' BOSWELL.
[707] There was an exception to this. In his criticism of _Paradise
Lost_ (_Works_, vii. 136), he says:--'The confusion of spirit and matter
which pervades the whole narration of the war of Heaven fills it with
incongruity; and the book in which it is related is, I believe, the
favourite of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is
increased.'
[708] In the _Academy_, xxii. 348, 364, 382, Mr. C. E. Doble shews
strong grounds for the belief that the author was Richard Allestree,
D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and Provost of Eton. Cowper
spoke of it as 'that repository of self-righteousness and pharisaical
lumber;' with which opinion Southey wholly disagreed. Southey's
_Cowper_, i. 116.
[709] Johnson said to Boswell:--'Sir, they knew that if they refused you
they'd probably never have got in another. I'd have kept them all out.
Beauclerk was very earnest for you.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug.
21, 1773.
[710] Garrick and Jones had been elected this same spring. See _ante_,
i. 481, note 3.
[711] Mr. Langton, in his _Collection_ (_post_, 1780), mentions an ode
brought by Goldsmith to the Club, which had been recited for money.
[712] Dr. Johnson's memory here was not perfectly accurate: _Eugenio_
does not conclude thus. There are eight more lines after the last of
those quoted by him; and the passage which he meant to recite is as
follows:--
'Say now ye fluttering, poor assuming elves, Stark full of pride, of
folly, of--yourselves; Say where's the wretch of all your impious crew
Who dares confront his character to view? Behold Eugenio, view him o'er
and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and be no more.'
Mr. Reed informs me that the Author of _Eugenio_, a Wine Merchant at
Wrexham in Denbighshire, soon after its publication, viz. 17th May,
1737, cut his own throat; and that it appears by Swift's _Works_ that
the poem had been shewn to him, and received some of his corrections.
Johnson had read _Eugenio_ on his first coming to town, for we see it
mentioned in one of his letters to Mr. Cave, which has been inserted in
this work; _ante_, p. 122. BOSWELL. See Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xix.
153, for his letter to this wine merchant, Thomas Beach by name.
[713] These lines are in the _Annus Mirabilis_ (stanza 164) in a
digression in praise of the Royal Society; described by Johnson
(_Works_, vii. 320) as 'an example seldom equalled of seasonable
excursion and artful return.' _Ib_ p. 341, he says: 'Dryden delighted to
tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to
mingle.... This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew;
and sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which perhaps he was not
conscious.' He then quotes these lines, and continues: 'They have no
meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley on another book--
"'Tis so like _sense_, 'twill serve the turn as well."'