Sir William Forbes came to breakfast, and brought with him Dr
Blacklock, whom he introduced to Dr Johnson, who received him with a
most humane complacency. 'Dear Blacklock, I am glad to see you!'
Blacklock seemed to be much surprised, when Dr Johnson said, 'it was
easier to him to write poetry than to compose his Dictionary. His mind
was less on the stretch in doing the one than the other. Besides;
composing a dictionary requires books and a desk: you can make a poem
walking in the fields, or lying in bed.' Dr Blacklock spoke of
scepticism in morals and religion, with apparant uneasiness, as if he
wished for more certainty. Dr Johnson, who had thought it all over,
and whose vigorous understanding was fortified by much experience,
thus encouraged the blind bard to apply to higher speculations what we
willingly submit to in common life: in short, he gave him more
familiarly the able and fair reasoning of Butler's Analogy: 'Why, sir,
the greatest concern we have in this world, the choice of our
profession, must be determined without demonstrative reasoning. Human
life is not yet so well known, as that we can have it. And take the
case of a man who is ill. I call two physicians: they differ in
opinion. I am not to lie down, and die between them: I must do
something.' The conversation then turned on atheism; on that horrible
book, Systeme de la Nature; and on the supposition of an eternal
necessity, without design, without a governing mind. JOHNSON. 'If it
were so, why has it ceased? Why don't we see men thus produced around
us now? Why, at least, does it not keep pace, in some measure, with
the progress of time? If it stops because there is now no need of it,
then it is plain there is, and ever has been, an all-powerful
intelligence. But stay!' said he, with one of his satyrick laughs.
'Hal ha! ha! I shall suppose Scotchmen made necessarily, and
Englishmen by choice.'
At dinner this day, we had Sir Alexander Dick, whose amiable
character, and ingenious and cultivated mind, are so generally known
(he was then on the verge of seventy, and is now (1785) eighty-one,
with his faculties entire, his heart warm, and his temper gay); Sir
David Dalrymple; Lord Hailes; Mr Maclaurin, advocate; Dr Gregory, who
now worthily fills his father's medical chair; and my uncle, Dr
Boswell. This was one of Dr Johnson's best days. He was quite in his
element. All was literature and taste, without any interruption. Lord
Hailes, who is one of the best philologists in Great Britain, who has
written papers in the World, and a variety of other works in prose and
in verse, both Latin and English, pleased him highly. He told him, he
had discovered the Life of Cheynel, in the Student, to be his.
JOHNSON. 'No one else knows it.' Dr Johnson had, before this, dictated
to me a law-paper, upon a question purely in the law of Scotland,
concerning 'vicious intromission', that is to say, intermeddling with
the effects of a deceased person, without a regular title; which
formerly was understood to subject the intermeddler to payment of all
the defunct's debts. The principle has of late been relaxed. Dr
Johnson's argument was, for a renewal of its strictness. The paper was
printed, with additions by me, and given into the Court of Session.
Lord Hailes knew Dr Johnson's part not to be mine, and pointed out
exactly where it began, and where it ended. Dr Johnson said, 'It is
much, now, that his lordship can distinguish so.'
In Dr Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, there is the following
passage:
The teeming mother, anxious for her race,
Begs, for each birth, the fortune of a face:
Yet VANE could tell, what ills from beauty spring;
And SEDLEY curs'd the charms which pleas'd a king.
Lord Hailes told him, he was mistaken in the instances he had given of
unfortunate fair ones; for neither Vane nor Sedley had a title to that
description. His Lordship has since been so obliging as to send me a
note of this, for the communication of which I am sure my readers will
thank me.
The lines in the tenth Satire of Juvenal, according to my alteration,
should have run thus:
Yet SHORE [Footnote: Mistress of Edward IV.] could tell--;
And VALIERE [Footnote: Mistress of Louis XIV.] curs'd--.
The first was a penitent by compulsion, the second by sentiment;
though the truth is, Mademoiselle de la Valiere threw herself (but
still from sentiment) in the King's way.
'Our friend chose Vane, who was far from being well-looked; and
Sedley, who was so ugly, that Charles II said, his brother had her by
way of penance.'
Mr Maclaurin's learning and talents enabled him to do his part very
well in Dr Johnson's company. He produced two epitaphs upon his
father, the celebrated mathematician. One was in English, of which Dr
Johnson did not change one word. In the other, which was in Latin, he
made several alterations. In place of the very words of Virgil, Ubi
luctus et pavor et plurima mortis imago, he wrote Ubi luctus regnant
et pavor. He introduced the word prorsus into the line Mortalibus
prorsus non absit solatium and after Hujus enim scripta evolve, he
added, Mentemque tantarum rerum capacem corpori caduco superstitem
crede; which is quite applicable to Dr Johnson himself. [Footnote: Mr
Maclaurin's epitaph, as engraved on a marble tombstone, in the
Gray-Friars church-yard, Edinburgh:
Infra situs est
COLIN MACLAURIN
Mathes. olim in Acad. Edin. Prof.
Electus ipso Newtono suadente.
H. L. P. F.
Non ut nomini paterno consulat,
Nam tali auxilio nil eget;
Sed ut in hoc infelici campo,
Ubi luctus regnant et pavor,
Mortalibus prorsus non absit solatium:
Hujus enim scripta evolve,
Mentemque tantarum rerum capacem
Corpori caduco superstitem crede.]
Mr Murray, advocate, who married a niece of Lord Mansfield's and is
now one of the Judges of Scotland, by the title of Lord Henderland,
sat with us a part of the evening; but did not venture to say any
thing, that I remember, though he is certainly possessed of talents
which would have enabled him to have shewn himself to advantage, if
too great anxiety had not prevented him.
At supper we had Dr Alexander Webster, who, though not learned, had
such a knowledge of mankind, such a fund of information and
entertainment, so clear a head and such accommodating manners, that Dr
Johnson found him a very agreeable companion.
When Dr Johnson and I were left by ourselves, I read to him my notes
of the opinions of our Judges upon the questions of Literary Property.
He did not like them; and said, 'they make me think of your Judges not
with that respect which I should wish to do'. To the argument of one
of them, that there can be no property in blasphemy or nonsense, he
answered, 'then your rotten sheep are mine! By that rule, when a man's
house falls into decay, he must lose it.' I mentioned an argument of
mine, that literary performances are not taxed. As Churchill says,
No statesman yet has thought it worth his pains
To tax our labours, or excite our brains;
and therefore they are not property. 'Yet,' said he, 'we hang a man
for stealing a horse, and horses are not taxed.' Mr Pitt has since put
an end to that argument.