Et quorum pars magna fui.'
'Which thing myself unhappy did behold,
Yea, and was no small part thereof.'
Morris, _Aeneids_, ii. 5.
[187] In the year 1770, in _The False Alarm_, Johnson attacked Wilkes
with more than 'some asperity.' 'The character of the man,' he wrote, 'I
have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill
of him, of whom no man speaks well.' He called him 'a retailer of
sedition and obscenity;' and he said:--'We are now disputing ... whether
Middlesex shall be represented, or not, by a criminal from a gaol.'
_Works_, vi. 156, 169, 177. In _The North Briton_, No. xii, Wilkes,
quoting Johnson's definition of a pensioner, asks:--'Is the said Mr.
Johnson a _dependant_? or is he _a slave of state, hired by a stipend
to obey his master_? There is, according to him, no alternative.--As Mr.
Johnson has, I think, failed in this account, may I, after so great an
authority, venture at a short definition of so intricate a word? A
_pension_ then I would call _a gratuity during the pleasure of the
Prince for services performed, or expected to be performed, to himself,
or to the state_. Let us consider the celebrated Mr. _Johnson_, and a
few other late pensioners in this light.'
[188] Boswell, in his _Letter to the People of Scotland_ (p. 70),
mentions 'my old classical companion, Wilkes;' and adds, 'with whom I
pray you to excuse my keeping company, he is so pleasant.'
[189] When Johnson was going to Auchinleck, Boswell begged him, in
talking with his father, 'to avoid three topicks as to which they
differed very widely; whiggism, presbyterianism, and--Sir John Pringle.'
Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov 2, 1773. See also _ib_. Aug 24. 'Pringle was
President of the Royal Society--"who sat in Newton's chair, And wonder'd
how the devil he got there."' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 165. He was one
of Franklin's friends (Franklin's _Memoirs_ iii. III), and so was likely
to be uncongenial to Johnson.
[190] No 22. CROKER. At this house 'Johnson owned that he always found a
good dinner.' _Post_, April 15, 1778.
[191] This has been circulated as if actually said by Johnson; when the
truth is, it was only _supposed_ by me. BOSWELL.
[192] 'Don't let them be _patriots_,' he said to Mr. Hoole, when he
asked him to collect a city Club. _Post_, April 6, 1781.
[193] See p. 7 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[194] 'Indifferent in his choice to sleep or die.' Addison's _Cato_,
act v. sc. 1.
[195] See _ante_, i. 485.
[196] He was at this time 'employed by Congress as a private and
confidential agent in England.' Dr. Franklin had arranged for letters to
be sent to him, not by post but by private hand, under cover to his
brother, Mr. Alderman Lee. Franklin's _Memoirs_, ii. 42, and iii. 415.
[197] When Wilkes the year before, during his mayoralty, had presented
An Address, 'the King himself owned he had never seen so well-bred a
Lord Mayor.' Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 484.
[198] Johnson's _London, a Poem_, v. 145. BOSWELL--
'How when competitors like these contend,
Can surly virtue hope to fix a friend.'
[199] See _ante_, ii. 154.
[200] Johnson had said much the same at a dinner in Edinburgh. See
Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 10, 1773. See _ante_, March 15, 1776, and
_post_, Sept. 21, 1777.
[201] 'To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him
against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of
human abilities.' _The Rambler_, No. 93.
[202] Foote told me that Johnson said of him, 'For loud obstreperous
broadfaced mirth, I know not his equal.' BOSWELL.
[203] In Farquhar's _Beaux-Stratagem_, Scrub thus describes his duties:
--'Of a Monday I drive the coach, of a Tuesday I drive the plough, on
Wednesday I follow the hounds, a Thursday I dun the tenants, on Friday I
go to market, on Saturday I draw warrants, and a Sunday I draw beer.'
Act iii. sc. 3.
[204] See _ante_, i. 393, note 1.
[205] See _post_, April 10, 1778, and April 24, 1779.
[206] See _ante_, i. 216, note 2.
[207] See _ante_, March 20, 1776, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22.
[208] Dryden had been dead but thirty-six years when Johnson came to
London.
[209] 'Owen MacSwinny, a buffoon; formerly director of the play-house.'
Horace Walpole, _Letters_, i. 118. Walpole records one of his puns.
'Old Horace' had left the House of Commons to fight a duel, and at once
'returned, and was so little moved as to speak immediately upon the
_Cambrick Bill_, which made Swinny say, "That it was a sign he was not
_ruffled_."' _Ib_. p. 233. See also, _ib_. vi. 373 for one of his
stories.
[210] A more amusing version of the story, is in _Johnsoniana_
(ed. 1836, p. 413) on the authority of Mr. Fowke. '"So Sir," said
Johnson to Cibber, "I find you know [knew?] Mr. Dryden?" "Know him? O
Lord! I was as well acquainted with him as if he had been my own
brother." "Then you can tell me some anecdotes of him?" "O yes, a
thousand! Why we used to meet him continually at a club at Button's. I
remember as well as if it were but yesterday, that when he came into the
room in winter time, he used to go and sit by the fire in one corner;
and in summer time he would always go and sit in the window." "Thus,
Sir," said Johnson, "what with the corner of the fire in winter and the
window in summer, you see that I got _much_ information from Cibber of
the manners and habits of Dryden.'" Johnson gives, in his _Life of
Dryden_ (_Works_, vii. 300), the information that he got from Swinney
and Cibber. Dr. Warton, who had written on Pope, found in one of the
poet's female-cousins a still more ignorant survivor. 'He had been
taught to believe that she could furnish him with valuable information.
Incited by all that eagerness which characterised him, he sat close to
her, and enquired her consanguinity to Pope. "Pray, Sir," said she, "did
not you write a book about my cousin Pope?" "Yes, madam." "They tell me
t'was vastly clever. He wrote a great many plays, did not he?" "I have
heard of only one attempt, Madam." "Oh no, I beg your pardon; that was
Mr. Shakespeare; I always confound them."' Wooll's _Warton_, p. 394.
[211] Johnson told Malone that 'Cibber was much more ignorant even of
matters relating to his own profession than he could well have
conceived any man to be who had lived nearly sixty years with players,
authors, and the most celebrated characters of the age.' Prior's
_Malone_, p. 95. See _ante_, ii. 92.
[212] 'There are few,' wrote Goldsmith, 'who do not prefer a page of
Montaigne or Colley Cibber, who candidly tell us what they thought of
the world, and the world thought of them, to the more stately memoirs
and transactions of Europe.' Cunningham's _Goldsmith's Works_, iv. 43.
[213] _Essay on Criticism_, i. 66.
[214] 'Cibber wrote as bad Odes (as Garrick), but then Gibber wrote
_The Careless Husband_, and his own _Life_, which both deserve
immortality.' Walpole's _Letters_, v. 197. Pope (_Imitations of Horace_,
II. i. 90), says:--
'All this may be; the people's voice is odd,
It is, and it is not, the voice of God.
To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,
And yet deny _The Careless Husband_ praise,
Or say our fathers never broke a rule;
Why then, I say, the public is a fool.'
See _ante_, April 6, 1775.
[215] See page 402 of vol. i. BOSWELL.
[216] Milton's _L'Allegro_, 1. 36.
[217] 'CATESBY. My Liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken. RICHARD. Off
with his head. So much for Buckingham.' Colley Gibber's _Richard III_,
iv. I.
[218] _Ars Poetica, i. 128.
[219] My very pleasant friend himself, as well as others _who remember
old stories_, will no doubt be surprised, when I observe that _John
Wilkes_ here shews himself to be of the WARBURTONIAN SCHOOL. It is
nevertheless true, as appears from Dr. Hurd the Bishop of Worcester's
very elegant commentary and notes on the '_Epistola ad Pisones_.'
It is necessary to a fair consideration of the question, that the whole
passage in which the words occur should be kept in view:
'Si quid inexpertum scenae committis, et audes
Personam formare novam, servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.
Difficile est propriè communia dicere: tuque
Rectiùs Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
Quàm si proferres ignota indictaque primus,
Publica materies privati juris erit, si
Non circa vilem patulumque moraberis orbem,
Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus
Interpres; nee desilies imitator in artum
Unde pedem proferre pudor vetat aut operis lex.'
The 'Commentary' thus illustrates it: 'But the formation of quite _new
characters_ is a work of great difficulty and hazard. For here there is
no generally received and fixed _archetype_ to work after, but every one
_judges_ of common right, according to the extent and comprehension of
his own idea; therefore he advises to labour and refit _old characters
and subjects_, particularly those made known and authorised by the
practice of Homer and the Epick writers.'
The 'Note' is,
'_Difficile_ EST PROPRIE COMMUNIA DICERE.' Lambin's Comment is,
'_Communia hoc loco appellat Horatius argumenta fabularum à nullo adhuc
tractata: et ita, quae cuivis exposita sunt et in medio quodammodo
posita, quasi vacua et à nemine occupata_.' And that this is the true
meaning of _communia_ is evidently fixed by the words _ignota
indictaque_, which are explanatory of it; so that the sense given it in
the commentary is unquestionably the right one. Yet, notwithstanding the
clearness of the case, a late critick has this strange passage:
'_Difficile quidem esse propriè communia dicere, hoc est, materiam
vulgarem, notam et è medio petitam, ita immutare atque exornare, ut nova
et scriptori propria videatur, ultra concedimus; et maximi procul dubio
ponderis ista est observatio. Sed omnibus utrinque collatis, et tum
difficilis, tum venusti, tam judicii quam ingenii ratione habitá, major
videtur esse gloria fabulam formare penitùs novam, quàm veterem,
utcunque mutatam, de novo exhibere_. (Poet. Prael. v. ii. p. 164.)
Where, having first put a wrong construction on the word _comnmnia_, he
employs it to introduce an impertinent criticism. For where does the
poet prefer the glory of refitting _old_ subjects to that of inventing
new ones? The contrary is implied in what he urges about the superiour
difficulty of the latter, from which he dissuades his countrymen, only
in respect of their abilities and inexperience in these matters; and in
order to cultivate in them, which is the main view of the Epistle, a
spirit of correctness, by sending them to the old subjects, treated by
the Greek writers.'
For my own part (with all deference for Dr. Hurd, who thinks the _case
clear_,) I consider the passage, '_Difficile est propriè communia
dicere_,' to be a _crux_ for the criticks on Horace.
The explication which My Lord of Worcester treats with so much contempt,
is nevertheless countenanced by authority which I find quoted by the
learned Baxter in his edition of Horace: '_Difficile est propriè
communia dicere_, h.e. res vulgares disertis verbis enarrare, vel humile
thema cum dignitate tractare. _Difficile est communes res propriis
explicare verbis_. Vet. Schol.' I was much disappointed to find that the
great critick, Dr. Bentley, has no note upon this very difficult
passage, as from his vigorous and illuminated mind I should have
expected to receive more satisfaction than I have yet had.
_Sanadon_ thus treats of it: '_Propriè communia dicere; c'est à dire,
qu'il n'est pas aisé de former à ces personnages d'imagination, des
caractêres particuliers et cependant vraisemblables. Comme l'on a eté le
maitre de les former tels qu'on a voulu, les fautes que l'on fait en
cela sont moins pardonnables. C'est pourquoi Horace conseille de prendre
toujours des sujets connus tels que sont par exemple ceux que l'on peut
tirer des poèmes d'Homere_.'
And _Dacier_ observes upon it, '_Apres avoir marqué les deux qualités
qu'il faut donner aux personnages qu'on invente, il conseille aux Poêtes
tragiques, de n'user pas trop facilement de cette liberté quils ont d'en
inventer, car il est três difficile de reussir dans ces nouveaux
caractêres. Il est mal aisé, dit Horace_, de traiter proprement, _c'st à
dire_ convenablement, _des_ sujets communs; _c'est à dire, des sujets
inventés, et qui n'ont aucun fondement ni dans l'Histoire ni dans la
Fable; et il les appelle_ communs, _parce qu'ils sont en disposition à
tout le monde, et que tout le monde a le droit de les inventer, et
qu'ils sont, comme on dit, au premier occupant_.' See his observations
at large on this expression and the following.
After all, I cannot help entertaining some doubt whether the words,
_Difficile est propriè communia dicere_, may not have been thrown in by
Horace to form a _separate_ article in a 'choice of difficulties' which
a poet has to encounter, who chooses a new subject; in which case it
must be uncertain which of the various explanations is the true one, and
every reader has a right to decide as it may strike his own fancy. And
even should the words be understood as they generally are, to be
connected both with what goes before and what comes after, the exact
sense cannot be absolutely ascertained; for instance, whether _propriè_
is meant to signify _in an appropriated manner_, as Dr. Johnson here
understands it, or, as it is often used by Cicero, _with propriety_, or
_elegantly_. In short, it is a rare instance of a defect in perspicuity
in an admirable writer, who with almost every species of excellence, is
peculiarly remarkable for that quality. The length of this note perhaps
requires an apology. Many of my readers, I doubt not, will admit that a
critical discussion of a passage in a favourite classick is very
engaging. BOSWELL. Boswell's French in this tedious note is left as he
printed it.
[220] Johnson, after describing Settle's attack on Dryden, continues
(_Works_, vii. 277):--'Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is the
prevalence of fashion, that the man whose works have not yet been
thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in
an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shows for
fairs ... might with truth have had inscribed upon his stone:--
"Here lies the Rival and Antagonist of Dryden."'
Pope introduces him in _The Dunciad_, i. 87, in the description of the
Lord Mayor's Show:--
'Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces,
Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners and broad faces.
Now night descending the proud scene was o'er,
But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.'
In the third book the ghost of Settle acts the part of guide in the
Elysian shade.
[221] Johnson implies, no doubt, that they were both Americans by birth.
Trecothick was in the American trade, but he was not an American.
Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iii. 184, note. Of
Beckford Walpole says:--'Under a jovial style of good humour he was
tyrannic in Jamaica, his native country.' _Ib_. iv. 156. He came over to
England when young and was educated in Westminster School. Stephens's
_Horne Tooke_, ii. 278. Cowper describes 'a jocular altercation that
passed when I was once in the gallery [of the House], between Mr. Rigby
and the late Alderman Beckford. The latter was a very incorrect speaker,
and the former, I imagine, not a very accurate scholar. He ventured,
however, upon a quotation from Terence, and delivered it thus, _Sine
Scelere et Baccho friget venus_. The Alderman interrupted him, was very
severe upon his mistake, and restored Ceres to her place in the
sentence. Mr. Rigby replied, that he was obliged to his worthy friend
for teaching him Latin, and would take the first opportunity to return
the favour by teaching him English.' Southey's _Cowper_, iii. 317. Lord
Chatham, in the House of Lords, said of Trecothick:--'I do not know in
office a more upright magistrate, nor in private life a worthier man.'
_Parl. Hist_. xvi. 1101. See _post_, Sept. 23, 1777.
[222]
'Oft have I heard thee mourn the wretched lot
Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot,
Who, might calm reason credit idle tales,
By rancour forged where prejudice prevails,
Or starves at home, or practises through fear
Of starving arts which damn all conscience here.'
Churchill's _Prophecy of Famine, Poems_, i. 105.
[223] For Johnson's praise of Lichfield see _ante_, March 23, 1776. For
the use of the word _civility_, see _ante_ ii. 155.
[224] See _ante_, i. 447.
[225] See _ante_, April 18, 1775.
[226] See _post_, April 15, 1778.
[227] It would not become me to expatiate on this strong and pointed
remark, in which a very great deal of meaning is condensed. BOSWELL.
[228] 'Mr. Wilkes's second political essay was an ironical dedication to
the Earl of Bute of Ben Jonson's play, _The Fall of Mortimer_. "Let me
entreat your Lordship," he wrote, "to assist your friend [Mr. Murphy] in
perfecting the weak scenes of this tragedy, and from the crude labours
of Ben Jonson and others to give us a _complete play_. It is the warmest
wish of my heart that the Earl of Bute may speedily complete the story of
Roger Mortimer."' Almon's _Wilkes_, i. 70, 86.
[229] Yet Wilkes within less than a year violently attacked Johnson in
parliament. He said, 'The two famous doctors, Shebbeare and Johnson, are
in this reign the state hirelings called pensioners.' Their names, he
continued, 'disgraced the Civil List. They are the known pensioned
advocates of despotism.' _Parl. Hist_. xix. 118. It is curious that
Boswell does not mention this attack, and that Johnson a few months
after it was made, speaking of himself and Wilkes, said:--'The contest
is now over.' _Post_, Sept 21, 1777.
[230] The next day he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'For my part, I begin to
settle and keep company with grave aldermen. I dined yesterday in the
Poultry with Mr. Alderman Wilkes, and Mr. Alderman Lee, and Counsellor
Lee, his brother. There sat you the while, so sober, with your W----'s
and your H----'s, and my aunt and her turnspit; and when they are gone,
you think by chance on Johnson, what is he doing? What should he be
doing? He is breaking jokes with Jack Wilkes upon the Scots. Such,
Madam, are the vicissitudes of things.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 325.
[231] See _ante_, March 20, 1776.
[232] If he had said this on a former occasion to a lady, he said it
also on a latter occasion to a gentleman--Mr. Spottiswoode. _Post_,
April 28, 1778. Moreover, Miss Burney records in 1778, that when Johnson
was telling about Bet Flint (_post_, May 8, 1781) and other strange
characters whom he had known, 'Mrs. Thrale said, "I wonder, Sir, you
never went to see Mrs. Rudd among the rest." "Why, Madam, I believe I
should," said he, "if it was not for the newspapers; but I am prevented
many frolics that I should like very well, since I am become such a
theme for the papers."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 90.
[233] Pope, _Essay on Man_, ii. 2.
[234] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 14 (Tuesday):--'----goes away
on Thursday, very well satisfied with his journey. Some great men have
promised to obtain him a place, and then a fig for my father and his new
wife.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 324. He is writing no doubt of Boswell; yet,
as Lord Auchinleck had been married more than six years, it is odd his
wife should be called _new_. Boswell, a year earlier, wrote to Temple of
his hopes from Lord Pembroke:--'How happy should I be to get an
independency by my own influence while my father is alive!' _Letters of
Boswell_, p. 182. Johnson, in a second letter to Mrs. Thrale, written
two days after Boswell left, says:--'B---- went away on Thursday night,
with no great inclination to travel northward; but who can contend with
destiny? ... He carries with him two or three good resolutions; I hope
they will not mould upon the road.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 333.
[235] 1 _Corinthians_, xiii. 5.
[236] This passage, which is found in Act iii, is not in the acting copy
of _Douglas_.
[237] Malone was one of these gentlemen. See _post_, under June 30,
1784. Reynolds, after saying that eagerness for victory often led
Johnson into acts of rudeness, while 'he was not thus strenuous for
victory with his intimates in tête-à-tête conversations when there were
no witnesses,' adds:--'Were I to write the Life of Dr. Johnson I would
labour this point, to separate his conduct that proceeded from his
passions, and what proceeded from his reason, from his natural
disposition seen in his quiet hours.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 462.
[238] These words must have been in the other copy. They are not in that
which was preferred. BOSWELL.
[239] On June 3 he wrote that he was suffering from 'a very serious and
troublesome fit of the gout. I enjoy all the dignity of lameness. I
receive ladies and dismiss them sitting. _Painful pre-eminence_.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 337. 'Painful pre-eminence' comes from Addison's _Cato_,
act iii. sc. 5. Pope, in his _Essay on Man_, iv. 267, borrows the
phrase:--
'Painful pre-eminence! yourself to view,
Above life's weakness and its comforts too.'
It is humorously introduced into the _Rolliad_ in the description of the
Speaker:--
'There Cornewall sits, and oh! unhappy fate!
Must sit for ever through the long debate.
Painful pre-eminence! he hears, 'tis true,
Fox, North, and Burke, but hears Sir Joseph too.'
[240] Dean Stanley (_Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, p. 297) says:--
'One expression at least has passed from the inscription into the
proverbial Latin of mankind--
"Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit."'
In a note he adds:--'Professor Conington calls my attention to the fact
that, if this were a genuine classical expression, it would be
_ornaret_. The slight mistake proves that it is Johnson's own.' The
mistake, of course, is the Dean's and the Professor's, who did not take
the trouble to ascertain what Johnson had really written. If we may
trust Cradock, Johnson here gave in a Latin form what he had already
said in English. 'When a bookseller ventured to say something rather
slightingly of Dr. Goldsmith, Johnson retorted:--"Sir, Goldsmith never
touches any subject but he adorns it." Once when I found the Doctor very
low at his chambers I related this circumstance to him, and it instantly
proved a cordial.' Cradock's _Memoirs_, i. 231.
[241] According to Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, i. 1), he was born
on Nov. 10, 1728. There is a passage in Goldsmith's _Bee_, No. 2, which
leads me to think that he himself held Nov. 12 as his birth-day. He says;
'I shall be sixty-two the twelfth of next November.' Now, as _The Bee_
was published in October 1759, he would be, not sixty-two, but just half
that number--thirty-one on his next birth-day. It is scarcely likely that
he selected the number and the date at random.
[242] Reynolds chose the spot in Westminster Abbey where the monument
should stand. Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 326.
[243] For A. Chamier, see _ante_, i. 478, note 1; and _post_, April 9,
1778: for P. Metcalfe, _post_, under Dec. 20, 1782. W. Vachell seems
only known to fame as having signed this _Round Robin_, and attended Sir
Joshua's funeral. Who Tho. Franklin was I cannot learn. He certainly was
not Thomas Francklin, D.D., the Professor of Greek at Cambridge and
translator of _Sophocles_ and _Lucian_, mentioned _post_, end of 1780.
The Rev. Dr. Luard, the Registrar of that University, has kindly
compared for me six of his signatures ranging from 1739 to 1770. In each
of these the _c_ is very distinct, while the writing is unlike the
signature in the _Round Robin_.
[244] Horace Walpole wrote in Dec. of this year:--'The conversation of
many courtiers was openly in favour of arbitrary power. Lord Huntingdon
and Dr. Barnard, who was promised an Irish Bishopric, held such
discourse publicly.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 91.
[245] He however upon seeing Dr. Warton's name to the suggestion, that
the Epitaph should be in English, observed to Sir Joshua, 'I wonder
that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool.' He
said too, 'I should have thought Mund Burke would have had more sense.'
Mr. Langton, who was one of the company at Sir Joshua's, like a sturdy
scholar, resolutely refused to sign the _Round Robin_. The Epitaph is
engraved upon Dr. Goldsmith's monument without any alteration. At
another time, when somebody endeavoured to argue in favour of its being
in English, Johnson said, 'The language of the country of which a
learned man was a native, is not the language fit for his epitaph, which
should be in ancient and permanent language. Consider, Sir; how you
should feel, were you to find at Rotterdam an epitaph upon Erasmus _in
Dutch_!' For my own part I think it would be best to have Epitaphs
written both in a learned language, and in the language of the country;
so that they might have the advantage of being more universally
understood, and at the same time be secured of classical stability. I
cannot, however, but be of opinion, that it is not sufficiently
discriminative. Applying to Goldsmith equally the epithets of '_Poetae_,
_Historici_, _Physici_,' is surely not right; for as to his claim to the
last of those epithets, I have heard Johnson himself say, 'Goldsmith,
Sir, will give us a very fine book upon the subject; but if he can
distinguish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of
his knowledge of natural history.' His book is indeed an excellent
performance, though in some instances he appears to have trusted too
much to Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and
extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the
science on which he wrote so admirably. For instance, he tells us that
the _cow_ sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable errour, which
Goldsmith has faithfully transferred into his book. It is wonderful that
Buffon, who lived so much in the country, at his noble seat, should have
fallen into such a blunder. I suppose he has confounded the _cow_ with
the _deer_. BOSWELL. Goldsmith says:--'At three years old the cow sheds
its horns and new ones arise in their place, which continue as long as
it lives.' _Animated Nature_, iii. 12. This statement remains in the
second edition. Johnson said that the epitaph on Sir J. Macdonald
'should have been in Latin, as everything intended to be universal and
permanent should be.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 5, 1773. He treated
the notion of an English inscription to Smollett 'with great contempt,
saying, "an English inscription would be a disgrace to Dr. Smollett."'
_Ib_. Oct. 28, 1773.
[246] Beside this Latin Epitaph, Johnson honoured the memory of his
friend Goldsmith with a short one in Greek. See _ante_, July 5, 1774.
BOSWELL.
[247] See _ante_, Oct. 24, 1775.
[248] Upon a settlement of our account of expences on a Tour to the
Hebrides, there was a balance due to me, which Dr. Johnson chose to
discharge by sending books. BOSWELL.
[249] See _post_, under Nov. 29, 1777.
[250] Baretti told me that Johnson complained of my writing very long
letters to him when I was upon the continent; which was most certainly
true; but it seems my friend did not remember it. BOSWELL.
[251] See _ante_, iii. 27.
[252] See _ante_, i. 446, for Johnson's remedies against melancholy.
[253] It was not 'last year' but on June 22, 1772, that the negro, James
Somerset--who had been brought to England by his master, had escaped
from him, had been seized, and confined in irons on board a ship in The
Thames that was bound for Jamaica, and had been brought on a writ of
_Habeas Corpus_ before the Court of King's Bench was discharged by Lord
Mansfield. Howell's _State Trials_, xx. 79, and Lofft's _Reports_, 1772,
p. 1. 'Lord Mansfield,' writes Lord Campbell (_Lives of the Chief
Justices_, ii. 418), 'first established the grand doctrine that the air
of England is too pure to be breathed by a slave.' According to Lord
Campbell, Mansfield's judgment thus ended:--'The air of England has long
been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it. Every
man who comes into England is entitled to the protection of English law,
whatever oppression he may heretofore have suffered, and whatever may be
the colour of his skin:
'"Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses."
'Let the negro be discharged.'
Where Lord Campbell found this speech, that is to say if he did not put
it together himself, I cannot guess. Mansfield's judgment was very
brief. He says in the conclusion:--'The only question before us is,
whether the cause on the return [to the writ of _habeas corpus_] is
sufficient. If it is, the negro must be remanded; if it is not, he must
be discharged. Accordingly the return states that the slave departed,
and refused to serve; whereupon he was kept to be sold abroad. So high
an act of dominion must be recognised by the law of the country where it
is used. The power of a master over his slave has been extremely
different in different countries. The state of slavery is of such a
nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or
political.... It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it
but positive law. Whatever inconveniences therefore may follow from a
decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of
England; and therefore the black must be discharged.' Lofft's _Reports_,
1772, p. 19. 'The judgment of the court,' says Broom (_Constitutional
Law_, 1885, p. 99), 'was delivered by Lord Mansfield, C.J., after some
delay, and with evident reluctance.' The passage about the air of
England that Campbell puts into Mansfield's mouth is found in Mr.
Hargrave's argument on May 14, 1772, where he speaks of England as 'a
soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to breathe in.' Lofft's
_Reports_, p. 2. Mr. Dunning replied:--'Let me take notice, neither the
air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe in, nor the laws of
England have rejected servitude.' _Ib_. p. 12. Serjeant Davy
rejoined:--'It has been asserted, and is now repeated by me, this air is
too pure for a slave to breathe in. I trust I shall not quit this court
without certain conviction of the truth of that assertion.' _Ib_. p. 17.
Lord Mansfield said nothing about the air. The line from Virgil, with
which Lord Campbell makes Mansfield's speech end, was 'the happily
chosen motto' to Maclaurin's published argument for the negro; Joseph
Knight, _post_, under Nov. 29, 1777.
[254] The son of Johnson's old friend, Mr. William Drummond. (See vol.
ii. pp. 26-29.) He was a young man of such distinguished merit, that he
was nominated to one of the medical professorships in the College of
Edinburgh without solicitation, while he was at Naples. Having other
views, he did not accept of the honour, and soon afterwards died.
BOSWELL.
[255] In the third and subsequent editions the date is wrongly given as
the 16th.
[256] A Florentine nobleman, mentioned by Johnson in his _Notes of his
Tour in France_ [_ante_, Oct. 18, 1775]. I had the pleasure of becoming
acquainted with him in London, in the spring of this year. BOSWELL. Mrs.
Thrale wrote to Johnson from Bath on May 16:--'Count Manucci would wait
seven years to come with you; so do not disappoint the man, but bring
him along with you. His delight in your company is like Boniface's
exultation when the squire speaks Latin; for understand you he
certainly cannot.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 328. It was not the squire,
but the priest, Foigard, who by his Latin did Boniface good.
_The Beaux Strategem_, act iii. sc. 2.
[257] _Pr. and Med_. p. 151.
[258] _St. James_, i. 17.
[259] See _ante_, ii. 175. Seven and even eight years later Paterson was
still a student in need of Johnson's recommendation. _Post_, June 2,
1783, and April 5, 1784.
[260] See _ante_, p. 58.
[261] Why his Lordship uses the epithet _pleasantly_, when speaking of
a grave piece of reasoning, I cannot conceive. But different men have
different notions of pleasantry. I happened to sit by a gentleman one
evening at the Opera-house in London, who, at the moment when _Medea_
appeared to be in great agony at the thought of killing her children,
turned to me with a smile, and said, '_funny_ enough.' BOSWELL.
[262] Dr. Johnson afterwards told me, that he was of opinion that a
clergyman had this right. BOSWELL.
[263] Johnson, nearly three years earlier, had said of Granger:--'The
dog is a Whig. I do not like much to see a Whig in any dress; but I hate
to see a Whig in a parson's gown.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 24, 1773.
[264] 'I did my utmost,' wrote Horace Walpole (_Letters_, v. 168), 'to
dissuade Mr. Granger from the dedication, and took especial pains to get
my _virtues_ left out of the question.'
[265]
'In moderation placing all my glory,
While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.'
Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, Bk. ii Sat. I. 1. 67.
[266] 'One of the dippers at Brighthelmstone, seeing Mr. Johnson swim in
the year 1766, said:--"Why, Sir, you must have been a stout-hearted
gentleman forty years ago."' _Piozzi's Anec_. p. 113. Johnson, in his
verses entitled, _In Rivum a Mola Stoana Lichfeldiæ diffluentem_
(_Works_, i. 163), writes:--
'Errat adhuc vitreus per prata virentia rivus,
Quo toties lavi membra tenella puer;
Hic delusa rudi frustrabar brachia motu,
Dum docuit blanda voce natare pater.'
[267] For this and Dr. Johnson's other letters to Mr. Levett, I am
indebted to my old acquaintance Mr. Nathaniel Thomas, whose worth and
ingenuity have been long known to a respectable, though not a wide
circle; and whose collection of medals would do credit to persons of
greater opulence. BOSWELL.
[268] Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale shew the difference between
modern Brighton and the Brighthelmstone of his days. Thus he writes:--
'Ashbourne, Sept. 27, 1777. I know not when I shall write again, now
you are going to the world's end [i.e. Brighton]. _Extra anni solisque
vias_, where the post will be a long time in reaching you. I shall,
notwithstanding all distance, continue to think on you.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 387. 'Oct. 6, 1777. Methinks you are now a great way off;
and if I come, I have a great way to come to you; and then the sea is so
cold, and the rooms are so dull; yet I do love to hear the sea roar and
my mistress talk--For when she talks, ye gods! how she will talk. I wish
I were with you, but we are now near half the length of England asunder.
It is frightful to think how much time must pass between writing this
letter and receiving an answer, if any answer were necessary.'
_Ib_. ii. 2.
[269] Boswell wrote to Temple on Nov. 3, 1780:--'I could not help
smiling at the expostulation which you suggest to me to try with my
father. It would do admirably with some fathers; but it would make mine
much worse, for he cannot bear that his son should talk with him as a
man. I can only lament his unmelting coldness to my wife and children,
for I fear it is hopeless to think of his ever being more affectionate
towards them. Yet it must be acknowledged that his paying £1000 of my
debt some years ago was a large bounty. He allows me £300 a year.'
_Letters of Boswell_, p. 255.
[270] See _ante_, Aug. 27, 1775, note.
[271] See _ante_, p. 48, note 4.
[272] 'He said to me often that the time he spent in this Tour was
the pleasantest part of his life, and asked me if I would lose the
recollection of it for five hundred pounds.' Boswell's _Hebrides_,
under Nov. 22, 1773.
[273] Chap. viii. 10. A translation of this work is in
_Bibliotheca Pastorum_, ed. J. Ruskin, vol. i.
[274] 'The chief cause of my deficiency has been a life immethodical
and unsettled, which breaks all purposes, confounds and suppresses
memory, and perhaps leaves too much leisure to imagination.' _Pr. and
Med_. p. 136.
[275] Johnson wrote to Boswell (_ante_, June 12, 1774):--'I have
stipulated twenty-five for you to give in your own name.' The book was
published early in 1775. On Feb. 25, 1775, he wrote:--'I am sorry that I
could get no books for my friends in Scotland. Mr. Strahan has at last
promised to send two dozen to you.' It is strange that not far short of
two years passed before the books were sent.
[276] Boswell had 'expressed his extreme aversion to his father's
second marriage.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 255--On Sept. 2, 1775, he
thus described his step-mother:--'His wife, whom in my conscience I
cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I
don't know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so
suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost
exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet.' _Ib_. p. 216.
[277] See _ante_, Jan. 19 and May 6, 1775.
[278] See _ante_, p. 86.
[279] See _ante_, May 27, 1775.
[280] Macquarry was the chief of Ulva's Isle. 'He told us,' writes
Boswell, 'his family had possessed Ulva for nine hundred years; but I
was distressed to hear that it was soon to be sold for payment of his
debts.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct 16, 1773.
[281] See _ante_, March 24, 1776.
[282] Mrs. Thrale gives a long but scarcely credible account of her
quarrel with Baretti. It is very unlikely that he used to say to her
eldest daughter 'that, if her mother died in a lying-in which happened
while he lived here, he hoped Mr. Thrale would marry Miss Whitbred, who
would be a pretty companion for her, and not tyrannical and overbearing
like me.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 336. No doubt in 1788 he attacked her
brutally (see _ante_, p. 49). 'I could not have suspected him,' wrote
Miss Burney, 'of a bitterness of invective so cruel, so ferocious.' Mme.
D'Arblay's _Diary_, iv. 185. The attack was provoked. Mrs. Piozzi, in
January, 1788, published one of Johnson's letters, in which he wrote--at
all events she says he wrote:--'Poor B----i! do not quarrel with him; to
neglect him a little will be sufficient. He means only to be frank, and
manly, and independent, and perhaps, as you say, a little wise. To be
frank he thinks is to be cynical, and to be independent is to be rude.
Forgive him, dearest lady, the rather because of his misbehaviour I am
afraid he learnt part of me. I hope to set him hereafter a better
example.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 277. Malone, in 1789, speaks of 'the
roughness for which Baretti was formerly distinguished.' Prior's
_Malone_, p. 391. Mrs. Thrale thus describes his departure: 'My daughter
kept on telling me that Mr. Baretti was grown very old and very cross,
would not look at her exercises, but said he would leave this house
soon, for it was no better than Pandæmonium. The next day he packed up
his cloke-bag, which he had not done for three years, and sent it to
town; and while we were wondering what he would say about it at
breakfast, he was walking to London himself, without taking leave of any
one person, except it may be the girl, who owns they had much talk, in
the course of which he expressed great aversion to me and even to her,
who, [_sic_] he said, he once thought well of.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii.
339. Baretti, in the _Eur. Mag_. xiii. 398, told his story. He
said:--'Madam took it into her head to give herself airs, and treat me
with some coldness and superciliousness. I did not hesitate to set down
at breakfast my dish of tea not half drank, go for my hat and stick that
lay in the corner of the room, turn my back to the house _insalutato
hospite_, and walk away to London without uttering a syllable.' In a
marginal note on _Piozzi Letters_, i. 338, he says he left Streatham on
June 4, 1776. 'I had,' he writes, 'by that time been in a manner one of
the family during six years and a-half. Johnson had made me hope that
Thrale would at last give me an annuity for my pains, but, never
receiving a shilling from him or from her, I grew tired at last, and on
some provocation from her left them abruptly.' It should seem that he
afterwards made it up with them, for in a note on vol. ii. p. 191, he
says of the day of Mr. Thrale's death, 'Johnson and I, and many other
friends, were to dine with him that day.' The rest of the note, at all
events, is inaccurate, for he says that 'Mrs. Thrale imparted to Johnson
the news [of her husband's death],' whereas Johnson saw him die.
[283] Mrs. Piozzi says that this money was given to Baretti as a
consolation for the loss of the Italian tour (_ante_, iii. 6). Hayward's
_Piozzi_, ii. 337.
[284] The Duke of York was present when Foote had the accident by which
he lost his leg (_ante_, ii. 95). Moved by compassion, he obtained for
him from the King a royal patent for performances at the Haymarket from
May 14 to Sept. 14 in every year. He played but thrice after his
retirement. Forster's Essays, ii. 400, 435.
[285] Strahan showed greater sagacity about Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_,
which had been declined by Elmsly. 'So moderate were our hopes,' writes
Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, i. 223), 'that the original impression had been
stinted to five hundred, till the number was doubled by the prophetic
taste of Mr. Strahan.' Carrick called Strahan 'rather an _obtuse_ man.'
_Post_, April 9 1778.
[286] See _post_, Sept. 19, 1777, and April 20, 1781.
[287] Johnson, I believe, at this time suffered less than usual from
despondency. See _ante_, iii. 25, note 1. The passage in which these
words are found applies to one day only. It is as follows:--'March 28.
This day is Good Friday. It is likewise the day on which my poor Tetty
was taken from me. My thoughts were disturbed in bed. I remembered
that it was my wife's dying day, and begged pardon for all our sins, and
commended her; but resolved to mix little of my own sorrows or cares
with the great solemnity. Having taken only tea without milk I went to
church; had time before service to commend my wife, and wished to join
quietly in the service, but I did not hear well, and my mind grew
unsettled and perplexed. Having rested ill in the night I slumbered at
the sermon, which, I think, I could not as I sat perfectly hear.... At
night I had some ease. L.D. [Laus Deo] I had prayed for pardon and
peace.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 153. Hawkins, however (_Life_, p. 532), says,
perhaps with considerable exaggeration, that at this time, 'he sunk into
indolence, till his faculties seemed to be impaired; deafness grew upon
him; long intervals of mental absence interrupted his conversation, and
it was difficult to engage his attention to any subject. His friends
concluded that his lamp was emitting its last rays, but the lapse of a
short period gave them ample proofs to the contrary.' The proofs were
_The Lives of the Poets_. Johnson himself says of this time:--'Days and
months pass in a dream; and I am afraid that my memory grows less
tenacious, and my observation less attentive.' _Pr. and Med_. 160.
[288]
'Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.'
Pope's _Essay on Man_, i. 99.
[289] '"I inherited," said Johnson, "a vile melancholy from my father,
which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober."' Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Sept. 16, 1773. See _ante_, i. 65, and _post_, Sept. 20,
1777.
[290] _Pr. and Med_. p. 155. BOSWELL.
[291] _Pr. and Med_. p. 158. BOSWELL.
[292] He continues:--'I passed the afternoon with such calm gladness of
mind as it is very long since I felt before. I passed the night in such
sweet uninterrupted sleep as I have not known since I slept at Fort
Augustus.' See _post_, Nov. 21, 1778, where in a letter to Boswell he
says:--'The best night that I have had these twenty years was at Fort
Augustus.' In 1767 he mentions (_Pr. and Med_. p. 73) 'a sudden relief
he once had by a good night's rest in Fetter Lane,' where he had lived
many years before. His good nights must have been rare indeed.
[293] Bishop Percy says that he handed over to Johnson various memoranda
which he had received from 'Goldsmith's brother and others of his family,
to afford materials for a _Life of Goldsmith_, which Johnson was to
write and publish for their benefit. But he utterly forgot them and the
subject.' Prior successfully defends Johnson against the charge that he
did not include Goldsmith's _Life_ among the _Lives of the Poets_. 'The
copy-right of _She Stoops to Conquer_ was the property of Carnan the
bookseller (surviving partner of F. Newbery); and Carnan being "a most
impracticable man and at variance with all his brethren," in the words
of Malone to the Bishop, he refused his assent, and the project for the
time fell to the ground.' But Percy clearly implies that it was a
separate work and not one of the _Lives_ that Johnson had undertaken.
See Prior's _Goldsmith_, Preface, p. x. Malone, in a note on Boswell's
letter of July 9, 1777, says:--'I collected some materials for a _Life
of Goldsmith_, by Johnson's desire.' He goes on to mention the quarrel
with Carnan. It should seem then that Johnson was gathering materials
for Goldsmith's _Life_ before the _Lives of the Poets_ were projected;
that later on he intended to include it in that series, but being
thwarted by Carnan that he did nothing.
[294] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773.
[295] 'I have often desired him not to call me Goldy.' _Ib_. Oct. 14.
[296] 'The Duke of Argyle was obliging enough to mount Dr. Johnson on a
stately steed from his grace's stable. My friend was highly pleased, and
Joseph [Boswell's Bohemian servant] said, "He now looks like a bishop."'
Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 26.
[297] See _ante_, ii. 196.
[298] Even Burke falls into the vulgarism of 'mutual friend.' See his
_Correspondence_, i. 196, ii. 251. Goldsmith also writes of 'mutual
acquaintance.' Cunningham's _Goldsmith's Works_, iv. 48.
[299] He means to imply, I suppose, that Johnson was the father of
plantations. See _ante_, under Feb. 7, 1775. note.
[300] For a character of this very amiable man, see _Journal of a Tour
to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 36. [Aug. 17.] BOSWELL.
[301] By the then course of the post, my long letter of the 14th had not
yet reached him. BOSWELL.
[302] _History of Philip the Second_. BOSWELL.
[303] See _ante_, Jan. 21, 1775.
[304] See _ante_, iii. 48.
[305] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Jan. 15, 1777, that he had had about
twelve ounces of blood taken, and then about ten more, and that another
bleeding was to follow. 'Yet I do not make it a matter of much form. I
was to-day at Mrs. Gardiner's. When I have bled to-morrow, I will not
give up Langton nor Paradise. But I beg that you will fetch me away on
Friday. I do not know but clearer air may do me good; but whether the
air be clear or dark, let me come to you.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 344. See
_post_, Sept. 16, 1777, note.
[306] See _ante_, i. 411, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773.
[307] Johnson tried in vain to buy this book at Aberdeen. _Ib_. Aug. 23.
[308] See _ante_, May 12, 1775.
[309] No doubt her _Miscellanies_. _Ante_, ii. 25.
[310] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 22.
[311] John_son_ is the most common English formation of the Sirname from
_John_; John_ston_ the Scotch. My illustrious friend observed that many
North Britons pronounced his name in their own way. BOSWELL. Boswell
(_Hebrides_, Oct. 21, 1773) tells of one Lochbuy who, 'being told that
Dr. Johnson did not hear well, bawled out to him, "Are you of the
Johnstons of Glencro, or of Ardnamurchan?"'
[312] See _post_, under Dec. 24, 1783.
[313] Johnson's old amanuensis. _Ante_, i. 187. Johnson described him as
'a man of great learning.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 654.
[314] On account of their differing from him as to religion and
politicks. BOSWELL. See _post_, April 13, 1778. Mr. Croker says that
'the Club had, as its records show, for many of his latter years very
little of his company.'
[315] See _ante_, i. 225 note 2, July 4, 1774, and March 20, 1776.
[316] Boswell was no reader. 'I don't believe,' Johnson once said to
him, 'you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable yourself
to borrow more.' _Ante_, April 16, 1775. Boswell wrote to Temple on
March 18, 1775:--'I have a kind of impotency of study.' Two months later
he wrote:--'I have promised to Dr. Johnson to read when I get to
Scotland, and to keep an account of what I read. I shall let you know
how I go on. My mind must be nourished.' _Letters of Boswell_, pp. 181,
195.
[317] Chesterfield's _Letters to his Son_ were published in 1774, and
his _Miscellaneous Works_, together with _Memoirs and Letters to his
Friends_, early in 1777.
[318] 'Whatso it is, the Danaan folk, yea gift-bearing I fear.' Morris,
Æneids, ii. 49.
[319] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on March 19, 1777:--'You are all young,
and gay, and easy; but I have miserable nights, and know not how to make
them better; but I shift pretty well a-days, and so have at you all at
Dr. Burney's to-morrow.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 345.
[320] A twelfth was born next year. See _post_, July 3, 1778.
[321] It was March 29.
[322] _Pr. and Med_. p. 155. BOSWELL
[323] See _ante_, i. 341, note 3.
[324] See _ante_, i. 439.
[325] Johnson's moderation in demanding so small a sum is extraordinary.
Had he asked one thousand, or even fifteen hundred guineas, the
booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would doubtless have
readily given it. They have probably got five thousand guineas by this
work in the course of twenty-five years. MALONE.
[326] See _post_, beginning of 1781.
[327] See _ante_, ii. 272, note 2.
[328] Mr. Joseph Cooper Walker, of the Treasury, Dublin, who obligingly
communicated to me this and a former letter from Dr. Johnson to the
same gentleman (for which see vol. i. p. 321), writes to me as follows:
--'Perhaps it would gratify you to have some account of Mr. O'Connor. He
is an amiable, learned, venerable old gentleman, of an independent
fortune, who lives at Belanagar, in the county of Roscommon; he is an
admired writer, and Member of the Irish Academy.--The above Letter is
alluded to in the Preface to the 2nd edit, of his _Dissert_, p. 3.'--Mr.
O'Connor afterwards died at the age of eighty-two. See a well-drawn
character of him in the _Gent. Mag_. for August 1791. BOSWELL.
[329] Mr. Croker shows good reason for believing that in the original
letter this parenthesis stood:--'_if such there were_.'
[330] See _ante_, i. 292.
[331] 'Johnson had not heard of Pearce's _Sermons_, which I wondered at,
considering that he wrote all the _Life_ published by the Chaplain
Derby, except what his Lordship wrote himself.' _Letters of Boswell_,
p. 242. See ante, March 20, 1776.
[332] Boswell, it seems, is here quoting himself. See his _Hebrides_,
3rd edit. p. 201 (Sept. 13, 1773), where, however, he lays the emphasis
differently, writing '_fervour_ of loyalty.'
[333] 'An old acquaintance' of the Bishop says that 'he struggled hard
ten years ago to resign his Bishopric and the Deanery of Westminster, in
which our gracious King was willing to gratify him; but upon a
consultation of the Bishops they thought it could not be done with
propriety; yet he was permitted to resign the Deanery.' _Gent. Mag_.
1775, p. 421.
[334] 'This person, it is said, was a stay-maker, but being a man of wit
and parts he betook himself to study, and at a time when the discipline
of the inns of court was scandalously lax, got himself called to the
Bar, and practised at the quarter-sessions under me, but with little
success. He became the conductor of a paper called _The Public Ledger_
and a writer for the stage, in which he met with some encouragement, till
it was insinuated that he was a pensioner of the minister, and therefore
a fit object of patriotic vengeance.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 518. See
_ante_, ii. 48 note, and _post_, 1784, in Mr. Nichols's account of
Johnson's last days.
[335] 'This address had the desired effect. The play was well received.'
Murphy's _Garrick_, p. 302. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield,
'Lucy [his step-daughter] thinks nothing of my prologue for Kelly, and
says she has always disowned it.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 352.
[336] It was composed at a time when Savage was generally without
lodging, and often without meat. Much of it was written with pen and ink
that were borrowed, on paper that had been picked up in the streets. The
unhappy poet 'was obliged to submit himself wholly to the players, and
admit with whatever reluctance the emendations of Mr. Cibber, which he
always considered as the disgrace of his performance.' When it was
brought out, he himself took the part of Overbury. 'He was so much
ashamed of having been reduced to appear as a player, that he always
blotted out his name from the list when a copy of his tragedy was to be
shown to his friends.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 110-112.
[337] It was not at Drury-lane, but at Covent Garden theatre, that it
was acted. MALONE.
[338] Part First, Chap 4. BOSWELL. See _ante_ ii. 225.
[339] _Life of Richard Savage_, by Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL.
[340] See _ante_, i. 387, and _post_, May 17, 1783.
[341] Sheridan joined the Literary Club in March, 1777. _The Rivals_
and _The Duenna_ were brought out in 1775; _The Trip to Scarborough_
on Feb. 24, 1777, and _The School for Scandal_ in the following May.
Moore (_Life of Sheridan_, i. 168), speaking of _The Duenna_, says,
'The run of this opera has, I believe, no parallel in the annals of the
drama. Sixty-three nights was the career of _The Beggar's Opera_; but
_The Duenna_ was acted no less than seventy-five times during the
season.' _The Trip to Scarborough_ was a failure. Johnson, therefore,
doubtless referred to _The Rivals_ and _The Duenna_.
[342] The date is wrongly given. Boswell says that he wrote again on
June 23 (_post_, p. 120), and Johnson's letter of June 28 is in answer
to both letters. The right date is perhaps June 9.
[343] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, under Nov. 11, 1773.
[344] See pp. 29, 30, of this volume. BOSWELL.
[345] Johnson, describing 'the fond intimacy' of Quin and Thomson, says
(_Works_, viii. 374):--'The commencement of this benevolence is very
honourable to Quin, who is reported to have delivered Thomson, then
known to him only for his genius, from an arrest by a very considerable
present; and its continuance is honourable to both, for friendship is
not always the sequel of obligation.'
[346] See _ante_, ii. 63, and _post_, June 18, 1778.
[347] Formerly Sub-preceptor to his present Majesty, and afterwards a
Commissioner of Excise. MALONE.
[348] The physician and poet. He died in 1779.
[349] Boswell nine years earlier (_ante_, ii. 63) had heard Johnson
accuse Thomson of gross sensuality.
[350] 'Savage, who lived much with Thomson, once told me he heard a
lady remarking that she could gather from his works three parts of his
character, that he was a great lover, a great swimmer, and rigorously
abstinent; but, said Savage, he knows not any love but that of the sex;
he was perhaps never in cold water in his life; and he indulges himself
in all the luxury that comes within his reach.' Johnson's _Works_, viii.
377.
[351] Dr. Johnson was not the _editor_ of this Collection of _The
English Poets_; he merely furnished the biographical prefaces. MALONE.
See _post_, Sept. 14, 1777.
[352] See _ante_, under April 18, 1775.
[353] One letter he seems to have sent to him from this spot. See
_ante_, ii. 3, note 1.
[354] Dr. Johnson had himself talked of our seeing Carlisle together.
_High_ was a favourite word of his to denote a person of rank. He said
to me, 'Sir, I believe we may at the house of a Roman Catholick lady in
Cumberland; a high lady, Sir.' I afterwards discovered he meant Mrs.
Strickland, sister of Charles Townley, Esq., whose very noble collection
of pictures is not more to be admired, than his extraordinary and polite
readiness in shewing it, which I and several of my friends have
agreeably experienced. They who are possessed of valuable stores of
gratification to persons of taste, should exercise their benevolence in
imparting the pleasure. Grateful acknowledgments are due to Welbore
Ellis Agar, Esq., for the liberal access which he is pleased to allow to
his exquisite collection of pictures. BOSWELL.
[355] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 11, 1773.
[356] It is no doubt, on account of its brevity that Boswell in speaking
of it writes:--'What is called _The Life_.'
[357] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct, 29, 1773.
[358] See _ante_, under Feb. 7, 1775.
[359] See post, p. 139.
[360] See _ante_, i. 494.
[361] From Prior's imitation of _Gualterus Danistonus ad Amicos_; the
poem mentioned by Boswell in his _Hebrides_, Aug. 18, 1773.
[362] _Copy_ is _manuscript for printing_.
[363] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 521) says that the jury did not at the trial
recommend Dodd to mercy. To one of the petitions 'Mrs. Dodd first got
the hands of the jury that found the bill against her husband, and after
that, as it is supposed, of the jury that tried him.' Ib. p. 527. He
says that the public were at first very little interested in his fate,
'but by various artifices, and particularly the insertion of his name in
public papers, with such palliatives as he and his friends could invent,
never with the epithet of _unfortunate_, they were betrayed into such an
enthusiastic commiseration of his case as would have led a stranger to
believe that himself had been no accessory to his distresses, but that
they were the inflictions of Providence.' Ib. p. 520. Johnson wrote to
Dr. Taylor on May 19:--'Poor Dodd was sentenced last week.... I am
afraid he will suffer. The clergy seem not to be his friends. The
populace, that was extremely clamorous against him, begins to pity him.
_Notes and Queries_, 6th S., v. 423.
[364] Horace Walpole says 'the criminal was raised to the dignity of a
confessor in the eyes of the people--but an inexorable judge had already
pronounced his doom. Lord Mansfield, who never felt pity, and never
relented unless terrified, had indecently declared for execution even
before the judges had given their opinion. An incident that seemed
favourable weighed down the vigorous [qu. rigorous] scale. The Common
Council had presented a petition for mercy to the king. Lord Mansfield,
who hated the popular party as much as he loved severity, was not likely
to be moved by such intercessors. At Court it grew the language that the
king must discountenance such interposition.' Walpole adds that 'as an
attempt to rescue Dodd might be apprehended, two thousand men were
ordered to be reviewed in Hyde Park during the execution.' _Journal of
the Reign of George III_, ii. 125.
[365] Johnson, in the '_Observations_ inserted in the newspapers'
(_post_, p. 142), said 'that though the people cannot judge of the
administration of justice so well as their governors, yet their voice
has always been regarded. That if the people now commit an error, their
error is on the part of mercy; and that perhaps history cannot shew a
time in which the life of a criminal, guilty of nothing above fraud, was
refused to the cry of nations, to the joint supplication of three and
twenty thousand petitioners.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 528. Johnson's
earnestness as a petitioner contrasts with the scornful way in which he
had spoken of petitions. 'There must be no yielding to encourage this,'
the minister might have answered in his own words. _Ante_, ii. 90.
[366] The king signs no sentences or death warrants; but out of respect
to the Royal perogative of mercy, expressed by the old adage, '_The
King's face gives grace_,' the cases of criminals convicted in London,
where the king is supposed to be resident, were reported to him by the
recorder, that his Majesty might have an option of pardoning. Hence it
was seriously doubted whether a recorder's report need or, indeed, could
be made at Windsor. All his Majesty did on these occasions was, to
express verbally his assent or dissent to or from the execution of the
sentence; and, though the King was on such occasions attended by his
Ministers and the great legal Privy Councillors, the business was not
technically a council business, but the individual act of the King.
On the accession of Queen Victoria, the nature of some cases that it
might be necessary to report to her Majesty occasioned the abrogation of
a practice which was certainly so far unreasonable that it made a
difference between London and all the rest of the kingdom. CROKER. 'I
was exceedingly shocked,' said Lord Eldon, 'the first time I attended to
hear the Recorder's report, at the careless manner in which, as it
appeared to me, it was conducted. We were called upon to decide on
sentences affecting no less than the lives of men, and yet there was
nothing laid before us to enable us to judge whether there had or had
not been any extenuating circumstances; it was merely a recapitulation
of the judge's opinion and the sentence. I resolved that I never would
attend another report, without having read and duly considered the whole
of the evidence of each case, and I never did.' Twiss's _Eldon_, i.
398.
[367] Under-Secretary of State and a member of the Literary Club.
_Ante_, i. 478.
[368] Johnson does not here let Boswell know that he had written this
address (_post_, p. 141). Wesley, two days before Dodd's execution,
records (_Journal_, iv. 99):--'I saw Dr. Dodd for the last time. He was
in exactly such a temper as I wished. He never at any time expressed the
least murmuring or resentment at any one; but entirely and calmly gave
himself up to the will of God. Such a prisoner I scarce ever saw before;
much less such a condemned malefactor. I should think none could
converse with him without acknowledging that God is with him.' In
earlier years Wesley was more than once refused admittance to a man
under sentence of death who was 'earnestly desirous' to speak with him.
Wesley's _Journal_, ed. 1827, i. 255, 292, 378.
[369] Between the Methodists and the Moravians there was no good-will.
In 1749 the Moravians published a declaration that 'whosoever reckons
that those persons in England who are usually called Moravians, and
those who are called Methodists, are the same, he is mistaken.'
Thereupon Wesley recorded in his _Journal_, ii. l20:--'The Methodists,
so called, heartily thank Brother Louis for his Declaration; as they
count it no honour to be in any connexion either with him or his
Brethren.'
[370] Since they have been so much honoured by Dr. Johnson I shall here
insert them:
'TO MR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
'MY EVER DEAR AND MUCH-RESPECTED SIR,
'You know my solemn enthusiasm of mind. You love me for it, and I
respect myself for it, because in so far I resemble Mr. Johnson. You
will be agreeably surprized when you learn the reason of my writing this
letter. I am at Wittemberg in Saxony. I am in the old church where the
Reformation was first preached, and where some of the reformers lie
interred. I cannot resist the serious pleasure of writing to Mr. Johnson
from the Tomb of Melancthon. My paper rests upon the gravestone of that
great and good man, who was undoubtedly the worthiest of all the
reformers. He wished to reform abuses which had been introduced into the
Church; but had no private resentment to gratify. So mild was he, that
when his aged mother consulted him with anxiety on the perplexing
disputes of the times, he advised her "to keep to the old religion." At
this tomb, then, my ever dear and respected friend! I vow to thee an
eternal attachment. It shall be my study to do what I can to render your
life happy: and, if you die before me, I shall endeavour to do honour to
your memory; and, elevated by the remembrance of you, persist in noble
piety. May GOD, the Father of all beings, ever bless you! and may you
continue to love,
'Your most affectionate friend, and devoted servant,
'JAMES BOSWELL.'
'Sunday, Sept. 30, 1764.'
'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
'Wilton-house, April 22, 1775.
'My DEAR SIR,
'Every scene of my life confirms the truth of what you have told me,
"there is no certain happiness in this state of being."--I am here,
amidst all that you know is at Lord Pembroke's; and yet I am weary and
gloomy. I am just setting out for the house of an old friend in
Devonshire, and shall not get back to London for a week yet. You said to
me last Good-Friday, with a cordiality that warmed my heart, that if I
came to settle in London, we should have a day fixed every week, to meet
by ourselves and talk freely. To be thought worthy of such a privilege
cannot but exalt me. During my present absence from you, while,
notwithstanding the gaiety which you allow me to possess, I am darkened
by temporary clouds, I beg to have a few lines from you; a few lines
merely of kindness, as--a _viaticum_ till I see you again. In your
_Vanity of Human Wishes_, and in Parnell's _Contentment_, I find the
only sure means of enjoying happiness; or, at least, the hopes of
happiness. I ever am, with reverence and affection,
'Most faithfully yours,
'JAMES BOSWELL.'
[371] William Seward, Esq., F.R.S., editor of _Anecdotes of some
distinguished persons_, etc., in four volumes, 8vo., well known to a
numerous and valuable acquaintance for his literature, love of the fine
arts, and social virtues. I am indebted to him for several
communications concerning Johnson. BOSWELL. Miss Burney frequently
mentions him as visiting the Thrales. 'Few people do him justice,' said
Mrs. Thrale to her, 'because as Dr. Johnson calls him, he is an abrupt
young man; but he has excellent qualities, and an excellent
understanding.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 141. Miss Burney, in one of
her letters, says:--'Mr. Seward, who seems to be quite at home among
them, appears to be a penetrating, polite, and agreeable young man. Mrs.
Thrale says of him, that he does good to everybody, but speaks well of
nobody.' _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, ii. 89. He must not be confounded with
the Rev. Mr. Seward of Lichfield.
[372] See _post_, under date of June 18, 1778.
[373] In the list of deaths in the _Gent. Mag_. for 1779, p. 103, we
find, 'Feb. 8. Isaac de Groot, great-grandson to the learned Grotius.
He had long been supported by private donations, and at length was
provided for in the Charterhouse, where he died.'
[374] The preceding letter. BOSWELL.
[375] This letter was addressed not to a Mr. Dilly, but to Mr. W. Sharp,
Junior. See _Gent. Mag_. 1787, p. 99. CROKER.
[376] See _ante_, i. 312.
[377] See _ante_, p. 101.
[378] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 16.
[379] See ante, p. 86, and _post_, under Nov. 29, 1777.
[380] Johnson gives both _epocha_ and _epoch_ in his _Dictionary_.
[381] Langton. See _ante_, p. 48, and _post_, Sept. 22, 1777.
[382] This very just remark I hope will be constantly held in
remembrance by parents, who are in general too apt to indulge their own
fond feelings for their children at the expence of their friends. The
common custom of introducing them after dinner is highly injudicious. It
is agreeable enough that they should appear at any other time; but they
should not be suffered to poison the moments of festivity by attracting
the attention of the company, and in a manner compelling them from
politeness to say what they do not think. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p. 28.
[383] Gibbon wrote to Garrick from Paris on Aug. 14:--'At this time of
year the society of the Turk's-head can no longer be addressed as a
corporate body, and most of the individual members are probably
dispersed: Adam Smith in Scotland; Burke in the shades of Beaconsfield;
Fox, the Lord or the devil knows where, etc. Be so good as to salute in
my name those friends who may fall in your way. Assure Sir Joshua, in
particular, that I have not lost my relish for _manly_ conversation and
the society of the brown table.' _Garrick Corres_. ii. 256. I believe
that in Gibbon's published letters no mention is found of Johnson.
[384] See _ante_, ii. 159, and _post_, April 4, 1778. Of his greatness
at the Bar Lord Eldon has left the following anecdote;--'Mr. Dunning,
being in very great business, was asked how he contrived to get through
it all. He said, "I do one third of it, another third does itself, and
the remaining third continues undone."' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 327.
[385] It is not easy to detect Johnson in anything that comes even near
an inaccuracy. Let me quote, therefore, a passage from one of his
letters which shews that when he wrote to Mrs. Boswell he had not, as
he seems to imply, eaten any of the marmalade:--'Aug. 4, 1777. I believe
it was after I left your house that I received a pot of orange marmalade
from Mrs. Boswell. We have now, I hope, made it up. I have not opened my
pot.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 350.
[386] See _ante_, March 19, 1776.
[387] What it was that had occured is shewn by Johnson's letter to Mrs.
Thrale on Aug. 4:--'Boswell's project is disconcerted by a visit from a
relation of Yorkshire, whom he mentions as the head of his clan [see
_ante_, ii. 169, note 2]. Boszy, you know, make a huge bustle about
all his own motions and all mine. I have inclosed a letter to pacify
him, and reconcile him to the uncertainties of human life.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 350.
[388] When she was about four months old, Boswell declared that she
should have five hundred pounds of additional fortune, on account of
her fondness for Dr. Johnson. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773.
She died, says Malone, of a consumption, four months after her father.
[389] See _ante_, March 23, 1776.
[390] By an odd mistake, in the first three editions we find a reading
in this line to which Dr. Johnson would by no means have subscribed,
_wine_ having been substituted for _time_. That error probably was a
mistake in the transcript of Johnson's original letter. The other
deviation in the beginning of the line (_virtue_ instead of nature) must
be attributed to his memory having deceived him. The verse quoted is the
concluding line of a sonnet of Sidney's:--
'Who doth desire that chast his wife should bee,
First be he true, for truth doth truth deserve;
Then be he such, as she his worth may see,
And, alwaies one, credit with her preserve:
Not toying kynd nor causelessly unkynd,
Nor stirring thoughts, nor yet denying right,
Nor spying faults, nor in plaine errors blind,
Never hard hand, nor ever rayns (reins) too light;
As far from want, as far from vaine expence,
Th' one doth enforce, the t'other doth entice:
Allow good companie, but drive from thence
All filthie mouths that glorie in their vice:
This done, thou hast no more but leave the rest
To _nature_, fortune, _time_, and woman's breast.'