Johnson, in his _Criticism upon Pope's Epitaphs_ (_Works_, viii. 355),
quotes the opinion of a 'lady of great beauty and excellence.' She was,
says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 162), Molly Aston. Mrs. Piozzi, in her
_Letters_ (ii. 383), writes:--'Nobody has ever mentioned what became of
Miss Aston's letters, though he once told me they should be the last
papers he would destroy.' See _ante_, i. 83.
[1014] See _ante_, ii. 470.
[1015] Pope's _Essay on Man_, iv. 380.
[1016] See _ante_, i. 294.
[1017] 'March 4, 1745. You say you expect much information about
Belleisle, but there has not (in the style of the newspapers) the least
particular _transpired_.' Horace Walpole's _Letters_, i. 344. 'Jan. 26,
1748. You will not let one word of it _transpire_.' Chesterfield's
_Misc. Works_, iv. 35. 'It would be next to a miracle that a fact of
this kind should be known to a whole parish, and not _transpire_ any
farther.' Fielding's _Tom Jones_, bk. ii. c. 5. _Tom Jones_ was
published before the _Dictionary_, but not so Walpole's _Letters_ and
Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_. I have not found a passage in which
Bolingbroke uses the word, but I have not read all his works.
[1018] 'The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge
of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own ... I have registered
as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others
against the folly of naturalising useless foreigners to the injury of
the natives.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 31. 'If an academy should be
established for the cultivation of our style, which I, who can never
wish to see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty
will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and
dictionaries, endeavour with all their influence to stop the license of
translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed,
will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.' _Ib_. p. 49. 'I have
rarely admitted any words not authorised by former writers; for I
believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent will
be able to express his thoughts without further help from other
nations.' _The Rambler_, No. 208.
[1019] Boswell on one occasion used _it came out_ where a lover of fine
words would have said _it transpired_. See Boswell's _Hebrides_,
November 1.
[1020] The record no doubt was destroyed with the other papers that
Boswell left to his literary executors (_ante_, p. 301, note 1).
[1021] See _ante_, i. 154.
[1022] 'Of Johnson's pride I have heard Reynolds observe, that if any
man drew him into a state of obligation without his own consent, that
man was the first he would affront by way of clearing off the account.'
Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 71.
[1023] See _post_, May 1, 1779.
[1024] This had happened the day before (May 11) in the writ of error in
Horne's case (_ante_, p. 314). _Ann. Reg_. xii. 181.
[1025] '_To enucleate_. To solve; to clear.' Johnson's _Dictionary_.
[1026] In the original _me_.
[1027] Pope himself (_Moral Essays_, iii. 25) attacks the sentiment
contained in this stanza. He says:--
'What nature wants (a phrase I must distrust)
Extends to luxury, extends to lust.'
Mr. Elwin (Pope's _Works_, ii. 462) doubts the genuineness of this
suppressed stanza. Montezuma, in Dryden's _Indian Emperour_, act ii. sc.
2, says:--
'That lust of power we from your Godheads have,
You're bound to please those appetites you gave.'
[1028] 'Antoine Arnauld, surnommé le grand Arnauld, théologien et
philosophe, né à Paris le 6 février 1612, mort le 6 août 1694 à
Bruxelles.' _Nouv. Biog. Gén_. iii. 282.
[1029] 'It may be discovered that when Pope thinks himself concealed he
indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those
distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that his
book was presented to the King and Queen by the right honourable Sir
Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud
that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first
distinction.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 278.
[1030] _Othello_, act iii. sc. 3.
[1031] Mr. Langton, I have little doubt. Not only does that which Johnson
says of sluggishness fit his character, but the fact that he is spoken
of in the next paragraph points to him.
[1032] Mr. Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48.
[1033] We may wonder whether _pasted_ is strictly used. It seems likely
that the wealthy brewer, who had a taste for the fine arts, afforded
Hogarth at least a frame.
[1034] See _ante_, i. 49.
[1035] Baths are called Hummums in the East, and thence these hotels in
Covent Garden, where there were baths, were called by that name. CROKER.
[1036] Beauclerk.
[1037] Bolingbroke. _Ante_, ii. 246.
[1038] Lord Clive. _Ante_, p. 334.
[1039] _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2.
[1040] Johnson, or Boswell in reporting him, here falls into an error.
The editor of Chesterfield's _Works_ says (ii. 3l9), 'that being
desirous of giving a specimen of his Lordship's eloquence he has made
choice of the three following speeches; the first in the strong nervous
style of Demosthenes; the two latter in the witty, ironical manner of
Tully.' Now the first of these speeches is not Johnson's, for it was
reported in _The Gent. Mag_. for July, 1737, p. 409, nine months before
his first contribution to that paper. In spite of great differences this
report and that in Chesterfield's _Works_ are substantially the same. If
Johnson had any hand in the authorised version he merely revised the
report already published. Nor did he always improve it, as will be seen
by comparing with Chesterfield's _Works_, ii. 336, the following passage
from the _Gent. Mag_. p. 411:--'My Lords, we ought in all points to be
tender of property. Wit is the property of those who are possessed of
it, and very often the only property they have. Thank God, my Lords,
this is not our case; we are otherwise provided for.' The other two
speeches are his. In the collected works (xi. 420, 489) they are wrongly
assigned to Lord Carteret. See _ante_, i. Appendix A.
[1041] See _ante_, p. 340.
[1042] These words are quoted by Kames, iii. 267. In his abbreviation
he perhaps passed over by accident the words that Johnson next quotes.
If Clarendon did not believe the story, he wished his readers to believe
it. He gives more than five pages to it, and he ends by saying:--
'Whatever there was of all this, it is a notorious truth, that when the
news of the duke's murder (which happened within few months after) was
brought to his mother, she seemed not in the least degree surprised; but
received it as if she had foreseen it.' According to the story, he had
told her of the warning which had come to him through his father's ghost.
Clarendon's _History_, ed. 1826, i. 74.
[1043] Kames maintains (iii. 95) that schools are not needful for the
children of the labouring poor. They would be needful, 'if without
regular education we could have no knowledge of the principles of
religion and of morality. But Providence has not left man in a state so
imperfect: religion and morality are stamped on his heart; and none can
be ignorant of them, who attend to their own perceptions.'
[1044] 'Oct. 5, 1764. Mr. Elliot brings us woeful accounts of the
French ladies, of the decency of their conversation, and the nastiness
of their behaviour.' Walpole's _Letters_, iv. 277. Walpole wrote from
Paris on Nov. 19, 1765, 'Paris is the ugliest, beastliest town in the
universe,' and describes the nastiness of the talk of French women of
the first rank. _Ib_. p. 435. Mrs. Piozzi, nearly twenty years later,
places among 'the contradictions one meets with every moment' at Paris,
'A Countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps,
and a dirty black handkerchief about her neck.' Piozzi's _Journey_, i.
17. See _ante_, ii. 403, and _post_, under Aug. 29, 1783.
[1045] See Appendix B.
[1046] His lordship was, to the last, in the habit of telling this story
rather too often. CROKER.
[1047] See _ante_, ii. 194.
[1048] See _ante_, iii. 178.
[1049] See _ante_, ii. 153.
[1050] 'Our eyes and ears may convince us,' wrote Wesley, 'there is not
a less happy body of men in all England than the country farmers. In
general their life is supremely dull; and it is usually unhappy too;
for of all people in the kingdom, they are the most discontented, seldom
satisfied either with God or man.' Southey's _Wesley_, i. 420. He did
not hold with Johnson as to the upper classes. 'Oh! how hard it is,' he
said, 'to be shallow enough for a polite audience.' _Ib_. p. 419.
[1051] Horne says:--'Even S. Johnson, though mistakenly, has attempted
AND, and would find no difficulty with THEREFORE' (ed. 1778, p. 21).
However, in a note on p. 56 he says:--'I could never read his preface
[to his _Dictionary_] without shedding a tear.' See _ante_, i. 297,
note 2.
[1052] In Mr. Horne Tooke's enlargement of that _Letter_, which he has
since published with the title of [Greek: Epea pteroenta]; or, the
_Diversions of Purley_; he mentions this compliment, as if Dr. Johnson
instead of _several_ of his etymologies had said _all_. His recollection
having thus magnified it, shews how ambitious he was of the approbation
of so great a man. BOSWELL. Horne Tooke says (ed. 1798, part i, p. 156)
'immediately after the publication of my _Letter to Mr. Dunning_ I was
informed by Mr. S. [Seward], an intimate friend of Dr. Johnson, that he
had declared that, if he lived to give a new edition of his
_Dictionary_, he should certainly adopt my derivations.' Boswell and
Horne Tooke, says Stephens (_Life of Tooke_, ii. 438), had an
altercation. 'Happening to meet at a gentleman's house, Mr. Boswell
proposed to make up the breach, on the express condition, however, that
they should drink a bottle of wine each between the toasts. But Mr.
Tooke would not give his assent unless the liquor should be brandy. By
the time a quart had been quaffed Boswell was left sprawling on the
floor.'
[1053] See _ante_, iii. 314. Thurlow, the Attorney-General, pressed that
Horne should be set in the pillory, 'observing that imprisonment would
be "a slight inconvenience to one of sedentary habits."' It was during
his imprisonment that he wrote his _Letter to Mr. Dunning_. Campbell's
_Chancellors_, ed. 1846, v. 517. Horace Walpole says that 'Lord
Mansfield was afraid, and would not venture the pillory.' _Journal of
the Reign of George III_, ii. 167.
[1054] '_Bulse_, a certain quantity of diamonds' (India). Webster's
_Dictionary_.
[1055] 'He raised,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 236), 'the medical
character to such a height of dignity as was never seen in this or any
other country. I have heard it said that when he began to practise, he
was a frequenter of the meeting at Stepney where his father preached;
and that when he was sent for out of the assembly, his father would in
his prayer insert a petition in behalf of the sick person. I once
mentioned this to Johnson, who said it was too gross for belief; but it
was not so at Batson's [a coffee-house frequented by physicians]; it
passed there as a current belief.' See _ante_, i. 159. Young has
introduced him in the second of his _Night Thoughts_--
'That time is mine, O Mead, to thee I owe;
Fain would I pay thee with eternity.'
Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 260) says 'that he had nothing but
pretensions.'
[1056] On Oct. 17, 1777, Burgoyne's army surrendered to the Americans
at Saratoga. One of the articles of the Convention was 'that the army
should march out of the camp with all the honours of war to a fixed
place where they were to deposit their arms. It is said that General
Gates [the American Commander] paid so nice and delicate an attention
to the British military honour that he kept his army close within their
lines, and did not suffer an American soldier to be a witness to the
degrading spectacle of piling their arms.' _Ann. Reg_. xx. 173, 174.
Horace Walpole, on Lord Cornwallis's capitulation in 1781, wrote:--'The
newspapers on the Court side had been crammed with paragraphs for a
fortnight, saying that Lord Cornwallis had declared he would never pile
up his arms like Burgoyne; that is, he would rather die sword in hand.'
Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 475.
[1057] See _ante_, i. 342.
[1058] There was a Colonel Fullarton who took an important part in the
war against Tippoo in 1783. Mill's _British India_, ed. 1840, iv. 276.
[1059] 'To count is a modern practice, the ancient method was to guess;
and when numbers are guessed, they are always magnified.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 95.
[1060] He published in 1714 _An Account of Switzerland_.
[1061] See _ante_, ii. 468.
[1062] See Appendix C.
[1063] 'All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a
prescience of the future which has not been given us. They are, I think,
a crime, because they resign that life to chance which God has given us
to be regulated by reason; and superinduce a kind of fatality, from
which it is the great privilege of our nature to be free.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 83. Johnson (_Works_, vii. 52) praises the 'just and noble
thoughts' in Cowley's lines which begin:--
'Where honour or where conscience does not bind,
No other law shall shackle me;
Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
Nor shall my future actions be confined
By my own present mind.'
See _ante_, ii. 21.
[1064] Juvenal, _Sat_. iii. 78. Imitated by Johnson in _London_.
[1065] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 16, and Johnson's _Tour into
Wales_, Aug. 1, 1774.
[1066] The slip of paper on which he made the correction, is deposited
by me in the noble library to which it relates, and to which I have
presented other pieces of his hand-writing. BOSWELL. In substituting
_burns_ he resumes the reading of the first edition, in which the former
of the two couplets ran:--
'Resistless burns the fever of renown,
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown.'
'The slip of paper and the other pieces of Johnson's hand-writing' have
been lost. At all events they are not in the Bodleian.
[1067] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 76), criticising Milton's scheme of
education, says:--'Those authors therefore are to be read at schools
that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and
most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by
poets, orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this
digression as pedantic or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me,
I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from
the study of nature to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I
oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think
that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of
the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn was
how to do good and avoid evil. "[Greek: hotti toi en megaroisi kakon t
agathon te tetuktai]."'
[1068] 'His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious,
but his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The
paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity
of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is
sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has
done well.' _Ib_. viii. 386. See _ante_, i. 312. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_.
p. 200) says that when 'Johnson would inveigh against devotional poetry,
and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble,' she
reminded him how 'when he would try to repeat the _Dies iræ, dies illa_,
he could never pass the stanza ending thus, _Tantus labor non sit
cassus_, without bursting into a flood of tears.'
[1069] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2.
[1070] Dr. Johnson was by no means attentive to minute accuracy in his
_Lives of the Poets_; for notwithstanding my having detected this
mistake, he has continued it. BOSWELL. See _post_, iv. 51, note 2 for a
like instance of neglect.
[1071] See _ante_, ii. 64.
[1072] See _ante_, ii. 278.
[1073] 'May 31, 1778. We shall at least not doze, as we are used to do,
in summer. The Parliament is to have only short adjournments; and our
senators, instead of retiring to horseraces (_their_ plough), are all
turned soldiers, and disciplining militia. Camps everywhere.' Horace
Walpole's _Letters_, vii. 75. It was a threat of invasion by the united
forces of France and Spain, at the time that we were at war with
America, that caused the alarm. Dr. J.H. Burton (Dr. A. Carlyle's
_Auto_. p. 399) points out, that while the militia of England was placed
nearly in its present position by the act of 1757, yet 'when a proposal
for extending the system to Scotland was suggested (sic), ministers were
afraid to arm the people.' 'It is curious,' he continues, 'that for a
reason almost identical Ireland has been excepted from the Volunteer
organisation of a century later. It was not until 1793 that the Militia
Acts were extended to Scotland.'
[1074] 'Before dinner,' wrote Miss Burney in September of this year,
'to my great joy Dr. Johnson returned home from Warley Common.' Mme.
D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 114. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Oct. 15:--'A
camp, however familiarly we may speak of it, is one of the great scenes
of human life. War and peace divide the business of the world. Camps are
the habitations of those who conquer kingdoms, or defend them.' _Piozzi
Letters_, ii. 22.
[1075] Third Edition, p. 111 [Aug. 28]. BOSWELL. It was at Fort George.
'He made a very good figure upon these topicks. He said to me afterwards
that "he had talked ostentatiously."'
[1076] When I one day at Court expressed to General Hall my sense of the
honour he had done my friend, he politely answered, 'Sir, I did _myself_
honour.' BOSWELL.
[1077] According to Malone, 'Mr. Burke said of Mr. Boswell that good
nature was so natural to him that he had no merit in possessing it, and
that a man might as well assume to himself merit in possessing an
excellent constitution.' _European Mag_. 1798, p. 376. See Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Aug. 21.
[1078] Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48.
[1079] No doubt his house at Langton.
[1080] The Wey Canal. See _ante_, ii. 136. From _navigation_, i.e. a
canal for internal navigation, we have _navvy_. A _canal_ was the
common term for an ornamental pool, and for a time it seemed that
_navigation_ and not _canal_ might be the term applied to artificial
rivers.
[1081] Langton.
[1082]
'He plunging downward shot his radiant head:
Dispelled the breathing air that broke his flight;
Shorn of his beams, a man to mortal sight.'
Dryden, quoted in Johnson's _Dictionary_ under _shorn_. The phrase first
appears in _Paradise Lost_, i. 596.
[1083] Mrs. Thrale, this same summer, 'asked whether Mr. Langton took
any better care of his affairs. "No, madam," cried the doctor, "and
never will. He complains of the ill-effects of habit, and rests
contentedly upon a confessed indolence. He told his father himself that
he had _no turn to economy_, but a thief might as well plead that he had
no _turn to honesty_!"' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 75.
[1084] Locke, in his last words to Collins, said:--'This world affords
no solid satisfaction but the consciousness of well-doing, and the hopes
of another life.' Warburton's _Divine Legation_, i. xxvi.
[1085] Not the young brewer who was hoped for (_ante_, iii. 210);
therefore she is called 'poor thing.' One of Mr. Thrale's daughters
lived to Nov. 5, 1858.
[1086] On Oct. 15 Johnson wrote:--'Is my master [i.e. Mr. Thrale,
_ante_, i. 494, note 3] come to himself? Does he talk, and walk, and
look about him, as if there were yet something in the world for which it
is worth while to live? Or does he yet sit and say nothing? To grieve
for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without
them.' _Piozzi Letters_. ii. 22. Nine days later he wrote:--'You appear
to me to be now floating on the spring-tide of prosperity. I think it
very probably in your power to lay up £8000 a-year for every year to
come, increasing all the time, what needs not be increased, the
splendour of all external appearance. And surely such a state is not to
be put into yearly hazard for the pleasure of _keeping the house full_,
or the ambition of _out-brewing Whitbread_? _Piozzi Letters_, p. 24.
[1087] See _ante_, ii. 136. The following letter, of which a fac-simile
is given at the beginning of vol. iii. of Dr. Franklin's _Memoirs_, ed.
1818, tells of 'a difference' between the famous printer of Philadelphia
and the King's Printer of London.
'Philada., July 5, 1775.
'Mr. Strahan,
'You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has
doomed my Country to Destruction.--You have begun to burn our Towns, and
murder our People.--Look upon your Hands!--They are stained with the
Blood of your Relations! You and I were long friends:--You are now my
Enemy,--and
'I am, yours,
'B. FRANKLIN.'
When peace was made between the two countries the old friendship was
renewed. _Ib_. iii. 147.
[1088] On this day he wrote a touching letter to Mr. Elphinston, who had
lost his wife (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 66, note). Perhaps the thoughts
thus raised in him led him to this act of reconciliation.
[1089] Dr. Johnson here addresses his worthy friend, Bennet Langton,
Esq., by his title as Captain of the Lincolnshire militia, in which he
has since been most deservedly raised to the rank of Major. BOSWELL.
[1090] President of the Royal Society.
[1091] The King visited Warley Camp on Oct. 20. _Ann. Reg_. xxi. 237.
[1092] He visited Coxheath Camp on Nov. 23. _Ib_. Horace Walpole,
writing of April of this year when, in the alarm of a French invasion,
the militia were called out, says:--'The King's behaviour was childish
and absurd. He ordered the camp equipage, and said he would command the
army himself.' Walpole continues:--'It is reported, that in a few days
will be published in two volumes, folio, an accurate account of _His
Majesty's Journeys to Chatham and Portsmouth, together with a minute
Description of his numerous Fatigues, Dangers, and hair-breadth Escapes;
to which will be added the Royal Bon-mots_. And the following week will
be published an _History of all the Campaigns of the King of Prussia_,
in one volume duodecimo.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 262,
264.
[1093] Boswell, eleven years later, wrote of him:--'My second son is an
extraordinary boy; he is much of his father (vanity of vanities). He is
of a delicate constitution, but not unhealthy, and his spirit never
fails him. He is still in the house with me; indeed he is quite my
companion, though only eleven in September.' _Letters of Boswell_, p.
315. Mr. Croker, who knew him, says that 'he was very convivial, and in
other respects like his father--though altogether on a smaller scale.'
He edited a new edition of Malone's _Shakespeare_. He died in 1822.
Croker's _Boswell_, p. 620.
[1094] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 30, 1773.
[1095] _Ib_. Nov. 1.
[1096] Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church. Johnson
wrote in 1783:--'At home I see almost all my companions dead or dying.
At Oxford I have just left [lost] Wheeler, the man with whom I most
delighted to converse.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 302. See _post_, Aug. 30,
1780.
[1097] Johnson, in 1784, wrote about a visit to Oxford:--'Since I was
there my convivial friend Dr. Edwards and my learned friend Dr. Wheeler
are both dead, and my probabilities of pleasure are very much
diminished.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 371.
[1098] Dr. Edwards was preparing an edition of Xenophon's _Memorabilia_.
CROKER.
[1099] Johnson wrote on the 14th:--'Dr. Burney had the luck to go to
Oxford the only week in the year when the library is shut up. He was,
however, very kindly treated; as one man is translating Arabick and
another Welsh for his service.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 38.
[1100] Johnson three years later, hearing that one of Dr. Burney's sons
had got the command of a ship, wrote:--'I question if any ship upon the
ocean goes out attended with more good wishes than that which carries
the fate of Burney. I love all of that breed whom I can be said to know,
and one or two whom I hardly know I love upon credit, and love them
because they love each other.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 225. See _post_,
Nov. 16, 1784.
[1101] Vol. ii. p. 38. BOSWELL.
[1102] Miss Carmichael. BOSWELL.
[1103] See Appendix D.
[1104] See _ante_, ii. 382, note 1.
[1105] See _ante_, i. 446.
[1106] See _ante_, iii. 99, note 4.
[1107] It was the collected edition containing the first seven
_Discourses_, which had each year been published separately. 'I was
present,' said Samuel Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 18), 'when Sir Joshua
Reynolds delivered his last lecture at the Royal Academy. On entering
the room, I found that a semicircle of chairs immediately in front of
the pulpit was reserved for persons of distinction, being labelled "Mr.
Burke," "Mr. Boswell," &c.'
[1108] In an unfinished sketch for a _Discourse_, Reynolds said of those
already delivered:--'Whatever merit they may have must be imputed, in a
great measure, to the education which I may be said to have had under Dr.
Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to the credit
of these _Discourses_ if I could say it with truth, that he contributed
even a single sentiment to them; but he qualified my mind to think
justly.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 282. See _ante_, i. 245.
[1109] The error in grammar is no doubt Boswell's. He was so proud of
his knowledge of languages that when he was appointed Secretary for
Foreign Correspondence to the Royal Academy (_ante_, ii. 67, note 1),
'he wrote his acceptance of the honour in three separate letters, still
preserved in the Academy archives, in English, French, and Italian.'
_The Athenæum_, No. 3041.
[1110] The remaining six volumes came out, not in 1780, but in 1781. See
_post_, 1781. He also wrote this year the preface to a translation of
_Oedipus Tyrannus_, by Thomas Maurice, in _Poems and Miscellaneous
Pieces_. (See preface to _Westminster Abbey with other Poems_, 1813.)
[1111] See _ante_, ii. 272.
[1112] _Life of Watts_ [_Works_, viii. 380]. BOSWELL.
[1113] See _ante_, ii. 107.
[1114] See _ante_, iii. 126.
[1115] 'Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused
than Pomfret's _Choice_.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 222.
[1116] Johnson, in his _Life of Yalden_ (_Ib_. viii. 83), calls the
following stanza from his _Hymn to Darkness_ 'exquisitely beautiful':--
'Thou dost thy smiles impartially bestow,
And know'st no difference here below:
All things appear the same by thee,
Though Light distinction makes, thou giv'st equality.'
It is strange that Churchill was left out of the collection.
[1117] Murphy says, though certainly with exaggeration, that 'after
Garrick's death Johnson never talked of him without a tear in his eyes.
He offered,' he adds, 'if Mrs. Garrick would desire it of him, to be the
editor of his works and the historian of his life.' Murphy's _Johnson_,
p. 145. Cumberland (_Memoirs_, ii. 210) said of Garrick's funeral:--'I
saw old Samuel Johnson standing beside his grave, at the foot of
Shakespeare's monument, and bathed in tears.' Sir William Forbes was
told that Johnson, in going to the funeral, said to William Jones:--'Mr.
Garrick and his profession have been equally indebted to each other. His
profession made him rich, and he made his profession respectable.'
Forbes's _Beattie_, Appendix CC.
[1118] See _ante_, i. 456.
[1119] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 23.
[1120] The anniversary of the death of Charles I.
[1121] See _ante_, i. 211.
[1122] He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a
very handsome present. BOSWELL.
[1123] On March 10 he wrote:--'I got my _Lives_, not yet quite printed,
put neatly together, and sent them to the King; what he says of them I
know not. If the king is a Whig, he will not like them; but is any king
a Whig?' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 43.
[1124] 'He was always ready to assist any authors in correcting their
works, and selling them to booksellers. "I have done writing," said he,
"myself, and should assist those that do write."' Johnson's _Works_
(1787), xi. 202. See _ante_, ii. 195.
[1125] In _The Rehearsal_. See _ante_, ii. 168.
[1126] Johnson wrote on Nov. 21, 1778:--'Baretti has told his musical
scheme to B---- and B---- _will neither grant the question nor deny_. He
is of opinion that if it does not fail, it will succeed, but if it does
not succeed he conceives it must fail.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 41.
Baretti, in a marginal note on his copy, says that B---- is Dr. Burney.
He adds:--'The musical scheme was the _Carmen Seculare_. That brought me
£150 in three nights, and three times as much to Philidor. It would have
benefited us both greatly more, if Philidor had not proved a scoundrel.'
'The complaisant Italian,' says the _Gent Mag_. (xlix. 361), 'in
compliment to our island chooses "to drive destructive war and
pestilence" _ad Mauros, Seras et Indos_, instead of _ad Persas atque
Britannos_.' Mr. Tasker, the clergyman, went a step further. 'I,' he
says in his version of the _Carmen_,
'Honour and fame prognosticate
To free-born Britain's naval state
And to her Patriot-King.' _Ib_.
[1127] We may compare with this the scene in _Le Misanthrope_ (Act i.
sc. 2), where Oronte reads his sonnet to Alceste; who thrice answers:
--'Je ne dis pas cela, mais--.' See _ante_, iii. 320.
[1128] This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informed me that this
portrait is so accurately drawn, that being, some years after the
publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he
was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know,
but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he
asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it
appeared that he was indeed the author of _The Warlike Genius of
Britain_. CROKER.
[1129] The poet was preparing a second edition of his _Ode_. 'This
animated Pindaric made its first appearance the latter end of last year
(1778). It is well calculated to rouse the martial spirit of the nation,
and is now reprinted with considerable additions.' _Gent. Mag_. July,
1779, p. 357. In 1781 he published another volume of his poems with a
poetical preface, in which he thus attacks his brother-in-law:--
'To suits litigious, ignorant and raw,
Compell'd by an unletter'd brother-in-law.'
_Ib_. 1781, p. 227.
[1130] Boswell must have misheard what Johnson said. It was not Anson,
but Amherst whom the bard praised. _Ode_, p. 7.
[1131] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Foote's death:--'Now, will any of
his contemporaries bewail him? Will Genius change _his sex_ to weep?'
_Piozzi Letters_, i. 396.
[1132]
'Genius of Britain! to thy office true,
On Cox-Heath reared the waving banners view.
* * * * *
In martial vest
By Venus and the Graces drest,
To yonder tent, who leads the way?
Art thou Britannia's Genius? say.'
_Ode_, p. 8.
[1133] Twenty-nine years earlier he wrote:--'There is nothing more
dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach,
hatred, and opposition are names of happiness.' _The Rambler_, No. 2. In
_The Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx, George says of his book:--'The learned
world said nothing to my paradoxes, nothing at all, Sir.... I suffered
the cruellest mortification, neglect.' See _ante_, ii. 61, 335. Hume
said:--'The misfortune of a book, says Boileau, is not the being ill
spoke [sic] of, but the not being spoken of at all.' J.H. Burton's
_Hume_, i. 412
[1134] The account given in Northcote's _Reynolds_ (ii. 94-97) renders
it likely that Sir Joshua is 'the friend of ours.' Northcote, quoting
Mr. Courtenay, writes:--'His table was frequented by men of the first
talents. Politics and party were never introduced. Temporal and
spiritual peers, physicians, lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the
motley group.' At one of these dinners Mr. Dunning, afterwards Lord
Ashburton, was the first who came. 'On entering, he said, "Well, Sir
Joshua, and who [sic] have you got to dine with you to-day? for the last
time I dined with you the assembly was of such a sort, that, by G--, I
believe all the rest of the world were at peace, for that afternoon at
least."' See _post_, under June 16, 1784, note. Boswell, in his _Letter
to the People of Scotland_ (p. 95), boasts that he too is 'a very
universal man.' 'I can drink, I can laugh, I can converse in perfect
humour with Whigs, with republicans, with dissenters, with Independents,
with Quakers, with Moravians, with Jews. But I would vote with Tories
and pray with a Dean and Chapter.'
[1135] 'Finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong
side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I therefore
drest up three paradoxes with some ingenuity. They were false, indeed,
but they were new.' _Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx. See _ante_, i. 441,
where Johnson says:--'When I was a boy, I used always to choose the
wrong side of a debate, because most ingenious things, that is to say,
most new things, could be said upon it.' In the _Present State of Polite
Learning_ (ch. vii.), Goldsmith says:--'Nothing can be a more certain
sign that genius is in the wane than its being obliged to fly to paradox
for support, and attempting to be erroneously agreeable.'
[1136] The whole night spent in playing at cards (see next page) may
account for part of his negligence. He was perhaps unusually dissipated
this visit.
[1137] See _ante_, ii. 135.
[1138] 'Three men,' writes Horace Walpole, 'were especially suspected,
Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and W. G. Hamilton. Hamilton was most generally
suspected.' _Memoirs of George III_, iii. 401. According to Dr. T.
Campbell (_Diary_, p. 35) Johnson in 1775 'said that he looked upon
Burke to be the author of _Junius_, and that though he would not take
him _contra mundum_, yet he would take him against any man.'
[1139] Sargeant Bettersworth, enraged at Swift's lines on him,
'demanded whether he was the author of that poem. "Mr. Bettesworth,"
answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who
knowing my disposition to satire advised me that if any scoundrel or
blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, _Are you the author of this
paper_? I should tell him that I was not the author; and therefore I
tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines."'
Johnson's Works, viii. 216. See _post_, June 13, 1784.
[1140] Mr. S. Whyte (_Miscellanea Nova_, p. 27) says that Johnson
mistook the nature of the compliment. Sheridan had fled to France from
his debtors. In 1766 an Insolvent Debtors' Relief Bill was brought into
the House in his absence. Mr. Whyte, one of his creditors, petitioned
the House to have Sheridan's name included. A very unusual motion was
made, 'that petitioner shall not be put to his oath; but the facts set
forth in his petition be admitted simply on his word.' The motion was
seconded by an instantaneous Ay! Ay! without a dissenting voice.
Sheridan wrote to Mr. Whyte:--'As the thing has passed with so much
credit to me, the whole honour and merit of it is yours'.
[1141] In _The Rambler_, No. 39, he wrote of this kind of control:--'It
may be urged in extenuation of this crime which parents, not in any
other respect to be numbered with robbers and assassins, frequently
commit, that, in their estimation, riches and happiness are equivalent
terms.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'There wanders about the world a wild
notion which extends over marriage more than over any transaction. If
Miss ---- followed a trade, would it be said that she was bound in
conscience to give or refuse credit at her father's choice? ... The
parent's moral right can arise only from his kindness, and his civil
right only from his money.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 83. See _ante_, i. 346.
[1142] See p. 186 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[1143] He refers to Johnson's letter of July 3, 1778, _ante_, p. 363.
[1144] See _ante_, iii. 5, 178.
[1145] 'By seeing London,' said Johnson, 'I have seen as much of life as
the world can show.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 11. 'London,' wrote Hume
in 1765, 'never pleased me much. Letters are there held in no honour;
Scotmen are hated; superstition and ignorance gain ground daily.' J.H.
Burton's _Hume_, ii. 292.
[1146] See _ante_, i. 82.
[1147] 'I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations ... many brought
thither by the desire of living after their own manner without
observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a
city populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the
gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.' _Rasselas_, ch.
xii. Gibbon wrote of London (_Misc. Works_, ii. 291):--'La liberté d'un
simple particulier se fortifie par l'immensité de la ville.'
[1148] Perhaps Mr. Elphinston, of whom he said (_ante_, ii. 171), 'His
inner part is good, but his outer part is mighty awkward.'
[1149] _Worthy_ is generally applied to Langton. His foibles were a
common subject of their talk. _Ante_, iii. 48.
[1150] By the Author of _The Whole Duty of Man_. See _ante_, ii. 239,
note 4. Johnson often quotes it in his _Dictionary_.
[1151] 'The things done in his body.' 2 _Corinthians_, v. 10.
[1152]
'Yes I am proud: I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me:
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.
O sacred weapon! left for truth's defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!'
Pope. _Satires, Epilogue_, ii. 208.
[1153] Page 173. BOSWELL.
[1154] At eleven o'clock that night Johnson recorded:--'I am now to
review the last year, and find little but dismal vacuity, neither
business nor pleasure; much intended and little done. My health is much
broken, my nights afford me little rest.... Last week I published the
_Lives of the Poets_, written, I hope, in such a manner as may tend to
the promotion of piety. In this last year I have made little
acquisition. I have scarcely read anything. I maintain Mrs. ----
[Desmoulins] and her daughter. Other good of myself I know not where to
find, except a little charity.' _Ib_. p. 175.
[1155] Mauritius Lowe, the painter. _Ante_, p. 324.
[1156] See _ante_ ii 249.
[1157] 'Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put
'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick,
and cried, "Down wantons, down!"' _King Lear_, act ii. sc. 4.
[1158] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 23, where Johnson, speaking of
claret, said that 'there were people who died of dropsies, which they
contracted in trying to get drunk.'
[1159] 'If,' wrote Johnson in one of his _Debates_ (_Works_ xi. 392),
'the felicity of drunkenness can be more cheaply obtained by buying
spirits than ale, it is easy to see which will be preferred.' See
_post_, March 30, 1781.
[1160] Dempster, to whom Boswell complained that his nerves were
affected, replied:--'One had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep
company with such a man.' _Ante_, i. 434.
[1161] Marquis of Graham, afterwards third Duke of Montrose. In _The
Rolliad_ (ed. 1795) he is thus attacked:--
'Superior to abuse
He nobly glories in the name of Goose;
Such Geese at Rome from the perfidious Gaul
Preserved the Treas'ry-Bench and Capitol.'