{382}messenger to bring Holder to me.” (1) If Mr. Croker is resolved to
write on points of classical learning, we would advise him to begin by
giving an hour every morning to our old friend Corderius.
Indeed we cannot open any volume of this work in any place, and turn it
over for two minutes in any direction, without lighting on a blunder.
Johnson, in his Life of Tickell, stated that the poem entitled The Royal
Progress, which appears in the last volume of the Spectator, was
written on the accession of George I. The word “arrival” was afterwards
substituted for “accession.”
“The reader will observe,” says Mr. Croker, “that the Whig term
_accession_, which might imply legality, was altered into a statement of
the simple fact of King George’s _arrival_.’” (2) Now Johnson, though
a bigoted Tory, was not quite such a fool as Mr. Croker here represents
him to be. In the Life of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, which stands a very
few pages from the Life of Tickell, mention is made of the accession of
Anne, and of the accession of George I. The word arrival was used in the
Life of Tickell for the simplest of all reasons. It was used because
the subject of the poem called The Royal Progress was the arrival of the
king, and not his accession, which took place near two months before his
arrival.
The editor’s want of perspicacity is indeed very amusing. He is
perpetually telling us that he cannot understand something in the text
which is as plain as language can make it. “Mattaire,” said Dr. Johnson,
“wrote Latin verses from time to time, and published a set in his old
age, which he called Senilia, in which he shows so little learning or
taste in writing, as to make Carteret a dactyl.” (3) Hereupon we have
this
(1) V. 17.
(2) IV. 425.
(3) IV. 335.
{383}note: “The editor does not understand this objection, nor the
following observation.” The following observation, which Mr. Croker
cannot understand, is simply this: “In matters of genealogy,” says
Johnson, “it is necessary to give the bare names as they are. But in
poetry and in prose of any elegance in the writing, they require to have
inflection given to them.” If Mr. Croker had told Johnson that this was
unintelligible, the doctor would probably have replied, as he replied
on another occasion, “I have found you a reason, sir; I am not bound to
find you an understanding.” Every body who knows any thing of Latinity
knows that, in genealogical tables, Joannes Baro de Carteret, or
Vice-comes de Carteret, may be tolerated, but that in compositions which
pretend to elegance, Carteretus, or some other form which admits of
inflection, ought to be used.
All our readers have doubtless seen the two distichs of Sir William
Jones, respecting the division of the time of a lawyer. One of the
distichs is translated from some old Latin lines; the other is original.
The former runs thus:
“Six hours to sleep, to law’s grave study six,