(_Page_ 238.)
Had Boswell continued the quotation from Priestley's _Illustrations of
Philosophical Necessity_ he would have shown that though Priestley could
not _hate_ the rioters, he could very easily _prosecute_ them.
He says:--
'If as a Necessarian I cease to _blame_ men for their vices in the
ultimate sense of the word, though, in the common and proper sense of
it, I continue to do as much as other persons (for how necessarily
soever they act, they are influenced by a base and mischievous
disposition of mind, against which I must guard myself and others in
proportion as I love myself and others),' &c. Priestley's
_Works_, iii. 508.
Of his interview with Johnson, Priestley, in his _Appeal to the Public_,
part ii, published in 1792 (_Works_, xix. 502), thus writes, answering
'the impudent falsehood that when I was at Oxford Dr. Johnson left a
company on my being introduced to it':--
'In fact we never were at Oxford at the same time, and the only
interview I ever had with him was at Mr. Paradise's, where we dined
together at his own request. He was particularly civil to me, and
promised to call upon me the next time he should go through Birmingham.
He behaved with the same civility to Dr. Price, when they supped
together at Dr. Adams's at Oxford. Several circumstances show that Dr.
Johnson had not so much of bigotry at the decline of life as had
distinguished him before, on which account it is well known to all our
common acquaintance, that I declined all their pressing solicitations to
be introduced to him.'
Priestley expresses himself ill, but his meaning can be made out. Parr
answered Boswell in the March number of the _Gent. Mag._ for 1795, p.
179. But the evidence that he brings is rendered needless by Priestley's
positive statement. May peace henceforth fall on 'Priestley's injured
name.' (Mrs. Barbauld's _Poems_, ii. 243.)
When Boswell asserts that Johnson 'was particularly resolute in not
giving countenance to men whose writings he considered as pernicious to
society,' he forgets that that very summer of 1783 he had been willing
to dine at Wilkes's house (_ante_, p. 224, note 2).
Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_, ed. 1833, iii. 157) wrote to Dr. Price in
1784:--'It is said that scarce anybody but yourself and Dr. Priestley
possesses the art of knowing how to differ decently.' Gibbon (_Misc.
Works_, i. 304), describing in 1789 the honestest members of the French
Assembly, calls them 'a set of wild visionaries, like our Dr. Price, who
gravely debate, and dream about the establishment of a pure and perfect
democracy of five and twenty millions, the virtues of the golden age,
and the primitive rights and equality of mankind.' Admiration of Price
made Samuel Rogers, when a boy, wish to be a preacher. 'I thought there
was nothing on earth so _grand_ as to figure in a pulpit. Dr. Price
lived much in the society of Lord Lansdowne [Earl of Shelburne] and
other people of rank; and his manners were extremely polished. In the
pulpit he was great indeed.' Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 3.
The full title of the tract mentioned by Boswell is, _A small
Whole-Length of Dr. Priestley from his Printed Works_. It was published
in 1792, and is a very poor piece of writing.
Johnson had refused to meet the Abbé Raynal, the author of the _Histoire
Philosophique et Politique du Commerce des Deux Indes_, when he was
over in England in 1777. Mrs. Chapone, writing to Mrs. Carter on June 15
of that year, says:--
'I suppose you have heard a great deal of the Abbé Raynal, who is in
London. I fancy you would have served him as Dr. Johnson did, to whom
when Mrs. Vesey introduced him, he turned from him, and said he had read
his book, and would have nothing to say to him.' Mrs. Chapone's
_Posthumous Works_, i. 172.
See Walpole's _Letters_, v. 421, and vi. 444. His book was burnt by the
common hangman in Paris. Carlyle's _French Revolution_, ed. 1857, i. 45.