For Dr. Hurd see _ante_, p. 189.
[897] There is a curious anecdote of this physician in _Gent. Mag._
1772, p. 467.
[898] See _ante_, p. 166. He may have taken the more to Fox, as he had
taken to Beauclerk (_ante_, i. 248), on account of his descent from
Charles II. Fox was the great-great-grandson of that king. His Christian
names recall his Stuart ancestry.
[899] Horace Walpole wrote on April 11 (_Letters_, viii. 469):--'In
truth Mr. Fox has all the popularity in Westminster; and, indeed, is so
amiable and winning that, could he have stood in person all over
England, I question whether he would not have carried the Parliament.'
Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 316) in the same month wrote:--'Unluckily for
my principles I met Fox canvassing the other day, and he looked so
sensible and agreeable, that if I had not turned my eyes another way, I
believe it would have been all over with me.' See _ante_, p. 279.
[900] Dr. John Radcliffe, who died in 1714, left by his will, among
other great benefactions to the University of Oxford, '£600 yearly to
two persons, when they are Masters of Arts and entered on the
physic-line, for their maintenance for the space of ten years; the half
of which time at least they are to travel in parts beyond sea for their
better improvement.' _Radcliffe's Life and Will_, p. 123. Pope mentions
them in his _Imitations of Horace, Epistles_, ii. i. 183:--
'E'en Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France,
Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance.'
[901] What risks were run even by inoculation is shewn in two of Dr.
Warton's letters. He wrote to his brother:--'This moment the dear
children have all been inoculated, never persons behaved better, no
whimpering at all, I hope in God for success, but cannot avoid being in
much anxiety.' A few days later he wrote:--'You may imagine I never
passed such a day as this in my life! grieved to death myself for the
loss of so sweet a child, but forced to stifle my feelings as much as
possible for the sake of my poor wife. She does not, however, hit on, or
dwell on, that most cutting circumstance of all, poor Nanny's dying, as
it were by our own means, tho' well intended indeed.' Wooll's _Warton_,
i. 289. Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 155), on the other hand, bitterly
regretted that he had not had a child inoculated, whom he lost by
small-pox.
[902] See _post_, before Nov. 17, and under Dec. 9, 1784.
[903] 'I am the vilest of sinners and the worst of men.' Taylor's
_Works_ (ed. 1864), iii. 31. 'The best men deserve not eternal life, and
I who am the worst may have it given me.' _Ib_. p. 431--'He that hath
lived worst, even I.' _Ib_. vii. 241. 'Behold me the meanest of thy
creatures.' _Ib_. p. 296.
[904] 'You may fairly look upon yourself to be the greatest sinner that
you know in the world. First, because you know more of the folly of your
own heart than you do of other people's; and can charge yourself with
various sins that you only know of yourself, and cannot be sure that
other people are guilty of them.' Law's _Serious Call_, chap. 23.
[905] 1 _Timothy_, i. 15.
[906] See _post_, v. 68, note 4.
[907] 'Be careful thou dost not speak a lie in thy prayers, which though
not observed is frequently practised by careless persons, especially in
the forms of confession, affirming things which they have not thought,
professing sorrow which is not, making a vow they mean not.' Taylor's
_Works_, ed. 1865, vii. 622.
[908] Reynolds wrote:--'As in Johnson's writings not a line can be found
which a saint would wish to blot, so in his life he would never suffer
the least immorality or indecency of conversation, [or anything]
contrary to virtue or piety to proceed without a severe check, which no
elevation of rank exempted them from.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 458. See
_ante_, iii. 41.
[909] No doubt Mr. Langton.
[910] Dr. Sheridan tells how Swift overheard a Captain Hamilton say to a
gentleman at whose house he had arrived 'that he was very sorry he had
chosen that time for his visit. "Why so?" "Because I hear Dean Swift is
with you. He is a great scholar, a wit; a plain country squire will have
but a bad time of it in his company, and I don't like to be laughed at."
Swift then stepped up and said, "Pray, Captain Hamilton, do you know how
to say _yes_ or _no_ properly?" "Yes, I think I have understanding
enough for that." "Then give me your hand--depend upon it, you and I
will agree very well."' 'The Captain told me,' continues Sheridan, 'that
he never passed two months so pleasantly in his life.' Swift's _Works_,
ed. 1803, ii. 104.
[911] Gibbon wrote on Feb. 21, 1772 (_Misc. Works_, ii. 78):--'To day
the House of Commons was employed in a very odd way. Tommy Townshend
moved that the sermon of Dr. Nowell, who preached before the House on
the 30th of January (_id est_, before the Speaker and four members),
should be burnt by the common hangman, as containing arbitrary, Tory,
high-flown doctrines. The House was nearly agreeing to the motion, till
they recollected that they had already thanked the preacher for his
excellent discourse, and ordered it to be printed.'
[912]
'Although it be not _shined_ upon.'
_Hudibras_, iii. 2, 175.
[913] According to Mr. Croker, this was the Rev. Henry Bate, of the
_Morning Post_, who in 1784 took the name of Dudley, was created a
baronet in 1815, and died in 1824. Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. 13, 1776
(_Letters_, vi. 39l):--'Yesterday I heard drums and trumpets in
Piccadilly: I looked out of the window and saw a procession with
streamers flying. At first I thought it a press-gang, but seeing the
corps so well-drest, like Hussars, in yellow with blue waistcoats and
breeches, and high caps, I concluded it was some new body of our allies,
or a regiment newly raised, and with new regimentals for distinction. I
was not totally mistaken, for the Colonel is _a new ally_. In short,
this was a procession set forth by Mr. Bate, Lord Lyttelton's chaplain,
and author of the old _Morning Post_, and meant as an appeal to the town
against his antagonist, the new one.' In June, 1781, Bate was sentenced
to a year's imprisonment 'for an atrocious libel on the Duke of
Richmond. He was the worst of all the scandalous libellers that had
appeared both on private persons as well as public. His life was
dissolute, and he had fought more than one duel. Yet Lord Sandwich had
procured for him a good Crown living, and he was believed to be
pensioned by the Court.' Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George
III_, ii. 464.
[914] See _ante_, ii. 339, and iii. 265.
[915] Three days earlier, in the debate on the Westminster Scrutiny, Fox
accused 'a person of great rank in this House'--Pitt I believe--'of
adding pertness and personal contumely to every species of rash and
inconsiderate violence.' _Parl. Hist_. xxiv. 924. Pitt, in reply,
classed Fox among 'political apostates,' _ib_. p. 929. Burke, the same
evening, 'sat down saying, "he little minded the ill-treatment of a
parcel of boys."' When he was called to order, he said:--'When he used
the term "a parcel of boys," he meant to apply it to the ministry, who,
he conceived, were insulting him with their triumph; a triumph which
grey hairs ought to be allowed the privilege of expressing displeasure
at, when it was founded on the rash exultation of mere boys.' _Ib_. p.
939. Pitt, Prime-Minister though he was, in the spring of the same year,
was called to order by the Speaker, for charging a member with using
'language the most false, the most malicious, and the most slanderous.'
_Ib_. p. 763.
[916] _Epistles to Mr. Pope_, ii. 165.
[917] See an account of him, in a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Agutter.
BOSWELL. This sermon was published in 1788. In Hannah More's _Memoirs_
(i. 217), Henderson is described as 'a mixture of great sense, which
discovered uncommon parts and learning, with a tincture of nonsense of
the most extravagant kind. He believes in witches and apparitions, as
well as in judicial astronomy.' Mrs. Kennicott writes (_ib_. p.
220):--'I think if Dr. Johnson had the shaking him about, he would shake
out his nonsense, and set his sense a-working. 'He never got out into the
world, says Dr. Hall, the Master of Pembroke College, having died in
College in 1788.
[918] This was the second Lord Lyttelton, commonly known as 'the wicked
Lord Lyttelton.' Fox described him to Rogers as 'a very bad
man--downright wicked.' Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 95. He died Nov. 27,
1779. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii. 292) wrote to Mason on Dec. 11
of that year:--'If you can send us any stories of ghosts out of the
North, they will be very welcome. Lord Lyttelton's vision has revived
the taste; though it seems a little odd that an apparition should
despair of being able to get access to his Lordship's bed in the shape
of a young woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a
robin-red-breast.' In the _Gent. Mag._ 1815, i. 597, and 1816, ii. 421,
accounts are given of this vision. In the latter account it is said that
'he saw a bird fluttering, and afterwards a woman appeared in white
apparel, and said, "Prepare to die; you will not exist three days."'
Mrs. Piozzi also wrote a full account of it. Hayward's _Piozzi_, i. 332.
[919] See _ante_, ii. 150, and iii. 298, note 1.
[920] See _ante_, p. 278.
[921] 'If he who considers himself as suspended over the abyss of
eternal perdition only by the thread of life, which must soon part by
its own weakness, and which the wing of every minute may divide, can
cast his eyes round him without shuddering with horror, or panting for
security; what can he judge of himself, but that he is not yet awakened
to sufficient conviction? &c.' _The Rambler_, No. 110. In a blank leaf
in the book in which Johnson kept his diary of his journey in Wales is
written in his own hand, 'Faith in some proportion to Fear.' Duppa's
Johnson's _Diary of a Journey &c_., p. 157. See _ante_, iii. 199.
[922] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on March 20:--'Write to me no more about
_dying with a grace_; when you feel what I have felt in approaching
eternity--in fear of soon hearing the sentence of which there is no
revocation, you will know the folly.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 354. Of him
it might have been said in Cowper's words:--
'Scripture is still a trumpet to his fears.'
_The Task: The Winter Morning Walk_, 1. 611. See _ante_, iii. 294.
[923] The Reverend Mr. Ralph Churton, Fellow of Brazen-Nose College,
Oxford, has favoured me with the following remarks on my Work, which he
is pleased to say, 'I have hitherto extolled, and cordially approve.'
'The chief part of what I have to observe is contained in the following
transcript from a letter to a friend, which, with his concurrence, I
copied for this purpose; and, whatever may be the merit or justness of
the remarks, you may be sure that being written to a most intimate
friend, without any intention that they ever should go further, they are
the genuine and undisguised sentiments of the writer:--
'Jan. 6, 1792.
'Last week, I was reading the second volume of Boswell's _Johnson_, with
increasing esteem for the worthy authour, and increasing veneration of
the wonderful and excellent man who is the subject of it. The writer
throws in, now and then, very properly some serious religious
reflections; but there is one remark, in my mind an obvious and just
one, which I think he has not made, that Johnson's "morbid melancholy,"
and constitutional infirmities, were intended by Providence, like St.
Paul's thorn in the flesh, to check intellectual conceit and arrogance;
which the consciousness of his extraordinary talents, awake as he was to
the voice of praise, might otherwise have generated in a very culpable
degree. Another observation strikes me, that in consequence of the same
natural indisposition, and habitual sickliness, (for he says he scarcely
passed one day without pain after his twentieth year,) he considered and
represented human life, as a scene of much greater misery than is
generally experienced. There may be persons bowed down with affliction
all their days; and there are those, no doubt, whose iniquities rob them
of rest; but neither calamities nor crimes, I hope and believe, do so
much and so generally abound, as to justify the dark picture of life
which Johnson's imagination designed, and his strong pencil delineated.
This I am sure, the colouring is far too gloomy for what I have
experienced, though as far as I can remember, I have had more sickness
(I do not say more severe, but only more in quantity,) than falls to the
lot of most people. But then daily debility and occasional sickness were
far overbalanced by intervenient days, and, perhaps, weeks void of pain,
and overflowing with comfort. So that in short, to return to the
subject, human life, as far as I can perceive from experience or
observation, is not that state of constant wretchedness which Johnson
always insisted it was; which misrepresentation, (for such it surely
is,) his Biographer has not corrected, I suppose, because, unhappily, he
has himself a large portion of melancholy in his constitution, and
fancied the portrait a faithful copy of life.'