'I have conversed with some sensible men on this subject, who all seem
to entertain the same sentiments respecting life with those which are
expressed or implied in the foregoing paragraph. It might be added that
as the representation here spoken of, appears not consistent with fact
and experience, so neither does it seem to be countenanced by Scripture.
There is, perhaps, no part of the sacred volume which at first sight
promises so much to lend its sanction to these dark and desponding
notions as the book of _Ecclesiastes_, which so often, and so
emphatically, proclaims the vanity of things sublunary. But the design
of this whole book, (as it has been justly observed,) is not to put us
out of conceit with life, but to cure our vain expectations of a
compleat and perfect happiness in this world; to convince us, that there
is no such thing to be found in mere external enjoyments;--and to teach
us to seek for happiness in the practice of virtue, in the knowledge and
love of God, and in the hopes of a better life. For this is the
application of all; _Let us hear_, &c. xii. 13. Not only his duty, but
his happiness too; _For_ GOD, &c. ver. 14.--See _Sherlock on
Providence_, p. 299.
'The New Testament tells us, indeed, and most truly, that "sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof;" and, therefore, wisely forbids us to
increase our burden by forebodings of sorrows; but I think it no where
says that even our ordinary afflictions are not consistent with a very
considerable degree of positive comfort and satisfaction. And,
accordingly, one whose sufferings as well as merits were conspicuous,
assures us, that in proportion "as the sufferings of Christ abounded in
them, so their consolation also abounded by Christ." 2 _Cor_. i. 5. It
is needless to cite, as indeed it would be endless even to refer to, the
multitude of passages in both Testaments holding out, in the strongest
language, promises of blessings, even in this world, to the faithful
servants of GOD. I will only refer to _St. Luke_, xviii. 29, 30, and 1
_Tim_. iv. 8.
'Upon the whole, setting aside instances of great and lasting bodily
pain, of minds peculiarly oppressed by melancholy, and of severe
temporal calamities, from which extraordinary cases we surely should not
form our estimate of the general tenour and complexion of life;
excluding these from the account, I am convinced that as well the
gracious constitution of things which Providence has ordained, as the
declarations of Scripture and the actual experience of individuals,
authorize the sincere Christian to hope that his humble and constant
endeavours to perform his duty, checquered as the best life is with many
failings, will be crowned with a greater degree of present peace,
serenity, and comfort, than he could reasonably permit himself to
expect, if he measured his views and judged of life from the opinion of
Dr. Johnson, often and energetically expressed in the Memoirs of him,
without any animadversion or censure by his ingenious Biographer. If he
himself, upon reviewing the subject, shall see the matter in this light,
he will, in an octavo edition, which is eagerly expected, make such
additional remarks or correction as he shall judge fit; lest the
impressions which these discouraging passages may leave on the reader's
mind, should in any degree hinder what otherwise the whole spirit and
energy of the work tends, and, I hope, successfully, to promote,--pure
morality and true religion.'
Though I have, in some degree, obviated any reflections against my
illustrious friend's dark views of life, when considering, in the course
of this Work, his _Rambler_ [_ante_, i. 213] and his _Rasselas_ [_ante_,
i. 343], I am obliged to Mr. Churton for complying with my request of
his permission to insert his Remarks, being conscious of the weight of
what he judiciously suggests as to the melancholy in my own
constitution. His more pleasing views of life, I hope, are just.
_Valeant quantum valere possunt_.
Mr. Churton concludes his letter to me in these words:--'Once, and only
once, I had the satisfaction of seeing your illustrious friend; and as I
feel a particular regard for all whom he distinguished with his esteem
and friendship, so I derive much pleasure from reflecting that I once
beheld, though but transiently near our College gate, one whose works
will for ever delight and improve the world, who was a sincere and
zealous son of the Church of England, an honour to his country, and an
ornament to human nature.'
His letter was accompanied with a present from himself of his _Sermons
at the Bampton Lecture_, and from his friend, Dr. Townson, the venerable
Rector of Malpas, in Cheshire, of his _Discourses on the Gospels_,
together with the following extract of a letter from that excellent
person, who is now gone to receive the reward of his labours:--'Mr.
Boswell is not only very entertaining in his works, but they are so
replete with moral and religious sentiments, without an instance, as far
as I know, of a contrary tendency, that I cannot help having a great
esteem for him; and if you think such a trifle as a copy of the
_Discourses, ex dono authoris_, would be acceptable to him, I should be
happy to give him this small testimony of my regard.'
Such spontaneous testimonies of approbation from such men, without any
personal acquaintance with me, are truly valuable and encouraging.
BOSWELL.
[924]
'Tout se plaint, tout gémit en cherchant le bien-etre;
Nul ne voudrait mourir, nul ne voudrait renaitre.'
Voltaire, _Le désastre de Lisbonne. Works_, ed. 1819, x. 124. 'Johnson
said that, for his part, he never passed that week in his life which he
would wish to repeat, were an angel to make the proposal to him.'
_Ante_, ii. 125. Yet Dr. Franklin, whose life overlapped Johnson's at
both ends, said:-'I should have no objection to go over the same life
from its beginning to the end, requesting only the advantage authors
have of correcting in a second edition the faults of its first. So would
I also wish to change some incidents of it for others more favourable
Notwithstanding, if this condition was denied, I should still accept the
offer of re-commencing the same life.' Franklin's _Memoirs_, i. 2.
[925] Mackintosh thus sums up this question:--'The truth is, that
endless fallacies must arise from the attempt to appreciate by
retrospect human life, of which the enjoyments depend on hope.' _Life of
Mackintosh_, ii. 160. See _ante_, ii. 350.
[926] In the lines on Levett. _Ante_, p. 137.
[927] AURENGZEBE, act iv. sc. 1. BOSWELL. According to Dr. Maxwell
(_ante_, ii. 124), Johnson frequently quoted the fourth couplet of these
lines. Boswell does not give the last--
'I'm tired with waiting for this chemic gold
Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.'
[928] Johnson, speaking of the companions of his college days, said:--
'It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick.' _Ante_, i. 73.
[929]
'--to thee I call
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams.'
Milton's _Paradise Lost_, iv. 35.
[930] Yet there is no doubt that a man may appear very gay in company
who is sad at heart. His merriment is like the sound of drums and
trumpets in a battle, to drown the groans of the wounded and
dying. BOSWELL.
[931] Mme. D'Arblay (_Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, ii. 103) tells how Johnson
was one day invited to her father's house at the request of Mr.
Greville, 'the finest gentleman about town,' as she earlier described
him (_ib_. i. 25), who desired to make his acquaintance. This 'superb'
gentleman was afraid to begin to speak. 'Assuming his most supercilious
air of distant superiority he planted himself, immovable as a noble
statue, upon the hearth, as if a stranger to the whole set.' Johnson,
who 'never spoke till he was spoken to' (_ante_, in. 307)--this habit
the Burneys did not as yet know--'became completely absorbed in silent
rumination; very unexpectedly, however, he shewed himself alive to what
surrounded him, by one of those singular starts of vision, that made him
seem at times, though purblind to things in common, gifted with an eye
of instinct for espying any action that he thought merited reprehension;
for all at once, looking fixedly on Mr. Greville, who without much
self-denial, the night being very cold, kept his station before the
chimney-piece, he exclaimed:--"If it were not for depriving the ladies
of the fire, I should like to stand upon the hearth myself." A smile
gleamed upon every face at this pointed speech. Mr. Greville tried to
smile himself, though faintly and scoffingly. He tried also to hold his
post; and though for two or three minutes he disdained to move, the
awkwardness of a general pause impelled him ere long to glide back to
his chair; but he rang the bell with force as he passed it to order his
carriage.'
[932] Page 139. BOSWELL.
[933] On this same day Miss Adams wrote to a friend:--'Dr. Johnson, tho'
not in good health, is in general very talkative and infinitely
agreeable and entertaining.' _Pemb. Coll. MSS_.
[934] Johnson said 'Milton was a _Phidias_, &c.' _Ante_, p. 99, note 1.
In his _Life of Milton_ (_Works, vii. 119) he writes:--'Milton never
learnt the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the
milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a _Lion_ that had no
skill _in dandling the kid_.'
['Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
Dandled the kid.'
_Paradise Lost_, iv. 343.]
[935] Cardinal Newman (_History of my Religious Opinions_, ed. 1865, p.
361) remarks on this:--'As to Johnson's case of a murderer asking you
which way a man had gone, I should have anticipated that, had such a
difficulty happened to him, his first act would have been to knock the
man down, and to call out for the police; and next, if he was worsted in
the conflict, he would not have given the ruffian the information he
asked, at whatever risk to himself. I think he would have let himself be
killed first. I do not think that he would have told a lie.'
[936] See _ante_, iii. 376.
[937] Book ii. 1. 142.
[938] The annotator calls them 'amiable verses.' BOSWELL. The annotators
of the _Dunciad_ were Pope himself and Dr. Arbuthnot. Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 280.
[939] Boswell was at this time corresponding with Miss Seward. See
_post_, June 25.
[940] By John Dyer. _Ante_, ii. 453.
[941] Lewis's Verses addressed to Pope were first published in a
Collection of Pieces on occasion of _The Dunciad_, 8vo., 1732. They do
not appear in Lewis's own _Miscellany_, printed in 1726.--_Grongar Hill_
was first printed in Savage's _Miscellanies_ as an Ode, and was
_reprinted_ in the same year in Lewis's _Miscellany_, in the form it
now bears.
In his _Miscellanies_, 1726, the beautiful poem,--'Away, let nought to
love displeasing,'--reprinted in Percy's _Reliques_, vol. i. book iii.
No. 13, first appeared. MALONE.
[942] See _ante_, p. 58.
[943] See _ante_, i. 71, and ii. 226.
[944] Captain Cook's third voyage. The first two volumes by Captain
Cook; the last by Captain King.
[945] See _ante_, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 49.
[946]
'--quae mollissima fandi Tempora.'
'--time wherein the word May softliest be said.'
MORRIS. Virgil, _Aeneids_, iv. 293.
[947] See _ante_, i. 71.
[948] See _ante_, i. 203, note 6.
[949] Boswell began to eat dinners in the Inner Temple so early as 1775.
_Ante_, ii. 377, note 1. He was not called till Hilary Term, 1786.
Rogers's _Boswelliana_, p. 143.
[950] Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Jones wrote two years earlier
(_Life_, p. 268):--'Whether it be a wise part to live uncomfortably in
order to die wealthy, is another question; but this I know by
experience, and have heard old practitioners make the same observation,
that a lawyer who is in earnest must be chained to his chambers and the
bar for ten or twelve years together.'
[951] Johnson's _Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre. Works,
_ i. 23.
[952] According to Mr. Seward, who published this account in his
_Anecdotes,_ ii. 83, it was Mr. Langton's great-grandfather who drew
it up.
[953] 'My Lord said that his rule for his, health was to be temperate
and keep himself warm. He never made breakfasts, but used in the morning
to drink a glass of some sort of ale. That he went to bed at nine, and
rose between six and seven, allowing himself a good refreshment for his
sleep. That the law will admit of no rival, nothing to go even with it;
but that sometimes one may for diversion read in the Latin historians of
England, Hoveden and Matthew Paris, &c. But after it is conquered, it
will admit of other studies. He said, a little law, a good tongue, and a
good memory, would fit a man for the Chancery.' Seward's
_Anecdotes_, ii. 92.
[954] Wednesday was the 16th
[955] See _ante_, i. 41.
[956] _Letters to Mrs. Thrale_, vol. ii. p. 372. BOSWELL.
[957] See _ante/_, i. 155.
[958] The recommendation in this list of so many histories little agrees
'with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance' with which,
according to Lord Macaulay, Johnson spoke of history. Macaulay's
_Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 403.
[959] See _ante_, iii. 12.
[960] Northcote's account of Reynolds's table suits the description of
this 'gentleman's mode of living.' 'A table prepared for seven or eight
was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen.' There was a
'deficiency of knives and forks, plates and glasses. The attendance was
in the same style.' There were 'two or three undisciplined domestics.
The host left every one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself.'
'Rags' is certainly a strong word to apply to any of the company; but
then strong words were what Johnson used. Northcote mentions 'the
mixture of company.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 94-6. See _ante_, iii.
375, note 2.
[961] The Mayor of Windsor. Rogers's _Boswelliana_, p. 211.
[962] The passage occurs in Brooke's _Earl of Essex_(1761) at the close
of the first act, where Queen Elizabeth says:
'I shall henceforth seek
For other lights to truth; for righteous monarchs,
Justly to judge, with their own eyes should see;
_To rule o'er freemen should themselves be free_.'
_Notes and Queries_, 5th S. viii. 456.
The play was acted at Drury Lane Theatre, old Mr. Sheridan taking the
chief part. He it was who, in admiration, repeated the passage to
Johnson which provoked the parody. Murphy's _Garrick_, p. 234.
[963] 'Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p. 284. BOSWELL. In a second
letter (_ib_. p. 347) he says:--'Cator has a rough, manly independent
understanding, and does not spoil it by complaisance.' Miss Burney
accuses him of emptiness, verbosity and pomposity, all of which she
describes in an amusing manner. Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 47.
[964] 'All general reflections upon nations and societies are the trite,
thread-bare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so
have recourse to common-place.' Chesterfield's _Letters_, i. 231.
[965] See vol. ii. p. 126. BOSWELL
[966] '"That may be so," replied the lady, "for ought I know, but they
are above my comprehension." "I an't obliged to find you comprehension,
Madam, curse me," cried he,' _Roderick Random_, ch. 53. '"I protest,"
cried Moses, "I don't rightly comprehend the force of your reasoning."
"O, Sir," cried the Squire, "I am your most humble servant, I find
you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too."' _Vicar
of Wakefield_, ch. 7.
[967] In the first edition, 'as the Honourable Horace Walpole is often
called;' in the second edition, 'as Horace, now Earl of Orford, &c.'
Walpole succeeded to the title in Dec. 1791. In answer to
congratulations he wrote (_Letters_, ix. 364):--'What has happened
destroys my tranquillity.... Surely no man of seventy-four, unless
superannuated, can have the smallest pleasure in sitting at home in his
own room, as I almost always do, and being called by a new name.' He
died March 2, 1797.
[968] In _The Rambler_, No. 83, a character of a virtuoso is given which
in many ways suits Walpole:--'It is never without grief that I find a
man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this
secondary class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of
gratifying his desire of eminence by expense rather than by labour, and
known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness and
the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo
again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and trinkets for arguments
and principles.'
[969] Walpole says:--'I do not think I ever was in a room with Johnson
six times in my days.' _Letters_, ix. 319. 'The first time, I think, was
at the Royal Academy. Sir Joshua said, "Let me present Dr. Goldsmith to
you;" he did. "Now I will present Dr. Johnson to you." "No," said I,
"Sir Joshua; for Dr. Goldsmith, pass--but you shall not present Dr.
Johnson to me."' _Journal &c. of Miss Berry_, i. 305. In his _Journal of
the Reign of George III_, he speaks of Johnson as 'one of the venal
champions of the Court,' 'a renegade' (i. 430); 'a brute,' 'an old
decrepit hireling' (_ib._ p. 472); and as 'one of the subordinate crew
whom to name is to stigmatize' (_ib._ ii. 5). In his _Memoirs of the
Reign of George III_, iv. 297, he says:--'With a lumber of learning and
some strong parts Johnson was an odious and mean character. His manners
were sordid, supercilious, and brutal; his style ridiculously bombastic
and vicious, and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the
gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster.'
[970] See _ante_, i. 367.
[971] On May 26, 1791, Walpole wrote of Boswell's _Life of Johnson
(Letters_ ix. 3l9):--'I expected amongst the excommunicated to find
myself, but am very gently treated. I never would be in the least
acquainted with Johnson; or, as Boswell calls it, I had not a just value
for him; which the biographer imputes to my resentment for the Doctor's
putting bad arguments (purposely out of Jacobitism) into the speeches
which he wrote fifty years ago for my father in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_; which I did not read then, or ever knew Johnson wrote till
Johnson died.' Johnson said of these Debates:--'I saved appearances
tolerably well; but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the
best of it.' _Ante_, i. 504. 'Lord Holland said that whenever Boswell
came into a company where Horace Walpole was, Walpole would throw back
his head, purse up his mouth very significantly, and not speak a word
while Boswell remained.' _Autobiographical Recollections of C. R.
Leslie_, i. 155. Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 44) says:--'Boswell, that
quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in,
which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tapping
many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he
vented his errand.'
[972] Walpole wrote (_Letters_, vi. 44):--'If _The School for Wives_
and _The Christmas Tale_ were laid to me, so was _The Heroic Espistle_.
I could certainly have written the two former, but not the latter.' See
_ante_, iv. 113.
[973] The title given by Bishop Pearson to his collection of Hales's
Writings is the _Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable John Hales of
Eaton College, &c_. It was published in 1659.
[974] I _Henry IV_, act ii. sc. 4. 'Sir James Mackintosh remembers that,
while spending the Christmas of 1793 at Beaconsfield, Mr. Burke said to
him, 'Johnson showed more powers of mind in company than in his
writings; but he argued only for victory; and when he had neither a
paradox to defend, nor an antagonist to crush, he would preface his
assent with "Why, no, Sir."' CROKER. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 768.
[975]
Search then the ruling passion: There alone
The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
The fool consistent, and the false sincere;
Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.'
Pope, _Moral Essays_, i. 174.
'The publick pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are
counterfeit.' _The Idler_, No. 18.
[976] _Ante_, ii. 241, and iii. 325.
[977] Boswell refers to Cicero's _Treatise on Famous Orators_.
[978] Boswell here falls into a mistake. About harvest-time in 1766,
there were corn-riots owing to the dearness of bread. By the Act of the
15th of Charles II, corn, when under a certain price, might be legally
exported. On Sept. 26, 1766, before this price had been reached, the
Crown issued a proclamation to prohibit the exportation of grain. When
parliament met in November, a bill of indemnity was brought in for those
concerned in the late embargo. 'The necessity of the embargo was
universally allowed;' it was the exercise by the Crown of a power of
dispensing with the laws that was attacked. Some of the ministers who,
out of office, 'had set up as the patrons of liberty,' were made the
object 'of many sarcasms on the beaten subject of occasional
patriotism.' _Ann. Reg._ x. 39-48, and Dicey's _Law of the
Constitution_, p. 50.
[979] _St. Mark_, ii. 9.
[980] _Anecdotes_, p. 43. BOSWELL. The passage is from the _Speech on
Conciliation with the Colonies_, March 22, 1775. Payne's _Burke_, i.
173. The image of the angel and Lord Bathurst was thus, according to
Mrs. Piozzi, parodied by Johnson:--'Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to
Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent Whigs of the last
age, the devil had, not with great impropriety, consented to appear.'
See _ante_, iii. 326, where Johnson said 'the first Whig was the Devil.'
[981] Boswell was stung by what Mrs. Piozzi wrote when recording this
parody. She said that she had begged Johnson's leave to write it down
directly. 'A trick,' she continues, 'which I have seen played on common
occasions of sitting steadily [? stealthily] down at the other end of
the room to write at the moment what should be said in company, either
by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in
another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery
in this conduct, that, were it commonly adopted, all confidence would
soon be exiled from society.' See _post_, under June 30, 1784, where
Boswell refers to this passage.
[982]
'Who'er offends, at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.'
Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, 2 Satires, i. 78.
[983] On March 14, 1770, in a debate on the licentiousness of the press,
Townshend joined together Johnson and Shebbeare. Burke, who followed
him, said nothing about Johnson. Fitzherbert, speaking of Johnson as 'my
friend,' defended him as 'a pattern of morality.' _Cavendish Debates_,
i.514. On Feb. 16, 1774, when Fox drew attention to a 'vile libel'
signed _A South Briton_, Townshend said 'Dr. Shebbeare and Dr. Johnson
have been pensioned, but this wretched South Briton is to be
prosecuted.' It was Fox, and not Burke, who on this occasion defended
Johnson. _Parl. Hist._ xvii.1054. As Goldsmith was writing _Retaliation_
at the very time that this second attack was made, it is very likely
that it was the occasion, of the change in the line.
[984] In the original _yet_.
[985]
'Sis pecore et multa dives tellure licebit,
Tibique Pactolus fluat.'
'Though wide thy land extends, and large thy fold,
Though rivers roll for thee their purest gold.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Epodes_, xv. 19.
[986] See Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 404, for Macaulay's
appropriation and amplification of this passage.
[987] See _ante_, ii. 168.
[988] Mr. Croker suggests the Rev. Martin Sherlock, an Irish Clergyman,
'who published in 1781 his own travels under the title of _Letters of an
English Traveller translated from the French._' Croker's _Boswell, p.
770. Mason writes of him as 'Mister, or Monsieur, or Signor Sherlock,
for I am told he is both [sic] French, English, and Italian in print.'
Walpole's _Letters_, viii. 202. I think, however, that Dr. Thomas
Campbell is meant. His _Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland_
Boswell calls 'a very entertaining book, which has, however, one
fault;--that it assumes the fictitious character of an Englishman.'
_Ante_, ii. 339.
[989] See _ante_, iv. 49.
[990] This anecdote is not in the first two editions.
[991] See _ante_, in. 369.
[992] 'I have heard,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 409), 'that in many
instances, and in some with tears in his eyes, he has apologised to
those whom he had offended by contradiction or roughness of behaviour.'
See _ante_, ii. 109, and 256, note 1.
[993] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 131) describes Savage's 'superstitious
regard to the correction of his sheets ... The intrusion or omission of
a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour
of a single letter as a heavy calamity.'
[994] Compositor in the Printing-house means, the person who adjusts the
types in the order in which they are to stand for printing; and arranges
what is called the _form_, from which an impression is taken. BOSWELL.
[995] This circumstance therefore alluded to in Mr. Courtenay's
_Poetical Character_ of him is strictly true. My informer was Mrs.
Desmoulins, who lived many years in Dr. Johnson's house. BOSWELL. The
following are Mr. Courtenay's lines:--
'Soft-eyed compassion with a look benign,
His fervent vows he offered at thy shrine;
To guilt, to woe, the sacred debt was paid,
And helpless females blessed his pious aid;
Snatched from disease, and want's abandoned crew,
Despair and anguish from their victims flew;
Hope's soothing balm into their bosoms stole,
And tears of penitence restored the soul.'
[996] The _Cross Readings_ were said to be formed 'by reading two
columns of a newspaper together onwards,' whereby 'the strangest
connections were brought about,' such as:--
'This morning the Right Hon. the Speaker
was convicted of keeping a disorderly house.
Whereas the said barn was set on fire by
an incendiary letter dropped early in the morning.
By order of the Commissioners for Paving
An infallible remedy for the stone and gravel.
The sword of state was carried
before Sir John Fielding and committed to Newgate.'
_The New Foundling Hospital for Wit_, i. 129. According to Northcote
(_Life of Reynolds_, i. 217), 'Dr. Goldsmith declared, in the heat of
his admiration of these _Cross Readings_, it would have given him more
pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had
ever published of his own.' Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 30) writes:--
'Have you seen that delightful paper composed out of scraps in the
newspapers? I laughed till I cried. I mean the paper that says:--
"This day his Majesty will go in great state to fifteen notorious common
prostitutes."'
[997] One of these gentlemen was probably Mr. Musgrave (_ante_, ii. 343,
note 2), who, says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 295), when 'once he was
singularly warm about Johnson's writing the lives of our famous prose
authors, getting up and entreating him to set about the work
immediately, he coldly replied, "Sit down, Sir."' Miss Burney says that
'the incense he paid Dr. Johnson by his solemn manner of listening, by
the earnest reverence with which he eyed him, and by a theatric start of
admiration every time he spoke, joined to the Doctor's utter
insensibility to all these tokens, made me find infinite difficulty in
keeping my countenance.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 85. The other
gentleman was perhaps Dr. Wharton. _Ante_, ii. 41, note 1.
[998] Probably Dr. Beattie. The number of letters in his name agrees
with the asterisks given a few lines below. _Ante_, iii. 339, note 1,
and _post_, p. 330.
[999] Johnson, in his _Dictionary_, defines _congé d'élire_ as _the
king's permission royal to a dean and chapter in time of vacation, to
choose a bishop._ When Dr. Hampden was made Bishop of Hereford in 1848,
the Dean resisted the appointment. H. C. Robinson records, on the
authority of the Bishop's Secretary (_Diary_, iii. 311), that 'at the
actual confirmation in Bow Church the scene was quite ludicrous. After
the judge had told the opposers that he could not hear them, the
citation for opposers to come forward was repeated, at which the people
present laughed out, as at a play.'
[1000] This has been printed in other publications, 'fall _to the
ground_.' But Johnson himself gave me the true expression which he had
used as above; meaning that the recommendation left as little choice in
the one case as the other. BOSWELL. One of the 'other publications is
Hawkins's edition of Johnson's _Works_. See in it vol. xi. p. 216.
[1001] They are published in vol. xi. of Hawkins's edition of Johnson's
_Works_. 1787, and are often quoted in my notes. It should be
remembered that Steevens is not trustworthy. See _ante_, iii. 281,
and iv. 178.
[1002] See _ante_, ii. 96.
[1003] See _ante_, p. iii.
[1004] _She Stoops to Conquer_ was first acted on March 15, 1773. The
King of Sardinia had died on Feb. 20. _Gent. Mag_. 1773, pp. 149, 151.
[1005] Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 170) describes how, in 1780, she went
to one of Mrs. Ord's assemblies at a time when 'the mourning for some
foreign Wilhelmina Jaquelina was not over. Every human creature was in
deep mourning, and I, poor I, all gorgeous in scarlet. Even Jacobite
Johnson was in deep mourning.'
[1006] In the tenth edition of the _Rambler_, published in 1784, the
entry is still found:--'Milton, Mr. John, remarks on his versification.'
In like manner we find:--'Shakspeare, Mr. William, his eminent success
in tragi-comedy;' 'Spenser, Mr. Edmund, some imitations of his diction
censured;' 'Cowley, Mr. Abraham, a passage in his writing illustrated.'
[1007] See _ante_, p. 116.
[1008] See _ante_, iii. 425, note 3.
[1009] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 571) writes:--'The plan for Johnson's
visiting the Continent became so well known, that, as a lady then
resident at Rome afterwards informed me, his arrival was anxiously
expected throughout Italy.'
[1010] Edward Lord Thurlow. BOSWELL.
[1011] See _ante_, p. 179.
[1012] In 1778.
[1013] 'With Lord Thurlow, while he was at the bar, Johnson was well
acquainted. He said to Mr. Murphy twenty years ago, "Thurlow is a man of
such vigour of mind that I never knew I was to meet him, but--I was
going to tell a falsehood; I was going to say I was afraid of him, and
that would not be true, for I was never afraid of any man--but I never
knew that I was to meet Thurlow, but I knew I had something to
encounter."' _Monthly Review_ for 1787, lxxvi. 382. Murphy, no doubt,
was the writer. Lord Campbell (_Lives of the Chancellors_, ed. 1846,
v.621) quotes from 'the Diary of a distinguished political character' an
account of a meeting between Thurlow and Horne Tooke, in 1801. 'Tooke
evidently came forward for a display, and as I considered his powers of
conversation as surpassing those of any person I had ever seen (in point
of skill and dexterity, and if necessary in _lying_), so I took for
granted old grumbling Thurlow would be obliged to lower his top-sail to
him--but it seemed as if the very _look_ and _voice_ of Thurlow scared
him out of his senses from the first moment. So Tooke tried to recruit
himself by wine, and, though not generally a drinker, was very drunk,
but all would not do.'
[1014] It is strange that Sir John Hawkins should have related that the
application was made by Sir Joshua Reynolds, when he could so easily
have been informed of the truth by inquiring of Sir Joshua. Sir John's
carelessness to ascertain facts is very remarkable. BOSWELL.
[1015] There is something dreadful in the thought of the old man quietly
going on with his daily life within a few hundred yards of this shocking
scene of slaughter, this 'legal massacre,' to use his own words (_ante_,
p. 188, note 3). England had a kind of Reign of Terror of its own;
little thought of at the time or remembered since. Twenty-four men were
sentenced to death at the Old Bailey Sessions that ended on April 28. On
June 16 nine of these had the sentence commuted; the rest were hanged
this day. Among these men was not a single murderer. Twelve of them had
committed burglary, two a street robbery, and one had personated another
man's name, with intent to receive his wages. _Ann. Reg_. xxvii, 193,
and _Gent. Mag_. liv. 379, 474. The _Gent. Mag_. recording the
sentences, remarks:--'Convicts under sentence of death in Newgate and
the gaols throughout the kingdom increase so fast, that, were they all
to be executed, England would soon be marked among the nations as the
_Bloody Country_.' In the spring assizes the returns are given for ten
towns. There were 88 capital convictions, of which 21 were at
Winchester. _Ib_. 224. In the summer assizes and at the Old Bailey
Sessions for July there were 149 capital convictions. At Maidstone a man
on being sentenced 'gave three loud cheers, upon which the judge gave
strict orders for his being chained to the floor of the dungeon.' _Ib_.
pp. 311, 633. The hangman was to grow busier yet. This increase in the
number of capital punishments was attributed by Romilly in great part to
Madan's _Thoughts on Executive Justice_; 'a small tract, in which, by a
mistaken application of the maxim "that the certainty of punishment is
more efficacious than its severity for the prevention of crimes," he
absurdly insisted on the expediency of rigidly enforcing, in every
instance, our penal code, sanguinary and barbarous as it was. In 1783,
the year before the book was published, there were executed in London
only 51 malefactors; in 1785, the year after the book was published,
there were executed 97; and it was recently after the publication of the
book that was exhibited a spectacle unseen in London for a long course
of years before, the execution of nearly 20 criminals at a time.' _Life
of Romilly_, i. 89. Madan's Tract was published in the winter of 1784-5.
Boswell's fondness for seeing executions is shewn, _ante_, ii. 93.
[1016] See _ante_, ii. 82, 104; iii. 290; and v. 7l.
[1017] A friend of mine happened to be passing by a _field congregation_
in the environs of London, when a Methodist preacher quoted this passage
with triumph. BOSWELL. On Dec. 26, 1784, John Wesley preached the
condemned criminals' sermon to forty-seven who were under sentence of
death. He records:--'The power of the Lord was eminently present, and
most of the prisoners were in tears. A few days after, twenty of them
died at once, five of whom died in peace. I could not but greatly
approve of the spirit and behaviour of Mr. Villette, the Ordinary; and I
rejoiced to hear that it was the same on all similar occasions.'
Wesley's _Journal_, ed. 1827, iv. 287.
[1018] I trust that THE CITY OF LONDON, now happily in unison with THE
COURT, will have the justice and generosity to obtain preferment for
this Reverend Gentleman, now a worthy old servant of that magnificent
Corporation. BOSWELL. In like manner, Boswell in 1768 praised the Rev.
Mr. Moore, Mr. Villette's predecessor. 'Mr. Moore, the Ordinary of
Newgate, discharged his duty with much earnestness and a fervour for
which I and all around me esteemed and loved him. Mr. Moore seems worthy
of his office, which, when justly considered, is a very important one.'
_London Mag._ 1783, p. 204. For the quarrel between the City and the
Court, see _ante_, iii. 201.
[1019] See _ante_, i. 387.
[1020] Knox in _Winter Evenings_, No. xi. (_Works_, ii. 348), attacks
Johnson's biographers for lowering his character by publishing his
private conversation. 'Biography,' he complains, 'is every day
descending from its dignity.' See _ante_, i. 222, note 1.
[1021] _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 256.
[1022] Johnson wrote on April 15:--'I am still very weak, though my
appetite is keen and my digestion potent. ... I now think and consult
to-day what I shall eat to-morrow. This disease likewise will, I hope,
be cured.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 362. Beattie, who dined with
Johnson on June 27, wrote:--'Wine, I think, would do him good, but he
cannot be prevailed on to drink it. He has, however, a voracious
appetite for food. I verily believe that on Sunday last he ate as much
to dinner as I have done in all for these ten days past.' Forbes's
_Beattie_, ed. 1824, p. 315. It was said that Beattie latterly indulged
somewhat too much in wine. _Ib_. p. 432.
[1023] Horace Walpole wrote in April 1750 (_Letters_, ii. 206):--'There
is come from France a Madame Bocage who has translated Milton: my Lord
Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon
for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has
written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord's approbation.'
It was this lady who bade her footman blow into the spout of the
tea-pot. _Ante_, ii. 403. Dr. J. H. Burton writes of her in his _Life of
Hume_, ii. 213:--'The wits must praise her bad poetry if they frequented
her house. "Elle était d'une figure aimable," says Grimm, "elle est
bonne femme; elle est riche; elle pouvait fixer chez elle les gens
d'esprit et de bonne compagnie, sans les mettre dans l'embarras de lui
parler avec peu de sincérité de sa Colombiade ou de ses Amazones."'
[1024] It is the sea round the South Pole that she describes in her
_Elegy_ (not _Ode_). The description begins:--
'While o'er the deep in many a dreadful form,
The giant Danger howls along the storm,
_Furling the iron sails with numbed hands,
Firm on the deck the great Adventurer stands;_
Round glitt'ring mountains hear the billows rave,
And the vast ruin thunder on the wave.'
In the _Gent. Mag._ 1793, p. 197, were given extracts abusive of Johnson
from some foolish letters that passed between Miss Seward and Hayley, a
poet her equal in feebleness. Boswell, in his _Corrections and Additions
to the First Edition_ (_ante_, i.10), corrected an error into which he
had been led by Miss Seward (_ante_, i.92, note 2). She, in the _Gent.
Mag._ for 1793, p.875, defended herself and attacked him. His reply is
found on p.1009. He says:--'As my book was to be a _real history_, and
not a _novel_, it was necessary to suppress all erroneous particulars,
however entertaining.' (_Ante_, ii 467, note 4.) He continues:--'So far
from having any hostile disposition towards this Lady, I have, in my
_Life of Dr. Johnson_...quoted a compliment paid by him to one of her
poetical pieces; and I have withheld his opinion of herself, thinking
that she might not like it. I am afraid it has reached her by some other
means; and thus we may account for various attacks by her on her
venerable townsman since his decease...What are we to think of the
scraps of letters between her and Mr. Hayley, impotently attempting to
undermine the noble pedestal on which the publick opinion has placed
Dr. Johnson?'
[1025] See _ante_, i.265, and iv. 174.
[1026] 'Johnson said he had once seen Mr. Stanhope at Dodsley's shop,
and was so much struck with his awkward manners and appearance that he
could not help asking Mr. Dodsley who he was.' Johnson's _Works_,
(1787) xi.209.
[1027] Chesterfield was Secretary of State from Nov. 1746 to Feb. 1748.
His letters to his son extend from 1739 to 1768.
[1028] Foote had taken off Lord Chesterfield in _The Cozeners_. Mrs.
Aircastle trains her son Toby in the graces. She says to her
husband:--'Nothing but grace! I wish you would read some late
_Posthumous Letters_; you would then know the true value of grace.' Act
ii. sc. 2.
[1029] See _ante_, p.78, note 1.
[1030] See a pamphlet entitled _Remarks on the Characters of the Court
of Queen Anne_, included in Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, vi. 163.
[1031] Carleton, according to the _Memoirs_, made his first service in
the navy in 1672--seventeen years before the siege of Derry. There is no
mention of this siege in the book.
[1032] 'He had obtained, by his long service, some knowledge of the
practic part of an engineer.' Preface to the _Memoirs_.
[1033] Nearly 200 pages in Bohn's edition. See _ante_, i. 71, for
Johnson's rapid reading.
[1034] Lord Mahon (_War of the Succession in Spain_, Appendix, p. 131)
proves that a Captain Carleton really served. 'It is not impossible,' he
says, 'that the MS. may have been intrusted to De Foe for the purpose of
correction or revision...The _Memoirs_ are most strongly marked with
internal proofs of authenticity.' Lockhart (_Life of Scott_, iii. 84)
says:--'It seems to be now pretty generally believed that Carleton's
_Memoirs_ were among the numberless fabrications of De Foe; but in this
case (if the fact indeed be so), as in that of his _Cavalier_, he no
doubt had before him the rude journal of some officer.' Dr. Burton
(_Reign of Queen Anne_ ii. 173) says that MSS. in the British Museum
disprove 'the possibility of De Foe's authorship.'
[1035] Lord Chesterfield (_Letters_, ii. 109) writing to his son on Nov.
29, 1748, says of Mr. Eliot:--'Imitate that application of his, which
has made him know all thoroughly, and to the bottom. He does not content
himself with the surface of knowledge; but works in the mine for it,
knowing that it lies deep.'
[1036] The Houghton Collection was sold in 1779 by the third Earl of
Orford, to the Empress of Russia for £40,555. (Walpole's _Letters_, vii.
227, note 1.)
Horace Walpole wrote on Aug. 4 of that year (_ib_. p. 235):--'Well!
adieu to Houghton! about its mad master I shall never trouble myself
more. From the moment he came into possession, he has undermined every
act of my father that was within his reach, but, having none of that
great man's sense or virtues, he could only lay wild hands on lands and
houses; and since he has stript Houghton of its glory, I do not care a
straw what he does with the stone or the acres.'
[1037] This museum at Alkerington near Manchester is described in the
_Gent. Mag_. 1773, p.219. A proposal was made in Parliament to buy it
for the British Museum. _Ib_. 1783, p. 919. On July 8, 1784, a bill
enabling Lever to dispose of it by lottery passed the House of Commons.
_Ib_. 1784, p.705.
[1038] Johnson defines _intuition_ as _sight of anything; immediate
knowledge_; and _sagacity_ as _quickness of scent; acuteness of
discovery_.
[1039] In the first edition it stands '_A gentleman_' and below instead
of Mr. ----, Mr. ----. In the second edition Mr. ---- becomes Mr. ----.
In the third edition _young_ is added. Young Mr. Burke is probably
meant. As it stood in the second edition it might have been thought that
Edmund Burke was the gentleman; the more so as Johnson often denied his
want of wit.
[1040] _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2.
[1041] See _ante_, i. 372, note 1.
[1042] Windham says (_Diary_, p. 34) that when Dr. Brocklesby made this
offer 'Johnson pressed his hands and said, "God bless you through Jesus
Christ, but I will take no money but from my sovereign." This, if I
mistake not, was told the King through West.' Dr. Brocklesby wrote to
Burke, on July 2, 1788, to make him 'an instant present of £1000,
which,' he continues, 'for years past, by will, I had destined as a
testimony of my regard on my decease.' Burke, accepting the present,
said:--'I shall never be ashamed to have it known, that I am obliged to
one who never can be capable of converting his kindness into a burthen.'
Burke's _Corres._ iii.78. See _ante_, p. 263, for the just praise
bestowed by Johnson on physicians in his _Life of Garth_.
[1043] See _ante_, ii. 194.
[1044] _Letters to Mrs. Thrale_, vol. ii. p 375. BOSWELL.
[1045] Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 45) describes him as 'a very handsome,
gentlemanly, and amiable person. Mme. D'Arblay tells how one evening at
Dr. Burney's home, when Signor Piozzi was playing on the piano, 'Mrs.
Thrale stealing on tip-toe behind him, ludicrously began imitating him.
Dr. Burney whispered to her, "Because, Madam, you have no ear yourself
for music, will you destroy the attention of all who in that one point
are otherwise gifted?"' Mrs. Thrale took this rebuke very well. This was
her first meeting with Piozzi. It was in Mr. Thrale's life-time.
_Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, ii. 110.
[1046] Dr. Johnson's letter to Sir John Hawkins, _Life_, p. 570.
BOSWELL. The last time Miss Burney saw Johnson, not three weeks before
his death, he told her that the day before he had seen Miss Thrale. 'I
then said:--"Do you ever, Sir, hear from mother?" "No," cried he, "nor
write to her. I drive her quite from my mind. If I meet with one of her
letters, I burn it instantly. I have burnt all I can find. I never speak
of her, and I desire never to hear of her more. I drive her, as I said,
wholly from my mind."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 328.
[1047] See _ante_, i. 493.
[1048] _Anec_. p. 293. BOSWELL.
[1049] 'The saying of the old philosopher who observes, "that he who
wants least is most like the gods who want nothing," was a favourite
sentence with Dr. Johnson, who on his own part required less attendance,
sick or well, than ever I saw any human creature. Conversation was all
he required to make him happy.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p.275. Miss Burney's
account of the life at Streatham is generally very cheerful. I suspect
that the irksome confinement described by Mrs. Piozzi was not felt by
her till she became attached to Mr. Piozzi. This caused a great change
in her behaviour and much unhappiness. (_Ante_, p. 138, note 4.) He at
times treated her harshly. (_Ante_, p. 160, note.) Two passages in her
letters to Miss Burney shew a want of feeling in her for a man who for
nearly twenty years had been to her almost as a father. On Feb. 18,
1784, she writes:--'Johnson is in a sad way doubtless; yet he may still
with care last another twelve-month, and every week's existence is gain
to him, who, like good Hezekiah, wearies Heaven with entreaties for
life. I wrote him a very serious letter the other day.' On March 23 she
writes:--' My going to London would be a dreadful expense, and bring on
a thousand inquiries and inconveniences--visits to Johnson and from
Cator.' It is likely that in other letters there were like passages, but
these letters Miss Burney 'for cogent reasons destroyed.' Mme.
D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 305, 7, 8.
[1050]
'Bless'd paper credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!'
Pope, _Moral Essays_, iii. 39.
[1051] Who has been pleased to furnish me with his remarks. BOSWELL. No
doubt Malone, who says, however: 'On the whole the publick is indebted
to her for her lively, though very inaccurate and artful, account of Dr.
Johnson.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 364.
[1052] See _ante_, iii. 81.
[1053] _Anec._ p. 183. BOSWELL.
[1054] Hannah More. She, with her sisters, had kept a boarding-school at
Bristol.
[1055] She first saw Johnson in June, 1774. According to her _Memoirs_
(i. 48) he met her 'with good humour in his countenance, and continued
in the same pleasant humour the whole of the evening.' She called on him
in Bolt Court. One of her sisters writes:--'Miss Reynolds told the
doctor of all our rapturous exclamations [about him] on the road. He
shook his scientific head at Hannah, and said, "She was a silly thing."'
_Ib_. p. 49. 'He afterwards mentioned to Miss Reynolds how much he had
been touched with the enthusiasm of the young authoress, which was
evidently genuine and unaffected.' _Ib_. p. 50. She met him again in the
spring of 1775. Her sister writes:--'The old genius was extremely
jocular, and the young one very pleasant. They indeed tried which could
"pepper the highest" [Goldsmith's _Retaliation_], and it is not clear to
me that he was really the highest seasoner.' _Ib_. p. 54. From the Mores
we know nothing of his reproof. He had himself said of 'a literary
lady'--no doubt Hannah More--'I was obliged to speak to Miss Reynolds to
let her know that I desired she would not flatter me so much.' _Ante_,
iii.293. Miss Burney records a story she had from Mrs. Thrale, 'which,'
she continues, 'exceeds, I think, in its severity all the severe things
I have yet heard of Dr. Johnson's saying. When Miss More was introduced
to him, she began singing his praise in the warmest manner. For some
time he heard her with that quietness which a long use of praise has
given him: she then redoubled her strokes, till at length he turned
suddenly to her, with a stern and angry countenance, and said, "Madam,
before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider
whether or not your flattery is worth his having."' Mme. D'Arblay's
_Diary_, i.103. Shortly afterwards Miss Burney records (_ib_. p. 121)
that Mrs. Thrale said to him:--'We have told her what you said to Miss
More, and I believe that makes her afraid.' He replied:--'Well, and if
she was to serve me as Miss More did, I should say the same thing to
her.' We have therefore three reports of what he said--one from Mrs.
Thrale indirectly, one from her directly, and the third from Malone.
However severe the reproof was, the Mores do not seem to have been much
touched by it. At all events they enjoyed the meeting with Johnson, and
Hannah More needed a second reproof that was conveyed to her through
Miss Reynolds.
[1056] _Anec._ p. 202. BOSWELL.
[1057] See _ante_, i. 40, 68, 92, 415, 481; ii. 188, 194; iii. 229; and
_post_, v. 245, note 2.
[1058] _Anec._ p. 44. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p. 318, _note_ 1, where I
quote the passage.
[1059] _Ib_. p. 23. BOSWELL.
[1060] _Ib_. p. 45. Mr. Hayward says:--'She kept a copious diary and
notebook called _Thraliana_ from 1776 to 1809. It is now,' [1861] he
continues, 'in the possession of Mr. Salusbury, who deems it of too
private and delicate a character to be submitted to strangers, but has
kindly supplied me with some curious passages from it.' Hayward's
_Piozzi_, i. 6.
[1061] _Ib_. p. 51 [192]. BOSWELL.
[1062] _Anec._ p. 193 [51]. BOSWELL.
[1063] Johnson, says Murphy, (_Life_, p. 96) 'felt not only kindness,
but zeal and ardour for his friends.' 'Who,' he asks (_ib_. p. 144),
'was more sincere and steady in his friendships?' 'Numbers,' he says
(_ib_. p. 146), 'still remember with gratitude the friendship which he
shewed to them with unaltered affection for a number of years.'
[1064] See _ante_, ii. 285, and iii. 440.
[1065] Johnson's _Works_, i. 152, 3.
[1066] In vol. ii. of the _Piozzi Letters_ some of these letters are
given.
[1067] He gave Miss Thrale lessons in Latin. Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary,_ i.
243 and 427.
[1068] _Anec._ p. 258. BOSWELL.
[1069] George James Cholmondeley, Esq., grandson of George, third Earl
of Cholmondeley, and one of the Commissioners of Excise; a gentleman
respected for his abilities, and elegance of manners. BOSWELL. When I
spoke to him a few years before his death upon this point, I found him
very sore at being made the topic of such a debate, and very unwilling
to remember any thing about either the offence or the apology. CROKER.
[1070] _Letters to Mrs. Thrale,_ vol. ii. p. 12. BOSWELL.
[1071] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec._p. 258) lays the scene of this anecdote 'in
some distant province, either Shropshire or Derbyshire, I believe.'
Johnson drove through these counties with the Thrales in 1774 (_ante_,
ii. 285). If the passage in the letter refers to the same anecdote--and
Mrs. Piozzi does not, so far as I know, deny it--more than three years
passed before Johnson was told of his rudeness. Baretti, in a MS. note
on _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 12, says that the story was 'Mr. Cholmondeley's
running away from his creditors.' In this he is certainly wrong; yet if
Mr. Cholmondeley had run away, and others gave the same explanation of
the passage, his soreness is easily accounted for.
[1072] _Anec_. p. 23. BOSWELL.
[1073] _Ib_. p. 302. BOSWELL.
[1074] _Rasselas_, chap, xvii
[1075] _Paradise Lost_, iv. 639.
[1076] _Anec_. p. 63. BOSWELL.
[1077] 'Johnson one day, on seeing an old terrier lie asleep by the
fire-side at Streatham, said, "Presto, you are, if possible, a more lazy
dog that I am."' Johnson's _Works_, ed. 1787, xi. 203.
[1078] Upon mentioning this to my friend Mr. Wilkes, he, with his usual
readiness, pleasantly matched it with the following _sentimental
anecdote_. He was invited by a young man of fashion at Paris, to sup
with him and a lady, who had been for some time his mistress, but with
whom he was going to part. He said to Mr. Wilkes that he really felt
very much for her, she was in such distress; and that he meant to make
her a present of two hundred louis-d'ors. Mr. Wilkes observed the
behaviour of Mademoiselle, who sighed indeed very piteously, and assumed
every pathetick air of grief; but eat no less than three French pigeons,
which are as large as English partridges, besides other things. Mr.
Wilkes whispered the gentleman, 'We often say in England, _Excessive
sorrow is exceeding dry_, but I never heard _Excessive sorrow is
exceeding hungry_. Perhaps _one_ hundred will do.' The gentleman took
the hint. BOSWELL.
[1079] See _post_, p. 367, for the passage omitted.
[1080] Sir Joshua Reynolds, on account of the excellence both of the
sentiment and expression of this letter, took a copy of it which he
shewed to some of his friends; one of whom, who admired it, being
allowed to peruse it leisurely at home, a copy was made, and found its
way into the newspapers and magazines. It was transcribed with some
inaccuracies. I print it from the original draft in Johnson's own
hand-writing. BOSWELL. Hawkins writes (_Life_, p. 574):--'Johnson, upon
being told that it was in print, exclaimed in my hearing, "I am
betrayed," but soon after forgot, as he was ever ready to do all real or
supposed injuries, the error that made the publication possible.'
[1081] Cowper wrote of Thurlow:--'I know well the Chancellor's
benevolence of heart, and how much he is misunderstood by the world.
When he was young he would do the kindest things, and at an expense to
himself which at that time he could ill afford, and he would do them too
in the most secret manner.' Southey's _Cowper_, vii. 128. Yet Thurlow
did not keep his promise made to Cowper when they were fellow-clerks in
an attorney's office. 'Thurlow, I am nobody, and shall be always nobody,
and you will be chancellor. You shall provide for me when you are.' He
smiled, and replied, 'I surely will.' _Ib._ i. 41. When Cowper sent him
the first volume of his poems, 'he thought it not worth his while,' the
poet writes, 'to return me any answer, or to take the least notice of my
present.' _Ib._ xv. 176. Mr. (afterwards Sir) W. Jones, in two letters
to Burke, speaks of Thurlow as the [Greek: thaerion] (beast). 'I heard
last night, with surprise and affliction,' he wrote on Feb. 15,
1783,'that the [Greek: thaerion] was to continue in office. Now I can
assure you from my own positive knowledge (and I know him well), that
although he hates _our_ species in general, yet his particular hatred is
directed against none more virulently than against Lord North, and the
friends of the late excellent Marquis.' Burke's _Corres._ ii. 488,
and iii. 10.
[1082] 'Scarcely had Pitt obtained possession of unbounded power when an
aged writer of the highest eminence, who had made very little by his
writings, and who was sinking into the grave under a load of infirmities
and sorrows, wanted five or six hundred pounds to enable him, during the
winter or two which might still remain to him, to draw his breath more
easily in the soft climate of Italy. Not a farthing was to be obtained;
and before Christmas the author of the _English Dictionary_ and of the
_Lives of the Poets_ had gasped his last in the river fog and coal smoke
of Fleet-street.' _Macaulay's Writings and Speeches,_ ed. 1871, p. 413.
Just before Macaulay, with monstrous exaggeration, says that Gibbon,
'forced by poverty to leave his country, completed his immortal work on
the shores of Lake Leman.' This poverty of Gibbon would have been
'splendour' to Johnson. Debrett's Royal Kalendar, for 1795 (p. 88),
shews that there were twelve Lords of the King's Bedchamber receiving
each £1000 a year, and fourteen Grooms of the Bedchamber receiving each,
£500 a year. As Burns was made a gauger, so Johnson might have been made
a Lord, or at least a Groom of the Bedchamber. It is not certain that
Pitt heard of the application for an increased pension. Mr. Croker
quotes from Thurlow's letter to Reynolds of Nov. 18, 1784:--'It was
impossible for me to take the King's pleasure on the suggestion I
presumed to move. I am an untoward solicitor.' Whether he consulted Pitt
cannot be known. Mr. Croker notices a curious obliteration in this
letter. The Chancellor had written:--'It would have suited the purpose
better, if nobody had heard of it, except Dr. Johnson, you and J.
Boswell.' _Boswell_ has been erased--'artfully' too, says--Mr. Croker-so
that 'the sentence appears to run, "except Dr. Johnson, you, and I."'
Mr. Croker, with his usual suspiciousness, suspects 'an uncandid trick.'
But it is very likely that Thurlow himself made the obliteration,
regardless of grammar. He might easily have thought that it would have
been better still had Boswell not been in the secret.
[1083] See _ante_, iii. 176.
[1084] On June 11 Boswell and Johnson were together (_ante_, p. 293).
The date perhaps should be July 11. The letter that follows next is
dated July 12.
[1085] 'Even in our flight from vice some virtue lies.' FRANCIS. Horace,
i. _Epistles_, I. 41.
[1086] See vol. ii. p. 258. BOSWELL.
[1087] Mrs. Johnson died in 1752. See _ante_, i. 241, note 2.
[1088] See Appendix.
[1089] Printed in his _Works_ [i. 150]. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i. 241,
note 2.
[1090] He wrote to Mr. Ryland on the same day:--'Be pleased to let the
whole be done with privacy that I may elude the vigilance of the
papers.' _Notes and Queries_, 5th S. vii. 381.
[1091] Boileau, _Art Poétique_, chant iv.
[1092] This is probably an errour either of the transcript or the press.
_Removes_ seems to be the word intended. MALONE.
[1093] See _ante_, i. 332, and _post_ p. 360.
[1094] See _ante_, p. 267.
[1095] I have heard Dr. Johnson protest that he never had quite as much
as he wished of wall-fruit, except once in his life.' Piozzi's
_Anec_. p. 103.
[1096] At the Essex Head, Essex-street. BOSWELL.
[1097] Juvenal, _Satires_, x. 8:--
'Fate wings with every wish the afflictive dart.'
_Vanity of Human Wishes_, l. 15.
[1098] Mr. Allen, the printer. BOSWELL. See _ante_, iii. 141, 269.
[1099] It was on this day that he wrote the prayer given below (p. 370)
in which is found that striking line--'this world where much is to be
done and little to be known.'
[1100] His letter to Dr. Heberden (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 789) shews
that he had gone with Dr. Brocklesby to the last Academy dinner, when,
as he boasted, 'he went up all the stairs to the pictures without
stopping to rest or to breathe.' _Ante_, p. 270, note 2.
[1101]
Quid te exempta _levat_ spinis de pluribus una?
'Pluck out one thorn to mitigate thy pain,
What boots it while so many more remain?'
FRANCIS. Horace, 2 _Epistles_, ii. 212.
[1102] See _ante_, iii. 4, note 2.
[1103] Sir Joshua's physician. He is mentioned by Goldsmith in his
verses to the Miss Hornecks. Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 149.
[1104] How much balloons filled people's minds at this time is shewn by
such entries as the following in Windham's _Diary_:-'Feb 7, 1784. Did
not rise till past nine; from that time till eleven, did little more
than indulge in idle reveries about balloons.' p. 3. 'July 20. The
greater part of the time, till now, one o'clock, spent in foolish
reveries about balloons.' p. 12. Horace Walpole wrote on Sept. 30
(_Letters_, viii. 505):--'I cannot fill my paper, as the newspapers do,
with air-balloons; which though ranked with the invention of navigation,
appear to me as childish as the flying kites of school-boys.' 'Do not
write about the balloon,' wrote Johnson to Reynolds (_post_, p. 368),
'whatever else you may think proper to say.' In the beginning of the
year he had written:--'It is very seriously true that a subscription of
£800 has been raised for the wire and workmanship of iron wings.'
_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 345.
[1105] It is remarkable that so good a Latin scholar as Johnson, should
have been so inattentive to the metre, as by mistake to have written
_stellas_ instead of _ignes_. BOSWELL.
[1106]
'Micat inter omnes
Julium sidus, velut inter ignes Luna minores.'
'And like the Moon, the feebler fires among,
Conspicuous shines the Julian star.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Odes_, i. 12. 46.
[1107] See _ante_, iii. 209.
[1108]
'The little blood that creeps within his veins
Is but just warmed in a hot fever's pains.'
DRYDEN. Juvenal, _Satires_, x. 217.
[1109] Lunardi had made, on Sept. 15, the first balloon ascent in
England. _Gent. Mag_. 1784, p. 711. Johnson wrote to Mr. Ryland on Sept.
18:--'I had this day in three letters three histories of the Flying Man
in the great Balloon.' He adds:--'I live in dismal solitude.' _Notes and
Queries_, 5th S. vii. 381.
[1110] 'Sept. 27, 1784. Went to see Blanchard's balloon. Met Burke and
D. Burke; walked with them to Pantheon to see Lunardi's. Sept. 29. About
nine came to Brookes's, where I heard that the balloon had been burnt
about four o'clock.' Windham's _Diary_, p. 24.
[1111] His love of London continually appears. In a letter from him to
Mrs. Smart, wife of his friend the Poet, which is published in a
well-written life of him, prefixed to an edition of his Poems, in 1791,
there is the following sentence:-'To one that has passed so many years
in the pleasures and opulence of London, there are few places that can
give much delight.'
Once, upon reading that line in the curious epitaph quoted in _The
Spectator;_
'Born in New-England, did in London die;'
he laughed and said, 'I do not wonder at this. It would have been
strange, if born in London, he had died in New-England.' BOSWELL. Mrs.
Smart was in Dublin when Johnson wrote to her. After the passage quoted
by Boswell he continued:--'I think, Madam, you may look upon your
expedition as a proper preparative to the voyage which we have often
talked of. Dublin, though a place much worse than London, is not so bad
as Iceland.' Smart's _Poems_, i. xxi. For Iceland see _ante_, i. 242.
The epitaph, quoted in _The Spectator_, No. 518, begins--
Here Thomas Sapper lies interred. Ah why!
Born in New-England, did in London die.'
[1112] _St. Mark_, v. 34.
[1113] There is no record of this in the _Gent. Mag_. Among the 149
persons who that summer had been sentenced to death (_ante_, p. 328) who
would notice these two?
[1114] See _ante_, p. 356, note 1
[1115] Johnson wrote for him a Dedication of his _Tasso_ in 1763.
_Ante_, i. 383.
[1116] There was no information for which Dr. Johnson was less grateful
that than for that which concerned the weather. It was in allusion to
his impatience with those who were reduced to keep conversation alive by
observations on the weather, that he applied the old proverb to himself.
If any one of his intimate acquaintance told him it was hot or cold, wet
or dry, windy or calm, he would stop them, by saying, 'Poh! poh! you are
telling us that of which none but men in a mine or a dungeon can be
ignorant. Let us bear with patience, or enjoy in quiet, elementary
changes, whether for the better or the worse, as they are never
secrets.' BURNEY. In _The Idler_, No. II, Johnson shews that 'an
Englishman's notice of the weather is the natural consequence of
changeable skies and uncertain seasons... In our island every man goes
to sleep unable to guess whether he shall behold in the morning a bright
or cloudy atmosphere, whether his rest shall be lulled by a shower, or
broken by a tempest. We therefore rejoice mutually at good weather, as
at an escape from something that we feared; and mutually complain of
bad, as of the loss of something that we hoped.' See _ante_, i.
332, and iv. 353.
[1117] His _Account of the Musical Performances in Commemoration of
Handel_. See _ante_, p. 283.
[1118] The celebrated Miss Fanny Burney. BOSWELL.
[1119] Dr. Burney's letter must have been franked; otherwise there would
have been no frugality, for each enclosure was charged as a
separate letter.
[1120] He does not know, that is to say, what people of his acquaintance
were in town, privileged to receive letters post free; such as members
of either House of Parliament.
[1121] _Consolation_ is clearly a blunder, Malone's conjecture
_mortification_ seems absurd.
[1122] See _ante_, iii. 48, and iv. 177.
[1123] Windham visited him at Ashbourne in the end of August, after the
former of these letters was written. See _ante_, p. 356.
[1124] This may refer, as Mr. Croker says, to Hamilton's generous offer,
mentioned _ante_, p. 244. Yet Johnson, with his accurate mind, was not
likely to assign to the spring an event of the previous November.
[1125] Johnson refers to Pope's lines on Walpole:--
'Seen him I have but in his _happier hour_
Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power.'
_Satires. Epilogue_, i. 29.
[1126] Son of the late Peter Paradise, Esq. his Britannick Majesty's
Consul at Salonica, in Macedonia, by his lady, a native of that country.
He studied at Oxford, and has been honoured by that University with the
degree of LL.D. He is distinguished not only by his learning and
talents, but by an amiable disposition, gentleness of manners, and a
very general acquaintance with well-informed and accomplished persons of
almost all nations. BOSWELL.
[1127] Bookseller to his Majesty. BOSWELL.
[1128] Mr. Cruikshank attended him as a surgeon the year before. _Ante_,
p. 239.
[1129]Allan Ramsay, Esq. painter to his Majesty, who died Aug. 10, 1784,
in the 71st year of his age, much regretted by his friends. BOSWELL. See
_ante_, p. 260.
[1130] Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, ii. 187) says that Johnson 'most
probably refers to Sir Joshua's becoming painter to the King. 'I know,'
he continues, 'that Sir Joshua expected the appointment would be offered
to him on the death of Ramsay, and expressed his disapprobation with
regard to soliciting for it; but he was informed that it was a necessary
point of etiquette, with which at last he complied.' His 'furious
purposes' should seem to have been his intention to resign the
Presidency of the Academy, on finding that the place was not at once
given him, and in the knowledge that in the Academy there was a party
against him. Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 448.
[1131] See _ante_, p. 348.
[1132] The Chancellor had not, it should seem, asked the King. See
_ante_, p. 350, note.
[1133] The Duke of Devonshire has kindly given me the following
explanation of this term:--'It was formerly the custom at some (I
believe several) of the large country-houses to have dinners at which
any of the neighbouring gentry and clergy might present themselves as
guests without invitation. The custom had been discontinued at
Chatsworth before my recollection, and so far as I am aware is now only
kept-up at Wentworth, Lord Fitzwilliam's house in Yorkshire, where a few
public dinners are still given annually. I believe, however, that all
persons intending to be present on such occasions are now expected to
give notice some days previously. Public dinners were also given
formerly by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and if I am not mistaken also
by the Archbishop of York. I have myself been present at a public dinner
at Lambeth Palace within the last fifty years or thereabouts, and I have
been at one or more such dinners at Wentworth.' Since receiving this
explanation I have read the following in the second part of the
_Greville Memoirs_, i. 99:--'June 1, 1838. I dined yesterday at
Lambeth, at the Archbishop's public dinner, the handsomest entertainment
I ever saw. There were nearly a hundred people present, all full-dressed
or in uniform. Nothing can be more dignified and splendid than the whole
arrangement.'
[1134] Six weeks later he was willing to hear even of balloons, so long
as he got a letter. 'You,' he wrote to Mr. Sastres, 'may always have
something to tell: you live among the various orders of mankind, and may
make a letter from the exploits, sometimes of the philosopher, and
sometimes of the pickpocket. You see some balloons succeed and some
miscarry, and a thousand strange and a thousand foolish things.' _Piozzi
Letters_, ii. 412.
[1135] See _ante_, p. 349, note.
[1136] 'He alludes probably to the place of King's Painter; which, since
Burke's reforming the King's household expenses, had been reduced from
£200 to £50 per annum.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 188. The place was
more profitable than Johnson thought. 'It was worth having from the
harvest it brought in by the multiplication of the faces of King and
Queen as presents for ambassadors and potentates.' This is shewn by the
following note in Sir Joshua's price-book:--'Nov. 28, 1789, remain in
the Academy five Kings, four Queens; in the house two Kings and one
Queen.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 449.
[1137] Mr. Nichols published in 1782 _Anecdotes of William Bowyer,
Printer_. In 1812-15 he brought out this work, recast and enlarged,
under the title of _Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century_. See
_ante_, p. 161.
[1138] In the original (which is in the British Museum) not _hints_ but
_names_.
[1139] On Nov. 4, he wrote to Mr. Ryland:--'I have just received a
letter in which you tell me that you love to hear from me, and I value
such a declaration too much to neglect it. To have a friend, and a
friend like you, may be numbered amongst the first felicities of life;
at a time when weakness either of body or mind loses the pride and the
confidence of self-sufficiency, and looks round for that help which
perhaps human kindness cannot give, and which we yet are willing to
expect from one another. I am at this time very much dejected.... I am
now preparing myself for my return, and do not despair of some more
monthly meetings [_post_, Appendix C]. To hear that dear Payne is better
gives me great delight. I saw the draught of the stone [over Mrs.
Johnson's grave, _ante_, p. 351]. Shall I ever be able to bear the sight
of this stone? In your company I hope I shall.' Mr. Morrison's
_Autographs_, vol. ii.
[1140] To him as a writer might be generally applied what he said of
Rochester:--'His pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of
resolution would produce.' _Works_, vii. 159.
[1141] _Odes_, iv.7. _Works_, i. 137.
[1142] _Against inqitisitive and perplexing thoughts_. 'O LORD, my Maker
and Protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world to work out
my salvation, enable me to drive from me all such unquiet and perplexing
thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice of those duties
which Thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy hands, and
consider the course of thy providence, give me grace always to remember
that thy thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways. And while
it shall please Thee to continue me in this world, where much is to be
done, and little to be known, teach me by thy Holy Spirit, to withdraw
my mind from unprofitable and dangerous enquiries, from difficulties
vainly curious, and doubts impossible to be solved. Let me rejoice in
the light which Thou hast imparted, let me serve Thee with active zeal
and humble confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in
which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.
Grant this, O LORD, for JESUS CHRIST'S sake. Amen.' BOSWELL. _Pr. and
Med._ p. 219.
[1143] _Life of Johnson_, p. 599.
[1144] Porson with admirable humour satirised Hawkins for his attack on
Barber. _Gent. Mag._ 1787, p. 752, and _Porson Tracts_, p. 358. Baretti
in his _Tolondron_, p. 149, says that 'Barber from his earliest youth
served Johnson with the greatest affection and disinterestedness.'
[1145] Vol. ii. p. 30. BOSWELL.
[1146] I shall add one instance only to those which I have thought it
incumbent on me to point out. Talking of Mr. Garrick's having signified
his willingness to let Johnson have the loan of any of his books to
assist him in his edition of Shakspeare [_ante_, ii. 192]; Sir John
says, (p. 444,) 'Mr. Garrick knew not what risque he ran by this offer.
Johnson had so strange a forgetfulness of obligations of this sort, that
few who lent him books ever saw them again.' This surely conveys a most
unfavourable insinuation, and has been so understood. Sir John mentions
the single case of a curious edition of Politian [_ante_, i. 90], which
he tells us, 'appeared to belong to Pembroke College, and which,
probably, had been considered by Johnson as his own, for upwards of
fifty years.' Would it not be fairer to consider this as an
inadvertence, and draw no general inference? The truth is, that Johnson
was so attentive, that in one of his manuscripts in my possession, he
has marked in two columns, books borrowed, and books lent.
In Sir John Hawkins's compilation, there are, however, some passages
concerning Johnson which have unquestionable merit. One of them I shall
transcribe, in justice to a writer whom I have had too much occasion to
censure, and to shew my fairness as the biographer of my illustrious
friend: 'There was wanting in his conduct and behaviour, that dignity
which results from a regular and orderly course of action, and by an
irresistible power commands esteem. He could not be said to be a stayed
man, nor so to have adjusted in his mind the balance of reason and
passion, as to give occasion to say what may be observed of some men,
that all they do is just, fit, and right.' [Hawkins's _Johnson_, p.
409.] Yet a judicious friend well suggests, 'It might, however, have
been added, that such men are often merely just, and rigidly correct,
while their hearts are cold and unfeeling; and that Johnson's virtues
were of a much higher tone than those of the _stayed, orderly man_, here
described.' BOSWELL.
[1147] 'Lich, a dead carcase; whence Lichfield, the field of the dead, a
city in Staffordshire, so named from martyred Christians. _Salve magna
parens.'_ It is curious that in the Abridgment of the _Dictionary_ he
struck out this salutation, though he left the rest of the article.
_Salve magna parens_, (Hail, mighty parent) is from Virgil's _Georgics_,
ii. 173. The Rev. T. Twining, when at Lichfield in 1797, says:--'I
visited the famous large old willow-tree, which Johnson, they say, used
to kiss when he came to Lichfield.' _Recreations and Studies of a
Country Clergyman of the XVIII Century_, p. 227.
[1148] The following circumstance, mutually to the honour of Johnson,
and the corporation of his native city, has been communicated to me by
the Reverend Dr. Vyse, from the Town-Clerk:--'Mr. Simpson has now before
him, a record of the respect and veneration which the Corporation of
Lichfield, in the year 1767, had for the merits and learning of Dr.
Johnson. His father built the corner-house in the Market-place, the two
fronts of which, towards Market and Broad-market-street, stood upon
waste land of the Corporation, under a forty years' lease, which was
then expired. On the 15th of August, 1767, at a common-hall of the
bailiffs and citizens, it was ordered (and that without any
solicitation,) that a lease should be granted to Samuel Johnson, Doctor
of Laws, of the encroachments at his house, for the term of ninety-nine
years, at the old rent, which was five shillings. Of which, as
Town-Clerk, Mr. Simpson had the honour and pleasure of informing him,
and that he was desired to accept it, without paying any fine on the
occasion, which lease was afterwards granted, and the Doctor died
possessed of this property.' BOSWELL.
[1149] See vol. i. p. 37. BOSWELL.
[1150] According to Miss Seward, who was Mr. White's cousin, 'Johnson
once called him "the rising strength of Lichfield."' Seward's
_Letters_, i. 335.
[1151] The Rev. R. Warner, who visited Lichfield in 1801, gives in his
_Tour through the Northern Counties_, i. 105, a fuller account. He is
clearly wrong in the date of its occurrence, and in one other matter,
yet his story may in the main be true. He says that Johnson's friends at
Lichfield missed him one morning; the servants said that he had set off
at a very early hour, whither they knew not. Just before supper he
returned. He informed his hostess of his breach of filial duty, which
had happened just fifty years before on that very day. 'To do away the
sin of this disobedience, I this day went,' he said, 'in a chaise
to--, and going into the market at the time of high business uncovered
my head, and stood with it bare an hour, before the stall which my
father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by, and
the inclemency of the weather.' This penance may recall Dante's lines,--
'Quando vivea più glorioso, disse,
Liberamente nel campo di Siena,
Ogni vergogna deposta, s'affisse.'
'"When at his glory's topmost height," said he,
"Respect of dignity all cast aside,
Freely he fix'd him on Sienna's plain."'
CARY. Dante, _Purgatory_. Cant. xi. l. 133.
[1152]
'How instinct varies in the grovelling swine,
Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine.'
Pope, _Essay on Man_, i. 221.
[1153] See _ante_, iii. 153, 296.
[1154] Mr. Burke suggested to me as applicable to Johnson, what Cicero,
in his CATO MAJOR, says of _Appius:--'Intentum enim animum tanquam arcum
habebat, nec languescens succumbebat senectuti_;' repeating, at the same
time, the following noble words in the same passage:--_'Ita enim
senectus honesta est, si se ipsa defendit, si jus suum retinet, si
nemini emancipata est, si usque ad extremum vitae spiritum vindicet jus
suum_.' BOSWELL. The last line runs in the original:-'si usque ad
ultimum spiritum dominatur in suos.' _Cato Major_, xi. 38.
[1155]
'_atrocem_ animum Catonis.'
'Cato--
Of spirit unsubdued.'
FRANCIS. Horace, 2 _Odes_, i. 24.
[1156] Yet Baretti, who knew Johnson well, in a MS. note on _Piozzi
Letters_, i.315, says:--'If ever Johnson took any delight in anything it
was to converse with some old acquaintance. New people he never loved to
be in company with, except ladies, when disposed to caress and
flatter him.'
[1157] Johnson, thirty-four years earlier, wrote:--'I think there is
some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so
proportioned that the one can bear all that can be inflicted on the
other; whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and
whether a soul well principled will not be separated sooner than
subdued.' _The Rambler_, No. 32. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14,
1780:--'But what if I am seventy-two; I remember Sulpitius says of Saint
Martin (now that's above your reading), _Est animus victor annorum, et
senectuti cedere nescius_. Match me that among your young folks.'
_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 177. On Sept. 2, 1784, he wrote to Mr. Sastres the
Italian master:--'I have hope of standing the English winter, and of
seeing you, and reading _Petrarch_ at Bolt-court.' _Ib_. p. 407.
[1158] _Life of Johnson_, p. 7.
[1159] It is a most agreeable circumstance attending the publication of
this Work, that Mr. Hector has survived his illustrious schoolfellow so
many years; that he still retains his health and spirits; and has
gratified me with the following acknowledgement: 'I thank you, most
sincerely thank you, for the great and long continued entertainment your
_Life of Dr. Johnson_ has afforded me, and others, of my particular
friends.' Mr. Hector, besides setting me right as to the verses on a
sprig of Myrtle, (see vol. i. p. 92, note,) has favoured me with two
English odes, written by Dr. Johnson, at an early period of his life,
which will appear in my edition of his poems. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i.
16, note 1.
[1160] The editor of the _Biographia Britannica. Ante_, iii. 174.
[1161] On Dec. 23, Miss Adams wrote to a friend:--'We are all under the
sincerest grief for the loss of poor Dr. Johnson. He spent three or four
days with my father at Oxford, and promised to come again; as he was, he
said, nowhere so happy.' _Pemb. Coll. MSS._
[1162] See _ante_, p. 293.
[1163] Mr. Strahan says (Preface, p. iv.) that Johnson, being hindered
by illness from revising these prayers, 'determined to give the MSS.,
without revision, in charge to me. Accordingly one morning, on my
visiting him by desire at an early hour, he put these papers into my
hands, with instructions for committing them to the press, and with a
promise to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.' Whatever
Johnson wished about the prayers, it passes belief that he ever meant
for the eye of the world these minute accounts of his health and his
feelings. Some parts indeed Mr. Strahan himself suppressed, as the Pemb.
Coll. MSS. shew (_ante_, p. 84, note 4). It is curious that one portion
at least fell into other hands (_ante_, ii. 476). There are other
apparent gaps in the diary which raise the suspicion that it was only
fragments that Mr. Strahan obtained. On the other hand Mr. Strahan had
nothing to gain by the publication beyond notoriety (see his Preface, p.
vi.). Dr. Adams, whose name is mentioned in the preface, expressed in a
letter to the _Gent. Mag._ 1785, p. 755, his disapproval of the
publication. Mr. Courtenay (_Poetical Review_, ed. 1786, p. 7), thus
attacked Mr. Strahan:--
'Let priestly S--h--n in a godly fit
The tale relate, in aid of Holy Writ;
Though candid Adams, by whom David fell [A],
Who ancient miracles sustained so well,
To recent wonders may deny his aid,
Nor own a pious brother of the trade.'
[A] The Rev. Dr. Adams of Oxford, distinguished for his answer to David
Hume's _Essay on Miracles_.
[1164] Johnson once said to Miss Burney of her brother Charles:--'I
should be glad to see him if he were not your brother; but were he a
dog, a cat, a rat, a frog, and belonged to you, I must needs be glad to
see him.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 233. On Nov. 25 she called on
him. 'He let me in, though very ill. He told me he was going to try what
sleeping out of town might do for him. "I remember," said he, "that my
wife, when she was near her end, poor woman, was also advised to sleep
out of town; and when she was carried to the lodgings that had been
prepared for her, she complained that the staircase was in very bad
condition, for the plaster was beaten off the walls in many places."
"Oh!" said the man of the house, "that's nothing but by the knocks
against it of the coffins of the poor souls that have died in the
lodgings." He laughed, though not without apparent secret anguish, in
telling me this.' Miss Burney continues:--'How delightfully bright are
his faculties, though the poor and infirm machine that contains them
seems alarmingly giving way. Yet, all brilliant as he was, I saw him
growing worse, and offered to go, which, for the first time I ever
remember, he did not oppose; but most kindly pressing both my hands, "Be
not," he said, in a voice of even tenderness, "be not longer in coming
again for my letting you go now." I assured him I would be the sooner,
and was running off, but he called me back in a solemn voice, and in a
manner the most energetic, said:--"Remember me in your prayers."' Mme.
D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 327. See _ante_, iii. 367, note 4.
[1165] Mr. Hector's sister and Johnson's first love. _Ante_, ii. 459.
[1166] The Rev. Dr. Taylor. BOSWELL.
[1167] See _ante_, ii. 474, and iii. 180.
[1168] 'Reliquum est, _[Greek: Sphartan elaches, tahutan khusmei].'_
Cicero, _Epistolae ad Atticum_, iv. 6. 'Spartam nactus es, hanc orna.'
Erasmus, _Adagiorum Chiliades_, ed. 1559, p. 485.
[1169] Temple says of the spleen that it is a disease too refined for
this country and people, who are well when they are not ill, and pleased
when they are not troubled; are content, because they think little of
it, and seek their happiness in the common eases and commodities of
life, or the increase of riches; not amusing themselves with the more
speculative contrivances of passion, or refinements of pleasure.'
Temple's _Works_, ed. 1757, i. 170.
[1170] It is truly wonderful to consider the extent and constancy of
Johnson's literary ardour, notwithstanding the melancholy which clouded
and embittered his existence. Besides the numerous and various works
which he executed, he had, at different times, formed schemes of a great
many more, of which the following catalogue was given by him to Mr.
Langton, and by that gentleman presented to his Majesty:
'DIVINITY.
'A small book of precepts and directions for piety; the hint taken from
the directions in Morton's exercise.
'PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, and LITERATURE in general.
'_History of Criticism_, as it relates to judging of authours, from
Aristotle to the present age. An account of the rise and improvements of
that art; of the different opinions of authours, ancient and modern.
'Translation of the _History of Herodian_.
'New edition of Fairfax's Translation of _Tasso_, with notes, glossary,
&c.
'Chaucer, a new edition of him, from manuscripts and old editions, with
various readings, conjectures, remarks on his language, and the changes
it had undergone from the earliest times to his age, and from his to the
present: with notes explanatory of customs, &c., and references to
Boccace, and other authours from whom he has borrowed, with an account
of the liberties he has taken in telling the stories; his life, and an
exact etymological glossary.
'Aristotle's _Rhetorick_, a translation of it into English.
'A Collection of Letters, translated from the modern writers, with some
account of the several authours.
'Oldham's Poems, with notes, historical and critical.
'Roscommon's Poems, with notes.
'Lives of the Philosophers, written with a polite air, in such a manner
as may divert as well as instruct.
'History of the Heathen Mythology, with an explication of the fables,
both allegorical and historical; with references to the poets.
'History of the State of Venice, in a compendious manner.
'Aristotle's _Ethicks_, an English translation of them, with notes.
'Geographical Dictionary, from the French.
'Hierocles upon Pythagoras, translated into English, perhaps with notes.
This is done by Norris.
'A book of Letters, upon all kinds of subjects.
'Claudian, a new edition of his works, _cum notis variorum_, in the
manner of Burman.
'Tully's Tusculan Questions, a translation of them.
'Tully's De Naturâ Deorum, a translation of those books.
'Benzo's New History of the New World, to be translated.
'Machiavel's History of Florence, to be translated.
'History of the Revival of Learning in Europe, containing an account of
whatever contributed to the restoration of literature; such as
controversies, printing, the destruction of the Greek empire, the
encouragement of great men, with the lives of the most eminent patrons
and most eminent early professors of all kinds of learning in different
countries.
'A Body of Chronology, in verse, with historical notes.
'A Table of the Spectators, Tatlers, and Guardians, distinguished by
figures into six degrees of value, with notes, giving the reasons of
preference or degradation.
'A Collection of Letters from English authours, with a preface giving
some account of the writers; with reasons for selection, and criticism
upon styles; remarks on each letter, if needful.
'A Collection of Proverbs from various languages. Jan. 6,--53.
'A Dictionary to the Common Prayer, in imitation of Calmet's _Dictionary
of the Bible_. March, 52.
'A Collection of Stories and Examples, like those of Valerius Maximus.
Jan. 10,--53.
'From Aelian, a volume of select Stories, perhaps from others. Jan.
28,-53.
'Collection of Travels, Voyages, Adventures, and Descriptions of
Countries.
'Dictionary of Ancient History and Mythology.
'Treatise on the Study of Polite Literature, containing the history of
learning, directions for editions, commentaries, &c.
'Maxims, Characters, and Sentiments, after the manner of Bruyère,
collected out of ancient authours, particularly the Greek, with
Apophthegms.
'Classical Miscellanies, Select Translations from ancient Greek and
Latin authours.
'Lives of Illustrious Persons, as well of the active as the learned, in
imitation of Plutarch.
'Judgement of the learned upon English authours.
'Poetical Dictionary of the English tongue.
'Considerations upon the present state of London.
'Collection of Epigrams, with notes and observations.
'Observations on the English language, relating to words, phrases, and
modes of Speech.
'Minutiae Literariae, Miscellaneous reflections, criticisms,
emendations, notes.
'History of the Constitution.
'Comparison of Philosophical and Christian Morality, by sentences
collected from the moralists and fathers.
'Plutarch's Lives, in English, with notes.
'POETRY and works of IMAGINATION.
'Hymn to Ignorance.
'The Palace of Sloth,--a vision.
'Coluthus, to be translated.
'Prejudice,--a poetical essay.
'The Palace of Nonsense,--a vision.'
Johnson's extraordinary facility of composition, when he shook off his
constitutional indolence, and resolutely sat down to write, is admirably
described by Mr. Courtenay, in his Poetical Review, which I have several
times quoted:
'While through life's maze he sent a piercing view,
His mind expansive to the object grew.
With various stores of erudition fraught,
The lively image, the deep-searching thought,
Slept in repose;--but when the moment press'd,
The bright ideas stood at once confess'd;
Instant his genius sped its vigorous rays,
And o'er the letter'd world diffus'd a blaze:
As womb'd with fire the cloud electrick flies,
And calmly o'er th' horizon seems to rise;
Touch'd by the pointed steel, the lightning flows,
And all th' expanse with rich effulgence glows.'
We shall in vain endeavour to know with exact precision every production
of Johnson's pen. He owned to me, that he had written about forty
sermons; but as I understood that he had given or sold them to different
persons, who were to preach them as their own, he did not consider
himself at liberty to acknowledge them. Would those who were thus aided
by him, who are still alive, and the friends of those who are dead,
fairly inform the world, it would be obligingly gratifying a reasonable
curiosity, to which there should, I think, now be no objection. Two
volumes of them, published since his death, are sufficiently
ascertained; see vol. iii. p. 181. I have before me, in his
hand-writing, a fragment of twenty quarto leaves, of a translation into
English of Sallust, _De Bella Catilinario_. When it was done I have no
notion; but it seems to have no very superior merit to mark it as his.
Beside the publications heretofore mentioned, I am satisfied, from
internal evidence, to admit also as genuine the following, which,
notwithstanding all my chronological care, escaped me in the course of
this work:
'Considerations on the Case of Dr. Trapp's Sermons,' + published in
1739, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_. [These Considerations were
published, not in 1739, but in 1787. _Ante_, i. 140, note 5.] It is a
very ingenious defence of the right of _abridging_ an authour's work,
without being held as infringing his property. This is one of the nicest
questions in the _Law of Literature_; and I cannot help thinking, that
the indulgence of abridging is often exceedingly injurious to authours
and booksellers, and should in very few cases be permitted. At any rate,
to prevent difficult and uncertain discussion, and give an absolute
security to authours in the property of their labours, no abridgement
whatever should be permitted, till after the expiration of such a number
of years as the Legislature may be pleased to fix.
But, though it has been confidently ascribed to him, I cannot allow that
he wrote a Dedication to both Houses of Parliament of a book entitled
_The Evangelical History Harmonized_. He was no _croaker_; no declaimer
against _the times_. [See _ante_, ii. 357.] He would not have written,
'That we are fallen upon an age in which corruption is not barely
universal, is universally confessed.' Nor 'Rapine preys on the publick
without opposition, and perjury betrays it without inquiry.' Nor would
he, to excite a speedy reformation, have conjured up such phantoms of
terrour as these: 'A few years longer, and perhaps all endeavours will
be in vain. We may be swallowed by an earthquake: we may be delivered to
our enemies.' This is not Johnsonian.
There are, indeed, in this Dedication, several sentences constructed
upon the model of those of Johnson. But the imitation of the form,
without the spirit of his style, has been so general, that this of
itself is not sufficient evidence. Even our newspaper writers aspire to
it. In an account of the funeral of Edwin, the comedian, in _The Diary_
of Nov. 9, 1790, that son of drollery is thus described: 'A man who had
so often cheered the sullenness of vacancy, and suspended the approaches
of sorrow.' And in _The Dublin Evening Post_, August 16, 1791, there is
the following paragraph: 'It is a singular circumstance, that, in a city
like this, containing 200,000 people, there are three months in the year
during which no place of publick amusement is open. Long vacation is
here a vacation from pleasure, as well as business; nor is there any
mode of passing the listless evenings of declining summer, but in the
riots of a tavern, or the stupidity of a coffee-house.'
I have not thought it necessary to specify every copy of verses written
by Johnson, it being my intention to, publish an authentick edition of
all his Poetry, with notes. BOSWELL. This _Catalogue_, as Mr. Boswell
calls it, is by Dr. Johnson intitled _Designs_. It seems from the hand
that it was written early in life: from the marginal dates it appears
that some portions were added in 1752 and 1753. CROKER.
[1171] On April 19 of this year he wrote: 'When I lay sleepless, I used
to drive the night along by turning Greek epigrams into Latin. I know
not if I have not turned a hundred.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 364.
Forty-five years earlier he described how Boerhaave, 'when he lay whole
days and nights without sleep, found no method of diverting his thoughts
so effectual as meditation upon his studies, and often relieved and
mitigated the sense of his torments by the recollection of what he had
read, and by reviewing those stores of knowledge which he had reposited
in his memory.' _Works_, vi. 284.
[1172] Mr. Cumberland assures me, that he was always treated with great
courtesy by Dr. Johnson, who, in his _Letters to Mrs. Thrale_, vol. ii.
p. 68 thus speaks of that learned, ingenious, and accomplished
gentleman: 'The want of company is an inconvenience: but Mr. Cumberland
is a million.' BOSWELL. Northcote, according to Hazlitt (_Conversations
of Northcote_, p. 275), said that Johnson and his friends 'never
admitted C----[Cumberland] as one of the set; Sir Joshua did not invite
him to dinner. If he had been in the room, Goldsmith would have flown
out of it as if a dragon had been there. I remember Garrick once saying,
"D--n his _dish-clout_ face; his plays would never do, if it were not
for my patching them up and acting in them."'
[1173] See _ante_, p. 64, note 2.
[1174] Dr. Parr said, "There are three great Grecians in England: Porson
is the first; Burney is the third; and who is the second I need not
tell"' Field's _Parr_, ii. 215.
[1175] 'Dr. Johnson,' said Parr, 'was an admirable scholar.... The
classical scholar was forgotten in the great original contributor to the
literature of his country.' _Ib._ i. 164. 'Upon his correct and profound
knowledge of the Latin language,' he wrote, 'I have always spoken with
unusual zeal and unusual confidence.' Johnson's _Parr_, iv. 679. Mrs.
Piozzi (_Anec._ p. 54) recounts a 'triumph' gained by Johnson in a talk
on Greek literature.
[1176] _Ante_, iii. 172.
[1177] We must smile at a little inaccuracy of metaphor in the Preface
to the _Transactions_, which is written by Mr. Burrowes. The _critick of
the style of_ JOHNSON having, with a just zeal for literature, observed,
that the whole nation are called on to exert themselves, afterwards
says: 'They are _called on_ by every _tye_ which can have a laudable
influence on the heart of man.' BOSWELL.
[1178] Johnson's wishing to unite himself with this rich widow, was much
talked of, but I believe without foundation. The report, however, gave
occasion to a poem, not without characteristical merit, entitled, 'Ode
to Mrs. Thrale, by Samuel Johnson, LL.D. on their supposed approaching
Nuptials; printed for Mr. Faulder in Bond-street.' I shall quote as a
specimen the first three stanzas:--
'If e'er my fingers touch'd the lyre,
In satire fierce, in pleasure gay;
Shall not my THRALIA'S smiles inspire?
Shall Sam refuse the sportive lay?
My dearest Lady! view your slave,
Behold him as your very _Scrub_;
Eager to write, as authour grave,
Or govern well, the brewing-tub.
To rich felicity thus raised,
My bosom glows with amorous fire;
Porter no longer shall be praised,
'Tis I MYSELF am _Thrale's Entire_'
[1179] See _ante_, ii. 44.
[1180] '_Higledy piggledy_,--Conglomeration and confusion.
'_Hodge-podge_,--A culinary mixture of heterogeneous ingredients:
applied metaphorically to all discordant combinations.
'_Tit for Tat_,--Adequate retaliation.
'_Shilly Shally_,--Hesitation and irresolution.
'_Fee! fau! fum!--Gigantic intonations.
_Rigmarole_,-Discourse, incoherent and rhapsodical.
'_Crincum-crancum_,--Lines of irregularity and involution.
'_Dingdong_--Tintinabulary chimes, used metaphorically to signify
dispatch and vehemence.' BOSWELL. In all the editions that I have
examined the sentence in the text beginning with 'annexed,' and ending
with 'concatenation,' is printed as if it were Boswell's. It is a
quotation from vol. ii. p. 93 of Colman's book. For _Scrub_, see _ante_,
iii. 70, note 2.
[1181] See _ante_, iii. 173.
[1182] _History of America_, vol. i. quarto, p. 332. BOSWELL.
[1183] Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, i. 219) thus writes of his own
style:--'The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the
choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise. Many
experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull
chronicle and a rhetorical declamation; three times did I compose the
first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably
satisfied with their effect.' See _ante_, p. 36, note 1.
[1184] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vol. i. chap. iv.
BOSWELL.
[1185] Macaulay (_Essays_, ed. 1874, iv. 157) gives a yet better example
of her Johnsonian style, though, as I have shewn (_ante_, p. 223, note
5), he is wrong in saying that Johnson's hand can be seen.
[1186] _Cecilia_, Book. vii. chap. i. [v.] BOSWELL.
[1187] The passage which I quote is taken from that gentleman's
_Elements of Orthoepy_; containing a distinct View of the whole Analogy
of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE, so far as relates to _Pronunciation, Accent,
and Quantity_, London, 1784. I beg leave to offer my particular
acknowledgements to the authour of a work of uncommon merit and great
utility. I know no book which contains, in the same compass, more
learning, polite literature, sound sense, accuracy of arrangement, and
perspicuity of expression. BOSWELL.
[1188] That collection was presented to Dr. Johnson, I believe by its
authours; and I heard him speak very well of it. BOSWELL. _The Mirror_
was published in 1779-80; by 1793 it reached its ninth edition. For an
account of it see Appendix DD. to Forbes's _Beattie_. Henry Mackenzie,
the author of _The Man of Feeling_, was the chief contributor as well as
the conductor of the paper. He is given as the author of No. 16 in
Lynam's edition, p. 1.
[1189] The name of Vicesimus Knox is now scarcely known. Yet so late as
1824 his collected _Works_ were published in seven octavo volumes. The
editor says of his _Essays_ (i. iii):--'In no department of the _Belles
Lettres_ has any publication, excepting the _Spectator_, been so
extensively circulated. It has been translated into most of the European
languages.' See _ante_, i. 222, note 1; iii. 13, note 3; and iv. 330.
[1190] _Lucretius_, iii. 6.
[1191] It were to be wished, that he had imitated that great man in
every respect, and had not followed the example of Dr. Adam Smith
[_ante_, iii. 13, note 1] in ungraciously attacking his venerable _Alma
Mater_ Oxford. It must, however, be observed, that he is much less to
blame than Smith: he only objects to certain particulars; Smith to the
whole institution; though indebted for much of his learning to an
exhibition which he enjoyed for many years at Baliol College. Neither of
them, however, will do any hurt to the noblest university in the world.
While I animadvert on what appears to me exceptionable in some of the
works of Dr. Knox, I cannot refuse due praise to others of his
productions; particularly his sermons, and to the spirit with which he
maintains, against presumptuous hereticks, the consolatory doctrines
peculiar to the Christian Revelation. This he has done in a manner
equally strenuous and conciliating. Neither ought I to omit mentioning a
remarkable instance of his candour: Notwithstanding the wide difference
of our opinions, upon the important subject of University education, in
a letter to me concerning this Work, he thus expresses himself: 'I thank
you for the very great entertainment your _Life of Johnson_ gives me. It
is a most valuable work. Yours is a new species of biography. Happy for
Johnson, that he had so able a recorder of his wit and wisdom.' BOSWELL.
[1192] Dr. Knox, in his _Moral and Literary_ abstraction, may be excused
for not knowing the political regulations of his country. No senator can
be in the hands of a bailiff. BOSWELL.
[1193] It is entitled _A Continuation of Dr. J--n's Criticism on the
Poems of Gray_. The following is perhaps the best passage:--'On some
fine evening Gray had seen the moon shining on a tower such as is here
described. An owl might be peeping out from the ivy with which it was
clad. Of the observer the station might be such that the owl, now
emerged from the mantling, presented itself to his eye in profile,
skirting with the Moon's limb. All this is well. The perspective is
striking; and the picture well defined. But the poet was not contented.
He felt a desire to enlarge it; and in executing his purpose gave it
accumulation without improvement. The idea of the Owl's _complaining_ is
an artificial one; and the views on which it proceeds absurd. Gray
should have seen, that it but ill befitted the _Bird of Wisdom_ to
complain to the Moon of an intrusion which the Moon could no more help
than herself.' p. 17. Johnson wrote of this book:--'I know little of
it, for though it was sent me I never cut the leaves open. I had a
letter with it representing it to me as my own work; in such an account
to the publick there may be humour, but to myself it was neither serious
nor comical. I suspect the writer to be wrong-headed.' _Piozzi Letters_,
ii. 289. 'I was told,' wrote Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 376), 'it would
divert me, that it seems to criticise Gray, but really laughs at
Johnson. I sent for it and skimmed it over, but am not at all clear what
it means--no recommendation of anything. I rather think the author
wishes to be taken by Gray's admirers for a ridiculer of Johnson, and by
the tatter's for a censurer of Gray.' '"The cleverest parody of the
Doctor's style of criticism," wrote Sir Walter Scott, "is by John Young
of Glasgow, and is very capital."' _Croker Corres_, ii. 34.
[1194] See _ante_, iv. 59, for Burke's description of Croft's imitation.
[1195] See _ante_, ii. 465.
[1196] H.S.E.