that time, living in his house at Lichfield. Miss Seward (_Letters_, i.
116) says that 'she boarded in Lichfield with his mother.' Some passages
in other of his letters (Croker's _Boswell_, pp. 144, 145, 173) lead me
to think that she stayed on in this house till 1766, when she had built
herself a house with money left her by her brother.
[321] See _post_, Oct. 10, 1779.
[322] He could scarcely have solicited a worse manager. Horace Walpole
writing in 1744 (_Letters_, i. 332) says: 'The town has been trying all
this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage very boisterously.
Fleetwood, the master of Drury-Lane, has omitted nothing to support them
as they supported his house. About ten days ago, he let into the pit
great numbers of Bear-garden _bruisers_ (that is the term) to knock down
everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out.'
[323] It was not till volume v. that Cave's name was given on the
title-page. In volumes viii. and ix., and volumes xii. to xvii. the name
is Edward Cave, Jun. Cave in his examination before the House of Lords
on April 30, 1747, said:--'That he was concerned in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ at first with his nephew; and since the death of his nephew he
has done it entirely himself.' _Parl. Hist_. xiv. 59.
[324] Its sale, according to Johnson, was ten thousand copies. _Post_,
April 25, 1778. So popular was it that before it had completed its ninth
year the fifth edition of some of the earliest numbers was printed.
Johnson's _Works_, v. 349. In the _Life of Cave_ Johnson describes it as
'a periodical pamphlet, of which the scheme is known wherever the
English language is spoken.' _Ib_. vi. 431.
[325] Yet the early numbers contained verses as grossly indecent as they
were dull. Cave moreover advertised indecent books for sale at St.
John's Gate, and in one instance, at least, the advertisement was in
very gross language.
[326] See _post_, April 25, 1778.
[327] While in the course of my narrative I enumerate his writings, I
shall take care that my readers shall not be left to waver in doubt,
between certainty and conjecture, with regard to their authenticity;
and, for that purpose, shall mark with an _asterisk_ (*) those which he
acknowledged to his friends, and with a _dagger_ (dagger) those which
are ascertained to be his by internal evidence. When any other pieces
are ascribed to him, I shall give my reasons. BOSWELL.
[328] Hawkins says that 'Cave had few of those qualities that constitute
the character of urbanity. Upon the first approach of a stranger his
practice was to continue sitting, and for a few minutes to continue
silent. If at any time he was inclined to begin the discourse, it was
generally by putting a leaf of the _Magazine_ then in the press into the
hand of his visitor and asking his opinion of it. He was so incompetent
a judge of Johnson's abilities that, meaning at one time to dazzle him
with the splendour of some of those luminaries in literature who
favoured him with their correspondence, he told him that, if he would in
the evening be at a certain alehouse in the neighbourhood of
Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne and another or
two of the persons mentioned in the preceding note. [The note contained
the names of some of Cave's regular writers.] Johnson accepted the
invitation; and being introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's
coat, and such a great bushy uncombed wig as he constantly wore, to the
sight of Mr. Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long
table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had his curiosity gratified.' [Mr.
Carlyle writes of 'bushy-wigged Cave;' but it was Johnson whose wig is
described, and not Cave's. On p. 327 Hawkins again mentions his 'great
bushy wig,' and says that 'it was ever nearly as impenetrable by a comb
as a quickset hedge.'] Hawkins's _Johnson_, pp. 45-50. Johnson, after
mentioning Cave's slowness, says: 'The same chillness of mind was
observable in his conversation; he was watching the minutest accent of
those whom he disgusted by seeming inattention; and his visitant was
surprised, when he came a second time, by preparations to execute the
scheme which he supposed never to have been heard.' Johnson's
_Works_, vi. 434.
[329] 'The first lines put one in mind of Casimir's Ode to Pope Urban:--
"Urbane, regum maxime, maxime
Urbane vatum."
The Polish poet was probably at that time in the hands of a man who had
meditated the history of the Latin poets.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 42.
[330] Cave had been grossly attacked by rival booksellers; see _Gent.
Mag_., viii. 156. Hawkins says (_Life_, p. 92), 'With that sagacity
which we frequently observe, but wonder at, in men of slow parts, he
seemed to anticipate the advice contained in Johnson's ode, and forbore
a reply, though not his revenge.' This he gratified by reprinting in his
own Magazine one of the most scurrilous and foolish attacks.
[331] A translation of this Ode, by an unknown correspondent, appeared
in the _Magazine_ for the month of May following:
'Hail, URBAN! indefatigable man,
Unwearied yet by all thy useful toil!
Whom num'rous slanderers assault in vain;
Whom no base calumny can put to foil.
But still the laurel on thy learned brow
Flourishes fair, and shall for ever grow.
'What mean the servile imitating crew,
What their vain blust'ring, and their empty noise,
Ne'er seek: but still thy noble ends pursue,
Unconquer'd by the rabble's venal voice.
Still to the Muse thy studious mind apply,
Happy in temper as in industry.
'The senseless sneerings of an haughty tongue,
Unworthy thy attention to engage,
Unheeded pass: and tho' they mean thee wrong,
By manly silence disappoint their rage.
Assiduous diligence confounds its foes,
Resistless, tho' malicious crouds oppose.
'Exert thy powers, nor slacken in the course,
Thy spotless fame shall quash all false reports:
Exert thy powers, nor fear a rival's force,
But thou shalt smile at all his vain efforts;
Thy labours shall be crown'd with large success;
The Muse's aid thy Magazine shall bless.
'No page more grateful to th' harmonious nine
Than that wherein thy labours we survey;
Where solemn themes in fuller splendour shine,
(Delightful mixture,) blended with the gay,
Where in improving, various joys we find,
A welcome respite to the wearied mind.
'Thus when the nymphs in some fair verdant mead,
Of various flowr's a beauteous wreath compose,
The lovely violet's azure-painted head
Adds lustre to the crimson-blushing rose.
Thus splendid Iris, with her varied dye,
Shines in the aether, and adorns the sky. BRITON.'
BOSWELL.
[332] 'I have some reason to think that at his first coming to town he
frequented Slaughter's coffee-house with a view to acquire a habit of
speaking French, but he never could attain to it. Lockman used the same
method and succeeded, as Johnson himself once told me.' Hawkins's
_Johnson_, p. 516. Lockman is _l'ilustre Lockman_ mentioned _post_,
1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_. It was at 'Old Slaughter's
Coffee-house, when a number of foreigners were talking loud about little
matters, that Johnson one evening said, "Does not this confirm old
Meynell's observation, _For anything I see, foreigners are fools_"?'
_post_, ib.
[333] He had read Petrarch 'when but a boy;' _ante_, p. 57.
[334] Horace Walpole, writing of the year 1770, about libels, says:
'Their excess was shocking, and in nothing more condemnable than in the
dangers they brought on the liberty of the press.' This evil was chiefly
due to 'the spirit of the Court, which aimed at despotism, and the
daring attempts of Lord Mansfield to stifle the liberty of the press.
His innovations had given such an alarm that scarce a jury would find
the rankest satire libellous.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iv.
167. Smollett in _Humphrey Clinker_ (published in 1771) makes Mr.
Bramble write, in his letter of June 2: 'The public papers are become
the infamous vehicles of the most cruel and perfidious defamation; every
rancorous knave--every desperate incendiary, that can afford to spend
half-a-crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a
newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom,
without running the least hazard of detection or punishment.' The
scribblers who had of late shewn their petulance were not always
obscure. Such scurrilous but humorous pieces as _Probationary Odes for
the Laureateship_, _The Rolliad_, and _Royal Recollections_, which were
all published while Boswell was writing _The Life of Johnson_, were
written, there can be little doubt, by men of position. In the first of
the three (p. 27) Boswell is ridiculed. He is made to say:--'I know
Mulgrave is a bit of a poet as well as myself; for I dined in company
once where he dined that very day twelve-month.' This evil of libelling
had extended to America. Benjamin Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 148), writing
in 1784, says that 'libelling and personal abuse have of late years
become so disgraceful to our country. Many of our printers make no
scruple of gratifying the malice of individuals by false accusations of
the fairest characters.'
[335] Boswell perhaps refers to a book published in 1758, called _The
Case of Authors by Profession. Gent. Mag_. xxviii. 130. Guthrie applies
the term to himself in the letter below.
[336] How much poetry he wrote, I know not: but he informed me, that he
was the authour of the beautiful little piece, _The Eagle and Robin
Redbreast_, in the collection of poems entitled _The Union_, though it
is there said to be written by Archibald Scott, before the year 1600.
BOSWELL. Mr. P. Cunningham has seen a letter of Jos. Warton's which
states that this poem was written by his brother Tom, who edited the
volume. CROKER.
[337] Dr. A. Carlyle in his _Autobiography_ (p. 191) describes a curious
scene that he witnessed in the British Coffee-house. A Captain Cheap
'was employed by Lord Anson to look out for a proper person to write his
voyage. Cheap had a predilection for his countrymen, and having heard of
Guthrie, he had come down to the coffee-house to inquire about him. Not
long after Cheap had sat down, Guthrie arrived, dressed in laced
clothes, and talking loud to everybody, and soon fell awrangling with a
gentleman about tragedy and comedy and the unities, &c., and laid down
the law of the drama in a peremptory manner, supporting his arguments
with cursing and swearing. I saw Cheap was astonished, when, going to
the bar, he asked who this was, and finding it was Guthrie he paid his
coffee and slunk off in silence.' Guthrie's meanness is shown by the
following letter in D'Israeli's _Calamities of Authors_, i. 5:--
'June 3, 1762.
'My Lord,
'In the year 1745-6 Mr. Pelham, then First Lord of the Treasury,
acquainted me that it was his Majesty's pleasure I should receive till
better provided for, which never has happened, 200£. a year, to be paid
by him and his successors in the Treasury. I was satisfied with the
august name made use of, and the appointment has been regularly and
quarterly paid me ever since. I have been equally punctual in doing the
Government all the services that fell within my abilities or sphere of
life, especially in those critical situations that call for unanimity in
the service of the Crown.
'Your Lordship may possibly now suspect that I am an Author by
profession; you are not deceived; and will be less so, if you believe
that I am disposed to serve his Majesty under your Lordship's future
patronage and protection with greater zeal, if possible, than ever.
'I have the honour to be
'My Lord &c.
'WILLIAM GUTHRIE.'
The lord's name is not given. See _post_, spring of 1768, and 1780 in
Mr. Langton's _Collection_ for further mention of Guthrie.
[338] Perhaps there were Scotticisms for Johnson to correct; for
Churchill in _The Author_, writing of Guthrie, asks:--
'With rude unnatural jargon to support Half _Scotch_, half _English_, a
declining Court
* * * * *
Is there not Guthrie?'
_Churchill's Poems_, ii. 39.
[339] See Appendix A.
[340] Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, ii. l. 71.
[341] 'To give the world assurance of a man.' _Hamlet_, Act iii. sc. 4.
[342] In his _Life of Pope_ Johnson says: 'This mode of imitation ...
was first practised in the reign of Charles II. by Oldham and Rochester;
at least I remember no instances more ancient. It is a kind of middle
composition between translation and original design, which pleases when
the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable and the parallels lucky. It
seems to have been Pope's favourite amusement, for he has carried it
farther than any former poet.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 295.
[343] I own it pleased me to find amongst them one trait of the manners
of the age in London, in the last century, to shield from the sneer of
English ridicule, which was some time ago too common a practice in my
native city of Edinburgh:--
'If what I've said can't from the town affright,
Consider other _dangers of the night_;
When brickbats are from upper stories thrown,
And _emptied chamberpots come pouring down
From garret windows_.'
BOSWELL.
See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 14, 1773, where Johnson, on taking his
first walk in Edinburgh, 'grumbled in Boswell's ear, "I smell you in the
dark."' I once spent a night in a town of Corsica, on the great road
between Ajaccio and Bastia, where, I was told, this Edinburgh practice
was universal. It certainly was the practice of the hotel.
[344] His Ode _Ad Urbanum_ probably. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.
[345] Johnson, on his death-bed, had to own that 'Cave was a penurious
paymaster; he would contract for lines by the hundred, and expect the
long hundred.' See _post_, Dec. 1784.
[346] Cave sent the present by Johnson to the unknown author.
[347] See _post_, p. 151, note 5.
[348] The original letter has the following additional paragraph:--'I
beg that you will not delay your answer.'
[349] In later life Johnson strongly insisted on the importance of fully
dating all letters. After giving the date in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he
would add,--'Now there is a date, look at it' (_Piozzi Letters_, ii.
109); or, 'Mark that--you did not put the year to your last' (_Ib_. p.
112); or, 'Look at this and learn' (_Ib_. p. 138). She never did learn.
The arrangement of the letters in the _Piozzi Letters_ is often very
faulty. For an omission of the date by Johnson in late life see _post_,
under March 5, 1774.
[350] A poem, published in 1737, of which see an account under April 30,
1773--BOSWELL.
[351] The learned Mrs. Elizabeth Carter. BOSWELL. She was born Dec.
1717, and died Feb. 19, 1806. She never married. Her father gave her a
learned education. Dr. Johnson, speaking of some celebrated scholar
[perhaps Langton], said, 'that he understood Greek better than any one
whom he he had ever known, except Elizabeth Carter.' Pennington's
_Carter_, i. 13. Writing to her in 1756 he said, 'Poor dear Cave! I owed
him much; for to him I owe that I have known you' (_Ib_. p. 40). Her
father wrote to her on June 25, 1738:--'You mention Johnson; but that is
a name with which I am utterly unacquainted, Neither his scholastic,
critical, or poetical character ever reached my ears. I a little suspect
his judgement, if he is very fond of Martial' (_Ib_. p. 39). Since 1734
she had written verses for the _Gent. Mag_. under the name of Eliza
(_Ib_. p. 37)! They are very poor. Her _Ode to Melancholy_ her
biographer calls her best. How bad it is three lines will show:--
'Here, cold to pleasure's airy forms,
Consociate with my sister worms,
And mingle with the dead.'
_Gent. Mag_. ix. 599.
Hawkins records that Johnson, upon hearing a lady commended for her
learning, said:--'A man is in general better pleased when he has a good
dinner upon his table than when his wife talks Greek. My old friend,
Mrs. Carter, could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus.'
Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 205. Johnson, joining her with Hannah More
and Fanny Burney, said:--'Three such women are not to be found.' _Post_,
May 15, 1784.
[352] See Voltaire's _Siécle de Louis XIV_, ch. xxv..
[353] At the end of his letter to Cave, quoted _post_, 1742, he
says:--'The boy found me writing this almost in the dark, when I could
not quite easily read yours.' A man who at times was forced to walk the
streets, for want of money to pay for a lodging, was likely also at
times to be condemned to idleness for want of a light.
[354] At the back of this letter is written: 'Sir, Please to publish the
enclosed in your paper of first, and place to acc't of Mr. Edward Cave.
For whom I am, Sir, your hum. ser't J. Bland. St. John's Gate, April 6,
1738.' _London_ therefore was written before April 6.
[355] Boswell misread the letter. Johnson does not offer to allow the
printer to make alterations. He says:--'I will take the trouble of
altering any stroke of satire which you may dislike.' The law against
libel was as unjust as it was severe, and printers ran a great risk.
[356] Derrick was not merely a poet, but also Master of the Ceremonies
at Bath; _post_, May 16, 1763. For Johnson's opinion of _his_ 'Muse' see
_post_ under March 30, 1783. _Fortune, a Rhapsody_, was published in
Nov. 1751. _Gent. Mag_. xxi. 527. He is described in _Humphrey Clinker_
in the letters of April 6 and May 6.
[357] See _post_, March 20, 1776.
[358] Six years later Johnson thus wrote of Savage's _Wanderer_:--'From
a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it might be
reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantage;
nor can it without some degree of indignation and concern be told, that
he sold the copy for ten guineas.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 131. Mrs.
Piozzi sold in 1788 the copyright of her collection of Johnson's Letters
for £500; _post_, Feb. 1767.
[359] The Monks of Medmenham Abbey. See Almon's _Life of Wilkes_, iii.
60, for Wilkes's account of this club. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, i. 92)
calls Whitehead 'an infamous, but not despicable poet.'
[360] From _The Conference_, Churchill's _Poems_, ii. 15.
[361] In the _Life of Pope_ Johnson writes:--'Paul Whitehead, a small
poet, was summoned before the Lords for a poem called _Manners_,
together with Dodsley his publisher. Whitehead, who hung loose upon
society, sculked and escaped; but Dodsley's shop and family made his
appearance necessary.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 297. _Manners_ was
published in 1739. Dodsley was kept in custody for a week. _Gent. Mag_.
ix. 104. 'The whole process was supposed to be intended rather to
intimidate Pope [who in his _Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-Eight_ had
given offence] than to punish Whitehead, and it answered that purpose.'
CHALMERS, quoted in _Parl. Hist_. x. 1325
[362] Sir John Hawkins, p. 86, tells us:--'The event is _antedated_, in
the poem of _London_; but in every particular, except the difference of
a year, what is there said of the departure of Thales, must be
understood of Savage, and looked upon as _true history_.' This
conjecture is, I believe, entirely groundless. I have been assured, that
Johnson said he was not so much as acquainted with Savage when he wrote
his _London_. If the departure mentioned in it was the departure of
Savage, the event was not _antedated_ but _foreseen_; for _London_ was
published in May, 1738, and Savage did not set out for Wales till July,
1739. However well Johnson could defend the credibility of _second
sight_ [see _post_, Feb. 1766], he did not pretend that he himself was
possessed of that faculty. BOSWELL. I am not sure that Hawkins is
altogether wrong in his account. Boswell does not state _of his own
knowledge_ that Johnson was not acquainted with Savage when he wrote
_London_. The death of Queen Caroline in Nov. 1737 deprived Savage of
her yearly bounty, and 'abandoned him again to fortune' (Johnson's
_Works_, viii. 166). The elegy on her that he composed on her birth-day
(March 1) brought him no reward. He was 'for some time in suspense,' but
nothing was done. 'He was in a short time reduced to the lowest degree
of distress, and often wanted both lodging and food' (_Ib_. p. 169). His
friends formed a scheme that 'he should retire into Wales.' 'While this
scheme was ripening' he lodged 'in the liberties of the Fleet, that he
might be secure from his creditors' (_Ib_. p. 170). After many delays a
subscription was at length raised to provide him with a small pension,
and he left London in July 1739 (_Ib_. p 173). _London_, as I have
shewn, was written before April 6, 1738. That it was written with great
rapidity we might infer from the fact that a hundred lines of _The
Vanity of Human Wishes_ were written in a day. At this rate _London_
might have been the work of three days. That it was written in a very
short time seems to be shown by a passage in the first of these letters
to Cave. Johnson says:--'When I took the liberty of writing to you a few
days ago, I did not expect a repetition of the same pleasure so soon;
... but having the enclosed poem, &c.' It is probable that in these few
days the poem was written. If we can assume that Savage's elegy was sent
to the Court not later than March 1--it may have been sent earlier--and
that Johnson's poem was written in the last ten days of March, we have
three weeks for the intervening events. They are certainly not more than
sufficient, if indeed they are sufficient. The coincidence is certainly
very striking between Thales's retirement to 'Cambria's solitary shore'
and Savage's retirement to Wales. There are besides lines in the
poem--additions to Juvenal and not translations--which curiously
correspond with what Johnson wrote of Savage in his _Life_. Thus he says
that Savage 'imagined that he should be transported to scenes of flowery
felicity; ... he could not bear ... to lose the opportunity of
listening, without intermission, to the melody of the nightingale, which
he believed was to be heard from every bramble, and which he did not
fail to mention as a very important part of the happiness of a country
life' (_Ib_. p. 170). In like manner Thales prays to find:--
'Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play,
Some peaceful vale, with nature's paintings gay.
* * * * *
There every bush with nature's musick rings;
There every breeze bears health upon its wings.'
Mr. Croker objects that 'if Thales had been Savage, Johnson could never
have admitted into his poem two lines that point so forcibly at the
drunken fray, in which Savage stabbed a Mr. Sinclair, for which he was
convicted of _murder_:--
"Some frolic _drunkard_, reeling from a feast,
_Provokes_ a broil, and _stabs_ you in a jest."'
But here Johnson is following Juvenal. Mr. Croker forgets that, if
Savage was convicted of murder, 'he was soon after admitted to bail, and
pleaded the King's pardon.' 'Persons of distinction' testified that he
was 'a modest inoffensive man, not inclined to broils or to insolence;'
the witnesses against him were of the lowest character, and his judge
had shewn himself as ignorant as he was brutal. Sinclair had been
drinking in a brothel, and Savage asserted that he had stabbed him 'by
the necessity of self defence' (_Ib_. p. 117). It is, however, not
unlikely that Wales was suggested to Johnson as Thales's retreat by
Swift's lines on Steele, in _Miscellanies in Prose and Verse_ (v. 181),
published only three years before _London_:--
'Thus Steele who owned what others writ,
And flourished by imputed wit,
From perils of a hundred jails
Withdrew to starve and die in Wales.'
[363] The first dialogue was registered at Stationers' Hall, 12th May,
1738, under the title _One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight_. The
second dialogue was registered 17th July, 1738, as _One Thousand Seven
Hundred and Thirty Eight, Dialogue_ 2. Elwin's _Pope_, iii. 455.
David Hume was in London this spring, finding a publisher for his first
work, _A Treatise of Human Nature_. J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 66.
[364] Pope had published _Imitations of Horace_.