remarkable for having got to the second edition in the space of a week.'
_Gent. Mag_. viii. 269. The price of the poem was one shilling. Pope's
satire, though sold at the same price, was longer in reaching its second
edition (_Ib_. p. 280).
[366]
'One driven by strong benevolence of soul
Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.'
Pope's _Imitations of Horace_, ii. 2. 276.
'General Oglethorpe, died 1785, earned commemoration in Pope's gallery
of worthies by his Jacobite politics. He was, however, a remarkable man.
He first directed attention to the abuses of the London jails. His
relinquishment of all the attractions of English life and fortune for
the settlement of the colony of Georgia is as romantic a story at that
of Bishop Berkeley' (Pattison's _Pope_, p. 152). It is very likely that
Johnson's regard for Oglethorpe was greatly increased by the stand that
he and his brother-trustees in the settlement of Georgia made against
slavery (see _post_, Sept. 23, 1777). 'The first principle which they
laid down in their laws was that no slave should be employed. This was
regarded at the time as their great and fundamental error; it was
afterwards repealed' (Southey's _Wesley_, i. 75). In spite, however, of
Oglethorpe's 'strong benevolence of soul' he at one time treated Charles
Wesley, who was serving as a missionary in Georgia, with great brutality
(_Ib_. p. 88). According to Benjamin Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 162)
Georgia was settled with little forethought. 'Instead of being made with
hardy industrious husbandmen, it was with families of broken
shop-keepers, and other insolvent debtors; many of idle habits, taken
out of the jails, who being set down in the woods, unqualified for
clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement,
perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for.'
Johnson wished to write Oglethorpe's life; _post_, April 10, 1775.
[367] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 548), writing of him 47 years
after _London_ was published, when he was 87 years old, says:--'His
eyes, ears, articulation, limbs, and memory would suit a boy, if a boy
could recollect a century backwards. His teeth are gone; he is a shadow,
and a wrinkled one; but his spirits and his spirit are in full bloom:
two years and a-half ago he challenged a neighbouring gentleman for
trespassing on his manor.'
[368] Once Johnson being at dinner at Sir Joshua's in company with many
painters, in the course of conversation Richardson's _Treatise on
Painting_ happened to be mentioned, 'Ah!' said Johnson, 'I remember,
when I was at college, I by chance found that book on my stairs. I took
it up with me to my chamber, and read it through, and truly I did not
think it possible to say so much upon the art.' Sir Joshua desired of
one of the company to be informed what Johnson had said; and it being
repeated to him so loud that Johnson heard it, the Doctor seemed hurt,
and added, 'But I did not wish, Sir, that Sir Joshua should have been
told what I then said.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 236. Jonathan
Richardson the painter had published several works on painting before
Johnson went to college. He and his son, Jonathan Richardson, junior,
brought out together _Explanatory Notes on Paradise Lost_.
[369] Sir Joshua Reynolds, from the information of the younger
Richardson. BOSWELL. See _post_, Oct. 16, 1769, where Johnson himself
relates this anecdote. According to Murphy, 'Pope said, "The author,
whoever he is, will not be long concealed;" alluding to the passage in
Terence [_Eun_. ii. 3, 4], _Ubi, ubi est, diu celari non potest_.'
Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 35.
[370] Such as _far_ and _air_, which comes twice; _vain_ and _man_,
_despair_ and _bar_.
[371] It is, however, remarkable, that he uses the epithet, which
undoubtedly, since the union between England and Scotland, ought to
denominate the natives of both parts of our island:--
'Was early taught a BRITON'S rights to prize.'
BOSWELL.
Swift, in his _Journal to Stella_ (Nov. 23, 1711), having to mention
England, continues:--'I never will call it _Britain_, pray don't call it
Britain.' In a letter written on Aug. 8, 1738, again mentioning England,
he adds,--'Pox on the modern phrase Great Britain, which is only to
distinguish it from Little Britain, where old clothes and old books are
to be bought and sold' (Swift's _Works_, 1803, xx. 185). George III
'gloried in being born a Briton;' _post_, 1760. Boswell thrice more at
least describes Johnson as 'a true-born Englishman;' _post_, under Feb.
7, 1775, under March 30, 1783, and Boswell's _Hebrides_ under Aug. 11,
1773. The quotation is from _Richard II_, Act i. sc. 3.
[372]
'For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land,
Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?
There none are swept by sudden fate away,
But all, whom hunger spares, with age decay.'
_London_, 1. 9-12.
[373] In the _Life of Savage_, Johnson, criticising the settlement of
colonies, as it is considered by the poet and the politician, seems to
be criticising himself. 'The politician, when he considers men driven
into other countries for shelter, and obliged to retire to forests and
deserts, and pass their lives, and fix their posterity, in the remotest
corners of the world, to avoid those hardships which they suffer or fear
in their native place, may very properly enquire, why the legislature
does not provide a remedy for these miseries, rather than encourage an
escape from them. He may conclude that the flight of every honest man is
a loss to the community.... The poet guides the unhappy fugitive from
want and persecution to plenty, quiet, and security, and seats him in
scenes of peaceful solitude, and undisturbed repose.' Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 156.
[374] Three years later Johnson wrote:--'Mere unassisted merit advances
slowly, if, what is not very common, it advances at all.' _Ib_. vi. 393.
[375] 'The busy _hum_ of men.' Milton's _L'Allegro_, 1. 118.
[376] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 21, 1773, and _post_, March 21,
1775, for Johnson's attack on Lord Chatham. In the _Life of Thomson_
Johnson wrote:--'At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert
Walpole had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man
felt the want, and with care for liberty, which was not in danger.'
Johnson's _Works_, viii. 370. Hawkins says (_Life_, p. 514);--'Of
Walpole he had a high opinion. He said of him that he was a fine fellow,
and that his very enemies deemed him so before his death. He honoured
his memory for having kept this country in peace many years, as also for
the goodness and placability of his temper.' Horace Walpole (_Letters_,
v. 509), says:--'My father alone was capable of acting on one great plan
of honesty from the beginning of his life to the end. He could for ever
wage war with knaves and malice, and preserve his temper; could know
men, and yet feel for them; could smile when opposed, and be gentle
after triumph.'
[377] Johnson in the _Life of Milton_ describes himself:--'Milton was
naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and
disdainful of help or hindrance. From his contemporaries he neither
courted nor received support; there is in his writings nothing by which
the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no
exchange of praise, nor solicitation of support.' Johnson's _Works_,
vii. 142. See _post_ Feb. 1766, for Johnson's opinion on 'courting
great men.'
[378] In a billet written by Mr. Pope in the following year, this school
is said to have been in _Shropshire_; but as it appears from a letter
from Earl Gower, that the trustees of it were 'some worthy gentlemen in
Johnson's neighbourhood,' I in my first edition suggested that Pope must
have, by mistake, written Shropshire, instead of Staffordshire. But I
have since been obliged to Mr. Spearing, attorney-at-law, for the
following information:--'William Adams, formerly citizen and haberdasher
of London, founded a school at Newport, in the county of Salop, by deed
dated 27th November, 1656, by which he granted "the yearly sum of _sixty
pounds_ to such able and learned schoolmaster, from time to time, being
of godly life and conversation, who should have been educated at one of
the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, and had taken the degree of
_Master of Arts_, and was well read in the Greek and Latin tongues, as
should be nominated from time to time by the said William Adams, during
his life, and after the decease of the said William Adams, by the
Governours (namely, the Master and Wardens of the Haberdashers' Company
of the City of London) and their successors." The manour and lands out
of which the revenues for the maintenance of the school were to issue
are situate _at Knighton and Adbaston, in the county of Stafford_.' From
the foregoing account of this foundation, particularly the circumstances
of the salary being sixty pounds, and the degree of Master of Arts being
a requisite qualification in the teacher, it seemed probable that this
was the school in contemplation; and that Lord Gower erroneously
supposed that the gentlemen who possessed the lands, out of which the
revenues issued, were trustees of the charity.
Such was probable conjecture. But in the _Gent. Mag_. for May, 1793,
there is a letter from Mr. Henn, one of the masters of the school of
Appleby, in Leicestershire, in which he writes as follows:--
'I compared time and circumstance together, in order to discover whether
the school in question might not be this of Appleby. Some of the
trustees at that period were "worthy gentlemen of the neighbourhood of
Litchfield." Appleby itself is not far from the neighbourhood of
Litchfield. The salary, the degree requisite, together with the _time of
election_, all agreeing with the statutes of Appleby. The election, as
said in the letter, "could not be delayed longer than the 11th of next
month," which was the 11th of September, just three months after the
annual audit-day of Appleby school, which is always on the 11th of June;
and the statutes enjoin _ne ullius praeceptorum electio diutius tribus
mensibus moraretur, etc_.
'These I thought to be convincing proofs that my conjecture was not
ill-founded, and that, in a future edition of that book, the
circumstance might be recorded as fact.
'But what banishes every shadow of doubt is the _Minute-book_ of the
school, which declares the headmastership to be _at that time_ VACANT.'
I cannot omit returning thanks to this learned gentleman for the very
handsome manner in which he has in that letter been so good as to speak
of this work. BOSWELL.
[379] 'What a pity it is, Sir,' said to him Sir William Scott,
afterwards Lord Stowell, 'that you did not follow the profession of the
law! You might have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain' _Post_,
April 17, 1778.
[380] See _post_, beginning of 1770.
[381] See _post_, March 21, 1775.
[382] In the _Weekly Miscellany_, October 21, 1738, there appeared the
following advertisement:--'Just published, Proposals for printing the
_History of the Council of Trent_, translated from the Italian of Father
Paul Sarpi; with the Authour's Life, and Notes theological, historical,
and critical, from the French edition of Dr. Le Courayer. To which are
added, Observations on the History, and Notes and Illustrations from
various Authours, both printed and manuscript. By S. Johnson. 1. The
work will consist of two hundred sheets, and be two volumes in quarto,
printed on good paper and letter. 2. The price will be 18_s_. each
volume, to be paid, half-a-guinea at the delivery of the first volume,
and the rest at the delivery of the second volume in sheets. 3.
Two-pence to be abated for every sheet less than two hundred. It may be
had on a large paper, in three volumes, at the price of three guineas;
one to be paid at the time of subscribing, another at the delivery of
the first, and the rest at the delivery of the other volumes. The work
is now in the press, and will be diligently prosecuted. Subscriptions
are taken in by Mr. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, Mr. Rivington in St. Paul's
Church-yard, by E. Cave at St. John's Gate, and the Translator, at No.
6, in Castle-street by Cavendish-square.' BOSWELL.
[383] They afterwards appeared in the _Gent. Mag_. [viii. 486] with this
title--'_Verses to Lady Firebrace, at Bury Assizes_.' BOSWELL.
[384] Du Halde's Description of China was then publishing by Mr. Cave in
weekly numbers, whence Johnson was to select pieces for the
embellishment of the _Magazine_. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.
[385] The premium of forty pounds proposed for the best poem on the
Divine Attributes is here alluded to. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.
[386] The Compositors in Mr. Cave's printing-office, who appear by this
letter to have then waited for copy. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.
[387] Twenty years later, when he was lodging in the Temple, he had
fasted for two days at a time; 'he had drunk tea, but eaten no bread;
this was no intentional fasting, but happened just in the course of a
literary life.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 4, 1773. See _post_, Aug.
5, 1763.
[388] Birch MSS. Brit. Mus. 4323. BOSWELL.
[389] See _post_, under Dec. 30, 1747, and Oct. 24, 1780.
[390] See _post_, 1750.
[391] This book was published. BOSWELL. I have not been able to find it.
[392] _The Historie of four-footed beasts and serpents_. By Edward
Topsell. London, 1607. Isaac Walton, in the _Complete Angler_, more than
once quotes Topsel. See p. 99 in the reprint of the first edition, where
he says:--'As our Topsel hath with great diligence observed.'
[393] In this preface he describes some pieces as 'deserving no other
fate than to be hissed, torn, and forgotten. Johnson's _Works_, v. 346.
[394] The letter to Mr. Urban in the January number of this year (p. 3)
is, I believe, by Johnson.
[395] 'Yet did Boerhaave not suffer one branch of science to withdraw
his attention from others; anatomy did not withhold him from chymistry,
nor chymistry, enchanting as it is, from the study of botany.' Johnson's
_Works_, vi. 276. See _post_, under Sept. 9, 1779.
[396] _Gent. Mag_. viii. 210, and Johnson's _Works_, i. 170.
[397] What these verses are is not clear. On p. 372 there is an epigram
_Ad Elisam Popi Horto Lauras carpentem_, of which on p. 429 there are
three translations. That by Urbanus may be Johnson's.
[398] _Ib_. p. 654, and Johnson's _Works_, i. 170. On p. 211 of this
volume of the _Gent. Mag_. is given the epigram 'To a lady who spoke in
defence of liberty.' This was 'Molly Aston' mentioned _ante_, p. 83.
[399] To the year 1739 belongs _Considerations on the Case of Dr.
T[rapp]s Sermons. Abridged by Mr. Cave, 1739_; first published in the
_Gent. Mag_. of July 1787. (See _post_ under Nov. 5, 1784, note.) Cave
had begun to publish in the _Gent. Mag_. an abridgment of four sermons
preached by Trapp against Whitefield. He stopped short in the
publication, deterred perhaps by the threat of a prosecution for an
infringement of copy-right. 'On all difficult occasions,' writes the
Editor in 1787, 'Johnson was Cave's oracle; and the paper now before us
was certainly written on that occasion.' Johnson argues that abridgments
are not only legal but also justifiable. 'The design of an abridgment is
to benefit mankind by facilitating the attainment of knowledge ... for
as an incorrect book is lawfully criticised, and false assertions justly
confuted ... so a tedious volume may no less lawfully be abridged,
because it is better that the proprietors should suffer some damage,
than that the acquisition of knowledge should be obstructed with
unnecessary difficulties, and the valuable hours of thousands thrown
away.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 465. Whether we have here Johnson's own
opinion cannot be known. He was writing as Cave's advocate. See also
Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 20, 1773.
[400] In his _Life of Thomson_ Johnson writes:--'About this time the act
was passed for licensing plays, of which the first operation was the
prohibition of _Gustavus Vasa_, a tragedy of Mr. Brooke, whom the public
recompensed by a very liberal subscription; the next was the refusal of
_Edward and Eleonora_, offered by Thomson. It is hard to discover why
either play should have been obstructed.' Johnson's Works, viii. 373.
[401] The Inscription and the Translation of it are preserved in the
_London Magazine_ for the year 1739, p. 244. BOSWELL. See Johnson's
_Works_, vi. 89.
[402] It is a little heavy in its humour, and does not compare well with
the like writings of Swift and the earlier wits.
[403] Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 72.
[404]
'Sic fatus senior, telumque imbelle sine ictu Conjecit.' 'So spake the
elder, and cast forth a toothless spear and vain.'
Morris, _Æneids_, ii. 544.
[405]
'Get all your verses printed fair,
Then let them well be dried;
And Curll must have a special care
To leave the margin wide.
Lend these to paper-sparing Pope;
And when he sits to write,
No letter with an envelope
Could give him more delight.'
_Advice to the Grub Street Verse-Writers_. (Swift's _Works_, 1803, xi
32.) Nichols, in a note on this passage, says:--'The original copy of
Pope's _Homer_ is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and
sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.' Johnson, in his
_Life of Pope_, writes:--'Of Pope's domestic character frugality was a
part eminently remarkable.... This general care must be universally
approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony,
such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters,
as may be seen in the remaining copy of the _Iliad_, by which perhaps in
five years five shillings were saved.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 312.
[406] See note, p. 132. BOSWELL.
[407] The _Marmor Norfolciense_, price one shilling, is advertised in
the _Gent. Mag_. for 1739 (p. 220) among the books for April.
[408] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 8. BOSWELL.
[409] According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Every person who knew Dr.
Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the
conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a
few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be
preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic
gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the
conversation. These were therefore improperly called convulsions, which
imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his
attention was recovered. Sometimes, indeed, it would be near a minute
before he would give an answer, looking as if he laboured to bring his
mind to bear on the question' (Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 456). 'I still,
however, think,' wrote Boswell, 'that these gestures were involuntary;
for surely had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in
the public streets' (Boswell's _Hebrides_, under date of Aug. 11, 1773,
note). Dr. T. Campbell, in his _Diary of a Visit to England_, p. 33,
writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:--'He has the aspect of an
idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one
feature--with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one
side only of his head--he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and
sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in
his absent paroxysms.' Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw
him in 1778:--'Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have
so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with
delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he
is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of
his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes of all together.' Mme.
D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 63. See _post_, under March 30, 1783, Boswell's
note on Johnson's peculiarities.
[410] 'Solitude,' wrote Reynolds, 'to him was horror; nor would he ever
trust himself alone but when employed in writing or reading. He has
often begged me to go home with him to prevent his being alone in the
coach. Any company was better than none; by which he connected himself
with many mean persons whose presence he could command.' Taylor's
_Reynolds_, ii. 455. Johnson writing to Mrs. Thrale, said:--'If the
world be worth winning, let us enjoy it; if it is to be despised, let us
despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it
is compared with something better. Company is in itself better than
solitude, and pleasure better than indolence.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 242.
In _The Idler_, No. 32, he wrote:--'Others are afraid to be alone, and
amuse themselves by a perpetual succession of companions; but the
difference is not great; in solitude we have our dreams to ourselves,
and in company we agree to dream in concert. The end sought in both is
forgetfulness of ourselves.' In _The Rambler_, No. 5, he wrote:--'It may
be laid down as a position which will seldom deceive, that when a man
cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from
himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life from the
equipoise of an empty mind ... or he must be afraid of the intrusion of
some unpleasing ideas, and, perhaps, is struggling to escape from the
remembrance of a loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other thought of
greater horror.'
Cowper, whose temperament was in some respects not unlike Johnson's,
wrote:--'A vacant hour is my abhorrence; because, when I am not
occupied, I suffer under the whole influence of my unhappy temperament.'
Southey's _Cowper_, vi. 146.
[411] Richardson was of the same way of thinking as Hogarth. Writing of
a speech made at the Oxford Commemoration of 1754 by the Jacobite Dr.
King (see _post_, Feb. 1755), he said:--'There cannot be a greater
instance of the lenity of the government he abuses than his pestilent
harangues so publicly made with impunity furnishes (_sic_) all his
readers with.'--_Rich. Corresp_. ii. 197.
[412] Impartial posterity may, perhaps, be as little inclined as Dr.
Johnson was to justify the uncommon rigour exercised in the case of Dr.
Archibald Cameron. He was an amiable and truly honest man; and his
offence was owing to a generous, though mistaken principle of duty.
Being obliged, after 1746, to give up his profession as a physician, and
to go into foreign parts, he was honoured with the rank of Colonel, both
in the French and Spanish service. He was a son of the ancient and
respectable family of Cameron, of Lochiel; and his brother, who was the
Chief of that brave clan, distinguished himself by moderation and
humanity, while the Highland army marched victorious through Scotland.
It is remarkable of this Chief, that though he had earnestly
remonstrated against the attempt as hopeless, he was of too heroick a
spirit not to venture his life and fortune in the cause, when personally
asked by him whom he thought his prince. BOSWELL.
Sir Walter Scott states, in his Introduction to _Redgauntlet_, that the
government of George II were in possession of sufficient evidence that
Dr. Cameron had returned to the Highlands, _not_, as he alleged on his
trial, for family affairs merely, but as the secret agent of the
Pretender in a new scheme of rebellion: the ministers, however,
preferred trying this indefatigable partisan on the ground of his
undeniable share in the insurrection of 1745, rather than rescuing
themselves and their master from the charge of harshness, at the expense
of making it universally known, that a fresh rebellion had been in
agitation so late as 1752. LOCKHART. He was executed on June 7, 1753.
_Gent. Mag_. xxiii. 292. Lord Campbell (_Lives of the Chancellors_, v.
109) says:--'I regard his execution as a wanton atrocity.' Horace
Walpole, however, inclined to the belief that Cameron was engaged in a
new scheme of rebellion. Walpole's _Memoirs of George II_, i. 333.