1747, 'and died extremely well: without passion, affectation,
buffoonery, or timidity; his behaviour was natural and intrepid.'
_Letters_, ii. 77.
[525] See _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_.
[526] My friend, Mr. Courtenay, whose eulogy on Johnson's Latin Poetry
has been inserted in this Work [_ante_, p. 62], is no less happy in
praising his English Poetry.
But hark, he sings! the strain ev'n Pope admires;
Indignant virtue her own bard inspires.
Sublime as juvenal he pours his lays,
And with the Roman shares congenial praise;--
In glowing numbers now he fires the age,
And Shakspeare's sun relumes the clouded stage.
BOSWELL.
[527] The play is by Ambrose Philips. 'It was concluded with the most
successful Epilogue that was ever yet spoken on the English theatre. The
three first nights it was recited twice; and not only continued to be
demanded through the run, as it is termed, of the play; but, whenever it
is recalled to the stage, where by peculiar fortune, though a copy from
the French, it yet keeps its place, the Epilogue is still expected, and
is still spoken.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 389. See _post_, April 21,
1773, note on Eustace Budgel. The Epilogue is given in vol. v. p. 228 of
Bonn's _Addison_, and the great success that it met with is described in
_The Spectator_, No. 341.
[528] Such poor stuff as the following is certainly not by Johnson:--
'Let musick sound the voice of joy!
Or mirth repeat the jocund tale;
Let Love his wanton wiles employ,
And o'er the season wine prevail.'
[529] 'Dodsley first mentioned to me the scheme of an English
Dictionary; but I had long thought of it.' _Post_, Oct. 10, 1779.
[530] It would seem from the passage to which Boswell refers that Pope
had wished that Johnson should undertake the _Dictionary_. Johnson, in
mentioning Pope, says:--'Of whom I may be justified in affirming that
were he still alive, solicitous as he was for the success of this work,
he would not be displeased that I have undertaken it.' _Works_, v. 20.
As Pope died on May 30, 1744, this renders it likely that the work was
begun earlier than Boswell thought.
[531] In the title-page of the first edition after the name of Hirch
comes that of L. Hawes.
[532] 'During the progress of the work he had received at different
times the amount of his contract; and when his receipts were produced to
him at a tavern-dinner given by the booksellers, it appeared that he had
been paid a hundred pounds and upwards more than his due.' Murphy's
_Johnson_. p. 78. See _post_, beginning of 1756.
[533] 'The truth is, that the several situations which I have been in
having made me long the _plastron_ [butt] of dedications, I am become as
callous to flattery as some people are to abuse.' Lord Chesterfield,
date of Dec. 15, 1755; Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_, iv. 266.
[534] September 22, 1777, going from Ashbourne in Derbyshire, to see
Islam. BOSWELL.
[535] Boswell here says too much, as the following passages in the
_Plan_ prove:--'Who upon this survey can forbear to wish that these
fundamental atoms of our speech might obtain the firmness and
immutability of the primogenial and constituent particles of matter?'
'Those translators who, for want of understanding the characteristical
difference of tongues, have formed a chaotick dialect of heterogeneous
phrases;' 'In one part refinement will be subtilised beyond exactness,
and evidence dilated in another beyond perspicuity.' Johnson's _Works_,
v. 12, 21, 22.
[536] Ausonius, _Epigram_ i. 12.
[537] Whitehead in 1757 succeeded Colley Cibber as poet-laureate, and
dying in 1785 was followed by Thomas Warton. From Warton the line of
succession is Pye, Southey, Wordsworth, Tennyson. See _post_, under
June 13, 1763.
[538] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 176) likewise says that the manuscript passed
through Whitehead and 'other hands' before it reached Chesterfield. Mr.
Croker had seen 'a draft of the prospectus carefully written by an
amanuensis, but signed in great form by Johnson's own hand. It was
evidently that which was laid before Lord Chesterfield. Some useful
remarks are made in his lordship's hand, and some in another. Johnson
adopted all these suggestions.'
[539] This poor piece of criticism confirms what Johnson said of Lord
Orrery:--'He grasped at more than his abilities could reach; tried to
pass for a better talker, a better writer, and a better thinker that he
was.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22, 1773. See _post_, under April
7, 1778.
[540] Birch, _MSS. Brit. Mus_. 4303. BOSWELL.
[541] 'When I survey the _Plan_ which I have laid before you, I cannot,
my Lord, but confess that I am frighted at its extent, and, like the
soldiers of Cæsar, look on Britain as a new world, which it is almost
madness to invade.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 21.
[542] There might be applied to him what he said of
Pope:--"Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
He, indeed, who forms his opinion of himself in solitude without knowing
the powers of other men, is very liable to error; but it was the
felicity of Pope to rate himself at his real value." Johnson's _Works_,
viii, 237.
[543] 'For the Teutonick etymologies I am commonly indebted to Junius
and Skinner.... Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning
and Skinner in rectitude of understanding.... Skinner is often ignorant,
but never ridiculous: Junius is always full of knowledge, but his
variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very frequently
disgraced by his absurdities.' _Ib_. v. 29. Francis Junius the younger
was born at Heidelberg in 1589, and died at Windsor, at the house of his
nephew Isaac Vossius, in 1678. His _Etymologicum Anglicanum_ was not
published till 1743. Stephen Skinner, M.D., was born in 1623, and died
in 1667. His _Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ_ was published in 1671.
Knight's _Eng. Cycle_.
[544] Thomas Richards published in 1753 _Antiquæ Linguæ Britannicæ
Thesaurus_, to which is prefixed a _Welsh Grammar_ and a collection of
British proverbs.
[545] See Sir John Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_ [p. 171], BOSWELL.
[546] 'The faults of the book resolve themselves, for the most part,
into one great fault. Johnson was a wretched etymologist.' Macaulay's
_Misc. Writings_, p. 382. See _post_, May 13, 1778, for mention of Horne
Tooke's criticism of Johnson's etymologies.
[547] 'The etymology, so far as it is yet known, was easily found in the
volumes where it is particularly and professedly delivered ... But to
COLLECT the WORDS of our language was a task of greater difficulty: the
deficiency of dictionaries was immediately apparent; and when they were
exhausted, what was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and
unguided excursions into books, and gleaned as industry should find, or
chance should offer it, in the boundless chaos of a living speech.'
Johnson's _Works_, v. 31.
[548] See _post_, under April 10, 1776. BOSWELL.
[549] 'Mr. Macbean,' said Johnson in 1778, 'is a man of great learning,
and for his learning I respect him, and I wish to serve him. He knows
many languages, and knows them well; but he knows nothing of life. I
advised him to write a geographical dictionary; but I have lost all
hopes of his ever doing anything properly, since I found he gave as much
labour to Capua as to Rome.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i, 114. See _post_
beginning of 1773, and Oct 24, 1780.
[550] Boswell is speaking of the book published under the name of
_Cibber_ mentioned above, but 'entirely compiled,' according to Johnson,
by Shiels. See _post_, April 10, 1776.
[551] See _Piozzi Letters_, i. 312, and _post_, May 21, 1775, note.
[552] 'We ourselves, not without labour and risk, lately discovered
Gough Square.... and on the second day of search the very House there,
wherein the _English Dictionary_ was composed. It is the first or corner
house on the right hand, as you enter through the arched way from the
North-west ... It is a stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house: "I
have spent many a pound and penny on it since then," said the worthy
Landlord: "here, you see, this bedroom was the Doctor's study; that was
the garden" (a plot of delved ground somewhat larger than a bed-quilt)
"where he walked for exercise; these three garret bedrooms" (where his
three [six] copyists sat and wrote) "were the place he kept
his--_pupils_ in": _Tempus edax rerum!_ Yet _ferax_ also: for our friend
now added, with a wistful look, which strove to seem merely historical:
"I let it all in lodgings, to respectable gentlemen; by the quarter or
the month; it's all one to me."--"To me also," whispered the ghost of
Samuel, as we went pensively our ways.' Carlyle's _Miscellanies_, edit,
of 1872, iv. 112.
[553] Boswell's account of the manner in which Johnson compiled his
_Dictionary_ is confused and erroneous. He began his task (as he himself
expressly described to me), by devoting his first care to a diligent
perusal of all such English writers as were most correct in their
language, and under every sentence which he meant to quote he drew a
line, and noted in the margin the first letter of the word under which
it was to occur. He then delivered these books to his clerks, who
transcribed each sentence on a separate slip of paper, and arranged the
same under the word referred to. By these means he collected the several
words and their different significations; and when the whole arrangement
was alphabetically formed, he gave the definitions of their meanings,
and collected their etymologies from Skinner, Junius, and other writers
on the subject. PERCY.
[554] 'The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own
collection, a copious but a miserably ragged one, and all such as he
could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent
them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning, and yet some of his
friends were glad to receive and entertain them as curiosities.'
Hawkins, p. 175.
[555] In the copy that he thus marked of Sir Matthew Hale's _Primitive
Origination of Mankind_, opposite the passage where it is stated, that
'Averroes says that if the world were not eternal ... it could never
have been at all, because an eternal duration must necessarily have
anteceded the first production of the world,' he has written:--'This
argument will hold good equally against the writing that I now write.'
[556] Boswell must mean 'whose writings _taken as a whole_ had a
tendency,' &c. Johnson quotes Dryden, and of Dryden he says:--'Of the
mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself
with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading the contagion in
society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation
of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be
contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had
Dryden has afforded by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.'
Johnson's _Works_, vii. 293. He quotes Congreve, and of Congreve he
says: 'It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal
of his works will make no man better; and that their ultimate effect is
to represent pleasure in alliance with vice, and to relax those
obligations by which life ought to be regulated.' _Ib_. viii. 28. He
would not quote Dr. Clarke, much as he admired him, because he was not
sound upon the doctrine of the Trinity. _Post_, Dec., 1784, note.
[557] In the _Plan to the Dictionary_, written in 1747, he describes his
task as one that 'may be successfully performed without any higher
quality than that of bearing burdens with dull patience, and beating the
track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution.' _Works_, v. 1. In 1751,
in the _Rambler_, No. 141, he thus pleasantly touches on his work: 'The
task of every other slave [except the 'wit'] has an end. The rower in
time reaches the port; the lexicographer at last finds the conclusion of
his alphabet.' On April 15, 1755, he writes to his friend Hector:--'I
wish, come of wishes what will, that my work may please you, as much as
it now and then pleased me, for I did not find dictionary making so very
unpleasant as it may be thought.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. 111, 301.
He told Dr. Blacklock that 'it was easier to him to write poetry than to
compose his _Dictionary_. His mind was less on the stretch in doing the
one than the other.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 17, 1773.
[558] The well-known picture of the company at Tunbridge Wells in Aug.
1748, with the references in Richardson's own writing, is given as a
frontispiece to vol. iii. of Richardson's _Correspondence_. There can be
no doubt that the figure marked by Richardson as Dr. Johnson is not
Samuel Johnson, who did not receive a doctor's degree till more than
four years after Richardson's death.
[559] 'Johnson hardly ever spoke of Bathurst without tears in his eyes.'
Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 56. Mrs. Piozzi, after recording an anecdote that
he had related to her of his childhood, continues:--'"I cannot imagine,"
said he, "what makes me talk of myself to you so, for I really never
mentioned this foolish story to anybody except Dr. Taylor, not even to
my dear, dear Bathurst, whom I loved better than ever I loved any human
creature; but poor Bathurst is dead!" Here a long pause and a few tears
ensued.' Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 18. Another day he said to her:--'Dear
Bathurst was a man to my very heart's content: he hated a fool, and he
hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig; he was a very good hater.' _Ib_. p.
83. In his _Meditations on Easter-Day_, 1764, he records:--'After sermon
I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother,
brother, and Bathurst in another.' _Pr. and Med_., p. 54. See also
_post_, under March 18, 1752, and 1780 in Mr. Langton's _Collection_.
[560] Of Hawkesworth Johnson thus wrote: 'An account of Dr. Swift has
been already collected, with great diligence and acuteness, by Dr.
Hawkesworth, according to a scheme which I laid before him in the
intimacy of our friendship. I cannot therefore be expected to say much
of a life concerning which I had long since communicated my thoughts to
a man capable of dignifying his narrations with so much elegance of
language and force of sentiment.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 192.
Hawkesworth was an imitator of Johnson's style; _post_, under Jan.
1, 1753.
[561] He was afterwards for several years Chairman of the Middlesex
justices, and upon occasion of presenting an address to the King,
accepted the usual offer of Knighthood. He is authour of 'A History of
Musick,' in five volumes in quarto. By assiduous attendance upon Johnson
in his last illness, he obtained the office of one of his executors; in
consequence of which, the booksellers of London employed him to publish
an edition of Dr. Johnson's works, and to write his Life. BOSWELL. This
description of Hawkins, as 'Mr. John Hawkins, an attorney,' is a reply
to his description of Boswell as 'Mr. James Boswell, a native of
Scotland.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 472. According to Miss Hawkins,
'Boswell complained to her father of the manner in which he was
described. Where was the offence? It was one of those which a
complainant hardly dares to embody in words; he would only repeat,
"Well, but _Mr. James Boswell_, surely, surely, _Mr. James Boswell_"'
Miss Hawkins's _Memoirs_, i. 235. Boswell in thus styling Hawkins
remembered no doubt Johnson's sarcasm against attorneys. See _post_,
1770, in Dr. Maxwell's _Collectanea_. Hawkins's edition of _Johnson's
Works_ was published in 1787-9, in 13 vols., 8vo., the last two vols.
being edited by Stockdale. In vol. xi. is a collection of Johnson's
sayings, under the name of _Apothegms_, many of which I quote in
my notes.
[562] Boswell, it is clear, has taken his account of the club from
Hawkins, who writes:--'Johnson had, in the winter of 1749, formed a club
that met weekly at the King's Head, a famous beef-steak house in Ivy
Lane, near St. Paul's, every Tuesday evening. Thither he constantly
resorted with a disposition to please and be pleased. Our conversations
seldom began till after a supper so very solid and substantial as led us
to think that with him it was a dinner.
'By the help of this refection, and no other incentive to hilarity than
lemonade, Johnson was in a short time after our assembling transformed
into a new creature; his habitual melancholy and lassitude of spirit
gave way; his countenance brightened.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, pp. 219,
250. Other parts of Hawkins's account do not agree with passages in
Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale written in 1783-4. 'I dined about a
fortnight ago with three old friends [Hawkins, Ryland, and Payne]; we
had not met together for thirty years. In the thirty years two of our
set have died.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 339. 'We used to meet weekly about
the year fifty.' _Ib_. p. 361. 'The people whom I mentioned in my letter
are the remnant of a little club that used to meet in Ivy Lane about
three and thirty years ago, out of which we have lost Hawkesworth and
Dyer, the rest are yet on this side the grave.' _Ib_. p. 363. Hawkins
says the club broke up about 1756 (_Life_, p. 361). Johnson in the first
of the passages says they had not met at all for thirty years--that is
to say, not since 1753; while in the last two passages he implies that
their weekly meetings came to an end about 1751. I cannot understand
moreover how, if Bathurst, 'his beloved friend,' belonged to the club,
Johnson should have forgotten it. Bathurst died in the expedition to the
Havannah about 1762. Two others of those given in Hawkins's list were
certainly dead by 1783. M'Ghie, who died while the club existed (_Ib_.
p. 361), and Dr. Salter. A writer in the _Builder_ (Dec. 1884) says,
'The King's Head was burnt down twenty-five years ago, but the cellarage
remains beneath No. 4, Alldis's dining-rooms, on the eastern side.'
[563] Tom Tyers said that Johnson 'in one night composed, after
finishing an evening in Holborn, his _Hermit of Teneriffe_.' _Gent.
Mag_. for 1784, p. 901. The high value that he set on this piece may be
accounted for in his own words. 'Many causes may vitiate a writer's
judgment of his own works.... What has been produced without toilsome
efforts is considered with delight, as a proof of vigorous faculties and
fertile invention.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 110. He had said much the
same thirty years earlier in _The Rambler_ (No. 21).
[564] 'On January 9 was published, long wished, another satire from
Juvenal, by the author of _London.' Gent. Mag_. xviii. 598, 9.
[565] Sir John Hawkins, with solemn inaccuracy, represents this poem as
a consequence of the indifferent reception of his tragedy. But the fact
is, that the poem was published on the 9th of January, and the tragedy
was not acted till the 6th of the February following. BOSWELL. Hawkins
perhaps implies what Boswell says that he represents; but if so, he
implies it by denying it. Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 201.
[566] 'I wrote,' he said, 'the first seventy lines in _The Vanity of
Human Wishes_ in the course of one morning in that small house beyond
the church at Hampstead.' _Works_ (1787), xi. 212.
[567] See _post_ under Feb. 15, 1766. That Johnson did not think that in
hasty composition there is any great merit, is shewn by _The Rambler_,
No. 169, entitled _Labour necessary to excellence_. There he describes
'pride and indigence as the two great hasteners of modern poems.' He
continues:--'that no other method of attaining lasting praise [than
_multa dies et multa litura_] has been yet discovered may be conjectured
from the blotted manuscripts of Milton now remaining, and from the tardy
emission of Pope's compositions.' He made many corrections for the later
editions of his poem.
[568] 'Nov. 25, 1748. I received of Mr. Dodsley fifteen guineas, for
which assign to him the right of copy of an imitation of the _Tenth
Satire of Juvenal_, written by me; reserving to myself the right of
printing one edition. SAM. JOHNSON.'
'London, 29 June, 1786. A true copy, from the original in Dr. Johnson's
handwriting. JAS. DODSLEY. BOSWELL.
_London_ was sold at a shilling a copy. Johnson was paid at the rate of
about 9-1/2_d_. a line for this poem; for _The Vanity of Human Wishes_
at the rate of about 10_d_. a line. Dryden by his engagement with Jacob
Tonson (see Johnson's _Works_, vii. 298) undertook to furnish 10,000
verses at a little over 6_d_. a verse. Goldsmith was paid for _The
Traveller_ £21, or about 11-1/2_d_. a line.
[569] He never published it. See _post_ under Dec. 9, 1784.
[570] 'Jan. 9, 1821. Read Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_,--all the
examples and mode of giving them sublime, as well as the latter part,
with the exception of an occasional couplet. I do not so much admire the
opening. The first line, 'Let observation,' etc., is certainly heavy and
useless. But 'tis a grand poem--and so _true_!--true as the Tenth of
Juvenal himself. The lapse of ages changes all things--time--language--
the earth--the bounds of the sea--the stars of the sky, and everything
"about, around, and underneath" man, _except man himself_. The infinite
variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead
but to disappointment.' _Byron_, vol. v. p. 66. WRIGHT. Sir Walter Scott
said 'that he had more pleasure in reading _London_, and _The Vanity of
Human Wishes _than any other poetical composition he could mention.'
Lockhart's _Scott_, iii. 269. Mr. Lockhart adds that 'the last line of
MS. that Scott sent to the press was a quotation from _The Vanity of
Human Wishes_.' Of the first lines
'Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind from China to Peru,'
De Quincey quotes the criticism of some writer, who 'contends with some
reason that this is saying in effect:--"Let observation with extensive
observation observe mankind extensively."' De Quincey's _Works_, x. 72.
[571] From Mr. Langton. BOSWELL.
[572] In this poem one of the instances mentioned of unfortunate learned
men is _Lydiat_:
'Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end.'
The history of Lydiat being little known, the following account of him
may be acceptable to many of my readers. It appeared as a note in the
Supplement to the _Gent. Mag_. for 1748, in which some passages
extracted from Johnson's poem were inserted, and it should have been
added in the subsequent editions.--A very learned divine and
mathematician, fellow of New College, Oxon, and Rector of Okerton, near
Banbury. He wrote, among many others, a Latin treatise _De Natura call_,
etc., in which he attacked the sentiments of Scaliger and Aristotle, not
bearing to hear it urged, _that some things are true in philosophy and
false in divinity_. He made above 600 Sermons on the harmony of the
Evangelists. Being unsuccessful in publishing his works, he lay in the
prison of Bocardo at Oxford, and in the King's Bench, till Bishop Usher,
Dr. Laud, Sir William Boswell, and Dr. Pink, released him by paying his
debts. He petitioned King Charles I. to be sent into Ethiopia, etc., to
procure MSS. Having spoken in favour of Monarchy and bishops, he was
plundered by the parliament forces, and twice carried away prisoner from
his rectory; and afterwards had not a shirt to shift him in three
months, without he borrowed it, and died very poor in 1646. BOSWELL.
[573] Psalm xc. 12.
[574] In the original _Inquirer_.
[575] '... nonumque prematur in annum.' Horace, _Ars Poet_. l. 388.
[576] 'Of all authors,' wrote Johnson, 'those are the most wretched who
exhibit their productions on the theatre, and who are to propitiate
first the manager and then the public. Many an humble visitant have I
followed to the doors of these lords of the drama, seen him touch the
knocker with a shaking hand, and after long deliberation adventure to
solicit entrance by a single knock.' _Works_, v. 360.
[577] Mahomet was, in fact, played by Mr. Barry, and Demetrius by Mr.
Garrick: but probably at this time the parts were not yet cast. BOSWELL.
[578] The expression used by Dr. Adams was 'soothed.' I should rather
think the audience was _awed_ by the extraordinary spirit and dignity of
the following lines: