objections that had been raised against the relief. 'We know that for
the prisoners of war there is no legal provision; we see their distress
and are certain of its cause; we know that they are poor and naked, and
poor and naked without a crime.... The opponents of this charity must
allow it to be good, and will not easily prove it not to be the best.
That charity is best of which the consequences are most extensive; the
relief of enemies has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal
affection.' The Committee for which Johnson's paper was written began
its work in Dec. 1759. In the previous month of October Wesley records
in his _Journal (ii. 461):--'I walked up to Knowle, a mile from Bristol,
to see the French prisoners. Above eleven hundred of them, we were
informed, were confined in that little place, without anything to lie on
but a little dirty straw, or anything to cover them but a few foul thin
rags, either by day or by night, so that they died like rotten sheep. I
was much affected, and preached in the evening on _Exodus_ xxiii. 9.'
Money was at once contributed, and clothing bought. 'It was not long
before contributions were set on foot in various parts of the Kingdom.'
On Oct. 24 of the following year, he records:--'I visited the French
prisoners at Knowle, and found many of them almost naked again.' _Ib_.
iii. 23. 'The prisoners,' wrote Hume (_Private Corres_. p. 55),
'received food from the public, but it was thought that their own
friends would supply them with clothes, which, however, was found after
some time to be neglected.' The cry arose that the brave and gallant
men, though enemies, were perishing with cold in prison; a subscription
was set on foot; great sums were given by all ranks of people; and,
notwithstanding the national foolish prejudices against the French, a
remarkable zeal everywhere appeared for this charity. I am afraid that
M. Rousseau could not have produced many parallel instances among his
heroes, the Greeks; and still fewer among the Romans. Baretti, in his
_Journey from London to Genoa_ (i. 62, 66), after telling how on all
foreigners, even on a Turk wearing a turban, 'the pretty appellation of
_French dog_ was liberally bestowed by the London rabble,'
continues:--'I have seen the populace of England contribute as many
shillings as they could spare towards the maintenance of the French
prisoners; and I have heard a universal shout of joy when their
parliament voted £100,000 to the Portuguese on hearing of the tremendous
earthquake.'
[1054] Johnson's _Works_, vi. 81. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 16,
1773, where Johnson describes Mary as 'such a Queen as every man of any
gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for.' 'There are,'
wrote Hume, 'three events in our history which may be regarded as
touchstones of party-men. An English Whig who asserts the reality of the
popish plot, an Irish Catholic who denies the massacre in 1641, and a
Scotch Jacobite who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary, must be
considered as men beyond the reach of argument or reason, and must be
left to their prejudices.' _History of England_, ed. 1802, v. 504.
[1055] _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 42. BOSWELL. The following is his
entry on this day:--
'1760, Sept. 18. Resolved D[eo]j[uvante]'
To combat notions of obligation.
To apply to study.
To reclaim imagination.
To consult the resolves on Tetty's coffin.
To rise early.
To study religion.
To go to church.
To drink less strong liquors.
To keep a journal.
To oppose laziness, by doing what is to be done tomorrow.
Rise as early as I can.
Send for books for Hist. of War.
Put books in order.
Scheme of life.'
[1056] See _post_, Oct. 19, 1769, and May 15, 1783, for Johnson's
measure of emotion, by eating.
[1057] Mr. Croker points out that Murphy's _Epistle_ was an imitation of
Boileau's _Epître à Molière_.
[1058] The paper mentioned in the text is No. 38 of the second series of
the _Grays Inn Journal_, published on June 15, 1754; which is a
translation from the French version of Johnson's _Rambler_, No. 190.
MALONE. Mrs. Piozzi relates how Murphy, used to tell before Johnson of
the first time they met. He found our friend all covered with soot, like
a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, with an intolerable heat and
strange smell, as if he had been acting Lungs in the _Alchymist_, making
aether. 'Come, come,' says Dr. Johnson, 'dear Murphy, the story is black
enough now; and it was a very happy day for me that brought you first to
my house, and a very happy mistake about the Ramblers.' Piozzi's _Anec_.
p. 235. Murphy quotes her account, Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 79. See also
_post_, 1770, where Dr. Maxwell records in his _Collectanea_ how Johnson
'very much loved Arthur Murphy.' Miss Burney thus describes him:--'He is
tall and well-made, has a very gentlemanlike appearance, and a quietness
of manner upon his first address that to me is very pleasing. His face
looks sensible, and his deportment is perfectly easy and polite.' A few
days later she records:--'Mr. Murphy was the life of the party; he was
in good spirits, and extremely entertaining; he told a million of
stories admirably well.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 195, 210. Rogers,
who knew Murphy well, says that 'towards the close of his life, till he
received a pension of £200 from the King, he was in great pecuniary
difficulties. He had eaten himself out of every tavern from the other
side of Temple-Bar to the west end of the town.' He owed Rogers a large
sum of money, which he never repaid. 'He assigned over to me the whole
of his works; and I soon found that he had already disposed of them to a
bookseller. One thing,' Rogers continues, 'ought to be remembered to his
honour; an actress with whom he had lived bequeathed to him all her
property, but he gave up every farthing of it to her relations.' He was
pensioned in 1803, and he died in 1805. Rogers's _Table-Talk_, p. 106.
[1059] Topham Beauclerk, Esq. BOSWELL.
[1060] Essays with that title, written about this time by Mr. Langton,
but not published. BOSWELL.
[1061] Thomas Sheridan, born 1721, died 1788. He was the son of Swift's
friend, and the father of R. B. Sheridan (who was born in 1751), and the
great-great-grandfather of the present Earl of Dufferin.
[1062] Sheridan was acting in Garrick's Company, generally on the nights
on which Garrick did not appear. Davies's _Garrick_, i. 299. Johnson
criticises his reading, _post_, April 18, 1783.
[1063] Mrs. Sheridan was authour of _Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph_, a
novel of great merit, and of some other pieces.--See her character,
_post_, beginning of 1763. BOSWELL.
[1064] _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 44. BOSWELL. '1761. Easter Eve.
Since the communion of last Easter I have led a life so dissipated and
useless, and my terrours and perplexities have so much increased, that I
am under great depression and discouragement.'
[1065] See _post_, April 6, 1775.
[1066] I have had inquiry made in Ireland as to this story, but do not
find it recollected there. I give it on the authority of Dr. Johnson, to
which may be added that of the _biographical Dictionary_, and
_Biographia Dramatica_; in both of which it has stood many years. Mr.
Malone observes, that the truth probably is, not that an edition was
published with Rolt's name in the title-page, but, that the poem being
then anonymous, Rolt acquiesced in its being attributed to him in
conversation. BOSWELL.
[1067] I have both the books. Innes was the clergyman who brought
Psalmanazar to England, and was an accomplice in his extraordinary
fiction. BOSWELL. It was in 1728 that Innes, who was a Doctor of
Divinity and Preacher-Assistant at St. Margaret's Westminster, published
this book. In his impudent Dedication to Lord Chancellor King he says
that 'were matters once brought to the melancholy pass that mankind
should become proselytes to such impious delusions' as Mandeville
taught, 'punishments must be annexed to virtue and rewards to vice.' It
was not till 1730 that Dr. Campbell 'laid open this imposture.' Preface,
p. xxxi. Though he was Professor of Ecclesiastical History in St.
Andrews, yet he had not, it should seem, heard of the fraud till then:
so remote was Scotland from London in those days. It was not till 1733
that he published his own edition. For Psalmanazar, see _post_,
April 18, 1778.
[1068] 'Died, the Rev. Mr. Eccles, at Bath. In attempting to save a boy,
whom he saw sinking in the Avon, he, together with the youth, were both
drowned.' _Gent. Mag_. Aug. 15, 1777. And in the magazine for the next
month are some verses on this event, with an epitaph, of which the
first line is,
'Beneath this stone the "_Man of
Feeling_" lies.'
CROKER.
[1069] 'Harry Mackenzie,' wrote Scott in 1814, 'never put his name in a
title page till the last edition of his works.' Lockhart's _Scott_, iv.
178. He wrote also _The Man of the World_, which Johnson 'looked at, but
thought there was nothing in it.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 2, 1773.
Scott, however, called it 'a very pathetic tale.' Croker's _Boswell, p.
359. Burns, writing of his twenty-third year, says: '_Tristram Shandy_
and the _Man of Feeling_ were my bosom favourites.' Currie's _Life of
Burns_, ed.1846. p. 21.
[1070] From the Prologue to Dryden's adaptation of _The Tempest_.
[1071] The originals of Dr. Johnson's three letters to Mr. baretti,
which are among the very best he ever wrote, were communicated to the
elegant monthly miscellany, _The European Magazine_, in which they first
appeared. BOSWELL.
[1072] Baretti left London for Lisbon on Aug. 14, 1760. He went through
Portugal, Spain, and France to Antibes, whence he went by sea to Genoa,
where he arrived on Nov. 18. In 1770 he published a lively account of
his travels under the title of _A Journey from London to Genoa_.
[1073] Malone says of Baretti that 'he was certainly a man of
extraordinary talents, and perhaps no one ever made himself so
completely master of a foreign language as he did of English.' Prior's
_Malone_, p. 392. Mrs. Piozzi gives the following 'instance of his skill
in our low street language. Walking in a field near Chelsea he met a
fellow, who, suspecting him from dress and manner to be a foreigner,
said sneeringly, "Come, Sir, will you show me the way to France?" "No,
Sir," says Baretti instantly, "but I will show you the way to Tyburn."'
He travelled with her in France. 'Oh how he would court the maids at the
inns abroad, abuse the men perhaps, and that with a facility not to be
exceeded, as they all confessed, by any of the natives. But so he could
in Spain, I find.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 347.
[1074] Johnson was intimate with Lord Southwell, _ante_, p. 243. It
seems unlikely that Baretti merely conducted Mr. Southwell from Turin to
Venice; yet there is not a line in his _Journey_ to show that any
Englishman accompanied him from London to Turin.
[1075] See _ante_, p. 350, note.
[1076] The first of these annual exhibitions was opened on April 21,
1760, at the Room of the Society of Arts, in the Strand. 'As a
consequence of their success, grew the incorporation of a Society of
Artists in 1765, by seccession from which finally was constituted the
Royal Academy [In Dec. 1768].' Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 179. For the
third exhibition Johnson wrote the Preface to the catalogue. In this,
speaking for the Committee of the Artists he says:--'The purpose of this
Exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the
eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with
contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour is here invited to
display his merit.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 101.
[1077] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 318) says that Johnson told him 'that in his
whole life he was never capable of discerning the least resemblance of
any kind between a picture and the subject it was intended to
represent.' This, however must have been an exaggeration on the part
either of Hawkins or Johnson. His general ignorance of art is shown by
Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_., p. 98):--'Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned some
picture as excellent. "It has often grieved me, sir," said Mr. Johnson,
"to see so much mind as the science of painting requires, laid out upon
such perishable materials: why do not you oftener make use of copper? I
could wish your superiority in the art you profess to be preserved in
stuff more durable than canvas." Sir Joshua urged the difficulty of
procuring a plate large enough for historical subjects. "What foppish
obstacles are these!" exclaims on a sudden Dr. Johnson. "Here is Thrale
has a thousand tun of copper; you may paint it all round if you will, I
suppose; it will serve him to brew in afterwards. Will it not, Sir?" to
my husband who sat by. Indeed his utter scorn of painting was such, that
I have heard him say, that he should sit very quietly in a room hung
round with the works of the greatest masters, and never feel the
slightest disposition to turn them, if their backs were outermost,
unless it might be for the sake of telling Sir Joshua that he _had_
turned them.' Such a remark of Johnson's must not, however, be taken too
strictly. He often spoke at random, often with exaggeration. 'There is
in many minds a kind of vanity exerted to the disadvantage of
themselves.' This reflection of his is the opening sentence to the
number of the Idler (No. 45) in which he thus writes about
portrait-painting:--'Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures;
and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity
of his subject. But it is in painting as in life; what is greatest is
not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and
to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is
now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in
quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of
the dead.' It is recorded in Johnson's _Works_, (1787) xi. 208, that
'Johnson, talking with some persons about allegorical painting said, "I
had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know than all the
allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."' He bought prints
of Burke, Dyer, and Goldsmith--'Good impressions' he said to hang in a
little room that he was fitting up with prints. Croker's _Boswell_, p.
639. Among his effects that were sold after his death were 'sixty-one
portraits framed and glazed,' _post_, under Dec. 9, 1784. When he was at
Paris, and saw the picture-gallery at the Palais Royal, he entered in
his Diary:--'I thought the pictures of Raphael fine;' _post_, Oct. 16,
1775. The philosopher Hume was more insensible even than Johnson. Dr.
J.H. Burton says:--'It does not appear from any incident in his life, or
allusions in his letters, which I can remember, that he had ever really
admired a picture or a statue.' _Life of me_, ii. 134.
[1078] By Colman--'There is nothing else new,' wrote Horace Walpole on
March 7, 1761 (_Letters,_ in. 382), 'but a very indifferent play, called
_The Jealous Wife_, so well acted as to have succeeded greatly.'
[1079] In Chap. 47 of _Rasselas_ Johnson had lately considered monastic
life. Imlac says of the monks:--'Their time is regularly distributed;
one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the
distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless
inactivity.... He that lives well in the world is better than he that
lives well in a monastery. But perhaps every one is not able to stem the
temptations of publick life; and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly
retreat.' See also _post_, March 15, 1776, and Boswell's _Hebrides_,
Aug. 19, 1773.
[1080] Baretti, in the preface to his _Journey_ (p. vi.), says that the
method of the book was due to Dr. Johnson. 'It was he that exhorted me
to write daily, and with all possible minuteness; it was he that pointed
out the topics which would most interest and most delight in a future
publication.'
[1081] He advised Boswell to go to Spain. _Post_, June 25 and July 26,
1763.
[1082] Dr. Percy records that 'the first visit Goldsmith ever received
from Johnson was on May 31, 1761, [ten days before this letter was
written] when he gave an invitation to him, and much other company, many
of them literary men, to a supper in his lodgings in Wine Office Court,
Fleet Street. Percy being intimate with Johnson, was desired to call
upon him and take him with him. As they went together the former was
much struck with the studied neatness of Johnson's dress. He had on a
new suit of clothes, a new wig nicely powdered, and everything about him
so perfectly dissimilar from his usual appearance that his companion
could not help inquiring the cause of this singular transformation.
"Why, Sir," said Johnson, "I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great
sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my
practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example."'
Goldsmith's _Misc. Works_, i. 62.
[1083] _Judges_, v. 20.
[1084] _Psalms_, xix. 2.
[1085] _Psalms_, civ. 19.
[1086] Boswell is ten years out in his date. This work was published in
1752. The review of it in the _Gent. Mag_. for that year, p. 146, was, I
believe, by Johnson.
[1087] He accompanied Lord Macartney on his embassy to China in 1792. In
1797 he published his _Account of the Embassy_.
[1088] It was taken in 1759, and restored to France in 1763. _Penny
Cyclo_. xi. 463.
[1089] W. S. Landor (_Works_, ed. 1876, v. 99) says:--'Extraordinary as
were Johnson's intellectual powers, he knew about as much of poetry as
of geography. In one of his letters he talks of Guadaloupe as being in
another hemisphere. Speaking of that island, his very words are these:
"Whether you return hither or stay in another hemisphere."' Guadaloupe,
being in the West Indies, is in another hemisphere.
[1090] See _post_, April 12, 1776.
[1091] 'It is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded;
for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent,
are less dreadful than its extinction.' _The Idler_, No. 58. See also
_post_, under March 30, 1783, where he ranks the situation of the Prince
of Wales as the happiest in the kingdom, partly on account of the
enjoyment of hope.
[1092] Though Johnson wrote this same day to Lord Bute to thank him for
his pension, he makes no mention to Baretti of this accession to
his fortune.
[1093] See _ante_, p. 245. Mrs. Porter, the actress, lived some time
with Mrs. Cotterel and her eldest daughter. CROKER.
[1094] Miss Charlotte Cotterel, married to Dean Lewis. See _post_, Dec.
21, 1762.
[1095] Reynolds's note-book shows that this year he had close on 150
sitters. Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 218.
[1096] He married a woman of the town, who had persuaded him
(notwithstanding their place of congress was a small coalshed in Fetter
Lane) that she was nearly related to a man of fortune, but was
injuriously kept by him out of large possessions. She regarded him as a
physician already in considerable practice. He had not been married four
months, before a writ was taken out against him for debts incurred by
his wife. He was secreted; and his friend then procured him a protection
from a foreign minister. In a short time afterwards she ran away from
him, and was tried (providentially in his opinion) for picking pockets
at the Old Bailey. Her husband was with difficulty prevented from
attending the Court, in the hope she would be hanged. She pleaded her
own cause and was acquitted. A separation between them took place.'
_Gent. Mag_. lv. 101.
[1097] Richardson had died more than a year earlier,--on July 4, 1761.
That Johnson should think it needful at the date of his letter to inform
Baretti of the death of so famous a writer shows how slight was the
communication between London and Milan. Nay, he repeats the news in his
letter of Dec. 21, 1762.
[1098] On Dec. 8, 1765, he wrote to Hector:--'A few years ago I just
saluted Birmingham, but had no time to see any friend, for I came in
after midnight with a friend, and went away in the morning.' _Notes and
Queries_, 6th S. iii. 321. He passed through Birmingham, I conjecture,
on his visit to Lichfield.
[1099] Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield on July 20, 1767, he
says:--'Miss Lucy [Porter, his step-daughter, not his daughter-in-law,
as he calls her above] is more kind and civil than I expected, and has
raised my esteem by many excellencies very noble and resplendent, though
a little discoloured by hoary virginity. Everything else recalls to my
remembrance years, in which I proposed what I am afraid I have not done,
and promised myself pleasure which I have not found.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 4.
[1100] In his _Journey into Wales_ (Aug. 24, 1774), he describes how
Mrs. Thrale visited one of the scenes of her youth. 'She remembered the
rooms, and wandered over them with recollection of her childhood. This
species of pleasure is always melancholy. The walk was cut down and the
pond was dry. Nothing was better.'
[1101] This is a very just account of the relief which London affords to
melancholy minds. BOSWELL.
[1102] To Devonshire.
[1103] See _ante_, p. 322.
[1104] Dr. T. Campbell (_Diary of a visit to England_, p. 32) recorded
on March 16, 1775, that 'Baretti said that now he could not live out of
London. He had returned a few years ago to his own country, but he could
not enjoy it; and he was obliged to return to London to those
connections he had been making for near thirty years past.' Baretti had
come to England in 1750 (_ante_, p. 302), so that thirty years is an
exaggeration.
[1105] How great a sum this must have been in Johnson's eyes is shown by
a passage in his _Life of Savage_ (_Works_, viii. 125). Savage, he says,
was received into Lord Tyrconnel's family and allowed a pension of £200
a year. 'His presence,' Johnson writes, 'was sufficient to make any
place of publick entertainment popular; and his approbation and example
constituted the fashion. So powerful is genius when it is invested with
the glitter of affluence!' In the last summer of his life, speaking of
the chance of his pension being doubled, he said that with six hundred a
year 'a man would have the consciousness that he should pass the
remainder of his life _in splendour_, how long soever it might be.'
_Post_, June 30, 1784. David Hume writing in 1751, says:--'I have £50 a
year, a £100 worth of books, great store of linens and fine clothes, and
near £100 in my pocket; along with order, frugality, a strong spirit of
independency, good health, a contented humour, and an unabating love of
study. In these circumstances I must esteem myself one of the happy and
fortunate.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 342. Goldsmith, in his _Present
State of Polite Learning_ (chap, vii), makes the following observation
on pensions granted in France to authors:--'The French nobility have
certainly a most pleasing way of satisfying the vanity of an author
without indulging his avarice. A man of literary merit is sure of being
caressed by the great, though seldom enriched. His pension from the
crown just supplies half a competence, and the sale of his labours makes
some small addition to his circumstances; thus the author leads a life
of splendid poverty, and seldom becomes wealthy or indolent enough to
discontinue an exertion of those abilities by which he rose.' Whether
Johnson's pension led to his writing less than he would otherwise have
done may be questioned. It is true that in the next seventeen years he
did little more than finish his edition of _Shakespeare_, and write his
_Journey to the Western Islands_ and two or three political pamphlets.
But since he wrote the last number of _The Idler_ in the spring of 1760
he had done very little. His mind, which, to use Murphy's words (_Life_,
p. 80), had been 'strained and overlaboured by constant exertion,' had
not recovered its tone. It is likely, that without the pension he would
not have lived to write the second greatest of his works--the _Lives of
the Poets_.
[1106] Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, i. 281) says:--'Bute's pensions
to his Scottish crew showing meaner than ever in Churchill's daring
verse, it occurred to the shrewd and wary Wedderburne to advise, for a
set off, that Samuel Johnson should be pensioned.' _The Prophecy of
Famine_ in which Churchill's attack was made on the pensioned Scots was
published in Jan. 1763, nearly half a year after Johnson's pension was
conferred.