following little story of my early years, which was literally true:
'Boswell, in the year 1745, was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and
prayed for King James, till one of his uncles (General Cochran) gave him
a shilling on condition that he should pray for King George, which he
accordingly did. So you see (says Boswell) that _Whigs of all ages are
made the same way_.' BOSWELL. Johnson, in his _Dictionary_ under
_Whiggism_, gives only one quotation, namely, from Swift: 'I could quote
passages from fifty pamphlets, wholly made up of whiggism and atheism.'
See _post_, April 28, 1778, where he said: 'I have always said, the
first _Whig_ was the Devil;' and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 21 and Nov.
8, 1773. To Johnson's sayings might be opposed one of Lord Chatham's in
the House of Lords: 'There are some distinctions which are inherent in
the nature of things. There is a distinction between right and
wrong--between Whig and Tory.' _Parl. Hist_. xvi. 1107.
[1278] _Letter to Rutland on Travel_, 16mo. 1569. BOSWELL. This letter
is contained in a little volume entitled, _Profitable Instructions;
describing what special observations are to be taken by travellers in
all nations, states and countries; pleasant and profitable. By the three
much admired, Robert, late Earl of Essex, Sir Philip Sidney, and
Secretary Davison. London. Printed for Benjamin Fisher, at the Sign of
the Talbot, without Aldersgate_. 1633. (Lowndes gives the date of 1613,
but the earliest edition seems to be this of 1633.) The letter from
which Boswell quotes is entitled, _The late E. of E. his advice to the
E. of R. in his Travels_. It is dated Greenwich, Jan. 4, 1596. Mr.
Spedding (Bacon's _Works_, ix. 4) suggests that 'it may have been
(wholly or in part) written by Bacon.'
[1279] Boswell (_Boswelliana_, p. 210) says that this 'impudent fellow'
was Macpherson.
[1280] Boswell repeated this saying and some others to Paoli. 'I felt an
elation of mind to see Paoli delighted with the sayings of Mr. Johnson,
and to hear him translate them with Italian energy to the Corsican
heroes.' Here Boswell describes the person as 'a certain authour.'
Boswell's _Corsica_, p. 199
[1281] Boswell thus takes him off in his comic poem _The Court of
Session Garland_:--
'"This cause," cries Hailes, "to judge I can't pretend, For _justice_, I
percieve, wants an _e_ at the end."'
Mr. R. Chambers, in a note on this, says:--'A story is told of Lord
Hailes once making a serious objection to a law-paper, an in consequence
to the whole suit, on account of the word _justice_ being thus spelt.
_Traditions of Edinburgh_, ii. 161. Burke says that he 'found him to be
a clever man, and generally knowing.' Burke's _Corres_. iii. 301. See
_ante_ p. 267, and _post_ May 12, 1774 and Boswell's _Hebrides_,
Aug. 17, 1773.
[1282] 'Ita feri ut se mori sentiat.' Suetonius, _Caligula_, chap. xxx.
[1283] Johnson himself was constantly purposing to keep a journal. On
April 11, 1773, he told Boswell 'that he had twelve or fourteen times
attempted to keep a journal of his life,' _post_, April 11, 1773. The
day before he had recorded:--'I hope from this time to keep a journal.'
_Pr. and Med_. p. 124. Like records follow, as:--'Sept. 24, 1773. My
hope is, for resolution I dare no longer call it, to divide my time
regularly, and to keep such a journal of my time, as may give me comfort
in reviewing it.' _Ib_. p. 132. 'April 6, 1777. My purpose once more is
To keep a journal.' _Ib_. p. 161. 'Jan. 2, 1781. My hope is To keep a
journal.' _Ib_. p. 188. See also _post_, April 14, 1775, and April
10, 1778.
[1284] Boswell, when he was only eighteen, going with his father to the
[Scotch] Northern Circuit, 'kept,' he writes, 'an exact journal.'
_Letters of Boswell_, p. 8. In the autumn of 1762 he also kept a journal
which he sent to Temple to read. _Ib_. p. 19.
[1285] 'It has been well observed, that the misery of man proceeds not
from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations
continually repeated.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 333. 'The main of life
is indeed composed of small incidents and petty occurrences.' _Ib_. ii.
322. Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 199) says:--'Human felicity is produced
not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by
little advantages that occur every day.'
[1286] Boswell wrote the next day:--'We sat till between two and three.
He took me by the hand cordially, and said, "My dear Boswell, I love you
very much." Now Temple, can I help indulging vanity?' _Letters of
Boswell_, p. 27. Fourteen years later Boswell was afraid that he kept
Johnson too late up. 'No, Sir,' said he, 'I don't care though I sit all
night with you.' _Post_, Sept. 23, 1777. See also _post_, April 7, 1779,
where Johnson, speaking of these early days, said to Boswell, 'it was
not the _wine_ that made your head ache, but the sense that I put
into it.'
[1287] Tuesday was the 19th.
[1288] 'The elder brother of the first Lord Rokeby, called long Sir
Thomas Robinson, on account of his height, and to distinguish him from
Sir Thomas Robinson, first Lord Grantham. It was on his request for an
epigram that Lord Chesterfield made the distich:--
"Unlike my subject will I make my song,
It shall be witty, and it shan't be long,"
and to whom he said in his last illness, "Ah, Sir Thomas, it will be
sooner over with me than it would be with you, for I am dying by
inches." Lord Chesterfield was very short.' CROKER. Southey, writing of
Rokeby Hall, which belonged to Robinson, says that 'Long Sir Thomas
found a portrait of Richardson in the house; thinking Mr. Richardson a
very unfit personage to be suspended in effigy among lords, ladies, and
baronets, he ordered the painter to put him on the star and blue riband,
and then christened the picture Sir Robert Walpole.' Southey's _Life_,
iii. 346. See also _ante_, p. 259 note 2, and _post_, 1770, near the end
of Dr. Maxwell's _Collectanea_.
[1289] Johnson (_Works_, vi. 440) had written of Frederick the Great in
1756:--'His skill in poetry and in the French language has been loudly
praised by Voltaire, a judge without exception if his honesty were equal
to his knowledge.' Boswell, in his _Hypochondriacks_, records a
conversation that he had with Voltaire on memory:--'I asked him if he
could give me any notion of the situation of our ideas which we have
totally forgotten at the time, yet shall afterwards recollect. He
paused, meditated a little, and acknowledged his ignorance in the spirit
of a philosophical poet by repeating as a very happy allusion a passage
in Thomson's _Seasons_--"Aye," said he, "Where sleep the winds when it
is calm?"' _London Mag_. 1783, p. 157. The passage is in Thomson's
_Winter_, l. 116:--
'In what far-distant region of the sky,
Hush'd in deep silence, sleep ye when 'tis calm?'
[1290] See _post_, ii. 54, note 3.
[1291] Bernard Lintot, the father, published Pope's _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_. Over the sale of the _Odyssey_ a quarrel arose between the
two men. Johnson's _Works_, viii. 251, 274. Lintot is attacked in the
_Dunciad_, i. 40 and ii. 53; He was High-Sheriff for Sussex in 1736--the
year of his death. _Gent. Mag_. vi. 110. The son is mentioned in
Johnson's _Works_, viii. 282.
[1292] 'July 19, 1763. I was with Mr. Johnson to-day. I was in his
garret up four pair of stairs; it is very airy, commands a view of St.
Paul's and many a brick roof. He has many good books, but they are all
lying in confusion and dust.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 30. On Good
Friday, 1764, Johnson made the following entry:--'I hope to put my rooms
in order: Disorder I have found one great cause of idleness.' On his
birth-day in the same year he wrote:--'To-morrow I purpose to regulate
my room.' _Pr. and Med_. pp. 50, 60.
[1293] See _ante_, p. 140, and _post_, under Sept. 9, 1779.
[1294] Afterwards Rector of Mamhead, Devonshire. He is the grandfather
of the present Bishop of London. He and Boswell had been fellow-students
at the University of Edinburgh, and seemed in youth to have had an equal
amount of conceit. 'Recollect,' wrote Boswell, 'how you and I flattered
ourselves that we were to be the greatest men of our age.' _Letters of
Boswell_, p. 159. They began to correspond at least as early as 1758.
The last letter was one from Boswell on his death-bed. Johnson thus
mentions Temple (_Works_, viii. 480):--'Gray's character I am willing to
adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, from a letter written to my friend Mr.
Boswell by the Revd. Mr. Temple, Rector of St. Gluvias in Cornwall; and
am as willing as his warmest well-wisher to believe it true.'
[1295] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 240) quotes the following by Edmund Smith,
and written some time after 1708:--'It will sound oddly to posterity,
that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of
the most literary property in 1710, whether by wise, most learned, and
most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a
mechanick should be better secured than that of a scholar! that the
poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest
products of the brain! that it should be felony to rob a cobbler of a
pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best authour of his whole
subsistence! that nothing should make a man a sure title to his own
writings but the stupidity of them!' See _post_, May 8, 1773, and Feb.7,
1774; and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 17 and 20, 1773.
[1296] The question arose, after the passing of the first statute
respecting literary property in 1710, whether by certain of its
provisions this perpetual copyright at common law was extinguished for
the future. The question was solemnly argued before the Court of King's
Bench, when Lord Mansfield presided, in 1769. The result was a decision
in favour of the common-law right as unaltered by the statute, with the
disapproval however of Mr. Justice Yates. In 1774 the same point was
brought before the House of Lords, and the decision of the court below
reversed by a majority of six judges in eleven, as Lord Mansfield, who
adhered to the opinion of the minority, declined to interfere; it being
very unusual, from motives of delicacy, for a peer to support his own
judgment on appeal to the House of Lords. _Penny Cylco_. viii. I. See
_post_, Feb. 7, 1774. Lord Shelburne, on Feb 27, 1774, humourously
describes the scene in the Lords to the Earl of Chatham:--'Lord
Mansfield showed himself the merest Captain Bobadil that, I suppose,
ever existed in real life. You can, perhaps, imagine to yourself the
Bishop of Carlyle, an old metaphysical head of a college, reading a
paper, not a speech, out of an old sermon book, with very bad sight
leaning on the table, Lord Mansfield sitting at it, with eyes of fixed
melancholy looking at him, knowing that the bishop's were the only eyes
in the House who could not meet his; the judges behind him, full of rage
at being drawn into so absurd an opinion, and abandoned in it by their
chief; the Bishops waking, as your Lordship knows they do, just before
they vote, and staring on finding something the matter; while Lord
Townshend was close to the bar, getting Mr. Dunning to put up his glass
to look at the head of criminal justice.' _Chatham Corres_. iv. 327.
[1297] See _post_ April 15 1778, note.
[1298] Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_ iii. 178), complaining of the high prices
of English books, describes 'the excessive artifices made use of to puff
up a paper of verses into a pamphlet, a pamphlet into an octavo, and an
octavo into a quarto with white-lines, exorbitant margins, &c., to such
a degree that the selling of paper seems now the object, and printing on
it only the pretence.'
[1299] Boswell was on friendly terms with him. He wrote to Erskine on
Dec. 2, 1761:--'I am just now returned from eating a most excellent pig
with the most magnificent Donaldson.' _Boswell and Erskine
Correspondence_, p. 20.
[1300] Dr. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 516) says that Lord Mansfield this year
(1769) 'talking of Hume and Robertson's _Histories_, said that though he
could point out few or no faults in them, yet, when he was reading their
books, he did not think he was reading English.' See _post_, ii. 72, for
Hume's Scotticisms. Hume went to France in 1734 when he was 23 years old
and stayed there three years. Hume's _Autobiography_, p. vii. He never
mastered French colloquially. Lord Charlemont, who met him in Turin in
1748, says:--'His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the
broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more
laughable.' Hardy's _Charlemont_, i. 15. Horace Walpole, who met him in
Paris in 1765, writes (_Letters_, iv. 426):--'Mr. Hume is the only thing
in the world that they [the French] believe implicitly; which they must
do, for I defy them to understand any language that he speaks.' Gibbon
(_Misc. Works_, i. 122) says of Hume's writings:--'Their careless
inimitable beauties often forced me to close the volume with a mixed
sensation of delight and despair.' Dr. Beattie (_Life_, p. 243) wrote on
Jan. 5, 1778:--'We who live in Scotland are obliged to study English
from books, like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot
speak.' He adds:--'I have spent some years in labouring to acquire the
art of giving a vernacular cast to the English we write.' Dr. A. Carlyle
(_Auto_, p. 222) says:--'Since we began to affect speaking a foreign
language, which the English dialect is to us, humour, it must be
confessed, is less apparent in conversation.'
[1301] _Discours sur L'origine et les fondemens de l'inégalité parmi les
hommes_, 1754.
[1302] 'I have indeed myself observed that my banker ever bows lowest to
me when I wear my full-bottomed wig, and writes me Mr. or Esq.,
accordingly as he sees me dressed.' _Spectator_, No. 150.
[1303] Mr. Croker, quoting Mr. Wright, says:--'_See his Quantulumanque_
(sic) _concerning Money_.' I have read Petty's _Quantulumcunque_, but do
not find the passage in it.
[1304] Johnson told Dr. Burney that Goldsmith said, when he first began
to write, he determined to commit to paper nothing but what was _new_;
but he afterwards found that what was _new_ was false, and from that
time was no longer solicitous about novelty. BURNEY. Mr. Forster (_Life
of Goldsmith_, i. 421) says that this note 'is another instance of the
many various and doubtful forms in which stories about Johnson and
Goldsmith are apt to appear when once we lose sight of the trustworthy
Boswell. This is obviously a mere confused recollection of what is
correctly told by Boswell [_post_, March 26, 1779].' There is much truth
in Mr. Forster's general remark: nevertheless Burney likely enough
repeated to the best of his memory what he had himself heard
from Johnson.
[1305] 'Their [the ancient moralists'] arguments have been, indeed, so
unsuccessful, that I know not whether it can be shewn, that by all the
wit and reason which this favourite cause has called forth a single
convert was ever made; that even one man has refused to be rich, when to
be rich was in his power, from the conviction of the greater happiness
of a narrow fortune.' Johnson's _Works_, ii. 278. See _post_, June 3,
1781, and June 3, Sept. 7, and Dec. 7, 1782.
[1306] Johnson (_Works_, vi. 440) shows how much Frederick owed to 'the
difficulties of his youth.' 'Kings, without this help from temporary
infelicity, see the world in a mist, which magnifies everything near
them, and bounds their view to a narrow compass, which few are able to
extend by the mere force of curiosity.' He next points out what Cromwell
'owed to the private condition in which he first entered the world;' and
continues:--'The King of Prussia brought to the throne the knowledge of
a private man, without the guilt of usurpation. Of this general
acquaintance with the world there may be found some traces in his whole
life. His conversation is like that of other men upon common topicks,
his letters have an air of familiar elegance, and his whole conduct is
that of a man who has to do with men.'
[1307] See _ante_ p. 408
[1308] See _ante_, p. 298.
[1309] That this was Mr. Dempster seems likely from the _Letters of
Boswell_ (p. 34), where Boswell says:--'I had prodigious satisfaction to
find Dempster's sophistry (which he has learnt from Hume and Rousseau)
vanquished by the solid sense and vigorous reasoning of Johnson.
Dempster,' he continues, 'was as happy as a vanquished argumentator
could be.' The character of the 'benevolent good man' suits Dempster
(see _post_, under Feb. 7, 1775, where Boswell calls him 'the virtuous
and candid Dempster'), while that of the 'noted infidel writer' suits
Hume. We find Boswell, Johnson, and Dempster again dining together on
May 9, 1772.
[1310]
'Thou wilt at best but suck a bull,
Or sheer swine, all cry and no wool.'
_Hudibras_, Part i. Canto I. 1. 851.
Dr. Z. Grey, in his note on these lines, quotes the proverbial saying
'As wise as the Waltham calf that went nine times to suck a bull.' He
quotes also from _The Spectator_, No. 138, the passage where the Cynic
said of two disputants, 'One of these fellows is milking a ram, and the
other holds the pail.'
[1311] The writer of the article _Vacuum_ in the _Penny Cyclo_. (xxvi.
76), quoting Johnson's words, adds:--'That is, either all space is full
of matter, or there are parts of space which have no matter. The
alternative is undeniable, and the inference to which the modern
philosophy would give the greatest probablility is, that all space is
full of matter in the common sense of the word, but really occupied by
particles of matter with vacuous interstices.'
[1312] 'When any one tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I
immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable that this
person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he
relates should really have happened.' Humes _Essay on Miracles_, Part i.
See _post_ Sept. 22 1777, where Boswell again quoted this passage.
[1313] A coffee-house over against Catherine Street, now the site of a
tourists' ticket office. _Athenaeum_, No. 3041.
[1314] Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, i. 202) that Johnson once said to
him:--'Whenever it is the duty of a young and old man to act at the same
time with a spirit of independence and generosity; we may always have
reason to hope that the young man will ardently perform, and to fear
that the old man will desert, his duty.'
[1315] Boswell thus writes of this evening:--'I learn more from him than
from any man I ever was with. He told me a very odd thing, that he knew
at eighteen as much as he does now; that is to say, his judgment is much
stronger, but he had then stored up almost all the facts he has now, and
he says that he has led but an idle life; only think, Temple, of that!'
_Letters of Boswell_, p. 34. See _ante_, p. 56, and _post_, ii. 36. He
told Windham in 1784 'that he read Latin with as much ease when he went
to college as at present.' Windham's _Diary_, p. 17.
[1316] Johnson in 1739 wrote of 'those distempers and depressions, from
which students, not well acquainted with the constitution of the human
body, sometimes fly for relief to wine instead of exercise, and purchase
temporary ease, by the hazard of the most dreadful consequences.'
_Works_, vi. 271. In _The Rambler_, No. 85, he says:--'How much
happiness is gained, and how much misery is escaped, by frequent and
violent agitation of the body.' Boswell records (_Hebrides_, Sept. 24,
1773):--'Dr. Johnson told us at breakfast, that he rode harder at a
fox-chace than anybody.' Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 206) says:--'He
certainly rode on Mr. Thrale's old hunter with a good firmness, and,
though he would follow the hounds fifty miles an end sometimes, would
never own himself either tired or amused. I think no praise ever went so
close to his heart, as when Mr. Hamilton called out one day upon
Brighthelmstone Downs, "Why Johnson rides as well, for aught I see, as
the most illiterate fellow in England."' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale in
1777:--'No season ever was finer. Barley, malt, beer and money. There is
the series of ideas. The deep logicians call it a _sorites_. _I hope my
master will no longer endure the reproach of not keeping me a horse_.'
_Piozzi Letters_, i. 360. See _post_, March 19 and 28, 1776, Sept. 20,
1777, and Nov. 21, 1778.
[1317] This _one_ Mrs. Macaulay was the same personage who afterwards
made herself so much known as 'the celebrated female historian.'
BOSWELL. Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 234) tells the following story of
Mrs. Macaulay's daughter:--'Desirous from civility to take some notice
of her, and finding she was reading _Shakespeare_, I asked her if she
was not delighted with many parts of _King John_. "I never read the
_Kings_, ma'am," was the truly characteristic reply.' See _post_, April
13, 1773, and May 15, 1776.
[1318] This speech was perhaps suggested to Johnson by the following
passage in _The Government of the Tongue_ (p. 106)--a book which he
quotes in his _Dictionary_:--'Lycurgus once said to one who importuned
him to establish a popular parity in the state, "Do thou," says he,
"begin it first in thine own family."'
[1319] The first volume was published in 1756, the second in 1782.
[1320] Warton, to use his own words, 'did not think Pope at the head of
his profession. In other words, in that species of poetry wherein Pope
excelled, he is superior to all mankind; and I only say that this
species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art.' He disposes
the English poets in four classes, placing in the first only Spenser,
Shakespeare, and Milton. 'In the second class should be ranked such as
possessed the true poetical genius in a more moderate degree, but who
had noble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poetry.' In this
class, in his concluding volume, he says, 'we may venture to assign Pope
a place, just above Dryden. Yet, to bring our minds steadily to make
this decision, we must forget, for a moment, the divine _Music Ode of
Dryden_; and may, perhaps, then be compelled to confess that though
Dryden be the greater genius, yet Pope is the better artist.' Warton's
_Essay_, i. i, vii. and ii. 404. See _post_, March 31, 1772.
[1321] Mr. Croker believes Joseph Warton was meant. His father, however,
had been Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was afterwards Vicar of
Basingstoke and Cobham, and Professor of Poetry in his own University,
so that the son could scarcely be described as being 'originally poor.'
It is, no doubt, after Boswell's fashion to introduce in consecutive
paragraphs the same person once by name and once anonymously; but then
the 'certain author who disgusted Boswell by his forwardness,' mentioned
just before Warton, may be Warton himself.
[1322] 'When he arrived at Eton he could not make a verse; that is, he
wanted a point indispensable with us to a certain rank in our system.
But this wonderful boy, having satisfied the Master [Dr. Barnard] that
he was an admirable scholar, and possessed of genius, was at once placed
at the head of a form. He acquired the rules of Latin verse; tried his
powers; and perceiving that he could not rise above his rivals in
Virgil, Ovid, or the lyric of Horace, he took up the _sermoni propiora_,
and there overshadowed all competitors. In the following lines he
describes the hammer of the auctioneer with a mock sublimity which turns
Horace into Virgil:--
'Jam-jamque cadit, celerique recursu
Erigitur, lapsum retrahens, perque aera nutat.'
Nichols's _Lit. Anec_. viii. 547.
Horace Walpole wrote of him in Sept. 1765 (_Letters_, iv. 411):--'He is
a very extraordinary young man for variety of learning. He is rather too
wise for his age, and too fond of showing it; but when he has seen more
of the world, he will choose to know less.' He died at Rome in the
following year. Hume, on hearing the news, wrote to Adam Smith:--'Were
you and I together, dear Smith, we should shed tears at present for the
death of poor Sir James Macdonald. We could not possibly have suffered a
greater loss than in that valuable young man.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_,
ii. 349. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 5, 1773.
[1323] Boswell says that Macdonald had for Johnson 'a _great_ terrour.'
(_Boswelliana_, p. 216.) Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 329)
says:--'It is a fact that a certain nobleman, an intimate friend of
Reynolds, had strangely conceived in his mind such a formidable idea of
all those persons who had gained great fame as literary characters, that
I have heard Sir Joshua say, he verily believed he could no more have
prevailed upon this noble person to dine at the same table with Johnson
and Goldsmith than with two tigers.' According to Mr. Seward
(_Biographiana_, p. 600), Mrs. Cotterell having one day asked Dr.
Johnson to introduce her to a celebrated writer, 'Dearest madam,' said
he, 'you had better let it alone; the best part of every author is in
general to be found in his book, I assure you.' Mr. Seward refers to
_The Rambler_, No. 14, where Johnson says that 'there has often been
observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an
authour and his writings.'