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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9180-8.txt b/9180-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f9b9f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/9180-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,23044 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 +by Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 + +Author: Boswell + Edited by Birkbeck Hill + +Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9180] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on September 11, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF JOHNSON, VOLUME 3 *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David King and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +BOSWELL'S +LIFE OF JOHNSON + +INCLUDING BOSWELL'S JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES +AND JOHNSON'S DIARY OF A JOURNEY INTO NORTH WALES + +EDITED BY + +GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L. + +PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD + +IN SIX VOLUMES + +VOLUME III.--LIFE (1776-1780) + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. III. + +LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (MARCH 1776--OCT. 1780). + +APPENDICES: + +A. GEORGE PSALMANAZAR + +B. JOHNSON'S TRAVELS AND LOVE OF TRAVELLING + +C. ELECTION OF LORD MAYORS OF LONDON + +D. THE INMATES OF JOHNSON'S HOUSE + +E. BOSWELL'S LETTERS OF ACCEPTANCE OF THE OFFICE +OF SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE TO +THE ROYAL ACADEMY + + + + +THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. + + +Having left Ashbourne in the evening, we stopped to change horses at +Derby, and availed ourselves of a moment to enjoy the conversation of my +countryman, Dr. Butter, then physician there. He was in great +indignation because Lord Mountstuart's bill for a Scotch militia[1] had +been lost. Dr. Johnson was as violent against it. 'I am glad, (said he,) +that Parliament has had the spirit to throw it out. You wanted to take +advantage of the timidity of our scoundrels;' (meaning, I suppose, the +ministry). It may be observed, that he used the epithet scoundrel very +commonly not quite in the sense in which it is generally understood, but +as a strong term of disapprobation; as when he abruptly answered Mrs. +Thrale, who had asked him how he did, 'Ready to become a scoundrel, +Madam; with a little more spoiling you will, I think, make me a complete +rascal[2]:' he meant, easy to become a capricious and self-indulgent +valetudinarian; a character for which I have heard him express great +disgust. + +Johnson had with him upon this jaunt, '_Il Palmerino d'Inghilterra_,' a +romance[3] praised by Cervantes; but did not like it much. He said, he +read it for the language, by way of preparation for his Italian +expedition.--We lay this night at Loughborough. + +On Thursday, March 28, we pursued our journey. I mentioned that old Mr. +Sheridan complained of the ingratitude of Mr. Wedderburne[4] and General +Fraser, who had been much obliged to him when they were young Scotchmen +entering upon life in England. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, a man is very apt to +complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. A man +when he gets into a higher sphere, into other habits of life, cannot +keep up all his former connections. Then, Sir, those who knew him +formerly upon a level with themselves, may think that they ought still +to be treated as on a level, which cannot be; and an acquaintance in a +former situation may bring out things which it would be very +disagreeable to have mentioned before higher company, though, perhaps, +every body knows of them.' He placed this subject in a new light to me, +and shewed that a man who has risen in the world, must not be condemned +too harshly for being distant to former acquaintance, even though he may +have been much obliged to them.' It is, no doubt, to be wished that a +proper degree of attention should be shewn by great men to their early +friends. But if either from obtuse insensibility to difference of +situation, or presumptuous forwardness, which will not submit even to an +exteriour observance of it, the dignity of high place cannot be +preserved, when they are admitted into the company of those raised above +the state in which they once were, encroachment must be repelled, and +the kinder feelings sacrificed. To one of the very fortunate persons +whom I have mentioned, namely, Mr. Wedderburne, now Lord Loughborough, I +must do the justice to relate, that I have been assured by another early +acquaintance of his, old Mr. Macklin[5], who assisted in improving his +pronunciation, that he found him very grateful. Macklin, I suppose, had +not pressed upon his elevation with so much eagerness as the gentleman +who complained of him. Dr. Johnson's remark as to the jealousy +'entertained of our friends who rise far above us,' is certainly very +just. By this was withered the early friendship between Charles +Townshend and Akenside[6]; and many similar instances might be adduced. + +He said, 'It is commonly a weak man who marries for love.' We then +talked of marrying women of fortune; and I mentioned a common remark, +that a man may be, upon the whole, richer by marrying a woman with a +very small portion, because a woman of fortune will be proportionally +expensive; whereas a woman who brings none will be very moderate in +expenses. JOHNSON. 'Depend upon it, Sir, this is not true. A woman of +fortune being used to the handling of money, spends it judiciously: but +a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her +marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with +great profusion.' + +He praised the ladies of the present age, insisting that they were more +faithful to their husbands, and more virtuous in every respect, than in +former times, because their understandings were better cultivated[7]. It +was an undoubted proof of his good sense and good disposition, that he +was never querulous, never prone to inveigh against the present times, +as is so common when superficial minds are on the fret. On the contrary, +he was willing to speak favourably of his own age; and, indeed, +maintained its superiority[8] in every respect, except in its reverence +for government; the relaxation of which he imputed, as its grand cause, +to the shock which our monarchy received at the Revolution, though +necessary[9]; and secondly, to the timid concessions made to faction by +successive administrations in the reign of his present Majesty. I am +happy to think, that he lived to see the Crown at last recover its just +influence[10]. + +At Leicester we read in the news-paper that Dr. James[11] was dead. I +thought that the death of an old school-fellow, and one with whom he had +lived a good deal in London, would have affected my fellow-traveller +much: but he only said, 'Ah! poor Jamy.' Afterwards, however, when we +were in the chaise, he said, with more tenderness, 'Since I set out on +this jaunt, I have lost an old friend and a young one;--Dr. James, and +poor Harry[12].' (Meaning Mr. Thrale's son.) + +Having lain at St. Alban's, on Thursday, March 28, we breakfasted the +next morning at Barnet. I expressed to him a weakness of mind which I +could not help; an uneasy apprehension that my wife and children, who +were at a great distance from me, might, perhaps, be ill. 'Sir, (said +he,) consider how foolish you would think it in _them_ to be +apprehensive that _you_ are ill[13].' This sudden turn relieved me for +the moment; but I afterwards perceived it to be an ingenious fallacy. I +might, to be sure, be satisfied that they had no reason to be +apprehensive about me, because I _knew_ that I myself was well: but we +might have a mutual anxiety, without the charge of folly; because each +was, in some degree, uncertain as to the condition of the other. + +I enjoyed the luxury of our approach to London, that metropolis which we +both loved so much, for the high and varied intellectual pleasure which +it furnishes[14]. I experienced immediate happiness while whirled along +with such a companion, and said to him, 'Sir, you observed one day at +General Oglethorpe's[15], that a man is never happy for the present, but +when he is drunk. Will you not add,--or when driving rapidly in a +post-chaise[16]?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, you are driving rapidly from +something, or to something.' + +Talking of melancholy, he said, 'Some men, and very thinking men too, +have not those vexing thoughts[17]. Sir Joshua Reynolds is the same all +the year round[18]. Beauclerk, except when ill and in pain, is the same. +But I believe most men have them in the degree in which they are capable +of having them. If I were in the country, and were distressed by that +malady, I would force myself to take a book; and every time I did it I +should find it the easier. Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by +every means but drinking[19].' + +We stopped at Messieurs Dillys, booksellers in the Poultry; from whence +he hurried away, in a hackney coach, to Mr. Thrale's, in the Borough. I +called at his house in the evening, having promised to acquaint Mrs. +Williams of his safe return; when, to my surprize, I found him sitting +with her at tea, and, as I thought, not in a very good humour: for, it +seems, when he had got to Mr. Thrale's, he found the coach was at the +door waiting to carry Mrs. and Miss Thrale, and Signor Baretti, their +Italian master, to Bath[20]. This was not shewing the attention which +might have been expected to the 'Guide, Philosopher, and Friend[21],' the +_Imlac_[22] who had hastened from the country to console a distressed +mother, who he understood was very anxious for his return. They had, I +found, without ceremony, proceeded on their intended journey. I was glad +to understand from him that it was still resolved that his tour to Italy +with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale should take place, of which he had entertained +some doubt, on account of the loss which they had suffered; and his +doubts afterwards proved to be well-founded. He observed, indeed very +justly, that 'their loss was an additional reason for their going +abroad; and if it had not been fixed that he should have been one of the +party, he would force them out; but he would not advise them unless his +advice was asked, lest they might suspect that he recommended what he +wished on his own account.' I was not pleased that his intimacy with Mr. +Thrale's family, though it no doubt contributed much to his comfort and +enjoyment, was not without some degree of restraint: not, as has been +grossly suggested, that it was required of him as a task to talk for the +entertainment of them and their company; but that he was not quite at +his ease; which, however, might partly be owing to his own honest +pride--that dignity of mind which is always jealous of appearing too +compliant. + +On Sunday, March 31, I called on him, and shewed him as a curiosity +which I had discovered, his _Translation of Lobo's Account of +Abyssinia_, which Sir John Pringle had lent me, it being then little +known as one of his works[23]. He said, 'Take no notice of it,' or 'don't +talk of it.' He seemed to think it beneath him, though done at +six-and-twenty. I said to him, 'Your style, Sir, is much improved since +you translated this.' He answered with a sort of triumphant smile, 'Sir, +I hope it is.' + +On Wednesday, April 3, in the morning I found him very busy putting his +books in order, and as they were generally very old ones, clouds of dust +were flying around him. He had on a pair of large gloves such as hedgers +use. His present appearance put me in mind of my uncle, Dr. Boswell's[24] +description of him, 'A robust genius, born to grapple with whole +libraries.' + +I gave him an account of a conversation which had passed between me and +Captain Cook, the day before, at dinner at Sir John Pringle's[25]; and he +was much pleased with the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated +circumnavigator, who set me right as to many of the exaggerated accounts +given by Dr. Hawkesworth of his Voyages. I told him that while I was +with the Captain, I catched the enthusiasm[26] of curiosity and +adventure, and felt a strong inclination to go with him on his next +voyage. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, a man _does_ feel so, till he considers how +very little he can learn from such voyages.' BOSWELL. 'But one is +carried away with the general grand and indistinct notion of A VOYAGE +ROUND THE WORLD.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, but a man is to guard himself +against taking a thing in general.' I said I was certain that a great +part of what we are told by the travellers to the South Sea must be +conjecture, because they had not enough of the language of those +countries to understand so much as they have related. Objects falling +under the observation of the senses might be clearly known; but every +thing intellectual, every thing abstract--politicks, morals, and +religion, must be darkly guessed. Dr. Johnson was of the same opinion. +He upon another occasion, when a friend mentioned to him several +extraordinary facts, as communicated to him by the circumnavigators, +slily observed, 'Sir, I never before knew how much I was respected by +these gentlemen; they told _me_ none of these things.' + +He had been in company with Omai, a native of one of the South Sea +Islands, after he had been some time in this country. He was struck with +the elegance of his behaviour, and accounted for it thus: 'Sir, he had +passed his time, while in England, only in the best company; so that all +that he had acquired of our manners was genteel. As a proof of this, +Sir, Lord Mulgrave and he dined one day at Streatham; they sat with +their backs to the light fronting me, so that I could not see +distinctly; and there was so little of the savage in Omai, that I was +afraid to speak to either, lest I should mistake one for the other[27].' + +We agreed to dine to-day at the Mitre-tavern, after the rising of the +House of Lords, where a branch of the litigation concerning the Douglas +Estate[28], in which I was one of the counsel, was to come on. I brought +with me Mr. Murray, Solicitor-General of Scotland, now one of the Judges +of the Court of Session, with the title of Lord Henderland. I mentioned +Mr. Solicitor's relation, Lord Charles Hay[29], with whom I knew Dr. +Johnson had been acquainted. JOHNSON. 'I wrote something[30] for Lord +Charles; and I thought he had nothing to fear from a court-martial. I +suffered a great loss when he died; he was a mighty pleasing man in +conversation, and a reading man. The character of a soldier is high. +They who stand forth the foremost in danger, for the community, have the +respect of mankind. An officer is much more respected than any other man +who has as little money. In a commercial country, money will always +purchase respect. But you find, an officer, who has, properly speaking, +no money, is every where well received and treated with attention. The +character of a soldier always stands him in stead[31].' BOSWELL. 'Yet, +Sir, I think that common soldiers are worse thought of than other men in +the same rank of life; such as labourers.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, a common +soldier is usually a very gross man[32], and any quality which procures +respect may be overwhelmed by grossness. A man of learning may be so +vicious or so ridiculous that you cannot respect him. A common soldier +too, generally eats more than he can pay for. But when a common soldier +is civil in his quarters, his red coat procures him a degree of +respect[33].' The peculiar respect paid to the military character in +France was mentioned. BOSWELL. 'I should think that where military men +are so numerous, they would be less valued as not being rare.' JOHNSON. +'Nay, Sir, wherever a particular character or profession is high in the +estimation of a people, those who are of it will be valued above other +men. We value an Englishman highly in this country, and yet Englishmen +are not rare in it.' + +Mr. Murray praised the ancient philosophers for the candour and good +humour with which those of different sects disputed with each other. +JOHNSON. 'Sir, they disputed with good humour, because they were not in +earnest as to religion. Had the ancients been serious in their belief, +we should not have had their Gods exhibited in the manner we find them +represented in the Poets. The people would not have suffered it. They +disputed with good humour upon their fanciful theories, because they +were not interested in the truth of them: when a man has nothing to +lose, he may be in good humour with his opponent. Accordingly you see in +Lucian, the Epicurean, who argues only negatively, keeps his temper; the +Stoick, who has something positive to preserve, grows angry[34]. Being +angry with one who controverts an opinion which you value, is a +necessary consequence of the uneasiness which you feel. Every man who +attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and +therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me +uneasy[35]. Those only who believed in revelation have been angry at +having their faith called in question; because they only had something +upon which they could rest as matter of fact.' MURRAY. 'It seems to me +that we are not angry at a man for controverting an opinion which we +believe and value; we rather pity him.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir; to be sure +when you wish a man to have that belief which you think is of infinite +advantage, you wish well to him; but your primary consideration is your +own quiet. If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his +hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary +consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him +down first, and pity him afterwards. No, Sir; every man will dispute +with great good humour upon a subject in which he is not interested. I +will dispute very calmly upon the probability of another man's son being +hanged; but if a man zealously enforces the probability that my own son +will be hanged, I shall certainly not be in a very good humour with +him.' I added this illustration, 'If a man endeavours to convince me +that my wife, whom I love very much, and in whom I place great +confidence, is a disagreeable woman, and is even unfaithful to me, I +shall be very angry, for he is putting me in fear of being unhappy.' +MURRAY. 'But, Sir, truth will always bear an examination.' JOHNSON. +'Yes, Sir, but it is painful to be forced to defend it. Consider, Sir, +how should you like, though conscious of your innocence, to be tried +before a jury for a capital crime, once a week.' + +We talked of education at great schools; the advantages and +disadvantages of which Johnson displayed in a luminous manner; but his +arguments preponderated so much in favour of the benefit which a boy of +good parts[36] might receive at one of them, that I have reason to +believe Mr. Murray was very much influenced by what he had heard to-day, +in his determination to send his own son to Westminster school[37].--I +have acted in the same manner with regard to my own two sons; having +placed the eldest at Eton, and the second at Westminster. I cannot say +which is best.[38] But in justice to both those noble seminaries, I with +high satisfaction declare, that my boys have derived from them a great +deal of good, and no evil: and I trust they will, like Horace[39], be +grateful to their father for giving them so valuable an education. + +I introduced the topick, which is often ignorantly urged, that the +Universities of England are too rich[40]; so that learning does not +flourish in them as it would do, if those who teach had smaller +salaries, and depended on their assiduity for a great part of their +income. JOHNSON. 'Sir, the very reverse of this is the truth; the +English Universities are not rich enough. Our fellowships are only +sufficient to support a man during his studies to fit him for the world, +and accordingly in general they are held no longer than till an +opportunity offers of getting away. Now and then, perhaps, there is a +fellow who grows old in his college; but this is against his will, +unless he be a man very indolent indeed. A hundred a year is reckoned a +good fellowship, and that is no more than is necessary to keep a man +decently as a scholar. We do not allow our fellows to marry, because we +consider academical institutions as preparatory to a settlement in the +world. It is only by being employed as a tutor, that a fellow can obtain +any thing more than a livelihood. To be sure a man, who has enough +without teaching, will probably not teach; for we would all be idle if +we could[41]. In the same manner, a man who is to get nothing by +teaching, will not exert himself. Gresham-College was intended as a +place of instruction for London; able professors were to read lectures +gratis, they contrived to have no scholars; whereas, if they had been +allowed to receive but sixpence a lecture from each scholar, they would +have been emulous to have had many scholars. Every body will agree that +it should be the interest of those who teach to have scholars; and this +is the case in our Universities[42]. That they are too rich is certainly +not true; for they have nothing good enough to keep a man of eminent +learning with them for his life. In the foreign Universities a +professorship is a high thing. It is as much almost as a man can make by +his learning; and therefore we find the most learned men abroad are in +the Universities[43]. It is not so with us. Our Universities are +impoverished of learning, by the penury of their provisions. I wish +there were many places of a thousand a-year at Oxford, to keep +first-rate men of learning from quitting the University.' Undoubtedly if +this were the case, Literature would have a still greater dignity and +splendour at Oxford, and there would be grander living sources of +instruction. + +I mentioned Mr. Maclaurin's[44] uneasiness on account of a degree of +ridicule carelessly thrown on his deceased father, in Goldsmith's +_History of Animated Nature_, in which that celebrated mathematician is +represented as being subject to fits of yawning so violent as to render +him incapable of proceeding in his lecture; a story altogether +unfounded, but for the publication of which the law would give no +reparation[45]. This led us to agitate the question, whether legal +redress could be obtained, even when a man's deceased relation was +calumniated in a publication. Mr. Murray maintained there should be +reparation, unless the author could justify himself by proving the fact. +JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is of so much more consequence that truth should be +told, than that individuals should not be made uneasy, that it is much +better that the law does not restrain writing freely concerning the +characters of the dead. Damages will be given to a man who is +calumniated in his life-time, because he may be hurt in his worldly +interest, or at least hurt in his mind: but the law does not regard that +uneasiness which a man feels on having his ancestor calumniated[46]. That +is too nice. Let him deny what is said, and let the matter have a fair +chance by discussion. But, if a man could say nothing against a +character but what he can prove, history could not be written; for a +great deal is known of men of which proof cannot be brought. A minister +may be notoriously known to take bribes, and yet you may not be able to +prove it.' Mr. Murray suggested, that the authour should be obliged to +shew some sort of evidence, though he would not require a strict legal +proof: but Johnson firmly and resolutely opposed any restraint whatever, +as adverse to a free investigation of the characters of mankind[47]. + +On Thursday, April 4, having called on Dr. Johnson, I said, it was a +pity that truth was not so firm as to bid defiance to all attacks, so +that it might be shot at as much as people chose to attempt, and yet +remain unhurt. JOHNSON. 'Then, Sir, it would not be shot at. Nobody[48] +attempts to dispute that two and two make four: but with contests +concerning moral truth, human passions are generally mixed, and +therefore it must ever be liable to assault and misrepresentation.' + +On Friday, April 5, being Good Friday, after having attended the morning +service at St. Clement's Church[49], I walked home with Johnson. We +talked of the Roman Catholick religion. JOHNSON. 'In the barbarous ages, +Sir, priests and people were equally deceived; but afterwards there were +gross corruptions introduced by the clergy, such as indulgences to +priests to have concubines, and the worship of images, not, indeed, +inculcated, but knowingly permitted.' He strongly censured the licensed +stews at Rome. BOSWELL. 'So then, Sir, you would allow of no irregular +intercourse whatever between the sexes?' JOHNSON. 'To be sure I would +not, Sir. I would punish it much more than it is done, and so restrain +it. In all countries there has been fornication, as in all countries +there has been theft; but there may be more or less of the one, as well +as of the other, in proportion to the force of law. All men will +naturally commit fornication, as all men will naturally steal. And, Sir, +it is very absurd to argue, as has been often done, that prostitutes are +necessary to prevent the violent effects of appetite from violating the +decent order of life; nay, should be permitted, in order to preserve the +chastity of our wives and daughters. Depend upon it, Sir, severe laws, +steadily enforced, would be sufficient against those evils, and would +promote marriage.' + +I stated to him this case:--'Suppose a man has a daughter, who he knows +has been seduced, but her misfortune is concealed from the world? should +he keep her in his house? Would he not, by doing so, be accessory to +imposition? And, perhaps, a worthy, unsuspecting man might come and +marry this woman, unless the father inform him of the truth.' JOHNSON. +'Sir, he is accessory to no imposition. His daughter is in his house; +and if a man courts her, he takes his chance. If a friend, or, indeed, +if any man asks his opinion whether he should marry her, he ought to +advise him against it, without telling why, because his real opinion is +then required. Or, if he has other daughters who know of her frailty, he +ought not to keep her in his house. You are to consider the state of +life is this; we are to judge of one another's characters as well as we +can; and a man is not bound, in honesty or honour, to tell us the faults +of his daughter or of himself. A man who has debauched his friend's +daughter is not obliged to say to every body--"Take care of me; don't +let me into your houses without suspicion. I once debauched a friend's +daughter. I may debauch yours."' + +Mr. Thrale called upon him, and appeared to bear the loss of his son +with a manly composure. There was no affectation about him; and he +talked, as usual, upon indifferent subjects.[50] He seemed to me to +hesitate as to the intended Italian tour, on which, I flattered myself, +he and Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson were soon to set out; and, therefore, +I pressed it as much as I could. I mentioned, that Mr. Beauclerk had +said, that Baretti, whom they were to carry with them, would keep them +so long in the little towns of his own district, that they would not +have time to see Rome. I mentioned this, to put them on their guard. +JOHNSON. 'Sir, we do not thank Mr. Beauclerk for supposing that we are +to be directed by Baretti. No, Sir; Mr. Thrale is to go, by my advice, +to Mr. Jackson[51], (the all-knowing) and get from him a plan for seeing +the most that can be seen in the time that we have to travel. We must, +to be sure, see Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice, and as much more as +we can.' (Speaking with a tone of animation.) + +When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said, 'I +do not see that I could make a book upon Italy[52]; yet I should be glad +to get two hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a work.' This +shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon the Continent was not wholly +out of his contemplation, and that he uniformly adhered to that strange +opinion, which his indolent disposition made him utter: 'No man but a +blockhead ever wrote, except for money[53].' Numerous instances to refute +this will occur to all who are versed in the history of literature.[54] + +He gave us one of the many sketches of character which were treasured in +his mind, and which he was wont to produce quite unexpectedly in a very +entertaining manner. 'I lately, (said he,) received a letter from the +East Indies, from a gentleman whom I formerly knew very well; he had +returned from that country with a handsome fortune, as it was reckoned, +before means were found to acquire those immense sums which have been +brought from thence of late; he was a scholar, and an agreeable man, and +lived very prettily in London, till his wife died. After her death, he +took to dissipation and gaming, and lost all he had. One evening he lost +a thousand pounds to a gentleman whose name I am sorry I have forgotten. +Next morning he sent the gentleman five hundred pounds, with an apology +that it was all he had in the world. The gentleman sent the money back +to him, declaring he would not accept of it; and adding, that if Mr. +---- had occasion for five hundred pounds more, he would lend it to him. +He resolved to go out again to the East Indies, and make his fortune +anew. He got a considerable appointment, and I had some intention of +accompanying him. Had I thought then as I do now, I should have gone: +but, at that time, I had objections to quitting England.' + +It was a very remarkable circumstance about Johnson, whom shallow +observers have supposed to have been ignorant of the world, that very +few men had seen greater variety of characters; and none could observe +them better, as was evident from the strong, yet nice portraits which he +often drew. I have frequently thought that if he had made out what the +French call _une catalogue raisonnée_ of all the people who had passed +under his observation, it would have afforded a very rich fund of +instruction and entertainment. The suddenness with which his accounts of +some of them started out in conversation, was not less pleasing than +surprising. I remember he once observed to me, 'It is wonderful, Sir, +what is to be found in London. The most literary conversation that I +ever enjoyed, was at the table of Jack Ellis, a money-scrivener behind +the Royal Exchange, with whom I at one period used to dine generally +once a week[55].' + +Volumes would be required to contain a list of his numerous and various +acquaintance[56], none of whom he ever forgot; and could describe and +discriminate them all with precision and vivacity. He associated with +persons the most widely different in manners, abilities, rank and +accomplishments[57]. He was at once the companion of the brilliant +Colonel Forrester[58] of the Guards, who wrote _The Polite Philosopher_, +and of the aukward and uncouth Robert Levet; of Lord Thurlow, and Mr. +Sastres, the Italian master; and has dined one day with the beautiful, +gay, and fascinating Lady Craven,[59] and the next with good Mrs. +Gardiner,[60] the tallow-chandler, on Snow-hill. + +On my expressing my wonder at his discovering so much of the knowledge +peculiar to different professions, he told me, 'I learnt what I know of +law, chiefly from Mr. Ballow,[61] a very able man. I learnt some, too, +from Chambers;[62] but was not so teachable then. One is not willing to +be taught by a young man.' When I expressed a wish to know more about +Mr. Ballow, Johnson said, 'Sir, I have seen him but once these twenty +years. The tide of life has driven us different ways.' I was sorry at +the time to hear this; but whoever quits the creeks of private +connections, and fairly gets into the great ocean of London, will, by +imperceptible degrees, unavoidably experience such cessations of +acquaintance. + +'My knowledge of physick, (he added,) I learnt from Dr. James, whom I +helped in writing the proposals for his _Dictionary_ and also a little +in the Dictionary itself.[63] I also learnt from Dr. Lawrence, but was +then grown more stubborn.' + +A curious incident happened to-day, while Mr. Thrale and I sat with him. +Francis announced that a large packet was brought to him from the +post-office, said to have come from Lisbon, and it was charged _seven +pounds ten shillings_. He would not receive it, supposing it to be some +trick, nor did he even look at it. But upon enquiry afterwards he found +that it was a real packet for him, from that very friend in the East +Indies of whom he had been speaking; and the ship which carried it +having come to Portugal, this packet, with others, had been put into the +post-office at Lisbon. + +I mentioned a new gaming-club,[64] of which Mr. Beauclerk had given me an +account, where the members played to a desperate extent. JOHNSON. +'Depend upon it, Sir, this is mere talk. _Who_ is ruined by gaming? You +will not find six instances in an age. There is a strange rout made +about deep play: whereas you have many more people ruined by adventurous +trade, and yet we do not hear such an outcry against it.' THRALE. 'There +may be few people absolutely ruined by deep play; but very many are much +hurt in their circumstances by it.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, and so are very +many by other kinds of expence.' I had heard him talk once before in the +same manner; and at Oxford he said, 'he wished he had learnt to play at +cards.'[65] The truth, however, is, that he loved to display his +ingenuity in argument; and therefore would sometimes in conversation +maintain opinions which he was sensible were wrong, but in supporting +which, his reasoning and wit would be most conspicuous.[66] He would +begin thus: 'Why, Sir, as to the good or evil of card-playing--' 'Now, +(said Garrick,) he is thinking which side he shall take.'[67] He appeared +to have a pleasure in contradiction, especially when any opinion +whatever was delivered with an air of confidence[68]; so that there was +hardly any topick, if not one of the great truths of Religion and +Morality, that he might not have been incited to argue, either for or +against. Lord Elibank[69] had the highest admiration of his powers. He +once observed to me, 'Whatever opinion Johnson maintains, I will not say +that he convinces me; but he never fails to shew me, that he has good +reasons for it.' I have heard Johnson pay his Lordship this high +compliment: 'I never was in Lord Elibank's company without learning +something.'[70] + +We sat together till it was too late for the afternoon service. Thrale +said he had come with intention to go to church with us. We went at +seven to evening prayers at St. Clement's church, after having drank +coffee; an indulgence, which I understood Johnson yielded to on this +occasion, in compliment to Thrale[71]. + +On Sunday, April 7, Easter-day, after having been at St. Paul's +Cathedral, I came to Dr. Johnson, according to my usual custom. It +seemed to me, that there was always something peculiarly mild and placid +in his manner upon this holy festival, the commemoration of the most +joyful event in the history of our world, the resurrection of our LORD +and SAVIOUR, who, having triumphed over death and the grave, proclaimed +immortality to mankind[72]. + +I repeated to him an argument of a lady of my acquaintance, who +maintained, that her husband's having been guilty of numberless +infidelities, released her from conjugal obligations, because they were +reciprocal. JOHNSON. 'This is miserable stuff, Sir. To the contract of +marriage, besides the man and wife, there is a third party--Society; and +if it be considered as a vow--GOD: and, therefore, it cannot be +dissolved by their consent alone. Laws are not made for particular +cases, but for men in general. A woman may be unhappy with her husband; +but she cannot be freed from him without the approbation of the civil +and ecclesiastical power. A man may be unhappy, because he is not so +rich as another; but he is not to seize upon another's property with his +own hand.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, this lady does not want that the contract +should be dissolved; she only argues that she may indulge herself in +gallantries with equal freedom as her husband does, provided she takes +care not to introduce a spurious issue into his family. You know, Sir, +what Macrobius has told us of Julia.[73]' JOHNSON. 'This lady of yours, +Sir, I think, is very fit for a brothel.' + +Mr. Macbean[74], authour of the _Dictionary of ancient Geography_, came +in. He mentioned that he had been forty years absent from Scotland. 'Ah, +Boswell! (said Johnson, smiling,) what would you give to be forty years +from Scotland?' I said, 'I should not like to be so long absent from the +seat of my ancestors.' This gentleman, Mrs. Williams, and Mr. Levet, +dined with us. + +Dr. Johnson made a remark, which both Mr. Macbean and I thought new. It +was this: that 'the law against usury is for the protection of creditors +as well as of debtors; for if there were no such check, people would be +apt, from the temptation of great interest, to lend to desperate +persons, by whom they would lose their money. Accordingly there are +instances of ladies being ruined, by having injudiciously sunk their +fortunes for high annuities, which, after a few years, ceased to be +paid, in consequence of the ruined circumstances of the borrower.' + +Mrs. Williams was very peevish; and I wondered at Johnson's patience +with her now, as I had often done on similar occasions. The truth is, +that his humane consideration of the forlorn and indigent state in which +this lady was left by her father, induced him to treat her with the +utmost tenderness, and even to be desirous of procuring her amusement, +so as sometimes to incommode many of his friends, by carrying her with +him to their houses, where, from her manner of eating, in consequence of +her blindness, she could not but offend the delicacy of persons of nice +sensations.[75] + +After coffee, we went to afternoon service in St. Clement's church. +Observing some beggars in the street as we walked along, I said to him I +supposed there was no civilised country in the world, where the misery +of want in the lowest classes of the people was prevented. JOHNSON. 'I +believe, Sir, there is not; but it is better that some should be +unhappy, than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a +general state of equality.'[76] + +When the service was ended, I went home with him, and we sat quietly by +ourselves. He recommended Dr. Cheyne's books. I said, I thought Cheyne +had been reckoned whimsical. 'So he was, (said he,) in some things; but +there is no end of objections. There are few books to which some +objection or other may not be made.' He added, 'I would not have you +read anything else of Cheyne, but his book on Health, and his _English +Malady_.'[77] + +Upon the question whether a man who had been guilty of vicious actions +would do well to force himself into solitude and sadness; JOHNSON. 'No, +Sir, unless it prevent him from being vicious again. With some people, +gloomy penitence is only madness turned upside down. A man may be +gloomy, till, in order to be relieved from gloom, he has recourse again +to criminal indulgencies.'[78] + +On Wednesday, April 10, I dined with him at Mr. Thrale's, where were Mr. +Murphy and some other company. Before dinner, Dr. Johnson and I passed +some time by ourselves. I was sorry to find it was now resolved that the +proposed journey to Italy should not take place this year.[79] He said, +'I am disappointed, to be sure; but it is not a great disappointment.' I +wondered to see him bear, with a philosophical calmness, what would have +made most people peevish and fretful. I perceived, however, that he had +so warmly cherished the hope of enjoying classical scenes, that he could +not easily part with the scheme; for he said, 'I shall probably contrive +to get to Italy some other way. But I won't mention it to Mr. and Mrs. +Thrale, as it might vex them.' I suggested, that going to Italy might +have done Mr. and Mrs. Thrale good. JOHNSON. 'I rather believe not, Sir. +While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must +wait till grief be _digested_, and then amusement will dissipate the +remains of it.' + +At dinner, Mr. Murphy entertained us with the history of Mr. Joseph +Simpson,[80] a schoolfellow of Dr. Johnson's, a barrister at law, of good +parts, but who fell into a dissipated course of life, incompatible with +that success in his profession which he once had, and would otherwise +have deservedly maintained; yet he still preserved a dignity in his +deportment. He wrote a tragedy on the story of Leonidas, entitled _The +Patriot_. He read it to a company of lawyers, who found so many faults, +that he wrote it over again: so then there were two tragedies on the +same subject and with the same title. Dr. Johnson told us, that one of +them was still in his possession. This very piece was, after his death, +published by some person who had been about him, and, for the sake of a +little hasty profit, was fallaciously advertised, so as to make it be +believed to have been written by Johnson himself. + +I said, I disliked the custom which some people had of bringing their +children into company,[81] because it in a manner forced us to pay +foolish compliments to please their parents. JOHNSON. 'You are right, +Sir. We may be excused for not caring much about other people's +children, for there are many who care very little about their own +children. It may be observed, that men, who from being engaged in +business, or from their course of life in whatever way, seldom see their +children, do not care much about them. I myself should not have had much +fondness for a child of my own.'[82] MRS. THRALE. 'Nay, Sir, how can you +talk so?' JOHNSON. 'At least, I never wished to have a child.' + +Mr. Murphy mentioned Dr. Johnson's having a design to publish an edition +of _Cowley_. Johnson said, he did not know but he should; and he +expressed his disapprobation of Dr. Hurd, for having published a +mutilated edition under the title of _Select Works of Abraham +Cowley_.[83] Mr. Murphy thought it a bad precedent; observing that any +authour might be used in the same manner; and that it was pleasing to +see the variety of an authour's compositions, at different periods. + +We talked of Flatman's Poems; and Mrs. Thrale observed, that Pope had +partly borrowed from him _The dying Christian to his Soul_.[84] Johnson +repeated Rochester's verses upon Flatman[85], which I think by much too +severe: + +'Nor that slow drudge in swift Pindarick strains, +Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, +And rides a jaded Muse, whipt with loose reins.' + +I like to recollect all the passages that I heard Johnson repeat: it +stamps a value on them. + +He told us, that the book entitled _The Lives of the Poets_, by Mr. +Cibber, was entirely compiled by Mr. Shiels, a Scotchman, one of his +amanuenses. 'The bookseller (said he,) gave Theophilus Cibber, who was +then in prison, ten guineas, to allow _Mr. Cibber_ to be put upon the +title-page, as the authour; by this, a double imposition was intended: +in the first place, that it was the work of a Cibber at all; and, in the +second place, that it was the work of old Cibber.'[86] + +Mr. Murphy said, that _The Memoirs of Gray's Life_ set him much higher +in his estimation than his poems did; 'for you there saw a man +constantly at work in literature.' Johnson acquiesced in this; but +depreciated the book, I thought, very unreasonably. For he said, 'I +forced myself to read it, only because it was a common topick of +conversation. I found it mighty dull; and, as to the style, it is fit +for the second table[87].' Why he thought so I was at a loss to conceive. +He now gave it as his opinion, that 'Akenside[88] was a superiour poet +both to Gray and Mason.' + +Talking of the Reviews, Johnson said, 'I think them very impartial: I do +not know an instance of partiality.'[89] He mentioned what had passed +upon the subject of the _Monthly_ and _Critical Reviews_, in the +conversation with which his Majesty had honoured him.[90] He expatiated a +little more on them this evening. 'The Monthly Reviewers (said he) are +not Deists; but they are Christians with as little christianity as may +be; and are for pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers +are for supporting the constitution both in church and state.[91] The +Critical Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books +through; but lay hold of a topick, and write chiefly from their own +minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men, and are glad to read the +books through.' + +He talked of Lord Lyttelton's extreme anxiety as an authour; observing, +that 'he was thirty years in preparing his _History_, and that he +employed a man to point it for him; as if (laughing) another man could +point his sense better than himself.'[92] Mr. Murphy said, he understood +his history was kept back several years for fear of Smollet[93]. JOHNSON. +'This seems strange to Murphy and me, who never felt that anxiety, but +sent what we wrote to the press, and let it take its chance.' MRS. +THRALE. 'The time has been, Sir, when you felt it.' JOHNSON. 'Why +really, Madam, I do not recollect a time when that was the case.' + +Talking of _The Spectator_, he said, 'It is wonderful that there is such +a proportion of bad papers, in the half of the work which was not +written by Addison; for there was all the world to write that half, yet +not a half of that half is good. One of the finest pieces in the English +language is the paper on Novelty,[94] yet we do not hear it talked of. It +was written by Grove, a dissenting _teacher_.' He would not, I +perceived, call him a _clergyman_, though he was candid enough to allow +very great merit to his composition. Mr. Murphy said, he remembered when +there were several people alive in London, who enjoyed a considerable +reputation merely from having written a paper in _The Spectator_. He +mentioned particularly Mr. Ince, who used to frequent Tom's +coffee-house. 'But (said Johnson,) you must consider how highly Steele +speaks of Mr. Ince[95].' He would not allow that the paper[96] on carrying +a boy to travel, signed _Philip Homebred_, which was reported to be +written by the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, had merit. He said, 'it was +quite vulgar, and had nothing luminous.' + +Johnson mentioned Dr. Barry's[97] System of Physick. 'He was a man (said +he,) who had acquired a high reputation in Dublin, came over to England, +and brought his reputation with him, but had not great success. His +notion was, that pulsation occasions death by attrition; and that, +therefore, the way to preserve life is to retard pulsation[98]. But we +know that pulsation is strongest in infants, and that we increase in +growth while it operates in its regular course; so it cannot be the +cause of destruction.' Soon after this, he said something very +flattering to Mrs. Thrale, which I do not recollect; but it concluded +with wishing her long life. 'Sir, (said I,) if Dr. Barry's system be +true, you have now shortened Mrs. Thrale's life, perhaps, some minutes, +by accelerating her pulsation.' + +On Thursday, April 11[99], I dined with him at General Paoli's, in whose +house I now resided, and where I had ever afterwards the honour of being +entertained with the kindest attention as his constant guest, while I +was in London, till I had a house of my own there. I mentioned my having +that morning introduced to Mr. Garrick, Count Neni, a Flemish Nobleman +of great rank and fortune, to whom Garrick talked of Abel Drugger[100] as +_a small part_; and related, with pleasant vanity, that a Frenchman who +had seen him in one of his low characters, exclaimed, '_Comment! je ne +le crois pas. Ce n'est pas Monsieur Garrick, ce Grand Homme_!' Garrick +added, with an appearance of grave recollection, 'If I were to begin +life again, I think I should not play those low characters.' Upon which +I observed, 'Sir, you would be in the wrong; for your great excellence +is your variety of playing, your representing so well, characters so +very different.' JOHNSON. 'Garrick, Sir, was not in earnest in what he +said; for, to be sure, his peculiar excellence is his variety[101]: and, +perhaps, there is not any one character which has not been as well acted +by somebody else, as he could do it.' BOSWELL. 'Why then, Sir, did he +talk so?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, to make you answer as you did.' BOSWELL. +'I don't know, Sir; he seemed to dip deep into his mind for the +reflection.' JOHNSON. 'He had not far to dip, Sir: he said the same +thing, probably, twenty times before.' + +Of a nobleman raised at a very early period to high office, he said, +'His parts, Sir, are pretty well for a Lord; but would not be +distinguished in a man who had nothing else but his parts[102]'. + +A journey to Italy was still in his thoughts[103]. He said, 'A man who has +not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not +having seen what it is expected a man should see. The grand object of +travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores +were the four great Empires of the world; the Assyrian, the Persian, the +Grecian, and the Roman.--All our religion, almost all our law, almost +all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from +the shores of the Mediterranean.' The General observed, that 'THE +MEDITERRANEAN would be a noble subject for a poem[104].' + +We talked of translation. I said, I could not define it, nor could I +think of a similitude to illustrate it; but that it appeared to me the +translation of poetry could be only imitation. JOHNSON. 'You may +translate books of science exactly. You may also translate history, in +so far as it is not embellished with oratory[105], which is poetical. +Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets +that preserve languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a +language, if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a +translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any +language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the +language.' + +A gentleman maintained that the art of printing had hurt real learning, +by disseminating idle writings.--JOHNSON. 'Sir, if it had not been for +the art of printing, we should now have no learning at all; for books +would have perished faster than they could have been transcribed.' This +observation seems not just, considering for how many ages books were +preserved by writing alone. + +The same gentleman maintained, that a general diffusion of knowledge +among a people was a disadvantage; for it made the vulgar rise above +their humble sphere. JOHNSON. 'Sir, while knowledge is a distinction, +those who are possessed of it will naturally rise above those who are +not. Merely to read and write was a distinction at first; but we see +when reading and writing have become general, the common people keep +their stations. And so, were higher attainments to become general the +effect would be the same.'[106] + +'Goldsmith (he said), referred every thing to vanity; his virtues, and +his vices too, were from that motive. He was not a social man. He never +exchanged mind with you.' + +We spent the evening at Mr. Hoole's. Mr. Mickle, the excellent +translator of _The Lusiad_[107], was there. I have preserved little of the +conversation of this evening.[108] Dr. Johnson said, 'Thomson had a true +poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light. +His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly +peep through. Shiels, who compiled _Cibber's Lives of the Poets_[109], was +one day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large +portion of him, and then asked,--Is not this fine? Shiels having +expressed the highest admiration. Well, Sir, (said I,) I have omitted +every other line.'[110] + +I related a dispute between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley, one day +when they and I were dining at Tom Davies's, in 1762. Goldsmith +asserted, that there was no poetry produced in this age. Dodsley +appealed to his own _Collection_[111], and maintained, that though you +could not find a palace like Dryden's _Ode on St. Cecilia's Day_, you +had villages composed of very pretty houses; and he mentioned +particularly _The Spleen_[112]. JOHNSON. 'I think Dodsley gave up the +question. He and Goldsmith said the same thing; only he said it in a +softer manner than Goldsmith did; for he acknowledged that there was no +poetry, nothing that towered above the common mark. You may find wit and +humour in verse, and yet no poetry. _Hudibras_ has a profusion of these; +yet it is not to be reckoned a poem. _The Spleen_, in Dodsley's +_Collection_, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry[113].' +BOSWELL. 'Does not Gray's poetry, Sir, tower above the common mark?' +JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but we must attend to the difference between what +men in general cannot do if they would, and what every man may do if he +would. Sixteen-string Jack[114] towered above the common mark.' BOSWELL. +'Then, Sir, what is poetry?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, it is much easier to +say what it is not. We all _know_ what light is; but it is not easy to +_tell_ what it is.' + +On Friday, April 12, I dined with him at our friend Tom Davies's, where +we met Mr. Cradock, of Leicestershire, authour of _Zobeide_, a +tragedy[115]; a very pleasing gentleman, to whom my friend Dr. Farmer's +very excellent _Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare_[116] is addressed; +and Dr. Harwood, who has written and published various works; +particularly a fantastical translation of the New Testament, in modern +phrase[117], and with a Socinian twist. + +I introduced Aristotle's doctrine in his _Art of Poetry_, of 'the +[Greek: katharis ton pathaematon], the purging of the passions,' as the +purpose of tragedy[118]. 'But how are the passions to be purged by terrour +and pity?' (said I, with an assumed air of ignorance, to incite him to +talk, for which it was often necessary to employ some address)[119]. +JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, you are to consider what is the meaning of purging +in the original sense. It is to expel impurities from the human body. +The mind is subject to the same imperfection. The passions are the great +movers of human actions; but they are mixed with such impurities, that +it is necessary they should be purged or refined by means of terrour and +pity. For instance, ambition is a noble passion; but by seeing upon the +stage, that a man who is so excessively ambitious as to raise himself by +injustice, is punished, we are terrified at the fatal consequences of +such a passion. In the same manner a certain degree of resentment is +necessary; but if we see that a man carries it too far, we pity the +object of it, and are taught to moderate that passion.' My record upon +this occasion does great injustice to Johnson's expression, which was so +forcible and brilliant, that Mr. Cradock whispered me, 'O that his words +were written in a book[120]!' + +I observed, the great defect of the tragedy of _Othello_ was, that it +had not a moral; for that no man could resist the circumstances of +suspicion which were artfully suggested to Othello's mind. JOHNSON. 'In +the first place, Sir, we learn from _Othello_ this very useful moral, +not to make an unequal match; in the second place, we learn not to yield +too readily to suspicion. The handkerchief is merely a trick, though a +very pretty trick; but there are no other circumstances of reasonable +suspicion, except what is related by Iago of Cassio's warm expressions +concerning Desdemona in his sleep; and that depended entirely upon the +assertion of one man.[121] No, Sir, I think _Othello_ has more moral than +almost any play.' + +Talking of a penurious gentleman of our acquaintance, Johnson said, +'Sir, he is narrow, not so much from avarice, as from impotence to spend +his money. He cannot find in his heart to pour out a bottle of wine; but +he would not much care if it should sour.' + +He said, he wished to see John Dennis's _Critical Works_ collected. +Davies said they would not sell. Dr. Johnson seemed to think +otherwise.[122] + +Davies said of a well-known dramatick authour, that 'he lived upon +_potted stories_, and that he made his way as Hannibal did, by vinegar; +having begun by attacking people; particularly the players.'[123] + +He reminded Dr. Johnson of Mr. Murphy's having paid him the highest +compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for +repeating some oaths in the course of telling a story.[124] + +Johnson and I supt this evening at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in +company with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Mr. Nairne,[125] now one of +the Scotch Judges, with the title of Lord Dunsinan, and my very worthy +friend, Sir William Forbes,[126] of Pitsligo. + +We discussed the question whether drinking improved conversation and +benevolence.[127] Sir Joshua maintained it did. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir: before +dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who +are conscious of their inferiority, have the modesty not to talk. When +they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that +modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous: but he is not improved; he +is only not sensible of his defects.' Sir Joshua said the Doctor was +talking of the effects of excess in wine; but that a moderate glass +enlivened the mind, by giving a proper circulation to the blood. 'I am +(said he,) in very good spirits, when I get up in the morning. By +dinner-time I am exhausted; wine puts me in the same state as when I got +up; and I am sure that moderate drinking makes people talk better.' +JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; wine gives not light, gay, ideal hilarity; but +tumultuous, noisy, clamorous merriment. I have heard none of those +drunken,--nay, drunken is a coarse word,--none of those _vinous_ +flights.' SIR JOSHUA. 'Because you have sat by, quite sober, and felt an +envy of the happiness of those who were drinking.' JOHNSON. 'Perhaps, +contempt.[128]--And, Sir, it is not necessary to be drunk one's self, to +relish the wit of drunkenness. Do we not judge of the drunken wit, of +the dialogue between Iago and Cassio, the most excellent in its kind, +when we are quite sober? Wit is wit, by whatever means it is produced; +and, if good, will appear so at all times. I admit that the spirits are +raised by drinking, as by the common participation of any pleasure: +cock-fighting, or bear-baiting, will raise the spirits of a company, as +drinking does, though surely they will not improve conversation. I also +admit, that there are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as +there are fruits which are not good till they are rotten. There are such +men, but they are medlars. I indeed allow that there have been a very +few men of talents who were improved by drinking; but I maintain that I +am right as to the effects of drinking in general: and let it be +considered, that there is no position, however false in its +universality, which is not true of some particular man.' Sir William +Forbes said, 'Might not a man warmed with wine be like a bottle of beer, +which is made brisker by being set before the fire?' 'Nay, (said +Johnson, laughing,) I cannot answer that: that is too much for me.' + +I observed, that wine did some people harm, by inflaming, confusing, and +irritating their minds; but that the experience of mankind had declared +in favour of moderate drinking. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not say it is wrong +to produce self complacency by drinking; I only deny that it improves +the mind. When I drank wine, I scorned to drink it when in company.[129] I +have drunk many a bottle by myself; in the first place, because I had +need of it to raise my spirits; in the second place, because I would +have nobody to witness its effects upon me.' + +He told us, 'almost all his _Ramblers_ were written just as they were +wanted for the press; that he sent a certain portion of the copy[130] of +an essay, and wrote the remainder, while the former part of it was +printing. When it was wanted, and he had fairly sat down to it, he was +sure it would be done.'[131] + +He said, that for general improvement, a man should read whatever his +immediate inclination prompts him to; though, to be sure, if a man has a +science to learn, he must regularly and resolutely advance. He added, +'what we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we +read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the +attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.'[132] +He told us, he read Fielding's _Amelia_ through without stopping.[133] He +said, 'if a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an +inclination to go on, let him not quit it, to go to the beginning. He +may perhaps not feel again the inclination.' + +Sir Joshua mentioned Mr. Cumberland's _Odes_,[134] which were just +published. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, they would have been thought as good as +Odes commonly are, if Cumberland had not put his name to them; but a +name immediately draws censure, unless it be a name that bears down +everything before it. Nay, Cumberland has made his _Odes_ subsidiary to +the fame of another man.[135] They might have run well enough by +themselves; but he has not only loaded them with a name, but has made +them carry double.' + +We talked of the Reviews, and Dr. Johnson spoke of them as he did at +Thrale's.[136] Sir Joshua said, what I have often thought, that he +wondered to find so much good writing employed in them, when the +authours were to remain unknown, and so could not have the motive of +fame. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, those who write in them, write well, in order +to be paid well.' + +Soon after this day, he went to Bath with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. I had +never seen that beautiful city, and wished to take the opportunity of +visiting it, while Johnson was there. Having written to him, I received +the following answer. + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. +'DEAR SIR, + +'Why do you talk of neglect? When did I neglect you? If you will come to +Bath, we shall all be glad to see you. Come, therefore, as soon as you +can. + +'But I have a little business for you at London. Bid Francis look in the +paper-drawer of the chest of drawers in my bed-chamber, for two cases; +one for the Attorney-General,[137] and one for the Solicitor-General.[138] +They lie, I think, at the top of my papers; otherwise they are somewhere +else, and will give me more trouble. + +'Please to write to me immediately, if they can be found. Make my +compliments to all our friends round the world, and to Mrs. Williams at +home. + +'I am, Sir, your, &c. +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Search for the papers as soon as you can, that, if it is necessary, I +may write to you again before you come down.' + +On the 26th of April, I went to Bath;[139] and on my arrival at the +Pelican inn, found lying for me an obliging invitation from Mr. and Mrs. +Thrale, by whom I was agreeably entertained almost constantly during my +stay. They were gone to the rooms;[140] but there was a kind note from Dr. +Johnson, that he should sit at home all the evening. I went to him +directly, and before Mr. and Mrs. Thrale returned, we had by ourselves +some hours of tea-drinking and talk. + +I shall group together such of his sayings as I preserved during the few +days that I was at Bath. + +Of a person[141] who differed from him in politicks, he said, 'In private +life he is a very honest gentleman; but I will not allow him to be so in +publick life. People _may_ be honest, though they are doing wrong: that +is, between their Maker and them. But _we_, who are suffering by their +pernicious conduct, are to destroy them. We are sure that ---- acts from +interest. We know what his genuine principles were. They who allow their +passions to confound the distinctions between right and wrong, are +criminal. They may be convinced; but they have not come honestly by +their conviction.'[142] + +It having been mentioned, I know not with what truth, that a certain +female political writer,[143] whose doctrines he disliked, had of late +become very fond of dress, sat hours together at her toilet, and even +put on rouge:--JOHNSON. 'She is better employed at her toilet, than +using her pen. It is better she should be reddening her own cheeks, than +blackening other people's characters.' + +He told us that 'Addison wrote Budgell's papers in the _Spectator_, at +least mended them so much, that he made them almost his own; and that +Draper, Tonson's partner, assured Mrs. Johnson, that the much admired +Epilogue to _The Distressed Mother_, which came out in Budgell's name, +was in reality written by Addison.'[144] + +'The mode of government by one may be ill adapted to a small society, +but is best for a great nation. The characteristick of our own +government at present is imbecility.[145] The magistrate dare not call the +guards for fear of being hanged. The guards will not come, for fear of +being given up to the blind rage of popular juries.'[146] + +Of the father of one of our friends, he observed, 'He never clarified +his notions, by filtrating them through other minds. He had a canal upon +his estate, where at one place the bank was too low.--I dug the canal +deeper,' said he.[147] + +He told me that 'so long ago as 1748[148] he had read "_The Grave_, a +Poem[149]," but did not like it much.' I differed from him; for though it +is not equal throughout, and is seldom elegantly correct, it abounds in +solemn thought, and poetical imagery beyond the common reach. The world +has differed from him; for the poem has passed through many editions, +and is still much read by people of a serious cast of mind. + +A literary lady of large fortune[150] was mentioned, as one who did good +to many, but by no means 'by stealth,' and instead of 'blushing to find +it fame,[151] acted evidently from vanity. JOHNSON. 'I have seen no beings +who do as much good from benevolence, as she does, from whatever motive. +If there are such under the earth, or in the clouds, I wish they would +come up, or come down. What Soame Jenyns says upon this subject is not +to be minded; he is a wit. No, Sir; to act from pure benevolence is not +possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, +interest, or some other motive.'[152] + +He would not allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing 'She does +not gain upon me, Sir; I think her empty-headed.' He was, indeed, a +stern critick upon characters and manners. Even Mrs. Thrale did not +escape his friendly animadversion at times. When he and I were one day +endeavouring to ascertain, article by article, how one of our friends[153] +could possibly spend as much money in his family as he told us he did, +she interrupted us by a lively extravagant sally, on the expence of +clothing his children, describing it in a very ludicrous and fanciful +manner. Johnson looked a little angry, and said, 'Nay, Madam, when you +are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.' At +another time, when she said, perhaps affectedly, 'I don't like to fly.' +JOHNSON. 'With _your_ wings, Madam, you _must_ fly: but have a care, +there are _clippers_ abroad.' How very well was this said, and how fully +has experience proved the truth of it! But have they not _clipped_ +rather _rudely_, and gone a great deal _closer_ than was necessary?[154] + +A gentleman[155] expressed a wish to go and live three years at Otaheité, +or New-Zealand, in order to obtain a full acquaintance with people, so +totally different from all that we have ever known, and be satisfied +what pure nature can do for man. JOHNSON. 'What could you learn, Sir? +What can savages tell, but what they themselves have seen? Of the past, +or the invisible, they can tell nothing. The inhabitants of Otaheité and +New-Zealand are not in a state of pure nature; for it is plain they +broke off from some other people. Had they grown out of the ground, you +might have judged of a state of pure nature. Fanciful people may talk of +a mythology being amongst them; but it must be invention. They have once +had religion, which has been gradually debased. And what account of +their religion can you suppose to be learnt from savages? Only consider, +Sir, our own state: our religion is in a book; we have an order of men +whose duty it is to teach it; we have one day in the week set apart for +it, and this is in general pretty well observed: yet ask the first ten +gross men you meet, and hear what they can tell of their religion.' + +On Monday, April 29, he and I made an excursion to Bristol, where I was +entertained with seeing him enquire upon the spot, into the authenticity +of 'Rowley's Poetry,'[156] as I had seen him enquire upon the spot into +the authenticity of 'Ossian's Poetry.'[157] George Catcot, the pewterer, +who was as zealous for Rowley, as Dr. Hugh Blair[158] was for Ossian, (I +trust my Reverend friend will excuse the comparison,) attended us at our +inn, and with a triumphant air of lively simplicity called out, 'I'll +make Dr. Johnson a convert.' Dr. Johnson, at his desire, read aloud some +of Chatterton's fabricated verses, while Catcot stood at the back of his +chair, moving himself like a pendulum, and beating time with his feet, +and now and then looking into Dr. Johnson's face, wondering that he was +not yet convinced. We called on Mr. Barret, the surgeon, and saw some of +the _originals_ as they were called, which were executed very +artificially;[159] but from a careful inspection of them, and a +consideration of the circumstances with which they were attended, we +were quite satisfied of the imposture, which, indeed, has been clearly +demonstrated from internal evidence, by several able criticks.'[160] + +Honest Catcot seemed to pay no attention whatever to any objections, but +insisted, as an end of all controversy, that we should go with him to +the tower of the church of St. Mary, Redcliff, and _view with our own +eyes_ the ancient chest in which the manuscripts were found. To this, +Dr. Johnson good-naturedly agreed; and though troubled with a shortness +of breathing, laboured up a long flight of steps, till we came to the +place where the wonderous chest stood. '_There_, (said Catcot, with a +bouncing confident credulity,) _there_ is the very chest itself.'[161] +'After this _ocular demonstration_, there was no more to be said. He +brought to my recollection a Scotch Highlander, a man of learning too, +and who had seen the world, attesting, and at the same time giving his +reasons for the authenticity of Fingal:--'I have heard all that poem +when I was young.'--'Have you, Sir? Pray what have you heard?'--'I have +heard Ossian, Oscar, and _every one of them_.' + +Johnson said of Chatterton, 'This is the most extraordinary young man +that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has +written such things.'[162] + +We were by no means pleased with our inn at Bristol. 'Let us see now, +(said I,) how we should describe it.' Johnson was ready with his +raillery. 'Describe it, Sir?--Why, it was so bad that Boswell wished to +be in Scotland!' + +After Dr. Johnson's return to London,[163] I was several times with him at +his house, where I occasionally slept, in the room that had been +assigned to me.[164] I dined with him at Dr. Taylor's, at General +Oglethorpe's, and at General Paoli's. To avoid a tedious minuteness, I +shall group together what I have preserved of his conversation during +this period also, without specifying each scene where it passed, except +one, which will be found so remarkable as certainly to deserve a very +particular relation. Where the place or the persons do not contribute to +the zest of the conversation, it is unnecessary to encumber my page with +mentioning them. To know of what vintage our wine is, enables us to +judge of its value, and to drink it with more relish: but to have the +produce of each vine of one vineyard, in the same year, kept separate, +would serve no purpose. To know that our wine, (to use an advertising +phrase,) is 'of the stock of an Ambassadour lately deceased,' heightens +its flavour: but it signifies nothing to know the bin where each bottle +was once deposited. + +'Garrick (he observed,) does not play the part of Archer in _The Beaux +Stratagem_ well. The gentleman should break out through the footman, +which is not the case as he does it.'[165] + +'Where there is no education, as in savage countries, men will have the +upper hand of women. Bodily strength, no doubt, contributes to this; but +it would be so, exclusive of that; for it is mind that always governs. +When it comes to dry understanding, man has the better.' + +'The little volumes entitled _Respublicæ_,[166] which are very well done, +were a bookseller's work.' + +'There is much talk of the misery which we cause to the brute creation; +but they are recompensed by existence[167]. If they were not useful to +man, and therefore protected by him, they would not be nearly so +numerous.' This argument is to be found in the able and benignant +Hutchinson's _Moral Philosophy_. But the question is, whether the +animals who endure such sufferings of various kinds, for the service and +entertainment of man, would accept of existence upon the terms on which +they have it. Madame Sévigné[168], who, though she had many enjoyments, +felt with delicate sensibility the prevalence of misery, complains of +the task of existence having been imposed upon her without her +consent[169]. + +'That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief +from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is +a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.'[170] + +'Though many men are nominally entrusted with the administration of +hospitals and other publick institutions, almost all the good is done by +one man, by whom the rest are driven on; owing to confidence in him, and +indolence in them.'[171] + +'Lord Chesterfield's _Letters to his Son_, I think, might be made a very +pretty book. Take out the immorality, and it should be put into the +hands of every young gentleman. An elegant manner and easiness of +behaviour are acquired gradually and imperceptibly. No man can say "I'll +be genteel." There are ten genteel women for one genteel man, because +they are more restrained. A man without some degree of restraint is +insufferable; but we are all less restrained than women. Were a woman +sitting in company to put out her legs before her as most men do, we +should be tempted to kick them in.' + +No man was a more attentive and nice observer of behaviour in those in +whose company he happened to be, than Johnson; or, however strange it +may seem to many, had a higher estimation of its refinements[172]. Lord +Eliot informs me, that one day when Johnson and he were at dinner at a +gentleman's house in London, upon Lord Chesterfield's Letters being +mentioned, Johnson surprized the company by this sentence: 'Every man of +any education would rather be called a rascal, than accused of +deficiency in _the graces_.' Mr. Gibbon, who was present, turned to a +lady who knew Johnson well, and lived much with him, and in his quaint +manner, tapping his box, addressed her thus: 'Don't you think, Madam, +(looking towards Johnson,) that among _all_ your acquaintance, you could +find _one_ exception?' The lady smiled, and seemed to acquiesce.[173] + +'I read (said he,) Sharpe's letters on Italy over again, when I was at +Bath. There is a great deal of matter in them.'[174] + +'Mrs. Williams was angry that Thrale's family did not send regularly to +her every time they heard from me while I was in the Hebrides. Little +people are apt to be jealous: but they should not be jealous; for they +ought to consider, that superiour attention will necessarily be paid to +superiour fortune or rank. Two persons may have equal merit, and on that +account may have an equal claim to attention; but one of them may have +also fortune and rank, and so may have a double claim.' + +Talking of his notes on Shakspeare, he said, 'I despise those who do not +see that I am right in the passage where _as_ is repeated, and "asses of +great charge" introduced. That on "To be, or not to be," is +disputable.'[175] + +A gentleman, whom I found sitting with him one morning, said, that in +his opinion the character of an infidel was more detestable than that of +a man notoriously guilty of an atrocious crime. I differed from him, +because we are surer of the odiousness of the one, than of the errour of +the other. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I agree with him; for the infidel would be +guilty of any crime if he were inclined to it.' + +'Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain +credit in the world. One of these is the cry against the evil of luxury. +Now the truth is, that luxury produces much good[176]. Take the luxury of +buildings in London. Does it not produce real advantage in the +conveniency and elegance of accommodation, and this all from the +exertion of industry? People will tell you, with a melancholy face, how +many builders are in gaol. It is plain they are in gaol, not for +building; for rents are not fallen.--A man gives half a guinea for a +dish of green peas. How much gardening does this occasion? how many +labourers must the competition to have such things early in the market, +keep in employment? You will hear it said, very gravely, Why was not the +half-guinea, thus spent in luxury, given to the poor? To how many might +it have afforded a good meal. Alas! has it not gone to the _industrious_ +poor, whom it is better to support than the _idle_ poor? You are much +surer that you are doing good when you _pay_ money to those who work, as +the recompence of their labour, than when you _give_ money merely in +charity. Suppose the ancient luxury of a dish of peacock's brains were +to be revived, how many carcases would be left to the poor at a cheap +rate: and as to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by +extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals +suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of +luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors in gaol; nay, +they would not care though their creditors were there too.'[177] + +The uncommon vivacity of General Oglethorpe's mind, and variety of +knowledge, having sometimes made his conversation seem too desultory, +Johnson observed, 'Oglethorpe, Sir, never _completes_ what he has to +say.' + +He on the same account made a similar remark on Patrick Lord Elibank: +'Sir, there is nothing _conclusive_ in his talk.'[178] + +When I complained of having dined at a splendid table without hearing +one sentence of conversation worthy of being remembered, he said, 'Sir, +there seldom is any such conversation.' BOSWELL. 'Why then meet at +table?' JOHNSON. 'Why to eat and drink together, and to promote +kindness; and, Sir, this is better done when there is no solid +conversation; for when there is, people differ in opinion, and get into +bad humour, or some of the company who are not capable of such +conversation, are left out, and feel themselves uneasy. It was for this +reason, Sir Robert Walpole said, he always talked bawdy at his table, +because in that all could join.'[179] + +Being irritated by hearing a gentleman[180] ask Mr. Levett a variety of +questions concerning him, when he was sitting by, he broke out, 'Sir, +you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.' 'A man, +(said he,) should not talk of himself, nor much of any particular +person. He should take care not to be made a proverb; and, therefore, +should avoid having any one topick of which people can say, "We shall +hear him upon it."' There was a Dr. Oldfield, who was always talking of +the Duke of Marlborough. He came into a coffee-house one day, and told +that his Grace had spoken in the House of Lords for half an hour. 'Did +he indeed speak for half an hour?' (said Belchier, the surgeon,)-- +'Yes.'--'And what did he say of Dr. Oldfield?'--'Nothing.'--'Why then, +Sir, he was very ungrateful; for Dr. Oldfield could not have spoken for +a quarter of an hour, without saying something of him.' + +'Every man is to take existence on the terms on which it is given to +him[181]. To some men it is given on condition of not taking liberties, +which other men may take without much harm. One may drink wine, and be +nothing the worse for it; on another, wine may have effects so +inflammatory as to injure him both in body and mind, and perhaps, make +him commit something for which he may deserve to be hanged.' + +'Lord Hailes's _Annals of Scotland_[182] have not that painted form which +is the taste of this age; but it is a book which will always sell, it +has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such a +punctuality of citation. I never before read Scotch history with +certainty.' + +I asked him whether he would advise me to read the Bible with a +commentary, and what commentaries he would recommend. JOHNSON. 'To be +sure, Sir, I would have you read the Bible with a commentary; and I +would recommend Lowth and Patrick on the Old Testament, and Hammond on +the New.' + +During my stay in London this spring, I solicited his attention to +another law case, in which I was engaged. In the course of a contested +election for the Borough of Dumfermline, which I attended as one of my +friend Colonel (afterwards Sir Archibald) Campbell's counsel; one of his +political agents, who was charged with having been unfaithful to his +employer, and having deserted to the opposite party for a pecuniary +reward--attacked very rudely in a news-paper the Reverend Mr. James +Thomson, one of the ministers of that place, on account of a supposed +allusion to him in one of his sermons. Upon this the minister, on a +subsequent Sunday, arraigned him by name from the pulpit with some +severity; and the agent, after the sermon was over, rose up and asked +the minister aloud, 'What bribe he had received for telling so many lies +from the chair of verity[183].' I was present at this very extraordinary +scene. The person arraigned, and his father and brother, who had also +had a share both of the reproof from the pulpit, and in the retaliation, +brought an action against Mr. Thomson, in the Court of Session, for +defamation and damages, and I was one of the counsel for the reverend +defendant. The _Liberty of the Pulpit_ was our great ground of defence; +but we argued also on the provocation of the previous attack, and on the +instant retaliation. The Court of Session, however--the fifteen Judges, +who are at the same time the Jury, decided against the minister, +contrary to my humble opinion; and several of them expressed themselves +with indignation against him. He was an aged gentleman, formerly a +military chaplain, and a man of high spirit and honour. Johnson was +satisfied that the judgement was wrong, and dictated to me the following +argument in confutation of it: + +'Of the censure pronounced from the pulpit, our determination must be +formed, as in other cases, by a consideration of the action itself, and +the particular circumstances with which it is invested. + +'The right of censure and rebuke seems necessarily appendant to the +pastoral office. He, to whom the care of a congregation is entrusted, is +considered as the shepherd of a flock, as the teacher of a school, as +the father of a family. As a shepherd tending not his own sheep but +those of his master, he is answerable for those that stray, and that +lose themselves by straying. But no man can be answerable for losses +which he has not power to prevent, or for vagrancy which he has not +authority to restrain. + +'As a teacher giving instruction for wages, and liable to reproach, if +those whom he undertakes to inform make no proficiency, he must have the +power of enforcing attendance, of awakening negligence, and repressing +contradiction. + +'As a father, he possesses the paternal authority of admonition, rebuke, +and punishment. He cannot, without reducing his office to an empty name, +be hindered from the exercise of any practice necessary to stimulate the +idle, to reform the vicious, to check the petulant, and correct the +stubborn. + +'If we enquire into the practice of the primitive church, we shall, I +believe, find the ministers of the word exercising the whole authority +of this complicated character. We shall find them not only encouraging +the good by exhortation, but terrifying the wicked by reproof and +denunciation. In the earliest ages of the Church, while religion was yet +pure from secular advantages, the punishment of sinners was publick +censure, and open penance; penalties inflicted merely by ecclesiastical +authority, at a time while the church had yet no help from the civil +power; while the hand of the magistrate lifted only the rod of +persecution; and when governours were ready to afford a refuge to all +those who fled from clerical authority. + +'That the Church, therefore, had once a power of publick censure is +evident, because that power was frequently exercised. That it borrowed +not its power from the civil authority, is likewise certain, because +civil authority was at that time its enemy. + +'The hour came at length, when after three hundred years of struggle and +distress, Truth took possession of imperial power, and the civil laws +lent their aid to the ecclesiastical constitutions. The magistrate from +that time co-operated with the priest, and clerical sentences were made +efficacious by secular force. But the State, when it came to the +assistance of the church, had no intention to diminish its authority. +Those rebukes and those censures which were lawful before, were lawful +still. But they had hitherto operated only upon voluntary submission. +The refractory and contemptuous were at first in no danger of temporal +severities, except what they might suffer from the reproaches of +conscience, or the detestation of their fellow Christians. When religion +obtained the support of law, if admonitions and censures had no effect, +they were seconded by the magistrates with coercion and punishment. + +'It therefore appears from ecclesiastical history, that the right of +inflicting shame by publick censure, has been always considered as +inherent in the Church; and that this right was not conferred by the +civil power; for it was exercised when the civil power operated against +it. By the civil power it was never taken away; for the Christian +magistrate interposed his office, not to rescue sinners from censure, +but to supply more powerful means of reformation; to add pain where +shame was insufficient; and when men were proclaimed unworthy of the +society of the faithful, to restrain them by imprisonment, from +spreading abroad the contagion of wickedness. + +'It is not improbable that from this acknowledged power of publick +censure, grew in time the practice of auricular confession. Those who +dreaded the blast of publick reprehension, were willing to submit +themselves to the priest, by a private accusation of themselves; and to +obtain a reconciliation with the Church by a kind of clandestine +absolution and invisible penance; conditions with which the priest would +in times of ignorance and corruption, easily comply, as they increased +his influence, by adding the knowledge of secret sins to that of +notorious offences, and enlarged his authority, by making him the sole +arbiter of the terms of reconcilement. + +'From this bondage the Reformation set us free. The minister has no +longer power to press into the retirements of conscience, to torture us +by interrogatories, or put himself in possession of our secrets and our +lives. But though we have thus controlled his usurpations, his just and +original power remains unimpaired. He may still see, though he may not +pry: he may yet hear, though he may not question. And that knowledge +which his eyes and ears force upon him it is still his duty to use, for +the benefit of his flock. A father who lives near a wicked neighbour, +may forbid a son to frequent his company. A minister who has in his +congregation a man of open and scandalous wickedness, may warn his +parishioners to shun his conversation. To warn them is not only lawful, +but not to warn them would be criminal. He may warn them one by one in +friendly converse, or by a parochial visitation. But if he may warn each +man singly, what shall forbid him to warn them altogether? Of that which +is to be made known to all, how is there any difference whether it be +communicated to each singly, or to all together? What is known to all, +must necessarily be publick. Whether it shall be publick at once, or +publick by degrees, is the only question. And of a sudden and solemn +publication the impression is deeper, and the warning more effectual. + +'It may easily be urged, if a minister be thus left at liberty to delate +sinners from the pulpit, and to publish at will the crimes of a +parishioner, he may often blast the innocent, and distress the timorous. +He may be suspicious, and condemn without evidence; he may be rash, and +judge without examination; he may be severe, and treat slight offences +with too much harshness; he may be malignant and partial, and gratify +his private interest or resentment under the shelter of his pastoral +character. + +'Of all this there is possibility, and of all this there is danger. But +if possibility of evil be to exclude good, no good ever can be done. If +nothing is to be attempted in which there is danger, we must all sink +into hopeless inactivity. The evils that may be feared from this +practice arise not from any defect in the institution, but from the +infirmities of human nature. Power, in whatever hands it is placed, will +be sometimes improperly exerted; yet courts of law must judge, though +they will sometimes judge amiss. A father must instruct his children, +though he himself may often want instruction. A minister must censure +sinners, though his censure may be sometimes erroneous by want of +judgement, and sometimes unjust by want of honesty. + +'If we examine the circumstances of the present case, we shall find the +sentence neither erroneous nor unjust; we shall find no breach of +private confidence, no intrusion into secret transactions. The fact was +notorious and indubitable; so easy to be proved, that no proof was +desired. The act was base and treacherous, the perpetration insolent and +open, and the example naturally mischievous. The minister, however, +being retired and recluse, had not yet heard what was publickly known +throughout the parish; and on occasion of a publick election, warned his +people, according to his duty, against the crimes which publick +elections frequently produce. His warning was felt by one of his +parishioners, as pointed particularly at himself. But instead of +producing, as might be wished, private compunction and immediate +reformation, it kindled only rage and resentment. He charged his +minister, in a publick paper, with scandal, defamation, and falsehood. +The minister, thus reproached, had his own character to vindicate, upon +which his pastoral authority must necessarily depend. To be charged with +a defamatory lie is an injury which no man patiently endures in common +life. To be charged with polluting the pastoral office with scandal and +falsehood, was a violation of character still more atrocious, as it +affected not only his personal but his clerical veracity. His +indignation naturally rose in proportion to his honesty, and with all +the fortitude of injured honesty, he dared this calumniator in the +church, and at once exonerated himself from censure, and rescued his +flock from deception and from danger. The man whom he accuses pretends +not to be innocent; or at least only pretends; for he declines a trial. +The crime of which he is accused has frequent opportunities and strong +temptations. It has already spread far, with much depravation of private +morals, and much injury to publick happiness. To warn the people, +therefore, against it was not wanton and officious, but necessary and +pastoral. + +'What then is the fault with which this worthy minister is charged? He +has usurped no dominion over conscience. He has exerted no authority in +support of doubtful and controverted opinions. He has not dragged into +light a bashful and corrigible sinner. His censure was directed against +a breach of morality, against an act which no man justifies. The man who +appropriated this censure to himself, is evidently and notoriously +guilty. His consciousness of his own wickedness incited him to attack +his faithful reprover with open insolence and printed accusations. Such +an attack made defence necessary; and we hope it will be at last decided +that the means of defence were just and lawful.' + +When I read this to Mr. Burke, he was highly pleased, and exclaimed, +'Well; he does his work in a workman-like manner.'[184] + +Mr. Thomson wished to bring the cause by appeal before the House of +Lords, but was dissuaded by the advice of the noble person who lately +presided so ably in that Most Honourable House, and who was then +Attorney-General. As my readers will no doubt be glad also to read the +opinion of this eminent man upon the same subject, I shall here insert +it. + +CASE. +'There is herewith laid before you, +1. Petition for the Reverend Mr. James Thomson, minister of Dumfermline. +2. Answers thereto. +3. Copy of the judgement of the Court of Session upon both. +4. Notes of the opinions of the Judges, being the reasons upon which + their decree is grounded. +'These papers you will please to peruse, and give your opinion, Whether +there is a probability of the above decree of the Court of Session's +being reversed, if Mr. Thomson should appeal from the same?' + +'I don't think the appeal adviseable: not only because the value of the +judgement is in no degree adequate to the expence; but because there are +many chances, that upon the general complexion of the case, the +impression will be taken to the disadvantage of the appellant. + +'It is impossible to approve the style of that sermon. But the +_complaint_ was not less ungracious from that man, who had behaved so +ill by his original libel, and, at the time, when he received the +reproach he complains of. In the last article, all the plaintiffs are +equally concerned. It struck me also with some wonder, that the Judges +should think so much fervour apposite to the occasion of reproving the +defendant for a little excess. + +'Upon the matter, however, I agree with them in condemning the behaviour +of the minister; and in thinking it a subject fit for ecclesiastical +censure; and even for an action, if any individual could qualify[185] a +wrong, and a damage arising from it. But this I doubt. The circumstance +of publishing the reproach in a pulpit, though extremely indecent, and +culpable in another view, does not constitute a different sort of wrong, +or any other rule of law, than would have obtained, if the same words +had been pronounced elsewhere. I don't know whether there be any +difference in the law of Scotland, in the definition of slander, before +the Commissaries, or the Court of Session. The common law of England +does not give way to actions for every reproachful word. An action +cannot be brought for general damages, upon any words which import less +than an offence cognisable by law; consequently no action could have +been brought here for the words in question. Both laws admit the truth +to be a justification in action _for words_; and the law of England does +the same in actions for libels. The judgement, therefore, seems to me to +have been wrong, in that the Court repelled that defence. + +'E. THURLOW.' + +I am now to record a very curious incident in Dr. Johnson's Life, which +fell under my own observation; of which _pars magna fui_,[186] and which I +am persuaded will, with the liberal-minded, be much to his credit. + +My desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every description, +had made me, much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Dr. +Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. Two men more different could +perhaps not be selected out of all mankind. They had even attacked one +another with some asperity[187] in their writings; yet I lived in habits +of friendship with both[188]. I could fully relish the excellence of each; +for I have ever delighted in that intellectual chymistry, which can +separate good qualities from evil in the same person. + +Sir John Pringle, 'mine own friend and my Father's friend,' between whom +and Dr. Johnson I in vain wished to establish an acquaintance[189], as I +respected and lived in intimacy with both of them, observed to me once, +very ingeniously, 'It is not in friendship as in mathematicks, where two +things, each equal to a third, are equal between themselves. You agree +with Johnson as a middle quality, and you agree with me as a middle +quality; but Johnson and I should not agree.' Sir John was not +sufficiently flexible; so I desisted; knowing, indeed, that the +repulsion was equally strong on the part of Johnson; who, I know not +from what cause, unless his being a Scotchman, had formed a very +erroneous opinion of Sir John. But I conceived an irresistible wish, if +possible, to bring Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes together. How to manage +it, was a nice and difficult matter. + +My worthy booksellers and friends, Messieurs Dilly in the Poultry[190], at +whose hospitable and well-covered table I have seen a greater number of +literary men, than at any other, except that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, had +invited me to meet Mr. Wilkes and some more gentlemen on Wednesday, May +15. 'Pray (said I,) let us have Dr. Johnson.'--'What with Mr. Wilkes? +not for the world, (said Mr. Edward Dilly:) Dr. Johnson would never +forgive me.'--'Come, (said I,) if you'll let me negociate for you, I +will be answerable that all shall go well.' DILLY. 'Nay, if you will +take it upon you, I am sure I shall be very happy to see them both +here.' + +Notwithstanding the high veneration which I entertained for Dr. Johnson, +I was sensible that he was sometimes a little actuated by the spirit of +contradiction, and by means of that I hoped I should gain my point. I +was persuaded that if I had come upon him with a direct proposal, 'Sir, +will you dine in company with Jack Wilkes?' he would have flown into a +passion, and would probably have answered, 'Dine with Jack Wilkes, Sir! +I'd as soon dine with Jack Ketch[191].' I therefore, while we were sitting +quietly, by ourselves at his house in an evening, took occasion to open +my plan thus:--'Mr. Dilly, Sir, sends his respectful compliments to you, +and would be happy if you would do him the honour to dine with him on +Wednesday next along with me, as I must soon go to Scotland.' JOHNSON. +'Sir, I am obliged to Mr. Dilly. I will wait upon him--'BOSWELL. +'Provided, Sir, I suppose, that the company which he is to have, is +agreeable to you.' JOHNSON. 'What do you mean, Sir? What do you take me +for? Do you think I am so ignorant of the world, as to imagine that I am +to prescribe to a gentleman what company he is to have at his table?' +BOSWELL. 'I beg your pardon, Sir, for wishing to prevent you from +meeting people whom you might not like. Perhaps he may have some of what +he calls his patriotick friends with him.' JOHNSON. 'Well, Sir, and what +then? What care _I_ for his _patriotick friends_[192]? Poh!' BOSWELL. 'I +should not be surprized to find Jack Wilkes there.' JOHNSON. 'And if +Jack Wilkes _should_ be there, what is that to _me_, Sir? My dear +friend, let us have no more of this. I am sorry to be angry with you; +but really it is treating me strangely to talk to me as if I could not +meet any company whatever, occasionally.' BOSWELL. 'Pray forgive me, +Sir: I meant well. But you shall meet whoever comes, for me.' Thus I +secured him, and told Dilly that he would find him very well pleased to +be one of his guests on the day appointed. + +Upon the much-expected Wednesday, I called on him about half an hour +before dinner, as I often did when we were to dine out together, to see +that he was ready in time, and to accompany him. I found him buffeting +his books, as upon a former occasion[193], covered with dust, and making +no preparation for going abroad. 'How is this, Sir? (said I.) Don't you +recollect that you are to dine at Mr. Dilly's?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I did not +think of going to Dilly's: it went out of my head. I have ordered dinner +at home with Mrs. Williams.' BOSWELL, 'But, my dear Sir, you know you +were engaged to Mr. Dilly, and I told him so. He will expect you, and +will be much disappointed if you don't come.' JOHNSON. 'You must talk to +Mrs. Williams about this.' + +Here was a sad dilemma. I feared that what I was so confident I had +secured would yet be frustrated. He had accustomed himself to shew Mrs. +Williams such a degree of humane attention, as frequently imposed some +restraint upon him; and I knew that if she should be obstinate, he would +not stir. I hastened down stairs to the blind lady's room, and told her +I was in great uneasiness, for Dr. Johnson had engaged to me to dine +this day at Mr. Dilly's, but that he had told me he had forgotten his +engagement, and had ordered dinner at home. 'Yes, Sir, (said she, pretty +peevishly,) Dr. Johnson is to dine at home,'--'Madam, (said I,) his +respect for you is such, that I know he will not leave you unless you +absolutely desire it. But as you have so much of his company, I hope you +will be good enough to forego it for a day; as Mr. Dilly is a very +worthy man, has frequently had agreeable parties at his house for Dr. +Johnson, and will be vexed if the Doctor neglects him to-day. And then, +Madam, be pleased to consider my situation; I carried the message, and I +assured Mr. Dilly that Dr. Johnson was to come, and no doubt he has made +a dinner, and invited a company, and boasted of the honour he expected +to have. I shall be quite disgraced if the Doctor is not there.' She +gradually softened to my solicitations, which were certainly as earnest +as most entreaties to ladies upon any occasion, and was graciously +pleased to empower me to tell Dr. Johnson, 'That all things considered +she thought he should certainly go.' I flew back to him still in dust, +and careless of what should be the event, 'indifferent in his choice to +go or stay[194];' but as soon as I had announced to him Mrs. Williams' +consent, he roared, 'Frank, a clean shirt,' and was very soon drest. +When I had him fairly seated in a hackney-coach with me, I exulted as +much as a fortune-hunter who has got an heiress into a post-chaise with +him to set out for Gretna-Green. + +When we entered Mr. Dilly's drawing room, he found himself in the midst +of a company he did not know. I kept myself snug and silent, watching +how he would conduct himself. I observed him whispering to Mr. Dilly, +'Who is that gentleman, Sir?'--'Mr. Arthur Lee.'--JOHNSON. 'Too, too, +too,' (under his breath,) which was one of his habitual mutterings[195]. +Mr. Arthur Lee could not but be very obnoxious to Johnson, for he was +not only a _patriot_ but an _American_[196]. He was afterwards minister +from the United States at the court of Madrid. 'And who is the gentleman +in lace?'--'Mr. Wilkes, Sir.' This information confounded him still +more; he had some difficulty to restrain himself, and taking up a book, +sat down upon a window-seat and read, or at least kept his eye upon it +intently for some time, till he composed himself. His feelings, I dare +say, were aukward enough. But he no doubt recollected his having rated +me for supposing that he could be at all disconcerted by any company, +and he, therefore, resolutely set himself to behave quite as an easy man +of the world, who could adapt himself at once to the disposition and +manners of those whom he might chance to meet. + +The cheering sound of 'Dinner is upon the table,' dissolved his reverie, +and we _all_ sat down without any symptom of ill humour. There were +present, beside Mr. Wilkes, and Mr. Arthur Lee, who was an old companion +of mine when he studied physick at Edinburgh, Mr. (now Sir John) Miller, +Dr. Lettsom, and Mr. Slater the druggist. Mr. Wilkes placed himself next +to Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and +politeness[197], that he gained upon him insensibly. No man eat more +heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice and delicate. Mr. +Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some fine veal. 'Pray give +me leave, Sir:--It is better here--A little of the brown--Some fat, +Sir--A little of the stuffing--Some gravy--Let me have the pleasure of +giving you some butter--Allow me to recommend a squeeze of this +orange;--or the lemon, perhaps, may have more zest.'--'Sir, Sir, I am +obliged to you, Sir,' cried Johnson, bowing, and turning--his head to +him with a look for some time of 'surly virtue,'[198] but, in a short +while, of complacency. + +Foote being mentioned, Johnson said. 'He is not a good mimick[199].' One +of the company added, 'A merry Andrew, a buffoon.' JOHNSON. 'But he has +wit too, and is not deficient in ideas, or in fertility and variety of +imagery, and not empty of reading; he has knowledge enough to fill up +his part. One species of wit he has in an eminent degree, that of +escape. You drive him into a corner with both hands; but he's gone, Sir, +when you think you have got him--like an animal that jumps over your +head. Then he has a great range for wit; he never lets truth stand +between him and a jest, and he is sometimes mighty coarse. Garrick is +under many restraints from which Foote is free[200].' WILKES. 'Garrick's +wit is more like Lord Chesterfield's.' JOHNSON. 'The first time I was in +company with Foote was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion of the +fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased; and it is very difficult to +please a man against his will[201]. I went on eating my dinner pretty +sullenly, affecting not to mind him. But the dog was so very comical, +that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back upon +my chair, and fairly laugh it out. No, Sir, he was irresistible[202]. He +upon one occasion experienced, in an extraordinary degree, the efficacy +of his powers of entertaining. Amongst the many and various modes which +he tried of getting money, he became a partner with a small-beer brewer, +and he was to have a share of the profits for procuring customers +amongst his numerous acquaintance. Fitzherbert was one who took his +small-beer; but it was so bad that the servants resolved not to drink +it. They were at some loss how to notify their resolution, being afraid +of offending their master, who they knew liked Foote much as a +companion. At last they fixed upon a little black boy, who was rather a +favourite, to be their deputy, and deliver their remonstrance; and +having invested him with the whole authority of the kitchen, he was to +inform Mr. Fitzherbert, in all their names, upon a certain day, that +they would drink Foote's small-beer no longer. On that day Foote +happened to dine at Fitzherbert's, and this boy served at table; he was +so delighted with Foote's stories, and merriment, and grimace, that when +he went down stairs, he told them, "This is the finest man I have ever +seen. I will not deliver your message. I will drink his small-beer."' + +Somebody observed that Garrick could not have done this. WILKES. +'Garrick would have made the small-beer still smaller. He is now leaving +the stage; but he will play _Scrub_[203] all his life.' I knew that +Johnson would let nobody attack Garrick but himself[204], as Garrick once +said to me, and I had heard him praise his liberality; so to bring out +his commendation of his celebrated pupil, I said, loudly, 'I have heard +Garrick is liberal[205].' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, I know that Garrick has +given away more money than any man in England that I am acquainted with, +and that not from ostentatious views. Garrick was very poor when he +began life; so when he came to have money, he probably was very +unskilful in giving away, and saved when he should not. But Garrick +began to be liberal as soon as he could; and I am of opinion, the +reputation of avarice which he has had, has been very lucky for him, and +prevented his having many enemies. You despise a man for avarice, but do +not hate him. Garrick might have been much better attacked for living +with more splendour than is suitable to a player:[206] if they had had the +wit to have assaulted him in that quarter, they might have galled him +more. But they have kept clamouring about his avarice, which has rescued +him from much obloquy and envy.' + +Talking of the great difficulty of obtaining authentick information for +biography,[207] Johnson told us, 'When I was a young fellow I wanted to +write the _Life of Dryden_, and in order to get materials, I applied to +the only two persons then alive who had seen him;[208] these were old +Swinney[209] and old Cibber. Swinney's information was no more than this, +"That at Will's coffee-house Dryden had a particular chair for himself, +which was set by the fire in winter, and was then called his +winter-chair; and that it was carried out for him to the balcony in +summer, and was then called his summer-chair." Cibber could tell no more +but "That he remembered him a decent old man, arbiter of critical +disputes at Will's[210]." You are to consider that Cibber was then at a +great distance from Dryden, had perhaps one leg only in the room, and +durst not draw in the other.' BOSWELL. 'Yet Cibber was a man of +observation?' JOHNSON. 'I think not.'[211] BOSWELL. 'You will allow his +_Apology_ to be well done.' JOHNSON. 'Very well done, to be sure, +Sir.[212] That book is a striking proof of the justice of Pope's remark: + +"Each might his several province well command, +Would all but stoop to what they understand[213]." + +BOSWELL. 'And his plays are good.' JOHNSON. 'Yes; but that was his +trade; _l'esprit du corps_; he had been all his life among players and +play-writers.[214] I wondered that he had so little to say in +conversation, for he had kept the best company, and learnt all that can +be got by the ear. He abused Pindar to me, and then shewed me an Ode of +his own, with an absurd couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle's +wing[215]. I told him that when the ancients made a simile, they always +made it like something real.' + +Mr. Wilkes remarked, that 'among all the bold flights of Shakspeare's +imagination, the boldest was making Birnamwood march to Dunsinane; +creating a wood where there never was a shrub; a wood in Scotland! ha! +ha! ha!' And he also observed, that 'the clannish slavery of the +Highlands of Scotland was the single exception to Milton's remark of +"The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty[216]," being worshipped in all hilly +countries.'--'When I was at Inverary (said he,) on a visit to my old +friend, Archibald, Duke of Argyle, his dependents congratulated me on +being such a favourite of his Grace. I said, "It is then, gentlemen, +truely lucky for me; for if I had displeased the Duke, and he had wished +it, there is not a Campbell among you but would have been ready to bring +John Wilkes's head to him in a charger. It would have been only + +'"'Off with his head! So much for Aylesbury[217].'" + +'I was then member for Aylesbury.' + + +Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes talked of the contested passage in Horace's +_Art of Poetry_[218], '_Difficile est propriè communia dicere_.' Mr. +Wilkes according to my note, gave the interpretation thus; 'It is +difficult to speak with propriety of common things; as, if a poet had to +speak of Queen Caroline drinking tea, he must endeavour to avoid the +vulgarity of cups and saucers.' But upon reading my note, he tells me +that he meant to say, that 'the word _communia_, being a Roman law term, +signifies here things _communis juris_, that is to say, what have never +yet been treated by any body; and this appears clearly from what +followed, + +"--Tuque +Rectiùs Iliacum carmen deducis in actus +Quàm si proferres ignota indictaque primus." + +'You will easier make a tragedy out of the _Iliad_ than on any subject +not handled before[219].' JOHNSON. 'He means that it is difficult to +appropriate to particular persons qualities which are common to all +mankind, as Homer has done.' + +WILKES. 'We have no City-Poet now: that is an office which has gone into +disuse. The last was Elkanah Settle. There is something in _names_ which +one cannot help feeling. Now _Elkanah Settle_ sounds so _queer_, who can +expect much from that name? We should have no hesitation to give it for +John Dryden, in preference to Elkanah Settle, from the names only, +without knowing their different merits[220].' JOHNSON. 'I suppose, Sir, +Settle did as well for Aldermen in his time, as John Home could do now. +Where did Beckford and Trecothick learn English[221]?' + +Mr. Arthur Lee mentioned some Scotch who had taken possession of a +barren part of America, and wondered why they should choose it. JOHNSON. +'Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The _Scotch_ would not know it +to be barren.' BOSWELL. 'Come, come, he is flattering the English. You +have now been in Scotland, Sir, and say if you did not see meat and +drink enough there.' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir; meat and drink enough to +give the inhabitants sufficient strength to run away from home.' All +these quick and lively sallies were said sportively, quite in jest, and +with a smile, which showed that he meant only wit. Upon this topick he +and Mr. Wilkes could perfectly assimilate; here was a bond of union +between them, and I was conscious that as both of them had visited +Caledonia, both were fully satisfied of the strange narrow ignorance of +those who imagine that it is a land of famine.[222] But they amused +themselves with persevering in the old jokes. When I claimed a +superiority for Scotland over England in one respect, that no man can be +arrested there for a debt merely because another swears it against him; +but there must first be the judgement of a court of law ascertaining its +justice; and that a seizure of the person, before judgement is obtained, +can take place only, if his creditor should swear that he is about to +fly from the country, or, as it is technically expressed, is _in +meditatione fugae_: WILKES. 'That, I should think, may be safely sworn +of all the Scotch nation.' JOHNSON. (to Mr. Wilkes) 'You must know, Sir, +I lately took my friend Boswell and shewed him genuine civilised life in +an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield, my native +city, that he might see for once real civility:[223] for you know he lives +among savages in Scotland, and among rakes in London.' WILKES. 'Except +when he is with grave, sober, decent people like you and me.' JOHNSON, +(smiling) 'And we ashamed of him.' + +They were quite frank and easy. Johnson told the story[224] of his asking +Mrs. Macaulay to allow her footman to sit down with them, to prove the +ridiculousness of the argument for the equality of mankind; and he said +to me afterwards, with a nod of satisfaction, 'You saw Mr. Wilkes +acquiesced.' Wilkes talked with all imaginable freedom of the ludicrous +title given to the Attorney-General, _Diabolus Regis_; adding, 'I have +reason to know something about that officer; for I was prosecuted for a +libel.' Johnson, who many people would have supposed must have been +furiously angry at hearing this talked of so lightly, said not a word. +He was now, _indeed_, 'a good-humoured fellow.'[225] + +After dinner we had an accession of Mrs. Knowles,[226] the Quaker lady, +well known for her various talents, and of Mr. Alderman Lee. Amidst some +patriotick groans, somebody (I think the Alderman) said, 'Poor old +England is lost.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is not so much to be lamented that +Old England is lost, as that the Scotch have found it.'[227] WILKES. 'Had +Lord Bute governed Scotland only, I should not have taken the trouble to +write his eulogy, and dedicate _Mortimer_ to him.'[228] + +Mr. Wilkes held a candle to shew a fine print of a beautiful female +figure which hung in the room, and pointed out the elegant contour of +the bosom with the finger of an arch connoisseur. He afterwards, in a +conversation with me, waggishly insisted, that all the time Johnson +shewed visible signs of a fervent admiration of the corresponding charms +of the fair Quaker. + +This record, though by no means so perfect as I could wish, will serve +to give a notion of a very curious interview, which was not only +pleasing at the time, but had the agreeable and benignant effect of +reconciling any animosity, and sweetening any acidity, which in the +various bustle of political contest, had been produced in the minds of +two men, who though widely different, had so many things in +common--classical learning, modern literature, wit, and humour, and +ready repartee--that it would have been much to be regretted if they had +been for ever at a distance from each other.[229] + +Mr. Burke gave me much credit for this successful _negociation_; and +pleasantly said, that 'there was nothing to equal it in the whole +history of the _Corps Diplomatique_'. + +I attended Dr. Johnson home, and had the satisfaction to hear him tell +Mrs. Williams how much he had been pleased with Mr. Wilkes's company, +and what an agreeable day he had passed.[230] + +I talked a good deal to him of the celebrated Margaret Caroline Rudd, +whom I had visited, induced by the fame of her talents, address, and +irresistible power of fascination[231]. To a lady who disapproved of my +visiting her, he said on a former occasion[232], 'Nay, Madam, Boswell is +in the right; I should have visited her myself, were it not that they +have now a trick of putting every thing into the news-papers.' This +evening he exclaimed, 'I envy him his acquaintance with Mrs. Rudd.' + +I mentioned a scheme which I had of making a tour to the Isle of Man, +and giving a full account of it; and that Mr. Burke had playfully +suggested as a motto, + +'The proper study of mankind is MAN.'[233] + +JOHNSON. 'Sir, you will get more by the book than the jaunt will cost +you; so you will have your diversion for nothing, and add to your +reputation.' + +On the evening of the next day I took leave of him, being to set out for +Scotland[234]. I thanked him with great warmth for all his kindness. 'Sir, +(said he,) you are very welcome. Nobody repays it with more.' + +How very false is the notion which has gone round the world of the +rough, and passionate, and harsh manners of this great and good man. +That he had occasional sallies of heat of temper, and that he was +sometimes, perhaps, too 'easily provoked[235]' by absurdity and folly, and +sometimes too desirous of triumph in colloquial contest, must be +allowed. The quickness both of his perception and sensibility disposed +him to sudden explosions of satire; to which his extraordinary readiness +of wit was a strong and almost irresistible incitement. To adopt one of +the finest images in Mr. Home's _Douglas_[236], + +'On each glance of thought +Decision followed, as the thunderbolt +Pursues the flash!' + +I admit that the beadle within him was often so eager to apply the lash, +that the Judge had not time to consider the case with sufficient +deliberation. + +That he was occasionally remarkable for violence of temper may be +granted: but let us ascertain the degree, and not let it be supposed +that he was in a perpetual rage, and never without a club in his hand, +to knock down every one who approached him. On the contrary, the truth +is, that by much the greatest part of his time he was civil, obliging, +nay, polite in the true sense of the word; so much so, that many +gentlemen, who were long acquainted with him, never received, or even +heard a strong expression from him.[237] + +The following letters concerning an Epitaph which he wrote for the +monument of Dr. Goldsmith, in Westminster-Abbey, afford at once a proof +of his unaffected modesty, his carelessness as to his own writings, and +of the great respect which he entertained for the taste and judgement of +the excellent and eminent person to whom they are addressed: + +'TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I have been kept away from you, I know not well how, and of these +vexatious hindrances I know not when there will be an end. I therefore +send you the poor dear Doctor's epitaph. Read it first yourself; and if +you then think it right, shew it to the Club. I am, you know, willing to +be corrected. If you think any thing much amiss, keep it to yourself, +till we come together. I have sent two copies, but prefer the card. The +dates must be settled by Dr. Percy. + +'I am, Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'May 16, 1776.' + + +TO THE SAME. + +'SIR, + +'Miss Reynolds has a mind to send the Epitaph to Dr. Beattie; I am very +willing, but having no copy, cannot immediately recollect it. She tells +me you have lost it. Try to recollect and put down as much as you +retain; you perhaps may have kept what I have dropped. The lines for +which I am at a loss are something of _rerum civilium sivè +naturalium_.'[238] It was a sorry trick to lose it; help me if you can. I +am, Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + + +'June 22, 1776. + +'The gout grows better but slowly[239].' + +It was, I think, after I had left London this year, that this Epitaph +gave occasion to a _Remonstrance_ to the MONARCH OF LITERATURE, for an +account of which I am indebted to Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo. + +That my readers may have the subject more fully and clearly before them, +I shall first insert the Epitaph. + +OLIVARII GOLDSMITH, +_Poetae, Physici, Historici, +Qui nullum ferè scribendi genus +Non tetigit, +Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.[240] +Sive risus essent movendi, +Sive lacrymae, +Affectuum potens at lenis dominator: +Ingenio sublimis, vividus, versatilis, +Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus: +Hoc monumento memoriam coluit +Sodalium amor, +Amicorum fides, +Lectorum veneratio. +Natus in Hiberniâ Forniae Longfordiensis, +In loco cui nomen Pallas, +Nov. XXIX. MDCCXXXI[241]; +Eblanae literis institutus; +Obiit Londini, +April IV, MDCCLXXIV.' + +Sir William Forbes writes to me thus:-- + +'I enclose the _Round Robin_. This _jeu d'esprit_ took its rise one day +at dinner at our friend Sir Joshua Reynolds's.[242] All the company +present, except myself, were friends and acquaintance of Dr. +Goldsmith[243]. The Epitaph, written for him by Dr. Johnson, became the +subject of conversation, and various emendations were suggested, which +it was agreed should be submitted to the Doctor's consideration. But the +question was, who should have the courage to propose them to him? At +last it was hinted, that there could be no way so good as that of a +_Round Robin_, as the sailors call it, which they make use of when they +enter into a conspiracy, so as not to let it be known who puts his name +first or last to the paper. This proposition was instantly assented to; +and Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, now Bishop of Killaloe[244], drew up an +address to Dr. Johnson on the occasion, replete with wit and humour, but +which it was feared the Doctor might think treated the subject with too +much levity. Mr. Burke then proposed the address as it stands in the +paper in writing, to which I had the honour to officiate as clerk. + +'Sir Joshua agreed to carry it to Dr. Johnson, who received it with much +good humour[245], and desired Sir Joshua to tell the gentlemen, that he +would alter the Epitaph in any manner they pleased, as to the sense of +it; but _he would never consent to disgrace the walls of Westminster +Abbey_ with an English inscription. + +'I consider this _Round Robin_ as a species of literary curiosity worth +preserving, as it marks, in a certain degree, Dr. Johnson's character.' + +My readers are presented with a faithful transcript of a paper, which I +doubt not of their being desirous to see. + +Sir William Forbes's observation is very just. The anecdote now related +proves, in the strongest manner, the reverence and awe with which +Johnson was regarded, by some of the most eminent men of his time, in +various departments, and even by such of them as lived most with him; +while it also confirms what I have again and again inculcated, that he +was by no means of that ferocious and irascible character which has been +ignorantly imagined. + +This hasty composition is also to be remarked as one of a thousand +instances which evince the extraordinary promptitude of Mr. Burke; who +while he is equal to the greatest things, can adorn the least; can, with +equal facility, embrace the vast and complicated speculations of +politicks, or the ingenious topicks of literary investigation.[246] + + +'DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. BOSWELL. + +'MADAM, + +'You must not think me uncivil in omitting to answer the letter with +which you favoured me some time ago. I imagined it to have been written +without Mr. Boswell's knowledge, and therefore supposed the answer to +require, what I could not find, a private conveyance. + +'The difference with Lord Auchinleck is now over; and since young +Alexander[247] has appeared, I hope no more difficulties will arise among +you; for I sincerely wish you all happy. Do not teach the young ones to +dislike me, as you dislike me yourself; but let me at least have +Veronica's kindness, because she is my acquaintance. + +'You will now have Mr. Boswell home; it is well that you have him; he +has led a wild life. I have taken him to Lichfield, and he has followed +Mr. Thrale to Bath. Pray take care of him, and tame him. The only thing +in which I have the honour to agree with you is, in loving him; and +while we are so much of a mind in a matter of so much importance, our +other quarrels will, I hope, produce no great bitterness. I am, Madam, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'May 16, 1776.' + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, June 25, 1776. + +'You have formerly complained that my letters were too long. There is no +danger of that complaint being made at present; for I find it difficult +for me to write to you at all. [Here an account of having been afflicted +with a return of melancholy or bad spirits.] + +'The boxes of books[248] which you sent to me are arrived; but I have not +yet examined the contents. + + * * * * * + +'I send you Mr. Maclaurin's paper for the negro, who claims his freedom +in the Court of Session.[249]' + + +'DR. JOHNSON TO MR. BOSWELL. + +'Dear Sir, + +'These black fits, of which you complain, perhaps hurt your memory as +well as your imagination. When did I complain that your letters were too +long[250]? Your last letter, after a very long delay, brought very bad +news. [Here a series of reflections upon melancholy, and--what I could +not help thinking strangely unreasonable in him who had suffered so much +from it himself,--a good deal of severity and reproof, as if it were +owing to my own fault, or that I was, perhaps, affecting it from a +desire of distinction.] + +'Read Cheyne's _English Malady_;[251] but do not let him teach you a +foolish notion that melancholy is a proof of acuteness. + +'To hear that you have not opened your boxes of books is very offensive. +The examination and arrangement of so many volumes might have afforded +you an amusement very seasonable at present, and useful for the whole of +life. I am, I confess, very angry that you manage yourself so ill.[252] + +'I do not now say any more, than that I am, with great kindness, and +sincerity, dear Sir, + +'Your humble servant, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' +'July 2, 1776.' + +'It was last year[253] determined by Lord Mansfield, in the Court of +King's Bench, that a negro cannot be taken out of the kingdom without +his own consent.' + + +'DR. JOHNSON TO MR. BOSWELL. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I make haste to write again, lest my last letter should give you too +much pain. If you are really oppressed with overpowering and involuntary +melancholy, you are to be pitied rather than reproached. + + * * * * * + +'Now, my dear Bozzy, let us have done with quarrels and with censure. +Let me know whether I have not sent you a pretty library. There are, +perhaps, many books among them which you never need read through; but +there are none which it is not proper for you to know, and sometimes to +consult. Of these books, of which the use is only occasional, it is +often sufficient to know the contents, that, when any question arises, +you may know where to look for information. + +'Since I wrote, I have looked over Mr. Maclaurin's plea, and think it +excellent. How is the suit carried on? If by subscription, I commission +you to contribute, in my name, what is proper. Let nothing be wanting in +such a case. Dr. Drummond[254], I see, is superseded. His father would +have grieved; but he lived to obtain the pleasure of his son's election, +and died before that pleasure was abated. + +'Langton's lady has brought him a girl, and both are well; I dined with +him the other day. + +'It vexes me to tell you, that on the evening of the 29th of May I was +seized by the gout, and am not quite well. The pain has not been +violent, but the weakness and tenderness were very troublesome, and what +is said to be very uncommon, it has not alleviated my other disorders. +Make use of youth and health while you have them; make my compliments to +Mrs. Boswell. I am, my dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'July 6[255], 1776.' + + +'Mr. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, July 18, 1776. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'Your letter of the second of this month was rather a harsh medicine; +but I was delighted with that spontaneous tenderness, which, a few days +afterwards, sent forth such balsam as your next brought me. I found +myself for some time so ill that all I could do was to preserve a decent +appearance, while all within was weakness and distress. Like a reduced +garrison that has some spirit left, I hung out flags, and planted all +the force I could muster, upon the walls. I am now much better, and I +sincerely thank you for your kind attention and friendly counsel. + + * * * * * + +'Count Manucci[256] came here last week from travelling in Ireland. I have +shewn him what civilities I could on his own account, on yours, and on +that of Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. He has had a fall from his horse, and been +much hurt. I regret this unlucky accident, for he seems to be a very +amiable man.' + +As the evidence of what I have mentioned at the beginning of this year, +I select from his private register the following passage: + +'July 25, 1776. O GOD, who hast ordained that whatever is to be desired +should be sought by labour, and who, by thy blessing, bringest honest +labour to good effect, look with mercy upon my studies and endeavours. +Grant me, O LORD, to design only what is lawful and right; and afford me +calmness of mind, and steadiness of purpose, that I may so do thy will +in this short life, as to obtain happiness in the world to come, for the +sake of JESUS CHRIST our Lord. Amen.[257] + +It appears from a note subjoined, that this was composed when he +'purposed to apply vigorously to study, particularly of the Greek and +Italian tongues.' + +Such a purpose, so expressed, at the age of sixty-seven, is admirable +and encouraging; and it must impress all the thinking part of my readers +with a consolatory confidence in habitual devotion, when they see a man +of such enlarged intellectual powers as Johnson, thus in the genuine +earnestness of secrecy, imploring the aid of that Supreme Being, 'from +whom cometh down every good and every perfect gift[258].' + + +'TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. + +'SIR, + +'A young man, whose name is Paterson, offers himself this evening to the +Academy. He is the son of a man[259] for whom I have long had a kindness, +and who is now abroad in distress. I shall be glad that you will be +pleased to shew him any little countenance, or pay him any small +distinction. How much it is in your power to favour or to forward a +young man I do not know; nor do I know how much this candidate deserves +favour by his personal merit, or what hopes his proficiency may now give +of future eminence. I recommend him as the son of my friend. Your +character and station enable you to give a young man great encouragement +by very easy means. You have heard of a man who asked no other favour of +Sir Robert Walpole, than that he would bow to him at his levee. + +'I am, Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Aug. 3, 1776.' + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, August 30, 1776. + +[After giving him an account of my having examined the chests of books +which he had sent to me, and which contained what may be truely called a +numerous and miscellaneous _Stall Library_, thrown together at +random:--] + +'Lord Hailes was against the decree in the case of my client, the +minister;[260] not that he justified the minister, but because the +parishioner both provoked and retorted. I sent his Lordship your able +argument upon the case for his perusal. His observation upon it in a +letter to me was, "Dr. Johnson's _Suasorium_ is pleasantly[261] and +artfully composed. I suspect, however, that he has not convinced +himself; for, I believe that he is better read in ecclesiastical +history, than to imagine that a Bishop or a Presbyter has a right to +begin censure or discipline _è cathedrá[262]_." + + * * * * * + +'For the honour of Count Manucci, as well as to observe that exactness +of truth which you have taught me, I must correct what I said in a +former letter. He did not fall from his horse, which might have been an +imputation on his skill as an officer of cavalry; his horse fell with +him. + +'I have, since I saw you, read every word of Granger's _Biographical +History_. It has entertained me exceedingly, and I do not think him the +_Whig_ that you supposed.[263] Horace Walpole's being his patron[264] is, +indeed, no good sign of his political principles. But he denied to Lord +Mountstuart that he was a Whig, and said he had been accused by both +parties of partiality. It seems he was like Pope, + +"While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory[265]." + +'I wish you would look more into his book; and as Lord Mountstuart +wishes much to find a proper person to continue the work upon Granger's +plan, and has desired I would mention it to you; if such a man occurs, +please to let me know. His Lordship will give him generous +encouragement.' + + +'TO MR. ROBERT LEVETT. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'Having spent about six weeks at this place, we have at length resolved +upon returning. I expect to see you all in Fleet-street on the 30th of +this month. + +'I did not go into the sea till last Friday[266], but think to go most of +this week, though I know not that it does me any good. My nights are +very restless and tiresome, but I am otherwise well. + +'I have written word of my coming to Mrs. Williams. Remember me kindly +to Francis and Betsy. I am, Sir, + +'Your humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON[267].' + +'Brighthelmstone[268], Oct. 21, 1776' + +I again wrote to Dr. Johnson on the 21st of October, informing him, that +my father had, in the most liberal manner, paid a large debt for me[269], +and that I had now the happiness of being upon very good terms with him; +to which he returned the following answer. + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I had great pleasure in hearing that you are at last on good terms with +your father[270]. Cultivate his kindness by all honest and manly means. +Life is but short; no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of +real sorrow, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not +throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall +hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry; and +best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled. May you and your +father pass the remainder of your time in reciprocal benevolence! + + * * * * * + +'Do you ever hear from Mr. Langton? I visit him sometimes, but he does +not talk. I do not like his scheme of life[271]; but as I am not permitted +to understand it, I cannot set any thing right that is wrong. His +children are sweet babies. + +'I hope my irreconcileable enemy, Mrs. Boswell, is well. Desire her not +to transmit her malevolence to the young people. Let me have Alexander, +and Veronica, and Euphemia, for my friends. + +'Mrs. Williams, whom you may reckon as one of your well-wishers, is in a +feeble and languishing state, with little hope of growing better. She +went for some part of the autumn into the country, but is little +benefited; and Dr. Lawrence confesses that his art is at an end. Death +is, however, at a distance; and what more than that can we say of +ourselves? I am sorry for her pain, and more sorry for her decay. Mr. +Levett is sound, wind and limb. + +'I was some weeks this autumn at Brighthelmstone. The place was very +dull, and I was not well; the expedition to the Hebrides was the most +pleasant journey that I ever made[272]. Such an effort annually would give +the world a little diversification. + +'Every year, however, we cannot wander, and must therefore endeavour to +spend our time at home as well as we can. I believe it is best to throw +life into a method, that every hour may bring its employment, and every +employment have its hour. Xenophon observes, in his _Treatise of +Oeconomy_[273], that if every thing be kept in a certain place, when any +thing is worn out or consumed, the vacuity which it leaves will shew +what is wanting; so if every part of time has its duty, the hour will +call into remembrance its proper engagement. + +'I have not practised all this prudence myself, but I have suffered much +for want of it; and I would have you, by timely recollection and steady +resolution, escape from those evils which have lain heavy upon me[274]. I +am, my dearest Boswell, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Bolt-court, Nov. 16, 1776.' + + +On the 16th of November I informed him that Mr. Strahan had sent me +_twelve_ copies of the _Journey to the Western Islands_, handsomely +bound, instead of the _twenty_ copies which were stipulated[275]; but +which, I supposed, were to be only in sheets; requested to know how they +should be distributed: and mentioned that I had another son born to me, +who was named David, and was a sickly infant. + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I have been for some time ill of a cold, which, perhaps, I made an +excuse to myself for not writing, when in reality I knew not what to +say. + +'The books you must at last distribute as you think best, in my name, or +your own, as you are inclined, or as you judge most proper. Every body +cannot be obliged; but I wish that nobody may be offended. Do the best +you can. + +'I congratulate you on the increase of your family, and hope that little +David is by this time well, and his mamma perfectly recovered. I am much +pleased to hear of the re-establishment of kindness between you and your +father. Cultivate his paternal tenderness as much as you can. To live at +variance at all is uncomfortable; and variance with a father is still +more uncomfortable. Besides that, in the whole dispute you have the +wrong side; at least you gave the first provocations, and some of them +very offensive[276]. Let it now be all over. As you have no reason to +think that your new mother has shewn you any foul play, treat her with +respect, and with some degree of confidence; this will secure your +father. When once a discordant family has felt the pleasure of peace, +they will not willingly lose it. If Mrs. Boswell would but be friends +with me, we might now shut the temple of Janus. + +'What came of Dr. Memis's cause[277]? Is the question about the negro +determined[278]? Has Sir Allan any reasonable hopes[279]? What is become of +poor Macquarry[280]? Let me know the event of all these litigations. I +wish particularly well to the negro and Sir Allan. + +'Mrs. Williams has been much out of order; and though she is something +better, is likely, in her physician's opinion, to endure her malady for +life, though she may, perhaps, die of some other. Mrs. Thrale is big, +and fancies that she carries a boy; if it were very reasonable to wish +much about it, I should wish her not to be disappointed. The desire of +male heirs is not appendant only to feudal tenures. A son is almost +necessary to the continuance of Thrale's fortune; for what can misses do +with a brewhouse? Lands are fitter for daughters than trades[281]. + +'Baretti went away from Thrale's in some whimsical fit of disgust, or +ill-nature, without taking any leave[282]. It is well if he finds in any +other place as good an habitation, and as many conveniencies. He has got +five-and-twenty guineas by translating Sir Joshua's _Discourses_ into +Italian, and Mr. Thrale gave him an hundred in the spring[283]; so that he +is yet in no difficulties. + +'Colman has bought Foote's patent, and is to allow Foote for life +sixteen hundred pounds a year, as Reynolds told me, and to allow him to +play so often on such terms that he may gain four hundred pounds +more[284]. What Colman can get by this bargain, but trouble and hazard, I +do not see. I am, dear Sir, + +'Your humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Dec. 21, 1776.' + + +The Reverend Dr. Hugh Blair, who had long been admired as a preacher at +Edinburgh, thought now of diffusing his excellent sermons more +extensively, and encreasing his reputation, by publishing a collection +of them. He transmitted the manuscript to Mr. Strahan, the printer, who +after keeping it for some time, wrote a letter to him, discouraging the +publication[285]. Such at first was the unpropitious state of one of the +most successful theological books that has ever appeared. Mr. Strahan, +however, had sent one of the sermons to Dr. Johnson for his opinion; and +after his unfavourable letter to Dr. Blair had been sent off, he +received from Johnson on Christmas-eve, a note in which was the +following paragraph: + +'I have read over Dr. Blair's first sermon with more than approbation; +to say it is good, is to say too little[286].' + +I believe Mr. Strahan had very soon after this time a conversation with +Dr. Johnson concerning them; and then he very candidly wrote again to +Dr. Blair, enclosing Johnson's note, and agreeing to purchase the +volume, for which he and Mr. Cadell gave one hundred pounds. The sale +was so rapid and extensive, and the approbation of the publick so high, +that to their honour be it recorded, the proprietors made Dr. Blair a +present first of one sum, and afterwards of another, of fifty pounds, +thus voluntarily doubling the stipulated price; and when he prepared +another volume, they gave him at once three hundred pounds, being in all +five hundred pounds, by an agreement to which I am a subscribing +witness; and now for a third octavo volume he has received no less than +six hundred pounds. + + +1777: ÆTAT. 68.--In 1777, it appears from his _Prayers and Meditations_, +that Johnson suffered much from a state of mind 'unsettled and +perplexed[287],' and from that constitutional gloom, which, together with +his extreme humility and anxiety with regard to his religious state, +made him contemplate himself through too dark and unfavourable a medium. +It may be said of him, that he 'saw GOD in clouds[288].' Certain we may be +of his injustice to himself in the following lamentable paragraph, which +it is painful to think came from the contrite heart of this great man, +to whose labours the world is so much indebted: + +'When I survey my past life, I discover nothing but a barren waste of +time, with some disorders of body, and disturbances of the mind, very +near to madness,[289] which I hope He that made me will suffer to +extenuate many faults, and excuse many deficiencies[290].' + +But we find his devotions in this year eminently fervent; and we are +comforted by observing intervals of quiet, composure, and gladness. + +On Easter-day we find the following emphatick prayer: + +'Almighty and most merciful Father, who seest all our miseries, and +knowest all our necessities, look down upon me, and pity me. Defend me +from the violent incursion [incursions] of evil thoughts, and enable me +to form and keep such resolutions as may conduce to the discharge of the +duties which thy providence shall appoint me; and so help me, by thy +Holy Spirit, that my heart may surely there be fixed, where true joys +are to be found, and that I may serve thee with pure affection and a +cheerful mind. Have mercy upon me, O GOD, have mercy upon me; years and +infirmities oppress me, terrour and anxiety beset me. Have mercy upon +me, my Creator and my Judge. [In all dangers protect me.] In all +perplexities relieve and free me; and so help me by thy Holy Spirit, +that I may now so commemorate the death of thy Son our Saviour JESUS +CHRIST, as that when this short and painful life shall have an end, I +may, for his sake, be received to everlasting happiness. Amen[291].' + +While he was at church, the agreeable impressions upon his mind are thus +commemorated: + +'I was for some time distressed, but at last obtained, I hope from the +GOD of Peace, more quiet than I have enjoyed for a long time. I had made +no resolution, but as my heart grew lighter, my hopes revived, and my +courage increased; and I wrote with my pencil in my Common Prayer Book, + +"Vita ordinanda. +Biblia legenda. +Theologiae opera danda. +Serviendum et lætandum[292]."' + +Mr. Steevens whose generosity is well known, joined Dr. Johnson in kind +assistance to a female relation of Dr. Goldsmith, and desired that on +her return to Ireland she would procure authentick particulars of the +life of her celebrated relation[293]. Concerning her there is the +following letter:-- + + +'To GEORGE STEEVENS, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'You will be glad to hear that from Mrs. Goldsmith, whom we lamented as +drowned, I have received a letter full of gratitude to us all, with +promise to make the enquiries which we recommended to her. + +'I would have had the honour of conveying this intelligence to Miss +Caulfield, but that her letter is not at hand, and I know not the +direction. You will tell the good news. + +'I am, Sir, + +'Your most, &c. + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'February 25, 1777.' + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, Feb. 14, 1777. + +'My Dear Sir, + +'My state of epistolary accounts with you at present is extraordinary. +The balance, as to number, is on your side. I am indebted to you for two +letters; one dated the 16th of November, upon which very day I wrote to +you, so that our letters were exactly exchanged, and one dated the 21st +of December last. + +'My heart was warmed with gratitude by the truely kind contents of both +of them; and it is amazing and vexing that I have allowed so much time +to elapse without writing to you. But delay is inherent in me, by nature +or by bad habit. I waited till I should have an opportunity of paying +you my compliments on a new year. I have procrastinated till the year is +no longer new. + + * * * * * + +'Dr. Memis's cause was determined against him, with £40 costs. The Lord +President, and two other of the Judges, dissented from the majority, +upon this ground;--that although there may have been no intention to +injure him by calling him _Doctor of Medicine_, instead of _Physician_, +yet, as he remonstrated against the designation before the charter was +printed off, and represented that it was disagreeable, and even hurtful +to him, it was ill-natured to refuse to alter it, and let him have the +designation to which he was certainly entitled. My own opinion is, that +our court has judged wrong. The defendants were _in malâ fide_, to +persist in naming him in a way that he disliked. You remember poor +Goldsmith, when he grew important, and wished to appear _Doctor Major_ +[294], could not bear your calling him _Goldy_[295]. Would it not have +been wrong to have named him so in your _Preface to Shakspeare_, or in +any serious permanent writing of any sort? The difficulty is, whether an +action should be allowed on such petty wrongs. _De minimis non curat +lex_. + +'The Negro cause is not yet decided. A memorial is preparing on the side +of slavery. I shall send you a copy as soon as it is printed. Maclaurin +is made happy by your approbation of his memorial for the black. + +'Macquarry was here in the winter, and we passed an evening together. +The sale of his estate cannot be prevented. + +'Sir Allan Maclean's suit against the Duke of Argyle, for recovering the +ancient inheritance of his family, is now fairly before all our judges. +I spoke for him yesterday, and Maclaurin to-day; Crosbie spoke to-day +against him. Three more counsel are to be heard, and next week the cause +will be determined. I send you the _Informations_, or _Cases_, on each +side, which I hope you will read. You said to me when we were under Sir +Allan's hospitable roof, "I will help him with my pen." You said it with +a generous glow; and though his Grace of Argyle did afterwards mount you +upon an excellent horse, upon which "you looked like a Bishop[296]," you +must not swerve from your purpose at Inchkenneth. I wish you may +understand the points at issue, amidst our Scotch law principles and +phrases. + +[Here followed a full state of the case, in which I endeavoured to make +it as clear as I could to an Englishman, who had no knowledge of the +formularies and technical language of the law of Scotland.] + +'I shall inform you how the cause is decided here. But as it may be +brought under the review of our Judges, and is certainly to be carried +by appeal to the House of Lords, the assistance of such a mind as yours +will be of consequence. Your paper on _Vicious Intromission_[297] is a +noble proof of what you can do even in Scotch law. + + * * * * * + +'I have not yet distributed all your books. Lord Hailes and Lord +Monboddo have each received one, and return you thanks. Monboddo dined +with me lately, and having drank tea, we were a good while by ourselves, +and as I knew that he had read the _Journey_ superficially, as he did +not talk of it as I wished, I brought it to him, and read aloud several +passages; and then he talked so, that I told him he was to have a copy +_from the authour_. He begged _that_ might be marked on it. + + * * * * * + +'I ever am, my dear Sir, + +'Your most faithful, + +'And affectionate humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + + +'SIR ALEXANDER DICK TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Prestonfield, Feb. 17, 1777. + +'Sir, + +'I had yesterday the honour of receiving your book of your _Journey to +the Western Islands of Scotland_, which you was so good as to send me, +by the hands of our mutual friend[298], Mr. Boswell, of Auchinleck; for +which I return you my most hearty thanks; and after carefully reading it +over again, shall deposit in my little collection of choice books, next +our worthy friend's _Journey to Corsica_. As there are many things to +admire in both performances, I have often wished that no Travels or +Journeys should be published but those undertaken by persons of +integrity and capacity to judge well, and describe faithfully, and in +good language, the situation, condition, and manners of the countries +past through. Indeed our country of Scotland, in spite of the union of +the crowns, is still in most places so devoid of clothing, or cover from +hedges and plantations, that it was well you gave your readers a sound +_Monitoire_ with respect to that circumstance. The truths you have told, +and the purity of the language in which they are expressed, as your +_Journey_ is universally read, may, and already appear to have a very +good effect. For a man of my acquaintance, who has the largest nursery +for trees and hedges in this country, tells me, that of late the demand +upon him for these articles is doubled, and sometimes tripled. I have, +therefore, listed Dr. Samuel Johnson in some of my memorandums of the +principal planters and favourers of the enclosures, under a name which I +took the liberty to invent from the Greek, _Papadendrion_[299]. Lord +Auchinleck and some few more are of the list. I am told that one +gentleman in the shire of Aberdeen, _viz_. Sir Archibald Grant, has +planted above fifty millions of trees on a piece of very wild ground at +Monimusk: I must enquire if he has fenced them well, before he enters my +list; for, that is the soul of enclosing. I began myself to plant a +little, our ground being too valuable for much, and that is now fifty +years ago; and the trees, now in my seventy-fourth year, I look up to +with reverence, and shew them to my eldest son now in his fifteenth +year, and they are full the height of my country-house here, where I had +the pleasure of receiving you, and hope again to have that satisfaction +with our mutual friend, Mr. Boswell. I shall always continue, with the +truest esteem, dear Doctor, + +'Your much obliged, + +'And obedient humble servant, + +'ALEXANDER DICK[300].' + + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, Esq. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'It is so long since I heard any thing from you[301], that I am not easy +about it; write something to me next post. When you sent your last +letter, every thing seemed to be mending; I hope nothing has lately +grown worse. I suppose young Alexander continues to thrive, and Veronica +is now very pretty company. I do not suppose the lady is yet reconciled +to me, yet let her know that I love her very well, and value her very +much. + +'Dr. Blair is printing some sermons. If they are all like the first, +which I have read, they are _sermones aurei, ac auro magis aurei_. It is +excellently written both as to doctrine and language. Mr. Watson's +book[302] seems to be much esteemed. + + * * * * * + +'Poor Beauclerk still continues very ill[303]. Langton lives on as he used +to do[304]. His children are very pretty, and, I think, his lady loses her +Scotch. Paoli I never see. + +'I have been so distressed by difficulty of breathing, that I lost, as +was computed, six-and-thirty ounces of blood in a few days[305]. I am +better, but not well. + +'I wish you would be vigilant and get me Graham's _Telemachus_[306] that +was printed at Glasgow, a very little book; and _Johnstoni Poemata_[307], +another little book, printed at Middleburgh. + +'Mrs. Williams sends her compliments, and promises that when you come +hither, she will accommodate you as well as ever she can in the old +room[308]. She wishes to know whether you sent her book[309] to Sir +Alexander Gordon[310]. + +'My dear Boswell, do not neglect to write to me; for your kindness is +one of the pleasures of my life, which I should be sorry to lose. + +'I am, Sir, + +'Your humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'February 18, 1777.' + + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, Feb. 24, 1777. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'Your letter dated the 18th instant, I had the pleasure to receive last +post. Although my late long neglect, or rather delay, was truely +culpable, I am tempted not to regret it, since it has produced me so +valuable a proof of your regard. I did, indeed, during that inexcusable +silence, sometimes divert the reproaches of my own mind, by fancying +that I should hear again from you, inquiring with some anxiety about me, +because, for aught you knew, I might have been ill. + +'You are pleased to shew me, that my kindness is of some consequence to +you. My heart is elated at the thought. Be assured, my dear Sir, that my +affection and reverence for you are exalted and steady. I do not believe +that a more perfect attachment ever existed in the history of mankind. +And it is a noble attachment; for the attractions are Genius, Learning, +and Piety. + +'Your difficulty of breathing alarms me, and brings into my imagination +an event, which although in the natural course of things, I must expect +at some period, I cannot view with composure. + + * * * * * + +'My wife is much honoured by what you say of her. She begs you may +accept of her best compliments. She is to send you some marmalade of +oranges of her own making. + + * * * * * + +'I ever am, my dear Sir, + +'Your most obliged + +'And faithful humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I have been much pleased with your late letter, and am glad that my old +enemy Mrs. Boswell, begins to feel some remorse. As to Miss Veronica's +Scotch, I think it cannot be helped. An English maid you might easily +have; but she would still imitate the greater number, as they would be +likewise those whom she must most respect. Her dialect will not be +gross. Her Mamma has not much Scotch, and you have yourself very little. +I hope she knows my name, and does not call me _Johnston_[311]. + +'The immediate cause of my writing is this:--One Shaw[312], who seems a +modest and a decent man, has written an _Erse Grammar_, which a very +learned Highlander, Macbean[313], has, at my request, examined and +approved. + +'The book is very little, but Mr. Shaw has been persuaded by his friends +to set it at half a guinea, though I advised only a crown, and thought +myself liberal. You, whom the authour considers as a great encourager of +ingenious men, will receive a parcel of his proposals and receipts. I +have undertaken to give you notice of them, and to solicit your +countenance. You must ask no poor man, because the price is really too +high. Yet such a work deserves patronage. + +'It is proposed to augment our club from twenty to thirty, of which I am +glad; for as we have several in it whom I do not much like to consort +with[314], I am for reducing it to a mere miscellaneous collection of +conspicuous men, without any determinate character. + + * * * * * + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Most affectionately your's, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'March 11, 1777.' + +'My respects to Madam, to Veronica, to Alexander, to Euphemia, to +David.' + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, April 4, 1777. + +[After informing him of the death of my little son David, and that I +could not come to London this spring:--] + +'I think it hard that I should be a whole year without seeing you. May I +presume to petition for a meeting with you in the autumn? You have, I +believe, seen all the cathedrals in England, except that of Carlisle. If +you are to be with Dr. Taylor, at Ashbourne, it would not be a great +journey to come thither. We may pass a few most agreeable days there by +ourselves, and I will accompany you a good part of the way to the +southward again. Pray think of this. + +'You forget that Mr. Shaw's _Erse Grammar_ was put into your hands by +myself last year. Lord Eglintoune put it into mine. I am glad that Mr. +Macbean approves of it. I have received Mr. Shaw's Proposals for its +publication, which I can perceive are written _by the hand of a_ MASTER. + + * * * * * + +'Pray get for me all the editions of _Walton's Lives_: I have a notion +that the republication of them with Notes will fall upon me, between Dr. +Home and Lord Hailes[315].' + +Mr. Shaw's Proposals[dagger] for _An Analysis of the Scotch Celtick +Language_, were thus illuminated by the pen of Johnson: + +'Though the Erse dialect of the Celtick language has, from the earliest +times, been spoken in Britain, and still subsists in the northern parts +and adjacent islands, yet, by the negligence of a people rather warlike +than lettered, it has hitherto been left to the caprice and judgement of +every speaker, and has floated in the living voice, without the +steadiness of analogy, or direction of rules. An Erse Grammar is an +addition to the stores of literature; and its authour hopes for the +indulgence always shewn to those that attempt to do what was never done +before. If his work shall be found defective, it is at least all his +own: he is not like other grammarians, a compiler or transcriber; what +he delivers, he has learned by attentive observation among his +countrymen, who perhaps will be themselves surprized to see that speech +reduced to principles, which they have used only by imitation. + +'The use of this book will, however, not be confined to the mountains +and islands; it will afford a pleasing and important subject of +speculation, to those whose studies lead them to trace the affinity of +languages, and the migrations of the ancient races, of mankind.' + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Glasgow, April 24, 1777. +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'Our worthy friend Thrale's death having appeared in the newspapers, and +been afterwards contradicted, I have been placed in a state of very +uneasy uncertainty, from which I hoped to be relieved by you: but my +hopes have as yet been vain. How could you omit to write to me on such +an occasion? I shall wait with anxiety. + +'I am going to Auchinleck to stay a fortnight with my father. It is +better not to be there very long at one time. But frequent renewals of +attention are agreeable to him. + +'Pray tell me about this edition of "_The English Poets_, with a +Preface, biographical and critical, to each Authour, by Samuel Johnson, +LL.D." which I see advertised. I am delighted with the prospect of it. +Indeed I am happy to feel that I am capable of being so much delighted +with literature.[316] But is not the charm of this publication chiefly +owing to the _magnum nomen_ in the front of it? + +'What do you say of Lord Chesterfield's _Memoirs and last Letters_?[317] + +'My wife has made marmalade of oranges for you. I left her and my +daughters and Alexander all well yesterday. I have taught Veronica to +speak of you thus;--Dr. John_son_, not Jon_ston_. + +'I remain, my dear Sir, +'Your most affectionate, +'And obliged humble servant, +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. +'DEAR SIR, + +'The story of Mr. Thrale's death, as he had neither been sick nor in any +other danger, made so little impression upon me, that I never thought +about obviating its effects on any body else. It is supposed to have +been produced by the English custom of making April fools, that is, of +sending one another on some foolish errand on the first of April. + +'Tell Mrs. Boswell that I shall taste her marmalade cautiously at first. +_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_.[318] Beware, says the Italian proverb, of +a reconciled enemy. But when I find it does me no harm, I shall then +receive it and be thankful for it, as a pledge of firm, and, I hope, of +unalterable kindness. She is, after all, a dear, dear lady. + +'Please to return Dr. Blair thanks for his sermons. The Scotch write +English wonderfully well. + +'Your frequent visits to Auchinleck, and your short stay there, are very +laudable and very judicious. Your present concord with your father gives +me great pleasure; it was all that you seemed to want. + +'My health is very bad, and my nights are very unquiet.[319] What can I do +to mend them? I have for this summer nothing better in prospect than a +journey into Staffordshire and Derbyshire, perhaps with Oxford and +Birmingham in my way. + +'Make my compliments to Miss Veronica; I must leave it to _her_ +philosophy to comfort you for the loss of little David. You must +remember, that to keep three out of four is more than your share. Mrs. +Thrale has but four out of eleven.[320] + +'I am engaged to write little Lives, and little Prefaces, to a little +edition of _The English Poets_. I think I have persuaded the +book-sellers to insert something of Thomson; and if you could give me +some information about him, for the life which we have is very scanty, I +should be glad. I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate humble servant, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' +'May 3, 1777.' + +To those who delight in tracing the progress of works of literature, it +will be an entertainment to compare the limited design with the ample +execution of that admirable performance, _The Lives of the English +Poets_, which is the richest, most beautiful and indeed most perfect +production of Johnson's pen. His notion of it at this time appears in +the preceding letter. He has a memorandum in this year, '29 May[321], +Easter Eve, I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the time was +not long[322].' The bargain was concerning that undertaking; but his +tender conscience seems alarmed lest it should have intruded too much on +his devout preparation for the solemnity of the ensuing day. But, +indeed, very little time was necessary for Johnson's concluding a treaty +with the booksellers; as he had, I believe, less attention to profit +from his labours than any man to whom literature has been a +profession.[323] I shall here insert from a letter to me from my late +worthy friend Mr. Edward Dilly, though of a later date, an account of +this plan so happily conceived; since it was the occasion of procuring +for us an elegant collection of the best biography and criticism of +which our language can boast. + + + +'TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. +'Southill, Sept. 26, 1777. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'You will find by this letter, that I am still in the same calm retreat, +from the noise and bustle of London, as when I wrote to you last. I am +happy to find you had such an agreeable meeting with your old friend Dr. +Johnson; I have no doubt your stock is much increased by the interview; +few men, nay I may say, scarcely any man, has got that fund of knowledge +and entertainment as Dr. Johnson in conversation. When he opens freely, +every one is attentive to what he says, and cannot fail of improvement +as well as pleasure. + +'The edition of _The Poets_, now printing, will do honour to the English +press; and a concise account of the life of each authour, by Dr. +Johnson, will be a very valuable addition, and stamp the reputation of +this edition superiour to any thing that is gone before. The first cause +that gave rise to this undertaking, I believe, was owing to the little +trifling edition of _The Poets_, printing by the Martins, at Edinburgh, +and to be sold by Bell, in London. Upon examining the volumes which were +printed, the type was found so extremely small, that many persons could +not read them; not only this inconvenience attended it, but the +inaccuracy of the press was very conspicuous. These reasons, as well as +the idea of an invasion of what we call our Literary Property[324], +induced the London Booksellers to print an elegant and accurate edition +of all the English Poets of reputation, from Chaucer to the present +time. + +'Accordingly a select number of the most respectable booksellers met on +the occasion; and, on consulting together, agreed, that all the +proprietors of copy-right in the various Poets should be summoned +together; and when their opinions were given, to proceed immediately on +the business. Accordingly a meeting was held, consisting of about forty +of the most respectable booksellers of London, when it was agreed that +an elegant and uniform edition of _The English Poets_ should be +immediately printed, with a concise account of the life of each authour, +by Dr. Samuel Johnson; and that three persons should be deputed to wait +upon Dr. Johnson, to solicit him to undertake the Lives, _viz_., T. +Davies, Strahan, and Cadell. The Doctor very politely undertook it, and +seemed exceedingly pleased with the proposal. As to the terms, it was +left entirely to the Doctor to name his own: he mentioned two hundred +guineas[325]: it was immediately agreed to; and a farther compliment, I +believe, will be made him.[326] A committee was likewise appointed to +engage the best engravers, _viz_., Bartolozzi, Sherwin, Hall, etc. +Likewise another committee for giving directions about the paper, +printing, etc., so that the whole will be conducted with spirit, and in +the best manner, with respect to authourship, editorship, engravings, +etc., etc. My brother will give you a list of the Poets we mean to give, +many of which are within the time of the Act of Queen Anne[327], which +Martin and Bell cannot give, as they have no property in them; the +proprietors are almost all the booksellers in London, of consequence. I +am, dear Sir, + +'Ever your's, +'EDWARD DILLY.' + + +I shall afterwards have occasion to consider the extensive and varied +range which Johnson took, when he was once led upon ground which he trod +with a peculiar delight, having long been intimately acquainted with all +the circumstances of it that could interest and please. + +'DR. JOHNSON TO CHARLES O'CONNOR, Esq.[328] + + + +'SIR, + +'Having had the pleasure of conversing with Dr. Campbell about your +character and your literary undertaking, I am resolved to gratify myself +by renewing a correspondence which began and ended a great while ago, +and ended, I am afraid, by my fault; a fault which, if you have not +forgotten it, you must now forgive. + +'If I have ever disappointed you, give me leave to tell you, that you +have likewise disappointed me. I expected great discoveries in Irish +antiquity, and large publications in the Irish language; but the world +still remains at it was, doubtful and ignorant. What the Irish language +is in itself, and to what languages it has affinity, are very +interesting questions, which every man wishes to see resolved that has +any philological or historical curiosity. Dr. Leland begins his history +too late: the ages which deserve an exact enquiry are those times +(for[329] such there were) when Ireland was the school of the west, the +quiet habitation of sanctity and literature. If you could give a +history, though imperfect, of the Irish nation, from its conversion to +Christianity to the invasion from England, you would amplify knowledge +with new views and new objects. Set about it therefore, if you can: do +what you can easily do without anxious exactness. Lay the foundation, +and leave the superstructure to posterity. I am, Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' +'May 19, 1777.' + + +Early in this year came out, in two volumes quarto, the posthumous works +of the learned Dr. Zachary Pearce, Bishop of Rochester; being _A +Commentary, with Notes, on the four Evangelists and the Acts of the +Apostles_, with other theological pieces. Johnson had now an opportunity +of making a grateful return to that excellent prelate, who, we have +seen[330], was the only person who gave him any assistance in the +compilation of his _Dictionary_. The Bishop had left some account of his +life and character, written by himself. To this Johnson made some +valuable additions[331][dagger], and also furnished to the editor, the +Reverend Mr. Derby, a Dedication[dagger], which I shall here insert, +both because it will appear at this time with peculiar propriety; and +because it will tend to propagate and increase that 'fervour of +_Loyalty_[332],' which in me, who boast of the name of TORY, is not only a +principle, but a passion. + + + +'To THE KING. + +'SIR, + +'I presume to lay before your Majesty the last labours of a learned +Bishop, who died in the toils and duties of his calling[333]. He is now +beyond the reach of all earthly honours and rewards; and only the hope +of inciting others to imitate him, makes it now fit to be remembered, +that he enjoyed in his life the favour of your Majesty. + +'The tumultuary life of Princes seldom permits them to survey the wide +extent of national interest, without losing sight of private merit; to +exhibit qualities which may be imitated by the highest and the humblest +of mankind; and to be at once amiable and great. + +'Such characters, if now and then they appear in history, are +contemplated with admiration. May it be the ambition of all your +subjects to make haste with their tribute of reverence: and as posterity +may learn from your Majesty how Kings should live, may they learn, +likewise, from your people, how they should be honoured. I am, + +'May it please your Majesty, +With the most profound respect, +Your Majesty's +Most dutiful and devoted +Subject and Servant.' + +In the summer he wrote a Prologue[*] which was spoken before _A Word to +the Wise_, a comedy by Mr. Hugh Kelly[334], which had been brought upon +the stage in 1770; but he being a writer for ministry, in one of the +news-papers, it fell a sacrifice to popular fury, and in the playhouse +phrase, was _damned_. By the generosity of Mr. Harris, the proprietor of +Covent Garden theatre, it was now exhibited for one night, for the +benefit of the authour's widow and children. To conciliate the favour of +the audience was the intention of Johnson's Prologue, which, as it is +not long, I shall here insert, as a proof that his poetical talents were +in no degree impaired. + +'This night presents a play, which publick rage, +Or right or wrong, once hooted from the stage: +From zeal or malice, now no more we dread, +For English vengeance _wars not with the dead_. +A generous foe regards with pitying eye +The man whom Fate has laid where all must lie. +To wit, reviving from its authour's dust, +Be kind, ye judges, or at least be just: +Let no renewed hostilities invade +Th' oblivious grave's inviolable shade. +Let one great payment every claim appease, +And him who cannot hurt, allow to please; +To please by scenes, unconscious of offence, +By harmless merriment, or useful sense. +Where aught of bright or fair the piece displays, +Approve it only;--'tis too late to praise. +If want of skill or want of care appear, +Forbear to hiss;--the poet cannot hear. +By all, like him, must praise and blame be found, +At last, a fleeting gleam, or empty sound; +Yet then shall calm reflection bless the night, +When liberal pity dignified delight; +When pleasure fir'd her torch at virtue's flame, +And mirth was bounty with an humbler name.'[335] + +A circumstance which could not fail to be very pleasing to Johnson +occurred this year. The Tragedy of _Sir Thomas Overbury_, written by his +early companion in London, Richard Savage[336] was brought out with +alterations at Drury-lane theatre[337]. The Prologue to it was written by +Mr. Richard Brinsley Sheridan; in which, after describing very +pathetically the wretchedness of + +'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n +No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n:' + +he introduced an elegant compliment to Johnson on his _Dictionary_, that +wonderful performance which cannot be too often or too highly praised; +of which Mr. Harris, in his _Philological Inquiries_[338], justly and +liberally observes: 'Such is its merit, that our language does not +possess a more copious, learned, and valuable work.' The concluding, +lines of this Prologue were these:-- + +'So pleads the tale that gives to future times +The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes; +There shall his fame (if own'd to-night) survive, +Fix'd by THE HAND THAT BIDS OUR LANGUAGE LIVE[339].' + +Mr. Sheridan here at once did honour to his taste and to his liberality +of sentiment, by shewing that he was not prejudiced from the unlucky +difference which had taken place between his worthy father and Dr. +Johnson. I have already mentioned, that Johnson was very desirous of +reconciliation with old Mr. Sheridan.[340] It will, therefore, not seem at +all surprizing that he was zealous in acknowledging the brilliant merit +of his son. While it had as yet been displayed only in the drama, +Johnson proposed him as a member of THE LITERARY CLUB, observing, that +'He who has written the two best comedies of his age, is surely a +considerable man[341].' And he had, accordingly, the honour to be elected; +for an honour it undoubtedly must be allowed to be, when it is +considered of whom that society consists, and that a single black ball +excludes a candidate. + + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'July 9, 1777.[342] + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'For the health of my wife and children I have taken the little +country-house at which you visited my uncle, Dr. Boswell[343], who, having +lost his wife, is gone to live with his son. We took possession of our +villa about a week ago; we have a garden of three quarters of an acre, +well stocked with fruit-trees and flowers, and gooseberries and +currants, and peas and beans, and cabbages, &c. &c., and my children are +quite happy. I now write to you in a little study, from the window of +which I see around me a verdant grove, and beyond it the lofty mountain +called Arthur's Seat. + +'Your last letter, in which you desire me to send you some additional +information concerning Thomson, reached me very fortunately just as I +was going to Lanark, to put my wife's two nephews, the young Campbells, +to school there, under the care of Mr. Thomson, the master of it, whose +wife is sister to the authour of _The Seasons_. She is an old woman; but +her memory is very good; and she will with pleasure give me for you +every particular that you wish to know, and she can tell. Pray then take +the trouble to send me such questions as may lead to biographical +materials. You say that the _Life_ which we have of Thomson is scanty. +Since I received your letter I have read his _Life_, published under the +name of Cibber, but as you told me, really written by a Mr. Shiels[344]; +that written by Dr. Murdoch; one prefixed to an edition of the Seasons, +published at Edinburgh, which is compounded of both, with the addition +of an anecdote of Quin's relieving Thomson from prison[345]; the +abridgement of Murdoch's account of him, in the _Biographia Britannica_, +and another abridgement of it in the _Biographical Dictionary_, enriched +with Dr. Joseph Warton's critical panegyrick on the _Seasons_ in his +_Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope_: from all these it appears to +me that we have a pretty full account of this poet. However, you will, I +doubt not, shew me many blanks, and I shall do what can be done to have +them filled up. As Thomson never returned to Scotland, (which _you_ will +think very wise,) his sister can speak from her own knowledge only as to +the early part of his life. She has some letters from him, which may +probably give light as to his more advanced progress, if she will let us +see them, which I suppose she will[346]. I believe George Lewis Scott[347] +and Dr. Armstrong[348] are now his only surviving companions, while he +lived in and about London; and they, I dare say, can tell more of him +than is yet known. My own notion is, that Thomson was a much coarser man +than his friends are willing to acknowledge[349]. His _Seasons_ are indeed +full of elegant and pious sentiments: but a rank soil, nay a dunghill, +will produce beautiful flowers[350]. + +'Your edition of _The English Poets_[351] will be very valuable, on +account of the _Prefaces_ and _Lives_. But I have seen a specimen of an +edition of _The Poets_ at the Apollo press, at Edinburgh, which, for +excellence in printing and engraving, highly deserves a liberal +encouragement. + +'Most sincerely do I regret the bad health and bad rest with which you +have been afflicted; and I hope you are better. I cannot believe that +the Prologue which you generously gave to Mr. Kelly's widow and children +the other day, is the effusion of one in sickness and in disquietude: +but external circumstances are never sure indications of the state of +man. I send you a letter which I wrote to you two years ago at +Wilton[352]; and did not send it at the time, for fear of being reproved +as indulging too much tenderness; and one written to you at the tomb of +Melancthon[353], which I kept back, lest I should appear at once too +superstitious and too enthusiastick. I now imagine that perhaps they may +please you. + +'You do not take the least notice of my proposal for our meeting at +Carlisle[354]. Though I have meritoriously refrained from visiting London +this year, I ask you if it would not be wrong that I should be two years +without having the benefit of your conversation, when, if you come down +as far as Derbyshire, we may meet at the expence of a few days' +journeying, and not many pounds. I wish you to see Carlisle, which made +me mention that place. But if you have not a desire to complete your +tour of the English cathedrals, I will take a larger share of the road +between this place and Ashbourne. So tell me _where_ you will fix for +our passing a few days by ourselves. Now don't cry "foolish fellow," or +"idle dog." Chain your humour, and let your kindness play. + +'You will rejoice to hear that Miss Macleod, of Rasay[355], is married to +Colonel Mure Campbell, an excellent man, with a pretty good estate of +his own, and the prospect of having the Earl of Loudoun's fortune and +honours. Is not this a noble lot for our fair Hebridean? How happy am I +that she is to be in Ayrshire. We shall have the Laird of Rasay, and old +Malcolm, and I know not how many gallant Macleods, and bagpipes, &c. &c. +at Auchinleck. Perhaps you may meet them all there. + +'Without doubt you have read what is called _The Life_ of David Hume[356], +written by himself, with the letter from Dr. Adam Smith subjoined to it. +Is not this an age of daring effrontery? My friend Mr. Anderson, +Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow, at whose house you and I +supped[357], and to whose care Mr. Windham[358], of Norfolk, was entrusted +at that University, paid me a visit lately; and after we had talked with +indignation and contempt of the poisonous productions with which this +age is infested, he said there was now an excellent opportunity for Dr. +Johnson to step forth. I agreed with him that you might knock Hume's and +Smith's heads together, and make vain and ostentatious infidelity +exceedingly ridiculous. Would it not be worth your while to crush such +noxious weeds in the moral garden? + +'You have said nothing to me of Dr. Dodd[359]. I know not how you think on +that subject; though the newspapers give us a saying of your's in favour +of mercy to him. But I own I am very desirous that the royal prerogative +of remission of punishment should be employed to exhibit an illustrious +instance of the regard which GOD's VICEGERENT will ever shew to piety +and virtue. If for ten righteous men the ALMIGHTY would have spared +Sodom, shall not a thousand acts of goodness done by Dr. Dodd +counterbalance one crime? Such an instance would do more to encourage +goodness, than his execution would do to deter from vice. I am not +afraid of any bad consequence to society; for who will persevere for a +long course of years in a distinguished discharge of religious duties, +with a view to commit a forgery with impunity? + +'Pray make my best compliments acceptable to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, by +assuring them of my hearty joy that the _Master_[360], as you call him, is +alive. I hope I shall often taste his Champagne--_soberly_. + +'I have not heard from Langton for a long time. I suppose he is as +usual, + +"Studious the busy moments to deceive[361]." + + * * * * * + +'I remain, my dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate, and faithful humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + +On the 23rd of June, I again wrote to Dr. Johnson, enclosing a +ship-master's receipt for a jar of orange-marmalade, and a large packet +of Lord Hailes's _Annals of Scotland_. + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I have just received your packet from Mr. Thrale's, but have not +day-light enough to look much into it. I am glad that I have credit +enough with Lord Hailes to be trusted with more copy[362]. I hope to take +more care of it than of the last. I return Mrs. Boswell my affectionate +thanks for her present, which I value as a token of reconciliation. + +'Poor Dodd was put to death yesterday, in opposition to the +recommendation of the jury[363]--the petition of the city of +London[364]--and a subsequent petition signed by three-and-twenty thousand +hands. Surely the voice of the publick, when it calls so loudly, and +calls only for mercy, ought to be heard[365]. + +'The saying that was given me in the papers I never spoke; but I wrote +many of his petitions, and some of his letters. He applied to me very +often. He was, I am afraid, long flattered with hopes of life; but I had +no part in the dreadful delusion; for, as soon as the King had signed +his sentence[366], I obtained from Mr. Chamier[367] an account of the +disposition of the court towards him, with a declaration that there _was +no hope even of a respite_. This letter immediately was laid before +Dodd; but he believed those whom he wished to be right, as it is +thought, till within three days of his end. He died with pious composure +and resolution. I have just seen the Ordinary that attended him. His +address to his fellow-convicts offended the Methodists[368]; but he had a +Moravian with him much of his time[369]. His moral character is very bad: +I hope all is not true that is charged upon him. Of his behaviour in +prison an account will be published. + +'I give you joy of your country-house, and your pretty garden; and hope +some time to see you in your felicity. I was much pleased with your two +letters that had been kept so long in store[370]; and rejoice at Miss +Rasay's advancement, and wish Sir Allan success. + +'I hope to meet you somewhere towards the north, but am loath to come +quite to Carlisle. Can we not meet at Manchester? But we will settle it +in some other letters. + +'Mr. Seward[371], a great favourite at Streatham, has been, I think, +enkindled by our travels with a curiosity to see the Highlands. I have +given him letters to you and Beattie. He desires that a lodging may be +taken for him at Edinburgh, against his arrival. He is just setting out. + +'Langton has been exercising the militia[372]. Mrs. Williams is, I fear, +declining. Dr. Lawrence says he can do no more. She is gone to summer in +the country, with as many conveniences about her as she can expect; but +I have no great hope. We must all die: may we all be prepared! + +'I suppose Miss Boswell reads her book, and young Alexander takes to his +learning. Let me hear about them; for every thing that belongs to you, +belongs in a more remote degree, and not, I hope, very remote, to, dear +Sir, + +'Yours affectionately, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'June, 28, 1777.' + + +TO THE SAME. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'This gentleman is a great favourite at Streatham, and therefore you +will easily believe that he has very valuable qualities. Our narrative +has kindled him with a desire of visiting the Highlands, after having +already seen a great part of Europe. You must receive him as a friend, +and when you have directed him to the curiosities of Edinburgh, give him +instructions and recommendations for the rest of his journey. I am, dear +Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'June 24, 1777.' + + +Johnson's benevolence to the unfortunate was, I am confident, as steady +and active as that of any of those who have been most eminently +distinguished for that virtue. Innumerable proofs of it I have no doubt +will be for ever concealed from mortal eyes. We may, however, form some +judgement of it, from the many and very various instances which have +been discovered. One, which happened in the course of this summer, is +remarkable from the name and connection of the person who was the object +of it. The circumstance to which I allude is ascertained by two letters, +one to Mr. Langton, and another to the Reverend Dr. Vyse, rector of +Lambeth, son of the respectable clergyman at Lichfield, who was +contemporary with Johnson, and in whose father's family Johnson had the +happiness of being kindly received in his early years. + + +'DR. JOHNSON TO BENNET LANGTON, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I have lately been much disordered by a difficulty of breathing, but am +now better. I hope your house is well. + +'You know we have been talking lately of St. Cross, at Winchester; I +have an old acquaintance whose distress makes him very desirous of an +hospital, and I am afraid I have not strength enough to get him into the +Chartreux. He is a painter, who never rose higher than to get his +immediate living, and from that, at eighty-three, he is disabled by a +slight stroke of the palsy, such as does not make him at all helpless on +common occasions, though his hand is not steady enough for his art. + +'My request is, that you will try to obtain a promise of the next +vacancy, from the Bishop of Chester. It is not a great thing to ask, and +I hope we shall obtain it. Dr. Warton has promised to favour him with +his notice, and I hope he may end his days in peace. I am, Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'June 29, 1777.' + + +'To THE REVEREND DR. VYSE, AT LAMBETH. + +'SIR, + +'I doubt not but you will readily forgive me for taking the liberty of +requesting your assistance in recommending an old friend to his Grace +the Archbishop, as Governour of the Charter-house. + +'His name is De Groot; he was born at Gloucester; I have known him many +years. He has all the common claims to charity, being old, poor, and +infirm, in a great degree. He has likewise another claim, to which no +scholar can refuse attention; he is by several descents the nephew of +Hugo Grotius; of him, from whom perhaps every man of learning has learnt +something. Let it not be said that in any lettered country a nephew of +Grotius asked a charity and was refused.[373] + +'I am, reverend Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'July 9, 1777.' + + +'REVEREND DR. VYSE TO MR. BOSWELL. + +'Lambeth, June 9, 1787. + +'SIR, + +'I have searched in vain for the letter which I spoke of, and which I +wished, at your desire, to communicate to you. It was from Dr. Johnson, +to return me thanks for my application to Archbishop Cornwallis in +favour of poor De Groot. He rejoices at the success it met with, and is +lavish in the praise he bestows upon his favourite, Hugo Grotius. I am +really sorry that I cannot find this letter, as it is worthy of the +writer. That which I send you enclosed[374] is at your service. It is very +short, and will not perhaps be thought of any consequence, unless you +should judge proper to consider it as a proof of the very humane part +which Dr. Johnson took in behalf of a distressed and deserving person. I +am, Sir, + +'Your most obedient humble servant, + +'W. VYSE.' + + + +'DR. JOHNSON TO MR. EDWARD DILLY[375]. + +'SIR, + +'To the collection of _English Poets_, I have recommended the volume of +Dr. Watts to be added; his name has long been held by me in +veneration[376], and I would not willingly be reduced to tell of him only +that he was born and died. Yet of his life I know very little, and +therefore must pass him in a manner very unworthy of his character, +unless some of his friends will favour me with the necessary +information; many of them must be known to you; and by your influence, +perhaps I may obtain some instruction. My plan does not exact much; but +I wish to distinguish Watts, a man who never wrote but for a good +purpose. Be pleased to do for me what you can. + +'I am, Sir, your humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Bolt-Court, Fleet-street, +July 7, 1777.' + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, July 15, 1777. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'The fate of poor Dr. Dodd made a dismal impression upon my mind. + + * * * * * + +'I had sagacity enough to divine that you wrote his speech to the +Recorder, before sentence was pronounced. I am glad you have written so +much for him; and I hope to be favoured with an exact list of the +several pieces when we meet. + +'I received Mr. Seward as the friend of Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, and as a +gentleman recommended by Dr. Johnson to my attention. I have introduced +him to Lord Kames, Lord Monboddo, and Mr. Nairne. He is gone to the +Highlands with Dr. Gregory; when he returns I shall do more for him. + +'Sir Allan Maclean has[377] carried that branch of his cause, of which we +had good hopes: the President and one other Judge only were against him. +I wish the House of Lords may do as well as the Court of Session has +done. But Sir Allan has not the lands of _Brolos_ quite cleared by this +judgement, till a long account is made up of debts and interests on the +one side, and rents on the other. I am, however, not much afraid of the +balance. + +'Macquarry's estates[378], Staffa and all, were sold yesterday, and bought +by a Campbell. I fear he will have little or nothing left out of the +purchase money. + +'I send you the case against the negro[379], by Mr. Cullen, son to Dr. +Cullen, in opposition to Maclaurin's for liberty, of which you have +approved. Pray read this, and tell me what you think as a _Politician_, +as well as a _Poet_, upon the subject. + +'Be so kind as to let me know how your time is to be distributed next +autumn. I will meet you at Manchester, or where you please; but I wish +you would complete your tour of the cathedrals, and come to Carlisle, +and I will accompany you a part of the way homewards. + +'I am ever, + +'Most faithfully yours, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'Your notion of the necessity of an yearly interview is very pleasing to +both my vanity and tenderness. I shall, perhaps, come to Carlisle +another year; but my money has not held out so well as it used to do. I +shall go to Ashbourne, and I purpose to make Dr. Taylor invite you. If +you live awhile with me at his house, we shall have much time to +ourselves, and our stay will be no expence to us or him. I shall leave +London the 28th; and after some stay at Oxford and Lichfield, shall +probably come to Ashbourne about the end of your Session, but of all +this you shall have notice. Be satisfied we will meet somewhere. + +'What passed between me and poor Dr. Dodd you shall know more fully when +we meet. + +'Of lawsuits there is no end; poor Sir Allan must have another trial, +for which, however, his antagonist cannot be much blamed, having two +Judges on his side. I am more afraid of the debts than of the House of +Lords. It is scarcely to be imagined to what debts will swell, that are +daily increasing by small additions, and how carelessly in a state of +desperation debts are contracted. Poor Macquarry was far from thinking +that when he sold his islands he should receive nothing. For what were +they sold? And what was their yearly value? The admission of money into +the Highlands will soon put an end to the feudal modes of life, by +making those men landlords who were not chiefs. I do not know that the +people will suffer by the change; but there was in the patriarchal +authority something venerable and pleasing. Every eye must look with +pain on a _Campbell_ turning the _Macquarries_ at will out of their +_sedes avitæ_, their hereditary island. + +'Sir Alexander Dick is the only Scotsman liberal enough not to be angry +that I could not find trees, where trees were not. I was much delighted +by his kind letter. + +'I remember Rasay with too much pleasure not to partake of the happiness +of any part of that amiable family. Our ramble in the islands hangs upon +my imagination, I can hardly help imagining that we shall go again. +Pennant seems to have seen a great deal which we did not see: when we +travel again let us look better about us. + +'You have done right in taking your uncle's house. Some change in the +form of life, gives from time to time a new epocha[380] of existence. In a +new place there is something new to be done, and a different system of +thoughts rises in the mind. I wish I could gather currants in your +garden. Now fit up a little study, and have your books ready at hand; do +not spare a little money, to make your habitation pleasing to yourself. + +'I have dined lately with poor dear ----[381]. I do not think he goes on +well. His table is rather coarse, and he has his children too much about +him[382]. But he is a very good man. + +'Mrs. Williams is in the country to try if she can improve her health; +she is very ill. Matters have come so about that she is in the country +with very good accommodation; but age and sickness, and pride, have made +her so peevish that I was forced to bribe the maid to stay with her, by +a secret stipulation of half a crown a week over her wages. + +'Our CLUB ended its session about six weeks ago[383]. We now only meet to +dine once a fortnight. Mr. Dunning[384], the great lawyer, is one of our +members. The Thrales are well. + +'I long to know how the Negro's cause will be decided. What is the +opinion of Lord Auchinleck, or Lord Hailes, or Lord Monboddo? + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate, &c. + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'July 22, 1777.' + + +'DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. BOSWELL. + +'MADAM, + +'Though I am well enough pleased with the taste of sweetmeats, very +little of the pleasure which I received at the arrival of your jar of +marmalade arose from eating it[385]. I received it as a token of +friendship, as a proof of reconciliation, things much sweeter than +sweetmeats, and upon this consideration I return you, dear Madam, my +sincerest thanks. By having your kindness I think I have a double +security for the continuance of Mr. Boswell's, which it is not to be +expected that any man can long keep, when the influence of a lady so +highly and so justly valued operates against him. Mr. Boswell will tell +you that I was always faithful to your interest, and always endeavoured +to exalt you in his estimation. You must now do the same for me. We must +all help one another, and you must now consider me, as, dear Madam, + +'Your most obliged, + +'And most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'July 22, 1777.' + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, July 28, 1777. + +'My Dear Sir, + +'This is the day on which you were to leave London and I have been +amusing myself in the intervals of my law-drudgery, with figuring you in +the Oxford post-coach. I doubt, however, if you have had so merry a +journey as you and I had in that vehicle last year, when you made so +much sport with Gwyn[386], the architect. Incidents upon a journey are +recollected with peculiar pleasure; they are preserved in brisk spirits, +and come up again in our minds, tinctured with that gaiety, or at least +that animation with which we first perceived them.' + + * * * * * + +[I added, that something had occurred, which I was afraid might prevent +me from meeting him[387]; and that my wife had been affected with +complaints which threatened a consumption, but was now better.] + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'Do not disturb yourself about our interviews; I hope we shall have +many; nor think it any thing hard or unusual, that your design of +meeting me is interrupted. We have both endured greater evils, and have +greater evils to expect. + +'Mrs. Boswell's illness makes a more serious distress. Does the blood +rise from her lungs or from her stomach? From little vessels broken in +the stomach there is no danger. Blood from the lungs is, I believe, +always frothy, as mixed with wind. Your physicians know very well what +is to be done. The loss of such a lady would, indeed, be very +afflictive, and I hope she is in no danger. Take care to keep her mind +as easy as is possible. + +'I have left Langton in London. He has been down with the militia, and +is again quiet at home, talking to his little people, as, I suppose, you +do sometimes. Make my compliments to Miss Veronica[388]. The rest are too +young for ceremony. + +'I cannot but hope that you have taken your country-house at a very +seasonable time, and that it may conduce to restore, or establish Mrs. +Boswell's health, as well as provide room and exercise for the young +ones. That you and your lady may both be happy, and long enjoy your +happiness, is the sincere and earnest wish of, dear Sir, + +'Your most, &c. + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Oxford, Aug. 4, 1777.' + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +[Informing him that my wife had continued to grow better, so that my +alarming apprehensions were relieved: and that I hoped to disengage +myself from the other embarrassment which had occurred, and therefore +requesting to know particularly when he intended to be at Ashbourne.] + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I am this day come to Ashbourne, and have only to tell you, that Dr. +Taylor says you shall be welcome to him, and you know how welcome you +will be to me. Make haste to let me know when you may be expected. + +'Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, and tell her, I hope we shall be +at variance no more. I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'August 30, 1777.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'On Saturday I wrote a very short letter, immediately upon my arrival +hither, to shew you that I am not less desirous of the interview than +yourself. Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit +to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, +and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased. When I came to +Lichfield, I found my old friend Harry Jackson dead[389]. It was a loss, +and a loss not to be repaired, as he was one of the companions of my +childhood. I hope we may long continue to gain friends, but the friends +which merit or usefulness can procure us, are not able to supply the +place of old acquaintance, with whom the days of youth may be retraced, +and those images revived which gave the earliest delight. If you and I +live to be much older, we shall take great delight in talking over the +Hebridean Journey. + +'In the mean time it may not be amiss to contrive some other little +adventure, but what it can be I know not; leave it, as Sidney says, + +"To virtue, fortune, wine, and woman's breast[390];" + +for I believe Mrs. Boswell must have some part in the consultation. + +'One thing you will like. The Doctor, so far as I can judge, is likely +to leave us enough to ourselves. He was out to-day before _I_ came down, +and, I fancy, will stay out till dinner. I have brought the papers about +poor Dodd, to show you, but you will soon have dispatched them. + +'Before I came away I sent poor Mrs. Williams into the country, very ill +of a pituitous defluxion, which wastes her gradually away, and which her +physician declares himself unable to stop. I supplied her as far as +could be desired, with all conveniences to make her excursion and abode +pleasant and useful. But I am afraid she can only linger a short time in +a morbid state of weakness and pain. + +'The Thrales, little and great, are all well, and purpose to go to +Brighthelmstone at Michaelmas. They will invite me to go with them, and +perhaps I may go, but I hardly think I shall like to stay the whole +time; but of futurity we know but little. + +'Mrs. Porter is well; but Mrs. Aston, one of the ladies at Stowhill, has +been struck with a palsy, from which she is not likely ever to recover. +How soon may such a stroke fall upon us! + +'Write to me, and let us know when we may expect you. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Ashbourne, Sept. 1, 1777.' + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, Sept. 9, 1777. + +[After informing him that I was to set out next day, in order to meet +him at Ashbourne.] + +'I have a present for you from Lord Hailes; the fifth book of +_Lactantius_, which he has published with Latin notes. He is also to +give you a few anecdotes for your _Life of Thomson_, who I find was +private tutor to the present Earl of Hadington, Lord Hailes's cousin, a +circumstance not mentioned by Dr. Murdoch. I have keen expectations of +delight from your edition of _The English Poets_. + +'I am sorry for poor Mrs. Williams's situation. You will, however, have +the comfort of reflecting on your kindness to her. Mr. Jackson's death, +and Mrs. Aston's palsy, are gloomy circumstances. Yet surely we should +be habituated to the uncertainty of life and health. When my mind is +unclouded by melancholy, I consider the temporary distresses of this +state of being, as "light afflictions[391]," by stretching my mental view +into that glorious after-existence, when they will appear to be as +nothing. But present pleasures and present pains must be felt. I lately +read _Rasselas_ over again with great satisfaction[392]. + +'Since you are desirous to hear about Macquarry's sale I shall inform +you particularly. The gentleman who purchased Ulva is Mr. Campbell, of +Auchnaba: our friend Macquarry was proprietor of two-thirds of it, of +which the rent was £156 5s 1-1/2d. This parcel was set up at £4,069 5s. +1d., but it sold for no less than £5,540. The other third of Ulva, with +the island of Staffa, belonged to Macquarry of Ormaig. Its rent, +including that of Staffa, £83 12s. 2-1/2d. set up at £2178 16s. +4d.--sold for no less than £3,540. The Laird of Col wished to purchase +Ulva, but he thought the price too high. There may, indeed, be great +improvements made there, both in fishing and agriculture; but the +interest of the purchase-money exceeds the rent so very much, that I +doubt if the bargain will be profitable. There is an island called +Little Colonsay, of £10 yearly rent, which I am informed has belonged to +the Macquarrys of Ulva for many ages, but which was lately claimed by +the Presbyterian Synod of Argyll, in consequence of a grant made to them +by Queen Anne. It is believed that their claim will be dismissed, and +that Little Colonsay will also be sold for the advantage of Macquarry's +creditors. What think you of purchasing this island, and endowing a +school or college there, the master to be a clergyman of the Church of +England? How venerable would such an institution make the name of DR. +SAMUEL JOHNSON in the Hebrides! I have, like yourself, a wonderful +pleasure in recollecting our travels in those islands. The pleasure is, +I think, greater than it reasonably should be, considering that we had +not much either of beauty or elegance to charm our imaginations, or of +rude novelty to astonish. Let us, by all means, have another expedition. +I shrink a little from our scheme of going up the Baltick[393]. I am sorry +you have already been in Wales; for I wish to see it. Shall we go to +Ireland, of which I have seen but little? We shall try to strike out a +plan when we are at Ashbourne. I am ever, + +'Your most faithful humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I write to be left at Carlisle, as you direct me; but you cannot have +it. Your letter, dated Sept. 6, was not at this place till this day, +Thursday, Sept. 11; and I hope you will be here before this is at +Carlisle[394]. However, what you have not going, you may have returning; +and as I believe I shall not love you less after our interview, it will +then be as true as it is now, that I set a very high value upon your +friendship, and count your kindness as one of the chief felicities of my +life. Do not fancy that an intermission of writing is a decay of +kindness. No man is always in a disposition to write; nor has any man at +all times something to say. + +'That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of +melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it +is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties +entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an +useless pain. From that, and all other pains, I wish you free and safe; +for I am, dear Sir, + +'Most affectionately yours, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Ashbourne, Sept. 11, 1777.' + + +On Sunday evening Sept. 14, I arrived at Ashbourne, and drove directly +up to Dr. Taylor's door. Dr. Johnson and he appeared before I had got +out of the post-chaise, and welcomed me cordially[395]. + +I told them that I had travelled all the preceding night, and gone to +bed at Leek in Staffordshire; and that when I rose to go to church in +the afternoon, I was informed there had been an earthquake[396], of which, +it seems, the shock had been felt in some degree at Ashbourne. JOHNSON. +'Sir, it will be much exaggerated in popular talk: for, in the first +place, the common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to the +objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their +thoughts: they do not mean to lie; but, taking no pains to be exact, +they give you very false accounts. A great part of their language is +proverbial. If anything rocks at all, they say _it rocks like a cradle_; +and in this way they go on.' + +The subject of grief for the loss of relations and friends being +introduced, I observed that it was strange to consider how soon it in +general wears away. Dr. Taylor mentioned a gentleman of the +neighbourhood as the only instance he had ever known of a person who had +endeavoured to _retain_ grief. He told Dr. Taylor, that after his Lady's +death, which affected him deeply, he _resolved_ that the grief, which he +cherished with a kind of sacred fondness, should be lasting; but that he +found he could not keep it long. JOHNSON. 'All grief for what cannot in +the course of nature be helped, soon wears away; in some sooner, indeed, +in some later; but it never continues very long, unless where there is +madness, such as will make a man have pride so fixed in his mind, as to +imagine himself a King; or any other passion in an unreasonable way: for +all unnecessary grief is unwise, and therefore will not be long retained +by a sound mind[397]. If, indeed, the cause of our grief is occasioned by +our own misconduct, if grief is mingled with remorse of conscience, it +should be lasting.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, we do not approve of a man who +very soon forgets the loss of a wife or a friend.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, we +disapprove of him, not because he soon forgets his grief, for the sooner +it is forgotten the better, but because we suppose, that if he forgets +his wife or his friend soon, he has not had much affection for them[398].' + +I was somewhat disappointed in finding that the edition of _The English +Poets_, for which he was to write Prefaces and Lives, was not an +undertaking directed by him: but that he was to furnish a Preface and +Life to any poet the booksellers pleased. I asked him if he would do +this to any dunce's works, if they should ask him. JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; +and _say_ he was a dunce.' My friend seemed now not much to relish +talking of this edition. + +On Monday, September 15, Dr. Johnson observed, that every body commended +such parts of his _Journey to the Western Islands_, as were in their own +way. 'For instance, (said he,) Mr. Jackson (the all-knowing)[399] told me +there was more good sense upon trade in it, than he should hear in the +House of Commons in a year, except from Burke. Jones commended the part +which treats of language; Burke that which describes the inhabitants of +mountainous countries[400].' + +After breakfast, Johnson carried me to see the garden belonging to the +school of Ashbourne, which is very prettily formed upon a bank, rising +gradually behind the house. The Reverend Mr. Langley[401], the +head-master, accompanied us. + +While we sat basking in the sun upon a seat here, I introduced a common +subject of complaint, the very small salaries which many curates have, +and I maintained, 'that no man should be invested with the character of +a clergyman, unless he has a security for such an income as will enable +him to appear respectable; that, therefore, a clergyman should not be +allowed to have a curate, unless he gives him a hundred pounds a year; +if he cannot do that, let him perform the duty himself.' JOHNSON. 'To be +sure, Sir, it is wrong that any clergyman should be without a reasonable +income; but as the church revenues were sadly diminished at the +Reformation, the clergy who have livings cannot afford, in many +instances, to give good salaries to curates, without leaving themselves +too little; and, if no curate were to be permitted unless he had a +hundred pounds a year, their number would be very small, which would be +a disadvantage, as then there would not be such choice in the nursery +for the church, curates being candidates for the higher ecclesiastical +offices, according to their merit and good behaviour.' He explained the +system of the English Hierarchy exceedingly well. 'It is not thought fit +(said he) to trust a man with the care of a parish till he has given +proof as a curate that he shall deserve such a trust.' This is an +excellent _theory_; and if the _practice_ were according to it, the +Church of England would be admirable indeed. However, as I have heard +Dr. Johnson observe as to the Universities, bad practice does not infer +that the _constitution_ is bad[402]. + +We had with us at dinner several of Dr. Taylor's neighbours, good civil +gentlemen, who seemed to understand Dr. Johnson very well, and not to +consider him in the light that a certain person did[403], who being +struck, or rather stunned by his voice and manner, when he was +afterwards asked what he thought of him, answered, 'He's a tremendous +companion.' + +Johnson told me, that 'Taylor was a very sensible acute man, and had a +strong mind[404]; that he had great activity in some respects, and yet +such a sort of indolence, that if you should put a pebble upon his +chimney-piece, you would find it there, in the same state, a year +afterwards.' + +And here is the proper place to give an account of Johnson's humane and +zealous interference in behalf of the Reverend Dr. William Dodd, +formerly Prebendary of Brecon, and chaplain in ordinary to his +Majesty[405]; celebrated as a very popular preacher[406], an encourager of +charitable institutions, and authour of a variety of works, chiefly +theological. Having unhappily contracted expensive habits of living, +partly occasioned by licentiousness of manners, he in an evil hour, when +pressed by want of money, and dreading an exposure of his circumstances, +forged a bond of which he attempted to avail himself to support his +credit, flattering himself with hopes that he might be able to repay its +amount without being detected. The person, whose name he thus rashly and +criminally presumed to falsify, was the Earl of Chesterfield[407], to whom +he had been tutor, and who, he perhaps, in the warmth of his feelings, +flattered himself would have generously paid the money in case of an +alarm being taken, rather than suffer him to fall a victim to the +dreadful consequences of violating the law against forgery, the most +dangerous crime in a commercial country; but the unfortunate divine had +the mortification to find that he was mistaken. His noble pupil appeared +against him, and he was capitally convicted. + +Johnson told me that Dr. Dodd was very little acquainted with him, +having been but once in his company, many years previous to this +period[408] (which was precisely the state of my own acquaintance with +Dodd); but in his distress he bethought himself of Johnson's persuasive +power of writing, if haply it might avail to obtain for him the Royal +Mercy. He did not apply to him, directly, but, extraordinary as it may +seem, through the late Countess of Harrington, who wrote a letter to +Johnson, asking him to employ his pen in favour of Dodd. Mr. Allen, the +printer, who was Johnson's landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court, +and for whom he had much kindness[409], was one of Dodd's friends, of whom +to the credit of humanity be it recorded, that he had many who did not +desert him, even after his infringement of the law had reduced him to +the state of a man under sentence of death. Mr. Allen told me that he +carried Lady Harrington's letter to Johnson, that Johnson read it +walking up and down his chamber, and seemed much agitated, after which +he said, 'I will do what I can;'--and certainly he did make +extraordinary exertions. + +He this evening, as he had obligingly promised in one of his letters, +put into my hands the whole series of his writings upon this melancholy +occasion, and I shall present my readers with the abstract which I made +from the collection; in doing which I studied to avoid copying what had +appeared in print, and now make part of the edition of _Johnson's +Works_, published by the Booksellers of London, but taking care to mark +Johnson's variations in some of the pieces there exhibited. + +Dr. Johnson wrote in the first place, Dr. Dodd's _Speech to the Recorder +of London_, at the Old-Bailey, when sentence of death was about to be +pronounced upon him. + +He wrote also _The Convict's Address to his unhappy Brethren_, a sermon +delivered by Dr. Dodd, in the chapel of Newgate[410]. + +According to Johnson's manuscript it began thus after the text, _What +shall I do to be saved?_[411]-- + +'These were the words with which the keeper, to whose custody Paul and +Silas were committed by their prosecutors, addressed his prisoners, when +he saw them freed from their bonds by the perceptible agency of divine +favour, and was, therefore, irresistibly convinced that they were not +offenders against the laws, but martyrs to the truth.' + +Dr. Johnson was so good as to mark for me with his own hand, on a copy +of this sermon which is now in my possession, such passages as were +added by Dr. Dodd. They are not many: whoever will take the trouble to +look at the printed copy, and attend to what I mention, will be +satisfied of this. + +There is a short introduction by Dr. Dodd, and he also inserted this +sentence, 'You see with what confusion and dishonour I now stand before +you;--no more in the pulpit of instruction, but on this humble seat with +yourselves.' The _notes_ are entirely Dodd's own, and Johnson's writing +ends at the words, 'the thief whom he pardoned on the cross[412].' What +follows was supplied by Dr. Dodd himself[413]. + +The other pieces mentioned by Johnson in the above-mentioned collection, +are two letters, one to the Lord Chancellor Bathurst, (not Lord North, +as is erroneously supposed,) and one to Lord Mansfield;--A Petition from +Dr. Dodd to the King;--A Petition from Mrs. Dodd to the Queen;-- +Observations of some length inserted in the news-papers, on occasion of +Earl Percy's having presented to his Majesty a petition for mercy to +Dodd, signed by twenty thousand people, but all in vain. He told me that +he had also written a petition from the city of London; 'but (said he, +with a significant smile) they _mended_ it[414].' The last of these +articles which Johnson wrote is _Dr. Dodd's last solemn Declaration_, +which he left with the sheriff at the place of execution. Here also my +friend marked the variations on a copy of that piece now in my +possession. Dodd inserted, 'I never knew or attended to the calls of +frugality, or the needful minuteness of painful oeconomy;' and in the +next sentence he introduced the words which I distinguish by _Italicks_; +'My life for some _few unhappy_ years past has been _dreadfully +erroneous_.' Johnson's expression was _hypocritical_; but his remark on +the margin is 'With this he said he could not charge himself.' + +Having thus authentically settled what part of the _Occasional Papers_, +concerning Dr. Dodd's miserable situation, came from the pen of Johnson, +I shall proceed to present my readers with my record of the unpublished +writings relating to that extraordinary and interesting matter. + +I found a letter to Dr. Johnson from Dr. Dodd, May 23, 1777, in which +_The Convict's Address_ seems clearly to be meant:-- + +'I am so penetrated, my ever dear Sir, with a sense of your extreme +benevolence towards me, that I cannot find words equal to the sentiments +of my heart. + + * * * * * + +'You are too conversant in the world to need the slightest hint from me, +of what infinite utility the Speech[415] on the aweful day has been to me. +I experience, every hour, some good effect from it. I am sure that +effects still more salutary and important must follow from _your kind +and intended favour_. I will labour--GOD being my helper,--to do justice +to it from the pulpit. I am sure, had I your sentiments constantly to +deliver from thence, in all their mighty force and power, not a soul +could be left unconvinced and unpersuaded.' + + * * * * * + +He added:-- + +'May GOD ALMIGHTY bless and reward, with his choicest comforts, your +philanthropick actions, and enable me at all times to express what I +feel of the high and uncommon obligations which I owe to the _first man_ +in our times.' + +On Sunday, June 22, he writes, begging Dr. Johnson's assistance in +framing a supplicatory letter to his Majesty:-- + +'If his Majesty could be moved of his royal clemency to spare me and my +family the horrours and ignominy of a _publick death_, which the publick +itself is solicitous to wave, and to grant me in some silent distant +corner of the globe, to pass the remainder of my days in penitence and +prayer, I would bless his clemency and be humbled.' + +This letter was brought to Dr. Johnson when in church. He stooped down +and read it, and wrote, when he went home, the following letter for Dr. +Dodd to the King:-- + +'SIR, + +'May it not offend your Majesty, that the most miserable of men applies +himself to your clemency, as his last hope and his last refuge; that +your mercy is most earnestly and humbly implored by a clergyman, whom +your Laws and Judges have condemned to the horrour and ignominy of a +publick execution. + +'I confess the crime, and own the enormity of its consequences, and the +danger of its example. Nor have I the confidence to petition for +impunity; but humbly hope, that publick security may be established, +without the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets, to a +death of infamy, amidst the derision of the profligate and profane; and +that justice may be satisfied with irrevocable exile, perpetual +disgrace, and hopeless penury. + +'My life, Sir, has not been useless to mankind. I have benefited many. +But my offences against GOD are numberless, and I have had little time +for repentance. Preserve me, Sir, by your prerogative of mercy, from the +necessity of appearing unprepared at that tribunal, before which Kings +and Subjects must stand at last together. Permit me to hide my guilt in +some obscure corner of a foreign country, where, if I can ever attain +confidence to hope that my prayers will be heard, they shall be poured +with all the fervour of gratitude for the life and happiness of your +Majesty. I am, Sir, + +'Your Majesty's, &c.' + +Subjoined to it was written as follows: + +'To DR. DODD. + +'SIR, + +'I most seriously enjoin you not to let it be at all known that I have +written this letter, and to return the copy to Mr. Allen in a cover to +me. I hope I need not tell you, that I wish it success.--But do not +indulge hope.--Tell nobody.' + +It happened luckily that Mr. Allen was pitched on to assist in this +melancholy office, for he was a great friend of Mr. Akerman, the keeper +of Newgate. Dr. Johnson never went to see Dr. Dodd. He said to me, 'it +would have done _him_ more harm, than good to Dodd, who once expressed a +desire to see him, but not earnestly.' + +Dr. Johnson, on the 20th of June, wrote the following letter: + +'To THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES JENKINSON. + +'SIR, + +'Since the conviction and condemnation of Dr. Dodd, I have had, by the +intervention of a friend, some intercourse with him, and I am sure I +shall lose nothing in your opinion by tenderness and commiseration. +Whatever be the crime, it is not easy to have any knowledge of the +delinquent, without a wish that his life may be spared; at least when no +life has been taken away by him. I will, therefore, take the liberty of +suggesting some reasons for which I wish this unhappy being to escape +the utmost rigour of his sentence. + +'He is, so far as I can recollect, the first clergyman of our church who +has suffered publick execution for immorality; and I know not whether it +would not be more for the interest of religion to bury such an offender +in the obscurity of perpetual exile, than to expose him in a cart, and +on the gallows, to all who for any reason are enemies to the clergy. + +'The supreme power has, in all ages, paid some attention to the voice of +the people; and that voice does not least deserve to be heard, when it +calls out for mercy. There is now a very general desire that Dodd's life +should be spared. More is not wished; and, perhaps, this is not too much +to be granted. + +'If you, Sir, have any opportunity of enforcing these reasons, you may, +perhaps, think them worthy of consideration: but whatever you determine, +I most respectfully intreat that you will be pleased to pardon for this +intrusion, Sir, + +'Your most obedient + +'And most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + + +It has been confidently circulated, with invidious remarks, that to this +letter no attention whatever was paid by Mr. Jenkinson (afterwards Earl +of Liverpool[416]), and that he did not even deign to shew the common +civility of owning the receipt of it. I could not but wonder at such +conduct in the noble Lord, whose own character and just elevation in +life, I thought, must have impressed him with all due regard for great +abilities and attainments. As the story had been much talked of, and +apparently from good authority, I could not but have animadverted upon +it in this work, had it been as was alleged; but from my earnest love of +truth, and having found reason to think that there might be a mistake, I +presumed to write to his Lordship, requesting an explanation; and it is +with the sincerest pleasure that I am enabled to assure the world, that +there is no foundation for it, the fact being, that owing to some +neglect, or accident, Johnson's letter never came to Lord Hawkesbury's +hands. I should have thought it strange indeed, if that noble Lord had +undervalued my illustrious friend; but instead of this being the case, +his Lordship, in the very polite answer with which he was pleased +immediately to honour me, thus expresses himself:--'I have always +respected the memory of Dr. Johnson, and admire his writings; and I +frequently read many parts of them with pleasure and great improvement.' + +All applications for the Royal Mercy having failed, Dr. Dodd prepared +himself for death; and, with a warmth of gratitude, wrote to Dr. Johnson +as follows: + +'June 25, _Midnight_. + +'Accept, thou _great_ and _good_ heart, my earnest and fervent thanks +and prayers for all thy benevolent and kind efforts in my behalf.--Oh! +Dr. Johnson! as I sought your knowledge at an early hour in life, would +to heaven I had cultivated the love and acquaintance of so excellent a +man!--I pray GOD most sincerely to bless you with the highest +transports--the infelt satisfaction of _humane_ and benevolent +exertions!--And admitted, as I trust I shall be, to the realms of bliss +before you, I shall hail _your_ arrival there with transports, and +rejoice to acknowledge that you was my Comforter, my Advocate and my +_Friend_! GOD _be ever_ with _you_!' + +Dr. Johnson lastly wrote to Dr. Dodd this solemn and soothing +letter: + +'To THE REVEREND DR. DODD. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'That which is appointed to all men is now coming upon you. Outward +circumstances, the eyes and the thoughts of men, are below the notice of +an immortal being about to stand the trial for eternity, before the +Supreme Judge of heaven and earth. Be comforted: your crime, morally or +religiously considered, has no very deep dye of turpitude. It corrupted +no man's principles; it attacked no man's life. It involved only a +temporary and reparable injury. Of this, and of all other sins, you are +earnestly to repent; and may GOD, who knoweth our frailty, and desireth +not our death, accept your repentance, for the sake of his Son JESUS +CHRIST our Lord. + +'In requital of those well-intended offices which you are pleased so +emphatically to acknowledge, let me beg that you make in your devotions +one petition for my eternal welfare. I am, dear Sir, + +'Your affectionate servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'June 26, 1777.' + +Under the copy of this letter I found written, in Johnson's own hand, +'Next day, June 27, he was executed.' + +To conclude this interesting episode with an useful application, let us +now attend to the reflections of Johnson at the end of the _Occasional +Papers_, concerning the unfortunate Dr. Dodd: + +'Such were the last thoughts of a man whom we have seen exulting in +popularity, and sunk in shame. For his reputation, which no man can give +to himself, those who conferred it are to answer. Of his publick +ministry the means of judging were sufficiently attainable. He must be +allowed to preach well, whose sermons strike his audience with forcible +conviction. Of his life, those who thought it consistent with his +doctrine, did not originally form false notions. He was at first what he +endeavoured to make others; but the world broke down his resolution, and +he in time ceased to exemplify his own instructions. + +'Let those who are tempted to his faults, tremble at his punishment; and +those whom he impressed from the pulpit with religious sentiments, +endeavour to confirm them, by considering the regret and self-abhorrence +with which he reviewed in prison his deviations from rectitude.' + +Johnson gave us this evening, in his happy discriminative manner, a +portrait of the late Mr. Fitzherbert, of Derbyshire. 'There was (said +he) no sparkle, no brilliancy in Fitzherbert; but I never knew a man who +was so generally acceptable[417]. He made every body quite easy, +overpowered nobody by the superiority of his talents, made no man think +worse of himself by being his rival, seemed always to listen, did not +oblige you to hear much from him, and did not oppose what you said. +Every body liked him; but he had no friend, as I understand the word, +nobody with whom he exchanged intimate thoughts[418]. People were willing +to think well of every thing about him. A gentleman was making an +affected rant, as many people do, of great feelings about "his dear +son," who was at school near London; how anxious he was lest he might be +ill, and what he would give to see him. "Can't you (said Fitzherbert,) +take a post-chaise and go to him." This, to be sure, _finished_ the +affected man, but there was not much in it[419]. However, this was +circulated as wit for a whole winter, and I believe part of a summer +too; a proof that he was no very witty man. He was an instance of the +truth of the observation, that a man will please more upon the whole by +negative qualities than by positive; by never offending, than by giving +a great deal of delight. In the first place, men hate more steadily than +they love; and if I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not +get the better of this, by saying many things to please him[420].' + +Tuesday, September 16, Dr. Johnson having mentioned to me the +extraordinary size and price of some cattle reared by Dr. Taylor, I rode +out with our host, surveyed his farm, and was shown one cow which he had +sold for a hundred and twenty guineas, and another for which he had been +offered a hundred and thirty[421]. Taylor thus described to me his old +schoolfellow and friend, Johnson: 'He is a man of a very clear head, +great power of words, and a very gay imagination; but there is no +disputing with him. He will not hear you, and having a louder voice than +you, must roar you down.' + +In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. +Hamilton of Bangour[422], which I had brought with me: I had been much +pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on +my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable +Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet[423] and a good critick, who +thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having +fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at +Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of +thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than +what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they +deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about +among his friends. He said the imitation of _Ne sit ancillæ tibi +amor_[424], &c. was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He +read the beautiful pathetick song, _Ah the poor shepherd's mournful +fate_, and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to +think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch +pronunciation, _wishes and blushes_[425], reading _wushes_--and there he +stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. +He read the _Inscription in a Summer-house_, and a little of the +imitations of Horace's _Epistles_; but said he found nothing to make him +desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical +passages in the book. 'Where (said he,) will you find so large a +collection without some?' I thought the description of Winter might +obtain his approbation: + +'See[426] Winter, from the frozen north +Drives his iron chariot forth! +His grisly hand in icy chains +Fair Tweeda's silver flood constrains,' &c. + +He asked why an '_iron_ chariot'? and said 'icy chains' was an old +image[427]. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry +that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. +Johnson. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too +delicate for his robust perceptions. Garrick maintained that he had not +a taste for the finest productions of genius: but I was sensible, that +when he took the trouble to analyse critically, he generally convinced +us that he was right. + +In the evening, the Reverend Mr. Seward[428], of Lichfield, who was +passing through Ashbourne in his way home, drank tea with us. Johnson +described him thus:--'Sir, his ambition is to be a fine talker; so he +goes to Buxton, and such places, where he may find companies to listen +to him. And, Sir, he is valetudinarian, one of those who are always +mending themselves. I do not know a more disagreeable character than a +valetudinarian, who thinks he may do any thing that is for his ease, and +indulges himself in the grossest freedoms: Sir, he brings himself to the +state of a hog in a stye[429].' + +Dr. Taylor's nose happening to bleed, he said, it was because he had +omitted to have himself blooded four days after a quarter of a year's +interval. Dr. Johnson, who was a great dabbler in physick[430], +disapproved much of periodical bleeding[431]. 'For (said he) you accustom +yourself to an evacuation which Nature cannot perform of herself, and +therefore she cannot help you, should you, from forgetfulness or any +other cause, omit it; so you may be suddenly suffocated. You may +accustom yourself to other periodical evacuations, because should you +omit them, Nature can supply the omission; but Nature cannot open a vein +to blood you.'--'I do not like to take an emetick, (said Taylor,) for +fear of breaking some small vessels.'--'Poh! (said Johnson,) if you have +so many things that will break, you had better break your neck at once, +and there's an end on't. You will break no small vessels' (blowing with +high derision). + +I mentioned to Dr. Johnson, that David Hume's persisting in his +infidelity, when he was dying, shocked me much. JOHNSON. 'Why should it +shock you, Sir? Hume owned he had never read the New Testament with +attention. Here then was a man, who had been at no pains to inquire into +the truth of religion, and had continually turned his mind the other +way. It was not to be expected that the prospect of death would alter +his way of thinking, unless GOD should send an angel to set him right.' +I said, I had reason to believe that the thought of annihilation gave +Hume no pain. JOHNSON. 'It was not so, Sir[432]. He had a vanity in being +thought easy. It is more probable that he should assume an appearance of +ease, than that so very improbable a thing should be, as a man not +afraid of going (as, in spite of his delusive theory, he cannot be sure +but he may go,) into an unknown state, and not being uneasy at leaving +all he knew. And you are to consider, that upon his own principle of +annihilation he had no motive to speak the truth.' The horrour of death +which I had always observed in Dr. Johnson, appeared strong to-night. I +ventured to tell him, that I had been, for moments in my life, not +afraid of death; therefore I could suppose another man in that state of +mind for a considerable space of time. He said, 'he never had a moment +in which death was not terrible to him[433].' He added, that it had been +observed, that scarce any man[434] dies in publick, but with apparent +resolution; from that desire of praise which never quits us. I said, Dr. +Dodd seemed to be willing to die, and full of hopes of happiness. 'Sir, +(said he,) Dr. Dodd would have given both his hands and both his legs to +have lived. The better a man is, the more afraid he is of death, having +a clearer view of infinite purity.' He owned, that our being in an +unhappy uncertainty as to our salvation, was mysterious; and said, 'Ah! +we must wait till we are in another state of being, to have many things +explained to us.' Even the powerful mind of Johnson seemed foiled by +futurity. But I thought, that the gloom of uncertainty in solemn +religious speculation, being mingled with hope, was yet more consolatory +than the emptiness of infidelity. A man can live in thick air, but +perishes in an exhausted receiver. + +Dr. Johnson was much pleased with a remark which I told him was made to +me by General Paoli:--'That it is impossible not to be afraid of death; +and that those who at the time of dying are not afraid, are not thinking +of death, but of applause, or something else, which keeps death out of +their sight: so that all men are equally afraid of death when they see +it; only some have a power of turning their sight away from it better +than others[435].' + +On Wednesday, September 17, Dr. Butter, physician at Derby, drank tea +with us; and it was settled that Dr. Johnson and I should go on Friday +and dine with him. Johnson said, 'I'm glad of this.' He seemed weary of +the uniformity of life at Dr. Taylor's. + +Talking of biography, I said, in writing a life, a man's peculiarities +should be mentioned, because they mark his character. JOHNSON. 'Sir, +there is no doubt as to peculiarities: the question is, whether a man's +vices should be mentioned; for instance, whether it should be mentioned +that Addison and Parnell drank too freely: for people will probably more +easily indulge in drinking from knowing this; so that more ill may be +done by the example, than good by telling the whole truth[436].' Here was +an instance of his varying from himself in talk; for when Lord Hailes +and he sat one morning calmly conversing in my house at Edinburgh, I +well remember that Dr. Johnson maintained, that 'If a man is to write A +_Panegyrick_, he may keep vices out of sight; but if he professes to +write _A Life_, he must represent it really as it was:' and when I +objected to the danger of telling that Parnell drank to excess, he said, +that 'it would produce an instructive caution to avoid drinking, when it +was seen, that even the learning and genius of Parnell could be debased +by it.' And in the Hebrides he maintained, as appears from my +_Journal_[437], that a man's intimate friend should mention his faults, if +he writes his life[438]. + +He had this evening, partly, I suppose, from the spirit of contradiction +to his Whig friend, a violent argument with Dr. Taylor, as to the +inclinations of the people of England at this time towards the Royal +Family of Stuart. He grew so outrageous as to say, 'that, if England +were fairly polled, the present King would be sent away to-night, and +his adherents hanged to-morrow.' Taylor, who was as violent a Whig as +Johnson was a Tory, was roused by this to a pitch of bellowing. He +denied, loudly, what Johnson said; and maintained, that there was an +abhorrence against the Stuart family, though he admitted that the people +were not much attached to the present King[439]. JOHNSON. 'Sir, the state +of the country is this: the people knowing it to be agreed on all hands +that this King has not the hereditary right to the crown, and there +being no hope that he who has it can be restored, have grown cold and +indifferent upon the subject of loyalty, and have no warm attachment to +any King. They would not, therefore, risk any thing to restore the +exiled family. They would not give twenty shillings a piece to bring it +about. But, if a mere vote could do it, there would be twenty to one; at +least, there would be a very great majority of voices for it. For, Sir, +you are to consider, that all those who think a King has a right to his +crown, as a man has to his estate, which is the just opinion, would be +for restoring the King who certainly has the hereditary right, could he +be trusted with it; in which there would be no danger now, when laws and +every thing else are so much advanced: and every King will govern by the +laws. And you must also consider, Sir, that there is nothing on the +other side to oppose to this; for it is not alleged by any one that the +present family has any inherent right[440]: so that the Whigs could not +have a contest between two rights.' + +Dr. Taylor admitted, that if the question as to hereditary right were to +be tried by a poll of the people of England, to be sure the abstract +doctrine would be given in favour of the family of Stuart; but he said, +the conduct of that family, which occasioned their expulsion, was so +fresh in the minds of the people, that they would not vote for a +restoration. Dr. Johnson, I think, was contented with the admission as +to the hereditary right, leaving the original point in dispute, _viz_. +what the people upon the whole would do, taking in right and affection; +for he said, people were afraid of a change, even though they think it +right. Dr. Taylor said something of the slight foundation of the +hereditary right, of the house of Stuart. 'Sir, (said Johnson,) the +house of Stuart succeeded to the full right of both the houses of York +and Lancaster, whose common source had the undisputed right. A right to +a throne is like a right to any thing else. Possession is sufficient, +where no better right can be shown. This was the case with the Royal +Family of England, as it is now with the King of France: for as to the +first beginning of the right, we are in the dark[441].' + +Thursday, September 18. Last night Dr. Johnson had proposed that the +crystal lustre, or chandelier, in Dr. Taylor's large room, should be +lighted up some time or other. Taylor said, it should be lighted up next +night. 'That will do very well, (said I,) for it is Dr. Johnson's +birth-day[442].' When we were in the Isle of Sky, Johnson had desired me +not to mention his birth-day. He did not seem pleased at this time that +I mentioned it, and said (somewhat sternly) 'he would _not_ have the +lustre lighted the next day.' + +Some ladies, who had been present yesterday when I mentioned his +birth-day, came to dinner to-day, and plagued him unintentionally, by +wishing him joy. I know not why he disliked having his birth-day +mentioned, unless it were that it reminded him of his approaching nearer +to death, of which he had a constant dread[443]. + +I mentioned to him a friend of mine who was formerly gloomy from low +spirits, and much distressed by the fear of death, but was now uniformly +placid, and contemplated his dissolution without any perturbation. 'Sir, +(said Johnson,) this is only a disordered imagination taking a different +turn.' + +We talked of a collection being made of all the English Poets who had +published a volume of poems. Johnson told me 'that a Mr. Coxeter[444], +whom he knew, had gone the greatest length towards this; having +collected, I think, about five hundred volumes of poets whose works were +little known; but that upon his death Tom Osborne[445] bought them, and +they were dispersed, which he thought a pity, as it was curious to see +any series complete; and in every volume of poems something good may be +found.' + +He observed, that a gentleman of eminence in literature had got into a +bad style of poetry of late[446]. 'He puts (said he) a very common thing +in a strange dress till he does not know it himself, and thinks other +people do not know it.' BOSWELL. 'That is owing to his being so much +versant in old English poetry[447].' JOHNSON. 'What is the purpose, Sir? +If I say a man is drunk, and you tell me it is owing to his taking much +drink, the matter is not mended. No, Sir, ---- has taken to an odd mode. +For example; he'd write thus: + +"Hermit hoar, in solemn cell, + Wearing out life's evening gray[448]." + +_Gray evening_ is common enough; but _evening gray_ he'd think +fine[449].--Stay;--we'll make out the stanza: + +"Hermit hoar, in solemn cell, + Wearing out life's evening gray; +Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell, + What is bliss? and which the way?"' + +BOSWELL. 'But why smite his bosom, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Why to shew he was in +earnest,' (smiling).--He at an after period added the following stanza: + +'Thus I spoke; and speaking sigh'd; + --Scarce repress'd the starting tear;-- +When the smiling sage reply'd-- + --Come, my lad, and drink some beer[450].' + +I cannot help thinking the first stanza very good solemn poetry, as also +the three first lines of the second. Its last line is an excellent +burlesque surprise on gloomy sentimental enquirers. And, perhaps, the +advice is as good as can be given to a low-spirited dissatisfied +being:--'Don't trouble your head with sickly thinking: take a cup, and +be merry.' + +Friday, September 19, after breakfast Dr. Johnson and I set out in Dr. +Taylor's chaise to go to Derby. The day was fine, and we resolved to go +by Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsdale, that I might see his +Lordship's fine house. I was struck with the magnificence of the +building; and the extensive park, with the finest verdure, covered with +deer, and cattle, and sheep, delighted me. The number of old oaks, of an +immense size, filled me with a sort of respectful admiration: for one of +them sixty pounds was offered. The excellent smooth gravel roads; the +large piece of water formed by his Lordship from some small brooks, with +a handsome barge upon it; the venerable Gothick church, now the family +chapel, just by the house; in short, the grand group of objects agitated +and distended my mind in a most agreeable manner. 'One should think +(said I) that the proprietor of all this _must_ be happy.'--'Nay, Sir, +(said Johnson,) all this excludes but one evil--poverty[451].' + +Our names were sent up, and a well-drest elderly housekeeper, a most +distinct articulator, shewed us the house; which I need not describe, as +there is an account of it published in _Adam's Works in Architecture_. +Dr. Johnson thought better of it to-day than when he saw it before[452]; +for he had lately attacked it violently, saying, 'It would do +excellently for a town-hall. The large room with the pillars (said he) +would do for the Judges to sit in at the assizes; the circular room for +a jury-chamber; and the room above for prisoners.' Still he thought the +large room ill lighted, and of no use but for dancing in; and the +bed-chambers but indifferent rooms; and that the immense sum which it +cost was injudiciously laid out. Dr. Taylor had put him in mind of his +_appearing_ pleased with the house. 'But (said he) that was when Lord +Scarsdale was present. Politeness obliges us to appear pleased with a +man's works when he is present. No man will be so ill bred as to +question you. You may therefore pay compliments without saying what is +not true. I should say to Lord Scarsdale of his large room, "My Lord, +this is the most _costly_ room that I ever saw;" which is true.' + +Dr. Manningham, physician in London, who was visiting at Lord +Scarsdale's, accompanyed us through many of the rooms, and soon +afterwards my Lord himself, to whom Dr. Johnson was known, appeared, and +did the honours of the house. We talked of Mr. Langton. Johnson, with a +warm vehemence of affectionate regard, exclaimed, 'The earth does not +bear a worthier man than Bennet Langton.' We saw a good many fine +pictures, which I think are described in one of _Young's Tours_[453]. +There is a printed catalogue of them which the housekeeper put into my +hand; I should like to view them at leisure. I was much struck with +Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's dream by Rembrandt. We were shown a +pretty large library. In his Lordship's dressing-room lay Johnson's +small _Dictionary_: he shewed it to me, with some eagerness, saying, +'Look 'ye! _Quæ terra nostri non plena laboris_[454].' He observed, also, +Goldsmith's _Animated Nature_; and said, 'Here's our friend! The poor +Doctor would have been happy to hear of this.' + +In our way, Johnson strongly expressed his love of driving fast in a +post-chaise[455]. 'If (said he) I had no duties, and no reference to +futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with +a pretty woman; but she should be one who could understand me, and would +add something to the conversation.' I observed, that we were this day to +stop just where the Highland army did in 1745[456]. JOHNSON. 'It was a +noble attempt.' BOSWELL. 'I wish we could have an authentick history of +it.' JOHNSON. 'If you were not an idle dog you might write it, by +collecting from every body what they can tell, and putting down your +authorities.' BOSWELL. 'But I could not have the advantage of it in my +life-time.' JOHNSON. 'You might have the satisfaction of its fame, by +printing it in Holland; and as to profit, consider how long it was +before writing came to be considered in a pecuniary view. Baretti says, +he is the first man that ever received copy-money in Italy[457].' I said +that I would endeavour to do what Dr. Johnson suggested; and I thought +that I might write so as to venture to publish my _History of the Civil +War in Great-Britain in 1745 and 1746_ without being obliged to go to a +foreign press[458]. + +When we arrived at Derby, Dr. Butter accompanied us to see the +manufactory of china there. I admired the ingenuity and delicate art +with which a man fashioned clay into a cup, a saucer, or a tea-pot, +while a boy turned round a wheel to give the mass rotundity. I thought +this as excellent in its species of power, as making good verses in +_its_ species. Yet I had no respect for this potter. Neither, indeed, +has a man of any extent of thinking for a mere verse-maker, in whose +numbers, however perfect, there is no poetry, no mind. The china was +beautiful, but Dr. Johnson justly observed it was too dear; for that he +could have vessels of silver, of the same size, as cheap as what were +here made of porcelain[459]. + +I felt a pleasure in walking about Derby such as I always have in +walking about any town to which I am not accustomed. There is an +immediate sensation of novelty; and one speculates on the way in which +life is passed in it, which, although there is a sameness every where +upon the whole, is yet minutely diversified. The minute diversities in +every thing are wonderful. Talking of shaving the other night at Dr. +Taylor's, Dr. Johnson said, 'Sir, of a thousand shavers, two do not +shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.' I thought this not +possible, till he specified so many of the varieties in +shaving;--holding the razor more or less perpendicular;--drawing long or +short strokes;--beginning at the upper part of the face, or the +under;--at the right side or the left side. Indeed, when one considers +what variety of sounds can be uttered by the windpipe, in the compass of +a very small aperture, we may be convinced how many degrees of +difference there may be in the application of a razor. + +We dined with Dr. Butter, whose lady is daughter of my cousin Sir John +Douglas, whose grandson is now presumptive heir of the noble family of +Queensberry. Johnson and he had a good deal of medical conversation. +Johnson said, he had somewhere or other given an account of Dr. +Nichols's[460] discourse _De Animá Medicâ_. He told us 'that whatever a +man's distemper was, Dr. Nichols would not attend him as a physician, if +his mind was not at ease; for he believed that no medicines would have +any influence. He once attended a man in trade, upon whom he found none +of the medicines he prescribed had any effect: he asked the man's wife +privately whether his affairs were not in a bad way? She said no. He +continued his attendance some time, still without success. At length the +man's wife told him, she had discovered that her husband's affairs +_were_ in a bad way. When Goldsmith was dying, Dr. Turton said to him, +"Your pulse is in greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of +fever which you have: is your mind at ease?" Goldsmith answered it was +not.' + +After dinner, Mrs. Butter went with me to see the silk-mill which Mr. +John Lombe had[461] had a patent for, having brought away the contrivance +from Italy. I am not very conversant with mechanicks; but the simplicity +of this machine, and its multiplied operations, struck me with an +agreeable surprize. I had learnt from Dr. Johnson, during this +interview, not to think with a dejected indifference of the works of +art, and the pleasures of life, because life is uncertain and short; but +to consider such indifference as a failure of reason, a morbidness of +mind; for happiness should be cultivated as much as we can, and the +objects which are instrumental to it should be steadily considered as of +importance[462], with a reference not only to ourselves, but to multitudes +in successive ages. Though it is proper to value small parts, as + +'Sands make the mountain, moments make the year[463];' + +yet we must contemplate, collectively, to have a just estimation of +objects. One moment's being uneasy or not, seems of no consequence; yet +this may be thought of the next, and the next, and so on, till there is +a large portion of misery. In the same way one must think of happiness, +of learning, of friendship. We cannot tell the precise moment when +friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at +last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there +is at last one which makes the heart run over. We must not divide +objects of our attention into minute parts, and think separately of each +part. It is by contemplating a large mass of human existence, that a +man, while he sets a just value on his own life, does not think of his +death as annihilating all that is great and pleasing in the world, as if +actually _contained in his mind_, according to Berkeley's reverie[464]. If +his imagination be not sickly and feeble, it 'wings its distant way[465]' +far beyond himself, and views the world in unceasing activity of every +sort. It must be acknowledged, however, that Pope's plaintive +reflection, that all things would be as gay as ever, on the day of his +death, is natural and common[466]. We are apt to transfer to all around us +our own gloom, without considering that at any given point of time there +is, perhaps, as much youth and gaiety in the world as at another. Before +I came into this life, in which I have had so many pleasant scenes, have +not thousands and ten thousands of deaths and funerals happened, and +have not families been in grief for their nearest relations? But have +those dismal circumstances at all affected _me_? Why then should the +gloomy scenes which I experience, or which I know, affect others? Let us +guard against imagining that there is an end of felicity upon earth, +when we ourselves grow old, or are unhappy. + +Dr. Johnson told us at tea, that when some of Dr. Dodd's pious friends +were trying to console him by saying that he was going to leave 'a +wretched world,' he had honesty enough not to join in the cant[467]:--'No, +no (said he,) it has been a very agreeable world to me.' Johnson added, +'I respect Dodd for thus speaking the truth; for, to be sure, he had for +several years enjoyed a life of great voluptuousness[468].' + +He told us, that Dodd's city friends stood by him so, that a thousand +pounds were ready to be given to the gaoler, if he would let him escape. +He added, that he knew a friend of Dodd's, who walked about Newgate for +some time on the evening before the day of his execution, with five +hundred pounds in his pocket, ready to be paid to any of the turnkeys +who could get him out: but it was too late; for he was watched with much +circumspection[469]. He said, Dodd's friends had an image of him made of +wax, which was to have been left in his place; and he believed it was +carried into the prison. + +Johnson disapproved of Dr. Dodd's leaving the world persuaded that _The +Convict's Address to his unhappy Brethren_ was of his own writing[470]. +'But, Sir, (said I,) you contributed to the deception; for when Mr. +Seward expressed a doubt to you that it was not Dodd's own, because it +had a great deal more force of mind in it than any thing known to be +his, you answered,--"Why should you think so? Depend upon it, Sir, when +a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind +wonderfully."' JOHNSON. 'Sir, as Dodd got it from me to pass as his own, +while that could do him any good, there was an _implied promise_ that I +should not own it. To own it, therefore, would have been telling a lie, +with the addition of breach of promise, which was worse than simply +telling a lie to make it be believed it was Dodd's. Besides, Sir, I did +not _directly_ tell a lie: I left the matter uncertain. Perhaps I +thought that Seward would not believe it the less to be mine for what I +said; but I would not put it in his power to say I had owned it.' + +He praised Blair's sermons: 'Yet,' said he, (willing to let us see he +was aware that fashionable fame, however deserved, is not always the +most lasting,) 'perhaps, they may not be re-printed after seven years; +at least not after Blair's death[471].' + +He said, 'Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late[472]. There appeared +nothing remarkable about him when he was young; though when he had got +high in fame, one of his friends[473] began to recollect something of his +being distinguished at College. Goldsmith in the same manner recollected +more of that friend's early years, as he grew a greater man.' + +I mentioned that Lord Monboddo told me, he awaked every morning at four, +and then for his health got up and walked in his room naked, with the +window open, which he called taking _an air bath_[474]; after which he +went to bed again, and slept two hours more. Johnson, who was always +ready to beat down any thing that seemed to be exhibited with +disproportionate importance, thus observed: 'I suppose, Sir, there is no +more in it than this, he awakes at four, and cannot sleep till he chills +himself, and makes the warmth of the bed a grateful sensation.' + +I talked of the difficulty of rising in the morning. Dr. Johnson told +me, 'that the learned Mrs. Carter, at that period when she was eager in +study, did not awake as early as she wished, and she therefore had a +contrivance, that, at a certain hour, her chamber-light should burn a +string to which a heavy weight was suspended, which then fell with a +strong sudden noise: this roused her from sleep, and then she had no +difficulty in getting up.' But I said _that_ was my difficulty; and +wished there could be some medicine invented which would make one rise +without pain, which I never did, unless after lying in bed a very long +time. Perhaps there may be something in the stores of Nature which could +do this. I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that +would give me pain, as it would counteract my internal inclination. I +would have something that can dissipate the _vis inertiæ_, and give +elasticity to the muscles. As I imagine that the human body may be put, +by the operation of other substances, into any state in which it has +ever been; and as I have experienced a state in which rising from bed +was not disagreeable, but easy, nay, sometimes agreeable; I suppose that +this state may be produced, if we knew by what. We can heat the body, we +can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is +possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a +pain. + +Johnson observed, that 'a man should take a sufficient quantity of +sleep, which Dr. Mead says is between seven and nine hours.' I told him, +that Dr. Cullen said to me, that a man should not take more sleep than +he can take at once. JOHNSON. 'This rule, Sir, cannot hold in all cases; +for many people have their sleep broken by sickness; and surely, Cullen +would not have a man to get up, after having slept but an hour. Such a +regimen would soon end in a _long sleep_[475].' Dr. Taylor remarked, I +think very justly, that 'a man who does not feel an inclination to sleep +at the ordinary time, instead of being stronger than other people, must +not be well; for a man in health has all the natural inclinations to +eat, drink, and sleep, in a strong degree.' + +Johnson advised me to-night not to _refine_ in the education of my +children. 'Life (said he) will not bear refinement: you must do as other +people do[476].' + +As we drove back to Ashbourne, Dr. Johnson recommended to me, as he had +often done, to drink water only: 'For (said he) you are then sure not to +get drunk; whereas if you drink wine you are never sure.' I said, +drinking wine was a pleasure which I was unwilling to give up. 'Why, +Sir, (said he,) there is no doubt that not to drink wine is a great +deduction from life; but it may be necessary.' He however owned, that in +his opinion a free use of wine did not shorten life[477]; and said, he +would not give less for the life of a certain Scotch Lord[478] (whom he +named) celebrated for hard drinking, than for that of a sober man. 'But +stay, (said he, with his usual intelligence, and accuracy of enquiry,) +does it take much wine to make him drunk?' I answered, 'a great deal +either of wine or strong punch.'--'Then (said he) that is the worse.' I +presume to illustrate my friend's observation thus: 'A fortress which +soon surrenders has its walls less shattered than when a long and +obstinate resistance is made.' + +I ventured to mention a person who was as violent a Scotsman as he was +an Englishman; and literally had the same contempt for an Englishman +compared with a Scotsman, that he had for a Scotsman compared with an +Englishman; and that he would say of Dr. Johnson, 'Damned rascal! to +talk as he does, of the Scotch.' This seemed, for a moment, 'to give him +pause[479].' It, perhaps, presented his extreme prejudice against the +Scotch in a point of view somewhat new to him, by the effect of +_contrast_. + +By the time when we returned to Ashbourne, Dr. Taylor was gone to bed. +Johnson and I sat up a long time by ourselves. + +He was much diverted with an article which I shewed him in the _Critical +Review_ of this year, giving an account of a curious publication, +entitled, _A Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies_, by John Rutty, M.D. Dr. +Rutty was one of the people called Quakers, a physician of some eminence +in Dublin, and authour of several works[480]. This Diary, which was kept +from 1753 to 1775, the year in which he died, and was now published in +two volumes octavo, exhibited, in the simplicity of his heart, a minute +and honest register of the state of his mind; which, though frequently +laughable enough, was not more so than the history of many men would be, +if recorded with equal fairness. + +The following specimens were extracted by the Reviewers:-- + +'Tenth month, 1753. +23. Indulgence in bed an hour too long. +Twelfth month, 17. An hypochondriack obnubilation from wind + and indigestion. +Ninth month, 28. An over-dose of whisky. +29. A dull, cross, cholerick day. +First month, 1757--22. A little swinish at dinner and repast. +31. Dogged on provocation. +Second month, 5. Very dogged or snappish. +14. Snappish on fasting. +26. Cursed snappishness to those under me, on a bodily + indisposition. +Third month, 11. On a provocation, exercised a dumb resentment + for two days, instead of scolding. +22. Scolded too vehemently. +23. Dogged again. +Fourth month, 29. Mechanically and sinfully dogged.' + +Johnson laughed heartily at this good Quietist's self-condemning +minutes; particularly at his mentioning, with such a serious regret, +occasional instances of '_swinishness_ in eating, and _doggedness of +temper_[481].' He thought the observations of the Critical Reviewers upon +the importance of a man to himself so ingenious and so well expressed, +that I shall here introduce them. + +After observing, that 'There are few writers who have gained any +reputation by recording their own actions,' they say:-- + +'We may reduce the egotists to four classes. In the _first_ we have +Julius Caesar: he relates his own transactions; but he relates them with +peculiar grace and dignity, and his narrative is supported by the +greatness of his character and atchievements. In the _second_ class we +have Marcus Antoninus: this writer has given us a series of reflections +on his own life; but his sentiments are so noble, his morality so +sublime, that his meditations are universally admired. In the _third_ +class we have some others of tolerable credit, who have given importance +to their own private history by an intermixture of literary anecdotes, +and the occurrences of their own times: the celebrated _Huetius_ has +published an entertaining volume upon this plan, "_De rebus ad eum +pertinentibus_[482]." In the _fourth_ class we have the journalists, +temporal and spiritual: Elias Ashmole, William Lilly, George Whitefield, +John Wesley, and a thousand other old women and fanatick writers of +memoirs and meditations.' + +I mentioned to him that Dr. Hugh Blair, in his lectures on Rhetorick and +Belles Lettres, which I heard him deliver at Edinburgh, had animadverted +on the Johnsonian style as too pompous; and attempted to imitate it, by +giving a sentence of Addison in _The Spectator_, No. 411, in the manner +of Johnson. When treating of the utility of the pleasures of imagination +in preserving us from vice, it is observed of those 'who know not how to +be idle and innocent,' that 'their very first step out of business is +into vice or folly;' which Dr. Blair supposed would have been expressed +in _The Rambler_ thus: 'Their very first step out of the regions of +business is into the perturbation of vice, or the vacuity of folly[483].' +JOHNSON. 'Sir, these are not the words I should have used. No, Sir; the +imitators of my style have not hit it. Miss Aikin has done it the best; +for she has imitated the sentiment as well as the diction[484].' I intend, +before this work is concluded[485], to exhibit specimens of imitation of +my friend's style in various modes; some caricaturing or mimicking it, +and some formed upon it, whether intentionally or with a degree of +similarity to it, of which, perhaps, the writers were not conscious. + +In Baretti's Review, which he published in Italy, under the title of +_Frusta Letteraria_[486], it is observed, that Dr. Robertson the historian +had formed his style upon that of _Il celebre Samuele Johnson_. My +friend himself was of that opinion; for he once said to me, in a +pleasant humour, 'Sir, if Robertson's style be faulty, he owes it to me; +that is, having too many words, and those too big ones[487].' + +I read to him a letter which Lord Monboddo had written to me, containing +some critical remarks upon the style of his _Journey to the Western +Islands of Scotland_. His Lordship praised the very fine passage upon +landing at Icolmkill[488]; but his own style being exceedingly dry and +hard, he disapproved of the richness of Johnson's language, and of his +frequent use of metaphorical expressions. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, this +criticism would be just, if in my style, superfluous words, or words too +big for the thoughts, could be pointed out[489]; but this I do not believe +can be done. For instance; in the passage which Lord Monboddo admires, +'We were now treading that illustrious region[490],' the word +_illustrious_, contributes nothing to the mere narration; for the fact +might be told without it: but it is not, therefore, superfluous; for it +wakes the mind to peculiar attention, where something of more than usual +importance is to be presented. "Illustrious!"--for what? and then the +sentence proceeds to expand the circumstances connected with Iona. And, +Sir, as to metaphorical expression, that is a great excellence in style, +when it is used with propriety, for it gives you two ideas for +one;--conveys the meaning more luminously, and generally with a +perception of delight.' + +He told me, that he had been asked to undertake the new edition of the +_Biographia Britannica_, but had declined it; which he afterwards said +to me he regretted[491]. In this regret many will join, because it would +have procured us more of Johnson's most delightful species of writing; +and although my friend Dr. Kippis has hitherto discharged the task +judiciously, distinctly, and with more impartiality than might have been +expected from a Separatist, it were to have been wished that the +superintendence of this literary Temple of Fame had been assigned to 'a +friend to the constitution in Church and State.' We should not then have +had it too much crowded with obscure dissenting teachers, doubtless men +of merit and worth, but not quite to be numbered amongst 'the most +eminent persons who have flourished in Great-Britain and Ireland[492].' + +On Saturday, September 30, after breakfast, when Taylor was gone out to +his farm, Dr. Johnson and I had a serious conversation by ourselves on +melancholy and madness; which he was, I always thought, erroneously +inclined to confound together[493]. Melancholy, like 'great wit,' may be +'near allied to madness[494];' but there is, in my opinion, a distinct +separation between them. When he talked of madness, he was to be +understood as speaking of those who were in any great degree disturbed, +or as it is commonly expressed, 'troubled in mind.' Some of the ancient +philosophers held, that all deviations from right reason were madness; +and whoever wishes to see the opinions both of ancients and moderns upon +this subject, collected and illustrated with a variety of curious facts, +may read Dr. Arnold's very entertaining work[495]. + +Johnson said, 'A madman loves to be with people whom he fears; not as a +dog fears the lash; but of whom he stands in awe.' I was struck with the +justice of this observation. To be with those of whom a person, whose +mind is wavering and dejected, stands in awe, represses and composes an +uneasy tumult of spirits, and consoles him with the contemplation of +something steady, and at least comparatively great. + +He added, 'Madmen are all sensual in the lower stages of the distemper. +They are eager for gratifications to sooth their minds, and divert their +attention from the misery which they suffer: but when they grow very +ill, pleasure is too weak for them, and they seek for pain[496]. +Employment, Sir, and hardships, prevent melancholy. I suppose in all our +army in America there was not one man who went mad[497].' + +We entered seriously upon a question of much importance to me, which +Johnson was pleased to consider with friendly attention. I had long +complained to him that I felt myself discontented in Scotland, as too +narrow a sphere, and that I wished to make my chief residence in London, +the great scene of ambition, instruction, and amusement: a scene, which +was to me, comparatively speaking, a heaven upon earth[498]. JOHNSON. +'Why, Sir, I never knew any one who had such a _gust_ for London as you +have: and I cannot blame you for your wish to live there: yet, Sir, were +I in your father's place, I should not consent to your settling there; +for I have the old feudal notions, and I should be afraid that +Auchinleck would be deserted, as you would soon find it more desirable +to have a country-seat in a better climate. I own, however, that to +consider it as a _duty_ to reside on a family estate is a prejudice; for +we must consider, that working-people get employment equally, and the +produce of land is sold equally, whether a great family resides at home +or not; and if the rents of an estate be carried to London, they return +again in the circulation of commerce; nay, Sir, we must perhaps allow, +that carrying the rents to a distance is a good, because it contributes +to that circulation. We must, however, allow, that a well-regulated +great family may improve a neighbourhood in civility and elegance, and +give an example of good order, virtue, and piety; and so its residence +at home may be of much advantage. But if a great family be disorderly +and vicious, its residence at home is very pernicious to a +neighbourhood. There is not now the same inducement to live in the +country as formerly; the pleasures of social life are much better +enjoyed in town; and there is no longer in the country that power and +influence in proprietors of land which they had in old times, and which +made the country so agreeable to them. The Laird of Auchinleck now is +not near so great a man as the Laird of Auchinleck was a hundred years +ago[499]. + +I told him, that one of my ancestors never went from home without being +attended by thirty men on horseback. Johnson's shrewdness and spirit of +enquiry were exerted upon every occasion. 'Pray (said he,) how did your +ancestor support his thirty men and thirty horses, when he went at a +distance from home, in an age when there was hardly any money in +circulation?' I suggested the same difficulty to a friend, who mentioned +Douglas's going to the Holy Land with a numerous train of followers. +Douglas could, no doubt, maintain followers enough while living upon his +own lands, the produce of which supplied them with food; but he could +not carry that food to the Holy Land; and as there was no commerce by +which he could be supplied with money, how could he maintain them in +foreign countries? + +I suggested a doubt, that if I were to reside in London, the exquisite +zest with which I relished it in occasional visits might go off, and I +might grow tired of it. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, you find no man, at all +intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is +tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that +life can afford[500].' + +To obviate his apprehension, that by settling in London I might desert +the seat of my ancestors, I assured him, that I had old feudal +principles to a degree of enthusiasm; and that I felt all the _dulcedo_ +of the _natale solum_[501]. I reminded him, that the Laird of Auchinleck +had an elegant house, in front of which he could ride ten miles forward +upon his own territories, upon which he had upwards of six hundred +people attached to him; that the family seat was rich in natural +romantick beauties of rock, wood, and water; and that in my 'morn of +life[502],' I had appropriated the finest descriptions in the ancient +Classicks to certain scenes there, which were thus associated in my +mind. That when all this was considered, I should certainly pass a part +of the year at home, and enjoy it the more from variety, and from +bringing with me a share of the intellectual stores of the metropolis. +He listened to all this, and kindly 'hoped it might be as I now +supposed.' + +He said, 'A country gentleman should bring his lady to visit London as +soon as he can, that they may have agreeable topicks for conversation +when they are by themselves.' + +As I meditated trying my fortune in Westminster Hall, our conversation +turned upon the profession of the law in England. JOHNSON. 'You must not +indulge too sanguine hopes, should you be called to our bar. I was told, +by a very sensible lawyer, that there are a great many chances against +any man's success in the profession of the law; the candidates are so +numerous, and those who get large practice so few. He said, it was by no +means true that a man of good parts and application is sure of having +business, though he, indeed, allowed that if such a man could but appear +in a few causes, his merit would be known, and he would get forward; but +that the great risk was, that a man might pass half a life-time in the +Courts, and never have an opportunity of shewing his abilities[503].' + +We talked of employment being absolutely necessary to preserve the mind +from wearying and growing fretful, especially in those who have a +tendency to melancholy; and I mentioned to him a saying which somebody +had related of an American savage, who, when an European was expatiating +on all the advantages of money, put this question: 'Will it purchase +_occupation_?' JOHNSON. 'Depend upon it, Sir, this saying is too refined +for a savage. And, Sir, money _will_ purchase occupation; it will +purchase all the conveniences of life; it will purchase variety of +company; it will purchase all sorts of entertainment.' + +I talked to him of Forster's _Voyage to the South Seas_, which pleased +me; but I found he did not like it. 'Sir, (said he,) there is a great +affectation of fine writing in it.' BOSWELL. 'But he carries you along +with him.' JOHNSON, 'No, Sir; he does not carry _me_ along with him: he +leaves me behind him: or rather, indeed, he sets me before him; for he +makes me turn over many leaves at a time.' + +On Sunday, September 12[504], we went to the church of Ashbourne, which is +one of the largest and most luminous that I have seen in any town of the +same size. I felt great satisfaction in considering that I was supported +in my fondness for solemn publick worship by the general concurrence and +munificence of mankind. + +Johnson and Taylor were so different from each other, that I wondered at +their preserving an intimacy[505]. Their having been at school and college +together, might, in some degree, account for this[506]; but Sir Joshua +Reynolds has furnished me with a stronger reason; for Johnson mentioned +to him, that he had been told by Taylor he was to be his heir. I shall +not take upon me to animadvert upon this; but certain it is, that +Johnson paid great attention to Taylor. He now, however, said to me, +'Sir, I love him; but I do not love him more; my regard for him does not +increase. As it is said in the Apocrypha, "his talk is of bullocks[507]:" +I do not suppose he is very fond of my company.[508] His habits are by no +means sufficiently clerical: this he knows that I see; and no man likes +to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.' + +I have no doubt that a good many sermons were composed for Taylor by +Johnson. At this time I found, upon his table, a part of one which he +had newly begun to write: and _Concio pro Tayloro_ appears in one of his +diaries. When to these circumstances we add the internal evidence from +the power of thinking and style, in the collection which the Reverend +Mr. Hayes has published, with the _significant_ title of Sermons _left +for publication_ by the Reverend John Taylor, LL.D., our conviction will +be complete[509]. + +I, however, would not have it thought, that Dr. Taylor, though he could +not write like Johnson, (as, indeed, who could?) did not sometimes +compose sermons as good as those which we generally have from very +respectable divines. He showed me one with notes on the margin in +Johnson's hand-writing; and I was present when he read another to +Johnson, that he might have his opinion of it, and Johnson said it was +'very well.' These, we may be sure, were not Johnson's; for he was above +little arts, or tricks of deception. + +Johnson was by no means of opinion, that every man of a learned +profession should consider it as incumbent upon him, or as necessary to +his credit, to appear as an authour. When in the ardour of ambition for +literary fame, I regretted to him one day that an eminent Judge had +nothing of it, and therefore would leave no perpetual monument of +himself to posterity[510]. 'Alas, Sir, (said Johnson) what a mass of +confusion should we have, if every Bishop, and every Judge, every +Lawyer, Physician, and Divine, were to write books.' + +I mentioned to Johnson a respectable person of a very strong mind, who +had little of that tenderness which is common to human nature; as an +instance of which, when I suggested to him that he should invite his +son, who had been settled ten years in foreign parts[511], to come home +and pay him a visit, his answer was, 'No, no, let him mind his +business.' JOHNSON. 'I do not agree with him, Sir, in this. Getting +money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable +part of the business of life.' + +In the evening, Johnson, being in very good spirits, entertained us with +several characteristical portraits. I regret that any of them escaped my +retention and diligence. I found, from experience, that to collect my +friend's conversation so as to exhibit it with any degree of its +original flavour, it was necessary to write it down without delay. To +record his sayings, after some distance of time, was like preserving or +pickling long-kept and faded fruits, or other vegetables, which, when in +that state, have little or nothing of their taste when fresh. + +I shall present my readers with a series of what I gathered this evening +from the Johnsonian garden. + +'My friend, the late Earl of Corke, had a great desire to maintain the +literary character of his family[512]: he was a genteel man, but did not +keep up the dignity of his rank. He was so generally civil, that nobody +thanked him for it.' + +'Did we not hear so much said of Jack Wilkes, we should think more +highly of his conversation. Jack has great variety of talk, Jack is a +scholar, and Jack has the manners of a gentleman[513]. But after hearing +his name sounded from pole to pole, as the phoenix of convivial +felicity, we are disappointed in his company. He has always been _at +me_: but I would do Jack a kindness, rather than not. The contest is now +over[514].' + +'Garrick's gaiety of conversation has delicacy and elegance: Foote makes +you laugh more; but Foote has the air of a buffoon paid for entertaining +the company. He, indeed, well deserves his hire[515].' + +'Colley Cibber once consulted me as to one of his birth-day Odes,[516] a +long time before it was wanted. I objected very freely to several +passages. Cibber lost patience, and would not read his Ode to an end. +When we had done with criticism, we walked over to Richardson's, the +authour of _Clarissa_, and I wondered to find Richardson displeased that +I "did not treat Gibber with more _respect_." Now, Sir, to talk of +_respect for a player_!' (smiling disdainfully). BOSWELL. 'There, Sir, +you are always heretical: you never will allow merit to a player[517].' +JOHNSON. 'Merit, Sir! what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer, or a +ballad-singer?' BOSWELL. 'No, Sir: but we respect a great player, as a +man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them gracefully.' +JOHNSON. 'What, Sir, a fellow who claps a hump on his back, and a lump +on his leg, and cries "_I am Richard the Third_[518]"? Nay, Sir, a +ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things; he repeats and he +sings: there is both recitation and musick in his performance: the +player only recites.' BOSWELL. 'My dear Sir! you may turn anything into +ridicule. I allow, that a player of farce is not entitled to respect; he +does a little thing: but he who can represent exalted characters, and +touch the noblest passions, has very respectable powers; and mankind +have agreed in admiring great talents for the stage. We must consider, +too, that a great player does what very few are capable to do: his art +is a very rare faculty. _Who_ can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be, or +not to be," as Garrick does it?' JOHNSON. 'Any body may. Jemmy, there (a +boy about eight years old, who was in the room), will do it as well in a +week[519].' BOSWELL. 'No, no, Sir: and as a proof of the merit of great +acting, and of the value which mankind set upon it, Garrick has got a +hundred thousand pounds.' JOHNSON. 'Is getting a hundred thousand pounds +a proof of excellence? That has been done by a scoundrel commissary[520].' + +This was most fallacious reasoning. I was sure, for once, that I had the +best side of the argument. I boldly maintained the just distinction +between a tragedian and a mere theatrical droll; between those who rouse +our terrour and pity, and those who only make us laugh. 'If (said I) +Betterton and Foote were to walk into this room, you would respect +Betterton much more than Foote.' JOHNSON. 'If Betterton were to walk +into this room with Foote, Foote would soon drive him out of it. Foote, +Sir, _quatenùs_ Foote, has powers superiour to them all[521].' + +On Monday, September 22, when at breakfast, I unguardedly said to Dr. +Johnson, 'I wish I saw you and Mrs. Macaulay[522] together.' He grew very +angry; and, after a pause, while a cloud gathered on his brow, he burst +out, 'No, Sir; you would not see us quarrel, to make you sport. Don't +you know that it is very uncivil to _pit_[523] two people against one +another?' Then, checking himself, and wishing to be more gentle, he +added, 'I do not say you should be hanged or drowned for this; but it +_is_ very uncivil.' Dr. Taylor thought him in the wrong, and spoke to +him privately of it; but I afterwards acknowledged to Johnson that I was +to blame, for I candidly owned, that I meant to express a desire to see +a contest between Mrs. Macaulay and him; but then I knew how the contest +would end; so that I was to see him triumph. JOHNSON. 'Sir, you cannot +be sure how a contest will end; and no man has a right to engage two +people in a dispute by which their passions may be inflamed, and they +may part with bitter resentment against each other. I would sooner keep +company with a man from whom I must guard my pockets, than with a man +who contrives to bring me into a dispute with somebody that he may hear +it. This is the great fault of ----[524], (naming one of our friends) +endeavouring to introduce a subject upon which he knows two people in +the company differ.' BOSWELL. 'But he told me, Sir, he does it for +instruction.' JOHNSON. 'Whatever the motive be, Sir, the man who does +so, does very wrong. He has no more right to instruct himself at such +risk, than he has to make two people fight a duel, that he may learn how +to defend himself.' + +He found great fault with a gentleman of our acquaintance for keeping a +bad table[525]. 'Sir, (said he,) when a man is invited to dinner, he is +disappointed if he does not get something good. I advised Mrs. Thrale, +who has no card-parties at her house, to give sweet-meats, and such good +things, in an evening, as are not commonly given, and she would find +company enough come to her; for every body loves to have things which +please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation[526].' +Such was his attention to the _minutiae_ of life and manners. + +He thus characterised the Duke of Devonshire[527], grandfather of the +present representative of that very respectable family: 'He was not a +man of superiour abilities, but he was a man strictly faithful to his +word. If, for instance, he had promised you an acorn, and none had grown +that year in his woods, he would not have contented himself with that +excuse; he would have sent to Denmark for it. So unconditional was he in +keeping his word; so high as to the point of honour.' This was a liberal +testimony from the Tory Johnson to the virtue of a great Whig nobleman. + +Mr. Burke's _Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the affairs of +America_, being mentioned, Johnson censured the composition much[528], and +he ridiculed the definition of a free government, _viz_. 'For any +practical purpose, it is what the people think so[529].'--'I will let the +King of France govern me on those conditions, (said he,) for it is to be +governed just as I please.' And when Dr. Taylor talked of a girl being +sent to a parish workhouse, and asked how much she could be obliged to +work, 'Why, (said Johnson,) as much as is reasonable: and what is that? +as much as _she thinks_ reasonable.' + +Dr. Johnson obligingly proposed to carry me to see Islam, a romantick +scene, now belonging to a family of the name of Port, but formerly the +seat of the Congreves[530]. I suppose it is well described in some of the +Tours. Johnson described it distinctly and vividly, at which I could not +but express to him my wonder; because, though my eyes, as he observed, +were better than his, I could not by any means equal him in representing +visible objects. I said, the difference between us in this respect was +as that between a man who has a bad instrument, but plays well on it, +and a man who has a good instrument, on which he can play very +imperfectly[531]. + +I recollect a very fine amphitheatre, surrounded with hills covered with +woods, and walks neatly formed along the side of a rocky steep, on the +quarter next the house, with recesses under projections of rock, +overshadowed with trees; in one of which recesses, we were told, +Congreve wrote his _Old Bachelor_[532]. We viewed a remarkable natural +curiosity at Islam; two rivers bursting near each other from the rock, +not from immediate springs, but after having run for many miles under +ground. Plott, in his _History of Staffordshire_[533], gives an account of +this curiosity; but Johnson would not believe it, though we had the +attestation of the gardener, who said, he had put in corks, where the +river _Manyfold_ sinks into the ground, and had catched them in a net, +placed before one of the openings where the water bursts out. Indeed, +such subterraneous courses of water are found in various parts of our +globe[534]. + +Talking of Dr. Johnson's unwillingness to believe extraordinary +things[535], I ventured to say, 'Sir, you come near Hume's argument +against miracles, "That it is more probable witnesses should lie, or be +mistaken, than that they should happen[536]."' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, Hume, +taking the proposition simply, is right. But the Christian revelation is +not proved by the miracles alone, but as connected with prophecies, and +with the doctrines in confirmation of which the miracles were wrought.' + +He repeated his observation, that the differences among Christians are +really of no consequence[537]. 'For instance, (said he,) if a Protestant +objects to a Papist, "You worship images;" the Papist can answer, "I do +not insist on _your_ doing it; you may be a very good Papist without it: +I do it only as a help to my devotion."' I said, the great article of +Christianity is the revelation of immortality. Johnson admitted it was. + +In the evening, a gentleman-farmer, who was on a visit at Dr. Taylor's, +attempted to dispute with Johnson in favour of Mungo Campbell, who shot +Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune[538] upon his having fallen, when retreating +from his Lordship, who he believed was about to seize his gun, as he had +threatened to do. He said, he should have done just as Campbell did. +JOHNSON. 'Whoever would do as Campbell did, deserves to be hanged; not +that I could, as a juryman, have found him legally guilty of murder; but +I am glad they found means to convict him.' The gentleman-farmer said, +'A poor man has as much honour as a rich man; and Campbell had _that_ to +defend.' Johnson exclaimed, 'A poor man has no honour.' The English +yeoman, not dismayed, proceeded: 'Lord Eglintoune was a damned fool to +run on upon Campbell, after being warned that Campbell would shoot him +if he did.' Johnson, who could not bear any thing like swearing[539], +angrily replied, 'He was _not_ a _damned_ fool: he only thought too well +of Campbell. He did not believe Campbell would be such a _damned_ +scoundrel, as to do so _damned_ a thing.' His emphasis on _damned_, +accompanied with frowning looks, reproved his opponent's want of decorum +in _his_ presence. + +Talking of the danger of being mortified by rejection, when making +approaches to the acquaintance of the great, I observed: 'I am, however, +generally for trying, "Nothing venture, nothing have."'[540] JOHNSON. +'Very true, Sir; but I have always been more afraid of failing, than +hopeful of success.' And, indeed, though he had all just respect for +rank, no man ever less courted the favour of the great. + +During this interview at Ashbourne, Johnson seemed to be more uniformly +social, cheerful, and alert, than I had almost ever seen him. He was +prompt on great occasions and on small. Taylor, who praised every thing +of his own to excess; in short, 'whose geese were all swans,' as the +proverb says, expatiated on the excellence of his bull-dog, which, he +told us, was 'perfectly well shaped.' Johnson, after examining the +animal attentively, thus repressed the vain-glory of our host:--'No, +Sir, he is _not_ well shaped; for there is not the quick transition from +the thickness of the fore-part, to the _tenuity_--the thin part-- +behind,--which a bull-dog ought to have.' This _tenuity_ was the only +_hard word_ that I heard him use during this interview, and it will be +observed, he instantly put another expression in its place. Taylor said, +a small bull-dog was as good as a large one. JOHNSON, 'No, Sir; for, in +proportion to his size, he has strength: and your argument would prove, +that a good bull-dog may be as small as a mouse.' It was amazing how he +entered with perspicuity and keenness upon every thing that occurred in +conversation. Most men, whom I know, would no more think of discussing a +question about a bull-dog, than of attacking a bull. + +I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning +the great subject of this work to be lost. Though a small particular may +appear trifling to some, it will be relished by others; while every +little spark adds something to the general blaze: and to please the +true, candid, warm admirers of Johnson, and in any degree increase the +splendour of his reputation, I bid defiance to the shafts of ridicule, +or even of malignity. Showers of them have been discharged at my +_Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_; yet it still sails unhurt along the +stream of time, and, as an attendant upon Johnson, + +'Pursues the triumph, and partakes the gale[541].' + +One morning after breakfast, when the sun shone bright, we walked out +together, and 'pored[542]' for some time with placid indolence upon an +artificial water-fall, which Dr. Taylor had made by building a strong +dyke of stone across the river behind the garden[543]. It was now somewhat +obstructed by branches of trees and other rubbish, which had come down +the river, and settled close to it. Johnson, partly from a desire to see +it play more freely, and partly from that inclination to activity which +will animate, at times, the most inert and sluggish mortal, took a long +pole which was lying on a bank, and pushed down several parcels of this +wreck with painful assiduity, while I stood quietly by, wondering to +behold the sage thus curiously employed, and smiling with an humorous +satisfaction each time when he carried his point. He worked till he was +quite out of breath; and having found a large dead cat so heavy that he +could not move it after several efforts, 'Come,' said he, (throwing down +the pole,) '_you_ shall take it now;' which I accordingly did, and being +a fresh man, soon made the cat tumble over the cascade. This may be +laughed at as too trifling to record; but it is a small characteristick +trait in the Flemish picture which I give of my friend, and in which, +therefore, I mark the most minute particulars. And let it be remembered, +that _Æsop at play_ is one of the instructive apologues of antiquity. + +I mentioned an old gentleman of our acquaintance whose memory was +beginning to fail. JOHNSON. 'There must be a diseased mind, where there +is a failure of memory at seventy. A man's head, Sir, must be morbid, if +he fails so soon.'[544] My friend, being now himself sixty-eight, might +think thus: but I imagine, that _threescore and ten_, the Psalmist's +period of sound human life in later ages, may have a failure, though +there be no disease in the constitution. + +Talking of Rochester's Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens +to castrate for the edition of the poets, to which he was to write +Prefaces. Dr. Taylor (the only time I ever heard him say any thing +witty)[545] observed, that 'if Rochester had been castrated himself, his +exceptionable poems would not have been written.'[546] I asked if Burnet +had not given a good Life of Rochester. JOHNSON. 'We have a good +_Death_: there is not much _Life_[547].' + +I asked whether Prior's Poems were to be printed entire: Johnson said +they were. I mentioned Lord Hailes's censure of Prior, in his Preface to +a collection of _Sacred Poems_, by various hands, published by him at +Edinburgh a great many years ago, where he mentions, 'those impure tales +which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious authour.' +JOHNSON. 'Sir, Lord Hailes has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that +will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hailes thinks there is, he must be more +combustible than other people[548].' + +I instanced the tale of _Paulo Purganti and his Wife_. JOHNSON. 'Sir, +there is nothing there, but that his wife wanted to be kissed when poor +Paulo was out of pocket. No, Sir, Prior is a lady's book. No lady is +ashamed to have it standing in her library.' + +The hypochondriack disorder being mentioned, Dr. Johnson did not think +it so common as I supposed. 'Dr. Taylor (said he) is the same one day as +another. Burke and Reynolds are the same; Beauclerk, except when in +pain, is the same. I am not so myself; but this I do not mention +commonly[549].' + +I complained of a wretched changefulness, so that I could not preserve, +for any long continuance, the same views of any thing. It was most +comfortable to me to experience, in Dr. Johnson's company, a relief from +this uneasiness. His steady vigorous mind held firm before me those +objects which my own feeble and tremulous imagination frequently +presented, in such a wavering state, that my reason could not judge well +of them. + +Dr. Johnson advised me to-day, to have as many books about me as I +could; that I might read upon any subject upon which I had a desire for +instruction at the time. 'What you read _then_ (said he) you will +remember; but if you have not a book immediately ready, and the subject +moulds in your mind, it is a chance if you again have a desire to study +it.' He added, 'If a man never has an eager desire for instruction, he +should prescribe a task for himself. But it is better when a man reads +from immediate inclination[550].' + +He repeated a good many lines of Horace's _Odes_, while we were in the +chaise. I remember particularly the Ode _Eheu fugaces_[551]. + +He said, the dispute as to the comparative excellence of Homer or +Virgil[552] was inaccurate. 'We must consider (said he) whether Homer was +not the greatest poet, though Virgil may have produced the finest poem. +Virgil was indebted to Homer for the whole invention of the structure of +an epick poem, and for many of his beauties.' + +He told me that Bacon was a favourite authour with him[553]; but he had +never read his works till he was compiling the _English Dictionary_, in +which, he said, I might see Bacon very often quoted. Mr. Seward +recollects his having mentioned, that a Dictionary of the English +Language might be compiled from Bacon's writings alone[554], and that he +had once an intention of giving an edition of Bacon, at least of his +English works, and writing the Life of that great man. Had he executed +this intention, there can be no doubt that he would have done it in a +most masterly manner. Mallet's _Life of Bacon_ has no inconsiderable +merit as an acute and elegant dissertation relative to its subject; but +Mallet's mind was not comprehensive enough to embrace the vast extent of +Lord Verulam's genius and research. Dr. Warburton therefore observed, +with witty justness, 'that Mallet, in his _Life of Bacon_, had forgotten +that he was a philosopher; and if he should write the Life of the Duke +of Marlborough, which he had undertaken to do, he would probably forget +that he was a general[555].' + +Wishing to be satisfied what degree of truth there was in a story which +a friend of Johnson's and mine had told me to his disadvantage, I +mentioned it to him in direct terms; and it was to this effect: that a +gentleman[556] who had lived in great intimacy with him, shewn him much +kindness, and even relieved him from a spunging-house, having afterwards +fallen into bad circumstances, was one day, when Johnson was at dinner +with him, seized for debt, and carried to prison; that Johnson sat still +undisturbed, and went on eating and drinking; upon which the gentleman's +sister, who was present, could not suppress her indignation: 'What, Sir, +(said she,) are you so unfeeling, as not even to offer to go to my +brother in his distress; you who have been so much obliged to him?' And +that Johnson answered, 'Madam, I owe him no obligation; what he did for +me he would have done for a dog.' + +Johnson assured me, that the story was absolutely false: but like a man +conscious of being in the right, and desirous of completely vindicating +himself from such a charge, he did not arrogantly rest on a mere denial, +and on his general character, but proceeded thus:--'Sir, I was very +intimate with that gentleman, and was once relieved by him from an +arrest; but I never was present when he was arrested, never knew that he +was arrested, and I believe he never was in difficulties after the time +when he relieved me. I loved him much; yet, in talking of his general +character, I may have said, though I do not remember that I ever did say +so, that as his generosity proceeded from no principle, but was a part +of his profusion, he would do for a dog what he would do for a friend: +but I never applied this remark to any particular instance, and +certainly not to his kindness to me. If a profuse man, who does not +value his money, and gives a large sum to a whore, gives half as much, +or an equally large sum to relieve a friend, it cannot be esteemed as +virtue. This was all that I could say of that gentleman; and, if said at +all, it must have been said after his death. Sir, I would have gone to +the world's end to relieve him. The remark about the dog, if made by me, +was such a sally as might escape one when painting a man highly.' + +On Tuesday, September 23, Johnson was remarkably cordial to me. It being +necessary for me to return to Scotland soon, I had fixed on the next day +for my setting out, and I felt a tender concern at the thought of +parting with him. He had, at this time, frankly communicated to me many +particulars, which are inserted in this work in their proper places; and +once, when I happened to mention that the expence of my jaunt would come +to much more than I had computed, he said, 'Why, Sir, if the expence +were to be an inconvenience, you would have reason to regret it: but, if +you have had the money to spend, I know not that you could have +purchased as much pleasure with it in any other way.' + +During this interview at Ashbourne, Johnson and I frequently talked with +wonderful pleasure of mere trifles which had occurred in our tour to the +Hebrides; for it had left a most agreeable and lasting impression upon +his mind. + +He found fault with me for using the phrase to _make_ money. 'Don't you +see (said he) the impropriety of it? To _make_ money is to _coin_ it: +you should say _get_ money.' The phrase, however, is, I think, pretty +current[557]. But Johnson was at all times jealous of infractions upon the +genuine English language, and prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; +such as, _pledging myself_, for _undertaking_; _line_, for _department_, +or _branch_, as, the _civil line_, the _banking line_. He was +particularly indignant against the almost universal use of the word +_idea_ in the sense of _notion_ or _opinion_, when it is clear that +_idea_ can only signify something of which an image can be formed in the +mind[558]. We may have an _idea_ or _image_ of a mountain, a tree, a +building; but we cannot surely have an _idea_ or _image_ of an +_argument_ or _proposition_. Yet we hear the sages of the law +'delivering their _ideas_ upon the question under consideration;' and +the first speakers in parliament 'entirely coinciding in the _idea_ +which has been ably stated by an honourable member;'--or 'reprobating an +_idea_ unconstitutional, and fraught with the most dangerous +consequences to a great and free country.' Johnson called this 'modern +cant[559].' + +I perceived that he pronounced the word _heard_, as if spelt with a +double _e, heerd_, instead of sounding it _herd_, as is most usually +done. He said, his reason was, that if it was pronounced _herd_, there +would be a single exception from the English pronunciation of the +syllable _ear_, and he thought it better not to have that exception. + +He praised Grainger's _Ode on Solitude_, in Dodsley's _Collection_, and +repeated, with great energy, the exordium:-- + +'O Solitude, romantick maid, +Whether by nodding towers you tread; +Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom, +Or hover o'er the yawning tomb; +Or climb the Andes' clifted side, +Or by the Nile's coy source abide; +Or, starting from your half-year's sleep, +From Hecla view the thawing deep; +Or, at the purple dawn of day, +Tadnor's marble waste survey[560]'; + +observing, 'This, Sir, is very noble.' + +In the evening our gentleman-farmer, and two others, entertained +themselves and the company with a great number of tunes on the fiddle. +Johnson desired to have 'Let ambition fire thy mind[561],' played over +again, and appeared to give a patient attention to it; though he owned +to me that he was very insensible to the power of musick[562]. I told him, +that it affected me to such a degree, as often to agitate my nerves +painfully, producing in my mind alternate sensations of pathetick +dejection, so that I was ready to shed tears; and of daring resolution, +so that I was inclined to rush into the thickest part of the battle. +'Sir, (said he,) I should never hear it, if it made me such a fool.' + +Much of the effect of musick, I am satisfied, is owing to the +association of ideas. That air, which instantly and irresistibly excites +in the Swiss, when in a foreign land, the _maladie du pais_, has, I am +told, no intrinsick power of sound. And I know from my own experience, +that Scotch reels, though brisk, make me melancholy, because I used to +hear them in my early years, at a time when Mr. Pitt called for soldiers +'from the mountains of the north,' and numbers of brave Highlanders were +going abroad, never to return[563]. Whereas the airs in _The Beggar's +Opera_, many of which are very soft, never fail to render me gay, +because they are associated with the warm sensations and high spirits of +London. This evening, while some of the tunes of ordinary composition +were played with no great skill, my frame was agitated, and I was +conscious of a generous attachment to Dr. Johnson, as my preceptor and +friend, mixed with an affectionate regret that he was an old man, whom I +should probably lose in a short time. I thought I could defend him at +the point of my sword. My reverence and affection for him were in full +glow. I said to him, 'My dear Sir, we must meet every year, if you don't +quarrel with me.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, you are more likely to quarrel +with me, than I with you. My regard for you is greater almost than I +have words to express; but I do not choose to be always repeating it; +write it down in the first leaf of your pocket-book, and never doubt of +it again.' + +I talked to him of misery being 'the doom of man' in this life, as +displayed in his _Vanity of Human Wishes_[564]'. Yet I observed that +things were done upon the supposition of happiness; grand houses were +built, fine gardens were made, splendid places of publick amusement were +contrived, and crowded with company. JOHNSON. 'Alas, Sir, these are all +only struggles for happiness. When I first entered Ranelagh[565], it gave +an expansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I never experienced +any where else. But, as Xerxes wept when he viewed his immense army, and +considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred +years afterwards, so it went to my heart to consider that there was not +one in all that brilliant circle, that was not afraid to go home and +think; but that the thoughts of each individual there, would be +distressing when alone.' This reflection was experimentally just. The +feeling of languor[566], which succeeds the animation of gaiety, is itself +a very severe pain; and when the mind is then vacant, a thousand +disappointments and vexations rush in and excruciate. Will not many even +of my fairest readers allow this to be true? + +I suggested, that being in love, and flattered with hopes of success; or +having some favourite scheme in view for the next day, might prevent +that wretchedness of which we had been talking. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, it +may sometimes be so as you suppose; but my conclusion is in general but +too true.' + +While Johnson and I stood in calm conference by ourselves in Dr. +Taylor's garden, at a pretty late hour in a serene autumn night, looking +up to the heavens, I directed the discourse to the subject of a future +state. My friend was in a placid and most benignant frame. 'Sir, (said +he,) I do not imagine that all things will be made clear to us +immediately after death, but that the ways of Providence will be +explained to us very gradually.' I ventured to ask him whether, although +the words of some texts of Scripture seemed strong in support of the +dreadful doctrine of an eternity of punishment, we might not hope that +the denunciation was figurative, and would not literally be executed. +JOHNSON. 'Sir, you are to consider the intention of punishment in a +future state. We have no reason to be sure that we shall then be no +longer liable to offend against GOD. We do not know that even the angels +are quite in a state of security; nay we know that some of them have +fallen. It may, therefore, perhaps be necessary, in order to preserve +both men and angels in a state of rectitude, that they should have +continually before them the punishment of those who have deviated from +it; but we may hope that by some other means a fall from rectitude may +be prevented. Some of the texts of Scripture upon this subject are, as +you observe, indeed strong; but they may admit of a mitigated +interpretation.' He talked to me upon this awful and delicate question +in a gentle tone, and as if afraid to be decisive[567]. + +After supper I accompanied him to his apartment, and at my request he +dictated to me an argument in favour of the negro who was then claiming +his liberty, in an action in the Court of Session in Scotland[568]. He had +always been very zealous against slavery in every form, in which I, with +all deference, thought that he discovered 'a zeal without knowledge[569].' +Upon one occasion, when in company with some very grave men at Oxford, +his toast was, 'Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the +West Indies[570].' His violent prejudice against our West Indian and +American settlers appeared whenever there was an opportunity[571]. Towards +the conclusion of his _Taxation no Tyranny_, he says, 'how is it that we +hear the loudest _yelps_ for liberty among the drivers of negroes[572]?' +and in his conversation with Mr. Wilkes, he asked, 'Where did Beckford +and Trecothick learn English[573]?' That Trecothick could both speak and +write good English is well known. I myself was favoured with his +correspondence concerning the brave Corsicans. And that Beckford could +speak it with a spirit of honest resolution even to his Majesty, as his +'faithful Lord-Mayor of London,' is commemorated by the noble monument +erected to him in Guildhall[574].' + +The argument dictated by Dr. Johnson was as follows:-- + +'It must be agreed that in most ages many countries have had part of +their inhabitants in a state of slavery[575]; yet it may be doubted +whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is +impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were +equal[576]; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to +another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit +his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty +of his children[577]. What is true of a criminal seems true likewise of a +captive. A man may accept life from a conquering enemy on condition of +perpetual servitude; but it is very doubtful whether he can entail that +servitude on his descendants; for no man can stipulate without +commission for another. The condition which he himself accepts, his son +or grandson perhaps would have rejected. If we should admit, what +perhaps may with more reason be denied, that there are certain relations +between man and man which may make slavery necessary and just, yet it +can never be proved that he who is now suing for his freedom ever stood +in any of those relations. He is certainly subject by no law, but that +of violence, to his present master; who pretends no claim to his +obedience, but that he bought him from a merchant of slaves, whose right +to sell him never was examined. It is said that, according to the +constitutions of Jamaica, he was legally enslaved; these constitutions +are merely positive; and apparently injurious to the rights of mankind, +because whoever is exposed to sale is condemned to slavery without +appeal; by whatever fraud or violence he might have been originally +brought into the merchant's power. In our own time Princes have been +sold, by wretches to whose care they were entrusted, that they might +have an European education; but when once they were brought to a market +in the plantations, little would avail either their dignity or their +wrongs. The laws of Jamaica afford a Negro no redress. His colour is +considered as a sufficient testimony against him. It is to be lamented +that moral right should ever give way to political convenience. But if +temptations of interest are sometimes too strong for human virtue, let +us at least retain a virtue where there is no temptation to quit it. In +the present case there is apparent right on one side, and no convenience +on the other. Inhabitants of this island can neither gain riches nor +power by taking away the liberty of any part of the human species. The +sum of the argument is this:--No man is by nature the property of +another: The defendant is, therefore, by nature free: The rights of +nature must be some way forfeited before they can be justly taken away: +That the defendant has by any act forfeited the rights of nature we +require to be proved; and if no proof of such forfeiture can be given, +we doubt not but the justice of the court will declare him free.' + +I record Dr. Johnson's argument fairly upon this particular case; where, +perhaps, he was in the right. But I beg leave to enter my most solemn +protest against his general doctrine with respect to the _Slave Trade_. +For I will resolutely say--that his unfavourable notion of it was owing +to prejudice, and imperfect or false information. The wild and dangerous +attempt which has for some time been persisted in to obtain an act of +our Legislature, to abolish so very important and necessary a branch of +commercial interest[578], must have been crushed at once, had not the +insignificance of the zealots who vainly took the lead in it, made the +vast body of Planters, Merchants, and others, whose immense properties +are involved in that trade, reasonably enough suppose that there could +be no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has received excites +my wonder and indignation: and though some men of superiour abilities +have supported it; whether from a love of temporary popularity, when +prosperous; or a love of general mischief, when desperate, my opinion is +unshaken. To abolish a _status_, which in all ages GOD has sanctioned, +and man has continued, would not only be _robbery_ to an innumerable +class of our fellow-subjects; but it would be extreme cruelty to the +African Savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or +intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much +happier state of life; especially now when their passage to the +West-Indies and their treatment there is humanely regulated. To abolish +that trade would be to + +'--shut the gates of mercy on mankind[579]'. + +Whatever may have passed elsewhere concerning it, the HOUSE OF LORDS is +wise and independent: + +_Intaminatis fulget honoribus; +Nec sumit aut ponit secures +Arbitrio popularis auræ_[580]. + +I have read, conversed, and thought much upon the subject, and would +recommend to all who are capable of conviction, an excellent Tract by my +learned and ingenious friend John Ranby, Esq., entitled _Doubts on the +Abolition of the Slave Trade_. To Mr. Ranby's _Doubts_ I will apply Lord +Chancellor Hardwicke's expression in praise of a Scotch Law Book, called +_Dirletons Doubts_; HIS _Doubts_, (said his Lordship,) are better than +most people's _Certainties_[581]. + +When I said now to Johnson, that I was afraid I kept him too late up. +'No, Sir, (said he,) I don't care though I sit all night with you[582].' +This was an animated speech from a man in his sixty-ninth year. + +Had I been as attentive not to displease him as I ought to have been, I +know not but this vigil might have been fulfilled; but I unluckily +entered upon the controversy concerning the right of Great-Britain to +tax America, and attempted to argue in favour of our fellow-subjects on +the other side of the Atlantick[583]. I insisted that America might be +very well governed, and made to yield sufficient revenue by the means of +_influence_[584], as exemplified in Ireland, while the people might be +pleased with the imagination of their participating of the British +constitution, by having a body of representatives, without whose consent +money could not be exacted from them. Johnson could not bear my thus +opposing his avowed opinion, which he had exerted himself with an +extreme degree of heat to enforce; and the violent agitation into which +he was thrown, while answering, or rather reprimanding me, alarmed me +so, that I heartily repented of my having unthinkingly introduced the +subject. I myself, however, grew warm, and the change was great, from +the calm state of philosophical discussion in which we had a little +before been pleasingly employed. + +I talked of the corruption of the British Parliament, in which I alleged +that any question, however unreasonable or unjust, might be carried by a +venal majority; and I spoke with high admiration of the Roman Senate, as +if composed of men sincerely desirous to resolve what they should think +best for their country[585]. My friend would allow no such character to +the Roman Senate; and he maintained that the British Parliament was not +corrupt, and that there was no occasion to corrupt its members; +asserting, that there was hardly ever any question of great importance +before Parliament, any question in which a man might not very well vote +either upon one side or the other. He said there had been none in his +time except that respecting America. + +We were fatigued by the contest, which was produced by my want of +caution; and he was not then in the humour to slide into easy and +cheerful talk. It therefore so happened, that we were after an hour or +two very willing to separate and go to bed[586]. + +On Wednesday, September 24, I went into Dr. Johnson's room before he got +up, and finding that the storm of the preceding night was quite laid, I +sat down upon his bed-side, and he talked with as much readiness and +good-humour as ever. He recommended to me to plant a considerable part +of a large moorish farm which I had purchased[587], and he made several +calculations of the expence and profit: for he delighted in exercising +his mind on the science of numbers[588]. He pressed upon me the importance +of planting at the first in a very sufficient manner, quoting the saying +'_In bello non licet bis errare_:' and adding, 'this is equally true in +planting.' + +I spoke with gratitude of Dr. Taylor's hospitality; and, as evidence +that it was not on account of his good table alone that Johnson visited +him often, I mentioned a little anecdote which had escaped my friend's +recollection, and at hearing which repeated, he smiled. One evening, +when I was sitting with him, Frank delivered this message: 'Sir, Dr. +Taylor sends his compliments to you, and begs you will dine with him +to-morrow. He has got a hare.'--'My compliments (said Johnson) and I'll +dine with him--hare or rabbit.' + +After breakfast I departed, and pursued my journey northwards[589]. I took +my post-chaise from the Green Man, a very good inn at Ashbourne, the +mistress of which, a mighty civil gentlewoman, courtseying very low, +presented me with an engraving of the sign of her house; to which she +had subjoined, in her own hand-writing, an address in such singular +simplicity of style, that I have preserved it pasted upon one of the +boards of my original Journal at this time, and shall here insert it for +the amusement of my readers:-- + +'_M. KILLINGLEY's duty waits upon_ Mr. Boswell, _is exceedingly +obliged to him for this favour; whenever he comes this way, hopes for +a continuance of the same. Would_ Mr. Boswell _name the house to his +extensive acquaintance, it would be a singular favour conferr'd on one +who has it not in her power to make any other return but her most +grateful thanks, and sincerest prayers for his happiness in time, and +in a blessed eternity. + +'Tuesday morn_.' + +From this meeting at Ashbourne I derived a considerable accession to my +Johnsonian store. I communicated my original Journal to Sir William +Forbes, in whom I have always placed deserved confidence; and what he +wrote to me concerning it is so much to my credit as the biographer of +Johnson, that my readers will, I hope, grant me their indulgence for +here inserting it[590]: 'It is not once or twice going over it (says Sir +William,) that will satisfy me; for I find in it a high degree of +instruction as well as entertainment; and I derive more benefit from Dr. +Johnson's admirable discussions than I should be able to draw from his +personal conversation; for, I suppose there is not a man in the world to +whom he discloses his sentiments so freely as to yourself.' + +I cannot omit a curious circumstance which occurred at Edensor-inn, +close by Chatsworth, to survey the magnificence of which I had gone a +considerable way out of my road to Scotland. The inn was then kept by a +very jolly landlord, whose name, I think, was Malton. He happened to +mention that 'the celebrated Dr. Johnson had been in his house.' I +inquired _who_ this Dr. Johnson was, that I might hear mine host's +notion of him. 'Sir, (said he,) Johnson, the great writer; _Oddity_, as +they call him. He's the greatest writer in England; he writes for the +ministry; he has a correspondence abroad, and lets them know what's +going on[591].' + +My friend, who had a thorough dependance upon the authenticity of my +relation without any _embellishment_[592], as _falsehood_ or _fiction_ is +too gently called, laughed a good deal at this representation of +himself. + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, Sept. 29, 1777. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'By the first post I inform you of my safe arrival at my own house, and +that I had the comfort of finding my wife and children all in good +health. + +'When I look back upon our late interview, it appears to me to have +answered expectation better than almost any scheme of happiness that I +ever put in execution. My Journal is stored with wisdom and wit[593]; and +my memory is filled with the recollection of lively and affectionate +feelings, which now, I think, yield me more satisfaction than at the +time when they were first excited. I have experienced this upon other +occasions. I shall be obliged to you if you will explain it to me; for +it seems wonderful that pleasure should be more vivid at a distance than +when near. I wish you may find yourself in a humour to do me this +favour; but I flatter myself with no strong hope of it; for I have +observed, that unless upon very serious occasions, your letters to me +are not answers to those which I write[594].' + +[I then expressed much uneasiness that I had mentioned to him the name +of the gentleman[595] who had told me the story so much to his +disadvantage, the truth of which he had completely refuted; for that my +having done so might be interpreted as a breach of confidence, and +offend one whose society I valued:--therefore earnestly requesting that +no notice might be taken of it to anybody, till I should be in London, +and have an opportunity to talk it over with the gentleman.] + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'You will wonder, or you have wondered, why no letter has come from me. +What you wrote at your return, had in it such a strain of cowardly +caution as gave me no pleasure. I could not well do what you wished; I +had no need to vex you with a refusal. I have seen Mr. ----[596], and as +to him have set all right, without any inconvenience, so far as I know, +to you. Mrs. Thrale had forgot the story. You may now be at ease. + +'And at ease I certainly wish you, for the kindness that you showed in +coming so long a journey to see me. It was pity to keep you so long in +pain, but, upon reviewing the matter, I do not see what I could have +done better than as I did. + +'I hope you found at your return my dear enemy[597] and all her little +people quite well, and had no reason to repent of your journey. I think +on it with great gratitude. + +'I was not well when you left me at the Doctor's, and I grew worse; yet +I staid on, and at Lichfield was very ill. Travelling, however, did not +make me worse; and when I came to London, I complied with a summons to +go to Brighthelmston, where I saw Beauclerk, and staid three days. + +'Our CLUB has recommenced last Friday, but I was not there. Langton has +another wench[598]. Mrs. Thrale is in hopes of a young brewer[599]. They +got by their trade last year a very large sum[600], and their expenses +are proportionate. + +'Mrs. Williams's health is very bad. And I have had for some time a very +difficult and laborious respiration; but I am better by purges, +abstinence, and other methods. I am yet, however, much behind hand in my +health and rest. + +'Dr. Blair's Sermons are now universally commended; but let him think +that I had the honour of first finding and first praising his +excellencies. I did not stay to add my voice to that of the publick[601]. + +'My dear friend, let me thank you once more for your visit; you did me +great honour, and I hope met with nothing that displeased you. I staid +long at Ashbourne, not much pleased, yet aukward at departing. I then +went to Lichfield, where I found my friend at Stow-hill[602] very +dangerously diseased. Such is life. Let us try to pass it well, whatever +it be, for there is surely something beyond it. + +'Well, now I hope all is well, write as soon as you can to, dear Sir, +'Your affectionate servant, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' +'London, Nov. 25, 1777.' + + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. +'Edinburgh, Nov. 29, 1777. + +'My DEAR SIR, + +'This day's post has at length relieved me from much uneasiness, by +bringing me a letter from you. I was, indeed, doubly uneasy;--on my own +account and yours. I was very anxious to be secured against any bad +consequences from my imprudence in mentioning the gentleman's name who +had told me a story to your disadvantage; and as I could hardly suppose +it possible, that you would delay so long to make me easy, unless you +were ill, I was not a little apprehensive about you. You must not be +offended when I venture to tell you that you appear to me to have been +too rigid upon this occasion. The "_cowardly caution which gave you no +pleasure_," was suggested to me by a friend here, to whom I mentioned +the strange story and the detection of its falsity, as an instance how +one may be deceived by what is apparently very good authority. But, as I +am still persuaded, that as I might have obtained the truth, without +mentioning the gentleman's name, it was wrong in me to do it, I cannot +see that you are just in blaming my caution. But if you were ever so +just in your disapprobation, might you not have dealt more tenderly with +me? + +'I went to Auchinleck about the middle of October, and passed some time +with my father very comfortably. + + * * * * * + +'I am engaged in a criminal prosecution against a country schoolmaster, +for indecent behaviour to his female scholars. There is no statute +against such abominable conduct; but it is punishable at common law. I +shall be obliged to you for your assistance in this extraordinary trial. +I ever am, my dear Sir, + +'Your faithful humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +About this time I wrote to Johnson, giving him an account of the +decision of the _Negro cause_, by the court of Session, which by those +who hold even the mildest and best regulated slavery in abomination, (of +which number I do not hesitate to declare that I am none,) should be +remembered with high respect, and to the credit of Scotland; for it went +upon a much broader ground than the case of _Somerset_, which was +decided in England[603]; being truly the general question, whether a +perpetual obligation of service to one master in any mode should be +sanctified by the law of a free country. A negro, then called _Joseph +Knight_, a native of Africa, who having been brought to Jamaica in the +usual course of the slave trade, and purchased by a Scotch gentleman in +that island, had attended his master to Scotland, where it was +officiously suggested to him that he would be found entitled to his +liberty without any limitation. He accordingly brought his action, in +the course of which the advocates on both sides did themselves great +honour. Mr. Maclaurin has had the praise of Johnson, for his argument[604] +in favour of the negro, and Mr. Macconochie distinguished himself on the +same side, by his ingenuity and extraordinary research. Mr. Cullen, on +the part of the master, discovered good information and sound reasoning; +in which he was well supported by Mr. James Ferguson, remarkable for a +manly understanding, and a knowledge both of books and of the world. But +I cannot too highly praise the speech which Mr. Henry Dundas generously +contributed to the cause of the sooty stranger. Mr. Dundas's Scottish +accent[605], which has been so often in vain obtruded as an objection to +his powerful abilities in parliament, was no disadvantage to him in his +own country. And I do declare, that upon this memorable question he +impressed me, and I believe all his audience, with such feelings as were +produced by some of the most eminent orations of antiquity. This +testimony I liberally give to the excellence of an old friend, with whom +it has been my lot to differ very widely upon many political topicks; +yet I persuade myself without malice. A great majority of the Lords of +Session decided for the negro. But four of their number, the Lord +President, Lord Elliock, Lord Monboddo, and Lord Covington, resolutely +maintained the lawfulness of a status, which has been acknowledged in +all ages and countries, and that when freedom flourished, as in old +Greece and Rome[606]. + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'This is the time of the year in which all express their good wishes to +their friends, and I send mine to you and your family. May your lives be +long, happy, and good. I have been much out of order, but, I hope, do +not grow worse. + +'The crime of the schoolmaster whom you are engaged to prosecute is very +great, and may be suspected to be too common. In our law it would be a +breach of the peace, and a misdemeanour: that is, a kind of indefinite +crime, not capital, but punishable at the discretion of the Court. You +cannot want matter: all that needs to be said will easily occur. + +'Mr. Shaw[607], the author of the _Gaelick Grammar_, desires me to make a +request for him to Lord Eglintoune, that he may be appointed Chaplain to +one of the new-raised regiments. + +'All our friends are as they were; little has happened to them of either +good or bad. Mrs. Thrale ran a great black hair-dressing pin into her +eye; but by great evacuation she kept it from inflaming, and it is +almost well. Miss Reynolds has been out of order, but is better. Mrs. +Williams is in a very poor state of health. + +'If I should write on, I should, perhaps, write only complaints, and +therefore I will content myself with telling you, that I love to think +on you, and to hear from you; and that I am, dear Sir, + +'Yours faithfully, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'December 27, 1777.' + + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, Jan. 8, 1778. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'Your congratulations upon a new year are mixed with complaint: mine +must be so too. My wife has for some time been very ill, having been +confined to the house these three months by a severe cold, attended with +alarming symptoms. + +[Here I gave a particular account of the distress which the person, upon +every account most dear to me, suffered; and of the dismal state of +apprehension in which I now was: adding that I never stood more in need +of his consoling philosophy.] + +'Did you ever look at a book written by Wilson, a Scotchman, under the +Latin name of _Volusenus_, according to the custom of literary men at a +certain period. It is entitled _De Animi Tranquillitate_[608]. I earnestly +desire tranquillity. _Bona res quies_: but I fear I shall never attain +it: for, when unoccupied, I grow gloomy, and occupation agitates me to +feverishness. + + * * * * * + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'To a letter so interesting as your last, it is proper to return some +answer, however little I may be disposed to write. + +'Your alarm at your lady's illness was reasonable, and not +disproportionate to the appearance of the disorder. I hope your physical +friend's conjecture is now verified, and all fear of a consumption at an +end: a little care and exercise will then restore her. London is a good +air for ladies; and if you bring her hither, I will do for her what she +did for me--I will retire from my apartments, for her accommodation[609]. +Behave kindly to her, and keep her cheerful. + +'You always seem to call for tenderness. Know then, that in the first +month of the present year I very highly esteem and very cordially love +you. I hope to tell you this at the beginning of every year as long as +we live; and why should we trouble ourselves to tell or hear it oftener? + +'Tell Veronica, Euphemia, and Alexander, that I wish them, as well as +their parents, many happy years. + +'You have ended the negro's cause much to my mind. Lord Auchinleck and +dear Lord Hailes were on the side of liberty. Lord Hailes's name +reproaches me; but if he saw my languid neglect of my own affairs, he +would rather pity than resent my neglect of his. I hope to mend, _ut et +mihi vivam et amicis_. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your's affectionately, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'January 24, 1778.' + +'My service to my fellow-traveller, Joseph[610].' + + +Johnson maintained a long and intimate friendship with Mr. Welch[611], who +succeeded the celebrated Henry Fielding as one of his Majesty's Justices +of the Peace for Westminster; kept a regular office for the police[612] of +that great district; and discharged his important trust, for many years, +faithfully and ably. Johnson, who had an eager and unceasing curiosity +to know human life in all its variety, told me, that he attended Mr. +Welch in his office for a whole winter, to hear the examinations of the +culprits; but that he found an almost uniform tenor of misfortune, +wretchedness and profligacy. Mr. Welch's health being impaired, he was +advised to try the effect of a warm climate; and Johnson, by his +interest with Mr. Chamier[613], procured him leave of absence to go to +Italy, and a promise that the pension or salary of two hundred pounds a +year, which Government allowed him[614], should not be discontinued. Mr. +Welch accordingly went abroad, accompanied by his daughter Anne, a young +lady of uncommon talents and literature. + + + +'TO SAUNDERS WELCH, ESQ., AT THE ENGLISH COFFEE-HOUSE, ROME. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'To have suffered one of my best and dearest friends to pass almost two +years in foreign countries without a letter, has a very shameful +appearance of inattention. But the truth is, that there was no +particular time in which I had any thing particular to say; and general +expressions of good will, I hope, our long friendship is grown too solid +to want. + +'Of publick affairs you have information from the news-papers wherever +you go, for the English keep no secret; and of other things, Mrs. +Nollekens informs you. My intelligence could therefore be of no use; and +Miss Nancy's letters made it unnecessary to write to you for +information: I was likewise for some time out of humour, to find that +motion, and nearer approaches to the sun, did not restore your health so +fast as I expected. Of your health, the accounts have lately been more +pleasing; and I have the gratification of imaging to myself a length of +years which I hope you have gained, and of which the enjoyment will be +improved by a vast accession of images and observations which your +journeys and various residence have enabled you to make and accumulate. +You have travelled with this felicity, almost peculiar to yourself, that +your companion is not to part from you at your journey's end; but you +are to live on together, to help each other's recollection, and to +supply each other's omissions. The world has few greater pleasures than +that which two friends enjoy, in tracing back, at some distant time, +those transactions and events through which they have passed together. +One of the old man's miseries is, that he cannot easily find a companion +able to partake with him of the past. You and your fellow-traveller have +this comfort in store, that your conversation will be not easily +exhausted; one will always be glad to say what the other will always be +willing to hear. + +'That you may enjoy this pleasure long, your health must have your +constant attention. I suppose you purpose to return this year. There is +no need of haste: do not come hither before the height of summer, that +you may fall gradually into the inconveniences of your native clime. +July seems to be the proper month. August and September will prepare you +for the winter. After having travelled so far to find health, you must +take care not to lose it at home; and I hope a little care will +effectually preserve it. + +'Miss Nancy has doubtless kept a constant and copious journal. She must +not expect to be welcome when she returns, without a great mass of +information. Let her review her journal often, and set down what she +finds herself to have omitted, that she may trust to memory as little as +possible, for memory is soon confused by a quick succession of things; +and she will grow every day less confident of the truth of her own +narratives, unless she can recur to some written memorials. If she has +satisfied herself with hints, instead of full representations, let her +supply the deficiencies now while her memory is yet fresh, and while her +father's memory may help her. If she observes this direction, she will +not have travelled in vain; for she will bring home a book with which +she may entertain herself to the end of life. If it were not now too +late, I would advise her to note the impression which the first sight of +any thing new and wonderful made upon her mind. Let her now set her +thoughts down as she can recollect them; for faint as they may already +be, they will grow every day fainter. + +'Perhaps I do not flatter myself unreasonably when I imagine that you +may wish to know something of me. I can gratify your benevolence with no +account of health. The hand of time, or of disease, is very heavy upon +me. I pass restless and uneasy nights, harassed with convulsions of my +breast, and flatulencies at my stomach; and restless nights make heavy +days. But nothing will be mended by complaints, and therefore I will +make an end. When we meet, we will try to forget our cares and our +maladies, and contribute, as we can, to the chearfulness of each other. +If I had gone with you, I believe I should have been better; but I do +not know that it was in my power. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM, JOHNSON.' + +'Feb. 3, 1778.' + + +This letter, while it gives admirable advice how to travel to the best +advantage, and will therefore be of very general use, is another eminent +proof of Johnson's warm and affectionate heart[615]. + + + +'TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, Feb. 26, 1778. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'Why I have delayed, for near a month, to thank you for your last +affectionate letter, I cannot say; for my mind has been in better health +these three weeks than for some years past. I believe I have evaded till +I could send you a copy of Lord Hailes's opinion on the negro's cause, +which he wishes you to read, and correct any errours that there may be +in the language; for, says he, "we live in a critical, though not a +learned age; and I seek to screen myself under the shield of Ajax." I +communicated to him your apology for keeping the sheets of his _Annals_ +so long. He says, "I am sorry to see that Dr. Johnson is in a state of +languor. Why should a sober Christian, neither an enthusiast nor a +fanatick, be very merry or very sad?" I envy his Lordship's comfortable +constitution: but well do I know that languor and dejection will afflict +the best, however excellent their principles. I am in possession of Lord +Hailes's opinion in his own hand-writing, and have had it for some time. +My excuse then for procrastination must be, that I wanted to have it +copied; and I have now put that off so long, that it will be better to +bring it with me than send it, as I shall probably get you to look at it +sooner, when I solicit you in person. + +'My wife, who is, I thank GOD, a good deal better, is much obliged to +you for your very polite and courteous offer of your apartment: but, if +she goes to London, it will be best for her to have lodgings in the more +airy vicinity of Hyde-Park. I, however, doubt much if I shall be able to +prevail with her to accompany me to the metropolis; for she is so +different from you and me, that she dislikes travelling; and she is so +anxious about her children, that she thinks she should be unhappy if at +a distance from them. She therefore wishes rather to go to some country +place in Scotland, where she can have them with her. + +'I purpose being in London about the 20th of next month, as I think it +creditable to appear in the House of Lords as one of Douglas's Counsel, +in the great and last competition between Duke Hamilton and him[616]. + + * * * * * + +'I am sorry poor Mrs. Williams is so ill: though her temper is +unpleasant, she has always been polite and obliging to me. I wish many +happy years to good Mr. Levett, who I suppose holds his usual place at +your breakfast table[617]. + +'I ever am, my dear Sir, + +'Your affectionate humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +TO THE SAME. + +'Edinburgh, Feb. 28, 1778. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'You are at present busy amongst the English poets, preparing, for the +publick instruction and entertainment, Prefaces, biographical and +critical. It will not, therefore, be out of season to appeal to you for +the decision of a controversy which has arisen between a lady and me +concerning a passage in Parnell. That poet tells us, that his Hermit +quitted his cell + +"... to know the world by sight, +To find if _books_ or _swains_ report it right; +(For yet by _swains alone_ the world he knew, +Whose feet came wand'ring o'er the nightly dew.)" + +I maintain, that there is an inconsistency here; for as the Hermit's +notions of the world were formed from the reports both of _books_ and +_swains_, he could not justly be said to know by _swains alone_. Be +pleased to judge between us, and let us have your reasons[618]. + +'What do you say to _Taxation no Tyranny_, now, after Lord North's +declaration, or confession, or whatever else his conciliatory speech +should be called[619]? I never differed from you in politicks but upon two +points,--the Middlesex Election[620], and the Taxation of the Americans by +the _British Houses of Representatives_[621]. There is a _charm _in the +word _Parliament_, so I avoid it. As I am a steady and a warm Tory, I +regret that the King does not see it to be better for him to receive +constitutional supplies from his American subjects by the voice of their +own assemblies, where his Royal Person is represented, than through the +medium of his British subjects. I am persuaded that the power of the +Crown, which I wish to increase, would be greater when in contact with +all its dominions, than if "the rays of regal bounty[622]" were to "shine" +upon America through that dense and troubled body, a modern British +Parliament. But, enough of this subject; for your angry voice at +Ashbourne[623] upon it, still sounds aweful "in my mind's _ears_[624]." + +'I ever am, my dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +TO THE SAME. + +'Edinburgh, March 12, 1778. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'The alarm of your late illness distressed me but a few hours; for on +the evening of the day that it reached me, I found it contradicted in +_The London Chronicle_, which I could depend upon as authentick +concerning you, Mr. Strahan being the printer of it. I did not see the +paper in which "the approaching extinction of a bright luminary" was +announced. Sir William Forbes told me of it; and he says, he saw me so +uneasy, that he did not give me the report in such strong terms as he +read it. He afterwards sent me a letter from Mr. Langton to him, which +relieved me much. I am, however, not quite easy, as I have not heard +from you; and now I shall not have that comfort before I see you, for I +set out for London to-morrow before the post comes in. I hope to be with +you on Wednesday morning; and I ever am, with the highest veneration, my +dear Sir, your much obliged, faithful, and affectionate, + +'Humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +On Wednesday, March 18, I arrived in London, and was informed by good +Mr. Francis that his master was better, and was gone to Mr. Thrale's at +Streatham, to which place I wrote to him, begging to know when he would +be in town. He was not expected for some time; but next day having +called on Dr. Taylor, in Dean's-yard, Westminster, I found him there, +and was told he had come to town for a few hours. He met me with his +usual kindness, but instantly returned to the writing of something on +which he was employed when I came in, and on which he seemed much +intent. Finding him thus engaged, I made my visit very short, and had no +more of his conversation, except his expressing a serious regret that a +friend of ours[625] was living at too much expence, considering how poor +an appearance he made: 'If (said he) a man has splendour from his +expence, if he spends his money in pride or in pleasure, he has value: +but if he lets others spend it for him, which is most commonly the case, +he has no advantage from it.' + +On Friday, March 20, I found him at his own house, sitting with Mrs. +Williams, and was informed that the room formerly allotted to me[626] was +now appropriated to a charitable purpose; Mrs. Desmoulins[627], and I +think her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael, being all lodged in it. Such +was his humanity, and such his generosity, that Mrs. Desmoulins herself +told me, he allowed her half-a-guinea a week. Let it be remembered, that +this was above a twelfth part of his pension. + +His liberality, indeed, was at all periods of his life very remarkable. +Mr. Howard, of Lichfield, at whose father's house Johnson had in his +early years been kindly received, told me, that when he was a boy at the +Charter-House, his father wrote to him to go and pay a visit to Mr. +Samuel Johnson, which he accordingly did, and found him in an upper +room, of poor appearance. Johnson received him with much courteousness, +and talked a great deal to him, as to a school-boy, of the course of his +education, and other particulars. When he afterwards came to know and +understand the high character of this great man, he recollected his +condescension with wonder. He added, that when he was going away, Mr. +Johnson presented him with half-a-guinea; and this, said Mr. Howard, was +at a time when he probably had not another. + +We retired from Mrs. Williams to another room. Tom Davies soon after +joined us. He had now unfortunately failed in his circumstances, and was +much indebted to Dr. Johnson's kindness for obtaining for him many +alleviations of his distress[628]. After he went away, Johnson blamed his +folly in quitting the stage, by which he and his wife got five hundred +pounds a year. I said, I believed it was owing to Churchill's attack +upon him, + +'He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone[629].' + +JOHNSON. 'I believe so too, Sir. But what a man is he, who is to be +driven from the stage by a line? Another line would have driven him from +his shop.' + +I told him, that I was engaged as Counsel at the bar of the House of +Commons to oppose a road-bill in the county of Stirling, and asked him +what mode he would advise me to follow in addressing such an audience. +JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, you must provide yourself with a good deal of +extraneous matter, which you are to produce occasionally, so as to fill +up the time; for you must consider, that they do not listen much. If you +begin with the strength of your cause, it may be lost before they begin +to listen. When you catch a moment of attention, press the merits of the +question upon them.' He said, as to one point of the merits, that he +thought 'it would be a wrong thing to deprive the small landholders of +the privilege of assessing themselves for making and repairing the high +roads; _it was destroying a certain portion of liberty, without a good +reason, which was always a bad thing_! When I mentioned this observation +next day to Mr. Wilkes, he pleasantly said, 'What! does _he_ talk of +liberty? _Liberty_ is as ridiculous in _his_ mouth as _Religion_ in +_mine_!' Mr. Wilkes's advice, as to the best mode of speaking at the bar +of the House of Commons, was not more respectful towards the senate, +than that of Dr. Johnson. 'Be as impudent as you can, as merry as you +can, and say whatever comes uppermost. Jack Lee[630] is the best heard +there of any Counsel; and he is the most impudent dog, and always +abusing us.' + +In my interview with Dr. Johnson this evening, I was quite easy, quite +as his companion; upon which I find in my Journal the following +reflection: 'So ready is my mind to suggest matter for dissatisfaction, +that I felt a sort of regret that I was so easy. I missed that aweful +reverence with which I used to contemplate MR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, in the +complex magnitude of his literary, moral, and religious character. I +have a wonderful superstitious love of _mystery_; when, perhaps, the +truth is, that it is owing to the cloudy darkness of my own mind. I +should be glad that I am more advanced in my progress of being, so that +I can view Dr. Johnson with a steadier and clearer eye. My +dissatisfaction to-night was foolish. Would it not be foolish to regret +that we shall have less mystery in a future state? That we "now see +in[631] a glass darkly," but shall "then see face to face?"' This +reflection, which I thus freely communicate, will be valued by the +thinking part of my readers, who may have themselves experienced a +similar state of mind. + +He returned next day to Streatham, to Mr. Thrale's; where, as Mr. +Strahan once complained to me, 'he was in a great measure absorbed from +the society of his old friends[632].' I was kept in London by business, +and wrote to him on the 27th, that a separation from him for a week, +when we were so near, was equal to a separation for a year, when we were +at four hundred miles distance. I went to Streatham on Monday, March 30. +Before he appeared, Mrs. Thrale made a very characteristical remark:--'I +do not know for certain what will please Dr. Johnson: but I know for +certain that it will displease him to praise any thing, even what he +likes, extravagantly[633].' + +At dinner he laughed at querulous declamations against the age, on +account of luxury[634],--increase of London,--scarcity of provisions,--and +other such topicks. 'Houses (said he) will be built till rents fall: and +corn is more plentiful now than ever it was[635].' + +I had before dinner repeated a ridiculous story told me by an old man +who had been a passenger with me in the stage-coach to-day. Mrs. Thrale, +having taken occasion to allude to it in talking to me, called it 'The +story told you by the old _woman_.'--'Now, Madam, (said I,) give me +leave to catch you in the fact; it was not an old _woman_, but an old +_man_, whom I mentioned as having told me this.' I presumed to take an +opportunity, in presence of Johnson, of shewing this lively lady how +ready she was, unintentionally, to deviate from exact authenticity of +narration[636]. + +_Thomas à Kempis_ (he observed) must be a good book, as the world has +opened its arms to receive it. It is said to have been printed, in one +language or other, as many times as there have been months since it +first came out[637]. I always was struck with this sentence in it: 'Be not +angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you +cannot make yourself as you wish to be[638].' + +He said, 'I was angry with Hurd about Cowley, for having published a +selection of his works: but, upon better consideration, I think there is +no impropriety in a man's publishing as much as he chooses of any +authour, if he does not put the rest out of the way. A man, for +instance, may print the _Odes_ of Horace alone.' He seemed to be in a +more indulgent humour, than when this subject was discussed between him +and Mr. Murphy[639]. + +When we were at tea and coffee, there came in Lord Trimlestown, in whose +family was an ancient Irish peerage, but it suffered by taking the +generous side in the troubles of the last century[640]. He was a man of +pleasing conversation, and was accompanied by a young gentleman, his +son. + +I mentioned that I had in my possession the _Life of Sir Robert +Sibbald_, the celebrated Scottish antiquary, and founder of the Royal +College of Physicians at Edinburgh, in the original manuscript in his +own handwriting; and that it was I believed the most natural and candid +account of himself that ever was given by any man. As an instance, he +tells that the Duke of Perth, then Chancellor of Scotland, pressed him +very much to come over to the Roman Catholick faith: that he resisted +all his Grace's arguments for a considerable time, till one day he felt +himself, as it were, instantaneously convinced, and with tears in his +eyes ran into the Duke's arms, and embraced the ancient religion; that +he continued very steady in it for some time, and accompanied his Grace +to London one winter, and lived in his household; that there he found +the rigid fasting prescribed by the church very severe upon him; that +this disposed him to reconsider the controversy, and having then seen +that he was in the wrong, he returned to Protestantism. I talked of some +time or other publishing this curious life. MRS. THRALE. 'I think you +had as well let alone that publication. To discover such weakness, +exposes a man when he is gone.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, it is an honest picture +of human nature. How often are the primary motives of our greatest +actions as small as Sibbald's, for his re-conversion[641].' MRS. THRALE. +'But may they not as well be forgotten?' JOHNSON. 'No, Madam, a man +loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or +journal[642].' LORD TRIMLESTOWN. 'True, Sir. As the ladies love to see +themselves in a glass; so a man likes to see himself in his journal.' +BOSWELL. 'A very pretty allusion.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, indeed.' BOSWELL. 'And +as a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character +by looking at his journal.' I next year found the very same thought in +Atterbury's _Funeral Sermon on Lady Cutts_; where, having mentioned her +_Diary_, he says, 'In this glass she every day dressed her mind.' This +is a proof of coincidence, and not of plagiarism; for I had never read +that sermon before. + +Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest +recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost +conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth, even in the most +minute particulars. 'Accustom your children (said he) constantly to +this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say +that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check +them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.' BOSWELL. 'It +may come to the door: and when once an account is at all varied in one +circumstance, it may by degrees be varied so as to be totally different +from what really happened.' Our lively hostess, whose fancy was +impatient of the rein, fidgeted at this, and ventured to say, 'Nay, this +is too much. If Mr. Johnson should forbid me to drink tea, I would +comply, as I should feel the restraint only twice a day; but little +variations in narrative must happen a thousand times a day, if one is +not perpetually watching.' JOHNSON. 'Well, Madam, and you _ought_ to be +perpetually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth than from +intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world[643].' + +In his review of Dr. Warton's _Essay on the Writings and Genius of +Pope_, Johnson has given the following salutary caution upon this +subject:-- + +'Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, +or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be +propagated, as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men +relate what they think, as what they know; some men of confused memories +and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and +some talk on, without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to +broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by +successive relaters[644].' + +Had he lived to read what Sir John Hawkins and Mrs. Piozzi have related +concerning himself, how much would he have found his observation +illustrated. He was indeed so much impressed with the prevalence of +falsehood, voluntary or unintentional, that I never knew any person who +upon hearing an extraordinary circumstance told, discovered more of the +_incredulus odi_[645]. He would say, with a significant look and decisive +tone, 'It is not so. Do not tell this again[646].' He inculcated upon all +his friends the importance of perpetual vigilance against the slightest +degrees of falsehood; the effect of which, as Sir Joshua Reynolds +observed to me, has been, that all who were of his _school_ are +distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy, which they would not +have possessed in the same degree, if they had not been acquainted with +Johnson[647]. + +Talking of ghosts, he said, 'It is wonderful that five thousand years +have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is +undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit +of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all +belief is for it[648].' + +He said, 'John Wesley's conversation is good[649], but he is never at +leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour[650]. This is very +disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, +as I do.' + +On Friday, April 3, I dined with him in London, in a company[651] where +were present several eminent men, whom I shall not name, but distinguish +their parts in the conversation by different letters. + +F. 'I have been looking at this famous antique marble dog of Mr. +Jennings, valued at a thousand guineas, said to be Alcibiades's dog.' +JOHNSON. 'His tail then must be docked. That was the mark of +Alcibiades's dog[652].' E. 'A thousand guineas! The representation of no +animal whatever is worth so much, at this rate a dead dog would indeed +be better than a living lion.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is not the worth of the +thing, but of the skill in forming it which is so highly estimated. +Every thing that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shews man he +can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. The first man who +balanced a straw upon his nose[653]; Johnson, who rode upon three horses +at a time[654]; in short, all such men deserved the applause of mankind, +not on account of the use of what they did, but of the dexterity which +they exhibited.' BOSWELL. 'Yet a misapplication of time and assiduity is +not to be encouraged. Addison, in one of his _Spectators_, commends the +judgement of a King, who, as a suitable reward to a man that by long +perseverance had attained to the art of throwing a barleycorn through +the eye of a needle, gave him a bushel of barley.' JOHNSON. 'He must +have been a King of Scotland, where barley is scarce.' F. 'One of the +most remarkable antique figures of an animal is the boar at Florence.' +JOHNSON. 'The first boar that is well made in marble, should be +preserved as a wonder. When men arrive at a facility of making boars +well, then the workmanship is not of such value, but they should however +be preserved as examples, and as a greater security for the restoration +of the art, should it be lost.' + +E. 'We hear prodigious[655] complaints at present of emigration[656]. I am +convinced that emigration makes a country more populous.' J. 'That +sounds very much like a paradox.' E. 'Exportation of men, like +exportation of all other commodities, makes more be produced.' JOHNSON. +'But there would be more people were there not emigration, provided +there were food for more.' E. 'No; leave a few breeders, and you'll have +more people than if there were no emigration.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, it is +plain there will be more people, if there are more breeders. Thirty cows +in good pasture will produce more calves than ten cows, provided they +have good bulls.' E. 'There are bulls enough in Ireland.' JOHNSON. +(smiling,) 'So, Sir, I should think from your argument.' BOSWELL. 'You +said, exportation of men, like exportation of other commodities, makes +more be produced. But a bounty is given to encourage the exportation of +corn[657], and no bounty is given for the exportation of men; though, +indeed, those who go, gain by it.' R. 'But the bounty on the exportation +of corn is paid at home.' E. 'That's the same thing.' JOHNSON. 'No, +Sir.' R. 'A man who stays at home, gains nothing by his neighbours +emigrating.' BOSWELL. 'I can understand that emigration may be the cause +that more people may be produced in a country; but the country will not +therefore be the more populous; for the people issue from it. It can +only be said that there is a flow of people. It is an encouragement to +have children, to know that they can get a living by emigration.' R. +'Yes, if there were an emigration of children under six years of age. +But they don't emigrate till they could earn their livelihood in some +way at home.' C. 'It is remarkable that the most unhealthy countries, +where there are the most destructive diseases, such as Egypt and Bengal, +are the most populous.' JOHNSON. 'Countries which are the most populous +have the most destructive diseases. _That_ is the true state of the +proposition.' C. 'Holland is very unhealthy, yet it is exceedingly +populous.' JOHNSON. 'I know not that Holland is unhealthy. But its +populousness is owing to an influx of people from all other countries. +Disease cannot be the cause of populousness, for it not only carries off +a great proportion of the people, but those who are left are weakened +and unfit for the purposes of increase.' + +R. 'Mr. E., I don't mean to flatter, but when posterity reads one of +your speeches in Parliament, it will be difficult to believe that you +took so much pains, knowing with certainty that it could produce no +effect, that not one vote would be gained by it[658].' E. 'Waiving your +compliment to me, I shall say in general, that it is very well worth +while for a man to take pains to speak well in Parliament. A man, who +has vanity, speaks to display his talents; and if a man speaks well, he +gradually establishes a certain reputation and consequence in the +general opinion, which sooner or later will have its political reward. +Besides, though not one vote is gained, a good speech has its effect. +Though an act which has been ably opposed passes into a law, yet in its +progress it is modelled, it is softened in such a manner, that we see +plainly the Minister has been told, that the Members attached to him are +so sensible of its injustice or absurdity from what they have heard, +that it must be altered[659].' JOHNSON. 'And, Sir, there is a +gratification of pride. Though we cannot out-vote them we will out-argue +them. They shall not do wrong without its being shown both to themselves +and to the world.' E. 'The House of Commons is a mixed body. (I except +the Minority, which I hold to be pure, [smiling] but I take the whole +House.) It is a mass by no means pure; but neither is it wholly corrupt, +though there is a large proportion of corruption in it. There are many +members who generally go with the Minister, who will not go all lengths. +There are many honest well-meaning country gentleman who are in +parliament only to keep up the consequence of their families. Upon most +of these a good speech will have influence.' JOHNSON. 'We are all more +or less governed by interest. But interest will not make us do every +thing. In a case which admits of doubt, we try to think on the side +which is for our interest, and generally bring ourselves to act +accordingly. But the subject must admit of diversity of colouring; it +must receive a colour on that side. In the House of Commons there are +members enough who will not vote what is grossly unjust or absurd. No, +Sir, there must always be right enough, or appearance of right, to keep +wrong in countenance.' BOSWELL. 'There is surely always a majority in +parliament who have places, or who want to have them, and who therefore +will be generally ready to support government without requiring any +pretext.' E. 'True, Sir; that majority will always follow + +"_Quo clamor vocat et turba, faventium_[660]."' + +BOSWELL. 'Well now, let us take the common phrase, Place-hunters. I +thought they had hunted without regard to any thing, just as their +huntsmen, the Minister, leads, looking only to the prey[661].' J. 'But +taking your metaphor, you know that in hunting there are few so +desperately keen as to follow without reserve. Some do not choose to +leap ditches and hedges and risk their necks, or gallop over steeps, or +even to dirty themselves in bogs and mire.' BOSWELL. 'I am glad there +are some good, quiet, moderate political hunters.' E. 'I believe, in any +body of men in England, I should have been in the Minority; I have +always been in the Minority.' P. 'The House of Commons resembles a +private company. How seldom is any man convinced by another's argument; +passion and pride rise against it.' R. 'What would be the consequence, +if a Minister, sure of a majority in the House of Commons, should +resolve that there should be no speaking at all upon his side.' E. 'He +must soon go out. That has been tried; but it was found it would not +do.' + +E. 'The Irish language is not primitive; it is Teutonick, a mixture of +the northern tongues: it has much English in it.' JOHNSON. 'It may have +been radically Teutonick; but English and High Dutch have no similarity +to the eye, though radically the same. Once, when looking into Low +Dutch, I found, in a whole page, only one word similar to English; +_stroem_, like _stream_, and it signified _tide_'. E. 'I remember having +seen a Dutch Sonnet, in which I found this word, _roesnopies_. Nobody +would at first think that this could be English; but, when we enquire, +we find _roes_, rose, and _nopie_, knob; so we have _rosebuds_'. + +JOHNSON. 'I have been reading Thicknesse's _Travels_, which I think are +entertaining.' BOSWELL. 'What, Sir, a good book?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, to +read once; I do not say you are to make a study of it, and digest it; +and I believe it to be a true book in his intention. All travellers +generally mean to tell truth; though Thicknesse observes, upon Smollet's +account of his alarming a whole town in France by firing a +blunderbuss[662], and frightening a French nobleman till he made him tie +on his portmanteau[663], that he would be loth to say Smollet had told two +lies in one page; but he had found the only town in France where these +things could have happened[664]. Travellers must often be mistaken. In +every thing, except where mensuration can be applied, they may honestly +differ. There has been, of late, a strange turn in travellers to be +displeased[665].' + +E. 'From the experience which I have had,--and I have had a great +deal,--I have learnt to think _better_ of mankind[666].' JOHNSON. 'From my +experience I have found them worse in commercial dealings, more disposed +to cheat, than I had any notion of; but more disposed to do one another +good than I had conceived[667].' J. 'Less just and more beneficent.' +JOHNSON. 'And really it is wonderful, considering how much attention is +necessary for men to take care of themselves, and ward off immediate +evils which press upon them, it is wonderful how much they do for +others. As it is said of the greatest liar, that he tells more truth +than falsehood; so it may be said of the worst man, that he does more +good than evil[668].' BOSWELL. 'Perhaps from experience men may be found +happier than we suppose.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; the more we enquire, we +shall find men the less happy.' P. 'As to thinking better or worse of +mankind from experience, some cunning people will not be satisfied +unless they have put men to the test, as they think. There is a very +good story told of Sir Godfrey Kneller, in his character of a Justice of +the peace. A gentleman brought his servant before him, upon an +accusation of having stolen some money from him; but it having come out +that he had laid it purposely in the servant's way, in order to try his +honesty, Sir Godfrey sent the master to prison[669].' JOHNSON. 'To resist +temptation once, is not a sufficient proof of honesty. If a servant, +indeed, were to resist the continued temptation of silver lying in a +window, as some people let it lye, when he is sure his master does not +know how much there is of it, he would give a strong proof of honesty. +But this is a proof to which you have no right to put a man. You know, +humanly speaking, there is a certain degree of temptation, which will +overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, +you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.' P. +'And, when once overcome, it is easier for him to be got the better of +again.' BOSWELL. 'Yes, you are his seducer; you have debauched him. I +have known a man[670] resolved to put friendship to the test, by asking a +friend to lend him money merely with that view, when he did not want +it.' JOHNSON. 'That is very wrong, Sir. Your friend may be a narrow man, +and yet have many good qualities: narrowness may be his only fault. Now +you are trying his general character as a friend, by one particular +singly, in which he happens to be defective, when, in truth, his +character is composed of many particulars.' + +E. 'I understand the hogshead of claret, which this society was favoured +with by our friend the Dean[671], is nearly out; I think he should be +written to, to send another of the same kind. Let the request be made +with a happy ambiguity of expression, so that we may have the chance of +his sending _it_ also as a present.' JOHNSON. 'I am willing to offer my +services as secretary on this occasion.' P. 'As many as are for Dr. +Johnson being secretary hold up your hands.--Carried unanimously.' +BOSWELL. 'He will be our Dictator.' JOHNSON. 'No, the company is to +dictate to me. I am only to write for wine; and I am quite +disinterested, as I drink none; I shall not be suspected of having +forged the application. I am no more than humble _scribe_.' E. 'Then you +shall _pre_scribe.' BOSWELL. 'Very well. The first play of words +to-day.' J. 'No, no; the _bulls_ in Ireland.' JOHNSON. 'Were I your +Dictator you should have no wine. It would be my business _cavere ne +quid detrimenti Respublica caperet_, and wine is dangerous. Rome was +ruined by luxury,' (smiling.) E. 'If you allow no wine as Dictator, you +shall not have me for your master of horse.' + +On Saturday, April 4, I drank tea with Johnson at Dr. Taylor's, where he +had dined. He entertained us with an account of a tragedy written by a +Dr. Kennedy, (not the Lisbon physician.) 'The catastrophe of it (said +he) was, that a King, who was jealous of his Queen with his +prime-minister, castrated himself[672]. This tragedy was actually shewn +about in manuscript to several people, and, amongst others, to Mr. +Fitzherbert, who repeated to me two lines of the Prologue: + +"Our hero's fate we have but gently touch'd; +The fair might blame us, if it were less couch'd." + +It is hardly to be believed what absurd and indecent images men will +introduce into their writings, without being sensible of the absurdity +and indecency. I remember Lord Orrery told me, that there was a pamphlet +written against Sir Robert Walpole, the whole of which was an allegory +on the PHALLICK OBSCENITY. The Duchess of Buckingham asked Lord Orrery +_who_ this person was? He answered he did not know. She said, she would +send to Mr. Pulteney, who, she supposed, could inform her. So then, to +prevent her from making herself ridiculous, Lord Orrery sent her Grace a +note, in which he gave her to understand what was meant.' + +He was very silent this evening; and read in a variety of books: +suddenly throwing down one, and taking up another. + +He talked of going to Streatham that night. TAYLOR. 'You'll be robbed if +you do: or you must shoot a highwayman[673]. Now I would rather be robbed +than do that; I would not shoot a highwayman.' JOHNSON. 'But I would +rather shoot him in the instant when he is attempting to rob me, than +afterwards swear against him at the Old-Bailey, to take away his life, +after he has robbed me[674]. I am surer I am right in the one case than in +the other. I may be mistaken as to the man, when I swear: I cannot be +mistaken, if I shoot him in the act. Besides, we feel less reluctance +reluctance to take away a man's life, when we are heated by the injury, +than to do it at a distance of time by an oath, after we have cooled.' +BOSWELL. 'So, Sir, you would rather act from the motive of private +passion, than that of publick advantage.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, when I +shoot the highwayman I act from both.' BOSWELL. 'Very well, very +well.--There is no catching him.' JOHNSON. 'At the same time one does +not know what to say. For perhaps one may, a year after, hang himself +from uneasiness for having shot a man[675]. Few minds are fit to be +trusted with so great a thing.' BOSWELL. 'Then, Sir, you would not shoot +him?' JOHNSON. 'But I might be vexed afterwards for that too[676].' + +Thrale's carriage not having come for him, as he expected, I accompanied +him some part of the way home to his own house. I told him, that I had +talked of him to Mr. Dunning[677] a few days before, and had said, that in +his company we did not so much interchange conversation, as listen to +him; and that Dunning observed, upon this, 'One is always willing to +listen to Dr. Johnson:' to which I answered, 'That is a great deal from +you, Sir.'--'Yes, Sir, (said Johnson,) a great deal indeed. Here is a +man willing to listen, to whom the world is listening all the rest of +the year.' BOSWELL. 'I think, Sir, it is right to tell one man of such a +handsome thing, which has been said of him by another. It tends to +increase benevolence.' JOHNSON. 'Undoubtedly it is right, Sir[678].' + +On Tuesday, April 7, I breakfasted with him at his house. He said, +'nobody was content.' I mentioned to him a respectable person[679] in +Scotland whom he knew; and I asserted, that I really believed he was +always content. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, he is not content with the present; +he has always some new scheme, some new plantation, something which is +future. You know he was not content as a widower; for he married again.' +BOSWELL. 'But he is not restless.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, he is only locally at +rest. A chymist is locally at rest; but his mind is hard at work. This +gentleman has done with external exertions. It is too late for him to +engage in distant projects.' BOSWELL. 'He seems to amuse himself quite +well; to have his attention fixed, and his tranquillity preserved by +very small matters. I have tried this; but it would not do with me.' +JOHNSON, (laughing) 'No, Sir; it must be born with a man to be contented +to take up with little things. Women have a great advantage that they +may take up with little things, without disgracing themselves: a man +cannot, except with fiddling. Had I learnt to fiddle, I should have done +nothing else[680].' BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, did you ever play on any musical +instrument?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. I once bought me a flagelet; but I never +made out a tune.' BOSWELL. 'A flagelet, Sir!--so small an instrument[681]? +I should have liked to hear you play on the violoncello. _That_ should +have been _your_ instrument.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I might as well have played +on the violoncello as another; but I should have done nothing else. No, +Sir; a man would never undertake great things, could he be amused with +small. I once tried knotting. Dempster's sister undertook to teach me; +but I could not learn it[682].' BOSWELL. 'So, Sir; it will be related in +pompous narrative, "Once for his amusement he tried knotting; nor did +this Hercules disdain the distaff."' JOHNSON. 'Knitting of stockings is +a good amusement. As a freeman of Aberdeen[683] I should be a knitter of +stockings.' He asked me to go down with him and dine at Mr. Thrale's at +Streatham, to which I agreed. I had lent him _An Account of Scotland, in +1702_, written by a man of various enquiry, an English chaplain to a +regiment stationed there. JOHNSON. 'It is sad stuff, Sir, miserably +written, as books in general then were. There is now an elegance of +style universally diffused.[684] No man now writes so ill as Martin's +_Account of the Hebrides_ is written. A man could not write so ill, if +he should try. Set a merchant's clerk now to write, and he'll do +better[685].' + +He talked to me with serious concern of a certain female friend's +'laxity of narration, and inattention to truth.'--'I am as much vexed +(said he) at the ease with which she hears it mentioned to her, as at +the thing itself. I told her, "Madam, you are contented to hear every +day said to you, what the highest of mankind have died for, rather than +bear."--You know, Sir, the highest of mankind have died rather than bear +to be told they had uttered a falsehood. Do talk to her of it[686]: I am +weary.' + +BOSWELL. 'Was not Dr. John Campbell a very inaccurate man in his +narrative, Sir? He once told me, that he drank thirteen bottles of port +at a sitting.'[687] JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever +lied with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he +told you in conversation: if there was fact mixed with it. However, I +loved Campbell: he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for +religion. Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; +and he did nothing grossly wrong that I have heard[688].' + +I told him, that I had been present the day before, when Mrs. Montagu, +the literary lady[689], sat to Miss Reynolds for her picture; and that she +said, 'she had bound up Mr. Gibbon's _History_ without the last two +offensive chapters[690]; for that she thought the book so far good, as it +gave, in an elegant manner, the substance of the bad writers _medii +aevi_, which the late Lord Lyttelton advised her to read.' JOHNSON. +'Sir, she has not read them: she shews none of this impetuosity to me: +she does not know Greek, and, I fancy, knows little Latin. She is +willing you should think she knows them; but she does not say she +does[691].' BOSWELL. 'Mr. Harris, who was present, agreed with her.' +JOHNSON. 'Harris was laughing at her, Sir. Harris is a sound sullen +scholar; he does not like interlopers. Harris, however, is a prig, and a +bad prig[692]. I looked into his book[693], and thought he did not +understand his own system.' BOSWELL. 'He says plain things in a formal +and abstract way, to be sure: but his method is good: for to have clear +notions upon any subject, we must have recourse to analytick +arrangement.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is what every body does, whether they +will or no. But sometimes things may be made darker by definition. I see +a _cow_, I define her, _Animal quadrupes ruminans cornutum_. But a goat +ruminates, and a cow may have no horns. _Cow_ is plainer.' BOSWELL. 'I +think Dr. Franklin's definition of _Man_ a good one--"A tool-making +animal."' JOHNSON. 'But many a man never made a tool; and suppose a man +without arms, he could not make a tool.' + +Talking of drinking wine, he said, 'I did not leave off wine, because I +could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the +worse for it. University College has witnessed this[694].' BOSWELL. 'Why +then, Sir, did you leave it off?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, because it is so +much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated, +never to lose the power over himself[695]. I shall not begin to drink wine +again, till I grow old, and want it.' BOSWELL. 'I think, Sir, you once +said to me, that not to drink wine was a great deduction from life.' +JOHNSON. 'It is a diminution of pleasure, to be sure; but I do not say a +diminution of happiness. There is more happiness in being rational.' +BOSWELL. 'But if we could have pleasure always, should not we be happy? +The greatest part of men would compound for pleasure.' JOHNSON. +'Supposing we could have pleasure always, an intellectual man would not +compound for it. The greatest part of men would compound, because the +greatest part of men are gross.' BOSWELL. 'I allow there may be greater +pleasure than from wine. I have had more pleasure from your +conversation, I have indeed; I assure you I have.' JOHNSON. 'When we +talk of pleasure, we mean sensual pleasure. When a man says, he had +pleasure with a woman, he does not mean conversation, but something of a +very different nature. Philosophers tell you, that pleasure is +_contrary_ to happiness. Gross men prefer animal pleasure. So there are +men who have preferred living among savages. Now what a wretch must he +be, who is content with such conversation as can be had among savages! +You may remember an officer at Fort Augustus[696], who had served in +America, told us of a woman whom they were obliged to _bind_, in order +to get her back from savage life.' BOSWELL. 'She must have been an +animal, a beast.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, she was a speaking cat.' + +I mentioned to him that I had become very weary in a company where I +heard not a single intellectual sentence, except that 'a man who had +been settled ten years in Minorca was become a much inferiour man to +what he was in London, because a man's mind grows narrow in a narrow +place.' JOHNSON. 'A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place, whose +mind is enlarged only because he has lived in a large place: but what is +got by books and thinking is preserved in a narrow place as well as in a +large place. A man cannot know modes of life as well in Minorca as in +London; but he may study mathematicks as well in Minorca.' BOSWELL. 'I +don't know, Sir: if you had remained ten years in the Isle of Col, you +would not have been the man that you now are.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, if I +had been there from fifteen to twenty-five; but not if from twenty-five +to thirty-five.' BOSWELL. 'I own, Sir, the spirits which I have in +London make me do every thing with more readiness and vigour. I can talk +twice as much in London as any where else[697].' + +Of Goldsmith he said, 'He was not an agreeable companion, for he talked +always for fame[698]. A man who does so never can be pleasing. The man who +talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you. An eminent +friend[699] of ours is not so agreeable as the variety of his knowledge +would otherwise make him, because he talks partly from ostentation.' + +Soon after our arrival at Thrale's, I heard one of the maids calling +eagerly on another, to go to Dr. Johnson. I wondered what this could +mean. I afterwards learnt, that it was to give her a Bible, which he had +brought from London as a present to her. + +He was for a considerable time occupied in reading _Mémoires de +Fontenelle_, leaning and swinging upon the low gate into the court, +without his hat. + +I looked into Lord Kames's _Sketches of the History of Man_; and +mentioned to Dr. Johnson his censure of Charles the Fifth, for +celebrating his funeral obsequies in his life-time, which, I told him, I +had been used to think a solemn and affecting act[700]. JOHNSON. 'Why, +Sir, a man may dispose his mind to think so of that act of Charles; but +it is so liable to ridicule, that if one man out of ten thousand laughs +at it, he'll make the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine +laugh too.' I could not agree with him in this. + +Sir John Pringle had expressed a wish that I would ask Dr. Johnson's +opinion what were the best English sermons for style. I took an +opportunity to-day of mentioning several to him.--_Atterbury_? JOHNSON. +'Yes, Sir, one of the best.' BOSWELL. _Tillotson_? JOHNSON. 'Why, not +now. I should not advise a preacher at this day to imitate Tillotson's +style: though I don't know; I should be cautious of objecting to what +has been applauded by so many suffrages.--_South_ is one of the best, if +you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness +of language.--_Seed_ has a very fine style; but he is not very +theological.--_Jortin's_ sermons are very elegant.--_Sherlock's_ style +too is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study.--And +you may add _Smallridge_. All the latter preachers have a good style. +Indeed, nobody now talks much of style: every body composes pretty +well.[701] There are no such unharmonious periods as there were a hundred +years ago. I should recommend Dr. _Clarke's_ sermons, were he +orthodox.[702] However, it is very well known _where_ he was not orthodox, +which was upon the doctrine of the Trinity, as to which he is a +condemned heretick; so one is aware of it.' BOSWELL. 'I like Ogden's +_Sermons on Prayer_ very much, both for neatness of style and subtilty +of reasoning.' JOHNSON. 'I should like to read all that Ogden has +written.'[703] BOSWELL. 'What I wish to know is, what sermons afford the +best specimen of English pulpit eloquence.' JOHNSON. 'We have no sermons +addressed to the passions that are good for any thing; if you mean that +kind of eloquence.' A CLERGYMAN: (whose name I do not recollect.) 'Were +not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions?' JOHNSON. 'They were +nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may.' + +At dinner, Mrs. Thrale expressed a wish to go and see Scotland. JOHNSON. +'Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England. It is seeing +the flower gradually fade away to the naked stalk. Seeing the Hebrides, +indeed, is seeing quite a different scene.' + +Our poor friend, Mr. Thomas Davies[704], was soon to have a benefit at +Drury-lane theatre, as some relief to his unfortunate circumstances. We +were all warmly interested for his success, and had contributed to it. +However, we thought there was no harm in having our joke, when he could +not be hurt by it. I proposed that he should be brought on to speak a +Prologue upon the occasion; and I began to mutter fragments of what it +might be: as, that when now grown _old_, he was obliged to cry, 'Poor +Tom's _a-cold_[705];'--that he owned he had been driven from the stage by +a Churchill, but that this was no disgrace, for a Churchill[706] had beat +the French;--that he had been satyrised as 'mouthing a sentence as curs +mouth a bone,' but he was now glad of a bone to pick.--'Nay, (said +Johnson,) I would have him to say, + +"Mad Tom is come to see the world again[707]."' + +He and I returned to town in the evening. Upon the road, I endeavoured +to maintain, in argument, that a landed gentleman is not under any +obligation to reside upon his estate; and that by living in London he +does no injury to his country. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, he does no injury to +his country in general, because the money which he draws from it gets +back again in circulation; but to his particular district, his +particular parish, he does an injury. All that he has to give away is +not given to those who have the first claim to it. And though I have +said that the money circulates back, it is a long time before that +happens. Then, Sir, a man of family and estate ought to consider himself +as having the charge of a district, over which he is to diffuse civility +and happiness[708].' + +Next day I found him at home in the morning. He praised Delany's +_Observations on Swift_; said that his book and Lord Orrery's might both +be true, though one viewed Swift more, and the other less favourably; +and that, between both, we might have a complete notion of Swift[709]. + +Talking of a man's resolving to deny himself the use of wine, from moral +and religious considerations, he said, 'He must not doubt about it. When +one doubts as to pleasure, we know what will be the conclusion. I now no +more think of drinking wine, than a horse does. The wine upon the table +is no more for me, than for the dog that is under the table.'[710] + +On Thursday, April 9, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, with +the Bishop of St. Asaph,[711] (Dr. Shipley,) Mr. Allan Ramsay[712], Mr. +Gibbon, Mr. Cambridge, and Mr. Langton. Mr. Ramsay had lately returned +from Italy, and entertained us with his observations upon Horace's +villa, which he had examined with great care. I relished this much, as +it brought fresh into my mind what I had viewed with great pleasure +thirteen years before. The Bishop, Dr. Johnson, and Mr. Cambridge, +joined with Mr. Ramsay, in recollecting the various lines in Horace +relating to the subject. + +Horace's journey to Brundusium being mentioned, Johnson observed, that +the brook which he describes is to be seen now, exactly as at that +time,[713] and that he had often wondered how it happened, that small +brooks, such as this, kept the same situation for ages, notwithstanding +earthquakes, by which even mountains have been changed, and agriculture, +which produces such a variation upon the surface of the earth. +CAMBRIDGE. 'A Spanish writer has this thought in a poetical conceit. +After observing that most of the solid structures of Rome are totally +perished, while the Tiber remains the same, he adds, + +'_Lo que èra Firme huió solamente, +Lo Fugitivo permanece y dura_[714].' + +JOHNSON. 'Sir, that is taken from Janus Vitalis:[715] + +'... _immota labescunt; +Et quae perpetuò sunt agitata manent_[716].' + +The Bishop said, it appeared from Horace's writings that he was a +cheerful contented man. JOHNSON. 'We have no reason to believe that, my +Lord. Are we to think Pope was happy, because he says so in his +writings? We see in his writings what he wished the state of his mind to +appear. Dr. Young, who pined for preferment, talks with contempt of it +in his writings, and affects to despise every thing that he did not +despise.'[717] BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH. 'He was like other chaplains, looking +for vacancies: but that is not peculiar to the clergy. I remember when I +was with the army,[718] after the battle of Lafeldt, the officers +seriously grumbled that no general was killed.' CAMBRIDGE. 'We may +believe Horace more when he says, + +"_Romae Tibur amem, ventosus Tibure Romam_[719];" + +than when he boasts of his consistency: + +"_Me constare mihi scis, et decedere tristem, +Quandocunque trahunt invisa negotia Romam_[720]."' + +BOSWELL. 'How hard is it that man can never be at rest.' RAMSAY. 'It is +not in his nature to be at rest. When he is at rest, he is in the worst +state that he can be in; for he has nothing to agitate him. He is then +like the man in the Irish song, + +"There liv'd a young man in Ballinacrazy. +Who wanted a wife for to make him un_ai_sy."' + +Goldsmith being mentioned, Johnson observed, that it was long before his +merit came to be acknowledged. That he once complained to him, in +ludicrous terms of distress, 'Whenever I write any thing, the publick +_make a point_ to know nothing about it:' but that his _Traveller_ +brought him into high reputation.[721] LANGTON. 'There is not one bad line +in that poem; not one of Dryden's careless verses.' SIR JOSHUA. 'I was +glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the +English language.' LANGTON. 'Why was you glad? You surely had no doubt +of this before.' JOHNSON. 'No; the merit of _The Traveller_ is so well +established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure +diminish it.'[722] SIR JOSHUA. 'But his friends may suspect they had too +great a partiality for him.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, the partiality of his +friends was always against him. It was with difficulty we could give him +a hearing. Goldsmith had no settled notions upon any subject; so he +talked always at random[723]. It seemed to be his intention to blurt out +whatever was in his mind, and see what would become of it. He was angry +too, when catched in an absurdity; but it did not prevent him from +falling into another the next minute. I remember Chamier[724], after +talking with him for some time, said, "Well, I do believe he wrote this +poem himself: and, let me tell you, that is believing a great deal." +Chamier once asked him, what he meant by _slow_, the last word in the +first line of _The Traveller_, + +'"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow." + +'Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something +without consideration, answered, "Yes." I was sitting by, and said, "No, +Sir; you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean, that +sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude[725]." Chamier +believed then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me +write it.[726] Goldsmith, however, was a man, who, whatever he wrote, did +it better than any other man could do. He deserved a place in +Westminster-Abbey, and every year he lived, would have deserved it +better. He had, indeed, been at no pains to fill his mind with +knowledge. He transplanted it from one place to another; and it did not +settle in his mind; so he could not tell what was in his own books.' + +We talked of living in the country. JOHNSON. 'No wise man will go to +live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better +done in the country. For instance: if he is to shut himself up for a +year to study a science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to +an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is +nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in +London, he is not sure when he shall walk in again. A great city is, to +be sure, the school for studying life; and "The proper study of mankind +is man," as Pope observes.'[727] BOSWELL. 'I fancy London is the best +place for society; though I have heard that the very first society of +Paris is still beyond any thing that we have here.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I +question if in Paris such a company as is sitting round this table could +be got together in less than half a year. They talk in France of the +felicity of men and women living together: the truth is, that there the +men are not higher than the women, they know no more than the women do, +and they are not held down in their conversation by the presence of +women[728].' RAMSAY. 'Literature is upon the growth, it is in its spring +in France. Here it is rather _passée_.' JOHNSON. 'Literature was in +France long before we had it. Paris was the second city for the revival +of letters: Italy had it first, to be sure. What have we done for +literature, equal to what was done by the Stephani and others in France? +Our literature came to us through France. Caxton printed only two books, +Chaucer and Gower, that were not translations from the French; and +Chaucer, we know, took much from the Italians. No, Sir, if literature be +in its spring in France, it is a second spring; it is after a winter. We +are now before the French in literature[729]; but we had it long after +them. In England, any man who wears a sword and a powdered wig is +ashamed to be illiterate[730]. I believe it is not so in France. Yet there +is, probably, a great deal of learning in France, because they have such +a number of religious establishments; so many men who have nothing else +to do but to study. I do not know this; but I take it upon the common +principles of chance. Where there are many shooters, some will hit.' + +We talked of old age[731]. Johnson (now in his seventieth year,) said, 'It +is a man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid +in old age.' The Bishop asked, if an old man does not lose faster than +he gets. JOHNSON. 'I think not, my Lord, if he exerts himself.' One of +the company rashly observed, that he thought it was happy for an old man +that insensibility comes upon him. JOHNSON: (with a noble elevation and +disdain,) 'No, Sir, I should never be happy by being less rational.' +BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH. 'Your wish then, Sir, is [Greek: gaeraskein +didaskomenos][732].' JOHNSON. 'Yes, my Lord.' + +His Lordship mentioned a charitable establishment in Wales, where people +were maintained, and supplied with every thing, upon the condition of +their contributing the weekly produce of their labour; and he said, they +grew quite torpid for want of property. JOHNSON. 'They have no object +for hope. Their condition cannot be better. It is rowing without a +port.' + +One of the company asked him the meaning of the expression in Juvenal, +_unius lacertæ_. JOHNSON. 'I think it clear enough; as much ground as +one may have a chance to find a lizard upon.' + +Commentators have differed as to the exact meaning of the expression by +which the Poet intended to enforce the sentiment contained in the +passage where these words occur. It is enough that they mean to denote +even a very small possession, provided it be a man's own: + +'_Est aliquid quocunque loco quocunque recessu, +Unius sese dominum fecisse lacertæ_[733].' + +This season there was a whimsical fashion in the newspapers of applying +Shakspeare's words to describe living persons well known in the world; +which was done under the title of _Modern Characters from Shakspeare_; +many of which were admirably adapted. The fancy took so much, that they +were afterwards collected into a pamphlet[734]. Somebody said to Johnson, +across the table, that he had not been in those characters. 'Yes (said +he) I have. I should have been sorry to be left out.' He then repeated +what had been applied to him, + +'I must borrow GARAGANTUA'S mouth[735].' + +Miss Reynolds not perceiving at once the meaning of this, he was obliged +to explain it to her, which had something of an aukward and ludicrous +effect. 'Why, Madam, it has a reference to me, as using big words, which +require the mouth of a giant to pronounce them. Garagantua is the name +of a giant in _Rabelais_.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, there is another amongst +them for you: + +"He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, +Or Jove for his power to thunder[736]."' + +JOHNSON. 'There is nothing marked in that. No, Sir, Garagantua is the +best.' Notwithstanding this ease and good humour, when I, a little while +afterwards, repeated his sarcasm on Kenrick[737], which was received with +applause, he asked, '_Who_ said that?' and on my suddenly answering, +_Garagantua_, he looked serious, which was a sufficient indication that +he did not wish it to be kept up. + +When we went to the drawing-room there was a rich assemblage. Besides +the company who had been at dinner, there were Mr. Garrick, Mr. Harris +of Salisbury, Dr. Percy, Dr. Burney, Honourable Mrs. Cholmondeley, Miss +Hannah More, &c. &c. + +After wandering about in a kind of pleasing distraction for some time, I +got into a corner, with Johnson, Garrick, and Harris. GARRICK: (to +Harris.) 'Pray, Sir, have you read Potter's _Aeschylus_?' HARRIS. 'Yes; +and think it pretty.' GARRICK. (to Johnson.) 'And what think you, Sir, +of it?' JOHNSON. 'I thought what I read of it _verbiage_[738]: but upon +Mr. Harris's recommendation, I will read a play. (To Mr. Harris.) Don't +prescribe two.' Mr. Harris suggested one, I do not remember which. +JOHNSON. 'We must try its effect as an English poem; that is the way to +judge of the merit of a translation. Translations are, in general, for +people who cannot read the original.' I mentioned the vulgar saying[739], +that Pope's _Homer_ was not a good representation of the original. +JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is the greatest work of the kind that has ever been +produced[740].' BOSWELL. 'The truth is, it is impossible perfectly to +translate poetry[741]. In a different language it may be the same tune, +but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a +flagelet.' HARRIS. 'I think Heroick poetry is best in blank verse; yet +it appears that rhyme is essential to English poetry, from our +deficiency in metrical quantities. In my opinion, the chief excellence +of our language is numerous prose.' JOHNSON. 'Sir William Temple was the +first writer who gave cadence to English prose[742]. Before his time they +were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended +with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of +speech it was concluded.' Mr. Langton, who now had joined us, commended +Clarendon. JOHNSON. 'He is objected to for his parentheses, his involved +clauses, and his want of harmony. But he is supported by his matter. It +is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so +faulty[743]. Every _substance_, (smiling to Mr. Harris[744],) has so many +_accidents_.--To be distinct, we must talk _analytically_. If we analyse +language, we must speak of it grammatically; if we analyse argument, we +must speak of it logically.' GARRICK. 'Of all the translations that ever +were attempted, I think Elphinston's _Martial_ the most +extraordinary[745]. He consulted me upon it, who am a little of an +epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely, "You don't seem to +have that turn." I asked him if he was serious; and finding he was, I +advised him against publishing. Why, his translation is more difficult +to understand than the original. I thought him a man of some talents; +but he seems crazy in this.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you have done what I had not +courage to do. But he did not ask my advice, and I did not force it upon +him, to make him angry with me.' GARRICK. 'But as a friend, Sir--' +JOHNSON. 'Why, such a friend as I am with him--no.' GARRICK. 'But if you +see a friend going to tumble over a precipice?' JOHNSON. 'That is an +extravagant case, Sir. You are sure a friend will thank you for +hindering him from tumbling over a precipice; but, in the other case, I +should hurt his vanity, and do him no good. He would not take my advice. +His brother-in-law, Strahan, sent him a subscription of fifty pounds, +and said he would send him fifty more, if he would not publish.' +GARRICK. 'What! Is Strahan a good judge of an Epigram? Is not he rather +an _obtuse_ man, eh?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, he may not be a judge of an +Epigram: but you see he is a judge of what is _not_ an Epigram.' +BOSWELL. 'It is easy for you, Mr. Garrick, to talk to an authour as you +talked to Elphinston; you, who have been so long the manager of a +theatre, rejecting the plays of poor authours. You are an old Judge, who +have often pronounced sentence of death. You are a practiced surgeon, +who have often amputated limbs; and though this may have been for the +good of your patients, they cannot like you. Those who have undergone a +dreadful operation, are not very fond of seeing the operator again.' +GARRICK. 'Yes, I know enough of that. There was a reverend gentleman, +(Mr. Hawkins,) who wrote a tragedy, the SIEGE of something[746], which I +refused.' HARRIS. 'So, the siege was raised.' JOHNSON. 'Ay, he came to +me and complained; and told me, that Garrick said his play was wrong in +the _concoction_. Now, what is the concoction of a play?' (Here Garrick +started, and twisted himself, and seemed sorely vexed; for Johnson told +me, he believed the story was true.) GARRICK. 'I--I--I--said _first_ +concoction[747].' JOHNSON: (smiling.) 'Well, he left out _first_. And +Rich[748], he said, refused him _in false English_: he could shew it +under his hand.' GARRICK. 'He wrote to me in violent wrath, for having +refused his play: "Sir, this is growing a very serious and terrible +affair. I am resolved to publish my play. I will appeal to the world; +and how will your judgement appear?" I answered, "Sir, notwithstanding +all the seriousness, and all the terrours, I have no objection to your +publishing your play; and as you live at a great distance, (Devonshire, +I believe,) if you will send it to me, I will convey it to the +press[749]." I never heard more of it, ha! ha! ha!' + +On Friday, April 10, I found Johnson at home in the morning. We resumed +the conversation of yesterday. He put me in mind of some of it which had +escaped my memory, and enabled me to record it more perfectly than I +otherwise could have done. He was much pleased with my paying so great +attention to his recommendation in 1763, the period when our +acquaintance began, that I should keep a journal[750]; and I could +perceive he was secretly pleased to find so much of the fruit of his +mind preserved; and as he had been used to imagine and say that he +always laboured when he said a good thing[751]--it delighted him, on a +review, to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery[752]. + +I said to him, 'You were yesterday, Sir, in remarkably good humour[753]: +but there was nothing to offend you, nothing to produce irritation or +violence. There was no bold offender. There was not one capital +conviction. It was a maiden assize. You had on your white gloves.' + +He found fault with our friend Langton for having been too silent. 'Sir, +(said I,) you will recollect, that he very properly took up Sir Joshua +for being glad that Charles Fox had praised Goldsmith's _Traveller_, and +you joined him.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, I knocked Fox on the head, without +ceremony. Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present. He is +under the _Fox star_ and the _Irish constellation_. He is always under +some planet[754].' BOSWELL. 'There is no Fox star.' JOHNSON. 'But there is +a dog star.' BOSWELL. 'They say, indeed, a fox and a dog are the same +animal.' + +I reminded him of a gentleman, who, Mrs. Cholmondeley said, was first +talkative from affectation, and then silent from the same cause; that he +first thought, 'I shall be celebrated as the liveliest man in every +company;' and then, all at once, 'O! it is much more respectable to be +grave and look wise.' 'He has reversed the Pythagorean discipline, by +being first talkative, and then silent. He reverses the course of Nature +too: he was first the gay butterfly, and then the creeping worm.' +Johnson laughed loud and long at this expansion and illustration of what +he himself had told me. + +We dined together with Mr. Scott (now Sir William Scott[755], his +Majesty's Advocate General,) at his chambers in the Temple, nobody else +there. The company being small, Johnson was not in such spirits as he +had been the preceding day, and for a considerable time little was said. +At last he burst forth, 'Subordination is sadly broken down in this age. +No man, now, has the same authority which his father had,--except a +gaoler. No master has it over his servants: it is diminished in our +colleges; nay, in our grammar-schools.' BOSWELL. 'What is the cause of +this, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Why the coming in of the Scotch,' (laughing +sarcastically). BOSWELL. 'That is to say, things have been turned topsy +turvey.--But your serious cause.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, there are many +causes, the chief of which is, I think, the great increase of money. No +man now depends upon the Lord of a Manour, when he can send to another +country, and fetch provisions. The shoe-black at the entry of my court +does not depend on me. I can deprive him but of a penny a day, which he +hopes somebody else will bring him; and that penny I must carry to +another shoe-black[756], so the trade suffers nothing. I have explained, +in my _Journey to the Hebrides_, how gold and silver destroy feudal +subordination[757]. But, besides, there is a general relaxation of +reverence. No son now depends upon his father as in former times. +Paternity used to be considered as of itself a great thing, which had a +right to many claims. That is, in general, reduced to very small bounds. +My hope is, that as anarchy produces tyranny, this extreme relaxation +will produce _freni strictio_[758].' + +Talking of fame, for which there is so great a desire, I observed how +little there is of it in reality, compared with the other objects of +human attention. 'Let every man recollect, and he will be sensible how +small a part of his time is employed in talking or thinking of +Shakspeare, Voltaire, or any of the most celebrated men that have ever +lived, or are now supposed to occupy the attention and admiration of the +world. Let this be extracted and compressed; into what a narrow space +will it go[759]!' I then slily introduced Mr. Garrick's fame, and his +assuming the airs of a great man[760]. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is wonderful how +_little_ Garrick assumes. No, Sir, Garrick _fortunam reverenter +habet_[761]. Consider, Sir: celebrated men, such as you have mentioned, +have had their applause at a distance; but Garrick had it dashed in his +face, sounded in his ears, and went home every night with the plaudits +of a thousand in his _cranium_. Then, Sir, Garrick did not _find_, but +_made_ his way to the tables, the levees, and almost the bed-chambers of +the great. Then, Sir, Garrick had under him a numerous body of people; +who, from fear of his power, and hopes of his favour, and admiration of +his talents, were constantly submissive to him. And here is a man who +has advanced the dignity of his profession. Garrick has made a player a +higher character.' SCOTT. 'And he is a very sprightly writer too.' +JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and all this supported by great wealth of his own +acquisition. If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple +of fellows with long poles walking before me, to knock down every body +that stood in the way. Consider, if all this had happened to Cibber or +Quin[762] they'd have jumped over the moon.--Yet Garrick speaks to +_us_[763].' (smiling.) BOSWELL. 'And Garrick is a very good man, a +charitable man.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, a liberal man. He has given away more +money than any man in England[764]. There may be a little vanity mixed; +but he has shewn, that money is not his first object.' BOSWELL. 'Yet +Foote used to say of him, that he walked out with an intention to do a +generous action; but, turning the corner of a street, he met with the +ghost of a halfpenny, which frightened him.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that is +very true, too; for I never knew a man of whom it could be said with +less certainty to-day, what he will do to-morrow, than Garrick; it +depends so much on his humour at the time.' SCOTT. 'I am glad to hear of +his liberality. He has been represented as very saving.' JOHNSON. 'With +his domestick saving we have nothing to do. I remember drinking tea with +him long ago, when Peg Woffington made it, and he grumbled at her for +making it too strong[765]. He had then begun to feel money in his purse, +and did not know when he should have enough of it[766].' + +On the subject of wealth, the proper use of it, and the effects of that +art which is called oeconomy, he observed: 'It is wonderful to think how +men of very large estates not only spend their yearly incomes, but are +often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for +what they spend. Lord Shelburne[767] told me, that a man of high rank, who +looks into his own affairs, may have all that he ought to have, all that +can be of any use, or appear with any advantage, for five thousand +pounds a year. Therefore, a great proportion must go in waste; and, +indeed, this is the case with most people, whatever their fortune is.' +BOSWELL. 'I have no doubt, Sir, of this. But how is it? What is waste?' +JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, breaking bottles, and a thousand other things. Waste +cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how destructive it is. +OEconomy on the one hand, by which a certain income is made to maintain +a man genteely, and waste on the other, by which, on the same income, +another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing: +as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell +how.' + +We talked of war. JOHNSON. 'Every man thinks meanly of himself for not +having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.' BOSWELL. 'Lord +Mansfield does not.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, if Lord Mansfield were in a company +of General Officers and Admirals who have been in service, he would +shrink; he'd wish to creep under the table.' BOSWELL. 'No; he'd think he +could _try_ them all.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, if he could catch them: but they'd +try him much sooner. No, Sir; were Socrates and Charles the Twelfth of +Sweden both present in any company, and Socrates to say, "Follow me, and +hear a lecture on philosophy;" and Charles, laying his hand on his +sword, to say, "Follow me, and dethrone the Czar;" a man would be +ashamed to follow Socrates. Sir, the impression is universal[768]; yet it +is strange. As to the sailor, when you look down from the quarter deck +to the space below, you see the utmost extremity of human misery; such +crouding, such filth, such stench[769]!' BOSWELL. 'Yet sailors are happy.' +JOHNSON. 'They are happy as brutes are happy, with a piece of fresh +meat,--with the grossest sensuality. But, Sir, the profession of +soldiers and sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence those +who have got over fear[770], which is so general a weakness.' SCOTT. 'But +is not courage mechanical, and to be acquired?' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir, +in a collective sense. Soldiers consider themselves only as parts of a +great machine[771].' SCOTT. 'We find people fond of being sailors.' +JOHNSON. 'I cannot account for that, any more than I can account for +other strange perversions of imagination.' + +His abhorrence of the profession of a sailor was uniformly violent[772]; +but in conversation he always exalted the profession of a soldier. And +yet I have, in my large and various collection of his writings, a letter +to an eminent friend, in which he expresses himself thus: 'My god-son +called on me lately. He is weary, and rationally weary, of a military +life. If you can place him in some other state, I think you may increase +his happiness, and secure his virtue. A soldier's time is passed in +distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.' Such was his cool +reflection in his study[773]; but whenever he was warmed and animated by +the presence of company, he, like other philosophers, whose minds are +impregnated with poetical fancy, caught the common enthusiasm for +splendid renown[774]. + +He talked of Mr. Charles Fox, of whose abilities he thought highly, but +observed, that he did not talk much at our CLUB. I have heard Mr. Gibbon +remark, 'that Mr. Fox could not be afraid of Dr. Johnson; yet he +certainly was very shy of saying any thing in Dr. Johnson's +presence[775].' Mr. Scott now quoted what was said of Alcibiades by a +Greek poet[776], to which Johnson assented. + +He told us, that he had given Mrs. Montagu a catalogue of all Daniel +Defoe's works of imagination; most, if not all of which, as well as of +his other works, he now enumerated, allowing a considerable share of +merit to a man, who, bred a tradesman, had written so variously and so +well. Indeed, his _Robinson Crusoe_ is enough of itself to establish his +reputation[777]. + +He expressed great indignation at the imposture of the Cocklane Ghost, +and related, with much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting +the cheat, and had published an account of it in the news-papers[778]. +Upon this subject I incautiously offended him, by pressing him with too +many questions, and he shewed his displeasure. I apologised, saying that +'I asked questions in order to be instructed and entertained; I repaired +eagerly to the fountain; but that the moment he gave me a hint, the +moment he put a lock upon the well, I desisted.'--'But, Sir, (said he,) +that is forcing one to do a disagreeable thing:' and he continued to +rate me. 'Nay, Sir, (said I,) when you have put a lock upon the well, so +that I can no longer drink, do not make the fountain of your wit play +upon me and wet me.' + +He sometimes could not bear being teazed with questions[779]. I was once +present when a gentleman asked so many as, 'What did you do, Sir?' 'What +did you say, Sir?' that he at last grew enraged, and said, 'I will not +be put to the _question_. Don't you consider, Sir, that these are not +the manners of a gentleman? I will not be baited with _what_, and _why_; +what is this? what is that? why is a cow's tail long? why is a fox's +tail bushy?' The gentleman, who was a good deal out of countenance, +said, 'Why, Sir, you are so good, that I venture to trouble you.' +JOHNSON. 'Sir, my being so _good_ is no reason why you should be so +_ill_.' + +Talking of the Justitia hulk at Woolwich, in which criminals were +punished, by being confined to labour, he said, 'I do not see that they +are punished by this: they must have worked equally had they never been +guilty of stealing[780]. They now only work; so, after all, they have +gained; what they stole is clear gain to them; the confinement is +nothing. Every man who works is confined: the smith to his shop, the +tailor to his garret.' BOSWELL. 'And Lord Mansfield to his Court.' +JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, you know the notion of confinement may be extended, +as in the song, "Every island is a prison[781]." There is, in Dodsley's +_Collection_, a copy of verses to the authour of that song[782].' + +Smith's Latin verses on Pococke, the great traveller,[783] were mentioned. +He repeated some of them, and said they were Smith's best verses. + +He talked with an uncommon animation of travelling into distant +countries; that the mind was enlarged by it, and that an acquisition of +dignity of character was derived from it. He expressed a particular +enthusiasm with respect to visiting the wall of China. I catched it for +the moment[784], and said I really believed I should go and see the wall +of China had I not children, of whom it was my duty to take care. 'Sir, +(said he,) by doing so, you would do what would be of importance in +raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected +upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times +regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of +China. I am serious, Sir.' + +When we had left Mr. Scott's, he said, 'Will you go home with me?' 'Sir, +(said I,) it is late; but I'll go with you for three minutes.' JOHNSON. +'Or _four_.' We went to Mrs. Williams's room, where we found Mr. Allen +the printer, who was the landlord of his house in Bolt-court, a worthy +obliging man, and his very old acquaintance; and what was exceedingly +amusing, though he was of a very diminutive size, he used, even in +Johnson's presence, to imitate the stately periods and slow and solemn +utterance of the great man[785].--I this evening boasted, that although I +did not write what is called stenography, or short-hand, in appropriated +characters devised for the purpose, I had a method of my own of writing +half words, and leaving out some altogether so as yet to keep the +substance and language of any discourse which I had heard so much in +view, that I could give it very completely soon after I had taken it +down. He defied me, as he had once defied an actual short-hand +writer[786], and he made the experiment by reading slowly and distinctly a +part of Robertson's _History of America_, while I endeavoured to write +it in my way of taking notes. It was found that I had it very +imperfectly; the conclusion from which was, that its excellence was +principally owing to a studied arrangement of words, which could not be +varied or abridged without an essential injury. + +On Sunday, April 12, I found him at home before dinner; Dr. Dodd's poem +entitled _Thoughts in Prison_ was lying upon his table. This appearing +to me an extraordinary effort by a man who was in Newgate for a capital +crime, I was desirous to hear Johnson's opinion of it: to my surprize, +he told me he had not read a line of it. I took up the book and read a +passage to him. JOHNSON. 'Pretty well, if you are previously disposed to +like them.' I read another passage, with which he was better pleased. He +then took the book into his own hands, and having looked at the prayer +at the end of it, he said, 'What _evidence_ is there that this was +composed the night before he suffered? _I_ do not believe it.' He then +read aloud where he prays for the King, &c. and observed, 'Sir, do you +think that a man the night before he is to be hanged cares for the +succession of a royal family[787]?--Though, he _may_ have composed this +prayer, then. A man who has been canting all his life, may cant to the +last[788].--And yet a man who has been refused a pardon after so much +petitioning, would hardly be praying thus fervently for the King.' + +He and I, and Mrs. Williams, went to dine with the Reverend Dr. Percy. +Talking of Goldsmith, Johnson said, he was very envious[789]. I defended +him, by observing that he owned it frankly upon all occasions. JOHNSON. +'Sir, you are enforcing the charge. He had so much envy, that he could +not conceal it. He was so full of it that he overflowed. He talked of it +to be sure often enough. Now, Sir, what a man avows, he is not ashamed +to think; though many a man thinks, what he is ashamed to avow. We are +all envious naturally[790]; but by checking envy, we get the better of it. +So we are all thieves naturally; a child always tries to get at what it +wants, the nearest way; by good instruction and good habits this is +cured, till a man has not even an inclination to seize what is +another's; has no struggle with himself about it.' + +And here I shall record a scene of too much heat between Dr. Johnson and +Dr. Percy, which I should have suppressed, were it not that it gave +occasion to display the truely tender and benevolent heart of Johnson, +who, as soon as he found a friend was at all hurt by any thing which he +had 'said in his wrath,' was not only prompt and desirous to be +reconciled, but exerted himself to make ample reparation[791]. + +Books of Travels having been mentioned, Johnson praised Pennant very +highly, as he did at Dunvegan, in the Isle of Sky[792]. Dr. Percy, knowing +himself to be the heir male of the ancient Percies,[793] and having the +warmest and most dutiful attachment to the noble House of +Northumberland, could not sit quietly and hear a man praised, who had +spoken disrespectfully of Alnwick-Castle and the Duke's pleasure +grounds, especially as he thought meanly of his travels. He therefore +opposed Johnson eagerly. JOHNSON. 'Pennant in what he has said of +Alnwick, has done what he intended; he has made you very angry.' PERCY. +'He has said the garden is _trim_[794], which is representing it like a +citizen's parterre, when the truth is, there is a very large extent of +fine turf and gravel walks.' JOHNSON. 'According to your own account, +Sir, Pennant is right. It _is_ trim. Here is grass cut close, and gravel +rolled smooth. Is not that trim? The extent is nothing against that; a +mile may be as trim as a square yard. Your extent puts me in mind of the +citizen's enlarged dinner, two pieces of roast-beef, and two +puddings[795]. There is no variety, no mind exerted in laying out the +ground, no trees[796].' PERCY. 'He pretends to give the natural history of +Northumberland, and yet takes no notice of the immense number of trees +planted there of late.' JOHNSON. 'That, Sir, has nothing to do with the +_natural history_; that is _civil_ history. A man who gives the natural +history of the oak, is not to tell how many oaks have been planted in +this place or that. A man who gives the natural history of the cow, is +not to tell how many cows are milked at Islington. The animal is the +same, whether milked in the Park or at Islington.' PERCY. 'Pennant does +not describe well; a carrier who goes along the side of Lochlomond would +describe it better.' JOHNSON. 'I think he describes very well.' PERCY. +'I travelled after him.' JOHNSON. 'And _I_ travelled after him.' PERCY. +'But, my good friend, you are short-sighted, and do not see so well as I +do.' I wondered at Dr. Percy's venturing thus. Dr. Johnson said nothing +at the time; but inflammable particles were collecting for a cloud to +burst. In a little while Dr. Percy said something more in disparagement +of Pennant. JOHNSON. (pointedly) 'This is the resentment of a narrow +mind, because he did not find every thing in Northumberland.' PERCY. +(feeling the stroke) 'Sir, you may be as rude as you please.' JOHNSON. +'Hold, Sir! Don't talk of rudeness; remember, Sir, you told me (puffing +hard with passion struggling for a vent) I was short-sighted[797]. We have +done with civility. We are to be as rude as we please.' PERCY. 'Upon my +honour, Sir, I did not mean to be uncivil.' JOHNSON. 'I cannot say so, +Sir; for I _did_ mean to be uncivil, thinking _you_ had been uncivil.' +Dr. Percy rose, ran up to him, and taking him by the hand, assured him +affectionately that his meaning had been misunderstood; upon which a +reconciliation instantly took place. JOHNSON. 'My dear Sir, I am willing +you shall _hang_ Pennant.' PERCY. (resuming the former subject) 'Pennant +complains that the helmet is not hung out to invite to the hall of +hospitality[798]. Now I never heard that it was a custom to hang out a +_helmet_[799].' JOHNSON. 'Hang him up, hang him up.' BOSWELL. (humouring +the joke) 'Hang out his skull instead of a helmet, and you may drink ale +out of it in your hall of Odin, as he is your enemy; that will be truly +ancient. _There_ will be _Northern Antiquities_[800].' JOHNSON. 'He's a +_Whig_, Sir; a _sad dog_. (smiling at his own violent expressions, +merely for _political_ difference of opinion.) But he's the best +traveller I ever read; he observes more things than any one else does.' + +I could not help thinking that this was too high praise of a writer who +had traversed a wide extent of country in such haste, that he could put +together only curt frittered fragments of his own, and afterwards +procured supplemental intelligence from parochial ministers, and others +not the best qualified or most impartial narrators, whose ungenerous +prejudice against the house of Stuart glares in misrepresentation; a +writer, who at best treats merely of superficial objects, and shews no +philosophical investigation of character and manners, such as Johnson +has exhibited in his masterly _Journey_, over part of the same ground; +and who it should seem from a desire of ingratiating himself with the +Scotch, has flattered the people of North-Britain so inordinately and +with so little discrimination, that the judicious and candid amongst +them must be disgusted, while they value more the plain, just, yet +kindly report of Johnson. + +Having impartially censured Mr. Pennant, as a Traveller in Scotland, let +me allow him, from authorities much better than mine, his deserved +praise as an able Zoologist; and let me also from my own understanding +and feelings, acknowledge the merit of his _London_, which, though said +to be not quite accurate in some particulars, is one of the most +pleasing topographical performances that ever appeared in any language. +Mr. Pennant, like his countrymen in general[801], has the true spirit of a +_Gentleman_. As a proof of it, I shall quote from his _London_ the +passage, in which he speaks of my illustrious friend. 'I must by no +means omit _Bolt-court_, the long residence of Doctor SAMUEL JOHNSON, a +man of the strongest natural abilities, great learning, a most retentive +memory, of the deepest and most unaffected piety and morality, mingled +with those numerous weaknesses and prejudices which his friends have +kindly taken care to draw from their dread abode[802]. I brought on myself +his transient anger, by observing that in his tour in _Scotland_, he +once had "long and woeful experience of oats being the food of men in +_Scotland_ as they were of horses in _England_."' It was a national +reflection unworthy of him, and I shot my bolt. In return he gave me a +tender hug[803]. _Con amore_ he also said of me '_The dog is a Whig_[804];' +I admired the virtues of Lord _Russell_, and pitied his fall. I should +have been a Whig at the Revolution. There have been periods since, in +which I should have been, what I now am, a moderate Tory, a supporter, +as far as my little influence extends, of a well-poised balance between +the crown and people: but should the scale preponderate against the +_Salus populi_, that moment may it be said '_The dog's a Whig_!' + +We had a calm after the storm, staid the evening and supped, and were +pleasant and gay. But Dr. Percy told me he was very uneasy at what had +passed; for there was a gentleman there who was acquainted with the +Northumberland family, to whom he hoped to have appeared more +respectable, by shewing how intimate he was with Dr. Johnson, and who +might now, on the contrary, go away with an opinion to his disadvantage. +He begged I would mention this to Dr. Johnson, which I afterwards did. +His observation upon it was, 'This comes of _stratagem_; had he told me +that he wished to appear to advantage before that gentleman, he should +have been at the top of the house, all the time.' He spoke of Dr. Percy +in the handsomest terms. 'Then, Sir, (said I,) may I be allowed to +suggest a mode by which you may effectually counteract any unfavourable +report of what passed. I will write a letter to you upon the subject of +the unlucky contest of that day, and you will be kind enough to put in +writing as an answer to that letter, what you have now said, and as Lord +Percy is to dine with us at General Paoli's soon, I will take an +opportunity to read the correspondence in his Lordship's presence.' This +friendly scheme was accordingly carried into execution without Dr. +Percy's knowledge. Johnson's letter placed Dr. Percy's unquestionable +merit in the fairest point of view; and I contrived that Lord Percy +should hear the correspondence, by introducing it at General Paoli's, as +an instance of Dr. Johnson's kind disposition towards one in whom his +Lordship was interested. Thus every unfavourable impression was obviated +that could possibly have been made on those by whom he wished most to be +regarded. I breakfasted the day after with him, and informed him of my +scheme, and its happy completion, for which he thanked me in the warmest +terms, and was highly delighted with Dr. Johnson's letter in his praise, +of which I gave him a copy. He said, 'I would rather have this than +degrees from all the Universities in Europe. It will be for me, and my +children and grand-children.' Dr. Johnson having afterwards asked me if +I had given him a copy of it, and being told I had, was offended, and +insisted that I should get it back, which I did. As, however, he did not +desire me to destroy either the original or the copy, or forbid me to +let it be seen, I think myself at liberty to apply to it his general +declaration to me concerning his other letters, 'That he did not choose +they should be published in his lifetime; but had no objection to their +appearing after his death[805].' I shall therefore insert this kindly +correspondence, having faithfully narrated the circumstances +accompanying it[806]. + + + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'I beg leave to address you in behalf of our friend Dr. Percy, who was +much hurt by what you said to him that day we dined at his house[807]; +when, in the course of the dispute as to Pennant's merit as a traveller, +you told Percy that "he had the resentment of a narrow mind against +Pennant, because he did not find every thing in Northumberland." Percy +is sensible that you did not mean to injure him; but he is vexed to +think that your behaviour to him upon that occasion may be interpreted +as a proof that he is despised by you, which I know is not the case. I +have told him, that the charge of being narrow-minded was only as to the +particular point in question; and that he had the merit of being a +martyr to his noble family. + +'Earl Percy is to dine with General Paoli next Friday; and I should be +sincerely glad to have it in my power to satisfy his Lordship how well +you think of Dr. Percy, who, I find, apprehends that your good opinion +of him may be of very essential consequence; and who assures me, that he +has the highest respect and the warmest affection for you. + +'I have only to add, that my suggesting this occasion for the exercise +of your candour and generosity, is altogether unknown to Dr. Percy, and +proceeds from my good-will towards him, and my persuasion that you will +be happy to do him an essential kindness. I am, more and more, my dear +Sir, + +'Your most faithful + +'And affectionate humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + * * * * * + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'SIR, + +'The debate between Dr. Percy and me is one of those foolish +controversies, which begin upon a question of which neither party cares +how it is decided, and which is, nevertheless, continued to acrimony, by +the vanity with which every man resists confutation[808]. Dr. Percy's +warmth proceeded from a cause which, perhaps, does him more honour than +he could have derived from juster criticism. His abhorrence of Pennant +proceeded from his opinion that Pennant had wantonly and indecently +censured his patron. His anger made him resolve, that, for having been +once wrong, he never should be right. Pennant has much in his notions +that I do not like; but still I think him a very intelligent traveller. +If Percy is really offended, I am sorry; for he is a man whom I never +knew to offend any one. He is a man very willing to learn, and very able +to teach; a man, out of whose company I never go without having learned +something. It is sure that he vexes me sometimes, but I am afraid it is +by making me feel my own ignorance. So much extension of mind, and so +much minute accuracy of enquiry, if you survey your whole circle of +acquaintance, you will find so scarce, if you find it at all, that you +will value Percy by comparison. Lord Hailes is somewhat like him: but +Lord Hailes does not, perhaps, go beyond him in research; and I do not +know that he equals him in elegance. Percy's attention to poetry has +given grace and splendour to his studies of antiquity. A mere +antiquarian is a rugged being. + +'Upon the whole, you see that what I might say in sport or petulance to +him, is very consistent with full conviction of his merit. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most, &c., + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'April 23, 1778.' + + +'TO THE REVEREND DR. PERCY, NORTHUMBERLAND-HOUSE. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I wrote to Dr. Johnson on the subject of the _Pennantian_ controversy; +and have received from him an answer which will delight you. I read it +yesterday to Dr. Robertson, at the Exhibition; and at dinner to Lord +Percy, General Oglethorpe, &c. who dined with us at General Paoli's; who +was also a witness to the high _testimony_ to your honour. + +'General Paoli desires the favour of your company next Tuesday to +dinner, to meet Dr. Johnson. If I can, I will call on you to-day. I am, +with sincere regard, + +'Your most obedient humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL[809].' + +'South Audley-street, April 25.' + + +On Monday, April 13, I dined with Johnson at Mr. Langton's, where were +Dr. Porteus, then Bishop of Chester, now of London, and Dr. Stinton[810]. +He was at first in a very silent mood. Before dinner he said nothing but +'Pretty baby,' to one of the children. Langton said very well to me +afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before dinner, +as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of _The +Natural History of Iceland_, from the Danish of _Horrebow_, the whole of +which was exactly thus:-- + +'CHAP. LXXII. _Concerning snakes_. + +'There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island[811].' + +At dinner we talked of another mode in the newspapers[812] of giving +modern characters in sentences from the classicks, and of the passage + +'Pareus deorum cultor, et infrequens, +Insanientis dum sapientiæ +Consultus erro, nunc retrorsùm +Vela dare, atque iterare cursus +Cogor relictos[813]:' + +being well applied to Soame Jenyns; who, after having wandered in the +wilds of infidelity, had returned to the Christian faith[814]. Mr. Langton +asked Johnson as to the propriety of _sapientiæ consultus_. JOHNSON. +'Though _consultus_ was primarily an adjective, like _amicus_ it came to +be used as a substantive. So we have _Juris consultus_, a consult in +law.' + +We talked of the styles of different painters, and how certainly a +connoisseur could distinguish them; I asked, if there was as clear a +difference of styles in language as in painting, or even as in +hand-writing, so that the composition of every individual may be +distinguished? JOHNSON. 'Yes. Those who have a style of eminent +excellence, such as Dryden and Milton, can always be distinguished.' I +had no doubt of this, but what I wanted to know was, whether there was +really a peculiar style to every man whatever, as there is certainly a +peculiar handwriting, a peculiar countenance, not widely different in +many, yet always enough to be distinctive:-- + +'... _facies non omnibus una, +Nec diversa tamen_[815].' + +The Bishop thought not; and said, he supposed that many pieces in +Dodsley's collection of poems, though all very pretty, had nothing +appropriated in their style, and in that particular could not be at all +distinguished. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I think every man whatever has a +peculiar style[816], which may be discovered by nice examination and +comparison with others: but a man must write a great deal to make his +style obviously discernible. As logicians say, this appropriation of +style is infinite in _potestate_, limited _in actu_.' + +Mr. Topham Beauclerk came in the evening, and he and Dr. Johnson and I +staid to supper. It was mentioned that Dr. Dodd had once wished to be a +member of THE LITERARY CLUB[817]. JOHNSON. 'I should be sorry if any of +our Club were hanged. I will not say but some of them deserve it[818].' +BEAUCLERK; (supposing this to be aimed at persons for whom he had at +that time a wonderful fancy, which, however, did not last long,) was +irritated, and eagerly said, 'You, Sir, have a friend[819], (naming him) +who deserves to be hanged; for he speaks behind their backs against +those with whom he lives on the best terms, and attacks them in the +newspapers. _He_ certainly ought to be _kicked_.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, we all +do this in some degree, "_Veniam petimus damusque vicissim_[820]." To be +sure it may be done so much, that a man may deserve to be kicked.' +BEAUCLERK. 'He is very malignant.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; he is not +malignant. He is mischievous, if you will. He would do no man an +essential injury; he may, indeed, love to make sport of people by vexing +their vanity. I, however, once knew an old gentleman who was absolutely +malignant. He really wished evil to others, and rejoiced at it.' +BOSWELL. 'The gentleman, Mr. Beauclerk, against whom you are so violent, +is, I know, a man of good principles.' BEAUCLERK. 'Then he does not wear +them out in practice[821].' + +Dr. Johnson, who, as I have observed before, delighted in discrimination +of character, and having a masterly knowledge of human nature, was +willing to take men as they are, imperfect and with a mixture of good +and bad qualities[822], I suppose thought he had said enough in defence of +his friend, of whose merits, notwithstanding his exceptional points, he +had a just value; and added no more on the subject. + +On Tuesday, April 14, I dined with him at General Oglethorpe's, with +General Paoli and Mr. Langton. General Oglethorpe declaimed against +luxury[823]. JOHNSON. 'Depend upon it, Sir, every state of society is as +luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.' +OGLETHORPE. 'But the best depends much upon ourselves; and if we can be +as well satisfied with plain things, we are in the wrong to accustom our +palates to what is high-seasoned and expensive. What says Addison in his +_Cato_, speaking of the Numidian? + +"Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chace, +Amid the running stream he slakes his thirst, +Toils all the day, and at the approach of night, +On the first friendly bank he throws him down, +Or rests his head upon a rock till morn[824]; +And if the following day he chance to find +A new repast, or an untasted spring, +Blesses his stars, and thinks it's luxury." + +Let us have _that_ kind of luxury, Sir, if you will.' JOHNSON. 'But +hold, Sir; to be merely satisfied is not enough. It is in refinement and +elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage. A great part of +our industry, and all our ingenuity is exercised in procuring pleasure; +and, Sir, a hungry man has not the same pleasure in eating a plain +dinner, that a hungry man has in eating a luxurious dinner. You see I +put the case fairly. A hungry man may have as much, nay, more pleasure +in eating a plain dinner, than a man grown fastidious has in eating a +luxurious dinner. But I suppose the man who decides between the two +dinners, to be equally a hungry man.' + +Talking of different governments,--JOHNSON. 'The more contracted that +power is, the more easily it is destroyed. A country governed by a +despot is an inverted cone. Government there cannot be so firm, as when +it rests upon a broad basis gradually contracted, as the government of +Great Britain, which is founded on the parliament, then is in the privy +council, then in the King.' BOSWELL. 'Power, when contracted into the +person of a despot, may be easily destroyed, as the prince may be cut +off. So Caligula wished that the people of Rome had but one neck, that +he might cut them off at a blow.' OGLETHORPE. 'It was of the Senate he +wished that[825]. The Senate by its usurpation controlled both the +Emperour and the people. And don't you think that we see too much of +that in our own Parliament?' + +Dr. Johnson endeavoured to trace the etymology of Maccaronick verses, +which he thought were of Italian invention from Maccaroni; but on being +informed that this would infer that they were the most common and easy +verses, maccaroni being the most ordinary and simple food, he was at a +loss; for he said, 'He rather should have supposed it to import in its +primitive signification, a composition of several things; for +Maccaronick verses are verses made out of a mixture of different +languages, that is, of one language with the termination of another[826].' +I suppose we scarcely know of a language in any country where there is +any learning, in which that motley ludicrous species of composition may +not be found. It is particularly droll in Low Dutch. The +_Polemomiddinia_[827] of Drummond of Hawthornden, in which there is a +jumble of many languages moulded, as if it were all in Latin, is well +known. Mr. Langton made us laugh heartily at one in the Grecian mould, +by Joshua Barnes, in which are to be found such comical +_Anglo-Ellenisms_ as [Greek: Klubboisin ebanchthen]: they were banged +with clubs[828]. + +On Wednesday, April 15, I dined with Dr. Johnson at Mr. Dilly's, and was +in high spirits, for I had been a good part of the morning with Mr. +Orme, the able and eloquent historian of Hindostan, who expressed a +great admiration of Johnson. 'I do not care (said he,) on what subject +Johnson talks; but I love better to hear him talk than any body. He +either gives you new thoughts, or a new colouring. It is a shame to the +nation that he has not been more liberally rewarded. Had I been George +the Third, and thought as he did about America, I would have given +Johnson three hundred a year for his _Taxation no Tyranny_ alone.' I +repeated this, and Johnson was much pleased with such praise from such a +man as Orme. + +At Mr. Dilly's to-day were Mrs. Knowles[829], the ingenious Quaker +lady[830], Miss Seward, the poetess of Lichfield, the Reverend Dr. +Mayo[831], and the Rev. Mr. Beresford, Tutor to the Duke of Bedford. +Before dinner Dr. Johnson seized upon Mr. Charles Sheridan's _Account of +the late Revolution in Sweden_[832], and seemed to read it ravenously, as +if he devoured it, which was to all appearance his method of studying. +'He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs. Knowles;) he gets +at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.' He +kept it wrapt up in the tablecloth in his lap during the time of dinner, +from an avidity to have one entertainment in readiness when he should +have finished another; resembling (if I may use so coarse a simile) a +dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he eats something +else which has been thrown to him. + +The subject of cookery having been very naturally introduced at a table +where Johnson, who boasted of the niceness of his palate[833], owned that +'he always found a good dinner,' he said, 'I could write a better book +of cookery than has ever yet been written; it should be a book upon +philosophical principles. Pharmacy is now made much more simple. Cookery +may be made so too. A prescription which is now compounded of five +ingredients, had formerly fifty in it. So in cookery, if the nature of +the ingredients be well known, much fewer will do. Then as you cannot +make bad meat good, I would tell what is the best butcher's meat, the +best beef, the best pieces; how to choose young fowls; the proper +seasons of different vegetables; and then how to roast and boil, and +compound.' DILLY. 'Mrs. Glasse's _Cookery_, which is the best, was +written by Dr. Hill. Half the _trade_[834] know this.' JOHNSON. 'Well, +Sir. This shews how much better the subject of cookery may be treated by +a philosopher. I doubt if the book be written by Dr. Hill; for, in Mrs. +Glasse's _Cookery_, which I have looked into, salt-petre and +sal-prunella are spoken of as different substances, whereas sal-prunella +is only salt-petre burnt on charcoal; and Hill could not be ignorant of +this. However, as the greatest part of such a book is made by +transcription, this mistake may have been carelessly adopted. But you +shall see what a Book of Cookery I shall make! I shall agree with Mr. +Dilly for the copy-right.' Miss SEWARD. 'That would be Hercules with the +distaff indeed.' JOHNSON. 'No, Madam. Women can spin very well; but they +cannot make a good book of Cookery.' + +JOHNSON. 'O! Mr. Dilly--you must know that an English Benedictine Monk +at Paris has translated _The Duke of Berwick's Memoirs_, from the +original French, and has sent them to me to sell. I offered them to +Strahan, who sent them back with this answer:--"That the first book he +had published was the _Duke of Berwick's Life_, by which he had lost: +and he hated the name."--Now I honestly tell you, that Strahan has +refused them; but I also honestly tell you, that he did it upon no +principle, for he never looked into them.' DILLY. 'Are they well +translated, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, very well--in a style very current +and very clear. I have written to the Benedictine to give me an answer +upon two points--What evidence is there that the letters are authentick? +(for if they are not authentick they are nothing;)--And how long will it +be before the original French is published? For if the French edition is +not to appear for a considerable time, the translation will be almost as +valuable as an original book. They will make two volumes in octavo; and +I have undertaken to correct every sheet as it comes from the press.' +Mr. Dilly desired to see them, and said he would send for them. He asked +Dr. Johnson if he would write a Preface to them. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. The +Benedictines were very kind to me[835], and I'll do what I undertook to +do; but I will not mingle my name with them. I am to gain nothing by +them. I'll turn them loose upon the world, and let them take their +chance.' DR. MAYO. 'Pray, Sir, are Ganganelli's letters authentick?' +JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. Voltaire put the same question to the editor of them, +that I did to Macpherson--Where are the originals[836]?' + +Mrs. Knowles affected to complain that men had much more liberty allowed +them than women. JOHNSON. 'Why, Madam, women have all the liberty they +should wish to have. We have all the labour and the danger, and the +women all the advantage. We go to sea, we build houses, we do +everything, in short, to pay our court to the women.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'The +Doctor reasons very wittily, but not convincingly. Now, take the +instance of building; the mason's wife, if she is ever seen in liquor, +is ruined; the mason may get himself drunk as often as he pleases, with +little loss of character; nay, may let his wife and children starve.' +JOHNSON. 'Madam, you must consider, if the mason does get himself drunk, +and let his wife and children starve, the parish will oblige him to find +security for their maintenance. We have different modes of restraining +evil. Stocks for the men, a ducking-stool for women[837], and a pound for +beasts. If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it +is doing them honour. And women have not the same temptations that we +have: they may always live in virtuous company; men must mix in the +world indiscriminately. If a woman has no inclination to do what is +wrong being secured from it is no restraint to her. I am at liberty to +walk into the Thames; but if I were to try it, my friends would restrain +me in Bedlam, and I should be obliged to them.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'Still, +Doctor, I cannot help thinking it a hardship that more indulgence is +allowed to men than to women. It gives a superiority to men, to which I +do not see how they are entitled.' JOHNSON. 'It is plain, Madam, one or +other must have the superiority. As Shakspeare says, "If two men ride on +a horse, one must ride behind[838]."' DILLY. 'I suppose, Sir, Mrs. Knowles +would have them to ride in panniers, one on each side.' JOHNSON. 'Then, +Sir, the horse would throw them both.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'Well, I hope that +in another world the sexes will be equal.' BOSWELL. 'That is being too +ambitious, Madam. _We_ might as well desire to be equal with the angels. +We shall all, I hope, be happy in a future state, but we must not expect +to be all happy in the same degree. It is enough if we be happy +according to our several capacities. A worthy carman will get to heaven +as well as Sir Isaac Newton. Yet, though equally good, they will not +have the same degrees of happiness.' JOHNSON. 'Probably not.' + +Upon this subject I had once before sounded him, by mentioning the late +Reverend Mr. Brown, of Utrecht's, image; that a great and small glass, +though equally full, did not hold an equal quantity; which he threw out +to refute David Hume's saying[839], that a little miss, going to dance at +a ball, in a fine new dress, was as happy as a great oratour, after +having made an eloquent and applauded speech. After some thought, +Johnson said, 'I come over to the parson.' As an instance of coincidence +of thinking, Mr. Dilly told me, that Dr. King, a late dissenting +minister in London, said to him, upon the happiness in a future state of +good men of different capacities, 'A pail does not hold so much as a +tub; but, if it be equally full, it has no reason to complain. Every +Saint in heaven will have as much happiness as he can hold.' Mr. Dilly +thought this a clear, though a familiar illustration of the phrase, 'One +star differeth from another in brightness[840].' + +Dr. Mayo having asked Johnson's opinion of Soame Jenyns's _View of the +Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion_[841];--JOHNSON. 'I think it a +pretty book; not very theological indeed; and there seems to be an +affectation of ease and carelessness, as if it were not suitable to his +character to be very serious about the matter.' BOSWELL. 'He may have +intended this to introduce his book the better among genteel people, who +might be unwilling to read too grave a treatise. There is a general +levity in the age. We have physicians now with bag-wigs[842]; may we not +have airy divines, at least somewhat less solemn in their appearance +than they used to be?' JOHNSON. 'Jenyns might mean as you say[843].' +BOSWELL. 'You should like his book, Mrs. Knowles, as it maintains, as +you _friends_ do, that courage is not a Christian virtue.' MRS. KNOWLES. +'Yes, indeed, I like him there; but I cannot agree with him, that +friendship is not a Christian virtue[844].' JOHNSON. 'Why, Madam, strictly +speaking, he is right. All friendship is preferring the interest of a +friend, to the neglect, or, perhaps, against the interest of others; so +that an old Greek said, "He that has _friends_ has _no friend_." Now +Christianity recommends universal benevolence, to consider all men as +our brethren[845], which is contrary to the virtue of friendship, as +described by the ancient philosophers. Surely, Madam, your sect must +approve of this; for, you call all men _friends_.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'We are +commanded to do good to all men, "but especially to them who are of the +household of Faith[846]."' JOHNSON. 'Well, Madam. The household of Faith +is wide enough.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'But, Doctor, our Saviour had twelve +Apostles, yet there was _one_ whom he _loved_. John was called "the +disciple whom JESUS loved[847]."' JOHNSON (with eyes sparkling +benignantly). 'Very well, indeed, Madam. You have said very well.' +BOSWELL. 'A fine application. Pray, Sir, had you ever thought of it?' +JOHNSON. 'I had not, Sir.' + +From this pleasing subject[848], he, I know not how or why, made a sudden +transition to one upon which he was a violent aggressor; for he said, 'I +am willing to love all mankind, _except an American_:' and his +inflammable corruption bursting into horrid fire, he 'breathed out +threatenings and slaughter[849];' calling them, 'Rascals--Robbers-- +Pirates;' and exclaiming, he'd 'burn and destroy them.' Miss Seward, +looking to him with mild but steady astonishment, said, 'Sir, this is an +instance that we are always most violent against those whom we have +injured.'--He was irritated still more by this delicate and keen +reproach; and roared out another tremendous volley, which one might +fancy could be heard across the Atlantick. During this tempest I sat in +great uneasiness, lamenting his heat of temper; till, by degrees, I +diverted his attention to other topicks. + +DR. MAYO (to Dr. Johnson). 'Pray, Sir, have you read _Edwards, of New +England, on Grace_?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir.' BOSWELL. 'It puzzled me so much +as to the freedom of the human will, by stating, with wonderful acute +ingenuity, our being actuated by a series of motives which we cannot +resist, that the only relief I had was to forget it.' MAYO. 'But he +makes the proper distinction between moral and physical necessity.' +BOSWELL. 'Alas, Sir, they come both to the same thing. You may be bound +as hard by chains when covered by leather, as when the iron appears. The +argument for the moral necessity of human actions is always, I observe, +fortified by supposing universal prescience to be one of the attributes +of the Deity.' JOHNSON. 'You are surer that you are free, than you are +of prescience; you are surer that you can lift up your finger or not as +you please, than you are of any conclusion from a deduction of +reasoning. But let us consider a little the objection from prescience. +It is certain I am either to go home to-night or not; that does not +prevent my freedom.' BOSWELL. 'That it is certain you are _either_ to go +home or not, does not prevent your freedom; because the liberty of +choice between the two is compatible with that certainty. But if _one_ +of these events be certain _now_, you have no _future_ power of +volition. If it be certain you are to go home to-night, you _must_ go +home.' JOHNSON. 'If I am well acquainted with a man, I can judge with +great probability how he will act in any case, without his being +restrained by my judging. GOD may have this probability increased to +certainty.' BOSWELL. 'When it is increased to _certainty_, freedom +ceases, because that cannot be certainly foreknown, which is not certain +at the time; but if it be certain at the time, it is a contradiction in +terms to maintain that there can be afterwards any _contingency_ +dependent upon the exercise of will or any thing else.' JOHNSON. 'All +theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it[850].'--I +did not push the subject any farther. I was glad to find him so mild in +discussing a question of the most abstract nature, involved with +theological tenets, which he generally would not suffer to be in any +degree opposed[851]. + +He as usual defended luxury[852]; 'You cannot spend money in luxury +without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by +spending it in luxury, than by giving it: for by spending it in luxury, +you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle. +I own, indeed, there may be more virtue in giving it immediately in +charity, than in spending it in luxury; though there may be a pride in +that too.' Miss Seward asked, if this was not Mandeville's doctrine of +'private vices publick benefits.' JOHNSON. 'The fallacy of that book is, +that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among +vices everything that gives pleasure[853]. He takes the narrowest system +of morality, monastick morality, which holds pleasure itself to be a +vice, such as eating salt with our fish, because it makes it eat better; +and he reckons wealth as a publick benefit, which is by no means always +true. Pleasure of itself is not a vice. Having a garden, which we all +know to be perfectly innocent, is a great pleasure. At the same time, in +this state of being there are many pleasures vices, which however are so +immediately agreeable that we can hardly abstain from them. The +happiness of Heaven will be, that pleasure and virtue will be perfectly +consistent. Mandeville puts the case of a man who gets drunk in an +alehouse; and says it is a publick benefit, because so much money is got +by it to the publick. But it must be considered, that all the good +gained by this, through the gradation of alehouse-keeper, brewer, +maltster, and farmer, is overbalanced by the evil caused to the man and +his family by his getting drunk[854]. This is the way to try what is +vicious, by ascertaining whether more evil than good is produced by it +upon the whole, which is the case in all vice. It may happen that good +is produced by vice; but not as vice; for instance, a robber may take +money from its owner, and give it to one who will make a better use of +it. Here is good produced; but not by the robbery as robbery, but as +translation of property[855]. I read Mandeville forty, or, I believe, +fifty years ago. He did not puzzle me; he opened my views into real life +very much[856]. No, it is clear that the happiness of society depends on +virtue. In Sparta, theft was allowed by general consent[857]: theft, +therefore, was _there_ not a crime, but then there was no security; and +what a life must they have had, when there was no security. Without +truth there must be a dissolution of society. As it is, there is so +little truth, that we are almost afraid to trust our ears; but how +should we be, if falsehood were multiplied ten times? Society is held +together by communication and information; and I remember this remark of +Sir Thomas Brown's, "Do the devils lie? No; for then Hell could not +subsist[858]."' + +Talking of Miss ----[859], a literary lady, he said, 'I was obliged to +speak to Miss Reynolds, to let her know that I desired she would not +flatter me so much.' Somebody now observed, 'She flatters Garrick.' +JOHNSON. 'She is in the right to flatter Garrick. She is in the right +for two reasons; first, because she has the world with her, who have +been praising Garrick these thirty years; and secondly, because she is +rewarded for it by Garrick[860]. Why should she flatter _me_? I can do +nothing for her. Let her carry her praise to a better market[861]. (Then +turning to Mrs. Knowles). You, Madam, have been flattering me all the +evening; I wish you would give Boswell a little now. If you knew his +merit as well as I do, you would say a great deal; he is the best +travelling companion in the world[862].' + +Somebody mentioned the Reverend Mr. Mason's prosecution of Mr. +Murray[863], the bookseller, for having inserted in a collection of +_Gray's Poems_, only fifty lines, of which Mr. Mason had still the +exclusive property, under the statute of Queen Anne; and that Mr. Mason +had persevered, notwithstanding his being requested to name his own +terms of compensation[864]. Johnson signified his displeasure at Mr. +Mason's conduct very strongly; but added, by way of shewing that he was +not surprized at it, 'Mason's a Whig.' MRS. KNOWLES, (not hearing +distinctly:) 'What! a Prig, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Worse, Madam; a Whig! But he +is both.' + +I expressed a horrour at the thought of death. MRS. KNOWLES. 'Nay, thou +should'st not have a horrour for what is the gate of life.' JOHNSON, +(standing upon the hearth rolling about, with a serious, solemn, and +somewhat gloomy air:) 'No rational man can die without uneasy +apprehension.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'The Scriptures tell us, "The righteous +shall have _hope_ in his death[865]."' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Madam; that is, he +shall not have despair[866]. But, consider, his hope of salvation must be +founded on the terms on which it is promised that the mediation of our +SAVIOUR shall be applied to us,--namely, obedience; and where obedience +has failed, then, as suppletory to it, repentance. But what man can say +that his obedience has been such, as he would approve of in another, or +even in himself upon close examination, or that his repentance has not +been such as to require being repented of? No man can be sure that his +obedience and repentance will obtain salvation.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'But +divine intimation of acceptance may be made to the soul.' JOHNSON. +'Madam, it may; but I should not think the better of a man who should +tell me on his death-bed he was sure of salvation. A man cannot be sure +himself that he has divine intimation of acceptance; much less can he +make others sure that he has it[867].' BOSWELL. 'Then, Sir, we must be +contented to acknowledge that death is a terrible thing.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, +Sir. I have made no approaches to a state which can look on it as not +terrible[868].' MRS. KNOWLES, (seeming to enjoy a pleasing serenity in the +persuasion of benignant divine light:) 'Does not St. Paul say, "I have +fought the good fight of faith, I have finished my course; henceforth is +laid up for me a crown of life[869]?"' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Madam; but here was +a man inspired, a man who had been converted by supernatural +interposition.' BOSWELL. 'In prospect death is dreadful; but in fact we +find that people die easy.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, most people have not +_thought_ much of the matter, so cannot _say_ much, and it is supposed +they die easy. Few believe it certain they are then to die; and those +who do, set themselves to behave with resolution, as a man does who is +going to be hanged. He is not the less unwilling to be hanged[870].' MISS +SEWARD. 'There is one mode of the fear of death, which is certainly +absurd; and that is the dread of annihilation, which is only a pleasing +sleep without a dream.' JOHNSON. 'It is neither pleasing, nor sleep; it +is nothing. Now mere existence is so much better than nothing, that one +would rather exist even in pain, than not exist[871].' BOSWELL. 'If +annihilation be nothing, then existing in pain is not a comparative +state, but is a positive evil, which I cannot think we should choose. I +must be allowed to differ here; and it would lessen the hope of a future +state founded on the argument, that the Supreme Being, who is good as he +is great, will hereafter compensate for our present sufferings in this +life. For if existence, such as we have it here, be comparatively a +good, we have no reason to complain, though no more of it should be +given to us. But if our only state of existence were in this world, then +we might with some reason complain that we are so dissatisfied with our +enjoyments compared with our desires.' JOHNSON. 'The lady confounds +annihilation, which is nothing, with the apprehension of it, which is +dreadful. It is in the apprehension of it that the horrour of +annihilation consists[872].' + +Of John Wesley, he said, 'He can talk well on any subject[873].' BOSWELL. +'Pray, Sir, what has he made of his story of a ghost?' JOHNSON. 'Why, +Sir, he believes it; but not on sufficient authority. He did not take +time enough to examine the girl. It was at Newcastle, where the ghost +was said to have appeared to a young woman several times, mentioning +something about the right to an old house, advising application to be +made to an attorney, which was done; and, at the same time, saying the +attorney would do nothing, which proved to be the fact. "This (says +John) is a proof that a ghost knows our thoughts[874]." Now (laughing) it +is not necessary to know our thoughts, to tell that an attorney will +sometimes do nothing. Charles Wesley, who is a more stationary man, does +not believe the story. I am sorry that John did not take more pains to +inquire into the evidence for it.' MISS SEWARD, (with an incredulous +smile:) 'What, Sir! about a ghost?' JOHNSON, (with solemn vehemence:) +'Yes, Madam: this is a question which, after five thousand years, is yet +undecided; a question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the +most important that can come before the human understanding[875].' + +Mrs. Knowles mentioned, as a proselyte to Quakerism, Miss ----[876], a +young lady well known to Dr. Johnson, for whom he had shewn much +affection; while she ever had, and still retained, a great respect for +him. Mrs. Knowles at the same time took an opportunity of letting him +know 'that the amiable young creature was sorry at finding that he was +offended at her leaving the Church of England and embracing a simpler +faith;' and, in the gentlest and most persuasive manner, solicited his +kind indulgence for what was sincerely a matter of conscience. JOHNSON, +(frowning very angrily,) 'Madam, she is an odious wench. She could not +have any proper conviction that it was her duty to change her religion, +which is the most important of all subjects, and should be studied with +all care, and with all the helps we can get. She knew no more of the +Church which she left, and that which she embraced, than she did of the +difference between the Copernican and Ptolemaick systems.' MRS. KNOWLES. +'She had the New Testament before her.' JOHNSON. 'Madam, she could not +understand the New Testament, the most difficult book in the world, for +which the study of a life is required.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'It is clear as to +essentials.' JOHNSON. 'But not as to controversial points. The heathens +were easily converted, because they had nothing to give up; but we ought +not, without very strong conviction indeed, to desert the religion in +which we have been educated. That is the religion given you, the +religion in which it may be said Providence has placed you. If you live +conscientiously in that religion, you may be safe. But errour is +dangerous indeed, if you err when you choose a religion for +yourself[877].' MRS. KNOWLES. 'Must we then go by implicit faith?' +JOHNSON. 'Why, Madam, the greatest part of our knowledge is implicit +faith; and as to religion, have we heard all that a disciple of +Confucius, all that a Mahometan, can say for himself?' He then rose +again into passion, and attacked the young proselyte in the severest +terms of reproach, so that both the ladies seemed to be much shocked[878]. + +We remained together till it was pretty late. Notwithstanding occasional +explosions of violence, we were all delighted upon the whole with +Johnson. I compared him at this time to a warm West-Indian climate, +where you have a bright sun, quick vegetation, luxuriant foliage, +luscious fruits; but where the same heat sometimes produces thunder, +lightning, earthquakes, in a terrible degree. + +April 17, being Good Friday[879], I waited on Johnson, as usual. I +observed at breakfast that although it was a part of his abstemious +discipline on this most solemn fast, to take no milk in his tea, yet +when Mrs. Desmoulins inadvertently poured it in, he did not reject it. I +talked of the strange indecision of mind, and imbecility in the common +occurrences of life, which we may observe in some people. JOHNSON. 'Why, +Sir, I am in the habit of getting others to do things for me.' BOSWELL. +'What, Sir! have you that weakness?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir. But I always +think afterwards I should have done better for myself.' I told him that +at a gentleman's house[880] where there was thought to be such +extravagance or bad management, that he was living much beyond his +income, his lady had objected to the cutting of a pickled mango, and +that I had taken an opportunity to ask the price of it, and found it was +only two shillings; so here was a very poor saving. JOHNSON. 'Sir, that +is the blundering oeconomy of a narrow understanding. It is stopping one +hole in a sieve.' + +I expressed some inclination to publish an account of my _Travels_ upon +the continent of Europe, for which I had a variety of materials +collected. JOHNSON. 'I do not say, Sir, you may not publish your +travels; but I give you my opinion, that you would lessen yourself by +it. What can you tell of countries so well known as those upon the +continent of Europe, which you have visited?' BOSWELL. 'But I can give +an entertaining narrative, with many incidents, anecdotes, _jeux +d'esprit_, and remarks, so as to make very pleasant reading.' JOHNSON. +'Why, Sir, most modern travellers in Europe who have published their +travels, have been laughed at: I would not have you added to the +number[881]. The world is now not contented to be merely entertained by a +traveller's narrative; they want to learn something[882]. Now some of my +friends asked me, why I did not give some account of my travels in +France. The reason is plain; intelligent readers had seen more of France +than I had. _You_ might have liked my travels in France, and THE CLUB +might have liked them; but, upon the whole, there would have been more +ridicule than good produced by them.' BOSWELL. 'I cannot agree with you, +Sir. People would like to read what you say of any thing. Suppose a face +has been painted by fifty painters before; still we love to see it done +by Sir Joshua.' JOHNSON. 'True, Sir, but Sir Joshua cannot paint a face +when he has not time to look on it.' BOSWELL. 'Sir, a sketch of any sort +by him is valuable. And, Sir, to talk to you in your own style (raising +my voice, and shaking my head,) you _should_ have given us your travels +in France. I am _sure_ I am right, and _there's an end on't_.' + +I said to him that it was certainly true, as my friend Dempster had +observed in his letter to me upon the subject, that a great part of what +was in his _Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland_ had been in his +mind before he left London. JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir, the topicks were; +and books of travels[883] will be good in proportion to what a man has +previously in his mind; his knowing what to observe; his power of +contrasting one mode of life with another. As the Spanish proverb says, +"He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the +wealth of the Indies with him." So it is in travelling; a man must carry +knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.' BOSWELL. 'The +proverb, I suppose, Sir, means, he must carry a large stock with him to +trade with.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir.' + +It was a delightful day: as we walked to St. Clement's church[884], I +again remarked that Fleet-street was the most cheerful scene in the +world[885]. 'Fleet-street (said I,) is in my mind more delightful than +Tempé.' JOHNSON. 'Ay, Sir; but let it be compared with Mull.' + +There was a very numerous congregation to-day at St. Clement's church, +which Dr. Johnson said he observed with pleasure. + +And now I am to give a pretty full account of one of the most curious +incidents in Johnson's life, of which he himself has made the following +minute on this day: 'In my return from church, I was accosted by +Edwards[886], an old fellow-collegian, who had not seen me since 1729. He +knew me, and asked if I remembered one Edwards; I did not at first +recollect the name, but gradually as we walked along, recovered it, and +told him a conversation that had passed at an alehouse between us. My +purpose is to continue our acquaintance[887].' + +It was in Butcher-row that this meeting happened. Mr. Edwards, who was a +decent-looking elderly man in grey clothes, and a wig of many curls, +accosted Johnson with familiar confidence, knowing who he was, while +Johnson returned his salutation with a courteous formality, as to a +stranger. But as soon as Edwards had brought to his recollection their +having been at Pembroke-College together nine-and-forty years ago, he +seemed much pleased, asked where he lived, and said he should be glad to +see him in Bolt-court. EDWARDS. 'Ah, Sir! we are old men now[888].' +JOHNSON, (who never liked to think of being old[889]:) 'Don't let us +discourage one another.' EDWARDS. 'Why, Doctor, you look stout and +hearty, I am happy to see you so; for the newspapers told us you were +very ill[890].' JOHNSON, 'Ay, Sir, they are always telling lies of _us old +fellows_.' + +Wishing to be present at more of so singular a conversation as that +between two fellow-collegians, who had lived forty years in London +without ever having chanced to meet, I whispered to Mr. Edwards that Dr. +Johnson was going home, and that he had better accompany him now. So +Edwards walked along with us, I eagerly assisting to keep up the +conversation. Mr. Edwards informed Dr. Johnson that he had practised +long as a solicitor in Chancery, but that he now lived in the country +upon a little farm, about sixty acres, just by Stevenage in +Hertfordshire, and that he came to London (to Barnard's Inn, No. 6), +generally twice a week. Johnson appearing to me in a reverie, Mr. +Edwards addressed himself to me, and expatiated on the pleasure of +living in the country. BOSWELL. 'I have no notion of this, Sir. What you +have to entertain you, is, I think, exhausted in half an hour.' EDWARDS. +'What? don't you love to have hope realized? I see my grass, and my +corn, and my trees growing. Now, for instance, I am curious to see if +this frost has not nipped my fruit-trees.' JOHNSON, (who we did not +imagine was attending:) 'You find, Sir, you have fears as well as +hopes.'--So well did he see the whole, when another saw but the half of +a subject. + +When we got to Dr. Johnson's house, and were seated in his library, the +dialogue went on admirably. EDWARDS. 'Sir, I remember you would not let +us say _prodigious_ at College[891]. For even then, Sir, (turning to me,) +he was delicate in language, and we all feared him[892].' JOHNSON, (to +Edwards:) 'From your having practised the law long, Sir, I presume you +must be rich.' EDWARDS. 'No, Sir; I got a good deal of money; but I had +a number of poor relations to whom I gave a great part of it.' JOHNSON. +'Sir, you have been rich in the most valuable sense of the word.' +EDWARDS. 'But I shall not die rich.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sure, Sir, it is +better to _live_ rich than to _die_ rich.' EDWARDS. 'I wish I had +continued at College.' JOHNSON. 'Why do you wish that, Sir?' EDWARDS. +'Because I think I should have had a much easier life than mine has +been. I should have been a parson, and had a good living, like Bloxam +and several others, and lived comfortably.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, the life of a +parson, of a conscientious clergyman, is not easy. I have always +considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able +to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the +cure of souls. No, Sir, I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy +life[893], nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.' Here +taking himself up all of a sudden, he exclaimed, 'O! Mr. Edwards! I'll +convince you that I recollect you. Do you remember our drinking together +at an alehouse near Pembroke gate[894]. At that time, you told me of the +Eton boy, who, when verses on our Saviour's turning water into wine were +prescribed as an exercise, brought up a single line, which was highly +admired,-- + +"_Vidit et erubuit lympha pudica Deum_[895]," + +and I told you of another fine line in Camden's _Remains_, an eulogy +upon one of our Kings, who was succeeded by his son, a prince of equal +merit:-- + +"_Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla secuta est_[896]."' + +EDWARDS. 'You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my +time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always +breaking in[897].' Mr. Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Courtenay, Mr. +Malone, and, indeed, all the eminent men to whom I have mentioned this, +have thought it an exquisite trait of character. The truth is, that +philosophy, like religion, is too generally supposed to be hard and +severe, at least so grave as to exclude all gaiety. + +EDWARDS. 'I have been twice married, Doctor. You, I suppose, have never +known what it was to have a wife.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I have known what it +was to have a wife, and (in a solemn tender faultering tone) I have +known what it was to _lose a wife_.--It had almost broke my heart.' + +EDWARDS. 'How do you live, Sir? For my part, I must have my regular +meals, and a glass of good wine. I find I require it.' JOHNSON. 'I now +drink no wine, Sir. Early in life I drank wine: for many years I drank +none. I then for some years drank a great deal.' EDWARDS. 'Some +hogsheads, I warrant you.' JOHNSON. 'I then had a severe illness, and +left it off[898], and I have never begun it again. I never felt any +difference upon myself from eating one thing rather than another, nor +from one kind of weather rather than another[899]. There are people. I +believe, who feel a difference; but I am not one of them. And as to +regular meals, I have fasted from the Sunday's dinner to the Tuesday's +dinner, without any inconvenience[900]. I believe it is best to eat just +as one is hungry: but a man who is in business, or a man who has a +family, must have stated meals. I am a straggler. I may leave this town +and go to Grand Cairo, without being missed here or observed there.' +EDWARDS. 'Don't you eat supper, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir.' EDWARDS. 'For +my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must +pass, in order to get to bed[901].' + +JOHNSON. 'You are a lawyer, Mr. Edwards. Lawyers know life practically. +A bookish man should always have them to converse with. They have what +he wants.' EDWARDS. 'I am grown old: I am sixty-five.' JOHNSON. 'I shall +be sixty-eight[902] next birth-day. Come, Sir, drink water, and put in for +a hundred.' + +Mr. Edwards mentioned a gentleman who had left his whole fortune to +Pembroke College. JOHNSON. 'Whether to leave one's whole fortune to a +College be right, must depend upon circumstances. I would leave the +interest of the fortune I bequeathed to a College to my relations or my +friends, for their lives[903]. It is the same thing to a College, which is +a permanent society, whether it gets the money now or twenty years +hence; and I would wish to make my relations or friends feel the benefit +of it.' + +This interview confirmed my opinion of Johnson's most humane and +benevolent heart. His cordial and placid behaviour to an old +fellow-collegian, a man so different from himself; and his telling him +that he would go down to his farm and visit him, showed a kindness of +disposition very rare at an advanced age. He observed, 'how wonderful it +was that they had both been in London forty years, without having ever +once met, and both walkers in the street too!' Mr. Edwards, when going +away, again recurred to his consciousness of senility, and looking full +in Johnson's face, said to him, 'You'll find in Dr. Young, + +"O my coevals! remnants of yourselves[904]!"' + +Johnson did not relish this at all; but shook his head with impatience. +Edwards walked off, seemingly highly pleased with the honour of having +been thus noticed by Dr. Johnson. When he was gone, I said to Johnson, I +thought him but a weak man. JOHNSON. 'Why, yes, Sir. Here is a man who +has passed through life without experience: yet I would rather have him +with me than a more sensible man who will not talk readily. This man is +always willing to say what he has to say.' Yet Dr. Johnson had himself +by no means that willingness which he praised so much, and I think so +justly; for who has not felt the painful effect of the dreary void, when +there is a total silence in a company, for any length of time; or, which +is as bad, or perhaps worse, when the conversation is with difficulty +kept up by a perpetual effort? + +Johnson once observed to me, 'Tom Tyers described me the best: "Sir +(said he), you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken +to[905]."' + +The gentleman whom he thus familiarly mentioned was Mr. Thomas Tyers, +son of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the founder of that excellent place of +publick amusement, Vauxhall Gardens, which must ever be an estate to its +proprietor, as it is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English +nation; there being a mixture of curious show,--gay exhibition,--musick, +vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear;--for all +which only a shilling is paid[906]; and, though last, not least, good +eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale[907]. Mr. +Thomas Tyers was bred to the law; but having a handsome fortune, +vivacity of temper, and eccentricity of mind, he could not confine +himself to the regularity of practice. He therefore ran about the world +with a pleasant carelessness, amusing everybody by his desultory +conversation[908]. He abounded in anecdote, but was not sufficiently +attentive to accuracy. I therefore cannot venture to avail myself much +of a biographical sketch of Johnson which he published, being one among +the various persons ambitious of appending their names to that of my +illustrious friend. That sketch is, however, an entertaining little +collection of fragments. Those which he published of Pope and Addison +are of higher merit; but his fame must chiefly rest upon his _Political +Conferences_, in which he introduces several eminent persons delivering +their sentiments in the way of dialogue, and discovers a considerable +share of learning, various knowledge, and discernment of character. This +much may I be allowed to say of a man who was exceedingly obliging to +me, and who lived with Dr. Johnson in as easy a manner as almost any of +his very numerous acquaintance. + +Mr. Edwards had said to me aside, that Dr. Johnson should have been of a +profession[909]. I repeated the remark to Johnson that I might have his +own thoughts on the subject. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it _would_ have been better +that I had been of a profession. I ought to have been a lawyer.' +BOSWELL. 'I do not think, Sir, it would have been better, for we should +not have had the _English Dictionary_.' JOHNSON. 'But you would have had +_Reports_.' BOSWELL. 'Ay; but there would not have been another, who +could have written the _Dictionary_. There have been many very good +Judges. Suppose you had been Lord Chancellor; you would have delivered +opinions with more extent of mind, and in a more ornamented manner, than +perhaps any Chancellor ever did, or ever will do. But, I believe, causes +have been as judiciously decided as you could have done.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, +Sir. Property has been as well settled.' + +Johnson, however, had a noble ambition floating in his mind, and had, +undoubtedly, often speculated on the possibility of his supereminent +powers being rewarded in this great and liberal country by the highest +honours of the state. Sir William Scott informs me, that upon the death +of the late Lord Lichfield, who was Chancellor of the University of +Oxford, he said to Johnson, 'What a pity it is, Sir, that you did not +follow the profession of the law[910]. You might have been Lord Chancellor +of Great Britain, and attained to the dignity of the peerage; and now +that the title of Lichfield, your native city, is extinct, you might +have had it[911].' Johnson, upon this, seemed much agitated; and, in an +angry tone, exclaimed, 'Why will you vex me by suggesting this, when it +is too late[912]?' + +But he did not repine at the prosperity of others. The late Dr. Thomas +Leland told Mr. Courtenay, that when Mr. Edmund Burke shewed Johnson his +fine house and lands near Beaconsfield, Johnson coolly said, 'Non +equidem invideo; miror magis[913].' + +Yet no man had a higher notion of the dignity of literature than +Johnson, or was more determined in maintaining the respect which he +justly considered as due to it. Of this, besides the general tenor of +his conduct in society, some characteristical instances may be +mentioned. + +He told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that once when he dined in a numerous +company of booksellers, where the room being small, the head of the +table, at which he sat, was almost close to the fire, he persevered in +suffering a great deal of inconvenience from the heat, rather than quit +his place, and let one of them sit above him. + +Goldsmith, in his diverting simplicity, complained one day, in a mixed +company, of Lord Camden. 'I met him (said he) at Lord Clare's house[914] +in the country, and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an +ordinary man.' The company having laughed heartily, Johnson stood forth +in defence of his friend. 'Nay, Gentleman, (said he,) Dr. Goldsmith is +in the right. A nobleman ought to have made up to such a man as +Goldsmith; and I think it is much against Lord Camden that he neglected +him[915].' + +Nor could he patiently endure to hear that such respect as he thought +due only to higher intellectual qualities, should be bestowed on men of +slighter, though perhaps more amusing talents. I told him, that one +morning, when I went to breakfast with Garrick, who was very vain of his +intimacy with Lord Camden,[916] he accosted me thus:--'Pray now, did +you--did you meet a little lawyer turning the corner, eh?'--'No, Sir, +(said I.) Pray what do you mean by the question?'--'Why, (replied +Garrick, with an affected indifference, yet as if standing on tip-toe,) +Lord Camden has this moment left me. We have had a long walk together.' +JOHNSON. 'Well, Sir, Garrick talked very properly. Lord Camden _was a +little lawyer_ to be associating so familiarly with a player.' Sir +Joshua Reynolds observed, with great truth, that Johnson considered +Garrick to be as it were his _property_. He would allow no man either to +blame or to praise Garrick in his presence, without contradicting +him[917]. + +Having fallen into a very serious frame of mind, in which mutual +expressions of kindness passed between us, such as would be thought too +vain in me to repeat, I talked with regret of the sad inevitable +certainty that one of us must survive the other. JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, +that is an affecting consideration. I remember Swift, in one of his +letters to Pope, says, "I intend to come over, that we may meet once +more; and when we must part, it is what happens to all human +beings[918]."' BOSWELL. 'The hope that we shall see our departed +friends[919] again must support the mind.' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir.' +BOSWELL. 'There is a strange unwillingness to part with life, +independent of serious fears as to futurity. A reverend friend of ours +(naming him) tells me, that he feels an uneasiness at the thoughts of +leaving his house, his study, his books.' JOHNSON. 'This is foolish in +----[920]. A man need not be uneasy on these grounds; for, as he will +retain his consciousness, he may say with the philosopher, _Omnia mea +mecum porto_[921].' BOSWELL. 'True, Sir: we may carry our books in our +heads; but still there is something painful in the thought of leaving +for ever what has given us pleasure. I remember, many years ago, when my +imagination was warm, and I happened to be in a melancholy mood, it +distressed me to think of going into a state of being in which +Shakspeare's poetry did not exist. A lady whom I then much admired, a +very amiable woman, humoured my fancy, and relieved me by saying, "The +first thing you will meet in the other world, will be an elegant copy of +Shakspeare's works presented to you."' Dr. Johnson smiled benignantly at +this, and did not appear to disapprove of the notion. + +We went to St. Clement's church again in the afternoon[922], and then +returned and drank tea and coffee in Mrs. Williams's room; Mrs. +Desmoulins doing the honours of the tea-table. I observed that he would +not even look at a proof-sheet of his _Life of Waller_ on Good-Friday. + +Mr. Allen, the printer, brought a book on agriculture, which was +printed, and was soon to be published[923]. It was a very strange +performance, the authour having mixed in it his own thoughts upon +various topicks, along with his remarks on ploughing, sowing, and other +farming operations. He seemed to be an absurd profane fellow, and had +introduced in his book many sneers at religion, with equal ignorance and +conceit. Dr. Johnson permitted me to read some passages aloud. One was, +that he resolved to work on Sunday, and did work, but he owned he felt +_some_ weak compunction; and he had this very curious reflection:--'I +was born in the wilds of Christianity, and the briars and thorns still +hang about me.' Dr. Johnson could not help laughing at this ridiculous +image, yet was very angry at the fellow's impiety. 'However, (said he,) +the Reviewers will make him hang himself.' He, however, observed, 'that +formerly there might have been a dispensation obtained for working on +Sunday in the time of harvest[924].' Indeed in ritual observances, were +all the ministers of religion what they should be, and what many of them +are, such a power might be wisely and safely lodged with the Church. + +On Saturday, April 14[925], I drank tea with him. He praised the late Mr. +Buncombe[926], of Canterbury, as a pleasing man. 'He used to come to me: I +did not seek much after him. Indeed I never sought much after any body.' +BOSWELL. 'Lord Orrery[927], I suppose.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; I never went to +him but when he sent for me.' BOSWELL. 'Richardson[928]?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, +Sir. But I sought after George Psalmanazar the most. I used to go and +sit with him at an alehouse in the city[929].' + +I am happy to mention another instance which I discovered of his +_seeking after_ a man of merit. Soon after the Honourable Daines +Barrington had published his excellent _Observations on the Statutes_, +Johnson waited on that worthy and learned gentleman; and, having told +him his name, courteously said, 'I have read your book, Sir, with great +pleasure, and wish to be better known to you.' Thus began an +acquaintance, which was continued with mutual regard as long as Johnson +lived. + +Talking of a recent seditious delinquent[930], he said, 'They should set +him in the pillory, that he may be punished in a way that would disgrace +him.' I observed, that the pillory does not always disgrace. And I +mentioned an instance of a gentleman[931] who I thought was not +dishonoured by it. JOHNSON. 'Ay, but he was, Sir. He could not mouth and +strut as he used to do, after having been there. People are not willing +to ask a man to their tables who has stood in the pillory.' + +The Gentleman who had dined with us at Dr. Percy's[932] came in. Johnson +attacked the Americans with intemperate vehemence of abuse. I said +something in their favour; and added, that I was always sorry when he +talked on that subject. This, it seems, exasperated him; though he said +nothing at the time. The cloud was charged with sulphureous vapour, +which was afterwards to burst in thunder.--We talked of a gentleman[933] +who was running out his fortune in London; and I said, 'We must get him +out of it. All his friends must quarrel with him, and that will soon +drive him away.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir; we'll send _you_ to him. If your +company does not drive a man out of his house, nothing will.' This was a +horrible shock, for which there was no visible cause. I afterwards asked +him why he had said so harsh a thing. JOHNSON. 'Because, Sir, you made +me angry about the Americans.' BOSWELL. 'But why did you not take your +revenge directly?' JOHNSON. (smiling) 'Because, Sir, I had nothing +ready. A man cannot strike till he has his weapons.' This was a candid +and pleasant confession. + +He shewed me to-night his drawing-room, very genteelly fitted up; and +said, 'Mrs. Thrale sneered when I talked of my having asked you and your +lady to live at my house[934]. I was obliged to tell her, that you would +be in as respectable a situation in my house as in hers. Sir, the +insolence of wealth will creep out.' BOSWELL. 'She has a little both of +the insolence of wealth, and the conceit of parts.' JOHNSON. 'The +insolence of wealth is a wretched thing; but the conceit of parts has +some foundation[935]. To be sure it should not be. But who is without it?' +BOSWELL. 'Yourself, Sir.' JOHNSON. 'Why I play no tricks: I lay no +traps.' BOSWELL. 'No, Sir. You are six feet high, and you only do not +stoop.' + +We talked of the numbers of people that sometimes have composed the +household of great families. I mentioned that there were a hundred in +the family of the present Earl of Eglintoune's father. Dr. Johnson +seeming to doubt it, I began to enumerate. 'Let us see: my Lord and my +Lady two.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, if you are to count by twos, you may be +long enough.' BOSWELL. 'Well, but now I add two sons and seven +daughters, and a servant for each, that will make twenty; so we have the +fifth part already.' JOHNSON. 'Very true. You get at twenty pretty +readily; but you will not so easily get further on. We grow to five feet +pretty readily; but it is not so easy to grow to seven.' + +On Sunday, April 19, being Easter-day, after the solemnities of the +festival in St. Paul's Church, I visited him, but could not stay to +dinner. I expressed a wish to have the arguments for Christianity always +in readiness, that my religious faith might be as firm and clear as any +proposition whatever, so that I need not be under the least uneasiness, +when it should be attacked. JOHNSON. 'Sir, you cannot answer all +objections. You have demonstration for a First Cause: you see he must be +good as well as powerful, because there is nothing to make him +otherwise, and goodness of itself is preferable. Yet you have against +this, what is very certain, the unhappiness of human life. This, +however, gives us reason to hope for a future state of compensation, +that there may be a perfect system. But of that we were not sure, till +we had a positive revelation.' I told him, that his _Rasselas_ had often +made me unhappy; for it represented the misery of human life so well, +and so convincingly to a thinking mind, that if at any time the +impression wore off, and I felt myself easy, I began to suspect some +delusion. + +On Monday, April 20[936], I found him at home in the morning. We talked of +a gentleman[937] who we apprehended was gradually involving his +circumstances by bad management. JOHNSON. 'Wasting a fortune is +evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means. If it were a stream, +they'd stop it. You must speak to him. It is really miserable. Were he a +gamester, it could be said he had hopes of winning. Were he a bankrupt +in trade, he might have grown rich; but he has neither spirit to spend +nor resolution to spare. He does not spend fast enough to have pleasure +from it. He has the crime of prodigality, and the wretchedness of +parsimony. If a man is killed in a duel, he is killed as many a one has +been killed; but it is a sad thing for a man to lie down and die; to +bleed to death, because he has not fortitude enough to sear the wound, +or even to stitch it up.' I cannot but pause a moment to admire the +fecundity of fancy, and choice of language, which in this instance, and, +indeed, on almost all occasions, he displayed. It was well observed by +Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore, 'The conversation of Johnson is strong +and clear, and may be compared to an antique statue, where every vein +and muscle is distinct and bold. Ordinary conversation resembles an +inferiour cast.' + +On Saturday, April 25, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, with +the learned Dr. Musgrave[938], Counsellor Leland of Ireland, son to the +historian, Mrs. Cholmondeley, and some more ladies. _The Project_[939], a +new poem, was read to the company by Dr. Musgrave. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it has +no power. Were it not for the well-known names with which it is filled, +it would be nothing: the names carry the poet, not the poet the names.' +MUSGRAVE. 'A temporary poem always entertains us.' JOHNSON. 'So does an +account of the criminals hanged yesterday entertain us.' + +He proceeded:--'Demosthenes Taylor, as he was called, (that is, the +Editor of Demosthenes) was the most silent man, the merest statue of a +man that I have ever seen. I once dined in company with him, and all he +said during the whole time was no more than _Richard_. How a man should +say only Richard, it is not easy to imagine. But it was thus: Dr. +Douglas was talking of Dr. Zachary Grey, and ascribing to him something +that was written by Dr. Richard Grey. So, to correct him, Taylor said, +(imitating his affected sententious emphasis and nod,) "_Richard_."' + +Mrs. Cholmondeley, in a high flow of spirits, exhibited some lively +sallies of hyperbolical compliment to Johnson, with whom she had been +long acquainted, and was very easy[940]. He was quick in catching the +_manner_ of the moment, and answered her somewhat in the style of the +hero of a romance, 'Madam, you crown me with unfading laurels.' + +I happened, I know not how, to say that a pamphlet meant a prose piece. +JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. A few sheets of poetry unbound are a pamphlet[941], as +much as a few sheets of prose.' MUSGRAVE. 'A pamphlet may be understood +to mean a poetical piece in Westminster-Hall, that is, in formal +language; but in common language it is understood to mean prose.' +JOHNSON. (and here was one of the many instances of his knowing clearly +and telling exactly how a thing is) 'A pamphlet is understood in common +language to mean prose, only from this, that there is so much more prose +written than poetry; as when we say a _book_, prose is understood for +the same reason, though a book may as well be in poetry as in prose. We +understand what is most general, and we name what is less frequent.' + +We talked of a lady's verses on Ireland. MISS REYNOLDS. 'Have you seen +them, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Madam. I have seen a translation from Horace, +by one of her daughters. She shewed it me.' MISS REYNOLDS. 'And how was +it, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Why, very well for a young Miss's verses;--that is +to say, compared with excellence, nothing; but, very well, for the +person who wrote them. I am vexed at being shewn verses in that manner.' +MISS REYNOLDS. 'But if they should be good, why not give them hearty +praise?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Madam, because I have not then got the better of +my bad humour from having been shewn them. You must consider, Madam; +beforehand they may be bad, as well as good. Nobody has a right to put +another under such a difficulty, that he must either hurt the person by +telling the truth, or hurt himself by telling what is not true.'[942] +BOSWELL. 'A man often shews his writings to people of eminence, to +obtain from them, either from their good-nature, or from their not being +able to tell the truth firmly, a commendation, of which he may +afterwards avail himself.' JOHNSON. 'Very true, Sir. Therefore the man, +who is asked by an authour, what he thinks of his work, is put to the +torture, and is not obliged to speak the truth; so that what he says is +not considered as his opinion; yet he has said it, and cannot retract +it; and this authour, when mankind are hunting him with a cannister at +his tail, can say, "I would not have published, had not Johnson, or +Reynolds, or Musgrave, or some other good judge commended the work." Yet +I consider it as a very difficult question in conscience, whether one +should advise a man not to publish a work, if profit be his object; for +the man may say, "Had it not been for you, I should have had the money." +Now you cannot be sure; for you have only your own opinion, and the +publick may think very differently.' SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 'You must upon +such an occasion have two judgments; one as to the real value of the +work, the other as to what may please the general taste at the time.' +JOHNSON. 'But you can be sure of neither; and therefore I should scruple +much to give a suppressive vote. Both Goldsmith's comedies were once +refused; his first by Garrick,[943] his second by Colman, who was +prevailed on at last by much solicitation, nay, a kind of force, to +bring it on.[944] His _Vicar of Wakefield_ I myself did not think would +have had much success. It was written and sold to a bookseller before +his _Traveller_; but published after; so little expectation had the +bookseller from it. Had it been sold after the _Traveller_, he might +have had twice as much money for it, though sixty guineas was no mean +price. The bookseller had the advantage of Goldsmith's reputation from +_The Traveller_ in the sale, though Goldsmith had it not in selling the +copy.'[945] SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. '_The Beggar's Opera_ affords a proof how +strangely people will differ in opinion about a literary performance. +Burke thinks it has no merit.' JOHNSON. 'It was refused by one of the +houses[946]; but I should have thought it would succeed, not from any +great excellence in the writing, but from the novelty, and the general +spirit and gaiety of the piece, which keeps the audience always +attentive, and dismisses them in good humour.' + +We went to the drawing-room, where was a considerable increase of +company. Several of us got round Dr. Johnson, and complained that he +would not give us an exact catalogue of his works, that there might be a +complete edition. He smiled, and evaded our entreaties. That he intended +to do it, I have no doubt, because I have heard him say so; and I have +in my possession an imperfect list, fairly written out, which he +entitles _Historia Studiorum_. I once got from one of his friends a +list, which there was pretty good reason to suppose was accurate, for it +was written down in his presence by this friend, who enumerated each +article aloud, and had some of them mentioned to him by Mr. Levett, in +concert with whom it was made out; and Johnson, who heard all this, did +not contradict it. But when I shewed a copy of this list to him, and +mentioned the evidence for its exactness, he laughed, and said, 'I was +willing to let them go on as they pleased, and never interfered.' Upon +which I read it to him, article by article, and got him positively to +own or refuse; and then, having obtained certainty so far, I got some +other articles confirmed by him directly; and afterwards, from time to +time, made additions under his sanction[947]. + +His friend Edward Cave having been mentioned, he told us, 'Cave used to +sell ten thousand of _The Gentleman's Magazine_; yet such was then his +minute attention and anxiety that the sale should not suffer the +smallest decrease, that he would name a particular person who he heard +had talked of leaving off the _Magazine_, and would say, 'Let us have +something good next month.' + +It was observed, that avarice was inherent in some dispositions. +JOHNSON. 'No man was born a miser, because no man was born to +possession. Every man is born _cupidus_--desirous of getting; but not +_avarus_,--desirous of keeping.' BOSWELL. 'I have heard old Mr. Sheridan +maintain, with much ingenuity, that a complete miser is a happy man; a +miser who gives himself wholly to the one passion of saving.' JOHNSON. +'That is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an +avaricious man a _miser_, because he is miserable[948]. No, Sir; a man who +both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both +enjoyments.' + +The conversation having turned on _Bon-Mots_, he quoted, from one of the +_Ana_, an exquisite instance of flattery in a maid of honour in France, +who being asked by the Queen what o'clock it was, answered, 'What your +Majesty pleases[949].' He admitted that Mr. Burke's classical pun upon Mr. +Wilkes's being carried on the shoulders of the mob,-- + +'... Numerisque fertur +Lege solutus[950],' + +was admirable; and though he was strangely unwilling to allow to that +extraordinary man the talent of wit[951], he also laughed with approbation +at another of his playful conceits; which was, that 'Horace has in one +line given a description of a good desirable manour:-- + +"Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines[952];" + +that is to say, a _modus_[953] as to the tithes and certain _fines_[954].' + +He observed, 'A man cannot with propriety speak of himself, except he +relates simple facts; as, "I was at Richmond:" or what depends on +mensuration; as, "I am six feet high." He is sure he has been at +Richmond; he is sure he is six feet high: but he cannot be sure he is +wise, or that he has any other excellence. Then, all censure of a man's +self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare. It +has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the reproach of +falsehood.' BOSWELL. 'Sometimes it may proceed from a man's strong +consciousness of his faults being observed. He knows that others would +throw him down, and therefore he had better lye down softly of his own +accord.' + +On Tuesday, April 28, he was engaged to dine at General Paoli's, where, +as I have already observed[955], I was still entertained in elegant +hospitality, and with all the ease and comfort of a home. I called on +him, and accompanied him in a hackney-coach. We stopped first at the +bottom of Hedge-lane, into which he went to leave a letter, 'with good +news for a poor man in distress,' as he told me[956]. I did not question +him particularly as to this. He himself often resembled Lady +Bolingbroke's lively description of Pope; that 'he was _un politique aux +choux et aux raves_.'[957].' He would say, 'I dine to-day in +Grosvenor-square;' this might be with a Duke[958]: or, perhaps, 'I dine +to-day at the other end of the town:' or, 'A gentleman of great eminence +called on me yesterday.' He loved thus to keep things floating in +conjecture: _Omne ignotum pro magnifico est_.[959]. I believe I ventured +to dissipate the cloud, to unveil the mystery, more freely and +frequently than any of his friends. We stopped again at Wirgman's, the +well-known _toy-shop_[960], in St. James's-street, at the corner of St. +James's-place, to which he had been directed, but not clearly, for he +searched about some time, and could not find it at first; and said, 'To +direct one only to a corner shop is _toying_ with one.' I suppose he +meant this as a play upon the word _toy_: it was the first time that I +knew him stoop to such sport[961]. After he had been some time in the +shop, he sent for me to come out of the coach, and help him to choose a +pair of silver buckles, as those he had were too small. Probably this +alteration in dress had been suggested by Mrs. Thrale, by associating +with whom, his external appearance was much improved. He got better +cloaths; and the dark colour, from which he never deviated, was +enlivened by metal buttons. His wigs, too, were much better; and during +their travels in France, he was furnished with a Paris-made wig, of +handsome construction[962]. This choosing of silver buckles was a +negociation: 'Sir (said he), I will not have the ridiculous large ones +now in fashion; and I will give no more than a guinea for a pair.' Such +were the _principles_ of the business; and, after some examination, he +was fitted. As we drove along, I found him in a talking humour, of which +I availed myself. BOSWELL. 'I was this morning in Ridley's shop, Sir; +and was told, that the collection called _Johnsoniana_[963] has sold very +much.' JOHNSON. 'Yet the _Journey to the Hebrides_ has not had a great +sale[964].' BOSWELL. 'That is strange.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; for in that +book I have told the world a great deal that they did not know before.' + +BOSWELL. 'I drank chocolate, Sir, this morning with Mr. Eld; and, to my +no small surprize, found him to be a _Staffordshire Whig_[965], a being +which I did not believe had existed.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, there are rascals +in all countries.' BOSWELL. 'Eld said, a Tory was a creature generated +between a non-juring parson and one's grandmother.' JOHNSON. 'And I have +always said, the first Whig was the Devil[966].' BOSWELL. 'He certainly +was, Sir. The Devil was impatient of subordination; he was the first who +resisted power:-- + +"Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven[967]."' + +At General Paoli's were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Marchese +Gherardi of Lombardy, and Mr. John Spottiswoode the younger, of +Spottiswoode[968], the solicitor. At this time fears of an invasion were +circulated; to obviate which, Mr. Spottiswoode observed, that Mr. Fraser +the engineer, who had lately come from Dunkirk, said, that the French +had the same fears of us. JOHNSON. 'It is thus that mutual cowardice +keeps us in peace. Were one half of mankind brave, and one half cowards, +the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they +would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting: but +being all cowards, we go on very well[969].' + +We talked of drinking wine. JOHNSON. 'I require wine, only when I am +alone. I have then often wished for it, and often taken it[970].' +SPOTTISWOODE. 'What, by way of a companion, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'To get rid +of myself, to send myself away. Wine gives great pleasure; and every +pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by +evil. A man may have a strong reason not to drink wine; and that may be +greater than the pleasure. Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. +I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others. Sometimes it +does. But the danger is, that while a man grows better pleased with +himself, he may be growing less pleasing to others[971]. Wine gives a man +nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, +and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. +It only puts in motion what has been locked up in frost. But this may be +good, or it may be bad[972].' SPOTTISWOODE. 'So, Sir, wine is a key which +opens a box; but this box may be either full or empty.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, +Sir, conversation is the key: wine is a pick-lock, which forces open the +box and injures it. A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that +confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.' BOSWELL. 'The +great difficulty of resisting wine is from benevolence. For instance, a +good worthy man asks you to taste his wine, which he has had twenty +years in his cellar.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, all this notion about benevolence +arises from a man's imagining himself to be of more importance to +others, than he really is. They don't care a farthing whether he drinks +wine or not.' SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 'Yes, they do for the time.' JOHNSON. +'For the time!--If they care this minute, they forget it the next. And +as for the good worthy man; how do you know he is good and worthy? No +good and worthy man will insist upon another man's drinking wine. As to +the wine twenty years in the cellar,--of ten men, three say this, merely +because they must say something;--three are telling a lie, when they say +they have had the wine twenty years;--three would rather save the +wine;--one, perhaps, cares. I allow it is something to please one's +company: and people are always pleased with those who partake pleasure +with them. But after a man has brought himself to relinquish the great +personal pleasure which arises from drinking wine, any other +consideration is a trifle. To please others by drinking wine, is +something only, if there be nothing against it. I should, however, be +sorry to offend worthy men:-- + +"Curst be the verse, how well so e'er it flow, +That tends to make one worthy man my foe[973]."' + +BOSWELL. 'Curst be the _spring_, the _water_.' JOHNSON. 'But let us +consider what a sad thing it would be, if we were obliged to drink or do +any thing else that may happen to be agreeable to the company where we +are.' LANGTON. 'By the same rule you must join with a gang of +cut-purses.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir: but yet we must do justice to wine; we +must allow it the power it possesses. To make a man pleased with +himself, let me tell you, is doing a very great thing[974]; + +"_Si patriæ volumus, si_ Nobis _vivere cari_[975].'" + +I was at this time myself a water-drinker, upon trial, by Johnson's +recommendation[976]. JOHNSON. 'Boswell is a bolder combatant than Sir +Joshua: he argues for wine without the help of wine; but Sir Joshua with +it.' SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 'But to please one's company is a strong +motive.' JOHNSON. (who, from drinking only water, supposed every body +who drank wine to be elevated,) 'I won't argue any more with you, Sir. +You are too far gone[977].' SIR JOSHUA. 'I should have thought so indeed, +Sir, had I made such a speech as you have now done.' JOHNSON (drawing +himself in, and, I really thought blushing,) 'Nay, don't be angry. I did +not mean to offend you.' SIR JOSHUA. 'At first the taste of wine was +disagreeable to me; but I brought myself to drink it, that I might be +like other people. The pleasure of drinking wine is so connected with +pleasing your company, that altogether there is something of social +goodness in it.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, this is only saying the same thing over +again.' SIR JOSHUA. 'No, this is new.' JOHNSON. 'You put it in new +words, but it is an old thought. This is one of the disadvantages of +wine. It makes a man mistake words for thoughts.' BOSWELL. 'I think it +is a new thought; at least, it is in a new _attitude_.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, +Sir, it is only in a new coat; or an old coat with a new facing. (Then +laughing heartily) It is the old dog in a new doublet.--An extraordinary +instance however may occur where a man's patron will do nothing for him, +unless he will drink: _there_ may be a good reason for drinking.' + +I mentioned a nobleman[978], who I believed was really uneasy if his +company would not drink hard. JOHNSON. 'That is from having had people +about him whom he has been accustomed to command.' BOSWELL. 'Supposing I +should be _tête-à-tête_ with him at table.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no +more reason for your drinking with _him_, than his being sober with +_you_.' BOSWELL. 'Why that is true; for it would do him less hurt to be +sober, than it would do me to get drunk.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and from +what I have heard of him, one would not wish to sacrifice himself to +such a man. If he must always have somebody to drink with him, he should +buy a slave, and then he would be sure to have it. They who submit to +drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves.' BOSWELL. 'But, +Sir, you will surely make allowance for the duty of hospitality. A +gentleman who loves drinking, comes to visit me.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, a man +knows whom he visits; he comes to the table of a sober man.' BOSWELL. +'But, Sir, you and I should not have been so well received in the +Highlands and Hebrides, if I had not drunk with our worthy friends. Had +I drunk water only as you did, they would not have been so cordial.' +JOHNSON. 'Sir William Temple mentions that in his travels through the +Netherlands he had two or three gentlemen with him; and when a bumper +was necessary, he put it on _them_[979]. Were I to travel again through +the islands, I would have Sir Joshua with me to take the bumpers.' +BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, let me put a case. Suppose Sir Joshua should take a +jaunt into Scotland; he does me the honour to pay me a visit at my house +in the country; I am overjoyed at seeing him; we are quite by ourselves, +shall I unsociably and churlishly let him sit drinking by himself? No, +no, my dear Sir Joshua, you shall not be treated so, I _will_ take a +bottle with you.' + +The celebrated Mrs. Rudd being mentioned. JOHNSON. 'Fifteen years ago I +should have gone to see her.' SPOTTISWOODE. 'Because she was fifteen +years younger?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; but now they have a trick of putting +every thing into the newspapers[980].' + +He begged of General Paoli to repeat one of the introductory stanzas of +the first book of Tasso's _Jerusalem_, which he did, and then Johnson +found fault with the simile of sweetening the edges of a cup for a +child, being transferred from Lucretius into an epick poem[981]. The +General said he did not imagine Homer's poetry was so ancient as is +supposed, because he ascribes to a Greek colony circumstances of +refinement not found in Greece itself at a later period, when Thucydides +wrote. JOHNSON. 'I recollect but one passage quoted by Thucydides from +Homer, which is not to be found in our copies of Homer's works; I am for +the antiquity of Homer, and think that a Grecian colony, by being nearer +Persia, might be more refined than the mother country.' + +On Wednesday, April 29, I dined with him at Mr. Allan Ramsay's, where +were Lord Binning, Dr. Robertson the historian, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and +the Honourable Mrs. Boscawen, widow of the Admiral, and mother of the +present Viscount Falmouth; of whom, if it be not presumptuous in me to +praise her, I would say, that her manners are the most agreeable, and +her conversation the best, of any lady with whom I ever had the +happiness to be acquainted. Before Johnson came we talked a good deal of +him; Ramsay said he had always found him a very polite man, and that he +treated him with great respect, which he did very sincerely. I said I +worshipped him. ROBERTSON. 'But some of you spoil him; you should not +worship him; you should worship no man.' BOSWELL. 'I cannot help +worshipping him, he is so much superiour to other men.' ROBERTSON. 'In +criticism, and in wit in conversation, he is no doubt very excellent; +but in other respects he is not above other men; he will believe any +thing[982], and will strenuously defend the most minute circumstance +connected with the Church of England.' BOSWELL. 'Believe me, Doctor, you +are much mistaken as to this; for when you talk with him calmly in +private[983], he is very liberal in his way of thinking.' ROBERTSON. 'He +and I have been always very gracious[984]; the first time I met him was +one evening at Strahan's, when he had just had an unlucky altercation +with Adam Smith[985], to whom he had been so rough, that Strahan, after +Smith was gone, had remonstrated with him, and told him that I was +coming soon, and that he was uneasy to think that he might behave in the +same manner to me. "No, no, Sir, (said Johnson) I warrant you Robertson +and I shall do very well." Accordingly he was gentle and good-humoured, +and courteous with me the whole evening; and he has been so upon every +occasion that we have met since. I have often said (laughing) that I +have been in a great measure indebted to Smith for my good reception.' +BOSWELL. 'His power of reasoning is very strong, and he has a peculiar +art of drawing characters, which is as rare as good portrait painting.' +SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 'He is undoubtedly admirable in this; but, in order +to mark the characters which he draws, he overcharges them, and gives +people more than they really have, whether of good or bad.' + +No sooner did he, of whom we had been thus talking so easily, arrive, +than we were all as quiet as a school upon the entrance of the +head-master[986]; and were very soon set down to a table covered with such +variety of good things, as contributed not a little to dispose him to be +pleased. + +RAMSAY. 'I am old enough to have been a contemporary of Pope. His poetry +was highly admired in his life-time, more a great deal than after his +death[987].' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it has not been less admired since his death; +no authours ever had so much fame in their own life-time as Pope and +Voltaire; and Pope's poetry has been as much admired since his death as +during his life; it has only not been as much talked of, but that is +owing to its being now more distant, and people having other writings to +talk of. Virgil is less talked of than Pope, and Homer is less talked of +than Virgil; but they are not less admired. We must read what the world +reads at the moment. It has been maintained that this superfoetation, +this teeming of the press in modern times, is prejudicial to good +literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of +inferiour value, in order to be in the fashion; so that better works are +neglected for want of time, because a man will have more gratification +of his vanity in conversation, from having read modern books, than from +having read the best works of antiquity. But it must be considered, that +we have now more knowledge generally diffused; all our ladies read now, +which is a great extension[988]. Modern writers are the moons of +literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from +the ancients. Greece appears to me to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome +of elegance.' RAMSAY. 'I suppose Homer's _Iliad_ to be a collection of +pieces which had been written before his time. I should like to see a +translation of it in poetical prose like the book of Ruth or Job.' +ROBERTSON. 'Would you, Dr. Johnson, who are master of the English +language, but try your hand upon a part of it.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you could +not read it without the pleasure of verse[989].' + +We talked of antiquarian researches. JOHNSON. 'All that is really +_known_ of the ancient state of Britain is contained in a few pages. We +_can_ know no more than what the old writers have told us; yet what +large books have we upon it, the whole of which, excepting such parts as +are taken from those old writers, is all a dream, such as Whitaker's +_Manchester_[990]. I have heard Henry's _History of Britain_ well spoken +of: I am told it is carried on in separate divisions, as the civil, the +military, the religious history: I wish much to have one branch well +done, and that is the history of manners, of common life.' ROBERTSON. +'Henry should have applied his attention to that alone, which is enough +for any man; and he might have found a great deal scattered in various +books, had he read solely with that view. Henry erred in not selling his +first volume at a moderate price to the booksellers, that they might +have pushed him on till he had got reputation[991]. I sold my _History of +Scotland_ at a moderate price[992], as a work by which the booksellers +might either gain or not; and Cadell has told me that Millar and he have +got six thousand pounds by it. I afterwards received a much higher price +for my writings. An authour should sell his first work for what the +booksellers will give, till it shall appear whether he is an authour of +merit, or, which is the same thing as to purchase-money, an authour who +pleases the publick.' + +Dr. Robertson expatiated on the character of a certain nobleman[993]; that +he was one of the strongest-minded men that ever lived; that he would +sit in company quite sluggish, while there was nothing to call forth his +intellectual vigour; but the moment that any important subject was +started, for instance, how this country is to be defended against a +French invasion, he would rouse himself, and shew his extraordinary +talents with the most powerful ability and animation. JOHNSON. 'Yet this +man cut his own throat. The true strong and sound mind is the mind that +can embrace equally great things and small. Now I am told the King of +Prussia will say to a servant, "Bring me a bottle of such a wine, which +came in such a year; it lies in such a corner of the cellars." I would +have a man great in great things, and elegant in little things.' He said +to me afterwards, when we were by ourselves, 'Robertson was in a mighty +romantick humour[994], he talked of one whom he did not know; but I +_downed_[995] him with the King of Prussia.' 'Yes, Sir, (said I,) you +threw a _bottle_ at his head.' + +An ingenious gentleman was mentioned, concerning whom both Robertson and +Ramsay agreed that he had a constant firmness of mind; for after a +laborious day, and amidst a multiplicity of cares and anxieties, he +would sit down with his sisters and be quite cheerful and good-humoured. +Such a disposition, it was observed, was a happy gift of nature. +JOHNSON. 'I do not think so; a man has from nature a certain portion of +mind; the use he makes of it depends upon his own free will. That a man +has always the same firmness of mind I do not say; because every man +feels his mind less firm at one time than another; but I think a man's +being in a good or bad humour depends upon his will.' I, however, could +not help thinking that a man's humour is often uncontroulable by his +will. + +Johnson harangued against drinking wine[996]. 'A man (said he) may choose +whether he will have abstemiousness and knowledge, or claret and +ignorance.' Dr. Robertson, (who is very companionable,) was beginning to +dissent as to the proscription of claret[997]. JOHNSON: (with a placid +smile.) 'Nay, Sir, you shall not differ with me; as I have said that the +man is most perfect who takes in the most things, I am for knowledge and +claret.' ROBERTSON: (holding a glass of generous claret in his hand.) +'Sir, I can only drink your health.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I should be sorry if +_you_ should be ever in such a state as to be able to do nothing more.' +ROBERTSON. 'Dr. Johnson, allow me to say, that in one respect I have the +advantage of you; when you were in Scotland you would not come to hear +any of our preachers[998], whereas, when I am here, I attend your publick +worship without scruple, and indeed, with great satisfaction.' JOHNSON. +'Why, Sir, that is not so extraordinary: the King of Siam sent +ambassadors to Louis the Fourteenth; but Louis the Fourteenth sent none +to the King of Siam[999].' + +Here my friend for once discovered a want of knowledge or forgetfulness; +for Louis the Fourteenth did send an embassy to the King of Siam, and +the Abbé Choisi, who was employed in it, published an account of it in +two volumes[1000]. + +Next day, Thursday, April 30, I found him at home by himself. JOHNSON. +'Well, Sir, Ramsay gave us a splendid dinner. I love Ramsay. You will +not find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more +information, and more elegance, than in Ramsay's.' BOSWELL. 'What I +admire in Ramsay, is his continuing to be so young.' JOHNSON. 'Why, yes, +Sir, it is to be admired. I value myself upon this, that there is +nothing of the old man in my conversation. I am now sixty-eight, and I +have no more of it than at twenty-eight[1001].' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, would +not you wish to know old age? He who is never an old man, does not know +the whole of human life; for old age is one of the divisions of it.' +JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, what talk is this?' BOSWELL. 'I mean, Sir, the +Sphinx's description of it;--morning, noon, and night. I would know +night, as well as morning and noon.' JOHNSON. 'What, Sir, would you know +what it is to feel the evils of old age? Would you have the gout? Would +you have decrepitude?'--Seeing him heated, I would not argue any +farther; but I was confident that I was in the right. I would, in due +time, be a Nestor, an elder of the people; and there _should_ be some +difference between the conversation of twenty-eight and sixty-eight. A +grave picture should not be gay. There is a serene, solemn, placid old +age. JOHNSON. 'Mrs. Thrale's mother said of me what flattered me much. A +clergyman was complaining of want of society in the country where he +lived; and said, "They talk of _runts_;" (that is, young cows). "Sir, +(said Mrs. Salusbury,) Mr. Johnson would learn to talk of runts:" +meaning that I was a man who would make the most of my situation, +whatever it was.' He added, 'I think myself a very polite man[1002].' + +On Saturday, May 2, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, where +there was a very large company, and a great deal of conversation; but +owing to some circumstance which I cannot now recollect, I have no +record of any part of it, except that there were several people there by +no means of the Johnsonian school; so that less attention was paid to +him than usual, which put him out of humour; and upon some imaginary +offence from me, he attacked me with such rudeness, that I was vexed and +angry, because it gave those persons an opportunity of enlarging upon +his supposed ferocity, and ill treatment of his best friends. I was so +much hurt, and had my pride so much roused, that I kept away from him +for a week; and, perhaps, might have kept away much longer, nay, gone to +Scotland without seeing him again, had not we fortunately met and been +reconciled. To such unhappy chances are human friendships liable[1003]. + +On Friday, May 8, I dined with him at Mr. Langton's. I was reserved and +silent, which I suppose he perceived, and might recollect the cause. +After dinner when Mr. Langton was called out of the room, and we were by +ourselves, he drew his chair near to mine, and said, in a tone of +conciliating courtesy[1004], 'Well, how have you done?' BOSWELL. 'Sir, +you have made me very uneasy by your behaviour to me when we were last +at Sir Joshua Reynolds's. You know, my dear Sir, no man has a greater +respect and affection for you, or would sooner go to the end of the +world to serve you. Now to treat me so--.' He insisted that I had +interrupted him, which I assured him was not the case; and proceeded-- +'But why treat me so before people who neither love you nor me?' +JOHNSON. 'Well, I am sorry for it. I'll make it up to you twenty +different ways, as you please.' BOSWELL. 'I said to-day to Sir Joshua, +when he observed that you _tossed_[1005] me sometimes--I don't care how +often, or how high he tosses me, when only friends are present, for then +I fall upon soft ground: but I do not like falling on stones, which is +the case when enemies are present.--I think this a pretty good image, +Sir.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is one of the happiest I have ever heard.' + +The truth is, there was no venom in the wounds which he inflicted at any +time, unless they were irritated by some malignant infusion by other +hands. We were instantly as cordial again as ever, and joined in hearty +laugh at some ludicrous but innocent peculiarities of one of our +friends[1006]. BOSWELL. 'Do you think, Sir, it is always culpable to +laugh at a man to his face?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that depends upon the +man and the thing. If it is a slight man, and a slight thing, you may; +for you take nothing valuable from him.' + +He said, 'I read yesterday Dr. Blair's sermon[1007] on Devotion, from +the text "_Cornelius, a devout man_[1008]." His doctrine is the best +limited, the best expressed: there is the most warmth without fanaticism, +the most rational transport. There is one part of it which I disapprove, +and I'd have him correct it; which is, that "he who does not feel joy in +religion is far from the kingdom of heaven!" There are many good men +whose fear of GOD predominates over their love. It may discourage. It +was rashly said. A noble sermon it is indeed. I wish Blair would come +over to the Church of England.' + +When Mr. Langton returned to us, the 'flow of talk' went on. An eminent +author[1009] being mentioned;--JOHNSON. 'He is not a pleasant man. His +conversation is neither instructive nor brilliant. He does not talk as +if impelled by any fulness of knowledge or vivacity of imagination. His +conversation is like that of any other sensible man. He talks with no +wish either to inform or to hear, but only because he thinks it does not +become ---- to sit in a company and say nothing.' + +Mr. Langton having repeated the anecdote of Addison having distinguished +between his powers in conversation and in writing, by saying 'I have +only nine-pence in my pocket; but I can draw for a thousand +pounds[1010];'--JOHNSON. 'He had not that retort ready, Sir; he had +prepared it before-hand.' LANGTON: (turning to me.) 'A fine surmise. Set +a thief to catch a thief.' + +Johnson called the East-Indians barbarians. BOSWELL. 'You will except +the Chinese, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir.' BOSWELL. 'Have they not arts?' +JOHNSON. 'They have pottery.' BOSWELL. 'What do you say to the written +characters of their language? 'JOHNSON. 'Sir, they have not an alphabet. +They have not been able to form what all other nations have formed.' +BOSWELL. 'There is more learning in their language than in any other, +from the immense number of their characters.' JOHNSON. 'It is only more +difficult from its rudeness; as there is more labour in hewing down a +tree with a stone than with an axe.' + +He said, 'I have been reading Lord Kames's _Sketches of the History of +Man_. In treating of severity of punishment, he mentions that of Madame +Lapouchin, in Russia, but he does not give it fairly; for I have looked +at _Chappe D'Auteroche_[1011], from whom he has taken it. He stops where +it is said that the spectators thought her innocent, and leaves out what +follows; that she nevertheless was guilty. Now this is being as culpable +as one can conceive, to misrepresent fact in a book, and for what +motive? It is like one of those lies which people tell, one cannot see +why. The woman's life was spared; and no punishment was too great for +the favourite of an Empress who had conspired to dethrone her mistress.' +BOSWELL. 'He was only giving a picture of the lady in her sufferings.' +JOHNSON. 'Nay, don't endeavour to palliate this. Guilt is a principal +feature in the picture. Kames is puzzled with a question that puzzled me +when I was a very young man. Why is it that the interest of money is +lower, when money is plentiful; for five pounds has the same proportion +of value to a hundred pounds when money is plentiful, as when it is +scarce? A lady explained it to me. "It is (said she) because when money +is plentiful there are so many more who have money to lend, that they +bid down one another. Many have then a hundred pounds; and one +says,--Take mine rather than another's, and you shall have it at four +_per cent_."' BOSWELL. 'Does Lord Kames decide the question?' JOHNSON. +'I think he leaves it as he found it[1012].' BOSWELL. 'This must have +been an extraordinary lady who instructed you, Sir. May I ask who she +was?' JOHNSON. 'Molly Aston[1013], Sir, the sister of those ladies with +whom you dined at Lichfield[1014]. I shall be at home to-morrow.' +BOSWELL. 'Then let us dine by ourselves at the Mitre, to keep up the +old custom, "the custom of the manor," the custom of the mitre.' +JOHNSON. 'Sir, so it shall be.' + +On Saturday, May 9, we fulfilled our purpose of dining by ourselves at +the Mitre, according to old custom. There was, on these occasions, a +little circumstance of kind attention to Mrs. Williams, which must not +be omitted. Before coming out, and leaving her to dine alone, he gave +her choice of a chicken, a sweetbread, or any other little nice +thing, which was carefully sent to her from the tavern, ready-drest. + +Our conversation to-day, I know not how, turned, (I think for the only +time at any length, during our long acquaintance,) upon the sensual +intercourse between the sexes, the delight of which he ascribed chiefly +to imagination. 'Were it not for imagination, Sir, (said he,) a man +would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess. But such +is the adventitious charm of fancy, that we find men who have violated +the best principles of society, and ruined their fame and their fortune, +that they might possess a woman of rank.' It would not be proper to +record the particulars of such a conversation in moments of unreserved +frankness, when nobody was present on whom it could have any hurtful +effect. That subject, when philosophically treated, may surely employ +the mind in as curious discussion, and as innocently, as anatomy; +provided that those who do treat it keep clear of inflammatory +incentives. + +'From grave to gay, from lively to severe[1015],'--we were soon engaged +in very different speculation; humbly and reverently considering and +wondering at the universal mystery of all things, as our imperfect +faculties can now judge of them. 'There are (said he) innumerable +questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no +answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was +to be created, why was it not created sooner?' + +On Sunday, May 10, I supped with him at Mr. Hoole's, with Sir Joshua +Reynolds. I have neglected the memorial of this evening, so as to +remember no more of it than two particulars; one, that he strenuously +opposed an argument by Sir Joshua, that virtue was preferable to vice, +considering this life only; and that a man would be virtuous were it +only to preserve his character: and that he expressed much wonder at the +curious formation of the bat, a mouse with wings; saying, that 'it was +almost as strange a thing in physiology, as if the fabulous dragon could +be seen.' + +On Tuesday, May 12, I waited on the Earl of Marchmont, to know if his +Lordship would favour Dr. Johnson with information concerning Pope, +whose Life he was about to write. Johnson had not flattered himself with +the hopes of receiving any civility from this nobleman; for he said to +me, when I mentioned Lord Marchmont as one who could tell him a great +deal about Pope,--'Sir, he will tell _me_ nothing.' I had the honour of +being known to his Lordship, and applied to him of myself, without being +commissioned by Johnson. His Lordship behaved in the most polite and +obliging manner, promised to tell all he recollected about Pope, and was +so very courteous as to say, 'Tell Dr. Johnson I have a great respect +for him, and am ready to shew it in any way I can. I am to be in the +city to-morrow, and will call at his house as I return.' His Lordship +however asked, 'Will he write the Lives of the Poets impartially? He was +the first that brought Whig and Tory into a Dictionary[1016]. And what do +you think of his definition of Excise? Do you know the history of his +aversion to the word _transpire_[1017]?' Then taking down the folio +_Dictionary_, he shewed it with this censure on its secondary sense: 'To +escape from secrecy to notice; a sense lately innovated from France, +without necessity[1018].' The truth was Lord Bolingbroke, who left the +Jacobites, first used it; therefore, it was to be condemned. 'He should +have shewn what word would do for it, if it was unnecessary.' I +afterwards put the question to Johnson: 'Why, Sir, (said he,) _get +abroad_.' BOSWELL. 'That, Sir, is using two words[1019].' JOHNSON. 'Sir, +there is no end of this. You may as well insist to have a word for old +age.' BOSWELL. 'Well, Sir, _Senectus_.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, to insist +always that there should be one word to express a thing in English, +because there is one in another language, is to change the language.' + +I availed myself of this opportunity to hear from his Lordship many +particulars both of Pope and Lord Bolingbroke, which I have in +writing[1020]. + +I proposed to Lord Marchmont that he should revise Johnson's _Life of +Pope_: 'So (said his Lordship) you would put me in a dangerous +situation. You know he knocked down Osborne the bookseller[1021].' + +Elated with the success of my spontaneous exertion to procure material +and respectable aid to Johnson for his very favourite work, _The Lives +of the Poets_, I hastened down to Mr. Thrale's at Streatham, where he +now was, that I might insure his being at home next day; and after +dinner, when I thought he would receive the good news in the best +humour, I announced it eagerly: 'I have been at work for you to-day, +Sir. I have been with Lord Marchmont. He bade me tell you he has a great +respect for you, and will call on you to-morrow at one o'clock, and +communicate all he knows about Pope.'--Here I paused, in full +expectation that he would be pleased with this intelligence, would +praise my active merit, and would be alert to embrace such an offer from +a nobleman. But whether I had shewn an over-exultation, which provoked +his spleen; or whether he was seized with a suspicion that I had +obtruded him on Lord Marchmont, and humbled him too much; or whether +there was any thing more than an unlucky fit of ill-humour, I know not; +but, to my surprize, the result was,--JOHNSON. 'I shall not be in town +to-morrow. I don't care to know about Pope.' MRS. THRALE: (surprized as +I was, and a little angry.) 'I suppose, Sir, Mr. Boswell thought, that +as you are to write _Pope's Life_, you would wish to know about him.' +JOHNSON. 'Wish! why yes. If it rained knowledge I'd hold out my hand; +but I would not give myself the trouble to go in quest of it.' There was +no arguing with him at the moment. Some time afterwards he said, 'Lord +Marchmont will call on me, and then I shall call on Lord Marchmont.' Mr. +Thrale was uneasy at his unaccountable caprice[1022]; and told me, that +if I did not take care to bring about a meeting between Lord Marchmont +and him, it would never take place, which would be a great pity. I sent +a card to his Lordship, to be left at Johnson's house, acquainting him, +that Dr. Johnson could not be in town next day, but would do himself the +honour of waiting on him at another time. I give this account fairly, as +a specimen of that unhappy temper with which this great and good man had +occasionally to struggle, from something morbid in his constitution. Let +the most censorious of my readers suppose himself to have a violent fit +of the tooth-ach, or to have received a severe stroke on the shin-bone, +and when in such a state to be asked a question; and if he has any +candour, he will not be surprized at the answers which Johnson sometimes +gave in moments of irritation, which, let me assure them, is exquisitely +painful. But it must not be erroneously supposed that he was, in the +smallest degree, careless concerning any work which he undertook, or +that he was generally thus peevish. It will be seen, that in the +following year he had a very agreeable interview with Lord Marchmont, at +his Lordship's house[1023]; and this very afternoon he soon forgot any +fretfulness, and fell into conversation as usual. + +I mentioned a reflection having been thrown out against four Peers for +having presumed to rise in opposition to the opinion of the twelve +Judges, in a cause in the House of Lords[1024], as if that were indecent. +JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no ground for censure. The Peers are Judges +themselves; and supposing them really to be of a different opinion, they +might from duty be in opposition to the Judges, who were there only to +be consulted.' + +In this observation I fully concurred with him; for, unquestionably, all +the Peers are vested with the highest judicial powers; and when they are +confident that they understand a cause, are not obliged, nay ought not +to acquiesce in the opinion of the ordinary Law Judges, or even in that +of those who from their studies and experience are called the Law Lords. +I consider the Peers in general as I do a Jury, who ought to listen with +respectful attention to the sages of the law; but, if after hearing +them, they have a firm opinion of their own, are bound, as honest men, +to decide accordingly. Nor is it so difficult for them to understand +even law questions, as is generally thought; provided they will bestow +sufficient attention upon them. This observation was made by my honoured +relation the late Lord Cathcart, who had spent his life in camps and +courts; yet assured me, that he could form a clear opinion upon most of +the causes that came before the House of Lords, 'as they were so well +enucleated[1025] in the Cases.' + +Mrs. Thrale told us, that a curious clergyman of our acquaintance had +discovered a licentious stanza, which Pope had originally in his +_Universal Prayer_, before the stanza, + +'What conscience dictates to be done, +Or warns us[1026] not to do,' &c. + +It was thus:-- + +'Can sins of moment claim the rod +Of everlasting fires? +And that offend great Nature's GOD, +Which Nature's self inspires[1027]?' + +and that Dr. Johnson observed, 'it had been borrowed from _Guarini_.' +There are, indeed, in _Pastor Fido_, many such flimsy superficial +reasonings, as that in the last two lines of this stanza. BOSWELL. 'In +that stanza of Pope's, "_rod of fires_" is certainly a bad metaphor.' +MRS. THRALE. 'And "sins of _moment_" is a faulty expression; for its +true import is _momentous_, which cannot be intended.' JOHNSON. 'It must +have been written "of _moments_." Of _moment_, is _momentous_; of +_moments_, _momentary_. I warrant you, however, Pope wrote this stanza, +and some friend struck it out. Boileau wrote some such thing, and +Arnaud[1028] struck it out, saying, "_Vous gagnerez deux ou trois impies, +et perdrez je ne scais combien des honnettes gens_." These fellows want +to say a daring thing, and don't know how to go about it. Mere poets +know no more of fundamental principles than--.' Here he was interrupted +somehow. Mrs. Thrale mentioned Dryden. JOHNSON. 'He puzzled himself +about predestination.--How foolish was it in Pope to give all his +friendship to Lords, who thought they honoured him by being with him; +and to choose such Lords as Burlington, and Cobham, and Bolingbroke! +Bathurst was negative, a pleasing man; and I have heard no ill of +Marchmont; and then always saying, "I do not value you for being a +Lord;" which was a sure proof that he did[1029]. I never say, I do not +value Boswell more for being born to an estate, because I do not care.' +BOSWELL. 'Nor for being a Scotchman?' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, I do value you +more for being a Scotchman. You are a Scotchman without the faults of a +Scotchman. You would not have been so valuable as you are, had you not +been a Scotchman.' + +Talking of divorces, I asked if Othello's doctrine was not plausible? + +'He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stolen, +Let him not know't, and he's not robb'd at all[1030].' + +Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale joined against this. JOHNSON. 'Ask any man +if he'd wish not to know of such an injury.' BOSWELL. 'Would you tell +your friend to make him unhappy?' JOHNSON. 'Perhaps, Sir, I should not; +but that would be from prudence on my own account. A man would tell his +father.' BOSWELL. 'Yes; because he would not have spurious children to +get any share of the family inheritance.' MRS. THRALE. 'Or he would tell +his brother.' BOSWELL. 'Certainly his _elder_ brother.' JOHNSON. 'You +would tell your friend of a woman's infamy, to prevent his marrying a +whore: there is the same reason to tell him of his wife's infidelity, +when he is married, to prevent the consequences of imposition. It is a +breach of confidence not to tell a friend.' BOSWELL. 'Would you tell +Mr.----[1031]?' (naming a gentleman who assuredly was not in the least +danger of such a miserable disgrace, though married to a fine woman.) +JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; because it would do no good: he is so sluggish, he'd +never go to parliament and get through a divorce.' + +He said of one of our friends[1032], 'He is ruining himself without +pleasure. A man who loses at play, or who runs out his fortune at court, +makes his estate less, in hopes of making it bigger: (I am sure of this +word, which was often used by him:) but it is a sad thing to pass +through the quagmire of parsimony, to the gulph of ruin. To pass over +the flowery path of extravagance is very well.' + +Amongst the numerous prints pasted[1033] on the walls of the dining-room +at Streatham, was Hogarth's 'Modern Midnight Conversation.' I asked him +what he knew of Parson Ford[1034], who makes a conspicuous figure in the +riotous group. JOHNSON. 'Sir, he was my acquaintance and relation, my +mother's nephew. He had purchased a living in the country, but not +simoniacally. I never saw him but in the country. I have been told he +was a man of great parts; very profligate, but I never heard he was +impious.' BOSWELL. 'Was there not a story of his ghost having appeared?' +JOHNSON. 'Sir, it was believed. A waiter at the Hummums[1035], in which +house Ford died, had been absent for some time, and returned, not +knowing that Ford was dead. Going down to the cellar, according to the +story, he met him; going down again he met him a second time. When he +came up, he asked some of the people of the house what Ford could be +doing there. They told him Ford was dead. The waiter took a fever, in +which he lay for some time. When he recovered, he said he had a message +to deliver to some women from Ford; but he was not to tell what, or to +whom. He walked out; he was followed; but somewhere about St. Paul's +they lost him. He came back, and said he had delivered the message, and +the women exclaimed, "Then we are all undone!" Dr. Pellet, who was not a +credulous man, inquired into the truth of this story, and he said, the +evidence was irresistible. My wife went to the Hummums; (it is a place +where people get themselves cupped.) I believe she went with intention +to hear about this story of Ford. At first they were unwilling to tell +her; but, after they had talked to her, she came away satisfied that it +was true. To be sure the man had a fever; and this vision may have been +the beginning of it. But if the message to the women, and their +behaviour upon it, were true as related, there was something +supernatural. That rests upon his word; and there it remains.' + +After Mrs. Thrale was gone to bed, Johnson and I sat up late. We resumed +Sir Joshua Reynolds's argument on the preceding Sunday, that a man would +be virtuous though he had no other motive than to preserve his +character. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is not true: for as to this world vice does +not hurt a man's character.' BOSWELL. 'Yes, Sir, debauching a friend's +wife will.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. Who thinks the worse of ----[1036] for it?' +BOSWELL. 'Lord ----[1037] was not his friend.' JOHNSON. 'That is only a +circumstance, Sir; a slight distinction. He could not get into the house +but by Lord ----. A man is chosen Knight of the shire, not the less for +having debauched ladies.' BOSWELL. 'What, Sir, if he debauched the +ladies of gentlemen in the county, will not there be a general +resentment against him?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. He will lose those +particular gentlemen; but the rest will not trouble their heads about +it.' (warmly.) BOSWELL. 'Well, Sir, I cannot think so.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, +Sir, there is no talking with a man who will dispute what every body +knows, (angrily.) Don't you know this?' BOSWELL. 'No, Sir; and I wish to +think better of your country than you represent it. I knew in Scotland a +gentleman obliged to leave it for debauching a lady; and in one of our +counties an Earl's brother lost his election, because he had debauched +the lady of another Earl in that county, and destroyed the peace of a +noble family.' + +Still he would not yield. He proceeded: 'Will you not allow, Sir, that +vice does not hurt a man's character so as to obstruct his prosperity in +life, when you know that ----[1038] was loaded with wealth and honours; +a man who had acquired his fortune by such crimes, that his consciousness +of them impelled him to cut his own throat.' BOSWELL. 'You will +recollect, Sir, that Dr. Robertson said, he cut his throat because he +was weary of still life; little things not being sufficient to move his +great mind.' JOHNSON, (very angry.) 'Nay, Sir, what stuff is this! You +had no more this opinion after Robertson said it, than before. I know +nothing more offensive than repeating what one knows to be foolish +things, by way of continuing a dispute, to see what a man will +answer,--to make him your butt!' (angrier still.) BOSWELL. 'My dear Sir, +I had no such intentions as you seem to suspect; I had not indeed. Might +not this nobleman have felt every thing "weary, stale, flat, and +unprofitable[1039]," as Hamlet says?' JOHNSON. 'Nay, if you are to bring +in gabble, I'll talk no more. I will not, upon my honour.'--My readers +will decide upon this dispute. + +Next morning I stated to Mrs. Thrale at breakfast, before he came down, +the dispute of last night as to the influence of character upon success +in life. She said he was certainly wrong; and told me, that a Baronet +lost an election in Wales, because he had debauched the sister of a +gentleman in the county, whom he made one of his daughters invite as her +companion at his seat in the country, when his lady and his other +children were in London. But she would not encounter Johnson upon the +subject. + +I staid all this day with him at Streatham. He talked a great deal, in +very good humour. + +Looking at Messrs. Dilly's splendid edition of Lord Chesterfield's +miscellaneous works, he laughed, and said, 'Here now are two speeches +ascribed to him, both of which were written by me: and the best of it +is, they have found out that one is like Demosthenes, and the other like +Cicero[1040].' + +He censured Lord Kames's _Sketches of the History of Man_[1041], for +misrepresenting Clarendon's account of the appearance of Sir George +Villiers's ghost, as if Clarendon were weakly credulous; when the truth +is, that Clarendon only says, that the story was upon a better +foundation of credit, than usually such discourses are founded upon[1042]; +nay, speaks thus of the person who was reported to have seen the vision, +'the poor man, _if he had been at all waking_;' which Lord Kames has +omitted. He added, 'in this book it is maintained that virtue is natural +to man, and that if we would but consult our own hearts we should be +virtuous.[1043] Now after consulting our own hearts all we can, and with +all the helps we have, we find how few of us are virtuous. This is +saying a thing which all mankind know not to be true.' BOSWELL. 'Is not +modesty natural?' JOHNSON. 'I cannot say, Sir, as we find no people +quite in a state of nature; but I think the more they are taught, the +more modest they are. The French are a gross, ill-bred, untaught people; +a lady there will spit on the floor and rub it with her foot.[1044] What +I gained by being in France was, learning to be better satisfied with my +own country. Time may be employed to more advantage from nineteen to +twenty-four almost in any way than in travelling; when you set +travelling against mere negation, against doing nothing, it is better to +be sure; but how much more would a young man improve were he to study +during those years. Indeed, if a young man is wild, and must run after +women and bad company, it is better this should be done abroad, as, on +his return, he can break off such connections, and begin at home a new +man, with a character to form, and acquaintances to make[1045]. How +little does travelling supply to the conversation of any man who has +travelled; how little to Beauclerk!' BOSWELL. 'What say you to +Lord ----?' JOHNSON. 'I never but once heard him talk of what he had +seen, and that was of a large serpent in one of the Pyramids of Egypt.' +BOSWELL. 'Well, I happened to hear him tell the same thing, which made +me mention him[1046].' + +I talked of a country life. JOHNSON. 'Were I to live in the country, I +would not devote myself to the acquisition of popularity; I would live +in a much better way, much more happily; I would have my time at my own +command[1047].' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, is it not a sad thing to be at a +distance from all our literary friends?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you will by and +by have enough of this conversation, which now delights you so much.' +[1048] + +As he was a zealous friend of subordination, he was at all times +watchful to repress the vulgar cant against the manners of the great; +[1049] High people, Sir, (said he,) are the best; take a hundred ladies +of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing +to sacrifice their own pleasure to their children than a hundred other +women. Tradeswomen (I mean the wives of tradesmen) in the city, who are +worth from ten to fifteen thousand pounds, are the worst creatures upon +the earth, grossly ignorant, and thinking viciousness fashionable. +Farmers, I think, are often worthless fellows[1050]. Few lords will +cheat; and, if they do, they'll be ashamed of it: farmers cheat and are +not ashamed of it: they have all the sensual vices too of the nobility, +with cheating into the bargain. There is as much fornication and adultery +among farmers as amongst noblemen.' BOSWELL. 'The notion of the world, +Sir, however is, that the morals of women of quality are worse than +those in lower stations.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, the licentiousness of one +woman of quality makes more noise than that of a number of women in +lower stations; then, Sir, you are to consider the malignity of women in +the city against women of quality, which will make them believe any +thing of them, such as that they call their coachmen to bed. No, Sir, so +far as I have observed, the higher in rank, the richer ladies are, they +are the better instructed and the more virtuous.' + +This year the Reverend Mr. Horne published his _Letter to Mr. Dunning on +the English Particle_; Johnson read it, and though not treated in it +with sufficient respect[1051], he had candour enough to say to Mr. Seward, +'Were I to make a new edition of my _Dictionary_, I would adopt +several[1052] of Mr. Horne's etymologies; I hope they did not put the dog +in the pillory for his libel; he has too much literature for that[1053].' + +On Saturday, May 16, I dined with him at Mr. Beauclerk's with Mr. +Langton, Mr. Steevens, Dr. Higgins, and some others. I regret very +feelingly every instance of my remissness in recording his +_memorabilia_; I am afraid it is the condition of humanity (as Mr. +Windham, of Norfolk, once observed to me, after having made an admirable +speech in the House of Commons, which was highly applauded, but which he +afterwards perceived might have been better:) 'that we are more uneasy +from thinking of our wants, than happy in thinking of our acquisitions.' +This is an unreasonable mode of disturbing our tranquillity, and should +be corrected; let me then comfort myself with the large treasure of +Johnson's conversation which I have preserved for my own enjoyment and +that of the world, and let me exhibit what I have upon each occasion, +whether more or less, whether a bulse[1054], or only a few sparks of a +diamond. + +He said, 'Dr. Mead lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost +any man[1055].' The disaster of General Burgoyne's army was then the +common topic of conversation. It was asked why piling their arms was +insisted upon as a matter of such consequence, when it seemed to be a +circumstance so inconsiderable in itself[1056]. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, a +French authour says, "_Il y a beaucoup de puerilités dans la guerre_." +All distinctions are trifles, because great things can seldom occur, and +those distinctions are settled by custom. A savage would as willingly +have his meat sent to him in the kitchen, as eat it at the table here; +as men become civilized, various modes of denoting honourable preference +are invented.' + +He this day made the observations upon the similarity between _Rasselas_ +and _Candide_, which I have inserted in its proper place[1057], when +considering his admirable philosophical Romance. He said _Candide_ he +thought had more power in it than any thing that _Voltaire_ had written. + +He said, 'the lyrical part of Horace never can be perfectly translated; +so much of the excellence is in the numbers and the expression. Francis +has done it the best; I'll take his, five out of six, against them all.' + +On Sunday, May 17, I presented to him Mr. Fullarton, of Fullarton, who +has since distinguished himself so much in India[1058], to whom he +naturally talked of travels, as Mr. Brydone accompanied him in his tour +to Sicily and Malta. He said, 'The information which we have from modern +travellers is much more authentick than what we had from ancient +travellers; ancient travellers guessed; modern travellers measure[1059]. +The Swiss admit that there is but one errour in Stanyan[1060]. If Brydone +were more attentive to his Bible, he would be a good traveller[1061].' + +He said, 'Lord Chatham was a Dictator; he possessed the power of putting +the State in motion; now there is no power, all order is relaxed.' +BOSWELL. 'Is there no hope of a change to the better?' JOHNSON. 'Why, +yes, Sir, when we are weary of this relaxation. So the City of London +will appoint its Mayors again by seniority[1062].' BOSWELL. 'But is not +that taking a mere chance for having a good or a bad Mayor?' JOHNSON. +'Yes, Sir; but the evil of competition is greater than that of the worst +Mayor that can come; besides, there is no more reason to suppose that +the choice of a rabble will be right, than that chance will be right.' + +On Tuesday, May 19, I was to set out for Scotland in the evening. He was +engaged to dine with me at Mr. Dilly's, I waited upon him to remind him +of his appointment and attend him thither; he gave me some salutary +counsel, and recommended vigorous resolution against any deviation from +moral duty. BOSWELL. 'But you would not have me to bind myself by a +solemn obligation?' JOHNSON, (much agitated) 'What! a vow--O, no, Sir, a +vow is a horrible thing, it is a snare for sin[1063]. The man who cannot +go to Heaven without a vow--may go--.' Here, standing erect, in the +middle of his library, and rolling grand, his pause was truly a curious +compound of the solemn and the ludicrous; he half-whistled in his usual +way, when pleasant, and he paused, as if checked by religious awe. +Methought he would have added--to Hell--but was restrained. I humoured +the dilemma. 'What! Sir, (said I,) _In cælum jusseris ibit_[1064]?' +alluding to his imitation of it,-- + +'And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes.' + +I had mentioned to him a slight fault in his noble _Imitation of the +Tenth Satire of Juvenal_, a too near recurrence of the verb _spread_, in +his description of the young Enthusiast at College:-- + +'Through all his veins the fever of renown, +_Spreads_ from the strong contagion of the gown; +O'er Bodley's dome his future labours _spread_, +And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head[1065].' + +He had desired me to change _spreads_ to _burns_, but for perfect +authenticity, I now had it done with his own hand[1066]. I thought this +alteration not only cured the fault, but was more poetical, as it might +carry an allusion to the shirt by which Hercules was inflamed. + +We had a quiet comfortable meeting at Mr. Dilly's; nobody there but +ourselves. Mr. Dilly mentioned somebody having wished that Milton's +_Tractate on Education_ should be printed along with his Poems in the +edition of _The English Poets_ then going on. JOHNSON. 'It would be +breaking in upon the plan; but would be of no great consequence. So far +as it would be any thing, it would be wrong. Education in England has +been in danger of being hurt by two of its greatest men, Milton and +Locke. Milton's plan is impracticable, and I suppose has never been +tried. Locke's, I fancy, has been tried often enough, but is very +imperfect; it gives too much to one side, and too little to the other; +it gives too little to literature[1067].--I shall do what I can for Dr. +Watts; but my materials are very scanty. His poems are by no means his +best works; I cannot praise his poetry itself highly; but I can praise +its design[1068].' + +My illustrious friend and I parted with assurances of affectionate +regard. + +I wrote to him on the 25th of May, from Thorpe in Yorkshire, one of the +seats of Mr. Bosville[1069], and gave him an account of my having passed +a day at Lincoln, unexpectedly, and therefore without having any letters +of introduction, but that I had been honoured with civilities from the +Reverend Mr. Simpson, an acquaintance of his, and Captain Broadley, of +the Lincolnshire Militia; but more particularly from the Reverend Dr. +Gordon, the Chancellor, who first received me with great politeness as a +stranger, and when I informed him who I was, entertained me at his house +with the most flattering attention; I also expressed the pleasure with +which I had found that our worthy friend Langton was highly esteemed in +his own county town. + + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, June 18, 1778. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + + * * * * * + +'Since my return to Scotland, I have been again at Lanark, and have had +more conversation with Thomson's sister. It is strange that Murdoch, who +was his intimate friend, should have mistaken his mother's maiden name, +which he says was Hume, whereas Hume was the name of his grandmother by +the mother's side. His mother's name was Beatrix Trotter[1070], a +daughter of Mr. Trotter, of Fogo, a small proprietor of land. Thomson +had one brother, whom he had with him in England as his amanuensis; but +he was seized with a consumption, and having returned to Scotland, to +try what his native air would do for him, died young. He had three +sisters, one married to Mr. Bell, minister of the parish of Strathaven; +one to Mr. Craig, father of the ingenious architect, who gave the plan +of the New Town of Edinburgh; and one to Mr. Thomson, master of the +grammar-school at Lanark. He was of a humane and benevolent disposition; +not only sent valuable presents to his sisters, but a yearly allowance +in money, and was always wishing to have it in his power to do them more +good. Lord Lyttelton's observation, that "he loathed much to write," was +very true. His letters to his sister, Mrs. Thomson, were not frequent, +and in one of them he says, "All my friends who know me, know how +backward I am to write letters; and never impute the negligence of my +hand to the coldness of my heart." I send you a copy of the last letter +which she had from him[1071]; she never heard that he had any intention +of going into holy orders. From this late interview with his sister, I +think much more favourably of him, as I hope you will. I am eager to see +more of your Prefaces to the Poets; I solace myself with the few +proof-sheets which I have. + +'I send another parcel of Lord Hailes's _Annals_[1072], which you will +please to return to me as soon as you conveniently can. He says, "he +wishes you would cut a little deeper;" but he may be proud that there is +so little occasion to use the critical knife. I ever am, my dear Sir, + +'Your faithful and affectionate, + +'humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +Mr. Langton has been pleased, at my request, to favour me with some +particulars of Dr. Johnson's visit to Warley-camp, where this gentleman +was at the time stationed as a Captain in the Lincolnshire militia[1073]. +I shall give them in his own words in a letter to me. + +'It was in the summer of the year 1778[1074], that he complied with my +invitation to come down to the Camp at Warley, and he staid with me +about a week; the scene appeared, notwithstanding a great degree of ill +health that he seemed to labour under, to interest and amuse him, as +agreeing with the disposition that I believe you know he constantly +manifested towards enquiring into subjects of the military kind. He +sate, with a patient degree of attention, to observe the proceedings of +a regimental court-martial, that happened to be called, in the time of +his stay with us; and one night, as late as at eleven o'clock, he +accompanied the Major of the regiment in going what are styled the +_Rounds_, where he might observe the forms of visiting the guards, for +the seeing that they and their sentries are ready in their duty on their +several posts. He took occasion to converse at times on military +topicks, one in particular, that I see the mention of, in your _Journal +of a Tour to the Hebrides_, which lies open before me[1075], as to +gun-powder; which he spoke of to the same effect, in part, that you +relate. + +'On one occasion, when the regiment were going through their exercise, +he went quite close to the men at one of the extremities of it, and +watched all their practices attentively; and, when he came away, his +remark was, "The men indeed do load their muskets and fire with +wonderful celerity." He was likewise particular in requiring to know +what was the weight of the musquet balls in use, and within what +distance they might be expected to take effect when fired off. + +'In walking among the tents, and observing the difference between those +of the officers and private men, he said that the superiority of +accommodation of the better conditions of life, to that of the inferiour +ones, was never exhibited to him in so distinct a view. The civilities +paid to him in the camp were, from the gentlemen of the Lincolnshire +regiment, one of the officers of which accommodated him with a tent in +which he slept; and from General Hall, who very courteously invited him +to dine with him, where he appeared to be very well pleased with his +entertainment, and the civilities he received on the part of the +General[1076]; the attention likewise, of the General's aid-de-camp, +Captain Smith, seemed to be very welcome to him, as appeared by their +engaging in a great deal of discourse together. The gentlemen of the +East York regiment likewise on being informed of his coming, solicited +his company at dinner, but by that time he had fixed his departure, so +that he could not comply with the invitation.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I have received two letters from you, of which the second complains of +the neglect shewn to the first. You must not tye your friends to such +punctual correspondence. You have all possible assurances of my +affection and esteem; and there ought to be no need of reiterated +professions. When it may happen that I can give you either counsel or +comfort, I hope it will never happen to me that I should neglect you; +but you must not think me criminal or cold if I say nothing when I have +nothing to say. + +'You are now happy enough. Mrs. Boswell is recovered; and I congratulate +you upon the probability of her long life. If general approbation will +add anything to your enjoyment, I can tell you that I have heard you +mentioned as _a man whom everybody likes_[1077]. I think life has little +more to give. + +'----[1078] has gone to his regiment. He has laid down his coach, and +talks of making more contractions of his expence: how he will succeed I +know not. It is difficult to reform a household gradually; it may be +better done by a system totally new. I am afraid he has always something +to hide. When we pressed him to go to ----[1079], he objected the +necessity of attending his navigation[1080]; yet he could talk of going +to Aberdeen, a place not much nearer his navigation. I believe he cannot +bear the thought of living at ----[1081] in a state of diminution; and +of appearing among the gentlemen of the neighbourhood _shorn of his +beams_.[1082] This is natural, but it is cowardly. What I told him of +the encreasing expence of a growing family seems to have struck him. He +certainly had gone on with very confused views, and we have, I think, +shewn him that he is wrong; though, with the common deficiency of +advisers, we have not shewn him how to do right.[1083] + +'I wish you would a little correct or restrain your imagination, and +imagine that happiness, such as life admits, may be had at other places +as well as London. Without asserting Stoicism, it may be said, that it +is our business to exempt ourselves as much as we can from the power of +external things. There is but one solid basis of happiness; and that is, +the reasonable hope of a happy futurity.[1084] This may be had every where. + +'I do not blame your preference of London to other places, for it is +really to be preferred, if the choice is free; but few have the choice +of their place, or their manner of life; and mere pleasure ought not to +be the prime motive of action. + +'Mrs. Thrale, poor thing, has a daughter.[1085] Mr. Thrale dislikes the +times,[1086] like the rest of us. Mrs. Williams is sick; Mrs. Desmoulins +is poor. I have miserable nights. Nobody is well but Mr. Levett. + +'I am, dear Sir, Your most, &c. + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'London, July 3, 1778.' + +In the course of this year there was a difference between him and his +friend Mr. Strahan;[1087] the particulars of which it is unnecessary to +relate. Their reconciliation was communicated to me in a letter from Mr. +Strahan, in the following words:-- + +'The notes I shewed you that passed between him and me were dated in +March last. The matter lay dormant till July 27,[1088] when he wrote to +me as follows: + +"To William Strahan, Esq. + +"Sir, + +"It would be very foolish for us to continue strangers any longer. You +can never by persistency make wrong right. If I resented too +acrimoniously, I resented only to yourself. Nobody ever saw or heard +what I wrote. You saw that my anger was over, for in a day or two I came +to your house. I have given you longer time; and I hope you have made so +good use of it, as to be no longer on evil terms with, Sir, + +"Your, &c. + +"Sam. Johnson." + +'On this I called upon him; and he has since dined with me.' + +After this time, the same friendship as formerly continued between Dr. +Johnson and Mr. Strahan. My friend mentioned to me a little circumstance +of his attention, which, though we may smile at it, must be allowed to +have its foundation in a nice and true knowledge of human life. 'When I +write to Scotland, (said he,) I employ Strahan to frank my letters, that +he may have the consequence of appearing a Parliament-man among his +countrymen.' + + +'To CAPTAIN LANGTON[1089], WARLEY-CAMP. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'When I recollect how long ago I was received with so much kindness at +Warley Common, I am ashamed that I have not made some enquiries after my +friends. + +'Pray how many sheep-stealers did you convict? and how did you punish +them? When are you to be cantoned in better habitations? The air grows +cold, and the ground damp. Longer stay in the camp cannot be without +much danger to the health of the common men, if even the officers can +escape. + +'You see that Dr. Percy is now Dean of Carlisle; about five hundred a +year, with a power of presenting himself to some good living. He is +provided for. + +'The session of the CLUB is to commence with that of the Parliament. Mr. +Banks[1090] desires to be admitted; he will be a very honourable +accession. + +'Did the King please you[1091]? The Coxheath men, I think, have some +reason to complain[1092]: Reynolds says your camp is better than theirs. + +'I hope you find yourself able to encounter this weather. Take care of +your own health; and, as you can, of your men. Be pleased to make my +compliments to all the gentlemen whose notice I have had, and whose +kindness I have experienced. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'Sam. Johnson.' + +'October 31, 1778.' + +I wrote to him on the 18th of August, the 18th of September, and the 6th +of November; informing him of my having had another son born, whom I had +called James[1093]; that I had passed some time at Auchinleck; that the +Countess of Loudoun, now in her ninety-ninth year, was as fresh as when +he saw her[1094], and remembered him with respect; and that his mother +by adoption, the Countess of Eglintoune[1095], had said to me, 'Tell Mr. +Johnson I love him exceedingly;' that I had again suffered much from bad +spirits; and that as it was very long since I heard from him, I was not +a little uneasy. + +The continuance of his regard for his friend Dr. Burney, appears from +the following letters:-- + + +'To THE REVEREND DR. WHEELER[1096], OXFORD. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'Dr. Burney, who brings this paper, is engaged in a History of Musick; +and having been told by Dr. Markham of some MSS. relating to his +subject, which are in the library of your College, is desirous to +examine them. He is my friend; and therefore I take the liberty of +intreating your favour and assistance in his enquiry: and can assure +you, with great confidence, that if you knew him he would not want any +intervenient solicitation to obtain the kindness of one who loves +learning and virtue as you love them. + +'I have been flattering myself all the summer with the hope of paying my +annual visit to my friends; but something has obstructed me: I still +hope not to be long without seeing you. I should be glad of a little +literary talk; and glad to shew you, by the frequency of my visits, how +eagerly I love it, when you talk it. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'London, November 2, 1778.' + + + +'TO THE REVEREND DR. EDWARDS[1097], OXFORD. + +'SIR, + +'The bearer, DR. BURNEY, has had some account of a Welsh Manuscript in +the Bodleian library, from which he hopes to gain some materials for his +History of Musick; but being ignorant of the language, is at a loss +where to find assistance. I make no doubt but you, Sir, can help him +through his difficulties, and therefore take the liberty of recommending +him to your favour, as I am sure you will find him a man worthy of every +civility that can be shewn, and every benefit that can be conferred. + +'But we must not let Welsh drive us from Greek. What comes of +Xenophon[1098]? If you do not like the trouble of publishing the book, +do not let your commentaries be lost; contrive that they may be published +somewhere. + +'I am, Sir, + +'Your humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'London, November 2, 1778. + + +These letters procured Dr. Burney great kindness and friendly offices +from both of these gentleman, not only on that occasion, but in future +visits to the university[1099]. The same year Dr. Johnson not only wrote +to Dr. Joseph Warton in favour of Dr. Burney's youngest son, who was to +be placed in the college of Winchester, but accompanied him when he went +thither[1100]. + +We surely cannot but admire the benevolent exertions of this great and +good man, especially when we consider how grievously he was afflicted +with bad health, and how uncomfortable his home was made by the +perpetual jarring of those whom he charitably accommodated under his +roof. He has sometimes suffered me to talk jocularly of his group of +females, and call them his _Seraglio_. He thus mentions them, together +with honest Levett, in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale[1101]: +'Williams hates every body; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love +Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll[1102] loves none of them.' +[1103] + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'It is indeed a long time since I wrote, and I think you have some +reason to complain; however, you must not let small things disturb you, +when you have such a fine addition to your happiness as a new boy, and I +hope your lady's health restored by bringing him. It seems very probable +that a little care will now restore her, if any remains of her +complaints are left. + +'You seem, if I understand your letter, to be gaining ground at +Auchinleck[1104], an incident that would give me great delight. + + * * * * * + +'When any fit of anxiety, or gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays +hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, but exert +your whole care to hide it; by endeavouring to hide it, you will drive +it away. Be always busy[1105]. + +'The CLUB is to meet with the Parliament; we talk of electing Banks, the +traveller; he will be a reputable member. + +'Langton has been encamped with his company of militia on Warley-common; +I spent five days amongst them; he signalized himself as a diligent +officer, and has very high respect in the regiment. He presided when I +was there at a court-martial; he is now quartered in Hertfordshire; his +lady and little ones are in Scotland. Paoli came to the camp and +commended the soldiers. + +'Of myself I have no great matter to say, my health is not restored, my +nights are restless and tedious. The best night that I have had these +twenty years was at Fort-Augustus[1106]. + +'I hope soon to send you a few lines to read. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'November 21, 1778.' + + +About this time the Rev. Mr. John Hussey, who had been some time in +trade, and was then a clergyman of the Church of England, being about to +undertake a journey to Aleppo, and other parts of the East, which he +accomplished, Dr. Johnson, (who had long been in habits of intimacy with +him,) honoured him with the following letter:-- + + +'To MR. JOHN HUSSEY. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I have sent you the _Grammar_, and have left you two books more, by +which I hope to be remembered; write my name in them; we may perhaps see +each other no more, you part with my good wishes, nor do I despair of +seeing you return. Let no opportunities of vice corrupt you; let no bad +example seduce you; let the blindness of Mahometans confirm you in +Christianity. GOD bless you. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your affectionate humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'December 29, 1778.' + + +Johnson this year expressed great satisfaction at the publication of the +first volume of _Discourses to the Royal Academy_[1107], by Sir Joshua +Reynolds, whom he always considered as one of his literary school[1108]. +Much praise indeed is due to those excellent _Discourses_, which are so +universally admired, and for which the authour received from the Empress +of Russia a gold snuff-box, adorned with her profile in _bas relief_, +set in diamonds; and containing what is infinitely more valuable, a slip +of paper, on which are written with her Imperial Majesty's own hand, the +following words: '_Pour le Chevalier Reynolds en témoignage du +contentement que j'ai ressentie[1109] à la lecture de ses excellens +discours sur la peinture_.' + +In 1779, Johnson gave the world a luminous proof that the vigour of his +mind in all its faculties, whether memory, judgement, or imagination, +was not in the least abated; for this year came out the first four +volumes of his _Prefaces, biographical and critical, to the most eminent +of the English Poets_,[*] published by the booksellers of London. The +remaining volumes came out in the year 1780[1110]. The Poets were +selected by the several booksellers who had the honorary copy right, +which is still preserved among them by mutual compact, notwithstanding +the decision of the House of Lords against the perpetuity of Literary +Property[1111]. We have his own authority[1112], that by his +recommendation the poems of Blackmore[1113], Watts[1114], Pomfret[1115], +and Yalden[1116], were added to the collection. Of this work I shall +speak more particularly hereafter. + +On the 22nd of January, I wrote to him on several topicks, and mentioned +that as he had been so good as to permit me to have the proof sheets of +his _Lives of the Poets_, I had written to his servant, Francis, to take +care of them for me. + + +'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, Feb. 2, 1779. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'Garrick's death is a striking event; not that we should be surprised +with the death of any man, who has lived sixty-two years; but because +there was a _vivacity_ in our late celebrated friend, which drove away +the thoughts of _death_ from any association with _him_. I am sure you +will be tenderly affected with his departure[1117]; and I would wish to +hear from you upon the subject. I was obliged to him in my days of +effervescence in London, when poor Derrick was my governour[1118]; and +since that time I received many civilities from him. Do you remember how +pleasing it was, when I received a letter from him at Inverary[1119], +upon our first return to civilized living after our Hebridean journey? I +shall always remember him with affection as well as admiration. + +'On Saturday last, being the 30th of January[1120], I drank coffee and +old port, and had solemn conversation with the Reverend Mr. Falconer, a +nonjuring bishop, a very learned and worthy man. He gave two toasts, +which you will believe I drank with cordiality, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and +Flora Macdonald. I sat about four hours with him, and it was really as +if I had been living in the last century. The Episcopal Church of +Scotland, though faithful to the royal house of Stuart, has never +accepted of any _congé d'liré_, since the Revolution; it is the only +true Episcopal Church in Scotland, as it has its own succession of +bishops. For as to the episcopal clergy who take the oaths to the +present government, they indeed follow the rites of the Church of +England, but, as Bishop Falconer observed, "they are not _Episcopals_; +for they are under no bishop, as a bishop cannot have authority beyond +his diocese." This venerable gentleman did me the honour to dine with me +yesterday, and he laid his hands upon the heads of my little ones. We +had a good deal of curious literary conversation, particularly about Mr. +Thomas Ruddiman[1121], with whom he lived in great friendship. + +'Any fresh instance of the uncertainty of life makes one embrace more +closely a valuable friend. My dear and much respected Sir, may GOD +preserve you long in this world while I am in it. + +'I am ever, + +'Your much obliged, + +'And affectionate humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +On the 23rd of February I wrote to him again, complaining of his +silence, as I had heard he was ill, and had written to Mr. Thrale, for +information concerning him; and I announced my intention of soon being +again in London. + + +'TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'Why should you take such delight to make a bustle, to write to Mr. +Thrale that I am negligent, and to Francis to do what is so very +unnecessary. Thrale, you may be sure, cared not about it; and I shall +spare Francis the trouble, by ordering a set both of the _Lives_ and +_Poets_ to dear Mrs. Boswell[1122], in acknowledgement of her marmalade. +Persuade her to accept them, and accept them kindly. If I thought she +would receive them scornfully, I would send them to Miss Boswell, who, I +hope, has yet none of her mamma's ill-will to me. + +'I would send sets of _Lives_, four volumes, to some other friends, to +Lord Hailes first. His second volume lies by my bed-side; a book surely +of great labour, and to every just thinker of great delight. Write me +word to whom I shall send besides[1123]; would it please Lord Auchinleck? +Mrs. Thrale waits in the coach. + +'I am, dear Sir, &c., + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'March 13, 1779.' + + +This letter crossed me on the road to London, where I arrived on Monday, +March 15, and next morning at a late hour, found Dr. Johnson sitting +over his tea, attended by Mrs. Desmoulins, Mr. Levett, and a clergyman, +who had come to submit some poetical pieces to his revision. It is +wonderful what a number and variety of writers, some of them even +unknown to him, prevailed on his good-nature to look over their works, +and suggest corrections and improvements[1124]. My arrival interrupted +for a little while the important business of this true representative +of Bayes[1125]; upon its being resumed, I found that the subject under +immediate consideration was a translation, yet in manuscript, of the +_Carmen Seculare_ of Horace, which had this year been set to musick, and +performed as a publick entertainment in London, for the joint benefit of +Monsieur Philidor and Signer Baretti[1126]. When Johnson had done +reading, the authour asked him bluntly, 'If upon the whole it was a good +translation?' Johnson, whose regard for truth was uncommonly strict, +seemed to be puzzled for a moment, what answer to make; as he certainly +could not honestly commend the performance: with exquisite address he +evaded the question thus, 'Sir, I do not say that it may not be made a +very good translation[1127].' Here nothing whatever in favour of the +performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed +_Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain_, came next in review; the bard +[1128] was a lank bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing +himself in agitation, while Johnson read, and shewing his teeth in a +grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp +tone, 'Is that poetry, Sir?--Is it _Pindar_?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, there +is here a great deal of what is called poetry.' Then, turning to me, the +poet cried, 'My muse has not been long upon the town, and (pointing to +the _Ode_) it trembles under the hand of the great critick[1129].' +Johnson, in a tone of displeasure, asked him, 'Why do you praise Anson +[1130]?' I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question. +He proceeded, 'Here is an errour, Sir; you have made Genius feminine.' +[1131] 'Palpable, Sir; (cried the enthusiast) I know it. But (in a lower +tone) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with +which her Grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath, in the +military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain[1132].' +JOHNSON. 'Sir, you are giving a reason for it; but that will not make it +right. You may have a reason why two and two should make five; but they +will still make but four.' + +Although I was several times with him in the course of the following +days, such it seems were my occupations, or such my negligence, that I +have preserved no memorial of his conversation till Friday, March 26, +when I visited him. He said he expected to be attacked on account of his +_Lives of the Poets_. 'However (said he) I would rather be attacked than +unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an authour is to be silent +as to his works.[1133]. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but +starving it is still worse; an assault may be unsuccessful; you may have +more men killed than you kill; but if you starve the town, you are sure +of victory.' + +Talking of a friend of ours associating with persons of very discordant +principles and characters; I said he was a very universal man, quite a +man of the world[1134]. JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but one may be so much a man +of the world as to be nothing in the world. I remember a passage in +Goldsmith's _Vicar of Wakefield_, which he was afterwards fool enough to +expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."' BOSWELL. +'That was a fine passage.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir: there was another fine +passage too, which he struck out: "When I was a young man, being anxious +to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But +I soon gave this over; for, I found that generally what was new was +false[1135]."' I said I did not like to sit with people of whom I had not +a good opinion. JOHNSON. 'But you must not indulge your delicacy too much; +or you will be a _tête-à-tête_ man all your life.' + +During my stay in London this spring, I find I was unaccountably[1136] +negligent in preserving Johnson's sayings, more so than at any time when +I was happy enough to have an opportunity of hearing his wisdom and wit. +There is no help for it now. I must content myself with presenting such +scraps as I have. But I am nevertheless ashamed and vexed to think how +much has been lost. It is not that there was a bad crop this year; but +that I was not sufficiently careful in gathering it in. I, therefore, in +some instances can only exhibit a few detached fragments. + +Talking of the wonderful concealment of the authour of the celebrated +letters signed _Junius_[1137]; he said, 'I should have believed Burke to +be Junius, because I know no man but Burke who is capable of writing +these letters[1138]; but Burke spontaneously denied it to me. The case +would have been different had I asked him if he was the authour; a man +so questioned, as to an anonymous publication, may think he has a right +to deny it.'[1139]. + +He observed that his old friend, Mr. Sheridan, had been honoured with +extraordinary attention in his own country, by having had an exception +made in his favour in an Irish Act of Parliament concerning insolvent +debtors[1140]. 'Thus to be singled out (said he) by a legislature, as an +object of publick consideration and kindness, is a proof of no common +merit.' + +At Streatham, on Monday, March 29, at breakfast he maintained that a +father had no right to control the inclinations of his daughters in +marriage[1141]. + +On Wednesday, March 31, when I visited him, and confessed an excess of +which I had very seldom been guilty; that I had spent a whole night in +playing at cards, and that I could not look back on it with +satisfaction; instead of a harsh animadversion, he mildly said, 'Alas, +Sir, on how few things can we look back with satisfaction.' + +On Thursday, April 1, he commended one of the Dukes of Devonshire for 'a +dogged veracity[1142].' He said too, 'London is nothing to some people; +but to a man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the place. And +there is no place where oeconomy can be so well practised as in London. +More can be had here for the money, even by ladies, than any where else. +You cannot play tricks with your fortune in a small place; you must make +an uniform appearance. Here a lady may have well-furnished apartments, +and elegant dress, without any meat in her kitchen.' + +I was amused by considering with how much ease and coolness he could +write or talk to a friend, exhorting him not to suppose that happiness +was not to be found as well in other places as in London[1143]; when he +himself was at all times sensible of its being, comparatively speaking, +a heaven upon earth[1144]. The truth is, that by those who from sagacity, +attention, and experience, have learnt the full advantage of London, its +preeminence over every other place, not only for variety of enjoyment, +but for comfort, will be felt with a philosophical exultation[1145]. The +freedom from remark and petty censure, with which life may be passed +there, is a circumstance which a man who knows the teazing restraint of +a narrow circle must relish highly. Mr. Burke, whose orderly and amiable +domestic habits might make the eye of observation less irksome to him +than to most men, said once very pleasantly, in my hearing, 'Though I +have the honour to represent Bristol, I should not like to live there; I +should be obliged to be so much _upon my good behaviour_.' In London, a +man may live in splendid society at one time, and in frugal retirement +at another, without animadversion. There, and there alone, a man's own +house is truly his _castle_, in which he can be in perfect safety from +intrusion whenever he pleases. I never shall forget how well this was +expressed to me one day by Mr. Meynell[1146]: 'The chief advantage of +London (said he) is, that a man is always _so near his burrow_[1147].' + +He said of one of his old acquaintances, 'He is very fit for a +travelling governour. He knows French very well. He is a man of good +principles; and there would be no danger that a young gentleman should +catch his manner; for it is so very bad, that it must be avoided. In +that respect he would be like the drunken Helot[1148].' + +A gentleman has informed me, that Johnson said of the same person, 'Sir, +he has the most _inverted_ understanding of any man whom I have ever +known.' + +On Friday, April 2, being Good-Friday, I visited him in the morning as +usual; and finding that we insensibly fell into a train of ridicule upon +the foibles of one of our friends, a very worthy man[1149], I, by way of +a check, quoted some good admonition from _The Government of the +Tongue_[1150], that very pious book. It happened also remarkably enough, +that the subject of the sermon preached to us to-day by Dr. Burrows, the +rector of St. Clement Danes, was the certainty that at the last day we +must give an account of 'the deeds done in the body[1151];' and, amongst +various acts of culpability he mentioned evil-speaking. As we were +moving slowly along in the crowd from church, Johnson jogged my elbow, +and said, 'Did you attend to the sermon?' 'Yes, Sir, (said I,) it was +very applicable to _us_.' He, however, stood upon the defensive. 'Why, +Sir, the sense of ridicule is given us, and may be lawfully used[1152]. +The authour of _The Government of the Tongue_ would have us treat all +men alike.' + +In the interval between morning and evening service, he endeavoured to +employ himself earnestly in devotional exercises; and as he has +mentioned in his _Prayers and Meditations_[1153], gave me '_Les Pensées +de Paschal_', that I might not interrupt him. I preserve the book with +reverence. His presenting it to me is marked upon it with his own hand, +and I have found in it a truly divine unction. We went to church again +in the afternoon[1154]. + +On Saturday, April 3, I visited him at night, and found him sitting in +Mrs. Williams's room, with her, and one who he afterwards told me was a +natural son[1155] of the second Lord Southwell. The table had a singular +appearance, being covered with a heterogeneous assemblage of oysters and +porter for his company, and tea for himself. I mentioned my having heard +an eminent physician, who was himself a Christian, argue in favour of +universal toleration, and maintain, that no man could be hurt by another +man's differing from him in opinion. JOHNSON. 'Sir, you are to a certain +degree hurt by knowing that even one man does not believe[1156].' + +On Easter-day, after solemn service at St. Paul's, I dined with him: Mr. +Allen the printer was also his guest. He was uncommonly silent; and I +have not written down any thing, except a single curious fact, which, +having the sanction of his inflexible veracity, may be received as a +striking instance of human insensibility and inconsideration. As he was +passing by a fishmonger who was skinning an eel alive, he heard him +'curse it, because it would not lye still[1157].' + +On Wednesday, April 7, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's. I have +not marked what company was there. Johnson harangued upon the qualities +of different liquors; and spoke with great contempt of claret, as so +weak, that 'a man would be drowned by it before it made him drunk[1158].' +He was persuaded to drink one glass of it, that he might judge, not from +recollection, which might be dim, but from immediate sensation. He shook +his head, and said, 'Poor stuff! No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; +port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink +brandy. In the first place, the flavour of brandy is most grateful to +the palate; and then brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking +_can_ do for him[1159]. There are, indeed, few who are able to drink +brandy. That is a power rather to be wished for than attained. And yet, +(proceeded he) as in all pleasure hope is a considerable part, I know +not but fruition comes too quick by brandy. Florence wine I think the +worst; it is wine only to the eye; it is wine neither while you are +drinking it, nor after you have drunk it; it neither pleases the taste, +nor exhilarates the spirits.' I reminded him how heartily he and I used +to drink wine together, when we were first acquainted; and how I used to +have a head-ache after sitting up with him[1160]. He did not like to +have this recalled, or, perhaps, thinking that I boasted improperly, +resolved to have a witty stroke at me: 'Nay, Sir, it was not the _wine_ +that made your head ache, but the _sense_ that I put into it.' BOSWELL. +'What, Sir! will sense make the head ache?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, (with a +smile) when it is not used to it.'--No man who has a true relish of +pleasantry could be offended at this; especially if Johnson in a long +intimacy had given him repeated proofs of his regard and good estimation. +I used to say, that as he had given me a thousand pounds in praise, he +had a good right now and then to take a guinea from me. + +On Thursday, April 8, I dined with him at Mr. Allan Ramsay's, with Lord +Graham[1161] and some other company. We talked of Shakspeare's witches. +JOHNSON. 'They are beings of his own creation; they are a compound of +malignity and meanness, without any abilities; and are quite different +from the Italian magician. King James says in his _Daemonology_, +'Magicians command the devils: witches are their servants. The Italian +magicians are elegant beings.' RAMSAY. 'Opera witches, not Drury-lane +witches.' Johnson observed, that abilities might be employed in a narrow +sphere, as in getting money, which he said he believed no man could do, +without vigorous parts, though concentrated to a point[1162]. RAMSAY. +'Yes, like a strong horse in a mill; he pulls better.' + +Lord Graham, while he praised the beauty of Lochlomond, on the banks of +which is his family seat, complained of the climate, and said he could +not bear it. JOHNSON. 'Nay, my Lord, don't talk so: you may bear it well +enough. Your ancestors have borne it more years than I can tell.' This +was a handsome compliment to the antiquity of the House of Montrose. His +Lordship told me afterwards, that he had only affected to complain of +the climate; lest, if he had spoken as favourably of his country as he +really thought, Dr. Johnson might have attacked it. Johnson was very +courteous to Lady Margaret Macdonald. 'Madam, (said he,) when I was in +the Isle of Sky, I heard of the people running to take the stones off +the road, lest Lady Margaret's horse should stumble[1163].' + +Lord Graham commended Dr. Drummond[1164] at Naples, as a man of +extraordinary talents; and added, that he had a great love of liberty. +JOHNSON. 'He is _young_, my Lord; (looking to his Lordship with an arch +smile) all _boys_ love liberty, till experience convinces them they are +not so fit to govern themselves as they imagined. We are all agreed as +to our own liberty; we would have as much of it as we can get; but we +are not agreed as to the liberty of others: for in proportion as we +take, others must lose. I believe we hardly wish that the mob should +have liberty to govern us. When that was the case some time ago, no man +was at liberty not to have candles in his windows.' RAMSAY. 'The result +is, that order is better than confusion.' JOHNSON. 'The result is, that +order cannot be had but by subordination.' + +On Friday, April 16, I had been present at the trial of the unfortunate +Mr. Hackman, who, in a fit of frantick jealous love, had shot Miss Ray, +the favourite of a nobleman.[1165] Johnson, in whose company I dined +to-day with some other friends, was much interested by my account of what +passed, and particularly with his prayer for the mercy of heaven.[1166] +He said, in a solemn fervid tone, 'I hope he _shall_ find mercy.' + +This day[1167] a violent altercation arose between Johnson and +Beauclerk,[1168] which having made much noise at the time, I think it +proper, in order to prevent any future misrepresentation, to give a +minute account of it. + +In talking of Hackman, Johnson argued, as Judge Blackstone had done, +that his being furnished with two pistols was a proof that he meant to +shoot two persons. Mr. Beauclerk said, 'No; for that every wise man who +intended to shoot himself, took two pistols, that he might be sure of +doing it at once. Lord ----'s cook shot himself with one pistol, and +lived ten days in great agony. Mr. ----, who loved buttered muffins, but +durst not eat them because they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to +shoot himself; and then he eat three buttered muffins for breakfast, +before shooting himself, knowing that he should not be troubled with +indigestion:[1169] _he_ had two charged pistols; one was found lying +charged upon the table by him, after he had shot himself with the +other.' 'Well, (said Johnson, with an air of triumph,) you see here one +pistol was sufficient.' Beauclerk replied smartly, 'Because it happened +to kill him.' And either then or a very little afterwards, being piqued +at Johnson's triumphant remark, added, 'This is what you don't know, and +I do.' There was then a cessation of the dispute; and some minutes +intervened, during which, dinner and the glass went on cheerfully; when +Johnson suddenly and abruptly exclaimed, 'Mr. Beauclerk, how came you to +talk so petulantly to me, as "This is what you don't know, but what I +know"? One thing _I_ know, which _you_ don't seem to know, that you are +very uncivil.' BEAUCLERK. 'Because you began by being uncivil, (which +you always are.)' The words in parenthesis were, I believe, not heard by +Dr. Johnson. Here again there was a cessation of arms. Johnson told me, +that the reason why he waited at first some time without taking any +notice of what Mr. Beauclerk said, was because he was thinking whether +he should resent it. But when he considered that there were present a +young Lord and an eminent traveller, two men of the world with whom he +had never dined before, he was apprehensive that they might think they +had a right to take such liberties with him as Beauclerk did, and +therefore resolved he would not let it pass; adding, that 'he would not +appear a coward.' A little while after this, the conversation turned on +the violence of Hackman's temper. Johnson then said, 'It was his +business to _command_ his temper, as my friend, Mr. Beauclerk, should +have done some time ago.' BEAUCLERK. 'I should learn of _you_, Sir.' +JOHNSON. 'Sir, you have given _me_ opportunities enough of learning, +when I have been in _your_ company. No man loves to be treated with +contempt.' BEAUCLERK. (with a polite inclination towards Johnson) 'Sir, +you have known me twenty years, and however I may have treated others, +you may be sure I could never treat you with contempt' JOHNSON. 'Sir, +you have said more than was necessary.' Thus it ended; and Beauclerk's +coach not having come for him till very late, Dr. Johnson and another +gentleman sat with him a long time after the rest of the company were +gone; and he and I dined at Beauclerk's on the Saturday se'nnight +following. + +After this tempest had subsided, I recollect the following particulars +of his conversation:-- + +'I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning; for that is a +sure good. I would let him at first read _any_ English book which +happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when +you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better +books afterwards[1170].' + +'Mallet, I believe, never wrote a single line of his projected life of +the Duke of Marlborough.[1171] He groped for materials; and thought of +it, till he had exhausted his mind. Thus it sometimes happens that men +entangle themselves in their own schemes.' + +'To be contradicted, in order to force you to talk, is mighty +unpleasing. You _shine_, indeed; but it is by being _ground_.' + +Of a gentleman who made some figure among the _Literati_ of his time, +(Mr. Fitzherbert,)[1172] he said, 'What eminence he had was by a felicity +of manner; he had no more learning than what he could not help.' + +On Saturday, April 24, I dined with him at Mr. Beauclerk's, with Sir +Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Jones, (afterwards Sir William,) Mr. Langton, Mr. +Steevens, Mr. Paradise, and Dr. Higgins. I mentioned that Mr. Wilkes had +attacked Garrick to me, as a man who had no friend. 'I believe he is +right, Sir. [Greek: _Oi philoi, ou philos_]--He had friends, but no +friend.[1173] Garrick was so diffused, he had no man to whom he wished to +unbosom himself. He found people always ready to applaud him, and that +always for the same thing: so he saw life with great uniformity.' I took +upon me, for once, to fight with Goliath's weapons, and play the +sophist.--'Garrick did not need a friend, as he got from every body all +he wanted. What is a friend? One who supports you and comforts you, +while others do not. Friendship, you know, Sir, is the cordial drop, "to +make the nauseous draught of life go down[1174]:" but if the draught be +not nauseous, if it be all sweet, there is no occasion for that drop.' +JOHNSON. 'Many men would not be content to live so. I hope I should not. +They would wish to have an intimate friend, with whom they might compare +minds, and cherish private virtues.' One of the company mentioned Lord +Chesterfield, as a man who had no friend. JOHNSON. 'There were more +materials to make friendship in Garrick, had he not been so diffused.' +BOSWELL. 'Garrick was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf. Lord +Chesterfield was tinsel.' JOHNSON. 'Garrick was a very good man, the +cheerfullest man of his age;[1175] a decent liver in a profession which +is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave +away, freely, money acquired by himself. He began the world with a great +hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family, whose +study was to make four-pence do as much as others made four-pence +halfpenny do. But, when he had got money, he was very liberal.'[1176] I +presumed to animadvert on his eulogy on Garrick, in his _Lives of the +Poets_.[1177] 'You say, Sir, his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations.' +[1178] JOHNSON. 'I could not have said more nor less. It is the truth; +_eclipsed_, not _extinguished_; and his death _did_ eclipse; it was like +a storm.' BOSWELL. 'But why nations? Did his gaiety extend farther than +his own nation?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, some exaggeration must be +allowed.[1179] Besides, nations may be said--if we allow the Scotch to be +a nation, and to have gaiety,--which they have not. _You_ are an +exception, though. Come, gentlemen, let us candidly admit that there is +one Scotchman who is cheerful.' BEAUCLERK. 'But he is a very unnatural +Scotchman.' I, however, continued to think the compliment to Garrick +hyperbolically untrue. His acting had ceased some time before his death; +at any rate he had acted in Ireland but a short time, at an early period +of his life[1180], and never in Scotland. I objected also to what appears +an anticlimax of praise, when contrasted with the preceding +panegyrick,--'and diminished[1181] the public stock of harmless +pleasure!'--'Is not harmless pleasure very tame?' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, +harmless pleasure is the highest praise. Pleasure is a word of dubious +import; pleasure is in general dangerous, and pernicious to virtue; to +be able therefore to furnish pleasure that is harmless, pleasure pure +and unalloyed, is as great a power as man can possess.' This was, +perhaps, as ingenious a defence as could be made; still, however, I was +not satisfied. + +A celebrated wit[1182] being mentioned, he said, 'One may say of him as +was said of a French wit, _Il n'a de l'esprit que contre Dieu_. I have +been several times in company with him, but never perceived any strong +power of wit. He produces a general effect by various means; he has a +cheerful countenance and a gay voice. Besides his trade is wit. It would +be as wild in him to come into company without merriment, as for a +highwayman to take the road without his pistols.' + +Talking of the effects of drinking, he said, 'Drinking may be practised +with great prudence; a man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, +has not the art of getting drunk; a sober man who happens occasionally +to get drunk, readily enough goes into a new company, which a man who +has been drinking should never do. Such a man will undertake any thing; +he is without skill in inebriation. I used to slink home, when I had +drunk too much[1183]. A man accustomed to self-examination will be +conscious when he is drunk, though an habitual drunkard will not be +conscious of it. I knew a physician who for twenty years was not sober; +yet in a pamphlet, which he wrote upon fevers, he appealed to Garrick +and me for his vindication from a charge of drunkenness[1184]. A +bookseller (naming him) who got a large fortune by trade[1185], was so +habitually and equably drunk, that his most intimate friends never +perceived that he was more sober at one time than another.' + +Talking of celebrated and successful irregular practisers in physick; he +said, 'Taylor[1186] was the most ignorant man I ever knew; but sprightly. +Ward[1187] the dullest. Taylor challenged me once to talk Latin with him; +(laughing). I quoted some of Horace, which he took to be a part of my +own speech. He said a few words well enough.' BEAUCLERK. 'I remember, +Sir, you said that Taylor was an instance how far impudence could carry +ignorance.' Mr. Beauclerk was very entertaining this day, and told us a +number of short stories in a lively elegant manner, and with that air of +_the world_ which has I know not what impressive effect, as if there +were something more than is expressed, or than perhaps we could +perfectly understand[1188]. As Johnson and I accompanied Sir Joshua +Reynolds in his coach, Johnson said, 'There is in Beauclerk a +predominance over his company, that one does not like. But he is a man +who has lived so much in the world, that he has a short story on every +occasion; he is always ready to talk, and is never exhausted.' + +Johnson and I passed the evening at Miss Reynolds's, Sir Joshua's +sister. I mentioned that an eminent friend of ours[1189], talking of the +common remark, that affection descends, said, that 'this was wisely +contrived for the preservation of mankind; for which it was not so +necessary that there should be affection from children to parents, as +from parents to children; nay, there would be no harm in that view +though children should at a certain age eat their parents.' JOHNSON. +'But, Sir, if this were known generally to be the case, parents would +not have affection for children.' BOSWELL. 'True, Sir; for it is in +expectation of a return that parents are so attentive to their children; +and I know a very pretty instance of a little girl of whom her father +was very fond, who once when he was in a melancholy fit, and had gone to +bed, persuaded him to rise in good humour by saying, "My dear papa, +please to get up, and let me help you on with your clothes, that I may +learn to do it when you are an old man."' + +Soon after this time a little incident occurred, which I will not +suppress, because I am desirous that my work should be, as much as is +consistent with the strictest truth, an antidote to the false and +injurious notions of his character, which have been given by others, and +therefore I infuse every drop of genuine sweetness into my biographical +cup. + +'TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'I am in great pain with an inflamed foot, and obliged to keep my bed, +so am prevented from having the pleasure to dine at Mr. Ramsay's to-day, +which is very hard; and my spirits are sadly sunk. Will you be so +friendly as to come and sit an hour with me in the evening. + +'I am ever + +'Your most faithful, + +'And affectionate humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + +'South Audley-street[1190], +Monday, April 26.' + +'TO MR. BOSWELL. + +'Mr. Johnson laments the absence of Mr. Boswell, and will come to him.' + +'Harley-street[1191]. + + +He came to me in the evening, and brought Sir Joshua Reynolds. I need +scarcely say, that their conversation, while they sat by my bedside, was +the most pleasing opiate to pain that could have been administered[1192]. + +Johnson being now better disposed to obtain information concerning Pope +than he was last year[1193], sent by me to my Lord Marchmont a present +of those volumes of his _Lives of the Poets_ which were at this time +published, with a request to have permission to wait on him; and his +Lordship, who had called on him twice, obligingly appointed Saturday, +the first of May, for receiving us. + +On that morning Johnson came to me from Streatham, and after drinking +chocolate, at General Paoli's, in South-Audley-street, we proceeded to +Lord Marchmont's in Curzon-street. His Lordship met us at the door of +his library, and with great politeness said to Johnson, 'I am not going +to make an encomium upon _myself_, by telling you the high respect I +have for _you_, Sir.' Johnson was exceedingly courteous; and the +interview, which lasted about two hours, during which the Earl +communicated his anecdotes of Pope, was as agreeable as I could have +wished[1194]. When we came out, I said to Johnson, that considering his +Lordship's civility, I should have been vexed if he had again failed to +come. 'Sir, (said he,) I would rather have given twenty pounds than not +have come.' I accompanied him to Streatham, where we dined, and returned +to town in the evening. + +On Monday, May 3, I dined with him at Mr. Dilly's[1195]; I pressed him +this day for his opinion on the passage in Parnell, concerning which I +had in vain questioned him in several letters, and at length obtained it +in _due form of law_. + +CASE for Dr. JOHNSON'S Opinion; +3rd of May, 1779. + +'PARNELL, in his _Hermit_, has the following passage: + +"To clear this doubt, to know the world by sight, +To find if _books_ and[1196] _swains_ report it right: +(For yet by _swains alone_ the world he knew, +Whose feet came wand'ring o'er the nightly dew.)" + +'Is there not a contradiction in its being _first_ supposed that the +_Hermit_ knew _both_ what books and swains reported of the world; yet +_afterwards_ said, that he knew it by swains _alone_?' 'I think it an +inaccuracy.--He mentions two instructors in the first line, and says he +had only one in the next.[1197].' + +This evening I set out for Scotland. + +'To MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD. + +'DEAR MADAM, + +'Mr. Green has informed me that you are much better; I hope I need not +tell you that I am glad of it. I cannot boast of being much better; my +old nocturnal complaint still pursues me, and my respiration is +difficult, though much easier than when I left you the summer before +last. Mr. and Mrs. Thrale are well; Miss has been a little indisposed; +but she is got well again. They have since the loss of their boy had two +daughters; but they seem likely to want a son. + +'I hope you had some books which I sent you. I was sorry for poor Mrs. +Adey's death, and am afraid you will be sometimes solitary; but +endeavour, whether alone or in company, to keep yourself cheerful. My +friends likewise die very fast; but such is the state of man. + +'I am, dear love, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'May 4, 1779.' + +He had, before I left London, resumed the conversation concerning the +appearance of a ghost at Newcastle upon Tyne, which Mr. John Wesley +believed, but to which Johnson did not give credit[1198]. I was, however, +desirous to examine the question closely, and at the same time wished to +be made acquainted with Mr. John Wesley; for though I differed from him +in some points, I admired his various talents, and loved his pious zeal. +At my request, therefore, Dr. Johnson gave me a letter of introduction +to him. + + + +'To THE REVEREND MR. JOHN WESLEY. + +SIR, + +Mr. Boswell, a gentleman who has been long known to me, is desirous of +being known to you, and has asked this recommendation, which I give him +with great willingness, because I think it very much to be wished that +worthy and religious men should be acquainted with each other. + +I am, Sir, + +Your most humble servant, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' +May 3, 1779.' + +Mr. Wesley being in the course of his ministry at Edinburgh, I presented +this letter to him, and was very politely received. I begged to have it +returned to me, which was accordingly done. His state[1199] of the +evidence as to the ghost did not satisfy me. I did not write to Johnson, +as usual, upon my return to my family, but tried how he would be affected +by my silence. Mr. Dilly sent me a copy of a note which he received from +him on the 13th of July, in these words:-- + +'TO MR. DILLY. + +SIR, + +Since Mr. Boswell's departure I have never heard from him; please to +send word what you know of him, and whether you have sent my books to +his lady. I am, &c., + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +My readers will not doubt that his solicitude about me was very +flattering. + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'What can possibly have happened, that keeps us two such strangers to +each other? I expected to have heard from you when you came home; I +expected afterwards. I went into the country and returned[1200]; and yet +there is no letter from Mr. Boswell. No ill I hope has happened; and if +ill should happen, why should it be concealed from him who loves you? Is +it a fit of humour, that has disposed you to try who can hold out +longest without writing? If it be, you have the victory. But I am afraid +of something bad; set me free from my suspicions. + +'My thoughts are at present employed in guessing the reason of your +silence: you must not expect that I should tell you any thing, if I had +any thing to tell. Write, pray write to me, and let me know what is, or +what has been the cause of this long interruption. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'July 13, 1779.' + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, July 17, 1779. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'What may be justly denominated a supine indolence of mind has been my +state of existence since I last returned to Scotland. In a livelier +state I had often suffered severely from long intervals of silence on +your part; and I had even been chided by you for expressing my +uneasiness. I was willing to take advantage of my insensibility, and +while I could bear the experiment, to try whether your affection for me +would, after an unusual silence on my part, make you write first. This +afternoon I have had very high satisfaction by receiving your kind +letter of inquiry, for which I most gratefully thank you. I am doubtful +if it was right to make the experiment; though I have gained by it. I +was beginning to grow tender, and to upbraid myself, especially +after having dreamt two nights ago that I was with you. I and my wife, +and my four children, are all well. I would not delay one post to answer +your letter; but as it is late, I have not time to do more. You shall +soon hear from me, upon many and various particulars; and I shall never +again put you to any test[1201]. + +I am, with veneration, my dear Sir, + +'Your much obliged, + +'And faithful humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +On the 22nd of July, I wrote to him again; and gave him an account of my +last interview with my worthy friend, Mr. Edward Dilly, at his brother's +house at Southill, in Bedfordshire, where he died soon after I parted +from him[1202], leaving me a very kind remembrance of his regard. + +I informed him that Lord Hailes, who had promised to furnish him with +some anecdotes for his _Lives of the Poets_, had sent me three instances +of Prior's borrowing from _Gombauld_, in _Recueil des Poetes_, tome 3. +Epigram _To John I owed 'great obligation_,' p. 25. _To the Duke of +Noailles_, p. 32. _Sauntering Jack and Idle Joan_, p. 25. + +My letter was a pretty long one, and contained a variety of particulars; +but he, it should seem, had not attended to it; for his next to me was +as follows:-- + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'Are you playing the same trick again, and trying who can keep silence +longest? Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish; and +that it is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a +friend, as upon the chastity of a wife. + +'What can be the cause of this second fit of silence, I cannot +conjecture; but after one trick, I will not be cheated by another, nor +will harass my thoughts with conjectures about the motives of a man who, +probably, acts only by caprice. I therefore suppose you are well, and +that Mrs. Boswell is well too; and that the fine summer has restored +Lord Auchinleck. I am much better than you left me; I think I am better +than when I was in Scotland[1203]. + +'I forgot whether I informed you that poor Thrale has been in great +danger[1204]. Mrs. Thrale likewise has miscarried, and been much +indisposed. Every body else is well; Langton is in camp. I intend to put +Lord Hailes's description of Dryden[1205] into another edition, and as I +know his accuracy, wish he would consider the dates, which I could not +always settle to my own mind. + +'Mr. Thrale goes to Brighthelmston, about Michaelmas, to be jolly and +ride a hunting. I shall go to town, or perhaps to Oxford. Exercise and +gaiety, or rather carelessness, will, I hope, dissipate all remains of +his malady; and I likewise hope by the change of place, to find some +opportunities of growing yet better myself. I am, dear Sir, + +'Your humble servant, + 'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Streatham, Sept. 9[1206], 1779.' + +My readers will not be displeased at being told every slight +circumstance of the manner in which Dr. Johnson contrived to amuse his +solitary hours. He sometimes employed himself in chymistry, sometimes in +watering and pruning a vine[1207], sometimes in small experiments, at +which those who may smile, should recollect that there are moments which +admit of being soothed only by trifles[1208]. + +On the 20th of September I defended myself against his suspicion of me, +which I did not deserve; and added, 'Pray let us write frequently. A +whim strikes me, that we should send off a sheet once a week, like a +stage-coach, whether it be full or not; nay, though it should be empty. +The very sight of your handwriting would comfort me; and were a sheet to +be thus sent regularly, we should much oftener convey something, were it +only a few kind words.' + +My friend Colonel James Stuart[1209], second son of the Earl of Bute, who +had distinguished himself as a good officer of the Bedfordshire +militia[1210], had taken a publick-spirited resolution to serve his +country in its difficulties, by raising a regular regiment, and taking +the command of it himself. This, in the heir of the immense property of +Wortley, was highly honourable[1211]. Having been in Scotland recruiting, +he obligingly asked me to accompany him to Leeds, then the head-quarters +of his corps; from thence to London for a short time, and afterwards to +other places to which the regiment might be ordered. Such an offer, at a +time of the year when I had full leisure, was very pleasing; especially +as I was to accompany a man of sterling good sense, information, +discernment, and conviviality; and was to have a second crop in one year +of London and Johnson. Of this I informed my illustrious friend, in +characteristical warm terms, in a letter dated the 30th of September, +from Leeds. + +On Monday, October 4, I called at his house before he was up. He sent +for me to his bedside, and expressed his satisfaction at this incidental +meeting, with as much vivacity as if he had been in the gaiety of youth. +He called briskly, 'Frank, go and get coffee, and let us breakfast _in +splendour_.' + +During this visit to London I had several interviews with him, which it +is unnecessary to distinguish particularly. I consulted him as to the +appointment of guardians to my children, in case of my death. 'Sir, +(said he,) do not appoint a number of guardians. When there are many, +they trust one to another, and the business is neglected. I would advise +you to choose only one; let him be a man of respectable character, who, +for his own credit, will do what is right; let him be a rich man, so +that he may be under no temptation to take advantage; and let him be a +man of business, who is used to conduct affairs with ability and +expertness, to whom, therefore, the execution of the trust will not be +burdensome[1212].' + +On Sunday, October 10, we dined together at Mr. Strahan's. The +conversation having turned on the prevailing practice of going to the +East-Indies in quest of wealth;--JOHNSON. 'A man had better have ten +thousand pounds at the end of ten years passed in England, than twenty +thousand pounds at the end of ten years passed in India, because you +must compute what you _give_ for money; and a man who has lived ten +years in India, has given up ten years of social comfort and all those +advantages which arise from living in England. The ingenious Mr. Brown, +distinguished by the name of Capability Brown[1213], told me, that he +was once at the seat of Lord Clive, who had returned from India with +great wealth; and that he shewed him at the door of his bed-chamber a +large chest, which he said he had once had full of gold; upon which +Brown observed, "I am glad you can bear it so near your bed-chamber.'" +[1214] + +We talked of the state of the poor in London.--JOHNSON. 'Saunders +Welch[1215], the Justice, who was once High-Constable of Holborn, and +had the best opportunities of knowing the state of the poor, told me, +that I under-rated the number, when I computed that twenty a week, that +is, above a thousand a year, died of hunger; not absolutely of immediate +hunger; but of the wasting and other diseases which are the consequences +of hunger[1216]. This happens only in so large a place as London, where +people are not known. What we are told about the great sums got by +begging is not true: the trade is overstocked. And, you may depend upon +it, there are many who cannot get work. A particular kind of manufacture +fails: those who have been used to work at it, can, for some time, work +at nothing else. You meet a man begging; you charge him with idleness: +he says, "I am willing to labour. Will you give me work?"--"I +cannot."--"Why, then you have no right to charge me with idleness."' +[1217] + +We left Mr. Strahan's at seven, as Johnson had said he intended to go to +evening prayers. As we walked along, he complained of a little gout in +his toe, and said, 'I shan't go to prayers to-night; I shall go +to-morrow: Whenever I miss church on a Sunday, I resolve to go another +day. But I do not always do it[1218].' This was a fair exhibition of that +vibration between pious resolutions and indolence, which many of us have +too often experienced. + +I went home with him, and we had a long quiet conversation. + +I read him a letter from Dr. Hugh Blair concerning Pope, (in writing +whose life he was now employed,) which I shall insert as a literary +curiosity[1219]. + +'TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. +'DEAR SIR, + +'In the year 1763, being at London, I was carried by Dr. John Blair, +Prebendary of Westminster, to dine at old Lord Bathurst's; where we +found the late Mr. Mallet, Sir James Porter, who had been Ambassadour at +Constantinople, the late Dr. Macaulay, and two or three more. The +conversation turning on Mr. Pope, Lord Bathurst told us, that _The Essay +on Man_ was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that +Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse: that he had read Lord +Bolingbroke's manuscript in his own hand-writing; and remembered well, +that he was at a loss whether most to admire the elegance of Lord +Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse. When Lord +Bathurst told this, Mr. Mallet bade me attend, and remember this +remarkable piece of information; as, by the course of Nature, I might +survive his Lordship, and be a witness of his having said so. The +conversation was indeed too remarkable to be forgotten. A few days +after, meeting with you, who were then also in London, you will remember +that I mentioned to you what had passed on this subject, as I was much +struck with this anecdote. But what ascertains[1220] my recollection of +it beyond doubt, is that being accustomed to keep a journal of what +passed when I was in London, which I wrote out every evening, I find the +particulars of the above information, just as I have now given them, +distinctly marked; and am thence enabled to fix this conversation to +have passed on Friday, the 22d of April, 1763. + +'I remember also distinctly, (though I have not for this the authority +of my journal,) that the conversation going on concerning Mr. Pope, I +took notice of a report which had been sometimes propagated that he did +not understand Greek[1221]. Lord Bathurst said to me, that he knew that +to be false; for that part of the _Iliad_ was translated by Mr. Pope in +his house in the country; and that in the mornings when they assembled +at breakfast, Mr. Pope used frequently to repeat, with great rapture, +the Greek lines which he had been translating, and then to give them his +version of them, and to compare them together. + +'If these circumstances can be of any use to Dr. Johnson, you have my +full liberty to give them to him. I beg you will, at the same time, +present to him my most respectful compliments, with best wishes for his +success and fame in all his literary undertakings. I am, with great +respect, my dearest Sir, + +'Your most affectionate, + +'And obliged humble servant, + +'HUGH BLAIR.' + +'Broughton Park, + +'Sept. 21, 1779.' + +JOHNSON. 'Depend upon it, Sir, this is too strongly stated. Pope may +have had from Bolingbroke the philosophick _stamina_ of his Essay; and +admitting this to be true, Lord Bathurst did not intentionally falsify. +But the thing is not true in the latitude that Blair seems to imagine; +we are sure that the poetical imagery, which makes a great part of the +poem, was Pope's own[1222]. It is amazing, Sir, what deviations there +are from precise truth, in the account which is given of almost every +thing[1223]. I told Mrs. Thrale, "You have so little anxiety about truth, +that you never tax your memory with the exact thing[1224]." Now what is +the use of the memory to truth, if one is careless of exactness? Lord +Hailes's _Annals of Scotland_ are very exact; but they contain mere dry +particulars[1225]. They are to be considered as a Dictionary. You know +such things are there; and may be looked at when you please. Robertson +paints; but the misfortune is, you are sure he does not know the people +whom he paints; so you cannot suppose a likeness[1226]. Characters +should never be given by an historian, unless he knew the people whom +he describes, or copies from those who knew them[1227].' + +BOSWELL. 'Why, Sir, do people play this trick which I observe now, when +I look at your grate, putting the shovel against it to make the fire +burn?' JOHNSON. 'They play the trick, but it does not make the fire +burn. _There_ is a better; (setting the poker perpendicularly up at +right angles with the grate.) In days of superstition they thought, as +it made a cross with the bars, it would drive away the witch.' + +BOSWELL. 'By associating with you, Sir, I am always getting an accession +of wisdom. But perhaps a man, after knowing his own character--the +limited strength of his own mind, should not be desirous of having too +much wisdom, considering, _quid valeant humeri_[1228], how little he can +carry[1229].' JOHNSON. 'Sir, be as wise as you can; let a man be _aliis +laetus, sapiens sibi_: + +"Though pleas'd to see the dolphins play, +I mind my compass and my way[1230]." + +You may be wise in your study in the morning, and gay in company at a +tavern in the evening. Every man is to take care of his own wisdom and +his own virtue, without minding too much what others think.' + +He said, 'Dodsley first mentioned to me the scheme of an English +Dictionary[1231]; but I had long thought of it.' BOSWELL. 'You did not +know what you were undertaking.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, I knew very well +what I was undertaking,--and very well how to do it,--and have done it +very well[1232].' BOSWELL. 'An excellent climax! and it _has_ availed +you. In your Preface you say, "What would it avail me in this gloom of +solitude[1233]?" You have been agreeably mistaken.' + +In his _Life of Milton_[1234] he observes, 'I cannot but remark a kind +of respect, perhaps unconsciously, paid to this great man by his +biographers: every house in which he resided is historically mentioned, +as if it were an injury to neglect naming any place that he honoured by +his presence.' I had, before I read this observation, been desirous of +shewing that respect to Johnson, by various inquiries. Finding him this +evening in a very good humour, I prevailed on him to give me an exact +list of his places of residence, since he entered the metropolis as an +authour, which I subjoin in a note[1235]. + +I mentioned to him a dispute between a friend of mine and his lady, +concerning conjugal infidelity, which my friend had maintained was by no +means so bad in the husband, as in the wife. JOHNSON. 'Your friend was +in the right, Sir. Between a man and his Maker it is a different +question: but between a man and his wife, a husband's infidelity is +nothing. They are connected by children, by fortune, by serious +considerations of community. Wise married women don't trouble themselves +about the infidelity in their husbands.' BOSWELL. 'To be sure there is a +great difference between the offence of infidelity in a man and that of +his wife.' JOHNSON. 'The difference is boundless. The man imposes no +bastards upon his wife[1236].' + +Here it may be questioned whether Johnson was entirely in the right. I +suppose it will not be controverted that the difference in the degree of +criminality is very great, on account of consequences: but still it may +be maintained, that, independent of moral obligation, infidelity is by +no means a light offence in a husband; because it must hurt a delicate +attachment, in which a mutual constancy is implied, with such refined +sentiments as Massinger has exhibited in his play of _The +Picture_.--Johnson probably at another time would have admitted this +opinion. And let it be kept in remembrance, that he was very careful not +to give any encouragement to irregular conduct. A gentleman[1237], not +adverting to the distinction made by him upon this subject, supposed a +case of singular perverseness in a wife, and heedlessly said, 'That then +he thought a husband might do as he pleased with a safe conscience.' +JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, this is wild indeed (smiling) you must consider that +fornication is a crime[1238] in a single man; and you cannot have more +liberty by being married.' + +He this evening expressed himself strongly against the Roman Catholics; +observing, 'In every thing in which they differ from us they are wrong.' +He was even against the invocation of saints[1239]; in short, he was in +the humour of opposition. + +Having regretted to him that I had learnt little Greek, as is too +generally the case in Scotland; that I had for a long time hardly +applied at all to the study of that noble language, and that I was +desirous of being told by him what method to follow; he recommended to +me as easy helps, Sylvanus's _First Book of the Iliad_; Dawson's +_Lexicon to the Greek New Testament_; and _Hesiod_, with _Pasoris +Lexicon_ at the end of it. + +On Tuesday, October 13, I dined with him at Mr. Ramsay's, with Lord +Newhaven[1240], and some other company, none of whom I recollect, but a +beautiful Miss Graham[1241], a relation of his Lordship's, who asked Dr. +Johnson to hob or nob with her. He was flattered by such pleasing +attention, and politely told her, he never drank wine; but if she would +drink a glass of water, he was much at her service. She accepted. 'Oho, +Sir! (said Lord Newhaven) you are caught.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, I do not see +_how_ I am _caught_; but if I am caught, I don't want to get free again. +If I am caught, I hope to be kept.' Then when the two glasses of water +were brought, smiling placidly to the young lady, he said, 'Madam, let +us _reciprocate_.' + +Lord Newhaven and Johnson carried on an argument for some time, +concerning the Middlesex election[1242]. Johnson said, 'Parliament may +be considered as bound by law as a man is bound where there is nobody to +tie the knot. As it is clear that the House of Commons may expel, and +expel again and again, why not allow of the power to incapacitate for +that parliament, rather than have a perpetual contest kept up between +parliament and the people.' Lord Newhaven took the opposite side; but +respectfully said, 'I speak with great deference to you, Dr. Johnson; I +speak to be instructed.' This had its full effect on my friend. He bowed +his head almost as low as the table, to a complimenting nobleman; and +called out, 'My Lord, my Lord, I do not desire all this ceremony; let us +tell our minds to one another quietly.' After the debate was over, he +said, 'I have got lights on the subject to-day, which I had not before.' +This was a great deal from him, especially as he had written a pamphlet +upon it[1243]. + +He observed, 'The House of Commons was originally not a privilege of the +people, but a check for the Crown on the House of Lords. I remember +Henry the Eighth wanted them to do something; they hesitated in the +morning, but did it in the afternoon. He told them, "It is well you did; +or half your heads should have been upon Temple-bar[1244]." But the House +of Commons is now no longer under the power of the crown, and therefore +must be bribed.' He added, 'I have no delight in talking of publick +affairs[1245].' + +Of his fellow-collegian,[1246] the celebrated Mr. George Whitefield, he +said, 'Whitefield never drew as much attention as a mountebank does; he +did not draw attention by doing better than others, but by doing what +was strange.[1247] Were Astley[1248] to preach a sermon standing upon +his head on a horse's back, he would collect a multitude to hear him; +but no wise man would say he had made a better sermon for that. I never +treated Whitefield's ministry with contempt; I believe he did good. He +had devoted himself to the lower classes of mankind, and among them he +was of use.[1249] But when familiarity and noise claim the praise due to +knowledge, art, and elegance, we must beat down such pretensions.' + +What I have preserved of his conversation during the remainder of my +stay in London at this time, is only what follows: I told him that when +I objected to keeping company with a notorious infidel,[1250] a +celebrated friend[1251] of ours said to me, 'I do not think that men who +live laxly in the world, as you and I do, can with propriety assume such +an authority. Dr. Johnson may, who is uniformly exemplary in his conduct. +But it is not very consistent to shun an infidel to-day, and get drunk +to-morrow.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, this is sad reasoning. Because a man +cannot be right in all things, is he to be right in nothing? Because a +man sometimes gets drunk, is he therefore to steal? This doctrine would +very soon bring a man to the gallows.' + +After all, however, it is a difficult question how far sincere +Christians should associate with the avowed enemies of religion; for in +the first place, almost every man's mind may be more or less 'corrupted +by evil communications;'[1252] secondly, the world may very naturally +suppose that they are not really in earnest in religion, who can easily +bear its opponents; and thirdly, if the profane find themselves quite +well received by the pious, one of the checks upon an open declaration +of their infidelity, and one of the probable chances of obliging them +seriously to reflect, which their being shunned would do, is removed. + +He, I know not why, shewed upon all occasions an aversion to go to +Ireland, where I proposed to him that we should make a tour. JOHNSON. +'It is the last place where I should wish to travel.' BOSWELL. 'Should +you not like to see Dublin, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir? Dublin is only a +worse capital.' BOSWELL. 'Is not the Giant's-Causeway worth seeing?' +JOHNSON. 'Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.' + +Yet he had a kindness for the Irish nation, and thus generously +expressed himself to a gentleman from that country, on the subject of an +UNION which artful Politicians have often had in view--'Do not make an +union with us, Sir. We should unite with you, only to rob you. We should +have robbed the Scotch, if they had had any thing of which we could have +robbed them[1253].' + +Of an acquaintance of ours, whose manners and every thing about him, +though expensive, were coarse, he said, 'Sir, you see in him vulgar +prosperity.' + +A foreign minister of no very high talents, who had been in his company +for a considerable time quite overlooked, happened luckily to mention +that he had read some of his _Rambler_ in Italian, and admired it much. +This pleased him greatly; he observed that the title had been +translated, _Il Genio errante_, though I have been told it was rendered +more ludicrously, _Il Vagabondo_;[1254] and finding that this minister +gave such a proof of his taste, he was all attention to him, and on the +first remark which he made, however simple, exclaimed, 'The Ambassadour +says well--His Excellency observes--.' And then he expanded and enriched +the little that had been said, in so strong a manner, that it appeared +something of consequence.[1255] This was exceedingly entertaining to the +company who were present, and many a time afterwards it furnished a +pleasant topick of merriment: '_The Ambassadeur says well_,' became a +laughable term of applause, when no mighty matter had been expressed. + +I left London on Monday, October 18, and accompanied Colonel Stuart to +Chester, where his regiment was to lye for some time. + + +'Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. +'Chester, October 22, 1779. + +'My Dear Sir, + +'It was not till one o'clock on Monday morning, that Colonel Stuart and +I left London; for we chose to bid a cordial adieu to Lord Mountstuart, +who was to set out on that day on his embassy to Turin. We drove on +excellently, and reached Lichfield in good time enough that night. The +Colonel had heard so preferable a character of the George, that he would +not put up at the Three Crowns, so that I did not see our host +Wilkins.[1256] We found at the George as good accommodation as we could +wish to have, and I fully enjoyed the comfortable thought that _I was in +Lichfield again_. Next morning it rained very hard; and as I had much to +do in a little time, I ordered a post-chaise, and between eight and nine +sallied forth to make a round of visits. I first went to Mr. Green, +hoping to have had him to accompany me to all my other friends, but he +was engaged to attend the Bishop of Sodor and Man, who was then lying at +Lichfield very ill of the gout. Having taken a hasty glance at the +additions to Green's museum,[1257] from which it was not easy to break +away, I next went to the Friery,[1258] where I at first occasioned some +tumult in the ladies, who were not prepared to receive _company_ so +early: but my _name_, which has by wonderful felicity come to be closely +associated with yours, soon made all easy; and Mrs. Cobb and Miss Adye +re-assumed their seats at the breakfast-table, which they had quitted +with some precipitation. They received me with the kindness of an old +acquaintance; and after we had joined in a cordial chorus to _your_ +praise, Mrs. Cobb gave _me_ the high satisfaction of hearing that you +said, "Boswell is a man who I believe never left a house without leaving +a wish for his return." And she afterwards added, that she bid you tell +me, that if ever I came to Lichfield, she hoped I would take a bed at +the Friery. From thence I drove to Peter Garrick's, where I also found a +very flattering welcome. He appeared to me to enjoy his usual +chearfulness; and he very kindly asked me to come when I could, and pass +a week with him. From Mr. Garrick's, I went to the Palace to wait on Mr. +Seward.[1259] I was first entertained by his lady and daughter, he himself +being in bed with a cold, according to his valetudinary custom. But he +desired to see me; and I found him drest in his black gown, with a white +flannel night-gown above it; so that he looked like a Dominican friar. +He was good-humoured and polite; and under his roof too my reception was +very pleasing. I then proceeded to Stow-hill, and first paid my respects +to Mrs. Gastrell,[1260] whose conversation I was not willing to quit. But +my sand-glass was now beginning to run low, as I could not trespass too +long on the Colonel's kindness, who obligingly waited for me; so I +hastened to Mrs. Aston's,[1261] whom I found much better than I feared I +should; and there I met a brother-in-law of these ladies, who talked +much of you, and very well too, as it appeared to me. It then only +remained to visit Mrs. Lucy Porter, which I did, I really believe, with +sincere satisfaction on both sides. I am sure I was glad to see her +again; and, as I take her to be very honest, I trust she was glad to see +me again; for she expressed herself so, that I could not doubt of her +being in earnest. What a great key-stone of kindness, my dear Sir, were +you that morning! for we were all held together by our common attachment +to you. I cannot say that I ever passed two hours with more +self-complacency than I did those two at Lichfield. Let me not entertain +any suspicion that this is idle vanity. Will not you confirm me in my +persuasion, that he who finds himself so regarded has just reason to be +happy? + +'We got to Chester about midnight on Tuesday; and here again I am in a +state of much enjoyment. Colonel Stuart and his officers treat me with +all the civility I could wish; and I play my part admirably. _Laetus +aliis, sapiens sibi_,[1262] the classical sentence which you, I imagine, +invented the other day, is exemplified in my present existence. The +Bishop[1263], to whom I had the honour to be known several years ago, +shews me much attention; and I am edified by his conversation. I must +not omit to tell you, that his Lordship admires, very highly, your +_Prefaces to the Poets_. I am daily obtaining an extension of agreeable +acquaintance, so that I am kept in animated variety; and the study of +the place itself, by the assistance of books, and of the Bishop, is +sufficient occupation. Chester pleases my fancy more than any town I +ever saw. But I will not enter upon it at all in this letter. + +'How long I shall stay here I cannot yet say. I told a very pleasing +young lady[1264], niece to one of the Prebendaries, at whose house I saw +her, "I have come to Chester, Madam, I cannot tell how; and far less can +I tell how I am to get away from it." Do not think me too juvenile. I +beg it of you, my dear Sir, to favour me with a letter while I am here, +and add to the happiness of a happy friend, who is ever, with +affectionate veneration, + +'Most sincerely yours, +'James Boswell.'[1265] + +'If you do not write directly, so as to catch me here, I shall be +disappointed. Two lines from you will keep my lamp burning bright.' + + +'To James Boswell, Esq. +'Dear Sir, + +'Why should you importune me so earnestly to write? Of what importance +can it be to hear of distant friends, to a man who finds himself welcome +wherever he goes, and makes new friends faster than he can want them? If +to the delight of such universal kindness of reception, any thing can be +added by knowing that you retain my good-will, you may indulge yourself +in the full enjoyment of that small addition. + +'I am glad that you made the round of Lichfield with so much success: +the oftener you are seen, the more you will be liked. It was pleasing to +me to read that Mrs. Aston was so well, and that Lucy Porter was so glad +to see you. + +'In the place where you now are, there is much to be observed; and you +will easily procure yourself skilful directors. But what will you do to +keep away the _black dog_[1266] that worries you at home? If you would, +in compliance with your father's advice, enquire into the old tenures +and old charters of Scotland, you would certainly open to yourself many +striking scenes of the manners of the middle ages.[1267] The feudal +system, in a country half-barbarous, is naturally productive of great +anomalies in civil life. The knowledge of past times is naturally +growing less in all cases not of publick record; and the past time of +Scotland is so unlike the present, that it is already difficult for a +Scotchman to image the oeconomy of his grandfather. Do not be tardy nor +negligent; but gather up eagerly what can yet be found.[1268] + +'We have, I think, once talked of another project, a _History of the +late insurrection in Scotland_, with all its incidents.[1269] Many +falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history. Voltaire, who loved +a striking story, has told what he[1270] could not find to be true. +[1271] + +'You may make collections for either of these projects, or for both, as +opportunities occur, and digest your materials at leisure. The great +direction which Burton has left to men disordered like you, is this, _Be +not solitary; be not idle_[1272]: which I would thus modify;--If you are +idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle. + +'There is a letter for you, from + 'Your humble servant, + 'Sam. Johnson[1273].' + +'London, October 27, 1779.' +'To Dr. Samuel Johnson. +'Carlisle, Nov. 7, 1779. + +'My dear Sir, + +'That I should importune you to write to me at Chester, is not +wonderful, when you consider what an avidity I have for delight; and +that the _amor_ of pleasure, like the _amor nummi_[1274], increases in +proportion with the quantity which we possess of it. Your letter, so +full of polite kindness and masterly counsel, came like a large treasure +upon me, while already glittering with riches. I was quite enchanted at +Chester, so that I could with difficulty quit it. But the enchantment +was the reverse of that of Circé; for so far was there from being any +thing sensual in it, that I was _all mind_. I do not mean all reason +only; for my fancy was kept finely in play. And why not?--If you please +I will send you a copy, or an abridgement of my Chester journal, which +is truly a log-book of felicity. + +'The Bishop treated me with a kindness which was very flattering. I told +him, that you regretted you had seen so little of Chester.[1275] His +Lordship bade me tell you, that he should be glad to shew you more of +it. I am proud to find the friendship with which you honour me is known +in so many places. + +'I arrived here late last night. Our friend the Dean[1276] has been gone +from hence some months; but I am told at my inn, that he is very +_populous_ (popular). However, I found Mr. Law, the Archdeacon, son to +the Bishop[1277], and with him I have breakfasted and dined very agreeably. +I got acquainted with him at the assizes here, about a year and a half +ago; he is a man of great variety of knowledge, uncommon genius, and I +believe, sincere religion. I received the holy sacrament in the +Cathedral in the morning, this being the first Sunday in the month; and +was at prayers there in the evening. It is divinely cheering to me to +think that there is a Cathedral so near Auchinleck; and I now leave Old +England in such a state of mind as I am thankful to GOD for granting me. + +'The _black dog_ that worries me at home I cannot but dread; yet as I +have been for some time past in a military train, I trust I shall +_repulse_ him. To hear from you will animate me like the sound of a +trumpet, I therefore hope, that soon after my return to the northern +field, I shall receive a few lines from you. + +'Colonel Stuart did me the honour to escort me in his carriage to shew +me Liverpool, and from thence back again to Warrington, where we +parted[1278]. In justice to my valuable wife, I must inform you she wrote +to me, that as I was so happy, she would not be so selfish as to wish me +to return sooner than business absolutely required my presence. She made +my clerk write to me a post or two after to the same purpose, by +commission from her; and this day a kind letter from her met me at the +Post-Office here, acquainting me that she and the little ones were well, +and expressing all their wishes for my return home. I am, more and more, +my dear Sir, + +'Your affectionate +'And obliged humble servant, +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. +'DEAR SIR, + +'Your last letter was not only kind but fond. But I wish you to get rid +of all intellectual excesses, and neither to exalt your pleasures, nor +aggravate your vexations, beyond their real and natural state[1279]. + +'Why should you not be as happy at Edinburgh as at Chester? _In culpa +est animus, qui se non effugit usquam_[1280]. Please yourself with your +wife and children, and studies, and practice. + +'I have sent a petition[1281] from Lucy Porter, with which I leave it to +your discretion whether it is proper to comply. Return me her letter, +which I have sent, that you may know the whole case, and not be seduced +to any thing that you may afterwards repent. Miss Doxy perhaps you know +to be Mr. Garrick's niece. + +'If Dean Percy can be popular at Carlisle, he may be very happy. He has +in his disposal two livings, each equal, or almost equal in value to the +deanery; he may take one himself, and give the other to his son. + +'How near is the Cathedral to Auchinleck, that you are so much delighted +with it? It is, I suppose, at least an hundred and fifty miles off[1282]. +However, if you are pleased, it is so far well. + +'Let me know what reception you have from your father, and the state of +his health. Please him as much as you can, and add no pain to his last +years. + +'Of our friends here I can recollect nothing to tell you. I have neither +seen nor heard of Langton. Beauclerk is just returned from +Brighthelmston, I am told, much better. Mr. Thrale and his family are +still there; and his health is said to be visibly improved; he has not +bathed, but hunted[1283]. + +'At Bolt-court there is much malignity, but of late little open +hostility[1284]. I have had a cold, but it is gone. + +'Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, &c. + +'I am, Sir, + +'Your humble servant, + +'London, Nov. 13, 1779.' + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + + +On November 22, and December 21, I wrote to him from Edinburgh, giving a +very favourable report of the family of Miss Doxy's lover;--that after a +good deal of enquiry I had discovered the sister of Mr. Francis +Stewart[1285], one of his amanuenses when writing his _Dictionary_;--that +I had, as desired by him, paid her a guinea for an old pocket-book of her +brother's which he had retained; and that the good woman, who was in +very moderate circumstances, but contented and placid, wondered at his +scrupulous and liberal honesty, and received the guinea as if sent her +by Providence[1286].--That I had repeatedly begged of him to keep his +promise to send me his letter to Lord Chesterfield, and that this +_memento_, like _Delenda est Carthago_, must be in every letter that I +should write to him, till I had obtained my object[1287]. + + +1780: AETAT. 71.--In 1780, the world was kept in impatience for the +completion of his _Lives of the Poets_, upon which he was employed so +far as his indolence allowed him to labour[1288]. + +I wrote to him on January 1, and March 13, sending him my notes of Lord +Marchmont's information concerning Pope;--complaining that I had not +heard from him for almost four months, though he was two letters in my +debt;--that I had suffered again from melancholy;--hoping that he had +been in so much better company, (the Poets,) that he had not time to +think of his distant friends; for if that were the case, I should have +some recompence for my uneasiness;--that the state of my affairs did not +admit of my coming to London this year; and begging he would return me +Goldsmith's two poems, with his lines marked[1289]. + +His friend Dr. Lawrence having now suffered the greatest affliction to +which a man is liable, and which Johnson himself had felt in the most +severe manner; Johnson wrote to him in an admirable strain of sympathy +and pious consolation. + +'To DR. LAWRENCE. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'At a time when all your friends ought to shew their kindness, and with +a character which ought to make all that know you your friends, you may +wonder that you have yet heard nothing from me. + +'I have been hindered by a vexatious and incessant cough, for which +within these ten days I have been bled once, fasted four or five times, +taken physick five times, and opiates, I think, six. This day it seems +to remit. + +'The loss, dear Sir, which you have lately suffered, I felt many years +ago, and know therefore how much has been taken from you, and how little +help can be had from consolation. He that outlives a wife whom he has +long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same +hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has +shared much good or evil; and with whom he could set his mind at +liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of +being is lacerated[1290]; the settled course of sentiment and action is +stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless, till it is driven by +external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspense is +dreadful. + +'Our first recourse in this distressed solitude, is, perhaps for want of +habitual piety, to a gloomy acquiescence in necessity. Of two mortal +beings, one must lose the other; but surely there is a higher and better +comfort to be drawn from the consideration of that Providence which +watches over all, and a belief that the living and the dead are equally +in the hands of GOD, who will reunite those whom he has separated; or +who sees that it is best not to reunite. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Your most affectionate, + +'And most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'January 20, 1780.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'Well, I had resolved to send you the Chesterfield letter; but I will +write once again without it. Never impose tasks upon mortals. To require +two things is the way to have them both undone. + +'For the difficulties which you mention in your affairs I am sorry; but +difficulty is now very general: it is not therefore less grievous, for +there is less hope of help. I pretend not to give you advice, not +knowing the state of your affairs; and general counsels about prudence +and frugality would do you little good. You are, however, in the right +not to increase your own perplexity by a journey hither; and I hope that +by staying at home you will please your father. + +'Poor dear Beauclerk[1291]--_nec, ut soles, dabis joca_[1292]. His wit +and his folly, his acuteness and maliciousness, his merriment and +reasoning, are now over. Such another will not often be found among +mankind. He directed himself to be buried by the side of his mother, an +instance of tenderness which I hardly expected[1293]. He has left his +children to the care of Lady Di, and if she dies, of Mr. Langton, and of +Mr. Leicester his relation, and a man of good character. His library has +been offered to sale to the Russian ambassador[1294]. + +'Dr. Percy, notwithstanding all the noise of the newspapers, has had no +literary loss[1295]. Clothes and moveables were burnt to the value of +about one hundred pounds; but his papers, and I think his books, were +all preserved. + +'Poor Mr. Thrale has been in extreme danger from an apoplectical +disorder, and recovered, beyond the expectation of his physicians; he is +now at Bath, that his mind may be quiet, and Mrs. Thrale and Miss are +with him. + +'Having told you what has happened to your friends, let me say something +to you of yourself. You are always complaining of melancholy, and I +conclude from those complaints that you are fond of it. No man talks of +that which he is desirous to conceal, and every man desires to conceal +that of which he is ashamed.[1296] Do not pretend to deny it; _manifestum +habemus furem_; make it an invariable and obligatory law to yourself, +never to mention your own mental diseases; if you are never to speak of +them, you will think on them but little, and if you think little of +them, they will molest you rarely. When you talk of them, it is plain +that you want either praise or pity; for praise there is no room, and +pity will do you no good; therefore, from this hour speak no more, think +no more, about them[1297]. + +'Your transaction with Mrs. Stewart gave me great satisfaction; I am +much obliged to you for your attention. Do not lose sight of her; your +countenance may be of great credit, and of consequence of great +advantage to her. The memory of her brother is yet fresh in my mind; he +was an ingenious and worthy man. + +'Please to make my compliments to your lady, and to the young ladies. I +should like to see them, pretty loves. + +'I am, dear Sir, + +'Yours affectionately, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'April 8, 1780.' + + +Mrs. Thrale being now at Bath with her husband, the correspondence +between Johnson and her was carried on briskly. I shall present my +readers with one of her original letters to him at this time, which will +amuse them probably more than those well-written but studied epistles +which she has inserted in her collection, because it exhibits the easy +vivacity of their literary intercourse. It is also of value as a key to +Johnson's answer, which she has printed by itself, and of which I shall +subjoin extracts. + + +'MRS. THRALE TO DR. JOHNSON. + +'I had a very kind letter from you yesterday, dear Sir, with a most +circumstantial date[1298]. You took trouble with my circulating letter, +[1299] Mr. Evans writes me word, and I thank you sincerely for so doing: +one might do mischief else not being on the spot. + +'Yesterday's evening was passed at Mrs. Montagu's: there was Mr. +Melmoth;[1300] I do not like him _though_, nor he me; it was expected we +should have pleased each other; he is, however, just Tory enough to hate +the Bishop of Peterborough[1301] for Whiggism, and Whig enough to abhor +you for Toryism. + +'Mrs. Montagu flattered him finely; so he had a good afternoon on't. +This evening we spend at a concert. Poor Queeney's[1302] sore eyes have +just released her; she had a long confinement, and could neither read +nor write, so my master[1303] treated her very good-naturedly with the +visits of a young woman in this town, a taylor's daughter, who professes +musick, and teaches so as to give six lessons a day to ladies, at five +and threepence a lesson. Miss Burney says she is a great performer; and +I respect the wench for getting her living so prettily; she is very +modest and pretty-mannered, and not seventeen years old. + +'You live in a fine whirl indeed; if I did not write regularly you would +half forget me, and that would be very wrong, for I _felt_ my regard for +you in my _face_ last night, when the criticisms were going on. + +'This morning it was all connoisseurship; we went to see some pictures +painted by a gentleman-artist, Mr. Taylor, of this place; my master +makes one, every where, and has got a good dawling[1304] companion to ride +with him now. He looks well enough, but I have no notion of health for a +man whose mouth cannot be sewed up.[1305] Burney[1306] and I and Queeney +teize him every meal he eats, and Mrs. Montagu is quite serious with him; +but what _can_ one do? He will eat, I think, and if he does eat I know he +will not live; it makes me very unhappy, but I must bear it. Let me +always have your friendship. I am, most sincerely, dear Sir, + +'Your faithful servant, + +'H. L. T.' + +'Bath, Friday, April 28.' + + +'DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE. + +'DEAREST MADAM, + +'Mr. Thrale never will live abstinently, till he can persuade himself to +live by rule[1307]. + + * * * * * + +Encourage, as you can, the musical girl. + +'Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is +particularly expected. There is often on both sides a vigilance not +over-benevolent; and as attention is strongly excited, so that nothing +drops unheeded, any difference in taste or opinion, and some difference +where there is no restraint will commonly appear, immediately generates +dislike. + +'Never let criticisms operate upon your face or your mind; it is very +rarely that an authour is hurt by his criticks. The blaze of reputation +cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket[1308]; a very few +names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed. From +the authour of _Fitzosborne's Letters_ I cannot think myself in much +danger. I met him only once about thirty years ago, and in some small +dispute reduced him to whistle; having not seen him since, that is the +last impression. Poor Moore, the fabulist[1309], was one of the company. + +'Mrs. Montagu's long stay, against her own inclination, is very +convenient. You would, by your own confession, want a companion; and she +is _par pluribus_; conversing with her you may _find variety in +one_[1310].' + +'London, May 1, 1780.' + + +On the and of May I wrote to him, and requested that we might have +another meeting somewhere in the North of England, in the autumn of this +year. + +From Mr. Langton I received soon after this time a letter, of which I +extract a passage, relative both to Mr. Beauclerk and Dr. Johnson. + +'The melancholy information you have received concerning Mr. Beauclerk's +death is true. Had his talents been directed in any sufficient degree as +they ought, I have always been strongly of opinion that they were +calculated to make an illustrious figure; and that opinion, as it had +been in part formed upon Dr. Johnson's judgment, receives more and more +confirmation by hearing what, since his death, Dr. Johnson has said +concerning them; a few evenings ago, he was at Mr. Vesey's[1311], where +Lord Althorpe[1312], who was one of a numerous company there, addressed +Dr. Johnson on the subject of Mr. Beauclerk's death, saying, "Our CLUB +has had a great loss since we met last." He replied, "A loss, that +perhaps the whole nation could not repair!" The Doctor then went on to +speak of his endowments, and particularly extolled the wonderful ease +with which he uttered what was highly excellent. He said, that "no man +ever was so free when he was going to say a good thing, from a _look_ +that expressed that it was coming; or, when he had said it, from a look +that expressed that it had come." At Mr. Thrale's, some days before when +we were talking on the same subject, he said, referring to the same idea +of his wonderful facility, "That Beauclerk's talents were those which he +had felt himself more disposed to envy, than those of any whom he had +known[1313]." + +'On the evening I have spoken of above, at Mr. Vesey's, you would have +been much gratified, as it exhibited an instance of the high importance +in which Dr. Johnson's character is held, I think even beyond any I ever +before was witness to. The company consisted chiefly of ladies, among +whom were the Duchess Dowager of Portland[1314], the Duchess of Beaufort, +whom I suppose from her rank I must name before her mother Mrs. +Boscawen, and her elder sister Mrs. Lewson, who was likewise there; Lady +Lucan[1315], Lady Clermont, and others of note both for their station +and understandings. Among the gentlemen were Lord Althorpe, whom I have +before named, Lord Macartney, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Lucan, Mr. +Wraxal[1316], whose book you have probably seen, _The Tour to the +Northern Parts of Europe_; a very agreeable ingenious man; Dr. Warren, +Mr. Pepys, the Master in Chancery, whom I believe you know, and Dr. +Barnard, the Provost of Eton[1317]. As soon as Dr. Johnson was come in +and had taken a chair[1318], the company began to collect round him, +till they became not less than four, if not five, deep; those behind +standing, and listening over the heads of those that were sitting near +him[1319]. The conversation for some time was chiefly between Dr. +Johnson and the Provost of Eton, while the others contributed +occasionally their remarks. Without attempting to detail the particulars +of the conversation, which perhaps if I did, I should spin my account +out to a tedious length, I thought, my dear Sir, this general account of +the respect with which our valued friend was attended to, might be +acceptable[1320].' + + +'To THE REVEREND DR. FARMER. + +'May 25, 1780. + +Sir, + +'I know your disposition to second any literary attempt, and therefore +venture upon the liberty of entreating you to procure from College or +University registers, all the dates, or other informations which they +can supply, relating to Ambrose Philips, Broome, and Gray, who were all +of Cambridge, and of whose lives I am to give such accounts as I can +gather. Be pleased to forgive this trouble from, Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + + +While Johnson was thus engaged in preparing a delightful literary +entertainment for the world, the tranquillity of the metropolis of +Great-Britain was unexpectedly disturbed, by the most horrid series of +outrage that ever disgraced a civilised country. A relaxation of some of +the severe penal provisions against our fellow-subjects of the Catholic +communion had been granted by the legislature, with an opposition so +inconsiderable that the genuine mildness of Christianity, united with +liberal policy, seemed to have become general in this island[1321]. But +a dark and malignant spirit of persecution soon shewed itself, in an +unworthy petition for the repeal of the wise and humane statute. That +petition was brought forward by a mob, with the evident purpose of +intimidation, and was justly rejected. But the attempt was accompanied +and followed by such daring violence as is unexampled in history. Of +this extraordinary tumult, Dr. Johnson has given the following concise, +lively, and just account in his _Letters to Mrs. Thrale[1322]:-- + +'On Friday[1323], the good Protestants met in Saint George's-Fields, at +the summons of Lord George Gordon, and marching to Westminster, insulted +the Lords and Commons, who all bore it with great tameness. At night the +outrages began by the demolition of the mass-house by Lincoln's-Inn.' + +'An exact journal of a week's defiance of government I cannot give you. +On Monday, Mr. Strahan[1324], who had been insulted, spoke to Lord +Mansfield, who had I think been insulted too, of the licentiousness of +the populace; and his Lordship treated it as a very slight irregularity. +On Tuesday night[1325] they pulled down Fielding's house, and burnt his +goods in the street. They had gutted on Monday Sir George Savile's +house, but the building was saved. On Tuesday evening, leaving +Fielding's ruins, they went to Newgate to demand their companions who +had been seized demolishing the chapel. The keeper could not release +them but by the Mayor's permission, which he went to ask; at his return +he found all the prisoners released, and Newgate in a blaze. They then +went to Bloomsbury, and fastened upon Lord Mansfield's house, which they +pulled down; and as for his goods, they totally burnt them[1326]. They +have since gone to Caen-wood, but a guard was there before them. They +plundered some Papists, I think, and burnt a mass-house[1327] in +Moorfields the same night.' + +'On Wednesday I walked with Dr. Scott to look at Newgate, and found it +in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. As I went by, the Protestants were +plundering the Sessions-house at the Old-Bailey. There were not, I +believe, a hundred; but they did their work at leisure, in full +security, without sentinels, without trepidation, as men lawfully +employed, in full day. Such is the cowardice of a commercial place. On +Wednesday they broke open the Fleet, and the King's-Bench, and the +Marshalsea, and Wood-street Compter, and Clerkenwell Bridewell, and +released all the prisoners[1328].' + +'At night they set fire to the Fleet, and to the King's-Bench, and I +know not how many other places; and one might see the glare of +conflagration fill the sky from many parts. The sight was dreadful. Some +people were threatened: Mr. Strahan advised me to take care of myself. +Such a time of terrour you have been happy in not seeing.' + +'The King said in Council, "That the magistrates had not done their +duty, but that he would do his own;" and a proclamation was published, +directing us to keep our servants within doors, as the peace was now to +be preserved by force. The soldiers were sent out to different parts, +and the town is now [_June_ 9] at quiet.' + +'The soldiers[1329] are stationed so as to be every where within call: +there is no longer any body of rioters, and the individuals are hunted +to their holes, and led to prison; Lord George was last night sent to +the Tower. Mr. John Wilkes was this day[1330] in my neighbourhood, to +seize the publisher of a seditious paper.' + +'Several chapels have been destroyed, and several inoffensive Papists +have been plundered; but the high sport was to burn the gaols. This was +a good rabble trick. The debtors and the criminals were all set at +liberty; but of the criminals, as has always happened, many are already +retaken; and two pirates have surrendered themselves, and it is expected +that they will be pardoned.' + +'Government now acts again with its proper force; and we are all[1331] +under the protection of the King and the law. I thought that it would be +agreeable to you and my master to have my testimony to the publick +security; and that you would sleep more quietly when I told you that you +are safe.' + +'There has, indeed, been an universal panick from which the King was the +first that recovered. Without the concurrence of his ministers, or the +assistance of the civil magistrate, he put the soldiers in motion, and +saved the town from calamities, such as a rabble's government must +naturally produce.' + +'The publick[1332] has escaped a very heavy calamity. The rioters +attempted the Bank on Wednesday night, but in no great number; and like +other thieves, with no great resolution. Jack Wilkes headed the party +that drove them away. It is agreed, that if they had seized the Bank on +Tuesday, at the height of the panick, when no resistance had been +prepared, they might have carried irrecoverably away whatever they had +found. Jack, who was always zealous for order and decency,[1333] declares +that if he be trusted with power, he will not leave a rioter alive. +There is, however, now no longer any need of heroism or bloodshed; no +blue ribband[1334] is any longer worn[1335].' + +Such was the end of this miserable sedition, from which London was +delivered by the magnanimity of the Sovereign himself. Whatever some may +maintain, I am satisfied that there was no combination or plan, either +domestic or foreign; but that the mischief spread by a gradual contagion +of frenzy, augmented by the quantities of fermented liquors, of which +the deluded populace possessed themselves in the course of their +depredations. + +I should think myself very much to blame, did I here neglect to do +justice to my esteemed friend Mr. Akerman, the keeper of Newgate, who +long discharged a very important trust with an uniform intrepid +firmness, and at the same time a tenderness and a liberal charity, which +entitle him to be recorded with distinguished honour[1336]. + +Upon this occasion, from the timidity and negligence of magistracy on +the one hand, and the almost incredible exertions of the mob on the +other, the first prison of this great country was laid open, and the +prisoners set free; but that Mr. Akerman, whose house was burnt, would +have prevented all this, had proper aid been sent to him in due time, +there can be no doubt. + +Many years ago, a fire broke out in the brick part which was built as an +addition to the old gaol of Newgate. The prisoners were in consternation +and tumult, calling out, 'We shall be burnt--we shall be burnt! Down +with the gate--down with the gate!' Mr. Akerman hastened to them, shewed +himself at the gate, and having, after some confused vociferation of +'Hear him--hear him!' obtained a silent attention, he then calmly told +them, that the gate must not go down; that they were under his care, and +that they should not be permitted to escape: but that he could assure +them, they need not be afraid of being burnt, for that the fire was not +in the prison, properly so called, which was strongly built with stone; +and that if they would engage to be quiet, he himself would come in to +them, and conduct them to the further end of the building, and would not +go out till they gave him leave. To this proposal they agreed; upon +which Mr. Akerman, having first made them fall back from the gate, went +in, and with a determined resolution, ordered the outer turnkey upon no +account to open the gate, even though the prisoners (though he trusted +they would not) should break their word, and by force bring himself to +order it. 'Never mind me, (said he,) should that happen.' The prisoners +peaceably followed him, while he conducted them through passages of +which he had the keys, to the extremity of the gaol which was most +distant from the fire. Having, by this very judicious conduct, fully +satisfied them that there was no immediate risk, if any at all, he then +addressed them thus: 'Gentlemen, you are now convinced that I told you +true. I have no doubt that the engines will soon extinguish this fire; +if they should not, a sufficient guard will come, and you shall all be +taken out and lodged in the Compters[1337]. I assure you, upon my word +and honour, that I have not a farthing insured. I have left my house, +that I might take care of you. I will keep my promise, and stay with you +if you insist upon it; but if you will allow me to go out and look after +my family and property, I shall[1338] be obliged to you.' Struck with +his behaviour, they called out, 'Master Akerman, you have done bravely; +it was very kind in you: by all means go and take care of your own +concerns.' He did so accordingly, while they remained, and were all +preserved. + +Johnson has been heard to relate the substance of this story with high +praise, in which he was joined by Mr. Burke. My illustrious friend, +speaking of Mr. Akerman's kindness to his prisoners, pronounced this +eulogy upon his character:--'He who has long had constantly in his view +the worst of mankind, and is yet eminent for the humanity of his +disposition, must have had it originally in a great degree, and +continued to cultivate it very carefully[1339].' + +In the course of this month my brother David waited upon Dr. Johnson, +with the following letter of introduction, which I had taken care should +be lying ready on his arrival in London. + + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'Edinburgh, April 29, 1780. + +'MY DEAR SIR, + +'This will be delivered to you by my brother David, on his return from +Spain. You will be glad to see the man who vowed to "stand by the old +castle of Auchinleck, with heart, purse, and sword;" that romantick +family solemnity devised by me, of which you and I talked with +complacency upon the spot. I trust that twelve years of absence have not +lessened his feudal attachment; and that you will find him worthy of +being introduced to your acquaintance. + +'I have the honour to be, + +'With affectionate veneration, + +'My dear Sir, + +'Your most faithful humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + + +Johnson received him very politely, and has thus mentioned him in a +letter to Mrs. Thrale[1340]: 'I have had with me a brother of Boswell's, +a Spanish merchant,[1341] whom the war has driven from his residence at +Valentia; he is gone to see his friends, and will find Scotland but a +sorry place after twelve years' residence in a happier climate. He is a +very agreeable man, and speaks no Scotch.' + + +'To DR. BEATTIE, AT ABERDEEN. + +'Sir, + +'More years[1342] than I have any delight to reckon, have past since you +and I saw one another; of this, however, there is no reason for making +any reprehensory complaint--_Sic fata ferunt[1343]_. But methinks there +might pass some small interchange of regard between us. If you say, that +I ought to have written, I now write; and I write to tell you, that I +have much kindness for you and Mrs. Beattie; and that I wish your health +better, and your life long. Try change of air, and come a few degrees +Southwards: a softer climate may do you both good; winter is coming on; +and London will be warmer, and gayer, and busier, and more fertile of +amusement than Aberdeen. + +'My health is better; but that will be little in the balance, when I +tell you that Mrs. Montagu has been very ill, and is I doubt now but +weakly. Mr. Thrale has been very dangerously disordered; but is much +better, and I hope will totally recover. He has withdrawn himself from +business the whole summer. Sir Joshua and his sister are well; and Mr. +Davies has got great success as an authour,[1344] generated by the +corruption of a bookseller.[1345] More news I have not to tell you, and +therefore you must be contented with hearing, what I know not whether +you much wish to hear[1346], that I am, Sir, + +'Your most humble servant, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Bolt-court, Fleet-street, +August 21, 1780.' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, Esq. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I find you have taken one of your fits of taciturnity, and have +resolved not to write till you are written to; it is but a peevish +humour, but you shall have your way. + +'I have sat at home in Bolt-court, all the summer, thinking to write the +_Lives_, and a great part of the time only thinking. Several of them, +however, are done, and I still think to do the rest. + +'Mr. Thrale and his family have, since his illness, passed their time +first at Bath, and then at Brighthelmston; but I have been at neither +place. I would have gone to Lichfield, if I could have had time, and I +might have had time if I had been active; but I have missed much, and +done little. + +'In the late disturbances, Mr. Thrale's house and stock were in great +danger; the mob was pacified at their first invasion, with about fifty +pounds in drink and meat; and at their second, were driven away by the +soldiers[1347]. Mr. Strahan got a garrison into his house, and maintained +them a fortnight; he was so frighted that he removed part of his goods. +Mrs. Williams took shelter in the country. + +'I know not whether I shall get a ramble this autumn[1348]; it is now +about the time when we were travelling. I have, however, better health +than I had then, and hope you and I may yet shew ourselves on some part +of Europe, Asia, or Africa[1349]. In the mean time let us play no trick, +but keep each other's kindness by all means in our power. + +'The bearer of this is Dr. Dunbar, of Aberdeen, who has written and +published a very ingenious book[1350], and who I think has a kindness +for me, and will, when he knows you, have a kindness for you. + +'I suppose your little ladies are grown tall; and your son is become a +learned young man. I love them all, and I love your naughty lady, whom I +never shall persuade to love me. When the _Lives_ are done, I shall send +them to complete her collection, but must send them in paper, as for +want of a pattern, I cannot bind them to fit the rest. + +'I am, Sir, +'Yours most affectionately, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' +'London, Aug. 21, 1780.' + + +This year he wrote to a young clergyman[1351] in the country, the +following very excellent letter, which contains valuable advice to +Divines in general:-- + +'Dear Sir, + +'Not many days ago Dr. Lawrence shewed me a letter, in which you make +mention of me: I hope, therefore, you will not be displeased that I +endeavour to preserve your good-will by some observations which your +letter suggested to me. + +'You are afraid of falling into some improprieties in the daily service +by reading to an audience that requires no exactness. Your fear, I hope, +secures you from danger. They who contract absurd habits are such as +have no fear. It is impossible to do the same thing very often, without +some peculiarity of manner: but that manner may be good or bad, and a +little care will at least preserve it from being bad: to make it good, +there must, I think, be something of natural or casual felicity, which +cannot be taught. + +'Your present method of making your sermons seems very judicious. Few +frequent preachers can be supposed to have sermons more their own than +yours will be. Take care to register, somewhere or other, the authours +from whom your several discourses are borrowed; and do not imagine that +you shall always remember, even what perhaps you now think it impossible +to forget. + +'My advice, however, is, that you attempt, from time to time, an +original sermon; and in the labour of composition, do not burthen your +mind with too much at once; do not exact from yourself at one effort of +excogitation, propriety of thought and elegance of expression. Invent +first, and then embellish. The production of something, where nothing +was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration +of the thing produced. Set down diligently your thoughts as they rise, +in the first words that occur; and, when you have matter, you will +easily give it form: nor, perhaps, will this method be always necessary; +for by habit, your thoughts and diction will flow together[1352]. + +'The composition of sermons is not very difficult: the divisions not +only help the memory of the hearer, but direct the judgement of the +writer; they supply sources of invention, and keep every part in its +proper place. + +'What I like least in your letter is your account of the manners of your +parish; from which I gather, that it has been long neglected by the +parson. The Dean of Carlisle[1353], who was then a little rector in +Northamptonshire[1354], told me, that it might be discerned whether or no +there was a clergyman resident in a parish by the civil or savage manner +of the people. Such a congregation as yours stands in need of much +reformation; and I would not have you think it impossible to reform +them. A very savage parish was civilised by a decayed gentlewoman, who +came among them to teach a petty school. My learned friend Dr. +Wheeler[1355] of Oxford, when he was a young man, had the care of a +neighbouring parish for fifteen pounds a year, which he was never paid; +but he counted it a convenience that it compelled him to make a sermon +weekly. One woman he could not bring to the communion; and, when he +reproved or exhorted her, she only answered, that she was no scholar. He +was advised to set some good woman or man of the parish, a little wiser +than herself, to talk to her in a language level to her mind. Such +honest, I may call them holy artifices, must be practised by every +clergyman; for all means must be tried by which souls may be saved[1356]. +Talk to your people, however, as much as you can; and you will find, +that the more frequently you converse with them upon religious subjects, +the more willingly they will attend, and the more submissively they will +learn. A clergyman's diligence always makes him venerable. I think I +have now only to say, that in the momentous work you have undertaken, I +pray GOD to bless you. + +'I am, Sir, +'Your most humble servant, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'Bolt-court, Aug. 30, 1780.' + +My next letters to him were dated August 24, September 6, and October 1, +and from them I extract the following passages:-- + +'My brother David and I find the long indulged fancy of our comfortable +meeting again at Auchinleck, so well realised, that it in some degree +confirms the pleasing hope of _O! preclarum diem!_[1357] in a future +state.' + +'I beg that you may never again harbour a suspicion of my indulging a +peevish humour, or playing tricks; you will recollect that when I +confessed to you, that I had once been intentionally silent to try your +regard, I gave you my word and honour that I would not do so again[1358].' + +'I rejoice to hear of your good state of health; I pray GOD to continue +it long. I have often said, that I would willingly have ten years added +to my life, to have ten taken from yours; I mean, that I would be ten +years older to have you ten years younger. But let me be thankful for +the years during which I have enjoyed your friendship, and please myself +with the hopes of enjoying it many years to come in this state of being, +trusting always, that in another state, we shall meet never to be +separated. Of this we can form no notion; but the thought, though +indistinct, is delightful, when the mind is calm and clear[1359].' + +'The riots in London were certainly horrible; but you give me no account +of your own situation, during the barbarous anarchy. A description of it +by DR. JOHNSON would be a great painting[1360]; you might write another +_London, a Poem_.' + +'I am charmed with your condescending affectionate expression, "let us +keep each other's kindness by all the means in our power;" my revered +Friend! how elevating is it to my mind, that I am found worthy to be a +companion to Dr. Samuel Johnson! All that you have said in grateful +praise of Mr. Walmsley,[1361] I have long thought of you; but we are +both Tories,[1362] which has a very general influence upon our +sentiments. I hope that you will agree to meet me at York, about the +end of this month; or if you will come to Carlisle, that would be better +still, in case the Dean be there. Please to consider, that to keep each +other's kindness, we should every year have that free and intimate +communication of mind which can be had only when we are together. We +should have both our solemn and our pleasant talk.' + +'I write now for the third time, to tell you that my desire for our +meeting this autumn, is much increased. I wrote to Squire Godfrey +Bosville[1363], my Yorkshire chief, that I should, perhaps, pay him a +visit, as I was to hold a conference with Dr. Johnson at York. I give +you my word and honour that I said not a word of his inviting you; but +he wrote to me as follows:-- + +'"I need not tell you I shall be happy to see you here the latter end of +this month, as you propose; and I shall likewise be in hopes that you +will persuade Dr. Johnson to finish the conference here. It will add to +the favour of your own company, if you prevail upon such an associate, +to assist your observations. I have often been entertained with his +writings, and I once belonged to a club of which he was a member, and I +never spent an evening there, but I heard something from him well worth +remembering." + +'We have thus, my dear Sir, good comfortable quarters in the +neighbourhood of York, where you may be assured we shall be heartily +welcome. I pray you then resolve to set out; and let not the year 1780 +be a blank in our social calendar, and in that record of wisdom and wit, +which I keep with so much diligence, to your honour, and the instruction +and delight of others.' + +Mr. Thrale had now another contest for the representation in parliament +of the borough of Southwark, and Johnson kindly lent him his assistance, +by writing advertisements and letters for him. I shall insert one as a +specimen: + + +'TO THE WORTHY ELECTORS OF THE BOROUGH OF SOUTHWARK. + +'GENTLEMEN, + +'A new Parliament being now called, I again solicit the honour of being +elected for one of your representatives; and solicit it with the greater +confidence, as I am not conscious of having neglected my duty, or of +having acted otherwise than as becomes the independent representative of +independent constituents; superiour to fear, hope, and expectation, who +has no private purposes to promote, and whose prosperity is involved in +the prosperity of his country. As my recovery from a very severe +distemper is not yet perfect, I have declined to attend the Hall, and +hope an omission so necessary will not be harshly censured. + +'I can only send my respectful wishes, that all your deliberations may +tend to the happiness of the kingdom, and the peace of the borough. + +'I am, Gentlemen, + +'Your most faithful + +'And obedient servant, + +'HENRY THRALE.' + +'Southwark, Sept. 5, 1780.' + + +On his birth-day, Johnson has this note:-- + +'I am now beginning the seventy-second year of my life, with more +strength of body, and greater vigour of mind, than I think is common at +that age[1364].' + +But still he complains of sleepless nights and idle days, and +forgetfulness, or neglect of resolutions. He thus pathetically expresses +himself,-- + +'Surely I shall not spend my whole life with my own total +disapprobation[1365].' + +Mr. Macbean, whom I have mentioned more than once, as one of Johnson's +humble friends, a deserving but unfortunate man, being now oppressed by +age and poverty, Johnson solicited the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, to have +him admitted into the Charterhouse. I take the liberty to insert his +Lordship's answer[1366], as I am eager to embrace every occasion of +augmenting the respectable notion which should ever be entertained of my +illustrious friend:-- + + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'London, October 24, 1780. + +'SIR, + +'I have this moment received your letter, dated the 19th, and returned +from Bath. + +'In the beginning of the summer I placed one in the Chartreux[1367], +without the sanction of a recommendation so distinct and so +authoritative as yours of Macbean; and I am afraid, that according to +the establishment of the House, the opportunity of making the charity so +good amends will not soon recur. But whenever a vacancy shall happen, if +you'll favour me with notice of it, I will try to recommend him to the +place, even though it should not be my turn to nominate. + +'I am, Sir, with great regard, + +'Your most faithful + +'And obedient servant, + +'THURLOW[1368].' + + +'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. + +'DEAR SIR, + +'I am sorry to write you a letter that will not please you, and yet it +is at last what I resolve to do. This year must pass without an +interview; the summer has been foolishly lost, like many other of my +summers and winters. I hardly saw a green field, but staid in town to +work, without working much. + +'Mr. Thrale's loss of health has lost him the election;[1369] he is now +going to Brighthelmston, and expects me to go with him; and how long I +shall stay, I cannot tell. I do not much like the place, but yet I shall +go, and stay while my stay is desired. We must, therefore, content +ourselves with knowing what we know as well as man can know the mind of +man, that we love one another, and that we wish each other's happiness, +and that the lapse of a year cannot lessen our mutual kindness. + +'I was pleased to be told that I accused Mrs. Boswell unjustly, in +supposing that she bears me ill-will. I love you so much, that I would +be glad to love all that love you, and that you love; and I have love +very ready for Mrs. Boswell, if she thinks it worthy of acceptance. I +hope all the young ladies and gentlemen are well. + +'I take a great liking to your brother. He tells me that his father +received him kindly, but not fondly; however, you seem to have lived +well enough at Auchinleck, while you staid. Make your father as happy as +you can. + +'You lately told me of your health: I can tell you in return, that my +health has been for more than a year past, better than it has been for +many years before. Perhaps it may please GOD to give us some time +together before we are parted. + +'I am, dear Sir, +'Yours most affectionately, +'SAM. JOHNSON.' +'October 17, 1780.' + + + + +APPENDIX A. + +(_Page_ 314.) + + +The alehouse in the city where Johnson used to go and sit with George +Psalmanazar was, no doubt, the club in Old Street, where he met also +'the metaphysical tailor,' the uncle of Hoole the poet (_post_, under +March 30, 1783). Psalmanazar is mentioned a third time by Boswell +(_post_, May 15, 1784) in a passage borrowed from Hawkins's edition of +Johnson's _Works_, xi. 206, where it is stated that 'Johnson said: "He +had never seen the close of the life of any one that he wished so much +his own to resemble as that of him, for its purity and devotion." He was +asked whether he ever contradicted him. "I should as soon," said he, +"have thought of contradicting a bishop." When he was asked whether he +had ever mentioned Formosa before him, he said, "he was afraid to +mention even China."' We learn from Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, p. 547, +that 'Psalmanazar lived in Ironmonger Row, Old Street; in the +neighbourhood whereof he was so well known and esteemed, that, as Dr. +Hawkesworth once told me, scarce any person, even children, passed him +without shewing him the usual signs of respect.' In the list of the +writers of the _Universal History_ that Johnson drew up a few days +before his death his name is given as the historian of the Jews, Gauls, +and Spaniards (_post_, November, 1784). According to Mrs. Piozzi +(_Anecdotes_, p. 175):--'His pious and patient endurance of a tedious +illness, ending in an exemplary death, confirmed the strong impression +his merit had made upon the mind of Mr. Johnson. "It is so very +difficult," said he always, "for a sick man not to be a scoundrel."' +Johnson, in _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 102, mentions him as a man +'whose life was, I think, uniform.' Smollett, in _Humphry Clinker_ (in +Melford's Letter of June 10), describes him as one 'who, after having +drudged half a century in the literary mill, in all the simplicity and +abstinence of an Asiatic, subsists upon the charity of a few +booksellers, just sufficient to keep him from the parish.' A writer in +the _Annual Register_ for 1764 (ii. 71), speaking of the latter part of +his life, says:--'He was concerned in compiling and writing works of +credit, and lived exemplarily for many years.' He died a few days before +that memorable sixteenth day of May 1763, when Boswell first met +Johnson. It is a pity that no record has been kept of the club meetings +in Ironmonger Row, for then we should have seen Johnson in a new light. +Johnson in an alehouse club, with a metaphysical tailor on one side of +him, and an aged writer on the other side of him, 'who spoke English +with the city accent and coarsely enough,'[1370] and whom he would never +venture to contradict, is a Johnson that we cannot easily imagine. + +Of the greater part of Psalmanazar's life we know next to +nothing--little, I believe, beyond the few facts that I have here +gathered together. His early years he has described in his _Memoirs_. +That he started as one of the most shameless impostors, and that he +remained a hypocrite and a cheat till he was fully forty, if not indeed +longer, his own narrative shows. That for many years he lived +laboriously, frugally, and honestly seems to be no less certain. How far +his _Memoirs_ are truthful is somewhat doubtful. In them he certainly +confesses the impudent trick which he had played in his youth, when he +passed himself off as a Formosan convert. He wished, he writes, 'to +undeceive the world by unravelling that whole mystery of iniquity' (p. +5). He lays bare roguery enough, and in a spirit, it seems, of real +sorrow. Nevertheless there are passages which are not free from the +leaven of hypocrisy, and there are, I suspect, statements which are at +least partly false. Johnson, indeed, looked upon him as little less than +a saint; but then, as Sir Joshua Reynolds tells us, though 'Johnson was +not easily imposed upon by professions to honesty and candour, he +appeared to have little suspicion of hypocrisy in religion.'[1371] It was +in the year 1704 that Psalmanazar published his _Historical and +Geographical Description of Formosa_. So gross is the forgery that it +almost passes belief that it was widely accepted as a true narrative. He +gave himself out as a native of that island and a convert to +Christianity. He lied so foolishly as to maintain that in the Academies +of Formosa Greek was studied (p. 290). He asserted also that in an +island that is only about half as large as Ireland 18,000 boys were +sacrificed every year (p. 176). But his readers were for the most part +only too willing to be deceived; for in Protestant England his abuse of +the Jesuits covered a multitude of lies. Ere he had been three months in +London, he was, he writes (_Memoirs_, p. 179), 'cried up for a prodigy, +and not only the domestic, but even the foreign papers had helped to +blaze forth many things in his praise.' He was aided in his fraud by the +Rev. Dr. Innes, or Innys, a clergyman of the English Church, who by +means of his interesting convert pushed himself into the notice of +Compton, Bishop of London, and before long was made chaplain-general to +the English forces in Portugal (_Memoirs_, p. 191). The same man, as +Boswell tells us (_ante_, i. 359), by another impudent cheat, a second +time obtained 'considerable promotion.' Psalmanazar's book soon reached +a second edition, 'besides the several versions it had abroad' (p. 5). +Yet it is very dull reading--just such a piece of work as might be +looked for from a young man of little fancy, but gifted with a strong +memory. Nevertheless, the author's credit lasted so long, that for many +years he lived on a subscription 'which was founded on a belief of his +being a Formosan and a real convert to the Church of England' (p. 208). +He was even sent to Oxford to study, and had rooms in one of the +colleges--Christ Church, if I mistake not (p. 186). It was not only as a +student that he was sent by his dupes to that ancient seat of learning; +the Bishop of London hoped that he would 'teach the Formosan language to +a set of gentlemen who were afterwards to go with him to convert those +people to Christianity' (p. 161). + +While he was living the life of a lying scoundrel, he was, he says (p. +192), 'happily restrained by Divine Grace,' so that 'all sense of +remorse was not extinguished,' and there was no fall into 'downright +infidelity.' At length he picked up Law's _Serious Call_, which moved +him, as later on it moved better men (_ante_, i. 68). Step by step he +got into a way of steady work, and lived henceforth a laborious and +honest life. It was in the year 1728, thirty-five years before his +death, that he began, he says, to write the narrative of his imposture +(p. 59). A dangerous illness and the dread of death had deeply moved +him, and filled him with the desire of leaving behind 'a faithful +narrative' which would 'undeceive the world.' Nineteen years later, +though he did not publish his narrative, he made a public confession of +his guilt. In the unsigned article on Formosa, which he wrote in 1747 +for Bowen's _Complete System of Geography_ (ii. 251), he says, +'Psalmanaazaar [so he had at one time written his name] hath long since +ingenuously owned the contrary [of the truthfulness of his narrative] +though not in so public a manner, as he might perhaps have done, had not +such an avowment been likely to have affected some few persons who for +private ends took advantage of his youthful vanity to encourage him in +an imposture, which he might otherwise never had the thought, much less +the confidence, to have carried on. These persons being now dead, and +out of all danger of being hurt by it, he now gives us leave to assure +the world that the greatest part of that account was fabulous ... and +that he designs to leave behind him a faithful account of that unhappy +step, and other particulars of his life leading to it, to be published +after his death.' + +In his _Memoirs_ he will not, he writes (p. 59), give any account 'of +his real country or family.' Yet it is quite clear from his own +narrative that he was born in the south of France. 'His pronunciation of +French had,' it was said, 'a spice of the Gascoin accent, and in that +provincial dialect he was so masterly that none but those born in the +country could excel him' (Preface, p. 1). If a town can be found that +answers to all that he tells of his birth-place, his whole account may +be true; but the circumstances that he mentions seem inconsistent. The +city in which he was born was twenty-four miles from an archiepiscopal +city in which there was a college of Jesuits (p. 67), and about sixty +miles from 'a noble great city full of gentry and nobility, of coaches, +and all kinds of grandeur,' the seat of a great university (pp. 76, 83). +When he left the great city for Avignon he speaks of himself as 'going +_down_ to Avignon' (p. 87). Thence he started on a pilgrimage to Rome, +and in order to avoid his native place, after he had gone no great way, +'he wheeled about to the left, to leave the place at some twenty or +thirty miles distance' (p. 101). He changed his mind, however, and +returned home. Thence he set off to join his father, who was 'near 500 +miles off' in Germany (p. 60). 'The direct route was through the great +university city' and Lyons (p. 104). His birth-place then, if his +account is true, was on the road from Avignon to Rome, sixty miles from +a great university city and southwards of it, for through this +university city passed the direct road from his home to Lyons. It was, +moreover, sixty miles from an archiepiscopal city. I do not think that +such a place can be found. He says (p. 59) that he thought himself +'obliged out of respect to his country and family to conceal both, it +being but too common, though unjust, to censure them for the crimes of +private persons.' The excuse seems unsatisfactory, for he tells enough +to shew that he came from the South of France, while for his family +there was no need of care. It was, he writes, 'ancient but decayed,' and +he was the only surviving child. Of his father and mother he had heard +nothing since he started on the career of a pious rogue. They must have +been dead very many years by the time his _Memoirs_ were given to the +world. His story shews that at all events for the first part of his life +he had been one of the vainest of men, and vanity is commonly found +joined with a love of mystery. He is not consistent, moreover, in his +dates. On April 23, 1752, he was in the 73rd year of his age (p. 7); so +that he was born in either 1679 or 1680. When he joined his father he +was 'hardly full sixteen years old' (p. 112); yet it was a few years +after the Peace of Ryswick, which was signed on September 22, 1697. He +was, he says, 'but near twenty' when he wrote his _History of Formosa_ +(p. 184). This was in the year 1704. + +With his father he stayed but a short time, and then set out rambling +northwards. At Avignon, by shameless lying, he had obtained a pass 'as a +young student in theology, of Irish extract [_sic_] who had left his +country for the sake of religion' (p. 98). It was wonderful that his +fraud had escaped detection there, for he had kept his own name, +'because it had something of quality in it' (p. 99). He now resolved on +a more impudent pretence; for 'passing as an Irishman and a sufferer for +religion, did not only,' he writes, 'expose me to the danger of being +discovered, but came short of the merit and admiration I had expected +from it' (p. 112). He thereupon gave himself out as a Japanese convert, +and forged a fresh pass, 'clapping to it the old seal' (p. 116). He went +through different adventures, and at last enlisted in the army of the +Elector of Cologne--an 'unhappy herd, destitute of all sense of religion +and shamefacedness.' He got his discharge, but enlisted a second time, +'passing himself off for a Japanese and a heathen, under the name of +Salmanazar' (pp. 133-141). Later on he altered it, he says, 'by the +addition of a letter or two to make it somewhat different from that +mentioned in the _Book of Kings_' (Shalmaneser, II _Kings_, xvii. 3). In +his _Description of Formosa_ he wrote it Psalmanaazaar, and in later +life Psalmanazar. In his vanity he invented 'an awkward show of worship, +turning his face to the rising or setting sun, and pleased to be taken +notice of for so doing' (p. 144). He had moreover 'the ambition of +passing for a moral heathen' (p. 147). By way of singularity he next +took to living altogether upon raw flesh, roots, and herbs (p. 163). + +It was when he was on garrison duty at Sluys that he became acquainted +with Innes, who was chaplain to a Scotch regiment that was in the pay of +the Dutch (p. 148). This man found in him a tool ready made to his hand. +He had at once seen through his roguery, but he used his knowledge only +to plunge him deeper in his guilt. By working on his fears and his +vanity and by small bribes he induced him to profess himself a convert +to the Church of England and to submit to baptism (p. 158). He brought +him over to London, and introduced him to the Bishop of London, and to +Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury (pp. 164, 179). Psalmanazar spoke +Latin fluently, but 'his Grace had either forgotten his, or being unused +to the foreign pronunciation was forced to have it interpreted to him by +Dr. Innes in English' (p. 178). The young impostor everywhere gave +himself out as a Formosan who had been entrapped by a Jesuit priest, and +brought to Avignon. 'There I could expect,' he wrote, 'no mercy from the +Inquisitors, if I had not in hypocrisy professed their religion' +(_History of Formosa_, p. 25). He was kept, he says, in a kind of +custody, 'but I trusted under God to my heels' (p. 24). It was Innes who +made him write this _History_. + +In the confession of his fraud Psalmanazar seems to keep back nothing. +His repentance appears to be sincere, and his later life, there can be +little question, was regular. Yet, as I have said, even his confessions +apparently are not free from the old leaven of hypocrisy. It is indeed +very hard, if not altogether impossible, for a man who has passed forty +years and more as a lying hypocrite altogether to 'clear his mind of +cant.' In writing of the time when he was still living the life of a +lying scoundrel, he says:--'I have great reason to acknowledge it the +greatest mercy that could befall me, that I was so well grounded in the +principles and evidence of the Christian religion, that neither the +conversation of the then freethinkers, as they loved to stile +themselves, and by many of whom I was severely attacked, nor the +writings of Hobbes, Spinosa, &c. against the truth of Divine revelation +could appear to me in any other light than as the vain efforts of a +dangerous set of men to overturn a religion, the best founded and most +judiciously calculated to promote the peace and happiness of mankind, +both temporal and eternal' (_Memoirs_, p. 192). Two pages further on he +writes, a little boastfully it seems, of having had 'some sort of +gallantry with the fair sex; with many of whom, even persons of fortune +and character, of sense, wit, and learning, I was become,' he continues, +'a great favourite, and might, if I could have overcome my natural +sheepishness and fear of a repulse, have been more successful either by +way of matrimony or intrigue.' He goes on:--'I may truly say, that +hardly any man who might have enjoyed so great a variety ever indulged +himself in so few instances of the unlawful kind as I have done.' He +concludes this passage in his writings by 'thankfully acknowledging that +there must have been some secret providence that kept me from giving +such way to unlawful amours as I might otherwise have done, to the ruin +of my health, circumstances,' &c. + +When he came to wish for an honest way of life he was beset with +difficulties. 'What a deadly wound,' he writes, 'must such an unexpected +confession have given to my natural vanity, and what a mortification +would it have been to such sincere honest people [as my friends] to hear +it from my mouth!' (p. 213.) This was natural enough. That he long +hesitated, like a coward, on the brink is not to be cast in his teeth, +seeing that at last he took the plunge. But then in speaking of the time +when he weakly repeated, and to use his own words, 'as it were confirmed +anew,' his old falsehoods, he should not have written that 'as the +assurance of God's mercy gave me good grounds to hope, so that hope +inspired me with a design to use all proper means to obtain it, and +leave the issue of it to his Divine Providence' (p. 214). The only +proper means to obtain God's mercy was at once to own to all the world +that he had lied. It is only the Tartuffes and the Holy Willies who, +whilst they persist in their guilt, talk of leaving the issue to the +Divine Providence of God. + +Since this Appendix was in type I have learnt, through the kindness of +Mr. C.E. Doble, the editor of Hearne's _Remarks and Collections_, ed. +1885, that a passage in that book (i. 271), confirms my conjecture that +Psalmanazar was lodged in Christ Church when at Oxford. Hearne says +(July 9, 1706):--'Mr. Topping of Christ Church ... also tells me that +Salmanezzer, the famous Formosan, when he left Christ Church (where he +resided while in Oxon) left behind him a Book in MSt., wherein a +distinct acct was given of the Consular and Imperial coyns by himself.' +Mr. Doble has also pointed out to me in the first edition of the +_Spectator_ the following passage at the end of No. 14:-- + +'ADVERTISEMENT. + +'On the first of April will be performed at the Play-house in the +Hay-market an opera call'd _The Cruelty of Atreus_. N.B. The Scene +wherein Thyestes eats his own children is to be performed by the famous +Mr. Psalmanazar lately arrived from Formosa: The whole Supper being set +to Kettle-drums.' + + + * * * * * + + + + +APPENDIX B. + + +JOHNSON'S TRAVELS AND LOVE OF TRAVELLING. + +(_Page 352_). + +On the passage in the text Macaulay in his Review of Croker's Edition of +_Boswell's Life of Johnson_ partly founds the following criticism:-- + +'Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him to a state of society +completely new to him; and a salutary suspicion of his own deficiencies +seems on that occasion to have crossed his mind for the first time. He +confessed, in the last paragraph of his _Journey_, that his thoughts on +national manners were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of +one who had passed his time almost wholly in cities. This feeling, +however, soon passed away. It is remarkable that to the last he +entertained a fixed contempt for all those modes of life and those +studies which tend to emancipate the mind from the prejudices of a +particular age or a particular nation. Of foreign travel and of history +he spoke with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance. "What +does a man learn by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better for travelling? +What did Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except that there was a +snake in one of the pyramids of Egypt?"' Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, +i. 403. + +In another passage (p. 400) Macaulay says:-- + +'Johnson was no master of the great science of human nature. He had +studied, not the genus man, but the species Londoner. Nobody was ever so +thoroughly conversant with all the forms of life and all the shades of +moral and intellectual character which were to be seen from Islington to +the Thames, and from Hyde-Park corner to Mile-end green. But his +philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life of +England he knew nothing, and he took it for granted that everybody who +lived in the country was either stupid or miserable.' + +Of the two assertions that Macaulay makes in these two passages, while +one is for the most part true, the other is utterly and grossly false. +Johnson had no contempt for foreign travel. That curiosity which +animated his eager mind in so many parts of learning did not fail him, +when his thoughts turned to the great world outside our narrow seas. It +was his poverty that confined him so long to the neighbourhood of Temple +Bar. He must in these early days have sometimes felt with Arviragus when +he says:-- + +'What should we speak of +When we are old as you? when we shall hear +The rain and wind beat dark December, how +In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse +The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.' + +With his pension his wanderings at once began. His friendship with the +Thrales gave them a still wider range. His curiosity, which in itself +was always eager, was checked in his more prosperous circumstances by +his years, his natural unwillingness at any one moment to make an +effort, and by the want of travelling companions who were animated by a +spirit of inquiry and of enterprise equal to his own. He did indeed +travel much more than is commonly thought, and was far less frequently +to be seen rolling along Fleet-street or stemming the full tide of human +existence at Charing Cross than his biographers would have us believe. + +The following table, imperfect though it must necessarily be, shows how +large a part of his life he passed outside 'the first turnpike-gate,' +and beyond the smoke of London:-- + +1709-1736. The first twenty-seven years of his life he spent in small +country towns or villages--Lichfield, Stourbridge, Oxford, +Market-Bosworth, Birmingham. So late as 1781 Lichfield did not contain +4,000 inhabitants (Harwood's _History of Lichfield_, p. 380); eight +years later it was reckoned that a little over 8,000 people dwelt in +Oxford (Parker's _Early History of Oxford_, ed. 1885, p. 229). In 1732 +or 1733 Birmingham, when Johnson first went to live there, had not, I +suppose, a population of 10,000. Its growth was wonderfully rapid. +Between 1770 and 1797 its inhabitants increased from 30,000 to nearly +80,000 (_Birmingham Directory for_ 1780, p. xx, and _A Brief History of +Birmingham_, p. 8). + +1736-7. The first eighteen months of his married life he lived quite in +the country at Edial, two miles from Lichfield. _Ante_, i. 97. + +1737. He was twenty-eight years old when he removed to London. _Ante_, +i. 110. + +1739. He paid a visit to Appleby in Leicestershire and to Ashbourn. +_Ante_, i. 82, 133 note 1. + +1754. Oxford. July and August, about five weeks. _Ante_, i. 270, note 5. + +1759. Oxford. July, length of visit not mentioned. _Ante_, i. 347. + +1761-2. Lichfield. Winter, a visit of five days. _Ante_, i. 370. + +1762. In the summer of this year his pension was granted, and he +henceforth had the means of travelling. _Ante_, i. 372. + +A trip to Devonshire, from Aug. 16 to Sept. 26; six weeks. _Ante_, i. +377. + +Oxford. December. 'I am going for a few days or weeks to Oxford.' Letter +of Dec. 21, 1762. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 129. + +1763. Harwich. August, a few days. _Ante_, i. 464. + +Oxford. October, length of visit not mentioned. A letter dated Oxford, +Oct. 27 [1763]. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 161. + +1764. Langton in Lincolnshire, part of January and February. _Ante_, i. +476. + +Easton Maudit in Northamptonshire, part of June, July, and August. +Croker's _Boswell_, p. 166, note, and _ante_, i. 486. + +Oxford, October. Letter to Mr. Strahan dated Oxford, Oct. 24, 1764. +_Post, Addenda_ to vol. v. + +Either this year or the next Johnson made the acquaintance of the +Thrales. For the next seventeen years he had 'an apartment appropriated +to him in the Thrales' villa at Streatham' (_ante_, i. 493), a handsome +house that stood in a small park. Streatham was a quiet country-village, +separated by wide commons from London, on one of which a highwayman had +been hanged who had there robbed Mr. Thrale (_ante_, iii. 239, note 2). +According to Mrs. Piozzi Johnson commonly spent the middle of the week +at their house, coming on the Monday night and returning to his own home +on the Saturday (_post_, iv. 169, note 3). Miss Burney, in 1778, +describes him 'as living almost wholly at Streatham' (_ante_, i. 493, +note 3). No doubt she was speaking chiefly of the summer half of the +year, for in the winter time the Thrales would be often in their town +house, where he also had his apartment. Mr. Strahan complained of his +being at Streatham 'in a great measure absorbed from the society of his +old friends' (_ante_, iii. 225). He used to call it 'my _home_' (_ante_, +i. 493, note 3). + +1765. Cambridge, early in the year; a short visit. _Ante_, i. 487. + +Brighton, autumn; a short visit. Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 126, and _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 1. + +1766. Streatham, summer and autumn; more than three months. Ante, ii. +25, and _Pr. and Med_. p. 71. + +Oxford, autumn; a month. _Ante_, ii. 25. + +1767. Lichfield, summer and autumn; 'near six months.' _Ante_, ii. 30, +and _Piozzi Letters_, i. 4, 5. + +1768. Oxford, spring; several weeks. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 6-15. + +Townmalling in Kent, September; apparently a short visit. _Pr. and Med_. +p. 81. + +1769. Oxford, from at least May 18 to July 7. _Piozzi Letters_, i. +19-23, and _ante_, ii. 67. + +Lichfield and Ashbourn, August; a short visit. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 24, +and _ante_, ii. 67. + +Brighton, part of August and September; some weeks. _Ante_, ii. 68, 70, +and Croker's _Boswell_, p. 198, letter dated 'Brighthelmstone. August +26, 1769.' + +1770. Lichfield and Ashbourn, apparently whole of July. _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 26-32. + +1771. Lichfield and Ashbourn, from June 20 to after Aug. 5. _Ante_, ii. +141, 142, and _Piozzi Letters_, i. 36-54. + +1772. Lichfield and Ashbourn, from about Oct. 15 to early in December. +_Piozzi Letters_, i. 55-69. + +1773. Oxford, April; a hurried visit. _Ante_, ii. 235, note 2. + +Tour to Scotland from Aug. 6 to Nov. 26. _Ante_, ii. 265, 268. + +Oxford, part of November and December. _Ante_, ii. 268. + +1774. Tour to North Wales (Derbyshire, Chester, Conway, Anglesey, +Snowdon, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Birmingham, Oxford, Beaconsfield) from +July 5 to Sept. 30. _Ante_, ii. 285, and _post_, v. 427. + +1775. Oxford, March; a short visit. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 212. + +Oxford, Lichfield, Ashbourn, from end of May till some time in August. +_Ante_, ii. 381, and _Piozzi Letters_, i. 223-301. + +Brighton; apparently a brief visit in September. Croker's _Boswell_, p. +459. + +A tour to Paris (going by Calais and Rouen and returning by Compiegne, +St. Quintin, and Calais), from Sept. 15 to Nov. 12. _Ante_, ii. 384, +401. + +1776. Oxford, Lichfield, Ashbourn, March 19-29. (The trip was cut short +by young Thrale's death.) _Ante_, ii. 438, and iii. 4. + +Bath, from the middle of April to the beginning of May. _Ante_, iii. 44, +51. + +Brighton, part of September and October; full seven weeks. _Ante_, iii. +92. + +1777. Oxford, Lichfield, and Ashbourn, from about July 28 to about Nov. +6. _Ante_, iii. 129, 210, and _Piozzi Letters_, i. 348-396 and ii. 1-16 +(the letter of Oct. 3, i. 396, is wrongly dated, as is shown by the +mention of Foote's death). + +Brighton, November; a visit of three days. _Ante_, iii. 210. + +1778. Warley Camp, in Essex, September; about a week. _Ante_, iii. 360. + +1779. Lichfield, Ashbourn, from May 20 to end of June. _Ante_, iii. 395, +and _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 44-55. + +Epsom, September; a few days. _Pr. and Med_. pp. 181, 225. + +1780. Brighton. October. MS. letter dated Oct. 26, 1780 to Mr. Nichols +in the British Museum. + +1781. Oxford, Birmingham, Lichfield, Ashbourn, from Oct. 15 to Dec. 11. +_Post_, iv. 135, and Croker's _Boswell_, p. 699, note 5. + +1782. Oxford, June; about ten days. _Post_, iv. 151, and _Piozzi +Letters_, ii. 243-249. + +Brighton, part of October and November. _Post_, iv. 159. + +1783. Rochester, July; about a fortnight. _Post_, iv. 233. + +Heale near Salisbury, part of August and September; three weeks. _Post_, +iv. 233, 239. + +1784. Oxford, June; a fortnight. _Post_, iv. 283, 311. + +Lichfield, Ashbourn, Oxford, from July 13 to Nov. 16. _Post_, iv. 353, +377. + +That he was always eager to see the world is shown by many a passage in +his writings and by the testimony of his biographers. How Macaulay, who +knew his _Boswell_ so well, could have accused him of 'speaking of +foreign travel with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance' +would be a puzzle indeed, did we not know how often this great +rhetorician was by the stream of his own mighty rhetoric swept far away +from the unadorned strand of naked truth. To his unjust and insulting +attack I shall content myself with opposing the following extracts which +with some trouble I have collected:-- + +1728 or 1729. Johnson in his undergraduate days was one day overheard +saying:-- + +'I have a mind to see what is done in other places of learning. I'll go +and visit the Universities abroad. I'll go to France and Italy. I'll go +to Padua.' _Ante_, i. 73. + +1734. 'A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more +certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity, nor is that curiosity +ever more agreeably or usefully employed than in examining the laws and +customs of foreign nations.' _Ante_, i. 89. + +1751. 'Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristicks of +a vigorous intellect.' _Rambler_, No. 103. 'Curiosity is in great and +generous minds the first passion and the last; and perhaps always +predominates in proportion to the strength of the contemplative +faculties.' _Ib_. No. 150. + +1752. Francis Barber, describing Johnson's friends in 1752, says:-- + +'There was a talk of his going to Iceland with Mr. Diamond, which would +probably have happened had he lived.' _Ante_, i. 242. Johnson, in a +letter to the wife of the poet Smart, says, 'we have often talked of a +voyage to Iceland.' _Post_, iv. 359 note. Mrs. Thrale wrote to him when +he was in the Hebrides in 1773:--'Well! 'tis better talk of Iceland. +Gregory challenges you for an Iceland expedition; but I trust there is +no need; I suppose good eyes might reach it from some of the places you +have been in.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 188. + +1761. Johnson wrote to Baretti:-- + +'I wish you had staid longer in Spain, for no country is less known to +the rest of Europe.' _Ante_, i. 365. He twice recommended Boswell to +perambulate Spain. _Ante_, i. 410, 455. + +1763. 'Dr. Johnson flattered me (Boswell) with some hopes that he would, +in the course of the following summer, come over to Holland, and +accompany me in a tour through the Netherlands.' _Ante_, i. 470. + +1772. He said that he had had some desire, though he soon laid it aside, +to go on an expedition round the world with Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander. +_Ante_, ii. 147. + +1773. 'Dr. Johnson and I talked of going to Sweden.' Boswell's +_Hebrides_, _post_, v. 215. + +On Sept. 9, 1777, Boswell wrote to Johnson:-- + +'I shrink a little from our scheme of going up the Baltick: I am sorry +you have already been in Wales; for I wish to see it.' _Ante_, iii. 134. +Four days later Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Boswell shrinks from the +Baltick expedition, which, I think, is the best scheme in our power: +what we shall substitute I know not. He wants to see Wales; but except +the woods of Bachycraigh (_post_, v. 436), what is there in Wales, that +can fill the hunger of ignorance, or quench the thirst of curiosity? We +may, perhaps, form some scheme or other; but in the phrase of _Hockley +in the Hole_, it is a pity he has not a _better bottom_.' _Ib_. note 1. + +Boswell writes:-- + +'Martin's account of the Hebrides had impressed us with a notion that we +might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from +what we had been accustomed to see.... Dr. Johnson told me that his +father put Martin's account into his hands when he was very young, and +that he was much pleased with it.' _Post_, v. 13. + +From the Hebrides Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:-- + +'I have a desire to instruct myself in the whole system of pastoral +life; but I know not whether I shall be able to perfect the idea. +However, I have many pictures in my mind, which I could not have had +without this journey; and should have passed it with great pleasure had +you, and Master, and Queeney been in the party. We should have excited +the attention and enlarged the observation of each other, and obtained +many pleasing topicks of future conversation.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 159. +'We travelled with very little light in a storm of wind and rain; we +passed about fifty-five streams that crossed our way, and fell into a +river that, for a very great part of our road, foamed and roared beside +us; all the rougher powers of nature except thunder were in motion, but +there was no danger. I should have been sorry to have missed any of the +inconveniencies, to have had more light or less rain, for their +co-operation crowded the scene and filled the mind.' _Ib_. p. 177. + +See _post_, v. 334 for the splendid passage in which, describing the +emotions raised in his mind by the sight of Iona, he says:-- + +'Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the +past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances +us in the dignity of thinking beings.... That man is little to be envied +whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or +whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.' + +Macaulay seems to have had the echo of these lines still in his ear, +when he described imagination as 'that noble faculty whereby man is able +to live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the +unreal.' _Essays_, ed. 1853, iii. 167. + +1774. When he saw some copper and iron works in Wales he wrote:-- + +'I have enlarged my notions.' _Post_, v. 442. See also _ante_, iii. 164. + +His letter to Warren Hastings shows his curiosity about India. _Ante,_ +iv. 68. + +1775. The Thrales had just received a sum of £14,000. Johnson wrote to +Mrs. Thrale:-- + +'If I had money enough, what would I do? Perhaps, if you and master did +not hold me, I might go to Cairo, and down the Red Sea to Bengal, and +take a ramble to India. Would this be better than building and planting? +It would surely give more variety to the eye, and more amplitude to the +mind. Half fourteen thousand would send me out to see other forms of +existence, and bring me back to describe them.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. +266. + +'Regions mountainous and wild, thinly inhabited and little cultivated, +make a great part of the earth, and he that has never seen them must +live unacquainted with much of the face of nature, and with one of the +great scenes of human existence.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 36. 'All travel +has its advantages. If the traveller visits better countries he may +learn to improve his own; and if fortune carries him to worse he may +learn to enjoy it.' _Ib_. p. 136. + +To Dr. Taylor he wrote:-- + +'I came back last Tuesday from France. Is not mine a kind of life turned +upside down? Fixed to a spot when I was young, and roving the world when +others are contriving to sit still, I am wholly unsettled. I am a kind +of ship with a wide sail, and without an anchor.' _Ante_, ii. 387, note +2. + +1776. In the spring of this year everything was settled for his journey +to Italy with the Thrales. Hannah More wrote (_Memoirs_, i. 74):-- + +'Johnson and Mr. Boswell have this day set out for Oxford, Lichfield, +&c., that the Doctor may take leave of all his old friends previous to +his great expedition across the Alps. I lament his undertaking such a +journey at his time of life, with beginning infirmities. I hope he will +not leave his bones on classic grounds.' + +Boswell tells how-- + +'Speaking with a tone of animation Johnson said, "We must, to be sure, +see Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice, and as much more as we can."' +_Ante_, iii. 19. + +When the journey was put off by the sudden death of Mr. Thrale's son, +Boswell wrote:-- + +'I perceived that he had so warmly cherished the hope of enjoying +classical scenes, that he could not easily part with the scheme; for he +said, "I shall probably contrive to get to Italy some other way."' _Ib_. +p. 28. + +A day later Boswell wrote:-- + +'A journey to Italy was still in his thoughts. He said, "A man who has +not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not +having seen what it is expected a man should see. The grand object of +travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean."' _Ib_. p. 36. +'Johnson's desire to go abroad, particularly to see Italy, was very +great; and he had a longing wish, too, to leave some Latin verses at the +Grand Chartreux. He loved indeed the very act of travelling.... He was +in some respects an admirable companion on the road, as he piqued +himself upon feeling no inconvenience, and on despising no +accommodations.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 168. + +Johnson, this same year, speaking of a friend who had gone to the East +Indies, said:-- + +'I had some intention of accompanying him. Had I thought then as I do +now, I should have gone.' _Ante_, iii. 20. According to Mr. Tyers he +once offered to attend another friend to India. Moreover 'he talked much +of travelling into Poland to observe the life of the Palatines, the +account of which struck his curiosity very much.' _Johnsoniana_, ed. +1836, p. 157. + +1777. Boswell wrote to Johnson this year (_ante_, iii. 107):-- + +'You have, I believe, seen all the cathedrals in England except that of +Carlisle.' + +This was not the case, yet most of them he had already seen or lived to +see. With Lichfield, Oxford, and London he was familiar. Winchester and +Exeter he had seen in 1762 on his tour to Devonshire (_ante_, i. 377), +Peterborough, Ely, Lincoln, York, and Durham he no doubt saw in 1773 on +his way to Scotland. The first three he might also have seen in 1764 on +his visit to Langton (_ante_, i. 476). Chester, St. Asaph, Bangor, and +Worcester he visited in 1774 in his journey to Wales (_post_, v. 435, +436, 448, 456). Through Canterbury he almost certainly passed in 1775 on +his way to France (_ante_, ii. 384). Bristol he saw in 1776 (_ante_, +iii. 51). To Chichester he drove from Brighton in 1782 (_post_, iv. +160). Rochester and Salisbury he visited in the summer of 1783 (_post_, +iv. 233). Wells he might easily have seen when he was at Bath in 1776 +(_ante_, iii. 44), and possibly Gloucester. Through Norwich he perhaps +came on his return from Lincolnshire in 1764 (_ante_, i. 476). Hereford, +I think, he could not have visited. + +When in the September of this year Johnson and Boswell were driving in +Dr. Taylor's chaise to Derby, 'Johnson strongly expressed his love of +driving fast in a post-chaise. "If," said he, "I had no duties, and no +reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a +post-chaise with a pretty woman; but she should be one who could +understand me, and would add something to the conversation"' (_ante_, +iii. 162). He had previously said (_ante_, ii. 453), as he was driven +rapidly along in a post-chaise, 'Life has not many things better than +this.' + +1778. Boswell wrote to Johnson:-- + +'My wife is so different from you and me that she dislikes travelling.' +_Ante_, iii. 219. + +Later on in the year Boswell records:-- + +'Dr. Johnson expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting +the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I really +believed I should go and see the wall of China had I not children, of +whom it was my duty to take care. "Sir, (said he,) by doing so you would +do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. +There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and +curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man +who had gone to view the wall of China. I am serious, Sir."' _Ante_, +iii. 269. + +1780. In August he wrote to Boswell:-- + +'I know not whether I shall get a ramble this summer.... I hope you and +I may yet shew ourselves on some part of Europe, Asia, or Africa.' +_Ante_, iii. 435. + +In the same year Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:-- + +'I hope you have no design of stealing away to Italy before the +election, nor of leaving me behind you; though I am not only seventy, +but seventy-one.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 177. + +On Oct. 17 he wrote:-- + +'The summer has been foolishly lost, like many other of my summers and +winters. I hardly saw a green field, but staid in town to work, without +working much.' _Ante_, iii. 441. + +1784. Johnson's wish to go to Italy in the last year of his life was +caused by the hope that it might be good for his health. 'I do not,' he +wrote, 'travel for pleasure or curiosity; yet if I should recover,' he +added, 'curiosity would revive.' _Post_, iv. 348. + +Mrs. Piozzi, without however giving the year, records:-- + +'Dr. Johnson was very angry with a gentleman at our house for not being +better company, and urged that he had travelled into Bohemia and seen +Prague. "Surely," added he, "the man who has seen Prague might tell us +something new and something strange, and not sit silent for want of +matter to put his lips in motion."' Piozzi's _Journey_, ii. 317. + +All these passages shew, what indeed is evident enough from the text, +that it was not travelling in general but travelling between the ages of +nineteen and twenty-four, with a character unformed, a memory unstored, +and a judgment untrained, that Johnson attacked. It was a common habit +in his day to send young men of fortune to make the tour of Europe, as +it was called, at an age when they would now be sent to either Oxford or +Cambridge. Lord Charlemont was but eighteen when he left England. Locke, +at the end of his work on _Education_, said in 1692 much the same as +Johnson said in 1778. + +'The ordinary time of travel,' he wrote, 'is from sixteen to one and +twenty.' He would send any one either at a younger age than sixteen +under a tutor, or at an older age than twenty-one without a tutor; 'when +he is of age to govern himself, and make observations of what he finds +in other countries worthy his notice ... and when, too, being thoroughly +acquainted with the laws and fashions, the natural and moral advantages +and defects of his own country, he has something to exchange with those +abroad, from whose conversation he hoped to reap any knowledge.' + +Goldsmith, in his _Present State of Polite Learning_, ch. xiii, wrote in +1759:-- + +'We see more of the world by travel, but more of human nature by +remaining at home.... A youth just landed at the Brille resembles a +clown at a puppet-show; carries his amazement from one miracle to +another; from this cabinet of curiosities to that collection of +pictures; but wondering is not the way to grow wise.... The greatest +advantages which result to youth from travel are an easy address, the +shaking off national prejudices, and the finding nothing ridiculous in +national peculiarities. The time spent in these acquisitions could have +been more usefully employed at home.' Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, i. 197) +says that 'the previous and indispensable requisites of foreign travel +are age, judgment, a competent knowledge of men and books, and a freedom +from domestic prejudices.' + +When he was only eighteen years old he saw the evils of early +travelling:-- + +'I never liked young travellers; they go too raw to make any great +remarks, and they lose a time which is (in my opinion) the most precious +part of a man's life.' _Ib_. p. 98. + +Cowper, in his _Progress of Error_ (ed. 1782, i. 60), describes how-- + +'His stock, a few French phrases got by heart, +With much to learn and nothing to impart, +The youth obedient to his sire's commands, +Sets off a wanderer into foreign lands. + + * * * * * + +Returning he proclaims by many a grace, +By shrugs and strange contortions of his face, +How much a dunce that has been sent to roam +Excels a dunce that has been kept at home.' + + + + +APPENDIX C. + +ELECTION OF LORD MAYORS OF LONDON. + +(_Page_ 356.) + + +In the years 1751-2-3, the Lord Mayor was not appointed by rotation; Sir +G. Champion, the senior Alderman, being accused of a leaning towards +Spain. From 1754 to 1765 (inclusive) if there was in any year a contest, +yet in each case the senior Alderman nominated was chosen. From 1766 to +1775 (inclusive) there was in every year a departure from the order of +seniority. In 1776-8 the order of seniority was again observed; so that +two years before Johnson made his remark the irregularity had come to an +end. This information I owe to the kindness of Mr. Scott, the excellent +Chamberlain of the City. Sir George Champion had been passed over in the +year 1739 also. In an address to the Liverymen he says that 'the +disorders and great disturbance to the peace of the city, which in +former times had been occasioned by the over-eagerness of some, too +ambitious and impatient to obtain this great honour, had been quieted' +by the adoption of the order of seniority. _Gent. Mag_. 1739, p. 595. +Among the Lord Mayors from 1769-1775 (inclusive) we find Beckford, +Trecothick, Crosby, Townshend, Bull, Wilkes, and Sawbridge. 'Where did +Beckford and Trecothick learn English?' asked Johnson (_ante_, iii. 76). +Crosby, in the year of his mayoralty (1770-1), was committed to the +Tower by the House of Commons, for having himself committed to prison a +messenger of the House when attempting to arrest the printer of the +_London Evening Debates_, who was accused of a breach of privilege in +reporting the Debates (_Parl. Hist_. xvii. 155). Townshend in the same +year refused to pay the land-tax, on the plea that his county +(Middlesex) was no longer represented, as Wilkes's election had been +annulled (_Walpole's Letters_, v. 348). Bull in the House of Commons +violently attacked Lord North's ministry (_Parl. Hist_. xix. 980). +Sawbridge, year after year, brought into Parliament a bill for +shortening the duration of parliaments. During his Mayoralty he would +not suffer the pressgangs to enter the city. (Walpole's _Journal of the +Reign of George III_, ii. 84.) + +Among the Aldermen the Court-party had a majority. In April 1769 +Wilkes's eligibility for election as an Alderman was not allowed by a +majority of ten to six (Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, +iii. 360, and _Ann. Reg_. xii. 92). On his release from prison in April +1770 he was, however, admitted without a division (_ib_. xiii. 99). +When, in March 1770, the City presented an outspoken remonstrance to the +King, sixteen Aldermen protested against it (Walpole's _Letters_, v. +229). About this time there arose a great division in the popular party +in the City. According to Lord Albemarle, in his _Memoirs of +Rockingham_, ii. 209, from the period of this struggle 'the Whigs and +what are now called Radicals became two distinct sections of the Liberal +party.' Townshend, who in this followed the lead of Lord Shelburne, +headed the more moderate men against Wilkes. The result was that in 1771 +each section running a candidate for the Mayoralty, a third man, Nash, +who was opposed to both, was returned (Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign +of George III_, iv. 345, and _Ann. Reg_. xiv. 146). + +The Livery, for a time at least, was Wilkite. Wilkes's name was sent up +as Lord Mayor at the top of the list in 1772 and 1773, but he was in +each case passed over by the Court of Aldermen. It was not till 1774 +that he was elected by a kind of 'Hobson's choice.' The Aldermen had to +choose between him and the retiring Lord Mayor, Bull. Walpole, writing +of Nov. 1776, says the new Lord Mayor 'invited the Ministers to his +feast, to which they had not been asked for seven years' (_Journal of +the Reign of George III_, ii. 84). See Boswell's _Hebrides_, _post_, v. +339. + + + + +APPENDIX D. + +THE INMATES OF JOHNSON'S HOUSE. +(Page 368.) + + +In September of this year (1778) Miss Burney records the following +conversation at Streatham:--'MRS. THRALE. "Pray, Sir, how does Mrs. +Williams like all this tribe?" DR. J. "Madam, she does not like them at +all; but their fondness for her is not greater. She and Desmoulins +quarrel incessantly; but as they can both be occasionally of service to +each other, and as neither of them have any other place to go to, their +animosity does not force them to separate." ... MR. T. "And pray who is +clerk of your kitchen, Sir?" DR. J. "Why, Sir, I am afraid there is +none; a general anarchy prevails in my kitchen, as I am told by Mr. +Levett, who says it is not now what it used to be." MRS. T. "Mr. Levett, +I suppose, Sir, has the office of keeping the hospital in health, for he +is an apothecary." DR. J. "Levett, Madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have +a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not his +mind." MR. T. "But how do you get your dinners drest?" DR. J. "Why, +Desmoulins has the chief management of the kitchen; but our roasting is +not magnificent, for we have no jack." MR. T. "No jack! Why, how do they +manage without?" DR. J. "Small joints, I believe, they manage with a +string, and larger are done at the tavern. I have some thoughts (with a +profound gravity) of buying a jack, because I think a jack is some +credit to a house." MR. T. "Well, but you'll have a spit too." DR. J. +"No, Sir, no; that would be superfluous; for we shall never use it; and +if a jack is seen, a spit will be presumed." MRS. T. "But pray, Sir, who +is the Poll you talk of? She that you used to abet in her quarrels with +Mrs. Williams, and call out, _At her again, Poll! Never flinch, Poll!_" +DR. J. "Why, I took to Poll very well at first, but she won't do upon a +nearer examination." MRS. T. "How came she among you, Sir?" DR. J. "Why, +I don't rightly remember, but we could spare her very well from us. Poll +is a stupid slut. I had some hopes of her at first; but when I talked to +her tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her; she was wiggle +waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical."' Mme. +D'Arblay's _Diary,_ i. 114. + +More than a year later Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Discord keeps her +residence in this habitation, but she has for some time been silent. We +have much malice, but no mischief. Levett is rather a friend to +Williams, because he hates Desmoulins more. A thing that he should hate +more than Desmoulins is not to be found.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 80. Mrs. +Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 213) says:--'He really was oftentimes afraid of going +home, because he was so sure to be met at the door with numberless +complaints; and he used to lament pathetically to me that they made his +life miserable from the impossibility he found of making theirs happy, +when every favour he bestowed on one was wormwood to the rest. If, +however, I ventured to blame their ingratitude, and condemn their +conduct, he would instantly set about softening the one and justifying +the other; and finished commonly by telling me, that I knew not how to +make allowances for situations I never experienced.' Hawkins (_Life_, p. +404) says:--'Almost throughout Johnson's life poverty and distressed +circumstances seemed to be the strongest of all recommendations to his +favour. When asked by one of his most intimate friends, how he could +bear to be surrounded by such necessitous and undeserving people as he +had about him, his answer was, "If I did not assist them, no one else +would, and they must be lost for want."' 'His humanity and generosity, +in proportion to his slender income, were,' writes Murphy (_Life_, p. +146), 'unbounded. It has been truly said that the lame, the blind, and +the sorrowful found in his house a sure retreat.' See also _ante_, iii. +222. At the same time it must be remembered that while Mrs. Desmoulins +and Miss Carmichael only brought trouble into the house, in the society +of Mrs. Williams and Levett he had real pleasure. See _ante_, i. 232, +note 1, and 243, note 3. + + * * * * * + + + + +APPENDIX E. + +BOSWELL'S LETTERS OF ACCEPTANCE OF THE OFFICE OF SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN +CORRESPONDENCE TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY. + +(_Page 370, note i_.) + + +LETTER I. + +'Agli Illustrissimi Signori Il Presidente e Consiglieri dell' Academia +Reale delle arti in Londra. + +'Avreste forse illustrissimi Signori potuto scegliere molte persone piu +degne dell' ufficcio di Segretario per la corrispondenza straniera; ma +non sarebbe, son certo, stato possibile di trovar alcuno dal quale +questa distinzione sarebbe stata piu stimata. Sento con un animo molto +riconoscente la parzialitá che l'Academia a ben voluto mostrar per me; e +mi conto felicissimo che la mia elezione sia stata graziosamente +confirmata dalla sua Maestá lo stesso Sovrano che a fondato l'Academia, +e che si é sempre mostrato il suo beneficente Protettore. + +'Vi prego, Signori, di credere que porro ogni mio studio a contribuire +tanto che potro alia prosperita della nostra instituzione ch' é gia +arrivata ad un punto si rispettevole. + +'Ho l'onore d'essere, +'Illustrissimi Signori, +'Vostro umilissimo, +'e divotissimo servo, +'Giacomo Boswell.' +'Londra, +'31 d'Ottobre, 1791.' + +LETTER. II. + +'A Messieurs Le President et les autres Membres du Conseil de l'Academie +Royale des Arts à Londres. + +'Messieurs, + +'C'est avec la plus vive reconnoissance que J'accepte la charge de +Secretaire pour la Correspondence etrangêre de votre Academie á laquelle +J'ai eu l'honneur d'etre choisi par vos suffrages unanimes gracieusement +confirmés par sa Majesté. + +'Ce choix spontané Messieurs me flatte beaucoup; et m'inspire des desirs +les plus ardens de m'en montrer digne, au moins par la promptitude avec +laquelle Je saisirai toute occasion de faire ce que Je pourrai pour +contribuer á l'avantage des Arts et la celebrité de l'Academie. + +'J'ai l'honneur d'etre avec toute la consideration possible, + +'Messieurs, + +'Votre serviteur tres obligé tres humble et tres fidel, +'Boswell.' +'A Londres, +'ce 31 d'Octobre, 1791' + +[In this letter I have made no attempt to correct Boswell's errors.] + +LETTER III. + +'To the President and Council of The Royal Academy of Arts in London. + +'Gentlemen, + +'Your unsolicited and unanimous election of me to be Secretary for +Foreign Correspondence to your Academy, and the gracious confirmation of +my election by his Majesty, I acknowledge with the warmest sentiments of +gratitude and respect. + +'I have always loved the Arts, and during my travels on the Continent I +did not neglect the opportunities which I had of cultivating a taste for +them.[1372] That taste I trust will now be much improved, when I shall +be so happy as to share in the advantages which the Royal Academy +affords; and I fondly embrace this very pleasing distinction as giving +me the means of providing additional solace for the future years of my +life. + +'Be assured, Gentlemen, that as I am proud to be a member of an Academy +which has the peculiar felicity of not being at all dependant on a +Minister[1373], but under the immediate patronage and superintendence of +the Sovereign himself, I shall be zealous to do every thing in my power +that can be of any service to our excellent Institution. + +'I have the honour to be, + +'Gentlemen, + +'Your much obliged + +'And faithful humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + +'London, + +'31 October, 1791.' + + +LETTER IV. + +'SIR, + +'I am much obliged to you for the very polite terms in which you have +been pleased to communicate to me my election to be Secretary for +Foreign Correspondence to the Royal Academy of Arts in London; and I +request that you will lay before the President and Council the enclosed +letters signifying my acceptance of that office. + +'I am with great regard, + +'Sir, + +'Your most obedient humble servant, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + +'London, + +'31 October, 1791. + +'To John Richards, Esq., R.A. &c.' + + +Bennet Langton's letter of acceptance of the Professorship of Ancient +Literature in the place of Johnson is dated April 2, 1788. + +I must express my acknowledgments to the President and Council of the +Royal Academy for their kindness in allowing me to copy the above +letters from the originals that are in their possession. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + + +[1] See ante, March 15, 1776. + +[2] _Anecdotes of Johnson_, p. 176. BOSWELL. 'It is,' he said, 'so +_very_ difficult for a sick man not to be a scoundrel.' Ib. p. 175. +He called Fludyer a scoundrel (_ante_, March 20, 1776), apparently +because he became a Whig. 'He used to say a man was a scoundrel that was +afraid of anything. "Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve +o'clock is," he said, "a scoundrel."' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 199, +211. Mr. Croker points out that 'Johnson in his _Dictionary_ defined +_knave_, a scoundrel; _sneakup_, a scoundrel; _rascal_, a scoundrel; +_loon_, a scoundrel; _lout_, a scoundrel; _poltroon_, a scoundrel; and +that he coined the word _scoundrelism_' (Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 25, +1773). Churchill, in _The Ghost_, Book ii. (_Poems_, i. 1. 217), +describes Johnson as one + +'Who makes each sentence current pass, +With _puppy, coxcomb, scoundrel, ass_.' + +Swift liked the word. 'God forbid,' he wrote, 'that ever such a +scoundrel as Want should dare to approach you.' Swift's _Works_, ed. +1803, xviii. 39. + +[3] See _ante_, i. 49, for Johnson's fondness for the old romances. + +[4] Boswell, _ante_, i. 386, implies that Sheridan's pension was partly +due to Wedderburne's influence. + +[5] See _ante_, i. 386. + +[6] Akenside, in his _Ode to Townshend_ (Book ii. 4), says:-- + +'For not imprudent of my loss to come, +I saw from Contemplation's quiet cell +His feet ascending to another home, +Where public praise and envied greatness dwell.' + +He had, however, no misgivings, for he thus ends:-- + +'Then for the guerdon of my lay, +This man with faithful friendship, will I say, +From youth to honoured age my arts and me hath viewed.' + +[7] We have now more knowledge generally diffused; all our ladies read +now 'which is a great extension.' _Post_, April 29, 1778. + +[8] See _post_, April, 28, 1783. + +[9] See _post_, March 22, 1783. + +[10] See _post_, March 18, 1784. + +[11] Newbery, the publisher, was the vendor of Dr. James's famous +powder. It was known that on the doctor's death a chemist whom he had +employed meant to try to steal the business, under the pretence that +he alone knew the secret of the preparation. A supply of powders enough +to last for many years was laid in by Newbery in anticipation, while +James left an affidavit that the chemist was never employed in the +manufacture. He, however, asserted that James was deprived of his mental +faculties when the affidavit was made. Evidence against this was +collected and published; the conclusion to the Preface being written by +Johnson. _A Bookseller of the Last Century_, p. 138. See _ante_, i. +159. + +[12] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on the birth of a second son who died +early:--'I congratulate you upon your boy; but you must not think that I +shall love him all at once as well as I love Harry, for Harry you know +is so rational. I shall love him by degrees.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 206. +A week after Harry's death he wrote:--'I loved him as I never expect to +love any other little boy; but I could not love him as a parent.' _Ib_. +p. 310. + +[13] Johnson had known this anxiety. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale from +Ashbourne on July 7, 1775:--'I cannot think why I hear nothing from you. +I hope and fear about my dear friends at Streatham. But I may have a +letter this afternoon--Sure it will bring me no bad news.' _Ib_. i. 263. +See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 21, 1773. + +[14] See _ante_, ii. 75. + +[15] _ante_, April 10, 1775. + +[16] See _ante_, March 21, 1776, and _post_, Sept. 19, 1777. + +[17] The phrase 'vexing thoughts,' is I think, very expressive. It has +been familiar to me from my childhood; for it is to be found in the +_Psalms in Metre_, used in the churches (I believe I should say _kirks_) +of Scotland, _Psal_. xliii. v. 5; + +'Why art thou then cast down, my soul? + What should discourage thee? +And why with _vexing thoughts art_ thou + Disquieted in me?' + +Some allowance must no doubt be made for early prepossession. But at a +maturer period of life, after looking at various metrical versions of +the _Psalms_, I am well satisfied that the version used in Scotland is, +upon the whole, the best; and that it has in general a simplicity and +_unction_ of sacred Poesy; and in many parts its transfusion is +admirable. BOSWELL. + +[18] 'Burke and Reynolds are the same one day as another,' Johnson said, +_post_, under Sept. 22, 1777. Boswell celebrates Reynolds's 'equal and +placid temper,' _ante_, i. I. On Aug. 12, 1775, he wrote to Temple:--'It +is absurd to hope for continual happiness in this life; few men, if any, +enjoy it. I have a kind of belief that Edmund Burke does; he has so much +knowledge, so much animation, and the consciousness of so much fame.' +_Letters of Boswell_, p. 212. + +[19] _ante_, i. 446. + +[20] Baretti says, that 'Mrs. Thrale abruptly proposed to start for Bath, +as wishing to avoid the sight of the funeral. She had no man-friend to +go with her,' and so he offered his services. Johnson at that moment +arrived. 'I expected that he would spare me the jaunt, and go himself to +Bath with her; but he made no motion to that effect.' _European Mag_. +xiii. 315. It was on the evening of the 29th that Boswell found Johnson, +as he thought, not in very good humour. Yet on the 30th he wrote to Mrs. +Thrale, and called on Mr. Thrale. On April 1 and April 4 he again wrote +to Mrs. Thrale. He would have gone a second time, he says, to see Mr. +Thrale, had he not been made to understand that when he was wanted he +would be sent for. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 309-314. + +[21] Pope, _Essay on Man_, iv. 390. Boswell twice more applies the same +line to Johnson, post, June 3, 1781, and under Dec. 13, 1784. + +[22] Imlac consoles the Princess for the loss of Pekuah. 'When the +clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can +imagine how they will be dispelled; yet a new day succeeded to the +night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease. But they who +restrain themselves from receiving comfort do as the savages would have +done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark.' _Rasselas_, ch. 35. +'Keep yourself busy,' wrote Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 'and you will in +time grow cheerful. New prospects may open, and new enjoyments may come +within your reach.' _Piozzi Letters_. + +[23] See _ante_, i. 86. It was reprinted in 1789. + +[24] See Boswell's _Hebrides_ under Nov. 11, 1773. + +[25] See _post_, under April 29, 1776. + +[26] In like manner he writes, 'I catched for the moment an enthusiasm +with respect to visiting the Wall of China.' _post_ April 10, 1778. +Johnson had had some desire to go upon Cook's expedition in 1772. +_ante_, March 21, 1772. + +[27] Mme. D'Arblay (_Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, i. 284) describes 'the +perfect case with which Omai managed a sword which he had received from +the King, and which he had that day put on for the first time in order +to go to the House of Lords.' He is the 'gentle savage' in Cowpers +_Task_, i. 632. + +[28] See ante, ii. 50. + +[29] Voltaire (_Siècle de Louis XV_, ch. xv.), in his account of the +battle of Fontenoy, thus mentions him:--'On était à cinquante pas de +distance.... Les officiers anglais saluèrent les Français en ôtant leurs +chapeaux.... Les officiers des gardes françaises leur rendirent le +salut, Mylord Charles Hay, capitaine aux gardes anglaises, +cria:--_Messieurs des gardes françaises, tirez_. Le comte d'Auteroche +leur dit a voix haute:--_Messieurs, nous ne tirons jamais les premiers; +tirez vous-mêmes_.' + +[30] See _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_. Hay was third in +command in the expedition to North America in 1757. It was reported that +he said that 'the nation's wealth was expended in making sham-fights and +planting cabbages.' He was put under arrest and sent home to be tried. +_Gent. Mag_. 1758, p. 170. Mr. Croker says that 'the real state of the +case was that he had gone mad, and was in that state sent home.' He died +before the sentence of the court-martial was promulgated. Croker's +_Boswell_, p. 497. + +[31] In _Thoughts on the Coronation of George III_ (_Works_, v. 458) he +expressed himself differently, if indeed the passage is of his writing +(see _ante_, i. 361). He says: 'It cannot but offend every Englishman to +see troops of soldiers placed between him and his sovereign, as if they +were the most honourable of the people, or the King required guards to +secure his person from his subjects. As their station makes them think +themselves important, their insolence is always such as may be expected +from servile authority.' In his _Journey to the Hebrides_ (_ib_. ix. 30) +he speaks of 'that courtesy which is so closely connected with the +military character.' See _post_, April 10, 1778. + +[32] 'It is not in the power even of God to make a polite +soldier.' Meander; quoted by Hume, _Essays_, Part i. 20, note. + +[33] In Johnson's Debates for 1741 (_Works_, x. 387) is on the +quartering of soldiers. By the Mutiny Act the innkeeper was required to +find each foot-soldier lodging, diet, and small beer for fourpence a +day. By the Act as amended that year if he furnished salt, vinegar, +small-beer, candles, fire, and utensils to dress their victuals, without +payment, he had not to supply diet except on a march. _Ib_. pp. 416, +420. The allowance of small-beer was fixed at five pints a day, though +it was maintained that it should be six. Lord Baltimore, according to +Johnson, said that 'as every gentleman's servants each consumed daily +six pints, it surely is not to be required that a soldier should live in +a perpetual state of warfare with his constitution.' _Ib_. p. 418. +Burke, writing in 1794, says:--'In quarters the innkeepers are obliged +to find for the soldiers lodging, fire, candle-light, small-beer, salt +and vinegar gratis.' Burke's _Corres_. iv. 258. Johnson wrote in 1758 +(_Works_, vi. 150):--'The manner in which the soldiers are dispersed in +quarters over the country during times of peace naturally produces +laxity of discipline; they are very little in sight of their officers; +and when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard are +suffered to live every man his own way.' Fielding, in _Tom Jones_, bk. +ix. ch. 6, humourously describes an innkeeper's grievances. + +[34] This alludes to the pleadings of a Stoic and an Epicurean for and +against the existence of the Divinity in Lucian's _Jupiter the Tragic_. +CROKER. + +[35] 'There is a time when every man is weary of raising difficulties +only to ask himself with the solution and desires to enjoy truth without +the labour or hazard of contest.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 497. See _ante_ +May 7, 1773, and _post_, April 3, 1779, where he says, 'Sir, you are to +a certain degree hurt by knowing that even one man does not believe.' +Hume, in his Essay _Of Parties in General_, had written:--'Such is the +nature of the human mind, that it always takes hold of every mind that +approaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified and corroborated by +an unanimity of sentiments, so is it, shocked and disturbed by any +contrariety.' 'Carlyle was fond of quoting a sentence of Novalis:--"My +conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in +it."' _Saturday Review_, No. 1538, p. 521. 'The introducing of new +doctrines,' said Bacon, 'is an affectation of tyranny over the +understandings and beliefs of men.' Bacon's _Nat. Hist_., Experiment +1000. + +[36] 'We must own,' said Johnson, 'that neither a dull boy, nor an idle +boy, will do so well at a great school as at a private one.' Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Aug. 22, 1773. See _ante_, under Dec. 5, 1775. On June 16, +1784, he said of a very timid boy:--'Placing him at a public school is +forcing an owl upon day.' Lord Shelburne says that the first Pitt told +him 'that his reason for preferring private to public education was, +that he scarce observed a boy who was not cowed for life at Eton; that a +public school might suit a boy of a turbulent forward disposition, but +would not do where there was any gentleness.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, +i. 72. + +[37] 'There are,' wrote Hume in 1767, 'several advantages of a Scots +education; but the question is, whether that of the language does not +counterbalance them, and determine the preference to the English.' He +decides it does. He continues:--'The only inconvenience is, that few +Scotsmen that have had an English education have ever settled cordially +in their own country; and they have been commonly lost ever after to +their friends.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 403. + +[38] He wrote to Temple on Nov. 28, 1789:--'My eldest son has been at +Eton since the 15th of October. You cannot imagine how miserable he has +been; he wrote to me for some time as if from the galleys, and +intreated me to come to him.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 314. On July 21, +1790, he wrote of his second son who was at home ill:--'I am in great +concern what should be done with him, for he is so oppressed at +Westminster School by the big boys that I am almost afraid to send him +thither.' _Ib_. p. 327. On April 6, 1791, he wrote:--'Your little friend +James is quite reconciled to Westminster.' _Ib_. p. 337. Southey, who +was at Westminster with young Boswell, describes 'the capricious and +dangerous tyranny' under which he himself had suffered. Southey's +_Life_, i. 138. + +[39] Horace, Satires, i. 6. 65-88. + +[40] Dr. Adam Smith, who was for some time a Professor in the +University of Glasgow, has uttered, in his _Wealth of Nations_ [v. I, +iii. 2], some reflections upon this subject which are certainly not well +founded, and seem to be invidious. BOSWELL. + +[41] See _ante,_ ii. 98. + +[42] Gibbon denied this. 'The diligence of the tutors is voluntary, and +will consequently be languid, while the pupils themselves, or their +parents, are not indulged in the liberty of choice or change,' _Misc. +Works_, i. 54. Of one of his tutors he wrote:--'He well remembered that +he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to +perform.' _Ib_. p. 58. Boswell, _post_, end of Nov. 1784, blames Dr. +Knox for 'ungraciously attacking his venerable _Alma Mater_.' Knox, who +was a Fellow of St. John's, left Oxford in 1778. In his _Liberal +Education_, published in 1781, he wrote:--'I saw immorality, habitual +drunkenness, idleness and ignorance, boastingly obtruding themselves on +public view.' Knox's _Works_, iv. 138. 'The general tendency of the +universities is favourable to the diffusion of ignorance, idleness, +vice, and infidelity among young men.' _Ib_. p. 147. 'In no part of the +kingdom will you meet with more licentious practices and sentiments, and +with less learning than in some colleges.' _Ib_. p. 179. 'The tutors +give what are called lectures. The boys construe a classic, the jolly +young tutor lolls in his elbow-chair, and seldom gives himself the +trouble of interrupting the greatest dunce.' _Ib_. p. 199. 'Some +societies would have been glad to shut themselves up by themselves, and +enjoy the good things of the cook and manciple, without the intrusion of +commoners who come for education.' _Ib_. p. 200. 'The principal thing +required is external respect from the juniors. However ignorant or +unworthy a senior fellow may be, yet the slightest disrespect is treated +as the greatest crime of which an academic can be guilty.' _Ib_. p. 201. +The Proctors gave far 'more frequent reprimands to the want of a band, +or to the hair tied in queue, than to important irregularities. A man +might be a drunkard, a debauchee, and yet long escape the Proctor's +animadversion; but no virtue could protect you if you walked on +Christ-church meadow or the High Street with a band tied too low, or +with no band at all; with a pig-tail, or with a green or scarlet coat.' +_Ib_. p. 159. Only thirteen weeks' residence a year was required. _Ib_. +p. 172. The degree was conferred without examination. _Ib_. p. 189. +After taking it 'a man offers himself as a candidate for orders. He is +examined by the Bishop's chaplain. He construes a few verses in the +Greek testament, and translates one of the articles from Latin into +English. His testimonial being received he comes from his jolly +companions to the care of a large parish.' _Ib_. p. 197. Bishop Law gave +in 1781 a different account of Cambridge. There, he complains, such was +the devotion to mathematics, that 'young men often sacrifice their whole +stock of strength and spirits, and so entirely devote most of their +first few years to what is called _taking a good degree_, as to be +hardly good for anything else.' Preface to Archbishop King's _Essay on +the Origin of Evil_, p. xx. + +[43] According to Adam Smith this is true only of the Protestant +countries. In Roman Catholic countries and England where benefices are +rich, the church is continually draining the universities of all their +ablest members. In Scotland and Protestant countries abroad, where a +chair in a university is generally a better establishment than a +benefice, by far the greater part of the most eminent men of letters +have been professors. _Wealth of Nations_, v. i. iii. 3. + +[44] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 17, 1773. + +[45] Dr. Goldsmith was dead before Mr. Maclaurin discovered the +ludicrous errour. But Mr. Nourse, the bookseller, who was the proprietor +of the work, upon being applied to by Sir John Pringle, agreed very +handsomely to have the leaf on which it was contained cancelled, and +re-printed without it, at his own expence. BOSWELL. In the second +edition, published five years after Goldsmith's death, the story +remains. In a foot-note the editor says, that 'he has been credibly +informed that the professor had not the defect here mentioned.' The +story is not quite as Boswell tells it. 'Maclaurin,' writes Goldsmith +(ii. 91), 'was very subject to have his jaw dislocated; so that when he +opened his mouth wider than ordinary, or when he yawned, he could not +shut it again. In the midst of his harangues, therefore, if any of his +pupils began to be tired of his lecture, he had only to gape or yawn, +and the professor instantly caught the sympathetic affection; so that he +thus continued to stand speechless, with his mouth wide open, till his +servant, from the next room, was called in to set his jaw again.' + +[46] Dr. Shebbeare (_post_, April 18, 1778) was tried for writing a +libellous pamphlet. Horace Walpole says:--'The bitterest parts of the +work were a satire on William III and George I. The most remarkable part +of this trial was the Chief Justice Mansfield laying down for law that +satires even on dead Kings were punishable. Adieu! veracity and history, +if the King's bench is to appreciate your expressions!' _Memoirs of the +Reign of George II_, iii. 153. + +[47] What Dr. Johnson has here said, is undoubtedly good sense; yet I am +afraid that law, though defined by _Lord Coke_ 'the perfection of +reason,' is not altogether _with him_; for it is held in the books, that +an attack on the reputation even of a dead man, may be punished as a +libel, because tending to a breach of the peace. There is, however, I +believe, no modern decided case to that effect. In the King's Bench, +Trinity Term, 1790, the question occurred on occasion of an indictment, +_The King_ v. _Topham_, who, as a _proprietor_ of a news-paper entitled +_The World_, was found guilty of a libel against Earl Cowper, deceased, +because certain injurious charges against his Lordship were published in +that paper. An arrest of Judgment having been moved for, the case was +afterwards solemnly argued. My friend Mr. Const, whom I delight in +having an opportunity to praise, not only for his abilities but his +manners; a gentleman whose ancient German blood has been mellowed in +England, and who may be truely said to unite the _Baron_ and the +_Barrister_, was one of the Counsel for Mr. Topham. He displayed much +learning and ingenuity upon the general question; which, however, was +not decided, as the Court granted an arrest chiefly on the informality +of the indictment. No man has a higher reverence for the law of England +than I have; but, with all deference I cannot help thinking, that +prosecution by indictment, if a defendant is never to be allowed to +justify, must often be very oppressive, unless Juries, whom I am more +and more confirmed in holding to be judges of law as well as of fact, +resolutely interpose. Of late an act of Parliament has passed +declaratory of their full right to one as well as the other, in matter +of libel; and the bill having been brought in by a popular gentleman, +many of his party have in most extravagant terms declaimed on the +wonderful acquisition to the liberty of the press. For my own part I +ever was clearly of opinion that this right was inherent in the very +constitution of a Jury, and indeed in sense and reason inseparable from +their important function. To establish it, therefore, by Statute, is, I +think, narrowing its foundation, which is the broad and deep basis of +Common Law. Would it not rather weaken the right of primo-geniture, or +any other old and universally-acknowledged right, should the legislature +pass an act in favour of it? In my _Letter to the People of Scotland, +against diminishing the number of the Lords of Session_, published in +1785, there is the following passage, which, as a concise, and I hope a +fair and rational state of the matter, I presume to quote: 'The Juries +of England are Judges of _law_ as well as of fact, in _many civil_, and +in all _criminals_ trials. That my principles of _resistance_ may not be +misapprehended and more than my principles of _submission_, I protest +that I should be the last man in the world to encourage Juries to +contradict rashly, wantonly, or perversely, the opinion of the Judges. +On the contrary, I would have them listen respectfully to the advise +they receive from the Bench, by which they may be often well directed in +forming _their own opinion_; which, "and not anothers," is the opinion +they are to return _upon their oaths_. But where, after due attention to +all that the judge has said, they are decidedly of a different opinion +from him, they have not only a _power and a right_, but they are _bound +in conscience_ to bring in a verdict accordingly.' BOWELL. _The World_ +is described by Gifford in his _Baviad and Marviad_, as a paper set up +by 'a knot of fantastic coxcombs to direct the taste of the town.' +Lowndes (_Bibl. Man_. ed. 1871, p. 2994) confounds it with _The World_ +mentioned _ante_, i. 257. The 'popular gentleman' was Fox, whose Libel +Bill passed the House of Lords in June 1792. _Parl. Hist_. xxix. 1537. + +[48] Nobody, that is to say, but Johnson. _Post_, p. 24, note 2. + +[49] Of this service Johnson recorded:--'In the morning I had at church +some radiations of comfort.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 146. + +[50] Baretti, in a marginal note on _Piozzi Letters_, i. 311, says:-- +'Mr. Thrale, who was a worldly man, and followed the direction of his +own feelings with no philosophical or Christian distinctions, having +now lost the strong hope of being one day succeeded in the profitable +Brewery by the only son he had left, gave himself silently up to his +grief, and fell in a few years a victim to it.' In a second note (ii. +22) he says:--'The poor man could never subdue his grief on account of +his son's death.' + +[51] A gentleman, who from his extraordinary stores of knowledge, has +been stiled _omniscient_. Johnson, I think very properly, altered it to +all-knowing, as it is a _verbum solenne_, appropriated to the Supreme +Being. BOSWELL. + +[52] Mrs. Thrale wrote to him on May 3:--'Should you write about +Streatham and Croydon, the book would be as good to me as a journey to +Rome, exactly; for 'tis Johnson, not _Falkland's Islands_ that interest +us, and your style is invariably the same. The sight of Rome might have +excited more reflections indeed than the sight of the Hebrides, and so +the book might be bigger, but it would not be better a jot.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i 318. + +[53] Hawkins says (_Life_, p. 84) that 'Johnson was never greedy of +money, but without money could not be stimulated to write. I have been +told by a clergyman with whom he had been long acquainted, that, being +(sic) to preach on a particular occasion, he applied to him for help. "I +will write a sermon for thee," said Johnson, "but thou must pay me for +it."' See _post_, May 1, 1783. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 150) +records an anecdote that he had from Hawkins:--'When Dr. Johnson was at +his work on his _Shakespeare_, Sir John said to him, "Well! Doctor, now +you have finished your _Dictionary_, I suppose you will labour your +present work _con amore_ for your reputation." "No Sir," said Johnson, +"nothing excites a man to write but necessity."' Walpole then relates +the anecdote of the clergyman, and speaks of Johnson as 'the mercenary.' +Walpole's sinecure offices thirty-nine years before this time brought +him in 'near, £2000 a year.' In 1782 he wrote that his office of Usher +of the Exchequer was worth £1800 a year. _Letters_, i. lxxix, lxxxii. + +[54] Swift wrote in 1735, when he was sixty-seven:--'I never got a +farthing by anything I writ, except one about eight years ago, and that +was by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me.' _Works_, xix. 171. It was, +I conjecture, _Gulliver's Travels_. Hume, in 1757, wrote:--'I am writing +the _History of England_ from the accession of Henry VII. I undertook +this work because I was tired of idleness, and found reading alone, +after I had often perused all good books (which I think is soon done), +somewhat a languid occupation.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 33. + +[55] This Mr. Ellis was, I believe, the last of that profession called +_Scriveners_, which is one of the London companies, but of which the +business is no longer carried on separately, but is transacted by +attornies and others. He was a man of literature and talents. He was the +authour of a Hudibrastick version of Maphæsus's _Canto_, in addition to +the _Æneid_; of some poems in Dodsley's _Collections_; and various other +small pieces; but being a very modest man, never put his name to +anything. He shewed me a translation which he had made of Ovid's +_Epistles_, very prettily done. There is a good engraved portrait of him +by Pether, from a picture by Fry, which hangs in the hall of the +Scriveners' company. I visited him October 4, 1790, in his ninety-third +year, and found his judgment distinct and clear, and his memory, though +faded so as to fail him occasionally, yet, as he assured me, and I +indeed perceived, able to serve him very well, after a little +recollection. It was agreeable to observe, that he was free from the +discontent and fretfulness which too often molest old age. He in the +summer of that year walked to Rotherhithe, where he dined, and walked +home in the evening. He died on the 31st of December, 1791. BOSWELL. The +version of Maphæsus's 'bombastic' additional _Canto_ is advertised in +the _Gent. Mag_. 1758, p. 233. The engraver of Mr. Ellis's portrait in +the first two editions is called Peffer. + +[56] 'Admiral Walsingham boasted that he had entertained more +miscellaneous parties than any other man in London. At one time he had +received the Duke of Cumberland, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Nairne the optician, +and Leoni the singer. It was at his table that Dr. Johnson made that +excellent reply to a pert coxcomb who baited him during dinner. "Pray +now," said he to the Doctor, "what would you give, old gentleman, to be +as young and sprightly as I am?" "Why, Sir, I think," replied Johnson, +"I would almost be content to be as foolish."' Cradock's _Memoirs_, i. +172. + +[57] 'Dr. Johnson almost always prefers the company of an intelligent +man of the world to that of a scholar.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 241. + +[58] See J.H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 174, for an account of him. + +[59] Lord Macartney, who with his other distinguished qualities, is +remarkable also for an elegant pleasantry, told me, that he met Johnson +at Lady Craven's, and that he seemed jealous of any interference: 'So, +(said his Lordship, smiling,) _I kept back_.' BOSWELL. + +[60] See _ante_, i. 242. + +[61] There is an account of him in Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson. +BOSWELL. Hawkins (Life, p. 246) records the following sarcasm of Ballow. +In a coffee-house he attacked the profession of physic, which Akenside, +who was a physician as well as poet, defended. 'Doctor,' said Ballow, +'after all you have said, my opinion of the profession of physic is +this. The ancients endeavoured to make it a science, and failed; and the +moderns to make it a trade, and have succeeded.' + +[62] See _ante_, i. 274. + +[63] I have in vain endeavoured to find out what parts Johnson wrote +for Dr. James. Perhaps medical men may. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i. 159. +Johnson, needing medicine at Montrose, 'wrote the prescription in +technical characters.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21, 1773. + +[64] Horace Walpole, writing of May in this year, says that General +Smith, an adventurer from the East Indies, who was taken off by Foote in +_The Nabob_, 'being excluded from the fashionable club of young men of +quality at Almack's, had, with a set of sharpers, formed a plan for a +new club, which, by the excess of play, should draw all the young +extravagants thither. They built a magnificent house in St. +James's-street, and furnished it gorgeously.' _Journal of the Reign of +George III_, ii. 39. + +[65] He said the same when in Scotland. Boswell's _Hebrides_, under Nov. +22, 1773. On the other hand, in _The Rambler_, No. 80, he wrote:--'It is +scarcely possible to pass an hour in honest conversation, without being +able, when we rise from it, to please ourselves with having given or +received some advantages; but a man may shuffle cards, or rattle dice, +from noon to midnight, without tracing any new idea in his mind, or +being able to recollect the day by any other token than his gain or +loss, and a confused remembrance of agitated passions, and clamorous +altercations.' + +[66] 'Few reflect,' says Warburton, 'on what a great wit has so +ingenuously owned. That wit is generally false reasoning.' The wit was +Wycherley. See his letter xvi. to Pope in Pope's _Works_. Warburton's +_Divine Legation_, i. xii. + +[67] 'Perhaps no man was ever more happy than Dr. Johnson in the +extempore and masterly defence of any cause which, at the given moment, +he chose to defend.' Stockdale's _Memoirs_, i. 261. + +[68] Burke, in a letter that he wrote in 1771 (_Corres_. i. 330), must +have had in mind his talks with Johnson. 'Nay,' he said, 'it is not +uncommon, when men are got into debates, to take now one side, now +another, of a question, as the momentary humour of the man and the +occasion called for, with all the latitude that the antiquated freedom +and ease of English conversation among friends did, in former days, +encourage and excuse.' H.C. Robinson (_Diary_, iii. 485) says that Dr. +Burney 'spoke with great warmth of affection of Dr. Johnson, and said he +was the kindest creature in the world when he thought he was loved and +respected by others. He would play the fool among friends, but he +required deference. It was necessary to ask questions and make no +assertion. If you said two and two make four, he would say, 'How will +you prove that, Sir?' Dr. Burney seemed amiably sensitive to every +unfavourable remark on his old friend. + +[69] Patrick Lord Elibank, who died in 1778. BOSWELL. See Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Sept. 12, 1773. + +[70] Yet he said of him:--'Sir, there is nothing conclusive in his talk.' +See _post_, p. 57. + +[71] Johnson records of this Good Friday:--'My design was to pass part +of the day in exercises of piety, but Mr. Boswell interrupted me; of +him, however, I could have rid myself; but poor Thrale, _orbus et +exspes_, came for comfort, and sat till seven, when we all went to +church.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 146. + +[72] Johnson's entries at Easter shew this year, and some of the +following years, more peace of mind than hitherto. Thus this Easter he +records, 'I had at church some radiations of comfort.... When I +received, some tender images struck me. I was so mollified by the +concluding address to our Saviour that I could not utter it.' _Pr. and +Med_. pp. 146, 149. 'Easter-day, 1777, I was for some time much +distressed, but at last obtained, I hope from the God of peace, more +quiet than I have enjoyed for a long time. I had made no resolution, but +as my heart grew lighter, my hopes revived, and my courage increased.' +_Ib_. p. 158. 'Good Friday, 1778. I went with some confidence and +calmness through the prayers.' _Ib_. p. 164. + +[73] '_Nunquam enim nisi navi plenâ tollo vectorem_.' Lib. ii. c. vi. +BOSWELL. + +[74] See _ante_, i. 187. + +[75] See _ante_, i. 232. + +[76] See _ante_, ii, 219. + +[77] Cheyne's _English Malady, or a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of All +Kinds_, 1733. He recommended a milk, seed, and vegetable diet; by seed +he apparently meant any kind of grain. He did not take meat. He drank +green tea. At one time he weighed thirty-two stones. His work shews the +great change in the use of fermented liquors since his time. Thus he +says:--'For nearly twenty years I continued sober, moderate, and plain +in my diet, and in my greatest health drank not above a quart, or three +pints at most of wine any day' (p. 235). 'For near one-half of the time +from thirty to sixty I scarce drank any strong liquor at all. It will be +found that upon the whole I drank very little above a pint of wine, or +at most not a quart one day with another, since I was near thirty' +(p. 243). Johnson a second time recommended Boswell to read this book, +_post_, July 2, 1776. See _ante_, i. 65. Boswell was not the man to +follow Cheyne's advice. Of one of his works Wesley says:--'It is one of +the most ingenious books which I ever saw. But what epicure will ever +regard it? for "the man talks against good eating and drinking."' +Wesley's _Journal_, i. 347. Young, in his _Epistles to Pope_, No. ii. +says:-- + +'--three ells round huge Cheyne + rails at meat.' + +Dr. J. H. Burton (_Life of Hume_, i. 45) shews reason for believing that +a very curious letter by Hume was written to Cheyne. + +[78] '"Solitude," he said one day, "is dangerous to reason, without +being favourable to virtue; pleasures of some sort are necessary to the +intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety +will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for +the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant +and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember (continued +he) that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably +superstitious, and possibly mad."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 106. + +[79] The day before he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Mr. Thrale's alteration +of purpose is not weakness of resolution; it is a wise man's compliance +with the change of things, and with the new duties which the change +produces. Whoever expects me to be angry will be disappointed. I do not +even grieve at the effect, I grieve only at the cause.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 314. Mrs. Thrale on May 3 wrote:--'Baretti said you would +be very angry, because this dreadful event made us put off our Italian +journey, but I knew you better. Who knows even now that 'tis deferred +for ever? Mr. Thrale says he shall not die in peace without seeing Rome, +and I am sure he will go no-where that he can help without you.' _Ib_. +p. 317. + +[80] See _ante_, i. 346. + +[81] See _post_, July 22, 1777, note, where Boswell complains of +children being 'suffered to poison the moments of festivity.' + +[82] Boswell, _post_, under March 30, 1783, says, 'Johnson discovered a +love of little children upon all occasions.' + +[83] Johnson at a later period thought otherwise. _Post_, March 30, 1778. + +[84] Pope borrowed from the following lines:-- + +'When on my sick bed I languish, +Full of sorrow, full of anguish; +Fainting, gasping, trembling, crying, +Panting, groaning, speechless, dying-- +Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say, +Be not fearful, come away.' + +Campbell's _Brit. Poets_, p. 301. + +[85] In Rochester's _Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the First Book of +Horace_. + +[86] In the _Monthly Review_ for May, 1792, there is such a correction +of the above passage, as I should think myself very culpable not to +subjoin. 'This account is very inaccurate. The following statement of +facts we know to be true, in every material circumstance:--Shiels was +the principal collector and digester of the materials for the work: but +as he was very raw in authourship, an indifferent writer in prose, and +his language full of Scotticisms, Cibber, who was a clever, lively +fellow, and then soliciting employment among the booksellers, was +engaged to correct the style and diction of the whole work, then +intended to make only four volumes, with power to alter, expunge, or +add, as he liked. He was also to supply _notes_, occasionally, +especially concerning those dramatick poets with whom he had been +chiefly conversant. He also engaged to write several of the Lives; +which, (as we are told,) he, accordingly, performed. He was farther +useful in striking out the Jacobitical and Tory sentiments, which Shiels +had industriously interspersed wherever he could bring them in:--and, as +the success of the work appeared, after all, very doubtful, he was +content with twenty-one pounds for his labour beside a few sets of the +books, to disperse among his friends.--Shiels had nearly seventy pounds, +beside the advantage of many of the best Lives in the work being +communicated by friends to the undertaking; and for which Mr. Shiels had +the same consideration as for the rest, being paid by the sheet, for the +whole. He was, however, so angry with his Whiggish supervisor, (He, like +his father, being a violent stickler for the political principles which +prevailed in the Reign of George the Second,) for so unmercifully +mutilating his copy, and scouting his politicks, that he wrote Cibber a +challenge: but was prevented from sending it, by the publisher, who +fairly laughed him out of his fury. The proprietors, too, were +discontented, in the end, on account of Mr. Cibber's unexpected +industry; for his corrections and alterations in the proof-sheets were +so numerous and considerable, that the printer made for them a grievous +addition to his bill; and, in fine, all parties were dissatisfied. On +the whole, the work was productive of no profit to the undertakers, who +had agreed, in case of success, to make Cibber a present of some +addition to the twenty guineas which he had received, and for which his +receipt is now in the booksellers' hands. We are farther assured, that +he actually obtained an additional sum; when he, soon after, (in the +year 1758,) unfortunately embarked for Dublin, on an engagement for one +of the theatres there: but the ship was cast away, and every person on +board perished. There were about sixty passengers, among whom was the +Earl of Drogheda, with many other persons of consequence and property. +[_Gent. Mag_. 1758, p. 555.] + +'As to the alledged design of making the compilement pass for the work +of old Mr. Cibber, the charges seem to have been founded on a somewhat +uncharitable construction. We are assured that the thought was not +harboured by some of the proprietors, who are still living; and we hope +that it did not occur to the first designer of the work, who was also +the printer of it, and who bore a respectable character. + +'We have been induced to enter thus circumstantially into the foregoing +detail of facts relating to _The Lives of the Poets_, compiled by +Messrs. Cibber and Shiels, from a sincere regard to that sacred +principle of Truth, to which Dr. Johnson so rigidly adhered, according +to the best of his knowledge; and which we believe, _no consideration_ +would have prevailed on him to violate. In regard to the matter, which +we now dismiss, he had, no doubt, been misled by partial and wrong +information: Shiels was the Doctor's amanuensis; he had quarrelled with +Cibber; it is natural to suppose that he told his story in his own way; +and it is certain that _he_ was not "a very sturdy moralist." [The +quotation is from Johnson's _Works_, ix. 116.] This explanation appears +to me very satisfactory. It is, however, to be observed, that the story +told by Johnson does not rest solely upon my record of his conversation; +for he himself has published it in his _Life of Hammond_ [_ib_. viii. +90], where he says, "the manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession." +Very probably he had trusted to Shiels's word, and never looked at it so +as to compare it with _The Lives of the Poets_, as published under Mr. +Cibber's name. What became of that manuscript I know not. I should have +liked much to examine it. I suppose it was thrown into the fire in that +impetuous combustion of papers, which Johnson I think rashly executed, +when _moribundus_.' BOSWELL. Mr. Croker, quoting a letter by Griffiths +the publisher, says:--'The question is now decided by this letter in +opposition to Dr. Johnson's assertion.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 818. The +evidence of such an infamous fellow as Griffiths is worthless. (For his +character see Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 161.) As the _Monthly Review_ +was his property, the passage quoted by Boswell was, no doubt, written +by his direction. D'Israeli (_Curiosities of Literature_, ed. 1834, vi. +375) says that Oldys (_ante_, i. 175) made annotations on a copy of +Langbaine's _Dramatic Poets_. 'This _Langbaine_, with additions by +Coxeter, was bought by Theophilus Cibber; on the strength of these notes +he prefixed his name to the first collection of the _Lives of Our +Poets_, written chiefly by Shiels.' + +[87] Mason's _Memoirs of Gray's Life_ was published in 1775. Johnson, in +his _Life of Gray_ (_Works_, viii. 476), praises Gray's portion of the +book:--'They [Gray and Horace Walpole] wandered through France into +Italy; and Gray's _Letters_ contain a very pleasing account of many +parts of their journey.' 'The style of Madame de Sévigné,' wrote +Mackintosh (_Life_, ii. 221), 'is evidently copied, not only by her +worshipper Walpole, but even by Gray; notwithstanding the extraordinary +merits of his matter, he has the double stiffness of an imitator and of +a college recluse.' + +[88] See ante, ii. 164. + +[89] This impartiality is very unlikely. In 1757 Griffiths, the owner of +the _Monthly_, aiming a blow at Smollett, the editor of the _Critical_, +said that _The Monthly Review_ was not written by 'physicians without +practice, authors without learning, men without decency, gentlemen +without manners, and critics without judgement.' Smollett retorted:-- +'_The Critical Review_ is not written by a parcel of obscure hirelings, +under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who presume to revise, +alter, and amend the articles occasionally. The principal writers in the +_Critical Review_ are unconnected with booksellers, un-awed by old women, +and independent of each other.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 100. 'A fourth +share in _The Monthly Review_ was sold in 1761 for £755.' _A Bookseller +of the Last Century_, p. 19. + +[90] See ante, ii. 39. + +[91] Horace Walpole writes:--'The scope of the _Critical Review_ was to +decry any work that appeared favourable to the principles of the +Revolution.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George II_, iii. 260. + +[92] 'The story of this publication is remarkable. The whole book was +printed twice over, a great part of it three times, and many sheets four +or five times. The booksellers paid for the first impression; but the +charges and repeated operations of the press were at the expense of the +author, whose ambitious accuracy is known to have cost him at least a +thousand pounds. He began to print in 1755. Three volumes appeared in +1764, and the conclusion in 1771. Andrew Reid undertook to persuade +Lyttelton, as he had persuaded himself, that he was master of the secret +of punctuation; and, as fear begets credulity, he was employed, I know +not at what price, to point the pages of _Henry the Second_. When time +brought the _History_ to a third edition, Reid was either dead or +discarded; and the superintendence of typography and punctuation was +committed to a man originally a comb-maker, but then known by the style +of Doctor. Something uncommon was probably expected, and something +uncommon was at last done; for to the Doctor's edition is appended, what +the world had hardly seen before, a list of errors in nineteen pages.' +Johnson's _Works_, viii. 492. In the first edition of _The Lives of the +Poets_ 'the Doctor' is called Dr. Saunders. So ambitious was Lord +Lyttelton's accuracy that in the second edition he gave a list of 'false +stops which hurt the sense.' For instance, the punctuation of the +following paragraph:--'The words of Abbot Suger, in his life of Lewis le +Gros, concerning this prince are very remarkable,' he thus corrects, +'after prince a comma is wanting.' See _ante_, ii. 37. + +[93] According to Horace Walpole, Lyttelton had angered Smollett by +declining 'to recommend to the stage' a comedy of his. 'He promised,' +Walpole continues, 'if it should be acted, to do all the service in his +power for the author. Smollett's return was drawing an abusive portrait +of Lord Lyttelton in _Roderick Random.' Memoirs of the Reign of George +II_, iii. 259. + +[94] _Spectator_, No. 626. See _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's +_Collection_, near the end. + +[95] When Steele brought _The Spectator_ to the close of its first +period, he acknowledged in the final number (No. 555) his obligation to +his assistants. In a postscript to the later editions he says:--'It had +not come to my knowledge, when I left off _The Spectator_, that I owe +several excellent sentiments and agreeable pieces in this work to Mr. +Ince, of Gray's Inn.' Mr. Ince died in 1758. _Gent. Mag_. 1758, p. 504. + +[96] _Spectator_, No. 364. + +[97] Sir Edward Barry, Baronet. BOSWELL. + +[98] 'We form our words with the breath of our nostrils, we have the +less to live upon for every word we speak.' Jeremy Taylor's _Holy +Dying_, ch. i. sec. 1. + +[99] On this day Johnson sent the following application for rooms in +Hampton Court to the Lord Chamberlain:-- + +'My Lord, Being wholly unknown to your lordship, I have only this +apology to make for presuming to trouble you with a request, that a +stranger's petition, if it cannot be easily granted, can be easily +refused. Some of the apartments are now vacant in which I am encouraged +to hope that by application to your lordship I may obtain a residence. +Such a grant would be considered by me as a great favour; and I hope +that to a man who has had the honour of vindicating his Majesty's +Government, a retreat in one of his houses may not be improperly or +unworthily allowed. I therefore request that your lordship will be +pleased to grant such rooms in Hampton Court as shall seem proper to + +'My Lord, + +'Your lordship's most obedient and most faithful humble servant, + +'SAM. JOHNSON.' + +'April 11, 1776.' + +'Mr. Saml. Johnson to the Earl of Hertford, requesting apartments at +Hampton Court, 11th May, 1776.' And within, a memorandum of the +answer:--'Lord C. presents his compliments to Mr. Johnson, and is sorry +he cannot obey his commands, having already on his hands many +engagements unsatisfied.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 337. The endorsement does +not, it will be seen, agree in date with the letter. Lord C. stands for +the Lord Chamberlain. + +[100] Hogarth saw Garrick in Richard III, and on the following night in +Abel Drugger; he was so struck, that he said to him, 'You are in your +element when you are begrimed with dirt, or up to your elbows in blood.' +Murphy's _Garrick_, p. 21. Cooke, in his _Memoirs of Macklin_, p. 110, +says that a Lichfield grocer, who came to London with a letter of +introduction to Garrick from Peter Garrick, saw him act Abel Drugger, +and returned without calling on him. He said to Peter Garrick: 'I saw +enough of him on the stage. He may be rich, as I dare say any man who +lives like him must be; but by G-d, though he is your brother, Mr. +Garrick, he is one of the shabbiest, meanest, most pitiful hounds I ever +saw in the whole course of my life.' Abel Drugger is a character in Ben +Jonson's _Alchemist_. + +[101] See _post_, under Sept. 30, 1783. + +[102] Lord Shelburne in 1766, at the age of twenty-nine, was appointed +Secretary of State in Lord Chatham's ministry. Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, +ii. 1. Jeremy Bentham said of him:--'His head was not clear. He felt the +want of clearness. He had had a most wretched education.' _Ib_. p. 175. + +[103] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:--'I hope you have no +design of stealing away to Italy before the election, nor of leaving me +behind you; though I am not only seventy, but seventy-one.... But what +if I am seventy-two; I remember Sulpitius says of Saint Martin (now +that's above your reading), _Est animus victor annorum et senectuti +cedere nescius_. Match me that among your young folks.' _Piozzi +Letters_, ii. 177. + +[104] Lady Hesketh, taking up apparently a thought which Paoli, as +reported by Boswell, had thrown out in conversation, proposed to Cowper +the Mediterranean for a topic. 'He replied, "Unless I were a better +historian than I am, there would be no proportion between the theme and +my ability. It seems, indeed, not to be so properly a subject for one +poem, as for a dozen."' Southey's _Cowper_, iii. 15, and vii. 44. + +[105] Burke said:--'I do not know how it has happened, that orators have +hitherto fared worse in the hands of the translators than even the +poets; I never could bear to read a translation of Cicero.' _Life of Sir +W. Jones_, p. 196. + +[106] See _ante_, ii. 188. + +[107] See _ante_, ii. 182. + +[108] See _post_, under date of Dec. 24, 1783, where mention seems to be +made of this evening. + +[109] See _ante_, note, p. 30. BOSWELL + +[110] 'Thomson's diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, +such as may be said to be to his images and thoughts "both their lustre +and their shade;" such as invest them with splendour, through which, +perhaps, they are not always easily discerned.' Johnson's _Works_, +viii. 378. See _ante_, i. 453, and ii. 63. + +[111] _A Collection of Poems in six volumes by several hands_, 1758. + +[112] _Ib_. i. 116. + +[113] Mr. Nicholls says, '_The Spleen_ was a great favourite with Gray +for its wit and originality.' Gray's _Works_, v. 36. See _post_, Oct. 10, +1779, where Johnson quotes two lines from it. 'Fling but a stone, the +giant dies,' is another line that is not unknown. + +[114] A noted highwayman, who after having been several times tried and +acquitted, was at last hanged. He was remarkable for foppery in his dress, +and particularly for wearing a bunch of sixteen strings at the knees of his +breeches. BOSWELL. + +[115] Goldsmith wrote a prologue for it. Horace Walpole wrote on +Dec. 14, 1771 (_Letters_, v. 356):--'There is a new tragedy at Covent +Garden called _Zobeide_, which I am told is very indifferent, though +written by a country gentleman.' Cradock in his old age published his +own _Memoirs_. + +[116] '"Dr. Farmer," said Johnson {speaking of this essay}, "you have +done that which never was done before; that is, you have completely +finished a controversy beyond all further doubt." "There are some +critics," answered Farmer, "who will adhere to their old opinions." +"Ah!" said Johnson, "that may be true; for the limbs will quiver and +move when the soul is gone."' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 152. Farmer was +Master of Emanuel College, Cambridge (_ante_, i. 368). In a letter dated +Oct. 3, 1786, published in Romilly's _Life_ (i. 332), it is +said:--'Shakespeare and black letter muster strong at Emanuel.' + +[117] 'When Johnson once glanced at this _Liberal Translation of the New +Testament_, and saw how Dr. Harwood had turned _Jesus wept_ into _Jesus, +the Saviour of the world, burst into a flood of tears_, he +contemptuously threw the book aside, exclaiming, "Puppy!" The author, +Dr. Edward Harwood, is not to be confounded with Dr. Thomas Harwood, the +historian of Lichfield.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 836. + +[118] See an ingenious Essay on this subject by the late Dr. Moor, Greek +Professor at Glasgow. BOSWELL. + +[119] See _ante_, i. 6, note 2. + +[120] 'Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a +book!' _Job_ xix. 23. + +[121] 'The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor's conviction, +and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him, are so artfully +natural, that, though it will perhaps not be said of him as he says of +himself, that he is "a man not easily jealous," yet we cannot but pity +him, when at last we find him "perplexed in the extreme."' Johnson's +_Works_, v. 178. + +[122] Of Dennis's criticism of Addison's _Cato_, he says:--'He found and +shewed many faults; he shewed them indeed with anger, but he found them +with acuteness, such as ought to rescue his criticism from oblivion.' +_Ib_. vii. 457. In a note on 'thunder rumbling from the mustard-bowl' +(The _Dunciad_, ii. 226) it is said:--'Whether Mr. Dennis was the +inventor of that improvement, I know not; but is certain that, being +once at a tragedy of a new author, he fell into a great passion at +hearing some, and cried, "S'death! that is _my_ thunder."' See +D'Israeli's _Calamities of Authors_, i. 135, for an amplification of +this story. + +[123] Sir James Mackintosh thought Cumberland was meant. I am now +satisfied that it was Arthur Murphy. CROKER. The fact that Murphy's name +is found close to the story renders it more likely that Mr. Croker is +right. + +[124] 'Obscenity and impiety,' Johnson boasted in the last year of his +life, 'have always been repressed in my company.' _Post_, June 11, 1784. +See also _post_, Sept. 22, 1777. + +[125] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 18. + +[126] See _ib_. Aug. 15. + +[127] See _post_, April 28, 29, 1778. + +[128] See _ante_, Jan. 21, 1775, note. + +[129] See _post_, April 28, 1778. That he did not always scorn to drink +when in company is shewn by what he said on April 7, 1778:--'I have +drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it. University +College has witnessed this.' + +[130] _Copy_ is _manuscript for printing_. + +[131] In _The Rambler_, No. 134, he describes how he had sat +deliberating on the subject for that day's paper, 'till at last I was +awakened from this dream of study by a summons from the press; the time +was now come for which I had been thus negligently purposing to provide, +and, however dubious or sluggish, I was now necessitated to write. To a +writer whose design is so comprehensive and miscellaneous that he may +accommodate himself with a topick from every scene of life, or view of +nature, it is no great aggravation of his task to be obliged to a sudden +composition.' See _ante_, i. 203. + +[132] See _ante_, i. 428. + +[133] We have here an involuntary testimony to the excellence of this +admirable writer, to whom we have seen that Dr. Johnson _directly_ +allowed so little merit. BOSWELL. 'Fielding's Amelia was the most +pleasing heroine of all the romances,' he said; 'but that vile broken +nose never cured [_Amelia_, bk. ii. ch. 1] ruined the sale of perhaps +the only book, which being printed off betimes one morning, a new +edition was called for before night.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 221. Mrs. +Carter, soon after the publication of _Amelia_, wrote (_Corres_. ii. +71):--'Methinks I long to engage you on the side of this poor +unfortunate book, which I am told the fine folks are unanimous in +pronouncing to be very sad stuff.' See _ante_, ii. 49. + +[134] Horace Walpole wrote, on Dec, 21, 1775 (_Letters_, vi. 298):-- +'Mr. Cumberland has written an _Ode_, as he modestly calls it, in +praise of Gray's _Odes_; charitably no doubt to make the latter taken +notice of. Garrick read it the other night at Mr. Beauclerk's, who +comprehended so little what it was about, that he desired Garrick to +read it backwards, and try if it would not be equally good; he did, and +it was.' It was to this reading backwards that Dean Barnard alludes in +his verses-- + +'The art of pleasing, teach me, Garrick; +Thou who reversest odes Pindaric, +A second time read o'er.' + +See _post_, under May 8, 1781. + +[135] Mr. Romney, the painter, who has now deservedly established a high +reputation. BOSWELL. Cumberland (_Memoirs_, i. 384) dedicated his _Odes_ +to him, shortly after 'he had returned from pursuing his studies at +Rome.' 'A curious work might be written,' says Mr. Croker, 'on the +reputation of painters. Hayley dedicated his lyre (such as it was) to +Romney. What is a picture of Romney now worth?' The wheel is come full +circle, and Mr. Croker's note is as curious as the work that he +suggests. + +[136] Page 32 of this vol. BOSWELL. + +[137] Thurlow. + +[138] Wedderburne. Boswell wrote to Temple on May 1:--'Luckily Dr. +Taylor has begged of Dr. Johnson to come to London, to assist him in +some interesting business, and Johnson loves much to be so consulted and +so comes up.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 234. On the 14th Johnson wrote to +Mrs. Thrale:--'Mr. Wedderburne has given his opinion today directly +against us. He thinks of the claim much as I think.' _Piozzi Letters_, +i. 323. In _Notes and Queries_, 6th S., v. 423, in a letter from Johnson +to Taylor, this business is mentioned. + +[139] Goldsmith wrote in 1762:--'Upon a stranger's arrival at Bath he is +welcomed by a peal of the Abbey bells, and in the next place by the +voice and music of the city waits.' Cunningham's _Goldsmith's Works_, +iv. 57. In _Humphry Clinker_ (published in 1771), in the Letter of April +24, we read that there was 'a peal of the Abbey bells for the honour of +Mr. Bullock, an eminent cow-keeper of Tottenham, who had just arrived at +Bath to drink the waters for indigestion.' The town waits are also +mentioned. The season was not far from its close when Boswell arrived. +Melford, in _Humphry Clinker_, wrote from Bath on May 17:--'The music +and entertainments of Bath are over for this season; and all our gay +birds of passage have taken their flight to Bristol-well [Clifton], +Tunbridge, Brighthelmstone, Scarborough, Harrowgate, &c. Not a soul is +seen in this place, but a few broken-winded parsons, waddling like so +many crows along the North Parade.' Boswell had soon to return to London +'to eat commons in the Inner Temple.' Delighted with Bath, and +apparently pleasing himself with the thought of a brilliant career at +the Bar, he wrote to Temple, 'Quin said, "Bath was the cradle of age, +and a fine slope to the grave." Were I a Baron of the Exchequer and you +a Dean, how well could we pass some time there!' _Letters of Boswell_, +pp. 231, 234. + +[140] To the rooms! and their only son dead three days over one month! + +'That it should come to this! +But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two.' + +_Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2. + +[141] No doubt Mr. Burke. See _ante_, April 15, 1773, and under Oct. 1, +1774, note, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15. + +[142] Mr. E.J. Payne, criticising this passage, says:--'It is certain +that Burke never thought he was deserting any principle of his own in +joining the Rockinghams.' Payne's _Burke_, i. xvii. + +[143] No doubt Mrs. Macaulay. See _ante_, i. 447. 'Being asked whether +he had read Mrs. Macaulay's second volume of the _History of England_, +"No, Sir," says he, "nor her first neither."' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), +xi. 205. + +[144] 'Of this distinguished Epilogue the reputed author was the +wretched Budgel, whom Addison used to denominate "the man who calls me +cousin" [Spence's _Anecdotes_, ed. 1820, p. 161]; and when he was asked +how such a silly fellow could write so well, replied, "The Epilogue was +quite another thing when I saw it first." [_Ib_. p. 257.] It was known +in Tonson's family, and told to Garrick, that Addison was himself the +author of it, and that, when it had been at first printed with his name, +he came early in the morning, before the copies were distributed, and +ordered it to be given to Budgel, that it might add weight to the +solicitation which he was then making for a place.' Johnson's _Works_, +viii. 389. See _ante_, i. 181. + +[145] See _post_, Jan. 20, 1782. + +[146] On May 10, 1768, on which day the new parliament met, a great body +of people gathered round the King's Bench prison in St. George's Fields +in expectation that Wilkes would go thence to the House of Commons. Some +kind of a riot arose, a proclamation was made in the terms of the +Riot-Act, and the soldiers firing by order of Justice Gillam, killed +five or six on the spot. The justice and one of the soldiers were on the +coroner's inquest brought in guilty of wilful murder, and two other +soldiers of aiding and abetting therein. With great difficulty the +prisoners were saved from the rage of the populace. They were all +acquitted however. At Gillam's trial the judge ruled in his favour, so +that the case did not go to the jury. Of the trial of one of the +soldiers 'no account was allowed to be published by authority.' _Ann. +Reg_. 1768, pp. 108-9, 112, 136-8, 233. Professor Dicey (_Law of the +Constitution_, p. 308) points out that 'the position of a soldier may +be both in theory and practice, a difficult one. He may, as it has +been well said, be liable to be shot by a court-martial if he disobeys +an order, and to be hanged by a judge and jury if he obeys it.' The +remembrance of these cases was perhaps the cause of the feebleness shewn +in the Gordon Riots in June 1780. Dr. Franklin wrote from London on May +14, 1768 (_Memoirs_, iii. 315):--'Even this capital is now a daily scene +of lawless riot. Mobs patrolling the streets at noon-day, some knocking +all down that will not roar for Wilkes and liberty; courts of justice +afraid to give judgment against him; coal-heavers and porters pulling +down the houses of coal-merchants that refuse to give them more wages; +sawyers destroying saw-mills; sailors unrigging all the outward-bound +ships, and suffering none to sail till merchants agree to raise their +pay; watermen destroying private boats, and threatening bridges; +soldiers firing among the mobs and killing men, women, and children.' +'While I am writing,' he adds (_ib_. p. 316), 'a great mob of +coal-porters fill the street, carrying a wretch of their business upon +poles to be ducked for working at the old wages.' See also _ib_. p. 402. +Hume agreed with Johnson about the 'imbecility' of the government; but +he drew from it different conclusions. He wrote on Oct. 27, 1775, about +the addresses to the King:--'I wish they would advise him first to +punish those insolent rascals in London and Middlesex, who daily insult +him and the whole legislature, before he thinks of America. Ask him, how +he can expect that a form of government will maintain an authority at +3000 miles' distance, when it cannot make itself be respected, or even +be treated with common decency, at home.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. +479. On the 30th of this month of April--four days after the +conversation in the text--John Home recorded:--'Mr. Hume cannot give any +reason for the incapacity and want of genius, civil and military, which +marks this period.' _Ib_. p. 503. + +[147] See _Dr. Johnson, His Friends, &c_., p. 252. + +[148] It was published in 1743. + +[149] I am sorry that there are no memoirs of the Reverend Robert Blair, +the author of this poem. He was the representative of the ancient family +of Blair, of Blair, in Ayrshire, but the estate had descended to a +female, and afterwards passed to the son of her husband by another +marriage. He was minister of the parish of Athelstanford, where Mr. John +Home was his successor; so that it may truely be called classick ground. +His son, who is of the same name, and a man eminent for talents and +learning, is now, with universal approbation, Solicitor-General of +Scotland. BOSWELL. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 94) describes Blair 'as so +austere and void of urbanity as to make him quite disagreeable to young +people.' + +[150] In 1775 Mrs. Montagu gave Mrs. Williams a small annuity. Croker's +_Boswell_, pp. 458, 739. Miss Burney wrote of her:--'Allowing a little +for parade and ostentation, which her power in wealth and rank in +literature offer some excuse for, her conversation is very agreeable.' +Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 325. See _post_, April 7, 1778, note. + +[151] + +'Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame, +Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.' + +Pope, _Sat. Ep_. i. 135. + +[152] Johnson refers to Jenyns's _View of the Internal Evidence of the +Christian Religion_, published this spring. See _post_, April 15, 1778. +Jenyns had changed his view, for in his _Origin of Evil_ he said, in a +passage quoted with applause by Johnson (_Works_, vi. 69), that 'it is +observable that he who best knows our formation has trusted no one +thing of importance to our reason or virtue; he trusts to our vanity or +compassion for our bounty to others.' + +[153] Mr. Langton is certainly meant. It is strange how often his mode +of living was discussed by Johnson and Boswell. See _post_, Nov. 16, +1776, July 22, and Sept. 22, 1777, March 18, April 17, 18, and 20, +May 12, and July 3, 1778. + +[154] Baretti made a brutal attack on Mrs. Piozzi in the _European Mag_. +for 1788, xiii. 313, 393, and xiv. 89. He calls her 'the frontless +female, who goes now by the mean appellation of Piozzi; La Piozzi, as +my fiddling countrymen term her; who has dwindled down into the +contemptible wife of her daughter's singing-master.' His excuse was +the attacks made on him by her in the correspondence just published +between herself and Johnson (see _Piozzi Letters_, i. 277, 319). He +suspected her, and perhaps with reason, of altering some of these +letters. Other writers beside Baretti attacked her. To use Lord +Macaulay's words, grossly exaggerated though they are, 'She fled from +the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land +where she was unknown.' Macaulay's _Writings and Speeches_, ed. 1871, p. +393. According to Dr. T. Campbell (_Diary_, p. 33) Baretti flattered +Mrs. Thrale to her face. 'Talking as we were at tea of the magnitude of +the beer vessels, Baretti said there was one thing in Mr. Thrale's house +still more extraordinary; meaning his wife. She gulped the pill very +prettily--so much for Baretti.' See _post_, Dec. 21, 1776. + +[155] Likely enough Boswell himself. On three other occasions he +mentions Otaheité; _ante_, May 7, 1773, _post_, June 15, 1784 and in his +_Hebrides_, Sept. 23, 1773. He was fond of praising savage life. See +_ante_, ii. 73. + +[156] Chatterton said that he had found in a chest in St. Mary Redcliffe +Church manuscript poems by Canynge, a merchant of Bristol in the +fifteenth century, and a friend of his, Thomas Rowley. He gave some of +these manuscripts to George Catcot, a pewterer of Bristol, who +communicated them to Mr. Barret, who was writing a History of Bristol. +Rose's _Biog. Dict_. vi. 256. + +[157] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22. + +[158] See _ante_, i. 396. + +[159] 'Artificially. Artfully; with skill.' Johnson's _dictionary_. + +[160] Mr. Tyrwhitt, Mr. Warton, Mr. Malone. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote on +May 16:--'Steevens seems to be connected with Tyrwhitt in publishing +Chatterton's poems; he came very anxiously to know the result of our +inquiries, and though he says he always thought them forged, is not well +pleased to find us so fully convinced.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 326. + +[161] Catcot had been anticipated by Smith the weaver (2 _Henry VI_. +iv. 2)--'Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are +alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.' + +[162] Horace Walpole says (_Works_, iv. 224) that when he was 'dining at +the Royal Academy, Dr. Goldsmith drew the attention of the company with +an account of a marvellous treasure of ancient poems lately discovered at +Bristol, and expressed enthusiastic belief in them; for which he was +laughed at by Dr. Johnson, who was present.... You may imagine we did not +at all agree in the measure of our faith; but though his credulity +diverted me, my mirth was soon dashed; for, on asking about Chatterton, +he told me he had been in London, and had destroyed himself.' + +[163] Boswell returned a few days earlier. On May 1 he wrote to Temple: +--'Luckily Dr. Taylor has begged of Dr. Johnson to come to London, to +assist him in some interesting business; and Johnson loves much to be so +consulted, and so comes up. I am now at General Paoli's, quite easy and +gay, after my journey; not wearied in body or dissipated in mind. I have +lodgings in Gerrard Street, where cards are left to me; but I lie at the +General's, whose attention to me is beautiful.' _Letters of Boswell_, +p. 234. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 6:--'Tomorrow I am to dine, +as I did yesterday, with Dr. Taylor. On Wednesday I am to dine with +Oglethorpe; and on Thursday with Paoli. He that sees before him to his +third dinner has a long prospect.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 320. + +[164] See _ante_, May 12, 1775. + +[165] In the _Dramatis Personæ_ of the play are 'Aimwell and Archer, two +gentlemen of broken fortunes, the first as master, and the second as +servant.' See _ante_, March 23, 1776, for Garrick's opinion of Johnson's +'taste in theatrical merit.' + +[166] Johnson is speaking of the _Respublicæ Elzevirianæ_, either 36 or +62 volumes. 'It depends on every collector what and how much he will +admit.' Ebert's _Bibl. Dict_. iii. 1571. See _ante_, ii. 7. + +[167] See _post_, under Oct. 20, 1784, for 'the learned pig.' + +[168] In the first edition Mme. de Sévigné's name is printed Sevigné, in +the second Sevigé, in the third Sevigne. Authors and compositors last +century troubled themselves little about French words. + +[169] Milton had put the same complaint into Adam's mouth:-- + +'Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay +To mould me man? ... +... As my will +Concurred not to my being,' &c. + +_Paradise Lost_, x. 743. + +[170] See _ante_, April 10, 1775. + +[171] Fielding in the _Covent Garden Journal_ for June 2, 1752 (_Works_, +x. 80), says of the difficulty of admission at the hospitals:--'The +properest objects (those I mean who are most wretched and friendless) +may as well aspire at a place at Court as at a place in the Hospital.' + +[172] 'We were talking of Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton. "He was the +only man," says Mr. Johnson quite seriously, "that did justice to my +good breeding; and you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of +needless scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not observing the +amazement of his hearers, "no man is so cautious not to interrupt +another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others +are speaking; no man so steadily refuses preference on himself, or so +willingly bestows it on another, as I do; no man holds so strongly as I +do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the +breach of it; yet people think me rude; but Barnard did me justice."' +Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 36. On p. 258, Mrs. Piozzi writes:--'No one was +indeed so attentive not to offend in all such sort of things as Dr. +Johnson; nor so careful to maintain the ceremonies of life; and though +he told Mr. Thrale once, that he had never sought to please till past +thirty years old, considering the matter as hopeless, he had been always +studious not to make enemies by apparent preference of himself.' See +Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 27, 1773, where Johnson said:--'Sir, I look +upon myself as a very polite man.' + +[173] The younger Colman in his boyhood met Johnson and Gibbon. 'Johnson +was in his rusty brown and his black worsteds, and Gibbon in a suit of +flowered velvet, with a bag and sword. He condescended, once or twice in +the course of the evening, to talk with me;--the great historian was +light and playful, suiting his matter to the capacity of the boy; but it +was done more sua [sic]; still his mannerism prevailed; still he tapped +his snuff-box; still he smirked, and smiled, and rounded his periods +with the same air of good-breeding, as if he were conversing with men. +His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was a round hole, nearly in the +centre of his visage.' _Random Records_, i. 121. + +[174] Samuel Sharp's _Letters from Italy_ were published in 1766. See +_ante_, ii. 57, note 2, for Baretti's reply to them. + +[175] It may be observed, that Mr. Malone, in his very valuable edition +of Shakspeare, has fully vindicated Dr. Johnson from the idle censures +which the first of these notes has given rise to. The interpretation of +the other passage, which Dr. Johnson allows to be _disputable_, he has +clearly shown to be erroneous. BOSWELL. The first note is on the line in +_Hamlet_, act v. sc. 2-- + +'And many such like as's of great charge.' + +Johnson says:--'A quibble is intended between _as_ the conditional +particle, and _ass_ the beast of burthen.' On this note Steevens +remarked:--'Shakespeare has so many quibbles of his own to answer for, +that there are those who think it hard he should be charged with others +which perhaps he never thought of.' The second note is on the opening of +Hamlet's soliloquy in act iii. sc. i. The line-- + +'To be, or not to be, that is the question,' + +is thus paraphrased by Johnson:--'Before I can form any rational scheme +of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide +whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be.' + +[176] See _post_, March 30, April 14 and 15, 1778, and Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Oct. 25. + +[177] Wesley wrote on Jan. 21, 1767 (_Journal_, iii. 263):--'I had a +conversation with an ingenious man who proved to a demonstration that it +was the duty of every man that could to be "clothed in purple and fine +linen," and to "fare sumptuously every day;" and that he would do +abundantly more good hereby than he could do by "feeding the hungry +and clothing the naked." O the depth of human understanding! What may +not a man believe if he will?' Much the same argument Johnson, +thirty-three years earlier, had introduced in one of his _Debates_ +(_Works_, xi. 349). He makes one of the speakers say:--'Our expenses are +not all equally destructive; some, though the method of raising them be +vexatious and oppressive, do not much impoverish the nation, because +they are refunded by the extravagance and luxury of those who are +retained in the pay of the court.' See _post_, March 23, 1783. The whole +argument is nothing but Mandeville's doctrine of 'private vices, public +benefits.' See _post_, April 15, 1778. + +[178] See _ante_, iii. 24. + +[179] Johnson no doubt refers to Walpole in the following passage +(_Works_, viii. l37):--'Of one particular person, who has been at one +time so popular as to be generally esteemed, and at another so +formidable as to be universally detested, Mr. Savage observed that his +acquisitions had been small, or that his capacity was narrow, and that +the whole range of his mind was from obscenity to politicks, and from +politicks to obscenity.' This passage is a curious comment on Pope's +lines on Sir Robert-- + +'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour + Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power.' + +_Epilogue to the Satires_, i. 29. + +[180] Most likely Boswell himself. See _ante_, March 25, 1776, and +_post_, April 10, 1778, for Johnson's dislike of questioning. See also +_ante_, ii. 84, note 3. + +[181] See _ante_, April 14, 1775. + +[182] See _ante_, May 12, 1774. + +[183] A Gallicism, which has it appears, with so many others, become +vernacular in Scotland. The French call a pulpit, _la chaire de vérité_. +CROKER. + +[184] As a proof of Dr. Johnson's extraordinary powers of composition, +it appears from the original manuscript of this excellent dissertation, +of which he dictated the first eight paragraphs on the 10th of May, and +the remainder on the 13th, that there are in the whole only seven +corrections, or rather variations, and those not considerable. Such were +at once the vigorous and accurate emanations of his mind. BOSWELL. + +[185] It is curious to observe that Lord Thurlow has here, perhaps in +compliment to North Britain, made use of a term of the Scotch Law, which +to an English reader may require explanation. To _qualify_ a wrong, is +to point out and establish it. BOSWELL. + +[186] + +'Quaeque ipse miserrima vidi, +Et quorum pars magna fui.' + +'Which thing myself unhappy did behold, +Yea, and was no small part thereof.' + +Morris, _Aeneids_, ii. 5. + +[187] In the year 1770, in _The False Alarm_, Johnson attacked Wilkes +with more than 'some asperity.' 'The character of the man,' he wrote, 'I +have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill +of him, of whom no man speaks well.' He called him 'a retailer of +sedition and obscenity;' and he said:--'We are now disputing ... whether +Middlesex shall be represented, or not, by a criminal from a gaol.' +_Works_, vi. 156, 169, 177. In _The North Briton_, No. xii, Wilkes, +quoting Johnson's definition of a pensioner, asks:--'Is the said Mr. +Johnson a _dependant_? or is he _a slave of state, hired by a stipend +to obey his master_? There is, according to him, no alternative.--As Mr. +Johnson has, I think, failed in this account, may I, after so great an +authority, venture at a short definition of so intricate a word? A +_pension_ then I would call _a gratuity during the pleasure of the +Prince for services performed, or expected to be performed, to himself, +or to the state_. Let us consider the celebrated Mr. _Johnson_, and a +few other late pensioners in this light.' + +[188] Boswell, in his _Letter to the People of Scotland_ (p. 70), +mentions 'my old classical companion, Wilkes;' and adds, 'with whom I +pray you to excuse my keeping company, he is so pleasant.' + +[189] When Johnson was going to Auchinleck, Boswell begged him, in +talking with his father, 'to avoid three topicks as to which they +differed very widely; whiggism, presbyterianism, and--Sir John Pringle.' +Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov 2, 1773. See also _ib_. Aug 24. 'Pringle was +President of the Royal Society--"who sat in Newton's chair, And wonder'd +how the devil he got there."' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 165. He was one +of Franklin's friends (Franklin's _Memoirs_ iii. III), and so was likely +to be uncongenial to Johnson. + +[190] No 22. CROKER. At this house 'Johnson owned that he always found a +good dinner.' _Post_, April 15, 1778. + +[191] This has been circulated as if actually said by Johnson; when the +truth is, it was only _supposed_ by me. BOSWELL. + +[192] 'Don't let them be _patriots_,' he said to Mr. Hoole, when he +asked him to collect a city Club. _Post_, April 6, 1781. + +[193] See p. 7 of this volume. BOSWELL. + +[194] 'Indifferent in his choice to sleep or die.' Addison's _Cato_, +act v. sc. 1. + +[195] See _ante_, i. 485. + +[196] He was at this time 'employed by Congress as a private and +confidential agent in England.' Dr. Franklin had arranged for letters to +be sent to him, not by post but by private hand, under cover to his +brother, Mr. Alderman Lee. Franklin's _Memoirs_, ii. 42, and iii. 415. + +[197] When Wilkes the year before, during his mayoralty, had presented +An Address, 'the King himself owned he had never seen so well-bred a +Lord Mayor.' Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 484. + +[198] Johnson's _London, a Poem_, v. 145. BOSWELL-- + +'How when competitors like these contend, +Can surly virtue hope to fix a friend.' + +[199] See _ante_, ii. 154. + +[200] Johnson had said much the same at a dinner in Edinburgh. See +Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 10, 1773. See _ante_, March 15, 1776, and +_post_, Sept. 21, 1777. + +[201] 'To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him +against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of +human abilities.' _The Rambler_, No. 93. + +[202] Foote told me that Johnson said of him, 'For loud obstreperous +broadfaced mirth, I know not his equal.' BOSWELL. + +[203] In Farquhar's _Beaux-Stratagem_, Scrub thus describes his duties: +--'Of a Monday I drive the coach, of a Tuesday I drive the plough, on +Wednesday I follow the hounds, a Thursday I dun the tenants, on Friday I +go to market, on Saturday I draw warrants, and a Sunday I draw beer.' +Act iii. sc. 3. + +[204] See _ante_, i. 393, note 1. + +[205] See _post_, April 10, 1778, and April 24, 1779. + +[206] See _ante_, i. 216, note 2. + +[207] See _ante_, March 20, 1776, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22. + +[208] Dryden had been dead but thirty-six years when Johnson came to +London. + +[209] 'Owen MacSwinny, a buffoon; formerly director of the play-house.' +Horace Walpole, _Letters_, i. 118. Walpole records one of his puns. +'Old Horace' had left the House of Commons to fight a duel, and at once +'returned, and was so little moved as to speak immediately upon the +_Cambrick Bill_, which made Swinny say, "That it was a sign he was not +_ruffled_."' _Ib_. p. 233. See also, _ib_. vi. 373 for one of his +stories. + +[210] A more amusing version of the story, is in _Johnsoniana_ +(ed. 1836, p. 413) on the authority of Mr. Fowke. '"So Sir," said +Johnson to Cibber, "I find you know [knew?] Mr. Dryden?" "Know him? O +Lord! I was as well acquainted with him as if he had been my own +brother." "Then you can tell me some anecdotes of him?" "O yes, a +thousand! Why we used to meet him continually at a club at Button's. I +remember as well as if it were but yesterday, that when he came into the +room in winter time, he used to go and sit by the fire in one corner; +and in summer time he would always go and sit in the window." "Thus, +Sir," said Johnson, "what with the corner of the fire in winter and the +window in summer, you see that I got _much_ information from Cibber of +the manners and habits of Dryden.'" Johnson gives, in his _Life of +Dryden_ (_Works_, vii. 300), the information that he got from Swinney +and Cibber. Dr. Warton, who had written on Pope, found in one of the +poet's female-cousins a still more ignorant survivor. 'He had been +taught to believe that she could furnish him with valuable information. +Incited by all that eagerness which characterised him, he sat close to +her, and enquired her consanguinity to Pope. "Pray, Sir," said she, "did +not you write a book about my cousin Pope?" "Yes, madam." "They tell me +t'was vastly clever. He wrote a great many plays, did not he?" "I have +heard of only one attempt, Madam." "Oh no, I beg your pardon; that was +Mr. Shakespeare; I always confound them."' Wooll's _Warton_, p. 394. + +[211] Johnson told Malone that 'Cibber was much more ignorant even of +matters relating to his own profession than he could well have +conceived any man to be who had lived nearly sixty years with players, +authors, and the most celebrated characters of the age.' Prior's +_Malone_, p. 95. See _ante_, ii. 92. + +[212] 'There are few,' wrote Goldsmith, 'who do not prefer a page of +Montaigne or Colley Cibber, who candidly tell us what they thought of +the world, and the world thought of them, to the more stately memoirs +and transactions of Europe.' Cunningham's _Goldsmith's Works_, iv. 43. + +[213] _Essay on Criticism_, i. 66. + +[214] 'Cibber wrote as bad Odes (as Garrick), but then Gibber wrote +_The Careless Husband_, and his own _Life_, which both deserve +immortality.' Walpole's _Letters_, v. 197. Pope (_Imitations of Horace_, +II. i. 90), says:-- + +'All this may be; the people's voice is odd, +It is, and it is not, the voice of God. +To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays, +And yet deny _The Careless Husband_ praise, +Or say our fathers never broke a rule; +Why then, I say, the public is a fool.' + +See _ante_, April 6, 1775. + +[215] See page 402 of vol. i. BOSWELL. + +[216] Milton's _L'Allegro_, 1. 36. + +[217] 'CATESBY. My Liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken. RICHARD. Off +with his head. So much for Buckingham.' Colley Gibber's _Richard III_, +iv. I. + +[218] _Ars Poetica, i. 128. + +[219] My very pleasant friend himself, as well as others _who remember +old stories_, will no doubt be surprised, when I observe that _John +Wilkes_ here shews himself to be of the WARBURTONIAN SCHOOL. It is +nevertheless true, as appears from Dr. Hurd the Bishop of Worcester's +very elegant commentary and notes on the '_Epistola ad Pisones_.' + +It is necessary to a fair consideration of the question, that the whole +passage in which the words occur should be kept in view: + +'Si quid inexpertum scenae committis, et audes +Personam formare novam, servetur ad imum +Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet. +Difficile est propriè communia dicere: tuque +Rectiùs Iliacum carmen deducis in actus, +Quàm si proferres ignota indictaque primus, +Publica materies privati juris erit, si +Non circa vilem patulumque moraberis orbem, +Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus +Interpres; nee desilies imitator in artum +Unde pedem proferre pudor vetat aut operis lex.' + +The 'Commentary' thus illustrates it: 'But the formation of quite _new +characters_ is a work of great difficulty and hazard. For here there is +no generally received and fixed _archetype_ to work after, but every one +_judges_ of common right, according to the extent and comprehension of +his own idea; therefore he advises to labour and refit _old characters +and subjects_, particularly those made known and authorised by the +practice of Homer and the Epick writers.' + +The 'Note' is, + +'_Difficile_ EST PROPRIE COMMUNIA DICERE.' Lambin's Comment is, +'_Communia hoc loco appellat Horatius argumenta fabularum à nullo adhuc +tractata: et ita, quae cuivis exposita sunt et in medio quodammodo +posita, quasi vacua et à nemine occupata_.' And that this is the true +meaning of _communia_ is evidently fixed by the words _ignota +indictaque_, which are explanatory of it; so that the sense given it in +the commentary is unquestionably the right one. Yet, notwithstanding the +clearness of the case, a late critick has this strange passage: +'_Difficile quidem esse propriè communia dicere, hoc est, materiam +vulgarem, notam et è medio petitam, ita immutare atque exornare, ut nova +et scriptori propria videatur, ultra concedimus; et maximi procul dubio +ponderis ista est observatio. Sed omnibus utrinque collatis, et tum +difficilis, tum venusti, tam judicii quam ingenii ratione habitá, major +videtur esse gloria fabulam formare penitùs novam, quàm veterem, +utcunque mutatam, de novo exhibere_. (Poet. Prael. v. ii. p. 164.) +Where, having first put a wrong construction on the word _comnmnia_, he +employs it to introduce an impertinent criticism. For where does the +poet prefer the glory of refitting _old_ subjects to that of inventing +new ones? The contrary is implied in what he urges about the superiour +difficulty of the latter, from which he dissuades his countrymen, only +in respect of their abilities and inexperience in these matters; and in +order to cultivate in them, which is the main view of the Epistle, a +spirit of correctness, by sending them to the old subjects, treated by +the Greek writers.' + +For my own part (with all deference for Dr. Hurd, who thinks the _case +clear_,) I consider the passage, '_Difficile est propriè communia +dicere_,' to be a _crux_ for the criticks on Horace. + +The explication which My Lord of Worcester treats with so much contempt, +is nevertheless countenanced by authority which I find quoted by the +learned Baxter in his edition of Horace: '_Difficile est propriè +communia dicere_, h.e. res vulgares disertis verbis enarrare, vel humile +thema cum dignitate tractare. _Difficile est communes res propriis +explicare verbis_. Vet. Schol.' I was much disappointed to find that the +great critick, Dr. Bentley, has no note upon this very difficult +passage, as from his vigorous and illuminated mind I should have +expected to receive more satisfaction than I have yet had. + +_Sanadon_ thus treats of it: '_Propriè communia dicere; c'est à dire, +qu'il n'est pas aisé de former à ces personnages d'imagination, des +caractêres particuliers et cependant vraisemblables. Comme l'on a eté le +maitre de les former tels qu'on a voulu, les fautes que l'on fait en +cela sont moins pardonnables. C'est pourquoi Horace conseille de prendre +toujours des sujets connus tels que sont par exemple ceux que l'on peut +tirer des poèmes d'Homere_.' + +And _Dacier_ observes upon it, '_Apres avoir marqué les deux qualités +qu'il faut donner aux personnages qu'on invente, il conseille aux Poêtes +tragiques, de n'user pas trop facilement de cette liberté quils ont d'en +inventer, car il est três difficile de reussir dans ces nouveaux +caractêres. Il est mal aisé, dit Horace_, de traiter proprement, _c'st à +dire_ convenablement, _des_ sujets communs; _c'est à dire, des sujets +inventés, et qui n'ont aucun fondement ni dans l'Histoire ni dans la +Fable; et il les appelle_ communs, _parce qu'ils sont en disposition à +tout le monde, et que tout le monde a le droit de les inventer, et +qu'ils sont, comme on dit, au premier occupant_.' See his observations +at large on this expression and the following. + +After all, I cannot help entertaining some doubt whether the words, +_Difficile est propriè communia dicere_, may not have been thrown in by +Horace to form a _separate_ article in a 'choice of difficulties' which +a poet has to encounter, who chooses a new subject; in which case it +must be uncertain which of the various explanations is the true one, and +every reader has a right to decide as it may strike his own fancy. And +even should the words be understood as they generally are, to be +connected both with what goes before and what comes after, the exact +sense cannot be absolutely ascertained; for instance, whether _propriè_ +is meant to signify _in an appropriated manner_, as Dr. Johnson here +understands it, or, as it is often used by Cicero, _with propriety_, or +_elegantly_. In short, it is a rare instance of a defect in perspicuity +in an admirable writer, who with almost every species of excellence, is +peculiarly remarkable for that quality. The length of this note perhaps +requires an apology. Many of my readers, I doubt not, will admit that a +critical discussion of a passage in a favourite classick is very +engaging. BOSWELL. Boswell's French in this tedious note is left as he +printed it. + +[220] Johnson, after describing Settle's attack on Dryden, continues +(_Works_, vii. 277):--'Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is the +prevalence of fashion, that the man whose works have not yet been +thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in +an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shows for +fairs ... might with truth have had inscribed upon his stone:-- + +"Here lies the Rival and Antagonist of Dryden."' + +Pope introduces him in _The Dunciad_, i. 87, in the description of the +Lord Mayor's Show:-- + +'Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces, +Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners and broad faces. +Now night descending the proud scene was o'er, +But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.' + +In the third book the ghost of Settle acts the part of guide in the +Elysian shade. + +[221] Johnson implies, no doubt, that they were both Americans by birth. +Trecothick was in the American trade, but he was not an American. +Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iii. 184, note. Of +Beckford Walpole says:--'Under a jovial style of good humour he was +tyrannic in Jamaica, his native country.' _Ib_. iv. 156. He came over to +England when young and was educated in Westminster School. Stephens's +_Horne Tooke_, ii. 278. Cowper describes 'a jocular altercation that +passed when I was once in the gallery [of the House], between Mr. Rigby +and the late Alderman Beckford. The latter was a very incorrect speaker, +and the former, I imagine, not a very accurate scholar. He ventured, +however, upon a quotation from Terence, and delivered it thus, _Sine +Scelere et Baccho friget venus_. The Alderman interrupted him, was very +severe upon his mistake, and restored Ceres to her place in the +sentence. Mr. Rigby replied, that he was obliged to his worthy friend +for teaching him Latin, and would take the first opportunity to return +the favour by teaching him English.' Southey's _Cowper_, iii. 317. Lord +Chatham, in the House of Lords, said of Trecothick:--'I do not know in +office a more upright magistrate, nor in private life a worthier man.' +_Parl. Hist_. xvi. 1101. See _post_, Sept. 23, 1777. + +[222] + +'Oft have I heard thee mourn the wretched lot +Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot, +Who, might calm reason credit idle tales, +By rancour forged where prejudice prevails, +Or starves at home, or practises through fear +Of starving arts which damn all conscience here.' + +Churchill's _Prophecy of Famine, Poems_, i. 105. + +[223] For Johnson's praise of Lichfield see _ante_, March 23, 1776. For +the use of the word _civility_, see _ante_ ii. 155. + +[224] See _ante_, i. 447. + +[225] See _ante_, April 18, 1775. + +[226] See _post_, April 15, 1778. + +[227] It would not become me to expatiate on this strong and pointed +remark, in which a very great deal of meaning is condensed. BOSWELL. + +[228] 'Mr. Wilkes's second political essay was an ironical dedication to +the Earl of Bute of Ben Jonson's play, _The Fall of Mortimer_. "Let me +entreat your Lordship," he wrote, "to assist your friend [Mr. Murphy] in +perfecting the weak scenes of this tragedy, and from the crude labours +of Ben Jonson and others to give us a _complete play_. It is the warmest +wish of my heart that the Earl of Bute may speedily complete the story of +Roger Mortimer."' Almon's _Wilkes_, i. 70, 86. + +[229] Yet Wilkes within less than a year violently attacked Johnson in +parliament. He said, 'The two famous doctors, Shebbeare and Johnson, are +in this reign the state hirelings called pensioners.' Their names, he +continued, 'disgraced the Civil List. They are the known pensioned +advocates of despotism.' _Parl. Hist_. xix. 118. It is curious that +Boswell does not mention this attack, and that Johnson a few months +after it was made, speaking of himself and Wilkes, said:--'The contest +is now over.' _Post_, Sept 21, 1777. + +[230] The next day he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'For my part, I begin to +settle and keep company with grave aldermen. I dined yesterday in the +Poultry with Mr. Alderman Wilkes, and Mr. Alderman Lee, and Counsellor +Lee, his brother. There sat you the while, so sober, with your W----'s +and your H----'s, and my aunt and her turnspit; and when they are gone, +you think by chance on Johnson, what is he doing? What should he be +doing? He is breaking jokes with Jack Wilkes upon the Scots. Such, +Madam, are the vicissitudes of things.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 325. + +[231] See _ante_, March 20, 1776. + +[232] If he had said this on a former occasion to a lady, he said it +also on a latter occasion to a gentleman--Mr. Spottiswoode. _Post_, +April 28, 1778. Moreover, Miss Burney records in 1778, that when Johnson +was telling about Bet Flint (_post_, May 8, 1781) and other strange +characters whom he had known, 'Mrs. Thrale said, "I wonder, Sir, you +never went to see Mrs. Rudd among the rest." "Why, Madam, I believe I +should," said he, "if it was not for the newspapers; but I am prevented +many frolics that I should like very well, since I am become such a +theme for the papers."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 90. + +[233] Pope, _Essay on Man_, ii. 2. + +[234] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 14 (Tuesday):--'----goes away +on Thursday, very well satisfied with his journey. Some great men have +promised to obtain him a place, and then a fig for my father and his new +wife.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 324. He is writing no doubt of Boswell; yet, +as Lord Auchinleck had been married more than six years, it is odd his +wife should be called _new_. Boswell, a year earlier, wrote to Temple of +his hopes from Lord Pembroke:--'How happy should I be to get an +independency by my own influence while my father is alive!' _Letters of +Boswell_, p. 182. Johnson, in a second letter to Mrs. Thrale, written +two days after Boswell left, says:--'B---- went away on Thursday night, +with no great inclination to travel northward; but who can contend with +destiny? ... He carries with him two or three good resolutions; I hope +they will not mould upon the road.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 333. + +[235] 1 _Corinthians_, xiii. 5. + +[236] This passage, which is found in Act iii, is not in the acting copy +of _Douglas_. + +[237] Malone was one of these gentlemen. See _post_, under June 30, +1784. Reynolds, after saying that eagerness for victory often led +Johnson into acts of rudeness, while 'he was not thus strenuous for +victory with his intimates in tête-à-tête conversations when there were +no witnesses,' adds:--'Were I to write the Life of Dr. Johnson I would +labour this point, to separate his conduct that proceeded from his +passions, and what proceeded from his reason, from his natural +disposition seen in his quiet hours.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 462. + +[238] These words must have been in the other copy. They are not in that +which was preferred. BOSWELL. + +[239] On June 3 he wrote that he was suffering from 'a very serious and +troublesome fit of the gout. I enjoy all the dignity of lameness. I +receive ladies and dismiss them sitting. _Painful pre-eminence_.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 337. 'Painful pre-eminence' comes from Addison's _Cato_, +act iii. sc. 5. Pope, in his _Essay on Man_, iv. 267, borrows the +phrase:-- + +'Painful pre-eminence! yourself to view, +Above life's weakness and its comforts too.' + +It is humorously introduced into the _Rolliad_ in the description of the +Speaker:-- + +'There Cornewall sits, and oh! unhappy fate! +Must sit for ever through the long debate. +Painful pre-eminence! he hears, 'tis true, +Fox, North, and Burke, but hears Sir Joseph too.' + +[240] Dean Stanley (_Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, p. 297) says:-- +'One expression at least has passed from the inscription into the +proverbial Latin of mankind-- + +"Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit."' + +In a note he adds:--'Professor Conington calls my attention to the fact +that, if this were a genuine classical expression, it would be +_ornaret_. The slight mistake proves that it is Johnson's own.' The +mistake, of course, is the Dean's and the Professor's, who did not take +the trouble to ascertain what Johnson had really written. If we may +trust Cradock, Johnson here gave in a Latin form what he had already +said in English. 'When a bookseller ventured to say something rather +slightingly of Dr. Goldsmith, Johnson retorted:--"Sir, Goldsmith never +touches any subject but he adorns it." Once when I found the Doctor very +low at his chambers I related this circumstance to him, and it instantly +proved a cordial.' Cradock's _Memoirs_, i. 231. + +[241] According to Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, i. 1), he was born +on Nov. 10, 1728. There is a passage in Goldsmith's _Bee_, No. 2, which +leads me to think that he himself held Nov. 12 as his birth-day. He says; +'I shall be sixty-two the twelfth of next November.' Now, as _The Bee_ +was published in October 1759, he would be, not sixty-two, but just half +that number--thirty-one on his next birth-day. It is scarcely likely that +he selected the number and the date at random. + +[242] Reynolds chose the spot in Westminster Abbey where the monument +should stand. Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 326. + +[243] For A. Chamier, see _ante_, i. 478, note 1; and _post_, April 9, +1778: for P. Metcalfe, _post_, under Dec. 20, 1782. W. Vachell seems +only known to fame as having signed this _Round Robin_, and attended Sir +Joshua's funeral. Who Tho. Franklin was I cannot learn. He certainly was +not Thomas Francklin, D.D., the Professor of Greek at Cambridge and +translator of _Sophocles_ and _Lucian_, mentioned _post_, end of 1780. +The Rev. Dr. Luard, the Registrar of that University, has kindly +compared for me six of his signatures ranging from 1739 to 1770. In each +of these the _c_ is very distinct, while the writing is unlike the +signature in the _Round Robin_. + +[244] Horace Walpole wrote in Dec. of this year:--'The conversation of +many courtiers was openly in favour of arbitrary power. Lord Huntingdon +and Dr. Barnard, who was promised an Irish Bishopric, held such +discourse publicly.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 91. + +[245] He however upon seeing Dr. Warton's name to the suggestion, that +the Epitaph should be in English, observed to Sir Joshua, 'I wonder +that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool.' He +said too, 'I should have thought Mund Burke would have had more sense.' +Mr. Langton, who was one of the company at Sir Joshua's, like a sturdy +scholar, resolutely refused to sign the _Round Robin_. The Epitaph is +engraved upon Dr. Goldsmith's monument without any alteration. At +another time, when somebody endeavoured to argue in favour of its being +in English, Johnson said, 'The language of the country of which a +learned man was a native, is not the language fit for his epitaph, which +should be in ancient and permanent language. Consider, Sir; how you +should feel, were you to find at Rotterdam an epitaph upon Erasmus _in +Dutch_!' For my own part I think it would be best to have Epitaphs +written both in a learned language, and in the language of the country; +so that they might have the advantage of being more universally +understood, and at the same time be secured of classical stability. I +cannot, however, but be of opinion, that it is not sufficiently +discriminative. Applying to Goldsmith equally the epithets of '_Poetae_, +_Historici_, _Physici_,' is surely not right; for as to his claim to the +last of those epithets, I have heard Johnson himself say, 'Goldsmith, +Sir, will give us a very fine book upon the subject; but if he can +distinguish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of +his knowledge of natural history.' His book is indeed an excellent +performance, though in some instances he appears to have trusted too +much to Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and +extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the +science on which he wrote so admirably. For instance, he tells us that +the _cow_ sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable errour, which +Goldsmith has faithfully transferred into his book. It is wonderful that +Buffon, who lived so much in the country, at his noble seat, should have +fallen into such a blunder. I suppose he has confounded the _cow_ with +the _deer_. BOSWELL. Goldsmith says:--'At three years old the cow sheds +its horns and new ones arise in their place, which continue as long as +it lives.' _Animated Nature_, iii. 12. This statement remains in the +second edition. Johnson said that the epitaph on Sir J. Macdonald +'should have been in Latin, as everything intended to be universal and +permanent should be.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 5, 1773. He treated +the notion of an English inscription to Smollett 'with great contempt, +saying, "an English inscription would be a disgrace to Dr. Smollett."' +_Ib_. Oct. 28, 1773. + +[246] Beside this Latin Epitaph, Johnson honoured the memory of his +friend Goldsmith with a short one in Greek. See _ante_, July 5, 1774. +BOSWELL. + +[247] See _ante_, Oct. 24, 1775. + +[248] Upon a settlement of our account of expences on a Tour to the +Hebrides, there was a balance due to me, which Dr. Johnson chose to +discharge by sending books. BOSWELL. + +[249] See _post_, under Nov. 29, 1777. + +[250] Baretti told me that Johnson complained of my writing very long +letters to him when I was upon the continent; which was most certainly +true; but it seems my friend did not remember it. BOSWELL. + +[251] See _ante_, iii. 27. + +[252] See _ante_, i. 446, for Johnson's remedies against melancholy. + +[253] It was not 'last year' but on June 22, 1772, that the negro, James +Somerset--who had been brought to England by his master, had escaped +from him, had been seized, and confined in irons on board a ship in The +Thames that was bound for Jamaica, and had been brought on a writ of +_Habeas Corpus_ before the Court of King's Bench was discharged by Lord +Mansfield. Howell's _State Trials_, xx. 79, and Lofft's _Reports_, 1772, +p. 1. 'Lord Mansfield,' writes Lord Campbell (_Lives of the Chief +Justices_, ii. 418), 'first established the grand doctrine that the air +of England is too pure to be breathed by a slave.' According to Lord +Campbell, Mansfield's judgment thus ended:--'The air of England has long +been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it. Every +man who comes into England is entitled to the protection of English law, +whatever oppression he may heretofore have suffered, and whatever may be +the colour of his skin: + +'"Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses." + +'Let the negro be discharged.' + +Where Lord Campbell found this speech, that is to say if he did not put +it together himself, I cannot guess. Mansfield's judgment was very +brief. He says in the conclusion:--'The only question before us is, +whether the cause on the return [to the writ of _habeas corpus_] is +sufficient. If it is, the negro must be remanded; if it is not, he must +be discharged. Accordingly the return states that the slave departed, +and refused to serve; whereupon he was kept to be sold abroad. So high +an act of dominion must be recognised by the law of the country where it +is used. The power of a master over his slave has been extremely +different in different countries. The state of slavery is of such a +nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or +political.... It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it +but positive law. Whatever inconveniences therefore may follow from a +decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of +England; and therefore the black must be discharged.' Lofft's _Reports_, +1772, p. 19. 'The judgment of the court,' says Broom (_Constitutional +Law_, 1885, p. 99), 'was delivered by Lord Mansfield, C.J., after some +delay, and with evident reluctance.' The passage about the air of +England that Campbell puts into Mansfield's mouth is found in Mr. +Hargrave's argument on May 14, 1772, where he speaks of England as 'a +soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to breathe in.' Lofft's +_Reports_, p. 2. Mr. Dunning replied:--'Let me take notice, neither the +air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe in, nor the laws of +England have rejected servitude.' _Ib_. p. 12. Serjeant Davy +rejoined:--'It has been asserted, and is now repeated by me, this air is +too pure for a slave to breathe in. I trust I shall not quit this court +without certain conviction of the truth of that assertion.' _Ib_. p. 17. +Lord Mansfield said nothing about the air. The line from Virgil, with +which Lord Campbell makes Mansfield's speech end, was 'the happily +chosen motto' to Maclaurin's published argument for the negro; Joseph +Knight, _post_, under Nov. 29, 1777. + +[254] The son of Johnson's old friend, Mr. William Drummond. (See vol. +ii. pp. 26-29.) He was a young man of such distinguished merit, that he +was nominated to one of the medical professorships in the College of +Edinburgh without solicitation, while he was at Naples. Having other +views, he did not accept of the honour, and soon afterwards died. +BOSWELL. + +[255] In the third and subsequent editions the date is wrongly given as +the 16th. + +[256] A Florentine nobleman, mentioned by Johnson in his _Notes of his +Tour in France_ [_ante_, Oct. 18, 1775]. I had the pleasure of becoming +acquainted with him in London, in the spring of this year. BOSWELL. Mrs. +Thrale wrote to Johnson from Bath on May 16:--'Count Manucci would wait +seven years to come with you; so do not disappoint the man, but bring +him along with you. His delight in your company is like Boniface's +exultation when the squire speaks Latin; for understand you he +certainly cannot.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 328. It was not the squire, +but the priest, Foigard, who by his Latin did Boniface good. +_The Beaux Strategem_, act iii. sc. 2. + +[257] _Pr. and Med_. p. 151. + +[258] _St. James_, i. 17. + +[259] See _ante_, ii. 175. Seven and even eight years later Paterson was +still a student in need of Johnson's recommendation. _Post_, June 2, +1783, and April 5, 1784. + +[260] See _ante_, p. 58. + +[261] Why his Lordship uses the epithet _pleasantly_, when speaking of +a grave piece of reasoning, I cannot conceive. But different men have +different notions of pleasantry. I happened to sit by a gentleman one +evening at the Opera-house in London, who, at the moment when _Medea_ +appeared to be in great agony at the thought of killing her children, +turned to me with a smile, and said, '_funny_ enough.' BOSWELL. + +[262] Dr. Johnson afterwards told me, that he was of opinion that a +clergyman had this right. BOSWELL. + +[263] Johnson, nearly three years earlier, had said of Granger:--'The +dog is a Whig. I do not like much to see a Whig in any dress; but I hate +to see a Whig in a parson's gown.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 24, 1773. + +[264] 'I did my utmost,' wrote Horace Walpole (_Letters_, v. 168), 'to +dissuade Mr. Granger from the dedication, and took especial pains to get +my _virtues_ left out of the question.' + +[265] + +'In moderation placing all my glory, +While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.' + +Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, Bk. ii Sat. I. 1. 67. + +[266] 'One of the dippers at Brighthelmstone, seeing Mr. Johnson swim in +the year 1766, said:--"Why, Sir, you must have been a stout-hearted +gentleman forty years ago."' _Piozzi's Anec_. p. 113. Johnson, in his +verses entitled, _In Rivum a Mola Stoana Lichfeldiæ diffluentem_ +(_Works_, i. 163), writes:-- + +'Errat adhuc vitreus per prata virentia rivus, + Quo toties lavi membra tenella puer; +Hic delusa rudi frustrabar brachia motu, + Dum docuit blanda voce natare pater.' + +[267] For this and Dr. Johnson's other letters to Mr. Levett, I am +indebted to my old acquaintance Mr. Nathaniel Thomas, whose worth and +ingenuity have been long known to a respectable, though not a wide +circle; and whose collection of medals would do credit to persons of +greater opulence. BOSWELL. + +[268] Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale shew the difference between +modern Brighton and the Brighthelmstone of his days. Thus he writes:-- +'Ashbourne, Sept. 27, 1777. I know not when I shall write again, now +you are going to the world's end [i.e. Brighton]. _Extra anni solisque +vias_, where the post will be a long time in reaching you. I shall, +notwithstanding all distance, continue to think on you.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 387. 'Oct. 6, 1777. Methinks you are now a great way off; +and if I come, I have a great way to come to you; and then the sea is so +cold, and the rooms are so dull; yet I do love to hear the sea roar and +my mistress talk--For when she talks, ye gods! how she will talk. I wish +I were with you, but we are now near half the length of England asunder. +It is frightful to think how much time must pass between writing this +letter and receiving an answer, if any answer were necessary.' +_Ib_. ii. 2. + +[269] Boswell wrote to Temple on Nov. 3, 1780:--'I could not help +smiling at the expostulation which you suggest to me to try with my +father. It would do admirably with some fathers; but it would make mine +much worse, for he cannot bear that his son should talk with him as a +man. I can only lament his unmelting coldness to my wife and children, +for I fear it is hopeless to think of his ever being more affectionate +towards them. Yet it must be acknowledged that his paying £1000 of my +debt some years ago was a large bounty. He allows me £300 a year.' +_Letters of Boswell_, p. 255. + +[270] See _ante_, Aug. 27, 1775, note. + +[271] See _ante_, p. 48, note 4. + +[272] 'He said to me often that the time he spent in this Tour was +the pleasantest part of his life, and asked me if I would lose the +recollection of it for five hundred pounds.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, +under Nov. 22, 1773. + +[273] Chap. viii. 10. A translation of this work is in +_Bibliotheca Pastorum_, ed. J. Ruskin, vol. i. + +[274] 'The chief cause of my deficiency has been a life immethodical +and unsettled, which breaks all purposes, confounds and suppresses +memory, and perhaps leaves too much leisure to imagination.' _Pr. and +Med_. p. 136. + +[275] Johnson wrote to Boswell (_ante_, June 12, 1774):--'I have +stipulated twenty-five for you to give in your own name.' The book was +published early in 1775. On Feb. 25, 1775, he wrote:--'I am sorry that I +could get no books for my friends in Scotland. Mr. Strahan has at last +promised to send two dozen to you.' It is strange that not far short of +two years passed before the books were sent. + +[276] Boswell had 'expressed his extreme aversion to his father's +second marriage.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 255--On Sept. 2, 1775, he +thus described his step-mother:--'His wife, whom in my conscience I +cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I +don't know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so +suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost +exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet.' _Ib_. p. 216. + +[277] See _ante_, Jan. 19 and May 6, 1775. + +[278] See _ante_, p. 86. + +[279] See _ante_, May 27, 1775. + +[280] Macquarry was the chief of Ulva's Isle. 'He told us,' writes +Boswell, 'his family had possessed Ulva for nine hundred years; but I +was distressed to hear that it was soon to be sold for payment of his +debts.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct 16, 1773. + +[281] See _ante_, March 24, 1776. + +[282] Mrs. Thrale gives a long but scarcely credible account of her +quarrel with Baretti. It is very unlikely that he used to say to her +eldest daughter 'that, if her mother died in a lying-in which happened +while he lived here, he hoped Mr. Thrale would marry Miss Whitbred, who +would be a pretty companion for her, and not tyrannical and overbearing +like me.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 336. No doubt in 1788 he attacked her +brutally (see _ante_, p. 49). 'I could not have suspected him,' wrote +Miss Burney, 'of a bitterness of invective so cruel, so ferocious.' Mme. +D'Arblay's _Diary_, iv. 185. The attack was provoked. Mrs. Piozzi, in +January, 1788, published one of Johnson's letters, in which he wrote--at +all events she says he wrote:--'Poor B----i! do not quarrel with him; to +neglect him a little will be sufficient. He means only to be frank, and +manly, and independent, and perhaps, as you say, a little wise. To be +frank he thinks is to be cynical, and to be independent is to be rude. +Forgive him, dearest lady, the rather because of his misbehaviour I am +afraid he learnt part of me. I hope to set him hereafter a better +example.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 277. Malone, in 1789, speaks of 'the +roughness for which Baretti was formerly distinguished.' Prior's +_Malone_, p. 391. Mrs. Thrale thus describes his departure: 'My daughter +kept on telling me that Mr. Baretti was grown very old and very cross, +would not look at her exercises, but said he would leave this house +soon, for it was no better than Pandæmonium. The next day he packed up +his cloke-bag, which he had not done for three years, and sent it to +town; and while we were wondering what he would say about it at +breakfast, he was walking to London himself, without taking leave of any +one person, except it may be the girl, who owns they had much talk, in +the course of which he expressed great aversion to me and even to her, +who, [_sic_] he said, he once thought well of.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. +339. Baretti, in the _Eur. Mag_. xiii. 398, told his story. He +said:--'Madam took it into her head to give herself airs, and treat me +with some coldness and superciliousness. I did not hesitate to set down +at breakfast my dish of tea not half drank, go for my hat and stick that +lay in the corner of the room, turn my back to the house _insalutato +hospite_, and walk away to London without uttering a syllable.' In a +marginal note on _Piozzi Letters_, i. 338, he says he left Streatham on +June 4, 1776. 'I had,' he writes, 'by that time been in a manner one of +the family during six years and a-half. Johnson had made me hope that +Thrale would at last give me an annuity for my pains, but, never +receiving a shilling from him or from her, I grew tired at last, and on +some provocation from her left them abruptly.' It should seem that he +afterwards made it up with them, for in a note on vol. ii. p. 191, he +says of the day of Mr. Thrale's death, 'Johnson and I, and many other +friends, were to dine with him that day.' The rest of the note, at all +events, is inaccurate, for he says that 'Mrs. Thrale imparted to Johnson +the news [of her husband's death],' whereas Johnson saw him die. + +[283] Mrs. Piozzi says that this money was given to Baretti as a +consolation for the loss of the Italian tour (_ante_, iii. 6). Hayward's +_Piozzi_, ii. 337. + +[284] The Duke of York was present when Foote had the accident by which +he lost his leg (_ante_, ii. 95). Moved by compassion, he obtained for +him from the King a royal patent for performances at the Haymarket from +May 14 to Sept. 14 in every year. He played but thrice after his +retirement. Forster's Essays, ii. 400, 435. + +[285] Strahan showed greater sagacity about Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, +which had been declined by Elmsly. 'So moderate were our hopes,' writes +Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, i. 223), 'that the original impression had been +stinted to five hundred, till the number was doubled by the prophetic +taste of Mr. Strahan.' Carrick called Strahan 'rather an _obtuse_ man.' +_Post_, April 9 1778. + +[286] See _post_, Sept. 19, 1777, and April 20, 1781. + +[287] Johnson, I believe, at this time suffered less than usual from +despondency. See _ante_, iii. 25, note 1. The passage in which these +words are found applies to one day only. It is as follows:--'March 28. +This day is Good Friday. It is likewise the day on which my poor Tetty +was taken from me. My thoughts were disturbed in bed. I remembered +that it was my wife's dying day, and begged pardon for all our sins, and +commended her; but resolved to mix little of my own sorrows or cares +with the great solemnity. Having taken only tea without milk I went to +church; had time before service to commend my wife, and wished to join +quietly in the service, but I did not hear well, and my mind grew +unsettled and perplexed. Having rested ill in the night I slumbered at +the sermon, which, I think, I could not as I sat perfectly hear.... At +night I had some ease. L.D. [Laus Deo] I had prayed for pardon and +peace.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 153. Hawkins, however (_Life_, p. 532), says, +perhaps with considerable exaggeration, that at this time, 'he sunk into +indolence, till his faculties seemed to be impaired; deafness grew upon +him; long intervals of mental absence interrupted his conversation, and +it was difficult to engage his attention to any subject. His friends +concluded that his lamp was emitting its last rays, but the lapse of a +short period gave them ample proofs to the contrary.' The proofs were +_The Lives of the Poets_. Johnson himself says of this time:--'Days and +months pass in a dream; and I am afraid that my memory grows less +tenacious, and my observation less attentive.' _Pr. and Med_. 160. + +[288] + +'Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind +Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.' + +Pope's _Essay on Man_, i. 99. + +[289] '"I inherited," said Johnson, "a vile melancholy from my father, +which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober."' Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Sept. 16, 1773. See _ante_, i. 65, and _post_, Sept. 20, +1777. + +[290] _Pr. and Med_. p. 155. BOSWELL. + +[291] _Pr. and Med_. p. 158. BOSWELL. + +[292] He continues:--'I passed the afternoon with such calm gladness of +mind as it is very long since I felt before. I passed the night in such +sweet uninterrupted sleep as I have not known since I slept at Fort +Augustus.' See _post_, Nov. 21, 1778, where in a letter to Boswell he +says:--'The best night that I have had these twenty years was at Fort +Augustus.' In 1767 he mentions (_Pr. and Med_. p. 73) 'a sudden relief +he once had by a good night's rest in Fetter Lane,' where he had lived +many years before. His good nights must have been rare indeed. + +[293] Bishop Percy says that he handed over to Johnson various memoranda +which he had received from 'Goldsmith's brother and others of his family, +to afford materials for a _Life of Goldsmith_, which Johnson was to +write and publish for their benefit. But he utterly forgot them and the +subject.' Prior successfully defends Johnson against the charge that he +did not include Goldsmith's _Life_ among the _Lives of the Poets_. 'The +copy-right of _She Stoops to Conquer_ was the property of Carnan the +bookseller (surviving partner of F. Newbery); and Carnan being "a most +impracticable man and at variance with all his brethren," in the words +of Malone to the Bishop, he refused his assent, and the project for the +time fell to the ground.' But Percy clearly implies that it was a +separate work and not one of the _Lives_ that Johnson had undertaken. +See Prior's _Goldsmith_, Preface, p. x. Malone, in a note on Boswell's +letter of July 9, 1777, says:--'I collected some materials for a _Life +of Goldsmith_, by Johnson's desire.' He goes on to mention the quarrel +with Carnan. It should seem then that Johnson was gathering materials +for Goldsmith's _Life_ before the _Lives of the Poets_ were projected; +that later on he intended to include it in that series, but being +thwarted by Carnan that he did nothing. + +[294] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773. + +[295] 'I have often desired him not to call me Goldy.' _Ib_. Oct. 14. + +[296] 'The Duke of Argyle was obliging enough to mount Dr. Johnson on a +stately steed from his grace's stable. My friend was highly pleased, and +Joseph [Boswell's Bohemian servant] said, "He now looks like a bishop."' +Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 26. + +[297] See _ante_, ii. 196. + +[298] Even Burke falls into the vulgarism of 'mutual friend.' See his +_Correspondence_, i. 196, ii. 251. Goldsmith also writes of 'mutual +acquaintance.' Cunningham's _Goldsmith's Works_, iv. 48. + +[299] He means to imply, I suppose, that Johnson was the father of +plantations. See _ante_, under Feb. 7, 1775. note. + +[300] For a character of this very amiable man, see _Journal of a Tour +to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 36. [Aug. 17.] BOSWELL. + +[301] By the then course of the post, my long letter of the 14th had not +yet reached him. BOSWELL. + +[302] _History of Philip the Second_. BOSWELL. + +[303] See _ante_, Jan. 21, 1775. + +[304] See _ante_, iii. 48. + +[305] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Jan. 15, 1777, that he had had about +twelve ounces of blood taken, and then about ten more, and that another +bleeding was to follow. 'Yet I do not make it a matter of much form. I +was to-day at Mrs. Gardiner's. When I have bled to-morrow, I will not +give up Langton nor Paradise. But I beg that you will fetch me away on +Friday. I do not know but clearer air may do me good; but whether the +air be clear or dark, let me come to you.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 344. See +_post_, Sept. 16, 1777, note. + +[306] See _ante_, i. 411, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773. + +[307] Johnson tried in vain to buy this book at Aberdeen. _Ib_. Aug. 23. + +[308] See _ante_, May 12, 1775. + +[309] No doubt her _Miscellanies_. _Ante_, ii. 25. + +[310] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 22. + +[311] John_son_ is the most common English formation of the Sirname from +_John_; John_ston_ the Scotch. My illustrious friend observed that many +North Britons pronounced his name in their own way. BOSWELL. Boswell +(_Hebrides_, Oct. 21, 1773) tells of one Lochbuy who, 'being told that +Dr. Johnson did not hear well, bawled out to him, "Are you of the +Johnstons of Glencro, or of Ardnamurchan?"' + +[312] See _post_, under Dec. 24, 1783. + +[313] Johnson's old amanuensis. _Ante_, i. 187. Johnson described him as +'a man of great learning.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 654. + +[314] On account of their differing from him as to religion and +politicks. BOSWELL. See _post_, April 13, 1778. Mr. Croker says that +'the Club had, as its records show, for many of his latter years very +little of his company.' + +[315] See _ante_, i. 225 note 2, July 4, 1774, and March 20, 1776. + +[316] Boswell was no reader. 'I don't believe,' Johnson once said to +him, 'you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable yourself +to borrow more.' _Ante_, April 16, 1775. Boswell wrote to Temple on +March 18, 1775:--'I have a kind of impotency of study.' Two months later +he wrote:--'I have promised to Dr. Johnson to read when I get to +Scotland, and to keep an account of what I read. I shall let you know +how I go on. My mind must be nourished.' _Letters of Boswell_, pp. 181, +195. + +[317] Chesterfield's _Letters to his Son_ were published in 1774, and +his _Miscellaneous Works_, together with _Memoirs and Letters to his +Friends_, early in 1777. + +[318] 'Whatso it is, the Danaan folk, yea gift-bearing I fear.' Morris, +Æneids, ii. 49. + +[319] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on March 19, 1777:--'You are all young, +and gay, and easy; but I have miserable nights, and know not how to make +them better; but I shift pretty well a-days, and so have at you all at +Dr. Burney's to-morrow.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 345. + +[320] A twelfth was born next year. See _post_, July 3, 1778. + +[321] It was March 29. + +[322] _Pr. and Med_. p. 155. BOSWELL + +[323] See _ante_, i. 341, note 3. + +[324] See _ante_, i. 439. + +[325] Johnson's moderation in demanding so small a sum is extraordinary. +Had he asked one thousand, or even fifteen hundred guineas, the +booksellers, who knew the value of his name, would doubtless have +readily given it. They have probably got five thousand guineas by this +work in the course of twenty-five years. MALONE. + +[326] See _post_, beginning of 1781. + +[327] See _ante_, ii. 272, note 2. + +[328] Mr. Joseph Cooper Walker, of the Treasury, Dublin, who obligingly +communicated to me this and a former letter from Dr. Johnson to the +same gentleman (for which see vol. i. p. 321), writes to me as follows: +--'Perhaps it would gratify you to have some account of Mr. O'Connor. He +is an amiable, learned, venerable old gentleman, of an independent +fortune, who lives at Belanagar, in the county of Roscommon; he is an +admired writer, and Member of the Irish Academy.--The above Letter is +alluded to in the Preface to the 2nd edit, of his _Dissert_, p. 3.'--Mr. +O'Connor afterwards died at the age of eighty-two. See a well-drawn +character of him in the _Gent. Mag_. for August 1791. BOSWELL. + +[329] Mr. Croker shows good reason for believing that in the original +letter this parenthesis stood:--'_if such there were_.' + +[330] See _ante_, i. 292. + +[331] 'Johnson had not heard of Pearce's _Sermons_, which I wondered at, +considering that he wrote all the _Life_ published by the Chaplain +Derby, except what his Lordship wrote himself.' _Letters of Boswell_, +p. 242. See ante, March 20, 1776. + +[332] Boswell, it seems, is here quoting himself. See his _Hebrides_, +3rd edit. p. 201 (Sept. 13, 1773), where, however, he lays the emphasis +differently, writing '_fervour_ of loyalty.' + +[333] 'An old acquaintance' of the Bishop says that 'he struggled hard +ten years ago to resign his Bishopric and the Deanery of Westminster, in +which our gracious King was willing to gratify him; but upon a +consultation of the Bishops they thought it could not be done with +propriety; yet he was permitted to resign the Deanery.' _Gent. Mag_. +1775, p. 421. + +[334] 'This person, it is said, was a stay-maker, but being a man of wit +and parts he betook himself to study, and at a time when the discipline +of the inns of court was scandalously lax, got himself called to the +Bar, and practised at the quarter-sessions under me, but with little +success. He became the conductor of a paper called _The Public Ledger_ +and a writer for the stage, in which he met with some encouragement, till +it was insinuated that he was a pensioner of the minister, and therefore +a fit object of patriotic vengeance.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 518. See +_ante_, ii. 48 note, and _post_, 1784, in Mr. Nichols's account of +Johnson's last days. + +[335] 'This address had the desired effect. The play was well received.' +Murphy's _Garrick_, p. 302. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield, +'Lucy [his step-daughter] thinks nothing of my prologue for Kelly, and +says she has always disowned it.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 352. + +[336] It was composed at a time when Savage was generally without +lodging, and often without meat. Much of it was written with pen and ink +that were borrowed, on paper that had been picked up in the streets. The +unhappy poet 'was obliged to submit himself wholly to the players, and +admit with whatever reluctance the emendations of Mr. Cibber, which he +always considered as the disgrace of his performance.' When it was +brought out, he himself took the part of Overbury. 'He was so much +ashamed of having been reduced to appear as a player, that he always +blotted out his name from the list when a copy of his tragedy was to be +shown to his friends.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 110-112. + +[337] It was not at Drury-lane, but at Covent Garden theatre, that it +was acted. MALONE. + +[338] Part First, Chap 4. BOSWELL. See _ante_ ii. 225. + +[339] _Life of Richard Savage_, by Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL. + +[340] See _ante_, i. 387, and _post_, May 17, 1783. + +[341] Sheridan joined the Literary Club in March, 1777. _The Rivals_ +and _The Duenna_ were brought out in 1775; _The Trip to Scarborough_ +on Feb. 24, 1777, and _The School for Scandal_ in the following May. +Moore (_Life of Sheridan_, i. 168), speaking of _The Duenna_, says, +'The run of this opera has, I believe, no parallel in the annals of the +drama. Sixty-three nights was the career of _The Beggar's Opera_; but +_The Duenna_ was acted no less than seventy-five times during the +season.' _The Trip to Scarborough_ was a failure. Johnson, therefore, +doubtless referred to _The Rivals_ and _The Duenna_. + +[342] The date is wrongly given. Boswell says that he wrote again on +June 23 (_post_, p. 120), and Johnson's letter of June 28 is in answer +to both letters. The right date is perhaps June 9. + +[343] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, under Nov. 11, 1773. + +[344] See pp. 29, 30, of this volume. BOSWELL. + +[345] Johnson, describing 'the fond intimacy' of Quin and Thomson, says +(_Works_, viii. 374):--'The commencement of this benevolence is very +honourable to Quin, who is reported to have delivered Thomson, then +known to him only for his genius, from an arrest by a very considerable +present; and its continuance is honourable to both, for friendship is +not always the sequel of obligation.' + +[346] See _ante_, ii. 63, and _post_, June 18, 1778. + +[347] Formerly Sub-preceptor to his present Majesty, and afterwards a +Commissioner of Excise. MALONE. + +[348] The physician and poet. He died in 1779. + +[349] Boswell nine years earlier (_ante_, ii. 63) had heard Johnson +accuse Thomson of gross sensuality. + +[350] 'Savage, who lived much with Thomson, once told me he heard a +lady remarking that she could gather from his works three parts of his +character, that he was a great lover, a great swimmer, and rigorously +abstinent; but, said Savage, he knows not any love but that of the sex; +he was perhaps never in cold water in his life; and he indulges himself +in all the luxury that comes within his reach.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. +377. + +[351] Dr. Johnson was not the _editor_ of this Collection of _The +English Poets_; he merely furnished the biographical prefaces. MALONE. +See _post_, Sept. 14, 1777. + +[352] See _ante_, under April 18, 1775. + +[353] One letter he seems to have sent to him from this spot. See +_ante_, ii. 3, note 1. + +[354] Dr. Johnson had himself talked of our seeing Carlisle together. +_High_ was a favourite word of his to denote a person of rank. He said +to me, 'Sir, I believe we may at the house of a Roman Catholick lady in +Cumberland; a high lady, Sir.' I afterwards discovered he meant Mrs. +Strickland, sister of Charles Townley, Esq., whose very noble collection +of pictures is not more to be admired, than his extraordinary and polite +readiness in shewing it, which I and several of my friends have +agreeably experienced. They who are possessed of valuable stores of +gratification to persons of taste, should exercise their benevolence in +imparting the pleasure. Grateful acknowledgments are due to Welbore +Ellis Agar, Esq., for the liberal access which he is pleased to allow to +his exquisite collection of pictures. BOSWELL. + +[355] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 11, 1773. + +[356] It is no doubt, on account of its brevity that Boswell in speaking +of it writes:--'What is called _The Life_.' + +[357] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct, 29, 1773. + +[358] See _ante_, under Feb. 7, 1775. + +[359] See post, p. 139. + +[360] See _ante_, i. 494. + +[361] From Prior's imitation of _Gualterus Danistonus ad Amicos_; the +poem mentioned by Boswell in his _Hebrides_, Aug. 18, 1773. + +[362] _Copy_ is _manuscript for printing_. + +[363] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 521) says that the jury did not at the trial +recommend Dodd to mercy. To one of the petitions 'Mrs. Dodd first got +the hands of the jury that found the bill against her husband, and after +that, as it is supposed, of the jury that tried him.' Ib. p. 527. He +says that the public were at first very little interested in his fate, +'but by various artifices, and particularly the insertion of his name in +public papers, with such palliatives as he and his friends could invent, +never with the epithet of _unfortunate_, they were betrayed into such an +enthusiastic commiseration of his case as would have led a stranger to +believe that himself had been no accessory to his distresses, but that +they were the inflictions of Providence.' Ib. p. 520. Johnson wrote to +Dr. Taylor on May 19:--'Poor Dodd was sentenced last week.... I am +afraid he will suffer. The clergy seem not to be his friends. The +populace, that was extremely clamorous against him, begins to pity him. +_Notes and Queries_, 6th S., v. 423. + +[364] Horace Walpole says 'the criminal was raised to the dignity of a +confessor in the eyes of the people--but an inexorable judge had already +pronounced his doom. Lord Mansfield, who never felt pity, and never +relented unless terrified, had indecently declared for execution even +before the judges had given their opinion. An incident that seemed +favourable weighed down the vigorous [qu. rigorous] scale. The Common +Council had presented a petition for mercy to the king. Lord Mansfield, +who hated the popular party as much as he loved severity, was not likely +to be moved by such intercessors. At Court it grew the language that the +king must discountenance such interposition.' Walpole adds that 'as an +attempt to rescue Dodd might be apprehended, two thousand men were +ordered to be reviewed in Hyde Park during the execution.' _Journal of +the Reign of George III_, ii. 125. + +[365] Johnson, in the '_Observations_ inserted in the newspapers' +(_post_, p. 142), said 'that though the people cannot judge of the +administration of justice so well as their governors, yet their voice +has always been regarded. That if the people now commit an error, their +error is on the part of mercy; and that perhaps history cannot shew a +time in which the life of a criminal, guilty of nothing above fraud, was +refused to the cry of nations, to the joint supplication of three and +twenty thousand petitioners.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 528. Johnson's +earnestness as a petitioner contrasts with the scornful way in which he +had spoken of petitions. 'There must be no yielding to encourage this,' +the minister might have answered in his own words. _Ante_, ii. 90. + +[366] The king signs no sentences or death warrants; but out of respect +to the Royal perogative of mercy, expressed by the old adage, '_The +King's face gives grace_,' the cases of criminals convicted in London, +where the king is supposed to be resident, were reported to him by the +recorder, that his Majesty might have an option of pardoning. Hence it +was seriously doubted whether a recorder's report need or, indeed, could +be made at Windsor. All his Majesty did on these occasions was, to +express verbally his assent or dissent to or from the execution of the +sentence; and, though the King was on such occasions attended by his +Ministers and the great legal Privy Councillors, the business was not +technically a council business, but the individual act of the King. +On the accession of Queen Victoria, the nature of some cases that it +might be necessary to report to her Majesty occasioned the abrogation of +a practice which was certainly so far unreasonable that it made a +difference between London and all the rest of the kingdom. CROKER. 'I +was exceedingly shocked,' said Lord Eldon, 'the first time I attended to +hear the Recorder's report, at the careless manner in which, as it +appeared to me, it was conducted. We were called upon to decide on +sentences affecting no less than the lives of men, and yet there was +nothing laid before us to enable us to judge whether there had or had +not been any extenuating circumstances; it was merely a recapitulation +of the judge's opinion and the sentence. I resolved that I never would +attend another report, without having read and duly considered the whole +of the evidence of each case, and I never did.' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. +398. + +[367] Under-Secretary of State and a member of the Literary Club. +_Ante_, i. 478. + +[368] Johnson does not here let Boswell know that he had written this +address (_post_, p. 141). Wesley, two days before Dodd's execution, +records (_Journal_, iv. 99):--'I saw Dr. Dodd for the last time. He was +in exactly such a temper as I wished. He never at any time expressed the +least murmuring or resentment at any one; but entirely and calmly gave +himself up to the will of God. Such a prisoner I scarce ever saw before; +much less such a condemned malefactor. I should think none could +converse with him without acknowledging that God is with him.' In +earlier years Wesley was more than once refused admittance to a man +under sentence of death who was 'earnestly desirous' to speak with him. +Wesley's _Journal_, ed. 1827, i. 255, 292, 378. + +[369] Between the Methodists and the Moravians there was no good-will. +In 1749 the Moravians published a declaration that 'whosoever reckons +that those persons in England who are usually called Moravians, and +those who are called Methodists, are the same, he is mistaken.' +Thereupon Wesley recorded in his _Journal_, ii. l20:--'The Methodists, +so called, heartily thank Brother Louis for his Declaration; as they +count it no honour to be in any connexion either with him or his +Brethren.' + +[370] Since they have been so much honoured by Dr. Johnson I shall here +insert them: + +'TO MR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. + +'MY EVER DEAR AND MUCH-RESPECTED SIR, + +'You know my solemn enthusiasm of mind. You love me for it, and I +respect myself for it, because in so far I resemble Mr. Johnson. You +will be agreeably surprized when you learn the reason of my writing this +letter. I am at Wittemberg in Saxony. I am in the old church where the +Reformation was first preached, and where some of the reformers lie +interred. I cannot resist the serious pleasure of writing to Mr. Johnson +from the Tomb of Melancthon. My paper rests upon the gravestone of that +great and good man, who was undoubtedly the worthiest of all the +reformers. He wished to reform abuses which had been introduced into the +Church; but had no private resentment to gratify. So mild was he, that +when his aged mother consulted him with anxiety on the perplexing +disputes of the times, he advised her "to keep to the old religion." At +this tomb, then, my ever dear and respected friend! I vow to thee an +eternal attachment. It shall be my study to do what I can to render your +life happy: and, if you die before me, I shall endeavour to do honour to +your memory; and, elevated by the remembrance of you, persist in noble +piety. May GOD, the Father of all beings, ever bless you! and may you +continue to love, + +'Your most affectionate friend, and devoted servant, +'JAMES BOSWELL.' +'Sunday, Sept. 30, 1764.' + +'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. +'Wilton-house, April 22, 1775. +'My DEAR SIR, + +'Every scene of my life confirms the truth of what you have told me, +"there is no certain happiness in this state of being."--I am here, +amidst all that you know is at Lord Pembroke's; and yet I am weary and +gloomy. I am just setting out for the house of an old friend in +Devonshire, and shall not get back to London for a week yet. You said to +me last Good-Friday, with a cordiality that warmed my heart, that if I +came to settle in London, we should have a day fixed every week, to meet +by ourselves and talk freely. To be thought worthy of such a privilege +cannot but exalt me. During my present absence from you, while, +notwithstanding the gaiety which you allow me to possess, I am darkened +by temporary clouds, I beg to have a few lines from you; a few lines +merely of kindness, as--a _viaticum_ till I see you again. In your +_Vanity of Human Wishes_, and in Parnell's _Contentment_, I find the +only sure means of enjoying happiness; or, at least, the hopes of +happiness. I ever am, with reverence and affection, + +'Most faithfully yours, + +'JAMES BOSWELL.' + +[371] William Seward, Esq., F.R.S., editor of _Anecdotes of some +distinguished persons_, etc., in four volumes, 8vo., well known to a +numerous and valuable acquaintance for his literature, love of the fine +arts, and social virtues. I am indebted to him for several +communications concerning Johnson. BOSWELL. Miss Burney frequently +mentions him as visiting the Thrales. 'Few people do him justice,' said +Mrs. Thrale to her, 'because as Dr. Johnson calls him, he is an abrupt +young man; but he has excellent qualities, and an excellent +understanding.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 141. Miss Burney, in one of +her letters, says:--'Mr. Seward, who seems to be quite at home among +them, appears to be a penetrating, polite, and agreeable young man. Mrs. +Thrale says of him, that he does good to everybody, but speaks well of +nobody.' _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, ii. 89. He must not be confounded with +the Rev. Mr. Seward of Lichfield. + +[372] See _post_, under date of June 18, 1778. + +[373] In the list of deaths in the _Gent. Mag_. for 1779, p. 103, we +find, 'Feb. 8. Isaac de Groot, great-grandson to the learned Grotius. +He had long been supported by private donations, and at length was +provided for in the Charterhouse, where he died.' + +[374] The preceding letter. BOSWELL. + +[375] This letter was addressed not to a Mr. Dilly, but to Mr. W. Sharp, +Junior. See _Gent. Mag_. 1787, p. 99. CROKER. + +[376] See _ante_, i. 312. + +[377] See _ante_, p. 101. + +[378] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 16. + +[379] See ante, p. 86, and _post_, under Nov. 29, 1777. + +[380] Johnson gives both _epocha_ and _epoch_ in his _Dictionary_. + +[381] Langton. See _ante_, p. 48, and _post_, Sept. 22, 1777. + +[382] This very just remark I hope will be constantly held in +remembrance by parents, who are in general too apt to indulge their own +fond feelings for their children at the expence of their friends. The +common custom of introducing them after dinner is highly injudicious. It +is agreeable enough that they should appear at any other time; but they +should not be suffered to poison the moments of festivity by attracting +the attention of the company, and in a manner compelling them from +politeness to say what they do not think. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p. 28. + +[383] Gibbon wrote to Garrick from Paris on Aug. 14:--'At this time of +year the society of the Turk's-head can no longer be addressed as a +corporate body, and most of the individual members are probably +dispersed: Adam Smith in Scotland; Burke in the shades of Beaconsfield; +Fox, the Lord or the devil knows where, etc. Be so good as to salute in +my name those friends who may fall in your way. Assure Sir Joshua, in +particular, that I have not lost my relish for _manly_ conversation and +the society of the brown table.' _Garrick Corres_. ii. 256. I believe +that in Gibbon's published letters no mention is found of Johnson. + +[384] See _ante_, ii. 159, and _post_, April 4, 1778. Of his greatness +at the Bar Lord Eldon has left the following anecdote;--'Mr. Dunning, +being in very great business, was asked how he contrived to get through +it all. He said, "I do one third of it, another third does itself, and +the remaining third continues undone."' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 327. + +[385] It is not easy to detect Johnson in anything that comes even near +an inaccuracy. Let me quote, therefore, a passage from one of his +letters which shews that when he wrote to Mrs. Boswell he had not, as +he seems to imply, eaten any of the marmalade:--'Aug. 4, 1777. I believe +it was after I left your house that I received a pot of orange marmalade +from Mrs. Boswell. We have now, I hope, made it up. I have not opened my +pot.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 350. + +[386] See _ante_, March 19, 1776. + +[387] What it was that had occured is shewn by Johnson's letter to Mrs. +Thrale on Aug. 4:--'Boswell's project is disconcerted by a visit from a +relation of Yorkshire, whom he mentions as the head of his clan [see +_ante_, ii. 169, note 2]. Boszy, you know, make a huge bustle about +all his own motions and all mine. I have inclosed a letter to pacify +him, and reconcile him to the uncertainties of human life.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 350. + +[388] When she was about four months old, Boswell declared that she +should have five hundred pounds of additional fortune, on account of +her fondness for Dr. Johnson. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773. +She died, says Malone, of a consumption, four months after her father. + +[389] See _ante_, March 23, 1776. + +[390] By an odd mistake, in the first three editions we find a reading +in this line to which Dr. Johnson would by no means have subscribed, +_wine_ having been substituted for _time_. That error probably was a +mistake in the transcript of Johnson's original letter. The other +deviation in the beginning of the line (_virtue_ instead of nature) must +be attributed to his memory having deceived him. The verse quoted is the +concluding line of a sonnet of Sidney's:-- + +'Who doth desire that chast his wife should bee, + First be he true, for truth doth truth deserve; +Then be he such, as she his worth may see, + And, alwaies one, credit with her preserve: +Not toying kynd nor causelessly unkynd, + Nor stirring thoughts, nor yet denying right, +Nor spying faults, nor in plaine errors blind, + Never hard hand, nor ever rayns (reins) too light; +As far from want, as far from vaine expence, + Th' one doth enforce, the t'other doth entice: +Allow good companie, but drive from thence + All filthie mouths that glorie in their vice: +This done, thou hast no more but leave the rest + To _nature_, fortune, _time_, and woman's breast.' + +MALONE. + +[391] 2 Corinthians, iv. 17. + +[392] Boswell says (ante, i. 342):--'I am not satisfied if a year passes +without my having read _Rasselas_ through.' + +[393] It appears that Johnson, now in his sixty-eighth year, was +seriously inclined to realise the project of our going up the Baltick, +which I had started when we were in the Isle of Sky [Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Sept. 16]; for he thus writes to Mrs. Thrale; _Letters_, +vol. i. p. 366:-- + +'Ashbourne, Sept. 13, 1777. + +'BOSWELL, I believe, is coming. He talks of being here to day: I shall +be glad to see him: but he shrinks from the Baltick expedition, which, I +think, is the best scheme in our power: what we shall substitute I know +not. He wants to see Wales; but, except the woods of _Bachycraigh_, what +is there in Wales, that can fill the hunger of ignorance, or quench the +thirst of curiosity? We may, perhaps, form some scheme or other; but, in +the phrase of _Hockley in the Hole_, it is a pity he has not a _better +bottom_.' + +Such an ardour of mind, and vigour of enterprise, is admirable at any +age: but more particularly so at the advanced period at which Johnson +was then arrived. I am sorry now that I did not insist on our executing +that scheme. Besides the other objects of curiosity and observation, to +have seen my illustrious friend received, as he probably would have +been, by a Prince so eminently distinguished for his variety of talents +and acquisitions as the late King of Sweden; and by the Empress of +Russia, whose extraordinary abilities, information, and magnanimity, +astonish the world, would have afforded a noble subject for +contemplation and record. This reflection may possibly be thought too +visionary by the more sedate and cold-blooded part of my readers; yet I +own, I frequently indulge it with an earnest, unavailing regret. +BOSWELL. In _The Spectator_, No. 436, Hockley in the Hole is described +as 'a place of no small renown for the gallantry of the lower order of +Britons.' Fielding mentions it in _Jonathan Wild_, bk. i. ch. 2:-- +'Jonathan married Elizabeth, daughter of Scragg Hollow, of Hockley +in the Hole, Esq., and by her had Jonathan, who is the illustrious +subject of these memoirs.' In _The Beggar's Opera_, act i. Mrs. Peachum +says to Filch: 'You should go to Hockley in the Hole, and to Marylebone, +child, to learn valour. These are the schools that have bred so many +brave men.' Hockley in the Hole was in Clerkenwell. That Johnson had +this valour was shewn two years earlier, when he wrote to Mrs. Thrale +about a sum of £14,000 that the Thrales had received: 'If I had money +enough, what would I do? Perhaps, if you and master did not hold me, I +might go to Cairo, and down the Red Sea to Bengal, and take a ramble in +India. Would this be better than building and planting? It would surely +give more variety to the eye, and more amplitude to the mind. Half +fourteen thousand would send me out to see other forms of existence, and +bring me back to describe them.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 266. To the 'King +of Sweden' _late_ was added in the second edition; Gustavus III having +been assassinated in March 1792. The story is somewhere told that George +III, on hearing the news, cried out, 'What, what, what! Shot, shot, +shot!' The Empress of Russia was Catherine II. + +[394] It so happened. The letter was forwarded to my house at Edinburgh. +BOSWELL. Arthur Young (_Tour through the North of England_, iv. 431-5) +describes, in 1768, some of the roads along which Boswell was to travel +nine years later. 'I would advise all travellers to consider the country +between Newcastle-under-Line and Preston as sea, and as soon think of +driving into the ocean as venturing into such detestable roads. I am +told the Derby way to Manchester is good, but further is not +penetrable.' The road from Wigan to Preston he calls 'infernal,' and +'cautions all travellers, who may accidentally purpose to travel this +terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to +one they break their necks or their limbs. They will here meet with ruts +which I actually measured four feet deep, and floating with mud only +from a wet summer; what therefore must it be after a winter?' + +[395] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 15, 1777:--'Last night came +Boswell. I am glad that he is come. He seems to be very brisk and +lively, and laughs a little at ---- [no doubt Taylor].' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 368. On the 18th he wrote:--'Boswell is with us in good +humour, and plays his part with his usual vivacity.' On this Baretti +noted in his copy:--'That is, he makes more noise than anybody in +company, talking and laughing loud.' On p. 216 in vol. i. he +noted:--'Boswell is not quite right-headed in my humble opinion.' + +[396] In the _Gent. Mag_. for 1777, p. 458, it is described as a +'violent shock.' + +[397] 'Grief has its time' he once said (_post_, June 2, 1781). 'Grief +is a species of idleness,' he wrote to Mrs. Thrale (_Piozzi Letters_, +i. 77). He constantly taught that it is a duty not to allow the mind to +prey on itself. 'Gaiety is a duty when health requires it' (Croker's +_Boswell_, p. 529). 'Encourage yourself in bustle, and variety, and +cheerfulness,' he wrote to Mrs. Thrale ten weeks after the +death of her only surviving son (_Piozzi Letters_, i. 341). 'Even to +think in the most reasonable manner,' he said at another time, 'is for +the present not useful as not to think.' _Ib_ i. 202. When Mr. Thrale +died, he wrote to his widow:--'I think business the best remedy for +grief, as soon as it can be admitted.' _Ib_. ii 197. To Dr. Taylor +Johnson wrote:--'Sadness only multiplies self.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th +S., v. 461. + +[398] 'There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is +something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot +be loved, nor will by me at least be thought worthy of esteem.' _Piozzi +Letters_, ii. 198. Against this Baretti has written in the margin:-- +'Johnson never grieved much for anything. His trade was wisdom.' See +_ante_, ii. 94. + +[399] See _ante_, iii 19. Mr. Croker gives a reference to p. 136 of his +edition. Turning to it we find an account of Johnson, who rode upon +three horses. It would seem from this that, because John=Jack, therefore +Johnson=Jackson. + +[400] Mr. Croker remarks on this:--'Johnson evidently thought, either +that Ireland is generally mountainous, or that Mr. Burke came from a +part which was: but he was mistaken.' The allusion may well be, not to +Burke as a native of Ireland, but to him as a student of national +politics and economy, to whom any general reflections on the character +of mountaineers would be welcome. In Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 201, +it is stated that 'it was the philosophy of the book that Burke thought +well of.' + +[401] Mr. Langley, I have little doubt, is the Mr. L---- of the +following passage in Johnson's letter, written from Ashbourne on July +12, 1775:--'Mr. L---- and the Doctor still continue at variance; and the +Doctor is afraid and Mr. L---- not desirous of a reconciliation. I +therefore step over at by-times, and of by-times I have enough.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 267. + +[402] See _ante_, ii. 52. + +[403] George Garrick. See Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 141. + +[404] See _ante_, March 26, 1776, and _post_, Sept. 21, 1777. + +[405] 'While Lord Bathurst held the Great Seal, an attempt was in vain +made to corrupt him by a secret offer to Lady Bathurst of three thousand +guineas for the living of St. George's, Hanover Square. The offer was +traced to the famous Dr. Dodd, then a King's Chaplain, and he was +immediately dismissed.' Campbell's _Chancellors_, v. 464. See Walpole's +_Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 298. + +[406] Horace Walpole, who accompanied Prince Edward to a service at the +Magdalen House in 1760, thus describes the service (_Letters_, iii. 282): +--'As soon as we entered the chapel the organ played, and the Magdalens +sung a hymn in parts. You cannot imagine how well. The chapel was +dressed with orange and myrtle, and there wanted nothing but a little +incense to drive away the devil,--or to invite him. Prayers then began, +psalms and a sermon; the latter by a young clergyman, one Dodd, who +contributed to the Popish idea one had imbibed, by haranguing entirely +in the French style, and very eloquently and touchingly. He +apostrophised the lost sheep, who sobbed and cried from their souls: so +did my Lady Hertford and Fanny Pelham, till, I believe, the city dames +took them both for Jane Shores. The confessor then turned to the +audience, and addressed himself to his Royal Highness, whom he called +most illustrious prince, beseeching his protection. In short, it was a +very pleasing performance, and I got _the most illustrious_ to desire it +might be printed.' Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 503) heard Dodd preach in +1769. 'We had,' he says, 'difficulty to get tolerable seats, the crowd +of genteel people was so great. The unfortunate young women were in a +latticed gallery, where you could only see those who chose to be seen. +The preacher's text was, "If a man look on a woman to lust after her," +&c. The text itself was shocking, and the sermon was composed with the +least possible delicacy, and was a shocking insult on a sincere +penitent, and fuel for the warm passions of the hypocrites. The fellow +was handsome, and delivered his discourse remarkably well for a reader. +When he had finished, there were unceasing whispers of applause, which I +could not help contradicting aloud, and condemning the whole +institution, as well as the exhibition of the preacher, as _contra bonos +mores_, and a disgrace to a Christian city.' Goldsmith in 1774 exposed +Dodd as a 'quacking divine' in his _Retaliation_. He describes Dr. +Douglas as a 'The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks,' and he +continues,-- + +'But now he is gone, and we want a detector, +Our Dodds shall be pious, our Kenricks shall lecture.' + +See _post_, April 7, 1778. + +[407] The fifth earl, the successor of the celebrated earl. On Feb. 22, +1777, Dodd was convicted of forging a bond for £4,200 in his name; _Ann. +Reg_. xx. 168. The earl was unfortunate in his tutors, for he had been +also under Cuthbert Shaw (_ante_, ii 31 note 2). + +[408] Mr. Croker quotes the following letter of Dodd, dated 1750:--'I +spent yesterday afternoon with Johnson, the celebrated author of _The +Rambler_, who is of all others the oddest and most peculiar fellow I +ever saw. He is six feet high, has a violent convulsion in his head, +and his eyes are distorted. He speaks roughly and loud, listens to no +man's opinions, thoroughly pertinacious of his own. Good sense flows +from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund +of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a +manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders it disagreeable +and dissatisfactory. In short it is impossible for words to describe +him. He seems often inattentive to what passes in company, and then +looks like a person possessed by some superior spirit. I have been +reflecting on him ever since I saw him. He is a man of most universal +and surprising genius, but in himself particular beyond expression.' +Dodd was born in 1729. + +[409] 'One of my best and tenderest friends,' Johnson called him, _post_, +July 31, 1784. See _post_, April 10, 1778. + +[410] _The Convict's Address to his Unhappy Brethren: Being a Sermon +preached by the Rev. Dr. Dodd, Friday, June 6, 1777, in the Chapel of +Newgate, while under sentence of death, for forging the name of the +Earl of Chesterfield on a bond for £4,200. Sold by the booksellers and +news-carriers. Price Two-pence_. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale from +Lichfield on Aug. 9:--'Lucy said, "When I read Dr. Dodd's sermon to the +prisoners, I said Dr. Johnson could not make a better."' + +_Piozzi Letters_, i. 352. See _post_, p. 167. + +[411] 'What must I do to be saved?' _Acts_ xvi. 30. + +[412] 'And finally we must commend and entrust our souls to Him who +died for the sins of men; with earnest wishes and humble hopes that +He will admit us with the labourers who entered the vineyard at the last +hour, and associate us with the thief whom he pardoned on the cross.' p. +14. + +[413] _The Gent. Mag_. for 1777 (p. 450) says of this address:--'As +none but a convict could have written this, all convicts ought to read +it; and we therefore recommend its being framed, and hung up in all +prisons.' Mr. Croker, italicising _could_ and suppressing the latter +part of the sentence, describes it as a criticism that must have been +offensive to Johnson. The writer's meaning is simple enough. The +address, he knew, was delivered in the Chapel of Newgate by a prisoner +under sentence of death. If, instead of 'written' he had said +'delivered,' his meaning would have been quite clear. + +[414] Having unexpectedly, by the favour of Mr. Stone, of London +Field, Hackney, seen the original in Johnson's hand-writing, of 'The +Petition of the City of London to his Majesty, in favour of Dr. Dodd,' I +now present it to my readers, with such passages as were omitted +in-closed in crotchets, and the additions or variations marked in +Italicks. + +'That William Dodd, Doctor of Laws, now lying under sentence of death +_in your Majesty's gaol of Newgate_, for the crime of forgery, has for a +great part of his life set a useful and laudable example of diligence in +his calling, [and as we have reason to believe, has exercised his +ministry with great fidelity and efficacy,] _which, in many instances, +has produced the most happy effect_. + +'That he has been the first institutor, [or] _and_ a very earnest and +active promoter of several modes of useful charity, and [that] therefore +[he] may be considered as having been on many occasions a benefactor to +the publick. + +'[That when they consider his past life, they are willing to suppose his +late crime to have been not the consequence of habitual depravity, but +the suggestion of some sudden and violent temptation.] + +'[That] _Your Petitioners_ therefore considering his case, as in some of +its circumstances unprecedented and peculiar, _and encouraged by your +Majesty's known clemency_, [they] most humbly recommend the said William +Dodd to [his] your Majesty's most gracious consideration, in hopes that +he will be found not altogether [unfit] _unworthy_ to stand an example +of Royal Mercy.' BOSWELL. + +[415] His Speech at the Old Bailey, when found guilty. BOSWELL. + +[416] In the second edition he is described as 'now Lord Hawkesbury.' +He had entered public life as Lord Bute's private secretary, and, +according to Horace Walpole, continued in it as his tool.' _Memoirs of +the Reign of George III_, iv. 70, 115. Walpole speaks of him as one of +'the Jesuits of the Treasury' (_Ib_. p. 110), and 'the director or agent +of all the King's secret counsels. His appearance was abject, his +countenance betrayed a consciousness of secret guilt; and, though his +ambition and rapacity were insatiate, his demeanour exhibited such a +want of spirit, that had he stood forth as Prime Minister, which he +really was, his very look would have encouraged opposition.' _Ib_. p. +135. The third Earl of Liverpool wrote to Mr. Croker on Dec. 7, 1845: +--'Very shortly before George III's accession my father became +confidential secretary of Lord Bute, if you can call secretary a man who +all through his life was so bad a penman that he always dictated +everything, and of whom, although I have a house full of papers, I have +scarcely any in his own hand.' _Croker Corres_. iii. 178. The editor is +in error in saying that the Earl of Liverpool who wrote this was son of +the Prime Minister. He was his half-brother. + +[417] Burke wrote to Garrick of Fitzherbert:--'You know and love him; +but I assure you, until we can talk some late matters over, you, even +you, can have no adequate idea of the worth of that man.' _Garrick +Corres_. i. 190. See _ante_, i. 82. + +[418] 'I remember a man,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (_Synonomy_, i. 2l7), +'much delighted in by the upper ranks of society, who upon a trifling +embarrassment in his affairs hanged himself behind the stable door, to +the astonishment of all who knew him as the liveliest companion and +most agreeable converser breathing. "What upon earth," said one at our +house, "could have made--[Fitzherbert] hang himself?" "Why, just his +having a multitude of acquaintance," replied Dr. Johnson, "and ne'er a +friend."' See _ante_, ii. 228. + +[419] Dr. Gisborne, Physician to his Majesty's Household, has +obligingly communicated to me a fuller account of this story than had +reached Dr. Johnson. The affected Gentleman was the late John Gilbert +Cooper, Esq., author of a _Life of Socrates_, and of some poems in +Dodsley's _Collection_. Mr. Fitzherbert found him one morning, +apparently, in such violent agitation, on account of the indisposition +of his son, as to seem beyond the power of comfort. At length, however, +he exclaimed, 'I'll write an Elegy.' Mr. Fitzherbert being satisfied, by +this, of the sincerity of his emotions, slyly said, 'Had not you better +take a postchaise and go and see him?' It was the shrewdness of the +insinuation which made the story be circulated. BOSWELL. Malone +writes:--'Mr. Cooper was the last of the _benevolists_ or +sentimentalists, who were much in vogue between 1750 and 1760, and dealt +in general admiration of virtue. They were all tenderness in words; +their finer feeling evaporated in the moment of expression, for they had +no connection with their practice.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 427. See +_ante_, ii. 129. This fashion seems to have reached Paris a few years +later. Mme. Riccoboni wrote to Garrick on May 3, 1769:--'Dans notre +brillante capitale, où dominent les airs et la mode, s'attendrir, +s'émouvoir, s'affliger, c'est le bon ton du moment. La bonté, la +sensibilité, la tendre humanité sont devenues la fantaisie universelle. +On ferait volontiers des malheureux pour goûter la douceur de les +plaindre.' Garrick _Corres_. ii. 561. + +[420] Johnson had felt the truth of this in the case of 'old Mr. +Sheridan.' _Ante_, i. 387. + +[421] Johnson, in his letters from Ashbourne, used to joke about +Taylor's cattle:--'July 23, 1770. I have seen the great bull, and very +great he is. I have seen likewise his heir apparent, who promises to +enherit all the bulk and all the virtues of his sire, I have seen the +man who offered an hundred guineas for the young bull, while he was yet +little better than a calf.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 33. 'July 3, 1771. The +great bull has no disease but age. I hope in time to be like the great +bull; and hope you will be like him too a hundred years hence.' _Ib_. p. +39. 'July 10, 1771. There has been a man here to-day to take a farm. +After some talk he went to see the bull, and said that he had seen a +bigger. Do you think he is likely to get the farm?' _Ib_. p. 43. 'Oct. +31, 1772. Our bulls and cows are all well; but we yet hate the man that +had seen a bigger bull.' _Ib_. p. 61. + +[422] Quoted by Boswell in his _Hebrides_, Aug. 16, 1773. + +[423] In the letters that Boswell and Erskine published (_ante_, 384, +note) are some verses by Erskine, of very slight merit. + +[424] Horace, _Odes_, ii. 4. + +[425] + +'The tender glance, the red'ning cheek, + O'erspread with rising blushes, +A thousand various ways they speak + A thousand various wishes.' + +Hamilton's _Poems_, ed. 1760, p. 59. + +[426] In the original, _Now. Ib_. p. 39. + +[427] Thomson, in _The Seasons_, Winter, 1. 915, describes how the ocean + + 'by the boundless frost +Is many a fathom to the bottom chain'd.' + +In 1. 992, speaking of a thaw, he says, + +'The rivers swell of bonds impatient.' + +[428] See _ante_ March 24, 1776. + +[429] Johnson wrote of Pope (_Works_, viii. 309):--'The indulgence and +accommodation which his sickness required had taught him all the +unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary man.' + +[430] When he was ill of a fever he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'The doctor +was with me again to-day, and we both think the fever quite gone. I +believe it was not an intermittent, for I took of my own head physick +yesterday; and Celsus says, it seems, that if a cathartick be taken the +fit will return _certo certius_. I would bear something rather than +Celsus should be detected in an error. But I say it was a _febris +continua_, and had a regular crisis.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 89. + +[431] Johnson must have shortened his life by the bleedings that he +underwent. How many they were cannot be known, for no doubt he was +often bled when he has left no record of it. The following, however, I +have noted. I do not know that he was bled more than most people of his +time. Dr. Taylor, it should seem, underwent the operation every quarter. + +Dec. 1755. Thrice. 54 ounces. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 100. + +Jan. 1761. Once. _Ib_. p. 122. + +April 1770. Cupped. _Pemb. Coll. MSS_. + +Winter of 1772-3. Three times. _Ante_, ii. 206, and _Pemb. Coll. MSS_. + +May 1773. Two copious bleedings. _Pr. and Med_. 130. + +1774. Times not mentioned. 36 ounces. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 209. + +Jan. 1777. Three bleedings. 22 ounces in first two. _Ib_. i. 343. + +Jan. 1780. Once. _Post_, Jan. 20, 1780. + +June 1780. Times not mentioned. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 649. + +Jan. and Feb. 1782. Thrice. 50 ounces. _Post_, Feb. 4 and March 20, +1782. + +May 1782. At least once. _Post_, under March 19, 1782, and _Piozzi +Letters_, ii. 240. + +Yet he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, 'I am of the chymical sect, which holds +phlebotomy in abhorrence.' _Ib_. ii. 240. 'O why,' asks Wesley, who was +as strongly opposed to bleeding as he was fond of poulticing, 'will +physicians play with the lives of their patients? Do not others (as well +as old Dr. Cockburn) know that "no end is answered by bleeding in a +pleurisy, which may not be much better answered without it?"' Wesley's +_Journal_, ii. 310. 'Dr. Cheyne,' writes Pope, 'was of Mr. Cheselden's +opinion, that bleeding might be frequently repeated with safety, for he +advised me to take four or five ounces every full moon.' Elwin and +Courthope's _Pope's Works_, ix. 162. + +[432] 'It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to +tell him he is at the end of his nature.' _Sir Thomas Browne _quoted in +Johnson's _Works_, vi. 485. See _post_, April 15, 1778, and Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Sept. 12, 1773. + +[433] In the last number of _The Idler_ Johnson says:--'There are few +things not purely evil of which we can say without some emotion of +uneasiness, _this is the last_.... The secret horrour of the last is +inseparable from a thinking being whose life is limited, and to whom +death is dreadful.' + +[434] In the first edition for _scarce any man_ we find _almost no +man_. See _ante_, March 20, 1776, note. + +[435] Bacon, in his _Essay on Death_, says:--'It is worthy the +observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it +mates and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such +terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can +win the combat of him.' In the _De Aug. Sci_. vi. 3. 12, he says:--'Non +invenias inter humanos affetum tam pusillum, qui si intendatur paullo +vehementius, non mortis metum superet.' + +[436] Johnson, in his _Lives of Addison and Parnell_ (_Works_, vii. 399, +449), mentions that they drank too freely. See _post_, under Dec. 2, +1784. + +[437] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_. 3d edit. p. 240 [Sept. 22]. +BOSWELL. + +[438] In the _Life of Addison_ (_Works_, vii. 444) he says:--'The +necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the great +impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent monuments +and records; but Lives can only be written from personal knowledge, +which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost for ever. +What is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it might be told, +it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the nice +discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of conduct, +are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice, obstinacy, +frolick and folly, however they might delight in the description, should +be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment and unseasonable +detection, a pang should be given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or +a friend. As the process of these narratives is now bringing me among my +contemporaries, I begin to feel myself "walking upon ashes under which +the fire is not extinguished," and coming to the time of which it will +be proper rather to say "nothing that is false, than all that is true."' +See _ante_, i. 9, and 30. + +[439] Dr. Taylor was very ready to make this admission, because the +party with which he was connected was not in power. There was then +some truth in it, owing to the pertinacity of factious clamour. Had he +lived till now, it would have been impossible for him to deny that his +Majesty possesses the warmest affection of his people. BOSWELL. See +_post_, March 21, 1783. + +[440] The Duke of York in 1788, speaking in the House of Lords on +the King's illness, said:--'He was confident that his Royal Highness +[the Prince of Wales] understood too well the sacred principles which +seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain ever to +assume or exercise any power, be his claim what it might, not derived +from the will of the people, expressed by their representatives, and +their lordships in parliament assembled.' _Parl. Hist_. xxvii. 678. + +[441] See _ante_, i. 430. + +[442] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 18, 1773, and _post_, under +date of Sept. 9, 1779, note. + +[443] 'The return of my birth-day,' he wrote in 1773, 'if I remember +it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of +humanity to escape.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 134. In 1781 he viewed the +day with calmness, _if not with cheerfulness_. He writes:--'I rose, +breakfasted, and gave thanks at church for my creation, preservation and +redemption. As I came home, I thought I had never begun any period of +life so placidly. I have always been accustomed to let this day pass +unnoticed, but it came this time into my mind that some little festivity +was not improper. I had a dinner; and invited Allen and Levet.' _Pr. and +Med_. p. 198. In 1783 he again had 'a little dinner,' and invited four +friends to keep the day. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 739. At Streatham the +day, it would seem, was always kept. Mrs. Piozzi writes (_Anec_. p. +211):--'On the birthday of our eldest daughter, and that of our friend, +Dr. Johnson, the 17th and 18th of September, we every year made up a +little dance and supper to divert our servants and their friends.' + +[444] The son of a Mr. Coxeter, 'a gentleman,' says Johnson, 'who was +once my friend,' enlisted in the service of the East India Company. +Johnson asked Mr. Thrale to use his influence to get his discharge. +_Piozzi Letters_, i. 33. + +[445] The bookseller whom Johnson beat, _ante_, i. 154. + +[446] 'When a well-known author published his poems in the year 1777, +"Such a one's verses are come out," said I: "Yes," replied Johnson, +"and this frost has struck them in again. Here are some lines I have +written to ridicule them; but remember that I love the fellow dearly +now--for all I laugh at him. + +'Wheresoe'er I turn my view, +All is strange, yet nothing new; +Endless labour all along, +Endless labour to be wrong; +Phrase that time has flung away; +Uncouth words in disarray, +Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, +Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.'"' + +Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 64. + +Thomas Warton in 1777 published a volume of his poems. He, no doubt, is +meant. + +[447] In _The Rambler_, No. 121. Johnson, twenty-six years earlier, +attacked 'the imitation of Spenser, which, by the influence of some men +of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age.... They seem +to conclude that, when they have disfigured their lines with a few +obsolete syllables, they have accomplished their design, without +considering that they ought, not only to admit old words, but to avoid +new. The laws of imitation are broken by every word introduced since the +time of Spenser.' + +[448] Warton's _Ode on the First of April_ is found a line which may +have suggested these two lines:--'The morning hoar, and evening chill.' + +[449] 'Collins affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; +and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with +some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to +write poetry.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 404. Goldsmith, eleven years +earlier, said in his _Life of Parnell_ (_Misc. Works_, iv. 22):--'These +misguided innovators have not been content with restoring antiquated +words and phrases, but have indulged themselves in the most licentious +transpositions and the harshest constructions, vainly imagining that the +more their writings are unlike prose, the more they resemble poetry.' +Collins and Warton might have quoted by way of defence the couplet in +Milton's _L'Allegro_.-- + +'While the cock with lively din +Scatters the rear of _darkness thin_.' + +[450] As some of my readers may be gratified by reading the progress of +this little composition, I shall insert it from my notes. 'When Dr. +Johnson and I were sitting _tête-à-tête_ at the Mitre tavern, May 9, +1778, he said "_Where_ is bliss," would be better. He then added a +ludicrous stanza, but would not repeat it, lest I should take it down. +It was somewhat as follows; the last line I am sure I remember: + +"While I thus cried, +The hoary seer reply'd, + Come, my lad, and drink some beer." + +In spring, 1779, when in better humour, he made the second stanza, as in +the text. There was only one variation afterwards made on my suggestion, +which was changing _hoary_ in the third line to _smiling_, both to avoid +a sameness with the epithet in the first line, and to describe the +hermit in his pleasantry. He was then very well pleased that I should +preserve it.' BOSWELL. + +[451] When I mentioned Dr. Johnson's remark to a lady of admirable good +sense and quickness of understanding, she observed, 'It is true, all this +excludes only one evil; but how much good does it let in?'--To this +observation much praise has been justly given. Let me then now do myself +the honour to mention that the lady who made it was the late Margaret +Montgomerie, my very valuable wife, and the very affectionate mother of +my children, who, if they inherit her good qualities, will have no +reason to complain of their lot. _Dos magna parentum virtus_. BOSWELL. +The latter part of this note was first given in the second edition. The +quotation if from Horace:-- + +'Cos est magna parentium Virtus.' +'The lovers there for dowry claim +The father's virtue and the mother's fame.' + +FRANCIS, Horace, Odes, iii. 24. 21. + +[452] He saw it in 1774 on his way to Wales; but he must, I think, have +seen it since, for it does not appear from his _Journal of a Tour into +Wales_ that he then saw Lord Scarsdale. He met him also at Dr. Taylor's +in July 1775. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 267. + +[453] I do not find the description in Young's _Six Months' Tour through +the North of England_, but in Pilkington's _Present State of Derbyshire_, +ii. 120. + +[454] + +'Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?' +'What place, what land in all the earth but with our grief is stored?' + +Morris, _Æneids_, i. 460. + +[455] See _ante_, March 21 and 28, 1776. + +[456] At Derby. + +[457] Baretti in his _Italy_, i. 236, says:--'It is the general custom +for our authors to make a present of their works to booksellers, who in +return scarcely give a few copies when printed.' The Venetian bookseller +to whom Metastasio gave his cleared, Baretti says, more than £10,000. +Goldoni scarcely got for each of his plays ten pounds from the manager of +the Venetian theatre, and much less from the booksellers. 'Our learned +stare when they are told that in England there are numerous writers who +get their bread by their productions only.' + +[458] I am now happy to understand, that Mr. John Home, who was himself +gallantly in the field for the reigning family, in that interesting +warfare, but is generous enough to do justice to the other side, is +preparing an account of it for the press. BOSWELL. Dr. A. Carlyle, who +knew Home well, says (_Auto_. p. 295):--'All his opinions of men and +things were prejudices, which, though it did not disqualify him for +writing admirable poetry, yet made him unfit for writing history.' See +_ante_, i. 225, for Boswell's projected works. + +[459] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale the next day:--'The finer pieces [of +the Derby china] are so dear that perhaps silver vessels of the same +capacity may be sometimes bought at the same price; and I am not yet so +infected with the contagion of china-fancy as to like anything at that +rate which can so easily be broken.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 380. + +[460] See _ante_, April 14, 1775. + +[461] See Hutton's _History of Derby_, a book which is deservedly +esteemed for its information, accuracy, and good narrative. Indeed the +age in which we live is eminently distinguished by topographical +excellence. BOSWELL. According to Hutton the Italians at the beginning +of the eighteenth century had 'the exclusive art of silk-throwing.' +Lombe went to Italy, and by bribery got admittance into the works. +Having mastered the secret he returned to England with two of the +workmen. About the year 1717 he founded a great silk-mill at Derby. He +died early, being poisoned, it was asserted, by an Italian woman who had +been sent over to destroy him. In this mill, Hutton, as a child, 'had +suffered intolerable severity.' Hutton's _Derby_, pp. 193-205. + +[462] 'I have enlarged my notions,' recorded Johnson in his _Journal of +a Tour into Wales_ (Aug. 3, 1774), after he had seen some iron-works. + +[463] Young. BOSWELL. + +'Think nought a trifle, though it small appear.' +Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, +And trifles life.' + +_Love of Fame_, Satire vi. + +[464] 'Pray, Sir, don't leave us;' said Johnson to an upholder of +Berkeley's philosophy, 'for we may perhaps forget to think of you, and +then you will cease to exist.' _Post_, 1780, in Langton's _Collection_. +See also _ante_, i. 471. + +[465] Perhaps Boswell is thinking of Gray's lines at the close of the +_Progress of Poesy_:-- + +'Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way +Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate.' + +[466] Goldsmith wrote:--'In all Pope's letters, as well as in those of +Swift, there runs a strain of pride, as if the world talked of nothing +but themselves. "Alas," says he in one of them, "the day after I am +dead the sun will shine as bright as the day before, and the world +will be as merry as usual." Very strange, that neither an eclipse nor an +earthquake should follow the loss of a poet!' Cunningham's _Goldsmith's +Works_, iv. 85. Goldsmith refers, I suppose, to Pope's letter to Steele +of July 15, 1712, where he writes:--'The morning after my exit the sun +will rise as bright as ever, the flowers smell as sweet, the plants +spring as green, the world will proceed in its old course, people will +laugh as heartily, and marry as fast as they were used to do.' Elwin's +Pope's _Works_, vi. 392. Gray's friend, Richard West, in some lines +suggested by this letter, gives a pretty turn to Pope's thoughts where +he says:-- + +'For me, whene'er all-conquering Death shall spread +His wings around my unrepining head, +I care not; tho' this face be seen no more, +The world will pass as cheerful as before; +Bright as before the day-star will appear, +The fields as verdant, and the skies as clear.' + +Mason's _Gray_, ed. 1807, i. 152. + +[467] See _post_, April 12, 1778. + +[468] A brother of Dodd's wife told Hawkins that 'Dodd's manner of +living was ever such as his visible income would no way account for. +He said that he was the most importunate suitor for preferment ever +known; and that himself had been the bearer of letters to great men, +soliciting promotion to livings, and had hardly escaped kicking down +stairs.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 435. + +[469] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 523) says that a Mr. Selwin, who just missed +being elected Chamberlain of the City, went by request to see a man +under sentence of death in Newgate, 'who informed him that he was in +daily expectation of the arrival of the warrant for his execution; +"but," said he, "I have £200, and you are a man of character, and had +the court-interest when you stood for Chamberlain; I should therefore +hope it is in your power to get me off." Mr. Selwin was struck with so +strange a notion, and asked, if there were any alleviating circumstances +in his case. The man peevishly answered "No;" but that he had enquired +into the history of the place where he was, and could not find that any +one who had £200 was ever hanged. Mr. Selwin told him it was out of his +power to help him, and bade him farewell--"which," added he, "he did; +for he found means to escape punishment."' + +[470] Dodd, in his Dedication of this Sermon to Mr. Villette, the +Ordinary of Newgate, says:--'The following address owes its present +public appearance to you. You heard it delivered, and are pleased to +think that its publication will be useful. To a poor and abject worm +like myself this is a sufficient inducement to that publication.' + +[471] See _ante_, p. 97. 'They have,' says Lowndes (_Bibl. Man_.), +'passed through innumerable editions.' To how many the book-stalls +testify, where they are offered second-hand for a few pence. + +[472] Goldsmith was thirty when he published _An Enquiry into the +Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_; thirty-six when he +published The _Traveller_; thirty-seven when he published _The Vicar of +Wakefield_, and thirty-nine when he brought out _The Good-Natured Man_. +In flowering late he was like Swift. 'Swift was not one of those minds +which amaze the world with early pregnancy; his first work, except his +few poetical Essays, was the _Dissentions in Athens and Rome_, published +in his thirty-fourth year.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 197. See _post_, +April 9, 1778. + +[473] Burke, I think, is meant. + +[474] This walking about his room naked was, perhaps, part of +Lord Monboddo's system that was founded 'on the superiority of the +savage life.' _Ante_, ii. 147. + +[475] This regimen was, however, practised by Bishop Ken, of whom +Hawkins (_not Sir John_) in his life of that venerable Prelate, p. 4, +tells us: 'And that neither his study might be the aggressor on his +hours of instruction, or what he judged his duty prevent his +improvements; or both, his closet addresses to his GOD; he strictly +accustomed himself to but one sleep, which often obliged him to rise at +one or two of the clock in the morning, and sometimes sooner; and grew +so habitual, that it continued with him almost till his last illness. +And so lively and chearful was his temper, that he would be very +facetious and entertaining to his friends in the evening, even when it +was perceived that with difficulty he kept his eyes open; and then +seemed to go to rest with no other purpose than the refreshing and +enabling him with more vigour and chearfulness to sing his morning hymn, +as he then used to do to his lute before he put on his cloaths.' +BOSWELL. + +[476] See _ante_, under Dec. 17, 1775. + +[477] Boswell shortened his life by drinking, if, indeed, he did +not die of it. Less than a year before his death he wrote to Temple:--'I +thank you sincerely for your friendly admonition on my frailty in +indulging so much in wine. I _do_ resolve _anew_ to be upon my guard, as +I am sensible how very pernicious as well as disreputable such a habit +is! How miserably have I yielded to it in various years!' _Letters of +Boswell_, p. 353. In 1776 Paoli had taken his word of honour that he +would not taste fermented liquor for a year, that he might recover +sobriety. _Ib_. p. 233. For a short time also in 1778 Boswell was a +water-drinker, _Post_, April 28, 1778. + +[478] Sir James Mackintosh told Mr. Croker that he believed Lord Errol +was meant here as well as _post_, April 28, 1778. See Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773. + +[479] 'Must give us pause.' _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 1. + +[480] 'He was the first,' writes Dr. T. Campbell (_Survey of the South +of Ireland_, p. 373), 'who gave histories of the weather, seasons, and +diseases of Dublin.' Wesley records (_Journal_, iv. 40):--'April 6, +1775. I visited that venerable man, Dr. Rutty, just tottering over the +grave; but still clear in his understanding, full of faith and love, and +patiently waiting till his change should come.' + +[481] Cowper wrote of Johnson's _Diary_:--'It is certain that the +publisher of it is neither much a friend to the cause of religion nor to +the author's memory; for, by the specimen of it that has reached us, it +seems to contain only such stuff as has a direct tendency to expose both +to ridicule.' Southey's _Cowper_, v. 152. + +[482] Huet, Bishop of Avranches, born 1630, died 1721, published in +1718 _Commentarius de rebus ad eum pertinentibus. Nouv. Biog. Gene_. +xxv. 380. + +[483] When Dr. Blair published his Lectures, he was invidiously attacked +for having omitted his censure on Johnson's style, and, on the contrary, +praising it highly. But before that time Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_ +had appeared, in which his style was considerably easier than when he +wrote _The Rambler_. It would, therefore, have been uncandid in Blair, +even supposing his criticism to have been just, to have preserved it. +BOSWELL. + +[484] Johnson refers no doubt to the essay _On Romances, An Imitation_, +by A. L. Aikin (Mrs. Barbauld); in _Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose_, by +J. and A. L. Aikin (1773), p. 39. He would be an acute critic who could +distinguish this _Imitation_ from a number of _The Rambler_. + +[485] See _post_, under Dec. 6, 1784. + +[486] _Id est, The Literary Scourge_. + +[487] See _ante_, ii. 236, where Johnson attacks 'the _verbiage_ of +Robertson.' + +[488] 'We were now treading that illustrious island, which was once +the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and +roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings +of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be +impossible if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were +possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever +makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the +present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and +from my friends, be such rigid philosophy, as may conduct us, +indifferent and unmoved, over any ground which has been dignified by +wisdom, bravery or virtue. The [That] man is little to be envied, whose +patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose +piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.' Had our Tour +produced nothing else but this sublime passage, the world must have +acknowledged that it was not made in vain. Sir Joseph Banks, the present +respectable President of the Royal Society, told me, he was so much +struck on reading it, that he clasped his hands together, and remained +for some time in an attitude of silent admiration. BOSWELL. See +Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 19, 1773, and Johnson's _Works_, ix. 145. + +[489] 'He that thinks with more extent than another will want words of +larger meaning.' _Ante_, i. 218. + +[490] In the original _island_. + +[491] See _ante_, ii. 203, note 3. + +[492] In this censure which has been carelessly uttered, I carelessly +joined. But in justice to Dr. Kippis, who with that manly candid good +temper which marks his character, set me right, I now with pleasure +retract it; and I desire it may be particularly observed, as pointed +out by him to me, that 'The new lives of dissenting Divines in the +first four volumes of the second edition of the _Biographia Brittanica_, +are those of John Abernethy, Thomas Amory, George Benson, Hugh Broughton +the learned Puritan, Simon Browne, Joseph Boyse of Dublin, Thomas +Cartwright the learned Puritan, and Samuel Chandler. The only doubt I +have ever heard suggested is, whether there should have been an article +of Dr. Amory. But I was convinced, and am still convinced, that he was +entitled to one, from the reality of his learning, and the excellent and +candid nature of his practical writings. + +'The new lives of clergymen of the Church of England, in the same four +volumes, are as follows: John Balguy, Edward Bentham, George Berkley +Bishop of Cloyne, William Berriman, Thomas Birch, William Borlase, +Thomas Bott, James Bradley, Thomas Broughton, John Brown, John Burton, +Joseph Butler Bishop of Durham, Thomas Carte, Edmund Castell, Edmund +Chishull, Charles Churchill, William Clarke, Robert Clayton Bishop of +Clogher, John Conybeare Bishop of Bristol, George Costard, and Samuel +Croxall.--"I am not conscious (says Dr. Kippis) of any partiality in +conducting the work. I would not willingly insert a Dissenting Minister +that does not justly deserve to be noticed, or omit an established +Clergyman that does. At the same time, I shall not be deterred from +introducing Dissenters into the _Biographia_, when I am satisfied that +they are entitled to that distinction, from their writings, learning, +and merit."' + +Let me add that the expression 'A friend to the Constitution in Church +and State,' was not meant by me, as any reflection upon this reverend +gentleman, as if he were an enemy to the political constitution of his +country, as established at the revolution, but, from my steady and +avowed predilection for a _Tory_, was quoted from Johnson's +_Dictionary_, where that distinction is so defined. BOSWELL. In his +_Dictionary_ a _Tory_ is defined as 'one who adheres to the ancient +constitution of the state and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of +England.' It was on the _Biographia Britannica_ that Cowper wrote the +lines that end:-- + +'So when a child, as playful children use, +Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news, +The flame extinct he views the roving fire, +There goes my lady, and there goes the squire, +There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark, +And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.' + +Cowper's Works, viii. 320. + +Horace Walpole said that the '_Biographia Britannica_ ought rather to be +called _Vindicatio Britannica_, for that it was a general panegyric upon +everybody.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 115. + +[493] See _ante_, p. 99. + +[494] + +'Great wits are sure to madness near allied, +And thin partitions do their bounds divide.' + +Dryden's _Absalom and Achitophel_, 1, 163. + +[495] _Observations on Insanity_, by Thomas Arnold, M.D., London, 1782. +BOSWELL. + +[496] We read in the Gospels, that those unfortunate persons who were +possessed with evil spirits (which, after all, I think is the most +probable cause of madness, as was first suggested to me by my +respectable friend Sir John Pringle), had recourse to pain, tearing +themselves, and jumping sometimes into the fire, sometimes into the +water. Mr. Seward has furnished me with a remarkable anecdote in +confirmation of Dr. Johnson's observation. A tradesman, who had acquired +a large fortune in London, retired from business, and went to live at +Worcester. His mind, being without its usual occupation, and having +nothing else to supply its place, preyed upon itself, so that existence +was a torment to him. At last he was seized with the stone; and a friend +who found him in one of its severest fits, having expressed his concern, +'No, no, Sir, (said he) don't pity me: what I now feel is ease compared +with that torture of mind from which it relieves me.' BOSWELL. + +[497] See _ante_, i. 446. 'Johnson was a great enemy to the present +fashionable way of supposing worthless and infamous persons mad.' +Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 203. + +[498] See _post_, April 1, 1779. + +[499] See _post_, April 7, 1778. + +[500] 'Reynolds,' writes Malone, 'was as fond of London as Dr. Johnson; +always maintaining that it was the only place in England where a +pleasant society might be found.' Prior's _Malone_ p. 433. Gibbon +wrote to Holroyd _Misc. Works_, ii 126:--'Never pretend to allure me by +painting in odious colours the dust of London. I love the dust, and +whenever I move into the Weald it is to visit you and my Lady, and not +your trees.' Burke, on the other hand, wrote (_Corres_. iii 422):--'What +is London? clean, commodious, neat; but, a very few things indeed +excepted, and endless addition of littleness to littleness, extending +itself over a great tract of land.' 'For a young man,' he says, 'for a +man of easy fortune, London is the best place one can imagine. But for +the old, the infirm, the straightened in fortune, the grave in character +or in disposition, I do not believe a much worse place can be found.' +_Ib_. iv. 250. + +[501] + +'Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine captos + Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse sui.' +Ovid, _Ep. ex Ponto_, i. 3. 35. + +[502] 'In the morn and liquid dew of youth.' _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 3. + +[503] Now, at the distance of fifteen years since this conversation +passed, the observation which I have had an opportunity of making in +Westminster Hall has convinced me, that, however true the opinion of +Dr. Johnson's legal friend may have been some time ago, the same +certainty of success cannot now be promised to the same display of +merit. The reasons, however, of the rapid rise of some, and the +disappointment of others equally respectable, are such as it might seem +invidious to mention, and would require a longer detail than would be +proper for this work. BOSWELL. Boswell began to eat his dinners in the +Inner Temple in 1775. _Ante_, p. 45 note 1, and _Letters of Boswell_, p. +196. In writing to Temple he thus mentions his career as a barrister. +'Jan. 10, 1789. In truth I am sadly discouraged by having no practice, +nor probable prospect of it; and to confess fairly to you, my friend, I +am afraid that, were I to be tried, I should be found so deficient in +the forms, the _quirks_ and the _quiddities_, which early habit +acquires, that I should expose myself. Yet the delusion of Westminster +Hall, of brilliant reputation and splendid fortune as a barrister, still +weighs upon my imagination.' _Ib_. p. 267. 'Aug. 23, 1789. The Law life +in Scotland amongst vulgar familiarity would now quite destroy me. I am +not able to acquire the Law of England.' _Ib_. p. 304. 'Nov. 28, 1789. I +have given up my house and taken good chambers in the Inner Temple, to +have the appearance of a lawyer. O Temple! Temple! is this realising any +of the towering hopes which have so often been the subject of our +conversations and letters? ... I do not see the smallest opening in +Westminster Hall but I like the scene, though I have attended only one +day this last term, being eager to get my _Life of Johnson_ finished.' +_Ib_. p. 314. 'April 6, 1791. When my book is launched, I shall, if I am +alone and in tolerable health and spirits, have some furniture put into +my chambers in the Temple, and force myself to sit there some hours +a-day, and to attend regularly in Westminster Hall. The chambers cost me +£20 yearly, and I may reckon furniture and a lad to attend there +occasionally £20 more. I doubt whether I shall get fees equal to the +expense.' _Ib_. p. 335. 'Nov. 22, 1791. I keep chambers open in the +Temple, I attend in Westminster Hall, but there is not the least +prospect of my having business.' _Ib_. p. 344. His chambers, as he wrote +to Malone, were 'in the very staircase where Johnson lived.' Croker's +_Boswell_, p. 830. + +[504] Sunday was the 21st. + +[505] See _ante_, March 26, 1776, and _post_, under Nov. 17, 1784. + +[506] In _Notes and Queries_ for April, May, and June 1882, is a series +of Johnson's letters to Taylor, between June 10, 1742 and April 12, +1784. In the first Johnson signs himself:--'Your very affectionate,' +(p. 304). On Nov. 18, 1756, he writes:--'Neither of us now can find many +whom he has known so long as we have known each other.... We both stand +almost single in the world,' (p. 324). On July 15, 1765, he reproaches +Taylor with not writing:--'With all your building and feasting you might +have found an hour in some wet day for the remembrance of your old +friend. I should have thought that since you have led a life so festive +and gay, you would have [invited] me to partake of your hospitality,' +(p. 383). On Oct. 19, 1779, he says:--'Write to me soon. We are both +old. How few of those whom we have known in our youth are left alive!' +(p. 461). On April 12, 1784, he writes:--'Let us be kind to one another. +I have no friend now living but you and Mr. Hector that was the friend +of my youth,' (p. 482, and _post_, April 12, 1784). See _ante_, p. 131, +for his regret on the death of his school-fellow, Henry Jackson, who +seemed to Boswell (_ante_, under March 22, 1776) to be a low man, dull +and untaught. 'One of the old man's miseries,' he wrote, (_post_, Feb. +3, 1778), 'is that he cannot easily find a companion able to partake +with him of the past.' 'I have none to call me Charley now,' wrote +Charles Lamb on the death of a friend of his boyhood (Talfourd's _Lamb_, +ed. 1865, p. 145). Such a companion Johnson found in Taylor. That, on +the death of his wife, he at once sent for him, not even waiting for the +light of morning to come, is a proof that he had a strong affection for +the man. + +[507] _Ecclesiasticus_, ch. xxxviii. verse 25. The whole chapter may be +read as an admirable illustration of the superiority of cultivated minds +over the gross and illiterate. BOSWELL. + +[508] Passages in Johnson's Letters to Mrs. Thrale are to the same +effect. 'Aug. 3, 1771. Having stayed my month with Taylor I came away on +Wednesday, leaving him, I think, in a disposition of mind not very +uncommon, at once weary of my stay, and grieved at my departure.' +_Piozzi Letters_, i. 52. 'July 13, 1775. Dr. Taylor and I spend little +time together, yet he will not yet be persuaded to hear of parting.' +_Ib_. p. 276. 'July 26, 1775. Having stayed long enough at Ashbourne, I +was not sorry to leave it. I hindered some of Taylor's diversions, and +he supplied me with very little.' _Ib_ p. 287. + +[509] The second volume of these Sermons, which was published in 1789, a +year after the first, contains the following addition to the title:--'To +which is added a Sermon written by Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., for the +Funeral of his Wife.' 'Dr. Taylor had,' writes Murphy (_Life_, p. 171), +'The LARGEST BULL in England, and some of the best Sermons.' + +[510] If the eminent judge was Lord Mansfield, we may compare with +Boswell's regret the lines in which Pope laments the influence of +Westminster Hall and Parliament:-- + +'There truant Windham every muse gave o'er, +There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more. +How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast! +How many Martials were in Pulteney lost!' + +_The Dunciad_, iv. 167. + +[511] Boswell's brother David had been settled in Spain since 1768. +(_Boswelliana_, p. 5.) He therefore is no doubt the son, and Lord +Auchinleck the father. + +[512] See _ante_, ii. 129, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22, 1773. + +[513] 'Jack' had not shown all his manners to Johnson. Gibbon thus +describes him in 1762 (_Misc. Works_, i. 142):--'Colonel Wilkes, of +the Buckinghamshire militia, dined with us. I scarcely ever met with a +better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, +and a great deal of knowledge; but a thorough profligate in principle as +in practice, his life stained with every vice, and his conversation full +of blasphemy and indecency. These morals he glories in--for shame is a +weakness he has long since surmounted.' The following anecdote in +_Boswelliana_ (p. 274) is not given in the _Life of Johnson_:--'Johnson +had a sovereign contempt for Wilkes and his party, whom he looked upon +as a mere rabble. "Sir," said he, "had Wilkes's mob prevailed against +government, this nation had died of _phthiriasis_. Mr. Langton told me +this. The expression, _morbus pediculosus_, as being better known would +strike more."' + +[514] See _ante_, p. 79, note 1. + +[515] See _ante_, p. 69. + +[516] See _ante_, i. 402. + +[517] See _ante_, i. 167. + +[518] See _post_, under Sept. 30, 1783. + +[519] See _post, ib_., where Johnson told Mrs. Siddons that 'Garrick was +no declaimer.' + +[520] Hannah More (_Memoirs_, ii. 16) says that she once asked Garrick +'why Johnson was so often harsh and unkind in his speeches both of him +and to him:--"Why," he replied, "it is very natural; is it not to be +expected he should be angry that I, who have so much less merit than +he, should have had so much greater success?"' + +[521] Foote died a month after this conversation. Johnson wrote to Mrs. +Thrale:--'Did you see Foote at Brighthelmstone? Did you think he would +so soon be gone? Life, says Falstaff, is a shuttle [_Merry Wives of +Windsor_, act v. sc. 1]. He was a fine fellow in his way; and the world +is really impoverished by his sinking glories. Murphy ought to write his +life, at least to give the world a _Footeana_. Now will any of his +contemporaries bewail him? Will genius change _his sex_ to weep? I +would really have his life written with diligence.' This letter is +wrongly dated Oct. 3, 1777. It was written early in November. _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 396. Baretti, in a marginal note on _Footeana_, says:--'One +half of it had been a string of obscenities.' See _post_, April 24, +1779, note. + +[522] See _ante_, i. 447. + +[523] _To pit_ is not in Johnson's _Dictionary_. + +[524] Very likely Mr. Langton. See _ante_, ii. 254. + +[525] Two months earlier Johnson had complained that Langton's table was +rather coarse. _Ante_, p. 128. + +[526] See _post_, April 13, 1781, where he again mentions this advice. +'He said of a certain lady's entertainments, "What signifies going +thither? There is neither meat, drink, nor talk."' Johnson's _Works_ +(1787), xi. 207. + +[527] William, third Duke of Devonshire, who died in 1755. Johnson +(_post_, April 1, 1779) 'commended him for a dogged veracity.' Horace +Walpole records of him a fact that 'showed a conscientious idea of +honesty in him. Sometime before his death he had given up to two of +his younger sons £600 a-year in land, that they might not perjure +themselves, if called upon to swear to their qualifications as Knights +of the Shire.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George II_, ii. 86. + +[528] Philip Francis wrote to Burke in 1790:--'Once for all, I wish +you would let me teach you to write English. To me who am to read +everything you write, it would be a great comfort, and to you no sort of +disparagement. Why will you not allow yourself to be persuaded that +polish is material to preservation?' Burke's _Corres_, iii. 164. + +[529] Edit. 2, p. 53. BOSWELL. + +[530] This is a mistake. The Ports had been seated at Islam time out of +mind. Congreve had visited there, and his _seat_, that is _the bench_ on +which he sometimes sat, used to be shown. CROKER. On the way to Islam, +Johnson told Boswell about the dedication of his _Plan_ to Lord +Chesterfield. _Ante_, i. 183, note 4. + +[531] See _ante_, i. 41. + +[532] 'I believe more places than one are still shown in groves and +gardens where he is related to have written his _Old Bachelor_.' +Johnson's _Works_, viii. 23. + +[533] Page 89. BOSWELL. + +[534] See Plott's _History of Staffordshire_, p. 88, and the authorities +referred to by him. BOSWELL. + +[535] See _ante_, ii. 247, and _post_, March 31, 1778. + +[536] See _ante_, i. 444. + +[537] Mrs. Piozzi records (_Anec_. p. 109):--'In answer to the arguments +urged by Puritans, Quakers, etc. against showy decorations of the human +figure, I once heard him exclaim:--"Oh, let us not be found, when our +Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of +contention from our souls and tongues! ... Alas! Sir, a man who cannot +get to heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner +in a grey one."' See _ante_, i, 405. + +[538] Campbell, who was an exciseman, had in July, 1769, caught a +favourite servant of Lord Eglintoune in smuggling 80 gallons of rum in +one of his master's carts. This, he maintains, led to an ill-feeling. He +had a right to carry a gun by virtue of his office, and from many of the +gentry he had licences to shoot over their grounds. His lordship, +however, had forbidden him to enter his. On Oct. 24, 1769, he passed +into his grounds, and walked along the shore within the sea-mark, +looking for a plover. Lord Eglintoune came up with him on the sea-sands +and demanded his gun, advancing as if to seize it. Campbell warned him +that he would fire if he did not keep off, and kept retiring backwards +or sideways. He stumbled and fell. Lord Eglintoune stopped a little, and +then made as if he would advance. Campbell thereupon fired, and hit him +in the side. He was found guilty of murder. On the day after the trial +he hanged himself in prison. _Ann. Reg_. xiii. 219. See _ante_, ii. 66, +and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 1. + +[539] See _ante_, p. 40. + +[540] _See ante_, ii. 10. + +[541] Boswell here alludes to the motto of his Journal:-- + +'Oh! while along the stream of time thy name +Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame; +Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, +Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?' + +Pope's _Essay on Man_, iv. 383. + +[542] + +'His listless length at noontide would he stretch, +And pore upon the brook that babbles by.' + +Gray's _Elegy_. + +[543] Johnson, a fortnight or so later, mentions this waterfall in a +letter to Mrs. Thrale, after speaking of a pool that Mr. Thrale was +having dug. 'He will have no waterfall to roar like the Doctor's. I sat +by it yesterday, and read Erasmus's _Militis Christiani Enchiridion_.' +_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 3. + +[544] See _post_, April 9 and 30, 1778. At the following Easter he +recorded: 'My memory is less faithful in retaining names, and, I am +afraid, in retaining occurrences.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 170. + +[545] I am told that Horace, Earl of Orford, has a collection of +_Bon-Mots_ by persons who never said but one. BOSWELL. Horace Walpole +had succeeded to his title after the publication of the first edition of +this book. + +[546] See Macaulay's _Essays_, i. 370. + +[547] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 158) tells how 'Rochester lived worthless +and useless, and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish +voluptuousness; till, at the age of one and thirty, he had exhausted the +fund of life, and reduced himself to a state of weakness and decay.' He +describes how Burnet 'produced a total change both of his manners and +opinions,' and says of the book in which this conversion is recounted +that it is one 'which the critick ought to read for its elegance, the +philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.' In +Johnson's answer to Boswell we have a play on the title of this work, +which is, _Some passages of the Life and Death of John Earl of +Rochester_. + +[548] In the passages from Johnson's _Life of Prior_, quoted _ante_, +ii. 78, note 3, may be found an explanation of what he here says. +A poet who 'tries to be amorous by dint of study,' and who 'in his +amorous pedantry exhibits the college,' may be gross and yet not excite +to lewdness. Goldsmith, in 1766, in a book entitled _Beauties of English +Poetry Selected_, had inserted two of Prior's tales, 'which for once +interdicted from general reading a book with his name upon its +title-page.' Mr. Forster hereupon remarks 'on the changes in the public +taste. Nothing is more frequent than these, and few things so sudden.' +Of these changes he gives some curious instances. Forster's _Goldsmith_, +ii. 4. + +[549] See _ante_, iii. 5. + +[550] See _ante_, i. 428. + +[551] Horace, _Odes_, ii. 14. + +[552] I am informed by Mr. Langton, that a great many years ago he was +present when this question was agitated between Dr. Johnson and Mr. +Burke; and, to use Johnson's phrase, they 'talked their best;' Johnson +for Homer, Burke for Virgil. It may well be supposed to have been one +of the ablest and most brilliant contests that ever was exhibited. How +much must we regret that it has not been preserved. BOSWELL. Johnson +(_Works_, vii. 332), after saying that Dryden 'undertook perhaps the +most arduous work of its kind, a translation of Virgil,' continues:--'In +the comparison of Homer and Virgil, the discriminative excellence of +Homer is elevation and comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is +grace and splendour of diction. The beauties of Homer are therefore +difficult to be lost, and those of Virgil difficult to be retained.' Mr. +E.J. Payne, in his edition of Burke's _Select Works_, i. xxxviii, says:-- +'Most writers have constantly beside them some favourite classical author +from whom they endeavour to take their prevailing tone. Burke, according +to Butler, always had a "ragged Delphin _Virgil_" not far from his elbow.' +See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21, note. + +[553] According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Mr. Burke, speaking of Bacon's +_Essays_, said he thought them the best of his works. Dr. Johnson was of +opinion that their excellence and their value consisted in being the +observations of a strong mind operating upon life; and in +consequence you find there what you seldom find in other books.' +Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 281. + +[554] Mr. Seward perhaps imperfectly remembered the following passage in +the _Preface to the Dictionary_ (_Works_, v. 40):--'From the authors +which rose in the time of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to +all the purposes of use and elegance. If the language of theology were +extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of +natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation +from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; +and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost +to mankind for want of English words in which they might be expressed.' + +[555] Of Mallet's _Life of Bacon_, Johnson says (_Works_, viii. 465) +that it is 'written with elegance, perhaps with some affectation; +but with so much more knowledge of history than of science, that when he +afterwards undertook the _Life of Marlborough_, Warburton remarked, that +he might perhaps forget that Marlborough was a general, as he had +forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher.' + +[556] It appears from part of the original journal in Mr. Anderdon's +papers that the friend who told the story was Mr. Beauclerk and the +gentleman and lady alluded to were Mr. (probably Henry) and Miss +Harvey. CROKER. Not Harvey but Hervey. See _ante_, i. 106, and ii. 32, +for another story told by Beauclerk against Johnson of Mr. Thomas +Hervey. + +[557] Johnson, in his _Dictionary_, gives as the 17th meaning of _make, +to raise as profit from anything_. He quotes the speech of Pompey in +_Measure for Measure_, act iv. sc. 3:--'He made five marks, ready money.' +But Pompey, he might reply, was a servant, and his English therefore is +not to be taken as a standard. + +[558] _Idea_ he defines as _mental imagination_. + +[559] See _post_, May 15, 1783, note. + +[560] In the first three editions of Boswell we find _Tadnor_ for +_Tadmor_. In Dodsley's _Collection_, iv. 229, the last couplet is as +follows:-- + +'Or Tadmor's marble wastes survey, +Or in yon roofless cloister stray.' + +[561] This is the tune that William Crotch (Dr. Crotch) was heard +playing before he was two years and a half old, on a little organ that +his father, a carpenter, had made. _Ann. Reg_. xxii 79. + +[562] See _ante_, under Dec. 17, 1775. + +[563] In 1757 two battalions of Highlanders were raised and sent +to North America. _Gent. Mag_. xxvii. 42, 333. Boswell (_Hebrides_, +Sept. 3, 1773) mentions 'the regiments which the late Lord Chatham +prided himself in having brought from "the mountains of the north."' +Chatham said in the House of Lords on Dec. 2, 1777:--'I remember that I +employed the very rebels in the service and defence of their country. +They were reclaimed by this means; they fought our battles; they +cheerfully bled in defence of those liberties which they attempted to +overthrow but a few years before.' _Parl. Hist_. xix. 477. + +[564] + +'Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, +Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee.' + +Line 154. + +[565] See _ante_, ii. 168. Boswell, when a widower, wrote to Temple +of a lady whom he seemed not unwilling to marry:--'She is about +seven-and-twenty, and he [Sir William Scott] tells me lively and gay-- +_a Ranelagh girl_--but of excellent principles, insomuch that she reads +prayers to the servants in her father's family every Sunday evening.' +_Letters of Boswell_, p. 336. + +[566] Pope mentions [_Dunciad_, iv. 342], + +'Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair.' + +But I recollect a couplet quite apposite to my subject in _Virtue an +Ethick Epistle_, a beautiful and instructive poem, by an anonymous +writer, in 1758; who, treating of pleasure in excess, says:-- + +'Till languor, suffering on the rack of bliss, +Confess that man was never made for this.' BOSWELL. + +[567] See _post_, June 12, 1784. + +[568] See _ante_, p. 86. + +[569] 'For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not +according to knowledge.' _Romans_, x. 2. + +[570] Horace Walpole wrote:--'Feb. 17, 1773. Caribs, black Caribs, have +no representatives in Parliament; they have no agent but God, and he is +seldom called to the bar of the House to defend their cause.' Walpole's +_Letters_, v. 438. 'Feb. 14, 1774. 'If all the black slaves were in +rebellion, I should have no doubt in choosing my side, but I scarce wish +perfect freedom to merchants who are the bloodiest of all tyrants. I +should think the souls of the Africans would sit heavy on the swords of +the Americans.' _Ib_. vi. 60. + +[571] See _ante_, ii. 27, 312. + +[572] 'We are told that the subjection of Americans may tend to the +diminution of our own liberties; an event which none but very +perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus +fatally contagious, how is it that we hear,' etc. _Works_, vi. 262. In +his _Life of Milton_ (_ib_. vii. 116) he says:--'It has been observed +that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally +grant it.' + +[573] See page 76 of this volume. BOSWELL. + +[574] The address was delivered on May 23, 1770. The editor of _Rogers's +Table Talk_ quotes, on p. 129, Mr. Maltby, the friend of Rogers, who +says:--'Dr. C. Burney assured me that Beckford did not utter one +syllable of the speech--that it was wholly the invention of Horne Tooke. +Being very intimate with Tooke, I questioned him on the subject. "What +Burney states," he said, "is true. I saw Beckford just after he came +from St. James's. I asked him what he had said to the King; and he +replied, that he had been so confused, he scarcely knew what he had +said. But, cried I, _your speech_ must be sent to the papers; I'll write +it for you. I did so immediately, and it was printed forthwith."' Tooke +gave the same account to Isaac Reed. Walpole's _Letters_, v. 238, note. +Stephens (_Life of Horne Tooke_, i. 155-8) says, that the King's answer +had been anticipated and that Horne had suggested the idea of a reply. +Stephens continues:--'The speech in reply, as Mr. Horne lately +acknowledged to me, was his composition.' Stephens does not seem to have +heard the story that Beckford did not deliver the reply. He says that +Horne inserted the account in the newspapers. 'No one,' he continues, +'was better calculated to give copies of those harangues than the person +who had furnished the originals; and as to the occurrences at St. +James's, he was enabled to detail the particulars from the lips of the +members of the deputation.' Alderman Townshend assured Lord Chatham that +Beckford did deliver the speech. _Chatham Corres_. iii. 460. Horne +Tooke's word is not worth much. He did not resign his living till more +than seven years after he wrote to Wilkes:--'It is true I have suffered +the infectious hand of a bishop to be waved over me; whose imposition, +like the sop given to Judas, is only a signal for the devil to enter.' +Stephens's _Horne Tooke_, i. 76. Beckford, dying in his Mayoralty, is +oddly connected with Chatterton. 'Chatterton had written a political +essay for _The North Briton_, which, though accepted, was not printed on +account of Lord Mayor Beckford's death. The patriot thus calculated the +death of his great patron:-- + + £ s. d. +Lost by his death in + this Essay 1 11 6 +Gained in Elegies £2.2 + in Essays £3.3 + ---- + 5 5 0 + ------------- +Am glad he is dead by £3 13 6 + +D'Israeli's _Calamities of Authors_, i. 54. + +[575] At the time that Johnson wrote this there were serfs in Scotland. +An Act passed in 1775 (15 Geo. III. c. 22) contains the following +preamble:--'Whereas by the law of Scotland, as explained by the judges +of the courts of law there, many colliers and salters are in a state of +slavery and bondage, bound to the collieries or saltworks where they +work for life, transferable with the coalwork and salteries,' etc. The +Act was ineffectual in giving relief, and in 1779 by 39 Geo. III. c. 56 +all colliers were 'declared to be free from their servitude.' The last +of these emancipated slaves died in the year 1844. _Tranent and its +Surroundings_, by P. M'Neill, p. 26. See also _Parl. Hist_. xxix. +1109, where Dundas states that it was only 'after several years' +struggle that the bill was carried through both Houses.' + +[576] See _ante_, ii. 13. + +[577] 'The Utopians do not make slaves of the sons of their slaves; the +slaves among them are such as are condemned to that state of life for the +commission of some crime.' Sir T. More's _Utopia--Ideal Commonwealths_, +p. 129. + +[578] The Rev. John Newton (Cowper's friend) in 1763 wrote of the +slave-trade, in which he had been engaged, 'It is indeed accounted a +genteel employment, and is usually very profitable, though to me it did +not prove so, the Lord seeing that a large increase of wealth could not +be good for me.' Newton's _Life_, p. 148. A ruffian of a London +Alderman, a few weeks before _The Life of Johnson_ was published, said +in parliament:--'The abolition of the trade would destroy our +Newfoundland fishery, which the slaves in the West Indies supported _by +consuming that part of the fish which was fit for no other consumption_, +and consequently, by cutting off the great source of seamen, annihilate +our marine.' _Parl. Hist_. xxix. 343. + +[579] Gray's Elegy. Mrs. Piozzi maintained that 'mercy was totally +abolished by French maxims; for, if all men are equal, mercy is no +more.' Piozzi's _Synonymy_, i. 370. Johnson, in 1740, described +slavery as 'the most calamitous estate in human life,' a state 'which +has always been found so destructive to virtue, that in many languages a +slave and a thief are expressed by the same word.' _Works_, v. 265-6. +Nineteen years later he wrote of the discoveries of the +Portuguese:--'Much knowledge has been acquired, and much cruelty been +committed; the belief of religion has been very little propagated, and +its laws have been outrageously and enormously violated.' _Ib_. p. 219. +Horace Walpole wrote, on July 9, 1754, (_Letters_, ii. 394), 'I was +reading t'other day the _Life of Colonel Codrington_. He left a large +estate for the propagation of the Gospel, and ordered that three hundred +negroes should constantly be employed upon it. Did one ever hear a more +truly Christian charity than keeping up a perpetuity of three hundred +slaves to look after the Gospel's estate?' Churchill, in _Gotham_, +published in 1764 (_Poems_, ii. 101), says of Europe's treatment of the +savage race:-- + +'Faith too she plants, for her own ends imprest, +To make them bear the worst, and hope the best.' + +[580] + +'With stainless lustre virtue shines, +A base repulse nor knows nor fears; + +Nor claims her honours, nor declines, +As the light air of crowds uncertain veers.' +FRANCIS. Horace _Odes_, iii. 2. + +[581] Sir Walter Scott, in a note to _Redgauntlet_, Letter 1, says:-- +'Sir John Nisbett of Dirleton's _Doubts and Questions upon the Law +especially of Scotland_, and Sir James Stewart's _Dirleton's Doubts +and Questions resolved and answered_, are works of authority in Scottish +jurisprudence. As is generally the case, the _Doubts_ are held more in +respect than the solution.' + +[582] When Boswell first made Johnson's acquaintance it was he who +suffered from the late hours. _Ante_, i. 434. + +[583] See _ante_, ii. 312. + +[584] Burke, in _Present Discontents_, says:--'The power of the Crown, +almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more +strength and far less odium, under the name of Influence.' _Influence_ +he explains as 'the method of governing by men of great natural interest +or great acquired consideration.' Payne's _Burke_, i. 10, 11. 'Influence,' +said Johnson,' must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it +should.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 18. To political life might be applied +what Johnson wrote of domestic life:--'It is a maxim that no man ever was +enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.' _Notes and Queries_, +6th S., v. 343. + +[585] Boswell falls into what he calls 'the cant transmitted from age to +age in praise of the ancient Romans.' _Ante_, i. 311. To do so with +Johnson was at once to provoke an attack, for he looked upon the Roman +commonwealth as one 'which grew great only by the misery of the rest of +mankind.' _Ib_. Moreover he disliked appeals to history. 'General +history,' writes Murphy (_Life_, p. 138), 'had little of his regard. +Biography was his delight. Sooner than hear of the Punic War he +would be rude to the person that introduced the subject.' Mrs. Piozzi +says (_Anec_. p. 80) that 'no kind of conversation pleased him less, I +think, than when the subject was historical fact or general polity. +'What shall we learn from _that_ stuff?' said he. 'He never,' as he +expressed it, 'desired to hear of the _Punic War_ while he lived.' The +_Punic War_, it is clear, was a kind of humorous catch word with him. +She wrote to him in 1773:--'So here's modern politics in a letter from +me; yes and a touch of the _Punic War_ too.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 187. +He wrote to her in 1775, just after she had been at the first regatta +held in England:--'You will now find the advantage of having made one at +the regatta.... It is the good of public life that it supplies agreeable +topics and general conversation. Therefore wherever you are, and +whatever you see, talk not of the Punic War; nor of the depravity of +human nature; nor of the slender motives of human actions; nor of the +difficulty of finding employment or pleasure; but talk, and talk, and +talk of the regatta.' _Ib_. p. 260. He was no doubt sick of the constant +reference made by writers and public speakers to Rome. For instance, in +Bolingbroke's _Dissertation upon Parties_, we find in three consecutive +Letters (xi-xiii) five illustrations drawn from Rome. + +[586] It is strange that Boswell does not mention that on this day they +met the Duke and Duchess of Argyle in the street. That they did so we +learn from _Piozzi Letters_, i. 386. Perhaps the Duchess shewed him 'the +same marked coldness' as at Inverary. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 25. + +[587] At Auchinleck he had 'exhorted Boswell to plant assiduously.' +Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 4. + +[588] See _ante_, i. 72. In Scotland it was Cocker's _Arithmetic_ that +he took with him. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 31. He was not always +correct in his calculations. For instance, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale from +Ashbourne less than a fortnight after Boswell's departure: 'Mr. Langdon +bought at Nottingham fair fifteen tun of cheese; which, at an ounce +a-piece, will suffice after dinner for four-hundred-and-eighty thousand +men.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 2. To arrive at this number he must have +taken a hundredweight as equal to, not 112, but 100, pounds. + +[589] Johnson wrote the next day:--'Boswell is gone, and is, I hope, +pleased that he has been here; though to look on anything with pleasure +is not very common. He has been gay and good-humoured in his usual way, +but we have not agreed upon any other expedition.' _Piozzi Letters_, +i. 384. + +[590] He lent him also the original journal of his _Hebrides_, and +received in return a complimentary letter, which he in like manner +published. Boswell's _Hebrides_, near the end. + +[591] 'The landlord at Ellon said that he heard he was the greatest man +in England, next to Lord Mansfield.' _Ante_, ii. 336. + +[592] See _ante_, under March 15, 1776, where Johnson says that 'truth +is essential to a story.' + +[593] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Boswell kept his journal very +diligently; but then what was there to journalize? I should be glad +to see what he says of *********.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 390. The number +of stars renders it likely that Beauclerk is meant. See _ante_, p. 195, +note 1. + +[594] See _ante_, ii. 279. + +[595] Mr. Beauclerk. See _ante_, p. 195. + +[596] Beauclerk. + +[597] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Boswell says his wife does not +love me quite well yet, though we have made a formal peace.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 390. + +[598] A daughter born to him. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker says that this +daughter was Miss Jane Langton, mentioned post, May 10, 1784. + +[599] She had already had eleven children, of whom seven were by this +time dead. _Ante_, p. 109. This time a daughter was born, and not a +young brewer. _Post_, July 3, 1778. + +[600] Three months earlier Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'We are not +far from the great year of a hundred thousand barrels, which, if three +shillings be gained upon each barrel, will bring us fifteen thousand +pounds a year.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 357. We may see how here, as +elsewhere, he makes himself almost one with the Thrales. + +[601] See _ante_, p. 97. + +[602] Mrs. Aston. BOSWELL. + +[603] See _State Trials_, vol. xi. p. 339, and Mr. Hargrave's +argument. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p. 87. + +[604] The motto to it was happily chosen:-- + +'Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses.' + +I cannot avoid mentioning a circumstance no less strange than true, that +a brother Advocate in considerable practice, but of whom it certainly +cannot be said, _Ingenuas didicit fideliter artes_, asked Mr. Maclaurin, +with a face of flippant assurance, 'Are these words your own?' BOSWELL. +Sir Walter Scott shows where the humour of this motto chiefly lay. 'The +counsel opposite,' he writes, 'was the celebrated Wight, an excellent +lawyer, but of very homely appearance, with heavy features, a blind eye +which projected from its socket, a swag belly, and a limp. To him +Maclaurin applied the lines of Virgil:-- + +'Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses, +O formose puer, nimium ne crede colori.' + +['Though he was black, and thou art heavenly fair, +Trust not too much to that enchanting face.' + +DRYDEN. Virgil, _Eclogues_, ii. 16.] Mr. Maclaurin wrote an essay +against the Homeric tale of 'Troy divine,' I believe, for the sole +purpose of introducing a happy motto,-- + +'Non anni domuere decem non mille carinæ.' + +[Æneid, ii. 198.] Croker's _Boswell_, p. 279. + +[605] There is, no doubt, some malice in this second mention of Dundas's +Scottish accent (see _ante_, ii. 160). Boswell complained to Temple in +1789 that Dundas had not behaved well to himself or his brother David. +'The fact is, he writes, 'on David's being obliged to quit Spain on +account of the war, Dundas promised to my father that he would give him +an office. Some time after my father's death, Dundas renewed the +assurance to me in strong terms, and told me he had said to Lord +Caermarthen, "It is a deathbed promise, and I must fulfil it." Yet +David has now been kept waiting above eight years, when he might have +established himself again in trade.... This is cruel usage.' Boswell +adds:--'I strongly suspect Dundas has given Pitt a prejudice against me. +The excellent Langton says it is disgraceful; it is utter folly in Pitt +not to reward and attach to his Administration a man of my popular and +pleasant talents, whose merit he has acknowledged in a letter under his +own hand.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 286. + +[606] Knight was kidnapped when a child and sold to a Mr. Wedderburne of +Ballandean, who employed him as his personal servant. In 1769 his master +brought him to Britain, and from that time allowed him sixpence a week +for pocket money. By the assistance of his fellow-servants he learnt to +read. In 1772 he read in a newspaper the report of the decision in the +Somerset Case. 'From that time,' said Mr. Ferguson, 'he had had it in his +head to leave his master's service.' In 1773 he married a fellow-servant, +and finding sixpence a week insufficient for married life, applied for +ordinary wages. This request being refused, he signified his intention +of seeking service elsewhere. On his master's petition to the Justices +of Peace of Perthshire, he was brought before them on a warrant; they +decided that he must continue with him as formerly. For some time he +continued accordingly; but a child being born to him, he petitioned the +Sheriff, who decided in his favour. He thereupon left the house of his +master, who removed the cause into the Court of Session.' Ferguson +maintained that there are 'many examples of greater servitude in this +country [Scotland] than that claimed by the defender, i.e. [Mr. +Wedderburne, the plaintiff]. There still exists a species of perpetual +servitude, which is supported by late statutes and by daily practice, +viz. That which takes place with regard to the coaliers and sailers, +where, from the single circumstance of entering to work after puberty, +they are bound to perpetual service, and sold along with the works.' +Ferguson's _Additional Information_, July 4, 1775, pp. 3; 29; and +Maclaurin's _Additional Information_, April 20, 1776, p. 2. See _ante_, +p. 202. + +[607] See _ante_, p. 106. + +[608] Florence Wilson accompanied, as tutor, Cardinal Wolsey's nephew +to Paris, and published at Lyons in 1543 his _De Tranquillitate Animi +Dialogus_. Rose's _Biog. Dict_. xii. 508. + +[609] When Johnson visited Boswell in Edinburgh, Mrs. Boswell 'insisted +that, to show all respect to the Sage, she would give up her own +bed-chamber to him, and take a worse.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 14. +See _post_, April 18, 1778. + +[610] See _ante_, Dec. 23, 1775. + +[611] Fielding, in his _Voyage to Lisbon_ (p. 2), writes of him as +'my friend Mr. Welch, whom I never think or speak of but with love +and esteem.' See _post_, under March 30, 1783. + +[612] Johnson defines _police_ as _the regulation and government of a +city or country, so far as regards the inhabitants_. + +[613] At this time Under-secretary of State. See _ante_, i. 478, note 1. + +[614] Fielding, after telling how, unlike his predecessor, he had not +plundered the public or the poor, continues:--'I had thus reduced an +income of about £500 a-year of the dirtiest money upon earth to little +more than £300; a considerable proportion of which remained with my +clerk.' He added that he 'received from the Government a yearly pension +out of the public service money.' _Voyage to Lisbon_, Introduction. + +[615] The friendship between Mr. Welch and him was unbroken. Mr. Welch +died not many months before him, and bequeathed him five guineas for a +ring, which Johnson received with tenderness, as a kind memorial. His +regard was constant for his friend Mr. Welch's daughters; of whom, Jane +is married to Mr. Nollekens the statuary, whose merit is too well known +to require any praise from me. BOSWELL. + +[616] See _ante_, ii. 50. It seems from Boswell's words, as the editor +of the _Letters of Boswell_ (p. 91) points out, that in this case he +was 'only a friend and amateur, and not a duly appointed advocate.' +He certainly was not retained in an earlier stage of the cause, for on +July 22, 1767, he wrote:--'Though I am not a counsel in that cause, yet +I am much interested in it.' _Ib_. p. 93. + +[617] Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, humorously observed, that Levett +used to breakfast on the crust of a roll, which Johnson, after tearing +out the crumb for himself, threw to his humble friend. BOSWELL. Perhaps +the word _threw_ is here too strong. Dr. Johnson never treated Levett +with contempt. MALONE. Hawkins (_Life_, p. 398) says that 'Dr. Johnson +frequently observed that Levett was indebted to him for nothing more +than house-room, his share in a penny loaf at breakfast, and now and +then a dinner on a Sunday.' Johnson's roll, says Dr. Harwood, was every +morning placed in a small blue and white china saucer which had +belonged to his wife, and which he familiarly called 'Tetty.' See the +inscription on the saucer in the Lichfield Museum. + +[618] See this subject discussed in a subsequent page, under May 3, +1779. BOSWELL. + +[619] On Feb. 17, Lord North 'made his Conciliatory Propositions.' +_Parl. Hist_. xix. 762. + +[620] See _ante_, ii 111. + +[621] See _ante_, ii. 312. + +[622] Alluding to a line in his _Vanity of Human Wishes_, describing +Cardinal Wolsey in his state of elevation:-- + +'Through him the rays of regal bounty shine.' BOSWELL. + +[623] See _ante_, p. 205. + +[624] 'In my mind's eye, Horatio.' _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2. + +[625] Mr. Langton. See _ante_, p. 48. + +[626] See _ante_, May 12, 1775. + +[627] Daughter of Dr. Swinfen, Johnson's godfather, and widow of Mr. +Desmoulins, a writing-master. BOSWELL. + +[628] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Montagu on March 5:--'Now, dear Madam, we +must talk of business. Poor Davies, the bankrupt bookseller, is +soliciting his friends to collect a small sum for the repurchase of +part of his household stuff. Several of them gave him five guineas. It +would be an honour to him to owe part of his relief to Mrs. Montagu.' +Croker's _Boswell_, p. 570. J. D'Israeli says (_Calamities of Authors_, +i. 265):--'We owe to Davies beautiful editions of some of our elder +poets, which are now eagerly sought after; yet, though all his +publications were of the best kinds, and are now of increasing value, +the taste of Tom Davies twice ended in bankruptcy.' See _post_, April 7, +1778. + +[629] See _ante_, i. 391. Davies wrote to Garrick in 1763:--'I remember +that during the run of _Cymbeline_ I had the misfortune to disconcert +you in one scene of that play, for which I did immediately beg your +pardon, and did attribute it to my accidentally seeing Mr. Churchill in +the pit, with great truth; and that was the only time I can recollect +of my being confused or unmindful of my business when that gentleman +was before me. I had even then a more moderate opinion of my abilities +than your candour would allow me, and have always acknowledged that +gentleman's picture of me was fair.' He adds that he left the stage +on account of Garrick's unkindness, 'who,' he says, 'at rehearsals took +all imaginable pains to make me unhappy.' _Garrick Corres_. i. 165. + +[630] He was afterwards Solicitor-General under Lord Rockingham and +Attorney-General under the Duke of Portland. 'I love Mr. Lee +exceedingly,' wrote Boswell, 'though I believe there are not any two +specifick propositions of any sort in which we exactly agree. But the +general mass of sense and sociality, literature and religion, in each of +us, produces two given quantities, which unite and effervesce +wonderfully well. I know few men I would go farther to serve than Jack +Lee.' _Letter to the People of Scotland_, p. 75. Lord Eldon said that +Lee, in the debates upon the India Bill, speaking of the charter of the +East India Company, 'expressed his surprise that there could be such +political strife about what he called "a piece of parchment, with a bit +of wax dangling to it." This most improvident expression uttered by a +Crown lawyer formed the subject of comment and reproach in all the +subsequent debates, in all publications of the times, and in everybody's +conversation.' Twiss's _Eldon_, iii. 97. In the debate on Fox's India +Bill on Dec. 3, 1783, Lee 'asked what was the consideration of a +charter, a skin of parchment with a waxed seal at the corner, compared +to the happiness of thirty millions of subjects, and the preservation of +a mighty empire.' _Parl. Hist_. xxiv. 49. See Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 106-9, +and 131, for anecdotes of Lee; and _ante_, ii. 48, note 1. + +[631] 'For now we see _through_ a glass darkly; but then face to face.' +I _Corinthians_, xiii. 12. + +[632] Goldsmith notices this in the _Haunch of Venison_:-- + +My friend bade me welcome, but struck me quite dumb +With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not come; +For I knew it (he cried), both eternally fail, +The one with his speeches, and _t'other with Thrale_.' + +CROKER. See _ante_, i. 493. + +[633] See _post_, April 1, 1781. 'Johnson said:--"He who praises +everybody praises nobody."' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 216. + +[634] See ante, p. 55. + +[635] Johnson wrote in July 1775:--'Everybody says the prospect of +harvest is uncommonly delightful; but this has been so long the +summer talk, and has been so often contradicted by autumn, that I do not +suffer it to lay much hold on my mind. Our gay prospects have now for +many years together ended in melancholy retrospects.' _Piozzi Letters_, +i. 259. On Aug. 27, 1777, he wrote:--'Amidst all these little things +there is one great thing. The harvest is abundant, and the weather _à la +merveille_. No season ever was finer.' _Ib_. p. 360. In this month of +March, 1778, wheat was selling at 5s. 3d. the bushel in London; at 6s. +10d. in Somerset; and at 5s. 1d. in Northumberland, Suffolk, and Sussex. +_Gent. Mag_. xlviii. 98. The average price for 1778 was 5s. 3d. _Ann. +Reg_. xxi. 282. + +[636] See _post_, iii. 243, Oct. 10, 1779, and April 1, 1781. + +[637] The first edition was in 1492. Between that period and 1792, +according to this account, there were 3600 editions. But this is +very improbable. MALONE. Malone assumes, as Mr. Croker points out, that +this rate of publication continued to the year 1792. But after all, the +difference is trifling. Johnson here forgot to use his favourite cure +for exaggeration--counting. See _post_, April 18, 1783. 'Round numbers,' +he said, 'are always false.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 198. Horace +Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 300), after making a calculation, writes:--'I +may err in my calculations, for I am a woeful arithmetician; but no +matter, one large sum is as good as another.' + +[638] The original passage is: 'Si non potes te talem facere, qualem +vis, quomodo poteris alium ad tuum habere beneplacitum?' _De Imit. +Christ_. lib. i. cap. xvi. J. BOSWELL, Jun. + +[639] See p. 29 of this vol. BOSWELL. + +[640] Since this was written the attainder has been reversed; and +Nicholas Barnewall is now a peer of Ireland with this title. The person +mentioned in the text had studied physick, and prescribed _gratis_ to +the poor. Hence arose the subsequent conversation. MALONE. + +[641] See Franklin's _Autobiography_ for his conversion from +vegetarianism. + +[642] See _ante_, ii. 217, where Johnson advised Boswell to keep a +journal. 'The great thing to be recorded, is the state of your own +mind.' + +[643] 'Nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of +convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible +ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very +lightly uttered, and, once uttered, are sullenly supported.' Johnson's +_Works_, viii. 23. + +[644] _Literary Magazine_, 1756, p. 37. BOSWELL. Johnson's _Works_, +vi. 42. See _post_, Oct. 10, 1779. + +[645] + +'Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.' +'For while upon such monstrous scenes we gaze, +They shock our faith, our indignation raise.' + +FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. 188. Johnson speaks of 'the natural +desire of man to propagate a wonder.' _Works_, vii. 2. 'Wonders,' he +says, 'are willingly told, and willingly heard.' _Ib_. viii. 292. +Speaking of Voltaire he says:--'It is the great failing of a strong +imagination to catch greedily at wonders.' _Ib_. vi. 455. See _ante_, i. +309, note 3, ii. 247, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 19, 1773. According +to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 137) Hogarth said:--'Johnson, though so wise +a fellow, is more like King David than King Solomon; for he says in his +haste that all men are liars.' + +[646] The following plausible but over-prudent counsel on this subject +is given by an Italian writer, quoted by '_Rhedi de generatione +insectarum_,' with the epithet of '_divini poetæ_:' + +'_Sempre a quel ver ch'ha faccia di menzogna +Dee l'uom chiuder le labbra quanto ei puote; +Però che senza colpa fa vergogna_.' BOSWELL. + +It is strange that Boswell should not have discovered that these lines +were from Dante. The following is Wright's translation:-- + +'That truth which bears the semblance of a lie, +Should never pass the lips, if possible; +Tho' crime be absent, still disgrace is nigh.' + +_Infern_. xvi. 124. CROKER. + +[647] See _ante_, i. 7, note 1. + +[648] See _ante_, i. 405. + +[649] 'Of John Wesley he said:--"He can talk well on any subject."' +_Post_, April 15, 1778. Southey says that 'his manners were almost +irresistibly winning, and his cheerfulness was like perpetual sunshine.' +_Life of Wesley_, i. 409. Wesley recorded on Dec. 18, 1783 (_Journal_, +iv. 258):--'I spent two hours with that great man Dr. Johnson, who is +sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.' + +[650] 'When you met him in the street of a crowded city, he attracted +notice, not only by his band and cassock, and his long hair white and +bright as silver, but by his pace and manner, both indicating that all +his minutes were numbered, and that not one was to be lost. "Though I +am always in haste," he says of himself, "I am never in a hurry; because +I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect +calmness of spirit."' Southey's _Wesley_, ii. 397. + +[651] No doubt the Literary Club. See _ante_, ii. 330, 345. Mr. Croker +says 'that it appears by the books of the Club that the company on that +evening consisted of Dr. Johnson president, Mr. Burke, Mr. Boswell, +Dr. George Fordyce, Mr. Gibbon, Dr. Johnson (again named), Sir Joshua +Reynolds, Lord Upper Ossory, and Mr. R. B. Sheridan.' E. no doubt +stands for Edmund Burke, and J. for Joshua Reynolds. Who are meant by +the other initials cannot be known. Mr. Croker hazards some guesses; but +he says that Sir James Mackintosh and Chalmers were as dubious as +himself. + +[652] See Langhorne's _Plutarch_, ed. 1809, ii. 133. + +[653] 'A man came in balancing a straw upon his nose, and the audience +were clapping their hands in all the raptures of applause.' _The +Citizen of the World_, Letter xxi. According to Davis (_Life of Garrick_, +i. 113), 'in one year, after paying all expenses, £11,000 were the +produce of Mr. Maddocks (the straw-man's agility), added to the talents +of the players at Covent Garden theatre.' + +[654] See _ante_, i. 399. + +[655] 'Sir' said Edwards to Johnson (_post_, April 17, 1778), +'I remember you would not let us say _prodigious_ at College.' + +[656] 'Emigration was at this time a common topick of discourse. +Dr. Johnson regretted it as hurtful to human happiness.' Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773. + +[657] In 1766 Johnson wrote a paper (first published in 1808) to +prove that 'the bounty upon corn has produced plenty.' 'The truth of +these principles,' he says, 'our ancestors discovered by reason, and the +French have now found it by experience. In this regulation we have the +honour of being masters to those who, in commercial policy, have been +long accounted the masters of the world.' _Works_, v. 323, 326, and +_ante_, i. 518. 'In 1688 was granted the parliamentary bounty upon the +exportation of corn. The country gentlemen had felt that the money price +of corn was falling. The bounty was an expedient to raise it +artificially to the high price at which it had frequently been sold in +the times of Charles I. and II.' Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, book I. c. +xi. The year 1792, the last year of peace before the great war, was +likewise the last year of exportation. _Penny Cyclo_. viii. 22. + +[658] + +'Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat +To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote.' + +Goldsmith's _Retaliation_. + +Horace Walpole says of Lord Mansfield's speech on the _Habeas Corpus +Bill_ of 1758:--'Perhaps it was the only speech that in my time at least +had real effect; that is, convinced many persons.' _Reign of George II_, +iii. 120. + +[659] Gibbon, who was now a member of parliament, was present at this +dinner. In his _Autobiography_ (_Misc. Works_, i. 221) he says:--'After +a fleeting illusive hope, prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the +humble station of a mute.... Timidity was fortified by pride, and even +the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice. But I assisted +at the debates of a free assembly; I listened to the attack and defence +of eloquence and reason; I had a near prospect of the character, views, +and passions of the first men of the age.... The eight sessions that I +sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most +essential virtue of an historian.' + +[660] Horace, _Odes_, iii. 24, 46. + +[661] Lord Bolingbroke, who, however detestable as a metaphysician, must +be allowed to have had admirable talents as a political writer, thus +describes the House of Commons, in his 'Letter to Sir William Wyndham:' +--'You know the nature of that assembly; they grow, like hounds, fond of +the man who shews them game, and by whose halloo they are used to be +encouraged.' BOSWELL. Bolingbroke's _Works_, i. 15. + +[662] Smollett says (_Journey_, i. 147) that he had a musquetoon which +could carry eight balls. 'This piece did not fail to attract the +curiosity and admiration of the people in every place through which we +passed. The carriage no sooner halted than a crowd surrounded the man to +view the blunderbuss, which they dignified with the name of _petit +canon_. At Nuys in Burgundy, he fired it in the air, and the whole mob +dispersed, and scampered off like a flock of sheep.' + +[663] Smollett does not say that he frightened the nobleman. He mistook +him for a postmaster and spoke to him very roughly. The nobleman seems +to have been good-natured; for, at the next stage, says Smollett, +'observing that one of the trunks behind was a little displaced, he +assisted my servant in adjusting it.' His name and rank were learnt +later on. _Journey_, i. p. 134. + +[664] The two things did not happen in the same town. 'I am sure, writes +Thicknesse (_Travels_, ii. 147), 'there was but that single French +nobleman in this mighty kingdom, who would have submitted to such +insults as the Doctor _says_ he treated him with; nor any other town but +Sens [it was Nuys] where the firing of a gun would have so terrified the +inhabitants.' + +[665] Both Smollett and Thicknesse were great grumblers. + +[666] Lord Bolingbroke said of Lord Oxford:--'He is naturally inclined +to believe the worst, which I take to be a certain mark of a mean spirit +and a wicked soul; at least I am sure that the contrary quality, when it +is not due to weakness of understanding, is the fruit of a generous +temper and an honest heart.' Bolingbroke's _Works_, i. 25. Lord Eldon +asked Pitt, not long before his death, what he thought of the honesty of +mankind. 'His answer was, that he had a favourable opinion of mankind +upon the whole, and that he believed that the majority was really +actuated by fair meaning and intention.' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 499. + +[667] Johnson wrote in 175l:--'We are by our occupations, education, +and habits of life, divided almost into different species, which +regard one another, for the most part, with scorn and malignity.' +_The Rambler_, No. 160. In No. 173 he writes of 'the general hostility +which every part of mankind exercises against the rest to furnish +insults and sarcasm.' In 1783 he said:--'I am ready now to call a man _a +good man_ upon easier terms than I was formerly.' _Post_, under Aug. 29, +1783. + +[668] Johnson thirty-four years earlier, in the _Life of Savage_ +(_Works_, viii. 188), had written:--'The knowledge of life was indeed +his chief attainment; and it is not without some satisfaction that I can +produce the suffrage of Savage in favour of human nature.' On April 14, +1781, he wrote:--'The world is not so unjust or unkind as it is +peevishly represented. Those who deserve well seldom fail to receive +from others such services as they can perform; but few have much in +their power, or are so stationed as to have great leisure from their own +affairs, and kindness must be commonly the exuberance of content. The +wretched have no compassion; they can do good only from strong +principles of duty.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 199. + +[669] Pope thus introduces this story: + +'Faith in such case if you should prosecute, +I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit, +Who send the thief who [that] stole the cash away, +And punish'd him that put it in his way.' + +_Imitations of Horace_, book II. epist. ii. [l. 23]. BOSWELL. + +[670] Very likely Boswell himself. See _post_, July 17, 1779, where +he put Johnson's friendship to the test by neglecting to write to him. + +[671] No doubt Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, afterwards Bishop of +Killaloe. See _ante_, p. 84. + +[672] The reverse of the story of _Combabus_, on which Mr. David Hume +told Lord Macartney, that a friend of his had written a tragedy. It is, +however, possible that I may have been inaccurate in my perception of +what Dr. Johnson related, and that he may have been talking of the same +ludicrous tragical subject that Mr. Hume had mentioned. BOSWELL. The +story of Combabus, which was originally told by Lucian, may be found in +Bayle's _Dictionary_. MALONE. + +[673] Horace Walpole, less than three months later, wrote (_Letters_, +vii. 83):--'Poor Mrs. Clive has been robbed again in her own lane +[in Twickenham] as she was last year. I don't make a visit without +a blunderbuss; one might as well be invaded by the French.' Yet Wesley +in the previous December, speaking of highwaymen, records (_Journal_, +iv. 110):--'I have travelled all roads by day and by night for these +forty years, and never was interrupted yet.' Baretti, who was a great +traveller, says:--'For my part I never met with any robbers in my +various rambles through several regions of Europe.' Baretti's _Journey +from London to Genoa_, ii. 266. + +[674] A year or two before Johnson became acquainted with the +Thrales a man was hanged on Kennington Common for robbing Mr. Thrale. +_Gent. Mag_. xxxiii. 411. + +[675] The late Duke of Montrose was generally said to have been uneasy +on that account; but I can contradict the report from his Grace's own +authority. As he used to admit me to very easy conversation with him, I +took the liberty to introduce the subject. His Grace told me, that when +riding one night near London, he was attacked by two highwaymen on +horseback, and that he instantly shot one of them, upon which the other +galloped off; that his servant, who was very well mounted, proposed to +pursue him and take him, but that his Grace said, 'No, we have had blood +enough: I hope the man may live to repent.' His Grace, upon my presuming +to put the question, assured me, that his mind was not at all clouded by +what he had thus done in self-defence. BOSWELL. + +[676] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22, for a discussion on signing +death-warrants. + +[677] 'Mr. Dunning the great lawyer,' Johnson called him, _ante_, p. 128. +Lord Shelburne says:--'The fact is well known of the present Chief +Justice of the Common Pleas (Lord Loughborough, formerly Mr. Wedderburne) +beginning a law argument in the absence of Mr. Dunning, but upon hearing +him hem in the course of it, his tone so visibly [sic] changed that there +was not a doubt in any part of the House of the reason of it.' +Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, iii. 454. + +[678] 'The applause of a single human being,' he once said, 'is of great +consequence.' _Post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_. + +[679] Most likely Boswell's father, for he answers to what is said of +this person. He was known to Johnson, he had married a second time, and +he was fond of planting, and entertained schemes for the improvement +of his property. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 4 and 5, 1773. +_Respectable_ was still a term of high praise. It had not yet come +down to signify 'a man who keeps a gig.' Johnson defines it as +'venerable, meriting respect.' It is not in the earlier editions of his +_Dictionary_. Boswell, in his _Hebrides_ (Oct. 27), calls Johnson the +Duke of Argyle's 'respectable guest,' and _post_, under Sept. 5, 1780, +writes of 'the _respectable_ notion which should ever be entertained of +my illustrious friend.' Dr. Franklin in a dedication to Johnson +describes himself as 'a sincere admirer of his _respectable_ talents;' +_post_, end of 1780. In the _Gent. Mag_. lv. 235, we read that 'a stone +now covers the grave which holds his [Dr. Johnson's] _respectable_ +remains.' 'I do not know,' wrote Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 43) of +Hampton Court, 'a more _respectable_ sight than a room containing +fourteen admirals, all by Sir Godfrey.' Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, ii. 487), +congratulating Lord Loughborough on becoming Lord Chancellor, speaks of +the support the administration will derive 'from so _respectable_ an +ally.' George III. wrote to Lord Shelburne on Sept. 16, 1782, 'when the +tie between the Colonies and England was about to be formally severed,' +that he made 'the most frequent prayers to heaven to guide me so to act +that posterity may not lay the downfall of this once _respectable_ +empire at my door.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, iii. 297. Lord +Chesterfield (_Misc. Works_, iv. 308) writing of the hour of death +says:--'That moment is at least a very _respectable_ one, let people who +boast of not fearing it say what they please.' + +[680] The younger Newbery records that Johnson, finding that he had a +violin, said to him:--'Young man, give the fiddle to the first beggar +man you meet, or you will never be a scholar.' _A Bookseller of the +Last Century_, pp. 127, 145. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 15. + +[681] When I told this to Miss Seward, she smiled, and repeated, with +admirable readiness, from _Acis and Galatea_, + +'Bring me a hundred reeds of ample growth, +To make a pipe for my CAPACIOUS MOUTH.' BOSWELL. + +[682] See _post_, June 3, 1784, where Johnson again mentions this. In +_The Spectator_, No. 536, Addison recommends knotting, which was, he +says, again in fashion, as an employment for 'the most idle part of the +kingdom; I mean that part of mankind who are known by the name of the +women's-men, or beaus,' etc. In _The Universal Passion_, Satire i, +Young says of fame:-- + +'By this inspired (O ne'er to be forgot!) +Some lords have learned to spell, and some to knot.' + +Lord Eldon says that 'at a period when all ladies were employed (when +they had nothing better to do) in knotting, Bishop Porteous was asked by +the Queen, whether she might knot on a Sunday. He answered, "You may +not;" leaving her Majesty to decide whether, as _knot_ and _not_ were in +sound alike, she was, or was not, at liberty to do so.' Twiss's _Eldon_, +ii. 355. + +[683] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 23. + +[684] See _post_, p. 248. + +[685] Martin's style is wanting in that 'cadence which Temple gave to +English prose' (_post_, p. 257). It would not be judged now so +severely as it was a century ago, as the following instance will +show:--'There is but one steel and tinder-box in all this commonwealth; +the owner whereof fails not upon every occasion of striking fire in the +lesser isles, to go thither, and exact three eggs, or one of the lesser +fowls from each man as a reward for his service; this by them is called +the Fire-Penny, and this Capitation is very uneasy to them; I bid them +try their chrystal with their knives, which, when they saw it did strike +fire, they were not a little astonished, admiring at the strangeness of +the thing, and at the same time accusing their own ignorance, +considering the quantity of chrystal growing under the rock of their +coast. This discovery has delivered them from the Fire-Penny-Tax, and so +they are no longer liable to it.' + +[686] See _ante_, p. 226. + +[687] Lord Macartney observes upon this passage, 'I have heard him tell +many things, which, though embellished by their mode of narrative, had +their foundation in truth; but I never remember any thing approaching +to this. If he had written it, I should have supposed some wag had put +the figure of one before the three.'--I am, however, absolutely certain +that Dr. Campbell told me it, and I gave particular attention to it, +being myself a lover of wine, and therefore curious to hear whatever is +remarkable concerning drinking. There can be no doubt that some men can +drink, without suffering any injury, such a quantity as to others +appears incredible. It is but fair to add, that Dr. Campbell told me, he +took a very long time to this great potation; and I have heard Dr. +Johnson say, 'Sir, if a man drinks very slowly, and lets one glass +evaporate before he takes another, I know not how long he may drink.' +Dr. Campbell mentioned a Colonel of Militia who sat with him all the +time, and drank equally. BOSWELL. + +[688] See _ante_, i. 417. + +[689] In the following September she is thus mentioned by Miss Burney: +--'Mrs. Thrale. "To-morrow, Sir, Mrs. Montagu dines here, and then you +will have talk enough." Dr. Johnson began to see-saw, with a countenance +strongly expressive of inward fun, and after enjoying it some time in +silence, he suddenly, and with great animation, turned to me and cried; +"Down with her, Burney! down with her! spare her not! attack her, fight +her, and down with her at once! You are a rising wit, and she is at the +top; and when I was beginning the world, and was nothing and nobody, the +joy of my life was to fire at all the established wits, and then +everybody loved to halloo me on."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 117. 'She +has,' adds Miss Burney, 'a sensible and penetrating countenance and the +air and manner of a woman accustomed to being distinguished and of great +parts. Dr. Johnson, who agrees in this, told us that a Mrs. Hervey of +his acquaintance says she can remember Mrs. Montagu _trying_ for this +same air and manner.' _Ib_. p. 122. See _ante_, ii. 88. + +[690] Only one volume had been published; it ended with the sixteenth +chapter. + +[691] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 462) says:--'She did not take at +Edinburgh. Lord Kames, who was at first catched with her Parnassian +coquetry, said at last that he believed she had as much learning as a +well-educated college lad here of sixteen. In genuine feelings and deeds +she was remarkably deficient. We saw her often in the neighbourhood of +Newcastle, and in that town, where there was no audience for such an +actress as she was, her natural character was displayed, which was that +of an active manager of her affairs, a crafty chaperon, and a keen +pursuer of her interest, not to be outdone by the sharpest coal-dealer +on the Tyne; but in this capacity she was not displeasing, for she was +not acting a part.' + +[692] What my friend meant by these words concerning the amiable +philosopher of Salisbury, I am at a loss to understand. A friend +suggests, that Johnson thought his _manner_ as a writer affected, while +at the same time the _matter_ did not compensate for that fault. In +short, that he meant to make a remark quite different from that which a +_celebrated gentleman_ made on a very eminent physician: 'He is a +coxcomb, but a _satisfactory coxcomb_.' BOSWELL. Malone says that the +_celebrated gentleman_ was Gerard Hamilton. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, +Nov. 3, where Johnson says that 'he thought Harris a coxcomb,' and +_ante_, ii. 225. + +[693] _Hermes_. + +[694] On the back of the engraving of Johnson in the Common Room +of University College is inscribed:--'Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in hac +camera communi frequens conviva. D.D. Gulielmus Scott nuper socius.' +Gulielmus Scott is better known as Lord Stowell. See _ante_, i. 379, +note 2, and iii. 42; and _post_, April 17, 1778. + +[695] See _ante_, under March 15, 1776. + +[696] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 31. + +[697] See _ante_, p. 176. + +[698] See _ante_, i. 413. + +[699] _Eminent_ is the epithet Boswell generally applies to Burke +(_ante_, ii. 222), and Burke almost certainly is here meant. Yet Johnson +later on said, 'Burke's talk is the ebullition of his mind. He does not +talk from a desire of distinction, but because his mind is full.' +_Post_, March 21, 1783. + +[700] Kames describes it as 'an act as wild as any that superstition +ever suggested to a distempered brain.' _Sketches, etc_. iv. 321. + +[701] See _ante,_ p. 243. + +[702] 'Queen Caroline,' writes Horace Walpole, 'much wished to make +Dr. Clarke a bishop, but he would not subscribe the articles again. +I have often heard my father relate that he sat up one night at the +Palace with the Doctor, till the pages of the backstairs asked if they +would have fresh candles, my father endeavouring to persuade him to +subscribe again, as he had for the living of St. James's. Clarke +pretended he had _then_ believed them. "Well," said Sir Robert, "but if +you do not now, you ought to resign your living to some man who would +subscribe conscientiously." The Doctor would neither resign his living +nor accept the bishopric.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 8. +See _ante_, i. 398, _post_, Dec. 1784, where Johnson, on his death-bed, +recommended Clarke's _Sermons_; and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 5. + +[703] Boswell took Ogden's _Sermons_ with him to the Hebrides, but +Johnson showed no great eagerness to read them. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, +Aug. 15 and 32. + +[704] See _ante_, p. 223. + +[705] _King Lear_, act iii. sc. 4. + +[706] The Duke of Marlborough. + +[707] See Chappell's _Popular Music of the Olden Time_, i. 330. + +[708] See _ante_, p. 177. + +[709] 'The accounts of Swift's reception in Ireland given by Lord +Orrery and Dr. Delany are so different, that the credit of the writers, +both undoubtedly veracious, cannot be saved but by supposing, what I +think is true, that they speak of different times. Johnson's _Works_, +viii. 207. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. Lord Orrery says that Swift, +on his return to Ireland in 1714, 'met with frequent indignities from +the populace, and indeed was equally abused by persons of all ranks and +denominations.' Orrery's _Remarks on Swift_, ed. 1752, p. 60. Dr. Delany +says (_Observations_, p. 87) that 'Swift, when he came--to take +possession of his Deanery (in 1713), was received with very +distinguished respect.' + +[710] 'He could practise abstinence,' says Boswell (_post_, March 20, +1781), 'but not temperance.' + +[711] 'The dinner was good, and the Bishop is knowing and conversible,' +wrote Johnson of an earlier dinner at Sir Joshua's where he had met the +same bishop. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 334. + +[712] See _post_, Aug 19, 1784. + +[713] There is no mention in the _Journey to Brundusium_ of a brook. +Johnson referred, no doubt, to Epistle I. 16. 12. + +[714] + +'Ne ought save Tyber hastning to his fall +Remaines of all. O world's inconstancie! +That which is firme doth flit and fall away, +And that is flitting doth abide and stay.' + +Spenser, _The Ruines of Rome_. + +[715] Giano Vitale, to give him his Italian name, was a theologian and +poet of Palermo. His earliest work was published in 1512, and he died +about 1560. _Brunet_, and Zedler's _Universal Lexicon_. + +[716] + +'Albula Romani restat nunc nominis index, +Qui quoque nunc rapidis fertur in aequor aquis. +Disce hinc quid possit Fortuna. Immota labascunt, +Et quae perpetuo sunt agitata manent.' + +Jani Vitalis Panormitani _De Roma_. See _Delicia C.C. Italorum +Poetarum_, edit. 1608, p. 1433, It is curious that in all the editions +of Boswell that I have seen, the error _labescunt_ remains unnoticed. + +[717] See _post_, June 2, 1781. + +[718] Dr. Shipley was chaplain to the Duke of Cumberland. CROKER. +The battle was fought on July 2, N.S. 1747. + +[719] + +'Inconstant as the wind I various rove; +At Tibur, Rome--at Rome, I Tibur love.' + +FRANCIS. Horace, _Epistles_, i. 8. 12. In the first two editions Mr. +Cambridge's speech ended here. + +[720] + +'More constant to myself, I leave with pain, +By hateful business forced, the rural scene.' + +FRANCIS. Horace, _Epist_., I. 14. 16. + +[721] See _ante_, p. 167. + +[722] Fox, it should be remembered, was Johnson's junior by nearly +forty years. + +[723] See _ante_, i. 413, ii. 214, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 2. + +[724] See _ante_, i. 478. + +[725] 'Who can doubt,' asks Mr. Forster, 'that he also meant slowness +of motion? The first point of the picture is _that_. The poet is +moving slowly, his tardiness of gait measuring the heaviness of +heart, the pensive spirit, the melancholy of which it is the outward +expression and sign.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 369. + +[726] See _ante_, ii. 5. + +[727] _Essay on Man_, ii. 2. + +[728] Gibbon could have illustrated this subject, for not long before +he had at Paris been 'introduced,' he said, 'to the best company of +both sexes, to the foreign ministers of all nations, and to the first +names and characters of France.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 227. He says +of an earlier visit:--'Alone, in a morning visit, I commonly found the +artists and authors of Paris less vain and more reasonable than in the +circles of their equals, with whom they mingle in the houses of the +rich.' _Ib_. p. 162. Horace Walpole wrote of the Parisians in 1765, +(_Letters_, iv. 436):--'Their gaiety is not greater than their +delicacy--but I will not expatiate. [He had just described the grossness +of the talk of women of the first rank.] Several of the women are +agreeable, and some of the men; but the latter are in general vain and +ignorant. The _savans_--I beg their pardon, the _philosophes_--are +insupportable, superficial, overbearing, and fanatic.' + +[729] See _post_, under Aug. 29, 1783, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 14. + +[730] See _post_, April 28, 1783. + +[731] See _ante_, p. 191. + +[732] [Greek: 'gaerusko d aiei polla didaskomenos.'] 'I grow in learning +as I grow in years.' Plutarch, _Solon_, ch. 31. + +[733] + +''Tis somewhat to be lord of some small ground +In which a lizard may at least turn around.' + +Dryden, _Juvenal_, iii. 230. + +[734] _Modern characters from Shakespeare. Alphabetically arranged_. +A New Edition. London, 1778. It is not a pamphlet but a duodecimo of 88 +pages. Some of the lines are very grossly applied. + +[735] _As You Like it_, act iii. sc. 2. The giant's name is Gargantua, +not Garagantua. In _Modern Characters_ (p. 47), the next line also is +given:--'Tis a word too great for any mouth of this age's size.' +The lines that Boswell next quotes are not given. + +[736] _Coriolanus_, act iii. sc. 1. + +[737] See vol. i. p. 498. BOSWELL. + +[738] See _ante_, ii. 236, where Johnson charges Robertson with +_verbiage_. This word is not in his _Dictionary_. + +[739] Pope, meeting Bentley at dinner, addressed him thus:--'Dr. +Bentley, I ordered my bookseller to send you your books. I hope you +received them.' Bentley, who had purposely avoided saying anything about +_Homer_, pretended not to understand him, and asked, 'Books! books! what +books?' 'My _Homer_,' replied Pope, 'which you did me the honour to +subscribe for.'--'Oh,' said Bentley, 'ay, now I recollect--your +translation:--it is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope; but you must not call it +_Homer_.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 336, note. + +[740] 'It is certainly the noblest version of poetry which the world +has ever seen; and its publication must therefore be considered as one +of the great events in the annals of Learning.' _Ib_. p. 256. 'There +would never,' said Gray, 'be another translation of the same poem equal +to it.' Gray's _Works_, ed. 1858, v. 37. Cowper however says, that he +and a friend 'compared Pope's translation throughout with the original. +They were not long in discovering that there is hardly the thing in the +world of which Pope was so utterly destitute as a taste for _Homer_.' +Southey's _Cowper_, i. 106. + +[741] Boswell here repeats what he had heard from Johnson, _ante_, p. 36. + +[742] Swift, in his Preface to Temple's _Letters_, says:--'It is +generally believed that this author has advanced our English tongue to +as great a perfection as it can well bear.' Temple's _Works_, i. 226. +Hume, in his Essay _Of Civil Liberty_, wrote in 1742:--'The elegance and +propriety of style have been very much neglected among us. The first +polite prose we have was writ by a man who is still alive (Swift). As to +Sprat, Locke, and even Temple, they knew too little of the rules of art +to be esteemed elegant writers.' Mackintosh says (_Life_, ii. +205):--'Swift represents Temple as having brought English style to +perfection. Hume, I think, mentions him; but of late he is not often +spoken of as one of the reformers of our style--this, however, he +certainly was. The structure of his style is perfectly modern.' Johnson +said that he had partly formed his style upon Temple's; _ante_, i. 218. +In the last _Rambler_, speaking of what he had himself done for our +language, he says:--'Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of +its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence.' + +[743] 'Clarendon's diction is neither exact in itself, nor suited to +the purpose of history. It is the effusion of a mind crowded with ideas, +and desirous of imparting them; and therefore always accumulating words, +and involving one clause and sentence in another.' _The Rambler_, +No. 122. + +[744] Johnson's addressing himself with a smile to Mr. Harris is +explained by a reference to what Boswell said (_ante_, p. 245) of +Harris's analytic method in his _Hermes_. + +[745] 'Dr. Johnson said of a modern Martial [no doubt Elphinston's], +"there are in these verses too much folly for madness, I think, and too +much madness for folly."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 61. Burns wrote on it the +following epigram:-- + +'O thou whom Poetry abhors, +Whom Prose has turned out of doors, +Heard'st thou that groan--proceed no further, +'Twas laurell'd. Martial roaring murder.' + +For Mr. Elphinston see _ante_, i. 210. + +[746] It was called _The Siege of Aleppo_. Mr. Hawkins, the authour of +it, was formerly Professor of Poetry at Oxford. It is printed in his +_Miscellanies_, 3 vols. octavo. BOSWELL. 'Hughes's last work was +his tragedy, _The Siege of Damascus_, after which a _Siege_ became a +popular title.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 477. See _ante_, i. 75, note 2. +Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 200) mentions another _Siege_ by a Mrs. B. +This lady asked Johnson to 'look over her _Siege of Sinope_; he always +found means to evade it. At last she pressed him so closely that he +refused to do it, and told her that she herself, by carefully looking it +over, would be able to see if there was anything amiss as well as he +could. "But, Sir," said she, "I have no time. I have already so many +irons in the fire." "Why then, Madame," said he, quite out of patience, +"the best thing I can advise you to do is to put your tragedy along with +your irons."' Mrs. B. was Mrs. Brooke. See Baker's _Biog. Dram_. iii. +273, where no less than thirty-seven _Sieges_ are enumerated. + +[747] That the story was true is shewn by the _Garrick Corres_. ii. 6. +Hawkins wrote to Garrick in 1774:--'You rejected my _Siege of Aleppo_ +because it was "wrong in the first concoction," as you said.' He added +that his play 'was honoured with the _entire_ approbation of Judge +Blackstone and Mr. Johnson.' + +[748] The manager of Covent Garden Theatre. + +[749] Hawkins wrote:--'In short, Sir, the world will be a proper +judge whether I have been candidly treated by you.' Garrick, in his +reply, did not make the impertinent offer which he here boasts of. +Hawkins lived in Dorsetshire, not in Devonshire; as he reminds Garrick +who had misdirected his letter. _Garrick Corres_. ii. 7-11. + +[750] See _ante_, i. 433. + +[751] 'BOSWELL. "Beauclerk has a keenness of mind which is very +uncommon." JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir; and everything comes from him so easily. +It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing." BOSWELL. "You +are loud, Sir, but it is not an effort of mind."' Boswell's _Hebrides_, +Aug. 21. See _post_, under May 2, 1780. + +[752] Boswell seems to imply that he showed Johnson, or at least read +to him, a portion of his journal. Most of his _Journal of a Tour to +the Hebrides_ had been read by him. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 18, and +Oct. 26. + +[753] Hannah More wrote of this evening (_Memoirs_, i. 146):--'Garrick +put Johnson into such good spirits that I never knew him so entertaining +or more instructive. He was as brilliant as himself, and as good-humoured +as any one else.' + +[754] He was, perhaps, more steadily under Johnson than under any else. +In his own words he was 'of Johnson's school.' (_Ante_, p. 230). Gibbon +calls Johnson Reynolds's oracle. Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 149. + +[755] Boswell never mentions Sir John Scott (Lord Eldon) who knew +Johnson (_ante_, ii. 268), and who was Solicitor-General when the _Life +of Johnson_ was published. Boswell perhaps never forgave him the trick +that he and others played him at the Lancaster Assizes about the years +1786-8. 'We found,' said Eldon, 'Jemmy Boswell lying upon the +pavement--inebriated. We subscribed at supper a guinea for him and +half-a-crown for his clerk, and sent him next morning a brief with +instructions to move for the writ of _Quare adhæsit pavimento_, with +observations calculated to induce him to think that it required great +learning to explain the necessity of granting it. He sent all round the +town to attornies for books, but in vain. He moved however for the writ, +making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge +was astonished and the audience amazed. The judge said, "I never heard +of such a writ--what can it be that adheres _pavimento_? Are any of you +gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?" The Bar laughed. At last one +of them said, "My Lord, Mr. Boswell last night _adhæsit pavimento_. +There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, +and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement."' Twiss's +_Eldon_, i. 130. Boswell wrote to Temple in 1789:--'I hesitate as to +going the Spring Northern Circuit, which costs £50, and obliges me to be +in rough, unpleasant company four weeks.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 274. +See _ante_, ii. 191, note 2. + +[756] 'Johnson, in accounting for the courage of our common people, +said (_Works_, vi. 151):--'It proceeds from that dissolution of +dependence which obliges every man to regard his own character. While +every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts; +he may always have wages for his labour, and is no less necessary to his +employer than his employer is to him.' + +[757] He says of a laird's tenants:--'Since the islanders no longer +content to live have learned the desire of growing rich, an ancient +dependant is in danger of giving way to a higher bidder, at the +expense of domestick dignity and hereditary power. The stranger, whose +money buys him preference, considers himself as paying for all that he +has, and is indifferent about the laird's honour or safety. The +commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages +which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love +of money be tempted to forego.' _Ib_. ix. 83. + +[758] 'Every old man complains ... of the petulance and insolence +of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of +former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in +which his youth was passed; a happy age, which is now no more to be +expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down +all the boundaries of civility and reverence.' _The Rambler_, No. 50. + +[759] Boswell, perhaps, had in mind _The Rambler_, No. 146:--'It is +long before we are convinced of the small proportion which every +individual bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn how few can +be interested in the fortune of any single man; how little vacancy is +left in the world for any new object of attention; to how small extent +the brightest blaze of merit can be spread amidst the mists of business +and of folly.' + +[760] See _ante_, ii. 227. + +[761] + +'Fortunam reverenter habe, quicumque repente +Dives ab exili progrediere loco.' + +Ausonius, _Epigrammata_, viii. 7. + +Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, ii. 186), that Johnson said to +him:--'Garrick has undoubtedly the merit of an unassuming behaviour; for +more pains have been taken to spoil that fellow than if he had been heir +apparent to the Empire of India.' + +[762] A lively account of Quin is given in _Humphry Clinker_, in the +letters of April 30 and May 6. + +[763] See _ante_, i. 216. + +[764] A few days earlier Garrick wrote to a friend:--'I did not hear +till last night that your friends have generously contributed to your +and their own happiness. No one can more rejoice at this circumstance +than I do; and as I hope we shall have a bonfire upon the occasion, I +beg that you will light it with the inclosed.' The inclosed was a bond +for £280. _Garrick Corres_. ii. 297. Murphy says:--'Dr. Johnson often +said that, when he saw a worthy family in distress, it was his custom to +collect charity among such of his friends as he knew to be affluent; and +on those occasions he received from Garrick more than from any other +person, and always more than he expected.' _Life of Garrick_, p. 378. 'It +was with Garrick a fixed principle that authors were intitled to the +emolument of their labours, and by that generous way of thinking he held +out an invitation to men of genius.' _Ib_. p. 362. See _ante_, p. 70, +and _post_, April 24, 1779. + +[765] When Johnson told this little anecdote to Sir Joshua Reynolds, he +mentioned a circumstance which he omitted to-day:--'Why (said Garrick) +it is as red as blood.' BOSWELL. A passage in Johnson's answer to +Hanway's _Essay on Tea_ (_ante_, i. 314) shews that tea was generally +made very weak. 'Three cups,' he says, 'make the common quantity, so +slightly impregnated that, perhaps, they might be tinged with the +Athenian cicuta, and produce less effects than these letters charge +upon tea.' _Works_, vi. 24. + +[766] To Garrick might be applied what Johnson said of Swift:--'He was +frugal by inclination, but liberal by principle.' _Works_, viii. 222. + +[767] See _post_, under March 30, 1783. In Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, +ii. 329, is a paper by Lord Shelburne in which are very clearly laid +down rules of economy--rules which, to quote his own words (p. 337), +'require little, if any, more power of mind, than to be sure to put on +a clean shirt every day.' Boswell records (_Hebrides_, Aug. 18) that +Johnson said:--'If a man is not of a sluggish mind, he may be his own +steward.' + +[768] 'Lady Macbeth urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a +glittering idea which has dazzled mankind from age to age, and animated +sometimes the housebreaker, and sometimes the conqueror.' Johnson's +_Works_, v. 69. + +[769] Smollett, who had been a ship's doctor, describes the hospital in +a man-of-war:--'Here I saw about fifty miserable distempered wretches, +suspended in rows, so huddled one upon another, that not more than +fourteen inches space was allotted for each with his bed and bedding; +and deprived of the light of the day as well as of fresh air; +breathing nothing but a noisome atmosphere ... devoured with vermin.' +&c. The doctor, when visiting the sick, 'thrust his wig in his pocket, +and stript himself to his waistcoat; then creeping on all fours under +their hammocks, and forcing up his bare pate between two, kept them +asunder with one shoulder until he had done his duty.' _Roderick +Random_, i. ch. 25 and 26. + +[770] See _ante_, ii. 339. + +[771] 'The qualities which commonly make an army formidable are long +habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline, and great +confidence in the commander ... But the English troops have none of +these requisites in any eminent degree. Regularity is by no means part +of their character.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 150. + +[772] See _ante_, i. 348. + +[773] In the _Marmor Norfolciense_ (_Works_, vi. 101) he describes the +soldier as 'a red animal, that ranges uncontrolled over the country, +and devours the labours of the trader and the husbandman; that carries +with it corruption, rapine, pollution, and devastation; that threatens +without courage, robs without fear, and is pampered without labour.' In +_The Idler_, No. 21, he makes an imaginary correspondent say:--'I passed +some years in the most contemptible of all human stations, that of a +soldier in time of peace.' 'Soldiers, in time of peace,' he continues, +'long to be delivered from the tyranny of idleness, and restored to the +dignity of active beings.' _Ib_. No. 30, he writes:--'Among the +calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of +truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity +encourages. A peace will equally leave the warriour and relater of wars +destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded +from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets +filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.' Many years later he wrote +(_Works_, viii. 396):--'West continued some time in the army; though it +is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor +ever lost the love, or much neglected the pursuit of learning.' + +[774] See _ante_, p. 9. + +[775] See _post_, March 21, 1783. + +[776] The reference seems to be to a passage in Plutarch's _Alcibiades_, +where Phaeax is thus described:--'He seemed fitter for soliciting and +persuading in private than for stemming the torrent of a public debate; +in short, he was one of those of whom Eupolis says:--"True he can talk, +and yet he is no speaker."' Langhome's _Plutarch_, ed. 1809, ii. 137. +How the quotation was applied is a matter only for conjecture. + +[777] 'Was there,' asked Johnson, 'ever yet anything written by mere man +that was wished longer by its readers, excepting _Don Quixote, Robinson +Crusoe_, and _The Pilgrim's Progress_?' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 281. + +[778] See _ante_, i. 406. + +[779] See _ante_, March 25, 1776. + +[780] In the _Gent. Mag_. for 1776, p. 382, this hulk seems to be +mentioned:--'The felons sentenced under the new convict-act began to +work in clearing the bed of the Thames about two miles below Barking +Creek. In the vessel wherein they work there is a room abaft in which +they are to sleep, and in the forecastle a kind of cabin for the +overseer.' _Ib_. p. 254, there is an admirable paper, very likely by +Bentham, on the punishment of convicts, which Johnson might have read +with advantage. + +[781] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 25. + +[782] Malone says that he had in vain examined Dodsley's _Collection_ +for the verses. My search has been equally in vain. + +[783] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 373) praises Smith's 'excellent Latin ode +on the death of the great Orientalist, Dr. Pocock.' He says that he +does not know 'where to find it equalled among the modern writers.' See +_ante_, ii. 187, note 3. + +[784] See _ante_, p. 7. + +[785] See _post_, April 15, 1781. + +[786] See _ante_, ii. 224. + +[787] 'Thus commending myself and my eternal concerns into thy most +faithful hands, in firm hope of a happy reception into thy kingdom; +Oh! my God! hear me, while I humbly extend my supplications for others; +and pray that thou wouldst bless the King and all his family; that thou +wouldst preserve the crown to his house to endless generations.' Dodd's +_Last Prayer_, p. 132. + +[788] See _ante_, iii. 166. + +[789] See _ante_, i. 413. + +[790] 'I never knew,' wrote Davies of Johnson, 'any man but one who +had the honour and courage to confess that he had a tincture of envy +in him. He, indeed, generously owned that he was not a stranger to it; +at the same time he declared that he endeavoured to subdue it.' Davies's +_Garrick_, ii. 391. + +[791] Reynolds said that Johnson, 'after the heat of contest was over, +if he had been informed that his antagonist resented his rudeness, +was the first to seek after a reconcilation.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, 11. +457. See ante, 11. 109. + +[792] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, edit. 3, p. 221 [Sept. 17]. +BOSWELL. + +[793] See this accurately stated, and the descent of his family from +the Earls of Northumberland clearly deduced in the Reverend Dr. Nash's +excellent _History of Worcestershire_, vol. ii. p. 318. The Doctor has +subjoined a note, in which he says, 'The Editor hath Seen and carefully +examined the proofs of all the particulars above-mentioned, now in the +possession of the Reverend Thomas Percy.' The same proofs I have also +myself carefully examined, and have seen some additional proofs which +have occurred since the Doctor's book was published; and both as a +Lawyer accustomed to the consideration of evidence, and as a +Genealogist versed in the study of pedigrees, I am fully satisfied. I +cannot help observing, as a circumstance of no small moment, that in +tracing the Bishop of Dromore's genealogy, essential aid was given by +the late Elizabeth Duchess of Northumberland, Heiress of that +illustrious House; a lady not only of high dignity of spirit, such as +became her noble blood, but of excellent understanding and lively +talents. With a fair pride I can boast of the honour of her Grace's +correspondence, specimens of which adorn my archives. BOSWELL. + +[794] 'The gardens are trim to the highest degree, and more adapted to a +_villa_ near London than the ancient seat of a great Baron. In a word, +nothing except the numbers of unindustrious poor that swarm at the gate +excites any one idea of its former circumstances.' Pennant's _Scotland_, +p. 31. + +[795] Mr. Croker quotes a passage from _The Heroic Epistle_, +which ends:-- + +'So when some John his dull invention racks +To rival Boodle's dinners, or Almack's, +Three uncouth legs of mutton shock our eyes, +Three roasted geese, three buttered apple pies.' + +[796] Johnson saw Alnwick on his way to Scotland. 'We came to Alnwick,' +he wrote, 'where we were treated with great civility by the Duke: I went +through the apartments, walked on the wall, and climbed the towers.' +_Piozzi Letters_, i. 108. + +[797] 'When Reynolds painted his portrait looking into the slit of his +pen and holding it almost close to his eye, as was his custom, he felt +displeased, and told me he would not be known by posterity for his +_defects_ only, let Sir Joshua do his worst. I said that the picture in +the room where we were talking represented Sir Joshua holding his ear in +his hand to catch the sound. "He may paint himself as deaf, if he +chooses," replied Johnson, "but I will not be _blinking Sam_."' Piozzi's +_Anec_. p. 248. + +[798] 'You look in vain for the _helmet_ on the tower, the ancient +signal of hospitality to the traveller, or for the grey-headed +porter to conduct him to the hall of entertainment. Instead of the +disinterested usher of the old times, he is attended by a _valet_ to +receive the fees of admittance.' Pennant's _Scottland_, p. 32. + +[799] It certainly was a custom, as appears from the following passage +in _Perce-forest_, vol. iii. p. 108:--'Fasoient mettre au plus hault +de leur hostel un _heaulme, en signe_ que tous les gentils hommes et +gentilles femmes entrâssent hardiment en leur hostel comme en leur +propre.' KEARNEY. + +[800] The title of a book translated by Dr. Percy. BOSWELL. It is a +translation of the introduction to _l'Histoire de Danemarck_, par M. +Mallet. Lowndes's _Bibl. Man_. ed. 1871, p. 1458. + +[801] He was a Welshman. + +[802] This is the common cant against faithful Biography. Does the +worthy gentleman mean that I, who was taught discrimination of +character by Johnson, should have omitted his frailties, and, in short, +have _bedawbed_ him as the worthy gentleman has bedawbed Scotland? +BOSWELL. + +[803] See Dr. Johnson's _Journey to the Western Islands_, 296 +[_Works_, ix. 124];--see his _Dictionary_ article, _oats_:--and my +_Voyage to the Hebrides_, first edition. PENNANT. + +[804] Mr. Boswell's Journal, p. 286, [third edition, p. 146, Sep. 6.] +PENNANT. + +[805] See _ante_, ii. 60. + +[806] Percy, it should seem, took offence later on. Cradock (_Memoirs_, +i. 206) says:--'Almost the last time I ever saw Johnson [it was in 1784] +he said to me:--"Notwithstanding all the pains that Dr. Farmer and I +took to serve Dr. Percy in regard to his _Ancient Ballads_, he has left +town for Ireland without taking leave of either of us."' Cradock adds +(p. 238) that though 'Percy was a most pleasing companion, yet there was +a violence in his temper which could not always be controlled.' 'I was +witness,' he writes (p. 206), 'to an entire separation between Percy and +Goldsmith about Rowley's [Chatterton's] poems.' + +[807] Sunday, April 12, 1778. BOSWELL. + +[808] Johnson, writing of the uncertainty of friendship, says: 'A +dispute begun in jest upon a subject which, a moment before, was on both +sides regarded with careless indifference, is continued by the desire of +conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into +enmity. Against this hasty mischief I know not what security can be +obtained; men will be sometimes surprised into quarrels.' _The Idler_, +No. 23. See _ante_, ii. 100, note 1. + +[809] Though the Bishop of Dromore kindly answered the letters which I +wrote to him, relative to Dr. Johnson's early history; yet, in justice +to him, I think it proper to add, that the account of the foregoing +conversation and the subsequent transaction, as well as some other +conversations in which he is mentioned, has been given to the publick +without previous communication with his Lordship. BOSWELL. This note is +first given in the second edition, being added, no doubt, at the +Bishop's request. + +[810] See _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_. + +[811] Chap. xlii. is still shorter:--'_Concerning Owls_. + +'There are no owls of any kind in the whole island.' + +Horrebow says in his _Preface_, p. vii:--'I have followed Mr. Anderson +article by article, declaring what is false in each.' A Member of the +_Icelandic Literary Society_ in a letter to the _Pall Mall Gazette_, +dated May 3, 1883, thus accounts for these chapters:--'In 1746 there was +published at Hamburg a small volume entitled, _Nachrichlen von Island, +Grönland und der Strasse Davis_. The Danish Government, conceiving that +its intentions were misrepresented by this work, procured a reply to be +written by Niels Horrebow, and this was published, in 1752, under the +title of _Tilforladelige Efterretninger om Island_; in 1758, an English +translation appeared in London. The object of the author was to answer +all Anderson's charges and imputations. This Horrebow did categorically, +and hence come these Chapters, though it must be added that they owe +their laconic celebrity to the English translator, the author being +rather profuse than otherwise in giving his predecessor a flat denial.' + +[812] See _ante_, p. 255. + +[813] 'A fugitive from heaven and prayer, + +I mocked at all religious fear, + Deep scienced in the mazy lore +Of mad philosophy: but now +Hoist sail, and back my voyage plough + To that blest harbour which I left before.' + +FRANCIS. Horace, _Odes_, i. 34. 1. + +[814] See _ante_, i. 315, and _post_, p. 288. + +[815] Ovid, _Meta_. ii. 13. + +[816] Johnson says (_Works_, viii. 355):--'The greater part of mankind +_have no character at all_, have little that distinguishes them from +others equally good or bad.' It would seem to follow that the greater +part of mankind have no style at all, for it is in character that style +takes its spring. + +[817] 'Dodd's wish to be received into our society was conveyed to us +only by a whisper, and that being the case all opposition to his +admission became unnecessary.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 435. + +[818] See note, vol. iii. p. 106. BOSWELL. See _post_, p. 290, for +Johnson's violence against the Americans and those who sided with them. + +[819] The friend was Mr. Steevens. Garrick says (_Corres_. ii. 361) +that Steevens had written things in the newspapers against him that +were slanderous, and then had assured him upon his word and honour that +he had not written them; that he had later on bragged that he had +written them, and had said, 'that it was fun to vex me.' Garrick +adds:--'I was resolved to keep no terms with him, and will always treat +him as such a pest of society merits from all men.' 'Steevens, Dr. Parr +used to say, had only three friends--himself, Dr. Farmer, and John Reed, +so hateful was his character. He was one of the wisest, most learned, +but most spiteful of men.' Johnstone's _Parr_, viii. 128. Boswell had +felt Steevens's ill-nature. While he was carrying the _Life of Johnson_ +through the press, at a time when he was suffering from 'the most woeful +return of melancholy,' he wrote to Malone,--'Jan 29, 1791. Steevens +_kindly_ tells me that I have over-printed, and that the curiosity about +Johnson is _now_ only in our own circle.... Feb. 25. You must know that +I am _certainly_ informed that a certain person who delights in mischief +has been _depreciating_ my book, so that I fear the sale of it may be +very dubious.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 828. _A certain person_ was, no +doubt, Steevens. See _ante_, ii. 375, and _post_, under March 30, 1783, +and May 15, 1784. + +[820] + +'I own th' indulgence--Such I give and take.' + +FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. II. + +[821] + +'We grant, altho' he had much wit, +H' was very shy of using it, +As being loth to wear it out.' + +_Hudibras_, i. I. 45. + +[822] 'Among the sentiments which almost every man changes as he +advances into years is the expectation of uniformity of character.' +_The Rambler_, No. 70. See _ante_, i. 161, note 2. + +[823] See _ante_, iii. 55. + +[824] After this follows a line which Boswell has omitted:--'Then +rises fresh, pursues his wonted game.' _Cato_, act i. sc. 4. + +[825] Boswell was right, and Oglethorpe wrong; the exclamation in +Suetonius is, 'Utinam _populus_ Romanus unam cervicem haberet.' Calig. +xxx.--CROKER. + +[826] 'Macaroon (_macarone_, Italian), a coarse, rude, low fellow; +whence, _macaronick_ poetry, in which the language is purposely +corrupted.' Johnson's _Dictionary_. '_Macaroni_, probably from old +Italian _maccare, to bruise, to batter, to pester_; Derivative, +_macaronic_, i.e. in a confused or mixed state (applied to a jumble of +languages).' Skeat's _Etymological Diet_. + +[827] _Polemo-middinia_, as the Commentator explains, is _Proelium in +sterquilinio commissum_. In the opening lines the poet thus calls on +the Skipperii, or _Skippers_:-- + +'Linquite skellatas botas, shippasque picatas, +Whistlantesque simul fechtam memorate blodeam, +Fechtam terribilem, quam marvellaverat omnis +Banda Deûm, quoque Nympharum Cockelshelearum.' + +[828] In Best's _Memorials_, p. 63, is given another of these lines +that Mr. Langton repeated:--'Five-poundon elendeto, ah! mala simplos.' +For Joshua Barnes see _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_. + +[829] See _ante_, iii. 78. + +[830] Dr. Johnson, describing her needle-work in one of his letters to +Mrs. Thrale, vol. i. p. 326, uses the learned word _sutile_; which Mrs. +Thrale has mistaken, and made the phrase injurious by writing '_futile_ +pictures.' BOSWELL. See _post_, p. 299. + +[831] See _ante_, ii. 252, note 2. + +[832] The revolution of 1772. The book was published in 1778. Charles +Sheridan was the elder brother of R.B. Sheridan. + +[833] See _ante_, i. 467. + +[834] As Physicians are called _the Faculty_, and Counsellors at +Law _the Profession_; the Booksellers of London are denominated _the +Trade_. Johnson disapproved of these denominations. BOSWELL. Johnson +himself once used this 'denomination.' _Ante_, i. 438. + +[835] See _ante_, ii. 385. + +[836] A translation of these forged letters which were written by +M. de Caraccioli was published in 1776. By the _Gent. Mag_. (xlvi. 563) +they were accepted as genuine. In _The Ann. Reg_. for the same year +(xix. 185) was published a translation the letter in which Voltaire had +attacked their authenticity. The passage that Johnson quotes is the +following:--'On est en droit de lui dire ce qu'on dit autrefois a l'abbé +Nodot: "Montrez-nous votre manuscript de Pétrone, trouvé a Belgrade, ou +consentez à n'être cru of de personne."' Voltaire's _Works_, xliii. +544. + +[837] Baretti (_Journey from London to Genoa_, i. 9) says that he +saw in 1760, near Honiton, at a small rivulet, 'an engine called a +ducking-stool; a kind of armed wooden chair, fixed on the extremity of a +pole about fifteen feet long. The pole is horizontally placed on a post +just by the water, and loosely pegged to that post; so that by raising +it at one end, you lower the stool down into the midst of the river. +That stool serves at present to duck scolds and termagants.' + +[838] 'An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind.' _Much Ado +about Nothing_, act iii. sc. 5. + +[839] See _ante_, ii. 9. + +[840] 'One star differeth from another star in glory.' I Cor. xv. 41. + +[841] See _ante_, iii. 48, 280. + +[842] 'The physicians in Hogarth's prints are not caricatures: the +full dress with a sword and _a great tye-wig_, and the hat under the +arm, and the doctors in consultation, each smelling to a gold-headed +cane shaped like a parish-beadle's staff, are pictures of real life in +his time, and myself have seen a young physician thus equipped walk the +streets of London without attracting the eyes of passengers.' Hawkins's +_Johnson_, p. 238. Dr. T. Campbell in 1777, writing of Dublin to a +London physician, says:--'No sooner were your _medical wigs_ laid aside +than an attempt was made to do the like here. But in vain.' _Survey of +the South of Ireland_, p. 463. + +[843] 'Jenyns,' wrote Malone, on the authority of W.G. Hamilton, +'could not be made without much labour to comprehend an argument. If +however there was anything weak or ridiculous in what another said, he +always laid hold of it and played upon it with success. He looked at +everything with a view to pleasantry alone. This being his grand object, +and he being no reasoner, his best friends were at a loss to know +whether his book upon Christianity was serious or ironical.' Prior's +_Malone_, p. 375. + +[844] Jenyns maintains (p. 51) that 'valour, patriotism, and friendship +are only fictitious virtues--in fact no virtue at all.' + +[845] He had furnished an answer to this in _The Rambler_, No. 99, +where he says:--'To love all men is our duty so far as it includes a +general habit of benevolence, and readiness of occasional kindness; but +to love all equally is impossible.... The necessities of our condition +require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the +species will never dictate. Every man has frequent grievances which only +the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would +remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it +only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to +every misery.' See _ante_, i. 207, note 1. + +[846] _Galatians_, vi. 10. + +[847] _St. John_, xxi. 20. Compare Jeremy Taylor's _Measures and Offices +of Friendship_, ch. i. 4. + +[848] In the first two editions 'from this _amiable and_ pleasing +subject.' + +[849] _Acts of the Apostles_, ix. i. + +[850] See _ante_, ii. 82. + +[851] If any of my readers are disturbed by this thorny question, +I beg leave to recommend, to them Letter 69 of Montesquieu's _Lettres +Persanes_; and the late Mr. John Palmer of Islington's Answer to Dr. +Priestley's mechanical arguments for what he absurdly calls +'Philosophical Necessity.' BOSWELL. See _post_, under Aug. 29, 1783; +note. + +[852] See _ante_, ii. 217, and iii. 55. + +[853] 'I have proved,' writes Mandeville (_Fables of the Bees_, ed. +1724, p. 179), 'that the real pleasures of all men in nature are +worldly and sensual, if we judge from their practice; I say all men in +nature, because devout Christians, who alone are to be excepted here, +being regenerated and preternaturally assisted by the divine grace, +cannot be said to be in nature.' + +[854] Mandeville describes with great force the misery caused by gin-- +'liquid poison' he calls it--'which in the fag-end and outskirts of the +town is sold in some part or other of almost every house, frequently +in cellars, and sometimes in the garret.' He continues:--'The +short-sighted vulgar in the chain of causes seldom can see further than +one link; but those who can enlarge their view may in a hundred places +see good spring up and pullulate from evil, as naturally as chickens do +from eggs.' He instances the great gain to the revenue, and to all +employed in the production of the spirit from the husbandman upwards. +_Fable of the Bees_, p. 89. + +[855] 'If a miser, who is almost a plum (i.e. worth £100,000, _Johnson's +Dictionary_), and spends but fifty pounds a year, should be robbed of a +thousand guineas, it is certain that as soon as this money should come +to circulate, the nation would be the better for the robbery; yet +justice and the peace of the society require that the robber should be +hanged.' _Ib_. p. 83. + +[856] Johnson, in his political economy, seems to have been very much +under Mandeville's influence. Thus in attacking Milton's position +that 'a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a +monarchy would set up our ordinary commonwealth,' he says, 'The support +and expense of a court is, for the most part, only a particular kind of +traffick, by which money is circulated, without any national +impoverishment.' _Works_, vii. 116. Mandeville in much the same way +says:--'When a covetous statesman is gone, who spent his whole life in +fattening himself with the spoils of the nation, and had by pinching and +plundering heaped up an immense treasure, it ought to fill every good +member of the society with joy to behold the uncommon profuseness of his +son. This is refunding to the public whatever was robbed from it. As +long as the nation has its own back again, we ought not to quarrel with +the manner in which the plunder is repaid.' _Ib_. p. 104. + +[857] See _ante_, ii. 176. + +[858] In _The Adventurer_, No. 50, Johnson writes:--'"The devils," says +Sir Thomas Brown, "do not tell lies to one another; for truth is +necessary to all societies; nor can the society of hell subsist without +it."' Mr. Wilkin, the editor of Brown's _Works_ (ed. 1836, i. liv), +says:--'I should be glad to know the authority of this assertion.' +I infer from this that the passage is not in Brown's _Works_. + +[859] Hannah More: see _post_, under date of June 30, 1784. + +[860] In her visits to London she was commonly the guest of the +Garricks. A few months before this conversation Garrick wrote a prologue +and epilogue for her tragedy of _Percy_. He invested for her the money +that she made by this play. H. More's _Memoirs_, i. 122, 140. + +[861] In April 1784 she records (_ib_. i. 319) that she called on +Johnson shortly after she wrote _Le Bas Bleu_. 'As to it,' she +continues, 'all the flattery I ever received from everybody together +would not make up his sum. He said there was no name in poetry that +might not be glad to own it. All this from Johnson, that parsimonious +praiser!' He wrote of it to Mrs. Thrale on April 19, 1784:--'It is in my +opinion a very great performance.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 364. Dr. +Beattie wrote on July 31, 1784:--'Johnson told me with great solemnity +that Miss More was "the most powerful versificatrix" in the English +language.' Forbes's _Beattie_, ed. 1824, p. 320. + +[862] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 18. + +[863] The ancestor of Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street. + +[864] See _A Letter to W. Mason, A.M. from J. Murray, Bookseller in +London_; 2d edition, p. 20. BOSWELL. + +[865] 'The righteous hath hope in his death.' _Proverbs_, xiv. 32. + +[866] See _post_, June 12, 1784. + +[867] Johnson, in _The Convict's Address_ (_ante_, p. 141), makes Dodd +say:--'Possibly it may please God to afford us some consolation, some +secret intimations of acceptance and forgiveness. But these radiations +of favour are not always felt by the sincerest penitents. To the greater +part of those whom angels stand ready to receive, nothing is granted in +this world beyond rational hope; and with hope, founded on promise, we +may well be satisfied.' + +[868] 'I do not find anything able to reconcile us to death but +extreme pain, shame or despair; for poverty, imprisonment, ill fortune, +grief, sickness and old age do generally fail.' _Swift's Works_, ed. +1803, xiv. 178. + +[869] 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have +kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of +righteousness.' 2 _Timothy_, iv. 7 and 8. + +[870] See _ante_, p. 154. + +[871] 'Inde illud Maecenatis turpissimum votum, quo et debilitatem non +recusat, et deformitatem, et novissime acutam crucem dummodo inter haec +mala spiritus prorogetur. + +"Debilem facito manu, +Debilem pede, coxa; +Tuber adstrue gibberum, +Lubricos quate dentes; +Vita dum superest, bene est; +Hanc mihi vel acuta +Si sedeam cruce sustine."' + +Seneca's _Epistles_, No. 101. + +Dryden makes Gonsalvo say in _The Rival Ladies_, act iv. sc. 1:-- + +'For men with horrour dissolution meet, +The minutes e'en of painful life are sweet.' + +In Paradise Lost Moloch and Belial take opposite sides on this point:-- + +MOLOCH. + 'What doubt we to incense +His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged, +Will either quite consume us, and reduce +To nothing this essential; happier far +Than miserable to have eternal being.' + +Bk. ii. 1. 94. + +BELIAL. + 'Who would lose, +Though full of pain, this intellectual being, +Those thoughts that wander through eternity, +To perish rather, swallowed up and lost +In the wide womb of uncreated night, +Devoid of sense and motion?' + +1. 146. + +Cowper, at times at least, held with Moloch. He wrote to his friend +Newton:--'I feel--I will not tell you what--and yet I must--a wish that +I had never been, a wonder that I am, and an ardent but hopeless desire +not to be.' Southey's _Cowper_, vi. 130. See _ante_, p. 153, and +Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 12. + +[872] Johnson recorded in _Pr. and Med_. p. 202:--'At Ashbourne I hope +to talk seriously with Taylor.' Taylor published in 1787 _A Letter +to Samuel Johnson on the Subject of a Future State_. He writes that +'having heard that Johnson had said that he would prefer a state of +torment to that of annihilation, he told him that such a declaration, +coming from him, might be productive of evil consequences. Dr. J. +desired him to arrange his thoughts on the subject.' Taylor says that +Johnson's entry about the serious talk refers to this matter. _Gent. +Mag_. 1787, p. 521. I believe that Johnson meant to warn Taylor about +the danger _he_ was running of 'entering the state of torment.' + +[873] Wesley, like Johnson, was a wide reader. On his journeys he +read books of great variety, such as _The Odyssey_, Rousseau's _Emile_, +Boswell's _Corsica_, Swift's _Letters_, Hoole's _Tasso_, Robertson's +_Charles V., Quintus Curtius_, Franklin's _Letters on Electricity_, +besides a host of theological works. Like Johnson, too, he was a great +dabbler in physic and a reader of medical works. His writings covered a +great range. He wrote, he says, among other works, an English, a Latin, +a Greek, a Hebrew, and a French Grammar, a Treatise on Logic and another +on Electricity. In the British Isles he had travelled perhaps more than +any man of his time, and he had visited North America and more than one +country of Europe. He had seen an almost infinite variety of characters. +See _ante_, p. 230. + +[874] The story is recorded in Wesley's _Journal_, ed. 1827, iv. 316. +It was at Sunderland and not at Newcastle where the scene was laid. +The ghost did not prophesy ill of the attorney. On the contrary, it said +to the girl:--'Go to Durham, employ an attorney there, and the house +will be recovered.' She went to Durham, 'and put the affair into Mr. +Hugill the attorney's hands.' 'A month after,' according to the girl, +'the ghost came about eleven. I said, "Lord bless me! what has brought +you here again?" He said, "Mr. Hugill has done nothing but wrote one +letter."' On this Wesley writes by way of comment:--'So he [the ghost] +had observed him [the attorney] narrowly, though unseen.' See _post_, +under May 3, 1779. + +[875] Johnson, with his horror of annihilation, caught at everything +which strengthened his belief in the immortality of the soul. Boswell +mentions _ante_, ii. 150, 'Johnson's elevated wish for more and more +evidence for spirit,' and records the same desire, _post_, June 12, +1784. Southey (_Life of Wesley_, i. 25) says of supernatural +appearances:--'With regard to the good end which they may be supposed to +answer, it would be end sufficient if sometimes one of those unhappy +persons, who looking through the dim glass of infidelity see nothing +beyond this life, and the narrow sphere of mortal existence, should, +from the established truth of one such story (trifling and objectless as +it might otherwise appear), be led to a conclusion that there are more +things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.' See +_ante_, p. 230, and _post_, April 15, 1781. + +[876] Miss Jane Harry. In Miss Seward's _Letters_, i. 97, is an +account of her, which Mr. Croker shows to be inaccurate. There is, too, +a long and lifeless report of the talk at this dinner. + +[877] See _ante_, ii. 14, 105. + +[878] Mrs. Knowles, not satisfied with the fame of her needlework, the +'_sutile pictures_' mentioned by Johnson, in which she has indeed +displayed much dexterity, nay, with the fame of reasoning better than +women generally do, as I have fairly shewn her to have done, +communicated to me a Dialogue of considerable length, which after many +years had elapsed, she wrote down as having passed between Dr. Johnson +and herself at this interview. As I had not the least recollection of +it, and did not find the smallest trace of it in my _Record_ taken at +the time, I could not in consistency with my firm regard to +authenticity, insert it in my work. It has, however, been published in +_The Gent. Mag_. for June, 1791. It chiefly relates to the principles of +the sect called _Quakers_; and no doubt the Lady appears to have greatly +the advantage of Dr. Johnson in argument as well as expression. From +what I have now stated, and from the internal evidence of the paper +itself, any one who may have the curiosity to peruse it, will judge +whether it was wrong in me to reject it, however willing to gratify Mrs. +Knowles. BOSWELL. Johnson mentioned the '_sutile pictures_' in a letter +dated May 16, 1776, describing the dinner at Messrs. Dilly's. 'And +there,' he wrote, 'was Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker, that works the sutile +[misprinted by Mrs. Piozzi _futile_] pictures. She is a Staffordshire +woman, and I am to go and see her. Staffordshire is the nursery of art; +here they grow up till they are transplanted to London.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 326. He is pleasantly alluding to the fact that he was a +Staffordshire man. In the _Dialogue_ in _The Gent. Mag_. for 1791, p. +502, Mrs. Knowles says that, the wrangle ended thus:--'Mrs. K. "I hope, +Doctor, thou wilt not remain unforgiving; and that you will renew your +friendship, and joyfully meet at last in those bright regions where +pride and prejudice can never enter." Dr. Johnson. "Meet _her_! I never +desire to meet fools anywhere." This sarcastic turn of wit was so +pleasantly received that the Doctor joined in the laugh; his spleen was +dissipated, he took his coffee, and became, for the remainder of the +evening, very cheerful and entertaining.' Did Miss Austen find here the +title of _Pride and Prejudice_, for her novel? + +[879] Of this day he recorded (_Pr. and Med_. p. 163):--'It has happened +this week, as it never happened in Passion Week before, that I have +never dined at home, and I have therefore neither practised abstinence +nor peculiar devotion.' + +[880] See _ante_, iii. 48, note 4. + +[881] I believe, however, I shall follow my own opinion; for the world +has shewn a very flattering partiality to my writings, on many +occasions. BOSWELL. In _Boswelliana_, p. 222, Boswell, after recording a +story about Voltaire, adds:--'In contradiction to this story, see in my +_Journal_ the account which Tronchin gave me of Voltaire.' This +_Journal_ was probably destroyed by Boswell's family. By his will, he +left his manuscripts and letters to Sir W. Forbes, Mr. Temple, and Mr. +Malone, to be published for the benefit of his younger children as they +shall decide. The Editor of _Boswelliana_ says (p. 186) that 'these +three literary executors did not meet, and the entire business of the +trust was administered by Sir W. Forbes, who appointed as his law-agent, +Robert Boswell, cousin-german of the deceased. By that gentleman's +advice, Boswell's manuscripts were left to the disposal of his family; +and it is believed that the whole were immediately destroyed.' The +indolence of Malone and Temple, and the brutish ignorance of the +Boswells, have indeed much to answer for. See _ante_, i. 225, note 2, +and _post_, May 12, 1778. + +[882] 'He that would travel for the entertainment of others should +remember that the great object of remark is human life.' _The Idler_, +No. 97. + +[883] See _ante_, ii. 377. + +[884] Johnson recorded (_Pr. and Med_. p. 163):--'Boswell came in to go +to Church ... Talk lost our time, and we came to Church late, at the +Second Lesson.' + +[885] See _ante_, i. 461. + +[886] Oliver Edwards entered Pembroke College in June, 1729. He left in +April, 1730. + +[887] _Pr. and Med_. p. 164. BOSWELL. + +[888] 'Edwards observed how many we have outlived. I hope, yet hope, that +my future life shall be better than my past.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 166. + +[889] See _post_, April 30, 1778. + +[890] See _ante_, p. 221. + +[891] 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little +matters.' _Ante_, i. 471. + +[892] Johnson said to me afterwards, 'Sir, they respected me for my +literature; and yet it was not great but by comparison. Sir, it is +amazing how little literature there is in the world.' BOSWELL. + +[893] See _ante_, i. 320. + +[894] Very near the College, facing the passage which leads to it from +Pembroke Street, still stands an old alehouse which must have been old +in Johnson's time. + +[895] This line has frequently been attributed to Dryden, when a King's +Scholar at Westminster. But neither Eton nor Westminster have in truth +any claim to it, the line being borrowed, with a slight change, from an +Epigram by Crashaw:-- + +'Joann. 2, + +'_Aquæ in vinum versæ. +Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphis? +Qua rosa mirantes tam nova mutat aquas? +Numen, convinvæ, præsens agnoscite numen, +Nympha pudica_ DEUM _vidit, et erubuit_.' MALONE. + +What gave your springs a brightness not their own? +What rose so strange the wond'ring waters flushed? +Heaven's hand, oh guests; heaven's hand may here be known; +The spring's coy nymph has seen her God and blushed. + +[896] 'He that made the verse following (some ascribe it to Giraldus +Cambrensis) could adore both the sun rising, and the sun setting, when +he could so cleanly honour King Henry II, then departed, and King +Richard succeeding. + +"_Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla sequutaest_."' + +Camden's _Remains_ (1870), p. 351. + +[897] 'When Mr. Hume began to be known in the world as a philosopher, +Mr. White, a decent, rich merchant of London, said to him:--"I am +surprised, Mr. Hume, that a man of your good sense should think of +being a philosopher. Why, _I_ now took it into my head to be a +philosopher for some time, but tired of it most confoundedly, and very +soon gave it up." "Pray, Sir," said Mr. Hume, "in what branch of +philosophy did you employ your researches? What books did you read?" +"Books?" said Mr. White; "nay sir, I read no books, but I used to sit +whole forenoons a-yawning and poking the fire." _Boswelliana_, p. 221. +The French were more successful than Mr. Edwards in the pursuit of +philosophy, Horace Walpole wrote from Paris in 1766 (_Letters_, iv. +466):--'The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are +dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy +and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural +levity and cheerfulness.' + +[898] See _ante_, ii. 8. + +[899] See _ante_, i. 332. + +[900] See _ante_, i. 468, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 4. + +[901] I am not absolutely sure but this was my own suggestion, though it +is truly in the character of Edwards. BOSWELL. + +[902] Sixty-nine. He was born in 1709. + +[903] See _ante_, i. 75, note 1. + +[904] + +'O my coevals! remnants of yourselves! +Poor human ruins, tottering o'er the grave! +Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees, +Strike deeper their vile roots, and closer cling, +Still more enamoured of this wretched soil?' + +Young's _Night Thoughts_, Night iv. + +[905] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 20, 1773. According to Mrs. Piozzi +'he liked the expression so well that he often repeated it.' Piozzi's +_Anec_. p. 208. He wrote to her:--'Have you not observed in all our +conversations that my _genius_ is always in extremes; that I am very +noisy or very silent; very gloomy or very merry; very sour or very +kind?' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 166. In Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_ (ii. 310) +we read that 'Dr. Johnson is never his best when there is nobody to draw +him out;' and in her _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_ (ii. 107) she adds that +'the masterly manner in which, as soon as any topic was started, he +seized it in all its bearings, had so much the air of belonging to the +leader of the discourse, that this singularity was unsuspected save by +the experienced observation of long years of acquaintance.' Malone wrote +in 1783:--'I have always found him very communicative; ready to give his +opinion on any subject that was mentioned. He seldom, however, starts a +subject himself; but it is very easy to lead him into one.' Prior's +_Malone_, p. 92. What Dugald Stewart says of Adam Smith (_Life_, p. 114) +was equally true of Johnson:--'He was scarcely ever known to start a new +topic himself, or to appear unprepared upon those topics that were +introduced by others.' Johnson, in his long fits of silence, was perhaps +like Cowper, but when aroused he was altogether unlike. Cowper says of +himself:--'The effect of such continual listening to the language of a +heart hopeless and deserted is that I can never give much more than half +my attention to what is started by others, and very rarely start +anything myself.' Southey's _Cowper_, v. 10. + +[906] In summer 1792, additional and more expensive decorations having +been introduced, the price of admission was raised to two shillings. I +cannot approve of this. The company may be more select; but a number of +the honest commonalty are, I fear, excluded from sharing in elegant and +innocent entertainment. An attempt to abolish the one-shilling gallery +at the playhouse has been very properly counteracted. BOSWELL. + +[907] _Regale_, as a noun, is not in Johnson's Dictionary. It was a +favourite word with Miss Burney. + +[908] 'Tyers is described in _The Idler_, No. 48, under the name of Tom +Restless; "a circumstance," says Mr. Nichols, "pointed out to me by +Dr. Johnson himself."' _Lit. Anec_. viii. 81. 'When Tom Restless +rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom +he takes to be reasoners, as to hear their discourse, and endeavours to +remember something which, when it has been strained through Tom's head, +is so near to nothing, that what it once was cannot be discovered. This +he carries round from friend to friend through a circle of visits, till, +hearing what each says upon the question, he becomes able at dinner to +say a little himself; and as every great genius relaxes himself among +his inferiors, meets with some who wonder how so young a man can talk so +wisely.' + +[909] 'That accurate judge of human life, Dr. Johnson, has often been +heard by me to observe, that it was the greatest misfortune which +could befall a man to have been bred to no profession, and pathetically +to regret that this misfortune was his own.' _More's Practical Piety_, +p. 313. MARKLAND. + +[910] He had wished to study it. See _ante_, i. 134. + +[911] The fourth Earl of Lichfield, the Chancellor of Oxford, died in +1772. The title became extinct in 1776, on the death of the fifth earl. +The present title was created in 1831. Courthope's _Hist. Peerage_, +p. 286. + +[912] See _post_, March 23, 1783, where Boswell vexed him in much the +same way. + +[913] I am not entirely without suspicion that Johnson may have felt a +little momentary envy; for no man loved the good things of this life +better than he did; and he could not but be conscious that he deserved +a much larger share of them, than he ever had. I attempted in a +newspaper to comment on the above passage, in the manner of Warburton, +who must be allowed to have shewn uncommon ingenuity, in giving to any +authour's text whatever meaning he chose it should carry. [_Ante_, ii. +37, note 1.] As this imitation may amuse my readers, I shall here +introduce it:-- + +'No saying of Dr. Johnson's has been more misunderstood than his +applying to Mr. Burke when he first saw him at his fine place at +Beaconsfield, _Non equidem invideo; miror magis_. These two celebrated +men had been friends for many years before Mr. Burke entered on his +parliamentary career. They were both writers, both members of THE +LITERARY CLUB; when, therefore, Dr. Johnson saw Mr. Burke in a situation +so much more splendid than that to which he himself had attained, he did +not mean to express that he thought it a disproportionate prosperity; +but while he, as a philosopher, asserted an exemption from envy, _non +equidem invideo_, he went on in the words of the poet _miror magis_; +thereby signifying, either that he was occupied in admiring what he was +glad to see; or, perhaps, that considering the general lot of men of +superiour abilities, he wondered that Fortune, who is represented as +blind, should, in this instance, have been so just.' BOSWELL. Johnson in +his youth had translated + +'Non equidem invideo; miror magis' + +(Virgil, _Eclogues_, i. II) by + +'My admiration only I exprest, +(No spark of envy harbours in my breast).' + +_Ante_, i. 51. + +[914] See _ante_ ii. 136. + +[915] This neglect was avenged a few years after Goldsmith's death, +when Lord Camden sought to enter The Literary Club and was black-balled. +'I am sorry to add,' wrote Mr. [Sir William] Jones in 1780, 'that Lord +Camden and the Bishop of Chester were rejected. When Bishops and +Chancellors honour us by offering to dine with us at a tavern, it seems +very extraordinary that we should ever reject such an offer; but there +is no reasoning on the caprice of men.' _Life of Sir W. Jones_, p. 240. + +[916] Cradock (_Memoirs_, i. 229) was dining with The Literary Club, +when Garrick arrived very late, full-dressed. 'He made many apologies; +he had been unexpectedly detained at the House of Lords, and Lord Camden +had insisted upon setting him down at the door of the hotel in his own +carriage. Johnson said nothing, but he looked a volume.' + +[917] Miss. [Per Errata; Originally: Mrs.] Burney records this year +(1778) that Mrs. Thrale said to Johnson, 'Garrick is one of those +whom you suffer nobody to abuse but yourself; for if any other person +speaks against him, you browbeat him in a minute. "Why, madam," answered +he, "they don't know when to abuse him, and when to praise him; I will +allow no man to speak ill of David that he does not deserve."' Mme. +D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 65. See _ante_, i. 393, note 1. + +[918] The passage is in a letter dated Dublin, Oct. 12, 1727. 'Here is +my maintenance,' wrote Swift, 'and here my convenience. If it pleases +God to restore me to my health, I shall readily make a third journey; +if not we must part, as all human creatures have parted.' He never made +the third journey. Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xvii. 154. + +[919] See _ante_, ii. 162. + +[920] No doubt Percy. + +[921] The philosopher was Bias. Cicero, _Paradoxa_, i. + +[922] Johnson recorded of this day (_Pr. and Med_. p. 164):--'We sat +till the time of worship in the afternoon, and then came again late, +at the Psalms. Not easily, I think, hearing the sermon, or not being +attentive, I fell asleep.' + +[923] Marshall's _Minutes of Agriculture_. + +[924] It was only in hay-time and harvest that Marshall approved of +Sunday work. He had seen in the wet harvest of 1775 so much corn +wasted that he 'was ambitious to set the patriotic example' of Sunday +labour. One Sunday he 'promised every man who would work two shillings, +as much roast beef and plumb pudding as he would eat, with as much ale +as it might be fit for him to drink.' Nine men and three boys came. In a +note in the edition of 1799, he says:--'The Author has been informed +that an old law exists (mentioned by Dugdale), which tolerates +husbandmen in working on Sundays in harvest; and that, in proof thereof, +a gentleman in the north has uniformly carried one load every year on a +Sunday.' He adds:--'Jan. 1799. The particulars of this note were +furnished by the late Dr. Samuel Johnson; at whose request some +considerable part of what was originally written, and _printed_ on this +subject was cancelled. That which was published and which is now offered +again to the public is, _in effect_, what Dr. Johnson approved; or, let +me put it in the most cautious terms, that of which _Dr. Johnson did not +disapprove_.' Marshall's _Minutes etc., on Agriculture_, ii. 65-70. + +[925] Saturday was April 18. + +[926] William Duncombe, Esq. He married the sister of John Hughes +the poet; was the authour of two tragedies and other ingenious +productions; and died 26th Feb. 1769, aged 79. MALONE. In his Life of +Hughes (_Works_, vii. 477), Johnson says 'an account of Hughes is +prefixed to his works by his relation, the late Mr. Duncombe, a man +whose blameless elegance deserved the same respect.' + +[927] See _ante_, i. 185, 243, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22. + +[928] See _ante_, i. 145. + +[929] See Appendix A. + +[930] No doubt Parson Home, better known as Home Tooke, who was at +this time in prison. He had signed an advertisement issued by the +Constitutional Society asking for a subscription for 'the relief of the +widows, etc., of our beloved American fellow-subjects, who had been +inhumanly murdered by the King's troops at Lexington and Concord.' For +this 'very gross libel' he had in the previous November been sentenced +to a fine of £200 and a year's imprisonment. Ann. Reg. xx. 234-245. See +_post_, May 13, 1778. + +[931] Mr. Croker's conjecture that Dr. Shebbeare was the gentleman is +supported by the favourable way in which Boswell (_post_, May 1781) +speaks of Shebbeare as 'that gentleman,' and calls him 'a respectable +name in literature.' Shebbeare, on Nov. 28, 1758, was sentenced by Lord +Mansfield to stand in the pillory, to be confined for three years, and +to give security for his good behaviour for seven years, for a libellous +pamphlet intitled _A Sixth Letter to the People of England_. _Gent. +Mag_. xxviii. 555. (See _ante_, p. 15, note 3.) On Feb. 7, 1759, the +under-sheriff of Middlesex was found guilty of a contempt of Court, in +having suffered Shebbeare to stand _upon_ the pillory only, and not _in_ +it. _Ib_. xxix. 91. Before the seven years had run out, Shebbeare was +pensioned. Smollett, in the preface to _Humphry Clinker_, represents the +publisher of that novel as writing to the imaginary author:--'If you +should be sentenced to the pillory your fortune is made. As times go, +that's a sure step to honour and preferment. I shall think myself happy +if I can lend you a lift.' See also in the same book Mr. Bramble's +Letter of June 2. + +[932] See p. 275 of this volume. BOSWELL. Why Boswell mentions this +gentleman at all, seeing that nothing that he says is reported, is +not clear. Perhaps he gave occasion to Johnson's attack on the +Americans. It is curious also why both here and in the account given of +Dr. Percy's dinner his name is not mentioned. In the presence of this +unknown gentleman Johnson violently attacked first Percy, and next +Boswell. + +[933] Mr. Langton no doubt. See _ante_, iii. 48. He had paid Johnson a +visit that morning. _Pr. and Med_. p. 165. + +[934] See _ante_, p. 216. + +[935] See _ante_, i. 494, where Johnson says that 'her learning is that +of a schoolboy in one of the lower forms.' + +[936] On this day Johnson recorded in his review of the past year:-- +'My nights have been commonly, not only restless, but painful and +fatiguing.' He adds, 'I have written a little of the _Lives of the +Poets_, I think with all my usual vigour.... This year the 28th of March +passed away without memorial. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and +failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldest +thou have lived!' _Pr. and Med_. pp. 169, 170. + +[937] Mr. Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48. + +[938] Malone was told by Baretti that 'Dr. James picked up on a stall a +book of Greek hymns. He brought it to Johnson, who ran his eyes over +the pages and returned it. A year or two afterwards he dined at Sir +Joshua Reynolds's with Dr. Musgrave, the editor of _Euripides_. Musgrave +made a great parade of his Greek learning, and among other less known +writers mentioned these hymns, which he thought none of the company were +acquainted with, and extolled them highly. Johnson said the first of +them was indeed very fine, and immediately repeated it. It consisted of +ten or twelve lines.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 160. + +[939] By Richard Tickell, the grandson of Addison's friend. Walpole's +_Letters_, vii. 54 + +[940] She was a younger sister of Peg Woffington (_ante_, p. 264). +Johnson described her as 'a very airy lady.' (Boswell's _Hebrides_, +Sept. 23, 1773.) Murphy (_Life_, p. 137) says that 'Johnson, sitting at +table with her, took hold of her hand in the middle of dinner, and held +it close to his eye, wondering at the delicacy and the whiteness, till +with a smile she asked:--"Will he give it to me again when he has done +with it?"' He told Miss Burney that 'Mrs. Cholmondeley was the first +person who publicly praised and recommended _Evelina_ among the wits.' +Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 180. Miss Burney wrote in 1778:--'Mrs. +Cholmondeley has been praising _Evelina_; my father said that I could +not have had a greater compliment than making two such women my friends +as Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Cholmondeley, for they were severe and knowing, +and afraid of praising _à tort et à travers_, as their opinions are +liable to be quoted.' _Ib_. i. 47. To Mrs. Cholmondeley Goldsmith, just +before his death, shewed a copy in manuscript of his _Retaliation_. No +one else, it should seem, but Burke had seen it. Forster's _Goldsmith_, +ii. 412. + +[941] Dr. Johnson is supported by the usage of preceding writers. +So in _Musarum Deliciae_, 8vo. 1656 (the writer is speaking of +Suckling's play entitled _Aglaura_, printed in folio):-- + +'This great voluminous _pamphlet_ may be said + To be like one that hath more hair than head.' + + MALONE. + +Addison, in _The Spectator_, No. 529 says that 'the most minute +pocket-author hath beneath him the writers of all pamphlets, or works +that are only stitched. As for a pamphleteer he takes place of none but +of the authors of single sheets.' The inferiority of a pamphlet is shewn +in Johnson's _Works_, ed. 1787, xi. 216:--'Johnson would not allow the +word _derange_ to be an English word. "Sir," said a gentleman who had +some pretensions to literature, "I have seen it in a book." "Not in a +_bound_ book," said Johnson; "_disarrange_ is the word we ought to use +instead of it."' In his _Dictionary_ he gives neither _derange_ nor +_disarrange_. Dr. Franklin, who had been a printer and was likely to use +the term correctly, writing in 1785, mentions 'the artifices made use of +to puff up a paper of verses into a pamphlet.' _Memoirs_, iii. 178. + +[942] See _post_, March 16, 1779, for 'the exquisite address' with which +Johnson evaded a question of this kind. + +[943] Garrick insisted on great alterations being made in _The Good +Natured Man_. When Goldsmith resisted this, 'he proposed a sort of +arbitration,' and named as his arbitrator Whitehead the laureate. +Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 41. It was of Whitehead's poetry that Johnson +said 'grand nonsense is insupportable.' _Ante_, i. 402. _The Good +Natured Man_ was brought out by Colman, as well as _She Stoops to +Conquer_. + +[944] See _ante_, ii. 208, note 5. + +[945] See _ante_, i. 416. + +[946] 'This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was +first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury Lane, and rejected; +it being then carried to Rich had the effect, as was ludicrously said, +of _making_ Gay _rich_ and Rich _gay_.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 66. +See _ante_, ii. 368. + +[947] See _ante_, i. 112. + +[948] In opposition to this Mr. Croker quotes Horace:--- + +'Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo +Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.' +'I'm hissed in public; but in secret blest, +I count my money and enjoy my chest.' Horace, _Sat_. i. I. 66. + +See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 26. + +[949] The anecdote is told in _Menagiana_, iii. 104, but not of a +'_maid_ of honour,' nor as an instance of '_exquisite flattery_.' 'M. +d'Uzès était chevalier d'honneur de la reine. Cette princesse lui +demanda un jour quelle heure il était; il répondit, "Madame, l'heure +qu'il plaira à votre majesté."' Menage tells it as _a pleasantry_ of M. +d'Uzès; but M. de la Monnoye says, that this duke was remarkable for +_naïvetés_ and blunders, and was a kind of _butt_, to whom the wits of +the court used to attribute all manner of absurdities. CROKER. + +[950] Horace, _Odes_, iv. 2. II. The common reading is _solutis_. +Boswell (_Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773) says:--'Mr. Wilkes told me this +himself with classical admiration.' + +[951] See this question fully investigated in the Notes upon my +_Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, edit. 3, p. 21, _et seq_. [Aug. +15]. And here, as a lawyer mindful of the maxim _Suum cuique tribuito_, +I cannot forbear to mention, that the additional Note beginning with 'I +find since the former edition,' is not mine, but was obligingly +furnished by Mr. Malone, who was so kind as to superintend the press +while I was in Scotland, and the first part of the second edition was +printing. He would not allow me to ascribe it to its proper authour; +but, as it is exquisitely acute and elegant, I take this opportunity, +without his knowledge, to do him justice. BOSWELL. See also _ante_, i. +453, and _post_, May 15, 1784. + +[952] Horace, _Sat_. i. I. 106. Malone points out that this is the +motto to _An Enquiry into Customary Estates and Tenants' Rights, &c., +with some considerations for restraining excessive fines_. By Everard +Fleetwood, 8vo, 1737. + +[953] A _modus_ is _something paid as a compensation for tithes +on the supposition of being a moderate equivalent_. Johnson's +_Dictionary_. It was more desirable for the landlord than the Parson. +Thus T. Warton, in his _Progress of Discontent_, represents the Parson +who had taken a college living regretting his old condition, + +'When calm around the common-room +I puffed my daily pipe's perfume; +... +And every night I went to bed, +Without a _modus_ in my head.' + +T. Warton's _Poems_, ii. 197. + +[954] Fines are payments due to the lord of a manor on every admission +of a new tenant. In some manors these payments are fixed by custom; they +are then _fines certain_; in others they are not fixed, but depend on +the reasonableness of the lord and the paying capacity of the tenant; +they are _fines uncertain_. The advantage of _fines certain_, like that +of a _modus_ in tithes, is that a man knows what he shall get. + +[955] _Ante_, iii. 35. + +[956] Mr. P. Cunningham has, I think, enabled us to clear up Boswell's +mystery, by finding in the _Garrick Corres_, ii. 305, May 1778, that +Johnson's poor friend, Mauritius Lowe, the painter, lived at No. 3, +Hedge Lane, in a state of extreme distress. CROKER. See _post_, April 3, +1779, and April 12, 1783. + +[957] 'In all his intercourse with mankind, Pope had great delight in +artifice, and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and +unsuspected methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem." ["Nor +take her tea without a stratagem." Young's _Universal Passion, Sat_. vi.] +He practised his arts on such small occasions that Lady Bolingbroke used +to say, in a French phrase, that "he played the politician about cabbages +and turnips."' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 311. + +[958] Johnson, _post_, under March 30, 1783, speaks of 'the vain +ostentatious importance of many persons in quoting the authority of +dukes and lords.' In his going to the other extreme, as he said he did, +may be found the explanation of Boswell's 'mystery.' For of +mystery--'the wisdom of blockheads,' as Horace Walpole calls it +(_Letters_, iii. 371)--Johnson was likely to have as little as any man. +As for Grosvenor-square, the Thrales lived there for a short time, and +Johnson had a room in the house (_post_, March 20, 1781). + +[959] Tacitus, _Agricola_, ch. xxx. 'The unknown always passes for +something peculiarly grand.' + +[960] Johnson defines _toy-shop_ as 'a shop where playthings and little +nice manufactures are sold.' + +[961] See _ante_, ii. 241. + +[962] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 237) says that 'the fore-top of all his +wigs were (sic) burned by the candle down to the very net-work. Mr. +Thrale's valet, for that reason, kept one always in his own hands, with +which he met him at the parlour door when the bell had called him down +to dinner.' Cumberland (_Memoirs_, i. 357) says that he wore 'a brown +coat with metal buttons, black waistcoat and worsted stockings, with a +flowing bob-wig; they were in perfectly good trim, and with the ladies +he had nothing of the slovenly philosopher about him.' + +[963] See _ante_, ii. 432. + +[964] Here he either was mistaken, or had a different notion of an +extensive sale from what is generally entertained: for the fact is, +that four thousand copies of that excellent work were sold very quickly. +A new edition has been printed since his death, besides that in the +collection of his works. BOSWELL. See _ante_, ii. 310, note 2. + +[965] 'In the neighbourhood of Lichfield [in 1750] the principal +gentlemen clothed their hounds in tartan plaid, with which they hunted +a fox, dressed in a red uniform.' Mahon's _Hist. of England_, iv. 10. + +[966] So Boswell in his _Hebrides_ (Nov. 8), hoping that his father and +Johnson have met in heaven, observes, 'that they have met in a place +where there is no room for Whiggism.' See _ante_, i. 431. + +[967] _Paradise Lost_, bk. i. 263. Butler (_Miscellaneous Thoughts_, +1. 169) had said:-- + +'The Devil was the first o' th' name +From whom the race of rebels came.' + +[968] In the phraseology of Scotland, I should have said, 'Mr. John +Spottiswoode the younger, _of that ilk_.' Johnson knew that sense +of the word very well, and has thus explained it in his _Dictionary_, +_voce_ ILK:--'It also signifies "the same;" as, _Mackintosh of that +ilk_, denotes a gentleman whose surname and the title of his estate are +the same.' BOSWELL. See _ante_, ii. 427, note 2. + +[969] He wrote to Dr. Taylor on Oct. 19 of the next year:--'There are +those still who either fright themselves, or would fright others, with +an invasion.... Such a fleet [a fleet equal to the transportation of +twenty or of ten thousand men] cannot be hid in a creek; it must be +safely [?] visible; and yet I believe no man has seen the man that has +seen it. The ships of war were within sight of Plymouth, and only within +sight.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 461. + +[970] See _ante_, iii. 42. + +[971] It is observed in Waller's _Life_, in the _Biographia Britannica_, +that he drank only water; and that while he sat in a company who were +drinking wine, 'he had the dexterity to accommodate his discourse to the +pitch of theirs as it _sunk_.' If excess in drinking be meant, the +remark is acutely just. But surely, a moderate use of wine gives a +gaiety of spirits which water-drinkers know not. BOSWELL. 'Waller passed +his time in the company that was highest, both in rank and wit, from +which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude him. Though he drank +water, he was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten the mirth of +Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said that "no man in England +should keep him company without drinking but Ned Waller."' Johnson's +_Works_, vii. 197. + +[972] See _ante_, iii. 41, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 17. + +[973] Pope. _Satires_, Prologue, 1. 283. + +[974] As he himself had said in his letter of thanks for his diploma of +Doctor of Laws, 'Nemo sibi placens non lactatur' (_ante_, ii. 333). + +[975] + +'Who mean to live within our proper sphere, +Dear to ourselves, and to our country dear.' + +FRANCIS. Horace, _Epistles_, i. 3. 29. + +[976] Johnson recommended this before. _Ante_, p. 169. Boswell tried +abstinence once before. _Ante_, ii. 436, note 1, and iii. 170, note 1. + +[977] Johnson wrote to Boswell in 1775:--'Reynolds has taken too much +to strong liquor, and seems to delight in his new character.' _Ante_, +ii. 292. + +[978] See _ante_, p. 170, note 2. + +[979] At the Castle of the Bishop of Munster 'there was,' writes Temple, +'nothing remarkable but the most Episcopal way of drinking that could +be invented. As soon as we came in the great hall there stood many +flagons ready charged; the general called for wine to drink the King's +health; they brought him a formal bell of silver gilt, that might hold +about two quarts or more; he took it empty, pulled out the clapper, and +gave it me who (sic) he intended to drink to, then had the bell filled, +drunk it off to his Majesty's health; then asked me for the clapper, put +it in, turned down the bell, and rung it out to shew he had played fair +and left nothing in it; took out the clapper, desired me to give it to +whom I pleased, then gave his bell to be filled again, and brought it to +me. I that never used to drink, and seldom would try, had commonly some +gentlemen with me that served for that purpose when it was necessary.' +Temple's _Works_, ed. 1757, i. 266. + +[980] See _ante_, ii. 450, note 1, and iii. 79. + +[981] The passages are in the _Jerusalem_, canto i. st. 3, and in +_Lucretius_, i. 935, and again iv. 12. CROKER. + +[982] See _ante_, ii. 247, where Boswell says that 'no man was more +scrupulously inquisitive in order to discover the truth;' and iii. 188, +229. + +[983] See _post_, under May 8, 1781. + +[984] 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his +book.' _Ante_, ii. 53. + +[985] 'I was once in company with Smith,' said Johnson in 1763, 'and we +did not take to each other.' _Ante_, i. 427. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, +Oct. 29. + +[986] See _ante_, ii. 63. + +[987] See _ante_, ii. 84 + +[988] See _ante_, p. 3. + +[989] This experiment which Madame Dacier made in vain, has since been +tried in our own language, by the editor of _Ossian_, and we must either +think very meanly of his abilities, or allow that Dr. Johnson was in the +right. And Mr. Cowper, a man of real genius, has miserably failed in his +blank verse translation. BOSWELL. Johnson, in his _Life of Pope_ +(_Works_, viii. 253), says:--'I have read of a man, who being by his +ignorance of Greek compelled to gratify his curiosity with the Latin +printed on the opposite page, declared that from the rude simplicity of +the lines literally rendered he formed nobler ideas of the Homeric +majesty, than from the laboured elegance of polished versions,' Though +Johnson nowhere speaks of Cowper, yet his writings were not altogether +unknown to him. 'Dr. Johnson,' wrote Cowper, 'read and recommended my +first volume.' Southey's _Cowper_, v. 171. + +[990] 'I bought the first volume of _Manchester_, but could not read it; +it was much too learned for me, and seemed rather an account of Babel +than Manchester, I mean in point of antiquity.' Walpole's _Letters_, +vi. 207. + +[991] Henry was injured by Gilbert Stuart, the malignant editor of the +_Edinburgh Magazine and Review_, who 'had vowed that he would crush his +work,' and who found confederates to help him. He asked Hume to review +it, thinking no doubt that one historian would attack another; when he +received from him a highly favourable review he would not publish it. +It contained a curious passage, where Hume points out that Henry and +Robertson were clergymen, and continues:--'These illustrious examples, +if any thing, must make the _infidel abashed of his vain cavils_.' J.H. +Burton's _Hume_, ii. 469. + +[992] Hume wrote to Millar:--'Hamilton and Balfour have offered +Robertson [for his _Scotland_] a very unusual price; no less than £500 +for one edition of 2000.' _Ib_. ii. 42. As Robertson did not accept this +offer, no doubt he got a better one. Even if he got no more, it would +not have seemed 'a moderate price' to a man whose preferment hitherto +had been only £100 a year. (See Dugald Stewart's _Robertson_, p. 161.) +Stewart adds (_ib_. p. 169):--'It was published on Feb. 1, 1759. Before +the end of the month the author was desired by his bookseller to prepare +for a second edition.' By 1793 it was in its fourteenth edition. _Ib_. +p. 326. The publisher was Millar; the price two guineas. _Gent. Mag_. +xxix. 84. + +[993] Lord Clive. See _post_, p. 350, and Oct. 10, 1779. + +[994] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 286) gives an instance of this +'romantick humour.' 'Robertson was very much a master of conversation, +and very desirous to lead it, and to raise theories that sometimes +provoked the laugh against him. He went a jaunt into England with +Dundas, Cockburn and Sinclair; who, seeing a gallows on a neighbouring +hillock, rode round to have a nearer view of the felon on the gallows. +When they met in the inn, Robertson began a dissertation on the +character of nations, and how much the English, like the Romans, were +hardened by their cruel diversions of cock-fighting, bull-baiting, &c.; +for had they not observed three Englishmen on horseback do what no +Scotchman or--. Here Dundas interrupted him, and said, "What! did you +not know, Principal, that it was Cockburn and Sinclair and me?" This put +an end to theories, &c., for that day.' + +[995] This was a favourite word with Johnson and Mrs. Thrale. 'Long live +Mrs. G. that _downs_ my mistress,' he wrote (_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 26). +'Did you quite _down_ her?' he asked of another lady (_Ib_. p. 100). +Miss Burney caught up the word: 'I won't be _downed_,' she wrote. Mme. +D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 252. + +[996] See _ante_, iii. 41, 327. + +[997] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 474) tells how Robertson, with one of +his pupils, and he, visited at a house where some excellent claret +flowed freely. 'After four days Robertson took me into a window +before dinner, and with some solemnity proposed to make a motion to +shorten the drinking, if I would second him--"Because," added he, +"although you and I may go through it, I am averse to it on my pupil's +account." I answered that I was afraid it would not do, as our +toastmaster might throw ridicule upon us, as we were to leave the island +the day after the next, and that we had not proposed any abridgement +till the old claret was all done, the last of which we had drunk +yesterday. "Well, well," replied the Doctor, "be it so then, and let us +end as we began."' + +[998] Johnson, when asked to hear Robertson preach, said:--'I will hear +him if he will get up into a tree and preach; but I will not give a +sanction by my presence to a Presbyterian assembly.' Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Aug. 27. See also _Ib_. Nov. 7. + +[999] Mrs. Piozzi confidently mentions this as having passed in +Scotland, _Anecdotes_, p. 62. BOSWELL. She adds:--'I was shocked to +think how he [Johnson] must have disgusted him [Robertson].' She, we may +well believe, felt no more shock than Robertson felt disgust. + +[1000] See Voltaire's _Siècle de Louis XIV_, ch. xiv. + +[1001] See _ante_, p. 191. + +[1002] See _ante_, p. 54. + +[1003] It was on this day that Johnson dictated to Boswell his Latin +translation of Dryden's lines on Milton. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 22. + +[1004] See _ante_, ii. 109. + +[1005] '"Well, Sir," said he, "we had good talk." BOSWELL. "Yes Sir; +you tossed and gored several persons."' _Ante_, ii. 66. + +[1006] Very likely their host. See _ante_, iii. 48. + +[1007] See _ante_, iii. 97. + +[1008] _Acts_, X. 1 and 2. + +[1009] Mr. Croker says, 'no doubt Dr. Robertson;' see _post_, under +June 16, 1784, where Johnson says much the same of 'an authour of +considerable eminence.' In this case Mr. Croker says, 'probably Dr. +Robertson.' I have little doubt that Dr. Beattie was there meant. He may +be meant also here, for the description of the conversation does not +agree with what we are told of Robertson. See _ante_, p. 335. note 1. +Perhaps, however, Dr. Blair was the eminent author. It is in Boswell's +manner to introduce the same person in consecutive paragraphs as if +there were two persons. + +[1010] See _ante_, ii. 256. + +[1011] Chappe D'Auteroche writes:--'La douceur de sa physionomie et sa +vivacité annonçaient plutôt quelque indiscrétion que l'ombre d'un +crime. Tous ceux que j'ai consultés par la suite m'ont cependant assuré +qu'elle était coupable.' _Voyage en Sibérie_, i. 227. Lord Kames +says:--'Of whatever indiscretion she might have been guilty, the +sweetness of her countenance and her composure left not in the +spectators the slightest suspicion of guilt.' She was cruelly knouted, +her tongue was cut out, and she was banished to Siberia. Kames's +_Sketches_, i. 363. + +[1012] Mr. Croker says:--'Here I think the censure is quite unjust. +Lord Kames gives in the clearest terms the same explanation.' Kames +made many corrections in the later editions. On turning to the first, +I found, as I expected, that Johnson's censure was quite just. Kames +says (i. 76):--'Whatever be the cause of high or low interest, I am +certain that the quantity of circulating coin can have no influence. +Supposing the half of our money to be withdrawn, a hundred pounds lent +ought still to afford but five pounds as interest; because if the +principal be doubled in value, so is also the interest.' This passage +was struck out in later editions. + +[1013] 'Johnson had an extraordinary admiration of this lady, +notwithstanding she was a violent Whig. In answer to her high-flown +speeches for _Liberty_, he addressed to her the following Epigram, of +which I presume to offer a translation:-- + +'_Liber ut esse velim suasiti pulchra Maria +Ut maneam liber pulchra Maria vale_,' +Adieu, Maria! since you'd have me free; +For, who beholds thy charms a slave must be. + +A correspondent of _The Gentleman's Magazine_, who subscribes himself +SCIOLUS, to whom I am indebted for several excellent remarks, observes, +'The turn of Dr. Johnson's lines to Miss Aston, whose Whig principles he +had been combating, appears to me to be taken from an ingenious epigram +in the _Menagiana_ [vol. iii. p. 376, edit. 1716] on a young lady who +appeared at a masquerade, _habillée en Jésuite_, during the fierce +contentions of the followers of Molinos and Jansenius concerning +free-will:-- + + "On s'étonne ici que Caliste +Ait pris l'habit de Moliniste. + Puisque cette jeune beauté +Ote à chacun sa liberté, + N'est-ce pas une Janseniste?" + +BOSWELL. + +Johnson, in his _Criticism upon Pope's Epitaphs_ (_Works_, viii. 355), +quotes the opinion of a 'lady of great beauty and excellence.' She was, +says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 162), Molly Aston. Mrs. Piozzi, in her +_Letters_ (ii. 383), writes:--'Nobody has ever mentioned what became of +Miss Aston's letters, though he once told me they should be the last +papers he would destroy.' See _ante_, i. 83. + +[1014] See _ante_, ii. 470. + +[1015] Pope's _Essay on Man_, iv. 380. + +[1016] See _ante_, i. 294. + +[1017] 'March 4, 1745. You say you expect much information about +Belleisle, but there has not (in the style of the newspapers) the least +particular _transpired_.' Horace Walpole's _Letters_, i. 344. 'Jan. 26, +1748. You will not let one word of it _transpire_.' Chesterfield's +_Misc. Works_, iv. 35. 'It would be next to a miracle that a fact of +this kind should be known to a whole parish, and not _transpire_ any +farther.' Fielding's _Tom Jones_, bk. ii. c. 5. _Tom Jones_ was +published before the _Dictionary_, but not so Walpole's _Letters_ and +Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_. I have not found a passage in which +Bolingbroke uses the word, but I have not read all his works. + +[1018] 'The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge +of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own ... I have registered +as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others +against the folly of naturalising useless foreigners to the injury of +the natives.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 31. 'If an academy should be +established for the cultivation of our style, which I, who can never +wish to see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty +will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and +dictionaries, endeavour with all their influence to stop the license of +translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, +will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.' _Ib_. p. 49. 'I have +rarely admitted any words not authorised by former writers; for I +believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent will +be able to express his thoughts without further help from other +nations.' _The Rambler_, No. 208. + +[1019] Boswell on one occasion used _it came out_ where a lover of fine +words would have said _it transpired_. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, +November 1. + +[1020] The record no doubt was destroyed with the other papers that +Boswell left to his literary executors (_ante_, p. 301, note 1). + +[1021] See _ante_, i. 154. + +[1022] 'Of Johnson's pride I have heard Reynolds observe, that if any +man drew him into a state of obligation without his own consent, that +man was the first he would affront by way of clearing off the account.' +Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 71. + +[1023] See _post_, May 1, 1779. + +[1024] This had happened the day before (May 11) in the writ of error in +Horne's case (_ante_, p. 314). _Ann. Reg_. xii. 181. + +[1025] '_To enucleate_. To solve; to clear.' Johnson's _Dictionary_. + +[1026] In the original _me_. + +[1027] Pope himself (_Moral Essays_, iii. 25) attacks the sentiment +contained in this stanza. He says:-- + +'What nature wants (a phrase I must distrust) +Extends to luxury, extends to lust.' + +Mr. Elwin (Pope's _Works_, ii. 462) doubts the genuineness of this +suppressed stanza. Montezuma, in Dryden's _Indian Emperour_, act ii. sc. +2, says:-- + +'That lust of power we from your Godheads have, +You're bound to please those appetites you gave.' + +[1028] 'Antoine Arnauld, surnommé le grand Arnauld, théologien et +philosophe, né à Paris le 6 février 1612, mort le 6 août 1694 à +Bruxelles.' _Nouv. Biog. Gén_. iii. 282. + +[1029] 'It may be discovered that when Pope thinks himself concealed he +indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those +distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that his +book was presented to the King and Queen by the right honourable Sir +Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud +that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first +distinction.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 278. + +[1030] _Othello_, act iii. sc. 3. + +[1031] Mr. Langton, I have little doubt. Not only does that which Johnson +says of sluggishness fit his character, but the fact that he is spoken +of in the next paragraph points to him. + +[1032] Mr. Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48. + +[1033] We may wonder whether _pasted_ is strictly used. It seems likely +that the wealthy brewer, who had a taste for the fine arts, afforded +Hogarth at least a frame. + +[1034] See _ante_, i. 49. + +[1035] Baths are called Hummums in the East, and thence these hotels in +Covent Garden, where there were baths, were called by that name. CROKER. + +[1036] Beauclerk. + +[1037] Bolingbroke. _Ante_, ii. 246. + +[1038] Lord Clive. _Ante_, p. 334. + +[1039] _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2. + +[1040] Johnson, or Boswell in reporting him, here falls into an error. +The editor of Chesterfield's _Works_ says (ii. 3l9), 'that being +desirous of giving a specimen of his Lordship's eloquence he has made +choice of the three following speeches; the first in the strong nervous +style of Demosthenes; the two latter in the witty, ironical manner of +Tully.' Now the first of these speeches is not Johnson's, for it was +reported in _The Gent. Mag_. for July, 1737, p. 409, nine months before +his first contribution to that paper. In spite of great differences this +report and that in Chesterfield's _Works_ are substantially the same. If +Johnson had any hand in the authorised version he merely revised the +report already published. Nor did he always improve it, as will be seen +by comparing with Chesterfield's _Works_, ii. 336, the following passage +from the _Gent. Mag_. p. 411:--'My Lords, we ought in all points to be +tender of property. Wit is the property of those who are possessed of +it, and very often the only property they have. Thank God, my Lords, +this is not our case; we are otherwise provided for.' The other two +speeches are his. In the collected works (xi. 420, 489) they are wrongly +assigned to Lord Carteret. See _ante_, i. Appendix A. + +[1041] See _ante_, p. 340. + +[1042] These words are quoted by Kames, iii. 267. In his abbreviation +he perhaps passed over by accident the words that Johnson next quotes. +If Clarendon did not believe the story, he wished his readers to believe +it. He gives more than five pages to it, and he ends by saying:-- +'Whatever there was of all this, it is a notorious truth, that when the +news of the duke's murder (which happened within few months after) was +brought to his mother, she seemed not in the least degree surprised; but +received it as if she had foreseen it.' According to the story, he had +told her of the warning which had come to him through his father's ghost. +Clarendon's _History_, ed. 1826, i. 74. + +[1043] Kames maintains (iii. 95) that schools are not needful for the +children of the labouring poor. They would be needful, 'if without +regular education we could have no knowledge of the principles of +religion and of morality. But Providence has not left man in a state so +imperfect: religion and morality are stamped on his heart; and none can +be ignorant of them, who attend to their own perceptions.' + +[1044] 'Oct. 5, 1764. Mr. Elliot brings us woeful accounts of the +French ladies, of the decency of their conversation, and the nastiness +of their behaviour.' Walpole's _Letters_, iv. 277. Walpole wrote from +Paris on Nov. 19, 1765, 'Paris is the ugliest, beastliest town in the +universe,' and describes the nastiness of the talk of French women of +the first rank. _Ib_. p. 435. Mrs. Piozzi, nearly twenty years later, +places among 'the contradictions one meets with every moment' at Paris, +'A Countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps, +and a dirty black handkerchief about her neck.' Piozzi's _Journey_, i. +17. See _ante_, ii. 403, and _post_, under Aug. 29, 1783. + +[1045] See Appendix B. + +[1046] His lordship was, to the last, in the habit of telling this story +rather too often. CROKER. + +[1047] See _ante_, ii. 194. + +[1048] See _ante_, iii. 178. + +[1049] See _ante_, ii. 153. + +[1050] 'Our eyes and ears may convince us,' wrote Wesley, 'there is not +a less happy body of men in all England than the country farmers. In +general their life is supremely dull; and it is usually unhappy too; +for of all people in the kingdom, they are the most discontented, seldom +satisfied either with God or man.' Southey's _Wesley_, i. 420. He did +not hold with Johnson as to the upper classes. 'Oh! how hard it is,' he +said, 'to be shallow enough for a polite audience.' _Ib_. p. 419. + +[1051] Horne says:--'Even S. Johnson, though mistakenly, has attempted +AND, and would find no difficulty with THEREFORE' (ed. 1778, p. 21). +However, in a note on p. 56 he says:--'I could never read his preface +[to his _Dictionary_] without shedding a tear.' See _ante_, i. 297, +note 2. + +[1052] In Mr. Horne Tooke's enlargement of that _Letter_, which he has +since published with the title of [Greek: Epea pteroenta]; or, the +_Diversions of Purley_; he mentions this compliment, as if Dr. Johnson +instead of _several_ of his etymologies had said _all_. His recollection +having thus magnified it, shews how ambitious he was of the approbation +of so great a man. BOSWELL. Horne Tooke says (ed. 1798, part i, p. 156) +'immediately after the publication of my _Letter to Mr. Dunning_ I was +informed by Mr. S. [Seward], an intimate friend of Dr. Johnson, that he +had declared that, if he lived to give a new edition of his +_Dictionary_, he should certainly adopt my derivations.' Boswell and +Horne Tooke, says Stephens (_Life of Tooke_, ii. 438), had an +altercation. 'Happening to meet at a gentleman's house, Mr. Boswell +proposed to make up the breach, on the express condition, however, that +they should drink a bottle of wine each between the toasts. But Mr. +Tooke would not give his assent unless the liquor should be brandy. By +the time a quart had been quaffed Boswell was left sprawling on the +floor.' + +[1053] See _ante_, iii. 314. Thurlow, the Attorney-General, pressed that +Horne should be set in the pillory, 'observing that imprisonment would +be "a slight inconvenience to one of sedentary habits."' It was during +his imprisonment that he wrote his _Letter to Mr. Dunning_. Campbell's +_Chancellors_, ed. 1846, v. 517. Horace Walpole says that 'Lord +Mansfield was afraid, and would not venture the pillory.' _Journal of +the Reign of George III_, ii. 167. + +[1054] '_Bulse_, a certain quantity of diamonds' (India). Webster's +_Dictionary_. + +[1055] 'He raised,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 236), 'the medical +character to such a height of dignity as was never seen in this or any +other country. I have heard it said that when he began to practise, he +was a frequenter of the meeting at Stepney where his father preached; +and that when he was sent for out of the assembly, his father would in +his prayer insert a petition in behalf of the sick person. I once +mentioned this to Johnson, who said it was too gross for belief; but it +was not so at Batson's [a coffee-house frequented by physicians]; it +passed there as a current belief.' See _ante_, i. 159. Young has +introduced him in the second of his _Night Thoughts_-- + +'That time is mine, O Mead, to thee I owe; +Fain would I pay thee with eternity.' + +Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 260) says 'that he had nothing but +pretensions.' + +[1056] On Oct. 17, 1777, Burgoyne's army surrendered to the Americans +at Saratoga. One of the articles of the Convention was 'that the army +should march out of the camp with all the honours of war to a fixed +place where they were to deposit their arms. It is said that General +Gates [the American Commander] paid so nice and delicate an attention +to the British military honour that he kept his army close within their +lines, and did not suffer an American soldier to be a witness to the +degrading spectacle of piling their arms.' _Ann. Reg_. xx. 173, 174. +Horace Walpole, on Lord Cornwallis's capitulation in 1781, wrote:--'The +newspapers on the Court side had been crammed with paragraphs for a +fortnight, saying that Lord Cornwallis had declared he would never pile +up his arms like Burgoyne; that is, he would rather die sword in hand.' +Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 475. + +[1057] See _ante_, i. 342. + +[1058] There was a Colonel Fullarton who took an important part in the +war against Tippoo in 1783. Mill's _British India_, ed. 1840, iv. 276. + +[1059] 'To count is a modern practice, the ancient method was to guess; +and when numbers are guessed, they are always magnified.' Johnson's +_Works_, ix. 95. + +[1060] He published in 1714 _An Account of Switzerland_. + +[1061] See _ante_, ii. 468. + +[1062] See Appendix C. + +[1063] 'All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a +prescience of the future which has not been given us. They are, I think, +a crime, because they resign that life to chance which God has given us +to be regulated by reason; and superinduce a kind of fatality, from +which it is the great privilege of our nature to be free.' _Piozzi +Letters_, i. 83. Johnson (_Works_, vii. 52) praises the 'just and noble +thoughts' in Cowley's lines which begin:-- + +'Where honour or where conscience does not bind, + No other law shall shackle me; + Slave to myself I ne'er will be; +Nor shall my future actions be confined + By my own present mind.' + +See _ante_, ii. 21. + +[1064] Juvenal, _Sat_. iii. 78. Imitated by Johnson in _London_. + +[1065] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 16, and Johnson's _Tour into +Wales_, Aug. 1, 1774. + +[1066] The slip of paper on which he made the correction, is deposited +by me in the noble library to which it relates, and to which I have +presented other pieces of his hand-writing. BOSWELL. In substituting +_burns_ he resumes the reading of the first edition, in which the former +of the two couplets ran:-- + +'Resistless burns the fever of renown, +Caught from the strong contagion of the gown.' + +'The slip of paper and the other pieces of Johnson's hand-writing' have +been lost. At all events they are not in the Bodleian. + +[1067] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 76), criticising Milton's scheme of +education, says:--'Those authors therefore are to be read at schools +that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and +most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by +poets, orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this +digression as pedantic or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me, +I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from +the study of nature to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I +oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think +that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of +the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn was +how to do good and avoid evil. "[Greek: hotti toi en megaroisi kakon t +agathon te tetuktai]."' + +[1068] 'His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious, +but his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The +paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity +of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is +sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has +done well.' _Ib_. viii. 386. See _ante_, i. 312. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. +p. 200) says that when 'Johnson would inveigh against devotional poetry, +and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble,' she +reminded him how 'when he would try to repeat the _Dies iræ, dies illa_, +he could never pass the stanza ending thus, _Tantus labor non sit +cassus_, without bursting into a flood of tears.' + +[1069] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2. + +[1070] Dr. Johnson was by no means attentive to minute accuracy in his +_Lives of the Poets_; for notwithstanding my having detected this +mistake, he has continued it. BOSWELL. See _post_, iv. 51, note 2 for a +like instance of neglect. + +[1071] See _ante_, ii. 64. + +[1072] See _ante_, ii. 278. + +[1073] 'May 31, 1778. We shall at least not doze, as we are used to do, +in summer. The Parliament is to have only short adjournments; and our +senators, instead of retiring to horseraces (_their_ plough), are all +turned soldiers, and disciplining militia. Camps everywhere.' Horace +Walpole's _Letters_, vii. 75. It was a threat of invasion by the united +forces of France and Spain, at the time that we were at war with +America, that caused the alarm. Dr. J.H. Burton (Dr. A. Carlyle's +_Auto_. p. 399) points out, that while the militia of England was placed +nearly in its present position by the act of 1757, yet 'when a proposal +for extending the system to Scotland was suggested (sic), ministers were +afraid to arm the people.' 'It is curious,' he continues, 'that for a +reason almost identical Ireland has been excepted from the Volunteer +organisation of a century later. It was not until 1793 that the Militia +Acts were extended to Scotland.' + +[1074] 'Before dinner,' wrote Miss Burney in September of this year, +'to my great joy Dr. Johnson returned home from Warley Common.' Mme. +D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 114. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Oct. 15:--'A +camp, however familiarly we may speak of it, is one of the great scenes +of human life. War and peace divide the business of the world. Camps are +the habitations of those who conquer kingdoms, or defend them.' _Piozzi +Letters_, ii. 22. + +[1075] Third Edition, p. 111 [Aug. 28]. BOSWELL. It was at Fort George. +'He made a very good figure upon these topicks. He said to me afterwards +that "he had talked ostentatiously."' + +[1076] When I one day at Court expressed to General Hall my sense of the +honour he had done my friend, he politely answered, 'Sir, I did _myself_ +honour.' BOSWELL. + +[1077] According to Malone, 'Mr. Burke said of Mr. Boswell that good +nature was so natural to him that he had no merit in possessing it, and +that a man might as well assume to himself merit in possessing an +excellent constitution.' _European Mag_. 1798, p. 376. See Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Aug. 21. + +[1078] Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48. + +[1079] No doubt his house at Langton. + +[1080] The Wey Canal. See _ante_, ii. 136. From _navigation_, i.e. a +canal for internal navigation, we have _navvy_. A _canal_ was the +common term for an ornamental pool, and for a time it seemed that +_navigation_ and not _canal_ might be the term applied to artificial +rivers. + +[1081] Langton. + +[1082] + +'He plunging downward shot his radiant head: +Dispelled the breathing air that broke his flight; +Shorn of his beams, a man to mortal sight.' + +Dryden, quoted in Johnson's _Dictionary_ under _shorn_. The phrase first +appears in _Paradise Lost_, i. 596. + +[1083] Mrs. Thrale, this same summer, 'asked whether Mr. Langton took +any better care of his affairs. "No, madam," cried the doctor, "and +never will. He complains of the ill-effects of habit, and rests +contentedly upon a confessed indolence. He told his father himself that +he had _no turn to economy_, but a thief might as well plead that he had +no _turn to honesty_!"' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 75. + +[1084] Locke, in his last words to Collins, said:--'This world affords +no solid satisfaction but the consciousness of well-doing, and the hopes +of another life.' Warburton's _Divine Legation_, i. xxvi. + +[1085] Not the young brewer who was hoped for (_ante_, iii. 210); +therefore she is called 'poor thing.' One of Mr. Thrale's daughters +lived to Nov. 5, 1858. + +[1086] On Oct. 15 Johnson wrote:--'Is my master [i.e. Mr. Thrale, +_ante_, i. 494, note 3] come to himself? Does he talk, and walk, and +look about him, as if there were yet something in the world for which it +is worth while to live? Or does he yet sit and say nothing? To grieve +for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without +them.' _Piozzi Letters_. ii. 22. Nine days later he wrote:--'You appear +to me to be now floating on the spring-tide of prosperity. I think it +very probably in your power to lay up £8000 a-year for every year to +come, increasing all the time, what needs not be increased, the +splendour of all external appearance. And surely such a state is not to +be put into yearly hazard for the pleasure of _keeping the house full_, +or the ambition of _out-brewing Whitbread_? _Piozzi Letters_, p. 24. + +[1087] See _ante_, ii. 136. The following letter, of which a fac-simile +is given at the beginning of vol. iii. of Dr. Franklin's _Memoirs_, ed. +1818, tells of 'a difference' between the famous printer of Philadelphia +and the King's Printer of London. + +'Philada., July 5, 1775. + +'Mr. Strahan, + +'You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has +doomed my Country to Destruction.--You have begun to burn our Towns, and +murder our People.--Look upon your Hands!--They are stained with the +Blood of your Relations! You and I were long friends:--You are now my +Enemy,--and + +'I am, yours, + +'B. FRANKLIN.' + +When peace was made between the two countries the old friendship was +renewed. _Ib_. iii. 147. + +[1088] On this day he wrote a touching letter to Mr. Elphinston, who had +lost his wife (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 66, note). Perhaps the thoughts +thus raised in him led him to this act of reconciliation. + +[1089] Dr. Johnson here addresses his worthy friend, Bennet Langton, +Esq., by his title as Captain of the Lincolnshire militia, in which he +has since been most deservedly raised to the rank of Major. BOSWELL. + +[1090] President of the Royal Society. + +[1091] The King visited Warley Camp on Oct. 20. _Ann. Reg_. xxi. 237. + +[1092] He visited Coxheath Camp on Nov. 23. _Ib_. Horace Walpole, +writing of April of this year when, in the alarm of a French invasion, +the militia were called out, says:--'The King's behaviour was childish +and absurd. He ordered the camp equipage, and said he would command the +army himself.' Walpole continues:--'It is reported, that in a few days +will be published in two volumes, folio, an accurate account of _His +Majesty's Journeys to Chatham and Portsmouth, together with a minute +Description of his numerous Fatigues, Dangers, and hair-breadth Escapes; +to which will be added the Royal Bon-mots_. And the following week will +be published an _History of all the Campaigns of the King of Prussia_, +in one volume duodecimo.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 262, +264. + +[1093] Boswell, eleven years later, wrote of him:--'My second son is an +extraordinary boy; he is much of his father (vanity of vanities). He is +of a delicate constitution, but not unhealthy, and his spirit never +fails him. He is still in the house with me; indeed he is quite my +companion, though only eleven in September.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. +315. Mr. Croker, who knew him, says that 'he was very convivial, and in +other respects like his father--though altogether on a smaller scale.' +He edited a new edition of Malone's _Shakespeare_. He died in 1822. +Croker's _Boswell_, p. 620. + +[1094] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 30, 1773. + +[1095] _Ib_. Nov. 1. + +[1096] Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church. Johnson +wrote in 1783:--'At home I see almost all my companions dead or dying. +At Oxford I have just left [lost] Wheeler, the man with whom I most +delighted to converse.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 302. See _post_, Aug. 30, +1780. + +[1097] Johnson, in 1784, wrote about a visit to Oxford:--'Since I was +there my convivial friend Dr. Edwards and my learned friend Dr. Wheeler +are both dead, and my probabilities of pleasure are very much +diminished.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 371. + +[1098] Dr. Edwards was preparing an edition of Xenophon's _Memorabilia_. +CROKER. + +[1099] Johnson wrote on the 14th:--'Dr. Burney had the luck to go to +Oxford the only week in the year when the library is shut up. He was, +however, very kindly treated; as one man is translating Arabick and +another Welsh for his service.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 38. + +[1100] Johnson three years later, hearing that one of Dr. Burney's sons +had got the command of a ship, wrote:--'I question if any ship upon the +ocean goes out attended with more good wishes than that which carries +the fate of Burney. I love all of that breed whom I can be said to know, +and one or two whom I hardly know I love upon credit, and love them +because they love each other.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 225. See _post_, +Nov. 16, 1784. + +[1101] Vol. ii. p. 38. BOSWELL. + +[1102] Miss Carmichael. BOSWELL. + +[1103] See Appendix D. + +[1104] See _ante_, ii. 382, note 1. + +[1105] See _ante_, i. 446. + +[1106] See _ante_, iii. 99, note 4. + +[1107] It was the collected edition containing the first seven +_Discourses_, which had each year been published separately. 'I was +present,' said Samuel Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 18), 'when Sir Joshua +Reynolds delivered his last lecture at the Royal Academy. On entering +the room, I found that a semicircle of chairs immediately in front of +the pulpit was reserved for persons of distinction, being labelled "Mr. +Burke," "Mr. Boswell," &c.' + +[1108] In an unfinished sketch for a _Discourse_, Reynolds said of those +already delivered:--'Whatever merit they may have must be imputed, in a +great measure, to the education which I may be said to have had under Dr. +Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to the credit +of these _Discourses_ if I could say it with truth, that he contributed +even a single sentiment to them; but he qualified my mind to think +justly.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 282. See _ante_, i. 245. + +[1109] The error in grammar is no doubt Boswell's. He was so proud of +his knowledge of languages that when he was appointed Secretary for +Foreign Correspondence to the Royal Academy (_ante_, ii. 67, note 1), +'he wrote his acceptance of the honour in three separate letters, still +preserved in the Academy archives, in English, French, and Italian.' +_The Athenæum_, No. 3041. + +[1110] The remaining six volumes came out, not in 1780, but in 1781. See +_post_, 1781. He also wrote this year the preface to a translation of +_Oedipus Tyrannus_, by Thomas Maurice, in _Poems and Miscellaneous +Pieces_. (See preface to _Westminster Abbey with other Poems_, 1813.) + +[1111] See _ante_, ii. 272. + +[1112] _Life of Watts_ [_Works_, viii. 380]. BOSWELL. + +[1113] See _ante_, ii. 107. + +[1114] See _ante_, iii. 126. + +[1115] 'Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused +than Pomfret's _Choice_.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 222. + +[1116] Johnson, in his _Life of Yalden_ (_Ib_. viii. 83), calls the +following stanza from his _Hymn to Darkness_ 'exquisitely beautiful':-- + +'Thou dost thy smiles impartially bestow, +And know'st no difference here below: +All things appear the same by thee, +Though Light distinction makes, thou giv'st equality.' + +It is strange that Churchill was left out of the collection. + +[1117] Murphy says, though certainly with exaggeration, that 'after +Garrick's death Johnson never talked of him without a tear in his eyes. +He offered,' he adds, 'if Mrs. Garrick would desire it of him, to be the +editor of his works and the historian of his life.' Murphy's _Johnson_, +p. 145. Cumberland (_Memoirs_, ii. 210) said of Garrick's funeral:--'I +saw old Samuel Johnson standing beside his grave, at the foot of +Shakespeare's monument, and bathed in tears.' Sir William Forbes was +told that Johnson, in going to the funeral, said to William Jones:--'Mr. +Garrick and his profession have been equally indebted to each other. His +profession made him rich, and he made his profession respectable.' +Forbes's _Beattie_, Appendix CC. + +[1118] See _ante_, i. 456. + +[1119] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 23. + +[1120] The anniversary of the death of Charles I. + +[1121] See _ante_, i. 211. + +[1122] He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a +very handsome present. BOSWELL. + +[1123] On March 10 he wrote:--'I got my _Lives_, not yet quite printed, +put neatly together, and sent them to the King; what he says of them I +know not. If the king is a Whig, he will not like them; but is any king +a Whig?' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 43. + +[1124] 'He was always ready to assist any authors in correcting their +works, and selling them to booksellers. "I have done writing," said he, +"myself, and should assist those that do write."' Johnson's _Works_ +(1787), xi. 202. See _ante_, ii. 195. + +[1125] In _The Rehearsal_. See _ante_, ii. 168. + +[1126] Johnson wrote on Nov. 21, 1778:--'Baretti has told his musical +scheme to B---- and B---- _will neither grant the question nor deny_. He +is of opinion that if it does not fail, it will succeed, but if it does +not succeed he conceives it must fail.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 41. +Baretti, in a marginal note on his copy, says that B---- is Dr. Burney. +He adds:--'The musical scheme was the _Carmen Seculare_. That brought me +£150 in three nights, and three times as much to Philidor. It would have +benefited us both greatly more, if Philidor had not proved a scoundrel.' +'The complaisant Italian,' says the _Gent Mag_. (xlix. 361), 'in +compliment to our island chooses "to drive destructive war and +pestilence" _ad Mauros, Seras et Indos_, instead of _ad Persas atque +Britannos_.' Mr. Tasker, the clergyman, went a step further. 'I,' he +says in his version of the _Carmen_, + +'Honour and fame prognosticate +To free-born Britain's naval state + And to her Patriot-King.' _Ib_. + +[1127] We may compare with this the scene in _Le Misanthrope_ (Act i. +sc. 2), where Oronte reads his sonnet to Alceste; who thrice answers: +--'Je ne dis pas cela, mais--.' See _ante_, iii. 320. + +[1128] This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informed me that this +portrait is so accurately drawn, that being, some years after the +publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he +was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know, +but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he +asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it +appeared that he was indeed the author of _The Warlike Genius of +Britain_. CROKER. + +[1129] The poet was preparing a second edition of his _Ode_. 'This +animated Pindaric made its first appearance the latter end of last year +(1778). It is well calculated to rouse the martial spirit of the nation, +and is now reprinted with considerable additions.' _Gent. Mag_. July, +1779, p. 357. In 1781 he published another volume of his poems with a +poetical preface, in which he thus attacks his brother-in-law:-- + +'To suits litigious, ignorant and raw, +Compell'd by an unletter'd brother-in-law.' + +_Ib_. 1781, p. 227. + +[1130] Boswell must have misheard what Johnson said. It was not Anson, +but Amherst whom the bard praised. _Ode_, p. 7. + +[1131] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Foote's death:--'Now, will any of +his contemporaries bewail him? Will Genius change _his sex_ to weep?' +_Piozzi Letters_, i. 396. + +[1132] + +'Genius of Britain! to thy office true, +On Cox-Heath reared the waving banners view. + + * * * * * + + In martial vest +By Venus and the Graces drest, +To yonder tent, who leads the way? +Art thou Britannia's Genius? say.' + +_Ode_, p. 8. + +[1133] Twenty-nine years earlier he wrote:--'There is nothing more +dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, +hatred, and opposition are names of happiness.' _The Rambler_, No. 2. In +_The Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx, George says of his book:--'The learned +world said nothing to my paradoxes, nothing at all, Sir.... I suffered +the cruellest mortification, neglect.' See _ante_, ii. 61, 335. Hume +said:--'The misfortune of a book, says Boileau, is not the being ill +spoke [sic] of, but the not being spoken of at all.' J.H. Burton's +_Hume_, i. 412 + +[1134] The account given in Northcote's _Reynolds_ (ii. 94-97) renders +it likely that Sir Joshua is 'the friend of ours.' Northcote, quoting +Mr. Courtenay, writes:--'His table was frequented by men of the first +talents. Politics and party were never introduced. Temporal and +spiritual peers, physicians, lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the +motley group.' At one of these dinners Mr. Dunning, afterwards Lord +Ashburton, was the first who came. 'On entering, he said, "Well, Sir +Joshua, and who [sic] have you got to dine with you to-day? for the last +time I dined with you the assembly was of such a sort, that, by G--, I +believe all the rest of the world were at peace, for that afternoon at +least."' See _post_, under June 16, 1784, note. Boswell, in his _Letter +to the People of Scotland_ (p. 95), boasts that he too is 'a very +universal man.' 'I can drink, I can laugh, I can converse in perfect +humour with Whigs, with republicans, with dissenters, with Independents, +with Quakers, with Moravians, with Jews. But I would vote with Tories +and pray with a Dean and Chapter.' + +[1135] 'Finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong +side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I therefore +drest up three paradoxes with some ingenuity. They were false, indeed, +but they were new.' _Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx. See _ante_, i. 441, +where Johnson says:--'When I was a boy, I used always to choose the +wrong side of a debate, because most ingenious things, that is to say, +most new things, could be said upon it.' In the _Present State of Polite +Learning_ (ch. vii.), Goldsmith says:--'Nothing can be a more certain +sign that genius is in the wane than its being obliged to fly to paradox +for support, and attempting to be erroneously agreeable.' + +[1136] The whole night spent in playing at cards (see next page) may +account for part of his negligence. He was perhaps unusually dissipated +this visit. + +[1137] See _ante_, ii. 135. + +[1138] 'Three men,' writes Horace Walpole, 'were especially suspected, +Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and W. G. Hamilton. Hamilton was most generally +suspected.' _Memoirs of George III_, iii. 401. According to Dr. T. +Campbell (_Diary_, p. 35) Johnson in 1775 'said that he looked upon +Burke to be the author of _Junius_, and that though he would not take +him _contra mundum_, yet he would take him against any man.' + +[1139] Sargeant Bettersworth, enraged at Swift's lines on him, +'demanded whether he was the author of that poem. "Mr. Bettesworth," +answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who +knowing my disposition to satire advised me that if any scoundrel or +blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, _Are you the author of this +paper_? I should tell him that I was not the author; and therefore I +tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines."' +Johnson's Works, viii. 216. See _post_, June 13, 1784. + +[1140] Mr. S. Whyte (_Miscellanea Nova_, p. 27) says that Johnson +mistook the nature of the compliment. Sheridan had fled to France from +his debtors. In 1766 an Insolvent Debtors' Relief Bill was brought into +the House in his absence. Mr. Whyte, one of his creditors, petitioned +the House to have Sheridan's name included. A very unusual motion was +made, 'that petitioner shall not be put to his oath; but the facts set +forth in his petition be admitted simply on his word.' The motion was +seconded by an instantaneous Ay! Ay! without a dissenting voice. +Sheridan wrote to Mr. Whyte:--'As the thing has passed with so much +credit to me, the whole honour and merit of it is yours'. + +[1141] In _The Rambler_, No. 39, he wrote of this kind of control:--'It +may be urged in extenuation of this crime which parents, not in any +other respect to be numbered with robbers and assassins, frequently +commit, that, in their estimation, riches and happiness are equivalent +terms.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'There wanders about the world a wild +notion which extends over marriage more than over any transaction. If +Miss ---- followed a trade, would it be said that she was bound in +conscience to give or refuse credit at her father's choice? ... The +parent's moral right can arise only from his kindness, and his civil +right only from his money.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 83. See _ante_, i. 346. + +[1142] See p. 186 of this volume. BOSWELL. + +[1143] He refers to Johnson's letter of July 3, 1778, _ante_, p. 363. + +[1144] See _ante_, iii. 5, 178. + +[1145] 'By seeing London,' said Johnson, 'I have seen as much of life as +the world can show.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 11. 'London,' wrote Hume +in 1765, 'never pleased me much. Letters are there held in no honour; +Scotmen are hated; superstition and ignorance gain ground daily.' J.H. +Burton's _Hume_, ii. 292. + +[1146] See _ante_, i. 82. + +[1147] 'I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations ... many brought +thither by the desire of living after their own manner without +observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a +city populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the +gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.' _Rasselas_, ch. +xii. Gibbon wrote of London (_Misc. Works_, ii. 291):--'La liberté d'un +simple particulier se fortifie par l'immensité de la ville.' + +[1148] Perhaps Mr. Elphinston, of whom he said (_ante_, ii. 171), 'His +inner part is good, but his outer part is mighty awkward.' + +[1149] _Worthy_ is generally applied to Langton. His foibles were a +common subject of their talk. _Ante_, iii. 48. + +[1150] By the Author of _The Whole Duty of Man_. See _ante_, ii. 239, +note 4. Johnson often quotes it in his _Dictionary_. + +[1151] 'The things done in his body.' 2 _Corinthians_, v. 10. + +[1152] + +'Yes I am proud: I must be proud to see +Men not afraid of God, afraid of me: +Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, +Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. +O sacred weapon! left for truth's defence, +Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!' + +Pope. _Satires, Epilogue_, ii. 208. + +[1153] Page 173. BOSWELL. + +[1154] At eleven o'clock that night Johnson recorded:--'I am now to +review the last year, and find little but dismal vacuity, neither +business nor pleasure; much intended and little done. My health is much +broken, my nights afford me little rest.... Last week I published the +_Lives of the Poets_, written, I hope, in such a manner as may tend to +the promotion of piety. In this last year I have made little +acquisition. I have scarcely read anything. I maintain Mrs. ---- +[Desmoulins] and her daughter. Other good of myself I know not where to +find, except a little charity.' _Ib_. p. 175. + +[1155] Mauritius Lowe, the painter. _Ante_, p. 324. + +[1156] See _ante_ ii 249. + +[1157] 'Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put +'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick, +and cried, "Down wantons, down!"' _King Lear_, act ii. sc. 4. + +[1158] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 23, where Johnson, speaking of +claret, said that 'there were people who died of dropsies, which they +contracted in trying to get drunk.' + +[1159] 'If,' wrote Johnson in one of his _Debates_ (_Works_ xi. 392), +'the felicity of drunkenness can be more cheaply obtained by buying +spirits than ale, it is easy to see which will be preferred.' See +_post_, March 30, 1781. + +[1160] Dempster, to whom Boswell complained that his nerves were +affected, replied:--'One had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep +company with such a man.' _Ante_, i. 434. + +[1161] Marquis of Graham, afterwards third Duke of Montrose. In _The +Rolliad_ (ed. 1795) he is thus attacked:-- + +'Superior to abuse +He nobly glories in the name of Goose; +Such Geese at Rome from the perfidious Gaul +Preserved the Treas'ry-Bench and Capitol.' + +He was one of the Lords of the Treasury. See also _The Rolliad_, p. 60 + +[1162] Johnson, however, when telling Mrs. Thrale that, in case of her +husband's death, she ought to carry on his business, said:--'Do not be +frighted; trade could not be managed by those who manage it if it had +much difficulty. Their great books are soon understood, and their +language, + +"If speech it may be called, that speech is none +Distinguishable in number, mood, or tense," + +is understood with no very laborious application.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. +91. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 18. + +[1163] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 26. + +[1164] See _ante_, iii. 88, note 1. + +[1165] The Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, with whom she +lived seventeen years, and by whom she had nine children. _Ann. Reg_. +xxii. 206. The Duke of Richmond attacked her in the House of Lords as +one 'who was supposed to sell favours in the Admiralty for money.' +Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 248, and _Parl. +Hist_. xix. 993. It so happened that on the day on which Hackman was +hanged 'Fox moved for the removal of Lord Sandwich [from office] but was +beaten by a large majority.' Walpole's _Letters_, vii. 194. One of her +children was Basil Montague, the editor of _Bacon_. Carlyle writes of +him:--'On going to Hinchinbrook, I found he was strikingly like the +dissolute, questionable Earl of Sandwich; who, indeed, had been father +of him in a highly tragic way.' Carlyle's _Reminiscences_, i. 224. +Hackman, who was a clergyman of the Church, had once been in the army. +Cradock's _Memoirs_, i. 140. + +[1166] On the following Monday Boswell was present at Hackman's +execution, riding to Tyburn with him in a mourning coach. _London Mag_. +for 1779, p. 189. + +[1167] At the Club. CROKER. See _ante_, ii. 345, note 5. + +[1168] See _ante_, p. 281, for a previous slight altercation, and p. 195 +for a possible cause of unfriendly feeling between the two men. If such +a feeling existed, it passed away, at all events on Johnson's side, +before Beauclerk's death. See _post_, iv. 10. + +[1169] This gentleman who loved buttered muffins reappears in _Pickwick_ +(ch. 44), as 'the man who killed himself on principle,' after eating +three-shillings' worth of crumpets. Mr. Croker says that Mr. Fitzherbert +is meant; but he hanged himself. _Ante_, ii. 228, note 3. + +[1170] 'It is not impossible that this restless desire of novelty, which +gives so much trouble to the teacher, may be often the struggle of the +understanding starting from that to which it is not by nature adapted, +and travelling in search of something on which it may fix with greater +satisfaction. For, without supposing each man particularly marked out by +his genius for particular performances, it may be easily conceived that +when a numerous class of boys is confined indiscriminately to the same +forms of composition, the repetition of the same words, or the +explication of the same sentiments, the employment must, either by +nature or accident, be less suitable to some than others.... Weariness +looks out for relief, and leisure for employment, and surely it is +rational to indulge the wanderings of both.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 232. +See _post_, iv. 21. + +[1171] 'See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept 10, and Johnson's _Works_, +viii. 466. Mallet had the impudence to write to Hume that the book was +ready for the press; 'which,' adds Hume, 'is more than I or most people +expected.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 139. + +[1172] The name is not given in the first two editions. See _ante_, +i. 82. + +[1173] See p. 289 of this vol., and vol. i. p. 207. BOSWELL. The saying +is from Diogenes Laertius, bk. v. ch. I, and is attributed to Aristotle +--[Greek: _ho philoi oudeis philos_.] + +[1174] + +'Love, the most generous passion of the mind, +The softest refuge innocence can find; +The safe director of unguided youth, +Fraught with kind wishes, and secured by truth; +That cordial drop Heaven in our cup has thrown, +To make the nauseous draught of life go down.' + +Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, _A Letter from Artemisia_, Chalmers's +_Poets_, viii. 242. Pope (_Imitations of Horace_, _Epist_. I. vi. 126) +refers to these lines:-- + +'If, after all, we must with Wilmot own, +The cordial drop of life is love alone.' + +[1175] Garrick wrote in 1776:--'Gout, stone, and sore throat! Yet I am +in spirits.' _Garrick Corres_, ii. 138. + +[1176] See ante, p. 70. + +[1177] In _The Life of Edmund Smith_ (_Works_, vii. 380). See _ante_, +i. 81. + +[1178] Johnson wrote of Foote's death:--'The world is really +impoverished by his sinking glories.' Piozzi _Letters_, i. 396. See +_ante_, p. 185, note 1. + +[1179] 'Allowance must be made for some degree of exaggerated praise,' +he said in speaking of epitaphs. 'In lapidary inscriptions a man is not +upon oath.' _Ante_, ii. 407. + +[1180] Garrick retired in January 1776, three years before his death. +He visited Ireland in 1742, and again in 1743. Davies's _Garrick_, +i. 57, 91. + +[1181] In the original _impoverished_. + +[1182] Certainly not Horace Walpole, as had been suggested to Mr. +Croker. He and Johnson can scarcely be said to have known each other +(_post_, under June 19, 1784, note). A sentence in one of Walpole's +_Letters_ (iv. 407) shews that he was very unlike the French wit. On +Sept. 22, 1765, he wrote from Paris:--'The French affect philosophy, +literature, and free-thinking: the first never did, and never will +possess me; of the two others I have long been tired. _Free-thinking is +for one's self, surely not for society_.' Perhaps Richard Fitzpatrick is +meant, who later on joined in writing _The Rolliad_, and who was the +cousin and 'sworn brother' of Charles Fox. Walpole describes him as 'an +agreeable young man of parts,' and mentions his 'genteel irony and +badinage.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 167 and ii. 560. He +was Lord Shelburne's brother-in-law, at whose house Johnson might have +met him, as well as in Fox's company. There are one or two lines in _The +Rolliad_ which border on profanity. Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 104) said +that 'Fitzpatrick was at one time nearly as famous for his wit as Hare.' +Tickell in his _Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox to the Hon. John +Townshend_, p. 13, writes:-- + +'Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit and Stanhope's ease, +And Burgoyne's manly sense unite to please.' + +[1183] See ante, i. 379, note 2. + +[1184] According to Mr. Wright (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 630), this +physician was Dr. James. I have examined, however, the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, +and 7th editions of his _Dissertation on Fevers_, but can find no +mention of this. In the 7th edition, published in 1770, he complains (p. +111) of 'the virulence and rancour with which the fever-powder and its +inventor have been traduced and persecuted by the vendors of medicines +and their abettors.' + +[1185] According to Mr. Croker this was Andrew Millar, but I doubt it. +See ante, i. 287, note 3. + +[1186] 'The Chevalier Taylor, Ophthalmiator Pontifical, Imperial, and +Royal,' as he styled himself. _Gent. Mag_. xxxi. 226. Lord Eldon said +that--'Taylor, dining with the barristers upon the Oxford circuit, +having related many wonderful things which he had done, was asked by +Bearcroft, "Pray, Chevalier, as you have told us of a great many things +which you have done and can do, will you be so good as to try to tell us +anything which you cannot do?" "Nothing so easy," replied Taylor, "I +cannot pay my share of the dinner bill: and that, Sir, I must beg of you +to do."' Twiss's _Eldon_, i 321. + +[1187] Pope mentions Ward in the Imitations of Horace_, 2 Epistle, +i. 180:-- + +'He serv'd a 'prenticeship who sets up shop; +Ward try'd on puppies, and the poor, his drop.' + +Fielding, in _Tom Jones_, bk. viii. ch. 9, says that 'interest is indeed +a most excellent medicine, and, like Ward's pill, flies at once to the +particular part of the body on which you desire to operate.' In the +introduction to the _Voyage to Lisbon_ he speaks very highly of Ward's +remedies and of Ward himself, who 'endeavoured, he says, 'to serve me +without any expectation or desire of fee or reward.' + +[1188] 'Every thing,' said Johnson, 'comes from Beauclerk so easily. It +appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Aug. 21. See _post_, under May 2, 1780. Dr. A. Carlyle +(_Auto_. p. 219) mentions another great-grandson of Charles II. +(Commissioner Cardonnel) who was 'the most agreeable companion that ever +was. He excelled in story-telling, like his great-grandfather, Charles +II., but he seldom or ever repeated them.' + +[1189] No doubt Burke. _Ante_, ii. 222, note 4. + +[1190] General Paoli's house, where for some years Boswell was 'a +constant guest while he was in London.' _Ante_, p. 35 + +[1191] Allan Ramsay's residence: No. 67, Harley-street. P. CUNNINGHAM. + +[1192] It is strange that he does not mention their visit in a +letter in which he tells Temple that he is lame, and that his 'spirits +sank to dreary dejection;' and utters what the editor justly calls an +ambiguous prayer:--'Let us hope for gleams of joy here, and a _blaze_ +hereafter.' This letter, by the way, and the one that follows it, are +both wrongly dated. _Letters of Boswell_, p. 237. + +[1193] See p. 344 of this Volume. BOSWELL. + +[1194] 'Johnson's first question was, "What kind of a man was Mr. Pope +in his conversation?" His Lordship answered, that if the conversation +did not take something of a lively or epigrammatic turn, he fell asleep, +or perhaps pretended to do so.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 200. +Johnson in his _Life of Pope (Works_, viii. 309) says that 'when he +wanted to sleep he "nodded in company."' + +[1195] Boswell wrote to Temple late on this day, 'Let us not dispute any +more about political notions. It is now night. Dr. Johnson has dined, +drunk tea, and supped with only Mr. Charles Dilly and me, and I am +confirmed in my Toryism.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 238. + +[1196] In the original _or_. Boswell quotes the line correctly, _ante_, +p. 220. + +[1197] 'I do not (says Mr. Malone) see any difficulty in this passage, +and wonder that Dr. Johnson should have acknowledged it to be +_inaccurate_. The Hermit, it should be observed, had no actual +experience of the world whatsoever: all his knowledge concerning it had +been obtained in two ways; from _books_, and from the _relations_ of +those country swains, who had seen a little of it. The plain meaning, +therefore, is, "To clear his doubts concerning Providence, and to obtain +some knowledge of the world by actual experience; to see whether the +accounts furnished by books, or by the oral communications of swains, +were just representations of it; [I say, _swains_,] for his oral or +_vivá voce_ information had been obtained from that part of mankind +_alone_, &c." The word _alone_ here does not relate to the whole of the +preceding line, as has been supposed, but, by a common licence, to the +words,--_of all mankind_, which are understood, and of which it is +restrictive.' + +Mr. Malone, it must be owned, has shewn much critical ingenuity in the +explanation of this passage. His interpretation, however, seems to me +much too recondite. The _meaning_ of the passage may be certain enough; +but surely the _expression_ is confused, and one part of it +contradictory to the other. BOSWELL. This note is first given in the +third edition. + +[1198] See ante, p. 297. + +[1199] State is used for statement. 'He sate down to examine Mr. Owen's +states.' Rob Roy, ed. 1860, viii. 101. + +[1200] Johnson started for Lichfield and Ashbourne about May 20, and +returned to London towards the end of June. _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 44, +55. 'It is good,' he wrote, 'to wander a little, lest one should dream +that all the world was Streatham, of which one may venture to say, +_none but itself can be its parallel_.' _Ib_. p. 47. 'None but thyself +can be thy parallel' is from Theobald's _Double Falsehood_. Pope calls +it 'a marvellous line,' and thus introduces it in _The Dunciad_, first +edition, iii. 271:--'For works like these let deathless Journals tell, +"None but thyself can be thy parallel."' + +[1201] See _post_, Boswell's letter of Aug. 24, 1780, and Johnson's +letter of Dec. 7, 1782. + +[1202] Boswell, on his way to Scotland, wrote to Temple from this +house:--'I am now at Southill, to which place Mr. Charles Dilly has +accompanied; it is the house of Squire John Dilly, his elder brother. +The family of Dilly have been land-proprietors in this county for two +hundred years.... I am quite the great man here, and am to go forward on +the North road to-morrow morning. Poor Mr. Edward Dilly is fast a-dying; +he cried with affection at seeing me here; he is in as agreeable a frame +as any Christian can be.... I am edified here.' _Letters of Boswell_, +p. 239. + +[1203] On June 18 in the following year he recorded:--'In the morning of +this day last year I perceived the remission of those convulsions in my +breast, which had distressed me for more than twenty years. I returned +thanks at church for the mercy granted me, which has now continued a +year.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 183. Three days later he wrote:--'It was a +twelvemonth last Sunday since the convulsions in my breast left me. I +hope I was thankful when I recollected it; by removing that disorder a +great improvement was made in the enjoyment of life. I am now as well +as men at my age can expect to be, and I yet think I shall be better.' +_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 163. + +[1204] From a stroke of apoplexy. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'You +really do not use me well in thinking that I am in less pain on this +occasion than I ought to be. There is nobody left for me to care about +but you and my master, and I have now for many years known the value of +his friendship, and the importance of his life, too well not to have +him very near my heart.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 56. To him he wrote +shortly after the attack, no doubt with a view to give the sick man +confidence:--'To shew you how well I think of your health, I have sent +you an hundred pounds to keep for me.' _Ib_. p. 54. Miss Burney wrote +very soon after the attack:--'At dinner everybody tried to be cheerful, +but a dark and gloomy cloud hangs over the head of poor Mr. Thrale which +no flashes of merriment or beams of wit can pierce through; yet he seems +pleased that everybody should be gay.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 220. +The attack was in June. _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 47. On Aug. 3, Johnson +wrote to Dr. Taylor:--'Mr. Thrale has perfectly recovered all his +faculties and all his vigour.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 461. + +[1205] Which I communicated to him from his Lordship, but it has not yet +been published. I have a copy of it. BOSWELL. The few notices concerning +Dryden, which Lord Hailes had collected, the authour afterwards gave to +Mr. Malone. MALONE. Malone published a _Life of Dryden_. + +[1206] He recorded of his birth-day this year:--'On the 17th Mr. Chamier +(_ante_, i. 478) took me away with him from Streatham. I left the +servants a guinea for my health, and was content enough to escape +into a house where my birth-day not being known could not be mentioned. +I sat up till midnight was past, and the day of a new year, a very awful +day, began.' _Pr. and Med_. pp. 181, 225. + +[1207] See _ante_, ii. 427, note 1. + +[1208] In one of his manuscript Diaries, there is the following entry, +which marks his curious minute attention: 'July 26, 1768. I shaved my +nail by accident in whetting the knife, about an eighth of an inch from +the bottom, and about a fourth from the top. This I measure that I may +know the growth of nails; the whole is about five eighths of an inch.' + +Another of the same kind appears, 'Aug. 7, 1779, _Partem brachii dextri +carpo proximam et cutem pectoris circa mamillam dextram rasi, ut notum +fieret quanta temporis pili renovarentur_.' + +And, 'Aug. 15, 1773. I cut from the vine 41 leaves, which weighed five +oz. and a half, and eight scruples:--I lay them upon my book-case, to +see what weight they will lose by drying.' BOSWELL. + +In _The Idler_, No. 31, we have in Mr. Sober a portrait of Johnson drawn +by himself. He writes:--'The art is to fill the day with petty business, +to have always something in hand which may raise curiosity, but not +solicitude, and keep the mind in a state of action, but not of labour. +This art has for many years been practised by my old friend Sober with +wonderful success.... His chief pleasure is conversation; there is no +end of his talk or his attention; to speak or to hear is equally +pleasing; for he still fancies that he is teaching or learning +something, and is free for the time from his own reproaches. But there +is one time at night when he must go home that his friends may sleep; +and another time in the morning when all the world agrees to shut out +interruption. These are the moments of which poor Sober trembles at the +thought. But the misery of these tiresome intervals he has many means of +alleviating.... His daily amusement is chymistry. He has a small furnace +which he employs in distillation, and which has long been the solace of +his life. He draws oils and waters, and essences and spirits, which he +knows to be of no use; sits and counts the drops as they come from his +retort, and forgets that whilst a drop is falling a moment flies away.' +Mrs. Piozzi says (_Anec_. p. 236):--'We made up a sort of laboratory at +Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with drawing essences and +colouring liquors. But the danger Mr. Thrale found his friend in one +day, when he got the children and servants round him to see some +experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment.' + +[1209] Afterwards Mr. Stuart Wortley. He was the father of the first +Lord Wharncliffe. CROKER. + +[1210] Horace Walpole, in April 1778, wrote:--'It was very remarkable +that on the militia being ordered out, two of Lord Bute's younger sons +offered, as Bedfordshire gentlemen, to take any rank in the militia in +that county. I warned Lord Ossory, the Lord Lieutenant, against so +dangerous a precedent as admitting Scots in the militia. A militia can +only be safe by being officered by men of property in each county.' +_Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 252. + +[1211] Walpole wrote in Dec. 1778:--'His Majesty complained of the +difficulty of recruiting. General Keppel replied aloud, "It is owing to +the Scots, who raise their clans in and about London." This was very +true; the Master of Lovat had received a Royal gift of £6000 to raise a +regiment of his clan, and had literally picked up boys of fifteen in +London and Westminster.' _Ib_. p. 316. + +[1212] He made his will in his wife's life-time, and appointed her and +Sir William Forbes, or the survivor of them, 'tutors and curators' to +his children. _Boswelliana_, p. 186. + +[1213] Head gardener at Stowe, and afterwards at Hampton Court and +Windsor. He got his nickname from his habit of saying that grounds which +he was asked to lay out had _capabilities_. Lord Chatham wrote of +him:--'He writes Lancelot Brown Esquire, _en titre d'office_: please to +consider, he shares the private hours of--[the King], dines familiarly +with his neighbour of Sion [the Duke of Northumberland], and sits down +at the tables of all the House of Lords, &c.' _Chatham Corres_. iv. 178, +430. + +[1214] See _ante_, pp. 334, 350. Clive, before the Committee of the +House of Commons, exclaimed:--'By God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I +stand astonished at my own moderation.' Macaulay's _Essays_, iii. 198. + +[1215] See _ante_, p. 216. + +[1216] Yet, according to Johnson, 'the poor in England were better +provided for than in any other country of the same extent.' _Ante_, ii. +130. + +[1217] See _ante_, ii. 119. + +[1218] See _ante_, i. 67, note 2. + +[1219] The Rev. Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, in the Preface to his +valuable edition of Archbishop King's _Essay on the Origin of Evil_ [ed. +1781, p. xvii], mentions that the principles maintained in it had been +adopted by Pope in his _Essay on Man_; and adds, 'The fact, +notwithstanding such denial (Bishop Warburton's), might have been +strictly verified by an unexceptionable testimony, _viz_ that of the +late Lord Bathurst, who saw the very same system of the [Greek: to +beltion] (taken from the Archbishop) in Lord Bolingbroke's own hand, +lying before Mr. Pope, while he was composing his _Essay_.' This is +respectable evidence; but that of Dr. Blair is more direct from the +fountain-head, as well as more full. Let me add to it that of Dr. Joseph +Warton; 'The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly assured me that he had read +the whole scheme of _The Essay on Man_, in the hand-writing of +Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions, which Pope was to +versify and illustrate.' _Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope_, +vol. ii. p. 62. BOSWELL. In the above short quotation from Law are two +parentheses. According to Paley, the Bishop was once impatient at the +slowness of his Carlisle printer. '"Why does not my book make its +appearance?" said he to the printer. "My Lord, I am extremely sorry; but +we have been obliged to send to Glasgow for a pound of parentheses."' +Best's _Memorials_, p. 196. + +[1220] Johnson, defining _ascertain_ in its first meaning as +_establish_, quotes from Hooker: 'The divine law _ascertaineth_ the +truth of other laws.' + +[1221] 'To those who censured his politicks were added enemies yet more +dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his +qualifications for a translator of Homer. To these he made no publick +opposition; but in one of his letters escapes from them as well as he +can. At an age like his, for he was not more than twenty-five, with an +irregular education, and a course of life of which much seems to have +passed in conversation, it is not very likely that he overflowed with +Greek. But when he felt himself deficient he sought assistance; and what +man of learning would refuse to help him?' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 252. +Johnson refers, I think, to Pope's letter to Addison of Jan. 30, +1713-14. + +[1222] 'That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme +regularly drawn and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only +transformed from prose to verse, has been reported but can hardly be +true. The Essay plainly appears the fabrick of a poet; what Bolingbroke +supplied could be only the first principles; the order, illustration and +embellishments must all be Pope's.' _Works_, viii. 287. Dr. Warton +(_Essay on Pope_, ii. 58) says that he had repeatedly heard from Lord +Bathurst the statement recorded by Dr. Blair. + +[1223] 'In defiance of censure and contempt truth is frequently +violated; and scarcely the most vigilant and unremitted circumspection +will secure him that mixes with mankind from being hourly deceived by +men, of whom it can scarcely be imagined that they mean any injury to +him or profit to themselves.' _Works_, iv. 22. + +[1224] See _ante_, pp. 226, 243. + +[1225] Gibbon wrote of Lord Hailes:--'In his _Annals of Scotland_ he +has shewn himself a diligent collector and an accurate critic.' Gibbon's +_Misc. Works_, i. 233. + +[1226] See _ante_, ii. 237. + +[1227] See _ante_, ii. 79. + +[1228] + +'Versate diu quid ferre recusent, + Quid valeant humeri.' +'Weigh with care + What suits your genius, what your strength can bear.' + +FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. 39. + +[1229] Boswell seems to be afraid of having his head made to ache again, +by the sense that Johnson should put into it. See _ante_, p. 381. + +[1230] _The Spleen_, a Poem. BOSWELL. The author was Matthew Green. +Dodsley's _Collection_, i. 145. See _ante_, p. 38. + +[1231] See _ante_, i. 182. + +[1232] Of Dryden he wrote (_Works_, vii. 250):--'He began even now to +exercise the domination of conscious genius by recommending his own +performance.' + +[1233] See _ante_, i. 297. + +[1234] Johnson's _Works_, vii. 95. See _ante_, i. 111. + +[1235] + +1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand. [March 1737, _ante_, i. + 103.] +2. Greenwich. [July 1737, _ante_, i. 107.] +3. Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square. [End of 1737, _ante_, i. III.] +4. Castle-street, Cavendish-square, No. 6. [Spring and October 1738; + _ante_, i. 120, and 135, note 1. Castle-street is now called + Castle-street East.] +5. Strand. +6. Boswell-Court. +7. Strand, again. [In Croker's _Boswell_, p. 44, is a letter dated, 'At + the Black Boy, over against Durham Yard, Strand, March 31, 1741.'] +8. Bow-street. +9. Holborn. +10. Fetter-lane. [Johnson mentions in _Pr. and Med_. p. 73, 'A good + night's rest I once had in Fetter-Lane.'] +11. Holborn, again. +12. Gough-square. [In Croker's _Boswell_, p. 62, is a letter dated + 'Goff-square, July 12, 1749.' He moved to Staple Inn on March 23, + 1759. _Rasselas_ was written when he was living in Gough-square, and + not in Staple Inn, as has been asserted. _Ante_, i. 516.] +13. Staple Inn. +14. Gray's Inn. [In Croker's _Boswell_, p. 118, is a letter dated + 'Gray's Inn, Dec. 17, 1759.'] +15. Inner Temple-lane, No. 1. [He was here in June 1760, _ante_, i. 350, + note 1; and on Jan. 13, 1761, as is shewn by a letter in Croker's + _Boswell_, p. 122. Johnson Buildings now stand where his house stood.] +16. Johnson's-court, No. 7. [See i. 518 for a letter dated + 'Johnson's-court, Oct. 17, 1765.'] +17. Bolt-court, No. 8. [He was here on March 15, 1776 (_ante_, ii. 427). + From about 1765 (_ante_, i. 493) to Oct. 7, 1782 (_post_), he had + moreover 'an apartment' at Streatham, and from about 1765 to about + the end of 1780, one at Southwark (_ante_, i. 493). From about the + beginning of 1781 to the spring of 1783 he had a room either in + Grosvenor-square or Argyll-street (_post_, March 20, 1781 and March + 21, 1783.)] + +[1236] See _ante_, ii. 55. + +[1237] If, as seems to be meant, the 'gentleman supposed the case' on +this occasion, he must have been Boswell, for no one else was present +with Johnson. + +[1238] A crime that he would have restrained by 'severe laws steadily +enforced.' _Ante_, iii. 18. + +[1239] See _ante_, ii. 105. + +[1240] Lord Newhaven was one of a creation of eighteen Irish peers in +1776. 'It was a mob of nobility,' wrote Horace Walpole. 'The King in +private laughed much at the eagerness for such insignificant honours.' +_Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 58. + +[1241] Now the Lady of Sir Henry Dashwood, Bart. BOSWELL. + +[1242] See _ante_, ii. 111. + +[1243] _The False Alarm_. See _ante_, ii. 111. + +[1244] See Collins's _Peerage_, i. 636, and Hume's _England_, ed. 1802, +iv. 451, for an account, how Henry VIII. once threatened to cut off the +head of Edward Montagu, one of the members (not the Speaker as Mr. +Croker says), if he did not get a money bill passed by the next day. The +bill, according to the story, was passed. Mr. P. Cunningham informed Mr. +Croker that Johnson was here guilty of an anachronism, for that heads +were first placed on Temple Bar in William III's time. + +[1245] Horace Walpole thus describes public affairs in February of this +year:--'The navy disgusted, insurrections in Scotland, Wales mutinous, +a rebellion ready to break out in Ireland where 15,000 Protestants were +in arms, without authority, for their own defence, many of them +well-wishers to the Americans, and all so ruined that they insisted on +relief from Parliament, or were ready to throw off subjection; Holland +pressed by France to refuse us assistance, and demanding whether we +would or not protect them: uncertainty of the fate of the West Indian +Islands; and dread at least that Spain might take part with France; Lord +North at the same time perplexed to raise money on the loan but at eight +per cent., which was demanded--such a position and such a prospect might +have shaken the stoutest king and the ablest administration. Yet the +king was insensible to his danger. He had attained what pleased him most +--his own will at home. His ministers were nothing but his tools-- +everybody called them so, and they proclaimed it themselves.' Walpole's +_Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 339. In this melancholy +enumeration he passes over the American War. + +[1246] See _ante_, i. 78, note 2. + +[1247] Wesley himself recorded in 1739 (_Journal_, i. 177):--'I have +been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating +to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls +almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.' + +[1248] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 131) talks of some one 'riding +on three elephants at once like Astley.' On p. 406 he says:--'I can +almost believe that I could dance a minuet on a horse galloping full +speed, like young Astley.' + +[1249] See _ante_, i. 458. + +[1250] A friend of Wilkes, as Boswell was, might well be supposed to +have got over such scruples. + +[1251] Mr. Croker says that the '"celebrated friend" was no doubt +Burke.' Burke, however, is generally described by Boswell as 'eminent.' +Moreover Burke was not in the habit of getting drunk, as seems to have +been the case with 'the celebrated friend.' Boswell (_ante_, p. 245, +note 1) calls Hamilton 'celebrated,' but then Boswell and Hamilton were +not friends, as is shewn, _post_, Nov. 1783. + +[1252] _Corinthians_. xv, 33. + +[1253] See _ante_, ii. 121. + +[1254] 'Prince Gonzaga di Castiglione, when dining in company with Dr. +Johnson, thinking it was a polite as well as gay thing to drink the +Doctor's health with some proof that he had read his works, called out +from the top of the table to the bottom.--_At your health, Mr. +Vagabond_.' Piozzi's _Synonymy_, ii. 358. Mme. D'Arblay (_Memoirs of Dr. +Burney_, ii. 258) says,--'General Paoli diverted us all very much by +begging leave of Mrs. Thrale to give one toast, and then, with smiling +pomposity, pronouncing "The great Vagabond."' + +[1255] 'Very near to admiration is the wish to admire. Every man +willingly gives value to the praise which he receives, and considers the +sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of discernment.' Johnson's +_Works_, vii. 396. + +[1256] See _ante_, ii. 461. + +[1257] See _ante_, ii. 465. + +[1258] See _ante_, _ib_. p. 466 + +[1259] See _ante_, _ib_. p. 467. + +[1260] See _ante_, _ib_. p. 470. + +[1261] See _ante_, _ib_. p. 469. + +[1262] See ante_, p. 405. + +[1263] Bishop Porteus. See _ante_, p. 279. + +[1264] Miss Letitia Barnston. BOSWELL. + +[1265] 'At Chester I passed a fortnight in mortal felicity. I had from +my earliest years a love for the military life, and there is in it an +animation and relish of existence which I have never found amongst any +other set of men, except players, with whom you know I once lived a +great deal. At the mess of Colonel Stuart's regiment I was quite _the +great man_, as we used to say; and I was at the same time all joyous and +gay ... I never found myself so well received anywhere. The young ladies +there were delightful, and many of them with capital fortunes. Had I +been a bachelor, I should have certainly paid my addresses to a Chester +lady.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 247. + +[1266] Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson from Brighton in 1778:--'I have lost +what made my happiness in all seasons of the year; but the black dog +shall not make prey of both my master and myself. My master swims now, +and forgets the black dog.' Johnson replied:--'I shall easily forgive my +master his long stay, if he leaves the dog behind him. We will watch, as +well as we can, that the dog shall never be let in again, for when he +comes the first thing he does is to worry my master.' _Piozzi Letters_, +ii. 32, 37. + +[1267] See _ante_, ii. 202. + +[1268] I have a valuable collection made by my Father, which, with some +additions and illustrations of my own, I intend to publish. I have some +hereditary claim to be an Antiquary; not only from my Father, but as +being descended, by the mother's side, from the able and learned Sir +John Skene, whose merit bids defiance to all the attempts which have +been made to lessen his fame. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i. 225, note 2, for +an imperfect list of Boswell's projected publications, and Boswell's +_Hebrides_, Aug. 23, for a fuller one. + +[1269] See _ante_, iii. 162, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 11. + +[1270] In the first two editions, _we_. + +[1271] In chaps, xxiv. and xxv. of his _Siècle de Louis XV_. See _ante_, +i. 498, note 4, for Voltaire's 'catching greedily at wonders.' + +[1272] Burton in the last lines of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, says:-- +'Only take this for a corollary and conclusion; as thou tenderest thine +own welfare in this and all other melancholy, thy good health of body +and mind, observe this short precept, give not way to solitariness and +idleness. "Be not solitary, be not idle."' + +[1273] Johnson was in better spirits than usual. The following day he +wrote:--'I fancy that I grow light and airy. A man that does not begin +to grow light and airy at seventy is certainly losing time if he intends +ever to be light and airy.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 73. + +[1274] Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit. _Juvenal_, +xiv. 139. + +[1275] He had seen it on his Tour in Wales on July 26, 1774. See _post_, +vol. v. + +[1276] Dean Percy, _ante_, p. 365. + +[1277] Another son was the first Lord Ellenborough. + +[1278] His regiment was afterwards ordered to Jamaica, where he +accompanied it, and almost lost his life by the climate. This impartial +order I should think a sufficient refutation of the idle rumour that +'there was still something behind the throne greater than the throne +itself.' BOSWELL. Lord Shelburne, about the year 1803, likening the +growth of the power of the Crown to a strong building that had been +raised up, said:--'The Earl of Bute had contrived such a lock to it as a +succession of the ablest men have not been able to pick, _nor has he +ever let the key be so much as seen by which he has held it_.' +Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 68. + +[1279] Boswell, on Jan. 4, wrote to Temple:--'How inconsiderable are +both you and I, in comparison with what we used to hope we should be! +Yet your learning and your memoirs set you far above the common run of +educated men. And _Son pittore anche io_. I too, in several respects, +have attained to superiority. But we both want solidity and force of +mind, such as we observe in those who rise in active life.' _Letters of +Boswell_, p. 249. + +[1280] + +'For in the mind alone our follies lie, + The mind that never from itself can fly.' + +FRANCIS. Horace, _Epistles_, i. 14. 13. + +[1281] Requesting me to inquire concerning the family of a gentleman who +was then paying his addresses to Miss Doxy. BOSWELL. + +[1282] It is little more than half that distance. + +[1283] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Nov. 7:--'My master, I hope, +hunts and walks, and courts the belles, and shakes Brighthelmston. When +he comes back, frolick and active, we will make a feast, and drink his +health, and have a noble day.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 79. + +[1284] See page 368. BOSWELL. On Nov. 16 he wrote:--'At home we do not +much quarrel; but perhaps the less we quarrel, the more we hate. There +is as much malignity amongst us as can well subsist without any thought +of daggers or poisons.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 93. + +[1285] See _ante_, i. 187. + +[1286] See _post_, p. 421, and Feb. 27, 1784. + +[1287] See _ante_, i. 260, and _post_, June 4. 1781. + +[1288] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on April 11--'You are at all places of +high resort, and bring home hearts by dozens; while I am seeking for +something to say about men of whom I know nothing but their verses, and +sometimes very little of them. Now I have begun, however, I do not +despair of making an end.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 100. + +[1289] See _ante_, ii. 5. + +[1290] A writer in _Notes and Queries_ (3rd S., viii. 197) points out +that Johnson, writing to a doctor, uses a doctor's language. 'Until very +lately _solution of continuity_ was a favourite phrase with English +surgeons; where a bone was broken, or the flesh, &c. cut or _lacerated_, +there was a _solution of continuity_.' See _ante_, ii. 106, for +_laceration_. + +[1291] He died March 11, 1780, aged 40. _Gent. Mag_. 1780, p. 155. + +[1292] + +'Animula, vagula, blandula, +Hospes comesque corporis, +Quæ nunc abibis in loca, +Pallidula, rigida, nudula? +Nec, ut soles, dabis joca.' + +_Adriani morientis ad animam suam_. + +'Poor little, pretty, fluttering thing, + Must we no longer live together? +And dost thou prune thy trembling wing, + To take thy flight thou know'st not whither? +Thy humorous vein, thy pleasing folly + Lies all neglected, all forgot; +And pensive, wavering, melancholy, + Thou dread'st and hop'st thou know'st not what.' _Prior_. + +In _The Spectator_, No. 532, is a letter from Pope to Steele on these +'famous verses which the Emperor Adrian spoke on his death-bed.' See in +Pope's _Correspondence_ (Elwin's _Pope_, vi. 394), this letter to Steele +of Nov. 7, 1712, for his version of these lines. + +[1293] See _ante_, ii. 246, note 1. + +[1294] Mr. Beauclerk's library was sold by publick auction in April and +May 1781, for £5011. MALONE. See _post_, May 8, 1781. + +[1295] By a fire in Northumberland-house, where he had an apartment, in +which I have passed many an agreeable hour. BOSWELL. + +[1296] See _post_, iv. 31. + +[1297] In 1768, on his birthday, Johnson recorded, 'This day it came +into my mind to write the history of my melancholy.' _Ante_, ii. 45, +note 1. + +[1298] Johnson had dated his letter, 'London, April 25, 1780,' and added, +'now there is a date; look at it.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 109. In his +reply he wrote:--'London, May 1, 1780. Mark that--you did not put the +year to your last.' _Ib_. p. 112. + +[1299] _An Address to the Electors of Southwark. Ib_. p. 106. See _post_, +p. 440. + +[1300] The author of the _Fitzosborne Letters (post_, May 5, 1784, note). +Miss Burney thus describes this evening:--'We were appointed to meet the +Bishop of Chester at Mrs. Montagu's. This proved a very gloomy kind of +grandeur; the Bishop waited for Mrs. Thrale to speak, Mrs. Thrale for +the Bishop; so neither of them spoke at all. Mrs. Montagu cared not a +fig, as long as she spoke herself, and so she harangued away. Meanwhile +Mr. Melmoth, the Pliny Melmoth, as he is called, was of the party, and +seemed to think nobody half so great as himself. He seems intolerably +self-sufficient--appears to look upon himself as the first man in Bath, +and has a proud conceit in look and manner, mighty forbidding.' Mme. +D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 348. + +[1301] Dr. John Hinchliffe. BOSWELL. + +[1302] A kind of nick-name given to Mrs. Thrale's eldest daughter, whose +name being _Esther_, she might be assimilated to a _Queen_. BOSWELL. + +[1303] Mr. Thrale. BOSWELL. + +[1304] In Johnson's _Dictionary_ is neither _dawling_ nor _dawdling_. He +uses _dawdle, post_, June 3, 1781. + +[1305] Miss Burney shews how luxurious a table Mr. Thrale kept. 'We +had,' she records, in May 1779, 'a very grand dinner to-day, _though +nothing to a Streatham dinner_, at the Ship Tavern [Brighton], where the +officers mess, to which we were invited by the major and the captain.' +As the major was a man of at least £8,000 a-year, and the captain of +£4,000 or £5,000, the dinner was likely to be grand enough. Mme. +D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 211. Yet when Mr. Thrale had his first stroke in +1779, Johnson wrote:--'I am the more alarmed by this violent seizure, as +I can impute it to no wrong practices, or intemperance of any kind.... +What can he reform? or what can he add to his regularity and temperance? +He can only sleep less.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 49, 51. Baretti, in a MS. +note on p. 51, says:--'Dr. Johnson knew that Thrale would eat like four, +let physicians preach.... May be he did not know it, so little did he +mind what people were doing. Though he sat by Thrale at dinner, he never +noticed whether he eat much or little. A strange man!' Yet in a note on +p. 49, Baretti had said that Thrale's seizure was caused by 'the mere +grief he could not overcome of his only son's loss. Johnson knew it, but +would not tell it.' See _post_, iv. 84, note 4. + +[1306] Miss Burney. + +[1307] I have taken the liberty to leave out a few lines. BOSWELL. Lines +about diet and physic. + +[1308] See _ante_, ii. 61, note 4. + +[1309] The author of _Fables for the Female Sex_, and of the tragedy of +_The Gamester_, and editor of _The World_. Goldsmith, in his _Present +State of Polite Learning_ (ch. x.), after describing the sufferings of +authors, continues:--'Let us not then aggravate those natural +inconveniences by neglect; we have had sufficient instances of this kind +already. Sale and Moore will suffice for one age at least. But they are +dead and their sorrows are over.' Mr. Foster (_Life of Goldsmith_, ed. +1871, ii, 484) strangely confounds Edward Moore the fabulist, with Dr. +John More the author of _Zeluco_. + +[1310] Line of a song in _The Spectator_, No. 470. CROKER. + +[1311] Hannah More, in 1783 (_Memoirs_, i. 286), describes 'Mrs. Vesey's +pleasant parties. It is a select society which meets at her house every +other Tuesday, on the day on which the Turk's Head Club dine together. +In the evening they all meet at Mrs. Vesey's, with the addition of such +other company as it is difficult to find elsewhere.' + +[1312] Second Earl Spencer; the First Lord of the Admiralty under Pitt, +and father of Lord Althorp who was leader of the House of Commons under +Earl Grey. + +[1313] see _ante_ p. 390. + +[1314] Her childhood was celebrated by Prior in the lines beginning:-- +'My noble, lovely little Peggy.' CROKER. + +[1315] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii. 510) wrote on Feb. 5, 1781:--'I +saw Dr. Johnson last night at Lady Lucan's, who had assembled a _blue +stocking_ meeting in imitation of Mrs. Vesey's Babels. It was so blue, +it was quite Mazarine-blue. Mrs. Montagu kept aloof from Johnson, like +the west from the east.' In his letter of Jan. 14 (_ib_. p. 497), the +allusion to Mrs. Vesey's Babels is explained: 'Mrs. Montagu is one of my +principal entertainments at Mrs. Vesey's, who collects all the graduates +and candidates for fame, where they vie with one another, till they are +as unintelligible as the good folks at Babel.' 'Lady Spencer,' said +Samuel Rogers, 'recollected Johnson well, as she used to see him often +in her girlhood. Her mother, Lady Lucan, would say, "Nobody dines with +us to-day; therefore, child, we'll go and get Dr. Johnson." So they +would drive to Bolt Court and bring the doctor home with them.' +_Rogers's Table Talk_, p. 10. 'I told Lady Lucan,' wrote Johnson on +April 25, 1780, 'how long it was since she sent to me; but she said I +must consider how the world rolls about her. She seemed pleased that we +met again.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 107. + +[1316] 'I have seen,' wrote Wraxall, 'the Duchess of Devonshire, +then in the first bloom of youth, hanging on the sentences that fell +from Johnson's lips, and contending for the nearest place to his chair. +All the cynic moroseness of the philosopher and the moralist seemed to +dissolve under so flattering an approach.' Wraxall's _Memoirs_, ed. +1815, i. 158. + +[1317] In Nichols's _Lit. Anec_. viii. 548, 9, Dr. Barnard is thus +described:--'In powers of conversation I never yet knew his equal. He +saw infinite variety of characters, and like Shakespeare adopted them +all by turns for comic effect. He carried me to London in a hired +chaise; we rose from our seat, and put our heads out of the windows, +while the postboy removed something under us. He supposed himself in the +pillory, and addressed the populace against the government with all the +cant of _No. 45 and Co_. He once told me a little anecdote of the +original Parson Adams, whom he knew. "Oh, Sir!" said he to Barnard, +almost in a whisper, and with a look of horror, "would you believe it, +Sir, he was wicked from a boy;" then going up close to him, "You will be +shocked--you will not believe it,--he wrote God with a little g, when he +was ten years old!"' + +[1318] In Mr. Croker's editions, 'had taken a chair' is changed into +'had taken the chair,' and additional emphasis is given by printing +these four words in italics. + +[1319] The hostess must have suffered, for, according to Miss Burney, +'Lord Harcourt said, "Mrs. Vesey's fear of ceremony is really +troublesome; for her eagerness to break a circle is such that she +insists upon everybody's sitting with their backs one to another; that +is, the chairs are drawn into little parties of three together, in a +confused manner all over the room."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 184. +Miss Burney thus describes her:--'She has the most wrinkled, sallow, +time-beaten face I ever saw. She is an exceeding well-bred woman, and of +agreeable manners; but all her name in the world must, I think, have +been acquired by her dexterity and skill in selecting parties, and by +her address in rendering them easy with one another.' _Ib_. p. 244. She +heard her say of a gentleman who had lately died:--'It's a very +disagreeable thing, I think, when one has just made acquaintance with +anybody and likes them, to have them die.' _Ib_. ii. 290. + +[1320] Johnson passed over this scene very lightly. 'On Sunday evening I +was at Mrs. Vesey's, and there was inquiry about my master, but I told +them all good. There was Dr. Barnard of Eton, and we made a noise all +the evening; and there was Pepys, and Wraxall till I drove him away.' +_Piozzi Letters,_ ii. 98. Wraxall was perhaps thinking of this evening +when he wrote (_Memoirs_, ed. 1815, i. 147):--'Those whom he could not +always vanquish by the force of his intellect, by the depth and range of +his arguments, and by the compass of his gigantic faculties, he silenced +by rudeness; and I have myself more than once stood in the predicament +which I here describe. Yet no sooner was he withdrawn, and with him had +disappeared these personal imperfections, than the sublime attainments +of his mind left their full effect on the audience: such the whole +assembly might be in some measure esteemed while he was present.' + +[1321] Among the provisions thus relaxed was one that subjected Popish +priests, or Papists keeping school, to perpetual imprisonment. Those +only enjoyed the benefit of the act who took a very strict test, in +which, among other things, they denied the Pope's temporal and civil +jurisdiction within this realm. This bill passed both Houses without a +single negative. It applied only to England. Scotland was alarmed by the +report that the Scotch Catholics were in like manner to be relieved. In +Edinburgh and Glasgow the Papists suffered from outrageous acts of +violence and cruelty, and government did not think it advisable to +repress this persecution by force. The success of these Scotch bigots +seems to have given the first rise to the Protestant Association in +England. _Ann. Reg_. xxiii. 254-6. How slight 'the relaxation' was in +England is shewn by Lord Mansfield's charge on Lord George Gordon's +trial, where we learn that the Catholics were still subject to all the +penalties created in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I, Charles II, and +of the first ten years of William III. _Ib_. xxiv. 237. Hannah More +(_Memoirs_, i. 326), four years after the riots, wrote:--'I have had a +great many prints, pamphlets, &c., sent me from Rouen; but, unluckily +for me, the sender happened to have put a popish prayer-book among my +things, which were therefore, by being caught in bad company, all found +guilty of popery at Brighthelmstone, and condemned to be burnt to my +great regret.' They were burnt in accordance with sect. 25 of 3 Jac. I. +c. 4. This act was only repealed in to 1846 (9 and 10. Rep. c. 59. s. i). + +[1322] Vol. ii. p. 143, _et seq_. I have selected passages from +several letters, without mentioning dates. BOSWELL. + +[1323] June 2. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote on June 9. + +[1324] See _post_, p. 435. + +[1325] On this day (June 6) Johnson, writing to Mrs. Thrale at Bath, did +not mention the riots. He gives the date very fully--'London, No. 8, +Bolt-court, Fleet-street, June 6, 1780,' and adds:--'Mind this, and tell +Queency [Miss Thrale].' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 141. Miss Burney, who was +with the Thrales, writes:--'Dr. Johnson has written to Mrs. Thrale, +without even mentioning the existence of this mob; perhaps, at this very +moment, he thinks it "a humbug upon the nation," as George Bodens called +the Parliament.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 401. When Johnson wrote, +the mob had not risen to its height of violence. Mrs. Thrale in her +answer, giving the date, 'Bath, 3 o'clock on Saturday morning, June 10, +1780,' asks, 'Oh! my dear Sir, was I ever particular in dating a letter +before? and is this a time to begin to be particular when I have been up +all night in trembling agitation? Miss Burney is frighted, but she says +better times will come; she made me date my letter so, and persists in +hoping that ten years hence we shall all three read it over together and +be merry. But, perhaps, you will ask, "who is _consternated_,"? as you +did about the French invasion.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 146. + +[1326] 'Lord Mansfield's house,' wrote Dr. Franklin from Paris +(_Memoirs_, iii. 62), 'is burnt with all his furniture, pictures, books, +and papers. Thus he who approved the burning American houses has had +fire brought home to him.' + +[1327] Baretti in a marginal note on _mass-house_, says, 'So illiberal +was Johnson made by religion that he calls here the chapel a +mass-house.... Yet he hated the Presbyterians. That was a nasty blot in +his character.' + +[1328] Horace Walpole this night (June 7) wrote:--'Yet I assure your +Ladyship there is no panic. Lady Aylesbury has been at the play in the +Haymarket, and the Duke and my four nieces at Ranelagh this evening.' +_Letters_, vii. 388. The following Monday he wrote:--'Mercy on us! we +seem to be plunging into the horrors of France, in the reigns of +Charles VI. and VII.!--yet, as extremes meet, there is at this moment +amazing insensibility. Within these four days I have received five +applications for tickets to see my house!' _Ib_. p. 395. + +[1329] Written on June 10. + +[1330] In the original, 'was this day _with a party of soldiers_.' + +[1331] In the original, 'We are all _again_.' + +[1332] Written on June 12. + +[1333] George III told Lord Eldon that at a levee 'he asked Wilkes after +his friend Serjeant Glynne. "_My_ friend, Sir!" says Wilkes to the King; +"he is no friend of mine." "Why," said the King, "he _was_ your friend +and your counsel in all your trials." "Sir," rejoined Wilkes, "he _was_ +my _counsel_--one _must_ have a counsel; but he was no _friend_; he +loves sedition and licentiousness which I never delighted in. In fact, +Sir, he was a Wilkite, which I never was." The King said the confidence +and humour of the man made him forget at the moment his impudence.' +Twiss's _Eldon_, ii. 356. + +[1334] Lord George Gordon and his followers, during these outrages, wore +blue ribbands in their hats. MALONE. + +[1335] Johnson added:--'All danger here is apparently over; but a +little agitation still continues. We frighten one another with a +seventy-thousand Scots to come hither with the Dukes of Gordon and +Argyle, and eat us, and hang us, or drown us.' Two days later Horace +Walpole, after mentioning that Lord George Gordon was in the Tower, +continued:--'What a nation is Scotland; in every reign engendering +traitors to the State, and false and pernicious to the Kings that favour +it the most. National prejudices, I know, are very vulgar; but if there +are national characteristics, can one but dislike the soils and climates +that concur to produce them?' _Letters_, vii. 400. + +[1336] He died Nov. 19, 1792, and left 'about, £20,000 accumulated not +parsimoniously, but during a very long possession of a profitable +office.' His father, who was keeper before him, began as a turnkey. +_Gent. Mag_. 1792, p. 1062. Wesley wrote on Jan. 2, 1761:--'Of all the +seats of woe on this side hell, few, I suppose, exceed or even equal +Newgate. If any region of horror could exceed it a few years ago, +Newgate in Bristol did; so great was the filth, the stench, the misery, +and wickedness which shocked all who had a spark of humanity left.' He +described a great change for the better which had lately been made in +the London Newgate. Perhaps it was due to Akerman. Wesley's _Journal_, +iii. 32. + +[1337] There were two city prisons so called. + +[1338] In the first two editions _will_. Boswell, in the third edition, +corrected most of his Scotticisms. + +[1339] In the _Life of Savage_ (_Works_, viii. 183) Johnson wrote of the +keeper of the Bristol gaol:--'Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in +that state which makes it most difficult; and therefore the humanity of +a gaoler certainly deserves this publick attestation; and the man whose +heart has not been hardened by such an employment may be justly proposed +as a pattern of benevolence. If an inscription was once engraved "to the +honest toll-gatherer," less honours ought not to be paid "to the tender +gaoler."' This keeper, Dagge by name, was one of Whitefield's disciples. +In 1739 Whitefield wrote:--'God having given me great favour in the +gaoler's eyes, I preached a sermon on the Penitent Thief, to the poor +prisoners in Newgate.' He began to read prayers and preach to them every +day, till the Mayor and Sheriffs forbade Mr. Dagge to allow him to +preach again. Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 179. + +[1340] Vol. ii. p. 163. Mrs. Piozzi has omitted the name, she best knows +why. BOSWELL. + +[1341] Now settled in London. BOSWELL. + +[1342] I had been five years absent from London. BEATTIE. + +[1343] '--sic fata ferebant.' _Æneid, ii. 34_. + +[1344] Meaning his entertaining _Memoirs of David Garrick, Esq_., of +which Johnson (as Davies informed me) wrote the first sentence; thus +giving, as it were, the key-note performance. It is, indeed, very +characteristical of its authour, beginning with a maxim, and proceeding +to illustrate.--'All excellence has a right to be recorded. I shall, +therefore, think it superfluous to apologise for writing the life of a +man, who by an uncommon assemblage of private virtues, adorned the +highest eminence in a publick profession.' BOSWELL. + +[1345] Davies had become bankrupt. See _ante_, p. 223. Young, in his +first _Epistle to Pope_, says:-- + +'For bankrupts write when ruined shops are shut +As maggots crawl from out a perished nut.' + +Davies's _Memoirs of Garrick_, published this spring, reached its third +edition by the following year. + +[1346] I wish he had omitted the suspicion expressed here, though I +believe he meant nothing but jocularity; for though he and I differed +sometimes in opinion, he well knew how much I loved and revered him. +BEATTIE. + +[1347] The Thrales fled from Bath where a riot had broken out, and +travelled about the country in alarm for Mr. Thrale's 'personal safety,' +as it had been maliciously asserted in a Bath and Bristol paper that he +was a Papist. Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 399. + +[1348] On May 30 he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'I have been so idle that I +know not when I shall get either to you, or to any other place; for my +resolution is to stay here till the work is finished.... I hope, however, +to see standing corn in some part of the earth this summer, but I shall +hardly smell hay, or suck clover flowers.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 140. + +[1349] It will, no doubt, be remarked how he avoids the _rebellious_ +land of America. This puts me in mind of an anecdote, for which I am +obliged to my worthy social friend, Governour Richard Penn: 'At one of +Miss E. Hervey's assemblies, Dr. Johnson was following her up and down +the room; upon which Lord Abingdon observed to her, "Your great friend +is very fond of you; you can go no where without him."--"Ay, (said she), +he would follow me to any part of the world."--"Then (said the Earl), +ask him to go with you to _America_.'" BOSWELL. This lady was the niece +of Johnson's friends the Herveys [_ante_, i. 106]. CROKER. + +[1350] _Essays on the History of Mankind_. BOSWELL. Johnson could +scarcely have known that Dunbar was an active opponent of the American +war. Mackintosh, who was his pupil, writes of him:--'I shall ever be +grateful to his memory for having contributed to breathe into my mind a +strong spirit of liberty.' Mackintosh's _Life_, i. 12. The younger +Colman, who attended, or rather neglected to attend his lectures, speaks +of him as 'an acute frosty-faced little Dr. Dunbar, a man of much +erudition, and great goodnature.' _Random Records_, ii. 93. + +[1351] Mr. Seward (_Biographiana_, p. 601) says that this clergyman was +'the son of an old and learned friend of his'--the Rev. Mr. Hoole, I +conjecture. + +[1352] See _post_, iv. 12, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 19. + +[1353] Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore. BOSWELL + +[1354] Johnson, in 1764, passed some weeks at Percy's rectory. _Ante_, +i. 486. + +[1355] See _ante_, p. 366. + +[1356] See _ante,_, i. 458 + +[1357] 'O præclarum diem quum ad illud divinum animorum concilium +c'tumque profiscar.' Cicero's _De Senectute_, c. 23. + +[1358] See _ante_, p. 396. + +[1359] See _ante_, ii. 162. + +[1360] I had not then seen his letters to Mrs. Thrale. BOSWELL. + +[1361] In the _Life of Edmund Smith_. See _ante_, i. 81, and Johnson's +_Works_, vii. 380. + +[1362] Unlike Walmsley and Johnson, of whom one was a Whig, the other a +Tory. 'Walmsley was a Whig,' wrote Johnson, 'with all the virulence and +malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us +apart. I honoured him, and he endured me.' + +[1363] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2. + +[1364] Miss Burney described an evening spent by Johnson at Dr. Burney's +some weeks earlier:--'He was in high spirits and good humour, talked all +the talk, affronted nobody, and delighted everybody. I never saw him +more sweet, nor better attended to by his audience.' In December she +wrote:--'Dr. Johnson is very gay, and sociable, and comfortable, and +quite as kind to me as ever.' A little later she wrote to Mrs. +Thrale:--'Does Dr. Johnson continue gay and good-humoured, and "valuing +nobody" in a morning?' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 412, 429, 432. + +[1365] _Pr. and Med_. p. 185. BOSWELL. + +[1366] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 27. + +[1367] The Charterhouse. + +[1368] Macbean was, on Lord Thurlow's nomination, admitted 'a poor +brother of the Charterhouse.' _Ante_, i. 187. Johnson, on Macbean's +death on June 26, 1784, wrote:--'He was one of those who, as Swift says, +_stood as a screen between me and death_. He has, I hope, made a good +exchange. He was very pious; he was very innocent; he did no ill; and of +doing good a continual tenour of distress allowed him few opportunities; +he was very highly esteemed in the house [the Charterhouse].' _Piozzi +Letters_, ii. 373. The quotation from Swift is found in the lines _On +the Death of Dr. Swift_:-- + +'The fools, my juniors by a year, +Are tortured with suspense and fear, +Who wisely thought my age a screen, +When death approached, to stand between.' + +Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xi. 246. + +[1369] Johnson, in May, had persuaded Mrs. Thrale to come up from Bath +to canvass for Mr. Thrale. 'My opinion is that you should come for a +week, and show yourself, and talk in high terms. Be brisk, and be +splendid, and be publick. The voters of the Borough are too proud and +too little dependant to be solicited by deputies; they expect the +gratification of seeing the candidate bowing or curtseying before them. +If you are proud, they can be sullen. Mr. Thrale certainly shall not +come, and yet somebody must appear whom the people think it worth the +while to look at.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 114. + +[1370] Hawkins's _Johnsons Works_, xi. 206. It is curious that +Psalmanazar, in his _Memoirs_, p. 101, uses the mongrel word +_transmogrify_. + +[1371] Taylor's _Life of Reynolds_, ii. 459. + +[1372] Boswell, when in the year 1764 he was starting from Berlin for +Geneva, wrote to Mr. Mitchell, the English Minister at Berlin:--'I shall +see Voltaire; I shall also see Switzerland and Rousseau. These two men +are to me greater objects than most statues or pictures.' Nichols's +_Lit. Hist_. ed. 1848, vii. 319. + +[1373] See _post,_ iv. 261, note 3 for Boswell's grievance against Pitt. + + +THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME. + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 +by Boswell, ed. 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