Chapter 20

[366]

Witness, ye chosen trainWho breathe the sweets of his Saturnian reign;Witness ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scots, Shebbeares,Hark to my call, for some of you have ears.'

Heroic Epistle. Seepost, under June 16, 1784.

[367]In this he was unlike the King, who, writes Horace Walpole,' expecting only an attack on Chambers, bought it to tease, and began reading it to, him; but, finding it more bitter on himself, flung it down on the floor in a passion, and would read no more.' Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 187.

[368]They were published in 1773 in a pamphlet of 16 pages, and, with the good fortune that attends a muse in the peerage, reached a third edition in the year. To this same earl the second edition of Byron's Hours of Idlenesswas 'dedicated by his obliged ward and affectionate kinsman, the author.' InEnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers, he is abused in the passage which begins:—

'No muse will cheer with renovating smile,The paralytic puling of Carlisle.'

In a note Byron adds:—'The Earl of Carlisle has lately published an eighteen-penny pamphlet on the state of the stage, and offers his plan for building a new theatre. It is to be hoped his lordship will be permitted to bring forward anything for the stage—except his own tragedies.' In the third canto of Childe HaroldByron makes amends. In writing of the death of Lord Carlisle's youngest son at Waterloo, he says:—

'Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine;Yet one I would select from that proud throng,Partly because they blend me with his line,And partly that I did his Sire some wrong.'

For his lordship's tragedy see post, under Nov. 19, 1783.

[369]Men of rank and fortune, however, should be pretty well assured of having a real claim to the approbation of the publick, as writers, before they venture to stand forth. Dryden, in his preface to All for Love, thus expresses himself:—

'Men of pleasant conversation (at least esteemed so) and endued with a trifling kind of fancy, perhaps helped out by [with] a smattering of Latin, are ambitious to distinguish themselves from the herd of gentlemen, by their poetry:

"Rarus enim fermè sensus communis in iliaFortuna,"——[Juvenal, viii. 73.]

And is not this a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to publick view? Not considering that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their flatterers after the third bottle: If a little glittering in discourse has passed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the world? Would a man who has an ill title to an estate, but yet is in possession of it, would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talents [talent], yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right where he said, "That no man is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented because the poets will not admit them of their number.' BOSWELL. Boswell, it should seem, had followed Swift's advice:—

'Read all the prefaces of Dryden,For these our critics much confide in;Though merely writ at first for filling,To raise the volume's price a shilling.'

Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xi. 293.

[370]See ante, i. 402.

[371]Wordsworth, it should seem, held with Johnson in this. When he read the article in the Edinburgh Reviewon Lord Byron's early poems, he remarked that 'though Byron's verses were probably poor enough, yet such an attack was abominable,—that a young nobleman, who took to poetry, deserved to be encouraged, not ridiculed.' Rogers'sTable-Talk, p. 234, note.

[372]Dr. Barnard, formerly Dean of Derry. See ante, iii. 84.

[373]This gave me very great pleasure, for there had been once a pretty smart altercation between Dr. Barnard and him, upon a question, whether a man could improve himself after the age of forty-five; when Johnson in a hasty humour, expressed himself in a manner not quite civil. Dr. Barnard made it the subject of a copy of pleasant verses, in which he supposed himself to learn different perfections from different men. They concluded with delicate irony:—

'Johnson shall teach me how to placeIn fairest light each borrow'd grace;From him I'll learn to write;Copy his clear familiar style,And by the roughness of his fileGrow, like himself, polite.'

I know not whether Johnson ever saw the poem, but I had occasion to find that as Dr. Barnard and he knew each other better, their mutual regard increased. BOSWELL. See Appendix A.

[374]See ante, ii. 357, iii. 309, andpost, March 23, 1783.

[375]'Sir Joshua once asked Lord B—— to dine with Dr. Johnson and the rest, but though a man of rank and also of good information, he seemed as much alarmed at the idea as if you had tried to force him into one of the cages at Exeter-Change.' Hazlitt's Conversations of Northcote, p. 41.

[376]Yet when he came across them he met with much respect. At Alnwick he was, he writes, 'treated with great civility by the Duke of Northumberland.' Piozzi Letters, i. 108. At Inverary, the Duke and Duchess of Argyle shewed him great attention. Boswell'sHebrides, Oct. 25. In fact, all through his Scotch tour he was most politely welcomed by 'the great.' At Chatsworth, he was 'honestly pressed to stay' by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire (post, Sept. 9, 1784). Seeante, iii. 21. On the other hand, Mrs. Barbauld says:—'I believe it is true that in England genius and learning obtain less personal notice than in most other parts of Europe.' She censures 'the contemptuous manner in which Lady Wortley Montagu mentioned Richardson:—"The doors of the Great," she says, "were never opened to him."'Richardson Corres.i. clxxiv.

[377]When Lord Elibank was seventy years old, he wrote:—'I shall be glad to go five hundred miles to enjoy a day of his company.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 12.

[378]Romans, x. 2.

[379]I Peter, iii. 15.

[380]Horace Walpole wrote three years earlier:—' Whig principles are founded on sense; a Whig may be a fool, a Tory must be so.' Letters, vii. 88.

[381]Mr. Barclay, a descendant of Robert Barclay, of Ury, the celebrated apologist of the people called Quakers, and remarkable for maintaining the principles of his venerable progenitor, with as much of the elegance of modern manners, as is consistent with primitive simplicity, BOSWELL.

[382]Now Bishop of Llandaff, one of the poorestBishopricks in this kingdom. His Lordship has written with much zeal to show the propriety ofequalizingthe revenues of Bishops. He has informed us that he has burnt all his chemical papers. The friends of our excellent constitution, now assailed on every side by innovators and levellers, would have less regretted the suppression of some of this Lordship's other writings. BOSWELL. Boswell refers toA Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury by Richard, Lord Bishop of Landaff, 1782. If the revenues were made more equal, 'the poorer Bishops,' the Bishop writes, 'would be freed from the necessity of holding ecclesiastical prefermentsin commendamwith their Bishopricks,' p. 8.

[383]De Quincey says that Sir Humphry Davy told him, 'that he could scarcely imagine a time, or a condition of the science, in which the Bishop's Essayswould be superannuated.' De Quincey'sWorks, ii. 106. De Quincey describes the Bishop as being 'always a discontented man, a railer at the government and the age, which could permit such as his to pine away ingloriously in one of the humblest among the Bishopricks.'Ib. p. 107. He was, he adds, 'a true Whig,' and would have been made Archbishop of York had his party staid in power a little longer in 1807.'

[384]Rasselas, chap. xi.

[385]See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 30.

[386]'They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.' Genesis, iii. 8.

[387]

... 'Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam,Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at illeLabitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.''And sure the man who has it in his powerTo practise virtue, and protracts the hour,Waits like the rustic till the river dried;Still glides the river, and will ever glide.'

FRANCIS. Horace, Epist. i. 2. 41.

[388]See ante, p. 59.

[389]See ante, iii. 251.

[390]See ante, iii. 136.

[391]This assertion is disproved by a comparison of dates. The first four satires of Young were published in 1725; The South Sea scheme (which appears to be meant,) was in 1720. MALONE. In Croft's Life of Young, which Johnson adopted, it is stated:—'By theUniversal Passionhe acquired no vulgar fortune, more than £3000. A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South Sea.' Johnson'sWorks, viii. 430. Some of Young's poems were published before 1720.

[392]Crabbe got Johnson to revise his poem, The Village(post, under March 23, 1783). He states, that 'the Doctor did not readily comply with requests for his opinion; not from any unwillingness to oblige, but from a painful contention in his mind between a desire of giving pleasure and a determination to speak truth.' Crabbe'sWorks, ii. 12. Seeante, ii. 51, 195, and iii. 373.

[393]Pope's Essay on Man, iv. 390. Seeante, iii. 6, note 2.

[394]He had within the last seven weeks gone up drunk, at least twice, to a lady's drawing-room. Ante, pp. 88, note 1, and 109.

[395]Mr. Croker, though without any authority, prints unconscious.

[396]I Corinthians, ix. 27. See ante, 295.

[397]'We walk by faith, not by sight.' 2 Corinthians, v. 7

[398]Dr. Ogden, in his second sermon On the Articles of the Christian Faith, with admirable acuteness thus addresses the opposers of that Doctrine, which accounts for the confusion, sin and misery, which we find in this life: 'It would be severe in GOD, you think, todegradeus to such a sad state as this, for the offence of our first parents: but you can allow him toplaceus in it without any inducement. Are our calamities lessened for not being ascribed to Adam? If your condition be unhappy, is it not still unhappy, whatever was the occasion? with the aggravation of this reflection, that if it was as good as it was at first designed, there seems to be somewhat the less reason to look for its amendment.' BOSWELL.

[399]'Which taketh away the sin' &c. St. John, i. 29.

[400]See Boswell's Hebrides, August 22.

[401]This unfortunate person, whose full name was Thomas Fysche Palmer, afterwards went to Dundee, in Scotland, where he officiated as minister to a congregation of the sect who called themselves Unitarians, from a notion that they distinctively worship ONE GOD, because theydenythe mysterious doctrine of the TRINITY. They do not advert that the great body of the Christian Church, in maintaining that mystery, maintain also theUnityof the GODHEAD; the 'TRINITY in UNITY!—three persons and ONE GOD.' The Church humbly adores the DIVINITY as exhibited in the holy Scriptures. The Unitarian sect vainly presumes to comprehend and define the ALMIGHTY. Mr. Palmer having heated his mind with political speculations, became so much dissatisfied with our excellent Constitution, as to compose, publish, and circulate writings, which were found to be so seditious and dangerous, that upon being found guilty by a Jury, the Court of Justiciary in Scotland sentenced him to transportation for fourteen years. A loud clamour against this sentence was made by some Members of both Houses of Parliament; but both Houses approved of it by a great majority; and he was conveyed to the settlement for convicts in New South Wales. BOSWELL. This note first appears in the third edition. Mr. Palmer was sentenced to seven (not fourteen) years transportation in Aug. 1793. It was his fellow prisoner, Mr. Muir, an advocate, who was sentenced to fourteen years.Ann. Reg.1793, p. 40. When these sentences were brought before the House of Commons, Mr. Fox said that it was 'the Lord-Advocate's fervent wish that his native principles of justice should be introduced into this country; and that on the ruins of the common law of England should be erected the infamous fabric of Scottish persecution. ... If that day should ever arrive, if the tyrannical laws of Scotland should ever be introduced in opposition to the humane laws of England, it would then be high time for my hon. friends and myself to settle our affairs, and retire to some happier clime, where we might at least enjoy those rights which God has given to man, and which his nature tells him he has a right to demand.'Parl. Hist.xxx. 1563. ForUnitarians, seeante, ii. 408, note I.

[402]Taken from Herodotus. [Bk. ii. ch. 104.] BOSWELL.

[403]'The mummies,' says Blakesley, 'have straight hair, and in the paintings the Egyptians are represented as red, not black.' Ib. note.

[404]See ante, i. 441, andpost, March 28, and June 3, 1782.

[405]Mr. Dawkins visited Palmyra in 1751. He had 'an escort of the Aga of Hassia's best Arab horsemen.' Johnson was perhaps astonished at the size of their caravan, 'which was increased to about 200 persons.' The writer treats the whole matter with great brevity. Wood's Ruins of Palmyra, p. 33. On their return the travellers discovered a party of Arab horsemen, who gave them an alarm. Happily these Arabs were still more afraid of them, and were at once plundered by the escort, 'who laughed at our remonstrances against their injustice.' Wood'sRuins of Balbec, p. 2.

[406]He wrote a Life of Watts, which Johnson quoted.Works, viii.

382.

[407]See ante, iii. 422, note 6.

[408]In the first two editions formal.

[409]Johnson maintains this in The Idler, No. 74. 'Few,' he says, 'have reason to complain of nature as unkindly sparing of the gifts of memory ... The true art of memory is the art of attention.' Seeante, iii. 191.

[410]The first of the definitions given by Johnson of to rememberisto bear in mind anything; not to forget. To recollecthe definesto recover to memory. We may, perhaps, assume that Boswell said, 'I did not recollect that the chair was broken;' and that Johnson replied, 'you mean, you did not remember. That you did not remember is your own fault. It was in your mind that it was broken, and therefore you ought to have remembered it. It was not a case of recollecting; for we recollect, that is, recover to memory, what is not in our mind.' In the passageante, i. 112, which begins, 'I indeed doubt if he could have remembered,' we find in the first two editions notremembered, butrecollected. Perhaps this change is due to euphony, ascollectedcomes a few lines before. Horace Walpole, in one of hisLetters(i. 15), distinguishes the two words, on his revisiting his old school, Eton:—'By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound—I recollect so much, and remember so little.'

[411]He made the same boast at St. Andrews. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19. He was, I believe, speaking of his translation of Courayer'sLife of Paul Sarpi and Notes, of which some sheets were printed off.Ante, i. 135.

[412]Horace Walpole, after mentioning that George III's mother, who died in 1772, left but £27,000 when she was reckoned worth at least £300,000, adds:—'It is no wonder that it became the universal belief that she had wasted all on Lord Bute. This became still more probable as he had made the purchase of the estate at Luton, at the price of £114,000, before he was visibly worth £20,000; had built a palace there, another in town, and had furnished the former in the most expensive manner, bought pictures and books, and made a vast park and lake.' Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 19.

[413]To him Boswell dedicated his Thesisasexcelsae familiae de Bute spei alterae(ante, ii. 20). In 1775, he wrote of him:—'He is warmly my friend and has engaged to do for me.'Letters of Boswell, p. 186

[414]He was mistaken in this. See ante, i. 260; also iii. 420.

[415]In England in like manner, and perhaps for the same reason, all Attorneys have been converted into Solicitors.

[416]'There is at Edinburgh a society or corporation of errand boys, called Cawdies, who ply in the streets at night with paper lanthorns, and are very serviceable in carrying messages.' Humphrey Clinker. Letter of Aug. 8.

[417]Their services in this sense are noticed in the same letter.

[418]

'The formal process shall be turned to sport,And you dismissed with honour by the Court.'FRANCIS. Horace, Satires, ii.i.86.

[419]Mr. Robertson altered this word to jocandi, he having found in Blackstone that to irritate is actionable. BOSWELL.

[420]Quoted by Johnson, ante, ii. l97.

[421]His god-daughter. See postMay 10, 1784.

[422]See post, under Dec. 20, 1782

[423]See ante, i. 155

[424]The will of King Alfred, alluded to in this letter, from the original Saxon, in the library of Mr. Astle, has been printed at the expense of the University of Oxford. BOSWELL.

[425]He was a surgeon in this small Norfolk town. Dr. Burney's Memoirs, i. 106.

[426]Burney visited Johnson first in 1758, when he was living in Gough Square. Ante, i. 328.

[427]Mme. D'Arblay says that Dr. Johnson sent them to Dr. Burney's house, directed 'For the Broom Gentleman.' Dr. Burney's Memoirs, ii. 180.

[428]'Sept. 14, 1781. Dr. Johnson has been very unwell indeed. Once I was quite frightened about him; but he continues his strange discipline—starving, mercury, opium; and though for a time half demolished by its severity, he always in the end rises superior both to the disease and the remedy, which commonly is the most alarming of the two.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 107. On Sept. 18, his birthday, he wrote:—'As I came home [from church], 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 Levett.'Pr. and Med.p. 199.

[429]This remark, I have no doubt, is aimed at Hawkins, who (Life, p. 553) pretends to account for this trip.

[430]Pr. and Med.p. 201. BOSWELL.

[431]He wrote from Lichfield on the previous Oct. 27:—'All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tediousness of time; a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned. But such is the lot of man.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 209.

[432]The truth of this has been proved by sad experience. BOSWELL. Mrs. Boswell died June 4, 1789. MALONE.

[433]See account of him in the Gent. Mag. Feb. 1785. BOSWELL, see ante, i. 243, note 3.

[434]Mrs. Piozzi (Synonymy, ii. 79), quoting this verse, underOfficious, says;—'Johnson, always thinking neglect the worst misfortune that could befall a man, looked on a character of this description with less aversion than I do.'

[435]

'Content thyself to be obscurely good.'

Addisons Cato, act. iv. sc. 4.

[436]In both editions of Sir John Hawkins's Life of Dr. Johnson, 'letter'dignorance' is printed. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker (Boswell, p. I) says that 'Mr. Boswell is habitually unjust to Sir J. Hawkins.' As some kind of balance, I suppose, to this injustice, he suppresses this note.

[437]Johnson repeated this line to me thus:—

'And Labour steals an hour to die.'

But he afterwards altered it to the present reading. BOSWELL. This poem is printed in the Ann. Reg. for 1783, p. 189, with the following variations:—l. 18, for 'ready help' 'useful care': l. 28, 'His single talent,' 'The single talent'; l. 33, 'no throbs of fiery pain,' 'no throbbing fiery pain'; l. 36, 'and freed,' 'and forced.' On the next page it is printedJohn Gilpin.

[438]Mr. Croker says that this line shows that 'some of Gray's happy expressions lingered in Johnson's memory' He quotes a line that comes at the end of the Ode on Vicissitude—'From busy day, the peaceful night.' This line is not Gray's, but Mason's.

[439]Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:—'If you want events, Here is Mr. Levett just come in at fourscore from a walk to Hampstead, eight miles, in August.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177.

[440]In the original, March20. On the afternoon of March 20 Lord North announced in the House of Commons 'that his Majesty's Ministers were no more.'Parl. Hist. xxii. 1215.

[441]Pr. and Med. p. 209 [207]. BOSWELL.

[442]See ante, ii. 355, iii. 46, iv. 81, 100. Mr. Seward records in hisBiographiana, p. 600—without however giving the year—that 'Johnson being asked what the Opposition meant by their flaming speeches and violent pamphlets against Lord North's administration, answered: "They mean, Sir, rebellion; they mean in spite to destroy that country which they are not permitted to govern."'

[443]In the previous December the City of London in an address, writes Horace Walpole, 'besought the King to remove both his public and privatecounsellors, and used these stunning and memorable words:—"Your armies are captured; the wonted superiority of your navies is annihilated, your dominions are lost."Words that could be used to no other King; no King had ever lost so much without losing all. If James II. lost his crown, yet the crown lost no dominions.'Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 483. The address is given in theAnn. Reg.xxiv. 320. On Aug. 4 of this year Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor:—'Perhaps no nation not absolutely conquered has declined so much in so short a time. We seem to be sinking. Suppose the Irish, having already gotten a free trade and an independent Parliament, should say we will have a King and ally ourselves with the House of Bourbon, what could be done to hinder or overthrow them?' Mr. Morrison'sAutographs, vol. ii.

[444]In February and March, 1771, the House of Commons ordered eight printers to attend at the bar on a charge of breach of privilege, in publishing reports of debates. One of the eight, Miller of the Evening Post, when the messenger of the House tried to arrest him, gave the man himself into custody on a charge of assault. The messenger was brought before Lord Mayor Crosby and Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, and a warrant was made out for his commitment. Bail was thereupon offered and accepted for his appearance at the next sessions. The Lord Mayor and Oliver were sent to the Tower by the House. Wilkes was ordered to appear on April 8; but the Ministry, not daring to face his appearance, adjourned the House till the 9th. A committee was appointed by ballot to inquire into the late obstructions to the execution of the orders of the House. It recommended the consideration of the expediency of the House ordering that Miller should be taken into custody. The report, when read, was received with a roar of laughter. Nothing was done. Such was, to quote the words of Burke in theAnnual Register(xiv. 70), 'the miserable result of all the pretended vigour of the Ministry.' SeeParl. Hist.xvii. 58, 186.

[445]Lord Cornwallis's army surrendered at York Town, five days before Sir Henry Clinton's fleet and army arrived off the Chesapeak. Ann. Reg.xxiv. 136.

[446]Johnson wrote on March 30:—'The men have got in whom I have endeavoured to keep out; but I hope they will do better than their predecessors; it will not be easy to do worse.' Croker's Boswell, p. 706.

[447]This note was in answer to one which accompanied one of the earliest pamphlets on the subject of Chatterton's forgery, entitled Cursory Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley, &c. Mr. Thomas Warton's very ableInquiryappeared about three months afterwards; and Mr. Tyrwhitt's admirableVindication of his Appendixin the summer of the same hear, left the believers in this daring imposture nothing but 'the resolution to say again what had been said before.' MALONE.

[448]Pr. and Med.p. 207. BOSWELL.

[449]He addressed to him an Ode in Latin, entitled Ad Thomam Laurence, medicum doctissimum, quum filium peregre agentem desiderio nimis tristi prosequeretur. Works, i. 165.

[450]Mr. Holder, in the Strand, Dr. Johnson's apothecary. BOSWELL.

[451]'Johnson should rather have written "imperatum est." But the meaning of the words is perfectly clear. "If you say yes, the messenger has orders to bring Holder to me." Mr. Croker translates the words as follows:-"If you consent, pray tell the messenger to bring Holder to me." If Mr. Croker is resolved to write on points of classical learning, we would advise him to begin by giving an hour every morning to our old friend Corderius.' Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, i 366. InThe Answers to Mr. Macaulay's Criticism, prefixed to Croker'sBoswell, p. 13, it is suggested that Johnson wrote eitherimpereturorimperator. The letter may be translated: 'A fresh chill, a fresh cough, and a fresh difficulty in breathing call for a fresh letting of blood. Without your advice, however, I would not submit to the operation. I cannot well come to you, nor need you come to me. Say yes or no in one word, and leave the rest to Holder and to me. If you say yes, let the messenger be bidden (imperetur) to bring Holder to me. May 1, 1782. Whenyouhave left, whither shall I turn?'

[452]Soon after the above letter, Dr. Lawrence left London, but not before the palsy had made so great a progress as to render him unable to write for himself. The folio wing are extracts from letters addressed by Dr. Johnson to one of his daughters:—

'You will easily believe with what gladness I read that you had heard once again that voice to which we have all so often delighted to attend. May you often hear it. If we had his mind, and his tongue, we could spare the rest.

'I am not vigorous, but much better than when dear Dr. Lawrence held my pulse the last time. Be so kind as to let me know, from one little interval to another, the state of his body. I am pleased that he remembers me, and hope that it never can be possible for me to forget him. July 22, 1782.'

'I am much delighted even with the small advances which dear Dr. Lawrence makes towards recovery. If we could have again but his mind, and his tongue in his mind, and his right hand, we should not much lament the rest. I should not despair of helping the swelled hand by electricity, if it were frequently and diligently supplied.

'Let me know from time to time whatever happens; and I hope I need not tell you, how much I am interested in every change. Aug. 26, 1782.'

'Though the account with which you favoured me in your last letter could not give me the pleasure that I wished, yet I was glad to receive it; for my affection to my dear friend makes me desirous of knowing his state, whatever it be. I beg, therefore, that you continue to let me know, from time to time, all that you observe.

'Many fits of severe illness have, for about three months past, forced my kind physician often upon my mind. I am now better; and hope gratitude, as well as distress, can be a motive to remembrance. Bolt-court, Fleet-street, Feb. 4, 1783.' BOSWELL.

[453]Mr. Langton being at this time on duty at Rochester, he is addressed by his military title. BOSWELL.

[454]Eight days later he recorded:—'I have in ten days written to Aston, Lucy, Hector, Langton, Boswell; perhaps to all by whom my letters are desired.' Pr. and Med.209. He had written also to Mrs. Thrale, but her affection, it should seem from this, he was beginning to doubt.

[455]See ante, p. 84.

[456]See ante, i. 247.

[457]See post, p. 158, note 4.

[458]Johnson has here expressed a sentiment similar to that contained in one of Shenstone's stanzas, to which, in his life of that poet, he has given high praise:—

'I prized every hour that went by,Beyond all that had pleased me before;But now they are gone [past] and I sigh,I grieve that I prized them no more.'

J. BOSWELL, JUN.

[459]She was his god-daughter. See post, May 10, 1784.

[460]'Dr. Johnson gave a very droll account of the children of Mr. Langton, "who," he said, "might be very good children, if they were let alone; but the father is never easy when he is not making them do something which they cannot do; they must repeat a fable, or a speech, or the Hebrew alphabet, and they might as well count twenty for what they know of the matter; however, the father says half, for he prompts every other word."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 73. Seeante, p. 20, note 2.

[461]A part of this letter having been torn off, I have, from the evident meaning, supplied a few words and half-words at the ends and beginnings of lines. BOSWELL.

[462]See vol. ii. p. 459. BOSWELL. She was Hector's widowed sister, and Johnson's first love. In the previous October, writing of a visit to Birmingham, he said:—'Mrs. Careless took me under her care, and told me when I had tea enough.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 205.

[463]This letter cannot belong to this year. In it Johnson says of his health, 'at least it is not worse.' But 1782 found him in very bad health; he passed almost the whole of the year 'in a succession of disorders' (post, p. 156). What he says of friendship renders it almost certain that the letter was written while he had still Thrale; and him he lost in April, 1781. Had it been written after June, 1779, but before Thrale's death, the account given of health would have been even better than it is (ante, iii. 397). It belongs perhaps to the year 1777 or 1778.

[464]'To a man who has survived all the companions of his youth ... this full-peopled world is a dismal solitude.' Rambler, No. 69.

[465]See ante, i. 63.

[466]They met on these days in the years 1772, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 81, and

[467]The ministry had resigned on the 20th. Ante, p. 139, note 1.

[468]Thirty-two years earlier he wrote in The Rambler, No. 53:-'In the prospect of poverty there is nothing but gloom and melancholy; the mind and body suffer together; its miseries bring no alleviation; it is a state in which every virtue is obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid reproach.' And again in No. 57:—'The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying, that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.' Seeante. 441.

[469]See ante, p. 128.

[470]Hannah More wrote in April of this year (Memoirs, i. 249):—'Poor Johnson is in a bad state of health. I fear his constitution is broken up.' (Yet in one week he dined out four times.Piozzi Letters, ii. 237.) At one of these dinners, 'I urged him,' she continues (ib. p. 251) 'to take alittlewine. He replied, "I can't drink alittle, child; therefore, I never touch it. Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." He was very good-humoured and gay. One of the company happened to say a word about poetry, "Hush, hush," said he, "it is dangerous to say a word of poetry before her; it is talking of the art of war before Hannibal."'

[471]This book was published in 1781, and, according to Lowndes, reached its seventh edition by 1787. See ante, i. 214.

[472]The clergyman's letter was dated May 4. Gent. Mag.1786, p. 93. Johnson is explaining the reason of his delay in acknowledging it.

[473]What follows appeared in the Morning Chronicleof May 29, 1782:—'A correspondent having mentioned, in theMorning Chronicleof December 12, the last clause of the following paragraph, as seeming to favour suicide; we are requested to print the whole passage, that its true meaning may appear, which is not to recommend suicide but exercise.

'Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed: but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disjoined by an easy separation. It was a principle among the ancients, that acute diseases are from Heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death, indeed, falls from Heaven, but we poison it by our own misconduct: to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.' [The Rambler, No. 85.] BOSWELL.

[474]The Correspondence may be seen at length in the Gent. Mag.Feb. 1786. BOSWELL. Johnson, advising Dr. Taylor 'to take as much exercise as he can bear,' says:-'I take the true definition of exercise to be labour without weariness.'Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 461.

[475]Here he met Hannah More. 'You cannot imagine,' she writes (Memoirs, i. 261), 'with what delight he showed me every part of his own college. Dr. Adams had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry. We spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner, Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of singing-birds." When we came into the common-room, we spied a fine large print of Johnson, hung up that very morning, with this motto:—And is not Johnson ours, himself a host?Under which stared you in the face—From Miss More's "Sensibility." This little incident amused us; but, alas! Johnson looks very ill indeed—spiritless and wan. However, he made an effort to be cheerful.' Miss Adams wrote on June 14, 1782:—'On Wednesday we had here a delightful blue-stocking party. Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott and Miss More, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Henderson, &c., dined here. Poor Dr. Johnson is in very bad health, but he exerted himself as much as he could, and being very fond of Miss More, he talked a good deal, and every word he says is worth recording. He took great delight in showing Miss More every part of Pembroke College, and his own rooms, &c., and told us many things about himself when here. .. June 19, 1782. We dined yesterday for the last time in the company with Dr. Johnson; he went away to-day. A warm dispute arose; it was about cider or wine freezing, and all the spirit retreating to the center.'Pemb. Coll. MSS.

[476]'I never retired to rest without feeling the justness of the Spanish proverb, "Let him who sleeps too much borrow the pillow of a debtor."' Johnson's Works, iv. 14.

[477]See ante, i. 441.

[478]Which I celebrated in the Church of England chapel at Edinburgh, founded by Lord Chief Baron Smith, of respectable and pious memory. BOSWELL.

[479]See ante, p. 80.

[480]The Reverend Mr. Temple, Vicar of St. Gluvias, Cornwall. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 436, and ii. 316.

[481]'He had settled on his eldest son,' says Dr. Rogers (Boswelliana, p. 129), 'the ancestral estate, with an unencumbered rental of £l,600 a year.' That the rental, whatever it was, was not unencumbered is shewn by the passage from Johnson's letter,post, p. 155, note 4. Boswell wrote to Malone in 1791 (Croker'sBoswell, p. 828):—'The clear money on which I can reckon out of my estate is scarcely £900 a year.'

[482]Cowley's Ode to Liberty, Stanza vi.

[483]'I do beseech all the succeeding heirs of entail,' wrote Boswell in his will, 'to be kind to the tenants, and not to turn out old possessors to get a little more rent.' Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 186.

[484]Macleod, the Laird of Rasay. See Boswell'sHebrides, Sept. 8.

[485]A farm in the Isle of Skye, where Johnson wrote his Latin Ode to Mrs. Thrale.Ib.Sept. 6.

[486]Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor on Oct. 4:—'Boswel's (sic) father is dead, and Boswel wrote me word that he would come to London for my advice. [The] advice which I sent him is to stay at home, and [busy] himself with his own affairs. He has a good es[tate], considerably burthened by settlements, and he is himself in debt. But if his wife lives, I think he will be prudent.'Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462.

[487]Miss Burney wrote in the first week in December:—'Dr. Johnson was in most excellent good humour and spirits.' She describes later on a brilliant party which he attended at Miss Monckton's on the 8th, where the people were 'superbly dressed,' and where he was 'environed with listeners.' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii. 186, and 190. Seeante, p. 108, note 4.

[488]Seeante,, iii. 337, where Johnson got 'heated' when Boswell maintained this.

[489]Seeante, in. 395.

[490]The greatest part of the copy, or manuscript ofThe Lives of the Poetshad been given by Johnson to Boswell (ante, iv. 36).

[491]Of her twelve children but these three were living. She was forty-one years old.

[492]'The family,' writes Dr. Burney, 'lived in the library, which used to be the parlour. There they breakfasted. Over the bookcases were hung Sir Joshua's portraits of Mr. Thrale's friends—Baretti, Burke, Burney, Chambers, Garrick, Goldsmith, Johnson, Murphy, Reynolds, Lord Sandys, Lord Westcote, and in the same picture Mrs. Thrale and her eldest daughter.' Mr. Thrale's portrait was also there. Dr. Burney'sMemoirs, ii. 80, and Prior'sMalone, p. 259.

[493]Pr. and Med.p. 214. BOSWELL.

[494]Boswell omits a line that follows this prayer:—'O Lord, so far as, &c.,—Thrale.' This means, I think, 'so far as it might be lawful, I prayed for Thrale.' The following day Johnson entered:—'I was called early. I packed up my bundles, and used the foregoing prayer with my morning devotions, somewhat, I think, enlarged. Being earlier than the family, I read St. Paul's farewell in theActs[xx. 17-end], and then read fortuitously in the gospels, which was my parting use of the library.'

[495]Johnson, no doubt, was leaving Streatham because Mrs. Thrale was leaving it. 'Streatham,' wrote Miss Burney, on Aug. 12 of this year, 'my other home, and the place where I have long thought my residence dependent only on my own pleasure, is already let for three years to Lord Shelburne.' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii.151. Johnson was not yet leaving the Thrale family, for he joined them at Brighton, and he was living with them the following spring in Argyll-street. Nevertheless, if, as all Mrs. Thrale's friends strongly held, her second marriage was blameworthy, Boswell's remark admits of defence. Miss Burney in her diary and letters keeps the secret which Mrs. Thrale had confided to her of her attachment to Mr. Piozzi; but in theMemoirs of Dr. Burney, which, as Mme. D'Arblay, she wrote long afterwards, she leaves little doubt that Streatham was given up as a step towards the second marriage. In 1782, on a visit there, she found that her father 'and all others—Dr. Johnson not excepted—were cast into the same gulf of general neglect. As Mrs. Thrale became more and more dissatisfied with her own situation, and impatient for its relief, she slighted Johnson's counsel, and avoided his society.' Mme. D'Arblay describes a striking scene in which her father, utterly puzzled by 'sad and altered Streatham,' left it one day with tears in his eyes. Another day, Johnson accompanied her to London. 'His look was stern, though dejected, but when his eye, which, however shortsighted, was quick to mental perception, saw how ill at ease she appeared, all sternness subsided into an undisguised expression of the strongest emotion, while, with a shaking hand and pointing finger, he directed her looks to the mansion from which they were driving; and when they faced it from the coach-window, as they turned into Streatham Common, tremulously exclaimed, "That house ...is lost tome... for ever."' Johnson's letter to Langton of March 20, 1782 (ante, p. 145), in which he says that he was 'musing in his chamber at Mrs. Thrale's,' shews that so early as that date he foresaw that a change was coming. Boswell's statement that 'Mrs. Thrale became less assiduous to please Johnson,' might have been far more strongly worded. See Dr. Burney'sMemoirs, ii. 243-253. Lord Shelburne, who as Prime Minister was negotiating peace with the United States, France, and Spain, hired Mrs. Thrale's house 'in order to be constantly near London.' Fitzmaurice'sShelburne, iii. 242.

[496]Mr. Croker quotes the following from theRose MSS.:—'Oct. 6, Die Dominica, 1782. Pransus sum Streathamiae agninum crus coctum cum herbis (spinach) comminutis, farcimen farinaceum cum uvis passis, lumbos bovillos, et pullum gallinae: Turcicae; et post carnes missas, ficus, uvas, non admodum maturas, ita voluit anni intemperies, cum malis Persicis, iis tamen duris. Non laetus accubui, cibum modicè sumpsi, ne intemperantiâ ad extremum peccaretur. Si recte memini, in mentem venerunt epulae in exequiis Hadoni celebratae. Streathamiam quando revisam?'

[497]'Mr. Metcalfe is much with Dr. Johnson, but seems to have taken an unaccountable dislike to Mrs. Thrale, to whom he never speaks.... He is a shrewd, sensible, keen, and very clever man.' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii. 172, 174. He, Burke, and Malone were Sir Joshua's executors. Northcote'sReynolds, ii. 293.

[498]Boswell should have shown, for he must have known it, that Johnson was Mrs. Thrale's guest at Brighton. Miss Burney was also of the party. Her account of him is a melancholy one:—'Oct. 28. Dr. Johnson accompanied us to a ball, to the universal amazement of all who saw him there; but he said he had found it so dull being quite alone the preceding evening, that he determined upon going with us; "for," said he, "it cannot be worse than being alone."' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii. 161. 'Oct. 29. Mr. Pepys joined Dr. Johnson, with whom he entered into an argument, in which he was so roughly confuted, and so severely ridiculed, that he was hurt and piqued beyond all power of disguise, and, in the midst of the discourse, suddenly turned from him, and, wishing Mrs. Thrale goodnight, very abruptly withdrew. Dr. Johnson was certainly right with respect to the argument and to reason; but his opposition was so warm, and his wit so satirical and exulting, that I was really quite grieved to see how unamiable he appeared, and how greatly he made himself dreaded by all, and by many abhorred.'Ib. p. 163. 'Oct. 30. In the evening we all went to Mrs. Hatsel's. Dr. Johnson was not invited.'Ib. p. 165. 'Oct. 31. A note came to invite us all, except Dr. Johnson, to Lady Rothes's.'Ib. p. 168. 'Nov. 2. We went to Lady Shelley's. Dr. Johnson again excepted in the invitation. He is almost constantly omitted, either from too much respect or too much fear. I am sorry for it, as he hates being alone.'Ib. p. 160. 'Nov. 7. Mr. Metcalfe called upon Dr. Johnson, and took him out an airing. Mr. Hamilton is gone, and Mr. Metcalfe is now the only person out of this house that voluntarily communicates with the Doctor. He has been in a terrible severe humour of late, and has really frightened all the people, till they almost ran from him. To me only I think he is now kind, for Mrs. Thrale fares worse than anybody.'Ib. p. 177.

[499]'"Dr. Johnson has asked me," said Mr. Metcalfe, "to go with him to Chichester, to see the cathedral, and I told him I would certainly go if he pleased; but why I cannot imagine, for how shall a blind man see a cathedral?" "I believe," quoth I [i.e. Miss Burney] "his blindness is as much the effect of absence as of infirmity, for he sees wonderfully at times."'Ib. p. 174. For Johnson's eyesight, seeante, i. 41.

[500]The second letter is dated the 28th. Johnson says:—'I have lookedoften,' &c.; but he does not say 'he has beenmuchinformed,' but only 'informed.' Both letters are in theGent. Mag.1784, p. 893.

[501]The reference is to Rawlinson's MS. collections for a continuation of Wood'sAthenae(Macray'sAnnals of the Bodleian, p. 181).

[502]Jortin's sermons are described by Johnson as 'very elegant.'Ante, in. 248. He and Thirlby are mentioned by him in theLife of Pope. Works, viii. 254.

[503]Markland was born 1693, died 1776. His notes on some of Euripides'Playswere published at the expense of Dr. Heberden. Markland had previously destroyed a great many other notes; writing in 1764 he said:—'Probably it will be a long time (if ever) before this sort of learning will revive in England; in which it is easy to foresee that there must be a disturbance in a few years, and all public disorders are enemies to this sort of literature.'Gent. Mag.1778, P. 3l0. 'I remember,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 252), 'when lamentation was made of the neglect shown to Jeremiah Markland, a great philologist, as some one ventured to call him: "He is a scholar undoubtedly, Sir," replied Dr. Johnson, "but remember that he would run from the world, and that it is not the world's business to run after him. I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and [who] does nothing when he is there but sit andgrowl; let him come out as I do, andbark"' A brief account of him is given in theAnn. Reg.xix. 45.

[504]Nichols published in 1784 a brief account of Thirlby, nearly half of it being written by Johnson. Thirlby was born in 1692 and died in 1753. 'His versatility led him to try the round of what are called the learned professions.' His life was marred by drink and insolence.' His mind seems to have been tumultuous and desultory, and he was glad to catch any employment that might produce attention without anxiety; such employment, as Dr. Battie has observed, is necessary for madmen.'Gent. Mag.1784, pp. 260, 893.

[505]He was attacked, says Northcote (Life of Reynolds, ii. 131), 'by a slight paralytic affection, after an almost uninterrupted course of good health for many years.' Miss Burney wrote on Dec. 28 to one of her sisters:—'How can you wish any wishes [matrimonial wishes] about Sir Joshua and me? A man who has had two shakes of the palsy!' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii. 218.

[506]Dr. Patten in Sept. 1781 (Croker'sBoswell, p. 699) informed Johnson of Wilson's intended dedication. Johnson, in his reply, said:—'What will the world do but look on and laugh when one scholar dedicates to another?'

[507]On the same day he wrote to Dr. Taylor:-'This, my dear Sir, is the last day of a very sickly and melancholy year. Join your prayers with mine, that the next may be more happy to us both. I hope the happiness which I have not found in this world will by infinite mercy be granted in another.'Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462.

[508]'Jan. 4, 1783. Dr. Johnson came so very late that we had all given him up; he was very ill, and only from an extreme of kindness did he come at all. When I went up to him to tell how sorry I was to find him so unwell, "Ah," he cried, taking my hand and kissing it, "who shall ail anything when Cecilia is so near? Yet you do not think how poorly I am."

All dinner time he hardly opened his mouth but to repeat to me:—"Ah! you little know how ill I am." He was excessively kind to me in spite of all his pain.' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii. 228.Ceciliawas the name of her second novel (post, May 26, 1783). On Jan. 10 he thus ended a letter to Mr. Nichols:—'Now I will put you in a way of shewing me more kindness. I have been confined by ilness (sic) a long time, and sickness and solitude make tedious evenings. Come sometimes and see, Sir,

'Your humble servant,

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