Chapter 21

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

MS. in the British Museum.

[509]'Dr. Johnson found here [at Auchinleck] Baxter's Anacreon, which he told me he had long inquired for in vain, and began to suspect there was no such book.' Boswell'sHebrides, Nov.2. Seepost, under Sept. 29, 1783.

[510]'The delight which men have in popularity, fame, honour, submission, and subjection of other men's minds, wills, or affections, although these things may be desired for other ends, seemeth to be a thing in itself, without contemplation of consequence, grateful and agreeable to the nature of man.' Bacon'sNat. Hist.Exper. No. 1000. Seeante, ii. 178.

[511]In a letter to Dr. Taylor on Jan. 21 of this year, he attacked the scheme of equal representation.' Pitt, on May 7, 1782, made his first reform motion. Johnson thus ended his letter:—'If the scheme were more reasonable, this is not a time for innovation. I am afraid of a civil war. The business of every wise man seems to be now to keep his ground.'Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 481.

[512]Seeante, i. 429,post, 170, and Boswell'sHebrides, Sept.

30.

[513]The year after this conversation the General Election of 1784 was held, which followed on the overthrow of the Coalition Ministry and the formation of the Pitt Ministry in December, 1783. The 'King's friends' were in a minority of one in the last great division in the old Parliament; in the motion on the Address in the new Parliament they had a majority of 168.Parl. Hist.xxiv. 744, 843. Miss Burney, writing in Nov. 1788, when the King was mad, says that one of his physicians 'moved me even to tears by telling me that none of their own lives would be safe if the King did not recover, so prodigiously high ran the tide of affection and loyalty. All the physicians received threatening letters daily, to answer for the safety of their monarch with their lives! Sir G. Baker had already been stopped in his carriage by the mob, to give an account of the King; and when he said it was a bad one, they had furiously exclaimed, "The more shame for you."' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, iv. 336. Describing in 1789 a Royal tour in the West of England, she writes of 'the crowds, the rejoicings, the hallooing and singing, and garlanding and decorating of all the inhabitants of this old city [Exeter], and of all the country through which we passed.'Ib.v. 48.

[514]Miss Palmer, Sir Joshua's niece, 'heard Dr. Johnson repeat these verses with the tears falling over his cheek.' Taylor'sReynolds, ii. 417.

[515]Gibbon remarked that 'Mr. Fox was certainly very shy of saying anything in Johnson's presence.'Ante, iii. 267. Seepost, under June 9, 1784, where Johnson said 'Fox is my friend.'

[516]Mr. Greville (Journal, ed. 1874, ii. 316) records the following on the authority of Lord Holland:—'Johnson liked Fox because he defended his pension, and said it was only to blame in not being large enough. "Fox," he said, is a liberal man; he would always beaut Caesar aut nullus; whenever I have seen him he has beennullus. Lord Holland said Fox made it a rule never to talk in Johnson's presence, because he knew all his conversations were recorded for publication, and he did not choose to figure in them.' Fox could not have known what was not the fact. When Boswell was by, he had reason for his silence; but otherwise he might have spoken out. 'Mr. Fox,' writes Mackintosh (Life, i. 322) 'united, in a most remarkable degree, the seemingly repugnant characters of the mildest of men and the most vehement of orators. In private life he was so averse from parade and dogmatism as to be somewhat inactive in conversation.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 283) tells how Fox spent a day with him at Lausanne:—'Perhaps it never can happen again, that I should enjoy him as I did that day, alone from ten in the morning till ten at night. Our conversation never flagged a moment.' 'In London mixed society,' said Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 74), 'Fox conversed little; but at his own house in the country, with his intimate friends, he would talk on for ever, with all the openness and simplicity of a child.'

[517]Secante, ii. 450.

[518]Most likely 'Old Mr. Sheridan.'

[519]Seeante, ii. 166.

[520]Were I to insert all the stories which have been told of contests boldly maintained with him, imaginary victories obtained over him, of reducing him to silence, and of making him own that his antagonist had the better of him in argument, my volumes would swell to an immoderate size. One instance, I find, has circulated both in conversation and in print; that when he would not allow the Scotch writers to have merit, the late Dr. Rose, of Chiswick, asserted, that he could name one Scotch writer, whom Dr. Johnson himself would allow to have written better than any man of the age; and upon Johnson's asking who it was, answered, 'Lord Bute, when he signed the warrant for your pension.' Upon which Johnson, struck with the repartee, acknowledged that thiswastrue. When I mentioned it to Johnson, 'Sir, (said he,) if Rose said this, I never heard it.' BOSWELL.

[521]This reflection was very natural in a man of a good heart, who was not conscious of any ill-will to mankind, though the sharp sayings which were sometimes produced by his discrimination and vivacity, which he perhaps did not recollect, were, I am afraid, too often remembered with resentment. BOSWELL. When, three months later on, he was struck with palsy, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'I have in this still scene of life great comfort in reflecting that I have given very few reason to hate me. I hope scarcely any man has known me closely but for his benefit, or cursorily but to his innocent entertainment. Tell me, you that know me best, whether this be true, that according to your answer I may continue my practice, or try to mend it.'Piozzi Letters, ii. 287. Seepost, May 19, 1784. Passages such as the two following might have shewn him why he had enemies. 'For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent; severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate.' Bacon'sEssays, No. xi. ''Tis possible that men may be as oppressive by their parts as their power.'The Government of the Tongue, sect. vii. Seeante, i. 388, note 2.

[522]'A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.'Ante, i. 294. Stockdale records (Memoirs, ii. 191) that he heard a Scotch lady, after quoting this definition, say to Johnson, 'I can assure you that in Scotland we give oats to our horses as well as you do to yours in England.' He replied:—'I am very glad, Madam, to find that you treat your horses as well as you treat yourselves.'

[523]Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote:—'The prejudices he had to countries did not extend to individuals. The chief prejudice in which he indulged himself was against Scotland, though he had the most cordial friendship with individuals. This he used to vindicate as a duty. ... Against the Irish he entertained no prejudice; he thought they united themselves very well with us; but the Scotch, when in England, united and made a party by employing only Scotch servants and Scotch tradesmen. He held it right for Englishmen to oppose a party against them.' Taylor'sReynolds, ii. 460. Seeante, ii. 242, 306, and Boswell'sHebrides, post, v. 20.

[524]Ante, ii. 300.

[525]Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 85) says that 'Dr. Johnson, commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, kept his numerous family in Fleet-street upon a settled allowance; but returned to them every Saturday to give them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us on the Monday night.'

[526]Lord North's Ministry lasted from 1770, to March, 1782. It was followed by the Rockingham Ministry, and the Shelburne Ministry, which in its turn was at this very time giving way to the Coalition Ministry, to be followed very soon by the Pitt Ministry.

[527]I have, in myJournal of a Tour to the Hebrides[p. 200, Sept. 13], fully expressed my sentiments upon this subject. The Revolution wasnecessary, but not a subject forglory; because it for a long time blasted the generous feelings ofLoyalty. And now, when by the benignant effect of time the present Royal Family are established in ouraffections, how unwise it is to revive by celebrations the memory of a shock, which it would surely have been better that our constitution had not required. BOSWELL. Seeante, iii. 3, and iv. 40, note 4.

[528]Johnson reviewed this book in 1756.Ante, i. 309.

[529]Johnson, four months later, wrote to one of Mrs. Thrale's daughters:—'Never think, my sweet, that you have arithmetick enough; when you have exhausted your master, buy books. ... A thousand stories which the ignorant tell and believe die away at once when the computist takes them in his gripe.'Piozzi Letters, ii. 296. Seepost, April 18, 1783.

[530]Seeante, p. 116; also iii. 310, where he bore the same topic impatiently when with Dr. Scott.

[531]Seeante, ii. 357.

[532]

'See nations, slowly wise and meanly just,To buried merit raise the tardy bust.'Johnson'sVanity of Human Wishes.

[533]He was perhaps, thinking of Markland.Ante, p. 161, note 3.

[534]'Dr. Johnson,' writes Mrs. Piozzi, 'was no complainer of ill-usage. I never heard him even lament the disregard shown toIrene.'Piozzi Letters, ii. 386. Seeante, i. 200.

[535]Letter to the People of Scotland against the attempt to diminish the number of the Lords of Session, 1785. BOSWELL. 'By Mr. Burke's removal from office the King's administration was deprived of the assistance of that affluent mind, which is so universally rich that, as long as British literature and British politicks shall endure, it will be said of Edmund Burke,Regum equabat [sic] opes animis.'p.71.

[536]Georgics, iv. 132.

[537]Seeante, iii. 56, note 2.

[538]Very likely Boswell.

[539]See Boswell'sHebrides, Sept. 22.

[540]Johnson had said:—'Lord Chesterfield is the proudest man this day existing.'Ante, i. 265.

[541]Lord Shelburne. At this time he was merely holding office till a new Ministry was formed. On April 5 he was succeeded by the Duke of Portland. His 'coarse manners' were due to a neglected childhood. In the fragment of hisAutobiographyhe describes 'the domestic brutality and ill-usage he experienced at home,' in the South of Ireland. 'It cost me,' he continues, 'more to unlearn the habits, manners, and principles which I then imbibed, than would have served to qualify me for anyrôlewhatever through life.' Fitzmaurice'sShelburne, i. 12, 16.

[542]Bentham, it is reported, said of of him that 'alone of his own time, he was a "Minister who did not fear the people."'Ib.iii. 572.

[543]Malagrida, a Jesuit, was put to death at Lisbon in 1761, nominally on a charge of heresy, but in reality on a suspicion of his having sanctioned, as confessor to one of the conspirators, an attempt to assassinate King Joseph of Portugal. Voltaire,Siècle de Louis XV, ch. xxxviii. 'His name,' writes Wraxall (Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 67), 'is become proverbial among us to express duplicity.' It was first applied to Lord Shelburne in a squib attributed to Wilkes, which contained a vision of a masquerade. The writer, after describing him as masquerading as 'the heir apparent of Loyola and all the College,' continues:—'A little more of the devil, my Lord, if you please, about the eyebrows; that's enough, a perfect Malagrida, I protest.' Fitzmaurice'sShelburne, ii. 164. 'George III. habitually spoke of Shelburne as "Malagrida," and the "Jesuit of Berkeley Square."'Ib.iii. 8. The charge of duplicity was first made against Shelburne on the retirement of Fox (the first Lord Holland) in 1763. 'It was the tradition of Holland House that Bute justified the conduct of Shelburne, by telling Fox that it was "a pious fraud." "I can see the fraud plainly enough," is said to have been Fox's retort, "but where is the piety?"'Ib. i. 226. Any one who has examined Reynolds's picture of Shelburne, especially 'about the eyebrows,' at once sees how the name of Jesuit was given.

[544]Beauclerk wrote to Lord Charlemont on Nov. 20, 1773:-'Goldsmith the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers in praise of Lord Mayor Townshend. [Shelburne supported Townshend in opposition to Wilkes in the election of the Lord Mayor. Fitzmaurice'sShelburne, ii. 287.] The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne at Drury Lane. I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him; he said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. "Do you know," answered Goldsmith, "that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida,forMalagrida was a very good sort of man." You see plainly what he meant to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. Mr. Walpole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life.'Life of Charlemont, i. 344.

[545]Most likely Reynolds, who introduced Crabbe to Johnson. Crabbe'sWorks, ed. 1834, ii. 11.

[546]

'I paint the cot,As truth will paint it, and as Bards will not.Nor you, ye Poor, of lettered scorn complain,To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain;O'ercome by labour, and bowed down by time,Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread,By winding myrtles round your ruined shed?Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower,Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?'The Village, book i.

See Boswell'sHebrides, Oct. 6.

[547]I shall give an instance, marking the original by Roman, and Johnson's substitution in Italick characters:—

'In fairer scenes, where peaceful pleasures spring,Tityrus, the pride of Mantuan swains, might sing:But charmed by him, or smitten with his views,Shall modern poets court the Mantuan muse?From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray,Where Fancy leads, or Virgil led the way?''On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign,If Tityrus found the golden age again,Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong,Mechanick echoes of the Mantuan song?From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray,Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?.

Here we find Johnson's poetical and critical powers undiminished. I must, however, observe, that the aids he gave to this poem, as toThe TravellerandDeserted Villageof Goldsmith, were so small as by no means to impair the distinguished merit of the authour. BOSWELL.

[548]In theGent. Mag.1763, pp. 602, 633, is a review of hisObservations on Diseases of the Army. He says that the register of deaths of military men proves that more than eight times as many men fall by what was called the gaol fever as by battle. His suggestions are eminently wise. Lord Seaford, in 1835, told Leslie 'that he remembered dining in company with Dr. Johnson at Dr. Brocklesby's, when he was a boy of twelve or thirteen. He was impressed with the superiority of Johnson, and his knocking everybody down in argument.' C.R. Leslie'sRecollections, i. 146.

[549]See Boswell'sHebrides, Sept. 28.

[550]Seeante, i. 433, and ii. 217, 358.

[551]"In hisLife of Swift(Works, viii. 205) he thus speaks of thisJournal:-'In the midst of his power and his politicks, he kept a journal of his visits, his walks, his interviews with ministers, and quarrels with his servant, and transmitted it to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, to whom he knew that whatever befell him was interesting, and no accounts could be too minute. Whether these diurnal trifles were properly exposed to eyes which had never received any pleasure from the presence of the dean, may be reasonably doubted: they have, however, some odd attraction: the reader, finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to consider as important, goes on in hope of information; and, as there is nothing to fatigue attention, if he is disappointed, he can hardly complain.'"

[552]On his fifty-fifth birthday he recorded:—'I resolve to keep a journal both of employment and of expenses. To keep accounts.'Pr. and Med. 59. Seepost, Aug. 25, 1784, where he writes to Langton:—'I am a little angry at you for not keeping minutes of your ownacceptum et expensum, and think a little time might be spared from Aristophanes for theres familiares.'

[553]This Mr. Chalmers thought was George Steevens. CROKER. D'Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, vi. 76) describes Steevens as guilty of 'an unparalleled series of arch deception and malicious ingenuity.' He gives curious instances of his literary impostures. Seeante, iii. 281, andpost, May 15, 1784.

[554]If this be Lord Mansfield, Boswell must uselatein the sense ofin retirement; for Mansfield was living when theLife of Johnsonwas published. He retired in 1788. Johnson in 1772, said that he had never been in his company (ante, ii. 158). The fact that Mansfield is mentioned in the previous paragraph adds to the probability that he is meant.

[555]Seeante, ii. 318.

[556]In Scotland, Johnson spoke of Mansfield's 'splendid talents.' Boswell'sHebrides, under Nov. 11.

[557]'I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.' 2Henry IV, act i. sc. 2.

[558]Knowing as well as I do what precision and elegance of oratory his Lordship can display, I cannot but suspect that his unfavourable appearance in a social circle, which drew such animadversions upon him, must be owing to a cold affectation of consequence, from being reserved and stiff. If it be so, and he might be an agreeable man if he would, we cannot be sorry that he misses his aim. BOSWELL. Wedderburne, afterwards Lord Loughborough, is mentioned (ante, ii. 374), and again in Murphy'sLife of Johnson, p. 43, as being in company with Johnson and Foote. Boswell also has before (ante, i. 387) praised the elegance of his oratory. Henry Mackenzie (Life of John Home, i. 56) says that Wedderburne belonged to a club at the British Coffee-house, of which Garrick, Smollett, and Dr. Douglas were members.

[559]Boswell informed the people of Scotland in the Letter that he addressed to them in 1785 (p. 29), that 'now that Dr. Johnson is gone to a better world, he (Boswell) bowed the intellectual knee toLord Thurlow.' Seepost, June 22, 1784.

[560]Boswell'sHebrides, Oct. 27.

[561]

'Charged with light summer-rings his fingers sweat,Unable to support a gem of weight.'DRYDEN. Juvenal,Satires, i. 29.

[562]He had published a series of seventyEssaysunder the title ofThe Hypochondriackin theLondon Magazinefrom 1777 to 1783.

[563]Juvenal,Satires, x. 365. The common reading, however, is 'Nullum numenhabes,' &c. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec.p. 218) records this saying, but with a variation. '"For," says Mr. Johnson, "though I do not quite agree with the proverb, thatNullum numen adest si sit prudentia, yet we may very well say, thatNullum numen adest, ni sit prudentia."'

[564]It has since appeared. BOSWELL.

[565]Miss Burney mentions meeting Dr. Harington at Bath in 1780. 'It is his son,' she writes, 'who published those very curious remains of his ancestor [Sir John Harington] under the title Nugae Antiquaewhich my father and all of us were formerly so fond of.' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, i. 341.

[566]

'For though they are but trifles, thouSome value didst to them allow.'Martin's Catullus, p. 1.

[567]

—Underneath this rude, uncouth disguise,A genius of extensive knowledge lies.'FRANCIS. Horace, Satires, i. 3. 33.

[568]He would not have been a troublesome patient anywhere, for, according to Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 275),'he required less attendance, sick or well, than ever I saw any human creature.'

[569]'That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the mind grows old with the body; and that he whom we are now forced to confess superiour is hastening daily to a level with ourselves.' Johnson's Works, vii. 212.

[570]With the following elucidation of the saying-Quos Deus(it should rather be-Quem Jupiter) vult perdere, prius dementat-Mr. Boswell was furnished by Mr. Pitts:—'Perhaps no scrap of Latin whatever has been more quoted than this. It occasionally falls even from those who are scrupulous even to pedantry in their Latinity, and will not admit a word into their compositions, which has not the sanction of the first age. The worddementois of no authority, either as a verb active or neuter.—After a long search for the purpose of deciding a bet, some gentlemen of Cambridge found it among the fragments of Euripides, in what edition I do not recollect, where it is given as a translation of a Greek Iambick: [Greek: Ou Theos thelei apolesoi' apophreuai.]

'The above scrap was found in the hand-writing of a suicide of fashion, Sir D. O., some years ago, lying on the table of the room where he had destroyed himself. The suicide was a man of classical acquirements: he left no other paper behind him.'

Another of these proverbial sayings,

Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim,

I, in a note on a passage in The Merchant of Venice[act iii. sc. 5], traced to its source. It occurs (with a slight variation) in theAlexandreisof Philip Gualtier (a poet of the thirteenth century), which was printed at Lyons in 1558. Darius is the person addressed:—

—Quò tendis inertem,Rex periture, fugam? nescis, heu! perdite, nescisQuern fugias: hostes incurris dum fugis hostem;Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim.

A line not less frequently quoted was suggested for enquiry in a note on The Rape of Lucrece:—

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris—:

But the author of this verse has not, I believe, been discovered. MALONE. The 'Greek lambick' in the above note is not Greek. To a learned friend I owe the following note. 'The Quem Jupiter vult perdere, &c., is said to be a translation of a fragment ofEuripidesby Joshua Barnes. There is, I believe, no such fragment at all. In Barnes'sEuripides, Cantab. 1694, fol. p. 515, is a fragment of Euripides with a note which may explain the muddle of Boswell's correspondent:—

"[Greek: otau de daimonn handri porsunae kaka ton noun heblapse proton,]"

on which Barnes writes:—"Tale quid in Franciados nostrae [probably his uncompleted poem on Edward III.] l. 3. Certe ille deorum Arbiter ultricem cum vult extendere dextram Dementat prius."' Seeante, ii. 445, note 1. Sir D. O. is, perhaps, Sir D'Anvers Osborne, whose death is recorded in theGent. Mag.1753, p. 591. 'Sir D'Anvers Osborne, Bart., Governor of New York, soon after his arrival there;in his garden.' Solamen miseris, &c., is imitated by Swift in hisVerses on Stella's Birthday, 1726-7:—

'The only comfort they propose,To have companions in their woes.'

Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xi. 22. The note onLucrecewas, I conjecture, on line 1111:—

'Grief best is pleased with grief's society.'

[571]

'FAUSTUS—"Tu quoque, ut hîc video, non es ignarus amorum."'FORTUNATUS—"Id commune malum; semel insanivimus omnes."'

Baptistae Mantuani Carmelitae Adolescentia, seu Bucolica. Ecloga I, published in 1498. 'Scaliger,' says Johnson (Works, viii. 391), 'complained that Mantuan's Bucolicks were received into schools, and taught as classical. ... He was read, at least in some of the inferiour schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present [eighteenth] century.'

[572]See ante, i. 368.

[573]See ante, i. 396.

[574]I am happy, however, to mention a pleasing instance of his enduring with great gentleness to hear one of his most striking particularities pointed out:—Miss Hunter, a niece of his friend Christopher Smart, when a very young girl, struck by his extraordinary motions, said to him, 'Pray, Dr. Johnson, why do you make such strange gestures?' 'From bad habit,' he replied. 'Do you, my dear, take care to guard against bad habits.' This I was told by the young lady's brother at Margate. BOSWELL. Boswell had himself told Johnson of some of them, at least in writing. Johnson read in manuscript his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Boswell says in a note on Oct. 12:—'It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying anything on the subject, which I hoped he would have done.'

[575]See ante, ii. 42, note 2, and iii. 324.

[576]Johnson, after stating that some of Milton's manuscripts prove that 'in the early part of his life he wrote with much care,' continues:—'Such reliques show how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.' Works, vii. 119. Lord Chesterfield (Letters, iii. 146) had made the same rule as Johnson:—'I was,' he writes, 'early convinced of the importance and powers of eloquence; and from that moment I applied myself to it. I resolved not to utter one word even in common conversation that should not be the most expressive and the most elegant that the language could supply me with for that purpose; by which means I have acquired such a certain degree of habitual eloquence, that I must now really take some pains if I would express myself very inelegantly.'

[577]'Dr. Johnson,' wrote Malone in 1783, 'is as correct and elegant in his common conversation as in his writings. He never seems to study either for thoughts or words. When first introduced I was very young; yet he was as accurate in his conversation as if he had been talking to the first scholar in England.' Prior's Malone, p. 92. Seepost, under Aug. 29, 1783.

[578]See ante, iii. 216.

[579]See ante, ii. 323.

[580]The justness of this remark is confirmed by the following story, for which I am indebted to Lord Eliot:—A country parson, who was remarkable for quoting scraps of Latin in his sermons, having died, one of his parishioners was asked how he liked his successor. 'He is a very good preacher,' was his answer, 'but no latiner.' BOSWELL. For the original of Lord Eliot's story see Twells'sLife of Dr. E. Pocock, ed. 1816, p. 94. Reynolds said that 'Johnson always practised on every occasion the rule of speaking his best, whether the person to whom he addressed himself was or was not capable of comprehending him. "If," says he, "I am understood, my labour is not lost. If it is above their comprehension, there is some gratification, though it is the admiration of ignorance;" and he said those were the most sincere admirers; and quoted Baxter, who made a rule never to preach a sermon without saying something which he knew was beyond the comprehension of his audience, in order to inspire their admiration.' Taylor'sReynolds, ii. 456. Addison, inThe Spectator, No. 221, tells of a preacher in a country town who outshone a more ignorant rival, by quoting every now and then a Latin sentence from one of the Fathers. 'The other finding his congregation mouldering every Sunday, and hearing at length what was the occasion of it, resolved to give his parish a little Latin in his turn; but being unacquainted with any of the Fathers, he digested into his sermons the whole book ofQuae Genus, adding, however, such explications to it as he thought might be for the benefit of his people. He afterwards entered uponAs in praesenti, which he converted in the same manner to the use of his parishioners. This in a very little time thickened his audience, filled his church, and routed his antagonist.'

[581]See ante, ii. 96

[582]'"Well," said he, "we had good talk." BOSWELL. "Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons."' Ante,ii. 66.

[583]Dr. J. H. Burton says of Hume (Life, ii. 31):—'No Scotsman could write a book of respectable talent without calling forth his loud and warm eulogiums. Wilkie was to be the Homer, Blacklock the Pindar, and Home the Shakespeare or something still greater of his country.' Seeante, ii. 121, 296, 306.

[584]The Present State of Music in France and Italy,I vol. 1771, andThe Present State of Music in Germany, &c.,2 vols. 1773. Johnson must have skipped widely in reading these volumes, for though Dr. Burney describes his travels, yet he writes chiefly of music.

[585]Boswell's son James says that he heard from his father, that the passage which excited this strong emotion was the following:—

'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more:I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you;For morn is approaching, your charms to restore,Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with dew;Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn;Kind Nature the embryo blossom will save:But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn?O when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?'

[586]Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 338) mentions this book at some length. On March 13, 1780, he wrote:—'Yesterday was published an octavo, pretending to contain the correspondence of Hackman and Miss Ray that he murdered.' Seeante, iii. 383.

[587]Hawkins (Life, p. 547), recording how Johnson used to meet Psalmanazar at an ale-house, says that Johnson one day 'remarked on the human mind, that it had a necessary tendency to improvement, and that it would frequently anticipate instruction. "Sir," said a stranger that overheard him, "that I deny; I am a tailor, and have had many apprentices, but never one that could make a coat till I had taken great pains in teaching him."' Seeante, iii. 443. Robert Hall was influenced in his studies by 'his intimate association in mere childhood with a tailor, one of his father's congregation, who was an acute metaphysician.' Hall'sWorks, vi. 5.

[588]Johnson had never been in Grub-street. Ante, i. 296, note 2.

[589]The Honourable Horace Walpole, late Earl of Orford, thus bears testimony to this gentleman's merit as a writer:—'Mr. Chambers's Treatise on Civil Architectureis the most sensible book, and the most exempt from prejudices, that ever was written on that science.'—Preface toAnecdotes of Painting in England. BOSWELL. Chambers was the architect of Somerset House. Seeante, p. 60, note 7.

[590]The introductory lines are these:—'It is difficult to avoid praising too little or too much. The boundless panegyricks which have been lavished upon the Chinese learning, policy, and arts, shew with what power novelty attracts regard, and how naturally esteem swells into admiration. I am far from desiring to be numbered among the exaggerators of Chinese excellence. I consider them as great, or wise, only in comparison with the nations that surround them; and have no intention to place them in competition either with the antients or with the moderns of this part of the world; yet they must be allowed to claim our notice as a distinct and very singular race of men: as the inhabitants of a region divided by its situation from all civilized countries, who have formed their own manners, and invented their own arts, without the assistance of example.' BOSWELL.

[591]The last execution at Tyburn was on Nov. 7, 1783, when one man was hanged. The first at Newgate was on the following Dec. 9, when ten were hanged. Gent. Mag.1783, pp. 974, 1060.

[592]We may compare with this 'loose talk' Johnson's real opinion, as set forth in The Rambler, No. 114, entitled:—The necessity of proportioning punishments to crimes. He writes:—'The learned, the judicious, the pious Boerhaave relates that he never saw a criminal dragged to execution without asking himself, "Who knows whether this man is not less culpable than me?" On the days when the prisons of this city are emptied into the grave, let every spectator of this dreadful procession put the same question to his own heart. Few among those that crowd in thousands to the legal massacre, and look with carelessness, perhaps with triumph, on the utmost exacerbations of human misery, would then be able to return without horror and dejection.' He continues:—'It may be observed that all but murderers have, at their last hour, the common sensations of mankind pleading in their favour.... They who would rejoice at the correction of a thief, are yet shocked at the thought of destroying him. His crime shrinks to nothing compared with his misery, and severity defeats itself by exciting pity.'

[593]Richardson, in his Familiar Letters, No. 160, makes a country gentleman in town describe the procession of five criminals to Tyburn, and their execution. He should have heard, he said, 'the exhortation spoken by the bell-man from the wall of St. Sepulchre's church-yard; but the noise of the officers and the mob was so great, and the silly curiosity of people climbing into the cart to take leave of the criminals made such a confused noise that I could not hear them. They are as follow: "All good people pray heartily to God for these poor sinners, who now are going to their deaths; for whom this great bell doth toll. You that are condemned to die, repent with lamentable tears.... Lord have mercy upon you! Christ have mercy upon you!" which last words the bell-man repeats three times. All the way up Holborn the crowd was so great, as at every twenty or thirty yards to obstruct the passage; and wine, notwithstanding a late good order against that practice, was brought the malefactors, who drank greedily of it. After this the three thoughtless young men, who at first seemed not enough concerned, grew most shamefully daring and wanton. They swore, laughed, and talked obscenely. At the place of execution the scene grew still more shocking; and the clergyman who attended was more the subject of ridicule than of their serious attention. The psalm was sung amidst the curses and quarrelling of hundreds of the most abandoned and profligate of mankind. As soon as the poor creatures were half-dead, I was much surprised to see the populace fall to haling and pulling the carcases with so much earnestness as to occasion several warm rencounters and broken heads. These, I was told, were the friends of the persons executed, or such as for the sake of tumult chose to appear so; and some persons sent by private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection.' The psalm is mentioned in a note on the line inThe Dunciad, i. 4l, 'Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines:'—'It is an ancient English custom,' says Pope, 'for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn.'

[594]The rest of these miscellaneous sayings were first given in the Additions to Dr. Johnson's Lifeat the beginning of vol. I of the second edition.

[595]Hume (Auto. p. 6) speaks of Hurd as attacking him 'with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility which distinguish the Warburtonian school.' 'Hurd,' writes Walpole, 'had acquired a great name by several works of slender merit, was a gentle, plausible man, affecting a singular decorum that endeared him highly to devout old ladies.'Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 50. He is best known to the present generation by his impertinent notes on Addison'sWorks. By reprinting them, Mr. Bohn did much to spoil what was otherwise an excellent edition of that author. Seeante, p. 47, note 2.

[596]The Rev. T. Twining, one of Dr. Burney's friends, wrote in 1779:—'You use a form of reference that I abominate, i.e. the latter, the former. "As long as you have the use of your tongue and your pen," said Dr. Johnson to Dr. Burney, "never, Sir, be reduced to that shift."' Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the XVIIIth Century, p. 72.

[597]'A shilling was now wanted for some purpose or other, and none of them happened to have one; I begged that I might lend one. "Ay, do," said the Doctor, "I will borrow of you; authors are like privateers, always fair game for one another."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 212.

[598]See ante, i. 129, note 3.

[599]See post, June 3, 1784, where he uses almost the same words.

[600]What this period was Boswell seems to leave intentionally vague. Johnson knew Lord Shelburne at least as early as 1778 (ante, iii. 265). He wrote to Dr. Taylor on July 22, 1782:—'Shelburne speaks of Burke in private with great malignity.'Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462. The company commonly gathered at his house would have been displeasing to Johnson. Priestley, who lived with Shelburne seven years, says (Auto. p. 55) that a great part of the company he saw there was like the French philosophers, unbelievers in Christianity, and even professed atheists: men 'who had given no proper attention to Christianity, and did not really know what it was.' Johnson was intimate with Lord Shelburne's brother.Ante, ii. 282, note 3.

[601]Johnson being asked his opinion of this Essay, answered, 'Why, Sir, we shall have the man come forth again; and as he has proved Falstaff to be no coward, he may prove Iago to be a very good character.' BOSWELL.

[602]A writer in the European Magazine, xxx. 160, says that Johnson visited Lord Shelburne at Bowood. At dinner he repeated part of his letter to Lord Chesterfield (ante, i. 261). A gentleman arrived late. Shelburne, telling him what he had missed, went on:-'I dare say the Doctor will be kind enough to give it to us again.' 'Indeed, my Lord, I will not. I told the circumstance first for my own amusement, but I will not be dragged in as story-teller to a company.' In an argument he used some strong expressions, of which his opponent took no notice, Next morning 'he went up to the gentleman with great good-nature, and said, "Sir, I have found out upon reflection that I was both warm and wrong in my argument with you last night; for the first of which I beg your pardon, and for the second, I thank you for setting me right."' It is clear that the second of these anecdotes is the same as that told by Mr. Morgann of Johnson and himself, and that the scene has been wrongly transferred from Wickham to Bowood. The same writer says that it was between Derrick and Boyce—not Derrick and Smart—that Johnson, in the story that follows, could not settle the precedency.

[603]See ante, i. 124, 394.

[604]See ante, i. 397.

[605]What the great TWALMLEY was so proud of having invented, was neither more nor less than a kind of box-iron for smoothing linen. BOSWELL.

[606]

'Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi,Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat,Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti,Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes.'Aeneid, vi. 660.'Lo, they who in their country's fightsword-wounded bodies bore;Lo, priests of holy life and chaste,while they in life had part;Lo, God-loved poets, men who spakethings worthy Phoebus' heart,And they who bettered life on earthby new-found mastery.'

MORRIS. Virgil, Aeneids, vi. 660. The great Twalmley might have justified himself byThe Rambler, No. 9:—'Every man, from the highest to the lowest station, ought to warm his heart and animate his endeavours with the hopes of being useful to the world, by advancing the art which it is his lot to exercise; and for that end he must necessarily consider the whole extent of its application, and the whole weight of its importance.... Every man ought to endeavour at eminence, not by pulling others down, but by raising himself, and enjoy the pleasure of his own superiority, whether imaginary or real, without interrupting others in the same felicity.' All this is what Twalmley did. He adorned an art, he endeavoured at eminence, and he inoffensively enjoyed the pleasure of his own superiority. He could also have defended himself by the example of Aeneas, who, introducing himself, said:—

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