Chapter 22

'Sum pius Aeneas ........ fama super aethera notus.'

Aeneid, i. 378. I fear that Twalmley met with the neglect that so commonly befalls inventors. In theGent. Mag. 1783, p. 719, I find in the list of 'B-nk-ts,' Josiah Twamley, the elder, of Warwick, ironmonger.

[607]'Sir, Hume is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not upon a principle of duty, for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 30. Horace Walpole's opinion was very different. 'Are not atheism and bigotry first cousins? Was not Charles II. an atheist and a bigot? and does Mr. Hume pluck a stone from a church but to raise an altar to tyranny?'Letters, v. 444. Hume wrote in 1756:—'My views ofthingsare more conformable to Whig principles; my representations ofpersonsto Tory prejudices.' J.H. Burton'sHume, ii. 11. Hume's Toryism increased with years. He says in hisAutobiography/(p. xi.) that all the alterations which he made in the later editions of hisHistory of the Stuarts, 'he made invariably to the Tory side.' Dr. Burton gives instances of these;Life of Hume, ii. 74. Hume wrote in 1763 that he was 'too much infected with the plaguy prejudices of Whiggism when he began the work.'Ib. p. 144. In 1770 he wrote:—'I either soften or expunge many villainous, seditious Whig strokes which had crept into it.'Ib. p. 434. This growing hatred of Whiggism was, perhaps, due to pique. John Home, in his notes of Hume's talk in the last weeks of his life, says: 'He recurred to a subject not unfrequent with him—that is, the design to ruin him as an author, by the people that were ministers at the first publication of hisHistory, and called themselves Whigs.'Ib. p. 500. As regards America, Hume was with the Whigs, as Johnson had perhaps learnt from their common friend, Mr. Strahan. 'He was,' says Dr. Burton, 'far more tolerant of the sway of individuals over numbers, which he looked upon as the means of preserving order and civilization, than of the predominance of one territory over another, which he looked upon as subjugation.'Ib. p. 477. Quite at the beginning of the struggle he foretold that the Americans would not be subdued, unless they broke in pieces among themselves.Ib. p. 482. He was not frightened by the prospect of the loss of our supremacy. He wrote to Adam Smith:—'My notion is that the matter is not so important as is commonly imagined. Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our manufactures.'Ib. p. 484. Johnson's charge against Hume that he had no principle, is, no doubt, a gross one; yet Hume's advice to a sceptical young clergyman, who had good hope of preferment, that he should therefore continue in orders, was unprincipled enough. 'It is,' he wrote, 'putting too great a respect on the vulgar and on their superstitions to pique one's self on sincerity with regard to them. Did ever one make it a point of honour to speak truth to children or madmen? If the thing were worthy being treated gravely, I should tell him that the Pythian oracle, with the approbation of Xenophon, advised every one to worship the gods—[Greek: nomo poleos]. I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular. The common duties of society usually require it; and the ecclesiastical profession only adds a little more to an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without which it is impossible to pass through the world.'Ib/. p. 187.

[608]Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 48) says that Johnson told her that in writing the story of Gelaleddin, the poor scholar (Idler, No. 75), who thought to fight his way to fame by his learning and wit, 'he had his own outset into life in his eye.' Gelaleddin describes how 'he was sometimes admitted to the tables of the viziers, where he exerted his wit and diffused his knowledge; but he observed that where, by endeavour or accident he had remarkably excelled, he was seldom invited a second time.' Seeante, p. 116.

[609]See ante, p. 115.

[610]Bar. BOSWELL.

[611]Nard. BOSWELL.

[612]Barnard. BOSWELL.

[613]It was reviewed in the Gent. Mag. 1781, p. 282, where it is said to have been written by Don Gabriel, third son of the King of Spain.

[614]Though 'you was' is very common in the authors of the last century when one person was addressed, I doubt greatly whether Johnson ever so expressed himself.

[615]See ante, i. 311.

[616]Horace Walpole (Lettersv. 85) says, 'Boswell, like Cambridge, has a rage of knowing anybody that ever was talked of.' Miss Burney records 'an old trick of Mr. Cambridge to his son George, when listening to a dull story, in saying to the relator "Tell the rest of that to George."' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii. 274. Seeante, ii. 361.

[617]Virgil, Eclogues, i. 47.

[618]'Mr. Johnson,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 21), 'was exceedingly disposed to the general indulgence of children, and was even scrupulously and ceremoniously attentive not to offend them. He had strongly persuaded himself of the difficulty people always find to erase early impressions either of kindness or resentment.'

[619]Ante, ii.171, iv.75; alsopost, May 15, 1784.

[620]Johnson, on May 1, 1780, wrote of the exhibition dinner:—'The apartments were truly very noble. The pictures, for the sake of a sky-light, are at the top of the house; there we dined, and I sat over against the Archbishop of York. See how I live when I am not under petticoat government.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 111. It was Archbishop Markham whom he met; he is mentioned by Boswell in hisHebrides, post, v. 37. In spite of the 'elaboration of homage' Johnson could judge freely of an archbishop. He described the Archbishop of Tuam as 'a man coarse of voice and inelegant of language.'Piozzi Letters, ii. 300.

[621]By Lord Perceval, afterwards Earl of Egmont. He carried, writes Horace Walpole (Letters, ii. 144), 'the Westminster election at the end of my father's ministry, which he amply described in the history of his own family, a genealogical work called theHistory of the House of Yvery, a work which cost him three thousand pounds; and which was so ridiculous, that he has since tried to suppress all the copies. It concluded with the description of the Westminster election, in these or some such words:—"And here let us leave this young nobleman struggling for the dying liberties of his country."'

[622]Five days earlier Johnson made the following entry in his Diary:—'1783, April 5. I took leave of Mrs. Thrale. I was much moved. I had some expostulations with her. She said that she was likewise affected. I commended the Thrales with great good-will to God; may my petitions have been heard.' Hawkins's Life, p. 553. This was not 'a formal taking of leave,' as Hawkins says. She was going to Bath (Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii. 264). On May-day he wrote to her on the death of one of her little girls:—'I loved her, for she was Thrale's and yours, and, by her dear father's appointment, in some sort mine: I love you all, and therefore cannot without regret see the phalanx broken, and reflect that you and my other dear girls are deprived of one that was born your friend. To such friends every one that has them has recourse at last, when it is discovered and discovered it seldom fails to be, that the fortuitous friendships of inclination or vanity are at the mercy of a thousand accidents.'Piozzi Letters, ii. 255. He was sadly thinking how her friendship for him was rapidly passing away.

[623]Johnson modestly ended his account of the tour by saying:—'I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on national manners are the thoughts of one who has seen but little.' Works, ix. 161. See Boswell'sHebrides, Nov. 22.

[624]See ib. Oct. 21.

[625]She says that he was 'the genuine author of the first volume. An ingenious physician,' she continues, 'with the assistance of several others, continued the work until the eighth volume.' Mrs. Manley's History of her own Life and Times, p. 15—a gross, worthless book. Swift satirised her inCorinna, a Ballad. Swift'sWorks(1803), x. 94.

[626]The real authour was I. P. Marana, a Genoese, who died at Paris in 1693. John Dunton in his Lifesays, that Mr.William Bradshawreceived from Dr. Midgeley forty shillings a sheet for writing part of theTurkish Spy; but I do not find that he any where mentionsSaultas engaged in that work. MALONE.

[627]See ante, ii. 355, iii. 46, and iv. 139.

[628]This was in June, 1783, and I find in Mr. Windham's private diary (which it seems this conversation induced him to keep) the following memoranda of Dr. Johnson's advice: 'I have no great timidity in my own disposition, and am no encourager of it in others. Never be afraid to think yourself fit for any thing for which your friends think you fit. You will become an able negotiator—a very pretty rascal. No one in Ireland wears even the mask of incorruption; no one professes to do for sixpence what he can get a shilling for doing. Set sail, and see where the winds and the waves will carry you. Every day will improve another.Dies diem docet, by observing at night where you failed in the day, and by resolving to fail so no more.' CROKER. The Whigs thought he made 'a very pretty rascal' in a very different way. On his opposition to Whitbread's bill for establishing parochial schools, Romilly wrote (Life, ii. 2l6), 'that a man so enlightened as Windham should take the same side (which he has done most earnestly) would excite great astonishment, if one did not recollect his eager opposition a few months ago to the abolition of the slave trade.' He was also 'most strenuous in opposition' to Romilly's bill for repealing the act which made it a capital offence to steal to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house,Ib. p. 316.

[629]We accordingly carried our scheme into execution, in October, 1792; but whether from that uniformity which has in modern times, in a great degree, spread through every part of the Metropolis, or from our want of sufficient exertion, we were disappointed. BOSWELL.

[630]Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 193. Seepost, under June 30, 1784.

[631]Northcote (Life of Reynolds, ii. 139-143) says that the picture, which was execrable beyond belief, was exhibited in an empty room. Lowe, in 1769 (not in 1771 as Northcote says), gained the gold medal of the Academy for the best historical picture. (Gent. Mag. 1770, p. 587.) Northcote says that the award was not a fair one. He adds that Lowe, being sent to Rome by the patronage of the Academy, was dissatisfied with the sum allowed him. 'When Sir Joshua said that he knew from experience that it was sufficient, Lowe pertly answered "that it was possible for a man to live on guts and garbage."' He died at an obscure lodging in Westminster, in 1793. There is, wrote Miss Burney, 'a certain poor wretch of a villainous painter, one Mr. Lowe, whom Dr. Johnson recommends to all the people he thinks can afford to sit for their picture. Among these he applied to Mr. Crutchley [one of Mr. Thrale's executors]. "But now," said Mr. Crutchley to me, "I have not a notion of sitting for my picture—for who wants it? I may as well give the man the money without; but no, they all said that would not do so well, and Dr. Johnson asked me to givehimmy picture." "And I assure you, Sir," says he, "I shall put it in very good company, for I have portraits of some very respectable people in my dining-room." After all I could say I was obliged to go to the painter's. And I found him in such a condition! a room all dirt and filth, brats squalling and wrangling... "Oh!" says I, "Mr. Lowe, I beg your pardon for running away, but I have just recollected another engagement; so I poked three guineas in his hand, and told him I would come again another time, and then ran out of the house with all my might."' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, ii.41. A correspondent of theExaminerwriting on May 28, 1873, said that he had met one of Lowe's daughters, 'who recollected,' she told him, 'when a child, sitting on Dr. Johnson's knee and his making her repeat the Lord's Prayer.' She was Johnson's god-daughter. By a committee consisting of Milman, Thackeray, Dickens, Carlyle and others, an annuity fund for her and her sister was raised. Lord Palmerston gave a large subscription.

[632]See post, May 15, 1783.

[633]See Boswell's Hebrides,post, v. 48.

[634]See ante, p. 171.

[635]Quoted by Boswell, ante, iii. 324.

[636]It is suggested to me by an anonymous Annotator on my Work, that the reason why Dr. Johnson collected the peels of squeezed oranges may be found in the 58th [358th] Letter in Mrs. Piozzi's Collection, where it appears that he recommended 'dried orange-peel, finely powdered,' as a medicine. BOSWELL. Seeante, ii. 330.

[637]There are two mistakes in this calculation, both perhaps due to Boswell. Eighty-fourshould beeighty-eight, and square-yards should beyards square. 'If a wall cost £1000 a mile, £100 would build 176 yards of wall, which would form a square of 44 yards, and enclose an area of 1936 square yards; and £200 would build 352 yards of wall, which would form a square of 88 yards, and inclose an area of 7744 square yards. The cost of the wall in the latter case, as compared with the space inclosed, would therefore be reduced to one half.'Notes and Queries, 1st S. x. 471.

[638]See ante, i. 318.

[639]'Davies observes, in his account of Ireland, that no Irishman had ever planted an orchard.' Johnson's Works, ix.7. 'At Fochabars [in the Highlands] there is an orchard, which in Scotland I had never seen before.'Ib.p. 21.

[640]Miss Burney this year mentions meeting 'Mr. Walker, the lecturer. Though modest in science, he is vulgar in conversation.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 237. Johnson quotes him,Works, viii. 474.

[641]'Old Mr. Sheridan' was twelve years younger than Johnson. For his oratory, see ante, i. 453, andpost, April 28 and May 17, 1783.

[642]See ante, i. 358, when Johnson said of Sheridan:—'His voice when strained is unpleasing, and when low is not always heard.'

[643]See ante, iii. 139.

[644]'A more magnificent funeral was never seen in London,' wrote Murphy (Life of Garrick, p. 349). Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 169), wrote on the day of the funeral:—'I do think the pomp of Garrick's funeral perfectly ridiculous. It is confounding the immense space between pleasing talents and national services.' He added, 'at Lord Chatham's interment there were not half the noble coaches that attended Garrick's.'Ib. p. 171. In hisJournal of the Reign of George III(ii. 333), he says:—'The Court was delighted to see a more noble and splendid appearance at the interment of a comedian than had waited on the remains of the great Earl of Chatham.' Bishop Horne (Essays and Thoughts, p. 283) has some lines on 'this grand parade of woe,' which begin:—

'Through weeping London's crowded streets,As Garrick's funeral passed,Contending wits and nobles strove,Who should forsake him last.Not so the world behaved to himWho came that world to save,By solitary Joseph borneUnheeded to his grave.'

Johnson wrote on April 30, 1782: 'Poor Garrick's funeral expenses are yet unpaid, though the undertaker is broken.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 239. Garrick was buried on Feb. 1, 1779, and had left his widow a large fortune. Chatham died in May, 1778.

[645]Boswell had heard Johnson maintain this; ante, ii. 101.

[646]See post, p. 238, note 2.

[647]This duel was fought on April 21, between Mr. Riddell of the Horse-Grenadiers, and Mr. Cunningham of the Scots Greys. Riddell had the first fire, and shot Cunningham through the breast. After a pause of two minutes Cunningham returned the fire, and gave Riddell a wound of which he died next day. Gent. Mag.1783, p. 362. Boswell's grandfather's grandmother was a Miss Cunningham. Rogers'sBoswelliana, p. 4. I do not know that there was any nearer connection. In Scotland, I suppose, so much kindred as this makes two men 'near relations.'

[648]'Unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other.' St. Luke, vi. 29. Had Miss Burney thought of this text, she might have quoted it with effect against Johnson, who, criticising herEvelina, said:—'You write Scotch, you say "the one,"—my dear, that's not English. Never use that phrase again.' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, i. 84.

[649]'Turn not thou away.' St. Matthew, v. 42.

[650]I think it necessary to caution my readers against concluding that in this or any other conversation of Dr. Johnson, they have his serious and deliberate opinion on the subject of duelling. In my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3 ed. p. 386 [p. 366, Oct. 24], it appears that he made this frank confession:—'Nobody at times, talks more laxly than I do;' and,ib. p. 231 [Sept. 19, 1773], 'He fairly owned he could not explain the rationality of duelling.' We may, therefore, infer, that he could not think that justifiable, which seems so inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel. At the same time it must be confessed, that from the prevalent notions of honour, a gentleman who receives a challenge is reduced to a dreadful alternative. A remarkable instance of this is furnished by a clause in the will of the late Colonel Thomas, of the Guards, written the night before he fell in a duel, Sept. 3, 1783:—'In the first place, I commit my soul to Almighty GOD, in hopes of his mercy and pardon for the irreligious step I now (in compliance with the unwarrantable customs of this wicked world) put myself under the necessity of taking.' BOSWELL. Seeante, ii. 179.

[651]See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 24 and Sept. 20. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, i. 177) says that when the assembly at Philadelphia, the majority of which were Quakers, was asked by New England to supply powder for some garrison, 'they would not grant money to buy powder, because that was an ingredient of war; but they voted an aid of £3000 to be appropriated for the purchase of bread, flour, wheat, orother grain.' The Governor interpretedother grainas gunpowder, without any objection ever being raised.

[652]'A gentleman falling off his horse brake his neck, which sudden hap gave occasion of much speech of his former life, and some in this judging world judged the worst. In which respect a good friend made this good epitaph, remembering that of Saint Augustine, Misericordia Domini inter pontem et fontem.

"My friend judge not me,Thou seest I judge not thee;Betwixt the stirrop and the ground,Mercy I askt, mercy I found."'

Camden's Remains, ed. 1870, p. 420.

[653]'In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.' Prayer-book.

[654]Upon this objection the Reverend Mr. Ralph Churton, Fellow of Brazennose College, Oxford, has favoured me with the following satisfactory observation:—'The passage in the Burial-service does not mean the resurrection of the person interred, but the general resurrection; it is in sure and certain hope of theresurrection; nothisresurrection. Where the deceased is really spoken of, the expression is very different, "as our hope is this our brother doth" [rest in Christ]; a mode of speech consistent with every thing but absolute certainty that the person departed dothnotrest in Christ, which no one can be assured of, without immediate revelation from Heaven. In the first of these places also, "eternal life" does not necessarily mean eternity of bliss, but merely the eternity of the state, whether in happiness or in misery, to ensue upon the resurrection; which is probably the sense of "the life everlasting," in the Apostles' Creed. SeeWheatly and Bennet on the Common Prayer.' BOSWELL.

[655]Six days earlier the Lord-Advocate Dundas had brought in a bill for the Regulation of the Government of India. Hastings, he said, should be recalled. His place should be filled by 'a person of independent fortune, who had not for object the repairing of his estate in India, that had long been the nursery of ruined and decayed fortunes.' Parl. Hist. xxiii. 757. Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor on Nov. 22 of this year:—'I believe corruption and oppression are in India at an enormous height, but it has never appeared that they were promoted by the Directors, who, I believe, see themselves defrauded, while the country is plundered; but the distance puts their officers out of reach.'Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 482. Seeante, p. 66.

[656]See ante, p. 113.

[657]Stockdale (Memoirs, ii. 57) says that, in 1770, the payment to writers in theCritical Reviewwas two guineas a sheet, but that some of the writers inThe Monthly Reviewreceived four guineas a sheet. As these Reviews were octavos, each sheet contained sixteen pages. Lord Jeffrey says that the writers in theEdinburgh Reviewwere at first paid ten guineas a sheet. 'Not long after theminimumwas raised to sixteen guineas, at which it remained during my reign, though two-thirds of the articles were paid much higher—averaging, I should think, from twenty to twenty-five guineas a sheet on the whole number.' Cockburn'sJeffrey, i. 136.

[658]See ante, ii. 344.

[659]See ante, iii.32.

[660]See ante, p. 206.

[661]Mondayis no doubt put by mistake forTuesday, which was the 29th. Boswell had spent a considerable part of Monday the 28th with Johnson (ante, p. 211).

[662]

'A fugitive from Heaven and prayer,I mocked at all religious fear.'FRANCIS. Horace, Odes, i.34. 1.

[663]He told Boswell (ante, i. 68) that he had been a sort of lax talker against religion for some years before he went to Oxford, but that there he took up Law'sSerious Calland found it quite an overmatch for him. 'This,' he said, 'was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of rational enquiry.' During the vacation of 1729 he had a serious illness (ante, i. 63), which most likely was 'the sickness that brought religion back.'

[664]See ante, i. 93, 164, andpost, under Dec. 2, 1784.

[665]Mr. Langton. See ante, ii. 254.

[666]See ante, ii. 249.

[667]Malloch continued to write his name thus, after he came to London. His verses prefixed to the second edition of Thomson'sWinterare so subscribed. MALONE. 'Alias. A Latin word signifying otherwise; as, Mallet,aliasMalloch; that isotherwiseMalloch.' The mention of Mallet first comes in Johnson's own abridgment of hisDictionary. In the earlier unabridged editions the definition concludes, 'often used in the trials of criminals, whose danger has obliged them to change their names; as SimpsonaliasSmith,aliasBaker, &c.' For Mallet, seeante, i. 268, and ii. 159.

[668]Perhaps Scott had this saying of Johnson's in mind when he made Earl Douglas exclaim:—

'At first in heart it liked me ill,When the King praised his clerkly skill.Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine,Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line.'Marmion, canto vi. 15.

[669]See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 10.

[670]Johnson often maintained this diffusion of learning. Thus he wrote:—'The call for books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature nor was every house supplied with a closet of knowledge.' Works, vii. 107. He goes on to mention 'that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its ranks.'Works, p. 108. 'That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in Addison's time rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and, in the female world, any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured.'Ib. p.470. 'Of theEssay on Criticism, Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick, because "not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could understand it." The gentlemen, and the education of that time, seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this.'Ib. viii. 243. Seeante, iii. 3, 254. Yet he maintained that 'learning has decreased in England, because learning will not do so much for a man as formerly.' Boswell'sHebrides, post, v. 80.

[671]Malone describes a call on Johnson in the winter of this year:—'I found him in his arm-chair by the fire-side, before which a few apples were laid. He was reading. I asked him what book he had got. He said the History of Birmingham. Local histories, I observed, were generally dull. "It is true, Sir; but this has a peculiar merit with me; for I passed some of my early years, and married my wife there." [Seeante, i. 96.] I supposed the apples were preparing as medicine. "Why, no, Sir; I believe they are only there because I want something to do. These are some of the solitary expedients to which we are driven by sickness. I have been confined this week past; and here you find me roasting apples, and reading theHistory of Birmingham."' Prior'sMalone, p. 92.

[672]On April 19, he wrote:—'I can apply better to books than I could in some more vigorous parts of my life—at least than I did; and I have one more reason for reading—that time has, by taking away my companions, left me less opportunity of conversation.' Croker'sBoswell, p. 727.

[673]He told Mr. Windham that he had never read the Odysseythrough in the original. Windham'sDiary, p. 17. 'Fox,' said Rogers (Table Talk, p. 92), 'used to read Homer through once every year. On my asking him, "Which poem had you rather have written, theIliador theOdyssey?" he answered, "I know which I had rather read" (meaning theOdyssey).'

[674]'Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.' Johnson's Works, iv. 145. Of Pope Johnson wrote (ib. viii. 321):—'To make verses was his first labour, and to mend them was his last. ... He was one of those few whose labour is their pleasure.' Thomas Carlyle, in 1824, speaking of writing, says:—'I always recoil from again engaging with it.' Froude'sCarlyle, i. 213. Five years later he wrote:—'Writing is a dreadful labour, yet not so dreadful asidleness.'Ib. ii. 75. Seeante, iii. 19.

[675]See ante, ii. 15.

[676]Miss Burney wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1780:—'I met at Sir Joshua's young Burke, who is made much ado about, but I saw not enough of him to know why.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 416. Mrs. Thrale replied:—'I congratulate myself on being quite of your opinion concerning Burke the minor, whom I once met and could make nothing of.'Ib. p. 418. Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 304) reports, on Langton's authority, that Burke said:—'How extraordinary it is that I, and Lord Chatham, and Lord Holland, should each have a son so superior to ourselves.'

[677]Cruikshank, not Cruikshanks (see post, under Sept. 18, 1783, and Sept. 4 1784). He had been Dr. Hunter's partner; he was not elected (Gent. Mag.1783, p. 626). Northcote, in quoting this letter, says that 'Sir Joshua's influence in the Academy was not always answerable to his desire. "Those who are of some importance everywhere else," he said, "find themselves nobody when they come to the Academy."' Northcote'sReynolds, ii. 145.

[678]William Hunter, scarcely less famous as a physician than his youngest brother, John Hunter, as a surgeon.

[679]Let it be remembered by those who accuse Dr. Johnson of illiberality that both were Scotchmen. BOSWELL.

[680]The following day he dined at Mrs. Garrick's. 'Poor Johnson,' wrote Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 280), 'exerted himself exceedingly, but he was very ill and looked so dreadfully, that it quite grieved me. He is more mild and complacent than he used to be. His sickness seems to have softened his mind, without having at all weakened it. I was struck with the mild radiance of this setting sun.'

[681]In the winter of 1788-9 Boswell began a canvass of his own county, He also courted Lord Lonsdale, in the hope of getting one of the seats in his gift, who first fooled him and then treated him with great brutality, Letters of Boswell, pp. 270, 294, 324.

[682]On April 6, 1780—'a day,' wrote Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 345), 'that ought for ever to be a red-lettered day'—Mr. Dunning made this motion. It was carried by 233 to 215.Parl. Hist.xxi. 340-367.

[683]See ante, i. 355, and ii. 94 for Johnson's appeal to meals as a measure of vexation.

[684]Johnson defines cantas '1. A corrupt dialect used by beggars and vagabonds. 2. A particular form of speaking peculiar to some certain class or body of men. 3. A whining pretension to goodness in formal and affected terms. 4. Barbarous jargon. 5. Auction.' I have noted the following instances of his use of the word:—'I betook myself to a coffee-house frequented by wits, among whom I learned in a short time thecantof criticism.'The Rambler, No.123. 'Every class of society has itscantof lamentation.'Ib. No.128. 'Milton's invention required no assistance from the commoncantof poetry.'Ib. No.140. 'We shall secure our language from being overrun withcant, from being crowded with low terms, the spawn of folly or affectation.'Works, v. II. 'This fugitivecant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language.'Ib. p.45. In a note on IHenry VI, act iii. sc.1, he says: 'Toroamis supposed to be derived from thecantof vagabonds, who often pretended a pilgrimage to Rome.' Seeante, iii. 197, for 'moderncant.'

[685]'Custom,' wrote Sir Joshua, 'or politeness, or courtly manners has authorised such an eastern hyperbolical style of compliment, that part of Dr. Johnson's character for rudeness of manners must be put to the account of scrupulous adherence to truth. His obstinate silence, whilst all the company were in raptures, vying with each other who should pepper highest, was considered as rudeness or ill-nature.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 458.

[686]'The shame is to impose words for ideas upon ourselves or others.' Johnson's Works, vi. 64. Seeante, p.122, where he says: 'There is a middle state of mind between conviction and hypocrisy.' Bacon, in hisEssay of Truth, says: 'It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.'

[687]See ante, p. 204.

[688]'I dined and lay at Harrison's, where I was received with that old-fashioned breeding which is at once so honourable and so troublesome.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 144. Mr. Pleydell, inGuy Mannering, ed. 1860, iv. 96, says: 'You'll excuse my old-fashioned importunity. I was born in a time when a Scotchman was thought inhospitable if he left a guest alone a moment, except when he slept.'

[689]See ante, ii. 167.

[690]See ante, i. 387.

[691]In Johnson's Works, ed. 1787, xi. 197, it is recorded that Johnson said, 'Sheridan's writings on elocution were a continual renovation of hope, and an unvaried succession of disappointments.' According to theGent. Mag.1785, p. 288, he continued:—'If we should have a bad harvest this year, Mr. Sheridan would say:—"It was owing to the neglect of oratory."' Seeante, p. 206.

[692]Burke, no doubt, was this 'bottomless Whig.' When Johnson said 'so they allare now,' he was perhaps thinking of the Coalition Ministry in which Lord North and his friends had places.

[693]No doubt Burke, who was Paymaster of the Forces. He is Boswell's 'eminent friend.' See anteii.222, andpost, Dec. 24, 1783, and Jan.8, 1784. In these two consecutive paragraphs, though two people seem to be spoken of, yet only one is in reality.

[694]I believe that Burke himself was present part of the time, and that he was the gentleman who 'talked of retiring. On May 19 and 21 he had in Parliament defended his action in restoring to office two clerks, Powell and Bembridge, who had been dismissed by his predecessor, and he had justified his reforms in the Paymaster's office. 'He awaited,' he said, the 'judgement of the House. ...If they so far differed in sentiment, he had only to say,Nunc dimittis servum tuum.' Parl. Hist.xxiii.919.

[695]A copy of Evelinahad been placed in the Bodleian. 'Johnson says,' wrote Miss Burney, 'that when he goes to Oxford he will write my name in the books, and my age when I writ them, and then,' he says, 'the world may know that weSo mix our studies, and so joined our fame.For we shall go down hand in hand to posterity.' Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary, i.429. The oldest copy ofEvelinanow in the Bodleian is of an edition published after Johnson's death. Miss Burney, in 1793, married General D'Arblay, a French refugee.

[696]Macaulay maintained that Johnson had a hand in the composition of Cecilia. He quotes a passage from it, and says:—'We say with confidence, either Sam. Johnson or the Devil.' (Essays, ed. 1874, iv. 157.) That he is mistaken is shown by Mme. D'Arblay'sDiary(ii. 172). 'Ay,' cried Dr. Johnson, 'some people want to make out some credit to me from the little rogue's book. I was told by a gentleman this morning that it was a very fine book, if it was all her own.' "It is all her own," said I, "for me, I am sure, for I never saw one word of it before it was printed."' On p. 196 she records the following:—'SIR JOSHUA. "Gibbon says he read the whole five volumes in a day." "'Tis impossible," cried Mr. Burke, "it cost me three days; and you know I never parted with it from the day I first opened it."' Seepost, among the imitators of Johnson's style, under Dec. 6, 1784.

[697]In Mr. Barry's printed analysis, or description of these pictures, he speaks of Johnson's character in the highest terms. BOSWELL. Barry, in one of his pictures, placed Johnson between the two beautiful duchesses of Rutland and Devonshire, pointing to their Graces Mrs. Montagu as an example. He expresses his 'reverence for his consistent, manly, and well-spent life.' Barry's Works, ii. 339. Johnson, in his turn, praises 'the comprehension of Barry's design.'Piozzi Letters, ii. 256. He was more likely to understand it, as the pictures formed a series, meant 'to illustrate one great maxim of moral truth, viz. that the obtaining of happiness depends upon cultivating the human faculties. We begin with man in a savage state full of inconvenience, imperfection, and misery, and we follow him through several gradations of culture and happiness, which, after our probationary state here, are finally attended with beatitude or misery.' Barry'sWorks, ii. 323. Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 366) describes Barry's book as one 'which does not want sense, though full of passion and self, and vulgarisms and vanity.'

[698]Boswell had tried to bring about a third meeting between Johnson and Wilkes. On May 21 he wrote:—'Mr. Boswell's compliments to Mr. Wilkes. He finds that it would not be unpleasant to Dr. Johnson to dine at Mr. Wilkes's. The thing would be so curiously benignant, it were a pity it should not take place. Nobody but Mr. Boswell should be asked to meet the doctor.' An invitation was sent, but the following answer was returned:—'May 24, 1783. Mr. Johnson returns thanks to Mr. and Miss Wilkes for their kind invitation; but he is engaged for Tuesday to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and for Wednesday to Mr. Paradise.' Owing to Boswell's return to Scotland, another day could not be fixed. Almon's Wilkes, iv. 314, 321.

[699]'If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.' Ecclesiastes, xi. 3.

[700]'When a tree is falling, I have seen the labourers, by a trivial jerk with a rope, throw it upon the spot where they would wish it should lie. Divines, understanding this text too literally, pretend, by a little interposition in the article of death, to regulate a person's everlasting happiness. I fancy the allusion will hardly countenance their presumption.' Shenstone's Works, ed. 1773, ii. 255.

[701]Hazlitt says that 'when old Baxter first went to Kidderminster to preach, he was almost pelted by the women for maintaining from the pulpit the then fashionable and orthodox doctrine, that "Hell was paved with infants' skulls.'" Conversations of Northcote, p. 80.

[702]Acts, xvii. 24.

[703]Now the celebrated Mrs. Crouch. BOSWELL.

[704]Mr. Windham was at this time in Dublin, Secretary to the Earl of Northington, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. BOSWELL. See ante, p.200.

[705]Son of Mr. Samuel Paterson. BOSWELL. See ante, iii.90, andpost, April 5, 1784.

[706]The late Keeper of the Royal Academy. He died on Jan. 23 of this year. Reynolds wrote of him:—'He may truly be said in every sense, to have been the father of the present race of artists.' Northcote's Reynoldsii.137.

[707]Mr. Allen was his landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court. Ante, iii. 141.

[708]Cowper mentions him in Retirement:—

'Virtuous and faithful Heberden! whose skillAttempts no task it cannot well fulfill,Gives melancholy up to nature's care,And sends the patient into purer air.'Cowper's Poems, ed. 1786, i. 272.

He is mentioned also by Priestley (Auto.ed. 1810, p.66) as one of his chief benefactors. Lord Eldon, when almost a briefless barrister, consulted him. 'I put my hand into my pocket, meaning to give him his fee; but he stopped me, saying, "Are you the young gentleman who gained the prize for the essay at Oxford?" I said I was. "I will take no fee from you." I often consulted him; but he would never take a fee.' Twiss'sEldon, i. 104.

[709]How much he had physicked himself is shewn by a letter of May 8. 'I took on Thursday,' he writes, 'two brisk catharticks and a dose of calomel. Little things do me no good. At night I was much better. Next day cathartick again, and the third day opium for my cough. I lived without flesh all the three days.' Piozzi Letters, ii.257. He had been bled at least four times that year and had lost about fifty ounces of blood.Ante, pp.142, 146. On Aug. 3, 1779, he wrote:—'Of the last fifty days I have taken mercurial physick, I believe, forty.'Notes and Queries, 6th S. v.461.

[710]An exact reprint of this letter is given by Professor Mayor in Notes and Queries, 6th S. v.481. The omissions and the repetitions 'betray,' he says, 'the writer's agitation.' The postscript Boswell had omitted. It is as follows:—'Dr. Brocklesby will be with me to meet Dr. Heberden, and I shall have previously make (sic) master of the case as well as I can.'

[711]Vol. ii. p.268, of Mrs. Thrale's Collection. BOSWELL. The beginning of the letter is very touching:—'I am sitting down in no cheerful solitude to write a narrative which would once have affected you with tenderness and sorrow, but which you will perhaps pass over now with the careless glance of frigid indifference. For this diminution of regard, however, I know not whether I ought to blame you, who may have reasons which I cannot know, and I do not blame myself, who have for a great part of human life done you what good I could, and have never done you evil.'Piozzi Letters, ii. 268. 'I have loved you,' he continued, 'with virtuous affection; I have honoured you with sincere esteem. Let not all our endearments be forgotten, but let me have in this great distress your pity and your prayers. You see I yet turn to you with my complaints as a settled and unalienable friend; do not, do not drive me from you, for I have not deserved either neglect or hatred.'Ib.p.271.

[712]On Aug. 20 he wrote:—'I sat to Mrs. Reynolds yesterday for my picture, perhaps the tenth time, and I sat near three hours with the patience of mortal born to bear; at last she declared it quite finished, and seems to think it fine. I told her it wasJohnson's grimly ghost. It is to be engraved, and I thinkin glided, &c., will be a good inscription.'Piozzi Letters, ii. 302. Johnson is quoting from Mallet's ballad ofMargaret's Ghost:—

'Twas at the silent solemn hour,When night and morning meet;In glided Margaret's grimly ghost,And stood at William's feet.'Percy Ballads, in. 3, 16.

According to Northcote, Reynolds said of his sister's oil-paintings, 'they made other people laugh and him cry.' 'She generally,' Northcote adds, 'did them by stealth.' Life of Reynolds, ii. 160.

[713]'Nocte, inter 16 et 17 Junii, 1783.

Summe pater, quodcunque tuum de corpore NumenHoc statuat, precibus Christus adesse velit:Ingenio parcas, nee sit mihi culpa rogasse,Qua solum potero parte placere tibi.'Works, i.159.

[714]According to the Gent. Mag. 1783, p.542, Dr. Lawrence died at Canterbury on June 13 of this year, his second son died on the 15th. But, if we may trust Munk'sRoll of the College of Physicians, ii.153, on the father's tomb-stone, June 6 is given as the day of his death. Mr. Croker gives June 17 as the date, and June 19 as the day of the son's death, and is puzzled accordingly.

[715]Poor Derrick, however, though he did not himself introduce me to Dr. Johnson as he promised, had the merit of introducing me to Davies, the immediate introductor. BOSWELL. See ante, i.385, 391.

[716]Miss Burney, calling on him the next morning, offered to make his tea. He had given her his own large arm-chair which was too heavy for her to move to the table. '"Sir," quoth she, "I am in the wrong chair." "It is so difficult," cried he with quickness, "for anything to be wrong that belongs to you, that it can only be I that am in the wrong chair to keep you from the right one."' Dr. Burney's Memoirs, ii. 345.

[717]His Lordship was soon after chosen, and is now a member of THE CLUB. BOSWELL. He was father of the future prime-minister, who was born in the following year.

[718]He wrote on June 23:—'What man can do for man has been done for me.' Piozzi Letters, ii.278. Murphy (Life, p. 121) says that, visiting him during illness, he found him reading Dr. Watson'sChymistry(ante, p. 118). 'Articulating with difficulty he said:—"From this book he who knows nothing may learn a great deal, and he who knows will be pleased to find his knowledge recalled to his mind in a manner highly pleasing."'

[719]'I have, by the migration of one of my ladies, more peace at home; but I remember an old savage chief that says of the Romans with great indignation-ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant[Tacitus, Agricola, c. xxx].Piozzi Letters, ii. 259.

[720]'July 23. I have been thirteen days at Rochester, and am just now returned. I came back by water in a common boat twenty miles for a shilling, and when I landed at Billingsgate, I carried my budget myself to Cornhill before I could get a coach, and was not much incommoded' Ib. ii.294. Seeante, iv.8, 22, for mention of Rochester.

[721]Murphy (Life, p. 121) says that Johnson visited Oxford this summer. Perhaps he was misled by a passage in thePiozzi Letters(ii. 302) where Johnson is made to write:—'At Oxford I have just left Wheeler.' Forleftno doubt should be readlost. Wheeler died on July 22 of this year.Gent. Mag. 1783, p. 629.

[722]This house would be interesting to Johnson, as in it Charles II, 'for whom he had an extraordinary partiality' (ante, ii. 341), lay hid for some days after the battle of Worcester. Clarendon (vi. 540) describes it 'as a house that stood alone from neighbours and from any highway.' Charles was lodged 'in a little room, which had been made since the beginning of the troubles for the concealment of delinquents.'

[723]'I told Dr. Johnson I had heard that Mr. Bowles was very much delighted with the expectation of seeing him, and he answered me:—"He is so delighted that it is shocking. It is really shocking to see how high are his expectations." I asked him why, and he said:—"Why, if any man is expected to take a leap of twenty yards, and does actually take one of ten, everybody will be disappointed, though ten yards may be more than any other man ever leaped."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii.260. On Oct. 9, he wrote:—'Two nights ago Mr. Burke sat with me a long time. We had both seen Stonehenge this summer for the first time.'Piozzi Letters, ii.315.

[724]Salisbury is eighty-two miles from Cornhill by the old coach-road. Johnson seems to have been nearly fifteen hours on the journey.

[725]'Aug. 13, 1783. I am now broken with disease, without the alleviation of familiar friendship or domestic society. I have no middle state between clamour and silence, between general conversation and self-tormenting solitude. Levett is dead, and poor Williams is making haste to die.' Piozzi Letters, ii.301. 'Aug. 20. This has been a day of great emotion; the office of the Communion of the Sick has been performed in poor Mrs. Williams's chamber.'Ib. 'Sept. 22. Poor Williams has, I hope, seen the end of her afflictions. She acted with prudence and she bore with fortitude. She has left me.

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