Читать книгу The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - James Boswell - Страница 185

Swift, in his Journal to Stella (Nov. 23, 1711), having to mention England, continues:—‘I never will call it Britain, pray don’t call it Britain.’ In a letter written on Aug. 8, 1738, again mentioning England, he adds,—‘Pox on the modern phrase Great Britain, which is only to distinguish it from Little Britain, where old clothes and old books are to be bought and sold’ (Swift’s Works, 1803, xx. 185). George III ‘gloried in being born a Briton;’ post, 1760. Boswell thrice more at least describes Johnson as ‘a true-born Englishman;’ post, under Feb. 7, 1775, under March 30, 1783, and Boswell’s Hebrides under Aug. 11, 1773. The quotation is from Richard II, Act i. sc. 3.

[372]

‘For who would leave, unbrib’d, Hibernia’s land,

Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?

There none are swept by sudden fate away,

But all, whom hunger spares, with age decay.’

London, 1. 9-12.

[373] In the Life of Savage, Johnson, criticising the settlement of colonies, as it is considered by the poet and the politician, seems to be criticising himself. ‘The politician, when he considers men driven into other countries for shelter, and obliged to retire to forests and deserts, and pass their lives, and fix their posterity, in the remotest corners of the world, to avoid those hardships which they suffer or fear in their native place, may very properly enquire, why the legislature does not provide a remedy for these miseries, rather than encourage an escape from them. He may conclude that the flight of every honest man is a loss to the community…. The poet guides the unhappy fugitive from want and persecution to plenty, quiet, and security, and seats him in scenes of peaceful solitude, and undisturbed repose.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 156.

[374] Three years later Johnson wrote:—‘Mere unassisted merit advances slowly, if, what is not very common, it advances at all.’ Ib. vi. 393.

[375] ‘The busy hum of men.’ Milton’s L’Allegro, 1. 118.

[376] See Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 21, 1773, and post, March 21, 1775, for Johnson’s attack on Lord Chatham. In the Life of Thomson Johnson wrote:—‘At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the want, and with care for liberty, which was not in danger.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 370. Hawkins says (Life, p. 514);—‘Of Walpole he had a high opinion. He said of him that he was a fine fellow, and that his very enemies deemed him so before his death. He honoured his memory for having kept this country in peace many years, as also for the goodness and placability of his temper.’ Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 509), says:—‘My father alone was capable of acting on one great plan of honesty from the beginning of his life to the end. He could for ever wage war with knaves and malice, and preserve his temper; could know men, and yet feel for them; could smile when opposed, and be gentle after triumph.’

[377] Johnson in the Life of Milton describes himself:—‘Milton was naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and disdainful of help or hindrance. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of support.’ Johnson’s Works, vii. 142. See post Feb. 1766, for Johnson’s opinion on ‘courting great men.’

[378] In a billet written by Mr. Pope in the following year, this school is said to have been in Shropshire; but as it appears from a letter from Earl Gower, that the trustees of it were ‘some worthy gentlemen in Johnson’s neighbourhood,’ I in my first edition suggested that Pope must have, by mistake, written Shropshire, instead of Staffordshire. But I have since been obliged to Mr. Spearing, attorney-at-law, for the following information:—‘William Adams, formerly citizen and haberdasher of London, founded a school at Newport, in the county of Salop, by deed dated 27th November, 1656, by which he granted “the yearly sum of sixty pounds to such able and learned schoolmaster, from time to time, being of godly life and conversation, who should have been educated at one of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, and had taken the degree of Master of Arts, and was well read in the Greek and Latin tongues, as should be nominated from time to time by the said William Adams, during his life, and after the decease of the said William Adams, by the Governours (namely, the Master and Wardens of the Haberdashers’ Company of the City of London) and their successors.” The manour and lands out of which the revenues for the maintenance of the school were to issue are situate at Knighton and Adbaston, in the county of Stafford.’ From the foregoing account of this foundation, particularly the circumstances of the salary being sixty pounds, and the degree of Master of Arts being a requisite qualification in the teacher, it seemed probable that this was the school in contemplation; and that Lord Gower erroneously supposed that the gentlemen who possessed the lands, out of which the revenues issued, were trustees of the charity.

Such was probable conjecture. But in the Gent. Mag. for May, 1793, there is a letter from Mr. Henn, one of the masters of the school of Appleby, in Leicestershire, in which he writes as follows:—

‘I compared time and circumstance together, in order to discover whether the school in question might not be this of Appleby. Some of the trustees at that period were “worthy gentlemen of the neighbourhood of Litchfield.” Appleby itself is not far from the neighbourhood of Litchfield. The salary, the degree requisite, together with the time of election, all agreeing with the statutes of Appleby. The election, as said in the letter, “could not be delayed longer than the 11th of next month,” which was the 11th of September, just three months after the annual audit-day of Appleby school, which is always on the 11th of June; and the statutes enjoin ne ullius praeceptorum electio diutius tribus mensibus moraretur, etc.

‘These I thought to be convincing proofs that my conjecture was not ill-founded, and that, in a future edition of that book, the circumstance might be recorded as fact.

‘But what banishes every shadow of doubt is the Minute-book of the school, which declares the headmastership to be at that time VACANT.’

I cannot omit returning thanks to this learned gentleman for the very handsome manner in which he has in that letter been so good as to speak of this work. BOSWELL.

[379] ‘What a pity it is, Sir,’ said to him Sir William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell, ‘that you did not follow the profession of the law! You might have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain’ Post, April 17, 1778.

[380] See post, beginning of 1770.

[381] See post, March 21, 1775.

[382] In the Weekly Miscellany, October 21, 1738, there appeared the following advertisement:—‘Just published, Proposals for printing the History of the Council of Trent, translated from the Italian of Father Paul Sarpi; with the Authour’s Life, and Notes theological, historical, and critical, from the French edition of Dr. Le Courayer. To which are added, Observations on the History, and Notes and Illustrations from various Authours, both printed and manuscript. By S. Johnson. 1. The work will consist of two hundred sheets, and be two volumes in quarto, printed on good paper and letter. 2. The price will be 18_s_. each volume, to be paid, half-a-guinea at the delivery of the first volume, and the rest at the delivery of the second volume in sheets. 3. Twopence to be abated for every sheet less than two hundred. It may be had on a large paper, in three volumes, at the price of three guineas; one to be paid at the time of subscribing, another at the delivery of the first, and the rest at the delivery of the other volumes. The work is now in the press, and will be diligently prosecuted. Subscriptions are taken in by Mr. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, Mr. Rivington in St. Paul’s Church-yard, by E. Cave at St. John’s Gate, and the Translator, at No. 6, in Castle-street by Cavendish-square.’ BOSWELL.

[383] They afterwards appeared in the Gent. Mag. [viii. 486] with this title—’Verses to Lady Firebrace, at Bury Assizes.’ BOSWELL.

[384] Du Halde’s Description of China was then publishing by Mr. Cave in weekly numbers, whence Johnson was to select pieces for the embellishment of the Magazine. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[385] The premium of forty pounds proposed for the best poem on the Divine Attributes is here alluded to. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[386] The Compositors in Mr. Cave’s printing-office, who appear by this letter to have then waited for copy. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[387] Twenty years later, when he was lodging in the Temple, he had fasted for two days at a time; ‘he had drunk tea, but eaten no bread; this was no intentional fasting, but happened just in the course of a literary life.’ Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 4, 1773. See post, Aug. 5, 1763.

[388] Birch MSS. Brit. Mus. 4323. BOSWELL.

[389] See post, under Dec. 30, 1747, and Oct. 24, 1780.

[390] See post, 1750.

[391] This book was published. BOSWELL. I have not been able to find it.

[392] The Historie of four-footed beasts and serpents. By Edward Topsell. London, 1607. Isaac Walton, in the Complete Angler, more than once quotes Topsel. See p. 99 in the reprint of the first edition, where he says:—‘As our Topsel hath with great diligence observed.’

[393] In this preface he describes some pieces as ‘deserving no other fate than to be hissed, torn, and forgotten. Johnson’s Works, v. 346.

[394] The letter to Mr. Urban in the January number of this year (p. 3) is, I believe, by Johnson.

[395] ‘Yet did Boerhaave not suffer one branch of science to withdraw his attention from others; anatomy did not withhold him from chymistry, nor chymistry, enchanting as it is, from the study of botany.’ Johnson’s Works, vi. 276. See post, under Sept. 9, 1779.

[396] Gent. Mag. viii. 210, and Johnson’s Works, i. 170.

[397] What these verses are is not clear. On p. 372 there is an epigram Ad Elisam Popi Horto Lauras carpentem, of which on p. 429 there are three translations. That by Urbanus may be Johnson’s.

[398] Ib. p. 654, and Johnson’s Works, i. 170. On p. 211 of this volume of the Gent. Mag. is given the epigram ‘To a lady who spoke in defence of liberty.’ This was ‘Molly Aston’ mentioned ante, p. 83.

[399] To the year 1739 belongs Considerations on the Case of Dr. T[rapp]s Sermons. Abridged by Mr. Cave, 1739; first published in the Gent. Mag. of July 1787. (See post under Nov. 5, 1784, note.) Cave had begun to publish in the Gent. Mag. an abridgment of four sermons preached by Trapp against Whitefield. He stopped short in the publication, deterred perhaps by the threat of a prosecution for an infringement of copyright. ‘On all difficult occasions,’ writes the Editor in 1787, ‘Johnson was Cave’s oracle; and the paper now before us was certainly written on that occasion.’ Johnson argues that abridgments are not only legal but also justifiable. ‘The design of an abridgment is to benefit mankind by facilitating the attainment of knowledge … for as an incorrect book is lawfully criticised, and false assertions justly confuted … so a tedious volume may no less lawfully be abridged, because it is better that the proprietors should suffer some damage, than that the acquisition of knowledge should be obstructed with unnecessary difficulties, and the valuable hours of thousands thrown away.’ Johnson’s Works, v. 465. Whether we have here Johnson’s own opinion cannot be known. He was writing as Cave’s advocate. See also Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773.

[400] In his Life of Thomson Johnson writes:—‘About this time the act was passed for licensing plays, of which the first operation was the prohibition of Gustavus Vasa, a tragedy of Mr. Brooke, whom the public recompensed by a very liberal subscription; the next was the refusal of Edward and Eleonora, offered by Thomson. It is hard to discover why either play should have been obstructed.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 373.

[401] The Inscription and the Translation of it are preserved in the London Magazine for the year 1739, p. 244. BOSWELL. See Johnson’s Works, vi. 89.

[402] It is a little heavy in its humour, and does not compare well with the like writings of Swift and the earlier wits.

[403] Hawkins’s Johnson, p. 72.

[404]

‘Sic fatus senior, telumque imbelle sine ictu Conjecit.’ ‘So spake the elder, and cast forth a toothless spear and vain.’

Morris, Æneids, ii. 544.

[405]

‘Get all your verses printed fair,

Then let them well be dried;

And Curll must have a special care

To leave the margin wide.

Lend these to paper-sparing Pope;

And when he sits to write,

No letter with an envelope

Could give him more delight.’

Advice to the Grub Street Verse-Writers. (Swift’s Works, 1803, xi 32.) Nichols, in a note on this passage, says:—‘The original copy of Pope’s Homer is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.’ Johnson, in his Life of Pope, writes:—‘Of Pope’s domestic character frugality was a part eminently remarkable…. This general care must be universally approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which perhaps in five years five shillings were saved.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 312.

[406] See note, p. 132. BOSWELL.

[407] The Marmor Norfolciense, price one shilling, is advertised in the Gent. Mag. for 1739 (p. 220) among the books for April.

[408] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 8. BOSWELL.

[409] According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘Every person who knew Dr. Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the conversation. These were therefore improperly called convulsions, which imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his attention was recovered. Sometimes, indeed, it would be near a minute before he would give an answer, looking as if he laboured to bring his mind to bear on the question’ (Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 456). ‘I still, however, think,’ wrote Boswell, ‘that these gestures were involuntary; for surely had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in the public streets’ (Boswell’s Hebrides, under date of Aug. 11, 1773, note). Dr. T. Campbell, in his Diary of a Visit to England, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—‘He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil’s jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.’ Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:—‘Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes of all together.’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, i. 63. See post, under March 30, 1783, Boswell’s note on Johnson’s peculiarities.

[410] ‘Solitude,’ wrote Reynolds, ‘to him was horror; nor would he ever trust himself alone but when employed in writing or reading. He has often begged me to go home with him to prevent his being alone in the coach. Any company was better than none; by which he connected himself with many mean persons whose presence he could command.’ Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 455. Johnson writing to Mrs. Thrale, said:—‘If the world be worth winning, let us enjoy it; if it is to be despised, let us despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it is compared with something better. Company is in itself better than solitude, and pleasure better than indolence.’ Piozzi Letters, i. 242. In The Idler, No. 32, he wrote:—‘Others are afraid to be alone, and amuse themselves by a perpetual succession of companions; but the difference is not great; in solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert. The end sought in both is forgetfulness of ourselves.’ In The Rambler, No. 5, he wrote:—‘It may be laid down as a position which will seldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life from the equipoise of an empty mind … or he must be afraid of the intrusion of some unpleasing ideas, and, perhaps, is struggling to escape from the remembrance of a loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other thought of greater horror.’

Cowper, whose temperament was in some respects not unlike Johnson’s, wrote:—‘A vacant hour is my abhorrence; because, when I am not occupied, I suffer under the whole influence of my unhappy temperament.’ Southey’s Cowper, vi. 146.

[411] Richardson was of the same way of thinking as Hogarth. Writing of a speech made at the Oxford Commemoration of 1754 by the Jacobite Dr. King (see post, Feb. 1755), he said:—‘There cannot be a greater instance of the lenity of the government he abuses than his pestilent harangues so publicly made with impunity furnishes (sic) all his readers with.’—Rich. Corresp. ii. 197.

[412] Impartial posterity may, perhaps, be as little inclined as Dr. Johnson was to justify the uncommon rigour exercised in the case of Dr. Archibald Cameron. He was an amiable and truly honest man; and his offence was owing to a generous, though mistaken principle of duty. Being obliged, after 1746, to give up his profession as a physician, and to go into foreign parts, he was honoured with the rank of Colonel, both in the French and Spanish service. He was a son of the ancient and respectable family of Cameron, of Lochiel; and his brother, who was the Chief of that brave clan, distinguished himself by moderation and humanity, while the Highland army marched victorious through Scotland. It is remarkable of this Chief, that though he had earnestly remonstrated against the attempt as hopeless, he was of too heroick a spirit not to venture his life and fortune in the cause, when personally asked by him whom he thought his prince. BOSWELL.

Sir Walter Scott states, in his Introduction to Redgauntlet, that the government of George II were in possession of sufficient evidence that Dr. Cameron had returned to the Highlands, not, as he alleged on his trial, for family affairs merely, but as the secret agent of the Pretender in a new scheme of rebellion: the ministers, however, preferred trying this indefatigable partisan on the ground of his undeniable share in the insurrection of 1745, rather than rescuing themselves and their master from the charge of harshness, at the expense of making it universally known, that a fresh rebellion had been in agitation so late as 1752. LOCKHART. He was executed on June 7, 1753. Gent. Mag. xxiii. 292. Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, v. 109) says:—‘I regard his execution as a wanton atrocity.’ Horace Walpole, however, inclined to the belief that Cameron was engaged in a new scheme of rebellion. Walpole’s Memoirs of George II, i. 333.

[413] Horace Walpole says that towards convicts under sentence of death ‘George II’s disposition in general was merciful, if the offence was not murder.’ He mentions, however, a dreadful exception, when the King sent to the gallows at Oxford a young man who had been ‘guilty of a most trifling forgery,’ though he had been recommended to mercy by the Judge, who ‘had assured him his pardon.’ Mercy was refused, merely because the Judge, Willes, ‘was attached to the Prince of Wales.’ It is very likely that this was one of Johnson’s ‘instances,’ as it had happened about four years earlier, and as an account of the young man had been published by an Oxonian. Walpole’s Memoirs of the Reign of George II, i. 175.

[414] It is strange that when Johnson had been sixteen years in London he should not be known to Hogarth by sight. ‘Mr. Hogarth,’ writes Mrs. Piozzi, ‘was used to be very earnest that I should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible, the friendship of Dr. Johnson, “whose conversation was to the talk of other men, like Titian’s painting compared to Hudson’s,” he said…. Of Dr. Johnson, when my father and he were talking together about him one day, “That man,” says Hogarth, “is not contented with believing the Bible, but he fairly resolves, I think, to believe nothing but the Bible.”’ Piozzi’s Anec. p. 136.

[415] On October 29 of this year James Boswell was born.

[416] In this preface is found the following lively passage:—‘The Roman Gazetteers are defective in several material ornaments of style. They never end an article with the mystical hint, this occasions great speculation. They seem to have been ignorant of such engaging introductions as, we hear it is strongly reported; and of that ingenious, but thread-bare excuse for a downright lie, it wants confirmation.’

[417] The Lives of Blake and Drake were certainly written with a political aim. The war with Spain was going on, and the Tory party was doing its utmost to rouse the country against the Spaniards. It was ‘a time,’ according to Johnson, ‘when the nation was engaged in a war with an enemy, whose insults, ravages, and barbarities have long called for vengeance.’ Johnson’s Works, vi. 293.

[418] Barretier’s childhood surpassed even that of J. S. Mill. At the age of nine he was master of five languages, Greek and Hebrew being two of them. ‘In his twelfth year he applied more particularly to the study of the fathers.’ At the age of fourteen he published Anti-Artemonius; sive initium evangelii S. Joannis adversus Artemonium vindicatum. The same year the University of Halle offered him the degree of doctor in philosophy. ‘His theses, or philosophical positions, which he printed, ran through several editions in a few weeks.’ He was a deep student of mathematics, and astronomy was his favourite subject. His health broke down under his studies, and he died in 1740 in the twentieth year of his age. Johnson’s Works, vi. 376.

[419] He wrote also in 1756 A Dissertation on the Epitaphs written by Pope.

[420] See post, Oct. 16, 1769.

[421] In the original and. Gent. Mag. x. 464. The title of this poem as there given is:—‘An epitaph upon the celebrated Claudy Philips, Musician, who died very poor.’

[422] The epitaph of Phillips is in the porch of Wolverhampton Church. The prose part of it is curious:—

‘Near this place lies

Charles Claudius Phillips,

Whose absolute contempt of riches

and inimitable performances upon the

violin

made him the admiration of all that

knew him.

He was born in Wales,

made the tour of Europe,

and, after the experience of both

kinds of fortune,

Died in 1732.’

Mr. Garrick appears not to have recited the verses correctly, the original being as follows:—

‘Exalted soul, thy various sounds could please The love-sick virgin and the gouty ease; Could jarring crowds, like old Amphion, move To beauteous order and harmonious love; Rest here in peace, till Angels bid thee rise, And meet thy Saviour’s consort in the skies.’ BLAKEWAY.

Consort is defined in Johnson’s Dictionary as a number of instruments playing together.

[423] I have no doubt that it was written in 1741; for the second line is clearly a parody of a line in the chorus of Cibber’s Birthday Ode for that year. The chorus is as follows:

‘While thou our Master of the Main

Revives Eliza’s glorious reign,

The great Plantagenets look down,

And see your race adorn your crown.’

Gent. Mag. xi. 549.

In the Life of Barretier Johnson had also this fling at George II:—‘Princes are commonly the last by whom merit is distinguished.’ Johnson’s Works, vi. 381.

[424] See Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 23 and Nov. 21, 1773.

[425] Hester Lynch Salusbury, afterwards Mrs. Thrale, and later on Mrs. Piozzi, was born on Jan. 27, 1741.

[426] This piece is certainly not by Johnson. It contains more than one ungrammatical passage. It is impossible to believe that he wrote such a sentence as the following:—‘Another having a cask of wine sealed up at the top, but his servant boring a hole at the bottom stole the greatest part of it away; sometime after, having called a friend to taste his wine, he found the vessel almost empty,’ &c.

[427] Mr. Carlyle, by the use of the term ‘Imaginary Editors’ (Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, iii. 229), seems to imply that he does not hold with Boswell in assigning this piece to Johnson. I am inclined to think, nevertheless, that Boswell is right. If it is Johnson’s it is doubly interesting as showing the method which he often followed in writing the Parliamentary Debates. When notes were given him, while for the most part he kept to the speaker’s train of thoughts, he dealt with the language much as it pleased him. In the Gent. Mag. Cromwell speaks as if he were wearing a flowing wig and were addressing a Parliament of the days of George II. He is thus made to conclude Speech xi:—‘For my part, could I multiply my person or dilate my power, I should dedicate myself wholly to this great end, in the prosecution of which I shall implore the blessing of God upon your counsels and endeavours.’ Gent. Mag. xi. 100. The following are the words which correspond to this in the original:—‘If I could help you to many, and multiply myself into many, that would be to serve you in regard to settlement…. But I shall pray to God Almighty that He would direct you to do what is according to His will. And this is that poor account I am able to give of myself in this thing.’ Carlyle’s Cromwell, iii. 255.

[428] See Appendix A.

[429] Lord Chesterfield.

[430] Duke of Newcastle.

[431] I suppose in another compilation of the same kind. BOSWELL.

[432] Doubtless, Lord Hardwick. BOSWELL.

[433] The delivery of letters by the penny-post ‘was originally confined to the cities of London and Westminster, the borough of Southwark and the respective suburbs thereof.’ In 1801 the postage was raised to twopence. The term ‘suburbs’ must have had a very limited signification, for it was not till 1831 that the limits of this delivery were extended to all places within three miles of the General Post Office. Ninth Report of the Commissioners of the Post Office, 1837, p. 4.

[434] Birch’s MSS. in the British Museum, 4302. BOSWELL.

[435] See post, Dec. 1784, in Nichols’s Anecdotes. If we may trust Hawkins, it is likely that Johnson’s ‘tenderness of conscience’ cost Cave a good deal; for he writes that, while Johnson composed the Debates, the sale of the Magazine increased from ten to fifteen thousand copies a month. ‘Cave manifested his good fortune by buying an old coach and a pair of older horses.’ Hawkins’s Johnson, P. 123.

[436] I am assured that the editor is Mr. George Chalmers, whose commercial works are well known and esteemed. BOSWELL.

[437] The characteristic of Pulteney’s oratory is thus given in Hazlitts Northcole’s Conversations (p. 288):—‘Old Mr. Tolcher used to say of the famous Pulteney—“My Lord Bath always speaks in blank verse.”’

[438] Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 100. BOSWELL.

[439] A bookseller of London. BOSWELL

[440] Not the Royal Society; but the Society for the encouragement of learning, of which Dr. Birch was a leading member. Their object was to assist authors in printing expensive works. It existed from about 1735 to 1746, when having incurred a considerable debt, it was dissolved. BOSWELL.

[441] There is no erasure here, but a mere blank; to fill up which may be an exercise for ingenious conjecture. BOSWELL.

[442] Johnson, writing to Dr. Taylor on June 10, 1742, says:—‘I propose to get Charles of Sweden ready for this winter, and shall therefore, as I imagine, be much engaged for some months with the dramatic writers into whom I have scarcely looked for many years. Keep Irene close, you may send it back at your leisure.’ Notes and Queries, 6th S., v. 303. Charles of Sweden must have been a play which he projected.

[443] The profligate sentiment was, that ‘to tell a secret to a friend is no breach of fidelity, because the number of persons trusted is not multiplied, a man and his friend being virtually the same.’ Rambler, No. 13.

[444] Journal of a tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 167. [Sept. 10, 1773.] BOSWELL.

[445] This piece contains a passage in honour of some great critic. ‘May the shade, at least, of one great English critick rest without disturbance; and may no man presume to insult his memory, who wants his learning, his reason, or his wit.’ Johnson’s Works, v. 182. Bentley had died on July 14 of this year, and there can be little question that Bentley is meant.

[446] See post, end of 1744.

[447] ‘There is nothing to tell, dearest lady, but that he was insolent and I beat him, and that he was a blockhead and told of it, which I should never have done…. I have beat many a fellow, but the rest had the wit to hold their tongues.’ Piozzi’s Anec. p. 233. In the Life of Pope Johnson thus mentions Osborne:—‘Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest to make another change, and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers [Dunciad, ii. 167]. Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any disgrace but that of poverty…. The shafts of satire were directed equally in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 302.

[448] In the original contentions.

[449] ‘Dec. 21, 1775. In the Paper Office there is a wight, called Thomas Astle, who lives like moths on old parchments.’ Walpole’s Letters, vi. 299.

[450] Savage died on Aug. 1, 1743, so that this letter is misplaced.

[451] The Plain Dealer was published in 1724, and contained some account of Savage. BOSWELL.

[452] In the Gent. Mag. for Sept. 1743 (p. 490) there is an epitaph on R——d S——e, Esq., which may perhaps be this inscription. ‘His life was want,’ this epitaph declares. It is certainly not the Runick Inscription in the number for March 1742, as Malone suggests; for the earliest possible date of this letter is seventeen months later.

[453] I have not discovered what this was. BOSWELL.

[454] The Mag.-Extraordinary is perhaps the Supplement to the December number of each year.

[455] This essay contains one sentiment eminently Johnsonian. The writer had shown how patiently Confucius endured extreme indigence. He adds:—‘This constancy cannot raise our admiration after his former conquest of himself; for how easily may he support pain who has been able to resist pleasure.’ Gent. Mag. xii. 355.

[456] In this Preface there is a complaint that has been often repeated—‘All kinds of learning have given way to politicks.’

[457] In the Life of Pope (Johnson’s Works, viii. 287) Johnson says that Crousaz, ‘however little known or regarded here, was no mean antagonist’

[458] It is not easy to believe that Boswell had read this essay, for there is nothing metaphysical in what Johnson wrote. Two-thirds of the paper are a translation from Crousaz. Boswell does not seem to have distinguished between Crousaz’s writings and Johnson’s. We have here a striking instance of the way in which Cave sometimes treated his readers. One-third of this essay is given in the number for March, the rest in the number for November.

[459]

Angliacas inter pulcherrima Laura puellas,

Mox uteri pondus depositura grave,

Adsit, Laura, tibi facilis Lucina dolenti,

Neve tibi noceat praenituisse Deae.

Mr. Hector was present when this Epigram was made impromptu. The first line was proposed by Dr. James, and Johnson was called upon by the company to finish it, which he instantly did. BOSWELL. Macaulay (Essays, i. 364) criticises Mr. Croker’s criticism of this epigram.

[460] The lines with which this poem is introduced seem to show that it cannot be Johnson’s. He was not the man to allow that haste of performance was any plea for indulgence. They are as follows:—‘Though several translations of Mr. Pope’s verses on his Grotto have already appeared, we hope that the following attempt, which, we are assured, was the casual amusement of half an hour during several solicitations to proceed, will neither be unacceptable to our readers, nor (these circumstances considered) dishonour the persons concerned by a hasty publication.’ Gent. Mag. xiii. 550.

[461] See Gent. Mag. xiii. 560. I doubt whether this advertisement be from Johnson’s hand. It is very unlikely that he should make the advertiser in one and the same paragraph when speaking of himself use us and mine. Boswell does not mention the Preface to vol. iii. of the Harkian Catalogue. It is included in Johnson’s Works (v. 198). Its author, be he who he may, in speaking of literature, says:—‘I have idly hoped to revive a taste well-nigh extinguished.’