Читать книгу The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - James Boswell - Страница 189

BOSWELL. The noble Lord was no doubt Lord Tyrconnel. See Johnson’s Works, viii. 140. Mr. Cust is mentioned post, p. 170.

[470] ‘Savage took all opportunities of conversing familiarly with those who were most conspicuous at that time for their power or their influence; he watched their looser moments, and examined their domestic behaviour with that acuteness which nature had given him, and which the uncommon variety of his life had contributed to increase, and that inquisitiveness which must always be produced in a vigorous mind by an absolute freedom from all pressing or domestic engagements.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 135.

[471] ‘Thus he spent his time in mean expedients and tormenting suspense, living for the greatest part in the fear of prosecutions from his creditors, and consequently skulking in obscure parts of the town, of which he was no stranger to the remotest corners.’ Ib. p. 165.

[472] Sir John Hawkins gives the world to understand, that Johnson, ‘being an admirer of genteel manners, was captivated by the address and demeanour of Savage, who, as to his exterior, was, to a remarkable degree, accomplished.’ Hawkins’s Life, p. 52. But Sir John’s notions of gentility must appear somewhat ludicrous, from his stating the following circumstance as presumptive evidence that Savage was a good swordsman: ‘That he understood the exercise of a gentleman’s weapon, may be inferred from the use made of it in that rash encounter which is related in his life.’ The dexterity here alluded to was, that Savage, in a nocturnal fit of drunkenness, stabbed a man at a coffee-house, and killed him; for which he was tried at the Old-Bailey, and found guilty of murder.

Johnson, indeed, describes him as having ‘a grave and manly deportment, a solemn dignity of mien; but which, upon a nearer acquaintance, softened into an engaging easiness of manners.’ [Johnson’s Works, viii. 187.] How highly Johnson admired him for that knowledge which he himself so much cultivated, and what kindness he entertained for him, appears from the following lines in the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1738, which I am assured were written by Johnson:

‘Ad RICARDUM SAVAGE.

‘Humani studium generis cui pectore

fervet

O colat humanum te foveatque

genus.’

BOSWELL. The epigram is inscribed Ad Ricardum Savage, Arm. Humani

Generis Amatorem. Gent. Mag. viii. 210.

[473] The following striking proof of Johnson’s extreme indigence, when he published the Life of Savage, was communicated to the author, by Mr. Richard Stow, of Apsley, in Bedfordshire, from the information of Mr. Walter Harte, author of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus:

‘Soon after Savage’s Life was published, Mr. Harte dined with Edward Cave, and occasionally praised it. Soon after, meeting him, Cave said, ‘You made a man very happy t’other day.’—‘How could that be,’ says Harte; ‘nobody was there but ourselves.’ Cave answered, by reminding him that a plate of victuals was sent behind a screen, which was to Johnson, dressed so shabbily, that he did not choose to appear; but on hearing the conversation, was highly delighted with the encomiums on his book.’ MALONE. ‘He desired much to be alone, yet he always loved good talk, and often would get behind the screen to hear it.’ Great-Heart’s account of Fearing; Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II. Harte was tutor to Lord Chesterfield’s son. See post, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell’s Collectanea, and March 30, 1781.

[474] ‘Johnson has told me that whole nights have been spent by him and Savage in a perambulation round the squares of Westminster, St. James’s in particular, when all the money they could both raise was less than sufficient to purchase for them the shelter and sordid comforts of a night’s cellar.’ Hawkins’s Johnson, P. 53. Where was Mrs. Johnson living at this time? This perhaps was the time of which Johnson wrote, when, after telling of a silver cup which his mother had bought him, and marked SAM. I., he says:—‘The cup was one of the last pieces of plate which dear Tetty sold in our distress.’ Account of Johnson’s Early Life, p. 18. Yet it is not easy to understand how, if there was a lodging for her, there was not one for him. She might have been living with friends. We have a statement by Hawkins (p. 89) that there was ‘a temporary separation of Johnson from his wife.’ He adds that, ‘while he was in a lodging in Fleet Street, she was harboured by a friend near the Tower.’ This separation, he insinuates, rose by an estrangement caused by Johnson’s ‘indifference in the discharge of the domestic virtues.’ It is far more likely that it rose from destitution.

Shenstone, in a letter written in 1743, gives a curious account of the streets of London through which Johnson wandered. He says;—‘London is really dangerous at this time; the pickpockets, formerly content with mere filching, make no scruple to knock people down with bludgeons in Fleet Street and the Strand, and that at no later hour than eight o’clock at night; but in the Piazzas, Covent Garden, they come in large bodies, armed with couteaus, and attack whole parties, so that the danger of coming out of the playhouses is of some weight in the opposite scale, when I am disposed to go to them oftener than I ought.’ Shenstone’s Works (edit.), iii. 73.

[475] ‘Savage lodged as much by accident as he dined, and passed the night sometimes in mean houses, … and sometimes, when he had not money to support even the expenses of these receptacles, walked about the streets till he was weary, and lay down in the summer upon a bulk, or in the winter, with his associates in poverty, among the ashes of a glass-house. In this manner were passed those days and those nights which nature had enabled him to have employed in elevated speculations, useful studies, or pleasing conversation.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 159.

[476] See ante, p. 94.

[477] Cave was the purchaser of the copyright, and the following is a copy of Johnson’s receipt for the money:—‘The 14th day of December, received of Mr. Ed. Cave the sum of fifteen guineas, in full, for compiling and writing The Life of Richard Savage, Esq., deceased; and in full for all materials thereto applied, and not found by the said Edward Cave. I say, received by me, SAM. JOHNSON. Dec. 14, 1743.’ WRIGHT. The titlepage is as follows:—‘An account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, son of the Earl Rivers. London. Printed for J. Roberts, in Warwick-Lane. MDCCXLIV. It reached a second edition in 1748, a third in 1767, and a fourth in 1769. A French translation was published in 1771.

[478] Roberts published in 1745 Johnson’s Observations on Macbeth. See Gent. Mag. xv. 112, 224.

[479] Horace, Ars Poetica l. 317.

[480] In the autumn of 1752. Northcote’s Reynolds i. 52

[481] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd ed. p. 35 [p. 55. Aug. 19, 1773]. BOSWELL.

[482] ‘mint of ecstasy:’ Savage’s Works (1777), ii. 91.

[483] ‘He lives to build, not boast a generous race: No tenth transmitter of a foolish face.’ Ib.

[484] ‘The Bastard: A poem, inscribed with all due reverence to Mrs. Bret, once Countess of Macclesfield. By Richard Savage, son of the late Earl Rivers. London, printed for T. Worrall, 1728.’ Fol. first edition. P. CUNNINGHAM. Between Savage’s character, as drawn by Johnson, and Johnson himself there are many points of likeness. Each ‘always preserved a steady confidence in his own capacity,’ and of each it might be said:—‘Whatever faults may be imputed to him, the virtue of suffering well cannot be denied him.’ Each ‘excelled in the arts of conversation and therefore willingly practised them.’ In Savage’s refusal to enter a house till some clothes had been taken away that had been left for him ‘with some neglect of ceremonies,’ we have the counterpart of Johnson’s throwing away the new pair of shoes that had been set at his door. Of Johnson the following lines are as true as of Savage:—‘His distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him; in his lowest state he wanted not spirit to assert the natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress that insolence which the superiority of fortune incited; … he never admitted any gross familiarities, or submitted to be treated otherwise than as an equal.’ Of both men it might be said that ‘it was in no time of his life any part of his character to be the first of the company that desired to separate.’ Each ‘would prolong his conversation till midnight, without considering that business might require his friend’s application in the morning;’ and each could plead the same excuse that, ‘when he left his company, he was abandoned to gloomy reflections.’ Each had the same ‘accurate judgment,’ the same ‘quick apprehension,’ the same ‘tenacious memory.’ In reading such lines as the following who does not think, not of the man whose biography was written, but of the biographer himself?—‘He had the peculiar felicity that his attention never deserted him; he was present to every object, and regardful of the most trifling occurrences … To this quality is to be imputed the extent of his knowledge, compared with the small time which he spent in visible endeavours to acquire it. He mingled in cursory conversation with the same steadiness of attention as others apply to a lecture…. His judgment was eminently exact both with regard to writings and to men. The knowledge of life was indeed his chief attainment.’ Of Johnson’s London, as of Savage’s The Wanderer, it might equally well be said:—‘Nor can it without some degree of indignation and concern be told that he sold the copy for ten guineas.’

[485] ‘Savage was now again abandoned to fortune without any other friend than Mr. Wilks; a man who, whatever were his abilities or skill as an actor, deserves at least to be remembered for his virtues, which are not often to be found in the world, and perhaps less often in his profession than in others. To be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case, but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 107.

[486] In his old age he wrote as he had written in the vigour of his manhood:—‘To the censure of Collier … he [Dryden] makes little reply; being at the age of sixty-eight attentive to better things than the claps of a playhouse.’ Johnson’s Works vii. 295. See post, April 29, 1773, and Sept. 21, 1777.

[487] Johnson, writing of the latter half of the seventeenth century, says:—‘The playhouse was abhorred by the Puritans, and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency. A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute licentiousness.’ Johnson’s Works, vii. 270. The following lines in Churchill’s Apology (Poems, i. 65), published in 1761, shew how strong, even at that time, was the feeling against strolling players:—

‘The strolling tribe, a despicable race,

Like wand’ring Arabs shift from place to place.

Vagrants by law, to Justice open laid,

They tremble, of the beadle’s lash afraid,

And fawning cringe, for wretched means of life,

To Madam May’ress, or his Worship’s Wife.’

[488] Johnson himself recognises the change in the public estimation:—‘In Dryden’s time,’ he writes, ‘the drama was very far from that universal approbation which it has now obtained.’ Works, vii. 270.

[489] Giffard was the manager of the theatre in Goodman’s Fields, where Garrick, on Oct. 19, 1741, made his first appearance before a London audience. Murphy’s Garrick, pp. 13, 16.

[490] ‘Colonel Pennington said, Garrick sometimes failed in emphasis; as, for instance, in Hamlet,

“I will speak daggers to her; but use none;”

instead of

“I will speak daggers to her; but use none.”’

Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.

[491] I suspect Dr. Taylor was inaccurate in this statement. The emphasis should be equally upon shalt and not, as both concur to form the negative injunction; and false witness, like the other acts prohibited in the Decalogue, should not be marked by any peculiar emphasis, but only be distinctly enunciated. BOSWELL.

[492] This character of the Life of Savage was not written by Fielding as has been supposed, but most probably by Ralph, who, as appears from the minutes of the partners of The Champion, in the possession of Mr. Reed of Staple Inn, succeeded Fielding in his share of the paper, before the date of that eulogium. BOSWELL. Ralph is mentioned in The Dunciad, iii. 165. A curious account of him is given in Benjamin Franklin’s Memoirs, i. 54-87 and 245.

[493] The late Francis Cockayne Cust, Esq., one of his Majesty’s Counsel. BOSWELL.

[494] Savage’s veracity was questioned, but with little reason; his accounts, though not indeed always the same, were generally consistent. ‘When he loved any man, he suppressed all his faults: and, when he had been offended by him, concealed all his virtues: but his characters were generally true so far as he proceeded; though it cannot be denied that his partiality might have sometimes the effect of falsehood.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 190.