Читать книгу The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - James Boswell - Страница 201

The epitaph is very likely Boswell’s own. For Jenyns’s conversion see post, April 12 and 15, 1778.

[933] Mr. John Payne, afterwards chief accountant of the Bank, one of the four surviving members of the Ivy Lane Club who dined together in 1783. See Hawkins’s Johnson, pp. 220, 563; and post, December, 1783.

[934] See post, under March 19, 1776.

[935] ‘He said, “I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life; it generates kindness and consolidates society.”’ Boswell’s Hebrides, Nov. 21, 1773.

[936] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3d edit. p. 48. [Aug. 19.] BOSWELL.

[937] Johnson’s Works, p. 435.

[938] He was paid at the rate of a little over twopence a line. For this Introduction see Ib. 206.

[939] See post, Oct. 26, 1769.

[940] See post, April 5, 1775.

[941] In 1740 he set apart the yearly sum of £100 to be distributed, by way of premium, to the authors of the best inventions, &c., in Ireland. Chalmers’s Biog. Dict.

[942] Boulter’s Monument. A Panegyrical Poem, sacred to the memory of that great and excellent prelate and patriot, the Most Reverend Dr. Hugh Boulter; Late Lord-Archbishop of Ardmagh, and Primate of All Ireland. Dublin, 1745. Such lines as the following might well have been blotted, but of them the poem is chiefly formed:—

‘My peaceful song in lays instructive paints

The first of mitred peers and Britain’s saints.’ p. 2.

‘Ha! mark! what gleam is that which paints the air?

The blue serene expands! Is Boulter there?’ p. 88.

The poet addresses Boulter’s successor Hoadley, who he says,

‘Shall equal him; while, like Elisha, you

Enjoy his spirit, and his mantle too.’ p. 89.

A note to mantle says ‘Alluding to the metropolitan pallium.’

Boulter is the bishop in Pope’s lines, (Prologue to the Satires, 1. 99):—

‘Does not one table Bavius still admit?

‘Still to one bishop Philips seem a wit?’

Pattison’s Pope’s Satires, p. 107. In the Life of Addison, Johnson mentioning Dr. Madden adds:—‘a name which Ireland ought to honour.’ Johnson’s Works, vii. 455.

[943] See ante, p. 175. Hawkins writes (Life, p. 363):—‘I congratulated him length, on his being now engaged in a work that suited his genius. His answer was:—“I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary; it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.”’

[944] They have been reprinted by Mr. Malone, in the Preface to his edition of Shakspeare. BOSWELL.

[945] At Christmas, 1757, he said that he should publish about March, 1758 (post, Dec. 24, 1757). When March came he said that he should publish before summer (post, March 1, 1758).

[946] In what Johnson says of Pope’s slow progress in translating the Iliad, he had very likely his own case in view. ‘Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure all take their turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker’s mind. He that runs against time has an antagonist not subject to casualties.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 255. In Prior’s Goldsmith (i. 238) we have the following extracts from letters written by Grainger (post, March 21, 1776) to Dr. Percy:—‘June 27, 1758. I have several times called on Johnson to pay him part of your subscription [for his edition of Shakespeare]. I say, part, because he never thinks of working if he has a couple of guineas in his pocket; but if you notwithstanding order me, the whole shall be given him at once.’ ‘July 20, 1758. As to his Shakespeare, movet sed non promovet. I shall feed him occasionally with guineas.’

[947] Hawkins (Life, p. 440) says that ‘Reynolds and some other of his friends, who were more concerned for his reputation than himself seemed to be, contrived to entangle him by a wager, or some other pecuniary engagement, to perform his task by a certain time.’ Just as Johnson was oppressed by the engagement that he had made to edit Shakespeare, so was Cowper by his engagement to edit Milton. ‘The consciousness that there is so much to do and nothing done is a burthen I am not able to bear. Milton especially is my grievance, and I might almost as well be haunted by his ghost, as goaded with such continual reproaches for neglecting him.’ Southey’s Cowper, vii. 163.

[948] From The Ghost, Bk. iii. 1. 801. Boswell makes two slight errors in quoting: ‘You cash’ should be ‘their cash; and ‘you know’ should be ‘we know.’

[949] See post, April 17, 1778.

[950] Mrs. Thrale writing to him in 1777, says:—‘You would rather be sick in London than well in the country.’ Piozzi Letters. i. 394. Yet Johnson, when he could afford to travel, spent far more time in the country than is commonly thought. Moreover a great part of each summer from 1766 to 1782 inclusive he spent at Streatham.

[951] The motto to this number

‘Steriles nec legit arenas,

Ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum.’

(Lucan).

Johnson has thus translated:—

‘Canst thou believe the vast eternal mind

Was e’er to Syrts and Libyan sands confin’d?

That he would choose this waste, this barren ground,

To teach the thin inhabitants around,

And leave his truth in wilds and deserts drown’d?’

[952] It was added to the January number of 1758, but it was dropped in the following numbers.

[953] According to the note in the Gent. Mag. the speech was delivered ‘at a certain respectable talking society.’ The chairman of the meeting is addressed as Mr. President. The speech is vigorously written and is, I have no doubt, by Johnson. ‘It is fit,’ the speaker says, ‘that those whom for the future we shall employ and pay may know they are the servants of a people that expect duty for their money. It is said an address expresses some distrust of the king, or may tend to disturb his quiet. An English king, Mr. President, has no great right to quiet when his people are in misery.’

[954] See post, May 19, 1777.

[955] See post, March 21, 1772.

[956] ‘I have often observed with wonder, that we should know less of Ireland than of any other country in Europe.’ Temple’s Works, iii. 82.

[957] The celebrated oratour, Mr. Flood has shewn himself to be of Dr. Johnson’s opinion; having by his will bequeathed his estate, after the death of his wife Lady Frances, to the University of Dublin; ‘desiring that immediately after the said estate shall come into their possession, they shall appoint two professors, one for the study of the native Erse or Irish language, and the other for the study of Irish antiquities and Irish history, and for the study of any other European language illustrative of, or auxiliary to, the study of Irish antiquities or Irish history; and that they shall give yearly two liberal premiums for two compositions, one in verse, and the other in prose, in the Irish language.’ BOSWELL.

[958] Dr. T. Campbell records in his Diary of a Visit to England (p. 62), that at the dinner at Messieurs Dilly’s (post, April 5, 1775) he ‘ventured to say that the first professors of Oxford, Paris, &c., were Irish. “Sir,” says Johnson, “I believe there is something in what you say, and I am content with it, since they are not Scotch.”’

[959] ‘On Mr. Thrale’s attack of apoplexy in 1779, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—‘I remember Dr. Marsigli, an Italian physician, whose seizure was more violent than Mr. Thrale’s, for he fell down helpless, but his case was not considered as of much danger, and he went safe home, and is now a professor at Padua.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 48.

[960] ‘Now, or late, Vice-Chancellor.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL. He was Vice-Chancellor when Johnson’s degree was conferred (ante, p. 282), but his term of office had now come to an end.

[961] ‘Mr. Warton was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in the preceding year.’ WARTON.-BOSWELL.

[962] ‘Miss Jones lived at Oxford, and was often of our parties. She was a very ingenious poetess, and published a volume of poems; and, on the whole, was a most sensible, agreeable, and amiable woman. She was a sister to the Reverend River Jones, Chanter of Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford, and Johnson used to call her the Chantress. I have heard him often address her in this passage from Il Penseroso:

“Thee, Chantress, oft the woods among I woo,” etc.

She died unmarried.’ WHARTON

[963] Tom. iii. p. 482. BOSWELL.

[964] Of Shakspeare. BOSWELL.

[965] This letter is misdated. It was written in Jan. 1759, and not in 1758. Johnson says that he is forty-nine. In Jan. 1758 he was forty-eight. He mentions the performance of Cleane, which was at the end of 1758; and he says that ‘Murphy is to have his Orphan of China acted next month.’ It was acted in the spring of 1759.

[966] Juvenal, Sat. iii. 1.

‘Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel,

When injured Thales bids the town farewell,

Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend,

I praise the hermit, but regret the friend;

Resolved at length from vice and London far

To breathe in distant fields a purer air,

And fixed on Cambria’s solitary shore

Give to St. David one true Briton more.’

Johnson’s London, l. 1.

[967] Mr. Garrick. BOSWELL.

[968] Mr. Dodsley, the Authour of Cleone. BOSWELL. Garrick, according to Davies, had rejected Dodsley’s Cleone, ‘and had termed it a cruel, bloody, and unnatural play.’ Davies’s Garrick, i. 223. Johnson himself said of it:—‘I am afraid there is more blood than brains.’ Post, 1780, in Mr. Langton’s Collection. The night it was brought out at Covent Garden, Garrick appeared for the first time as Marplot in the Busy Body at Drury Lane. The next morning he wrote to congratulate Dodsley on his success, and asked him at the same time to let him know how he could support his interest without absolutely giving up his own. To this Dodsley returned a cold reply. Garrick wrote back as follows:—

‘Master Robert Dodsley,

When I first read your peevish answer to my well-meant proposal to you, I was much disturbed at it—but when I considered, that some minds cannot bear the smallest portion of success, I most sincerely pitied you; and when I found in the same letter, that you were graciously pleased to dismiss me from your acquaintance, I could not but confess so apparent an obligation, and am with due acknowledgements,

Master Robert Dodsley,

Your most obliged

David Garrick.’

Garrick Corres., i. 80 (where the letters that passed are wrongly dated 1757). Mrs. Bellamy in her Life (iii. 109) says that on the evening of the performance she was provoked by something that Dodsley said, ‘which,’ she continues, ‘made me answer that good man with a petulance which afterwards gave me uneasiness. I told him that I had a reputation to lose as an actress; but, as for his piece, Mr. Garrick had anticipated the damnation of it publicly, the preceding evening, at the Bedford Coffee-house, where he had declared that it could not pass muster, as it was the very worst piece ever exhibited.’ Shenstone (Works, iii. 288) writing five weeks after the play was brought out, says:—‘Dodsley is now going to print his fourth edition. He sold 2000 of his first edition the very first day he published it.’ The price was eighteen-pence.

[969] Mrs. Bellamy (Life, iii. 108) says that Johnson was present at the last rehearsal. ‘When I came to repeat, “Thou shalt not murder,” Dr. Johnson caught me by the arm, and that somewhat too briskly, saying, at the same time, “It is a commandment, and must be spoken, Thou shalt not murder.” As I had not then the honour of knowing personally that great genius, I was not a little displeased at his inforcing his instructions with so much vehemence.’ The next night she heard, she says, amidst the general applause, ‘the same voice which had instructed me in the commandment, exclaim aloud from the pit, “I will write a copy of verses upon her myself.” I knew that my success was insured.’ See post, May 11, 1783.

[970] Dodsley had published his London and his Vanity of Human Wishes (ante, pp. 124, 193), and had had a large share in the Dictionary, (ante, p. 183).

[971] It is to this that Churchill refers in the following lines:—

‘Let them [the Muses] with Glover o’er Medea doze;

Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone’s woes,

Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears,

Melts as they melt, and weeps with weeping Peers.’

The Journey. Poems, ii. 328.

[972] See post p. 350, note.

[973] Mr. Samuel Richardson, authour of Clarissa. BOSWELL.

[974] In 1753 when in Devonshire he charged five guineas a head (Taylor’s Reynolds, i. 89); shortly afterwards, when he removed to London, twelve guineas (ib. p. 101); in 1764, thirty guineas; for a whole length 150 guineas (ib. p. 224). Northcote writes that ‘he sometimes has lamented the being interrupted in his work by idle visitors, saying, “those persons do not consider that my time is worth to me five guineas an hour.”’ Northcote’s Reynolds, i. 83.

[975] ‘Miss Reynolds at first amused herself by painting miniature portraits, and in that part of the art was particularly successful. In her attempts at oil-painting, however, she did not succeed, which made Reynolds say jestingly, that her pictures in that way made other people laugh and him cry; and as he did not approve of her painting in oil, she generally did it by stealth.’ Ib. ii. 160.

[976] Murphy was far from happy. The play was not produced till April; by the date of Johnson’s letter, he had not by any means reached the end of what he calls ‘the first, and indeed, the last, disagreeable controversy that he ever had with Mr. Garrick.’ Murphy’s Garrick, p. 213.

[977] This letter was an answer to one in which was enclosed a draft for the payment of some subscriptions to his Shakspeare. BOSWELL.

[978] In the Preface he says:—(Works, v. 52) ‘I have not passed over with affected superiority what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance.’

[979] Northcote gives the following account of this same garret in describing how Reynolds introduced Roubiliac to Johnson. ‘Johnson received him with much civility, and took them up into a garret, which he considered as his library; where, besides his books, all covered with dust, there was an old crazy deal table, and a still worse and older elbow chair, having only three legs. In this chair Johnson seated himself, after having, with considerable dexterity and evident practice, first drawn it up against the wall, which served to support it on that side on which the leg was deficient.’ Northcote’s Reynolds, i. 75. Miss Reynolds improves on the account. She says that ‘before Johnson had the pension he literally dressed like a beggar; and, from what I have been told, he as literally lived as such; at least as to common conveniences in his apartments, wanting even a chair to sit on, particularly in his study, where a gentleman who frequently visited him, whilst writing his Idlers, constantly found him at his desk, sitting on one with three legs; and on rising from it, he remarked that Dr. Johnson never forgot its defect, but would either hold it in his hand, or place it with great composure against some support, taking no notice of its imperfection to his visitor. It was remarkable in Johnson, that no external circumstances ever prompted him to make any apology, or to seem even sensible of their existence.’ Croker’s Boswell, p. 832. There can be little question that she is describing the same room—a room in a house in which Miss Williams was lodged, and most likely Mr. Levet, and in which Mr. Burney dined; and in which certainly there must have been chairs. Yet Mr. Carlyle, misled by her account, says:—‘In his apartments, at one time, there were unfortunately no chairs.’ Carlyle’s Miscellanies, ed. 1872, iv. 127.

[980] In his Life of Pope (Works, viii. 272) Johnson calls Theobald ‘a man of heavy diligence, with very slender powers.’ In the Preface to Shakspeare he admits that ‘what little he did was commonly right.’ Ib. v. 137. The Editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare on the other hand say:—‘Theobald, as an Editor, is incomparably superior to his predecessors, and to his immediate successor Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his materials. Many most brilliant emendations are due to him.’ On Johnson’s statement that ‘Warburton would make two-and-fifty Theobalds, cut into slices,’ they write:—‘From this judgment, whether they be compared as critics or editors, we emphatically dissent.’ Cambridge Shakespeare, i., xxxi., xxxiv., note. Among Theobald’s ‘brilliant emendations’ are ‘a’babbled of green fields’ (Henry V, ii. 3), and ‘lackeying the varying tide.’ (Antony and Cleopatra, i.4).

[981] ‘A familiar epistle [by Lord Bolingbroke] to the most impudent man living, 1749.’ Brit. Mus. Catal.

[982] ‘Mallet, by address or accident, perhaps by his dependence on the prince [of Wales], found his way to Bolingbroke, a man whose pride and petulance made his kindness difficult to gain or keep, and whom Mallet was content to court by an act, which, I hope, was unwillingly performed. When it was found that Pope had clandestinely printed an unauthorised number of the pamphlet called The Patriot King, Bolingbroke, in a fit of useless fury, resolved to blast his memory, and employed Mallet (1749) as the executioner of his vengeance. Mallet had not virtue, or had not spirit, to refuse the office; and was rewarded not long after with the legacy of Lord Bolingbroke’s works.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 467. See ante, p. 268, and Walpole’s Letters, ii. 159.

[983] A View of Lord Bolingbroke’s Philosophy in Four Letters to a Friend, 1754-5.

[984] A paper under this name had been started seven years earlier. See Carter and Talbot Corres., ii. 33.

[985] In the two years in which Johnson wrote for this paper it saw many changes. The first Idler appeared in No. 2 of the Universal Chronicle or Weekly Gazette, which was published not by Newbery, but by J. Payne. On April 29, this paper took the title of Payne’s Universal Chronicle, etc. On Jan. 6, 1759, it resumed the old title and was published by R. Stevens. On Jan. 5, 1760, the title was changed to The Universal Chronicle and Westminster Journal, and it was published by W. Faden and R. Stevens. On March 15, 1760, it was published by R. Stevens alone. The paper consisted of eight pages. The Idler, which varied in length, came first, and was printed in larger characters, much like a leading article. The changes in title and ownership seem to show that in spite of Johnson’s contributions it was not a successful publication.

[986] ‘Those papers may be considered as a kind of syllabus of all Reynolds’s future discourses, and certainly occasioned him some thinking in their composition. I have heard him say, that Johnson required them from him on a sudden emergency, and on that account, he sat up the whole night to complete them in time; and by it he was so much disordered, that it produced a vertigo in his head.’ Northcote’s Reynolds, i. 89, Reynolds must have spoken of only one paper; as the three, appearing as they did on Sept. 29, Oct. 20, and Nov. 10, could not have been required at one time.

[987] ‘To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavours with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.’ The Idler, No. 17.

[988] Prayers and Meditations, p. 30 [36], BOSWELL.

[989] In July, 1759.

[990] This number was published a few days after his mother’s death. It is in the form of a letter, which is thus introduced:-‘The following letter relates to an affliction perhaps not necessary to be imparted to the publick; but I could not persuade myself to suppress it, because I think I know the sentiments to be sincere, and I feel no disposition to provide for this day any other entertainment.’

[991] In the table of contents the title of No. 58 is, ‘Expectations of pleasure frustrated.’ In the original edition of The Idler no titles are given. In this paper he shews that ‘nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.’

[992] In this paper he begins by considering, ‘why the only thinking being of this globe is doomed to think merely to be wretched, and to pass his time from youth to age in fearing or in suffering calamities.’ He ends by asserting that ‘of what virtue there is, misery produces far the greater part.’

[993] ‘There are few things,’ he writes, ‘not purely evil, of which we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last…. The secret horrour of the last is inseparable from a thinking being, whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful.’

[994] ‘I asked him one day, why the Idlers were published without mottoes. He replied, that it was forborne the better to conceal himself, and escape discovery. “But let us think of some now,” said he, “for the next edition. We can fit the two volumnes in two hours, can’t we?” Accordingly he recollected, and I wrote down these following (nine mottoes) till come friend coming in, in about five minutes, put an end to our further progress on the subject.’ Piossi Letters, ii. 388.

[995] See post, July 14 and 26, 1763, April 14, 1775, and Aug. 2, 1784, note for instances in which Johnson ridicules the notion that weather and seasons have any necessary effect on man; also April 17, 1778. In the Life of Milton (Works. vii. 102), he writes:—‘this dependence of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be derided as the fumes of vain imagination. Sapiens dominabitur astro. The author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little help from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted. But while this notion has possession of the head, it produces the inability with it supposes. Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes; possunt quin posse vidertur.’ Boswell records, in his Hebrides (Aug. 16, 1773), that when ‘somebody talked of happy moments for composition,’ Johnson said:—‘Nay, a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.’ Reynolds, who Alas! avowed how much he had learnt from Johnson (ante, p. 245), says much the same in his Seventh Discourse: ‘But when, in plain prose, we gravely talk of courting the Muse in shady bowers; waiting the call and inspiration of Genius … of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the vernal equinox … when we talk such language or entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious.’ Reynolds’s Works, i. 150. On the other hand, in 1773 Johnson recorded:—‘Between Easter and Whitsuntide, having always considered that time as propitious to study, I attempted to learn the Low-Dutch language.’ Post, under May 9, 1773. In The Rambler, No. 80, he says:—‘To the men of study and imagination the winter is generally the chief time of labour. Gloom and silence produce composure of mind and concentration of ideas.’ In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, written in 1775, he says:—‘Most men have their bright and their Cloudy days, at least they have days when they put their powers into act, and days when they suffer them to repose.’ Piozzi Letters, i. 265. In 1781 he wrote:—‘I thought myself above assistance or obstruction from the seasons; but find the autumnal blast sharp and nipping, and the fading world an uncomfortable prospect.’ Ib. ii. 220. Again, in the last year of his life he wrote:—‘The: weather, you know, has not been balmy. I am now reduced to think, and am at least content to talk, of the weather. Pride must have a fall.’ Post, Aug. 2, 1784.

[996] Addison’s Cato, act i. sc. 4.

[997] Johnson, reviewing the Duchess of Marlborough’s attack on Queen Mary, says (Works, vi. 8):—‘This is a character so different from all those that have been hitherto given of this celebrated princess, that the reader stands in suspense, till he considers that … it has hitherto had this great advantage, that it has only been compared with those of kings.’

[998] Johnson had explained how it comes to pass that Englishmen talk so commonly of the weather. He continues:—‘Such is the reason of our practice; and who shall treat it with contempt? Surely not the attendant on a court, whose business is to watch the looks of a being weak and foolish as himself, and whose vanity is to recount the names of men, who might drop into nothing, and leave no vacuity…. The weather is a nobler and more interesting subject; it is the present state of the skies and of the earth, on which plenty and famine are suspended, on which millions depend for the necessaries of life.’ ‘Garrick complained that when he went to read before the court, not a look or a murmur testified approbation; there was a profound stillness—every one only watched to see what the king thought.’ Hazlitt’s Conversations of Northcote, p. 262.

[999] The Idler, No. 90. See post, April 3, 1773, where he declaims against action in public speaking.

[1000] He now and then repeats himself. Thus, in The Idler, No. 37, he moralises on the story, how Socrates, passing through the fair at Athens, cried out:—‘How many things are here which I do not need!’ though he had already moralised on it in the Adventurer, Nos. 67, 119.

[1001] No. 34.

[1002] Poems on Several Occasions, by Thomas Blacklock, p. 179. See post, Aug. 5, 1763, and Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773.

[1003] ‘Among the papers of Newbery, in the possession of Mr. Murray, is the account rendered on the collection of The Idler into two small volumes, when the arrangement seems to have been that Johnson should receive two-thirds of the profits.

The Idler.

‘DR. £. s. d.

Paid for Advertising.. 20 0 6

Printing two vols., 1,500 41 13 0

Paper… … . 52 3 0

*

£113 16 6

Profit on the edition . 126 3 6

*

£240 0 0

*

‘CR. £. s. d.

1,500 Sets at 16£ per 100 240 0 0

*

Dr. Johnson two-thirds 84 2 4

Mr. Newbery one-third. 42 1 2

*

£126 3 6

*

Forster’s Goldsmith, i. 204.

If this account is correctly printed, the sale must have been slow. The first edition (2 vols. 5s.) was published in Oct. 1761, (Gent. Mag. xxxi. 479). Johnson is called Dr. in the account; but he was not made an LL.D. till July 1765. Prior, in his Life of Goldsmith (i. 459), publishes an account between Goldsmith and Newbery in which the first entry is:—

‘1761. Oct. 14, 1 set of

The Idler… . . £0 50 0.’

Johnson, as Newbery’s papers show, a year later bought a copy of

Goldsmith’s Life of Nash; ib. p. 405.

[1004] See ante, p. 306.

[1005] This paper may be found in Stockdale’s supplemental volume of Johnson’s Miscellaneous Pieces. BOSWELL. Stockdale’s supplemental volumes—for there are two—are vols. xii. and xiii. of what is known as ‘Hawkins’s edition.’ In this paper (Works, iv. 450) he represents in a fable two vultures speculating on that mischievous being, man, ‘who is the only beast who kills that which he does not devour,’ who at times is seen to move in herds, while ‘there is in every herd one that gives directions to the rest, and seems to be more eminently delighted with a wide carnage.’

[1006] ‘Receipts for Shakespeare.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[1007] ‘Then of Lincoln College. Now Sir Robert Chambers, one of the Judges in India.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[1008] Old Mr. Langton’s niece. See post, July 14, 1763.

[1009] ‘Mr. Langton.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[1010] Boswell records:—‘Lady Di Beauclerk told me that Langton had never been to see her since she came to Richmond, his head was so full of the militia and Greek. “Why,” said I, “Madam, he is of such a length he is awkward and not easily moved.” “But,” said she, “if he had lain himself at his length, his feet had been in London, and his head might have been here eodem die.”’ Boswelliana, p. 297.

[1011] ‘Part of the impression of the Shakespeare, which Dr. Johnson conducted alone, and published by subscription. This edition came out in 1765.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[1012] Stockdale records (Memoirs, ii. 191), that after he had entered on his charge as domestic tutor to Lord Craven’s son, he called on Johnson, who asked him how he liked his place. On his hesitating to answer, he said: ‘You must expect insolence.’ He added that in his youth he had entertained great expectations from a powerful family. “At length,” he said, “I found that their promises, and consequently my expectations, vanished into air…. But, Sir, they would have treated me much worse, if they had known that motives from which I paid my court to them were purely selfish, and what opinion I had formed of them.” He added, that since he knew mankind, he had not, on any occasion, been the sport of such delusion and that he had never been disappointed by anyone but himself.’

[1013] This, and some of the other letters to Langton, were not received by Boswell till the first volume of the second edition had been carried through the press. He gave them as a supplement to the second volume. The date of this letter was there wrongly given as June 27, 1758. In the third edition it was corrected. Nevertheless the letter was misplaced as if the wrong date were the right one. Langton, as I have shewn (ante, p. 247), subscribed the articles at Oxford on July 7, 1757. He must have come into residence, as Johnson did (ante, p. 58), some little while before this subscription.

[1014] Major-General Alexander Dury, of the first regiment of foot-guards, who fell in the gallant discharge of his duty, near St. Cas, in the well-known unfortunate expedition against France, in 1758. His lady and Mr. Langton’s mother was sisters. He left an only son, Lieutenant-Colonel Dury, who has a company in the same regiment. BOSWELL. The expedition had been sent against St. Malo early in September. Failing in the attempt, the land forces retreated to St. Cas, where, while embarking, they were attacked by the French. About 400 of our soldiers were made prisoners, and 600 killed and wounded. Ann. Reg.i.68.

[1015] See post, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell’s Collectanea.

[1016] Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 365. BOSWELL. ‘In the beginning of the year 1759 an event happened for which it might be imagined he was well prepared, the death of his mother, who had attained the age of ninety; but he, whose mind had acquired no firmness by the contemplation of mortality, was as little able to sustain the shock, as he would have been had this loss befallen him in his nonage.’

[1017] We may apply to Johnson in his behaviour to his mother what he said of Pope in his behaviour to his parents:—‘Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has among its soothing and quiet comforts few things better to give than such a son.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 281. In The Idler of January 27, 1759 (No. 41), Johnson shews his grief for his loss. ‘The last year, the last day must come. It has come, and is past. The life which made my own life pleasant is at an end, and the gates of death are shut upon my prospects…. Such is the condition of our present existence that life must one time lose its associations, and every inhabitant of the earth must walk downward to the grave alone and unregarded, without any partner of his joy or grief, without any interested witness of his misfortunes or success. Misfortune, indeed, he may yet feel; for where is the bottom of the misery of man? But what is success to him that has none to enjoy it? Happiness is not found in self-contemplation; it is perceived only when it is reflected from another.’ In Rasselas (ch. xlv.) he makes a sage say with a sigh:—‘Praise is to have an old man an empty sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband.’ He here says once more what he had already said in his Letter to Lord Chesterfield (ante, p. 261), and in the Preface to the Dictionary (ante, p. 297).

[1018] Writing to his Birmingham friend, Mr. Hector, on Oct. 7, 1756, he said:—‘I have been thinking every month of coming down into the country, but every month has brought its hinderances. From that kind of melancholy indisposition which I had when we lived together at Birmingham I have never been free, but have always had it operating against my health and my life with more or less violence. I hope however to see all my friends, all that are remaining, in no very long time.’ Notes and Queries, 6th S. iii. 301. No doubt his constant poverty and the need that he was under of making ‘provision for the day that was passing over him’ had had much to do in keeping him from a journey to Lichfield. A passage in one of his letters shews that fourteen years later the stage-coach took twenty-six hours in going from London to Lichfield. (Piozzi Letters, i. 55.) The return journey was very uncertain; for ‘our carriages,’ he wrote, ‘are only such as pass through the place sometimes full and sometimes vacant.’ A traveller had to watch for a place (ib. p. 51). As measured by time London was, in 1772, one hour farther from Lichfield than it now is from Marseilles. It is strange, when we consider the long separation between Johnson and his mother, that in Rasselas, written just after her death, he makes Imlac say:-‘There is such communication [in Europe] between distant places, that one friend can hardly be said to be absent from another.’ Rasselas, chap, xi. His step-daughter, Miss Porter, though for many years she was well off, had never been to London. Post, March 23, 1776. Nay, according to Horace Walpole (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 327), ‘George III. had never seen the sea, nor ever been thirty miles from London at the age of thirty-four.’

[1019] For the letters written at this time by Johnson to his mother and Miss Porter, see Appendix B.

[1020] Rasselas was published in two volumes, duodecimo, and was sold for five shillings. It was reviewed in the Gent. Mag. for April, and was no doubt published in that month. In a letter to Miss Porter dated March 23, 1759 (See Appendix), Johnson says:—‘I am going to publish a little story-book, which I will send you when it is out.’ I may here remark that the Gent. Mag. was published at the end of the month, or even later. Thus the number for April, 1759, contains news as late as April 30. The name Rasselas Johnson got from Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia. On p. 102 of that book he mentions ‘Rassela Christos, Lieutenant-General to _Abysinia; Sultan Segued.’ On p. 262 he explains the meaning of the first part of the word:—‘There is now a Generalissimo established under the title of Ras, or Chief.’ The title still exists. Colonel Gordon mentions Ras Arya and Ras Aloula. The Rev. W. West, in his Introduction to Rasselas, p. xxxi (Sampson Low and Co.), says:—‘The word Ras, which is common to the Amharic, Arabic, and Hebrew tongues, signifies a head, and hence a prince, chief, or captain…. Sela Christos means either “Picture of Christ,” or “For the sake of Christ.”’

[1021] Hawkins’s Johnson, p. 367.

[1022] See post, June 2, 1781. Finding it then accidentally in a chaise with Mr. Boswell, he read it eagerly. This was doubtless long after his declaration to Sir Joshua Reynolds. MALONE.

[1023] Baretti told Malone that ‘Johnson insisted on part of the money being paid immediately, and accordingly received £70. Any other person with the degree of reputation he then possessed would have got £400 for that work, but he never understood the art of making the most of his productions.’ Prior’s Malone, p. 160. Some of the other circumstances there related by Baretti are not correct.

[1024] Hawkesworth received £6000 for his revision of Cook’s Voyages; post, May 7, 1773.

[1025] See post, March 4, 1773.

[1026] Ecclesiastes, i. 14.

[1027] See post, May 16, 1778. It should seem that Candide was published in the latter half of February 1759. Grimm in his letter of March 1, speaks of its having just appeared. ‘M. de Voltaire vient de nous égayer par un petit roman.’ He does not mention it in his previous letter of Feb. 15. Grimm, Carres. Lit. (edit. 1829), ii. 296. Johnson’s letter to Miss Porter, quoted in the Appendix, shows that Rasselas was written before March 23; how much earlier cannot be known. Candide is in the May list of books in the Gent. Mag. (pp. 233-5), price 2_s_. 6_d_., and with it two translations, each price 1_s_. 6_d_.

[1028] See post, June 13, 1763.

[1029] In the original,—‘which, perhaps, prevails.’ Rasselas, ch. xxxi.

[1030] This is the second time that Boswell puts ‘morbid melancholy’ in quotation marks (ante, p. 63). Perhaps he refers to a passage in Hawkins’s Johnson (p. 287), where the author speaks of Johnson’s melancholy as ‘this morbid affection, as he was used to call it.’

[1031] ‘Perfect through sufferings.’ Hebrews, ii. 10.

[1032] Perhaps the reference is to the conclusion of Le Monde comme il va:—‘Il résolut … de laisser aller le monde comme il va; car, dit il, si tout riest pas bien, tout est passable.’

[1033] Gray, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College.

[1034] Johnson writing to Mrs. Thrale said:—’Vivite lacti is one of the great rules of health.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 55. ‘It was the motto of a bishop very eminent for his piety and good works in King Charles the Second’s reign, Inservi Deo et laetare—“Serve God and be cheerful.”’ Addison’s Freeholder, No. 45.

[1035] Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL.

[1036] This paper was in such high estimation before it was collected into volumes, that it was seized on with avidity by various publishers of newspapers and magazines, to enrich their publications. Johnson, to put a stop to this unfair proceeding, wrote for the Universal Chronicle the following advertisement; in which there is, perhaps, more pomp of words than the occasion demanded:

‘London, January 5, 1759. ADVERTISEMENT. The proprietors of the paper intitled The Idler, having found that those essays are inserted in the newspapers and magazines with so little regard to justice or decency, that the Universal Chronicle, in which they first appear, is not always mentioned, think it necessary to declare to the publishers of those collections, that however patiently they have hitherto endured these injuries, made yet more injurious by contempt, they have now determined to endure them no longer. They have already seen essays, for which a very large price is paid, transferred, with the most shameless rapacity, into the weekly or monthly compilations, and their right, at least for the present, alienated from them, before they could themselves be said to enjoy it. But they would not willingly be thought to want tenderness, even for men by whom no tenderness hath been shewn. The past is without remedy, and shall be without resentment. But those who have been thus busy with their sickles in the fields of their neighbours, are henceforward to take notice, that the time of impunity is at an end. Whoever shall, without our leave, lay the hand of rapine upon our papers, is to expect that we shall vindicate our due, by the means which justice prescribes, and which are warranted by the immemorial prescriptions of honourable trade. We shall lay hold, in our turn, on their copies, degrade them from the pomp of wide margin and diffuse typography, contract them into a narrow space, and sell them at an humble price; yet not with a view of growing rich by confiscations, for we think not much better of money got by punishment than by crimes. We shall, therefore, when our losses are repaid, give what profit shall remain to the Magdalens; for we know not who can be more properly taxed for the support of penitent prostitutes, than prostitutes in whom there yet appears neither penitence nor shame.’ BOSWELL.

[1037] I think that this letter belongs to a later date, probably to 1765 or 1766. As we learn, post, April 10, 1776, Simpson was a barrister ‘who fell into a dissipated course of life.’ On July 2, 1765, Johnson records that he repaid him ten guineas which he had borrowed in the lifetime of Mrs. Johnson (his wife). He also lent him ten guineas more. If it was in 1759 that Simpson was troubled by small debts, it is most unlikely that Johnson let six years more pass without repaying him a loan which even then was at least of seven years’ standing. Moreover, in this letter Johnson writes:—‘I have been invited, or have invited myself, to several parts of the kingdom.’ The only visits, it seems, that he paid between 1754-1762 were to Oxford in 1759 and to Lichfield in the winter of 1761-2. After 1762, when his pension gave him means, he travelled frequently. Besides all this, he says of his step-daughter:— ‘I will not incommode my dear Lucy by coming to Lichfield, while her present lodging is of any use to her.’ Miss Porter seems to have lived in his house till she had built one for herself. Though his letter to her of Jan. 10, 1764 (Croker’s Boswell, p. 163), shews that it was then building, yet she had not left his house on Jan. 14, 1766 (ib. p. 173).

‘To JOSEPH SIMPSON, ESQ.