Читать книгу The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - James Boswell - Страница 208

The appointment for the examination stands as it did when I saw you last, viz., between 8 and 9 this evening. Mr. Johnson was applied to by a friend of mine soon after you left him, and promised to be with us. Should be glad, if convenient, you’d show him the way hither. Mrs. Oakes, of Dr. Macauley’s recommendation, I should be glad to have here on the occasion; and think it would do honour to the list of examiners to have Dr. Macauley with us.

I am, Dear Sir, your most obedient servant, STE. ALDRICH.

If Dr Macauley can conveniently attend, should be glad you’d acquaint Lord Dartmouth with it, who seemed to be at loss to recommend a gentleman of the faculty at his end of the town.

St. John’s Square. Monday noon.

To the Revd. Dr. Douglas.’

Endorsed ‘Mr. Aldrich, Feb. 1762, about the Cock Lane ghost.—Examination at his house.’

[1197] Boswell was with Paoli when news came that a Corsican under sentence of death ‘had consented to accept of his life, upon condition of becoming hangman. This made a great noise among the Corsicans, who were enraged at the creature, and said their nation was now disgraced. Paoli did not think so. He said to me:—“I am glad of this. It will be of service. It will contribute to form us to a just subordination. As we must have Corsican tailours, and Corsican shoemakers, we must also have a Corsican hangman.”’ Boswell’s Corsica, p. 201. See post, July 20 and 21, 1763, April 13, 1773, and March 28, 1775.

[1198] ‘Mallet’s Dramas had their day, a short day, and are forgotten.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 468.

[1199] See ante, p. 384, note.

[1200] ‘A man had heard that Dempster was very clever, and therefore expected that he could say nothing but good things. Being brought acquainted, Mr. Dempster said to him with much politeness, “I hope, Sir, your lady and family are well.” “Ay, ay, man,” said he, “pray where is the great wit in that speech?”’ Boswelliana, p. 307. Mr. Dempster is mentioned by Burns in The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer to the Scotch Representatives in the House of Commons:—‘Dempster, a true-blue Scot I’se warran.’ In 1769 he was elected member for the Forfar Boroughs. Parl. Hist. xvi. 453.

[1201] The Critical Review, in which Mallet himself sometimes wrote, characterised this pamphlet as ‘the crude efforts of envy, petulance and self conceit.’ There being thus three epithets, we, the three authours, had a humourous contention how each should be appropriated. BOSWELL.

[1202] Johnson (Works, ix. 86) talks of the chiefs ‘gradually degenerating from patriarchal rulers to rapacious landlords.’ In Boswell’s Hebrides, the subject is often examined.

[1203] See ante, i. 365.

[1204] ‘Dr. Burney spoke with great warmth of affection of Dr. Johnson; said he was the kindest creature in the world when he thought he was loved and respected by others. He would play the fool among friends, but he required deference. It was necessary to ask questions and make no assertion. If you said two and two make four, he would say, “How will you prove that, Sir?” Dr. Burney seemed amiably sensitive to every unfavourable remark on his old friend.’ H. C. Robinson’s Diary, iii. 485.

[1205] See post, April 24, 1777, note, and Oct. l0, 1779, where he consults Johnson about the study of Greek. He formed wishes, scarcely plans of study but never studied.

[1206] See post, Feb. 18, 1777. It was Graham who so insulted Goldsmith by saying:—”Tis not you I mean, Dr. Minor; ‘tis Dr. Major there.’ Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 24, 1773.

[1207] See post, Sept. 19, 1777.

[1208] Of Mathematics Goldsmith wrote:—‘This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal.’ See post, March 15, 1776, note.

[1209] In his Present State of Polite Learning, ch. 13 (Misc. Works, i. 266), Goldsmith writes:—‘A man who is whirled through Europe in a post-chaise, and the pilgrim who walks the grand tour on foot, will form very different conclusions. Haud inexpertus loquor.’ The last three words are omitted in the second edition.

[1210] George Primrose in the Vicar of Wakefield (ch. 20), after describing these disputations, says:—‘In this manner I fought my way towards England.’

[1211] Dr. Warton wrote to his brother on Jan. 22, 1766:—‘Of all solemn coxcombs Goldsmith is the first; yet sensible—but affects to use Johnson’s hard words in conversation.’ Wooll’s Warton, p. 312.

[1212] It was long believed that the author of one of Goldsmith’s early works was Lord Lyttelton. ‘“Whenever I write anything,” said Goldsmith, “I think the public make a point to know nothing about it.” So the present book was issued as a History of England in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son. The persuasion at last became general that the author was Lord Lyttelton, and the name of that grave good lord is occasionally still seen affixed to it on the bookstalls.’ Forster’s Goldsmith, i. 301. The Traveller was the first of his works to which he put his name. It was published in 1764. 16. p. 364.

[1213] Published in 1759.

[1214] Published in 1760-1.

[1215] See his Epitaph in Westminster Abbey, written by Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL.

‘Qui nullum fere scribendi genus

Non tetigit,

Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.’

Post, under June 22, 1776.

[1216] In allusion to this, Mr. Horace Walpole, who admired his writings, said he was ‘an inspired ideot;’ and Garrick described him as one

‘——for shortness call’d Noll, Who wrote like an angel, and talk’d like poor Poll.’

Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned to me that he frequently heard Goldsmith talk warmly of the pleasure of being liked, and observe how hard it would be if literary excellence should preclude a man from that satisfaction, which he perceived it often did, from the envy which attended it; and therefore Sir Joshua was convinced that he was intentionally more absurd, in order to lessen himself in social intercourse, trusting that his character would be sufficiently supported by his works. If it indeed was his intention to appear absurd in company, he was often very successful. But with due deference to Sir Joshua’s ingenuity, I think the conjecture too refined. BOSWELL.

Horace Walpole’s saying of the ‘inspired ideot’ is recorded in Davies’s Garrick, ii. 151. Walpole, in his Letters, describes Goldsmith as ‘a changeling that has had bright gleams of parts,’ (v. 458); ‘a fool, the more wearing for having some sense,’ (vi. 29); ‘a poor soul that had sometimes parts, though never common sense,’ (ib. p. 73); and ‘an idiot, with once or twice a fit of parts,’ (ib. p. 379). Garrick’s lines—

‘Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,

Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll,’

are his imaginary epitaph on Goldsmith, which, with the others, gave rise to Retaliation. Forster’s Goldsmith, ii. 405.

[1217] Rousseau accounting for the habit he has ‘de balbutier promptement des paroles sans idées,’ continues, ‘je crois que voilà de quoi faire assez comprendre comment n’étant pas un sot, j’ai cependant souvent passé pour l’être, même chez des gens en état de bien juger…. Le parti que j’ai pris d’écrire et de me cacher est précisément celui qui me convenait. Moi présent on n’aurait jamais su ce que je valois, on ne l’aurait pas soupconné même.’ Les Confessions, Livre iii. See post, April 27, 1773, where Boswell admits that ‘Goldsmith was often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists with Johnson himself:’ and April 30, 1773, where Reynolds says of him: ‘There is no man whose company is more liked.’

[1218] Northcote, a few weeks before his death, said to Mr. Prior:—‘When Goldsmith entered a room, Sir, people who did not know him became for a moment silent from awe of his literary reputation; when he came out again, they were riding upon his back.’ Prior’s Goldsmith, i. 440. According to Dr. Percy:—‘His face was marked with strong lines of thinking. His first appearance was not captivating; but when he grew easy and cheerful in company, he relaxed into such a display of good humour as soon removed every unfavourable impression.’ Goldsmith’s Misc. Works, i. 117.

[1219] ‘Dr. Goldsmith told me, he himself envied Shakespeare.’ Walpole’s Letters, vi. 379. Boswell, later on (post, May 9, 1773), says:—‘In my opinion Goldsmith had not more of it [an envious disposition] than other people have, but only talked of it freely.’ See also post, April 12, 1778. According to Northcote, ‘Sir Joshua said that Goldsmith considered public notoriety or fame as one great parcel, to the whole of which he laid claim, and whoever partook of any part of it, whether dancer, singer, slight of hand man, or tumbler, deprived him of his right.’ Northcote’s Reynolds, i. 248. See post, April 7, 1778, where Johnson said that ‘Goldsmith was not an agreeable companion, for he talked always for fame;’ and April 9, 1778.

[1220] Miss Hornecks, one of whom is now married to Henry Bunbury, Esq., and the other to Colonel Gwyn. BOSWELL.

[1221] ‘Standing at the window of their hotel [in Lisle] to see a company of soldiers in the Square, the beauty of the sisters Horneck drew such marked admiration, that Goldsmith, heightening his drollery with that air of solemnity so generally a point in his humour and so often more solemnly misinterpreted, turned off from the window with the remark that elsewhere he too could have his admirers. The Jessamy Bride, Mrs. Gwyn, was asked about the occurrence not many years ago; remembered it as a playful jest; and said how shocked she had subsequently been “to see it adduced in print as a proof of his envious disposition.”’ Forster’s Goldsmith, ii. 217.

[1222] Puppets.

[1223] He went home with Mr. Burke to supper; and broke his shin by attempting to exhibit to the company how much better he could jump over a stick than the puppets. BOSWELL. Mr. Hoole was one day in a coach with Johnson, when ‘Johnson, who delighted in rapidity of pace, and had been speaking of Goldsmith, put his head out of one of the windows to see they were going right, and rubbing his hands with an air of satisfaction exclaimed:—“This man drives fast and well; were Goldsmith here now he would tell us he could do better.”’ Prior’s Goldsmith, ii. 127.

[1224] See post, April 9, 1773; also April 9, 1778, where Johnson says, ‘Goldsmith had no settled notions upon any subject.’

[1225] I am willing to hope that there may have been some mistake as to this anecdote, though I had it from a Dignitary of the Church. Dr. Isaac Goldsmith, his near relation, was Dean of Cloyne, in 1747. BOSWELL. This note first appears in the second edition.

[1226] Mr. Welsh, in A Bookseller of the Last Century, p. 58, quotes the following entry from an account-book of B. Collins of Salisbury, the printer of the first edition of the Vicar:—’Vicar of Wakefield, 2 vols. 12mo., 1/3rd. B. Collins, Salisbury, bought of Dr. Goldsmith, the author, October 28, 1762, £21.’ Goldsmith, it should seem from this, as Collins’s third share was worth twenty guineas, was paid not sixty pounds, but sixty guineas. Collins shared in many of the ventures of Newbery, Goldsmith’s publisher. Mr. Welsh says (ib. p. 61) that Collins’s accounts show ‘that the first three editions resulted in a loss.’ If this was so, the booksellers must have been great bunglers, for the book ran through three editions in six or seven months. Forster’s Goldsmith, i. 425.

[1227] The Traveller (price one shilling and sixpence) was published in December 1764, and The Vicar of Wakefield in March 1766. In August 1765 the fourth edition of The Traveller appeared, and the ninth in the year Goldsmith died. He received for it £21. Forster’s Goldsmith, i. 364, 374, 409. See ante, p. 193, note i.

[1228] ‘“Miss Burney,” said Mrs. Thrale [to Dr. Johnson], “is fond of The Vicar of Wakefield, and so am I. Don’t you like it, Sir?” “No, madam, it is very faulty; there is nothing of real life in it, and very little of nature. It is a mere fanciful performance.”’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, i. 83. ‘There are a hundred faults in this Thing,’ said Goldsmith in the preface, ‘and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.’ See post, April 25, 1778.

[1229] Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 119. BOSWELL.

[1230] Life of Johnson, p. 420. BOSWELL.

[1231] In his imprudence he was like Savage, of whom Johnson says (Works, viii. 161):—‘To supply him with money was a hopeless attempt; for no sooner did he see himself master of a sum sufficient to set him free from care for a day, than he became profuse and luxurious.’ When Savage was ‘lodging in the liberties of the Fleet, his friends sent him every Monday a guinea, which he commonly spent before the next morning, and trusted, after his usual manner, the remaining part of the week to the bounty of fortune.’ Ib. p. 170.

[1232] It may not be improper to annex here Mrs. Piozzi’s account of this transaction, in her own words, as a specimen of the extreme inaccuracy with which all her anecdotes of Dr. Johnson are related, or rather discoloured and distorted:—‘I have forgotten the year, but it could scarcely, I think, be later than 1765 or 1766 that he was called abruptly from our house after dinner, and returning in about three hours, said he had been with an enraged authour, whose landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira, to drown care, and fretting over a novel, which, when finished, was to be his whole fortune, but he could not get it done for distraction, nor could he step out of doors to offer it for sale. Mr. Johnson, therefore, sent away the bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and desiring some immediate relief; which when he brought back to the writer, he called the ‘woman of the house directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment.’ Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, p. 119. BOSWELL. The whole transaction took place in 1762, as is shown, ante, p. 415, note 1; Johnson did not know the Thrales till 1764.

[1233] Through Goldsmith Boswell became acquainted with Reynolds. In his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 99), he says:—‘I exhort you, my friends and countrymen, in the words of my departed Goldsmith, who gave me many nodes Atticae, and gave me a jewel of the finest water—the acquaintance of Sir Joshua Reynolds.’

[1234] See post, July 30, 1763.

[1235] See post, March 20, 1776, and Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 17, 1773.

[1236] See post, March 15, 1776.

[1237] ‘Dr. Campbell was an entertaining story-teller, which [sic] sometimes he rather embellished; so that the writer of this once heard Dr. Johnson say:—“Campbell will lie, but he never lies on paper.”’ Gent. Mag. for 1785, p. 969.

[1238] I am inclined to think that he was misinformed as to this circumstance. I own I am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. For though Milton could without remorse absent himself from publick worship [Johnson’s Works, vii. 115] I cannot. On the contrary, I have the same habitual impressions upon my mind, with those of a truely venerable Judge, who said to Mr. Langton, ‘Friend Langton, if I have not been at church on Sunday, I do not feel myself easy.’ Dr. Campbell was a sincerely religious man. Lord Macartney, who is eminent for his variety of knowledge, and attention to men of talents, and knew him well, told me, that when he called on him in a morning, he found him reading a chapter in the Greek New Testament, which he informed his Lordship was his constant practice. The quantity of Dr. Campbell’s composition is almost incredible, and his labours brought him large profits. Dr. Joseph Warton told me that Johnson said of him, ‘He is the richest authour that ever grazed the common of literature.’ BOSWELL.

[1239] See post, April 7, 1778. Campbell complied with one of the Monita Padagogica of Erasmus. ‘Si quem praeteribis natu grandem, magistratum, sacerdotem, doctorem…. memento aperire caput…. Itidem facito quum praeteribis asdem sacram.’ Erasmus’s Colloquies, ed. 1867, i. 36.

[1240] Reynolds said of Johnson:—‘He was not easily imposed upon by professions to honesty and candour; but he appeared to have little suspicion of hypocrisy in religion.’ Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 459. Boswell, in one of his penitent letters, wrote to Temple on July 21, 1790:—‘I am even almost inclined to think with you, that my great oracle Johnson did allow too much credit to good principles, without good practice.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 327.

[1241] Campbell lived in ‘the large new-built house at the north-west-corner of Queen Square, Bloomsbury, whither, particularly on a Sunday evening, great numbers of persons of the first eminence for science and literature resorted for the enjoyment of conversation.’ Hawkins’s Johnson, p. 210.

[1242] Churchill, in his first poem, The Rosciad (Poems, i. 4), mentions Johnson without any disrespect among those who were thought of as judge.

‘For Johnson some, but Johnson, it was feared,

Would be too grave; and Sterne too gay appeared.’

In The Author (ib. ii. 36), if I mistake not, he grossly alludes to the convulsive disorder to which Johnson was subject. Attacking the pensioners he says—the italics are his own:—

‘Others, half-palsied only, mutes become, And what makes Smollett write makes Johnson dumb.’

[1243] See post, April 6, 1772, where Johnson called Fielding a blockhead.

[1244] Churchill published his first poem, The Rosciad, in March or April 1761 (Gent. Mag. xxxi. 190); The Apology in May or June (Ib. p. 286); Night in Jan. 1762 (Ib. xxxii. 47); The First and Second Parts of The Ghost in March (ib. p. 147); The Third Part in the autumn (ib. p. 449); The Prophecy of Famine in Jan. 1763 (ib. xxxiii. 47), and The Epistle to Hogarth in this month of July (ib. p. 363). He wrote the fourth part of The Ghost, and nine more poems, and died on Nov. 4, 1764, aged thirty-two or thirty-three.

[1245] ‘Cowper had a higher opinion of Churchill than of any other contemporary writer. “It is a great thing,” he said, “to be indeed a poet, and does not happen to more than one man in a century; but Churchill, the great Churchill, deserved that name.” He made him, more than any other writer, his model.’ Southey’s Cowper, i. 87, 8.

[1246] Mr. Forster says that ‘Churchill asked five guineas for the manuscript of The Rosciad (according to Southey, but Mr. Tooke says he asked twenty pounds).’ Finding no purchaser he brought the poem out at his own risk. Mr. Forster continues:—‘The pulpit had starved him on forty pounds a year; the public had given him a thousand pounds in two months.’ Forster’s Essays, ii. 226, 240. As The Rosciad was sold at one shilling a copy, it seems incredible that such a gain could have been made, even with the profits of The Apology included. ‘Blotting and correcting was so much Churchill’s abhorrence that I have heard from his publisher he once energetically expressed himself, that it was like cutting away one’s own flesh.’ D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, iii. 129. D’Israeli ‘had heard that after a successful work he usually precipitated the publication of another, relying on its crudeness being passed over by the public curiosity excited by its better brother. He called this getting double pay, for thus he secured the sale of a hurried work.’

[1247] In the opening lines of Gotham, Bk. iii, there is a passage of great beauty and tenderness.

[1248] In 1769 I set Thornton’s burlesque Ode. It was performed at Ranelagh in masks, to a very crowded audience, as I was told; for I then resided in Norfolk. BURNEY. Dr. Burney’s note cannot be correct. He came to reside in London in 1760 (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 133) The Ode is in the list of ‘new books, published’ in the Gent. Mag. for June 1763, and is described as having been performed at Ranelagh.

[1249] The Connoisseur was started by Thornton and Colman in 1754. Cowper and Lloyd were contributors. Southey’s Cowper, i. 46, 49, 65.

[1250] See ante, p. 350, note.

[1251] See post, Aug. 2, 1763, and Oct. 26, 1769.

[1252] See post. Sept. 20, 1777, note.

[1253] The northern bard mentioned page 421. When I asked Dr. Johnson’s permission to introduce him, he obligingly agreed; adding, however, with a sly pleasantry, ‘but he must give us none of his poetry.’ It is remarkable that Johnson and Churchill, however much they differed in other points, agreed on this subject. See Churchill’s Journey.

[‘Under dark Allegory’s flimsy veil

Let Them with Ogilvie spin out a tale

Of rueful length,’

Churchill’s Poems, ii. 329.]

It is, however, but justice to Dr. Ogilvie to observe, that his Day of Judgement has no inconsiderable share of merit. BOSWELL.

[1254] ‘Johnson said:—“Goldsmith should not be for ever attempting to shine in conversation.”’ Post, April 27, 1773. See also post, May 7, 1773.

[1255] Fifteen years later Lord George Germaine, Secretary of State, asserted in a debate ‘that the King “was his own Minister,” which Charles Fox took up admirably, lamenting that His Majesty “was his own unadvised Minister.”’ Walpole’s Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 314.

[1256] ‘The general story of mankind will evince that lawful and settled authority is very seldom resisted when it is well employed…. Men are easily kept obedient to those who have temporal dominion in their hands, till their veneration is dissipated by such wickedness and folly as can neither be defended nor concealed.’ The Rambler, No. 50. See post, March 31, 1772.

[1257] ‘It is natural to believe … that no writer has a more easy task than the historian. The philosopher has the works of omniscience to examine…. The poet trusts to his invention…. But the happy historian has no other labour than of gathering what tradition pours down before him, or records treasure for his use.’ The Rambler, No. 122.

[1258] See Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773.

[1259] ‘Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliancy of wit; a wit, who in the crowd of life retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 296.

[1260] Goldsmith wrote from Edinburgh in 1753:—‘Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country, where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their vallies scarce able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil. Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape.’ Forster’s Goldsmith, i. 433.

[1261] See Boswell’s Hebrides, Nov. 10, 1773.

[1262] Johnson would suffer none of his friends to fill up chasms in conversation with remarks on the weather: ‘Let us not talk of the weather.’ BURNEY.

[1263] See ante, p. 332.

[1264] Boswell wrote to Temple on Sept. 9, 1767:—‘How unaccountable is it that my father and I should be so ill together! He is a man of sense and a man of worth; but from some unhappy turn in his disposition he is much dissatisfied with a son whom you know. I write to him with warmth, with an honest pride, wishing that he should think of me as I am; but my letters shock him, and every expression in them is interpreted unfavourably. To give you an instance, I send you a letter I had from him a few days ago. How galling is it to the friend of Paoli to be treated so! I have answered him in my own style; I will be myself.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 110. In the following passage in one of his Hypochondriacks he certainly describes his father. ‘I knew a father who was a violent Whig, and used to attack his son for being a Tory, upbraiding him with being deficient in “noble sentiments of liberty,” while at the same time he made this son live under his roof in such bondage, that he was not only afraid to stir from home without leave, like a child, but durst scarcely open his mouth in his father’s presence. This was sad living. Yet I would rather see such an excess of awe than a degree of familiarity between father and son by which all reverence is destroyed.’ London Mag. 1781, p. 253.

[1265] Boswell, the day after this talk, wrote:—‘I have had a long letter from my father, full of affection and good counsel. Honest man! he is now very happy: it is amazing to think how much he has had at heart, my pursuing the road of civil life.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 25.

[1266] Gray, says Nicholls, ‘disliked all poetry in blank verse, except Milton.’ Gray’s Works, ed. 1858, v. 36. Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning (ch. xi.), wrote in 1759:—‘From a desire in the critic of grafting the spirit of ancient languages upon the English have proceeded of late several disagreeable instances of pedantry. Among the number, I think, we may reckon blank verse. Nothing but the greatest sublimity of subject can render such a measure pleasing; however, we now see it used upon the most trivial occasions.’ On the same page he speaks of ‘the tuneless flow of our blank verse.’ See post, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell’s Collectanea and the beginning of 1781, under The Life of Milton, for Johnson’s opinion of blank verse.

[1267] ‘Johnson told me, that one day in London, when Dr. Adam Smith was boasting of Glasgow, he turned to him and said, “Pray, Sir, have you ever seen Brentford?’” Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 29, 1773. See post, April 29, 1778.

[1268] ‘He advised me to read just as inclination prompted me, which alone, he said, would do me any good; for I had better go into company than read a set task. He said, too, that I should prescribe to myself five hours a day, and in these hours gratify whatever literary desires may spring up.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 28. The Editor of these Letters compares Tranio’s advice:—

‘No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en:

In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.’

Taming of the Shrew, act i. sc. I.

‘Johnson used to say that no man read long together with a folio on his table. “Books,” said he, “that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.”’ Johnson’s Works (1787), xi. 197. See also The Idler, No. 67, and post, April 12, 1776, and under Sept. 22, 1777.

[1269] Wilkes, among others, had attacked him in Aug. 1762 in The North Briton, Nos. xi. and xii.

[1270] When I mentioned the same idle clamour to him several years afterwards, he said, with a smile, ‘I wish my pension were twice as large, that they might make twice as much noise.’ BOSWELL.

[1271] In one thing at least he was changed. He could now indulge in the full bent, to use his own words (Works, viii. l36), ‘that inquisitiveness which must always be produced in a vigorous mind, by an absolute freedom from all pressing or domestick engagements.’

[1272] See post, April 13, 1773, Sept. 17 and 19, 1777, March 21, 1783, and June 9, 1784. Lord Shelburne says:—‘After the Revolution the Tory and Jacobite parties had become almost identified by their together opposing the Court for so many years, and still more by the persecution which they suffered in common, for it was the policy of Sir Robert Walpole to confound them as much as possible, so as to throw the Jacobite odium upon every man who opposed government.’ Fitzmaurice’s Shelburne, i. 35. Lord Bolingbroke (Works, iii. 28) complains that the writers on the side of the ministry ‘frequently throw out that every man is a friend to the Pretender who is not a friend of Walpole.’

[1273] See post, April 6, 1775

[1274] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 402 [Nov. 10]. BOSWELL.

[1275] Mr. Walmsley died in 1751 (ante, p. 81). Johnson left Lichfield in 1737. Unless Mr. Walmsley after 1737 visited London from time to time, he can scarcely be meant.

[1276] See ante, p. 336.

[1277] He used to tell, with great humour, from my relation to him, the following little story of my early years, which was literally true: ‘Boswell, in the year 1745, was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James, till one of his uncles (General Cochran) gave him a shilling on condition that he should pray for King George, which he accordingly did. So you see (says Boswell) that Whigs of all ages are made the same way.’ BOSWELL. Johnson, in his Dictionary under Whiggism, gives only one quotation, namely, from Swift: ‘I could quote passages from fifty pamphlets, wholly made up of whiggism and atheism.’ See post, April 28, 1778, where he said: ‘I have always said, the first Whig was the Devil;’ and Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 21 and Nov. 8, 1773. To Johnson’s sayings might be opposed one of Lord Chatham’s in the House of Lords: ‘There are some distinctions which are inherent in the nature of things. There is a distinction between right and wrong—between Whig and Tory.’ Parl. Hist. xvi. 1107.

[1278] Letter to Rutland on Travel, 16mo. 1569. BOSWELL. This letter is contained in a little volume entitled, Profitable Instructions; describing what special observations are to be taken by travellers in all nations, states and countries; pleasant and profitable. By the three much admired, Robert, late Earl of Essex, Sir Philip Sidney, and Secretary Davison. London. Printed for Benjamin Fisher, at the Sign of the Talbot, without Aldersgate. 1633. (Lowndes gives the date of 1613, but the earliest edition seems to be this of 1633.) The letter from which Boswell quotes is entitled, The late E. of E. his advice to the E. of R. in his Travels. It is dated Greenwich, Jan. 4, 1596. Mr. Spedding (Bacon’s Works, ix. 4) suggests that ‘it may have been (wholly or in part) written by Bacon.’

[1279] Boswell (Boswelliana, p. 210) says that this ‘impudent fellow’ was Macpherson.

[1280] Boswell repeated this saying and some others to Paoli. ‘I felt an elation of mind to see Paoli delighted with the sayings of Mr. Johnson, and to hear him translate them with Italian energy to the Corsican heroes.’ Here Boswell describes the person as ‘a certain authour.’ Boswell’s Corsica, p. 199

[1281] Boswell thus takes him off in his comic poem The Court of Session Garland:—

‘“This cause,” cries Hailes, “to judge I can’t pretend, For justice, I percieve, wants an e at the end.”’

Mr. R. Chambers, in a note on this, says:—‘A story is told of Lord Hailes once making a serious objection to a law-paper, an in consequence to the whole suit, on account of the word justice being thus spelt. Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 161. Burke says that he ‘found him to be a clever man, and generally knowing.’ Burke’s Corres. iii. 301. See ante p. 267, and post May 12, 1774 and Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773.

[1282] ‘Ita feri ut se mori sentiat.’ Suetonius, Caligula, chap. xxx.

[1283] Johnson himself was constantly purposing to keep a journal. On April 11, 1773, he told Boswell ‘that he had twelve or fourteen times attempted to keep a journal of his life,’ post, April 11, 1773. The day before he had recorded:—‘I hope from this time to keep a journal.’ Pr. and Med. p. 124. Like records follow, as:—‘Sept. 24, 1773. My hope is, for resolution I dare no longer call it, to divide my time regularly, and to keep such a journal of my time, as may give me comfort in reviewing it.’ Ib. p. 132. ‘April 6, 1777. My purpose once more is To keep a journal.’ Ib. p. 161. ‘Jan. 2, 1781. My hope is To keep a journal.’ Ib. p. 188. See also post, April 14, 1775, and April 10, 1778.

[1284] Boswell, when he was only eighteen, going with his father to the [Scotch] Northern Circuit, ‘kept,’ he writes, ‘an exact journal.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 8. In the autumn of 1762 he also kept a journal which he sent to Temple to read. Ib. p. 19.

[1285] ‘It has been well observed, that the misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 333. ‘The main of life is indeed composed of small incidents and petty occurrences.’ Ib. ii. 322. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, i. 199) says:—‘Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.’

[1286] Boswell wrote the next day:—‘We sat till between two and three. He took me by the hand cordially, and said, “My dear Boswell, I love you very much.” Now Temple, can I help indulging vanity?’ Letters of Boswell, p. 27. Fourteen years later Boswell was afraid that he kept Johnson too late up. ‘No, Sir,’ said he, ‘I don’t care though I sit all night with you.’ Post, Sept. 23, 1777. See also post, April 7, 1779, where Johnson, speaking of these early days, said to Boswell, ‘it was not the wine that made your head ache, but the sense that I put into it.’

[1287] Tuesday was the 19th.

[1288] ‘The elder brother of the first Lord Rokeby, called long Sir Thomas Robinson, on account of his height, and to distinguish him from Sir Thomas Robinson, first Lord Grantham. It was on his request for an epigram that Lord Chesterfield made the distich:—

“Unlike my subject will I make my song,

It shall be witty, and it shan’t be long,”

and to whom he said in his last illness, “Ah, Sir Thomas, it will be sooner over with me than it would be with you, for I am dying by inches.” Lord Chesterfield was very short.’ CROKER. Southey, writing of Rokeby Hall, which belonged to Robinson, says that ‘Long Sir Thomas found a portrait of Richardson in the house; thinking Mr. Richardson a very unfit personage to be suspended in effigy among lords, ladies, and baronets, he ordered the painter to put him on the star and blue riband, and then christened the picture Sir Robert Walpole.’ Southey’s Life, iii. 346. See also ante, p. 259 note 2, and post, 1770, near the end of Dr. Maxwell’s Collectanea.

[1289] Johnson (Works, vi. 440) had written of Frederick the Great in 1756:—‘His skill in poetry and in the French language has been loudly praised by Voltaire, a judge without exception if his honesty were equal to his knowledge.’ Boswell, in his Hypochondriacks, records a conversation that he had with Voltaire on memory:—‘I asked him if he could give me any notion of the situation of our ideas which we have totally forgotten at the time, yet shall afterwards recollect. He paused, meditated a little, and acknowledged his ignorance in the spirit of a philosophical poet by repeating as a very happy allusion a passage in Thomson’s Seasons—“Aye,” said he, “Where sleep the winds when it is calm?”’ London Mag. 1783, p. 157. The passage is in Thomson’s Winter, l. 116:—

‘In what far-distant region of the sky,

Hush’d in deep silence, sleep ye when ‘tis calm?’

[1290] See post, ii. 54, note 3.

[1291] Bernard Lintot, the father, published Pope’s Iliad and Odyssey. Over the sale of the Odyssey a quarrel arose between the two men. Johnson’s Works, viii. 251, 274. Lintot is attacked in the Dunciad, i. 40 and ii. 53; He was High-Sheriff for Sussex in 1736—the year of his death. Gent. Mag. vi. 110. The son is mentioned in Johnson’s Works, viii. 282.

[1292] ‘July 19, 1763. I was with Mr. Johnson to-day. I was in his garret up four pair of stairs; it is very airy, commands a view of St. Paul’s and many a brick roof. He has many good books, but they are all lying in confusion and dust.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 30. On Good Friday, 1764, Johnson made the following entry:—‘I hope to put my rooms in order: Disorder I have found one great cause of idleness.’ On his birthday in the same year he wrote:—‘Tomorrow I purpose to regulate my room.’ Pr. and Med. pp. 50, 60.

[1293] See ante, p. 140, and post, under Sept. 9, 1779.

[1294] Afterwards Rector of Mamhead, Devonshire. He is the grandfather of the present Bishop of London. He and Boswell had been fellow-students at the University of Edinburgh, and seemed in youth to have had an equal amount of conceit. ‘Recollect,’ wrote Boswell, ‘how you and I flattered ourselves that we were to be the greatest men of our age.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 159. They began to correspond at least as early as 1758. The last letter was one from Boswell on his death-bed. Johnson thus mentions Temple (Works, viii. 480):—‘Gray’s character I am willing to adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, from a letter written to my friend Mr. Boswell by the Revd. Mr. Temple, Rector of St. Gluvias in Cornwall; and am as willing as his warmest well-wisher to believe it true.’

[1295] Johnson (Works, vii. 240) quotes the following by Edmund Smith, and written some time after 1708:—‘It will sound oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most literary property in 1710, whether by wise, most learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick should be better secured than that of a scholar! that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest products of the brain! that it should be felony to rob a cobbler of a pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best authour of his whole subsistence! that nothing should make a man a sure title to his own writings but the stupidity of them!’ See post, May 8, 1773, and Feb.7, 1774; and Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 17 and 20, 1773.

[1296] The question arose, after the passing of the first statute respecting literary property in 1710, whether by certain of its provisions this perpetual copyright at common law was extinguished for the future. The question was solemnly argued before the Court of King’s Bench, when Lord Mansfield presided, in 1769. The result was a decision in favour of the common-law right as unaltered by the statute, with the disapproval however of Mr. Justice Yates. In 1774 the same point was brought before the House of Lords, and the decision of the court below reversed by a majority of six judges in eleven, as Lord Mansfield, who adhered to the opinion of the minority, declined to interfere; it being very unusual, from motives of delicacy, for a peer to support his own judgment on appeal to the House of Lords. Penny Cylco. viii. I. See post, Feb. 7, 1774. Lord Shelburne, on Feb 27, 1774, humourously describes the scene in the Lords to the Earl of Chatham:—‘Lord Mansfield showed himself the merest Captain Bobadil that, I suppose, ever existed in real life. You can, perhaps, imagine to yourself the Bishop of Carlyle, an old metaphysical head of a college, reading a paper, not a speech, out of an old sermon book, with very bad sight leaning on the table, Lord Mansfield sitting at it, with eyes of fixed melancholy looking at him, knowing that the bishop’s were the only eyes in the House who could not meet his; the judges behind him, full of rage at being drawn into so absurd an opinion, and abandoned in it by their chief; the Bishops waking, as your Lordship knows they do, just before they vote, and staring on finding something the matter; while Lord Townshend was close to the bar, getting Mr. Dunning to put up his glass to look at the head of criminal justice.’ Chatham Corres. iv. 327.

[1297] See post April 15 1778, note.

[1298] Dr. Franklin (Memoirs iii. 178), complaining of the high prices of English books, describes ‘the excessive artifices made use of to puff up a paper of verses into a pamphlet, a pamphlet into an octavo, and an octavo into a quarto with white-lines, exorbitant margins, &c., to such a degree that the selling of paper seems now the object, and printing on it only the pretence.’

[1299] Boswell was on friendly terms with him. He wrote to Erskine on Dec. 2, 1761:—‘I am just now returned from eating a most excellent pig with the most magnificent Donaldson.’ Boswell and Erskine Correspondence, p. 20.

[1300] Dr. Carlyle (Auto. p. 516) says that Lord Mansfield this year (1769) ‘talking of Hume and Robertson’s Histories, said that though he could point out few or no faults in them, yet, when he was reading their books, he did not think he was reading English.’ See post, ii. 72, for Hume’s Scotticisms. Hume went to France in 1734 when he was 23 years old and stayed there three years. Hume’s Autobiography, p. vii. He never mastered French colloquially. Lord Charlemont, who met him in Turin in 1748, says:—‘His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable.’ Hardy’s Charlemont, i. 15. Horace Walpole, who met him in Paris in 1765, writes (Letters, iv. 426):—‘Mr. Hume is the only thing in the world that they [the French] believe implicitly; which they must do, for I defy them to understand any language that he speaks.’ Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 122) says of Hume’s writings:—‘Their careless inimitable beauties often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair.’ Dr. Beattie (Life, p. 243) wrote on Jan. 5, 1778:—‘We who live in Scotland are obliged to study English from books, like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot speak.’ He adds:—‘I have spent some years in labouring to acquire the art of giving a vernacular cast to the English we write.’ Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto, p. 222) says:—‘Since we began to affect speaking a foreign language, which the English dialect is to us, humour, it must be confessed, is less apparent in conversation.’

[1301] Discours sur L’origine et les fondemens de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, 1754.

[1302] ‘I have indeed myself observed that my banker ever bows lowest to me when I wear my full-bottomed wig, and writes me Mr. or Esq., accordingly as he sees me dressed.’ Spectator, No. 150.

[1303] Mr. Croker, quoting Mr. Wright, says:—’See his Quantulumanque (sic) concerning Money.’ I have read Petty’s Quantulumcunque, but do not find the passage in it.

[1304] Johnson told Dr. Burney that Goldsmith said, when he first began to write, he determined to commit to paper nothing but what was new; but he afterwards found that what was new was false, and from that time was no longer solicitous about novelty. BURNEY. Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, i. 421) says that this note ‘is another instance of the many various and doubtful forms in which stories about Johnson and Goldsmith are apt to appear when once we lose sight of the trustworthy Boswell. This is obviously a mere confused recollection of what is correctly told by Boswell [post, March 26, 1779].’ There is much truth in Mr. Forster’s general remark: nevertheless Burney likely enough repeated to the best of his memory what he had himself heard from Johnson.

[1305] ‘Their [the ancient moralists’] arguments have been, indeed, so unsuccessful, that I know not whether it can be shewn, that by all the wit and reason which this favourite cause has called forth a single convert was ever made; that even one man has refused to be rich, when to be rich was in his power, from the conviction of the greater happiness of a narrow fortune.’ Johnson’s Works, ii. 278. See post, June 3, 1781, and June 3, Sept. 7, and Dec. 7, 1782.

[1306] Johnson (Works, vi. 440) shows how much Frederick owed to ‘the difficulties of his youth.’ ‘Kings, without this help from temporary infelicity, see the world in a mist, which magnifies everything near them, and bounds their view to a narrow compass, which few are able to extend by the mere force of curiosity.’ He next points out what Cromwell ‘owed to the private condition in which he first entered the world;’ and continues:—‘The King of Prussia brought to the throne the knowledge of a private man, without the guilt of usurpation. Of this general acquaintance with the world there may be found some traces in his whole life. His conversation is like that of other men upon common topicks, his letters have an air of familiar elegance, and his whole conduct is that of a man who has to do with men.’

[1307] See ante p. 408

[1308] See ante, p. 298.

[1309] That this was Mr. Dempster seems likely from the Letters of Boswell (p. 34), where Boswell says:—‘I had prodigious satisfaction to find Dempster’s sophistry (which he has learnt from Hume and Rousseau) vanquished by the solid sense and vigorous reasoning of Johnson. Dempster,’ he continues, ‘was as happy as a vanquished argumentator could be.’ The character of the ‘benevolent good man’ suits Dempster (see post, under Feb. 7, 1775, where Boswell calls him ‘the virtuous and candid Dempster’), while that of the ‘noted infidel writer’ suits Hume. We find Boswell, Johnson, and Dempster again dining together on May 9, 1772.

[1310]

‘Thou wilt at best but suck a bull,

Or sheer swine, all cry and no wool.’

Hudibras, Part i. Canto I. 1. 851.

Dr. Z. Grey, in his note on these lines, quotes the proverbial saying ‘As wise as the Waltham calf that went nine times to suck a bull.’ He quotes also from The Spectator, No. 138, the passage where the Cynic said of two disputants, ‘One of these fellows is milking a ram, and the other holds the pail.’

[1311] The writer of the article Vacuum in the Penny Cyclo. (xxvi. 76), quoting Johnson’s words, adds:—‘That is, either all space is full of matter, or there are parts of space which have no matter. The alternative is undeniable, and the inference to which the modern philosophy would give the greatest probablility is, that all space is full of matter in the common sense of the word, but really occupied by particles of matter with vacuous interstices.’

[1312] ‘When any one tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened.’ Humes Essay on Miracles, Part i. See post Sept. 22 1777, where Boswell again quoted this passage.

[1313] A coffee-house over against Catherine Street, now the site of a tourists’ ticket office. Athenaeum, No. 3041.

[1314] Stockdale records (Memoirs, i. 202) that Johnson once said to him:—‘Whenever it is the duty of a young and old man to act at the same time with a spirit of independence and generosity; we may always have reason to hope that the young man will ardently perform, and to fear that the old man will desert, his duty.’

[1315] Boswell thus writes of this evening:—‘I learn more from him than from any man I ever was with. He told me a very odd thing, that he knew at eighteen as much as he does now; that is to say, his judgment is much stronger, but he had then stored up almost all the facts he has now, and he says that he has led but an idle life; only think, Temple, of that!’ Letters of Boswell, p. 34. See ante, p. 56, and post, ii. 36. He told Windham in 1784 ‘that he read Latin with as much ease when he went to college as at present.’ Windham’s Diary, p. 17.

[1316] Johnson in 1739 wrote of ‘those distempers and depressions, from which students, not well acquainted with the constitution of the human body, sometimes fly for relief to wine instead of exercise, and purchase temporary ease, by the hazard of the most dreadful consequences.’ Works, vi. 271. In The Rambler, No. 85, he says:—‘How much happiness is gained, and how much misery is escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.’ Boswell records (Hebrides, Sept. 24, 1773):—‘Dr. Johnson told us at breakfast, that he rode harder at a fox-chace than anybody.’ Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 206) says:—‘He certainly rode on Mr. Thrale’s old hunter with a good firmness, and, though he would follow the hounds fifty miles an end sometimes, would never own himself either tired or amused. I think no praise ever went so close to his heart, as when Mr. Hamilton called out one day upon Brighthelmstone Downs, “Why Johnson rides as well, for aught I see, as the most illiterate fellow in England.”’ He wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1777:—‘No season ever was finer. Barley, malt, beer and money. There is the series of ideas. The deep logicians call it a sorites. I hope my master will no longer endure the reproach of not keeping me a horse.’ Piozzi Letters, i. 360. See post, March 19 and 28, 1776, Sept. 20, 1777, and Nov. 21, 1778.

[1317] This one Mrs. Macaulay was the same personage who afterwards made herself so much known as ‘the celebrated female historian.’ BOSWELL. Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 234) tells the following story of Mrs. Macaulay’s daughter:—‘Desirous from civility to take some notice of her, and finding she was reading Shakespeare, I asked her if she was not delighted with many parts of King John. “I never read the Kings, ma’am,” was the truly characteristic reply.’ See post, April 13, 1773, and May 15, 1776.

[1318] This speech was perhaps suggested to Johnson by the following passage in The Government of the Tongue (p. 106)—a book which he quotes in his Dictionary:—‘Lycurgus once said to one who importuned him to establish a popular parity in the state, “Do thou,” says he, “begin it first in thine own family.”’

[1319] The first volume was published in 1756, the second in 1782.

[1320] Warton, to use his own words, ‘did not think Pope at the head of his profession. In other words, in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to all mankind; and I only say that this species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art.’ He disposes the English poets in four classes, placing in the first only Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. ‘In the second class should be ranked such as possessed the true poetical genius in a more moderate degree, but who had noble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poetry.’ In this class, in his concluding volume, he says, ‘we may venture to assign Pope a place, just above Dryden. Yet, to bring our minds steadily to make this decision, we must forget, for a moment, the divine Music Ode of Dryden; and may, perhaps, then be compelled to confess that though Dryden be the greater genius, yet Pope is the better artist.’ Warton’s Essay, i. i, vii. and ii. 404. See post, March 31, 1772.

[1321] Mr. Croker believes Joseph Warton was meant. His father, however, had been Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was afterwards Vicar of Basingstoke and Cobham, and Professor of Poetry in his own University, so that the son could scarcely be described as being ‘originally poor.’ It is, no doubt, after Boswell’s fashion to introduce in consecutive paragraphs the same person once by name and once anonymously; but then the ‘certain author who disgusted Boswell by his forwardness,’ mentioned just before Warton, may be Warton himself.

[1322] ‘When he arrived at Eton he could not make a verse; that is, he wanted a point indispensable with us to a certain rank in our system. But this wonderful boy, having satisfied the Master [Dr. Barnard] that he was an admirable scholar, and possessed of genius, was at once placed at the head of a form. He acquired the rules of Latin verse; tried his powers; and perceiving that he could not rise above his rivals in Virgil, Ovid, or the lyric of Horace, he took up the sermoni propiora, and there overshadowed all competitors. In the following lines he describes the hammer of the auctioneer with a mock sublimity which turns Horace into Virgil:—

‘Jam-jamque cadit, celerique recursu

Erigitur, lapsum retrahens, perque aera nutat.’

Nichols’s Lit. Anec. viii. 547.

Horace Walpole wrote of him in Sept. 1765 (Letters, iv. 411):—‘He is a very extraordinary young man for variety of learning. He is rather too wise for his age, and too fond of showing it; but when he has seen more of the world, he will choose to know less.’ He died at Rome in the following year. Hume, on hearing the news, wrote to Adam Smith:—‘Were you and I together, dear Smith, we should shed tears at present for the death of poor Sir James Macdonald. We could not possibly have suffered a greater loss than in that valuable young man.’ J. H. Burton’s Hume, ii. 349. See Boswell’s Hebrides, Sept. 5, 1773.

[1323] Boswell says that Macdonald had for Johnson ‘a great terrour.’ (Boswelliana, p. 216.) Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 329) says:—‘It is a fact that a certain nobleman, an intimate friend of Reynolds, had strangely conceived in his mind such a formidable idea of all those persons who had gained great fame as literary characters, that I have heard Sir Joshua say, he verily believed he could no more have prevailed upon this noble person to dine at the same table with Johnson and Goldsmith than with two tigers.’ According to Mr. Seward (Biographiana, p. 600), Mrs. Cotterell having one day asked Dr. Johnson to introduce her to a celebrated writer, ‘Dearest madam,’ said he, ‘you had better let it alone; the best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.’ Mr. Seward refers to The Rambler, No. 14, where Johnson says that ‘there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an authour and his writings.’

[1324] See post, Jan. 19, 1775. In his Hebrides (p. i) Boswell writes:—‘When I was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned our design to Voltaire. He looked at me as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and said, “You do not insist on my accompanying you?” “No, Sir.” “Then I am very willing you should go.”’

[1325] ‘When he went through the streets he desired to have one to lead him by the hand. They asked his opinion of the high church. He answered that it was a large rock, yet there were some in St. Kilda much higher, but that these were the best caves he ever saw; for that was the idea which he conceived of the pillars and arches upon which the church stands.’ M. Martin’s Western Isles, p. 297. Mr. Croker compares the passage in The Spectator (No. 50), in which an Indian king is made to say of St. Paul’s:—‘It was probably at first an huge misshapen rock that grew upon the top of the hill, which the natives of the country (after having cut it into a kind of regular figure) bored and hollowed with incredible pains and industry.’

[1326] Boswell, writing to Temple the next day, slightly varies these words:—‘He said, “My dear Boswell, it would give me great pain to part with you, if I thought we were not to meet again.”’ Letters of Boswell, p. 34.

[1327] Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 43) protests against ‘the trite and lavish praise of the happiness of our boyish years, which is echoed with so much affectation in the world. That happiness I have never known, that time I have never regretted. The poet may gaily describe the short hours of recreation; but he forgets the daily tedious labours of the school, which is approached each morning with anxious and reluctant steps.’ See ante, p. 44, and post, under Feb. 27, 1772.

[1328] About fame Gibbon felt much as Johnson did. ‘I am disgusted,’ he wrote (ib. 272), ‘with the affectation of men of letters, who complain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow, and that their fame (which sometimes is no insupportable weight) affords a poor compensation for envy, censure, and persecution. My own experience, at least, has taught me a very different lesson; twenty happy years have been animated by the labour of my History, and its success has given me a name, a rank, a character, in the world, to which I should not otherwise have been entitled.’

[1329] See ante, p. 432.

[1330] See ante, p. 332.

[1331] This opinion was given by him more at large at a subsequent period. See Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 32 [Aug. 16]. BOSWELL. ‘That Swift was its author, though it be universally believed, was never owned by himself, nor very well proved by any evidence; but no other claimant can be produced, and he did not deny it when Archbishop Sharpe and the Duchess of Somerset, by showing it to the Queen, debarred him from a bishoprick.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 197. See also post, March 24, 1775. Stockdale records (Memoirs, ii. 61) that Johnson said ‘that if Swift really was the author of The Tale of the Tub, as the best of his other performances were of a very inferior merit, he should have hanged himself after he had written it.’ Scott (Life of Swift, ed. 1834, p. 77) says:—‘Mrs. Whiteway observed the Dean, in the latter years of his life [in 1735], looking over the Tale, when suddenly closing the book he muttered, in an unconscious soliloquy, “Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!” She begged it of him, who made some excuse at the moment; but on her birthday he presented her with it inscribed, “From her affectionate cousin.” On observing the inscription, she ventured to say, “I wish, Sir, you had said the gift of the author!” The Dean bowed, smiled good-humouredly, and answered, “No, I thank you,” in a very significant manner.’ There is this to be said of Johnson’s incredulity about the Tale of a Tub, that the History of John Bull and the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, though both by Arbuthnot, were commonly assigned to Swift and are printed in his Works.

[1332] ‘Thomson thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet;—the eye that distinguishes in everything presented to its view whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 377. See post, ii. 63, and April 11, 1776.

[1333] Burke seems to be meant. See post, April 25, 1778, and Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 15, and Sept. 15, 1773.—It is strange however that, while in these three places Boswell mentions Burke’s name, he should leave a blank here. In Boswelliana, p. 328, Boswell records:—‘Langton said Burke hammered his wit upon an anvil, and the iron was cold. There were no sparks flashing and flying all about.’

[1334] In Boswelliana (p. 214) this anecdote is thus given:—‘Boswell was talking to Mr. Samuel Johnson of Mr. Sheridan’s enthusiasm for the advancement of eloquence. “Sir,” said Mr. Johnson, “it won’t do. He cannot carry through his scheme. He is like a man attempting to stride the English Channel. Sir, the cause bears no proportion to the effect. It is setting up a candle at Whitechapel to give light at Westminster.”’ See also ante, p. 385, and post. Oct. 16, 1969, April 18 and May 17, 1783.

[1335] Most likely Boswell himself. See ante, p. 410.

[1336] ‘Let a Frenchman talk twice with a minister of state, he desires no more to furnish out a volume.’ Swift’s Works, ed. 1803, xvi. 197. Lord Chesterfield wrote from Paris in 1741:—‘They [the Parisians] despise us, and with reason, for our ill-breeding; on the other hand, we despite them for their want of learning, and we are in the right of it.’ Supplement to Chesterfield’s Letters, p. 49. See Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 14, 1773.

[1337] ‘Dr. Johnson said that he had been told by an acquaintance of Sir Isaac Newton, that in early life he started as a clamorous infidel.’ Seward’s Anecdotes, ii. 324. In Brewster’s Life of Newton I find no mention of early infidelity. On the contrary, Newton had been described as one who ‘had been a searcher of the Scriptures from his youth’ (ii. 314). Brewster says that ‘some foreign writers have endeavoured to shew that his theological writings were composed at a late period of life, when his mind was in its dotage.’ It was not so, however. Ib. p. 315.

[1338] I fully intended to have followed advice of such weight; but having staid much longer both in Germany and Italy than I proposed to do, and having also visited Corsica, I found that I had exceeded the time allowed me by my father, and hastened to France in my way homewards. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 410.

[1339]

‘Has heaven reserved, in pity to the poor,

No pathless waste, or undiscovered shore?

No secret island in the boundless main?

No peaceful desert, yet unclaimed by Spain?’

Johnson looked upon the discovery of America as a misfortune to mankind. In Taxation no Tyranny (Works, vi. 233) he says that ‘no part of the world has yet had reason to rejoice that Columbus found at last reception and employment. In the same year, in a year hitherto disastrous to mankind, by the Portuguese was discovered the passage of the Indies, and by the Spaniards the coast of America.’ On March 4, 1773, he wrote (Croker’s Boswell, p. 248):—‘I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.’ See ante, p. 308, note 2, and post, March 21, 1775, and under Dec. 24, 1783.