Chapter 10

'On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ!'

Moore, describing Sheridan's funeral, says:--'It was well remarked by a French Journal, in contrasting the penury of Sheridan's latter years with the splendour of his funeral, that "France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the place for him to die in."' Moore himself wrote:--

'How proud they can press to the funeral array Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow-- How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day, Whose pall shall be held up by Nobles to-morrow.'

Moore's _Sheridan_, ii. 460-2.

[674] Johnson's _Works_, i. 115.

[675] Among the advertisements in the _Gent. Mag_. for February of this year is the following:--'_An elegy wrote in a country churchyard, 6d_.'

[676] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 17, 1773.

[677] 'Lest there should be any person, at any future period, absurd enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder's fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, at the time when he detected the imposition. 'It is to be hoped, nay it is _expected_, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the authour of Lauder's Preface and Postscript, will no longer allow one to _plume himself with his feathers_, who appeareth so little to deserve [his] assistance: an assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets.' _Milton no Plagiary_, 2nd edit. p. 78. And his Lordship has been pleased now to authorise me to say, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who expressed the strongest indignation against Lauder. BOSWELL. To this letter Lauder had the impudence to add a shameless postscript and some 'testimonies' concerning himself. Though on the face of it it is evident that this postscript is not by Johnson, yet it is included in his works (v. 283). The letter was dated Dec. 20, 1750. In the _Gent. Mag_. for the next month (xxi. 47) there is the following paragraph:--'Mr. Lauder confesses here and exhibits all his forgeries; for which he assigns one motive in the book, and after asking pardon assigns another in the postscript; he also takes an opportunity to publish several letters and testimonials to his former character.' Goldsmith in Retaliation has a hit at Lauder:--

'Here Douglas retires from his toils to relax, The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over, No countryman living their tricks to discover.'

Dr. Douglas was afterwards Bishop of Salisbury (_ante_, p. 127). See _post_, June 25, 1763, for the part he took in exposing the Cock Lane Ghost imposture.

[678] Scott writing to Southey in 1810 said:--'A witty rogue the other day, who sent me a letter signed Detector, proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida's Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of.' The passage alleged to be stolen ends with,--

'When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!'

which in Vida _ad Eranen. El_. ii. v. 21, ran,--

'Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor, Fungeris angelico sola ministerio.'

'It is almost needless to add,' says Mr. Lockhart, 'there are no such lines.' _Life of Scott_, iii. 294.

[679] The greater part of this Preface was given in the _Gent. Mag_. for August 1747 (xvii. 404).

[680] 'Persuasive' is scarcely a fit description for this noble outburst of indignation on the part of one who knew all the miseries of poverty. After quoting Dr. Newton's account of the distress to which Milton's grand-daughter had been reduced, he says:--'That this relation is true cannot be questioned: but surely the honour of letters, the dignity of sacred poetry, the spirit of the English nation, and the glory of human nature require--that it should be true no longer.... In an age, which amidst all its vices and all its follies has not become infamous for want of charity, it may be surely allowed to hope, that the living remains of Milton will be no longer suffered to languish in distress.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 270.

[681] Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 275.

[682] In the original _retrospection_. Johnson's _Works_, v. 268.

[683] In this same year Johnson thus ends a severe criticism on _Samson Agonistes_: 'The everlasting verdure of Milton's laurels has nothing to fear from the blasts of malignity; nor can my attempt produce any other effect than to strengthen their shoots by lopping their luxuriance.' _The Rambler_, No. 140. 'Mr. Nichols shewed Johnson in 1780 a book called _Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton_, in which the affair of Lauder was renewed with virulence. He read the libellous passage with attention, and instantly wrote on the margin:--"In the business of Lauder I was deceived; partly by thinking the man too frantic to be fraudulent.'" Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 66.

[684] 'Johnson turned his house,' writes Lord Macaulay, 'into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no other asylum; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevolence' (_Essays_, i. 390). In his _Biography of Johnson_ (p. 388) he says that Mrs. Williams's 'chief recommendations were her blindness and her poverty.' No doubt in Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale are found amusing accounts of the discord of the inmates of his house. But it is abundantly clear that in Mrs. Williams's company he had for years found pleasure. A few months after her death he wrote to Mrs. Thrale: 'You have more than once wondered at my complaint of solitude, when you hear that I am crowded with visits. _Inopem me copia fecit_. Visitors are no proper companions in the chamber of sickness.... The amusements and consolations of languor and depression are conferred by familiar and domestic companions.... Such society I had with Levett and Williams' (_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 341). To Mrs. Montagu he wrote:--'Thirty years and more she had been my companion, and her death has left me very desolate' (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 739). Boswell says that 'her departure left a blank in his house' (_post_, Aug. 1783). 'By her death,' writes Murphy, 'he was left in a state of destitution, with nobody but his black servant to soothe his anxious moments' (Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 122). Hawkins (_Life_, p. 558) says that 'she had not only cheered him in his solitude, and helped him to pass with comfort those hours which otherwise would have been irksome to him, but had relieved him from domestic cares, regulated and watched over the expenses of his house, etc.' 'She had,' as Boswell says (_post_, Aug. 1783), 'valuable qualities.' 'Had she had,' wrote Johnson, 'good humour and prompt elocution, her universal curiosity and comprehensive knowledge would have made her the delight of all that knew her' (_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 311). To Langton he wrote:--'I have lost a companion to whom I have had recourse for domestic amusement for thirty years, and whose variety of knowledge never was exhausted' (_post_, Sept. 29, 1783). 'Her acquisitions,' he wrote to Dr. Burney, 'were many and her curiosity universal; so that she partook of every conversation' (_post_, Sept. 1783). Murphy (_Life_ p. 72) says:--'She possessed uncommon talents, and, though blind, had an alacrity of mind that made her conversation agreeable, and even desirable.' According to Hawkins (_Life_, 322-4) 'she had acquired a knowledge of French and Italian, and had made great improvements in literature. She was a woman of an enlightened understanding. Johnson in many exigencies found her an able counsellor, and seldom shewed his wisdom more than when he hearkened to her advice.' Perhaps Johnson had her in his thoughts when, writing of Pope's last years and Martha Blount, he said:--'Their acquaintance began early; the life of each was pictured on the other's mind; their conversation therefore was endearing, for when they met there was an immediate coalition of congenial notions.' (Johnson's _Works_, viii. 304.) Miss Mulso (Mrs. Chapone) writing to Mrs. Carter in 1753, says:--'I was charmed with Mr. Johnson's behaviour to Mrs. Williams, which was like that of a fond father to his daughter. She shewed very good sense, with a great deal of modesty and humility; and so much patience and cheerfulness under her misfortune that it doubled my concern for her' (_Mrs. Chapone's Life_, p. 73). Miss Talbot wrote to Mrs. Carter in 1756:--'My mother the other day fell in love with your friend, Mrs. Williams, whom we met at Mr. Richardson's [where Miss Mulso also had met her], and is particularly charmed with the sweetness of her voice' (Talbot and Carter _Corresp_. ii. 221). Miss Talbot was a niece of Lord Chancellor Talbot. Hannah More wrote in 1774:--'Mrs. Williams is engaging in her manners; her conversation lively and entertaining' (More's _Memoirs_, i.49). Boswell, however, more than once complains that she was 'peevish' (_post_, Oct. 26, 1769 and April 7, 1776). At a time when she was very ill, and had gone into the country to try if she could improve her health, Johnson wrote:--'Age, and sickness, and pride have made her so peevish, that I was forced to bribe the maid to stay with her by a secret stipulation of half-a-crown a week over her wages' (_post_, July 22, 1777). Malone, in a note on August 2, 1763, says that he thinks she had of her own 'about £35 or £40 a year.' This was in her latter days; Johnson had prevailed on Garrick to give her a benefit and Mrs. Montagu to give her a pension. She used, he adds, to help in the house-work.

[685] March 14. See _ante_, p. 203, note 1. He had grown weary of his work. In the last _Rambler_ but one he wrote: 'When once our labour has begun, the comfort that enables us to endure it is the prospect of its end.... He that is himself weary will soon weary the public. Let him therefore lay down his employment, whatever it be, who can no longer exert his former activity or attention; let him not endeavour to struggle with censure, or obstinately infest the stage, till a general hiss commands him to depart.'

[686] How successful an imitator Hawkesworth was is shewn by the following passage in the Carter and Talbot _Corresp_., ii. 109:--'I discern Mr. Johnson through all the papers that are not marked A, as evidently as if I saw him through the keyhole with the pen in his hand.'

[687] In the _Rambler_ for Feb. 25 of this year (No. 203) he wrote in the following melancholy strain:--'Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from the time to come. In youth we have nothing past to entertain us, and in age we derive little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the future likewise has its limits which the imagination dreads to approach, but which we see to be not far distant. The loss of our friends and companions impresses hourly upon us the necessity of our own departure; we know that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that we must soon lie down in the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former ages, and yield our place to others, who, like us, shall be driven a while by hope or fear about the surface of the earth, and then like us be lost in the shades of death.' In _Prayers and Meditations_, pp. 12-15, in a service that he used on May 6, 'as preparatory to my return to life to-morrow,' he prays:--'Enable me to begin and perfect that reformation which I promised her, and to persevere in that resolution which she implored Thee to continue, in the purposes which I recorded in Thy sight when she lay dead before me.' See _post_, Jan. 20, 1780. The author of _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnson_, 1785, says, p. 113, that on the death of his wife, 'to walk the streets of London was for many a lonesome night Johnson's constant substitute for sleep.'

[688] 'I have often been inclined to think that, if this fondness of Johnson for his wife was not dissembled, it was a lesson that he had learned by rote, and that, when he practised it, he knew not where to stop till he became ridiculous.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 313

[689] The son of William Strahan, M.P., 'Johnson's old and constant friend, Printer to His Majesty' (_post_, under April 20, 1781). He attended Johnson on his death-bed, and published the volume called _Prayers and Meditations_.

[690] Southey in his _Life of Wesley_, i. 359, writes:--'The universal attention which has been paid to dreams in all ages proves that the superstition is natural; and I have heard too many well-attested facts (facts to which belief could not be refused upon any known laws of evidence) not to believe that impressions are sometimes made in this manner, and forewarnings communicated, which cannot be explained by material philosophy or mere metaphysics.'

[691] Warburton in his _Divine Legation_, i. 284, quotes the 'famous sepulchral inscription of the Roman widow.' 'Ita peto vos Manes sanctissimi commendatum habeatis meum conjugem et velitis huic indulgentissimi esse horis nocturnis ut eum videam,' etc.

[692] Mrs. Boswell died in June 1789. Johnson's prayer with Boswell's comments on it was first inserted in the _Additions_ to the second edition.

[693] Mrs. Johnson died on March 17, O. S., or March 28, N. S. The change of style was made in September, 1752. He might have kept either the 17th, or the 28th as the anniversary. In like manner, though he was born on Sept. 7, after the change he kept the 18th as his birth-day. See _post_, beginning of 1753, where he writes, 'Jan. 1, N. S., which I shall use for the future.'

[694] In _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 22, he recorded: 'The melancholy of this day hung long upon me.' P. 53: 'April 22, 1764, Thought on Tetty, dear, poor Tetty, with my eyes full.' P. 91: 'March 28, 1770. This is the day on which, in 1752, I was deprived of poor, dear Tetty.... When I recollect the time in which we lived together, my grief for her departure is not abated; and I have less pleasure in any good that befalls me because she does not partake it.' P. 170: 'April 20, 1778. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday [Easter Sunday]. Couldest thou have lived!' P. 210: 'March 28, 1782. This is the day on which, in 1752, dear Tetty died. I have now uttered a prayer of repentance and contrition; perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her. Perhaps Tetty is now praying for me. God help me.' In a letter to Mrs. Thrale on the occasion of the death of her son (dated March 30, 1776) he thus refers to the loss of his wife:--'I know that a whole system of hopes, and designs, and expectations is swept away at once, and nothing left but bottomless vacuity. What you feel I have felt, and hope that your disquiet will be shorter than mine.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 310. In a letter to Mr. Elphinston, who had just lost his wife, written on July 27, 1778, he repeats the same thought:--'A loss such as yours lacerates the mind, and breaks the whole system of purposes and hopes. It leaves a dismal vacuity in life, which affords nothing on which the affections can fix, or to which endeavour may be directed. All this I have known.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 66, note. See also _post_, his letter to Mr. Warton of Dec. 21, 1754, and to Dr. Lawrence of Jan. 20, 1780.

[695] In the usual monthly list of deaths in the _Gent. Mag_. her name is not given. Johnson did not, I suppose, rank among 'eminent persons.'

[696] Irene, Act i. sc. 1.

[697] See _post_, Nov. 16, 1784, note.

[698] The Anderdon MSS. contain an importunate letter, dated July 3, 1751, from one Mitchell, a tradesman in Chandos-street, pressing Johnson to pay £2, due by his wife ever since August, 1749, and threatening legal proceedings to enforce payment. This letter Mr. Boswell had endorsed, 'Proof of Dr. Johnson's wretched circumstances in 1751.' CROKER.

[699] In the _Gent. Mag_. for February, 1794, (p. 100,) was printed a letter pretending to be that written by Johnson on the death of his wife. But it is merely a transcript of the 41st number of _The Idler_. A fictitious date (March 17, 1751, O. S.) was added by some person previous to this paper being sent to the publisher of that miscellany, to give a colour to this deception. MALONE.

[700] Francis Barber was born in Jamaica, and was brought to England in 1750 by Colonel Bathurst, father of Johnson's very intimate friend, Dr. Bathurst. He was sent, for some time, to the Reverend Mr. Jackson's school, at Barton, in Yorkshire. The Colonel by his will left him his freedom, and Dr. Bathurst was willing that he should enter into Johnson's service, in which he continued from 1752 till Johnson's death, with the exception of two intervals; in one of which, upon some difference with his master, he went and served an apothecary in Cheapside, but still visited Dr. Johnson occasionally; in another, he took a fancy to go to sea. Part of the time, indeed, he was, by the kindness of his master, at a school in Northamptonshire, that he might have the advantage of some learning. So early and so lasting a connection was there between Dr. Johnson and this humble friend. BOSWELL. 'I believe that Francis was scarcely as much the object of Mr. Johnson's personal kindness as the representative of Dr. Bathurst, for whose sake he would have loved anybody or anything.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 212.

[701] 'I asked him,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. pp. 146-150), 'if he ever disputed with his wife. "Perpetually," said he; "my wife had a particular reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do, till they become troublesome to their best friends, slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt and useless lumber. A clean floor is so comfortable, she would say sometimes by way of twitting; till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor, we would now have a touch at the ceiling." I asked him if he ever huffed his wife about his dinner. "So often," replied he, "that at last she called to me and said, Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do not make a farce of thanking God for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest not eatable."'

[702] 'When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed; and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive, as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood.' _Rambler_, No. 54.

[703] _Pr. and Med_. p. 19. BOSWELL.

[704] Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, p. 316. BOSWELL.

[705] See _post_, Oct. 26, 1769, where the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory or 'a middle state,' as Johnson calls it is discussed, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 25, 1773.

[706] In the original, 'lawful _for_ me.' Much the same prayer Johnson made for his mother. _Pr. and Med_. p. 38. On Easter Day, 1764, he records:--'After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me.' _Ib_. p. 54. On the death of Mr. Thrale he wrote, 'May God that delighteth in mercy _have had_ mercy on thee.' _Ib_. p. 191; and later on, 'for Henry Thrale, so far as is lawful, I humbly implore thy mercy in his present state.' _Ib_. p. 197.

[707] _Pr. and Med_., p. 20. BOSWELL.

[708] Shortly before his death (see _post,_ July 12, 1784) Johnson had a stone placed over her grave with the following inscription:--

Hic conduntur reliquiae ELIZABETHÆ Antiqua Jarvisiorum Leicestrienses, ortae; Formosae, cultae, ingeniosae, piae; Uxoris, primis nuptiis, Henrici Porter, Secundis Samuelis Johnson: Qui multum amatam, diuque defletam Hoc lapide contexit. Obiit Londini Mense Mart. A.D. MDCCLIII

As Mrs. Johnson died in 1752, the date is wrong.

[709] See _post_, Sept. 21. 1777.

[710] He described her as a woman 'whom none, who were capable of distinguishing either moral or intellectual excellence, could know without esteem or tenderness. She was extensively charitable in her judgements and opinions, grateful for every kindness that she received, and willing to impart assistance of every kind to all whom her little power enabled her to benefit. She passed through many months of languor, weakness, and decay without a single murmur of impatience, and often expressed her adoration of that mercy which granted her so long time for recollection and penitence.' Johnson's _Works,_ ix. 523.

[711] See _ante_, p. 187.

[712] Dr. Bathurst, though a Physician of no inconsiderable merit, had not the good fortune to get much practice in London. He was, therefore willing to accept of employment abroad, and, to the regret of all who knew him, fell a sacrifice to the destructive climate, in the expedition against the Havannah. Mr. Langton recollects the following passage in a letter from Dr. Johnson to Mr. Beauclerk: 'The Havannah is taken;--a conquest too dearly obtained; for, Bathurst died before it. "_Vix Priamus tanti totaque Troja fuit_."' BOSWELL.

The quotation is from Ovid, _Heroides_, i. 4. Johnson (_post_, Dec. 21, 1762) wrote to Baretti, 'Bathurst went physician to the army, and died at the Havannah.' Mr. Harwood in his _History of Lichfield_, p. 451, gives two letters from Bathurst to Johnson dated 1757. In the postscript to one he says:--'I know you will call me a lazy dog, and in truth I deserve it; but I am afraid I shall never mend. I have indeed long known that I can love my friends without being able to tell them so.... Adieu my dearest friend.' He calls Johnson 'the best of friends, to whom I stand indebted for all the little virtue and knowledge that I have.' 'Nothing,' he continues, 'I think, but absolute want can force me to continue where I am.' Jamaica he calls 'this execrable region.' Hawkins (_Life_, p. 235) says that 'Bathurst, before leaving England, confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years' exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.' Johnson perhaps had Bathurst in mind when, many years later, he wrote:--'A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual; they that employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a century, a very curious book might be written on the _Fortune of Physicians_.' _Works_, viii. 471.

[713] Mr. Ryland was one of the members of the old club in Ivy Lane who met to dine in 1783. Mr. Payne was another, (_post_, end of 1783).

[714] Johnson revised her volumes: _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783.

[715] Catherine Sawbridge, sister of Mrs. [? Mr.] Alderman Sawbridge, was born in 1733; but it was not till 1760 that she was married to Dr. Macaulay, a physician; so that Barber's account was incorrect either in date or name. CROKER. For Alderman Sawbridge see _post_, May 17, 1778, note.

[716] See _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783. Johnson bequeathed to her a book to keep as a token of remembrance (_post_, Dec. 9, 1784). I find her name in the year 1765 in the list of subscribers to the edition of Swift's _Works_, in 17 vols., so that perhaps she was more 'in the learned way' than Barber thought.

[717] Reynolds did not return to England from Italy till the October of this year, seven months after Mrs. Johnson's death. Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 87. He writes of his 'thirty years' intimacy with Dr. Johnson.' He must have known him therefore at least as early as 1754. _Ib_. ii. 454.

[718] See _ante_, p. 185.

[719] 'Lord Southwell,' said Johnson, 'was the most _qualitied_ man I ever saw.' _Post_, March 23, 1783.

[720] The account given of Levet in _Gent. Mag_. lv. 101, shews that he was a man out of the common run. He would not otherwise have attracted the notice of the French surgeons. The writer says:--'Mr. Levet, though an Englishman by birth, became early in life a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris. The surgeons who frequented it, finding him of an inquisitive turn and attentive to their conversation, made a purse for him, and gave him some instructions in their art. They afterwards furnished him with the means of further knowledge, by procuring him free admission to such lectures in pharmacy and anatomy as were read by the ablest professors of that period.' When he lived with Johnson, 'much of the day was employed in attendance on his patients, who were chiefly of the lowest rank of tradesmen. The remainder of his hours he dedicated to Hunter's lectures, and to as many different opportunities of improvement as he could meet with on the same gratuitous conditions.' 'All his medical knowledge,' said Johnson, 'and it is not inconsiderable, was obtained through the ear. Though he buys books, he seldom looks into them, or discovers any power by which he can be supposed to judge of an author's merit.' 'Dr. Johnson has frequently observed that Levet was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny-loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday. His character was rendered valuable by repeated proof of honesty, tenderness, and gratitude to his benefactor, as well as by an unwearied diligence in his profession. His single failing was an occasional departure from sobriety. Johnson would observe, "he was perhaps the only man who ever became intoxicated through motives of prudence. He reflected that, if he refused the gin or brandy offered him by some of his patients, he could have been no gainer by their cure, as they might have had nothing else to bestow on him. This habit of taking a fee, in whatever shape it was exhibited, could not be put off by advice. He would swallow what he did not like, nay what he knew would injure him, rather than go home with an idea that his skill had been exerted without recompense. Though he took all that was offered him, he demanded nothing from the poor."' The writer adds that 'Johnson never wished him to be regarded as an inferior, or treated him like a dependent.' Mrs. Piozzi says:--'When Johnson raised contributions for some distressed author, or wit in want, he often made us all more than amends by diverting descriptions of the lives they were then passing in corners unseen by anybody but himself, and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house to tend the outpensioners, and of whom he said most truly and sublimely, that

"In misery's darkest caverns known,"' etc. Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 118.

'Levet, madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not in his mind.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 115. 'Whoever called in on Johnson at about midday found him and Levet at breakfast, Johnson, in deshabille, as just risen from bed, and Levet filling out tea for himself and his patron alternately, no conversation passing between them. All that visited him at these hours were welcome. A night's rest and breakfast seldom failed to refresh and fit him for discourse, and whoever withdrew went too soon.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 435.

How much he valued his poor friend he showed at his death, _post_, Jan. 20, 1782.

[721]

'O et praesidium et dulce decus meum.' 'My joy, my guard, and sweetest good.'

CREECH. Horace, _Odes_, i. I. 2.

[722] It was in 1738 that Johnson was living in Castle Street. At the time of Reynolds's arrival in London in 1752 he had been living for some years in Gough Square. Boswell, I suppose, only means to say that Johnson's acquaintance with the Cotterells was formed when he lived in their neighbourhood. Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 69) says that the Cotterells lived 'opposite to Reynolds's,' but his account seems based on a misunderstanding of Boswell.

[723] _Ante_, p. 165.

[724] 'We are both of Dr. Johnson's school,' wrote Reynolds to some friend. 'For my own part, I acknowledge the highest obligations to him. He may be said to have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a great deal of rubbish. Those very persons whom he has brought to think rightly will occasionally criticise the opinions of their master when he nods. But we should always recollect that it is he himself who taught us and enabled us to do it.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 461. Burke, writing to Malone, said:--'You state very properly how much Reynolds owed to the writings and conversation of Johnson; and nothing shews more the greatness of Sir Joshua's parts than his taking advantage of both, and making some application of them to his profession, when Johnson neither understood nor desired to understand anything of painting.' _Ib_. p. 638. Reynolds, there can be little question, is thinking of Johnson in the following passage in his _Seventh Discourse_:--'What partial and desultory reading cannot afford may be supplied by the conversation of learned and ingenious men, which is the best of all substitutes for those who have not the means or opportunities of deep study. There are many such men in this age: and they will be pleased with communicating their ideas to artists, when they see them curious and docile, if they are treated with that respect and deference which is so justly their due. Into such society young artists, if they make it the point of their ambition, will by degrees be admitted. There, without formal teaching, they will insensibly come to feel and reason like those they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste imperceptibly formed in their minds, which they will know how to reduce to a standard, by applying general truth to their own purposes, better perhaps than those to whom they owned [?owed] the original sentiment.' Reynolds's _Works_, edit. 1824, i. 149. 'Another thing remarkable to shew how little Sir Joshua crouched to the great is, that he never gave them their proper titles. I never heard the words "your lordship" or "your ladyship" come from his mouth; nor did he ever say "Sir" in speaking to any one but Dr. Johnson; and when he did not hear distinctly what the latter said (which often happened) he would then say "Sir?" that he might repeat it.' Northcote's _Conversations_, p. 289. Gibbon called Johnson 'Reynolds's oracle.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 149. See also _post_, under Dec. 29, 1778.

[725] The thought may have been suggested to Reynolds by Johnson's writings. In _The Rambler_, No. 87, he had said:--'There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.' In No. 166, he says:--'To be obliged is to be in some respect inferior to another.'

[726] Northcote tells the following story on the authority of Miss Reynolds. It is to be noticed, however, that in her _Recollections_ (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 832) the story is told somewhat differently. Johnson, Reynolds and Miss Reynolds one day called on the Miss Cotterells. 'Johnson was the last of the three that came in; when the maid, seeing this uncouth and dirty figure of a man, and not conceiving he could be one of the company, laid hold of his coat, just as he was going up-stairs, and pulled him back again, saying, "You fellow, what is your business here? I suppose you intended to rob the house." This most unlucky accident threw him into such a fit of shame and anger that he roared out like a bull, "What have I done? What have I done?"' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 73.

[727] Johnson writing to Langton on January 9, 1759, describes him as 'towering in the confidence of twenty-one.' The conclusion of _The Rambler_ was in March 1752, when Langton must have been only fourteen or just fifteen at most; Johnson's first letter to him dated May 6, 1755, shews that at that time their acquaintance had been but short. Langton's subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles in the Register of the University of Oxford was on July 7, 1757. Johnson's first letter to him at Oxford is dated June 28, 1757.

[728] See _post_, March 20, 1782.

[729] 'My friend Maltby and I,' said Samuel Rogers, 'when we were very young men, had a strong desire to see Dr. Johnson; and we determined to call upon him, and introduce ourselves. We accordingly proceeded to his house in Bolt Court; and I had my hand on the knocker when our courage failed us, and we retreated. Many years afterwards I mentioned this circumstance to Boswell, who said, "What a pity that you did not go boldly in! He would have received you with all kindness."' Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 9. For Johnson's levee see _post_, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell's _Collectanea_.

[730] 'George Langton,' writes Mr. Best in his _Memorials_ (p. 66), 'shewed me his pedigree with the names and arms of the families with which his own had intermarried. It was engrossed on a piece of parchment about ten inches broad, and twelve to fifteen feet long. "It leaves off at the reign of Queen Elizabeth," said he.'

[731] Topham Beauclerk was the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk, fifth son of the first Duke of St. Alban's. He was therefore the great-grandson of Charles II. and Nell Gwynne. He was born in Dec. 1739. In my _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_ I have put together such facts as I could find about Langton and Beauclerk.

[732] Mr. Best describes Langton as 'a very tall, meagre, long-visaged man, much resembling a stork standing on one leg near the shore in Raphael's cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. His manners were, in the highest degree, polished; his conversation mild, equable and always pleasing.' Best's _Memorials_, p. 62. Miss Hawkins writes:--'If I were called on to name the person with whom Johnson might have been seen to the fairest advantage, I should certainly name Mr. Langton.' Miss Hawkins's _Memoirs_, i. 144. Mrs. Piozzi wrote in 1817:--'I remember when to have Langton at a man's house stamped him at once a literary character.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 203.

[733] In the summer of 1759. See _post_, under April 15, 1758, and 1759.

[734] Lord Charlemont said that 'Beauclerk possessed an exquisite taste, various accomplishments, and the most perfect good breeding. He was eccentric, often querulous, entertaining a contempt for the generality of the world, which the politeness of his manners could not always conceal; but to those whom he liked most generous and friendly. Devoted at one time to pleasure, at another to literature, sometimes absorbed in play, sometimes in books, he was altogether one of the most accomplished, and when in good humour and surrounded by those who suited his fancy, one of the most agreeable men that could possibly exist.' Lord Charlemont's _Life_, i. 210. Hawkins writes (_Life_, p. 422) that 'over all his behaviour there beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and good-humour as communicated itself to all around him.' Mrs. Piozzi said of him:--'Topham Beauclerk (wicked and profligate as he wished to be accounted) was yet a man of very strict veracity. Oh Lord! how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, i. 348. Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 40) said that 'Beauclerk was a strangely absent person.' He once went to dress for a dinner-party in his own house. 'He forgot all about his guests; thought that it was bed-time, and got into bed. His servant, coming to tell him that his guests were waiting for him, found him fast asleep.'

[735] It was to the Round-house that Captain Booth was first taken in Fielding's _Amelia_, Book i, chap. 2.

[736]

'Blends, in exception to all general rules, Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools.'

Pope, _Moral Essays_, ii. 275.

[737] In the college which _The Club_ was to set up at St. Andrew's, Beauclerk was to have the chair of natural philosophy. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 25, 1773. Goldsmith, writing to Langton in 1771, says: 'Mr. Beauclerk is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle; deep in chymistry and physics.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 283. Boswell described to Temple, in 1775, Beauclerk's villa at Muswell Hill, with its 'observatory, laboratory for chymical experiments.' Boswell's _Letters_, p. 194.

[738] 'I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.' 1 Henry IV. Act v. sc. 4.

[739] 'Bishop. A cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges, and sugar.' Johnson's _Dictionary_.

[740] Mr. Langton has recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are in Lord Lansdowne's Drinking Song to Sleep, and run thus:--

'Short, very short be then thy reign, For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again.' BOSWELL.

Lord Lansdowne was the Granville of Pope's couplet--

'But why then publish? Granville the polite, And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.'

_Prologue to the Satires,_ 1.135.

[741] Boswell in _Hebrides_ (Aug. 18, 1773) says that Johnson, on starting from Edinburgh, left behind in an open drawer in Boswell's house 'one volume of a pretty full and curious Diary of his life, of which I have a few fragments.' He also states (_post_, under Dec 9, 1784):--'I owned to him, that having accidentally seen them [two quarto volumes of his _Life_] I had read a great deal in them.' It would seem that he had also transcribed a portion.

[742] This is inconsistent with what immediately follows, for No. 39 on Sleep was published on March 20.

[743] Hawkesworth in the last number of _The Adventurer_ says that he had help at first from A.; 'but this resource soon failing, I was obliged to carry on the publication alone, except some casual supplies, till I obtained from the gentlemen who have distinguished their papers by T and Z, such assistance as I most wished.' In a note he says that the papers signed Z are by the Rev. Mr. Warton. The papers signed A are written in a light style. In Southey's _Cowper_, i. 47, it is said that Bonnell Thornton wrote them.

[744] Boswell had read the passage carelessly. Statius is mentioned, but the writer goes on to quote _Cowley_, whose Latin lines C. B. has translated. Johnson's _Works_, iv. 10.

[745] Malone says that 'Johnson was fond of him, but latterly owned that Hawkesworth--who had set out a modest, humble man--was one of the many whom success in the world had spoiled. He was latterly, as Sir Joshua Reynolds told me, an affected insincere man, and a great coscomb in his dress. He had no literature whatever.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 441. See _post_, April 11 and May 7, 1773, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 3.

[746] 'Johnson's statement to Warton is definite and is borne out by internal evidence, if internal evidence can be needful when he had once made a definite statement. The papers signed _Misargyrus_, the first of which appeared on March 3, are all below his style. They were not, I feel sure, written by him, and are improperly given in the Oxford edition of his works. I do not find in them even any traces of his hand. The paper on Sleep, No. 39, is I am almost sure, partly his, but I believe it is not wholly. In the frequency of quotations in the first part of it I see another, and probably a younger author. The passage on the 'low drudgery of digesting dictionaries' is almost certainly his. Dr. Bathurst, perhaps, wrote the Essay, and Johnson corrected it. Whether it was Johnson's or not, it was published after the letter to Dr. Warton was written.

[747] See _post_, April 25, 1778, for an instance where Johnson's silence did not imply assent.

[748] 'One evening at the Club Johnson proposed to us the celebrating the birth of Mrs. Lennox's first literary child, as he called her book, [_The Life of Harriet Stuart_, a novel, published Dec. 1750] by a whole night spent in festivity. Our supper was elegant, and Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay-leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an authoress, and had written verses; and further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not till he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows. About five Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 286. See _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 'Collection,' and May 15, 1784.

[749] In a document in the possession of one of Cave's collateral descendants which I have seen dated May 3, 1754, and headed, 'Present state of the late Mr. Edward Cave's effects,' I found entered '_Magazine_, £3,000. _Daily Advertiser_, £900.' The total value of the effects was £8,708.

[750] Johnson records of his friend that 'one of the last acts of reason which he exerted was fondly to press the hand that is now writing this little narrative.' _Works_, vi. 433.

[751] See Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 189.

[752] Lord Chesterfield writing to his son in 1751 (_Letters_, iii. 136) said:--'People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind, as surgeons are to their bodily pains; they see and hear of them all day long, and even of so many simulated ones, that they do not know which has are real, and which are not. Other sentiments are therefore to be applied to than those of mere justice and humanity; their favour must be captivated by the _suaviter in modo_; their love of ease disturbed by unwearied importunity; or their fears wrought upon by a decent intimation of implacable, cool resentment: this is the true _fortiter in re_! He was himself to experience an instance of the true _fortiter in re_.

[753] If Lord Chesterfield had read the last number of _The Rambler_ (published in March, 1752) he could scarcely have flattered himself with these expectations. Johnson, after saying that he would not endeavour to overbear the censures of criticism by the influence of a patron, added:--'The supplications of an author never yet reprieved him a moment from oblivion; and, though greatness sometimes sheltered guilt, it can afford no protection to ignorance or dulness. Having hitherto attempted only the propagation of truth, I will not at last violate it by the confession of terrors which I do not feel; having laboured to maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now degrade it by the meanness of dedication.'

[754] On Nov. 28 and Dec. 5, 1754. _The World_, by Adam Fitz-Adam, Jan. 1753 to Dec. 1765. The editor was Edward Moore. Among the contributors were the Earls of Chesterfield and Corke, Horace Walpole, R. O. Cambridge, and Soame Jenyns. See _post_, July 1, 1763.

[755] With these papers as a whole Johnson would have been highly offended. The anonymous writer hopes that his readers will not suspect him 'of being a hired and interested puff of this work.' 'I most solemnly protest,' he goes on to say, 'that neither Mr. Johnson, nor any booksellers have ever offered me the usual compliment of a pair of gloves or a bottle of wine.' It is a pretty piece of irony for a wealthy nobleman solemnly to protest that he has not been bribed by a poor author, whom seven years before he had repulsed from his door. But Chesterfield did worse than this. By way of recommending a work of so much learning and so much labour he tells a foolish story of an assignation that had failed 'between a fine gentleman and a fine lady.' The letter that had passed between them had been badly spelt, and they had gone to different houses. 'Such examples,' he wrote, 'really make one tremble; and will, I am convinced, determine my fair fellow-subjects and their adherents to adopt and scrupulously conform to Mr. Johnson's rules of true orthography.' Johnson, in the last year of his life, at a time of great weakness and depression, defended the roughness of his manner. 'I have done more good as I am. Obscenity and impiety have always been repressed in my company' (_post_, June 11, 1784).

[756] In the original 'Mr. Johnson.'

[757] In the original 'unnecessary foreign ornaments.'

[758] In the original, 'will now, and, I dare say.'

[759] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 191) says that Chesterfield, further to appease Johnson, sent to him Sir Thomas Robinson (see _post_, July 19, 1763), who was 'to apologise for his lordship's treatment of him, and to make him tenders of his future friendship and patronage. Sir Thomas, whose talent was flattery, was profuse in his commendations of Johnson and his writings, and declared that, were his circumstances other than they were, himself would settle £500 a year on him. 'And who are you,' asked Johnson, 'that talk thus liberally?' 'I am,' said the other, 'Sir Thomas Robinson, a Yorkshire baronet.' 'Sir,' replied Johnson, 'if the first peer of the realm were to make me such an offer, I would shew him the way down stairs.'

[760] _Paradise Lost_, ii. 112.

[761] Johnson, perhaps, was thinking of his interviews with Chesterfield, when in his _Rambler_ on 'The Mischiefs of following a Patron' (No. 163) he wrote:--'If you, Mr. Rambler, have ever ventured your philosophy within the attraction of greatness, you know the force of such language, introduced with a smile of gracious tenderness, and impressed at the conclusion with an air of solemn sincerity.'

[762] Johnson said to Garrick:--'I have sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the English language; and does he now send out two cock-boats to tow me into harbour?' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 74. This metaphor may perhaps have been suggested to Johnson by Warburton. 'I now begin to see land, after having wandered, according to Mr. Warburton's phrase, in this vast sea of words.' _Post_, Feb. 1, 1755.

[763] See _post_, Nov. 22, 1779, and April 8, 1780. Sir Henry Ellis says that 'address' in Johnson's own copy of his letter to Lord Chesterfield is spelt twice with one _d_. Croker's _Corres_. ii. 44. In the series of Letters by Johnson given in _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v, Johnson writes _persuit_ (p. 325); 'I cannot _butt_ (p. 342); 'to retain _council_' (p. 343); _harrassed_ (p. 423); _imbecillity_ (p. 482). In a letter to Nichols quoted by me, _post_, beginning of 1783, he writes _ilness_. He commonly, perhaps always, spelt _Boswell Boswel_, and Nichols's name in one series of letters he spelt Nichols, Nichol, and Nicol. _Post_, beginning of 1781, note.

[764] Dr. Johnson appeared to have had a remarkable delicacy with respect to the circulation of this letter; for Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, informs me that, having many years ago pressed him to be allowed to read it to the second Lord Hardwicke, who was very desirous to hear it (promising at the same time, that no copy of it should be taken), Johnson seemed much pleased that it had attracted the attention of a nobleman of such a respectable character; but after pausing some time, declined to comply with the request, saying, with a smile, 'No, Sir; I have hurt the dog too much already;' or words to that purpose. BOSWELL.

[765] See _post_, June 4, 1781.

[766] In 1790, the year before the _Life of Johnson_ came out, Boswell published this letter in a separate sheet of four quarto pages under the following title:--_The celebrated Letter from Samuel Johnson, LL.D., to Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Now first published with Notes, by James Boswell, Esq., London. Printed by Henry Baldwin: for Charles Dilly in the Poultry, MDCCXC. Price Half-a-Guinea. Entered in the Hall-Book of the Company of Stationers_. It belongs to the same impression as _The Life of Johnson_.

[767] 'Je chante le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre.' Boileau, _L'Art poétique_, iii. 272.

[768] The following note is subjoined by Mr. Langton:--'Dr. Johnson, when he gave me this copy of his letter, desired that I would annex to it his information to me, that whereas it is said in the letter that "no assistance has been received," he did once receive from Lord Chesterfield the sum of ten pounds; but as that was so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find place in a letter of the kind that this was.' BOSWELL. 'This surely is an unsatisfactory excuse,' writes Mr. Croker. He read Johnson's letter carelessly, as the rest of his note shews. Johnson says, that during the seven years that had passed since he was repulsed from Chesterfield's door he had pushed on his work without one act of assistance. These ten pounds, we may feel sure, had been received before the seven years began to run. No doubt they had been given in 1747 as an acknowledgement of the compliment paid to Chesterfield in the _Plan_. He had at first been misled by Chesterfield's one act of kindness, but he had long had his eyes opened. Like the shepherd in Virgil (_Eclogues_, viii. 43) he could say:--'_Nunc_ scio quid sit Amor.'

[769] In this passage Dr. Johnson evidently alludes to the loss of his wife. We find the same tender recollection recurring to his mind upon innumerable occasions: and, perhaps no man ever more forcibly felt the truth of the sentiment so elegantly expressed by my friend Mr. Malone, in his Prologue to Mr. Jephson's tragedy of JULIA [_Julia or the Italian Lover_ was acted for the first time on April 17, 1787. _Gent. Mag_. 1787, p. 354]:--

'Vain--wealth, and fame, and fortune's fostering care, If no fond breast the splendid blessings share; And, each day's bustling pageantry once past, There, only there, our bliss is found at last.' BOSWELL.

Three years earlier, when his wife was dying, he had written in one of the last _Ramblers_ (No 203):--'It is necessary to the completion of every good, that it be timely obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will come too late to give much delight ... What we acquire by bravery or science, by mental or corporal diligence, comes at last when we cannot communicate, and therefore cannot enjoy it.' Chesterfield himself was in no happy state. Less than a month before he received Johnson's letter he wrote (_Works_, iii. 308):--'For these six months past, it seems as if all the complaints that ever attacked heads had joined to overpower mine. Continual noises, headache, giddiness, and impenetrable deafness; I could not stoop to write; and even reading, the only resource of the deaf, was painful to me.' He wrote to his son a year earlier (_Letters_, iv. 43), 'Reading, which was always a pleasure to me in the time even of my greatest dissipation, is now become my only refuge; and I fear I indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes. But what can I do? I must do something. I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary. I will not hoard them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss than not enjoy the use of them.'

[770] '_The English Dictionary_ was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.' Johnson's _Works_ v. 51.

[771] Upon comparing this copy with that which Dr. Johnson dictated to me from recollection, the variations are found to be so slight, that this must be added to the many other proofs which he gave of the wonderful extent and accuracy of his memory. To gratify the curious in composition, I have deposited both the copies in the British Museum. BOSWELL.

[772] Soon after Edwards's _Canons of Criticism_ came out, Johnson was dining at Tonson the Bookseller's with Hayman the Painter and some more company. Hayman related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the conversation having turned upon Edwards's book, the gentlemen praised it much, and Johnson allowed its merit. But when they went farther, and appeared to put that author upon a level with Warburton, 'Nay, (said Johnson,) he has given him some smart hits to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.' BOSWELL. Johnson in his _Preface to Shakespeare_ (_Works_, v. 141) wrote:--'Dr. Warburton's chief assailants are the authors of _The Canons of Criticism_, and of _The Revisal of Shakespeare's Text_.... The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter and returns for more; the other bites like a viper.... When I think on one with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that "girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle;" when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in _Macbeth_:

"A falcon tow'ring in his pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd."

Let me, however, do them justice. One is a wit and one a scholar.'

[773] To Johnson might be applied what he himself said of Dryden:--'He appears to have known in its whole extent the dignity of his character, and to have set a very high value on his own powers and performances.' _Works_, vii. 291.

[774] In the original _Yet mark_.

[775] In the original _Toil_.

[776] In his _Dictionary_ he defined _patron_ as 'commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery.' This definition disappears in the _Abridgement_, but remains in the fourth edition.

[777] Chesterfield, when he read Johnson's letter to Dodsley, was acting up to the advice that he had given his own son six years earlier (_Letters_, ii. 172):--'When things of this kind [bons mots] happen to be said of you, the most prudent way is to seem not to suppose that they are meant at you, but to dissemble and conceal whatever degree of anger you may feel inwardly: and, should they be so plain, that you cannot be supposed ignorant of their meaning, so join in the laugh of the company against yourself; acknowledge the hit to be a fair one, and the jest a good one, and play off the whole thing in seeming good humour; but by no means reply in the same way; which only shows that you are hurt, and publishes the victory which you might have concealed.'

[778] See _post_, March 23, 1783, where Johnson said that 'Lord Chesterfield was dignified, but he was insolent;' and June 27, 1784, where he said that 'his manner was exquisitely elegant.'

[779]

'Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits, A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.'

Pope's _Dunciad_, iv. 90.

'A true choice spirit we admit; With wits a fool, with fools a wit.'

Churchill's _Duellist_' Book iii.

'The solemn fop, significant and budge; A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.'

Cowper's _Poems_, _Conversation_, 1. 299.

According to Rebecca Warner (_Original Letters_, p. 204), Johnson telling Joseph Fowke about his refusal to dedicate his _Dictionary_ to Chesterfield, said: 'Sir, I found I must have gilded a rotten post.'

[780] That collection of letters cannot be vindicated from the serious charge of encouraging, in some passages, one of the vices most destructive to the good order and comfort of society, which his Lordship represents as mere fashionable gallantry; and, in others, of inculcating the base practice of dissimulation, and recommending, with disproportionate anxiety, a perpetual attention to external elegance of manners. But it must, at the same time, be allowed, that they contain many good precepts of conduct, and much genuine information upon life and manners, very happily expressed; and that there was considerable merit in paying so much attention to the improvement of one who was dependent upon his Lordship's protection; it has, probably, been exceeded in no instance by the most exemplary parent; and though I can by no means approve of confounding the distinction between lawful and illicit offspring, which is, in effect, insulting the civil establishment of our country, to look no higher; I cannot help thinking it laudable to be kindly attentive to those, of whose existence we have, in any way, been the cause. Mr. Stanhope's character has been unjustly represented as diametrically opposite to what Lord Chesterfield wished him to be. He has been called dull, gross, and awkward; but I knew him at Dresden, when he was Envoy to that court; and though he could not boast of the _graces_, he was, in truth, a sensible, civil, well-behaved man. BOSWELL. See _post_, March 28, 1775, under April, 29, 1776, and June 27, 1784.

[781] Chesterfield's _Letters_, iii. 129.

[782] Now one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State. BOSWELL. Afterwards Viscount Melville.

[783] Probably George, second Earl of Macclesfield, who was, in 1752, elected President of the Royal Society. CROKER. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, ii. 321) mentions him as 'engaged to a party for finding out the longitude.'

[784] In another work (_Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_, p. 214), I have shewn that Lord Chesterfield's 'Respectable Hottentot' was not Johnson. From the beginning of 1748 to the end of 1754 Chesterfield had no dealings of any kind with Johnson. At no time had there been the slightest intimacy between the great nobleman and the poor author. Chesterfield had never seen Johnson eat. The letter in which the character is drawn opens with the epigram:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nee possum dicere quare, Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

Chesterfield goes on to show 'how it is possible not to love anybody, and yet not to know the reason why.... How often,' he says, 'have I, in the course of my life, found myself in this situation with regard to many of my acquaintance whom I have honoured and respected, without being able to love.' He then instances the case of the man whom he describes as a respectable Hottentot. It is clear that he is writing of a man whom he knows well and who has some claim upon his affection. Twice he says that it is impossible to love him. The date of this letter is Feb. 28, 1751, more than three years after Johnson had for the last time waited in Chesterfield's outward rooms. Moreover the same man is described in three other letters (Sept. 22, 1749; Nov. 1749; and May 27, 1753), and described as one with whom Chesterfield lived on terms of intimacy. In the two former of these letters he is called Mr. L. Lyttelton did not become Sir George Lyttelton till Sept. 14, 1751. He was raised to the peerage in 1757. Horace Walpole (_Reign of George III_, i. 256) says of him:--'His ignorance of mankind, want of judgment, with strange absence and awkwardness, involved him in mistakes and ridicule.' Had Chesterfield's letter been published when it was written, no one in all likelihood would have so much as dreamt that Johnson was aimed at. But it did not come before the world till twenty-three years later, when Johnson's quarrel with Chesterfield was known to every one, when Johnson himself was at the very head of the literary world, and when his peculiarities had become a matter of general interest.

[785] About four years after this time Gibbon, on his return to England, became intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Mallet. He thus wrote of them:--'The most useful friends of my father were the Mallets; they received me with civility and kindness at first on his account, and afterwards on my own; and (if I may use Lord Chesterfield's words) I was soon _domesticated_ in their house. Mr. Mallet, a name among the English poets, is praised by an unforgiving enemy for the ease and elegance of his conversation, and his wife was not destitute of wit or learning.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i 115. The 'unforgiving enemy' was Johnson, who wrote (_Works_, viii. 468):--'His conversation was elegant and easy. The rest of his character may, without injury to his memory, sink into silence.' Johnson once said:--'I have seldom met with a man whose colloquial ability exceeded that of Mallet.' Johnson's _Works_, 1787, xi. 214. See _post_, March 27, 1772, and April 28, 1783; and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 10, 1773.

[786] Johnson had never read Bolingbroke's _Philosophy_. 'I have never read Bolingbroke's impiety,' he said (_post_, under March 1, 1758). In the memorable sentence that he, notwithstanding, pronounced upon the author, he exposed himself to the retort which he had recorded in his _Life of Boerhaave_ (_Works_, vi. 277). 'As Boerhaave was sitting in a common boat, there arose a conversation among the passengers upon the impious and pernicious doctrine of Spinosa, which, as they all agreed, tends to the utter overthrow of all religion. Boerhaave sat and attended silently to this discourse for some time, till one of the company ... instead of confuting the positions of Spinosa by argument began to give a loose to contumelious language and virulent invectives, which Boerhaave was so little pleased with, that at last he could not forbear asking him, whether he had ever read the author he declaimed against.'

[787] Lord Shelburne said that 'Bolingbroke was both a political and personal coward.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 29.

[788] It was in the summer of this year that Murphy became acquainted with Johnson. (See _post,_ 1760.) 'The first striking sentence that he heard from him was in a few days after the publication of Lord Bolingbroke's posthumous works. Mr. Garrick asked him, "if he had seen them." "Yes, I have seen them." "What do you think of them?" "Think of them!" He made a long pause, and then replied: "Think of them! a scoundrel and a coward! A scoundrel who spent his life in charging a gun against Christianity; and a coward, who was afraid of hearing the report of his own gun; but left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death!" His mind, at this time strained and over laboured by constant exertion, called for an interval of repose and indolence. But indolence was the time of danger; it was then that his spirits, not employed abroad, turned with inward hostility against himself.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 79, and Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 235. Adam Smith, perhaps, had this saying of Johnson's in mind, when in 1776 he refused the request of the dying Hume to edit after his death his _Dialogues on Natural Religion_. Hume wrote back:--'I think your scruples groundless. Was Mallet anywise hurt by his publication of Lord Bolingbroke? He received an office afterwards from the present King and Lord Bute, the most prudish man in the world.' Smith did not yield. J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 491.

[789] According to Horace Walpole (_Letters_, ii. 374), Pelham died of a surfeit. As Johnson says (_Works_, viii. 310):--'The death of great men is not always proportioned to the lustre of their lives. The death of Pope was imputed by some of his friends to a silver saucepan, in which it was his delight to heat potted lampreys.' Fielding in _The Voyage to Lisbon_ (_Works_, x. 201) records:--'I was at the worst on that memorable day when the public lost Mr. Pelham. From that day I began slowly, as it were, to draw my feet out of the grave.' '"I shall now have no more peace," the King said with a sigh; being told of his Minister's death.' Walpole's _George II_, i. 378.

[790] 'Thomas Warton, the younger brother of Dr. Warton, was a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He was Poetry Professor from 1758 to 1768. Mant's _Warton_, i. xliv. In 1785 he was made Poet Laureate. _Ib_. lxxxiii. Mr. Mant, telling of an estrangement between Johnson and the Wartons, says that he had heard 'on unquestionable authority that Johnson had lamented, with tears in his eyes, that the Wartons had not called on him for the last four years; and that he has been known to declare that Tom Warton was the only man of genius whom he knew without a heart.' _Ib_. xxxix.

[791] 'Observations on Spenser's Fairy Queen, the first edition of which was now just published.' WARTON.

[792] 'Hughes published an edition of Spenser.' WARTON. See Johnson's _Works_, vii.476.

[793] 'His Dictionary.' WARTON.

[794] 'He came to Oxford within a fortnight, and stayed about five weeks. He lodged at a house called Kettel hall, near Trinity College. But during this visit at Oxford, he collected nothing in the libraries for his Dictionary.' WARTON.

[795] Pitt this year described, in the House of Commons, a visit that he had paid to Oxford the summer before. He and his friends 'were at the window of the Angel Inn; a lady was desired to sing _God save great George our King_. The chorus was re-echoed by a set of young lads drinking at a college over the way [Queen's], but with additions of rank treason.' Walpole's _George II_, i. 413.

[796] A Fellow of Pembroke College, of Johnson's time, described the college servants as in 'the state of servitude the most miserable that can be conceived amongst so many masters.' He says that 'the kicks and cuffs and bruises they submit to entitle them, when those who were displeased relent,' to the compensation that is afforded by draughts of ale. 'There is not a college servant, but if he have learnt to suffer, and to be officious, and be inclined to tipple, may forget his cares in a gallon or two of ale every day of his life.' _Dr. Johnson:--His Friends, &c_., p. 45.

[797] It was against the Butler that Johnson, in his college days, had written an epigram:--

'Quid mirum Maro quod digne canit arma virumque, Quid quod putidulum nostra Camoena sonat? Limosum nobis Promus dat callidus haustum; Virgilio vires uva Falerna dedit. Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora Poetae? Ingenium jubeas purior haustus alat.'

[798] Pope, _Eloisa to Abelard_, 1. 38.

[799] Johnson or Warton misquoted the line. It stands:--'Mittit aromaticas vallis Saronica nubes.' Husbands's _Miscellany_, p. 112.

[800] De Quincey (_Works_, xiii. 162), after saying that Johnson did not understand Latin 'with the elaborate and circumstantial accuracy required for the editing critically of a Latin classic,' continues:--'But if he had less than that, he also had more: he _possessed_ that language in a way that no extent of mere critical knowledge could confer. He wrote it genially, not as one translating into it painfully from English, but as one using it for his original organ of thinking. And in Latin verse he expressed himself at times with the energy and freedom of a Roman.'

[801] Mr. Jorden. See _ante_, p. 59.

[802] Boswell (_Hebrides_, Aug. 19, 1773) says that Johnson looked at the ruins at St. Andrew's 'with a strong indignation. I happened to ask where John Knox was buried. Dr. Johnson burst out, "I hope in the highway, I have been looking at his reformations."'

[803] In Reasmus Philipps's _Diary_ it is recorded that in Pembroke College early in every November 'was kept a great Gaudy [feast], when the Master dined in public, and the juniors (by an ancient custom they were obliged to observe) went round the fire in the hall.' _Notes & Queries_, 2nd S. x. 443.

[804] Communicated by the Reverend Mr. Thomas Warton, who had the original. BOSWELL. In the imaginary college which was to be opened by _The Club_ at St. Andrew's, Chambers was to be the professor of the law of England. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 25, 1773; also _post_, July 5, 1773 and March 30, 1774.

[805] I presume she was a relation of Mr. Zachariah Williams, who died in his eighty-third year, July 12, 1755. When Dr. Johnson was with me at Oxford, in 1755, he gave to the Bodleian Library a thin quarto of twenty-one pages, a work in Italian, with an English translation on the opposite page. The English titlepage is this: 'An Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea, by an exact Variation of the Magnetical Needle, &c. By Zachariah Williams. London, printed for Dodsley, 1755.' The English translation, from the strongest internal marks, is unquestionably the work of Johnson. In a blank leaf, Johnson has written the age, and time of death, of the authour Z. Williams, as I have said above. On another blank leaf, is pasted a paragraph from a newspaper, of the death and character of Williams, which is plainly written by Johnson. He was very anxious about placing this book in the Bodleian: and, for fear of any omission or mistake, he entered, in the great Catalogue, the title-page of it with his own hand.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

In this statement there is a slight mistake. The English account, which was written by Johnson, was the _original_ the Italian was a _translation_, done by Baretti. See _post_, end of 1755. MALONE. Johnson has twice entered in his own hand that 'Zachariah Williams, died July 12, 1755, in his eighty-third year,' and also on the title-page that he was 82.

[806] See _ante_, p. 133.

[807] The compliment was, as it were, a mutual one. Mr. Wise urged Thomas Warton to get the degree conferred before the _Dictionary_ was published. 'It is in truth,' he wrote, 'doing ourselves more honour than him, to have such a work done by an Oxford hand, and so able a one too, and will show that we have not lost all regard for good letters, as has been too often imputed to us by our enemies.' Wooll's _Warton_, p. 228.

[808] 'In procuring him the degree of Master of Arts by diploma at Oxford.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[809] 'Lately fellow of Trinity College, and at this time Radclivian librarian, at Oxford. He was a man of very considerable learning, and eminently skilled in Roman and Anglo-Saxon antiquities. He died in 1767.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[810] No doubt _The Rambler_.

[811] 'Collins (the poet) was at this time at Oxford, on a visit to Mr. Warton; but labouring under the most deplorable languor of body, and dejection of mind.' WARTON. BOSWELL. Johnson, writing to Dr. Warton on March 8, 1754, thus speaks of Collins:-'I knew him a few years ago full of hopes, and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is now under the government of those who lately would not have been able to comprehend the least and most narrow of its designs.' Wooll's _Warton_ 1. 219. Again, on Dec. 24, 1754:--'Poor dear Collins! Let me know whether you think it would give him pleasure if I should write to him. I have often been near his state, and therefore have it in great commiseration.' _Ib_. p. 229. Again, on April 15, 1756:--'That man is no common loss. The moralists all talk of the uncertainty of fortune, and the transitoriness of beauty: but it is yet more dreadful to consider that the powers of the mind are equally liable to change, that understanding may make its appearance and depart, that it may blaze and expire.' _Ib_. p. 239. See _post_, beginning of 1763.

[812] 'Of publishing a volume of observations on the best of Spenser's works. It was hindered by my taking pupils in this College.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[813] 'Young students of the lowest rank at Oxford are so called.' WARTON.--BOSWELL. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 28, 1773.

[814] 'His Dictionary.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[815] Johnson says (_Works_, viii. 403) that when Collins began to feel the approaches of his dreadful malady 'with the usual weakness of men so diseased he eagerly snatched that temporary relief with which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce.'

[816] 'Petrarch, finding nothing in the word _eclogue_ of rural meaning, supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own pastorals aeglogues, by which he meant to express the talk of goatherds, though it will mean only the talk of goats. This new name was adopted by subsequent writers.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 390.

[817] 'Of the degree at Oxford.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[818] This verse is from the long-lost _Bellerophon_, a tragedy by Euripides. It is preserved by Suidas. CHARLES BURNEY. 'Alas! but wherefore alas? Man is born to sorrow.'

[819]

'Sento venir per allegrezza un tuono Que frêmer l'aria, e rimbombar fa l'onrle:-- Odo di squille,' &c.

_Orlando Furioso_. c. xlvi. s. 2.

[820] 'His degree had now past, according to the usual form, the surrages of the heads of Colleges; but was not yet finally granted by the University. It was carried without a single dissentient voice.' WARTON. BOSWELL.

[821] 'On Spenser.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[822] Lord Eldon wrote of him:--'Poor Tom Warton! He was a tutor at Trinity; at the beginning of every term he used to send to his pupils to know whether they would _wish_ to attend lecture that term.' Twiss's _Eldon_, iii. 302.

[823] The fields north of Oxford.

[824] 'Of the degree.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[825] 'Principal of St. Mary Hall at Oxford. He brought with him the diploma from Oxford.' WARTON.--BOSWELL. Dr. King (_Anec_. p. 196) says that he was one of the Jacobites who were presented to the Pretender when, in September 1750, he paid a stealthy visit to England. The Pretender in 1783 told Sir Horace Mann that he was in London in that very month and year and had met fifty of his friends, among whom was the Earl of Westmoreland, the future Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Mahon's _England_, iv. II. Hume places the visit in 1753. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 462. See also in Boswell's _Hebrides_, the account of the Young Pretender. In 1754, writes Lord Shelburne, 'Dr. King in his speech upon opening the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, before a full theatre introduced three times the word _Redeat_, pausing each time for a considerable space, during which the most unbounded applause shook the theatre, which was filled with a vast body of peers, members of parliament, and men of property. Soon after the rebellion [of 1745], speaking of the Duke of Cumberland, he described him as a man, _qui timet omnia prater Deum_. I presented this same Dr. King to George III. in 1760.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 35.

[826] 'I suppose Johnson means that my _kind intention_ of being the _first_ to give him the good news of the degree being granted was _frustrated_, because Dr. King brought it before my intelligence arrived.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[827] Dr. Huddesford, President of Trinity College.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[828] Extracted from the Convocation-Register, Oxford. BOSWELL.

[829] The Earl of Arran, 'the last male of the illustrious House of Ormond,' was the third Chancellor in succession that that family had given to the University. The first of the three, the famous Duke of Ormond, had, on his death in 1688, been succeeded by his grandson, the young Duke. (Macaulay's _England_, iii. 159). He, on his impeachment and flight from England in 1715, was succeeded by his brother, the Earl of Arran. Richardson, writing in 1754 (_Carres_. ii. 198), said of the University, 'Forty years ago it chose a Chancellor in despite of the present reigning family, whose whole merit was that he was the brother of a perjured, yet weak, rebel.' On Arran's death in 1758, the Earl of Westmoreland, 'old dull Westmoreland' as Walpole calls him (_Letters_, i. 290), was elected. It was at his installation that Johnson clapped his hands till they were sore at Dr. King's speech (_post_, 1759). 'I hear,' wrote Walpole of what he calls _the coronation at Oxford_, 'my Lord Westmoreland's own retinue was all be-James'd with true-blue ribands.' _Letters_, iii. 237. It is remarkable that this nobleman, who in early life was a Whig, had commanded 'the body of troops which George I. had been obliged to send to Oxford, to teach the University the only kind of passive obedience which they did not approve.' Walpole's _George II_, iii. 167.

[830] The original is in my possession, BOSWELL.

[831] We may conceive what a high gratification it must have been to Johnson to receive his diploma from the hands of the great Dr. KING, whose principles were so congenial with his own. BOSWELL.

[832] Johnson here alludes, I believe, to the charge of disloyalty brought against the University at the time of the famous contested election for Oxfordshire in 1754. A copy of treasonable verses was found, it was said, near the market-place in Oxford, and the grand jury made a presentment thereon. 'We must add,' they concluded, 'that it is the highest aggravation of this crime to have a libel of a nature so false and scandalous, published in a famous University, &c. _Gent. Mag_. xxiv. 339. A reward of £200 was offered in the _London Gazette_ for the detection of the writer or publisher,' _Ib_. p. 377.

[833] A single letter was a single piece of paper; a second piece of paper, however small, or any inclosure constituted a double letter; it was not the habit to prepay the postage. The charge for a single letter to Oxford at this time was three-pence, which was gradually increased till in 1812 it was eight-pence. _Penny Cyclo_. xviii. 455.

[834] 'The words in Italicks are allusions to passages in Mr. Warton's poem, called _The Progress of Discontent_, now lately published.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

'And now intent on new designs, Sighs for a fellowship--and fines.

* * * * *

These fellowships are pretty things, We live indeed like petty kings.

* * * * *

And ev'ry night I went to bed, Without a Modus in my head.'

Warton's _Poems_, ii. 192.

For _modus_ and _fines_ see _post_, April 25, 1778.

[835] Lucretius, i. 23

[836]

'Hence ye prophane; I hate ye all, Both the Great Vulgar and the Small.'

Cowley's _Imit. of Horace_, Odes, iii. 1.

[837] _Journal Britannique_. It was to Maty that Gibbon submitted the manuscript of his first work. Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 123.

[838] Maty, as Prof. de Morgan pointed out, had in the autumn of 1755 been guilty of 'wilful suppression of the circumstances of Johnson's attack on Lord Chesterfield.' In an article in his _Journal_ he regrets the absence from the _Dictionary_ of the _Plan_. 'Elle eût épargné à l'auteur la composition d'une nouvelle préface, qui ne contient qu'en partie les mêmes choses, et qu'on est tenté de regarder comme destinée à faire perdre de vue quelques-unes des obligations que M. Johnson avait contractées, et le Mécène qu'il avait choisi.' _Notes and Queries_, 2nd S. iv. 341.

[839] He left London in 1751 and returned to it in 1760. _Memoirs of Dr. Barney_, i. 85, 133.

[840] See _ante_, p. 183, note 2.

[841] Sir John Hawkins, p. 341, inserts two notes as having passed formally between Andrew Millar and Johnson, to the above effect. I am assured this was not the case. In the way of incidental remark it was a pleasant play of raillery. To have deliberately written notes in such terms would have been morose. BOSWELL.

[842] 'Talking one day of the patronage the great sometimes affect to give to literature and literary men, "Andrew Millar," says Johnson, "is the Maecenas of the age."' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 200. Horace Walpole, writing on May 18, 1749 (_Letters_ ii. 163), says:--'Millar the bookseller has done very generously by Fielding; finding _Tom Jones_, for which he had given him six hundred pounds, sell so greatly, he has since given him another hundred.' Hume writing on July 6, 1759, says:--'Poor Andrew Millar is declared bankrupt; his debts amount to above £40,000, and it is said his creditors will not get above three shillings in the pound. All the world allows him to have been diligent and industrious; but his misfortunes are ascribed to the extravagance of his wife, a very ordinary case in this city.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 64. He must soon have recovered his position, for Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 434) met Millar at Harrogate in 1763. In the inn were several baronets, and great squires, members of parliament, who paid Millar civility for the use of his two newspapers which came to him by every post. 'Yet when he appeared in the morning, in his well-worn suit of clothes, they could not help calling him Peter Pamphlet; for the generous patron of Scotch authors, with his city wife and her niece, were sufficiently ridiculous when they came into good company.' Mr. Croker (_Boswell_, p. 630) says that Millar was the bookseller described by Johnson, _post_, April 24, 1779. as 'habitually and equably drunk.' He is, I think, mistaken.

[843] His _Dictionary_. BOSWELL.

[844] 'A translation of Apollonius Rhodius was now intended by Mr. Warton.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[845] Kettel Hall is an ancient tenement built about the year 1615 by Dr. Ralph Kettel, President of Trinity College, for the accommodation of commoners of that Society. It adjoins the College; and was a few years ago converted into a private house. MALONE.

[846] 'At Ellsfield, a village three miles from Oxford.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[847] It was published on April 15, 1755, in two vols. folio, price £4 10_s_. bound. Johnson's _Works_, v. 51.

[848] 'Booksellers concerned in his _Dictionary_.' WARTON.--BOSWELL. 'June 12, Mr. Paul Knapton, bookseller. June 18, Thos. Longman, Esq., bookseller.' _Gent. Mag_., xxv. 284. The 'Esq.' perhaps is a sign that even so early as 1755 the Longmans ranked higher than most of their brethren.

[849] 1. _Own_ not in the original. Johnson's _Works_, v. 36.

[850] 'I have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations.' Johnson's _Works_, p. 41.

[851] In the _Plan of an English Dictionary_ (_ib_. p. 16) Johnson, writing of 'the word _perfection_' says:--'Though in its philosophical and exact sense it can be of little use among human beings, it is often so much degraded from its original signification, that the academicians have inserted in their work, _the perfection of a language_, and, with a little more licentiousness, might have prevailed on themselves to have added _the perfection of a Dictionary_.' In the Preface to the fourth edition he writes:--'He that undertakes to compile a Dictionary undertakes that, which if it comprehends the full extent of his design, he knows himself unable to perform.' _Ib_. p. 52.

[852] _Ib_. p. 51.

[853] See _post_, under May 19, 1777.

[854] See _ante_, p. 186, note 5.

[855] He defines both _towards the wind_. The definitions remain unchanged in the fourth edition, the last corrected by Johnson, and also in the third edition of the abridgment, though this abridgment was made by him. _Pastern_ also remains unaltered in this latter edition. In the fourth edition he corrected it. 'The drawback of his character,' wrote Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'is entertaining prejudices on very slight foundations; giving an opinion, perhaps, first at random, but from its being contradicted he thinks himself obliged always to support it, or, if he cannot support, still not to acquiesce. Of this I remember an instance of a defect or forgetfulness in his _Dictionary_. I asked him how he came not to correct it in the second edition. "No," says he, "they made so much of it that I would not flatter them by altering it."' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 461.

[856] In his Preface (_Works_, v. 50) he anticipated errors and laughter. 'A few wild blunders and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter and harden ignorance into contempt' In a letter written nearly thirty years later he said:--'Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 406.

[857] See _post_, under July 20, 1762.

[858] 'Network. Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.' Reticulated is defined 'Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.'

[859] 'That part of my work on which I expect malignity most frequently to fasten is the _Explanation_.... Such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 34.

[860] In the original, 'to admit _a_ definition.' _Ib_.

[861] In the original, '_drier.' Ib_. 38.

[862] 'Tory. (A cant term derived, I suppose, from an Irish word signifying a savage.) One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England: opposed to a _whig_.'

[863] 'Whig. The name of a faction.' Lord Marchmont (_post_, May 12, 1778) said that 'Johnson was the first that brought Whig and Tory into a dictionary.' In this he was mistaken. In the fourth edition of Dr. Adam Littleton's _Linguae Latinae Liber Dictionarius_, published in 1703, _Whig_ is translated _Homo fanaticus, factiosus; Whiggism, Enthusiasmus, Perduellio; Tory, bog-trotter or Irish robber, Praedo Hibernicus; Tory_ opposed to whig, _Regiarum partium assertor_. These definitions are not in the first edition, published in 1678. _A pensioner_ or _bride_ [bribed] _person_ is rendered _Mercenarius.

[864] 'Pension. An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.' _Pensioner_ is defined as 'One who is supported by an allowance paid at the will of another; a dependant.' These definitions remain in the fourth edition, corrected by Johnson in 1773.

[865] 'Oats. A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' See _post_, March 23, 1776, and March 21, 1783. 'Did you ever hear,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, 'of Lord Elibank's reply when Johnson's famous definition of oats was pointed out first to him. "Very true, and where will you find such _men_ and such _horses_?"' Croker's _Carres_, ii. 35.

[866] He thus defines Excise: 'A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid.' The Commissioners of Excise being offended by this severe reflection, consulted Mr. Murray, then Attorney General, to know whether redress could be legally obtained. I wished to have procured for my readers a copy of the opinion which he gave, and which may now be justly considered as history; but the mysterious secrecy of office, it seems, would not permit it. I am, however, informed, by very good authority, that its import was, that the passage might be considered as actionable; but that it would be more prudent in the board not to prosecute. Johnson never made the smallest alteration in this passage. We find he still retained his early prejudice against Excise; for in _The Idler_, No. 65, there is the following very extraordinary paragraph: 'The authenticity of _Clarendon's_ history, though printed with the sanction of one of the first Universities of the world, had not an unexpected manuscript been happily discovered, would, with the help of factious credulity, have been brought into question by the two lowest of all human beings, a Scribbler for a party, and a Commissioner of Excise.'--The persons to whom he alludes were Mr. John Oldmixon, and George Ducket, Esq. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker obtained a copy of the case.

'_Case for the opinion of Mr. Attorney-General_.

'Mr. Samuel Johnson has lately published "A Dictionary of the English Language," in which are the following words:--

'"EXCISE, _n.s_. A hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid."

'_The author's definition being observed by the Commissioners of Excise, they desire the favour of your opinion_. "Qu. Whether it will not be considered as a libel, and if so, whether it is not proper to proceed against the author, printers, and publishers thereof, or any and which of them, by information, or how otherwise?"

'I am of opinion that it is a libel. But under all the circumstances, I should think it better to give him an opportunity of altering his definition; and, in case he do not, to threaten him with an information.

'29th Nov. 1755. W. Murray.' In one of the Parl. Debates of 1742 Johnson makes Pitt say that 'it is probable that we shall detect bribery descending through a long subordination of wretches combined against the public happiness, from the prime minister surrounded by peers and officers of state to the exciseman dictating politics amidst a company of mechanics whom he debauches at the public expense, and lists in the service of his master with the taxes which he gathers.' _Parl. Hist_., xii. _570_. See _ante_, p. 36, note 5.

[867] He defined _Favourite_ as 'One chosen as a companion by a superiour; a mean wretch, whose whole business is by any means to please:' and _Revolution_ as 'change in the state of a government or country. It is used among us _kat hexochaen_ for the change produced by the admission of King William and Queen Mary.' For these definitions Wilkes attacked him in _The North Briton_, No. xii. In the fourth edition Johnson gives a second definition of _patriot_:--'It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.' Premier and _prime minister_ are not defined. _Post_, April 14, 1775. See also _ante_, p. 264 note, for the definition of _patron_; and _post_, April 28, 1783 for that of _alias_.

[868] 'There have been great contests in the Privy Council about the trial of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford [on a charge of Jacobitism]: Lord Gower pressed it extremely. He asked the Attorney-General his opinion, who told him the evidence did not appear strong enough. Lord Gower said:--"Mr. Attorney, you seem to be very lukewarm for your party." He replied:--"My Lord, I never was lukewarm for my party, _nor ever was but of one party_!"' Walpole's _Letters_, ii. 140. Mr. Croker assumes that Johnson here 'attempted a pun, and wrote the name (as pronounced) Go'er. Johnson was very little likely to pun, for 'he had a great contempt for that species of wit.' _Post_, April 30, 1773.

[869] Boswell omits the salutation which follows this definition:

Chair Ithakae met haethla, met halgea pikra Haspasios teon oudas ikanomai.

'Dr. Johnson,' says Miss Burney, 'inquired if I had ever yet visited _Grub-street_, but was obliged to restrain his anger when I answered "No;" because he had never paid his respects to it himself. "However," says he, "you and I, Burney, will go together; we have a very good right to go, so we'll visit the mansions of our progenitors, and take up our own freedom together."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 415.

[870] Lord Bolingbroke had said (_Works_, in. 317): 'I approve the devotion of a studious man at Christ Church, who was overheard in his oratory entering into a detail with God, and acknowledging the divine goodness in furnishing the world with makers of dictionaries. These men court fame, as well as their betters, by such means as God has given them to acquire it. They deserve encouragement while they continue to compile, and neither affect wit, nor presume to reason.' Johnson himself in _The Adventurer_, No. 39, had in 1753 described a class of men who 'employed their minds in such operations as required neither celerity nor strength, in the low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting dictionaries,' &c. Lord Monboddo, in his _Origin of Language_, v. 273, says that 'J. C. Scaliger called the makers of dictionaries _les portefaix de la république des lettres_.'

[871] Great though his depression was, yet he could say with truth in his Preface:--'Despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress me to negligence.' _Works_, v. 43.

[872] _Ib_. p. 51. 'In the preface the author described the difficulties with which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Horne Tooke, never could read that passage without tears.' Macaulay's _Misc. Writings_, p. 382. It is in _A Letter to John Dunning, Esq_. (p. 56) that Horne Tooke, or rather Horne, wrote:--'I could never read his preface without shedding a tear.' See _post_, May 13, 1778. On Oct. 10, 1779, Boswell told Johnson, that he had been 'agreeably mistaken' in saying:--'What would it avail me in this gloom of solitude?'

[873] It appears even by many a passage in the Preface--one of the proudest pieces of writing in our language. 'The chief glory,' he writes, 'of every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add anything by my own writings to the reputation of English literature must be left to time.' 'I deliver,' he says, 'my book to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavoured well.... In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the _English Dictionary_ was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.' _Works_, v. pp. 49-51. Thomas Warton wrote to his brother:--'I fear his preface will disgust by the expressions of his consciousness of superiority, and of his contempt of patronage.' Wooll's _Warton_, p. 231.

[874] That praise was slow in coming is shown by his letter to Mr. Burney, written two years and eight months after the publication of the _Dictionary_. 'Your praise,' he wrote, 'was welcome, not only because I believe it was sincere, but because praise has been very scarce.... Yours is the only letter of good-will that I have received; though, indeed, I am promised something of that sort from Sweden.' _Post_, Dec. 24, 1757.

[875] In the _Edinburgh Review_ (No. 1, 1755)--a periodical which only lasted two years--there is a review by Adam Smith of Johnson's _Dictionary_. Smith admits the 'very extraordinary merit' of the author. 'The plan,' however, 'is not sufficiently grammatical.' To explain what he intends, he inserts 'an article or two from Mr. Johnson, and opposes to them the same articles, digested in the manner which we would have wished him to have followed.' He takes the words _but_ and _humour_. One part of his definition of humour is curious--'something which comes upon a man by fits, which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness.' This essay has not, I believe, been reprinted.

[876] She died in March 1752; the _Dictionary_ was published in April 1755.

[877] In the Preface he writes (_Works_, v. 49):--'Much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me.' In his fine Latin poem [Greek: Inothi seauton] 'he has left,' says Mr. Murphy (_Life_, p. 82), 'a picture of himself drawn with as much truth, and as firm a hand, as can be seen in the portraits of Hogarth or Sir Joshua Reynolds.' He wrote it after revising and enlarging his _Dictionary_, and he sadly asks himself what is left for him to do.

Me, pensi immunis cum jam mihi reddor, inertis Desidiae sors dura manet, graviorque labore Tristis et atra quies, et tardae taedia vitae. Nascuntur curis curae, vexatque dolorum Importuna cohors, vacuae mala somnia mentis. Nunc clamosa juvant nocturnae gaudia mensae, Nunc loca sola placent; frustra te, somne, recumbens, Alme voco, impatiens noctis, metuensque diei. Omnia percurro trepidus, circum omnia lustro, Si qua usquam pateat melioris semita vitae, Nec quid agam invenio.... Quid faciam? tenebrisne pigram damnare senectam Restat? an accingar studiis gravioribus audax? Aut, hoc si nimium est, tandem nova lexica poscam?

Johnson's _Works_, i. 164.

[878] A few weeks before his wife's death he wrote in _The Rambler_ (No. 196):--'The miseries of life would be increased beyond all human power of endurance, if we were to enter the world with the same opinions as we carry from it.' He would, I think, scarcely have expressed himself so strongly towards his end. Though, as Dr. Maxwell records, in his _Collectanea_ (_post_, 1770), 'he often used to quote with great pathos those fine lines of Virgil:--

'Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit, &c.'

yet he owned, and the pages of Boswell amply testify, that it was in the latter period of his life that he had his happiest days.

[879] _Macbeth_, Act ii. sc. 3.

[880] In the third edition, published in 1773, he left out the words _perhaps never_, and added the following paragraph:--

'It sometimes begins middle or final syllables in words compounded, as _block-head_, or derived from the Latin, as _compre-hended_.' BOSWELL. In the _Abridgment_, which was published some years earlier, after _never_ is added 'except in compounded words.'

[881] It was published in the _Gent. Mag_. for April, 1755 (xxv. 190), just below the advertisement of the _Dictionary_.

[882] In the original, 'Milton and Shakespeare.'

[883] The number of the French Academy employed in settling their language. BOSWELL.

[884] The maximum reward offered by a bill passed in 1714 was £20,000 for a method that determined the longitude at sea to half a degree of a great circle, or thirty geographical miles. For less accuracy smaller rewards were offered. _Ann. Reg_. viii. 114. In 1765 John Harrison received £7,500 for his chronometer; he had previously been paid £2,500; _ib_. 128. In this Act of Parliament 'the legislature never contemplated the invention of a _method_, but only of the means of making existing methods accurate.' _Penny Cyclo_. xiv. 139. An old sea-faring man wrote to Swift that he had found out the longitude. The Dean replied 'that he never knew but two projectors, one of whom ruined himself and his family, and the other hanged himself; and desired him to desist lest one or other might happen to him.' Swift's _Works_ (1803), xvii. 157. In _She Stoops to Conquer_ (Act i. sc. 2), when Tony ends his directions to the travellers by telling them,--'coming to the farmer's barn you are to turn to the right, and then to the left, and then to the right about again, till you find out the old mill;' Marlow exclaims: 'Zounds, man! we could as soon find out the longitude.'

[885] Joseph Baretti, a native of Piedmont, came to England in 1750 (see Preface to his _Account of Italy_, p. ix). He died in May, 1789. In his _Journey from London to Genoa_ (ii. 276), he says that his father was one of the two architects of the King of Sardinia. Shortly after his death a writer in the _Gent. Mag_. (Iix. 469, 570), who was believed to be Vincent, Dean of Westminster, thus wrote of him:--'Though his severity had created him enemies, his talents, conversation, and integrity had conciliated the regard of many valuable friends and acquaintance. His manners were apparently rough, but not unsocial. His integrity was in every period of his distresses constant and unimpeached. His wants he never made known but in the last extremity. He and Johnson had been friends in distress. One evening, when they had agreed to go to the tavern, a foreigner in the streets, by a specious tale of distress, emptied the Doctor's purse of the last half-guinea it contained. When the reckoning came, what was his surprise upon his recollecting that his purse was totally exhausted. Baretti had fortunately enough to answer the demand, and has often declared that it was impossible for him not to reverence a man, who could give away all that he was worth, without recollecting his own distress.' See _post_, Oct. 20, 1769.

[886] See note by Mr. Warton, _ante_, p. 275. BOSWELL.

[887] 'On Saturday the 12th, about twelve at night, died Mr. Zachariah Williams, in his eighty-third year, after an illness of eight months, in full possession of his mental faculties. He has been long known to philosophers and seamen for his skill in magnetism, and his proposal to ascertain the longitude by a peculiar system of the variation of the compass. He was a man of industry indefatigable, of conversation inoffensive, patient of adversity and disease, eminently sober, temperate, and pious; and worthy to have ended life with better fortune.' BOSWELL.

[888] Johnson's _Works_, v. 49. Malone, in a note on this passage, says:--'Johnson appears to have been in this year in great pecuniary distress, having been arrested for debt; on which occasion Richardson became his surety.' He refers to the following letter in the _Richardson Corres_, v. 285:--

'To MR. RICHARDSON.

'Tuesday, Feb. 19, 1756.

'DEAR SIR,

'I return you my sincerest thanks for the favour which you were pleased to do me two nights ago. Be pleased to accept of this little book, which is all that I have published this winter. The inflammation is come again into my eye, so that I can write very little. I am, Sir, your most obliged and most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

The 'little book' is not (as Mr. Croker suggests) Williams's _Longitude_, for it was published in Jan. 1755 (_Gent. Mag_. xxv. 47); but the _Abridgment of the Dictionary_, which was advertised in the _Gent. Mag_. for Jan. 1756. Murphy says (_Life_, p. 86), that he has before him a letter in Johnson's handwriting, which shows the distress of the man who had written _The Rambler_, and finished the great work of his _Dictionary_. It is directed to Mr. Richardson, and is as follows:--

'SIR,--I am obliged to entreat your assistance. I am now under an arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings. Mr. Strahan, from whom I should have received the necessary help in this case, is not at home, and I am afraid of not finding Mr. Millar. If you will be so good as to send me this sum, I will very gratefully repay you, and add it to all former obligations. I am, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

'SAMUEL JOHNSON.

'Gough-Square, 16 March.'

In the margin of this letter there is a memorandum in these words:--'March 16, 1756. Sent six guineas. Witness, Win. Richardson.' In the _European Mag_., vii. 54, there is the following anecdote recorded, for which Steevens most likely was the authority:--'I remember writing to Richardson' said Johnson, 'from a spunging-house; and was so sure of my deliverance through his kindness and liberality, that before his reply was brought I knew I could afford to joke with the rascal who had me in custody, and did so over a pint of adulterated wine, for which at that instant I had no money to pay.' It is very likely that this anecdote has no other foundation than Johnson's second letter to Richardson, which is dated, not from a spunging-house, but from his own residence. What kind of fate awaited a man who was thrown into prison for debt is shown by the following passage in Wesley's _Journal_ (ii. 267), dated Feb. 3, 1753:--'I visited one in the Marshalsea prison, a nursery of all manner of wickedness. O shame to man, that there should be such a place, such a picture of hell upon earth!' A few days later he writes:--'I visited as many more as I could. I found some in their cells under ground; others in their garrets, half starved both with cold and hunger, added to weakness and pain.'

[889] In a Debate on the Copyright Bill on May 16, 1774, Governor Johnstone said:--'It had been urged that Dr. Johnson had received an after gratification from the booksellers who employed him to compile his _Dictionary_. He had in his hand a letter from Dr. Johnson, which he read, in which the doctor denied the assertion, but declared that his employers fulfilled their bargain with him, and that he was satisfied.' _Parl. Hist_. xvii. 1105.

[890] He more than once attacked them. Thus in _An Appeal to the Public_, which he wrote for the _Gent. Mag_. in 1739 (_Works_, v. 348), he said:--'Nothing is more criminal in the opinion of many of them, than for an author to enjoy more advantage from his own works than they are disposed to allow him. This is a principle so well established among them, that we can produce some who threatened printers with their highest displeasure, for having dared to print books for those that wrote them.' In the _Life of Savage_ (_ib_. viii. 132), written in 1744, he writes of the 'avarice, by which the booksellers are frequently incited to oppress that genius by which they are supported.' In the _Life of Dryden_ (_ib_. vii. 299), written in 1779, he speaks of an improvement. 'The general conduct of traders was much less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were narrower, and their manners grosser. To the mercantile ruggedness of that race the delicacy of the poet was sometimes exposed.'

[891] _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 40 [25]. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote to Miss Boothby on Dec. 30, 1755:--'If I turn my thoughts upon myself, what do I perceive but a poor helpless being, reduced by a blast of wind to weakness and misery?... Mr. Fitzherbert sent to-day to offer me some wine; the people about me say I ought to accept it. I shall therefore be obliged to him if he will send me a bottle.' _Pioszi Letters_, ii. 393.

[892] _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 27. BOSWELL

[893] See _post_, April 6, 1775. Kit Smart, once a Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, ended his life in the King's Bench Prison; 'where he had owed to a small subscription, of which Dr. Burney was at the head, a miserable pittance beyond the prison allowance. In his latest letter to Dr. Burney, he passionately pleaded for a fellow-sufferer, "whom I myself," he impressively adds, "have already assisted according to my willing poverty." In another letter to the same friend he said:--"I bless God for your good nature, which please to take for a receipt."' _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, i. 205, 280.

[894] In this Essay Johnson writes (_Works_, v. 315):--'I think there is room to question whether a great part of mankind has yet been informed that life is sustained by the fruits of the earth. I was once, indeed, provoked to ask a lady of great eminence for genius, "Whether she knew of what bread is made."'

[895] In _The Universal Visiter_ this Essay is entitled, 'Reflections on the Present State of Literature;' and in Johnson's _Works_, v. 355, 'A Project for the Employment of Authors.' The whole world, he says, is turning author. Their number is so large that employment must be found for them. 'There are some reasons for which they may seem particularly qualified for a military life. They are used to suffer want of every kind; they are accustomed to obey the word of command from their patrons and their booksellers; they have always passed a life of hazard and adventure, uncertain what may be their state on the next day.... There are some whom long depression under supercilious patrons has so humbled and crushed, that they will never have steadiness to keep their ranks. But for these men there may be found fifes and drums, and they will be well enough pleased to inflame others to battle, if they are not obliged to fight themselves.'

[896] He added it also to his _Life of Pope_.

[897] 'This employment,' wrote Murphy (_Life_, p. 88), 'engrossed but little of Johnson's time. He resigned himself to indolence, took no exercise, rose about two, and then received the visits of his friends. Authors long since forgotten waited on him as their oracle, and he gave responses in the chair of criticism. He listened to the complaints, the schemes, and the hopes and fears of a crowd of inferior writers, "who," he said, in the words of Roger Ascham, "lived, men knew not how, and died obscure, men marked not when." He believed, that he could give a better history of Grub Street than any man living. His house was filled with a succession of visitors till four or five in the evening. During the whole time he presided at his tea-table.' In _The Rambler_, No. 145, Johnson takes the part of these inferior writers:--'a race of beings equally obscure and equally indigent, who, because their usefulness is less obvious to vulgar apprehensions, live unrewarded and die unpitied, and who have been long exposed to insult without a defender, and to censure without an apologist.'

[898] In this essay (_Works_, vi. 129) Johnson describes Canada as a 'region of desolate sterility,' 'a cold, uncomfortable, uninviting region, from which nothing but furs and fish were to be had.'

[899] The bill of 1756 that he considers passed through the Commons but was rejected by the Lords. It is curious as showing the comparative population of the different counties, Devonshire was to furnish 3200 men--twice as many as Lancashire. Essex, Kent, Norfolk and Suffolk were each to furnish 1920 men; Lancashire, Surrey, Sussex, and Wiltshire 1600: Durham and Bedfordshire 800. From the three Ridings of Yorkshire 4800 were to be raised. The men were to be exercised every Sunday before and after service. _The Literary Magazine_, p. 58.

[900] In this paper are found the forcible words, 'The desperate remedy of desperate distress,' which have been used since by orators. _Ib_. p. 121.

[901] Johnson considers here the war in America between the English and French, and shows a strong feeling for the natives who had been wronged by both nations. 'Such is the contest that no honest man can heartily wish success to either party.... The American dispute between the French and us is only the quarrel of two robbers for the spoils of a passenger.' The French had this in their favour, that they had treated the natives better than we. 'The favour of the Indians which they enjoy with very few exceptions among all the nations of the northern continent we ought to consider with other thoughts; this favour we might have enjoyed, if we had been careful to deserve it.' _Works_, vi. 114, 122.

[902] These Memoirs end with the year 1745. Johnson had intended to continue them, for he writes:--'We shall here suspend our narrative.' _Ib_. vi. 474.

[903] See _ante_, p. 221.

[904] The sentence continues:--'and produce heirs to the father's habiliments.' _Ib_. vi. 436. Another instance may be adduced of his _Brownism_ in the following line:--'The war continued in an equilibration by alternate losses and advantages.' _Ib_ 473.

[905] In a letter from the Secretary of the Tall Club in _The Guardian_, No. 108. 'If the fair sex look upon us with an eye of favour, we shall make some attempts to lengthen out the human figure, and restore it to its ancient procerity.'

[906] See _post_, March 23, 1783.

[907] 'As power is the constant and unavoidable consequence of learning, there is no reason to doubt that the time is approaching when the Americans shall in their turn have some influence on the affairs of mankind, for literature apparently gains ground among them. A library is established in Carolina and some great electrical discoveries were made at Philadelphia...The fear that the American colonies will break off their dependence on England I have always thought chimerical and vain ... They must be dependent, and if they forsake us, or be forsaken by us, must fall into the hands of France.' _Literary Magazine_, pp. 293, 299.

[908] Johnson, I have no doubt, wrote the _Review of A True Account of Lisbon since the Earthquake_, in which it is stated that the destruction was grossly exaggerated. After quoting the writer at length, he concludes:--'Such then is the actual, real situation of _that place which once was_ Lisbon, and has been since gazetically and pamphletically quite destroyed, consumed, annihilated! Now, upon comparing this simple narration of things and facts with the false and absurd accounts which have rather insulted and imposed upon us than informed us, who but must see the enormous disproportion?... Exaggeration and the absurdities ever faithfully attached to it are inseparable attitudes of the ignorant, the empty, and the affected. Hence those eloquent tropes so familiar in every conversation, _monstrously pretty, vastly little_; ... hence your _eminent shoe-maker, farriers, and undertakers_.... It is to the same muddy source we owe the many falsehoods and absurdities we have been pestered with concerning Lisbon. Thence your extravagantly sublime figures: _Lisbon is no more; can be seen no more_, etc., ... with all the other prodigal effusions of bombast beyond that stretch of time or temper to enumerate. _Ib_. p. 22. See _post_, under March 30, 1778.

[909] In the original _undigested_.

[910] Johnson's _Works_, vi. 113.

[911] In the spring of 1784, after the king had taken advantage of Fox's India Bill to dismiss the Coalition Ministry. See _post_, March 28, 1784.

[912] In Ireland there was no act to limit the duration of parliament. One parliament sat through the whole reign of George II--thirty-three years. Dr. Lucas, a Dublin physician, in attacking other grievances, attacked also this. In 1749 he would have been elected member for Dublin, had he not, on a charge of seditious writings, been committed by the House of Commons to prison. He was to be confined, he was told, 'in the common hall of the prison among the felons.' He fled to England, which was all that the government wanted, and he practised as a physician in London. In 1761 he was restored to the liberties of the City of Dublin and was also elected one of its members. Hardy's _Lord Charlemont_, i. 249, 299; and _Gent. Mag_., xx. 58 and xxxi. 236.

[913] Boswell himself falls into this 'cant.' See _post_, Sept. 23, 1777.

[914] Johnson's _Works_, vi. II.

[915] _Ib_. p. 13. He vigorously attacks the style in which these 'Memoirs' are written. 'Sometimes,' he writes, 'the reader is suddenly ravished with a sonorous sentence, of which, when the noise is past, the meaning does not long remain.' _Ib_. p. 15.

[916] The author of _Friendship in Death_.

[917] In the _Lives of the Poets (Works, viii. 383) Johnson writes:--'Dr Watts was one of the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction.'

[918] 'Such he [Dr. Watts] was as every Christian Church would rejoice to have adopted.' _Ib_. p. 380. See also _post_, July 7, 1777, and May 19, 1778.

[919] Johnson's _Works_, vi. 79.

[920] Mr. Hanway would have had the support of Johnson's father, who, as his son writes, 'considered tea as very expensive, and discouraged my mother from keeping company with the neighbours, and from paying visits or receiving them. She lived to say, many years after, that if the time were to pass again, she would not comply with such unsocial injunctions.' _Account of Johnson's Early Life_, p. 18. The Methodists, ten years earlier than Hanway, had declared war on tea. 'After talking largely with both the men and women Leaders,' writes Wesley, 'we agreed it would prevent great expense, as well of health as of time and of money, if the poorer people of our society could be persuaded to leave off drinking of tea.' Wesley's _Journal_, i. 526. Pepys, writing in 1660, says: 'I did send for a cup of tee, (a China drink) of which I never had drank before.' Pepys' _Diary_, i. 137. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, i. 224) writing in 1743 says:--'They have talked of a new duty on tea, to be paid by every housekeeper for all the persons in their families; but it will scarce be proposed. Tea is so universal, that it would make a greater clamour than a duty on wine.' In October 1734 tea was sold in London at the following prices:--Ordinary Bohca 9s. per lb. Fine Bohca 10s. to 12s. per lb. Pekoe 15s. per lb. Hyson 20s. to 25s. per lb. _Gent. Mag_. iv. 575.

[921] Yet in his reply to Mr. Hanway he said (_Works_, vi. 33):--'I allowed tea to be a barren superfluity, neither medicinal nor nutritious, that neither supplied strength nor cheerfulness, neither relieved weariness, nor exhilarated sorrow.' Cumberland writes (_Memoirs_, i. 357):--'I remember when Sir Joshua Reynolds at my house reminded Dr. Johnson that he had drank eleven cups, he replied: "Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?" And then laughing in perfect good humour he added:--"Sir, I should have released the lady from any further trouble, if it had not been for your remark; but you have reminded me that I want one of the dozen, and I must request Mrs. Cumberland to round up my number."'

[922] In this Review Johnson describes himself as 'a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the morning.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 21. That 'he never felt the least inconvenience from it' may well be doubted. His nights were almost always bad. In 1774 he recorded:--'I could not drink this day either coffee or tea after dinner. I know not when I missed before.' The next day he recorded:--'Last night my sleep was remarkably quiet. I know not whether by fatigue in walking, or by forbearance of tea.' _Diary of a Journey into North Wales_, Aug. 4.

[923] See _post_, May, 1768.

[924]

'Losing, he wins, because his name will be Ennobled by defeat who durst contend with me.'

DRYDEN, Ovid, _Meta_., xiii. 19.

[925] In Hanway's _Essay_ Johnson found much to praise. Hanway often went to the root when he dealt with the evils of life. Thus he writes:--'The introducing new habits of life is the most substantial charity.' But he thus mingles sense and nonsense:--'Though tea and gin have spread their baneful influence over this island and his Majesty's other dominions, yet you may be well assured that the Governors of the Foundling Hospital will exert their utmost skill and vigilance to prevent the children under their care from being poisoned, or enervated, by one or the other.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 26, 28.

[926] 'Et pourquoi tuer cet amiral? C'est, lui dit-on, parce qu'il n'a pas fait tuer assez de monde; il a livré un combat à un amiral français, et on a trouvé qu'il n'était pas assez près de lui. Mais, dit Candide, l'amiral français était aussi loin de l'amiral anglais que celui-ci l'était de l'autre. Cela est incontestable, lui répliquat-on; mais dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.' _Candide_, ch. xxiii.

[927] See _post_, June 3, 1781, when Boswell went to this church.

[928] Johnson reprinted this Review in a small volume by itself. See Johnson's _Works_, vi. 47, note.

[929]

'I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth.'

Henry VIII, Act iii. sc. 2.

[930] _Musical Travels through England_, by Joel Collier [not Collyer], Organist, 1774. This book was written in ridicule of Dr. Burney's _Travels_, who, says his daughter, 'was much hurt on its first appearance.' Dr. Burney's _Memoirs_, i. 259.

[931] See _ante_, p. 223.

[932] Some time after Dr. Johnson's death there appeared in the newspapers and magazines an illiberal and petulant attack upon him, in the form of an Epitaph, under the name of Mr. Soame Jenyns, very unworthy of that gentleman, who had quietly submitted to the critical lash while Johnson lived. It assumed, as characteristicks of him, all the vulgar circumstances of abuse which had circulated amongst the ignorant. It was an unbecoming indulgence of puny resentment, at a time when he himself was at a very advanced age, and had a near prospect of descending to the grave. I was truly sorry for it; for he was then become an avowed, and (as my Lord Bishop of London, who had a serious conversation with him on the subject, assures me) a sincere Christian. He could not expect that Johnson's numerous friends would patiently bear to have the memory of their master stigmatized by no mean pen, but that, at least, one would be found to retort. Accordingly, this unjust and sarcastick Epitaph was met in the same publick field by an answer, in terms by no means soft, and such as wanton provocation only could justify:

'EPITAPH,

'_Prepared for a creature_ not quite dead _yet_.

'Here lies a little ugly nauseous elf, Who judging only from its wretched self, Feebly attempted, petulant and vain, The "Origin of Evil" to explain. A mighty Genius at this elf displeas'd, With a strong critick grasp the urchin squeez'd. For thirty years its coward spleen it kept, Till in the duat the mighty Genius slept; Then stunk and fretted in expiring snuff, And blink'd at JOHNSON with its last poor puff.'

BOSWELL.

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 news-papers 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 news-papers 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.

'DEAR SIR,

'Your father's inexorability not only grieves but amazes me[1038]: he is your father; he was always accounted a wise man; nor do I remember any thing to the disadvantage of his good-nature; but in his refusal to assist you there is neither good-nature, fatherhood, nor wisdom. It is the practice of good-nature to overlook faults which have already, by the consequences, punished the delinquent. It is natural for a father to think more favourably than others of his children; and it is always wise to give assistance while a little help will prevent the necessity of greater.

[1038] In the _Rambler_, No. 148, entitled 'The cruelty of parental tyranny,' Johnson, after noticing the oppression inflicted by the perversion of legal authority, says:--'Equally dangerous and equally detestable are the cruelties often exercised in private families, under the venerable sanction of parental authority.' He continues:--'Even though no consideration should be paid to the great law of social beings, by which every individual is commanded to consult the happiness of others, yet the harsh parent is less to be vindicated than any other criminal, because he less provides for the happiness of himself.' See also _post_, March 29, 1779. A passage in one of Boswell's _Letters to Temple_ (p. 111) may also be quoted here:--'The time was when such a letter from my father as the one I enclose would have depressed; but I am now firm, and, as my revered friend, Mr. Samuel Johnson, used to say, _I feel the privileges of an independent human being_; however, it is hard that I cannot have the pious satisfaction of being well with my father.'

[1039] Perhaps 'Van,' for Vansittart.

[1040] Lord Stowell informs me that Johnson prided himself in being, during his visits to Oxford, accurately academic in all points: and he wore his gown almost _ostentatiously_. CROKER.

[1041] Dr. Robert Vansittart, of the ancient and respectable family of that name in Berkshire. He was eminent for learning and worth, and much esteemed by Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL. Johnson perhaps proposed climbing over the wall on the day on which 'University College witnessed him drink three bottles of port without being the worse for it.' _Post_, April 7, 1778.

[1042] _Gentleman's Magazine_, April, 1785. BOSWELL. The speech was made on July 7, 1759, the last day of 'the solemnity of the installment' of the Earl of Westmoreland as Chancellor of the University. On the 3rd 'the ceremony began with a grand procession of noblemen, doctors, &c., in their proper habits, which passed through St. Mary's, and was there joined by the Masters of Arts in their proper habits; and from thence proceeded to the great gate of the Sheldonian Theatre, in which the most numerous and brilliant assembly of persons of quality and distinction was seated, that had ever been seen there on any occasion.' _Gent. Mag_. xxix. 342. Would that we had some description of Johnson, as, in his new and handsome gown, he joined the procession among the Masters! See _ante_, p. 281.

[1043] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3d edit. p. 126 [Aug. 31]. BOSWELL. The chance of death from disease would seem also to have been greater on the ship than in a jail. In _The Idler_ (No. 38) Johnson estimates that one in four of the prisoners dies every year. In his Review of Hanway's _Essay on Tea_ (_Works_, vi. 31) he states that he is told that 'of the five or six hundred seamen sent to China, sometimes half, commonly a third part, perish in the voyage.' See _post_, April 10, 1778.

[1044] _Ibid_. p. 251 [Sept. 23]. BOSWELL.

[1045] In my first edition this word was printed _Chum_, as it appears, in one of Mr. Wilkes's _Miscellanies_, and I animadverted on Dr. Smollet's ignorance; for which let me propitiate the _manes_ of that ingenious and benevolent gentleman. CHUM was certainly a mistaken reading for _Cham_, the title of the Sovereign of Tartary, which is well applied to Johnson, the Monarch of Literature; and was an epithet familiar to Smollet. See _Roderick Random_, chap. 56. For this correction I am indebted to Lord Palmerston, whose talents and literary acquirements accord well with his respectable pedigree of TEMPLE BOSWELL.

After the publication of the second edition of this work, the author was furnished by Mr. Abercrombie, of Philadelphia, with the copy of a letter written by Dr. John Armstrong, the poet, to Dr. Smollet at Leghorne, containing the following paragraph:--'As to the K. Bench patriot, it is hard to say from what motive he published a letter of yours asking some triffling favour of him in behalf of somebody, for whom the great CHAM of literature, Mr. Johnson, had interested himself.' MALONE. In the first edition Boswell had said:--'Had Dr. Smollet been bred at an English University, he would have know that a _chum_ is a student who lives with another in a chamber common to them both. A _chum of literature_ is nonsense.'

[1046] In a note to that piece of bad book-making, Almon's _Memoirs of Wilkes_ (i. 47), this allusion is thus explained:-'A pleasantry of Mr. Wilkes on that passage in Johnson's _Grammar of the English Tongue_, prefixed to the Dictionary--"_H_ seldom, perhaps never, begins any but the first syllable."' For this 'pleasantry' see _ante_, p. 300.

[1047] Mr. Croker says that he was not discharged till June 1760. Had he been discharged at once he would have found Johnson moving from Gough Square to Staple Inn; for in a letter to Miss Porter, dated March 23, 1739, given in the Appendix, Johnson said:-'I have this day moved my things, and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn.'

[1048] _Prayers and Meditations _, pp. 30 [39] and 40. BOSWELL.

[1049] 'I have left off housekeeping' wrote Johnson to Langton on Jan. 9, 1759. Murphy (_Life_, p. 90), writing of the beginning of the year 1759, says:--'Johnson now found it necessary to retrench his expenses. He gave up his house in Gough Square. Mrs. Williams went into lodgings [See _post_, July 1, 1763]. He retired to Gray's-Inn, [he had first moved to Staple Inn], and soon removed to chambers in the Inner Temple-lane, where he lived in poverty, total idleness, and the pride of literature, _Magni stat nominis umbra_. Mr. Fitzherbert used to say that he paid a morning visit to Johnson, intending from his chambers to send a letter into the city; but, to his great surprise, he found an authour by profession without pen, ink, or paper.' (It was Mr. Fitzherbert, who sent Johnson some wine. See _ante_, p. 305, note 2. See also _post_, Sept. 15, 1777). The following documents confirm Murphy's statement of Johnson's poverty at this time:

'May 19, 1759.

'I promise to pay to Mr. Newbery the sum of forty-two pounds, nineteen shillings, and ten pence on demand, value received. £42 19 10.

'Sam. Johnson.'

'March 20, 1760.

'I promise to pay to Mr. Newbery the sum of thirty pounds upon demand., £30 0 0.

'Sam. Johnson.'

In 1751 he had thrice borrowed money of Newbery, but the total amount of the loans was only four guineas. Prior's _Goldsmith_, i. 340. With Johnson's want of pen, ink, and paper we may compare the account that he gives of Savage's destitution (_Works_, viii. 3):--'Nor had he any other conveniences for study than the fields or the streets allowed him; there he used to walk and form his speeches, and afterwards step into a shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen and ink, and write down what he had composed upon paper which he had picked up by accident.' Hawkins (_Life_, p. 383) says that Johnson's chambers were two doors down the Inner Temple Lane. 'I have been told,' he continues, 'by his neighbour at the corner, that during the time he dwelt there, more inquiries were made at his shop for Mr. Johnson, than for all the inhabitants put together of both the Inner and Middle Temple.' In a court opening out of Fleet Street, Goldsmith at this very time was still more miserably lodged. In the beginning of March 1759, Percy found him 'employed in writing his _Enquiry into Polite Learning_ in a wretched dirty room, in which there was but one chair, and when he from civility offered it to his visitant, himself was obliged to sit in the window.' _Goldsmith's Misc. Works_, i. 61.

[1050] Sir John Hawkins (Life, p. 373) has given a long detail of it, in that manner vulgarly, but significantly, called rigmarole; in which, amidst an ostentatious exhibition of arts and artists, he talks of 'proportions of a column being taken from that of the human figure, and _adjusted by Nature_--masculine and feminine--in a man, sesquioctave of the head, and in a woman _sesquinonal_;' nor has he failed to introduce a jargon of musical terms, which do not seem much to correspond with the subject, but serve to make up the heterogeneous mass. To follow the Knight through all this, would be an useless fatigue to myself, and not a little disgusting to my readers. I shall, therefore, only make a few remarks upon his statement.--He seems to exult in having detected Johnson in procuring 'from a person eminently skilled in Mathematicks and the principles of architecture, answers to a string of questions drawn up by himself, touching the comparative strength of semicircular and elliptical arches.' Now I cannot conceive how Johnson could have acted more wisely. Sir John complains that the opinion of that excellent mathematician, Mr. Thomas Simpson, did not preponderate in favour of the semicircular arch. But he should have known, that however eminent Mr. Simpson was in the higher parts of abstract mathematical science, he was little versed in mixed and practical mechanicks. Mr. Muller, of Woolwich Academy, the scholastick father of all the great engineers which this country has employed for forty years, decided the question by declaring clearly in favour of the elliptical arch.

It is ungraciously suggested, that Johnson's motive for opposing Mr. Mylne's scheme may have been his prejudice against him as a native of North Britain; when, in truth, as has been stated, he gave the aid of his able pen to a friend, who was one of the candidates; and so far was he from having any illiberal antipathy to Mr. Mylne, that he afterwards lived with that gentleman upon very agreeable terms of acquaintance, and dined with him at his house. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, gives full vent to his own prejudice in abusing Blackfriars bridge, calling it 'an edifice, in which beauty and symmetry are in vain sought for; by which the citizens of London have perpetuated study their own disgrace, and subjected a whole nation to the reproach of foreigners.' Whoever has contemplated, _placido lumine_ [Horace, _Odes_, iv. 3, 2], this stately, elegant, and airy structure, which has so fine an effect, especially on approaching the capital on that quarter, must wonder at such unjust and ill-tempered censure; and I appeal to all foreigners of good taste, whether this bridge be not one of the most distinguished ornaments of London. As to the stability of the fabrick, it is certain that the City of London took every precaution to have the best Portland stone for it; but as this is to be found in the quarries belonging to the publick, under the direction of the Lords of the Treasury, it so happened that parliamentary interest, which is often the bane of fair pursuits, thwarted their endeavours. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, it is well known that not only has Blackfriars-bridge never sunk either in its foundation or in its arches, which were so much the subject of contest, but any injuries which it has suffered from the effects of severe frosts have been already, in some measure, repaired with sounder stone, and every necessary renewal can be completed at a moderate expence. BOSWELL. Horace Walpole mentions an ineffectual application made by the City to Parliament in 1764 'for more money for their new bridge at Blackfriars,' when Dr. Hay, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, 'abused the Common Council, whose late behaviour, he said, entitled them to no favour.' Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, i. 390. The late behaviour was the part taken by the City in Wilkes's case. It was the same love of liberty no doubt that lost the City the Portland stone. Smollett goes out of the way to praise his brother-Scot, Mr. Mylne, in _Humphry Clinker_--'a party novel written,' says Horace Walpole, 'to vindicate the Scots' (_Reign of George III_, iv. 328). In the letter dated May 29, he makes Mr. Bramble say:--'The Bridge at Blackfriars is a noble monument of taste and public spirit--I wonder how they stumbled upon a work of such magnificence and utility.'

[1051] Juvenal, _Sat_. i. 85.

[1052] 'Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton.'--George III's first speech to his parliament. It appears from the _Hardwicke Papers_, writes the editor of the _Parl. Hist. (xv. 982), that after the draft of the speech had been settled by the cabinet, these words and those that came next were added by the King's own hand. Wilkes in his _Dedication of Mortimer_ (see _post_, May 15, 1776) asserted that 'these endearing words, "Born,&c.," were permitted to be seen in the royal orthography of Britain for Briton,' Almon's _Works_, i. 84.

[1053] In this _Introduction_ (_Works_, vi. 148) Johnson answers objections that had been raised against the relief. 'We know that for the prisoners of war there is no legal provision; we see their distress and are certain of its cause; we know that they are poor and naked, and poor and naked without a crime.... The opponents of this charity must allow it to be good, and will not easily prove it not to be the best. That charity is best of which the consequences are most extensive; the relief of enemies has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal affection.' The Committee for which Johnson's paper was written began its work in Dec. 1759. In the previous month of October Wesley records in his _Journal (ii. 461):--'I walked up to Knowle, a mile from Bristol, to see the French prisoners. Above eleven hundred of them, we were informed, were confined in that little place, without anything to lie on but a little dirty straw, or anything to cover them but a few foul thin rags, either by day or by night, so that they died like rotten sheep. I was much affected, and preached in the evening on _Exodus_ xxiii. 9.' Money was at once contributed, and clothing bought. 'It was not long before contributions were set on foot in various parts of the Kingdom.' On Oct. 24 of the following year, he records:--'I visited the French prisoners at Knowle, and found many of them almost naked again.' _Ib_. iii. 23. 'The prisoners,' wrote Hume (_Private Corres_. p. 55), 'received food from the public, but it was thought that their own friends would supply them with clothes, which, however, was found after some time to be neglected.' The cry arose that the brave and gallant men, though enemies, were perishing with cold in prison; a subscription was set on foot; great sums were given by all ranks of people; and, notwithstanding the national foolish prejudices against the French, a remarkable zeal everywhere appeared for this charity. I am afraid that M. Rousseau could not have produced many parallel instances among his heroes, the Greeks; and still fewer among the Romans. Baretti, in his _Journey from London to Genoa_ (i. 62, 66), after telling how on all foreigners, even on a Turk wearing a turban, 'the pretty appellation of _French dog_ was liberally bestowed by the London rabble,' continues:--'I have seen the populace of England contribute as many shillings as they could spare towards the maintenance of the French prisoners; and I have heard a universal shout of joy when their parliament voted £100,000 to the Portuguese on hearing of the tremendous earthquake.'

[1054] Johnson's _Works_, vi. 81. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 16, 1773, where Johnson describes Mary as 'such a Queen as every man of any gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for.' 'There are,' wrote Hume, 'three events in our history which may be regarded as touchstones of party-men. An English Whig who asserts the reality of the popish plot, an Irish Catholic who denies the massacre in 1641, and a Scotch Jacobite who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary, must be considered as men beyond the reach of argument or reason, and must be left to their prejudices.' _History of England_, ed. 1802, v. 504.

[1055] _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 42. BOSWELL. The following is his entry on this day:--

'1760, Sept. 18. Resolved D[eo]j[uvante]' To combat notions of obligation. To apply to study. To reclaim imagination. To consult the resolves on Tetty's coffin. To rise early. To study religion. To go to church. To drink less strong liquors. To keep a journal. To oppose laziness, by doing what is to be done tomorrow. Rise as early as I can. Send for books for Hist. of War. Put books in order. Scheme of life.'

[1056] See _post_, Oct. 19, 1769, and May 15, 1783, for Johnson's measure of emotion, by eating.

[1057] Mr. Croker points out that Murphy's _Epistle_ was an imitation of Boileau's _Epître à Molière_.

[1058] The paper mentioned in the text is No. 38 of the second series of the _Grays Inn Journal_, published on June 15, 1754; which is a translation from the French version of Johnson's _Rambler_, No. 190. MALONE. Mrs. Piozzi relates how Murphy, used to tell before Johnson of the first time they met. He found our friend all covered with soot, like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, with an intolerable heat and strange smell, as if he had been acting Lungs in the _Alchymist_, making aether. 'Come, come,' says Dr. Johnson, 'dear Murphy, the story is black enough now; and it was a very happy day for me that brought you first to my house, and a very happy mistake about the Ramblers.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 235. Murphy quotes her account, Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 79. See also _post_, 1770, where Dr. Maxwell records in his _Collectanea_ how Johnson 'very much loved Arthur Murphy.' Miss Burney thus describes him:--'He is tall and well-made, has a very gentlemanlike appearance, and a quietness of manner upon his first address that to me is very pleasing. His face looks sensible, and his deportment is perfectly easy and polite.' A few days later she records:--'Mr. Murphy was the life of the party; he was in good spirits, and extremely entertaining; he told a million of stories admirably well.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 195, 210. Rogers, who knew Murphy well, says that 'towards the close of his life, till he received a pension of £200 from the King, he was in great pecuniary difficulties. He had eaten himself out of every tavern from the other side of Temple-Bar to the west end of the town.' He owed Rogers a large sum of money, which he never repaid. 'He assigned over to me the whole of his works; and I soon found that he had already disposed of them to a bookseller. One thing,' Rogers continues, 'ought to be remembered to his honour; an actress with whom he had lived bequeathed to him all her property, but he gave up every farthing of it to her relations.' He was pensioned in 1803, and he died in 1805. Rogers's _Table-Talk_, p. 106.

[1059] Topham Beauclerk, Esq. BOSWELL.

[1060] Essays with that title, written about this time by Mr. Langton, but not published. BOSWELL.

[1061] Thomas Sheridan, born 1721, died 1788. He was the son of Swift's friend, and the father of R. B. Sheridan (who was born in 1751), and the great-great-grandfather of the present Earl of Dufferin.

[1062] Sheridan was acting in Garrick's Company, generally on the nights on which Garrick did not appear. Davies's _Garrick_, i. 299. Johnson criticises his reading, _post_, April 18, 1783.

[1063] Mrs. Sheridan was authour of _Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph_, a novel of great merit, and of some other pieces.--See her character, _post_, beginning of 1763. BOSWELL.

[1064] _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 44. BOSWELL. '1761. Easter Eve. Since the communion of last Easter I have led a life so dissipated and useless, and my terrours and perplexities have so much increased, that I am under great depression and discouragement.'

[1065] See _post_, April 6, 1775.

[1066] I have had inquiry made in Ireland as to this story, but do not find it recollected there. I give it on the authority of Dr. Johnson, to which may be added that of the _biographical Dictionary_, and _Biographia Dramatica_; in both of which it has stood many years. Mr. Malone observes, that the truth probably is, not that an edition was published with Rolt's name in the title-page, but, that the poem being then anonymous, Rolt acquiesced in its being attributed to him in conversation. BOSWELL.

[1067] I have both the books. Innes was the clergyman who brought Psalmanazar to England, and was an accomplice in his extraordinary fiction. BOSWELL. It was in 1728 that Innes, who was a Doctor of Divinity and Preacher-Assistant at St. Margaret's Westminster, published this book. In his impudent Dedication to Lord Chancellor King he says that 'were matters once brought to the melancholy pass that mankind should become proselytes to such impious delusions' as Mandeville taught, 'punishments must be annexed to virtue and rewards to vice.' It was not till 1730 that Dr. Campbell 'laid open this imposture.' Preface, p. xxxi. Though he was Professor of Ecclesiastical History in St. Andrews, yet he had not, it should seem, heard of the fraud till then: so remote was Scotland from London in those days. It was not till 1733 that he published his own edition. For Psalmanazar, see _post_, April 18, 1778.

[1068] 'Died, the Rev. Mr. Eccles, at Bath. In attempting to save a boy, whom he saw sinking in the Avon, he, together with the youth, were both drowned.' _Gent. Mag_. Aug. 15, 1777. And in the magazine for the next month are some verses on this event, with an epitaph, of which the first line is,

'Beneath this stone the "_Man of Feeling_" lies.'

CROKER.

[1069] 'Harry Mackenzie,' wrote Scott in 1814, 'never put his name in a title page till the last edition of his works.' Lockhart's _Scott_, iv. 178. He wrote also _The Man of the World_, which Johnson 'looked at, but thought there was nothing in it.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 2, 1773. Scott, however, called it 'a very pathetic tale.' Croker's _Boswell, p. 359. Burns, writing of his twenty-third year, says: '_Tristram Shandy_ and the _Man of Feeling_ were my bosom favourites.' Currie's _Life of Burns_, ed.1846. p. 21.

[1070] From the Prologue to Dryden's adaptation of _The Tempest_.

[1071] The originals of Dr. Johnson's three letters to Mr. baretti, which are among the very best he ever wrote, were communicated to the elegant monthly miscellany, _The European Magazine_, in which they first appeared. BOSWELL.

[1072] Baretti left London for Lisbon on Aug. 14, 1760. He went through Portugal, Spain, and France to Antibes, whence he went by sea to Genoa, where he arrived on Nov. 18. In 1770 he published a lively account of his travels under the title of _A Journey from London to Genoa_.

[1073] Malone says of Baretti that 'he was certainly a man of extraordinary talents, and perhaps no one ever made himself so completely master of a foreign language as he did of English.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 392. Mrs. Piozzi gives the following 'instance of his skill in our low street language. Walking in a field near Chelsea he met a fellow, who, suspecting him from dress and manner to be a foreigner, said sneeringly, "Come, Sir, will you show me the way to France?" "No, Sir," says Baretti instantly, "but I will show you the way to Tyburn."' He travelled with her in France. 'Oh how he would court the maids at the inns abroad, abuse the men perhaps, and that with a facility not to be exceeded, as they all confessed, by any of the natives. But so he could in Spain, I find.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 347.

[1074] Johnson was intimate with Lord Southwell, _ante_, p. 243. It seems unlikely that Baretti merely conducted Mr. Southwell from Turin to Venice; yet there is not a line in his _Journey_ to show that any Englishman accompanied him from London to Turin.

[1075] See _ante_, p. 350, note.

[1076] The first of these annual exhibitions was opened on April 21, 1760, at the Room of the Society of Arts, in the Strand. 'As a consequence of their success, grew the incorporation of a Society of Artists in 1765, by seccession from which finally was constituted the Royal Academy [In Dec. 1768].' Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 179. For the third exhibition Johnson wrote the Preface to the catalogue. In this, speaking for the Committee of the Artists he says:--'The purpose of this Exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour is here invited to display his merit.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 101.

[1077] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 318) says that Johnson told him 'that in his whole life he was never capable of discerning the least resemblance of any kind between a picture and the subject it was intended to represent.' This, however must have been an exaggeration on the part either of Hawkins or Johnson. His general ignorance of art is shown by Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_., p. 98):--'Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned some picture as excellent. "It has often grieved me, sir," said Mr. Johnson, "to see so much mind as the science of painting requires, laid out upon such perishable materials: why do not you oftener make use of copper? I could wish your superiority in the art you profess to be preserved in stuff more durable than canvas." Sir Joshua urged the difficulty of procuring a plate large enough for historical subjects. "What foppish obstacles are these!" exclaims on a sudden Dr. Johnson. "Here is Thrale has a thousand tun of copper; you may paint it all round if you will, I suppose; it will serve him to brew in afterwards. Will it not, Sir?" to my husband who sat by. Indeed his utter scorn of painting was such, that I have heard him say, that he should sit very quietly in a room hung round with the works of the greatest masters, and never feel the slightest disposition to turn them, if their backs were outermost, unless it might be for the sake of telling Sir Joshua that he _had_ turned them.' Such a remark of Johnson's must not, however, be taken too strictly. He often spoke at random, often with exaggeration. 'There is in many minds a kind of vanity exerted to the disadvantage of themselves.' This reflection of his is the opening sentence to the number of the Idler (No. 45) in which he thus writes about portrait-painting:--'Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures; and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in life; what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.' It is recorded in Johnson's _Works_, (1787) xi. 208, that 'Johnson, talking with some persons about allegorical painting said, "I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."' He bought prints of Burke, Dyer, and Goldsmith--'Good impressions' he said to hang in a little room that he was fitting up with prints. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 639. Among his effects that were sold after his death were 'sixty-one portraits framed and glazed,' _post_, under Dec. 9, 1784. When he was at Paris, and saw the picture-gallery at the Palais Royal, he entered in his Diary:--'I thought the pictures of Raphael fine;' _post_, Oct. 16, 1775. The philosopher Hume was more insensible even than Johnson. Dr. J.H. Burton says:--'It does not appear from any incident in his life, or allusions in his letters, which I can remember, that he had ever really admired a picture or a statue.' _Life of me_, ii. 134.

[1078] By Colman--'There is nothing else new,' wrote Horace Walpole on March 7, 1761 (_Letters,_ in. 382), 'but a very indifferent play, called _The Jealous Wife_, so well acted as to have succeeded greatly.'

[1079] In Chap. 47 of _Rasselas_ Johnson had lately considered monastic life. Imlac says of the monks:--'Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless inactivity.... He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But perhaps every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life; and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat.' See also _post_, March 15, 1776, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 19, 1773.

[1080] Baretti, in the preface to his _Journey_ (p. vi.), says that the method of the book was due to Dr. Johnson. 'It was he that exhorted me to write daily, and with all possible minuteness; it was he that pointed out the topics which would most interest and most delight in a future publication.'

[1081] He advised Boswell to go to Spain. _Post_, June 25 and July 26, 1763.

[1082] Dr. Percy records that 'the first visit Goldsmith ever received from Johnson was on May 31, 1761, [ten days before this letter was written] when he gave an invitation to him, and much other company, many of them literary men, to a supper in his lodgings in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. Percy being intimate with Johnson, was desired to call upon him and take him with him. As they went together the former was much struck with the studied neatness of Johnson's dress. He had on a new suit of clothes, a new wig nicely powdered, and everything about him so perfectly dissimilar from his usual appearance that his companion could not help inquiring the cause of this singular transformation. "Why, Sir," said Johnson, "I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example."' Goldsmith's _Misc. Works_, i. 62.

[1083] _Judges_, v. 20.

[1084] _Psalms_, xix. 2.

[1085] _Psalms_, civ. 19.

[1086] Boswell is ten years out in his date. This work was published in 1752. The review of it in the _Gent. Mag_. for that year, p. 146, was, I believe, by Johnson.

[1087] He accompanied Lord Macartney on his embassy to China in 1792. In 1797 he published his _Account of the Embassy_.

[1088] It was taken in 1759, and restored to France in 1763. _Penny Cyclo_. xi. 463.

[1089] W. S. Landor (_Works_, ed. 1876, v. 99) says:--'Extraordinary as were Johnson's intellectual powers, he knew about as much of poetry as of geography. In one of his letters he talks of Guadaloupe as being in another hemisphere. Speaking of that island, his very words are these: "Whether you return hither or stay in another hemisphere."' Guadaloupe, being in the West Indies, is in another hemisphere.

[1090] See _post_, April 12, 1776.

[1091] 'It is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are less dreadful than its extinction.' _The Idler_, No. 58. See also _post_, under March 30, 1783, where he ranks the situation of the Prince of Wales as the happiest in the kingdom, partly on account of the enjoyment of hope.

[1092] Though Johnson wrote this same day to Lord Bute to thank him for his pension, he makes no mention to Baretti of this accession to his fortune.

[1093] See _ante_, p. 245. Mrs. Porter, the actress, lived some time with Mrs. Cotterel and her eldest daughter. CROKER.

[1094] Miss Charlotte Cotterel, married to Dean Lewis. See _post_, Dec. 21, 1762.

[1095] Reynolds's note-book shows that this year he had close on 150 sitters. Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 218.

[1096] He married a woman of the town, who had persuaded him (notwithstanding their place of congress was a small coalshed in Fetter Lane) that she was nearly related to a man of fortune, but was injuriously kept by him out of large possessions. She regarded him as a physician already in considerable practice. He had not been married four months, before a writ was taken out against him for debts incurred by his wife. He was secreted; and his friend then procured him a protection from a foreign minister. In a short time afterwards she ran away from him, and was tried (providentially in his opinion) for picking pockets at the Old Bailey. Her husband was with difficulty prevented from attending the Court, in the hope she would be hanged. She pleaded her own cause and was acquitted. A separation between them took place.' _Gent. Mag_. lv. 101.

[1097] Richardson had died more than a year earlier,--on July 4, 1761. That Johnson should think it needful at the date of his letter to inform Baretti of the death of so famous a writer shows how slight was the communication between London and Milan. Nay, he repeats the news in his letter of Dec. 21, 1762.

[1098] On Dec. 8, 1765, he wrote to Hector:--'A few years ago I just saluted Birmingham, but had no time to see any friend, for I came in after midnight with a friend, and went away in the morning.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. iii. 321. He passed through Birmingham, I conjecture, on his visit to Lichfield.

[1099] Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield on July 20, 1767, he says:--'Miss Lucy [Porter, his step-daughter, not his daughter-in-law, as he calls her above] is more kind and civil than I expected, and has raised my esteem by many excellencies very noble and resplendent, though a little discoloured by hoary virginity. Everything else recalls to my remembrance years, in which I proposed what I am afraid I have not done, and promised myself pleasure which I have not found.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 4.

[1100] In his _Journey into Wales_ (Aug. 24, 1774), he describes how Mrs. Thrale visited one of the scenes of her youth. 'She remembered the rooms, and wandered over them with recollection of her childhood. This species of pleasure is always melancholy. The walk was cut down and the pond was dry. Nothing was better.'

[1101] This is a very just account of the relief which London affords to melancholy minds. BOSWELL.

[1102] To Devonshire.

[1103] See _ante_, p. 322.

[1104] Dr. T. Campbell (_Diary of a visit to England_, p. 32) recorded on March 16, 1775, that 'Baretti said that now he could not live out of London. He had returned a few years ago to his own country, but he could not enjoy it; and he was obliged to return to London to those connections he had been making for near thirty years past.' Baretti had come to England in 1750 (_ante_, p. 302), so that thirty years is an exaggeration.

[1105] How great a sum this must have been in Johnson's eyes is shown by a passage in his _Life of Savage_ (_Works_, viii. 125). Savage, he says, was received into Lord Tyrconnel's family and allowed a pension of £200 a year. 'His presence,' Johnson writes, 'was sufficient to make any place of publick entertainment popular; and his approbation and example constituted the fashion. So powerful is genius when it is invested with the glitter of affluence!' In the last summer of his life, speaking of the chance of his pension being doubled, he said that with six hundred a year 'a man would have the consciousness that he should pass the remainder of his life _in splendour_, how long soever it might be.' _Post_, June 30, 1784. David Hume writing in 1751, says:--'I have £50 a year, a £100 worth of books, great store of linens and fine clothes, and near £100 in my pocket; along with order, frugality, a strong spirit of independency, good health, a contented humour, and an unabating love of study. In these circumstances I must esteem myself one of the happy and fortunate.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 342. Goldsmith, in his _Present State of Polite Learning_ (chap, vii), makes the following observation on pensions granted in France to authors:--'The French nobility have certainly a most pleasing way of satisfying the vanity of an author without indulging his avarice. A man of literary merit is sure of being caressed by the great, though seldom enriched. His pension from the crown just supplies half a competence, and the sale of his labours makes some small addition to his circumstances; thus the author leads a life of splendid poverty, and seldom becomes wealthy or indolent enough to discontinue an exertion of those abilities by which he rose.' Whether Johnson's pension led to his writing less than he would otherwise have done may be questioned. It is true that in the next seventeen years he did little more than finish his edition of _Shakespeare_, and write his _Journey to the Western Islands_ and two or three political pamphlets. But since he wrote the last number of _The Idler_ in the spring of 1760 he had done very little. His mind, which, to use Murphy's words (_Life_, p. 80), had been 'strained and overlaboured by constant exertion,' had not recovered its tone. It is likely, that without the pension he would not have lived to write the second greatest of his works--the _Lives of the Poets_.

[1106] Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, i. 281) says:--'Bute's pensions to his Scottish crew showing meaner than ever in Churchill's daring verse, it occurred to the shrewd and wary Wedderburne to advise, for a set off, that Samuel Johnson should be pensioned.' _The Prophecy of Famine_ in which Churchill's attack was made on the pensioned Scots was published in Jan. 1763, nearly half a year after Johnson's pension was conferred.

[1107] For his _Falkland's Islands_ 'materials were furnished to him by the ministry' (_post_, 1771). '_The Patriot_ was called for,' he writes, 'by my political friends' (_post_, Nov. 26, 1774). 'That _Taxation no Tyranny_ was written at the desire of those who were then in power, I have no doubt,' writes Boswell (_post_, under March 21, 1775). 'Johnson complained to a friend that, his pension having been given to him as a literary character, he had been applied to by administration to write political pamphlets' (_Ib_.). Are these statements inconsistent with what Lord Loughborough said, and with Boswell's assertion (_Ib_.) that 'Johnson neither asked nor received from government any reward whatsoever for his political labours?' I think not. I think that, had Johnson unpensioned been asked by the Ministry to write these pamphlets, he would have written them. He would have been pleased by the compliment, and for pay would have trusted to the sale. Speaking of the first two of these pamphlets--the third had not yet appeared--he said, 'Except what I had from the booksellers, I did not get a farthing by them' (_post_, March 21, 1772). They had not cost him much labour. _The False Alarm_ was written between eight o'clock of one night and twelve o'clock of the next. It went through three editions in less than two months (_post_, 1770). _The Patriot_ was written on a Saturday (_post_, Nov. 26, 1774). At all events Johnson had received his pension for more than seven years before he did any work for the ministry. In Croft's _Life of Young_, which Johnson adopted (_Works_, viii. 422), the following passage was perhaps intended to be a defence of Johnson as a writer for the Ministry:--'Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner? In all modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been regularly called hirelings, and on the other patriots?'

[1108] See _ante_, p. 294.

[1109] Murphy's account is nearly as follows (_Life_, p. 92):--'Lord Loughborough was well acquainted with Johnson; but having heard much of his independent spirit, and of the downfall of Osborne the bookseller (_ante_, p. 154), he did not know but his benevolence might be rewarded with a folio on his head. He desired me to undertake the task. I went to the chambers in the Inner Temple Lane, which, in fact, were the abode of wretchedness. By slow and studied approaches the message was disclosed. Johnson made a long pause; he asked if it was seriously intended. He fell into a profound meditation, and his own definition of a pensioner occurred to him. He desired to meet next day, and dine at the Mitre Tavern. At that meeting he gave up all his scruples. On the following day Lord Loughborough conducted him to the Earl of Bute. The conversation that passed was in the evening related to me by Dr. Johnson. He expressed his sense of his Majesty's bounty, and thought himself the more highly honoured, as the favour was not bestowed on him for having dipped his pen in faction. "No, Sir," said Lord Bute, "it is not offered to you for having dipped your pen in faction, nor with a design that you ever should."' The reviewer of Hawkins's _Johnson_ in the _Monthly Review_, lxxvi. 375, who was, no doubt, Murphy, adds a little circumstance:--'On the next day Mr. Murphy was in the Temple Lane soon after nine; _he got Johnson up and dressed in due time_; and saw him set off at eleven.' Malone's note on what Lord Bute said to Johnson is as follows:--'This was said by Lord Bute, as Dr. Burney was informed by Johnson himself, in answer to a question which he put, previously to his acceptance of the intended bounty: "Pray, my Lord, what am I expected to do for this pension?"'

[1110]

'In Britain's senate he a seat obtains And one more pensioner St. Stephen gains.'

_Moral Essays_, iii. 392.

Johnson left the definition of _pension_ and _pensioner_ unchanged in the fourth edition of the _Dictionary_, corrected by him in 1773.

[1111] He died on March 10, 1792. This paragraph and the letter are not in the first two editions.

[1112] The Treasury, Home Office, Exchequer of Receipt and Audit Office Records have been searched for a warrant granting a pension to Dr. Johnson without success. In 1782, by Act of Parliament all pensions on the Civil List Establishment were from that time to be paid at the Exchequer. In the Exchequer Order Book, Michaelmas 1782, No. 46, p. 74, the following memorandum occurs:--"Memdum. 3 Dec. 1782. There was issued to the following persons (By order 6th of Nov. 1782) the sums set against their names respectively, etc.:--Persons names: Johnson Saml, LL.D. Pensions p. ann. £300. Due to 5 July 1782, two quarters, £150."

This pension was paid at the Exchequer from that time to the quarter ending 10 Oct. 1784. 'It is clear that the pension was payable quarterly [for confirmation of this, see _post_, Nov. 3, 1762, and July 16, 1765] and at the old quarter days, July 5, Oct. 10, Jan. 5, April 5, though payment was sometimes delayed. [Once he was paid half-yearly; see _post_, under March 20, 1771.] The expression "bills" was a general term at the time for notes, cheques, and warrants, and no doubt covered some kind of Treasury warrant.' The above information I owe to the kindness of my friend Mr. Leonard H. Courtney, M.P., late Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The 'future favours' are the future payments. His pension was not for life, and depended therefore entirely on the king's pleasure (see _post_, under March 21, 1775). The following letter in the _Grenville Papers_, ii. 68, seems to show that Johnson thought the pension due on the _new_ quarter-day:--

'DR. JOHNSON To MR. GRENVILLE.

'July 2, 1763.

'SIR,

'Be pleased to pay to the bearer seventy-five pounds, being the quarterly payment of a pension granted by his Majesty, and due on the 24th day of June last, to Sir,

'Your most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

[1113] They left London on Aug. 16 and returned to it on Sept. 26. Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 214. Northcote records of this visit:--'I remember when Mr. Reynolds was pointed out to me at a public meeting, where a great crowd was assembled, I got as near to him as I could from the pressure of the people to touch the skirt of his coat, which I did with great satisfaction to my mind.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 116. In like manner Reynolds, when a youth, had in a great crowd touched the hand of Pope. _Ib_, p. 19. Pope, when a boy of eleven, 'persuaded some friends to take him to the coffee-house which Dryden frequented.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 236. Who touched old Northcote's hand? Has the apostolic succession been continued?--Since writing these lines I have read with pleasure the following passage in Mr. Ruskin's _Praeterita_,