Life of Johnson, Volume 1 1709-1765
Chapter 3
long speech is put into his mouth. It was the Earl of Sandwich who had spoken at this turn of the debate. The editor of the _Parl. Hist_. (xii. 1398), without even notifying the change, coolly transfers the speech from the 'decent' Seeker[1466], who was afterwards Primate, to the grossly licentious Earl. A transference such as this is, however, but of little moment. For the most part the speeches would be scarcely less lifelike, if all on one side were assigned to some nameless Whig, and all on the other side to some nameless Tory. It is nevertheless true that here and there are to be found passages which no doubt really fell from the speaker in whose mouth they are put. They mention some fact or contain some allusion which could not otherwise have been known by Johnson. Even if we had not Cave's word for it, we might have inferred that now and then a member was himself his own reporter. Thus in the _Gent. Mag_. for February 1744 (p. 68) we find a speech by Sir John St. Aubyn that had appeared eight months earlier in the very same words in the _London Magazine_. That Johnson copied a rival publication is most unlikely--impossible, I might say. St. Aubyn, I conjecture, sent a copy of his speech to both editors. In the _Gent. Mag_. for April 1743 (p. 184), a speech by Lord Percival on Dec. 10, 1742, is reported apparently at full length. The debate itself was not published till the spring of 1744, when the reader is referred for this speech to the back number in which it had already been inserted. (_Ib_. xiv. 123).
The _London Magazine_ generally gave the earlier report; it was, however, twitted by its rival with its inaccuracy. In one debate, it was said, 'it had introduced instead of twenty speakers but six, and those in a very confused manner. It had attributed to Caecilius words remembered by the whole audience to be spoken by M. Agrippa.' (_Gent. Mag_. xii. 512). The report of the debate of Feb. 13, 1741, in the _London Magazine_ fills more than twenty-two columns of the _Parl. Hist_. (xi. 1130) with a speech by Lord Bathurst. That he did speak is shewn by Secker (_ib_. p. 1062). No mention of him is made, however, in the report in the _Gent. Mag_. (xi. 339). But, on the other hand, it reports eleven speakers, while the _London Magazine_ gives but five. Secker shows that there were nineteen. Though the _London Magazine_ was generally earlier in publishing the debates, it does not therefore follow that Johnson had seen their reports when he wrote his. His may have been kept back by Cave's timidity for some months even after they had been set up in type. In the staleness of the debate there was some safeguard against a parliamentary prosecution.
Mr. Croker maintains (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 44) that Johnson wrote the _Debates_ from the time (June 1738) that they assumed the _Lilliputian_ title till 1744. In this he is certainly wrong. Even if we had not Johnson's own statement, from the style of the earlier _Debates_ we could have seen that they were not written by him. No doubt we come across numerous traces of his work; but this we should have expected. Boswell tells us that Guthrie's reports were sent to Johnson for revision (_ante_, p. 118). Nay, even a whole speech now and then may be from his hand. It is very likely that he wrote, for instance, the _Debate_ on buttons and button-holes (_Gent. Mag_. viii. 627), and the _Debate_ on the registration of seamen (_ib_. xi.). But it is absurd to attribute to him passages such as the following, which in certain numbers are plentiful enough long after June 1738. 'There never was any measure pursued more consistent with, and more consequential of, the sense of this House' (_ib_. ix. 340). 'It gave us a handle of making such reprisals upon the Iberians as this Crown found the sweets of' (_ib_. x. 281). 'That was the only expression that the least shadow of fault was found with' (ib. xi. 292).
'Johnson told me himself,' says Boswell (_ante_, p. 150), 'that he was the sole composer of the _Debates_ for those three years only (1741-2-3). He was not, however, precisely exact in his statement, which he mentioned from hasty recollection; for it is sufficiently evident that his composition of them began November 19, 1740, and ended February 23 [22], 1742-3.' Some difficulty is caused in following Boswell's statement by the length of time that often elapsed between the debate itself and its publication. The speeches that were spoken between Nov. 19, or, more strictly speaking, Nov. 25, 1740, and Feb. 22, 1743, were in their publication spread through the _Magazine_ from July 1741 to March, 1744. On Feb. 13, 1741, Lord Carteret in the House of 'Lords, and Mr. Sandys, 'the Motion-maker[1467],' in the House of Commons, moved an address to the King for the removal of Sir Robert Walpole. Johnson's report of the debate in the Lords was published in the _Magazine_ for the next July and August. The year went round. Walpole's ministry was overthrown, and Walpole himself was banished to the House of Lords. A second year went by. At length, in three of the spring numbers of 1743, the debate on Sandys's motion was reported. It had been published in the _London Magazine_ eleven months earlier.
Cave, if he was tardy, nevertheless was careful that his columns should not want variety. Thus in the number for July 1743, we have the middle part of the debate in the Lords on Feb. 1, 1743, the end of the debate in the Commons on March 9, 1742, and the beginning of another in the Commons on the following March 23. From the number for July 1741 to the number for March 1744 Johnson, as I have already said, was the sole composer of the _Debates_. The irregularity with which they were given at first sight seems strange; but in it a certain method can be discovered. The proceedings of a House of Commons that had come to an end might, as I have shown, be freely published. There had been a dissolution after the session which closed in April 1741. The publication of the _Debates_ of the old parliament could at once begin, and could go on freely from month to month all the year round. But they would not last for ever. In 1742, in the autumn recess, the time when experience had shewn that the resolution of the House could be broken with the least danger, the _Debates_ of the new parliament were published. They were continued even in the short session before Christmas. But the spring of 1743 saw a cautious return to the reports of the old parliament. The session closed on April 21, and in the May number the comparatively fresh _Debates_ began again. In one case the report was not six months after date. In the beginning of 1744 this publication went on even in the session, but it was confined to the proceedings of the previous winter.
The following table shews the order in which Johnson's Debates were published:--
_Gentleman's _Debate or part Magazine_. of debate of_
July, 1741 {Parliament was dissolved } Feb. 13, 1741 { on April 25, 1741. } Aug. " Feb. 13, "
Sept. " {Jan. 27, " {Mar. 2, " Oct. " Mar. 2, "
Nov. " Mar. 2, "
Dec. " { The new Parliament met} Dec. 9, 1740 { on Dec. 1. }
_Gentleman's Debate or part Magazine. of debate of_
Supplement to 1741 Dec. 2, " Dec. 12," Jan. 1742 Feb. 3, 1741 Feb. 27, " Feb. " Jan. 26, " April 13, " Mar. " Feb. 24, " April 13, " April " Jan. 27, " Feb. 24, " May " Nov. 25, 1740 June " Nov. 25, " April 8, 1741 July " The session ended on July April 8, " 15. Dec. 1, " Dec. 4, " Aug. " Dec. 4, " Sept. " Dec. 4, " Dec. 8, " Oct. " Dec. 8, " May 25, 1742 Nov. " The Session opened on May 25, " Nov. 16. Dec. " May 25, " June 1, " Supplement to 1742 Dec. 10, 1740 June 1, 1742 Jan. 1743 Dec. 10, 1740 Feb. " Feb. 13, 1741 Mar. " Feb. 13, " April " The Session ended on April 21 Feb. 13, " May " Mar. 9, 1742 Nov. 16, " June " Mar. 9, " Feb. 1, 1743 July " Mar. 9, 1742 Mar. 23, " Feb. 1, 1743 Aug. " Feb. 1, " Sept. " Feb. 1, " Oct. " Feb. 1, " Nov. " Feb. 22, " Dec. " The Session opened on Dec. 1 Feb. 22, " Supplement to 1743 Feb. 22, " Jan. 1744 Feb. 22, " Feb. " Dec. 10, 1742 Feb. 22, 1743 Mar. " Dec. 10, 1742
During the rest of 1744 the debates were given in the old form, and in a style that is a close imitation of Johnson's. Most likely they were composed by Hawkesworth (_ante_, p. 252). In 1745 they were fewer in number, and in 1746 the reports of the Senate of Lilliputia with its Hurgoes and Clinabs passed away for ever. They had begun, to quote the words of the Preface to the _Magazine_ for 1747, at a time when 'a determined spirit of opposition in the national assemblies communicated itself to almost every individual, multiplied and invigorated periodical papers, and rendered politics the chief, if not the only object, of curiosity.' They are a monument to the greatness of Walpole, and to the genius of Johnson. Had that statesman not been overthrown, the people would have called for these reports even though Johnson had refused to write them. Had Johnson still remained the reporter, even though Walpole no longer swayed the Senate of the Lilliputians, the speeches of that tumultuous body would still have been read. For though they are not debates, yet they have a vast vigour and a great fund of wisdom of their own.
* * * * *
APPENDIX B.
JOHNSON'S LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER AND MISS PORTER IN 1759. (_Page 340_.)
Malone published seven of the following letters in the fourth edition, and Mr. Croker the rest.
'TO MRS. JOHNSON IN LICHFIELD.
'HONOURED MADAM,
'The account which Miss [Porter] gives me of your health pierces my heart. God comfort and preserve you and save you, for the sake of Jesus Christ.
'I would have Miss read to you from time to time the Passion of our Saviour, and sometimes the sentences in the Communion Service, beginning "_Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest_."
'I have just now read a physical book, which inclines me to think that a strong infusion of the bark would do you good. Do, dear mother, try it.
'Pray, send me your blessing, and forgive all that I have done amiss to you. And whatever you would have done, and what debts you would have paid first, or any thing else that you would direct, let Miss put it down; I shall endeavour to obey you.
'I have got twelve guineas[1468] to send you, but unhappily am at a loss how to send it to-night. If I cannot send it to-night, it will come by the next post.
'Pray, do not omit any thing mentioned in this letter: God bless you for ever and ever.
'I am your dutiful son,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Jan. 13, 1758[1469].'
'To Miss PORTER, AT MRS. JOHNSON'S, IN LICHFIELD.
'MY DEAR Miss,
'I think myself obliged to you beyond all expression of gratitude for your care of my dear mother. God grant it may not be without success. Tell Kitty[1470] that I shall never forget her tenderness for her mistress. Whatever you can do, continue to do. My heart is very full.
'I hope you received twelve guineas on Monday. I found a way of sending them by means of the postmaster, after I had written my letter, and hope they came safe. I will send you more in a few days. God bless you all.
'I am, my dear,
'Your most obliged
'And most humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Jan. 16, 1759. 'Over the leaf is a letter to my mother.'
'DEAR HONOURED MOTHER,
'Your weakness afflicts me beyond what I am willing to communicate to you. I do not think you unfit to face death, but I know not how to bear the thought of losing you. Endeavour to do all you [can] for yourself. Eat as much as you can.
'I pray often for you; do you pray for me. I have nothing to add to my last letter.
'I am, dear, dear mother
'Your dutiful son,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Jan. 16, 1759.'
'To MRS. JOHNSON, IN LICHFIELD.
'DEAR HONOURED MOTHER,
'I fear you are too ill for long letters; therefore I will only tell you, you have from me all the regard that can possibly subsist in the heart. I pray God to bless you for evermore, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
'Let Miss write to me every post, however short.
'I am, dear mother,
'Your dutiful son,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Jan. 18, 1759.'
'TO MISS PORTER, AT MRS. JOHNSON'S, IN LICHFIELD.
'DEAR Miss,
'I will, if it be possible, come down to you. God grant I may yet [find] my dear mother breathing and sensible. Do not tell her, lest I disappoint her. If I miss to write next post, I am on the road.
'I am, my dearest Miss, 'Your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Jan. 20, 1759.'
_On the other side_.
'DEAR HONOURED MOTHER[1471],
'Neither your condition nor your character make it fit for me to say much. You have been the best mother, and I believe the best woman in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and all that I have omitted to do well. God grant you his Holy Spirit, and receive you to everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. Lord Jesus receive your spirit. Amen.
'I am, dear, dear mother, 'Your dutiful son, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Jan. 20, 1759.'
'TO MISS PORTER IN LICHFIELD.
'You will conceive my sorrow for the loss of my mother, of the best mother. If she were to live again surely I should behave better to her. But she is happy, and what is past is nothing to her; and for me, since I cannot repair my faults to her, I hope repentance will efface them. I return you and all those that have been good to her my sincerest thanks, and pray God to repay you all with infinite advantage. Write to me, and comfort me, dear child. I shall be glad likewise, if Kitty will write to me. I shall send a bill of twenty pounds in a few days, which I thought to have brought to my mother; but God suffered it not. I have not power or composure to say much more. God bless you, and bless us all.
'I am, dear Miss, 'Your affectionate humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Jan. 23, 1759[1472].'
'To Miss PORTER.
(_The beginning is torn and lost_.)
* * * * *
'You will forgive me if I am not yet so composed as to give any directions about any thing. But you are wiser and better than I, and I shall be pleased with all that you shall do. It is not of any use for me now to come down; nor can I bear the place. If you want any directions, Mr. Howard[1473] will advise you. The twenty pounds I could not get a bill for to-night, but will send it on Saturday.
'I am, my dear, your affectionate servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Jan. 25, 1759.'
* * * * *
'To Miss PORTER.
'DEAR Miss,
'I have no reason to forbear writing, but that it makes my heart heavy, and I had nothing particular to say which might not be delayed to the next post; but had no thoughts of ceasing to correspond with my dear Lucy, the only person now left in the world with whom I think myself connected. There needed not my dear mother's desire, for every heart must lean to somebody, and I have nobody but you; in whom I put all my little affairs with too much confidence to desire you to keep receipts, as you prudently proposed.
'If you and Kitty will keep the house, I think I shall like it best. Kitty may carry on the trade for herself, keeping her own stock apart, and laying aside any money that she receives for any of the goods which her good mistress has left behind her. I do not see, if this scheme be followed, any need of appraising the books. My mother's debts, dear mother, I suppose I may pay with little difficulty; and the little trade may go silently forward. I fancy Kitty can do nothing better; and I shall not want to put her out of a house, where she has lived so long, and with so much virtue. I am very sorry that she is ill, and earnestly hope that she will soon recover; let her know that I have the highest value for her, and would do any thing for her advantage. Let her think of this proposal. I do not see any likelier method by which she may pass the remaining part of her life in quietness and competence.
'You must have what part of the house you please, while you are inclined to stay in it; but I flatter myself with the hope that you and I shall some time pass our days together. I am very solitary and comfortless, but will not invite you to come hither till I can have hope of making you live here so as not to dislike your situation. Pray, my dearest, write to me as often as you can.
'I am, dear Madam,
'Your affectionate humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.
'Feb. 6, 1759'
'To Miss PORTER.
'DEAR MADAM,
'I thought your last letter long in coming; and did not require or expect such an inventory of little things as you have sent me. I could have taken your word for a matter of much greater value. I am glad that Kitty is better; let her be paid first, as my dear, dear mother ordered, and then let me know at once the sum necessary to discharge her other debts, and I will find it you very soon.
'I beg, my dear, that you would act for me without the least scruple, for I can repose myself very confidently upon your prudence, and hope we shall never have reason to love each other less. I shall take it very kindly if you make it a rule to write to me once at least every week, for I am now very desolate, and am loth to be universally forgotten.
'I am, dear sweet, 'Your affectionate servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'March 1, 1759.'
'TO MISS PORTER.
'DEAR MADAM,
'I beg your pardon for having so long omitted to write. One thing or other has put me off. I have this day moved my things and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn, London. I hope, my dear, you are well, and Kitty mends. I wish her success in her trade. I am going to publish a little story book [_Rasselas_], which I will send you when it is out. Write to me, my dearest girl, for I am always glad to hear from you.
'I am, my dear, your humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'March 23, 1759.'
'TO MISS PORTER.
'DEAR MADAM,
'I am almost ashamed to tell you that all your letters came safe, and that I have been always very well, but hindered, I hardly know how, from writing. I sent, last week, some of my works, one for you, one for your aunt Hunter, who was with my poor dear mother when she died, one for Mr. Howard, and one for Kitty.
'I beg you, my dear, to write often to me, and tell me how you like my little book.
'I am, dear love, your affectionate humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'May 10, 1759.'
JOHNSON AT CAMBRIDGE.
(Page 487.)
The following is the full extract of Dr. Sharp's letter giving an account of Johnson's visit to Cambridge in 1765:--
'Camb. Mar. 1, 1765.
'As to Johnson, you will be surprised to hear that I have had him in the chair in which I am now writing. He has ascended my aërial citadel. He came down on a Saturday evening, with a Mr. Beauclerk, who has a friend at Trinity. Caliban, you may be sure, was not roused from his lair before next day noon, and his breakfast probably kept him till night. I saw nothing of him, nor was he heard of by any one, till Monday afternoon, when I was sent for home to two gentlemen unknown. In conversation I made a strange _faux pas_ about Burnaby Greene's poem, in which Johnson is drawn at full length[1474]. He drank his large potations of tea with me, interrupted by many an indignant contradiction, and many a noble sentiment. He had on a better wig than usual, but, one whose curls were not, like Sir Cloudesly's[1475], formed for 'eternal buckle.' [1476] Our conversation was chiefly on books, you may be sure. He was much pleased with a small _Milton_ of mine, published in the author's lifetime, and with the Greek epigram on his own effigy, of its being the picture, not of him, but of a bad painter[1477]. There are many manuscript stanzas, for aught I know, in Milton's own handwriting, and several interlined hints and fragments. We were puzzled about one of the sonnets, which we thought was not to be found in Newton's edition[1478], and differed from all the printed ones. But Johnson cried, "No, no!" repeated the whole sonnet instantly, _memoriter_, and shewed it us in Newton's book. After which he learnedly harangued on sonnet-writing, and its different numbers. He tells me he will come hither again quickly, and is promised "an habitation in Emanuel College[1479]." He went back to town next morning; but as it began to be known that he was in the university, several persons got into his company the last evening at Trinity, where, about twelve, he began to be very great; stripped poor Mrs. Macaulay to the very skin, then gave her for his toast, and drank her in two bumpers.' (_Gent. Mag_. for 1785, p. 173.)
* * * * *
APPENDIX D.
JOHNSON'S LETTER TO DR. LELAND.
(Page 489.)
'TO THE REV. DR. LELAND.
'SIR,
'Among the names subscribed to the degree which I have had the honour of receiving from the university of Dublin, I find none of which I have any personal knowledge but those of Dr. Andrews and yourself.
'Men can be estimated by those who know them not, only as they are represented by those who know them; and therefore I flatter myself that I owe much of the pleasure which this distinction gives me to your concurrence with Dr. Andrews in recommending me to the learned society.
'Having desired the Provost to return my general thanks to the University, I beg that you, sir, will accept my particular and immediate acknowledgements.
'I am, Sir,
'Your most obedient and most humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Johnson's-court, Fleet-street,
London, Oct. 17, 1765.'
* * * * *
APPENDIX E.
JOHNSON'S 'ENGAGING IN POLITICKS WITH H----N.
(Page 490.)
In a little volume entitled _Parliamentary Logick_, by the Right Hon. W.G. Hamilton, published in 1808, twelve years after the author's death, is included _Considerations on Corn_, by Dr. Johnson (_Works_, v. 321). It was written, says Hamilton's editor, in November 1766. A dearth had caused riots. 'Those who want the supports of life,' Johnson wrote, 'will seize them wherever they can be found.' (_Ib_. p. 322.) He supported in this tract the bounty for exporting corn. If more than a year after he had engaged in politics with Mr. Hamilton nothing had been produced but this short tract, the engagement was not of much importance. But there was, I suspect, much more in it. Indeed, the editor says (_Preface_, p. ix.) that 'Johnson had entered into some engagement with Mr. Hamilton, occasionally to furnish him with his sentiments on the great political topicks that should be considered in Parliament.' Mr. Croker draws attention to a passage in Johnson's letter to Miss Porter of Jan. 14, 1766 (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 173) in which he says: 'I cannot well come [to Lichfield] during the session of parliament.' In the spring of this same year Burke had broken with Hamilton, in whose service he had been. 'The occasion of our difference,' he wrote, 'was not any act whatsoever on my part; it was entirely upon his, by a voluntary but most insolent and intolerable demand, amounting to no less than a claim of servitude during the whole course of my life, without leaving to me at any time a power either of getting forward with honour, or of retiring with tranquillity' (Burke's _Corres_. i. 77). It seems to me highly probable that Hamilton, in consequence of his having just lost, as I have shewn, Burke's services, sought Johnson's aid. He had taken Burke 'as a companion in his studies.' (_Ib_. p. 48.) 'Six of the best years of my life,' wrote Burke, 'he took me from every pursuit of literary reputation or of improvement of my fortune. In that time he made his own fortune (a very great one).' (_Ib_. p. 67.) Burke had been recommended to Hamilton by Dr. Warton. On losing him Hamilton, on Feb. 12, 1765, wrote to Warton, giving a false account of his separation with Burke, and asking him to recommend some one to fill his place--some one 'who, in addition to a taste and an understanding of ancient authors, and what generally passes under the name of scholarship, has likewise a share of modern knowledge, and has applied himself in some degree to the study of the law.' By way of payment he offers at once 'an income, which would neither be insufficient for him as a man of letters, or disreputable to him as a gentleman,' and hereafter 'a situation'--a post, that is to say, under government. (Wooll's _Warton_, i. 299.) Warton recommended Chambers. Chambers does not seem to have accepted the post, for we find him staying on at Oxford (_post_, ii. 25, 46). Johnson had all the knowledge that Hamilton required, except that of law. It is this very study that we find him at this very time entering upon. All this shows that for some time and to some extent an engagement was formed between him and Hamilton. Boswell, writing to Malone on Feb. 25, 1791, while _The Life of Johnson_ was going through the press, says:--
'I shall have more cancels. That _nervous_ mortal W. G. H. is not satisfied with my report of some particulars _which I wrote down from his own mouth_, and is so much agitated that Courtenay has persuaded me to allow a _new edition_ of them by H. himself to be made at H.'s expense.'
(Croker's _Boswell_, p. 829). This would seem to show that there was something that Hamilton wished to conceal. Horace Walpole (_Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iii. 402) does not give him a character for truthfulness. He writes on one occasion:--'Hamilton denied it, but his truth was not renowned.' Miss Burney, who met Hamilton fourteen years after this, thus describes him:--'This Mr. Hamilton is extremely tall and handsome; has an air of haughty and fashionable superiority; is intelligent, dry, sarcastic, and clever. I should have received much pleasure from his conversational powers, had I not previously been prejudiced against him, by hearing that he is infinitely artful, double, and crafty.' (Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 293).
* * * * *
APPENDIX F.
JOHNSON'S FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE THRALES AND HIS SERIOUS ILLNESS.
(_Page_ 490.)
Johnson (_Pr. and Med_. p. 191) writes:--'My first knowledge of Thrale was in 1765.' In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he says:--'You were but five-and-twenty when I knew you first.' (_Piozzi Letters_, i. 284). As she was born on Jan. 16/27, 1741, this would place their introduction in 1766. In another letter, written on July 8, 1784, he talks of her 'kindness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched.' (_Ib_. ii. 376). Perhaps, however, he here spoke in round numbers. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 125) says they first met in 1764. Mr. Thrale, she writes, sought an excuse for inviting him. 'The celebrity of Mr. Woodhouse (_post_, ii. 127), a shoemaker, whose verses were at that time the subject of common discourse, soon afforded a 'pretence.' There is a notice of Woodhouse in the _Gent. Mag_. for June, 1764 (p. 289). Johnson, she says, dined with them every Thursday through the winter of 1764-5, and in the autumn of 1765 followed them to Brighton. In the _Piozzi Letters_ (i. 1) there is a letter of his, dated Aug. 13, 1765, in which he speaks of his intention to join them there.
'From that time,' she writes, 'his visits grew more frequent till, in the year 1766, his health, which he had always complained of, grew so exceedingly bad, that he could not stir out of his room in the court he inhabited for many _weeks_ together, I think _months_. Mr. Thrale's attentions and my own now became so acceptable to him, that he often lamented to us the horrible condition of his mind, which, he said, was nearly distracted: and though he charged _us_ to make him odd solemn promises of secrecy on so strange a subject, yet when we waited on him one morning, and heard him, in the most pathetic terms, beg the prayers of Dr. Delap [the Rector of Lewes] who had left him as we came in, I felt excessively affected with grief, and well remember my husband involuntarily lifted up one hand to shut his mouth, from provocation at hearing a man so widely proclaim what he could at last persuade no one to believe; and what, if true, would have been so unfit to reveal. Mr. Thrale went away soon after, leaving me with him, and bidding me prevail on him to quit his close habitation in the court, and come with us to Streatham, where I undertook the care of his health, and had the honour and happiness of contributing to its restoration.'
It is not possible to reconcile the contradiction in dates between Johnson and Mrs. Piozzi, nor is it easy to fix the time of this illness. That before February, 1766, he had had an illness so serious as to lead him altogether to abstain from wine is beyond a doubt. Boswell, on his return to England in that month, heard it from his own lips (_post_, ii. 8). That this illness must have attacked him after March 1, 1765, when he visited Cambridge, is also clear; for at that time he was still drinking wine (_ante_, Appendix C). That he was unusually depressed in the spring of this year is shewn by his entry at Easter (_ante_, p. 487). From his visit to Dr. Percy in the summer of 1764 (_ante_, p. 486) to the autumn of 1765, we have very little information about him. For more than two years he did not write to Boswell (_post_, ii. 1). Dr. Adams (_ante_, p. 483) describes the same kind of attack as Mrs. Piozzi. Its date is not given. Boswell, after quoting an entry made on Johnson's birthday, Sept. 18, 1764, says 'about this time he was afflicted' with the illness Dr. Adams describes. From Mrs. Piozzi, from Johnson's account to Boswell, and from Dr. Adams we learn of a serious illness. Was there more than one? If there was only one, then Boswell is wrong in placing it before March 1, 1765, when Johnson was still a wine-drinker, and Mrs. Piozzi is wrong in placing it after February, 1766, when he had become an abstainer. Johnson certainly stayed at Streatham from before Midsummer to October in 1766 (_post_, ii. 25, and _Pr. and Med_. p. 71), and this fact lends support to Mrs. Piozzi's statement. But, on the other hand, his meetings with Boswell in February of that year, and his letters to Langton of March 9 and May 10 (_post_, ii. 16, 17), shew a not unhappy frame of mind. Boswell, in his _Hebrides_ (Oct. 16, 1773), speaks of Johnson's illness in 1766. If it was in 1766 that he was ill, it must have been after May 10 and before Midsummer-day, and this period is almost too brief for Mrs. Piozzi's account. It is a curious coincidence that Cowper was introduced to the Unwins in the same year in which Johnson, according to his own account, had his first knowledge of the Thrales. (Southey's _Cowper_, i, 171.)
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Post_, iv. 172.
[2] _Post_, iii. 312.
[3] _Post_, i. 324.
[4] _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, ed. 1807, vol. i. p. xi.
[5] _Post_, iii. 230.
[6] _Post_, i. 7.
[7] _Post_, ii. 212.
[8] _Post_, i. 7.
[9] _Post_, iv. 444.
[10] _Post_, ii. 100.
[11] _Post_, iv. 429; v. 17.
[12] _Post_, v. 117.
[13] _Post_, i. 472, n. 4; iv. 260, n. 2; v. 405, n. 1, 454, n. 2; vi. i-xxxvii.
[14] _Post_, i. 60, n. 7.
[15] _Post_, ii. 476.
[16] _Post_, vi. xxxiv.
[17] _Post_, iii. 462.
[18] _Post_, vi. xxii.
[19] _Post_, iv. 8, n. 3.
[20] _Post_, i. 489, 518.
[21] _Post_, iv. 223, n. 3.
[22] _Post_, i. 39, n. 1.
[23] _Post_, iii. 340, n. 2.
[24] _Post_, i. 103, n. 3.
[25] _Post_, i. 501.
[26] _Post_, iii. 443.
[27] _Post_, iii. 314.
[28] _Post_, iii. 449.
[29] _Post_, iii. 478.
[30] _Post_, iii. 459.
[31] _Post_, i. 189. n. 2.
[32] i. 296, n. 3.
[33] _Post_, vi. 289.
[34] _Post_, ii. 350.
[35] _Post_, iii. 137, n. 1; 389.
[36] _Post_, i. 14
[37] _Post_, i. 7-8
[38] _Post_, i. 14-15.
[39] _Post_, iv. 31, n. 3
[40] ii. 173-4.
[41] vol. ii. p. 47.
[42] Johnson's _Works_, ed. 1825, vol. v. p. 152.
[43] Johnson's _Works_, ed. 1825, vol. v. p. 152.
[44] See _Post_, ii. 35, 424-6, 441.
[45] See _Post_, iv. 422.
[46] _Correspondence of Edmund Burke_, ii. 425.
[47] To this interesting and accurate publication I am indebted for many valuable notes.
[48] _Post_, iii. 51, n. 3.
[49] Johnson's _Works_, ed. 1825, vol. iv. p. 446.
[50] _Post_, i. 331, _n_. 7.
[51] Johnson said of him:--'Sir Joshua Reynolds is the same all the year round;' _post_, March 28, 1776. Boswell elsewhere describes him as 'he who used to be looked upon as perhaps the most happy man in the world.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 344.
[52] 'O noctes coenaeque Deum!' 'O joyous nights! delicious feasts! At which the gods might be my guests. _Francis_. Horace, _Sat_, ii. 6. 65.
[53] Six years before this Dedication Sir Joshua had conferred on him another favour. 'I have a proposal to make to you,' Boswell had written to him, 'I am for certain to be called to the English bar next February. Will you now do my picture? and the price shall be paid out of the first fees which I receive as a barrister in Westminster Hall. Or if that fund should fail, it shall be paid at any rate five years hence by myself or my representatives.' Boswell told him at the same time that the debts which he had contracted in his father's lifetime would not be cleared off for some years. The letter was endorsed by Sir Joshua:--'I agree to the above conditions;' and the portrait was painted. Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 477.
[54] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773.
[55] 'I surely have the art of writing agreeably. The Lord Chancellor [Thurlow] told me he had read every word of my _Hebridian Journal_;' he could not help it; adding, 'could you give a rule how to write a book that a man _must_ read? I believe Longinus could not.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 322.
[56] Boswell perhaps quotes from memory the following passage in Goldsmith's _Life of Nash_:--'The doctor was one day conversing with Locke and two or three more of his learned and intimate companions, with that freedom, gaiety, and cheerfulness, which is ever the result of innocence. In the midst of their mirth and laughter, the doctor, looking from the window, saw Nash's chariot stop at the door. "Boys, boys," cried the philosopher, "let us now be wise, for here is a fool coming."' Cunningham's Goldsmith's _Works_, iv. 96. Dr. Warton in his criticism on Pope's line
'Unthought of frailties cheat us in the wise,'
(_Moral Essays_, i. 69) says:--'For who could imagine that Dr. Clarke valued himself for his agility, and frequently amused himself in a private room of his house in leaping over the tables and chairs.' Warton's _Essay on Pope_, ii. 125. 'It is a good remark of Montaigne's,' wrote Goldsmith, 'that the wisest men often have friends with whom they do not care how much they play the fool.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 166. Mr. Seward says in his _Anecdotes_, ii. 320, that 'in the opinion of Dr. Johnson' Dr. Clarke was the most complete literary character that England ever produced.' For Dr. Clarke's sermons see _post_, April 7, 1778.
[57] See _post_, Oct. 16, 1769, note.
[58] How much delighted would Boswell have been, had he been shewn the following passage, recorded by Miss Burney, in an account she gives of a conversation with the Queen:--
THE QUEEN:--'Miss Burney, have you heard that Boswell is going to publish a life of your friend Dr. Johnson?' 'No, ma'am!' 'I tell you as I heard, I don't know for the truth of it, and I can't tell what he will do. He is so extraordinary a man that perhaps he will devise something extraordinary.' _Mme. D'Artlay's Diary_, ii. 400. 'Dr. Johnson's history,' wrote Horace Walpole, on June 20, 1785, 'though he is going to have as many lives as a cat, might be reduced to four lines; but I shall wait to extract the quintessence till Sir John Hawkins, Madame Piozzi, and Mr. Boswell have produced their quartos.' Horace Walpole's _Letters_, viii. 557.
[59] The delay was in part due to Boswell's dissipation and place-hunting, as is shewn by the following passages in his _Letters_ to Temple:--'Feb. 24, 1788, I have been wretchedly dissipated, so that I have not written a line for a fortnight.' p. 266. 'Nov. 28, 1789, Malone's hospitality, and my other invitations, and particularly my attendance at Lord Lonsdale's, have lost us many evenings.' _Ib_. p. 311. 'June 21, 1790, How unfortunate to be obliged to interrupt my work! Never was a poor ambitious projector more mortified. I am suffering without any prospect of reward, and only from my own folly.' _Ib_. p. 326.
[60] 'You cannot imagine what labour, what perplexity, what vexation I have endured in arranging a prodigious multiplicity of materials, in supplying omissions, in searching for papers, buried in different masses, and all this besides the exertion of composing and polishing; many a time have I thought of giving it up.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 311.
[61] Boswell writing to Temple in 1775, says:--'I try to keep a journal, and shall shew you that I have done tolerably; but it is hardly credible what ground I go over, and what a variety of men and manners I contemplate in a day; and all the time I myself am _pars magna_, for my exuberant spirits will not let me listen enough.' _Ib_. p. 188. Mr. Barclay said that 'he had seen Boswell lay down his knife and fork, and take out his tablets, in order to register a good anecdote.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 837. The account given by Paoli to Miss Burney, shows that very early in life Boswell took out his tablets:--'He came to my country, and he fetched me some letter of recommending him; but I was of the belief he might be an impostor, and I supposed in my minde he was an espy; for I look away from him, and in a moment I look to him again, and I behold his tablets. Oh! he was to the work of writing down all I say. Indeed I was angry. But soon I discover he was no impostor and no espy; and I only find I was myself the monster he had come to discern. Oh! he is a very good man; I love him indeed; so cheerful, so gay, so pleasant! but at the first, oh! I was indeed angry.' _Mme. D'Arblay's Diary_, ii. 155. Boswell not only recorded the conversations, he often stimulated them. On one occasion 'he assumed,' he said, 'an air of ignorance to incite Dr. Johnson to talk, for which it was often necessary to employ some address.' See _post_, April 12, 1776. 'Tom Tyers,' said Johnson, 'described me the best. He once said to me, "Sir, you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to."' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 20, 1773. Boswell writing of this Tour said:--'I also may be allowed to claim some merit in leading the conversation; I do not mean leading, as in an orchestra, by playing the first fiddle; but leading as one does in examining a witness--starting topics, and making him pursue them.' _Ib_. Sept. 28. One day he recorded:--'I did not exert myself to get Dr. Johnson to talk, that I might not have the labour of writing down his conversation.' _Ib_. Sept. 7. His industry grew much less towards the close of Johnson's life. Under May 8, 1781, he records:--'Of his conversation on that and other occasions during this period, I neglected to keep any regular record.' On May 15, 1783:--'I have no minute of any interview with Johnson [from May 1] till May 15. 'May 15, 1784:--'Of these days and others on which I saw him I have no memorials.'
[62] It is an interesting question how far Boswell derived his love of truth from himself, and how far from Johnson's training. He was one of Johnson's _school_. He himself quotes Reynolds's observation, 'that all who were of his _school_ are distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy, which they would not have possessed in the same degree if they had not been acquainted with Johnson' (_post_, under March 30, 1778). Writing to Temple in 1789, he said:--'Johnson taught me to cross-question in common life.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 280. His quotations, nevertheless, are not unfrequently inaccurate. Yet to him might fairly be applied the words that Gibbon used of Tillemont:--'His inimitable accuracy almost assumes the character of genius.' Gibbon's _Misc. Words_, i. 213.
[63] 'The revision of my _Life of Johnson_, by so acute and knowing a critic as Mr. Malone, is of most essential consequence, especially as he is _Johnsonianissimum_.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 310. A few weeks earlier he had written:--'Yesterday afternoon Malone and I made ready for the press thirty pages of Johnson's _Life_; he is much pleased with it; but I feel a sad indifference [he had lately lost his wife], and he says, "I have not the use of my faculties."' _Ib_. p. 308.
[64] Horace, _Odes_, i. 3. 1.
[65] He had published an answer to Hume's _Essay on Miracles_. See _post_, March 20, 1776.
[66] Macleod asked if it was not wrong in Orrery to expose the defects of a man [Swift] with whom he lived in intimacy, Johnson, 'Why no, Sir, after the man is dead; for then it is done historically.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22, 1773. See also _post_, Sept 17, 1777.
[67] See Mr. Malone's Preface to his edition of Shakspeare. BOSWELL.
[68] 'April 6, 1791.
'My _Life of Johnson_ is at last drawing to a close.... I really hope to publish it on the 25th current.... I am at present in such bad spirits that I have every fear concerning it--that I may get no profit, nay, may lose--that the Public may be disappointed, and think that I have done it poorly--that I may make many enemies, and even have quarrels. Yet perhaps the very reverse of all this may happen.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 335.
'August 22, 1791.
'My _magnum opus_ sells wonderfully; twelve hundred are now gone, and we hope the whole seventeen hundred may be gone before Christmas.' _Ib_. p. 342.
Malone in his Preface to the fourth edition, dated June 20, 1804, says that 'near four thousand copies have been dispersed.' The first edition was in 2 vols., quarto; the second (1793) in 3 vols., octavo; the third (1799), the fourth (1804), the fifth (1807), and the sixth (1811), were each in 4 vols., octavo. The last four were edited by Malone, Boswell having died while he was preparing notes for the third edition.
[69] 'Burke affirmed that Boswell's _Life_ was a greater monument to Johnson's fame than all his writings put together.' _Life of Mackintosh_, i. 92.
[70] It is a pamphlet of forty-two pages, under the title of _The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell's Life Of Johnson_. Price two shillings and sixpence.
[71] Reynolds died on Feb. 23, 1792.
[72] Sir Joshua in his will left £200 to Mr. Boswell 'to be expended, if he thought proper, in the purchase of a picture at the sale of his paintings, to be kept for his sake.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 636.
[73] Of the seventy-five years that Johnson lived, he and Boswell did not spend two years and two months in the same neighbourhood. Excluding the time they were together on their tour to the Hebrides, they were dwelling within reach of each other a few weeks less than two years. Moreover, when they were apart, there were great gaps in their correspondence. Between Dec. 8, 1763, and Jan. 14, 1766, and again between Nov. 10, 1769 and June 20, 1771, during which periods they did not meet, Boswell did not receive a single letter from Johnson. The following table shows the times they were in the same neighbourhood.
1763, May 16 to Aug. 6, London. 1766, a few days in February " 1768, " " March, Oxford. 1768, a few days in May, London. 1769, end of Sept. to Nov. 10, " 1772, March 21 to about May 10, " 1773, April 3 to May 10, " " Aug. 14 to Nov. 22, Scotland. 1775, March 21 to April 18, London. May 2 to May 23, " 1776, March 15 to May 16, London, Oxford, Birmingham, with an interval of Lichfield, about a fortnight, Ashbourne, when Johnson was at and Bath and Boswell at Bath. London, 1777, Sept. 14 to Sept. 24, Ashbourne. 1778, March 18 to May 19, London. 1779, March 15 to May 3, " " Oct. 4 to Oct. 18, " 1781, March 19 to June 5, London and Southill. 1783, March 21 to May 30, London. 1784, May 5 to June 30, London and Oxford.
[74]
'To shew what wisdom and what sense can do, The poet sets Ulysses in our view.'
_Francis_. Horace, _Ep_. i. 2. 17.
[75] In his _Letter to the People of Scotland, p. 92, he wrote:--'Allow me, my friends and countrymen, while I with honest zeal maintain _your_ cause--allow me to indulge a little more my _own egotism_ and _vanity_. They are the indigenous plants of my mind; they distinguish it. I may prune their luxuriancy; but I must not entirely clear it of them; for then I should be no longer "as I am;" and perhaps there might be something not so good.'
[76] See _post_, April 17, 1778, note.
[77] Lord Macartney was the first English ambassador to the Court of Pekin. He left England in 1792 and returned in 1794.
[78] Boswell writing to Temple ten days earlier had said:--'Behold my _hand_! the robbery is only of a few shillings; but the cut on my head and bruises on my arms were sad things, and confined me to bed, in pain, and fever, and helplessness, as a child, many days.... This shall be a crisis in my life: I trust I shall henceforth be a sober regular man. Indeed, my indulgence in wine has, of late years especially, been excessive.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 346.
[79] On this day his brother wrote to Mr. Temple: 'I have now the painful task of informing you that my dear brother expired this morning at two o'clock; we have both lost a kind, affectionate friend, and I shall never have such another.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 357. What was probably Boswell's last letter is as follows:--
'My Dear Temple,
'I would fain write to you in my own hand, but really cannot. [These words, which are hardly legible, and probably the last poor Boswell ever wrote, afford the clearest evidence of his utter physical prostration.] Alas, my friend, what a state is this! My son James is to write for me what remains of this letter, and I am to dictate. The pain which continued for so many weeks was very severe indeed, and when it went off I thought myself quite well; but I soon felt a conviction that I was by no means as I should be--so exceedingly weak, as my miserable attempt to write to you afforded a full proof. All then that can be said is, that I must wait with patience. But, O my friend! how strange is it that, at this very time of my illness, you and Miss Temple should have been in such a dangerous state. Much occasion for thankfulness is there that it has not been worse with you. Pray write, or make somebody write frequently. I feel myself a good deal stronger to-day, not withstanding the scrawl. God bless you, my dear Temple! I ever am your old and affectionate friend, here and I trust hereafter,
'JAMES BOSWELL.' _Ib_. p. 353.
[80] Malone died on May 25, 1812.
[81] I do not here include his Poetical Works; for, excepting his Latin Translation of Pope's _Messiah_, his _London_, and his _Vanity of Human Wishes_ imitated from _Juvenal_; his Prologue on the opening of Drury-Lane Theatre by Mr. Garrick, and his _Irene_, a Tragedy, they are very numerous, and in general short; and I have promised a complete edition of them, in which I shall with the utmost care ascertain their authenticity, and illustrate them with notes and various readings. BOSWELL. Boswell's meaning, though not well expressed, is clear enough. Mr. Croker needlessly suggests that he wrote 'they are _not_ very numerous.' Boswell a second time (_post_, under Aug. 12, 1784, note) mentions his intention to edit Johnson's poems. He died without doing it. See also _post_, 1750, Boswell's note on Addison's style.
[82] The _Female Quixote_ was published in 1752. See _post_, 1762, note.
[83] The first four volumes of the _Lives_ were published in 1779, the last six in 1781.
[84] See Dr. Johnson's letter to Mrs. Thrale, dated Ostick in Skie, September 30, 1773:--'Boswell writes a regular Journal of our travels, which I think contains as much of what I say and do, as of all other occurrences together; "_for such a faithful chronicler_ is _Griffith_."' BOSWELL. See _Piozzi Letters_, i. 159, where however we read '_as_ Griffith.'
[85] _Idler_, No. 84. BOSWELL.--In this paper he says: 'Those relations are commonly of most value in which the writer tells his own story. He that recounts the life of another ... lessens the familiarity of his tale to increase its dignity ... and endeavours to hide the man that he may produce a hero.'
[86] 'It very seldom happens to man that his business is his pleasure. What is done from necessity is so often to be done when against the present inclination, and so often fills the mind with anxiety, that an habitual dislike steals upon us, and we shrink involuntarily from the remembrance of our task.... From this unwillingness to perform more than is required of that which is commonly performed with reluctance it proceeds that few authors write their own lives.' _Idler_, No. 102. See also _post_, May 1, 1783.
[87] Mrs. Piozzi records the following conversation with Johnson, which, she says, took place on July 18, 1773. 'And who will be my biographer,' said he, 'do you think?' 'Goldsmith, no doubt,' replied I; 'and he will do it the best among us.' 'The dog would write it best to be sure,' replied he; 'but his particular malice towards me, and general disregard for truth, would make the book useless to all, and injurious to my character.' 'Oh! as to that,' said I, 'we should all fasten upon him, and force him to do you justice; but the worst is, the Doctor does not _know_ your life; nor can I tell indeed who does, except Dr. Taylor of Ashbourne.' 'Why Taylor,' said he, 'is better acquainted with my _heart_ than any man or woman now alive; and the history of my Oxford exploits lies all between him and Adams; but Dr. James knows my very early days better than he. After my coming to London to drive the world about a little, you must all go to Jack Hawkesworth for anecdotes: I lived in great familiarity with him (though I think there was not much affection) from the year 1753 till the time Mr. Thrale and you took me up. I intend, however, to disappoint the rogues, and either make you write the life, with Taylor's intelligence; or, which is better, do it myself after outliving you all. I am now,' added he, 'keeping a diary, in hopes of using it for that purpose sometime.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 31. How much of this is true cannot be known. Boswell some time before this conversation had told Johnson that he intended to write his Life, and Johnson had given him many particulars (see _post_, March 31, 1772, and April 11, 1773). He read moreover in manuscript most of Boswell's _Tour to the Hebrides_, and from it learnt of his intention. 'It is no small satisfaction to me to reflect,' Boswell wrote, 'that Dr. Johnson, after being apprised of my intentions, communicated to me, at subsequent periods, many particulars of his life.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 14, 1773.
[88] 'It may be said the death of Dr. Johnson kept the public mind in agitation beyond all former example. No literary character ever excited so much attention.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 3.
[89] The greatest part of this book was written while Sir John Hawkins was alive; and I avow, that one object of my strictures was to make him feel some compunction for his illiberal treatment of Dr. Johnson. Since his decease, I have suppressed several of my remarks upon his work. But though I would not 'war with the dead' _offensively_, I think it necessary to be strenuous in _defence_ of my illustrious friend, which I cannot be without strong animadversions upon a writer who has greatly injured him. Let me add, that though I doubt I should not have been very prompt to gratify Sir John Hawkins with any compliment in his life-time, I do now frankly acknowledge, that, in my opinion, his volume, however inadequate and improper as a life of Dr. Johnson, and however discredited by unpardonable inaccuracies in other respects, contains a collection of curious anecdotes and observations, which few men but its author could have brought together. BOSWELL.
[90] 'The next name that was started was that of Sir John Hawkins; and Mrs. Thrale said, "Why now, Dr. Johnson, he is another of those whom you suffer nobody to abuse but yourself: Garrick is one too; for, if any other person speaks against him, you brow-beat him in a minute." "Why madam," answered he, "they don't know when to abuse him, and when to praise him; I will allow no man to speak ill of David that he does not deserve; and as to Sir John, why really I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom; but to be sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended.... He said that Sir John and he once belonged to the same club, but that as he eat no supper, after, the first night of his admission he desired to be excused paying his share." "And was he excused?" "O yes; for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him, and admitted his plea. For my part, I was such a fool as to pay my share for wine, though I never tasted any. But Sir John was a most _unclubable man_."' Madame D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 65.
[91] 'In censuring Mr. [_sic_] J. Hawkins's book I say: "There is throughout the whole of it a dark, uncharitable cast, which puts the most unfavourable construction on my illustrious friend's conduct." Malone maintains _cast_ will not do; he will have "malignancy." Is that not too strong? How would "disposition" do?... Hawkins is no doubt very malevolent. _Observe how he talks of me as quite unknown.' Letters of Boswell_, p. 281. Malone wrote of Hawkins as follows: 'The bishop [Bishop Percy of Dromore] concurred with every other person I have heard speak of Hawkins, in saying that he was a most detestable fellow. He was the son of a carpenter, and set out in life in the very lowest line of the law. Dyer knew him well at one time, and the Bishop heard him give a character of Hawkins once that painted him in the blackest colours; though Dyer was by no means apt to deal in such portraits. Dyer said he was a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition. Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me that Hawkins, though he assumed great outward sanctity, was not only mean and grovelling in dispostion, but absolutely dishonest. He never lived in any real intimacy with Dr. Johnson, who never opened his heart to him, or had in fact any accurate knowledge of his character.' Prior's _Malone_, pp. 425-7. See _post_, Feb. 1764, note.
[92] Mrs. Piozzi. See _post_, under June 30, 1784.
[93] Voltaire in his account of Bayle says: 'Des Maizeaux a écrit sa vie en un gros volume; elle ne devait pas contenir six pages.' Voltaire's _Works_, edition of 1819, xvii. 47.
[94] Brit. Mus. 4320, Ayscough's Catal., Sloane MSS. BOSWELL.--Horace Walpole describes Birch as 'a worthy, good-natured soul, full of industry and activity, and running about like a young setting-dog in quest of anything, new or old, and with no parts, taste, or judgment.' Walpole's _Letters_, vii. 326. See _post_, Sept. 1743.
[95] 'You have fixed the method of biography, and whoever will write a life well must imitate you.' Horace Walpole to Mason; Walpole's _Letters_, vi. 211.
[96] 'I am absolutely certain that my mode of biography, which gives not only a _History_ of Johnson's _visible_ progress through the world, and of his publications, but a _view_ of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work that has ever yet appeared.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 265.
[97] Pope's Prologue to Addison's _Cato_, 1. 4.
[98] 'Boswell is the first of biographers. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.' Macaulay's _Essays_, i. 374.
[99] See _post_, Sept. 17, 1777, and Malone's note of March 15, 1781, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22, 1773. Hannah More met Boswell when he was carrying through the press his _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_. 'Boswell tells me,' she writes, 'he is printing anecdotes of Johnson, not his _Life_, but, as he has the vanity to call it, his _pyramid_. I besought his tenderness for our virtuous and most revered departed friend, and begged he would mitigate some of his asperities. He said roughly: "He would not cut off his claws, nor make a tiger a cat, to please anybody." It will, I doubt not, be a very amusing book, but, I hope, not an indiscreet one; he has great enthusiasm and some fire.' H. More's _Memoirs_, i. 403.
[100] Rambler, No. 60. BOSWELL.
[101] In the _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_.
[102] 'Mason's _Life of Gray_ is excellent, because it is interspersed with letters which show us the _man_. His _Life of Whitehead_ is not a life at all, for there is neither a letter nor a saying from first to last.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 265.
[103] The Earl and Countess of Jersey, WRIGHT.
[104] Plutarch's _Life of Alexander_, Langhorne's Translation. BOSWELL.
[105] In the original, _revolving something_.
[106] In the original, _and so little regard the manners_.
[107] In the original, _and are rarely transmitted_.
[108] _Rambler_, No. 60. BOSWELL.
[109] Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_, Book I. BOSWELL.
[110] Johnson's godfather, Dr. Samuel Swinfen, according to the author of _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnson_, 1785, p. 10, was at the time of his birth lodging with Michael Johnson. Johnson had uncles on the mother's side, named Samuel and Nathanael (see _Notes and Queries_, 5th S. v. 13), after whom he and his brother may have been named. It seems more likely that it was his godfather who gave him his name.
[111] So early as 1709 _The Tatler_ complains of this 'indiscriminate assumption.' 'I'll undertake that if you read the superscriptions to all the offices in the kingdom, you will not find three letters directed to any but Esquires.... In a word it is now _Populus Armigerorum_, a people of Esquires, And I don't know but by the late act of naturalisation, foreigners will assume that title as part of the immunity of being Englishmen.' _The Tatler_, No. 19.
[112] 'I can hardly tell who was my grandfather,' said Johnson. See _post_, May 9, 1773.
[113] Michael Johnson was born in 1656. He must have been engaged in the book-trade as early as 1681; for in the _Life of Dryden_ his son says, 'The sale of Absalom and Achitophel was so large, that my father, an old bookseller, told me, he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's Trial.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 276. In the _Life of Sprat_ he is described by his son as 'an old man who had been no careless observer of the passages of those times.' Ib. 392.
[114] Her epitaph says that she was born at Kingsnorton. Kingsnorton is in Worcestershire, and not, as the epitaph says, 'in agro Varvicensi.' When Johnson a few days before his death burnt his papers, some fragments of his _Annals_ escaped the flames. One of these was never seen by Boswell; it was published in 1805 under the title of _An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, from his Birth to his Eleventh Year, written by himself_. In this he says (p. 14), 'My mother had no value for my father's relations; those indeed whom we knew of were much lower than hers.' Writing to Mrs. Thrale on his way to Scotland he said: 'We changed our horses at Darlington, where Mr. Cornelius Harrison, a cousin-german of mine, was perpetual curate. He was the only one of my relations who ever rose in fortune above penury, or in character above neglect.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 105. His uncle Harrison he described as 'a very mean and vulgar man, drunk every night, but drunk with little drink, very peevish, very proud, very ostentatious, but luckily not rich.' _Annals_, p. 28. In _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. x. 465, is given the following extract of the marriage of Johnson's parents from the Register of Packwood in Warwickshire:--
'1706. Mickell Johnsones of lichfield and Sara ford maried June the 9th.'
[115] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 3) records that Johnson told her that 'his father was wrong-headed, positive, and afflicted with melancholy.'
[116] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 213 [Sept. 16]. BOSWELL.
[117] Stockdale in his _Memoirs_, ii. 102, records an anecdote told him by Johnson of 'the generosity of one of the customers of his father. "This man was purchasing a book, and pressed my father to let him have it at a far less price than it was worth. When his other topics of persuasion failed, he had recourse to one argument which, he thought, would infallibly prevail:--You know, Mr. Johnson, that I buy an almanac of you every year."'
[118] Extract of a letter, dated 'Trentham, St. Peter's day, 1716,' written by the Rev. George Plaxton, Chaplain at that time to Lord Gower, which may serve to show the high estimation in which the Father of our great Moralist was held: 'Johnson, the Litchfield Librarian, is now here; he propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth knowledge to its just height; all the Clergy here are his Pupils, and suck all they have from him; Allen cannot make a warrant without his precedent, nor our quondam John Evans draw a recognizance _sine directione Michaelis_.' _Gentleman's Magazine_, October, 1791. BOSWELL.
[119] In _Notes and Queries_, 3rd S. v. 33, is given the following title-page of one of his books: '[Greek: Pharmako-Basauos]: _or the Touchstone of Medicines, etc_. By Sir John Floyer of the City of Litchfield, Kt., M.D., of Queen's College, Oxford. London: Printed for Michael Johnson, Bookseller, and are to be sold at his shops at Litchfield and Uttoxiter, in Staffordshire; and Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire, 1687.'
[120] Johnson writing of his birth says: 'My father being that year sheriff of Lichfield, and to ride the circuit of the county [Mr. Croker suggests city, not being aware that 'the City of Lichfield was a county in itself.' See Harwood's _Lichfield_, p. 1. In like manner, in the Militia Bill of 1756 (_post_ 1756) we find entered, 'Devonshire with Exeter City and County,' 'Lincolnshire with Lincoln City and County'] next day, which was a ceremony then performed with great pomp, he was asked by my mother whom he would invite to the Riding; and answered, "all the town now." He feasted the citizens with uncommon magnificence, and was the last but one that maintained the splendour of the Riding.' _Annals_, p. 10. He served the office of churchwarden in 1688; of sheriff in 1709; of junior bailiff in 1718; and senior bailiff in 1725.' Harwood's _Lichfield_, p. 449.
[121] 'My father and mother had not much happiness from each other. They seldom conversed; for my father could not bear to talk of his affairs, and my mother being unacquainted with books cared not to talk of anything else. Had my mother been more literate, they had been better companions. She might have sometimes introduced her unwelcome topic with more success, if she could have diversified her conversation. Of business she had no distinct conception; and therefore her discourse was composed only of complaint, fear, and suspicion. Neither of them ever tried to calculate the profits of trade, or the expenses of living. My mother concluded that we were poor, because we lost by some of our trades; but the truth was, that my father, having in the early part of his life contracted debts, never had trade sufficient to enable him to pay them and maintain his family; he got something, but not enough.' _Annals_, p. 14. Mr. Croker noticing the violence of Johnson's language against the Excise, with great acuteness suspected 'some cause of _personal animosity_;' this mention of the trade in parchment (an _exciseable_ article) afforded a clue, which has led to the confirmation of that suspicion. In the records of the Excise Board is to be found the following letter, addressed to the supervisor of excise at Lichfield: 'July 27, 1725. The Commissioners received yours of the 22nd instant, and since the justices would not give judgment against Mr. Michael Johnson, _the tanner_, notwithstanding the facts were fairly against him, the Board direct that the next time he offends, you do not lay an information against him, but send an affidavit of the fact, that he may be prosecuted in the Exchequer.'
[122] See _post_, March 27, 1775.
[123] 'I remember, that being in bed with my mother one morning, I was told by her of the two places to which the inhabitants of this world were received after death: one a fine place filled with happiness, called Heaven; the other, a sad place, called Hell. That this account much affected my imagination I do not remember.' _Annals_, p. 19.
[124] Johnson's _Works_, vi. 406.
[125] Mr. Croker disbelieves the story altogether. 'Sacheverel,' he says, 'by his sentence pronounced in Feb. 1710, was interdicted for three years from preaching; so that he could not have preached at Lichfield while Johnson was under three years of age. Sacheverel, indeed, made a triumphal progress through the midland counties in 1710; and it appears by the books of the corporation of Lichfield that he was received in that town, and complimented by the attendance of the corporation, "and a present of three dozen of wine," on June 16, 1710; but then "the _infant Hercules of Toryism_" was just _nine months_ old.' It is quite possible that the story is in the main correct. Sacheverel was received in Lichfield in 1710 on his way down to Shropshire to take possession of a living. At the end of the suspension in March 1713 he preached a sermon in London, for which, as he told Swift, 'a book-seller gave him £100, intending to print 30,000' (Swift's _Journal to Stella_, April 2, 1713). It is likely enough that either on his way up to town or on his return journey he preached at Lichfield. In the spring of 1713 Johnson was three years old.
[126] See _post_, p. 48, and April 25,1778 note; and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 28, 1773.
[127] _Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson_, by Hester Lynch Piozzi, p. 11. Life of Dr. Johnson_, by Sir John Hawkins, p. 6. BOSWELL.
[128] 'My father had much vanity which his adversity hindered from being fully exerted.' _Annals_, p. 14.
[129] This anecdote of the duck, though disproved by internal and external evidence, has nevertheless, upon supposition of its truth, been made the foundation of the following ingenious and fanciful reflections of Miss Seward, amongst the communications concerning Dr. Johnson with which she has been pleased to favour me: 'These infant numbers contain the seeds of those propensities which through his life so strongly marked his character, of that poetick talent which afterwards bore such rich and plentiful fruits; for, excepting his orthographick works, every thing which Dr. Johnson wrote was Poetry, whose essence consists not in numbers, or in jingle, but in the strength and glow of a fancy, to which all the stores of nature and of art stand in prompt administration; and in an eloquence which conveys their blended illustrations in a language "more tuneable than needs or rhyme or verse to add more harmony."
'The above little verses also shew that superstitious bias which "grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength," and, of late years particularly, injured his happiness, by presenting to him the gloomy side of religion, rather than that bright and cheering one which gilds the period of closing life with the light of pious hope.'
This is so beautifully imagined, that I would not suppress it. But like many other theories, it is deduced from a supposed fact, which is, indeed, a fiction. BOSWELL.
[130] _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 27. BOSWELL.
[131] Speaking himself of the imperfection of one of his eyes, he said to Dr. Burney, 'the dog was never good for much.' MALONE.
[132] Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 1, 1773.
[133] 'No accidental position of a riband,' wrote Mrs. Piozzi, 'escaped him, so nice was his observation, and so rigorous his demands of propriety.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 287. Miss Burney says:-- 'Notwithstanding Johnson is sometimes so absent and always so near-sighted, he scrutinizes into every part of almost everybody's appearance [at Streatham].' And again she writes:--'his blindness is as much the effect of absence [of mind] as of infirmity, for he sees wonderfully at times. He can see the colour of a lady's top-knot, for he very often finds fault with it.' Mme. D'Arblays _Diary_, i. 85, ii. 174. 'He could, when well, distinguish the hour on Lichfield town-clock.' _Post_, p. 64.
[134] See _post_, Sept. 22, 1777.
[135] This was Dr. Swinfen's opinion, who seems also to have attributed Johnson's short-sightedness to the same cause. 'My mother,' he says, 'thought my diseases derived from her family.' _Annals_, p. 12. When he was put out at nurse, 'She visited me,' he says, 'every day, and used to go different ways, that her assiduity might not expose her to ridicule.'
[136] In 1738 Carte published a masterly 'Account of Materials, etc., for a History of England with the method of his undertaking.' (_Gent. Mag_. viii. 227.) He proposed to do much of what has been since done under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. He asked for subscriptions to carry on his great undertaking, for in its researches it was to be very great. In 1744 the City of London resolved to subscribe £50 for seven years (ib. xiv: 393). In vol. i. of his history, which only came down to the reign of John (published in 1748), he went out of his way to assert that the cure by the king's touch was not due to the 'regal _unction_'; for he had known a man cured who had gone over to France, and had been there 'touched by the eldest lineal descendant of a race of kings who had not at that time been crowned or _anointed_.' (ib. xviii. 13.) Thereupon the Court of Common Council by a unanimous vote withdrew its subscription, (ib. 185.) The old Jacobites maintained that the power did not descend to Mary, William, or Anne. It was for this reason that Boswell said that Johnson should have been taken to Rome; though indeed it was not till some years after he was 'touched' by Queen Anne that the Pretender dwelt there. The Hanoverian kings never 'touched.' The service for the ceremony was printed in the _Book of Common Prayer_ as late as 1719. (_Penny Cyclo_. xxi. 113.) 'It appears by the newspapers of the time,' says Mr. Wright, quoted by Croker, 'that on March 30, 1712, two hundred persons were touched by Queen Anne.' Macaulay says that 'Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred thousand persons.... The expense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year.' Macaulay's _England_, ch. xiv.
[137] See _post_, p. 91, note.
[138] _Anecdotes_, p. 10. BOSWELL.
[139] Johnson, writing of Addison's schoolmasters, says:--'Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously diminished. I would therefore trace him through the whole process of his education.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 418.
[140] Neither the British Museum nor the Bodleian Library has a copy.
[141] 'When we learned _Propria qua maribus_, we were examined in the Accidence; particularly we formed verbs, that is, went through the same person in all the moods and tenses. This was very difficult to me, and I was once very anxious about the next day, when this exercise was to be performed in which I had failed till I was discouraged. My mother encouraged me, and I proceeded better. When I told her of my good escape, "We often," said she, dear mother! "come off best when we are most afraid." She told me that, once when she asked me about forming verbs I said, "I did not form them in an ugly shape." "You could not," said she "speak plain; and I was proud that I had a boy who was forming verbs" These little memorials soothe my mind.' _Annals_, p. 22.
[142] 'This was the course of the school which I remember with pleasure; for I was indulged and caressed by my master; and, I think, really excelled the rest.' _Annals_, p. 23.
[143] Johnson said of Hunter:--'Abating his brutality, he was a very good master;' _post_. March 21, 1772. Steele in the _Spectator_, No. 157, two years after Johnson's birth, describes these savage tyrants of the grammar-schools. 'The boasted liberty we talk of,' he writes, 'is but a mean reward for the long servitude, the many heartaches and terrors to which our childhood is exposed in going through a grammar school.... No one who has gone through what they call a great school but must remember to have seen children of excellent and ingenuous natures (as has afterwards appeared in their manhood); I say no man has passed through this way of education but must have seen an ingenuous creature expiring with shame, with pale looks, beseeching sorrow and silent tears, throw up its honest eyes and kneel or its tender kneeds to an inexorable blockhead to be forgiven the false quantity of a word in making a Latin verse.' Likely enough Johnson's roughness was in part due to this brutal treatment; for Steele goes on to say:--'It is wholly to this dreadful practise that we may attribute a certain hardiness and ferocity which some men, though liberally educated, carry about them in all their behaviour. To be bred like a gentleman, and punished like a malefactor, must, as we see it does, produce that illiberal sauciness which we see sometimes in men of letters.'
[144] Johnson described him as 'a peevish and ill-tempered man,' and not so good a scholar or teacher as Taylor made out. Once the boys perceived that he did not understand a part of the Latin lesson; another time, when sent up to the upper-master to be punished, they had to complain that when they 'could not get the passage,' the assistant would not help them. _Annals_, pp. 26, 32.
[145] One of the contributors to the _Athenian Letters_. See _Gent. Mag_. liv. 276.
[146] Johnson, _post_, March 22, 1776, describes him as one 'who does not get drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy.'
[147] A tradition had reached Johnson through his school-fellow Andrew Corbet that Addison had been at the school and had been the leader in a barring out. (Johnson's _Works_, vii. 419.) Garrick entered the school about two years after Johnson left. According to Garrick's biographer, Tom Davies (p. 3), 'Hunter was an odd mixture of the pedant and the sportsman. Happy was the boy who could slily inform his offended master where a covey of partridges was to be found; this notice was a certain pledge of his pardon.' Lord Campbell in his _Lives of the Chief Justices_, ii. 279, says:--'Hunter is celebrated for having flogged seven boys who afterwards sat as judges in the superior courts at Westminster at the same time. Among these were Chief Justice Wilmot, Lord Chancellor Northington, Sir T. Clarke, Master of the Rolls, Chief Justice Willes, and Chief Baron Parker. It is remarkable that, although Johnson and Wilmot were several years class-fellows at Lichfield, there never seems to have been the slightest intercourse between them in after life; but the Chief Justice used frequently to mention the Lexicographer as "a long, lank, lounging boy, whom he distinctly remembered to have been punished by Hunter for idleness." Lord Campbell blunders here. Northington and Clarke were from Westminster School (Campbell's _Chancellors_, v. 176). The schoolhouse, famous though it was, was allowed to fall into decay. A writer in the _Gent. Mag_. in 1794 (p. 413) says that 'it is now in a state of dilapidation, and unfit for the use of either the master or boys.'
[148] Johnson's observation to Dr. Rose, on this subject, deserves to be recorded. Rose was praising the mild treatment of children at school, at a time when flogging began to be less practised than formerly: 'But then, (said Johnson,) they get nothing else: and what they gain at one end, they lose at the other.' BURNEY. See _post_, under Dec. 17, 1775.
[149] This passage is quoted from Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773. Mr. Boyd had told Johnson that Lady Errol did not use force or fear in educating her children; whereupon he replied, 'Sir, she is wrong,' and continued in the words of the text.
Gibbon in his _Autobiography_ says:--'The domestic discipline of our ancestors has been relaxed by the philosophy and softness of the age: and if my father remembered that he had trembled before a stern parent, it was only to adopt with his son an opposite mode of behaviour.' Gibbon's _Works_, i. 112. Lord Chesterfield writing to a friend on Oct. 18, 1752, says:--'Pray let my godson never know what a blow or a whipping is, unless for those things for which, were he a man, he would deserve them; such as lying, cheating, making mischief, and meditated malice.' Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_, iv. 130.
[150] Johnson, however, hated anything that came near to tyranny in the management of children. Writing to Mrs. Thrale, who had told him that she had on one occasion gone against the wish of her nurses, he said:--'That the nurses fretted will supply me during life with an additional motive to keep every child, as far as is possible, out of a nurse's power. A nurse made of common mould will have a pride in overcoming a child's reluctance. There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful; power is nothing but as it is felt, and the delight of superiority is proportionate to the resistance overcome.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 67.
[151] 'Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed.' 2 Henry VI, act iv. sc. 10. John Wesley's mother, writing of the way she had brought up her children, boys and girls alike, says:--'When turned a year old (and some before) they were taught to fear the rod, and to cry softly; by which means they escaped abundance of correction they might otherwise have had.' Wesley's _Journal_, i. 370.
[152] 'There dwelt at Lichfield a gentleman of the name of Butt, to whose house on holidays he was ever welcome. The children in the family, perhaps offended with the rudeness of his behaviour, would frequently call him the great boy, which the father once overhearing said:--'You call him the great boy, but take my word for it, he will one day prove a great man.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 6.
[153] See _post_, March 22, 1776 and Johnson's visit to Birmingham in Nov. 1784.
[154] 'You should never suffer your son to be idle one minute. I do not call play, of which he ought to have a good share, idleness; but I mean sitting still in a chair in total inaction; it makes boys lazy and indolent.' Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_, iv. 248.
[155] The author of the _Reliques_.
[156] The summer of 1764.
[157] Johnson, writing of _Paradise Lost_, book ii. l. 879, says:--'In the history of _Don Bellianis_, when one of the knights approaches, as I remember, the castle of Brandezar, the gates are said to open, _grating harsh thunder upon their brazen hinges_.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 76. See _post_, March 27, 1776, where 'he had with him upon a jaunt Il Palmerino d'Inghilterra.' Prior says of Burke that 'a very favourite study, as he once confessed in the House of Commons, was the old romances, _Palmerin of England_ and _Don Belianis of Greece_, upon which he had wasted much valuable time.' Prior's _Burke_, p. 9.
[158] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 2) says that the uncle was Dr. Joseph Ford 'a physician of great eminence.' The son, Parson Ford, was Cornelius. In Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 15, 1773, Johnson mentions an uncle who very likely was Dr. Ford. In _Notes and Queries_, 5th S. v. 13, it is shown that by the will of the widow of Dr. Ford the Johnsons received £200 in 1722. On the same page the Ford pedigree is given, where it is seen that Johnson had an uncle Cornelius. It has been stated that 'Johnson was brought up by his uncle till his fifteenth year.' I understand Boswell to say that Johnson, after leaving Lichfield School, resided for some time with his uncle before going to Stourbridge.
[159] He is said to be the original of the parson in Hogarth's _Modern Midnight Conversation_. BOSWELL.
In the _Life of Fenton_ Johnson describes Ford as 'a clergyman at that time too well known, whose abilities, instead of furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and dissolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 57. Writing to Mrs. Thrale on July 8, 1771, he says, 'I would have been glad to go to Hagley [close to Stourbridge] for I should have had the opportunity of recollecting past times, and wandering _per montes notos et flumina nota_, of recalling the images of sixteen, and reviewing my conversations with poor Ford.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 42. See also _post_, May 12, 1778.
[160] See _post_, April 20, 1781.
[161] As was likewise the Bishop of Dromore many years afterwards. BOSWELL.
[162] Mr. Hector informs me, that this was made almost _impromptu_, in his presence. BOSWELL.
[163] This he inserted, with many alterations, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1743 [p. 378]. BOSWELL. The alterations are not always for the better. Thus he alters
'And the long honours of a lasting name'
into
'And fir'd with pleasing hope of endless fame.'
[164] Settle was the last of the city-poets; _post_, May 15, 1776.
[165] 'Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great.' Dunciad, i. 141.
[166] Some young ladies at Lichfield having proposed to act _The Distressed Mother_, Johnson wrote this, and gave it to Mr. Hector to convey it privately to them. BOSWELL. See _post_, 1747, for _The Distressed Mother_.
[167] Yet he said to Boswell:--'Sir, in my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now' (_post_, July 21, 1763). He told Mr. Langton, that 'his great period of study was from the age of twelve to that of eighteen' (Ib. note). He told the King that his reading had later on been hindered by ill-health (_post_, Feb. 1767).
[168] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 9) says that his father took him home, probably with a view to bring him up to his own trade; for I have heard Johnson say that he himself was able to bind a book. 'It were better bind books again,' wrote Mrs. Thrale to him on Sept. 18, 1777, 'as you did one year in our thatched summer-house.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 375. It was most likely at this time that he refused to attend his father to Uttoxeter market, for which fault he made atonement in his old age (_post_, November, 1784).
[169] Perhaps Johnson had his own early reading in mind when he thus describes Pope's reading at about the same age. 'During this period of his life he was indefatigably diligent and insatiably curious; wanting health for violent, and money for expensive pleasures, and having excited in himself very strong desires of intellectual eminence, he spent much of his time over his books; but he read only to store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his authors presented with undistinguishing voracity, and with an appetite for knowledge too eager to be nice.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 239.
[170] Andrew Corbet, according to Hawkins. Corbet had entered Pembroke College in 1727. Dr. Swinfen, Johnson's god-father, was a member of the College. I find the name of a Swinfen on the books in 1728.
[171] In the Caution Book of Pembroke College are found the two following entries:--
'Oct. 31, 1728. Recd. then of Mr. Samuel Johnson Commr. of Pem. Coll. ye summ of seven Pounds for his Caution, which is to remain in ye Hands of ye Bursars till ye said Mr. Johnson shall depart ye said College leaving ye same fully discharg'd.
Recd. by me, John Ratcliff, Bursar.'
'March 26, 1740. At a convention of the Master and Fellows to settle the accounts of the Caution it appear'd that the Persons Accounts underwritten stood thus at their leaving the College:
Caution not Repay'd Mr. Johnson £7 0 0 Battells not discharg'd Mr. Johnson £7 0 0
Mr. Carlyle is in error in describing Johnson as a servitor. He was a commoner as the above entry shows. Though he entered on Oct. 31, he did not matriculate till Dec. 16. It was on Palm Sunday of this same year that Rousseau left Geneva, and so entered upon his eventful career. Goldsmith was born eleven days after Johnson entered (Nov. 10, 1728). Reynolds was five years old. Burke was born before Johnson left Oxford.
[172] He was in his twentieth year. He was born on Sept. 18, 1709, and was therefore nineteen. He was somewhat late in entering. In his _Life of Ascham_ he says, 'Ascham took his bachelor's degree in 1534, in the eighteenth year of his age; a time of life at which it is more common now to enter the universities than to take degrees.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 505. It was just after Johnson's entrance that the two Wesleys began to hold small devotional meetings at Oxford.
[173] Builders were at work in the college during all his residence. 'July 16, 1728. About a quarter of a year since they began to build a new chapel for Pembroke Coll. next to Slaughter Lane.' Hearne's _Remains_, iii. 9.
[174] _Athen. Oxon_. edit. 1721, i. 627. BOSWELL.
[175] Johnson would oftener risk the payment of a small fine than attend his lectures.... Upon occasion of one such imposition he said to Jorden:--"Sir, you have sconced [fined] me two pence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny." Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 9. A passage in Whitefield's _Diary_ shows that the sconce was often greater. He once neglected to give in the weekly theme which every Saturday had to be given to the tutor in the Hall 'when the bell rang.' He was fined half-a-crown. Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 22. In my time (1855-8) at Pembroke College every Saturday when the bell rang we gave in our piece of Latin prose--themes were things of the past.
[176] This was on Nov. 6, O.S., or Nov. 17, N.S.--a very early time for ice to bear. The first mention of frost that I find in the newspapers of that winter is in the _Weekly Journal_ for Nov. 30, O.S.; where it is stated that 'the passage by land and water [i.e. the Thames] is now become very dangerous by the snow, frost, and ice.' The record of meteorological observations began a few years later.
[177] Oxford, 20th March, 1776. BOSWELL.
[178] Mr. Croker discovers a great difference between this account and that which Johnson gave to Mr. Warton (_post_, under July 16, 1754). There is no need to have recourse, with Mr. Croker, 'to an ear spoiled by flattery.' A very simple explanation may be found. The accounts refer to different hours of the same day. Johnson's 'stark insensibility' belonged to the morning, and his 'beating heart' to the afternoon. He had been impertinent before dinner, and when he was sent for after dinner 'he expected a sharp rebuke.'
[179] It ought to be remembered that Dr. Johnson was apt, in his literary as well as moral exercises, to overcharge his defects. Dr. Adams informed me, that he attended his tutors lectures, and also the lectures in the College Hall, very regularly. BOSWELL.
[180] Early in every November was kept 'a great gaudy [feast] in the college, when the Master dined in publick, and the juniors (by an ancient custom they were obliged to comply with) went round the fire in the hall.' Philipps's _Diary, Notes and Queries_, 2nd S., x. 443. We can picture to ourselves among the juniors in November 1728, Samuel Johnson, going round the fire with the others. Here he heard day after day the Latin grace which Camden had composed for the society. 'I believe I can repeat it,' Johnson said at St. Andrew's, 'which he did.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 19, 1773.
[181] Seven years before Johnson's time, on Nov. 5, 'Mr. Peyne, Bachelor of Arts, made an oration in the hall suitable to the day.' Philipps's _Diary_.
[182] Boswell forgot Johnson's criticism on Milton's exercises on this day. 'Some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason might have been spared.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 119.
[183] It has not been preserved. There are in the college library four of his compositions, two of verse and two of prose. One of the copies of verse I give _post_, under July 16, 1754. Both have been often printed. As his prose compositions have never been published I will give one:--
'Mea nec Falernae Temperant Vites, neque Formiani Pocula Colles.'
'Quaedam minus attente spectata absurda videntur, quae tamen penitus perspecta rationi sunt consentanea. Non enim semper facta per se, verum ratio occasioque faciendi sunt cogitanda. Deteriora ei offerre cui meliorum ingens copia est, cui non ridiculum videtur? Quis sanus hirtam agrestemque vestem Lucullo obtulisset, cujus omnia fere Serum opificia, omnia Parmae vellera, omnes Tyri colores latuerunt? Hoc tamen fecisse Horatium non puduit, quo nullus urbanior, nullus procerum convictui magis assuetus. Maecenatem scilicet nôrat non quaesiturum an meliora vina domi posset bibere, verum an inter domesticos quenquam propensiori in se animo posset invenire. Amorem, non lucrum, optavit patronus ille munifentissimus (_sic_). Pocula licet vino minus puro implerentur, satis habuit, si hospitis vultus laetitia perfusus sinceram puramque amicitiam testaretur. Ut ubi poetam carmine celebramus, non fastidit, quod ipse melius posset scribere, verum poema licet non magni facit (_sic_), amorem scriptoris libenter amplectitur, sic amici munuscula animum gratum testantia licet parvi sint, non nisi a superbo et moroso contemnentur. Deos thuris fumis indigere nemo certè unquam credidit, quos tamen iis gratos putarunt, quia homines se non beneficiorum immemores his testimoniis ostenderunt.'
JOHNSON.
[184] 'The accidental perusal of some Latin verses gained Addison the patronage of Dr. Lancaster, afterwards Provost of Queen's College, by whose recommendation he was elected into Magdalen College as a Demy' [a scholar]. Johnson's _Works_, vii. 420. Johnson's verses gained him nothing but 'estimation.'
[185] He is reported to have said:--'The writer of this poem will leave it a question for posterity, whether his or mine be the original.' Hawkins, p. 13.
[186] 'A Miscellany of Poems by several hands. Published by J. Husbands, A.M., Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxon., Oxford. Printed by Leon. Lichfield, near the East-Gate, In the year MDCCXXXI.' Among the subscribers I notice the name of Richard Savage, Esq., for twenty copies. It is very doubtful whether he paid for one. Pope did not subscribe. Johnson's poem is thus mentioned in the preface:--'The translation of Mr. Pope's Messiah was deliver'd to his Tutor as a College Exercise by Mr. Johnson, a commoner of Pembroke College in Oxford, and 'tis hoped will be no discredit to the excellent original.'
[187] See _post_, under July 16, 1754.
[188] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 6, 1773.
[189] _Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson,_ by John Courtenay, Esq., M.P. BOSWELL.
[190] Hector, in his account of Johnson's early life, says:--'After a long absence from Lichfield, when he returned, I was apprehensive of something wrong in his constitution which might either impair his intellect or endanger his life; but, thanks to Almighty God, my fears have proved false.' Hawkins, p. 8. The college books show that Johnson was absent but one week in the Long Vacation of 1729. It is by no means unlikely that he went to Lichfield in that week to consult Dr. Swinfen about his health. In that case his first attack, when he tried to overcome the malady by frequently walking to Birmingham, must have been at an earlier date. In his time students often passed the vacation at the University. The following table shows the number of graduates and undergraduates in residence in Pembroke College at the end of each fourth week, from June to December 1729:--
Members in residence. June 20, 1729 . . . 54 July 18, " . . . 34 Aug. 15, " . . . 25 Sept. 12, " . . . 16 Oct. 10, " . . . 30 Nov. 7, " . . . 52 Dec. 5, " . . . 49
At Christmas there were still sixteen men left in the college. That under a zealous tutor the vacation was by no means a time of idleness is shown by a passage in Wesley's _Journal_, in which he compares the Scotch Universities with the English. 'In Scotland,' he writes, 'the students all come to their several colleges in November, and return home in May. So they _may_ study five months in the year, and lounge all the rest! O where was the common sense of those who instituted such colleges? In the English colleges everyone _may_ reside all the year, as all my pupils did; and I should have thought myself little better than a highwayman if I had not lectured them every day in the year but Sundays.' Wesley's _Journal_, iv. 75. Johnson lived to see Oxford empty in the Long Vacation. Writing on Aug. 1, 1775, he said:--'The place is now a sullen solitude.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 294.
[191] Johnson, perhaps, was thinking of himself when he thus criticised the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. 'The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 431.
[192] Writing in his old age to Hector, he said,--'My health has been from my twentieth year such as has seldom afforded me a single day of ease' (_post_, under March 21, 1782). Hawkins writes, that he once told him 'that he knew not what it was to be totally free from pain.' Hawkins, p. 396.
[193] See _post_, Oct. 27, 1784, note.
[194] In the _Rambler_, No. 85, he pointed out 'how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.' See _post_, July 21, 1763, for his remedies against melancholy.
[195] Thirty-two miles in all. Southey mentions that in 1728, the Wesleys, to save the more money for the poor, began to perform their journeys on foot. He adds,--'It was so little the custom in that age for men in their rank of life to walk any distance, as to make them think it a discovery that four or five-and-twenty miles are an easy and safe day's journey.' Southey's _Wesley_, i. 52.
[196] Boswell himself suffered from hypochondria. He seems at times to boast of it, as Dogberry boasted of his losses; so that Johnson had some reason for writing to him with seventy, as if he were 'affecting it from a desire of distinction.' _Post_, July 2, 1776.
[197] Johnson on April 7, 1776, recommended Boswell to read this book, and again on July 2 of the same year.
[198] On Dec. 24, 1754, writing of the poet Collins, who was either mad or close upon it, he said,--'Poor dear Collins! I have often been near his state.' Wooll's _Warton_, p. 229. 'I inherited,' Johnson said, 'a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 16, 1773. 'When I survey my past life,' he wrote in 1777, 'I discover nothing but a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body and disturbances of the mind very near to madness.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 155. Reynolds recorded that 'what Dr. Johnson said a few days before his death of his disposition to insanity was no new discovery to those who were intimate with him.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 455. See also _post_ Sept. 20, 1777.
[199] Ch. 44.
[200] 'Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.' _Rasselas_, ch. 43.
[201] Boswell refers to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_., pp. 77, 127), and Hawkins (_Life_, pp. 287-8).
[202] 'Quick in these seeds is might of fire and birth of heavenly place.' Morris, _Aeneids_, vi. 730.
[203] On Easter Sunday 1716 during service some pieces of stone from the spire of St. Mary's fell on the roof of the church. The congregation, thinking that the steeple was coming down, in their alarm broke through the windows. Johnson, we may well believe, witnessed the scene. The church was pulled down, and the new one was opened in Dec. 1721. Harwood's _Lichfield_, p. 460.
[204] 'Sept. 23, 1771. I have gone voluntarily to church on the week day but few times in my life. I think to mend. April 9, 1773. I hope in time to take pleasure in public worship. April 6, 1777. I have this year omitted church on most Sundays, intending to supply the deficience in the week. So that I owe twelve attendances on worship. I will make no more such superstitious stipulations, which entangle the mind with unbidden obligations.' _Pr. and Med_. pp. 108, 121, 161. In the following passage in the _Life of Milton_, Johnson, no doubt, is thinking of himself:--'In the distribution of his hours there was no hour of prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting public prayers he omitted all.... That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death as too often happens, intercepted his reformation.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 115. See _post_, Oct. 10, 1779.
[205] We may compare with this a passage in Verecundulus's letter in _The Rambler_, No. 157:--'Though many among my fellow students [at the university] took the opportunity of a more remiss discipline to gratify their passions, yet virtue preserved her natural superiority, and those who ventured to neglect were not suffered to insult her.' Oxford at this date was somewhat wayward in her love for religion. Whitefield records:--'I had no sooner received the sacrament publicly on a week-day at St. Mary's, but I was set up as a mark for all the polite students that knew me to shoot at. By this they knew that I was commenced Methodist, for though there is a sacrament at the beginning of every term, at which all, especially the seniors, are by statute obliged to be present, yet so dreadfully has that once faithful city played the harlot, that very few masters, and no undergraduates but the Methodists attended upon it. I daily underwent some contempt at college. Some have thrown dirt at me; others by degrees took away their pay from me.' Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 19. Story, the Quaker, visiting Oxford in 1731, says, 'Of all places wherever I have been the scholars of Oxford were the rudest, most giddy, and unruly rabble, and most mischievous.' Story's _Journal_, p. 675.
[206] John Wesley, who was also at Oxford, writing of about this same year, says:--'Meeting now with Mr. Law's _Christian Perfection_ and _Serious Call_ the light flowed in so mightily upon my soul that everything appeared in a new view.' Wesley's _Journal_, i. 94. Whitefield writes:--'Before I went to the University, I met with Mr. Law's _Serious Call_, but had not then money to purchase it. Soon after my coming up to the University, seeing a small edition of it in a friend's hand I soon procured it. God worked powerfully upon my soul by that and his other excellent treatise upon Christian perfection.' Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 16. Johnson called the _Serious Call_ 'the finest piece of hortatory theology in any language;' _post_, 1770. A few months before his death he said:--'William Law wrote the best piece of parenetic divinity; but William Law was no reasoner;' _post_, June 9, 1784. Law was the tutor of Gibbon's father, and he died in the house of the historian's aunt. In describing the _Serious Call_ Gibbon says:--'His precepts are rigid, but they are founded on the gospel; his satire is sharp, but it is drawn from the knowledge of human life; and many of his portraits are not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyère. If he finds a spark of piety in his reader's mind he will soon kindle it to a flame.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 21.
[207] Mrs. Piozzi has given a strange fantastical account of the original of Dr. Johnson's belief in our most holy religion. 'At the age of ten years his mind was disturbed by scruples of infidelity, which preyed upon his spirits, and made him very uneasy, the more so, as he revealed his uneasiness to none, being naturally (as he said) of a sullen temper, and reserved disposition. He searched, however, diligently, but fruitlessly, for evidences of the truth of revelation; and, at length, _recollecting_ a book he had once seen [_I suppose at five years old_] in his father's shop, intitled _De veritate Religionis_, etc., he began to think himself _highly culpable_ for neglecting such a means of information, and took himself severely to task for this sin, adding many acts of voluntary, and, to others, unknown _penance_. The first opportunity which offered, of course, he seized the book with avidity; but, on examination, _not finding himself scholar enough to peruse its contents_, set his heart at rest; and not thinking to enquire whether there were any English books written on the subject, followed his usual amusements and _considered his conscience as lightened of a crime_. He redoubled his diligence to learn the language that contained the information he most wished for; but from the pain which _guilt [namely having omitted to read what he did not understand_,] had given him, he now began to deduce the soul's immortality [_a sensation of pain in this world being an unquestionable proof of existence in another_], which was the point that belief first stopped at; _and from that moment resolving to be a Christian_, became one of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever produced.' _Anecdotes_, p. 17.
This is one of the numerous misrepresentations of this lively lady, which it is worth while to correct; for if credit should be given to such a childish, irrational, and ridiculous statement of the foundation of Dr. Johnson's faith in Christianity, how little credit would be due to it. Mrs. Piozzi seems to wish, that the world should think Dr. Johnson also under the influence of that easy logick, _Stet pro ratione voluntas_. BOSWELL. On April 28, 1783, Johnson said:--'Religion had dropped out of my mind. It was at an early part of my life. Sickness brought it back, and I hope I have never lost it since.' Most likely it was the sickness in the long vacation of 1729 mentioned _ante_, p. 63.
[208] In his _Life of Milton_, writing of _Paradise Lost_, he says:--'But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of life.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 134.
[209] Acts xvi. 30.
[210] Sept. 7, Old Style, or Sept. 18, New Style.
[211] 'He that peruses Shakespeare looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 71. 'I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor.' Ib. p. 175.
[212] He told Mr. Windham that he had never read through the Odyssey completely. Windham's _Diary_, p. 17. At college, he said, he had been 'very idle and neglectful of his studies.' Ib.
[213] 'It may be questioned whether, except his Bible, he ever read a book entirely through. Late in life, if any man praised a book in his presence, he was sure to ask, 'Did you read it through?' If the answer was in the affirmative, he did not seem willing to believe it.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 12. It would be easy to show that Johnson read many books right through, though, according to Mrs. Piozzi, he asked, 'was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?' Piozzi's Anec., p. 281. Nevertheless in Murphy's statement there is some truth. See what has been just stated by Boswell, that 'he hardly ever read any poem to an end,' and _post_, April 19, 1773 and June 15, 1784. To him might be applied his own description of Barretier:--'He had a quickness of apprehension and firmness of memory which enabled him to read with incredible rapidity, and at the same time to retain what he read, so as to be able to recollect and apply it. He turned over volumes in an instant, and selected what was useful for his purpose.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 390.
[214] See _post_, June 15, 1784. Mr. Windham (_Diary_, p. 17) records the following 'anecdote of Johnson's first declamation at college; having neglected to write it till the morning of his being (sic) to repeat it, and having only one copy, he got part of it by heart while he was walking into the hall, and the rest he supplied as well as he could extempore.' Mrs. Piozzi, recording the same ancedote, says that 'having given the copy into the hand of the tutor who stood to receive it as he passed, he was obliged to begin by chance, and continue on how he could.... "A prodigious risk, however," said some one. "Not at all," exclaims Johnson, "no man, I suppose, leaps at once into deep water who does not know how to swim."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 30.
[215] He told Dr. Burney that he never wrote any of his works that were printed, twice over. Dr. Burney's wonder at seeing several pages of his _Lives of the Poets_, in Manuscript, with scarce a blot or erasure, drew this observation from him. MALONE. 'He wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the _Life of Savage_ at a sitting' (_post_, Feb. 1744), and a hundred lines of the _Vanity of Human Wishes_ in a day (_post_, under Feb. 15, 1766). The _Ramblers_ were written in haste as the moment pressed, without even being read over by him before they were printed (_post_, beginning of 1750). In the second edition, however, he made corrections. 'He composed _Rasselas_ in the evenings of one week' (_post_, under January, 1759). '_The False Alarm_ was written between eight o'clock on Wednesday night and twelve o'clock on Thursday night.' Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 41. '_The Patriot_' he says, 'was called for on Friday, was written on Saturday' (_post_, Nov. 26, 1774).
[216] 'When Mr. Johnson felt his fancy, or fancied he felt it, disordered, his constant recurrence was to the study of arithmetic.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 77. 'Ethics, or figures, or metaphysical reasoning, was the sort of talk he most delighted in;' ib. p. 80. See _post_, Sept. 24, 1777.
[217] 'Sept. 18, 1764, I resolve to study the Scriptures; I hope in the original languages. 640 verses every Sunday will nearly comprise the Scriptures in a year.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 58. '1770, 1st Sunday after Easter. The plan which I formed for reading the Scriptures was to read 600 verses in the Old Testament, and 200 in the New, every week;' ib. p. 100.
[218] 'August 1, 1715. This being the day on which the late Queen Anne died, and on which George, Duke and Elector of Brunswick, usurped the English throne, there was very little rejoicing in Oxford.... There was a sermon at St. Marie's by Dr. Panting, Master of Pembroke.... He is an honest gent. His sermon took no notice, at most very little, of the Duke of Brunswick.' Hearne's _Remains_, ii. 6.
[219] The outside wall of the gateway-tower forms an angle with the wall of the Master's house, so that any one sitting by the open window and speaking in a strong emphatic voice might have easily been overheard.
[220] Goldsmith did go to Padua, and stayed there some months. Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 71.
[221] I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnson confirmed it. Bramston, in his _Man of Taste_, has the same thought: 'Sure, of all blockheads, scholars are the worst.' BOSWELL. Johnson's meaning, however, is, that a scholar who is a blockhead must be the worst of all blockheads, because he is without excuse. But Bramston, in the assumed character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains that _all_ scholars are blockheads on account of their scholarship. J. BOSWELL, JUN. There is, I believe, a Spanish proverb to the effect that, 'to be an utter fool a man must know Latin.' A writer in _Notes and Queries_ (5th S. xii. 285) suggests that Johnson had in mind Acts xvii. 21.
[222] It was the practice in his time for a servitor, by order of the Master, to go round to the rooms of the young men, and knocking at the door to enquire if they were within; and if no answer was returned to report them absent. Johnson could not endure this intrusion, and would frequently be silent, when the utterance of a word would have ensured him from censure, and would join with others of the young men in the college in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who was thus diligent in his duty, and this they did with the noise of pots and candlesticks, singing to the tune of Chevy Chase the words in the old ballad,--
'To drive the deer with hound and horn!' _Hawkins_, p. 12. Whitefield, writing of a few years later, says:--'At this time Satan used to terrify me much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would appear to me every stair I went up.' Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 20.
[223] See _post_, June 12, 1784.
[224] Perhaps his disregard of all authority was in part due to his genius, still in its youth. In his _Life of Lyttelton_ he says:--'The letters [Lyttelton's _Persian Letters_] have something of that indistinct and headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius always catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as he passes forward.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 488.
[225] Dr. Hall [formerly Master of the College] says, 'Certainly not all.' CROKER.
[226] 'I would leave the interest of the fortune I bequeathed to a college to my relations or my friends for their lives. It is the same thing to a college, which is a permanent society, whether it gets the money now or twenty years hence; and I would wish to make my relations or friends feel the benefit of it;' _post_, April 17, 1778. Hawkins (_Life_, p. 582,) says that 'he meditated a devise of his house to the corporation of that city for a charitable use, but, it being freehold he said, "I cannot live a twelvemonth, and the last statute of Mortmain stands in my way."' The same statute, no doubt, would have hindered the bequest to the College.
[227] Garrick refused to act one of Hawkins's plays. The poet towards the end of a long letter which he signed,--'Your much dissatisfied humble servant,' said:--'After all, Sir, I do not desire to come to an open rupture with you. I wish not to exasperate, but to convince; and I tender you once more my friendship and my play.' _Garrick Corres_. ii. 8. See _post_, April 9, 1778.
[228] See Nash's _History of Worcestershire_, vol. i. p. 529. BOSWELL. To the list should be added, Francis Beaumont, the dramatic writer; Sir Thomas Browne, whose life Johnson wrote; Sir James Dyer, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord Chancellor Harcourt, John Pym, Francis Rous, the Speaker of Cromwell's parliament, and Bishop Bonner. WRIGHT. Some of these men belonged to the ancient foundation of Broadgates Hall, which in 1624 was converted into Pembroke College. It is strange that Boswell should have passed over Sir Thomas Browne's name. Johnson in his life of Browne says that he was 'the first man of eminence graduated from the new college, to which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most can wish little better than that it may long proceed as it began.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 476. To this list Nash adds the name of the Revd. Richard Graves, author of _The Spiritual Quixote_, who took his degree of B.A. on the same day as Whitefield, whom he ridiculed in that romance.
[229] See _post_, Oct. 6, 1769, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773.
[230] In his _Life of Shenstone_ he writes:--'From school Shenstone was sent to Pembroke College in Oxford, a society which for half a century has been eminent for English poetry and elegant literature. Here it appears that he found delight and advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he took no degree.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 408. Johnson's name would seem to have been in like manner continued for more than eleven years, and perhaps for the same reasons. (_Ante_, p. 58 note.) Hannah More was at Oxford in June 1782, during one of Johnson's visits to Dr. Adams. 'You cannot imagine,' she writes, 'with what delight Dr. Johnson showed me every part of his own college.... After dinner he begged to conduct me to see the college; he would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of singing-birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket." [It may be doubted whether he ever played.] He ran over with pleasure the history of the juvenile days he passed there. When we came into the Common Room, we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and hung up that very morning, with this motto: "And is not Johnson ours, himself a host;" under which stared you in the face, "From Miss More's _Sensibility_"' Hannah More's _Memoirs_, i. 261. At the end of 'the ludicrous analysis of Pocockius' quoted by Johnson in the _Life of Edmund Smith_ are the following lines:--'Subito ad Batavos proficiscor, lauro ab illis donandus. Prius vero Pembrochienses voco ad certamen poeticum.' Smith was at Christ Church. He seems to be mocking the neighbouring 'nest of singing-birds.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 381.
[231] Taylor matriculated on Feb. 24, 1729. Mr. Croker in his note has confounded him with another John Taylor who matriculated more than a year later. Richard West, writing of Christ Church in 1735, says:--'Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown.' Gray's _Letters_, ii. I.
[232]
'Si toga sordidula est et rupta calceus alter Pelle patet.' 'Or if the shoe be ript, or patches put.'
Dryden, _Juvenal_, iii. 149.
Johnson in his _London_, in describing 'the blockhead's insults,' while he mentions 'the tattered cloak,' passes over the ript shoe. Perhaps the wound had gone too deep to his generous heart for him to bear even to think on it.
[233] 'Yet some have refused my bounties, more offended with my quickness to detect their wants than pleased with my readiness to succour them.' _Rasselas_, ch. 25. 'His [Savage's] distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him; in his lowest state he wanted not spirit to assert the natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress that insolence which the superiority of fortune incited; ... he never admitted any gross familiarities, or submitted to be treated otherwise than as an equal.... His clothes were worn out; and he received notice that at a coffee-house some clothes and linen were left for him.... But though the offer was so far generous, it was made with some neglect of ceremonies, which Mr. Savage so much resented that he refused the present, and declined to enter the house till the clothes that had been designed for him were taken away.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 161 and 169.
[234]
'Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat Res angusta domi.'
Juvenal, _Sat_. iii. 164.
Paraphrased by Johnson in his _London_, 'Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.'
[235] Cambridge thirty-six years later neglected Parr as Oxford neglected Johnson. Both these men had to leave the University through poverty. There were no open scholarships in those days.
[236] Yet his college bills came to only some eight shillings a week. As this was about the average amount of an undergraduate's bill it is clear that, so far as food went, he lived, in spite of Mr. Carlyle's assertion, as well as his fellow-students.
[237] Mr. Croker states that 'an examination of the college books proves that Johnson, who entered on the 31st October, 1728, remained there, even during the vacations, to the 12th December, 1729, when he personally left the college, and never returned--though his _name_ remained on the books till 8th October, 1731.' I have gone into this question at great length in my _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics_, p. 329. I am of opinion that Mr. Croker's general conclusion is right. The proof of residence is established, and alone established, by the entries in the buttery books. Now these entries show that Johnson, with the exception of the week in October 1729 ending on the 24th, was in residence till December 12, 1729. He seems to have returned for a week in March 1730, and again for a week in the following September. On three other weeks there is a charge against him of fivepence in the books. Mr. Croker has made that darker which was already dark enough by confounding, as I have shewn, two John Taylors who both matriculated at Christ Church. Boswell's statement no doubt is precise, but in this he followed perhaps the account given by Hawkins. He would have been less likely to discover Hawkins's error from the fact that, as Johnson's name was for about three years on the College books, he was so long, in name at least, a member of the College. Had Boswell seen Johnson's letter to Mr. Hickman, quoted by Mr. Croker (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 20), he would at once have seen that Johnson could not have remained at college for a little more than three years. For within three years all but a day of his entrance at Pembroke, he writes to Mr. Hickman from Lichfield, '_As I am yet unemployed_, I hope you will, if anything should offer, remember and recommend, Sir, your humble servant, Sam. Johnson.'
In Boswell's _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ (Aug. 15, 1773) there is a very perplexing passage bearing on Johnson's residence at College. 'We talked of Whitefield. He said he was at the same college with him, and knew him before he began to be better than other people.' Now Johnson, as Boswell tells us, read this journal in manuscript. The statement therefore seems to be well-established indeed. Yet Whitefield did not matriculate till Nov. 7, 1732, a full year after Johnson, according to Boswell, had left Oxford. We are told that, when Johnson was living at Birmingham, he borrowed Lobo's _Abyssinia_ from the library of Pembroke College. It is probable enough that a man who frequently walked from Lichfield to Birmingham and back would have trudged all the way to Oxford to fetch the book. In that case he might have seen Whitefield. But Thomas Warton says that 'the first time of his being at Oxford after quitting the University was in 1754' (_post_, under July 16, 1754).
[238] 'March 16, 1728-9. Yesterday in a Convocation Mr. Wm. Jorden of Pembroke Coll. was elected the Univ. of Oxford rector of Astocke in com. Wilts (which belongs to a Roman Catholic family).' Hearne's _Remains_, iii. 17. His fellowship was filled up on Dec. 23, 1730. Boswell's statement therefore is inaccurate. If Johnson remained at college till Nov. 1731, he would have really been for at least ten months Adams's pupil. We may assume that as his name remained on the books after Jorden left so he was _nominally_ transferred to Adams. It is worthy of notice that Thomas Warton, in the account that he gives of Johnson's visit to Oxford in 1754, says:--'He much regretted that his _first_ tutor was dead.'
[239] According to Hawkins (_Life_, pp. 17, 582 and _post_, Dec. 9, 1784) Johnson's father was at one time a bankrupt. Johnson, in the epitaph that he wrote for him (_post_, Dec. 2, 1784) describes him as 'bibliopola admodum peritus,' but 'rebus adversis diu conflictatus.' He certainly did not die a bankrupt, as is shown by his leaving property to his widow and son, and also by the following MS. letter, that is preserved with two others of the same kind in Pembroke College.
Ashby, April 19, 1736.
Good Sr.,
I must truble you again, my sister who desiurs her survis to you, & begs you will be so good if you can to pravale with Mr. Wumsley to paye you the little money due to her you may have an opertunity to speak to him & it will be a great truble for me to have a jerney for it when if he pleasd he might paye it you, it is a poore case she had but little left by Mr. Johnson but his books (not but he left her all he had) & those sold at a poore reat, and be kept out of so small a sume by a gentleman so well able to paye, if you will doe yr best for the widow will be varey good in you, which will oblige yr reall freund JAMES BATE.
To Mr. John Newton
a Sider Seller at Litchfield.
Pd. £5 to Mr. Newton.
In another hand is written,
To Gilbert Walmesley Esq.
at Lichfield.
And in a third hand,
Pd. £5 to Mr. Newton.
The exact amount claimed, as is Shewn by the letter, dated Jan. 31, 1735, was £5 6s. 4d. There is a yet earlier letter demanding payment of £5 6s. 4d. as 'due to me' for books, signed D. Johnson, dated Swarkstone, Aug. 21, 1733. It must be the same account. Perhaps D. Johnson was the executor. He writes from Ashby, where Michael Johnson had a branch business. But I know of no other mention of him or of James Bate. John Newton was the father of the Bishop of Bristol. _Post_, June 3,1784, and Bishop Newton's _Works_, i. I.
[240] Johnson, in a letter to Dr. Taylor, dated Aug. 18, 1763, advised him, in some trouble that he had with his wife, 'to consult our old friend Mr. Howard. His profession has acquainted him with matrimonial law, and he is in himself a cool and wise man.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 342. See _post_, March 20, 1778, for mention of his son.
[241] See _post_, Dec. 1, 1743, note. Robert Levett, made famous by Johnson's lines (_post_, Jan. 20, 1782), was not of this family.
[242] Mr. Warton informs me, 'that this early friend of Johnson was entered a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged seventeen, in 1698; and is the authour of many Latin verse translations in the _Gent. Mag_. (vol. xv. 102). One of them is a translation of:
'My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent.' &c.
He died Aug, 3, 1751, and a monument to his memory has been erected in the Cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward, one of the Prebendaries. BOSWELL.
[243] Johnson's _Works_, vii. 380.
[244] See _post_, 1780, note at end of Mr. Langton's 'Collection.'
[245] See _post_, 1743.
[246] See _post_ April 24, 1779.
[247] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 61) says that in August, 1738 (? 1739), Johnson went to Appleby, in Leicestershire, to apply for the mastership of Appleby School. This was after he and his wife had removed to London. It is likely that he visited Ashbourne.
[248] 'Old Meynell' is mentioned, _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 'Collection,' as the author of 'the observation, "For anything I see, foreigners are fools;"' and 'Mr. Meynell,' _post_, April 1, 1779, as saying that 'The chief advantage of London is, that a man is always _so near his burrow_.'
[249] See _post_, under March 16, 1759, note, and April 21, 1773. Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert was created Lord St. Helens.
[250] See _post_, 1780, end of Mr. Langton's 'Collection.'
[251] Johnson, writing to Dr. Taylor on July 31, 1756, said, 'I find myself very unwilling to take up a pen, only to tell my friends that I am well, and indeed I never did exchange letters regularly but with dear Miss Boothby.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 304. At the end of the _Piozzi Letters_ are given some of his letters to her. They were republished together with her letters to him in _An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson_, 1805.
[252] The words of Sir John Hawkins, P. 316. BOSWELL. 'When Mr. Thrale once asked Johnson which had been the happiest period of his past life, he replied, "it was that year in which he spent one whole evening with Molly Aston. That, indeed," said he, "was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year." I must add that the evening alluded to was not passed tête-à-tête, but in a select company of which the present Lord Kilmorey was one. "Molly," says Dr. Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty; and so I made this epigram upon her--She was the loveliest creature I ever saw--
'Liber ut esse velim suasisti pulchra Maria; Ut maneam liber--pulchra Maria vale.'
'Will it do this way in English, Sir,' said I:--
'Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you; If freedom we seek--fair Maria, adieu!'
'It will do well enough,' replied he; 'but it is translated by a lady, and the ladies never loved Molly Aston.'" Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 157. See _post_, May 8, 1778.
[253] Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in January, 1724-5, left one son, named Thomas also, and eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine married Johnson's friend, the Hon. Henry Hervey [_post, 1737]; Margaret, Gilbert Walmsley. Another of these ladies married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell [the man who cut down Shakspeare's mulberry tree, _post_, March 25, 1776]; Mary, or _Molly_ Aston, as she was usually called, became the wife of Captain Brodie of the navy. MALONE.
[254] Luke vi. 35.
[255] If this was in 1732 it was on the morrow of the day on which he received his share of his father's property, _ante_, p. 80. A letter published in _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. x. 421, shews that for a short time he was tutor to the son of Mr. Whitby of Heywood.
[256] Bishop Hurd does not praise Blackwall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth, headmaster of the grammar school at Brewood, who had himself been bred under Blackwall. MALONE. Mr. Nichols relates (_post_, Dec. 1784) that Johnson applied for the post of assistant to Mr. Budworth.
[257] See _Gent. Mag_. Dec. 1784, p. 957. BOSWELL.
[258] See _ante_, p. 78.
[259] The patron's manners were those of the neighbourhood. Hutton, writing of this town in 1770, says,--'The inhabitants set their dogs at me merely because I was a stranger. Surrounded with impassable roads, no intercourse with man to humanize the mind, no commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue the boors of nature.' _Life, of W. Hutton_, p. 45.
[260] It appears from a letter of Johnson's to a friend, dated Lichfield, July 27, 1732, that he had left Sir Wolstan Dixie's house recently, before that letter was written. MALONE.
[261] 'The despicable wretchedness of teaching,' wrote Carlyle, in his twenty-fourth year, when he was himself a teacher, 'can be known only to those who have tried it, and to Him who made the heart and knows it all. One meets with few spectacles more afflicting than that of a young man with a free spirit, with impetuous though honourable feelings, condemned to waste the flower of his life in such a calling; to fade in it by slow and sure corrosion of discontent; and at last obscurely and unprofitably to leave, with an indignant joy, the miseries of a world which his talents might have illustrated and his virtues adorned. Such things have been and will be. But surely in that better life which good men dream of, the spirit of a Kepler or a Milton will find a more propitious destiny.' Conway's _Carlyle_, p. 176.
[262] This newspaper was the _Birmingham Journal_. In the office of the _Birmingham Daily Post_ is preserved the number (No. 28) for May 21, 1733. It is believed to be the only copy in existence. Warren is described by W. Hutton (_Life_, p. 77) as one of the 'three eminent booksellers' in Birmingham in 1750. 'His house was "over against the Swan Tavern," in High Street; doubtless in one of the old half-timbered houses pulled down in 1838 [1850].' Timmins's _Dr. Johnson in Birmingham_, p. 4.
[263] 'In the month of June 1733, I find him resident in the house of a person named Jarvis, at Birmingham.' Hawkins, p. 21. His wife's maiden name was Jarvis or Jervis.
[264] In 1741, Hutton, a runaway apprentice, arrived at Birmingham. He says,--'I had never seen more than five towns, Nottingham, Derby, Burton, Lichfield and Walsall. The outskirts of these were composed of wretched dwellings, visibly stamped with dirt and poverty. But the buildings in the exterior of Birmingham rose in a style of elegance. Thatch, so plentiful in other places, was not to be met with in this. The people possessed a vivacity I had never beheld. I had been among dreamers, but now I saw men awake. Their very step along the street showed alacrity. Every man seemed to know what he was about. The faces of other men seemed tinctured with an idle gloom; but here with a pleasing alertness. Their appearance was strongly marked with the modes of civil life.' _Life of W. Hutton_, p. 41.
[265] Hutton, in his account of the Birmingham riots of 1791, describing the destruction of a Mr. Taylor's house, says,--'The sons of plunder forgot that the prosperity of Birmingham was owing to a Dissenter, father to the man whose property they were destroying;' ib. p. 181.
[266] Johnson, it should seem, did not think himself ill-used by Warren; for writing to Hector on April 15, 1755, he says,--'What news of poor Warren? I have not lost all my kindness for him.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. iii. 301.
[267] That it is by no means an exact translation Johnson's _Preface_ shows. He says that in the dissertations alone an exact translation has been attempted. The rest of the work he describes as an epitome.
[268] In the original, _Segued_.
[269] In the original, _Zeila_.
[270] Lobo, in describing a waterfall on the Nile, had said:--'The fall of this mighty stream from so great a height makes a noise that may be heard to a considerable distance; but I could not observe that the neighbouring inhabitants were at all deaf. I conversed with several, and was as easily heard by them as I heard them,' p. 101.
[271] In the original, _without religion, polity, or articulate language_.
[272] See _Rambler_, No. 103. BOSWELL. Johnson in other passages insisted on the high value of curiosity. In this same _Rambler_ he says:--'Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.' In the allegory in _Rambler_, No. 105, he calls curiosity his 'long-loved protectress,' who is known by truth 'among the most faithful of her followers.' In No. 150 he writes:--'Curiosity is in great and generous minds the first passion and the last; and perhaps always predominates in proportion to the strength of the contemplative faculties.' In No. 5 he assert that 'he that enlarges his curiosity after the works of nature demonstrably multiplies the inlets to happiness.'
[273] Rasselas, _post_, 1759.
[274] Hawkins (p. 163) gives the following extract from Johnson's _Annales_:--'Friday, August 27 (1734), 10 at night. This day I have trifled away, except that I have attended the school in the morning, I read to-night in Roger's sermoms. To-night I began the breakfast law (sic) anew.'
[275] May we not trace a fanciful similarity between Politian and Johnson? Huetius, speaking of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, says, '... in quo Natura, ut olim in Angelo Politiano, deformitarem oris excellentis ingenii præstantia compensavit.' _Comment, de reb. ad eum pertin_. Edit. Amstel. 1718, p. 200. BOSWELL. In Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius we have difficulty in detecting Mme. de Sévigné's friend, Pelisson, of whom M. de Guilleragues used the phrase, 'qu'il abusait de la permission qu'ont les hommes d'être laids.' See _Mme. de Sévigné's Letter_, 5 Jan., 1674. CROKER.
[276] The book was to contain more than thirty sheets, the price to be two shillings and sixpence at the time of subscribing, and two shillings and sixpence at the delivery of a perfect book in quires. BOSWELL. 'Among the books in his library, at the time of his decease, I found a very old and curious edition of the works of Politian, which appeared to belong to Pembroke College, Oxford.' HAWKINS, p. 445. See _post_, Nov., 1784. In his last work he shews his fondness for modern Latin poetry. He says:--'Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have been explored by many other of the English writers; he had consulted the modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally neglected.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 299.
[277] A writer in _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. xii. 266, says 'that he has a letter written by Nathanael, in which he makes mention of his brother "scarcely using him with common civility," and says, "I believe I shall go to Georgia in about a fortnight!"' Nathanael died in Lichfield in 1737; see _post_, Dec. 2, 1784, for his epitaph. Among the MSS. in Pembroke College Library are bills for books receipted by Nath. Johnson and by Sarah Johnson (his mother). She writes like a person of little education.
[278] Miss Cave, the grand-niece of Mr. Edward Cave, has obligingly shewn me the originals of this and the other letters of Dr. Johnson, to him, which were first published in the _Gent. Mag_. [lv. 3], with notes by Mr. John Nichols, the worthy and indefatigable editor of that valuable miscellany, signed N.; some of which I shall occasionally transcribe in the course of this work. BOSWELL. I was able to examine some of these letters while they were still in the possession of one of Cave's collateral descendants, and I have in one or two places corrected errors of transcription.
[279] Sir John Floyer's Treatise on Cold Baths. _Gent. Mag_. 1734, p. 197. BOSWELL. This letter shews how uncommon a thing a cold bath was. Floyer, after recommending 'a general method of bleeding and purging' before the patient uses cold bathing, continues, 'I have commonly cured the rickets by dipping children of a year old in the bath every morning; and this wonderful effect has encouraged me to dip four boys at Lichfield in the font at their baptism, and none have suffered any inconvenience by it.' (For mention of Floyer, see _ante_, p. 42, and _post_, March 27 and July 20, 1784.) Locke, in his _Treatise on Education_, had recommended cold bathing for children. Johnson, in his review of Lucas's _Essay on Waters_ (_post_, 1756), thus attacks cold bathing:--'It is incident to physicians, I am afraid, beyond all other men, to mistake subsequence for consequence. "The old gentleman," says Dr. Lucas, "that uses the cold bath, enjoys in return an uninterrupted state of health." This instance does not prove that the cold bath produces health, but only that it will not always destroy it. He is well with the bath, he would have been well without it.' _Literary Magazine_, p. 229.
[280] A prize of fifty pounds for the best poem on 'Life, Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell.' See _Gent. Mag_. vol. iv. p. 560. N. BOSWELL. 'Cave sometimes offered subjects for poems, and proposed prizes for the best performers. The first prize was fifty pounds, for which, being but newly acquainted with wealth, and thinking the influence of fifty pounds extremely great, he expected the first authors of the kingdom to appear as competitors; and offered the allotment of the prize to the universities. But when the time came, no name was seen among the writers that had ever been seen before; the universities and several private men rejected the province of assigning the prize.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 432.
[281] I suspect that Johnson wrote 'the Castle _Inn_, Birmingham.'
[282] Mrs. Piozzi gives the following account of this little composition from Dr. Johnson's own relation to her, on her inquiring whether it was rightly attributed to him:--'I think it is now just forty years ago, that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on--Sit still a moment, (says I) dear Mund' [see _post_, May 7, 1773, for Johnson's 'way of contracting the names of his friends'], 'and I'll fetch them thee--So stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir about.' _Anec_. p. 34.
In my first edition I was induced to doubt the authenticity of this account, by the following circumstantial statement in a letter to me from Miss Seward, of Lichfield:--'_I know_ those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather's, and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he showed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for _the Verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a Sprig of Myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom_. We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable of the mean vanity of applying to herself a compliment not _intended_ for her.' Such was this lady's statement, which I make no doubt she supposed to be correct; but it shews how dangerous it is to trust too implicitly to traditional testimony and ingenious inference; for Mr. Hector has lately assured me that Mrs. Piozzi's account is in this instance accurate, and that he was the person for whom Johnson wrote those verses, which have been erroneously ascribed to Mr. Hammond.
I am obliged in so many instances to notice Mrs. Piozzi's incorrectness of relation, that I gladly seize this opportunity of acknowledging, that however often, she is not always inaccurate.
The author having been drawn into a controversy with Miss Anna Seward, in consequence of the preceding statement, (which may be found in the _Gent. Mag_. vol. liii. and liv.) received the following letter from Mr. Edmund Hector, on the subject:
'DEAR SIR,
'I am sorry to see you are engaged in altercation with a Lady, who seems unwilling to be convinced of her errors. Surely it would be more ingenuous to acknowledge, than to persevere.
'Lately, in looking over some papers I meant to burn, I found the original manuscript of the _Myrtle_, with the date on it, 1731, which I have inclosed.
'The true history (which I could swear to) is as follows: Mr. Morgan Graves, the elder brother of a worthy Clergyman near Bath, with whom I was acquainted, waited upon a lady in this neighbourhood, who at parting presented him the branch. He shewed it me, and wished much to return the compliment in verse. I applied to Johnson, who was with me, and in about half an hour dictated the verses which I sent to my friend.
'I most solemnly declare, at that time Johnson was an entire stranger to the Porter family; and it was almost two years after that I introduced him to the acquaintance of Porter, whom I bought my cloaths of.
'If you intend to convince this obstinate woman, and to exhibit to the publick the truth of your narrative, you are at liberty to make what use you please of this statement.
'I hope you will pardon me for taking up so much of your time. Wishing you _multos et felices annos_, I shall subscribe myself,
'Your obliged humble servant,
'E. HECTOR.'
_Birmingham_, Jan. 9th, 1794.
BOSWELL. For a further account of Boswell's controversy with Miss Seward, see _post_, June 25, 1784.
[283] See _post_, beginning of 1744, April 28, 1783, and under Dec. 2, 1784.
[284] See _post_, near end of 1762, note.
[285] In the registry of St. Martin's Church, Birmingham, are the following entries:--'Baptisms, Nov. 8, 1715, Lucy, daughter of Henry Porter. Jan. 29, 1717 [O. S.], Jarvis Henry, son of Henry Porter. Burials, Aug. 3, 1734, Henry Porter of Edgbaston.' There were two sons; one, Captain Porter, who died in 1763 (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 130), the other who died in 1783 (_post_, Nov. 29, 1783).
[286] According to Malone, Reynolds said that 'he had paid attention to Johnson's limbs; and far from being unsightly, he deemed them well formed.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 175. Mrs. Piozzi says:--'His stature was remarkably high, and his limbs exceedingly large; his features were strongly marked, and his countenance particularly rugged; though the original complexion had certainly been fair, a circumstance somewhat unusual; his sight was near, and otherwise imperfect; yet his eyes, though of a light-grey colour, were so wild, so piercing, and at times so fierce, that fear was, I believe, the first emotion in the hearts of all his beholders.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 297. See _post_, end of the book, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, near the beginning.
[287] If Johnson wore his own hair at Oxford, it must have exposed him to ridicule. Graves, the author of _The Spiritual Quixote_, tells us that Shenstone had the courage to wear his own hair, though 'it often exposed him to the ill-natured remarks of people who had not half his sense. After I was elected at All Souls, where there was often a party of loungers in the gateway, on my expostulating with Mr. Shenstone for not visiting me so often as usual, he said, "he was ashamed to face his enemies in the gate."'
[288] See _post_, 1739.
[289] Mrs. Johnson was born on Feb. 4, 1688-9. MALONE. She was married on July 9, 1735, in St. Werburgh's Church, Derby, as is shewn by the following copy of the marriage register: '1735, July 9, Mar'd Sam'll Johnson of ye parish of St Mary's in Litchfield, and Eliz'th Porter of ye parish of St Phillip in Burmingham.' _Notes and Queries_, 4th S. vi. 44. At the time of their marriage, therefore, she was forty-six, and Johnson only two months short of twenty-six.
[290] The author of the _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnson_, 1785, p. 25, says:--'Mrs. Porter's husband died insolvent, but her settlement was secured. She brought her second husband about seven or eight hundred pounds, a great part of which was expended in fitting up a house for a boarding-school.' That she had some money can be almost inferred from what we are told by Boswell and Hawkins. How other-wise was Johnson able to hire and furnish a large house for his school? Boswell says that he had but three pupils. Hawkins gives him a few more. 'His number,' he writes (p. 36) 'at no time exceeded eight, and of those not all were boarders.' After nearly twenty months of married life, when he went to London, 'he had,' Boswell says, 'a little money.' It was not till a year later still that he began to write for the _Gent. Mag_. If Mrs. Johnson had not money, how did she and her husband live from July 1735 to the spring of 1738? It could scarcely have been on the profits made from their school. Inference, however, is no longer needful, as there is positive evidence. Mr. Timmins in his _Dr. Johnson in Birmingham_ (p. 4) writes:--'My friend, Mr. Joseph Hill, says, A copy of an old deed which has recently come into my hands, shews that a hundred pounds of Mrs. Johnson's fortune was left in the hands of a Birmingham attorney named Thomas Perks, who died insolvent; and in 1745, a bulky deed gave his creditors 7_s_. 4_d_. in the pound. Among the creditors for £100 were "Samuel Johnson, gent., and Elizabeth his wife, executors of the last will and testament of Harry Porter, late of Birmingham aforesaid, woollen draper, deceased." Johnson and his wife were almost the only creditors who did not sign the deed, their seals being left void. It is doubtful, therefore, whether they ever obtained the amount of the composition £36 13_s_. 4_d_.'
[291] Sir Walter Scott has recorded Lord Auchinleck's 'sneer of most sovereign contempt,' while he described Johnson as 'a dominie, monan auld dominie; he keeped a schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 397, note.
[292] 'Edial is two miles west of Lichfield.' Harwood's _Lichfield_, p. 564.
[293] Johnson in more than one passage in his writings seems to have in mind his own days as a schoolmaster. Thus in the _Life of Milton_ he says:--'This is the period of his life from which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but, since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 75. In the _Life of Blackmore_ he says:--'In some part of his life, it is not known when, his indigence compelled him to teach a school, an humiliation with which, though it certainly lasted but a little while, his enemies did not forget to reproach him, when he became conspicuous enough to excite malevolence; and let it be remembered for his honour, that to have been once a school-master is the only reproach which all the perspicacity of malice, animated by wit, has ever fixed upon his private life.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 36.
[294] In the original _To teach. Seasons, Spring_, l. 1149, Thomson is speaking, not of masters, but of parents.
[295] In the _Life of Milton_, Johnson records his own experience. 'Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 76.
[296]
'As masters fondly soothe their boys to read With cakes and sweetmeats.'
_Francis_, Hor. i. _Sat_. I. 25.
[297] As Johnson kept Garrick much in awe when present, David, when his back was turned, repaid the restraint with ridicule of him and his dulcinea, which should be read with great abatement. PERCY. He was not consistent in his account, for 'he told Mrs. Thrale that she was a _little painted puppet_ of no value at all.' 'He made out,' Mrs. Piozzi continues, 'some comical scenes, by mimicking her in a dialogue he pretended to have overheard. I do not know whether he meant such stuff to be believed or no, it was so comical. The picture I found of her at Lichfield was very pretty, and her daughter said it was like. Mr. Johnson has told me that her hair was eminently beautiful, quite _blonde_ like that of a baby.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 148.
[298] Mr. Croker points out that in this paper 'there are two separate schemes, the first for a school--the second for the individual studies of some young friend.'
[299] In the _Rambler_, No. 122, Johnson, after stating that 'it is observed that our nation has been hitherto remarkably barren of historical genius,' praises Knolles, who, he says, 'in his _History of the Turks_, has displayed all the excellencies that narration can admit.'
[300] Both of them used to talk pleasantly of this their first journey to London. Garrick, evidently meaning to embellish a little, said one day in my hearing, 'we rode and tied.' And the Bishop of Killaloe informed me, that at another time, when Johnson and Garrick were dining together in a pretty large company, Johnson humorously ascertaining the chronology of something, expressed himself thus: 'that was the year when I came to London with two-pence half-penny in my pocket.' Garrick overhearing him, exclaimed, 'eh? what do you say? with two-pence half-penny in your pocket?'--JOHNSON, 'Why yes; when I came with two-pence half-penny in _my_ pocket, and thou, Davy, with three half-pence in thine.' BOSWELL.
[301] See _Gent. Mag_., xxiv. 333.
[302] Mr. Colson was First Master of the Free School at Rochester. In 1739 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. MALONE. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 49) says that 'by Gelidus the philosopher (_Rambler_, No. 24), Johnson meant to represent Colson.'
[303] This letter is printed in the _Garrick Corres_. i. 2. There we read _I doubt not_.
[304] One curious anecdote was communicated by himself to Mr. John Nichols. Mr. Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an authour, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a significant look, said, 'You had better buy a porter's knot.' He however added, 'Wilcox was one of my best friends.' BOSWELL. Hawkins (_Life_, p. 43) states that Johnson and Garrick had soon exhausted their small stock of money in London, and that on Garrick's suggestion they applied for a loan to Wilcox, of whom he had a slight knowledge. 'Representing themselves to him, as they really were, two young men, friends and travellers from the same place, and just arrived with a view to settle here, he was so moved with their artless tale, that on their joint note he advanced them all that their modesty would permit them to ask (five pounds), which was soon after punctually repaid.' Perhaps Johnson was thinking of himself when he recorded the advice given by Cibber to Fenton, 'When the tragedy of Mariamne was shewn to Cibber, it was rejected by him, with the additional insolence of advising Fenton to engage himself in some employment of honest labour, by which he might obtain that support which he could never hope from his poetry. The play was acted at the other theatre; and the brutal petulance of Cibber was confuted, though perhaps not shamed, by general applause.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 56. Adam Smith in the _Wealth of Nations_ (Book i. ch. 2) says that 'the difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street-porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.' Wilcox's shop was in Little Britain. Benjamin Franklin, in 1725, lodged next door to him. 'He had,' says Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 64), 'an immense collection of second-hand books. Circulating libraries were not then in use; but we agreed that on certain reasonable terms I might read any of his books.'
[305] Bernard Lintot (_post_, July 19, 1763) died Feb. 3, 1736. _Gent. Mag_. vi. 110. This, no doubt, was his son.
[306] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 195) says that being in London in 1746 he dined frequently with a club of officers, where they had an excellent dinner at ten-pence. From what he adds it is clear that the tavern-keeper made his profit on the wine. At Edinburgh, four years earlier, he and his fellow-students used to get 'at four-pence a-head a very good dinner of broth and beef, and a roast and potatoes every day, with fish three or four times a-week, and all the small beer that was called for till the cloth was removed' (_ib_. p. 63). W. Hutton, who in 1750 opened a very small book-shop in Birmingham, for which he paid rent at a shilling a week, says (_Life of Hutton_, p. 84): 'Five shillings a week covered every expense; as food, rent, washing, lodging, &c.' He knew how to live wretchedly.
[307] On April 17, 1778, Johnson said: 'Early in life I drank wine; for many years I drank none. I then for some years drank a great deal. I then had a severe illness, and left it off, and I have never begun it again.' Somewhat the same account is given in Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 16, 1773. Roughly speaking, he seems to have been an abstainer from about 1736 to at least as late as 1757, and from about 1765 to the end of his life. In 1751 Hawkins (_Life_, p. 286) describes him as drinking only lemonade 'in a whole night spent in festivity' at the Ivy Lane Club. In 1757 he described himself 'as a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only tea' (Johnson's _Works_, vi. 21). It was, I believe, in his visit to Oxford in 1759 that 'University College witnessed his drinking three bottles of port without being the worse for it' (_post_, April 7, 1778). When he was living in the Temple (between 1760-65) he had the frisk with Langton and Beauclerk when they made a bowl of _Bishop_ (_post_, 1753). On his birthday in 1760, he 'resolved to drink less strong liquors' (_Pr. and Med_. p. 42). In 1762 on his visit to Devonshire he drank three bottles of wine after supper. This was the only time Reynolds had seen him intoxicated. (Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 161). In 1763 he affected Boswell's nerves by keeping him up late to drink port with him (_post_, July 14, 1763). On April 21, 1764, he records: 'From the beginning of this year I have in some measure forborne excess of strong drink' (_Pr. and Med_. p. 51). On Easter Sunday he records: 'Avoided wine' (_id_. p. 55). On March 1, 1765, he is described at Cambridge as 'giving Mrs. Macaulay for his toast, and drinking her in two bumpers.' It was about this time that he had the severe illness (_post_, under Oct. 17, 1765, note). In Feb. 1766, Boswell found him no longer drinking wine. He shortly returned to it again; for on Aug. 2, 1767, he records, 'I have for some days forborne wine;' and on Aug. 17, 'By abstinence from wine and suppers I obtained sudden and great relief' (_Pr. and Med_. pp. 73, 4). According to Hawkins, Johnson said:--'After a ten years' forbearance of every fluid except tea and sherbet, I drank one glass of wine to the health of Sir Joshua Reynolds on the evening of the day on which he was knighted' (Hawkins's _Johnson's Works_ (1787), xi. 215). As Reynolds was knighted on April 21, 1769 (Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 321), Hawkins's report is grossly inaccurate. In Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 16, 1773, and _post_, March 16, 1776, we find him abstaining. In 1778 he persuaded Boswell to be 'a water-drinker upon trial' (_post_, April 28, 1778). On April 7, 1779, 'he was persuaded to drink one glass of claret that he might judge of it, not from recollection.' On March 20, 1781, Boswell found that Johnson had lately returned to wine. 'I drink it now sometimes,' he said, 'but not socially.' He seems to have generally abstained however. On April 20, 1781, he would not join in drinking Lichfield ale. On March 17, 1782, he made some punch for himself, by which in the night he thought 'both his breast and imagination disordered' (_Pr. and Med_. p. 205). In the spring of this year Hannah More urged him to take a little wine. 'I can't drink a _little_, child,' he answered; 'therefore I never touch it' (H. More's _Memoirs_, i. 251). On July 1, 1784, Beattie, who met him at dinner, says, 'he cannot be prevailed on to drink wine' (Beattie's _Life_, p. 316). On his death-bed he refused any 'inebriating sustenance' (_post_, Dec. 1784). It is remarkable that writing to Dr. Taylor on Aug. 5, 1773, he said:--'Drink a great deal, and sleep heartily;' and that on June 23, 1776, he again wrote to him:--'I hope you presever in drinking. My opinion is that I have drunk too little, and therefore have the gout, for it is of my own acquisition, as neither my father had it nor my mother' (_Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. pp. 422, 3). On Sept. 19, 1777 (_post_), he even 'owned that in his opinion a free use of wine did not shorten life.' Johnson disapproved of fermented liquors only in the case of those who, like himself and Boswell, could not keep from excess.
[308] Ofellus, or rather Ofella, is the 'rusticus, abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva' of Horace's _Satire_, ii. 2. 3. What he teaches is briefly expressed in Pope's Imitation, ii. 2. 1:
'What, and how great, the virtue and the art To live on little with a cheerful heart (A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine); Let's talk, my friends, but talk before we dine.'
In 1769 was published a worthless poem called _The Art of Living in London_; in which 'instructions were given to persons who live in a garret, and spend their evenings in an ale-house.' _Gent. Mag_. xxxix. 45. To this Boswell refers.
[309] 'Johnson this day, when we were by ourselves, observed how common it was for people to talk from books; to retail the sentiments of others, and not their own; in short, to converse without any originality of thinking. He was pleased to say, "You and I do not talk from books."' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 3, 1773.
[310] The passage to Ireland was commonly made from Chester.
[311] The honourable Henry Hervey, third son of the first Earl of Bristol, quitted the army and took orders. He married a sister of Sir Thomas Aston, by whom he got the Aston Estate, and assumed the name and arms of that family. Vide Collins's _Peerage_. BOSWELL.
[312] The following brief mention of Greenwich Park in 1750 is found in one of Miss Talbot's Letters. 'Then when I come to talk of Greenwich--Did you ever see it? It was quite a new world to me, and a very charming one. Only on the top of a most inaccessible hill in the park, just as we were arrived at a view that we had long been aiming at, a violent clap of thunder burst over our heads.'--_Carter and Talbot Corres_, i. 345.
[313] At the Oxford Commemoration of 1733 Courayer returned thanks in his robes to the University for the honour it had done him two years before in presenting him with his degree. _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_, p. 94.
[314] This library was given by George IV to the British Museum. CROKER.
[315] Ovid, Meta. iii. 724.
[316] Act iii. sc. 8.
[317] Act i. sc. 1.
[318] Act ii. sc. 7.
[319] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 232 [Sept. 20, 1773]. BOSWELL.
[320] Johnson's letter to her of Feb. 6, 1759, shows that she was, at that time, living in his house at Lichfield. Miss Seward (_Letters_, i. 116) says that 'she boarded in Lichfield with his mother.' Some passages in other of his letters (Croker's _Boswell_, pp. 144, 145, 173) lead me to think that she stayed on in this house till 1766, when she had built herself a house with money left her by her brother.
[321] See _post_, Oct. 10, 1779.
[322] He could scarcely have solicited a worse manager. Horace Walpole writing in 1744 (_Letters_, i. 332) says: 'The town has been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage very boisterously. Fleetwood, the master of Drury-Lane, has omitted nothing to support them as they supported his house. About ten days ago, he let into the pit great numbers of Bear-garden _bruisers_ (that is the term) to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out.'
[323] It was not till volume v. that Cave's name was given on the title-page. In volumes viii. and ix., and volumes xii. to xvii. the name is Edward Cave, Jun. Cave in his examination before the House of Lords on April 30, 1747, said:--'That he was concerned in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ at first with his nephew; and since the death of his nephew he has done it entirely himself.' _Parl. Hist_. xiv. 59.
[324] Its sale, according to Johnson, was ten thousand copies. _Post_, April 25, 1778. So popular was it that before it had completed its ninth year the fifth edition of some of the earliest numbers was printed. Johnson's _Works_, v. 349. In the _Life of Cave_ Johnson describes it as 'a periodical pamphlet, of which the scheme is known wherever the English language is spoken.' _Ib_. vi. 431.
[325] Yet the early numbers contained verses as grossly indecent as they were dull. Cave moreover advertised indecent books for sale at St. John's Gate, and in one instance, at least, the advertisement was in very gross language.
[326] See _post_, April 25, 1778.
[327] While in the course of my narrative I enumerate his writings, I shall take care that my readers shall not be left to waver in doubt, between certainty and conjecture, with regard to their authenticity; and, for that purpose, shall mark with an _asterisk_ (*) those which he acknowledged to his friends, and with a _dagger_ (dagger) those which are ascertained to be his by internal evidence. When any other pieces are ascribed to him, I shall give my reasons. BOSWELL.
[328] Hawkins says that 'Cave had few of those qualities that constitute the character of urbanity. Upon the first approach of a stranger his practice was to continue sitting, and for a few minutes to continue silent. If at any time he was inclined to begin the discourse, it was generally by putting a leaf of the _Magazine_ then in the press into the hand of his visitor and asking his opinion of it. He was so incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities that, meaning at one time to dazzle him with the splendour of some of those luminaries in literature who favoured him with their correspondence, he told him that, if he would in the evening be at a certain alehouse in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne and another or two of the persons mentioned in the preceding note. [The note contained the names of some of Cave's regular writers.] Johnson accepted the invitation; and being introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat, and such a great bushy uncombed wig as he constantly wore, to the sight of Mr. Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had his curiosity gratified.' [Mr. Carlyle writes of 'bushy-wigged Cave;' but it was Johnson whose wig is described, and not Cave's. On p. 327 Hawkins again mentions his 'great bushy wig,' and says that 'it was ever nearly as impenetrable by a comb as a quickset hedge.'] Hawkins's _Johnson_, pp. 45-50. Johnson, after mentioning Cave's slowness, says: 'The same chillness of mind was observable in his conversation; he was watching the minutest accent of those whom he disgusted by seeming inattention; and his visitant was surprised, when he came a second time, by preparations to execute the scheme which he supposed never to have been heard.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 434.
[329] 'The first lines put one in mind of Casimir's Ode to Pope Urban:--
"Urbane, regum maxime, maxime Urbane vatum."
The Polish poet was probably at that time in the hands of a man who had meditated the history of the Latin poets.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 42.
[330] Cave had been grossly attacked by rival booksellers; see _Gent. Mag_., viii. 156. Hawkins says (_Life_, p. 92), 'With that sagacity which we frequently observe, but wonder at, in men of slow parts, he seemed to anticipate the advice contained in Johnson's ode, and forbore a reply, though not his revenge.' This he gratified by reprinting in his own Magazine one of the most scurrilous and foolish attacks.
[331] A translation of this Ode, by an unknown correspondent, appeared in the _Magazine_ for the month of May following:
'Hail, URBAN! indefatigable man, Unwearied yet by all thy useful toil! Whom num'rous slanderers assault in vain; Whom no base calumny can put to foil. But still the laurel on thy learned brow Flourishes fair, and shall for ever grow.
'What mean the servile imitating crew, What their vain blust'ring, and their empty noise, Ne'er seek: but still thy noble ends pursue, Unconquer'd by the rabble's venal voice. Still to the Muse thy studious mind apply, Happy in temper as in industry.
'The senseless sneerings of an haughty tongue, Unworthy thy attention to engage, Unheeded pass: and tho' they mean thee wrong, By manly silence disappoint their rage. Assiduous diligence confounds its foes, Resistless, tho' malicious crouds oppose.
'Exert thy powers, nor slacken in the course, Thy spotless fame shall quash all false reports: Exert thy powers, nor fear a rival's force, But thou shalt smile at all his vain efforts; Thy labours shall be crown'd with large success; The Muse's aid thy Magazine shall bless.
'No page more grateful to th' harmonious nine Than that wherein thy labours we survey; Where solemn themes in fuller splendour shine, (Delightful mixture,) blended with the gay, Where in improving, various joys we find, A welcome respite to the wearied mind.
'Thus when the nymphs in some fair verdant mead, Of various flowr's a beauteous wreath compose, The lovely violet's azure-painted head Adds lustre to the crimson-blushing rose. Thus splendid Iris, with her varied dye, Shines in the aether, and adorns the sky. BRITON.'
BOSWELL.
[332] 'I have some reason to think that at his first coming to town he frequented Slaughter's coffee-house with a view to acquire a habit of speaking French, but he never could attain to it. Lockman used the same method and succeeded, as Johnson himself once told me.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 516. Lockman is _l'ilustre Lockman_ mentioned _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_. It was at 'Old Slaughter's Coffee-house, when a number of foreigners were talking loud about little matters, that Johnson one evening said, "Does not this confirm old Meynell's observation, _For anything I see, foreigners are fools_"?' _post_, ib.
[333] He had read Petrarch 'when but a boy;' _ante_, p. 57.
[334] Horace Walpole, writing of the year 1770, about libels, says: 'Their excess was shocking, and in nothing more condemnable than in the dangers they brought on the liberty of the press.' This evil was chiefly due to 'the spirit of the Court, which aimed at despotism, and the daring attempts of Lord Mansfield to stifle the liberty of the press. His innovations had given such an alarm that scarce a jury would find the rankest satire libellous.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iv. 167. Smollett in _Humphrey Clinker_ (published in 1771) makes Mr. Bramble write, in his letter of June 2: 'The public papers are become the infamous vehicles of the most cruel and perfidious defamation; every rancorous knave--every desperate incendiary, that can afford to spend half-a-crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom, without running the least hazard of detection or punishment.' The scribblers who had of late shewn their petulance were not always obscure. Such scurrilous but humorous pieces as _Probationary Odes for the Laureateship_, _The Rolliad_, and _Royal Recollections_, which were all published while Boswell was writing _The Life of Johnson_, were written, there can be little doubt, by men of position. In the first of the three (p. 27) Boswell is ridiculed. He is made to say:--'I know Mulgrave is a bit of a poet as well as myself; for I dined in company once where he dined that very day twelve-month.' This evil of libelling had extended to America. Benjamin Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 148), writing in 1784, says that 'libelling and personal abuse have of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Many of our printers make no scruple of gratifying the malice of individuals by false accusations of the fairest characters.'
[335] Boswell perhaps refers to a book published in 1758, called _The Case of Authors by Profession. Gent. Mag_. xxviii. 130. Guthrie applies the term to himself in the letter below.
[336] How much poetry he wrote, I know not: but he informed me, that he was the authour of the beautiful little piece, _The Eagle and Robin Redbreast_, in the collection of poems entitled _The Union_, though it is there said to be written by Archibald Scott, before the year 1600. BOSWELL. Mr. P. Cunningham has seen a letter of Jos. Warton's which states that this poem was written by his brother Tom, who edited the volume. CROKER.
[337] Dr. A. Carlyle in his _Autobiography_ (p. 191) describes a curious scene that he witnessed in the British Coffee-house. A Captain Cheap 'was employed by Lord Anson to look out for a proper person to write his voyage. Cheap had a predilection for his countrymen, and having heard of Guthrie, he had come down to the coffee-house to inquire about him. Not long after Cheap had sat down, Guthrie arrived, dressed in laced clothes, and talking loud to everybody, and soon fell awrangling with a gentleman about tragedy and comedy and the unities, &c., and laid down the law of the drama in a peremptory manner, supporting his arguments with cursing and swearing. I saw Cheap was astonished, when, going to the bar, he asked who this was, and finding it was Guthrie he paid his coffee and slunk off in silence.' Guthrie's meanness is shown by the following letter in D'Israeli's _Calamities of Authors_, i. 5:--
'June 3, 1762.
'My Lord,
'In the year 1745-6 Mr. Pelham, then First Lord of the Treasury, acquainted me that it was his Majesty's pleasure I should receive till better provided for, which never has happened, 200£. a year, to be paid by him and his successors in the Treasury. I was satisfied with the august name made use of, and the appointment has been regularly and quarterly paid me ever since. I have been equally punctual in doing the Government all the services that fell within my abilities or sphere of life, especially in those critical situations that call for unanimity in the service of the Crown.
'Your Lordship may possibly now suspect that I am an Author by profession; you are not deceived; and will be less so, if you believe that I am disposed to serve his Majesty under your Lordship's future patronage and protection with greater zeal, if possible, than ever.
'I have the honour to be
'My Lord &c.
'WILLIAM GUTHRIE.'
The lord's name is not given. See _post_, spring of 1768, and 1780 in Mr. Langton's _Collection_ for further mention of Guthrie.
[338] Perhaps there were Scotticisms for Johnson to correct; for Churchill in _The Author_, writing of Guthrie, asks:--
'With rude unnatural jargon to support Half _Scotch_, half _English_, a declining Court
* * * * *
Is there not Guthrie?'
_Churchill's Poems_, ii. 39.
[339] See Appendix A.
[340] Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, ii. l. 71.
[341] 'To give the world assurance of a man.' _Hamlet_, Act iii. sc. 4.
[342] In his _Life of Pope_ Johnson says: 'This mode of imitation ... was first practised in the reign of Charles II. by Oldham and Rochester; at least I remember no instances more ancient. It is a kind of middle composition between translation and original design, which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable and the parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope's favourite amusement, for he has carried it farther than any former poet.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 295.
[343] I own it pleased me to find amongst them one trait of the manners of the age in London, in the last century, to shield from the sneer of English ridicule, which was some time ago too common a practice in my native city of Edinburgh:--
'If what I've said can't from the town affright, Consider other _dangers of the night_; When brickbats are from upper stories thrown, And _emptied chamberpots come pouring down From garret windows_.'
BOSWELL.
See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 14, 1773, where Johnson, on taking his first walk in Edinburgh, 'grumbled in Boswell's ear, "I smell you in the dark."' I once spent a night in a town of Corsica, on the great road between Ajaccio and Bastia, where, I was told, this Edinburgh practice was universal. It certainly was the practice of the hotel.
[344] His Ode _Ad Urbanum_ probably. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.
[345] Johnson, on his death-bed, had to own that 'Cave was a penurious paymaster; he would contract for lines by the hundred, and expect the long hundred.' See _post_, Dec. 1784.
[346] Cave sent the present by Johnson to the unknown author.
[347] See _post_, p. 151, note 5.
[348] The original letter has the following additional paragraph:--'I beg that you will not delay your answer.'
[349] In later life Johnson strongly insisted on the importance of fully dating all letters. After giving the date in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he would add,--'Now there is a date, look at it' (_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 109); or, 'Mark that--you did not put the year to your last' (_Ib_. p. 112); or, 'Look at this and learn' (_Ib_. p. 138). She never did learn. The arrangement of the letters in the _Piozzi Letters_ is often very faulty. For an omission of the date by Johnson in late life see _post_, under March 5, 1774.
[350] A poem, published in 1737, of which see an account under April 30, 1773--BOSWELL.
[351] The learned Mrs. Elizabeth Carter. BOSWELL. She was born Dec. 1717, and died Feb. 19, 1806. She never married. Her father gave her a learned education. Dr. Johnson, speaking of some celebrated scholar [perhaps Langton], said, 'that he understood Greek better than any one whom he he had ever known, except Elizabeth Carter.' Pennington's _Carter_, i. 13. Writing to her in 1756 he said, 'Poor dear Cave! I owed him much; for to him I owe that I have known you' (_Ib_. p. 40). Her father wrote to her on June 25, 1738:--'You mention Johnson; but that is a name with which I am utterly unacquainted, Neither his scholastic, critical, or poetical character ever reached my ears. I a little suspect his judgement, if he is very fond of Martial' (_Ib_. p. 39). Since 1734 she had written verses for the _Gent. Mag_. under the name of Eliza (_Ib_. p. 37)! They are very poor. Her _Ode to Melancholy_ her biographer calls her best. How bad it is three lines will show:--
'Here, cold to pleasure's airy forms, Consociate with my sister worms, And mingle with the dead.'
_Gent. Mag_. ix. 599.
Hawkins records that Johnson, upon hearing a lady commended for her learning, said:--'A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table than when his wife talks Greek. My old friend, Mrs. Carter, could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 205. Johnson, joining her with Hannah More and Fanny Burney, said:--'Three such women are not to be found.' _Post_, May 15, 1784.
[352] See Voltaire's _Siécle de Louis XIV_, ch. xxv..
[353] At the end of his letter to Cave, quoted _post_, 1742, he says:--'The boy found me writing this almost in the dark, when I could not quite easily read yours.' A man who at times was forced to walk the streets, for want of money to pay for a lodging, was likely also at times to be condemned to idleness for want of a light.
[354] At the back of this letter is written: 'Sir, Please to publish the enclosed in your paper of first, and place to acc't of Mr. Edward Cave. For whom I am, Sir, your hum. ser't J. Bland. St. John's Gate, April 6, 1738.' _London_ therefore was written before April 6.
[355] Boswell misread the letter. Johnson does not offer to allow the printer to make alterations. He says:--'I will take the trouble of altering any stroke of satire which you may dislike.' The law against libel was as unjust as it was severe, and printers ran a great risk.
[356] Derrick was not merely a poet, but also Master of the Ceremonies at Bath; _post_, May 16, 1763. For Johnson's opinion of _his_ 'Muse' see _post_ under March 30, 1783. _Fortune, a Rhapsody_, was published in Nov. 1751. _Gent. Mag_. xxi. 527. He is described in _Humphrey Clinker_ in the letters of April 6 and May 6.
[357] See _post_, March 20, 1776.
[358] Six years later Johnson thus wrote of Savage's _Wanderer_:--'From a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantage; nor can it without some degree of indignation and concern be told, that he sold the copy for ten guineas.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 131. Mrs. Piozzi sold in 1788 the copyright of her collection of Johnson's Letters for £500; _post_, Feb. 1767.
[359] The Monks of Medmenham Abbey. See Almon's _Life of Wilkes_, iii. 60, for Wilkes's account of this club. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, i. 92) calls Whitehead 'an infamous, but not despicable poet.'
[360] From _The Conference_, Churchill's _Poems_, ii. 15.
[361] In the _Life of Pope_ Johnson writes:--'Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the Lords for a poem called _Manners_, together with Dodsley his publisher. Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, sculked and escaped; but Dodsley's shop and family made his appearance necessary.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 297. _Manners_ was published in 1739. Dodsley was kept in custody for a week. _Gent. Mag_. ix. 104. 'The whole process was supposed to be intended rather to intimidate Pope [who in his _Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-Eight_ had given offence] than to punish Whitehead, and it answered that purpose.' CHALMERS, quoted in _Parl. Hist_. x. 1325
[362] Sir John Hawkins, p. 86, tells us:--'The event is _antedated_, in the poem of _London_; but in every particular, except the difference of a year, what is there said of the departure of Thales, must be understood of Savage, and looked upon as _true history_.' This conjecture is, I believe, entirely groundless. I have been assured, that Johnson said he was not so much as acquainted with Savage when he wrote his _London_. If the departure mentioned in it was the departure of Savage, the event was not _antedated_ but _foreseen_; for _London_ was published in May, 1738, and Savage did not set out for Wales till July, 1739. However well Johnson could defend the credibility of _second sight_ [see _post_, Feb. 1766], he did not pretend that he himself was possessed of that faculty. BOSWELL. I am not sure that Hawkins is altogether wrong in his account. Boswell does not state _of his own knowledge_ that Johnson was not acquainted with Savage when he wrote _London_. The death of Queen Caroline in Nov. 1737 deprived Savage of her yearly bounty, and 'abandoned him again to fortune' (Johnson's _Works_, viii. 166). The elegy on her that he composed on her birth-day (March 1) brought him no reward. He was 'for some time in suspense,' but nothing was done. 'He was in a short time reduced to the lowest degree of distress, and often wanted both lodging and food' (_Ib_. p. 169). His friends formed a scheme that 'he should retire into Wales.' 'While this scheme was ripening' he lodged 'in the liberties of the Fleet, that he might be secure from his creditors' (_Ib_. p. 170). After many delays a subscription was at length raised to provide him with a small pension, and he left London in July 1739 (_Ib_. p 173). _London_, as I have shewn, was written before April 6, 1738. That it was written with great rapidity we might infer from the fact that a hundred lines of _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ were written in a day. At this rate _London_ might have been the work of three days. That it was written in a very short time seems to be shown by a passage in the first of these letters to Cave. Johnson says:--'When I took the liberty of writing to you a few days ago, I did not expect a repetition of the same pleasure so soon; ... but having the enclosed poem, &c.' It is probable that in these few days the poem was written. If we can assume that Savage's elegy was sent to the Court not later than March 1--it may have been sent earlier--and that Johnson's poem was written in the last ten days of March, we have three weeks for the intervening events. They are certainly not more than sufficient, if indeed they are sufficient. The coincidence is certainly very striking between Thales's retirement to 'Cambria's solitary shore' and Savage's retirement to Wales. There are besides lines in the poem--additions to Juvenal and not translations--which curiously correspond with what Johnson wrote of Savage in his _Life_. Thus he says that Savage 'imagined that he should be transported to scenes of flowery felicity; ... he could not bear ... to lose the opportunity of listening, without intermission, to the melody of the nightingale, which he believed was to be heard from every bramble, and which he did not fail to mention as a very important part of the happiness of a country life' (_Ib_. p. 170). In like manner Thales prays to find:--
'Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play, Some peaceful vale, with nature's paintings gay.
* * * * *
There every bush with nature's musick rings; There every breeze bears health upon its wings.'
Mr. Croker objects that 'if Thales had been Savage, Johnson could never have admitted into his poem two lines that point so forcibly at the drunken fray, in which Savage stabbed a Mr. Sinclair, for which he was convicted of _murder_:--
"Some frolic _drunkard_, reeling from a feast, _Provokes_ a broil, and _stabs_ you in a jest."'
But here Johnson is following Juvenal. Mr. Croker forgets that, if Savage was convicted of murder, 'he was soon after admitted to bail, and pleaded the King's pardon.' 'Persons of distinction' testified that he was 'a modest inoffensive man, not inclined to broils or to insolence;' the witnesses against him were of the lowest character, and his judge had shewn himself as ignorant as he was brutal. Sinclair had been drinking in a brothel, and Savage asserted that he had stabbed him 'by the necessity of self defence' (_Ib_. p. 117). It is, however, not unlikely that Wales was suggested to Johnson as Thales's retreat by Swift's lines on Steele, in _Miscellanies in Prose and Verse_ (v. 181), published only three years before _London_:--
'Thus Steele who owned what others writ, And flourished by imputed wit, From perils of a hundred jails Withdrew to starve and die in Wales.'
[363] The first dialogue was registered at Stationers' Hall, 12th May, 1738, under the title _One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight_. The second dialogue was registered 17th July, 1738, as _One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight, Dialogue_ 2. Elwin's _Pope_, iii. 455.
David Hume was in London this spring, finding a publisher for his first work, _A Treatise of Human Nature_. J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 66.
[364] Pope had published _Imitations of Horace_.
[365] P. 269. BOSWELL. 'Short extracts from _London, a Poem_, become remarkable for having got to the second edition in the space of a week.' _Gent. Mag_. viii. 269. The price of the poem was one shilling. Pope's satire, though sold at the same price, was longer in reaching its second edition (_Ib_. p. 280).
[366]
'One driven by strong benevolence of soul Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.'
Pope's _Imitations of Horace_, ii. 2. 276.
'General Oglethorpe, died 1785, earned commemoration in Pope's gallery of worthies by his Jacobite politics. He was, however, a remarkable man. He first directed attention to the abuses of the London jails. His relinquishment of all the attractions of English life and fortune for the settlement of the colony of Georgia is as romantic a story at that of Bishop Berkeley' (Pattison's _Pope_, p. 152). It is very likely that Johnson's regard for Oglethorpe was greatly increased by the stand that he and his brother-trustees in the settlement of Georgia made against slavery (see _post_, Sept. 23, 1777). 'The first principle which they laid down in their laws was that no slave should be employed. This was regarded at the time as their great and fundamental error; it was afterwards repealed' (Southey's _Wesley_, i. 75). In spite, however, of Oglethorpe's 'strong benevolence of soul' he at one time treated Charles Wesley, who was serving as a missionary in Georgia, with great brutality (_Ib_. p. 88). According to Benjamin Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 162) Georgia was settled with little forethought. 'Instead of being made with hardy industrious husbandmen, it was with families of broken shop-keepers, and other insolvent debtors; many of idle habits, taken out of the jails, who being set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for.' Johnson wished to write Oglethorpe's life; _post_, April 10, 1775.
[367] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 548), writing of him 47 years after _London_ was published, when he was 87 years old, says:--'His eyes, ears, articulation, limbs, and memory would suit a boy, if a boy could recollect a century backwards. His teeth are gone; he is a shadow, and a wrinkled one; but his spirits and his spirit are in full bloom: two years and a-half ago he challenged a neighbouring gentleman for trespassing on his manor.'
[368] Once Johnson being at dinner at Sir Joshua's in company with many painters, in the course of conversation Richardson's _Treatise on Painting_ happened to be mentioned, 'Ah!' said Johnson, 'I remember, when I was at college, I by chance found that book on my stairs. I took it up with me to my chamber, and read it through, and truly I did not think it possible to say so much upon the art.' Sir Joshua desired of one of the company to be informed what Johnson had said; and it being repeated to him so loud that Johnson heard it, the Doctor seemed hurt, and added, 'But I did not wish, Sir, that Sir Joshua should have been told what I then said.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 236. Jonathan Richardson the painter had published several works on painting before Johnson went to college. He and his son, Jonathan Richardson, junior, brought out together _Explanatory Notes on Paradise Lost_.
[369] Sir Joshua Reynolds, from the information of the younger Richardson. BOSWELL. See _post_, Oct. 16, 1769, where Johnson himself relates this anecdote. According to Murphy, 'Pope said, "The author, whoever he is, will not be long concealed;" alluding to the passage in Terence [_Eun_. ii. 3, 4], _Ubi, ubi est, diu celari non potest_.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 35.
[370] Such as _far_ and _air_, which comes twice; _vain_ and _man_, _despair_ and _bar_.
[371] It is, however, remarkable, that he uses the epithet, which undoubtedly, since the union between England and Scotland, ought to denominate the natives of both parts of our island:--
'Was early taught a BRITON'S rights to prize.'
BOSWELL.
Swift, in his _Journal to Stella_ (Nov. 23, 1711), having to mention England, continues:--'I never will call it _Britain_, pray don't call it Britain.' In a letter written on Aug. 8, 1738, again mentioning England, he adds,--'Pox on the modern phrase Great Britain, which is only to distinguish it from Little Britain, where old clothes and old books are to be bought and sold' (Swift's _Works_, 1803, xx. 185). George III 'gloried in being born a Briton;' _post_, 1760. Boswell thrice more at least describes Johnson as 'a true-born Englishman;' _post_, under Feb. 7, 1775, under March 30, 1783, and Boswell's _Hebrides_ under Aug. 11, 1773. The quotation is from _Richard II_, Act i. sc. 3.
[372]
'For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land, Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand? There none are swept by sudden fate away, But all, whom hunger spares, with age decay.'
_London_, 1. 9-12.
[373] In the _Life of Savage_, Johnson, criticising the settlement of colonies, as it is considered by the poet and the politician, seems to be criticising himself. 'The politician, when he considers men driven into other countries for shelter, and obliged to retire to forests and deserts, and pass their lives, and fix their posterity, in the remotest corners of the world, to avoid those hardships which they suffer or fear in their native place, may very properly enquire, why the legislature does not provide a remedy for these miseries, rather than encourage an escape from them. He may conclude that the flight of every honest man is a loss to the community.... The poet guides the unhappy fugitive from want and persecution to plenty, quiet, and security, and seats him in scenes of peaceful solitude, and undisturbed repose.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 156.
[374] Three years later Johnson wrote:--'Mere unassisted merit advances slowly, if, what is not very common, it advances at all.' _Ib_. vi. 393.
[375] 'The busy _hum_ of men.' Milton's _L'Allegro_, 1. 118.
[376] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 21, 1773, and _post_, March 21, 1775, for Johnson's attack on Lord Chatham. In the _Life of Thomson_ Johnson wrote:--'At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the want, and with care for liberty, which was not in danger.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 370. Hawkins says (_Life_, p. 514);--'Of Walpole he had a high opinion. He said of him that he was a fine fellow, and that his very enemies deemed him so before his death. He honoured his memory for having kept this country in peace many years, as also for the goodness and placability of his temper.' Horace Walpole (_Letters_,