Chapter 10

miseries of her friends and fellow-citizens.' See _ante_, i. 447.

[989] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773, and _post_, Sept. 24, 1777, for another landlord's account of Johnson.

[990] From Dryden's lines on Milton.

[991] Horace Walpole wrote, on Jan. 15, 1775 (_Letters_, vi. 171):--'They [the Millers] hold a Parnassus-fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman Vase, dressed with pink ribands and myrtles, receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival: six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle, with--I don't know what.'

[992] Miss Burney wrote, in 1780:--'Do you know now that, notwithstanding Bath-Easton is so much laughed at in London, nothing here is more tonish than to visit Lady Miller. She is a round, plump, coarse-looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary woman in very common life, with fine clothes on.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 364.

[993] 'Yes, on my faith, there are _bouts-rimA(C)s_ on a buttered muffin, made by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland.' Walpole's _Letters_, vi. 171. 'She was,' Walpole writes, 'a jovial heap of contradictions. She was familiar with the mob, while stifled with diamonds; and yet was attentive to the most minute privileges of her rank, while almost shaking hands with a cobbler.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, i. 419. Dr. Percy showed her Goldsmith's ballad of _Edwin and Angelina_ in MS., and she had a few copies privately printed. Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 379.

[994] Perhaps Mr. Seward, who was something of a literary man, and who visited Bath (_post_, under March 30, 1783).

[995]

'--rerum Fluctibus in mediis et tempestatibus urbis.'

Horace, _Epistles_, ii. 2. 84. See _ante_, i. 461.

[996]

'Qui semel adspexit quantum dimissa petitis PrA|stent, mature redeat repetatque relicta.'

Horace, _Epistles_, i. 7. 96.

'To his first state let him return with speed, Who sees how far the joys he left exceed His present choice.' FRANCIS.

Malone says that 'Walpole, after he ceased to be minister, endeavoured to amuse his mind with reading. But one day when Mr. Welbore Ellis was in his library, he heard him say, with tears in his eyes, after having taken up several books and at last thrown away a folio just taken down from a shelf, "Alas! it is all in vain; _I cannot read_."' Prior's _Malone_, p. 379. Lord Eldon, after his retirement, said to an inn-keeper who was thinking of giving up business:--'Believe me, for I speak from experience, when a man who has been much occupied through life arrives at having nothing to do, he is very apt not to know what to do _with himself_.' Later on, he said:--'It was advice given by me in the spirit of that Principal of Brasenose, who, when he took leave of young men quitting college, used to say to them, "Let me give you one piece of advice, _Cave de resignationibus_." And very good advice too.' Twiss's _Eldon_, iii. 246.

[997] See _post_, April 10, 1775. He had but lately begun to visit London. 'Such was his constant apprehension of the small-pox, that he lived for twenty years within twenty miles of London, without visiting it more than once.' At the age of thirty-five he was inoculated, and henceforth was oftener in town. Campbell's _British Poets_, p. 569.

[998] Mr. S. Raymond, Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, published in Sydney in 1854 the _Diary of a Visit to England in 1775. by an Irishman_ (_The Rev. Dr. Thomas Campbell_,) _with Notes_. The MS., the editor says, was discovered behind an old press in one of the offices of his Court. The name of the writer nowhere appears in the MS. It is clear, however, that if it is not a forgery, the author was Campbell. In the _Edinburgh Review_ for Oct., 1859, its authenticity is examined, and is declared to be beyond a doubt. Lord Macaulay aided the Reviewer in his investigation. _Ib_ p. 323. He could scarcely, however, have come to his task with a mind altogether free from bias, for the editor 'has contrived,' we are told, 'to expose another of Mr. Croker's blunders.' Faith in him cannot be wrong who proves that Croker is not in the right. The value of this _Diary_ is rated too highly by the Reviewer. The Master of Balliol College has pointed out to me that it adds but very little to Johnson's sayings. So far as he is concerned, we are told scarcely anything of mark that we did not know already. This makes the Master doubt its genuineness. I have noticed one suspicious passage. An account is given of a dinner at Mr. Thrale's on April 1, at which Campbell met Murphy, Boswell, and Baretti. 'Johnson's _bons mots_ were retailed in such plenty that they, like a surfeit, could not lie upon my memory.' In one of the stories told by Murphy, Johnson is made to say, 'Damn the rascal.' Murphy would as soon have made the Archbishop of Canterbury swear as Johnson; much sooner the Archbishop of York. It was Murphy 'who paid him the highest compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for repeating some oaths in the course of telling a story' (_post_, April 12, 1776). Even supposing that at this time he was ignorant of his character, though the supposition is a wild one, he would at once have been set right by Boswell and the Thrales (_post_, under March 15, 1776). It is curious, that this anecdote imputing profanity to Johnson is not quoted by the Edinburgh reviewer. On the whole I think that the _Diary_ is genuine, and accordingly I have quoted it more than once.

[999] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 173) says that Johnson spoke of Browne as 'of all conversers the most delightful with whom he ever was in company.' Pope's bathos, in his lines to Murray:--

'Graced as thou art with all the power of words, So known, so honoured, at the House of Lords,'

was happily parodied by Browne:--

'Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks, And he has chambers in the King's Bench Walks.'

Pattison's _Satires of Pope_, pp. 57, 134. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 5.

[1000] Horace Walpole says of Beckford's Bribery Bill of 1768:--'Grenville, to flatter the country gentlemen, who can ill afford to combat with great lords, nabobs, commissaries, and West Indians, declaimed in favour of the bill.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iii. 159.

[1001] See _ante_, ii. 167, where he said much the same. Another day, however, he agreed that a landlord ought to give leases to his tenants, and not 'wish to keep them in a wretched dependance on his will. "It is a man's duty," he said, "to extend comfort and security among as many people as he can. He should not wish to have his tenants mere _Ephemerae_--mere beings of an hour."' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 10, 1773.

[1002] 'Thomas Hickey is now best remembered by a characteristic portrait of his friend Tom Davies, engraved with Hickey's name to it.' P. CUNNINGHAM.

[1003] See _ante_, ii. 92. In the _Life of Pope_ (_Works_, viii. 302), Johnson says that 'the shafts of satire were directed in vain against Cibber, being repelled by his impenetrable impudence.' Pope speaks of Gibber's 'impenetrability.' Elwin's _Pope_, ix. 231.

[1004] He alludes perhaps to a note on the _Dunciad_, ii, 140, in which it is stated that 'the author has celebrated even Cibber himself (presuming him to be the author of the _Careless Husband_).' See _post_, May 15, 1776, note.

[1005] See _ante_, ii. 32.

[1006] Burke told Malone that 'Hume, in compiling his _History_, did not give himself a great deal of trouble in examining records, &c.; and that the part he most laboured at was the reign of King Charles II, for whom he had an unaccountable partiality.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 368.

[1007] Yet Johnson (_Works_, vii. 177) wrote of Otway, who was nine years old when Charles II. came to the throne, and who outlived him by only a few weeks:--'He had what was in those times the common reward of loyalty; he lived and died neglected.' Hawkins (_Life_, p. 51) says that he heard Johnson 'speak of Dr. Hodges who, in the height of the Great Plague of 1665, continued in London, and was almost the only one of his profession that had the courage to oppose his art to the spreading of the contagion. It was his hard fate, a short time after, to die in prison for debt in Ludgate. Johnson related this to us with the tears ready to start from his eyes; and, with great energy, said, "Such a man would not have been suffered to perish in these times."'

[1008] Johnson in 1742 said that William III. 'was arbitrary, insolent, gloomy, rapacious, and brutal; that he was at all times disposed to play the tyrant; that he had, neither in great things nor in small, the manners of a gentleman; that he was capable of gaining money by mean artifices, and that he only regarded his promise when it was his interest to keep it.' _Works_, vi. 6. Nearly forty years later, in his _Life of Rowe_ (_ib_. vii. 408), he aimed a fine stroke at that King. 'The fashion of the time,' he wrote, 'was to accumulate upon Lewis all that can raise horrour and detestation; and whatever good was withheld from him, that it might not be thrown away, was bestowed upon King William.' Yet in the _Life of Prior_ (_ib_. viii. 4) he allowed him great merit. 'His whole life had been action, and none ever denied him the resplendent qualities of steady resolution and personal courage.' See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 24, 1773.

[1009] 'The fact of suppressing the will is indubitably true,' wrote Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii. 142). 'When the news arrived of the death of George I, my father carried the account from Lord Townshend to the then Prince of Wales. The Council met as soon as possible. There Archbishop Wake, with whom one copy of the will had been deposited, advanced, and delivered the will to the King, who put it into his pocket, and went out of Council without opening it, the Archbishop not having courage or presence of mind to desire it to be read, as he ought to have done. I was once talking to the late Lady Suffolk, the former mistress, on that extraordinary event. She said, "I cannot justify the deed to the legatees; but towards his father, the late King was justifiable, for George I. had burnt two wills made in favour of George II."'

[1010] 'Charles II. by his affability and politeness made himself the idol of the nation, which he betrayed and sold.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 7.

[1011] 'It was maliciously circulated that George was indifferent to his own succession, and scarcely willing to stretch out a hand to grasp the crown within his reach.' Coxe's _Memoirs of Walpole_, i. 57.

[1012] Plin. _Epist_. lib. ii. ep. 3. BOSWELL.

[1013] Mr. Davies was here mistaken. Corelli never was in England. BURNEY.

[1014] Mr. Croker is wrong in saying that the Irishman in Mrs. Thrale's letter of May 16, 1776 (_Piozzi Letters_, i. 329), is Dr. Campbell. The man mentioned there had never met Johnson, though she wrote more than a year after this dinner at Davies's. She certainly quotes one of 'Dr. C-l's phrases,' but she might also have quoted Shakspeare. I have no doubt that Mrs. Thrale's Irishman was a Mr. Musgrave (_post_, under June 16, 1784, note), who is humorously described in Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 83. Since writing this note I have seen that the Edinburgh reviewer (Oct. 1859, p. 326) had come to the same conclusion.

[1015] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 26, 1773, where Johnson said that 'he did not approve of a Judge's calling himself Farmer Burnett, and going about with a little round hat.'

[1016] 'If all the employments of life were crowded into the time which it [sic] really occupied, perhaps a few weeks, days, or hours would be sufficient for its accomplishment, so far as the mind was engaged in the performance.' _The Rambler_, No. 8.

[1017] Johnson certainly did, who had a mind stored with knowledge, and teeming with imagery: but the observation is not applicable to writers in general. BOSWELL. See _post_, April 20, 1783.

[1018] See _ante_, i. 358.

[1019] See ante, i. 306.

[1020] There has probably been some mistake as to the terms of this supposed extraordinary contract, the recital of which from hearsay afforded Johnson so much play for his sportive acuteness. Or if it was worded as he supposed, it is so strange that I should conclude it was a joke. Mr. Gardner, I am assured, was a worthy and a liberal man. BOSWELL. Thurlow, when Attorney-General, had been counsel for the Donaldsons, in the appeal before the House of Lords on the Right of Literary Property (_ante_, i. 437, and ii. 272). In his argument 'he observed (exemplifying his observations by several cases) that the booksellers had not till lately ever concerned themselves about authors.' _Gent. Mag_. for 1774, p. 51.

[1021] 'The booksellers of London are denominated _the trade_' (_post_, April 15, 1778, note).

[1022] _Bibliopole_ is not in Johnson's _Dictionary_.

[1023] The Literary Club. See _ante_, p. 330, note 1. Mr. Croker says that the records of the Club show that, after the first few years, Johnson very rarely attended, and that he and Boswell never met there above seven or eight times. It may be observed, he adds, how very rarely Boswell records the conversation at the club, Except in one instance (_post_, April, 3, 1778), he says, Boswell confines his report to what Johnson or himself may have said. That this is not strictly true is shewn by his report of the dinner recorded above, where we find reported remarks of Beauclerk and Gibbon. Seven meetings besides this are mentioned by Boswell. See _ante_, ii. 240, 255, 318, 330; and _post_, April 3, 1778, April 16, 1779, and June 22, 1784. Of all but the last there is some report, however brief, of something said. When Johnson was not present, Boswell would have nothing to record in this book.

[1024] _Travels through Germany, &c_., 1756-7.

[1025] _Travels through Holland, &c. Translated from the French_, 1743.

[1026] See _post_, March 24, 1776, and May 17, 1778.

[1027] _Description of the East_, 1743-5.

[1028] Johnson had made the same remark, and Boswell had mentioned Leandro Alberti, when they were talking in an inn in the Island of Mull. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 14, 1773.

[1029] Addison does not mention where this epitaph, which has eluded a very diligent inquiry, is found. MALONE. I have found it quoted in old Howell. 'The Italian saying may be well applied to poor England:--"I was well--would be better--took physic--and died."' _Lett_. Jan. 20, 1647. CROKER. It is quoted by Addison in _The Spectator_, No. 25:--'This letter puts me in mind of an Italian epitaph written on the monument of a Valetudinarian: _Stavo ben, ma per star meglio sto qui_, which it is impossible to translate.'

[1030] Lord Chesterfield, as Mr. Croker points out, makes the same observation in one of his _Letters to his Son_ (ii. 351). Boswell, however, does not get it from him, for he had said the same in the _Hebrides_, six months before the publication of Chesterfield's _Letters_. Addison, in the preface to his _Remarks_, says:--'Before I entered on my voyage I took care to refresh my memory among the classic authors, and to make such collections out of them as I might afterwards have occasion for.'

[1031] See ante, ii. 156.

[1032] 'It made an impression on the army that cannot be well imagined by those who saw it not. The whole army, and at last all people both in city and country were singing it perpetually, and perhaps never had so slight a thing so great an effect.' Bumet's Own Time, ed. 1818, ii. 430. In Tristram Shandy, vol. i. chap. 21, when Mr. Shandy advanced one of his hypotheses:--'My uncle Toby,' we read, 'would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument than that of whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lilliburlero.'

[1033] See ante, ii. 66.

[1034] 'Of Gibbon, Mackintosh neatly remarked that he might have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind, without his missing it.' _Life of Mackintosh_, i. 92. It is worthy of notice that Gibbon scarcely mentions Johnson in his writings. Moreover, in the names that he gives of the members of the Literary Club, 'who form a large and luminous constellation of British stars,' though he mentions eighteen of them, he passes over Boswell. Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i.219. See also _post_, April 18, 1775.

[1035] We may compare with this Dryden's line:--

'Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.'

_Absalom and Achitophel_, l. 179. Hawkins (_Life_, p. 506) says that 'to party opposition Johnson ever expressed great aversion, and of the pretences of patriots always spoke with indignation and contempt.' He had, Hawkins adds, 'partaken of the short-lived joy that infatuated the public' when Walpole fell; but a few days convinced him that the patriotism of the opposition had been either hatred or ambition. For _patriots_, see _ante_, i. 296, note, and _post_, April 6, 1781.

[1036] Mr. Burke. See _ante_, p. 222, note 4.

[1037] Lord North's ministry lasted from 1770 to 1782.

[1038] Perhaps Johnson had this from Davies, who says (_Life of Garrick_, i. 124):--'Mrs. Pritchard read no more of the play of _Macbeth_ than her own part, as written out and delivered to her by the prompter.' She played the heroine in _Irene_ (_ante_, i. 197). See _post_ under Sept. 30, 1783, where Johnson says that 'in common life she was a vulgar idiot,' and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 28, 1773.

[1039] A misprint for April 8.

[1040] Boswell calls him the 'Irish Dr. Campbell,' to distinguish him from the Scotch Dr. Campbell mentioned _ante_, i. 417.

[1041] See _ante_, i. 494.

[1042] Baretti, in a MS. note in his copy of _Piozzi Letters_, i. 374, says:--'Johnson was often fond of saying silly things in strong terms, and the silly Madam [Mrs. Thrale] never failed to echo that beastly kind of wit.'

[1043] According to Dr. T. Campbell, who was present at the dinner (_Diary_, p. 66), Barry and Garrick were the two actors, and Murphy the author. If Murphy said this in the heat of one of his quarrels with Garrick, he made amends in his _Life_ of that actor (p. 362):--'It was with Garrick,' he wrote, 'a fixed principle, that authors were entitled to the emolument of their labours, and by that generous way of thinking he held out an invitation to men of genius.'

[1044] Page 392, vol. i. BOSWELL.

[1045] Let me here be allowed to pay my tribute of most sincere gratitude to the memory of that excellent person, my intimacy with whom was the more valuable to me, because my first acquaintance with him was unexpected and unsolicited. Soon after the publication of my _Account of Corsica_, he did me the honour to call on me, and, approaching me with a frank courteous air, said, 'My name, Sir, is Oglethorpe, and I wish to be acquainted with you.' I was not a little flattered to be thus addressed by an eminent man, of whom I had read in Pope, from my early years,

'Or, driven by strong benevolence of soul, Will fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.'

I was fortunate enough to be found worthy of his good opinion, insomuch, that I not only was invited to make one in the many respectable companies whom he entertained at his table, but had a cover at his hospitable board every day when I happened to be disengaged; and in his society I never failed to enjoy learned and animated conversation, seasoned with genuine sentiments of virtue and religion. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i. 127, and ii. 59, note 1. The couplet from Pope is from _Imitations of Horace_, _Epist_. ii. 2. 276.

[1046]

'Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never _is_, but always _to be_ blest.'

_Essay on Man_, i. 95.

[1047] 'The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.' _The Rambler_, No. 2. See _post_, iii. 53, and June 12, 1784. Swift defined happiness as 'a perpetual possession of being well deceived.' _Tale of a Tub_, Sect, ix., Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, iii. 154.

[1048] See _post_, March 29, 1776.

[1049] The General seemed unwilling to enter upon it at this time; but upon a subsequent occasion he communicated to me a number of particulars, which I have committed to writing; but I was not sufficiently diligent in obtaining more from him, not apprehending that his friends were so soon to lose him; for, notwithstanding his great age, he was very healthy and vigorous, and was at last carried off by a violent fever, which is often fatal at any period of life. BOSWELL.

[1050] See _ante_, p. 338.

[1051]

'Mediocribus esse poetis _Non homines, non Di_, non concessere columnae.' 'But God and man, and letter'd post denies That poets ever are of middling size.'

FRANCIS, Horace, _Ars Poet_. l. 372.

[1052] Why he failed to keep his journal may be guessed from his letter to Temple:--'I am,' he wrote on April 17, 'indeed enjoying this metropolis to the full, according to my taste, except that I cannot, I see, have a plenary indulgence from you for Asiatic multiplicity. Be not afraid of me, except when I take too much claret; and then indeed there is a _furor brevis_ as dangerous as anger.... I have rather had too much dissipation since I came last to town. I try to keep a journal, and shall show 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.' _Letters of Boswell_, pp. 187-9.

[1053] Johnson, in _The Rambler_, No. 110, published on Easter Eve, 1751, thus justifies fasting:--'Austerity is the proper antidote to indulgence; the diseases of mind as well as body are cured by contraries, and to contraries we should readily have recourse if we dreaded guilt as we dread pain.'

[1054] From this too just observation there are some eminent exceptions, BOSWELL. 'Dr. Johnson said:--"Few bishops are now made for their learning. To be a bishop, a man must be learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age, but always of eminence."' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21, 1773.

[1055] Lord Shelburne wrote of him:--'He panted for the Treasury, having a notion that the King and he understood it from what they had read about revenue and funds while they were at Kew.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 141.

[1056] Chief Justice Pratt (afterwards Lord Camden) became popular by his conduct as a judge in Wilkes's case. In 1764 he received the freedom of the guild of merchants in Dublin in a gold box, and from Exeter the freedom of the city. The city of London gave him its freedom in a gold box, and had his portrait painted by Reynolds. _Gent. Mag_. 1764, pp. 44, 96, 144. See _ante_, p. 314.

[1057] The King, on March 3, 1761, recommended this measure to Parliament. _Parl. Hist_. xv. 1007. 'This,' writes Horace Walpole, 'was one of Lord Bute's strokes of pedantry. The tenure of the judges had formerly been a popular topic; and had been secured, as far as was necessary. He thought this trifling addition would be popular now, when nobody thought or cared about it.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, i. 41.

[1058] The money arising from the property of the prizes taken before the declaration of war, which were given to his Majesty by the peace of Paris, and amounted to upwards of AL700,000, and from the lands in the ceded islands, which were estimated at AL200,000 more. Surely there was a noble munificence in this gift from a Monarch to his people. And let it be remembered, that during the Earl of Bute's administration, the King was graciously pleased to give up the hereditary revenues of the Crown, and to accept, instead of them, of the limited sum of AL800,000 a year; upon which Blackstone observes, that 'The hereditary revenues, being put under the same management as the other branches of the publick patrimony, will produce more, and be better collected than heretofore; and the publick is a gainer of upwards of AL100,000 _per annum_ by this disinterested bounty of his Majesty.' Book I. Chap. viii. p. 330. BOSWELL. Lord Bolingbroke (_Works_, iii. 286), about the year 1734, pointed out that 'if the funds appropriated produce the double of that immense revenue of AL800,000 a year, which hath been so liberally given the King for life, the whole is his without account; but if they fail in any degree to produce it, the entire national fund is engaged to make up the difference.' Blackstone (edit, of 1778, i. 331) says:--'AL800,000 being found insufficient, was increased in 1777 to, AL900,000.' He adds, 'the public is still a gainer of near AL100,000.'

[1059] See _post_, iii. 163.

[1060] Lord Eldon says that Dundas, 'in broken phrases,' asked the King to confer a baronetcy on 'an eminent Scotch apothecary who had got from Scotland the degree of M. D. The King said:--"What, what, is that all? It shall be done. I was afraid you meant to ask me to make the Scotch apothecary a physician--that's more difficult."' He added:--'They may make as many Scotch apothecaries Baronets as they please, but I shall die by the College.' Twiss's _Eldon_, ii. 354. A Dr. Duncan, says Mr. Croker, was appointed physician to the King in 1760. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 448. A doctor of the same name, and no doubt the same man, was made a baronet in Aug. 1764. Jesse's _Selwyn_, i. 287.

[1061] Wedderburne, afterwards Lord Chancellor Loughborough, and Earl of Rosslyn. One of his 'errands' had been to bring Johnson bills in payment of his first quarter's pension. _Ante_, i. 376.

[1062] Home, the author of _Douglas_. Boswell says that 'Home showed the Lord Chief Baron Orde a pair of pumps he had on, and desired his lordship to observe how well they were made, telling him at the same time that they had been made for Lord Bute, but were rather too little for him, so his lordship had made John a present of them. "I think," said the Lord Chief Baron, "you have taken the measure of Lord Bute's foot."' _Boswelliana_, p. 252. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 335), writes:--'With Robertson and Home in London I passed the time very agreeably; for though Home was now [1758] entirely at the command of Lord Bute, whose nod made him break every engagement--for it was not given above an hour or two before dinner--yet, as he was sometimes at liberty when the noble lord was to dine abroad, like a horse loosened from his stake, he was more sportful than usual.'

[1063] Lord North was merely the King's agent. The King was really his own minister at this time, though he had no seat in his own cabinet councils.

[1064] Only thirty-four years earlier, on the motion in the Lords for the removal of Walpole, the Duke of Argyle said:--'If my father or brother took upon him the office of a sole minister, I would oppose it as inconsistent with the constitution, as a high crime and misdemeanour. I appeal to your consciences whether he [Walpole] hath not done this... He hath turned out men lately for differing with him.' Lord Chancellor Hardwicke replied:--'A sole minister is so illegal an office that it is none. Yet a noble lord says, _Superior respondeat_, which is laying down a rule for a prime minister; whereas the noble Duke was against any.' _The Secker MS. Parl. Hist_. xi. 1056-7. In the Protest against the rejection of the motion it was stated:--'We are persuaded that a sole, or even a first minister, is an officer unknown to the law of Britain,' &c. _Ib_ p. 1215. Johnson reports the Chancellor as saying:--'It has not been yet pretended that he assumes the title of _prime minister_, or, indeed, that it is applied to him by any but his enemies ... The first minister can, in my opinion, be nothing more than a formidable illusion, which, when one man thinks he has seen it, he shows to another, as easily frighted as himself,' &c. Johnson's _Works_, x. 214-15. In his _Dictionary_, _premier_ is only given as an adjective, and _prime minister_ is not given at all. When the Marquis of Rockingham was forming his cabinet in March 1782, Burke wrote to him:--'Stand firm on your ground--but _one_ ministry. I trust and hope that your lordship will not let _one_, even but _one_ branch of the state ... out of your own hands; or those which you can entirely rely on.' Burke's _Corres_. ii. 462. See also _post_, iii. 46, April 1, 1781, Jan. 20, 1782, and April 10, 1783.

[1065] See _ante_, p. 300.

[1066] 'As he liberally confessed that all his own disappointments proceeded from himself, he hated to hear others complain of general injustice.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 251. See _post_, end of May, 1781, and March 23, 1783.

[1067] 'Boswell and I went to church, but came very late. We then took tea, by Boswell's desire; and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not seem to fast ostentatiously.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 138.

[1068] See ante, i. 433.

[1069] See ante, i. 332.

[1070] The following passages shew that the thought, or something like it, was not new to Johnson:--'BruyA"re declares that we are come into the world too late to produce anything new, that nature and life are preoccupied, and that description and sentiment have been long exhausted.' _The Rambler_, No. 143. 'Some advantage the ancients might gain merely by priority, which put them in possession of the most natural sentiments, and left us nothing but servile repetition or forced conceits.' _Ib_ No. 169. 'My earlier predecessors had the whole field of life before them, untrodden and unsurveyed; characters of every kind shot up in their way, and those of the most luxuriant growth, or most conspicuous colours, were naturally cropt by the first sickle. They that follow are forced to peep into neglected corners.' _The Idler_, No. 3. 'The first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction.' _Rasselas_, ch. x. Some years later he wrote:--'Whatever can happen to man has happened so often that little remains for fancy or invention.' _Works_, vii. 311. See also _The Rambler_, No. 86. In _The Adventurer_, No. 95, he wrote:--'The complaint that all topicks are preoccupied is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness.' See _post_, under Aug. 29, 1783. Dr. Warton (_Essay on Pope_, i. 88) says that 'St. Jerome relates that Donatus, explaining that passage in Terence, _Nihil est dictum quod non sit dictum prius_, railed at the ancients for taking from him his best thoughts. _Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt_.'

[1071] Warburton, in the Dedication of his _Divine Legation_ to the Free-thinkers (vol. I. p. ii), says:--'Nothing, I believe, strikes the serious observer with more surprize, in this age of novelties, than that strange propensity to infidelity, so visible in men of almost every condition: amongst whom the advocates of Deism are received with all the applauses due to the inventers of the arts of life, or the deliverers of oppressed and injured nations.' See _ante_, ii. 81.

[1072] In _The Rambler_, No. 89, Johnson writes of 'that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation, where suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence; where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness to offend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be pleased.' In _The Idler_, No. 34, he says 'that companion will be oftenest welcome whose talk flows out with inoffensive copiousness and unenvied insipidity.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Such tattle as filled your last sweet letter prevents one great inconvenience of absence, that of returning home a stranger and an inquirer. The variations of life consist of little things. Important innovations are soon heard, and easily understood. Men that meet to talk of physicks or metaphysicks, or law or history, may be immediately acquainted. We look at each other in silence, only for want of petty talk upon slight occurrences.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 354.

[1073] _Pr. and Med_. p. 138. BOSWELL.

[1074] This line is not, as appears, a quotation, but an abstract of p. 139 of _Pr. and Med_.

[1075] This is a proverbial sentence. 'Hell,' says Herbert, 'is full of good meanings and wishings.' _Jacula Prudentum_, p. 11, edit 1651. MALONE.

[1076] Boswell wrote to Temple:--'I have only to tell you, as my divine, that I yesterday received the holy sacrament in St. Paul's Church, and was exalted in piety.' It was in the same letter that he mentioned 'Asiatic multiplicity' (_ante_ p. 352, note 1). _Letters of Boswell_, p. 189.

[1077]

'Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici, Solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum'

Horace, _Epis_. i. 6. 1.

'Not to admire is all the art I know, To make men happy and keep them so'

Pope's _Imitations_, adapted from Creech.

[1078]

'We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love; And even as these are well and wisely fixed, In dignity of being we ascend.'

Wordsworth's _Works_, ed. 1857, vi. 135.

[1079]

'Amoret's as sweet and good, As the most delicious food; Which but tasted does impart Life and gladness to the heart. Sacharissa's beauty's wine, Which to madness does incline; Such a liquor as no brain That is mortal can sustain.'

Waller's _Epistles_, xii. BOSWELL.

[1080] Not that he would have wished Boswell 'to talk from books.' 'You and I,' he once said to him, 'do not talk from books.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 3, 1773. See _post_, iii, 108, note 1, for Boswell's want of learning.

[1081] See _post_, under March 30, 1783.

[1082] Yet he sat to Miss Reynolds, as he tells us, perhaps ten times (_post_, under June 17, 1783), and 'Miss Reynolds's mind,' he said, 'was very near to purity itself.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 80. Eight years later Barry, in his _Analysis_ (_post_, May, 1783, note), said:--'Our females are totally, shamefully, and cruelly neglected in the appropriation of trades and employments.' Barry's _Works_, ii. 333.

[1083] The four most likely to be mentioned would be, I think, Beauclerk, Garrick, Langton, and Reynolds. On p. 359, Boswell mentions Beauclerk's 'acid manner.'

[1084] In his _Dictionary_, Johnson defines _muddy_ as _cloudy in mind, dull_; and quotes _The Winter's Tale_, act i. sc. 2. Wesley (_Journal_, ii. 10) writes:--'Honest, _muddy_ M. B. conducted me to his house.' Johnson (_post_, March 22, 1776), after telling how an acquaintance of his drank, adds, 'not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always _muddy_.' It seems at first sight unlikely that he called Reynolds _muddy_; yet three months earlier he had written:--'Reynolds has taken too much to strong liquor.' _Ante_, p. 292, note 5.

[1085] In _The Rambler_, No. 72, Johnson defines good-humour as 'a habit of being pleased; a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition.'

[1086] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 17, 1773.

[1087] 'It is with their learning as with provisions in a besieged town, every one has a mouthful, and no one a bellyful.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 200.

[1088] 'Men bred in the Universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 158. Lord Shelburne said that the Earl of Bute had 'a great deal of superficial knowledge, such as is commonly to be met with in France and Scotland, chiefly upon matters of natural philosophy, mines, fossils, a smattering of mechanics, a little metaphysics, and a very false taste in everything.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 139. 'A gentleman who had heard that Bentley was born in the north, said to Porson: "Wasn't he a Scotchman?" "No, Sir," replied Porson, "Bentley was a great Greek scholar."' Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 322.

[1089] Walton did not retire from business till 1643. But in 1664, Dr. King, Bishop of Chichester, in a letter prefixed to his _Lives_, mentions his having been familiarly acquainted with him for forty years; and in 1631 he was so intimate with Dr. Donne that he was one of the friends who attended him on his death-bed. J. BOSWELL, jun. His first wife's uncle was George Cranmer, the grandson of the Archbishop's brother. His second wife was half-sister of Bishop Ken.

[1090] Johnson himself, as Boswell tells us, 'was somewhat susceptible of flattery.' _Post_, end of 1784.

[1091] The first time he dined with me, he was shewn into my book-room, and instantly poured over the lettering of each volume within his reach. My collection of books is very miscellaneous, and I feared there might be some among them that he would not like. But seeing the number of volumes very considerable, he said, 'You are an honest man, to have formed so great an accumulation of knowledge.' BURNEY. Miss Burney describes this visit (_Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, ii. 93):--'Everybody rose to do him honour; and he returned the attention with the most formal courtesie. My father whispered to him that music was going forward, which he would not, my father thinks, have found out; and, placing him on the best seat vacant, told his daughters to go on with the duet, while Dr. Johnson, intently rolling towards them one eye--for they say he does not see with the other--made a grave nod, and gave a dignified motion with one hand, in silent approvance of the proceeding.' He was next introduced to Miss Burney, but 'his attention was not to be drawn off two minutes longer from the books, to which he now strided his way. He pored over them shelf by shelf, almost brushing them with his eye-lashes from near examination. At last, fixing upon something that happened to hit his fancy, he took it down, and standing aloof from the company, which he seemed clean and clear to forget, he began very composedly to read to himself, and as intently as if he had been alone in his own study. We were all excessively provoked, for we were languishing, fretting, expiring to hear him talk.' Dr. Burney, taking up something that Mrs. Thrale had said, ventured to ask him about Bach's concert. 'The Doctor, comprehending his drift, good-naturedly put away his book, and see-sawing with a very humorous smile, drolly repeated, "Bach, Sir? Bach's concert? And pray, Sir, who is Bach? Is he a piper?"'

[1092] Reynolds, noting down 'such qualities as Johnson's works cannot convey,' says that 'the most distinguished was his possessing a mind which was, as I may say, always ready for use. Most general subjects had undoubtedly been already discussed in the course of a studious thinking life. In this respect few men ever came better prepared into whatever company chance might throw him; and the love which he had to society gave him a facility in the practice of applying his knowledge of the matter in hand, in which I believe he was never exceeded by any man.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 454.

[1093] See _ante_, p. 225.

[1094] 'Our silly things called Histories,' wrote Burke (_Corres_, i. 337). 'The Duke of Richmond, Fox, and Burke,' said Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 82), 'were conversing about history, philosophy, and poetry. The Duke said, "I prefer history to philosophy or poetry, because history is _truth_." Both Fox and Burke disagreed with him: they thought that poetry was _truth_, being a representation of human nature.' Lord Bolingbroke had said (_Works_, iii. 322) that the child 'in riper years applies himself to history, or to that which he takes for history, to authorised romance.'

[1095] Mr. Plunket made a great sensation in the House of Commons (Feb. 28, 1825) by saying that history, if not judiciously read, 'was no better than an old almanack'--which Mercier had already said in his _Nouveau Tableau de Paris_--'Malet du Pan's and such like histories of the revolution are no better than an old almanack.' Boswell, we see, had anticipated both. CROKER.

[1096] It was at Rome on Oct. 15, 1764, says Gibbon in a famous passage, 'that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.' It was not till towards the end of 1772 that he 'undertook the composition of the first volume.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 198, 217-9.

[1097] See p. 348. BOSWELL. Gibbon, when with Johnson, perhaps felt that timidity which kept him silent in Parliament. 'I was not armed by nature and education,' he writes, 'with the intrepid energy of mind and voice _Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebus agendis_. Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 221. Some years before he entered Parliament, he said that his genius was 'better qualified for the deliberate compositions of the closet, than for the extemporary discourses of the Parliament. An unexpected objection would disconcert me; and as I am incapable of explaining to others what I do not thoroughly understand myself, I should be meditating while I ought to be answering.' _Ib_ ii. 39.

[1098] A very eminent physician, whose discernment is as acute and penetrating in judging of the human character as it is in his own profession, remarked once at a club where I was, that a lively young man, fond of pleasure, and without money, would hardly resist a solicitation from his mistress to go upon the highway, immediately after being present at the representation of _The Beggar's Opera_. I have been told of an ingenious observation by Mr. Gibbon, that '_The Beggar's Opera_ may, perhaps, have sometimes increased the number of highwaymen; but that it has had a beneficial effect in refining that class of men, making them less ferocious, more polite, in short, more like gentlemen.' Upon this Mr. Courtenay said, that 'Gay was the Orpheus of highwaymen.' BOSWELL.

[1099] 'The play like many others was plainly written only to divert without any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived without more speculation than life requires or admits to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and house-breakers seldom frequent the play-house, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.' _Works_, viii. 68.

[1100] 'The worthy Queensb'ry yet laments his Gay.'

_The Seasons_. Summer, l. 1422. Pope (_Prologue to the Satires_, l. 259) says:--

'Of all thy blameless life the sole return My verse, and Queensb'ry weeping o'er thy urn.'

Johnson (_Works_, viii. 69) mentions 'the affectionate attention of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, into whose house he was taken, and with whom he passed the remaining part of his life.' Smollett, in _Humphry Clinker_, in the letters of Sept. 12 and 13, speaks of the Duke as 'one of the best men that ever breathed,' 'one of those few noblemen whose goodness of heart does honour to human nature.' He died in 1778.

[1101] This song is the twelfth air in act i.

[1102] 'In several parts of tragedy,' writes Tom Davies, 'Walker's look, deportment, and action gave a _distinguished glare to tyrannic rage_.' Davies's _Garrick_, i. 24.

[1103] Pope said of himself and Swift:--'Neither of us thought it would succeed. We shewed it to Congreve, who said it would either take greatly or be damned confoundedly. We were all at the first night of it in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle say, "It will do--it must do! I see it in the eyes of them!" This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon: for that duke has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in this, as usual: the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.' Spence's _Anec_. p. 159. See _The Dundad_, iii. 330, and _post_, April 25, 1778.

[1104] R. B. Sheridan married Miss Linley in 1773.

[1105] His wife had AL3000, settled on her with delicate generosity by a gentleman to whom she had been engaged. Moore's _Sheridan_, i. 43.

[1106] 'Those who had felt the mischief of discord and the tyranny of usurpation read _Hudibras_ with rapture, for every line brought back to memory something known, and gratified resentment by the just censure of something hated. But the book, which was once quoted by princes, and which supplied conversation to all the assemblies of the gay and witty, is now seldom mentioned, and even by those that affect to mention it, is seldom read.' _The Idler_, No. 59.

[1107] In his _Life of Addison_, Johnson says (_Works_, vii. 431):--'The reason which induced Cervantes to bring his hero to the grave, _para mi solo nacio Don Quixote y yo para el_ [for me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him], made Addison declare, with undue vehemence of expression, that he would kill Sir Roger; being of opinion that they were born for one another, and that any other hand would do him wrong.'

[1108] 'It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up his original delineation. He describes his knight as having his imagination somewhat warped; but of this perversion he has made very little use.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 431.

[1109] 'The papers left in the closet of Pieresc supplied his heirs with a whole winter's fuel.' _The Idler_, No. 65. 'A chamber in his house was filled with letters from the most eminent scholars of the age. The learned in Europe had addressed Pieresc in their difficulties, who was hence called "the attorney-general of the republic of letters." The niggardly niece, though entreated to permit them to be published, preferred to use these learned epistles occasionally to light her fires.' D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_, i. 59.

[1110] Boswell was accompanied by Paoli. To justify his visit to London, he said:--'I think it is also for my interest, as in time I may get something. Lord Pembroke was very obliging to me when he was in Scotland, and has corresponded with me since. I have hopes from him.' _Letters of Boswell_, pp. 182, 189, and _post_, iii. 122, note 2. Horace Walpole described Lord Pembroke in 1764 as 'a young profligate.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, i. 415.

[1111] Page 316. BOSWELL.

[1112] Page 291. BOSWELL.

[1113] In justice to Dr. Memis, though I was against him as an Advocate, I must mention, that he objected to the variation very earnestly, before the translation was printed off. BOSWELL.

[1114] Mr. Croker quotes _The World_ of June 7, 1753, where a Londoner, 'to gratify the curiosity of a country friend, accompanied him in Easter week to Bedlam. To my great surprise,' he writes, 'I found a hundred people, at least, who, having paid their twopence apiece, were suffered unattended to run rioting up and down the wards making sport of the miserable inhabitants. I saw them in a loud laugh of triumph at the ravings they had occasioned.' Young (_Universal Passion_, Sat. v.) describes Britannia's daughters

'As unreserved and beauteous as the sun, Through every sign of vanity they run; Assemblies, parks, coarse feasts in city halls, Lectures and trials, plays, committees, balls; Wells, _Bedlams_, executions, Smithfield scenes, And fortune-tellers' caves, and lions' dens.'

In 1749, William Hutton walked from Nottingham to London, passed three days there in looking about, and returned on foot. The whole journey cost him ten shillings and eight-pence. He says:--'I wished to see a number of curiosities, but my shallow pocket forbade. _One penny to see Bedlam was all I could spare_.' Hutton's _Life_, pp. 71, 74. Richardson (_Familiar Letters_, No. 153) makes a young lady describe her visit to Bedlam:--'The distempered fancies of the miserable patients most unaccountably provoked mirth and loud laughter; nay, so shamefully inhuman were some, among whom (I am sorry to say it) were several of my own sex, as to endeavour to provoke the patients into rage to make them sport.'

[1115] In the _Life of Dryden_ (_Works_, vii. 304), Johnson writes:--'Virgil would have been too hasty if he had condemned him [Statius] _to straw_ for one sounding line.' In _Humphry Clinker_ (Letter of June 10), Mr. Bramble says to Clinker:--'The sooner you lose your senses entirely the better for yourself and the community. In that case, some charitable person might provide you with a dark room and clean straw in Bedlam.' Churchill, in _Independence_ (Poems, ii. 307), writes:--

'To Bethlem with him--give him whips and straw, I'm very sensible he's mad in law.'

[1116] My very honourable friend General Sir George Howard, who served in the Duke of Cumberland's army, has assured me that the cruelties were not imputable to his Royal Highness. BOSWELL. Horace Walpole shews the Duke's cruelty to his own soldiers. 'In the late rebellion some recruits had been raised under a positive engagement of dismission at the end of three years. When the term was expired they thought themselves at liberty, and some of them quitted the corps. The Duke ordered them to be tried as deserters, and not having received a legal discharge, they were condemned. Nothing could mollify him; two were executed.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George II_, ii. 203.

[1117] It has been suggested that this is Dr. Percy (see _post_, April 23, 1778), but Percy was more than 'an acquaintance of ours,' he was a friend.

[1118] Very likely Mr. Steevens. See _post_, April 13, 1778, and May 15, 1784.

[1119] On this day Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Boswell has made me promise not to go to Oxford till he leaves London; I had no great reason for haste, and therefore might as well gratify a friend. I am always proud and pleased to have my company desired. Boswell would have thought my absence a loss, and I know not who else would have considered my presence as profit. He has entered himself at the Temple, and I joined in his bond. He is to plead before the Lords, and hopes very nearly to gain the cost of his journey. He lives much with his friend Paoli.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 216. Boswell wrote to Temple on June 6:--'For the last fortnight that I was in London I lay at Paoli's house, and had the command of his coach.... I felt more dignity when I had several servants at my devotion, a large apartment, and the convenience and state of a coach. I recollected that _this dignity in London_ was honourably acquired by my travels abroad, and my pen after I came home, so I could enjoy it with my own approbation.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 200. A year later he records, that henceforth, while in London, he was Paoli's constant guest till he had a house of his own there (_post_, iii. 34).

[1120] Lord Stowell told Mr. Croker that, among the Scottish _literati_, Mr. Crosbie was the only man who was disposed to _stand up_ (as the phrase is) to Johnson. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 270. It is said that he was the original of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell in Scott's novel of _Guy Mannering_. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Autobiography_, p. 420) says of 'the famous club called the Poker,' which was founded in Edinburgh in 1762:--'In a laughing humour, Andrew Crosbie was chosen Assassin, in case any officer of that sort should be needed; but David Hume was added as his Assessor, without whose assent nothing should be done, so that between _plus_ and _minus_ there was likely to be no bloodshed.' See Boswell's _Herbrides_, Aug. 16, 1773.

[1121] He left on the 22nd. 'Boswell,' wrote Johnson to Mrs. Thrale on May 22, 'went away at two this morning. He got two and forty guineas in fees while he was here. He has, by his wife's persuasion and mine, taken down a present for his mother-in-law.' [? Step-mother, with whom he was always on bad terms; _post_, iii. 95, note 1.] _Piozzi Letters_, i. 219. Boswell, the evening of the same day, wrote to Temple from Grantham:--'I have now eat (sic) a Term's Commons in the Inner Temple. You cannot imagine what satisfaction I had in the form and ceremony of the _Hall_.... After breakfasting with Paoli, and worshipping at St. Paul's, I dined tA¬te-A -tA¬te with my charming Mrs. Stuart. We talked with unreserved freedom, as we had nothing to fear; we were _philosophical_, upon honour--not deep, but feeling; we were pious; we drank tea, and bid each other adieu as finely as romance paints. She is my wife's dearest friend; so you see how beautiful our intimacy is. I then went to Mr. Johnson's, and he accompanied me to Dilly's, where we supped; and then he went with me to the inn in Holborn, where the Newcastle Fly sets out; we were warmly affectionate. He is to buy for me a chest of books, of his choosing, off stalls, and I am to read more and drink less; that was his counsel.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 196.

[1122] Yet Gilbert Walmsley had called him in his youth 'a good scholar.' _Garrick Corres_. i. 1; and Boswell wrote to him:--'Mr. Johnson is ready to bruise any one who calls in question your classical knowledge, and your happy application of it.' _Ib_ p. 622.

[1123] 'Those whose lot it is to ramble can seldom write, and those who know how to write very seldom ramble.' Johnson to Mrs. Thrale. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 32. See _post_, April 17, 1778.

[1124] A letter from Boswell to Temple on this day helps to fill up the gap in his journal:--'It gives me acute pain that I have not written more to you since we parted last; but I have been like a skiff in the sea, driven about by a multiplicity of waves. I am now at Mr. Thrale's villa, at Streatham, a delightful spot. Dr. Johnson is here too. I came yesterday to dinner, and this morning Dr. Johnson and I return to London, and I go with Mr. Beauclerk to see his elegant villa and library, worth AL3000, at Muswell Hill, and return and dine with him. I hope Dr. Johnson will dine with us. I am in that dissipated state of mind that I absolutely cannot write; I at least imagine so. But while I glow with gaiety, I feel friendship for you, nay, admiration of some of your qualities, as strong as you could wish. My excellent friend, let us ever cultivate that mutual regard which, as it has lasted till now, will, I trust, never fail. On Saturday last I dined with John Wilkes and his daughter, and nobody else, at the Mansion-House; it was a most pleasant scene. I had that day breakfasted with Dr. Johnson. I drank tea with Lord Bute's daughter-in-law, and I supped with Miss Boswell. What variety! Mr. Johnson went with me to Beauclerk's villa, Beauclerk having been ill; it is delightful, just at Highgate. He has one of the most numerous and splendid private libraries that I ever saw; green-houses, hot-houses, observatory, laboratory for chemical experiments, in short, everything princely. We dined with him at his box at the Adelphi. I have promised to Dr. Johnson to read when I get to Scotland, and to keep an account of what I read; I shall let you know how I go on. My mind must be nourished.' _Letters of Boswell_, pp. 193-5.

[1125] Swift did not laugh. 'He had a countenance sour and severe, which he seldom softened by any appearance of gaiety. He stubbornly resisted any tendency to laughter.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 222. Neither did Pope laugh. 'By no merriment, either of others or his own, was he ever seen excited to laughter.' _Ib_ p. 312. Lord Chesterfield wrote (_Letters_ i. 329):--'How low and unbecoming a thing laughter is. I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason nobody has ever heard me laugh.' Mrs. Piozzi records (_Anec_. p. 298) that 'Dr. Johnson used to say "that the size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth;" and his own was never contemptible.'

[1126] The day before he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Peyton and Macbean [_ante_, i 187] are both starving, and I cannot keep them.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 218. On April 1, 1776, he wrote:--'Poor Peyton expired this morning. He probably, during many years for which he sat starving by the bed of a wife, not only useless but almost motionless, condemned by poverty to personal attendance chained down to poverty--he probably thought often how lightly he should tread the path of life without his burthen. Of this thought the admission was unavoidable, and the indulgence might be forgiven to frailty and distress. His wife died at last, and before she was buried he was seized by a fever, and is now going to the grave. Such miscarriages when they happen to those on whom many eyes are fixed, fill histories and tragedies; and tears have been shed for the sufferings, and wonder excited by the fortitude of those who neither did nor suffered more than Peyton.' _Ib_ 312. Baretti, in a marginal note on _Piozzi Letters_, i. 219, writes:--'Peyton was a fool and a drunkard. I never saw so nauseous a fellow.' But Baretti was a harsh judge.

[1127] A learned Greek. BOSWELL. 'He was a nephew of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and had fled from some massacre of the Greeks.' Johnstone's _Life of Parr_, i. 84.

[1128] See _ante_, p. 278.

[1129] Wife of the Rev. Mr. Kenneth Macaulay, authour of _The History of St. Kilda_. BOSWELL. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 28, 1773.

[1130] 'The Elzevirs of Glasgow,' as Boswell called them. (_Hebrides_, Oct. 29.)

[1131] See in Boswell's _Hebrides_, Johnson's letter of May 6, 1775.

[1132] A law-suit carried on by Sir Allan Maclean, Chief of his Clan, to recover certain parts of his family estates from the Duke of Argyle. BOSWELL.

[1133] A very learned minister in the Isle of Sky, whom both Dr. Johnson and I have mentioned with regard. BOSWELL. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 3, 1773, and Johnson's _Works_, ix. 54. Johnson in another passage, (_ib_. p. 115), speaks of him as 'a very learned minister. He wished me to be deceived [as regards Ossian] for the honour of his country; but would not directly and formally deceive me.' Johnson told him this to his face. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22. His credulity is shewn by the belief he held, that the name of a place called Ainnit in Sky was the same as the _Anaitidis delubrum_ in Lydia. _Ib_ Sept. 17.

[1134] This darkness is seen in his letters. He wrote 'June 3, 1775. It required some philosophy to bear the change from England to Scotland. The unpleasing tone, the rude familiarity, the barren conversation of those whom I found here, in comparison with what I had left, really hurt my feelings ... The General Assembly is sitting, and I practise at its Bar. There is _de facto_ something low and coarse in such employment, though on paper it is a Court of _Supreme Judicature_; but guineas must be had ... Do you know it requires more than ordinary spirit to do what I am to do this very morning: I am to go to the General Assembly and arraign a judgement pronounced last year by Dr. Robertson, John Home, and a good many more of them, and they are to appear on the other side. To speak well, when I despise both the cause and the Judges, is difficult: but I believe I shall do wonderfully. I look forward with aversion to the little, dull labours of the Court of Sessions. You see, Temple, I have my troubles as well as you have. My promise under the venerable yew has kept me sober.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 198. On June 19, he is 'vexed to think myself a coarse labourer in an obscure corner.... Mr. Hume says there will in all probability be a change of the Ministry soon, which he regrets. Oh, Temple, while they change so often, how does one feel an ambition to have a share in the great department! ... My father is most unhappily dissatisfied with me. He harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think how shockingly erroneous!) and wandering (or some such phrase) to London!' _Ib_ p. 201. 'Aug. 12. I have had a pretty severe return this summer of that melancholy, or hypochondria, which is inherent in my constitution.... While afflicted with melancholy, all the doubts which have ever disturbed thinking men come upon me. I awake in the night dreading annihilation, or being thrown into some horrible state of being.' He recounts a complimentary letter he had received from Lord Mayor Wilkes, and continues:--'Tell me, my dear Temple, if a man who receives so many marks of more than ordinary consideration can be satisfied to drudge in an obscure corner, where the manners of the people are disagreeable to him.' _Ib_ p. 209.

[1135] He was absent from the end of May till some time in August. He wrote from Oxford on June 1:--'Don't suppose that I live here as we live at Streatham. I went this morning to the chapel at _six_.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 223. He was the guest of Mr. Coulson, a Fellow of University College. On June 6, he wrote:--'Such is the uncertainty of all human things that Mr. Coulson has quarrelled with me. He says I raise the laugh upon him, and he is an independent man, and all he has is his own, and he is not used to such things.' _Ib_ p. 226. An eye-witness told Mr. Croker that 'Coulson was going out on a country living, and talking of it with the same pomp as to Lord Stowell.' [He had expressed to him his doubts whether, after living so long in the _great world_, he might not grow weary of the comparative retirement of a country parish. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 425.] Johnson chose to imagine his becoming an archdeacon, and made himself merry at Coulson's expense. At last they got to warm words, and Johnson concluded the debate by exclaiming emphatically--'Sir, having meant you no offence, I will make you no apology.' _Ib_ p. 458. The quarrel was made up, for the next day he wrote:--'Coulson and I are pretty well again.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 229.

[1136] Boswell wrote to Temple on Sept. 2:--'It is hardly credible how difficult it is for a man of my sensibility to support existence in the family where I now am. My father, whom I really both respect and affectionate (if that is a word, for it is a different feeling from that which is expressed by _love_, which I can say of you from my soul), is so different from me. We _divaricate_ so much, as Dr. Johnson said, that I am often hurt when, I dare say, he means no harm: and he has a method of treating me which makes me feel myself like a _timid boy_, which to _Boswell_ (comprehending all that my character does in my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) is intolerable. His wife too, whom in my conscience I cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I don't know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet. I however have done so all this week to admiration: nay, I have appeared good-humoured; but it has cost me drinking a considerable quantity of strong beer to dull my faculties.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 215.

[1137] Voltaire wrote of HA(C)nault's _AbrA(C)gA(C) de l' Histoire de la France_:--'Il a A(C)tA(C) dans l'histoire ce que Fontenelle a A(C)tA(C) dans la philosophie. Il l'a rendue familiA"re.' Voltaire's _Works_, xvii. 99. With a quotation from HA(C)nault, Carlyle begins his _French Revolution_.

[1138] My _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, which that lady read in the original manuscript. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale, 'May 22, 1775:--I am not sorry that you read Boswell's _Journal_. Is it not a merry piece? There is much in it about poor me.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 220. 'June 11, 1775. You never told me, and I omitted to inquire, how you were entertained by Boswell's _Journal_. _One would think the man had been hired to be a spy upon me_. He was very diligent, and caught opportunities of writing from time to time.' _Ib_ p. 233. I suspect that the words I have marked by italics are not Johnson's, but are Mrs. Piozzi's interpolation.

[1139] 'In my heart of _heart_.' _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 2.

[1140] Another parcel of Lord Hailes's _Annals of Scotland_. BOSWELL.

[1141] Where Sir Joshua Reynolds lived. BOSWELL.

[1142] Johnson's birthday. In _Pr. and Med_. p. 143, is a prayer which was, he writes, 'composed at Calais in a sleepless night, and used before the morn at NA'tre Dame.'

[1143] See _ante_, i. 243, note 3.

[1144] 'While Johnson was in France, he was generally very resolute in speaking Latin.' _Post_, under Nov. 12, 1775.

[1145] Miss Thrale. BOSWELL.

[1146] In his _Journal_ he records 'their meals are gross' (_post_, Oct. 10). We may doubt therefore Mrs. Piozzi's statement that he said of the French: 'They have few sentiments, but they express them neatly; they have little in meat too, but they dress it well.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 102.

[1147] See _ante_, i. 362, note 1.

[1148] Boswell wrote to Temple:--'You know, my dearest friend, of what importance this is to me; of what importance it is to the family of Auchinleck, _which you may be well convinced is my supreme object in this world_.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 217. Alexander Boswell was killed in a duel in 1822.

[1149] This alludes to my old feudal principle of preferring male to female succession. BOSWELL. See _post_, under Jan. 10, 1776.

[1150] He wrote to Dr. Taylor on the same day:--'I came back last Tuesday from France. Is not mine a kind of life turned upside down? Fixed to a spot when I was young, and roving the world when others are contriving to sit still, I am wholly unsettled. I am a kind of ship with a wide sail, and without an anchor.' _Notes and Queries_. 6th S., v. 422.

[1151] There can be no doubt that many years previous to 1775 he corresponded with this lady, who was his step-daughter, but none of his earlier letters to her have been preserved. BOSWELL. Many of these earlier letters were printed by Malone and Croker in later editions. See i. 512.

[1152] When on their way to Wales, July 7, 1774, _post_, vol. v.

[1153] Smollett wrote (_Travels_, i. 88):--'Notwithstanding the gay disposition of the French, their houses are all gloomy. After all it is in England only where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay furniture, neatness, and convenience.'

[1154] Son of Mrs. Johnson, by her first husband. BOSWELL.

[1155] 'A gentleman said, "Surely that Vanessa must be an extraordinary woman, that could inspire the Dean to write so finely upon her." Mrs. Johnson [Stella] smiled, and answered "that she thought that point not quite so clear; for it was well known the Dean could write finely upon a broomstick."' Johnson's Works, viii. 210.

[1156] Horace Walpole wrote from Paris this autumn:--'I have not yet had time to visit the Hotel du Chatelet.' _Letters_, vi. 260. On July 31st, 1789, writing of the violence of the mob, he says:--'The hotel of the Due de Chatelet, lately built and superb, has been assaulted, and the furniture sold by auction.' _Ib_ ix. 202.

[1157] See _post_, under Nov. 12, 1775, note, and June 25, 1784.

[1158] The Prior of the Convent of the Benedictines where Johnson had a cell appropriated to him. _Post_, Oct. 31, and under Nov. 12.

[1159] The rest of this paragraph appears to be a minute of what was told by Captain Irwin. BOSWELL.

[1160] Melchior Canus, a celebrated Spanish Dominican, who died at Toledo, in 1560. He wrote a treatise _De Locis Theologicis_, in twelve books. BOSWELL.

[1161] D'Argenson's. CROKER.

[1162] See Macaulay's _Essays_, i. 355, and Mr. Croker's answer in his note on this passage. His notion that 'this book was exhibited purposely on the lady's table, in the expectation that her English visitors would think it a literary curiosity,' seems absurd. He does not choose to remember the '_Bibl. des FA(C)es_ and other books.' Since I wrote this note Mr. Napier has published an edition of Boswell, in which this question is carefully examined (ii. 550). He sides with Macaulay.

[1163] 'Si quelque invention peut supplA(C)er A la connaissance qui nous est refusA(C)e des longitudes sur la mer, c'est celle du plus habile horloger de France (M. Leroi) qui dispute cette invention A l'Angleterre.' Voltaire, _SiA"cle de Louis XV_, ch. 43.

[1164] The _Palais Marchand_ was properly only the stalls which were placed along some of the galleries of the Palais. They have been all swept away in Louis Philippe's restoration of the Palais. CROKER.

[1165] 'Petit siA"ge de bois sur lequel on faisait asseoir, pour les interroger, ceux qui A(C)taient accusA(C)s d'un dA(C)lit pouvant faire encourir une peine afflictive.' LITTRA%.

[1166] The Conciergerie, before long to be crowded with the victims of the Revolution.

[1167] This passage, which so many think superstitious, reminds me of Archbishop Laud's Diary. BOSWELL. Laud, for instance, on Oct. 27, 1640, records:--'In my upper study hung my picture taken by the life; and coming in, I found it fallen down upon the face, and lying on the floor, the string being broken by which it was hanged against the wall. I am almost every day threatened with my ruin in Parliament. God grant this be no omen.' Perhaps there was nothing superstitious in Johnson's entry. He may have felt ill in mind or body, and dreaded to become worse.

[1168] For a brief account of FrA(C)ron, father and son, see Carlyle's _French Revolution_, part ii. bk. 1. ch. 4.

[1169] A round table, the centre of which descended by machinery to a lower floor, so that supper might be served without the presence of servants. It was invented by Lewis XV. during the favour of Madame du Barri. CROKER.

[1170] See _ante_, i. 363, note 3.

[1171] Before the Revolution the passage from the garden of the Tuileries into the Place Louis XV. was over a _pont tournant_. CROKER.

[1172] The niece of Arabella Fermor, the Belinda of the _Rape of the Lock_. Johnson thus mentions this lady (_Works_, viii. 246):--'At Paris, a few years ago, a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English convent, mentioned Pope's works with very little gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour.' She is no doubt the Lady Abbess mentioned _post_, March 15, 1776. She told Mrs. Piozzi in 1784 'that she believed there was but little comfort to be found in a house that harboured poets; for that she remembered Mr. Pope's praise made her aunt very troublesome and conceited, while his numberless caprices would have employed ten servants to wait on him.' Piozzi's _Journey_, i. 20.

[1173] Mrs. Thrale wrote, on Sept. 18, 1777:--'When Mr. Thrale dismisses me, I am to take refuge among the Austin Nuns, and study Virgil with dear Miss Canning.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 374.

[1174] _Pensionnaires_, pupils who boarded in the convent.

[1175] He brought back a snuff-box for Miss Porter. _Ante_, p. 387.

[1176] 63 livres = AL2 12s. 6d.

[1177] Torture-chamber. See _ante_, i. 467, note 1.

[1178] 'Au parlement de Paris la chambre chargA(C)e des affaires criminelles.' LITTRA%.

[1179] The grandson was the Duke d'Enghien who was put to death by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804.

[1180] His tender affection for his departed wife, of which there are many evidences in his _Prayers and Meditations_, appears very feelingly in this passage. BOSWELL. 'On many occasions I think what she [his wife] would have said or done. When I saw the sea at Brighthelmstone, I wished for her to have seen it with me.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 91.

[1181] See _post_, p. 402.

[1182] See _post_, iii. 89.

[1183] Dr. Moore (_Travels in France_, i. 31) says that in Paris, 'those who cannot afford carriages skulk behind pillars, or run into shops, to avoid being crushed by the coaches, which are driven as near the wall as the coachman pleases.' Only on the Pont Neuf, and the Pont Royal, and the quays between them were there, he adds, foot-ways.

[1184] Lewis XVI.

[1185] The King's sister, who was guillotined in the Reign of Terror.

[1186] See p. 391. BOSWELL.

[1187] 'When at Versailles, the people showed us the Theatre. As we stood on the stage looking at some machinery for playhouse purposes; "Now we are here, what shall we act, Mr. Johnson:--_The Englishman in Paris_"? "No, no," replied he, "we will try to act _Harry the Fifth_."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 101. _The Englishman in Paris_ is a comedy by Foote.

[1188] This epithet should be applied to this animal, with one bunch. BOSWELL.

[1189] He who commanded the troops at the execution of Lewis XVI.

[1190] 1462.

[1191] I cannot learn of any book of this name. Perhaps Johnson saw _Durandi Rationale Officiorum Divinorum_, which was printed in 1459, one year later than Johnson mentions. A copy of this he had seen at Blenheim in 1774. His _Journey into North Wales_, Sept. 22.

[1192] He means, I suppose, that he read these different pieces while he remained in the library. BOSWELL.

[1193] Johnson in his _Dictionary_ defines _Apartment_ as _A room; a set of rooms_.

[1194] Smollett (_Travels_, i. 85) writes of these temporary servants:--'You cannot conceive with what eagerness and dexterity these rascally valets exert themselves in pillaging strangers. There is always one ready in waiting on your arrival, who begins by assisting your own servant to unload your baggage, and interests himself in your own affairs with such artful officiousness that you will find it difficult to shake him off.'

[1195] Livres--francs we should now say.

[1196] It was here that Rousseau got rid of his children. 'Je savais que l'A(C)ducation pour eux la moins perilleuse A(C)tait celle des enfans trouvA(C)s; et je les y mis.' _Les Reveries, ix'me promenade_.

[1197] Dr. Franklin, in 1785, wrote:--'I am credibly informed that nine-tenths of them die there pretty soon.' _Memoirs_, iii. 187. Lord Kames (_Sketches of the History of Man_, iii. 91) says:--'The Paris almanac for the year 1768 mentions that there were baptised 18,576 infants, of whom the foundling-hospital received 6025.'

[1198] St. Germain des PrA(C)s. Better known as the Prison of the Abbaye.

[1199] I have looked in vain into De Bure, Meerman, Mattaire, and other typographical books, for the two editions of the _Catholicon_, which Dr. Johnson mentions here, with _names_ which I cannot make out. I read 'one by _Latinius_, one by _Boedinus_.' I have deposited the original MS. in the British Museum, where the curious may see it. My grateful acknowledgements are due to Mr. Planta for the trouble he was pleased to take in aiding my researches. BOSWELL. A Mr. Planta is mentioned in Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, v. 39.

[1200] Friar Wilkes visited Johnson in May 1776. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 336. On Sept. 18, 1777, Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson:--'I have got some news that will please you now. Here is an agreeable friend come from Paris, whom you were very fond of when we were there--the Prior of our English Benedictine Convent, Mr. Cowley ... He inquires much for you; and says Wilkes is very well, No. 45, as they call him in the Convent. A cell is always kept ready for your use he tells me.' _Ib_ p. 373.

[1201] The writing is so bad here, that the names of several of the animals could not be decyphered without much more acquaintance with natural history than I possess.--Dr. Blagden, with his usual politeness, most obligingly examined the MS. To that gentleman, and to Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, who also very readily assisted me, I beg leave to express my best thanks. BOSWELL

[1202] It is thus written by Johnson, from the French pronunciation of _fossane_. It should be observed, that the person who shewed this Menagerie was mistaken in supposing the _fossane_ and the Brasilian weasel to be the same, the _fossane_ being a different animal, and a native of Madagascar. I find them, however, upon one plate in Pennant's _Synopsis of Quadrupeds_. BOSWELL.

[1203] How little Johnson relished this talk is shewn by his letter to Mrs. Thrale of May 1, 1780, and by her answer. He wrote:--'The Exhibition, how will you do, either to see or not to see? The Exhibition is eminently splendid. There is contour, and keeping, and grace, and expression, and all the varieties of artificial excellence.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. III. She answered:--'When did I ever plague about contour, and grace, and expression? I have dreaded them all three since that hapless day at Compiegne when you teased me so.' _Ib_ p. 116

[1204] '_Nef_, (old French from _nave_) _the body of a church_.' Johnson's _Dictionary_.

[1205] My worthy and ingenious friend, Mr. Andrew Lumisden, by his accurate acquaintance with France, enabled me to make out many proper names, which Dr. Johnson had written indistinctly, and sometimes spelt erroneously. Boswell. Lumisden is mentioned in Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 13.

[1206] Baretti, in a marginal note on _Piozzi Letters_, i. 142, says that 'Johnson saw next to nothing of Paris.' On p. 159 he adds:--'He noticed the country so little that he scarcely spoke of it ever after.' He shews, however, his ignorance of Johnson's doings by saying that 'in France he never touched a pen.'

[1207] Hume's reception in 1763 was very different. He wrote to Adam Smith:--'I have been three days at Paris, and two at Fontainebleau, and have everywhere met with the most extraordinary honours which the most exorbitant vanity could wish or desire.' The Dauphin's three children, afterwards Lewis XVI, Lewis XVIII, and Charles X, had each to make a set speech of congratulation. He was the favourite of the most exclusive coteries. J.H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 168, 177, 208. But at that date, sceptical philosophy was the rage.

[1208] Horace Walpole wrote from Paris in 1771 (_Letters_, v. 317-19):--'The distress here is incredible, especially at Court.... The middling and common people are not much richer than Job when he had lost everything but his patience.' Rousseau wrote of the French in 1777:--'Cette nation qui se prA(C)tend si gaie montre peu cette gaitA(C) dans ses jeux. Souvent j'allais jadis aux guinguettes pour y voir danser le menu peuple; mais ses danses A(C)taient si maussades, son maintien si dolent, si gauche, que j'en sortais plutot contristA(C) que rA(C)joui.' _Les RA(C)veries, IXme. promenade_. Baretti (_Journey to Genoa_, iv. 146) denies that the French 'are entitled to the appellation of cheerful.' 'Provence,' he says (_ib_. 148), 'is the only province in which you see with some sort of frequency the rustic assemblies roused up to cheerfulness by the _fifre_ and the _tambourin_.' Mrs. Piozzi describes the absence of 'the happy middle state' abroad. 'As soon as Dover is left behind, every man seems to belong to some other man, and no man to himself.' Piozzi's _Journey_, ii. 341. Voltaire, in his review of _Julia Mandeville_ (_Works_, xliii. 364), says:--'Pour peu qu'un roman, une tragA(C)die, une comA(C)die ait de succA"s a Londres, on en fait trois et quatre A(C)ditions en peu de mois; c'est que l'A(C)tat mitoyen est plus riche et plus instruit en Angleterre qu'en France, &c.' But Barry, the painter (_post_, May 17, 1783), in 1766, described to Burke, 'the crowds of busy contented people which cover (as one may say) the whole face of the country.' But he was an Irishman comparing France with Ireland. 'They make a strong, but melancholy contrast to a miserable ------ which I cannot help thinking of sometimes. You will not be at any loss to know that I mean Ireland.' Barry's _Works_, i. 57. 'Hume,' says Dr. J. H. Burton, 'in his _Essay on The Parties of Great Britain_ (published in 1741), alludes to the absence of a middle class in Scotland, where he says, there are only "two ranks of men, gentlemen who have some fortune and education, and the meanest starving poor; without any considerable number of the middling rank of men, which abounds more in England, both in cities and in the country, than in any other quarter of the world."' _Life of Hume_, i. 198. I do not find this passage in the edition of Hume's _Essays_ of 1770.

[1209] Yet Smollett wrote in 1763:--'All manner of butcher's meat and poultry are extremely good in Paris. The beef is excellent.' He adds, 'I can by no means relish their cookery.' Smollett's _Travels_, i. 86. Horace Walpole, in 1765, wrote from Amiens on his way to Paris:--'I am almost famished for want of clean victuals, and comfortable tea, and bread and butter.' _Letters_, iv. 401. Goldsmith, in 1770, wrote from Paris:--'As for the meat of this country I can scarce eat it, and though we pay two good shillings an head for our dinner, I find it all so tough, that I have spent less time with my knife than my pick-tooth.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 219.

[1210] Walpole calls Paris 'the ugliest, beastliest town in the universe,' and describes the indelicacy of the talk of women of the first rank. _Letters_, iv. 435. See _post_, May 13, 1778, and under Aug. 29, 1783.

[1211] Madame du Boccage, according to Miss Reynolds, whose authority was Baretti. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 467. See _post_, June 25, 1784.

[1212] In Edinburgh, Johnson threw a glass of lemonade out of the window because the waiter had put the sugar into it 'with his greasy fingers.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 14.

[1213] Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson in 1782:--'When we were in France we could form little judgement [of the spread of refinement], as our time was passed chiefly among English; yet I recollect that one fine lady, who entertained us very splendidly, put her mouth to the teapot, and blew in the spout when it did not pour freely.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 247.

[1214] That he did not continue exactly as in London is stated by Boswell himself. 'He was furnished with a Paris-made wig of handsome construction,' (_Post_, April 28, 1778). His _Journal_ shews that he bought articles of dress (_ante_, p. 398). Hawkins (_Life_, p. 517) says that 'he yielded to the remonstrances of his friends so far as to dress in a suit of black and a Bourgeois wig, but resisted their importunity to wear ruffles. By a note in his diary it appears that he laid out near thirty pounds in clothes for this journey.' A story told by Foote we may believe as little as we please. 'Foote is quite impartial,' said Johnson, 'for he tells lies of everybody.' _Post_, under March 15, 1776.

[1215] If Johnson's Latin was understood by foreigners in France, but not in England, the explanation may be found in his _Life of Milton_ (_Works_, vii. 99), where he says:--'He who travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries.' Johnson was so sturdy an Englishman that likely enough, as he was in London, he would not alter his pronunciation to suit his Excellency's ear. In Priestley's _Works_, xxiii. 233, a conversation is reported in which Dr. Johnson argued for the Italian method of pronouncing Latin.

[1216] See _ante_, ii. 80.

[1217] As Mme. de Boufflers is mentioned in the next paragraph, Boswell no doubt, wishes to shew that the letter was addressed to her. She was the mistress of the Prince of Conti. She understood English, and was the correspondent of Hume. There was also a Marquise de Boufflers, mistress of old King Stanislaus.

[1218] In the _Piozzi Letters_ (i. 34), this letter is dated May 16, 1771; in Boswell's first and second editions, July 16, 1771; in the third edition, July 16, 1775. In May, 1771, Johnson, so far as there is anything to shew, was in London. On July 16, both in 1771 and 1775, he was in Ashbourne. One of Hume's Letters (_Private Corres_., p. 283), dated April 17, 1775, shews that Mme. de Boufflers was at that time 'speaking of coming to England.'

[1219] Mme. de Boufflers was in England in the summer of 1763. Jesse's _Selwyn_, i. 235.

[1220] Boscovich, a learned Jesuit, was born at Ragusa in 1711, and died in 1787. He visited London in 1760, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Chalmers's _Biog. Dict_. See _ante_, p. 125.

[1221] See _ante_, p. 288.

[1222] Four years later Johnson thus spoke to Miss Burney of her father:--'"I love Burney; my heart goes out to meet him." "He is not ungrateful, Sir," cried I; "for most heartily does he love you." "Does he, Madam? I am surprised at that." "Why, Sir? Why should you have doubted it?" "Because, Madam, Dr. Burney is a man for all the world to love: it is but natural to love him." I could have almost cried with delight at this cordial, unlaboured _A(C)loge_.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 196.

[1223] 'Though a sepulchral inscription is professedly a panegyrick, and therefore not confined to historical impartiality, yet it ought always to be written with regard to truth. No man ought to be commended for virtues which he never possessed, but whoever is curious to know his faults must inquire after them in other places.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 265. See _post_, April 24, 1779.

[1224] See _ante_, i. 46.

[1225] See _post_, iii. 12, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 22.

[1226] Johnson's Dick Wormwood, in _The Idler_, No. 83, a man 'whose sole delight is to find everything wrong, triumphs when he talks on the present system of education, and tells us with great vehemence that we are learning words when we should learn things.' In the _Life of Milton_ (_Works_, vii, 75), Johnson writes:--'It is told that in the art of education Milton performed wonders; and a formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Aldersgate-street, by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider, that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of the horse.' He advised Boswell 'not to _refine_ in the education of his children. You must do as other people do.' _Post_, iii. 169. Yet, in his _Life of Barretier_ (_Works_, vi. 380), he says:--'The first languages which he learnt were the French, German, and Latin, which he was taught, not in the common way, by a multitude of definitions, rules, and exceptions, which fatigue the attention and burden the memory, without any use proportionate to the time which they require and the disgust which they create. The method by which he was instructed was easy and expeditious, and therefore pleasing. He learnt them all in the same manner, and almost at the same time, by conversing in them indifferently with his father.'

[1227] Miss Aikin, better known as Mrs. Barbauld. Johnson uses _Presbyterian_ where we should use _Unitarian_. 'The Unitarians of the present day [1843] are the representatives of that branch of the early Nonconformists who received the denomination of Presbyterians; and they are still known by that name.' _Penny Cyclo_. xxvi. 6.

[1228] Othello, act ii. sc. 1.

[1229] He quotes Barbauld's _Lessons for Children_ (p. 68, ed. of 1878). Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 16), speaking of books for children says:--'Mrs. Barbauld had his best praise; no man was more struck than Mr. Johnson with voluntary descent from possible splendour to painful duty.' Mrs. Piozzi alludes to Johnson's praise of Dr. Watts:--'Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action, will look with veneration on the writer, who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year. A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach.' _Works_, viii. 384. He praised Milton also, who, when 'writing _Paradise Lost_, could condescend from his elevation to rescue children from the perplexity of grammatical confusion, and the trouble of lessons unnecessarily repeated.' _Ib_ vii. 99. Mrs. Barbauld did what Swift said Gay had shown could be done. 'One may write things to a child without being childish.' Swift's _Works_, xvii. 221. In her _Advertisement_, she says:--'The task is humble, but not mean; to plant the first idea in a human mind can be no dishonour to any hand.' 'Ethicks, or morality,' wrote Johnson, 'is one of the studies which ought to begin with the first glimpse of reason, and only end with life itself.' _Works_, v. 243. This might have been the motto of her book. As the _Advertisement_ was not published till 1778 (Barbauld's _Works_, ii. 19) it is possible that Johnson's criticism had reached her, and that it was meant as an answer. Among her pupils were William Taylor of Norwich, Sir William Gell, and the first Lord Denman (_ib_. i. xxv-xxx). Mrs. Barbauld bore Johnson no ill-will. In her _Eighteen Hundred and Eleven_, she describes some future pilgrims 'from the Blue Mountains or Ontario's Lake,' coming to view 'London's faded glories.'

'With throbbing bosoms shall the wanderers tread The hallowed mansions of the silent dead, Shall enter the long aisle and vaulted dome Where genius and where valour find a home; Bend at each antique shrine, and frequent turn To clasp with fond delight some sculptured urn, The ponderous mass of Johnson's form to greet, Or breathe the prayer at Howard's sainted feet.'

_Ib_ i. 242.

[1230] According to Mme. D'Arblay he said:--'Sir, I shall be very glad to have a new sense _put into_ me.' He had been wont to speak slightingly of music and musicians. 'The first symptom that he showed of a tendency to conversion was upon hearing the following read aloud from the preface to Dr. Burney's _History of Music_ while it was yet in manuscript:--"The love of lengthened tones and modulated sounds seems a passion implanted in human nature throughout the globe; as we hear of no people, however wild and savage in other particulars, who have not music of some kind or other, with which they seem greatly delighted." "Sir," cried Dr. Johnson after a little pause, "this assertion I believe may be right." And then, see-sawing a minute or two on his chair, he forcibly added:--"All animated nature loves music--except myself!"' _Dr. Burney's Memoirs_, ii. 77. Hawkins (_Life_, p. 319) says that Johnson said of music, '"it excites in my mind no ideas, and hinders me from contemplating my own." I have sometimes thought that music was positive pain to him. Upon his hearing a celebrated performer go through a hard composition, and hearing it remarked that it was very difficult, he said, "I would it had been impossible."' Yet he had once bought a flageolet, though he had never made out a tune. 'Had I learnt to fiddle,' he said, 'I should have done nothing else' (_post_, April 7, 1778, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 15, 1773). Not six months before his death he asked Dr. Burney to teach him the scale of music (_ante_, p. 263, note 4). That 'he appeared fond of the bagpipe, and used often to stand for some time with his ear close to the great drone' (Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 15), does not tell for much either way. In his _Hebrides_ (_Works_, ix. 55), he shews his pleasure in singing. 'After supper,' he writes, 'the ladies sung Erse songs, to which I listened, as an English audience to an Italian opera, delighted with the sound of words which I did not understand.' Boswell records (_Hebrides_, Sept. 28) that another day a lady 'pleased him much, by singing Erse songs, and playing on the guitar.' Johnson himself shews that if his ear was dull to music, it was by no means dead to sound. He thus describes a journey by night in the Highlands (_Works_, ix. 155):--'The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough music of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before.' In 1783, when he was in his seventy-fourth year, he said, on hearing the music of a funeral procession:--'This is the first time that I have ever been affected by musical sounds.' _Post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_.

[1231] Miss Burney, in 1778, records that he said:--'David, Madam, looks much older than he is; for his face has had double the business of any other man's; it is never at rest; when he speaks one minute, he has quite a different countenance to what he assumes the next; I don't believe he ever kept the same look for half-an-hour together in the whole course of his life; and such an eternal, restless, fatiguing play of the muscles must certainly wear out a man's face before its real time.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 64. Malone fathers this witticism on Foote. Prior's _Malone_, p. 369.

[1232] On Nov. 2 of this year, a proposal was made to Garrick by the proprietors of Covent-Garden Theatre, 'that now in the time of dearth and sickness' they should open their theatres only five nights in each week. _Garrick Corres_, ii. 108.

[1233] 'Mrs. Boswell no doubt had disliked his wish to pass over his daughters in entailing the Auchinleck estate, in favour of heirs-male however remote. _Post_, p. 414--Johnson, on Feb. 9, 1776, opposing this intention, wrote:--'I hope I shall get some ground now with Mrs. Boswell.'

[1234] Joseph Ritter, a Bohemian, who was in my service many years, and attended Dr. Johnson and me in our Tour to the Hebrides. After having left me for some time, he had now returned to me. BOSWELL. See _ante_, ii. 103.

[1235] See Boswell's _Hebrides_ near the end.

[1236] See _ante_, p. 383.

[1237] Mr. Croker says that he was informed by Boswell's grand-daughter, who died in 1836, that it had come to be pronounced Auchinleck. The Rev. James Chrystal, the minister of Auchinleck, in answer to my inquiry, politely informs me that 'the name "Affleck" is still quite common as applied to the parish, and even Auchinleck House is as often called Place Affleck as otherwise.'

[1238] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 4.

[1239] Acts of Parliament of Scotland, 1685, cap. 22. BOSWELL. Cockburn (_Life of Jeffrey_, i. 372) mentions 'the statute (11 and 12 Victoria, chap. 36) which dissolves the iron fetters by which, for about 160 years, nearly three-fourths of the whole land in Scotland was made permanently unsaleable, and unattachable for debt, and every acre in the kingdom might be bound up, throughout all ages, in favour of any heirs, or any conditions, that the caprice of each unfettered owner might be pleased to proscribe.'

[1240] As first, the opinion of some distinguished naturalists, that our species is transmitted through males only, the female being all along no more than a _nidus_, or nurse, as Mother Earth is to plants of every sort; which notion seems to be confirmed by that text of scripture, 'He was yet _in the loins of his_ FATHER when Melchisedeck met him' (Heb.