Chapter 12

likewise the last year of exportation. _Penny Cyclo_. viii. 22.

[658]

'Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote.'

Goldsmith's _Retaliation_.

Horace Walpole says of Lord Mansfield's speech on the _Habeas Corpus Bill_ of 1758:--'Perhaps it was the only speech that in my time at least had real effect; that is, convinced many persons.' _Reign of George II_, iii. 120.

[659] Gibbon, who was now a member of parliament, was present at this dinner. In his _Autobiography_ (_Misc. Works_, i. 221) he says:--'After a fleeting illusive hope, prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute.... Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice. But I assisted at the debates of a free assembly; I listened to the attack and defence of eloquence and reason; I had a near prospect of the character, views, and passions of the first men of the age.... The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian.'

[660] Horace, _Odes_, iii. 24, 46.

[661] Lord Bolingbroke, who, however detestable as a metaphysician, must be allowed to have had admirable talents as a political writer, thus describes the House of Commons, in his 'Letter to Sir William Wyndham:' --'You know the nature of that assembly; they grow, like hounds, fond of the man who shews them game, and by whose halloo they are used to be encouraged.' BOSWELL. Bolingbroke's _Works_, i. 15.

[662] Smollett says (_Journey_, i. 147) that he had a musquetoon which could carry eight balls. 'This piece did not fail to attract the curiosity and admiration of the people in every place through which we passed. The carriage no sooner halted than a crowd surrounded the man to view the blunderbuss, which they dignified with the name of _petit canon_. At Nuys in Burgundy, he fired it in the air, and the whole mob dispersed, and scampered off like a flock of sheep.'

[663] Smollett does not say that he frightened the nobleman. He mistook him for a postmaster and spoke to him very roughly. The nobleman seems to have been good-natured; for, at the next stage, says Smollett, 'observing that one of the trunks behind was a little displaced, he assisted my servant in adjusting it.' His name and rank were learnt later on. _Journey_, i. p. 134.

[664] The two things did not happen in the same town. 'I am sure, writes Thicknesse (_Travels_, ii. 147), 'there was but that single French nobleman in this mighty kingdom, who would have submitted to such insults as the Doctor _says_ he treated him with; nor any other town but Sens [it was Nuys] where the firing of a gun would have so terrified the inhabitants.'

[665] Both Smollett and Thicknesse were great grumblers.

[666] Lord Bolingbroke said of Lord Oxford:--'He is naturally inclined to believe the worst, which I take to be a certain mark of a mean spirit and a wicked soul; at least I am sure that the contrary quality, when it is not due to weakness of understanding, is the fruit of a generous temper and an honest heart.' Bolingbroke's _Works_, i. 25. Lord Eldon asked Pitt, not long before his death, what he thought of the honesty of mankind. 'His answer was, that he had a favourable opinion of mankind upon the whole, and that he believed that the majority was really actuated by fair meaning and intention.' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 499.

[667] Johnson wrote in 175l:--'We are by our occupations, education, and habits of life, divided almost into different species, which regard one another, for the most part, with scorn and malignity.' _The Rambler_, No. 160. In No. 173 he writes of 'the general hostility which every part of mankind exercises against the rest to furnish insults and sarcasm.' In 1783 he said:--'I am ready now to call a man _a good man_ upon easier terms than I was formerly.' _Post_, under Aug. 29, 1783.

[668] Johnson thirty-four years earlier, in the _Life of Savage_ (_Works_, viii. 188), had written:--'The knowledge of life was indeed his chief attainment; and it is not without some satisfaction that I can produce the suffrage of Savage in favour of human nature.' On April 14, 1781, he wrote:--'The world is not so unjust or unkind as it is peevishly represented. Those who deserve well seldom fail to receive from others such services as they can perform; but few have much in their power, or are so stationed as to have great leisure from their own affairs, and kindness must be commonly the exuberance of content. The wretched have no compassion; they can do good only from strong principles of duty.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 199.

[669] Pope thus introduces this story:

'Faith in such case if you should prosecute, I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit, Who send the thief who [that] stole the cash away, And punish'd him that put it in his way.'

_Imitations of Horace_, book II. epist. ii. [l. 23]. BOSWELL.

[670] Very likely Boswell himself. See _post_, July 17, 1779, where he put Johnson's friendship to the test by neglecting to write to him.

[671] No doubt Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, afterwards Bishop of Killaloe. See _ante_, p. 84.

[672] The reverse of the story of _Combabus_, on which Mr. David Hume told Lord Macartney, that a friend of his had written a tragedy. It is, however, possible that I may have been inaccurate in my perception of what Dr. Johnson related, and that he may have been talking of the same ludicrous tragical subject that Mr. Hume had mentioned. BOSWELL. The story of Combabus, which was originally told by Lucian, may be found in Bayle's _Dictionary_. MALONE.

[673] Horace Walpole, less than three months later, wrote (_Letters_, vii. 83):--'Poor Mrs. Clive has been robbed again in her own lane [in Twickenham] as she was last year. I don't make a visit without a blunderbuss; one might as well be invaded by the French.' Yet Wesley in the previous December, speaking of highwaymen, records (_Journal_,