Chapter 8

find in the first two editions not _remembered_, but _recollected_. Perhaps this change is due to euphony, as _collected_ comes a few lines before. Horace Walpole, in one of his _Letters_ (i. 15), distinguishes the two words, on his revisiting his old school, Eton:--'By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound--I recollect so much, and remember so little.'

[411] He made the same boast at St. Andrews. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 19. He was, I believe, speaking of his translation of Courayer's _Life of Paul Sarpi and Notes_, of which some sheets were printed off. _Ante_, i. 135.

[412] Horace Walpole, after mentioning that George III's mother, who died in 1772, left but £27,000 when she was reckoned worth at least £300,000, adds:--'It is no wonder that it became the universal belief that she had wasted all on Lord Bute. This became still more probable as he had made the purchase of the estate at Luton, at the price of £114,000, before he was visibly worth £20,000; had built a palace there, another in town, and had furnished the former in the most expensive manner, bought pictures and books, and made a vast park and lake.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 19.

[413] To him Boswell dedicated his _Thesis_ as _excelsae familiae de Bute spei alterae_ (_ante_, ii. 20). In 1775, he wrote of him:--'He is warmly my friend and has engaged to do for me.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 186

[414] He was mistaken in this. See _ante_, i. 260; also iii. 420.

[415] In England in like manner, and perhaps for the same reason, all Attorneys have been converted into Solicitors.

[416] 'There is at Edinburgh a society or corporation of errand boys, called Cawdies, who ply in the streets at night with paper lanthorns, and are very serviceable in carrying messages.' _Humphrey Clinker_. Letter of Aug. 8.

[417] Their services in this sense are noticed in the same letter.

[418]

'The formal process shall be turned to sport, And you dismissed with honour by the Court.' FRANCIS. Horace, _Satires_, ii.i.86.

[419] Mr. Robertson altered this word to _jocandi_, he having found in Blackstone that to irritate is actionable. BOSWELL.

[420] Quoted by Johnson, _ante_, ii. l97.

[421] His god-daughter. See _post_ May 10, 1784.

[422] See _post_, under Dec. 20, 1782

[423] See _ante_, i. 155

[424] The will of King Alfred, alluded to in this letter, from the original Saxon, in the library of Mr. Astle, has been printed at the expense of the University of Oxford. BOSWELL.

[425] He was a surgeon in this small Norfolk town. Dr. Burney's _Memoirs_, i. 106.

[426] Burney visited Johnson first in 1758, when he was living in Gough Square. _Ante_, i. 328.

[427] Mme. D'Arblay says that Dr. Johnson sent them to Dr. Burney's house, directed 'For the Broom Gentleman.' Dr. Burney's _Memoirs_, ii. 180.

[428] 'Sept. 14, 1781. Dr. Johnson has been very unwell indeed. Once I was quite frightened about him; but he continues his strange discipline--starving, mercury, opium; and though for a time half demolished by its severity, he always in the end rises superior both to the disease and the remedy, which commonly is the most alarming of the two.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 107. On Sept. 18, his birthday, he wrote:--'As I came home [from church], I thought I had never begun any period of life so placidly. I have always been accustomed to let this day pass unnoticed, but it came this time into my mind that some little festivity was not improper. I had a dinner, and invited Allen and Levett.' _Pr. and Med._ p. 199.

[429] This remark, I have no doubt, is aimed at Hawkins, who (_Life_, p. 553) pretends to account for this trip.

[430] _Pr. and Med._ p. 201. BOSWELL.

[431] He wrote from Lichfield on the previous Oct. 27:--'All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tediousness of time; a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned. But such is the lot of man.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 209.

[432] The truth of this has been proved by sad experience. BOSWELL. Mrs. Boswell died June 4, 1789. MALONE.

[433] See account of him in the _Gent. Mag_. Feb. 1785. BOSWELL, see ante, i. 243, note 3.

[434] Mrs. Piozzi (_Synonymy_, ii. 79), quoting this verse, under _Officious_, says;--'Johnson, always thinking neglect the worst misfortune that could befall a man, looked on a character of this description with less aversion than I do.'

[435]

'Content thyself to be _obscurely good_.'

Addisons _Cato_, act. iv. sc. 4.

[436] In both editions of Sir John Hawkins's _Life of Dr. Johnson_, 'letter'd _ignorance_' is printed. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker (_Boswell_, p. I) says that 'Mr. Boswell is habitually unjust to Sir J. Hawkins.' As some kind of balance, I suppose, to this injustice, he suppresses this note.

[437] Johnson repeated this line to me thus:--

'And Labour steals an hour to die.'

But he afterwards altered it to the present reading. BOSWELL. This poem is printed in the _Ann. Reg_. for 1783, p. 189, with the following variations:--l. 18, for 'ready help' 'useful care': l. 28, 'His single talent,' 'The single talent'; l. 33, 'no throbs of fiery pain,' 'no throbbing fiery pain'; l. 36, 'and freed,' 'and forced.' On the next page it is printed _John Gilpin_.

[438] Mr. Croker says that this line shows that 'some of Gray's happy expressions lingered in Johnson's memory' He quotes a line that comes at the end of the _Ode on Vicissitude_--'From busy day, the peaceful night.' This line is not Gray's, but Mason's.

[439] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:--'If you want events, Here is Mr. Levett just come in at fourscore from a walk to Hampstead, eight miles, in August.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 177.

[440] In the original, _March_ 20. On the afternoon of March 20 Lord North announced in the House of Commons 'that his Majesty's Ministers were no more.' _Parl. Hist_. xxii. 1215.

[441] _Pr. and Med_. p. 209 [207]. BOSWELL.

[442] See _ante_, ii. 355, iii. 46, iv. 81, 100. Mr. Seward records in his _Biographiana_, p. 600--without however giving the year--that 'Johnson being asked what the Opposition meant by their flaming speeches and violent pamphlets against Lord North's administration, answered: "They mean, Sir, rebellion; they mean in spite to destroy that country which they are not permitted to govern."'

[443] In the previous December the City of London in an address, writes Horace Walpole, 'besought the King to remove both his public and _private_ counsellors, and used these stunning and memorable words:--_"Your armies are captured; the wonted superiority of your navies is annihilated, your dominions are lost."_ Words that could be used to no other King; no King had ever lost so much without losing all. If James II. lost his crown, yet the crown lost no dominions.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 483. The address is given in the _Ann. Reg._ xxiv. 320. On Aug. 4 of this year Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor:--'Perhaps no nation not absolutely conquered has declined so much in so short a time. We seem to be sinking. Suppose the Irish, having already gotten a free trade and an independent Parliament, should say we will have a King and ally ourselves with the House of Bourbon, what could be done to hinder or overthrow them?' Mr. Morrison's _Autographs_, vol. ii.

[444] In February and March, 1771, the House of Commons ordered eight printers to attend at the bar on a charge of breach of privilege, in publishing reports of debates. One of the eight, Miller of the _Evening Post_, when the messenger of the House tried to arrest him, gave the man himself into custody on a charge of assault. The messenger was brought before Lord Mayor Crosby and Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, and a warrant was made out for his commitment. Bail was thereupon offered and accepted for his appearance at the next sessions. The Lord Mayor and Oliver were sent to the Tower by the House. Wilkes was ordered to appear on April 8; but the Ministry, not daring to face his appearance, adjourned the House till the 9th. A committee was appointed by ballot to inquire into the late obstructions to the execution of the orders of the House. It recommended the consideration of the expediency of the House ordering that Miller should be taken into custody. The report, when read, was received with a roar of laughter. Nothing was done. Such was, to quote the words of Burke in the _Annual Register_ (xiv. 70), 'the miserable result of all the pretended vigour of the Ministry.' See _Parl. Hist._ xvii. 58, 186.

[445] Lord Cornwallis's army surrendered at York Town, five days before Sir Henry Clinton's fleet and army arrived off the Chesapeak. _Ann. Reg._ xxiv. 136.

[446] Johnson wrote on March 30:--'The men have got in whom I have endeavoured to keep out; but I hope they will do better than their predecessors; it will not be easy to do worse.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 706.

[447] This note was in answer to one which accompanied one of the earliest pamphlets on the subject of Chatterton's forgery, entitled _Cursory Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley_, &c. Mr. Thomas Warton's very able _Inquiry_ appeared about three months afterwards; and Mr. Tyrwhitt's admirable _Vindication of his Appendix_ in the summer of the same hear, left the believers in this daring imposture nothing but 'the resolution to say again what had been said before.' MALONE.

[448] _Pr. and Med._ p. 207. BOSWELL.

[449] He addressed to him an Ode in Latin, entitled _Ad Thomam Laurence, medicum doctissimum, quum filium peregre agentem desiderio nimis tristi prosequeretur. Works_, i. 165.

[450] Mr. Holder, in the Strand, Dr. Johnson's apothecary. BOSWELL.

[451] 'Johnson should rather have written "imperatum est." But the meaning of the words is perfectly clear. "If you say yes, the messenger has orders to bring Holder to me." Mr. Croker translates the words as follows:-"If you consent, pray tell the messenger to bring Holder to me." If Mr. Croker is resolved to write on points of classical learning, we would advise him to begin by giving an hour every morning to our old friend Corderius.' Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, i 366. In _The Answers to Mr. Macaulay's Criticism_, prefixed to Croker's _Boswell_, p. 13, it is suggested that Johnson wrote either _imperetur_ or _imperator_. The letter may be translated: 'A fresh chill, a fresh cough, and a fresh difficulty in breathing call for a fresh letting of blood. Without your advice, however, I would not submit to the operation. I cannot well come to you, nor need you come to me. Say yes or no in one word, and leave the rest to Holder and to me. If you say yes, let the messenger be bidden (imperetur) to bring Holder to me. May 1, 1782. When _you_ have left, whither shall I turn?'

[452] Soon after the above letter, Dr. Lawrence left London, but not before the palsy had made so great a progress as to render him unable to write for himself. The folio wing are extracts from letters addressed by Dr. Johnson to one of his daughters:--

'You will easily believe with what gladness I read that you had heard once again that voice to which we have all so often delighted to attend. May you often hear it. If we had his mind, and his tongue, we could spare the rest.

'I am not vigorous, but much better than when dear Dr. Lawrence held my pulse the last time. Be so kind as to let me know, from one little interval to another, the state of his body. I am pleased that he remembers me, and hope that it never can be possible for me to forget him. July 22, 1782.'

'I am much delighted even with the small advances which dear Dr. Lawrence makes towards recovery. If we could have again but his mind, and his tongue in his mind, and his right hand, we should not much lament the rest. I should not despair of helping the swelled hand by electricity, if it were frequently and diligently supplied.

'Let me know from time to time whatever happens; and I hope I need not tell you, how much I am interested in every change. Aug. 26, 1782.'

'Though the account with which you favoured me in your last letter could not give me the pleasure that I wished, yet I was glad to receive it; for my affection to my dear friend makes me desirous of knowing his state, whatever it be. I beg, therefore, that you continue to let me know, from time to time, all that you observe.

'Many fits of severe illness have, for about three months past, forced my kind physician often upon my mind. I am now better; and hope gratitude, as well as distress, can be a motive to remembrance. Bolt-court, Fleet-street, Feb. 4, 1783.' BOSWELL.

[453] Mr. Langton being at this time on duty at Rochester, he is addressed by his military title. BOSWELL.

[454] Eight days later he recorded:--'I have in ten days written to Aston, Lucy, Hector, Langton, Boswell; perhaps to all by whom my letters are desired.' _Pr. and Med._ 209. He had written also to Mrs. Thrale, but her affection, it should seem from this, he was beginning to doubt.

[455] See _ante_, p. 84.

[456] See _ante_, i. 247.

[457] See _post_, p. 158, note 4.

[458] Johnson has here expressed a sentiment similar to that contained in one of Shenstone's stanzas, to which, in his life of that poet, he has given high praise:--

'I prized every hour that went by, Beyond all that had pleased me before; But now they are gone [past] and I sigh, I grieve that I prized them no more.'

J. BOSWELL, JUN.

[459] She was his god-daughter. See _post_, May 10, 1784.

[460] 'Dr. Johnson gave a very droll account of the children of Mr. Langton, "who," he said, "might be very good children, if they were let alone; but the father is never easy when he is not making them do something which they cannot do; they must repeat a fable, or a speech, or the Hebrew alphabet, and they might as well count twenty for what they know of the matter; however, the father says half, for he prompts every other word."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 73. See _ante_, p. 20, note 2.

[461] A part of this letter having been torn off, I have, from the evident meaning, supplied a few words and half-words at the ends and beginnings of lines. BOSWELL.

[462] See vol. ii. p. 459. BOSWELL. She was Hector's widowed sister, and Johnson's first love. In the previous October, writing of a visit to Birmingham, he said:--'Mrs. Careless took me under her care, and told me when I had tea enough.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 205.

[463] This letter cannot belong to this year. In it Johnson says of his health, 'at least it is not worse.' But 1782 found him in very bad health; he passed almost the whole of the year 'in a succession of disorders' (_post_, p. 156). What he says of friendship renders it almost certain that the letter was written while he had still Thrale; and him he lost in April, 1781. Had it been written after June, 1779, but before Thrale's death, the account given of health would have been even better than it is (_ante_, iii. 397). It belongs perhaps to the year 1777 or 1778.

[464] 'To a man who has survived all the companions of his youth ... this full-peopled world is a dismal solitude.' _Rambler_, No. 69.

[465] See _ante_, i. 63.

[466] They met on these days in the years 1772, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 81, and 3.

[467] The ministry had resigned on the 20th. _Ante_, p. 139, note 1.

[468] Thirty-two years earlier he wrote in _The Rambler_, No. 53:-'In the prospect of poverty there is nothing but gloom and melancholy; the mind and body suffer together; its miseries bring no alleviation; it is a state in which every virtue is obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid reproach.' And again in No. 57:--'The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying, that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.' See _ante_. 441.

[469] See _ante_, p. 128.

[470] Hannah More wrote in April of this year (_Memoirs_, i. 249):--'Poor Johnson is in a bad state of health. I fear his constitution is broken up.' (Yet in one week he dined out four times. _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 237.) At one of these dinners, 'I urged him,' she continues (_ib_. p. 251) 'to take a _little_ wine. He replied, "I can't drink a _little_, child; therefore, I never touch it. Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." He was very good-humoured and gay. One of the company happened to say a word about poetry, "Hush, hush," said he, "it is dangerous to say a word of poetry before her; it is talking of the art of war before Hannibal."'

[471] This book was published in 1781, and, according to Lowndes, reached its seventh edition by 1787. See _ante_, i. 214.

[472] The clergyman's letter was dated May 4. _Gent. Mag._ 1786, p. 93. Johnson is explaining the reason of his delay in acknowledging it.

[473] What follows appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ of May 29, 1782:--'A correspondent having mentioned, in the _Morning Chronicle_ of December 12, the last clause of the following paragraph, as seeming to favour suicide; we are requested to print the whole passage, that its true meaning may appear, which is not to recommend suicide but exercise.

'Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed: but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disjoined by an easy separation. It was a principle among the ancients, that acute diseases are from Heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death, indeed, falls from Heaven, but we poison it by our own misconduct: to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.' [_The Rambler_, No. 85.] BOSWELL.

[474] The Correspondence may be seen at length in the _Gent. Mag._ Feb. 1786. BOSWELL. Johnson, advising Dr. Taylor 'to take as much exercise as he can bear,' says:-'I take the true definition of exercise to be labour without weariness.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 461.

[475] Here he met Hannah More. 'You cannot imagine,' she writes (_Memoirs_, i. 261), 'with what delight he showed me every part of his own college. Dr. Adams had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry. We spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner, Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of singing-birds." When we came into the common-room, we spied a fine large print of Johnson, hung up that very morning, with this motto:--_And is not Johnson ours, himself a host?_ Under which stared you in the face--_From Miss More's "Sensibility_." This little incident amused us; but, alas! Johnson looks very ill indeed--spiritless and wan. However, he made an effort to be cheerful.' Miss Adams wrote on June 14, 1782:--'On Wednesday we had here a delightful blue-stocking party. Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott and Miss More, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Henderson, &c., dined here. Poor Dr. Johnson is in very bad health, but he exerted himself as much as he could, and being very fond of Miss More, he talked a good deal, and every word he says is worth recording. He took great delight in showing Miss More every part of Pembroke College, and his own rooms, &c., and told us many things about himself when here. .. June 19, 1782. We dined yesterday for the last time in the company with Dr. Johnson; he went away to-day. A warm dispute arose; it was about cider or wine freezing, and all the spirit retreating to the center.' _Pemb. Coll. MSS._

[476] 'I never retired to rest without feeling the justness of the Spanish proverb, "Let him who sleeps too much borrow the pillow of a debtor."' Johnson's _Works_, iv. 14.

[477] See _ante_, i. 441.

[478] Which I celebrated in the Church of England chapel at Edinburgh, founded by Lord Chief Baron Smith, of respectable and pious memory. BOSWELL.

[479] See _ante_, p. 80.

[480] The Reverend Mr. Temple, Vicar of St. Gluvias, Cornwall. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i. 436, and ii. 316.

[481] 'He had settled on his eldest son,' says Dr. Rogers (_Boswelliana_, p. 129), 'the ancestral estate, with an unencumbered rental of £l,600 a year.' That the rental, whatever it was, was not unencumbered is shewn by the passage from Johnson's letter, _post_, p. 155, note 4. Boswell wrote to Malone in 1791 (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 828):--'The clear money on which I can reckon out of my estate is scarcely £900 a year.'

[482] Cowley's _Ode to Liberty_, Stanza vi.

[483] 'I do beseech all the succeeding heirs of entail,' wrote Boswell in his will, 'to be kind to the tenants, and not to turn out old possessors to get a little more rent.' Rogers's _Boswelliana, p. 186.

[484] Macleod, the Laird of Rasay. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 8.

[485] A farm in the Isle of Skye, where Johnson wrote his Latin Ode to Mrs. Thrale. _Ib._ Sept. 6.

[486] Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor on Oct. 4:--'Boswel's (sic) father is dead, and Boswel wrote me word that he would come to London for my advice. [The] advice which I sent him is to stay at home, and [busy] himself with his own affairs. He has a good es[tate], considerably burthened by settlements, and he is himself in debt. But if his wife lives, I think he will be prudent.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 462.

[487] Miss Burney wrote in the first week in December:--'Dr. Johnson was in most excellent good humour and spirits.' She describes later on a brilliant party which he attended at Miss Monckton's on the 8th, where the people were 'superbly dressed,' and where he was 'environed with listeners.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 186, and 190. See _ante_, p. 108, note 4.

[488] See _ante,_, iii. 337, where Johnson got 'heated' when Boswell maintained this.

[489] See _ante_, in. 395.

[490] The greatest part of the copy, or manuscript of _The Lives of the Poets_ had been given by Johnson to Boswell (_ante_, iv. 36).

[491] Of her twelve children but these three were living. She was forty-one years old.

[492] 'The family,' writes Dr. Burney, 'lived in the library, which used to be the parlour. There they breakfasted. Over the bookcases were hung Sir Joshua's portraits of Mr. Thrale's friends--Baretti, Burke, Burney, Chambers, Garrick, Goldsmith, Johnson, Murphy, Reynolds, Lord Sandys, Lord Westcote, and in the same picture Mrs. Thrale and her eldest daughter.' Mr. Thrale's portrait was also there. Dr. Burney's _Memoirs_, ii. 80, and Prior's _Malone_, p. 259.

[493] _Pr. and Med._ p. 214. BOSWELL.

[494] Boswell omits a line that follows this prayer:--'O Lord, so far as, &c.,--Thrale.' This means, I think, 'so far as it might be lawful, I prayed for Thrale.' The following day Johnson entered:--'I was called early. I packed up my bundles, and used the foregoing prayer with my morning devotions, somewhat, I think, enlarged. Being earlier than the family, I read St. Paul's farewell in the _Acts_ [xx. 17-end], and then read fortuitously in the gospels, which was my parting use of the library.'

[495] Johnson, no doubt, was leaving Streatham because Mrs. Thrale was leaving it. 'Streatham,' wrote Miss Burney, on Aug. 12 of this year, 'my other home, and the place where I have long thought my residence dependent only on my own pleasure, is already let for three years to Lord Shelburne.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii.151. Johnson was not yet leaving the Thrale family, for he joined them at Brighton, and he was living with them the following spring in Argyll-street. Nevertheless, if, as all Mrs. Thrale's friends strongly held, her second marriage was blameworthy, Boswell's remark admits of defence. Miss Burney in her diary and letters keeps the secret which Mrs. Thrale had confided to her of her attachment to Mr. Piozzi; but in the _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, which, as Mme. D'Arblay, she wrote long afterwards, she leaves little doubt that Streatham was given up as a step towards the second marriage. In 1782, on a visit there, she found that her father 'and all others--Dr. Johnson not excepted--were cast into the same gulf of general neglect. As Mrs. Thrale became more and more dissatisfied with her own situation, and impatient for its relief, she slighted Johnson's counsel, and avoided his society.' Mme. D'Arblay describes a striking scene in which her father, utterly puzzled by 'sad and altered Streatham,' left it one day with tears in his eyes. Another day, Johnson accompanied her to London. 'His look was stern, though dejected, but when his eye, which, however shortsighted, was quick to mental perception, saw how ill at ease she appeared, all sternness subsided into an undisguised expression of the strongest emotion, while, with a shaking hand and pointing finger, he directed her looks to the mansion from which they were driving; and when they faced it from the coach-window, as they turned into Streatham Common, tremulously exclaimed, "That house ...is lost to _me_... for ever."' Johnson's letter to Langton of March 20, 1782 (_ante_, p. 145), in which he says that he was 'musing in his chamber at Mrs. Thrale's,' shews that so early as that date he foresaw that a change was coming. Boswell's statement that 'Mrs. Thrale became less assiduous to please Johnson,' might have been far more strongly worded. See Dr. Burney's _Memoirs_, ii. 243-253. Lord Shelburne, who as Prime Minister was negotiating peace with the United States, France, and Spain, hired Mrs. Thrale's house 'in order to be constantly near London.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, iii. 242.

[496] Mr. Croker quotes the following from the _Rose MSS_.:--'Oct. 6, Die Dominica, 1782. Pransus sum Streathamiae agninum crus coctum cum herbis (spinach) comminutis, farcimen farinaceum cum uvis passis, lumbos bovillos, et pullum gallinae: Turcicae; et post carnes missas, ficus, uvas, non admodum maturas, ita voluit anni intemperies, cum malis Persicis, iis tamen duris. Non laetus accubui, cibum modicè sumpsi, ne intemperantiâ ad extremum peccaretur. Si recte memini, in mentem venerunt epulae in exequiis Hadoni celebratae. Streathamiam quando revisam?'

[497] 'Mr. Metcalfe is much with Dr. Johnson, but seems to have taken an unaccountable dislike to Mrs. Thrale, to whom he never speaks.... He is a shrewd, sensible, keen, and very clever man.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 172, 174. He, Burke, and Malone were Sir Joshua's executors. Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 293.

[498] Boswell should have shown, for he must have known it, that Johnson was Mrs. Thrale's guest at Brighton. Miss Burney was also of the party. Her account of him is a melancholy one:--'Oct. 28. Dr. Johnson accompanied us to a ball, to the universal amazement of all who saw him there; but he said he had found it so dull being quite alone the preceding evening, that he determined upon going with us; "for," said he, "it cannot be worse than being alone."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 161. 'Oct. 29. Mr. Pepys joined Dr. Johnson, with whom he entered into an argument, in which he was so roughly confuted, and so severely ridiculed, that he was hurt and piqued beyond all power of disguise, and, in the midst of the discourse, suddenly turned from him, and, wishing Mrs. Thrale goodnight, very abruptly withdrew. Dr. Johnson was certainly right with respect to the argument and to reason; but his opposition was so warm, and his wit so satirical and exulting, that I was really quite grieved to see how unamiable he appeared, and how greatly he made himself dreaded by all, and by many abhorred.' _Ib_. p. 163. 'Oct. 30. In the evening we all went to Mrs. Hatsel's. Dr. Johnson was not invited.' _Ib_. p. 165. 'Oct. 31. A note came to invite us all, except Dr. Johnson, to Lady Rothes's.' _Ib_. p. 168. 'Nov. 2. We went to Lady Shelley's. Dr. Johnson again excepted in the invitation. He is almost constantly omitted, either from too much respect or too much fear. I am sorry for it, as he hates being alone.' _Ib_. p. 160. 'Nov. 7. Mr. Metcalfe called upon Dr. Johnson, and took him out an airing. Mr. Hamilton is gone, and Mr. Metcalfe is now the only person out of this house that voluntarily communicates with the Doctor. He has been in a terrible severe humour of late, and has really frightened all the people, till they almost ran from him. To me only I think he is now kind, for Mrs. Thrale fares worse than anybody.' _Ib_. p. 177.

[499] '"Dr. Johnson has asked me," said Mr. Metcalfe, "to go with him to Chichester, to see the cathedral, and I told him I would certainly go if he pleased; but why I cannot imagine, for how shall a blind man see a cathedral?" "I believe," quoth I [i.e. Miss Burney] "his blindness is as much the effect of absence as of infirmity, for he sees wonderfully at times."' _Ib_. p. 174. For Johnson's eyesight, see _ante_, i. 41.

[500] The second letter is dated the 28th. Johnson says:--'I have looked _often_,' &c.; but he does not say 'he has been _much_ informed,' but only 'informed.' Both letters are in the _Gent. Mag._ 1784, p. 893.

[501] The reference is to Rawlinson's MS. collections for a continuation of Wood's _Athenae_ (Macray's _Annals of the Bodleian_, p. 181).

[502] Jortin's sermons are described by Johnson as 'very elegant.' _Ante_, in. 248. He and Thirlby are mentioned by him in the _Life of Pope. Works_, viii. 254.

[503] Markland was born 1693, died 1776. His notes on some of Euripides' _Plays_ were published at the expense of Dr. Heberden. Markland had previously destroyed a great many other notes; writing in 1764 he said:--'Probably it will be a long time (if ever) before this sort of learning will revive in England; in which it is easy to foresee that there must be a disturbance in a few years, and all public disorders are enemies to this sort of literature.' _Gent. Mag._ 1778, P. 3l0. 'I remember,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 252), 'when lamentation was made of the neglect shown to Jeremiah Markland, a great philologist, as some one ventured to call him: "He is a scholar undoubtedly, Sir," replied Dr. Johnson, "but remember that he would run from the world, and that it is not the world's business to run after him. I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and [who] does nothing when he is there but sit and _growl_; let him come out as I do, and _bark_"' A brief account of him is given in the _Ann. Reg._ xix. 45.

[504] Nichols published in 1784 a brief account of Thirlby, nearly half of it being written by Johnson. Thirlby was born in 1692 and died in 1753. 'His versatility led him to try the round of what are called the learned professions.' His life was marred by drink and insolence.' His mind seems to have been tumultuous and desultory, and he was glad to catch any employment that might produce attention without anxiety; such employment, as Dr. Battie has observed, is necessary for madmen.' _Gent. Mag._ 1784, pp. 260, 893.

[505] He was attacked, says Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, ii. 131), 'by a slight paralytic affection, after an almost uninterrupted course of good health for many years.' Miss Burney wrote on Dec. 28 to one of her sisters:--'How can you wish any wishes [matrimonial wishes] about Sir Joshua and me? A man who has had two shakes of the palsy!' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 218.

[506] Dr. Patten in Sept. 1781 (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 699) informed Johnson of Wilson's intended dedication. Johnson, in his reply, said:--'What will the world do but look on and laugh when one scholar dedicates to another?'

[507] On the same day he wrote to Dr. Taylor:-'This, my dear Sir, is the last day of a very sickly and melancholy year. Join your prayers with mine, that the next may be more happy to us both. I hope the happiness which I have not found in this world will by infinite mercy be granted in another.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 462.

[508] 'Jan. 4, 1783. Dr. Johnson came so very late that we had all given him up; he was very ill, and only from an extreme of kindness did he come at all. When I went up to him to tell how sorry I was to find him so unwell, "Ah," he cried, taking my hand and kissing it, "who shall ail anything when Cecilia is so near? Yet you do not think how poorly I am."

All dinner time he hardly opened his mouth but to repeat to me:--"Ah! you little know how ill I am." He was excessively kind to me in spite of all his pain.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 228. _Cecilia_ was the name of her second novel (_post_, May 26, 1783). On Jan. 10 he thus ended a letter to Mr. Nichols:--'Now I will put you in a way of shewing me more kindness. I have been confined by ilness (sic) a long time, and sickness and solitude make tedious evenings. Come sometimes and see, Sir,

'Your humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

_MS_. in the British Museum.

[509] 'Dr. Johnson found here [at Auchinleck] Baxter's Anacreon, which he told me he had long inquired for in vain, and began to suspect there was no such book.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov.2. See _post_, under Sept. 29, 1783.

[510] 'The delight which men have in popularity, fame, honour, submission, and subjection of other men's minds, wills, or affections, although these things may be desired for other ends, seemeth to be a thing in itself, without contemplation of consequence, grateful and agreeable to the nature of man.' Bacon's _Nat. Hist._ Exper. No. 1000. See _ante_, ii. 178.

[511] In a letter to Dr. Taylor on Jan. 21 of this year, he attacked the scheme of equal representation.' Pitt, on May 7, 1782, made his first reform motion. Johnson thus ended his letter:--'If the scheme were more reasonable, this is not a time for innovation. I am afraid of a civil war. The business of every wise man seems to be now to keep his ground.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 481.

[512] See _ante_, i. 429, _post_, 170, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 30.

[513] The year after this conversation the General Election of 1784 was held, which followed on the overthrow of the Coalition Ministry and the formation of the Pitt Ministry in December, 1783. The 'King's friends' were in a minority of one in the last great division in the old Parliament; in the motion on the Address in the new Parliament they had a majority of 168. _Parl. Hist._ xxiv. 744, 843. Miss Burney, writing in Nov. 1788, when the King was mad, says that one of his physicians 'moved me even to tears by telling me that none of their own lives would be safe if the King did not recover, so prodigiously high ran the tide of affection and loyalty. All the physicians received threatening letters daily, to answer for the safety of their monarch with their lives! Sir G. Baker had already been stopped in his carriage by the mob, to give an account of the King; and when he said it was a bad one, they had furiously exclaimed, "The more shame for you."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, iv. 336. Describing in 1789 a Royal tour in the West of England, she writes of 'the crowds, the rejoicings, the hallooing and singing, and garlanding and decorating of all the inhabitants of this old city [Exeter], and of all the country through which we passed.' _Ib._ v. 48.

[514] Miss Palmer, Sir Joshua's niece, 'heard Dr. Johnson repeat these verses with the tears falling over his cheek.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 417.

[515] Gibbon remarked that 'Mr. Fox was certainly very shy of saying anything in Johnson's presence.' _Ante_, iii. 267. See _post_, under June 9, 1784, where Johnson said 'Fox is my friend.'

[516] Mr. Greville (_Journal_, ed. 1874, ii. 316) records the following on the authority of Lord Holland:--'Johnson liked Fox because he defended his pension, and said it was only to blame in not being large enough. "Fox," he said, is a liberal man; he would always be _aut Caesar aut nullus_; whenever I have seen him he has been _nullus_. Lord Holland said Fox made it a rule never to talk in Johnson's presence, because he knew all his conversations were recorded for publication, and he did not choose to figure in them.' Fox could not have known what was not the fact. When Boswell was by, he had reason for his silence; but otherwise he might have spoken out. 'Mr. Fox,' writes Mackintosh (_Life_, i. 322) 'united, in a most remarkable degree, the seemingly repugnant characters of the mildest of men and the most vehement of orators. In private life he was so averse from parade and dogmatism as to be somewhat inactive in conversation.' Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, i. 283) tells how Fox spent a day with him at Lausanne:--'Perhaps it never can happen again, that I should enjoy him as I did that day, alone from ten in the morning till ten at night. Our conversation never flagged a moment.' 'In London mixed society,' said Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 74), 'Fox conversed little; but at his own house in the country, with his intimate friends, he would talk on for ever, with all the openness and simplicity of a child.'

[517] Sec _ante_, ii. 450.

[518] Most likely 'Old Mr. Sheridan.'

[519] See _ante_, ii. 166.

[520] Were I to insert all the stories which have been told of contests boldly maintained with him, imaginary victories obtained over him, of reducing him to silence, and of making him own that his antagonist had the better of him in argument, my volumes would swell to an immoderate size. One instance, I find, has circulated both in conversation and in print; that when he would not allow the Scotch writers to have merit, the late Dr. Rose, of Chiswick, asserted, that he could name one Scotch writer, whom Dr. Johnson himself would allow to have written better than any man of the age; and upon Johnson's asking who it was, answered, 'Lord Bute, when he signed the warrant for your pension.' Upon which Johnson, struck with the repartee, acknowledged that this _was_ true. When I mentioned it to Johnson, 'Sir, (said he,) if Rose said this, I never heard it.' BOSWELL.

[521] This reflection was very natural in a man of a good heart, who was not conscious of any ill-will to mankind, though the sharp sayings which were sometimes produced by his discrimination and vivacity, which he perhaps did not recollect, were, I am afraid, too often remembered with resentment. BOSWELL. When, three months later on, he was struck with palsy, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'I have in this still scene of life great comfort in reflecting that I have given very few reason to hate me. I hope scarcely any man has known me closely but for his benefit, or cursorily but to his innocent entertainment. Tell me, you that know me best, whether this be true, that according to your answer I may continue my practice, or try to mend it.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 287. See _post_, May 19, 1784. Passages such as the two following might have shewn him why he had enemies. 'For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent; severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate.' Bacon's _Essays_, No. xi. ''Tis possible that men may be as oppressive by their parts as their power.' _The Government of the Tongue_, sect. vii. See _ante_, i. 388, note 2.

[522] 'A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' _Ante_, i. 294. Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, ii. 191) that he heard a Scotch lady, after quoting this definition, say to Johnson, 'I can assure you that in Scotland we give oats to our horses as well as you do to yours in England.' He replied:--'I am very glad, Madam, to find that you treat your horses as well as you treat yourselves.'

[523] Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote:--'The prejudices he had to countries did not extend to individuals. The chief prejudice in which he indulged himself was against Scotland, though he had the most cordial friendship with individuals. This he used to vindicate as a duty. ... Against the Irish he entertained no prejudice; he thought they united themselves very well with us; but the Scotch, when in England, united and made a party by employing only Scotch servants and Scotch tradesmen. He held it right for Englishmen to oppose a party against them.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 460. See _ante_, ii. 242, 306, and Boswell's _Hebrides, post_, v. 20.

[524] _Ante_, ii. 300.

[525] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 85) says that 'Dr. Johnson, commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, kept his numerous family in Fleet-street upon a settled allowance; but returned to them every Saturday to give them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us on the Monday night.'

[526] Lord North's Ministry lasted from 1770, to March, 1782. It was followed by the Rockingham Ministry, and the Shelburne Ministry, which in its turn was at this very time giving way to the Coalition Ministry, to be followed very soon by the Pitt Ministry.

[527] I have, in my _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ [p. 200, Sept. 13], fully expressed my sentiments upon this subject. The Revolution was _necessary_, but not a subject for _glory_; because it for a long time blasted the generous feelings of _Loyalty_. And now, when by the benignant effect of time the present Royal Family are established in our _affections_, how unwise it is to revive by celebrations the memory of a shock, which it would surely have been better that our constitution had not required. BOSWELL. See _ante_, iii. 3, and iv. 40, note 4.

[528] Johnson reviewed this book in 1756. _Ante_, i. 309.

[529] Johnson, four months later, wrote to one of Mrs. Thrale's daughters:--'Never think, my sweet, that you have arithmetick enough; when you have exhausted your master, buy books. ... A thousand stories which the ignorant tell and believe die away at once when the computist takes them in his gripe.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 296. See _post_, April 18, 1783.

[530] See _ante_, p. 116; also iii. 310, where he bore the same topic impatiently when with Dr. Scott.

[531] See _ante_, ii. 357.

[532]

'See nations, slowly wise and meanly just, To buried merit raise the tardy bust.' Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_.

[533] He was perhaps, thinking of Markland. _Ante_, p. 161, note 3.

[534] 'Dr. Johnson,' writes Mrs. Piozzi, 'was no complainer of ill-usage. I never heard him even lament the disregard shown to _Irene_.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 386. See _ante_, i. 200.

[535] Letter to the People of Scotland against the attempt to diminish the number of the Lords of Session, 1785. BOSWELL. 'By Mr. Burke's removal from office the King's administration was deprived of the assistance of that affluent mind, which is so universally rich that, as long as British literature and British politicks shall endure, it will be said of Edmund Burke, _Regum equabat [sic] opes animis.'_ p.71.

[536] _Georgics_, iv. 132.

[537] See _ante_, iii. 56, note 2.

[538] Very likely Boswell.

[539] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22.

[540] Johnson had said:--'Lord Chesterfield is the proudest man this day existing.' _Ante_, i. 265.

[541] Lord Shelburne. At this time he was merely holding office till a new Ministry was formed. On April 5 he was succeeded by the Duke of Portland. His 'coarse manners' were due to a neglected childhood. In the fragment of his _Autobiography_ he describes 'the domestic brutality and ill-usage he experienced at home,' in the South of Ireland. 'It cost me,' he continues, 'more to unlearn the habits, manners, and principles which I then imbibed, than would have served to qualify me for any _rôle_ whatever through life.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 12, 16.

[542] Bentham, it is reported, said of of him that 'alone of his own time, he was a "Minister who did not fear the people."' _Ib._ iii. 572.

[543] Malagrida, a Jesuit, was put to death at Lisbon in 1761, nominally on a charge of heresy, but in reality on a suspicion of his having sanctioned, as confessor to one of the conspirators, an attempt to assassinate King Joseph of Portugal. Voltaire, _Siècle de Louis XV_, ch. xxxviii. 'His name,' writes Wraxall (_Memoirs_, ed. 1815, i. 67), 'is become proverbial among us to express duplicity.' It was first applied to Lord Shelburne in a squib attributed to Wilkes, which contained a vision of a masquerade. The writer, after describing him as masquerading as 'the heir apparent of Loyola and all the College,' continues:--'A little more of the devil, my Lord, if you please, about the eyebrows; that's enough, a perfect Malagrida, I protest.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, ii. 164. 'George III. habitually spoke of Shelburne as "Malagrida," and the "Jesuit of Berkeley Square."' _Ib._ iii. 8. The charge of duplicity was first made against Shelburne on the retirement of Fox (the first Lord Holland) in 1763. 'It was the tradition of Holland House that Bute justified the conduct of Shelburne, by telling Fox that it was "a pious fraud." "I can see the fraud plainly enough," is said to have been Fox's retort, "but where is the piety?"' _Ib_. i. 226. Any one who has examined Reynolds's picture of Shelburne, especially 'about the eyebrows,' at once sees how the name of Jesuit was given.

[544] Beauclerk wrote to Lord Charlemont on Nov. 20, 1773:-'Goldsmith the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers in praise of Lord Mayor Townshend. [Shelburne supported Townshend in opposition to Wilkes in the election of the Lord Mayor. Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, ii. 287.] The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne at Drury Lane. I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him; he said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. "Do you know," answered Goldsmith, "that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, _for_ Malagrida was a very good sort of man." You see plainly what he meant to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. Mr. Walpole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life.' _Life of Charlemont_, i. 344.

[545] Most likely Reynolds, who introduced Crabbe to Johnson. Crabbe's _Works_, ed. 1834, ii. 11.

[546]

'I paint the cot, As truth will paint it, and as Bards will not. Nor you, ye Poor, of lettered scorn complain, To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; O'ercome by labour, and bowed down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruined shed? Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?'

_The Village_, book i.

See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 6.

[547] I shall give an instance, marking the original by Roman, and Johnson's substitution in Italick characters:--

'In fairer scenes, where peaceful pleasures spring, Tityrus, the pride of Mantuan swains, might sing: But charmed by him, or smitten with his views, Shall modern poets court the Mantuan muse? From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, Where Fancy leads, or Virgil led the way?' '_On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign, If Tityrus found the golden age again, Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Mechanick echoes of the Mantuan song?_ From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, _Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?._

Here we find Johnson's poetical and critical powers undiminished. I must, however, observe, that the aids he gave to this poem, as to _The Traveller_ and _Deserted Village_ of Goldsmith, were so small as by no means to impair the distinguished merit of the authour. BOSWELL.

[548] In the _Gent. Mag._ 1763, pp. 602, 633, is a review of his _Observations on Diseases of the Army_. He says that the register of deaths of military men proves that more than eight times as many men fall by what was called the gaol fever as by battle. His suggestions are eminently wise. Lord Seaford, in 1835, told Leslie 'that he remembered dining in company with Dr. Johnson at Dr. Brocklesby's, when he was a boy of twelve or thirteen. He was impressed with the superiority of Johnson, and his knocking everybody down in argument.' C.R. Leslie's _Recollections_, i. 146.

[549] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 28.

[550] See _ante_, i. 433, and ii. 217, 358.

[551] "In his _Life of Swift_ (_Works_, viii. 205) he thus speaks of this _Journal_:-'In the midst of his power and his politicks, he kept a journal of his visits, his walks, his interviews with ministers, and quarrels with his servant, and transmitted it to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, to whom he knew that whatever befell him was interesting, and no accounts could be too minute. Whether these diurnal trifles were properly exposed to eyes which had never received any pleasure from the presence of the dean, may be reasonably doubted: they have, however, some odd attraction: the reader, finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to consider as important, goes on in hope of information; and, as there is nothing to fatigue attention, if he is disappointed, he can hardly complain.'"

[552] On his fifty-fifth birthday he recorded:--'I resolve to keep a journal both of employment and of expenses. To keep accounts.' _Pr. and Med_. 59. See _post_, Aug. 25, 1784, where he writes to Langton:--'I am a little angry at you for not keeping minutes of your own _acceptum et expensum_, and think a little time might be spared from Aristophanes for the _res familiares_.'

[553] This Mr. Chalmers thought was George Steevens. CROKER. D'Israeli (_Curiosities of Literature_, ed. 1834, vi. 76) describes Steevens as guilty of 'an unparalleled series of arch deception and malicious ingenuity.' He gives curious instances of his literary impostures. See _ante_, iii. 281, and _post_, May 15, 1784.

[554] If this be Lord Mansfield, Boswell must use _late_ in the sense of _in retirement_; for Mansfield was living when the _Life of Johnson_ was published. He retired in 1788. Johnson in 1772, said that he had never been in his company (_ante_, ii. 158). The fact that Mansfield is mentioned in the previous paragraph adds to the probability that he is meant.

[555] See _ante_, ii. 318.

[556] In Scotland, Johnson spoke of Mansfield's 'splendid talents.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, under Nov. 11.

[557] 'I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.' 2 _ Henry IV_, act i. sc. 2.

[558] Knowing as well as I do what precision and elegance of oratory his Lordship can display, I cannot but suspect that his unfavourable appearance in a social circle, which drew such animadversions upon him, must be owing to a cold affectation of consequence, from being reserved and stiff. If it be so, and he might be an agreeable man if he would, we cannot be sorry that he misses his aim. BOSWELL. Wedderburne, afterwards Lord Loughborough, is mentioned (_ante_, ii. 374), and again in Murphy's _Life of Johnson_, p. 43, as being in company with Johnson and Foote. Boswell also has before (_ante_, i. 387) praised the elegance of his oratory. Henry Mackenzie (_Life of John Home_, i. 56) says that Wedderburne belonged to a club at the British Coffee-house, of which Garrick, Smollett, and Dr. Douglas were members.

[559] Boswell informed the people of Scotland in the Letter that he addressed to them in 1785 (p. 29), that 'now that Dr. Johnson is gone to a better world, he (Boswell) bowed the intellectual knee to _Lord Thurlow_.' See _post_, June 22, 1784.

[560] Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 27.

[561]

'Charged with light summer-rings his fingers sweat, Unable to support a gem of weight.' DRYDEN. Juvenal, _Satires_, i. 29.

[562] He had published a series of seventy _Essays_ under the title of _The Hypochondriack_ in the _London Magazine_ from 1777 to 1783.

[563] Juvenal, _Satires_, x. 365. The common reading, however, is 'Nullum numen _habes_,' &c. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec._ p. 218) records this saying, but with a variation. '"For," says Mr. Johnson, "though I do not quite agree with the proverb, that _Nullum numen adest si sit prudentia_, yet we may very well say, that _Nullum numen adest, ni sit prudentia."'

[564] It has since appeared. BOSWELL.

[565] Miss Burney mentions meeting Dr. Harington at Bath in 1780. 'It is his son,' she writes, 'who published those very curious remains of his ancestor [Sir John Harington] under the title _Nugae Antiquae_ which my father and all of us were formerly so fond of.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 341.

[566]

'For though they are but trifles, thou Some value didst to them allow.'

Martin's _Catullus_, p. 1.

[567]

--Underneath this rude, uncouth disguise, A genius of extensive knowledge lies.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Satires_, i. 3. 33.

[568] He would not have been a troublesome patient anywhere, for, according to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 275),'he required less attendance, sick or well, than ever I saw any human creature.'

[569] 'That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the mind grows old with the body; and that he whom we are now forced to confess superiour is hastening daily to a level with ourselves.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 212.

[570] With the following elucidation of the saying-_Quos Deus_ (it should rather be-_Quem Jupiter) vult perdere, prius dementat_-Mr. Boswell was furnished by Mr. Pitts:--'Perhaps no scrap of Latin whatever has been more quoted than this. It occasionally falls even from those who are scrupulous even to pedantry in their Latinity, and will not admit a word into their compositions, which has not the sanction of the first age. The word _demento_ is of no authority, either as a verb active or neuter.--After a long search for the purpose of deciding a bet, some gentlemen of Cambridge found it among the fragments of Euripides, in what edition I do not recollect, where it is given as a translation of a Greek Iambick: [Greek: Ou Theos thelei apolesoi' apophreuai.]

'The above scrap was found in the hand-writing of a suicide of fashion, Sir D. O., some years ago, lying on the table of the room where he had destroyed himself. The suicide was a man of classical acquirements: he left no other paper behind him.'

Another of these proverbial sayings,

_Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim,_

I, in a note on a passage in _The Merchant of Venice_ [act iii. sc. 5], traced to its source. It occurs (with a slight variation) in the _Alexandreis_ of Philip Gualtier (a poet of the thirteenth century), which was printed at Lyons in 1558. Darius is the person addressed:--

--Quò tendis inertem, Rex periture, fugam? nescis, heu! perdite, nescis Quern fugias: hostes incurris dum fugis hostem; _Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim._

A line not less frequently quoted was suggested for enquiry in a note on _The Rape of Lucrece:--

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris--_:

But the author of this verse has not, I believe, been discovered. MALONE. The 'Greek lambick' in the above note is not Greek. To a learned friend I owe the following note. 'The _Quem Jupiter vult perdere_, &c., is said to be a translation of a fragment of _Euripides_ by Joshua Barnes. There is, I believe, no such fragment at all. In Barnes's _Euripides_, Cantab. 1694, fol. p. 515, is a fragment of Euripides with a note which may explain the muddle of Boswell's correspondent:--

"[Greek: otau de daimonn handri porsunae kaka ton noun heblapse proton,]"

on which Barnes writes:--"Tale quid in Franciados nostrae [probably his uncompleted poem on Edward III.] l. 3. _Certe ille deorum Arbiter ultricem cum vult extendere dextram Dementat prius._"' See _ante_, ii. 445, note 1. Sir D. O. is, perhaps, Sir D'Anvers Osborne, whose death is recorded in the _Gent. Mag._ 1753, p. 591. 'Sir D'Anvers Osborne, Bart., Governor of New York, soon after his arrival there; _in his garden.' Solamen miseris, &c._, is imitated by Swift in his _Verses on Stella's Birthday_, 1726-7:--

'The only comfort they propose, To have companions in their woes.'

Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xi. 22. The note on _Lucrece_ was, I conjecture, on line 1111:--

'Grief best is pleased with grief's society.'

[571]

'FAUSTUS-- "Tu quoque, ut hîc video, non es ignarus amorum." 'FORTUNATUS-- "Id commune malum; semel insanivimus omnes."'

Baptistae Mantuani Carmelitae _Adolescentia, seu Bucolica_. Ecloga I, published in 1498. 'Scaliger,' says Johnson (_Works_, viii. 391), 'complained that Mantuan's Bucolicks were received into schools, and taught as classical. ... He was read, at least in some of the inferiour schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present [eighteenth] century.'

[572] See _ante_, i. 368.

[573] See _ante_, i. 396.

[574] I am happy, however, to mention a pleasing instance of his enduring with great gentleness to hear one of his most striking particularities pointed out:--Miss Hunter, a niece of his friend Christopher Smart, when a very young girl, struck by his extraordinary motions, said to him, 'Pray, Dr. Johnson, why do you make such strange gestures?' 'From bad habit,' he replied. 'Do you, my dear, take care to guard against bad habits.' This I was told by the young lady's brother at Margate. BOSWELL. Boswell had himself told Johnson of some of them, at least in writing. Johnson read in manuscript his _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_. Boswell says in a note on Oct. 12:--'It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying anything on the subject, which I hoped he would have done.'

[575] See _ante_, ii. 42, note 2, and iii. 324.

[576] Johnson, after stating that some of Milton's manuscripts prove that 'in the early part of his life he wrote with much care,' continues:--'Such reliques show how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.' _Works_, vii. 119. Lord Chesterfield (_Letters_, iii. 146) had made the same rule as Johnson:--'I was,' he writes, 'early convinced of the importance and powers of eloquence; and from that moment I applied myself to it. I resolved not to utter one word even in common conversation that should not be the most expressive and the most elegant that the language could supply me with for that purpose; by which means I have acquired such a certain degree of habitual eloquence, that I must now really take some pains if I would express myself very inelegantly.'

[577] 'Dr. Johnson,' wrote Malone in 1783, 'is as correct and elegant in his common conversation as in his writings. He never seems to study either for thoughts or words. When first introduced I was very young; yet he was as accurate in his conversation as if he had been talking to the first scholar in England.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 92. See _post_, under Aug. 29, 1783.

[578] See _ante_, iii. 216.

[579] See _ante_, ii. 323.

[580] The justness of this remark is confirmed by the following story, for which I am indebted to Lord Eliot:--A country parson, who was remarkable for quoting scraps of Latin in his sermons, having died, one of his parishioners was asked how he liked his successor. 'He is a very good preacher,' was his answer, 'but no _latiner_.' BOSWELL. For the original of Lord Eliot's story see Twells's _Life of Dr. E. Pocock_, ed. 1816, p. 94. Reynolds said that 'Johnson always practised on every occasion the rule of speaking his best, whether the person to whom he addressed himself was or was not capable of comprehending him. "If," says he, "I am understood, my labour is not lost. If it is above their comprehension, there is some gratification, though it is the admiration of ignorance;" and he said those were the most sincere admirers; and quoted Baxter, who made a rule never to preach a sermon without saying something which he knew was beyond the comprehension of his audience, in order to inspire their admiration.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 456. Addison, in _The Spectator_, No. 221, tells of a preacher in a country town who outshone a more ignorant rival, by quoting every now and then a Latin sentence from one of the Fathers. 'The other finding his congregation mouldering every Sunday, and hearing at length what was the occasion of it, resolved to give his parish a little Latin in his turn; but being unacquainted with any of the Fathers, he digested into his sermons the whole book of _Quae Genus_, adding, however, such explications to it as he thought might be for the benefit of his people. He afterwards entered upon _As in praesenti_, which he converted in the same manner to the use of his parishioners. This in a very little time thickened his audience, filled his church, and routed his antagonist.'

[581] See _ante_, ii. 96

[582] '"Well," said he, "we had good talk." BOSWELL. "Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons."' _Ante,_ ii. 66.

[583] Dr. J. H. Burton says of Hume (_Life, ii. 31_):--'No Scotsman could write a book of respectable talent without calling forth his loud and warm eulogiums. Wilkie was to be the Homer, Blacklock the Pindar, and Home the Shakespeare or something still greater of his country.' See _ante_, ii. 121, 296, 306.

[584] _The Present State of Music in France and Italy,_ I vol. 1771, and _The Present State of Music in Germany, &c.,_ 2 vols. 1773. Johnson must have skipped widely in reading these volumes, for though Dr. Burney describes his travels, yet he writes chiefly of music.

[585] Boswell's son James says that he heard from his father, that the passage which excited this strong emotion was the following:--

'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more: I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you; For morn is approaching, your charms to restore, Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with dew; Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn; Kind Nature the embryo blossom will save: But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn? O when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?'

[586] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii. 338) mentions this book at some length. On March 13, 1780, he wrote:--'Yesterday was published an octavo, pretending to contain the correspondence of Hackman and Miss Ray that he murdered.' See _ante_, iii. 383.

[587] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 547), recording how Johnson used to meet Psalmanazar at an ale-house, says that Johnson one day 'remarked on the human mind, that it had a necessary tendency to improvement, and that it would frequently anticipate instruction. "Sir," said a stranger that overheard him, "that I deny; I am a tailor, and have had many apprentices, but never one that could make a coat till I had taken great pains in teaching him."' See _ante_, iii. 443. Robert Hall was influenced in his studies by 'his intimate association in mere childhood with a tailor, one of his father's congregation, who was an acute metaphysician.' Hall's _Works_, vi. 5.

[588] Johnson had never been in Grub-street. _Ante_, i. 296, note 2.

[589] The Honourable Horace Walpole, late Earl of Orford, thus bears testimony to this gentleman's merit as a writer:--'Mr. Chambers's _Treatise on Civil Architecture_ is the most sensible book, and the most exempt from prejudices, that ever was written on that science.'--Preface to _Anecdotes of Painting in England_. BOSWELL. Chambers was the architect of Somerset House. See _ante_, p. 60, note 7.

[590] The introductory lines are these:--'It is difficult to avoid praising too little or too much. The boundless panegyricks which have been lavished upon the Chinese learning, policy, and arts, shew with what power novelty attracts regard, and how naturally esteem swells into admiration. I am far from desiring to be numbered among the exaggerators of Chinese excellence. I consider them as great, or wise, only in comparison with the nations that surround them; and have no intention to place them in competition either with the antients or with the moderns of this part of the world; yet they must be allowed to claim our notice as a distinct and very singular race of men: as the inhabitants of a region divided by its situation from all civilized countries, who have formed their own manners, and invented their own arts, without the assistance of example.' BOSWELL.

[591] The last execution at Tyburn was on Nov. 7, 1783, when one man was hanged. The first at Newgate was on the following Dec. 9, when ten were hanged. _Gent. Mag._ 1783, pp. 974, 1060.

[592] We may compare with this 'loose talk' Johnson's real opinion, as set forth in _The Rambler_, No. 114, entitled:--_The necessity of proportioning punishments to crimes_. He writes:--'The learned, the judicious, the pious Boerhaave relates that he never saw a criminal dragged to execution without asking himself, "Who knows whether this man is not less culpable than me?" On the days when the prisons of this city are emptied into the grave, let every spectator of this dreadful procession put the same question to his own heart. Few among those that crowd in thousands to the legal massacre, and look with carelessness, perhaps with triumph, on the utmost exacerbations of human misery, would then be able to return without horror and dejection.' He continues:--'It may be observed that all but murderers have, at their last hour, the common sensations of mankind pleading in their favour.... They who would rejoice at the correction of a thief, are yet shocked at the thought of destroying him. His crime shrinks to nothing compared with his misery, and severity defeats itself by exciting pity.'

[593] Richardson, in his _Familiar Letters_, No. 160, makes a country gentleman in town describe the procession of five criminals to Tyburn, and their execution. He should have heard, he said, 'the exhortation spoken by the bell-man from the wall of St. Sepulchre's church-yard; but the noise of the officers and the mob was so great, and the silly curiosity of people climbing into the cart to take leave of the criminals made such a confused noise that I could not hear them. They are as follow: "All good people pray heartily to God for these poor sinners, who now are going to their deaths; for whom this great bell doth toll. You that are condemned to die, repent with lamentable tears.... Lord have mercy upon you! Christ have mercy upon you!" which last words the bell-man repeats three times. All the way up Holborn the crowd was so great, as at every twenty or thirty yards to obstruct the passage; and wine, notwithstanding a late good order against that practice, was brought the malefactors, who drank greedily of it. After this the three thoughtless young men, who at first seemed not enough concerned, grew most shamefully daring and wanton. They swore, laughed, and talked obscenely. At the place of execution the scene grew still more shocking; and the clergyman who attended was more the subject of ridicule than of their serious attention. The psalm was sung amidst the curses and quarrelling of hundreds of the most abandoned and profligate of mankind. As soon as the poor creatures were half-dead, I was much surprised to see the populace fall to haling and pulling the carcases with so much earnestness as to occasion several warm rencounters and broken heads. These, I was told, were the friends of the persons executed, or such as for the sake of tumult chose to appear so; and some persons sent by private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection.' The psalm is mentioned in a note on the line in _The Dunciad_, i. 4l, 'Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines:'--'It is an ancient English custom,' says Pope, 'for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn.'

[594] The rest of these miscellaneous sayings were first given in the _Additions to Dr. Johnson's Life_ at the beginning of vol. I of the second edition.

[595] Hume (_Auto_. p. 6) speaks of Hurd as attacking him 'with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility which distinguish the Warburtonian school.' 'Hurd,' writes Walpole, 'had acquired a great name by several works of slender merit, was a gentle, plausible man, affecting a singular decorum that endeared him highly to devout old ladies.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 50. He is best known to the present generation by his impertinent notes on Addison's _Works_. By reprinting them, Mr. Bohn did much to spoil what was otherwise an excellent edition of that author. See _ante_, p. 47, note 2.

[596] The Rev. T. Twining, one of Dr. Burney's friends, wrote in 1779:--'You use a form of reference that I abominate, i.e. the latter, the former. "As long as you have the use of your tongue and your pen," said Dr. Johnson to Dr. Burney, "never, Sir, be reduced to that shift."' _Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the XVIIIth Century_, p. 72.

[597] 'A shilling was now wanted for some purpose or other, and none of them happened to have one; I begged that I might lend one. "Ay, do," said the Doctor, "I will borrow of you; authors are like privateers, always fair game for one another."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 212.

[598] See _ante_, i. 129, note 3.

[599] See _post_, June 3, 1784, where he uses almost the same words.

[600] What this period was Boswell seems to leave intentionally vague. Johnson knew Lord Shelburne at least as early as 1778 (_ante_, iii. 265). He wrote to Dr. Taylor on July 22, 1782:--'Shelburne speaks of Burke in private with great malignity.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 462. The company commonly gathered at his house would have been displeasing to Johnson. Priestley, who lived with Shelburne seven years, says (_Auto_. p. 55) that a great part of the company he saw there was like the French philosophers, unbelievers in Christianity, and even professed atheists: men 'who had given no proper attention to Christianity, and did not really know what it was.' Johnson was intimate with Lord Shelburne's brother. _Ante_, ii. 282, note 3.

[601] Johnson being asked his opinion of this Essay, answered, 'Why, Sir, we shall have the man come forth again; and as he has proved Falstaff to be no coward, he may prove Iago to be a very good character.' BOSWELL.

[602] A writer in the _European Magazine_, xxx. 160, says that Johnson visited Lord Shelburne at Bowood. At dinner he repeated part of his letter to Lord Chesterfield (_ante_, i. 261). A gentleman arrived late. Shelburne, telling him what he had missed, went on:-'I dare say the Doctor will be kind enough to give it to us again.' 'Indeed, my Lord, I will not. I told the circumstance first for my own amusement, but I will not be dragged in as story-teller to a company.' In an argument he used some strong expressions, of which his opponent took no notice, Next morning 'he went up to the gentleman with great good-nature, and said, "Sir, I have found out upon reflection that I was both warm and wrong in my argument with you last night; for the first of which I beg your pardon, and for the second, I thank you for setting me right."' It is clear that the second of these anecdotes is the same as that told by Mr. Morgann of Johnson and himself, and that the scene has been wrongly transferred from Wickham to Bowood. The same writer says that it was between Derrick and Boyce--not Derrick and Smart--that Johnson, in the story that follows, could not settle the precedency.

[603] See ante, i. 124, 394.

[604] See ante, i. 397.

[605] What the great TWALMLEY was so proud of having invented, was neither more nor less than a kind of box-iron for smoothing linen. BOSWELL.

[606]

'Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi, Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti, Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes.'

_Aeneid_, vi. 660.

'Lo, they who in their country's fight sword-wounded bodies bore; Lo, priests of holy life and chaste, while they in life had part; Lo, God-loved poets, men who spake things worthy Phoebus' heart, And they who bettered life on earth by new-found mastery.'

MORRIS. Virgil, _Aeneids_, vi. 660. The great Twalmley might have justified himself by _The Rambler_, No. 9:--'Every man, from the highest to the lowest station, ought to warm his heart and animate his endeavours with the hopes of being useful to the world, by advancing the art which it is his lot to exercise; and for that end he must necessarily consider the whole extent of its application, and the whole weight of its importance.... Every man ought to endeavour at eminence, not by pulling others down, but by raising himself, and enjoy the pleasure of his own superiority, whether imaginary or real, without interrupting others in the same felicity.' All this is what Twalmley