was otherwise known.
[748] 'A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of
_Phalaris_; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of
criticism (the _Answer_ to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be
discouraged at this run upon him, for tho' they had got the laughers on
their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a
work of so much merit. To which the other replied, "Indeed Dr. S.
[Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter. For I hold it as certain,
that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."'
_Warburton on Pope_, iv. 159, quoted in Person's _Tracts_, p. 345.
'Against personal abuse,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 348), 'Johnson was
ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:--"Alas!
reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every
concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' He wrote to Baretti:--'A man of
genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.' _Ante_, i. 381. Voltaire
in his _Essay Sur les inconveniens attaches a la Litterature_ (_Works_,
ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win
the favour of the critics, continues:--'Tous vos soins n'empechent pas
que quelque journaliste ne vous dechire. Vous lui repondez; il replique;
vous avez un proces par ecrit devant le public, qui condamne les deux
parties au ridicule.' See _ante_, ii. 61, note 4.
[749] However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they
are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he
says:--'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very
slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as
the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to
continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea
of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender
exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' _Tom Jones_,
bk. xi. ch. 1.
[750] It is strange that Johnson should not have known that the
_Adventures of a Guinea_ was written by a namesake of his own, Charles
Johnson. Being disqualified for the bar, which was his profession, by a
supervening deafness, he went to India, and made some fortune, and died
there about 1800. WALTER SCOTT.
[751] Salusbury, not Salisbury.
[752] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, .ii 57) mentions in 1746 his cousin Sir
John Philipps, of Picton Castle; 'a noted Jacobite.'... He thus mentions
Lady Philipps in 1788 when she was 'very aged.' 'They have a favourite
black, who has lived with them a great many years, and is remarkably
sensible. To amuse Lady Philipps under a long illness, they had read to
her the account of the Pelew Islands. Somebody happened to say we were
sending a ship thither; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, "Then
there is an end of their happiness." What a satire on Europe!' _Ib_.
ix. 157.
Lady Philips was known to Johnson through Miss Williams, to whom, as a
note in Croker's _Boswell_ (p. 74) shews, she made a small yearly
allowance.
[753] 'To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate
the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which
are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which,
if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was
first attempted by Casa in his book of _Manners_, and Castiglione in his
_Courtier_; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance.'
Johnson's _Works_, vii. 428. _The Courtier_ was translated into English
so early as 1561. Lowndes's _Bibl. Man_. ed. 1871, p. 386.
[754] Burnet (_History of His Own Time_, ii. 296) mentions Whitby among
the persons who both managed and directed the controversial war' against
Popery towards the end of Charles II's reign. 'Popery,' he says, 'was
never so well understood by the nation as it came to be upon this
occasion.' Whitby's Commentary _on the New Testament_ was published
in 1703-9.
[755] By Henry Mackenzie, the author of _The Man of Feeling. Ante_, i.
360. It had been published anonymously this spring. The play of the same
name is by Macklin. It was brought out in 1781.
[756] No doubt Sir A. Macdonald. _Ante_, p. 148. This 'penurious
gentleman' is mentioned again, p. 315.
[757] Moliere's play of _L'Avare_.
[758]
'...facit indignatio versum.'
Juvenal, _Sat_. i. 79.
[759] See _ante_, iii. 252.
[760] He was sixty-four.
[761] Still, perhaps, in the _Western Isles_, 'It may be we shall touch
the Happy Isles.' Tennyson's _Ulysses._
[762] See _ante_, ii, 51.
[763] See _ante_, ii. 150.
[764] Sir Alexander Macdonald.
[765] 'To be or not to be: that is the question.' _Hamlet_, act iii. sc.
1.
[766] Virgil, _Eclogues_, iii. III.
[767] 'The stormy Hebrides.' Milton's _Lycidas_, 1. 156.
[768] Boswell was thinking of the passage (p. xxi.) in which Hawkesworth
tells how one of Captain Cook's ships was saved by the wind falling.
'If,' he writes, 'it was a natural event, providence is out of the
question; at least we can with no more propriety say that providentially
the wind ceased, than that providentially the sun rose in the morning.
If it was not,' &c. According to Malone the attacks made on Hawkesworth
in the newspapers for this passage 'affected him so much that from low
spirits he was seized with a nervous fever, which on account of the high
living he had indulged in had the more power on him; and he is supposed
to have put an end to his life by intentionally taking an immoderate
dose of opium.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 441. Mme. D'Arblay says that these
attacks shortened his life. _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, i. 278. He died on
Nov. 17 of this year. See _ante_, i. 252, and ii. 247.
[769] 'After having been detained by storms many days at Sky we left it,
as we thought, with a fair wind; but a violent gust, which Bos had a
great mind to call a tempest, forced us into Col.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.
167. 'The wind blew against us in a short time with such violence, that
we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest... The
master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties might, perhaps,
have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr. Maclean of Col... piloted
us safe into his own harbour.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 117. Sir Walter
Scott says, 'Their risque, in a sea full of islands, was very
considerable. Indeed, the whole expedition was highly perilous,
considering the season of the year, the precarious chance of getting
sea-worthy boats, and the ignorance of the Hebrideans, who,
notwithstanding the opportunities, I may say the _necessities_, of their
situation, are very careless and unskilful sailors.' Croker's
_Boswell_, p. 362.
[770] For as the tempest drives, I shape my way. FRANCIS. [Horace,
_Epistles_, i. 1. 15.] BOSWELL.
[771]
'Imberbus juvenis, tandem custode remoto,
Gaudet equis canibusque, et aprici gramine campi.'
'The youth, whose will no froward tutor bounds,
Joys in the sunny field, his horse and hounds.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. 161.
[772] _Henry VI_, act i. sc. 2.
[773] See _ante_, i. 468, and iii. 306.
[774] Johnson describes him as 'a gentleman who has lived some time in
the East Indies, but, having dethroned no nabob, is not too rich to
settle in his own country.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 117.
[775] This curious exhibition may perhaps remind some of my readers of
the ludicrous lines, made, during Sir Robert Walpole's administration,
on Mr. George (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, though the figures of the two
personages must be allowed to be very different:--
'But who is this astride the pony;
So long, so lean, so lank, so bony?
Dat be de great orator, Littletony.'
BOSWELL.
These lines were beneath a caricature called _The Motion_, described by
Horace Walpole in his letter of March 25, 1741, and said by Mr.
Cunningham to be 'the earliest good political caricature that we
possess.' Walpole's _Letters_, i. 66. Mr. Croker says that 'the exact
words are:--
bony? O he be de great orator Little-Tony.'
[776] See _ante_, ii. 213.
[777] In 1673 Burnet, who was then Professor of Theology in Glasgow,
dedicated to Lauderdale _A Vindication of the Authority, &c., of the
Church and State of Scotland_. In it he writes of the Duke's 'noble
character, and more lasting and inward characters of his princely mind.'
[778] See _ante_, i. 450.
[779] See _ante_, p. 250.
[780] 'Others have considered infinite space as the receptacle, or
rather the habitation of the Almighty; but the noblest and most exalted
way of considering this infinite space, is that of Sir Isaac Newton, who
calls it the _sensorium_ of the Godhead. Brutes and men have their
_sensoriola_, or little _sensoriums_, by which they apprehend the
presence, and perceive the actions, of a few objects that lie contiguous
to them. Their knowledge and observation turn within a very narrow
circle. But as God Almighty cannot but perceive and know everything in
which he resides, infinite space gives room to infinite knowledge, and
is, as it were, an organ to Omniscience.' Addison, _The Spectator_,
No. 565.
[781] 'Le celebre philosophe Leibnitz ... attaqua ces expressions du
philosophe anglais, dans une lettre qu'il ecrivit en 1715 a la feue
reine d'Angleterre, epouse de George II. Cette princesse, digne d'etre
en commerce avec Leibnitz et Newton, engagea une dispute reglee par
lettres entre les deux parties. Mais Newton, ennemi de toute dispute et
avare de son temps, laissa le docteur Clarke, son disciple en physique,
et pour le moins son egal en metaphysique, entrer pour lui dans la lice.
La dispute roula sur presque toutes les idees metaphysiques de Newton,
et c'est peut-etre le plus beau monument que nous ayons des combats
litteraires.' Voltaire's _Works_, ed. 1819, xxviii. 44.
[782] See _ante_, iii. 248.
[783] See _ante_, iv. 295, where Boswell asked Johnson 'if he would not
have done more good if he had been more gentle.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; I
have done more good as I am. Obscenity and impiety have always been
repressed in my company.'
[784] 'Mr. Maclean has the reputation of great learning: he is
seventy-seven years old, but not infirm, with a look of venerable
dignity, excelling what I remember in any other man. His conversation
was not unsuitable to his appearance. I lost some of his good will by
treating a heretical writer with more regard than in his opinion a
heretick could deserve. I honoured his orthodoxy, and did not much
censure his asperity. A man who has settled his opinions does not love
to have the tranquillity of his conviction disturbed; and at
seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 118.
[785] 'Mr. Maclean has no publick edifice for the exercise of his
ministry, and can officiate to no greater number than a room can
contain; and the room of a hut is not very large... The want of churches
is not the only impediment to piety; there is likewise a want of
ministers. A parish often contains more islands than one... All the
provision made by the present ecclesiastical constitution for the
inhabitants of about a hundred square miles is a prayer and sermon in a
little room once in three weeks.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 118.
[786]
'Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds
what we have taught her.
I wonder any man alive will
ever rear a daughter.
For she must have both hoods
and gowns, and hoops to
swell her pride,
With scarfs and stays, and
gloves and lace; and she
will have men beside;
And when she's drest with care
and cost, all-tempting, fine and gay,
As men should serve a cucumber,
she flings herself away.'
Air vii.
[787] See _ante_, p. 162.
[788] In 1715.
[789]
'When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow.'
Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, l. 370.
[790] Johnson's remark on these stones is curious as shewing that he had
not even a glimpse of the discoveries to be made by geology. After
saying that 'no account can be given' of the position of one of the
stones, he continues:--'There are so many important things of which
human knowledge can give no account, that it may be forgiven us if we
speculate no longer on two stones in Col.' _Works_, ix. 122. See _ante_,
ii. 468, for his censure of Brydone's 'anti-mosaical remark.'
[791]
'Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella.'
'My Phillis me with pelted apples plies.'
DRYDEN. Virgil, _Eclogues_, iii. 64.
[792]
'The helpless traveller, with wild surprise,
Sees the dry desert all around him rise,
And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies.'
_Cato_ act ii. sc. 6.
[793] Johnson seems unwilling to believe this. 'I am not of opinion that
by any surveys or land-marks its [the sand's] limits have been ever
fixed, or its progression ascertained. If one man has confidence enough
to say that it advances, nobody can bring any proof to support him in
denying it.' _Works_, ix. 122. He had seen land in like manner laid
waste north of Aberdeen; where 'the owner, when he was required to pay
the usual tax, desired rather to resign the ground.' _Ib_. p. 15.
[794] _Box_, in this sense, is not in Johnson's _Dictionary_.
[795] See _ante_, ii. 100, and iv. 274.
[796] In the original, _Rich windows. A Long Story_, l. 7.
[797] 'And this according to the philosophers is happiness.' Boswell
says of Crabbe's poem _The Village_, that 'its sentiments as to the
false notions of rustick happiness and rustick virtue were quite
congenial with Johnson's own.' _Ante_, iv. 175.
[798] 'This innovation was considered by Mr. Macsweyn as the idle
project of a young head, heated with English fancies; but he has now
found that turnips will really grow, and that hungry sheep and cows will
really eat them.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 121. 'The young laird is heir,
perhaps, to 300 square miles of land, which, at ten shillings an acre,
would bring him L96,000 a year. He is desirous of improving the
agriculture of his country; and, in imitation of the Czar, travelled for
improvement, and worked with his own hands upon a farm in
Hertfordshire.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 168.
[799] 'In more fruitful countries the removal of one only makes room for
the succession of another; but in the Hebrides the loss of an inhabitant
leaves a lasting vacuity; for nobody born in any other parts of the
world will choose this country for his residence.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 93.
[800] 'In 1628 Daille wrote his celebrated book, _De l'usage des Peres_,
or _Of the Use of the Fathers_. Dr. Fleetwood, Bishop of Ely, said of it
that he thought the author had pretty sufficiently proved they were of
_no use_ at all.' Chalmers's _Biog. Dict_. xi. 209.
[801] _Enquiry after Happiness_, by Richard Lucas, D.D., 1685.
[802] _Divine Dialogues_, by Henry More, D.D. See _ante_, ii. 162, note
I.
[803] By David Gregory, the second of the sixteen professors which the
family of Gregory gave to the Universities. _Ante_, p. 48.
[804] 'Johnson's landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court.' _Ante_,
iii. 141.
[805] 'Cuper's Gardens, near the south bank of the Thames, opposite to
Somerset House. The gardens were illuminated, and the company
entertained by a band of music and fireworks; but this, with other
places of the same kind, has been lately discontinued by an act that has
reduced the number of these seats of luxury and dissipation.' Dodsley's
_London and its Environs_, ed. 1761, ii. 209. The Act was the 25th
George II, for 'preventing robberies and regulating places of public
entertainment.' _Parl. Hist_. xiv. 1234.
[806] 'Mr. Johnson,' according to Mr. Langton, 'used to laugh at a
passage in Carte's _Life of the Duke of Ormond,_ where he gravely
observes "that he was always in full dress when he went to court; too
many being in the practice of going thither with double lapells."'
_Boswelliana_, p. 274. The following is the passage:--'No severity of
weather or condition of health served him for a reason of not observing
that decorum of dress which he thought a point of respect to persons and
places. In winter time people were allowed to come to court with
double-breasted coats, a sort of undress. The duke would never take
advantage of that indulgence; but let it be never so cold, he always
came in his proper habit, and indeed the king himself always did the
same, though too many neglected his example to make use of the liberty
he was pleased to allow.' Carte's _Life of Ormond_, iv. 693. See _ante_,
i. 42. It was originally published in _three_ volumes folio in 1735-6.
[807] Seneca's two epigrams on Corsica are quoted in Boswell's
_Corsica_, first edition, p. 13. Boswell, in one of his _Hypochondriacks
(London Mag._ 1778, p. 173), says:--'For Seneca I have a double
reverence, both for his own worth, and because he was the heathen sage
whom my grandfather constantly studied.'
[808] 'Very near the house of Maclean stands the castle of Col, which
was the mansion of the Laird till the house was built.... On the wall
was, not long ago, a stone with an inscription, importing, that if any
man of the clan of Maclonich shall appear before this castle, though he
come at midnight, with a man's head in his hand, he shall there find
safety and protection against all but the king. This is an old Highland
treaty made upon a very memorable occasion. Maclean, the son of John
Gerves, who recovered Col, and conquered Barra, had obtained, it is
said, from James the Second, a grant of the lands of Lochiel, forfeited,
I suppose, by some offence against the state. Forfeited estates were not
in those days quietly resigned; Maclean, therefore, went with an armed
force to seize his new possessions, and, I know not for what reason,
took his wife with him. The Camerons rose in defence of their chief, and
a battle was fought at Loch Ness, near the place where Fort Augustus now
stands, in which Lochiel obtained the victory, and Maclean, with his
followers, was defeated and destroyed. The lady fell into the hands of
the conquerors, and, being found pregnant, was placed in the custody of
Maclonich, one of a tribe or family branched from Cameron, with orders,
if she brought a boy, to destroy him, if a girl, to spare her.
Maclonich's wife, who was with child likewise, had a girl about the same
time at which Lady Maclean brought a boy; and Maclonich, with more
generosity to his captive than fidelity to his trust, contrived that the
children should be changed. Maclean, being thus preserved from death, in
time recovered his original patrimony; and, in gratitude to his friend,
made his castle a place of refuge to any of the clan that should think
himself in danger; and, as a proof of reciprocal confidence, Maclean
took upon himself and his posterity the care of educating the heir of
Maclonich.' Johnson's _Works,_ ix. 130.
[809] 'Mr. Croker tells us that the great Marquis of Montrose was
beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650. There is not a forward boy at any school
