something. It may be added to the _Life of Philips_. The Latin page is
to be added to the _Life of Smith_. I shall be at home to revise the two
sheets of Milton. March 1, 1779.'
'Please to get me the last edition of Hughes's _Letters_; and try to get
_Dennis upon Blackmore_, and upon Calo, and any thing of the same writer
against Pope. Our materials are defective.'
'As Waller professed to have imitated Fairfax, do you think a few pages
of Fairfax would enrich our edition? Few readers have seen it, and it
may please them. But it is not necessary.'
'An account of the Lives and works of some of the most eminent English
Poets. By, &c.--"The English Poets, biographically and critically
considered, by SAM. JOHNSON."--Let Mr. Nichols take his choice, or make
another to his mind. May, 1781.'
'You somehow forgot the advertisement for the new edition. It was not
inclosed. Of Gay's _Letters_ I see not that any use can be made, for
they give no information of any thing. That he was a member of the
Philosophical Society is something; but surely he could be but a
corresponding member. However, not having his life here, I know not how
to put it in, and it is of little importance.'
See several more in _The Gent. Mag._, 1785. The Editor of that
Miscellany, in which Johnson wrote for several years, seems justly to
think that every fragment of so great a man is worthy of being
preserved. BOSWELL. In the original MS. in the British Museum, _Your_ in
the third paragraph of this note is not in italics. Johnson writes his
correspondent's name _Nichols_, _Nichol_, and _Nicol_. In the fourth
paragraph he writes, first _Philips_, and next _Phillips_. His spelling
was sometimes careless, _ante_, i. 260, note 2. In the _Gent. Mag._ for
1785, p. 10, another of these notes is published:--'In reading Rowe in
your edition, which is very impudently called mine, I observed a little
piece unnaturally and odiously obscene. I was offended, but was still
more offended when I could not find it in Rowe's genuine volumes. To
admit it had been wrong; to interpolate it is surely worse. If I had
known of such a piece in the whole collection, I should have been angry.
What can be done?' In a note, Mr. Nichols says that this piece 'has not
only appeared in the _Works_ of Rowe, but has been transplanted by Pope
into the _Miscellanies_ he published in his own name and that of
Dean Swift.'
[132] He published, in 1782, a revised edition of Baker's_ Biographia
Dramatica_. Baker was a grandson of De Foe. _Gent. Mag._ 1782, p. 77.
[133] Dryden writing of satiric poetry, says:--'Had I time I could
enlarge on the beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are as
requisite in this as in heroic poetry itself; of which the satire is
undoubtedly a species. With these beautiful turns I confess myself to
have been unacquainted, till about twenty years ago, in a conversation
which I had with that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he
asked me why I did not imitate in my verses the turns of Mr. Waller, and
Sir John Denham. ... This hint, thus seasonably given me, first made me
sensible of my own wants, and brought me afterwards to seek for the
supply of them in other English authors. I looked over the darling of my
youth, the famous Cowley.' Dryden's _Works_, ed. 1821, xiii. III.
[134] In one of his letters to Nichols, Johnson says:--'You have now all
Cowley. I have been drawn to a great length, but Cowley or Waller never
had any critical examination before.' _Gent. Mag._ 1785, p.9.
[135] _Life of Sheffield_. BOSWELL. Johnson's _Works_, vii. 485.
[136] See, however, p.11 of this volume, where the same remark is made
and Johnson is there speaking of _prose_. MALONE.
[137]
'Purpureus, late qui splendeat unus et alter
Assuitur pannus.'
'... Shreds of purple with broad lustre shine
Sewed on your poem.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 15.
[138] The original reading is enclosed in crochets, and the present one
is printed in Italicks. BOSWELL.
[139] I have noticed a few words which, to our ears, are more uncommon
than at least two of the three that Boswell mentions; as, 'Languages
divaricate,' _Works_, vii. 309; 'The mellifluence of Pope's numbers,'
_ib._ 337; 'A subject flux and transitory,' _ib._ 389; 'His prose is
pure without scrupulosity,' _ib._ 472; 'He received and accommodated the
ladies' (said of one serving behind the counter), _ib._ viii. 62; 'The
prevalence of this poem was gradual,' _ib._ p. 276; 'His style is
sometimes concatenated,' _ib._ p. 458. Boswell, on the next page,
supplies one more instance--'Images such as the superficies of nature
readily supplies.'
[140] See _ante_, iii. 249.
[141] Veracious is perhaps one of the 'four or five words' which Johnson
added, or thought that he added, to the English language. _Ante_, i.
221. He gives it in his _Dictionary_, but without any authority for it.
It is however older than his time.
[142] See Johnson's _Works_, vii. 134, 212, and viii. 386.
[143] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii. 452) writes of Johnson's
'_Billingsgate on Milton_.' A later letter shows that, like so many of
Johnson's critics, he had not read the _Life_. _Ib_. p. 508.
[144] _Works_, vii. 108.
[145] Thirty years earlier he had written of Milton as 'that poet whose
works may possibly be read when every other monument of British
greatness shall be obliterated.' _Ante_, i. 230. See _ante_, ii. 239.
[146] Earl Stanhope (_Life of Pitt_, ii. 65) describes this Society in
1790, 'as a Club, till then of little note, which had a yearly festival
in commemoration of the events of 1688. It had been new-modelled, and
enlarged with a view to the transactions at Paris, but still retained
its former name to imply a close connection between the principles of
1688 in England, and the principles of 1789 in France.' The Earl
Stanhope of that day presided at the anniversary meeting on Nov. 4,
1789. Nov. 4 was the day on which William III. landed.
[147] See _An Essay on the Life, Character, and writings of Dr. Samuel
Johnson_, London, 1787; which is very well written, making a proper
allowance for the democratical bigotry of its authour; whom I cannot
however but admire for his liberality in speaking thus of my
illustrious friend:--
'He possessed extraordinary powers of understanding, which were much
cultivated by study, and still more by meditation and reflection. His
memory was remarkably retentive, his imagination uncommonly vigorous,
and his judgement keen and penetrating. He had a strong sense of the
importance of religion; his piety was sincere, and sometimes ardent; and
his zeal for the interests of virtue was often manifested in his
conversation and in his writings. The same energy which was displayed in
his literary productions was exhibited also in his conversation, which
was various, striking, and instructive; and perhaps no man ever equalled
him for nervous and pointed repartees.'
'His _Dictionary_, his moral Essays, and his productions in polite
literature, will convey useful instruction, and elegant entertainment,
as long as the language in which they are written shall be
understood.' BOSWELL.
[148] Boswell paraphrases the following passage:--'The King, with lenity
of which the world has had perhaps no other example, declined to be the
judge or avenger of his own or his father's wrongs; and promised to
admit into the Act of Oblivion all, except those whom the Parliament
should except; and the Parliament doomed none to capital punishment but
the wretches who had immediately co-operated in the murder of the King.
Milton was certainly not one of them; he had only justified what they
had done.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 95.
[149]
'Though fall'n on evil days,
On evil days though fall'n and evil tongues,
In darkness, and with dangers compast round.'
_Paradise Lost_, vii. 26.
[150] Johnson's _Works_, vii. 105.
[151] 'His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly
republican.' _Ib_. p. 116.
[152] 'What we know of Milton's character in domestick relations is,
that he was severe and arbitrary.' _Ib._ p. 116.
[153] 'His theological opinions are said to have been first,
Calvinistical; and afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the
Presbyterians, to have tended towards Arminianism.... He appears to have
been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion.' _Ib._ p. 115.
[154] Mr. Malone things it is rather a proof that he felt nothing of
those cheerful sensations which he has described: that on these topicks
it is the _poet_, and not the _man_, that writes. BOSWELL.
[155] See _ante_, i. 427, ii. 124, and iv. 20, for Johnson's
condemnation of blank verse. This condemnations was not universal. Of
Dryden, he wrote (_Works_, vii. 249):--'He made rhyming tragedies, till,
by the prevalence of manifest propriety, he seems to have grown ashamed
of making them any longer.' His own _Irene_ is in blank verse; though
Macaulay justly remarks of it:--'He had not the slightest notion of what
blank verse should be.' (Macaulay's _Writings and Speeches_, ed. 1871,
p. 380.) Of Thomson's _Seasons_, he says (_Works_, vii. 377):--'His is one
of the works in which blank verse seems properly used.' Of Young's
_Night Thoughts_:--'This is one of the few poems in which blank verse
could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage.' _Ib_. p. 460. Of
Milton himself, he writes:--'Whatever be the advantages of rhyme, I
cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I
cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he
is to be admired rather than imitated.' _Ib_. vii. 142. How much he felt
the power of Milton's blank verse is shewn by his _Rambler_, No. 90,
where, after stating that 'the noblest and most majestick pauses which
our versification admits are upon the fourth and sixth syllables,' he
adds:--' Some passages [in Milton] which conclude at this stop [the
sixth syllable] I could never read without some strong emotions of
delight or admiration.' 'If,' he continues, 'the poetry of Milton be
examined with regard to the pauses and flow of his verses into each
other, it will appear that he has performed all that our language would
admit.' Cowper was so indignant at Johnson's criticism of Milton's blank
verse that he wrote:--'Oh! I could thresh his old jacket till I made his
pension jingle in his pocket.' Southey's _Cowper_, iii. 315.
[156] One of the most natural instances of the effect of blank verse
occurred to the late Earl of Hopeton. His Lordship observed one of his
shepherds poring in the fields upon Milton's _Paradise Lost_; and having
asked him what book it was, the man answered, 'An't please your
Lordship, this is a very odd sort of an authour: he would fain rhyme,
but cannot get at it.' BOSWELL. 'The variety of pauses, so much boasted
by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to
the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy
readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines
end or begin. "Blank verse," said an ingenious critick, "seems to be
verse only to the eye."' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 141. In the _Life of
Roscommon_ (_ib_. p. 171), he says:--'A poem frigidly didactick, without
rhyme, is so near to prose, that the reader only scorns it for
pretending to be verse.'
[157] Mr. Locke. Often mentioned in Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_.
[158] See vol. in. page 71. BOSWELL.
[159] It is scarcely a defence. Whatever it was, he thus ends it:-'It is
natural to hope, that a comprehensive is likewise an elevated soul, and
that whoever is wise is also honest. I am willing to believe that
Dryden, having employed his mind, active as it was, upon different
studies, and filled it, capacious as it was, with other materials, came
unprovided to the controversy, and wanted rather skill to discover the
right than virtue to maintain it. But inquiries into the heart are not
for man; we must now leave him to his judge.' Works, vii. 279.
[160] In the original _fright_. _The Hind and the Panther_, i. 79.
[161] In this quotation two passages are joined. _Works_, vii. 339, 340.
[162] 'The deep and pathetic morality of the _Vanity of Human Wishes_'
says Sir Walter Scott, 'has often extracted tears from those whose eyes
wander dry over the pages of professed sentimentality.' CROKER. It. drew
tears from Johnson himself. 'When,' says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 50),
'he read his own satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted, he
burst into a passion of tears. The family and Mr. Scott only were
present, who, in a jocose way, clapped him on the back, and
said:--"What's all this, my dear Sir? Why you, and I, and Hercules, you
know, were all troubled with melancholy." He was a very large man, and
made out the triumvirate with Johnson and Hercules comically enough. The
Doctor was so delighted at his odd sally, that he suddenly embraced him,
and the subject was immediately changed.'
[163] In Disraeli's _Curiosities of Literature_, ed. 1834, iv. 180, is
given 'a memorandum of Dr. Johnson's of hints for the _Life of Pope_.'
[164] _Works_, viii. 345.
[165] 'Of the last editor [Warburton] it is more difficult to speak.
Respect is due to high place, tenderness to living reputation, and
veneration to genius and learning; but he cannot be justly offended at
that liberty of which he has himself so frequently given an example, nor
very solicitous what is thought of notes which he ought never to have
considered as part of his serious employments.' _Works_, v. 140. See
_post_, June 10,1784.
[166] The liberality is certainly measured. With much praise there is
much censure. _Works_, viii. 288. See _ante_, ii. 36, and Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Aug. 23.
[167] Of Johnson's conduct towards Warburton, a very honourable notice
is taken by the editor of _Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian, not
admitted into the Collection of their respective Works_. After an able
and 'fond, though not undistinguishing,' consideration of Warburton's
character, he says, 'In two immortal works, Johnson has stood forth in
the foremost rank of his admirers. By the testimony of such a man,
impertinence must be abashed, and malignity itself must be softened. Of
literary merit, Johnson, as we all know, was a sagacious but a most
severe judge. Such was his discernment, that he pierced into the most
secret springs of human actions; and such was his integrity, that he
always weighed the moral characters of his fellow-creatures in the
"balance of the sanctuary." He was too courageous to propitiate a rival,
and too proud to truckle to a superiour. Warburton he knew, as I know
him, and as every man of sense and virtue would wish to be known,--I
mean, both from his own writings, and from the writings of those who
dissented from his principles, or who envied his reputation. But, as to
favours, he had never received or asked any from the Bishop of
Gloucester; and, if my memory fails me not, he had seen him only once,
when they met almost without design, conversed without much effort, and
parted without any lasting impressions of hatred or affection. Yet, with
all the ardour of sympathetic genius, Johnson has done that
spontaneously and ably, which, by some writers, had been before
attempted injudiciously, and which, by others, from whom more successful
attempts might have been expected, has not _hitherto_ been done at all.
He spoke well of Warburton, without insulting those whom Warburton
despised. He suppressed not the imperfections of this extraordinary man,
while he endeavoured to do justice to his numerous and transcendental
excellencies. He defended him when living, amidst the clamours of his
enemies; and praised him when dead, amidst the _silence of his
friends_.'
Having availed myself of this editor's eulogy on my departed friend, for
which I warmly thank him, let me not suffer the lustre of his
reputation, honestly acquired by profound learning and vigorous
eloquence, to be tarnished by a charge of illiberality. He has been
accused of invidiously dragging again into light certain writings of a
person respectable by his talents, his learning, his station and his
age, which were published a great many years ago, and have since, it is
said, been silently given up by their authour. But when it is considered
that these writings were not _sins of youth_, but deliberate works of
one well-advanced in life, overflowing at once with flattery to a great
man of great interest in the Church, and with unjust and acrimonious
abuse of two men of eminent merit; and that, though it would have been
unreasonable to expect an humiliating recantation, no apology whatever
has been made in the cool of the evening, for the oppressive fervour of
the heat of the day; no slight relenting indication has appeared in any
note, or any corner of later publications; is it not fair to understand
him as superciliously persevering? When he allows the shafts to remain
in the wounds, and will not stretch forth a lenient hand, is it wrong,
is it not generous to become an indignant avenger? BOSWELL. Boswell
wrote on Feb. 16, 1789:--'There is just come out a publication which
makes a considerable noise. The celebrated Dr. Parr, of Norwich,
has--wickedly, shall we say?--but surely wantonly--published Warburton's
_Juvenile Translations and Discourse on Prodigies_, and Bishop Kurd's
attacks on Jortin and Dr. Thomas Leland, with his _Essay on the Delicacy
of Friendship_.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 275. The 'editor,' therefore,
is Parr, and the 'Warburtonian' is Hurd. Boswell had written to Parr on
Jan. 10, 1791:--'I request to hear by return of post if I may say or
guess that Dr. Parr is the editor of these tracts.' Parr's _Works_,
viii. 12. See also _ib_. iii. 405.
[168] In Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 213, it is said, that this
meeting was 'at the Bishop of St. ----'s [Asaph's]. Boswell, by his
'careful enquiry,' no doubt meant to show that this statement was wrong.
Johnson is reported to have said:--' Dr. Warburton at first looked
surlily at me; but after we had been jostled into conversation he took
me to a window, asked me some questions, and before we parted was so
well pleased with me that he patted me.'
[169] 'Warburton's style is copious without selection, and forcible
without neatness; he took the words that presented themselves; his
diction is coarse and impure; and his sentences are unmeasured.'
Johnson's _Works_, viii. 288.
[170] Churchill, in _The Duellist (Poems_ ed. 1766, ii. 85), describes
Warburton as having
'A heart, which virtue ne'er disgraced;
A head where learning runs to waste.'
[171] _Works_, viii. 230.
[172] 'I never,' writes Mrs. Piozzi, 'heard Johnson pronounce the words,
"I beg your pardon, Sir," to any human creature but the apparently
soft and gentle Dr. Burney.' Burney had asked her whether she had
subscribed L100 to building a bridge. '"It is very comical, is it not,
Sir?" said I, turning to Dr. Johnson, "that people should tell such
unfounded stories." "It is," answered he, "neither comical nor serious,
my dear; it is only a wandering lie." This was spoken in his natural
voice, without a thought of offence, I am confident; but up bounced
Burney in a towering passion, and to my much amaze put on the hero,
surprising Dr. Johnson into a sudden request for pardon, and
protestation of not having ever intended to accuse his friend of a
falsehood.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, i. 312.
[173] In the original, '_nor_.' _Works_, viii. 311.
[174] In the original, '_either_ wise or merry.'
[175] In the original, '_stands upon record_'.
[176] _Works_, viii. 316. Surely the words 'had not much to say' imply
that Johnson had heard the answer, but thought little of its wit.
According to Mr. Croker, the repartee is given in Ruffhead's _Life of
Pope_, and this book Johnson had seen. _Ante_, ii. 166.
[177] Let me here express my grateful remembrance of Lord Somerville's
kindness to me, at a very early period. He was the first person of high
rank that took particular notice of me in the way most flattering to a
young man, fondly ambitious of being distinguished for his literary
talents; and by the honour of his encouragement made me think well of
myself, and aspire to deserve it better. He had a happy art of
communicating his varied knowledge of the world, in short remarks and
anecdotes, with a quiet pleasant gravity, that was exceedingly engaging.
Never shall I forget the hours which I enjoyed with him at his
apartments in the Royal Palace of Holy-Rood House, and at his seat near
Edinburgh, which he himself had formed with an elegant taste. BOSWELL.
[178] _Ante_, iii. 392.
[179] Boswell, I think, misunderstands Johnson. Johnson said (_Works_,
viii. 313) that 'Pope's admiration of the Great seems to have increased
in the advance of life.' His _Iliad_ he had dedicated to Congreve, but
'to his latter works he took care to annex names dignified with titles,
but was not very happy in his choice; for, except Lord Bathurst, none of
his noble friends were such as that a good man would wish to have his
intimacy with them known to posterity; he can derive little honour from
the notice of Cobham, Burlington, or Bolingbroke.' Johnson, it seems
clear, is speaking, not of the noblemen whom Pope knew in general, but
of those to whom he dedicated any of his works. Among them Lord
Marchmont is not found, so that on him no slight is cast.
[180] Neither does Johnson actually say that Lord Marchmont had 'any
concern,' though perhaps he implies it. He writes:--'Pope left the care
of his papers to his executors; first to Lord Bolingbroke; and, if he
should not be living, to the Earl of Marchmont: undoubtedly expecting
them to be proud of the trust, and eager to extend his fame. But let no
man dream of influence beyond his life. After a decent time, Dodsley the
