'modern _cant_.'
[685] 'Custom,' wrote Sir Joshua, 'or politeness, or courtly manners has
authorised such an eastern hyperbolical style of compliment, that part
of Dr. Johnson's character for rudeness of manners must be put to the
account of scrupulous adherence to truth. His obstinate silence, whilst
all the company were in raptures, vying with each other who should
pepper highest, was considered as rudeness or ill-nature.' Taylor's
_Reynolds_, ii. 458.
[686] 'The shame is to impose words for ideas upon ourselves or others.'
Johnson's _Works_, vi. 64. See _ante_, p.122, where he says: 'There is a
middle state of mind between conviction and hypocrisy.' Bacon, in his
_Essay of Truth_, says: 'It is not the lie that passeth through the
mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth
the hurt.'
[687] See _ante_, p. 204.
[688] 'I dined and lay at Harrison's, where I was received with that
old-fashioned breeding which is at once so honourable and so
troublesome.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 144. Mr. Pleydell, in _Guy
Mannering_, ed. 1860, iv. 96, says: 'You'll excuse my old-fashioned
importunity. I was born in a time when a Scotchman was thought
inhospitable if he left a guest alone a moment, except when he slept.'
[689] See _ante_, ii. 167.
[690] See _ante_, i. 387.
[691] In Johnson's _Works_, ed. 1787, xi. 197, it is recorded that
Johnson said, 'Sheridan's writings on elocution were a continual
renovation of hope, and an unvaried succession of disappointments.'
According to the _Gent. Mag._ 1785, p. 288, he continued:--'If we
should have a bad harvest this year, Mr. Sheridan would say:--"It was
owing to the neglect of oratory."' See _ante_, p. 206.
[692] Burke, no doubt, was this 'bottomless Whig.' When Johnson said 'so
they _all_ are now,' he was perhaps thinking of the Coalition Ministry
in which Lord North and his friends had places.
[693] No doubt Burke, who was Paymaster of the Forces. He is Boswell's
'eminent friend.' See _ante_ ii.222, and _post_, Dec. 24, 1783, and
Jan.8, 1784. In these two consecutive paragraphs, though two people seem
to be spoken of, yet only one is in reality.
[694] I believe that Burke himself was present part of the time, and
that he was the gentleman who 'talked of _retiring_. On May 19 and 21 he
had in Parliament defended his action in restoring to office two clerks,
Powell and Bembridge, who had been dismissed by his predecessor, and he
had justified his reforms in the Paymaster's office. 'He awaited,' he
said, the 'judgement of the House. ...If they so far differed in
sentiment, he had only to say, _Nunc dimittis servum tuum.' Parl. Hist._
xxiii.919.
[695] A copy of _Evelina_ had been placed in the Bodleian. 'Johnson
says,' wrote Miss Burney, 'that when he goes to Oxford he will write my
name in the books, and my age when I writ them, and then,' he says, 'the
world may know that we _So mix our studies, and so joined our fame._ For
we shall go down hand in hand to posterity.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_,
i.429. The oldest copy of _Evelina_ now in the Bodleian is of an edition
published after Johnson's death. Miss Burney, in 1793, married General
D'Arblay, a French refugee.
[696] Macaulay maintained that Johnson had a hand in the composition of
_Cecilia_. He quotes a passage from it, and says:--'We say with
confidence, either Sam. Johnson or the Devil.' (_Essays_, ed. 1874, iv.
157.) That he is mistaken is shown by Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_ (ii. 172).
'Ay,' cried Dr. Johnson, 'some people want to make out some credit to me
from the little rogue's book. I was told by a gentleman this morning
that it was a very fine book, if it was all her own.' "It is all her
own," said I, "for me, I am sure, for I never saw one word of it before
it was printed."' On p. 196 she records the following:--'SIR JOSHUA.
"Gibbon says he read the whole five volumes in a day." "'Tis
impossible," cried Mr. Burke, "it cost me three days; and you know I
never parted with it from the day I first opened it."' See _post_, among
the imitators of Johnson's style, under Dec. 6, 1784.
[697] In Mr. Barry's printed analysis, or description of these pictures,
he speaks of Johnson's character in the highest terms. BOSWELL. Barry,
in one of his pictures, placed Johnson between the two beautiful
duchesses of Rutland and Devonshire, pointing to their Graces Mrs.
Montagu as an example. He expresses his 'reverence for his consistent,
manly, and well-spent life.' Barry's _Works_, ii. 339. Johnson, in his
turn, praises 'the comprehension of Barry's design.' _Piozzi Letters_,
ii. 256. He was more likely to understand it, as the pictures formed a
series, meant 'to illustrate one great maxim of moral truth, viz. that
the obtaining of happiness depends upon cultivating the human faculties.
We begin with man in a savage state full of inconvenience, imperfection,
and misery, and we follow him through several gradations of culture and
happiness, which, after our probationary state here, are finally
attended with beatitude or misery.' Barry's _Works_, ii. 323. Horace
Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 366) describes Barry's book as one 'which does
not want sense, though full of passion and self, and vulgarisms
and vanity.'
[698] Boswell had tried to bring about a third meeting between Johnson
and Wilkes. On May 21 he wrote:--'Mr. Boswell's compliments to Mr.
Wilkes. He finds that it would not be unpleasant to Dr. Johnson to dine
at Mr. Wilkes's. The thing would be so curiously benignant, it were a
pity it should not take place. Nobody but Mr. Boswell should be asked to
meet the doctor.' An invitation was sent, but the following answer was
returned:--'May 24, 1783. Mr. Johnson returns thanks to Mr. and Miss
Wilkes for their kind invitation; but he is engaged for Tuesday to Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and for Wednesday to Mr. Paradise.' Owing to Boswell's
return to Scotland, another day could not be fixed. Almon's _Wilkes_,
iv. 314, 321.
[699] 'If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the
place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.' _Ecclesiastes_, xi. 3.
[700] 'When a tree is falling, I have seen the labourers, by a trivial
jerk with a rope, throw it upon the spot where they would wish it should
lie. Divines, understanding this text too literally, pretend, by a
little interposition in the article of death, to regulate a person's
everlasting happiness. I fancy the allusion will hardly countenance
their presumption.' Shenstone's _Works_, ed. 1773, ii. 255.
[701] Hazlitt says that 'when old Baxter first went to Kidderminster to
preach, he was almost pelted by the women for maintaining from the
pulpit the then fashionable and orthodox doctrine, that "Hell was paved
with infants' skulls.'" _Conversations of Northcote_, p. 80.
[702] _Acts_, xvii. 24.
[703] Now the celebrated Mrs. Crouch. BOSWELL.
[704] Mr. Windham was at this time in Dublin, Secretary to the Earl of
Northington, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. BOSWELL. See
_ante_, p.200.
[705] Son of Mr. Samuel Paterson. BOSWELL. See _ante_, iii.90, and
_post_, April 5, 1784.
[706] The late Keeper of the Royal Academy. He died on Jan. 23 of this
year. Reynolds wrote of him:--'He may truly be said in every sense, to
have been the father of the present race of artists.' Northcote's
_Reynolds_ ii.137.
[707] Mr. Allen was his landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court.
_Ante_, iii. 141.
[708] Cowper mentions him in _Retirement_:--
'Virtuous and faithful Heberden! whose skill
Attempts no task it cannot well fulfill,
Gives melancholy up to nature's care,
And sends the patient into purer air.'
Cowper's _Poems_, ed. 1786, i. 272.
He is mentioned also by Priestley (_Auto._ ed. 1810, p.66) as one of his
chief benefactors. Lord Eldon, when almost a briefless barrister,
consulted him. 'I put my hand into my pocket, meaning to give him his
fee; but he stopped me, saying, "Are you the young gentleman who gained
the prize for the essay at Oxford?" I said I was. "I will take no fee
from you." I often consulted him; but he would never take a fee.'
Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 104.
[709] How much he had physicked himself is shewn by a letter of May 8.
'I took on Thursday,' he writes, 'two brisk catharticks and a dose of
calomel. Little things do me no good. At night I was much better. Next
day cathartick again, and the third day opium for my cough. I lived
without flesh all the three days.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.257. He had been
bled at least four times that year and had lost about fifty ounces of
blood. _Ante_, pp.142, 146. On Aug. 3, 1779, he wrote:--'Of the last
fifty days I have taken mercurial physick, I believe, forty.' _Notes and
Queries_, 6th S. v.461.
[710] An exact reprint of this letter is given by Professor Mayor in
_Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v.481. The omissions and the repetitions
'betray,' he says, 'the writer's agitation.' The postscript Boswell had
omitted. It is as follows:--'Dr. Brocklesby will be with me to meet Dr.
Heberden, and I shall have previously make (sic) master of the case as
well as I can.'
[711] Vol. ii. p.268, of Mrs. Thrale's _Collection_. BOSWELL. The
beginning of the letter is very touching:--'I am sitting down in no
cheerful solitude to write a narrative which would once have affected
you with tenderness and sorrow, but which you will perhaps pass over now
with the careless glance of frigid indifference. For this diminution of
regard, however, I know not whether I ought to blame you, who may have
reasons which I cannot know, and I do not blame myself, who have for a
great part of human life done you what good I could, and have never done
you evil.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 268. 'I have loved you,' he continued,
'with virtuous affection; I have honoured you with sincere esteem. Let
not all our endearments be forgotten, but let me have in this great
distress your pity and your prayers. You see I yet turn to you with my
complaints as a settled and unalienable friend; do not, do not drive me
from you, for I have not deserved either neglect or hatred.'
_Ib._ p.271.
[712] On Aug. 20 he wrote:--'I sat to Mrs. Reynolds yesterday for my
picture, perhaps the tenth time, and I sat near three hours with the
patience of _mortal born to bear_; at last she declared it quite
finished, and seems to think it fine. I told her it was _Johnson's
grimly ghost_. It is to be engraved, and I think _in glided_, &c., will
be a good inscription.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 302. Johnson is quoting
from Mallet's ballad of _Margaret's Ghost_:--
'Twas at the silent solemn hour,
When night and morning meet;
In glided Margaret's grimly ghost,
And stood at William's feet.'
_Percy Ballads_, in. 3, 16.
According to Northcote, Reynolds said of his sister's oil-paintings,
'they made other people laugh and him cry.' 'She generally,' Northcote
adds, 'did them by stealth.' _Life of Reynolds_, ii. 160.
[713] 'Nocte, inter 16 et 17 Junii, 1783.
Summe pater, quodcunque tuum de corpore Numen
Hoc statuat, precibus Christus adesse velit:
Ingenio parcas, nee sit mihi culpa rogasse,
Qua solum potero parte placere tibi.'
_Works_, i.159.
[714] According to the _Gent. Mag_. 1783, p.542, Dr. Lawrence died at
Canterbury on June 13 of this year, his second son died on the 15th.
But, if we may trust Munk's _Roll of the College of Physicians_, ii.153,
on the father's tomb-stone, June 6 is given as the day of his death. Mr.
Croker gives June 17 as the date, and June 19 as the day of the son's
death, and is puzzled accordingly.
[715] Poor Derrick, however, though he did not himself introduce me to
Dr. Johnson as he promised, had the merit of introducing me to Davies,
the immediate introductor. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i.385, 391.
[716] Miss Burney, calling on him the next morning, offered to make his
tea. He had given her his own large arm-chair which was too heavy for
her to move to the table. '"Sir," quoth she, "I am in the wrong chair."
"It is so difficult," cried he with quickness, "for anything to be wrong
that belongs to you, that it can only be I that am in the wrong chair to
keep you from the right one."' Dr. Burney's _Memoirs_, ii. 345.
[717] His Lordship was soon after chosen, and is now a member of THE
CLUB. BOSWELL. He was father of the future prime-minister, who was born
in the following year.
[718] He wrote on June 23:--'What man can do for man has been done for
me.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.278. Murphy (_Life_, p. 121) says that,
visiting him during illness, he found him reading Dr. Watson's
_Chymistry_ (_ante_, p. 118). 'Articulating with difficulty he
said:--"From this book he who knows nothing may learn a great deal, and
he who knows will be pleased to find his knowledge recalled to his mind
in a manner highly pleasing."'
[719] 'I have, by the migration of one of my ladies, more peace at home;
but I remember an old savage chief that says of the Romans with great
indignation-_ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant_ [_Tacitus,
Agricola_, c. xxx]. _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 259.
[720] 'July 23. I have been thirteen days at Rochester, and am just now
returned. I came back by water in a common boat twenty miles for a
shilling, and when I landed at Billingsgate, I carried my budget myself
to Cornhill before I could get a coach, and was not much incommoded'
_Ib_. ii.294. See _ante_, iv.8, 22, for mention of Rochester.
[721] Murphy (_Life_, p. 121) says that Johnson visited Oxford this
summer. Perhaps he was misled by a passage in the _Piozzi Letters_ (ii.
302) where Johnson is made to write:--'At Oxford I have just left
Wheeler.' For _left_ no doubt should be read _lost_. Wheeler died on
July 22 of this year. _Gent. Mag_. 1783, p. 629.
[722] This house would be interesting to Johnson, as in it Charles II,
'for whom he had an extraordinary partiality' (_ante_, ii. 341), lay hid
for some days after the battle of Worcester. Clarendon (vi. 540)
describes it 'as a house that stood alone from neighbours and from any
highway.' Charles was lodged 'in a little room, which had been made
since the beginning of the troubles for the concealment of delinquents.'
[723] 'I told Dr. Johnson I had heard that Mr. Bowles was very much
delighted with the expectation of seeing him, and he answered me:--"He
is so delighted that it is shocking. It is really shocking to see how
high are his expectations." I asked him why, and he said:--"Why, if any
man is expected to take a leap of twenty yards, and does actually take
one of ten, everybody will be disappointed, though ten yards may be more
than any other man ever leaped."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii.260. On
Oct. 9, he wrote:--'Two nights ago Mr. Burke sat with me a long time.
We had both seen Stonehenge this summer for the first time.' _Piozzi
Letters_, ii.315.
[724] Salisbury is eighty-two miles from Cornhill by the old coach-road.
Johnson seems to have been nearly fifteen hours on the journey.
[725] 'Aug. 13, 1783. I am now broken with disease, without the
alleviation of familiar friendship or domestic society. I have no middle
state between clamour and silence, between general conversation and
self-tormenting solitude. Levett is dead, and poor Williams is making
haste to die.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.301. 'Aug. 20. This has been a day
of great emotion; the office of the Communion of the Sick has been
performed in poor Mrs. Williams's chamber.' _Ib_. 'Sept. 22. Poor
Williams has, I hope, seen the end of her afflictions. She acted with
prudence and she bore with fortitude. She has left me.
"Thou thy weary [worldly] task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages."
[_Cymbeline_, act iv. sc. 2.]
Had she had good humour and prompt elocution, her universal curiosity
and comprehensive knowledge would have made her the delight of all that
knew her.' _Ib_. p. 311.
[726] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 354) described in 1756 such a companion as
he found in Mrs. Williams. He quotes Pope's _Epitaph on Mrs. Corbet_,
and continues:--'I have always considered this as the most valuable of
all Pope's epitaphs; the subject of it is a character not discriminated
by any shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which really makes,
though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every
wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor
of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs, weary and disgusted,
from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character
which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value
should be made known, and the dignity established.' See _ante_, i.232.
[727] _Pr. and Med_. p. 226. BOSWELL.
[728] I conjecture that Mr. Bowles is the friend. The account follows
close on the visit to his house, and contains a mention of Johnson's
attendance at a lecture at Salisbury.
[729] A writer in _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. xii. 149, says:--'Mr.
Bowles had married a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, viz. Dinah, the
fourth daughter of Sir Thomas Frankland, and highly valued himself upon
this connection with the Protector.' He adds that Mr. Bowles was an
active Whig.
[730] Mr. Malone observes, 'This, however, was certainly a mistake, as
appears from the _Memoirs_ published by Mr. Noble. Had Johnson been
furnished with the materials which the industry of that gentleman has
procured, and with others which, it it is believed, are yet preserved in
manuscript, he would, without doubt, have produced a most valuable and
curious history of Cromwell's life.' BOSWELL.
[731] See _ante_, ii.358, note 3.
[732] _Short Notes for Civil Conversation_. Spedding's _Bacon_, vii.109.
[733] 'When I took up his _Life of Cowley_, he made me put it away to
talk. I could not help remarking how very like he is to his writing, and
how much the same thing it was to hear or to read him; but that nobody
could tell that without coming to Streatham, for his language was
generally imagined to be laboured and studied, instead of the mere
common flow of his thoughts. "Very true," said Mrs. Thrale, "he writes
and talks with the same ease, and in the same manner."' Mme. D'Arblay's
_Diary_, i. 120. What a different account is this from that given by
Macaulay:--'When he talked he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible
and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write
for the public, his style became systematically vicious.' Macaulay's
_Essays_, edit. 1843, i.404. See _ante_, ii.96, note; iv.183; and
_post_, the end of the vol.
[734] See _ante_, ii.125, iii.254, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 14.
[735] Hume said:--'The French have more real politeness, and the English
the better method of expressing it. By real politeness I mean softness
of temper, and a sincere inclination to oblige and be serviceable, which
is very conspicuous in this nation, not only among the high, but low; in
so much that the porters and coachmen here are civil, and that, not only
to gentlemen, but likewise among themselves.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_,
i. 53.
[736] This is the third time that Johnson's disgust at this practice is
recorded. See _ante_, ii.403, and iii.352.
[737] See _ante_, iii.398, note 3.
[738] 'Sept. 22, 1783. The chymical philosophers have discovered a body
(which I have forgotten, but will enquire) which, dissolved by an acid,
emits a vapour lighter than the atmospherical air. This vapour is
caught, among other means, by tying a bladder compressed upon the body
in which the dissolution is performed; the vapour rising swells the
bladder and fills it. _Piozzi Letters_, ii.310. The 'body' was
iron-filings, the acid sulphuric acid, and the vapour nitrogen. The
other 'new kinds of air' were the gases discovered by Priestley.
[739] I do not wonder at Johnson's displeasure when the name of Dr.
Priestley was mentioned; for I know no writer who has been suffered to
publish more pernicious doctrines. I shall instance only three. First,
_Materialism_; by which _mind_ is denied to human nature; which, if
believed, must deprive us of every elevated principle. Secondly,
_Necessity_; or the doctrine that every action, whether good or bad, is
included in an unchangeable and unavoidable system; a notion utterly
subversive of moral government. Thirdly, that we have no reason to think
that the _future_ world, (which, as he is pleased to _inform_ us, will
be adapted to our _merely improved_ nature,) will be materially
different from _this_; which, if believed, would sink wretched mortals
into despair, as they could no longer hope for the 'rest that remaineth
for the people of GOD' [_Hebrews_, iv.9], or for that happiness which is
revealed to us as something beyond our present conceptions; but would
feel themselves doomed to a continuation of the uneasy state under which
they now groan. I say nothing of the petulant intemperance with which he
dares to insult the venerable establishments of his country.
As a specimen of his writings, I shall quote the following passage,
which appears to me equally absurd and impious, and which might have
