difficulty happened to him, his first act would have been to knock the
man down, and to call out for the police; and next, if he was worsted in
the conflict, he would not have given the ruffian the information he
asked, at whatever risk to himself. I think he would have let himself be
killed first. I do not think that he would have told a lie.'
[936] See _ante_, iii. 376.
[937] Book ii. 1. 142.
[938] The annotator calls them 'amiable verses.' BOSWELL. The annotators
of the _Dunciad_ were Pope himself and Dr. Arbuthnot. Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 280.
[939] Boswell was at this time corresponding with Miss Seward. See
_post_, June 25.
[940] By John Dyer. _Ante_, ii. 453.
[941] Lewis's Verses addressed to Pope were first published in a
Collection of Pieces on occasion of _The Dunciad_, 8vo., 1732. They do
not appear in Lewis's own _Miscellany_, printed in 1726.--_Grongar Hill_
was first printed in Savage's _Miscellanies_ as an Ode, and was
_reprinted_ in the same year in Lewis's _Miscellany_, in the form it
now bears.
In his _Miscellanies_, 1726, the beautiful poem,--'Away, let nought to
love displeasing,'--reprinted in Percy's _Reliques_, vol. i. book iii.
No. 13, first appeared. MALONE.
[942] See _ante_, p. 58.
[943] See _ante_, i. 71, and ii. 226.
[944] Captain Cook's third voyage. The first two volumes by Captain
Cook; the last by Captain King.
[945] See _ante_, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 49.
[946]
'--quae mollissima fandi Tempora.'
'--time wherein the word May softliest be said.'
MORRIS. Virgil, _Aeneids_, iv. 293.
[947] See _ante_, i. 71.
[948] See _ante_, i. 203, note 6.
[949] Boswell began to eat dinners in the Inner Temple so early as 1775.
_Ante_, ii. 377, note 1. He was not called till Hilary Term, 1786.
Rogers's _Boswelliana_, p. 143.
[950] Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Jones wrote two years earlier
(_Life_, p. 268):--'Whether it be a wise part to live uncomfortably in
order to die wealthy, is another question; but this I know by
experience, and have heard old practitioners make the same observation,
that a lawyer who is in earnest must be chained to his chambers and the
bar for ten or twelve years together.'
[951] Johnson's _Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre. Works,
_ i. 23.
[952] According to Mr. Seward, who published this account in his
_Anecdotes,_ ii. 83, it was Mr. Langton's great-grandfather who drew
it up.
[953] 'My Lord said that his rule for his, health was to be temperate
and keep himself warm. He never made breakfasts, but used in the morning
to drink a glass of some sort of ale. That he went to bed at nine, and
rose between six and seven, allowing himself a good refreshment for his
sleep. That the law will admit of no rival, nothing to go even with it;
but that sometimes one may for diversion read in the Latin historians of
England, Hoveden and Matthew Paris, &c. But after it is conquered, it
will admit of other studies. He said, a little law, a good tongue, and a
good memory, would fit a man for the Chancery.' Seward's
_Anecdotes_, ii. 92.
[954] Wednesday was the 16th
[955] See _ante_, i. 41.
[956] _Letters to Mrs. Thrale_, vol. ii. p. 372. BOSWELL.
[957] See _ante/_, i. 155.
[958] The recommendation in this list of so many histories little agrees
'with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance' with which,
according to Lord Macaulay, Johnson spoke of history. Macaulay's
_Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 403.
[959] See _ante_, iii. 12.
[960] Northcote's account of Reynolds's table suits the description of
this 'gentleman's mode of living.' 'A table prepared for seven or eight
was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen.' There was a
'deficiency of knives and forks, plates and glasses. The attendance was
in the same style.' There were 'two or three undisciplined domestics.
The host left every one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself.'
'Rags' is certainly a strong word to apply to any of the company; but
then strong words were what Johnson used. Northcote mentions 'the
mixture of company.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 94-6. See _ante_, iii.
375, note 2.
[961] The Mayor of Windsor. Rogers's _Boswelliana_, p. 211.
[962] The passage occurs in Brooke's _Earl of Essex_(1761) at the close
of the first act, where Queen Elizabeth says:
'I shall henceforth seek
For other lights to truth; for righteous monarchs,
Justly to judge, with their own eyes should see;
_To rule o'er freemen should themselves be free_.'
_Notes and Queries_, 5th S. viii. 456.
The play was acted at Drury Lane Theatre, old Mr. Sheridan taking the
chief part. He it was who, in admiration, repeated the passage to
Johnson which provoked the parody. Murphy's _Garrick_, p. 234.
[963] 'Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p. 284. BOSWELL. In a second
letter (_ib_. p. 347) he says:--'Cator has a rough, manly independent
understanding, and does not spoil it by complaisance.' Miss Burney
accuses him of emptiness, verbosity and pomposity, all of which she
describes in an amusing manner. Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 47.
[964] 'All general reflections upon nations and societies are the trite,
thread-bare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so
have recourse to common-place.' Chesterfield's _Letters_, i. 231.
[965] See vol. ii. p. 126. BOSWELL
[966] '"That may be so," replied the lady, "for ought I know, but they
are above my comprehension." "I an't obliged to find you comprehension,
Madam, curse me," cried he,' _Roderick Random_, ch. 53. '"I protest,"
cried Moses, "I don't rightly comprehend the force of your reasoning."
"O, Sir," cried the Squire, "I am your most humble servant, I find
you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too."' _Vicar
of Wakefield_, ch. 7.
[967] In the first edition, 'as the Honourable Horace Walpole is often
called;' in the second edition, 'as Horace, now Earl of Orford, &c.'
Walpole succeeded to the title in Dec. 1791. In answer to
congratulations he wrote (_Letters_, ix. 364):--'What has happened
destroys my tranquillity.... Surely no man of seventy-four, unless
superannuated, can have the smallest pleasure in sitting at home in his
own room, as I almost always do, and being called by a new name.' He
died March 2, 1797.
[968] In _The Rambler_, No. 83, a character of a virtuoso is given which
in many ways suits Walpole:--'It is never without grief that I find a
man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this
secondary class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of
gratifying his desire of eminence by expense rather than by labour, and
known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness and
the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo
again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and trinkets for arguments
and principles.'
[969] Walpole says:--'I do not think I ever was in a room with Johnson
six times in my days.' _Letters_, ix. 319. 'The first time, I think, was
at the Royal Academy. Sir Joshua said, "Let me present Dr. Goldsmith to
you;" he did. "Now I will present Dr. Johnson to you." "No," said I,
"Sir Joshua; for Dr. Goldsmith, pass--but you shall not present Dr.
Johnson to me."' _Journal &c. of Miss Berry_, i. 305. In his _Journal of
the Reign of George III_, he speaks of Johnson as 'one of the venal
champions of the Court,' 'a renegade' (i. 430); 'a brute,' 'an old
decrepit hireling' (_ib._ p. 472); and as 'one of the subordinate crew
whom to name is to stigmatize' (_ib._ ii. 5). In his _Memoirs of the
Reign of George III_, iv. 297, he says:--'With a lumber of learning and
some strong parts Johnson was an odious and mean character. His manners
were sordid, supercilious, and brutal; his style ridiculously bombastic
and vicious, and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the
gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster.'
[970] See _ante_, i. 367.
[971] On May 26, 1791, Walpole wrote of Boswell's _Life of Johnson
(Letters_ ix. 3l9):--'I expected amongst the excommunicated to find
myself, but am very gently treated. I never would be in the least
acquainted with Johnson; or, as Boswell calls it, I had not a just value
for him; which the biographer imputes to my resentment for the Doctor's
putting bad arguments (purposely out of Jacobitism) into the speeches
which he wrote fifty years ago for my father in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_; which I did not read then, or ever knew Johnson wrote till
Johnson died.' Johnson said of these Debates:--'I saved appearances
tolerably well; but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the
best of it.' _Ante_, i. 504. 'Lord Holland said that whenever Boswell
came into a company where Horace Walpole was, Walpole would throw back
his head, purse up his mouth very significantly, and not speak a word
while Boswell remained.' _Autobiographical Recollections of C. R.
Leslie_, i. 155. Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 44) says:--'Boswell, that
quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in,
which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tapping
many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he
vented his errand.'
[972] Walpole wrote (_Letters_, vi. 44):--'If _The School for Wives_
and _The Christmas Tale_ were laid to me, so was _The Heroic Espistle_.
I could certainly have written the two former, but not the latter.' See
_ante_, iv. 113.
[973] The title given by Bishop Pearson to his collection of Hales's
Writings is the _Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable John Hales of
Eaton College, &c_. It was published in 1659.
[974] I _Henry IV_, act ii. sc. 4. 'Sir James Mackintosh remembers that,
while spending the Christmas of 1793 at Beaconsfield, Mr. Burke said to
him, 'Johnson showed more powers of mind in company than in his
writings; but he argued only for victory; and when he had neither a
paradox to defend, nor an antagonist to crush, he would preface his
assent with "Why, no, Sir."' CROKER. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 768.
[975]
Search then the ruling passion: There alone
The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
The fool consistent, and the false sincere;
Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.'
Pope, _Moral Essays_, i. 174.
'The publick pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are
counterfeit.' _The Idler_, No. 18.
[976] _Ante_, ii. 241, and iii. 325.
[977] Boswell refers to Cicero's _Treatise on Famous Orators_.
[978] Boswell here falls into a mistake. About harvest-time in 1766,
there were corn-riots owing to the dearness of bread. By the Act of the
15th of Charles II, corn, when under a certain price, might be legally
exported. On Sept. 26, 1766, before this price had been reached, the
Crown issued a proclamation to prohibit the exportation of grain. When
parliament met in November, a bill of indemnity was brought in for those
concerned in the late embargo. 'The necessity of the embargo was
universally allowed;' it was the exercise by the Crown of a power of
dispensing with the laws that was attacked. Some of the ministers who,
out of office, 'had set up as the patrons of liberty,' were made the
object 'of many sarcasms on the beaten subject of occasional
patriotism.' _Ann. Reg._ x. 39-48, and Dicey's _Law of the
Constitution_, p. 50.
[979] _St. Mark_, ii. 9.
[980] _Anecdotes_, p. 43. BOSWELL. The passage is from the _Speech on
Conciliation with the Colonies_, March 22, 1775. Payne's _Burke_, i.
173. The image of the angel and Lord Bathurst was thus, according to
Mrs. Piozzi, parodied by Johnson:--'Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to
Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent Whigs of the last
age, the devil had, not with great impropriety, consented to appear.'
See _ante_, iii. 326, where Johnson said 'the first Whig was the Devil.'
[981] Boswell was stung by what Mrs. Piozzi wrote when recording this
parody. She said that she had begged Johnson's leave to write it down
directly. 'A trick,' she continues, 'which I have seen played on common
occasions of sitting steadily [? stealthily] down at the other end of
the room to write at the moment what should be said in company, either
by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in
another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery
in this conduct, that, were it commonly adopted, all confidence would
soon be exiled from society.' See _post_, under June 30, 1784, where
Boswell refers to this passage.
[982]
'Who'er offends, at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.'
Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, 2 Satires, i. 78.
[983] On March 14, 1770, in a debate on the licentiousness of the press,
Townshend joined together Johnson and Shebbeare. Burke, who followed
him, said nothing about Johnson. Fitzherbert, speaking of Johnson as 'my
friend,' defended him as 'a pattern of morality.' _Cavendish Debates_,
i.514. On Feb. 16, 1774, when Fox drew attention to a 'vile libel'
signed _A South Briton_, Townshend said 'Dr. Shebbeare and Dr. Johnson
have been pensioned, but this wretched South Briton is to be
prosecuted.' It was Fox, and not Burke, who on this occasion defended
Johnson. _Parl. Hist._ xvii.1054. As Goldsmith was writing _Retaliation_
at the very time that this second attack was made, it is very likely
that it was the occasion, of the change in the line.
[984] In the original _yet_.
[985]
'Sis pecore et multa dives tellure licebit,
Tibique Pactolus fluat.'
'Though wide thy land extends, and large thy fold,
Though rivers roll for thee their purest gold.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Epodes_, xv. 19.
[986] See Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 404, for Macaulay's
appropriation and amplification of this passage.
[987] See _ante_, ii. 168.
[988] Mr. Croker suggests the Rev. Martin Sherlock, an Irish Clergyman,
'who published in 1781 his own travels under the title of _Letters of an
English Traveller translated from the French._' Croker's _Boswell, p.
770. Mason writes of him as 'Mister, or Monsieur, or Signor Sherlock,
for I am told he is both [sic] French, English, and Italian in print.'
Walpole's _Letters_, viii. 202. I think, however, that Dr. Thomas
Campbell is meant. His _Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland_
Boswell calls 'a very entertaining book, which has, however, one
fault;--that it assumes the fictitious character of an Englishman.'
_Ante_, ii. 339.
[989] See _ante_, iv. 49.
[990] This anecdote is not in the first two editions.
[991] See _ante_, in. 369.
[992] 'I have heard,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 409), 'that in many
instances, and in some with tears in his eyes, he has apologised to
those whom he had offended by contradiction or roughness of behaviour.'
See _ante_, ii. 109, and 256, note 1.
[993] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 131) describes Savage's 'superstitious
regard to the correction of his sheets ... The intrusion or omission of
a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour
of a single letter as a heavy calamity.'
[994] Compositor in the Printing-house means, the person who adjusts the
types in the order in which they are to stand for printing; and arranges
what is called the _form_, from which an impression is taken. BOSWELL.
[995] This circumstance therefore alluded to in Mr. Courtenay's
_Poetical Character_ of him is strictly true. My informer was Mrs.
Desmoulins, who lived many years in Dr. Johnson's house. BOSWELL. The
following are Mr. Courtenay's lines:--
'Soft-eyed compassion with a look benign,
His fervent vows he offered at thy shrine;
To guilt, to woe, the sacred debt was paid,
And helpless females blessed his pious aid;
Snatched from disease, and want's abandoned crew,
Despair and anguish from their victims flew;
Hope's soothing balm into their bosoms stole,
And tears of penitence restored the soul.'
[996] The _Cross Readings_ were said to be formed 'by reading two
columns of a newspaper together onwards,' whereby 'the strangest
connections were brought about,' such as:--
'This morning the Right Hon. the Speaker
was convicted of keeping a disorderly house.
Whereas the said barn was set on fire by
an incendiary letter dropped early in the morning.
By order of the Commissioners for Paving
An infallible remedy for the stone and gravel.
The sword of state was carried
before Sir John Fielding and committed to Newgate.'
_The New Foundling Hospital for Wit_, i. 129. According to Northcote
(_Life of Reynolds_, i. 217), 'Dr. Goldsmith declared, in the heat of
his admiration of these _Cross Readings_, it would have given him more
pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had
ever published of his own.' Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 30) writes:--
'Have you seen that delightful paper composed out of scraps in the
newspapers? I laughed till I cried. I mean the paper that says:--
"This day his Majesty will go in great state to fifteen notorious common
prostitutes."'
[997] One of these gentlemen was probably Mr. Musgrave (_ante_, ii. 343,
note 2), who, says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 295), when 'once he was
singularly warm about Johnson's writing the lives of our famous prose
authors, getting up and entreating him to set about the work
immediately, he coldly replied, "Sit down, Sir."' Miss Burney says that
'the incense he paid Dr. Johnson by his solemn manner of listening, by
the earnest reverence with which he eyed him, and by a theatric start of
admiration every time he spoke, joined to the Doctor's utter
insensibility to all these tokens, made me find infinite difficulty in
keeping my countenance.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 85. The other
gentleman was perhaps Dr. Wharton. _Ante_, ii. 41, note 1.
[998] Probably Dr. Beattie. The number of letters in his name agrees
with the asterisks given a few lines below. _Ante_, iii. 339, note 1,
and _post_, p. 330.
[999] Johnson, in his _Dictionary_, defines _conge d'elire_ as _the
king's permission royal to a dean and chapter in time of vacation, to
choose a bishop._ When Dr. Hampden was made Bishop of Hereford in 1848,
the Dean resisted the appointment. H. C. Robinson records, on the
authority of the Bishop's Secretary (_Diary_, iii. 311), that 'at the
actual confirmation in Bow Church the scene was quite ludicrous. After
the judge had told the opposers that he could not hear them, the
citation for opposers to come forward was repeated, at which the people
present laughed out, as at a play.'
[1000] This has been printed in other publications, 'fall _to the
ground_.' But Johnson himself gave me the true expression which he had
used as above; meaning that the recommendation left as little choice in
the one case as the other. BOSWELL. One of the 'other publications is
Hawkins's edition of Johnson's _Works_. See in it vol. xi. p. 216.
[1001] They are published in vol. xi. of Hawkins's edition of Johnson's
