Volume 1 / Act 5 — Act v. sc. 9. (continued 3)

Forster's Goldsmith, i. 204.

If this account is correctly printed, the sale must have been slow. The first edition (2 vols. 5s.) was published in Oct. 1761, (Gent. Mag. xxxi. 479). Johnson is called Dr. in the account; but he was not made an LL.D. till July 1765. Prior, in his Life of Goldsmith (i. 459), publishes an account between Goldsmith and Newbery in which the first entry is:—

'1761. Oct. 14, 1 set of The Idler. . . . . £0 50 0.'

Johnson, as Newbery's papers show, a year later bought a copy of Goldsmith's Life of Nash; ib. p. 405.

[1004] See ante, p. 306.

[1005] This paper may be found in Stockdale's supplemental volume of Johnson's Miscellaneous Pieces. BOSWELL. Stockdale's supplemental volumes—for there are two—are vols. xii. and xiii. of what is known as 'Hawkins's edition.' In this paper (Works, iv. 450) he represents in a fable two vultures speculating on that mischievous being, man, 'who is the only beast who kills that which he does not devour,' who at times is seen to move in herds, while 'there is in every herd one that gives directions to the rest, and seems to be more eminently delighted with a wide carnage.'

[1006] 'Receipts for Shakespeare.' WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[1007] 'Then of Lincoln College. Now Sir Robert Chambers, one of the Judges in India.' WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[1008] Old Mr. Langton's niece. See post, July 14, 1763.

[1009] 'Mr. Langton.' WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[1010] Boswell records:—'Lady Di Beauclerk told me that Langton had never been to see her since she came to Richmond, his head was so full of the militia and Greek. "Why," said I, "Madam, he is of such a length he is awkward and not easily moved." "But," said she, "if he had lain himself at his length, his feet had been in London, and his head might have been here eodem die."' Boswelliana, p. 297.

[1011] 'Part of the impression of the Shakespeare, which Dr. Johnson conducted alone, and published by subscription. This edition came out in 1765.' WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[1012] Stockdale records (Memoirs, ii. 191), that after he had entered on his charge as domestic tutor to Lord Craven's son, he called on Johnson, who asked him how he liked his place. On his hesitating to answer, he said: 'You must expect insolence.' He added that in his youth he had entertained great expectations from a powerful family. "At length," he said, "I found that their promises, and consequently my expectations, vanished into air…. But, Sir, they would have treated me much worse, if they had known that motives from which I paid my court to them were purely selfish, and what opinion I had formed of them." He added, that since he knew mankind, he had not, on any occasion, been the sport of such delusion and that he had never been disappointed by anyone but himself.'

[1013] This, and some of the other letters to Langton, were not received by Boswell till the first volume of the second edition had been carried through the press. He gave them as a supplement to the second volume. The date of this letter was there wrongly given as June 27, 1758. In the third edition it was corrected. Nevertheless the letter was misplaced as if the wrong date were the right one. Langton, as I have shewn (ante, p. 247), subscribed the articles at Oxford on July 7, 1757. He must have come into residence, as Johnson did (ante, p. 58), some little while before this subscription.

[1014] Major-General Alexander Dury, of the first regiment of foot-guards, who fell in the gallant discharge of his duty, near St. Cas, in the well-known unfortunate expedition against France, in 1758. His lady and Mr. Langton's mother was sisters. He left an only son, Lieutenant-Colonel Dury, who has a company in the same regiment. BOSWELL. The expedition had been sent against St. Malo early in September. Failing in the attempt, the land forces retreated to St. Cas, where, while embarking, they were attacked by the French. About 400 of our soldiers were made prisoners, and 600 killed and wounded. Ann. Reg.i.68.

[1015] See post, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell's Collectanea.

[1016] Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 365. BOSWELL. 'In the beginning of the year 1759 an event happened for which it might be imagined he was well prepared, the death of his mother, who had attained the age of ninety; but he, whose mind had acquired no firmness by the contemplation of mortality, was as little able to sustain the shock, as he would have been had this loss befallen him in his nonage.'

[1017] We may apply to Johnson in his behaviour to his mother what he said of Pope in his behaviour to his parents:—'Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has among its soothing and quiet comforts few things better to give than such a son.' Johnson's Works, viii. 281. In The Idler of January 27, 1759 (No. 41), Johnson shews his grief for his loss. 'The last year, the last day must come. It has come, and is past. The life which made my own life pleasant is at an end, and the gates of death are shut upon my prospects…. Such is the condition of our present existence that life must one time lose its associations, and every inhabitant of the earth must walk downward to the grave alone and unregarded, without any partner of his joy or grief, without any interested witness of his misfortunes or success. Misfortune, indeed, he may yet feel; for where is the bottom of the misery of man? But what is success to him that has none to enjoy it? Happiness is not found in self-contemplation; it is perceived only when it is reflected from another.' In Rasselas (ch. xlv.) he makes a sage say with a sigh:—'Praise is to have an old man an empty sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband.' He here says once more what he had already said in his Letter to Lord Chesterfield (ante, p. 261), and in the Preface to the Dictionary (ante, p. 297).

[1018] Writing to his Birmingham friend, Mr. Hector, on Oct. 7, 1756, he said:—'I have been thinking every month of coming down into the country, but every month has brought its hinderances. From that kind of melancholy indisposition which I had when we lived together at Birmingham I have never been free, but have always had it operating against my health and my life with more or less violence. I hope however to see all my friends, all that are remaining, in no very long time.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. iii. 301. No doubt his constant poverty and the need that he was under of making 'provision for the day that was passing over him' had had much to do in keeping him from a journey to Lichfield. A passage in one of his letters shews that fourteen years later the stage-coach took twenty-six hours in going from London to Lichfield. (Piozzi Letters, i. 55.) The return journey was very uncertain; for 'our carriages,' he wrote, 'are only such as pass through the place sometimes full and sometimes vacant.' A traveller had to watch for a place (ib. p. 51). As measured by time London was, in 1772, one hour farther from Lichfield than it now is from Marseilles. It is strange, when we consider the long separation between Johnson and his mother, that in Rasselas, written just after her death, he makes Imlac say:-'There is such communication [in Europe] between distant places, that one friend can hardly be said to be absent from another.' Rasselas, chap, xi. His step-daughter, Miss Porter, though for many years she was well off, had never been to London. Post, March 23, 1776. Nay, according to Horace Walpole (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 327), 'George III. had never seen the sea, nor ever been thirty miles from London at the age of thirty-four.'

[1019] For the letters written at this time by Johnson to his mother and Miss Porter, see Appendix B.

[1020] Rasselas was published in two volumes, duodecimo, and was sold for five shillings. It was reviewed in the Gent. Mag. for April, and was no doubt published in that month. In a letter to Miss Porter dated March 23, 1759 (See Appendix), Johnson says:—'I am going to publish a little story-book, which I will send you when it is out.' I may here remark that the Gent. Mag. was published at the end of the month, or even later. Thus the number for April, 1759, contains news as late as April 30. The name Rasselas Johnson got from Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. On p. 102 of that book he mentions 'Rassela Christos, Lieutenant-General to _Abysinia; Sultan Segued.' On p. 262 he explains the meaning of the first part of the word:—'There is now a Generalissimo established under the title of Ras, or Chief.' The title still exists. Colonel Gordon mentions Ras Arya and Ras Aloula. The Rev. W. West, in his Introduction to Rasselas, p. xxxi (Sampson Low and Co.), says:—'The word Ras, which is common to the Amharic, Arabic, and Hebrew tongues, signifies a head, and hence a prince, chief, or captain…. Sela Christos means either "Picture of Christ," or "For the sake of Christ."'

[1021] Hawkins's Johnson, p. 367.

[1022] See post, June 2, 1781. Finding it then accidentally in a chaise with Mr. Boswell, he read it eagerly. This was doubtless long after his declaration to Sir Joshua Reynolds. MALONE.

[1023] Baretti told Malone that 'Johnson insisted on part of the money being paid immediately, and accordingly received £70. Any other person with the degree of reputation he then possessed would have got £400 for that work, but he never understood the art of making the most of his productions.' Prior's Malone, p. 160. Some of the other circumstances there related by Baretti are not correct.

[1024] Hawkesworth received £6000 for his revision of Cook's Voyages; post, May 7, 1773.

[1025] See post, March 4, 1773.

[1026] Ecclesiastes, i. 14.

[1027] See post, May 16, 1778. It should seem that Candide was published in the latter half of February 1759. Grimm in his letter of March 1, speaks of its having just appeared. 'M. de Voltaire vient de nous égayer par un petit roman.' He does not mention it in his previous letter of Feb. 15. Grimm, Carres. Lit. (edit. 1829), ii. 296. Johnson's letter to Miss Porter, quoted in the Appendix, shows that Rasselas was written before March 23; how much earlier cannot be known. Candide is in the May list of books in the Gent. Mag. (pp. 233-5), price 2_s_. 6_d_., and with it two translations, each price 1_s_. 6_d_.

[1028] See post, June 13, 1763.

[1029] In the original,—'which, perhaps, prevails.' Rasselas, ch. xxxi.

[1030] This is the second time that Boswell puts 'morbid melancholy' in quotation marks (ante, p. 63). Perhaps he refers to a passage in Hawkins's Johnson (p. 287), where the author speaks of Johnson's melancholy as 'this morbid affection, as he was used to call it.'

[1031] 'Perfect through sufferings.' Hebrews, ii. 10.

[1032] Perhaps the reference is to the conclusion of Le Monde comme il va:—'Il résolut … de laisser aller le monde comme il va; car, dit il, si tout riest pas bien, tout est passable.'

[1033] Gray, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College.

[1034] Johnson writing to Mrs. Thrale said:—'Vivite lacti is one of the great rules of health.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 55. 'It was the motto of a bishop very eminent for his piety and good works in King Charles the Second's reign, Inservi Deo et laetare—"Serve God and be cheerful."' Addison's Freeholder, No. 45.

[1035] Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL.

[1036] This paper was in such high estimation before it was collected into volumes, that it was seized on with avidity by various publishers of news-papers and magazines, to enrich their publications. Johnson, to put a stop to this unfair proceeding, wrote for the Universal Chronicle the following advertisement; in which there is, perhaps, more pomp of words than the occasion demanded:

'London, January 5, 1759. ADVERTISEMENT. The proprietors of the paper intitled The Idler, having found that those essays are inserted in the news-papers and magazines with so little regard to justice or decency, that the Universal Chronicle, in which they first appear, is not always mentioned, think it necessary to declare to the publishers of those collections, that however patiently they have hitherto endured these injuries, made yet more injurious by contempt, they have now determined to endure them no longer. They have already seen essays, for which a very large price is paid, transferred, with the most shameless rapacity, into the weekly or monthly compilations, and their right, at least for the present, alienated from them, before they could themselves be said to enjoy it. But they would not willingly be thought to want tenderness, even for men by whom no tenderness hath been shewn. The past is without remedy, and shall be without resentment. But those who have been thus busy with their sickles in the fields of their neighbours, are henceforward to take notice, that the time of impunity is at an end. Whoever shall, without our leave, lay the hand of rapine upon our papers, is to expect that we shall vindicate our due, by the means which justice prescribes, and which are warranted by the immemorial prescriptions of honourable trade. We shall lay hold, in our turn, on their copies, degrade them from the pomp of wide margin and diffuse typography, contract them into a narrow space, and sell them at an humble price; yet not with a view of growing rich by confiscations, for we think not much better of money got by punishment than by crimes. We shall, therefore, when our losses are repaid, give what profit shall remain to the Magdalens; for we know not who can be more properly taxed for the support of penitent prostitutes, than prostitutes in whom there yet appears neither penitence nor shame.' BOSWELL.

[1037] I think that this letter belongs to a later date, probably to 1765 or 1766. As we learn, post, April 10, 1776, Simpson was a barrister 'who fell into a dissipated course of life.' On July 2, 1765, Johnson records that he repaid him ten guineas which he had borrowed in the lifetime of Mrs. Johnson (his wife). He also lent him ten guineas more. If it was in 1759 that Simpson was troubled by small debts, it is most unlikely that Johnson let six years more pass without repaying him a loan which even then was at least of seven years' standing. Moreover, in this letter Johnson writes:—'I have been invited, or have invited myself, to several parts of the kingdom.' The only visits, it seems, that he paid between 1754-1762 were to Oxford in 1759 and to Lichfield in the winter of 1761-2. After 1762, when his pension gave him means, he travelled frequently. Besides all this, he says of his step-daughter:— 'I will not incommode my dear Lucy by coming to Lichfield, while her present lodging is of any use to her.' Miss Porter seems to have lived in his house till she had built one for herself. Though his letter to her of Jan. 10, 1764 (Croker's Boswell, p. 163), shews that it was then building, yet she had not left his house on Jan. 14, 1766 (ib. p. 173).

'To JOSEPH SIMPSON, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'Your father's inexorability not only grieves but amazes me[1038]: he is your father; he was always accounted a wise man; nor do I remember any thing to the disadvantage of his good-nature; but in his refusal to assist you there is neither good-nature, fatherhood, nor wisdom. It is the practice of good-nature to overlook faults which have already, by the consequences, punished the delinquent. It is natural for a father to think more favourably than others of his children; and it is always wise to give assistance while a little help will prevent the necessity of greater.

[1038] In the Rambler, No. 148, entitled 'The cruelty of parental tyranny,' Johnson, after noticing the oppression inflicted by the perversion of legal authority, says:—'Equally dangerous and equally detestable are the cruelties often exercised in private families, under the venerable sanction of parental authority.' He continues:—'Even though no consideration should be paid to the great law of social beings, by which every individual is commanded to consult the happiness of others, yet the harsh parent is less to be vindicated than any other criminal, because he less provides for the happiness of himself.' See also post, March 29, 1779. A passage in one of Boswell's Letters to Temple (p. 111) may also be quoted here:—'The time was when such a letter from my father as the one I enclose would have depressed; but I am now firm, and, as my revered friend, Mr. Samuel Johnson, used to say, I feel the privileges of an independent human being; however, it is hard that I cannot have the pious satisfaction of being well with my father.'

[1039] Perhaps 'Van,' for Vansittart.

[1040] Lord Stowell informs me that Johnson prided himself in being, during his visits to Oxford, accurately academic in all points: and he wore his gown almost ostentatiously. CROKER.

[1041] Dr. Robert Vansittart, of the ancient and respectable family of that name in Berkshire. He was eminent for learning and worth, and much esteemed by Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL. Johnson perhaps proposed climbing over the wall on the day on which 'University College witnessed him drink three bottles of port without being the worse for it.' Post, April 7, 1778.

[1042] Gentleman's Magazine, April, 1785. BOSWELL. The speech was made on July 7, 1759, the last day of 'the solemnity of the installment' of the Earl of Westmoreland as Chancellor of the University. On the 3rd 'the ceremony began with a grand procession of noblemen, doctors, &c., in their proper habits, which passed through St. Mary's, and was there joined by the Masters of Arts in their proper habits; and from thence proceeded to the great gate of the Sheldonian Theatre, in which the most numerous and brilliant assembly of persons of quality and distinction was seated, that had ever been seen there on any occasion.' Gent. Mag. xxix. 342. Would that we had some description of Johnson, as, in his new and handsome gown, he joined the procession among the Masters! See ante, p. 281.

[1043] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3d edit. p. 126 [Aug. 31]. BOSWELL. The chance of death from disease would seem also to have been greater on the ship than in a jail. In The Idler (No. 38) Johnson estimates that one in four of the prisoners dies every year. In his Review of Hanway's Essay on Tea (Works, vi. 31) he states that he is told that 'of the five or six hundred seamen sent to China, sometimes half, commonly a third part, perish in the voyage.' See post, April 10, 1778.

[1044] Ibid. p. 251 [Sept. 23]. BOSWELL.

[1045] In my first edition this word was printed Chum, as it appears, in one of Mr. Wilkes's Miscellanies, and I animadverted on Dr. Smollet's ignorance; for which let me propitiate the manes of that ingenious and benevolent gentleman. CHUM was certainly a mistaken reading for Cham, the title of the Sovereign of Tartary, which is well applied to Johnson, the Monarch of Literature; and was an epithet familiar to Smollet. See Roderick Random, chap. 56. For this correction I am indebted to Lord Palmerston, whose talents and literary acquirements accord well with his respectable pedigree of TEMPLE BOSWELL.

After the publication of the second edition of this work, the author was furnished by Mr. Abercrombie, of Philadelphia, with the copy of a letter written by Dr. John Armstrong, the poet, to Dr. Smollet at Leghorne, containing the following paragraph:—'As to the K. Bench patriot, it is hard to say from what motive he published a letter of yours asking some triffling favour of him in behalf of somebody, for whom the great CHAM of literature, Mr. Johnson, had interested himself.' MALONE. In the first edition Boswell had said:—'Had Dr. Smollet been bred at an English University, he would have know that a chum is a student who lives with another in a chamber common to them both. A chum of literature is nonsense.'

[1046] In a note to that piece of bad book-making, Almon's Memoirs of Wilkes (i. 47), this allusion is thus explained:-'A pleasantry of Mr. Wilkes on that passage in Johnson's Grammar of the English Tongue, prefixed to the Dictionary—"H seldom, perhaps never, begins any but the first syllable."' For this 'pleasantry' see ante, p. 300.

[1047] Mr. Croker says that he was not discharged till June 1760. Had he been discharged at once he would have found Johnson moving from Gough Square to Staple Inn; for in a letter to Miss Porter, dated March 23, 1739, given in the Appendix, Johnson said:-'I have this day moved my things, and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn.'

[1048] Prayers and Meditations , pp. 30 [39] and 40. BOSWELL.

[1049] 'I have left off housekeeping' wrote Johnson to Langton on Jan. 9, 1759. Murphy (Life, p. 90), writing of the beginning of the year 1759, says:—'Johnson now found it necessary to retrench his expenses. He gave up his house in Gough Square. Mrs. Williams went into lodgings [See post, July 1, 1763]. He retired to Gray's-Inn, [he had first moved to Staple Inn], and soon removed to chambers in the Inner Temple-lane, where he lived in poverty, total idleness, and the pride of literature, Magni stat nominis umbra. Mr. Fitzherbert used to say that he paid a morning visit to Johnson, intending from his chambers to send a letter into the city; but, to his great surprise, he found an authour by profession without pen, ink, or paper.' (It was Mr. Fitzherbert, who sent Johnson some wine. See ante, p. 305, note 2. See also post, Sept. 15, 1777). The following documents confirm Murphy's statement of Johnson's poverty at this time:

'May 19, 1759.

'I promise to pay to Mr. Newbery the sum of forty-two pounds, nineteen shillings, and ten pence on demand, value received. £42 19 10.

'Sam. Johnson.'

'March 20, 1760.

'I promise to pay to Mr. Newbery the sum of thirty pounds upon demand., £30 0 0.

'Sam. Johnson.'

In 1751 he had thrice borrowed money of Newbery, but the total amount of the loans was only four guineas. Prior's Goldsmith, i. 340. With Johnson's want of pen, ink, and paper we may compare the account that he gives of Savage's destitution (Works, viii. 3):—'Nor had he any other conveniences for study than the fields or the streets allowed him; there he used to walk and form his speeches, and afterwards step into a shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen and ink, and write down what he had composed upon paper which he had picked up by accident.' Hawkins (Life, p. 383) says that Johnson's chambers were two doors down the Inner Temple Lane. 'I have been told,' he continues, 'by his neighbour at the corner, that during the time he dwelt there, more inquiries were made at his shop for Mr. Johnson, than for all the inhabitants put together of both the Inner and Middle Temple.' In a court opening out of Fleet Street, Goldsmith at this very time was still more miserably lodged. In the beginning of March 1759, Percy found him 'employed in writing his Enquiry into Polite Learning in a wretched dirty room, in which there was but one chair, and when he from civility offered it to his visitant, himself was obliged to sit in the window.' Goldsmith's Misc. Works, i. 61.

[1050] Sir John Hawkins (Life, p. 373) has given a long detail of it, in that manner vulgarly, but significantly, called rigmarole; in which, amidst an ostentatious exhibition of arts and artists, he talks of 'proportions of a column being taken from that of the human figure, and adjusted by Nature—masculine and feminine—in a man, sesquioctave of the head, and in a woman sesquinonal;' nor has he failed to introduce a jargon of musical terms, which do not seem much to correspond with the subject, but serve to make up the heterogeneous mass. To follow the Knight through all this, would be an useless fatigue to myself, and not a little disgusting to my readers. I shall, therefore, only make a few remarks upon his statement.—He seems to exult in having detected Johnson in procuring 'from a person eminently skilled in Mathematicks and the principles of architecture, answers to a string of questions drawn up by himself, touching the comparative strength of semicircular and elliptical arches.' Now I cannot conceive how Johnson could have acted more wisely. Sir John complains that the opinion of that excellent mathematician, Mr. Thomas Simpson, did not preponderate in favour of the semicircular arch. But he should have known, that however eminent Mr. Simpson was in the higher parts of abstract mathematical science, he was little versed in mixed and practical mechanicks. Mr. Muller, of Woolwich Academy, the scholastick father of all the great engineers which this country has employed for forty years, decided the question by declaring clearly in favour of the elliptical arch.

It is ungraciously suggested, that Johnson's motive for opposing Mr. Mylne's scheme may have been his prejudice against him as a native of North Britain; when, in truth, as has been stated, he gave the aid of his able pen to a friend, who was one of the candidates; and so far was he from having any illiberal antipathy to Mr. Mylne, that he afterwards lived with that gentleman upon very agreeable terms of acquaintance, and dined with him at his house. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, gives full vent to his own prejudice in abusing Blackfriars bridge, calling it 'an edifice, in which beauty and symmetry are in vain sought for; by which the citizens of London have perpetuated study their own disgrace, and subjected a whole nation to the reproach of foreigners.' Whoever has contemplated, placido lumine [Horace, Odes, iv. 3, 2], this stately, elegant, and airy structure, which has so fine an effect, especially on approaching the capital on that quarter, must wonder at such unjust and ill-tempered censure; and I appeal to all foreigners of good taste, whether this bridge be not one of the most distinguished ornaments of London. As to the stability of the fabrick, it is certain that the City of London took every precaution to have the best Portland stone for it; but as this is to be found in the quarries belonging to the publick, under the direction of the Lords of the Treasury, it so happened that parliamentary interest, which is often the bane of fair pursuits, thwarted their endeavours. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, it is well known that not only has Blackfriars-bridge never sunk either in its foundation or in its arches, which were so much the subject of contest, but any injuries which it has suffered from the effects of severe frosts have been already, in some measure, repaired with sounder stone, and every necessary renewal can be completed at a moderate expence. BOSWELL. Horace Walpole mentions an ineffectual application made by the City to Parliament in 1764 'for more money for their new bridge at Blackfriars,' when Dr. Hay, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, 'abused the Common Council, whose late behaviour, he said, entitled them to no favour.' Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 390. The late behaviour was the part taken by the City in Wilkes's case. It was the same love of liberty no doubt that lost the City the Portland stone. Smollett goes out of the way to praise his brother-Scot, Mr. Mylne, in Humphry Clinker—'a party novel written,' says Horace Walpole, 'to vindicate the Scots' (Reign of George III, iv. 328). In the letter dated May 29, he makes Mr. Bramble say:—'The Bridge at Blackfriars is a noble monument of taste and public spirit—I wonder how they stumbled upon a work of such magnificence and utility.'

[1051] Juvenal, Sat. i. 85.

[1052] 'Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton.'—George III's first speech to his parliament. It appears from the Hardwicke Papers, writes the editor of the _Parl. Hist. (xv. 982), that after the draft of the speech had been settled by the cabinet, these words and those that came next were added by the King's own hand. Wilkes in his Dedication of Mortimer (see post, May 15, 1776) asserted that 'these endearing words, "Born,&c.," were permitted to be seen in the royal orthography of Britain for Briton,' Almon's Works, i. 84.

[1053] In this Introduction (Works, vi. 148) Johnson answers objections that had been raised against the relief. 'We know that for the prisoners of war there is no legal provision; we see their distress and are certain of its cause; we know that they are poor and naked, and poor and naked without a crime…. The opponents of this charity must allow it to be good, and will not easily prove it not to be the best. That charity is best of which the consequences are most extensive; the relief of enemies has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal affection.' The Committee for which Johnson's paper was written began its work in Dec. 1759. In the previous month of October Wesley records in his _Journal (ii. 461):—'I walked up to Knowle, a mile from Bristol, to see the French prisoners. Above eleven hundred of them, we were informed, were confined in that little place, without anything to lie on but a little dirty straw, or anything to cover them but a few foul thin rags, either by day or by night, so that they died like rotten sheep. I was much affected, and preached in the evening on Exodus xxiii. 9.' Money was at once contributed, and clothing bought. 'It was not long before contributions were set on foot in various parts of the Kingdom.' On Oct. 24 of the following year, he records:—'I visited the French prisoners at Knowle, and found many of them almost naked again.' Ib. iii. 23. 'The prisoners,' wrote Hume (Private Corres. p. 55), 'received food from the public, but it was thought that their own friends would supply them with clothes, which, however, was found after some time to be neglected.' The cry arose that the brave and gallant men, though enemies, were perishing with cold in prison; a subscription was set on foot; great sums were given by all ranks of people; and, notwithstanding the national foolish prejudices against the French, a remarkable zeal everywhere appeared for this charity. I am afraid that M. Rousseau could not have produced many parallel instances among his heroes, the Greeks; and still fewer among the Romans. Baretti, in his Journey from London to Genoa (i. 62, 66), after telling how on all foreigners, even on a Turk wearing a turban, 'the pretty appellation of French dog was liberally bestowed by the London rabble,' continues:—'I have seen the populace of England contribute as many shillings as they could spare towards the maintenance of the French prisoners; and I have heard a universal shout of joy when their parliament voted £100,000 to the Portuguese on hearing of the tremendous earthquake.'

[1054] Johnson's Works, vi. 81. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 16, 1773, where Johnson describes Mary as 'such a Queen as every man of any gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for.' 'There are,' wrote Hume, 'three events in our history which may be regarded as touchstones of party-men. An English Whig who asserts the reality of the popish plot, an Irish Catholic who denies the massacre in 1641, and a Scotch Jacobite who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary, must be considered as men beyond the reach of argument or reason, and must be left to their prejudices.' History of England, ed. 1802, v. 504.

[1055] Prayers and Meditations, p. 42. BOSWELL. The following is his entry on this day:—

'1760, Sept. 18. Resolved D[eo]j[uvante]' To combat notions of obligation. To apply to study. To reclaim imagination. To consult the resolves on Tetty's coffin. To rise early. To study religion. To go to church. To drink less strong liquors. To keep a journal. To oppose laziness, by doing what is to be done tomorrow. Rise as early as I can. Send for books for Hist. of War. Put books in order. Scheme of life.'

[1056] See post, Oct. 19, 1769, and May 15, 1783, for Johnson's measure of emotion, by eating.

[1057] Mr. Croker points out that Murphy's Epistle was an imitation of Boileau's Epître à Molière.

[1058] The paper mentioned in the text is No. 38 of the second series of the Grays Inn Journal, published on June 15, 1754; which is a translation from the French version of Johnson's Rambler, No. 190. MALONE. Mrs. Piozzi relates how Murphy, used to tell before Johnson of the first time they met. He found our friend all covered with soot, like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, with an intolerable heat and strange smell, as if he had been acting Lungs in the Alchymist, making aether. 'Come, come,' says Dr. Johnson, 'dear Murphy, the story is black enough now; and it was a very happy day for me that brought you first to my house, and a very happy mistake about the Ramblers.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 235. Murphy quotes her account, Murphy's Johnson, p. 79. See also post, 1770, where Dr. Maxwell records in his Collectanea how Johnson 'very much loved Arthur Murphy.' Miss Burney thus describes him:—'He is tall and well-made, has a very gentlemanlike appearance, and a quietness of manner upon his first address that to me is very pleasing. His face looks sensible, and his deportment is perfectly easy and polite.' A few days later she records:—'Mr. Murphy was the life of the party; he was in good spirits, and extremely entertaining; he told a million of stories admirably well.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 195, 210. Rogers, who knew Murphy well, says that 'towards the close of his life, till he received a pension of £200 from the King, he was in great pecuniary difficulties. He had eaten himself out of every tavern from the other side of Temple-Bar to the west end of the town.' He owed Rogers a large sum of money, which he never repaid. 'He assigned over to me the whole of his works; and I soon found that he had already disposed of them to a bookseller. One thing,' Rogers continues, 'ought to be remembered to his honour; an actress with whom he had lived bequeathed to him all her property, but he gave up every farthing of it to her relations.' He was pensioned in 1803, and he died in 1805. Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 106.

[1059] Topham Beauclerk, Esq. BOSWELL.

[1060] Essays with that title, written about this time by Mr. Langton, but not published. BOSWELL.

[1061] Thomas Sheridan, born 1721, died 1788. He was the son of Swift's friend, and the father of R. B. Sheridan (who was born in 1751), and the great-great-grandfather of the present Earl of Dufferin.

[1062] Sheridan was acting in Garrick's Company, generally on the nights on which Garrick did not appear. Davies's Garrick, i. 299. Johnson criticises his reading, post, April 18, 1783.

[1063] Mrs. Sheridan was authour of Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, a novel of great merit, and of some other pieces.—See her character, post, beginning of 1763. BOSWELL.

[1064] Prayers and Meditations, p. 44. BOSWELL. '1761. Easter Eve. Since the communion of last Easter I have led a life so dissipated and useless, and my terrours and perplexities have so much increased, that I am under great depression and discouragement.'

[1065] See post, April 6, 1775.

[1066] I have had inquiry made in Ireland as to this story, but do not find it recollected there. I give it on the authority of Dr. Johnson, to which may be added that of the biographical Dictionary, and Biographia Dramatica; in both of which it has stood many years. Mr. Malone observes, that the truth probably is, not that an edition was published with Rolt's name in the title-page, but, that the poem being then anonymous, Rolt acquiesced in its being attributed to him in conversation. BOSWELL.

[1067] I have both the books. Innes was the clergyman who brought Psalmanazar to England, and was an accomplice in his extraordinary fiction. BOSWELL. It was in 1728 that Innes, who was a Doctor of Divinity and Preacher-Assistant at St. Margaret's Westminster, published this book. In his impudent Dedication to Lord Chancellor King he says that 'were matters once brought to the melancholy pass that mankind should become proselytes to such impious delusions' as Mandeville taught, 'punishments must be annexed to virtue and rewards to vice.' It was not till 1730 that Dr. Campbell 'laid open this imposture.' Preface, p. xxxi. Though he was Professor of Ecclesiastical History in St. Andrews, yet he had not, it should seem, heard of the fraud till then: so remote was Scotland from London in those days. It was not till 1733 that he published his own edition. For Psalmanazar, see post, April 18, 1778.

[1068] 'Died, the Rev. Mr. Eccles, at Bath. In attempting to save a boy, whom he saw sinking in the Avon, he, together with the youth, were both drowned.' Gent. Mag. Aug. 15, 1777. And in the magazine for the next month are some verses on this event, with an epitaph, of which the first line is,

'Beneath this stone the "Man of Feeling" lies.'

CROKER.

[1069] 'Harry Mackenzie,' wrote Scott in 1814, 'never put his name in a title page till the last edition of his works.' Lockhart's Scott, iv. 178. He wrote also The Man of the World, which Johnson 'looked at, but thought there was nothing in it.' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 2, 1773. Scott, however, called it 'a very pathetic tale.' Croker's _Boswell, p. 359. Burns, writing of his twenty-third year, says: 'Tristram Shandy and the Man of Feeling were my bosom favourites.' Currie's Life of Burns, ed.1846. p. 21.

[1070] From the Prologue to Dryden's adaptation of The Tempest.

[1071] The originals of Dr. Johnson's three letters to Mr. baretti, which are among the very best he ever wrote, were communicated to the elegant monthly miscellany, The European Magazine, in which they first appeared. BOSWELL.

[1072] Baretti left London for Lisbon on Aug. 14, 1760. He went through Portugal, Spain, and France to Antibes, whence he went by sea to Genoa, where he arrived on Nov. 18. In 1770 he published a lively account of his travels under the title of A Journey from London to Genoa.

[1073] Malone says of Baretti that 'he was certainly a man of extraordinary talents, and perhaps no one ever made himself so completely master of a foreign language as he did of English.' Prior's Malone, p. 392. Mrs. Piozzi gives the following 'instance of his skill in our low street language. Walking in a field near Chelsea he met a fellow, who, suspecting him from dress and manner to be a foreigner, said sneeringly, "Come, Sir, will you show me the way to France?" "No, Sir," says Baretti instantly, "but I will show you the way to Tyburn."' He travelled with her in France. 'Oh how he would court the maids at the inns abroad, abuse the men perhaps, and that with a facility not to be exceeded, as they all confessed, by any of the natives. But so he could in Spain, I find.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 347.

[1074] Johnson was intimate with Lord Southwell, ante, p. 243. It seems unlikely that Baretti merely conducted Mr. Southwell from Turin to Venice; yet there is not a line in his Journey to show that any Englishman accompanied him from London to Turin.

[1075] See ante, p. 350, note.

[1076] The first of these annual exhibitions was opened on April 21, 1760, at the Room of the Society of Arts, in the Strand. 'As a consequence of their success, grew the incorporation of a Society of Artists in 1765, by seccession from which finally was constituted the Royal Academy [In Dec. 1768].' Taylor's Reynolds, i. 179. For the third exhibition Johnson wrote the Preface to the catalogue. In this, speaking for the Committee of the Artists he says:—'The purpose of this Exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour is here invited to display his merit.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 101.

[1077] Hawkins (Life, p. 318) says that Johnson told him 'that in his whole life he was never capable of discerning the least resemblance of any kind between a picture and the subject it was intended to represent.' This, however must have been an exaggeration on the part either of Hawkins or Johnson. His general ignorance of art is shown by Mrs. Piozzi (Anec., p. 98):—'Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned some picture as excellent. "It has often grieved me, sir," said Mr. Johnson, "to see so much mind as the science of painting requires, laid out upon such perishable materials: why do not you oftener make use of copper? I could wish your superiority in the art you profess to be preserved in stuff more durable than canvas." Sir Joshua urged the difficulty of procuring a plate large enough for historical subjects. "What foppish obstacles are these!" exclaims on a sudden Dr. Johnson. "Here is Thrale has a thousand tun of copper; you may paint it all round if you will, I suppose; it will serve him to brew in afterwards. Will it not, Sir?" to my husband who sat by. Indeed his utter scorn of painting was such, that I have heard him say, that he should sit very quietly in a room hung round with the works of the greatest masters, and never feel the slightest disposition to turn them, if their backs were outermost, unless it might be for the sake of telling Sir Joshua that he had turned them.' Such a remark of Johnson's must not, however, be taken too strictly. He often spoke at random, often with exaggeration. 'There is in many minds a kind of vanity exerted to the disadvantage of themselves.' This reflection of his is the opening sentence to the number of the Idler (No. 45) in which he thus writes about portrait-painting:—'Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures; and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in life; what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.' It is recorded in Johnson's Works, (1787) xi. 208, that 'Johnson, talking with some persons about allegorical painting said, "I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."' He bought prints of Burke, Dyer, and Goldsmith—'Good impressions' he said to hang in a little room that he was fitting up with prints. Croker's Boswell, p. 639. Among his effects that were sold after his death were 'sixty-one portraits framed and glazed,' post, under Dec. 9, 1784. When he was at Paris, and saw the picture-gallery at the Palais Royal, he entered in his Diary:—'I thought the pictures of Raphael fine;' post, Oct. 16, 1775. The philosopher Hume was more insensible even than Johnson. Dr. J.H. Burton says:—'It does not appear from any incident in his life, or allusions in his letters, which I can remember, that he had ever really admired a picture or a statue.' Life of me, ii. 134.

[1078] By Colman—'There is nothing else new,' wrote Horace Walpole on March 7, 1761 (Letters, in. 382), 'but a very indifferent play, called The Jealous Wife, so well acted as to have succeeded greatly.'

[1079] In Chap. 47 of Rasselas Johnson had lately considered monastic life. Imlac says of the monks:—'Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless inactivity…. He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But perhaps every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life; and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat.' See also post, March 15, 1776, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19, 1773.

[1080] Baretti, in the preface to his Journey (p. vi.), says that the method of the book was due to Dr. Johnson. 'It was he that exhorted me to write daily, and with all possible minuteness; it was he that pointed out the topics which would most interest and most delight in a future publication.'

[1081] He advised Boswell to go to Spain. Post, June 25 and July 26, 1763.

[1082] Dr. Percy records that 'the first visit Goldsmith ever received from Johnson was on May 31, 1761, [ten days before this letter was written] when he gave an invitation to him, and much other company, many of them literary men, to a supper in his lodgings in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. Percy being intimate with Johnson, was desired to call upon him and take him with him. As they went together the former was much struck with the studied neatness of Johnson's dress. He had on a new suit of clothes, a new wig nicely powdered, and everything about him so perfectly dissimilar from his usual appearance that his companion could not help inquiring the cause of this singular transformation. "Why, Sir," said Johnson, "I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example."' Goldsmith's Misc. Works, i. 62.

[1083] Judges, v. 20.

[1084] Psalms, xix. 2.

[1085] Psalms, civ. 19.

[1086] Boswell is ten years out in his date. This work was published in 1752. The review of it in the Gent. Mag. for that year, p. 146, was, I believe, by Johnson.

[1087] He accompanied Lord Macartney on his embassy to China in 1792. In 1797 he published his Account of the Embassy.

[1088] It was taken in 1759, and restored to France in 1763. Penny Cyclo. xi. 463.

[1089] W. S. Landor (Works, ed. 1876, v. 99) says:—'Extraordinary as were Johnson's intellectual powers, he knew about as much of poetry as of geography. In one of his letters he talks of Guadaloupe as being in another hemisphere. Speaking of that island, his very words are these: "Whether you return hither or stay in another hemisphere."' Guadaloupe, being in the West Indies, is in another hemisphere.

[1090] See post, April 12, 1776.

[1091] 'It is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are less dreadful than its extinction.' The Idler, No. 58. See also post, under March 30, 1783, where he ranks the situation of the Prince of Wales as the happiest in the kingdom, partly on account of the enjoyment of hope.

[1092] Though Johnson wrote this same day to Lord Bute to thank him for his pension, he makes no mention to Baretti of this accession to his fortune.

[1093] See ante, p. 245. Mrs. Porter, the actress, lived some time with Mrs. Cotterel and her eldest daughter. CROKER.

[1094] Miss Charlotte Cotterel, married to Dean Lewis. See post, Dec. 21, 1762.

[1095] Reynolds's note-book shows that this year he had close on 150 sitters. Taylor's Reynolds, i. 218.

[1096] He married a woman of the town, who had persuaded him (notwithstanding their place of congress was a small coalshed in Fetter Lane) that she was nearly related to a man of fortune, but was injuriously kept by him out of large possessions. She regarded him as a physician already in considerable practice. He had not been married four months, before a writ was taken out against him for debts incurred by his wife. He was secreted; and his friend then procured him a protection from a foreign minister. In a short time afterwards she ran away from him, and was tried (providentially in his opinion) for picking pockets at the Old Bailey. Her husband was with difficulty prevented from attending the Court, in the hope she would be hanged. She pleaded her own cause and was acquitted. A separation between them took place.' Gent. Mag. lv. 101.

[1097] Richardson had died more than a year earlier,—on July 4, 1761. That Johnson should think it needful at the date of his letter to inform Baretti of the death of so famous a writer shows how slight was the communication between London and Milan. Nay, he repeats the news in his letter of Dec. 21, 1762.

[1098] On Dec. 8, 1765, he wrote to Hector:—'A few years ago I just saluted Birmingham, but had no time to see any friend, for I came in after midnight with a friend, and went away in the morning.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. iii. 321. He passed through Birmingham, I conjecture, on his visit to Lichfield.

[1099] Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield on July 20, 1767, he says:—'Miss Lucy [Porter, his step-daughter, not his daughter-in-law, as he calls her above] is more kind and civil than I expected, and has raised my esteem by many excellencies very noble and resplendent, though a little discoloured by hoary virginity. Everything else recalls to my remembrance years, in which I proposed what I am afraid I have not done, and promised myself pleasure which I have not found.' Piozzi Letters, i. 4.

[1100] In his Journey into Wales (Aug. 24, 1774), he describes how Mrs. Thrale visited one of the scenes of her youth. 'She remembered the rooms, and wandered over them with recollection of her childhood. This species of pleasure is always melancholy. The walk was cut down and the pond was dry. Nothing was better.'

[1101] This is a very just account of the relief which London affords to melancholy minds. BOSWELL.

[1102] To Devonshire.

[1103] See ante, p. 322.

[1104] Dr. T. Campbell (Diary of a visit to England, p. 32) recorded on March 16, 1775, that 'Baretti said that now he could not live out of London. He had returned a few years ago to his own country, but he could not enjoy it; and he was obliged to return to London to those connections he had been making for near thirty years past.' Baretti had come to England in 1750 (ante, p. 302), so that thirty years is an exaggeration.

[1105] How great a sum this must have been in Johnson's eyes is shown by a passage in his Life of Savage (Works, viii. 125). Savage, he says, was received into Lord Tyrconnel's family and allowed a pension of £200 a year. 'His presence,' Johnson writes, 'was sufficient to make any place of publick entertainment popular; and his approbation and example constituted the fashion. So powerful is genius when it is invested with the glitter of affluence!' In the last summer of his life, speaking of the chance of his pension being doubled, he said that with six hundred a year 'a man would have the consciousness that he should pass the remainder of his life in splendour, how long soever it might be.' Post, June 30, 1784. David Hume writing in 1751, says:—'I have £50 a year, a £100 worth of books, great store of linens and fine clothes, and near £100 in my pocket; along with order, frugality, a strong spirit of independency, good health, a contented humour, and an unabating love of study. In these circumstances I must esteem myself one of the happy and fortunate.' J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 342. Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning (chap, vii), makes the following observation on pensions granted in France to authors:—'The French nobility have certainly a most pleasing way of satisfying the vanity of an author without indulging his avarice. A man of literary merit is sure of being caressed by the great, though seldom enriched. His pension from the crown just supplies half a competence, and the sale of his labours makes some small addition to his circumstances; thus the author leads a life of splendid poverty, and seldom becomes wealthy or indolent enough to discontinue an exertion of those abilities by which he rose.' Whether Johnson's pension led to his writing less than he would otherwise have done may be questioned. It is true that in the next seventeen years he did little more than finish his edition of Shakespeare, and write his Journey to the Western Islands and two or three political pamphlets. But since he wrote the last number of The Idler in the spring of 1760 he had done very little. His mind, which, to use Murphy's words (Life, p. 80), had been 'strained and overlaboured by constant exertion,' had not recovered its tone. It is likely, that without the pension he would not have lived to write the second greatest of his works—the Lives of the Poets.

[1106] Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, i. 281) says:—'Bute's pensions to his Scottish crew showing meaner than ever in Churchill's daring verse, it occurred to the shrewd and wary Wedderburne to advise, for a set off, that Samuel Johnson should be pensioned.' The Prophecy of Famine in which Churchill's attack was made on the pensioned Scots was published in Jan. 1763, nearly half a year after Johnson's pension was conferred.

[1107] For his Falkland's Islands 'materials were furnished to him by the ministry' (post, 1771). 'The Patriot was called for,' he writes, 'by my political friends' (post, Nov. 26, 1774). 'That Taxation no Tyranny was written at the desire of those who were then in power, I have no doubt,' writes Boswell (post, under March 21, 1775). 'Johnson complained to a friend that, his pension having been given to him as a literary character, he had been applied to by administration to write political pamphlets' (Ib.). Are these statements inconsistent with what Lord Loughborough said, and with Boswell's assertion (Ib.) that 'Johnson neither asked nor received from government any reward whatsoever for his political labours?' I think not. I think that, had Johnson unpensioned been asked by the Ministry to write these pamphlets, he would have written them. He would have been pleased by the compliment, and for pay would have trusted to the sale. Speaking of the first two of these pamphlets—the third had not yet appeared—he said, 'Except what I had from the booksellers, I did not get a farthing by them' (post, March 21, 1772). They had not cost him much labour. The False Alarm was written between eight o'clock of one night and twelve o'clock of the next. It went through three editions in less than two months (post, 1770). The Patriot was written on a Saturday (post, Nov. 26, 1774). At all events Johnson had received his pension for more than seven years before he did any work for the ministry. In Croft's Life of Young, which Johnson adopted (Works, viii. 422), the following passage was perhaps intended to be a defence of Johnson as a writer for the Ministry:—'Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner? In all modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been regularly called hirelings, and on the other patriots?'

[1108] See ante, p. 294.

[1109] Murphy's account is nearly as follows (Life, p. 92):—'Lord Loughborough was well acquainted with Johnson; but having heard much of his independent spirit, and of the downfall of Osborne the bookseller (ante, p. 154), he did not know but his benevolence might be rewarded with a folio on his head. He desired me to undertake the task. I went to the chambers in the Inner Temple Lane, which, in fact, were the abode of wretchedness. By slow and studied approaches the message was disclosed. Johnson made a long pause; he asked if it was seriously intended. He fell into a profound meditation, and his own definition of a pensioner occurred to him. He desired to meet next day, and dine at the Mitre Tavern. At that meeting he gave up all his scruples. On the following day Lord Loughborough conducted him to the Earl of Bute. The conversation that passed was in the evening related to me by Dr. Johnson. He expressed his sense of his Majesty's bounty, and thought himself the more highly honoured, as the favour was not bestowed on him for having dipped his pen in faction. "No, Sir," said Lord Bute, "it is not offered to you for having dipped your pen in faction, nor with a design that you ever should."' The reviewer of Hawkins's Johnson in the Monthly Review, lxxvi. 375, who was, no doubt, Murphy, adds a little circumstance:—'On the next day Mr. Murphy was in the Temple Lane soon after nine; he got Johnson up and dressed in due time; and saw him set off at eleven.' Malone's note on what Lord Bute said to Johnson is as follows:—'This was said by Lord Bute, as Dr. Burney was informed by Johnson himself, in answer to a question which he put, previously to his acceptance of the intended bounty: "Pray, my Lord, what am I expected to do for this pension?"'

[1110]

'In Britain's senate he a seat obtains And one more pensioner St. Stephen gains.'

Moral Essays, iii. 392.

Johnson left the definition of pension and pensioner unchanged in the fourth edition of the Dictionary, corrected by him in 1773.

[1111] He died on March 10, 1792. This paragraph and the letter are not in the first two editions.

[1112] The Treasury, Home Office, Exchequer of Receipt and Audit Office Records have been searched for a warrant granting a pension to Dr. Johnson without success. In 1782, by Act of Parliament all pensions on the Civil List Establishment were from that time to be paid at the Exchequer. In the Exchequer Order Book, Michaelmas 1782, No. 46, p. 74, the following memorandum occurs:—"Memdum. 3 Dec. 1782. There was issued to the following persons (By order 6th of Nov. 1782) the sums set against their names respectively, etc.:—Persons names: Johnson Saml, LL.D. Pensions p. ann. £300. Due to 5 July 1782, two quarters, £150."

This pension was paid at the Exchequer from that time to the quarter ending 10 Oct. 1784. 'It is clear that the pension was payable quarterly [for confirmation of this, see post, Nov. 3, 1762, and July 16, 1765] and at the old quarter days, July 5, Oct. 10, Jan. 5, April 5, though payment was sometimes delayed. [Once he was paid half-yearly; see post, under March 20, 1771.] The expression "bills" was a general term at the time for notes, cheques, and warrants, and no doubt covered some kind of Treasury warrant.' The above information I owe to the kindness of my friend Mr. Leonard H. Courtney, M.P., late Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The 'future favours' are the future payments. His pension was not for life, and depended therefore entirely on the king's pleasure (see post, under March 21, 1775). The following letter in the Grenville Papers, ii. 68, seems to show that Johnson thought the pension due on the new quarter-day:—

'DR. JOHNSON To MR. GRENVILLE.

'July 2, 1763.

'SIR,

'Be pleased to pay to the bearer seventy-five pounds, being the quarterly payment of a pension granted by his Majesty, and due on the 24th day of June last, to Sir,

'Your most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

[1113] They left London on Aug. 16 and returned to it on Sept. 26. Taylor's Reynolds, i. 214. Northcote records of this visit:—'I remember when Mr. Reynolds was pointed out to me at a public meeting, where a great crowd was assembled, I got as near to him as I could from the pressure of the people to touch the skirt of his coat, which I did with great satisfaction to my mind.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 116. In like manner Reynolds, when a youth, had in a great crowd touched the hand of Pope. Ib, p. 19. Pope, when a boy of eleven, 'persuaded some friends to take him to the coffee-house which Dryden frequented.' Johnson's Works, viii. 236. Who touched old Northcote's hand? Has the apostolic succession been continued?—Since writing these lines I have read with pleasure the following passage in Mr. Ruskin's Praeterita, chapter i. p. 16:—'When at three-and-a-half I was taken to have my portrait painted by Mr. Northcote, I had not been ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there were holes in his carpet.' Dryden, Pope, Reynolds, Northcote, Ruskin, so runs the chain of genius, with only one weak link in it.

[1114] At one of these seats Dr. Amyat, Physician in London, told me he happened to meet him. In order to amuse him till dinner should be ready, he was taken out to walk in the garden. The master of the house, thinking it proper to introduce something scientifick into the conversation, addressed him thus: 'Are you a botanist, Dr. Johnson:' 'No, Sir, (answered Johnson,) I am not a botanist; and, (alluding no doubt, to his near sightedness) should I wish to become a botanist, I must first turn myself into a reptile.' BOSWELL.

[1115] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. 285) says:—'The roughness of the language used on board a man of war, where he passed a week on a visit to Captain Knight, disgusted him terribly. He asked an officer what some place was called, and received for answer that it was where the loplolly man kept his loplolly; a reply he considered as disrespectful, gross and ignorant.' Mr. Croker says that Captain Knight of the Belleisle lay for a couple of months in 1762 in Plymouth Sound. Croker's Boswell, p. 480. It seems unlikely that Johnson passed a whole week on ship-board. Loplolly, or Loblolly, is explained in Roderick Random, chap. xxvii. Roderick, when acting as the surgeon's assistant on a man of war, 'suffered,' he says, 'from the rude insults of the sailors and petty officers, among whom I was known by the name of Lobolly Boy.'

[1116] He was the father of Colonel William Mudge, distinguished by his trigonometrical survey of England and Wales. WRIGHT.

[1117] 'I have myself heard Reynolds declare, that the elder Mr. Mudge was, in his opinion, the wisest man he had ever met with in his life. He has always told me that he owed his first disposition to generalise, and to view things in the abstract, to him.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 112, 115.

[1118] See post, under March 20, 1781.

[1119] See ante, p. 293. BOSWELL.

[1120] The present Devonport.

[1121] A friend of mine once heard him, during this visit, exclaim with the utmost vehemence 'I hate a Docker.' BLAKEWAY. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 118) says that Reynolds took Johnson to dine at a house where 'he devoured so large a quantity of new honey and of clouted cream, besides drinking large potations of new cyder, that the entertainer found himself much embarrassed between his anxious regard for the Doctor's health and his fear of breaking through the rules of politeness, by giving him a hint on the subject. The strength of Johnson's constitution, however, saved him from any unpleasant consequences.' 'Sir Joshua informed a friend that he had never seen Dr. Johnson intoxicated by hard drinking but once, and that happened at the time that they were together in Devonshire, when one night after supper Johnson drank three bottles of wine, which affected his speech so much that he was unable to articulate a hard word, which occurred in the course of his conversation. He attempted it three times but failed; yet at last accomplished it, and then said, "Well, Sir Joshua, I think it is now time to go to bed."' Ib. ii. 161. One part of this story however is wanting in accuracy, and therefore all may be untrue. Reynolds at this time was not knighted. Johnson said (post, April 7, 1778): 'I did not leave off wine because I could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it. University College has witnessed this.' See however post, April 24, 1779, where he said:—'I used to slink home when I had drunk too much;' also ante, p. 103, and post, April 28, 1783.

[1122] George Selwyn wrote:—'Topham Beauclerk is arrived. I hear he lost £10,000 to a thief at Venice, which thief, in the course of the year, will be at Cashiobury.' (The reference to this quotation I have mislaid.)

[1123] Two years later he repeated this thought in the lines that he added to Goldsmith's Traveller. Post, under Feb. 1766.

[1124] We may compare with this what 'old Bentley' said:—'Depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself.' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 1, 1773.

[1125] The preliminaries of peace between England and France had been signed on Nov. 3 of this year. Ann Reg. v. 246.

[1126] Of Baretti's Travels through Spain, &c., Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'That Baretti's book would please you all I made no doubt. I know not whether the world has ever seen such Travels before. Those whose lot it is to ramble can seldom write, and those who know how to write very seldom ramble.' Piozzi Letters, i. 32.

[1127] See ante, p. 370.

[1128] See ante, p. 242, note 1.

[1129] Huggins had quarrelled with Johnson and Baretti (Croker's Boswell, 129, note). See also post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection.

[1130] See ante, p. 370.

[1131] Cowper, writing in 1784 about Collins, says:—'Of whom I did not know that he existed till I found him there'—in the Lives of the Poets, that is to say. Southey's Cowper, v. II.

[1132] To this passage Johnson, nearly twenty years later, added the following (Works, viii. 403):—'Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse, and whom I yet remember with tenderness.'

[1133] 'MADAM. To approach the high and the illustrious has been in all ages the privilege of Poets; and though translators cannot justly claim the same honour, yet they naturally follow their authours as attendants; and I hope that in return for having enabled TASSO to diffuse his fame through the British dominions, I may be introduced by him to the presence of YOUR MAJESTY.

TASSO has a peculiar claim to YOUR MAJESTY'S favour, as follower and panegyrist of the House of Este, which has one common ancestor with the House of HANOVER; and in reviewing his life it is not easy to forbear a wish that he had lived in a happier time, when he might, among the descendants of that illustrious family, have found a more liberal and potent patronage.

I cannot but observe, MADAM, how unequally reward is proportioned to merit, when I reflect that the happiness which was withheld from TASSO is reserved for me; and that the poem which once hardly procured to its authour the countenance of the Princess of Ferrara, has attracted to its translator the favourable notice of a BRITISH QUEEN.

Had this been the fate of TASSO, he would have been able to have celebrated the condescension of YOUR MAJESTY in nobler language, but could not have felt it with more ardent gratitude, than MADAM, Your MAJESTY'S Most faithful and devoted servant.'—BOSWELL.

[1134] Young though Boswell was, he had already tried his hand at more than one kind of writing. In 1761 he had published anonymously an Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady, with an Epistle from Menalcas to Lycidas. (Edinburgh, Donaldson.) The Elegy is full of such errors as 'Thou liv'd,' 'Thou led,' but is recommended by a puffing preface and three letters—one of which is signed J—B. About the same time he brought out a piece that was even more impudent. It was An Ode to Tragedy. By a gentleman of Scotland. (Edinburgh, Donaldson, 1761. Price sixpence.) In the 'Dedication to James Boswell, Esq.,' he says:—'I have no intention to pay you compliments—To entertain agreeable notions of one's own character is a great incentive to act with propriety and spirit. But I should be sorry to contribute in any degree to your acquiring an excess of self-sufficiency … I own indeed that when … to display my extensive erudition, I have quoted Greek, Latin and French sentences one after another with astonishing celerity; or have got into my Old-hock humour and fallen a-raving about princes and lords, knights and geniuses, ladies of quality and harpsichords; you, with a peculiar comic smile, have gently reminded me of the importance of a man to himself, and slily left the room with the witty Dean lying open at—P.P. clerk of this parish. [Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xxiii. 142.] I, Sir, who enjoy the pleasure of your intimate acquaintance, know that many of your hours of retirement are devoted to thought.' The Ode is serious. He describes himself as having

'A soul by nature formed to feel Grief sharper than the tyrant's steel, And bosom big with swelling thought From ancient lore's remembrance brought.'

In the winter of 1761-2 he had helped as a contributor and part-editor in bringing out a Collection of Original Poems. (Boswell and Erskine's Letters, p. 27.) His next publication, also anonymous, was The Club at Newmarket, written, as the Preface says, 'in the Newmarket Coffee Room, in which the author, being elected a member of the Jockey Club, had the happiness of passing several sprightly good-humoured evenings.' It is very poor stuff. In the winter of 1762-3 he joined in writing the Critical Strictures, mentioned post, June 25, 1763. Just about the time that he first met Johnson he and his friend the Hon. Andrew Erskine had published in their own names a very impudent little volume of the correspondence that had passed between them. Of this I published an edition with notes in 1879, together with Boswell's Journal of a Tour to Corsica. (Messrs. Thos. De La Rue & Co.).

[1135] Boswell, in 1768, in the preface to the third edition of his Corsica described 'the warmth of affection and the dignity of veneration' with which he never ceased to think of Mr. Johnson.

[1136] In the Garrick Carres, (ii. 83) there is a confused letter from this unfortunate man, asking Garrick for the loan of five guineas. He had a scheme for delivering dramatic lectures at Eton and Oxford; 'but,' he added, 'my externals have so unfavourable an appearance that I cannot produce myself with any comfort or hope of success.' Garrick sent him five guineas. He had been a Major in the army, an actor, and dramatic author. 'For the last seven years of his life he struggled under sickness and want to a degree of uncommon misery.' Gent. Mag. for 1784, p. 959.

[1137] As great men of antiquity such as Scipio Africanus had an epithet added to their names, in consequence of some celebrated action, so my illustrious friend was often called DICTIONARY JOHNSON, from that wonderful atchievement of genius and labour, his Dictionary of the English Language; the merit of which I contemplate with more and more admiration. BOSWELL. In like manner we have 'Hermes Harris,' 'Pliny Melmoth,' 'Demosthenes Taylor,' 'Persian Jones,' 'Abyssinian Bruce,' 'Microscope Baker,' 'Leonidas Glover,' 'Hesiod Cooke,' and 'Corsica Boswell.'

[1138] See ante, p. 124. He introduced Boswell to Davies, who was 'the immediate introducer.' Post, under June 18, 1783, note.

[1139] On March 2, 1754 (not 1753), the audience called for a repetition of some lines which they applied against the government. 'Diggs, the actor, refused by order of Sheridan, the manager, to repeat them; Sheridan would not even appear on the stage to justify the prohibition. In an instant the audience demolished the inside of the house, and reduced it to a shell.' Walpole's Reign of George II, i. 389, and Gent. Mag. xxiv. 141. Sheridan's friend, Mr. S. Whyte, says (_Miscellanea Nova, p. 16):—'In the year 1762 Sheridan's scheme for an English Dictionary was published. That memorable year he was nominated for a pension.' He quotes (p. 111) a letter from Mrs. Sheridan, dated Nov. 29, 1762, in which she says:—'I suppose you must have heard that the King has granted him a pension of 200£. a year, merely as an encouragement to his undertaking.'

[1140] See post, March 28, 1776.

[1141] Horace Walpole describes Lord Bute as 'a man that had passed his life in solitude, and was too haughty to admit to his familiarity but half a dozen silly authors and flatterers. Sir Henry Erskine, a military poet, Home, a tragedy-writing parson,' &c. Mem. of the Reign of George III, i. 37.

[1142] See post, March 28, 1776.

[1143] 'Native wood-notes wild.' Milton's L'Allegro, l. 134

[1144]

'In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas Corpora. Di coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas) Adspirate meis.' 'Of bodies changed to various forms I sing:— Ye Gods from whence these miracles did spring Inspired, &c.'—DRYDEN, Ov. Met. i.i.

See post under March 30, 1783, for Lord Loughborough.

[1145] See post, May 17, 1783, and June 24, 1784. Sheridan was not of a forgiving nature. For some years he would not speak to his famous son: yet he went with his daughters to the theatre to see one of his pieces performed. 'The son took up his station by one of the side scenes, opposite to the box where they sat, and there continued, unobserved, to look at them during the greater part of the night. On his return home he burst into tears, and owned how deeply it had gone to his heart, "to think that there sat his father and his sisters before him, and yet that he alone was not permitted to go near them."' Moore's Sheridan, i. 167.

[1146] As Johnson himself said:—'Men hate more steadily than they love; and if I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.' Post, Sept. 15, 1777.

[1147] P. 447. BOSWELL. 'There is another writer, at present of gigantic fame in these days of little men, who has pretended to scratch out a life of Swift, but so miserably executed as only to reflect back on himself that disgrace which he meant to throw upon the character of the Dean.' The Life of Doctor Swift, Swift's Works, ed. 1803, ii. 200. There is a passage in the Lives of the Poets (Works, viii. 43) in which Johnson might be supposed playfully to have anticipated this attack. He is giving an account of Blackmore's imaginary Literary Club of Lay Monks, of which the hero was 'one Mr. Johnson.' 'The rest of the Lay Monks,' he writes, 'seem to be but feeble mortals, in comparison with the gigantick Johnson.' See also post, Oct. 16, 1769. Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 458) spoke no less scornfully than Sheridan of Johnson and his contemporaries. On April 27, 1773, after saying that he should like to be intimate with Anstey (the author of the New Bath Guide), or with the author of the Heroic Epistle, he continues:—'I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope and lived with Gray.'

[1148] Johnson is thus mentioned by Mrs. Sheridan in a letter dated, Blois, Nov. 16, 1743, according to the Garrick Corres, i. 17, but the date is wrongly given, as the Sheridans went to Blois in 1764: 'I have heard Johnson decry some of the prettiest pieces of writing we have in English; yet Johnson is an honourable man—that is to say, he is a good critic, and in other respects a man of enormous talents.'

[1149] My position has been very well illustrated by Mr. Belsham of Bedford, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry. 'The fashionable doctrine (says he) both of moralists and criticks in these times is, that virtue and happiness are constant concomitants; and it is regarded as a kind of dramatick impiety to maintain that virtue should not be rewarded, nor vice punished in the last scene of the last act of every tragedy. This conduct in our modern poets is, however, in my opinion, extremely injudicious; for, it labours in vain to inculcate a doctrine in theory, which every one knows to be false in fact, viz. that virtue in real life is always productive of happiness; and vice of misery. Thus Congreve concludes the Tragedy of The Mourning Bride with the following foolish couplet:—

'For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.'

'When a man eminently virtuous, a Brutus, a Cato, or a Socrates, finally sink under the pressure of accumulated misfortune, we are not only led to entertain a more indignant hatred of vice than if he rose from his distress, but we are inevitably induced to cherish the sublime idea that a day of future retribution will arrive when he shall receive not merely poetical, but real and substantial justice.' Essays Philosophical, Historical, and Literary, London, 1791, vol. II. 8vo. p. 317.

This is well reasoned and well expressed. I wish, indeed, that the ingenious authour had not thought it necessary to introduce any instance of 'a man eminently virtuous;' as he would then have avoided mentioning such a ruffian as Brutus under that description. Mr. Belsham discovers in his Essays so much reading and thinking, and good composition, that I regret his not having been fortunate enough to be educated a member of our excellent national establishment. Had he not been nursed in nonconformity, he probably would not have been tainted with those heresies (as I sincerely, and on no slight investigation, think them) both in religion and politicks, which, while I read, I am sure, with candour, I cannot read without offence. BOSWELL. Boswell's 'position has been illustrated' with far greater force by Johnson. 'It has been the boast of some swelling moralists, that every man's fortune was in his own power, that prudence supplied the place of all other divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue. But surely the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows against which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been boasted, is held up in vain; we do not always suffer by our crimes; we are not always protected by our innocence.' The Adventurer, No. 120. See also Rasselas, chap. 27.

[1150] 'Charles Fox said that Mrs. Sheridan's Sydney Biddulph was the best of all modern novels. By the by [R. B.] Sheridan used to declare that he had never read it.' Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 90. The editor says, in a note on this passage:—'The incident in The School for Scandal of Sir Oliver's presenting himself to his relations in disguise is manifestly taken by Sheridan from his mother's novel.'

[1151] No. 8.—The very place where I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the illustrious subject of this work, deserves to be particularly marked. I never pass by it without feeling reverence and regret. BOSWELL.

[1152] Johnson said:—'Sir, Davies has learning enough to give credit to a clergyman.' Post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. The spiteful Steevens thus wrote about Davies:—'His concern ought to be with the outside of books; but Dr. Johnson, Dr. Percy, and some others have made such a coxcomb of him, that he is now hardy enough to open volumes, turn over their leaves, and give his opinions of their contents. Did I ever tell you an anecdote of him? About ten years ago I wanted the Oxford Homer, and called at Davies's to ask for it, as I had seen one thrown about his shop. Will you believe me, when I assure you he told me "he had but one, and that he kept for his own reading?"' Garrick Corres. i. 608.

[1153] Johnson, writing to Beattie, post, Aug 21, 1780, says:—'Mr. Davies has got great success as an author, generated by the corruption of a bookseller.' His principal works are Memoirs of Garrick, 1780, and Dramatic Miscellanies, 1784.

[1154] Churchill, in the Rosciad, thus celebrated his wife and mocked his recitation:—

'With him came mighty Davies. On my life That Davies hath a very pretty wife:— Statesman all over!—In plots famous grown!— He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone.'

Churchill's Poems, i. 16.

See post, under April 20, 1764, and March 20, 1778. Charles Lamb in a note to his Essay on the Tragedies of Shakespeare says of Davies, that he 'is recorded to have recited the Paradise Lost better than any man in England in his day (though I cannot help thinking there must be some mistake in this tradition).' Lamb's Works, ed. 1840, p. 517.

[1155] See Johnson's letter to Davies, post, June 18, 1783.

[1156] Mr. Murphy, in his Essay on the Life and Genius of Dr. Johnson, [p. 106], has given an account of this meeting considerably different from mine, I am persuaded without any consciousness of errour. His memory, at the end of near thirty years, has undoubtedly deceived him, and he supposes himself to have been present at a scene, which he has probably heard inaccurately described by others. In my note taken on the very day, in which I am confident I marked every thing material that passed, no mention is made of this gentleman; and I am sure, that I should not have omitted one so well known in the literary world. It may easily be imagined that this, my first interview with Dr. Johnson, with all its circumstances, made a strong impression on my mind, and would be registered with peculiar attention. BOSWELL.

[1157] See post, April 8, 1775.

[1158] That this was a momentary sally against Garrick there can be no doubt; for at Johnson's desire he had, some years before, given a benefit-night at his theatre to this very person, by which she had got two hundred pounds. Johnson, indeed, upon all other occasions, when I was in his company, praised the very liberal charity of Garrick. I once mentioned to him, 'It is observed, Sir, that you attack Garrick yourself, but will suffer nobody else to do it.' JOHNSON, (smiling) 'Why, Sir, that is true.' BOSWELL. See post, May 15, 1776, and April 17, 1778.

[1159] By Henry Home, Lord Kames, 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1762. See post, Oct. 16, 1769. 'Johnson laughed much at Lord Kames's opinion that war was a good thing occasionally, as so much valour and virtue were exhibited in it. "A fire," says Johnson, "might as well be thought a good thing; there is the bravery and address of the firemen employed in extinguishing it; there is much humanity exerted in saving the lives and properties of the poor sufferers; yet after all this, who can say a fire is a good thing?"' Johnson's Works, (1787) xi. 209.

[1160] No. 45 of the North Briton had been published on April 23. Wilkes was arrested under a general warrant on April 30. On May 6 he was discharged from custody by the Court of Common Pleas, before which he had been brought by a writ of Habeas Corpus. A few days later he was served with a subpoena upon an information exhibited against him by the Attorney-General in the Court of King's Bench. He did not enter an appearance, holding, as he said, the serving him with the subpoena as a violation of the privilege of parliament. Parl. Hist. xv. 1360.

[1161] Mr. Sheridan was then reading lectures upon Oratory at Bath, where Derrick was Master of the Ceremonies; or, as the phrase is, KING. BOSWELL. Dr. Parr, who knew Sheridan well, describes him 'as a wrong-headed, whimsical man.' 'I remember,' he continues, 'hearing one of his daughters, in the house where I lodged, triumphantly repeat Dryden's Ode upon St. Cecilia's Day, according to the instruction given to her by her father. Take a sample:—

"None but the brave None but the brave. None but the brave deserve the fair."

Naughty Richard [R. B. Sheridan], like Gallio, seemed to care nought for these things.' Moore's Sheridan, i. 9, 11. Sheridan writing from Dublin on Dec. 7, 1771, says:—'Never was party violence carried to such a height as in this session; the House [the Irish House of Parliament] seldom breaking up till eleven or twelve at night. From these contests the desire of improving in the article of elocution is become very general. There are no less than five persons of rank and fortune now waiting my leisure to become my pupils.' Ib. p. 60. See post, July 28, 1763.

[1162] Bonnell Thornton. See post July 1, 1763.

[1163] Lloyd was one of a remarkable group of Westminster boys. He was a school-fellow not only of Churchill, the elder Colman, and Cumberland, buy also of Cowper and Warren Hastings. Bonnell Thornton was a few years their senior. Not many weeks after this meeting with Boswell, Lloyd was in the Fleet prison. Churchill in Indepence(Poems ii 310) thus addresses the Patrons of the age:—

'Hence, ye vain boasters, to the Fleet repair And ask, with blushes ask if Lloyd is there.'

Of the four men who thus enlivened Boswell, two were dead before the end of the following year. Churchill went first. When Lloyd heard of his death, '"I shall follow poor Charles," was all he said, as he went to the bed from which he never rose again.' Thornton lived three or four years longer, Forster's Essays, ii 217, 270, 289. See also his Life of Goldsmith i. 264, for an account how 'Lloyd invited Goldsmith to sup with some friends of Grub Street, and left him to pay the reckoning.' Thornton, Lloyd, Colman, Cowper, and Joseph Hill, to whom Cowper's famous Epistle was addressed, had at one time been members of the Nonsense Club. Southey's Cowper, i. 37.

[1164] The author of the well-known sermons, see post, under Dec. 21, 1776.

[1165] See post, under Dec. 9, 1784.

[1166] See post, Feb. 7, 1775, under Dec. 24, 1783, and Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 10, 1773.

[1167] 'Sir,' he said to Reynolds, 'a man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it;' post, under March 30, 1783.

[1168] 'Or behind the screen' some one might have added, ante, i. 163.

[1169] Wesley was told that a whole waggon-load of Methodists had been lately brought before a Justice of the Peace. When he asked what they were charged with, one replied, 'Why they pretended to be better than other people, and besides they prayed from morning to night.' Wesley's Journal, i. 361. See also post, 1780, near the end of Mr. Langton's Collection.

[1170] 'The progress which the understanding makes through a book has' he said, 'more pain than pleasure in it;' post, May 1, 1783.

[1171] Matthew, vi. 16.

[1172] Boswell, it is clear, in the early days of his acquaintance with Johnson often led the talk to this subject. See post, June 25, July 14, 21, and 28, 1763.

[1173] See post, April 7, 1778.

[1174] He finished his day, 'however late it might be,' by taking tea at Miss Williams's lodgings; post, July 1, 1763.

[1175] See post, under Feb. 15, 1766, Feb. 1767, March 20, 1776, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 20, 1773, where Johnson says:—'I have been trying to cure my laziness all my life, and could not do it.' It was this kind of life that caused so much of the remorse which is seen in his Prayers and Meditations.

[1176] Horace Walpole writing on June 12, 1759 (Letters, iii. 231), says:—'A war that reaches from Muscovy to Alsace, and from Madras to California, don't produce an article half so long as Mr. Johnson's riding three horses at once.' I have a curious copper-plate showing Johnson standing on one, or two, and leading a third horse in full speed.' It bears the date of November 1758. See post, April 3, 1778.

[1177] In the impudent Correspondence (pp. 63, 65) which Boswell and Andrew Erskine published this year, Boswell shows why he wished to enter the Guards. 'My fondness for the Guards,' he writes, 'must appear very strange to you, who have a rooted antipathy at the glare of scarlet. But I must inform you, that there is a city called London, for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress…. I am thinking of the brilliant scenes of happiness, which I shall enjoy as an officer of the guards. How I shall be acquainted with all the grandeur of a court, and all the elegance of dress and diversions; become a favourite of ministers of state, and the adoration of ladies of quality, beauty, and fortune! How many parties of pleasure shall I have in town! How many fine jaunts to the noble seats of dukes, lords, and members of parliament in the country! I am thinking of the perfect knowledge which I shall acquire of men and manners, of the intimacies which I shall have the honour to form with the learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary anecdotes which I shall pick up,' etc. Boswell, in his Hebrides (Aug. 18, 1773), says of himself:—'His inclination was to be a soldier; but his father, a respectable Judge, had pressed him into the profession of the law.'

[1178] A row of tenements in the Strand, between Wych Street and Temple Bar, and 'so called from the butchers' shambles on the south side.' (Strype, B. iv. p. 118.) Butcher Row was pulled down in 1813, and the present Pickett Street erected in its stead. P. CUNNINGHAM. In Humphry Clinker, in the letter of June 10, one of the poor authors is described as having been 'reduced to a woollen night-cap and living upon sheep's-trotters, up three pair of stairs backward in Butcher Row.'

[1179] Cibber was poet-laureate from 1730 to 1757. Horace Walpole describes him as 'that good humoured and honest veteran, so unworthily aspersed by Pope, whose Memoirs, with one or two of his comedies, will secure his fame, in spite of all the abuse of his contemporaries.' His successor Whitehead, Walpole calls 'a man of a placid genius.' Reign of George II, iii. 81. See ante, pp. 149, 185, and post, Oct. 19, 1769, May 15, 1776, and Sept. 21, 1777.

[1180] The following quotations show the difference of style in the two poets:—

COLLEY GIBBER.

'When her pride, fierce in arms, Would to Europe give law; At her cost let her come, To our cheer of huzza! Not lightning with thunder more terrible darts, Than the burst of huzza from our bold British hearts.'

Gent. Mag. xxv. 515.

WM. WHITEHEAD.

'Ye guardian powers, to whose command, At Nature's birth, th' Almighty mind The delegated task assign'd To watch o'er Albion's favour'd land, What time your hosts with choral lay, Emerging from its kindred deep, Applausive hail'd each verdant steep, And white rock, glitt'ring to the new-born day!'

Ib. xxix. 32.

[1181] See ante, p. 167.

[1182] 'Whitehead was for some while Garrick's "reader" of new plays for Drury-lane.' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 41. See post, April 25, 1778, note. The verses to Garrick are given in Chalmers's English Poets, xvii. 222.

[1183] 'In 1757 Gray published The Progress of Poetry and The Bard, two compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability to understand them…. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Some hardy champions undertook to rescue them from neglect; and in a short time many were content to be shown beauties which they could not see.' Johnson's Works, viii. 478. See post, March 28, and April 2, 1775, and 1780 in Mr. Langton's Collection. Goldsmith, no doubt, attacked Gray among 'the misguided innovators,' of whom he said in his Life of Parnell:—'They have adopted a language of their own, and call upon mankind for admiration. All those who do not understand them are silent, and those who make out their meaning are willing to praise to show they understand.' Goldsmith's Misc. Works, iv. 22.

[1184] Johnson, perhaps, refers to the anonymous critic quoted by Mason in his notes on this Ode, who says:—'This abrupt execration plunges the reader into that sudden fearful perplexity which is designed to predominate through the whole.' Mason's Gray, ed. 1807, i. 96.

[1185] 'Of the first stanza [of The Bard] the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his subject that has read the ballad of Johnny Armstrong.' Johnson's Works, viii. 485.

[1186] My friend Mr. Malone, in his valuable comments on Shakspeare, has traced in that great poet the disjecta membra of these lines. BOSWELL. Gray, in the edition of The Bard of the year 1768, in a note on these lines had quoted from King John, act v. sc. 1:—'Mocking the air with colours idly spread.' Gosse's Gray, i. 41. But Malone quotes also from Macbeth, act i. sc. 2:—

'Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky And fan our people cold.'

'Out of these passages,' he said, 'Mr. Gray seems to have framed the first stanza of his celebrated Ode.' Malone's Shakespeare, xv. 344.

[1187] Cradock records (Memoirs, 1.230) that Goldsmith said to him:—'You are so attached to Kurd, Gray, and Mason, that you think nothing good can proceed but out of that formal school;—now, I'll mend Gray's Elegy by leaving out an idle word in every line.

"The curfew tolls the knell of day, The lowing herd winds o'er the lea The ploughman homeward plods his way And—-"

Enough, enough, I have no ear for more.'

[1188] So, less than two years later, Boswell opened his mind to Paoli. 'My time passed here in the most agreeable manner. I enjoyed a sort of luxury of noble sentiment. Paoli became more affable with me. I made myself known to him.' Boswell's Corsica, p. 167.

[1189] See ante, p. 67.

[1190] See post, Sept. 22, 1777.

[1191] See post, March 30, 1778, where in speaking of the appearance of spirits after death he says:—'All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.' See also ante, p. 343, and post, April 15, 1778, under May 4, 1779, April 15, 1781, and June 12, 1784.

[1192] The caricature begins:—