Volume 1 / Act 5 — Act v. sc. 9.

[582] Murphy referring to Boswell's statement says:—'The Epilogue, we are told in a late publication, was written by Sir William Young. This is a new discovery, but by no means probable. When the appendages to a Dramatic Performance are not assigned to a friend, or an unknown hand, or a person of fashion, they are always supposed to be written by the author of the Play.' Murphy's Johnson, p. 154. He overlooks altogether the statement in the Gent. Mag. (xix. 85) that the Epilogue is 'by another hand.' Mr. Croker points out that the words 'as Johnson informed me' first appear in the second edition. The wonder is that Johnson accepted this Epilogue, which is a little coarse and a little profane. Yonge was Secretary at War in Walpole's ministry. Walpole said of him 'that nothing but Yonge's character could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character.' Horace Walpole's Letters, i. 98, note.

[583] I know not what Sir John Hawkins means by the cold reception of Irene. (See note, p. 192.) I was at the first representation, and most of the subsequent. It was much applauded the first night, particularly the speech on to-morrow [Act iii. sc. 2]. It ran nine nights at least. It did not indeed become a stock-play, but there was not the least opposition during the representation, except the first night in the last act, where Irene was to be strangled on the stage, which John could not bear, though a dramatick poet may stab or slay by hundreds. The bow-string was not a Christian nor an ancient Greek or Roman death. But this offence was removed after the first night, and Irene went off the stage to be strangled.—BURNEY.

[584] According to the Gent. Mag. (xix. 76) 'it was acted from Monday, Feb. 6, to Monday, Feb. 20, inclusive.' A letter in the Garrick Corres, (i. 32), dated April 3, 1745, seems to shew that so long a run was uncommon. The writer addressing Garrick says:—'You have now performed it [Tancred] for nine nights; consider the part, and whether nature can well support the frequent repetition of such shocks. Permit me to advise you to resolve not to act upon any account above three times a week.' Yet against this may be set the following passage in the Rambler, No. l23:—'At last a malignant author, whose performance I had persecuted through the nine nights, wrote an epigram upon Tape the critic, which drove me from the pit for ever.' Murphy writing in 1792 said that Irene had not been exhbited on any stage since its first representation. Murphy's Johnson, p. 52.

[585] Mr. Croker says that 'it appears by a MS. note in Isaac Reed's copy of Murphy's Life, that the receipts of the third, sixth, and ninth nights, after deducting sixty guineas a night for the expenses of the house, amounted to £195 17s.: Johnson cleared therefore, with the copyright, very nearly £300.' Irene was sold at the price of 1s. 6d. a copy (Gent. Mag. xix. 96); so that Dodsley must have looked for a very large sale.

[586] See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection for Johnson's estimate of Irene in later life.

[587] Aaron Hill (vol. ii. p. 355), in a letter to Mr. Mallett, gives the following account of Irene after having seen it: 'I was at the anomalous Mr. Johnson's benefit, and found the play his proper representative; strong sense ungraced by sweetness or decorum.' BOSWELL.

[588] See ante, p. 102

[589] Murphy (Life, p. 53) says that some years afterwards, when he knew Johnson to be in distress, he asked Garrick why he did not produce another tragedy for his Lichfield friend? Garrick's answer was remarkable: "When Johnson writes tragedy, declamation roars, and passion sleeps: when Shakespeare wrote; he dipped his pen in his own heart." Johnson was perhaps aware of the causes of his failure as a tragedy-writer. In his criticism of Addison's Cato he says: 'Of Cato it has been not unjustly determined that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or any state probable or possible in human life … The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow…. Its success has introduced or confirmed among us the use of dialogue too declamatory, of unaffecting elegance and chill philosophy.' Works, vii. 456. 'Johnson thought: Cato the best model of tragedy we had; yet he used to say, of all things the most ridiculous would be to see a girl cry at the representation of it.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 207. Cato, if neglected, has added at least eight 'habitual quotations' to the language (see Thackeray's English Humourists, p. 98). Irene has perhaps not added a single one. It has neverthingless some quotable lines, such as—

'Crowds that hide a monarch from himself.' Act i. sc. 4. 'To cant … of reason to a lover.' Act iii. sc. 1. 'When e'en as love was breaking off from wonder, And tender accents quiver'd on my lips.' Ib. 'And fate lies crowded in a narrow space.' Act iii. sc. 6. 'Reflect that life and death, affecting sounds, Are only varied modes of endless being.' Act ii. sc. 8. 'Directs the planets with a careless nod.' Ib. 'Far as futurity's untravell'd waste.' Act iv. sc. 1. 'And wake from ignorance the western world.' Act iv. sc. 2. 'Through hissing ages a proverbial coward, The tale of women, and the scorn of fools.' Act iv. sc. 3. 'No records but the records of the sky.' Ib. '… thou art sunk beneath reproach.' Act v. sc. 2. 'Oh hide me from myself.' Act v. sc. 3.

[590] Johnson wrote of Milton:—'I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation.' Johnson's Works, vii. 108.

[591]

'Genus irritabile vatum.' 'The fretful tribe of rival poets.'

Francis, Horace, Ep. ii. 2. 102.

[592] This deference he enforces in many passages in his writings; as for instance:—'Dryden might have observed, that what is good only because it pleases, cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please.' Johnson's Works, vii. 252. 'The authority of Addison is great; yet the voice of the people, when to please the people is the purpose, deserves regard.' Ib. 376. 'About things on which the public thinks long, it commonly attains to think right.' Ib. 456. 'These apologies are always useless: "de gustibus non est disputandum;" men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased against their will.' Ib. viii. 26. 'Of things that terminate in human life, the world is the proper judge; to despise its sentence, if it were possible, is not just; and if it were just, is not possible.' Ib. viii. 316. Lord Chesterfield in writing to his son about his first appearance in the world said, 'You will be tried and judged there, not as a boy, but as a man; and from that moment there is no appeal for character.' Lord Chesterfield's Letters, iii. 324. Addison in the Guardian, No. 98, had said that 'men of the best sense are always diffident of their private judgment, till it receives a sanction from the public. Provoco ad populum, I appeal to the people, was the usual saying of a very excellent dramatic poet, when he had any disputes with particular persons about the justness and regularity of his productions.' See post, March 23, 1783.

[593] 'Were I,' he said, 'to wear a laced or embroidered waistcoat, it should be very rich. I had once a very rich laced waistcoat, which I wore the first night of my tragedy.' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 27, 1773.

[594] 'Topham Beauclerc used to give a pleasant description of this greenroom finery, as related by the author himself: 'But,' said Johnson, with great gravity, 'I soon laid aside my gold-laced hat, lest it should make me proud.' Murphy's Johnson, p. 52. In The Idler (No. 62) we have an account of a man who had longed to 'issue forth in all the splendour of embroidery.' When his fine clothes were brought, 'I felt myself obstructed,' he wrote, 'in the common intercourse of civility by an uneasy consciousness of my new appearance; as I thought myself more observed, I was more anxious about my mien and behaviour; and the mien which if formed by care is commonly ridiculous.'

[595] See ante, p. 167.

[596] See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection.

[597] The Tatler came to an end on Jan 2, 1710-1; the first series of The Spectator on Dec 6, 1712; and the second series of The Spectator on December 20, 1714.

[598] 'Two new designs have appeared about the middle of this month [March, 1750], one entitled, The Tatler Revived; or The Christian Philosopher and Politician, half a sheet, price 2_d_. (stamped); the other, The Rambler, three half sheets (un-stamped); price 2_d_.' Gent. Mag. xx. 126.

[599] Pope's Essay on Man, ii. 10.

[600] See post, under Oct. 12, 1779.

[601] I have heard Dr. Warton mention, that he was at Mr. Robert Dodsley's with the late Mr. Moore, and several of his friends, considering what should be the name of the periodical paper which Moore had undertaken. Garrick proposed The Sallad, which, by a curious coincidence, was afterwards applied to himself by Goldsmith:

'Our Garrick's a sallad, for in him we see Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree!'

[Retaliation, line II.]

At last, the company having separated, without any thing of which they approved having been offered, Dodsley himself thought of The World. BOSWELL.

[602] In the original MS. 'in this my undertaking,' and below, 'the salvation both of myself and others.'

[603] Prayers and Meditations, p. 9. BOSWELL.

[604] In the original folio edition of the Rambler the concluding paper is dated Saturday, March 17. But Saturday was in fact March 14. This circumstance is worth notice, for Mrs. Johnson died on the 17th. MALONE.

[605] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3d edit. p. 28. [Aug. 16, 1773]. BOSWELL.

[606] 'Gray had a notion not very peculiar, that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a fantastic foppery, to which my kindness for a man of learning and virtue wishes him to have been superior.' Johnson's Works, viii. 482. See post, under April 15, 1758.

[607] Her correspondence with Richardson and Mrs. Carter was published in 1807.

[608] The correspondence between her and Mrs. Carter was published in 1808.

[609] Dr. Birch says:—'The proprietor of the Rambler, Cave, told me that copy was seldom sent to the press till late in the night before the day of publication,' Croker's Boswell, p. 121, note. See post, April 12, 1776, and beginning of 1781.

Johnson carefully revised the Ramblers for the collected edition. The editor of the Oxford edition of Johnson's Works states (ii. x), that 'the alterations exceeded six thousand.' The following passage from the last number affords a good instance of this revision.

First edition.

'I have never complied with temporary curiosity, nor furnished my readers with abilities to discuss the topic of the day; I have seldom exemplified my assertions by living characters; from my papers therefore no man could hope either censures of his enemies or praises of himself, and they only could be expected to peruse them, whose passions left them leisure for the contemplation of abstracted truth, and whom virtue could please by her native dignity without the assistance of modish ornaments.' Gent. Mag. xxii. 117.

Revised edition.

'I have never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled my readers to discuss the topic of the day; I have rarely exemplified my assertions by living characters; in my papers no man could look for censures of his enemies, or praises of himself; and they only were expected to peruse them, whose passions left them leisure for abstracted truth, and whom virtue could please by its naked dignity.' Johnson's Works, iii. 462.

[610] 'Such relicks [Milton's early manuscripts] shew how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.' Johnson's Works, vii. 119.

[611] Of the first 52 Ramblers 49 were wholly by Johnson; of the last 156, 154. He seems to say that in the first 49, 17 were written from notes, and in the last 154 only 13.

[612] No. 46.

[613] Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 268 [p. 265]. BOSWELL.

[614] 'The sly shadow steals away upon the dial, and the quickest eye can distinguish no more than that it is gone.' Glanville, quoted in Johnson's Dictionary.

[615] This most beautiful image of the enchanting delusion of youthful prospect has not been used in any of Johnson's essays. BOSWELL.

[616] From Horace (Ars Poet. 1. 175) he takes his motto for the number:—

'Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimunt.' The blessings flowing in with life's full tide Down with our ebb of life decreasing glide.'

FRANCIS.

[617] Lib. xii. 96 [95]. 'In Tuccam aemulum omnium suorum studiorum.' MALONE.

[618] 'There never appear,' says Swift, 'more than five or six men of genius in an age; but if they were united, the world could not stand before them.' Johnson's Works, iv. 18.

[619] In the first edition this is printed [Greek: o philoi on philos]; in the second, [Greek: o philoi on philos]; in the 'Corrections' to the second, we find 'for [Greek: o] read [Greek: oi];' in the third it is printed as above. In three editions we have therefore five readings of the first word. See post, April 15, 1778, where Johnson says:

'An old Greek said, "He that has friends has no friend,"' and April 24, 1779, where he says: 'Garrick had friends but no friend.'

[620]

'gravesque Principum amicitias.' 'And fatal friendships of the guilty great.'

FRANCIS, Horace, Odes, ii. 1. 4.

[621] 3 Post, under Jan. 1, 1753.

[622] Sir John Hawkins has selected from this little collection of materials, what he calls the 'Rudiments of two of the papers of the Rambler.' But he has not been able to read the manuscript distinctly. Thus he writes, p. 266, 'Sailor's fate any mansion;' whereas the original is 'Sailor's life my aversion.' He has also transcribed the unappropriated hints on Writers for bread, in which he decyphers these notable passages, one in Latin, fatui non famæ, instead of fami non famæ; Johnson having in his mind what Thuanus says of the learned German antiquary and linguist, Xylander, who, he tells us, lived in such poverty, that he was supposed fami non famæ scribere; and another in French, Degente de fate [fatu] et affamé a'argent, instead of Dégouté de fame, (an old word for renommée) et affamé d'argent. The manuscript being written in an exceedingly small hand, is indeed very hard to read; but it would have been better to have left blanks than to write nonsense. BOSWELL.

[623] When we know that of the 208 Ramblers all but five were written by Johnson, it is amusing to read a passage in one of Miss Talbot's letters to Mrs. Carter, dated Oct. 20, 1750:—'Mr. Johnson would, I fear, be mortified to hear that people know a paper of his own by the sure mark of somewhat a little excessive, a little exaggerated in the expression.' Carter Corres. i. 357.

[624] The Ramblers certainly were little noticed at first. Smart, the poet, first mentioned them to me as excellent papers, before I had heard any one else speak of them. When I went into Norfolk, in the autumn of 1751, I found but one person, (the Rev. Mr. Squires, a man of learning, and a general purchaser of new books,) who knew anything of them. Before I left Norfolk in the year 1760, the Ramblers were in high favour among persons of learning and good taste. Others there were, devoid of both, who said that the hard words in the Rambler were used by the authour to render his Dictionary indispensably necessary. BURNEY. We have notices of the Rambler in the Carter Corres:—'May 28, 1750. The author ought to be cautioned not to use over many hard words. In yesterday's paper (a very pretty one indeed) we had _equiponderant, and another so hard I cannot remember it [adscititious], both in one sentence.' 'Dec. 17, 1750:—Mr. Cave complains of him for not admitting correspondents; this does mischief. In the main I think he is to be applauded for it. But why then does he not write now and then on the living manners of the times?' In writing on April 22, 1752, just after the Rambler had come to an end, Miss Talbot says:—'Indeed 'tis a sad thing that such a paper should have met with discouragement from wise and learned and good people too. Many are the disputes it has cost me, and not once did I come off triumphant.' Mrs. Carter replied:—'Many a battle have I too fought for him in the country, out with little success.' Murphy says:—'of this excellent production the number sold on each day did not amount to five hundred; of course the bookseller, who paid the author four guineas a week, did not carry on a successful trade.' Murphy's Johnson, p. 59.

[625] Richardson wrote to Cave on Aug. 9, 1750, after forty-one numbers had appeared:—'I hope the world tastes them; for its own sake I hope the world tastes them. The author I can only guess at. There is but one man, I think, that could write them.' Rich. Corres, i. 165. Cave replied:—'Mr. Johnson is the Great Rambler, being, as you observe, the only man who can furnish two such papers in a week, besides his other great business.' He mentioned the recommendation it received from high quarters, and continued:—'Notwithstanding, whether the price of two-pence, or the unfavourable season of their first publication hinders the demand, no boast can be made of it.' Johnson had not wished his name to be known. Cave says that 'Mr. Carrick and others, who knew the author's powers and style from the first, unadvisedly asserting their suspicions, overturned the scheme of secrecy.' Ib. pp. 168-170.

[626] Horace Walpole, while justifying George II. against 'bookish men who have censured his neglect of literature,' says:—'In truth, I believe King George would have preferred a guinea to a composition as perfect as Alexander's Feast.' Reign of George II, iii. 304.

[627] 'Dr. Johnson said to an acquaintance of mine, "My other works are wine and water; but my Rambler is pure wine."' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 10.

[628] See post, April 5, 1772; April 19, 1773; and April 9, 1778.

[629] It was executed in the printing-office of Sands, Murray, and Cochran, with uncommon elegance, upon writing-paper, of a duodecimo size, and with the greatest correctness; and Mr. Elphinston enriched it with translations of the mottos. When completed, it made eight handsome volumes. It is, unquestionably, the most accurate and beautiful edition of this work; and there being but a small impression, it is now become scarce, and sells at a very high price. BOSWELL.

[630] Mr. Thomas Ruddiman, the learned grammarian of Scotland, well known for his various excellent works, and for his accurate editions of several authours. He was also a man of a most worthy private character. His zeal for the Royal House of Stuart did not render him less estimable in Dr. Johnson's eye. BOSWELL.

[631] In the Gent. Mag. for Sept. 1750, and for Oct. 1752, translations of many of the mottoes were given; but in each number there are several of Elphinston's. Johnson seems to speak of only one.

[632] Writing to Miss Porter on July 12, 1749, he said:—'I was afraid your letter had brought me ill news of my mother, whose death is one of the few calamities on which I think with terror.' Crokers Boswell, p. 62.

[633] Mr. Strahan was Elphinston's brother-in-law. Post, April 9, 1778.

[634] In the Gent. Mag. for January, 1752, in the list of books published is:—'A correct and beautiful edition of the Rambler in 4 volumes, in 12mo. Price 12s.' The Rambler was not concluded till the following March. The remaining two volumes were published in July. Gent. Mag. xxii. 338.

[635] According to Hawkins (Life, P. 269) each edition consisted of 1250 copies.

[636] No. 55 [59.]. BOSWELL.

[637] Miss Burney records in her Diary that one day at Streatham, while she and Mrs. Thrale 'were reading this Rambler, Dr. Johnson came in. We told him what we were about. "Ah, madam!" cried he, "Goldsmith was not scrupulous; but he would have been a great man had he known the real value of his own internal resources."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 83. See post, beginning of 1768.

[638] It is possible that Mrs. Hardcastle's drive in She Stoops to Conquer was suggested by the Rambler, No. 34. In it a young gentleman describes a lady's terror on a coach journey. 'Our whole conversation passed in dangers, and cares, and fears, and consolations, and stories of ladies dragged in the mire, forced to spend all the night on a heath, drowned in rivers, or burnt with lightning…. We had now a new scene of terror, every man we saw was a robber, and we were ordered sometimes to drive hard, lest a traveller whom we saw behind should overtake us; and sometimes to stop, lest we should come up to him who was passing before us. She alarmed many an honest man by begging him to spare her life as he passed by the coach.'

[639] Dr. Johnson was gratified by seeing this selection, and wrote to Mr. Kearsley, bookseller in Fleet-Street, the following note:—

'Mr. Johnson sends compliments to Mr. Kearsley, and begs the favour of seeing him as soon as he can. Mr. Kearsley is desired to bring with him the last edition of what he has honoured with the name of BEAUTIES. May 20, 1782.' BOSWELL. The correspondence, post, May 15, 1782, shews that Johnson sent for this book, not because he was gratified, but because he was accused, on the strength of one of the Beauties, of recommending suicide. On that day, being in the country, he wrote: 'I never saw the book but by casual inspection, and considered myself as utterly disengaged from its consequences.' He adds:—'I hope some time in the next week to have all rectified.' The letter of May 20 shews that on his return to town he lost little time, if any, in sending for Kearsley.

[640] See post, April 12, 1781.

[641] Ecclesiastes vii. 4.

[642] In the original 'separated sooner than subdued.' Johnson acted up to what he said. When he was close on his end, 'all who saw him beheld and acknowledged the invictum animum Catonis … Talking of his illness he said:—"I will be conquered; I will not capitulate."' See post, Oct. 1784.

[643] In the Spectator, No. 568, Addison tells of a village in which 'there arose a current report that somebody had written a book against the 'squire and the whole parish.' The book was The Whole Duty of Man.

[644] 'The character of Prospero was, beyond all question, occasioned by Garrick's ostentatious display of furniture and Dresden china.' Murphy's Johnson, p. 144. If Garrick was aimed at, it is surprising that the severity of the satire did not bring to an end, not only all friendship, but even any acquaintance between the two men. The writer describes how he and Prospero had set out in the world together, and how for a long time they had assisted each other, till his friend had been lately raised to wealth by a lucky project. 'I felt at his sudden shoot of success an honest and disinterested joy.' Prospero reproached him with his neglect to visit him at his new house. When however he went to see him, he found that his friend's impatience 'arose not from any desire to communicate his happiness, but to enjoy his superiority.' He was kept waiting at the door, and when at length he was shewn up stairs, he found the staircase carefully secured by mats from the pollution of his feet. Prospero led him into a backroom, where he told him he always breakfasted when he had not great company. After the visitor had endured one act of insolence after another, he says:—'I left him without any intention of seeing him again, unless some misfortune should restore his understanding.' Rambler, No. 200. See post, May 15, 1776, where Johnson, speaking of the charge of meanness brought against Garrick, said, 'he might have been much better attacked for living with more splendour than is suitable to a player.'

[645] In C. C. Greville's Journal (ii. 316) we have an instance how stories about Johnson grew. He writes:—'Lord Holland told some stories of Johnson and Garrick which he had heard from Kemble…. When Garrick was in the zenith of his popularity, and grown rich, and lived with the great, and while Johnson was yet obscure, the Doctor used to drink tea with him, and he would say, "Davy, I do not envy you your money nor your fine acquaintance, but I envy you your power of drinking such tea as this." "Yes," said Garrick, "it is very good tea, but it is not my best, nor that which I give to my Lord this and Sir somebody t'other."' There can be little doubt that the whole story is founded on the following passage in the character of Prospero: 'Breakfast was at last set, and, as I was not willing to indulge the peevishness that began to seize me, I commended the tea. Prospero then told me that another time I should taste his finest sort, but that he had only a very small quantity remaining, and reserved it for those whom he thought himself obliged to treat with particular respect.' See post, April 10, 1778, where Johnson maintained that Garrick bore his good-fortune with modesty.

[646] No 98.

[647] Yet his style did not escape the harmless shafts of pleasant humour; for the ingenious Bonnell Thornton published a mock Rambler in the Drury-lane Journal. BOSWELL. Murphy (Life, p. 157), criticising the above quotation from Johnson, says:—'He forgot the observation of Dryden: "If too many foreign words are poured in upon us, it looks as if they were designed, not to assist the natives, but to conquer them."'

[648] Idler, No. 70. BOSWELL. In the same number Johnson writes:—'Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers than the use of hard words…. But words are hard only to those who do not understand them; and the critic ought always to inquire, whether he is incommoded by the fault of the writer or by his own. Every author does not write for every reader.' See post, Sept. 19, 1777, where Johnson says:—'If Robertson's style be faulty he owes it to me; that is, having too many words, and those too big ones.'

[649] The following passages in Temple's writings shew that a likeness may be discovered between his style and Johnson's:—'There may be firmness and constancy of courage from tradition as well as of belief: nor, methinks, should any man know how to be a coward, that is brought up with the opinion, that all of his nation or city have ever been valiant.' Temple's Works, i. 167. 'This is a disease too refined for this country and people, who are well, when they are not ill, and pleased, when they are not troubled; are content, because they think little of it; and seek their happiness in the common eases and commodities of life, or the increase of riches; not amusing themselves with the more speculative contrivances of passion, or refinements of pleasure.' Ib. p. 170. 'They send abroad the best of their own butter into all parts, and buy the cheapest out of Ireland, or the north of England, for their own use. In short they furnish infinite luxury which they never practise, and traffic in pleasures which they never taste.' Ib. p. 195. See post, April 9, 1778, where Johnson says:—'Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose.'

[650] Dean Stanley calls Ephraim Chambers 'the Father of Cyclopedias.' Memorials of Westminster Abbey, p. 299, note. The epitaph which Chambers wrote for himself the Dean gives as:—'Multis pervulgatus, paucis notus, qui vitam inter lucem et umbram, nec eruditus nec idioticis literis deditus, transegit.' In the Gent. Mag. for 1740, p. 262, the last line is given, no doubt correctly, as:—'Nec eruditus nec idiota, literis deditus.' The second edition of Chambers's Cyclopaedia was published in 1738. There is no copy of his Proposal in the British Museum or Bodleian. The resemblance between his style and Johnson's is not great. The following passage is the most Johnsonian that I could find:—'None of my predecessors can blame me for the use I have made of them; since it is their own avowed practice. It is a kind of privilege attached to the office of lexicographer; if not by any formal grant, yet by connivance at least. I have already assumed the bee for my device, and who ever brought an action of trover or trespass against that avowed free-booter? 'Tis vain to pretend anything of property in things of this nature. To offer our thoughts to the public, and yet pretend a right reserved therein to oneself, if it be not absurd, yet it is sordid. The words we speak, nay the breath we emit, is not more vague and common than our thoughts, when divulged in print.' Chambers's Preface, p. xxiii.

[651] 'There were giants in the earth in those days.' Gen. vi. 4.

[652] A GREAT PERSONAGE first appears in the second edition. In the first edition we merely find 'by one whose authority,' &c. Boswell in his Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773, speaks of George III. as 'a Great Personage.' In his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 90) he thus introduces an anecdote about the King—and Paoli:—'I have one other circumstance to communicate; but it is of the highest value. I communicate it with a mixture of awe and fondness.—That Great Personage, who is allowed by all to have the best memory of any man born a Briton, &c. In the Probationary Odes for the Laureateship, published a few months after Boswell's Letter, a 'Great Personage' is ludicrously introduced; pp. xxx. 63.

[653] The first nine lines form the motto.

[654] Horat. Epist. Lib. ii. Epist. ii. {1, 110} BOSWELL.

But how severely with themselves proceed The men, who write such verse as we can read! Their own strict judges, not a word they spare That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care, Howe'er unwillingly it quits its place, Nay, though at court, perhaps, it may find grace: Such they'll degrade; and some-times, in its stead, In downright charity revive the dead; Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears, Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years; Command old words that long have slept to wake, Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake; Or bid the new be English, ages hence, (For use will father what's begot by sense;) Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong, Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue.'

Pope, Imitations of Horace, ii. 2. 157

[655] 'Horat. De Arte Poetica. [1. 48.] BOSWELL.

[656] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 29, 1773, where Boswell says that up that date he had twice heard Johnson coin words, peregrinity and depeditation.

[657] 'The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness, by compliance with fashion or lust of innovation, I have registered as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others against the folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the injury of the natives…. Our language for almost a century has, by the concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original Teutonick character, and deviating towards a Gallick structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recall it, by making our ancient volumes the groundwork of style…. From the authors which rose in the time of Elizabeth a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance.' Johnson's Works, v. pp. 31, 39. See post. May 12, 1778.

[658] If Johnson sometimes indulged his Brownism (see post, beginning of 1756), yet he saw much to censure in Browne's style. 'His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another. He must however be confessed to have augmented our philosophical diction…. His innovations are sometimes pleasing, and his temerities happy.' Johnson's Works, vi. 500. 'It is remarkable that the pomp of diction, which has been objected to Johnson, was first assumed in the Rambler. His Dictionary was going on at the same time, and in the course of that work, as he grew familiar with technical and scholastic words, he thought that the bulk of his readers were equally learned; or at least would admire the splendour and dignity of the style.' Murphy's Johnson, p. 156.

'The observation of his having imitated Sir Thomas Brown has been made by many people; and lately it has been insisted on, and illustrated by a variety of quotations from Brown, in one of the popular Essays written by the Reverend Mr. Knox [the Essay is No. xxii. of Winter Evenings, Knox's Works, ii 397], master of Tumbridge school, whom I have set down in my list [post, under Dec. 6, 1784] of those who have sometimes not unsuccessfully imitated Dr. Johnson's style. BOSWELL.

[659] The following observation in Mr. Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides [p. 9] may sufficiently account for that Gentleman's being 'now scarcely esteem'd a Scot' by many of his countrymen:—If he [Dr. Johnson] was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because they were more in his way; because he thought their success in England rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit; and because he could not but see in them that nationality which, I believe, no liberal-minded Scotchman will deny.' Mr. Boswell, indeed, is so free from national prejudices, that he might with equal propriety have been described as—

'Scarce by South Britons now esteem'd a Scot.' COURTENAY. BOSWELL.

[660] Malone says that 'Baretti used sometimes to walk with Johnson through the streets at night, and occasionally entered into conversation with the unfortunate women who frequent them, for the sake of hearing their stories. It was from a history of one of these, which a girl told under a tree in the King's Bench Walk in the Temple to Baretti and Johnson, that he formed the story of Misella in the Rambler [Nos. 170 and 171].' Prior's Malone, p. 161. 'Of one [of these women] who was very handsome he asked, for what she thought God had given her so much beauty. She answered:—"To please gentlemen."' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 321. See also post, under Dec. 2, 1784.

[661] Hawkins (Life, p. 270) had said that 'the characteristics of Addison's style are feebleness and inanity.' He was thus happily ridiculed by Person:—'Soon after the publication of Sir John's book, a parcel of Eton boys, not having the fear of God before their eyes, etc., instead of playing truant, robbing orchards, annoying poultry, or performing any other part of their school exercise, fell foul in print (see the Microcosm, No. 36) upon his Worship's censure of Addison's middling style…. But what can you expect, as Lord Kames justly observes, from a school where boys are taught to rob on the highway?' Person, Tracts, p. 339.

[662] Works, vii. 473.

[663] When Johnson shewed me a proof-sheet of the character of Addison, in which he so highly extols his style, I could not help observing, that it had not been his own model, as no two styles could differ more from each other.—'Sir, Addison had his style, and I have mine.'—When I ventured to ask him, whether the difference did not consist in this, that Addison's style was full of idioms, colloquial phrases, and proverbs; and his own more strictly grammatical, and free from such phraseology and modes of speech as can never be literally translated or understood by foreigners; he allowed the discrimination to be just.—Let any one who doubts it, try to translate one of Addison's Spectators into Latin, French, or Italian; and though so easy, familiar, and elegant, to an Englishman, as to give the intellect no trouble; yet he would find the transfusion into another language extremely difficult, if not impossible. But a Rambler, Adventurer, or Idler, of Johnson, would fall into any classical or European language, as easily as if it had been originally conceived in it. BURNEY. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 125) recounts how Johnson recommended Addison's works as a model for imitation to Mr. Woodhouse, a poetical shoemaker. '"Give nights and days, Sir, (said he) to the study of Addison, if you mean either to be a good writer, or, what is more worth, an honest man." When I saw something like the same expression in his criticism on that author, I put him in mind of his past injunctions to the young poet, to which he replied, "That he wished the shoemaker might have remembered them as well."' Yet he says in his Life of Pope ( Works, viii. 284), 'He that has once studiously formed a style rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.'

[664] I shall probably, in another work, maintain the merit of Addison's poetry, which has been very unjustly depreciated. BOSWELL. He proposed also to publish an edition of Johnson's poems (ante, p. 16), an account of his own travels (post, April 17, 1778), a collection, with notes, of old tenures and charters of Scotland (post, Oct. 27, 1779), and a History of James IV. of Scotland, 'the patron,' as he said, 'of my family' (Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 23, 1773).

[665] Lewis thus happily translates the lines in Martial,—

'Diligat ilia senèm quondam: sed et ipsa marito, Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur, anus. 'Wrinkled with age, may mutual love and truth To their dim eyes recall the bloom of youth.'

Rambler, No. 167.

Some of Johnson's own translations are happy, as:—

'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem Aut, gelidas hibernus aquas quum fuderit auster, Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi! 'How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours, Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs.'

Ib. No. 117.

[666] [Greek: Augon ek makaron antaxios eiae amoibae.]

'Celestial powers! that piety regard, From you my labours wait their last reward.'

A modification of the Greek line is engraved on the scroll in Johnson's monument in St. Paul's (post, Dec. 1784).

[667] 'The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity…. I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment.' Rambler, No. 208.

[668] I have little doubt that this attack on the concluding verse is an indirect blow at Hawkins, who had quoted the whole passage, and had clearly thought it the more 'awful' on account of the couplet. See Hawkins's Johnson, p. 291.

[669] In the original Raleigh's.

[670] The italics are Boswell's.

[671] Mrs. Williams is probably the person meant. BOSWELL.

[672] 'In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was theatre was offered her. The profits of the night were only £130, though Dr. Newton brought a large contribution; and £20 were given by Tonson, a man who is to be praised as often as he is named…. This was the greatest benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants; and to this he who has now attempted to relate his life had the honour of contributing a Prologue.' Johnson's Works, vii. 118. In the Gent. Mag. (xx. 152) we read that, as on 'April 4, the night first appointed, many in convenient circumstances happened to disappoint the hopes of success, the managers generously quitted the profits of another night, in which the theatre was expected to be fuller. Mr. Samuel Johnson's prologue was afterwards printed for Mrs. Foster's benefit.'

[673] Johnson is thinking of Pope's lines—

'But still the great have kindness in reserve, He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.'

Prologue to the Satires, 1. 247. In the Life of Milton he writes:—'In our time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey To the author of Paradise Lost by Mr. Benson, who has in the inscription bestowed more words upon himself than upon Milton.' Johnson's Works, vii. 112. Pope has a hit at Benson in the Dunciad, iii. 325:—

'On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ!'

Moore, describing Sheridan's funeral, says:—'It was well remarked by a French Journal, in contrasting the penury of Sheridan's latter years with the splendour of his funeral, that "France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the place for him to die in."' Moore himself wrote:—

'How proud they can press to the funeral array Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow— How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day, Whose pall shall be held up by Nobles to-morrow.'

Moore's Sheridan, ii. 460-2.

[674] Johnson's Works, i. 115.

[675] Among the advertisements in the Gent. Mag. for February of this year is the following:—'An elegy wrote in a country churchyard, 6d.'

[676] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773.

[677] 'Lest there should be any person, at any future period, absurd enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder's fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, at the time when he detected the imposition. 'It is to be hoped, nay it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the authour of Lauder's Preface and Postscript, will no longer allow one to plume himself with his feathers, who appeareth so little to deserve [his] assistance: an assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets.' Milton no Plagiary, 2nd edit. p. 78. And his Lordship has been pleased now to authorise me to say, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who expressed the strongest indignation against Lauder. BOSWELL. To this letter Lauder had the impudence to add a shameless postscript and some 'testimonies' concerning himself. Though on the face of it it is evident that this postscript is not by Johnson, yet it is included in his works (v. 283). The letter was dated Dec. 20, 1750. In the Gent. Mag. for the next month (xxi. 47) there is the following paragraph:—'Mr. Lauder confesses here and exhibits all his forgeries; for which he assigns one motive in the book, and after asking pardon assigns another in the postscript; he also takes an opportunity to publish several letters and testimonials to his former character.' Goldsmith in Retaliation has a hit at Lauder:—

'Here Douglas retires from his toils to relax, The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over, No countryman living their tricks to discover.'

Dr. Douglas was afterwards Bishop of Salisbury (ante, p. 127). See post, June 25, 1763, for the part he took in exposing the Cock Lane Ghost imposture.

[678] Scott writing to Southey in 1810 said:—'A witty rogue the other day, who sent me a letter signed Detector, proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida's Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of.' The passage alleged to be stolen ends with,—

'When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!'

which in Vida ad Eranen. El. ii. v. 21, ran,—

'Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor, Fungeris angelico sola ministerio.'

'It is almost needless to add,' says Mr. Lockhart, 'there are no such lines.' Life of Scott, iii. 294.

[679] The greater part of this Preface was given in the Gent. Mag. for August 1747 (xvii. 404).

[680] 'Persuasive' is scarcely a fit description for this noble outburst of indignation on the part of one who knew all the miseries of poverty. After quoting Dr. Newton's account of the distress to which Milton's grand-daughter had been reduced, he says:—'That this relation is true cannot be questioned: but surely the honour of letters, the dignity of sacred poetry, the spirit of the English nation, and the glory of human nature require—that it should be true no longer…. In an age, which amidst all its vices and all its follies has not become infamous for want of charity, it may be surely allowed to hope, that the living remains of Milton will be no longer suffered to languish in distress.' Johnson's Works, v. 270.

[681] Hawkins's Johnson, p. 275.

[682] In the original retrospection. Johnson's Works, v. 268.

[683] In this same year Johnson thus ends a severe criticism on Samson Agonistes: 'The everlasting verdure of Milton's laurels has nothing to fear from the blasts of malignity; nor can my attempt produce any other effect than to strengthen their shoots by lopping their luxuriance.' The Rambler, No. 140. 'Mr. Nichols shewed Johnson in 1780 a book called Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton, in which the affair of Lauder was renewed with virulence. He read the libellous passage with attention, and instantly wrote on the margin:—"In the business of Lauder I was deceived; partly by thinking the man too frantic to be fraudulent.'" Murphy's Johnson, p. 66.

[684] 'Johnson turned his house,' writes Lord Macaulay, 'into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no other asylum; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevolence' (Essays, i. 390). In his Biography of Johnson (p. 388) he says that Mrs. Williams's 'chief recommendations were her blindness and her poverty.' No doubt in Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale are found amusing accounts of the discord of the inmates of his house. But it is abundantly clear that in Mrs. Williams's company he had for years found pleasure. A few months after her death he wrote to Mrs. Thrale: 'You have more than once wondered at my complaint of solitude, when you hear that I am crowded with visits. Inopem me copia fecit. Visitors are no proper companions in the chamber of sickness…. The amusements and consolations of languor and depression are conferred by familiar and domestic companions…. Such society I had with Levett and Williams' (Piozzi Letters, ii. 341). To Mrs. Montagu he wrote:—'Thirty years and more she had been my companion, and her death has left me very desolate' (Croker's Boswell, p. 739). Boswell says that 'her departure left a blank in his house' (post, Aug. 1783). 'By her death,' writes Murphy, 'he was left in a state of destitution, with nobody but his black servant to soothe his anxious moments' (Murphy's Johnson, p. 122). Hawkins (Life, p. 558) says that 'she had not only cheered him in his solitude, and helped him to pass with comfort those hours which otherwise would have been irksome to him, but had relieved him from domestic cares, regulated and watched over the expenses of his house, etc.' 'She had,' as Boswell says (post, Aug. 1783), 'valuable qualities.' 'Had she had,' wrote Johnson, 'good humour and prompt elocution, her universal curiosity and comprehensive knowledge would have made her the delight of all that knew her' (Piozzi Letters, ii. 311). To Langton he wrote:—'I have lost a companion to whom I have had recourse for domestic amusement for thirty years, and whose variety of knowledge never was exhausted' (post, Sept. 29, 1783). 'Her acquisitions,' he wrote to Dr. Burney, 'were many and her curiosity universal; so that she partook of every conversation' (post, Sept. 1783). Murphy (Life p. 72) says:—'She possessed uncommon talents, and, though blind, had an alacrity of mind that made her conversation agreeable, and even desirable.' According to Hawkins (Life, 322-4) 'she had acquired a knowledge of French and Italian, and had made great improvements in literature. She was a woman of an enlightened understanding. Johnson in many exigencies found her an able counsellor, and seldom shewed his wisdom more than when he hearkened to her advice.' Perhaps Johnson had her in his thoughts when, writing of Pope's last years and Martha Blount, he said:—'Their acquaintance began early; the life of each was pictured on the other's mind; their conversation therefore was endearing, for when they met there was an immediate coalition of congenial notions.' (Johnson's Works, viii. 304.) Miss Mulso (Mrs. Chapone) writing to Mrs. Carter in 1753, says:—'I was charmed with Mr. Johnson's behaviour to Mrs. Williams, which was like that of a fond father to his daughter. She shewed very good sense, with a great deal of modesty and humility; and so much patience and cheerfulness under her misfortune that it doubled my concern for her' (Mrs. Chapone's Life, p. 73). Miss Talbot wrote to Mrs. Carter in 1756:—'My mother the other day fell in love with your friend, Mrs. Williams, whom we met at Mr. Richardson's [where Miss Mulso also had met her], and is particularly charmed with the sweetness of her voice' (Talbot and Carter Corresp. ii. 221). Miss Talbot was a niece of Lord Chancellor Talbot. Hannah More wrote in 1774:—'Mrs. Williams is engaging in her manners; her conversation lively and entertaining' (More's Memoirs, i.49). Boswell, however, more than once complains that she was 'peevish' (post, Oct. 26, 1769 and April 7, 1776). At a time when she was very ill, and had gone into the country to try if she could improve her health, Johnson wrote:—'Age, and sickness, and pride have made her so peevish, that I was forced to bribe the maid to stay with her by a secret stipulation of half-a-crown a week over her wages' (post, July 22, 1777). Malone, in a note on August 2, 1763, says that he thinks she had of her own 'about £35 or £40 a year.' This was in her latter days; Johnson had prevailed on Garrick to give her a benefit and Mrs. Montagu to give her a pension. She used, he adds, to help in the house-work.

[685] March 14. See ante, p. 203, note 1. He had grown weary of his work. In the last Rambler but one he wrote: 'When once our labour has begun, the comfort that enables us to endure it is the prospect of its end…. He that is himself weary will soon weary the public. Let him therefore lay down his employment, whatever it be, who can no longer exert his former activity or attention; let him not endeavour to struggle with censure, or obstinately infest the stage, till a general hiss commands him to depart.'

[686] How successful an imitator Hawkesworth was is shewn by the following passage in the Carter and Talbot Corresp., ii. 109:—'I discern Mr. Johnson through all the papers that are not marked A, as evidently as if I saw him through the keyhole with the pen in his hand.'

[687] In the Rambler for Feb. 25 of this year (No. 203) he wrote in the following melancholy strain:—'Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from the time to come. In youth we have nothing past to entertain us, and in age we derive little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the future likewise has its limits which the imagination dreads to approach, but which we see to be not far distant. The loss of our friends and companions impresses hourly upon us the necessity of our own departure; we know that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that we must soon lie down in the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former ages, and yield our place to others, who, like us, shall be driven a while by hope or fear about the surface of the earth, and then like us be lost in the shades of death.' In Prayers and Meditations, pp. 12-15, in a service that he used on May 6, 'as preparatory to my return to life to-morrow,' he prays:—'Enable me to begin and perfect that reformation which I promised her, and to persevere in that resolution which she implored Thee to continue, in the purposes which I recorded in Thy sight when she lay dead before me.' See post, Jan. 20, 1780. The author of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnson, 1785, says, p. 113, that on the death of his wife, 'to walk the streets of London was for many a lonesome night Johnson's constant substitute for sleep.'

[688] 'I have often been inclined to think that, if this fondness of Johnson for his wife was not dissembled, it was a lesson that he had learned by rote, and that, when he practised it, he knew not where to stop till he became ridiculous.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 313

[689] The son of William Strahan, M.P., 'Johnson's old and constant friend, Printer to His Majesty' (post, under April 20, 1781). He attended Johnson on his death-bed, and published the volume called Prayers and Meditations.

[690] Southey in his Life of Wesley, i. 359, writes:—'The universal attention which has been paid to dreams in all ages proves that the superstition is natural; and I have heard too many well-attested facts (facts to which belief could not be refused upon any known laws of evidence) not to believe that impressions are sometimes made in this manner, and forewarnings communicated, which cannot be explained by material philosophy or mere metaphysics.'

[691] Warburton in his Divine Legation, i. 284, quotes the 'famous sepulchral inscription of the Roman widow.' 'Ita peto vos Manes sanctissimi commendatum habeatis meum conjugem et velitis huic indulgentissimi esse horis nocturnis ut eum videam,' etc.

[692] Mrs. Boswell died in June 1789. Johnson's prayer with Boswell's comments on it was first inserted in the Additions to the second edition.

[693] Mrs. Johnson died on March 17, O. S., or March 28, N. S. The change of style was made in September, 1752. He might have kept either the 17th, or the 28th as the anniversary. In like manner, though he was born on Sept. 7, after the change he kept the 18th as his birth-day. See post, beginning of 1753, where he writes, 'Jan. 1, N. S., which I shall use for the future.'

[694] In Prayers and Meditations, p. 22, he recorded: 'The melancholy of this day hung long upon me.' P. 53: 'April 22, 1764, Thought on Tetty, dear, poor Tetty, with my eyes full.' P. 91: 'March 28, 1770. This is the day on which, in 1752, I was deprived of poor, dear Tetty…. When I recollect the time in which we lived together, my grief for her departure is not abated; and I have less pleasure in any good that befalls me because she does not partake it.' P. 170: 'April 20, 1778. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday [Easter Sunday]. Couldest thou have lived!' P. 210: 'March 28, 1782. This is the day on which, in 1752, dear Tetty died. I have now uttered a prayer of repentance and contrition; perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her. Perhaps Tetty is now praying for me. God help me.' In a letter to Mrs. Thrale on the occasion of the death of her son (dated March 30, 1776) he thus refers to the loss of his wife:—'I know that a whole system of hopes, and designs, and expectations is swept away at once, and nothing left but bottomless vacuity. What you feel I have felt, and hope that your disquiet will be shorter than mine.' Piozzi Letters, i. 310. In a letter to Mr. Elphinston, who had just lost his wife, written on July 27, 1778, he repeats the same thought:—'A loss such as yours lacerates the mind, and breaks the whole system of purposes and hopes. It leaves a dismal vacuity in life, which affords nothing on which the affections can fix, or to which endeavour may be directed. All this I have known.' Croker's Boswell, p. 66, note. See also post, his letter to Mr. Warton of Dec. 21, 1754, and to Dr. Lawrence of Jan. 20, 1780.

[695] In the usual monthly list of deaths in the Gent. Mag. her name is not given. Johnson did not, I suppose, rank among 'eminent persons.'

[696] Irene, Act i. sc. 1.

[697] See post, Nov. 16, 1784, note.

[698] The Anderdon MSS. contain an importunate letter, dated July 3, 1751, from one Mitchell, a tradesman in Chandos-street, pressing Johnson to pay £2, due by his wife ever since August, 1749, and threatening legal proceedings to enforce payment. This letter Mr. Boswell had endorsed, 'Proof of Dr. Johnson's wretched circumstances in 1751.' CROKER.

[699] In the Gent. Mag. for February, 1794, (p. 100,) was printed a letter pretending to be that written by Johnson on the death of his wife. But it is merely a transcript of the 41st number of The Idler. A fictitious date (March 17, 1751, O. S.) was added by some person previous to this paper being sent to the publisher of that miscellany, to give a colour to this deception. MALONE.

[700] Francis Barber was born in Jamaica, and was brought to England in 1750 by Colonel Bathurst, father of Johnson's very intimate friend, Dr. Bathurst. He was sent, for some time, to the Reverend Mr. Jackson's school, at Barton, in Yorkshire. The Colonel by his will left him his freedom, and Dr. Bathurst was willing that he should enter into Johnson's service, in which he continued from 1752 till Johnson's death, with the exception of two intervals; in one of which, upon some difference with his master, he went and served an apothecary in Cheapside, but still visited Dr. Johnson occasionally; in another, he took a fancy to go to sea. Part of the time, indeed, he was, by the kindness of his master, at a school in Northamptonshire, that he might have the advantage of some learning. So early and so lasting a connection was there between Dr. Johnson and this humble friend. BOSWELL. 'I believe that Francis was scarcely as much the object of Mr. Johnson's personal kindness as the representative of Dr. Bathurst, for whose sake he would have loved anybody or anything.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 212.

[701] 'I asked him,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. pp. 146-150), 'if he ever disputed with his wife. "Perpetually," said he; "my wife had a particular reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do, till they become troublesome to their best friends, slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt and useless lumber. A clean floor is so comfortable, she would say sometimes by way of twitting; till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor, we would now have a touch at the ceiling." I asked him if he ever huffed his wife about his dinner. "So often," replied he, "that at last she called to me and said, Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do not make a farce of thanking God for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest not eatable."'

[702] 'When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed; and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive, as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood.' Rambler, No. 54.

[703] Pr. and Med. p. 19. BOSWELL.

[704] Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 316. BOSWELL.

[705] See post, Oct. 26, 1769, where the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory or 'a middle state,' as Johnson calls it is discussed, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 25, 1773.

[706] In the original, 'lawful for me.' Much the same prayer Johnson made for his mother. Pr. and Med. p. 38. On Easter Day, 1764, he records:—'After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me.' Ib. p. 54. On the death of Mr. Thrale he wrote, 'May God that delighteth in mercy have had mercy on thee.' Ib. p. 191; and later on, 'for Henry Thrale, so far as is lawful, I humbly implore thy mercy in his present state.' Ib. p. 197.

[707] Pr. and Med., p. 20. BOSWELL.

[708] Shortly before his death (see post, July 12, 1784) Johnson had a stone placed over her grave with the following inscription:—

Hic conduntur reliquiae ELIZABETHÆ Antiqua Jarvisiorum Leicestrienses, ortae; Formosae, cultae, ingeniosae, piae; Uxoris, primis nuptiis, Henrici Porter, Secundis Samuelis Johnson: Qui multum amatam, diuque defletam Hoc lapide contexit. Obiit Londini Mense Mart. A.D. MDCCLIII

As Mrs. Johnson died in 1752, the date is wrong.

[709] See post, Sept. 21. 1777.

[710] He described her as a woman 'whom none, who were capable of distinguishing either moral or intellectual excellence, could know without esteem or tenderness. She was extensively charitable in her judgements and opinions, grateful for every kindness that she received, and willing to impart assistance of every kind to all whom her little power enabled her to benefit. She passed through many months of languor, weakness, and decay without a single murmur of impatience, and often expressed her adoration of that mercy which granted her so long time for recollection and penitence.' Johnson's Works, ix. 523.

[711] See ante, p. 187.

[712] Dr. Bathurst, though a Physician of no inconsiderable merit, had not the good fortune to get much practice in London. He was, therefore willing to accept of employment abroad, and, to the regret of all who knew him, fell a sacrifice to the destructive climate, in the expedition against the Havannah. Mr. Langton recollects the following passage in a letter from Dr. Johnson to Mr. Beauclerk: 'The Havannah is taken;—a conquest too dearly obtained; for, Bathurst died before it. "Vix Priamus tanti totaque Troja fuit."' BOSWELL.

The quotation is from Ovid, Heroides, i. 4. Johnson (post, Dec. 21, 1762) wrote to Baretti, 'Bathurst went physician to the army, and died at the Havannah.' Mr. Harwood in his History of Lichfield, p. 451, gives two letters from Bathurst to Johnson dated 1757. In the postscript to one he says:—'I know you will call me a lazy dog, and in truth I deserve it; but I am afraid I shall never mend. I have indeed long known that I can love my friends without being able to tell them so…. Adieu my dearest friend.' He calls Johnson 'the best of friends, to whom I stand indebted for all the little virtue and knowledge that I have.' 'Nothing,' he continues, 'I think, but absolute want can force me to continue where I am.' Jamaica he calls 'this execrable region.' Hawkins (Life, p. 235) says that 'Bathurst, before leaving England, confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years' exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.' Johnson perhaps had Bathurst in mind when, many years later, he wrote:—'A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual; they that employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a century, a very curious book might be written on the Fortune of Physicians.' Works, viii. 471.

[713] Mr. Ryland was one of the members of the old club in Ivy Lane who met to dine in 1783. Mr. Payne was another, (post, end of 1783).

[714] Johnson revised her volumes: post, under Nov. 19, 1783.

[715] Catherine Sawbridge, sister of Mrs. [? Mr.] Alderman Sawbridge, was born in 1733; but it was not till 1760 that she was married to Dr. Macaulay, a physician; so that Barber's account was incorrect either in date or name. CROKER. For Alderman Sawbridge see post, May 17, 1778, note.

[716] See post, under Nov. 19, 1783. Johnson bequeathed to her a book to keep as a token of remembrance (post, Dec. 9, 1784). I find her name in the year 1765 in the list of subscribers to the edition of Swift's Works, in 17 vols., so that perhaps she was more 'in the learned way' than Barber thought.

[717] Reynolds did not return to England from Italy till the October of this year, seven months after Mrs. Johnson's death. Taylor's Reynolds, i. 87. He writes of his 'thirty years' intimacy with Dr. Johnson.' He must have known him therefore at least as early as 1754. Ib. ii. 454.

[718] See ante, p. 185.

[719] 'Lord Southwell,' said Johnson, 'was the most qualitied man I ever saw.' Post, March 23, 1783.

[720] The account given of Levet in Gent. Mag. lv. 101, shews that he was a man out of the common run. He would not otherwise have attracted the notice of the French surgeons. The writer says:—'Mr. Levet, though an Englishman by birth, became early in life a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris. The surgeons who frequented it, finding him of an inquisitive turn and attentive to their conversation, made a purse for him, and gave him some instructions in their art. They afterwards furnished him with the means of further knowledge, by procuring him free admission to such lectures in pharmacy and anatomy as were read by the ablest professors of that period.' When he lived with Johnson, 'much of the day was employed in attendance on his patients, who were chiefly of the lowest rank of tradesmen. The remainder of his hours he dedicated to Hunter's lectures, and to as many different opportunities of improvement as he could meet with on the same gratuitous conditions.' 'All his medical knowledge,' said Johnson, 'and it is not inconsiderable, was obtained through the ear. Though he buys books, he seldom looks into them, or discovers any power by which he can be supposed to judge of an author's merit.' 'Dr. Johnson has frequently observed that Levet was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny-loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday. His character was rendered valuable by repeated proof of honesty, tenderness, and gratitude to his benefactor, as well as by an unwearied diligence in his profession. His single failing was an occasional departure from sobriety. Johnson would observe, "he was perhaps the only man who ever became intoxicated through motives of prudence. He reflected that, if he refused the gin or brandy offered him by some of his patients, he could have been no gainer by their cure, as they might have had nothing else to bestow on him. This habit of taking a fee, in whatever shape it was exhibited, could not be put off by advice. He would swallow what he did not like, nay what he knew would injure him, rather than go home with an idea that his skill had been exerted without recompense. Though he took all that was offered him, he demanded nothing from the poor."' The writer adds that 'Johnson never wished him to be regarded as an inferior, or treated him like a dependent.' Mrs. Piozzi says:—'When Johnson raised contributions for some distressed author, or wit in want, he often made us all more than amends by diverting descriptions of the lives they were then passing in corners unseen by anybody but himself, and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house to tend the outpensioners, and of whom he said most truly and sublimely, that

"In misery's darkest caverns known,"' etc. Piozzi's Anec., p. 118.

'Levet, madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not in his mind.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 115. 'Whoever called in on Johnson at about midday found him and Levet at breakfast, Johnson, in deshabille, as just risen from bed, and Levet filling out tea for himself and his patron alternately, no conversation passing between them. All that visited him at these hours were welcome. A night's rest and breakfast seldom failed to refresh and fit him for discourse, and whoever withdrew went too soon.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 435.

How much he valued his poor friend he showed at his death, post, Jan. 20, 1782.

[721]

'O et praesidium et dulce decus meum.' 'My joy, my guard, and sweetest good.'

CREECH. Horace, Odes, i. I. 2.

[722] It was in 1738 that Johnson was living in Castle Street. At the time of Reynolds's arrival in London in 1752 he had been living for some years in Gough Square. Boswell, I suppose, only means to say that Johnson's acquaintance with the Cotterells was formed when he lived in their neighbourhood. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 69) says that the Cotterells lived 'opposite to Reynolds's,' but his account seems based on a misunderstanding of Boswell.

[723] Ante, p. 165.

[724] 'We are both of Dr. Johnson's school,' wrote Reynolds to some friend. 'For my own part, I acknowledge the highest obligations to him. He may be said to have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a great deal of rubbish. Those very persons whom he has brought to think rightly will occasionally criticise the opinions of their master when he nods. But we should always recollect that it is he himself who taught us and enabled us to do it.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 461. Burke, writing to Malone, said:—'You state very properly how much Reynolds owed to the writings and conversation of Johnson; and nothing shews more the greatness of Sir Joshua's parts than his taking advantage of both, and making some application of them to his profession, when Johnson neither understood nor desired to understand anything of painting.' Ib. p. 638. Reynolds, there can be little question, is thinking of Johnson in the following passage in his Seventh Discourse:—'What partial and desultory reading cannot afford may be supplied by the conversation of learned and ingenious men, which is the best of all substitutes for those who have not the means or opportunities of deep study. There are many such men in this age: and they will be pleased with communicating their ideas to artists, when they see them curious and docile, if they are treated with that respect and deference which is so justly their due. Into such society young artists, if they make it the point of their ambition, will by degrees be admitted. There, without formal teaching, they will insensibly come to feel and reason like those they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste imperceptibly formed in their minds, which they will know how to reduce to a standard, by applying general truth to their own purposes, better perhaps than those to whom they owned [?owed] the original sentiment.' Reynolds's Works, edit. 1824, i. 149. 'Another thing remarkable to shew how little Sir Joshua crouched to the great is, that he never gave them their proper titles. I never heard the words "your lordship" or "your ladyship" come from his mouth; nor did he ever say "Sir" in speaking to any one but Dr. Johnson; and when he did not hear distinctly what the latter said (which often happened) he would then say "Sir?" that he might repeat it.' Northcote's Conversations, p. 289. Gibbon called Johnson 'Reynolds's oracle.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 149. See also post, under Dec. 29, 1778.

[725] The thought may have been suggested to Reynolds by Johnson's writings. In The Rambler, No. 87, he had said:—'There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.' In No. 166, he says:—'To be obliged is to be in some respect inferior to another.'

[726] Northcote tells the following story on the authority of Miss Reynolds. It is to be noticed, however, that in her Recollections (Croker's Boswell, p. 832) the story is told somewhat differently. Johnson, Reynolds and Miss Reynolds one day called on the Miss Cotterells. 'Johnson was the last of the three that came in; when the maid, seeing this uncouth and dirty figure of a man, and not conceiving he could be one of the company, laid hold of his coat, just as he was going up-stairs, and pulled him back again, saying, "You fellow, what is your business here? I suppose you intended to rob the house." This most unlucky accident threw him into such a fit of shame and anger that he roared out like a bull, "What have I done? What have I done?"' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 73.

[727] Johnson writing to Langton on January 9, 1759, describes him as 'towering in the confidence of twenty-one.' The conclusion of The Rambler was in March 1752, when Langton must have been only fourteen or just fifteen at most; Johnson's first letter to him dated May 6, 1755, shews that at that time their acquaintance had been but short. Langton's subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles in the Register of the University of Oxford was on July 7, 1757. Johnson's first letter to him at Oxford is dated June 28, 1757.

[728] See post, March 20, 1782.

[729] 'My friend Maltby and I,' said Samuel Rogers, 'when we were very young men, had a strong desire to see Dr. Johnson; and we determined to call upon him, and introduce ourselves. We accordingly proceeded to his house in Bolt Court; and I had my hand on the knocker when our courage failed us, and we retreated. Many years afterwards I mentioned this circumstance to Boswell, who said, "What a pity that you did not go boldly in! He would have received you with all kindness."' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 9. For Johnson's levee see post, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell's Collectanea.

[730] 'George Langton,' writes Mr. Best in his Memorials (p. 66), 'shewed me his pedigree with the names and arms of the families with which his own had intermarried. It was engrossed on a piece of parchment about ten inches broad, and twelve to fifteen feet long. "It leaves off at the reign of Queen Elizabeth," said he.'

[731] Topham Beauclerk was the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk, fifth son of the first Duke of St. Alban's. He was therefore the great-grandson of Charles II. and Nell Gwynne. He was born in Dec. 1739. In my Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics I have put together such facts as I could find about Langton and Beauclerk.

[732] Mr. Best describes Langton as 'a very tall, meagre, long-visaged man, much resembling a stork standing on one leg near the shore in Raphael's cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. His manners were, in the highest degree, polished; his conversation mild, equable and always pleasing.' Best's Memorials, p. 62. Miss Hawkins writes:—'If I were called on to name the person with whom Johnson might have been seen to the fairest advantage, I should certainly name Mr. Langton.' Miss Hawkins's Memoirs, i. 144. Mrs. Piozzi wrote in 1817:—'I remember when to have Langton at a man's house stamped him at once a literary character.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 203.

[733] In the summer of 1759. See post, under April 15, 1758, and 1759.

[734] Lord Charlemont said that 'Beauclerk possessed an exquisite taste, various accomplishments, and the most perfect good breeding. He was eccentric, often querulous, entertaining a contempt for the generality of the world, which the politeness of his manners could not always conceal; but to those whom he liked most generous and friendly. Devoted at one time to pleasure, at another to literature, sometimes absorbed in play, sometimes in books, he was altogether one of the most accomplished, and when in good humour and surrounded by those who suited his fancy, one of the most agreeable men that could possibly exist.' Lord Charlemont's Life, i. 210. Hawkins writes (Life, p. 422) that 'over all his behaviour there beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and good-humour as communicated itself to all around him.' Mrs. Piozzi said of him:—'Topham Beauclerk (wicked and profligate as he wished to be accounted) was yet a man of very strict veracity. Oh Lord! how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk.' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 348. Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 40) said that 'Beauclerk was a strangely absent person.' He once went to dress for a dinner-party in his own house. 'He forgot all about his guests; thought that it was bed-time, and got into bed. His servant, coming to tell him that his guests were waiting for him, found him fast asleep.'

[735] It was to the Round-house that Captain Booth was first taken in Fielding's Amelia, Book i, chap. 2.

[736]

'Blends, in exception to all general rules, Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools.'

Pope, Moral Essays, ii. 275.

[737] In the college which The Club was to set up at St. Andrew's, Beauclerk was to have the chair of natural philosophy. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 25, 1773. Goldsmith, writing to Langton in 1771, says: 'Mr. Beauclerk is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle; deep in chymistry and physics.' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 283. Boswell described to Temple, in 1775, Beauclerk's villa at Muswell Hill, with its 'observatory, laboratory for chymical experiments.' Boswell's Letters, p. 194.

[738] 'I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.' 1 Henry IV. Act v. sc. 4.

[739] 'Bishop. A cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges, and sugar.' Johnson's Dictionary.

[740] Mr. Langton has recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are in Lord Lansdowne's Drinking Song to Sleep, and run thus:—

'Short, very short be then thy reign, For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again.' BOSWELL.

Lord Lansdowne was the Granville of Pope's couplet—

'But why then publish? Granville the polite, And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.'

Prologue to the Satires, 1.135.

[741] Boswell in Hebrides (Aug. 18, 1773) says that Johnson, on starting from Edinburgh, left behind in an open drawer in Boswell's house 'one volume of a pretty full and curious Diary of his life, of which I have a few fragments.' He also states (post, under Dec 9, 1784):—'I owned to him, that having accidentally seen them [two quarto volumes of his Life] I had read a great deal in them.' It would seem that he had also transcribed a portion.

[742] This is inconsistent with what immediately follows, for No. 39 on Sleep was published on March 20.

[743] Hawkesworth in the last number of The Adventurer says that he had help at first from A.; 'but this resource soon failing, I was obliged to carry on the publication alone, except some casual supplies, till I obtained from the gentlemen who have distinguished their papers by T and Z, such assistance as I most wished.' In a note he says that the papers signed Z are by the Rev. Mr. Warton. The papers signed A are written in a light style. In Southey's Cowper, i. 47, it is said that Bonnell Thornton wrote them.

[744] Boswell had read the passage carelessly. Statius is mentioned, but the writer goes on to quote Cowley, whose Latin lines C. B. has translated. Johnson's Works, iv. 10.

[745] Malone says that 'Johnson was fond of him, but latterly owned that Hawkesworth—who had set out a modest, humble man—was one of the many whom success in the world had spoiled. He was latterly, as Sir Joshua Reynolds told me, an affected insincere man, and a great coscomb in his dress. He had no literature whatever.' Prior's Malone, p. 441. See post, April 11 and May 7, 1773, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 3.

[746] 'Johnson's statement to Warton is definite and is borne out by internal evidence, if internal evidence can be needful when he had once made a definite statement. The papers signed Misargyrus, the first of which appeared on March 3, are all below his style. They were not, I feel sure, written by him, and are improperly given in the Oxford edition of his works. I do not find in them even any traces of his hand. The paper on Sleep, No. 39, is I am almost sure, partly his, but I believe it is not wholly. In the frequency of quotations in the first part of it I see another, and probably a younger author. The passage on the 'low drudgery of digesting dictionaries' is almost certainly his. Dr. Bathurst, perhaps, wrote the Essay, and Johnson corrected it. Whether it was Johnson's or not, it was published after the letter to Dr. Warton was written.

[747] See post, April 25, 1778, for an instance where Johnson's silence did not imply assent.

[748] 'One evening at the Club Johnson proposed to us the celebrating the birth of Mrs. Lennox's first literary child, as he called her book, [The Life of Harriet Stuart, a novel, published Dec. 1750] by a whole night spent in festivity. Our supper was elegant, and Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay-leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an authoress, and had written verses; and further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not till he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows. About five Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 286. See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 'Collection,' and May 15, 1784.

[749] In a document in the possession of one of Cave's collateral descendants which I have seen dated May 3, 1754, and headed, 'Present state of the late Mr. Edward Cave's effects,' I found entered 'Magazine, £3,000. Daily Advertiser, £900.' The total value of the effects was £8,708.

[750] Johnson records of his friend that 'one of the last acts of reason which he exerted was fondly to press the hand that is now writing this little narrative.' Works, vi. 433.

[751] See Hawkins's Johnson, p. 189.

[752] Lord Chesterfield writing to his son in 1751 (Letters, iii. 136) said:—'People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind, as surgeons are to their bodily pains; they see and hear of them all day long, and even of so many simulated ones, that they do not know which has are real, and which are not. Other sentiments are therefore to be applied to than those of mere justice and humanity; their favour must be captivated by the suaviter in modo; their love of ease disturbed by unwearied importunity; or their fears wrought upon by a decent intimation of implacable, cool resentment: this is the true fortiter in re! He was himself to experience an instance of the true fortiter in re.

[753] If Lord Chesterfield had read the last number of The Rambler (published in March, 1752) he could scarcely have flattered himself with these expectations. Johnson, after saying that he would not endeavour to overbear the censures of criticism by the influence of a patron, added:—'The supplications of an author never yet reprieved him a moment from oblivion; and, though greatness sometimes sheltered guilt, it can afford no protection to ignorance or dulness. Having hitherto attempted only the propagation of truth, I will not at last violate it by the confession of terrors which I do not feel; having laboured to maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now degrade it by the meanness of dedication.'

[754] On Nov. 28 and Dec. 5, 1754. The World, by Adam Fitz-Adam, Jan. 1753 to Dec. 1765. The editor was Edward Moore. Among the contributors were the Earls of Chesterfield and Corke, Horace Walpole, R. O. Cambridge, and Soame Jenyns. See post, July 1, 1763.

[755] With these papers as a whole Johnson would have been highly offended. The anonymous writer hopes that his readers will not suspect him 'of being a hired and interested puff of this work.' 'I most solemnly protest,' he goes on to say, 'that neither Mr. Johnson, nor any booksellers have ever offered me the usual compliment of a pair of gloves or a bottle of wine.' It is a pretty piece of irony for a wealthy nobleman solemnly to protest that he has not been bribed by a poor author, whom seven years before he had repulsed from his door. But Chesterfield did worse than this. By way of recommending a work of so much learning and so much labour he tells a foolish story of an assignation that had failed 'between a fine gentleman and a fine lady.' The letter that had passed between them had been badly spelt, and they had gone to different houses. 'Such examples,' he wrote, 'really make one tremble; and will, I am convinced, determine my fair fellow-subjects and their adherents to adopt and scrupulously conform to Mr. Johnson's rules of true orthography.' Johnson, in the last year of his life, at a time of great weakness and depression, defended the roughness of his manner. 'I have done more good as I am. Obscenity and impiety have always been repressed in my company' (post, June 11, 1784).

[756] In the original 'Mr. Johnson.'

[757] In the original 'unnecessary foreign ornaments.'

[758] In the original, 'will now, and, I dare say.'

[759] Hawkins (Life, p. 191) says that Chesterfield, further to appease Johnson, sent to him Sir Thomas Robinson (see post, July 19, 1763), who was 'to apologise for his lordship's treatment of him, and to make him tenders of his future friendship and patronage. Sir Thomas, whose talent was flattery, was profuse in his commendations of Johnson and his writings, and declared that, were his circumstances other than they were, himself would settle £500 a year on him. 'And who are you,' asked Johnson, 'that talk thus liberally?' 'I am,' said the other, 'Sir Thomas Robinson, a Yorkshire baronet.' 'Sir,' replied Johnson, 'if the first peer of the realm were to make me such an offer, I would shew him the way down stairs.'

[760] Paradise Lost, ii. 112.

[761] Johnson, perhaps, was thinking of his interviews with Chesterfield, when in his Rambler on 'The Mischiefs of following a Patron' (No. 163) he wrote:—'If you, Mr. Rambler, have ever ventured your philosophy within the attraction of greatness, you know the force of such language, introduced with a smile of gracious tenderness, and impressed at the conclusion with an air of solemn sincerity.'

[762] Johnson said to Garrick:—'I have sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the English language; and does he now send out two cock-boats to tow me into harbour?' Murphy's Johnson, p. 74. This metaphor may perhaps have been suggested to Johnson by Warburton. 'I now begin to see land, after having wandered, according to Mr. Warburton's phrase, in this vast sea of words.' Post, Feb. 1, 1755.

[763] See post, Nov. 22, 1779, and April 8, 1780. Sir Henry Ellis says that 'address' in Johnson's own copy of his letter to Lord Chesterfield is spelt twice with one d. Croker's Corres. ii. 44. In the series of Letters by Johnson given in Notes and Queries, 6th S. v, Johnson writes persuit (p. 325); 'I cannot butt (p. 342); 'to retain council' (p. 343); harrassed (p. 423); imbecillity (p. 482). In a letter to Nichols quoted by me, post, beginning of 1783, he writes ilness. He commonly, perhaps always, spelt Boswell Boswel, and Nichols's name in one series of letters he spelt Nichols, Nichol, and Nicol. Post, beginning of 1781, note.

[764] Dr. Johnson appeared to have had a remarkable delicacy with respect to the circulation of this letter; for Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, informs me that, having many years ago pressed him to be allowed to read it to the second Lord Hardwicke, who was very desirous to hear it (promising at the same time, that no copy of it should be taken), Johnson seemed much pleased that it had attracted the attention of a nobleman of such a respectable character; but after pausing some time, declined to comply with the request, saying, with a smile, 'No, Sir; I have hurt the dog too much already;' or words to that purpose. BOSWELL.

[765] See post, June 4, 1781.

[766] In 1790, the year before the Life of Johnson came out, Boswell published this letter in a separate sheet of four quarto pages under the following title:—The celebrated Letter from Samuel Johnson, LL.D., to Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Now first published with Notes, by James Boswell, Esq., London. Printed by Henry Baldwin: for Charles Dilly in the Poultry, MDCCXC. Price Half-a-Guinea. Entered in the Hall-Book of the Company of Stationers. It belongs to the same impression as The Life of Johnson.

[767] 'Je chante le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre.' Boileau, L'Art poétique, iii. 272.

[768] The following note is subjoined by Mr. Langton:—'Dr. Johnson, when he gave me this copy of his letter, desired that I would annex to it his information to me, that whereas it is said in the letter that "no assistance has been received," he did once receive from Lord Chesterfield the sum of ten pounds; but as that was so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find place in a letter of the kind that this was.' BOSWELL. 'This surely is an unsatisfactory excuse,' writes Mr. Croker. He read Johnson's letter carelessly, as the rest of his note shews. Johnson says, that during the seven years that had passed since he was repulsed from Chesterfield's door he had pushed on his work without one act of assistance. These ten pounds, we may feel sure, had been received before the seven years began to run. No doubt they had been given in 1747 as an acknowledgement of the compliment paid to Chesterfield in the Plan. He had at first been misled by Chesterfield's one act of kindness, but he had long had his eyes opened. Like the shepherd in Virgil (Eclogues, viii. 43) he could say:—'Nunc scio quid sit Amor.'

[769] In this passage Dr. Johnson evidently alludes to the loss of his wife. We find the same tender recollection recurring to his mind upon innumerable occasions: and, perhaps no man ever more forcibly felt the truth of the sentiment so elegantly expressed by my friend Mr. Malone, in his Prologue to Mr. Jephson's tragedy of JULIA [Julia or the Italian Lover was acted for the first time on April 17, 1787. Gent. Mag. 1787, p. 354]:—

'Vain—wealth, and fame, and fortune's fostering care, If no fond breast the splendid blessings share; And, each day's bustling pageantry once past, There, only there, our bliss is found at last.' BOSWELL.

Three years earlier, when his wife was dying, he had written in one of the last Ramblers (No 203):—'It is necessary to the completion of every good, that it be timely obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will come too late to give much delight … What we acquire by bravery or science, by mental or corporal diligence, comes at last when we cannot communicate, and therefore cannot enjoy it.' Chesterfield himself was in no happy state. Less than a month before he received Johnson's letter he wrote (Works, iii. 308):—'For these six months past, it seems as if all the complaints that ever attacked heads had joined to overpower mine. Continual noises, headache, giddiness, and impenetrable deafness; I could not stoop to write; and even reading, the only resource of the deaf, was painful to me.' He wrote to his son a year earlier (Letters, iv. 43), 'Reading, which was always a pleasure to me in the time even of my greatest dissipation, is now become my only refuge; and I fear I indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes. But what can I do? I must do something. I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary. I will not hoard them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss than not enjoy the use of them.'

[770] 'The English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.' Johnson's Works v. 51.

[771] Upon comparing this copy with that which Dr. Johnson dictated to me from recollection, the variations are found to be so slight, that this must be added to the many other proofs which he gave of the wonderful extent and accuracy of his memory. To gratify the curious in composition, I have deposited both the copies in the British Museum. BOSWELL.

[772] Soon after Edwards's Canons of Criticism came out, Johnson was dining at Tonson the Bookseller's with Hayman the Painter and some more company. Hayman related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the conversation having turned upon Edwards's book, the gentlemen praised it much, and Johnson allowed its merit. But when they went farther, and appeared to put that author upon a level with Warburton, 'Nay, (said Johnson,) he has given him some smart hits to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.' BOSWELL. Johnson in his Preface to Shakespeare (Works, v. 141) wrote:—'Dr. Warburton's chief assailants are the authors of The Canons of Criticism, and of The Revisal of Shakespeare's Text…. The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter and returns for more; the other bites like a viper…. When I think on one with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that "girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle;" when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in Macbeth: