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 D^ JOHNSON 
 
 vK
 
 DR JOHNSON 
 
 HIS FRIENDS and HIS CRITICS 
 
 BV 
 
 GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L. 
 
 PEMBROKE COr.LEGE, OXFORD 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1878 
 
 [Ali rights reserve J]
 
 ^^ -^ SAM'A liAKIiAKA 
 
 'H^f 
 
 TO 
 
 SIR ROWLAND HILL, K.C.B. D.C.L. F.R.S. 
 
 ETC. 
 
 ^\iis l^olnmc is ^ciiicutct) 
 
 WITH MUCH RESPECT AND AFFECTION 
 BY HIS NEPHEW 
 
 THE AUTHOR
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Though I cannot say with Lord Macaulay that I 
 was never better pleased than when at fourteen I 
 was master ofBoswell's 'Lifeof Johnson,' yet I was 
 still a schoolboy when I first read the book. When 
 later on I entered the University of Oxford I was 
 proud as a member of Pembroke College to boast 
 of the great man who is the glory of that society. 
 I little thought, however, in those days that the 
 study of his life was to fill up much of the leisure 
 time of not a few of my busiest years, and that, on 
 my retirement from a laborious occupation, and my 
 recovery from a tedious illness, I should attempt 
 to describe Oxford as it was known to him. 
 
 It might at first sight seem that he who should 
 at the present day venture to write about Johnson 
 would justly incur the same kind of criticism as 
 that which Johnson himself passed on one of the 
 writers of his time. ' How,' he says * must the
 
 viii r RE FACE. 
 
 unlearned reader be surprised when he shall be told 
 that Mr. Blackwell has neither digged in the ruins 
 of any demolished city, nor found out the way 
 to the library of Fez, nor had a single book in 
 his hands that has not been in the possession of 
 every man that was inclined to read it, for years 
 and ages ; and that his book relates to a people 
 who above all others have furnished employment 
 to the studious, and amusements to the idle.' 
 
 My justification is twofold. In the first place 
 I have ' found out the way ' in Oxford to rooms in 
 Christ Church and Pembroke College in which are 
 stored up the documents which have enabled me to 
 set a matter at rest which has been the puzzle of 
 Johnsonian critics for more than forty years. Only 
 the other day I discovered an entry in the battel- 
 books of Christ Church, which, combined with what 
 I had previously found out, has, in my opinion, 
 settled beyond doubt the question of the duration 
 of Johnson's residence at the University. I have, 
 moreover, in the hours that I have spent in the 
 Bodleian Library, turned over many an interesting 
 record of Oxford as it was in the early part of last 
 century. But the chief part of my labour has cer- 
 tainly lain among books that have been for years
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 in the possession of every man that was inclined to 
 read them. When I first began to study these 
 works I read with the eager interest of one who 
 was merely anxious to learn, and not as one who 
 had any thoughts of setting up for a teacher him- 
 self. I was as yet but half of Chaucer's Oxford 
 scholar of whom it was said ' Gladly wolde he lerne 
 and gladly teche.' I was, to use Johnson's words, 
 merely 'filling the hunger of ignorance and quench- 
 ing the thirst of curiosity.' I had all the pleasure 
 of a reader while I was altogether free from the 
 necessity of exerting that almost painful degree of 
 attention which is too often the lot of one who 
 intends to write. But as I continued to read and 
 passed from Boswell to the works of Hawkins, 
 Murphy, Madame Piozzi, Madame D'Arblay, and 
 other writers, who had themselves known Johnson, 
 I began to feel that in every separate portrait that 
 had been drawn of that great man there were great 
 imperfections. Boswell's indeed was worth all the 
 rest taken together, but even Boswell had not seen 
 Johnson in every light. The sketch that Lord 
 Macaulay has given in his celebrated Review, which 
 I had once accepted without misgiving, now seemed 
 to me singularly unjust and distorted. Even the 
 Life of Johnson that he contributed to the ' Ency-
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 clopaedia Britannica,' finely though it is written, I 
 yet found to be greatly wanting in truthfulness. 
 Mr. Carlyle's noble portrait of my hero, while it 
 delighted me, did not fully satisfy me. It was too 
 much like a portrait drawn by Rembrandt, in 
 which the light that the artist lets in on his picture 
 but too often serves to give the spectator a greater 
 impression of gloom. 
 
 If Johnson had had but scant justice done to 
 him, the greatest injustice, I felt, had been done to 
 Boswell. Mr. Carlyle had, indeed, defended him, 
 as he had defended Johnson, from the violent attacks 
 of Macaulay, but he had not gone into the whole 
 case. In some points also even he, I held, had not 
 formed a right estimate of Boswell's character. As 
 these convictions grew upon me I began to set 
 forth the views that I had formed in articles that I 
 contributed from time to time to some among the 
 leading newspapers. I also formed the plan of 
 writing sketches of the lives of some of Johnson's 
 friends. Two of these sketches I had finished and 
 published, when the continuance of my task was 
 hindered by the serious illness, of which I have 
 spoken. On my partial recovery, when I took up 
 the pen that had lain idle for two long years, I
 
 PREFACE. xr 
 
 resolved to recast much of what I had already 
 written, and to combine that which lay scattered 
 in a variety of papers. At the same time I began 
 to use the fresh materials which I had gathered 
 together, and to add to the essays that I had al- 
 ready written. The contents of this book therefore 
 may be divided into three parts. The largest of 
 these divisions consists of matter that is here 
 published for the first time. The second division 
 consists of articles which I have so recast and so 
 enlarged that, so far as form at least is concerned, 
 they may fairly claim to be original. The third 
 po.rtion is composed of essays that are republished 
 in the same form in which they at first appeared. 
 But even to many of these I have made consi- 
 derable additions. 
 
 I trust that I have done something to give a 
 juster view of Johnson and his biographer, and that 
 I have, in the chapters which do not concern them 
 so directly, helped some little towards a better 
 understanding of one or two among the men whom 
 they reckoned as their friends. Should my book be 
 received with any degree of favour, I shall hope in 
 another volume to write of others among Johnson's 
 friends and, perhaps, of others among his critics.
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 I must not forget to express my grateful 
 acknowledgments to the Editors and Proprietors of 
 ' The Cornhill Magazine,' ' The Pall Mall Gazette,' 
 'The Saturday Review,' and 'The Times,' for the 
 permission they have kindly given me to use 
 in this volume my various contributions to their 
 papers. 
 
 GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL. 
 
 The Poplars, Burghfield: 
 May 28, 1S78.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Oxford in Johnson's Time . . . . i 
 II. Lord Macaulay on Johnson . . • . 97 
 
 III. Mr. Carlyle on Boswell .... 146 
 
 IV. Lord Macaulay on Boswell . . , . 160 
 V. The Melancholy of Johnson and Cowper 200 
 
 VI. Lord Chesterfield and Johnson . . . 214 
 VII. Lord Chesterfield's Letters . . . 230 
 
 VIII. Bennet Langton 248 
 
 IX. TOPHAM Beauclerk 28o 
 
 X. Oliver Goldsmith 319 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The Duration of Johnson's Residence at 
 Oxford 329
 
 DR. JOHNSON: 
 
 HIS FRIENDS AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OXFORD IN Johnson's time. 
 
 The Oxford of last century is with most readers the 
 Oxford not of Johnson, but of Gibbon. They call to 
 mind the just indignation which the gi"eat historian felt in 
 his riper years against that University where he spent the 
 most idle and unprofitable fourteen months of his whole 
 life. ' To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no 
 obligation,' he wrote, ' and she mil as cheerfully renounce 
 me for a son as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother.' 
 It is but a few pages that he gives to this mother whom 
 he thus renounces, but his description is so lively, his 
 satire so pointed, and his scorn so marked, that it is the 
 sketch that he thus paints that remains fixed in our 
 minds as the very picture of Oxford herself.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 We call to mind the lad in his fifteenth year suddenly 
 raised from a boy to a man ; his decent allowance of 
 money ; the indefinite and dangerous latitude of credit 
 that he could command ; his velvet cap and silk gown 
 which distinguished him as a gentleman-commoner from 
 an ordinary student ; the key which was delivered into his 
 hands, which gave him the free use of a numerous and 
 learned library ; his three elegant and well-furnished 
 rooms in the new building — a stately pile, as he calls it 
 — of Magdalen College ; his first tutor — one of the best 
 of the tribe — who proposed to read with him one hour 
 every day, and who, with a smile, accepted his first 
 apology for his omission to attend, and encouraged him 
 to repeat the offence with less ceremony ; his second 
 tutor, wlio well remembered that he had a salary to 
 receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to perform, 
 who never summoned him to attend even the ceremony 
 of a lecture ; his growing debts ; the tour he made to 
 Bath, the visit to Buckinghamshire, and the four excur- 
 sions to London, as if he had been an independent 
 stranger in a hired lodging, without once hearing the 
 voice of admonition, without once feeling the hand of 
 control ; his first appearance before the Vice-Chancellor, 
 who said that he was not old enough as yet to sign the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, but, directing him to return when he
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 3 
 
 was sixteen, recommended him in the meantime to the 
 instruction of his college ; the forgetfulness of his college 
 to instruct, his own forgetfulness to return, and the forget- 
 fulness of the Vice-Chancellor to send for him ; his 
 groping his way, unaided and untaught, into the dangerous 
 mazes of controversy, and his bewilderment into the 
 errors of the Church of Rome. 
 
 We call to mind the Fellows of Magdalen — those 
 decent, easy men — into whose common-room he was, 
 as a gentleman-commoner, of right admitted \ their days 
 filled by a series of uniform employments — the chapel 
 and the hall, the coifee-house and the common-room — 
 till they retired, weary and well satisfied, to a long slum- 
 ber ; their conversation that stagnated in a round of 
 college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and 
 private scandal ; their dull and deep potations, and their 
 toasts that were not expressive of the most hvely loyalty 
 for the House of Hanover. We call to mind the tradi- 
 tion that prevailed that some of his predecessors had 
 spoken Latin declamations in the hall, and the total 
 absence in his time of public exercises and examinations. 
 We remember, too, that in the University itself he could 
 find nothing to make up for the shameless neglect of his 
 college ; for in the University the greater part of the
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 public professors had for these many years given up 
 altogether even the pretence of teaching. ' 
 
 But just as may be the picture that we shall thus 
 raise before ourselves of Magdalen College, just as may 
 be the picture that we shall raise of the University of 
 Oxford as a whole, we shall wander very far from the 
 truth if we go on to infer that every one of the numerous 
 colleges and halls was a second Magdalen. Had Gibbon 
 been entered at some other college, the University of 
 Oxford would not, to her great and lasting disgrace, have 
 been disclaimed by one of the greatest of her sons. 
 There were bad colleges and indolent tutors in his time 
 as there are bad colleges and indolent tutors now. 
 Though doubtless there were many more bad colleges 
 and many more indolent tutors in those days, when the 
 University, neither by examination nor by any other way, 
 exercised the slightest control over the studies of the 
 
 ' ' What do you think of being Greek Professor at one of our 
 Universities ? It is a very pretty sinecure, and requires very little 
 knowledge (much less than I hope you have already) of that lan- 
 guage.' — Lord Chesterfield^ s Letters to his Son (January 15, 1748). 
 Cumberland, who entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1746, had 
 the same kind of tutors as Gibbon. His first tutor left him to 
 choose and pursue his studies as he liked. From his second, 
 whose zeal or whose piety was afterwards rewarded with a bishopric, 
 he never received a single lecture. — Metnoirs of Richard Cumber- 
 land, vol. i. p. 91.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 5 
 
 students. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, who entered Cor- 
 pus Christi College eight years after Gibbon left Mag- 
 dalen, and who was not likely to have loved a place 
 merely because it was venerable, bears high testimony to 
 the merits of his college. ' I applied assiduously not 
 only to my studies,' he writes, ' under my excellent tutor, 
 but also to the perusal of the best English writers. 
 Scarcely a day passed without my having added to my 
 stock of knowledge some new fact or idea ; and I remem- 
 ber with satisfaction the pleasure I then felt from the 
 consciousness of intellectual improvement.' 
 
 More than one hundred years have passed since these 
 men left Oxford. Magdalen can still boast of its grace- 
 ful tower, its venerable cloisters, its noble hall, and 
 Addison's Walk. Corpus, if you ask what it can show 
 that is beautiful or venerable, must still borrow its 
 prospect from its neighbours, and point to Merton 
 Tower on its left and the Cathedral Tower on its right. 
 But a second Edgeworth, perhaps, if fate were to place 
 him there, would not boast of Magdalen, nor would a 
 second Gibbon, if a second could arise, disclaim Corpus. 
 
 It is difficult, we must remember, at any time to arrive 
 at a fair estimate of an ancient seat of learning. Some 
 men are more touched with resentment when they come 
 to learn by experience where their education was faulty
 
 6 PR. yOHXSOX. 
 
 than moved by gratitude for the training they received, 
 however judicious, considered as a whole, it may have 
 been. Their deficiencies they attribute to their teachers, 
 and to the system under which they were brought up. 
 Their merits they derive from themselves alone. Some 
 men, on the other hand, look upon their Alma Mate?- as 
 a mother indeed. Her failings they will not see, much 
 less will they avow. They are proud of being her sons, 
 and they increase their pride by magnifying her merits. 
 But much more difticult is it to form this estimate when 
 we are considering an age in which party spirit ran high, 
 and the Church brought anything but peace into the 
 world. Johnson, in writing his ' Debates of Parliament,' 
 always took care, as he says, that the Whig dogs came oft 
 worse. Consciously or unconsciously judgments were 
 formed and evidence was given in much the same way as 
 the composition of these ' Debates ' was managed. Thus, if 
 we may trust Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, Christ Church 
 under Dean Aldrich was, though not the worst, yet one 
 of the worst colleges in Oxford. ' It is totally spoilt,' he 
 wrote in one letter, ' and for that reason when chosen a 
 Canon and Professor of Oriental Literature I refused to 
 go.' In another letter he admitted that bad though it 
 was, there was at least one other college worse. * "\^Tio- 
 ever advised you there [to Exeter College] was no friend.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 7 
 
 That is worse than Christ Church, for at the latter there 
 is something of ingenuity and genteel carriage in the genius 
 of the place, but in the other I never knew anything 
 all the while I was at Oxford but drinking and duncery.' 
 
 If Prideaux spoke ill of Aldrich's college, Aldrich in 
 return used to speak slightingly of Prideaux as 'an inaccu- 
 rate, muddy-headed man.' If we turn from Prideaux to 
 Hearne, we should be inclined to consider Christ Church 
 as looked after, under Aldrich, if anything, too carefully. 
 * The Dean used to rise to five o'clock prayers, summer 
 and winter. He visited the chambers of the young 
 gentlemen on purpose to see that they employed their 
 time in useful and commendable studies. . . . He was 
 always for encouraging industry, learning, integrity, and 
 whatever deserves commendation.' It is no wonder, 
 therefore, putting aside all differences in their colleges, 
 that not only men like Gibbon and Edgeworth who had 
 but little in common, but also that men like Gibbon and 
 Johnson who, widely as they differed in many things, yet 
 were both scholars, felt so differently towards Oxford. 
 
 It is, indeed, interesting to compare the feelings of 
 scornful indignation with which the younger of the two 
 looked upon Oxford, wth the love that the elder, through 
 his long life, bore to his old college and his old university. 
 In the last summer of his life, when his str-^ngth that was
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 rapidly ebbing away had returned with the warm weather, 
 it was to Oxford that Johnson longed to go as his first 
 jaunt after his illness. Boswell, who travelled with him, 
 tells us that the old man ' seemed to feel himself elevated 
 as he approached Oxford, that magnificent and venerable 
 seat of learning, orthodoxy, and Toryism.' The regard 
 which he bore to his old college had always been strong, 
 and remained with him to the last. A short time before his 
 death he presented its library with his books, and had he 
 not been reminded of the necessities of his relations he 
 would have left it his house at Lichfield. He always took 
 pleasure ' in mentioning how many of the sons of Pem- 
 broke were poets ; adding with a smile of sportive 
 triumph, " Sir, we are a nest of singing-birds." ' And yet 
 his obligations to Oxford would not seem, at first sight, to 
 have been very great. He had come up like the young 
 enthusiast of his own noble poem, though it most certainly 
 was not ease that he had quitted for fame. We may feel 
 certain that he was recalling his own feelings when, nearly 
 twenty years after he left college, he wrote those fine lines : 
 
 When first the college rolls receive his name, 
 The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame ; 
 Through all his veins the fever of renown 
 Burns from the strong contagion of the gown ; 
 O'er Bodley's dome his future labours spread, 
 And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 9 
 
 We know that the Hnes that follow, in which he bids 
 us ' mark what ills the scholar's life assail,' so truly told 
 of his own sufferings, that when in his old age he 
 tried to read them aloud he burst into a passion of 
 tears. 
 
 The eagerness, the ambition, the enthusiasm Avith 
 which he entered Oxford were soon deadened. He came 
 to a place rich in endowments, though his own college 
 indeed was poor. He soon gave proof of his power and 
 his knowledge. His translation into Latin verse of Pope's 
 * Messiah ' ' kept him high in the estimation of his college, 
 and, indeed, of all the university.' Pope, when he read 
 it, with much kindness said, ' the writer of this poem will 
 leave it a question for posterity whether his or mine be 
 the original.' And yet, with all the proofs Johnson gave 
 of his great powers, he was forced by poverty to leave 
 Oxford without even taking his degree. Nay even, there is 
 good reason to believe that, like Gibbon, he stayed there 
 but fourteen short months.^ His college bills came to 
 only some eight shillings a week. Fifty pounds, no 
 doubt, would have covered, and much more than covered, 
 his whole yearly expenses. Whitfield, who was, however, 
 a servitor, only cost his relations about eight pounds a 
 year. One of the colleges forty years before Johnson's 
 ' See Appendix.
 
 lo DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 time 'was popularly said to be wealthier than the 
 wealthiest abbeys of the Continent.' But Johnson, in 
 the midst of all this wealth which the piety of past ages 
 had left for the encouragement of learning, had to leave 
 Oxford because he was poor. A few years later on, 
 when he had published his poem of ' London ' and 
 had become famous, when he found that the want of 
 a degree stood in the way of his advancement in life, 
 when without it he could neither, as he at one time 
 wished, get the mastership of a grammar-school, nor, as 
 he at another time wished, practise in Doctor's Com- 
 mons, he learnt that ' it was thought too great a favour 
 even to be asked ' of the University that it should confer 
 on him its degree. 
 
 Johnson might not unreasonably have borne towards 
 Oxford an ill-will that would have lasted through life. 
 No doubt he was a high Tory and a high Churchman, 
 and as such would be the less inclined to find any- 
 thing wrong in the seat of Toryism and orthodoxy. 
 But it was not to his prejudices alone that his affections 
 were due. Whatever the length of his residence was — 
 whether three years, as his biographers say, or only 
 fourteen months, as seems more probable — he never 
 regretted the time that he spent at the University. He 
 delighted to expatiate on the advantages of Oxford for
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. ii 
 
 learning, and on the excellent rules of discipline in 
 every college. 'That the rules are sometimes ill ob- 
 served may be true, but is nothing against the system.' 
 When the University at length did honour to itself by 
 giving him his Master's Degree, he took as much pleasure 
 in his gown as if he had been five and twenty years 
 younger. * I have been in my gown ever since I came 
 here ' he writes. ' It was at my first-coming quite new 
 and handsome.' He made frequent visits to Oxford, 
 and ' he prided himself,' as we learn from Lord Stowell, 
 ' in being accurately academic in all points ; and he wore 
 his gown almost ostentatiously.' The Christ Church 
 men had mocked at his worn-out shoes when he was 
 an undergraduate. Nearly fifty years later he must have 
 felt that an ample apology was offered for the insult, 
 for a Canon of Christ Church invited him to dinner. 
 ' Sir,' he said to Boswell, ' it is a great thing to dine with 
 the Canons of Christ Church.' 
 
 He delighted, as Madame Piozzi tells us, in his 
 partiality for Oxford. He one day in her presence 
 entertained five Cambridge men with various instances 
 of the superiority of his own university. She reminded 
 him that there were no less than five Cambridge men in 
 the room. ' I did not,' said he, ' think of that till you told 
 me, but the wolf does not count the sheep.' In speaking
 
 12 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 of a Cambridge friend for whom he had a high regard, 
 he said, ' a fellow deserves to be of Oxford that talks so.' 
 Hannah More met him at dinner at his old college two 
 years before his death. He looked very ill — spiritless 
 and wan, but after dinner he took her over the College and 
 would let no one show it but himself ' This was my room, 
 this Shenstone's.' Then after pointing out all the rooms 
 of the poets who had been of his college, ' In short,' said 
 he, ' We were a nest of singing birds. Here we walked, 
 there we played at cricket.' We very much doubt, by the 
 way, Johnson's playing at cricket. His sight, as we know, 
 debarred him from almost all the games of boyhood. 
 ' He ran over with pleasure the history of the juvenile 
 days he passed there. When we came into the common- 
 room we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and 
 hung up that very morning, with this motto, " And is not 
 Johnson ours, himself a host? " Under which stared you 
 in the face, " From Miss More's Sensibility."' 
 
 In his Life of Sir Thomas Browne, who was a Pem- 
 broke man, he tells us that Browne was the first man of 
 eminence graduated from the new college, and adds, ' to 
 which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most can 
 wish little better than that it may long proceed as it 
 began.' 
 
 Johnson was, it is true, by nature easily contented.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 13 
 
 ' Sir,' he once said, ' I have never complained of the 
 world, nor do I think that I have reason to complain. 
 It is rather to be wondered at that I have so much.' 
 But it was not only the habit of easy contentment that 
 made him bear no ill-will against his college. There had 
 been no shameful neglect of duty on the part of his 
 tutors, no unworthy example set by the Fellows to excite 
 his indignation as it excited Gibbon's. Gibbon com- 
 plained that though the government of his college and, 
 indeed, of the University, was in the hands of the clergy, 
 yet he received no instruction in religion. Johnson, on 
 the other hand, said that it was to Oxford that was due the 
 first occasion of his thinking in earnest of religion, after 
 he became capable of rational enquiry. The tutors of 
 Pembroke were not, indeed, so far as ability went, worthy 
 of their illustrious pupil. Each of them might have said 
 with Dr. Adams, ' I was his nominal tutor ; but he was 
 above my mark.' Yet Johnson revered Adams' learning, 
 and felt that he had received a high compliment. ' His 
 eyes flashed with grateful satisfaction ' when Boswell told 
 him what Adams had said, and he exclaimed, ' That was 
 liberal and noble.' But the tutors of Pembroke, if they 
 were not very able, were at least honest men, and did their 
 duty. Of one of them, Jorden, he said, ' Whenever a 
 young man becomes Jorden's pupil he becomes his son.'
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 He retained for him a great regard, and when he visited 
 Oxford twenty-five years after he had left he learnt with 
 regret that he was dead. 
 
 Every reader of Boswell will remember how Johnson, 
 like Gibbon, was one day absent from a lecture, and how 
 his tutor after dinner sent for him to his room. ' I ex- 
 pected a sharp rebuke for my idleness, and went with a 
 beating heart. When we were seated he told me he had 
 sent for me to drink a glass of wine with him, and to tell 
 me he was not angry with me for missing his lecture. 
 This was indeed a most severe reprimand.' If we may 
 trust Hawkins' statement, he once, on being fined for not 
 attending a lecture, said to his tutor, 'Sir, you have 
 sconced me two-pence for non-attendance at a lecture 
 not worth a penny.' If he really made this rude speech, 
 it is not impossible that a second most severe reprimand 
 followed in a second glass of wine in the kindly tutor's 
 room. 
 
 What it was that led old Michael Johnson to select 
 Pembroke College for his son we can only conjecture. 
 Hawkins says that he was placed there in the position of 
 a commoner by a neighbouring gentleman in quality of 
 assistant to his son in his studies, who entered as a 
 gentleman-commoner. This statement is confirmed by 
 Johnson's old friend, Dr. Taylor. But Pembroke was
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 15 
 
 the college of his god-father, Dr. Samuel Swinfen, of 
 Lichfield, from whom, no doubt, he took his name, and 
 who may have borne part of the expenses of his educa- 
 tion. Even if Johnson went as a kind of tutor to 
 another student, it was likely enough on Dr. Swinfen's 
 advice that Pembroke College was chosen for the two 
 young men. It had borne a high name even at the end 
 of the previous century. In February 1695-6, a Mr. 
 Lapthorne wrote to a Mr. Coffin : ' I have placed my 
 son in Pembrook Colledge, the Society being under the 
 care of the Bishop of Bristol, Dr. Hall, who is Master 
 and constantly resident. The house, tho' it bee but a 
 little one, yet is reputed to be one of the best for 
 sobriety and order.'' Bishop Hall was master for forty- 
 five years, so that he had time to work a thorough 
 reform, if a reform had been needed. He had died the 
 year Johnson was born. The master in Johnson's time 
 was that ' fine Jacobite fellow,' Dr. Matthew Panting, 
 Heame calls him ' an honest gent,' and tells how ' he had 
 to preach the sermon at St. Mary's on the day on which 
 George, Duke and Elector of Brunswick, usurped the 
 English throne, but his sermon took no notice, at most 
 very little, of the Duke of Brunswick.' 
 
 ' Historical Manuscripts Commission, ' Appendix to Fifth 
 Report,' p. 385.
 
 1 6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 The buildings have been not a little altered since 
 Johnson's day ; yet we can still bring back before our- 
 selves the little college as it was when his father, proud 
 of his son, brought him up to Oxford on the last day of 
 October in the year 1728. The tower has undergone 
 considerable changes, but we can still look up with 
 reverence to the second floor above the gateway, where 
 Johnson lived and whence he was overheard by the 
 Master from his house hard by uttering, in his strong 
 emphatic voice, ' Well, I have a mind to see what is done 
 in other places of learning. I'll go and visit the Univer- 
 sities abroad. I'll go to France and Italy. I'll go to 
 Padua. And I'll mind my business. For an Athenian 
 blockhead is the worst of all blockheads.' We can think 
 how it was in that room no doubt that, at the end of his 
 first year's residence, he recorded in his diary, Desidice 
 iialedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem 
 obversu7'iis. ' I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved 
 henceforth not to listen to her syren strains.' We can 
 stand in the gateway and remember how he used to 
 lounge there with a circle of young students whom he 
 was entertaining with his wit and keeping from their 
 studies. To those around him he seemed 'a gay and 
 frolicsome fellow ; but ' it was bitterness,' he said, ' that 
 they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 17 
 
 thought to fight my way by my hterature and my wit.' 
 ' They all feared him, however,' as one of them nearly 
 fifty years afterwards admitted. He used to criticise the 
 words they used, ' for even then he was delicate in 
 language. Sir, I remember you would not let us say 
 prodigmis at college.' 
 
 The quadrangle is much as he knew it. The pre- 
 sent library was in his time the hall. The raised dais at 
 the western end, where the high table stood, was an 
 addition made by Clayton, the first Master, to a more 
 ancient building which had formed part of an earlier 
 foundation called Broadgate Hall. The eastern end is, 
 I believe, all that is left of this ancient foundation. 
 Bishop Bonner belonged to this society, and must have 
 dined many a day within these walls while he was still a 
 young student unstained by blood, little thinking how 
 hateful a name he was destined to bear through all time. 
 It was in the hall that at the classical lecture Johnson 
 sat as far away from Meeke as he could, that he might 
 not hear him construe, for he could not bear his supe- 
 riority. In this venerable building is treasured up John- 
 son's writing-desk. What memorial is preserved of Meeke ? 
 
 It was here, too, that he made his first decla- 
 mation. He wrote but one copy, and that coarsely, 
 and he had given it into the hands of his tutor. He had 
 
 c
 
 i8 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 got but little of it by heart, and he trusted to his present 
 powers to supply what he forgot. ' A prodigious risk,' 
 said some one. ' Not at all,' exclaimed Johnson. ' No 
 man, I suppose, leaps at once into deep water who does 
 not know how to swim.' 
 
 It was here that would have been recited his 
 exercise on Gunpowder Plot Day, had he not been 
 too indolent to write it, to Boswell's great regret, 
 who thinks that he would probably have produced 
 something sublime. November was kept with great 
 solemnity at Pembroke College. Seven years before 
 Johnson's time ' Mr. Peyne, Bachelor of Arts, made,' as 
 an old diary tells us, ' an oration in the hall suitable to 
 the day.' Here, early in every November, was kept ' a 
 great Gaudy in the college, when the Master dined in 
 public, and the Juniors (by an ancient custom they were 
 obliged to observe) went round the fire in the hall.' We 
 can picture to ourselves among the Juniors in November, 
 1728, Samuel Johnson, who had but just entered the 
 college, going round the fire with the others. Warton 
 records how Johnson, in one of his visits to Oxford, 
 when, talking of the form of old halls, said, ' In these 
 halls the fire-place was anciently always in the middle of 
 the room till the Whigs removed it on one side.' If in 
 his time the fire in Pembroke hall was still in the middle
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 19 
 
 of the room, the ancient custom did not press very 
 heavily. Here day after day he heard the Latin Grace 
 which the learned Camden had written for the society, 
 and no doubt the signal for Grace was given, as it was 
 for many a year after, by three blows with a piece of 
 wood, in honour of the Trinity. The ordinary dinner- 
 hour was early, as is shown by Hearne in one of those 
 delightfully foolish passages in which the foolish old 
 Jacobite antiquarian abounds. On February 27, 1722-3, 
 he solemnly records, ' It hath been an old custom in 
 Oxford for the scholars of all houses, on Shrove-Tuesday,. 
 to go to dinner at ten o'clock (at which time the little 
 bell called pan-cake bell rings, or at least should ring, at 
 St. Maries), and at four in the afternoon ; and it was 
 always followed in Edmund Hall as long as I have been- 
 in Oxford till yesterday, when they went to dinner at 
 twelve and to supper at six. Nor were there any fritters 
 at dinner as there used always to be. When laudable 
 old customs alter, 'tis a sign learning dwindles.' 
 
 The library in Johnson's days, where he read in the 
 French Lobo's ' Voyage to Abyssinia,' was in a large room 
 over the hall. It had been removed there a few years 
 earlier from a room above a side chapel in the church of 
 St. Aldate's, which stands just outside the college gates. 
 He borrowed the book a few years after he left and
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 translated it for a Birmingham bookseller, receiving as 
 his payment for his first literary venture five guineas. 
 Whether he forgot to return the book, or whether 
 he returned it and it has been since carried off as a 
 curiosity by some one who had a greater regard for 
 the great moralist than for morality, I know not. At all 
 events, the book is no longer in the library. So fiir as it 
 goes, it would seem to show that the Fellows of Pem- 
 broke took a lively interest in modern literature, when 
 we find that a foreign book of travels was to be found on 
 their shelves three or four years at most after it was 
 published. 
 
 The side chapel beneath the old library was the college 
 chapel Six months before he came into residence the 
 foundations of the present chapel were laid. During the 
 whole of his stay at Oxford he had rising before his eyes 
 a building which for ugliness has, perhaps, but one rival 
 in Oxford. Johnson, however, cared nothing for archi- 
 tecture. ' A building,' he said, ' is not at all more con- 
 venient for being decorated with superfluous carved 
 work.' Perhaps it is fortunate for his reputation that in 
 architecture he lay claim to neither taste nor knowledge. 
 Otherwise he might have described Pembroke chapel as 
 a stately pile, as Gibbon described the new building at 
 Magdalen. In Logan's print of the college we see a
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 21 
 
 pleasant row of trees where now this chapel stands. As 
 it is not easy to see that either piety or convenience was 
 increased when the members of a society who, in going to 
 service, had hitherto taken a few paces to the north, now 
 began to take the same number of paces to the south, we 
 may be allowed to regret the loss of the trees. On the 
 Fellows' garden the present hall is built ; but to this 
 garden it is probable that Johnson had no right of 
 admission, as he was not a fellow-commoner. The 
 common-room, where he used to play at draughts with 
 Phil. Jones, who loved beer and did not get very forward 
 in the Church, and with Fludyer, who turned out a 
 scoundrel and a Whig, stood where now the kitchen 
 stands. It was a detached building, with a sanded floor 
 and wooden chairs. Carpets were not generally seen in 
 Oxford common-rooms till well on in the present century. 
 In an out-house the grate of the old fire-place is stowed 
 away. Johnson must have warmed his feet at it many a 
 time. Perhaps Whitfield, who was a servitor of the 
 college, more than once cleaned it. Less interesting 
 relics have received more honourable treatment. 
 
 In every Oxford common-room at this date all the 
 members of the college — tutors, fellows, and commoners, 
 with the exception, no doubt, of the servitors — met on an 
 equal footing. More than forty years later Johnson
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 learned that in some of the colleges the Fellows 
 had excluded the students from the common-room. 
 ' They are in the right, Sir,' he said ; ' there can be no 
 real conversation, no fair exertion of mind amongst them, 
 if the young men are by ; for a man who has a character 
 does not choose to stake it in their presence.' According 
 to Gibbon, it was rather the younger men who lost their 
 character by this association, than the older men who 
 staked theirs. ' The dull and deep potations of the 
 Fellows,' he said, ' excused the brisk intemperance of 
 youth.' 
 
 The Master's house has been greatly altered. It is no 
 longer as it was when Johnson was at college, nor as it was 
 when, more than twenty years later, he visited the Master 
 of that day, and was not asked to dinner With the old 
 college servants, whom he found all still there, he was 
 highly pleased. The Fellows in residence pressed him 
 very much to have a room in college. But the Master 
 showed him no civility, nor did he even order a copy of his 
 Dictionary. As he left his house he said, ' T/iere lives a 
 man who lives by the revenues of literature, and will not 
 move a finger to support it.' 
 
 Close to the college stands an old inn, which must 
 have been old in Johnson's time. As we pass it we think 
 of the day when he and Edwards ' were drinking together
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 23 
 
 at an ale-house near Pembroke Gate,' and giving instances 
 of fine lines in modern Latin verse. Edwards must 
 have altogether lost his interest in literature, for when he 
 met Johnson forty-nine years after he said to him, ' I am 
 told you have written a very pretty book called 'The 
 Rambler.' Johnson was unwilling that he should leave 
 the world in total darkness, and sent him a set. 
 
 The college accounts — the buttery-books, as they are 
 called — are still preserved. The offices of the servants 
 are given in Latin, and we find the Fromus against whom 
 Johnson wrote his epigram : 
 
 Limosum nobis Promus dat callidus haustum. 
 
 He must have forgotten, or at least forgiven, his muddy 
 beer, for at the time when he was so pleased to find the 
 old college servants, he was particularly pleased to find 
 ' the very old butler.' Among the scribbling at the end 
 of the books I eagerly searched for Johnson's name, but 
 I could not find it. Shenstone and Sheny occur many 
 times. There is even some kind of evidence of Phil. 
 Jones' love of beer ; for we find entered, ' O yes, O yes, 
 come forth, Phil Jones, and answer to your charge for 
 exceeding the batells.' His excess, perhaps, was in 
 liquor. 
 
 Mr. Meeke is entered as ' Honest Jack Meek of Pemb.
 
 24 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Coll.' The young servitor who kept the buttery-book 
 must have had an admiration for the Master's daughter, 
 for he has written down, ' Pretty Miss Pan., dear Miss 
 Panting.' He confided, too, to the same record the in- 
 dignation that he felt at some harsh treatment that he 
 had received. ' Nothing is so imperious as a Fellow of a 
 college upon his own dunghill, nothing so contemptible 
 abroad.' 
 
 By the help of these old books the curious can still 
 follow Johnson's expenditure from week to week. Mr. 
 Carlyle, in his article on Boswell's ' Life of Johnson,' says, 
 ' Meat he has probably little. . . . The Rev. Dr. Hall 
 (the Master of Pembroke forty years ago) remarks, "As 
 far as we can judge from a cursory view of the weekly 
 account in the buttery-books, Johnson appears to have 
 lived as well as other commoners and scholars." Alas ! 
 such " cursory view of the buttery-books " now, from the 
 safe distance of a century, in the safe chair of a college 
 Mastership, is one thing ; the continual view of the 
 empty or locked buttery itself was quite a different 
 thing.' 
 
 This is nonsense so far as I can see. Whatever was 
 Johnson's want of proper clothing and of ready cash, he 
 lived, so far as food went, as the accounts show, in the 
 same way as his fellow-students. They all dined m
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 25 
 
 common, and for his other meals, so long as he was in 
 residence there was no empty or locked buttery for him. 
 If a student could not pay for his food, he would have 
 been sent away and not allowed to stay and starve. No 
 doubt Johnson left because he could not afford to stay 
 any longer, but while he was at college he had, we may 
 be sure, abundant food. Whitfield, who, as we have 
 said, was a servitor, and waited on the others when they 
 dined, and dined himself with the other servitors on what 
 was left, says that when ' I thought to get peace and 
 purity by outward austerities, I always chose the worst 
 sort of food, though my place furnished me with variety.' 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, in his ' Heroes and Hero Worship,' makes 
 another error about Johnson. He writes, ' One always 
 remembers that story of the shoes at Oxford : the rough, 
 seamy-faced, raw-boned college servitor stalking about in 
 winter season with his shoes worn out ; how the charit- 
 able gentleman-commoner secretly places a new pair at 
 his door ; and the raw-boned servitor lifting them, look- 
 ing at them near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts 
 — pitches them out of window ! ' 
 
 Johnson was most assuredly not a servitor, nor is 
 there anything to show that it was a gentleman-com- 
 moner who placed the shoes. Hawkins, from whom the 
 story comes, says it was a gentleman of his college.
 
 26 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Furthermore, it is not on evidence where the shoes were 
 thrown. It is more Hkely that they were thrown down 
 the stairs than out of the window. Johnson was so far 
 from being a servitor that, if we can trust Hawkins, he 
 for a time joined with the other students in persecuting 
 them. ' It was the practice for a servitor,' Hawkins 
 writes, ' by order of the Master, to go round to the rooms 
 of the young men, and knocking at the door to enquire if 
 they were within : and if no answer was returned to 
 report them absent. Johnson could not endure this 
 intrusion, and would frequently be silent, when the 
 utterance of a word would have ensured him from cen- 
 sure, and .... would join with others of the young men 
 in college in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who 
 was thus diligent in his duty, and this they did with the 
 noise of pots and candlesticks, singing to the tune of 
 " Chevy Chase " the words in that old ballad — 
 
 To drive the deer with hound and horn.' 
 
 We cannot tell how far this account is true ; Hawkins 
 knew Johnson well, and knew him rather early in life, 
 but he is by no means trustworthy. He certainly too 
 often ' lies,' — -we use the word as Johnson used it — 
 though we will not go on to add ' he knows that he lies.' 
 If Johnson had gone to college three years later, or
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 27 
 
 Whitfield three years earlier, the great champion of the 
 High Church party might, in after life, have had it to 
 boast, if it were a boast, that he had in his youth hunted 
 the great leader of the Methodists. 
 
 In the attempt to bring before ourselves college life as 
 it was in these days, we must not overlook this class of 
 servitors- — these scholars among servants and servants 
 among scholars. To many of them the position must 
 have been most galling. No commoner could appear in 
 public with a servitor without loss of position ; and as 
 each order in the University constantly wore its appro- 
 priate gown, a servitor was at once distinguished. If 
 a commoner visited a servitor he had to visit him 
 privately. To whatever post a servitor might rise in 
 after-life — and some rose very high — ' it was always in the 
 power of a purse-proud collegian to point out that he 
 had waited on him, though, perhaps, all the obligation 
 he had lain under to such a patron was the receiving 
 six-pence a week, not as an act of generosity, but as a 
 tribute imposed on him by the standing rules of the 
 society.' 
 
 Whitfield's narrative shows that the servitor's life, 
 even at a well-ordered college like Pembroke, was not an 
 easy one, though he did not seem to have felt anything 
 painful in the position so long as he was left alone. He
 
 28 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 had been used to waiting in his mother's inn at Gloucester, 
 and must therefore have looked upon a servitorship as a 
 rise in life. The account that he gives of the circum- 
 stances that brought him to Oxford is curious. An old 
 school- fellow who was himself a servitor at Pembroke 
 came to pay his mother a visit, and told her how he had 
 not only discharged his college expenses for the term, 
 but had received a penny. She cried out, ' This will do 
 for my son.' Then turning to Whitfield she said, ' Will 
 you go to Oxford, George ? ' I replied, ' With all my 
 heart ! ' He found that his having been used to a 
 public-house was of service to him at Pembroke. ' For 
 many of the servitors being sick at my first coming up, 
 by my diligent and steady attendance I ingratiated myself 
 into the gentlemen's favours so far, that many who had it 
 in their power chose me to be their servitor.' 
 
 The servitors slept several together in the same room ; 
 though this could not have been looked upon in those 
 days as any very great hardship, for only fifty years 
 before Whitfield's time we read of three gentlemen- 
 commoners chumming' together. No doubt the great 
 size of some of the rooms in college is explained by the 
 fact that they were intended to be shared by three or 
 four students. The sitting-room of the present day must 
 
 ' They call chamber-fellows by the name of chums. — Heariie.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 29 
 
 have been the common bed-room, while the bed-room 
 and, perhaps, the pantry were used as studies. 
 
 Whitfield says that he was sohcited to join in excess 
 of riot with several who lay in the same room. ' But 
 God gave me grace to withstand them ; and once m 
 particular it being cold, my limbs were so benumbed by 
 sitting alone in my study because I would not go out 
 amongst them, that I could scarce sleep all night.' 
 
 He speaks of the kindness of his tutor, but when he 
 joined Wesley's small set he met with harsh treatment 
 from the Master who frequently chid him, and once 
 threatened to expel him if ever he visited the poor again. 
 By the collegians — by some only we would hope — 
 he was most grossly treated. ' I had no sooner,' he 
 writes, ' received the Sacrament publicly on a week-day 
 at St. Mary's, but I was set up as a mark for all the 
 polite students that knew me to shoot at .... I daily 
 underwent some contempt from the collegians. Some 
 have thrown dirt at me, and others took away their pay 
 from me.' 
 
 Johnson, Hawkins tells us, would have done away 
 with the whole system of servitors, as indeed it has been 
 long done away with. ' He thought that the scholar's 
 like the Christian life levelled all distinctions of rank and 
 worldly pre-eminence.' But years later on when he was
 
 30 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 passing the night in the house of Lord Macaulay's great- 
 uncle, the minister of Calder, ' he gave such an account 
 of the education at Oxford in all its gradations, that 
 the advantage of being a servitor to a youth of little 
 fortune struck Mrs. Macaulay much.' Johnson undertook 
 to get her son made a servitor if they sent the boy to 
 him. He did in fact obtain a servitorship for him, 
 though the lad did not accept it, as he had other views. 
 
 Could Johnson have looked nearly sixty years forward 
 and seen how another Macaulay would misunderstand 
 him and abuse him, and yet spread his fame far more 
 widely than ever, he might have hesitated about the 
 benefit he proposed to confer. And yet had his offer 
 been accepted who can tell what the result might have 
 been ? The members of a family commonly go to the 
 same university, and many a man has gone to Oxford or 
 to Cambridge merely because his uncle went before him. 
 It is as pleasant to picture to ourselves Thomas Babington 
 Macaulay at Oxford as it is impossible to guess what sort 
 of a man an Oxford Macaulay would have been. 
 
 Servitorships, as we have said, have been abolished. 
 We must not forget, however, that they were not an un- 
 mixed evil. As many a poor man has worked his pas- 
 sage over the sea to some settlement where a freer and a 
 larger life awaited him, so by a servitorship has many a
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 
 
 man worked his way from a life of low drudgery to some 
 high and honourable calling. The student-servant is no 
 longer to be found at Oxford. But the poor student 
 who, in his eagerness to fight his way by his learning, is 
 ready for any duty, however humble it may be, finds one 
 way barred to him that was open to the men of former 
 generations. 
 
 While from Whitfield we learn what was the posi- 
 tion of a servitor in Pembroke College in Johnson's 
 time, we get a curious and pleasant insight into the life 
 of a gentleman-commoner by means of the diary' kept by 
 Mr. Erasmus Philipps (afterwards the fifth baronet of 
 that name), of Picton Castle. He entered into residence 
 on August I, 1720, only eight years before Johnson. He 
 was fond of sports. He more than once was present 
 at the races on Poit Mead ; he saw Lord Tracey's mare 
 ' Whimsey ' run, the swiftest galloper in England, and yet 
 he does not note down in his diary either how much he 
 had betted on her or against her, or how much he had 
 lost or won, as we should expect a young heir to a 
 baronetcy of the present day to note down. ' I could 
 not help thinking,' he records, ' of Job's description of 
 
 ' Published in Notes and Querits, 2nd series, vol. x. p. 366. My 
 attention was drawn to this diary by Mr. Wordsworth's Social Life 
 at the English Universities.
 
 32 DR. yOHNSOiW 
 
 the horse, and particularly of that description in it, he 
 swalIo7veth the groimd, which is an expression for prodi- 
 gious swiftness, in use among the Arabians, Job's country- 
 men, at this day.' He went to see a foot-race between 
 tailors for geese, and another day he went to a great 
 cock-match in Holywell, fought between the Earl of 
 Plymouth and the town cocks, which beat his lordship. 
 One night he went ' to the Ball at the " Angel," a guinea 
 touch.' Another night he and some gentlemen-commoners 
 of Balliol ' made a private ball for Miss Brigandine, my 
 partner, Miss Hume, &c.' Curiously enough, on an old 
 pane of glass in University College, in the hand-writing 
 of the early part of last century, I have found a name 
 written which we can please ourselves with thinking is 
 that of young Mr. Philipps' partner. There is the 
 difference of one letter in the spelling, but this may be 
 due to the mistake of the printer of ' Notes and Queries.' 
 The inscription is as follows : 
 
 Charming Pen Stonehouse, 
 Loveliest of women. Heaven is in thy soul ; 
 Beauty and virtue shine for ever round you, 
 Brightening each, thou art all divine, 
 Nanny Brigantine. 
 
 I have already pointed out the much greater inti- 
 macy that existed between the Fellows and the com- 
 moners in those days. A gentleman-commoner, no
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 33 
 
 doubt, was on still closer terms. One day Mr. Philipps 
 went out riding with the Rev. Mr. Wilder, the Vice- 
 gerent of his college, and another gentleman, to Newn- 
 ham, where they dined. The Vice-gerent, as his name 
 implies, is in authority second only to the Master, and is 
 specially answerable for the discipline of the college. 
 Yet Mr. Philipps notes down : ' Coming home a dispute 
 arose between these two gentlemen, whom with great 
 difficulty I kept from blows.' 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Wilder had left before Johnson's time. 
 This reverend Vice-gerent must have enjoyed what John- 
 son would have called ' a frisk with the lads,' for one fine 
 day in summer, he, the author of the diary, and four 
 other Pembrokians, went fishing up the river as far as 
 Burnt Island, where they landed and dressed a leg of 
 mutton, which they despatched in the wherry. Mr. Phi- 
 lipps' tutor, Mr. Horn, shared in these amusements. One 
 day he gave him an Essay on Friendship, and in the 
 evening, I suppose as a practical commentary on his 
 essay, the two went together to Godstow by water, with 
 some others, taking music and wine. 
 
 Another of the Fellows, Mr. Tristram, took him to a 
 poetical club at ' The Tuns,' where he drank Gallicia 
 wine, and was entertained with two fables of Dr. Evans' 
 composition, ' which were, indeed, masterly in their kind, 
 
 D
 
 34 DR- JOHNSON. 
 
 but the doctor is allowed to have a peculiar knack and 
 excellence at a fable.' 
 
 This Mr. Tristram seems to have been somewhat of a 
 humourist He once greatly offended poor Hearne, who, 
 in his diary, records, ' Beyond High Bridge is a little 
 house called "Antiquity Hall," which one Wise of Trinity 
 College, and one Tristram of Pembroke College (both of 
 them very conceited fellows and of little understanding, 
 though both are Masters of Arts), have had a draught 
 taken of, and printed with very silly, ridiculous things 
 and words in it, for which they are much laughed at by 
 all people, who cannot but look upon it as one of the 
 weakest things ever done.' 
 
 Dr. Bliss, in a note, tells us where the point of the 
 jest lay. ' The silly things and words which gave Hearne 
 so much offence were inserted in order to ridicule some 
 of his own plates, in which he has given explanations of 
 the objects, or what they were intended to represent. 
 Wise and Tristram have done the same, and have intro- 
 duced Hearne himself as entering at the court-yard 
 holding up his gown behind, according to his usual man- 
 ner of walking.' Johnson must have known Tristram, 
 and, perhaps, enjoyed his humour. 
 
 But to return to Mr. Philipps. He, a second time, 
 went to ' The Tuns,' with three other Pembrokians,
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 35 
 
 ' where they motto'd, epigrammatiz'd,' &c. He evidently 
 
 had a hking for Hterary pursuits. He was present in the 
 
 Sheldonian Theatre on a speech-day, and present as one 
 
 competent to criticise, and not, as young men attend now, 
 
 merely to make a noise. ' The Proctor's speech,' he 
 
 c 
 notes down, was a delicate and masterly piece of oratory.' 
 
 With an honest pride in his college, he adds, ' Mr. 
 
 Church, the Junior Collector, a Pembrokian, came off 
 
 very handsomely.' He wTote an essay on Pride, and took 
 
 it to the Master, who then desired him to declaim in the 
 
 Hall on the following thesis, ' Virtutem atnplectinmr ipsam, 
 
 prcemia si tollas' He presented to the Bodleian Library 
 
 a Malabar Grammar, a very great curiosity, and received 
 
 the thanks of the Keeper. The same day he presented 
 
 to the library of his own college Mr. Prior's Works in 
 
 folio, neatly bound, ' which cost me ^i 3^.' He was 
 
 entered, as he records, a benefactor to the library. He 
 
 fell acquainted with Mr. Solomon Negri, a native of 
 
 Damascus, a great critic in the Arabic language, who had 
 
 come to Oxford to transcribe Arabic manuscripts, and he 
 
 enjoyed abundance of satisfaction in his conversation. 
 
 He met another day in Mr. Tristram's room Mr. Wanley, 
 
 the famous antiquarian, and Mr. Hunt, Avho is skilled in 
 
 the Arabic. On leaving Pembroke, he presented one of 
 
 the scholars with his key of the garden, for which he had 
 
 D 2
 
 36 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 on entrance paid ten shillings, treated the whole college 
 in the common-room, and then took up his caution 
 money {j[,'io) from the Bursar, and lodged it with the 
 Master for the use of Pembroke College. Altogether, if 
 we put aside the ride to Newnham, young Mr. Phihpps 
 gives us a very pleasant picture of life in his little college. 
 In the two years in which he was in residence he left 
 Oxford but twice. He went to London for a few weeks 
 each Christmas. He travelled in Bartlett's stage, paying 
 ten shillings for his ' passage,' and taking two days on the 
 road. In Gibbon's time (1752) the Long Vacation, as he 
 tells us, emptied the Colleges of Oxford as well as the 
 Courts of Westminster. But both Johnson and Philipps 
 stayed up the Long Vacation. Johnson was, perhaps, 
 absent one week, but certainly not more. The following 
 table which I have compiled from the batell-books shows 
 the number of men (graduates and undergraduates) in 
 residence at Pembroke at the end of each fourth week 
 from June to December, 1729 : — 
 
 Members 
 in residence 
 
 June 20, 1729 54 
 
 July 18, „ 34 
 
 Aug. 13, „ 25 
 
 Sept. 12, „ 16 
 
 Oct. 10, „ 30 
 
 Nov. 7, „ 52 
 
 Dec. 5, „ 49
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. yj 
 
 At Christmas there were still sixteen men left in the 
 college. How little those who did leave Oxford in the 
 Vacation were given to roving after the manner of the 
 modem undergraduate is shown by a curious letter 
 published among the Historical Manuscripts. ' He hath, 
 says the writer, speaking of a young Oxonian, ' a fancy 
 to pass over into the Isle of Wight. But this I dissuade 
 him from, because he can see nothing worth the hazard 
 of passing the sea to it ; and he has agreed to let it 
 alone.' 
 
 Shortly after Johnson left Pembroke College, Shen- 
 stone the poet entered. In the same year entered also 
 Richard Graves, the author of the 'Spiritual Quixote.'' 
 In a series of letters that were published more than fifty 
 years later Mr. Graves gives an interesting account of the 
 * sets ' into which the college was at that time divided. 
 As Johnson certainly did noi leave three years, and, 
 perhaps, not one year, before Graves entered, we may 
 assume that no great change had come over the college 
 in this short time. 
 
 Graves' account, which I slightly abridge, is as fol- 
 lows : — ' The young people of the college at that time 
 
 ' It is curious that his name is not given in any edition of 
 Boswell that I have seen, among the men of note who were edu- 
 cated at Pembroke.
 
 38 DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 (as I believe is the case in most colleges) were divided 
 into different small associations according to their 
 different tastes and pursuits. Having been elected from 
 a public school and brought with me the character of a 
 tolerably good Grecian, I was invited by a very worthy 
 person, now living, to a very sober little party who 
 amused themselves in the evening with reading Greek 
 and drinking water. (Dr Cheyne had then brought 
 water-drinking into great vogue.) Here I continued six 
 months, and we read over Theophrastus, Epictetus, 
 Phalaris's Epistles, and such other Greek authors as are 
 seldom read at school. But I was at length seduced 
 from this mortified symposium to a very different party, a 
 set of jolly, sprightly young fellows, most of them West- 
 country lads, who drank ale, smoked tobacco, punned, 
 and sung bacchanalian catches the whole evening : our 
 " pious orgies " generally began with — 
 
 Let's be jovial, fill our glasses, 
 
 Madness 'tis for us to think, 
 How the world is ruled by asses, 
 
 And the wisest sway'd by chink.' 
 
 To this set belonged, we may readily believe, Phil Jones, 
 who loved beer, and Edwards, who considered supper 
 as a turnpike through which one must pass in order to go 
 to bed.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 39 
 
 ' I own with shame,' continues Mr. Graves, ' that 
 being then not seventeen, I was so far captivated with 
 the social disposition of these young people (many of 
 whom were ingenious lads and good scholars) that I 
 began to think them the only wise men, and to have a 
 contempt for every degree of temperance and sobriety. 
 Some gentlemen-commoners, however, who considered 
 the above-mentioned as very low company (chiefly on 
 account of the liquor they drank), good-naturedly invited 
 me to their party ; they treated me with port wine and 
 arrack-punch ; and now and then when they had drunk 
 so much as hardly to distinguish wine from water, they 
 would conclude with a bottle or two of claret. They 
 kept late hours, drank their favourite toasts on their 
 knees, and in short were what were then called " bucks 
 of the first head." This was deemed good company and 
 high life ; but it neither suited my taste, my fortune, or 
 my constitution. 
 
 * There was besides a sort of flying squadron of plain 
 sensible, matter-of-fact men, confined to no club, but 
 associating with each party. They anxiously enquired 
 after the news of the day, and the politics of the times. 
 They had come to the University on their way to the 
 Temple, or to get a slight smattering of the sciences 
 before they settled in the country.'
 
 40 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 At length he became acquainted with Shenstone, and 
 was invited by him to breakfast, together with a Mr. 
 Whistler. This latter gentleman was ' a young man of 
 great delicacy of sentiment, and though with every assist- 
 ance at Eton, he had such a dislike to learning languages 
 that he could not read the classics in the original. Yet 
 no one formed a better judgment of them. He wrote, 
 moreover, great part of a tragedy on the story of Dido.' 
 The three young men dragged out the breakfast in 
 literary talk. Each one quoted his favourite humourist. 
 ' Mr. Whistler, who was a year or two older than either of 
 us, and had finished his school education at Eton, pre- 
 ferred Pope's " Rape of the Lock," as a higher species of 
 humour than anything we had produced.' They con- 
 stantly met afterwards in each other's rooms, and ' read 
 plays and poetry, " Spectators " or " Tatlers," and sipped 
 Florence wine.' Graves says that he at least did not 
 neglect his more serious studies. He was a scholar of 
 the house, and had some dry studies prescribed to him, 
 which he had to pursue with regularity and strict atten- 
 tion the whole morning. 
 
 We may amuse ourselves with guessing to which set 
 Johnson belonged. Among the gentlemen-commoners, 
 we may be sure he never spent a single evening. We 
 can picture him to ourselves equally well reading Greek
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 41 
 
 with the water-drinkers, or drinking ale and singing 
 catches with the West-country lads, or talking politics 
 with the matter-of-fact men. 
 
 * At this time,' says Mr. Graves, ' every schoolboy so 
 soon as he was entered at the University, cut off his 
 hair, and without any regard to his complexion, put on a 
 wig, black, white, brown, or grizzle, as "lawless fancy" 
 suggested.' Shenstone had the courage to wear his own 
 hair, though ' it often exposed him to the ill-natured re- 
 marks of people who had not half his sense.' ' After I was 
 elected,' Mr. Graves writes, ' at All Souls, where, though 
 there were very many studious young men,' yet there was 
 often a party of loungers in the gateway, on my expostu- 
 lating with Mr. Shenstone for not visiting me so often 
 as usual, he said, " he was ashamed to face his enemies 
 in the gate."' 
 
 In a satire published four years before Johnson matri- 
 culated, we have a lively description of the Oxford fop. ' A 
 college smart is a character few are unacquainted with. He 
 is one that spends his time in a constant circle of engage- 
 ments and assignations ; he rises at ten, tattles over his 
 tea-table till twelve, dines, dresses, waits upon his mistress, 
 
 ' The Oxonian of the present day will leain with not a little 
 satisfaction that there once were studious young men in All Souls' 
 College.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 drinks tea again, flutters about in public till it is dark, 
 then to the tavern, knocks into college at two in the 
 morning, sleeps till ten again, and disposes of the follow- 
 ing day just as he did of the last. He affects great com- 
 pany, and scrapes acquaintance with " golden tuffs " {sic) 
 and brocaded gowns ; and, after a course of studies of 
 this nature for three or four years, he huddles over the 
 public exercises, disputes, and passes examination in the 
 sciences after the modern fashion, without understanding 
 a word of what, like a parrot, he is taught memorially to 
 utter,' Such a gentleman as this could not be content 
 with a stuff gown. ' Silk gowns, tye-wigs, and ruffles are 
 become necessary accomplishments for a man of sense.' 
 He had no need to fear crosses in love. ' Anything in a 
 cap and gown that has the appearance of a man, a little 
 money, and tolerable assurance, never fails in his ad- 
 dresses.' 
 
 These ' university gallants ' had their troubles. They 
 made a brave show for a time, but paid dearly for it. In 
 a mock ballad opera published after the Oxford Act — the 
 Commemoration, as it is now called — of 1733, we have 
 three of them represented under the names of Spendthrift, 
 Sprightly, and Thoughtless. Thoughtless is discovered 
 wandering up and down Merton Walks and lamenting his 
 folly in having spent all his Midsummer quarteridge {sic)
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 43 
 
 of 50/., only to make a gaudy appearance for a few days 
 this Public Act. He had sold his books, his furniture, 
 and even his bed, and so he thinks he may as well ' walk 
 the parade ' all night as sneak into college. He ends 
 by wishing that he 'had been help building the new 
 town at Georgia, rather than in this cursed place.' 
 That colony had been founded by Oglethorpe only the 
 year before. 
 
 Thoughtless' companions are in just as bad a way, and 
 even some of the Fellows are no better off. ' There is a 
 universal complaint,' says the Proctor, 'from all our 
 members, masters, bachelors, as undergraduates, that 
 this Act has exhausted their pockets. Most of our col- 
 leges are beset with bailiffs.' The play ends in an ale- 
 house, where the three luckless undergraduates, and 
 Haughty and Pedant, the two Fellows, resolve to go in a 
 body to seek their fortunes in Georgia. 
 
 Sprightly, Thoughtless, and Spendthrift are not un- 
 common in Oxford even in these latter days. They go 
 eastward to Australia instead of westward to Georgia, and 
 they have not Fellows for their comrades ; in most other 
 respects, however, they are very like ' the college smarts ' 
 of many generations back. Extravagance was largely 
 caused by that ' mischievous and unstatutable practice of 
 scholars having private entertainments and company at
 
 44 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 their chambers.' Convocation protested against it, as a 
 practice which is ' generally attended with great intemper- 
 ance and excess, and always with expenses that are both 
 needless and hurtful.' All bursars, deans, and censors 
 were earnestly recommended to prevent it, as much as 
 in their power, and to oblige all persons to attend 
 in the common hall at the usual hours of dinner and 
 supper. 
 
 A Fellow of Pembroke, of Johnson's time, published 
 a letter to his brother Fellows of the University, entitled 
 * The Expense of University Education Reduced ' In 
 fourteen years it went through four editions. Haughty 
 and Pedant of the ' Mock Comic Opera ' were no doubt 
 exaggerations ; yet this letter shows that there was some 
 truth in the satire. Even the best endowed fellowships, 
 we are told, were but barely sufficient for maintenance, 
 for decent apparel, and for a few useful books. Yet 
 every Fellow thought himself bound to spend his money 
 in absurd and conceited entertainments for every trifling 
 acquaintance who has a mind to visit Oxford on his way 
 'to the Bath.' Yet one such entertainment in a Fellow's 
 private chamber exceeded a month's allowance from his 
 founder. 
 
 The ale in the common cellar was a great source of 
 extravagance. Ale in itself was a liquor innocent, cheer-
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 45 
 
 ful, and useful. It wanted its situation changed. At 
 present it was too near. It was drunk even in the morn- 
 ing, a time that was friendly to the Muses without its 
 pretended aid. If the ale is excellent, its fame reaches to 
 distant parts. 'My friends will oblige me so far as to 
 come and taste it. They will be so just as to speak very 
 well of it to others, who likewise may want to give their 
 opinion whether it doth indeed answer the high character 
 that is given of it. Nay, I am not sure that my intimate 
 acquaintances will not sometimes carry their complaisance 
 so far as to send for it to their own colleges.' 
 
 To the college servants, too, another large stream will 
 run at their master's expense. ' Their state of servitude, 
 the most miserable that can be conceived amongst so 
 many masters, requires frequent consolation and relief. 
 The kicks and cuffs and bruises they submit to entitle 
 them, when those who were displeased relent, to this sort 
 of compensation. They likewise, at other times, can in- 
 sinuate their little merits towards me, and being always 
 about me know the mollia tempora, as well as persons of 
 the best education and address. There is not a college 
 servant, but if he have learnt to suffer, and to be officious, 
 and be inclined to tipple, may forget his cares in a gallon 
 or two of ale every day of his life.' 
 
 The state of life thus described seems strange enough.
 
 46 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 It is well to remember that when we try to study the 
 manners of a past age, it is to the satirist and the moralist 
 that we have chiefly to go. They both alike, though from 
 different reasons and in different ways, exaggerate whatever 
 is vicious, extravagant, or absurd. There is one little 
 trait of bygone life that comes out in this letter that 
 will amuse the bursar of the present time. When he 
 suffers under the ever-repeated complaints of the badness 
 of the college ale, he will smile when he finds that one 
 hundred and forty years ago a Fellow, in remarking that 
 the undergraduates sent out into the town for ale, noted 
 down ' There is that humour in young men as to despise 
 what is before them, and is cheaper, and to covet what is 
 at a distance, and of greater price, though not more 
 excellent.' 
 
 The abstemious Pembroke Fellow did not escape 
 attack. At that time, at the Commemoration, a licensed 
 buffoon, under the name of ' Terrae Filius,' used * to sport 
 and play with the reputation of others.' At the Grand 
 Commemoration of 1733 he was not allowed to speak. 
 The ' Terrae Filius Speech,' as it was to have been spoken, 
 was nevertheless published. Its scurrility is extraordinary. 
 In fact, the gross licentiousness of the satires commonly 
 \vritten on the University authorities is very striking. The 
 author of ' University Education ' comes off very easily.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 47 
 
 when compared with many others. 'Say, abstemious 
 Don, have you never transgressed your own rules ? never 
 exceeded a twopenny commons and a halfpenny small for 
 dinner or supper ? How came the cook, then, to convey 
 privately into your own apartment a cold fowl or neat's 
 tongue, with a bottle or two of good wine, to stuff your 
 maw with in secret ? ' All Souls' College, if we may trust 
 Terrae Filius, was most given to drinking. He had been 
 to look for it, but he could not find it. It used to stand 
 above Queen's, but it would seem to have been translated 
 over the way to the Three Tuns Tavern. So deserted 
 was it as a place of learning that a cat had lately been 
 starved to death in its library. Terrae Filius can be 
 proved to have libelled the Fellows of All Souls' 
 College, for at least on one night in every year, if they 
 did drink, at all events they drank at home. * On the 
 14th January in every year,' as Hearne tells us, 'being 
 All Souls' College Mallard, 'tis usual with the Fellows 
 and their friends to have a supper, and to sit up all 
 night drinking and singing.' 
 
 In the year 17 16, it was said that there were '300 
 ale-houses in Oxford of the worst fame and reputation, 
 without even the least offer of discommuning them.' 
 Only five years before Johnson entered, the senior 
 Proctor and his pro-proctor were found by the Vice-
 
 48 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Chancellor at a tavern, at an unreasonable hour, and ' to 
 their great reluctance ' were forthwith sent to their 
 colleges. I suspect that the Vice-Chancellor was in- 
 spired quite as much with zeal against the Hanoverians 
 as with any love of temperance and early hours. It was 
 ' on the Coronation-day of the Duke of Brunswick, 
 commonly called King George,' that these gentlemen had 
 thus met together. The proctor and the pro-proctor 
 both belonged to Merton, the stronghold of the Hano- 
 verian party, and they had, no doubt, assembled to 
 drink loyal toasts. On the tenth of June late drinking 
 would have been quite another matter. A few honest 
 lads who had come together to drink to ' the King over 
 the water,' on his birthday, would have had no fear of 
 being troubled by the Vice-Chancellor. 
 
 Story, the Quaker, visiting Oxford in the year 1731, 
 records in his journal, ' Of all places wherever I have 
 been, the scholars of Oxford were the rudest, most giddy 
 and unruly rabble, and most mischievous. They used 
 to come to the Meeting House to make fun. Some of 
 them looked wild and airy, but others more solid ; some 
 sat down and were quiet, others restless and floating, full 
 of tricks, whisperings, smirkings, and sometimes fleer- 
 ings.' He adds, however, that when he addressed them 
 ' several were affected and chained.'
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 49 
 
 Some sixteen years earlier, as I shall presently show, 
 the Quakers had had far worse treatment to undergo in 
 Oxford, but the head of the Quaker family in the town 
 had, as Story says, ' borne a faithful testimony in that old 
 seat of the power of darkness against all the envy, scoffs, 
 flouts, and jeers, and other immoralities of the young 
 brood hatched in this place, till by patience in well- 
 doing he is now treated with general respect.' Johnson 
 in his old age said to Boswell, that he liked individuals 
 among the Quakers, but not the sect. At Oxford he 
 would have found it hard to distinguish between the 
 individuals and the sect. 
 
 It was at the very time that Johnson entered Oxford 
 that the two Wesleys were laying the foundations of their 
 sect. Three or four years later, Whitfield saw them ' go 
 through a ridiculing crowd to receive the holy sacrament 
 at St. Mary's.' They went by the name of the Sacramen- 
 tarians, Bible-bigots, Bible-moths, the Holy Club, and 
 the Godly Club. There were three points to which, they 
 said, they would adhere, though their practice of them 
 had brought upon them reproaches. The three points 
 were as follows : — 
 
 I. Visiting and relieving the prisoners and the sick, 
 and giving away copies of the Bible, the Prayer Book, 
 and the ' Whole Duty of Man.' 
 
 E
 
 50 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 2. Weekly Communion. 
 
 3. Strict observance of the Fasts of the Church. 
 They had been attacked by even ' forcible arguments 
 
 and menaces.' One ' worthy gentleman ' wrote to his 
 son : ' You can't conceive what a noise this ridiculous 
 society you have engaged in has made here, . . . Besides 
 follies at Oxford, to hear that you were noted for going 
 into the villages about Holt, entering into poor people's 
 houses, calling their children together, teaching them 
 their prayers and catechism, and giving them a shilling 
 at your departure.' 
 
 The Vice-Chancellor and the Heads of Houses, 
 strongly as they were against the Methodists, had 
 themselves become alarmed at the progress of what is 
 called infidelity. They had, when Johnson had been in 
 residence barely three months, put forth ' a Programma in 
 which they exhorted the tutors to discharge their duty by 
 double diligence ; and forbade the undergraduates to 
 read such books as might tend to the weakening of 
 their faith.' 
 
 It is not at all likely that Johnson ever met Wesley 
 in these early days, though he knew him in after life, and 
 enjoyed his society — so much of it, that is to say, as he 
 could get. ' John Wesley's conversation is good,' he said, 
 ' but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 51 
 
 at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man 
 who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do.' 
 For Methodistical students Johnson had no liking. 
 Years later he defended the expulsion of six of them 
 from the University. ' Sir, that expulsion was extremely 
 just and proper. What have they to do at an University, 
 who are not willing to be taught, but will presume to 
 teach ? Sir, they were examined and found to be mighty 
 ignorant fellows.' Boswell : ' But was it not hard, Sir, 
 to expel them, for I am told they were good beings. 
 fohfison : ' I believe they might be good beings, but they 
 were not fit to be in the University of Oxford. A cow 
 is a very good animal in the field, but we turn her out 
 of a garden.' 
 
 The case of these six Methodists throws so much 
 light on the state of Oxford last century, that though they 
 were nearly forty years later than Johnson's days as an 
 undergraduate, I shall not hesitate to give a brief account 
 of it All the six were members of St. Edmund Hall. 
 The Principal was satisfied with their conduct, and had 
 no wish to trouble them. But the Vice-Principal, who 
 was their tutor, appealed to the Vice-Chancellor as the 
 Visitor of the society to expel them. He thereupon, 
 acting, it must be remembered, in his capacity of Visitor 
 and not of Vice-Chancellor, held an enquiry. The chief 
 
 E 2
 
 52 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 charges made against them by the Vice-Principal were as 
 follow : — 
 
 ' I. Three of the six had been bred to trades, while 
 all the six were at their entrance and still continued to be 
 destitute of such a knowledge of the learned languages 
 as is necessary for performing the usual exercises of the 
 Hall and the University. 
 
 * 2. They were all enemies to the doctrine and 
 discipline of the Church of England, which appeared 
 either by their preaching or expounding in, or frequenting 
 illicit conventicles, and by several other actions and 
 expressions. 
 
 * 3. They neglected to attend lectures, or misbehaved 
 themselves when they did attend.' 
 
 In a pamphlet published by Dr. Nowell, the Principal 
 of St. Mary Hall, in defence of the Vice-Chancellor, a 
 full report is given of the proceedings. Considerably 
 abridged, it is as follows : — 
 
 ' J. Matthews, thirty years of age, accused that he was 
 brought up to the trade of a weaver, and had kept a 
 tap-house. — Confessed. Accused that he is totally ig- 
 norant of Greek and Latin, which appeared by his 
 declining all examination. Accused of being a reported 
 Methodist, that he entered himself at Edmund Hall with 
 a design to get into holy orders, that he still continues
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 53 
 
 to be wholly illiterate and incapable of doing the exercises 
 of the Hall. — Proved. That he had frequented illicit 
 conventicles held in a private house in Oxford. — Con- 
 fessed. 
 
 ' T. Jones, accused to have been brought up to the 
 trade of a barber, which he had followed very lately. — 
 Confessed. 
 
 ' J. Shipman, accused that he had been brought up to 
 the trade of a draper, and that he was totally illiterate, 
 which appeared in his examination. 
 
 ' B. Kay confesses that he has been present at meetings 
 held in Mrs. Durbridge's house, where he heard ex- 
 tempore prayers offered up by a stay-maker. Had 
 endeavoured to persuade a young man of Magdalen 
 College to attend also. Holds that the Spirit of God 
 works irresistibly. 
 
 ' T. Grove confessed that he had lately preached to an 
 assembly of people called Methodists in a barn, and had 
 offered up extempore prayers.' 
 
 V These four and two others were expelled. One 
 Benjamin Blatch had also been accused. He confessed 
 his ignorance, and declined all examination. ' But ' — we 
 quote Dr. Nowell's own words — ' as he was represented 
 to be a man of fortune, and declared that he was not 
 designed for holy orders, the Vice-Chancellor did not
 
 54 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 think fit to remove him for this reason only, though he 
 was supposed to be one of " the righteous overmuch." ' 
 The Vice- Chancellor had been reproached with his 
 cruelty in thus depriving these men of their living. 
 ' There is no fear of their starving,' replied Dr. Nowell. 
 
 ' Mr. J s makes a good periwig ; he need not starve. 
 
 Mr. M s and Mr. S — — n may maintain themselves 
 
 and serve their countr)' better at the loom, or at the tap, 
 or behind the counter, than they were likely to do in the 
 pulpit. Tradant fabrilia fabri.' There was, he main 
 tained, no need of excuse, for the Vice-Chancellor's 
 whole proceeding ' was an act of discipline commendable 
 in itself and pleasing to the true friends of learning and 
 religion.' 
 
 Commendable and pleasing though this act was, yet 
 it led to hot controversy. The Apostles themselves, it 
 was objected, were not men of learning. These six 
 students were not so ignorant as had been asserted. 
 They had been confused and frightened when they had 
 been called upon to give a proof of their learning in a 
 public court. There were much more ignorant men — 
 men who were abandoned as well as ignorant— who were 
 not expelled. They had been called upon as a proof of 
 their knowledge of Latin to construe the Statutes of the 
 University ; and it was not reasonable, it was maintained,
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 55 
 
 to expect that they should be familiar with the barbarous 
 Latin in which these statutes are written. 
 
 Perhaps the Vice-Chancellor required them to trans- 
 late the section De CoJivcntlculis illicitis reprime?idis, 
 where it is written, ' Ne quis confoederationes sive con- 
 spirationes ineat unde Cancellarius, Procuratores, seu alii 
 Ministri Universitatis in executione Officiorum suorum 
 secundum Statuta et Ordinationes ejusdem impediri vel 
 perturbari possint, sub poena bannitionis ab Universitate.' 
 Cicero might certainly have been puzzled with such 
 Latin ; but to a Methodistical student it would have 
 appeared, I should have thought, a good deal like the 
 Latin that he himself was wont to write. In Greek 
 they had been asked to translate a passage from the 
 New Testament in the original. 
 
 If, it was objected, all academics were expelled who 
 could not construe the Greek Testament and the Univer- 
 sity Statutes, the colleges would be much more empty. 
 ' At the great examination,' as the advocate for the six 
 students asserted, * all the classical learning required is to 
 be able to construe one Greek and two Latin books ; and 
 the custom of the place while I resided there allowed the 
 candidate himself to fix on the three books — Epictetus, 
 for instance, Eutropius and Cornelius Nepos.' Why 
 were not the vicious expelled ? Why was not Mr.
 
 S6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Welling expelled, who also belonged to Edmund Hall, 
 and who had said that whoever believed the miracles of 
 Moses must be a knave. What was the history of this 
 drunken infidel ? He was a poor foundling beggar-boy, 
 bred in a workhouse, and thence received into the house 
 of a hatter to run errands. Next he had been the scout 
 of an apothecary. Then he had been taken into the 
 house of a pious clergyman and schoolmaster, where he 
 got a smattering of learning. Next he had been assistant 
 in a school. Here he maintained his Deistical principles, 
 till the maid-servant being found with child, both he and 
 she were dismissed. He married her, and she getting a 
 place in a Jew's family, could now contribute to his 
 support. 
 
 The charge brought against Mr. Welling about Moses' 
 miracles was too serious for the Vice-Chancellor to over- 
 look, and he at once instituted an enquiry. Mr. W. 
 Wrighte, a gentleman-commoner of Edmund Hall, gave 
 evidence as follows. When walking in St. John's Garden, 
 he saw the said Welling to be concerned in liquor. (It 
 was St. John the Baptist's day, and Welling had been 
 helping to celebrate the patron saint of the college at the 
 college dinner.) He took occasion to expostulate with 
 him thereon. A dispute then arose concerning some 
 points in religion. Welling said, ' What, fool, do you
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 57 
 
 believe in the miracles of Moses?' Upon which in- 
 formant threatened him very severely. Next day Welling 
 came to ask pardon, and since then informant has taken 
 occasion to examine into his real sentiments in regard to 
 the miracles of Moses. Before the Vice-Chancellor 
 Welling declared his unfeigned assent to Divine revela- 
 tion in general, and the miracles of Moses in particular. 
 But the Vice-Chancellor was not satisfied till he had 
 read a declaration of orthodoxy and regret of drunken- 
 ness before congregation. He had since obtained 
 a cure of souls, and, as it was asserted, when asked 
 why he had been ordained, had replied, 'Why should 
 I not read the Bible for money as well as any other 
 book?' 
 
 A yet worse instance was brought forward by the 
 advocate of the six Methodists than even Mr. Welling's. 
 Not many years before this the sacrament had been 
 administered to an ass in the chapel or the ante-chapel 
 of one of the colleges ; and yet the man who had ad- 
 ministered it was not expelled, but had merely lost his 
 fellowship. 
 
 All these arguments availed nought. The six Method- 
 ists were not allowed to return. There is little doubt 
 that in an University they were, to use Johnson's com- 
 parison, like a cow in a garden. It is equally clear that
 
 58 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 they were expelled, not for their ignorance, but their 
 Methodism. The gentleman of fortune who, as Dr. 
 Novvell admitted, ' had not had any school learning,' was 
 allowed to stay, partly because he was a gentleman of 
 fortune, and partly because he was not designed for holy 
 orders. Had Johnson been brought before the Vice- 
 Chancellor of his day, and had he been accused of having 
 been brought up to the trade of a bookbinder, we should 
 have found entered against the charge 'confessed.'' It 
 is worth noticing, moreover, that not many years before 
 Dr. Nowell's time, one among the Heads of Halls, 
 as soon as he was appointed Principal, refused to 
 admit any students, but shut up the gate altogether, 
 and wholly lived in the country. ' Whereas,' as Hearne 
 says, "twas expected that he, being a disciplinarian, 
 and a sober, studious, regular, and learned man, would 
 have made it flourish in a most remarkable manner.' 
 While the head of a Hall could thus shamefully shirk 
 his duty ; while the tutor of Magdalen could well re- 
 member that he had a salary to receive and only forgot 
 that he had a duty to perform ; while the Fellows of that 
 society, by their dull and deep potations, could excuse 
 the brisk intemperance of youth ; these six Methodist 
 students might have been borne with by the Vice- 
 ' He had, at all events, learnt how to bind a book.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 59 
 
 Principal of St. Edmund Hall and its Visitor, the Vice- 
 Chancellor. 
 
 Mighty though Methodism was to be, yet the 
 Oxford of Johnson's time saw nothing of its destined 
 greatness. The young giant was one of her own chil- 
 dren, yet she mocked it from its very birth and cast it 
 out of her house with scorn. Oxford was looking back- 
 wards to a time that had happily passed by, never to 
 return. Her golden age was the age of the Stuarts. 
 The Wesleys and Whitfield bade men look across this 
 world to some far happier and far better world beyond. 
 Oxford also had her hopes for the future as well as her 
 longings for what was past. The golden age was, 
 indeed, no more, but Astraea might once more return. 
 The poet might again sing, 
 
 And now Time's whiter series is begun, 
 Which in soft centuries shall smoothly run. 
 
 For Oxford there was no need to cross the River of 
 Death ; it would be enough for her that the king who was 
 over the water should come back to his own again. She 
 had suffered grievously under the tyrant James. Yet her 
 wrongs were forgotten, and she was ready once more to 
 put the generosity of the Stuarts to the proof. The town, 
 widely though it had always differed from the University,
 
 6o DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 was at one with it in this. Gownsmen and townsmen 
 alike were Jacobite to the backbone. Old Michael 
 Johnson, staunch Jacobite as he was, though ' he had 
 reconciled himself by casuistical arguments of expediency 
 and necessity to take the oaths ' as a magistrate of Lich- 
 field, must have felt, as he placed his son at Oxford, that 
 there was little chance that the young student's loyalty 
 would ever be shaken. Was not the whole University 
 loyal, and was not the Master of Pembroke ' a fine 
 Jacobite fellow ' ? 
 
 George I. had not been many months on the throne 
 before town and gown, joining together in a mad riot, 
 showed their hatred of him and the Whigs who supported 
 him. On the king's birthday. May 28, in the year 17 15, 
 the Quaker Story chanced to visit Oxford He went to 
 view the college buildings and gardens, and found them, 
 in their kinds, pleasant and comoiodious. But the great 
 load of the power of darkness which he felt was an over- 
 balance to any satisfaction he had therein. At the 
 Friends' afternoon meeting some scholars were present, 
 but he found them fluctuating and unsettled. By even- 
 ing the city was in an uproar. A great mob of scholars 
 and townsmen appeared in the streets cursing and damn- 
 ing tlie Presbyterians. The members of the Constitution 
 Club had met at the King's Head Tavern to drink pros-
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 6i 
 
 perity to the Royal Family, and had had a bonfire lighted 
 before the tavern. The mob surrounded the house and 
 bore away the burning wood. It next broke into the 
 Presbyterian Chapel, and tearing down the wainscot and 
 bearing out the benches and the pulpit, made a great 
 Jacobite bonfire at the head of High Street. The mem- 
 bers of the Constitution Club took refuge in New College, 
 and, if we can believe the charge that was brought against 
 them, thence shot off several blunderbusses at a venture 
 among the people. The mob round the blazing pile 
 were heard to vow that the next night they would serve 
 the Quakers as they had served the Presbyterians. By 
 nine o'clock on the following evening — the evening of 
 May 29, a day for many a long year dear to Oxford — 
 the mob began to assemble again. This night it was the 
 Quakers whom they cursed and damned. 
 
 It was in vain that the great bell of Christ Church 
 rang out, as it had rung out for many a year before, and 
 would ring out for many a year to come, calling the 
 scholars within their colleges. What scholar w'as likely 
 on such a night as this to be asked troublesome ques- 
 tions by his Dean ? They gutted the Quakers' Meeting- 
 house, as they had vowed, and then they gutted the Baptist 
 Chapel. They next broke into the dwelling house of a 
 widow— the daughter of an ancient Friend. A young
 
 62 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 nobleman had been murdered, they said, and hidden 
 somewhere thereabouts, and they were in search of his 
 body. Finding neither young nobleman nor body, they 
 broke all the windows and threw in some hundredweight 
 of stones and dirt. Story was lodging with the widow's 
 brother. The terrified Quakers crouched for safety under 
 the staircase, and there the two men, with the frightened 
 woman of the house and her little children, stayed while 
 the rioters let fly their volley of stones. By two o'clock 
 in the morning the riot was over, and some of the neigh- 
 bours ventured to come in. From them Story learned 
 ' the unreasonable reason,' as he calls it, of the mob's 
 violence. Some of the Low Party, it was said, when 
 dining at a tavern, ' had drunk healths and confusions,' 
 and had talked of burning the late Queen's picture and 
 Sachevere I's also. The Quakers at the last election 
 had voted for the Low members, and in revenge the mob 
 had wrecked their meeting-house and their homes. 
 Story the next morning went to see the ruins. He stood 
 on a slight rise in the ground, and seeing many scholars 
 present, he said loud enough for them all to hear, ' Can 
 these be the effects of religion and learning ? ' Several of 
 them had shame enough left to hang their heads, but 
 none answered. 
 
 The I St of August of that year was appointed for a
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 63 
 
 thanksgiving day for His Majesty's happy accession. In 
 these happier times for more than three long months of 
 summer, nothing can happen at Oxford to trouble the 
 calm repose of the Vice-Chancellor, the Proctors, and the 
 Heads of Houses. But in the early part of last century 
 the undergraduates, as I have shown, remained at 
 Oxford in large numbers during the Long Vacation. 
 Those in authority dreaded another riot ; dreaded, no 
 doubt, still more the angry displeasure of the Government. 
 They accordingly published regulations for the observance 
 of the day. The scholars were strictly forbidden to draw 
 a mob together by giving drink. Neither were they to 
 make bonfires in the street. Each College and Hall 
 might at the public expense of the society make a bon- 
 fire. But the bonfires were to be lighted immediately 
 after morning service at St. Mary's, at which time, it 
 was said, the University bonfire was usually made before 
 the church door. A bonfire lighted in the broad light 
 of an August day would make but a sorry sight. It is 
 not impossible that there was some touch of humour 
 in the regulation. Though the Vice-Chancellor was 
 accused of currying favour \\ith the Government, yet the 
 Heads of Houses, as a body, were not unwilHng to cast 
 ridicule on this Hanoverian thanksgiving. The day 
 passed off quietly enough. Hearne says that ' the gene-
 
 64 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 rality of people turned it into a day of mourning. The 
 bells only jambled, being pulled by a parcel of children 
 and silly people ; but there was not so much as one good 
 peal rung in Oxford.' 
 
 Meanwhile a regiment had been quartered in the 
 town, to overawe gownsmen and townsmen alike. It was 
 at this time, I imagine, that Dr. Trapp, the Fellow of 
 Wadham, wrote his famous epigram — 
 
 Our royal master saw, with heedful eyes, 
 
 The wants of his two Universities : 
 
 Troops he to Oxford sent, as knowing why 
 
 That learned body wanted loyalty : 
 
 But books to Cambridge gave, as well discerning, 
 
 That that right loyal body wanted learning. 
 
 Sir William Browne, when Johnson had repeated these 
 lines to him with an air of triumph, made, if we may 
 trust Mdme. Piozzi, the famous epigram in answer on the 
 spur of the moment — 
 
 The King to Oxford sent his troop of horse 
 For Tories own no argument but force ; 
 With equal care to Cambridge books he sent, 
 For Whigs allow no force but argument. 
 
 It was not, however, a troop of horse, but a regiment of 
 foot soldiers that on this occasion was quartered in 
 Oxford. The peace was not disturbed till October 30 in 
 the following year (17 16). It was the Prince of Wales's
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 65 
 
 birthday, but, learned though the University was in dates 
 generally, of that one date it was in profound ignorance. 
 No less ignorant was the Mayor. Not a bell was rung 
 in honour of the day. Major d'Offrainville, who was in 
 command of the regiment, could not contain his indigna- 
 tion. He came into a coffee-house cursing and swearing, 
 and said that not a bell had stirred t'.:at morning. A 
 Bachelor of Arts of Brasenose College, who happened to 
 be present, turned to his companion and innocently asked 
 what day it was. 'It was the Prince's birthday,' the 
 Major answered, 'and it was the disaffection of the 
 governors, who were a pack of villains, which occasioned 
 the bells not ringing.' ' Why,' asked the simple Bachelor, 
 'did not the Merton bells ring? No one could think 
 that Merton, the stronghold of the Constitution Club, was 
 disaffected.' ' No,' said the Major ; ' that was a good, 
 honest college.' He went on swearing, and said over and 
 over again that he would send soldiers at night to break 
 the windows of the colleges. This hov/ever the Major 
 afterwards denied. He admitted that he had said that the 
 colleges deserved to have their windows broken, but he 
 had never said that he would send soldiers to break them. 
 The same day he met one of the magistrates of the town, 
 and told him that the townspeople deserved to have their 
 windows broken also. At five o'clock in the afternoon, 
 
 F
 
 66 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 when it must have been growing dark,' the Major drew up 
 his regiment all along High Street, from the Conduit that 
 at that time stood before Carfax Church, to the East 
 Gate by Magdalen College. The mob cried out ' Down 
 with the Roundheads.' The Major, hearing the cry, 
 turned his horse about, and seeing ' some one who had 
 on the habit of a clergyman told him he was the rogue, 
 and that if he could get at him he would break his head, 
 or any disaffected person's head, as soon as he would a 
 dog's, or words to that effect' (the Major's own evidence). 
 The soldiers discharged their three rounds in honour of 
 the day, the colours were lodged, and the regiment was 
 dismissed. The officers, with some honest gentlemen of 
 the Constitution Club, went to the Star Inn to finish up 
 the day with a dinner. A bonfire had been made in front 
 of the inn, by the Major's orders. After dinner, they all 
 went out into the street, and round the fire drank healths 
 to His Majesty, the Prince of Wales and the Royal 
 Family, and to the pious memory of WiUiam lU. 
 
 It must have been a strange sight in the Corn-market 
 — North Street as it was then called — that November 
 night. The blazing bonfire, with the soldiers standing 
 round it glass in hand, drinking their loyal toasts ; in the 
 background, a crowd of sullen townsmen and gownsmen, 
 ' October 30, Old Style, is the same as" November 11, New Style,
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 67 
 
 bent on mischief. No sooner had the officers gone back 
 into their inn than a volley of stones shattered the 
 windows. The soldiers who were in the crowd below, 
 and had no doubt joined in the loyal and pious toasts, at 
 once broke the windows of a Jacobite ironmonger on the 
 other side of the street. The inn was a second time 
 attacked by the mob, and the soldiers then began to 
 break the windows of all the houses that were not illumi- 
 nated. The Major went down into the street and ordered 
 his men to drive away all the Jacobites. Mr. Wilson, a 
 cutler, prayed that he might be allowed to stay, for he 
 was an honest man, and had been so in the worst of 
 times, whereupon the Major made him drink two or three 
 glasses to His Majesty's health. He asked the cutler if 
 there were many such men as he in the town. There 
 were a few of them, he answered, and pointing towards a 
 mercer, he said ' that is a man that suffered much in the 
 bad times,' and then towards a barber's shop, 'that is 
 another.' The Vice- Chancellor, attended by a man 
 bearing a lanthorn and candle, came up to help to keep 
 the peace. But the soldiers went up to the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor and asked him if he carried any fire-arms, and 
 continued whooping and hallooing, and one of them 
 struck the lanthorn with a great stick, and beat out the 
 candle.
 
 68 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 The account that the soldiers gave differed not a 
 Httle. A shot had been fired at them out of a window 
 of St. John's College, and soon after, up came the Vice- 
 Chancellor and several of the gownsmen. The soldiers 
 asked why they fired at them thus ; whereupon one of 
 them answered, ' we can fire for the king as well as you.' 
 In another part of the town the mob seized one of the 
 patrol, who thereupon fired his piece and shot the Mayor's 
 mace-bearer through the hat. One man swore that he 
 had heard the gentlemen of the Constitution Club halloo- 
 ing out of the windows, and crying out, A Maflborongh, 
 a MarIbo7-ough, while those in the street cried out, 
 Ormond.^ 
 
 During the debate on the Mutiny Bill in the following 
 spring, a peer complained of the conduct of the soldiery 
 at Oxford during this riot. An address was moved to 
 the Crown that all papers relating to that affair should be 
 laid before the House. ' A great debate ensued.' The 
 House voted by 65 to 33 that the Heads of the Univer- 
 sity and the Mayor were in fault, and that the conduct of 
 the Major seemed well justified. 
 
 More than thirty years later, on the 23rd of February, 
 
 ' The Duke of Ormond had been Chancellor of the University 
 till his flight from the country the year before, on his impeachment 
 for high treason.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 69 
 
 7747-48, not two years after the battle of Culloden, there 
 was another Jacobite riot in Oxford. It so happened 
 that on the evening of that day one of the Canons of 
 Windsor, the Rev. R. Blacow, was in Winter's Coffee 
 House in Oxford. He was told that there were in the 
 street at the door of the coffee-house some rioters 
 shouting K — g J— s for ever, Pr — C — s for ever. It 
 is amusing that the loyal Canon cannot bring himself to 
 write such treasonable names in full. There had been 
 that day an entertainment in Balliol College, a very hot- 
 bed of Jacobites, to which had been invited among other 
 out-college guests, Mr. Dawes, Mr. Whitmore, and Mr. 
 Luxmoore. No doubt many a toast had been drunk to 
 the king over the water. The guests, as soon as they 
 left Balliol, had begun their treasonable cries. The Canon 
 hurried into the street, and heard the rioters as they went 
 down High Street not only bless King James and Prince 
 Charles, but also d — n K — g G — e. He boldly laid 
 hold of one of them, but his comrades desired him to let 
 him go. Some of them even pulled off their clothes and 
 struck the Canon. They then went down St. Mary Hall 
 Lane, waving their caps and shouting the most treason- 
 able expressions, where they met two soldiers. The 
 gownsmen, being seven or eight in number, demanded 
 the soldiers' swords, tore the coat of one of them and
 
 70 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 insisted on both crying King James for ever. The Canon 
 tried to take refuge in Oriel College, for the rioters had 
 now increased to forty in number. Some of them cried, 
 D — n K — g G — e and all his assistants, and cursed the 
 Canon in particular. Mr. Dawes laid hold of him, and 
 then stripping to fight, cried out, ' I am a man who dare 
 say, God bless K — g James ' the Third, and I tell you 
 my name is Dawes of St. Mary Hall. I am a man of an 
 independent fortune, and therefore afraid of no man.' 
 The Proctor came up at that moment and seized Mr. 
 Dawes, who even when in the Proctor's hands shouted. 
 ' G — d bless my dear K — g J — s.' Mr. Luxmoore 
 made his escape, though the Proctor adjured him to stop 
 by the solemn and peremptory command of Siste per 
 fidem.'^ 
 
 The Canon called on the Vice-Chancellor and in- 
 formed him of what he had seen. The Vice-Chancellor 
 said that he was sorry for what had happened, but that 
 nothing could prevent young fellows getting in liquor. 
 He would severely punish them however. They should 
 be delayed a year in taking their degree and they should 
 
 ' The Canon in his narrative, sometimes by forgetfulness, gives 
 the name in full. 
 
 ^ Note by Canon Blacow. Expulsion is due by statute for 
 running off from the Proctor's Siste per fide}}i.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 71 
 
 have an imposition of English to be translated into 
 Latin. The Canon was not satisfied with this and re- 
 quired the Vice-Chancellor as a magistrate to receive his 
 deposition^. The Vice-Chancellor refused. ' In conse- 
 quence of this/ says the Canon, ' the rioters were treated 
 with general respect, and I was, as generally, hissed and 
 insulted.' 
 
 Shortly after the riot the Assizes were held, and the 
 Canon laid an account of what had happened before one 
 of the judges. The judge said that he was to dine that 
 afternoon with the Vice-Chancellor and he would talk 
 the matter over with him. The same evening he told 
 the Canon that he had desired the Vice-Chancellor to 
 take the depositions and have the rioters brought before 
 the Grand Jury at once. Nothing, however, was done. 
 News of the riot had, however, reached the Court and 
 messengers were sent down to arrest the three chief 
 rioters. They were brought before the Court of King's 
 Bench on May 6th for drinking the Pretender's health and 
 other disorders, and were admitted to bail. They were 
 tried in the following November. Luxmoore, after an 
 eight-hours' trial, was acquitted. Whitmore and Dawes 
 were found guilty and were sentenced ' To be fined five 
 nobles ' each ; to suffer two years' imprisonment in the 
 
 ' A noble is equal to ds, Zd,
 
 72 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 King's Bench Prison, and to find securities for their good 
 behaviour for seven years, themselves bound in ;^5oo 
 each, and their sureties in ^^250 each ; and to walk imme- 
 diately round Westminster Hall with a libel affixed to 
 their foreheads denoting their crime and sentence, and 
 to ask pardon of the several courts.' The whole sentence 
 was strictly carried out. Steps were taken to put the 
 Vice-Chancellor himself on his trial for refusing to re- 
 ceive the depositions, but the matter was allowed to 
 drop. 
 
 It was only a year before this that the University had 
 presented a loyal address to the King on the suppression 
 ' of the most wicked rebellion in favour of a popish 
 pretender,' and had expressed a modest hope that ' the 
 zealous loyalty of the clergy of the Church of England, 
 whose education in part was our care, had its weight 
 on this important occasion.' 
 
 The year after the riot Dr. King, the Principal of St. 
 Mary Hall, * the idol of the Jacobites,' delivered amidst 
 the greatest applause a violent Jacobite speech at the 
 opening of the Radcliffe Library. This speech made a 
 great stir at the time, and even twenty years later John 
 Wilkes, in a letter to the editor of the ' Political Register,' 
 wrote, ' Methinks, Sir, I still hear the seditious shouts of 
 ^plause given to the pestilent harangues of the late Dr.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 73 
 
 King when he viHfied our great deliverer, the Duke of 
 Cumberland, and repeated with such energy the treason- 
 able redeat' With scarce an attempt at disguise he had, 
 in a series of eloquent sentences, each of which began 
 with Redeat, prayed for the return of the Pretender. The 
 great Hero of Culloden, the Darling of the people, as he 
 was styled, he had, indeed, treated with the greatest 
 contempt. 
 
 ' Learned men,' he said, ' we may acknowledge to be 
 the pride of their age, the ornament of mankind, and the 
 most illustrious heroes of the world ; and indeed, always 
 to be preferred to those heroes, foreign ones I mean, for 
 our own as is becoming I always except, who delight in the 
 slaughter of mankind and the destruction of cities, and 
 cruelly contrive the ruin of those they govern as well as 
 of others .... Shall these pretend to be adored by 
 the people ? These expect us Oxonians to adore them, 
 who are inveterate enemies to this celebrated University, 
 whose glory they envy, and to letters themselves which 
 they do not understand?' Dr. King was thinking, no 
 doubt, of the king who cared nothing for ' Bainters and 
 Boets.' ' He who was the first author of moulding an 
 earthen vessel used for the vilest purposes, or of weaving 
 a wicker basket, that man has deserved more from all 
 nations than all the generals (except those who fought
 
 74 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 for their country like ours, whom on that account I 
 distinguish) — I say than all the generals, emperors, nay 
 conquerors, that now are or ever have been.' 
 
 He ends by praising 'our glorious Vice- Chancellor, 
 whom they had accused ' only last year at Westminster. 
 A few years later Dr. King made another great speech at 
 Oxford, at which Johnson in his Master's gown, that at 
 his first coming was so new and handsome, clapped his 
 hands till they were sore. 
 
 It was Dr. King who with his own hands delivered to 
 Johnson his diploma of Master of Arts. Johnson, in his 
 letter of thanks to the Vice-Chancellor, wrote : 'Ingratus 
 (mihi videar) nisi comitatem qua vir eximius mihi vestri 
 testimonium amoris in manus tradidit, agnoscam et 
 laudem.' Dr. King has left it on record that Johnson 
 was one of the three ' men whom he had known in his 
 long life, ' who spoke English with that elegance and 
 propriety, that if all they said had been immediately 
 coihmitted to writing, any judge of the English language 
 would have pronounced it an excellent and very beauti- 
 ful style.' 
 
 ' The other two were Atterbury, the exiled Bishop of Rochester, 
 and Dr. Gower, Provost of Worcester College. Lord Chesterfield 
 moreover says that ' Lord Bolingbroke's most famil'ar conversa- 
 tions, if taken down in writing, would bear the press without the 
 least correction either as to method or style.'
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 75 
 
 Oxford for many a year stood as steadily by every- 
 thing that was old as it had stood by the Jacobite's 
 falling cause. The age, as Johnson said, was running 
 mad after innovation. There was little fear lest Oxford 
 should run. It had long ceased even to move. Yet 
 it is strange that it was in Oxford of all places that 
 the great Methodist movement began. Scarcely less 
 strange is it that it was a student of Oxford, who by his 
 ' Wealth of Nations ' wrought a far greater change in the 
 world's history than even Methodism with its host of 
 preachers. 
 
 The University, as I have shown, did little as a body 
 to encourage learning, still less to restrain idleness. The 
 greater part of the Professors had for many years given 
 up altogether even the pretence of teaching. They had 
 nothing to gain by teaching, as Adam Smith pointed out, 
 for they were secure in the enjoyment of a fixed stipend 
 without the necessity of labour or the apprehension of 
 control. There were, indeed, a few brilliant exceptions. 
 Lowth by his lectures on the Poetry of the Hebrews, 
 and Blackstone by his lectures on the English Constitution 
 and Laws, did something to redeem the University from 
 the reproach that had fallen on her. Lowth was proud 
 of his University, and when Warburton reproached him 
 with his education there, burst out into eloquent praise
 
 76 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 of his Ahna Mater. * I was educated in the University 
 of Oxford. I enjoyed all the advantages, both public and 
 private, which that famous seat of learning so largely 
 affords. I spent many years in that illustrious society, 
 in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and studies, 
 and in the agreeable and improving commerce of gentle- 
 men and of scholars ; in a society where emulation 
 without envy, ambition without jealousy, contention 
 without animosity, incited industry and awakened genius ; 
 where a liberal pursuit of knowledge and a genuine 
 freedom of thought was raised, encouraged, and pushed 
 forward by example, by commendation, and by authority.' 
 Lowth was Professor of Poetry, and must have had 
 not a little of the poet's fancy himself At least we of 
 the present age are bound to think so, who hold that it 
 is a law of nature that where there are no examinations, 
 much more where there are no competitive examinations, 
 there learning cannot flourish. And yet Adam Smith 
 must have studied hard in the seven years he spent at 
 Balliol, for, to quote Dugald Stewart's words, ' How 
 intimately he had once been conversant with the works 
 of the Roman, Greek, French, and Italian poets appeared 
 sufficiently from the hold which they kept of his memory, 
 after all the different occupations and enquiries in which 
 his maturer faculties had been employed.'
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 77 
 
 Blackstone, who was at Pembroke College only a few 
 years after Johnson left, ' prosecuted his studies/ his 
 biographer tells us, ' with unremitting ardour, and 
 although the classics, and particularly the Greek and 
 Roman poets, were his favourites, they did not entirely 
 engross his attention. Logic, mathematics, and the other 
 sciences were not neglected.' Wesley too studied hard ; 
 and when he was Greek lecturer and moderator of the 
 classes at Lincoln College, presided over six disputations 
 in a week. ' However the students may have profited by 
 them, they were of singular use to the moderator.' 
 
 Johnson, in one of his ' Idlers,' speaks of the ' one 
 very powerful incentive to learning ' to be found at either 
 of the Universities — ' the genius of the place. It is a 
 sort of inspiring deity, which every youth of quick sen- 
 sibility and ingenuous disposition creates to himself, by 
 reflecting that he is placed under those venerable walls 
 where a Hooker and a Hammond, a Bacon and a Newton, 
 once pursued the same course of science, and from 
 whence they soared to the most elevated heights of 
 literary fame.' He extols, ' the conveniences and oppor- 
 tunities for study which still subsist in them, more than 
 in any other place.' Yet his utterance is uncertain. 
 When he writes that ' the number of learned persons n\ 
 these celebrated seats is still considerable,' he shows that
 
 78 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 he looked back to a golden age of learning as well as of 
 loyalty. 
 
 This number of the ' Idler ' was written but five 
 years after Gibbon had found the potations of the Fellows 
 of his College so dull and deep and seductive, and his 
 tutors and the Vice-Chancellor so forgetful of his religious 
 training. Yet Johnson says, ' English Universities render 
 their students virtuous, at least by excluding all oppor- 
 tunities of vice ; and by teaching them the principles 
 of the Church of England, confirm them in those of 
 true Christianity.' 
 
 A letter in the Bodleian Library, entitled ' Advice to 
 a Young Student, by a Tutor,' shows that not all tutors 
 were like the tutors of Magdalen. This letter was pub- 
 lished in 1755, but it had been written thirty years earlier, 
 shortly before Johnson entered. The scheme of studies 
 it presents is not therefore merely the scheme of a young 
 man with his Master's gown still fresh, whose require- 
 ments are as high as his acquirements are small. It is 
 the scheme drawn up, indeed, by a tutor in his youth, 
 but confirmed by the experience of many years. 
 ' Studies,' he says, ' should be of three kinds. Philo- 
 sophy, classical learning, and divinity. The mornings 
 and evenings are to be set apart for philosophy ; the 
 afternoons for classics ; while the Sundays and Church
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 79 
 
 holidays are to be given to divinity.' He arranges a 
 course of study for four years, and divides every year 
 into periods of two months. He takes no notice of 
 vacations, as if it were a matter of course that the 
 student should remain at Oxford from the day he matri- 
 culates till the day he takes his degree. The whole 
 scheme is so curious that I shall not hesitate to copy it, 
 not giving, however, the list of the books on divinity. 
 Johnson once distinguished between the learning of two 
 different men. One had learning enough for a parson ; 
 the other had learning enough not to disgrace a bishop. 
 If the young student read all the books on divinity that 
 his tutor enjoined, he would, I should have thought, have 
 had learning enough not to disgrace even an archbishop. 
 The following is the scheme of his studies in philosophy 
 and the classics. 
 
 BOOKS TO BE READ. 
 
 First Year. 
 
 Philosophical. Classical. 
 
 Jan. ] 
 and h Wingate's ' Arithmetic ' . Terence. 
 Feb. ) 
 
 ^"""^^^li:- vj ( ' Xenophontis Cyri 
 
 and \ Euclid . . . . ^ ; . 
 April J ^ Institutio.' 
 
 ^'^^^A 1 AH7 n- » < T • . ( TuHy's ' Epistles.' 
 
 and r Walhs's ' Logic ' . •• , , 
 June ) ^ f 'haedrus' ' Fables.'
 
 8o DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Philosophical. Classical. 
 
 Tjjj N / Lucian's ' Select Dia- 
 
 and [ Euclid . . . .\ logues.' 
 
 Aug. ) ( Theophrastus. 
 
 ^^^^' ^ c i„,^„'. fr-^^^^..^!,,,' (Justin. 
 Oct 
 
 and r Salmon's ' Geography ' .- ^, 
 
 j a r J ^ Nepos. 
 
 Nov. ] , 
 
 and r Keil's ' Trigonometria ' . Dionysius' ' Geography.' 
 Dec. i ^ 
 
 Second Year. 
 
 T^j^ [Harris' ' Astronomical "| Cambray 'On Elo- 
 and \ Dialogues ' . . . r quence.' 
 ^^^- i Keil's 'Astronomy ' J Vossius' ' Rhetoric' 
 
 / Locke's ' Human Under- 
 
 March standing' 
 
 and J .'' ,^,; .• -Tully's' Orations.' 
 April Simpson s ' Come bec- 
 
 \ tions ' . 
 
 ^^^y I Milnes' ' Sectiones Co- r Isocrates. 
 Tune I nicae'. . . .( Demosthenes. 
 
 July ] / Csesar. 
 
 and \ Keil's ' Intioduction ' . ^ „ 
 Aug. ) ^ Sallust. 
 
 Sept. I cheyne's ' Philosophical r Hesiod. 
 Q^^ j Principles ' , . . j Theocritus. 
 
 Nov. I Bartholin's ' Physics ' . j Ovid's ' Fasti.' 
 Qgj, j Rohaulti's „ ( Virgil's ' Eclogues.'
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 
 
 Third Year. 
 
 Philosophical. Classical. 
 
 Jan. 1 
 and ^ Burnet's * Theory ' . . Homeri ' Ilias.' 
 Feb. J 
 
 ^^'^'^^ I .,n-- , .^u , f Virgil's ' Georgics.' 
 and KVhiston's ' Theory ' . " ^, 
 
 April J i " '^neid. 
 
 May ] Wells' ' Chronology ' . ) „ , , 
 and r T, . , , \ Sophocles. 
 
 June J Bevendge's „ . .) 
 
 Tyjy [ ' Ethices Compendium.'! 
 and \ Puffendorf' s ' Law of [• Horace. 
 Aug. ( Nature' . . .) 
 
 ^ept- ] Puffendorf . . .) ^ . ., 
 and \ ^ . , , - Ti 11- , r Euripides. 
 Q(,j. j Grotius ' de Jure Belli ' . ) 
 
 Nov. I Puffendorf . . . j Juvenal. 
 Dec 1 Grotius . . . . j Persius. 
 
 Fourth Year. 
 
 Jan. \ Hutcheson's 'Metaphy-) ^, 
 and " . , - Thucydides. 
 
 Feb. j sics' . . . .) 
 
 March ] 
 
 and r Newton's ' Optics'. . „ 
 
 April j 
 
 May ] 
 
 and [ )j J7 • • Livy. 
 
 June ) 
 
 July \ 
 and \ Gregory's ' Astronomy ' . „ 
 
 Aug. )
 
 82 DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 Philosophical. Classical. 
 
 Sept. ] 
 and \ Gregory's 'Astronomy'. Diogenes Laertius. 
 
 Cicero's ' Philosophical 
 
 Oct. 
 Nov. 
 
 Dec. ) ^ Works. 
 
 The student is not to neglect English writers 
 altogether. He is recommended ' to read the best 
 authors, such as Temple, Collier, the " Spectator," and 
 the other writings of Addison.' 
 
 It is strange that no book of Plato or Aristotle is to 
 be found in this scheme. They are to be read in his 
 fifth year, after he has taken his Bachelor's degree. 
 Among the authors mentioned is Puffendorf. That he 
 was at this time regularly read at Oxford is shown by a 
 passage in one of Richard West's letters to the poet 
 Gray. ' Adieu ! ' he says, ' I am going to my tutor's 
 lectures on one Puffendorf, a very jurisprudent author 
 as you shall read on a summer's day.' 
 
 West does not rate Oxford learning very highly. He 
 had lately entered Christ Church. ' Consider me,' he 
 writes, 'very seriously here in a strange country, in- 
 habited by things that call themselves Doctors and 
 Masters of Arts ; a country flowing with syllogisms and 
 ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown.' It 
 was in the year 1735 that he thus wrote.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 83 
 
 We may wonder if Mr. Bateman were still a tutor 
 there, whom five years before Johnson on enquiry found 
 to be the tutor of highest reputation in all the University. 
 It was his lectures, if we can trust the story, that he used 
 to get second-hand from his friend Taylor till the Christ 
 Church men mocked at his worn-out shoes. 
 
 That young men, and young men of fashion, could 
 respect learning even when they were not forced to pass 
 examinations, is shown by an anecdote Horace Walpole 
 told in his old age. He was at Cambridge with Gray 
 from "1735 to 1738. He attended bHnd Professor 
 Sanderson's mathematical lectures till the Professor 
 honestly said to him, ' Young man, it would be cheating 
 you to take your money; for you never can learn what I am 
 trying to teach you.' ' I was exceedingly mortified,' said 
 Walpole, ' and cried ; for being a Prime Minister's son, 
 I had firmly believed all the flattery with which I had 
 been assured that my parts were capable of anything. I 
 paid a private instructor for a year ; but at the year's end 
 was forced to own Sanderson had been in the right.' 
 
 While many a student of these old days worked with 
 far greater benefit to himself and with far better results 
 than if he had been teased with a system of examinations, 
 yet it cannot be doubted that the average of work done 
 must have been far below the average of the present day.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 The University, as I have shown, exercised no control 
 over the college, and the degree was given as a matter of 
 course when an undergraduate had resided his sixteen 
 terms. Thirteen weeks residence in each year was all 
 that was insisted on, and in the first and last of the four 
 years even this short period might be cut down. 
 
 It is clear that at the time when the six Methodists 
 were expelled the examination was a mere farce. Had 
 there been any real examination to be undergone the 
 danger to the Church would have been averted, for men 
 so ignorant could never have taken their degree, and 
 so could never have been ordained. Mr. Blatch, the 
 gentleman of fortune, who had had no school learning, 
 was allowed to stay on, because he had no intention of 
 taking holy orders when he had finished his University 
 course. That he would take his degree at the end of 
 his four years there seemed to be no manner of doubt. 
 
 A curious book entitled ' The Ancient and Present 
 State of the University of Oxford,' by Doctor John 
 Ayliffe, Fellow of New College, published in the year 
 1723, shows what was required by the statutes for each 
 degree. For the degree of Bachelor of Arts a student 
 had first diligently to attend all public lectures. How he 
 was to do this when the Professors had ceased to lecture, 
 is nowhere stated. He had besides ' to do the other
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 85 
 
 statutable exercise, such as Generals, Juraments, Answer- 
 ing under Bachelor, &c.' 
 
 Generals are disputations on three logical questions, 
 from one o'clock in the afternoon till three. This exercise 
 could not be performed till the end of the third year of 
 residence. After the student had performed this exercise 
 he was created General or Senior Sophist. When a scholar 
 was created Senior Sophist, the Master of the Schools, 
 ascending the rostrum, made a sliort speech to him in 
 praise of Aristotle's Logic and exhorted him to the study 
 of good letters, and thereupon delivered Aristotle's Logic 
 into his hands. 
 
 In each of the remaining terms he was obliged to 
 dispute once at least. These disputations were called 
 Juraments, ' from the oath taken at the time of pro- 
 ceeding Bachtlor that he had done all the statutable 
 exercise.' 
 
 Besides this he had ' to answer twice at Lent Deter- 
 minations for an hour and a half under Bachelor .... 
 the respondent sitting opposite to the opponent under 
 the Bachelor's pew.' When he had fulfilled these require- 
 ments he could take his degree. 
 
 For the degree of Master of Arts he had ' to solemnly 
 determine in Lent, to answer at Quodlibet Disputations, 
 to dispute in Austins, speak two Declamations, and read
 
 86 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 six solemn Lectures.' For the management of these 
 Determinations and Disputations certain officers called 
 Collectors were appointed, who were bound ' as soon as 
 admitted to their office to go to their respective Halls and 
 Colleges without any noise or disturbance ; and not to 
 entertain any persons at all with compotations.' 
 
 The Collectors in disposing their classes with a view 
 to the Disputations were bound ' to have special regard to 
 persons of more eminent condition and quality, to place 
 them so as they might have the opportunity of praying a 
 Gracious Day.' On a Gracious Day the Disputations 
 lasted only from nine till eleven, instead of from one till 
 five. 
 
 ' On Ash Wednesday, according to an ancient laudable 
 custom, immediately after the Latin sermon preached to 
 these Determiners there is a bell rings out.' The Deans 
 of the Colleges with their Bachelors thereupon went to 
 ' the Schools.' Three questions in Natural Pliilosophy 
 were propounded for a discussion between the Dean of 
 each College and each of his Bachelors. But the 
 Bachelor apparently was allowed to answer by deputy, for 
 when a Syllogism Avas propounded to him ' he thereupon 
 prayed his Aristotle (for so is the senior responding 
 bachelor called) ' to answer for him. These Disputations 
 lasted from one o'clock till five, ' when the first Determiner
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 87 
 
 in each School in the name of the rest surrounding, on 
 his bended knees ought to return thanks to the Dean and 
 the Aristotles under a certain form of words.' 
 
 These were followed by Disputations on logical ques- 
 tions, which the Bachelors were obliged to defend accord- 
 ing to their great master Aristotle. In Rhetoric, Politics, 
 and Moral Philosophy everyone was likewise bound to 
 defend Aristotle and the whole doctrine of the Peripatetics, 
 under pain that his answer shall not be X-^ktrs. pro forma, 
 and that he shall be mulcted five shillings Mies quoties. 
 
 All the Bachelors had to attend service at St. Mary's 
 on the vigil of Palm Sunday, when 'after the end of 
 prayers the junior Proctor makes a speech, rebuking all 
 errors committed in point of learning during the Lent, 
 as well as offences against good manners, especially 
 tumults, brawlings, and fightings if any shall have hap- 
 pened.' They had next each to read six solemn lectures 
 in public without borrowing or transcribing from authors, 
 but purely of their own composition, and each of these 
 lectures was to last above half an hour. 
 
 They had moreover to go 'a circuiting.' Mr. Erasmus 
 Philipps records in his diary : ' April 4. Went a circuit- 
 ing with Mr. Collins of our College. This is an exercise 
 previous to a Master's Degree.' A man was said to go a 
 circuiting when clothed in his proper habit and following
 
 88 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 his Dean, bareheaded, with the bedels (or one of them 
 at least) going before him he waited upon the Vice- 
 Chancellor and the Proctors to supplicate their presence 
 at a Congregation the next day that he might be presented 
 for his degree. It was required that the Vice-Chancellor 
 and Proctors should be waited upon on the same day and 
 before the sun set. 
 
 They had lastly to dispute on three questions at the 
 next Act or Commemoration as it is now called. Not 
 every Commemoration was in those days a Public Com- 
 memoration. 
 
 'These academical jubilees,' writes Colley Cibber, 
 ' have usually been looked upon as a kind of congratula- 
 tory compliment to the accession of every new Prince to 
 the throne.' They had been more frequently held, how- 
 ever, after the Restoration, though, owing as he thinks to 
 the dissensions of Whigs and Tories, they had again 
 become uncommon. 
 
 A company of actors often went down to Oxford on 
 such occasions, and Dryden wrote several of his pro- 
 logues for the plays that were then performed. The 
 comedians generally acted twice a day. Once quite early 
 in the morning so that the play might be over before the 
 hour of dinner, and once in the afternoon in time for the 
 scholars to get back to their colleges before the great bell
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 89 
 
 of Christ Church rang at nine o'clock for the gates to be 
 shut. The actors found a more highly cultivated audience 
 at Oxford than at London. ' A great deal of that false 
 flashy wit and forced humour, which had been the delight 
 of our MetropoHtan multitude was only rated there at its 
 bare intrinsic value.' Shakespeare and Jonson were now 
 reverenced in Oxford as Aristotle once had been. Addi- 
 son alone among the play-writers of the day was allowed 
 to have any merit. Thrice was ' Cato ' acted during the 
 Commemoration of 1712, and each time before a crowded 
 house. 
 
 A great change has, indeed, come over Oxford. 
 Plays are no longer acted during the great summer fes- 
 tival. But the undergraduate who once despised the 
 false, flashy wit and forced humour of the hired actor, has 
 now turned buffoon himself The students who cannot 
 for one short hour restrain their folly while strangers, 
 men of worth and learning, are having honour done 
 to them by the most venerable of Universities, would 
 not have thronged to see ' Cato ' acted, written 
 though it was by one of the most illustrious of the 
 sons of Oxford. 
 
 The Commemoration of old was not altogether free 
 from scurrility. It suffered under but one buffoon, and 
 that a licensed buff'oon. 'An impudent fellow,' says
 
 90 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Ayliffe, ' of no reputation in himself, called a " Terrae- 
 Filius," was allowed to sport anrl play with the reputation 
 of others. This manner of sportive wit,' he adds, ' had 
 its first original at the time of the Reformation, when the 
 gross absurdities and superstitions of the Roman Church 
 were to be exposed.' It was no small gain, however, 
 that the Terrae-FiUus, whose opponent was one of the 
 pro-Proctors, had to carry on the disputation in Latin. 
 
 In the year 1733 a grand public Act was held.* 
 Hearne commended the Vice-Chancellor ' for reviving 
 our Acts ' and for excluding the players. But the old 
 Jacobite was indignant that 'one Handel, a foreigner,' 
 was allowed to come with ' his lousy crew — a great num- 
 ber of foreign fiddlers.' Whether Hearne hated them as 
 fiddlers or as Germans is not clear. Perhaps he hated 
 them as both. More than one account is preserved of 
 this Commemoration. 
 
 At the Act, whether it was public or was private, 
 those who took the higher degrees, whether Masters or 
 Doctors — inceptors as they were called — had, as I have 
 said, to perform their final exercises. On the previous 
 Saturday, ' in their Act habits, the bedels going before 
 them, they went into all the schools, and by a bedel of 
 each faculty gave an invitation in Latin to the several 
 ' See page 42.
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 91 
 
 readers to be present at the performance of their exer- 
 cise. They craved, moreover, a benediction of their 
 professors, which they gave accordingly.' Perhaps the 
 benedictions went some way to make up for the lectures 
 which the professors had left off giving. The disputa- 
 tions were carried on in the schools and in the Shel- 
 donian Theatre the following Monday. On that day the 
 Vice-Chancellor, accompanied by the heads of houses, 
 the doctors in their boots and robes, and the other mem- 
 bers of the University properly habited, repaired to the 
 theatre, where was a vast concourse of nobility and other 
 persons of distinction of both sexes. There were eighty- 
 four Masters of Arts created. There were besides nine 
 Inceptors in Theology, six in Medicine, two in Law, 
 and one in Philosophy. These had each to discuss three 
 questions against an opponent. The opponents in 
 divinity were mostly the heads of houses. In theolog>- 
 alone, therefore, on that Monday afternoon twenty-seven 
 questions had to be discussed. It is not surprising that 
 in this faculty the disputation lasted from one o'clock till 
 between six and seven. In the other faculties it was 
 finished by five. The following are examples of the 
 questions : — 
 
 *An tota Christiana fides contineatur in hac sim- 
 plici propositione, Jesum esse Messiam ? '
 
 92 DR, JOHNSON. 
 
 *An purgatio conveniat in secunda variolarum febre? ' 
 
 *An ex praesumptionibus de crimine quis sit condem- 
 nandus ? ' 
 
 ' An entium spiritualium proprietates concipiantur 
 analogice ? ' 
 
 The eighty-four inceptors in Arts had to dispute on 
 three philosophical questions ; but, happily for the 
 audience, one of these inceptors was appointed as 
 respondent for all. At this grand Commemoration of 
 1733 the Terrae-Filius, though he appeared in his 
 character, was not allowed to open his mouth. It were 
 greatly to be wished that the modern Terrae-Filius, with 
 his hundred mouths, could be silenced whenever it was 
 thought that buffoonery would be out of place. 
 
 It is worth noticing, as a proof of the favour shown 
 to rank, that of the thirty-five students who took part in 
 the ' Philological Exercises,' eleven were sons of men of 
 title. If those who had thus the honour of reciting in 
 public were fairly chosen. Savage must have been 
 singularly unjust when, about this time, he wrote his 
 celebrated line : 
 
 Some tenth transmitter of a foolish face. 
 
 A great crowd of country people had come to see this 
 unusual sight. On common occasions they were welcome
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 93 
 
 enough, but this year the crowd was so great that the 
 gownsmen took it ill. ' They contrived/ said an eye- 
 witness, 'so to place themselves, that as soon as the 
 " Hem ! " was given, the country people were set a-going 
 in such a manner, that they trundled one another into 
 the court whilst you could say " Bob Fergeson." ' In 
 what age, we may ask, did Jack Robinson begin to 
 flourish? In the evening the Chevalier Handel, 'as 
 some of the company had been but very scramblingly 
 entertained at the disputations, tried how a little fiddling 
 would sit upon them,' and gave a performance of his 
 ' Esther.' 
 
 In each college a sumptuous and elegant supper — 
 called the Act Supper — at the equal expense of all the 
 inceptors, was given for the entertainment of the 
 Doctors. 
 
 The next morning, all the inceptors being waited 
 upon by the bedels, met at St. Mary's, and after the 
 Litany was over, the bedels still waiting upon them, 
 humbly and reverently presented their offerings at the 
 altar. 
 
 There were then fresh disputations in the theatre. 
 The first among the inceptor Masters had a book given 
 him by the Senior Proctor — the Father of the Comitia, 
 as he was styled ; and was then by him created a Master
 
 94 DR- JOHNSON. 
 
 by a kiss and by putting on his cap. Next the Regius 
 Professor of Divinity addressed the inceptor Doctors. 
 ' When he came to that part which related to their boots, 
 it was incumbent upon the Proctors to see that he 
 examined whether they had their boots on. By which is 
 intimated, some say, that they should be always ready for 
 the discharge of every part of their duty ; others say that 
 the superior inceptors were allowed to wear upon this 
 festivity that which they are forbidden by statute to wear 
 generally, as too proud a fashion for the University.' 
 From Ayliffe we learn that in the congregation which 
 was held immediately after the Act, ' at the supplication 
 of the Doctors and Masters newly created, they are wont 
 to dispense with the wearing of boots and slop shoes, to 
 which the Doctors and Masters of the Act are obliged 
 during the Comitia.' When the Proctors were satisfied 
 that the Regius Professor of Divinity had properly ex- 
 amined whether the Doctors had their boots on, and 
 when the degrees had been all conferred, Handel gave a 
 performance of his new opera 'Athalia' before an 
 audience of 3,700 persons. 
 
 On the last day of the Commemoration, Father 
 Courayer, who had fled from France about seven years 
 before on account of a book he had written in defence of 
 the English ordination, returned thanks in his robes to
 
 OXFORD IN JOHNSON'S TIME. 95 
 
 the University for the honour it had done him two years 
 before in presenting him with his degree. 
 
 Such was the Grand Public Act, or Commemoration, 
 of 1733. Johnson, no doubt, had witnessed one Act if 
 not more, and had seen the solemn procession of Heads 
 of Houses and Doctors, and had listened to the disputations 
 of the inceptors in each of the faculties. No Handel 
 had come in his time, however, nor had one come would 
 Johnson have cared to hear him. He knew no difference 
 between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. 
 
 There is one other scene at which it is likely that 
 Johnson was at times an attentive listener. The students 
 in those days were privileged to attend the assize courts, 
 and largely availed themselves of their privilege. Their 
 conduct there was anything but seemly. 
 
 In most country courts in those days there was, if we 
 may trust Lovell Edgeworth, not a litde noise and confu- 
 sion. At Oxford the din and interruption vi^ere beyond 
 anything he had ever witnessed. The young men were 
 not in the least solicitous to preserve decorum, and the 
 judges were unwilling to be severe upon the students. 
 
 Edgeworth says that he was present at a trial for 
 felony, when the foreman of the jury, who had not heard 
 the evidence or the summing up, asked him what verdict 
 he should give. The young student at once stood up to
 
 96 DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 inform the Judge. 'Sit down, sir,' said the Judge. 
 Edgeworth begged to be heard. The Judge grew angry, 
 and told him that his gown should not protect him. 
 Edgeworth persisted, and the Judge ordered the sheriff to 
 remove hin.. At last he made the Judge hear him, and 
 ' at once received an apology and a few words of strong 
 approbation.' 
 
 I have done my best to bring before my readers 
 Oxford as it was when the rolls of Pembroke College first 
 received the name of Samuel Johnson. I have, I hope, 
 thrown some light also on the University as it was in 
 later years, when the scholar who had been driven forth 
 by poverty and neglect would now have been a welcome 
 and an honoured guest in any of its colleges. It is but 
 little that has been handed down to us of the incidents of 
 his undergraduate days, and to that little I have not been 
 able to add anything. All that was left to me to do was 
 to give a picture of the general life of the students in his 
 time. I have tried to show what were the habits, the 
 feeUngs, and the tone of thought which, at an age when 
 the character is most strongly affected for good or for 
 evil, were brought to bear on this poor scholar, the story 
 of whose life is, in the words of Lord Macaulay, 'likely 
 to be read as long as the English exists either as a living 
 or a dead language.'
 
 LORD MAC AULA Y ON JOHNSON. 97 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON.' 
 
 Johnson's character must have had a singular interest for 
 Macaulay, as he has twice described it. The vigorous 
 sketch that he dashed off in the days of his youth for the 
 pages of the ' Edinburgh Review ' is doubtless more 
 widely known than the life that he wrote with such 
 exquisite skill when he was now in the fulness of his 
 powers. In the essay we seem to look upon the picture 
 of a Tory painted by a Whig. In the life we have the 
 portrait of one great man drawn by another great man. 
 Even here there are great blemishes and great exaggera- 
 tions. But, taken as a whole, it is an admirable piece of 
 workmanship. In it Macaulay silently retracts not a few 
 of the gross statements he had made in his earlier writing 
 He no longer holds that 'as soon as Johnson took his 
 
 ' In writing this chapter I have made use of articles contributed 
 by me to the Times, September 19, 1874, and the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, February 17, 1875.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 pen in his hand to write for the pubUc his style became 
 systematically vicious.' He no longer sneers at 'his con- 
 stant practice of padding out a sentence with useless 
 epithets till it became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite.' 
 He can now see the beauty and the power of his writings. 
 He thus describes his ' Life of Savage.' ' The little work, 
 with all its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer specimen 
 of literary biography existed in any language living or 
 dead ; and a discerning critic might have confidently pre- 
 dicted that the author was destined to be the founder of 
 a new school of English eloquence.' 
 
 It is a pity that Macaulay had not the justice more 
 openly to own his error. His Essays are read in 
 every quarter of the world. They have been sold by 
 thousands and tens of thousands, and wherever they are 
 read there a grievous wrong is done to the memory of 
 Johnson. We remember how the old man, when he was 
 ill, begged Miss Burney ' to stand by him and support 
 him, and not hear him abused when he was no more and 
 could not defend himself 
 
 Few people have memory enough, or judgment 
 enough if they have the memory, to compare different 
 accounts of the same man. However inconsistent the 
 accounts may be, they accept both as true, and remember 
 in each that only which best fixes itself in the memory.
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 99 
 
 It may seem almost a hopeless matter to struggle against 
 Macaulay's powerful mind and brilliant style. ' There is 
 no appeal against character,' said Lord Chesterfield. 
 Certainly there is very little hope of appeal against any 
 character Macaulay has drawn. Yet the misstatements of 
 which he is guilty are so gross that, if truth has the power 
 that is commonly assigned to her, she ought to prevail. 
 
 It is doubly important now and then to examine with 
 great minuteness some one or two of the almost countless 
 likenesses that Macaulay has drawn. There is no man 
 living who could follow him in all the width of his 
 reading, and through all the stores of learning displayed 
 by his powerful and ready memory. There are many men 
 who can rival him, and even go beyond him, in the know- 
 ledge of some among the books and men and periods 
 that he has described. Such men can test the accuracy of 
 his workmanship on one point, and can thereby infer how 
 far he is to be trusted in cases where they have not their 
 own previous knowledge by which to judge, but only his 
 statements on which to rely. I have in more than one 
 case followed in his steps with no little labour and care. 
 The result has been that, much as I wonder at his vast 
 and varied gifts, I have, like many others, come to distnist 
 the truthfulness of the characters he has so vigorously 
 drawn. The first thing he aimed at was brilliancy, and to 
 
 H 2
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 brilliancy he was not unwilling to make some sacrifice of 
 truth. A hasty saying which was, perhaps, forgotten by the 
 speaker almost as soon as uttered ; a hasty action, which 
 was quickly regretted and never repeated, are turned by him 
 into the habits of a lifetime. Gibbon has justly censured 
 the historian of the reign of the Emperor Justinian, by 
 whom ' the partial injustice of a moment is dexterously 
 applied as the general maxim of a reign of thirty-two 
 years.' I shall have, in another chapter, to show in the 
 case of Boswell how open Macaulay is to the same 
 kind of censure. I shall now confine myself to his 
 treatment of Johnson. I should weary my readers' atten- 
 tion if I were to point out all the errors into which he has 
 fallen, and all the misstatements which he has made. I 
 shall content myself with examining some — but only some 
 — of those which are of the most importance. I shall 
 try, moreover, to show one side of Johnson's character, 
 which, neither in Macaulay nor in any other of his bio- 
 graphers, is seen with any fulness, and I shall end by 
 attempting to prove that Johnson was a far happier man 
 than is commonly supposed. 
 
 The character that Macaulay gives of Johnson might 
 have been founded on a passage in one of Horace Wal- 
 pole's letters, just as the character he gives of Boswell 
 would seem to have been founded on a criticism by Gray.
 
 LORD MAC AULA Y ON JOHNSON. loi 
 
 Walpole writing ^ of ' Boswell's most absurd enormous 
 book,' ' which had just been pubUshed, says, ' The more 
 one learns of Johnson, the more preposterous assem- 
 blage he appears of strong sense, of the lowest bigotry 
 and prejudices, of pride, brutality, fretfulness, and 
 vanity.' Macaulay says, ' the characteristic peculiarity 
 of his intellect w\as the union of great powers with low 
 prejudices.' In ^\Titing of that curious though quite 
 intelligible mixture of credulity and incredulity which 
 characterized Johnson, he says, 'Johnson was in the 
 habit of sifting with extreme severity the evidence for all 
 stories which were merely odd. But when they were not 
 only odd but miraculous, his severity relaxed. He began 
 to be credulous precisely at the point where the most 
 credulous people begin to be sceptical. . . . He once 
 said, half jestingly we suppose, that for six months he 
 refused to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, 
 and that he still believed the extent of the calamity to be 
 greatly exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave face 
 how old Mr. Cave of St. John's-gate saw a ghost, and 
 how this ghost w\t.s something of a shadowy being. He 
 
 ' Letter to the Hon. H. S. Comvay, October 6, 17S5. I am not 
 sure if this letter had been published at the time when Macaulay 
 wrote his review. 
 
 ^ Journal of the Tour to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 went himself on a ghost-hunt to Cock-lane, and was 
 angry with John Wesley for not following up another 
 scent of the same kind with proper spirit and perseve- 
 rance.' 
 
 Now, before I consider the misrepresentations con- 
 tained in the last two paragraphs, I will first examine into 
 Johnson's general belief in apparitions. Boswell, in 
 writing about the appearance of departed spirits, states 
 that it is * a doctrine which it is a mistake to suppose that 
 Johnson himself ever positively held.' Johnson himself 
 said, in speaking of apparitions, ' A total disbelief of 
 them is adverse to the opinion of the existence of the 
 soul between death and the last day ; the question simply 
 is whether departed spirits ever have the power of making 
 themselves perceptible to us. A man who thinks he has 
 seen an apparition can only be convinced himself; his 
 authority will not convince another, and his conviction, 
 if rational, must be founded on being told something 
 which cannot be known but by supernatural means.' In 
 another passage he said, in considering whether there 
 had ever been an instance of the spirit of any person 
 appearing after death, ' All argument is against it, but all 
 belief is for it.' In fact, his state of mind was not an 
 unnatural one for a man who had a firm belief in another 
 world. If we have any existence after death, it is surely
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 103 
 
 only negative evidence which can disprove the exis- 
 tence of apparitions. If we still exist somewhere after 
 death, there is no i priori impossibility of our existing on 
 the earth. Johnson, indeed, was certainly likely to have 
 admitted general evidence in proof of the appearance of 
 a ghost which many men would have at once and rightly 
 rejected. When, however, there was a possibility of test- 
 ing any particular piece of evidence, he would have been 
 the first to sift it with the utmost severity. This, indeed, 
 he wanted John Wesley to do ; and he was angry with 
 him, not for not following up the scent with proper 
 spirit and perseverance, as Macaulay says, but for be- 
 lieving in a ghost story without proper grounds. It is 
 necessary to quote the whole passage from Boswell, so 
 that my readers may see how strangely Macaulay has 
 perverted it : — ' Of John Wesley he said, " He can talk 
 well on any subject." Boswell : " Pray, sir, what has he 
 made of his story of a ghost?" Johnson : "Why, sir, 
 he believes it, but not on sufficient authority. He did 
 not take time enough to examine the girl. It was at 
 Newcastle where the ghost was said to have appeared to 
 a young woman several times, mentioning something 
 about the right to an old house ; advising application 
 to be made to an attorney, which was done ; and at the 
 same time saying the attorney would do nothing, which
 
 I04 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 proved to be the fact. ' This,' says John, * is a proof 
 that a ghost knows our thoughts.' Now (laughing) it is 
 not necessary to know our thoughts to tell that an attorney 
 will sometimes do nothing. Charles Wesley, who is a 
 more stationary man, does not believe the story. I am 
 sorry that John did not take more pains to enquire into 
 the evidence for it." Miss Seward (with an incredulous 
 smile) : " What, sir, about a ghost ! " Johnson (with 
 solemn vehemence) : " Yes, madam. This is a question 
 which, after five thousand years, is yet undecided ; a 
 question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the 
 most important that can come before the human under- 
 standing."' We may, indeed, wonder that a man of John- 
 son's vigorous intellect should have refused to accept the 
 general evidence against apparitions, which was strong 
 enough even in his day. In the case of John Wesley's 
 ghost, however, he was anything but credulous. In fact, 
 as is shown by another passage, it was Boswell, and not 
 Johnson, who wanted to follow up the scent. Boswell 
 says, ' Mr. Wesley believed it, but Johnson did not give 
 it credit. I was, however, desirous to examine the ques- 
 tion closely.' 
 
 The account Macaulay gives of the ghost that Cave 
 was said to have seen, though not so inaccurate, is still 
 not fair. Boswell writes : ' Talking of ghosts, he said he
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 105 
 
 knew one friend who was an honest man and a sen- 
 sible man, who told him he had seen a ghost ; old Mr. 
 Edward Cave, the printer at St. John's Gate. He said 
 Mr. Cave did not like to talk of it, and seemed to be in 
 great horror whenever it was mentioned. Boswell : " Pray 
 Sir, what did he say was the appearance ? " y^o/inson : 
 " Why, Sir, something, of a shadowy being." ' Macaulay 
 says, ' he related with a grave face how old Mr. Cave 
 saw a ghost.' Of the gravity of his face we are told 
 nothing, but what he related was not what old Mr. Cave 
 saw, but what old Mr. Cave said he saw. Well might 
 Johnson say, ' Accustom your children constantly to a 
 strict attention to truth, even in the most minute particu- 
 lars ; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when 
 relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it 
 pass, but instantly check them ; you do not know where 
 deviation from truth will end.' As for the Cock-lane 
 ghost, Johnson scarcely deserves more reproach than did 
 Faraday when he took the trouble to expose the folly of 
 table-turning. He thought, indeed, that it was possible 
 for a ghost to appear in Cock-lane as anywhere else, 
 while Faraday, from the beginning, saw through the 
 modern absurdity. Johnson examined into the facts of 
 the case and exposed the whole imposture in an account 
 which he wrote for the Gentleman's Magazine. Later on,
 
 io6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 ' he expressed,' writes Boswell, ' great indignation at the 
 imposture of the Cock-lane ghost, and related, with 
 much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting the 
 cheat, and had published an account of it in the news- 
 papers.' 
 
 Scarcely less unfair is Macaulay when he says that 
 Johnson ' declares himself willing to believe the stories of 
 the second sight' Johnson when he went to the High- 
 lands, resolved to examine the question of the second 
 sight. ' Of an opinion,' he writes, ' received for centuries 
 by a whole nation, and supposed to be confirmed through 
 its whole descent by a series of successive facts, it is 
 desirable that the truth should be established or the 
 fallacy detected.' He found that ' the islanders of all 
 degrees, whether of rank or understanding, universally 
 admitted it, except the ministers.' He enquired into the 
 question as far as he was able, but ends by saying, ' I 
 never could advance my curiosity to conviction ; but 
 came away at last only willing to believe.' Is this the 
 habit of mind of a man who ' begins to be credulous pre- 
 cisely at the point where the most credulous people 
 begin to be sceptical ? ' A superstitious man always 
 believes what he is willing to believe, and advances his 
 curiosity to conviction just as fast as his wishes lead him. 
 His judgment says to his inclination, ' I beheve. Help
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSOX. 107 
 
 thou my unbelief,' and his incUnation at once renders the 
 required aid. Johnson no doubt longed to find, as one 
 who knew him said, ' some positive proof of communi- 
 cation with another world.' With all his faith in the 
 immortality of the soul, there can be little doubt that he 
 would have eagerly welcomed any further proof Had 
 his faith, indeed, been as free from all doubts as that of 
 many men, it is not likely that he would have so fiercely 
 resented any attempt, however slight, to question the 
 evidences of Christianity. ' Every man,' he once said, 
 ' who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my 
 confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy ; and I 
 am angry Avith him who makes me uneasy.' It was this 
 strong desire to add one more prop to his belief that 
 made him willing to believe in the appearance of spirits 
 and second sight. But as I have said, whenever he came 
 in each case to look into the evidence, his reason was 
 too powerful to suffer any indulgence to be shown to his 
 desires. 
 
 To pass to another of his ' low prejudices.' ' It is 
 remarkable,' Macaulay writes, ' that to the last Johnson 
 entertained a fixed contempt for all those modes of life 
 and those studies which tend to emancipate the mind 
 from the prejudices of a particular age or a particular 
 nation. Of foreign travel and of history he spoke
 
 io8 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance. 
 " What does a man learn by travelling ? Is Beauclerk 
 the better for travelling? What did Lord Charlemont 
 learn in his travels, except that there was a snake in one 
 of the pyramids of Egypt?'" Any one reading this pas- 
 sage and seeing the inverted commas would at once 
 believe that he was reading Johnson's own words. He 
 is really reading but an abridgment of them, and an 
 abridgment in which the sense has been greatly altered. 
 I must agam give his words as reported by Boswell : — 
 
 ' " Time may be employed to more advantage from 
 nineteen to twenty-four almost in any way than travel- 
 ling. When you set travelling against mere negation, 
 against doing nothing, it is better to be sure ; but how 
 much more would a young man improve were he to 
 study during those years ! Indeed, if a young man is 
 wild, and must run after bad company, it is better this 
 should be done abroad, as. on his return, he can break 
 off such connections, and begin at home a new man, 
 with a character to form and acquaintance to make. 
 How little does travelling supply to the conversation of 
 any man who has travelled 1 how little to Beauclerk ! " 
 
 Boswell : " What say you to Lord (Charlemont) ? " 
 
 Jo/iJisofi : " I never but once heard him talk of what he 
 had seen, and that was of a large serpent in one of the
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 109 
 
 pyramids of Egypt." Boswell : " Well, I happened to 
 hear him tell the same thing, which made me mention 
 him." ' Croker adds in a note, ' His lordship was, to the 
 last, in the habit of telling this story rather too often.' 
 
 Johnson, in this passage, does not condemn travelling 
 in general. He says, and most men would agree with him, 
 that the years between nineteen and twenty-four should 
 not be spent, as was in his time so commonly the case, 
 in mere travelling. He goes on to say that good talkers 
 who have travelled talk little the better because they have 
 travelled. But it is not needful to enlarge on the way in 
 which his meaning has been wrested. It is open to every 
 one to see. So far from having a fierce and boisterous 
 contempt of travel, Johnson had very early shown a great 
 eagerness for it and this eagerness lasted till old age. 
 When he was an undergraduate at Pembroke he was, as 
 my readers will remember, overheard saying to hhnself, 
 ' Well, I have a mind to see what is done in other places 
 of learning. I'll go and visit the universities abroad. I'll 
 go to France and Italy. I'll go to Padua. And I'll mind 
 my business. For an Athenian blockhead is the worst of 
 all blockheads.' It was not till he was an old man that 
 he could afford to gratify this eagerness. 
 
 The tour to the Hebrides was a greater undertaking 
 than a tour to Iceland in the present day, and he was
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 sixty-four when he set out on it. ' On our return to 
 Edinburgh,' says Boswell, ' everybody accosted us with 
 some studied compliment/ while Robertson advanced 
 to Dr. Johnson repeating a line of Virgil. ' I am really 
 ashamed,' said Johnson, ' of the congratulations which 
 we receive. We are addressed as if we had made a 
 voyage to Nova Zembla and suffered five persecutions in 
 Japan.' In his sixty-eighth year he was eager for a trip 
 to the Baltic. He writes : ' Boswell shrinks from the 
 Baltic expedition, which, I think, is the best scheme in our 
 power. What we shall substitute, I know not. He wants 
 to see Wales ; but, except the woods of Bachycraigh, 
 what is there in Wales that can fill the hunger of ignor- 
 ance or quench the thirst of curiosity ? ' He had been 
 the year before full of eagerness for a tour to Italy with 
 the Thrales. He said, ' Mr. Thrale is to go by my ad- 
 vice to Mr. Jackson (the all-knowing), and get from him 
 a plan for seeing the most that can be seen in the time 
 that we have to travel. We must, to be sure, see Rome, 
 Naples, Florence, and Venice, and as much more as we 
 can. (Speaking with a tone of animation.)' The tour 
 was put off. Boswell goes on to say : ' He said, " I am 
 disappointed, to be sure \ but it is not a great disappoint- 
 ment." I wondered to see him bear with a philosophical 
 calmness what would have made most people peevish and
 
 LORD MAC AULA Y ON JOHNSON. in 
 
 fretful. I perceived that he had so warmly cherished the 
 hope of enjoying classical scenes that he could not easily 
 part with the scheme ; for he said, " I shall probably con- 
 trive to get to Italy some other way." ' Later on, in a 
 letter to Mrs. Thrale, he says, ' I hope you have no 
 design of stealing away to Italy before the election ; nor 
 of leaving me behind you ; though I am not only seventy, 
 but seventy-one.' 
 
 On another occasion Boswell says : ' He talked with 
 an uncommon animation of travelling into distant coun- 
 tries ; that the mind was enlarged by it, and that an 
 acquisition of dignity of character was derived from it. 
 He expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to 
 visiting the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, 
 and said I really believed I should go and see the wall of 
 China had I not children, of whom it was my duty to 
 take care. " Sir," said he, " by doing so, you would do 
 what would be of importance in raising your children to 
 eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them 
 from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all 
 times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to 
 view the wall of China. I am serious, Sir.'" 
 
 Johnson's manners, if we are to trust INIacaulay, 
 were almost savage. ' His active benevolence,' he says, 
 ' contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional
 
 DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 ferocity of his manners in society. . . . For the suffer- 
 ing which a harsh word inflicts upon a deHcate mind he 
 had no pity ; for it was a kind of suffering which he could 
 scarcely conceive.' Mr. Carlyle, in a few pages, has 
 most nobly and beautifully vindicated Johnson's claim to 
 'a merciful, tenderly affectionate nature.' It is rather, 
 however, with the greater matters that he has dealt. I 
 shall attempt to show that in smaller matters also 
 Macaulay has not done Johnson justice. 
 
 There is no doubt that though his tenderness of 
 heart was always great, yet his manners in the last 
 twenty years of his life were not a little softened. 
 He never complained of the world, yet for many a 
 year he must have felt that his labour was shamefully 
 underpaid. A sense of injustice — the sight, ever before 
 the eyes, of the unworthy idler getting filled with good 
 things while the worthy labourer is sent empty away — does 
 not sweeten the temper or soften the manners. Even at 
 this time of his life, however, he was far from deserving 
 the harsh judgment that Macaulay has passed on him. 
 But when his modest pension had put an end to that 
 struggle with poverty which, without a moment's breath- 
 ing space, he had carried on for more than thirty years ; 
 still more, when the Thrales had made their house his 
 home, a change came over him. As he himself said,
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 113 
 
 ' In my younger days, it is true, I was much inclined to 
 treat mankind with asperity and contempt, but I found it 
 answered no good end. I thought it wiser and better to 
 take the world as it goes. Besides, as I have advanced 
 in life, I have had more reason to be satisfied with it. 
 Mankind have treated me with more kindness, and of 
 course I have more kindness for them.' 
 
 Madame Piozzi herself, on whom Macaulay has 
 largely drawn, says, ' I saw Mr. Johnson in none but a 
 tranquil, uniform state, passing the evening of his life 
 among friends who loved, honoured, and admired him.' 
 Her words must not be pressed too closely, for beyond a 
 doubt she was more than once a witness of violent out- 
 bursts of temper. Nevertheless, her testimony is clear. 
 She made Johnson's acquaintance when he was fifty-five 
 years old. ' It should seem,' wTites Macaulay, ' that a 
 full half of Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was 
 passed under the roof of the Thrales.' The tranquil, 
 unifonn state in which he lived for so many years con- 
 trasts curiously with the manners that were ' almost savage ' 
 and the constant rudeness which are laid to his charge. 
 When he was rude, even when he was violent, there was 
 so much ' method in his madness,' such wit, such humour, 
 that these outbursts of passion were never forgotten. 
 Other men are violent and silly ; he was violent, and 
 
 I
 
 114 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 kept his wits more than ever about him. The wit of his 
 rudeness passed from mouth to mouth, while the gentle- 
 ness of his every-day life afforded no matter for talk, and 
 so was scarcely known beyond his friends. 
 
 How tranquil he cor.imonly was, at all events in his 
 later years, there is other evidence besides that of 
 Madame Piozzi to show. Boswell says, ' that by much 
 the greatest part of his time he was civil, obliging, nay, 
 polite in the true sense of the word ; so much so that 
 many gentlemen who were long acquainted with him 
 never received or even heard a strong expression from 
 him.' 
 
 This is confirmed by the statement of Mr. Barclay 
 (Mr. Thralo's successor in the brewery), who had seen 
 not a little of Johnson, and who said that he ' had never 
 observed any rudeness or violence on his part.' ' Few 
 men,' said Miss Reynolds, who had known Johnson in 
 the days of his greatest poverty, ' in his ordinary disposi- 
 tion or common frame of mind could be more inoffensive 
 than Dr. Johnson. . . . Peace and goodwill towards 
 man were the natural emanations of his heart.' 
 
 Miss Burney was present at one of the outbursts of 
 temper. ' He had,' she said, ' been long provoked, and 
 justly enough.' Yet 'he did, to own the truth, appear 
 unreasonably furious and grossly severe.' She adds, ' I
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 115 
 
 never saw him so before, and I heartily hope I never 
 shall again.' But by this time she had known him at 
 least five years, and she had known him most intimately 
 for no less than three years. She had spent a great deal 
 of time with him at Streatham. Yet this was the first 
 violent outburst that she has recorded. Towards her he 
 was all gentleness and tenderness. She came to him, 
 indeed, ready to love him from the affection her father 
 bore him. He has recorded 'the politeness and urbanity' 
 that Johnson showed him when he was young and un- 
 kno^vn — ' politeness and urbanity,' he says, ' which may 
 be opposed to some of the stories which have been 
 lately circulated of his natural rudeness and ferocity.' 
 When Dr. Burney's daughters first met Johnson, and 
 were amazed at his figure and his habits, they asked their 
 father why he had not prepared them * for such uncouth, 
 untoward strangeness, he laughed heartily, and said he 
 had entirely forgotten that the same impression had been 
 at first made upon himself, but had been lost even on the 
 second interview.' 
 
 Miss Burney is never tired of recording his kindness- 
 to her. He once met her at dinner, when he was suffer- 
 ing greatly. He was little apt to complain, but he said 
 more than once, ' Ah ! you little know how ill I am.' 
 ' Yet he was,' she says, ' excessively kind to me in spite 
 I 2
 
 ii6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 of all his pain.' In her diary are to be found such records 
 as the following : 'The dear Dr. Johnson was more 
 pleased, more kind, and more delightful than ever.' 
 ' He was charming both in spirits and in humour. I 
 really think he grows gayer and gayer daily, and more 
 ductile and pleasant.' 'He was, if possible, more instruc- 
 tive, entertaining, good-humoured, and exquisitely fertile 
 than ever.' Those who can be charged with either con- 
 stant rudeness or anything like savageness of manners 
 are rude and savage above all to the weak. But Miss 
 Burney says, ' He was always indulgent to the young, 
 he never attacked the unassuming, nor meant to terrify 
 the diffident.' He himself said that he looked upon him- 
 self as ' a very polite man ;' and, indeed, to anyone who 
 would look below the surface he had ' the noble univer- 
 sal politeness of a man that knows the dignity of men 
 and feels his own.'' But his politeness was seen also by 
 those who in such matters did not look deep. 
 
 Boswell, in recording Johnson's first introduction to 
 Mrs. Boswell, writes, * as no man could be more polite 
 when he chose to be so, his address to her was most 
 courteous and engaging.' ' When Dr. Johnson,' says 
 Madame Piozzi, ' had a mind to compliment any one, he 
 did it with more dignity to himself and better effect upon 
 ' Mr. Carlyle. Boswell's Life of Johnson.
 
 LORD M AC AULA Y ON JOHNSON. 117 
 
 the company than any man.' So far from being indiffer- 
 ent to politeness, he had a great regard for it. * He did 
 not much like any of the contrivances by which ease has 
 been lately introduced into society instead of cere- 
 mony.' When he entered a room and ' everybody rose 
 to do him honour, he returned the attention with the 
 most formal courtesy.' When any lady visited him he 
 would, even in his old age, whatever was the state of the 
 weather, attend her down a very long entry to her coach. 
 The character Macaulay gives of him is after all only an 
 expansion and an exaggeration of a comical speech by 
 some Irish gentleman whom Miss Bumey met. ' Dr. 
 Johnson is not much of a fine gentleman, indeed ; but a 
 clever fellow — a deal of knowledge — got a deuced good 
 understanding.' 
 
 Nothing was farther from the truth than Macaulay's 
 statement that 'for the suffering which a harsh word 
 inflicts upon a delicate mind he had no pity ; for it was 
 a kind of suffering which he could scarcely conceive.' 
 He himself said in Miss Burney's presence that he was 
 always sorry when he made bitter speeches, and never 
 did it but when he was insufferably vexed. Mr. Murphy 
 bears witness to the truthfulness of this statement. 
 'When the fray was over he generally softened into 
 repentance, and by conciliating measures took care that
 
 ii8 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 no animosity should be left rankling in the breast of his 
 antagonist.' Of this defect he seems to have been con- 
 scious. In a letter to Mrs. Thrale he says, ' Poor 
 Baretti ! do not quarrel with him ; to neglect him a 
 little will be sufficient. He means only to be frank and 
 manly and independent, and perhaps, as you say, a little 
 wise. Forgive him, dearest lady, the rather, because of 
 his misbehaviour I am afraid he learned part from me. 
 J hope to set him hereafter a better example.' 
 
 Miss Burney records how on one occasion, ' when he 
 was pursuing an antagonist with unabating vigour and 
 dexterity, recollecting himself, and thinking, as he owned 
 afterwards, that the dispute grew too serious, with a skill 
 all his own, he suddenly and unexpectedly turned it to 
 ^burlesque.' 
 
 One evening when he had treated Goldsmith with 
 Tudeness he noticed that he was sitting silently, brooding 
 •over his reprimand. ' He said aside to some of us — " I'll 
 ,make Goldsmith forgive me," and then called to him in 
 a loud voice, " Dr. Goldsmith, something passed to-day 
 where you and I dined : I ask your pardon." Goldsmith 
 answered placidly, "It must be much from you, Sir, that 
 I take ill." ' 
 
 Even more strongly did he show his sorrow for his 
 rude treatment of Dean Bernard. He had told him at
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 119 
 
 a dinner-table that in his character there was great room 
 for improvement. He soon followed the ladies into the 
 drawing room, leaving the dean still at table. ' Sitting 
 down by the lady of the house, he said, " I am very sorry 
 for having spoken so rudely to the dean .... and I am 
 the more hurt on reflecting with what mild dignity he 
 received it." When the dean came up into the drawnng 
 room, Dr. Johnson immediately rose from his seat, and 
 made him sit on the sofa by him, and with such a 
 beseeching look for pardon and with such fond gestures 
 — literally smoothing down his arms and knees — tokens 
 of penitence which were so graciously received by the 
 dean as to make Dr. Johnson very happy.' 
 
 ' One evening in the drawing room at Streatham, a 
 young gentleman,' says Madame Piozzi, called to him sud- 
 denly, and I suppose he thought disrespectfully, in these 
 words : ' Mr. Johnson, would you advise me to marry? ' 
 ' I would advise no man to marry, sir, (returns for answer 
 in a very angry tone Dr. Johnson), who is not likely to 
 propagate understanding,' and so left the room. Our 
 companion looked confounded, and, I believe, had scarce 
 recovered the consciousness of his own existence, when 
 Johnson came back, and drawing his chair among us, 
 with altered looks and a softened voice, joined in the 
 general chat, insensibly led the conversation to the
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 subject of marriage, where he laid himself out in a dis- 
 sertation so useful, so elegant, so founded on the true 
 knowledge of human life .... that no one ever recollected 
 the offence, except to rejoice in its consequences.' 
 
 It would be easy to bring forward other instances to 
 prove that Johnson could both conceive the suffering 
 which he had inflicted by a harsh word, and had not only 
 pity for it, but was ready to do all he could to make 
 amends. Macaulay in one passage shows how little he 
 understood the real tenderness of Johnson's nature. He 
 is talking of the school he had started in Staffordshire. 
 * His appearance,' he writes, ' was so strange, and his 
 temper so violent, that his school-room must have re- 
 sembled an ogre's den.' Johnson would, no doubt, have 
 often been irritable, but that he could have ever been 
 violent to the boys in his charge, I greatly doubt. He 
 had suffered himself under a master who was what he 
 called ' wrong-headedly severe,' and though his discipline 
 would have been strict, yet he would never have been 
 cruel or unjust. 
 
 His love of little children was, as Boswell says, great. 
 He used to show it 'upon all occasions, calling them 
 " pretty dears," and giving them sweetmeats.' Madame 
 Piozzi says that 'he was exceedingly disposed to the 
 general indulgence of children, and was even scrupulously
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 121 
 
 and ceremoniously attentive not to offend them : he had 
 strongly persuaded himself of the difficulty people 
 always find to erase early impressions, either of kindness 
 or resentment, and said, ' he should never have so loved 
 his mother when a man, had she not given him coffee 
 she could ill afford, to gratify his appetite when a boy.' 
 ' If you had had children, sir,' said I, ' would you have 
 taught them anything?' 'I hope,' replied he, 'that I 
 should have willingly lived on bread and water to obtain 
 instruction for them; but I would not have set their 
 future friendship to hazard for the sake of thrusting into 
 their heads knowledge of things for which they might 
 not perhaps have either taste or necessity. You teach 
 your daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder 
 when you have done that they do not delight in your 
 company.' Madame Piozzi further says that ' the re- 
 membrance of what had passed in his own childhood 
 made Mr. Johnson very solicitous to preserve the felicity 
 of children ; and when he had persuaded Dr. Sumner to 
 remit the tasks usually given to fill up boys' time during 
 the holidays, he rejoiced exceedingly, and told me that he 
 had never ceased representing to all the eminent school- 
 masters in England the absurd tryanny of poisoning 
 the hour of permitted pleasure by keeping future misery 
 before the children's eyes.'
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 On one occasion hearing that Dr. Burney. with whom 
 he was at that time by no means intimate, was going to 
 Winchester to place his youngest son in the college, he 
 at once ' offered to accompany the father to Winchester 
 that he might himself present the son to the head master.' 
 The offer was gratefully accepted. His tenderness to 
 poor children was very touchingly shown. ' As he re- 
 turned to his lodging, at one or two o'clock in the 
 morning, he often saw poor children asleep on thresholds 
 and stalls, and he used to put pennies into their hands to 
 buy them a breakfast.' This he did, as Mr. Croker has 
 pointed out, ' at a time when he himself was living on 
 pennies.' Certainly he would have made one of the 
 strangest ogres that children have ever seen. 
 
 ' Want of tenderness Johnson always alleged was want 
 of parts, and was no less a proof of stupidity than depra- 
 vity.' Benevolence, any amount of benevolence, Macaulay 
 would have allowed him, but very little tenderness. And 
 yet it would be easy to multiply the instances I have 
 already adduced, that beneath the rough outside there 
 was a heart almost tremulous with sensibility. Of his 
 friend Dr. Bathurst ' he hardly ever spoke without tears 
 in his life.' Speaking of Dr. Hodges, who, ' during the 
 whole time of the plague continued in London, adminis- 
 tering medical assistance, he used to relate with tears
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 123 
 
 in his eyes how he was suffered to die for debt in a gaol' 
 One day a lady who was travelling in a post-chaise with 
 him, and was relating to him some story of sadness, 
 ' heard him heave heavy sighs and sobs, and turning 
 round she saw his dear face bathed in tears.' Once with 
 pretended sharpness he reproved Hannah More for 
 reading 'Les Pensees de Pascal' ' I was beginning to 
 stand upon my defence, when he took me with both 
 hands, and with a tear running down his cheeks, " Child," 
 said he, with the most affecting earnestness, " I am 
 heartily glad that you read pious books by whomsoever 
 they may be written." ' How strikingly was his consider- 
 ation for the feelings of others shown when he always 
 went himself to buy food for his sick cat, and would 
 not send his man-servant, the negro Frank, that the 
 man's 'deHcacy might not be hurt at seeing himself 
 employed for the convenience of a quadruped.' 
 
 Besides this tenderness there was a liveliness, a co- 
 micality, we might even say a joviality in Johnson's charac- 
 ter which is not at all shown in the pages of Macaulay, 
 and but little even in those of Boswell It was at Streat- 
 ham that this side of his character was most shown, and of 
 the life at Streatham Boswell knew very little. He did his 
 best to get an account of it, but he failed. He went 
 down to Windsor and asked Miss Burney for her help.
 
 124 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 ' My help ? ' said Miss Burney. 
 
 * Yes, Madam ; you must give me some of your choice 
 Httle notes of the Doctor's ; we have seen him long 
 enough upon stilts ; I want to show him in a new light. 
 Grave Sam, and great Sam, and solemn Sam, and learned 
 Sam — all these he has appeared over and over. Now I 
 want to entwine a wreath of the Graces across his brow; 
 I want to show him as gay Sam, agreeable Sam, pleasant 
 Sam ; so you must help me with some of his beautiful 
 billets to yourself 
 
 It was a pity that Miss Burney would not yield, for 
 the notes she could have given Boswell would, when 
 worked into ' The Life,' have thrown a great light on 
 Johnson's character. The scenes that she describes at 
 Streatham show Johnson in his happiest mood. The 
 days, indeed, did come when she had * long and melan- 
 choly discourses with him about our dear deceased master 
 whom, indeed, he regrets incessantly;' but while Thrale 
 still lived — Thrale whose face for fifteen years had never 
 been turned upon him but with respect or benignity — 
 she had had little but lively scenes and lively talk to record. 
 Her letters and her diary bear her out to the full when she 
 writes that ' Dr. Johnson has more fun and comical humour 
 and love of nonsense about him that almost anybody I ever 
 saw.' The humour of ' Evelina ' had tickled him greatly,
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 125 
 
 and he played upon the characters in a most amusing 
 manner. ' He got those incomparable Branghtons quite 
 by heart, and recited scene after scene of their squabbles 
 and selfishness and forwardness, till he quite shook his 
 sides with laughter. He got into such high spirits that 
 he set about personating Mr. Smith himself. We all 
 thought we must have died no other death than that of 
 suffocation, in seeing Dr. Johnson handing about any- 
 thing he could catch or snatch at, and making smirking 
 bows, saying he was all for the ladies — everything that 
 was agreeable to the ladies, &c., " except," says he, " going 
 to church with them ; and as to that, though marriage, to 
 be sure, is all in all to the ladies, marriage to a man — is 
 the devil."' The reader who does not know him in 
 this happy state must first read ' Evehna,' and next the 
 first two volumes of Madame d'Arblay's ' Diary.' In 
 reading these books he will certainly maintain that 
 Johnson was in one instance wrong when he asserted 
 that ' the progress which the understanding makes through 
 a book has more pain than pleasure in it.' 
 
 In the society of women of quick understandings 
 and pleasant manners he was seen in his liveliest 
 moods ; and of their society he never tired. He once 
 went to a party at Miss Monckton's house, about the 
 time when Mrs. Siddons was becoming famous. ' How
 
 126 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 these people talk of Mrs. Siddons ! ' said the Doctor. 
 * I came hither in full expectation of hearing no name 
 but the name I love and pant to hear, — when from one 
 corner to another they are talking of that jade Mrs. Sid- 
 dons ; till at last wearied out I went yonder into a corner 
 and repeated to myself Bumey ! Barney ! Bumey ! 
 Burney ! ' ' Ay Sir,' said Mr. Metcalfe, ' You should have 
 carved it upon the trees.' ' Sir, had there been any trees, 
 so I should, but, being none, I was content to carve it 
 upon my heart.' 
 
 Hannah More's ' Memoirs ' tell of the same liveliness. 
 One evening she and Johnson had ' a violent quarrel till 
 at length laughter ran so high on all sides that argument 
 was confounded in noise ; the gallant youth at one o'clock 
 in the morning set us down at our lodgings.' Another 
 time she writes, ' I have got the headache to-day, by 
 raking out so late with that gay libertine Johnson.' 
 According to Madame Piozzi, Mr. Murphy, who was no 
 bad judge, 'always said Johnson was incomparable at 
 buffoonery ; and I verily think if he had had good eyes, 
 and a form less inflexible, he would have made an 
 admirable mimic' 
 
 Even in his earlier days when life went very hard with 
 him, there was the same liveliness in him, though it was 
 not so often called forth. In the winter of 1749 he formed
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON JOHNSON. 127 
 
 a club that met in Ivy Lane every Tuesday evening. 
 'Thither he constantly resorted, and,' says the surly 'un- 
 clubable' Hawkins, who was one of the members, 'he 
 had a disposition to please and be pleased.' 'In the 
 talent of humour,' Hawkins adds, ' there hardly ever was 
 his equal, except perhaps among the old comedians, such 
 as Tarleton, and a few others mentioned by Gibber. By 
 means of this he was enabled to give to any relation that 
 required it the graces and aids of expression, and to dis- 
 criminate with the nicest exactness the characters of those 
 whom it concerned.' He drank nothing but lemonade, 
 but ' in a short time after assembling he was transformed 
 into a new creature.' 
 
 One morning at Streatham everyone had been urging 
 Miss Burney to write a comedy. 'While Mrs. Thrale 
 was in the midst of her flattering persuasions the Doctor, 
 see-sawing in his chair, began laughing to himself so 
 heartily as to almost shake his seat as well as his sides. 
 We stopped our confabulation, in which he had ceased to 
 join, hoping he would reveal the subject of his mirth ; 
 but he enjoyed it inwardly without heeding our curiosity 
 — till at last he said he had been struck with a notion 
 that Miss Burney would begin her dramatic career by 
 writing a piece called "Streatham." He paused and laughed 
 yet more cordially, and then suddenly commanded a
 
 128 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 pomposity to his countenance and his voice, and added 
 — "Yes ! Streatham, a Farce.'" It is pleasant to think 
 that had the farce been written, the old man now in his 
 seventieth year, whose life, to use his own words, had 
 been ' radically wretched,' would nevertheless have most 
 naturally found in it his place by his mirthfulness. 
 
 To Johnson's powers of conversation Macaulay does 
 full justice. He quotes the observation of Mr. Burke that 
 Johnson appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his 
 own. Great though he there appears, we must remember 
 that that talk of his which has been handed down to us 
 is the merest fragment of the great utterances of his long 
 life. Of the seventy-five years that Johnson lived, he and 
 Boswell spent not above two years and a quarter in the 
 same neighbourhood. If we exclude the time they were 
 together in the tour to the Hebrides, which does not, of 
 course, fall within the ' Life,' during scarcely two years in 
 all were they within reach of each other. In these two 
 years there were very many days, even some weeks, in 
 which they did not meet, and often when they did meet, 
 Boswell did not make the effort to record what was said. 
 Then, too, Johnson was in his fifty-fourth year when 
 Boswell first met him. He was already, at that time, the 
 most powerful talker, if not that the world has ever known 
 — at least that the world is ever likely to know of. It
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 129 
 
 would be absurd, of course, to compare Johnson's genius 
 with Shakespeare's, and yet he talks as well as some of 
 the best of Shakespeare's characters. He wrote, indeed, 
 well ; though not so well as the men of his own age 
 thought. Yet it would be difficult to find a better 
 written biography than the ' Life of Savage.' His 
 letters, too, are written with simplicity and admirable 
 force. 
 
 It is not in his writings, however, but in his talk, that 
 Johnson lives. It is his lost talk that we regret more 
 than a decade of Livy, or a library of Cyclic poets. It is 
 sad to think that a man who talked so much, so wisely, 
 and so well, should have been ever reproaching himself 
 with his indolence and his waste of time. Like Socrates, 
 he taught by talking ; and so long as he talked, neither in 
 his own mind, nor in his listeners, was there any in- 
 dolence. Doubtless he was not aware of all the influence 
 he had on the men of his own time by his conversation ; 
 far less, of course, could he have looked forward to the 
 influence he should have on men as yet unborn. He 
 knew that Boswell kept notes of what he said, and meant 
 to write his life ; but he did not know how fully those 
 notes would prove to have been kept, and how admirably 
 the Life was to be written. He showed on one occa- 
 sion how many more he thought he should reach by his 
 
 K
 
 I30 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 writings than by his talk, when he likened himself to a 
 physician, who, after he had practised long in a great city, 
 retires to a small town, and takes less practice. ' Now, 
 Sir, the good I can do by my conversation bears the same 
 proportion to the good I can do by my writings that the 
 practice of a physician, retired to a town, does to his 
 practice in a great city.' Had he known how vast an 
 audience his strong, wholesome conversation was to reach, 
 he would have seen that if, according to the monkish 
 saying, toiling is praying, so in some cases talking is 
 toiling. 
 
 The more familiar we are with Boswell, the more are 
 we convinced that Johnson was a far happier man, at all 
 events, in his latter days, than is commonly thought. 
 Mr. Forster has shown in his ' Life of Goldsmith ' how 
 strong a cast is given by Boswell to one side of 
 Johnson's character. The melancholy that undoubtedly 
 existed in his hero's temperament is also, we have little 
 doubt, brought too much into the foreground by his 
 biographer. Boswell himself, at times, revelled in me- 
 lancholy, and was as proud of it as Dogberry was of his 
 losses. Johnson wrote to him that he hoped he had got 
 rid of all this hypocrisy of misery. But it was not so 
 willingly dropped. Doubtless, Boswell often had his 
 real moments of misery. A man who shortens his life 
 
 I
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 131 
 
 by drinking, as Boswell did, has at times something worse 
 than the hypocrisy of misery. Then, too, we form our 
 notions of Johnson's unhappiness from the sad entries 
 which are to be found in his diaries. He hated solitude; 
 and it was, we should remember, in the hours of solitude 
 that these entries were made. Many a man, who enjoys 
 a fair share of happiness, would often say with Johnson, 
 'When I survey my past life, I discover nothing but 
 a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body 
 and disturbances of the mind very near to madness.' 
 Happily, most men keep such thoughts to themselves. 
 This diary was never intended to be read by others ; • and, 
 perhaps, we should form a juster estimate of his character 
 had the whole of it, and not merely a part, perished in 
 the flames to which in his last illness he committed so 
 many of his papers. 'Whenever,' he says, 'any fit of 
 anxiety or gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold 
 upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, 
 but exert your whole care to hide it ; by endeavouring to 
 hide it, you will drive it away.' It is a pity that his OAvn 
 fits of gloominess were not more successfully hidden. 
 
 ' Johnson recommended me to keep a journal of my life, full 
 and unreserved. . . . He counselled me to keep it private, and 
 said I might surely have a friend who would burn it in case of my 
 death. — Boswell's Zz/ff ^ y(7/ozjo« (July 14, 1763).
 
 132 DE. JOHNSON. 
 
 The unhappiness of his home life is commonly ex- 
 aggerated.' Mrs. Williams, his blind companion, though 
 petulant, yet, as Boswell tells us, ' had valuable qualities, 
 and her departure left a blank in his house.' Levett 
 was no less missed, — that 'faithful adherent for thirty 
 years ; ' that * old friend who lived with me in the 
 house, and was useful and companionable.' When they 
 were both gone, Johnson, now near the close of his life, 
 wrote: — 'I have now no middle state between clamour 
 and silence, between general conversation and self-tor- 
 menting solitude.' Mrs. Desmoulins, her daughter, and 
 Miss Carmichael, who certainly, if they lessened the 
 silence, did not increase the harmony or the happiness of 
 the household, were its inmates only some five years or 
 so. A long time enough, no doubt; but happily during 
 their residence Johnson mixed very much in general 
 society. 
 
 It was not the fear of death alone that made Johnson 
 cling so fast to life. He loved life scarcely less strongly 
 than he dreaded death. He had in his early life and in 
 his later manhood struggles enough to undergo and 
 miseries enough to encounter. By the death of his wife 
 he had felt how, to quote his own words, ' the continuity 
 of being is lacerated, the settled course of sentiment and 
 ' See page i68.
 
 LORD MAC AULA V ON JOHNSON. 133 
 
 action is stopped, and life stands suspended and motion- 
 less, till it is driven by external causes into a new channel.' 
 But then, as Boswell says, ' it pleased God to grant him 
 almost thirty years of life after this time ; and once, when 
 he was in a placid frame of mind, he was obliged to own 
 to me that he had enjoyed happier days, and had had 
 many more friends since that gloomy hour than before.' 
 'Grief has its time,' he once said. 
 
 The evening when Boswell found him in Mr. Hector's 
 house, some twenty years after his wife's death, 'sitting 
 placidly at tea with his first love, Mrs. Careless,' he said, 
 ' If I had married her, it might have been as happy for 
 me.' He would still maintain that a man never is happy 
 in the moment that is present — ' never ' — and this excep- 
 tion he made when hard pressed on the subject — 'but 
 when he is drunk.' Even in a rapidly driven post-chaise, 
 than which life, as he said, has not many better things, a 
 man, he maintained, is not happy, for ' you are driving 
 rapidly from something or to something.' 
 
 Doubtless he was suffering greatly at the time when 
 Mr. Thrale found him giving way to such an uncontrolled 
 burst of despair regarding the world to come that he tried 
 to stop his mouth by placing one hand before it, and be- 
 fore leaving him desired Mrs. Thrale to prevail on him to 
 quit 'his close habitation in the court,' and come with them
 
 134 DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 to Streatham. And yet it was somewhere about this time 
 that we have the pleasant scene in Neville's Court, Trinity 
 College, described in the ' New Monthly Magazine.' I 
 hope that we may rely on the truthfulness of the narra- 
 tive, for the sake of the following pleasant anecdote : — 
 ' In the height of our convivial hilarity, our great man ex- 
 claimed, " Come, now, I'll give you a test ; now I'll try 
 who is the true antiquary among you. Has any one of 
 this company ever met with the ' History of Glorianus 
 and Gloriana ? ' " Farmer, drawing the pipe out of his 
 mouth, followed by a cloud of smoke, instantly said, " I've 
 got the book." " Gi' me your hand, gi' me your hand," 
 said Johnson. "You are the man after my own heart." 
 And the shaking of two such hands, with two such happy 
 faces attached to them, could hardly, I believe, be matched 
 in the whole annals of literature.' 
 
 Johnson knew as well as any one the means by which 
 to keep this melancholy at a distance. He did not make 
 of it the mystery that Boswell did. ' He recommended,' 
 though he did not always practise, ' constant occupation 
 of mind, a great deal of exercise, and moderation in 
 eating and drinking. He observed that labouring men, 
 who work hard and live sparingly, are seldom or never 
 troubled with low spirits.' Just before he was found in 
 that melancholy state by Thrale he had not stirred out
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 133 
 
 of his room, as Mrs. Thrale writes, ' for many weeks 
 together, I think months.' 
 
 Leigh Hunt, in his autobiography, tells us that he 
 himself had suffered much m the same way, and had been 
 cured by regular and steady walking. Johnson lived 
 nearly twenty years after the day when he first met 
 Thrale, and during these twenty years he had no violent 
 attack of hypochondria. Boswell when he first went to 
 Streatham and found that, ' though quite at home, he was 
 yet looked up to with an awe tempered by affection, and 
 seemed to be equally the care of his host and hostess, 
 rejoiced at seeing him so happy.' 
 
 The mere exercise of the remarkable powers of mind 
 that he possessed must have been to him a source of 
 great happiness. He had the pleasure of doing a thing 
 well, and the scarcely smaller pleasure of reflecting that 
 he had done a thing well. Thirty years after he had 
 brought out his ' Dictionary ' he could say, ' Yes, sir, I 
 knew very well what I was undertaking, and very well how 
 to do It ; and I have done it very well.' It could not 
 have been rarely, too, that on the morrow of some great 
 talk, Boswell found him highly satisfied with his colloquial 
 powers the evening before. 'Well, we had good talk,' 
 must have been often what he thought, if not often what 
 he said.
 
 136 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 It may have been true with him, as he said, that 
 ' the whole of Ufe is but keeping away the thought of 
 death ; ' and yet, while it was Burke and Goldsmith and 
 Garrick and Reynolds who helped him to keep the 
 thought away, life may have been pleasant enough. What 
 a happy picture does Boswell paint of the dinner at his 
 lodgings in Old Bond Street, when ' Garrick played round 
 Johnson with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the breasts 
 of his coat, and, looking up in his face with a lively 
 archness, complimented him on the good health which he 
 seemed to enjoy, while the sage, shaking his head, beheld 
 him with a gentle complacency.' 
 
 If, as he maintained, ' a tavern chair is the throne of 
 human felicity,' it was a throne on which he was ever 
 sitting. ' I can scarcely recollect,' says the Rev. Dr. 
 Maxwell, the assistant preacher at the Temple, ' that he 
 ever refused going with me to a tavern, and he often went 
 to Ranelagh, which he deemed a place of innocent 
 recreation. He declaimed all the morning, then went 
 to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly stayed late, 
 and then drank his tea at some friend's house, over which 
 he loitered a great while.' ' He often used to quote, with 
 great pathos,' Dr. Maxwell goes on to say, 'those fine 
 lines of Virgil: —
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 137 
 
 Optima quasque dies miseris mortalibus aevi 
 Prima fugit,' &c. 
 
 Happily there was for Johnson, as we have shown, 
 more of sentiment than of reaUty in the Hnes. His best 
 days were to come last. What a pleasant picture we 
 have of him, too, as he drove along in the post-chaise to 
 Twickenham, when 'he was in such good spirits that 
 everything seemed to please him, and, as Boswell writes, 
 shaking his head and stretching himself at his ease in the 
 coach, and, smiling with much complacency, he turned to 
 me and said, " I look upon myself as a good-humoured 
 fellow." When he was merry I never knew a man,' says 
 Boswell, ' laugh more heartily.' Who does not remember 
 Johnson ' shaking his sides and laughing ' when Gold- 
 smith was talking of the skill of the writer of fables, who 
 had made the little fishes talk like little fishes? 'Johnson,' 
 said Garrick, 'gives you a forcible hug, and shakes 
 laughter out of you whether you will or not.' 
 
 What a scene rises up before us when Boswell tells us 
 how, on coming from Scotland and driving to Thrale's 
 house in the Borough, he found Johnson and Mrs. Thrale 
 at breakfast. ' In a moment he was in a full glow of 
 conversation, and I felt myself elevated as if brought into 
 another state of being. Mrs. Thrale and I looked at each
 
 138 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 other while he talked, and our looks expressed our con- 
 genial admiration and affection for him. I shall ever 
 recollect this scene with great pleasure.' But there is an 
 almost endless number of similar pleasant scenes which 
 rise up in the memory. 
 
 Johnson, moreover, if often dissatisfied with himself, 
 was never dissatisfied with the world or the age in which 
 his life was cast. ' Sir, I have never complained of the 
 world, nor do I think that I have reason to complain. It 
 is rather to be wondered at that I have so much.' 'He 
 was never querulous, never prone to inveigh against the 
 present times, as is so common when superficial minds 
 are on the fret. On the contrary, he was willing to speak 
 favourably of his own age, and, indeed, maintained its 
 superiority in every respect, except in its reverence for 
 government.' 
 
 If he was not always happy, he, nevertheless, steadily 
 aimed at happiness. 'Life admits not of delays,' he 
 writes to Boswell ; ' when pleasure can be iiad, it is fit to 
 catch it. If you and I live to be much older, we shall 
 take great delight in talking over the Hebridean journey.' 
 In recording, too, their visit to the silk mill at Derby, 
 Boswell writes, ' I had learnt from Dr. Johnson during 
 this interview not to think with a dejected indifference of 
 the works of art and the pleasures of life, because life is
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 139 
 
 uncertain and short ; but to consider such indifference as 
 a failure of reason, a morbidness of mind ; for happiness 
 should be cultivated as much as we can.' 
 
 His own theoretical or hypothetical mode of cultivating 
 it, he once set forth as follows : — ' If I had no duties, and 
 no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving 
 briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman, but she 
 should be one that could understand me and would 
 add something to the conversation.' In his eager search 
 after all kinds of knowledge much happiness must have 
 lain. ' There is the same difference,' he would say, 
 ' between the learned and the unlearned as between the 
 living and the dead.' 
 
 His thirst for knowledge was not quenched by old 
 age. Not six months before his death he asked Dr. 
 Burney to teach him the scales of music. When close 
 upon three-score and ten, having picked up in the 
 drawing-room of Mr. Billy's house in the Poultry the 
 account of the late Revolution in Sweden, he, not only 
 disregarding the company, ' seemed to read it ravenously 
 as if he devoured it,' but in the dining-room 'he kept 
 it wrapt up in the table-cloth in his lap during the time 
 of dinner, from an avidity to have one entertainment in 
 readiness when he should have finished another.' 
 
 A short time before his death, when most men
 
 HO DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 would have been looking forward to the end as an 
 escape from bodily suffering, he writes to Boswell : — * I 
 hope still to see you in happier times to talk over what 
 we have often talked, and perhaps to find new topics of 
 merriment or new incitements to curiosity.' ' Such,' we 
 read, ' was his intellectual ardour even at this time that 
 he said to one friend, " Sir, I look upon every day to be 
 lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance."' In 
 June, less than five months before his death, he was 
 dining at General Paoli's, where he was eating so heartily 
 that, Boswell says, ' I was afraid he might be hurt by it ; 
 and I whispered to the General my fear, and begged he 
 might not press him. " Alas ! " said the General, " see 
 how very ill he looks ; he can live but a very short time. 
 Would you refuse any slight gratification to a man under 
 sentence of death ? There is a humane custom in Italy by 
 which persons in that melancholy situation are indulged 
 with having whatever they like best to eat and drink, even 
 with expensive delicacies." ' Yet only a few days later, 
 receiving from Lord Eliot a copy of a rare book which 
 he happened never to have seen, ' he told Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds that he was going to bed when it came, but was 
 so much pleased with it that he sat up till he read it 
 through, adding, with a smile (in allusion to Lord 
 Eliot's having recently been raised to the peerage),
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 141 
 
 " I did not think a young lord could have mentioned 
 to me a book in the English history that was not known 
 to me." ' 
 
 A little earlier than this he had recorded, ' I read a 
 book in the " ^neid " every night ; so it was done in 
 twelve nights, and I had great delight in it.' Harassed 
 though his body was by asthma and dropsy, yet such was its 
 natural vigour that less than a month before his death 
 we find him writing, 'I came in the common vehicle 
 easily to London from Oxford.' 
 
 Even when his body was at its worst, his mind, at all 
 events, never knew the approach of age. Mr. Burke 
 applied to him the words of Cicero : ' Intentum enim 
 animum tanquam arcum habebat, nee languescens suc- 
 cumbebat senectuti.' He was attacked one night with 
 paralysis, and for a while lost the power of speech. In 
 describing afterwards how the paralytic stroke fell upon 
 him, he says, ' I was alarmed, and prayed God that, 
 however he might afflict my body, he would spare my 
 understanding. This prayer, that I might try the inte- 
 grity of my faculties, I made in Latin verse. The lines 
 were not very good, but I knew them not to be very good. 
 I made them easily.' That very evening before he had 
 retired he felt himself, he writes, 'light a^d easy, and began 
 to plan schemes of life.'
 
 142 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Just one year before his death he was estabUshing a 
 new Club in Essex Street, Strand. He writes to ask Sir 
 Joshua to join, and says 'the company is numerous, 
 and, as you will see by the list, miscellaneous. The 
 terms are lax and the expenses light. We meet thrice a 
 week, and he who misses forfeits two-pence.' If his 
 house in Bolt Court was lonely, why he would seek for 
 company abroad. He would never allow that he was 
 old. ' I value myself upon this — that there is nothing of 
 the old man in my conversation.' ' Don't let us dis- 
 courage one another,' was his reply to his college friend 
 Edwards, when on meeting Johnson Edwards said, ' Ah, 
 Sir, we are old men now.' 
 
 Later on, when his infirmities forced him to acknow- 
 ledge that old age had come upon his body, he said, 
 ' He that lives must grow old, and he that would 
 rather grow old than die has God to thank for the 
 infirmities of age.' Six months before his death, as we 
 can learn from Boswell, he had dined out at least six 
 times in nine days, besides spending one evening at 
 the Essex Street Club. ' Of these days and others,' 
 writes Boswell, ' on which I saw him, I have no me 
 morials, except the general recollection of his being able 
 and animated in conversation, and appearing to relish 
 society as much as the youngest man.'
 
 . LORD MAC AULA Y ON JOHNSON. 143 
 
 It was this perfect preservation of the powers of his 
 mind that rendered death so terrible to him to the last. 
 ' I struggle hard for life,' he writes, * I try to hold up my 
 head as high as I can ; ' and again, ' I will be conquered; 
 I will not capitulate.' Some one told him of a wonderful 
 learned pig, and when ' a person who was present pro- 
 ceeded to remark that great torture must have been em- 
 ployed ere the indocility of the animal could have been 
 subdued, "Certainly" (said the Doctor), " but " (turning to 
 me), " how old is your pig ? " I told him three years old. 
 " Then," said he, " the pig has no cause to complain ; he 
 would have been killed the first year if he had not been edu- 
 cated, and protracted existence is a good recompense for 
 very considerable degrees of torture." ' Who can forget 
 the stern strength of mind the old man showed in the last 
 day of his life when, thinking that the surgeons, out of 
 fear of giving him pain, would not cut deep enough, he 
 called for a case of lancets and operated upon himself ? 
 Nay even, ' soon after he got at a pair of scissors that lay 
 in a drawer by him, and plunged them deep into the calf 
 of each leg.' 
 
 The longer he lived the more attractive did the world 
 seem to him. He had kept his friendship in constant 
 repair, to quote his own expressive words. The retired 
 and uncourtly scholar whose shoes had been laughed at
 
 144 ^R- JOHNSON. 
 
 by the Christ Church men, who had come to London 
 poor and unknown, whose surly virtue had often wanted 
 a friend ; who ' in the gloom of solitude,' had thirty years 
 before brought out his great work, now found himself 
 courted by the great, whose rank, if only joined with 
 decency of life, he had always so deeply respected. The 
 friends of his daily life were some of the greatest men 
 that England could then boast of; who, great though 
 they were, looked upon him not as their equal but as 
 their chief. What more splendid homage was ever paid 
 to any man than to him, to whom when Burke and 
 Reynolds and Gibbon and Sheridan wished to pre- 
 sent a petition, they only ventured to send it in the 
 form of a Round Robin ? He relished fame, and he was 
 famous. 
 
 ' He called to us,' as Boswell writes in describing a 
 Club meeting a short while before his death, — ' he called 
 to us with a sudden air of exultation as the thought 
 started into his mind, " Oh ! gentlemen, I must tell you 
 a very great thing. The Empress of Russia has ordered 
 the ' Rambler ' to be translated into the Russian language ; 
 so I shall be read on the banks of the Wolga. Horace 
 boasts that his fame would extend as far as the banks of 
 the Rhone ; now the Wolga is farther from me than the 
 Rhone was from Horace." Bostvell: "You must cer-
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON JOHNSON. 145 
 
 tainly be pleased with this, Sir." yohnson: "I am 
 pleased, Sir, to be sure. A man is pleased to find he has 
 succeeded in that which he has endeavoured to do." ' 
 London life had lost to him none of its charms. ' When a 
 man is tired of London, he is tired of life ; for there is 
 in London all that life can afford.' And when in the 
 last autumn that he was ever to see, he had gone into the 
 country in the hope that change of air and scene might 
 do something for him, worn with suffering it is not to the 
 rest of the grave or to some better world that he looks 
 fonvard. ' The town,' he WTites, * is my element ; there 
 are my friends, there are my books, to which I have not 
 yet bidden farewell ; and there are my amusements.' He 
 had, too often in his long life, with good reason to own 
 himself 'a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief 
 Yet we please ourselves with the strong belief that he Avho 
 had so large a share of some of the noblest qualities 
 with which man is endowed, had also no small share 
 of that happiness which here on earth can fall to the lot 
 of man.
 
 146 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MR. CARLYLE ON BOSWELL.' 
 
 In the whole of literature there is scarcely a stronger 
 contrast to be found than that which exists between the 
 two celebrated reviews of Boswell's * Life of Johnson.' 
 Lord Macaulay was, I think, carried by his love of 
 paradox and his hatred of Tories as far wrong in one 
 direction, as Mr. Carlyle by his love of hero-worship and 
 his utter indifference both to Whigs and Tories was 
 carried in another direction. There are those who imagine 
 that between two opposite characters that are given of 
 the same man a kind of balance can be struck, which 
 shall not be far removed from the truth. Character, 
 however, admits of such infinite variety that it may well 
 happen that the truth lies not between any two opposing 
 views, but in some altogether different direction. Though 
 the study of both Boswell and Johnson as drawn by 
 
 ' Reprinted (with alterations) from the Sa^uraay Kniew, 
 November 28, 1874.
 
 MR. CARLYLE ON BO SWELL. 147 
 
 these two great writers is very interesting, yet I doubt 
 whether in their pages there is to be found, even by 
 a man who is well skilled in weighing arguments and 
 balancing opposing statements, an accurate estimate of 
 the two men. 
 
 Macaulay had represented Boswell as everything 
 that was contemptible and mean. It was no hard matter 
 to upset this outrageous view; and Mr. Carlyle has done 
 it most thoroughly. Even he, in some points, has not 
 done full justice to Boswell's character. In one respect, 
 however, he has exaggerated his merits. ' Loyalty, dis- 
 cipleship,' he writes, ' all that was ever meant by Ho-o- 
 7vorship, lives perennially in the human bosom, and waits, 
 even in these dead days, only for occasions to unfold it, 
 and inspire all men with it, and again make the world 
 alive ! James Boswell we can regard as a practical 
 witness, or real martyr., to this high, everlasting truth.' 
 Now the more hidden the hero is, the less recognised by 
 the world, the greater is the merit of the disciple who 
 discovers him and establishes his worship. Mr. Carlyle, 
 I hold, exalts Boswell's merits by lowering the position 
 which Johnson held at the time when the two first 
 became acquainted. 'At the date,' he writes, 'when 
 Johnson was a poor, rusty-coated " scholar," dwelling in 
 Temple Lane, and indeed throughout their whole inter-
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 course afterwards, were there not chancellors and prime 
 ministers enough ; graceful gentlemen, the glass of 
 fashion ; honour-giving noblemen ; dinner-giving rich 
 men ; renowned fire-eaters, swordsmen, gownsmen ; 
 Quacks and Realities of all hues — any one of whom 
 bulked much larger in the world's eye than Johnson 
 ever did ? ' 
 
 In another passage he says : ' His mighty " constella- 
 tion," or sun, round whom he, as satellite, observantly 
 gyrated, was, for the mass of men, but a huge, ill-snuffed 
 tallow-light.' Again he writes : ' Nay, it does not 
 appear that vulgar vanity could ever have been much 
 flattered by Boswell's relation to Johnson. Mr. Croker 
 says Johnson was, to the last, little regarded by the great 
 world.' Anyone who should read the review without 
 knowing the Life would certainly infer that Boswell was 
 the first to discover to the world a great man hidden 
 away in obscurity and poverty. Now by the year 1763, 
 when the disciple first met his master, Johnson was at 
 the head of the literary world. He had published 
 ' Irene,' ' London,' the ' Life of Savage,' the Diction- 
 ary, the 'Vanity of Human Wishes,' the 'Rambler,' 
 the 'Idler,' and 'Rasselas.' His edition of Shakespeare 
 he had been engaged on for some years, and he com- 
 pleted it two years later, before Boswell's return from
 
 MR. CARLYLE ON BOS WELL. 149 
 
 the Continent. He was no longer the poor, rusty-coated 
 scholar, for the year before he had had granted to him 
 his pension of jQ:^oo a year.' It was granted, it will 
 be remembered, in the most honourable way possible, 
 ' solely as the reward of his literary merit, without any 
 stipulation whatever, or even tacit understanding that 
 he should write for the Administration.' Boswell's own 
 allowance from his father was but ;^24o a year ; so that 
 of the two men, Johnson, in the early part of their ac- 
 quaintance at all events, had the larger income. We 
 have not very full information as to the society in which 
 Johnson mixed, and the regard in which he was held 
 before the time when Boswell made his acquaintance. 
 But I have gathered together a few facts, which I will 
 briefly lay before my readers. 
 
 When Boswell was only a boy of twelve years old, a 
 gentleman of a higher lineage and an older family than 
 he could boast of had come up to London to worship at 
 
 ' How large a sum this pension must have been in his eyes 
 we can judge from a passage in his Life of Savage. He de- 
 scribes how Lord Tyrconnel received the poet into his family, 
 and engaged to allow him a pension of ;[f 200 a year. He goes on 
 to tell how Savage became at once all the rage. ' His presence was 
 sufficient to make any place of public entertainment popular, ant! 
 his approbation and example constituted the fashion. So powerful 
 is genius when it is invested with the glitter of atllueuce.'
 
 ISO DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 the feet of the author of the ' Rambler.' Bennet 
 Langton, the son of the Lincolnshire squire whose 
 'ancestor signed Magna Charta first, as Primate of all 
 England/ had, I should imagine, to use Mr. Carlyle's 
 words, ' been nurtured in an atmosphere of heraldry ' 
 scarcely less than Boswell. He could show a pedigree, 
 engrossed on a piece of parchment about ten inches 
 broad and from twelve to fifteen feet long. He not 
 only visited Johnson in London, but quite early in 
 their acquaintance invited him down to his father's 
 Hall in Lincolnshire. Through him, too, Johnson be- 
 came acquainted with Topham Beauclerk, the grandson 
 of the Duke of St. Albans. With these two young 
 Oxonians Johnson was living on terms of the greatest 
 intimacy many years before he knew Boswell. 
 
 Writing of the year 1752, Boswell says, 'The circle 
 of his friends at this time was extensive and various, far 
 beyond what had been generally imagined ; ' while Haw- 
 kins, speaking of about the same time, says, ' His 
 acquaintance was sought by persons of the first eminence 
 in literature.' Men of rank were reckoned among his 
 friends, as the Earl of Cork and Orrery and Lord South- 
 well. Bubb Doddington, afterward Lord Melcombe, 
 wrote to him to say that ' if Mr. Johnson was inclined to 
 enlarge the circle of his acquaintance, he should be glad
 
 MR. CARLYLE ON BOS WELL. 151 
 
 to be admitted into the number of his friends.' So 
 early as the year 1748, in the print that is still preserved 
 of the company which that summer visited Tunbridge 
 Wells, we find Johnson and his wife represented, in 
 company with Speaker Onslow, Mr. Pitt (Lord Chatham), 
 and Mr., afterwards Lord, Lyttelton. As Mr. Croker 
 remarks, ' in that assemblage neither Johnson nor his 
 wife exhibit an appearance of inferiority to the rest of 
 the company.' The reference to the figures, by the way, 
 in the facsimile of the print is said to be in Richardson's 
 own writing. How comes it then that we find Dr., and 
 not Mr., Johnson? Johnson received his degree from 
 Dublin in 1765, and Richardson died in 1761. 
 
 It was in the year 1755 that Lord Chesterfield by his 
 attempts to flatter him provoked the celebrated letter. 
 When he was accused of having treated Johnson with 
 rudeness by keeping him waiting in his ante-chamber, he 
 said he ' would have turned off the best servant he ever 
 had, if he had known that he denied him to a man who 
 would have been always more than welcome.' Li the 
 same year Johnson received from Oxford the honorary 
 degree of Master of Arts, while the Academy at Florence 
 presented him with a copy of their ' Vocabulario ' in 
 return for a copy of his Dictionary presented to it by 
 ' his friend the Earl of Cork and Orrery,' at the same
 
 152 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 time that the French Academy sent him their ' Diction - 
 naire.' A year or two later Smollett, ^vriting on his 
 behalf to Wilkes, describes him as that great Cham of 
 literature. When his pension was granted Lord Bute 
 behaved in the handsomest manner. In the same year 
 that he received his pension, Boswell says that in a trip 
 which he took with Reynolds to Devonshire ' he was enter- 
 tained at the seats of several noblemen and gentlemen in 
 the West of England.' At Plymouth 'the Commissioner 
 of the Dockyard paid him the compliment of ordering the 
 yacht to convey him and his friend to Eddystone.' At 
 Exeter, ' that very eminent divine, the Rev. Zachariah 
 Mudge, Prebendary of Exeter, preached a sermon pur- 
 posely that Johnson might hear him.' Boswell, when he 
 comes to the time of his own introduction to his hero, says 
 that ' Sir David Dalrymple, now one of the Judges of Scot- 
 land, by the title of Lord Hailes, had contributed much to 
 increase my high opinion of Johnson, on account of his 
 writings, long before I attained to a personal acquaintance 
 with him.' Sir David writes to congratulate Boswell on 
 making Johnson's acquaintance, and says, ' I envy you the 
 free and undisguised converse with such a man.' He goes 
 on to say, ' May I beg you to present my best respects to 
 him, and to assure him of the veneration which I enter- 
 tain for the author of the "Rambler" and of "Rasselas"?'
 
 MR. CARLYLE ON BOS WELL. 153 
 
 On one of the early days of their acquaintance, 
 Boswell ' found tall Sir Thomas Robinson (the elder 
 brother of the first Lord Rokeby) sitting with Johnson.' 
 Boswell another day told Johnson how ' Sir James 
 Macdonald, who united the highest reputation at Eton 
 and Oxford with the patriarchal spirit of a great High- 
 land chieftain, had said that he had never seen Johnson, 
 but he had a great respect for him, though at the same 
 time it was mixed with some degree of terror.' Mr. 
 Dempster, long M.P. for Fife, ' was so much struck,' 
 Boswell says, writing of the same period, ' even with the 
 imperfect account I gave him of Dr. Johnson's conversa- 
 tion, that to his honour be it recorded, when I com- 
 plained that drinking port and sitting up late with him 
 affected my nerves for some time after, he said, " One 
 had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep company 
 with such a man." ' 
 
 It was in the same year that the Countess de Boufflers, 
 one of the leaders of French society, who was now 
 on a round of visits in England, breakfasting with 
 Walpole, dining with the Duke of Grafton, supping with 
 Beauclerk, paid her visit to Johnson in Inner Temple 
 Lane. All readers of Boswell will remember how John- 
 son, a moment or two after the lady had left his rooms, 
 eager to show himself a man of gallantry, hurried down
 
 154 DR- JOHNSON. 
 
 the staircase in violent agitation, and in the strangest of 
 costumes, seized her hand and conducted her to her 
 coach. Some years before this Dr. Maxwell, the assist- 
 ant preacher at the Temple, had described the levee of 
 morning visitors that he held. ' He seemed to me,' he 
 wrote, ' to be considered as a kind of public oracle, whom 
 everybody thought they had a right to visit and consult. 
 Though the most accessible and communicative man 
 alive,' he goes on to add, ' yet when he suspected he 
 was invited to be exhibited, he constantly spurned the 
 invitation.' 
 
 In 1764, the year after Boswell first met Johnson, the 
 Club was founded. 'When the society was not more 
 than fifteen years old,' I quote from Mr. Forster's 'Life 
 of Goldsmith,' ' the Bishop of St. Asaph wrote to Mr, 
 William Jones, " I believe Mr. Fox will allow me to say 
 that the honour of being elected into the Turk's Head 
 Club is not inferior to that of being the representative of 
 Westminster or Surrey. The electors are certainly more 
 disinterested ; and I should say they were much better 
 judges of merit, if they had not rejected Lord Camden 
 and chosen me." ' The Bishop of Chester was blackballed 
 on the same night as the ex-Lord Chancellor. 
 
 In 1765, Johnson paid a visit to Cambridge. Mr. 
 Turner, who twenty years later published an account of
 
 MR. CARLYLE ON BO SWELL. 155 
 
 this visit, says : ' I admire his prudence and good sense in 
 not appearing that day (Sunday) at St. Mary's, to be the 
 general gaze during the whole service. Such an appear- 
 ance at such a time and place might have turned, as it 
 , were, a Christian church into an idol temple.' The 
 writer, after saying that Johnson ' seemed studious to 
 preserve a strict incognito,' goes on to add : ' Had he 
 visited Cambridge at the Commencement, or on some 
 public occasion, he would doubtless have met with the 
 honours due to the bright luminary of a sister University; 
 and yet even these honours, however genuine and desir- 
 able, the modesty of conscious excellence seems rather to 
 have prompted him to avoid.' In the same year ' Trinity 
 College, Dublin, surprised Johnson with a spontaneous 
 compliment of the highest academical honours by creat- 
 ing him Doctor of Law.' 
 
 In 1767, by which year Boswell had still seen very 
 little of Johnson, occurred the interview with the King in 
 the library at the Queen's house. ' His Majesty having 
 been informed of his occasional visits, was pleased to 
 signify a desire that he should be told when Dr. Johnson 
 came next to the library. Accordingly, the next time 
 that Johnson did come, as soon as he was fairly engaged 
 with a book, on which, while he sat by the fire, he seemed 
 quite intent, Mr. Barnard stole round to the apartment
 
 156 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 where the King was, and, in obedience to his Majesty's 
 commands, mentioned that Dr. Johnson was then in the 
 hbrary. His Majesty said he was at leisure, and would 
 go to him.' In the course of the conversation that fol- 
 lowed, the King, it will be remembered, asked him if he 
 was then writing anything. ' Johnson said he thought he 
 had already done his part as a writer. " I should have 
 thought so, too (said the King), if you had not written so 
 well." Johnson observed to me upon this (writes Boswell) 
 that "No man could have paid a handsomer compliment, 
 and it was fit for a king to pay. It was decisive." ' 
 
 At one period of his life, and probably not much later 
 than the time when Boswell made his acquaintance, 
 ' Johnson was a good deal with the Earl of Shelburne.' 
 Boswell himself does not seem to know when it was that 
 the intimacy had existed. We may infer, therefore, that 
 it was at least somewhat early in the friendship of John- 
 son and his biographer, if not, indeed, before the friend- 
 ship began. 
 
 I have shown, I think, that at the time when Boswell 
 became intimate with Johnson the position his hero held 
 in the world was very far from being inconsiderable. It 
 would not be difficult to go on and upset Mr. Croker's 
 statement, which Mr. Carlyle seems to adopt, that John- 
 son was to the last little regarded by the great world.
 
 MR. CARLYLE ON BOS WELL. 157 
 
 In his tour to the Hebrides he was welcomed by the 
 great people wherever there were great people to wel- 
 come him. Setting aside the Scotch judges, many of 
 whom were men of good family and received him hospit- 
 ably, and the Scottish lairds, whom Mr. Carlyle describes 
 as the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known, but 
 who were as warm in their welcome as the judges, he was 
 hospitably received by the Earl of Errol. the Duke of 
 Argyle, the Earl of Loudoun, and the Countess of 
 Eglintoun. ' The Earl of Errol put Dr. Johnson in mind 
 of their having dined together in London.' At Inverary 
 ' the Duke placed Dr. Johnson next to him at dinner. 
 The Duchess was very attentive to him. He talked a 
 great deal, and was so entertaining that Lady Betty 
 Hamilton, after dinner, went and placed her chair close 
 to his, leaned upon the back of it, and listened eagerly. 
 He did not know all the while how much he was 
 honoured.' When the Earl of Loudoun heard that 
 Johnson would dine with him, Boswell's servant reported 
 that 'he jumped for joy.' 'We were received with a 
 most pleasing courtesy by his Lordship, and by the 
 Countess his mother, who in her ninety-fifth year had all 
 her faculties quite unimpaired.' At the Countess of Eglin- 
 toun's ' in the course of our conversation it came out 
 that she was married the year before Dr. Johnson was
 
 158 DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 born, upon which she graciously said to him that she 
 might have been his mother, and that she now adopted 
 him ; and when we were going away she embraced him, 
 saying, " My dear son, farewell." ' In London ' he 
 associated,' as Boswell tells us, ' with persons the most 
 widely different in manners, abilities, rank, and accom- 
 plishments. He was at once the companion of the 
 brilliant Colonel Forrester of the Guards,^ who wrote 
 "The Polite Philosopher," and of the awkward and un- 
 couth Robert Levett ; of Lord Thurlow and Mr. Sastres, 
 the Italian master ; and has dined one day with the 
 beautiful, gay, and fascinating Lady Craven and the next 
 with good Mrs. Gardiner, the tallow-chandler on Snow 
 Hill.' Mr. Fitzgerald, in his edition of Boswell, quoting 
 from Rogers's ' Table Talk,' says : ' Mr. Rogers was 
 told by Lady Lucan that her mother, Lady Spencer, 
 used to say, " Now, child, we have nothing to do to-night ; 
 let us bring home Dr. Johnson to dinner." ' Boswell 
 says that ' at the house of Lord and Lady Lucan he 
 often enjoyed all that an elegant house and the best com- 
 pany can contribute to form happiness.' But Bennet 
 Langton's account of the party at Mrs. Vesey's, where 
 the company, in which there were two duchesses, half a 
 dozen or so of lords and ladies, whom he names, and 
 * others of note both for their station and understanding,
 
 MR. CARLYLE ON BO SWELL. 159 
 
 began to collect round Johnson till thev became not less 
 than four, if not five, deep,' is in itself proof enough that 
 Johnson was regarded by the great. 
 
 I cannot admit, then, the claim made for Boswell that 
 he, and he alone, last century was a real martyr to the 
 high, everlasting truth that hero-worship lives perennially 
 in the human bosom. If the age in which he lived was 
 ' a decrepit, death-sick era, when Cant had first decisively 
 opened her poison-breathing lips to proclaim that God- 
 worship and Mammon-worship were one and the same, 
 that Life was a Lie,' &c., it was at all events the age 
 of Goldsmith, Burke, Reynolds, and the gentle Bennet 
 Langton, each of whom rivalled Boswell in the high 
 esteem and the deep affection which they felt for Samuel 
 Johnson.
 
 i6o DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOSWELL.' 
 
 It is strange how a man of Macaulay's common sense, 
 wide reading, and knowledge of the world could have 
 fallen into such a rhetorical passion with Boswell. It 
 would be almost as reasonable if a writer were to set about 
 to belabour the memory of Sir Toby Belch as a man who 
 had lost all self-respect. 
 
 Boswell, I should have thought, had sufficiently 
 guarded himself against such an attack by the story he 
 applies to himself in his dedication of the ' Life ' to Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds. He complains that he had been 
 misunderstood when, in his * Tour to the Hebrides,' in 
 his eagerness to display the fertility and readiness of 
 Johnson's wit, he freely showed to the world its dexterity, 
 even when he himself was the object of it. 
 
 ' In writing this chapter I have made some use of articles pub- 
 lished in the Saturday Reznau, June 20, 1874, and the Fall Mall 
 Gazette, October 13, 1875.
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOS WELL. i6i 
 
 He goes on to say, * It is related of the great Dr. 
 Clarke that, when in one of his leisure hours, he was un- 
 bending himself with a few friends in the most playful and 
 frolicksome manner, he observed Beau Nash approaching ; 
 upon which he suddenly stopped. " My boys," said he, 
 " let us be grave ; here comes a fool." ' It is well for the 
 world that Boswell had none of that second sight in which 
 he was very willing to believe, or he might have spoiled 
 his book by often stopping suddenly in his narrative with 
 the exclamation, ' Let me be grave ! I see coming from 
 afar an Edinburgh Reviewer.' 
 
 His faults — and they were certainly very great — were 
 not such as to raise either anger or contempt. A corre- 
 spondent of Malone's described him well when he said 
 ' he was an amiable, warm-hearted fellow, and there was 
 a simplicity in him very engaging.' Hume, who was no 
 bad judge of a man, wrote of him as 'a young gentleman 
 very good humoured, very agreeable, and very mad.' 
 Adam Smith, if we may trust Boswell, had told him when 
 he was quite a young man that he was ' happily possessed 
 of a faciHty of manners.' Rousseau recommended him to 
 Pascal Paoli, and Paoli, after he had had him as his guest, 
 in writing to him told him he should be desirous to keep 
 up a correspondence with him. Hannah More speaks of 
 him as ' a very agreeable, good-natured man.' Cumber- 
 
 M
 
 x62 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 land calls him 'the pleasant tourist to Corsica. ... I 
 loved the man,' he writes ; 'he had great convivial 
 powers, and an inexhaustible fund of good humour in 
 societ)'.' Miss Bumey, angry though she was with him 
 for revealing to the world ' every weakness and infirmity of 
 the first and greatest good man of these times,' and resolved 
 though she was to show him ' a forbidding reserve and 
 silence,' yet found her resolution overcome. 'He is so 
 open and forgiving for all that is said in return, that he 
 soon forced me to consider him in a less serious light, . . . 
 and before we parted we became good friends. There is 
 no resisting great good humour, be what will in the oppo- 
 site scale.' Beauclerk, the courtly Topham Beauclerk, 
 who, according to Macaulay,^ used Boswell's name as a 
 proverbial expression for a bore, was nevertheless very 
 zealous for his election into the Club. It was at his house 
 that Boswell's friends dined on the day of the election, 
 and went off in a body to vote for him, leaving him ' in a 
 state of anxiety which even the charming conversation of 
 Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate.' 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds was the last man to have been a 
 friend to the vile sycophant whom Macaulay describes. 
 Boswell, in dedicating his great work to Reynolds, boasts 
 
 ' Macaulay, no doubt, was thinking of the passage in a letter 
 from Beauclerk to the Earl of Charlemunt, that I quote on page 311.
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOS WELL. 163 
 
 * Avith honest pride ' that between the two there had been 
 a long and uninterrupted friendship. And he was justified 
 in making this boast, for Reynolds had been no less eager 
 than Johnson for his election into the Club. It was to 
 him, no doubt, that many years later was due his appoint- 
 ment as Secretary for Foreign Correspondence to the 
 Royal Academy. He gave him during his lifetime one of 
 the portraits that he had painted of Johnson, and in his 
 will he left him ^200, ' to be expended, if he thought 
 proper, in the purchase of a picture at the sale of his 
 paintings, and to be kept for his sake.' Dr. Barnard, 
 Bishop of Killaloe, when he was appointed chaplain to 
 the Royal Academy, writing to Reynolds, said, ' Tell my 
 brother Boswell that I expect his congratulations.' 
 
 Dr. Barnard was a wit who could hold his place even 
 when in company with Johnson and Burke. He would 
 never have asked for the congratulations of ' a man of the 
 meanest and feeblest intellect.' Was Johnson likely to 
 have endured a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect 
 for twenty minutes? But his friendship with Boswell 
 lasted more than twenty years. 'He described him,' 
 writes Macaulay, 'as a fellow who had missed his only 
 chance of immortality by not having been alive when the 
 " Dunciad " was written.' > But are all Johnson's hasty 
 
 ' 'Johnson repeated to us in his forcible, melodious manner, the 
 M 2
 
 1 64 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 utterances to be taken as so many deliberate judgments ? 
 Did he really look upon Fielding as a blockhead, a barren 
 rascal ; or upon Reynolds as a man too far gone in wine ; 
 or upon Dean Percy as a man who had done with 
 civility ; or upon Beauclerk as a man who was very 
 uncivil ; or upon Garrick as a fellow who exhibited 
 himself for a shilling — a Punch who had no feelings? 
 Did he really think that Dean Barnard deserved to be 
 openly told that in him there was great room for improve- 
 ment ; or that Goldsmith deserved to be no less openly 
 told that he was impertinent ? 
 
 In his 'Life of Savage' he has himself shown how 
 unreasonable it is to give too much weight to such 
 utterances as these. ' A little knowledge of the world, 
 he writes, ' is sufficient to discover that such weakness is 
 very common, and that there are few who do not some- 
 times, in the wantonness of thoughtful mirth, or the heat 
 of transient resentment, speak of their friends and bene- 
 factors with levity and contempt.' 
 
 If, to use Boswell's own expression, he at times gored 
 
 concluding lines of the Dunciad, While he was talking loudly in 
 praise of those lines, one of the company ventured to say, "Too 
 fine for such a poem : a poem on what?" Johnson (with a dis- 
 dainful air) : "Why, on dunces. It was worth while being a dunce 
 then. Ah, Sir, hadst thou lived in those days ! " ' — Boswell's 
 Johnson, October 1 6, 1769.
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOSWELL. 165 
 
 him and tossed him, he often spoke of him in a vety 
 different way. In his ' Journey to the Western Islands ' 
 he writes : ' I was induced to undertake the journey by 
 finding in Mr. Boswell a companion whose acuteness 
 would help my inquiry, and whose gaiety of conversation 
 and civility of manners are sufficient to counteract the 
 inconveniencies of travel in countries less hospitable 
 than we have passed,' In his letters to Mrs. Thrale, 
 who, as he must have known, did not like Boswell, he 
 speaks of 'his good humour and perpetual cheerfiilness.' 
 
 * It is very convenient to travel with him, for there is 
 no house where he is not received with kindness and 
 respect.' Mrs. Boswell ' had the mien and manners of a 
 gentlewoman.' Yet ' she is in a proper degree inferior to 
 her husband ; she cannot rival him, nor can he ever be 
 ashamed of her.' In letters written in later years he tells 
 how Boswell 'is with us in good humour, and plays his 
 part with his usual vivacity.' ' He has been gay and good 
 humoured in his usual way.' 
 
 Johnson, no doubt, was, as Madame D'Arblay says, 
 
 * really touched by Boswell's attachment. It was indeed 
 surprising, and even touching,' she goes on to say, ' to re- 
 mark the pleasure with which this great man accepted 
 personal kindness even from the simplest of mankind, 
 and the grave formality with which he acknowledged it
 
 i66 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 even to the meanest. Possibly it was what he most 
 prized because what he could least command, for personal 
 partiality hangs upon lighter and slighter qualities than 
 those which earn solid approbation.' But no amount of 
 personal attachment from such a man as Macaulay 
 describes could have won Johnson's friendship. 'On 
 men and manners,' as he justly says, 'Johnson had 
 certainly looked with a most observant and discriminating 
 eye. ... It is clear, from the remains of his conversation, 
 that he had more of that homely wisdom which nothing 
 but experience and observation can give than any writer 
 since the time of Swift.' 
 
 It was certainly with an observant and a discri- 
 minating but not with a scornful eye that Johnson had 
 looked on men and manners, and it was because he had 
 so looked that he could see Boswell's merits and enjoy 
 Boswell's society. He could find good in everything. 
 His mind was large enough to be tolerant of that which 
 was immeasurably beneath him. He was like some lofty 
 and wide-spreading tree, beneath whose branches the 
 grass can grow which the thick shrub would choke. The 
 range of his knowledge was wide, and he was always 
 eager to make it still wider. 
 
 No less wide was the range of his friendships, and 
 scarcely less eager was his desire to extend it. 'Let
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOS WELL. 167 
 
 us keep our friendships in repair/ he wrote in his old age. 
 He despised no one who knew anything that he himself 
 did not know, or who had any share of common sense, or 
 ordinary intelligence. Swift one day overheard a gentle- 
 man regretting that he should have chanced to come to 
 the house where among the guests was so great a scholar 
 and a wit. 'A plain country squire,' the gentleman said, 
 * will have but a bad time of it in his company, and I don't 
 like to be laughed at.' Swift stepped up to him and said, 
 ' Pray, Sir, do you know how to say yes or Jio properly ? ' 
 *Yes, I think I have understanding enough for tVat.' 
 ' Then give me your hand — depend upon it you and I 
 will agree very well.' 
 
 Johnson and the plain country squire would have 
 agreed still better. ' It was never,' as Madame Piozzi 
 says, ' against people of coarse life that his contempt was 
 expressed; while poverty of sentiment in men who con- 
 sidered themselves to be company for the parlour, as he 
 called it, was what he would not bear.' It might have 
 been said of him what he said of Burke : ' Take up 
 whatever topic you please, he is ready to meet you.' One 
 evening when he had been with Burke and had had by 
 far the largest share in the talk, Burke in his modesty 
 owTied that it was enough for him to have rung the bell 
 to him. When a clergyman complained of the want of
 
 1 68 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 < 
 
 society in the country where he Hved and said * They talk 
 of runts ^;' a lady, who was by and who knew Johnson 
 well, said, 'Sir, Mr. Johnson would learn to talk of 
 runts.' 
 
 With all his prejudices he was, so far as men are con- 
 cerned, one of the most unprejudiced of men. He had 
 in a high degree the power of finding out in each man 
 his better part. He was on a level with Burke and 
 Gibbon, Reynolds and Garrick, but blind Miss Williams 
 and old Mr. Levett were not beneath him. 
 
 Macaulay sneers at the inmates of his house — * this 
 strange menagerie,' as he calls them — ' Miss Williams 
 whose chief recommendations were her blindness and her 
 poverty,' ' the old quack doctor named Levett,' and the 
 others who ' continued to torment him and to live upon 
 him.' But in both of them he found in no small degree that 
 eagerness after knowledge which he himself had in so large 
 a degree. ' My house has lost,' he wrote when Levett died, 
 ' a man who took interest in everything, and therefore ready 
 at conversation.' When death the following year swept off 
 Miss Williams, he wrote, ' had she had good humour and 
 prompt elocution, her universal curiosity and comprehen- 
 sive knowledge would have made her the delight of all 
 
 ' *Runt, in the Teutonick dialects, signifies a bull or a cow, and 
 is used in contempt by us for small cattle.' — ^Johnson's Dictionary.
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BOS WELL. 169 
 
 that kiiew her.' Hannah More writing of Miss Williams 
 whom she had met for the first time, said : * She is engaging 
 in her manners ; her conversation lively and entertaining.' 
 
 He felt their loss deeply. 'The amusements and 
 consolations of languor and depression/ he wrote to 
 Mrs. Thrale, 'are conferred by familiar and domestick 
 companions which can be visited or called at will, and 
 can occasionally be quitted or dismissed. . . . Such 
 society I had with Levett and Williams; such I had 
 where — I am never likely to have it more.' The last 
 passage is very striking^ He is thinking of the home at 
 Streatham that was now broken up, and he puts it and 
 his 'strange menagerie ' on a level. 
 
 Macaulay was not able to understand the pleasure 
 that Johnson found in such companions as these. Still 
 less was he able to understand the pleasure that he found 
 in Boswell. But Macaulay was a man of 'imperfect 
 sympathies.' He was not a humourist himself and he was 
 quite free from those harmless follies which are so com- 
 monly joined with humour. He never, we may be sure, 
 enjoyed a quiet laugh at himself. He never smiled at 
 his own inconsistencies. Had he knowaa Goldsmith, he 
 would have scorned him almost as much as he scorned 
 Boswell. He could never have burst into tears, as Burke 
 did, when he heard of Goldsmith's death, nor laid aside
 
 I70 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 his pen for the day, as Reynolds laid aside his brush. 
 
 He could never have liked ' an inspired idiot.' 
 
 In some lines that I have somewhere read the beauty 
 
 of a woman is described as so great that 
 
 The beggars drew into shadow as she passed 
 
 And covered up their sores with deeper sense of ill.^ 
 
 The clearness of Macaulay's mind was so great, so wide 
 were the partitions that divided his wit from madness, 
 that a man whose folly and whose genius were hopelessly 
 tangled together might well in like manner have covered 
 himself up, if he had known how, from the gaze of that 
 keen but unsympathetic eye. To like a man, Macaulay 
 had first to respect him. Could he have wandered like 
 Don Quixote through the world, he would rather have 
 been accompanied by a consistent Whig, who said 
 nothing because he had nothing to say, than by Sancho 
 Panza with all his humour and his folly. He could never 
 laugh at a man and laugh with him at the same time. So 
 little, indeed, was he formed for understanding a man of 
 Boswell's character, that when we examine the gross 
 caricature that he would pass off as his portrait, we have, 
 indeed, a feeling of pity — but the pity is for Macaulay not 
 for Boswell. 
 
 ^ I quote from recollection, and likely enough my quotation is 
 imperfect.
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BO SWELL. 171 
 
 * Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot 
 and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally 
 blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet 
 stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common 
 butt in the taverns of London ; so curious to know every- 
 body who was talked about, that Tory and High Church- 
 man as he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for an 
 introduction to Tom Paine ; so vain of the most childish 
 distinctions that, when he had been to court, he drove to 
 the office where his book was printing without changing 
 his clothes, and summoned all the printer's devils to 
 admire his new ruffles and sword ; such was this man ; 
 and such he was content and proud to be.' 
 
 ' I would your grace would take me with you ! ' Ave 
 may exclaim as Falstaff did when he heard himself de- 
 scribed by Prince Hal, ' Whom means your grace ? ' And 
 with some change in the words, we may go on to say, 
 ' No, my good Lord, banish Whig, banish Tory, banish 
 Edinburgh Reviewer, but for Jemmy Boswell banish not 
 him thy reader's company, banish not him thy reader's 
 friendship ; banish Jemmy and banish all the world.' For 
 with all his faihngs and with all his faults, despise him as 
 much as we please, yet we cannot help liking the man 
 and almost looking upon him as a friend. He is delight- "~\ 
 ful because he is Boswell, and to abuse him for being
 
 172 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Boswell is to abuse him for being delightful. He was 
 more than half aware of his own weaknesses and absur- 
 dities, and a fool who knows his own folly is no longer a 
 t_^ fool. In his preface to his book on Corsica he writes, 
 'For my part I should be proud to be known as an 
 authour ; and I have an ardent ambition for literary fame ; 
 for of all possessions I should imagine literary fame to be 
 the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish 
 a book which has been approved by the world has 
 established himself as a respectable character in distant 
 society, without any danger of having that character 
 lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To pre- 
 serve an uniform dignity among those who see us every 
 day is hardly possible; and to aim at it must put us 
 under the fetters of a perpetual restraint. The authour of 
 an approved book may allow his natural disposition an 
 easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superiour genius, 
 when he considers that by those who know him only as an 
 authour he never ceases to be respected. Such an authour 
 when in his hours of gloom and discontent may have the 
 consolation to think that his writings are at that very time 
 giving pleasure to numbers, and such an authour may 
 cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which 
 has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages.' 
 Boswell, unfortunately for his reputation, had by no
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOSWELL. 173, 
 
 means the art of preserving even in his writings 'an 
 uniform dignity.' This Goldsmith had, though perhaps 
 among those who saw him every day he, more even than 
 Boswell, exposed his weaknesses. As Sir Joshua said of 
 him, * admirers in a room whom his entrance had struck 
 with awe, might be seen riding out upon his back,' 
 
 Boswell was always giving the world something to 
 laugh at, but it was a good-natured laugh that he raised. 
 "When he was barely one and twenty he and his friend 
 Erskine published a series of letters that had passed be- 
 tween them. He was in such a hurry for fame that he 
 could not wait till he had written a book, but when we 
 read the letters we are only amused. He no more 
 excites our anger than did Goldsmith when he showed 
 himself off in his bloom-coloured coat. He is in these 
 Letters, as Hume says, very good humoured, very agree- 
 able and very mad. 
 
 Erskine laughs at him ; he ridicules the solemnity of 
 his small nose, his dark face which beamed a black ray 
 upon him, the rotundity of his Bath great-coat, his person 
 little and squat, the pomatum which gives his hair a 
 gloss, the grandeur of his pinchbeck buckles. He had 
 taken him, he says, sometimes for the witches' cauldron in 
 Macbeth 3 sometimes for an enormous ink-bottle ; some- 
 times for a funeral procession; now and then for a
 
 X74 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 chimney sweeper, and not unfrequently for a black- 
 pudding. He knows, he tells him, his aversion at being 
 thought a genius or a wit. He is aware he hates flattery, 
 and yet, in spite of his teeth, he will tell him that he is 
 the best poet and the most humorous letter-writer he 
 knows. He ridicules his wish to become a soldier, and 
 reminds him that * we find in all history, ancient and 
 modern, lawyers are very apt to run away.' 
 
 A man cannot, indeed, boast much of his dignity who 
 publishes such jests on himself. But he shows at all 
 events his good humour. He is wise enough to stand 
 a laugh against himself. He had had the impudence to 
 publish an Ode to Tragedy written by a gentleman of 
 Scotland and dedicated to James Boswell, Esq. Erskine's 
 curiosity is aroused, and he eagerly writes for information, 
 ' I must now ask like the " Spectator," is this Ode-writing 
 gentleman of Scotland fat or lean, tall or short, does he 
 use spectacles ? ^Vllat is the length of his walking-stick ? ' 
 
 Boswell with some humour replies : ' The author 
 of the Ode to Tragedy is a most excellent man : he 
 is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon 
 which he values himself not a little. At his nativity 
 there appeared omens of his future greatness. His 
 parts are bright, and his education has been good. 
 He has travelled in post-chaises miles without number.
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOS WELL. 175 
 
 He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of 
 every good dish, especially apple-pie. He drinks old 
 hock. He has a very fine temper. He is_ somewhat of 
 an humourist and a little tinctured with pride. He has 
 a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be 
 amorous. He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at 
 times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than 
 lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old. His 
 shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles. 
 The length of his walking-stick is not as yet ascertained ; 
 but we hope soon to favour the republic of letters with a 
 solution of this difficulty, as several able mathematicians 
 are employed in its investigation, and for that purpose 
 have posted themselves at different given points in the 
 Canongate, so that when the gentleman saunters down 
 to the Abbey of Holyrood House in order to think on 
 ancient days, on King James the Fifth, and on Queen 
 Mary, they may compute its altitude above the street 
 according to the rules of geometry.' 
 
 In the account he gives of his Tour to Corsica, there 
 is the same display of vanity as harmless as it is 
 amusing. To his great satisfaction it was generally 
 believed that he was on a public mission. ' The more I 
 disclaimed any such thing, the more they persevered in 
 affirming it ; and I was considered as a very close young
 
 176 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 man. I therefore just allowed them to make a minister 
 of me, till time should undeceive them. . . . The 
 Ambasciado7-e Inglcse — the English ambassadour — as the 
 good peasants and soldiers used to call me, became a 
 great favourite among them. I got a Corsican dress 
 made, in which I walked about with an air of true satis- 
 faction. . . . They were quite free and easy with 
 me. Numbers of them used to come and see me of a 
 morning, and just go in and out as they pleased. I did 
 everything in my power to make them fond of the 
 British, and bid them hope for an alliance with us. They 
 asked me a thousand questions about my country, all of 
 which I chearfuUy answered as well as I could.' 
 
 In another passage he says, 'At Bastelica, where 
 there is a stately spirited race of people, I had a large 
 company to attend me in the convent. I liked to see 
 their natural frankness and ease ; for why should men be 
 afraid of their own species ? They just came in making 
 an easy bow, placed themselves round the room where I 
 was sitting, rested themselves on their muskets, and 
 immediately entered into conversation with me.' We are 
 pleasantly reminded by his condescension how a few 
 years later on he said, ' For my part I like very well to 
 hear honest Goldsmith talk away carelessly.' 
 
 Paoli treated him with great ceremony, and whenever
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOS WELL. 177 
 
 he chose to make a little tour he was attended by a party 
 of guards. ' One day,' he writes, ' when I rode out I was 
 mounted on Paoli's own horse, with rich furniture of 
 crimson velvet, with broad gold lace, and had my guards 
 marching along with me. I allowed myself to indulge a 
 momentary pride in this parade, as I was curious to ex- 
 perience what could really be the pleasure of state and 
 distinction with which mankind are so strangely intoxi- 
 cated.' I wonder, by the way, if Boswell ever read the 
 Book of Esther without being filled with envy of Mor- 
 decai. How he would have delighted to be led along 
 the street in royal apparel, with the Prime Minister or the 
 Lord Chancellor walking by his side and proclaiming 
 before him, ' Thus shall it be done to the man whom the 
 King delighteth to honour.' When first he was to appear 
 before Paoli, ' I could not help being,' he says, ' under 
 considerable anxiety. My ideas of him had been greatly 
 heightened by the conversations I had held with all sorts 
 of people in the island, they having represented him to 
 me as something above humanity.' But a few pages 
 later on he writes : ' My time passed here in the most 
 agreeable manner. I enjoyed a sort of luxury of noble 
 sentiments. Paoli became more affable with me. I 
 made myself known to him.' 
 
 Wonderfully amusing is the account he gave of him- 
 
 N
 
 178 
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 self, when he had thus made himself known. ' This kind of 
 conversation led me to tell him how much I had suffered 
 from anxious speculations. With a mind naturally in- 
 clined to melancholy, and a keen desire of inquiry, I had 
 intensely (Oh, Bozzy ! Bozzy ! you bounced there, and 
 you know you did) applied myself to metaphysical re- 
 searches, and reasoned beyond my depth on such sub- 
 jects as it is not given to man to know. I told him I had 
 rendered my mind a camera obscura — that in the very 
 heat of youth I felt the non est tanti, the onmia vanitas of 
 one who has exhausted all the sweets of his being, and 
 is weary with dull repetition. I told him that I had 
 almost become for ever incapable of taking a part in 
 active life.' 
 
 One good, at all events, resulted from this visit, for 
 he says : ' From having known intimately so exalted a 
 character my sentiments of human nature were raised ; 
 while, by a sort of contagion, I felt an honest ardour to 
 distinguish myself and be useful, as far as my situation 
 and abilities would allow ; and I was, for the rest of my 
 life, set free from a slavish timidity in the presence of 
 great men — for where shall I find a man greater than 
 Paoli ? ' It was, no doubt, this happy freedom from slav- 
 ish timidity which a year or two later gave him courage 
 to write to the great Chatham, and ask, ' Could your
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BOS WELL. 179 
 
 lordship find time to honour me now and then \vith a 
 letter ? ' 
 
 As he had delighted in the experience of the pleasure 
 of state and distinction, so another day he made trial of 
 Arcadian simplicity. On almost every day of his life but 
 this he was, as every one knows, only too fond of good 
 eating and the bottle. But on this day, in describing a 
 trip he was taking, he says, ' When we grew hungry we 
 threw stones among the thick branches of the chestnut 
 trees which overshadowed us, and in that manner we 
 brought down a shower of chestnuts with which we filled 
 our pockets, and went on eating them with great relish ; 
 and when this made us thirsty we lay down by the side 
 of the first brook, put our mouths to the stream, and 
 drank sufficiently. It was just being for a while one of 
 the prisca gens mortaliuin, the primitive race of men, who 
 ran about in the woods eating acorns and drinking 
 water.' 
 
 jMacaulay says that Boswell ' has reported innumerable 
 observations made by himself in the course of conversa- 
 tion. Of those observations we do not remember one 
 which is above the intellectual capacity of a boy of 
 fifteen.' Had he read ' The Tour to Corsica ' he must 
 have allowed that in the following conversation Boswell 
 showed a good deal of wit.
 
 i8o DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 ' While I stopped to refresh my mules at a little vil- 
 lage, the inhabitants came crowding about me as an 
 ambassador going to their general. When they were 
 informed of my countr}', a strong black fellow among 
 them said : " English ! They are barbarians ; they don't 
 believe in the great God." I told him, " E.xcuse me, Sir. 
 We do believe in God, and in Jesus Christ too." "And 
 in the Pope?" "No." "And why?" This was a puzzling 
 question in these circumstances ; for there was a great 
 audience to the controversy. I thought I would try a 
 method of my own, and very gravely replied, " Because 
 we are too far off." A very new argument against the 
 universal infallibility of the Pope. It took, however ; 
 for my opponent mused awhile, and then said, " Too far 
 off ? Why, Sicily is as far off as England. Yet in Sicily 
 they believe in the Pope." " Oh ! " said I, " we are ten 
 times farther off than Sicily." "Aha!" said he; and 
 seemed quite satisfied.' 
 
 / All this vanity that Boswell thus early showed would 
 
 in a Malvolio, or a Mr. Collins such as Miss Austen drew, 
 be intolerable ; but vanity Avhcn it is joined with good 
 nature, a lively temperament, and an active mind, often 
 
 I amuses, and even pleases rather than offends. 
 
 But he had no liveliness of temperament, no activity 
 of mind, if we may trust Macaulay. ' He was, if we are
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BOS WELL. i8i 
 
 to give any credit to his own account or to the united 
 testimony of all who knew him, a man of the meanest 
 and feeblest intellect' Yet this 'Tour to Corsica' was 
 not the act of an intellect that was either mean or feeble. 
 He was, he says, the first Briton ^ who had had the curio- 
 sity to visit Corsica, and a trip to Corsica in those days 
 was as great a feat as a trip to Mount Ararat in these 
 days. ' Your countr}^men,' said Paoli, ' will be curious to 
 see you. A man come from Corsica will be like a man 
 come from the Antipodes.' The Mediterranean still 
 swarmed with Turkish corsairs, and Corsica itself 
 swarmed with brigands. ' Come home,' wrote Johnson 
 to him, ' and expect such welcome as is due to him 
 whom a wise and noble curiosity has led where perhaps 
 no native of this country ever was before.' The enthu- 
 siasm that led him there was, perhaps, wild ; but enthu- 
 siasm is not the failing of the meanest intellects. Scarcely 
 less noble was the enthusiasm which led him, a young 
 
 ' He was not, indeed, quite the first Briton to go to Corsica. 
 Curiously enough, he found in a town occupied by the French, an 
 EngHshwoman of Penrith in Cumberland. When the Highlanders 
 marched through that countr)' in the year 1745, she had married a 
 soldier of the French picquets in the very midst of all the confusion 
 and danger, and when she could hardly understand one word he 
 said. What a strange story might have been written of that 
 woman's adventures, if Boswell had had the powers of De Foe, and 
 had taken the trouble to learn all the circumstances of her life.
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 man of two and twenty, fond, only too fond, of pleasures, 
 and freshly arrived in London, to sit up four nights in 
 one week recording in his journal all that he could re- 
 member of what Johnson had said to him in the day. 
 
 But he had more than enthusiasm ; he had sound 
 literary judgment. When he came to write his book on 
 Corsica he showed that he knew very well the right way 
 to set about the work he had taken in hand. He says, 
 ' From my first setting out on this tour I wrote down 
 every night what I had observed during the day, throw- 
 ing together a great deal, that I might afterwards make a 
 selection at leisure.' His method might be studied 
 with great advantage by most of the authors of voyages 
 and travels. He not only makes it quite clear what it is 
 that he has seen himself and what it is that he knows 
 only on the authority of others ; but more than this, he 
 keeps each narrative quite apart from tlie other. He 
 first of all gives a history of Corsica and then the journal 
 of his tour. 
 
 The criticism which Johnson passed on the different 
 parts of the book is thoroughly sound. ' Your history,' 
 he writes, ' is like other histories ; but your journal is in 
 a very high degree curious and delightful. There is 
 between the history and the journal that difference which 
 there will always be found between notions borrowed
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BOS WELL. 183 
 
 from without and notions generated within. Your 
 history was copied from books ; your journal rose cut 
 of your own experience and observation. You express 
 images which operated strongly upon yourself, and you 
 have impressed them with great force upon your readers. 
 I know not whether I could name any narrative by 
 which curiosity is better excited or better gratified.' 
 
 But what is Johnson's judgment worth in the case of 
 books? — for according to Macaulay 'the judgments 
 which he passed on books are in our time generally 
 treated with indiscriminate contempt.' 
 
 The judgment that Macaulay passed on the ' Life of 
 Johnson,' is sure to be treated with contempt by anyone 
 who gives himself the trouble to think how rare and how 
 great are the powers that a man must have who is to 
 write a book that will live for all time. 
 
 A sentence in one of Gray's Letters, which contains 
 one of the earliest criticisms that we have on Boswell, has 
 in brief all that Macaulay has said at length. In writing 
 to Horace Walpole of the ' Tour to Corsica,' which had 
 just come out, Gray says, ' Mr. Boswell's book I was 
 going to recommend to you when I received your 
 letter ; it has pleased and moved me strangely — all (I 
 mean) that relates to Paoli. He is a man born two 
 thousand years after his time ! The pamphlet proves
 
 i84 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 what I have always maintained, that any fool may write 
 a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us 
 what he heard and saw with veracity. Of Mr. Boswell's 
 truth I have not the least suspicion, because I am sure 
 he could invent nothing of this kind.' 
 
 Gray, like Macaulay, does not remember that the 
 merit of a book quite as much depends on what is left 
 out as on what is put in. A veracious fool, like anyone 
 else, knows and sees a great deal. It demands sound 
 taste and literary skill to seize and retam only what 
 is interesting, and to put on one side even interesting 
 matter, if it would interfere with the general plan of the 
 work. Gray himself showed how well he understood 
 this when he struck out from his Elegy almost the 
 most beautiful stanza' of all, merely because he thought 
 it caused too long a break. He did not, indeed, live to 
 see the ' Life of Johnson ' published. If he had, he 
 would, I fear, have failed to discover that Boswell's judg- 
 ment on this point was not much inferior to his own. 
 And yet, perhaps, he would have found scarcely a 
 passage that he would willingly have struck out, and 
 
 ' There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, 
 
 By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found ; 
 The redbreast loves to build and warble there, 
 And little footsteps lightly print the ground.
 
 LORD MACAULAY ON BOS WELL. 185 
 
 scarcely a passage that does not bear on the hero of the 
 story. 
 
 But in the varied society he kept Boswell must have 
 heard many a good thing which could easily enough 
 have been worked into his book, though it would not 
 properly have belonged to it. In the conception he 
 formed of the task that lay before him, and in the self- 
 restraint with which he acted up to the rule he had laid 
 down, he showed remarkable literary taste and literary 
 power. And yet how strangely this is lost sight of, is 
 shown not only by Macaulay's criticism, but also by the 
 way in which his criticism is taken as just and sound by 
 men of real ability. 
 
 Some few years ago Mr. George Henry Lewes wrote 
 a preface to a kind of abridgment of Boswell. He 
 admires the Life so much that he says, ' it is for me a 
 sort of test-book ; according to a man's judgment of it 
 I am apt to form my judgment of him. . . . It is a 
 work which has delighted generations, and will continue 
 to delight posterity. . . . Yet even the staunchest admirers 
 of Boswell's Life must admit that it is three times as 
 long as need be.' He had himself entertained the 
 notion of *re-\vriting Boswell,' intending 'to preserve 
 all that constitutes the essential merits of his work, and 
 merely to adapt it to the more exigent tastes of our day.'
 
 1 86 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Happily for Mr. Lewes's reputation, ' scientific pursuits 
 absorbed,' he writes, ' all my energy, and left me neither 
 time nor strength to turn to literature.' We shall next 
 have some artist proposing to repaint Hogarth, preserving 
 of course all that constitutes the essential merits of his 
 pictures ; or adapting Gil Bias to the more exigent tastes 
 of the day. When the celebrated Round Robin was 
 laid before Dr. Johnson, in which he was asked by his 
 friends to write Goldsmith's epitaph in English and not 
 in Latin, we are told that ' upon seeing Dr. Warton's 
 name to the suggestion, he observed to Sir Joshua, " I 
 wonder that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should 
 be such a fool." He said too, " I should have thought 
 Mund Burke would have had more sense." ' Lord 
 Macaulay and Mr. Lewes are both scholars by profession ; 
 yet they both raise our wonder. 
 
 The question, after all, lies in a nut-shell. Is this 
 wonderful biography due, and due alone, as Macaulay 
 says, to the fact that Boswell had not only a quick 
 observation and a retentive memory, but was also a 
 dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb ? Is it, as Mr. Lewes 
 says, 'nothing more than the thin soup of Boswellian 
 narrative and comment in which the solid meat of 
 Johnson was dished up ? ' Might not Boswell, with good 
 reason, have made the same proud boast as Johnson
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BO SWELL. 187 
 
 made when speaking of the greatest of all his works: 
 * Yes, Sir, I knew very well what I was undertaking, 
 and very well how to do it, and have done it very well ' ? 
 I have spoken of Boswell's admirable literary taste. 
 But he shows also at times a dramatic power of which 
 even Goldsmith need not have been ashamed. How 
 few scenes there are in any play which, even when acted 
 before us on the stage by the best actors, seem half so 
 life-like as the dinner at Messieurs Billy's in the Poultry, 
 where Wilkes and Johnson met. Does anyone suppose 
 that the wonderful merits of that scene are due merely to 
 Boswell's skill in reporting conversations ? Could Gold- 
 smith himself, if he had lived to be present at that first 
 of all dinners, have told the story better, even with the 
 help of Boswell's notes ? How happy is Boswell when 
 he writes : ' I was persuaded that if I had come upon 
 him with a direct proposal, " Sir, will you dine in com- 
 pany with Jack Wilkes ? " he would have flown into a 
 passion, and would probably have answered, " Dine with 
 Jack Wilkes, Sir ! I'd as soon dine with Jack Ketch ! '" 
 How humourous is the touch when he describes his 
 exultation at having at last got the great man off : 
 ' When I had him fairly seated in a hackney-coach with 
 me, I exulted as much as a fortune-hunter who has got 
 an heiress into a post-chaise with him to set out for
 
 1 88 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Gretna Green.' Does he not show almost such an in- 
 sight into the comic side of human nature as we find in 
 Addison, when he describes the way in which Wilkes by 
 means of politeness and of roast-veal overcomes the 
 great man's surly virtue? The dexterity that Boswell 
 displayed in thus bringing these two men together surely 
 shows a great readiness of wit. As Burke pleasantly 
 said, ' there was nothing equal to it in the whole history 
 of the corps diplo7natique.^ 
 
 It is less to be wondered at that Boswell could give 
 a dramatic turn to such a scene as this, as he had him- 
 self great powers as an actor. Hannah More was once 
 made 'umpire in a trial of skill between Garrick and 
 Boswell, who could most nearly imitate Johnson's manner. 
 She gave it for Boswell in familiar conversation, and 
 for Garrick in reciting poetry.' The man who could 
 even in one point beat Garrick in his own art surely 
 had powers which Macaulay should not have failed to 
 discover and acknowledge. 
 
 Miss Burney also tells us that his imitations of 
 Johnson, though comic to excess, yet did not turn John- 
 son into ridicule by caricature. To imitate a man of 
 strongly marked character, and yet not to caricature him, 
 requires not only keenness of observation but also a 
 certain delicacy of mind.
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BOS WELL. 189 
 
 That love, I might almost say that passion, for accu- 
 racy, that distinguished Boswell in so high a degree does 
 not belong to a mind that is either mean or feeble. 
 Mean minds are indifferent to truth, and feeble minds can 
 see no importance in a date. He had been urged by his 
 friends to make here and there in his book on Cor- 
 sica, ' a change in Paoli's remarkable sayings.' He had 
 steadily' refused, for ' I know,' he writes, ' with how much 
 pleasure we read what is perfectly authentic' 
 
 He had set up Johnson as his idol. The Life that 
 he was on the point of bringing out he everywhere spoke 
 of as the magnum opus. But he liad not the weakness 
 of most worshippers, who think to make their idol greater 
 by carefully hiding its faults. Hannah More begged him 
 ' to mitigate some of Johnson's asperities. He said 
 roughly he would not cut off his claws, nor make a tiger 
 a cat to please anybody.' • Eager though he was for 
 fame, yet he would not bring out his book till he had 
 made it as perfect as he could. Hawkins, Murphy, and 
 Madame Piozzi had all brought out their books, but 
 Boswell was not to be hurried. Johnson had been dead 
 nearly seven years before the Life appeared. Whoever 
 has read the book as a student reads it, knoAvs that he 
 had a right to boast that he had spared no pains to 
 ascertain with a scrupulous authenticity, even the most
 
 I90 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 minute of the innumerable detached particulars of which 
 it consists. Genius has been defined, if I remember 
 rightly, as an infinite capacity for taking trouble in small 
 matters. If this is genius, Boswell certainly had his 
 share of it. 
 
 In the record that Boswell gives of Johnson's conver- 
 sation, Macaulay allows him no other merit but that of a 
 retentive memory. But more than once in reading the 
 Life, the question has forced itself upon me. How mucli 
 of Johnson's reported conversation is his own and how 
 much Boswell's ? Whenever Boswell pretends to give 
 Johnson's exact words, does he, even though he omits a 
 great deal, show in what he gives the literal accuracy of a 
 shorthand reporter ? Or, on the other hand, while the 
 thoughts are altogether Johnson's, is some part of the 
 language in which they are expressed Boswell's ? An 
 answer to this may to some extent be found in a passage 
 of the Life which, so far as I know, has escaped the 
 notice of the commentators. Of the year 1780, Boswell 
 wriltes : — 
 
 * Being disappointed in my hopes of meeting Johnson, 
 so that I could hear none of his admirable sayings, I 
 shall compensate for this want by inserting a collection 
 of them, for which I am indebted to my worthy friend 
 Mr. Langton. Very few articles of this collection were
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BO SWELL. 191 
 
 committed to writing by himself, he not having that 
 habit. I however found, in conversation with him, that 
 a good store of Johnsoniana was treasured in his mind. 
 The authenticity of every article is unquestionable. For 
 the expressions, I, who wrote them down in his presence, 
 am partly answerable.' 
 
 It is quite clear from this that Boswell had, to use 
 his own word, * Johnsonised ' the stories with which Mr. 
 Langton supplied him. His friend gave him the sub- 
 stance of what Johnson had said, and Boswell then gave 
 it a Johnsonian turn. So Johnson himself in his early 
 life had given an oratorical turn to the notes of the Par- 
 liamentary debates that had been taken down for him by 
 Guthrie. Johnson no doubt, even at his first start, made 
 a far greater change than ever Boswell did, for he could 
 have supplied, and in fact generally did supply, the 
 greatest speakers, not only with words, but also with facts 
 and arguments. 
 
 Now Boswell, with all his great merits, was utterly 
 incapable of imitating Johnson in the substance of what 
 he said. Of that neither he was capable, nor was 
 Garrick, nor Goldsmith, nor Reynolds, nor Burke. As 
 Gerard Hamilton said on Johnson's death, ' He has made 
 a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which 
 nothing has a tendency to fill up. Johnson is dead. Let
 
 192 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 us go to the next best. There is nobody ; no man can 
 be said to put you in mind of Johnson.' But yet, just as 
 Garrick, with his Httle body, could in a most ludicrous 
 way take off Johnson's huge frame, so Boswell had, I 
 have little doubt, a considerable power of taking off his 
 style. He did not, I believe, trust solely to his memory, 
 tenacious though it was, when he was reproducing John- 
 son's conversation. If his memory did not preserve the 
 exact words, he would draw on his imagination for them. 
 
 A considerable light was thrown on this question by 
 the publication of some ' loose quarto sheets in Boswell's 
 writings inscribed on each page Boswelliana.' In these 
 sheets are found twenty-five anecdotes about Johnson, 
 at least twenty-one of which are given also in the Life. 
 Fifteen or sixteen of these twenty-one must have been 
 recorded in the first ten weeks of the acquaintance of the 
 two men. During this time Boswell kept his journal 
 with the greatest diligence. It was then that he sat 
 up, working at it four nights in one week. 
 
 I cannot pretend to offer any thorouglily satisfactory 
 explanation of the fact that Boswell kept double records 
 — if, indeed, he did keep double records — of the same 
 
 ' Boiwelliana. The Commonplace Book ofyames Boswell. Edited 
 by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D. London : Printed for the 
 Grampian Chib. 1874.
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BO SWELL. 193 
 
 story. It may have been the case that when he first met 
 Johnson, while he was bent on recording his conversa- 
 tions, he was intending at the same time to form a gene- 
 ral collection of good sayings, and that thus he entered 
 certain stories in both collections. It may also be the 
 case — and this I think much more likely — that the loose 
 sheets on which * Boswelliana ' are recorded were, in cer- 
 tain cases, the only notes, or at all events the first notes, 
 he had taken of Johnson's sayings . Be the explanation 
 what it may, the curious fact remains, that though the 
 stories in both collections are in substance the same, yet 
 most of them differ more or less verbally. If I am justi- 
 fied in assuming that the stories given in this collection 
 that are common to both books were recorded in the 
 * Boswelliana ' at the time they were heard, then we have 
 a clear proof that Boswell, to a certain extent, changed 
 the sayings of Johnson which he had collected. 
 
 It may be objected that this is at variance with the 
 high character for accuracy which he claims for himself, 
 and which is so generally and so justly allowed him. 
 And there would be certainly some force, though not 
 much, in the objection. His reports of Johnson's talk 
 must of necessity have often been very imperfect. 
 Complete accuracy was therefore impossible. He 
 aimed at giving them what I have called a Johnsonian 
 
 o
 
 194 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 turn, knowing that he would thereby give a truer pic- 
 ture of Johnson. Whether what was said told for his 
 hero or against his hero, mattered nothing to him. He 
 left for the most part the facts as he found them, and 
 made only changes in words. And yet one or two of 
 the changes are greater than we should have expected, 
 assuming, that is to say, as I am now assuming, that in 
 ' Boswelliana ' we have in each case the original record. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking instance is to be found in the 
 two following stories from ' Boswelliana.' ' Mr. Sheridan, 
 though a man of knowledge and parts, was a little fan- 
 ciful! {sic) in his projects for establishing oratory and 
 altering the mode of British education. Mr. Samuel 
 Johnson said, " Sherry, cannot abide me, for I allways {sic) 
 ask him, Pray, Sir, what do you propose to do ? " (From 
 Mr. Johnson.)' 
 
 The second anecdote is as follows : ' Boswell was 
 talking to Mr. Samuel Johnson of Mr. Sheridan's enthu- 
 siasm for the advancement of eloquence. " Sir," said Mr. 
 Johnson, " it won't do. He cannot carry through his 
 scheme. He is like a man attempting to stride the 
 Enghsh Channel. Sir, the cause bears no proportion to 
 the effect. It is setting up a candle at Whitechapel to 
 give light at Westminster." ' 
 
 Now there is good internal evidence that these two
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BO SWELL. 195 
 
 anecdotes, as well as all the earlier ones, were recorded 
 at the time they were heard. For in every one of them 
 Boswell calls his friend Mr. Samuel Johnson, and not 
 Dr. Johnson or Johnson. Boswell was abroad from 
 August 1763 to February 1766. In his absence Johnson 
 was complimented by the University of Dublin with the 
 degree of Doctor of Laws, and Boswell, in the Life, 
 writes : ' I returned to London in February, and found 
 Dr. Johnson in a good house in Johnson's Court.' In 
 none of the later anecdotes of ' Boswelliana ' do we find 
 ' Mr. Samuel Johnson.' In the Life, however, these two 
 stories about Mr. Sheridan are not only run into one, but 
 they are also not a little altered. Boswell writes : ' He 
 now added, " Sheridan cannot bear me. I bring his 
 declamation to a point. I ask him a plain question, 
 What do you mean to teach ? Besides, Sir, what in- 
 fluence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this 
 great country by his narrow exertions ? Sir, it is burning 
 a farthing candle at Dover to show light at Calais.'" 
 
 While the first of the stories seems to me to have 
 been not a little improved, the latter has suffered to a far 
 greater extent. Whitechapel and Westminster not only 
 contrast far better than Dover and Calais, but they are 
 sufficiently near to keep the absurdity from being too gross. 
 
 In the ' Boswelliana ' we have the following anecdote : 
 o 2
 
 196 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 ' Bosvvell asked Mr. Samuel Johnson what was best to 
 teach a gentleman's children first. " Why, Sir," said he, 
 " there is no matter what you teach them first. It matters 
 no more than which leg you put first into your bretches 
 {sic). Sir, you may stand disputing which you shall put 
 in first, but in the meantime your legs are bare. No 
 matter which you put in first, so that you put 'em both 
 in, and then you have your bretches on. Sir, while you 
 think which of two things to teach a child first, another 
 boy in the common course has learnt both." (I was 
 present. ) ' 
 
 This is thus given in the Life in a much more pithy 
 form : ' We talked of the education of children ; and I 
 asked him what he thought was best to teach them first. 
 J^ohnson : " Sir, it is no matter what you teach them 
 first, any more than what leg you shall put into your 
 breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is 
 best to put in first, but in the meantime your breech is 
 bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things 
 you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt 
 them both." ' 
 
 If in ' Boswelliana ' we have a report in the rough of 
 what Johnson on this occasion said, Boswell may surely 
 claim some small degree of merit for the more pointed 
 way in which it is given in the Life.
 
 LORD MACAU LAY ON BOS WELL. 197 
 
 In reporting one of the numerous attacks which 
 Johnson made on Ossian, Boswell in the Life consi- 
 derably weakens its force. He says that ' Dr. Blair asked 
 Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern 
 age could have written such poems ? Johnson replied, 
 " Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many chil- 
 dren." ' In the ' Boswelliana ' the story is thus told : 
 ' Doctor Blair asked him if he thought any man could 
 describe these barbarous manners so well if he had not 
 lived at the time and seen them. " Any man, Sir," re- 
 plied Mr. Johnson, " any man, woman, or child might 
 have done it." ' 
 
 At the same time that he has weakened what Johnson 
 said by changing ' any ' into ' many,' he has made it in 
 another way a greater exaggeration ; for Johnson had not 
 said (if we are to trust to the authority of ' Boswelliana ') 
 that any child could have written the poems, but that 
 any child could have described the barbarous manners. 
 
 Here is another story which is certainly more pointed 
 as given in the Life than as it thus stands in ' Boswelliana' : 
 ' Boswell told Mr. Samuel Johnson that a gentleman 
 of their acquaintance maintained in public company that 
 he could see no distinction between virtue and vice. 
 " Sir," said Mr. Johnson, " does he intend that we should 
 believe that he is lying, or that he is in earnest ? If we
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 think him a liar, that is not honouring him very much. 
 But if we think him in earnest, when he leaves our houses 
 let us count our spoons."' 
 
 How much better is this told in the Life : ' Why, 
 Sir, if the fellow does not think as he speaks, he is lying ; 
 and I see not what honour he can propose to himself 
 from having the character of a liar. But if he does really 
 think that there is no distinction between virtue and 
 vic^ why. Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our 
 spoons.' 
 
 Anyone who cares to study Boswell critically would 
 find in a comparison of the other anecdotes not a Uttle 
 to interest him. But I will not run the risk of wearying 
 my readers by quoting any more. I have, I hope, suffi- 
 ciently shown that there are strong grounds for thinking 
 that Boswell's merits, as a mere reporter of Johnson's 
 talk, are not quite what they were thought to be. 
 
 As a writer, I have claimed for him, against the autho- 
 rity of one of the greatest writers of our age, a high place 
 indeed. Macaulay, indeed, allows that ' his \vritings are 
 likely to be read as long as the English exists, either as 
 a living or as a dead language.' But while he grants him 
 immortality, he refuses him greatness. Nay, even he 
 belabours him with somewhat the same kind of fury as 
 certain savage nations belabour their gods, who are at the
 
 LORD MAC AULA Y ON BOS WELL. 199 
 
 same time the object of their adoration. Johnson, he will 
 allow, was both a great and a good man, but Boswell, 
 who has made known to us and to all time both the 
 greatness and the goodness of Johnson, was himself most 
 mean and vile. And yet we might almost fancy the two 
 friends as they wandered through the Elysian Fields, and 
 were pleased with the report each new comer brought of 
 the fame ' The Life of Samuel Johnson ' has here on earth, 
 saying with a slight change in the words of the poet : — 
 
 And it seems as I retrace the story line by line. 
 That but half of it is his, and one half of it is mine. 
 
 I am fully aware of Boswell's failings and weaknesses 
 as a man ; but grievous though they were, they do not 
 make me for a moment forget the great debt under which 
 we all lie to the author of the immortal Life. It is not 
 likely that I should forget. He has carried me through 
 many an hour of sickness and depression, and in the 
 days of my health and strength has supplied me with 
 an occupation in which I have found an interest that 
 never fails. 
 
 J
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MELANCHOLY OF JOHNSON AND COWPER. ' 
 
 In Cowper's Letters we find a criticism on Johnson's 
 diary which, though of no great interest in itself, is curious 
 enough when we consider the man by whom it was 
 written. He had not seen the whole of the diary, but 
 merely some extracts from it in one of the newspapers. 
 He says : ' It is certain that the publisher of it is neither 
 much a friend to the cause of religion nor to the author's 
 memory ; for by the specimen of it that has reached us, 
 it seems to contain only such stuff as has a direct tendency 
 to expose both to ridicule. His prayers for the dead, and 
 his minute account of the rigour with which he observed 
 church fasts, whether he drank tea or coffee, whether with 
 sugar or without, and whether one or two dishes of either, 
 are the most important items to be found in this childish 
 register of the great Johnson, supreme dictator in the 
 
 ' Reprinted (with alterations) from the Pall Mall Gazette, Sep- 
 tember 4, 1875.
 
 JOHNSON AND COW PER. 
 
 chair of literature and almost a driveller in his closet — a 
 melancholy witness to testify how much of the wisdom of 
 this world may consist with almost infantine ignorance of 
 the affairs of a better.' He goes on to refer to the diary 
 of the Quaker of Huntingdon, over which Johnson 
 himself, as was afterwards known from Boswell, had 
 laughed so heartily ; and he says that ' it contained much 
 more valuable matter than the poor Doctor's journal 
 seems to do.' To another correspondent he writes : 
 * Poor man ! one would think, that to pray for his dead 
 wife, and to pinch himself with church fasts, had been 
 almost the whole of his religion. I am sorry that he, who 
 was so manly an advocate for the cause of virtue in all 
 other places, was so childishly employed, and so supersti- 
 tiously too, in his closet.' 
 
 It is clear, I may notice in passing, that the extracts 
 that Cowper had seen were not a fair sample of the whole 
 diary. They had been selected, no doubt, to cast ridicule 
 on Johnson's character, and the selection was only too 
 easy. It is not with this point, however, that I intend 
 to deal. As I was reading these letters — the letters of 
 the best of English letter writers, if we may accept 
 Southey's estimate — I could not but be affected with the 
 melancholy state to which superstition had helped to 
 reduce so fine a mind. In many points I was (j\cr
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 finding myself reminded of Johnson and of the gloom 
 which so often hung round him, when, to my amazement, 
 I found the one sufferer thus sitting in judgment on the 
 other. Utterly unconscious that passages in his own 
 letters would affect his readers in much the same way as 
 Johnson's diary had affected him, Cowper is as full of 
 pity for this supreme dictator in the chair of literature 
 as we are for the poet. An extreme High Churchman, 
 indeed, may see nothing pitiable in Johnson's records, 
 any more than an extreme Low Churchman may in 
 Cowper's. To a man of common sense there is but little 
 to choose between them. 
 
 Compared with Johnson's entries about his tea and 
 coffee, with sugar or without, the following extract from 
 one of Cowper's letters does not strike me as showing a 
 spark more of real sense : ' At present I am tolerably 
 free from it (a nervous fever) — a blessing for which I 
 believe myself partly indebted to the use of James's 
 powder in small quantities, and partly to a small quantity 
 of laudanum taken every night, but chiefly to a manifesta- 
 tion of God's presence vouchsafed to me a few days since.' 
 In an earlier letter, in describing how Mrs. Unwin had 
 narrowly escaped being burned to death when saying her 
 prayers, he writes : ' It is not possible, perhaps, that so 
 tragical a death should overtake a person actually engaged
 
 yOHNSON AND COWPER. 203 
 
 in prayer.' In another letter he tells a cock-and-bull 
 story of an apparition that Johnson would have sifted 
 with his usual severity, even though he saw no impossi- 
 bility in a ghost story being true. How melancholy, too, 
 is the frame of mind which could lead one so gentle thus 
 to write such a verse as the following for the use of 
 children : — 
 
 Thanks for Thy word, and for Thy day ; 
 
 And grant us, we implore. 
 Never to waste, in sinful play. 
 
 The holy Sabbaths more. 
 
 We may well compare with this Johnson's outburst against 
 a friend who lamented the enormous wickedness of the 
 times, because some birdcatchers were busy on Streatham 
 Common one fine Sunday morning.' Between the super- 
 stition of the two men there was not, indeed, much to 
 choose. Of the two, however, I should prefer John- 
 son's, for on the whole it sat on him more easily. He 
 
 ' Mdme. Piozzi says : 'He ridiculed a friend who, looking out on 
 Streatham Common from our windows one day, lamented the 
 enormous wickedness of the times, because some birdcatchers were 
 busy there one fine Sunday morning. "While half the Christian 
 world is permitted," said he, "to dance and sing, and celebrate 
 Sunday as a day of festivity, how comes your puritanical spirit so 
 offended with frivolous and empty deviations from exactness ? Who- 
 ever loads life with unnecessary scruples, Sir," continued he, " pro- 
 vokes the attention of others on his conduct, and incurs the censure 
 of singularity without reaping the reward of superior virtue." '
 
 204 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 could find plausible excuses for shaking off at times some 
 of the burdens he had bound on his own shoulders. He 
 once dined twice abroad in Passion week, as Boswell tells 
 us, and thus ingeniously defended himself : ' Why, Sir, a 
 bishop's calling company together in this week is, to use 
 the vulgar phrase, not the thing. But you must consider, 
 laxity is a bad thing ; but preciseness is also a bad thing ; 
 and your general character may be more hurt by precise- 
 ness than by dining with a bishop in Passion week. 
 There might be a handle for reflection. It might be said, 
 " He refuses to dine with a bishop in Passion week, but 
 was three Sundays absent from Church." ' 
 
 It is an interesting question how far the gloom, both 
 of Johnson and of Cowper, was due to religious belief, and 
 how far religious belief was due to gloom. If the dread 
 of a future state had not constantly hung over each man, 
 would he still have lived so much in a state of morbid 
 melancholy ? This is a question rather for the physician 
 to decide than for a layman. I believe that under 
 the most hopeful and encouraging of all creeds both men 
 would at times have been distressed with melancholy, 
 though at the same time I feel sure that their melan- 
 choly was greatly increased by the gloomy views they 
 held. It is plain that in Cowper's case his friend Mr. 
 Newton did him, and through him the world, as grievous
 
 yOHNSON AND COVVPER. 205 
 
 a wrong as a thoroughly sincere and conscientious man of 
 considerable ability often has a chance of doing. It is 
 true that, before he knew Mr. Newton, Cowper had tried 
 to make away with himself, but after that sad time he had 
 regained his tranquillity and cheerfulness of mind. It was 
 owing to the teaching and mismanagement of his pastor 
 that this most loving and gentle of men lived year after 
 year in the full belief that God had utterly rejected him, 
 and that, as he was passing away from the world, he ex- 
 claimed, ' I feel unutterable despair.' 
 
 Johnson, indeed, at one time v/as in a scarcely less 
 miserable state. In the early days of his acquaintance 
 with the Thrales, ' he lamented to us,' as Madame Piozzi 
 tells us, ' the horrible condition of his mind, which he said 
 was nearly distracted ; and though he charged us to make 
 him odd, solemn promises of secrecy on so strange a sub- 
 ject, yet when we waited on him one morning, and heard 
 him in the most pathetic terms beg the prayers of Dr. Delap, 
 who had left him as we came in, I felt excessively affected 
 with grief, and well remember my husband involuntarily 
 lifted up one hand to shut his mouth, from provocation 
 at hearing a man so wildly proclaim what he could at last 
 persuade no one to believe ; and what, if true, would 
 have been so very unfit to reveal.' Some years later he 
 said to Boswell, with some truth, ' I inherited a vile
 
 2o6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 melancholy from my father, which has made me mad 411 
 my life, at least not sober.' 
 
 His dread of a future state, great though it was, 
 nevertheless was far more tempered by reason thar, 
 Cowper's. A few months before his death, in a gloomy 
 conversation in which he joined after supper in Pembroke 
 College, in answer to Boswell's question, ' May not a man 
 attain to such a degree of hope as not to be uneasy from 
 the fear of death ? ' he replied, ' A man may have such a 
 degree of hope as to keep him quiet. You see I am not 
 quiet, from the vehemence with which I talk ; but I do 
 not despair.' Cowper's misery led him to write: ' I feel — 
 I will not tell you what — and yet I must — a wish that I 
 had never been, a wonder that I am, and an ardent but 
 hopeless desire not to be.' Into such a wish as this 
 Johnson could never have entered. Much as he dreaded 
 the next world, he dreaded annihilation still more. ' Mere 
 existence,' he said on one occasion^ — and he expressed, 
 we have no doubt, his settled belief — ' is so much better 
 than nothing, that one would rather exist even in pain 
 than not exist' He went on to say, in answer to an ob- 
 jection that was raised, 'The lady confounds annihilation, 
 which is nothing, with the apprehension of it, which is 
 dreadful. It is in the apprehension of it that the horror 
 of annihilation consists.'
 
 JOHNSON AND COW PER. 207 
 
 Both men were quite well aware that their melancholy 
 could be to no small extent overcome by exercise, occu- 
 pation, and attention to diet. Johnson, in writing to 
 Boswell, says, ' I believe it is best to throw life into a 
 method, that every hour may bring its employment, and 
 every employment have its hour. ... I have not prac- 
 tised all this prudence myself, but I have suffered much 
 from want of it' In his diary he records, 'by abstinence 
 from wine and suppers I obtained great and sudden 
 relief, and had freedom of mind restored to me.' Cowper 
 often connects his mental feelings with the state of his 
 digestion ; and it is worth while noting that S\\aft, whose 
 case in many points resembles theirs, fills his letters with 
 the doings of his stomach, and the meat and drink that 
 give it the least trouble. While S"v\aft's motto was Vive 
 la bagatelle, and while in literar)' trifling, in gardening, and 
 in riding he sought to break what Johnson calls ' the gloomy 
 calm of idle vacancy,' and while Cowper had a greater 
 variety of occupation both for in-doors and out-of-doors, 
 Johnson had Uttle but company on which to fall back. 
 He did, indeed, now and then trim and water a vine that 
 grew up his house in Bolt Court; and he delighted in 
 chemical experiments till Mr. Thraie put an end to them, 
 at Streatham at least, ' being persuaded that Johnson's 
 short sight would have occasioned his destruction in a.
 
 2o8 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 moment, by bringing him close to a fierce and violent 
 flame.' He regretted that he had not learned to play at 
 cards, and he once made the attempt to learn knotting. 
 ' Next to mere idleness,' he said, ' I think knotting is to 
 be reckoned in the scale of insignificance ; though I once 
 attempted to learn knotting ; Dempster's sister endea- 
 voured to teach me it, but I made no progress.' It is 
 strange that he never took to smoking. ' I cannot 
 account,' he said, in speaking of it, ' why a thing which 
 requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind 
 from total vacuity, should have gone out. Every man 
 has something by which he calms himself; beating with 
 his feet or so.' 
 
 There was the following difference between the two 
 men. ' A vacant hour,' wrote Cowper, ' is my abhorrence.' 
 Accordingly he took care that there should be no vacant 
 hours. Every moment of his time was filled up, and to his 
 correspondents he often complains that he can scarcely find 
 leisure in which to write to them. Johnson, who suffered 
 at times scarcely less than Cowper in his vacant hours, 
 had not, nevertheless, resolution enough to overcome his 
 natural indolence. ' He always felt,' he said, ' an inclina- 
 tion to do nothing.' Cowper, though he greatly stood in 
 need of money to supply his very modest wants, yet 
 needed not the inducement of money to set him writing.
 
 JOHNSON AND COWPER. 209 
 
 In fact almost all his original poetry, in ignorance of its 
 value, he made a present of to his publisher. He was 
 paid, no doubt, for his translation of Homer ; but he 
 began it without hope of reward, and he would have 
 finished it, though it took him many years, even had he 
 not earned a penny by it. He had strength of mind to use 
 the best cure he could find for his melancholy, and verse- 
 making for a long time was the best. Johnson, on the 
 contrary, maintained that no one but a fool would write 
 unless he were paid for it. ' It has been said that there 
 is pleasure in writing, particularly in writing verses. I 
 allow you may have pleasure from writing after it is over, 
 if you have written well ; but you don't go willingly to it 
 again. I know, when I have been writing verses, I have 
 run my finger down the margin to see how many I had 
 made, and how few I had to make.' Even of reading he 
 said: 'The progress which the understanding makes 
 through a book has more pain than pleasure in it.' Yet 
 he was one of the most rapid of readers as he was one of 
 the most rapid of writers. 
 
 Both men at one time undertook literary work for 
 which they were very ill fitted, and which, in consequence, 
 weighed very heavily on them. There is no doubt that 
 Cowper's last attack of insanity was greatly brought on 
 by the engagement into which he had entered to edit 
 
 p
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Milton ; while Shakespeare for many a year weighed most 
 heavily on Johnson. A man of his strict honesty must 
 have suffered greatly from the thought that he had been 
 paid for work which it seemed he would never finish, long 
 before Churchill taunted him in the lines — 
 
 He for subscribers baits his hook, 
 
 And takes your cash ; but where's the book ? 
 
 There is one point of resemblance between Cowper 
 and Johnson which, likely enough, took its rise from the 
 same cause. Boswell, in his '■ Tour to the Hebrides,' 
 says : ' Having taken the liberty, this evening, to remark 
 to Dr. Johnson that he very often sat quite silent for a 
 long time, even when in company with only a single 
 friend, which I myself had sometimes sadly experienced, 
 he smiled, and said, " It is true, Sir. Tom Tyers described 
 me the best. He once said to me, ' Sir, you are like a 
 ghost; you never speak till you are spoken to."" This 
 habit of his was often remarked on. He very rarely, in 
 fact, was the first to begin a conversation, nor, when he 
 began to speak, was it on a subject of his own choosing. 
 This habit of talk was shown, indeed, the first evening he 
 spent at Oxford, when he was only a lad of nineteen. 
 ' He sat silent till, upon something which occurred in the 
 course of conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted 
 Macrobius.'
 
 JOHNSON AND COW PER. 
 
 Cowper, in writing of himself, says : ' The effect of 
 such continual listening to the language of a heart hope- 
 less and deserted is, that I can never give much more 
 than half my attention to what is started by others, and 
 very rarely start anything myself My silence, however, 
 and my absence of mind make me sometimes as enter- 
 taining as if I had wit.' 
 
 Johnson, indeed, could give all his attention to what 
 was started by others if it once roused his interest, but he, 
 no doubt, too often, like Cowper, was listening to the 
 language of a heart, if not hopeless and deserted, yet in a 
 very despondent state. His absence of mind, too, was 
 entertaining, and his habit of talking to himself occasioned 
 some merriment. ' I was certain,' writes Boswell, ' that 
 he was frequently uttering pious ejaculations, for frag- 
 ments of the Lord's Prayer have been distinctly over- 
 heard. His friend, Mr. Thomas Davies, of whom 
 Churchill says, "That Davies hath a very pretty wife," 
 when Johnson muttered " Lead us not into temptation," 
 used with waggish and gallant humour to whisper Mrs. 
 Davies, "You, my dear, are the cause of this.'" 
 
 The society of lively women told equally well on 
 each. What Mrs. Thrale did for Johnson, the same, 
 though in a far less degree, for they were far less with 
 him, did Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh do for Cowper.
 
 DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 Without in the least forgetting all he owed to Mrs. 
 Unwin, we may with some confidence say that, had he 
 never known Mr. Newton, and had Lady Hesketh always 
 lived with him, he might, as his death drew near, have 
 owned with Johnson that he had enjoyed far more real 
 happiness in his latter than in his earlier years. 
 
 For many years these two men lived very near to each 
 other without ever meeting. Two of the unhappiest men 
 in London — for so at about one and the same time they 
 were — were indeed very close neighbours. Johnson was 
 living in Inner Temple Lane when Dr. Adams, the tutor 
 of his old college, visited him and found him * in a 
 deplorable state, sighing, groaning, talking to himself, and 
 restlessly walking from room to room. He then used 
 this emphatical expression of the misery which he felt : 
 " I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover 
 my spirits." It was in his chambers in the Inner Tem- 
 ple that only a few months earlier Cowper, first with 
 laudanum and then with his garter, had tried to end his 
 life, which had become too miserable for him any longer 
 to bear. It was, moreover, at the same period of life 
 that they were first attacked with melancholy. Cowper 
 was but twenty when he was, as he says, 'struck with 
 such a dejection of spirits as none but those who have 
 felt the same can have the least conception of. Day and
 
 JOHNSON AND COW PER. 213 
 
 night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror and 
 rising up in despair.' At the very same age Johnson 
 ' felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, 
 with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience, and 
 with a dejection, gloom, and despair which made existence 
 miser)'.' 
 
 It is strange that of these two melancholy men the 
 one should have \\Titten one of the most diverting of 
 histories, the ' History of John Gilpin,' and that the other 
 should have lived to be the material out of which has 
 been formed one of the liveliest of books, Boswell's * Life 
 of Samuel Johnson.' But humour and melancholy com- 
 monly go hand-in-hand, and men who have done most to 
 lighten the sadness of others, too often themselves have 
 passed through life 'as 'twere with a defeated joy.'
 
 214 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 
 
 There is a well-known passage in one of ' Lord Chester- 
 field's Letters to his Son,' which is commonly supposed to 
 have been aimed at Johnson. Boswell says ' the charac- 
 ter of a respectable Hottentot in " Lord Chesterfield's 
 Letters " has been generally understood to be meant for 
 Johnson, and I have no doubt that it was.' Murphy 
 does not even raise a doubt on the question, neither does 
 Hawkins. But Johnson himself said that the character 
 was not meant for him, but for George Lord Lyttelton ; 
 and Lord Hailes, according to Boswell, ' maintained with 
 some warmth that it was not intended as a portrait of 
 Johnson, but of a late noble lord distinguished for 
 abstruse science (probably, says Mr. Croker, the second 
 Earl of Macclesfield).' I shall be able, I believe, to 
 prove almost beyond a doubt that Boswell, Murphy, and 
 Hawkins were wrong. Whoever it was that Lord Chester- 
 field meant, it certainly was not Johnson. To establish 
 my position I must quote the passage at length.
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 215 
 
 * There is a man whose moral character, deep learn- 
 ing, and superior parts I acknowledge, admire, and re- 
 spect ; but whom it is so impossible for me to love, that 
 I am almost in a fever whenever I am in his company. 
 His figure (without being deformed) seems made to dis- 
 grace or ridicule the common structure of the human 
 body. His legs and arms are never in the position, 
 which, according to the situation of his body, they ought 
 to be in ; but constantly employed in committing acts of 
 hostility upon the Graces. He throws anywhere but down 
 his throat whatever he means to drink ; and only mangles 
 what he means to carve. Inattentive to all the regards 
 of social life, he mistimes or misplaces everything. He 
 disputes with heat and indiscriminately, mindless of the 
 rank, character, and situation of those with whom he dis- 
 putes ; absolutely ignorant of the several gradations of 
 familiarity or respect, he is exactly the same to his 
 superiors, his equals, and his inferiors, and therefore by a 
 necessary consequence absurd to two of the three. Is it 
 possible to love such a man ? No. The utmost I can do 
 for him is to consider him as a respectable Hottentot.' 
 
 Now in this passage itself there is good evidence to 
 be found that Chesterfield was thinking of anyone rather 
 than Johnson. As Boswell himself said to Johnson, 
 ' there was one trait which unquestionably did not belong
 
 2i6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 to him — " he throws his meat anywhere but down his 
 throat.'" He certainly was not the man to scatter his 
 food. ' When at table he was totally absorbed in the 
 business of the moment ; his looks seemed riveted to his 
 plate.' No man, moreover, was less open than Johnson 
 to the charge of being ' absolutely ignorant of the several 
 gradations of familiarity or respect.' He had, as every 
 reader of Boswell knows, a high respect for rank. ' I 
 have great merit,' he said, ' in being zealous for subordi- 
 nation and the honours of birth; for I can hardly tell 
 who was my grandfather.' His respect for the dignitaries 
 of the Church is well known, and his bow to an arch- 
 bishop was described ' as such a studied elaboration of 
 homage, such an extension of limb, such a flexion of 
 body as have seldom or ever been equalled.' In his 
 interview with the king he exactly acted up to one of 
 Lord Chesterfield's directions to his son. ' Were you,' 
 he writes to the young man, ' to converse with a king 
 you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your 
 own valet de chamb7-e ; but yet every look, word, and 
 action should imply the utmost respect.' What ' a nice 
 and dignified sense of true politeness ' did Johnson show, 
 as Boswell has pointed out, when on some one asking 
 him whether he had made any reply to a high compli- 
 ment the king had paid him, he answered : ' No, Sir.
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 217 
 
 When the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not 
 for me to bandy civihties with my sovereign.' Nothing, 
 moreover, is farther from the truth than that he was ' in- 
 attentive to all the regards of social life.' Even Madame 
 Piozzi, who was, to a great extent, an unfriendly witness, 
 says that ' no one was so attentive not to offend in all 
 such sort of things as Dr. Johnson ; nor so careful to 
 maintain the ceremonies of life.' 
 
 Nevertheless Chesterfield's portrait, though a gross 
 caricature, might have been meant for Johnson. To 
 prove that it was not, I will first consider the circum- 
 stances under which it was drawn. The letter in which 
 it is given opens with the epigram in Martial — 
 
 Non amo te, Sabidi, nee possum dicere quare, 
 Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te. 
 
 Chestei"field goes on to show ' how it is possible not to 
 love anybody and yet not to know the reason why 
 . . . . ' How often,' he says, ' have I, in the course of 
 my life, found myself in this situation with regard to 
 many of my acquaintance whom I have honoured and 
 respected, without being able to love.' He then goes on 
 to instance the case of the man whom he ends by describ- 
 ing as a respectable Hottentot. It is clear that he is 
 writing of a man whom he knows well and who has some 
 claim upon his affections. Twice he says that it is
 
 2i8 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 impossible to love him, and he clearly implies thereby 
 that this man was in some respect or other on such a 
 footing with him as to render it likely that he would have 
 loved him. 
 
 This letter was written in February 1751. On what 
 footing did Johnson stand with Chesterfield at that time ? 
 Four years earlier Johnson, at the suggestion of Dodsley 
 the bookseller, had dedicated to his lordship the plan of 
 his great Dictionary. Chesterfield at this time was the 
 head of the world of fashion, and was moreover one of 
 the two Secretaries of State. Johnson had for years felt, 
 and was for years to feel, ' what ills the scholar's life assail.' 
 Only three years before this dedication he had dined be- 
 hind the screen at Cave's house, when he was too shabbily 
 dressed to be seen, and had heard his ' Life of Savage ' 
 praised by Mr. Harte, who, two years afterwards, was ap- 
 pointed tutor to Lord Chesterfield's son. Nine years after 
 the dedication he was under arrest for five pounds eighteen 
 shillings and was only freed by a loan from Richardson. 
 The two men — the great nobleman and the poor author — 
 were in the year 1747 wide as the poles asunder. Johnson 
 was laying the foundation of his fame, but he was not yet 
 famous. He had written the ' Parliamentary Debates,' but 
 they were not known to be his. His poem of ' London ' 
 and his ' Life of Savage ' were as yet the books on which
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 219 
 
 his fame mainly rested. The work that he was now 
 taking in hand was, to quote his own words, generally- 
 considered as a task that might ' be successfully per- 
 formed without any higher qualities than that of bearing 
 burthens with dull patience, and beating the track of the 
 alphabet with sluggish resolution.' It was from one of 
 his poor lodgings ' in the courts and alleys in and about 
 the Strand and Fleet Street ' that Johnson went to pay 
 his respects to his noble patron the great Minister of 
 State. He saw but little of him, and certainly never 
 enjoyed his hospitality, for Johnson himself has stated 
 that Chesterfield never saw him eat in his life. He re- 
 ceived from him in return for his dedication a present of 
 ten pounds. He soon grew weary of the neglect with 
 which he was constantly received, and certainly never 
 visited him after the beginning of the year 1748. * Seven 
 years, my lord,' he wrote on February 7, 1755, ' have now 
 past since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed 
 from your door.' He had done all that he could. The 
 honour that he had paid to Chesterfield was, indeed, a 
 great one, when he addressed to him that fine piece of writ- 
 ing, in which he sets forth the plan on which was slowly 
 to be built up one of the noblest monuments in our lan- 
 guage. He had done all that he could ; ' and no man is 
 well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.'
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 It is clear then that Chesterfield had at no time seen 
 much of Johnson, and that in the year 1 75 1, when he wrote 
 the letter to his son, he had not seen him for three years. 
 Croker, in a note on Johnson's statement that Chesterfield 
 never saw hmi eat, says : 'Nor did we — and yet we know 
 that Chesterfield's picture, if meant for Johnson, was not 
 overcharged.' We know of Johnson's mode of eating, 
 but how should Chesterfield have known? how, above 
 all, should he have known so early as the year 1751 ? 
 
 Here is the very key to the error into which Boswell 
 and Hawkins have fallen. Had Chesterfield's letter been 
 published when it was written, no one in all likelihood 
 would have so much as dreamt that Johnson was aimed 
 at. But it did not come before the world till twenty- 
 three years later, when Johnson's quarrel with Chesterfield 
 was known to everyone, when Johnson himself was at the 
 very head of the literary world, and when his peculiarities 
 had become a matter of general interest. His famous 
 letter to Chesterfield had been seen as yet by very few, 
 but that he had written a letter of great power and great 
 severity was well known. Lord Hardwicke in his eager- 
 ness to read it had used, and used in vain, the interven- 
 tion of the Bishop of Salisbury. Johnson had refused 
 the Bishop's request, saying with a smile : ' No, Sir, I 
 have hurt the dog too much already.'
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 221 
 
 From the beginning of 1748 to the end of 1754 
 Chesterfield had no deaUngs of any kind with Johnson. 
 He later on attempted to excuse his neglect ' by saying 
 that he had heard he had changed his lodgings, and did 
 not know where he lived.' Johnson certainly changed 
 his lodgings very often. In the first eleven years of his 
 residence in London he had at least eleven different 
 lodgings. But Chesterfield could, of course, at any time 
 have learnt from Dodsley where he was to be found. By 
 the end of 1754 the Dictionary was almost ready for 
 publication, and Chesterfield no doubt had heard how 
 admirably Johnson had performed his task. There was 
 not a man in the kingdom, he must have felt, but would 
 have had high honour done to him by having his name 
 for ever associated with such a work. He had, no 
 doubt, forgotten all about Johnson in the seven long 
 years, during which he had been tugging at the oar. 
 But a great man's smile goes a long way ; his good word 
 goes still farther. ' He attempted therefore, in a courtly 
 manner to soothe and insinuate himself with the sage 
 .... and further attempted to conciliate him by writing 
 two papers in "The World" in recommendation of the 
 work.' 
 
 Boswell thinks that some of the ' studied compli- 
 ments ' in these papers are ' so finely turned that if there
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 had been no previous offence, it is probable that John- 
 son would have been highly delighted.' We very much 
 doubt, however, whether Johnson, pleased though he 
 might have been with a passage here and there, would not 
 have been offended, and most justly and highly offended, 
 with the papers as a whole. He would have felt under 
 small obligations when the anonymous writer hopes his 
 readers will not suspect him ' of being a hired and 
 interested puff of this work ; I most solemnly protest,' 
 his lordship goes on to say, ' that neither Mr. Johnson, 
 nor any bookseller or booksellers concerned in the suc- 
 cess of it, have ever offered me the usual compliment 
 of a pair of gloves or a bottle of wine.' It is, no doubt, 
 a pretty piece of irony for a wealthy nobleman solemnly 
 to protest that he has not been bribed by a poor author. 
 But we cannot but think of Johnson's stubborn honesty, 
 we cannot but call to mind how years later on, in far 
 happier days, he burst into a passion of tears when he 
 read his own noble poem in which he so touchingly 
 described the poor scholar's hard life. We do not 
 forget that this poem was written in 1749, the year after 
 he had for the last time waited in Lord Chesterfield's 
 outward rooms, or been repulsed from his door. The 
 pert, flippant tone in which the second of the two papers 
 is written would have pleased him, if possible, still less.
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 223 
 
 A man who has laboured hard till the eleventh hour, and 
 has borne the heat and burthen of the day, is not likely 
 to be over-pleased when a fine fellow in a laced coat 
 strolls in with a genteel air, and begins to praise his 
 work, and in gloved hands to pat him on the back. 
 
 But Chesterfield did worse than this. He displeased 
 Johnson in a point where he always made his displea- 
 sure be most heavily felt. In the last year of his life, at 
 a time of great weakness and depression, the old man 
 boasted that obscenity had always been repressed in his 
 company. Who can picture then the indignation that he 
 must have felt at the support that Chesterfield brought to 
 his book ? This great patron of literature, by way of re- 
 commending a work of so much learning and so much 
 labour, 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,' writes his lordship, ' 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.' 
 ' What ! ' we can imagine Johnson exclaiming, ' shall the 
 fellow turn me into a guide to the brothels ? ' 
 
 In one of his Letters Chesterfield has happily de-
 
 J 24 DR. yOHNSON. 
 
 scnbed his own conduct, and has fully justified Johnson's 
 indignation. 'The insolent civility,' he says, 'of a proud 
 man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could 
 be ; because he shows you by his manner that he thinks 
 it mere condescension in him ; and that his goodness 
 alone bestows upon you what you have no pretence to 
 claim.' With good reason did Johnson exclaim when he 
 read Chesterfield's papers in ' The World,' ' 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 ? ' 
 
 Mr. Croker is almost lost in astonishment at 'the 
 magnanimity of good taste and conscious rectitude ' which 
 Lord Chesterfield displayed, when he let Johnson's letter 
 lie open on his table for anyone to read. But his motives 
 are clear enough to anyone but Mr. Croker. He was only 
 acting up to the advice which he had himself given his 
 son, as his guide in a like case. ' When things of this 
 kind happen to be said of you,' he wrote, 'the most 
 prudent way is to seem not to suppose that they are 
 meant at you, but to dissemble and conceal whatever 
 degree of anger you may feel inwardly ; and should they 
 be so plain that you cannot be supposed ignorant of their 
 meaning, to join in the laugh of the company against 
 yourself; acknowledge the hit to be a fair one, and the
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 225 
 
 jest a good one, and play off the whole thing in seeming 
 good humour ; but by no means reply in the same way , 
 which only shows that you are hurt, and publishes the 
 victory which you might have concealed.' 
 
 He exactly acted up to this when he read Johnson's 
 letter to Dodsley and 'said, "This man has great 
 powers," pointed out the severest passages, and observed 
 how well they were expressed.' He must have felt that 
 he was overmatched, and that the wiser course for him 
 was to show no resentment. 
 
 If we may trust Hawkins, he even made further efforts 
 to conciliate Johnson. He sent to him Sir Thomas Ro- 
 binson ' to apologize for his lordship's treatment of him, 
 and to make him tenders of his future friendship and 
 patronage.' Robinson declared that were his own circum- 
 stances other than they were, he would himself settle five 
 hundred pounds a year on him. ' And who are you,' 
 asked Johnson, ' that talk thus liberally?' ' I am,' said he, 
 '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 show him the way down stairs.' 
 
 It is not unlikely that Chesterfield really made this 
 attempt. He knew what is commonly called the world 
 well, and he had made man, as he often boasted, his 
 chief study. He had told his son that ' people in high 
 
 Q
 
 226 . /'A'. JOHNSON. 
 
 life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind 
 as surgeons are to their bodily pains.' He had assured 
 him, that if he wanted to succeed with them, he must 
 apply to ' other sentiments than those of mere justice and 
 humanity. . . . Their love of ease must be disturbed 
 by unwearied importunity, or their fears wrought upon by 
 a decent intimation of implacable, cool resentment.' 
 Johnson, he might have said to himself, had waited upon 
 him and had gained nothing. He had now tried what 
 the other course would effect. Implacable and cool 
 though his resentment threatened to be, he had as yet 
 given but a decent intimation of it. He had not pub- 
 lished his letter to the world. 
 
 But Johnson was not to be won over. He had taken 
 Chesterfield's measure, and he ever afterwards spoke of him 
 in terms of the greatest contempt. ' This man,' said he, 
 ' I thought had been a lord among wits ; but I find he is 
 only a wit among lords.' He even changed, as Boswell 
 tells us, a word in one of the couplets of the Vanity of 
 Human Wishes. It had run : — 
 
 Yet think what ills the scholar's life assail. 
 Toil, envy, want, the garret, and the jail. 
 
 Henceforth, in remembrance of what he had endured 
 
 from Lord Chesterfield, the Hne ran : — 
 
 Toil, envy, want, the Patron, and the jail.
 
 ; LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 227 
 
 The proofs that I have already brought forward that 
 Chesterfield was not thinking of Johnson when he drew 
 the character of a respectable Hottentot, seem to me con- 
 clusive. But further evidence is to be found in the 
 letters themselves. I have no doubt that once again he 
 described the same person, and I have as little doubt, 
 that he had twice described him before. We must 
 remember that these Letters were not written for publi- 
 cation, and were not pubHshed till after the writer's death. 
 There is in them therefore not a little repetition, as might 
 be expected, seeing that they spread over a space of 
 thirty years. The first of these passages is in a letter 
 dated September 22nd O. S. 1749 : — 
 
 ' You have often seen, and I have as often made 
 you observe, L.'s distinguished inattention and awk- 
 wardness. Wrapped up, like a Laputan, in intense 
 thought, and possibly sometimes in no thought at all 
 (which, I believe, is very often the case of absent people,) 
 he does not know his most intimate acquaintance by 
 sight, or answers them as if he were at cross-purposes. 
 He leaves his hat in one room, his sword in another, and 
 would leave his shoes in a third, if his buckles, though 
 awry, did not save them ; his legs and arms, by his 
 awkward management of them, seem to have undergone 
 the question extraordinah'e ; and his head always hanging 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 upon one or other of his shoulders, seem to have received 
 the first stroke upon a block. J sincerely value and 
 esteem him for his parts, learning, and virtue ; but for 
 the soul of me I cannot love him in company.' 
 
 The second passage is in a letter written sometime in 
 November of the same year : — 
 
 ' Should you be awkward, inattentive and distrait, and 
 happen to meet Mr. L. at my table, the consequences 
 of that meeting must be fatal ; you would run your heads 
 against each other, cut each other's fingers instead of 
 your meat, or die by the precipitate infusion of scalding 
 soup.' 
 
 The last passage is in a letter dated May 27, O. S. 
 
 1753 :— 
 
 ' I have this day been tired, jaded, nay tormented, 
 by the company of a most worthy, sensible, and learned 
 man, a near relation of mine, who dined and passed the 
 evening with me. This seems a paradox, but is a plain 
 truth ; he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, 
 no address. ... It would be endless to correct his 
 mistakes, nor would he take it kindly ; for he has consi- 
 dered everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is 
 in the right. Impropriety is a characteristic, and a never 
 failing one, of these people. Regardless, because igno- 
 rant, of custom and manners, they violate them every
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON. 229 
 
 moment. They often shock, though they never mean to 
 offend ; never attending either to the general character, 
 or the particular distinguishing circumstances of the 
 people to whom, or before whom they talk \ whereas 
 the knowledge of the world teaches one that the very 
 same things which are exceedingly right and proper in 
 one company, time, and place, are exceedingly absurd in 
 others.' 
 
 We have in all these passages the same character 
 throughout. There are the same parts, the same learning, 
 the same virtue, the same awkwardness, the same absence 
 of mind, the same indifference to the rank, character, and 
 situation of those with whom he disputes. There is also 
 the same claim upon Lord Chesterfield's affection, and 
 the same impossibility of bestowing it. It is clear, I 
 hold, that the respectable Hottentot was not Samuel 
 Johnson, but Mr. L., Lord Chesterfield's relation.
 
 :3o DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LORD chesterfield's LETTERS. 
 
 Though Johnson had spoken with the utmost scorn of 
 ' Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son,' yet he once ad- 
 mitted that ' they might be made a very pretty book. 
 Take out the immorality and it should be put into the 
 hands of every young gentleman.' 
 
 However much the book would be improved as a 
 piece of morality, its chief interest as a work of art and 
 as a study of manners would be gone. In it, as it at 
 present stands, we have set forth at great length and with 
 great minuteness the whole art of living as practised and 
 taught by a man who at one time held a great place in 
 England. Horace Walpole, who is no mean authority on 
 such a point, says that ' the work is a most proper book of 
 laws for the generation in which it is published, and has 
 reduced the foily and worthlessness of the age to a 
 regular system.' He sums it up as ' the whole duty of 
 man adapted to the meanest capacities.' But the more
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 231 
 
 faithful a picture the book gives of the times in which it 
 
 was written, the more it would sufter if any parts of it 
 
 were cut out. There is no doubt that it contains a great 
 
 many shrewd remarks, a great deal of lively writing, and 
 
 not a few wise sayings. But the real interest of the book 
 
 is lost if it is not taken as a whole. Chesterfield held 
 
 that ' the trade of a courtier is as much a trade as that of 
 
 a shoemaker.' He is never weary of repeating this truth 
 
 in one form or other. His son is his apprentice. He, 
 
 himself is a master who knows the whole craft. He has 
 
 for years made man and the world his study. His day, 
 
 indeed, is passing by. He has played his part, and on 
 
 the whole has played it very well. But he has retired 
 
 in time, titi conviva satia: It should never be said 
 
 of him — 
 
 Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage. 
 
 But he can make a still better player of his son. 
 He himself is an old traveller, well acquainted with 
 all the by-ways as well as with the great roads. He 
 cannot misguide from ignorance. His only remaining 
 ambition is to be the minister of his son's rising 
 ambition. There is only one thing in the world so far 
 as he knows that is not to be acquired by application 
 and care, and that is poetry. But everything else he 
 can have if he will. Every one must do something that
 
 232 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 deserves to be written, or write something that deserves 
 to be read. ' Can there,' he asks of his son when he is 
 a schoolboy of fourteen, * Can there be a greater pleasure 
 than to be universally allowed to excel those of one's 
 own age and manner of life ? ' Earlier still does he try to 
 teach him the lesson of ambition. Where would he, a 
 boy of nine, run to hide himself if Master Onslow, a 
 youth of the same age, should deservedly obtain a place 
 in school above him ? Master Onslow apparently did 
 get above him, for the father later on writes that he knows 
 very well his son will not be easy till he has got above 
 Master Onslow. He must do everything well, however 
 trifling it may be. If he plays at pitch and cricket, let 
 him play better than any boy in Westminster. When 
 Chesterfield is appointed Secretary of State, he writes to 
 tell the lad that, if he will work, he may very possibly be 
 his successor, though not his immediate successor. But 
 everything must be ' steadily directed to this end. He, 
 as his father, had done and was doing his best.' He had 
 not spoilt his son by over-fondness or over-severity. 
 Nineteen fathers in twenty, and every mother who had 
 loved him as well as he did, would have ruined him. 
 But no weaknesses of his own had warped his education, 
 no parsimony had starved it, no rigour had deformed it 
 Sound and extensive learning was the foundation that he
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 233 
 
 had meant to lay, and he had laid it. He had given him 
 the best masters. He had put him at Westminster 
 School, and before the boy had seen his fifteenth birth- 
 day he had sent him abroad under the care of a sound 
 scholar to study in Lausanne, Leipzig, Berlin, Turin, 
 Rome, and Paris, 
 
 He used from the very first to write to the lad as if he 
 were almost a man. He was right, he said, in seeing the 
 curiosities in the several places he visited. But he was 
 to remember that seeing is the least material object of 
 travelling ; hearing and knowing are the essential points. 
 Not once in the course of his letters is there any mention 
 of the beauties of nature. He might form a taste if he 
 pleased for painting, sculpture, and architecture, for these 
 were liberal arts, and a real taste and knowledge of them 
 became a man of fashion very well. But the steeples, 
 the market places, and the signs he must leave to the 
 laborious researches of Dutch and German travellers. 
 
 George Fox himself could scarcely have spoken with 
 greater contempt of the steeple-house than did Ches- 
 terfield of the steeple. His son's destination, he was to 
 remember, was the great and busy world ; his immediate 
 object was the affairs, the interests, the history, the con- 
 stitutions, the customs and the manners of the several 
 parts of Europe. In whatever country he might be, he was
 
 234 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 to learn all he could about its strength, its revenue, and 
 its commerce ; and this part of political knowledge could 
 not be learnt from books, but could only be had by 
 inquiiy and conversation. He was never to waste a 
 single moment. He was not, indeed, to pass all the day 
 in studying, but he was to be always doing something. 
 He was never to sit idle and yawning. Rather let 
 him read a jest-book than do that. He might have his 
 share in pleasures. He might go to public spectacles, 
 assemblies, cheerful suppers, and even balls ; but even 
 these require attention, or the time is lost. He must 
 be curious, attentive, inquisitive as to everything. 
 
 There was hardly any place or any company where 
 knowledge might not be gained. Almost everybody 
 knows some one thing, and is glad to talk upon that one 
 thing. Seek and you will find, in this world as well as in 
 the next. 
 
 His chief study was to be the world ; that country 
 which nobody ever knew by description, which is utterly 
 unknown to the scholar, though he talks and writes of 
 it as he sits in the dust of his closet. ' You must look into 
 people,' he writes to this lad of fourteen, ' as well as at 
 them. Almost all people are born with all the passions 
 to a certain degree ; but almost every man has a pre- 
 vailinfr one to which the others are subordinate. Search
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 235 
 
 every one for that ruling passion; pry into the recesses 
 of his heart, and observe the difterent workings of the 
 same passion in different people. And, when you have 
 found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember 
 never to trust him where that passion is concerned. 
 Work upon him by it if you please, but be uj)on your 
 guard yourself against it, whatever professions he may 
 make.' 
 
 He returns to this again and again. A year later he 
 bids him observe the little habits, the likings, the antipa- 
 thies, and the tastes of those whom he would gain. Let 
 them, if they sup with him, find their favourite dish, and 
 let them be informed that it has been provided because it 
 was their favourite dish. Attention to trifles flatters self- 
 love much more than attention to greater things, as it 
 makes people think themselves almost the only objects 
 of one's care and tlioughts. 
 
 Chesterfield wished that he had known these 
 * arcana ' so necessary for initiation in the great society 
 of the world at his son's age. He had paid the price of 
 three and fifty years for them ; but this price, heavy 
 though it was, he would not grudge if the boy reaped the 
 advantage. He returns again and again to these 
 ' arcana.' When he was at court he was to speak ad- 
 vantageously of the people highest in llishion behind
 
 236 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 their backs, in companies who, he had reason to beHeve, 
 would repeat what he said. At Turin Jet him express 
 his admiration of the many great men that the House of 
 Savoy has produced, and let him point out that nature 
 instead of being exhausted by those efforts seems to have 
 redoubled them in the persons of the present King and 
 the Duke ; let him wonder at this rate where it will end. 
 Let him stick to capitals, where the best company is 
 always to be found. He had himself stuck to them all 
 his lifetime. 
 
 But even at courts not a moment of time must be 
 wasted. ' What would I not give,' he ^vrites to his son 
 when he has reached the age of seventeen, ' to have you 
 read Demosthenes critically in the morning, and under- 
 stand him better than anybody ; at noon behave your- 
 self better than any person at court : and in the evening 
 trifle more agreeably than anybody in mixed companies.' 
 If he only made a right use of the company he kept, his 
 very pleasures would make him a successful negotiator, 
 for company is in truth a constant state of negotiation. 
 By the same means that a man makes a friend, guards 
 against an enemy, or gains a mistress, he will make an 
 advantageous treaty, baffle those who counteract him, 
 and gain the court to which he is sent. 
 
 He must conform to the world, and such was the
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 237 
 
 present turn of the world that some valuable qualities 
 were even ridiculous if not accompanied by the genteeler 
 accomplisliments. Plainness, simplicity and Quakerism 
 either in dress or manners would by no means do. He 
 must frequent those good houses where he had already a 
 footing, and wriggle himself somehow or other into every 
 other. He must flatter humours, he must study the 
 mollia tempora ; he must acquire confidence by seeming 
 frankness and profit of it by silent skill. Above all he 
 must gain and engage the heart to betray the understand- 
 ing. Hce tibi ei-unt artes. 
 
 The anger that Chesterfield from time to time rouses 
 in the hearts of his readers is far more roused by this vile 
 use of Virgil's noble lines, than by all the recommen- 
 dations he gives his son to improve his manners at the 
 expense of his morals : — 
 
 Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento ; 
 Hae tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morem, 
 Parcere subjectis, at debellare superbos. 
 
 This young man, too, was to aim at being a ruler. 
 He was the only one, his father said, whose education 
 was from the beginning calculated for foreign affairs. 
 He could, if he pleased, make himself absolutely neces- 
 sary to the Government. He would first receive orders 
 as a minister abroad, and then in his turn send orders to
 
 238 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 others as Secretary of State at home. But he must begin 
 by wrigghng. IIcb tibi erunt artes. 
 
 Chesterfield had unhappily forgotten his own advice. 
 The lad was never to quote Greek or Latin, and never to 
 bring precedents from the virtuous Spartans, the polite 
 Athenians, and the brave Romans. His father had him- 
 self, he owned, fallen into this folly. At the time that he 
 left Cambridge, when he talked his best he quoted 
 Horace ; when he aimed at being facetious he quoted 
 Martial ; and when he had a mind to be a fine gentleman 
 he quoted Ovid. Unhappily in his riper years when he 
 aimed at being base he quoted Virgil. 
 
 Yet Chesterfield had no suspicion of his own base- 
 ness. He aimed, as he often reminds his son, at nothing 
 short of perfection in the education he was giving him. 
 He longed to make him that most perfect of all beings, 
 a man of parts and knowledge who has acquired the easy 
 and noble manners of a court. He wished him to grow 
 up a virtuous man, a man who acted wisely, upon solid 
 principles, and from true motives, though he must keep 
 his motives to himself and never talk sententiously. He 
 warns him that there is nothing so delicate as moral 
 character, and nothing Avhich it is so much his interest to 
 preserve pure. 
 
 ' For God's sake,' he writes, ' be scrupulously jealous
 
 LORD CH-ESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 239 
 
 of the merit of your moral character ; keep it immaculate, 
 unblemished, unsullied.' When the young man is first 
 going into the great world he warns him that he will be 
 tried and judged there not as a boy, but as a man, and 
 he bids him remember that from that moment his cha- 
 racter is fixed, and that for character there is no appeal. 
 
 He warns him again and again that if he has not the 
 knowledge, the honour, and the probity which he expects 
 of him, he will visit him with his severest displeasure. If 
 once they quarrel, let him not count upon any weakness 
 in his nature for a reconciliation. He has no such weak- 
 ness about him. He will never forgive. But it was, he 
 hoped, impossible that they should quarrel, for the lad 
 was no stranger to the principles of virtue, and whoever 
 knows virtue must love it. 
 
 In all this there is not the slightest insincerity nor the 
 slightest hypocrisy. Horace Walpole admitted that to 
 his great surprise the letters seemed really written from 
 the heart. Chesterfield after all was only adapting to his 
 times the lessons which the poet Horace had taught, and 
 taught with applause, ages before. 
 
 The foundation of learning had been laid, but as the 
 building was slowly rising Chesterfield was distressed by 
 one dread. Knowledge and virtue were all, he felt, in 
 vain, unless to them were added manners.
 
 240 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Take, he says, one man, with a very moderate degree 
 of knowledge, but with a pleasing figure and prepossessing 
 address, who is graceful in all that he says and does, who 
 is in short adorned with all the lesser talents, and take 
 another man with sound sense and profound knowledge, 
 but without these advantages ; the former will not only 
 get the better of the latter in every pursuit, of every kind, 
 but in truth there will be no sort of competition. 
 
 Marlborough's success, he asserted, was chiefly due to 
 his admirable manners. To the Graces quite as much as 
 to Mars he owed the triumph of Blenheim. See what 
 the Duke of Richelieu had done, and to what a station 
 he had raised himself. He had not the parts of a oorter, 
 but he had a graceful figure, polite manners, and an en- 
 gaging address. 
 
 The lad had had, he feared, but a bad start, for 
 ' Westminster School was undoubtedly the seat of illiberal 
 manners, and brutal behaviour.'' Nor was Leipzig the 
 
 ' Cumberland, the dramatist, who was at Westminster School 
 about the same time as young .Stanhope, gives a very different 
 account of the school. He says, ' Doctor Nichols (the Head- 
 master) had the art of making his scholars gentlemen ; for there 
 was a court of honour in that school, to whose unwritten laws every 
 member of our community was amenable, and which to transgress by 
 any act of meanness, that exposed the offender to public contempt, 
 was a degree of punishment, compared to which the being sentenced 
 to the rod would have been considered as an acquittal or reprieve.
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 241 
 
 seat of refined and elegant manners. But eloquence and 
 manners, that is to say, the graces of speech and the 
 graces of behaviour, were to be had. They were as much 
 in a young man's power as powdering his hair. 
 
 He was now to see better society. He was to visit 
 Venice, Rome, and Paris. But everything must depend 
 on himself. The Graces never came till after they had 
 been long and eagerly wooed. 
 
 The young man was, it would seem, awkward by 
 nature. Walpole says that Chesterfield 'was sensible 
 what a cub he had to work on, and whom two quartos 
 of licking could not mould, for cub he remained to his 
 death.' Had young Stanhope been naturally graceful, I 
 have no doubt that the tone of the Letters would have 
 been not a little higher. He was intelligent, sensible, 
 and well stocked with knowledge. There was little need 
 therefore for the father in his later letters to dwell on 
 
 While I am making this remark, an instance occurs to me of a 
 certain boy from the fifth, who was summoned before the seniors 
 in the seventh, and convicted of an offence, which in the high 
 spirit of that school argued an abasement of principle and honour. 
 Dr. Nichols having stated the case, demanded their opinion 
 of the crime, and what degree of punishment they conceived 
 it to deserve ; their answer was unanimously — "The severest 
 that could be inflicted." "I can inflict none more severe than 
 you have given him," said the master, and dismissed him without 
 any other chastisement.' — Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, vol. i. 
 p. 71. 
 
 R
 
 242 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 these points. The whole strength of his exhortations he 
 must turn, he felt, on that first of all qualities in which 
 his son was so wanting. He was timid and diffident of 
 himself. The father repeats again and again La Bruybre's 
 maxim, Qu'on tie vaiit dans ce nionde que ce qu'on veut 
 valoir. He knew that in this faint-heartedness there was 
 a great danger, for nothing sinks a young man into low 
 company, both of women and men, so surely as timidity 
 and diffidence of himself 
 
 He had himself suffered from it in his youth. He re- 
 membered the day when he had been intrepid enough to 
 go up to a fine woman and tell her that he thought it was 
 very warm. She had pitied his embarrassment, and had 
 even offered to take him in hand and to give him polish. 
 She had called up three or four people to her and had 
 said, 'Savez-vous que j'ai entrepris ce jeune homme, et 
 qu'il le faut rassurer. ... II lui faut necessairement 
 une passion, et s'il ne m'en juge pas digne, nous lui en 
 chercherons quelque autre. Au reste, mon Novice, 
 n'allez pas vous encanailler avec des filles d'Opera. . . . 
 si vous vous encanaillez, vous etes perdu. Ces malheu- 
 reuses ruineront et votre fortune, et votre sante, corrom- 
 pront vos moeurs, et vous n'aurez jamais le ton de la 
 bonne compagnie.' 
 
 His son must follow his course. He must shun bad
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 243 
 
 company with its ill examples, and, what is worse, with 
 its infamous exhortations and invitations. He must 
 listen to the advice given by a lady at Venice, a friend of 
 Chesterfield's, who had at his request drawn his picture 
 in a letter : ' Un arrangement avec quelque femme de 
 condition et qui a du monde, est pre'cise'ment ce qu'il lui 
 faut.' He returns shortly to the same subject, and tells 
 him that ' the gallantry of high life, though not strictly 
 justifiable, carries, at least, no external marks of infamy 
 about it. Neither the heart nor the constitution is cor- 
 rupted by it ; character is not lost, and manners are, 
 possibly, improved.' 
 
 When the young man arrives at Paris he is told that 
 pleasure is now the principal remaining part of his educa- 
 tion, for pleasure will soften and polish his manners ; it 
 will make him pursue and at last overtake the Graces. 
 But his pleasures must be the pleasures of a gentleman. 
 He must no longer give much time to books, for living 
 books are much better than dead ones. He must study 
 mankind and the world. lago did not more urge Roderigo 
 to put money in his purse, than Chesterfield urged his son 
 to cultivate the Graces. 'I would much rather,' he 
 writes, 'that you were passionately in love with some 
 determined coquette of condition, who would lead you a 
 dance, fashion, supple, and polish you, than that you 
 
 R 2
 
 244 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 knew all Plato and Aristotle by heart.' A week or two 
 later he WTites : ' I hope you frequent La Foire St. 
 Laurent. You will improve more by going there with 
 your mistress, than by staying at home and reading 
 Euclid with your geometry master.' 
 
 There was nothing immoral, Chesterfield would have 
 maintained, in all this. He was the fondest of fathers, 
 and he wished to make his son not only a good man, but 
 a perfect man. He had been unwearying in the efforts 
 he had made to have him well taught and well brought- 
 up. He had laid, to use his own metaphor, a foundation 
 of the Tuscan order, the strongest and most solid of all 
 orders. On it must now rise the Doric, the Ionic, and the 
 Corinthian orders, with all their beauty, proportions, and 
 ornaments. This beauty, these proportions and orna- 
 ments, could be added only by the help of women, and 
 of women who both were given to gallantr}' and lived in 
 the best society. Without a fashionable air, address, and 
 manner, a man might be esteemed and respected, but he 
 could never please, much less could he shine. It was his 
 duty to please, it was his duty to shine. If he did not, 
 the foresight, the anxious care, the ardent hopes, the toil 
 of many years would have been thrown away. 
 
 A young man was sure, he said, to lead a life of 
 pleasures ; and it was right he should, for pleasures are as
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 245 
 
 necessary as they are useful. They fashion and form a 
 man for the world. They teach him character, and show 
 him the human heart in its unguarded minutes. He had 
 no regret for the time that he had passed in pleasures. 
 They were seasonable, and he had enjoyed them while 
 young. If he had not, he would probably have over- 
 valued them in his old age, as men are apt to overvalue 
 what they do not know. But his son's pleasures must be 
 the pleasures of a man of fashion, and not the vices of a 
 scoundrel. The pleasures he ought to pursue would give 
 him that experience and that polish Avhich, added to his 
 good qualities and his learning, would make him both 
 respectable et aimable, the perfection of a human character. 
 If he once reached that perfection, nothing should be 
 wanting on his father's part. The son should solidly 
 experience all the extent and tenderness of his affection ; 
 but if he fell far short, let him dread the reverse. 
 
 Does his son ask for a man after whom he can fashion 
 himself ? Let him try to be a second Lord Bolingbroke, 
 the 'all-accomplished St. John'; not as he was in his 
 stormy youth, when unbounded ambitions and impetuous 
 faults led him astray, but as he is now. Let him strive to 
 join, as this great man joins, to the deepest erudition, 
 the most elegant politeness and good breeding that ever 
 adorned a courtier and man of the world. But let him
 
 246 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 take warning by his faults and by his faikires. In the tumult 
 and storm of pleasures which distinguished his youth he 
 had disdained all decorum, and, as a necessary con- 
 sequence, both his constitution and his character had 
 suffered. His ambition had been under no guidance, 
 and so had destroyed both his fortune and his reputation. 
 
 But what limits were set to the young man's ambition 
 if he would but take the trouble to perfect his manners ? 
 He might in time rise to the highest rank. But he 
 must make a beginning. The Duke of Newcastle 
 loves to have a favourite, and to open himself to that 
 favourite. He has now no such person with him : the 
 place is vacant, and if he had dexterity he might fill 
 it. But in one thing he must not humour him. He 
 had never been drunk in his life, and if he tried to 
 humour his Grace by drinking, he might say or do a little 
 too much, and so kick do\vn all that he had done before. 
 
 Chesterfield in some ways showed great political fore- 
 sight. He foretold the French Revolution nearly forty 
 years before it took place. He foresaw the growth of the 
 House of Savoy, and the overthrow of the Papacy. But 
 could he have been gifted with the prophet's vision, he 
 would have seen in this our time a man run that course 
 for which he had in vain so carefully trained his son, and 
 gain that prize which he looked upon as the highest of
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS. 247 
 
 all rewards. His disappointment in his own failure 
 would have been, we may well believe, greatly lessened 
 could he have foreseen the triumph of his system in the 
 career of the Earl of Beaconsfield. 
 
 In the last chapter I attempted to prove that Lord 
 Chesterfield and Johnson never were on terms of intimacy. 
 Did the arguments that I have brought forward need 
 strengthening, such strength would surely be given by the 
 general tone of these Letters. Whoever carefully con- 
 siders the character that Chesterfield here draws of himself, 
 must feel that there was nothing in common between the 
 two men. Chesterfield was, no doubt, a man of the 
 world, and could, if he thought it worth the while, adapt 
 himself to his company. Johnson also had seen so much 
 of mankind that he felt at ease with men of almost every 
 variety of character. But Chesterfield, when he had once 
 learnt Johnson's power, and had once recognised the 
 perfect simplicity of his nature, could never have felt at 
 ease in his company ; while Johnson, when he had seen 
 through the hoUowness of his patron's character, would 
 not have cared long to hide the contempt which he felt. 
 There could never have been any intimacy, still less could 
 there have been any affection between the author of the 
 'Vanity of Human Wishes' and the writer of these 
 ' Letters to a Son.'
 
 248 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BENNET LANGTON.^ 
 
 It is not the portrait of Johnson only that Boswell has 
 drawn for us. To most men Garrick and Burke, Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, and even Goldsmith, are known only 
 so far as they appear in the pages of the Life. Great 
 though these men were, no one of them was so fortunate 
 as to find an artist so skilled in painting him that his 
 likeness, though made the very centre of the picture, 
 stands out to us half so clear as it shows when given in 
 the very background of Boswell's wide canvas. By the 
 side of their great figures are sketched in, with no 
 weaker hand, a host of lesser men. Had he not written, 
 their very names would long' ago have passed away, but 
 now the men themselves live for us. The thought arises, 
 not what they, but what we should have lost if they had 
 missed their vates sacer. It is the living, not the dead 
 who are to be pitied, when the good of a bygone age 
 
 ' Reprinted (with additions) from the Cornhill Magazine.
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 249 
 
 are left overwhelmed and unknown in the long night of 
 which the Latin poet sings. What reader of Boswell 
 does not almost feel that he would have had one friend 
 less in the world had he never had his delightful pages to 
 teach him the worth of the gentle Bennet Langton ? 
 Dear to us as are so many of the men who loved Johnson 
 and whom Johnson loved, dear to us as is Goldsmith, 
 dear to us as is the ' dear Knight of Plympton ' himself, 
 certainly not less dear is the tall Lincolnshire squire who, 
 as a mere lad, came to London chiefly in the hope of 
 getting introduced to the author of the ' Rambler,' and 
 who, more than thirty years later, came up once more 
 to tend his friend when the grand old man knew at 
 last that that death which he had so long dreaded from 
 afar was now close upon him and must be faced. Their 
 long friendship had been but once broken. Happily, 
 ten years or so before it was broken for ever it had 
 been made whole again. 
 
 Boswell himself does not describe Bennet Langton's 
 person, nor could he well have done so, as Langton was 
 living when the Life was published. Miss Hawkins, 
 however, in her ' Memoirs ' has happily supplied the 
 deficiency. She says, ' Oh ! that we could sketch him 
 with his mild countenance, his elegant features, and his 
 sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other,
 
 J50 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 as if fearing to occupy more space than was equitable ; 
 his person inclining forward, as if wanting strength to 
 support his height, and his arms crossed over his bosom, 
 or his hands locked together on his knee ; his oblong 
 gold-mounted snuff-box, taken from the waistcoat pocket 
 opposite his hand, and either remaining between his 
 fingers or set by him on the table, but which was never 
 used but when his mind was occupied in conversation ; 
 so soon as conversation began the box was produced.' 
 
 We find another description of him given by Mr. 
 Best, in his ' Personal and Literary Memorials.' ' He 
 was a very tall, meagre, long-visaged man, much resem- 
 bling 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.' 
 Johnson, in a letter to Langton's tutor at Trinity College, 
 Oxford, thus pleasantly alludes to his great height : ' I 
 see your pupil sometimes ; his mind is as exalted as his 
 stature. I am half afraid of him ; but he is no less 
 amiable than formidable.' The nickname of Lanky that 
 he gave him was, no doubt, not merely, like Sherry or 
 Goldy, an abbreviation of a name ; it was also a hit at 
 his friend's person. Topham Beauclerk's wife also had 
 her fling at his height.
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 251 
 
 In ' Boswelliana ' we read, ' Lady Di Beauclerk told 
 me that Langton had never been to see her since she 
 came to Richmond, his head was so full of the militia 
 and Greek. " Why," said I, " madam, he is of such a 
 length; he is awkward, and not easily moved." "But," 
 said she, " if he had laid himself at his length, his feet 
 had been in London and his head might have been here 
 eodem die." ' His sons were not unworthy of their father, 
 and ' used,' as we read in Miss Hawkins' ' Memoirs,' ' to 
 amuse the good people of Paris by raising their arms to 
 let them pass.' 
 
 ' Johnson,' as Boswell tells us, ' was not the less ready 
 to love Mr. Langton for his being of a very ancient 
 family; for I have heard him say with pleasure, " Lang- 
 ton, Sir, has a grant of free-warren from Henry II., and 
 Cardinal Stephen Langton in King John's reign was of 
 this family." ' His grandfather had known Lord Chief 
 Justice Hale, and had kept a note of a conversation in 
 which ' that great man told him that for two years after 
 he came to the Inn of Court he studied sixteen hours a 
 day; however, by this intense application he almost 
 brought himself to his grave, though he were of a very 
 strong constitution, and after reduced himself to eight 
 hours.' His father, ' old Mr. Langton, Avas a high and 
 steady Tory, yet attached to the present Royal family.
 
 252 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Johnson said of him, Sir, you will seldom see such a 
 gentleman, such are his stores of literature, such his 
 knowledge in divinity, and such his exemplary life ; and, 
 Sir, he has no grimace, no gesticulation, no bursts of 
 admiration on trivial occasions ; he never embraces you 
 with an overacted cordiality.' Yet at another time he 
 said of him, ' He never clarified his notions by filtrating 
 them through other minds. He had a canal upon his 
 estate, where at one place the bank was too low. " I 
 dug the canal deeper," said he.' The word canal, in 
 Johnson's time, I may remark, was generally applied to 
 an ornamental sheet of water. 
 
 Miss Hawkins in her ' Memoirs ' gives a rather fuller 
 account than Boswell of this curious piece of engineering. 
 She, like him, had the anecdote from Johnson. ' Mr. 
 Langton had bestowed considerable pains on enlarging a 
 piece of water on his estate and was showing to some 
 friends what he had achieved, when it was remarked to 
 him, that the bank which confined the water was in one 
 place so low as not to be a security against its overflow- 
 ing. He admitted that to the eye it might appear danger- 
 ous ; but he said he had provided against such an acci- 
 dent by having had the ground in that spot dug deeper 
 to allow for it.' She had also from Johnson another 
 amusing anecdote about the same worthy old gentleman.
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 253 
 
 * A legacy of ^1,000 had been equally divided between 
 himself and a person to whom he was indebted ^100. 
 He consented that this debt should be deducted from his 
 moiety ; but when the deduction was made, and he saw 
 the person to whom he was indebted with ;^2oo more 
 than he had, he could not admit it just, that when the 
 other legatee was to have only ;^ioo from him he should 
 yet be ^200 the richer. And when an attempt was 
 made to demonstrate it by figures, he could acquiesce no 
 further than to say it might be true on paper, but it could 
 not be so in practice.' 
 
 Old Mr. and Mrs. Langton had both opposed sitting 
 for their pictures. ^Vhen Johnson, who thought it right 
 that each generation of a family should have its portraits 
 taken, heard of this, he exclaimed, 'Sir, among the 
 anfractuosities of the human mind, I know not if it may 
 not be one, that there is a superstitious reluctance to sit 
 for a picture.' The old gentleman, though later on he 
 suspected that Johnson was at heart a Papist, had offered 
 him a living of considerable value in Lincolnshire if he 
 were inclined to take orders. Happily for the world, 
 perhaps not unhappily for the parish, Johnson declined. 
 Of Peregrine Langton, Bennet's uncle, who Johnson says 
 ' was one of those whom I loved at once by instinct and 
 by reason,' and of his admirable economy, we have an
 
 JS4 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 interesting account from the pen of the nephew himselt. 
 ' He had an annuity for hfe of ;^2oo per annum. His 
 family consisted of a sister, who paid him ;!^i8 annually 
 for her board, and a niece. The servants were two 
 maids, and two men in livery. His common way of 
 living at his table was three or four dishes ; the appur- 
 tenances to his table were neat and handsome ; he fre- 
 quently entertained company at dinner, and then his 
 table was well served with as many dishes as were usual 
 at the tables of the other gentlemen in the neighbour 
 hood. His own appearance as to clothes was genteelly 
 neat and plain. He had always a post-chaise, and kept 
 three horses. Some money he put into the stocks ; at 
 his death the sum he had there amounted to ^^150.' 
 ' His art of life certainly deserves to be known and 
 studied ' as much now as when Johnson wrote. 
 
 Such was the family of the tall Lincolnshire lad who, 
 at the age of seventeen or thereabouts, full of admiration 
 for the ' Rambler,' which had just been brought to an 
 end, eagerly sought an introduction to its author. He 
 by good luck made the acquaintance of Robert Levett, 
 * the practiser in physic,' the man ' obscurely wise and 
 coarsely kind,' who introduced him to Johnson. ' Mr. 
 Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first 
 appeared. He had not received the smallest intimation
 
 BEN NET LANGTON. 255 
 
 of his figure, dress, or manner. From perusing his writ- 
 ings, he fancied he should see a decent, well-dressed, in 
 short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of 
 which, down from his bed-chamber about noon, came, as 
 newly risen, a huge uncouth figure, with a little dark wig 
 which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging 
 loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so 
 animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political 
 notions so congenial with those in which Mr. Langton 
 had been educated, that he conceived for him that venera- 
 tion and attachment which he ever preserved.' Johnson 
 took no less pleasure in Langton's company. He de- 
 scribed him as one of those men ' to whom Nature does 
 not spread her volumes or utter her voices in vain,' ' as 
 a friend at once cheerful and serious,' while rising yet 
 higher, ' ^vith a warm vehemence of affectionate regard, 
 he exclaimed, " The earth does not bear a worthier man 
 than Bennet Langton." ' On another occasion he said, 
 *■ I know not who will go to Heaven if Langton does not. 
 Sir, I could almost say. Sit miima mea ciwi Langtono.' 
 
 Miss Reynolds, in her ' Anecdotes,' tells us, * I shall 
 never forget the exalted character he drew of his friend 
 Mr. Langton, nor with what energy, what fond delight, 
 he expatiated in his praise, giving him every excellence 
 that nature could bestow, and every perfection that
 
 2S6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 humanity could acquire.' Boswell, too, describes 'our 
 worthy friend ' — for that is Langton's Homeric epithet in 
 the modern Odyssey — as ' a gentleman eminent not only 
 for worth and learning, but for an inexhaustible fund of 
 entertaining conversation.' 
 
 In a note to the Life he quotes one of his stories, 
 * An honest carpenter,' we read, ' after giving some anec- 
 dote in Langton's presence of the ill-treatment which he 
 had received from a clergyman's wife, who was a noted 
 termagant, and whom he accused of unjust dealing in 
 some transaction with him, added, " I took care to let her 
 know what I thought of her ; " and being asked, *' What 
 did you say?" answered, "I told her she was a scoun- 
 drel." ' In ' Boswelliana ' I find recorded two or three 
 anecdotes that Langton told of Johnson that Boswell has 
 not, I believe, worked up into the Life. 'A certain 
 young clergyman,' we read, 'used to come about Dr. 
 Johnson. The Doctor said it vexed him to be in his 
 company — his ignorance was so hopeless. " Sir," said 
 Mr. Langton, " his coming about you shows he wishes 
 to help his ignorance." "Sir," said the Doctor, "his 
 ignorance is so great I am afraid to show him the bottom 
 of it." ' Langton also told Boswell how ' Mr. Johnson 
 used to laugh at a passage in " Carte's Life of the Duke 
 of Ormond,"' where he gravely observes, 'that he was
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 257 
 
 always in full dress when he went to court ; too many 
 being in the practice of going thither with double lapells.' 
 Johnson, when insisting one day ' that the value of every 
 story depends on its being true,' said, ' Langton used to 
 think a story a story, till I showed him that truth was 
 essential to it.' 
 
 He was endeared to Johnson by his Greek scarcely 
 less than by his ancient lineage, his piety, his entertaining 
 conversation, and his worth. He was the man who had 
 read Clenardus's '■ Greek Grammar.' ' Why, Sir,' said 
 Johnson, ' who is there in this town who knows anything 
 of Clenardus but you and I ? ' He had learnt by heart 
 the Epistle of St. Basil. ' Sir,' said Johnson, ' I never 
 made such an effort to attain Greek.' It was at his house 
 that Johnson spent an evening with the Rev. Dr. Parr, 
 when ' he was much pleased with the conversation of that 
 learned gentleman.' ' He has invited,' so Johnson writes 
 to Boswell, ' Nicolaida, the learned Greek, to visit him at 
 his house in Lincolnshire.' When he gets somewhat em- 
 barrassed in his circumstances, Johnson, though close on 
 the end of his life, and nigh worn out with illness, writes 
 to him, ' I am a little angry at you for not keeping 
 minutes of your own accepium et expensiim, and think a 
 little time might be spared from Aristophanes for the res 
 familiares' To him Johnson, now on his death-bed, 
 
 S
 
 258 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 gave the translations into Latin verse that he had made 
 of Greek epigrams during the sleepless nights of his last 
 illness. His name is not to be found to the celebrated 
 Round Robin which Burke drew up, and that the company 
 gathered round Sir Joshua Reynolds's table signed. 'Joe 
 Warton, a scholar by profession, might be such a fool ' as 
 to put his hand to a petition that Goldsmith's epitaph 
 should be not in Latin, but in English ; but ' Mr. Lang- 
 ton, like a sturdy scholar, refused to sign it' 
 
 In Miss Hawkins' ' Memoirs ' we read how ' he would 
 get into the most fluent recitation of half a page of Greek, 
 breaking off for fear of wearying, by saying, as I well 
 remember was his phrase, "and so it goes on ; " accom- 
 panpng his words with a gentle wave of his hand, indi- 
 cating that you might better suppose the rest than bear 
 his proceeding.' He could nevertheless enjoy a liberty 
 taken with his beloved Greek, and one evening as Bos- 
 well writes, 'made us laugh heartily at some lines by 
 Joshua Barnes in which are to be found such comical 
 Anglo-Hellenisms as K\vpj3ot(nv ii3av)(dEv, they were 
 banged with clubs.' 
 
 Mr. Best has given an account of an evening that he 
 once spent in his company. * In the course of conversa- 
 tion he took out a small pocket-album, containing bon- 
 mots, or heads and notices of bon-mots, which he filled
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 259 
 
 out and commented upon in a most amusing manner. 
 Among other witticisms was a short copy of macaronic 
 Greek verses, of which I remember " five-poundon elen- 
 deto, ah ! mala simplos.'" He was no unfit successor to 
 his great friend in the Professorship of Ancient Literature 
 in the Royal Academy. 
 
 Johnson had taken him in the early days of their 
 iriendship to see Richardson, who had little conversation 
 except about his own works. ' Johnson,' says Langton, 
 '■ professed that he could bring him out into conversation, 
 and used this allusive expression, " Sir, I can make him 
 rear" But he failed ; for in that interview Richardson 
 said little else than that there lay in the room a translation 
 of his " Clarissa " into German.' Langton had also visited 
 Young, who told him when they were walking in the 
 garden, ' Here I had put a handsome sun-dial, with this 
 inscription, Eheu fugaces ! which (speaking with a smile) 
 was sadly verified, for by the next morning my dial had 
 been carried off.' ' Young,' he remarked, ' showed a degree 
 of eager curiosity concerning the common occurrences 
 that were then passing, which appeared somewhat re- 
 markable in a man of such intellectual stores, of such an 
 advanced age, and who had retired from life with declared 
 disappointment in his expectations.' He was intimate 
 indeed with most of the men of letters of his time, but it
 
 26o DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 was in Johnson's house ' at his levee of morning visitors 
 when he was declaiming over his tea, which he drank 
 very plentifully,' that he was mostly to be found. Lang- 
 ton, early in their acquaintance, had invited Johnson to 
 visit his father's house at Spilsby, but he wrote in reply 
 that much as he would have liked to have gone, never 
 theless he must forbear the pleasure. ' I will give the 
 true reason,' he writes, ' which I know you will approve : 
 — I have a mother more than eighty years old, who has 
 counted the days to the publication of my book (his 
 Dictionary) in hopes of seeing me ; and to her, if I can 
 disengage myself here, I resolve to go.' 
 
 A year or two later on he again writes to him. ' I go 
 on, as I formerly did, designing to be some time or other 
 both rich and wise ; and yet cultivate neither mind nor 
 fortune. Do you take notice of my example, and learn 
 the danger of delay. When I was as you are now, 
 towering in confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect 
 that I should be at forty-nine what I now am. But you 
 do not seem to need my admonition. You are busy in 
 acquiring and in communicating knowledge, and while 
 you are studying, enjoy the end of study, by making 
 others wiser and happier. I was much pleased with the 
 tale that you told me of being tutor to your sisters. I, 
 who have no sisters nor brothers, look with some degree
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 261 
 
 of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born 
 friends, and cannot see, without wonder, how rarely that 
 native union is afterwards regarded.' He goes on to say, 
 ' we tell the ladies that good wives make good husbands ; 
 I believe it is a more certain position that good brothers 
 make good sisters.' He acknowledges in the same letter 
 a present of game from Langton. He had left off house- 
 keeping — his wife was by this time dead— and therefore 
 gave the birds away. ' The pheasant I gave to Mr. 
 Richardson ' (the author of ' Clarissa '). 
 
 He writes to him when he is at Trinity College, 
 Oxford, and says, ' You who are very capable of anti- 
 cipating futurity and raising phantoms before your own 
 eyes, must often have imagined to yourself an academical 
 life, and have conceived what would be the manners, 
 the views, and the conversation of men devoted to 
 letters ; how they would choose their companions ; how 
 they would direct their studies, and how they would 
 regulate their lives. Let me know what you expected 
 and what you have found.' He thus ends his letter 
 to the young student, ' I love, dear Sir, to think on you, 
 and therefore should willingly write more to you but that 
 the post,' &c. Two years later in again writing to him 
 he says, ' While you have been riding and running, and 
 seeing the tombs of the learned, and the camps of the
 
 262 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 valiant, I have only staid at home and intended to do 
 great things, which I have not done ; ' and he goes on to 
 say. ' LiCt me hear from you again wherever you are, or 
 whatever you are doing ; whether you wander or sit still, 
 plant trees or make Rusticks, play with your sisters, or 
 inuse alone.' The Rusticks, Boswell tells us, were some 
 essays, with that title, written about this time by Mr. 
 Langton, but not published. We should be curious to 
 know whether they are still preserved in the family house 
 at Langton. 
 
 He wrote pleasantly enough, as we can see from the 
 paper that he contributed to 'The Idler' (No. 67). He 
 describes 'a man of vast designs and of vast performances, 
 though he sometimes designed one thing and performed 
 another.' He ends by enforcing a position which he had 
 no doubt often heard Johnson maintain — for it was a 
 familiar one with him — that *he who finds himself 
 strongly attracted to any particular study, though it may 
 happen to be out of his proposed scheme, if it is not 
 trifling or vicious, had better continue his application to 
 it, since it is likely that he will, with much more ease and 
 expedition, attain that which a warm inclination stimu- 
 lates him to pursue, than that at which a prescribed law 
 compels him to toil.' 
 
 He was an admirable reader aloud, but though his
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 263 
 
 readings surpassed, as was thought, the actor's recitations, 
 yet he did not overcome Johnson's * extreme impatience 
 to be read to.' Boswell tells us how, * when a very young 
 man, he read to him Dodsley's *' Cleone, a tragedy." As 
 it went on Johnson turned his face to the back of his 
 chair, and put himself into various attitudes, which 
 marked his uneasiness. At the end of an act, however, 
 he said, " Come, let's have some more, let's go into the 
 slaughter-house again, Lanky. But I am afraid there is 
 more blood than brains."' 
 
 If we may trust Miss Bumey, however well Langton 
 may have read, he had but little of the actor's power. In 
 her Diary, after giving an account of Boswell's imitation 
 of Johnson's manner, she says, ' Mr. Langton told some 
 stories himself in imitation of Johnson ; but they became 
 him less than Mr. Boswell, and only reminded me of 
 what Dr. Johnson himself once said to me : " Every man 
 has, some time in his life, an ambition to be a wag." If 
 Mr. Langton had repeated everything from his truly 
 great friend quietly, it would far better have accorded 
 with his own serious and respectable character.' 
 
 'If I were called on,' ^mtes Miss Hawkins, *to name 
 the person with whom Johnson might have been seen to 
 the fairest advantage, I should certainly name Mr. 
 Langton. His good breeding and the pleasing tone of
 
 264 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 his voice would have given the pitch to Johnson's replies: 
 his classic acquirements would have brought out those of 
 the other speaker; while the thorough respect Johnson 
 entertained for him would have prevented that harshness 
 which sometimes alarmed a third person.' He had, how- 
 ever, one failing — a failing that leaned to virtue's side. 
 ' I mentioned,' says Boswell, ' a worthy friend of ours ' 
 (no doubt Langton) 'whom we valued much, but observed 
 that he was too ready to introduce religious discourse 
 upon all occasions. yoJimo7i -. " Why yes, Sir, he will 
 introduce religious discourse without seeing whether it 
 will end in instruction and improvement, or produce 
 some profane jest. He would introduce it in the company 
 of Wilkes and twenty more such." ' 
 
 It was to what Johnson considered an indiscretion of 
 this sort that the breach in their friendship was due. At 
 a dinner at the Messieurs Dilly's, the booksellers in the 
 Poultry, there had been a hot discussion on toleration. 
 Johnson had just quarrelled with Goldsmith, when a 
 gentleman present (who, there is little doubt, was Lang- 
 ton) ' ventured to ask him if there was not a material 
 difference as to toleration of opinions which lead to 
 action, and opinions merely speculative; for instance, 
 would it be wrong in the magistrate to tolerate those who 
 preach against the doctrine of the Trinity ? Johnson was
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 265 
 
 highly ofifended, and said, " I wonder, Sir, how a gentle- 
 man of your piety can introduce this subject in a mixed 
 company." ' 
 
 In spite of this sharp rebuke, on leaving the house 
 Langton went with Johnson and Boswell to the club, and 
 the following day Johnson, in fulfilment no doubt of an 
 old engagement, dined at his house. At the club that 
 evening occurred that fine scene when Johnson begged 
 Goldsmith's pardon for what had passed at dinner, and 
 Goldsmith answered placidly, 'It must be much from 
 you, Sir, that I take ill.' I am inclined to think that 
 Langton's resentment was increased by the contrast. 
 Both had been harshly treated, but it was only Goldsmith 
 to whom amends were made. On the following day 
 Langton made his will, ' devising his estate to his three 
 sisters in preference to a remote heir male. Johnson 
 called them (Langton, of course, was not present) three 
 dowdies, and said, with as high a spirit as the boldest 
 baron in the most perfect days of the feudal system, " an 
 ancient estate should always go to males." ' Boswell 
 goes on to add, * He now laughed immoderately, without 
 any reason that we could perceive, at our friend's making 
 his will, called him the testator, and added, " I dare say 
 he thinks he has done a mighty thing. He won't stay till 
 he gets home to his seat in the country to produce this
 
 266 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 wonderful deed — he'll call up the landlord of the first inn 
 on the road ; and after a suitable preface upon mortality 
 and the uncertainty of life, will tell him that he should 
 not delay in making his will ; and here, Sir, will he say, is 
 my will, which I have just made, with the assistance of 
 one of the ablest lawyers in the kingdom ; and he will 
 read it to him (laughing all the time). He believes he 
 has made this will ; but he did not make it. You, 
 Chambers, made it for him. I trust you have had more 
 conscience than to make him say 'being of sound 
 understanding ; ' ha, ha, ha ! I hope he has left me a 
 legacy. I'd have his will turned into verse like a ballad." 
 It was in continuation of this merry strain that Johnson 
 " burst into such a fit of laughter that he appeared to be 
 almost in a convulsion ; and, in order to support himself, 
 laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot-pave- 
 ment, and sent forth peals so loud that in the silence of 
 the night his voice seemed to resound from Temple Bar 
 to Fleet Ditch." Johnson writes to Boswell two months 
 
 later, " " (no doubt Langton) " left the town without 
 
 taking leave of me, and is gone in deep dudgeon to » 
 
 Is not this very childish ? Where is now my legacy ? " ' 
 
 It was in the autumn of this year that Johnson went 
 to Scotland, but neither in going nor returning did he stop 
 at Langton. In his journal of the tour Boswell says, *we
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 267 
 
 talked of one of our friends taking ill for a length of time 
 a hasty expression of Dr. Johnson's to him/ on his in- 
 troducing, in a mixed company, a religious subject so 
 unseasonably as to provoke a rebuke. ^Johnson : " What 
 is to become of society, if a friendship of twenty years is 
 to be broken off for such a cause? As Bacon says — 
 
 ' Who then to frail mortality shall trust 
 But limns the water, or but writes in dust.' " ' 
 
 By the following summer much had been done to 
 bind up the friendship again, and Johnson writes to 
 Langton, telling him of poor Goldsmith's death. He 
 ends his letter by saying, ' Do not be sullen now, but let 
 me find a letter when I come back.' And in the next 
 winter, writing to Boswell, he says, ' Langton is here ! we 
 are all that ever we were. He is a worthy fellow, without 
 malice, though not without resentment' 
 
 Langton had married, two or three years earlier than 
 the date of this quarrel, 'one of those three Countess 
 Dowagers of Rothes, who had all of them the fortune to 
 get second husbands at about the same time.' He had 
 invited Goldsmith and Reynolds, together with Johnson 
 AS it would seem, to visit him at his seat in Lincolnshire. 
 Goldsmith in a pleasant letter, that Mr. Forster gives in 
 full, declines. He was so much employed ' in the coun-
 
 268 
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 try, at a fanner's house, quite alone, trying to write a 
 comedy ' (' She Stoops to Conquer '), that he has to put 
 off his intended visit to Lincolnshire for this season, and, 
 as it proved, alas ! for all seasons. ' Everybody,' says he, 
 ' is a visiting about and merry but myself. And that is 
 hard, too, as I have been trying these three months to do 1 
 something to make people laugh.' He goes on to say, 
 ' I have published, or Davies has pubHshed for me, an 
 "Abridgment of the History of England," for which I 
 have been a good deal abused in the newspapers for 
 betraying the liberties of the people. God knows I had 
 no thought for or against liberty in my head ; my whole 
 aim being to make up a book of a decent size that, as 
 'Squire Richard says, would do no harm to nobody. 
 However, they set me down as an arrant Tory, and con- 
 sequently an honest man. When you come to look at 
 any part of it, you'll say that I am a sour Whig.' 
 
 Johnson did make a visit to Lincolnshire, the remem- 
 brance of which was long preserved. For when, many 
 many years later, Mr. Best visited Langton, ' after break- 
 fast,' he writes, ' we walked to the top of a very steep hill 
 behind the house. When we arrived at the summit, Mr. 
 Langton said, ' Poor, dear Dr. Johnson, when he came to 
 this spot, turned back to look down the hill, and said he 
 was determined " to take a roll down." When we under-
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 269 
 
 Stood what he meant to do, we endeavoured to dissuade 
 him ; but he was resokite, saying, "he had not had a roll 
 for a long time ; " and taking out of his lesser pockets 
 whatever might be in them — keys, pencil, purse, or pen- 
 knife — and laying himself parallel with the edge of the 
 hill, he actually descended, turning himself over and over 
 till he came to the bottom.'" Mr. Best goes on to say : 
 ' The story was told with such gravity, and with an air of 
 such affectionate remembrance of a departed friend, that 
 it was impossible to suppose this extraordinary freak of 
 the great lexicographer to have been a fiction or invention 1 
 
 of Mr. Langton.' 
 
 It was on this visit that Johnson ' was so socially ac- 
 commodating that, once when Mr. Langton and he were 
 driving together in a coach, and Mr. Langton complained 
 of being sick, he insisted that they should go and sit on 
 the back of it in the open air, which they did; and 
 being sensible how strange the appearance m.ust be, 
 observed, that a countryman whom they saw in a field 
 would probably be thinking, "If those two madmen 
 should come down, what would become of me ? " ' 
 
 Langton, for some years of his married life, lived at 
 an expense almost beyond his means. He could not, I 
 suppose, spare time from his Aristophanes for his minutes 
 of accephwi et expcnsum. Johnson, in a letter to Boswell,
 
 270 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 says, ' I do not like his scheme of life, but as I am not 
 permitted to understand it, I cannot set anything right 
 that is wrong. ' 
 
 When Mrs. Thrale, in Miss Burney's hearing, ' asked 
 Johnson whether Mr. Langton took any better care of his 
 affairs than formerly, " No, Madam," cried the Doctor ; 
 "and never will. He complains of the ill effects of 
 habit, and rests contentedly upon a confessed indolence. 
 He told his father himself that he had "no turn lo 
 economy," but a thief might as well plead that he had 
 " no turn to honesty." ' 
 
 When Boswell was next up in London, 'we talked,' 
 says he, ' of a gentleman ' (Langton we may feel almost 
 sure) ' who was running out his fortune in London ; and I 
 said, " We must get him out of it. All his friends must 
 quarrel with him, and that will soon drive him away." 
 Johnson : " Nay, sir, we'll send you to him. If j'our com- 
 pany does not drive a man out of his house, nothing 
 will." ' A few days later on they were again talking of 'a 
 gentleman who, we apprehended, was gradually involving 
 his circumstances by bad management.' Langton again, 
 no doubt, is meant. Johnson said, 'Wasting a fortune is 
 evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means. If it 
 were a stream, they'd stop it. You must speak to him. 
 It is really miserable. Were he a gamester, it could be
 
 BENI\lEr LANGTON. 271 
 
 said he had hopes of winning. Were he a bankrupt in 
 trade, he might have grown rich ; but he has neither 
 spirit to spend nor resolution to spare. He does not 
 spend fast enough to have pleasure from it. He has the 
 crime of prodigality and the wretchedness of parsimony.' 
 Another time he said, ' He is ruining himself without 
 pleasure. A man who loses at play, or who runs out his 
 fortune at court, makes his estate less, in hopes of 
 making it bigger ; but it is a sad thing to pass through the 
 quagmire of parsimony to the gulf of ruin. To pass over 
 the flowery path of extravagance is very well.' Later on 
 
 he writes to Boswell, that ' has laid down his coach, 
 
 and talks of making more contractions of his expense : 
 how he will succeed, I know not. It is difficult to reform 
 a household gradually 3 it may be better done by a 
 system totally new.' He goes on to add : ' What I told 
 him of the increasing expense of a growing family seems 
 to have struck him. He certainly had gone on with ver}' 
 confused views, and we have, I think, shown him that he 
 is wrong ; though, with the common deficience of advisers, 
 we have not shown him how to do right.' 
 
 Though Langton showed indolence in money matters, 
 yet Johnson praised him for his vigour as a captain of 
 mihtia. ' Langton,' he writes, ' has been encamped with 
 his company of militia on Warley Common; I spent five
 
 272 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 days amongst them ; he signalized himself as a diligent 
 officer, and has very high respect in the regiment. He 
 presided when I was there at a court-martial.' Boswell 
 also pats him on the back, and writes to express to John- 
 son the pleasure with which he had found ' that our 
 worthy friend Langton was highly esteemed in his own 
 county town.' 
 
 If Langton was a tender brother, he was no less tender 
 a father. Johnson indeed at one time complained in 
 writing about the table he kept, that ' he has his children 
 too much about him.' In one of his letters, however, 
 he seems to hint that Boswell might, with advantage, see 
 a little more of his. ' Langton has been down with the 
 militia,' he says, ' and is again quiet at home, talking to 
 his little people, as, I suppose, you do sometimes.' In 
 writing to Langton, he begs him to keep him ' in the 
 memory of all the little dear family, particularly pretty 
 Mrs. Jane' (his god-child); and in another letter he says, 
 after describing his owm mournful state, ' You, dear Sir, 
 have, I hope, a more cheerful scene; you see George 
 fond of his book, and the pretty misses airy and lively, 
 with my own little Jenny equal to the best; and in what- 
 ever can contribute to your quiet or pleasure, you have 
 Lady Rothes ready to concur.' In the last year of his 
 life he writes, ' How does my owai Jenny? I think I owe
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 273 
 
 Jenny a letter, which I will take care to pay. In the 
 meantime tell her that I acknowledge the debt,' A 
 month later he pays the debt. ' He took the trouble to 
 write the letter in a large, round hand, nearly resembling 
 printed characters, that she might have the satisfaction 
 of reading it herself ' The original,' says Boswell, 'now 
 lies before me, but shall be faithfully restored to her ; and 
 I dare say will be preserved by her as a jewel as long as 
 she lives.' She did preserve it, and nearly sixty years 
 later showed it to Mr. Croker. The letter begins, ' My 
 dearest Miss Jenny,' and ends, ' I am, my dear, your most 
 humble servant, Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' Of the children of the family,' says Miss Hawkins, 
 ' Dr. Johnson was very fond. They were, in their full 
 number, ten, with not a plain face nor a faulty person. 
 They were taught to behave to Johnson as they would 
 have done to a grandfather, and he felt it.' In a letter 
 to Mrs. Thrale he says ' You find, now you have seen the 
 progenies Langtoniana that I did not praise them without 
 reason. Yet the second girl is my favourite.' 
 
 'It was Langton's intention,' Miss Hawkins states, 
 * to educate his children at home, and under only parental 
 tutelage. He therefore settled in Westminster, determined 
 to live very quietly, and devote himself to this grand 
 duty, in which the children of both sexes were to be 
 
 T
 
 274 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 equally considered. He told my father he should not 
 only give his sons but his daughters a knowledge of the 
 learned languages, and that he meant to familiarise the 
 latter to the Greek language to such perfection, that while 
 five of his girls employed themselves in feminine works, 
 the sixth should read a Greek author for the general 
 amusement' 
 
 Miss Burney records how Dr. Johnson gave a very 
 droll account of the children of Mr. Langton, 'who,' he 
 said, ' might be very good children if they were let alone; 
 but the father is never easy when he is not making them 
 do something which they cannot do; they must repeat a 
 fable, or a speech, or the Hebrew alphabet; and they 
 might as well count twenty for what they know of the 
 matter; however, the father says half, for he prompts 
 every other word. But he could not have chosen a man 
 who would have been less entertained by such means.' 
 
 In one of Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale a passage 
 occurs which there is little doubt refers to Langton and 
 his eldest boy, though the names are suppressed. 'I 
 
 dined,' he writes, '■ yesterday with . His children are 
 
 very lovely. . . . He begins to reproach himself with neg- 
 lect of 's education, and censures that idleness or 
 
 that deviation, by the indulgence of which he has left 
 uncultivated such a fertile mind. I advised him to let
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 275 
 
 the child alone ; and told him that the matter was not 
 great whether he could read at the end of four years, 
 or of five, and that I thought it not proper to harass a 
 tender mind with the violence of painful attention. 
 I may perhaps procure both father and son a year 
 of quiet; and surely I may rate myself among their 
 
 benefactors.' 
 
 The home education would not seem to have suc- 
 ceeded. ' Mr. Langton knew not how much the possession 
 of extensive learning sometimes overshoots the power of 
 communicating first elements ; he was bewildered in his 
 own labyrinth of ideas, and, I beheve, was a little sickened 
 of his plan by the late King's frequently repeated inquiry, 
 " How does education go on ? " ' George Langton, the 
 eldest son, at all events, had, as Mr. Best tells us, 
 ' profited by the conversation and instruction of his father, 
 so as to become a man of almost universal, though 
 perhaps superficial, literary knowledge.' A tutor, named 
 Lusignan, had been engaged to teach him modern Greek, 
 of whom he used to tell the following anecdote: 'It had 
 been imposed on him by his director as a penance to 
 recite a certain number of times, before breakfast, the 
 words Kupte i\Ef.~i(Tor. He paced his chamber impatiently, 
 repeating with what seemed practised rapidity the words 
 prescribed, ever and anon, however, opening his door.
 
 276 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 and calling downstairs to the maid, " Is my breakfast 
 ready?"' 
 
 On one occasion, when Johnson was at Langton's 
 house, ' before dinner,' says Boswell, ' he said nothing but 
 " Pretty baby ! " to one of the children. Langton said very 
 well to me afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's 
 conversation before dinner, as Johnson had said that he 
 could repeat a complete chapter of the " Natural History 
 of Iceland," from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of 
 which was exactly thus: — 
 
 ' " CHAP. LXXII.— Concerning Snakes.— There are 
 no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island." ' 
 
 When, on Beauclerk's death, Langton received by his 
 will Reynolds' portrait of Johnson, with the inscription 
 on the frame — 
 
 Ingenium ingens 
 Inculto latet hoc sub corpora, 
 
 he had the lines effaced. Johnson said, complacently, 
 * It was kind in you to take it off; ' and then, after a short 
 pause, added, ' and not unkind in him to put it on.' We 
 must not forget that the great painter and the great lexico- 
 grapher, as men then delighted to call him, had thought 
 so highly of the two friends, that when they were still 
 quite young men, they had invited them, with Goldsmith 
 and Burke, to join them in founding The Club.
 
 BENNET LANGTON. 277 
 
 Nothing is more pleasant in Langton's life than that 
 scene for a comedy, as Sir Joshua described it, when the 
 penitent got into a panic and belaboured his confessor. 
 'When I was ill,' said Johnson, ' 1 desired Langton would 
 tell me sincerely in what he thought my life was faulty. 
 Sir, he brought me a sheet of paper, on which he had 
 written down several texts of Scripture, recommending 
 Christian charity. And when I questioned him what 
 occasion I had given for such animadversion, all that he 
 could say amounted to this — that I sometimes contra- 
 dicted people in conversation. Now what harm does it 
 do to any man to be contradicted?' Boswell, in de- 
 scribing the scene, says that ' Johnson, at the time when 
 the paper was presented to him, though at first pleased 
 with the attention of his friend, whom he thanked in an 
 earnest manner, soon exclaimed, in a loud and angry 
 tone, " What is your drift. Sir ? " ' What an admirable 
 subject for Hogarth, if he had lived to paint it ! 
 
 When Johnson's last illness was upon him, Langton, 
 as we have said, came up from Lincolnshire to be with 
 his dying friend. He took lodgings in Fleet Street, so 
 that he might be near at hand. ' Nobody,' says Boswell, 
 'was more attentive to him than Mr. Langton, to 
 whom he tenderly said, " Tc teneavi moricns defidente 
 manu." '
 
 278 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 His failing hand did not, indeed, at the very moment 
 of death hold his friend's. Stupor had set in, and even 
 the gentle Bennet Langton, the friend of thirty years, 
 would have been as a stranger to him. A letter has been 
 preserved, in Langton's handwriting, a letter which was 
 never finished and never sent, but was meant likely enough 
 for Bos well, m which we read, ' I am now writing in the 
 room where his venerable remains exhibit a spectacle^ 
 the interesting solemnity of which, difficult as it would 
 be in any sort to find terms to express, so to you, my 
 dear Sir, whose own sensations will paint it so strongly, 
 it would be of all men the most superfluous to attempt 
 
 to .' Here grief, it would seem, got the better of 
 
 the writer, and the letter was left, with all the eloquence 
 of a broken utterance. 
 
 Langton survived Johnson many years. Mrs. Piozzi, 
 in a passage which shows all the spite of a small mind, 
 writes, 'The Dean of Winchester's account of Bennet 
 Langton coming to town some few years after the death 
 of Dr. Johnson, and finding no house where he was even 
 asked to dinner, was exceedingly comical. Mr. Wilber- 
 force dismissed him with a cold " Adieu, dear Sir ; I 
 hope we shall meet in heaven." How capricious is the 
 public taste! I remember when to have Langton at a 
 man's house stamped him at once a literary character.'
 
 BENNET LANGTON, 279 
 
 Public taste is capricious, but yet as long as Boswell's 
 * Life of Johnson ' is read, so long will there be men to 
 love the memory of the gentle Bennet Langton, the 
 worthy friend who was serious and yet cheerful, who did 
 not keep his minutes of acceptum et expensum^ but had 
 read Clenardus.
 
 28o ' DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK.' 
 
 ' Goldsmith/ says Lord Macaulay, ' lived in what was 
 intellectually far the best society of the kingdom, in a 
 society in which no talent or accomplishment was wanting, 
 and in which the art of conversation was cultivated with 
 splendid success. There probably were never four talkers 
 more admirable in four different ways than Johnson, 
 Burke, Beauclerk,^ and Garrick ; and Goldsmith was 
 on terms of intimacy with all the four.' Many a 
 reader, as he has come upon this passage, must have 
 paused to reflect who this Beauclerk was, who is thus 
 matched with Johnson, Burke, and Garrick, and whose 
 society was an honour to Goldsmith. He may at length 
 have called to mind the lively, the learned, the witty, the 
 
 ' Reprinted (with additions) from the CornJiill Magazine. 
 
 2 ' There is a poignancy without effort in all that he (Talleyrand) 
 says, which reminds me a little of the character which the wits of 
 Johnson's circlegive of Beauclerk.' — Life of Macaulay,'by1ie.\e\y3.n, 
 vol. i. p. 231.
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 281 
 
 fashionable Topham Beauclerk, as he is shown to us in 
 the pages of Boswell. In the last chapter I have given a 
 sketch of Bennet Langton. I shall do my best to present 
 a. companion portrait of the friend of his college days and 
 of his mature life — Topham Beauclerk. 
 
 I have, I feel, a far harder task before me, for Lang- 
 ton's life lay in a much narrower circle. The books that 
 tell of Johnson tell also of him, but Beauclerk knew a 
 world that was known to neither Langton nor Johnson. 
 He was a man of fashion, as well as an accomplished 
 scholar and an eager student, and had mixed with men 
 whom neither Johnson nor Langton would have cared to 
 have known. Though I have not failed in diligence in 
 consulting the memoirs of last century, yet I have not suc- 
 ceeded so well as I had hoped in gathering information 
 about many periods of his Hfe. Especially had I wished to 
 illustrate his marvellous conversational powers, to which 
 so many of his contemporaries bear witness, but the good 
 sayings of his that I have come upon are but few indeed. 
 
 Topham Beauclerk's wildness and wit may well have 
 come from one and the same source, for he was the 
 great-grandson of Charles II. and Nell Gwyn. Boswell 
 says that ' Mr. Beauclerk's being of the St. Albans' 
 family, and having, in some particulars, a resemblance to 
 Charles II., contributed, in Johnson's imagination, to
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 throw a lustre upon his other qualities.' In another 
 passage we learn that Johnson had an extraordinary 
 partiality for that prince, and took fire at any attack upon 
 him. Beauclerk's father, Lord Sidney Beauclerk, the third 
 son of the first Duke of St. Albans, was not unworthy 
 of his illustrious grandparents. ' Sir C. H. Williams calls 
 him " Worthless Sidney." He was notorious for hunting 
 after the fortunes of the old and childless. Being very 
 handsome, he had almost persuaded Lady Betty Germaine 
 (Swift's correspondent) in her old age to marry him. He 
 failed also in obtaining the fortune of Sir Thomas Reeve, 
 Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, whom he used to 
 attend on the circuit with a view of ingratiating himself 
 with him. At length he induced Mr. Topham, of Windsor, 
 to leave his estate to him.' 
 
 If Mr. Topham together with his fortune left him also 
 his famous collection of pictures and drawings,' it is 
 likely enough that from them his godson derived much 
 of his accurate taste and judgment in painting and sculp- 
 ture. It was certamly not to his mother that Beauclerk 
 owed the powers of his mind. In the course of his tour 
 to the Hebrides, Johnson one day told Boswell the 
 following anecdote of this lady : ' "Beauclerk and I, and 
 
 * ' He buys for Topham, drawings and designs.' — Pope's Moral 
 Essays, Epistle iv.
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 283 
 
 Langton, and Lady Sidney Beauclerk, mother to our 
 friend, were one day driving in a coach by Cuper's 
 Gardens (an inferior place of popular amusement), which 
 were then unoccupied. I, in sport, proposed that Beau- 
 clerk and Langton and myself should take them ; and 
 we amused ourselves with scheming how we should all do 
 our parts. Lady Sidney grew angry, and said, " An old 
 man should not put such things in young people's heads." 
 She had no notion of a joke, Sir ; had come late into life, 
 and had a mighty unpliable understanding.' 
 
 It was at Trinity College, Oxford, that Beauclerk formed 
 an acquaintance with his fellow-collegian Bennet Langton. 
 Boswell says that ' though their opinions and modes of 
 life were so different, that it seemed utterly improbable 
 that they should at all agree, yet Mr, Beauclerk had so 
 ardent a love of literature, so acute an understanding, 
 such elegance of manners, and so well discerned the ex- 
 cellent qualities of iMr. Langton, that they became inti- 
 mate friends.' They entered college within a few months 
 of each other in 1757, when Beauclerk was eighteen years 
 old. 'Johnson, soon after this acquaintance began, 
 passed a considerable time at Oxford. He at first 
 thought it strange that Langton should associate so much 
 with one who had the character of being loose, both in 
 his principles and practice ; but by degrees he himself
 
 284 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 was fascinated.' The resemblance to Charles II. was too 
 much for him. 'And in a short time the moral, pious 
 Johnson and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk were com- 
 panions. " What a coalition ! " (said Garrick, when he 
 heard of this) ; " I shall have my old friend to bail out of 
 the round-house." ' 
 
 Boswell goes on to say that ' it was a very agreeable 
 association. Beauclerk was too polite, and valued learn- 
 ing and wit too much, to offend Johnson by sallies of 
 infidelity or licentiousness ; and Johnson delighted in 
 the good qualities of Beauclerk, and hoped to correct the 
 evil, Innumerable were the scenes in which Johnson 
 was amused by these young men. Beauclerk could take 
 more liberty with him than anybody with whom I ever 
 saw him; but, on the other hand, Beauclerk was not 
 spared by his respectable companion when reproof was 
 proper. Beauclerk had such a propensity to satire, that 
 at one time Johnson said to him, " You never open your 
 mouth but with intention to give pain ; and you have 
 often given me pain, not from the power of what you 
 said, but from seeing your intention." At another time, 
 applying to him, with a slight alteration, a line of Pope, 
 he said, " Thy love of folly and thy scorn of fools — every- 
 thing thou dost shows the one, and everything thou say'st 
 the other." At another time he said to him, "Thy body
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 285 
 
 is all vice, and thy mind all virtue." Beauclerk not 
 seeming to relish the compliment, Johnson said, "Nay, 
 Sir, Alexander the Great, marching in triumph into Bab}'- 
 lon, could not have desired to have had more said to 
 him." ' 
 
 The pious Johnson at times so far forgot to correct 
 the evil that he saw in his friend, that he even allowed 
 himself to be led astray. When he was staying at Beau- 
 clerk's house at Windsor, ' one Sunday when the weather 
 was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him insensibly to saunter 
 about all the morning. They went into a churchyard, in 
 the time of Divine service, and Johnson laid himself 
 down at his ease upon one of the tomb-stones. " Now, 
 Sir" (said Beauclerk), "you are like Hogarth's idle appren- 
 tice."' On another occasion, as Boswell tells us, 'when 
 Beauclerk and Langton had supped at a tavern in 
 London, and sat till about three in the morning, it came 
 into their heads to go and knock up Johnson, and see if 
 they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. 
 They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the 
 Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little 
 black wig on the top of his head, instead of a night-cap, 
 and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some 
 ruffians were coming to attack him. WHien he discovered 
 who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and
 
 286 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 with great good humour agreed to their proposal : "What, 
 is it you, you dogs ! I'll have a frisk with you." He 
 was soon dressed, and they sallied forth together into 
 Covent Garden, where the greengrocers and fruiterers 
 were beginning to arrange their hampers, just come in 
 from the country. Johnson made some attempts to helj^ 
 them, but the honest gardeners stared so at his figure and 
 manner, and odd interference, that he soon saw his 
 services were not relished. They then repaired to one of 
 the neighbouring taverns, and made a bowl of that liquor 
 called Bishop, which Johnson had always liked, while in 
 joyous contempt of sleep, from which he had been roused, 
 he repeated the festive lines — 
 
 Short, O short then be thy reign 
 And give us to the world again ! 
 
 They did not stay long, but walked down to the Thames, 
 took a boat, and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and 
 Johnson were so well pleased with their amusement that 
 they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the rest of 
 the day ; but Langton deserted them, being engaged to 
 breakfast with some young ladies. Johnson scolded him 
 for " leaving his social friends to go and sit with a set of 
 wretched tm-idea'd g\x\s.'"' 
 
 Shortly after Beauclerk must have left college, we
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 287 
 
 learn by a letter of Mrs. Montague's that this lively young 
 gentleman came \vithin a very little of being married. 
 ' Mr. Beauclerk,' she writes, '■ was to have been married 
 to Miss Draycott, but by a certain coldness in his manner 
 she fancied her lead mines were rather the objects of his 
 love than herself, and so after the licence was taken out 
 she gave him his co7ige. Rosamond's pond was never 
 thought of by the forsaken swain. His prudent parents 
 thought of the transmutation of metals, and to how much 
 gold the lead might have been changed, and rather regret 
 the loss.' 
 
 A few months later in the same year Beauclerk, let us 
 hope to drive away his grief for the loss of his bride, went 
 the grand tour. Langton accompanied him, at all events 
 part of the way. Johnson wrote to Mr. Baretti at IMilan, 
 ' I beg that you will show Mr. Beauclerk all the civilities 
 which you have in your power, for he has always been 
 kind to me.' Five months later he writes to the same 
 gentleman, 'I gave a letter to Mr. Beauclerk, wlio, in my 
 opinion, and in his own, was hastening to Naples for the 
 recovery of his health; but he has stopped at Paris, and 
 I know not when he will proceed.' In George Selwyn's 
 Letters we read, ' Topham Beauclerk is arrived. I hear 
 he lost ;j^i 0,000 to a thief at Venice, which thief, in the 
 course of the year, will be at Cashiobury.' Johnson,
 
 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 with Beauclerk's example before him, had certainly some 
 reason for saying that ' Time may be employed to more 
 advantage from nineteen to twenty-four almost in any 
 way than in travelling.' ' 
 
 Beauclerk, a few years after his return, had an oppor- 
 tunity of repaying the civilities he had received from Mr. 
 Baretti. That gentleman was put on his trial for murder. 
 He had been assailed in the grossest manner possible by 
 a woman of the town, and, driving her off with a blow, 
 was set upon by three bullies. He thereupon ran away 
 in great fear, for he was a timid man, and being pursued 
 had stabbed two of the men with a small knife he carried 
 in his pocket. One of them died within a few hours of 
 the wound. In his defence he had said, ' I hope it will 
 be seen that my knife was neither a weapon of offence nor 
 defence. I wear it to carve fruit and sweetmeats, and 
 not to kill my fellow- creatures.' It was important to 
 prove that abroad everyone carried a knife as a matter of 
 course, not for offensive or defensive purposes, but simply 
 for convenience in eating. The Hon. T. Beauclerk gave 
 evidence as follows : — 
 
 ' In France they never lay anything upon the table 
 but a fork, not only in the inns, but in public-houses. It 
 is usual for gentlemen and ladies to carry knives with 
 ' See page io8. 
 
 I
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 
 
 them without silver blades. I have seen those kind of 
 knives in toy-shops.' (Baretti's knife had a ' silver case 
 over the blade, and was kept in a green shagreen case.') 
 Garrick testified to the same custom. He was asked, 
 ' When you travel abroad do you carry such knives as 
 this ? ' He answered, ' Yes, or we should have no vic- 
 tuals.' Had Johnson by this time been to the Hebrides, 
 his evidence also might have helped to confirm the 
 statement of his friends. In a letter he wrote from Skye 
 to Mrs. Thrale he states, ' Table-knives are not of long 
 subsistence in the Highlands ; every man, while arms 
 were a regular part of dress, had his knife and fork 
 appendant to his dirk.' 
 
 Beauclerk also bore evidence to the position Baretti 
 held in his own country. He was asked, ' How long 
 have you known Mr. Baretti ? ' He answered, ' I have 
 known him ten years. I was acquainted with him before 
 I went abroad. Some time after that I went to Italy, 
 and he gave me letters of recommendation to some of 
 the first people there, and to men of learning. I went to 
 Italy the time the Duke of York did. Unless Mr. Baretti 
 had been a man of consequence he could never have 
 recommended me to such people as he did. He is a 
 gentleman of letters, and a studious man.' 
 
 In 1768 Beauclerk married the eldest daughter of the 
 u
 
 290 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 second Duke of Marlborough, two days after her divorce 
 from her first husband, Frederick Viscount BoHngbroke, 
 the nephew and heir of the great Lord BoHngbroke. 
 
 Boswell reports a conversation with Johnson, which 
 sets forth the history of this unhappy affair. ' While we 
 were alone,' he writes, ' I endeavoured as well as I could 
 to apologise for a lady who had been divorced from her 
 husband by Act of Parliament. I said that he had used 
 her very ill, had behaved brutally to her, and that she 
 could not continue to live with him without having her 
 delicacy contaminated; that all affection for him was 
 thus destroyed ; that the essence of conjugal union being 
 gone, there remained only a cold form, a mere civil obli- 
 gation ; that she was in the prime of life, with qualities 
 to produce happiness ; that these ought not to be lost ; 
 and that the gentleman on whose account she was 
 divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily 
 situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady 
 in question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sen- 
 sible could not be justified; for when I had finished my 
 harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check. 
 " My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle 
 
 virtue and vice. The woman's a , and there's an 
 
 end on't." ' As Lady Diana Beauclerk did not die till the 
 year 1808, she lived to see this story, so slightly veiled
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 291 
 
 as it was by the omission of names, submitted to the 
 world. A short time before the divorce Horace Walpole 
 writes : ' Lady Bohngbroke has declared she will come 
 into waiting on Sunday se'nnight ; but as the Queen is 
 likely to be brought to bed before that time, this may be 
 only a bravado.' It may be interesting to mention, with 
 a view to help us towards fomiing a kind of link with the 
 past, that the child that was soon after born to the Queen 
 was the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria. 
 
 In a letter written to Selwyn by Gilly Williams we 
 read, ' Lady D. Spencer was married at St. George's on 
 Saturday morning. They are in town at Topham's 
 house, and give dinners. Lord Ancram dined there 
 yesterday, and called her nothing but Lady Bolingbroke 
 the whole time.' In another letter he says, ' Topham 
 goes on with his dinners. Report says neither of them 
 will live a twelvemonth, and if it is so, their life ought to 
 be a merry one.' 
 
 Johnson on one occasion gave, as regards this mar- 
 riage, an instance of that real delicacy of mind that 
 beneath all his outside roughness belonged to him in so 
 high a degree. He was talking of Blenheim, and said 
 'he should be very glad to see it, if properly invited, 
 which in all probability would never be the case, as ir 
 was not worth his while to seek for it. I observed ' (says 
 
 u 2
 
 292 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Boswell) ' that he might be easily introduced there by a 
 common friend of ours, nearly related to the Duke. He 
 answered, with an uncommon attention to delicacy of 
 feeling, " I doubt whether our friend be on such a footing 
 with the Duke as to carry anybody there ; and I would 
 not give him the uneasiness of seeing that I knew he was 
 not, or even of being himself reminded of it." ' 
 
 Lady Di Beauclerk in her second marriage seems to 
 have been a faithful and devoted wife, though her faith- 
 fulness and her devotion met with but a poor return. 
 Miss Bumey in the following passage in her Diary 
 gives a sad account of her married life. 
 
 ' From the window of the dining-parlour. Sir Joshua 
 directed us to look at a pretty white house which 
 belonged to Lady Di Beauclerk. 
 
 ' " I am extremely glad," said Mr. Burke, " to see her 
 at last so well housed ; poor woman ! the bowl has long 
 rolled in misery ; I rejoice that it has now found its 
 balance. I never, myself, so much enjoyed the sight of 
 happiness in another, as in that woman, when I first saw 
 her after the death of her husband. It was really enliven- 
 ing to behold her placed in that sweet house, released 
 from all her cares, a thousand pounds a year at her dis- 
 posal, and — her husband was dead ! Oh, it was pleasant, 
 it was delightful to see her enjoyment of her situation ! "
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 293 
 
 ' " But, without considering the circumstances,'"' said 
 Mr. Gibbon, " this may appear very strange, though, 
 when they are fairly stated, it is perfectly rational and 
 unavoidable." 
 
 ' " Very true," said Mr. Burke, " if the circumstances 
 are not considered, Lady Di may seem highly reprehen- 
 sible." 
 
 * He then, addressing himself particularly to me, as 
 the person least likely to be acquainted with the character 
 of Mr. Beauclerk, drew it himself in strong and marked 
 expressions, describing the misery he gave his wife, his 
 singular illtreatment of her, and the necessary relief the 
 death of such a man must give.' 
 
 I cannot but hope that there may have been some 
 exaggeration either in Burke's statements or in Miss 
 Burney's record of what he said. If, however, Lady Di 
 Beauclerk suffered such unkindness from her husband, 
 she showed no resentment. She tended him to the last 
 with the utmost faithfulness and affection. 
 
 Johnson writes to Boswell some years after the mar- 
 riage, ' Poor Beauclerk is so ill that his life is thought to 
 be in danger. Lady Di nurses him with very great as- 
 siduity.' When he died he left his children to her care ; 
 and, if she died, to the care of Mr. Langton. David 
 Hume describes her as being ' handsome, agreeable, and
 
 294 DR. yOHA^SON. 
 
 ingenious beyond the ordinary rate.' Horace Walpole 
 often speaks in very high terms of her powers as an artist. 
 
 In writing of a portrait she had drawn of the Duchess 
 of Devonshire he says, ' The likeness is perfectly pre- 
 served, except that the paintress has lent her own expres- 
 sion to the Duchess, which you will allow is very agree- 
 able flattery. What should I go to the Royal Academy 
 for ? I shall see no such chefs-d'oeuvre there.' In writing 
 of another of her pictures he says, ' Miss Pope, the 
 actress, dined here yesterday, and literally shed tears, 
 though she did not know the story. I think this is more 
 to Lady Di's credit than a tom-tit pecking at painted 
 fruit.' Mr. Hardy, in his 'Life of the Earl of Charle- 
 mont,' says, ' Lord Charlemont has often mentioned to 
 me that Sir Joshua Reynolds frequently declared to him 
 that many of her ladyship's drawings might be studied as 
 models.' 
 
 A lively letter of hers to George Selwyn is given in 
 his ' Memoirs.' She is staying in Bath and she writes : 
 * The fog has been choking me all the morning, and now 
 the sun is blinding me. A thousand children are running 
 by the windows. I should like to whip them for not 
 being mine.' Boswell bears witness to her pleasant 
 conversations.^ It was from her he won a small bett 
 ' See page 162.
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 295 
 
 {sic) by asking Johnson as to one of his pecuUarities, 
 ' which her Ladyship laid I durst not do.' Both Beau- 
 clerk and Garrick had wondered at his pocketing at the 
 club the Seville oranges after he had squeezed out the 
 juice, and * seemed to think that he had a strange unwil- 
 lingness to be discovered.' Boswell, though he won his 
 * bett,' did not succeed in learning what he did with 
 them. 
 
 To Beauclerk's great natural powers, and to his fine 
 scholarly mind, testimony is borne, as I have already 
 said, by many competent witnesses. Boswell, in describ- 
 ing a dinner at his house, says : ' Mr. Beauclerk was 
 ver)' entertaining this day, and told us a number of short 
 stories in a lively, elegant manner, and with that air of 
 the world which has I know not what impressive effect, 
 as if there were something more than is expressed, or 
 than perhaps we could perfectly understand. As Johnson 
 and I accompanied Sir Joshua Reynolds in his coach, 
 Johnson said : " There is in Beauclerk a predominance 
 over his company that one does not like. But he is a 
 man who has lived so much in the world that he has a 
 short story on every occasion ; he is always ready to talk, 
 and is never exhausted."' Langton, in a letter to Bos- 
 well, gives further proof of the way in which his extra- 
 ordinary powers were regarded by Johnson : —
 
 296 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 ' The melancholy information you have received con- 
 cerning Mr. Beauclerk's death is true. Had his talents 
 been directed in any sufficient degree, as they ought, 1 
 have always been strongly of opinion that they were cal 
 culated to make an illustrious figure; and that opinion, 
 as it had been in part formed upon Dr. Johnson's judg- 
 ment, receives more and more confirmation by hearing 
 what, since his death. Dr. Johnson has said concerning 
 them. A few evenings ago he was at Mr. Vesey's, where 
 Lord Althorpe, who was one of a numerous company 
 there, addressed Dr. Johnson on the subject of Mr. 
 Beauclerk's death, saying, "Our club has had a great loss 
 since we met last." He replied, " A loss that perhaps 
 the whole nation could not repair." The Doctor then 
 went on to speak of his endowments, and particularly 
 extolled the wonderful ease with which he uttered what 
 was highly excellent. He said that no man ever was so 
 free when he was going to say a good thing from a look 
 that expressed that it was coming ; or, when he had said 
 it, from a look that expressed that it had come. At Mr. 
 Thrale's, some days before, when we were talking on the 
 same subject, he said, referring to the same idea of his 
 wonderful facility, "that Beauclerk's talents were those 
 which he had felt himself more disposed to envy than 
 those of any whom he had known." ' And yet what
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 297 
 
 great men he had known ! On an earUer occasion, 
 Avhen Boswell had remarked to Johnson that ' Beauclerk 
 has a keenness of mmd which is very uncommon ; ' John- 
 son repHed, ' Yes, Sir ! and everything comes from him 
 so easily. It appears to me that I labour when I say a 
 good thing.' Eoswell replied, ' You are loud, Sir ; but it 
 is not an effort of mind.' Dean Barnard, in those admir- 
 able verses with which he so wittily rebuked Johnson's 
 rudeness, shows the opinion held by no mean judge of 
 conversation of Beauclerk's powers : 
 
 If I have thoughts and can't express 'em, 
 Gibbon shall teach me how to dress 'em 
 
 In terms select and terse ; 
 Jones teach me modesty and Greek ; 
 Smith, how to think ; Burke, how to speak ; 
 
 And Beauclerk to converse. 
 
 Hawkins writes, 'His conversation was of the most 
 excellent kind ; learned, witty, polite, and where the sub- 
 ject required it serious ; and over all his behaviour there 
 beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and good 
 humour as communicated itself to all around him.' 
 Lord Charlemont, who was a member of the Literary 
 Club and knew him well, said that ' he possessed an 
 exquisite taste, various accomplishments, and the most per- 
 fect good breeding. He was eccentric, often querulous,
 
 298 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 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.' Wilkes, in a marginal note in his 
 copy of Boswell's 'Johnson,' describes Beau clerk as being 
 ' shy, sly, and dry.' 
 
 Miss Burney speaks of him as ' that celebrated wit 
 and libertine.' It is a pity that so admirable a talker 
 had not his Boswell, though, perhaps, inuch of what he 
 said depended to a very great extent on the manner in 
 which he said it. Lord Pembroke said, with perhaps 
 more wit than truth, that ' Dr. Johnson's sayings would 
 not appear so extraordinary were it not for his bow-wow 
 way! There are, however, very few talkers whose con- 
 versation if written down would still strike us with won- 
 der. I have gathered together the few good sayings of 
 Beauclerk that I have been able to find. WTien John- 
 son got his pension, Beauclerk said to him in the 
 humourous phrase of Falstaff, ' I hope you'll now purge 
 and live cleanly like a gentleman.' Boswell gives the
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 299 
 
 following account which he received from Beauclerk of a 
 curious affair between Dr. Johnson and Mr, Hervey. 
 ' Tom Hervey had a gteat hking for Johnson, and in his 
 will had left him a legacy of fifty pounds. One day he 
 said to me, " Johnson may want this money now more 
 than afterwards. I have a mind to give it him directly. 
 Will you be so good as to carry a fifty-pound note from 
 me to him ? " This I positively refused to do, as he 
 might, perhaps, have knocked me down for insulting him, 
 and have afterwards put the note in his pocket.' Boswell 
 repeated this story, with certain other circumstances into 
 which it is not necessary to enter here, to Johnson. 
 Afterwards he wrote to tell Johnson that he had become 
 .very uneasy lest his having done so ' might be interpreted 
 as a breach of confidence, and offend one whose society 
 
 he valued.' Johnson wrote back, ' I have seen Mr. , 
 
 and as to him, have set all right without any incon- 
 venience, as far as I know, to you. Mrs. Thrale had 
 forgot the story. You may now be at ease.' 
 
 Mr. Croker says that there is reason to fear that this 
 mention of Beauclerk's name by Boswell impaired the 
 cordiality between Beauclerk and Johnson. 
 
 It was Beauclerk who, when he heard that Tom 
 Davies clapped Moody the player on his back, when in 
 an argument that was going on ' he once tried to say
 
 30O DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 something upon our side/ exclaimed 'he could not conceive 
 a more humiliating situation than to be clapped on the 
 back by Tom Davies.' A few days after this, a discus- 
 sion was going on as to the belief in immortality. 
 Boswell \vrites : ' I said it appeared to me that some 
 people had not the least notion of immortality, and I 
 mentioned a distinguished gentleman of our acquaintance. 
 J^ohnson : " Sir, if it were not for the notion of immor- 
 tality, he would cut a throat to fill his pockets." When I 
 quoted this to Beauclerk,' Boswell goes on to add, ' who 
 knew much more of the gentleman than we did, he said, 
 in his acid manner, " He would cut a throat to fill his 
 pockets, if it were not for fear of being hanged." ' John- 
 son, as we read on another occasion, ' thought Mr. 
 Beau clerk made a shrewd and judicious remark to Mr. 
 Langton, who after having been for the first time in com- 
 pany with a well-known wit about town, was warmly ad- 
 miring and praising him, — " See him again," said Beau- 
 clerk.' ' In the only instance remembered of Goldsmith's 
 practice as a physician,' as we read in Mr. Forster's 
 interesting Life, ' it one day happened that, his opinion 
 differing somewhat from the apothecary's in attendance, 
 the lady thought her apothecary the safer counsellor, and 
 Goldsmith quitted the house in high indignation. He 
 would leave off prescribing for his friends, he said. "Do 
 
 I
 
 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK. 
 
 so, my dear Doctor," observed Beauclerk. " Whenever 
 you undertake to kill, let it only be your enemies." ' 
 
 A hot discussion, not the only one of its kind, one 
 day arose between Beauclerk and Johnson, which Beau- 
 clerk closed by an admirable saying. 'It was mentioned 
 that Dr. Dodd had once wished to be a member of the 
 Literary Club. 
 
 ' Johnson : " I should be sorry if any of our club 
 were hanged. I will not say but some of them deserve it." 
 
 ' Beauclerk (supposing this to be aimed at persons 
 for whom he had at that time a wonderful fancy, which, 
 however, did not last long) was irritated, and eagerly 
 said, "You, Sir, have a friend (naming him) who deserves 
 to be hanged, for he speaks behind their backs against 
 those with whom he lives on the best terms, and attacks 
 them in the newspapers. He certainly ought to be 
 kicked.^^ 
 
 ' J^ohnso7i : *' Sir, we all do this in some degree, 
 veniani petinms damusque vidssim. To be sure it may be 
 done so much that a man may deserve to be kicked." 
 
 * Beauclerk : " He is very malignant." 
 
 ' Johnsoji : " No, Sir, he is not malignant. He is 
 mischievous, if you will. He would do no man an essen- 
 tial injury ; he may, indeed, love to make sport of people 
 by vexing their vanity. I, however, once knew an old
 
 302 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 gentleman who was absolutely malignant. He really 
 wished evil to others, and rejoiced at it." 
 
 ' Boswell : " The gentleman, Mr. Beauclerk, against 
 whom you are so violent, is, I know, a man of good 
 principles." 
 
 ^Beauclerk: "Then he does not wear them out in 
 practice." ' 
 
 Boswell in one instance tries to give his readers a 
 conception of Beauclerk's manner of telling a story. H e 
 writes : ' Here let me not forget a curious anecdote, as 
 related to me by Mr. Beauclerk, which I shall endeavour 
 to exhibit as well as I can in that gentleman's lively 
 manner ; and in justice to him it is proper to add that 
 Dr. Johnson told me that I might rely both on the cor- 
 rectness of his memory and the fidelity of his narrative. 
 " When Madame de Boufflers was first in England (said 
 Beauclerk) she was desirous to see Johnson. I accord- 
 ingly went with her to his chambers in the Temple, 
 where she was entertained with his conversation for some 
 time. When our visit was over, she and I left him and 
 were got into Inner Temple Lane, when all at once I 
 heard a voice like thunder. This was occasioned by 
 Johnson, who, it seems, upon a little reflection, had 
 taken it into his head that he ought to have done the 
 honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 303 
 
 quality, and eager to show himself a man of gallantry, was 
 hurrying down the staircase in violent agitation. He over- 
 took us before we reached the Temple Gate, and brushing 
 in between me and Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand 
 and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty- 
 brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, 
 a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and 
 the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hang- 
 ing loose. A considerable crowd of people gathered round, 
 and were not a little struck by this singular appearance." ' 
 Boswell records 'a violent altercation that arose 
 between Johnson and Beauclerk, which,' he writes, ' hav- 
 ing made much noise at the time, I think it proper, in 
 order to prevent any future misrepresentation, to give a 
 minute account of it. In talking of Hackman (the Rev. 
 Mr. Hackman, who in a fit of frantic jealous love had 
 shot Miss Ray), Johnson argued, as Judge Blackstone 
 had done, that his being furnished with two pistols was a 
 proof that he meant to shoot two persons. Mr. Beau- 
 clerk said, " No : for that every wise man who intended 
 to shoot himself took two pistols, that he might be sure 
 
 of doing it at once. Lord 's cook shot himself with 
 
 one pistol, and lived ten days in great agony. Mr. , 
 
 who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them be- 
 cause they disagreed witli his stomach, resolved to shoot
 
 304 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 himself ; he had two charged pistols : one was found 
 lying charged upon the table by him, after he had shot 
 himself with the other." " Well " (said Johnson, with an 
 air of triumph), " you see here one pistol was sufficient." 
 Beauclerk replied smartly, " Because it happened to kill 
 him." And either then, or a very little afterwards, being 
 piqued at Johnson's triumphant remark, added, " This 
 is what you don't know, and I do." 
 
 ' There was then a cessation of the dispute ; some 
 minutes intervened, during which dinner and the glass 
 went on cheerfully ; when Johnson suddenly and abruptly 
 exclaimed, " Mr. Beauclerk, how came you to talk so 
 petulantly to me, as ' This is what you don't know, but 
 what I know ' ? One thing / know which yoii don't seem 
 to know, that you are very uncivil." 
 
 ' Beauclerk : " Because you began by being uncivil 
 (which you always are)." 
 
 ' The words in parenthesis were, I believe, not heard 
 by Dr. Johnson. Here again there was a cessation of 
 arms. Johnson told me that the reason why he waited 
 at first some time without taking any notice of what 
 Mr. Beauclerk said, was because he was thinking whether 
 he should resent it. But when he considered that there 
 were present a young lord and an eminent traveller, two 
 men of the world with whom he had never dined before,
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 305 
 
 he was apprehensive that they might think they had a 
 right to take such Hberties with him as Beauclerk did, 
 and therefore resolved he would not let it pass ; adding 
 that " he would not appear a coward." A little while 
 after this, the conversation turned on the violence of 
 Hackman's temper. Johnson then said, " It was his 
 business to comma7id his temper, as my friend Mr. 
 Beauclerk should have done some time ago." 
 
 ' Beauclerk : " I should learn oiyou, Sir." 
 
 ' J^ohnson : " Sir, you have given i/ie opportunities 
 enough of learning, when I have been in your company. 
 No man loves to be treated with contempt." 
 
 '■Beauclerk (with a polite inclination towards Johnson) : 
 " Sir, you have known me twenty years, and however I 
 may have treated others, you may be sure I could never 
 treat you with contempt." 
 
 ' yohnson : " Sir, you have said more than was neces- 
 sary." 
 
 ' Thus it ended ; and Beauclerk's coach not having 
 come for him till very late, Dr. Johnson and another 
 gentleman sat with him a, long time after the rest of the 
 company were gone ; and he and I dined at Beauclerk's 
 on the Saturday se'nnight following.' 
 
 Johnson on another occasion showed a certain irrita- 
 bility towards Beauclerk. Boswell, in speaking of the 
 
 X
 
 3o6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 projected journey to Italy with the Thrales, writes: 'I 
 mentioned that Mr Beauclerk had said that Baretti, 
 whom they were to carry with them, would keep them so 
 long in the little towns of his own district, that they 
 would not have time to see Rome. I mentioned this to 
 put them on their guard, Johnson : " Sir, we do not 
 thank Mr. Beauclerk for supposing that we are to be 
 directed by Mr. Baretti." ' 
 
 In the chapter on ' Bennet Langton ' I have quoted 
 the happily chosen quotation that Beauclerk had put on 
 Johnson's portrait. No less happy was he in the inscrip- 
 tion from Love's Labour's Lost, which he placed under the 
 portrait of Garrick. ' Mr. Beauclerk,' as Boswell writes, 
 ' with happy propriety, inscribed under that fine portrait 
 of him, which by Lady Diana's kindness is now the pro- 
 perty of my friend Mr. Langton, the following passage 
 from his beloved Shakspeare — 
 
 — a merrier man 
 Within the limit of becoming mirth 
 I never spent an hour's talk withal, &c.' 
 
 In the Life of Lord Charlemont are given a few 
 letters by Beauclerk written in a very lively manner. 
 Langton, it will be remembered, had said that if his 
 friend's talents had been directed as they ought, they
 
 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK. 307 
 
 were calculated to make an illustrious figure. Beauclerk 
 in these letters shows that he himself is fully aware of his 
 own indolence. He apologises for his neglect in ' keeping 
 up an intercourse with one for whom I shall always 
 retain the greatest and tenderest regard,' and lays the 
 blame on ' that insuperable idleness, which accompanies 
 me through life, which not only prevents me from doing 
 what I ought, but likewise from enjoying my greatest 
 pleasure, where anything is to be done.' Later on he 
 writes, saying he has been very ill, but he goes on to add, 
 *■ in spite of my doctor, or nature itself, I will very soon 
 pay you a visit. Business, it is true, I have none to keep 
 me here; but you forget that 1 have business in Lan- 
 cashire, and that I must go there when I come to you.' 
 {Lord Charlemont was in Ireland.) ' Now, you will 
 please to recollect that there is nothing in this world I so 
 entirely hate as business of any kind, and that I pay you 
 the greatest compliment I can do when I risque the 
 meeting with my own confounded affairs in order to 
 have the pleasure of seeing you ; but this I am resolved 
 to do.' 
 
 He owns his detestation of politics and politicians. 
 He writes, in a letter dated Muswell Hill, Summer Quar- 
 ters, July 18, 1774: "Why should you be vexed to find 
 that mankind are fools and knaves ? I ha^■e known it so
 
 3o8 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 long that every fresh instance of it amuses me, provided 
 it does not immediately affect my friends or myself. 
 Politicians do not seem to me to be much greater rogues 
 than other people ; and as their actions affect in general 
 private persons less than other kinds of villainy do, I 
 cannot find that I am so angry with them. It is true 
 that the leading men in both countries at present are, I 
 believe, the most corrupt, abandoned people in the 
 nation; but, now that I am upon this worthy subject of 
 human nature, I will inform you of a few particulars 
 relating to the discovery of Otaheite, which Dr. Hawkes- 
 worth said placed the King above all the conquerors in 
 the world ; and if the glory is to be estimated by the 
 mischief, I do not know whether he is not right. When 
 Wallis first anchored off the island, two natives came 
 alongside of the ship, without fear or distrust, to barter 
 their goods with our people. A man, called the boat- 
 keeper, who was in a boat that was tied to the ship, 
 attempted to get the things from them without payment. 
 The savages resisted, and he struck one of them with the 
 boat-hook, upon which they immediately paddled away. 
 In the morning great numbers came 'in canoes of all sizes 
 about the ship. They behaved, however, in the most 
 peaceable manner, still offering to exchange their com- 
 modities for anything that they could obtain from us. 
 
 II
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 309 
 
 The same trick was played by attempting to take away 
 their things by force. This enraged them, and they had 
 come prepared to defend themselves with such weapons 
 as they had; they immediately began to fling stones, one 
 of which went into the cabin window. Wallis on this 
 ordered that the guns, loaded with grape-shot, should be 
 fired. This, you may imagine, immediately dispersed 
 them. Some were drowned, many killed, and some few 
 got on shore, where numbers of the natives were assem- 
 bled. Wallis then ordered the great guns to be played, 
 according to his phrase, upon them. This drove them 
 off, when he still ordered the same pastime to be con- 
 tinued in order to convince them, as he says, that our 
 arms could reach them at such^a distance. If you add 
 to this that the inhabitants of all these islands are eat up 
 with vile disorders, you will find that men may be much 
 worse employed than by doing the dirtiest job that ever 
 was undertaken by the lowest of our clerk-ministers.' 
 
 Beauclerk might write that ' every year, every hour, 
 adds to my misanthropy, and I have had a pretty consi- 
 derable share of it for some years past ; ' but the generous 
 indignation that blazes forth in this letter of his belongs 
 to any one rather than a misanthrope. It was in such 
 feelings as these, as well as in their literary pursuits, that 
 he and Johnson had so much in common. My readers
 
 31 o DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 will remember Johnson's hatred of every kind of oppres- 
 sion of the less civilized races, and how, ' upon one 
 occasion, when in company with some very grave men at 
 Oxford, his toast was, " Here's to the next insurrection of 
 the negroes in the West Indies." ' Another time he said, 
 with 'great emotion and with generous warmth, " I love 
 the University of Salamanca ; for when the Spaniards 
 were in doubt as to the lawfulness of their conquering 
 America, the University of Salamanca gave it as their 
 opinion that it was not lawful."' In a letter written a 
 year earlier than Beauclerk's, he says, " I do not much 
 wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will 
 end in conquest and robbery.' 
 
 Beauclerk's letters are very interesting from the fre- 
 quent mention made in them of the other members of 
 the club. He writes : ' Why should fortune have placed 
 our paltry concerns in two different islands? If we 
 could keep them, they are not worth one hour's conver- 
 sation at Elmsly's (the bookseller). If life is good for 
 anything, it is only made so by the society of those whom 
 we love. At all events I will try to come to Ireland, and 
 shall take no excuse from you for not coming early in the 
 winter to London. The club exists but by your pre- 
 sence; the flourishing of learned men is the glory of the 
 State. Mr. Vesey will tell you that our club consists of 
 
 II
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 311 
 
 the greatest men in the world, consequently you see there 
 is a good and patriotic reason for you to return to England 
 in the winter. Pray make my best respects to Lady 
 Charlemont and Miss Hickman, and tell them I wish 
 they were at this moment sitting at the door of our ale- 
 house in Gerrard Street.' (The Turk's Head Tavern, 
 where the Literary Club met, was in that street.) Later 
 on he writes : ' Our poor club is in a miserable decay; 
 unless you come and relieve it, it will certainly expire. 
 Would you imagine that Sir Joshua Reynolds is extremely 
 anxious to be a member of Almack's? You see what 
 noble ambition will make a man attempt. That den is 
 not yet opened, consequently I have not been there ; 
 so, for the present, I am clear upon that score.' He ends 
 his letter by saying, ' We cannot do without you. If you 
 do not come here, I will bring all the club over to Ireland 
 to live with you, and that will drive you here in your own 
 defence. Johnson shall spoil your books, Goldsmith pull 
 your flowers, and Boswell talk to you : stay then if you 
 can.' 
 
 At a later date he writes : ' Our club has dwindled away 
 to nothing. Nobody attends but Mr. Chambers, and he 
 is going to the East Indies. Sir Joshua and Goldsmith 
 have got into such a round of pleasures that they have 
 no time.' Poor Goldsmith's round ended in less than
 
 3X2 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 two months after this letter was written. In an earUer 
 letter we read, ' I have been but once at the club since 
 you left England; we were entertained as usual by Dr, 
 Goldsmith's absurdity.' ' Goldsmith,' he writes in another 
 letter, ' the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers 
 in praise of Lord Mayor Townshend. The same night we 
 happened to sit next to Lord Shelbume at Drury Lane ; 
 I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him ; 
 he said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had men- 
 tioned nothing about Malagrida in it. " Do you know," 
 answered Goldsmith, '• that I never could conceive the 
 reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a 
 very good sort of man." You see plainly what he meant 
 to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to 
 himself. Mr. Walpole says, that this story is a picture of 
 Goldsmith's whole life. Johnson has been confined for 
 some weeks in the Isle of Sky; we hear that he was 
 obliged to swim over to the mainland taking hold of a 
 cow's tail. Be that as it may, Lady Di has promised to 
 make a drawing of it.' A few weeks later he writes : ' I 
 hope your Parliament has finished all its absurdities, and 
 that you will be at leisure to come over here to attend 
 your club, where you will do much more good than all 
 the patriots in the world ever did to anybody, viz., you 
 will make very many of your friends extremely happy,
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 313 
 
 and you know Goldsmith ^ has informed us that no form 
 of government ever contributed either to the happiness 
 or misery of anyone. I saw a letter from Foote, with an 
 account of an Irish tragedy; the subject is Manlius, and 
 the last speech which he makes, when he is pushed off from 
 the Tarpeian Rock, is "Sweet Jesus, where am I going?" 
 Pray send me word if this is true. We have a new 
 comedy here' (' The School for Wives '), 'which is good for 
 nothing ; bad as it is, however, it succeeds very well, and 
 has almost killed Goldsmith with envy. I have no news 
 either literary or political, to send you. Everybody, 
 except myself, and about a million of vulgars, are in the 
 country.' He gives an amusing account of a naval 
 review. ' I have been at the review at Portsmouth. If 
 you had seen it you would have owned that it is a very 
 
 pleasant thing to be a king. It is true, made a job 
 
 of the claret to , who furnished the first tables with 
 
 vinegar under that denomination. Charles Fox said, that 
 Lord S — wich should have been impeached ; what an 
 abominable world do we live in, that there should not be 
 above half-a-dozen honest men in the world, and that 
 
 ' How small of all that human hearts endure 
 
 That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. 
 
 TIu Traveller. 
 
 These lines were really written by Johnson, not by Goldsmith.
 
 314 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 one of those should Hve in Ireland. You will, perhaps, 
 be shocked at the small portion of honesty that I allot to 
 your country ; but a sixth part is as much as comes to 
 its share ; and, for anything I know to the contrary, the 
 other five may be in Ireland too, for I am sure I do not 
 know where else to find them.' 
 
 I will give but one more extract from these inter- 
 esting letters. He writes, ' I can now give you a better 
 reason for not writing sooner to you than for any other 
 thing that I ever did in my life. When Sir Charles 
 Bingham came from Ireland, I, as you may easily ima- 
 gine, immediately enquired after you ; he told me that 
 you were very well, but in great affliction, having just 
 lost your child. You cannot conceive how I was shocked 
 with this news ; not only by considering what you 
 suffered on this occasion, but I recollected that a foolish 
 letter of mine, laughing at your Irish politics, would 
 arrive just at that point of time. A bad joke at any 
 time is a bad thing; but when any attempt at pleasantry 
 happens at a moment that a person is in great affliction, 
 it certainly is the most odious thing in the world. I 
 could not write to you to comfort you ; you will not 
 wonder, therefore, that I did not write at all.' 
 
 The great width of Beauclerk's reading is shown by 
 the size and variety of his library, which was sold after
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 315 
 
 his death. A copy of the catalogue is to be seen in the 
 British Museum. The title-page is as follows : ' Biblio- 
 theca selectissima et elegantissima Pemobilis Angli, T. 
 Beauclerk, S.R.S. Price three shillings. Comprehending 
 an excellent choice of Books, to the number of upwards 
 of thirty thousand volumes, in most languages, and upon 
 almost every branch of science and polite literature, 
 which will be sold on Monday April 9, 1781, and the 
 forty-nine following days (Good Friday excepted).' Two 
 days' sale were given to the works on divinity, including 
 * Heterodoxi et Increduli. Angl. Freethinkers and their 
 opponents ; ' six days to ' Itineraria. Angl. Voyages and 
 Travels ; ' and twelve days to historical works. 
 
 Boswell records that ' Mr. Wilkes said he wondered 
 to find in Mr. Beauclerk's library such a numerous 
 collection of sermons, seeming to think it strange that a 
 gentleman of Mr. Beauclerk's character in the gay world 
 should have chosen to have many compositions of that 
 kind. Johnson : " Why, Sir, you are to consider that 
 sermons make a considerable branch of English literature, 
 so that a library must be very imperfect if it has not a 
 numerous collection of sermons , and in all collections, 
 Sir, the desire of augmenting them grows stronger in 
 proportion to the advance in acquisition, as motion is 
 accelerated by the continuance of the impetus. Besides,
 
 3i6 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Sir (looking at Mr. Wilkes with a placid but significant 
 smile), a man may collect sermons with intention of making 
 himself better by them. I hope Mr. Beau clerk intended 
 that some time or other that should be the case with him."" 
 Beauclerk was especially eager in scientific researches. 
 In the University which Johnson and Boswell amused 
 themselves with founding in the air, Beauclerk was to 
 have the Chair of Natural Philosophy. Goldsmith writes, , 
 
 * I see Mr. Beauclerk very often both in town and country. 
 He is now going directly forward to become a second' 
 Boyle : deep in chymistry and physics.' Boswell, in a 
 letter to his friend Temple, says, ' He has one of the most 
 numerous and splendid private libraries that I ever saw ; 
 greenhouses, hothouses, observatory, laboratory for chy- 
 mical experiments, in short, everything princely.' 
 
 To all this eagerness after knowledge, and this 
 delight in one of the most uncourtly of men, Beauclerk 
 
 * added the character of a man of fashion, of which his 
 dress and equipage showed him to be emulous. In the 
 early period of his life he was the exemplar of all who 
 wished, without incurring the censure of foppery, to 
 become conspicuous in the gay world.' In 'Selwyn's 
 Letters,' we read that ' Madame Pitt (sister to Lord 
 Chatham) met with an accident (a sprained leg) leaning 
 on Topham as she was stepping out of her chaise, and
 
 TOP HAM BEAUCLERK. 317 
 
 swears she will trust to the shoulders of no Macaroni for 
 the future.' Johnson's name for him of Beau fitted him 
 very well. 
 
 Beauclerk's health seems never to have been vigorous, 
 and he suffered a great deal at times. His temperament, 
 however, was a very happy one. Johnson one day 
 talking of melancholy said, ' Some men, and very think- 
 ing men too, have not those vexing thoughts. Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds is the same all the year round. 
 Beauclerk, except when ill and in pain, is the same.' 
 In spite of occasional altercations the affection between 
 the men was very strong. ' As Beauclerk and I walked 
 up Johnson's Court,' writes Boswell, 'I said, "I have 
 a veneration for this court ; " and was glad to find that 
 Beauclerk had the same reverential enthusiasm.' John- 
 son in his turn often showed his high regard for 
 Beauclerk. ' One evening,' says Boswell, ' when we were 
 in the street together, and I told him I was going to 
 sup at Mr. Beauclerk's, he said, " I'll go with you." 
 After having walked part of the way, seeming to recollect 
 something, he suddenly stopped and said, " I cannot go, 
 but I do 7iot love Beatiderk the less." ' 
 
 'Johnson's affection for Topham Beauclerk,' Boswell 
 says in another passage, ' was so great, that when Beau- 
 clerk was labouring under that severe illness which at
 
 31 8 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 last occasioned his death, Johnson said (with a voice 
 faultering with emotion), "Sir, I would walk to the extent 
 of the diameter of the earth to save Beauclerk.'" We 
 are reminded how, when he heard that Mr. Thrale had 
 lost his only son, he said, ' I would have gone to the 
 extremity of the earth to have preserved this boy.' On 
 Beauclerk's death he wrote to Boswell, ' Poor, dear, 
 Beauclerk — nee, ut soles, dabis joea. His wit and his 
 folly, his acuteness and maliciousness, his merriment and 
 his reasoning are now over. Such another will not often 
 be found among mankind. He directed himself to be 
 buried by the side of his mother, an instance of tender- 
 ness which I hardly expected.' WTien a year later 
 Boswell was walking home with Johnson from the first 
 party that Mrs. Garrick had given after her husband's 
 death, ' We stopped,' he says, ' a little while by the rails 
 of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to 
 him with some emotion that I was now thinking of two 
 friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings 
 behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. " Ay, Sir," (said he 
 tenderly), " and two such friends as cannot be supplied." ' 
 
 1
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 319 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH.^ 
 
 ' One day/ writes the younger Colman, ' I met the poet 
 Harding at Oxford — a half-crazy creature, as poets gene- 
 rally are, with a huge broken brick and some bits of 
 thatch upon the crown of his hat. On my asking him 
 for a solution of this prosopopoeia, " Sir," said he, " to- 
 day is the anniversary of the celebrated Dr. Goldsmith's 
 death, and I am now in the character of his ' Deserted 
 Village.' " ' When anyone sets about celebrating the anni- 
 versary of a great writer's death, even if he does not 
 go_ to the lengths of poor Harding, he is likely enough to 
 make himself foolish. He is weighed down ^vith the 
 feeling that to celebrate it properly, he must celebrate it 
 in character ; and yet he is by no means certain what is 
 the character that he should assume. It is the anniver- 
 sary of a death, and so a certain degree of gloom would 
 not be unsuitable ; but, on the other hand, it may be the 
 
 ' Reprinted from the Times, April 4, 1874.
 
 320 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 anniversary of the death of a humourist, and so a certain 
 degree of mirth would be most becoming. Like Hamlet's 
 uncle, he is 
 
 With an auspicious and a droppirxg eye, 
 In equal scale, weighing delight and dole. 
 
 And like Hamlet's uncle, as the play goes on, he does not 
 feel altogether at his ease in his part. The difficulties, 
 then, of keeping anniversaries are so great that no sen- 
 sible person troubles himself to keep them at all. 
 
 There are, however, those who think that just as the 
 aloe makes an effort once every hundred years to put out 
 flowers, so, though we are more than justified in dis- 
 regarding anniversaries, we ought nevertheless to make 
 an effort to celebrate centenaries. Such people as these, 
 then, would have felt a kindly sympathy with poor poet 
 Harding if it had been the centenary, and not the anniver- 
 sary, of Goldsmith's death. They would not, perhaps, have 
 shown their enthusiasm by carrying about a huge broken 
 brick and some bits of thatch ; but likely enough they 
 would have held a kind of jubilee at the Crystal Palace. 
 
 While, however, we do not love the ostentatious cele- 
 bration of anniversaries and centenaries, yet it is by no 
 means unbecoming when some day memorable in a great 
 man's life comes round to have his name freshly remem-
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 321 
 
 bered among us. Thus, it is natural enough on this 4th 
 of April to dwell on the memory of that writer whose 
 death just one hundred years ago to-day made sharers in 
 one common and almost overwhelming grief Johnson, 
 Burke, and Reynolds, and many an outcast of this great 
 city. It may be well to reflect on all that we, too, even 
 in these days when each season counts its new books by 
 thousands, have lost by the death of an author who, when 
 he had written in the last thirteen years of his life ' The 
 Citizen of the World,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' 'The 
 Traveller,' 'The Good Natured Man,' 'The Deserted 
 Village,' 'She Stoops to Conquer,' and 'Retaliation,' 
 ' yielding to the united pressure of labour, penury, and 
 sorrow,' sank into his grave when he was but forty-five 
 years old. 
 
 ' He died of a fever,' wrote Johnson, ' made, I am 
 afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind. His debts 
 began to be heavy, and all his resources were exhausted. 
 Sir Joshua is of opinion that he owed not less than two 
 thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before ? ' 
 One, certainly, of his resources had not been exhausted. 
 His last illness attacked him as he was painting Reynolds 
 with his pen no less gracefully than Reynolds had painted 
 him with his pencil. 
 
 Two thousand pounds was a heavy debt for a ^vriter to 
 
 Y
 
 322 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 owe. Yet if an author who so largely increased ' the public 
 stock of harnaless pleasure ' could have ' reached a hand 
 through time to catch the far-off interest ' that was due to 
 him, and that would have been so cheerfully paid, how 
 trifling would the debt have appeared ! It is not too 
 much to say that if Goldsmith had been rewarded by the 
 Crown, like Johnson, we might now have another ' Vicar 
 of Wakefield,' another 'Traveller,' another 'Good Ma- 
 tured Man.' He was improvident, no doubt, and the 
 little that he did receive he did not manage wisely. Like 
 the Man in Black, he was ' perfectly instmcted in the 
 art of giving away thousands before he was taught the 
 more necessary qualifications of getting a farthing.' But 
 his improvidence, doubtless, was due not only to the 
 training of his childhood and to his own natural tempera- 
 ment, but also to the uncertainty with which, when he 
 had once learnt how to earn money, money came in. 
 Had he had either the fixed income of a pension on 
 which to count, or, far better, the certainty of fair pay 
 which attends a man of any literary powers at the 
 present day, his mind would not have lost its balance 
 every time he had ten guineas in his pocket. Had 
 there only been some Thrale to have taken him, as 
 the great brewer took Johnson when in his state of utter 
 despondency, some one who would have provided for
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 323 
 
 him prudence, as the Thrales provided cheerfulness for 
 Johnson, how lengthened might have been his life, how 
 different its decline and end ! ' Is your mind at ease ? ' 
 asked his physician a day or two before his death, ' i\o, 
 it is not,' was Goldsmith's answer. He never spoke again. 
 What a different end in this chamber in Brick Court from 
 that to which he had four or five years earlier looked 
 forward in his ' Sweet Auburn ' ! 
 
 And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue 
 Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, 
 I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
 Here to return — and die at home at last. 
 
 Sad though was Goldsmith's end, sad, too, many a 
 scene in his life, yet we must not forget the light that 
 such a mind as his, while the Avorld is still young and 
 hopes still fresh and high, ever casts before itself In 
 a letter which Mr. Forster quotes in his ' Life of Gold- 
 smith,' we read, ' His debts rendered him, at times, so 
 very melancholy and dejected that I am sure he felt 
 himself, at least the last years of his life, a very unhappy 
 man.' 
 
 We doubt, however, if till his health began to fail he 
 had not, we cannot say his fair share of happiness — for 
 who could venture to fix the share which the author of 
 ' The Vicar of Wakefield ' might have fairly claimed? —
 
 324 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 but, at all events, such a share as would make life desir- 
 able enough. No unhappy man could have written the 
 books that Goldsmith wrote. Is he a philosopher and 
 enlarging with all seriousness on the vanity and misery 
 of this world? then, as Johnson's old college fi-iend 
 complained, ' cheerfulness is always breaking in on his 
 philosophy.' Have 'eight years of disappointment, and 
 anguish, and study worn him down ? ' he is still ready to 
 enjoy ' a Shoemaker's Holiday ' with any one ; still 
 ready, when no fool is near, to cry out to his friends, 
 ' Come, now, let us play the fool a little.' Children 
 delighted in him, and children do not delight in an 
 unhappy man. 
 
 Walter Scott in writing of him says, ' We bless the 
 memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile 
 us to human nature.' Can it be the case that an author 
 can reconcile his readers to human nature who has not 
 first reconciled himself to it ? Goldsmith was of all men 
 the most artless. He could no more hide his failings 
 than his merits, his sorrows than his joys. In every 
 book he is the hero of his own story, and his heroes are 
 far from being unhappy men. He suffers, indeed, from 
 what he calls 'an exquisite sensibility of contempt ;' but 
 his suffermgs are more than balanced by many an exqui- 
 site sensibility besides. He had an exquisite sensibility
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 325 
 
 of admiration, of friendship, of kindliness, of love, of the 
 beauties of nature and the beauties of great \ATiters, of 
 all simple and harmless pleasures. 
 
 In his own innocent vanity, which others mocked at, 
 and through which he was often so grievously wounded, 
 he had no small pleasure too. Was he slighted by the 
 world ? He was a far better judge than the world of 
 greatness, and he knew that he was great. They are 
 very ignorant of human nature who, while they delight in 
 Goldsmith's writings, yet regret that he was so vain 1 
 If Goldsmith had been stripped of his vanity he might 
 have been a great writer, but he would not have been 
 Goldsmith. Both he and Swift delight in painting the 
 weaknesses of the heart, but while one paints with all the 
 savageness of a man who is caricaturing his bitter enemy, 
 the other paints with all the tenderness that would be 
 found in an artist who, sitting before a mirror, is amusing 
 himself by drawing his o-wti likeness. We cannot doubt 
 that Goldsmith knew all his own weaknesses much better 
 than did Johnson, Garrick, or Boswell, and that when 
 alone he had many a smile over that queer fellow, 
 himself. It was from this exact knowledge of his own 
 mind that he derived that exquisite sensibility of con- 
 tempt from which he suftered. He knew only too well 
 that he had a hundred weaknesses which exposed him to
 
 326 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 the contempt of those who can fathom only the shallows 
 of the human mind, and not the depths which lie so 
 close alongside them. He could laugh at his own weak- 
 nesses, for his weaknesses he knew were, like Samson's 
 locks, closely connected with his strength. Deprived of 
 them, where would he have made that study of the 
 human heart in which his knowledge, so far as it went. 
 was so exact ? The greater passions may be studied in 
 others, but the little failings which form so large a part of 
 our everyday life are best studied in ourselves. 
 
 Goldsmith, then, to a mind that was gifted with a 
 wonderful power of analysing character united a heart 
 that in a no less wonderful degree was worthy of analysis. 
 There have been, no doubt, equally clever artists and 
 equally good subjects. Scarcely ever have so clever an 
 artist and so good a subject been joined in one. In a 
 literary point of view we might apply to him his own line,, 
 and say of him, as he said of the parish priest in his 
 * Deserted Village' — 
 
 ' Even his failings lean'd to Virtue's side.' 
 
 Though the names of the great writers of ' that past 
 Georgian day ' are still familiar in our mouths as house- 
 hold words, it is a pity that their works are not familiar in 
 our hands as household things. ' The Vicar of Wakefield' 
 
 4
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 327 
 
 is read by every one, of course, or, at least, like a muni- 
 cipal address to the Queen, must be taken as read. We 
 should be curious to know, however, how many editions 
 of ' The Citizen of the World ' have been called for in 
 the last thirty years. Out of every hundred people who 
 can quote Mr. Pickwick, could we count on finding one 
 who could quote the Man in Black? Nay, to go further, 
 and to take, not Charles Dickens, but the second, or 
 third, or tenth-rate authors of the present day, has ' The 
 Citizen of the World ' a twentieth of the readers that 
 some among the popular novelists can boast of? 
 
 The literature of last century is divided from us as if 
 by a great gulf, and though on the other side of the gulf 
 there is a perfect paradise of intellectual delight, yet few 
 care to face the trouble of crossing over. With the great 
 stir in men's minds that set in on the Continent with the 
 French Revolution, and in England with its fullest force 
 on the close of the French war, began a literature which, 
 even if it excites every man's interest, yet, to use Mr. 
 Disraeli's expression, ' harasses ' every man's mind. The 
 age of optimism had passed away with the meeting of the 
 States General — not for ever, but certainly for a long 
 time. 'Whatever is, is not best,' was the text on 
 which all preachers began to hold forth. The parish 
 priest in whom Fielding and Goldsmith delighted, who
 
 328 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 was a Christian, and not a theologian, and who neither 
 harassed himself nor yet his people, had passed away. 
 
 Yet there are persons who, weary of endless talk on 
 reforms and improvements, like at times to drop out of 
 the stream of this uneasy aga- to seek for quiet thought 
 among men who never so much as heard that there was a 
 social science. A time, indeed, comes to many a reader 
 when, in the literature of the eighteenth century, the 
 mind finds its best repose. And among the great 
 writers of that great age of writing not the least dear, as 
 not the least resting, must be held that ' child of the 
 public,' to use his own words, Oliver Goldsmith. If any 
 of our readers desire to keep fittingly the centenary of 
 Oliver Goldsmith, let them take down from the book- 
 shelf the old copy of the ' Deserted Village ' or the ' Vicar 
 of Wakefield,' and in the noble characters they find in 
 those charming pages will be seen what manner of man 
 he was whose death made Reynolds lay aside his brush 
 and Burke seek relief in tears. 
 
 ]
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE DURATION OF JOHNSON'S RESIDENCE 
 AT OXFORD.^ 
 
 Mr. Fitzgerald in his edition of Boswell's 'Johnson' has 
 reopened a question which, though perhaps of no very great 
 importance in itself, is yet not without its interest. Johnson, 
 as I have already shown, was forced, through want of means, 
 to leave the University before he had completed his residence 
 and taken his degree. Boswell had stated that Johnson had 
 been a member of Pembroke College for little more than 
 three years. No doubt was thrown, so far as I know, on 
 this statement, till Mr. Croker, after an inspection of the 
 College books with the help of Dr. Hall, the Master of Pem- 
 broke, maintained that Boswell was altogether wrong, as 
 Johnson had only been an actual member fourteen months. 
 But neither Mr. Croker nor Mr. Fitzgerald has brought 
 together all the facts that bear on this question, though 
 each, without first carefully summing up the case, has ven- 
 tured to speak with all the authority of a judge from whose 
 decision there was no appeal. I have little confidence in 
 my own power of arriving at a decision one way or the 
 
 ' Reprinted (with alterations) from the Saturday Rciiew, 
 September 12, 1874.
 
 330 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 other, and I shall content myself with putting before my 
 readers the statements made on each side, the difficulties 
 which have to be overcome, and the facts which I have 
 myself at some labour gathered together. Like Mr. Fitz- 
 gerald, I must express my obligations to Professor Chandler 
 of Pembroke College, for the assistance he has so kindly 
 rendered me by his searches into the musty old battel 
 books. 
 
 Boswell's statement as to Johnson's residence is precise, 
 and Boswell, as I need scarcely say, when he speaks of any 
 matter positively, is very rarely proved to be wrong. He 
 says, ' The res angusta donii prevented him from having the 
 advantage of a complete academical education. The friend 
 to whom he had trusted for support had deceived him. His 
 debts in College, though not great were increasing, and his 
 scanty remittances from Lichfield, which had all along been 
 made with great difficulty, could be supplied no longer, his 
 father having fallen into a state of insolvency. Compelled, 
 therefore, by irresistible necessity, he left the College in 
 autumn 1 731, without a degree, having been a member of 
 it little more than three years.' 
 
 Hawkins's statement, in his ' Life of Johnson,' agrees 
 with Boswell's. He says : ' The time of his continuance at 
 Oxford is divisible into two periods, the former whereof com- 
 menced on the 31st day of October, 1728, and determined 
 in December 1729, when, as appears by a note in his diary 
 in these words— "1729, Dec, S. J. Oxonio rediit" — he left 
 that place, the reason whereof was a failure of pecuniary 
 supplies from his father ; but meeting with another source, 
 the bounty, as it is supposed, of one or more of the members 
 of the Cathedral, he returned, and made up the whole of 
 his residence — about three years.' These two statements,
 
 APPENDIX. 331 
 
 though they dififer in some points, are almost at one as to 
 the time of Johnson's residence. 
 
 It might be objected that after all we have the evidence 
 only of one writer, and not of two, as Boswell, whose work 
 wss the later of the two, might have merely followed Haw- 
 kins. But Boswell not only took a great deal of trouble 
 to test the accuracy of all the statements he made on the 
 authority of others, but in this case also he had independent 
 authority of his own. He had lived in the house of Dr. 
 Adams, the Master of Pembroke, who had been a Fellow 
 when Johnson entered, and who was able, therefore, to 
 speak with exact knowledge in ' that authentic information 
 which he obligingly gave ' Boswell. Nevertheless, as I 
 shall presently consider, it is not impossible that Boswell 
 may have been influenced by Hawkins's statement, Ac- 
 cording, then, both to Hawkins and Boswell, Johnson entered 
 Pembroke in October 1728, and left it in the autumn of 173 1. 
 When, however, Dr. Hall consulted the College books, he 
 found that they were very far from agreeing with this state- 
 ment. On the information he furnished, Mr. Croker main- 
 tained that Boswell was altogether wrong both in his 
 statement as to residence and in one or two anecdotes 
 which depend on the duration of his residence. Dr. Hall 
 says : ' He was not quite three years a member of the 
 College, having been entered October 31, 1728, and his 
 name having been finally removed October S, 1731. It 
 would appear by the temporary suspension of his name, 
 and replacements of it, as if he had contemplated an earlier 
 departure from College, and had been induced to continue 
 on with the hope of returning ; this, however, he never did 
 after his absence December 1729, having kept a continuous 
 residence of si.xty weeks.'
 
 332 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 Mr. Croker remarks on this : ' It will be observed that 
 Mr. Boswell slurs over the years 1729, '30, and '31, under 
 the general inference that they were all spent at Oxford, but 
 Dr. Hall's accurate statement of dates from the College 
 books proves that Johnson personally left College on the 
 I2th of December, 1729, though his name remained on the 
 books till October 8, 1731.' He goes on to add: 'That 
 these two years were not pleasantly or profitably spent may 
 be inferred from the silence of Johnson and all his friends 
 about them. It is due to Pembroke to note particularly this 
 absence, because that institution possesses two scholarships, 
 to one of which Johnson would have been eUgible, and 
 probably (considering his claims) elected in 1730, had he 
 been a candidate.' I may say, in passing, that these scholar- 
 ships a few years ago were worth only ;^ 10 each, and that 
 there is no likelihood that they were ever of greater value. 
 
 Hereupon Mr. Fitzgerald comes on the scene. He, too, 
 has had the College books investigated, and 'with the as- 
 sistance of the Rev. Whitwell Elwin has arrived at the 
 conclusion that Mr. Croker was wrong, and that Boswell, as 
 indeed he always is in points of importance, is right. I 
 found,' says Mr. Fitzgerald, ' to my surprise, that " the 
 authority of the College books," which sounds impressively 
 enough, resolved itself into no more than certain entries for 
 commons, or " battles," in the buttery books ; while on the 
 absence of " charges " against Johnson's name during par- 
 ticular years the whole argument is founded.' Mr. Fitzgerald 
 is, I notice, a Master of Arts. If he belongs to either Oxford 
 or Cambridge he ought surely to know that in all cases the 
 proof of residence is established by these entries in the 
 buttery books. The authority of the College books not only 
 sounds impressively, but is impressive — impressive, that is
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 333 
 
 to say, on any mind that is capable of understanding a fact, 
 and receiving from it an impression. From December 12, 
 1729, till October i, 1731, the charges against Johnson 
 amount to only a few shillings in all. It is certainly worth 
 noticing that these charges are somewhat scattered, and that 
 his name disappears from the College books more than once, 
 to reappear a few weeks further on. 
 
 Mr. Whitwell Elwin, whose authority on a matter con- 
 nected with the early part of last century is deserving of 
 respect, thus attempts to get over the difficulty. He agrees 
 with Hawkins in his statement that in December 1729 
 Johnson would have had to leave College had he not ob- 
 tained assistance from outside his family. He does not 
 agree with him as to the source whence that assistance 
 came. ' It must, I think, have been the gift of the College,' 
 he says, 'or it would have been charged to Johnson, what- 
 ever might have been the quarter from which he derived the 
 money to pay the bill. If we may guess the course of events 
 from the materials we possess, I should say that Johnson, 
 just before the Christmas vacation, informed the tutor of 
 his inability to remain at College ; that it was then settled 
 that he should return home and consult with his father ; and 
 that in the two or three weeks which elapsed before he set 
 out, his ordifiary " battles " were supplied gratis. The result, 
 we may presume, of his Lichfield visit was an announcement 
 to the tutor that he could not raise funds to complete his 
 residence, and the result of the announcement that the 
 College, in consideration of his great learning and abilities, 
 resolved that he should have his " battles " free.' 
 
 I have now put before my readers the original statement 
 of Boswell and Hawkins, the facts brought forward by Mr. 
 Croker to upset it, and the assumptions made by Mr. Elwin
 
 334 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 to support it. Boswell and Hawkins are very positive ; but 
 no less positive with their silent record are the old College 
 books. Had there been no other facts to go by, I should 
 have been inclined to assume that Boswell had learnt from 
 Dr. Adams that Johnson had had his name three years on 
 the books, and perhaps, not aware how often it has happened 
 that residence has ceased long before a name is removed, 
 having Hawkins's statement moreover to follow, had jumped 
 at the not unnatural conclusion that he had resided as long 
 as he was a member of the College. 
 
 But there are other facts which I will set forth as briefly 
 as I can. Boswell states, ' I have from the information of 
 Dr. Taylor a very strong instance of that rigid honesty 
 which he (Johnson) ever inflexibly preserved. Taylor had 
 obtained his father's consent to be entered of Pembroke, 
 that he might be with his schoolfellow Johnson, with whom 
 he was very intimate. This would have been a great comfort 
 to Johnson. But he fairly told Taylor that he could not in 
 conscience suffer him to enter where he knew he could not 
 have an able tutor.' Taylor went to Christ Church, and, as 
 Boswell goes on to say, it was in going to get his friend's 
 notes at second-hand that Johnson saw that his poverty was 
 noticed by the Christ Church men. It is not quite clear 
 from Boswell whether this latter part of the story rests on 
 the authority of Taylor. If it does, then the question is 
 decided, for on Taylor's evidence we may rely, and Taylor 
 did not enter Christ Church till June 27, 1730. If Johnson 
 then was in residence at the same time with him, he clearly 
 did not leave in 1729. This seems indeed, at first sight, to 
 follow from that part of the story which, as we are expressly 
 told, rests on the information of Dr. Taylor. But we must 
 remember that Taylor might have had his name entered
 
 APPENDIX. 335 
 
 some months before he came into residence, and that after 
 his name was entered Johnson might have left. Neverthe- 
 less the whole story is very strong evidence that Johnson 
 was in residence in the latter half of the year 1730. Mr. 
 Croker remarks on it, ' Circumstantially as this story is 
 told, there is good reason for disbelieving it. Taylor was 
 admitted Commoner of Christ Church, June 27, 1730 : but 
 it will be seen that Johnson left Oxford six months 
 before.' 
 
 There is still stronger evidence to be found that Johnson 
 and Taylor were fellow students at Oxford, which had 
 apparently escaped Mr. Croker's notice. Mrs. Piozzi, in 
 her anecdotes records that once when Johnson was con- 
 sidering who was likely to be his future biographer, he said, 
 *the history of my Oxford exploits lies all between Taylor 
 and Adams ' 
 
 Next to Dr. Taylor's evidence comes that which Dr. 
 Adams can be made to furnish. He, as Boswell says, ' has 
 generally had the reputation of being Johnson's tutor. The 
 fact however is, that in 173 1, Mr. Jorden quitted the College, 
 and his pupils were transferred to Dr. Adams ; so that, had 
 Johnson returned, Dr. Adams would have been his tutor. 
 Boswell goes on to say, ' Dr. Adams paid Johnson this high 
 compliment. He said to me at Oxford in 1776, " I was his 
 nominal tutor, but he was above my mark." When I re- 
 peated it to Johnson, his eyes flashed with grateful satisfac- 
 tion, and he exclaimed, " That was liberal and noble." ' 
 
 Mr. Croker has the following note on this passage : ' If 
 Adams called himself his nominal tutor only because the 
 pupil was above his mark, the expression would be liberal 
 and noble ; but if he was his nominal tutor, only because he 
 would have been his tutor if Johnson had returned, the case
 
 336 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 is different, and Boswell is, either way, guilty of an inac- 
 curacy.' 
 
 Mr. Fitzgerald pays no attention to Mr. Croker, but 
 broadly says, in speaking of Hawkins's statement about 
 Johnson's three years' residence, ' Nothing can be more 
 explicit, or more consistent with Boswell's narrative, and 
 with the statement that Dr. Adams was his "nominal" 
 tutor in 1731.' 
 
 I cannot admit, however, with Mr. Croker that Boswell 
 is, either way, guilty of an inaccuracy. Suppose a brief 
 pause between the two parts of Dr. Adams's statement, and 
 all is explained. ' I was his nominal tutor ; that is to say, 
 his name was on my lecture lists ; but even if he had at- 
 tended I should still have been his nominal tutor, his tutor 
 only in name, for he was above my mark.' Both Mr. Croker 
 and Mr. Fitzgerald should have tried to find out when it 
 was that Adams took Jorden's place. Jorden's fellowship 
 was filled up, as I have ascertained, on December 23, 1730. 
 His name appears for the last time on the list of Fellows in 
 the College books on December 4, 1730. He does not 
 appear to have been in residence during any part of the 
 last term of 1730. It is very improbable that he continued 
 to be tutor after he had vacated his fellowship, and I may 
 fairly assume that his pupils were transferred to Adams in 
 the beginning of 1731, if not, indeed, at the beginning of 
 Michaelmas term, 1730. If so, what becomes of the state- 
 ment that Johnson was resident till the October of 173 1 P^ 
 
 I will next consider the evidence to be derived from the 
 case of Mr. Edwards, Johnson's fellow-collegian. Johnson, 
 
 1 I have lately ascertained that Jorden was elected to a living 
 by the University on March 16, 1729. This renders it likely that 
 his tutorship came fo an end even earlier than his fellowship. 
 
 f
 
 APPENDIX. 2,n 
 
 in his diary for 1778, says, ' In my return from church I was 
 accosted by Edwards, an old fellow-collegian, who had not 
 seen me since 1729.' Mr. Croker, first noting that Edwards 
 entered Pembroke in June 1729, says, 'This deliberate asser- 
 tion of Johnson, that he had not seen Edwards since 1729, 
 is a confirmation of the opinion derived by Dr. Hall from 
 the dates in the College books, that Johnson did not return 
 to Pembroke after Christmas 1729 — an important fact in his 
 early history.' Mr. Fitzgerald finding, I suppose, no means 
 of meeting Mr. Croker's argument, passes it over in silence. 
 It did not occur to Mr. Croker that it might have been 
 Edwards, and not Johnson, who left Pembroke early. I 
 have ascertained that Edwards's name occurs for the last 
 time on April 24, 1730, but, to judge from the amount of his 
 battels, it would seem likely that he did not reside after 
 April 10. To a man used to Old Style, as Johnson was, 
 April 10, 1730, is so near to 1729 that at the distance of 
 nearly fifty years Johnson may easily have been wrong by a 
 week or two. Edwards's case, therefore, seems to me to 
 prove nothing. 
 
 Boswell, in giving an account of Johnson's health, says 
 that ' while he was at Lichfield in the College vacation of 
 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with a terrible hypo- 
 chondria.' Now the College books show — if battels can be 
 trusted — that Johnson was absent only one week in the Long 
 vacation of 1729. Boswell may have meant the Christmas 
 vacation, which, according to the old Style, would have all 
 fallen in 1729. It was in a vacation, however, that Johnson 
 had this long illness, and he enjoyed, as it seemed, no vaca- 
 tion (except one of a week's duration) till the end of 1729 
 and the beginning of 1730 (X.S.). If Boswell then is cor- 
 rect in his statement that it was in a vacation that he was
 
 338 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 attacked, it would follow that Johnson returned to College 
 in 1730. 
 
 As an argument on the other side we may set the state- 
 ment, which Boswell mentions merely to refute, that John- 
 son had been ' assistant to the famous Anthony Blackwall.' 
 Boswell says this cannot have been the case, 'for Mr. Black- 
 wall died on the 8th of April 1730, more than a year before 
 Johnson left the University.' The statement, however, may 
 be taken in evidence for what it is worth, that Johnson did 
 leave at the end of 1729. The entry, too, in Johnson's 
 diary ' 1729, Dec. S. J. Oxonio rediit,' is of no small weight. 
 He may simply have recorded his return home for the 
 Christmas vacation. But it is certainly an important fact 
 that the entry is made in the very month in which the 
 College books seem to show that his residence came to 
 an end. 
 
 In the Caution Book of Pembroke College occur the 
 two following entries, which I am, I believe, the first to 
 publish : — 
 
 ' Oct. 31, 1728. 
 ' Reed, then of Mr. Samuel Johnson Comr : of Pern : Coll : 
 ye sum of seven Pounds for his Caution, which is to Remain 
 in ye Hands of ye Bursars till ye said Mr. Johnson shall 
 depart ye said College leaving ye same fully discharg'd. 
 ' Reed, by me 
 
 'John Ratcliff, Bursar. 
 'March 26, 1740. — At a convention of the Master and 
 Fellows to settle the account of the Caution it Appear'd that 
 the Persons Accounts underwritten stood thus at their leaving 
 the College. 
 
 ' Caution not Repayd. | ' Battells not Discharg'd. 
 ' Mr. Johnson. 7 o o I ' Mr. Johnson. 7 00'
 
 APPENDIX. 339 
 
 It scarcely seems probable that the College authorities, if 
 they resolved, as Mr. Elwin guesses, to give Johnson his 
 battels free, should have retained till the year 1 740 his cau- 
 tion money in their hands. If they were generous enrugh 
 to support him without payment, they would, I should think, 
 have been generous enough to return him the money which 
 they had received from him as security. For why should 
 security for payment be required from those who are free 
 from the payment itself.'' 
 
 I will now, as briefly as I can, enter upon one head of 
 evidence which, so far as I know, has not been touched on. 
 Johnson, Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Elwin say, was at Pem- 
 broke in 1730. Can they show that among his fellow- 
 collegians there were any who entered so late as that year? 
 I have somewhat carefully gathered together the names of 
 all his fellow-collegians whom he mentions, and, with one 
 remarkable exception, I have ascertained that all of them 
 entered before 1730. It is possible, however, that some 
 name has escaped my notice. Adams, as I have shown, 
 was already a Fellow when Johnson entered. Meeke, whose 
 superiority he could not bear, and from whom, to quote his 
 own words, ' I tried to sit as far as I could, that I might not 
 hear him construe,' matriculated in 1725 ; Edwards, as I 
 have shown, in 1729. Phil. Jones and Fludyer, with whom 
 he used to play at draughts — the one of whom loved beer 
 and did not get very forward in the Church, while the other 
 turned out a scoundrel and a \\hig — were about of John- 
 son's standing. Jones, indeed, must have been his senior. 
 
 To this fact, for such I believe it to be, that Johnson 
 mentions no Pembroke man who entered after 1729, there 
 is the one exception of the celebrated preacher George 
 Whitfield. He is twice mentioned in Boswell as having
 
 540 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 been Johnson's fellow-collegian. In Boswell's account of 
 October 12, 1779, on the passage beginning 'Of his fellow- 
 collegian the celebrated Mr. George Whitfield,' &c,, Mr. 
 Croker quotes this note of Dr. Hall's : ' George Whitfield 
 did not enter at Pembroke College before November 1732, 
 more than twelve months after Johnson's name was off the 
 books ; so that, strictly speaking, they were not fellow- 
 collegians, though they were both of the same College.' But 
 in Boswell's 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides' we find the 
 following passage, under the date of August 15 : ' We talked 
 of Whitfield. He said he was at the same College with him, 
 and knew him before he began to be better than other people 
 {smiling).' 
 
 Now Johnson read this journal in manuscript, and, as 
 Boswell on one occasion tells us, corrected any mistakes 
 he had made. Yet it is quite certain that Johnson, even 
 if he was at College in 1731, most certainly was not there 
 in 1732. Not only have we Boswell's statement and the 
 authority of the College books, but we have the evidence of 
 a letter he wrote from Lichfield on October 30, 1731, and 
 two entries in his diary for 1732. If he had known Whit- 
 field he would have known Shenstone, for Shenstone entered 
 Pembroke six months before Whitfield ; but, so far as I 
 know, there is no evidence that they were ever acquainted. 
 I cannot pretend to reconcile Boswell's statement — and for 
 the matter of that Johnson's, seeing that he revised the 
 manuscript — with the facts of the case. We are told, 
 indeed, that a year or two after he left Oxford he borrowed 
 a book from the library of Pembroke College. It would not 
 have been impossible, or even improbable, that a man who, 
 like Johnson, frequently w^alked from Lichfield to Birming- 
 ham and back, would have trudged all the way to Oxford to 
 
 I
 
 APPENDIX. 341 
 
 fetch the book. In that case he might have seen Whitfield. 
 But Boswell tells us that ' the first time of his being at 
 Oxford after quitting the University' was in 1754. 
 
 The evidence, then, as those who have had patience to 
 follow me will have seen, is strong on both sides, and in one 
 part at least full of perplexity. Jt had at one time occurred 
 to me that, when his means failed, he might have occupied 
 the post of a servitor. A servitor I thought, perhaps, had 
 no charge made against him in the books. But by the kind- 
 ness of Mr, Mowat, the Bursar of Pembroke College, I 
 have since inspected the College books, and I have satisfied 
 myself that at no time of his University course was Johnson 
 a servitor. I have looked at Whitfield's battels, who was 
 a servitor, and I have found that though they were more 
 moderate in amount they were kept like a commoner's. His 
 name, moreover, as a servitor, is entered on a different part 
 of the page from those of the commoners. He comes after 
 the Obsonator, Promus, and Coquiis, while Johnson's name 
 remains from first to last in the same division. 
 
 Mr. Elwin is bound to show in support of his hypothesis 
 at least one instance at the University of free commons. 
 Even if a man had free commons, nevertheless, as a matter of 
 account and as a proof of residence we should have expected 
 that his battels would have been kept in the usual way. 
 
 The more I consider the question, the more I incline to 
 the opinion that Johnson's residence at Oxford practically 
 came to an end in December 1729. The books seem to 
 show that he was in residence one week in March 1730, and 
 one week in the following September. 
 
 As I have said above, the proof of residence is estab- 
 lished, and alone established, by the entries in the buttery 
 books. It is not by residing in college, but by eating in
 
 342 DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 college, that the required number of terms is kept. Had 
 the college authorities wished to assist Johnson, they could 
 have done so by subscribing together to pay his battels, but 
 the account of his battels would have been kept just the 
 same. With what Mr. Elwin calls free battels, he could 
 never have taken his degree. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 I HAD already received from the printer the revised proofs 
 of this chapter, when, in the hope of throwing more light on 
 this perplexing question, I examined, by the kind permission 
 of the Treasurer of Christ Church, the battel-books of the 
 College. I have been more than repaid for the trouble that 
 I have taken by the discovery that I have made. I now feel 
 no doubt whatever that Johnson's residence at Pembroke 
 College came to an end, as the Pembroke battel-books 
 show, in December, 1729. Mr. Croker therefore was right, I 
 hold, in maintaining that, so far from being three years at 
 Oxford, he was there barely fourteen months. I should before 
 this have come with full certainty to this conclusion, had it 
 not been for Mr. Croker's statement as to the date of Dr. 
 Taylor's matriculation at Christ Church. Hawkins, indeed, 
 and Boswell both say that Johnson was at college three 
 years. His name certainly was not finally taken off the 
 books till three years after his matriculation. But the only 
 contemporary evidence (excluding the statement about 
 Whitfield) that seemed to prove that Johnson was in resi- 
 dence after December 1729, was his own statement about 
 Taylor. He had himself told Mrs. Thrale, as I have pointed 
 
 J
 
 APPENDIX. 343 
 
 out, that the history of his Oxford exploits lay all between 
 Taylor and Adams. One of these ' exploits ' has been handed 
 down in the story told about Johnson's visit to Taylor in the 
 worn-out pair of shoes. ' Authoritatively,' says Mr. Croker, 
 'and circumstantially as this story is told, it seems impossible 
 to reconcile it with some indisputable facts and dates.' In- 
 disputable though Mr. Croker 's facts and dates may be, I 
 shall nevertheless venture to dispute them. As I was revis- 
 ing this chapter and balancing once more in my mind the 
 evidence that seemed so strong and yet was so contradictory, 
 it occurred to me that, perhaps, it was Mr. Croker himself 
 who had blundered. He it was who first asserted that John- 
 son had left college in December 1729. He it was who first 
 asserted that Taylor, Johnson's companion at the University, 
 had matriculated on June 27th, 1730. 
 
 I obtained permission to examine the battel-books of 
 Christ Church. As I turned over the pages covered with 
 the dust of long years, I certainly found the entry of the 
 matriculation of John Taylor on June 27, 1730; but I was 
 not discouraged. Taylor is not an uncommon name, and there 
 might be not only two Taylors but also two John Taylors at 
 one College at the same time. On a different page I had 
 noticed the name of another Taylor. His Christian name, 
 however, was not given. With some anxiety but with more 
 confidence I eagerly traced him backwards through two or 
 three volum.es, and at last came upon the entry of his matri- 
 culation. John Taylor matriculated on February 24, 1728-9. 
 This, I felt sure, was the Dr. Taylor of Boswell. He came 
 into residence therefore but four months after Johnson. My 
 satisfaction was complete. At that moment, perhaps, one 
 of the happiest men in Oxford was to be found in a garret in 
 Christ Church into which the light of the sun never makes
 
 344 DR- JOHNSON. 
 
 its way. The reader may smile, but I will exclaim with 
 Goldsmith * I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.' 
 
 Against all the evidence that can be brought forward on 
 the other side there is nothing left of any weight but the state- 
 ments of Boswell and Hawkins. I have already said that it 
 is not unlikely that Boswell has merely followed the account 
 given by Hawkins. He would have been the less likely to 
 have discovered Hawkins' error from the fact that, as John- 
 son's name was for about three years on the College books, 
 he was so long, in name at least, a member of the College. 
 
 The following table that I have drawn up will assist the 
 reader in arriving at a conclusion on this matter. 
 
 1723. Adams elected to a Fellowship at. Pembroke. 
 1725. J. Meeke entered. 
 
 1727, Corbet „ 
 
 1728. Jones „ 
 
 „ Oct. 31. Johnson entered. 
 
 „ Nov. Fludyer „ 
 
 „ Dec. 16. Johnson matriculated. 
 1729 Feb. 24. Taylor „ 
 
 „ March 16. Jorden elected to a University living. 
 
 „ June Edwards entered. 
 
 „ Oct. 24. No charge for battels against Johnson this 
 week. 
 'Johnson at Lichfield in the College va- 
 cation of 1729 overwhelmed with hypo- 
 chondria.' 
 
 „ Dec. 12. Johnson's period of regular battels came to 
 an end. 
 
 „ „ Entry in his diary, S. y. Oxonio rediit. 
 
 „ „ 26. Johnson charged 5^. in battel-books. 
 
 I
 
 APPENDIX. 345 
 
 1730 Jan, 2. Johnson charged ^d. in battel-books. 
 
 JJ » 3*-'' » >> 5> 
 
 „ March 13. „ 4^. -jd. „ 
 
 n » 27. J) 5^* 3J 
 
 „ April 8. Blackwall died. 
 
 „ „ 10. Edwards left college. 
 
 „ Sept. 18. Charges against Johnson in battel-books 
 but the account not added up. 
 
 „ Nov. 27, Johnson's name disappears from the battel- 
 books. 
 
 „ Dec. 23, Jorden's Fellowship filled up. 
 
 1 731 Jan. 29. Johnson's name reappears for this week, 
 
 with no charge added to it. 
 „ March 12. Johnson's name reappears and remains on 
 
 the books till the following October, when 
 
 it finally disappears. 
 „ Oct. 30. Johnson, in a letter written at Lichfield, says, 
 
 ' as I am yet unemployed.' 
 „ Dec. Michael Johnson died. 
 
 1732 May 25. Shenstone matriculated. 
 
 „ July 16. Entry in Johnson's diary : Bosvortiajn pcdds 
 
 petit. 
 „ Nov. 7. Whitfield matriculated. 
 
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