THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON 
 G. BIRKBECK HILL
 
 i&K 
 
 I 
 
 
 From a bust by J. N'ollekeiu, R.A.
 
 Bo SWELL'S 
 
 Llfe of Johnson 
 
 INCLUDING BOSIVELVS JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES 
 AND JOHNSON'S DIARY OF A JOURNEY INTO NORTH IVALES 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L. 
 
 PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 IN SIX VOLUMES 
 VOLUME II.— LIFE C17O5-1776) 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1891
 
 P ud n -' 
 
 i/-
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. II. 
 
 Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (November, 1765-MARCH, 
 
 1776) 1-545 
 
 Appendices : 
 
 A. Autograph Records by Johnson (1766) in the 
 
 Bodleian Library 547 
 
 B. Johnson's Sentiments towards his Fellow-sub- 
 
 jects IN America 549
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, Etc. 
 Volume II. 
 
 Samuel Johnson, from the Bust by Nollekens . . Frontispiece, 
 Facsimile of Johnson's Handwriting in his 
 
 54TH YEAR Facing p. i 
 
 Dr. Johnson's House, Johnson's Court ... " 6 
 
 James Boswell " 14 
 
 James Boswell, in Costume of a Corsican Chief " ■j'^ 
 
 Samuel Johnson, in Hebridean Costume . . " 306 
 
 Dr. Johnson's House, Bolt Court .... " 490 
 
 Lichfield "530
 
 (U 
 
 JitA^ i^A^ fil^^j^ (Jwv (Liw L/ki^ (K^X ktA- iLfjiU^u-td. 
 
 Facsimile or Dr. Johnson's Handwritixg in ins 54x11 vkar. 
 
 ,^ J^t
 
 THE LIFE OF 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. 
 
 IN 1764 and 1765 it should seem that Dr. Johnson was so 
 busily employed with his edition of Shakspeare, as to 
 have had little leisure for any other literary exertion, or, in- 
 deed, even for private correspondence ^ He did not favour 
 me with a single letter for more than two years, for which 
 it will appear that he afterwards apologised. 
 
 He was, however, at all times ready to give assistance to 
 his friends, and others, in revising their works, and in writing 
 for them, or greatly improving their Dedications. In that 
 courtly species of composition no man excelled Dr. Johnson. 
 Though the loftiness of his mind prevented him from ever 
 dedicating in his own person \ he wrote a very great number 
 
 ' Had he been ' busily employed ' he would, no doubt, have finished 
 the edition in a few months. He himself had recorded at Easter, 
 1765: 'My time has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream 
 that has left nothing behind.' Pr. and Med., p. 61. 
 
 '^ Dedications had been commonly used as a means of getting money 
 by flattery. I. D'Israeli in his Calamities of Authors, i. 64, says : — ' Ful- 
 ler's Chitrch History is disgraced by twelve particular dedications. It 
 was an expedient to procure dedication fees ; for publishing books by 
 subscription was an art not yet discovered.' The price of the dedica- 
 tion of a play was, he adds, in the time of George I. twenty guineas. 
 So much then, at least, Johnson lost by not dedicating Irene. How- 
 ever, when he addressed the Plan of his Dictionary to Lord Chester- 
 field (ante, i. 212) he certainly came very near a dedication. Boswell, 
 in the Hypochondriack, writes : — ' For my own part, I own I am proud 
 enough. But I do not relish the stateliness of not dedicating at all. 
 I prefer pleasure to pride, and it appears to me that there is much 
 pleasure in honestly expressing one'ts admiration, esteem, or affection 
 in a public manner, and in thus contributing to the happiness of an- 
 other by making him better pleased with himself.' London Mag. for 
 H.— I of
 
 Dedications. [a.d. 1765. 
 
 of Dedications for others. Some of these, the persons who 
 were favoured with them are unwilHng should be mentioned, 
 from a too anxious apprehension, as I think, that they might 
 be suspected of having received larger assistance ' ; and some, 
 after all the diligence I have bestowed, have escaped my en- 
 quiries. He told me, a great many years ago, ' he believed 
 he had dedicated to all the Royal Family round ^;' and it 
 was indifferent to him what was the subject of the work 
 dedicated, provided it were innocent. He once dedicated 
 some Musick for the German Flute to Edward, Duke of 
 York. In writing Dedications for others, he considered him- 
 self as by no means speaking his own sentiments. 
 
 Notwithstanding his long silence, I never omitted to write 
 to him when I had any thing worthy of communicating. I 
 generally kept copies of my letters to him, that I might have 
 
 1782, p. 454. His dedications were dedications of friendship, not of 
 flattery or servnlity. He dedicated his Tour to Corsica to Paoli, his 
 Toicr to the Hebrides to Malone, and his Life of Johnson to Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds. Goldsmith, in like manner, distrest though he so often was, 
 dedicated his Traiwller to his brother, the Deserted Village to Sir 
 Joshua, and She Sloops to Conquer to Johnson. 
 
 ' A passage in Boswell's letter to Malone of Jan. 29, 1791 (Croker's 
 Bosrvell, p. 829), shows that it is Reynolds of whom he is writing. ' I 
 am,' he writes, 'to cancel a leaf of the first volume, having found that 
 though Sir Joshua certainly assured me he had no objection to my 
 mentioning that Johnson wrote a dedication for him, he now thinks 
 otherwise. In that leaf occurs the mention of Johnson having writ- 
 ten to Dr. Leland, thanking the University of Dublin for their diplo- 
 ma.' In the first edition, this mention of the letter is followed by the 
 passage above about dedications. It was no doubt Reynolds's Dedi- 
 cation of his Discourses to the King in the year 1778 that Johnson 
 wrote. The first sentence is in a high degree Johnsonian. ' The reg- 
 ular progress of cultivated life is from necessaries to accommodations, 
 from accommodations to ornaments.' 
 
 ' 'That is to say,' he added, 'to the last generation of the Royal 
 Family.' S&& post, April 15, 1773. We may hope that the Royal Fam- 
 ily were not all like the Duke of Gloucester, who, when Gibbon brought 
 him the second volume of the Decline and Fall, ' received him with 
 much good nature and affability, -saying to him, as he laid the quarto 
 on the table, " Another d — d thick, square book ! Always scribble, 
 scribble, scribble ! Eh ! Mr. Gibbon ?" ' Best's Memorials, p. 68. 
 
 a full
 
 Aetat. 60.] Boswell in Corsica. 3 
 
 a full view of our correspondence, and never be at a loss to 
 understand any reference in his letters '. He kept the greater 
 part of mine very carefully ; and a short time before his 
 death was attentive enough to seal them up in bundles, and 
 order them to be delivered to me, which was accordingly 
 done. Amongst them I found one, of which I had not made 
 a copy, and which I own I read with pleasure at the distance 
 of almost twenty years. It is dated November, 1765, at the 
 palace of Pascal Paoli, in Corte, the capital of Corsica, and 
 is full of generous enthusiasm*. After giving a sketch of 
 what I had seen and heard in that island, it proceeded thus: 
 ' I dare to call this a spirited tour. I dare to challenge your 
 approbation.' 
 
 This letter produced the following answer, which I found 
 on my arrival at Paris : 
 
 A Mr. Mr. Boswell, chez Mr. Waters, Banquier, a Paris. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 'Apologies are seldom of any use. We will delay till your 
 arrival the reasons, good or bad, which have made me such a 
 
 ' Such care was needless. Boswell complained {posf,]\xne 24, 1774), 
 that Johnson did not ansivcr his letters, but only sent hhu returns. 
 
 * ' On one of the days that my ague disturbed me least, I walked 
 from the convent to Corte, purposely to write a letter to Mr. Samuel 
 Johnson. I told my revered friend, that from a kind of superstition 
 agreeable in a certain degree to him as well as to myself, I had, during 
 my travels, written to him from Loca Solennia, places in some meas- 
 ure sacred. That, as I had written to him from the tomb of Melanc- 
 thon (see posf, June 28, 1777), sacred to learning and piety, I now wrote 
 to him from the palace of Pascal Paoli, sacred to wisdom and liberty.' 
 Boswell 's Tottr to Corsica, p. 218. How delighted would Boswell have 
 been had he lived to see the way in which he is spoken of by the biog- 
 rapher of Paoli : ' En travcrsant la Mediterranee sur de freles navires 
 pour venir s'asseoir au foyer de la nationalite Corse, des homnu's graves 
 tels que Boswel et Volney obeissaient sans doute a un sentiment bien 
 plus eleve qu' au besoin vulgaire d'une puerile curiosite.' Histoire de 
 Pascal Paoli, par A. Arrighi, i. 23 [. By every Corsican of any educa- 
 tion the name of Boswell is known and honoured. One of them told 
 me that it was in Boswell's pages that Paoli still lived for them. He 
 informed me also of a family which still preserved by tradition the 
 remembrance of Boswell's visit to their ancestral home. 
 
 sparing
 
 4 BosweWs Return to London. [a.d. 1766. 
 
 sparing and ungrateful correspondent. Be assured, for the pres- 
 ent, that nothing has lessened either the esteem or love with which 
 I dismissed you at Harwich. Both have been increased by all that 
 I have been told of you by yourself or others ; and' when you return, 
 you will return to an unaltered, and, I hope, unalterable friend. 
 
 ' All that you have to fear from me is the vexation of disappoint- 
 ing me. No man loves to frustrate expectations which have been 
 formed in his favour ; and the pleasure which I promise myself 
 from your journals and remarks is so great, that perhaps no degree 
 of attention or discernment will be sufficient to afford it. 
 
 ' Come home, however, and take your chance. I long to see 
 you, and to hear you ; and hope that we shall not be so long sep- 
 arated again. Come home, and expect such a 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 twelve following lines of this letter were published by Bos- 
 well in his Cofstca (p. 219) without Johnson's leave. (S&e post, March 
 23, 1768.) Temple, to whom the book had been shewn before publica- 
 tion, had, it should seem, advised Boswell to omit this extract. Bos- 
 well replied : — ' Your remarks are of great service to me . . . but I must 
 have my great preceptor, Mr. Johnson, introduced.' Letters of Bos- 
 well, p. 122. In writing to excuse himself to Johnson {post, April 26, 
 1768), he says, 'the temptation to publishing it was so strong.' 
 
 " 'Tell your Court,' said Paoli to Boswell, 'what you have seen 
 here. They will be curious to ask you. A man come from Corsica 
 will be like a man come from the Antipodes.' Boswell's Corsica, 
 p. 188. He was not indeed the first ' native of this country ' to go there. 
 He found in Bastia ' an English woman of Penrith, in Cumberland. 
 When the Highlanders marched through that country 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.' lb., p. 226. Boswell nowhere quotes 
 Mrs. Barbauld's fine lines on Corsica. Perhaps he was ashamed of 
 the praise of the wife of ' a little Presbyterian parson who kept an in- 
 fant boarding-school.' {Ste post, under Dec. 17, 1775.) Yet he must 
 have been pleased when he read : — 
 
 'Such were the working thoughts which swelled the breast 
 Of generous Boswell ; when with nobler aim 
 And views beyond the narrow beaten track 
 By trivial fancy trod, he turned his course 
 From polished Gallia's soft delicious vales,' &c. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld's Poefiis, i. 2. 
 ' I have
 
 Aetat. 57.] Johusofi in Johnsons Court. 5 
 
 * I have no news to tell you that can deserve your notice ; nor 
 would I willingly lessen the pleasure that any novelty may give 
 you at your return. I am afraid we shall find it difficult to keep 
 among us a mind which has been so long feasted with variety. 
 But let us \.xy what esteem and kindness can effect. 
 
 ' As your father's liberality has indulged you with so long a ram- 
 ble, I doubt not but you will think his sickness, or even his desire 
 to see you, a sufficient reason for hastening your return. The 
 longer we live, and the more we think, the higher value we learn 
 to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends. 
 Parents we can have but once ; and he promises himself too much, 
 who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends. 
 Upon some motive, I hope, that you will be here soon ; and am 
 willing to think that it will be an inducement to your return, that 
 it is sincerely desired by, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'Johnson's Court, Fleet-street, 
 January 14, 1766.' 
 
 I returned to London in February, and found Dr. John- 
 son in a good house in Johnson's Court, Fleet-street', in 
 which he had accommodated Miss Williams with an apart- 
 ment on the ground floor, while Mr. Levett occupied his 
 post in the garret : his faithful Francis was still attending 
 upon him. He received me with much kindness. The 
 
 ^ Murphy, in the Monthly Review, txxvi. 376, thus describes John- 
 son's life in Johnson's Court after he had received his pension. ' His 
 friend Levett, his physician in ordinary, paid his daily visits witli assi- 
 duity; attended at all hours, made tea all the morning, talked what 
 he had to say, and did not expect an answer; or, if occasion required 
 it, was mute, officious, and ever complying. . . . There Johnson sat every 
 morning, receiving visits, hearing the topics of the day, and indolently 
 trifling away the time. Chymistry afforded some amusement.' Haw- 
 kins (Life, p. 452), says : — ' An upper room, which had the advantages 
 of a good light and free air, he fitted up for a study. A silver standish 
 and some useful plate, which he had been prevailed on to accept as 
 pledges of kindness from some who most esteemed him, together with 
 furniture that would not have disgraced a better dwelling, banished 
 those appearances of squalid indigence which, in his less happy days, 
 disgusted those who came to see him.' Some of the plate Johnson 
 had bought. See /(^i-/, April 15, 1781. 
 
 fragments
 
 6 Johnsons lines in The Traveller, [a.d. 176g. 
 
 fragments of our first conversation, which I have preserved, 
 are these : I told him that Voltaire, in a conversation with 
 mc, had distinguished Pope and Dryden thus : — ' Pope drives 
 a handsome chariot, with a couple of neat trim nags ; Dry- 
 den a coach, and six stately horses.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, 
 the truth is, they both drive coaches and six ; but Dryden's 
 horses are either galloping or stumbling : Pope's go at a 
 steady even trot'.' He said of Goldsmith's Traveller, which 
 had been published in my absence, ' There has not been so 
 fine a poem since Pope's time.' 
 
 And here it is proper to settle, with authentick precision, 
 what has long floated in publick report, as to Johnson's be- 
 ing himself the authour of a considerable part of that poem. 
 Much, no doubt, both of the sentiments and expression, 
 were derived from conversation with him ; and it was cer- 
 tainly submitted to his friendly revision : but in the year 
 1783, he, at my request, marked with a pencil the lines which 
 he had furnished, which are only line 420th, 
 
 'To stop too fearful, and too faint to go;' 
 
 and the concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one, 
 which I distinguished by the Italick character: 
 
 ' How small of all that human hearts endure, 
 That part which kings or laws* can cause or cure. 
 
 ' It is remarkable, that Mr. Gray has employed somewhat the same 
 image to characterise Dryden. He, indeed, furnishes his car with but 
 two horses, but they are of ' ethereal race :' 
 
 'Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car, 
 Wide o'er the fields of glory bear 
 Two coursers of ethereal race. 
 With necks in thunder cloath'd, and long resounding pace.' 
 
 Ode on the Progress of Poesy. Boswell. In the Life of Pope ( Works, 
 viii. 324) Johnson says: — 'The style of Dryden is capricious and va- 
 ried ; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the mo- 
 tions of his own mind ; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of 
 composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid ; Pope is 
 always smooth, uniform, and gentle.' 
 ' In the original laivs or kings. 
 
 Still
 
 OR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE. 
 Johnsons Court, Fled Street.
 
 Aetat. o7.j Johnsoii s Itiies in The Traveller. 7 
 
 Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, 
 
 Our own felicity we make or find ' ; 
 
 With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, 
 
 Glides the smooth current of domestick joy : 
 
 The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, 
 
 Luke's iron crozon, and Damien''s bed of steel, 
 
 To men remote from power, but rarely known, 
 
 Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.' 
 
 He added, * These are all of which I can be sure".' They 
 bear a small proportion to the whole, which consists of four 
 hundred and thirty-eight verses. Goldsmith, in the couplet 
 which he inserted, mentions Luke as a person well known, 
 and superficial readers have passed it over quite smoothly; 
 while those of more attention have been as much perplexed 
 by Luke, as by Lydiat^, in The Vanity of Human WisJies. 
 The truth is, that Goldsmith himself was in a mistake. In 
 the Respublica Hungarica^, there is an account of a desperate 
 
 * 'The mind is its own place, and in itself 
 
 Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' 
 
 Paradise Lost, i. 254. 
 
 'Caelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt.' 
 
 Horace, Epis. i. 11. 27. 
 See also ante, i. 441, note i. 
 
 * ' I once inadvertently put him,' wrote Reynolds, ' in a situation 
 from which none but a man of perfect integrity could extricate him- 
 self. I pointed at some lines in The Traveller which. I told him I was 
 sure he wrote. He hesitated a little ; durins: this hesitation I recol- 
 lected myself, that, as I knew he would not lie, I put him in a cleft- 
 stick, and should have had but my due if he had given me a rough 
 answer ; but he only said, " Sir, I did not write them, but that you may 
 not imagine that I have wrote more than I really have, the utmost I 
 have wrote in that poem, to the best of my recollection, is not more 
 than eighteen lines." |Nine seems the actual number.] It must be 
 observed there was then an opinion about town that Dr. Johnson 
 wrote the whole poem for his friend, who was then in a manner an 
 unknown writer.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 458. See also post, April 9, 
 1778. For each line of The Tra7)eller Goldsmith was paid \\\\ {ante, 
 i. 224, note). Johnson's present, therefore, of nine lines was, if reck- 
 oned in money, worth 8/5^. ' See afite, i. 225, note. 
 
 * Respublica et Status Regni Hungariae. Ex Offict'na Eheviriana, 
 
 rebellion
 
 8 Teaching by lectures. [a.d. 176G. 
 
 rebellion in the year 15 14, headed by two brothers, of the 
 name of Zeck, George and Luke. When it was quelled, 
 George, not Luke, was punished by his head being encircled 
 with a red-hot iron crown : ' corona candescente f erred coro- 
 natur\' The same severity of torture was exercised on the 
 Earl of Athol, one of the murderers of King James I. of 
 Scotland. 
 
 Dr. Johnson at the same time favoured me by marking 
 the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith's Deserted Village, 
 which are only the last four : 
 
 ' That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, 
 As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away : 
 While self-dependent power can time defy, 
 As rocks resist the billows and the sky.' 
 
 Talking of education, ' People have now-a-days, (said he,) 
 got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by 
 lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much 
 good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. 
 I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures ^ except 
 
 1634, p. 136. This work belongs to the series of Republics mentioned 
 by Johnson, /(7J/, under April 29, 1776. 
 
 ' ' " Luke " had been taken simply for the euphony of the line. He 
 was one of two brothers, Dosa. . . . The origin of the mistake [of 
 Zeck for Dosa] is curious. The two brothers belonged to one of the 
 native races of Transylvania called Szeklers or Zecklers, which de- 
 scriptive addition follows their names in the German biographical 
 authorities ; and this, through abridgment and misapprehension, in 
 subsequent books came at last to be substituted for the family name.' 
 Forster's Goldsjuith, i. 370. The iron crown was not the worst of the 
 tortures inflicted. 
 
 "^ Ste. post, April 15, 178 1. In 1748 Johnson had written {Works, \. 
 231) : ' At a time when so many schemes of education have been pro- 
 jected, ... so many schools opened for general knowledge, and so many 
 lectures in particular sciences attended.' Goldsmith, in his Lzfe of 
 NasJi (published in 1762), describes the lectures at Bath 'on the arts 
 and sciences, which are frequently taught there in a pretty, superficial 
 manner, so as not to tease the understanding, while they afford the 
 imagination some amusement.' Cunningham's Goldsmiih's Works, 
 iv. 59. 
 
 where
 
 Aetat. 57.] DeistS. ' 9 
 
 where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chym- 
 istry by lectures. — You might teach making of shoes by 
 lectures ' !' 
 
 At night I supped with him at the Mitre tavern, that we 
 might renew our social intimacy at the original place of 
 meeting. But there was now a considerable difference in 
 his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was 
 advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued 
 to abstain from it, and drank only water, or lemonade \ 
 
 I told him that a foreign friend of his^, whom I had met 
 with abroad, was so wretchedly perverted to infidelity, that 
 he treated the hopes of immortality with brutal levity ; and 
 said, * As man dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog.' JOHN- 
 SON. *y/"he dies like a dog, /ct him lie like a dog.' I added, 
 that this man said to me, ' I hate mankind, for I think my- 
 self one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.' 
 Johnson. * Sir, he must be very singular in his opinion, if 
 he thinks himself one of the best of men ; for none of his 
 friends think him so.' — He said, no honest man could be a 
 Deist ; for no man could be so after a fair examination of 
 the proofs of Christianity. I named Hume*. Johnson. 
 
 * Perhaps Gibbon had read this passage at the time when he wrote 
 in his Memoirs : — ' It has indeed been observed, nor is the observation 
 absurd, that, excepting in experimental sciences which demand a costly 
 apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many valuable treatises that have 
 been pubhshed on every subject of learning may now supersede the 
 ancient mode of oral instruction.' Gibbon's Af/sc. Works, i. 50. See 
 post, March 20, 1776, note. - See a/i/e, i. 120. 
 
 ' Baretti was in Italy at the same time as Boswell. That they met 
 seems to be shewn by a passage in Boswell's letter {post, Nov. 6, 1766). 
 Malone wrote of him : — ' He appears to be an infidel.' Prior s Ala lone, 
 
 P- 399- 
 
 * Lord Charlemont records {Life, i. 235) that ' Mrs. Mallet, meeting 
 Hume at an assembly, boldly accosted him in these words : — " Mr. 
 Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you ; we deists ought to 
 know each other." " Madame," replied Hume, " I am no deist. I do 
 not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appella- 
 tion." ' Hume, in 1763 or 1764, wrote to Dr. Blair about the men of 
 letters at Paris : — ' It would give you and Robertson great .satisfaction 
 to find that there is not a single deist among them.' J. II. Burton's 
 
 • No.
 
 lO Equality ill Jiappi7iess. [a.d. 176G. 
 
 ' No, Sir; Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishoprick of 
 Durham, that he had never read the New Testament Avith 
 attention.' I mentioned Hume's notion', that all who are 
 happy are equally happy ; a little miss with a new gown at 
 a dancing-school ball, a general at the head of a victorious 
 army, and an orator, after having made an eloquent speech 
 in a great assembly. JOHNSON. ' Sir, that all who are 
 happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a 
 philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally liappy. 
 Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable conscious- 
 ness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal happi- 
 ness with a philosopher.' I remember this very question 
 very happily illustrated in opposition to Hume, by the Rev- 
 erend Mr. Robert Brown", at Utrecht. * A small drinking- 
 
 Hume,\\. i8i. There was no deist, I suppose, because they were all 
 atheists. Romilly {Life, i. 179) records the following anecdote, which 
 he had from Diderot in 1781 : — 'Hume dina avec une grande com- 
 pagnie chez le Baron d'Holbach. II etait assis a cote du Baron ; on 
 parla de la religion naturelle. "Pour les Athees," disait Hume, "je 
 ne crois pas qu'il en existe ; je n'en ai jamais vu." " Vous avez ete un 
 peu malheureux," repondit I'autre, "vous voici a table avec dix-sept 
 pour la premiere fois." ' It was on the same day that Diderot related 
 this that he said to Romilly, ' II faut sabrcr la theologie.' 
 
 ' ' The inference upon the whole is, that it is not from the value or 
 worth of the object which any person pursues that we can determine 
 his enjoyment ; but merely from the passion with which he pursues 
 it, and the success which he meets with in his pursuit. Objects have 
 absolutely no worth or value in themselves. They derive their worth 
 merely from the passion. If that be strong and steady and success- 
 ful, the person is happy. It cannot reasonably be doubted but a lit- 
 tle miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives as 
 complete enjoyment as the greatest orator, who triumphs in the splen- 
 dour of his eloquence, while he governs the passions and resolutions 
 of a numerous assembly.' Hume's Essays, i. 17 {The Sceptic). Pope 
 had written in the Essay on Alan (iv. 57) : 
 
 'Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; 
 Bliss is the same in subject or in King.' 
 
 See also ^(?5/, April 15, 1778. 
 
 2 In Bosivelliana, p. 220, a brief account is given of his life, which 
 was not altogether uneventful. 
 
 glass
 
 Aetat. 57.] Courtiug great men. 1 1 
 
 glass and a large one, (said he,) may be equally full ; but 
 the large one holds more than the small.' 
 
 Dr. Johnson was very kind this evening, and said to me, 
 ' You have now lived five-and-twenty years, and you have 
 employed them well.' ' Alas, Sir, (said I,) I fear not. Do 
 I know history ? Do I know mathematicks ? Do I know 
 law?' Johnson. 'Why, Sir, though you may know no 
 science so well as to be able to teach it, and no profession 
 so well as to be able to follow it, your general mass of knowl- 
 edge of books and men renders you very capable to make 
 yourself master of any science, or fit yourself for any pro- 
 fession.' I mentioned that a gay friend had advised me 
 against being a lawyer, because I should be excelled by 
 plodding block-heads. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, in the formu- 
 lary and statutory part of law, a plodding block-head may 
 excel ; but in the ingenious and rational part of it a plodding 
 block-head can never excel.' 
 
 I talked of the mode adopted by some to rise in the world, 
 by courting great men, and asked him whether he had ever 
 submitted to it. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, I never was near 
 enough to great men, to court them. You may be prudent- 
 ly attached to great men and yet independent. You are 
 not to do what you think wrong ; and. Sir, you are to cal- 
 culate, and not pay too dear for what you get. You must 
 not give a shilling's Avorth of court for six-pence worth of 
 good. But if you can get a shilling's worth of good for 
 six-pence worth of court, you are a fool if you do not pay 
 court'.' 
 
 He said, ' If convents should be allowed at all, they should 
 only be retreats for persons unable to serve the publick, or 
 
 * We may compare with this what he says in The Rambler, No. 21, 
 about the 'cowardice which always encroaches fast upon such as 
 spend their time in the company of persons higher than themselves.' 
 In No. 104 he writes: — 'It is dangerous for mean minds to venture 
 themselves w-ithin the sphere of greatness.' In the court that Bos- 
 well many years later paid to Lord Lonsdale, he suffered all the hu- 
 miliations that the brutality of this petty greatness can inflict. Let- 
 ters of Boswell, p. 324. See also post, Sept. 22, 1 777. 
 
 who
 
 12 Rousseau and Wilkes. [a.d. 176G. 
 
 who have served it. It is our first duty to serve society, and, 
 after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salva- 
 tion of our own souls. A youthful passion for abstracted 
 devotion should not be encouraged '.' 
 
 I introduced the subject of second-sight, and other mys- 
 terious manifestations ; the fulfilment of which, I suggested, 
 might happen by chance. JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but they 
 have happened so often, that mankind have agreed to think 
 them not fortuitous ^' 
 
 I talked to him a great deal of what I had seen in Corsica, 
 and of my intention to publish an account of it. He encour- 
 aged me by saying, ' You cannot go to the bottom of the 
 subject ; but all that you tell us will be new to us. Give us 
 as many anecdotes as you can ^' 
 
 Our next meeting at the Mitre was on Saturday the 1 5th 
 of February, when I presented to him my old and most in- 
 timate friend, the Reverend Mr. Temple'', then of Cambridge. 
 I having mentioned that I had passed some time with Rous- 
 seau in his wild retreat ', and having quoted some remark 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19, 1773. 
 
 ^ Johnson ( Works, ix. 107) thus sums up his examination of second- 
 sight : — ' There is against it, the seeming analogy of things confusedly 
 seen, and little understood ; and for it, the indistinct cry of natural 
 persuasion, which may be, perhaps, resolved at last into prejudice and 
 tradition. I never could advance my curiosity to conviction ; but 
 came away at last only willing to believe.' See 2X1,0 post, March 24, 
 1775. Hume said of the evidence in favour of second -sight : — 'As 
 finite a^dded to finite never approaches a hair's breadth nearer to infi- 
 nite, so a fact incredible in itself acquires not the smallest accession 
 of probability by the accumulation of testimony.' J. H. Burton's 
 Hunie, i. 480. 
 
 ^ ' I love anecdotes,' said Johnson. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 16, 
 1773. Boswell said that 'Johnson always condemned the word a7iec- 
 dotes, as used in the sense that the French, and we from them, use it, 
 as signifying particulars.' Letters of Boswell, p. 31 1. In his Dictiona- 
 ry, he defined 'Anecdote Something yet unpublished; secret history.' 
 In the fourth edition he added : ' It is now used, after the French, for 
 a biographical incident ; a minute passage of private life.' 
 
 * See anie,]\\\y 19, 1763. 
 
 ^ Boswell, writing to Wilkes in 1776, said : — ' Though we diffci- 
 
 made
 
 Aetat. 57.] Rousseau and Voltaire. 13 
 
 made by Mr. Wilkes, with whom I had spent many pleasant 
 hours in Italy, Johnson said (sarcastically,) ' It seems, Sir, 
 you have kept very good company abroad, Rousseau and 
 Wilkes !' Thinking it enough to defend one at a time, I 
 said nothing as to my gay friend, but answered with a smile, 
 ' My dear Sir, you don't call Rousseau bad company. Do 
 you really think Jiim a bad man?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, if you 
 are talking jestingly of this, I don't talk with you. If you 
 mean to be serious, I think him one of the worst of men ; a 
 rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. 
 Three or four nations have expelled him ; and it is a shame 
 that he is protected in this country'.' BOSWELL. 'I don't 
 deny, Sir, but that his novel * may, perhaps, do harm ; but I 
 cannot think his intention was bad.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, that 
 will not do. We cannot prove any man's intention to be 
 bad. You may shoot a man through the head, and say you 
 intended to miss him ; but the Judge will order you to be 
 hanged. An alleged want of intention, when evil is commit- 
 ted, will not be allowed in a court of justice. Rousseau, Sir, 
 is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his 
 transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from 
 the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have 
 him work in the plantations \' BosWELL. 'Sir, do you 
 
 widely in religion and politicb, il y a dcs points oh iios dmcs sofii times, 
 as Rousseau said to me in his wild retreat.' Almon's Wilkes, iv. 319. 
 
 ' Rousseau fled from France in 1762. A few days later his arrest 
 was ordered at Geneva. He fled from Neufchatel in 1763, and soon 
 afterwards he was banished from Berne. A'ouv. Biog. Gat. xlii. 750. 
 He had come to England with David Hume a few weeks before this 
 conversation was held, and was at this time in Chiswick. Hume's 
 Private Carres, pp. 125, 145. 
 
 ^ Rousseau had by this time published his Nonvelle Heloise and 
 Emile. 
 
 ^ Less than three months after the date of this conversation Rous- 
 seau wrote to General Conway, one of the Secretaries of State, thank- 
 ing him for the pension which George HI proposed secretly to con- 
 fer on him. Hume's Private Corres. p. 165. Miss Burney, in her 
 preface to Evelina, a novel which was her introduction to Johnson's 
 strong affection, mentioning Rousseau and Johnson, adds in a foot- 
 think
 
 14 Subordination. [a.d. 1766. 
 
 think him as bad a man as Voltaire?' JOHNSON. 'Why, 
 Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between 
 them '.' 
 
 This violence seemed very strange to me, who had read 
 many of Rousseau's animated writings with great pleasure, 
 and even edification ; had been much pleased with his socie- 
 ty ^ and was just come from the Continent, where he was 
 very generally admired. Nor can I yet allow that he de- 
 serves the very severe censure which Johnson pronounced 
 upon him. His absurd preference of savage to civilised 
 life', and other singularities, are proofs rather of a defect in 
 his understanding, than of any depravity in his heart. And 
 notwithstanding the unfavourable opinion which many wor- 
 thy men have expressed of his ' Profession de Foi du Vicaire 
 Savoyard,' I cannot help admiring it as the performance of 
 a man full of sincere reverential submission to Divine Mys- 
 tery, though beset with perplexing doubts ; a state of mind 
 to be viewed with pity rather than with anger. 
 
 On his favourite subject of subordination, Johnson said, 
 ' So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal \ 
 
 note : — ' However superior the capacities in which these great writers 
 deserve to be considered, they must pardon me that, for the dignity of 
 my subject, I here rank the authors of Rasselas and Eloise as novehsts.' 
 
 ' Rousseau thus wrote of himself : — ' Dieu est juste ; il veut que je 
 souffre ; et il sait que je suis innocent. Voila le motif de ma confi- 
 ance, mon coeur et ma raison me orient quelle ne me trompera pas. 
 Laissons done faire les hommes et la destinee ; apprenons a souflfrir 
 sans murmure ; tout doit a la fin rentrer dans I'ordre, et mon tour 
 viendra tot ou tard.' Rousseau's Works, xx. 223. 
 
 " ' He entertained me very courteously,' wrote Boswell in his Cor- 
 sica, p. 140. 
 
 ^ In this preference Boswell pretended at times to share. St& post, 
 Sept. 30, 1769. 
 
 " Johnson seems once to have held this view to some extent ; for, 
 writing of Savage's poem On Public Spirit, h^ says {Works, xin. 156) : 
 — 'He has asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured 
 to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the 
 consequence of power.' See dAso post, Sept. 23, 1777, where he asserts : 
 — ' It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state 
 were equal.' For the opposite opinion, see ante, June 25, 1763. 
 
 that
 
 JAMES BOSWEI.I., ESQ. 
 
 From an original sketch by George Langton, Esq.
 
 Aetat. 57.] Subordination. 1 5 
 
 that no two people can be half an hour together, but one 
 shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.' 
 
 I mentioned the advice given us by philosophers, to con- 
 sole ourselves, when distressed or embarrassed, by thinking 
 of those who are in a worse situation than ourselves. This, 
 I observed, could not apply to all, for there must be some 
 who have nobody worse than they are. JOHNSON. 'Why, 
 to be sure. Sir, there are ; but they don't know it. There is 
 no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think 
 there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible.' 
 
 As my stay in London at this time was very short, I had 
 not many opportunities of being with Dr. Johnson ; but I 
 felt my veneration for him in no degree lessened, by my hav- 
 ing seen multoruiii houiinuin mores et iirbcs\ On the con- 
 trar}^, by having it in my power to compare him with many 
 of the most celebrated persons of other countries ^ my ad- 
 miration of his extraordinary mind was increased and con- 
 firmed. 
 
 The roughness, indeed, which sometimes appeared in his 
 manners, was more striking to me now, from my having been 
 accustomed to the studied smooth complying habits of the 
 Continent ; and I clearly recognised in him, not without re- 
 spect for his honest conscientious zeal, the same indignant 
 and sarcastical mode of treating every attempt to unhinge 
 or weaken good principles. 
 
 One evening when a young gentleman ^ teized him with an 
 account of the infidelity of his servant, who, he said, would 
 
 ' ' Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes.' ' Manners and 
 towns of various nations viewed.' Francis. Horace, Ars Foctica, 
 1. 142. 
 
 ^ By the time Boswcll was twenty-six years old he could boast that 
 he had made the acquaintance of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli among 
 foreigners ; and of Adam Smith, Robertson, Hume, Johnson, Gold- 
 smith, Garrick, Horace Walpole, Wilkes, and perhaps Reynolds, among 
 Englishmen. He had twice at least received a letter from the Earl 
 of Chatham. 
 
 ^ In such passages as this we may generally assume that the gentle- 
 man, whose name is not given, is Boswell himself. See ante, i. 4, and 
 posi, Ocl. 16, 1769. 
 
 not
 
 1 6 Boswell talks stuff. [a.d. 1766. 
 
 not believe the scriptures, because he could not read them in 
 the original tongues, and be sure that they were not invent- 
 ed. ' Why, foolish fellow, (said Johnson,) has he any better 
 authority for almost every thing that he believes?' BOvS- 
 WELL. ' Then the vulgar. Sir, never can know they are right, 
 but must submit themselves to the learned.' JOHNSON. ' To 
 be sure. Sir. The vulgar are the children of the State, and 
 must be taught like children \' BosWELL. 'Then, Sir, a 
 poor Turk must be a Mahometan, just as a poor Englishman 
 must be a Christian ° ?' JOHNSON. ' Why, yes. Sir ; and what 
 then? This now is such stuff as I used to talk to my moth- 
 er, when I first began to think myself a clever fellow ; and 
 she ought to have whipt me for it.' 
 
 Another evening Dr. Goldsmith and I called on him, with 
 the hope of prevailing on him to sup with us at the Mitre. 
 We found him indisposed, and resolved not to go abroad. 
 ' Com.e then, (said Goldsmith,) we will not go to the Mitre 
 to-night, since we cannot have the big man' with us.' John- 
 son then called for a bottle of port, of which Goldsmith and 
 I partook, while our friend, now a water-drinker, sat by us. 
 Goldsmith. ' I think, Mr. Johnson, you don't go near the 
 theatres now. You give yourself no more concern about a 
 new play, than if you had never had any thing to do with 
 the stage.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, our tastes greatly alter. 
 The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man 
 does not care for the young man's whore.' Goldsmith. 
 * Nay, Sir, but your Muse was not a whore.' JOHNSON. * Sir, 
 I do not think she was. But as we advance in the journey 
 of life, we drop some of the things which have pleased us ; 
 whether it be that we are fatigued and don't choose to carry 
 so many things any farther, or that we find other things 
 which we like better.' BosWELL. ' But, Sir, why don't you 
 
 * ^t.& post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's ' Collection,' where this assertion 
 is called ' his usual remark.' 
 
 "^ See /fj/, April 15,1778. 
 
 ^ These two words may be observed as marks of Mr. Boswell's ac- 
 curacy. It is a jocular Irish phrase, which, of all Johnson's acquaint- 
 ances, no one probably, but Goldsmith, would have used. — Croker. 
 
 give
 
 Aetat. 57.] Johnsoii like a retired physician. 1 7 
 
 give us something in some other way ?' Goldsmith. ' Ay, 
 Sir, we have a claim upon you '.' JOHNSON. ' No, Sir, I am 
 not obliged to do any more. No man is obliged to do as 
 much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life to him- 
 self. If a soldier has fought a good many campaigns, he is 
 not to be blamed if he retires to ease and tranquillity. A 
 physician, who has practised long in a great city, may be ex- 
 cused if he 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 small town, does to 
 his practice in a great city '.' BOSWELL. ' But I wonder, 
 Sir, you have not more pleasure in writing than in not writ- 
 ing.' Johnson. ' Sir, you 7;/^/ wonder.' 
 
 He talked of making verses, and observed, ' The great dif- 
 ficulty is to know when you have made good ones. When 
 composing, I have generally had them in my mind, perhaps 
 fifty at a time, walking up and down in my room ; and then 
 I have written them down, and often, from laziness, have 
 written only half lines. I have written a hundred lines in a 
 day. I remember I wrote a hundred lines of The Vanity of 
 Hinnan Wishes in a day\ Doctor, (turning to Goldsmith,) 
 I am not quite idle ; I made one line t'other day ; but 
 I made no more.' GOLDSMITH. ' Let us hear it ; we'll 
 
 ' See ante, May 24, 1763. 
 
 ■■* Johnson's best justification for the apparent indolence of the lat- 
 ter part of his life may be found in his own words : ' Every man of 
 genius has some arts of fixing the attention peculiar to himself, by 
 which, honestly exerted, he may benefit mankind. . . . To the position 
 of Tully, that if virtue could be seen she must be loved, may be added, 
 that if truth could be heard she must be obeyed.' The Rambler, No. 
 87. He fixed the attention be.st by his talk. For ' the position of 
 Tully,' see post, under March 19, 1776. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 223, and post. May i, 1783. Goldsmith wrote T/ie Trav- 
 eller and Deserted Village on a very different plan. ' To save himself 
 the trouble of tran.scription, he wrote the Imes in his first copy very 
 wide, and would so fill up the intermediate space with reiterated cor- 
 rections, that scarcely a word of his first effusions was left unaltered.' 
 Goldsmith's Misc. Works, i. 1 13. 
 
 II. — 2 put
 
 1 8 Burke enters Parliament. [a. d. 1766. 
 
 put a bad one to it.' JOHNSON. * No, Sir, I have for- 
 got it '.' 
 
 Such specimens of the easy and playful conversation of 
 the great Dr. Samuel Johnson are, I think, to be prized ; as 
 exhibiting the little varieties of a mind so enlarged and so 
 powerful when objects of consequence required its exertions, 
 and as giving us a minute knowledge of his character and 
 modes of thinking. 
 
 ' To Bennet Langton, Esq., at Langton, near Spilsby, 
 
 Lincolnshire. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 'What your friends have done, that from your departure till 
 now nothing has been heard of you, none of us are able to inform 
 the rest ; but as we are all neglected alike, no one thinks himself 
 entitled to the privilege of complaint. 
 
 ' I should have known nothing of you or of Langton, from the 
 time that dear Miss Langton left us, had not I met Mr. Simpson, 
 of Lincoln, one day in the street, by whom I was informed that 
 Mr. Langton, your Mamma, and yourself, had been all ill, but that 
 you were all recovered. 
 
 ' That sickness should suspend your correspondence, I did not 
 wonder ; but hoped that it would be renewed at your recovery. 
 
 ' Since you will not inform us where you are, or how you live, I 
 know not whether you desire to know any thing of us. However, 
 I will tell you that the club subsists \ but we have the loss of 
 Burke's company since he has been engaged in publick business,' 
 in which he has gained more reputation than perhaps any man at 
 
 ^ Mrs. Thrale, in a letter to Dr. Johnson, said : — ' Don't sit making 
 verses that never will be written.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 183. Baretti 
 noted opposite this in the margin of his copy : ' Johnson was always 
 making Latin or English verses in his mind, but never would write 
 them down.' 
 
 * Burke entered Parliament as member for Wendover borough on 
 Jan. 14, 1766. William Burke, writing to Barry the artist on the 
 following March 23, says : — ' Ned's success has exceeded our most 
 sanguine hopes ; all at once he has darted into fame. He is full of 
 real business, intent upon doing real good to his country, as much as 
 if he was to receive twenty per cent, from the commerce of the whole 
 empire, which he labours to improve and extend.' Barry's Works, 
 i.42. 
 
 his
 
 Aetat. 57.] The attefidaiicc at The Club. 19 
 
 his [first] appearance ever gained before. He made two speeches 
 in the House for repeaUng the Stamp-act, which were pubUckly 
 commended by Mr. Pitt, and have filled the town with wonder'. 
 
 ' Burke is a great man by nature, and is expected soon to attain 
 civil greatness.'' I am grown greater too, for I have maintained 
 the newspapers these many weeks^ ; and what is greater still, I 
 have risen every morning since New-year's day, at about eight ; 
 when I was up, I have indeed done but little ; yet it is no slight 
 advancement to obtain for so many hours more, the consciousness 
 of being. 
 
 ' I wish you were in my new study' ; I am now writing the first 
 letter in it. I think it looks very pretty about me. 
 
 ' Dyer^ is constant at the club ; Hawkins is remiss ; I am not 
 over diligent. Dr. Nugent, Dr. Goldsmith, and Mr. Reynolds, are 
 very constant. Mr. Lye is printing his Saxon and Gothick Dic- 
 tionary' ; all THE CLUB subscribes. 
 
 ' You will pay my respects to all my Lincolnshire friends. I am, 
 dear Sir, 
 
 ' Most affectionately your's, 
 ' March 9, 1766. ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 Johnson's-court, Fleet-street'.' 
 
 'To Bennet Langton, Esq., at Langton, near Spilsby, 
 
 Lincolnshire. 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' In supposing that I should be more than commonly affected 
 by the death of Peregrine Langton*, you were not mistaken ; he 
 
 ' It was of these speeches that Macaulay wrote : — ' The House of 
 Commons heard Pitt for the last time, and Burke for the first time, 
 and was in doubt to which of them the palm of eloquence should be 
 assigned. It was indeed a splendid sunset and a splendid dawn.' 
 Macaulay's Essays (edition 1874), iv. 330. 
 
 " Sae. posi, March 20, 1776. 
 
 ^ Boswell has already stated {ante, Oct. 1765) that Johnson's Shake- 
 speare was 'virulently attacked' by Kenrick. No doubt there were 
 other attacks and rejoinders too. 
 
 * Two days earlier he had drawn up a prayer on entering Novum 
 Museum. Pr. and Med. p. 69. 
 
 ' Sec pos/, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. 
 
 ' Dictionarium .Saxom'co et Cothico-Latinum. London, 1772. Lye 
 died in 1767. O. Manning completed the work. 
 
 ' See Appendix A. ^ Mr. Langton's uncle. Boswell. 
 
 was
 
 20 Mr. Peregrine Laugton. [a.d. 1766. 
 
 was one of those whom I loved at once by instinct and by reason. 
 I have seldom indulged more hope of any thing than of being able 
 to improve our acquaintance to friendship. Many a time have I 
 placed myself again at Langton, and imagined the pleasure with 
 which I should walk to Partney' in a summer morning ; but this is 
 no longer possible. We must now endeavour to preserve what is 
 left us, — his example of piety and ceconomy. I hope you make 
 what enquiries you can, and write down what is told you. The lit- 
 tle things which distinguish domestick characters are soon forgot- 
 ten : if you delay to enquire, you will have no information ; if you 
 neglect to write, information will be vain." 
 
 ' The place of residence of Mr. Peregrine Langton. Boswell. 
 
 ■ Mr. Langton did not disregard this counsel, but wrote the follow- 
 ing account, which he has been pleased to communicate to me : 
 
 ' The circumstances of Mr. Peregrine Langton were these. He had 
 an annuity for life of two hundred pounds /.!?r annum. He resided in 
 a village in Lincolnshire ; the rent of his house, with two or three 
 small fields, was twenty-eight pounds ; the county he lived in was not 
 more than moderately cheap ; his family consisted of a sister, who 
 paid him eighteen pounds 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 appurtenances to 
 his table were neat and handsome ; he frequently entertained com- 
 pany 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 
 neighbourhood. His own appearance, as to clothes, was genteelly 
 neat and plain. He had always a post-chaise, and kept three horses. 
 
 ' Such, with the resources I have mentioned, was his way of living, 
 which he did not suffer to employ his whole income : for he had al- 
 ways a sum of money lying by him for any extraordinary expences 
 that might arise. Some money he put into the stocks ; at his death, 
 the sum he had there amounted to one hundred and fifty pounds. 
 He purchased out of his income his household-furniture and linen, 
 of which latter he had a very ample store ; and, as I am assured by 
 those that had very good means of knowing, not less than the tenth 
 part of his income was set apart for charity : at the time of his death, 
 the sum of twenty-five pounds was found, with a direction to be em- 
 ployed in such uses. 
 
 ' He had laid down a plan of living proportioned to his income, and 
 did not practise any extraordinary degree of parsimony, but endeav- 
 oured that in his family there should be plenty without waste ; as an 
 instance that this was his endeavour, it may be worth while to men- 
 tion a method he took in regulating a proper allowance of malt liquor 
 
 'His
 
 Aetat. 57.] Mr. Peregrine Langton. 21 
 
 ' His art of life certainly deserves to be known and studied. He 
 lived in plenty and elegance upon an income which, to many would 
 
 to be drunk in his family, that there might not be a deficiency, or 
 any intemperate profusion : On a complaint made that his allowance 
 of a hogshead in a month, was not enough for his own family, he or- 
 dered the quantity of a hogshead to be put into bottles, had it locked 
 up from the servants, and distributed out, every day, eight quarts, 
 which is the quantity each day at one hogshead in a month ; and 
 told his ser\^ants, that if that did not suffice, he would allow them 
 more ; but, by this method, it appeared at once that the allowance 
 was much more than sufficient for his small family ; and this proved 
 a clear conviction, that could not be answered, and saved all future 
 dispute. He was, in general, very diligently and punctually attended 
 and obeyed by his servants ; he was very considerate as to the in- 
 junctions he gave, and explained them distinctly ; and, at their first 
 coming to his service, steadily exacted a close compliance with them, 
 without any remission ; and the servants finding this to be the case, 
 soon grew habitually accustomed to the practice of their business, 
 and then very little further attention was necessary. On extraordi- 
 nary instances of good behaviour, or diligent service, he was not want- 
 ing in particular encouragements and presents above their wages ; it 
 is remarkable that he would permit their relations to visit them, and 
 stay at his house two or three days at a time. 
 
 ' The wonder, with most that hear an account of his oeconomy, will 
 be, how he was able, with such an income, to do so much, especially 
 when it is considered that he paid for every thing he had ; he had no 
 land, except the two or three small fields which I have said he rented ; 
 and, instead of gaining any thing by their produce, I have reason to 
 think he lost by them; however, they furnished him with no further 
 assistance towards his housekeeping, than grass for his horses, (not 
 hay, for that I know he bought,) and for two cows. Every Monday 
 morning he settled his family accounts, and so kept up a constant at- 
 tention to the confining his expences within his income ; and to do it 
 more exactly, compared those expences with a computation he had 
 made, how much that income would afford him every week and day 
 of the year. One of his oeconomical practices was, as soon as any re- 
 pair was wanting in or about his house, to have it immediately per- 
 formed. When he had money to spare, he chose to lay in a provision 
 of linen or clothes, or any other necessaries ; as then, he said, he could 
 afford it, which he might not be so well able to do when the actual 
 want came; in consequence of which method, he had a considerable 
 supply of necessary articles lying by him, beside what was in use. 
 
 ' But the main particular that seems to have enabled him to do so 
 
 appear
 
 2 2 Mr. Peregrme Laiigton. [a.d. 176G. 
 
 appear indigent, and to most, scanty. How he lived, therefore, 
 every man has an interest in knowing. His death, I hope, was 
 peaceful ; it was surely happy. 
 
 ' I wish I had written sooner, lest, writing now, I should renew 
 your grief ; but I would not forbear saying what I have now said. 
 
 •■ This loss is, I hope, the only misfortune of a family to whom 
 no misfortune at all should happen, if my wishes could avert it. 
 Let me know how you all go on. Has Mr. Langton got him the 
 little horse that I recommended ? It would do him good to ride 
 about his estate in fine weather. 
 
 ' Be pleased to make my compliments to Mrs. Langton, and to 
 dear Miss Langton, and Miss Di, and Miss Juliet, and to every 
 body else. 
 
 'The Club holds very well together. Monday is my night'. I 
 continue to rise tolerably well, and read more than I did. I hope 
 something will yet come on it^ I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most affectionate servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' May ID, 1766, 
 Johnson 's-court, Fleet-street.' 
 
 much with his income, was, that he paid for every thing as soon as he 
 had it, except, alone, what were current accounts, such as rent for his 
 house and servants' wages ; and these he paid at the stated times with 
 the utmost exactness. He gave notice to the tradesmen of the neigh- 
 bouring market-towns that they should no longer have his custom, if 
 they let any of his servants have anything without their paying for it. 
 Thus he put it out of his power to commit those imprudences to 
 which those are liable that defer their payments by using their money 
 some other way than where it ought to go. And whatever money he 
 had by him, he knew that it was not demanded elsewhere, but that 
 he might safely employ it as he pleased. 
 
 ' His example was confined, by the sequestered place of his abode, 
 to the observation of few, though his prudence and virtue would have 
 made it valuable to all who could have known it. — These few particu- 
 lars, which I knew myself, or have obtained from those who lived with 
 him, may aft'ord instruction, and be an incentive to that wise art of 
 living, which he so successfully practised.' Boswell. 
 
 ' Of his being in the chair of The Literary Club, which at this 
 time met once a week in the evening. Boswell. See aritc, Feb. 
 1764, note. 
 
 - See post, Feb. 1767, where he told the King that 'he must now 
 read to acquire more knowledge.' 
 
 After
 
 Aetat. 57.] BoswelVs Thesis in Civil Law. 23 
 
 After I had been some time in Scotland, I mentioned to 
 him in a letter that ' On my first return to my native coun- 
 try, after some years of absence, I was told of a vast num- 
 ber of my acquaintance who were all gone to the land of 
 forgetfulness, and I found myself like a man stalking over 
 a field of battle, who every moment perceives some one ly- 
 ing dead.' I complained of irresolution, and mentioned my 
 having made a vow as a security for good conduct. I wrote 
 to him again, without being able to move his indolence ; 
 nor did I hear from him till he had received a copy of my 
 inaugural Exercise, or Thesis in Civil Law, which I pub- 
 lished at my admission as an Advocate, as is the custom in 
 Scotland. He then wrote to me as follows : 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' The reception of your Thesis put me in mind of my debt to 
 you. Why did you *************'. I will punish you 
 for it, by telling you that your Latin wants correction". In the 
 
 ' The passage omitted ahuded to a private transaction. Boswell. 
 ■ " This censure of my Latin relates to the Dedication, which was as 
 follows : 
 
 VIRO NOBILISSIMO, ORNATISSIMO, 
 
 JOANNI, 
 
 VICECOMITI MOUNTSTUART, 
 
 ATAVIS EDITO REGIBUS 
 
 EXCELS^ FAMILI^ DE BUTE SPEI ALTER/E ; 
 
 LABENTE SECULO, 
 
 QUUM HOMINES NULLIUS ORIGINIS 
 
 GENUS /EQUARE OPIBUS AGGREDIUNTUR, 
 
 SANGUINIS ANTIQUI ET ILLUSTRIS 
 
 • SEMPER MEMORI, 
 
 NATALIUM SPLENDOREM VIRTUTIBUS AUGENTI : 
 
 AD PUBLICA POPULI COMITIA 
 
 JAM LEGATO; 
 
 IN OPTIMATIUM VERO MAGN^ BRITANNI^E SENATU, 
 
 JURE H/EREDITARIO. 
 
 O L I M CONS ESS U RO : 
 
 VIM INSITAM VARIA DOCTRINA PROMOVENTE, 
 
 NEC TAMEN SE VENDITANTE, 
 
 PR^DITO : 
 
 beginning,
 
 24 BoswelL 's Latm criticised. [a.d. 1706. 
 
 beginning, Spei alterce, not to urge that it should be primce, is not 
 grammatical : altera; should be alteri. In the next line you seem 
 to use genus absolutely, for what we c^Wfami/y, that is, for illustri- 
 ous extraction, I doubt without authority. Homines nullius originis, 
 for Nullis orti majoribus, or, Nullo loco nati, is, I am afraid, bar- 
 barous. — Ruddiman is dead '. 
 
 ' I have now vexed you enough, and will try to please you. 
 Your resolution to obey your father I sincerely approve ; but do 
 not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility by vows : they 
 will sometime leave a thorn in your mind, which you will, perhaps, 
 never be able to extract or eject. Take this warning, it is of great 
 importance '. 
 
 'The study of the law is what you very justly term it, copious 
 and generous ^ ; and in adding your name to its professors, you 
 have done exactly what I always wished, when I wished you best. 
 I hope that you will continue to pursue it vigorously and constant- 
 ly \ You gain, at least, what is no small advantage, security from 
 
 PRISCA FIDE, ANIMO LIBERRIMO, 
 
 ET MORUM ELEGANTIA 
 
 INSIGNI : 
 
 IN ITALIC VISITANDiE ITINERE, 
 
 SOCIO SUO HONORATISSIMO, 
 
 HASCE JURISPRUDENTI^ PRIMITIAS 
 
 DEVINCTISSIMiE AMICITI^ ET OBSERVANTI^ 
 
 MONUMENTUM, 
 
 D. D. C. Q. 
 
 JACOBUS BOSWELL. Boswell. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 244. * Ste. post. May 19, 1778. 
 
 "■ This alludes to the first sentence of the Procemium of my Thesis. 
 ' JurisprudentL'E studio nullum uberius, nullum gcjterosius : in Icgi- 
 bus enim agitandis, populorttm mores, variasque fortunce vices ex quibus 
 leges oriuntur, contcmplari simul solemus.' Boswell. 
 
 * ' Mr. Boswell,' says Malone, ' professed the Scotch and the English 
 law; but had never taken very great pains on the subject. His fa- 
 ther, Lord Auchinleck, told him one day, that it would cost him more 
 trouble to hide his ignorance in these professions than to show his 
 knowledge. This Boswell owned he had found to be true.' Etiro- 
 pean Magazine, 1798, p. 376. Boswell wrote to Temple in 1775 : — ' You 
 are very kind in saying that I may overtake you in learning. Believe 
 me though that I have a kind of impotency of study.' Letters of Bos- 
 well, p. 181. 
 
 those
 
 Aetat. 57.] The clioice of a Profession. 25 
 
 those troublesome and wearisome discontents, which are always 
 obtruding themselves upon a mind vacant, unemployed, and un- 
 determined. 
 
 ' You ought to think it no small inducement to diligence and 
 perseverance, that they will please your father. We all live upon 
 the hope of pleasing somebody ; and the pleasure of pleasing 
 ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our 
 endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty. 
 
 ' Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle de- 
 liberation how it shall be spent ; deliberation, which those who 
 begin it by prudence, and continue it with subtilty, must, after long 
 expence of thought, conclude by chance'. To prefer one future 
 mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires faculties which 
 it has not pleased our Creator to give us. 
 
 ' If, therefore, the profession you have chosen has some unex- 
 pected inconveniencies, console yourself by reflecting that no pro- 
 fession is without them ; and that all the importunities and per- 
 plexities of business are softness and luxury, compared with the 
 incessant cravings of vacancy, and the unsatisfactory expedients of 
 idleness. 
 
 " Hcec sunt quce nostra potui te voce monere' ; 
 Vade, age''^ 
 
 'As to your History of Corsica, you have no materials which 
 others have not, or may not have. You have, somehow, or other, 
 warmed your imagination. I wish there were some cure, like the 
 lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained 
 an unreasonable and irregular possession. Mind your own affairs, 
 and leave the Corsicans to theirs. I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' London, Aug. 21, 1766.' 
 
 ' This is a truth that Johnson often enforced. 'Very few,' said the 
 poet, ' live by choice : every man is placed in his present condition by 
 causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not 
 always willingly co-operate.' Rasselas,c\i2i)^.\6. 'To him that lives 
 well,' answered the hermit, 'every form of life is good ; nor can I give 
 any other rule for choice than to remove from all apparent evil.' Jb. 
 chap. 21. 'Young man,' said Omar, ' it is of little use to form plans 
 of life.' The Idler, No. loi. 
 
 "^ ' Ha^c sunt quee nostra //cent tc voce moneri.' ^Eneid iii. 461. 
 
 'To
 
 26 BosweWs defence of his Latin. [a.d. 1706. 
 
 'To Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 ' Auchinleck, Nov. 6, 1766. 
 ' Much Esteemed and Dear Sir, 
 
 'I plead not guilty to "***************** * 
 
 'Having thus, I hope, cleared myself of the charge brought 
 against me, I presume you will not be displeased if I escape the 
 punishment which you have decreed for me unheard. If you 
 have discharged the arrows of criticism against an innocent man, 
 you must rejoice to find they have missed him, or have not been 
 pointed so as to wound him. 
 
 ' To talk no longer in allegory, I am, with all deference, going 
 to offer a few observations in defence of my Latin, which you have 
 found fault with. 
 
 ' You think I should have used spei pruncB, instead of spei altercE. 
 Spes is, indeed, often used to express something on which we have 
 a future dependence, as in Virg. Eclog. i. 1. 14, 
 
 " modo namqiie gemellos 
 
 Spem gregis ah silice in nudd connixa reliqiiit,'' 
 
 and in Georg. iii. 1. 473, 
 
 " Spemque gregeinque simul,'" 
 
 for the lambs and the sheep. Yet it is also used to express any 
 thing on which we have a present dependence, and is well applied 
 to a man of distinguished influence, our support, our refuge, our 
 prcesidiiifft, as Horace calls Maecenas. So, ^neid xii. 1. 57, Queen 
 Amata addresses her son-in-law Turnus : — " Spes tu nunc una .•" 
 and he was then no future hope, for she adds, 
 
 " decus imperiumque Latitii 
 
 Te penes ■" 
 
 which might have been said of my Lord Bute some years ago. 
 Now I consider the present Earl of Bute to be '' Exceisa; fami/ii^ de 
 Bute spes prima ;" and my Lord Mountstuart, as his eldest son, to 
 be ''spes altera^ So in ^neid xii. 1. 168, after having mentioned 
 Pater ^neas, who was the present spes, the reigning spes, as my 
 German friends would say, the spes prijna, the poet adds, 
 
 '■'■ Et juxta Ascanius, magnce spes altera Romcer 
 
 ' The passage omitted explained the transaction to which the pre- 
 ceding letter had alluded. Boswell, 
 
 'You
 
 Aetat. 57.] BosweW s defence of his Latin. 27 
 
 'You think altercB ungrammatical, and you tell me it should 
 have been alteri. You must recollect, that in old times alter was 
 declined regularly ; and when the ancient fragments preserved in 
 the jfuris Civilis Pontes were written, it was certainly declined in 
 the way that I use it. This, I should think, may protect a lawyer 
 who writes altercB in a dissertation upon part of his own science. 
 But as I could hardly venture to quote fragments of old law to 
 so classical a man as Mr. Johnson, I have not made an accurate 
 search into these remains, to find examples of what I am able to 
 produce in poetical composition. We find in Plaut. Rudens, act 
 iii. scene 4, 
 
 '■''Nam hide alterse />atna qucc sit prof ecto nescior 
 
 Plautus is, to be sure, an old comick writer ; but in the days of 
 Scipio and Lelius, we find, Terent. Heautontim. act ii. scene 3, 
 
 " hoc ipsa in itinere alterae 
 
 Dmn narrat, forte andiviJ'' 
 
 ' You doubt my having authority for using genus absolutely, for 
 what we call family, that is, for illustrious extraction. Now I take 
 genus in Latin, to have much the same signification with birth in 
 English ; both in their primary meaning expressing simply de- 
 scent, but both made to stand kut it,oxt)y, for noble descent. 
 Genus is thus used in Hor. lib. ii. Sat. v. 1. 8, 
 
 " JSt genus et virtus, nisi cum re, vilior alga est^ 
 
 'And in lib. i. Epist. vi. 1. 37, 
 
 '^ Et genus et formam Regina pecuftia donate 
 
 ' And in the celebrated contest between Ajax and Ulysses, Ovid's 
 Metamorph. lib. xiii. 1. 140, 
 
 '''Nam genus et proavos, et qiice non fccimus ipsi, 
 Vix ea nostra voco^ 
 
 ''Homines tiullius originis, for tiullis orti majoribus, or nullo loco 
 nati, is, you are afraid, "barbarous." 
 
 ' Origo is used to signify extraction, as in Virg. ^neid i. 1. 286, 
 
 '''■ Nascetur pulchra Trojanus origine Ccesar." 
 
 And in ^neid x. 1. 618, 
 
 "///d' tamen nostrA deducit origine nomen." 
 
 And
 
 28 Johnsons intimacy with Mr. Cha?nbers. [a.d. 1766. 
 
 And as iiullus is used for obscure, is it not in the genius of the 
 Latin language to write iiullius originis, for obscure extraction ? 
 
 ' I have defended myself as well as I could. 
 
 ' Might I venture to differ from you with regard to the utility of 
 vows ? I am sensible that it would be very dangerous to make 
 vows rashly, and without a due consideration. But I cannot help 
 thinking that they may often be of great advantage to one of a va- 
 riable judgement and irregular inclinations. I always remember a 
 passage in one of your letters to our Italian friend Baretti ; where 
 talking of the monastick life, you say you do not wonder that 
 serious men should put themselves under the protection of a re- 
 ligious order, when they have found how unable they are to take 
 care of themselves'. For my own part, without affecting to be a 
 Socrates, I am sure I have a more than ordinary struggle to main- 
 tain with the Evil Principle; and all the methods I can devise are 
 
 little enough to keep me tolerably steady in the paths of rectitude. 
 
 ****** 
 
 ' I am ever, with the highest veneration, 
 
 ' Your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 'James Boswell.' 
 
 It appears from Johnson's diary, that he was this year at 
 Mr. Thrale's, from before Midsummer till after Michaelmas, 
 and that he afterwards passed a month at Oxford. He had 
 then contracted a great intimacy with Mr. Chambers of that 
 University, afterwards Sir Robert Chambers, one of the 
 Judges in India ^ 
 
 He published nothing this year in his own name; but the 
 noble dedication^ "^ to the King, of Gwyn's London and West- 
 minster Improved, was written by him ; and he furnished the 
 
 ' See rt!;//r, June lo, 1761. 
 
 "^ Mr. Croker says : — ' It was by visiting Chambers, when a fellow of 
 University College, that Johnson became acquainted with Lord Stow- 
 cll [at that time Wilham Scott] ; and when Chambers went to India, 
 Lord Stowell, as he expressed it to me, seemed to succeed to his place 
 in Johnson's friendship.' Croker's Boswell, p. 90, note. John Scott, 
 (Earl of Eldon,) Sir William Jones and Mr. Windham, were also mem- 
 bers of University College. The hall is adorned with the portraits of 
 these five men. An engraving of Johnson is in the Common Room. 
 
 ^ It is not easy to discover any thing noble or even felicitous in this 
 Dedication. Works, v. 444. 
 
 Preface,
 
 Aetat. 57.] Mrs. Williams s Miscellanies. 29 
 
 Preface, t and sev^eral of the pieces, which compose a volume 
 of Miscellanies by Mrs. Anna WilHams, the blind lady who 
 had an asylum in his house. Of these, there are his ' Epi- 
 taph on Philips \'* 'Translation of a Latin Epitaph on Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer^'f 'Friendship, an Ode^'* and, 'The 
 Ant,'^' a paraphrase from the Proverbs, of which I have a 
 copy in his own hand-writing ; and, from internal evidence, 
 
 I ascribe to him, ' To Miss , on her giving the Authour 
 
 a gold and silk net-work Purse of her own weaving* ;' f and, 
 ' The happy Life ^' f 
 
 Most of the pieces in this volume have evidently received 
 additions from his superiour pen, particularly ' Verses to Mr. 
 Richardson, on his Sir Charles Grandison ;' ' The Excursion;' 
 ' Reflections on a Grave digging in Westminster Abbey \' 
 There is in this collection a poem ' On the Death of Stephen 
 Grey, the Electrician;'* which, on reading it, appeared to 
 me to be undoubtedly Johnson's. I asked Mrs. Williams 
 whether it was not his. 'Sir, (said she, with some warmth,) 
 I wrote that poem before I had the honour of Dr. Johnson's 
 acquaintance.' I, however, was so much impressed with my 
 first notion, that I mentioned it to Johnson, repeating, at 
 the same time, what Mrs. Williams had said. His answer 
 was, ' It is true. Sir, that she wrote it before she was ac- 
 quainted with me ; but she has not told you that I wrote 
 it all over again, except two lines'.' 'The Fountains,' f a 
 
 ' See ajitc, i. 171. " See ante, i. 205, note 2. 
 
 ' See a7ite, i. 182. '' See a7ite, i. 206, note i. 
 
 ^ This poem is scarcely Johnson's, though all the lines but the third 
 in the following couplets may be his. 
 
 ' Whose life not sunk in sloth is free from care, 
 Nor tost by change, nor stagnant in despair ; 
 Who with wise authours pass the instructive day, 
 And wonder how the moments stole away ; 
 Who not retired beyond the sight of life 
 Behold its weary cares, its noisy strife.' — p. 18. 
 
 " Johnson's additions to these three poems are not at all evident. 
 ^ In a note to the poem it is stated that Mrs. Williams, when, be- 
 fore her blindness, she was assisting Mr. Grey in his experiments, was 
 
 beautiful
 
 30 An Erse version of the Bible. [a.d. 17GG. 
 
 beautiful little Fairy tale in prose, written with exquisite 
 simplicity, is one of Johnson's productions; and I cannot 
 with-hold from Mrs. Thrale the praise of being the authour 
 of that admirable poem, ' The Three Warnings.' 
 
 He wrote this year a letter, not intended for publication, 
 which has, perhaps, as strong marks of his sentiment and 
 style, as any of his compositions. The original is in my 
 possession. It is addressed to the late Mr. William Drum- 
 mond, bookseller in Edinburgh, a gentleman of good family, 
 but small estate, who took arms for the house of Stuart in 
 1745 ; and during his concealment in London till the act 
 of general pardon came out obtained the acquaintance of 
 Dr. Johnson, who justly esteemed him as a very worthy 
 man. It seems, some of the members of the society in 
 Scotland for propagating Christian knowledge, had opposed 
 the scheme of translating the holy scriptures into the Erse 
 or Gaelick language, from political considerations of the dis- 
 advantage of keeping up the distinction between the High- 
 landers and the other inhabitants of North - Britain. Dr. 
 Johnson being informed of this, I suppose by Mr. Drum- 
 mond, wrote with a generous indignation as follows: 
 
 ' To Mr. William Drummond. 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' I did not expect to hear that it could be, in an assembly con- 
 vened for the propagation of Christian knowledge, a question wheth- 
 er any nation uninstructed in religion should receive instruction, 
 
 the first that observed the emission of the electrical spark from a hu- 
 man body. The best lines are the following : — 
 
 ' Now, hoary Sage, pursue thy happy flight, 
 With swifter motion haste to purer light, 
 Where Bacon waits with Newton and with Boyle 
 To hail thy genius, and applaud thy toil ; 
 Where intuition breaks through time and space, 
 And mocks experiment's successive race ; 
 Sees tardy Science toil at Nature's laws, 
 And wonders how th' effect obscures the cause. 
 Yet not to deep research or happy guess 
 Is owed the life of hope, the death of peace.' — p. 42. 
 
 or
 
 Aetat. 57.] Languages the pedigree of Nations. 3 1 
 
 or whether that instruction should be imparted to them by a 
 translation of the holy books into their own language. If obedi- 
 ence to the will of God be necessary to happiness, and knowledge 
 of his will be necessary to obedience, I know not how he that with- 
 holds this knowledge, or delays it. can be said to love his neigh- 
 bour as himself. He that voluntarily continues ignorance, is guilty 
 of all the crimes which ignorance produces ; as to him that should 
 extinguish the tapers of a light-house, might justly be imputed the 
 calamities of shipwrecks. Christianity is the highest perfection of 
 humanity ; and as no man is good but as he wishes the good of 
 others, no man can be good in the highest degree who wishes not 
 to others the largest measures of the greatest good. To omit for 
 a year, or for a day, the most efficacious method of advancing 
 Christianity, in compliance with any purposes that terminate on 
 this side of the grave, is a crime of which I know not that the 
 world has yet had an example, except in the practice of the plant- 
 ers of America ', a race of mortals whom, I suppose, no other man 
 wishes to resemble^. 
 
 ' The Papists have, indeed, denied to the laity the use of the 
 bible ; but this prohibition, in few places now very rigorously en- 
 forced, is defended by arguments, which have for their foundation 
 the care of souls. To obscure, upon motives merely political, the 
 light of revelation, is a practice reserved for the reformed ; and, 
 surely, the blackest midnight of popery is meridian sunshine to 
 such a reformation. I am not very willing that any language 
 should be totally extinguished. The similitude and derivation of 
 languages afford the most indubitable proof of the traduction of 
 nations, and the genealogy of mankind \ They add often physical 
 certainty to historical evidence ; and often supply the only evidence 
 of ancient migrations, and of the revolutions of ages which left no 
 written monuments behind them. 
 
 ' A gentleman, writing from Virginia to John Wesley, in 1755, about 
 the need of educating the negro slaves in religion, says : — ' Their mas- 
 ters generally neglect them, as though immortality was not the privi- 
 lege of their souls in common with their own.' Wesley's y^wr;/^?/, ii. 
 288. But much nearer home Johnson might have found this criminal 
 enforcement of ignorance. Burke, writing in 1779, about the Irish, 
 accuses the legislature of 'condemning a million and a half of people 
 to ignorance, according to act of jjarliament.' Burke's Corrcs. ii. 294. 
 
 ° Sq.c post, March 21, 1775, and Appendix. 
 
 ' John.son said very finely: — 'Languages are the pedigree of na- 
 tions.' ^iosvicWs Hebrides, S^Y^X.. 18, 1773. 
 
 ' Evcrv'
 
 32 The translation of the JSrse Bible, [a.d. 1766. 
 
 ' Every man's opinions, at least his desires, are a little influenced 
 by his favourite studies. My zeal for languages may seem, per- 
 haps, rather over-heated, even to those by whom I desire to be 
 well-esteemed. To those who have nothing: in their thoutrhts but 
 trade or policy, present power, or present money, I should not 
 think it necessary to defend my opinions ; but with men of letters 
 I would not unwillingly compound, by wishing the continuance of 
 every language, however narrow in its extent, or however incom- 
 modious for common purposes, till it is reposited in some version 
 of a known book, that it may be always hereafter examined and 
 compared with other languages, and then permitting its disuse. 
 For this purpose, the translation of the bible is most to be desired. 
 It is not certain that the same method will not preserve the High- 
 land language, for the purposes of learning, and abolish it from 
 daily use. When the Highlanders read the Bible, they will natu- 
 rally wish to have its obscurities cleared, and to know the history, 
 collateral or appendant. Knowledge always desires increase : it is 
 like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but 
 which will afterwards propagate itself. When they once desire to 
 learn, they will naturally have recourse to the nearest language by 
 which that desire can be gratified ; and one will tell another that 
 if he would attain knowledge, he must learn English. 
 
 'This speculation may, perhaps, be thought more subtle than 
 the grossness of real life will easily admit. Let it, however, be re- 
 membered, that the efficacy of ignorance has been long tried, and 
 has not produced the consequence expected. Let knowledge, 
 therefore, take its turn ; and let the patrons of privation stand 
 awhile aside, and admit the operation of positive principles. 
 
 ' You will be pleased. Sir, to assure the worthy man who is em- 
 ployed in the new translation', that he has my wishes for his 
 
 ' The Rev. Mr. John Campbell, Minister of the Parish of Kippen, 
 near Stirling, who has lately favoured me with a long, intelligent, and 
 very obliging letter upon this work, makes the following remark : — 
 ' Dr. Johnson has alluded to the worthy man employed in the transla- 
 tion of the New Testament. Might not this have afforded you an 
 opportunity of paying a proper tribute of respect to the memory of 
 the Rev. Mr. James Stuart, late Minister of Killin, distinguished by 
 his eminent Piety, Learning and Taste .^ The amiable simplicity of 
 his life, his warm benevolence, his indefatigable and successful exer- 
 tions for civilizing and improving the Parish of which he was Minister 
 for upwards of fifty years, entitle him to the gratitude of his country, 
 and the veneration of all good men. It certainly would be a pity, if 
 
 success ;
 
 Aetat. 57.] The translation of the Erse Bible. 33 
 
 success ; and if here or at Oxford I can be of any use, that I 
 shall think it more than honour to promote his undertaking. 
 ' I am sorry that I delayed so long to write. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, 
 Aug. 13, 1766.' 
 
 The opponents of this pious scheme being made ashamed 
 of their conduct, the benevolent undertaking was allowed to 
 go on '. 
 
 The following letters, though not written till the year 
 after, being chiefly upon the same subject, are here inserted : 
 
 'To Mr. William Drummond. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' That my letter should have had such effects as you mention, 
 gives me great pleasure. I hope you do not flatter me by imput- 
 ing to me more good than I have really done. Those whom my 
 arguments have persuaded to change their opinion, shew such 
 modesty and candour as deserve great praise. 
 
 ' I hope the worthy translator goes diligently forward. He has 
 a higher reward in prospect than any honours which this world 
 can bestow. I wish I could be useful to him. 
 
 ' The publication of my letter, if it could be of use in a cause to 
 which all other causes are nothing, I should not prohibit. But 
 first, I would have you consider whether the publication will really 
 do any good ; next, whether by printing and distributing a very 
 small number, you may not attain all that you propose ; and, what 
 perhaps I should have said first, whether the letter, which I do 
 not now perfectly remember, be fit to be printed. 
 
 ' If you can consult Dr. Robertson, to whom I am a little known, 
 
 such a character should be permitted to sink into oblivion.' Bos- 
 
 WELL. 
 
 ' Seven years later Johnson received from the Society some relig- 
 ious works in Erse. Sec /(?^/, June 24, 1774. Yet in his journey to 
 the Hebrides, in 1773 {Works, ix. loi), he had to record of the paro- 
 chial schools in those islands that ' by the rule of their institution 
 they teach only English, so that the natives read a language which 
 they may never use or understand.' 
 
 II.— 3 I shall
 
 34 -^ poor relation. [a.d. 1766. 
 
 I shall be satisfied about the propriety of whatever he shall direct. 
 If he thinks that it should be printed, I entreat him to revise it ; 
 there may, perhaps, be some negligent lines written, and whatever 
 is amiss, he knows very well how to rectify'. 
 
 ' Be pleased to let me know, from time to time, how this excel- 
 lent design goes forward. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to young Mr. Drummond, whom I hope 
 you will live to see such as you desire him. 
 
 ' I have not lately seen Mr. Elphinston ^ but believe him to be 
 prosperous. I shall be glad to hear the same of you, for I am, Sir, 
 ' Your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson,' 
 ' Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, 
 April 21, 1767.' 
 
 'To THE Same. 
 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' I returned this week from the country, after an absence of 
 near six months, and found your letter with many others, which I 
 should have answered sooner, if I had sooner seen them. 
 
 ' Dr. Robertson's opinion was surely right. Men should not be 
 told of the faults which they have mended. I am glad the old 
 language is taught, and honour the translator as a man whom God 
 has distinguished by the high office of propagating his word. 
 
 ' I must take the liberty of engaging you in an office of charity. 
 Mrs. Heely, the wife of Mr. Heely, who had lately some office in 
 your theatre, is my near relation, and now in great distress. They 
 wrote me word of their situation some time ago, to which I re- 
 turned them an answer which raised hopes of more than it is proper 
 for me to give them. Their representation of their affairs I have 
 discovered to be such as cannot be trusted ; and at this distance, 
 though their case requires haste, I know not how to act. She, or 
 her daughters, may be heard of at Canongate Head. I must beg, 
 Sir, that you will enquire after them, and let me know what is to 
 be done. I am willing to go to ten pounds, and will transmit you 
 such a sum, if upon examination you find it likely to be of use. 
 If they are in immediate v/ant, advance them what you think proper, 
 
 ' This paragraph shews Jo'nnson's real estimation of the character 
 and abilities of the celebrated Scottish Historian, however lightly, in 
 a moment of caprice, he may have spoken of his works, Boswell. 
 
 ' See ante, i. 243. 
 
 What
 
 Aetat. 57.] Cutkbert Shaw. 35 
 
 What I could do, I would do for the women, having no great rea- 
 son to pay much regard to Heely himself '. 
 
 ' I believe you may receive some intelligence from Mrs. Baker, 
 of the theatre, whose letter I received at the same time with yours ; 
 and to whom, if you see her, you will make my excuse for the 
 seeming neglect of answering her, 
 
 ' Whatever you advance within ten pounds shall be immediately 
 
 returned to you, or paid as you shall order. I trust wholly to your 
 
 judgement. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, &:c. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' London, Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, 
 Oct. 24, 1767.' 
 
 Mr. Cuthbert Shaw ^ alike distinguished by his genius, mis- 
 fortunes, and misconduct, published this year a poem, called 
 ' The Race, by Mercurius Spur, Esq. \' in which he whimsi- 
 cally made the living poets of England contend for pre-emi- 
 nence of fame by running: 
 
 ' Prove by their heels the prowess of the head.' 
 
 In this poem there was the following portrait of Johnson : 
 
 ' Here Johnson comes, — unblest with outward grace, 
 His rigid morals stamp'd upon his face. 
 While strong conceptions struggle in his brain ; 
 (For even wit is brought to-bed with pain :) 
 
 ' This is the person concerning whom Sir John Hawkins has 
 thrown out very unwarrantable reflections both against Dr. Johnson 
 and Mr. Francis Barber. Boswell. See post, under Oct. 20, 1784. 
 In 1775, Heely, it appears, applied through Johnson for the post that 
 was soon to be vacant of ' master of the tap ' at Ranelagh House. 
 ' He seems,' wrote Johnson, in forwarding his letter of application, 
 'to have a genius for an alehouse.' Plozsi Letters, \.2\o. See also 
 post, Aug. 12, 17CS4. 
 
 "^ Sec an account of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. Bos- 
 well. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school 
 usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor 
 to a youthful Farl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats 
 of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered 
 him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or 1739, 
 and died in 1771. 
 
 ' It was republished in The Repository, ii. 227, edition of 1790. 
 
 To
 
 o 
 
 6 The Hon. Thomas Hervey. [a.d. 1766, 
 
 To view him, porters with their loads would rest, 
 And babes cling frighted to the nurse's breast. 
 With looks convuls'd he roars in pompous strain, 
 And, like an angry lion, shakes his mane. 
 The Nine, with terrour struck, who ne'er had seen, 
 Aught human with so horrible a mien. 
 Debating whether they should stay or run. 
 Virtue steps forth, and claims him for her son : 
 With gentle speech she warns him now to yield, 
 Nor stain his glories in the doubtful field ; 
 But wrapt in conscious worth, content sit down. 
 Since Fame, resolv'd his various pleas to crown. 
 Though forc'd his present claim to disavow, 
 , Had long reserv'd a chaplet for his brow. 
 He bows, obeys ; for time shall first expire, 
 Ere Johnson stay, when Virtue bids retire.' 
 
 The Honourable Thomas Hervey ' and his lady having 
 unhappily disagreed, and being about to separate, Johnson 
 interfered as their friend, and wrote him a letter of expostu- 
 lation, which I have not been able to find ; but the substance 
 of it is ascertained by a letter to Johnson in answer to it, 
 which Mr. Hervey printed. The occasion of this corre- 
 spondence between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Hervey, was thus 
 related to me by Mr. Beauclerk\ ' Tom Hervey had a great 
 liking 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 insult- 
 ing him, and have afterwards put the note in his pocket. 
 But I said, if Hervey w^ould write him a letter, and enclose a 
 
 * The Hon. Thomas Hervey, whose Letter to Sir Thomas Hafitner in 
 1742 was much read at that time. He was the second son of John, 
 first Earl of Bristol, and one of the brothers of Johnson's early friend, 
 Henry Hervey. He died Jan. 20, 1775. M alone. See post, April 6, 
 
 1775- 
 ^ See post, under Sept. 22, 1777, for another story told by Beauclerk 
 
 against Johnson of a Mr. Hervey. 
 
 f^fty
 
 Aetat. 58.] The library in the Queen's house. 37 
 
 fifty pound note, I should take care to deliver it. He ac- 
 cordingly did write him a letter, mentioning that he was 
 only paying a legacy a little sooner. To his letter he added, 
 "P.S. I am going to part zvitJi my zvife^ Johnson then 
 wrote to him, saying nothing of the note, but remonstrating 
 with him against parting with his w'ife.' 
 
 When I mentioned to Johnson this story, in as delicate 
 terms as I could, he told me that the fifty pound note was 
 given to him by Mr. Hervey in consideration of his having 
 written for him a pamphlet against Sir Charles Hanbury 
 Williams, who, Mr. Hervey imagined, was the authour of an 
 attack upon him ; but that it was afterwards discovered to 
 be the work of a garreteer who wrote The FooP : the pam- 
 phlet therefore against Sir Charles was not printed \ 
 
 In February, 1767, there happened one of the most re- 
 markable incidents of Johnson's life, which gratified his m.o- 
 narchical enthusiasm, and which he loved to relate with all its 
 circumstances, when requested by his friends. This was his 
 being honoured by a private conversation with his Majesty, 
 in the library at the Queen's house ^ He had frequently 
 
 ' Essays published in the Daily Gazetteer and afterwards collected 
 into two vols. Cent. Mag. for 1748, p. 48. 
 
 ^ Mr. Croker regrets that Johnson employed his pen for hire in 
 Hervey 's 'disgusting squabbles,' and in a long note describes Her- 
 vey 's letter to Sir Thomas Hanmer with whose wife he had eloped. 
 But the attack to which Johnson was hired to reply was not made by 
 Hanmer, but, as was supposed, by Sir C. H. Williams. Because a man 
 has wronged another, he is not therefore to submit to the attacks of 
 a third. Williams, moreover, it must be remembered, was himself a 
 man of licentious character. 
 
 ^ Buckingham House, bought in 1761, by George HI, and settled on 
 Queen Charlotte. The present Buckingham Palace occupies the site. 
 P. CUXNINGHAM. Here, according to Hawkins {Li'fe, p. 470), John- 
 son met the Prince of Wales (George IV) when a child, 'and enquired 
 as to his knowledge of the Scriptures ; the Prince in his answers gave 
 him great satisfaction.' Horace Walpole, writing of the Prince at the 
 age of nineteen, says {Journal of the Reign of Geors;e III, ii. 503) : — 
 ' Nothing was coarser than his conversation and phrases ; and it made 
 men smile to find that in the palace of piety and pride his Royal High- 
 ness had learnt nothing but the dialect of footmen and grooms.' 
 
 visited
 
 2)8 Jofmsons conversation with the King. [a.d. 1767. 
 
 visited those splendid rooms and noble collection of books ', 
 which he used to say was more numerous and curious than 
 he supposed any person could have made in the time which 
 the King had employed. Mr. Barnard, the librarian, took 
 care that he should have every accommodation that could 
 contribute to his ease and convenience, while indulging his 
 literary taste in that place ; so that he had here a very agree- 
 able resource at leisure hours. 
 
 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 where 
 the King was, and, in obedience to his Majesty's commands, 
 mentioned that Dr. Johnson was then in the library. His 
 Majesty said he was at leisure, and would go to him ; upon 
 which Mr. Barnard took one of the candles that stood on 
 the King's table, and lighted his Majesty through a suite of 
 rooms, till they came to a private door into the library, of 
 which his Majesty had the key. Being entered, Mr. Barnard 
 stepped forward hastily to Dr. Johnson, who was still in a 
 profound study, and whispered him, ' Sir, here is the King.' 
 Johnson started up, and stood still. His Majesty approached 
 him, and at once was courteously easy^ 
 
 * Dr. Johnson had the honour of contributing his assistance towards 
 the formation of this Hbrary ; for I have read a long letter from him 
 to Mr. Barnard, giving the most masterly instructions on the subject. 
 I wished much to have gratified my readers with the perusal of this 
 letter, and have reason to think that his Majesty would have been 
 graciously pleased to permit its publication ; but Mr. Barnard, to 
 whom I applied, declined it ' on his own account.' Boswell. It is 
 given in Mr. Croker's edition, p. 196. 
 
 "^ The particulars of this conversation I have been at great pains to 
 collect with the utmost authenticity from Dr. Johnson's own detail to 
 myself; from Mr. Langton who was present when he gave an account 
 of it to Dr. Joseph Warton, and several other friends, at Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds's ; from Mr. Barnard ; from the copy of a letter written by 
 the late Mr. Strahan the printer, to Bishop Warburton ; and from a 
 
 His
 
 Aetat. 58.] Johnson s conversation with the King. 39 
 
 His Majesty began by observing, that he understood he 
 came sometimes to the Hbrary ; and then mentioning his 
 having heard that the Doctor had been lately at Oxford ', 
 asked him if he was not fond of going thither. To which 
 Johnson answered, that he was indeed fond of going to Ox- 
 ford sometimes, but was likewise glad to come back again. 
 The King then asked him what they were doing at Oxford. 
 Johnson answered, he could not much commend their dili- 
 gence, but that in some respects they were mended, for they 
 had put their press under better regulations, and were at 
 that time printing Polybius. He was then asked whether 
 there were better libraries at Oxford or Cambridge. He 
 answered, he believed the Bodleian was larger than any 
 they had at Cambridge ; at the same time adding, ' I hope, 
 whether we have more books or not than they have at Cam- 
 bridge, we shall make as good use of them as they do.' 
 Being asked whether All -Souls or Christ -Church library '^ 
 
 minute, the original of which is among the papers of the late Sir 
 James Caldwell, and a copy of which was most obligingly obtained for 
 me from his son Sir John Caldwell, by Sir Francis Lumm. To all 
 these gentlemen I beg leave to make my grateful acknowledgements, 
 and particularly to Sir Francis Lumm, who was pleased to take a great 
 deal of trouble, and even had the minute laid before the King by Lord 
 Caermarthen, now Duke of Leeds, then one of his Majesty's Principal 
 Secretaries of State, who announced to Sir Francis the Royal pleas- 
 ure concerning it by a letter, in these words : ' I have the King's com- 
 mands to assure you. Sir, how sensible his Majesty is of your attention 
 in communicating the minute of the conversation previous to its pub- 
 lication. As there appears no objection to your complying with Mr. 
 Boswell's wishes on the subject, you are at full liberty to deliver it to 
 that gentleman, to make such use of in his Life of Dr. Johnson, as he 
 may think proper.' Boswell. In 1790, Boswell published in a quarto 
 sheet of eight pages 'A conversation between His Most Sacred Majesty 
 George III and Samuel Johnson, LLD. Illustrated iviih Observations. 
 By James Boswell, Esq. London. Printed by Ilefiry Baldwin, for 
 Charles Dilly in the Poultry. M DCCXC. Price Half-a-Guinea. En- 
 tered in the Hall-Book of the Company of Stationers.' It is of the same 
 im[jression as the first edition of the Life of Johnsoft. 
 
 ' After Michaelmas, 1766. See a7ite, ii. 28. 
 
 ' Sec post, May 31, 1769, note. 
 
 was
 
 40 Compliments paid by a King. [a.d. 1767. 
 
 was the largest, he answered, ' All-Souls library is the largest 
 we have, except the Bodleian.' ' Aye, (said the King,) that 
 is the publick library.' 
 
 His Majesty enquired if he was then writing any thing. 
 He answered, he was not, for he had pretty well told the 
 Avorld what he knew, and must now read to acquire more 
 knowledge '. The King, as it should seem with a view to 
 urge him to rely on his own stores as an original writer, 
 and to continue his labours \ then said, ' I do not think you 
 borrow much from any body.' 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, that ' No man 
 could have paid a handsomer compliment ; and it was fit 
 for a King to pay. It was decisive.' When asked by an- 
 other friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made any 
 reply to this high compliment, he answered, ' No, Sir. When 
 the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to 
 bandy civilities with my Sovereign'.' Perhaps no man who 
 had spent his whole life in courts could have shewn a more 
 nice and dignified sense of true politeness, than Johnson did 
 in this instance. 
 
 His Majesty having observed to him that he supposed 
 
 ' Writing to Langton, on May lo, of the year before he had said, ' I 
 read more than I did. I hope something will yet come on it.' Aiite, 
 ii. 22. 
 
 ^ Boswell and Goldsmith had in like manner urged him 'to con- 
 tinue his labours.' See ante, i.461, and ii. 17. 
 
 ^ Johnson had written to Lord Chesterfield in the Plan of his Dic- 
 tionary {Works, Y. 19), ' Ausonius thought that modesty forbade him 
 to plead inability for a task to which Coesar had judged him equal : — 
 Cur me posse negem posse quod ille putatf We may compare also a 
 passage in Mme. D'Arblay's Diary (ii. 377) :— 'The King. " I believe 
 there is no constraint to be put upon real genius ; nothing but incli- 
 nation can set it to work. Miss Burney, however, knows best." And 
 then hastily returning to me he cried : " What.^ what?" " No, sir, I 
 —I— believe not, certainly." quoth I, very awkwardly, for I seemed 
 taking a violent compliment only as my due ; but I knew not how to 
 put him off as I would another person.' 
 
 he
 
 Aetat. 58.] Jokusou s reading. 41 
 
 he must have read a great deal ; Johnson answered, that he 
 thought more than he read ' ; that he had read a great deal 
 in the early part of his life, but having fallen into ill health, 
 he had not been able to read much, compared with others : 
 for instance, he said he had not read much, compared with 
 Dr. Warburton^ Upon which the King said, that he heard 
 Dr. Warburton was a man of such general knowledge, that 
 you could scarce talk with him on any subject on which he 
 was not qualified to speak ; and that his learning resembled 
 Garrick's acting, in its universality '. His Majesty then talked 
 
 ' In one part of the character of Pope {Works, \\\\. 319), Johnson 
 seems to be describing himself : — ' He certainly was in his early life a 
 man of great literary curiosity ; and when he wrote his Essay on Crit- 
 icism had for his age a very wide acquaintance with books. When he 
 entered into the living world, it seems to have happened to him as to 
 many others, that he was less attentive to dead masters ; he studied 
 in the academy of Paracelsus, and made the universe his favourite vol- 
 ume. ... His frequent references to histoiy, his allusions to various 
 kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and nature, with 
 his observ'ations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, 
 show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and 
 diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it.' See 
 ante, i. 65. 
 
 " Johnson thus describes Warburton {Works, viii. 288): — 'About 
 this time [1732] Warburton began to make his appearance in the first 
 ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid 
 and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited enquiry, with won- 
 derful extent and variety of knowledge.' Cradock {Memoirs, i. 188) 
 says that ' Bishop Hurd always wondered where it was possible for 
 Warburton to meet with certain anecdotes with which not only his 
 conversation, but likewise his writings, abounded. " I could have 
 readily informed him," said Mrs. Warburton, " for, when we passed 
 our winters in London, he would often, after his long and severe stud- 
 ies, send out for a whole basketful of books from the circulating libra- 
 ries ; and at times I have gone into his study, and found him laughing, 
 though alone." ' Lord Macaulay was, in this respect, the Warburton 
 of our age. 
 
 ' The Rev. Mr. Strahan clearly recollects having been told by John- 
 son, that the King observed that Pope made Warburton a Bishop. 
 ' True, Sir, (said Johnson,) but Warburton did more for Pope ; he made 
 him a Christian :' alluding, no doubt, to his ingenious Comments on 
 the Essay on Man. Boswell. The statements both of the King and 
 
 of
 
 42 Waybiirton and Lowth. [a.d. 1767. 
 
 of the controversy between Warburton and Lowth, which he 
 seemed to have read, and asked Johnson what he thought of 
 it. Johnson answered, ' Warburton has most general, most 
 scholastick learning ; Lowth is the more correct scholar. I do 
 not know which of them calls names best.' The King was 
 pleased to say he was of the same opinion ; adding, ' You do 
 not think, then. Dr. Johnson, that there was much argument 
 in the case.' Johnson said, he did not think there was'. 
 ' Why truly, (said the King,) when once it comes to calling 
 names, argument is pretty \\q\\ at an end.' 
 
 His Majesty then asked him what he thought of Lord 
 
 Johnson are supported by two passages in Johnson's Life of Pope 
 ( Works, viii. 289, 290). He says of Warburton's Comments : — ' Pope, 
 who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad 
 that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know the full 
 meaning, could by any mode of interpretation be made to mean well. 
 . . . From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his com- 
 mentator, and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal ; for he intro- 
 duced him to Mr. Murray, by whose interest he became preacher at 
 Lincoln's Inn ; and to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his es- 
 tate, and by consequence a bishoprick.' See also the account given 
 by Johnson, in Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773. Bishop Law in his 
 Revised Preface to Archbishop King's Origin <7/"irw7 (1781), p. xvii., 
 writes : — ' I had now the satisfaction of seeing that those very princi- 
 ples which had been maintained by Archbishop King were adopted 
 by Mr. Pope in his Essay on Man ; this I used to recollect, and some- 
 times relate, with pleasure, conceiving that such an account did no less 
 honour to the poet than to our philosopher ; but was soon made to 
 understand that any thing of that kind was taken highly amiss by 
 one [Warburton] who had once held the doctrine of that same Essay 
 to be rank atheism, but afterwards turned a warm advocate for it, 
 and thought proper to deny the account above-mentioned, with heavy 
 menaces against those who presumed to insinuate that Pope bor- 
 rowed anything from any man whatsoever.' S&e posf, Oct. 10, 1779. 
 
 ' In Gibbon's Memoirs, a fine passage is quoted from Lowth 's De- 
 fence of the University of Oxford, against Warburton's reproaches. 
 ' I transcribe with pleasure this eloquent passage,' writes Gibbon, 
 ' without inquiring whether in this angry controversy the spirit of 
 Lowth himself is purified from the intolerant zeal which Warburton 
 had ascribed to the genius of the place.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 47. 
 See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773. 
 
 Lyttelton's
 
 Aetat. 58.] Dr. Hill. 43 
 
 Lyttelton's History, which was then just published'. John- 
 son said, he thought his style pretty good, but that he had 
 blamed Henry the Second rather too much. ' Why, (said 
 the King,) they seldom do these things by halves.' ' No, 
 Sir, (answered Johnson,) not to Kings.' But fearing to be 
 misunderstood, he proceeded to explain himself ; and im- 
 mediately subjoined, ' That for those who spoke worse of 
 Kings than they deserved, he could find no excuse ; but that 
 he could more easily conceive how some might speak better 
 of them than -they deserved, without any ill intention ; for, as 
 Kings had much in their power to give, those who were 
 favoured by them would frequently, from gratitude, exag- 
 gerate their praises ; and as this proceeded from a good 
 motive, it was certainly excusable, as far as errour could be 
 excusable.' 
 
 The King then asked him what he thought of Dr. HilP. 
 
 * See post, April 15, 1773, where Johnson says that Lyttelton ' in his 
 History wrote the most vulgar Whiggism,' and April 10, 1776. Gib- 
 bon, who had reviewed it this year, says in his Memoirs (A/isc. IForA-s, 
 i. 207) . ' The public has ratified my judgment of that voluminous 
 work, in which sense and learning are not illuminated by a ray of 
 genius.' 
 
 ^ Hawkins says of him (Lz/c', p. 211) : — 'He obtained from one of 
 those universities which would scarce refuse a degree to an apothe- 
 cary's horse a diploma for that of doctor of physic' He became a 
 great compiler and in one year earned ^^1500. In the end he turned 
 quack-doctor. He was knighted by the King of Sweden ' in return 
 for a present to that monarch of his Vegetable System.' He at least 
 thrice attacked Garrick (Murphy's Garrick, pp. 136, 189, 212), who re- 
 plied with three epigrams, of which the last is well-known : — 
 
 ' For Farces and Physic his equal there scarce is ; 
 His Farces are Physic, his Physic a Farce is.' 
 
 Horace Walpole {Letters, iii. 372), writing on Jan. 3, 1761, said: — 
 'Would you believe, what I know is fact, that Dr. Hill earned fifteen 
 guineas a week by working for wholesale dealers.' He was at once 
 employed on six voluminous works of Botany, Husbandry, &c., pub- 
 lished weekly.' Churchill in the Rosciad thw?, writes of him : — 
 
 ' Who could so nobly grace the motley list, 
 Actor, Inspector, Doctor, Botanist.-* 
 
 Johnson
 
 44 Dr. Hill. [a.d. 17G7. 
 
 Johnson answered, that he was an ingenious man, but had no 
 veracity ; and immediately mentioned, as an instance of it, 
 an assertion of that writer, that he had seen objects magni- 
 fied to a much greater degree by using three or four micro- 
 scopes at a time, than by using one. ' Now, (added John- 
 son,) every one acquainted with microscopes knows, that the 
 more of them he looks through, the less the object will ap- 
 pear.' ' Why, (replied the King,) this is not only telling an 
 untruth, but telling it clumsily ; for, if that be the case, every 
 one who can look through a microscope will be able to de- 
 tect him '.' 
 
 ' I now, (said Johnson to his friends, when relating what 
 had passed,) began to consider that I was depreciating this 
 man in the estimation of his Sovereign, and thought it was 
 time for me to say something that might be more favour- 
 able.' He added, therefore, that Dr. Hill was, notwithstand- 
 ing, a very curious observer; and if he would have been con- 
 tented to tell the world no more than he knew, he might 
 have been a very considerable man, and needed not to have 
 recourse to such mean expedients to raise his reputation^. 
 
 The King then talked of literary journals, mentioned par- 
 ticularly the Journal des Savans, and asked Johnson if it was 
 
 Knows any one so well — sure no one knows — 
 At once to play, prescribe, compound, compose ?' 
 
 Churchill's Poems, i. 6. In the Gent. Mag. xxii. 568, it is stated that 
 he had acted pantomime, tragedy and comedy, and had been damned 
 in all. 
 
 ' Mr. Croker quotes Bishop Elrington, who says, ' Dr. Johnson was 
 unjust to Hill, and showed that he did not understand the subject.' 
 Croker's Boswell, p. 1 86. 
 
 " D'Israeli {Curiosities of Liter attire, ed. 1834, i. 201) says that ' Hill, 
 once when he fell sick, owned to a friend that he had ov^er-fatigued 
 himself with writing seven works at once, one of which was on archi- 
 tecture and another on cookeiy.' D'Israeli adds that Hill contracted 
 to translate a Dutch work on insects for fifty guineas. As he was 
 ignorant of the language, he bargained with another translator for 
 twenty-five guineas. This man, who was equally ignorant, rebar- 
 gained with a third, who perfectly understood his original, for twelve 
 guineas. 
 
 well
 
 Aetat. 58.] The REVIEWS. 45 
 
 well done. Johnson said, it was formerly very well done, and 
 gave some account of the persons who began it, and carried 
 it on for some years ; enlarging, at the same time, on the 
 nature and use of such works. The King asked him if it was 
 well done now. Johnson answered, he had no reason to think 
 that it was'. The King then asked him if there were any 
 other literar}^ journals published in this kingdom, except the 
 Monthly and Critical Rcvicivs"^ ; and on being answered there 
 were no other, his Majesty asked which of them was the best : 
 Johnson answered, that the Monthly Review was done with 
 most care, the Critical upon the best principles ; adding that 
 the authours of the Motithly Review were enemies to the 
 Church ^ This the King said he was sorry to hear. 
 
 The conversation next turned on the Philosophical Trans- 
 actions, when Johnson observed, that they had now a better 
 method of arranging their materials than formerly. ' Aye, 
 (said the King.) they are obliged to Dr. Johnson for that ;' 
 for his Majesty had heard and remembered the circumstance, 
 which Johnson himself had forgot^. 
 
 ' Gibbon {Misc. Works, v. 442), writing on Dec. 20, 1763, of the /oiif- 
 nal dcs Savans, says : — ' I can hardly express how much I am delighted 
 with this journal ; its characteristics are erudition, precision, and taste. 
 . . . The father of all the rest, it is still their superior. . . . There is 
 nothing to be wished for in it but a little more boldness and philoso- 
 phy ; but it is published under the Chancellor's eye.' 
 
 ^ Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning (ch. xi.), pub- 
 lished in 1759, says: — 'We have two literary reviews in London, with 
 critical newspapers and magazines without number. The compilers 
 of these resemble the commoners of Rome, they are all for levelling 
 property, not by increasing their own, but by diminishing that of oth- 
 ers. . . . The most diminutive son of fame or of famine has his we and 
 his 7is, his frstlys and his secondlys, as methodical as if bound in cow- 
 hide and closed with clasps of brass. Were these Monthly Reviews 
 and Magazines frothy, pert, or absurd, they might find some pardon, 
 but to be dull and dronish is an encroachment on the prerogative of 
 a folio.' 
 
 ^ See /f.fA April 10, 1766. 
 
 ^ Mr. White, the Librarian of the Royal Society, has, at my request, 
 kindly examined the records of the Royal Society, but has not been 
 able to discover what the ' circumstance ' was. Neither is any light 
 
 His
 
 46 Johnsoiis manner before the King. [a.d. 1767. 
 
 His Majesty expressed a desire to have the literary biogra- 
 phy of this country ably executed, and proposed to Dr. John- 
 son to undertake it. Johnson signified his readiness to com- 
 ply with his Majesty's wishes. 
 
 During the whole of this interview, Johnson talked to his 
 Majesty with profound respect, but still in his firm manly 
 manner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued 
 tone which is commonly used at the levee and in the draw- 
 ing-room'. After the King withdrew, Johnson shewed him- 
 self highly pleased with his Majesty's conversation, and gra- 
 cious behaviour. He said to Mr. Barnard, ' Sir, they may 
 talk of the King as they will ; but he is the finest gentleman 
 I have ever seen ^' And he afterwards observed to Mr. Lang- 
 ton, ' Sir, his manners are those of as fine a gentleman as we 
 may suppose Lewis the Fourteenth or Charles the Second.' 
 
 At Sir Joshua Reynolds's, where a circle of Johnson's 
 friends was collected round him to hear his account of this 
 
 • 
 
 thrown on it by Johnson's reviews of Birch's History of the Royal So- 
 ciety and Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlix. {afitc, 1. 358), which I 
 have examined. 
 
 ' ' Were you to converse with a King, you ought to be as easy and 
 unembarrassed as with your own valet-de-chambre ; but yet every 
 look, word, and action should imply the utmost respect. What would 
 be proper and well-bred with others much your superior, would be 
 absurd and ill-bred with one so very much so.' Chesterfield's Letters, 
 iii. 203. 
 
 ^ Imlac thus described to Rasselas his interview with the Great 
 Mogul: — 'The emperor asked me many questions concerning my 
 country and my travels ; and though I cannot now recollect any thing 
 that he uttered above the power of a common man, he dismissed me 
 astonished at his wisdom, and enamoured of his goodness.' Rasselas, 
 chap. ix. Wraxall {Memoirs, edit, of 1884, i. 283) says that Johnson 
 was no judge of a fine gentleman. 'George III,' he adds, 'was alto- 
 gether destitute of these ornamental and adventitious endowments.' 
 He mentions 'the oscillations of his body, the precipitation of his 
 questions, none of which, it was said, would wait for an answer, and 
 the hurry of his articulation.' Mr. Wheatley, in a note on this pas- 
 sage, quotes the opinion of ' Adams, the American Envoy, who said, 
 the " King is, I really think, the most accomplished courtier in his 
 dominions." ' 
 
 memorable
 
 Aetat. 58.] Dr. Joseph War ton. 47 
 
 memorable conversation, Dr. Joseph Warton, in his frank 
 and Hvely manner', was very active in pressing him to men- 
 tion the particulars. ' Come now, Sir, this is an interesting 
 matter; do favour us with it.' Johnson, with great good 
 humour, complied. 
 
 He told them, ' I found his Majesty w^ished I should talk, 
 and I made it my business to talk. I find it does a man 
 good to be talked to by his Sovereign. In the first place, 
 a man cannot be in a passion — .' Here some question in- 
 terrupted him, which is to be regretted, as he certainly 
 would have pointed out and illustrated many circumstances 
 
 ' ' Dr. Warton made me a most obsequious bow. . . . He is what 
 Dr. Johnson calls a rapturist, and I saw plainly he meant to pour forth 
 much civility into my ears. He is a very communicative, gay, and 
 pleasant converser, and enlivened the whole day by his readiness upon 
 all subjects.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 236. It is very, likely that 
 he is 'the ingenious writer' mentioned post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 
 ' Collection,' of whom Johnson said, ' Sir, he is an enthusiast by rule.' 
 Mr. Windham records that Johnson, speaking of Warton 's admiration 
 of fine passages, said : — 'His taste is amazement" (misprinted afiiuse- 
 inefif). Windham's Diary, p. 20. In her Memoirs of Dr. Biirney (ii. 
 82), Mme. D'Arblay says that Johnson ' at times, when in gay spirits, 
 would take off Dr. Warton with the strongest humour; describing, 
 almost convulsively, the ecstasy with which he would seize upon the 
 person nearest to him, to hug in his arms, lest his grasp should be 
 eluded, while he displayed some picture or some prospect.' In that 
 humourous ^\ccq. Probationary Odes for the Laureateship (p. xliii.), 
 Dr. Joseph is made to hug his brother in his arms, when he sees him 
 descend safely from the balloon in which he had composed his Ode. 
 Thomas Warton is described in the same piece (p. 116) as 'a little, 
 thick, squat, red-faced man.' There was for some time a coolness be- 
 tween Johnson and Dr. Warton. Warton, writing on Jan. 22, 1766, 
 .says • — ' I only dined with Johnson, who seemed cold and indifferent, 
 and scarce said anything to me ; perhaps he has heard what I said of 
 his Shakespeare, or rather was offended at what I wrote to him — as 
 he pleases.' WooU's Warton, p. 312. Wooll says that a dispute took 
 place between the two men at Reynolds's house. ' One of the com- 
 pany overheard the following conclusion of the dispute. Johnson. 
 " Sir, I am not used to be contradicted." Warton. " Better for your- 
 self and friends, Sir, if you were; our admiration could not be in- 
 creased, but our Icjvc might." ' lb. p. 98. 
 
 of
 
 48 Goldsiuiilis affected indiffere^ice. [a.d. 1767, 
 
 of advantage, from being in a situation, where the powers 
 of the mind are at once excited to vigorous exertion, and 
 tempered by reverential awe. 
 
 During all the time in which Dr. Johnson was employed 
 in relating to the circle at Sir Joshua Reynolds's the particu- 
 lars of what passed between the King and him, Dr. Gold- 
 smith remained unmoved upon a sopha at some distance, af- 
 fecting not to join in the least in the eager curiosity of the 
 company. He assigned as a reason for his gloom and seeming 
 inattention, that he apprehended Johnson had relinquished 
 his purpose of furnishing him with a Prologue to his play', 
 wuth the hopes of which he had been flattered ; but it was 
 strongly suspected that he was fretting with chagrin and 
 envy at the singular honour Dr. Johnson had lately enjoyed. 
 At length, the frankness and simplicity of his natural char- 
 acter prevailed. He sprung from the sopha, advanced to 
 Johnson, and in a kind of flutter, from imagining himself in 
 the situation which he had just been hearing described, ex- 
 claimed, ' Well, you acquitted yourself in this conversation 
 better than I should have done ; for I should have bowed 
 and stammered through the whole of it\' 
 
 I received no letter from Johnson this year; nor have I 
 
 ' The Good-Naiured Man, post, p. 45. 
 
 ^ ' It has been said that the King only sought one interview with 
 Dr. Johnson. There was nothing to complain of ; it was a compli- 
 ment paid by rank to letters, and once was enough. The King was 
 more afraid of this interview than Dr. Johnson was ; and went to it 
 as a schoolboy to his task. But he did not want to have this trial 
 repeated every day, nor was it necessary. The very jealousy of his 
 self-love marked his respect ; and if he had thought less of Dr. John- 
 son, he would have been more willing to risk the encounter.' Haz- 
 litt's Conversations of Northcote, p. 45. It should seem that Johnson 
 had a second interview with the King thirteen years later. In 1780, 
 Hannah More records {Memoirs, \. 174): — 'Johnson told me he had 
 been with the King that morning, who enjoined him to add Spenser 
 to his Lives of the Poets' It is strange that, so far as I know, this in- 
 terview is not mentioned by any one else. It is perhaps alluded to, 
 post, Dec. 1784, when Mr. Nichols told Johnson that he wished 'he 
 would gratify his sovereign by a Life of Spenser.' 
 
 discovered
 
 Aetat. 58.] DeatJi of Cai/iarme Chambers. 49 
 
 discovered any of the correspondence ' he had, except the 
 two letters to J\Ir. Drummond, which have been inserted, for 
 the sake of connection with that to the same gentleman in 
 1766. His diary affords no light as to his employment at 
 this time. He passed three months at Lichfield"; and I 
 cannot omit an affecting and solemn scene there, as related 
 by himself^ : 
 
 ' Sunday, Oct. 18, 1767. Yesterday, Oct. 17, at about ten in the 
 morning, I took my leave for ever of my dear old friend, Catharine 
 Chambers, who came to live with my mother about 1724, and has 
 been but little parted from us since. She buried my father, my 
 brother, and my mother. She is now fifty-eight years old. 
 
 ' I desired all to withdraw, then told her that we were to part 
 for ever ; that as Christians, we should part with prayer ; and that 
 I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She 
 expressed great desire to hear me ; and held up her poor hands, 
 as she lay in bed, with great fervour, while I prayed, kneeling by 
 her, nearly in the following words : 
 
 'Almighty and most merciful Father, whose loving kindness is 
 over all thy works, behold, visit, and relieve this thy servant, who 
 is grieved with sickness. Grant that the sense of her weakness 
 may add strength to her faith, and seriousness to her repentance. 
 And grant that by the help of thy Holy Spirit, after the pains and 
 labours of this short life, we may all obtain everlasting happiness, 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord ; for whose sake hear our prayers. 
 Amen. Our Father, «Scc. 
 
 ' I then kissed her. She told me, that to part was the greatest 
 pain that she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet 
 again in a better place. I expressed, with swelled eyes, and great 
 
 ' It is proper here to mention, that when I speak of his correspond- 
 ence, I consider it independent of the voluminous collection of letters 
 which, in the course of many years, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, which 
 forms a separate part of his works ; and as a proof of the high esti- 
 mation set on any thing which came from his pen, was sold by that 
 lady for the sum of five hundred pounds. Boswell. 
 
 ^ He was away from London ' near six months.' See attte, ii. 34. 
 
 ^ On Aug. 17 he recorded : — ' I have communicated with Kitty, and 
 kissed her. I was for some time distracted, but at last more composed. 
 I commended my friends, and Kitty, Lucy, and I were much affected. 
 Kitty is, I think, going to heaven.' Pr. and Med. p. 75. 
 
 n —4 emotion
 
 50 Lexiphanes. [a.d. 1767. 
 
 emotion of tenderness, the same hopes. We kissed, and parted. 
 I humbly hope to meet again, and to part no more'.' 
 
 By those who have been taught to look upon Johnson as 
 a man of a harsh and stern character, let this tender and af- 
 fectionate scene be candidly read ; and let them then judge 
 whether more warmth of heart, and grateful kindness, is often 
 found in human nature. 
 
 We have the following notice in his devotional record : 
 
 'August 2, 1767. I have been disturbed and unsettled for a 
 long time, and have been without resolution to apply to study or 
 to business, being hindered by sudden snatches ^' 
 
 He, however, furnished Mr. Adams with a Dedication'" to 
 the King of that ingenious gentleman's Treatise on the Globes, 
 conceived and expressed in such a manner as could not fail 
 to be very grateful to a Monarch, distinguished for his love 
 of the sciences. 
 
 This year was published a ridicule of his style, under the 
 title of Lcxiplianes. Sir John Hawkins ascribes it to Dr. 
 Kenrick^; but its authour was one Campbell, a Scotch purser 
 in the navy. The ridicule consisted in applying Johnson's 
 'words of large meaning^ ' to insignificant matters, as if one 
 should put the armour of Goliath upon a dwarf. The con- 
 trast might be laughable ; but the dignity of the armour 
 must remain the same in all considerate minds. This -ma- 
 licious drollery, therefore, it may easily be supposed, could 
 do no harm to its illustrious object \ 
 
 ' Pr. and Med. pp. T] and 78. Boswell. 
 
 " Pr. and Med. p. 73. Boswell. On Aug. 17 he recorded: — 'By 
 abstinence from wine and suppers I obtained sudden and great relief, 
 and had freedom of mind restored to me, which I have wanted for all 
 this year, without being able to find any means of obtaining it.' lb. 
 
 P-74- 
 
 ^ Hawkins, in his second edition (p. 347), assigns it to Campbell, 
 
 ' who,' he says, ' as well for the malignancy of his heart as his terrific 
 
 countenance, was called horrible Campbell.' 
 
 * See ante, i. 253. 
 
 * The book is as dull as it is indecent. The ' drollery ' is of the fol- 
 lowing kind. Johnson is represented as saying : — ' Without dubiety 
 
 'To
 
 Aetat. 59.] Prologtie to The Good-Na tured Man. 5 1 
 
 'To Bennet Langton, Esq., at Mr. Rothwell's, perfumer, in 
 New Bond-street, London. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 'That you have been all summer in London, is one more rea- 
 son for which I regret my long stay in the country. I hope that 
 you will not leave the town before my return. We have here only 
 the chance of vacancies in the passing carriages, and I have be- 
 spoken one that may, if it happens, bring me to town on the four- 
 teenth of this month ; but this is not certain. 
 
 ' It will be a favour if you communicate this to Mrs. Williams : I 
 long to see all my friends. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Lichfield, Oct. lo, 1767.' 
 
 1768 : ^TAT. 59. — It appears from his notes of the state of 
 his mind \ that he suffered great perturbation and distraction 
 in 1 768. Nothing of his writing was given to the publick this 
 year, except the Prologue'"" to his friend Goldsmith's comedy 
 of TIic Good-Natiircd Man ". The first lines of this Prologue 
 are strongly characteristical of the dismal gloom of his mind ; 
 which in his case, as in the case of all who arc distressed with 
 the same malady of imagination, transfers to others its own 
 feelings. Who could suppose it was to introduce a comedy, 
 when Mr. Bensley solemnly began, 
 
 ' Press'd with ' the load of life, the weary mind 
 Surveys the general toil of human kind.' 
 
 you misapprehend this dazzling scintillation of conceit in totality, and 
 had you had that constant recurrence to my oraculous dictionary 
 which was incumbent upon you from the vehemence of my monitory 
 injunctions,' &c. — p. 2. 
 
 ' Pr. and Med. p. 81. BoswELL. ' This day,' he wrote on his birth- 
 day, ' has been passed in great perturbation ; I was distracted at church 
 in an uncommon degree, and my distress has had very little intermis- 
 sion. . . . This day it came into my mind to write the history of my 
 melancholy. On this I purpose to deliberate; I know not whether 
 it may not too much disturb me.' Sqc post, April 8, 1780. 
 
 ' It is strange that Boswcll nowhere quotes the lines in T/ie Good- 
 Natured Man,\n which Paoli is mentioned. 'That's from Paoli of 
 Corsica,' said Lofty. Act v. sc. i. 
 
 ^ In the original, ' Pressed by.' Boswell, in thus changing the prepo- 
 
 But
 
 5 2 Boswell 's book on Corsica. [a.d. 1768. 
 
 But this dark ground might make Goldsmith's humour shine 
 the more. 
 
 In the spring of this year, having pubHshed my Account 
 of Corsica, with the Jotiriml of a Toitr to that Island'^ ^ I re- 
 turned to London^, very desirous to see Dr. Johnson, and 
 hear him upon the subject. I found he was at Oxford, with 
 his friend Mr. Chambers ^ who was now Vinerian Professor, 
 
 sition, forgot what Johnson says in his Plan of an English Dictionary 
 ( Works, V. 12) : — ' We say, according to the present modes of speech, 
 The soldier died of his wounds, and the sailor perished with hunger ; 
 and every man acquainted with our language would be offended with 
 a change of these particles, which yet seem originally assigned by 
 chance.' 
 
 * Boswell, writing to Temple on March 24, says : — ' My book has 
 amazing celebrity ; Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Walpole, Mrs. Macaulay, and 
 Mr. Garrick have all written me noble letters about it. There are two 
 Dutch translations going forward.' Letters of Boswell, p. 145. It met 
 with a rapid sale. A third edition was called for within a year. Dilly, 
 the publisher, must have done very well by it, as he purchased the 
 copyright for one hundred guineas. 7(5. p. 103. 'Pray read the new 
 account of Corsica,' wrote Horace Walpole to Gray on Feb. 18, 1768 
 (Letters, v. 85). 'The author is a strange being, and has a rage of 
 knowing everybody that ever was talked of. He forced himself upon 
 me at Paris in spite of my teeth and my doors.' To this Gray re- 
 plied : — ' Mr. Boswell's book 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, what I have always main- 
 tained, that any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he 
 will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.' In the Let- 
 ters of Boswell (p. 122) there is the following under date of Nov. 9, 
 1767 : — ' I am always for fixing some period for my perfection, as far 
 as possible. Let it be when my account of Corsica is published ; I 
 shall then have a character which I must support.' In April 16 of 
 the following year, a few weeks after the book had come out, he 
 writes : — ' To confess to you at once, Temple, I have since my last 
 coming to town been as wild as ever ' (p. 146). 
 
 ^ Boswell used to put notices of his movements in the newspapers, 
 such as — 'James Boswell, Esq., is expected in town.' Public Adver- 
 tiser, Feb. 28, 1768. 'Yesterday James Boswell, Esq., arrived from 
 Scotland at his lodgings in Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly.' lb. March 
 24, 1768. Prior's Goldsmith, i. 449. 
 
 ^ Johnson was very ill during this visit. Mrs. Thrale had at the 
 
 and
 
 Aetat. 59.] The dtUy of ail advocate. 53 
 
 and lived in New Inn Hall. Having had no letter from him 
 since that in which he criticised the Latinity of my Thesis, 
 and having been told by somebody that he was offended at 
 my having put into my Book an extract of his letter to me 
 at Paris', I was impatient to be with him, and therefore fol- 
 lowed him to Oxford, where I was entertained by Mr. Cham- 
 bers, with a civility which I shall ever gratefully remember. 
 I found that Dr. Johnson had sent a letter to me to Scotland, 
 and that I had nothing to complain of but his being more 
 indifferent to my anxiety than I wished him to be. Instead 
 of giving, with the circumstances of time and place, such 
 fragments of his conversation as I preserved during this visit 
 to Oxford, I shall throw them together in continuation \ 
 
 I asked him whether, as a moralist, he did not think that 
 the practice of the law, in some degree, hurt the nice feeling of 
 honesty. Johnson. ' Why no, Sir, if you act properly. You 
 are not to deceive your clients with false representations of 
 your opinion : you are not to tell lies to a judge.' BOSWELL. 
 ' But what do you think of supporting a cause which you 
 know to be bad ?' JOHNSON. ' Sir, you do not know it to be 
 good or bad till the Judge determines it. I have said that 
 you are to state facts fairly ; so that your thinking, or what 
 you call knowing, a cause to be bad, must be from reasoning, 
 
 same time given birth to a daughter, and had been nursed by her 
 mother. His thoughts, therefore, were turned on illness. Writing to 
 Mrs. Thrale, he says : — ' To roll the weak eye of helpless anguish, and 
 see nothing on any side but cold indifference, will, I hope, happen to 
 none whom I love or value ; it may tend to withdraw the mind from 
 life, but has no tendency to kindle those affections which fit us for 
 a purer and a nobler state. . . . These reflections do not grow out of 
 any discontent at C's [Chambers's] behaviour ; he has been neither 
 negligent nor troublesome ; nor do I love him less for having been 
 ill in his house. This is no small degree of praise.' Piozzi Letters, 
 i. 13. 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 3, note. 
 
 ' The editor of the Letters of Boswcll justly says (p. 149) : — 'The 
 detail in the Life of JoJmson is rather scanty about this period ; dissi- 
 patir)n, the History of Corsica, wife-hunting, . . . interfered perhaps at 
 this time with Boswell's pursuit of Dr. Johnson.' 
 
 must
 
 54 Modern plays. [a.d. 1768. 
 
 must be from your supposing your arguments to be weak 
 and inconclusive. But, Sir, that is not enough. An argu- 
 ment which does not convince yourself, may convince the 
 Judge to whom you urge it : and if it does convince him, 
 why, then, Sir, you are wrong, and he is right. It is his 
 business to judge ; and you are not to be confident in your 
 own opinion that a cause is bad, but to say all you can 
 for your client, and then hear the Judge's opinion.' Bos- 
 WELL. ' But, Sir, does not affecting a warmth when you have 
 no warmth, and appearing to be clearly of one opinion when 
 you are in reality of another opinion, does not such dissimu- 
 lation impair one's honesty? Is there not some danger that 
 a lawyer may put on the same mask in common life, in the 
 intercourse with his friends?' JOHNSON. ' Why no, Sir. Ev- 
 erybody knows you are paid for affecting warmth for your 
 client ; and it is, therefore, properly no dissimulation : the 
 moment you come from the bar you resume your usual be- 
 haviour. Sir, a man will no more carry the artifice of the 
 bar into the common intercourse of society, than a man who 
 is paid for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble 
 upon his hands when he should walk on his feet '.' 
 
 Talking of some of the modern plays, he said False Deli- 
 cacy was totally void of character ^ He praised Goldsmith's 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773, for a discussion of the same 
 question. Lord Eldon has recorded ^Life, i. 106), that when he first 
 went the Northern Circuit (about 1 776-1 780), he asked Jack Lee {post, 
 March 20, 1778), who was not scrupulous in his advocacy, whether his 
 method could be justified. ' Oh. yes,' he said, ' undoubtedly. Dr. 
 Johnson had said that counsel were at liberty to state, as the parties 
 themselves would state, what it was most for their interest to state.' 
 After some interval, and when he had had his evening bowl of milk 
 punch and two or three pipes of tobacco, he suddenly said, 'Come, 
 Master Scott, let us go to bed. I have been thinking upon the ques- 
 tions that you asked me, and I am not quite so sure that the conduct 
 you represented will bring a man peace at the last.' Lord Eldon, 
 after stating pretty nearly what Johnson had said, continues : — ' But 
 it may be questioned whether even this can be supported.' 
 
 ' Garrick brought out Hugh Kelly's False Delicacy at Drury Lane 
 six days before Goldsmith's Good-Natured Man was brought out at 
 
 Good-Naturcd
 
 Aetat. 59.] Modem play s. 55 
 
 Good-Nattircd Man ; said, it was the best comedy that had 
 appeared since The Provoked Hiisband\ and that there had 
 not been of late any such character exhibited on the stage 
 as that of Croaker. I observed it was the Suspirius of his 
 Rambler. He said, Goldsmith had owned he had borrowed 
 it from thence ^ ' Sir, (continued he,) there is all the differ- 
 ence in the world between characters of nature and char- 
 acters of manners ; and tJiere is the difference between the 
 characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters 
 of manners are very entertaining ; but they are to be under- 
 stood, by a more superficial observer, than characters of nat- 
 ure, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human 
 heart.' 
 
 It always appeared to me that he estimated the compo- 
 sitions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unrea- 
 sonable prejudice against Fielding ^ In comparing those two 
 writers, he used this expression : ' that there was as great a 
 difference between them as between a man who knew how a 
 watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by look- 
 ing on the dial-plate\' This was a short and figurative state of 
 
 Covent Garden. ' It was the town talk,' says Mr. Forster {Life of 
 Goldsmith, ii. 93), ' some weeks before either performance took place, 
 that the two comedies were to be pitted against each other.' False 
 Delicacy had a great success. Ten thousand copies of it were sold 
 before the season closed. (lb. p. 96.) ' Garrick's prologue to False 
 Delicacy,' writes Murphy {Life of Garrick, p. 287), ' promised a moral 
 and sentimental comedy, and with an air of pleasantry called it a ser- 
 mon in fiv^e acts. The critics considered it in the same light, but the 
 general voice was in favour of the play during a run of near twenty 
 nights. Foote, at last, by a little piece called Piety in Pattens, brought 
 that species of composition into disrepute.' It is recorded in John- 
 son's Works (1787), xi. 201, that when some one asked Johnson whether 
 they should introduce Hugh Kelly to him, ' No, Sir,' says he, ' I never 
 desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.' 
 See /^^/, beginning of 1777. 
 
 ' The Provoked Husband, or A Journey to London, by Vanbrugh and 
 Colley Gibber It was brought out in 1727-S. See /fj-/, June 3, 1784. 
 
 * See ante, i. 247. 
 
 ' See post, April 6, 1772, and April 12, 1776. 
 
 * Richardson, writing on Dec. 7, 1756, to Miss Fielding, about her 
 
 his
 
 56 Richardson and Fielding. [a.d. 1768. 
 
 his distinction between drawing characters of nature and char- 
 acters only of manners. But I cannot help being of opinion, 
 that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as 
 the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial-plates are 
 brighter. Fielding's characters, though they do not expand 
 themselves so widely in dissertation, are as just pictures of 
 human nature, and I will venture to say, have more striking 
 features, and nicer touches of the pencil ; and though John- 
 son used to quote with approbation a saying of Richardson's, 
 ' that the virtues of Fielding's heroes were the vices of a truly 
 good man,' I will venture to add, that the moral tendency of 
 Fielding's writings, though it does not encourage a strained 
 and rarely possible virtue, is ever favourable to honour and 
 honesty, and cherishes the benevolent and generous affec- 
 tions. He who is as good as Fielding would make him, is 
 an amiable member of society, and may be led on by more 
 regulated instructors, to a higher state of ethical perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 Johnson proceeded : ' Even Sir Francis Wronghead is a 
 character of manners, though drawn with great humour.' 
 He then repeated, very happily, all Sir Francis's credulous 
 account to Manly of his being with ' the great man,' and 
 securing a place'. I asked him, if Tlie Suspicions Husband'' 
 did not furnish a well - drawn character, that of Ranger. 
 
 Familiar Letters, says : — 'What a knowledge of the human heart! 
 Well might a critical judge of writing say, as he did to me, that your 
 late brother's knowledge of it was not (fine writer as he was) com- 
 parable to yours. His w^as but as the knowledge of the outside of a 
 clock-work machine, while yours was that of all the finer springs and 
 movements of the inside.' Richardson Corres. ii. 104. Mrs. Calder- 
 wood, writing of her visit to the Low Countries m 1756, says: — 'All 
 Richison's [Richardson's] books are translated, and much admired 
 abroad ; but for Fielding's, the foreigners have no notion of them, 
 and do not understand them, as the manners are so entirely English.' 
 Letters, &-'c., of Mrs. Calderwood, p. 208. 
 
 ' In The Provoked Husband, slcX. iv. sc. i. 
 
 » By Dr. Hoadley, brought out in 1747. 'This was the first good 
 comedy from the time of The Provoked Hitsbatid in 1727.' Murphy's 
 Garrick, p. 78. 
 
 Johnson.
 
 Aetat. 59.] The Douglas Cause. 5 7 
 
 Johnson. 'No, Sir; Ranger is just a rake, a mere rake', 
 and a lively young fellow, but no character.' 
 
 The great Douglas Cause ^ was at this time a veiy general 
 subject of discussion. I found he had not studied it with 
 much attention, but had only heard parts of it occasionally. 
 He, however, talked of it, and said, ' I am of opinion that 
 positive proof of fraud should not be required of the plain- 
 tiff, but that the Judges should decide according as probabili- 
 ty shall appear to preponderate, granting to the defendant 
 the presumption of filiation to be strong in his favour. And 
 I think too, that a good deal of weight should be allowed 
 to the dying declarations, because they were spontaneous. 
 There is a great difference between what is said without our 
 being urged to it, and what is said from a kind of compulsion. 
 If I praise a man's book without being asked my opinion of 
 it, that is honest praise, to which one may trust. But if an 
 authour asks me if I like his book, and I give him something 
 like praise, it must not be taken as my real opinion.' 
 
 ' Madame Riccoboni, writing to Garrick from Paris on Sept. 7, 1768, 
 says : — ' On ne supporterait point ici I'indecence de Ranger. Les tres- 
 indecens Franc^ais deviennent dclicats sur leur theatre, a mcsure qu'ils 
 le sent moins dans leur conduite.' Garrick' s Corrcs. ii. 548. 
 
 ''■ ' The question in dispute was as to the heirship of Mr. Archibald 
 Douglas. If he were really the son of Lady Jane Douglas, he would 
 inherit large family estates ; but if he were supposititious, then they 
 would descend to the Duke of Hamilton. The Judges of the Court 
 of Session had been divided in opinion, eight against seven, the Lord 
 President Dundas giving the casting vote in favour of the Duke of 
 Hamilton ; and in consequence of it he and several other of the judges 
 had, on the reversal by the Lords, their houses attacked by a mob. It 
 is said, but not upon conclusive authority, that Boswell himself headed 
 the mob which broke his own father's windows.' Letters 0/ Boswell, 
 p. 86. See post, April 27, 1773, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 24-26, 1773. 
 Mr. J. H. Burton, in his Li/e of Hiane (ii. 150), says : — ' Men about to 
 meet each other in company used to lay an injunction on themselves 
 not to open their lips on the subject, so fruitful was it in debates and 
 brawls.' Boswell, according to the Bodleian catalogue, was the au- 
 thour of Dorando, A Spanish Talc, 1767. In this tale the Douglas 
 cause is narrated under the thinnest disguise. It is reviewed in the 
 Gent. Mag. for 1 767, p. 36 1 . 
 
 ' I have
 
 58 S^. Kilda, [a.d. 1768. 
 
 * I have not been troubled for a long time with authours 
 desiring my opinion of their works '. I used once to be sadly 
 plagued with a man who wrote verses, but who literally had 
 no other notion of a verse, but that it consisted of ten sylla- 
 bles. Lay your knife and your fork, across your plate, was to 
 him a verse : 
 
 Lay your knife and your fork, across your plate. 
 
 As he wrote a great number of verses, he sometimes by chance 
 made good ones, though he did not know it.' 
 
 He renewed his promise of coming to Scotland, and going 
 with me to the Hebrides, but said he would now content him- 
 self with seeing one or two of the most curious of them. He 
 said, * Macaulay°, who writes the account of St. Kilda, set out 
 with a prejudice against prejudices, and wanted to be a smart 
 modern thinker ; and yet he affirms for a truth, that when a 
 ship arrives there, all the inhabitants are seized with a cold^' 
 
 Dr. John Campbell \ the celebrated writer, took a great 
 deal of pains to ascertain this fact, and attempted to account 
 for it on physical principles, from the effect of effluvia from 
 human bodies. Johnson, at another time ^ praised Macaulay 
 for his ' magnanimity^ in asserting this wonderful story, be- 
 cause it was well attested. A Lady of Norfolk, by a letter 
 
 ' See /^j/, under April 19, 1772, March 15, 1779, and June 2, 1781. 
 
 * Revd. Kenneth Macaulay. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 27, 1773. 
 He was the great-uncle of Lord Macaulay. 
 
 ' Martui, in his St. Kilda (p. 38), had stated that the people of St. 
 Kilda ' are seldom troubled with a cough, except at the Stewart's land- 
 ing. I told them plainly,' he continues, ' that I thought all this no- 
 tion of infection was but a mere fancy, at which they seemed offended, 
 saying, that never any before the minister and myself was heard to 
 doubt of the truth of it, which is plainly demonstrated upon the land- 
 ing of every boat.' The usual ' infected cough ' came, he says, upon 
 his visit. Macaulay {History of St. Kilda, p. 204) says that he had 
 gone to the island a disbeliever, but that by eight days after his arriv- 
 al all the inhabitants were infected with this disease. See also post, 
 March 21, 1772, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 2, 1773. 
 
 * See ante, ]u\y 1, 1763. 
 
 ^ See post, March 21, 1772. 
 
 to
 
 Aetat. 59.] The University of Oxford. 59 
 
 to my friend Dr. Burney, has favoured me with the following 
 solution : ' Now for the explication of this seeming mystery, 
 which is so very obvious as, for that reason, to have escaped 
 the penetration of Dr. Johnson and his friend, as well as that 
 of the authour. Reading the book with my ingenious friend, 
 the late Reverend Mr. Christian, of Docking — after ruminat- 
 ing a little, " The cause, (says he,) is a natural one. The situ- 
 ation of St. Kilda renders a North-East Wind indispensably 
 necessary before a stranger can land '. The wind, not the 
 stranger, occasions an epidemic cold." If I am not mistaken, 
 Mr. Macaulay is dead ; if living, this solution might please 
 him. as I hope it will Mr. Boswell, in return for the many 
 agreeable hours his works have afforded us.' 
 
 Johnson expatiated on the advantages of Oxford for learn- 
 ing". 'There is here, Sir, (said he,) such a progressive emu- 
 lation. The students are anxious to appear well to their 
 tutors ; the tutors are anxious to have their pupils appear 
 well in the college ; the colleges are anxious to have their 
 students appear well in the University ; and there are ex- 
 cellent rules of discipline in every college. That the rules 
 are sometimes ill observed, may be true ; but is nothing 
 against the system. The members of an University may, 
 for a season, be unmindful of their duty. I am arguing 
 for the excellency of the institution ^' 
 
 Of Guthrie', he said,' Sir, he is a man of parts. He has 
 no great regular fund of knowledge ; but by reading so 
 
 ' This is not the case. Martin (p. 9) says that the only landing 
 place is inaccessible except under favour of a neap tide, a north-east 
 or west wind, or with a perfect calm. He himself was rowed to St. 
 Kilda, ' the inhabitants admiring to see us get thither contrary to 
 wind and tide ' (p. 5). 
 
 That for one kind of learning Oxford has no advantages, he shows 
 in a letter that he wrote there on Aug. 4, 1777. ' I shall enquire,' he 
 says, 'about the harv^est when I come into a region where any thing 
 necessary to life is understood.' Piozzi Letters, ■^r:i\<~). At Lichfield 
 he reached that region. ' My barber, a man not unintelligent, speaks 
 magnificently of the harvest ' (ib. p. 351). 
 
 ' Siniposi, Sept. 14, 1777. ■• See ante, i. 135. 
 
 long,
 
 6o Scotch Atithors. [a. d. 1768. 
 
 long, and writing so long, he no doubt has picked up a 
 good deal.' 
 
 He said he had lately been a long while at Lichfield, but 
 had grown very weary before he left it. BOSWELL. ' I won- 
 der at that. Sir; it is your native place.' JOHNSON. 'Why, 
 so is Scotland your native place.' 
 
 His prejudice against Scotland appeared remarkably strong 
 at this time. When I talked of our advancement in litera- 
 ture ', ' Sir, (said he,) you have learnt a little from us, and you 
 think yourselves very great men. Hume would never have 
 written History, had not Voltaire written it before him\ He 
 is an echo of Voltaire.' BoswELL. ' But, Sir, we have Lord 
 Karnes'.' JOHNSON. ' You /^«z/£- Lord Karnes. Keep him ; 
 ha, ha, ha ! We don't envy you him. Do you ever see Dr. 
 Robertson?' BosWELL. 'Yes, Sir.' Johnson. 'Does the 
 dog talk of me ?' BosWELL. ' Indeed, Sir, he does, and 
 
 ' The advancement had been very rapid. ' When Dr. Robertson's 
 career commenced,' writes Dugald Stewart in his Life of that his- 
 torian (p. 157), 'the trade of authorship was unknown in Scotland.' 
 Smollett, in Humphry Clinker, published three years after this conver- 
 sation, makes Mr. Bramble write (Letter of Aug. 8) : — ' Edinburgh is 
 a hot-bed of genius. I have had the good fortune to be made ac- 
 quainted with many authors of the first distinction ; such as the two 
 Humes [David Hume and John Home, whose names had the same 
 pronunciation], Robertson, Smith, Wallace, Blair, Ferguson, Wilke, 
 &c.' To these might be added Smollett himself, Boswell, Reid, Beat- 
 tie, Kames, Monboddo. Henry Mackenzie and Dr. Henry began to 
 publish in 1771. Gibbon, writing to Robertson in 1779, says; — 'I have 
 often considered with some sort of envy the valuable society which 
 you possess in so narrow a compass.' Stewart's Robert so}i, p. 363. 
 
 ^ See /f J-/, April 30, 1773, where Johnson owned that he had not 
 read Hume. J. H. Burton {Life of Hume, ii. 129), after stating that 
 ' Hume was the first to add to a mere narrative of events an enquiry 
 into the progress of the people, &c.,' says : — ' There seems to be no 
 room for the supposition that he had borrowed the idea from Vol- 
 taire's Essai siir les Mosiirs. Hume's own Political Discourses are as 
 close an approach to this method of inquiry as the work of Voltaire; 
 and if we look for such productions of other writers as may have led 
 him into this train of thought, it would be more just to name Bacon 
 and Montesquieu.' ^ See ^(75/, May 8 and 13, 1778. 
 
 loves
 
 Aetat. 59.] The future life of brutes. 6 1 
 
 loves vou.' Thinkinsf that I now had him in a corner, 
 and being soHcitous for the literary fame of my country, I 
 pressed him for his opinion on the merit of Dr. Robert- 
 son's History of Scotland. But, to my surprise, he escaped. 
 — ' Sir, I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his book'.' 
 
 It is but justice both to him and Dr. Robertson to add, 
 that though he indulged himself in this sally of wit, he 
 had too good taste not to be fully sensible of the mer- 
 its of that admirable work. 
 
 An essay, written by Mr. Deane, a divine of the Church of 
 England, maintaining the future life of brutes, by an expli- 
 cation of certain parts of the scriptures", was mentioned, and 
 the doctrine insisted on by a gentleman who seemed fond of 
 curious speculation. Johnson, who did not like to hear of 
 any thing concerning a future state which was not authorised 
 by the regular canons of orthodoxy, discouraged this talk ; 
 and being offended at its continuation, he watched an op- 
 portunity to give the gentleman a blow of reprehension. So, 
 when the poor speculatist, with a serious metaphysical pen- 
 sive face, addressed him, ' But really, Sir, when we see a very 
 sensible dog, we don't know what to think of him ;' Johnson, 
 rolling with joy at the thought which beamed in his eye, 
 turned quickly round, and replied, 'True, Sir: and when we 
 see a very foolish fcllozv, we don't know what to think of 
 htju.' He then rose up, strided to the fire, and stood for 
 some time laughing and exulting. 
 
 I told him that I had several times, when in Italy, seen the 
 experiment of placing a scorpion within a circle of burning 
 coals ; that it ran round and round in extreme pain ; and find- 
 ing no way to escape, retired to the centre, and like a true 
 Stoick philosopher, darted its sting into its head, and thus at 
 
 ' See post, April 30, 1773, April 29, 1778, and Oct. 10, 1779. 
 
 ' An Essay on the Fntiire Life of Brutes. By Richard Dean, Curate 
 of Middlcton, Manchester, 1767. The 'part of the Scriptures' on 
 which the author chiefly relies is the Epistle to the Romans, viii. 19- 
 23. He also finds support for his belief in ' those passages in Isaiah 
 where the prophet speaks of new Heavens, and a new Earth, of the 
 Lion as eating straw like the Ox, &c.' Vol. ii. pp. x, 4. 
 
 once
 
 62 The future life of brutes. [a.d. 1768. 
 
 once freed itself from its woes. ' TJiis must end 'em ',' I said, 
 this was a curious fact, as it shewed deliberate suicide in a 
 reptile. Johnson would not admit the fact. He said, Mau- 
 pertuis'' was of opinion that it does not kill itself, but dies of 
 the heat ; that it gets to the centre of the circle, as the cool- 
 est place ; that its turning its tail in upon its head is merely 
 a convulsion, and that it does not sting itself. He said he 
 would be satisfied if the great anatomist Morgagni, after 
 dissecting a scorpion on which the experiment had been 
 tried, should certify that its sting had penetrated into its 
 head. 
 
 » The words that Addison's Cato uses as he lays his hand on his 
 sv,'ord. Act V. sc. i. 
 
 - I should think it impossible not to wonder at the variety of John- 
 son's reading, however desultory it may have been. Who could have 
 imagined that the High Church of Englandman would be so prompt 
 in quoting Maiipertiiis, who, I am sorry to think, stands in the list of 
 those unfortunate mistaken men, who call themselves esprits forts. I 
 have, however, a high respect for that Philosopher whom the Great 
 Frederick of Prussia loved and honoured, and addressed pathetically 
 in one of his Poems, — 
 
 ' Maiipertnis, cher Mauperttcis, 
 
 Que iiotre vie est pen de chose /' 
 There was in Maupertuis a vigour and yet a tenderness of sentiment, 
 united with strong intellectual powers, and uncommon ardour of soul. 
 Would he had been a Christian ! I cannot help earnestly venturing 
 to hope that he is one now. Boswell. Voltaire writing to D'Alem- 
 bert on Aug. 25, 1759, says: — 'Que dites-vous de Maupertuis, mort 
 entre deux capucins ?' Voltaire's Works, Ixii. 94. The stanza from 
 which Boswell quotes is as follows : — 
 
 ' O Maupertuis, cher Maupertuis, 
 
 Que notre vie est peu de chose ! 
 
 Cette fleur, qui brille sujourd'hui, 
 
 Demain se fane a peine eclose; 
 
 Tout perit, tout est emporte 
 
 Par la dure fatalite 
 
 Des arrets de la destinee; 
 
 Votre vertu, vos grands talents 
 
 Ne pourront obtenir du temps 
 
 Le seul delai d'une journee.' 
 La vie est un Songe. OLuvres de Frederic II (edit. 1849), x. 40. 
 
 He
 
 Aetat. 59.J The crime of adultery. 63 
 
 He seemed pleased to talk of natural philosophy. ' That 
 woodcocks, (said he,) fly over to the northern countries is 
 proved, because they have been observed at sea. Swallows 
 certainly sleep all the winter, A number of them conglobu- 
 late together', by flying round and round, and then all in a 
 heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a 
 river".' He told us, one of his first essays was a Latin poem 
 upon the glow-worm. I am sorry I did not ask where it was 
 to be found. 
 
 Talking of the Russians and the Chinese, he advised me 
 to read Bell's travels \ I asked him whether I should read 
 Du Halde's account of China \ ' Why yes, (said he,) as one 
 reads such a book ; that is to say, consult it.' 
 
 He talked of the heinousness of the crime of adultery, by 
 which the peace of families was destroyed. He said, ' Con- 
 fusion of progeny constitutes the essence of the crime ; and 
 therefore a woman who breaks her marriage vows is much 
 more criminal than a man who does it ^ A man, to be sure, 
 is criminal in the sight of GOD : but he does not do his wife 
 a very material injury, if he does not insult her; if, for in- 
 stance, from mere wantonness of appetite, he steals privately 
 to her chambermaid. Sir, a wife ought not greatly to resent 
 this. I would not receive home a daughter who had run away 
 from her husband on that account. A wife should study to 
 
 ' Johnson does not give Conglobiilate in his Diciionary ; only coii- 
 globe. If he used the word it is not likely that he said ' conglobulate 
 together! 
 
 "^ Gilbert White, writing on Nov. 4, 1767, after mentioning that he 
 had seen swallows roosting in osier-beds by the river, says : — ' This 
 seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as 
 it isj of their retiring under water.' White's Sclbornc, Letter xii. See 
 also/f^j-/, May 7, 1773. 
 
 ^ Traifcls f7-flin St. Petersburg/!, in Russia to di7>crs parts of Asia. By 
 John Bell, Glasgow, 1763: 4to. 2 vols. 
 
 * I. D'Israeli {Curiosities of Literature, cd. 1834, i. 194) ranks this 
 book among Literary Impostures. ' Du Halde never travelled ten 
 leagues from Paris in his life ; though he appears by his writings to 
 be familiar with Chinese scenery.' See ante, i. 158. 
 
 ' Sec post, Oct. 10, 1779. 
 
 reclaim
 
 64 Superiority of ialenls in a wife. [a.d. 1768, 
 
 reclaim her husband by more attention to please him. Sir, 
 a man will not, once in a hundred instances, leave his wife 
 and go to a harlot, if his wife has not been negligent of 
 pleasing.' 
 
 Here he discovered that acute discrimination, that solid 
 judgement, and that knowledge of human nature, for which 
 he was upon all occasions remarkable. Taking care to keep 
 in view the moral and religious duty, as understood in our 
 nation, he shewed clearly from reason and good sense, the 
 greater degree of culpability in the one sex deviating from it 
 than the other ; and, at the same time, inculcated a very use- 
 ful lesson as to tlie way to keep him. 
 
 I asked him if it was not hard that one deviation from 
 chastity should so absolutely ruin a young woman, JOHN- 
 SON. ' Why, no, Sir ; it is the great principle which she is 
 taught. When she has given up that principle, she has given 
 up every notion of female honour and virtue, which are all 
 included in chastity.' 
 
 A gentleman ' talked to him of a lady whom he greatly 
 admired and wished to marry, but was afraid of her superi- 
 ority of talents. ' Sir, (said he,) you need not be afraid ; 
 marry her. Before a year goes about, yow'll find that rea- 
 son much weaker, and that wit not so bright.' Yet the 
 gentleman may be justified in his apprehension by one of 
 Dr. Johnson's admirable sentences in his life of Waller: 
 'He doubtless praised many^ whom he would have been 
 
 ' Boswell, in his correspondence with Temple in 1767 and 1768, 
 passes in review the various ladies whom he proposes to marry. The 
 lady described in this paragraph — for the ' gentleman ' is clearly Bos- 
 well — is 'the fair and lively Zelide,' a Dutchwoman. She was trans- 
 lating his Corsica into French. On March 24, 1768, he wrote, ' I must 
 have her.' On April 26, he asked his father's permission to go over 
 to Holland to see her. But on May 14 he forwarded to Temple one 
 of her letters. 'Could/ he said, 'any actress at any of the theatres 
 attack me with a keener — what is the word.' not fury, something 
 softer. The lightning that flashes with so much brilliance may scorch, 
 and does not her esprit do so }' Letters of Boswell, pp. 144-150. 
 
 " In the original it is some not many. Johnson's Works, vii. 182. 
 
 afraid
 
 Aetat. 59.] Joliiison s watch. 65 
 
 afraid to marry ; and, perhaps, married one whom he would 
 have been ashamed to praise. Many quahties contribute 
 to domestic happiness, upon which poetry has no colours 
 to bestow ; and many airs and sallies may delight imagina- 
 tion, which he who flatters them never can approve.' 
 
 He praised Signor Baretti. ' His account of Italy is a very 
 entertaining book ' ; and. Sir, I know no man who carries his 
 head higher in conversation than Baretti '^ There are strong 
 powers in his mind. He has not, indeed, many hooks ; but 
 with what hooks he has, he grapples very forcibly.' 
 
 At this time I observed upon the dial-plate of his watch ^ 
 a short Greek inscription, taken from the New Testament, 
 Nv^ yap ep-xjerat*, being the first words of our SAVIOUR'S 
 solemn admonition to the improvement of that time which 
 is allowed us to prepare for eternity: ' the night cometh, when 
 no man can work.' He sometime afterwards laid aside this 
 dial-plate ; and when I asked him the reason, he said, ' It 
 might do very well upon a clock which a man keeps in his 
 closet ; but to have it upon his watch which he carries about 
 with him, and which is often looked at by others, might be 
 
 * Ati account of the Manners and Customs of Italy, by Joseph Ba- 
 retti, London, 1768. The book would be still more entertaining were 
 it not written as a reply to Sharp's Letters on Italy. Post, under April 
 29, 1776. 
 
 " Mrs. Piozzi wrote of him : ' His character is easily seen, and his 
 soul above disguise, haughty and insolent, and breathing defiance 
 against all mankind ; while his powers of mind exceed most people's, 
 and his powers of purse are so slight that they leave him dependent 
 on all. Baretti is for ever in the state of a stream dammed up ; if he 
 could once get loose, he would bear down all before him.' Hayward's 
 Piozzi, ii. 335. 
 
 * According to Hawkins {Life, p. 460), the watch was new this year, 
 and was, he believed, the first Johnson ever had. 
 
 * St.fohn, ix. 4. In Pr. and Med. p. 233 is the following: — ' Ejacu- 
 lation imploring diligence. " O God, make me to remember that the 
 night cometh when no man can work." ' Porson, in his witty attack 
 on Sir John Hawkins, originally published in the Gent. Mag. for 1787, 
 quotes the inscription as a proof of Hawkins's Greek. ' Nr$ yap fpxfrai. 
 The meaning is (says Sir John) For the night cometh. And so it is, 
 Mr. Urban.' Porson Tracts, p. 337. 
 
 II.— 5 censured
 
 66 BosweWs head full of Corsica. [a.d. i768. 
 
 censured as ostentatious. Mr. Steevens is now possessed of 
 the dial-plate inscribed as above. 
 
 He remained at Oxford a considerable time ' ; I was obliged 
 to go to London, where I received his letter, which had been 
 returned from Scotland. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 'My dear Boswell, 
 
 ' I have omitted a long time to write to you, without know- 
 ing very well why. I could now tell why I should not write ; for 
 who would write to men who publish the letters of their friends, 
 without their leave ^ ? Yet I write to you in spite of my caution, to 
 tell you that I shall be glad to see you, and that I wish you would 
 empty your head of Corsica, which I think has filled it rather too 
 long. But, at all events, I shall be glad, very glad to see you. 
 ' I am. Sir, yours affectionately, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' Oxford, March 23, 1768.' 
 
 I answered thus : 
 
 'To Mr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 ' London, 26th April, 1768 '. 
 'My dear Sir, 
 
 ' I have received your last letter, which, though very short, 
 and by no means complimentary, yet gave me real pleasure, 
 because it contains these words, " I shall be glad, very glad to 
 see you." Surely you have no reason to complain of my publish- 
 ing a single paragraph of one of your letters ; the temptation to it 
 was so strong. An irrevocable grant of your friendship, and your 
 
 ' He thus wrote of himself from Oxford to Mrs. Thrale : — ' This 
 little dog does nothing, but I hope he will mend ; he is now reading 
 Jack the Giatit-killer . Perhaps so noble a narrative may rouse in him 
 the soul of enterprise.' Piozzi Letters, i. 9. "^ See atite, ii. 4. 
 
 ' Under the same date, Boswell thus begins a letter to Temple : — 
 ' Your moral lecture came to me yesterday in very good time, while I 
 lay suffering severely for immorality. If there is any firmness at all in 
 me, be assured that I shall never again behave in a manner so unwor- 
 thy the friend of Paoli. My warm imagination looks forward with 
 great complacency on the sobriety, the healthfulness, and the worth 
 of my future life.' Letters of Boswell, p. 147. 
 
 dignifying
 
 Aetat. 59.] Boswell and the Ear I of Chatham. 67 
 
 dignifying my desire of visiting Corsica with the epithet of " a wise 
 and noble curiosity," are to me more valuable than many of the 
 grants of kings. 
 
 ' But how can you bid me "empty my head of Corsica ' ?" My 
 noble-minded friend, do you not feel for an oppressed nation brave- 
 ly struggling to be free ? Consider fairly what is the case. The 
 Corsicans never received any kindness from the Genoese ^ They 
 never agreed to be subject to them. They owe them nothing ; and 
 when reduced to an abject state of slavery, by force, shall they not 
 rise in the great cause of liberty, and break the galling yoke t And 
 shall not every liberal soul be warm for them ? Empty my head of 
 Corsica ! Empty it of honour, empty it of humanity, empty it of 
 friendship, empty it of piety. No ! while I live, Corsica and the 
 cause of the brave islanders shall ever employ much of my atten- 
 tion, shall ever interest me in the sincerest manner. 
 ******* 
 
 ' I am, &c. 
 
 'James Boswell.' 
 
 ' Johnson so early as Aug. 21, 1766, had given him the same advice 
 {a7ite, ii. 25). How little Boswell followed it is shewn by his letter to 
 the Earl of Chatham, on April 8, 1767, in which he informed him of 
 his intention to publish his Corsica, and concluded: — 'Could your 
 Lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter.? I have 
 been told how favourably your Lordship has spoken of me. To cor- 
 respond with a Paoli and with a Chatham is enough to keep a young 
 man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame.' Chatham Corrcs. 
 iii. 246. On the same day on which he wrote to Johnson, he said in a 
 letter to Temple, ' Old General Oglethorpe, who has come to see me, 
 and is with me often, just on account of my book, bids me not marry 
 till I have first put the Corsicans in a proper situation. " You may 
 make a fortune in the doing of it," said he ; " or, if you do not, you 
 will have acquired such a character as will entitle you to any fort- 
 une." ' Letters of Boswell, p. 148. Four months later, Boswell wrote : 
 — ' By a private subscription .in Scotland, I am sending this week ^700 
 worth of ordnance [to Corsica]. . . It is really a tolerable train of artil- 
 lery.' Id. p. 156. In 1769 he brought out a small volume entitled 
 British Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans. By Several Hands. 
 Collected and published by James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 "^ From about the beginning of the fourteenth century, Corsica had 
 belonged to the Republic of Genoa. In the great rising under Paoli, 
 the Corsicans would have achieved their independence, had not Genoa 
 ceded the island to the crown of France. 
 
 Upon
 
 68 Popular liberty. [a.d. 17G8. 
 
 Upon his arrival in London in May, he surprised me one 
 morning with a visit at my lodgings in Half-Moon-street ', 
 was quite satisfied with my explanation, and was in the 
 kindest and most agreeable frame of mind. As he had ob- 
 jected to a part of one of his letters being published, I 
 thought it right to take this opportunity of asking him ex- 
 plicitly whether it would be improper to publish his letters 
 after his death. His answer was, ' Nay, Sir, when I am dead, 
 you may do as you will ".' 
 
 He talked in his usual style with a rough contempt of 
 popular liberty ^ 'They make a rout about universal lib- 
 erty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or 
 indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, \s private liberty. Po- 
 litical liberty is good only so far as it produces private liber- 
 ty. Now, Sir, there is the liberty of the press, which you 
 know is a constant topick\ Suppose you and I and two 
 
 ' Boswell, writing to Temple on May 14 of this year, says : — ' I am 
 really th^grcai man now. I have had David Hume in the forenoon, 
 and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon of the same day, visiting me. Sir J. 
 Pringle and Dr. Franklin dined with me to-day; and Mr. Johnson and 
 General Oglethorpe one day, Mr. Garrick alone another, and David 
 Hume and some more literati another, dine with me next week. I 
 give admirable dinners and good claret ; and the moment I go abroad 
 again, which will be in a day or two, I set up my chariot. This is en- 
 joying the fruit of my labours, and appearing like the friend of Paoli." 
 Letters of Boswell, p. 151. 
 
 ^ See post, April 12, 1778, and May 8, 1781. 
 
 ^ The talk arose no doubt from the general election that had just 
 been held amid all the excitement about Wilkes. Dr. Franklin (Afe- 
 moirs, iii. 307), in a letter dated April 16, 1768, describes the riots in 
 London. He had seen ' the mob requiring gentlemen and ladies of 
 all ranks as they passed in their carriages, to shout for Wilkes and 
 liberty, marking the same words on all their coaches with chalk, and 
 No. 45 on every door. I went last week to Winchester, and observed 
 that for fifteen miles out of town there was scarce a door or window 
 shutter next the road unmarked ; and this continued here and there 
 quite to Winchester.' 
 
 * In his Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, he thus writes : — 
 ' If I might presume to advise them [the Ministers] upon this great 
 affair, I should dissuade them from any direct attempt upon the lib- 
 hundred
 
 Aetat. 59.] Attacks on Authors. 69 
 
 hundred more were restrained from printing our thoughts : 
 what then ? What proportion would that restraint upon us 
 bear to the private happiness of the nation ' ?' 
 
 This mode of representing the inconveniences of restraint 
 as light and insignificant, was a kind of sophistr}^ in which 
 he delighted to indulge himself, in opposition to the extreme 
 laxity for which it has been fashionable for too many to argue, 
 when it is evident, upon reflection, that the very essence of 
 government is restraint ; and certain it is, that as government 
 produces rational happiness, too much restraint is better than 
 too little. But when restraint is unnecessary, and so close as 
 to gall those who are subject to it, the people may and ought 
 to remonstrate ; and, if relief is not granted, to resist. Of 
 this manly and spirited principle, no man was more convinced 
 than Johnson himself ^ 
 
 About this time Dr. Kenrick^ attacked him, through my 
 sides, in a pamphlet, entitled An Epistle to James Boszvcll, 
 
 erty of the press, which is the darling of the common people, and 
 therefore cannot be attacked without immediate danger.' Works, v. 
 344. On p. 191 of the same volume, he shows some of the benefits 
 that arise in England from ' the boundless liberty with which every 
 man may write his own thoughts.' See also in his Life of Milton, the 
 passage about Areopagitica, ib. vii. 82. The liberty of the press was 
 likely to be ' a constant topic' Horace Walpole {Memoirs of the Reign 
 of George III, ii. 15), writing of the summer of 1764, says : — ' Two hun- 
 dred informations were filed against printers ; a larger number than 
 had been prosecuted in the whole thirty-three years of the last reign.' 
 
 ' 'The sun has risen, and the corn has grown, and, whatever talk 
 has been of the danger of property, yet he that ploughed the field 
 commonly reaped it, and he that built a house was master of the door; 
 the vexation excited by injustice suffered, or supposed to be suffered, 
 by any private man, or single community, was local and temporary; it 
 neither spread far nor lasted long.' Johnson's Works, vi. 170. See also 
 post, March 31, 1772. Dr. Franklin {Memoirs, iii. 215) wrote to the 
 Abbe Morellet, on April 22, 1787 : — ' Nothing can be better expressed 
 than your sentiments are on this point, where you prefer liberty of 
 trading, cultivating, manufacturing, &c., even to civil liberty, this being 
 affected but rarely, the other every hour.' 
 
 * See ante, July 6, 1763. 
 
 ' See a7tte, Oct. 1765. 
 
 Esq.,
 
 70 Attacks oil Authors. [a.d. 1768. 
 
 Esq., occasioned by his havijtg transmitted the moral Writings 
 of Dr. Samuel Johnson to Pascal Paoli, General of the Corsi- 
 ca7is\ I was at first inclined to answer this pamphlet; but 
 Johnson, who knew that my doing so would only gratify 
 Kenrick, by keeping alive what would soon die away of itself, 
 would not suffer me to take any notice of it^ 
 
 * 'I was diverted with Paoli's English library. It consisted of: — 
 Some broken volumes of the Spectatoiir and Tatler ; Pope's Essay on 
 Man; Gullivers Travels; A History of France in old English; and 
 Barclay's Apology for the Quakers. I promised to send him some 
 English books. ... I have sent him some of our best books of moral- 
 ity and entertainment, in particular the works of Mr. Samuel John- 
 son.' Boswell's Cicr^/rrt;, p. 169. 
 
 "' Johnson, as Boswell believed, only once ' in the whole course of 
 his life condescended to oppose anything that was written against 
 him.' (See ante, i. 363.) In this he followed the rule of Bentley and 
 of Boerhaave. ' It was said to old Bentley, upon the attacks against 
 him, " Why, they'll write you down." " No, Sir," he replied ; " depend 
 upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself." ' Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Oct. i, 1773. Bentley shewed prudence in his silence. ' He 
 was right,' Johnson said, ' not to answer; for, in his hazardous method 
 of writing, he could not but be often enough wrong.' Boswell's Heb- 
 rides, Sept. 10, 1773. 'Boerhaave was never soured by calumny and 
 detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them ; " for they 
 are sparks," said he, "which, if you do not blow them, will go out of 
 themselves." ' Johnson's Works, vi. 288. Swift, in his Lines oti Censure 
 which begin, — 
 
 'Ye wise instruct me to endure 
 An evil which admits no cure,' 
 ends by saying : — 
 
 'The most effectual way to baulk 
 Their malice is — to let them talk.' 
 
 Swift's Works, xi. 58. 
 
 Young, in his Second Epistle to Pope, had written : — 
 
 'Armed with this truth all critics I defy; 
 For if I fall, by my own pen I die.' 
 
 Hume, in his Auto. (p. ix.) says : — ' I had a fixed resolution, which I 
 inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body.' This is not quite 
 true. See J. H. Burton's Life of Hume, ii. 252, for an instance of a 
 violent reply. The following passages in Johnson's writings are to 
 the same effect : — ' I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of 
 
 His
 
 Aetat. 59.] Francis Barber sent to school. 71 
 
 His sincere regard for Francis Barber, his faithful negro 
 servant, made him so desirous of his further improvement, 
 that he now placed him at a school at Bishop Stortford, in 
 Hertfordshire. This humane attention does Johnson's heart 
 much honour. Out of many letters which Mr. Barber re- 
 ceived from his master, he has preserved three, which he 
 kindly gave me, and which I shall insert according to their 
 dates. 
 
 'To Mr. Francis Barber. 
 
 'Dear Francis, 
 
 ' I have been very much out of order. I am glad to hear 
 that you are well, and design to come soon to see you. I would 
 have you stay at Mrs. Clapp's for the present, till I can determine 
 what we shall do. Be a good boy \ 
 
 ' My compliments to Mrs. Clapp and to Mr. Fowler, I am, 
 
 'Yours affectionately, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'May 28, 1768.' 
 
 ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those that 
 they provoke.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 289. ' It is very rarely that an author 
 is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, 
 but it often dies in the socket.' lb. p. no. 'The writer who thinks 
 his works formed for duration mistakes his interest when he mentions 
 his enemies. He degrades his own dignity by shewing that he was 
 affected by their censures, and gives lasting importance to names, 
 which, left to themselves would vanish from remembrance.' John- 
 son's Works, vii. 294. ' If it had been possible for those who were 
 attacked to conceal their pain and their resentment, the Diinciad 
 might have made its way very slowly in the world.' lb. viii. 276. Haw- 
 kins (^Life of Johnson, p. 348) says that, ' against personal abuse John- 
 son was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter: — 
 " Alas ! reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of 
 every concealed enemy to deprive us of it." ' In his Pari. Debates 
 ( Works, X. 359), Johnson makes Mr. Lyttelton say : — ' No man can fall 
 into contempt but those who deserve it.' Addison in The Freeholder, 
 No. 40, says, that ' there is not a more melancholy object in the learned 
 world than a man who has written himself down.' See also Boswell's 
 Hebrides, near the end. 
 
 ' Barber had entered Johnson's service in 1752 {ante, \. 277). Nine 
 years before this letter was written he had been a sailor on board a 
 frigate (a}ite, i. 403), so that he was somewhat old for a boy. 
 
 Soon
 
 72 Scotch literati awed by Johison. [a.d. 1708. 
 
 Soon afterwards, he supped at the Crown and Anchor 
 tavern, in the Strand, with a company whom I collected to 
 meet him. They were Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore, 
 Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, Mr. Langton, Dr. 
 Robertson the Historian', Dr. Hugh Blair, and Mr. Thomas 
 Davies, who wished much to be introduced to these eminent 
 Scotch literati ; but on the present occasion he had very 
 little opportunity of hearing them talk, for with an excess 
 of prudence, for which Johnson afterwards found fault with 
 them, they hardly opened their lips, and that only to say 
 something which they were certain would not expose them 
 to the sword of Goliath ; such was their anxiety for their 
 fame when in the presence of Johnson ^ He was this even- 
 ing in remarkable vigour of mind, and eager to exert him- 
 self in conversation, which he did with great readiness and 
 fluency ; but I am sorry to find that I have preserved but a 
 small part of what passed. 
 
 He allowed high praise to Thomson as a poet ' ; but when 
 one of the company said he was also a very good man, our 
 moralist contested this with great warmth, accusing him of 
 gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners. I was very 
 much afraid that in writing Thomson's Life, Dr. Johnson 
 would have treated his private character with a stern sever- 
 ity, but I was agreeably disappointed ; and I niay claim a 
 little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him 
 authentick accounts of the affectionate and generous con- 
 duct of that poet to his sisters, one of whom, the wife of 
 Mr. Thomson, schoolmaster at Lanark, I knew, and was pre- 
 sented by her with three of his letters, one of which Dr. 
 Johnson has inserted in his Life''. 
 
 ' Boswell, writing to Temple on May 14 of this year, says :— ' Dr. 
 Robertson is come up laden with his Charles F^— three large quartos; he 
 has been offered three thousand guineas for it.' Letters of Boswell, p. 1 52. 
 
 ^ In like manner the professors at Aberdeen and Glasgow seemed 
 afraid to speak in his presence. See Boswell 's Hebrides, Aug. 23, and 
 Oct. 29, 1773. See q\.?,o post, April 29, 1778. 
 
 ^ See a)ite, July 28, 1763. 
 
 * Johnson, in inserting this letter, says ( Works, viii. 374) :— ' I corn- 
 He
 
 Aetat. 59.] Dr. Mounsey. 73 
 
 He was vehement against old Dr. Mounsey, of Chelsea 
 College ', as ' a fellow who swore and talked bawdy.' ' I 
 have been often in his company, (said Dr. Percy,) and never 
 heard him swear or talk bawdy.' Mr. Davies, who sat next 
 to Dr. Percy, having after this had some conversation aside 
 with him, made a discovery which, in his zeal to pay court 
 to Dr. Johnson, he eagerly proclaimed aloud from the foot 
 of the table : ' O, Sir, I have found out a very good reason 
 why Dr. Percy never heard Mounsey swear or talk bawdy ; 
 for he tells me, he never saw him but at the Duke of North- 
 umberland's table.' 'And so. Sir, (said Johnson loudly, to 
 Dr. Percy,) you would shield this man from the charge of 
 swearing and talking bawdy, because he did not do so at 
 the Duke of Northumberland's table. Sir, you might as 
 well tell us that you had seen him hold up his hand at the 
 Old Bailey, and he neither swore nor talked bawdy ; or that 
 you had seen him in the cart at Tyburn, and he neither swore 
 nor talked bawdy. And is it thus, Sir, that you presume to 
 controvert what I have related ?' Dr. Johnson's animad- 
 version was uttered in such a manner, that Dr. Percy seemed 
 to be displeased, and soon afterwards left the company, of 
 which Johnson did not at that time take any notice. 
 
 Swift having been mentioned, Johnson, as usual, treated 
 
 municate it with much pleasure, as it gives me at once an opportunity 
 of recording the fraternal kindness of Thomson, and reflecting on the 
 friendly assistance of Mr. Boswell, from whom I received it.' See/tfi-/, 
 July 9, 1777, and June i8, 1778. 
 
 ' Murphy, in his Life of Garrick, p. 183, says that Garrick once 
 brought Dr. Munsey — so he writes the name — to call on him. ' Gar- 
 rick entered the dining-room, and turning suddenly round, ran to the 
 door, and called out, " Dr. Munsey, where are you going.'" " Up stairs 
 to see the author," said Munsey. " Pho ! pho ! come down, the author 
 is here." Dr. Munsey came, and, as he entered the room, said in his 
 free way, " You scoundrel ! I was going up to the garret. Who could 
 think of finding an author on the first floor?" ' Mrs. Montagu wrote 
 to Lord Lyttelton from Tunbridge in 1760: — 'The great Monsey {sic) 
 came hither on Friday. . . . He is great in the coffee-house, great in the 
 rooms, and great on the pantiles.' Montagu Letters, iv. 291. In Rog- 
 ers's Table -Talk, p. 211, then; is a curious account of him. 
 
 him
 
 74 Swift's Conduct of the Allies, [a.d. 1768. 
 
 him with httle respect as an authour'. Some of us en- 
 deavoured to support the Dean of St. Patrick's by various 
 arguments. One in particular praised his Conduct of the Al- 
 lies. Johnson. ' Sir, his Conduct of the Allies is a perform- 
 ance of very httle ability.' ' Surely, Sir, (said Dr. Douglas,) 
 you must allow it has strong facts ^' JOHNSON. ' Why yes, 
 Sir; but what is that to the merit of the composition? In 
 the Sessions-paper of the Old Bailey there are strong facts. 
 Housebreaking is a strong fact ; robbery is a strong fact ; and 
 murder is a mighty strong fact ; but is great praise due to the 
 historian of those strong facts? No, Sir. Swift has told 
 what he had to tell distinctly enough, but that is all. He 
 had to count ten, and he has counted it right \' Then rec- 
 ollecting that Mr. Davies, by acting as an informer, had 
 been the occasion of his talking somewhat too harshly to his 
 friend^ Dr. Percy, for which, probably, when the first ebul- 
 lition was over, he felt some compunction, he took an op- 
 portunity to give him a hit ; so added, with a preparatory 
 
 * See a7itc', July 26, 1763. 
 
 ^ My respectable friend, upon reading this passage, observed, that 
 he probably must have said not simply, ' strong facts,' but ' strong 
 facts well arranged.' His lordship, however, knows too well the value 
 of written documents to insist on setting his recollection against my 
 notes taken at the time. He does not attempt to traverse the record. 
 The fact, perhaps, may have been, either that the additional words 
 escaped me in the noise of a numerous company, or that Dr. Johnson, 
 from his impetuosity, and eagerness to seize an opportunity to make 
 a lively retort, did not allow Dr. Douglas to finish his sentence. Bos- 
 
 WELL. 
 
 ^ ' It is boasted that between November [1712] and January, elev- 
 en thousand [of The Conduct of the Attics] were sold. . . . Yet, surely 
 whoever surveys this wonder-working pamphlet with cool perusal, 
 will confess that its efficacy was supplied by the passions of its read- 
 ers ; that it operates by the mere weight of facts, with very little as- 
 sistance from the hand that produced them.' Johnson's Works, viii. 
 203. 
 
 * ' Every great man, of whatever kind be his greatness, has among 
 his friends those who officiously or insidiously quicken his attention 
 to offences, heighten his disgust, and stimulate his resentment.' lb. 
 viii. 266. 
 
 laugh,
 
 Aetat. 59.] Johtison s rotighuess of manners. 75 
 
 laugh, * Why, Sir, Tom Davies might have written Tlie Con- 
 duct of the Allies' Poor Tom being thus suddenly dragged 
 into ludicrous notice in presence of the Scottish Doctors, 
 to whom he was ambitious of appearing to advantage, was 
 grievously mortified. Nor did his punishment rest here ; 
 for upon subsequent occasions, whenever he, ^ statesman all 
 over','* assumed a strutting importance, I used to hail him 
 — ' the Authour of The Conduct of the Allies' 
 
 When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning, I found 
 him highly satisfied with his colloquial prowess the pre- 
 ceding evening. 'Well, (said he,) we had good talk\' 
 BOSWELL. 'Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several per- 
 
 3 ' 
 sons . 
 
 The late Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune \ who loved wit 
 more than wine, and men of genius more than sycophants, 
 had a great admiration of Johnson ; but from the remark- 
 able elegance of his own manners, was, perhaps, too delicate- 
 ly sensible of the roughness which sometimes appeared in 
 Johnson's behaviour. One evening about this time, when 
 his Lordship did me the honour to sup at my lodgings with 
 Dr. Robertson and several other men of literary distinction, 
 he regretted that Johnson had not been educated with more 
 refinement, and lived more in polished society. ' No, no, my 
 Lord, (said Signor Baretti,) do with him what you would, he 
 would always have been a bear.' ' True, (answered the Earl, 
 with a smile,) but he would have been a dancing bear,' 
 
 To obviate all the reflections which have gone round the 
 world to Johnson's prejudice, by applying to him the epi- 
 thet of a bear", let me impress upon my readers a just and 
 happy saying of my friend Goldsmith, who knew him well : 
 'Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner; but 
 
 ' See the hard drawing of him in Churchill's Rosciad. BoswELL. 
 See a7ttc, i. 452, note 4. 
 
 ' For talk, see post, under March 30, 1783. 
 
 ' See /o^/, Oct. 6, 1769, and May 8, 1778, where Johnson tosses Bos- 
 well. 
 
 * See post, Sept. 22, 1777, and Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. i, 1773. 
 
 ■* See /tf^A Nov. 27, 1773, note, April 7, 1775, and under May 8, 1781. 
 
 no
 
 76 Royal Academy Professors. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 no man alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of 
 the bear but his skin.' 
 
 1769: ^TAT. 60.] — In 1769, so far as I can discover, the 
 pubHck was favoured with nothing of Johnson's composi- 
 tion, either for himself or any of his friends'. His Medita- 
 tions'' too strongly prove that he suffered much both in 
 body and mind ; yet was he perpetually striving against 
 evil, and nobly endeavouring to advance his intellectual and 
 devotional improvement. Every generous and grateful heart 
 must feel for the distresses of so eminent a benefactor to 
 mankind ; and now that his unhappiness is certainly known, 
 must respect that dignity of character which prevented him 
 from complaining. 
 
 His Majesty having the preceding year instituted the 
 Royal Academy of Arts in London, Johnson had now the 
 honour of being appointed Professor in Ancient Literature \ 
 
 ' He wrote the character of Mr. Mudge. See post, under March 20, 
 1781. 
 
 ^ ' Sept. 18, 1769. This day completes the sixtieth year of my age. . . . 
 The last year has been wholly spent in a slow progress of recovery.' 
 Fr. and Mt'd. p. Ss- 
 
 ^ In which place he has been succeeded by Bennet Langton, Esq. 
 When that truly religious gentleman was elected to this honorary 
 Professorship, at the same time that Edward Gibbon, Esq., noted for 
 introducing a kind of sneering infidelity into his Historical Writings, 
 was elected Professor in Ancient History, in the room of Dr. Gold- 
 smith, I observed that it brought to my mind, ' Wicked Will Whiston 
 and good Mr. Ditton.' I am now also of that admirable institution as 
 Secretary for Foreign Correspondence, by the favour of the Academi- 
 cians, and the approbation of the Sovereign. Boswell. Goldsmith, 
 writing to his brother in Jan. 1770, said: — 'The King has lately been 
 pleased to make me Professor of Ancient History in a Royal Acade- 
 my of Painting, which he has just established, but there is no salary 
 annexed, and I took it rather as a compliment to the institution than 
 any benefit to myself. Honours to one in my situation are something 
 like ruffles to one that wants a shirt.' Prior's Goldsmith, ii. 221. 
 ' Wicked Will Whiston,' &c., comes from Swift's Ode for Music, On 
 the Longitude (Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xxiv. 39), which begins, — 
 
 ' The longitude miss'd on 
 By wicked Will Whiston ; 
 
 In
 
 Aetat. 60.] Reverend Thomas War ton. 77 
 
 In the course of the year he wrote some letters to Mrs. 
 Thrale, passed some part of the summer at" Oxford and at 
 Lichfield, and when at Oxford wrote the following letter : — 
 
 *To THE Reverend Mr. Thomas Warton. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Many years ago, when I used to read in the library of your 
 College, I promised to recompence the College for that permission, 
 by adding to their books a Baskerville's Virgil. I have now sent 
 it, and desire you to reposit it on the shelves in my name '. 
 
 ' If you will be pleased to let me know when you have an hour 
 of leisure, I will drink tea with you. I am engaged for the after- 
 noon, to-morrow and on Friday : all my mornings are my own ^. 
 
 ' I am, &c., 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' May 31, 1769.' 
 
 I came to London in the autumn, and having informed 
 him that I was going to be married in a few months, I 
 wished to have as much of his conversation as I could be- 
 fore engaging in a state of life which would probably keep 
 me more in Scotland, and prevent me seeing him so often 
 
 And not better hit on 
 By good Master Ditton.' 
 
 It goes on so grossly and so offensively as regards one and the other, 
 that Boswell's comparison was a great insult to Langton as well as to 
 Gibbon. 
 
 ' It has this inscription in a blank leaf :— ' Hiinc librum D. D. Sam- 
 iiei Jo/mson, co quod hie loci studiis inierdum vacaret.' Of this library, 
 which is an old Gothick room, he was very fond. On my observing 
 to him that some of the modern libraries of the University were more 
 commodious and pleasant for study, as being more spacious and airy, 
 he replied, ' Sir, if a man has a mind to pranee, he must study at 
 Christ-Church and All-Souls.' Boswell. 
 
 '" During this visit he seldom or never dined out. He appeared to 
 be deeply engaged in some literary work. Miss Williams was now 
 with him at 0.\ford. Bosweli,. It was more likely the state of his 
 health which kept him at home. Writing from Oxford on June 27 
 of this year to Mrs. Thrale, who had been ill, he says : — ' I will not in- 
 crease your uneasiness with mine. I hope I grow better. I am very 
 cautious and very timorous.' Pioszi Letters, i. 21. 
 
 as
 
 78 The Shakspeare Jubilee. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 as when I was a single man ; but I found he was at Bright- 
 helmstone with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. I was very sorry that 
 I had not his company with me at the Jubilee, in honour of 
 Shakspeare, at Stratford-upon-Avon, the great poet's native 
 town '. Johnson's connection both with Shakspeare and 
 Garrick founded a double claim to his presence ; and it 
 would have been highly gratifying to Mr. Garrick. Upon 
 this occasion I particularly lamented that he had not that 
 warmth of friendship for his brilliant pupil, which we may 
 suppose would have had a benignant effect on both ^ When 
 
 ' Boswell wrote a letter, signed with his own name, to the London 
 Magazine for 1769 (p. 451) describing the Jubilee. It is followed by 
 a print of himself ' in the dress of an armed Corsican chief,' and by 
 an account, no doubt written by himself. It says : — ' Of the most re- 
 markable masks upon this occasion was James Boswell, Esq., in the 
 dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre 
 about twelve o'clock. On the front of his cap was embroidered in 
 gold letters, Viva La Liberia ; and on one side of it was a handsome 
 blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant, as well as a war- 
 like appearance. He wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for 
 a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room he drew uni- 
 versal attention.' Cradock {Memoirs, i. 217) gives a melancholy ac- 
 count of the festival. The preparations were all behind-hand and the 
 weather was stormy. ' There was a masquerade in the evening, and 
 all zealous friends endeavoured to keep up the spirit of it as long as 
 they could, till they were at last informed that the Avon was rising 
 so very fast that no delay could be admitted. The ladies of our par- 
 ty were conveyed by planks from the building to the coach, and found 
 that the wheels had been two feet deep in water.' Garrick in 1771 
 was asked by the Stratford committee to join them in celebrating a 
 Jubilee every year, as ' the most likely method to promote the inter- 
 est and reputation of their town.' Boswell caught at the proposal 
 eagerly, and writing to Garrick said : — ' I please myself with the pros- 
 pect of attending j^ou at several more Jubilees at Stratford-upon- 
 Avon . ' Garrick Cor res. i . 4 1 4, 43 5 . 
 
 ^ Garrick's correspondents not seldom spoke disrespectfully of John- 
 son. Thus, Mr. .Sharp, writing to him in 1769, talks of 'risking the 
 sneer of one of Dr. Johnson's ghastly smiles.' lb. i. 334. Dr. J. Hoad- 
 ly, in a letter dated July 25, 1775, says: — ' Mr. Goodenough has writ- 
 ten a kind of parody of Puffy Pensioner's Taxation no Tyranny, 
 under the noble title of Resistance no Rebellion! lb. ii. 68. 
 
 almost
 
 
 ^ 
 
 y/M^t'kfn^ar/u/ ful'u^^ulyiy^ra//i'Ji/ii/ioiL^%^7T'ofLy K:f,yll'^//^/^t'r kO\i. -— 

 
 Aetat. 60.] BosweW s Corsican Journal. 79 
 
 almost every man of eminence in the literary world was 
 happy to partake in this festival of genius, the absence of 
 Johnson could not but be wondered at and regretted. The 
 only trace of him there, was in the whimsical advertisement 
 of a haberdasher, who sold Shakspcariaii ribbands of various 
 dyes ; and, by way of illustrating their appropriation to the 
 bard, introduced a line from the celebrated Prologue ' at the 
 opening of Drury-lane theatre : 
 
 ' Each change of many-colour' d life he drew.' 
 
 From Brighthelmstone Dr. Johnson wrote me the follow- 
 ing letter, which they who may think that I ought to have 
 suppressed, must have less ardent feelings than I have al- 
 ways avowed * : 
 
 ' See ante, i. 209. 
 
 ^ In the Preface to my Accoutit of Corsica, published in 1768, 1 thus 
 express myself : 
 
 ' He who publishes a book affecting not to be an authour, and pro- 
 fessing an indifference for literary fame, may possibly impose upon 
 many people such an idea of his consequence as he wishes may be 
 received. For my part, I should be proud to be known as an au- 
 thour, 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 ap- 
 proved by the world, has established himself as a respectable char- 
 acter in distant society, without any danger of having that character 
 lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve an uni- 
 form dignity among those who see us every day, is hardly possible ; 
 and to aim at it, must put us under the fetters of perpetual restraint. 
 The authour of an approved book may allow his natural disposition 
 an easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superior 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 au- 
 thour may cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which 
 has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages.' Boswell. 
 His preface to the third edition thus ends: — 'When I first ventured 
 to send this book into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for 
 literary fame. I have obtained my desire : and whatever clouds may 
 overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods 
 
 'To
 
 8o BoswelVs Corsican Journal. [a. d. 1769. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Why do you charge me with unkindness .'' I have omitted 
 nothing that could do you good, or give you pleasure, unless it be 
 that I have forborne to tell you my opinion of your Account of Cor- 
 sica. I believe my opinion, if you think well of my judgement, 
 might have given you pleasure ; but when it is considered how 
 much vanity is excited by praise, I am not sure that it would have 
 done you good. Your History 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 from without, and 
 notions generated within. Your History was copied from books ; 
 your Journal rose out 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. 
 
 ' I am glad that you are going to be married ; and as I wish you 
 well in things of less importance, wish you well with proportionate 
 ardour in this crisis of your life. What I can contribute to your 
 happiness, I should be very unwilling to with-hold ; for I have al- 
 ways loved and valued you, and shall love you and value you still 
 more, as you become more regular and useful : effects which a hap- 
 py marriage will hardly fail to produce. 
 
 ' I do not find that I am likely to come back very soon from this 
 
 place. I shall, perhaps, stay a fortnight longer ; and a fortnight is 
 
 a long time to a lover absent from his mistress. Would a fortnight 
 
 ever have an end ? 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' Brighthelmstone, 
 
 Sept. 9, 1769.' 
 
 After his return to town, we met frequently, and I con- 
 tinued the practice of making notes of his conversation, 
 though not with so much assiduity as I wish I had done. 
 
 of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done 
 something worthy.' The dedication of the first edition and the pref- 
 ace of the third are both dated Oct. 29 — one 1767, and the other 1768. 
 Oct. 29 was his birthday. 
 
 At
 
 Aetat. GO.] General Paoli. 8 1 
 
 At this time, indeed, I had a sufficient excuse for not being 
 able to appropriate so much time to my Journal ; for Gener- 
 al Paoli ', after Corsica had been overpowered by the mon- 
 archy of France, was now no longer at the head of his brave 
 countr>'men, but having with difficulty escaped from his 
 native island, had sought an asylum in Great-Britain ; and 
 it was my duty, as well as my pleasure, to attend much 
 upon him". Such particulars of Johnson's conversation at 
 
 ' Paoli's father had been one of the leaders of the Corsicans in their 
 revolt against Genoa in 1734. Paoli himself was chosen by them as 
 their General-in-chief in 1755. In 1769 the island was conquered by 
 the French. He escaped in an English ship, and settled in England. 
 Here he stayed till 1789, when Mirabeau moved in the National As- 
 sembly the recall of all the Corsican patriots. Paoli was thereupon 
 appointed by Louis XVI Lieutenant-general and military command- 
 ant in Corsica. He resisted the violence of the Convention, and was, 
 in consequence, summoned before it. Refusing to obey, an expedi- 
 tion was sent to arrest him. Napoleon Buonaparte fought in the 
 French army, but Paoli's party proved the stronger. The islanders 
 sousfht the aid of Great Britain, and offered the crown of Corsica to 
 George III. The offer was accepted, but by an act of incredible folly, 
 not Paoli, but Sir Gilbert Eliot, was made Viceroy. Paoli returned to 
 England, where he died in 1807, at the age of eighty-two. In 1796 
 Corsica was abandoned by the English. By the Revolution it ceased 
 to be a conquered province, having been formally declared an inte- 
 gral part of France. At the present day the Corsicans are proud of 
 being citizens of that great country ; no less proud, however, are they 
 of Pascal Paoli, and of the gallant struggle for independence of theii 
 forefathers. 
 
 "^ According to the Ann. Reg. (xii. 132) Paoli arrived in London on 
 Sept. 21. He certainly was in London on Oct. 10, for on that day he 
 was presented by Boswell to Johnson. Yet Wesley records in his 
 Journal (iii. 370) on Oct. 13: — 'I very narrowly missed meeting the 
 great Pascal Paoli. He landed in the dock [at Portsmouth] but a 
 ver)'' few minutes after I left the water side. Surely He who hath 
 been with him from his youth up hath not sent him into England for 
 nothing.' In the Ptiblic Advertiser for Oct. 4 there is the following 
 entry, inserted no doubt by Boswell : — ' On Sunday last General Paoli, 
 accompanied l)y James Boswell, Esq., took an airing in Hyde Park in 
 his coach.' Prior's Goldsmith, i.450. Horace Walpole writes : — ' Pa- 
 oli's character had been so advantageously exaggerated by Mr. Bos- 
 well's enthusiastic and entertaining account of him, that the Opposi- 
 II. -6 this
 
 82 Humes Scotticisms. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 this period as I have committed to writing, I shall here in- 
 troduce, without any strict attention to methodical arrange- 
 ment. Sometimes short notes of different days shall be 
 blended together, and sometimes a day may seem impor- 
 tant enough to be separately distinguished. 
 
 He said, he would not have Sunday kept with rigid sever- 
 ity and gloom, but with a gravity and simplicity of behav- 
 iour '. 
 
 I told him that David Hume had made a short collection 
 of Scotticisms \ 'I wonder, (said Johnson,) that lie should 
 find them.' 
 
 tion were ready to incorporate him in the list of popular tribunes. 
 The Court artfully intercepted the project ; and deeming patriots of 
 all nations equally corruptible, bestowed a pension of ^looo a year on 
 the unheroic fugitive.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 387. 
 
 ' Johnson, writes Mrs. Piozzi (^«^c. p. 228), ridiculed a friend 'who, 
 looking out on Streatham Common from our windows, lamented the 
 enormous wickedness of the times, because some bird-catchers were 
 busy there one fine Sunday morning. " While half the Christian 
 world is permitted," said Johnson, "to dance and sing and celebrate 
 Sunday as a day of festivity, how comes your puritanical spirit so of- 
 fended 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." ' See 
 Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773. 
 
 ^ The first edition of Hume's History of England \v2.?, full of Scotti- 
 cisms, many of which he corrected in subsequent editions. Malone. 
 According to Mr. J. H. Burton {Life of Hume, ii. 79), ' He appears to 
 have earnestly solicited the aid of Lyttelton, Mallet, and others, whose 
 experience of English composition might enable them to detect Scot- 
 ticisms.' Mr. Burton gives instances of alterations made in the sec- 
 ond edition. He says also that ' in none of his historical or philo- 
 sophical writings does any expression used by him, unless in those 
 cases where a Scotticism has escaped his vigilance, betray either the 
 district or the county of his origin.' //;. i. 9. Hume was shown in 
 manuscript Reid's Itiqiiiry into the Human Mind. Though it was an 
 attack on his own philosophy, yet in reading it ' he kept,' he says, ' a 
 watchful eye all along over the style,' so that he might point out any 
 Scotticisms. lb. ii. 1 54. Nevertheless, as Dugald Stewart says in his 
 Life of Robertson (p. 214),' Hume fails frequently both in purity and 
 
 He
 
 Aetat. 60.] JoJinsoii s laxUy of talk. 8 '• 
 
 vD 
 
 He would not admit the importance of the question con- 
 cerning the legahty of general warrants '. ' Such a power,' 
 (he observed,) ' must be vested in every government, to an- 
 swer particular cases of necessity; and there can be no just 
 complaint but when it is abused, for which those who ad- 
 minister government must be answerable. It is a matter of 
 such indifference, a matter about which the people care so 
 very little, that were a man to be sent over Britain to offer 
 them an exemption from it at a halfpenny a piece, very few 
 would purchase it.' This was a specimen of that laxity of 
 talking, which I have heard him fairly acknowledge ' ; for, 
 surely, while the power of granting general warrants was 
 supposed to be legal, and the apprehension of them hung 
 over our heads, we did not possess that security of freedom, 
 congenial to our happy constitution, and which, by the in- 
 trepid exertions of Mr. Wilkes, has been happily established. 
 
 He said, ' The duration of Parliament, whether for seven 
 years or the life of the King, appears to me so immaterial, 
 that I would not give half a crown to turn the scale one 
 way or the other'. The habeas corpus is the single advan- 
 tage which our government has over that of other countries.' 
 
 On the 30th of September we dined together at the Mitre. 
 I attempted to argue for the superior happiness of the sav- 
 age life, upon the usual fanciful topicks. JOHNSON. ' Sir, 
 there can. be nothing more false. The savages have no 
 bodily advantages beyond those of civilised men. They 
 
 grammatical correctness.' Even in his later letters I have noticed 
 Scotticisms. 
 
 ' In 1763 Wilkes, as author of The North i7r//tf;/, No. 45, had been 
 arrested on 'a general warrant directed to four messengers to take 
 up any persons without naming or describing them with any certain- 
 ty, and to bring them, together with their papers.' Such a warrant as 
 this Chief Justice Pratt (Lord Camden) declared to be ' unconstitu- 
 tional, illegal, and absolutely void.' Ann. Reg. vi. 145. 
 
 * See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 24, 1773. 
 
 ^ In the Spring of this year, at a meeting of the electors of South- 
 wark, ' instructions ' had been presented to Mr. Thrale and his brother- 
 member, of which the twelfth was: — 'That you promote a bill for 
 shortening the duration of Parliaments.' Gent. Mag. xxxix. 162. 
 
 have
 
 84 Lord Monboddo. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 have not better health ; and as to care or mental uneasi- 
 ness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, 
 Sir ; you are not to talk such paradox ' : let me have no 
 more on't. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct. 
 Lord Monboddo ^ one of your Scotch Judges, talked a great 
 deal of such nonsense. I suffered Iiiin ; but I will not 
 
 ' This paradox Johnson had exposed twenty-nine years earlier, in 
 his Life of Sir Francis Drake, Works, vi. 366. In Rasselas, chap, xi., 
 he considers also the same question. Imlac is ' inclined to conclude 
 that, if nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we 
 grow more happy as our minds take a wider range.' He then enu- 
 merates the advantages which civilisation confers on the Europeans. 
 ' They are surely happy,' said the prince, ' who have all these conven- 
 iences.' ' The Europeans,' answered Imlac, ' are less unhappy than 
 we, but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere a state in 
 which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.' Writing to 
 Mrs. Thrale from Skye, Johnson said : — ' The traveller wanders 
 through a naked desert, gratified sometimes, but rarely, with the sight 
 of cows, and now and then finds a heap of loose stones and turf in a 
 cavity between rocks, where a being born with all those powers which 
 education expands, and all those sensations which culture refines, is 
 condemned to shelter itself from the wind and rain. Philosophers 
 there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy, 
 but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet pro- 
 duced conviction in a single mind.' Piozzi Letters, i. 150. See post, 
 April 21 and May 7, 1773, April 26, 1776, and June 15, 1784. 
 
 ' James Burnet, a Scotch Lord of Session, by the title of Lord Mon- 
 boddo. ' He was a devout believer in the virtues of the heroic ages, 
 and the deterioration of civilised mankind ; a great contemner of luxu- 
 ries, insomuch that he never used a wheel carriage.' Walter Scott, 
 quoted in Croker's Bosivell, p. 227. There is some account of him in 
 Chambers's Traditions of EdinlmrgJi, ii. 175. In his Origin of Lan- 
 guage, to which Boswell refers in his next note, after praising Hemy 
 Stephen for his Greek Dictionary, he continues : — ' But to compile a 
 dictionary of a barbarous language, such as all the modern are com- 
 pared with the learned, is a work which a man of real genius, rather 
 than undertake, would choose to die of hunger, the most cruel, it is 
 said, of all deaths. I should, however, have praised this labour of 
 Doctor Johnson's more, though of the meanest kind,' &c. Monbod- 
 do's Origin of Language, v. 274. On p. 271, he says: — 'Dr. Johnson 
 was the most invidious and malignant man I have ever known.' See 
 post, March 21, 1772, May 8, 1773, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773. 
 
 suffer
 
 Aetat. CO.] Singularity. 85 
 
 suffer you' BOSWELL. ' But, Sir, does not Rousseau talk 
 such nonsense?' JOHNSON. ' True, Sir, but Rousseau knozvs 
 he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for star- 
 ing at him.' BosWELL. ' How so, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Why, 
 Sir, a man who talks nonsense so well, must know that he 
 is talking nonsense. But I am afraid, (chuckling and laugh- 
 ing,) Monboddo does not know that he is talking nonsense'.* 
 BoswELL. ' Is it wrong then. Sir, to affect singularity, in 
 order to make people stare?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, if you do 
 it by propagating errour: and, indeed, it is wrong in any 
 way. There is in human nature a general inclination to 
 make people stare ; and every wise man has himself to cure 
 of it, and does cure himself \ If you wish to make people 
 
 ' His Lordship having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of 
 Dr. Johnson, in my company, I on one occasion during the Hfe-time 
 of my illustrious friend could not refrain from retaliation, and repeated 
 to him this saying. He has since published I don't know how many 
 pages in one of his curious books, attempting, in much anger, but 
 with pitiful effect, to persuade mankind that my illustrious friend was 
 not the great and good man which they esteemed and ever will es- 
 teem him to be. Boswell. 
 
 "■ Mrs. Piozzi {Atiec.^. io8) says : — ' Mr. Johnson was indeed unjustly 
 supposed to be a lover of singularity. Few people had a more settled 
 reverence for the world than he, or was less captivated by new modes 
 of behaviour introduced, or innovations on the long-received customs 
 of common life.' In writing to Dr. Taylor to urge him to take a cer- 
 tain course, he says : — ' This I would have you do, not in compliance 
 with solicitation or advice, but as a justification of yourself to the 
 world ; the world has always a right to be regarded.' Notes and Queries, 
 6th S. V. 343. In The Adventurer, No. 131, he has a paper on ' Singu- 
 larities.' After quoting Fontenelle's observation on Newton that ' he 
 was not distinguished from other men by any singularity, either natu- 
 ral or affected,' he goes on : — ' Some may be found who, supported by 
 the consciousness of great abilities, and elevated by a long course of 
 reputation and applause, voluntarily consign themselves to singularity, 
 affect to cross the roads of life because they know that they shall not 
 be jostled, and indulge a boundless gratification of will, because they 
 perceive that they shall be quietly obeyed. . . . Singularity is, I think, 
 in its own nature universally and invariably displeasing.' Writing of 
 Swift, he says ( IVorhs, viii. 223): — ' Whatever he did, he seemed willing 
 to do in a manner peculiar to himself, without suflicicntly considering 
 
 stare
 
 86 Happiness of London. [a.d. I76i). 
 
 stare by doing better than others, why, make them stare 
 till they stare their eyes out. But consider how easy it is 
 to make people stare by being absurd. I may do it by 
 going into a drawing-room without my shoes. You re- 
 member the gentleman in TJic Spectator, who had a com- 
 mission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme 
 singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. 
 Now, Sir, abstractedly, the night - cap was best ; but, rela- 
 tively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the 
 boys run after him '.' 
 
 Talking of a London life, he said, ' The happiness of Lon- 
 don is not to be conceived but by those who have been in 
 it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science 
 within the circumference of ten miles from where we now 
 sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom.' BOSWELL. 'The 
 only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live 
 from one another.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but that is oc- 
 casioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the 
 other advantages.' BoSYVELL. ' Sometimes I have been in 
 the humour of wishing to retire to a desart.' JOHNSON. 
 ' Sir, you have desart enough in Scotland.' 
 
 Although I had promised myself a great deal of instruct- 
 ive conversation with him on the conduct of the married 
 state, of which I had then a near prospect, he did not say 
 much upon that topick. Mr. Seward ^ heard him once say, 
 that ' a man has a very bad chance for happiness in that 
 
 that singularity, as it implies a contempt of the general practice, is a 
 kind of defiance which justly provokes the hostility of ridicule ; he, 
 therefore, who indulges peculiar habits is worse than others, if he be 
 not better.' See ante, Oct. 1765, the record in his Journal: — 'At 
 church. To avoid all singularity.' 
 
 ' ' He had many other particularities, for which he gave sound and 
 philosophical reasons. As this humour still grew upon him he chose 
 to wear a turban instead of a periwig ; concluding very justly that a 
 bandage of clean linen about his head was much more wholesome, as 
 well as cleanly, than the caul of a wig, which is soiled with frequent 
 perspirations.' Spectator, No. 576. 
 
 ' See ^t"^/, June 28, 1777, note. 
 
 state.
 
 Aetat. CO.] Secoud Marriages. Sy 
 
 state, unless he marries a woman of very strong and fixed 
 principles of religion.' He maintained to me, contrary to 
 the common notion, that a woman would not be the worse 
 wife for being learned ' ; in which, from all that I have ob- 
 served of Arteniisias', I humbly differed from him. That 
 a woman should be sensible and well informed, I allow to 
 be a great advantage ; and think that Sir Thomas Over- 
 bury^, in his rude versification, has very judiciously pointed 
 out that degree of intelligence which is to be desired in a 
 female companion : 
 
 ' Give me, next good, an understanding 7vife, 
 By Nature wise, not learned by much art ; 
 
 Some knoicdedge on her side will all my life 
 More scope of conversation impart ; 
 
 Besides, her inborne virtue fortifie ; 
 
 They are most firmly good, who * best know why.' 
 
 When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for 
 marrying a second time, as it shewed a disregard of his 
 first wife, he said, ' Not at all. Sir. On the contrary, were 
 he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first 
 wife had given him a disgust to marriage ; but by taking a 
 second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by 
 shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that 
 he wishes to be so a second time \' So ingenious a turn 
 
 ' ' Depend upon it,' he said. ' no woman is the worse for sense and 
 knowledge.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 19, 1773. See, however, post, 
 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection, where he says: — 'Supposing a wife 
 to be of a studious or argumentative turn, it would be very trouble- 
 some.' 
 
 2 ' Though Artemisia talks by fits 
 
 Of councils, classics, fathers, wits ; 
 
 Reads Malbranche, Boyle, and Locke: 
 Yet in some things, methinks she fails; 
 'Twere well if she would pare her nails, 
 And wear a cleaner smock.' 
 Swift, Imitation of English Poets, Works, x.xiv. 6. 
 ^ A ?i>'^/i', a poem, 1G14. Boswell. * In the original ///«;/. 
 
 * What a succession of compliments was paid by Johnson's old 
 
 did
 
 88 BosweWs visit to Streatham. [a.d. 1769, 
 
 did he give to this dehcate question. And yet, on another 
 occasion, he owned that he once had almost asked a prom- 
 ise of Mrs. Johnson that she would not marry again, but 
 had checked himself. Indeed, I cannot help thinking, that 
 in his case the request would have been unreasonable ; for 
 if Mrs. Johnson forgot, or thought it no injury to the mem- 
 ory of her first love, — the husband of her youth and the 
 father of her children, — to make a second marriage, why 
 should she be precluded from a third, should she be so in- 
 clined ? In Johnson's persevering fond appropriation of his 
 Tetty, even after her decease, he seems totally to have over- 
 looked the prior claim of the honest Birmingham trader. I 
 presume that her having been married before had, at times, 
 given him some uneasiness ; for I remember his observing 
 upon the marriage of one of our common friends, ' He has 
 done a very foolish thing. Sir; he has married a widow, 
 when he might have had a maid '.' 
 
 We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I had last year the 
 pleasure of seeing Mrs. Thrale at Dr. Johnson's one morn- 
 ing, and had conversation enough with her to admire her 
 talents, and to shew her that I was as Johnsonian as her- 
 self. Dr. Johnson had probably been kind enough to speak 
 well of me, for this evening he delivered me a very po- 
 lite card from Mr. Thrale and her, inviting me to Streat- 
 ham. 
 
 On the 6th of October I complied with this obliging in- 
 vitation, and found, at an elegant villa, six miles from town, 
 every circumstance that can make society pleasing. John- 
 son, though quite at home, was yet looked up to with an awe, 
 tempered by affection, and seemed to be equally the care 
 of his host and hostess. I rejoiced at seeing him so happy. 
 
 school-fellow, whom he met a year or two later in Lichfield, who ' has 
 had, as he phrased it, a matter of four wives, for which,' added John- 
 son to Mrs. Thrale, ' neither you nor I like him much the better.' 
 Ptozzi Letters, i. 41. 
 
 ' Mr. Langton married the widow of the Earl of Rothes ; post, 
 March 20, 1771. 
 
 He
 
 Aetat. 60.] Prior s love verses. 89 
 
 He played off his wit against Scotland with a good 
 humoured pleasantry, which gave me, though no bigot to 
 national prejudices, an opportunity for a little contest with 
 him. I havang said that England was obliged to us for 
 gardeners, almost all their good gardeners being Scotchmen. 
 Johnson. ' Why, Sir, that is because gardening is much 
 more necessary amongst you than with us, which makes so 
 many of your people learn it. It is all gardening with you. 
 Things which grow wild here, must be cultivated with great 
 care in Scotland. Pray now, (throwing himself back in his 
 chair, and laughing,) are you ever able to bring the sloe to 
 perfection ?' 
 
 I boasted that we had the honour of being the first to 
 abolish the unhospitable, troublesome, and ungracious cus- 
 tom of giving vails to servants'. JOHNSON. 'Sir, you abol- 
 ished vails, because you were too poor to be able to give 
 them.' 
 
 Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the merit of Prior. He 
 attacked him powerfully ; said he wrote of love like a man 
 who had never felt it : his love verses were college verses ; 
 and he repeated the song 'Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains^' 
 &c., in so ludicrous a manner, as to make us all wonder how 
 any one could have been pleased with such fantastical stuff. 
 Mrs. Thrale stood to her gun with great courage, in defence 
 
 ' Horace Walpole, writing of 1764, says: — 'As one of my objects 
 was to raise the popularity of our party, I had inserted a paragraph in 
 the newspapers observing that the aboHtion of vails to servants had 
 been set on foot by the Duke of Bedford, and had been opposed by 
 the Duke of Devonshire. Soon after a riot happened at Ranelagh, in 
 which the footmen mobbed and ill-treated some gentlemen who had 
 been active in that reformation.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, 
 
 11. 
 
 J- 
 
 ' 'Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains, 
 
 Their rural sports and jocund strains, 
 
 (Fleavcn guard us all from Cupid's bow !) 
 He lost his crook, he left his flocks ; 
 And wandering through the lonely rocks, 
 He nourished endless woe.' 
 
 The Despairing Shepherd. 
 
 of
 
 90 Mrs. Tlirale. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 of amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at last 
 silenced her by saying, ' My dear Lady, talk no more of 
 this. Nonsense can be defended but by nonsense'.' 
 
 Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talent for light gay 
 poetry ; and, as a specimen, repeated his song in Florizel 
 and Pcrdita, and dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line: 
 
 'I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor'.' 
 
 Johnson. ' Nay, my dear Lady, this will never do. Poor 
 David ! Smile with the simple ; — What folly is that? And 
 who would feed with the poor that can help it ? No, no ; 
 let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.' I re- 
 peated this sally to Garrick, and wondered to find his sensi- 
 bility as a writer not a little irritated by it. To sooth him, 
 I observed, that Johnson spared none of us ; and I quoted 
 the passage in Horace ^ in which he compares one who at- 
 tacks his friends for the sake of a laugh, to a pushing ox*, 
 that is marked by a bunch of hay put upon his horns : ' fcs- 
 mint habet in cornii! ' Ay, (said Garrick vehemently,) he has 
 a whole 7;ioza of it.' 
 
 Talking of history, Johnson said, ' We may know historical 
 facts to be true, as we may know facts in common life to be 
 true. Motives are generally unknown. W^e cannot trust to 
 
 ' ' In his amorous effusions Prior is less happy ; for they are not dic- 
 tated by nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tender- 
 ness. They have the coldness of Cowley without his wit, the dull 
 exercises of a skilful versifier, resolved at all adventures to write some- 
 thing about Chloe, and trj'ing to be amorous by dint of study. ... In 
 his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous ped- 
 antry he exhibited the college.' Johnson's M-^orAs,viu. 15, 22. 
 
 ^ Florizcl attd Perdita is Garrick's version of The Winter's Tale. 
 He cut down the five acts to three. The line, which is misquoted, is 
 in one of Perdita's songs : — 
 
 * That giant ambition we never can dread ; 
 Our roofs are too low for so lofty a head ; 
 Content and sweet cheerfulness open our door. 
 They smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.' 
 
 Act ii. sc. I. 
 ^ Horace. 5^A i. 4, 34. * See a«/^, ii. 75. 
 
 the
 
 Aetat. 60.] Wliitejield s Oratory. 91 
 
 the characters we find in history, unless when they are drawn 
 by those who knew the persons ; as those, for instance, by 
 Sallust and by Lord Clarendon '.' 
 
 He would not allow much merit to Whiteficld's oratory. 
 ' His popularity, Sir, (said he,) is chiefly owing to the pecu- 
 liarity of his manner. He would be followed by crowds 
 were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit, or were he to 
 preach from a tree \' 
 
 I know not from what spirit of contradiction he burst out 
 
 ' Horace Walpole told Malone that ' he was about twenty -two 
 [twenty-four] years old when his father retired ; and that he remem- 
 bered his offering one day to read to him, finding that time hung 
 heavy on his hands. "What," said he, "will you read, child?" Mr. 
 Walpole, considering that his father had long been engaged in public 
 business, proposed to read some history. " No," said he, " don't read 
 history to me ; that can't be true." ' Prior's Malone, p. 3S7. See also 
 post,h.^x\\ 30, 1773, and Oct. 10, 1779. 
 
 "^ See ante, i. 86, post, Oct. 12, 1779, and Boswell's Hebrides, August 
 15,1773. Boswell himself had met Whitefield ; for mentioning him 
 in his Letter to the People of Scotland {\>.2S), he adds :— ' Of whose 
 pious and animated society 1 had some share.' Southey thus describes 
 Whitefield in his L/fe of IVesley (i. 126) : — ' His voice excelled both in 
 melody and compass, and its fine modulations were happily accom- 
 panied by that grace of action which he possessed in an eminent de- 
 gree, and which has been said to be the chief requisite of an orator. 
 An ignorant man described his eloquence oddly but strikingly, when 
 he said that Mr. Whitefield preached like a lion. So strange a com- 
 parison conveyed no unapt a notion of the force and vehemence and 
 passion of that oratory which awed the hearers, and made them trem- 
 ble like Felix before the apostle.' Benjamin Franklin writes {Memoirs, 
 i. 163) :— ' Mr. Whiteficld's eloquence had a wonderful power over the 
 hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an instance.' 
 He happened to be present at a sermon which, he perceived, was to 
 finish with a collection for an object which had not his approbation. 
 ' I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my 
 pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five 
 pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded 
 to give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed 
 of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so ad- 
 mirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, 
 gold and all.' 
 
 into
 
 92 Johnson and Paoli. [a.d. 17G9. 
 
 into a violent declamation against the Corsicans, of whose 
 heroism I talked in high terms. ' Sir, (said he,) what is all 
 this rout about the Corsicans ? They have been at war with 
 the Genoese for upwards of twenty years, and have never yet 
 taken their fortified towns. They might have battered down 
 their walls, and reduced them to powder in twenty years. 
 They might have pulled the walls in pieces, and cracked the 
 stones with their teeth in twenty years.' It was in vain to 
 argue with him upon the want of artillery : he was not to be 
 resisted for the moment. 
 
 On the evening of October lo, I presented Dr. Johnson 
 to General Paoli. I had greatly wished that two men, for 
 whom I had the highest esteem, should meet'. They met 
 with a manly ease, mutually conscious of their own abilities, 
 and of the abilities of each other. The General spoke Italian, 
 and Dr. Johnson English, and understood one another very 
 well, with a little aid of interpretation from me, in which I 
 compared myself to an isthmus which joins two great con- 
 tinents. Upon Johnson's approach, the General said, ' From 
 what I have read of your works. Sir, and from what Mr. 
 Boswell has told me of you, I have long held you in great 
 veneration.' The General talked of languages being formed 
 on the particular notions and manners of a people, without 
 knowing which, we cannot know the language. We may 
 know the direct signification of single words ; but by these 
 no beauty of expression, no sally of genius, no wit is con- 
 veyed to the mind. All this must be by allusion to other 
 ideas. ' Sir, (said Johnson,) you talk of language, as if you 
 had never done any thing else but study it, instead of govern- 
 ing a nation.' The General said, ' Qucsto c iin troppo gran 
 coniplimento ;' this is too great a compliment. Johnson an- 
 swered, ' I should have thought so. Sir, if I had not heard you 
 talk.' The General asked him, what he thought of the 
 spirit of infidelity which was so prevalent\ JOHNSON. 'Sir, 
 
 * ' What an idea may we not form of an interview between such a 
 scholar and philosopher as Mr. Johnson, and such a legislatour and 
 general as Paoli.' Boswell's Corsica, •g. 198. 
 
 ' Mr. Stewart, who in 1768 was sent on a secret mission to Paoli, in 
 
 this
 
 Aetat. CO.] The fasJdoiiable infidelity. 93 
 
 this gloom of infidelity, I hope, is only a transient cloud 
 passing through the hemisphere", which will soon be dis- 
 sipated, and the sun break forth with his usual splendour.' 
 * You think then, (said the General,) that they will change 
 their principles like their clothes.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, if 
 they bestow no more thought on principles than on dress, it 
 must be so.' The General said, that ' a great part of the 
 fashionable infidelity was owing to a desire of shewing cour- 
 age. Men who have no opportunities of shewing it as to 
 things in this life, take death and futurity as objects on 
 which to display it.' JOHNSON. ' That is mighty foolish 
 affectation. Fear is one of the passions of human nature, 
 of which it is impossible to divest it. You remember that 
 the Emperour Charles V, when he read upon the tomb-stone 
 of a Spanish nobleman, " Here lies one Avho never knew 
 fear," wittily said, " Then he never snuffed a candle with 
 his fingers." ' 
 
 He talked a few words of French ° to the General; but 
 finding he did not do it with facility, he asked for pen, ink, 
 and paper, and wrote the following note : — 
 
 ' y\Ti III dans la geographic de Lucas de Linda nn Pater-7ioster 
 
 his interesting report says : — ' Religion seems to sit easy upon Paoli, 
 and notwithstanding what his historian Boswell relates, I take him to 
 be very !ree in his notions that way. This I suspect both from the 
 strain of his conversation, and from what I have learnt of his conduct 
 towards the clergy and monks.' Fitzmaurice's S/ielbnrne, ii. 158. See 
 post, A^rW 14, 1775, where Johnson said: — ' Sir, there is a great cry 
 about infidelity ; but there are in reality very few infidels.' Yet not 
 long before he had complained of an ' inundation of impiety.' Bos- 
 well's Hebrides, Sept. 30, 1773. 
 
 ' I suppose Johnson said atmosphere. Croker. In Humphry 
 Clinker, in the Letter of June 2, there is, however, a somewhat similar 
 use of the word. Lord Bute is described as ' the Caledonian luminary, 
 that lately blazed so bright in our hemisphere ; methinks, at present, 
 it glimmers through a fog.' A star, however, unlike a cloud, may pass 
 from one hemisphere to the other. 
 
 " See /<9i-/, under Nov. 5, 1775. Hannah More, writing in 1782 {Me- 
 7noirs, i. 242), says : — ' Paoli will not talk in English, and his French is 
 mixed with Italian. He speaks no language with purity.' 
 
 krit
 
 94 Good breeding defined. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 ecrit dans 7ine latiguc tout a-fait differente de ritaliemic, et de toutes 
 autres lesqudUs se derivent du Latin. L'auteiir Vappelle linguam 
 Corsicag rusticam ; elk a pciit-etre passe pen a pen ; mats elk a cer- 
 taiJicment prcvalue autrefois datis les viontagnes et da?is la eampagne. 
 Lc mane aiitenr dit la me me chose en pa7-lant de Sardaigne ; qii'il y a 
 deux langues dans Plsle, une des villes, V autre de la eampagne' 
 
 The General immediately informed him that the lingua 
 riistica was only in Sardinia. 
 
 Dr. Johnson went home with me, and drank tea till late 
 in the night. He said, ' General Paoli had the loftiest port 
 of any man he had ever seen '.' He denied that military 
 men were always the best bred men. * Perfect good breed- 
 ing, he observed, consists in having no particular mark of any 
 profession, but a general elegance of manners ; whereas, in 
 a military man, you can commonly distinguish the brand of 
 a soldier, riioninie dUpcc' 
 
 Dr.'Johnson shunned to-night any discussion of the per- 
 plexed question of fate and free will, which I attempted to 
 agitate. ' Sir, (said he,) we know our will is free, and there s 
 an end on't ".' 
 
 He honoured me with his company at dinner on the i6th 
 of October, at my lodgings in Old Bond -street, with Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Murphy, 
 Mr. Bickerstaff ', and Mr. Thomas Davies. Garrick played 
 
 ' Horace Walpole writes : — ' Paoli had as much ease as suited a pru- 
 dence that seemed the utmost effort of a wary understanding, and was 
 so void of anything remarkable in his aspect, that being asked if I 
 knew who it was, I judged him a Scottish officer (for he was sandy- 
 complexioned and in regimentals), who was cautiously awaiting the 
 moment of promotion.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 3S7. 
 
 ^ Boswell introduced this subject often. See post, Oct. 26, 1769, 
 April 15, 1778, March 14, 1781, and June 23, 1784. Like Milton's fallen 
 angels, he ' found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.' Paradise Lost, 
 ii. 561. 
 
 ^ ' To this wretched being, himself by his own misconduct lashed 
 out of human society, the stage was indebted for several very pure 
 and pleasing entertainments ; among them, Lo7ie in a Village, The 
 Maid of the Mill.' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 136. 'When,' says Mrs. 
 Piozzi {Anec. p. 168), ' Mr. Bickerstaff's flight confirmed the report of 
 
 round
 
 Aetat. 60.] Goldsjuitli s bloom-coloureci coat. 95 
 
 round him with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the breasts 
 of his coat, and, looking up in his face with a lively arch- 
 ness, complimented him on the good health which he seemed 
 then to enjoy ; while the sage, shaking his head, beheld him 
 with a gentle complacency. One of the company not being 
 come at the appointed hour, I proposed, as usual upon such 
 occasions, to order dinner to be served ; adding, ' Ought six 
 people to be kept waiting for one ?' ' Why, yes, (answered 
 Johnson, with a delicate humanity,) if the one will suffer 
 more by your sitting down, than the six will do by wait- 
 ing.' Goldsmith, to divert the tedious minutes, strutted 
 about, bragging of his dress, and I believe was seriously 
 vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such 
 impressions '. ' Come, come, (said Garrick,) talk no more of 
 that. You are, perhaps, the worst — eh, eh !' — Goldsmith 
 was eagerly attempting to interrupt him, when Garrick went 
 on, laughing ironically, ' Nay, you will always look like a 
 gentleman " ; but I am talking of being well or ill drest' 
 ' Well, let me tell you, (said Goldsmith,) when my tailor 
 brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, " Sir, I have 
 a favour to beg of you. When any body asks you who made 
 
 his guilt, and my husband said in answer to Johnson's astonishment, 
 that he had long been a suspected man : " By those who look close to 
 the ground dirt will be seen, Sir, (was his lofty reply;) I hope I see 
 things from a greater distance." ' In the Garrick Corres. (i. 473) is a 
 piteous letter in bad French, written from St. Malo, by Bickerstaff to 
 Garrick, endorsed by Garrick, ' From that poor wretch Bickerstaff : I 
 could not answer it.' 
 
 ' Boswell, only a couple of years before he published The Life of 
 Johnson, in fact while he was writing it, had written to Temple: — 'I 
 was \.\iQ. great man (as we used to say) at the late Drawing-room, in a 
 suit of imperial blue, lined with rose-coloured silk, and ornamented 
 with rich gold-wrought buttons.' Letters of Bosiuell, p. 289. 
 
 ' Miss Reynolds, in her Recollections (Croker's Boswell, p. 831), says, 
 ' One day at Sir Joshua Reynolds's Goldsmith was relating with great 
 indignation an insult he had just received from some gentleman he 
 had accidentally met. " The fellow," he said, " took me for a tailor !" 
 on which all the company cither laughed aloud or showed they sup- 
 pressed a laugh.' 
 
 your
 
 96 The DuNciAD. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Har- 
 row, in Water -lane.'" JOHNSOxN. 'Why, Sir, that was be- 
 cause he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to 
 gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how 
 well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour'.' 
 
 After dinner our conversation first turned upon Pope. 
 Johnson said, his characters of men were admirably drawn, 
 those of women not so welP. He repeated to us, in his 
 forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the Dunci- 
 ad\ While he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, 
 one of the company' ventured to say, 'Too fine for such a 
 
 ' In Prior's Goldsmith, ii. 232, is given Filby's Bill for a suit of 
 clothes sent to Goldsmith this very day : — 
 Oct. 16.— ^ ^ s. d. 
 
 To making a half-dress suit of ratteen, lined with satin - 12 12 o 
 
 To a pair of silk stocking breeches --------250 
 
 To Q.'g^xx o{ bloom-coloured d^xXXo ---------146 
 
 Nothing is said in this bill of the colour of the coat ; it is the breeches 
 that are bloom-coloured. The tailor's name was William, not John, 
 Filby ; ib. i. 378. Goldsmith in his Life of Nash had said :— ' Dress 
 has a mechanical influence upon the mind, and we naturally are awed 
 into respect and esteem at the elegance of those whom even our rea- 
 son would teach us to contemn. He seemed early sensible of human 
 weakness in this respect , he brought a person genteelly dressed to 
 every assembly.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 46. 
 
 '•^ 'The Characters of Mett and Women are the product of diligent 
 speculation upon human life ; much labour has been bestowed upon 
 
 them, and Pope very seldom laboured in vain The Characters of 
 
 Men, however, are written with more, if not with deeper thought, and 
 
 exhibit many passages exquisitely beautiful In the women's part 
 
 are some defects.' Johnson's Works, viii. 341. 
 
 ^ Mr. Langton informed me that he once related to Johnson (on the 
 authority of Spence), that Pope himself admired those lines so much 
 that when he repeated them his voice faltered : ' and well it might. 
 Sir,' said Johnson, ' for they are noble lines.' J. Boswell, jun. 
 
 ' We have here an instance of that reserve which Boswell, in his 
 Dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds {aiite, i. 4), says that he has prac- 
 tised. In one particular he had ' found the world to be a great fool,' 
 and, ' I have therefore,' as he writes, ' in this work been more reserved ;' 
 yet the reserve is slight enough. Everyone guesses that ' one of the 
 company ' was Boswell. 
 
 poem : —
 
 Aetat. 60.] The Mourning Bride. 97 
 
 poem: — a poem on what?' JOHNSON, (with a disdainful 
 look,) ' Why, on dunces. It was worth while being a dunce 
 then. Ah, Sir, hadst tJioii lived in those days ! It is not 
 worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits'.' 
 Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's 
 fame was higher when he was alive than it was then '. John- 
 son said, his Pastorals were poor things, though the versi- 
 fication was fine'. He told us, with high satisfaction, the 
 anecdote of Pope's inquiring who was the authour of his 
 London, and saying, he will be soon dctcrrc*. He observed, 
 that in Dryden's poetry there were passages drawn from a 
 profundity which Pope could never reach \ He repeated 
 some fine lines on love, by the former, (which I have now 
 forgotten ',) and gave great applause to the character of 
 Zimri'. Goldsmith said, that Pope's character of Addison' 
 shewed a deep knowledge of the human heart. Johnson 
 said, that the description of the temple, in T/ic Mourning 
 Bride ", was the finest poetical passage he had ever read ; 
 
 ' Yet Johnson, in his L(fe of Pope {Works, viii. 276), seems to be 
 much of Boswell's opinion ; for in writing of the Dunciad, he says : — 
 ' The subject itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom did it 
 concern to know that one or another scribbler was a dunce ?' 
 - The opposite of this Johnson maintained on April 29, 1778. 
 ' ' It is surely sufficient for an author of sixteen ... to have obtained 
 sufficient power of language and skill in metre, to exhibit a series of 
 v^ersification which had in English poetry no precedent, nor has since 
 had an imitation.' Johnson's Works, viii. 326. 
 * See ante, i. 149. 
 
 '■' ' If the flights of Dryden are higher. Pope continues longer on the 
 wing. . . . Drj'den is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with 
 perpetual delight.' Johnson's Works, viii. 325. 
 
 " Probably, says Mr. Croker, those quoted by Johnson in T/te Life 
 of Dryden. lb. vii. 339. 
 
 ' The Duke of Buckingham in Dryden's yi^^j^/^w a7td Achiiophel. 
 ^ Prologue to the Satires, 1. 193. 
 
 " Almeria. — ' It was a fancy'd noise ; for all is hush'd. 
 Leonora. — It bore the accent of a human voice. 
 Almeria. — It was thy fear, or else some transient wind 
 Whistling thro' hollows of this vaulted aisle; 
 We'll listen— 
 II.— 7 he
 
 98 Shakspeare and Congreve. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 he recollected none in Shakspeare equal to it. ' But, (said 
 Garrick, all alarmed for the ' God of his idolatry V) we know 
 not the extent and variety of his powers. We are to sup- 
 pose there are such passages in his works. Shakspeare must 
 not suffer from the badness of our memories.' Johnson, 
 diverted by this enthusiastick jealousy, went on with greater 
 ardour: 'No, Sir; Congreve has nature;' (smiling on the 
 tragick eagerness of Garrick ;) but composing himself, he 
 added, ' Sir, this is not comparing Congreve on the whole, 
 with Shakspeare on the whole ; but only maintaining that 
 Congreve has one finer passage than any that can be found 
 in Shakspeare. Sir, a man may have no more than ten 
 guineas in the world, but he may have those ten guineas 
 in one piece ; and so may have a finer piece than a man 
 who has ten thousand pounds : but then he has only one ten- 
 guinea piece. What I mean is, that you can shew me no 
 
 Leonora. — Hark ! 
 
 Almeria. — No, all is hush'd and still as death, — 'Tis dreadful ! 
 
 How reverend is the face of this tall pile, 
 
 Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads, 
 
 To bear aloft its arch'd and ponderous roof, 
 
 By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable, 
 
 Looking tranquillity ! It strikes an awe 
 
 And terror on my aching sight ; the tombs 
 
 And monumental caves of death look cold, 
 
 And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart. 
 
 Give me thy hand, and let me hear thy voice ; 
 
 Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear 
 
 Thy voice — my ov/n affrights me with its echoes.' 
 
 Act ii. sc. I. 
 ' ' Swear by thy gracious self. 
 
 Which is the god of my idolatry.' 
 
 Ronico and Juliet, act ii. sc. 2. 
 He was a God with whom he ventured to take great liberties. Thus 
 on Jan. lo, 1776, he wrote : — ' I have ventured to produce Hamlet with 
 alterations. It was the most imprudent thing I ever did in all my life; 
 but I had sworn I would not leave the stage till I had rescued that 
 noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth act. I have brought it 
 forth without the grave-digger's trick and the fencing match. The 
 alterations were received with general approbation beyond my most 
 warm expectations.' Garrick Carres, ii. 126. See afite, ii. 90, note 2. 
 
 passage
 
 Aetat. 60.] Sliakspeare and Congreve, 99 
 
 passage where there is simply a description of material ob- 
 jects, without any intermixture of moral notions, which pro- 
 duces such an effect '.' Mr. Murphy mentioned Shakspeare's 
 
 ' This comparison between Shakespeare and Congreve is mentioned 
 perhaps oftener than any passage in Boswell. Almost as often as it is 
 mentioned, it may be seen that Johnson's real opinion is misrepresented 
 or misunderstood. A few passages from his writings will shew how 
 he regarded the two men. In the Life of Congrer/c {lVor/cs,\\n. 31) 
 he repeats what he says here : — ' If I were required to select from the 
 whole mass of English poetry the most poetical paragraph, I know 
 not what I could prefer to an exclamation in T/ic Mourmng Bride.' 
 Yet in writing of the same play, he says:—' In this play there is more 
 bustle than sentiment ; the plot is busy and intricate, and the events 
 take hold on the attention ; but, except a very few passages, we are 
 rather amused with noise and perplexed with stratagem, than enter- 
 tained with any true delineation of natural characters.' Jb. p. 26. In 
 the preface to his Shakespeare, published four years before this conver- 
 sation, he almost answered Garrick by anticipation. ' It was said of 
 Euripides that every verse was a precept ; and it may be said of 
 Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil 
 and economical prudence. Yet his real power is not shown in the 
 splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and 
 the tenour of his dialogue, and he that tries to recommend him by se- 
 lect quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when 
 he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a speci- 
 men.' lb. v. 106. Ignorant, indeed, is he who thinks that Johnson 
 was insensible to Shakespeare's ' transcendent and unbounded genius,' 
 to use the words that he himself applied to him. The Rambler, No. 
 156. ' It may be doubtful,' he writes, ' whether from all his successors 
 more maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical pru- 
 dence, can be collected than he alone has given to his country.' IVorks, 
 v. 131. 'He that has read Shakespeare with attention will, perhaps, 
 find little new in the crowded world.' lb. p. 434. ' Let him that is 
 yet unacquainted with the povv^ers of Shakespeare, and who desires to 
 feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play, 
 from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his com- 
 mentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at 
 correction or explanation.' lb. p. 152. And lastly he quotes Dryden's 
 words [from Dryden's Essay of Dramatiek Poesie, edit, of 1701, i. 19] 
 * that Shakespeare was the man who, of all modern and perhaps an- 
 cient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.' //;. p. 153. 
 Mrs. Piozzi records (Anec. p. 58), that she ' forced Johnson one day 
 in a similar humour [to that in which he had praised Congreve] to 
 
 descrii)tion
 
 lOO Thomas Sheridan. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 description of the night before the battle of Agin- 
 court ' ; but it was observed, it had men in it. Mr. Davies 
 suggested the speech of JuHet, in which she figures herself 
 awaking in the tomb of her ancestors'. Some one men- 
 tioned the description of Dover Cliff". JOHNSON. 'No, 
 Sir; it should be all precipice, — all vacuum. The crows 
 impede your fall. The diminished appearance of the boats, 
 and other circumstances, are all very good description ; but 
 do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea of 
 immense height. The impression is divided ; you pass on 
 by computation, from one stage of the tremendous space 
 to another. Had the girl in The Mourning Bi'ide said, she 
 could not cast her shoe to the top of one of the pillars in the 
 temple, it would not have aided the idea, but weakened it.' 
 
 Talking of a Barrister who had a bad utterance, some one, 
 (to rouse Johnson,) wickedly said, that he was unfortunate 
 in not having been taught oratory by Sheridan \ JOHN- 
 SON. ' Nay, Sir, if he had been taught by Sheridan, he 
 would have cleared the room.' Garrick. ' Sheridan has 
 too much vanity to be a good man.' We shall now see John- 
 son's mode of defending a man ; taking him into his own 
 hands, and discriminating. JOHNSON. ' No, Sir. There is, 
 to be sure, in Sheridan, something to reprehend, and every 
 thing to laugh at ; but. Sir, he is not a bad man. No, Sir ; 
 were mankind to be divided into good and bad, he would 
 stand considerably within the ranks of good. And, Sir, it 
 must be allowed that Sheridan excels in plain declamation, 
 though he can exhibit no character.' 
 
 I should, perhaps, have suppressed this disquisition 
 concerning a person of whose merit and worth I think with 
 respect, had he not attacked Johnson so outrageously in 
 
 prefer Young's description of night to those of Shakespeare and Dry- 
 den.' He ended however by saying :— ' Young froths and foams and 
 bubbles sometimes very vigorously ; but we must not compare the 
 noise made by your tea-kettle here with the roaring of the ocean.' 
 See ^'io post, ii. in. 
 
 ^ Henry V, act iv. Prologue. " Romeo a7id Juliet, act iv. sc. 3. 
 
 ^ King Lear, act iv. sc. 6. " See ante, July 26, 1763. 
 
 his
 
 Aetat. GO.] Voltaire and Mrs. Montagu. loi 
 
 his Life of Szvift, and, at the same time, treated us, his 
 admirers, as a set of pigmies'. He who has provoked the 
 lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it. 
 
 Mrs. Montagu, a lady distinguished for having written an 
 Essay on Shakspeare, being mentioned ; REYNOLDS. ' I 
 think that essay does her honour.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; 
 it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. 
 I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the 
 end of a web, and find it packthread, I do not expect, by 
 looking further, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to 
 say, there is not one sentence of true criticism in her 
 book.' GarricK. ' But, Sir, surely it shews how much Vol- 
 taire has mistaken Shakspeare, which nobody else has done^' 
 Johnson. ' Sir, nobody else has thought it worth while. 
 And what merit is there in that ? You may as well praise 
 a school-master for whipping a boy who has construed ill. 
 No, Sir, there is no real criticism in it : none shewing the 
 beauty of thought, as formed on the workings of the human 
 heart.' 
 
 The admirers of this Essay' may be offended at the 
 
 * See ante, i. 450. 
 
 ' In spite of the gross nonsense that Voltaire has written about 
 Shakespeare, yet it was with justice that in a letter to Horace Wal- 
 pole, (dated July 15,1768,) he said: — 'Je suis le premier qui ait fait 
 
 connaitre Shakespeare aux Franrais Je peux vous assurer qu'avant 
 
 moi pcrsonne en France ne connaissait la poesie anglaise.' Voltaire's 
 Works, liv. 513. 
 
 ' ' Of whom I acknowledge myself to be one, considering it as a 
 piece of the secondary or comparative species of criticism ; and not 
 of that profound species which alone Dr. Johnson would allow to be 
 " real criticism." It is, besides, clearly and elegantly expressed, and 
 has done effectually what it professed to do, namely, vindicated Shake- 
 speare from the misrepresentations of Voltaire; and considering how 
 many young people were misled by his witty, though false observa- 
 tions, Mrs. Montagu's Essay was of service to Shakespeare with a cer- 
 tain class of readers, and is, therefore, entitled to praise. Johnson, I 
 am assured, allowed the merit which I have stated, saying, (with refer- 
 ence to Voltaire,) " it is conclusive ad Juvnincm." ' BoswRLL. That 
 this dull essay, which would not do credit to a clever school-girl of 
 seventeen, should have had a fame, of which the echoes have not yet 
 
 sliirhting
 
 I02 Mrs. Montagiis Essay. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 slighting manner in which Johnson spoke of it ; but let it be 
 remembered, that he gave his honest opinion unbiassed by 
 any prejudice, or any proud jealousy of a woman intruding 
 herself into the chair of criticism ; for Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 has told me, that when the Essay first came out, and it was 
 not known who had written it, Johnson wondered how Sir 
 Joshua could like it'. At this time Sir Joshua himself had 
 received no information concerning the authour, except being 
 assured by one of our most eminent literati, that it was clear 
 
 quite died out, can only be fully explained by Mrs. Montagu's great 
 wealth and position in society. Contemptible as was her essay, yet 
 a saying of hers about Voltaire was clever. ' He sent to the Acad- 
 emy an invective [against Shakespeare] that bears all the marks of 
 passionate dotage. Mrs. Montagu happened to be present when it 
 was read. Suard, one of their writers, said to her, " Je crois, Madame, 
 que vous etes un peu fache (sic) de ce que vous venez d'entendre." 
 She replied, " Moi, Monsieur ! point du tout ! Je ne suis pas amic de 
 M. Voltaire." ' Walpole's Letters, vi. 394. Her own Letters are very 
 pompous and very poor, and her wit would not seem to have flashed 
 often; for Miss Burney wrote of her: — 'She reasons well, and ha- 
 rangues well, but wit she has none.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 335. 
 Yet in this same Diary (i. 112) we find evidence of the absurdly high 
 estimate that was commonly formed of her. ' Mrs. Thrale asked me 
 if I did not want to see Mrs. Montagu. I truly said, I should be the 
 most insensible of all animals not to like to see our sex's glory.' That 
 she was a very extraordinary woman we have Johnson's word for it. 
 (See post, May 15, 1784.) It is impossible, however, to discover any 
 thing that rises above commonplace in any thing that she wrote, and, 
 so far as I know, that she said, with the exception of her one saying 
 about Voltaire. Johnson himself, in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale, 
 has a laugh at her. He had mentioned Shakespeare, nature and 
 friendship, and continues : — ' Now, of whom shall I proceed to speak } 
 Of whom but Mrs. Montagu .'' Having mentioned Shakespeare and 
 Nature, does not the name of Montagu force itself upon me ? Such 
 were the transitions of the ancients, which now seem abrupt, because 
 the intermediate idea is lost to modern understandings. I wish her 
 name had connected itself with friendship ; but, ah Colin, thy hopes 
 are in vain.' Pioz^i Letters, ii. loi. S&q post, April 7, 1778. 
 
 ' ' Reynolds is fond of her book, and I wonder at it ; for neither I, 
 nor Beauclerc, nor Mrs. Thrale, could get through it.' Boswell's //i?(5- 
 r/^^5, Sept. 23, 1773. 
 
 its
 
 Aetat. 60.] Lord Kanies and Buvke. 103 
 
 its authour did not know the Greek tragedies in the original. 
 One day at Sir Joshua's table, when it was related that Mrs. 
 IMontagu, in an excess of compliment to the authour of a 
 modern tragedy, had exclaimed, ' I tremble for Shakspearc ;' 
 
 Johnson said, ' When Shakspeare has got for his rival, 
 
 and Mrs. Montagu for his defender, he is in a poor state 
 indeed.' 
 
 Johnson proceeded: ' The Scotchman' has taken the right 
 method in his Elements of Criticism. I do not mean that 
 he has taught us any thing ; but he has told us old things 
 in a new way.' MURPHY. ' He seems to have read a great 
 deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own ; as 
 if he had been for years anatomising the heart of man, and 
 peeping into every cranny of it.' GOLDSMITH. * It is easier 
 to write that book, than to read it'.' JOHNSON. 'We have 
 an example of true criticism in Burke's Essay on the Sublime 
 and Beautiful ; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos^ and 
 Bouhours*, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There 
 
 ' Lord Kames is 'the Scotchman.' See ante, i.455. 
 
 ^ ' When Charles Townshend read some of Lord Karnes's Etemcnts 
 of Criticism, he said : — " This is the work of a dull man grown whim- 
 sical "—a most characteristical account of Lord Kames as a writer.' 
 Boswelliana, p. 278. Hume wrote of it : — ' Some parts of the work are 
 ingenious and curious ; but it is too abstruse and crabbed ever to take 
 with the public' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 131. ' Kames,' he says, ' had 
 much provoked Voltaire, who never forgives, and never thinks any- 
 enemy below his notice.' lb. p. 195. Voltaire ( Works, xliii. 302) thus 
 ridicules his book : — ' II nous prouve d'abord que nous avons cinq 
 sens, et que nous sentons moins I'impression douce faite sur nos yeux 
 et sur nos oreilles par les couleurs et par les sons que nous ne sentons 
 un grand coup sur la jambe ou sur la tete.' 
 
 ^ L'Abbe Dubos, 1670-1742. ' Tous les artistes lisent avec fruit ses 
 Rdflexions sur la pohie, la peinture, et la musiquc. C'est le livre le 
 plus utile qu'on ait jamais ecrit sur ces matieres chez aucune des na- 
 tions de I'Europe.' Voltaire's Steele de Louis XIV, i. 81. 
 
 * Bouhours, 1 628-1 702. Voltaire, writing of Bouhours' Manierc 
 de bien penser sur les ouvrages d' esprit, says that he teaches young 
 people 'a eviter rcnflurc, I'obscurite, le recherche, et le faux.' 
 lb. p. 54. Johnson, perhaps, knew him, through The Spectator, No. 
 62, where it is said that he has shown ' that it is impossible for any 
 
 is
 
 I04 Petitionmg. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in 
 them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must 
 shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart. In 
 the description of night in Macbeth \ the beetle and the 
 bat detract from the general idea of darkness, — inspissated 
 gloom.' 
 
 Politicks being mentioned, he said, ' This petitioning is a 
 new mode of distressing government, and a mighty easy 
 one. I will undertake to get petitions either against quar- 
 ter-guineas or half-guineas, with the help of a little hot 
 wine. There must be no yielding to encourage this. The 
 object is not important enough. We are not to blow up 
 half a dozen palaces, because one cottage is burning'.' 
 
 thought to be beautiful which is not just, . . . that the basis of all 
 wit is truth.' 
 
 ' Macbeth, act iii. so. 2. 
 
 ' In The False Alarm, that was published less than three months after 
 this conversation, Johnson describes how petitions were got. 'The 
 progress of a petition is well known. An ejected placeman goes down 
 to his county or his borough, tells his friends of his inability to serve 
 them, and his constituents of the corruption of the Government. His 
 friends readily understand that he who can get nothing will have 
 nothing to give. They agree to proclaim a meeting ; meat and drink 
 are plentifully provided, a crowd is easily brought together, and those 
 who think that they know the reason of their meeting, undertake to 
 tell those who know it not ; ale and clamour unite their powers. . . . 
 The petition is read, and universally approved. Those who are sober 
 enough to write, add their names, and the rest would sign it if they 
 could.' Works, V\. 172. Yet, when the petitions for Dr. Dodd's life 
 were rejected, Johnson said : — ' Surely the voice of the public when it 
 calls so loudly, and calls only for mercy, ought to be heard.' Post, 
 June 28, 1777. Horace Walpole, writing of the numerous petitions 
 presented to the King this year (1769), blames 'an example so incon- 
 sistent with the principles of liberty, as appealing to the Crown against 
 the House of Commons.' Some of them prayed for a dissolution of 
 Parliament. Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 382, 390. Two 
 years earlier Lord Shelburne, when Secretary of State, had found 
 among the subscribers to a petition for his impeachment, a friend of 
 his, a London alderman. ' Oh ! aye,' said the alderman when asked 
 for an explanation, ' I did sign a petition at the Royal E.xchange. 
 which they told me was for the impeachment of a Minister; I always 
 
 The
 
 Aetat. 60.] Ignovaiice in men of eminence. 105 
 
 The conversation then took another turn. Johnson. ' It 
 is amazing what ignorance of certain points one sometimes 
 finds in men of eminence. A wit about town, who wrote 
 Latin bawdy verses, asked me, how it happened that Eng- 
 land and Scotland, which were once two kingdoms, were now 
 one : — and Sir Fletcher Norton ' did not seem to know that 
 there were such publications as the Reviews.' 
 
 'The Ballad of Hardyknute^ has no great merit, if it be 
 really ancient. People talk of nature. But mere obvious 
 nature may be exhibited with very little power of mind.' 
 
 On Thursday, October 19, I passed the evening with him 
 at his house. He advised me to complete a Dictionary of 
 words peculiar to Scotland, of which I shewed him a speci- 
 men. ' Sir, (said he,) Ray has made a collection of north- 
 country words ^ By collecting those of your country, you 
 will do a useful thing towards the history of the language.' 
 He bade me also go on with collections which I was mak- 
 ing upon the antiquities of Scotland. ' Make a large book ; 
 a folio.' BOSWELL. 'But of what use will it be, Sir?' 
 Johnson. ' Never mind the use; do it.' 
 
 I complained that he had not mentioned Garrick in his 
 Preface to Shakspeare* ; and asked him if he did not admire 
 him. Johnson. 'Yes, as "a poor player, who frets and 
 struts his hour upon the stage ;" — as a shadow'.' BosWELL. 
 
 sign a petition to impeach a Minister, and I recollect that as soon as 
 I had subscribed it, twenty more put their names to it.' Pari. Hist. 
 XXXV. 167. 
 
 ' See /^.y/, under March 24, 1776. 
 
 '•' Mr. Robert Chambers says that the authour of the ballad was Eliz- 
 abeth Halket, wife of Sir Henry Wardlaw. She died about 1727. ' The 
 ballad of Hardyknute was the first poem I ever read, and it will be the 
 last I shall forget.' Sir Walter Scott. Croker's Bosivcll, p. 205. 
 
 ' John Ray published, in 1674, A Collection of English Words, &c., 
 and A Collcctio7i of English Proverbs. In 1768 the two were published 
 in one volume. 
 
 * See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773. 
 
 ' ' Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.' 
 
 Macbeth, act v. sc. 5. 
 'But
 
 io6 JoJmson and Garrick. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 'But has he not brought Shakspeare into notice'?' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Sir, to allow that, would be to lampoon the age. 
 Many of Shakspeare's plays are the worse for being acted : 
 Macbeth, for instance'.' BOSWELL. 'What, Sir, is nothing 
 gained by decoration and action ? Indeed, I do wish that 
 you had mentioned Garrick.' JOHNSON. ' My dear Sir, had 
 I mentioned him, I must have mentioned many more : Mrs. 
 Pritchard, Mrs. Gibber, — nay, and Mr. Gibber too ; he too 
 altered Shakspeare.' BosWELL. ' You have read his apol- 
 ogy. Sir?' Johnson. 'Yes, it is very entertaining. But as 
 for Gibber himself, taking from his conversation all that he 
 ought not to have said \ he was a poor creature. I remem- 
 ber when he brought me one of his Odes to have my opin- 
 ion of it*; I could not bear such nonsense, and would not 
 let him read it to the end ; so little respect had I for tJiat 
 great man ! (laughing.) Yet I remember Richardson won- 
 dering that I could treat him with familiarity*.' 
 
 I mentioned to him that I had seen the execution of 
 
 • In the Garrick Corres. i. 385, there is a letter from Mrs. Montagu 
 to Garrick, which shows the ridiculous way in which Shakespeare was 
 often patronised last century, and ' brought into notice.' She says : — 
 ' Mrs. Montagu is a little jealous for poor Shakespeare, for if Mr. Gar- 
 rick often acts Kitely, Ben Jonson will eclipse his fame.' 
 
 ■■^ ' Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre than in 
 the page; imperial tragedy is always less.' Johnson's Works, v. 122. 
 See also Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15 and 16, 1773, where Johnson 'dis- 
 played another of his heterodox opinions — a contempt of tragick act- 
 ing.' Murphy {Life, p. 145) thus writes of Johnson's slighting Garrick 
 and the stage : — ' The fact was, Johnson could not see the passions as 
 they rose and chased one another in the varied features of that ex- 
 pressive face ; and by his own manner of reciting verses, which was 
 wonderfully impressive, he plainly showed that he thought there was 
 too much of artificial tone and measured cadence in the declamation 
 of the theatre.' Reynolds said of Johnson's recitation, that ' it had no 
 more tone than it should have.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 26, 1773. 
 See post, April 3, 1773. 
 
 ' See post, April 6, 1775, where Johnson, speaking of Gibber's 'tal- 
 ents of conversation,' said :— ' He had but half to furnish ; for one half 
 of what he said was oaths.' 
 
 * See ante, June 13, 1763. ^ See post, Sept. 21, 1777. 
 
 several
 
 Aetat. GO.] Boswell at Tyburn. 107 
 
 several convicts at Tyburn ', two days before, and that none 
 of them seemed to be under any concern. JOHNSON. ' Most 
 of them. Sir, have never thought at all.' BosWELL. ' But 
 is not the fear of death natural to man ?' JOHNSON. * So 
 much so, Sir, that the whole of life is but keeping away the 
 thoughts of it'.' He then, in a low and earnest tone, talked 
 of his meditating upon the aweful hour of his own dissolu- 
 tion, and in what manner he should conduct himself upon 
 that occasion : ' I know not, (said he,) whether I should 
 wash to have a friend by me, or have it all between GOD 
 and myself.' 
 
 ' On Oct. 18, one day, not two days before, four men were hanged 
 at Tyburn for robbery on the highway, one for steahng money and 
 linen, and one for forgery. Gent. Mag. xxxix. 508. Boswell, in The 
 Hypochondriack, No. 68 {London Mag. for 1783, p. 203), republishes a 
 letter which he had written on April 25, 1768, to the Public Advertiser, 
 after he had witnessed the execution of an attorney named Gibbon, 
 and a youthful highwayman. He says : — ' I must confess that I my- 
 self am never absent from a public execution. . . . When I first attended 
 them, I was shocked to the greatest degree. I was in a manner con- 
 vulsed with pity and terror, and for several days, but especially nights 
 after, I was in a very dismal situation. Still, however, I persisted in 
 attending them, and by degrees my sensibility abated, so that I can 
 now see one with great composure. I can account for this curiosity 
 in a philosophical manner, when I consider that death is the most 
 awful object before every man, whoever directs his thoughts seriously 
 towards futurity. Therefore it is that I feel an irresistible impulse to 
 be present at every execution, as I there behold the various effects of 
 the near approach of death.' He maintains ' that the curiosity which 
 impels people to be present at such affecting scenes, is certainly a 
 proof of sensibility, not of callousness. For, it is observed, that the 
 greatest proportion of the spectators is composed of women.' See 
 post, June 23, 1784. 
 
 - Of Johnson, perhaps, might almost be said what he said of Swift 
 { Works, yWi. 207) : — 'The thoughts of death rushed upon him at this 
 time with such incessant importunity that they took possession of his 
 mind, when he first waked, for many hours together.' Writing to Mrs. 
 Thrale from Lichfield on Oct. 27, 1781, he says : — ' All here is gloomy; 
 a faint struggle with the tediousness of time, a doleful confession of 
 present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded 
 and most shunned. Hut such is the lot of man.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 209. 
 
 Talking
 
 1 08 Sympathetic feelings. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 Talking of our feeling for the distresses of others ; — JOHN- 
 SON. ' Why, Sir, there is much noise made about it, but it 
 is greatly exaggerated. No, Sir, we have a certain degree of 
 feeling to prompt us to do good : more than that. Provi- 
 dence does not intend. It would be misery to no purpose'.' 
 BOSWELL. * But suppose now, Sir, that one of your inti- 
 mate friends were apprehended for an offence for which he 
 might be hanged.' JOHNSON. ' I should do what I could 
 to bail him, and give him any other assistance ; but if he 
 were once fairly hanged, I should not suffer.' BosWELL. 
 'Would you eat your dinner that day, Sir?' JOHNSON. 
 ' Yes, Sir ; and eat it as if he were eating it with me. Why, 
 there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow, 
 friends have risen up for him on every side ; yet if he should 
 be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plumb-pudding 
 the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little 
 way in depressing the mind^' 
 
 I told him that I had dined lately at Foote's, who shewed 
 me a letter which he had received from Tom Davies, telling 
 him that he had not been able to sleep from the concern 
 which he felt on account of ^T/iis sad affair of Baretti^,' 
 begging of him to try if he could suggest any thing that 
 might be of service ; and, at the same time, recommending 
 
 ' Johnson, during a serious illness, thus wrote to Mrs. Thrale : — 
 ' When any man finds himself disposed to complain with how little 
 care he is regarded, let him reflect how little he contributed to the 
 happiness of others, and how little, for the most part, he suffers from 
 their pain. It is perhaps not to be lamented that those solicitudes 
 are not long nor frequent which must commonly be vain ; nor can we 
 wonder that, in a state in which all have so much to feel of their own 
 evils, very few have leisure for those of another.' Piozzi Letters, i. 14. 
 St&post, Sept. 14, 1777. 
 
 ' ' I was shocked to find a letter from Dr. Holland, to the effect that 
 poor Harry Hallam is dying at Sienna [Vienna]. What a trial for my 
 dear old friend ! I feel for the lad himself, too. Much distressed. I 
 dined, however. We dine, unless the blow comes very, very near the 
 heart indeed.' Macaulay's Life, ii. 287. See also ante, i. 411. 
 
 ^ See post, Feb. 24, 1773, for 'a furious quarrel' between Davies and 
 Baretti. 
 
 to
 
 Aetat. 60.] Foote s hiimour. 109 
 
 to him an industrious young man who kept a pickle-shop. 
 Johnson. ' Ay, Sir, here you have a specimen of human 
 sympathy ; a friend hanged, and a cucumber pickled. We 
 know not whether Baretti or the pickle-man has kept Davies 
 from sleep ; nor does he know himself. And as to his not 
 sleeping, Sir ; Tom Davies is a very great man ; Tom has 
 been upon the stage, and knows how to do those things. 
 I have not been upon the stage, and cannot do those things.' 
 BOSWELL. ' I have often blamed myself. Sir, for not feel- 
 ing for others as sensibly as many say they do.' JOHNSON. 
 ' Sir, don't be duped by them any more. You will find these 
 very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They 
 pay you hy feeling.' 
 
 BosWELL. 'Foote has a great deal of humour?' JOHN- 
 SON. 'Yes, Sir.' BosWELL. ' He has a singular talent of ex- 
 hibiting character.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, it is not a talent ; it is 
 a vice ; it is what others abstain from. It is not comedy, 
 which exhibits the character of a species, as that of a miser 
 gathered from many misers : it is farce, which exhibits in- 
 dividuals.' BosWELL. ' Did not he think of exhibiting you, 
 Sir?' Johnson. ' Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would 
 have broken his bones. I would have saved him the trouble 
 of cutting off a leg ; I would not have left him a leg to cut 
 off '.' BOSWELL. ' Pray, Sir, is not Foote an infidel ?' JOHN- 
 SON. ' I do not know, Sir, that the fellow is an infidel ; but 
 if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel ; 
 that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject^.' 
 
 ' Foote, two or three years before this, had lost one leg through an 
 accident in hunting. Forster's Essays, ii. 398. See post, under Feb. 
 
 7,1775- 
 
 ^ When Mr. Foote was at Edinburgh, he thought fit to entertain a 
 numerous Scotch company, with a great deal of coarse jocularity, at 
 the expense of Dr. Johnson, imagining it would be acceptable. I felt 
 this as not civil to me ; but sat very patiently till he had exhausted 
 his merriment on that subject; and then observed, that surely John- 
 son must be allowed to have some sterling wit, and that I had heard 
 him say a very good thing of Mr. Foote himself. ' Ah, my old friend 
 .Sam, (cried Foote,) no man says better things; do let us have it.' 
 
 BoSWELL.
 
 no Footes Jnunour. [a.d. 17G9, 
 
 BOSWELL. ' I suppose, Sir, he has thought superficially, and 
 seized the first notions which occurred to his mind.' JOHN- 
 SON. 'Why then, Sir, still he is like a dog, that snatches 
 the piece next him. Did you never observe that dogs have 
 not the power of comparing? A dog will take a small bit 
 of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him.' 
 
 'Buchanan, (he observed,) has fewer centos^ than any 
 modern Latin poet. He not only had great knowledge of 
 the Latin language, but was a great poetical genius. Both 
 the Scaligers praise him.' 
 
 He again talked of the passage in Congrevc with high 
 commendation, and said, ' Shakspeare never has six lines 
 together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, 
 but this does not refute my general assertion. If I come 
 to an orchard, and say there's no fruit here, and then comes 
 a poring man, who finds two apples and three pears, and 
 
 Upon which I told the above story, which produced a very loud laugh 
 from the company. But I never saw Foote so disconcerted. He 
 looked grave and angiy, and entered into a serious refutation of the 
 justice of the remark. ' What, Sir, (said he,) talk thus of a man of 
 liberal education ; — a man who for years was at the University of Ox- 
 ford ; — a man who has added sixteen new characters to the English 
 drama of his country !' Boswell. 
 
 Foote was at Worcester College, but he left without taking his de- 
 gree. He was constantly in scrapes. When the Provost, Dr. Gower, 
 who was a pedant, sent for him to reprimand him, ' Foote would pre- 
 sent himself with great apparent gravity and submission, but with a 
 large dictionary under his arm ; when, on the doctor beginning in his 
 usual pompous manner with a surprisingly long word, he would im- 
 mediately interrupt him, and, after begging pardon with great formal- 
 ity, would produce his dictionary, and pretending to and the meaning 
 •of the word, would say, " Very well. Sir ; now please to go on." ' For- 
 ster's Essays, ii. 307. Dr. Gower is mentioned by Dr. King (Anec. 
 p. 174) as one of the three persons he had known ' who spoke English 
 with that elegance and propriety, that if all they said had been im- 
 mediately committed to v/riting, any judge of the language would 
 have pronounced it an excellent and very beautiful style.' The other 
 two were Bishop Atterbury and Dr. Johnson. 
 
 * ' Cento. A composition formed by joining scrapes from other 
 authours.' Johnson's Dictio7iary. 
 
 tells
 
 Aetat. CO.] Johusoii ill a Court of Jtistice. 1 1 1 
 
 tells me, " Sir, you are mistaken, I have found both apples 
 and pears," I should laugh at him : what would that be to 
 the purpose ?' 
 
 BOSWELL. ' What do you think of Dr. Young's Night 
 T/umghts, Sir?' Joi-INSON. ' Why, Sir, there are very fine 
 things in them '.' BosWELL. ' Is there not less religion in 
 the nation now. Sir, than there was formerly?' JOHNSON. 
 ' I don't know. Sir, that there is.' BoswELL. ' For instance, 
 there used to be a chaplain in every great family ^ which 
 we do not find now.' JOHNSON. ' Neither do you find any 
 of the state servants which great families used formerly 
 to have. There is a change of modes in the whole depart- 
 ment of life.' 
 
 Next day, October 20, he appeared, for the only time I 
 suppose in his life, as a witness in a Court of Justice, being 
 called to give evidence to the character of Mr. Baretti, who 
 having stabbed a man in the street, was arraigned at the 
 Old Bailey for murder ^ Never did such a constellation 
 
 ^ See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 30, 1773. 
 
 - For the position of these chaplains see T/te Tl^/Zcr, No. 255, and 
 The Guardiati, No. 163. 
 
 ' ' He had been assailed in the grossest manner possible by a woman 
 of the town, and, driving her ofT 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.' Garrick and Beauclerk testified that every 
 one abroad carried such a knife, for in foreign inns only forks were 
 provided. ' When you travel abroad do you carry such knives as 
 this.'*' Garrick was asked. ' Yes,' he answered, ' or we should have no 
 victuals.' Dr. Johnson : His Friends and His Critics, p. 288. I have 
 extracted from the Sessional Reports for 1769, p. 431, the following evi- 
 dence as to Baretti's character: — 'Sir Joshua Revnolds. I have 
 known Mr. Baretti fifteen or sixteen years. He is a man of great hu- 
 manity, and very active in endeavouring to help his friends. He is a 
 gentleman of a good temper; I never knew him quarrelsome in my 
 life ; he is of a sober disposition. . . . This affair was on a club night 
 of the Royal Academicians. We expected him there, and were in- 
 quiring about him before we heard of this accident. He is secretary 
 for foreign correspondence.' ' Dk. Johnson. I believe I began to 
 be acquainted with Mr. Baretti about the year '53 or '54. I have been 
 
 of
 
 112 Barettis trial. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 of genius enlighten the aweful Sessions- House, emphatic- 
 ally called Justice Hall; Mr. Burke, Mr. Garrick, Mr. 
 Beauclerk, and Dr. Johnson : and undoubtedly their favour- 
 able testimony had due weight with the Court and Jury. 
 Johnson gave his evidence in a slow, deliberate, and dis- 
 tinct manner, which was uncommonly impressive. It is well 
 known that Mr. Baretti was acquitted. 
 
 intimate with him. He is a man of literature, a very studious man, a 
 man of great diligence. He gets his living by study. I have no rea- 
 son to think he was ever disordered with liquor in his life. A man 
 that I never knew to be otherwise than peaceable, and a man that I 
 take to be rather timorous.' Ou. ' Was he addicted to pick up women 
 in the street.'' ' Dr. J. I never knew that he was.' Qu. ' How is he 
 as to his eye-sight?' ' Dr. J. He does not see me now, nor I do not 
 [sic] see him. I do not believe he could be capable of assaulting any- 
 body in the street without great provocation.' ' Edmund Burke, 
 Esq. I have known him between three and four years ; he is an in- 
 genious man, a man of remarkable humanity — a thorough good-nat- 
 ured man.' ' David Garrick, Esq. I never knew a man of a more 
 active benevolence. . . . He is a man of great probity and morals.' 
 ' Dr. Goldsmith. I have had the honour of Mr. Baretti's company 
 at my chambers in the Temple. He is a most humane, benevolent, 
 peaceable man. . . . He is a man of as great humanity as any in the 
 world.' Mr. Fitzherbert and Dr. Hallifax also gave evidence. 'There 
 were divers other gentlemen in court to speak for his character, but 
 the Court thought it needless to call them.' It is curious that Bos- 
 well passes over Reynolds and Goldsmith among the witnesses. Ba- 
 retti's bail before Lord Mansfield were Burke, Garrick, Reynolds, and 
 Fitzherbert. Mrs. Piozzi tells the following anecdotes of Baretti . — 
 ' When Johnson and Burke went to see him in Newgate, they had 
 small comfort to give him, and bid him not hope too strongly. " Why, 
 what can he fear," says Baretti, placing himself between them, "that 
 holds two such hands as I do .''" An Italian came one day to Ba- 
 retti, when he was in Newgate, to desire a letter of recommendation 
 for the teaching his scholars, when he (Baretti) should be hanged. 
 " You rascal," replies Baretti in a rage, " if I were not in my own 
 apartment, I would kick you down stairs directly." ' Hayward's Pi- 
 ozzi, ii. 348. Dr. T. Campbell, in his Diary (p. 52), wrote on April i, 
 1775: — ' Boswell and Baretti, as I learned, are mortal foes; so much 
 so that Murphy and Mrs. Thrale agreed that Boswell expressed a de- 
 sire that Baretti should be hanged upon that unfortunate affair of his 
 killing, &c.' 
 
 On
 
 Aetat. 60.J Trade. 1 1 3 
 
 On the 26th of October, we dined together at the Mitre 
 tavern. I found fault with Foote for indulging his talent 
 of ridicule at the expence of his visitors, which I colloqui- 
 ally termed making fools of his company. JOHNSON. ' Why, 
 Sir, when you go to see Foote, you do not go to see a saint : 
 you go to see a man who will be entertained at your house, 
 and then bring you on a publick stage ; who will entertain 
 you at his house, for the very purpose of bringing you on a 
 publick stage. Sir, he does not make fools of his company; 
 they whom he exposes are fools already : he only brings 
 them into action.' 
 
 Talking of trade, he observed, ' It is a mistaken notion 
 that a vast deal of money is brought into a nation by trade. 
 It is not so. Commodities come from commodities ; but 
 trade produces no capital accession of wealth. However, 
 though there should be little profit in money, there is a 
 considerable profit in pleasure, as it gives to one nation 
 the productions of another; as we have wines and fruits, 
 and many other foreign articles, brought to us.' BOSWELL. 
 'Yes, Sir, and there is a profit in pleasure, by its furnishing 
 occupation to such numbers of mankind.' JOHNSON. 'Why, 
 Sir, you cannot call that pleasure to which all are averse, 
 and which none begin but with the hope of leaving off ; a 
 thing which men dislike before they have tried it, and when 
 they have tried it.' BosWELL. ' But, Sir, the mind must 
 be employed, and we grow weary when idle.' JOHNSON. 
 ' That is. Sir, because, others being busy, we want compa- 
 ny ; but if we were all idle, there would be no growing 
 weary ; we should all entertain one another. There is, in- 
 deed, this in trade : — it gives men an opportunity of im- 
 proving their situation. If there were no trade, many who 
 are poor would always remain poor. But no man loves 
 labour for itself.' BosWELL. 'Yes, Sir, I know a person 
 who docs. He is a very laborious Judge, and he loves the 
 labour'.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, that is because he loves respect 
 
 ' Lord Auchinleck, we may assume. Johnson said of Pope, that ' he 
 
 was one of those few whose labour is their pleasure.' Works, viii. 321. 
 
 1 1. -8 and
 
 114 Tea with Mrs, Williams. [a.d. 17G9. 
 
 and distinction. Could he have them without labour, he 
 would like it less.' BOSWELL. ' He tells me he likes it for 
 itself.' — ' Why, Sir, he fancies so, because he is not ac- 
 customed to abstract.' 
 
 We went home to his house to tea. Mrs. Williams made 
 it with sufficient dexterity, notwithstanding her blindness, 
 though her manner of satisfying herself that the cups were 
 full enough appeared to me a little aukward ; for I fancied 
 she put her finger down a certain way, till she felt the tea 
 touch it '. In my first elation at being allowed the privi- 
 lege of attending Dr. Johnson at his late visits to this lady, 
 which was like being e secretioribiis consiliis'^, I willingly 
 drank cup after cup, as if it had been the Heliconian spring. 
 But as the charm of novelty went off, I grew more fastidi- 
 ous; and besides, I discovered that she was of a peevish 
 temper ^' 
 
 There was a pretty large circle this evening. Dr. John- 
 son was in very good humour, lively, and ready to talk 
 upon all subjects. Mr. Fergusson, the self-taught philoso- 
 pher, told him of a new invented machine which went with- 
 out horses : a man who sat in it turned a handle, which 
 worked a spring that drove it forward. 'Then, Sir, (said 
 Johnson,) what is gained is, the man has his choice whether 
 he will move himself alone, or himself and the machine too.' 
 Dominicetti* being mentioned, he would not allow him any 
 merit. ' There is nothing in all this boasted system. No, 
 
 ' I have since had reason to think that I was mistaken ; for I have 
 been informed by a lady, who was long intimate with her, and likely 
 to be a more accurate observer of such matters, that she had acquired 
 such a niceness of touch, as to know, by the feeling on the outside of 
 the cup, how near it was to being full. Boswell. Baretti, in a MS. 
 note on Piozzi Letters, ii. 84, says : — ' I dined with Dr. Johnson as sel- 
 dom as I could, though often scolded for it ; but I hated to see the 
 victuals pawed by poor Mrs. Williams, that would often carve, though 
 stone blind.' 
 
 "^ See ante, ]u\y 1 and Aug. 2, 1763. 
 
 ' See a/!te, i. 269, note. 
 
 * An Italian quack who in 1765 established medicated baths in 
 Cheney Walk, Chelsea. Croker, 
 
 Sir;
 
 Aetat. 60.] Johiisoii s talking for victory. 115 
 
 Sir ; medicated baths can be no better than warm water : 
 their only effect can be that of tepid moisture.' One of 
 the company took the other side, maintaining that medi- 
 cines of various sorts, and some too of most powerful ef- 
 fect, are introduced into the human frame by the medium 
 of the pores ; and, therefore, when warm water is impreg- 
 nated with salutiferous substances, it may produce great 
 effects as a bath. This appeared to me very satisfactoiy. 
 Johnson did not answer it ; but talking for victory, and de- 
 termined to be master of the field, he had recourse to the 
 device which Goldsmith imputed to him in the witty words 
 of one of Gibber's comedies : ' There is no arguing with 
 Johnson ; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you 
 down with the butt end of it '.' He turned to the gentle- 
 man, ' Well, Sir, go to Dominicetti, and get thyself fumi- 
 gated ; but be sure that the steam be directed to thy Jicad, 
 for tJiat is the peccant part.' This produced a triumphant 
 roar of laughter from the motley assembly of philosophers, 
 printers, and dependents, male and female. 
 
 I know not how so whimsical a thought came into my 
 mind, but I asked, ' If, Sir, you were shut up in a castle, and 
 
 ' The same saying is recorded /(7^/, May 15, 1784, and in Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Oct. 5, 1773. ' Cooke reports another saying of Goldsmith's 
 to the same effect : — " There's no chance for you in arguing with 
 Johnson. Like the Tartar horse, if he does not conquer you in front, 
 his kick from behind is sure to be fatal." ' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 
 167. 'In arguing,' wrote Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Johnson did not 
 trouble himself with much circumlocution, but opposed directly and 
 abruptly his antagonist. He fought with all sorts of weapons — ludi- 
 crous comparisons and similes ; if all failed, with rudeness and over- 
 bearing. He thought it necessary never to be worsted in argument. 
 He had one virtue which I hold one of the most difficult to practise. 
 After the heat of contest was over, if he had been informed that his 
 antagonist resented his rudeness, he was the first to seek after a rec- 
 onciliation. . . . That he was not thus strenuous for victory with his 
 intimates in tete-a-tete conversations when there were no witnesses, 
 may be easily believed. Indeed, had his conduct been to them the 
 same as he exhibited to the public, his friends could never have en- 
 tertained that love and affection for him which they all feel and pro- 
 fess for his memory.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 457, 462. 
 
 a new-born
 
 ii6 Men bred in London. [a.d. 17G9, 
 
 a new-born child with you, what would you do?' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Why, Sir, I should not much like my company.' 
 BOSWELL. ' But would you take the trouble of rearing it ?' 
 He seemed, as may well be supposed, unwilling to pursue 
 the subject : but upon my persevering in my question, re- 
 plied, ' Why yes. Sir, I would; but I must have all con- 
 veniencies. If I had no garden, I would make a shed on 
 the roof, and 'take it there for fresh air. I should feed 
 it, and wash it much, and with warm water to please it, 
 not with cold water to give it pain.' BoswELL. ' But, Sir, 
 does not heat relax?' JOHNSON. ' Sir, you are not to 
 imagine the water is to be very hot. I would not coddle 
 the child. No, Sir, the hardy method of treating children 
 does no good. I'll take you five children from London, 
 who shall cuff five Highland children. Sir, a man bred in 
 London will carry a burthen, or run, or wrestle, as well as 
 a man brought up in the hardiest manner in the country.' 
 BoswELL. ' Good living, I suppose, makes the Londoners 
 strong.' Johnson. 'Why, Sir, I don't know that it does. 
 Our Chairmen from Ireland, who are as strong men as any, 
 have been brought up upon potatoes. Quantity makes up 
 for quality.' BosWELL. ' Would you teach this child, that 
 I have furnished you with, any thing?' JOHNSON. 'No, 
 I should not be apt to teach it.' BoswELL. ' Would not 
 you have a pleasure in teaching it ?' JOHNSON. ' No, Sir, I 
 should not have a pleasure in teaching it.' BoswELL. ' Have 
 you not a pleasure in teaching men? — TJicre I have you. 
 You have the same pleasure in teaching men, that I should 
 have in teaching children.' JOHNSON. ' Why, something 
 about that.' 
 
 BosWELL. ' Do you think. Sir, that what is called natural 
 affection is born with us? It seems to me to be the effect 
 of habit, or of gratitude for kindness. No child has it for 
 a parent whom it has not seen.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I 
 think there is an instinctive natural affection in parents 
 towards their children.' 
 
 Russia being mentioned as likely to become a great em- 
 pire, by the rapid increase of population : — JOHNSON. ' Why, 
 
 Sir,
 
 Aetat. GO.] Landlords and tenants. 117 
 
 Sir, I see no prospect of their propagating more. They can 
 have no more children than they can get. I know of no 
 way to make them breed more than they do. It is not from 
 reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclina- 
 tion. A man is poor ; he thinks, " I cannot be worse, and 
 so I'll e'en take Peggy." ' BOSWELL. ' But have not nations 
 been more populous at one period than another?' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Yes, Sir ; but that has been owing to the people being 
 less thinned at one period than another, whether by emigra- 
 tions, war, or pestilence, not by their being more or less pro- 
 lifick. Births at all times bear the same proportion to the 
 same number of people,' Boswell. ' But, to consider the 
 state of our own country ; — does not throwing a number of 
 farms into one hand hurt population?' JOHNSON. ' Why no, 
 Sir ; the same quantity of food being produced, will be con- 
 sumed by the same number of mouths, though the people 
 may be disposed of in different Avays. We see, if corn be 
 dear, and butchers' meat cheap, the farmers all apply them- 
 selves to the raising of corn, till it becomes plentiful and 
 cheap, and then butchers' meat becomes dear ; so that an 
 equality is always preserved. No, Sir, let fanciful men do 
 as they will, depend upon it, it is difficult to disturb the 
 system of life.' BosWELL. ' But, Sir, is it not a very bad 
 thing for landlords to oppress their tenants, by raising their 
 rents?' Johnson. 'Very bad. But, Sir, it never can have 
 any general influence ; it may distress some individuals. For, 
 consider this : landlords cannot do without tenants. Now 
 tenants will not give more for land than land is worth. If 
 they can make more of their money by keeping a shop, or 
 any other way, they'll do it, and so oblige landlords to let 
 land come back to a reasonable rent, in order that they may 
 get tenants. Land, in England, is an article of commerce. 
 A tenant who pays his landlord his rent, thinks himself no 
 more obliged to him than you think yourself obliged to a 
 man in whose shop you buy a piece of goods. He knows 
 the landlord does not let him have his land for less than 
 he can get from others, in the same manner as the shop- 
 keeper sells his goods. No shopkeeper sells a yard of 
 
 ribband
 
 ii8 Landlords and tenants. [a.d. 17G9. 
 
 ribband for sixpence when sevenpence is the current price.' 
 BOSWELL. ' But, Sir, is it not better that tenants should 
 be dependant on landlords ?* JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, as there 
 are many more tenants than landlords, perhaps, strictly 
 speaking, we should wish not. But if you please you 
 may let your lands cheap, and so get the value, part in 
 money and part in homage. I should agree with you in 
 that.' BoswELL. * So, Sir, you laugh at schemes of political 
 improvement.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, most schemes of po- 
 litical improvement are very laughable things.' 
 
 He observed, ' Providence has wisely ordered that the 
 more numerous men are, the more difficult it is for them 
 to agree in any thing, and so they are governed. There 
 is no doubt, that if the poor should reason, " We'll be the 
 poor no longer, we'll make the rich take their turn," they 
 could easily do it, were it not that they can't agree. So 
 the common soldiers, though so much more numerous than 
 their officers, are governed by them for the same reason.' 
 
 He said, ' Mankind have a strong attachment to the habi- 
 tations to which they have been accustomed. You see the 
 inhabitants of Norway do not with one consent quit it, and 
 go to some part of America, where there is a mild climate, 
 and where they may have the same produce from land, with 
 the tenth part of the labour. No, Sir; their affection for 
 their old dwellings, and the terrour of a general change, 
 keep them at home. Thus, we see many of the finest spots 
 in the world thinly inhabited, and many rugged spots well 
 inhabited.' 
 
 Tlie London Chro)iicle\ which was the only news-paper 
 he constantly took in, being brought, the office of reading 
 it aloud was assigned to me. I was diverted by his im- 
 patience. He made me pass over so many parts of it, that 
 my task was very easy. He would not suffer one of the 
 petitions to the King about the Middlesex election to be 
 read ^ 
 
 ' He had written the Introduction to it. Ante, i. 368. 
 ^ See /tij/, beginning of 1770. 
 
 I had
 
 Aetat. CO.] Papists and Presbyterians. 1 1 9 
 
 I had hired a Bohemian as my servant' while I remained 
 in London, and being much pleased with him, I asked Dr. 
 Johnson whether his being a Roman Catholick should pre- 
 vent my taking him with me to Scotland. JOHNSON. 'Why 
 no, Sir, if Jie has no objection, you can have none.' BOS- 
 WELL. ' So, Sir, you are no great enemy to the Roman 
 Catholick religion.' JOHNSON. ' No more, Sir, than to the 
 Presbyterian religion.' BOSWELL. 'You are joking.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' No, Sir, I really think so. Nay, Sir, of the two, I 
 prefer the Popish'.' BOSWELL. ' How so. Sir?' JOHNSON. 
 ' Why, Sir, the Presbyterians have no church, no apostolical 
 ordination.' BOSWELL. ' And do you think that absolutely 
 essential. Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, as it was an apos- 
 tolical institution, I think it is dangerous to be without it. 
 And, Sir, the Presbyterians have no publick worship : they 
 have no form of prayer in which they know they are to join. 
 They go to hear a man pray, and are to judge whether 
 they will join with him.' BosWELL. ' But, Sir, their doc- 
 trine is the same with that of the Church of England. Their 
 confession of faith, and the thirty-nine articles, contain the 
 same points, even the doctrine of predestination. JOHN- 
 SON. ' Why yes. Sir, predestination was a part of the clamour 
 of the times, so it is mentioned in our articles, but with as 
 little positiveness as could be.' BoswELL. ' Is it necessary, 
 Sir, to believe all the thirty-nine articles?' JOHNSON. 'Why, 
 Sir, that is a question which has been much agitated. Some 
 have thought it necessary that they should all be believed ; 
 others have considered them to be only articles of peace, 
 that is to say, you are not to preach against them \' 
 BosWELL. ' It appears to me. Sir, that predestination, or 
 what is equivalent to it, cannot be avoided, if we hold an 
 
 ' He accompanied Bosvvell on his tour to the Hebrides. Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Aug. 18, 1773. 
 
 " While he was in Scotland he never entered one of the churches. 
 ' I will not give a sanction,' he said, ' by my presence, to a Presbyterian 
 assembly.' Id. Aug. 27, 1773. When he was in France he went to a 
 Roman Catholic service ; posi, Oct. 29, 1775. 
 
 * Sgq post, March 21, 1772. 
 
 universal
 
 I20 Predestinatio7i and free will. [a. d. 1769. 
 
 universal prescience in the Deity.' JOHNSON. * Why, Sir, 
 does not GOD every day see things going on without pre- 
 venting them?' BOSWELL. 'True, Sir; but if a thing h^ cer- 
 tainly foreseen, it must be fixed, and cannot happen other- 
 wise ; and if we apply this consideration to the human 
 mind, there is no free will, nor do I see how prayer can 
 be of any avail.' He mentioned Dr. Clarke, and Bishop 
 Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, and bid me read South's 
 Sermons on Prayer ; but avoided the question which has 
 excruciated philosophers and divines, beyond any other. I 
 did not press it further, when I perceived that he was dis- 
 pleased', and shrunk from any abridgement of an attribute 
 usually ascribed to the Divinity, however irreconcileable in 
 its full extent with the grand system of moral government. 
 His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers 
 of his understanding. He was confined by a chain which 
 early imagination and long habit made him think massy 
 and strong, but which, had he ventured to try, he could at 
 once have snapt asunder. 
 
 I proceeded: 'What do you think. Sir, of Purgatory \ as 
 believed by the Roman Catholicks?' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, 
 it is a very harmless doctrine. They are of opinion that the 
 generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked as 
 to deserve everlasting punishment, nor so good as to merit 
 being admitted into the society of blessed spirits; and there- 
 fore that God is graciously pleased to allow of a middle 
 state, where they may be purified by certain degrees of suf- 
 fering. You see. Sir, there is nothing unreasonable in this.' 
 BoswELL. 'But then, Sir, their masses for the dead?' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Why, Sir, if it be once established that there are souls 
 in purgatory, it is as proper to pray for tlieni^ as for our 
 brethren of mankind who are yet in this life.' BosWELL. 
 'The idolatry of the Mass?' JOHNSON. ' Sir, there is no 
 idolatry^ in the Mass. They believe GOD to be there, and 
 they adore him.' BosWELL. ' The worship of Saints ?' 
 Johnson. ' Sir, they do not worship saints ; they invoke 
 
 * See ante, ii. 94. * See. post, March 27, 1772. 
 
 them ;
 
 Aetat. 60.] Roman Catholick doctrines. 1 2 1 
 
 them ; they only ask their prayers '. I am talking all this 
 time of the doctrines of the Church of Rome. I grant 
 you that in practice. Purgatory is made a lucrative imposi- 
 tion, and that the people do become idolatrous as they 
 recommend themselves to the tutelary protection of par- 
 ticular saints. I think their giving the sacrament only in 
 one kind is criminal, because it is contrary to the express 
 institution of CHRIST, and I wonder how the Council of 
 Trent admitted it.' BOSWELL. 'Confession?' JOHNSON. 
 ' Why, I don't know but that is a good thing. The script- 
 ure says, " Confess your faults one to another"," and the 
 priests confess as well as the laity. Then it must be con- 
 sidered that their absolution is only upon repentance, and 
 often upon penance also. You think your sins may be for- 
 given without penance, upon repentance alone,' 
 
 I thus ventured to mention all the common objections 
 against the Roman Catholick Church, that I might hear 
 so great a man upon them. What he said is here accurately 
 recorded. But it is not improbable that if one had taken 
 the other side, he might have reasoned differently. 
 
 I must however mention, that he had a respect for ' tJie 
 old religion' as the mild Melancthon '' called that of the 
 Roman Catholick Church, even while he was exerting him- 
 self for its reformation in some particulars. Sir William 
 Scott informs me, that he heard Johnson say, 'A man who 
 is converted from Protestantism to Popery may be sincere ; 
 he parts with nothing: he is only superadding to what he 
 already had. But a convert from Popery to Protestantism 
 gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as any thing 
 that he retains; there is so much laceration of mind* in such 
 a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and lasting'.' 
 The truth of this reflection may be confirmed by many 
 
 * Set post, May 7, 1773, Oct. 10, 1779, and June 9, 1784. 
 ' St. James, v. 1 6. 
 
 ^ See /tfj-/, June 28, 1777, note. 
 
 * Laceration was properly a term of surgery; hence the itahcs. 
 See post,]?in. 20, 1780. 
 
 * See /^j/, April 15, 1778. 
 
 and
 
 1 2 2 The fear of death. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 and eminent instances, some of which will occur to most 
 of my readers. 
 
 When we were alone, I introduced the subject of death, 
 and endeavoured to maintain that the fear of it might be 
 got over. I told him that David Hume said to me, he was 
 no more uneasy to think he should not be after this life, 
 than that he had not been before he began to exist. JOHN- 
 SON. ' Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are dis- 
 turbed ; he is mad : if he does not think so, he lies. He 
 may tell you, he holds his finger in the flame of a candle, 
 without feeling pain ; would you believe him ? When he 
 dies, he at least gives up all he has.' Boswell. ' Foote, 
 Sir, told me, that when he was very ill he was not afraid 
 to die.' Johnson. 'It is not true. Sir'. Hold a pistol to 
 Foote's breast, or to Hume's breast, and threaten to kill 
 them, and you'll see how they behave.' BoswELL, ' But 
 may we not fortify our minds for the approach of death ?' 
 Here I am sensible I was in the wrong, to bring before 
 his view what he ever looked upon with horrour; for al- 
 though when in a celestial frame, in his Vanity of Hiiinan 
 Wishes, he has supposed death to be 'kind Nature's signal 
 for retreat,' from this state of being to ' a happier seat^' his 
 thoughts upon this aweful change were in general full of 
 dismal apprehensions. His mind resembled the vast amphi- 
 theatre, the Colisseum at Rome. In the centre stood his 
 judgement, which, like a mighty gladiator, combated those 
 apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were 
 all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After 
 a conflict, he drives them back into their dens ; but not 
 killing them, they were still assailing him. To my question, 
 whether we might not fortify our minds for the approach 
 of death, he answered, in a passion, ' No, Sir, let it alone. 
 It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 12, 1773. 
 * He bids us pray 
 
 ' For faith that panting for a happier seat, 
 Counts death kind nature's signal of retreat.' 
 
 of
 
 Aetat. GO.] A qtiarvcl and a reconciliation. 123 
 
 of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time'.' He 
 added, (with an earnest look,) 'A man knows it must be so, 
 and submits. It w^ill do him no good to whine.' 
 
 I attempted to continue the conversation. He was so 
 provoked, that he said, ' Give us no more of this ;' and was 
 thrown into such a state of agitation, that he expressed 
 himself in a way that alarmed and distressed me ; shewed 
 an impatience that I should leave him, and when I was 
 going away, called to me sternly, ' Don't let us meet to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 I went home exceedingly uneasy. All the harsh observa- 
 tions which I had ever heard made upon his character, 
 crowded into my mind ; and I seemed to myself like the 
 man who had put his head into the lion's mouth a great 
 many times with perfect safety, but at last had it bit off. 
 
 Next morning I sent him a note, stating, that I might 
 have been in the wrong, but it was not intentionally ; he 
 was therefore, I could not help thinking, too severe upon 
 me. That notwithstanding our agreement not to meet that 
 day, I would call on him in my way to the city, and stay 
 five minutes by my watch. ' You are, (said I,) in my mind, 
 since last night, surrounded with cloud and storm. Let 
 me have a glimpse of sunshine, and go about my affairs 
 in serenity and chearfulness.' 
 
 Upon entering his study, I was glad that he was not 
 alone, which would have made our meeting more awkward. 
 There were with him, Mr. Steevens' and Mr. Tyers', both 
 of whom I now saw for the first time. My note had, on ' 
 
 ' 'To die is landing on some silent shore, 
 
 Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar, 
 Ere well we feci the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.' 
 Garth. Quoted in Johnson's Works, vi. 61. Bacon, if he was the au- 
 thor of An Essay on Death, says, ' I do not believe that any man fears 
 to be dead, but only the stroke of death.' Spedding's Bacon, vi. 600. 
 Cicero {Tiiscid. Qucest. i. 8j quotes Epicharmus's saying :— ' Emori nolo, 
 scd me esse mortuum nihil a^stimo.' 
 
 ' See/^^/, beginning of 1773. ' See j^cj.-/, April 17, '778. 
 
 * Perhaps on is a misprint for or. 
 
 his
 
 1 24 Blackmores supposed lines. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 his own reflection, softened him, for he received me very 
 complacently ; so that I unexpectedly found myself at ease, 
 and joined in the conversation. 
 
 He said, the criticks had done too much honour to Sir 
 Richard Blackmore, by writing so much against him '. That 
 in his Creation he had been helped by various wits, a line 
 by Philips and a line by Tickell ; so that by their aid, and 
 that of others, the poem had been made out*. 
 
 I defended Blackmore's supposed lines, which have been 
 ridiculed as absolute nonsense : — 
 
 'A painted vest Prince Voltiger had on, 
 Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won ^' 
 
 ' Johnson says of Blackmore ( Works, viii. 36) that ' he is one of 
 those men whose lot it has been to be much oftener mentioned by 
 enem.ies than by friends.' 
 
 = This account Johnson says he had from an eminent bookseller, 
 who had it from Ambrose Philips the poet. 'The relation of Philips,' 
 he adds, ' I suppose was true ; but when all reasonable, all credible al- 
 lowance is made for this friendly revision, the author will still retain 
 an ample dividend of praise. . . . Correction seldom efifects more than 
 the suppression of faults : a happy line, or a single elegance, may per- 
 haps be added, but of a large work the general character must always 
 remain.' Works, \\\\. \\. 
 
 ^ An acute correspondent of the Eiiropeaii Magazine, April, 1792, 
 has completely exposed a mistake which has been unaccountably fre- 
 quent in ascribing these lines to Blackmore, notwithstanding that Sir 
 Richard Steele, in that very popular work, TJic Spectator, mentions 
 them as written by the Authour of Tlie British Princes, the Honour- 
 able Edward Howard. The correspondent above mentioned, shews 
 this mistake to be so inveterate, that not only / defended the lines as 
 Blackmore's, in the presence of Dr. Johnson, without any contradic- 
 tion or doubt of their authenticity, but that the Reverend Mr. Whita- 
 ker has asserted in print, that he understands they were suppressed in 
 the late edition or editions of Blackmore. ' After all, (says this intel- 
 ligent writer.) it is not unworthy of particular observation, that these 
 lines so often quoted do not exist either in Blackmore or Howard.' In 
 The British Princes, 8vo. 1669, now before me, p. 96, they stand thus : — • 
 'A vest as admired Voltiger had on, 
 Which, from this Island's foes, his grandsire won. 
 Whose artful colour pass'd the Tyrian dye, 
 Oblig'd to triumph in this legacy.' 
 
 I maintained
 
 Aetat. 60.] Johiisou a good-kiimoured man. 125 
 
 I maintained it to be a poetical conceit. A Pict being 
 painted, if he is slain in battle, and a vest is made of his 
 skin, it is a painted vest won from him, though he was 
 naked \ 
 
 Johnson spoke unfavourably of a certain pretty volumi- 
 nous authour, saying, ' He used to write anonymous books, 
 and then other books commending those books, in which 
 there was something of rascality.' 
 
 I whispered him, ' Well, Sir, you are now in good humour.' 
 Johnson. ' Yes, Sir.' I was going to leave him, and had 
 got as far as the staircase. He stopped me, and smiling, 
 said, ' Get you gone m;' a curious mode of inviting me to 
 stay, which I accordingly did for some time longer. 
 
 This little incidental quarrel and reconciliation, which, 
 perhaps, I may be thought to have detailed too minutely, 
 must be esteemed as one of many proofs which his friends 
 had, that though he might be charged with bad Jiiunour at 
 times, he was always a good-natured man ; and I have heard 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds °, a nice and delicate observer of man- 
 ners, particularly remark, that when upon any occasion John- 
 son had been rough to any person in company, he took the 
 first opportunity of reconciliation, by drinking to him, or 
 
 It is probable, I think, that some wag, in order to make Howard still 
 more ridiculous than he really was, has formed the couplet as it now 
 circulates. Boswell. Swift in his Poetty : A Rhapsody, thus joins 
 Howard and Blackmore together : — 
 
 ' Remains a difficulty still. 
 To purchase fame by writing ill. 
 From Flecknoe down to Howard's time 
 How few have reached the low sublime ! 
 For when our high-born Howard died, 
 Blackmore alone his place supplied.' 
 
 Swift's ?F(;r/-.y (1803), xi. 296. 
 * Boswell seems to have borrowed the notion from T/ie Spectator, 
 No. 43, where Steele, after saying that the poet blundered because he 
 was ' vivacious as well as stupid,' continues : — ' A fool of a colder con- 
 stitution would have staid to have flayed the Pict, and made bufi of 
 his skin for the wearing of the conqueror.' 
 ' See ante, ii. 1 1 5, note. 
 
 addressing
 
 126 On Marriage. [a.d. 1769, 
 
 addressing his discourse to him ' ; but if he found his dignified 
 indirect overtures sullenly neglected, he was quite indiffer- 
 ent, and considered himself as having done all that he ought 
 to do, and the other as now in the wrong. 
 
 Being- to set out for Scotland on the loth of November, 
 I wrote to him at Streatham, begging that he would meet 
 me in tov/n on the 9th ; but if this should be very incon- 
 venient to him, I would go thither. His answer was as 
 follows : — 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Upon balancing the inconveniences of both parties, I find it 
 will less incommode you to spend your night here, than me to 
 come to town. I wish to see you, and am ordered by the lady of 
 this house to invite you hither. Whether you can come or not, I 
 shall not have any occasion of writing to you again before your 
 marriage, and therefore tell you now, that with great sincerity I 
 wish you happiness. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 ' Your most affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Nov. 9, 1769.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Piozzi {Anec. p. 97) tells how one day at Streatham ' when he 
 was musing over the fire, a young gentleman called to him suddenly, 
 and I suppose he thought disrespectfully, in these words : — " Mr. John- 
 son, 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 recov- 
 ered the consciousness of his own existence, when Johnson came 
 back, and drawing his chair among us, with altered looks and a soft- 
 ened voice, joined in the general chat, insensibly led the conversation 
 to the subject of marriage, where he laid himself out in a dissertation 
 so useful, so elegant, so founded on the true knowledge of human life, 
 and so adorned with beauty of sentiment, that no one ever recollected 
 the offence except to rejoice in its consequences.' This 'young gen- 
 tleman,' according to Mr. Hayward (Mrs. Piozzi's Aiifo. i. 69), was Sir 
 John Lade, the hero of the ballad which Johnson recited on his death- 
 bed. For other instances of Johnson's seeking a reconciliation, see 
 pos/, May 7, 1773, and April 12 and May 8, 1778. 
 
 I was
 
 Aetat. 60.] The Marriage Service. 127 
 
 I was detained in town till it was too late on the ninth, 
 so went to him early on the morning of the tenth of No- 
 vember. ' Now, (said he,) that you are going to marry, do 
 not expect more from life, than life will afford. You may 
 often find yourself out of humour, and you may often think 
 your wife not studious enough to please you ; and yet you 
 may have reason to consider yourself as upon the whole 
 very happily married.' 
 
 Talking of marriage in general, he observed, ' Our marriage 
 service is too refined. It is calculated only for the best kind 
 of marriages ; whereas, we should have a form for matches 
 of convenience, of which there are many.' He agreed with 
 me that there was no absolute necessity for having the mar- 
 riage ceremony performed by a regular clergyman, for this 
 was not commanded in scripture. 
 
 I was volatile enough to repeat to him a little epigram- 
 matick song of mine, on matrimony, which Mr. Garrick had 
 a few days before procured to be set to musick by the very 
 ingenious Mr. Dibden. 
 
 'A Matrimonial Thought. 
 
 'In the blithe days of honey-moon, 
 
 With Kate's allurements smitten, 
 I lov'd her late, I lov'd her soon, 
 
 And call'd her dearest kitten. 
 But now my kitten's grown a cat, 
 
 And cross like other wives, 
 O ! by my soul, my honest Mat, 
 
 I fear she has nine lives.' 
 
 My illustrious friend said, ' It is very well, Sir; but you 
 should not swear.' Upon which I altered * O! by my soul,' 
 to ' alas, alas !' 
 
 He was so good as to accompany me to London, and see 
 mc into the post-chaise which was to carry me on my road 
 to Scotland. And sure I am, that, however inconsiderable 
 many of the particulars recorded at this time may appear 
 to some, they will be esteemed by the best part of my 
 
 readers
 
 128 The False Alarm, [a.d. 1770, 
 
 readers as genuine traits of his character, contributing to- 
 gether to give a full, fair, and distinct view of it. 
 
 1770: ^TAT. 61.] — In 1770 he published a political pam- 
 phlet, entitled TJic False Alarm', intended to justify the 
 conduct of ministry and their majority in the House of 
 Commons, for having virtually assumed it as an axiom, that 
 the expulsion of a Member of Parliament was equivalent to 
 exclusion, and thus having declared Colonel Lutterel to be 
 duly elected for the county of Middlesex, notwithstanding 
 Mr. Wilkes had a great majority of votes*. This being 
 justly considered as a gross violation of the right of election, 
 an alarm for the constitution extended itself all over the 
 kingdom. To prove this alarm to be false, was the pur- 
 pose of Johnson's pamphlet ; but even his vast powers were 
 inadequate to cope with constitutional truth and reason, 
 and his argument failed of effect ; and the House of Com- 
 mons have since expunged the offensive resolution from 
 their Journals \ That the House of Commons might have 
 expelled Mr. Wilkes repeatedly, and as often as he should 
 be re-chosen, was not denied ; but incapacitation cannot be 
 but by an act of the whole legislature. It was wonderful to 
 
 ' ' The False Alarm, his first and favourite pamphlet, was written 
 at our house between eight o'clock on Wednesday night and twelve 
 o'clock on Thursday night. We read it to Mr. Thrale when he came 
 very late home from the House of Commons.' Piozzi's Anec.-p- A'^- 
 See also post, Nov. 26, 1774, where Johnson says that ' T/ie Patriot was 
 called for by my political friends on Friday, was written on Saturday.' 
 
 * Wilkes was first elected member for Middlesex at the General 
 Election of March, 1768. He did not take his seat, having been thrown 
 into prison before Parliament met. On Feb. 3, 1769, he was declared 
 incapable of being elected, and a new writ was ordered. On Feb. 16 
 he was again elected, and without opposition. His election was again 
 declared void. On March 16 he was a third time elected, and without 
 opposition. His election was again declared void. On April 13 he 
 was a fourth time elected by 1 143 votes against 296 given for Colonel 
 Luttrell. On the 14th the poll taken for him was declared null and 
 void, and on the 15th, Colonel Luttrell was declared duly elected. 
 Part. Hist. xvi. 437, and Almon's Wilkes, iv. 4. See post, Oct. 1 2, 1 779. 
 
 ' The resolution of expulsion was carried on Feb. 17, 1769. Pari. 
 Hist.xvi.^Tj. It was expunged on May 3, 1782. /^. xxii. 1407. 
 
 see
 
 Aetat. 61.] Wilkes s expulsion from Parliament. 129 
 
 see how a prejudice in favour of government in general, and 
 an aversion to popular clamour, could blind and contract 
 such an understanding as Johnson's, in this particular case; 
 yet the wit, the sarcasm, the eloquent vivacity which this 
 pamphlet displayed, made it be read with great avidity at 
 the time, and it will ever be read with pleasure, for the sake 
 of its composition. That it endeavoured to infuse a nar- 
 cotick indifference, as to publick concerns, into the minds 
 of the people, and that it broke out sometimes into an ex- 
 treme coarseness of contemptuous abuse, is but to.o evident. 
 
 It must not, however, be omitted, that when the storm 
 •of his violence subsides, he takes a fair opportunity to pay 
 a grateful compliment to the King, who had rewarded his 
 merit: 'These low-born rulers' have endeavoured, surely 
 without effect, to alienate the affections of the people from 
 the only King who for almost a century has much appeared 
 to desire, or much endeavoured to deserve them.' And, 
 ' Every honest man must lament, that the faction has been 
 regarded with frigid neutrality by the Tories, who being 
 long accustomed to signalise their principles by opposition 
 to the Court, do not yet consider, that they have at last a 
 King who knows not the name of party, and who wishes to 
 be the common father of all his people.' 
 
 To this pamphlet, which was at once discovered to be 
 Johnson's, several answers came out, in which, care was 
 taken to remind the publick of his former attacks upon 
 government, and of his now being a pensioner, without al- 
 lowing for the honourable terms upon which Johnson's 
 pension was granted and accepted, or the change of system 
 which the British Court had undergone upon the accession 
 of his present Majesty \ He was, however, soothed in the 
 
 ' In the origina! it is not rulers, but railcrs. Johnson's Works, vi. 
 176. 
 
 " How shght the change of system was is shown by a passage in 
 Forster's Goldstm'l/i, ii. 388. Mr. Forster mentions a ' memorial in fa- 
 vour of the most worthless of hack-partizans, Shebbeare, which ob- 
 tained for him his pension of ;/^2oo a year. It is signed by fifteen 
 members of the House of Commons, and it asks for a pension " that 
 II. — 9 higjiest
 
 1 30 Rev. Mr. Stockdale. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 highest strain of panegyrick ', in a poem called Tlie Remon- 
 strance, by the Rev. Mr. Stockdale", to whom he was, upon 
 many occasions, a kind protector. 
 
 The following admirable minute made by him describes 
 so well his own state, and that of numbers to whom self- 
 examination is habitual, that I cannot omit it : — 
 
 'June I, 1770. Every man naturally persuades himself that he 
 can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but 
 by length of time and frequency of experiment ^ This opinion of 
 
 he may be enabled to pursue that laudable inclination which he has 
 of manifesting his zeal for the service of his Majesty and his Govern- 
 ment ;" in other words, that a rascal shall be bribed to support a cor- 
 rupt administration.' Horace Walpole, in 1757 {Letters, iii. 54), de- 
 scribed Shebbeare as one ' who made a pious resolution of writing 
 himself into a place or the pillory, but who miscarried in both views.' 
 He added in a note, ' he did write himself into a pillory before the 
 conclusion of that reign, and into a pension at the beginning of the 
 next, for one and the same kind of merit — writing against King Will- 
 iam and the Revolution.' See also ^^^'.r/, end of May, 1781. 
 
 ' Johnson could scarcely be soothed by lines such as the follow- 
 ing :— 
 
 ' Never wilt thou retain the hoarded store, 
 In virtue affluent, but in metal poor; 
 
 Great is thy prose ; great thy poetic strain, 
 
 Yet to dull coxcombs are they great in vain.' — pp. 16, 17. 
 
 "^ Stockdale, who was born in 1736 and died in 181 1, wrote Memoirs 
 of his Life — a long, dull book, but containing a few interesting anec- 
 dotes of Johnson. He thought himself, and the world also, much ill- 
 used by the publishers, when they passed him over and chose John- 
 son to edit the Lives of the Poets. He lodged both in Johnson's Court 
 and in Bolt Court, but preserved little good-will for his neighbour. 
 Johnson, in the Life of Waller {Works, \n. 194), quoting from Stock- 
 dale's Life of that poet, calls him ' his last ingenious biographer.' 
 I. D'Israeli says that ' the bookseller Flexney complained that when- 
 ever this poet came to town, it cost him ^20. Flexney had been the 
 publisher of Churchill's Works, and never forgetting the time when 
 he published The Rosciad, he was speculating all his life for another 
 Churchill and another quarto poem. Stockdale usually brought him 
 what he wanted, and Flexney found the workman, but never the 
 work.' Calatnities of Authors, ed. 1812, ii. 314. 
 
 ' ' I believe most men may review all the lives that have passed 
 
 our
 
 Aetat. 61.] Revision of Johnsons Shakspeare. 131 
 
 our own constancy is so prevalent, that we always despise him 
 who suffers his general and settled purpose to be overpowered 
 by an occasional desire. They, therefore, whom frequent failures 
 have made desperate, cease to form resolutions ; and they who are 
 become cunning, do not tell them. Those who do not make them 
 are very few, but of their effect little is perceived ; for scarcely any 
 man persists in a course of life planned by choice, but as he is re- 
 strained from deviation by some external power. He who may live 
 as he will, seldom lives long in the observation of his own rules '.' 
 
 Of this year I have obtained the following letters: — 
 
 'To THE Reverend Dr. Farmer*, Cambridge. 
 'Sir, 
 
 'As no man ought to keep wholly to himself any possession 
 that may be useful to the publick, I hope you will not think me 
 unreasonably intrusive, if I have recourse to you for such informa- 
 tion as you are more able to give me than any other man. 
 
 ' In support of an opinion which you have already placed above 
 the need of any more support, Mr. Steevens, a very ingenious gen- 
 tleman, lately of King's College, has collected an account of all 
 the translations which Shakspeare might have seen and used. 
 He wishes his catalogue to be perfect, and therefore intreats that 
 you will favour him by the insertion of such additions as the ac- 
 curacy of your inquiries has enabled you to make. To this re- 
 quest, I take the liberty of adding my own solicitation. 
 
 ' We have no immediate use for this catalogue, and therefore do 
 not desire that it should interrupt or hinder your more important 
 employments. But it will be kind to let us know that you receive it. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, &c. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson,' 
 ' Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, 
 March 21, 1770.' 
 
 within their observation without remembering one efficacious resolu- 
 tion, or being able to tell a single instance of a course of practice sud- 
 denly changed in consequence of a change of opinion, or an establish- 
 ment of determination.' A/Av, No. 27. ' These sorrowful meditations 
 fastened upon Rasselas's mind ; he passed four months in resolving 
 to lose no more time in idle resolves.' Rasselas, ch. iv. 
 
 ' Pr.aiid Mcd.-^.^l{y^.\o\\. Boswell. 
 
 '^ See ante, i. 426. 
 
 'To
 
 132 Revision of Johnsons Shakspeare. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 *To THE Reverend Mr. Thomas Warton. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 'The readiness with which you were pleased to promise me 
 some notes on Shakspeare, was a new instance of your friendship. 
 I shall not hurry you ; but am desired by Mr. Steevens, who helps 
 me in this edition, to let you know, that we shall print the trage- 
 dies first, and shall therefore want first the notes which belong to 
 them. We think not to incommode the readers with a supplement ; 
 and therefore, what we cannot put into its proper place, will do us 
 no good. We shall not begin to print before the end of six weeks, 
 
 perhaps not so soon. 
 
 ' I am, &c. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' London, June 23, 1770.' 
 
 'To the Rev. Dr. Joseph Warton. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I am revising my edition of Shakspeare, and remember that 
 I formerly misrepresented your opinion of Lear. Be pleased to 
 write the paragraph as you would have it, and send it '. If you 
 have any remarks of your own upon that or any other play, I shall 
 gladly receive them. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to Mrs. Warton. I sometimes think of 
 wandering for a few days to Winchester, but am apt to delay. I 
 am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Sept. 27, 1770.' 
 
 ' To Mr. Francis Barber, at Mrs. Clapp's, Bishop-stortford, 
 
 Hertfordshire. 
 ' Dear Francis, 
 . ' I am at last sat down to write to you, and should very much 
 blame myself for having neglected you so long, if I did not impute 
 that and many other failings to want of health ^. I hope not to be 
 
 ' The passage remains unrevised in the second edition. 
 
 * Johnson had suffered greatly from rheumatism this year, as well 
 as from other disorders. He mentions ' spasms in the stomach which 
 disturbed me for many yfears, and for two past harassed me almost to 
 distraction.' These, however, by means of a strong remedy, had at 
 Easter nearly ceased. ' The pain,' he adds, ' harasses me much ; yet 
 
 so
 
 Aetat. Gl.] Dr. MaXWeW S CoLLECTANEA. 1 33 
 
 SO long silent again. I am very well satisfied with your progress, 
 if you can really perform the exercises which you are set ; and I 
 hope Mr. Ellis does not suffer you to impose on him, or on your- 
 self. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to Mr. Ellis, and to Mrs. Clapp, and Mr. 
 Smith. 
 
 ' Let me know what English books you read for your entertain- 
 ment. You can never be Avise unless you love reading. 
 
 ' Do not imagine that I shall forget or forsake you ; for if, when 
 I examine you, I find that you have not lost your time, you shall 
 want no encouragement from 
 
 'Yours affectionately, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' London, Sept. 25, 1770.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 
 ' Dear Francis, 
 
 ' I hope you mind your business. I design you shall stay 
 
 with Mrs. Clapp these holidays. If you are invited out you may 
 
 go, if Mr. Ellis gives leave. I have ordered you some clothes, 
 
 which you will receive, I believe, next week. My compliments to 
 
 Mrs. Clapp and to Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Smith, &c. 
 
 ' I am 
 
 ' Your affectionate, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' December 7, 1770.' 
 
 During this year there was a total cessation of all corre- 
 spondence between Dr. Johnson and me, without any cold- 
 ness on either side, but merely from procrastination, con- 
 tinued from day to day ; and as I was not in London, I 
 had no opportunity of enjoying his company and recording 
 his conversation. To supply this blank, I shall present my 
 readers with some Collectanea, obligingly furnished to me 
 by the Rev. Dr. Maxwell, of Falkland, in Ireland, some time 
 
 many have the disease perhaps in a much higher degree, with want 
 of food, fire, and covering, which I find thus grievous, with all the 
 succours that riches and kindness can buy and give.' (He was stay- 
 ing at Mr. Thralc's.) /"naw^/J/tv/. pp. 92-95. 'Shall I ever,' he asks 
 on Easter Day, ' receiv^e the Sacrament with tranquillity? Surely the 
 time will come.' lb. p. 99. 
 
 assistant
 
 1 34 Mr. Grierson. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 assistant preacher at the Temple, and for many years the 
 social friend of Johnson, who spoke of him with a very 
 kind regard. 
 
 ' My acquaintance with that great and venerable character com- 
 menced in the year 1754. I was introduced to him by Mr. Grier- 
 son ', his Majesty's printer at Dublin, a gentleman of uncommon 
 learning, and great wit and vivacity. Mr. Grierson died in Ger- 
 many, at the age of twenty-seven. Dr. Johnson highly respected 
 his abilities, and often observed, that he possessed more extensive 
 knowledge than any man of his years he had ever known. His 
 industry was equal to his talents ; and he particularly excelled in 
 ever)' species of philological learning, and was, perhaps, the best 
 critick of the age he lived in. 
 
 ' I must always remember with gratitude my obligation to Mr. 
 Grierson, for the honour and happiness of Dr. Johnson's acquaint- 
 ance and friendship, which continued uninterrupted and undimin- 
 ished to his death : a connection, that was at once the pride and 
 happiness of my life. 
 
 ' What pity it is, that so much wit and good sense as he contin- 
 ually exhibited in conversation, should perish unrecorded ! Few 
 persons quitted his company without perceiving themselves wiser 
 and better than they were before. On serious subjects he flashed 
 the most interesting conviction upon his auditors ; and upon 
 lighter topicks, you might have supposed — Albatio musas de monte 
 locHtas ". 
 
 ' Though I can hope to add but little to the celebrity of so ex- 
 alted a character, by any communications I can furnish, yet out of 
 pure respect to his memory, I will venture to transmit to you some 
 anecdotes concerning him, which fell under my own observation. 
 The very mimiticB of such a character must be interesting, and may 
 be compared to the filings of diamonds. 
 
 ' In politicks he was deemed a Tory, but certainly was not so in 
 
 ' Son of the learned Mrs. Grierson, who was patronised by the late 
 Lord Granville, and was the editor of several of the Classicks. Bos- 
 
 WELL. 
 
 * ' Pontificum libros, annosa volumina vatum, 
 
 Dictitet Albano Musas in monte locutas.' 
 
 ' Then swear transported that the sacred Nine 
 Pronounced on Alba's top each hallowed line.' 
 
 Francis. Horace, £^w. II. i. 26. 
 
 the
 
 Aetat. 61.] JoJinsoii not a party man. 135 
 
 the obnoxious or party sense of the term ; for while he asserted 
 the legal and salutary prerogatives of the crown, he no less respect- 
 ed the constitutional liberties of the people. Whiggism, at the time 
 of the Revolution, he said, was accompanied with certain princi- 
 ples ; but latterly, as a mere party distinction under Walpole ' and 
 the Pelhams was no better than the politicks of stock-jobbers, and 
 the religion of infidels. 
 
 ' He detested the idea of governing by parliamentary corruption, 
 and asserted most strenuously, that a prince steadily and conspic- 
 uously pursuing the interests of his people, could not fail of par- 
 liamentary concurrence. A prince of ability, he contended, might 
 and should be the directing soul and spirit of his own administra- 
 tion ; in short, his own minister, and not the mere head of a party : 
 and then, and not till then, would the royal dignity be sincerely 
 respected. 
 
 ' Johnson seemed to think, that a certain degree of crown influ- 
 ence over the Houses of Parliament, (not meaning a corrupt and 
 shameful dependence,) was very salutary, nay, even necessary, in 
 our mixed government '^. " For, (said he,) if the members were un- 
 der no crown influence, and disqualified from receiving any grati- 
 fication from Court, and resembled, as they possibly might, Pym 
 and Haslerig, and other stubborn and sturdy members of the long 
 Parliament, the wheels of government would be totally obstructed. 
 Such men would oppose, merely to shew their power, from envy, 
 jealousy, and perversity of disposition , and not gaining themselves, 
 would hate and oppose all who did : not loving the person of the 
 prince, and conceiving they owed him little gratitude, from the 
 mere spirit of insolence and contradiction, they would oppose and 
 thwart him upon all occasions." 
 
 'The inseparable imperfection annexed to all human govern- 
 ments consisted, he said, in not being able to create a sufficient 
 fund of virtue and principle to carry the laws into due and efl^ectual 
 execution. Wisdom might plan, but virtue alone could execute. 
 And where could sufficient virtue be found } A variety of delegated, 
 and often discretionary, powers must be entrusted somewhere ; 
 which, if not governed by integrity and conscience, would necessa- 
 rily be abused, till at last the constable would sell his for a shilling. 
 
 'This excellent person was sometimes charged with abetting 
 
 ' See ante, \. 1 52, where Boswell says tliat ' Johnson afterwards hon- 
 estly acknowledged uhe merit of Walpole." 
 " See/fj/, May 15, 1783. 
 
 slavish
 
 136 JoJinsoiis mode of life. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 slavish and arbitrary principles of government. Nothing in my 
 opinion could be a grosser calumny and misrepresentation ; for 
 how can it be rationally supposed, that he should adopt such per- 
 nicious and absurd opinions, who supported his philosophical char- 
 acter with so much dignity, was extremely jealous of his personal 
 liberty and independence, and could not brook the smallest ap- 
 pearance of neglect or insult, even from the highest personages ? 
 
 ' But let us view him in some instances of more familiar life. 
 
 ' His general mode of life, during my acquaintance, seemed to 
 be pretty uniform. About twelve o'clock I commonly visited him, 
 and frequently found him in bed, or declaiming over his tea, which 
 he drank very plentifully. He generally had a levee of morning 
 visitors, chiefly men of letters ' ; Hawkesworth, Goldsmith, Murphy, 
 Langton, Steevens, Beauclerk, &c. &c., and sometimes learned la- 
 dies, particularly I remember a French lady" of wit and fashion 
 doing him the honour of a visit. He seemed to me to be consid- 
 ered as a kind of publick oracle, whom every body thought they 
 had a right to visit and consult ' ; and doubtless they were well re- 
 warded. I never could discover how he found time for his com- 
 positions \ He declaimed all the morning, then went to dinner at 
 a tavern, where he commonly staid late, and then drank his tea at 
 
 ' ' His acquaintance was sought by persons of the first eminence in 
 literature ; and his house, in respect of the conversations there, be- 
 came an academy.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 329. See ante, i. 287, 405, 
 note 3. 
 
 * Probably Madame de Boufflers. See post, under November 12, 
 
 1775- ■ 
 
 ^ ' To talk in publick, to think in solitude, to read and hear, to in- 
 quire and answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar.' Rassclas, ch. 
 viii. Miss Burney mentions an amusing instance of a consultation by 
 letter. ' The letter was dated from the Orkneys, and cost Dr. John- 
 son eighteen pence. The writer, a clergyman, says he labours under 
 a most peculiar misfortune, for which he can give no account, and 
 which is that, though he very often writes letters to his friends and 
 others, he never gets any answers. He entreats, therefore, that Dr. 
 Johnson will take this into consideration, and explain to him to what 
 so strange a thing may be attributed.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 96. 
 
 * ' How he [Swift] spent the rest of his time, and how he employed 
 his hours of study, has been inquired with hopeless curiosity. For 
 who can give an account of another's studies ? Swift was not likely 
 to admit any to his privacies, or to impart a minute account of his 
 business or his leisure.' Johnson's Works, \n\\. 208. 
 
 some
 
 Aetat. Gi.] Johnso7i s viode of life. 137 
 
 some friend's house, over which he loitered a great while, but sel- 
 dom took supper. I fancy he must have read and wrote chiefly in 
 the night, for I can scarcely recollect 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 frequently gave all the silver in his pocket to the poor, who 
 watched him, between his house and the tavern where he dined ^ 
 He walked the streets at all hours, and said he was never robbed ', 
 for the rogues knew he had little money, nor had the appearance 
 of having much. 
 
 ' Though the most accessible and communicative man alive ; yet 
 when he suspected he was invited to be exhibited, he constantly 
 spurned the invitation. 
 
 ' Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was 
 present, to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which 
 they were inclined. " Come, (said he,) you pretty fools, dine with 
 Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject ;" 
 which they did, and after dinner he took one of them upon his 
 knee, and fondled her for half an hour together. 
 
 ' Upon a visit to me at a country lodging near Twickenham, he 
 asked what sort of society I had there. I told him, but indifferent ; 
 as they chiefly consisted of opulent traders, retired from business. 
 
 ' See /^j/, March 31, 1772. 
 
 "^ 'He loved the poor,' says Mrs. Piozzi (^//^-^r. p. 84), ' as I never 
 yet saw any one else do, with an earnest desire to make them happy. 
 "What signifies," says some one, "giving half-pence to common beg- 
 gars } they only lay it out in gin or tobacco." " And why should they 
 be denied such sweeteners of their existence ?" says Johnson.' The 
 harm done by this indiscriminate charity had been pointed out by 
 Fielding in his Covciit Garden Journal for June 2, 1752. He took as 
 
 the motto for the paper : 
 
 ' O bone, ne te 
 
 Frustrere, insanis et tu ;' 
 which he translates, 
 
 ' My good friend, do not deceive thyself ; for with all thy charity 
 thou also art a silly fellow.' ' Giving our money to common beggars,' 
 he describes as 'a kind of bounty that is a crime against the public' 
 Fielding's Works, x. "]"], ed. 1806. Johnson once allowed (post, 1780, in 
 Mr. Langton's Collection) that ' one might give away £500 a year to 
 those that importune in the streets, and not do any good.' See also 
 post, Oct. 10, 1779. 
 
 ' He was once attacked, though whether by robbers is not made 
 clear. See post, under Feb. 7. 1775. 
 
 He
 
 1 38 Londo)i. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 He said, he never much liked that class of people ; " For, Sir, (said 
 he,) they have lost the civility of tradesmen, without acquiring the 
 manners of gentlemen '." 
 
 ' Johnson was much attached to London : he observed, that a 
 man stored his mind better there, than any where else ; and that 
 in remote situations a man's body might be feasted, but his mind 
 was starved, and his faculties apt to degenerate, from want of ex- 
 ercise and competition. No place, (he said,) cured a man's vanity 
 or arrogance so well as London ; for as no man was either great 
 or good per se, but as compared with others not so good or great, 
 he was sure to find in the metropolis many his equals, and some 
 his superiours. He observed, that a man in London was in less 
 danger of falling in love indiscreetly, than any where else ; for 
 there the difficulty of deciding between the confiicting pretensions 
 of a vast variety of objects, kept him safe. He told me, that he 
 had frequently been offered country preferment, if he would con- 
 sent to take orders " ; but he could not leave the improved society 
 of the capital, or consent to exchange the exhilarating joys and 
 splendid decorations of publick life, for the obscurity, insipidity, 
 and uniformity of remote situations, 
 
 ' Speaking of Mr. Harte ^ Canon of Windsor, and writer of The 
 History of Gustavus Adolphus, he much commended him as a 
 scholar, and a man of the most companionable talents he had ever 
 known. He said, the defects in his history proceeded not from 
 imbecility, but from foppery. 
 
 ' He loved, he said, the old black letter books ; they were rich 
 in matter, though their style was inelegant ; wonderfully so, con- 
 sidering how conversant the writers were with the best models of 
 antiquity. 
 
 ' Burton's AnatoDiy of Melancholy^ he said, was the only book 
 that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to 
 rise. 
 
 * He frequently exhorted me to set about writing a History of 
 Ireland, and archly remarked, there had been some good Irish 
 
 ' Perhaps it was this class of people which is described in the fol- 
 lowing passage : — ' It was never against people of coarse life that his 
 contempt was expressed, while poverty of sentiment in men who con- 
 sidered themselves to be company /(^r the parlour, as he called it, was 
 what he would not bear.' Piozzi's Anec. 215. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 370, for one such offer. 
 
 ' See atite, i. 188, note i, and/f^y/, March 30, 1781. 
 
 writers,
 
 Aetat. 61.] Ireland. 139 
 
 writers, and that one Irishman might at least aspire to be equal to 
 another. He had great compassion for the miseries and distresses 
 of the Irish nation, particularly the Papists ; and severely repro- 
 bated the barbarous debilitating policy of the British government, 
 which, he said, was the most detestable mode of persecution. To 
 a gentleman, who hinted such policy might be necessary to sup- 
 port the authority of the English government, he replied by say- 
 ing. " Let the authority of the English government perish, rather 
 than be maintained by iniquity. Better would it be to restrain the 
 turbulence of the natives by the authority of the sword, and to 
 make them amenable to law and justice by an effectual and vigor- 
 ous police, than to grind them to powder by all manner of disabili- 
 ties and incapacities. Better, (said he,) to hang or drown people 
 at once, than by an unrelenting persecution to beggar and starve 
 them '.'' The moderation and humanity of the present times have, 
 in some measure, justified the wisdom of his observations. 
 
 ' Dr. Johnson was often accused of prejudices, nay, antipathy, 
 with regard to the natives of Scotland. Surely, so illiberal a prej- 
 udice never entered his mind : and it is well known, many natives 
 of that respectable country possessed a large share in his esteem ; 
 nor were any of them ever excluded from his good offices, as far 
 as opportunity permitted. True it is, he considered the Scotch, 
 nationally, as a crafty, designing people, eagerly attentive to their 
 own interest, and too apt to overlook the claims and pretentions 
 
 ' Dr. T. Campbell, in his Siirvty of the South of Ireland, ed. 1777 
 {post, April 5, 1775), says : — ' By one law of the penal code, if a Papist 
 have a horse worth fifty, or five hundred pounds, a Protestant may 
 become the purchaser upon paying him down five. By another of 
 the same code, a son may say to his father, " Sir, if you don't give me 
 what money I want, I'll turn discover cr, and in spite of you and my 
 elder brother too, on whom at marriage you settled your estate, 
 I shall become heir,"' p. 251. Father O'Leary, in his Remarks on 
 Wesley's Letter, published in 1780 {post, Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773), says 
 (p. 41) : — ' He has seen the venerable matron, after twenty-four years' 
 marriage, banished from the perjured husband's house, though it was 
 proved in open court that for six months before his marriage he went 
 to mass. But the law requires that he should be a year and a day of 
 the same religion.' Burke wrote in 1792: 'The Castle [the govern- 
 ment in Dublin] considers the out-lawry (or what at least I look on 
 as such) of the great mass of the people as an unalterable nia.\im in 
 the government of Ireland.' Burke s Corrcs. iii. 378. See post, ii. 150, 
 and May 7, 1773, ^^"d Oct. 12, 1779. 
 
 of
 
 140 Opinions of Johnson. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 of other people. " While they confine their benevolence, in a man- 
 ner, exclusively to those of their own country, they expect to share 
 in the good offices of other people. Now, (said Johnson,) this prin- 
 ciple is either right or wrong ; if right, we should do well to imitate 
 such conduct; if wrong, we cannot too much detest it'." 
 
 ' Being solicited to compose a funeral sermon for the daughter 
 of a tradesman, he naturally enquired into the character of the 
 deceased ; and being told she was remarkable for her humility and 
 condescension to inferiours, he observed, that those were very 
 laudable qualities, but it might not be so easy to discover who the 
 lady's inferiours were. 
 
 'Of a certain player* he remarked, that his conversation usually 
 threatened and announced more than it performed ; that he fed 
 you with a continual renovation of hope, to end in a constant suc- 
 cession of disappointment. 
 
 ' When exasperated by contradiction, he was apt to treat his op- 
 ponents with too much acrimony : as, " Sir, you don't see your way 
 through that question :" — " Sir, you talk the language of ignorance." 
 On my observing to him that a certain gentleman had remained 
 silent the whole evening, in the midst of a very brilliant and learned 
 society, " Sir, (said he,) the conversation overflowed, and drowned 
 him." 
 
 ' His philosophy, though austere and solemn, was by no means 
 morose and cynical, and never blunted the laudable sensibilities of 
 his character, or exempted him from the influence of the tender 
 passions. Want of tenderness, he always alledged, was want of 
 parts, and was no less a proof of stupidity than depravity. 
 
 ' Speaking of Mr. Hanway,who published An Eight Days' Journey 
 from Lojidon to Portsmouth, " Jonas, (said he,) acquired some repu- 
 tation by travelling abroad', but lost it all by travelling at home'." 
 
 ' Of the passion of love he remarked, that its violence and ill 
 effects were much exaggerated ; for who knows any real sufferings 
 on that head, more than from the exorbitancy of any other passion ? 
 
 * Sgq post, just before Feb. 18, 1775. 
 
 ^ ' Of Sheridan's writings on elocution, Johnson said, they were a 
 continual renovation of hope, and an unvaried succession of disap- 
 pointments.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 197. See^ost, May 17, 1783. 
 
 ' In 1753, Jonas Hanway published his Travels to Persia. 
 
 ^ ' Though his journey was completed in eight days he gave a re- 
 lation of it in two octavo volumes.' Hawkins's yi3/z«Jc;z, p. 352. See 
 ante, i. 362. 
 
 'He
 
 Aetat. 61 .] MetJiodist preaching. 1 4 1 
 
 ' He much commended Laiv''s Serious Call, which he said was 
 the finest piece of hortatory theology in any language '. " Law, 
 (said he,) fell latterly into the reveries of Jacob Behmen", whom 
 Law alledged to have been somewhat in the same state with St. 
 Paul, and to have seen Jinutterablc things^. Were it even so, (said 
 Johnson,) Jacob would have resembled St. Paul still more, by not 
 attempting to utter them." 
 
 ' He observed, that the established clergy in general did not 
 preach plain enough ; and that polished periods and glittering 
 sentences flew over the heads of the common people, without any 
 impression upon their hearts. Something might be necessary, he 
 observed, to excite the affections of the common people, who were 
 sunk in languor and lethargy, and therefore he supposed that the 
 new concomitants of methodism might probably produce so desir- 
 able an effect \ The mind, like the body, he observed, delighted 
 in change and novelty, and even in religion itself, courted new 
 
 ' See afilr, i. 78, and post, June 9, 1784, note, where he varies the epi- 
 thet, calling it ' the best piece oi parcnetic divinity.' 
 
 ^ '" I taught myself," Law tells us, "the high Dutch language, on 
 purpose to know the original words of the blessed Jacob." ' Over- 
 ton's Life of Law, p. i8i. Behmen,' or Bohme, the mystic shoemaker 
 of Gorlitz, was born in 1575, and died in 1624. 'His books may not 
 hold at all honourable places in libraries ; his name may be ridicu- 
 lous. But he ivas a generative thinker. What he knew he knew for 
 himself. It was not transmitted to him. but fought for.' F. D. Mau- 
 rice's Moral and Meta. Phil. ii. 325. Of Hudibras's squire, Ralph, it 
 
 was said : 
 
 ' He Anthroposophus, and Floud, 
 
 And Jacob Behmen understood.' 
 
 Hiidibras, L i. 541. 
 
 Wesley {foiirnal, i. 359) writes of Behmen's Mystcrium Magnian, ' I 
 can and must say thus much (and that with as full evidence as I can 
 say two and two make four) it is most sublime nonsense, inimitable 
 bombast, fustian not to be paralleled.' 
 
 ^ ' He heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to 
 utter.' 2 Corinihiatis, xii. 4. 
 
 * See a7tte, i. 530. In Hitniphry Clinker, in the Letter of June 11, 
 the turnkey of Clerkenwell Prison thus speaks of a Methodist : — ' I 
 don't care if the devil had him ; here has been nothing but canting 
 and praying since the fellow entered the place. Rabbit him ! the tap 
 will be ruined — we han't sold a cask of beer nor a dozen of wine, since 
 he paid his garnish— the gentlemen get drunk with nothing but your 
 damned religion.' 
 
 appearances
 
 142 Bla7ik-verse. [a. d. 1770. 
 
 appearances and modifications. Whatever might be thought of 
 some methodist teachers, he said, he could scarcely doubt the sin- 
 cerity of that man, who travelled nine hundred miles in a month, 
 and preached twelve times a week ; for no adequate reward, mere- 
 ly temporal, could be given for such indefatigable labour'. 
 
 'Of Dr. Priestley's theological works, he remarked, that they 
 tended to unsettle every thing, and yet settled nothing. 
 
 ' He was much affected by the death of his mother, and wrote 
 to me to come and assist him to compose his mind, which indeed 
 I found extremely agitated. He lamented that all serious and re- 
 ligious conversation was banished from the society of men, and yet 
 great advantages might be derived from it. All acknowledged, he 
 said, what hardly any body practised, the obligation we were under 
 of making the concerns of eternity the governing principles of our 
 lives. Every man, he observed, at last wishes for retreat : he sees 
 his expectations frustrated in the world, and begins to wean him- 
 self from it, and to prepare for everlasting separation. 
 
 ' He observed, that the influence of London now extended every 
 where, and that from all manner of communication being opened, 
 there shortly would be no remains of the ancient simplicity, or 
 places of cheap retreat to be found. 
 
 ' He was no admirer of blank-verse, and said it always failed, 
 unless sustained by the dignity of the subject. In blank-verse, he 
 said, the language suffered more distortion, to keep it out of prose, 
 
 ' 'John Wesley probably paid more for turnpikes than any other 
 man in England, for no other person travelled so much.' Southey's 
 Wesley, i. 407. ' He tells us himself, that he preached about Soo ser- 
 mons in a year.' lb, ii. 532. In one of h.\s Appeals to Men 0/ Reason 
 and Religion, he asks : — ' Can you bear the summer sun to beat upon 
 your naked head .'' Can you suffer the wintry rain or wind, from what- 
 ever quarter it blows .' Are you able to stand in the open air, without 
 any covering or defence, when God casteth abroad his snow like wool, 
 or scattereth his hoar-frost like ashes .'' And yet these are some of 
 the smallest inconveniences which accompany field-preaching. For 
 beyond all these, are the contradiction of sinners, the scoffs both of 
 the great vulgar and the small ; contempt and reproach of every kind 
 — often more than verbal affronts-^stupid, brutal violence, sometimes 
 to the hazard of health, or limbs, or life. Brethren, do you en\'y us 
 this honour .-' What, I pray you, would buy you to be a field-preacher.' 
 Or what, think you, could induce any man of common sense to con- 
 tinue therein one year, unless he had a full conviction in himself that 
 it was the will of God concerning him ?' Southey's IVesley, i. 405. 
 
 than
 
 Aetat. 61.] Joliusoji s opinion of the English nation. 14 
 
 -> 
 
 than any inconvenience or limitation to be apprehended from the 
 shackles and circumspection of rhyme '. 
 
 ' He reproved me once for saying grace without mention of the 
 name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and hoped in future I would be 
 more mindful of the apostolical injunction ^. 
 
 ' He refused to go out of a room before me at Mr. Langton's 
 house, saying, he hoped he knew his rank better than to presume 
 to take place of a Doctor in Divinity. I mention such little anec- 
 dotes, merely to shew the peculiar turn and habit of his mind. 
 
 ' He used frequently to observe, that there was more to be en- 
 dured than enjoyed, in the general condition of human life ; and 
 frequently quoted those lines of Dryden : 
 
 " Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again, 
 Yet all hope pleasure from what still remain \" 
 
 For his part, he said, he never passed that week in his life w'hich he 
 would wish to repeat, were an angel to make the proposal to him. 
 
 ' He was of opinion, that the English nation cultivated both their 
 soil and their reason better than any other people : but admitted 
 that the French, though not the highest, perhaps, in any depart- 
 ment of literature, yet in every department were very high\ In- 
 tellectual pre-eminence, he observed, was the highest superiority; 
 and that every nation derived their highest reputation from the 
 splendour and dignity of their writers ^ Voltaire, he said, was a 
 good narrator, and that his principal merit consisted in a happy 
 selection and arrangement of circumstances. 
 
 ' Speaking of the French novels, compared with Richardson's, 
 he said, they might be pretty baubles, but a wren was not an eagle. 
 
 ' Stockdale reported to Johnson, that Pope had told Lyttelton that 
 the reason why he had not translated Homer into blank verse was 
 'that he could translate it more easily into rhyme. "Sir," replied 
 Johnson, "when Pope said that, he knew that he lied." ' Stockdale 's 
 Memoirs, \\. w. In X\\^ Life of Somervile, ]o\\nson says: — ' If blank- 
 verse be not tumid and f);orgeous, it is crippled prose.' Johnson's 
 IVorks, viii. 95. Sac. post, beginning of 1781. 
 
 * EphcsiiDis, v. 20. 
 
 ^ In the original — 
 
 ' Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain.' 
 See />(7^/, June 12, 1784. 
 
 * See post, under Aug. 29, 1783, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 14, 1773. 
 ' 'The chief glory of every people arises from its authours.' John- 
 son's Works, V. 49. 
 
 'In
 
 144 -^ conversation in Latin. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 ' In a Latin conversation with the Pere Boscovitch, at the house 
 of Mrs. Chohnondeley, I heard him maintain the superiority of Sir 
 Isaac Newton over all foreign philosophers', with a dignity and 
 eloquence that surprized that learned foreigner '. It being observed 
 to him, that a rage for every thing English prevailed much in France 
 after Lord Chatham's glorious war, he said, he did not wonder at 
 it, for that we had drubbed those fellows into a proper reverence 
 for us, and that their national petulance required periodical chas- 
 tisement. 
 
 ' Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues, he deemed a nugatory performance. 
 "That man, (said he,) sat down to write a book, to tell the world 
 what the world had all his life been telling him'." 
 
 ' Somebody observing that the Scotch Highlanders, in the year 
 1745, had made surprizing efforts, considering their numerous 
 wants and disadvantages : " Yes, Sir, (said he,) their wants were 
 
 ' In a Discourse by Sir William Jones, addressed to the Asiatick 
 Society [in Calcutta], Feb. 24, 1785, is the following passage : — 
 
 ' One of the most sagacious men in this age who continues, I hope, 
 to improve and adorn it, Samuel Johnson [he had been dead ten 
 weeks], remarked in my hearing, that if Newton had flourished in 
 ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a Divinity.' Ma- 
 LONE. Johnson, in An Account of an A/ tempi to ascertain the Longi- 
 tude ( Works, V. 299), makes the supposed authour say : — ' I have lived 
 till I am able to produce in my favour the testimony of time, the in- 
 flexible enemy of false hypotheses ; the only testimony which it be- 
 comes human understanding to oppose to the authority of Newton.' 
 
 * Murphy (Z//^', p. 9 1 ) places the scene of such a conversation in the 
 house ot the Bishop of Salisbury. ' Boscovitch,' he writes, ' had a 
 ready current flow of that flimsy phraseology with which a priest 
 may travel through Italy, Spain, and Germany. Johnson scorned 
 what he called colloquial barbarisms. It was his pride to speak his 
 best. He went on, after a little practice, with as much facility as if 
 it was his native tongue. One sentence this writer well remembers. 
 Observing that Fontenelle at first opposed the Newtonian philoso- 
 phy, and embraced it afterwards, his words were : — " Fontenellus, ni 
 fallor, in extrema senectute fuit transfuga ad castra Newtoniana." ' 
 S&c post, under Nov. 12, 1775. Boscovitch, the Jesuit astronomer, was 
 a professor in the LTniversity of Pavia. When Dr. Burney visited him, 
 ' he complained very much of the silence of the English astronomers, 
 who answer none of his letters.' Burney's Tour in France and Italy, 
 p. 92. 
 
 ' Se.e.post, in 1 781, the Life of Lyttelton.
 
 Aetat. Gi.] Attorneys. 145 
 
 numerous ; but you have not mentioned the greatest of them all, — 
 the want of law." 
 
 'Speaking of the imvard light, to which some methodists pre- 
 tended, he said, it was a principle utterly incompatible with social 
 or civil security. " If a man, (said he,) pretends to a principle of 
 action of which I can know nothing, nay, not so much as that he 
 has it, but only that he pretends to it ; how can I tell what that 
 person may be prompted to do ? When a person professes to be 
 governed by a written ascertained law, I can then know where to 
 find him." 
 
 ' The poem of Fiiigal ', he said, was a mere unconnected rhap- 
 sody, a tiresome repetition of the same images. " In vain shall 
 we look for the lucidus ordo^, where there is neither end or object, 
 design or moral, ?iec ccrta recur rit i?nago." 
 
 ' Being asked by a young nobleman, what was become of the 
 gallantry and military spirit of the old English nobility, he replied, 
 "Why, my Lord, I'll tell you what is become of it; it is gone into 
 the city to look for a fortune." 
 
 ' Speaking of a dull tiresome fellow, whom he chanced to meet, 
 he said, " That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and 
 that is a wrong one." 
 
 ' Much enquiry having been made concerning a gentleman, who 
 had quitted a company where Johnson was, and no information 
 being obtained ; at last Johnson observed, that " he did not care 
 to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gen- 
 tleman was an attorney^.'''' 
 
 * The first of Macpherson's forgeries was Fragments of Ancient 
 Poetry collected in the Highlands. Edinburgh, 1760. In 1762, he pub- 
 lished in London, The Works of Ossian, the son of Fingal, 2 vols. 
 Vol. i. contained Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in six Books. See post, 
 Jan. 1775. 
 
 ° Horace. Ars Poetica,\.\\. 
 
 ^ Perhaps Johnson had some ill-will towards attorneys, such as he 
 had towards excisemen (ante, i. 41, note i and 341. In London, which 
 was published in May, 1738, he couples them with street robbers : 
 ' Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay, 
 And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.' 
 IVorhs, i. I. In a paper in the Cent. Jlfag. for the following June 
 (p. 287), written, I have little doubt, by him, the profession is thus sav- 
 agely attacked : — ' Our ancestors, in ancient times, had some regard 
 to the moral character of the person sent to represent them in their 
 national assemblies, and would have shewn some degree of rescnt- 
 IL— 10 ' JIc
 
 146 Arthur MtLvphy. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 ' He spoke with much contempt of the notice taken of Wood- 
 house, the poetical shoemaker'. He said, it was all vanity and 
 childishness : and that such objects were, to those who patronised 
 them, mere mirrours of their own superiority. " They had better, 
 (said he,) furnish the man with good implements for his trade, 
 than raise subscriptions for his poems. He may make an excel- 
 lent shoemaker, but can never make a good poet. A school-boy's 
 exercise may be a pretty thing for a school-boy ; but it is no treat 
 for a man." 
 
 ' Speaking of Boetius, who was the favourite writer of the mid- 
 dle ages\ he said it was very surprizing, that upon such a subject, 
 and in such a situation, he should be magis philosophus qiiafn 
 C/instianus. 
 
 ' Speaking of Arthur Murphy, whom he very much loved, " I 
 don't know, (said he,) that Arthur can be classed with the very first 
 dramatick writers ; yet at present I doubt much whether we have 
 any thing superiour to Arthur ^" 
 
 ment or indignation, had their votes been asked for a murderer, an 
 adulterer, a known oppressor, an hireling evidence, an attorney, a 
 gamester, or a pimp.' In the Lz/e of Blackmorc ( Works, viii. 36) he 
 has a sly hit at the profession. ' Sir Richard Blackmore was the son 
 of Robert Blackmore, styled by Wood gentleman, and supposed to 
 have been an attorney.' We may compare Goldsmith's lines in 
 Retaliation .•— 
 
 ' Then what was his failing ? come tell it, and burn ye, — 
 He was, could he help it } a special attorney.' 
 See also /(?i^/, under June 16, 1784. 
 
 ' See ante, i. Appendix F. 
 
 ^ Dr. Maxwell is perhaps here quoting The Idler, No. 69, where 
 Johnson, speaking of Boethiiis on the Comforts of Philosophy, calls it 
 ' the book which seems to have been the favourite of the middle ages.' 
 
 ' Yet it is of Murphy's tragedy of Zefwbia that Mrs. Piozzi writes 
 {Anec. p. 280) :— ' A gentleman carried Dr. Johnson his tragedy, which 
 because he loved the author, he took, and it lay about our rooms some 
 time. " What answer did you give your friend. Sir.-*" said I, after the 
 book had been called for. " I told him," replied he, " that there was 
 too much Tig and Tirry in it." Seeing me laugh most violently, 
 " Why, what would'st have, child ?" said he. " I looked at nothing 
 but the dramatis \personcc\, and there was Tigrancs and Tiridates, or 
 Teribaziis, or such stuff. A man can tell but what he knows, and I 
 never got any further than the first page." ' In Zenobia two of the 
 characters are Teribazus and Tigranes. 
 
 ' Speaking
 
 Aetat. 61.] Marriages. 147 
 
 ' Speaking of the national debt, he said, it was an idle dream to 
 suppose that the country could sink under it. Let the public cred- 
 itors be ever so clamorous, the interest of millions must ever pre- 
 vail over that of thousands'. 
 
 ' Of Dr. Kennicott's Collations, he observed, that though the text 
 should not be much mended thereby, yet it was no small advantage 
 to know, that we had as good a text as the most consummate in- 
 dustry and diligence could procure'. 
 
 'Johnson observed, that so many objections might be made to 
 every thing, that nothing could overcome them but the necessity of 
 doing something. No man would be of any profession, as simply 
 opposed to not being of it : but every one must do something. 
 
 ' He remarked, that a London parish was a very comfortless 
 thing ; for the clerg)'man seldom knew the face of one out of ten 
 of his parishioners. 
 
 ' Of the late Mr. Mallet he spoke with no great respect : said, he 
 was ready for any dirty job : that he had wrote against Byng at 
 the instigation of the ministry ', and was equally ready to write for 
 him, provided he found his account in it. 
 
 ' A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married 
 immediately after his wife died : Johnson said, it was the triumph 
 of hope over experience. 
 
 ' He observed, that a man of sense and education should meet a 
 suitable companion in a wife \ It was a miserable thing when the 
 conversation could only be such as, whether the mutton should be 
 boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that. 
 
 ' He did not approve of late marriages, observing that more was 
 
 ' Hume was one who had this idle dream. Shortly before his death 
 one of his friends wrote : — ' He still maintains that the national debt 
 must be the ruin of Britain ; and laments that the two most civilised 
 nations, the English and French, should be on the decline ; and the 
 barbarians, the Goths and Vandals of Germany and Russia, should be 
 rising in power and renown.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 497. 
 
 ^ Hannah More was with Dr. Kennicott at his death. ' Thus closed 
 a life,' she wrote {Memoirs, i. 289), ' the last thirty years of which were 
 honourably spent in collating the Hebrew Scriptures.' See also Bos- 
 well's Hebrides, Aug. 16, 1773. 
 
 ' Johnson ( Works, viii. 467) says that Mallet, in return for what he 
 wrote against Byng, ' had a considerable pension bestowed upon him, 
 which he retained to his death.' Sec ante, i. 312. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 87. 
 
 lost
 
 148 A quotation from Virgil. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 lost in point of time, than compensated for by any possible advan- 
 tages '. Even ill assorted marriages were preferable to cheerless 
 celibacy. 
 
 'Of old Sheridan he remarked, that he neither wanted parts 
 nor literature ; but that his vanity and Quixotism obscured his 
 merits. 
 
 ' He said, foppery was never cured ; it was the bad stamina of 
 the mind, which, like those of the body, were never rectified : once 
 a coxcomb, and always a coxcomb. 
 
 ' Being told that Gilbert Cowper called him the Caliban of liter- 
 ature ; "Well, (said he,) I must dub him the Punchinello"." 
 
 ' Speaking of the old Earl of Corke and Orrery, he said, " that 
 man spent his life in catching at an object, [literary eminence,] 
 which he had not power to grasp ^" 
 
 ' To find a substitution for violated morality, he said, was the 
 leading feature in all perversions of religion. 
 
 ' He often used to quote, with great pathos, those fine lines of 
 Virgil : 
 
 " Optima quceqiie dies miser is mortalibus cevi 
 Frima fugit * ; siibeunt 7)iorbi, tristisqiie senectus, 
 Et labor, et diircs rap it inclement ia mortis^ T 
 
 ' ' It is dangerous for a man and woman to suspend their fate upon 
 each other at a time when opinions are fixed, and habits are estab- 
 lished ; when friendships have been contracted on both sides ; when 
 life has been planned into method, and the mind has long enjoyed 
 the contemplation of its own prospects.' Rasselas, ch. xxix. 
 
 "^ Malone records that ' Cooper was round and fat. Dr. Warton, one 
 day, when dining with Johnson, urged in his favour that he was, at 
 least, very well informed, and a good scholar. "Yes," said Johnson, 
 " it cannot be denied that he has good materials for playing the fool, 
 and he makes abundant use of them." ' Prior's Malone, p. 428. See 
 post, Sept. 15, 1777, note. 
 
 ^ Sc^epost, Sept. 21, 1777, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, 1773. 
 
 ^ But see ante, i. 346, where Johnson owned that his happier days had 
 come last. 
 
 * ' In youth alone unhappy mortals live. 
 
 But ah ! the mighty bliss is fugitive ; 
 Discolour'd sickness, anxious labours come, 
 And age, and death's inexorable doom.' 
 Drvden. Virgil, Georgics, iii. 66. In the first edition Dr. Maxwell's 
 Collectanea ended here. What follows was given in the second edi- 
 tion in Additions received after the second edition was printed, i. v. 
 
 ' Speaking
 
 Aetat. 61.] Respect for the iiobility. 149 
 
 ' Speaking of Homer, whom he venerated as the prince of poets, 
 Johnson remarked that the advice given to Diomed ' by his father, 
 when he sent him to the Trojan war, was the noblest exhortation 
 that could be instanced in any heathen writer, and comprised in a 
 single line : 
 
 Kuv uptfTTtveiv, Koi. vireipoyoi' kfmeiai aWwi' 
 
 'J5' 
 
 which, if I recollect well, is translated by Dr. Clarke thus : sejnper 
 appetere prccstantissi7na, ct 07nnibus aiiis antecdlere. 
 
 * He observed, " it was a most mortifying reflexion for any man 
 to consider, what he had done, compared with what he might have 
 doner 
 
 ' He said few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forego 
 the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to 
 fill the interval between dinner and supper. 
 
 ' He went with me, one Sunday, to hear my old Master, Gregory 
 Sharpe"'', preach at the Temple, In the prefatory prayer, Sharpe 
 ranted about Liberty, as a blessing most fervently to be implored, 
 and its continuance prayed for. Johnson observed, that our liberty 
 was in no sort of danger : — he would have done much better, to 
 pray against our licentiousness. 
 
 ' One evening at Mrs. Montagu's, where a splendid company was 
 assembled, consisting of the most eminent literary characters, I 
 thought he seemed highly pleased with the respect and attention 
 that were shewn him, and asked him on our return home if he was 
 not highly gratified by his visit : " No, Sir, (said he,) not highly grat- 
 ified; yet I do not recollect to have passed many evenings with 
 fewer object ions. ''' 
 
 ' Though of no high extraction himself, he had much respect for 
 birth and family, especially among ladies. He said, " adventitious 
 accomplishments may be possessed by all ranks ; but one may 
 easily distinguish the born gentlewoman.''' 
 
 ' He said, "the poor in England^ were better provided for, than 
 
 ' To Glaucus. Clarke's translation is :— ' Ut semper fortisslme rem 
 gererem, et superior virtutc cssem aiiis.' Iliad, vi. 208. Cowper's 
 version is : — 
 
 'That I should outstrip always all mankind 
 In worth and valour.' 
 ^ Maxwell calls him his old master, because Sharpe was Master of 
 the Temple when Maxwell was assistant preacher. Croker. 
 
 ^ Dr. T. Campbell, in his Survey of the South of Ireland, p. 185, 
 
 in
 
 1 50 The poor in E^igland. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 in any other country of the same extent : he did not mean little 
 Cantons, or petty Republicks. Where a great proportion of the 
 people, (said he,) are suffered to languish in helpless misery, that 
 country must be ill policed, and wretchedly governed : a decent 
 provision for the poor, is the true test of civilization. — Gentlemen 
 of education, he observed, were pretty much the same in all coun- 
 tries ; the condition of the lower orders, the poor especially, was 
 the true mark of national discrimination." 
 
 ' When the corn laws were in agitation in Ireland, by which that 
 country has been enabled not only to feed itself, but to export corn 
 to a large amount ' ; Sir Thomas Robinson ^ observed, that those 
 laws might be prejudicial to the corn -trade of England. "Sir 
 Thomas, (said he,) you talk the language of a savage : what. Sir ? 
 would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any 
 honest means they can do it^" 
 
 ' It being mentioned, that Garrick assisted Dr. Brown, the authour 
 of the Estimate" ,\x\. some dramatick composition, "No, Sir, (said 
 
 writes : — ' In England the meanest cottager is better fed, better lodged, 
 and better dressed than the most opulent farmers here.' See post, 
 Oct. 10, 1779. 
 
 * In the vice-royalty of the Duke of Bedford, which began in Dec. 
 1756, 'in order to encourage tillage a law was passed granting boun- 
 ties on the land carriage of corn and flour to the metropolis.' Lecky's 
 Hist, of Eng. ii. 435. In 1773-4 a law was passed granting bounties 
 upon the export of Irish corn to foreign countries. lb. iv. 415. 
 
 "^ See ante, i. 502. 
 
 ^ See a?ite, ii. 139. Lord Kames, in his Sketches of the Hzsto?y of 
 Man, published in 1774, says :— ' In Ireland to this day goods exported 
 are loaded with a high duty, without even distinguishing made work 
 from raw materials ; corn, for example, fish, butter, horned cattle, 
 leather, &c. And, that nothing may escape, all goods exported that 
 are not contained in the book of rates, pay five per cent, ad valo7-em,' 
 ii. 413. These export duties were selfishly levied in what was sup- 
 posed to be the interest of England. 
 
 ■* 'At this time [1756] appeared Brown's Estimate, a book now re- 
 membered only by the allusions in Cowper's Table Talk [Cowper's 
 Poems, ed. 1786, i. 20] and in Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace 
 [Payne's Burke, p. 9]. It was universally read, admired, and believed. 
 The author fully convinced his readers that they were a race of cow- 
 ards and scoundrels : that nothing could save them ; that they were 
 on the point of being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly 
 deserved their fate.' Macaulay's Essays, ii. 183. Dr. J. H. Burton 
 
 Johnson,)
 
 Aetat. Gi.] Dr. Broiuu s Estimate. 151 
 
 Johnson,) he would no more suffer Garrick to write a line in his 
 play, than he would suffer him to mount his pulpit." 
 
 ' Speaking of Burke, he said, " It was commonly observed, he 
 spoke too often in parliament ; but nobody could say he did not 
 speak well, though too frequently and too familiarly'." 
 
 * Speaking of economy, he remarked, it was hardly worth while 
 to save anxiously twenty pounds a year. If a man could save to 
 that degree, so as to enable him to assume a different rank in so- 
 ciety, then indeed, it might answer some purpose. 
 
 ' He observed, a principal source of erroneous judgement was, 
 viewing things partially and only on one side : as for instance,_/i?/'/- 
 nnc-huniers, when they contemplated the fortunes singly and sepa- 
 rately, it was a dazzling and tempting object ; but when they came 
 to possess the wives and their fortunes together, they began to sus- 
 pect that they had not made quite so good a bargain. 
 
 ' Speaking of the late Duke of Northumberland living very mag- 
 nificently when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, somebody remarked 
 it would be difficult to find a suitable successor to him : then ex- 
 claimed Johnson, he is only fit to succeed himself ^. 
 
 ' He advised me, if possible, to have a good orchard. He knew, 
 
 says : — ' Dr. Brown's book is said to have run to a seventh edition in 
 a few months. It is rather singular that the edition marked as the 
 seventh has precisely the same matter in each page, and the same 
 number of pages as the first.' Lz/e 0/ Hteme,n.2T,. Brown wrote two 
 tragedies, Barbarossa and At heist an, both of which Garrick brought 
 out at Drury Lane. In Barbarossa Johnson observed ' that there were 
 two improprieties ; in the first place, the use of a bell is unknown to 
 the Mahometans ; and secondly, Otway had tolled a bell before Dr. 
 Brown, and we are not to be made April fools twice by the same 
 trick.' Murphy's Garrick, p. 173. Brown's vanity is shown in a let- 
 ter to Garrick {Garrick Carres, i. 220) written on Jan. 19, 1766, in which 
 he talks of going to St. Petersburg, and drawing up a System of Leg- 
 islation for the Russian Empire. In the following September, in a fit 
 of madness, he made away with himself. 
 
 * Sec post. May 8, 1781. 
 
 ^ Horace Walpole, writing in May, 1764, says : — ' The Earl of North- 
 umberland returned from Ireland, where his profusion and ostenta- 
 tion had been so great that it seemed to lay a dangerous precedent 
 for succeeding governors.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, \. 417. 
 He was created Duke in 1766. For some pleasant anecdotes about 
 this nobleman and Goldsmith, see Goldsmith's Misc. Works, i. 66, and 
 Forster's Goldsmith, i. 379, and ii. 227. 
 
 he
 
 152 The Irish clergy. [a. d. 1770. 
 
 he said, a clergyman of small income, who brought up a family very 
 reputably which he chiefly fed with apple dumplins. 
 
 ' He said, he had known several good scholars among the Irish 
 gentlemen ; but scarcely any of them correct in qicantityK He ex- 
 tended the same observation to Scotland. 
 
 ' Speaking of a certain Prelate, who exerted himself very lauda- 
 bly in building churches and parsonage - houses ; " however, said 
 he, I do not find that he is esteemed a man of much professional 
 learning, or a liberal patron of it ; — yet, it is well, where a man pos- 
 sesses any strong positive excellence. — Few have all kinds of merit 
 belonging to their character. We must not examine matters too 
 deeply — No, Sir, 2i fallible being will fail somc-ivhere.'''' 
 
 'Talking of the Irish clergy, he said, Swift was a man of great 
 parts, and the instrument of much good to his country'. — Berkeley 
 was a profound scholar, as well as a man of fine imagination ; but 
 Usher, he said, was the great luminary of the Irish church ; and a 
 greater, he added, no church could boast of ; at least in modern 
 times. 
 
 ' We dined tcte-a-tele at the Mitre, as I was preparing to return to 
 Ireland, after an absence of many years. I regretted much leaving 
 London, where I had formed many agreeable connexions : " Sir, 
 (said he,) I don't wonder at it ; no man, fond of letters, leaves 
 London without regret. But remember, Sir, you have seen and 
 enjoyed a great deal ; — you have seen life in its highest decora- 
 tions, and the world has nothing new to exhibit. No man is so 
 well qualifyed to leave publick life as he who has long tried it and 
 known it well. We are always hankering after untried situations, 
 
 ' Johnson thus writes of him {Works, v\n. 207): — 'The Archbishop 
 of Dublin gave him at first some disturbance in the exercise of his 
 jurisdiction ; but it was soon discovered that between prudence and 
 integrity he was seldom in the wrong ; and that, when he was right, 
 his spirit did not easily yield to opposition.' He adds : ' He delivered 
 Ireland from plunder and oppression, and showed that wit confeder- 
 ated with truth had such force as authority was unable to resist. He 
 said truly of himself that Ireland "was his debtor." It was from the 
 time when he first began to patronise the Irish, that they may date 
 their riches and prosperity.' lb. p. 319. Pope, in his Imitations of 
 Horace, II. i. 221, says : — 
 
 ' Let Ireland tell how wit upheld her cause. 
 Her trade supported, and supplied her laws , 
 And leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved, 
 " The rights a Court attacked, a poet saved." ' 
 
 and
 
 Aetat. 61.] Johnson s retejitive 7ne7nory. 153 
 
 and imagining greater felicity from them than they can afford. 
 No, Sir, knowledge and virtue may be acquired in all countries, 
 and your local consequence will make you some amends for the 
 intellectual gratifications you relinquish." Then he quoted the 
 following lines with great pathos : — 
 
 " He who has early known the pomps of state, 
 (For things unknown, 'tis ignorance to condemn ;) 
 And after having viewed the gaudy bait, 
 Can boldly say, the {rifle I contemn ; 
 With such a one contented could I live. 
 Contented could I die ' ;" — 
 
 ' He then took a most affecting leave of me ; said, he knew, it 
 
 ' These lines have been discovered by the author's second son in 
 the London Magazitie for July, 1732, where they form part of a poem 
 on Rettretnent, copied, with some slight variations, from one of Walsh's 
 smaller poems, entitled The Reizrcvwiit. They exhibit another proof 
 that Johnson retained in his memory fragments of neglected poetry. 
 In quoting verses of that description, he appears by a slight varia- 
 tion to have sometimes given them a moral turn, and to have dex- 
 terously adapted them to his own sentiments, where the original 
 had a very different tendency. In 1782, when he was at Brighthelm- 
 stone, he repeated to Mr. Metcalfe, some verses, as very character- 
 istic of a celebrated historian [Gibbon]. They are found among 
 some anonymous poems appended to the second volume of a col- 
 lection frequently printed by Lintot, under the title of Popes JSIiscel- 
 lanics : — 
 
 ' See how the wand'ring Danube flows, 
 Realms and religions parting ; 
 A friend to all true christian foes, 
 
 To Peter, Jack, and Martin. 
 Now Protestant, and Papist now. 
 
 Not constant long to either. 
 At length an infidel does grow. 
 And ends his journey neither. 
 Thus many a youth I've known set out, 
 
 Half Protestant, half Papist, 
 And rambling long the world about. 
 Turn infidel or atheist.' 
 Malone. See pos^, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection, ^nd. Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Aug. 27, and Oct. 28, 1773. 
 
 wa.s
 
 154 Falkland's Islands. [a.d. 1771. 
 
 was a point of duty that called me away. " We shall all be sorry 
 to lose you," said he : ^'- laudo iamcn\" ' 
 
 1771 : ^TAT. 62.] — In 1 77 1 he published another political 
 pamphlet, entitled Thoughts on the late Transactions respect- 
 ing Falkland" s Islands', in which, upon materials furnished 
 to him by ministry, and upon general topicks expanded 
 in his richest style, he successfully endeavoured to persuade 
 the nation that it was wise and laudable to suffer the ques- 
 tion of right to remain undecided, rather than involve our 
 country in another war. It has been suggested by some, 
 with what truth I shall not take upon me to decide, that 
 he rated the consequence of those islands to Great-Britain 
 too low^ But however this may be, every humane mind 
 must surely applaud the earnestness with which he avert- 
 ed the calamity of war; a calamity so dreadful, that it is 
 astonishing how civilised, nay. Christian nations, can deliber- 
 ately continue to renew it. His description of its miseries 
 in this pamphlet, is one of the finest pieces of eloquence 
 in the English language'. Upon this occasion, too, we find 
 
 ^ Juvenal, Sat. iii. 1. 2. 
 
 ' Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend.' 
 
 Johnson's London, 1. 3. 
 
 ' It was published without the author's name. 
 
 ^ ' What have we acquired } What but ... an island thrown aside 
 from human use ; ... an island which not the southern savages have 
 dignified with habitation.' Works, vi. 198. 
 
 ' ' It is wonderful with v/hat coolness and indifference the greater 
 part of mankind see war commenced. Those that hear of it at a dis- 
 tance, or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to 
 their minds, consider it as little more than a splendid game, a procla- 
 mation, an army, a battle, and a triumph. Some, indeed, must perish 
 in the most successful field, but they die upon the bed of honour, 
 " resign their lives, amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled with Eng- 
 land's glory, smile in death." The life of a modern soldier is ill-repre- 
 sented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formi- 
 dable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and ten 
 thousands that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, 
 a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest lan- 
 guished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction ; pale, tor- 
 Johnson
 
 Aetat.62.] Junius. 155 
 
 Johnson lashing the party in opposition with unbounded 
 severity, and making the fullest use of what he ever reckoned 
 a most effectual argumentative instrument, — contempt'. 
 His character of their very able mysterious champion, 
 Junius, is executed with all the force of his genius, and 
 finished with the highest care. He seems to have exulted 
 in sallying forth to single combat against the boasted and 
 formidable hero, who bade defiance to ' principalities and 
 powers, and the rulers of this world ^' 
 
 This pamphlet, it is observable, was softened in one par- 
 ticular, after the first edition ^ ; for the conclusion of Mr. 
 
 pid, spiritless, and helpless ; gasping and groaning, unpitied among 
 men made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and 
 were at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without no- 
 tice and without remembrance. By incommodious encampments 
 and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless, and enterprise 
 impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly 
 melted away.' Works, vi. 199. 
 
 ' Johnson wrote of the Earl of Chatham : — ' This surely is a suffi- 
 cient answer to the feudal gabble of a man who is every day lessen- 
 ing that splendour of character which once illuminated the kingdom, 
 then dazzled, and afterwards inflamed it ; and for whom it will be 
 happy if the nation shall at last dismiss him to nameless obscurity, 
 with that equipoise of blame and praise which Corneille allows to 
 Richelieu.' Works, x'x.icf]- 
 
 ^ Ephcsians, vi. I2. Johnson {Wo7-ks, vi. 198) calls Junius 'one of 
 the few writers of his despicable faction whose name does not dis- 
 grace the page of an opponent.' But he thus ends his attack ; — 
 ' What, says Pope, must be the priest where a monkey is the god ? 
 What must be the drudge of a party of which the heads are Wilkes 
 and Crosby, Sawbridge and Townsend ?' //;. p. 206. 
 
 ' This softening was made in the later copies of Xhc first edition. 
 A second change seems to have been made. In the text, as given in 
 Murphy's edition (1796, viii. 137), the last line of the passage stands: 
 — ' If he was sometimes wrong, he was often right.' Horace Walpole 
 describes Grenville's 'plodding, methodic genius, which made him 
 take the spirit of detail for ability.' Memoirs of the Rez'gn of George 
 III, i. 36. For the fine character that Burke drew of him see Payne's 
 Burke, i. 122. There is, I think, a hit at Lord Bute's Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, Sir F. Dashwood (Lord Le Despencer), who was described 
 as 'a man to whom a sum of five figures was an impenetrable secret.' 
 
 George
 
 156 Mr. George Grenville. [a.d. 1771, 
 
 George Grenville's character stood thus : ' Let him not, how- 
 ever, be depreciated in his grave. He had powers not uni- 
 versally possessed : could he have enforced payment of the 
 Manilla ransom, Jie coidd have counted it '.' Which, instead 
 of retaining its sly sharp point, was reduced to a mere flat 
 unmeaning expression, or, if I may use the word, — truism : 
 ' He had powers not universally possessed : and if he some- 
 times erred, he was likewise sometimes right.' 
 
 'To Bennet Langton, Esq. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' After much lingering of my own, and much of the ministry, 
 I have at length got out my paper". But delay is not yet at an 
 end : Not many had been dispersed, before Lord North ordered 
 the sale to stop. His reasons I do not distinctly know. You may 
 try to find them in the perusal'. Before his order, a sufficient 
 number were dispersed to do all the mischief, though, perhaps, not 
 to make all the sport that might be expected from it. 
 
 ' Soon after your departure, I had the pleasure of finding all the 
 danger past with which your navigation * was threatened. I hope 
 nothing happens at home to abate your satisfaction ; but that Lady 
 Rothes ^, and Mrs. Langton, and the young ladies, are all well. 
 
 Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 172, note. He him- 
 self said, ' People will point at me, and cry, " there goes the worst 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever appeared." ' lb. p. 250. 
 
 ^ Boswell, I suspect, quoted this passage from hearsay, for originally 
 it stood : — ' If he could have got the money, he could have counted 
 it' (p. 68). In the British Museum there are copies of the first edi- 
 tion both softened and. wtsoftened. 
 
 ^ Thoughts on the tate Trattsactions respecting Fa tkla fid's /stands. 
 
 BOSWELL. 
 
 ^ By comparing the first with the subsequent editions, this curious 
 circumstance of ministerial authorship may be discovered. Boswell. 
 
 * Navigation was the common term for canals, which at that time 
 were getting rapidly made. A writer in Notes and Queries, 6th S. xi. 
 64, shows that Langton, as payment of a loan, undertook to pay John- 
 son's servant, Frank, an annuity for life, secured on profits from the 
 fiavigation of the River Wey in Surrey. 
 
 * It was, Mr. Chalmers told me, a saying about that time, ' Married 
 a Countess Dowager of Rothes ! Why, everybody marries a Countess 
 Dowager of Rothes !' And there were in fact, about 1772, three ladies 
 
 ' I was
 
 Aetat. 62.] Ml'. Slrakan. 157 
 
 ' I was last night at the club. Dr. Percy has written a long 
 
 ballad ' in mzny Jits ; it is pretty enough. He has printed, and will 
 
 soon publish it. Goldsmith is at Bath, with Lord Clare "'. At Mr. 
 
 Thrale's, where I am now writing, all are well. I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' March 20, 1771.' 
 
 Mr. Strahan '; the printer, who had been long in intimacy 
 with Johnson, in the course of his literary labours, who was at 
 once his friendly agent in receiving his pension for him*, and 
 
 of that name married to second husbands. Croker. Mr. Langton 
 married one of these ladies. 
 
 * The Hermit of Warkworth : A Ballad in three cantos. T. Davis, 
 2s. 6d. Cradock {Memoirs, i. 207) quotes Johnson's parody on a stanza 
 in The Herinit : 
 
 ' I put my hat upon my head, 
 
 And walked into the Strand, 
 And there I met another man 
 With his hat in his hand.' 
 ' Mr. Garrick,' he continues, 'asked me whether I had seen Johnson's 
 criticism on The Hermit. " It is already," said he, " over half the 
 town." ' 
 
 * '" I am told," says a letter-writer of the day, " that Dr. Goldsmith 
 now generally lives with his countryman, Lord Clare, who has lost 
 his only son. Colonel Nugent." ' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 228. ' The 
 Haunch of Venison was written this year (1771), and appears to have 
 been written for Lord Clare alone ; nor was it until two years after 
 the writer's death that it obtained a wider audience than his immedi- 
 ate circle of friends.' Il>. p. 230. S&e. post, April 17, 1778. 
 
 ' Gibbon (Afisc. IVorhs, i. 222) mentions Mr. Strahan : — ' I agreed 
 upon easy terms with Mr. Thomas Cadell, a respectable bookseller, 
 and Mr. William Strahan, an eminent printer, and they undertook the 
 care and risk of the publication [of the Decline and /v;//J, which de- 
 rived more credit from the name of the shop than from that of the 
 author. ... So moderate were our hopes, that the original impression 
 had been stinted to five hundred, till the number was doubled by the 
 prophetic taste of Mr. Strahan.' Hume, by his will, left to Strahan's 
 care all his manuscripts, ' trusting,' he says, ' to the friendship that has 
 long subsisted between us for his careful and faithful execution of my 
 intentions.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 494. Sec ib. p. 512, for a letter 
 written to Hume on his death-bed by Strahan. 
 
 * Dr. Franklin, writing of the year 1773, says {Memoirs, i. 398 : — ' An 
 
 his
 
 158 A seat in Parliament for Johnson, [a. d. 1771. 
 
 his banker in supplying him with money when he wanted it ; 
 who was himself now a Member of Parhament,and who loved 
 much to be employed in political negociation' ; thought he 
 should do eminent service both to government and Johnson, 
 if he could be the means of his getting a seat in the House 
 of Commons'. With this view, he wrote a letter to one of 
 the Secretaries of the Treasury, of which he gave me a copy 
 in his own hand-writing, which is as follows : — 
 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' You will easily recollect, when I had the honour of waiting 
 upon you some time ago, I took the liberty to observe to you, that 
 Dr. Johnson would make an excellent figure in the House of Com- 
 mons, and heartily wished he had a seat there. My reasons are 
 briefly these : 
 
 ' I know his perfect good affection to his Majesty, and his gov- 
 ernment, which I am certain he wishes to support by every means 
 in his power. 
 
 ' He possesses a great share of manly, nervous, and ready elo- 
 quence ; is quick in discerning the strength and weakness of an 
 argument ; can express himself with clearness and precision, and 
 fears the face of no man alive. 
 
 ' His known character, as a man of extraordinary sense and un- 
 impeached virtue, would secure him the attention of the House, 
 and could not fail to give him a proper weight there. 
 
 acquaintance (Mr. Strahan, M.P.) callmg on me, after having just been 
 at the Treasury, showed me what he styled a pretty thing, for a friend 
 of his; it was an order for /150, payable to Dr. Johnson, said to be 
 one half of his yearly pension.' 
 ' See /^5-/, July 27, 1778. 
 Hawkins {Life, p. 513) says that Mr. Thrale made the same at- 
 tempt. ' He had two meetings with the ministry, who at first seemed 
 inclined to find Johnson a seat.' ' Lord Stowell told me,' says Mr. 
 Croker, ' that it was understood amongst Johnson's friends that Lord 
 North was afraid that Johnson's help (as he himself said of Lord 
 Chesterfield's) might have been sometimes embarrassing. " He per- 
 haps thought, and not unreasonably," added Lord Stowell, "that, like 
 the elephant in the battle, he was quite as likely to trample down his 
 friends as his foes." ' Lord Stowell referred to Johnson's letter to 
 Chesterfield {ante, i. 304), in which he describes a patron as ' one who 
 encumbers a man with help.' 
 
 'He
 
 Aetat. 63.] A seat in Parliament for Joluisoji. 159 
 
 ' He is capable of the greatest application, and can undergo any 
 degree of labour, where he sees it necessary, and where his heart 
 and affections are strongly engaged. His Majesty's ministers 
 might therefore securely depend on his doing, upon every proper 
 occasion, the utmost that could be expected from him. They would 
 lind him ready to vindicate such measures as tended to promote 
 the stability of government, and resolute and steady in carrying 
 them into execution. Nor is any thing to be apprehended from 
 the supposed impetuosity of his temper. To the friends of the 
 King you will find him a lamb, to his enemies a lion. 
 
 ' For these reasons, I humbly apprehend that he would be a very 
 able and useful member. And I will venture to say, the employ- 
 ment would not be disagreeable to him ; and knowing, as I do, his 
 strong affection to the King, his ability to serve him in that capac- 
 ity, and the extreme ardour with which I am convinced he would 
 engage in that service, I must repeat, that I wish most heartily to 
 see him in the House. 
 
 ' If you think this worthy of attention, you will be pleased to 
 take a convenient opportunity of mentioning it to Lord North. If 
 his Lordship should happily approve of it, I shall have the satis- 
 faction of having been, in some degree, the humble instrument of 
 doing my country, in my opinion, a very essential service. I know 
 your good-nature, and your zeal for the publick welfare, will plead 
 my excuse for giving you this trouble. I am, with the greatest 
 respect, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most obedient and humble servant, 
 
 'William Strahan.' 
 ' New-street, 
 
 March 30, 1771.' 
 
 This recommendation, we know, was not effectual ; but 
 how, or for what reason, can only be conjectured. It is 
 not to be believed that Mr. Strahan would have applied, 
 unless Johnson had approved of it. I never heard him 
 mention the subject ; but at a later period of his life, when 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds told him that Mr. Edmund Burke 
 had said, that if he had come early into Parliament, he 
 certainly would have been the greatest speaker that ever 
 was there, Johnson exclaimed, ' I should like to try my hand 
 now.' 
 
 It has been much agitated among his friends and others, 
 
 whether
 
 i6o Johnson as a debater. [a.d. I77i. 
 
 whether he Avould have been a powerful speaker in ParHa- 
 ment, had he been brought in when advanced in life. I am 
 inclined to think that his extensive knowledge, his quick- 
 ness and force of mind, his vivacity and richness of expres- 
 sion, his wit and humour, and above all his poignancy of 
 sarcasm, would have had great effect in a popular assembly ; 
 and that the magnitude of his figure, and striking peculiar- 
 ity of his manner, would have aided the effect. But I re- 
 member it was observed by Mr. Flood, that Johnson, having 
 been long used to sententious brevity and the short flights 
 of conversation, might have failed in that continued and 
 expanded kind of argument, which is requisite in stating 
 complicated matters in publick speaking ; and as a proof of 
 this he mentioned the supposed speeches in Parliament 
 written by him for the magazine, none of which, in his 
 opinion, were at all like real debates. The opinion of one 
 who was himself so eminent an orator, must be allowed to 
 have great weight. It was confirmed by Sir William Scott, 
 who mentioned that Johnson had told him that he had 
 several times tried to speak in the Society of Arts and 
 Sciences, but ' had found he could not get on.' From Mr. 
 William Gerrard Hamilton I have heard that Johnson, when 
 observing to him that it was prudent for a man who had 
 not been accustomed to speak in publick, to begin his 
 speech in as simple a manner as possible, acknowledged 
 that he rose in that society to deliver a speech which he 
 had prepared ; ' but, (said he,) all my flowers of oratory for- 
 sook me.' I however cannot help v/ishing, that he Jiad 
 ' tried his hand ' in Parliament ; and I wonder that ministry 
 did not make the experinient. 
 
 I at length renewed a correspondence which had been too 
 long discontinued : — 
 
 'To Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, April i8, 1771. 
 'My Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I can now fully understand those intervals of silence in 
 
 your correspondence with me, which have often given me anxiety 
 
 and uneasiness ; for although I am conscious that my veneration 
 
 and
 
 Aetat. 62.] Boswell a married 77ian. 1 6 1 
 
 and love for Mr. Johnson have never in the least abated, yet I have 
 deferred for almost a year and a half to write to him.' . . . 
 
 In the subsequent part of this letter, I gave him an ac- 
 count of my comfortable life as a married man ', and a 
 lawyer in practice at the Scotch bar ; invited him to Scot- 
 land, and promised to attend him to the Highlands, and 
 Hebrides. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq, 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' If you are now able to comprehend that I might neglect to 
 write without diminution of affection, you have taught me, likewise, 
 how that neglect may be uneasily felt without resentment. I wished 
 for your letter a long time, and when it came, it amply recompensed 
 the delay. I never was so much pleased as now with your account 
 of yourself ; and sincerely hope, that between publick business, nn- 
 proving studies, and domestick pleasures, neither melancholy nor 
 caprice will find any place for entrance. Whatever philosophy may 
 determine of material nature, it is certainly true of intellectual nat- 
 ure, that it abhors a vacuicm : our minds cannot be empty , and evil 
 will break in upon them, if they are not pre-occupied by good. 
 My dear Sir, mind your studies, mind your business, make your 
 lady happy, and be a good Christian. After this, 
 
 " tristitiam et mettis 
 
 Trades protervis in mare Cretician 
 Portare ve?ifis^." 
 
 ' Boswell married his cousm Margaret Montgomene on Nov. 25, 
 1769. On the same day his father married for the second time. Scols 
 Mag. for 1769, p. 61 5. Boswell, m his Letter to tlic People of Scotland 
 (p. 55j, pubhshed in 1785, describes his wife as 'a true Montgomeric, 
 whom I esteem, whom I love, after fifteen years, as on the day when 
 she gave mc her hand.' See his Hebrides, Aug. 14, 1773. 
 * ' Musis amicus, tristitiam et metus 
 
 Tradam, &c. 
 
 While in the Muse's friendship blest, 
 Nor fear, nor grief, shall break my rest ; 
 Bear them, ye vagrant winds, away. 
 And drown them in the Cretan Sea.' 
 
 Francis. Horace, Odes, i. 26, i. 
 
 n.— II 'If
 
 1 62 Johnsons portrait. [a.d. 1771. 
 
 ' If we perform our duty, we shall be safe and steady, '' Sivc per\'' 
 &c., whether we climb the Highlands, or are tost among the Heb- 
 rides ; and I hope the time will come when we may try our powers 
 both with cliffs and water. I see but little of Lord Elibank', I 
 know not why ; perhaps by my own fault. I am this day going 
 into Staffordshire and Derbyshire for six weeks'. 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most affectionate, 
 
 ' And most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' London, June 20, 1771.' 
 
 'To Sir Joshua Reynolds, in Leicester-fields. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 'When I came to Lichfield, I found that my portrait' had 
 been much visited, and much admired. Every man has a lurking 
 wish to appear considerable in his native place , and I was pleased 
 with the dignity conferred by such a testimony of your regard. 
 
 ' Be pleased, therefore, to accept the thanks of. Sir, your most 
 
 obliged , , , , 
 
 ' And most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' Ashbourn m Derbyshire, 
 
 July 17, 1771- 
 
 ' Compliments to Miss Reynolds.' 
 
 ' Horace. Odes, i. 22, 5. 
 
 "" Lord Elibank wrote to Boswell two years later:— 'Old as I am, I 
 shall be glad to go five hundred miles to enjoy a day of Mr. Johnson's 
 company.' Boswell's Hebrides, under date of Sept. 12, 1773. See ib. 
 Nov. 10, 2iX\di post, April 5, 1776. 
 
 = Goldsmith wrote to Langton on Sept. 7, 1 77 1 : — ' Johnson has 
 been down upon a visit to a country parson, Doctor Taylor, and is 
 returned to his old haunts at Mrs. Thrale's.' Goldsmith's Misc. 
 
 Works, 1. 93. 
 
 ^ While Miss Burney was examining a likeness of Johnson, ' he no 
 sooner discerned it than he began see-sawing for a moment or two in 
 silence ; and then, with a ludicrous half-laugh, peeping over her shoul- 
 der, he called out :— " Ah, ha ! Sam Johnson ! I see thee !— and an 
 ugly dog thou art!''' Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 180. In another 
 passage (p. 197), after describing ' the kindness that irradiated his aus- 
 tere and studious features into the most pleased and pleasing benig- 
 nitv,' as he welcomed her and her father to his house, she adds that 
 
 'To
 
 Aetat. 62.] The revision of the DICTIONARY. 163 
 
 'To Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, July 27, 1771. 
 'My Dear Sir, 
 
 'The bearer of this, Mr. Seattle \ Professor of Moral Phi- 
 losophy at Aberdeen, Is desirous of being Introduced to your ac- 
 quaintance. His genius and learning, and labours in the service 
 of virtue and religion, render him very worthy of it ; and as he has 
 a high esteem of your character, I hope you will give him a favour- 
 able reception. I ever am, &c. 
 
 'James Boswell.' 
 
 ' To Bennet Langton, Esq., at Langton, near Spilsby, 
 
 Lincolnshire. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I am lately returned from Staffordshire and Derbyshire. 
 The last letter mentions two others which you have written to me 
 since you received my pamphlet. Of these two I never had but 
 one, in which you mentioned a design of visiting Scotland, and, by 
 consequence, put my journey to Langton out of my thoughts. My 
 summer wanderings are now over, and I am engaging in a very 
 great work, the revision of my Diclmiary'^ ; from which I know not, 
 at present, how to get loose. 
 
 ' If you have observed, or been told, any errours or omissions, 
 you will do me a great favour by letting me know them. 
 
 ' Lady Rothes, I find, has disappointed you and herself. Ladles 
 will have these tricks. The Queen and Mrs. Thrale, both ladies 
 of experience, yet both missed their reckoning this summer. I 
 hope, a few months will recompence your uneasiness. 
 
 ' Please to tell Lady Rothes how highly I value the honour of 
 her invitation, which it is my purpose to obey as soon as I have 
 disengaged myself. In the mean time I shall hope to hear often 
 of her Ladyship, and every day better news and better, till I hear 
 
 a lady who was present often exclaimed, ' Why did not Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds paint Dr. Johnson when he was speaking to Dr. Burncy or 
 to you Y 
 
 ' 'Johnson,' wrote Beattie from London on Sept. 8 of this year, 'has 
 been greatly misrepresented. I have passed several entire days with 
 him, and found him extremely agreeable.' Beattic's Life, ed. 1824, 
 p. 120. 
 
 "^ He was preparing the fourth edition. Set posi, March 23, 1772. 
 
 that
 
 164 Early rising. [a.d. 1771. 
 
 that you have both the happiness, which to both is very sincerely 
 
 wished, by, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most affectionate, and 
 
 ' Most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Aug. 29, 1 77 1.' 
 
 In October I again wrote to him, thanking him for his last 
 letter, and his obliging reception of Mr. Beattie ; informing 
 him that I had been at Alnwick lately, and had good accounts 
 of him from Dr. Percy. 
 
 In his religious record of this year, we observe that he was 
 better than usual, both in body and mind, and better satis- 
 fied with the regularity of his conduct '. But he is still ' try- 
 ing his ways^ ' too rigorously. He charges himself with not 
 rising early enough ; yet he mentions what was surely a suf- 
 ficient excuse for this, supposing it to be a duty seriously 
 required, as he all his life appears to have thought it. ' One 
 great hindrance is want of rest ; my nocturnal complaints 
 grow less troublesome towards morning; and I am tempted 
 to repair the deficiencies of the night '.' Alas ! how hard 
 would it be if this indulgence were to be imputed to a sick 
 man as a crime. In his retrospect on the following Easter- 
 Eve, he says, ' When I review the last year, I am able to 
 recollect so little done, that shame and sorrow, though per- 
 haps too weakly, come upon me.' Had he been judging of 
 any one else in the same circumstances, how clear would he 
 have been on the favourable side. How very difficult, and 
 in my opinion almost constitutionally impossible it was for 
 him to be raised early, even by the strongest resolutions, 
 
 ' ' Sept. 18, 1 77 1, 9 at night. I am now come to my sixty-third year. 
 For the last year I have been slowly recovering both from the violence 
 of my last illness, and, I think, from the general disease of my life : . . . 
 some advances I hope have been made towards regularity. I have 
 missed church since Easter only two Sundays. . . . But indolence and 
 indifference has [sicj been neither conquered nor opposed.' Pr. atid 
 Med. p. 104. 
 
 "^ ' Let us search and try our ways.' Lamaitations, iii. 40. 
 
 ' Pr. and Med. Y>.ioi [105]. BOSWELL. 
 
 appears
 
 Aetat.62.] Sir Joseph Banks s goat. 165 
 
 appears from a note in one of his little paper-books, (con- 
 taining words arranged for his Dictionary^ written, I sup- 
 pose, about 1753 : 'I do not remember that since I left Ox- 
 ford I ever rose early by mere choice, but once or twice at 
 Edial, and two or three times for The Rambler! I think he 
 had fair ground enough to have quieted his mind on this 
 subject, by concluding that he was physically incapable of 
 Avhat is at best but a commodious regulation. 
 
 In 1772 he was altogether quiescent as an authour' ; but 
 it will be found from the various evidences which I shall 
 bring together that his mind was acute, lively, and vigorous. 
 
 'To Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Be pleased to send to Mr. Banks, whose place of residence 
 
 I do not know, this note, which I have sent open, that, if you please, 
 
 you may read it. 
 
 ' When you send it, do not use your own seal. 
 
 ' I am. Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 . c u - - . ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'Feb. 27, 1772. ■' 
 
 'To Joseph Banks, Esq. 
 
 " Perpctua ambit A his terrct prcrjuia tad is 
 Hccc tiabet at t rid Capra secunda J^ovis"^." 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' I return thanks to you and to Dr. Solander for the pleasure 
 
 ' Boswell forgets the fourth edition of his Dictionary. Johnson, in 
 Aug. 1 77 1 {ante, ii. 163), wrote to Langton : — ' I am engaging m a very 
 great work, the revision of my Dictionary.' In Pr. and Med. p. 123, at 
 Easter, 1773, as he ' reviews the last year,' he records : — ' Of the spring 
 and summer I remember that I was able in those seasons to examine 
 and improve my Dictionary, and was seldom withheld from the work 
 but by my own unwillingness.' 
 * Thus translated by a friend : — 
 
 ' In fame scarce second to the nurse of Jove, 
 This Goat, who twice the world had traversed round, 
 Deserving both her master's care and love, 
 Ease and perpetual pasture now has found.' 
 
 Boswell. 
 which
 
 1 66 A ScotcJi schoolmasters cause. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 which I received in yesterday's conversation. I could not recollect 
 a motto for your Goat, but have given her one. You, Sir, may per- 
 haps have an epick poem from some happier pen than, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, 
 Feb. 27, 1772.' 
 
 'To Dr. Johnson. 
 ' My Dear Sir, 
 
 ' It is hard that I cannot prevail on you to write to me oft- 
 ener. But I am convinced that it is in vain to expect from you 
 a private correspondence with any regularity. I must, therefore, 
 look upon you as a fountain of wisdom, from whence few rills are 
 communicated to a distance, and which must be approached at its 
 
 source, to partake fully of its virtues. 
 
 ******** 
 
 ' I am coming to London soon, and am to appear in an appeal 
 from the Court of Session in the House of Lords. A schoolmaster 
 in Scotland was, by a court of inferiour jurisdiction, deprived of 
 his office, for being somewhat severe in the chastisement of his 
 scholars'. The Court of Session, considering it to be dangerous 
 to the interest of learning and education, to lessen the dignity of 
 teachers, and make them afraid of too indulgent parents, instigated 
 by the complaints of their children, restored him. His enemies 
 have appealed to the House of Lords, though the salary is only 
 twenty pounds a year. I was Counsel for him here. I hope there 
 will be little fear of a reversal , but I must beg to have your aid 
 in my plan of supporting the decree. It is a general question, and 
 
 not a point of particular law. 
 
 ******** 
 
 ' I am, &c., 
 
 'James Boswell.' 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' That you are coming so soon to town I am very glad ; and 
 still more glad that you are coming as an advocate. I think 
 
 • Cockburn {Life of Jeffrey, i. 4) says that the High School of Edin- 
 burgh, in 1781, 'was cursed by two under masters, whose atrocities 
 young men cannot be made to believe, but old men cannot forget, 
 and the criminal law would not now endure.' 
 
 nothing
 
 Aetat. 63.] Beat ties College. 167 
 
 nothing more likely to make your life pass happily away, than that 
 consciousness of your own value, which eminence in your profession 
 will certainly confer. If I can give you any collateral help, I hope 
 you do not suspect that it will be wanting. My kindness for you 
 has neither the merit of singular virtue, nor the reproach of singular 
 prejudice. \\'hether to love you be right or wrong, I have many 
 on my side : Mrs. Thrale loves you, and Mrs. Williams loves you, 
 and what would have inclined me to love you, if I had been neutral 
 before, you are a great favourite of Dr. Beattie. 
 
 ' Of Dr. Beattie I should have thought much, but that his lady 
 puts him out of my head ; she is a very lovely woman. 
 
 ' The ejection which you come hither to oppose, appears very 
 cruel, unreasonable, and oppressive. I should think there could 
 not be much doubt of your success. 
 
 ' My health grows better, yet I am not fully recovered. I believe 
 it is held, that men do not recover very fast after threescore. I 
 hope yet to see Beattie's College : and have not given up the west- 
 ern voyage. But however all this may be or not, let us try to make 
 each other happy when we meet, and not refer our pleasure to dis- 
 tant times or distant places. 
 
 ' How comes it that you tell me nothing of your lady ? I hope 
 
 to see her some time, and till then shall be glad to hear of her. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, &c. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'March 15, 1772.' 
 
 'To Bennet Langton, Esq., near Spilsby, Lincolnshire. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I congratulate you and Lady Rothes ' on your little man, 
 and hope you will all be many years happy together. 
 
 ' Poor Miss Langton can have little part in the joy of her family. 
 She this day called her aunt Langton to receive the sacrament with 
 her , and made me talk yesterday on such subjects as suit her con- 
 dition. It will probably be her viaiiciim. I surely need not men- 
 tion again that she wishes to see her mother. I am. Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' March 14, 1772.' 
 
 On the 2 1st of March, I was happy to find myself again 
 
 ' Mr. Langton married the Countess Dowager of Rothes. BOSWEI.I.. 
 
 in
 
 1 68 Obstinacy and severity. [a.d. 1773, 
 
 in my friend's study, and was glad to see my old acquaint- 
 ance, Mr. Francis Barber, who was now returned home '. Dr. 
 Johnson received mc with a hearty welcome ; saying, ' I am 
 glad you are come, and glad you are come upon such an 
 errand :' (alluding to the cause of the schoolmaster.) BOS- 
 WELL. ' I hope. Sir, he will be in no danger. It is a very 
 delicate matter to interfere between a master and his schol- 
 ars : nor do I see how you can fix the degree of severity that 
 a master may use.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, till you can fix 
 the degree of obstinacy and negligence of the scholars, you 
 cannot fix the degree of severity of the master. Severity 
 must be continued until obstinacy be subdued, and negli- 
 gence be cured.' He mentioned the severity of Hunter, his 
 own master\ 'Sir, (said I,) Hunter is a Scotch name: so it 
 should seem this schoolmaster who beat you so severely was 
 a Scotchman. I can now account for your prejudice against 
 the Scotch.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, he was not Scotch; and abat- 
 ing his brutality, he was a very good master \' 
 
 We talked of his two political pamphlets. The False 
 Alarm, and Thoughts concerning FalklafuTs Islands. JOHN- 
 SON. 'Well, Sir, which of them did you think the best?' 
 BOSWELL. 'I liked the second best.' JOHNSON. 'Why, 
 Sir, I liked the first best ; and Beattie liked the first best. 
 Sir, there is a subtlety of disquisition in the first, that is 
 worth all the fire of the second.' BoswELL. ' Pray, Sir, is 
 it true that Lord North paid you a visit, and that you got 
 two hundred a year in addition to your pension?' JOHN- 
 SON. ' No, Sir. Except what I had from the bookseller, I 
 
 ' From school. See, afitc/n.ji. " See rt/z/f, i. 51. 
 
 ^ Johnson used to say that schoolmasters were worse than the Egyp- 
 tian task-masters of old. ' No boy," says he, ' is sure any day he goes 
 to school to escape a whipping. How can the schoolm.aster tell what 
 the boy has really forgotten, and what he has neglected to learn ?' 
 Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 209. 'I rejoice,' writes J. S. Mill {Auto. 
 p. 53), ' in the decline of the old, brutal, and tyrannical system of teach- 
 ing, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of application ; 
 but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who will 
 be incapable of doing anything which is disagreeable to them.' 
 
 did
 
 Aetat. 03.J Lord North. 169 
 
 did not get a farthing by them '. And, between you and 
 me, I beheve Lord North is no friend to me.' BoswELL. 
 ' How so. Sir?' Johnson. ' Why, Sir, you cannot account 
 for the fancies of men. Well, how does Lord Elibank? and 
 how does Lord Monboddo?' BosWELL. 'Very well. Sir. 
 Lord Monboddo still maintains the superiority of the sav- 
 age life^' Johnson. 'What strange narrowness of mind 
 now is that, to think the things we have not known, are 
 better than the things which we have known.' BosWELL. 
 'Why, Sir, that is a common prejudice.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, 
 Sir, but a common prejudice should not be found in one 
 whose trade it is to rectify errour.' 
 
 A gentleman having come in who was to go as a mate in 
 the ship along with Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, Dr. John- 
 son asked what were the names of the ships destined for the 
 expedition. The gentleman answered, they were once to 
 be called the Drake and the Ralegh, but now they were to 
 be called the Resolution and the Adventure \ JOHNSON. 
 'Much better; for had the Ralegh^ returned without going 
 round the world, it would have been ridiculous. To give 
 them the names of the Drake and the Ralegh was laying a 
 trap for satire.' BosWELL. ' Had not you some desire to go 
 upon this expedition. Sir?' JOHNSON. ' Why yes, but I soon 
 laid it aside. Sir, there is very little of intellectual, in the 
 course. Besides, I see but at a small distance. So it was not 
 worth my while to go to see birds fly, which I should not have 
 seen fly; and fishes swim, which I should not have seen swim.' 
 
 ' Sec (^w/*^, i. 431. ' ^ See <r«/6', ii. 84. 
 
 * The ship in which Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander were to have sailed 
 was the Endeavour. It was, they said, unfit for the voyage. The Ad- 
 miralty altered it in such a way as to render it top-heavy. It was 
 nearly overset on going down the river. Then it was rendered safe 
 by restoring it to its former condition. When the explorers raised 
 their former objections, they were told to take it or none. A>i7i. Reg, 
 XV. 108. See also ^oswOlX'S, Hebrides, Oct. i8, 1773. 
 
 * I suspect that Raleigh is here an error of Mr. Boswell's pen for 
 Drake. Croker. Johnson had written Drake's Life, and therefore 
 must have had it well in mind that it was Drake who went round the 
 world. 
 
 The
 
 1 70 Doctor and Aire. Beattie. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 The gentleman being gone, and Dr. Johnson having left 
 the room for some time, a debate arose between the Rever- 
 end Mr. Stockdale and Mrs. Desmoulins, whether Mr. Banks 
 and Dr. Solander were entitled to any share of glory from 
 their expedition. When Dr. Johnson returned to us, I told 
 him the subject of their dispute. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, it 
 was properly for botany that they went out : I believe they 
 thought only of culling of simples'.' 
 
 I thanked him for showing civilities to Beattie. ' Sir, (said 
 he,) I should thank jj/<3?/. We all love Beattie. Mrs. Thrale 
 says, if ever she has another husband, she'll have Beattie. 
 He sunk upon us'' that he was married ; else we should have 
 
 ' Romeo aiid Juliet, act v. sc. i. 
 
 ' 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 ■ , ^ ^, ' Edinburgh, May 3, 1792. 
 
 'My Dear Sir, * j- o- z::^ 
 
 ' As I suppose your great work will soon be reprinted, I beg leave 
 to trouble you with a remark on a passage of it, in which I am a little 
 misrepresented. Be not alarmed ; the misrepresentation is not im- 
 putable to you. Not having the book at hand, I cannot specify the 
 page, but I suppose you will easily find it. Dr. Johnson says, speak- 
 ing of Mrs. Thrale's family, " Dr. Beattie sutik tipo7i 7is that he was 
 married, or words to that purpose." I am not sure that I understand 
 sunk upon us, which is a very uncommon phrase, but it seems to me to 
 imply, (and others, I find, have understood it in the same sense,) stti- 
 diously concealed from us his being married. Now, Sir, this was by no 
 means the case. I could have no motive to conceal a circumstance, 
 of which I never was nor can be ashamed ; and of which Dr. Johnson 
 seemed to think, when he afterwards became acquainted with Mrs. 
 Beattie, that I had, as was true, reason to be proud. So far was I 
 from concealing her, that my wife had at that time almost as numer- 
 ous an acquaintance in London as I had myself ; and was, not very 
 long after, kindly invited and elegantly entertained at Streatham by 
 Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. 
 
 ' My request, therefore, is, that you would rectify this matter in your 
 new edition. You are at liberty to make what use you please of this 
 letter. 
 
 ' My best wishes ever attend you and your family. Believe me to 
 be, with the utmost regard and esteem, dear Sir, 
 
 'Your obliged and affectionate humble servant, J. Beattie.' 
 
 I have, from my respect for my friend Dr. Beattie, and regard to his 
 
 shewn
 
 Aetat. 63.] Boswell proposes to buy St. Kilda. 171 
 
 shewn his lady more civiHties. She is a very fine woman. 
 But how can you shew civiHties to a non-entity ? I did not 
 think he had been married. Nay, I did not think about it 
 one way or other; but he did not tell us of his lady till late.' 
 
 He then spoke of St. Kilda', the most remote of the Heb- 
 rides. I told him, I thought of buying it. JOHNSON. ' Pray 
 do. Sir. We will go and pass a winter amid the blasts there. 
 We shall have fine fish, and we will take some dried ^tongues 
 with us, and some books. We will have a strong built ves- 
 sel, and some Orkney men to navigate her. We must build 
 a tolerable house : but we may carry with us a wooden house 
 ready made, and requiring nothing but to be put up. Con- 
 sider, Sir, by buying St. Kilda, you may keep the people 
 from falling into worse hands. We must give them a cler- 
 gyman, and he shall be one of Beattie's choosing. He shall 
 be educated at Marischal College. I'll be your Lord Chan- 
 cellor, or what you please.' BosWELL. ' Are you serious. 
 Sir, in advising me to buy St. Kilda ? for if you should advise 
 me to go to Japan, I believe I should do it.' JOHNSON. 
 ' Why yes. Sir, I am serious.' BosWELL. ' Why then, I'll 
 see what can be done.' 
 
 I gave him an account of the two parties in the Church 
 of Scotland, those for supporting the rights of patrons, inde- 
 pendent of the people, and those against it. JOHNSON. ' It 
 should be settled one way or other. I cannot wish well to 
 a popular election of the clergy, when I consider that it 
 occasions such animosities, such unworthy courting of the 
 
 extreme sensibility, inserted the foregoing letter, though I cannot but 
 wonder at his considering as any imputation a phrase commonly used 
 among the best friends. Boswell. Mr. Croker says there was a cause 
 for the ' extreme sensibility.' ' Dr. Beattie was conscious that there 
 was something that might give a colour to such an imputation. It 
 became known, shortly after the date of this letter, that the mind of 
 Mrs. Beattie had become deranged.' Beattie would have found in 
 Johnson's Dictiotiary an explanation of sunk upon us — ' To sitik. To 
 suppress; to conceal.' 'If sent with ready money to buy anything, 
 and you happen to be out of pocket, sink the money and take up the 
 goods on account.' Swift's Rules to Servants, Works, viii. 256. 
 ' See ante, i. 521. 
 
 people,
 
 172 Evidence for spirit. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 people, such slanders between the contending parties, and 
 other disadvantages. It is enough to allow the people to 
 remonstrate against the nomination of a minister for solid 
 reasons.' (I suppose he meant heresy or immorality.) 
 
 He was engaged to dine abroad, and asked me to return 
 to him in the evening, at nine, which I accordingly did. 
 
 We drank tea with Mrs. Williams, who told us a story of 
 second sight ', which happened in Wales where she was born. 
 He listened to it very attentively, and said he should be glad 
 to have some instances of that faculty well authenticated. 
 His elevated wish for more and more evidence for spirit *, in 
 opposition to the groveling belief of materialism, led him to 
 a love of such mysterious disquisitions. He again ^ justly 
 observed, that we could have no certainty of the truth of su- 
 pernatural appearances, unless something was told us which 
 we could not know by ordinary means, or something done 
 which could not be done but by supernatural power ; that 
 Pharaoh in reason and justice required such evidence from 
 Moses; nay, that our Saviour said, ' If I had not done among 
 them the works which none other man did, they had not had 
 sin \' He had said in the morning, that Macaulay's History 
 of St. Kilda, was very well written, except some foppery 
 about liberty and slavery. I mentioned to him that Macau- 
 lay told me, he was advised to leave out of his book the 
 wonderful story that upon the approach of a stranger all the 
 inhabitants catch cold^; but that it had been so vv'ell authen- 
 ticated, he determined to retain it. JOHNSON. ' Sir, to leave 
 things out of a book, merely because people tell you they 
 will not be believed, is meanness. Macaulay acted with more 
 magnanimity.' 
 
 We talked of the Roman Catholick religion, and how little 
 difference there was in essential matters between ours and it. 
 Johnson. 'True, Sir; all denominations of Christians have 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 12. 
 
 * See/f^/, April 15, 1778, note, and June 12, 1784- 
 ^ See afife, i. 469. 
 
 * St. John, XV. 24. 
 
 * See note, p. 58 of this volume. Boswell. 
 
 really
 
 Aetat. 63.] Subscription to the Articles. 173 
 
 really little difference in point of doctrine, though they may 
 differ widely in external forms. There is a prodigious dif- 
 ference between the external form of one of your Presbyte- 
 rian churches in Scotland, and a church in Italy ; yet the 
 doctrine taught is essentially the same '.' 
 
 I mentioned the petition to Parliament for removing the 
 subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles ^ JOHNSON. 'It 
 was soon thrown out. Sir, they talk of not making boys at 
 the University subscribe to what they do not understand ' ; 
 but they ought to consider, that our Universities were found- 
 ed to bring up members for the Church of England, and we 
 must not supply our enemies with arms from our arsenal. 
 No, Sir, the meaning of subscribing is, not that they fully 
 understand all the articles, but that they will adhere to the 
 Church of England'. Now take it in this way, and suppose 
 that they should only subscribe their adherence to the Church 
 of England, there would be still the same difificulty ; for still 
 the young men would be subscribing to what they do not 
 understand. For if you should ask them, what do you mean 
 by the Church of England ? Do you know in what it differs 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 121. 
 
 ^ The petition was presented on Feb. 6 of this year. By a majority 
 of 217 to 71 leave was refused for it to be brought up. Pari. Hist. xvii. 
 245-297. Gibbon, in a letter dated Feb. 8, 1772 {Misc. Works, ii. 74), 
 congratulates Mr. Holroyd ' on the late victory of our dear mamma, 
 the Church of England. She had. last Thursday, 71 rebellious sons, 
 who pretended to set aside her will on account of insanity; but 217 
 worthy champions, headed by Lord North, Burke, and Charles Fox, 
 though they allowed the thirty-nine clauses of her testament were 
 absurd and unreasonable, supported the validity of it with infinite 
 humour. By the by, Charles Fox prepared himself for that holy war 
 by passing twenty-two hours in the pious exercise of hazard ; his de- 
 votion cost him only about ^500 per hour — in all, £1 1,000.' Sec Bos- 
 well's /Av^r/V/fj, Aug. 19, 1773. 
 
 * ' Lord George Germayne,' writes Horace Walpole, ' said that he 
 wondered the House did not take some steps on this subject with 
 regard to the Universities, where boys were made to subscribe the 
 Articles without reading them — a scandalous abuse.' Joitrnal of the 
 Reign of George III, i. 1 1. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 1 19. 
 
 from
 
 1 74 Fast Sermon of the 2,otk of January, [a.d. 1772. 
 
 from the Presbyterian Church? from the Romish Church? 
 from the Greek Church ? from the Coptick Church ? they 
 could not tell you. So, Sir, it comes to the same thing.' 
 BOSWELL. ' But, would it not be sufificient to subscribe the 
 Bible'?' Johnson. 'Why no, Sir; for all sects will sub- 
 scribe the Bible ; nay, the Mahometans will subscribe the 
 Bible; for the Mahometans acknowledge jESUS Christ, as 
 well as Moses, but maintain that GOD sent Mahomet as a 
 still greater prophet than either.' 
 
 I mentioned the motion which had been made in the 
 House of Commons, to abolish the fast of the 30th of Jan- 
 uary ^ Johnson. 'Why, Sir, I could have v/ished that it 
 had been a temporary act, perhaps, to have expired with the 
 century. I am against abolishing it ; because that would be 
 declaring it wrong to establish it ; but I should have no ob- 
 jection to make an act, continuing it for another century, 
 and then letting it expire.' 
 
 ' Burke had thus answered Boswell's proposal: — 'What is that 
 Scripture to which they are content to subscribe ? The Bible is a 
 vast collection of different treatises ; a man who holds the divine au- 
 thority of one may consider the other as merely human. Therefore, 
 to ascertain Scripture you must have one Article more, and you must 
 define what that Scripture is which you mean to teach.' Pari. Hist, 
 xvii. 284. 
 
 "^ Dr. Nowell {post, June ii, 1784) had this year preached the fast 
 sermon before the House of Commons on Jan. 30, the anniversary of 
 the execution of Charles I, and received the usual vote of thanks. 
 Pari. Hist. xvii. 245. On Feb. 25 the entry of the vote was, without a 
 division, ordered to be expunged. On the publication of the sermon 
 it had been seen that Nowell had asserted that George III was en- 
 dued with the same virtues as Charles I, and that the members of the. 
 House were the descendants of those who had opposed that King. lb. 
 p. 313, and Ann. Reg. xv. 79. On March 2, Mr. Montague moved for 
 leave to bring in a bill to abolish the fast, but it was refused by 125 to 
 97. Pari. Hist. xvii. 319. The fast was abolished in 1859 — thirteen 
 years within the century that Johnson was ready to allow it. ' It is 
 remarkable,' writes Horace Walpole, 'that George III had never from 
 the beginning of his reign gone to church on the 30th of January, 
 whereas George II always did.' Journal of the Reign of George III, 
 i.41. 
 
 He
 
 Aetat. 63.] The Royal Marriage Bill. 1 75 
 
 He disapproved of the Royal Marriage Bill ; ' Because, 
 (said he,) I would not have the people think that the validity 
 of marriage depends on the will of man, or that the right of 
 a King depends on the will of man. I should not have been 
 against making the marriage of any of the royal family without 
 the approbation of King and Parliament, highly criminar.' 
 
 In the morning we had talked of old families, and the 
 respect due to them. JOHNSON. ' Sir, you have a right to 
 that kind of respect, and are arguing for yourself. I am for 
 supporting the principle, and am disinterested in doing it, as 
 I have no such right ''.' BOSWELL. ' Why, Sir, it is one more 
 incitement to a man to do well.' JOHNSON. ' Yes, Sir, and 
 it is a matter of opinion, very necessary to keep society to- 
 gether. What is it but opinion, by which we have a respect 
 for authority, that prevents us, who are the rabble, from 
 
 ' This passage puzzled Mr. Croker and Mr. Lockhart. The follow- 
 ing extract from the GeJit. Mag. for Feb. 1772, p. 92, throws light on 
 Johnson's meaning : — ' This, say the opposers of the Bill, is putting it 
 in the King's power to change the order of succession, as he may for 
 ever prevent, if he is so minded, the elder branches of the family from 
 marrying, and therefore may establish the succession in the younger. 
 Be this as it may, is it not, in fact, converting the holy institution of 
 marriage into a mere state contract?' See also the Protest of four- 
 teen of the peers in Pari. Hist. xvii. 391, and post, April 1 5, 1773. Hor- 
 ace Walpole ends his account of the Marriage Bill by saying : — ' Thus 
 within three weeks were the Thirty-nine Articles affirmed and the 
 New Testament deserted.' Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 37. 
 How carelessly this Act was drawn was shown by Lord Eldon, when 
 Attorney-General, in the case of the marriage of the Duke of Sussex 
 to Lady Augusta Murray. ' Lord Thurlow said to me angrily at the 
 Privy Council, " Sir, why have you not prosecuted under the Act of 
 Parliament all the parties concerned in this abominable marriage .^" 
 To which I answered, " That it was a very difficult business to prose- 
 cute — that the Act had been drawn by Lord Mansfield and Mr.Attor- 
 7iey-GeHeral Thurloiu, and Mr. Solicitor-General Wcddcrburne, and 
 unluckily they had made all parties present at the marriage guilty of 
 felony ; and as nobody could prove the marriage except a person who 
 had been present at it, there could be no prosecution, because nobody 
 present could be compelled to be a witness." This put an end to the 
 matter.' Twiss's Eldon, i. 234. 
 
 ' SQCposi, May 9, 1773, and May 13, 1778. 
 
 rising
 
 176 Respect for the old families. [a. d. 1772. 
 
 rising up and pulling down you who are gentlemen from your 
 places, and saying "We will be gentlemen in our turn"? 
 Now, Sir, that respect for authority is much more easily 
 granted to a man whose father has had it, than to an up- 
 start ', and so Society is more easily supported.' BOSWELL. 
 ' Perhaps, Sir, it might be done by the respect belonging to 
 office, as among the Romans, where the dress, the toga, in- 
 spired reverence.' JOHNSON. ' Why, we know very little 
 about the Romans. But, surely, it is much easier to respect 
 a man who has always had respect, than to respect a man 
 who we know was last year no better than ourselves, and 
 will be no better next year. In republicks there is not a 
 respect for authority, but a fear of power.' BoswELL. 'At 
 present, Sir, I think riches seem to gain most respect.' JOHN- 
 SON. * No, Sir, riches do not gain hearty respect ; they only 
 procure external attention. A very rich man, from low be- 
 ginnings, may buy his election in a borough ; but, ccsteris 
 paribus, a man of family will be preferred. People will pre- 
 fer a man for whose father their fathers have voted, though 
 they should get no more money, or even less. That shows 
 that the respect for family is not merely fanciful, but has an 
 actual operation. If gentlemen of family would allow the 
 rich upstarts to spend their money profusely, which they are 
 ready enough to do, and not vie with them in expence, the 
 upstarts would soon be at an end, and the gentlemen would 
 remain : but if the gentlemen will vie in expence with the 
 upstarts, which is very foolish, they must be ruined.' 
 
 I gave him an account of the excellent mimickry of a friend 
 of mine in Scotland^ ; observing, at the same time, that some 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 25, 1773, where Johnson, discussing 
 the same question, says : — ' There is generally a scotmdrelism about a 
 low man.' 
 
 ^ Mackintosh told Mr. Croker that this friend was Mr. Cullen, after- 
 wards a judge by the name of Lord Cullen. In Boswelliana (pp. 
 250-2), Boswell mentions him thrice, and always as ' Cullen the mim- 
 ick.' His manner, he says, was wretched, and his physiognomy worse 
 than Wilkes's. Dr. A. Carlyle {Atdo. p. 268) says that ' Cullen pos- 
 sessed the talent of mimicry beyond all mankind , for his was not 
 
 people
 
 Aetat. 63.] Mimickry. 177 
 
 people thought it a very mean thing. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, 
 it is making a very mean use of a man's powers. But to be 
 a good mimick, requires great powers ; great acuteness of 
 observation, great retention of what is observed, and great 
 pliancy of organs, to represent what is observed. I remem- 
 ber a lady of quality in this town. Lady , who 
 
 was a wonderful mimick, and used to make me laugh immod- 
 erately. I have heard she is now gone mad.' Boswell. 
 ' It is amazing how a mimick can not only give you the gest- 
 ures and voice of a person whom he represents ; but even 
 what a person would say on any particular subject.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Why, Sir, you are to consider that the manner and 
 some particular phrases of a person do much to impress you 
 with an idea of him, and you are not sure that he would say 
 what the mimick says in his character.' Boswell. ' I don't 
 think Foote' a good mimick. Sir.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; his 
 imitations are not like. He gives you something different 
 from himself, but not the character which he means to as- 
 sume. He goes out of himself, without going into other 
 people. He cannot take off any person unless he is strongly 
 marked, such as George Faulkner^. He is like a painter, 
 who can draw the portrait of a man who has a wen upon his 
 face, and who, therefore, is easily known. If a man hops 
 upon one leg, Foote can hop upon one leg^ But he has not 
 
 merely an exact imitation of voice and manner of speaking, but a per- 
 fect exhibition of every man's manner of thinking on every subject.' 
 Carlyle mentions two striking instances of this. 
 
 ' S^^ post. May 15, 1776. 
 
 '■^ ' The prince of Dublin printers,' as Swift called him. Swift's 
 Works (1803), xviii. 288. He was taken off by Foote under the name 
 of Peter Paragraph, in The Orators, the piece in which he had meant 
 to take ofl Johnson {ante, ii. 109). ' Faulkner consoled himself (pend- 
 ing his prosecution of the libeller) by printing the libel, and selling it 
 most extensively.' Forster's Goldsmith, i. 287. See Boswell's Hebri- 
 des, Aug. 29. 
 
 ' Faulkner had lost one of his legs. ' When Foote had his accident 
 {ante, ii. 109), " Now I shall take off old Faulkner indeed to the life," 
 was the first remark he made when what he had to suffer was an- 
 nounced to him.' Forster's Essays, ii. 400. 
 
 II.— 12 that
 
 lyS Revision of the Dictionary. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 that nice discrimination which your friend seems to possess. 
 Foote is, however, very entertaining, with a kind of conver- 
 sation between wit and buffoonery'.' 
 
 On Monday, March 23, I found him busy, preparing a 
 fourth edition of his foHo Dictionary. Mr. Peyton, one of 
 his original amanuenses, was writing for him. I put him in 
 mind of a meaning of the word side, which he had omitted, 
 viz. relationship ; as father's side, mother's side. He inserted 
 it. I asked him if Juiiniliating was a good word. He said, 
 he had seen it frequently used, but he did not know it to be 
 legitimate English. He would not admit civilisation, but 
 only civility"^. With great deference to him, I thought civ- 
 ilization, from to civilize better in the sense opposed to bar- 
 barity, than civility ; as it is better to have a distinct word 
 for each sense, than one word with two senses, which civility 
 is, in his way of using it. 
 
 He seemed also to be intent on some sort of chymical 
 operation. I was entertained by observing how he con- 
 trived to send Mr. Peyton on an errand, without seeming to 
 degrade him. * Mr. Peyton, — Mr. Peyton, will you be so good 
 as to take a walk to Temple-Bar ? You will there see a chym- 
 ist's shop ; at which you will be pleased to buy for me an 
 
 ' A writer in the Monthly Rein'ew, Ixxvi. 374 (no doubt Murphy), 
 says : — ' A large number of friends such as Johnson, Mr. Burke, and 
 Mr. Murphy dined at Garrick's at Christmas, 1760. Foote was then 
 in Dubhn. It was said at table that he had been horsewhipped by an 
 apothecary for taking him off upon the stage. " But I 'Cvonder," said 
 Garrick, " that any man would show so much resentment to Foote ; 
 nobody ever thought it worth his while to quarrel with him in Lon- 
 don." " And I am glad," said Johnson, " to find that the man is rising 
 in the world." The anecdote was afterwards told to Foote, who in 
 return gave out that he would in a short time produce the Caliban of 
 literature on the stage. Being informed of this design, Johnson sent 
 word to Foote, that, the theatre being intended for the reformation of 
 vice, he would go from the boxes on the stage, and correct him before 
 the audience. Foote abandoned the design. No ill-will ensued.' 
 
 ^ See pos/, May 15, 1776, where Johnson says: — 'I turned Boswell 
 loose at Lichfield, my native city, that he might see for once real 
 civility.' 
 
 ounce
 
 Aetat. 63.] One original language. 1 79 
 
 ounce of oil of vitriol ; not spirit of vitriol, but oil of vitriol. 
 It will cost three half-pence.' Peyton immediately went, 
 and returned with it, and told him it cost but a penny. 
 
 I then reminded him of the schoolmaster's cause, and pro- 
 posed to read to him the printed papers concerning it. ' No, 
 Sir, (said he,) I can read quicker than I can hear.' So he 
 read them to himself. 
 
 After he had read for some time, we were interrupted by 
 the entrance of Mr. Kristrom, a Swede, who was tutor to 
 some young gentlemen in the city. He told me, that there 
 was a very good History of Sweden, by Daline. Having at 
 that time an intention of w-riting the history of that coun- 
 try' ', I asked Dr. Johnson whether one might write a history 
 of Sweden, without going thither. * Yes, Sir, (said he,) one 
 for common use.' 
 
 We talked of languages. Johnson observed, that Leibnitz 
 had made some progress in a work, tracing all languages up 
 to the Hebrew. ' Why, Sir, (said he,) you would not imagine 
 that the Frenchjb^^r, day, is derived from the Latin dies,2ind 
 yet nothing is more certain ; and the intermediate steps are 
 very clear. From dies, comes diurnus. Dm is, by inaccurate 
 ears, or inaccurate pronunciation, easily confounded w'lih. gin; 
 then the Italians form a substantive of the ablative of an ad- 
 jective, and thtncc giurtto, or, as they make \t,gioriw; which 
 is readily contracted into gioiir, or Jour.'' He observed, that 
 the Bohemian language was true Sclavonick. The Swede 
 said, it had some similarity with the German. JOHNSON. 
 ' Why, Sir, to be sure, such parts of Sclavonia as confine with 
 Germany, will borrow German words ; and such parts as con- 
 fine with Tartary will borrow Tartar words.* 
 
 He said, he never had it properly ascertained that the 
 Scotch Highlanders and the Irish understood each other', 
 I told him that my cousin Colonel Graham, of the Royal 
 Highlanders, whom I met at Droghcda", told me they did. 
 
 ' In my list of Boswell's projected works {ante, i. 261, note i) I have 
 omitted this. ^ Sec post, April 7, 1775. 
 
 ^ lioswell visited Ireland in the summer of 1769. Prior's Goldsmith, 
 i. 450. 
 
 Johnson.
 
 i8o The schoolmaster s catise. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 Johnson. ' Sir, if the Highlanders understood Irish, why 
 translate the New Testament into Erse, as was done lately 
 at Edinburgh, when there is an Irish translation?' BOS- 
 WELL. * Although the Erse and Irish are both dialects of 
 the same language, there may be a good deal of diversity 
 between them, as between the different dialects in Italy.' — 
 The Swede went away, and Mr. Johnson continued his read- 
 ing of the papers. I said, ' I am afraid. Sir, it is troublesome.' 
 ' Why, Sir, (said he,) I do not take much delight in it ; but 
 I'll go through it.' 
 
 We went to the Mitre, and dined in the room where he 
 and I first supped together. He gave me great hopes of my 
 cause. * Sir, (said he,) the government of a schoolmaster is 
 somewhat of the nature of military government ; that is to 
 say, it must be arbitrary, it must be exercised by the will of 
 one man, according to particular circumstances. You must 
 shew some learning upon this occasion. You must shew, 
 that a schoolmaster has a prescriptive right to beat ; and 
 that an action of assault and battery cannot be admitted 
 against him, unless there is some great excess, some barbar- 
 ity. This man has maimed none of his boys. They are all 
 left with the full exercise of their corporeal faculties. In 
 our schools in England, many boys have been maimed ; yet 
 I never heard of an action against a schoolmaster on that 
 account. Puffendorf, I think, maintains the right of a school- 
 master to beat his scholars '.' 
 
 On Saturday, March 27, I introduced to him Sir Alexan- 
 der Macdonald ^ with whom he had expressed a wish to be 
 acquainted. He received him very courteously. 
 
 ' Puflfendorf states that ' tutors and schoolmasters have a right to 
 the moderate use of gentle discipline over their pupils' — viii. 3-10; 
 adding, rather superfluously, Grotius's caveat, that ' it shall not extend 
 to a power of death.' Croker. 
 
 "^ "The brother of Sir J. Macdonald, mentioned ante, i. 520. Johnson 
 visited him in the Isle of Skye. ' He had been very well pleased with 
 him in London, but he was dissatisfied at hearing heavy complaints of 
 rents racked, and the people driven to emigration.' BosweH's/Zt'^^/-/- 
 des, Sept. 2, 1773. He reproached him also with meanness as a host. 
 
 Sir
 
 Aetat. G3.] The Lord Cha)icellors. i8i 
 
 Sir Alexander observed, that the Chancellors in England 
 are chosen from views much inferiour to the office, being 
 chosen from temporary political views. JOHNSON. ' Why, 
 Sir, in such a government as ours, no man is appointed to an 
 office because he is the fittest for it, nor hardly in any other 
 government ; because there are so many connexions and de- 
 pendencies to be studied '. A despotick prince may choose 
 a man to an office, merely because he is the fittest for it. 
 The King of Prussia may do it.' SiR A. ' I think, Sir, al- 
 most all great lawyers, such at least as have written upon 
 law, have known only law, and nothing else.' JOHNSON, 
 'Why no. Sir; Judge Hale was a great lawyer, and wrote 
 upon law ; and yet he knew a great many other things, and 
 has written upon other things. Selden too.' SiR A. ' Very 
 true. Sir; and Lord Bacon. But was not Lord Coke a mere 
 lawyer?' JOHNSON. 'Why, I am afraid he was; but he 
 would have taken it very ill if you had told him so. He 
 would have prosecuted you for scandal.' BOSWELL. ' Lord 
 Mansfield is not a mere lawyer.' JOHNSON. ' No, Sir. I 
 never was in Lord Mansfield's company ; but Lord Mans- 
 field was distinguished at the University. Lord Mansfield, 
 when he first came to town, " drank champagne with the 
 wits," as Prior says^ He was the friend of Pope\' Sn^ A. 
 ' Barristers, I believe, are not so abusive now as they were 
 formerly. I fancy they had less law long ago, and so were 
 obliged to take to abuse, to fill up the time. Now they 
 have such a number of precedents, they have no occasion 
 
 ' Lord Campbell {Lives of the C/iaticcHors, v. 449) points out that 
 this conversation followed close on the appointment of 'the incompe- 
 tent Bathurst ' as Chancellor. ' Such a conversation,' he adds, ' would 
 not have occurred during the chancellorship of Lord Hardwicke or 
 Lord Somcrs.' 
 
 " ' Hut if at first he minds his hits. 
 
 And drinks champagne among the wits,' &c. 
 
 Prior's Chameleon, 1. 39. 
 ^ ' Plain truth, dc'ar Murray, needs no flowers of speech.' Pope 
 thus addresses him in Epistle vi. Book i. of his Imitations of Horace, 
 which he dedicated to him. 
 
 for
 
 1 82 The Scotch accent. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 for abuse.' JoilNSON. ' Nay, Sir, they had more law long 
 ago than they have now. As to precedents, to be sure they 
 will increase in course of time ; but the more precedents 
 there are, the less occasion is there for law ; that is to say, 
 the less occasion is there for investigating principles.' SiR 
 A. ' I have been correcting several Scotch accents ' in my 
 friend Boswell. I doubt, Sir, if any Scotchman ever attains 
 to a perfect English pronunciation.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, 
 few of them do, because they do not persevere after acquir- 
 ing a certain degree of it. But, Sir, there can be no doubt 
 that they may attain to a perfect English pronunciation, if 
 they will. We find how near they come to it ; and certainly, 
 a man who conquers nineteen parts of the Scottish accent, 
 may conquer the twentieth. But, Sir, when a man has got 
 the better of nine tenths he grows weary, he relaxes his dili- 
 gence, he finds he has corrected his accent so far as not to 
 be disagreeable, and he no longer desires his friends to tell 
 him when he is wrong ; nor does he choose to be told. Sir, 
 when people watch me narrowly, and I do not watch myself, 
 they will find me out to be of a particular county ^ In the 
 same manner, Dunning^ may be found out to be a Devon- 
 shire man. So most Scotchmen may be found out. But, 
 Sir, little aberrations are of no disadvantage. I never catched 
 Mallet in a Scotch accent^; and yet Mallet, I suppose, was 
 past five-and-twenty before he came to London.' 
 
 Upon another occasion I talked to him on this subject, 
 
 ' See ante, i. 447. 
 
 ^ See pos/, March 23, 1776. 
 
 ^ Afterwards Lord Ashburton. Described by Johnson {^osf, July 
 22, 1777), as ' Mr. Dunning, the great lawyer.' 
 
 * ' Having cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation, so as 
 to be no longer distinguished as a Scot, he seems inclined to disen- 
 cumber himself from all adherences of his original, and took upon 
 him to change his name from Scotch Mai loch to English Mallet, with- 
 out any imaginable reason of preference which the eye or ear can 
 discover. What other proofs he gave of disrespect to his native 
 country I know not, but it was remarked of him that he was the only 
 Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend.' Johnson's Works, viii. 
 464. See ante, i. 31 1, and post, April 28, 1783. 
 
 having
 
 Aetat. 63.] The Scotch accent. 1 8 
 
 a 
 
 having myself taken some pains to improve my pronuncia- 
 tion, by the aid of the late Mr. Love \ of Drury-lane theatre, 
 when he was a player at Edinburgh, and also of old ]\Ir. 
 Sheridan. Johnson said to me, ' Sir, your pronunciation is 
 not offensive.' With this concession I was pretty well sat- 
 isfied ; and let me give my countr}micn of North-Britain an 
 advice not to aim at absolute perfection in this respect ; not 
 to speak HigJi English, as we are apt to call what is far re- 
 moved from the Scotch, but which is by no xne.dir\s good Eng- 
 lish, and makes, 'the fools who use it",' truly ridiculous \ 
 Good English is plain, easy, and smooth in the mouth of an 
 unaffected English Gentleman. A studied and factitious 
 pronunciation, which requires perpetual attention and im- 
 poses perpetual constraint, is exceedingly disgusting. A small 
 intermixture of provincial peculiarities may, perhaps, have 
 an agreeable effect, as the notes of different birds concur in 
 the harmony of the grove, and please more than if they were 
 all exactly alike. I could name some gentlemen of Ireland, 
 to whom a slight proportion of the accent and recitative of 
 that country is an advantage. The same observation will 
 apply to the gentlemen of Scotland. I do not mean that we 
 
 ' Mr. Love was, so far as is known, the first who advised Boswell to 
 keep a journal. When Boswell was but eighteen, writing of a journe}' 
 he had taken, he says : — ' I kept an exact journal, at the particular de- 
 sire of my friend, Mr. Love, and sent it to him in sheets every post.' 
 Letters of Boswetl, p. 8. 
 
 ' ' That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool 
 that uses it.' Hamlet, iii. 2. 
 
 ' Jeffrey wrote from Oxford, where he spent nine months in 1791-2 : 
 — ' The only part of a Scotchman I mean to abandon is the language, 
 and language is all I expect to learn in England.' (Cockburn'syif^r^, 
 i. 46.) His biographer says : — ' He certainly succeeded in the aban- 
 donment of his habitual Scotch. The change was so sudden and so 
 complete, that it excited the surprise of his friends, and furnished 
 others with ridicule for many years. . . . The result, on the whole, was 
 exactly as described by Lord Holland, who said that though Jeffrey 
 "had lost the broad Scotch at Oxford, he had only gained the narrow 
 English." ' Cockburn, in forgetfulncss of Mallet's case, says that 'the 
 acquisition of a pure English accent by a full-grown Scotchman is 
 fortunately impossible.' 
 
 should
 
 1 84 The pronunciation of English, [a.d. 1772. 
 
 should speak as broad as a certain prosperous member of 
 Parliament from that country ' ; though it has been well ob- 
 served, that ' it has been of no small use to him ; as it rouses 
 the attention of the House by its uncommonness ; and is 
 equal to tropes and figures in a good English speaker.' I 
 would give as an instance of what I mean to recommend to 
 my countrymen, the pronunciation of the late Sir Gilbert 
 Elliot"; and may I presume to add that of the present Earl of 
 Marchmont', who told me, with great good humour, that the 
 master of a shop in London, where he was not known, said to 
 him, ' I suppose, Sir, you are an American.' * Why so, Sir?' 
 (said his Lordship.) ' Because, Sir, (replied the shopkeeper,) 
 you speak neither English nor Scotch, but something differ- 
 ent from both, which I conclude is the language of America.' 
 BOSWELL. ' It may be of use, Sir, to have a Dictionary 
 to ascertain the pronunciation.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, my 
 Dictionary shows you the accents of words, if you can but 
 remember them.' BosWELL. ' But, Sir, we want marks to 
 ascertain the pronunciation of the vowels. Sheridan, I be- 
 lieve, has finished such a work.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, con- 
 sider how much easier it is to learn a language by the ear, 
 than by any marks. Sheridan's Dictionary may do very well ; 
 but you cannot always carry it about with you : and, when 
 
 ' Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville. See post, under 
 Nov. 29, 1777. Boswell wrote to Temple on May 22, 1775 : — ' Harry 
 Dundas is going to be made King's Advocate — Lord Advocate at 
 thirty-three! I cannot help being angry and somewhat fretful at 
 this ; he has, to be sure, strong parts, but he is a coarse, unlettered, 
 unfanciful dog.' Letters of Boswell, ^^.k^^. Horace Walpole describes 
 him as 'the rankest of all Scotchmen, and odious for that bloody 
 speech that had fixed on him the nick-name of Starvation! Journal 
 of the Reign of George HI, ii. 479. On p. 637 he adds : — ' The happily 
 coined word " starvation " delivered a whole continent from the North- 
 ern harpies that meant to devour it.' The speech in which Dundas 
 introduced starvation was made in 1775. Walpole's Letters, viii. 30. 
 See Pari. Hist. xvnx. 387. His character is drawn with great force by 
 Cockburn. Life of Jeffrey, i. JJ. 
 
 ' The correspondent of Hume. See J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 320. 
 
 ^ See post. May 12, 177S. 
 
 you
 
 Aetat. 63.] The pronunciation of English. 185 
 
 you want the word, you have not the Dictionary. It is like 
 a man who has a sword that will not draw. It is an admi- 
 rable sword, to be sure : but while your enemy is cutting 
 your throat, you are unable to use it. Besides, Sir, what 
 entitles Sheridan to fix the pronunciation of English? He 
 has, in the first place, the disadvantage of being an Irish- 
 man : and if he says he will fix it after the example of the 
 best company, why they differ among themselves. I remem- 
 ber an instance : when I published the Plan for my Diction- 
 ar}'. Lord Chesterfield told me that the w^ord great should 
 be pronounced so as to rhyme to state ; and Sir William 
 Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to 
 rhyme to scat, and that none but an Irishman would pro- 
 nounce it grait\ Now here were two men of the highest 
 rank, the one, the best speaker in the House of Lords, the 
 other, the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing 
 entirely.' 
 
 I again visited him at night. Finding him in a very good 
 humour, I ventured to lead him to the subject of our situa- 
 tion in a future state, having much curiosity to know his no- 
 tions on that point. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, the happiness of 
 
 ' In the Plan ( Works, v. 9), Johnson noticed the difference of the 
 pronunciation of great. ' Some words have two sounds which may 
 be equally admitted as being equally defensible by authority. Thus 
 great is differently used : — 
 
 " For Swift and him despised the farce of state, 
 The sober follies of the wise and great." — Pope. 
 
 "As if misfortune made the throne her seat, 
 And none could be unhappy but the great." ' — RowE. 
 In tlie Preface to the Dictionary {Works, v. 25), Johnson says that 
 *the vowels are capriciously pronounced, and differently modified 
 by accident or affectation, not only in every province, but in every 
 mouth.' Swift gives both rhymes within ten lines : — 
 ' My lord and he are grown so great — 
 Always together, tete-a-tete.' 
 ****** 
 ' You, Mr. Dean, frequent the great. 
 Inform us, will the emperor treat?' 
 
 Swift's Works (1803), x. no. 
 
 an
 
 1 86 The happiness of a spirit. [a. d. 1773. 
 
 an unembodied spirit will consist in a consciousness of the 
 favour of GOD, in the contemplation of truth, and in the pos- 
 session of felicitating ideas.' BOSWELL. ' But, Sir, is there 
 any harm in our forming to ourselves conjectures as to the 
 particulars of our happiness, though the scripture has said 
 but very little on the subject ? " We know not what we shall 
 be." ' Johnson. ' Sir, there is no harm. What philosophy 
 suggests to us on this topick is probable : what scripture 
 tells us is certain. Dr. Henry More ' has carried it as far as 
 philosophy can. You may buy both his theological and 
 philosophical works in two volumes folio, for about eight 
 shillings.' BosWELL. ' One of the most pleasing thoughts 
 is, that we shall see our friends again.' Johnson. ' Yes, Sir; 
 but you must consider, that when we are become purely ra- 
 tional, many of our friendships will be cut off. Many friend- 
 ships are formed by a community of sensual pleasures : all 
 these will be cut off. We form many friendships with bad 
 men, because they have agreeable qualities, and they can be 
 useful to us; but, after death, they can no longer be of use to 
 us. We form many friendships by mistake, imagining people 
 to be different from what they really are. After death, we 
 shall see every one in a true light. Then, Sir, they talk of 
 our meeting our relations : but then all relationship is dis- 
 solved ; and we shall have no regard for one person more 
 than another, but for their real value. However, we shall 
 either have the satisfaction of meeting our friends, or be sat- 
 isfied without meeting them \' Boswell. ' Yet, Sir, we see 
 in scripture, that Dives still retained an anxious concern 
 about his brethren.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, we must either 
 suppose that passage to be metaphorical, or hold with many 
 divines, and all the Purgatorians, that departed souls do not 
 all at once arrive at the utmost perfection of which they are 
 
 ' ' Dr. Henry More, of Cambridge, Johnson did not much affect ; he 
 was a Platonist, and, in Johnson's opinion, a visionary. He would 
 frequently cite from him, and laugh at, a passage to this effect : — " At 
 the consummation of all things, it shall come to pass that eternity 
 shall shake hands with opacity." ' Hawkins's _/i3/;;w(?«, p. 543. 
 
 =■ SQtpost, April 17, 1778, and May 19, 1784. 
 
 capable.'
 
 Aetat. C3.] Mrs. VeaV s ghost. 1S7 
 
 capable.' BOSWELL. ' I think, Sir, that is a very "rational 
 supposition.* JOHNSON. 'Why, yes. Sir; but we do not 
 know it is a true one. There is no harm in believing it : but 
 you must not compel others to make it an article of faith ; 
 for it is not revealed.' BoswELL. ' Do you think, Sir, it is 
 wrong in a man who holds the doctrine of purgatory, to pray 
 for the souls of his deceased friends?' Johnson. ' Why, no, 
 Sir'.' BoswELL. 'I have been told, that in the Liturgy of 
 the Episcopal Church of Scotland, there was a form of prayer 
 for the dead.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, it is not in the liturgy which 
 Laud framed for the Episcopal Church of Scotland : if there 
 is a liturgy older than that, I should be glad to see it.' BOS- 
 WELL. * As to our employment in a future state, the sacred 
 writings say little. The Revelation, however, of St. John 
 gives us many ideas, and particularly mentions musick^' 
 Johnson. ' Why, Sir, ideas must be given you by means of 
 something which you know': and as to musick there are 
 some philosophers and divines who have maintained that we 
 shall not be spiritualized to such a degree, but that some- 
 thing of matter, very much refined, will remain. In that case, 
 musick may make a part of our future felicity.' 
 
 BosWELL. ' I do not know whether there are any well- 
 attested stories of the appearance of ghosts. You know 
 there is a famous story of the appearance of Mrs. Veal, pre- 
 fixed to Drclincourt on Death.' JOHNSON. ' I believe. Sir, 
 that is given up. I believe the woman declared upon her 
 death-bed that it was a lie'.' BoswELL. 'This objection 
 
 ' See attte, i. 278, and ii. 120. 
 
 "^ Reziclattons, xiv. 2. 
 
 ' Johnson, in The Ravibler, No. 78, describes man's death as 'a 
 change not only of the place, but the manner of his being; an en- 
 trance into a state not simply which he knows not, but which per- 
 haps he has not faculties to know.' 
 
 * This fiction is known to have been invented by Daniel Defoe, and 
 was added to Drelincourt's book, to make it sell. The first edition 
 had it not. Malonk. ' More than fifty editions have not exhausted 
 its popularity. The hundreds of thousands who have bought the 
 sifly treatise of Drelincourt have borne unconscious testimony to the 
 genius of De Foe.' Forster's Essays, ii. 70. 
 
 is
 
 1 88 Elwal the heretick. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 is made against the truth of ghosts appearing : that if they 
 are in a state of happiness, it would be a punishment to 
 them to return to this world ; and if they are in a state 
 of misery, it would be giving them a respite.' JOHNSON. 
 
 * Why, Sir, as the happiness or misery of embodied spirits 
 does not depend upon place, but is intellectual, we cannot 
 say that they are less happy or less miserable by appearing 
 upon earth.' 
 
 We went down between twelve and one to Mrs. Williams's 
 room, and drank tea. I mentioned that we were to have 
 the remains of Mr. Gray, in prose and verse, published by 
 Mr. Mason '. JOHNSON. ' I think we have had enough of 
 Gray. I see they have published a splendid edition of 
 Akenside's works. One bad ode may be suffered ; but a 
 number of them together makes one sick^' BOSWELL. 
 
 * Akenside's distinguished poem is his Pleasures of Imagi- 
 nation : but for my part, I never could admire it so much 
 as most people do.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, I could not read it 
 through.' BoswELL. ' I have read it through ; but I did 
 not find any great power in it.' 
 
 I mentioned Elwal, the heretick, whose trial Sir John 
 Pringle" had given me to read. JOHNSON. 'Sir, Mr. Elwal 
 was, I think, an ironmonger at Wolverhampton ; and he 
 had a mind to make himself famous, by being the founder 
 of a new sect, which he wished much should be called 
 Ehvallians, He held, that every thing in the Old Testa- 
 ment that was not typical, was to be of perpetual observ- 
 ance ; and so he wore a ribband in the plaits of his coat, 
 and he also wore a beard. I remember I had the honour 
 of dining in company with Mr. Elwal. There was one 
 
 ' See ante, i. 34. 
 
 ' In his Life of Akenside ( Works, viii. 475) he says : — ' Of Akenside's 
 Odes nothing favourable can be said. ... To examine such composi- 
 tions singly cannot be required ; they have doubtless brighter and 
 darker parts ; but when they are once found to be generally dull, all 
 further labour may be spared ; for to what use can the work be criti- 
 cised that will not be read ?' Se.e post, April 10, 1776. 
 
 ^ See/>ost, just before May 15, 1776. 
 
 Barter,
 
 Aetat. 63.] Elwal the hevetick. 1S9 
 
 Barter, a miller, who wrote against him ; and you had the 
 controversy between Mr. Elwal and Mr. Barter. To 
 tr}' to make himself distinguished, he wrote a letter to 
 King George the Second, challenging him to dispute with 
 him, in which he said, ** George, if you be afraid to come 
 by yourself, to dispute with a poor old man, you may 
 bring a thousand of your black -^VidsAs with you; and if 
 you should still be afraid, you may bring a thousand of 
 your nv/- guards." 'The letter had something of the im- 
 pudence of Junius to our present King. But the men of 
 Wolverhampton were not so inflammable as the Common- 
 Council of London'; so Mr. Elwal failed in his scheme of 
 making himself a man of great consequence'.' 
 
 On Tuesday, March 31, he and I dined at General Paoli's. 
 
 ' St&posi, Sept. 23, 1777. 
 
 ^ The account of his trial is entitled : — ' T/ie Grand Question in Re- 
 ligion Considered. WJicther we shall obey God or Man ; Christ or the 
 Pope ; the Prophets and Apostles, or Prelates and Priests. Humbly 
 offered to the King atid Parliament of Great Britain. By E. Elwall. 
 With an account of the Author s Tryal or Prosectition at Stafford As- 
 sizes before Jtidge Detiton. London.' No date. Elwall seems to have 
 been a Unitarian Quaker. He was prosecuted for publishing a book 
 against the doctrines of the Trinity, but was discharged, being, he 
 writes, treated by the Judge with great humanity. In his pamphlet 
 he says (p. 49) : — ' You see what I have already done in my former 
 book. I have challenged the greatest potentates on earth, yea, even 
 the King of Great Britain, whose true and faithful subject I am in all 
 temporal things, and whom I love and honour ; also his noble and 
 valiant friend, John Argyle, and his great friends Robert Walpole, 
 Charles Wager, and Arthur Onslow ; all these can speak well, and 
 who is like them ; and yet, behold, none of all these cared to engage 
 with their friend Elwall.' Sec post. May 7, 1773. Dr. Priestley had re- 
 ceived an account of the trial from a gentleman who was present, who 
 described Elwall as 'a tall man, with white hair, a large beard and 
 flowing garments, who struck everybody with respect. He spoke 
 about an hour with great gravity, fluency, and presence of mind.' The 
 trial took place, he said, in 1726. ' It is impossible,* adds Priestley 
 ( IVorlcs, ed. 1831, ii.417), ' for an unprejudiced person to read Elwall's 
 account of his trial, without feeling the greatest veneration for the 
 writer.' In truth, Elwall spoke with all the simple power of the best 
 of the early Quakers. 
 
 A question
 
 190 Is marriage natural to man? [a.d. 1773. 
 
 A question was started, whether the state of marriage was 
 natural to man. JOHNSON. ' Sir, it is so far from being 
 natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, 
 that we find all the motives which they have for remaining 
 in that connection, and the restraints which civilized society 
 imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufificient to keep 
 them together.' The General said, that in a state of nature 
 a man and woman uniting together, would form a strong 
 and constant affection, by the mutual pleasure each would 
 receive ; and that the same causes of dissention would not 
 arise between them, as occur between husband and wife in 
 a civilized state. JOHNSON. 'Sir, they would have dissen- 
 tions enough, though of another kind. One would choose to 
 go a hunting in this wood, the other in that ; one would 
 choose to go a fishing in this lake, the other in that ; or, 
 perhaps, one would choose to go a hunting, when the other 
 would choose to go a fishing; and so they would part. Be- 
 sides, Sir, a savage man and a savage woman meet by 
 chance; and when the man sees another woman that pleases 
 him better, he will leave the first.' 
 
 We then fell into a disquisition whether there is any beauty 
 independent of utility. The General maintained there was 
 not. Dr. Johnson maintained that there was; and he in- 
 stanced a coffee-cup which he held in his hand, the paint- 
 ing of which was of no real use, as the cup would hold the 
 coffee equally well if plain ; yet the painting was beautiful. 
 
 We talked of the strange custom of swearing in conversa- 
 tion '. The General said, that all barbarous nations swore 
 from a certain violence of temper, that could not be con- 
 fined to earth, but was always reaching at the powers above. 
 He said, too, that there was greater variety of swearing, 
 in proportion as there was a greater variety of religious 
 ceremonies. 
 
 ' Boswell, in the Hypochondriack {London Mag. 1783, p. 290), writing 
 on swearing, says : — ' I have the comfort to think that my practice has 
 been blameless in this respect.' He continues (p. 293) : — ' To do the 
 present age justice, there is much less swearing among genteel people 
 than in the last age.' 
 
 Dr. Johnson
 
 Aetat. 63.] GoldsniitJi s LiFE OF Parnell. 191 
 
 Dr. Johnson went home with me to my lodgings in Con- 
 duit-street and drank tea, previous to our going to the 
 Pantheon, which neither of us had seen before. 
 
 He said, ' Goldsmith's Life of ParnclP is poor; not that 
 it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials ; for 
 nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have 
 eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.' 
 
 I said, that if it was not troublesome and presuming too 
 much, I would request him to tell me all the little circum- 
 stances of his life ; what schools he attended, when he came 
 to Oxford, when he came to London, &c., &c. He did not 
 disapprove of my curiosity as to these particulars ; but said, 
 'They'll come out by degrees as we talk together".' 
 
 He censured Ruffhead's Life of Pope ^ ; and said, ' he knew 
 nothing of Pope, and nothing of poetry.' He praised Dr. 
 Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope* ; but said, he supposed we 
 should have no more of it, as the authour had not been able 
 to persuade the world to think of Pope as he did. BOS- 
 WELL. * Why, Sir, should that prevent him from continuing 
 his work ? He is an ingenious Counsel, who has made the 
 most of his cause : he is not obliged to gain it.' JOHNSON. 
 * But, Sir, there is a difference when the cause is of a man's 
 own makincf.' 
 
 'fc>* 
 
 ' ' The Life of Dr. Parncll is a task which I should very wilHngly 
 dedine, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such 
 variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always 
 seemed to do best that which he was doing. . . . What such an author 
 has told, who would tell again ? I have made an abstract from his- 
 larger narrative, and have this gratification from my attempt, that 
 it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of 
 Goldsmith. To yap yfpae ioTi Oavovron-.' Johnson's JVor/cs, vii. 398. 
 
 ^ See i:7;/A-, i. 31, and /^i-/, April 11,1773. 
 
 ' 'Mr. RulThcad says of fine passages that they are fine, and of fee- 
 ble passages that they are feeble ; but recommending poetical beauty 
 is like remarking the splendour of sunshine ; to those who can see it 
 is unnecessary', and to those who are blind, absurd.' Gc/it. Afai^. May, 
 1769, p. 255. The review in which this passage occurs, is perhaps in 
 part Johnson's. 
 
 * See ante, i. 519. 
 
 We
 
 192 The proper use of riches. [a. d. 1772. 
 
 We talked of the proper use of riches. Johnson. ' If I 
 were a man of a great estate, I would drive all the rascals 
 whom I did not like out of the county at an election ',' 
 
 I asked him how far he thought wealth should be em- 
 ployed in hospitality. JoiiNSON. 'You are to consider that 
 ancient hospitality, of which we- hear so much, was in an 
 uncommercial country, when men being idle, were glad to 
 be entertained at rich men's tables. But in a commercial 
 country, a busy country, time becomes precious, and there- 
 fore hospitality is not so much valued. No doubt there is 
 still room for a certain degree of it ; and a man has a satis- 
 faction in seeing his friends eating and drinking around 
 him. But promiscuous hospitality is not the way to gain 
 real influence. You must help some people at table be- 
 fore others ; you must ask some people how they like their 
 wine oftener than others. You therefore offend more peo- 
 ple than you please. You are like the French statesman, 
 who said, when he granted a favour, " y ai fait dix inccon- 
 tents ct 2111 ingrat'y Besides, Sir, being entertained ever so 
 well at a man's table, impresses no lasting regard or esteem. 
 No, Sir, the way to make sure of power and influence is, 
 by lending money confidentially to your neighbours at a 
 small interest, or, perhaps, at no interest at all, and having 
 their bonds in your possession \' BOSWELL. ' May not a 
 man. Sir, employ his riches to advantage in educating young 
 men of merit?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, if they fall in your 
 way; but if it be understood that you patronize young men 
 of merit, you will be harassed with solicitations. You will 
 have nuinbers forced upon you who have no merit ; some 
 will force them upon you from mistaken partiality; and some 
 from downright interested motives, without scruple ; and you 
 will be disgraced.' 
 
 ' Seeposf, April 5, 1775. 
 
 " It was Lewis XIV who said it. ' Toutes les fois que je donne une 
 place vacante, je fais cent mecontents et un ingrat.' Voltaire, Siccle de 
 Louis XIV, ch. 26. ' When I give away a place,' said Lewis XIV, ' I 
 make an hundred discontented, and one ungrateful.' Johnson's Works, 
 viii. 204. ^ See post, May 15, 1783. 
 
 ' Were
 
 Aetat. 63.] Bayes in The Rehearsal. 193 
 
 * Were I a rich man, I would propagate all kinds of trees 
 that will grow in the open air. A greenhouse is childish. I 
 would introduce foreign animals into the country; for in- 
 stance the reindeer'.' 
 
 The conversation now turned on critical subjects. JOHN- 
 SON. ' Bayes, in The Rehearsal, is a mighty silly character. 
 If it was intended to be like a particular man, it could only 
 be diverting while that man was remembered. But I ques- 
 tion whether it was meant for Dr}^den, as has been reported ; 
 for we know some of the passages said to be ridiculed, were 
 written since The Rehearsal ; at least a passage mentioned 
 in the Preface* is of a later date.' I maintained that it 
 had merit as a general satire on the self-importance of 
 dramatick authours. But even in this light he held it very 
 cheap. 
 
 We then walked to the Pantheon. The first view of it 
 did not strike us so much as Ranelagh, of which he said, 
 the ' co7ip d'a;il was the finest thing he had ever seen.' The 
 truth is, Ranelagh is of a more beautiful form ; more of it, 
 or rather indeed the whole rotunda, appears at once, and it 
 is better lighted. However, as Johnson observed, we saw 
 the Pantheon in time of mourning, when there was a dull 
 uniformity ; whereas we had seen Ranelagh when the view 
 
 ' This project has since been realized. Sir Henry Liddel, who 
 made a spirited tour into Lapland, brought two rein-deer to his estate 
 in Northumberland, where they bred ; but the race has unfortunately 
 perished. Boswell. 
 
 * Dr. Johnson seems to have meant the Address to the Reader with 
 a Key subjoined to it ; which have been prefixed to the modern edi- 
 tions of that play. He did not know, it appears, that several addi- 
 tions were made to The Rehearsal after the first edition. Malone. 
 In his Life of Dry den ( Works, vn. 272) Johnson writes: — 'Bucking- 
 ham characterised Dryden in 1671 by the name of Bayes in The Re- 
 hearsal. ... It is said that this farce was originally intended against 
 Davenant, who in the first draught was characterised by the name of 
 Bilboa. ... It is said, likewise, that Sir Rot^crt Howard was once meant. 
 The design was probably to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he 
 might be. Much of the personal satire, to which it might owe its first 
 reception, is now lost or obscured." 
 
 II. — 13 was
 
 1 94 The Pantheon. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 was enlivened with a gay profusion of colours '. Mrs. Bos- 
 ville^ of Gunthwait, in Yorkshire, joined us, and entered into 
 conversation with us. Johnson said to me afterwards, ' Sir, 
 this is a mighty intelligent lady.' 
 
 I said there was not half a guinea's worth of pleasure in 
 seeing this place. Johnson. ' But, Sir, there is half a guin- 
 ea's worth of inferiority to other people in not having seen 
 it.' BOSWELL. * I doubt. Sir, whether there are many happy 
 people here.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, there are many happy 
 people here. There are many people here who are watching 
 hundreds, and who think hundreds are watching them \' 
 
 Happening to meet Sir Adam Fergusson *, I presented 
 
 * ' The Pantheon,' wrote Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 489), a year 
 later than this conversation, ' is still the most beautiful edifice in Eng- 
 land.' Gibbon, a few weeks before Johnson's visit to the Pantheon, 
 wrote: — 'In point of ejitiuz and magnificence, the Pantheon is the 
 wonder of the eighteenth century and of the British empire.' Gibbon's 
 Misc. Works, ii. 74. Evelina, in Miss Barney's novel (vol. i. Letter 
 xxiii) contrasts the Pantheon and Ranelagh : — ' I was extremely struck 
 on entering the Pantheon with the beauty of the building, which 
 greatly surpassed whatever I could have expected or imagined. Yet 
 it has more the appearance of a chapel than of a place of diversion ; 
 and, though I was quite charmed with the magnificence of the room, 
 I felt that I could not be as gay and thoughtless there as at Rane- 
 lagh ; for there is something in it which rather inspires awe and so- 
 lemnity than mirth and pleasure.' Ranelagh was at Chelsea, the 
 Pantheon was in Oxford-street. See ante, ii. 137, and post, Sept. 23, 
 1777. 
 
 ^ Her husband. Squire Godfrey Bosville, Boswell {post, Aug. 24, 
 1780) calls 'my Yorkshire chief.' Their daughter was one of the 
 young ladies whom he passes in review in his letters to Temple. 
 'What say you to my marrying ? I intend next autumn to visit Miss 
 Bosville in Yorkshire ; but I fear, my lot being cast in Scotland, that 
 beauty would not be content. She is, however, grave ; I shall see.' 
 Letters of Boswell, p. 81. She married Sir A. Macdonald, Johnson's 
 inhospitable host in Sky {ante, ii. 180). 
 
 ' In The Adi'enturer, No. 120, Johnson, after describing 'a gay as- 
 sembly,' continues: — 'The world in its best state is nothing more 
 than a larger assembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness 
 which they do not feel.' Works, iv. 120. 
 
 * ' Sir Adam Fergusson, who by a strange coincidence of chances 
 
 him
 
 Aetat. 63.] The remedy against tyra7tny. 195 
 
 him to Dr. Johnson. Sir Adam expressed some apprehen- 
 sion that the Pantheon would encourage luxury. ' Sir, (said 
 Johnson,) I am a great friend to publick amusements ; for 
 they keep people from vice. You now, (addressing himself 
 to me,) would have been with a wench, had you not been 
 here. — O I I forgot you were married,' 
 
 Sir Adam suggested, that luxury corrupts a people, and 
 destroys the spirit of liberty. JOHNSON. ' Sir, that is all 
 visionary. I would not give half a guinea to live under one 
 form of government rather than another. It is of no mo- 
 ment to the happiness of an individuar. Sir, the danger 
 of the abuse of power is nothing to a private man. What 
 Frenchman is prevented from passing his life as he pleases?' 
 Sir Adam. ' But, Sir, in the British constitution it is surely 
 of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to pre- 
 serve a balance against the crown.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I per- 
 ceive }-ou are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy 
 of the power of the crown ? The crown has not power 
 enough. When I say that all governments are alike, I con- 
 sider that in no government power can be abused long. Man- 
 kind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to 
 a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head. There is 
 a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us 
 safe under every form of government \ Had not the people 
 of France thought themselves honoured as sharing in the 
 brilliant actions of Lewis XIV, they would not have endured 
 him ; and we may say the same of the King of Prussia's 
 
 got in to be member of Parliament for Ayrshire in 1774, was the great- 
 grandson of a messenger. I was talking with great indignation that 
 the whole (.' old) families of the county should be defeated by an up- 
 start.' Boswclliaiia, p. 2S3. 
 
 ■ See ante, ii. 68. 
 
 * See ante, i. 491. Hume wrote of the judgment of Charles I {Hist, 
 of Eng. vii. 148) : — ' If ever, on any occasion, it were laudable to con- 
 ceal truth from the populace, it must be confessed that the doctrine 
 of resistance affords such an example; and that all speculative rea- 
 soners ought to observe with regard to this principle the same cau- 
 tious silence which the laws in every species of government have ever 
 prescribed to themselves.' 
 
 people.'
 
 1 96 BisJiops as peers. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 people.' Sir Adam introduced the ancient Greeks and Ro- 
 mans. Johnson. ' Sir, the mass of both of them were barba- 
 rians. The mass of every people must be barbarous where 
 there is no printing, and consequently knowledge is not gen- 
 erally diffused. Knowledge is diffused among our people by 
 the news-papers'.' Sir Adam mentioned the orators, poets, 
 and artists of Greece. JOHNSON. ' Sir, I am talking of the 
 mass of the people. We see even what the boasted Athe- 
 nians were. The little effect which Demosthenes's orations 
 had upon them, shews that they were barbarians \' 
 
 Sir Adam was unlucky in his topicks ; for he suggested a 
 doubt of the propriety of Bishops having seats in the House 
 of Lords. Johnson. 'How so. Sir? Who is more proper 
 for having the dignity of a peer, than a Bishop, provided a 
 Bishop be what he ought to be ; and if improper Bishops be 
 made, that is not the fault of the Bishops, but of those who 
 make them.' 
 
 On Sunday, April 5, after attending divine service at St. 
 Paul's church, I found him alone. Of a schoolmaster^ of his 
 acquaintance, a native of Scotland, he said, ' He has a great 
 deal of good about him ; but he is also very defective in 
 some respects. His inner part is good, but his outer part is 
 
 * ' All foreigners remark that the knowledge of the common people 
 of England is greater than that of any other vulgar. This superiority 
 we undoubtedly owe to the rivulets of intelligence [i. e. the newspa- 
 pers] which are continually trickling among us, which every one may 
 catch, and of which every one partakes.' /c/Z?r, No. 7. In a later number 
 (30), he speaks very contemptuously of news-writers. ' In Sir Henry 
 Wotton's jocular definition, a7i ambassador is said to be a mati of virtue 
 sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country. A newswriter 
 is a 7nan without virtue, ivho writes lies at home for his own profit .' 
 
 ° See /<7j/, April 3, 1773. 
 
 ^ Probably Mr. Elphinston. See ante, i. 2^2, post, April 19, 1773, and 
 April I, 1779. Dr. A. Carlyle {Auto. p. 493) wrote of a friend : — ' He 
 had overcome many disadvantages of his education, for he had been 
 sent to a Jacobite seminary of one Elphinstone at Kensington, where 
 his body was starv^ed and his mind also. He returned to Edinburgh 
 to college. He had hardly a word of Latin, and was obliged to work 
 hard with a private tutor.' 
 
 mighty
 
 Aetat. 63.] Heiiious siiis. 197 
 
 might)- aukward. You in Scotland do not attain that nice 
 critical skill in languages, which we get in our schools in 
 England. I would not put a boy to him, whom I intended 
 for a man of learning. But for the sons of citizens, who are 
 to learn a little, get good morals, and then go to trade, he 
 may do very well.' 
 
 I mentioned a cause in which I had appeared as counsel 
 at the bar of the General Assembly of the Church of Scot- 
 land, where a Probationer'' , (as one licensed to preach, but not 
 yet ordained, is called,) was opposed in his application to be 
 inducted, because it was alledged that he had been guilty of 
 fornication five years before. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, if he 
 has repented, it is not a sufficient objection. A man who is 
 good enough to go to heaven, is good enough to be a clergy- 
 man.' This was a humane and liberal sentiment. But the 
 character of a clergyman is more sacred than that of an ordi- 
 nary Christian. As he is to instruct with authority, he should 
 be regarded with reverence, as one upon whom divine truth 
 has had the effect to set him above such transgressions, as 
 men less exalted by spiritual habits, and yet upon the whole 
 not to be excluded from heaven, have been betrayed into by 
 the predominance of passion. That clergymen may be con- 
 sidered as sinners in general, as all men are, cannot be denied ; 
 but this reflection will not counteract their good precepts so 
 much, as the absolute knowledge of their having been guilty 
 of certain specifick immoral acts. I told him, that by the 
 rules of the Church of Scotland, in their Book of Discipline, 
 if a scandal, as it is called, is not prosecuted for five years, it 
 cannot afterwards be proceeded upon, ' unless it be of a hei- 
 nous nature, or again become flagrant ;' and that hence a 
 question arose, whether fornication was a sin of a heinous 
 nature ; and that I had maintained, that it did not deserve 
 that epithet, in as much as it was not one of those sins which 
 argue very great depravity of heart : in short, was not, in the 
 general acceptation of mankind, a heinous sin. JOllNSON. 
 
 ' 'In progress of lime Abel Sampson, /r(^<^rt//tf;/,;r of divinity, was 
 admitted to the privileges of a preacher.' Guy Maiinermg, chap. ii. 
 
 'No,
 
 198 Inequality of Church livings. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 ' No, Sir, it is not a heinous sin. A heinous sin is that for 
 which a man is punished with death or banishment '.' BOS- 
 WELL. ' But, Sir, after I had argued that it was not an hei- 
 nous sin, an old clergyman rose up, and repeating the text 
 of scripture denouncing judgement against whoremongers', 
 asked, whether, considering this, there could be any doubt 
 of fornication being a heinous sin.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, 
 observe the word whoremonger. Every sin, if persisted in, 
 will become heinous. Whoremonger is a dealer in whores ', 
 as ironmonger is a dealer in iron. But as you don't call a 
 man an ironmonger for buying and selling a pen-knife ; so 
 you don't call a man a whoremonger for getting one wench 
 with child \' 
 
 I spoke of the inequality of the livings of the clergy in 
 England, and the scanty provisions of some of the Curates. 
 Johnson. 'Why yes. Sir; but it cannot be helped. You 
 must consider, that the revenues of the clergy are not at the 
 disposal of the state, like the pay of the army. Different 
 men have founded different churches ; and some are better 
 endowed, some worse. The State cannot interfere and make 
 an equal division of what has been particularly appropriated. 
 Now when a clergyman has but a small living, or even two 
 small livings, he can afford very little to a curate.' 
 
 He said, he went more frequently to church when there 
 were prayers only, than when there was also a sermon, as 
 the people required more an example for the one than the 
 other ; it being much easier for them to hear a sermon, than 
 to fix their minds on prayer. 
 
 On Monday, April 6, I dined with him at Sir Alexander 
 
 ' In his Dictionary he defines heinous as atrocious; wicked in a high 
 degree. 
 
 ^ Ephesiaiis, v. 5. ' 
 
 ^ His second definition of 'whoremo7iger is one who converses with a 
 fornicatress. 
 
 * It must not be presumed that Dr. JohRson meant to give any 
 countenance to licentiousness, though in the character of an Advo- 
 cate he made a just and subtle distinction between occasional and 
 habitual transgression. Boswell. 
 
 Macdonald's,
 
 Aetat. 63.] Hoii, Thoiuas Erskiiic. 199 
 
 Macdonald's, where was a young officer in the regimentals 
 of the Scots Royal, who talked with a vivacity, fluency, and 
 precision so uncommon, that he attracted particular atten- 
 tion. He proved to be the Honourable Thomas Erskine, 
 youngest brother to the Earl of Buchan, who has since risen 
 into such brilliant reputation at the bar in Westminster- 
 hall'. 
 
 Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, 'he was a 
 blockhead * ;' and upon my expressing my astonishment at 
 so strange an assertion, he said, ' What I mean by his being 
 a blockhead is that he was a barren rascal.' BOSWELL. 
 ' Will you not allow. Sir, that he draws very natural pictures 
 of human life?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, it is of very low life. 
 Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Field- 
 ing was, he should have believed he was an hostler ^ Sir, 
 
 ' Erskine was born in 1750, entered the navy in 1764, the army in 
 1768, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1776, was called 
 to the Bar in 1778, was made a King's counsel in 1783, and Lord Chan- 
 cellor in 1806. He died in 1823. Campbell's Chancellors, \\. 368-674. 
 
 ^ Johnson had called Churchill 'ablockhead.' See^?;//^, i.485. 'I have 
 remarked,' said Miss Reynolds, ' that his dislike of anyone seldom 
 prompted him to say much more than that the fellow is a blockhead.' 
 Croker's Boswell, p. 834. In like manner Goldsmith called Sterne a 
 blockhead; for Mr. Forster {Life of Goldsmith, i. 260) is, no doubt, 
 right in saying that the author of Tristram Shandy is aimed at in the 
 following passage in The Citizen of the I Vor Id (Letter 74) : — ' In Eng- 
 land, if a bawdy blockhead thus breaks in on the community, he sets 
 his whole fraternity in a roar ; nor can he escape even though he 
 should fly to nobility for shelter.' That Johnson did not think so 
 lowly of Fielding's powers is shown by a compliment that he paid 
 Miss Burncy, on one of the characters in Ei'elina. ' " Oh, Mr. Smith, 
 Mr. Smith is the man !" cried he, laughing violently. " Harry Field- 
 ing never drew so good a character !" ' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 78. 
 
 ' Richardson wrote of Fielding {Carres. v\. 154): — 'Poor Fielding! 
 I could not help telling his sister that I was equally surprised at and 
 concerned for his continued lowness. Had your brother, said I, been 
 born in a stable, or been a runner at a sponging-house, we should have 
 thought him a genius, and wished he had had the advantage of a lib- 
 eral education, and of being admitted into good company.' Other 
 passages show Richardson's dislike or jealousy of Fielding. Thus he 
 wrote : — ' You guess that I have not read Atnelia. Indeed, I have read 
 
 there
 
 200 Richardson and Fielding. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Rich- 
 ardson's, than in all Tom Jones '. I, indeed, never read Jo- 
 scpli Andrcivs'^.'' Erskine. ' Surely, Sir, Richardson is very 
 tedious.' Johnson. ' Why, Sir, if you were to read Rich- 
 ardson for the story, your impatience would be so much 
 
 but the first volume. I had intended to go through with it ; but I 
 found the characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty that 
 I imagined 1 could not be interested for any one of them.' lb. iv. 60. 
 ' So long as the world will receive, Mr. Fielding will write.' lb. p. 285. 
 
 * Hannah More wrote in 17S0 {Mctnoirs, i. 168), ' I never saw John- 
 son really angry with me but once. I alluded to some witty passage 
 in Tom Jones ; he replied, " 1 am shocked to hear you quote from so 
 vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it : a confession 
 which no modest lady should ever make. I scarcely know a more 
 corrupt work !" He went so far as to refuse to Fielding the great tal- 
 ents which are ascribed to him, and broke out into a noble panegyric 
 on his competitor, Richardson ; who, he said, was as superior to him 
 in talents as in virtue ; and whom he pronounced to be the greatest 
 genius that had shed its lustre on this path of literature." Yet Miss 
 Burney in her Preface to Evelina describes herself as ' exhilarated by 
 the wit of Fielding and humour of Smollett.' It is strange that while 
 Johnson thus condemned Fielding, he should ' with an ardent and lib- 
 eral earnestness ' have revised Smollett's epitaph. Boswell's Hebrides, 
 Oct. 28, 1773. Macaulay in his Speech on Copy7-ight {Wrttz?igs and 
 Speeches, p. 615) said of Richardson's novels : — ' No writings have done 
 more to raise the fame of English genius in foreign countries. No 
 writings are more deeply pathetic. No writings, those of Shakespeare 
 excepted, show more profound knowledge of the human heart.' Hor- 
 ace Walpole {Letters, iv. 305), on the other hand, spoke of Richardson 
 as one ' who wrote those deplorably tedious lamentations, Clarissa 
 and Sir Charles Grandison, which are pictures of high life as conceived 
 by a bookseller, and romances as they would be spiritualised by a 
 methodist teacher.' Lord Chesterfield says of Sir Charles Grattdison, 
 that ' it is too long, and there is too much mere talk in it. Whenever 
 he goes ^tlfra crepidam mto high life, he grossly mistakes the modes ; 
 but to do him justice he never mistakes nature, and he has surely 
 great knowledge and skill both in painting and in interesting the 
 heart.' 7(5. note. See a«/^, ii. 55. 
 
 "^ Amelia he read through without stopping. Post, April 12, 1776. 
 Shenstone ( Works, iii. 70) writes of 'the tedious character of Parson 
 Adams,' and calls the book 'a very mean performance; of which the 
 greater part is unnatural and unhumorous.' 
 
 fretted
 
 Aetat. 63.] Richardson and Fielding. 201 
 
 fretted that you would hang yourself '. But you must read 
 him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving 
 occasion to the sentiment.' — I have already given my opin- 
 ion of Fielding ; but I cannot refrain from repeating here 
 my wonder at Johnson's excessive and unaccountable depre- 
 ciation of one of the best writers that England has produced. 
 To7n Jones has stood the test of publick opinion with such 
 success, as to have established its great merit, both for the 
 story, the sentiments, and the manners, and also the varieties 
 of diction, so as to leave no doubt of its having an animated 
 truth of execution throughout ". 
 
 A book of travels, lately published under the title of Co- 
 riat Junior, and written by Mr. Paterson ^ was mentioned. 
 Johnson said, this book was an imitation of Sterne \ and not 
 of Coriat, whose name Paterson had chosen as a whimsical 
 
 ' Johnson wrote to Richardson of Clarissa, ' though the story is 
 long, every letter is short.' He begged him to add an nuicx rcrum, 
 ' for Clarissa is not a performance to be read with eagerness, and laid 
 aside for ever; but will be occasionally consulted by the busy, the 
 aged, and the studious.' Richardson's Corrcs. v. 281. 
 
 "^ ' Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls 
 of Denbigh, who draw their origin from the Counts of Habsburg, the 
 lineal descendants of Eltrico, in the seventh century Duke of Alsace. 
 Far different have been the fortunes of the English and German divis- 
 ions of the family of Habsburg: the former, the knights and sheriffs 
 of Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity of a peerage: the 
 latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened 
 the liberty of the old, and invaded the treasures of the new world. 
 The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of 
 England ; but the romance of To/n Jones, that exquisite picture of 
 human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial, and the impe- 
 rial eagle of the house of Austria.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 4. Rich- 
 ardson, five years after Tom Jones w?i?, published, wrote {Corrcs. v. 275) : 
 — ' Its run is over, even with us. Is it true that France had virtue 
 enough to refuse a license for such a profligate performance?' 
 
 ' Mr. Samuel Paterson, eminent for his knowledge of books. Bos- 
 WF.l.L. In the first two editions this note does not appear, but Mr. 
 Paterson is described as 'the auctioneer.' ':^qq. post, Aug. 3, 1776. 
 
 ^ Mr. Paterson, in a pamphlet, produced some evidence to shew 
 that his work was written before Sterne's Senlitnental Journey ap- 
 peared. BOSWELL. 
 
 one.
 
 202 Gaming. [a.d 1772, 
 
 one. ' Tom Coriat, (said he,) was a humourist about the 
 court of James the First. He had a mixture of learning, 
 of wit, and of buffoonery. He first travelled through Eu- 
 rope, and published his travels '. He afterwards travelled 
 on foot through Asia, and had made many remarks ; but 
 he died at Mandoa, and his remarks were lost.' 
 
 We talked of gaming, and animadverted on it with sever- 
 ity. Johnson. ' Nay, gentlemen, let us not aggravate the 
 matter. It is not roguery to play with a man who is igno- 
 rant of the game, while you are master of it, and so win his 
 money ; for he thinks he can play better than you, as you 
 think you can play better than he ; and the superiour skill 
 carries it.' Erskine. ' He is a fool, but you are not a rogue.' 
 Johnson. ' That's much about the truth, Sir. It must be 
 considered, that a man who only does what every one of 
 the society to which he belongs would do, is not a dishonest 
 man. In the republick of Sparta, it was agreed, that steal- 
 ing was not dishonourable, if not discovered. I do not com- 
 mend a society where there is an agreement that what would 
 not otherwise be fair, shall be fair ; but I maintain, that an 
 individual of any society, who practises what is allowed, is 
 not a dishonest man.' BOSWELL. 'So then, Sir, you do not 
 think ill of a man who wins perhaps forty thousand pounds 
 in a winter?' JOHNSON. ' Sir, I do not call a gamester a dis- 
 honest man ; but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable 
 man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without 
 producing any intermediate good. Trade gives employment 
 to numbers, and so produces intermediate good.' 
 
 Mr. Erskine told us, that when he was in the island of 
 Minorca, he not only read prayers, but preached two sermons 
 to the regiment \ He seemed to object to the passage in 
 scripture where we are told that the angel of the Lord 
 
 ' Coryafs Crudities hastily gobled up in Jive Moneths Trauells in 
 France, Sauoy, Italy, &^c. London, i6i i. 
 
 * ' Lord Erskine,' says Mr. Croker, 'was fond of this anecdote. He 
 told it to me the first time that I was in his company, and often re- 
 peated it, boasting that he had been a sailor, a soldier, a lawj^er, and a 
 parson.' 
 
 smote
 
 Aetat. 63.] Families and commerce. 20 
 
 J 
 
 smote in one night forty thousand Assyrians '. ' Sir, (said 
 Johnson,) you should recollect that there was a supernatural 
 interposition ; they were destroyed by pestilence. You are 
 not to suppose that the angel of the Lord went about and 
 stabbed each of them with a dagger, or knocked them on 
 the head, man by man.' 
 
 After Mr. Erskine was gone, a discussion took place, 
 whether the present Earl of Buchan, when Lord Cardross, 
 did right to refuse to go Secretary of the Embassy to Spain, 
 when Sir James Gray, a man of inferiour rank, went Am- 
 bassadour'. Dr. Johnson said, that perhaps in point of in- 
 terest he did wrong ; but in point of dignity he did well. 
 Sir Alexander insisted that he was wrong ; and said that 
 Mr. Pitt intended it as an advantageous thing for him. 
 'Why, Sir, (said Johnson,) Mr. Pitt might think it an ad- 
 vantageous thing for him to make him a vintner, and get 
 him all the Portugal trade ; but he would have demeaned 
 himself strangely had he accepted of such a situation. Sir, 
 had he gone Secretary while his inferiour was Ambassadour, 
 he would have been a traitor to his rank and family.' 
 
 I talked of the little attachment which subsisted between 
 near relations in London. ' Sir, (said Johnson,) in a country 
 so commercial as ours, where eveiy man can do for himself, 
 there is not so much occasion for that attachment. No man 
 is thought the worse of here, whose brother was hanged. In 
 uncommercial countries, many of the branches of a family 
 must depend on the stock ; so, in order to make the head 
 of the family take care of them, they arc represented as 
 
 ' 1 8 5 ,000. 2 Kings, X i X . 3 5 . 
 
 ^ Lord Chatham wrote on Oct. 12, 1766, to Lord Shelburne that 
 he ' had extremely at heart to obtain this post for Lord Cardross, a 
 young nobleman of great talents, learning, and accomplishments, and 
 son of the Earl of Buchan, an intimate friend of Lord Chatham, from 
 the time they were students together at Utrecht.' Chatham Carres. 
 iii. 106. Horace Walpolc wrote on Oct. 26, 'Sir James Gray goes to 
 Madrid. The embassy has been sadly hawked about ; not a peer that 
 would take it.' Walpolc 's Letters, v. 22. ' Sir James Gray's father 
 was first a bo.x-keeper, and then footman to James IL' lb. ii. 366. 
 
 connected
 
 204 Ghosts and Witches. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 connected with his reputation, that, self-love being interested, 
 he may exert himself to promote their interest. You have 
 first large circles, or clans ; as commerce increases, the con- 
 nection is confined to families. By degrees, that too goes 
 off, as having become unnecessary, and there being few op- 
 portunities of intercourse. One brother is a merchant in 
 the city, and another is an officer in the guards. How little 
 intercourse can these two have !' 
 
 I argued warmly for the old feudal system'. Sir Alex- 
 ander opposed it, and talked of the pleasure of seeing all 
 men free and independent. JOHNSON. ' I agree with Mr. 
 Boswell that there must be a high satisfaction in being a 
 feudal Lord ; but we are to consider, that Ave ought not to 
 wish to have a number of men unhappy for the satisfaction 
 of one^' — I maintained that numbers, namely, the vassals 
 or followers, were not unhappy ; for that there was a recip- 
 rocal satisfaction between the Lord and them : he being 
 kind in his authority over them*; they being respectful and 
 faithful to him. 
 
 On Thursday, April 9, I called on him to beg he would 
 go and dine with me at the Mitre tavern. He had resolved 
 not to dine at all this day, I know not for what reason ; and 
 I was so unwilling to be deprived of his company, that I 
 was content to submit to suffer a want, which was at first 
 somewhat painful, but he soon made me forget it ; and a 
 man is always pleased with himself when he finds his in- 
 tellectual inclinations predominate. 
 
 He observed, that to reason philosophically on the nature 
 of prayer, was very unprofitable. 
 
 Talking of ghosts ', he said, he knew one friend, who was 
 an honest man and a sensible man, who told him he had 
 seen a ghost, old Mr. Edward Cave, the printer at St. John's 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 155, for Johnson's attack on Lord Chatham's 'feudal 
 gabble.' 
 
 ^ In Boswell's Hebrides, on Aug. 25, 1773, Johnson makes much the 
 same answer to a like statement by Boswell. See post, March 21, 
 
 1783. 
 ' See ante, i. 397, 469, and post, April 10, 1772. 
 
 Gate.
 
 Aetat. 63.] GJiosts and zvitches. 205 
 
 Gate. He said, Mr. Cave did not like to talk of it, and 
 seemed to be in great horrour whenever it was mentioned. 
 BOSWELL. ' Pray, Sir, what did he say was the appearance?' 
 Johnson. ' Why, Sir, something of a shadowy being.' 
 
 I mentioned witches, and asked him what they properly 
 meant. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, they properly mean those 
 who make use of the aid of evil spirits.' BosWELL. ' There 
 is no doubt. Sir, a general report and belief of their having 
 existed'.' JOHNSON. 'You have not only the general re- 
 port and belief, but you have many voluntary solemn con- 
 fessions.' He did not afifirm any thing positively upon a 
 subject which it is the fashion of the times to laugh at as 
 a matter of absurd credulity. He only seemed willing, as a 
 candid enquirer after truth, however strange and inexplica- 
 ble, to shew that he understood what might be urged for it\ 
 
 On Friday, April 10, I dined with him at General Ogle- 
 thorpe's, where we found Dr. Goldsmith. 
 
 Armorial bearings having been mentioned, Johnson said 
 they were as ancient as the siege of Thebes, which he proved 
 by a passage in one of the tragedies of Euripides ^ 
 
 ' ' I cannot,' wrote John Wesley {Journal, iv. 74), 'give up to all the 
 Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft, till I give up the 
 credit of all histor\', sacred and profane. And at the present time, I 
 have not only as strong but stronger proofs of this from eye and ear 
 witnesses than I have of murder ; so that I cannot rationally doubt 
 of one any more than the other.' 
 
 " See this curious question treated by him with most acute ability, 
 lotirnal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 33. [Aug. 16.] Bos- 
 WKLL. Johnson, in his Observations on Macbeth {Works, v. 55-7), 
 shews his utter disbelief in witchcraft. 'These phantoms,' he writes, 
 ' have indeed appeared more frequently in proportion as the darkness 
 of ignorance has been more gross ; but it cannot be shewn that the 
 brightest gleams of knowledge have at any time been suiFicicnt to 
 drive them out of the world.' He describes the spread of the belief 
 in them in the middle ages, and adds: — 'The reformation did not im- 
 mediately arrive at its meridian, and though day was gradually increas- 
 ing upon us, the goblins of witchcraft still continued to hover in the 
 twilight.' S&c post, April 8, 1779 and 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. 
 
 " The passage to which Johnson alluded is to be found (I conject- 
 ure) in the Pha'nisscr, 1. 1 120. J. Boswkll, Jun. 
 
 I started
 
 2o6 The lawfulness of dtielling. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 I started the question whether dueUing was consistent 
 with moral duty. The brave old General fired at Ihis, and 
 said, with a lofty air, ' Undoubtedly a man has a right to 
 defend his honour.' Goldsmith, (turning to me.) ' I ask 
 you first, Sir, what would you do if you were affronted ?' 
 I answered I should think it necessary to fight '. ' Why 
 then, (replied Goldsmith,) that solves the question.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' No, Sir, it does not solve the question. It does not 
 follow that what a man would do is therefore right.' I said, 
 I wished to have it settled, whether duelling was contrary 
 to the laws of Christianity. Johnson immediately entered 
 on the subject, and treated it in a masterly manner ; and so 
 far as I have been able to recollect, his thoughts were these : 
 ' Sir, as men become in a high degree refined, various causes 
 of offence arise ; which are considered to be of such im- 
 portance, that life must be staked to atone for them, though 
 in reality they are not so. A body that has received a very 
 fine polish may be easily hurt. Before men arrive at this 
 artificial refinement, if one tells his neighbour he lies, his 
 neighbour tells him he lies ; if one gives his neighbour a 
 blow, his neighbour gives him a blow : but in a state of 
 highly polished society, an affront is held to be a serious 
 injury. It must therefore be resented, or rather a duel must 
 be fought upon it ; as men have agreed to banish from their 
 society one who puts up with an affront without fighting a 
 duel. Now, Sir, it is never unlawful to fight in self-defence. 
 He, then, who fights a duel, does not fight from passion 
 against his antagonist, but out of self-defence ; to avert the 
 stigma of the world, and to prevent himself from being 
 driven out of society. I could wish there was not that 
 
 ■ Boswell (Letters, p. 324), on June 21, 1790, described to Temple the 
 insults of that ' brutal fellow,' Lord Lonsdale, and continued : — ' In m}'- 
 fretfulness I used such expressions as irritated him almost to fur}% so 
 that he used such expressions towards me that I should have, accord- 
 ing to the irrational laws of honour sanctioned by the world, been 
 under the necessity of risking my life, had not an explanation taken 
 place.* Boswell's eldest son. Sir Alexander Boswell, lost his life in a 
 duel. 
 
 superfluity
 
 Aetat. 63.] The lawfulness of duelling. 207 
 
 superfluity of refinement ; but while such notions prevail, 
 no doubt a man may lawfully fight a due' '.' 
 
 Let it be remembered, that this justification is applicable 
 only to the person who receives an affront. All mankind 
 must condemn the aggressor. 
 
 The General told us, that when he was a very young man, 
 I think only fifteen \ serving under Prince Eugene of Savoy, 
 he was sitting in a company at table with a Prince of Wir- 
 temberg. The Prince took up a glass of wine, and, by a 
 fillip, made some of it fly in Oglethorpe's face. Here was 
 a nice dilemma. To have challenged him instantly, might 
 have fixed a quarrelsome character upon the young soldier: 
 to have taken no notice of it might have been considered as 
 cowardice. Oglethorpe, therefore, keeping his eye upon 
 the Prince, and smiling all the time, as if he took what his 
 Highness had done in jest, said ^ Mon Prince, — ' (I forget 
 the French words he used, the purport however was,) 'That's 
 a good joke ; but we do it much better in England ;' and 
 threw a whole glass of wine in the Prince's face. An old 
 General who sat by, said, *// a bien fait, Dion Prince, vous 
 lavez conunence y and thus all ended in good humour. 
 
 Dr. Johnson said, ' Pray, General, give us an account of 
 the siege of Belgrade \' Upon which the General, pouring 
 
 ' Johnson might have quoted the Heutenant in Tom Jones, Book 
 vii. chap. 13. ' My dear boy, be a good Christian as long as you live : 
 but be a man of honour too, and never put up an affront ; not all the 
 books, nor all the parsons in the world, shall ever persuade me to 
 that. I love my religion very well, but I love my honour more. 
 There must be some mistake in the wording of the text, or in the 
 translation, or in the understanding it, or somewhere or other. But 
 however that be, a man must run the risk, for he must preserve his 
 honour.' See post, April 19, 1773, and April 20, 1783, and Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Sept. 19, 1773. 
 
 ^ Oglethorpe was born in 1698. In 17 14 he entered the army. 
 Prince Eugene's campaigns against the Turks in which Oglethorpe 
 served were in 17 16-17. Rose's Biog. Dict.vn. 266 and x. 381. He 
 was not therefore quite so young as Boswell thought. 
 
 ^ In the first two editions Bender. Belgrade was taken by Eugene 
 in 1717. 
 
 a little
 
 2o8 Friendship. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 a little wine upon the table, described every thing with a 
 wet finger: 'Here we were, here were the Turks," &c. &c. 
 Johnson listened with the closest attention. 
 
 A question was started, how far people who disagree in a 
 capital point can live in friendship together. Johnson said 
 they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not 
 the idem velle atque idem nolle^ — the same likings and the 
 same aversions. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, you must shun the 
 subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live 
 very well with Burke : I love his knowledge, his genius, his 
 diffusion, and affluence of conversation ; but I would not talk 
 to him of the Rockingham party.' GOLDSMITH. ' But, Sir, 
 when people live together who have something as to which 
 they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in 
 the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard : " You 
 may look into all the chambers but one." But we should 
 have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to 
 talk of that subject.' Johnson, (with a loud voice.) ' Sir, I 
 am not saying that yoii could live in friendship with a man 
 from whom you differ as to some point : I am only saying 
 that /could do it. You put me in mind of Sappho in Ovid^' 
 
 Goldsmith told us, that he was now busy in writing a nat- 
 ural history ^ and, that he might have full leisure for it, he 
 
 ' ' Idem velle atque idem nolle ea demum firma amicitia est.' Sal- 
 lust, Catilina, xx. 4. 
 
 "^ More than one conjecture has been hazarded as to the passage to 
 which Johnson referred. I believe that he was thinking of the lines — 
 ' Et variis albae junguntur saepe columbae ; 
 Et niger a viridi turtur amatur ave.' 
 
 Sappho to P/iaon, line 37. 
 'Turtles and doves of differing hues unite. 
 And glossy jet is paired with shining white.' (Pope.) 
 Goldsmith had said that people to live in friendship together must 
 have the same likings and aversions. Johnson thereupon calls to 
 mind Sappho, who had shown that there could be love where there 
 was little likeness. 
 
 ^ It was not published till after Goldsmith's death. It is in the list 
 of new books in the Gent. Mag. for Aug. 1774, p. 378. See post, under 
 June 22, 1776, the note on Goldsmith's epitaph. 
 
 had
 
 Aetat. 63.] Goldsmitii s coimtry lodgings. 209 
 
 had taken lodgings, at a farmer's house, near to the six mile- 
 stone, on the Edgeware road, and had carried down his 
 books in two returned post-chaises. He said, he believed 
 the farmer's family thought him an odd character, similar 
 to that in which The Spectator appeared to his landlady 
 and her children : he was The Gentleman\ Mr. Mickle, the 
 translator of The Lusiad'^, and I went to visit him at this 
 place a few days afterwards. He was not at home; but 
 having a curiosity to see his apartment, we went in and 
 found curious scraps of descriptions of animals, scrawled 
 upon the w^all with a black lead penciP. 
 
 The subject of ghosts being introduced, Johnson repeated 
 what he had told me of a friend of his, an honest man, and 
 a man of sense, having asserted to him, that he had seen 
 an apparition". Goldsmith told us, he was assured by his 
 brother, the Reverend Mr. Goldsmith, that he also had seen 
 one. General Oglethorpe told us, that Prendergast, an of- 
 ficer in the Duke of Marlborough's army, had mentioned to 
 many of his friends, that he should die on a particular day. 
 That upon that day a battle took place with the French ; 
 that after it was over, and Prendergast was still alive, his 
 
 ' ' Upon my opening the door the young women broke off their dis- 
 course, but my landlady's daughters telling them that it was nobody 
 but the Gentleman (for that is the name that I go by in the neigh- 
 bourhood as well as in the family), they went on without minding 
 me.' Spectator, No. 12. 
 
 * The author also of the Ballad of Cumnor Hall. See Scott's In- 
 troduction to Kenilworth. Bishop Home says that ' Mickle inserted 
 in the Lusiad an angry note against Garrick, who, as he thought, had 
 used him ill by rejecting a tragedy of his.' Shortly afterwards, he 
 saw Garrick act for the first time. The play was Lear. ' During the 
 first three acts he said not a word. In a fine passage of the fourth he 
 fetched a deep sigh, and turning to a friend,"! wish," said he, "the 
 note was out of my book." ' Home's Essays, ed. 1808, p. 38. See post, 
 under Dec. 24, 1783, and Garrick's letter in BoswelVs //edri'des, Oct. 23, 
 
 1773- 
 ' The farmer's son told Mr. Prior that ' he had felt much reluctance 
 
 in erasing during necessary repairs these memorials.' Prior's Gold- 
 
 smtt/i, ii. 335. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 204. 
 
 n. — 14 brother
 
 2IO Death of Prendergast. [a. d. 1772. 
 
 brother officers, while they were yet in the field, jestingly 
 asked him, where was his prophecy now. Prendergast 
 gravely answered, ' I shall die, notwithstanding what you 
 see.' Soon afterwards, there came a shot from a French 
 battery, to which the orders for a cessation of arms had not 
 yet reached, and he was killed upon the spot. Colonel 
 Cecil, who took possession of his effects, found in his 
 pocket-book the following solemn entry : 
 
 [Here the date,] ' Dreamt — or ' Sir John Friend 
 
 meets me:' (here the very day on which he was killed, was 
 mentioned.) Prendergast had been connected with Sir John 
 Friend, who was executed for high treason. General Ogle- 
 thorpe said, he was with Colonel Cecil when Pope came and 
 enquired into the truth of this story, which made a great 
 noise at the time, and w^as then confirmed by the Colonel. 
 
 On Saturday, April 11, he appointed me to come to him 
 in the evening, when he should be at leisure to give me some 
 assistance for the defence of Hastie, the schoolmaster of 
 Campbelltown, for whom I was to appear in the House of 
 Lords. When I came, I found him unwilling to exert him- 
 self. I pressed him to write down his thoughts upon the 
 
 ^ Here was a blank, which may be filled up thus: — ' ruas told by 
 an appa7'ition ;' — the writer being probably uncertain whether he was 
 asleep or awake, when his mind was impressed with the solemn pre- 
 sentiment with which the fact afterwards happened so wonderfully to 
 correspond. Boswell. ' Lord Hardinge, when Secretary at War,' 
 writes Mr. Croker, ' informed me, that it appears that Colonel Sir 
 Thomas Prendergast, of the twenty-second foot, was killed at Mal- 
 plaquet, Aug. 31, 1709 ; but no trace can be found of any Colonel Cecil 
 in the army at that period. Colonel W. Cecil, who was sent to the 
 Tower in 1744, could hardly have been, in 1709, of the age and rank 
 which Oglethorpe's anecdote seems to imply.' Prendergast, or Pen- 
 dergrass, in the year 1696, informed the government of the plot to 
 assassinate William III., in which Friend was one of the leaders. 
 Macaulay {Hist.of Eng. chap. 21), calls Prendergrass ' a Roman Catho- 
 lic gentleman of known courage and honour.' Swift, attacking Pren- 
 dergast's son, attacks Prendergast himself :— 
 
 ' What ! thou the spawn of him who shamed our isle, 
 
 Traitor, assassin, and informer vile.' 
 
 Swift's Works, xi. 319. 
 
 subject.
 
 Aetat. G3.] A ScotcJi scJioolmaster s case. 2 1 1 
 
 subject. He said, ' There's no occasion for my writing. I'll 
 talk to you.' He was, however, at last prevailed on to dic- 
 tate to me, while I wrote as follows : — 
 
 ' The charge is, that he has used immoderate and cruel correc- 
 tion. Correction, in itself, is not cruel ; children, being not reason- 
 able, can be governed only by fear. To impress this fear, is there- 
 fore one of the first duties of those who have the care of children. 
 It is the duty of a parent ; and has never been thought inconsist- 
 ent with parental tenderness. It is the duty of a master, who is in 
 his highest exaltation when he is ioco parentis. Yet, as good things 
 become evil by excess, correction, by being immoderate, may be- 
 come cruel. But when is correction immoderate .' \\'hen it is more 
 frequent or more severe than is required ad monendian ct docendum, 
 for reformation and instruction. No severity is cruel which obsti- 
 nacy makes necessary ; for the greatest cruelty would be to desist, 
 and leave the scholar too careless for instruction, and too much 
 hardened for reproof. Locke, in his treatise of Education, men- 
 tions a mother, with applause, who whipped an infant eight times 
 before she had subdued it ; for had she stopped at the seventh act 
 of correction, her daughter, says he, would have been ruined'. 
 The degrees of obstinacy in young minds, are very different ; as 
 different must be the degrees of persevering severity. A stubborn 
 scholar must be corrected till he is subdued. The discipline of a 
 school is military. There must be either unbounded licence or 
 absolute authority. The master, who punishes, not only consults 
 the future happiness of liim who is the immediate subject of cor- 
 rection ; but he p>ropagates obedience through the whole school ; 
 and establishes regularity by exemplary justice. The victorious 
 obstinacy of a single boy would make his future endeavours of ref- 
 ormation or instruction totally ineffectual. Obstinacy, therefore, 
 
 ' Locke says : — ' When once it comes to be a trial of skill, contest 
 for mastery betwixt you and your child, you must be sure to cany it, 
 whatever blows it costs, if a nod or words will not prevail.' He con- 
 tinues : — 'A prudent and kind mother of my acquaintance was, on 
 such an occasion, forced to whip her little daughter, at her first com- 
 ing home from nurse, eight times successively the same morning, be- 
 fore she could master her stubbornness, and obtain a compliance in a 
 very easy and indifferent matter. ... As this was the first time, so I 
 think it was the last, too, she ever struck her.' Locke on Education 
 ('ed. 1 710), p. 96. 
 
 must
 
 2 12 A Scotch scJioolmaster s case. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 must never be victorious. Yet, it is well known, that there some- 
 times occurs a sullen and hardy resolution, that laughs at all com- 
 mon punishment, and bids defiance to all common degrees of pain. 
 Correction must be proportioned to occasions. The flexible will 
 be reformed by gentle discipline, and the refractory must be sub- 
 dued by harsher methods. The degrees of scholastick, as of mili- 
 tary punishment, no stated rules can ascertain. It must be en- 
 forced till it overpowers temptation ; till stubbornness becomes 
 flexible, and perverseness regular. Custom and reason have, in- 
 deed, set some bounds to scholastick penalties. The schoolmaster 
 inflicts no capital punishments ; nor enforces his edicts by either 
 death or mutilation. The civil law has wisely determined, that a 
 master who strikes at a scholar's eye shall be considered as crim- 
 inal. But punishments, however severe, that produce no lasting 
 evil, may be just and reasonable, because they may be necessary. 
 Such have been the punishments used by the respondent. No 
 scholar has gone from him either blind or lame, or with any of his 
 limbs or powers injured or impaired. They were irregular, and he 
 punished them : they were obstinate, and he enforced his punish- 
 ment. But, however provoked, he never exceeded the limits of 
 moderation, for he inflicted nothing beyond present pain ; and how 
 much of that was required, no man is so little able to determine as 
 those who have determined against him ; — the parents of the offend- 
 ers. It has been said, that he used unprecedented and improper 
 instruments of correction. Of this accusation the meaning is not 
 very easy to be found. No instrument of correction is more proper 
 than another, but as it is better adapted to produce present pain 
 without lasting mischief. Whatever were his instruments, no last- 
 ing mischief has ensued ; and therefore, however unusual, in hands 
 so cautious they were proper. It has been objected, that the re- 
 spondent admits the charge of cruelty, by producing no evidence 
 to confute it. Let it be considered, that his scholars are either 
 dispersed at large in the world, or continue to inhabit the place in 
 which they were bred. Those who are dispersed cannot be found ; 
 those who remain are the sons of his persecutors, and are not likely 
 to support a man to whom their fathers are enemies. If it be sup- 
 posed that the enmity of their fathers proves the justice of the 
 charge, it must be considered how often experience shews us, that 
 men who are angry on one ground will accuse on another ; with 
 how little kindness, in a town of low trade, a man who lives by 
 learning is regarded ; and how implicitly, where the inhabitants 
 are not very rich, a rich man is hearkened to and followed. In a 
 
 place
 
 Aetat. G3.] Lord Mansfield on school discipline. 2 1 
 
 o 
 
 place like Campbelltown, it is easy for one of the principal inhabi- 
 tants to make a party. It is easy for that party to heat themselves 
 with imaginary grievances. It is easy for them to oppress a man 
 poorer than themselves ; and natural to assert the dignity of riches, 
 by persisting in oppression. The argument which attempts to 
 prove the impropriety of restoring him to the school, by alledging 
 that he has lost the confidence of the people, is not the subject of 
 juridical consideration ; for he is to suffer, if he must suffer, not 
 for their judgement, but for his own actions. It may be convenient 
 for them to have another master ; but it is a convenience of their 
 own making. It would be likewise convenient for him to find an- 
 other school ; but this convenience he cannot obtain. The ques- 
 tion is not what is now convenient, but what is generally right. If 
 the people of Campbelltown be distressed by the restoration of the 
 respondent, they are distressed only by their own fault ; by turbu- 
 lent passions and unreasonable desires ; by tyranny, which law has 
 defeated, and by malice, which virtue has surmounted.' 
 
 ' This, Sir, (said he,) you are to turn in your mind, and 
 make the best use of it you can in your speech.' 
 
 Of our friend, Goldsmith, he said, ' Sir, he is so much 
 afraid of being unnoticed, that he often talks merely lest 
 you should forget that he is in the company.' BOSWELL, 
 'Yes, he stands forward.' JOHNSON, 'True, Sir; but if a 
 man is to stand forward, he should wish to do it not in an 
 aukward posture, not in rags, not so as that he shall only be 
 exposed to ridicule.' BosWELL. ' For my part, I like very 
 well to hear honest Goldsmith talk away carelessly,' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Why yes, Sir; but he should not like to hear himself.' 
 
 On Tuesday, April 14, the decree of the Court of Session 
 in the schoolmaster's cause was reversed in the House of 
 Lords, after a very eloquent speech by Lord Mansfield, who 
 shewed himself an adept in school discipline, but I thought 
 was too rigorous towards my client '. On the evening of 
 
 ' Andrew Crosbie, arguing for the schoolmaster, had said : — ' Sup- 
 posing it true that the respondent had been provoked to use a Httle 
 more severity than he wished to do, it might well be justified on ac- 
 count of the ferocious and rebellious behaviour of his scholars, some 
 of whom cursed and swore at him, and even went so far as to wrestle 
 with him, in which case he was under a necessity of subduing them 
 
 the
 
 2 14 Lord Mansfield on school discipline, [a.d. 1773. 
 
 the next day I supped with Dr. Johnson, at the Crown and 
 Anchor tavern, in the Strand, in company with Mr. Lang- 
 ton and his brother-in-law, Lord Binning. I repeated a sen- 
 tence of Lord Mansfield's speech, of which, by the aid of Mr. 
 Longlands, the solicitor on the other side, who obligingly 
 allowed me to compare his note with my own, I have a full 
 copy : ' My Lords, severity is not the way to govern either 
 boys or men.' ' Nay, (said Johnson,) it is the way to govern 
 them. I know not whether it be the way to moid them.' 
 
 I talked of the recent expulsion of six students from the 
 University of Oxford, who were methodists and would not 
 desist from publickly praying and exhorting'. JOHNSON. 
 
 as he best could.' Scotch Appeal Cases, xvii. p. 214. The judgment 
 of the House of Lords is given in Paton's Reports of Cases tipon Ap- 
 peal from Scotland, ii. 277, as follows : — ' A schoolmaster, appointed by 
 the Magistrates and Town Council of Cambelton, without any men- 
 tion being made as to whether his office was for life or at pleasure : 
 Held that it was a public office, and that he was liable to be dismissed 
 for a just and reasonable cause, and that acts of cruel chastisement 
 of the boys were a justifiable cause for his dismissal; reversing the 
 judgment of the Court of Session. . . . The proof led before his dis- 
 mission went to shew that scarce a day passed without some of the 
 scholars coming home with their heads cut, and their bodies discol- 
 oured. He beat his pupils with wooden squares, and sometimes with 
 his fists, and used his feet by kicking them, and dragged them by the 
 hair of the head. He had also entered into the trade of cattle graz- 
 ing and farming — dealt in black cattle — in the shipping business — and 
 in herring fishing.' 
 
 * These six Methodists were in 1768 expelled St. Edmund's Hall, 
 by the Vice -Chancellor, acting as 'visitor.' Nominally they were 
 expelled for their ignorance; in reality for their active Methodism. 
 That they were ' mighty ignorant fellows ' was shown, but ignorance 
 Avas tolerated at Oxford. One of their number confessed his igno- 
 rance, and declined all examination. But ' 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 think fit to remove him for this 
 reason only, though he was supposed to be one of " the righteous 
 over-much.'" Dr.fohnson: His Friends atid his Critics, pp. 51-57. 
 Horace Walpole, Whig though he was, thought as Johnson. ' Ox- 
 ford,' he wrote (Letters, v. 97), ' has begun with these rascals, and I 
 hope Cambridge will wake.' 
 
 'Sir,
 
 Aetat. 63.] 'In vino Veritas^. 215 
 
 * 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 ? Where is religion to be 
 learnt but at an University? 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?' JOHNSON. ' 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.' Lord Elibank used to repeat this as an illus- 
 tration uncommonly happy. 
 
 Desirous of calling Johnson forth to talk, and exercise his 
 wit, though I should myself be the object of it, I resolutely 
 ventured to undertake the defence of convivial indulgence 
 in wine, though he was not to-night in the most genial hu- 
 mour ^ After urging the common plausible topicks, I at last 
 had recourse to the maxim, in viiio Veritas^ a man who is 
 well warmed with wine will speak truth \ JOHNSON. ' Why, 
 
 ' Much such an expulsion as this Johnson had justified in his Life 
 of Cluyncl {Works, vi. 415). 'A temper of this kind,' he wrote, 'is 
 generally inconvenient and offensive in any society, but in a place of 
 education is least to be tolerated. . . . He may be justly driven from 
 a society, by which he thinks himself too wise to be governed, and in 
 which he is too young to teach, and too opinionative to learn.' 
 
 "^ Johnson wrote far otherwise of the indulgence shown to Edmund 
 Smith, the poet. ' The indecency and licentiousness of his behaviour 
 drew upon him, Dec. 24, 1694, while he was yet only bachelor, a pub- 
 lick admonition, entered upon record, in order to his expulsion. Of 
 this reproof the effect is not known. He was probably less notori- 
 ous. At Oxford, as we all know, much will be forgiven to literary 
 merit. ... Of his lampoon upon Dean Aldrich, [Smith was a Christ- 
 Church man], I once heard a single line too gross to be repeated. 
 But he was still a genius and a scholar, and Oxford was unwilling to 
 lose him ; he was endured with all his pranks and his vices two years 
 longer; but on Dec. 20, 1705, at the instance of all the Canons, the 
 sentence declared five years before was put in execution. The exe- 
 cution was, I believe, silent and tender.' Works, \'\\. 373-4. 
 
 ^ ':icc post, p. 222, note i. 
 
 * ' Our bottle-conversation,' wrote Addison, ' is infected with party- 
 lying.' The Spectator, No. 507. 
 
 Sir,
 
 2i6 Education of the people. [a. d. 1772. 
 
 Sir, that may be an argument for drinking, if you suppose 
 men in general to be liars. But, Sir, I would not keep com- 
 pany with a fellow, who lyes as long as he is sober, and 
 whom you must make drunk before you can get a word of 
 truth out of him '.' 
 
 Mr. Laneton told us he was about to establish a school 
 upon his estate, but it had been suggested to him, that it 
 might have a tendency to make the people less industrious. 
 Johnson. ' No, Sir. While learning to read and write is a 
 distinction, the few who have that distinction may be the 
 less inclined to work ; but when every body learns to read 
 and write, it is no longer a distinction '. A man who has a 
 laced waistcoat is too fine a man to work ; but if every body 
 had laced waistcoats, we should have people working in laced 
 waistcoats. There are no people whatever more industrious, 
 none who work more, than our manufacturers^; yet they 
 have all learnt to read and write. Sir, you must not neglect 
 doing a thing immediately good, from fear of remote evil; 
 — from fear of its being abused \ A man who has candles 
 
 ' Mrs. Piozzi, in her Anecdotes, p. 261, has given an erroneous ac- 
 count of tiiis incident, as of many others. She pretends to relate it 
 from recollection, as if she herself had been present; when the fact is 
 that it was communicated to her by me. She has represented it as a 
 personality, and the true point has escaped her. Boswell. She tells 
 
 the story against Boswell. ' I fancy Mr. B has not forgotten,' 
 
 she writes. 
 
 ' See /^^/, April 11, 1776. 
 
 ^ Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines manufactttrer as a workman ; 
 an artificer. 
 
 ^ Johnson had no fear of popular education. In his attack on 
 Jenyns's Enquiry {ante, i. 365), he wrote ( Works, vi. 56) :— ' Though it 
 should be granted that those who are born to poverty and drudgery 
 should not be deprived by an improper education of the opiate of igno- 
 rance, G.\&n this concession will not be of much use to direct our prac- 
 tice, unless it be determined, who are those that are born to poverty. 
 To entail irreversible poverty upon generation after generation, only 
 because the ancestor happened to be poor, is in itself cruel, if not 
 unjust. ... I am always afraid of determining on the side of envy or 
 cruelty. The privileges of education may sometimes be improperly 
 bestowed, but I shall always fear to withhold them, lest I should be 
 
 may
 
 Aetat. 63.] Tacitus. 2 1 7 
 
 may sit up too late, which he would not do if he had not 
 candles ; but nobody will deny that the art of making 
 candles, by which light is continued to us beyond the time 
 that the sun gives us light, is a valuable art, and ought to 
 be preserved.' BOSWELL. ' But, Sir, would it not be better 
 to follow Nature ; and go to bed and rise just as nature 
 gives us light or with-holds it?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; for 
 then we should have no kind of equality in the partition 
 of our time between sleeping and waking. It would be 
 very different in different seasons and in different places. 
 In some of the northern parts of Scotland how little light 
 is there in the depth of winter !' 
 
 We talked of Tacitus', and I hazarded an opinion, that 
 with all his merit for penetration, shrewdness of judgement, 
 and terseness of expression, he was too compact, too much 
 broken into hints, as it were, and therefore too difficult to be 
 understood. To my great satisfaction, Dr. Johnson sanc- 
 tioned this opinion. ' Tacitus, Sir, seems to me rather to 
 have made notes for an historical work, than to have writ- 
 ten a history ^' 
 
 At this time it appears from his Prayers and Meditations, 
 that he had been more than commonly diligent in religious 
 duties, particularly in reading the Holy Scriptures. It was 
 Passion Week, that solemn season which the Christian world 
 has appropriated to the commemoration of the mysteries of 
 our redemption, and during which, whatever embers of re- 
 ligion are in our breasts, will be kindled into pious warmth. 
 
 yielding to the suggestions of pride, while I persuade myself that I 
 am following the maxims of policy.' In The Idler, No. 26, he attacked 
 those who ' hold it little less than criminal to teach poor girls to read 
 and write,' and who say that ' they who are born to poverty are born 
 to ignorance, and will work the harder the less they know.' 
 
 ' Tacitus's Agrkola, ch. xii., was no doubt quoted in reference to 
 the shortness of the northern winter day. 
 
 * It is remarkable, that Lord Monboddo, whom, on account of his 
 resembling Dr. Johnson in some particulars, Footc called an Elzevir 
 edition of him, has, by coincidence, niad(^ the very same remark. Ori- 
 j^t'n and Progress 0/ Language, vol. iii. 2nd ed. p. 219. Boswell. See 
 Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, note. 
 
 I paid
 
 2i8 Johnson reads the Bible through, [a.d. 1773. 
 
 I paid him short visits both on Friday and Saturday, and 
 seeing his large foHo Greek Testament before him, beheld 
 him with a rcv^erential awe, and would not intrude upon his 
 time'. While he was thus employed to such good purpose, 
 and while his friends in their intercourse with him con- 
 stantly found a vigorous intellect and a lively imagination, 
 it is melancholy to read in his private register, ' My mind 
 is unsettled and my memory confused. I have of late 
 turned my thoughts with a very useless earnestness upon 
 past incidents. I have yet got no command over my 
 thoughts ; an unpleasing incident is almost certain to hinder 
 my rest^' What philosophick heroism was it in him to 
 appear with such manly fortitude to the world, while he 
 was inwardly so distressed ! We may surely believe that 
 the mysterious principle of being 'made perfect through suf- 
 fering^' was to be strongly exemplified in him. 
 
 On Sunday, April 19, being Easter-day, General Paoli and 
 I paid him a visit before dinner. We talked of the notion 
 that blind persons can distinguish colours by the touch. 
 Johnson said, that Professor Sanderson^ mentions his having 
 
 ' On Saturday night Johnson recorded : — ' I resolved last Easter to 
 read within the year the whole Bible, a very great part of which 1 
 had never looked upon. I read the Greek Testament without con- 
 struing, and this day concluded the Apocalypse. . . . Easter Day. 
 After twelve at night. The day is now begun on which I hope to 
 begin a new course, wa-rrep d^' vaTrXTjyyav, [as if from the starting- 
 place.] 
 
 My hopes are from this time — 
 To rise early, 
 To waste less time, 
 To appropriate something to charity.' 
 
 A week later he recorded : — ' It is a comfort to me that at last, in my 
 sixty-third year, I have attained to know even thus hastily, confused- 
 ly, and imperfectly, what my Bible contains. I have never yet read 
 the Apocrypha. I have sometimes looked into the Maccabees, and 
 read a chapter containing the question, IV/nc/i zs the strongest? I 
 think, in Esdras' [i Esdras, ch. iii. v. lo]. Pr. and Med.'p^. 112-118. 
 
 ^ P7-. and Med. p. 1 1 1. BOSWELL. 
 
 ^ ' Perfect through sufferings.' Hebrerus, ii. 10. 
 
 * ' I was alwaj's so incapable of learning mathematics,' wrote Hor- 
 
 attempted
 
 Aetat. 63.] Taste in the arts. 2 1 9 
 
 attempted to do it, but that he found he was aiming at an 
 impossibility ; that to be sure a difference in the surface 
 makes the difference of colours ; but that difference is so 
 fine, that it is not sensible to the touch. The General men- 
 tioned jugglers and fraudulent gamesters, who could know 
 cards by the touch. Dr. Johnson said, ' the cards used by 
 such persons must be less polished than ours commonly 
 are.' 
 
 We talked of sounds. The General said, there was no 
 beauty in a simple sound, but only in an harmonious com- 
 position of sounds. I presumed to differ from this opinion, 
 and mentioned the soft and sweet sound of a fine woman's 
 voice. Johnson. ' No, Sir, if a serpent or a toad uttered it, 
 you would think it ugly.' BOSWELL, ' So you would think. 
 Sir, were a beautiful tune to be uttered by one of those 
 animals.' JOHNSON. ' No, Sir, it would be admired. We 
 have seen fine fiddlers whom we liked as little as toads.' 
 (laughing.) 
 
 Talking on the subject of taste in the arts, he said, that 
 difference of taste was, in truth, difference of skill \ BOS- 
 WELL. 'But, Sir, is there not a quality called taste ^ which 
 
 ace Walpole {Letters, ix. 467), 'that I could not even get by heart the 
 multiplication table, as blind Professor Sanderson honestly told me, 
 above three -score years ago, when I went to his lectures at Cam- 
 bridge. After the first fortnight he said to me, " Young man, it 
 would be cheating you to take your money ; for you never can learn 
 what I am tr^nng to teach you." I was exceedingly mortified, 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.' 
 
 ' Reynolds said : — ' Out of the great number of critics in this me- 
 tropolis who all pretend to knowledge in pictures, the greater part 
 must be mere pretenders only. Taste does not come by chance ; it is 
 a long and laborious task to acquire it.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 264. 
 
 ' 'Jemmy Boswell,' wrote John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon), 
 'called upon me, desiring to know what would be my definition of 
 taste. I told him I mu.st decline defining it, because I knew he would 
 publish it. He continued his importunities in frequent calls, and in 
 one complained mucii that I would not give him it, as he had that 
 morning got Henry Dundas's, Sir A. Macdonald's, and J. Anstruther's 
 
 consists
 
 2 20 Johnsoiis reflection against Garrick. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 consists merely in perception or in liking? For instance, we 
 find people differ much as to what is the best style of Eng- 
 lish composition. Some think Swift's the best ; others pre- 
 fer a fuller and grander way of writing.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, 
 you must first define what you mean by style, before you 
 can judge who has a good taste in style, and who has a bad. 
 The two classes of persons whom you have mentioned don't 
 differ as to good and bad. They both agree that Swift has 
 a good neat style ' ; but one loves a neat style, another 
 loves a style of more splendour. In like manner, one loves 
 a plain coat, another loves a laced coat ; but neither will 
 deny that each is good in its kind.' 
 
 While I remained in London this spring, I was with him 
 at several other times, both by himself and in company. I 
 dined with him one day at the Crown and Anchor tavern, 
 in the Strand, with Lord Elibank, Mr. Langton, and Dr. 
 Vansittart of Oxford. Without specifying each particular 
 day, I have preserved the following memorable things. 
 
 I regretted the reflection in his Preface to Shakspeare 
 against Garrick, to whom we cannot but apply the follow- 
 ing passage : ' I collated such copies as I could procure, and 
 
 definitions. " Well, then," I said, " Boswell, we must have an end of 
 this. Taste, according to my definition, is the judgment which Dun- 
 das, Macdonald, Anstruther, and you manifested when you determined 
 to quit Scotland and to come into the south. You may publish this if 
 you please." ' Twiss's Eldon, i. 303. S&q J)osi, April 10, 1778, note for 
 Lord Eldon. 
 
 ' Johnson ( Works, viii. 220) says that ' Swift's delight was in sim- 
 plicity. That he has in his works no metaphor, as has been said, is 
 not true ; but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by neces- 
 sity than choice. He studied purity. . . . His style was well suited to 
 his thoughts. . . . He pays no court to the passions ; he excites nei- 
 ther surprise nor admiration ; he always understands himself, and his 
 reader always understands him ; the peruser of Swift wants little pre- 
 vious knowledge ; it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with com- 
 mon words and common things ; . . . [his style] instructs, but it does 
 not persuade.' Hume describes Swift's style as one which he ' can 
 approve, but surely can never admire. It has no harmony, no elo- 
 quence, no ornament, and not much correctness, whatever the Eng- 
 lish may imagine.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 413. 
 
 wished
 
 Aetat. 63.] JoJiusons reflection against Garrick. 221 
 
 wished for more, but have not found the collectors of these 
 rarities very communicative '.' I told him, that Garrick had 
 complained to me of it, and had vindicated himself by as- 
 suring me, that Johnson was made welcome to the full use 
 of his collection, and that he left the key of it with a servant, 
 with orders to have a fire and every convenience for him. 
 I found Johnson's notion was, that Garrick wanted to be 
 courted for them, and that, on the contrary, Garrick should 
 have courted him, and sent him the plays of his own ac- 
 cord. But, indeed, considering the slovenly and careless 
 manner in which books were treated by Johnson, it could 
 not be expected that scarce and valuable editions should 
 have been lent to him". 
 
 ' Johnson's Works, v. 146. 
 
 - Dr. Warton wrote on Jan. 22, 1766 : — ' Garrick is entirely off from 
 Johnson, and cannot, he says, forgive him his insinuating tliat he with- 
 held his old editions, which ahvays were open to him ; nor, I suppose, 
 his never mentioning him in all his works.' Wooll's lVar/ofi,p. ^i;^. 
 Beauclerk wrote to Lord Charlemont in 1773: — ' 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 m your own defence. Johnson shall spoil your 
 books, Goldsmith pull your flowers, and Boswell talk to you ; stay then 
 if you can.' Charlemont's Life, i. 347. Yet Garrick had lent Johnson 
 some books, for Johnson wrote to him on Oct. 10, 1766: — 'I return 
 you thanks for the present of the Dictionary, and will take care to 
 return you [qu. your] other books.' Garrick Corres. 1. 245. Steevens, 
 who had edited Johnson's Shakespeare, wrote to Garrick : — ' I have 
 taken the liberty to introduce your name, because / have found no 
 reason to say that the possessors of the old quartos were not suffi- 
 ciently communicative.' lb. p. 501. Mme. D'Arblay describes how 
 ' Garrick, giving a thundering stamp on some mark on the carpet that 
 struck his eye — not with passion or displeasure, but merely as if from 
 singularity — took off Dr. Johnson's voice in a short dialogue with him- 
 self that had passed the preceding week. " David ! Will you lend 
 me your Pctrarca ?" " Y-e-s, Sir !" " David ! you sigh ?" " Sir — you 
 shall have it certainly." " Accordingly," Mr. Garrick continued, " the 
 book, stupendously bound, I sent to him that very evening. But 
 scarcely had he taken it in his hands, when, as Boswell tells me, he 
 poured forth a Greek ejaculation and a couplet or two from Horace, 
 and then in one of those fits of enthusiasm which always seem to 
 require that he should spread his arms aloft, he suddenly pounces my 
 
 A gentleman
 
 222 Arguments for drinkmg. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 A gentleman' having to some of the usual arguments for 
 drinking added this : ' You know, Sir, drinking drives away 
 care, and makes us forget whatever is disagreeable. Would 
 not you allow a man to drink for that reason?' Johnson. 
 ' Yes, Sir, if he sat next you! 
 
 I expressed a liking for Mr. Francis Osborne's works, and 
 asked him what he thought of that writer. He answere'd, 
 ' A conceited fellow. Were a man to write so now, the boys 
 would throw stones at him.' He, however, did not alter my 
 opinion of a favourite authour, to whom I was first directed 
 by his being quoted in The Spectator'^, and in whom I have 
 found much shrewd and lively sense, expressed indeed in 
 a style somewhat quaint, which, however, I do not dislike. 
 His book has an air of originality. We figure to ourselves 
 an ancient gentleman talking to us. 
 
 When one of his friends endeavoured to maintain that a 
 
 poor Pdrarca over his head upon the floor. And then, standing for 
 several minutes lost in abstraction, he forgot probably that he had 
 ever seen it." ' Dr. Barney's Memoirs, i. 352. See post, under Aug. 
 12, 1784. 
 
 ' The gentleman most likely is Boswell {ante, ii. 15, note 3). I sus- 
 pect that this anecdote belongs to ante, April 14, when 'Johnson was 
 not in the most genial humour.* Boswell, while showing that Mrs. 
 Piozzi misrepresented an incident of that evening 'as a personality,' 
 would be afraid of weakening his case by letting it be seen that John- 
 son on that occasion was very personal. Since writing this I have 
 noticed that Dr. T. Campbell records in his Diary, p. 53, that on April 
 I, 1775, he was dining at Mr. Thrale's with Boswell, when many of 
 Johnson's ' bon-mots were retailed. Boswell arguing in favour of a 
 cheerful glass, adduced the maxim in vino Veritas. " Well," says 
 Johnson, " and what then, unless a man has lived a lie." Boswell then 
 urged that it made a man forget all his cares. " That to be sure," 
 says Johnson, " might be of use, if a man sat by such a person as 
 you." ' Campbell's account confirms what Boswell asserts (ante, ii. 
 216) that Mrs. Piozzi had the anecdote from him. 
 
 ■ No. 1 50. The quotation is from Francis Osborne's Advice to a 
 Son. Swift, in The Tatler, No. 230, ranks Osborne with some other 
 authors, who ' being men of the Court, and affecting the phrases then 
 in fashion, are often either not to be understood, or appear perfectly 
 ridiculous.' 
 
 country
 
 Aetat. 03.] The story of a Jlca. 223 
 
 country' gentleman might contrive to pass his Hfe very agree- 
 abh', ' Sir, (said he,) you cannot give me an instance of any 
 man who is permitted to lay out his own time, contriving 
 not to have tedious hours'.' This observation, however, is 
 equally applicable to gentlemen who live in cities, and are 
 of no profession. 
 
 He said, ' there is no permanent national character; it 
 varies according to circumstances. Alexander the Great 
 swept India : now the Turks sweep Greece.' 
 
 A learned gentleman who in the course of conversation 
 wished to inform us of this simple fact, that the Counsel 
 upon the circuit at Shrewsbury were much bitten by fleas, 
 took, I suppose, seven or eight minutes in relating it circum- 
 stantially. He in a plenitude of phrase told us, that large 
 bales of woollen cloth were lodged in the town -hall; — 
 that by reason of this, fleas nestled there in prodigious 
 numbers ; that the lodgings of the counsel were near to the 
 town-hall ; — and that those little animals moved from place 
 to place with wonderful agility. Johnson sat in great im- 
 patience till the gentleman had finished his tedious narra- 
 tive, and then burst out, (playfully however,) 'It is a pity, 
 Sir, that you have not seen a lion ; for a flea has taken you 
 such a time, that a lion must have served you a twelve- 
 month '.' 
 
 He would not allow Scotland to derive any credit from 
 Lord Mansfield ; for he was educated in England. ' Much, 
 (said he,) may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught 
 young \' 
 
 * Seepos/, May 13, 1778, and June 30, 1784. 
 
 ^ Mrs. Piozzi, to whom I told this anecdote, has related it, as if the 
 gentleman had given ' the 7iatiiral history of the mouse' Alice, p. 191. 
 BOSWELL. The gentleman was very likely Dr. Vansittart, who is men- 
 tioned just before. (See ante, i. 402, note 3.) Mrs. Thrale, in 1773, 
 wrote to Johnson of ' the man that saw the mouse.' Piozzi Letters, i. 
 186. From Johnson's answer {ib. p. 197) it seems that she meant Van- 
 sittart. Mr. Croker says ' this proves that Johnson himself sanctioned 
 Mrs. Piozzi 's version of the story — mouse versus y/tv;.' Mr. Croker has 
 an odd notion of what constitutes both a proof and a sanction. 
 
 ' Lord Shelburnc says that ' William Murray [Lord Mansfield] was 
 
 Talkincr
 
 2 24 The manuscripts of authours. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 Talking of a modern historian and a modern moralist ', 
 he said, ' There is more thought in the moralist than in the 
 historian. There is but a shallow stream of thought in his- 
 tory.' BOSWELL. ' But surely, Sir, an historian has reflec- 
 tion.' Johnson. 'Why yes, Sir; and so has a cat when she 
 catches a mouse for her kitten. But she cannot write like 
 ******* . neither can *********.' 
 
 He said, ' I am very unwilling to read the manuscripts of 
 authours, and give them my opinion ". If the authours who 
 apply to me have money I bid them boldly print without 
 a name ; if they have written in order to get money, I tell 
 them to go to the booksellers, and make the best bargain 
 they can.' BoswELL. ' But, Sir, if a bookseller should bring 
 you a manuscript to look at ?' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, I 
 would desire the bookseller to take it away.' 
 
 I mentioned a friend of mine who had resided long in 
 Spain, and was unwilling to return to Britain. JOHNSON. 
 ' Sir, he is attached to some woman.' BoswELL. ' I rather 
 believe, Sir, it is the fine climate which keeps him there.' 
 Johnson. 'Nay, Sir, how can you talk so? What is cli- 
 mate to happiness^? Place me in the heart of Asia, should 
 I not be exiled ? What proportion does climate bear to the 
 complex system of human life? You may advise me to go 
 to live at Bologna to eat sausages. The sausages there are 
 the best in the world ; they lose much by being carried.' 
 
 On Saturday, May 9, Mr. Dempster^ and I had agreed to 
 
 sixteen years of age when he came out of Scotland, and spoke such 
 broad Scotch that he stands entered in the University books at Ox- 
 ford as born at Bath, the Vice-Chancellor mistaking Batti for Perth! 
 Fitzmaurice's Shelbunie, i. 87. 
 
 ' The asterisks seem to show that Beattie and Robertson are meant. 
 This is rendered more probable from the fact that the last paragraph 
 is about Scotchmen. 
 
 " See a7tte, ii. 57. 
 
 ' Boswell's friend was very likely his brother David, who had long 
 resided in Valencia. In that case, Johnson came round to Boswell's 
 opinion, for he wrote, ' he will find Scotland but a sorry place after 
 twelve years' residence in a happier climate ;' post, April 29, 1780. 
 
 * See a7ite, i. 513, note 2. 
 
 dine
 
 Aetat. 63.] '' Vicious intro7nissio7i! 225 
 
 dine by ourselves at the British Coffee-house. Johnson, on 
 whom I happened to call in the morning, said he would join 
 us, which he did, and we spent a very agreeable day, though 
 I recollect but little of what passed. 
 
 He said, ' Walpole was a minister given by the King to 
 the people : Pitt was a minister given by the people to the 
 King, — as an adjunct.' 
 
 'The misfortune of Goldsmith in conversation is this: he 
 goes on without knowing how he is to get off. His genius 
 is great, but his knowledge is small. As they say of a gen- 
 erous man, it is a pity he is not rich, we may say of Gold- 
 smith, it is a pity he is not knowing. He would not keep 
 his knowledge to himself.' 
 
 Before leaving London this year, I consulted him upon a 
 question purely of Scotch law. It was held of old, and con- 
 tinued for a long period, to be an established principle in 
 that law, that whoever intermeddled with the effects of a 
 person deceased, without the interposition of legal authority 
 to guard against embezzlement, should be subjected to pay 
 all the debts of the deceased, as having been guilty of what 
 was technically called vicious intromission. The Court of 
 Session had gradually relaxed the strictness of this princi- 
 ple, where the interference proved had been inconsiderable. 
 In a case ' which came before that Court the preceding win- 
 ter, I had laboured to persuade the Judges to return to the 
 ancient law. It was my own sincere opinion, that they ought 
 to adhere to it ; but I had exhausted all my powers of rea- 
 soning in vain. Johnson thought as I did ; and in order to 
 assist me in my application to the Court for a revision and 
 alteration of the judgement, he dictated to mc the following 
 argument : — 
 
 ' This, we are told, is a law which has its force only from the long 
 practice of the Court : and may, therefore, be suspended or modi- 
 fied as the Court shall think proper. 
 
 ' Concerning the power of the Court to make or to suspend 
 a law, we have no intention to inquire. It is sufficient for our 
 
 ' Wilson against Smith and. Armour. Bosvvell. 
 II.-15
 
 226 ^Vicious intromission^ [a. d. 1772. 
 
 purpose that every just law is dictated by reason ; and that the prac- 
 tice of every legal Court is regulated by equity. It is the quality 
 of reason to be invariable and constant ; and of equity, to give to 
 one man what, in the same case, is given to another. The advan- 
 tage which humanity derives from law is this : that the law gives 
 every man a rule of action, and prescribes a mode of conduct which 
 shall entitle him to the support and protection of society. That 
 the law may be a rule of action, it is necessary that it be known ; 
 it is necessary that it be permanent and stable. The law is the 
 measure of civil right ; but if the measure be changeable, the ex- 
 tent of the thing measured never can be settled. 
 
 'To permit a law to be modified at discretion, is to leave the 
 community without law. It is to withdraw the direction of that 
 publick wisdom, by which the deficiencies of private understand- 
 ing are to be supplied. It is to suffer the rash and ignorant to act 
 at discretion, and then to depend for the legality of that action on 
 the sentence of the Judge. He that is thus governed, lives not by 
 law, but by opinion : not by a certain rule to which he can apply 
 his intention before he acts, but by an uncertain and variable opin- 
 ion, which he can never know but after he has committed the act 
 on which that opinion shall be passed. He lives by a law, (if a 
 law it be,) which he can never know before he has offended it. 
 To this case may be justly applied that important principle, jnisera 
 est servitus ubi jus est ant incognitum aiit vagum. If Intromission 
 be not criminal till it exceeds a certain point, and that point be un- 
 settled, and consequently different in different minds, the right of 
 Intromission, and the right of the Creditor arising from it, are all 
 jura vaga, and, by consequence, are jura incognita ; and the result 
 can be no other than a misera servitus, an uncertainty concerning 
 the event of action, a servile dependence on private opinion. 
 
 ' It may be urged, and with great plausibility, that there may be 
 Intromission without fraud ; which, however true, will by no means 
 justify an occasional and arbitrary relaxation of the law. The end 
 of law is protection as well as vengeance. Indeed, vengeance is 
 never used but to strengthen protection. That society only is well 
 governed, where life is freed from danger and from suspicion ; 
 where possession is so sheltered by salutary prohibitions, that vio- 
 lation is prevented more frequently than punished. Such a pro- 
 hibition was this, while it operated with its original force. The 
 creditor of the deceased was not only without loss, but without 
 fear. He was not to seek a remedy for an injury suffered ; for, 
 injury was warded off. 
 
 'As
 
 Aetat. 63.] "■ Viciotis intromission^ 227 
 
 ' As the law has been sometimes administered, it lays us open to 
 wounds, because it is imagined to have the power of healing. To 
 punish fraud when it is detected, is the proper act of vindictive 
 justice ; but to prevent frauds, and make punishment unnecessary, 
 is the great employment of legislative wisdom. To permit Intro- 
 mission, and to punish fraud, is to make law no better than a pit- 
 fall. To tread upon the brink is safe ; but to come a step further 
 is destruction. But, surely, it is better to enclose the gulf, and hin- 
 der all access, than by encouraging us to advance a little, to entice 
 us afterwards a little further, and let us perceive our folly only by 
 our destruction. 
 
 ' As law supplies the weak with adventitious strength, it likewise 
 enlightens the ignorant with extrinsick understanding. Law teaches 
 us to know when we commit injury, and when we suffer it. It fixes 
 certain marks upon actions, by which we are admonished to do or 
 to forbear them. Qui sibi bene femperat in licitis, says one of the 
 fathers, nunquam cadet in illicita. He who never intromits at all, 
 will never intromit with fraudulent intentions. 
 
 ' The relaxation of the law against vicious intromission has been 
 very favourably represented by a great master of jurisprudence ', 
 whose words have been exhibited with unnecessary pomp, and 
 seem to be considered as irresistibly decisive. The great moment 
 of his authority makes it necessary to examine his position. " Some 
 ages ago, (says he,) before the ferocity of the inhabitants of this 
 part of the island was subdued, the utmost severity of the civil law 
 was necessary, to restrain individuals from plundering each other. 
 Thus, the man who intermeddled irregularly with the moveables 
 of a person deceased, was subjected to all the debts of the deceased 
 without limitation. This makes a branch of the law of Scotland, 
 known by the name of vicious intromission ; and so rigidly was this 
 regulation applied in our Courts of Law, that the most trifling 
 moveable abstracted mala fide, subjected the intermeddler to the 
 foregoing consequences, which proved in many instances a most 
 rigorous punishment. But this severity was necessary, in order to 
 subdue the undisciplined nature of our people. It is extremely 
 remarkable, that in proportion to our improvement in manners, 
 this regulation has been gradually softened, and applied by our 
 sovereign Court with a sparing hand." 
 
 ' I find myself under a necessity of observing, that this learned and 
 judicious writer has not accurately distinguished the deficiencies 
 
 ' Lord Kames, in h\s Historical Law Tracts. BOSWELL. 
 
 and
 
 228 ^ Vicious intromission.' [a. d. 1773. 
 
 and demands of the different conditions of human life, which, from 
 a degree of savageness and independence, in which all laws are 
 vain, passes or may pass, by innumerable gradations, to a state 
 of reciprocal benignity, in which laws shall be no longer necessary. 
 Men are first wild and unsocial, living each man to himself, taking 
 from the weak, and losing to the strong. In their first coalitions 
 of society, much of this original savageness is retained. Of gen- 
 eral happiness, the product of general confidence, there is yet no 
 thought. Men continue to prosecute their own advantages by the 
 nearest way ; and the utmost severity of the civil law is necessary 
 to restrain individuals from plundering each other. The restraints 
 then necessary, are restraints from plunder, from acts of publick 
 violence, and undisguised oppression. The ferocity of our ances- 
 tors, as of all other nations, produced not fraud, but rapine. They 
 had not yet learned to cheat, and attempted only to rob. As man- 
 ners grow more polished, with the knowledge of good, men attain 
 likewise dexterity in evil. Open rapine becomes less frequent, and 
 violence gives way to cunning. Those who before invaded pastures 
 and stormed houses, now begin to enrich themselves by unequal 
 contracts and fraudulent intromissions. It is not against the vio- 
 lence of ferocity, but the circumventions of deceit, that this law 
 was framed ; and I am afraid the increase of commerce, and the 
 incessant struggle for riches which commerce excites, give us no 
 prospect of an end speedily to be expected of artifice and fraud. 
 It therefore seems to be no very conclusive reasoning, which con- 
 nects those two propositions ; — " the nation is become less fero- 
 cious, and therefore the laws against fraud and covin ' shall be re- 
 laxed." 
 
 'Whatever reason may have influenced the Judges to a relaxa- 
 tion of the law, it was not that the nation was grown less fierce ; 
 and, I am afraid, it cannot be affirmed, that it is grown less fraudu- 
 lent. 
 
 ' Since this law has been represented as rigorously and unreasona- 
 bly penal, it seems not improper to consider what are the conditions 
 and qualities that make the justice or propriety of a penal law. 
 
 'To make a penal law reasonable and just, two conditions are 
 necessary, and two proper. It is necessary that the law should be 
 adequate to its end ; that, if it be observed, it shall prevent the 
 evil against which it is directed. It is, secondly, necessary that the 
 
 ' ' Covin. A deceitful agreement between two or more to the hurt 
 of another.' Johnson's Dictionary. 
 
 end
 
 Aetat. 63.] '' Vicious intromission^ 229 
 
 end of the law be of such importance, as to deserve the security 
 of a penal sanction. The other conditions of a penal law, which 
 though not absolutely necessary, are to a very high degree fit, are, 
 that to the moral violation of the law there are many temptations, 
 and that of the physical observance there is great facility. 
 
 'AH these conditions apparently concur to justify the law which 
 we are now considering. Its end is the security of property ; and 
 property very often of great value. The method by which it effects 
 the security is efhcacious, because it admits, in its original rigour, 
 no gradations of injury; but keeps guilt and innocence apart, by a 
 distinct and definite limitation. He that intromits, is criminal ; he 
 that intromits not, is innocent. Of the two secondary considera- 
 tions it cannot be denied that both are in our favour. The temp- 
 tation to intromit is frequent and strong ; so strong and so frequent, 
 as to require the utmost activity of justice, and vigilance of caution, 
 to withstand its prevalence ; and the method by which a man may 
 entitle himself to legal intromission, is so open and so facile, that to 
 neglect it is a proof of fraudulent intention : for why should a man 
 omit to do, (but for reasons which he will not confess,) that which 
 he can do so easily, and that which he knows to be required by the 
 law .^ If temptation were rare, a penal law might be deemed un- 
 necessary. If the duty enjoined by the law were of difficult per- 
 formance, omission, though it could not be justified, might be pit- 
 ied. But in the present case, neither equity nor compassion operate 
 against it, A useful, a necessary law is broken, not only without 
 a reasonable motive, but with all the inducements to obedience 
 that can be derived from safety and facility. 
 
 ' I therefore return to my original position, that a law, to have its 
 effect, must be permanent and stable. It may be said, in the lan- 
 guage of the schools. Lex non recipit ?najus et minus, — we may have 
 a law, or we may have no law, but we cannot have half a law. We 
 must either have a rule of action, or be permitted to act by dis- 
 cretion and by chance. Deviations from the law must be uniformly 
 punished, or no man can be certain when he shall be safe. 
 
 ' That from the rigour of the original institution this Court has 
 sometimes departed, cannot be denied. But, as it is evident that 
 such deviations, as they make law uncertain, make life unsafe, I 
 hope, that of departing from it there will now be an end ; that the 
 wisdom of our ancestors will be treated with due reverence ; and 
 that consistent and steady decisions will furnish the people with a 
 rule of action, and leave fraud and fraudulent intromission no fut- 
 ure hope of impunity or escape.' 
 
 With
 
 230 Lord Karnes. [a.d. 1772. 
 
 With such comprehension of mind, and such clearness of 
 penetration, did he thus treat a subject ahogether new to 
 him, without any other preparation than my having stated 
 to him the arguments which had been used on each side of 
 the question. His intellectual powers appeared with pecul- 
 iar lustre, when tried against those of a writer of so much 
 fame as Lord Kames, and that too in his Lordship's own 
 department '. 
 
 This masterly argument, after being prefaced and con- 
 cluded with some sentences of my own, and garnished with 
 the usual formularies, was actually printed and laid before 
 the Lords of Session ^ but without success. My respected 
 friend Lord Hailes, however, one of that honourable body, 
 had critical sagacity enough to discover a more than ordi- 
 nary hand in the Petition. I told him Dr. Johnson had fa- 
 voured me with his pen. His Lordship, with wonderful acu- 
 men, pointed out exactly where his composition began, and 
 
 * Lord Kames {Sketches of the History of Man, iv. i68) says : — ' The 
 undisciplined manners of our forefathers in Scotland made a law 
 necessaiy, that whoever intermeddled irregularly with the goods of a 
 deceased person should be subjected to pay all his debts, however 
 extensive. A due submission to legal authority has in effect abro- 
 gated that severe law, and it is now [1774] scarce ever heard of.' Scott 
 introduces Lord Kames in Redgawitlet, at the end of chap, i of the 
 Narrative : — ' " What's the matter with the auld bitch ne.xt?" said an 
 acute metaphysical judge, though somewhat coarse in his manners, 
 aside to his brethren.' In Boswell's poem The Court of Session Gar- 
 land, where the Scotch judges each give judgment, we read : — • 
 ' Alemore the judgment as illegal blames, 
 " 'Tis equity, you bitch," replies my Lord Kames.' 
 Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. i6i. Mr. Chambers adds (p. 
 171) that when Kames retired from the Bench, 'after addressing his 
 brethren in a solemn speech, in going out of the door of the court 
 room, he turned about, and casting them a last look, cried, in his usual 
 familiar tone, " Fare ye a' weel, ye bitches." ' 
 
 ^ At this time there were no civil juries in Scotland. ' But this was 
 made up for, to a certain extent, by the Supreme Court, consisting of 
 no fewer than fifteen judges ; who formed a sort of judicial jury, and 
 were dealt with as such. The great mass of the business was carried 
 on by writing.' Cockburn's /<?^r^j, i. %7. See post, Jan. 19, 1775, note. 
 
 where
 
 Aetat.63.] Casting pearls before swine. 231 
 
 where it ended '. But that I may do impartial justice, and 
 conform to the great rule of Courts, Suuin ciiiqiie tribuito, I 
 must add, that their Lordships in general, though they were 
 pleased to call this ' a well-drawn paper,' preferred the for- 
 mer very inferiour petition which I had written ; thus con- 
 firming the truth of an observation made to me by one of 
 their number, in a merry mood : ' My dear Sir, give yourself 
 no trouble in the composition of the papers you present to 
 us ; for, indeed, it is casting pearls before swine.' 
 
 I renewed my solicitations that Dr. Johnson would this 
 year accomplish his long-intended visit to Scotland. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 'The regret has not been little with which I have missed a 
 journey so pregnant with pleasing expectations, as that in which I 
 could promise myself not only the gratification of curiosity, both 
 rational and fanciful, but the delight of seeing those whom I love 
 and esteem. **********. But such has been the course of 
 things, that I could not come ; and such has been, I am afraid, the 
 state of my body, that it would not well have seconded my inclina- 
 tion. My body, I think, grows better, and I refer my hopes to an- 
 other year ; for I am very sincere in my design to pay the visit, and 
 take the ramble. In the mean time, do not omit any opportunity 
 of keeping up a favourable opinion of me in the minds of any of my 
 friends. Beattie's book "^ is, I believe, every day more liked ; at 
 least, I like it more, as I look more upon it. 
 
 ' I am glad if you got credit by your cause, and am yet of opinion, 
 
 ' In like manner, he had discovered the Life of Chcyncl to be John- 
 son's. 'Qo'assi&W's Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1774. 
 
 ^ The Essay on Truth, pubHshed in May, 1770. Beattie wrote on 
 Sept. 30, 1772 : — ' The fourth edition of my Essay is now in the press.' 
 Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 134. Three translations — French, Dutch, 
 and German — had, it seems, already appeared. /^. p. 121. ' Mr. John- 
 son made Goldsmith a comical answer one day, when seeming to re- 
 pine at the success of Beattie's Essay on Truth. " Here's such a stir," 
 said he, " about a fellow that has written one book, and I have written 
 many." "Ah, Doctor," says he, "there go two and forty sixpences 
 you know to one guinea." ' Piozzi's Anee. p. 179. See Boswell's //eb- 
 ridcs, Oct. i, 1773. 
 
 that
 
 232 The history of ancient tenures. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 that our cause was good, and that the determination ought to have 
 been in your favour. Poor Hastie ', I think, had but his deserts. 
 
 'You promised to get me a Uttle Findar, you may add to it a 
 little Ana cr con. 
 
 ' The leisure which I cannot enjoy, it will be a pleasure to hear 
 that you employ upon the antiquities of the feudal establishment. 
 The whole system of ancient tenures is gradually passing away ; 
 and I wish to have the knowledge of it preserved adequate and 
 complete. For such an institution makes a very important part of 
 the history of mankind. Do not forget a design so worthy of a 
 scholar who studies the laws of his country, and of a gentleman who 
 may naturally be curious to know the condition of his own ancestors. 
 
 'I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Yours with great affection, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 Q ' 
 
 •Aug. 31, I772^ 
 
 ' To Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Dec. 25, 1772. 
 
 *My Dear Sir, 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' I was much disappointed that you did not come to Scotland 
 last autumn. However, I must own that your letter prevents me 
 
 ' See ante, ii. i66, 210. 
 
 " On the same day he wrote to Dr. Taylor :— ' Your uneasiness at 
 the misfortunes of your relations, I comprehend perhaps too well. It 
 was an irresistible obtrusion of a disagreeable image, which you always 
 wished away, but could not dismiss, an incessant persecution of a 
 troublesome thought, neither to be pacified nor ejected. Such has of 
 late been the state of my own mind. I had formerly great command of 
 my attention, and what I did not like could forbear to think on. But 
 of this power, which is of the highest importance to the tranquillity 
 of life, I have been so much exhausted, that I do not go into a com- 
 pany towards night, in which I foresee anything disagreeable, nor en- 
 quire after anything to which I am not indifferent, lest something, 
 which I know to be nothing, should fasten upon my imagination, and 
 hinder me from sleep.' Notes and (2i(eries, 6th S., v. 383. On Oct. 6 
 he wrote to Dr. Taylor : — ' I am now within a few hours of being able 
 to send the whole Dictionary to the press \atite, ii. 178], and though I 
 often went sluggishly to the work, I am not much delighted at the 
 co[mpletion]. My purpose is to come down to Lichfield next week.' 
 lb. p. 422. He stayed some weeks there and in Ashbourne. Piozzi 
 Letters, i. 55-70. 
 
 from
 
 Aetat. 64.] Dr, Beattie. 233 
 
 from complaining ; not only because I am sensible that the state 
 of your health was but too good an excuse, but because you write 
 in a strain which shews that you have agreeable views of the 
 
 scheme which we have so long proposed. 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' I communicated to Beattie what you said of his book in your 
 last letter to me. He writes to me thus : — " You judge very rightly 
 in supposing that Dr. Johnson's favourable opinion of my book 
 must give me great delight. Indeed it is impossible for me to say 
 how much I am gratified by it ; for there is not a man upon earth 
 whose good opinion I would be more ambitious to cultivate. His 
 talents and his virtues I reverence more than any words can ex- 
 press. The extraordinary civilities ' (the paternal attentions I should 
 rather say,) and the many instructions I have had the honour to 
 receive from him, will to me be a perpetual source of pleasure in 
 the recollection, 
 
 '•'• Dum memor ipse met, dum spiritiis hos rcget ariiis^." 
 
 ' " I had still some thoughts, while the summer lasted, of being 
 obliged to go to London on some little business ; otherwise I should 
 certainly have troubled him with a letter several months ago, and 
 given some vent to my gratitude and admiration. This I intend to 
 do, as soon as I am left a little at leisure. Mean time, if you have 
 occasion to write to him, I beg you will offer him my most respect- 
 ful compliments, and assure him of the sincerity of my attachment 
 
 and the warmth of my gratitude." 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' I am, &c. 
 
 'James Boswell.' 
 
 1773: .^TAT. 64.] — In 1773 his only publication was an 
 edition of his folio Dictionary, with additions and cor- 
 rections ^ ; nor did he, so far as is known, furnish any 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 163, note i. 
 
 ^ ' While of myself I yet may think, while breath my body sways.' 
 
 Morris's ^Encz'ds, iv. 336. 
 
 ^ It should seem that this dictionary work was not unpleasant to 
 Jolinson ; for Stockdale records (Momnrs, ii. 179) that about 1774, 
 having told him that he had declined to edit a new edition of Cham- 
 bers's Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences, ' Johnson replied that if I 
 would not undertake it, he would. I expressed my astonishment that, 
 in his easy circumstances, he should think of preparing a new edition 
 
 productions
 
 2 34 Johnson mid Steevenss Shakspeare. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 productions of his fertile pen to any of his numerous friends 
 or dependants, except the Preface ' to his old amanuensis 
 Macbean's Dictionary of Ancient Geography''. His Shak- 
 speare, indeed, which had been received with high approba- 
 tion by the publick, and gone through several editions, was 
 this year re-published by George Steevens, Esq., a gentleman 
 not only deeply skilled in ancient learning, and of very exten- 
 sive reading in English literature, especially the early writers, 
 but at the same time of acute discernment and elegant taste ^ 
 It is almost unnecessary to say, that by his great and valua- 
 ble additions to Dr. Johnson's work, he justly obtained con- 
 siderable reputation : 
 
 '■ Divisum imperium cum Jove Cccsar habct^.^ 
 
 of a tedious, scientific dictionary. " Sir," said he, " I like that mud- 
 dhng work." He allowed some time to«|0 by, during which another 
 editor was found — Dr. Rees. ImmediatSy after this intelligence he 
 called on me, and his first words were : — " It is gone. Sir." ' 
 
 ' He, however, wrote, or partly wrote, an Epitaph on Mrs. Bell, wife 
 of his friend John Bell, Esq., brother of the Reverend Dr. Bell, Preb- 
 endary of Westminster, which is printed in his Works [i. 151]. It is 
 in English prose, and has so little of his manner, that I did not believe 
 he had any hand in it, till I was satisfied of the fact by the authority 
 of Mr. Bell. Boswell. ' The epitaph is to be seen in the parish 
 church of Watford.' Hawkins's yt?//;;^-!?;/, p. 471. 
 
 ^ See ante, \. 216. Mme. D'Arblay {Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 271) 
 says that this year Goldsmith projected a Dictionary of Arts and Sci- 
 ences, in which Johnson was to take the department of ethics, and 
 that Dr. Burney finished the article Musician. The scheme came to 
 nothing. 
 
 ^ We may doubt Steevens's taste. Garrick ' produced Ha?ntet with 
 alterations, rescuing,' as he said, ' that noble play from all the rubbish 
 of the fifth act ' {ante, ii. 98, note). Steevens wrote to Garrick : — ' I 
 expect great pleasure from the perusal of your altered Handet. It is 
 a circumstance in favour of the poet which I have long been wishing 
 for. You had better throw what remains of the piece into a farce, to 
 appear immediately afterwards. No foreigner who should happen to 
 be present at the exhibition, would ever believe it was formed out of 
 the loppings and excrescences of the tragedy itself. You may entitle 
 it The Grave-Diggcrs ; with the pleasant Humours of Osric, the Danish 
 Macaroni.' _ Garrick Corrcs. i. 45 1 . 
 
 * A line of an epigram in the Life of Virgil, ascribed to Donatus. 
 
 'To
 
 Aetat. 64.] A masquerade in EdinburgJi. 235 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I have read your kind letter much more than the elegant 
 Pindar -which it accompanied. I am always glad to find myself 
 not forgotten ; and to be forgotten by you would give me great un- 
 easiness. My northern friends have never been unkind to me : I 
 have from you, dear Sir, testimonies of affection, which I have not 
 ■ often been able to excite ; and Dr. Beattie rates the testimony which 
 I was desirous of paying to his merit, much higher than I should 
 have thought it reasonable to expect. 
 
 ' I have heard of your masquerade '. What says your synod to 
 such innovations ? I am not studiously scrupulous, nor do I think 
 a masquerade either evil in itself, or very likely to be the occasion 
 of evil , yet as the world thinks it a very licentious relaxation of 
 manners, I would not have been one of the first masquers in a 
 country where no masquerade had ever been before ^. 
 
 'A new edition of my great Dictionary is printed, from a copy 
 which I was persuaded to revise ; but having made no prepara- 
 tion, I was able to do very little. Some superfluities I have ex- 
 punged, and some faults I have corrected, and here and there 
 have scattered a remark : but the main fabrick of the work re- 
 mains as it was. I had looked very little into it since I wrote 
 it, and, I think, I found it full as often better, as worse, than I 
 expected. 
 
 ' Baretti and Davies have had a furious quarrel ^ ; a quarrel, I 
 
 ' Given by a lady at Edinburgh. Boswell. 
 
 ^ There had been masquerades in Scotland ; but not for a very long 
 time. Bosw^ell. ' Johnson,' as Mr. Croker observes, ' had no doubt 
 seen an account of the masquerade in the Gent. Mag. for January,' 
 p. 43. It is stated there that ' it was the first masquerade ever seen 
 in Scotland.' Boswell appeared as a dumb Conjurer. 
 
 ^ Mrs. Thrale recorded in 1776, after her quarrel with Baretti: — 'I 
 had occasion to talk of him with Tom Davies, who spoke with horror 
 of his ferocious temper; "and yet," says I, "there is great sensibility 
 about Baretti. I have seen tears often stand in his eyes." " Indeed," 
 replies Davies, " I should like to have seen that sight vastly, when — 
 even butchers weep." ' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 340. Davies said of Gold- 
 smith : — 'He least of all mankind approved Baretti's conversation; 
 he considered him as an insolent, overbearing foreigner.' Davies, in 
 the same passage, speaks of Baretti as ' this unhappy Italian.' Da- 
 vies's Garrick, ii. 168. As this was published in Baretti's life-time, the 
 man could scarcely have been so ferocious as he was described. 
 
 think,
 
 236 GoldsmitJis comedy. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 think, irreconcileable. Dr. Goldsmith has a new comedy, which is 
 expected in the spring. No name is yet given it '. The chief di- 
 version arises from a stratagem by which a lover is made to mistake 
 his future father-in-law's house for an inn. This, you see, borders 
 upon farce. The dialogue is quick and gay, and the incidents are 
 so prepared as not to seem improbable. 
 
 ' I am sorry that you lost your cause of Intromission, because I 
 yet think the arguments on your side unanswerable. But you seem,- 
 I think, to say that you gained reputation even by your defeat ; 
 and reputation you will daily gain, if you keep Lord Auchinleck's 
 precept in your mind, and endeavour to consolidate in your mind 
 a firm and regular system of law, instead of picking up occasional 
 fragments. 
 
 ' My health seems in general to improve ; but I have been trou- 
 bled for many weeks with a vexatious catarrh, which is sometimes 
 sufficiently distressful. I have not found any great effects from 
 bleeding and physick; and am afraid, that I must expect help 
 from brighter days and softer air. 
 
 ' Write to me now and then ; and whenever any good befalls 
 
 you, make haste to let me know it, for no one will rejoice at it 
 
 more than, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'London, Feb. 24, 1773.' 
 
 * You continue to stand very high in the favour of Mrs. Thrale.' 
 
 ' ' There were but a few days left before the comedy was to be acted, 
 and no name had been found for it. " We are all in labour," says 
 Johnson, whose labour of kindness had been untiring throughout, 
 " for a name to Goldy's play." [See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 14, 1773.] 
 What now stands as the second title. The Mistakes of a Night, was 
 originally the only one ; but it was thought undignified for a comedy. 
 The Old House a New Inn was suggested in place of it, but dismissed 
 as awkward. Sir Joshua offered a much better name to Goldsmith, 
 saying, " You ought to call it The Belle's Stratagem, and if you do not 
 I will damn it." When Goldsmith, in whose ear perhaps a line of 
 Dryden's lingei-ed, hit upon She Stoops to Conquer.' Forster's Gold- 
 smith, ii. 337, and Northcote's Reynolds, i. 285. Mr. Forster quotes the 
 line of Dryden as 
 
 ' But kneels to conquer, and but stoops to rise.' 
 In Lord Chesterfield's Letters, iii. 131, the line is given, 
 
 ' But stoops to conquer, and but kneels to rise.' 
 
 While
 
 Aetat. 64.] Jokiisoiis American correspondents. 237 
 
 While a former edition of my work was passing through 
 the press, I was unexpectedly favoured with a packet from 
 Philadelphia, from Mr. James Abercrombie, a gentleman of 
 that country, who is pleased to honour me with very high 
 praise of my Life of Dr. JoJinsoii. To have the fame of my 
 illustrious friend, and his faithful biographer, echoed from 
 the New World is extremely flattering ; and my grateful 
 acknowledgements shall be wafted across the Atlantick. Mr. 
 Abercrombie has politely conferred on me a considerable 
 additional obligation, by transmitting to me copies of two 
 letters from Dr. Johnson to American gentlemen. ' Gladly, 
 Sir, (says he,) would I have sent you the originals ; but being 
 the only relicks of the kind in America, they are considered 
 by the possessors of such inestimable value, that no possible 
 consideration would induce them to part with them. In 
 some future publication of yours relative to that great and 
 good man, they may perhaps be thought worthy of inser- 
 tion.' 
 
 'To Mr. B d'. 
 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' That in the hurry of a sudden departure you should yet find 
 leisure to consult my convenience, is a degree of kindness, and an 
 instance of regard, not only beyond my claims, but above my ex- 
 pectation. You are not mistaken in supposing that I set a high 
 value on my American friends, and that you should confer a very 
 valuable favour upon me by giving me an opportunity of keeping 
 myself in their memory. 
 
 'I have taken the liberty of troubling you with a packet, to 
 which I wish a safe and speedy conveyance, because I wish a safe 
 and speedy voyage to him that conveys it. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 'Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' London, Johnson's-court, 
 Fleet-street, March 4, 1773.' 
 
 ' This gentleman, who now resides in America in a publick charac- 
 ter of considerable dignity, desired that his name might not be tran- 
 scribed at full length. Boswell. 
 
 'To
 
 238 An American edition of Rasselas. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 ' To THE Reverend Mr. White '. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your kindness for your friends accompanies you across the 
 Atlantick. It was long since observed by Horace "'', that no ship 
 could leave care behind ; you have been attended in your voyage 
 by other powers, — by benevolence and constancy ; and I hope 
 care did not often shew her face in their company. 
 
 ' I received the copy of Rasselas. The impression is not mag- 
 nificent, but it flatters an authour, because the printer seems to 
 have expected that it would be scattered among the people. The 
 little book has been well received, and is translated into Italian ^, 
 French *, German, and Dutch \ It has now one honour more by 
 an American edition. 
 
 ' I know not that much has happened since your departure that 
 can engage your curiosity. Of all publick transactions the whole 
 world is now informed by the news-papers. Opposition seems to 
 
 ' Now Doctor White, and Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Penn- 
 sylvania. During his first visit to England in 1 771, as a candidate for 
 holy orders, he was several times in company with Dr. Johnson, who 
 expressed a wish to see the edition of his Rasselas, which Dr. White 
 told him had been printed in America. Dr. White, on his return, im- 
 mediately sent him a copy. Boswell. 
 
 - Horace. Odes,\\\.\.'>^\. . 
 
 ^ See. post, Oct. 12, 1779. 
 
 * Malone had the following from Baretti : — ' Baretti made a trans- 
 lation of Rasselas into French. He never, however, could satisfy him- 
 self with the translation of the first sentence, which is uncommonly 
 lofty. Mentioning this to Johnson, the latter said, after thinking two 
 or three minutes, " Well, take up the pen, and if you can understand 
 my pronunciation, I will see what I can do." He then dictated the 
 sentence to the translator, which proved admirable, and was imme- 
 diately adopted.' Prior's Malone, p. 161. Baretti, in a MS. note on 
 his copy of Piozzi Letters, i. 225, says : — 'Johnson never wrote to me 
 French, but when he translated for me the first paragraph of his Ras- 
 selas.' That Johnson's French was faulty, is shown by his letters in 
 that language. See ante, ii. 93, and post, under Nov. 12. 1775. 
 
 ^ It has been translated into Bengalee, Hungarian, Polish, Modern 
 Greek, and Spanish, besides the languages mentioned by Johnson. 
 Dr. J. Macaulay's Bibliography of Rasselas. It reached its fifth edition 
 by 1 76 1. A Bookseller of the Last Centf(ry,f^.2\'i). In the same book 
 (p. 19) it is mentioned that 'a sixteenth share in The Rainbler was 
 sold for _£22 2s. 6dl 
 
 despond ;
 
 Aetat. 64.] A new editioji of the Dictionary. 239 
 
 despond ; and the dissenters, though they have taken advantage 
 of unsettled times, and a government much enfeebled, seem not 
 likely to gain any immunities '. 
 
 ' Dr. Goldsmith has a new comedy in rehearsal at Covent-Gar- 
 den, to which the manager predicts ill success ". I hope he will 
 be mistaken. I think it deserves a very kind reception. 
 
 'I shall soon publish a new edition of my large Dictio?iary ; I 
 have been persuaded to revise it, and have mended some faults, 
 but added little to its usefulness. 
 
 ' No book has been published since your departure, of which 
 much notice is taken. Faction only fills the town with pam- 
 phlets, and greater subjects are forgotten in the noise of dis- 
 cord. 
 
 'Thus have I written, only to tell you how little I have to tell. 
 Of myself I can only add, that having been afflicted many weeks 
 with a very troublesome cough, I am now recovered. 
 
 ' I take the liberty which you give me of troubling you with 
 
 ' A motion in the House of Commons for a committee to consider 
 of the subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles had, on Feb. 23 of this 
 year, been rejected by 159 to 67. Pa?-!. Hist. xvii. 742-758. A bill for 
 the relief of Protestant Dissenters that passed the House of Com- 
 mons by 65 to 14 on March 25, was rejected in the House of Lords by 
 86 to 28 on April 2. lb. p. 790. 
 
 "^ See post, April 25, 1778, where Johnson says that ' Colman [the 
 manager] was prevailed on at last by much solicitation, nay, a kind of 
 force, to bring it on.' Mr. Forster {Life of Goldsinith, ii. 334-6) writes : 
 — ' The actors and actresses had taken their tone from the manager. 
 Gentleman Smith threw up Young Marlow ; Woodward refused Tony 
 Lumpkin ; Mrs. Abington declined Miss Hardcastle [in The Athe- 
 ncEiwi, No. 3041, it is pointed out that Mrs. Abington was not one of 
 Colman's Company] ; and, in the teeth of his own misgivings, Colman 
 could not contest with theirs. He would not suffer a new scene to 
 be painted for the play, he refused to furnish even a new dress, and 
 was careful to spread his forebodings as widely as he could.' The 
 play met with the greatest success. ' There was a new play by Dr. 
 Goldsmith last night, which succeeded prodigiously,' wrote Horace 
 Walpole {Letters, v. 452). The laugh was turned against the doubting 
 manager. Ten days after the play had been brought out, Johnson 
 wrote to Mrs. Thrale : — 'C — [Colman] is so distressed with abuse 
 about his play, that he has solicited Goldsmitli to take him off the rack 
 of the newspapers.' Piozzi Letters, i. 80. Sec post, just before June 22, 
 1784, for Mr. Steevens's account. 
 
 a letter,
 
 240 Dr. Goldsmitit s apology. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 a letter, of which you will please to fill up the direction. I 
 am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most hvimble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, 
 London, March 4, 1773.' 
 
 On Saturday, April 3, the day after my arrival in London 
 this year, I went to his house late in the evening, and sat 
 with Mrs. Williams till he came home. I found in the Lon- 
 don Clironiclc, Dr. Goldsmith's apology ' to the publick for 
 beating Evans, a bookseller, on account of a paragraph in a 
 newspaper published by him, which Goldsmith thought im- 
 pertinent to him and to a lady of his acquaintance \ The 
 apology was written so much in Dr. Johnson's manner, that 
 both Mrs. Williams and I supposed it to be his ; but when 
 he came home, he soon undeceived us. When he said to 
 Mrs. Williams, ' Well, Dr. Goldsmith's viauifcsto has got into 
 your paper';' I asked him if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, 
 with an air that made him see I suspected it was his, though 
 subscribed by Goldsmith. JOHNSON. ' Sir, Dr. Goldsmith 
 would no more have asked me to write such a thing as that for 
 him, than he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon, 
 or to do any thing else that denoted his imbecility. I as much 
 
 * It was anything but an apology, unless apology is used in its old 
 meaning of defence. 
 
 ' Nine days after She Stoops to Conquer was brought out, a vile libel, 
 written, it is believed, by Kenrick {ante, i. 576), was published by Evans 
 in The London Packet. The libeller dragged in one of the Miss Hor- 
 necks, 'the Jessamy Bride' of Goldsmith's verse. Goldsmith, believ- 
 ing Evans had written the libel, struck him with his cane. The blow 
 was returned, for Evans was a strong man. ' He indicted Goldsmith 
 for the assault, but consented to a compromise on his paying fifty 
 pounds to a Welsh charity. The papers abused the poet, and stead- 
 ily turned aside from the real point in issue. At last he stated it him- 
 self, in an Address to the Public, in the Daily Advertiser of March 31.' 
 Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 347-351. The libel is given in Goldsmith's 
 Misc. Works (1801), i. 103. 
 
 ' ' Your paper,' I suppose, because the Chronicle was taken in at 
 Bolt Court. See ante, ii. 118. 
 
 believe
 
 Aetat. G4.j Sir Jolui Dalrymples Memoirs. 241 
 
 believe that he wrote it, as if I had seen him do it. Sir, had 
 he shewn it to any one friend, he would not have been al- 
 lowed to publish it. He has, indeed, done it very well ; but 
 it is a foolish thing well done. I suppose he has been so 
 much elated with the success of his new comedy, that he has 
 thought every thing that concerned him must be of impor- 
 tance to the publick.' BOSWELL. ' I fancy. Sir, this is the 
 first time that he has been engaged in such an adventure.' 
 Johnson. * Why, Sir, I believe it is the iirst time he has 
 beat; he may have been beaten before'. This, Sir, is a new 
 plume to him.' 
 
 I mentioned Sir John Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great-Brit- 
 ain and Ireland, and his discoveries to the prejudice of Lord 
 Russcl and Algernon Sydney. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, every 
 body w^io had just notions of government thought them 
 rascals before. It is well that all mankind now see them to 
 be rascals.' BoswELL. ' But, Sir, may not those discoveries 
 be true without their being rascals?' JOHNSON. 'Consider, 
 Sir ; would any of them have been willing to have had it 
 known that they intrigued with France ? Depend upon it. 
 Sir, he who does what he is afraid should be known, has 
 something rotten about him. This Dalrymple seems to be 
 an honest fellow ^ ; for he tells equally what makes against 
 both sides. But nothing can be poorer than his mode of 
 writing, it is the mere bouncing of a school-boy. Great He ! 
 but greater She ! and such stuff ■\' 
 
 ' See Forster's Goldsmith, i. 265, for a possible explanation of this 
 sarcasm. 
 
 ■■' Horace Walpolc is violent against Dalrymple and the King. 
 'What must,' he says, 'be the designs of this reign when George III 
 encourages a Jacobite wretch to hunt in France for materials for 
 blackening the heroes who withstood the enemies of Protestantism 
 and liberty.' Joternal of the Reign of George III, i. 286. 
 
 ^ Mr. Hallam pointed out to Mr. Crokcr that Johnson was speaking 
 of Dalrjmiplc's description of the parting of Lord and Lady Russell: 
 — ' With a deep and noble silence ; with a long and fixed look, in 
 which respect and affection unmingled with passion were expressed. 
 Lord and Lady Russell parted for ever — he great in this last act of his 
 n. — 16 I could
 
 242 Action ill publick speaking. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 I could not agree with him in this criticism ; for though 
 Sir John Ualrymple's style is not regularly formed in any 
 respect, and one cannot help smiling sometimes at his af- 
 fected grandiloquence, there is in his writing a pointed vivac- 
 ity, and much of a gentlemanly spirit. 
 
 At Mr. Thrale's, in the evening, he repeated his usual 
 paradoxical declamation against action in publick speak- 
 ing '. ' Action can have no effect upon reasonable minds. It 
 may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument. If 
 you speak to a dog, you use action ; you hold up your hand 
 thus, because he is a brute ; and in proportion as men are 
 removed from brutes, action will have the less influence 
 upon them.' Mrs. Thrale. ' What then. Sir, becomes of 
 Demosthenes's saying? " Action, action, action !" ' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Demosthenes, Madam, spoke to an assembly of brutes; 
 to a barbarous peopled' 
 
 I thought it extraordinary, that he should deny the power 
 of rhetorical action upon human nature, when it is proved by 
 innumerable facts in all stages of society. Reasonable beings 
 are not solely reasonable. They have fancies which may be 
 pleased, passions which may be roused. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield being mentioned, Johnson remarked, 
 that almost all of that celebrated nobleman's witty sayings 
 were puns'. He, however, allowed the merit of good wit to 
 his Lordship's saying of Lord Tyrawley * and himself, when 
 
 life, but she greater.' Dalrymple's Memoirs, i. 31. S&c post, April 30, 
 1773, for the foppery of Dalrymple ; and Boswell's Hebrides, near the 
 end, for Johnson's imitation of Dalrymple's style. 
 
 ' See ante, i. 387. 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 196. 
 
 ^ Horace Walpole says : — ' It was not Chesterfield's fault if he had 
 not wit ; nothing exceeded his efforts in that point ; and though they 
 were far from producing the wit, they at least amply yielded the ap- 
 plause he aimed at.' Memoirs of the Reign of George II, i. 5 1 . 
 
 * A curious account of Tyrawley is given in Walpole's Reign of 
 George II, iii. 108. He had been Ambassador at Lisbon, and he ' even 
 affected not to know where the House of Commons was.' Walpole 
 says ^Letters, i. 215, note) that ' Pope has mentioned his and another 
 
 both
 
 Aetat. G4.] The WJiigs and ahts-giving. 243 
 
 both very old and infirm : ' Tyravvley and I have been dead 
 these two years ; but we don't choose to have it known.' 
 
 He talked with approbation of an intended edition of The 
 Spectator, with notes ; two volumes of which had been pre- 
 pared by a gentleman eminent in the literary world, and 
 the materials which he had collected for the remainder had 
 been transferred to another hand'. He observed, that all 
 works which describe manners, require notes in sixty or 
 seventy years, or less ; and told us, he had communicated all 
 he knew that could throw light upon The Spectator. He 
 said, ' Addison had made his Sir Andrew Freeport a true 
 Whig, arguing against giving charity to beggars, and throw- 
 ing out other such ungracious sentiments; but that he had 
 thought better, and made amends by making him found an 
 hospital for decayed farmers'. He called for the volume 
 
 ambassador's seraglios in one of his Imitations of Horace' He refers 
 to the lines in the Imitations, i. 6. 120 : — 
 
 'Go live with Chartres, in each vice outdo 
 K — I's lewd cargo, or Ty — y's crew.' 
 Kinnoul and Tyrawley, says Walpole, are meant. 
 
 ' According to Chalmers, who himself has performed this task. Dr. 
 Percy was the first of these gentlemen, and Dr. John Calder the sec- 
 ond. Croker. 
 
 • Sir Andrew Freeport, after giving money to some importunate 
 beggars, says : — ' I ought to give to an hospital of invalids, to recover 
 as many useful subjects as I can, but I shall bestow none of my boun- 
 ties upon an almshouse of idle people; and for the same reason I 
 should not think it a reproach to me if I had withheld my charity from 
 those common beggars.* The Spectator, No. 232. This paper is not 
 by Addison. In No. 549, which is by Addison, Sir Andrew is made 
 to found ' an almshouse for a dozen superannuated husbandmen.' I 
 have before (ii. 137) contrasted the opinions of Johnson and Fielding 
 as to almsgiving. A more curious contrast is afforded by the follow- 
 ing passage in Tom Jones, hoo)^. i. chap. iii. : — 'I have told my reader 
 that Mr. AUworthy inherited a large fortune, that he had a good heart, 
 and no family. Hence, doubtless, it will be concluded by many that 
 he lived like an honest man, owed no one a shilling, took nothing but 
 what was his own, kept a good house, entertained his neighbours with 
 a hearty welcome at his table, and was charitable to the poor, i. e. to 
 those who had rathe.- beg than work, by giving them the offals from 
 it • that he died immensely rich, and built an hospital." 
 
 of
 
 244 Scripture phrases. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 of TJie Spectator, in which that account is contained, and 
 read it aloud to us. He read so well, that every thing ac- 
 quired additional weight and grace from his utterance '. 
 
 The conversation having turned on modern imitations of 
 ancient ballads, and some one having praised their simplic- 
 ity, he treated them with that ridicule which he always dis- 
 played when that subject was mentioned \ 
 
 He disapproved of introducing scripture phrases into sec- 
 ular discourse. This seemed to me a question of some dif- 
 ficulty. A scripture expression may be used, like a highly 
 classical phrase, to produce an instantaneous strong impres- 
 sion ; and it may be done without being at all improper. 
 Yet I own there is danger, that applying the language of 
 our sacred book to ordinary subjects may tend to lessen 
 our reverence for it. If therefore it be introduced at all, it 
 should be with very great caution. 
 
 On Thursday, April 8, I sat a good part of the evening 
 
 ' Boswell says {Hebrides, Aug. 26, 1773) : — ' His recitation was grand 
 and affecting, and, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, had no 
 more tone than it should have.' Mrs. Piozzi {Alice, p. 302) writes : — 
 ' His manner of repeating deserves to be described, though at the same 
 time it defeats all power of description ; but whoever once heard him 
 repeat an ode of Horace would be long before they could endure to 
 hear it repeated by another.' See ante, ii. 106, note 2. 
 
 ^ ' Some of the old legendary stories put in verse by modern writers 
 provoked him to caricature them thus one day at Streatham : — 
 " The tender infant, meek and mild, 
 Fell down upon the stone ; 
 The nurse took up the squealing child, 
 But still the child squeal'd on." 
 A famous ballad also beginning Rio verde, Rio verde, when I com- 
 mended the translation of it, he said he could do it better himself, as 
 
 thus : — 
 
 " Glassy water, glassy water, 
 
 Down whose current clear and strong. 
 
 Chiefs confused in mutual slaughter. 
 
 Moor and Christian roll along." 
 
 " But, Sir," said I, " this is not ridiculous at all." " Why no," replied 
 
 he, " why should I always write ridiculously ?" ' Piozzi's Ance. p. 65. 
 
 See ante,\\.\^'],Vi.otQ. i. Neither Boswell nor Mrs. Piozzi mentions 
 
 Percy by name as the subject of Johnson's ridicule. 
 
 with
 
 Aetat.64.] Buruet's History. 245 
 
 with him, but he was very silent. He said, ' Burnet's His- 
 tory of his oxvn times is very entertaining '. The style, in- 
 deed, is mere chit-chat ^ I do not believe that Burnet in- 
 tentionally lyed ; but he was so much prejudiced, that he 
 took no pains to find out the truth. He was like a man 
 who resolves to regulate his time by a certain watch ; but 
 will not inquire whether the watch is right or not \' 
 
 Though he was not disposed to talk, he was unwilling 
 that I should leave him ; and when I looked at my watch, 
 and told him it was twelve o'clock, he cried, ' What's that to 
 you and me ?' and ordered Frank to tell Mrs. Williams that 
 we were coming to drink tea with her, which we did. It 
 was settled that we should go to church together next 
 day. 
 
 On the 9th of April, being Good Friday, I breakfasted 
 with him on tea and cross-buns*; Doctor Levet, as Frank 
 called him, making the tea. He carried me with him to 
 the church of St. Clement Danes, where he had his seat; 
 and his behaviour was, as I had imaged to myself, solemnly 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 4, 1773. 
 
 ^ Rogers {Table -Talk, p. 88) said that 'Fox considered Burnet's 
 style to be perfect.' 
 
 ^ Johnson ( Works, vii. 96) quotes : ' Dalrymple's observation, who 
 says " that whenever Burnet's narrations are examined, he appears 
 to be mistaken." ' Lord BoHngbroke ( Works, iv. 151) wrote of party 
 pamphlets and histories : — ' Read them with suspicion, for they de- 
 serve to be suspected ; pay no regard to the epithets given, nor to the 
 judgments passed ; neglect all declamation, weigh the reasoning, and 
 advert to fact. With such precautions, even Burnet's history may be 
 of some use.' Horace Walpole, noticing an attack on Burnet, says 
 {Letters, vi. 487) : — ' It shows his enemies are not angry at his telling 
 falsehoods, but the truth. ... I will tell you what was said of his His- 
 tory by one whose testimony you yourself will not dispute. That con- 
 fessor said, " Damn him, he has told a great deal of truth, but where 
 the devil did he learn it?" This was St. Attcrbury's testimony.' 
 
 ^ The cross-buns were for Boswell and Levet. Johnson recorded 
 {Pr. a?id Med. p. 121) : — 'On this whole day I took nothing of nour- 
 ishment but one cup of tea without milk ; but the fast was very incon- 
 venient. Towards night I grew fretful and impatient, unable to fix 
 my mind or govern my thoughts.' 
 
 devout.
 
 246 Good Friday with Johnson. [a.d. 1773 
 
 devout '. I never shall forget the tremulous earnestness 
 with which he pronounced the awful petition in the Litany: 
 ' In the hour of death, and at* the day of judgement, good 
 Lord deliver us.' 
 
 We went to church both in the morning and evening. In 
 the interval between the two services we did not dine ; but 
 he read in the Greek New Testament, and I turned over 
 several of his books. 
 
 In Archbishop Laud's Diary, I found the following pas- 
 sage, which I read to Dr. Johnson : — 
 
 ' 1623. February i, Sunday. I stood by the most illustrious 
 Prince Charles ^, at dinner. He was then very merry, and talked 
 occasionally of many things with his attendants. Among other 
 things, he said, that if he were necessitated to take any particular 
 profession of life, he could not be a lawyer, adding his reasons ; 
 " I cannot, (saith he,) defend a bad, nor yield in a good cause." ' 
 
 Johnson. ' Sir, this is false reasoning ; because every cause 
 has a bad side": and a lawyer is not overcome, though the 
 cause which he has endeavoured to support be determined 
 against him.' 
 
 I told him that Goldsmith had said to me a few days 
 before, ' As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my 
 coat from the taylor, so I take my religion from the priest.' 
 I regretted this loose way of talking. JOHNSON. ' Sir, he 
 knows nothing; he has made up his mind about nothing \' 
 
 To my great surprize he asked me to dine with him on 
 Easter-day. I never supposed that he had a dinner at his 
 house; for I had not then heard of any one of his friends 
 
 ' It is curious to compare with this Johnson's own record : — ' I 
 found the service not burdensome nor tedious, though I could not 
 hear the lessons. I hope in time to take pleasure in public worship.' 
 Pr. and Med. p. 121. 
 
 '■" In the original in. 
 
 ' Afterwards Charles I. Bqswell. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 54. 
 
 ^ See /^.y/, April 9, 1778, where Johnson said: — 'Goldsmith had no 
 settled notions upon any subject ; so he talked always at random.' 
 
 having
 
 Aetat. 64.] Dinner in Johnso7ts house. 247 
 
 having been entertained at his table. He told me, ' I gen- 
 erally have a meat pye on Sunday : it is baked at a publick 
 oven, which is very properly allowed, because one man can 
 attend it ; and thus the advantage is obtained of not keep- 
 ing servants from church to dress dinners '.' 
 • April II, being Easter-Sunday, after having attended Di- 
 vine Service at St. Paul's, I repaired to Dr. Johnson's. I had 
 gratified my curiosity much in dining with jEAN JAQUES 
 Rousseau ^ while he lived in the wilds of Neufchatel : I had 
 as great a curiosity to dine with Dr. Samuel JOHNSON, in 
 the dusky recess of a court in Fleet-street. I supposed we 
 should scarcely have knives and forks, and only some strange, 
 uncouth, ill-drest dish : but I found every thing in very good 
 order. We had no other company but Mrs. Williams and 
 a young woman whom I did not know. As a dinner here 
 was considered as a singular phaenomenon, and as I was fre- 
 quently interrogated on the subject, my readers may perhaps 
 be desirous to know our bill of fare. Foote, I remember, in 
 allusion to Francis, the negro, was willing to suppose that 
 our repast was black brctJi. But the fact was, that we had 
 a very good soup, a boiled leg of lamb and spinach, a veal 
 pye, and a rice pudding'. 
 
 ' The next day Johnson recorded : — ' I have had some nights of that 
 quiet and continual sleep which I had wanted till I had almost for- 
 gotten it.' Penib. Coll. MSS. 
 
 ^ See anle, ii. 13. 
 
 * We have the following account of Johnson's kitchen in 1778: 
 ' Mr. Thrale. — " And pray who is clerk of your kitchen, Sir .^" Dr. J. 
 — " Why, Sir, I am afraid there is none ; a general anarchy prevails in 
 my kitchen, as I am told by Mr. Levet, who says it is not now what it 
 used to be." Mr. T. — "But how do you get your dinners drest.'" 
 Dr. J. — " Why, Desmoulins has the chief management of the kitchen, 
 but our roasting is not magnificent, for we have no jack." Mr. T. — 
 "No jack.' Why, how do they manage without.''" Dr. J. — "Small 
 joints, I believe, they manage with a string, and larger are done at the 
 tavern. I have some thoughts (with a profound gravity) of buying a 
 jack, because I think a jack is some credit to a house." Mr. T. — 
 " Well, but you'll have a spit too ?" Dr. J. — " No, Sir, no ; that would 
 be superfluous ; for we shall ncv^er use it ; if a jack is seen, a spit will 
 be presumed." ' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 115. 
 
 Of
 
 248 Goldsmitlis regard for Johnson. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 Of Dr. John Campbell, the authour, he said, ' He is a very 
 inquisitive and a very able man, and a man of good religious 
 principles, though I am afraid he has been deficient in prac- 
 tice. Campbell is radically right ; and we may hope, that in 
 time there will be good practice '.' 
 
 He owned that he thought Hawkesworth was one of his 
 imitators^ but he did not think Goldsmith was. Goldsmith, 
 he said, had great merit. BOSWELL. ' But, Sir, he is much 
 indebted to you for his getting so high in the publick esti- 
 mation.' Johnson. ' Why, Sir, he has perhaps got sooner to 
 it by his intimacy with me.' 
 
 Goldsmith, though his vanity often excited him to oc- 
 casional competition, had a very high regard for Johnson, 
 which he at this time expressed in the strongest manner in 
 the Dedication of his comedy, entitled, Site Stoops to Con- 
 quer ^ 
 
 Johnson observed, that there were very few books printed 
 in Scotland before the Union. He had seen a complete 
 collection of them in the possession of the Hon. Archibald 
 Campbell, a non-juring Bishop \ I wish this collection had 
 been kept entire. Many of them are in the library of the 
 Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh. I told Dr. Johnson 
 that I had some intention to write the life of the learned 
 and worthy Thomas Ruddiman ^ He said, ' I should take 
 pleasure in helping you to do honour to him. But his fare- 
 well letter to the Faculty of Advocates, when he resigned 
 the office of their Librarian, should have been in Latin.' 
 
 ' See ante, i. 484. ' See ante, i. 293. 
 
 ' ' By inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so 
 much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to 
 inform the publick, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. 
 It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the 
 greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most 
 unaflected piety.' Boswell. 
 
 ^ See an account of this learned and respectable gentleman, and of 
 his curious work on the Middle Sta/e, Journal of a Tour to the Hebri- 
 des, 3rd edit. p. 371. [Oct. 25.] Boswell. Se.Q post, June 9, 1784. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 261, for Boswell's projected works, and i. 244. 
 
 I put
 
 Aetat. 64.] JoJiusou s attempts to keep a journal. 249 
 
 I put a question to him upon a fact in common life, which 
 he could not answer, nor have I found any one else who 
 could. What is the reason that women servants, though 
 obliged to be at the expense of purchasing their own 
 clothes, have much lower wages than men servants, to 
 whom a great proportion of that article is furnished, and 
 when in fact our female house servants work much harder 
 than the male ' ? 
 
 He told me that he had twelve or fourteen times attempt- 
 ed to keep a journal of his life, but never could persevere \ 
 He advised me to do it. ' The great thing to be recorded, 
 (said he,) is the state of your own mind ^ ; and you should 
 write down every thing that you remember, for you cannot 
 judge at first what is good or bad ; and write immediately 
 while the impression is fresh, for it will not be the same a 
 week afterwards *.' 
 
 I again solicited him to communicate to me the particu- 
 lars of his early life. He said, ' You shall have them all for 
 twopence. I hope you shall know a great deal more of me 
 before you write my Life.' He mentioned to me this day 
 
 ' ' When the efficiency [of men and women] is equal, but the pay 
 unequal, the only explanation that can be given is custom.' J. S. 
 Mill's Political Economy, book il. ch. xiv. 5. 
 
 ■ The day before he told Boswell this he had recorded :— ' My gen- 
 eral resolution, to which I humbly implore the help of God, is to 
 methodise my life, to resist sloth. I hope from this time to keep a 
 journal.' Pr. and Med. p. 124. Four times more he recorded the 
 same resolution to keep a journal. See ante, i. 501, note 2, and post, 
 April 14, 1775. 
 
 ' Sq.g. post, March. 30, 177S, where Johnson says: — 'A man loves to 
 review his own mind. That is the use of a diary or journal.' 
 
 * ' He who has not made the experiment, or who is not accustomed 
 to require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how 
 much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge and distinctness 
 of imager)-. . . . To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false 
 relations of travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive. 
 They trusted to memory what cannot be trusted safely but to the eye, 
 and told by guess what a few hours before they had known with cer- 
 tainty.' Johnson's IVor/cs, \\. 144. 
 
 many
 
 250 No nation hurt by luxury, [a.d. 1773. 
 
 many circinnstances, which I wrote down when I went home, 
 and have interwoven in the former part of this narrative. 
 
 On Tuesday, April 13, he and Dr. Goldsmith and I dined 
 at General Oglethorpe's. Goldsmith expatiated on the com- 
 mon topick, that the race of our people was degenerated, 
 and that this was owing to luxury. JOHNSON. ' Sir, in the 
 first place, I doubt the fact \ I believe there are as many 
 tall men in England now, as ever there were. But, secondly, 
 supposing the stature of our people to be diminished, that 
 is not owing to luxury ; for. Sir, consider to how very small 
 a proportion of our people luxury can reach. Our soldiery, 
 surely, are not luxurious, who live on sixpence a day'; and 
 the same remark will apply to almost all the other classes. 
 Luxury, so far as it reaches the poor, will do good to the 
 race of people ; it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, 
 no nation was ever hurt by luxury ; for, as I said before, it 
 can reach but to a very few. I admit that the great increase 
 of commerce and manufactures hurts the military spirit of 
 a people ; because it produces a competition for something 
 
 ' Goldsmith, in his dedication to Reynolds of the Deserted Village, 
 refers no doubt to Johnson's opinion of luxury. He writes : — ' I know 
 you will object (and indeed seireral of our best and wisest friends con- 
 cur in the opinion) that the depopulation it deplores is nowhere to be 
 seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in the poet's 
 own imagination. ... In regretting the depopulation of the country I 
 inveigh against the increase of our luxuries ; and here also I expect 
 the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty 
 years past it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the 
 greatest national advantages.' Ste.post, April 15, 1778. 
 
 ^ Johnson, in his Pari. Debates ( Works, x. 418), makes General Han- 
 dasyd say : — ' The whole pay of a foot soldier is sixpence a day, of 
 which he is to pay fourpence to his landlord for his diet, or, what is 
 very nearly the same, to carry fourpence daily to the market. . . . Two- 
 pence a day is all that a soldier has to lay out upon cleanliness and 
 decency, and with which he is likewise to keep his arms in order, and 
 to supply himself with some part of his clothing. If, Sir, after these 
 deductions he can, from twopence a day, procure himself the means 
 of enjoying a few happy moments in the year with his companions 
 over a cup of ale, is not his economy much more to be envied than 
 his luxury }' 
 
 else
 
 Aetat. G4.] Goldsmith sings. 2 5 1 
 
 else than martial honours, — a competition for riches. It also 
 hurts the bodies of the people ; for you will observe, there 
 is no man who works at any particular trade, but you may 
 know him from his appearance to do so. One part or other 
 of his body being more used than the rest, he is in some 
 degree deformed : but, Sir, that is not luxury. A tailor sits 
 cross-legged ; but that is not luxury.' GOLDSMITH. ' Come, 
 you're just going to the same place by another road.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Nay, Sir, I say that is not luxury. Let us take a walk 
 from Charing-cross to White-chapel, through, I suppose, the 
 greatest series of shops in the world ; what is there in any of 
 these shops, (if you except gin-shops,) that can do any human 
 being any harm?' GOLDSMITH. ' Well, Sir, I'll accept your 
 challenge. The very next shop to Northumberland-house is 
 a pickle-shop.' JOHNSON. ' Well, Sir: do we not know that 
 a maid can in one afternoon make pickles sufficient to serve 
 a whole family for a year? nay, that five pickle-shops can 
 serve all the kingdom ? Besides, Sir, there is no harm done 
 to any body by the making of pickles, or the eating of 
 pickles.' 
 
 We drank tea with the ladies ; and Goldsmith sung Tony 
 Lumpkin's song in his comedy. She Stoops to Conquer, and a 
 very pretty one, to an Irish tune ', which he had designed 
 for Miss Hardcastle ; but as Mrs. Bulkeley, who played the 
 part, could not sing, it was left out. He afterwards wrote 
 it down for me, by which means it was preserved, and now 
 appears amongst his poems^ Dr. Johnson, in his way home, 
 
 ' The humours of Ballamagairy. BOSWELL. 
 ' ' Ah me I when shall I marry me ? 
 
 Lovers are plenty ; but fail to relieve me. 
 He, fond youth, that could carry me, 
 Offers to love, but means to deceive me. 
 But I will rally and combat the ruiner : 
 Not a look, nor a smile shall my passion discover; 
 She that gives all to the false one pursuing her. 
 Makes but a penitent and loses a lover.' 
 Boswell, in a letter published in Goldsmith's Misc. Works, ii. Ii6, 
 with the song, says: — The tune is a pretty Irish air, called The Hu- 
 mours of Baltamagairy, to which, he told me, he found it very difficult 
 
 stopped
 
 252 The family of Shiart. [a. d. 1773, 
 
 stopped at my lodgings in Piccadilly, and sat with me, drink- 
 ing tea a second time, till a late hour. 
 
 I told him that Mrs. Macaulay said, she wondered how he 
 could reconcile his political principles with his moral ; his 
 notions of inequality and subordination with wishing well to 
 the happiness of all mankind, who might live so agreeably, 
 had they all their portions of land, and none to domineer 
 over another. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, I reconcile my princi- 
 ples very well, because mankind are happier in a state of ine- 
 quality and subordination '. Were they to be in this pretty 
 state of equality, they would soon degenerate into brutes ; — 
 they would become Monboddo's nation ° ; — their tails would 
 grow. Sir, all would be losers were all to work for all : — 
 they would have no intellectual improvement. All intel- 
 lectual improvement arises from leisure ; all leisure arises 
 from one working for another.' 
 
 Talking of the family of Stuart ^ he said, ' It should seem 
 that the family at present on the throne has now established 
 as good a right as the former family, by the long consent of 
 the people ; and that to disturb this right might be consid- 
 ered as culpable. At the same time I own, that it is a very 
 difficult question, when considered with respect to the house 
 of Stuart. To oblige people to take oaths as to the disputed 
 right, is wrong. I know not whether I could take them : but 
 I do not blame those who do.' So conscientious and so del- 
 icate was he upon this subject, which has occasioned so much 
 clamour against him. 
 
 Talking of law cases, he said, * The English reports, in gen- 
 eral, are very poor : only the half of what has been said is 
 taken down ; and of that half, much is mistaken. Where- 
 as, in Scotland, the arguments on each side are deliberately 
 put in writing, to be considered by the Court. I think a 
 
 to adapt words ; but he has succeeded very happily in these few Hnes. 
 As I could sing the tune and was fond of them, he was so good as to 
 give me them. I preserve this little relic in his own handwriting with 
 an affectionate care.' 
 
 ■ See ante, i. 472, and post, April 7, 1776. 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 85. ^ See ante, i. 497. 
 
 collection
 
 Aetat.64.] Histories of the present age. 253 
 
 collection of your cases upon subjects of importance, with 
 the opinions of the Judges upon them, would be valuable.' 
 
 On Thursday, April 15, I dined with him and Dr. Gold- 
 smith at General PaoU's. We found here Signor Martinelli, 
 of Florence, authour of a History of England, in Italian, 
 printed at London. 
 
 I spoke of Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, in the Scottish 
 dialect, as the best pastoral that had ever been written ; not 
 only abounding with beautiful rural imagery, and just and 
 pleasing sentiments, but being a real picture of manners ; 
 and I offered to teach Dr. Johnson to understand it. ' No, 
 Sir, (said he,) I won't learn it. You shall retain your supe- 
 riority by my not knowing it.' 
 
 This brought on a question whether one man is lessened 
 by another's acquiring an equal degree of knowledge with 
 him '. Johnson asserted the afifirmative. I maintained that 
 the position might be true in those kinds of knowledge 
 which produce wisdom, power, and force, so as to enable 
 one man to have the government of others ; but that a man 
 is not in any degree lessened by others knowing as well as 
 he what ends in mere pleasure : — eating fine fruits, drinking 
 delicious wines, reading exquisite poetry. 
 
 The General observed, that Martinelli was a Whig. JOHN- 
 SON. ' I am sorry for it. It shows the spirit of the times : he 
 is obliged to temporise.' Boswell. ' I rather think. Sir, that 
 Toryism prevails in this reign.' JOHNSON. ' I know not why 
 you should think so. Sir. You see your friend Lord Lyttel- 
 ton ', a nobleman, is obliged in his History to write the most 
 vulgar Whiggism.' 
 
 An animated debate took place whether Martinelli should 
 continue his History of England to the present day. GOLD- 
 SMITH. 'To be sure he should.' JoiiNSON. 'No, Sir; he 
 would give great offence. He would have to tell of al- 
 most all the living great what they do not wish told." 
 
 ' Sec ante, ii. 194, for Johnson's ' half-a-guinca's worth of inferiority.' 
 ' Boswell {ante, i. 298) mentions that he knew Lyttelton. For his 
 History, see ante, ii. 43. 
 
 Goldsmith.
 
 2 54 London hospitality. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 Goldsmith, ' It may, perhaps, be necessary for a native to 
 be more cautious ; but a foreigner who comes among us with- 
 out prejudice, may be considered as holding the place of a 
 Judge, and may speak his mind freely.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, a 
 foreigner, when he sends a work from the press, ought to be 
 on his guard against catching the errour and mistaken en- 
 thusiasm of the people among whom he happens to be.' 
 Goldsmith, ' Sir, he wants only to sell his history, and to 
 tell truth ; one an honest, the other a laudable motive,' 
 Johnson. 'Sir, they are both laudable motives. It is laud- 
 able in a man to wish to live by his labours ; but he should 
 write so as he may live by them, not so as he may be knocked 
 on the head, I would advise him to be at Calais before he 
 publishes his history of the present age, A foreigner who 
 attaches himself to a political party in this country, is in 
 the worst state that can be imagined : he is looked upon as 
 a mere intermeddler, A native may do it from interest.' 
 BOSWELL. ' Or principle.' GOLDSMITH. ' There are people 
 who tell a hundred political lies every day, and are not hurt 
 by it. Surely, then, one may tell truth with safety.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Why, Sir, in the first place, he who tells a hundred 
 lies has disarmed the force of his lies '. But besides ; a man 
 had rather have a hundred lies told of him, than one truth 
 which he does not wish should be told.' GOLDSMITH. ' For 
 my part, I'd tell truth, and shame the devil.' JOHNSON. 
 ' Yes, Sir ; but the devil will be angry. I wish to shame the 
 devil as much as you do, but I should choose to be out of 
 the reach of his claws.' GOLDSMITH. ' His claws can do you 
 no harm, when you have the shield of truth.' 
 
 It having been observed that there was little hospitality in 
 London ; — JOHNSON. ' Nay, Sir, any man who has a name, 
 or who has the power of pleasing, will be very generally in- 
 vited in London. The man, Sterne, I have been told, has 
 
 ' Johnson has an interesting paper ' on lying ' in The Adventurer, 
 No. 50, which thus begins : — ' When Aristotle was once asked what a 
 man could gain by uttering falsehoods, he replied, " Not to be credited 
 when he shall tell the truth.'" 
 
 had
 
 Aetat. 64.] Charles Towns/tend. 255 
 
 had eneaeements for three months '.' Goldsmith. ' And a 
 very dull fellow.' JOHNSON. 'Why, no, Sir'.' 
 
 Martinelli told us, that for several years he lived much 
 with Charles Townshend, and that he ventured to tell him 
 he was a bad joker. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, thus much I can 
 say upon the subject. One day he and a few more agreed 
 to go and dine in the country, and each of them was to bring 
 a friend in his carriage with him. Charles Townshend asked 
 Fitzherbert to go with him, but told him, " You must find 
 somebody to bring you back : I can only carry you there." 
 Fitzherbert did not much like this arrangement. He how- 
 ever consented, observing sarcastically, " It will do very well ; 
 for then the same jokes will serve you in returning as in 
 
 3 »» » 
 
 going . 
 
 An eminent publick character'* being mentioned; — JOHN- 
 SON. ' I remember being present when he shewed himself 
 
 ' Johnson speaks of the past, for Sterne had been dead five years. 
 Gray wrote on April 22, 1760: — 'Tristram Shandy is still a greater 
 object of admiration, the man as well as the book. One is invited to 
 dinner where he dines a fortnight beforehand.' Gray's Works, ed. 
 1858, iii. 241. 
 
 ^ ' I was but once,' said Johnson, ' in Sterne's company, and then 
 his only attempt at merriment consisted in his display of a drawing 
 too indecently gross to have delighted even in a brothel.' Johnson's 
 Works (1787), xi. 214. 
 
 ^ Townshend was not the man to make his jokes serve twice. Hor- 
 ace Walpole said of his Champagne Speech, — ' It was Garrick writing 
 and acting extempore scenes of Congreve.' Memoirs of the Reign of 
 George III, iii. 25. Sir G. Colebrooke says : — ' When Garrick and Foote 
 were present he took the lead, and hardly allowed them an opportu- 
 nity of shewing their talents of mimicry, because he could excel them 
 in their own art.' Ib.\y. loi, note. '" Perhaps," said Burke, "there 
 nev'cr arose in this country, nor in any country, a man of a more 
 pointed and finished wit." ' Payne's Burke, i. 146. 
 
 * The 'eminent public character' is no doubt Burke, and the friend, 
 as Mr. Croker suggests, probably Reynolds. See Boswell's Hebrides, 
 Aug. 15, 1773, for a like charge made by Johnson against Burke. Bos- 
 well commonly describes Burke as ' an eminent friend of ours ;' but he 
 could not do so as yet, for he first met him fifteen days later. See. post, 
 April 30. 
 
 to
 
 256 Burkes defence of parties. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 to be so corrupted, or at least something so different from 
 what I think right, as to maintain, that a member of Parha- 
 ment should go along with his party right or wrong. Now, 
 Sir, this is so remote from native virtue, from scholastick 
 virtue, that a good man must have undergone a great change 
 before he can reconcile himself to such a doctrine. It is 
 maintaining that you may lie to the publick ; for you lie 
 when you call that right which you think wrong, or the re- 
 verse'. A friend of ours, who is too much an echo of that 
 gentleman, observed, that a man who does not stick uni- 
 formly to a party, is only waiting to be bought. Why then, 
 said I, he is only waiting to be what that gentleman is 
 already.' 
 
 We talked of the King's coming to see Goldsmith's new 
 play, — ' I wish he would ^' said Goldsmith ; adding, however, 
 with an affected indifference, ' Not that it would do me the 
 least good.' JOHNSON. ' Well then. Sir, let us say it would 
 do Jiiin good, (laughing). No, Sir, this affectation w^ill not 
 pass; — it is mighty idle. In such a state as ours, who 
 would not wish to please the Chief Magistrate?' GOLD- 
 SMITH. ' I do wish to please him. I remember a line in 
 Dryden, — 
 
 "And every poet is the monarch's friend." 
 
 It ought to be reversed.' JOHNSON. ' Nay, there are finer 
 lines in Dryden on this subject : — 
 
 " For colleges on bounteous Kings depend, 
 And never rebel was to arts a friend ^"' 
 
 ' 'Party,' Burke wrote in 1770 {Thoughts on tkc Present Discon- 
 tents), ' is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeav- 
 ours the national interest upon some particular principle in which 
 they are all agreed. For my part I find it impossible to conceive 
 that any one believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any 
 weight, who refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into 
 practice.' Payne's Burke, i. 86. 
 
 On May 5, and again on Nov. 10, the play was commanded by the 
 King and Queen. Prior's Goldsmith, ii. 394. 
 
 ^ Absalom and Achitophel, part i. 1. 872. 
 
 General
 
 Aetat. 64.] Happy revolutions. 257 
 
 General Paoli obsen^ed, that ' successful rebels might '.' 
 Martinelli. ' Happy rebellions.' GOLDSMITH. ' We have 
 no such phrase.' GENERAL Paoli. ' But have you not 
 the thing f GOLDSMITH. 'Yes; all our happy revolutions. 
 They have hurt our constitution, and will hurt it, till we 
 mend it by another HAPPY REVOLUTION.' I never before 
 discovered that my friend Goldsmith had so much of the 
 old prejudice in him. 
 
 General Paoli, talking of Goldsmith's new play, said, ' // 
 a fait iin compliment trcs gracieux a 7inc certaine grande 
 dame ;' meaning a duchess of the first rank\ 
 
 I expressed a doubt whether Goldsmith intended it, in 
 order that I might hear the truth from himself. It, per- 
 haps, was not quite fair to endeavour to bring him to a con- 
 fession, as he might not wish to avow positively his taking 
 part against the Court. He smiled and hesitated. The 
 General at once relieved him, by this beautiful image: 'Mon- 
 sieur Goldsmith est comme la iner, qui jette des perles et beau- 
 coup d\iutrcs belle chases, sans sen appercevoir.' GOLDSMITH. 
 ' Tres bien dit et tres elegainment' 
 
 A person was mentioned, who it was said could take down 
 in short hand the speeches in Parliament with perfect exact- 
 ness. Johnson. ' Sir, it is impossible. I remember one, 
 Ang-el, who came to me to write for him a Preface or 
 
 ' Paoli perhaps was thinking of himself. While he was .still ' the 
 successful rebel ' in Corsica, he had said to Boswell :— ' The arts and 
 sciences are like dress and ornament. You cannot expect them from 
 us for some time. But come back twenty or thirty years hence, and 
 we'll shew you arts and sciences.' Boswell's Corsica, p. 172. 
 
 * ' The Duke of Cumberland had been forbidden the Court on his 
 marriage with Mrs. Horton, a year before-, but on the Duke of Glouces- 
 ter's avowal of his marriage with Lady Waldegrave, the King's in- 
 dignation found vent in the Royal Marriage Act: which was hotly 
 opposed by the Whigs as an edict of tyranny. Goldsmith (perhaps 
 for Burke's sake) helped to make it unpopular with the people : " We'll 
 go to France," says Hastings to Miss Neville, " for there, even among 
 slaves, the laws of marriage are respected." Said on the first night; 
 this had directed repeated cheering to the Duke of Gloucester, who 
 sat in one of the boxes.' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 358. See ante, ii. 175. 
 II. — 17 Dedication
 
 258 Hermes Harris. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 Dedication to a book upon short hand ', and he professed 
 to write as fast as a man could speak. In order to try him, 
 I took down a book, and read while he wrote ; and I fa- 
 voured him, for I read more deliberately than usual. I had 
 proceeded but a very little way, when he begged I would 
 desist, for he could not follow me^' Hearing now for the 
 first time of this Preface or Dedication, I said, ' What an 
 expense, Sir, do you put us to in buying books, to which 
 you have written Prefaces or Dedications.' JOHNSON. ' Why 
 I have dedicated to the Royal family all round ; that is to 
 say, to the last generation of the Royal family \' Gold- 
 smith. ' And perhaps, Sir, not one sentence of wit in a 
 whole Dedication.' Johnson. ' Perhaps not, Sir.' BOS- 
 WELL. ' What then is. the reason for applying to a partic- 
 ular person to do that which any one may do as well?' 
 Johnson. 'Why, Sir, one man has greater readiness at do- 
 ing it than another.' 
 
 I spoke of Mr. Harris \ of Salisbury, as being a very 
 
 ' Stenography, by John Angell, 1758. 
 
 ' Stcpost, April 10, 1778. ^ See ante, ii. 2. 
 
 * James Harris, father of the first Earl of Malmesbury, born in 1709, 
 died 1780. Two years later Boswell wrote to Temple : ' I am invited 
 to a dinner at Mr. Cambridge's (for the dinner, see post, April 18, 1775), 
 where are to be Reynolds, Johnson, and Hermes Harris. " Do j/ou 
 thitik so ?" said he. " Most certainty, said I." Do you remember how 
 I used to laugh at his style when we were in the Temple? He thinks 
 himself an ancient Greek from these little peculiarities, as the imita- 
 tors of Shakspeare, whom the Spectator mentions, thought they had 
 done wonderfully when they had produced a line similar: — 
 
 " And so, good morrow to ye, good Master Lieutenant." ' 
 Letters of Boswell, p. 187. It is not in The Spectator, but in Martinus 
 Scriblerits, ch. ix. (Swift's Works, 1803, xxiii. 53), that the imitators of 
 Shakspeare are ridiculed, Harris got his name of Hermes from his 
 Hermes, or a Philosophical Inqiciry concerning Universal Grammar. 
 Cradock {Memoirs, i. 208) says that, ' A gentleman applied to his friend 
 to lend him some amusing book, and he recommended Harris's Her- 
 mes. On returning it, the other asked how he had been entertained. 
 " Not much," he replied ; " he thought that all these imitations of Tris- 
 tram Shandy fell far short of the original." ' See post, April 7, 1778, 
 and Boswell 's Hebrides, Nov. 3, 1773. 
 
 learned
 
 Aetat. 64.] A printer s coacli. 259 
 
 learned man, and in particular an eminent Grecian, JOHN- 
 SON. ' I am not sure of that. His friends give him out as 
 such, but I know not who of his friends are able to judge 
 of it.' Goldsmith. 'He is what is much better: he is a 
 worthy humane man.' JOHNSON. ' Nay, Sir, that is not to 
 the purpose of our argument * : that will as much prove 
 that he can play upon the fiddle as well as Giardini, as that 
 he is an eminent Grecian.' GOLDSMITH. ' The greatest 
 musical performers have but small emoluments. Giardini, 
 I am told, does not get above seven hundred a year.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' That is indeed but little for a man to get, who does 
 best that which so many endeavour to do. There is nothing, 
 I think, in which the power of art is shewn so much as in 
 playing on the fiddle. In all other things we can do some- 
 thing at first. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give 
 him a hammer ; not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A 
 man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a 
 clumsy one ; but give him a fiddle and a fiddle-stick, and he 
 can do nothing.' 
 
 On Monday, April 19, he called on me with Mrs. Will- 
 iams, in Mr. Strahan's coach, and carried me out to dine 
 with Mr. Elphinston \ at his academy at Kensington. A 
 printer having acquired a fortune sufficient to keep his 
 coach, was a good topick for the credit of literature^ Mrs. 
 Williams said, that another printer, Mr. Hamilton, had not 
 
 ' Johnson suffers, in Cowper's epitaph on him, from the same kind 
 
 of praise as Goldsmith gives Harris : — 
 
 ' Whose v^erse may claim, grave, masculine and strong, 
 
 Superior praise to the mere poet's song.' 
 
 Cowper's Works,\. 119. 
 * See a7itc, i. 243. 
 
 ^ Cave set up his coach about thirty years earlier {ajitc, i. 175, note 
 
 3). Dr. Franklin {Memoi'rs, iii. 172) wrote to Mr. Strahan in 1784: — 
 
 ' I remember your observing once to me, as we sat together in the 
 
 House of Commons, that no two journeymen printers within your 
 
 knowledge had met with such success in the world as ourselves. You 
 
 were then at the head of your profession, and soon afterwards became 
 
 a member of parliament. I was an agent for a few provinces, and now 
 
 act for them all." 
 
 waited
 
 26o Garriclcs flatterers. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 waited so long as Mr. Strahan, but had kept his coach sev- 
 eral years sooner'. JOHNSON. * He was in the right. Life 
 is short. The sooner that a man begins to enjoy his 
 wealth the better.' 
 
 Mr. Elphinston talked of a new book that was much ad- 
 mired, and asked Dr. Johnson if he had read it. JOHNSON. 
 ' I have looked into it.' ' What, (said Elphinston,) have 
 you not read it through?' Johnson, offended at being thus 
 pressed, and so obliged to own his cursory mode of read- 
 ing, answered tartly, ' No, Sir, Ao you read books through'' f 
 
 He this day again defended duelling ^ and put his argu- 
 ment upon what I have ever thought the most solid basis ; 
 that if publick war be allowed to be consistent with moral- 
 ity, private war must be equally so. Indeed we may ob- 
 serve what strained arguments are used, to reconcile war 
 with the Christian religion. But, in my opinion, it is ex- 
 ceedingly clear that duelling, having better reasons for its 
 barbarous violence, is more justifiable than war, in which 
 thousands go forth without any cause of personal quarrel, 
 and massacre each other. 
 
 On Wednesday, April 21, I dined with him at Mr. Thrale's. 
 A gentleman^ attacked Garrick for being vain. JOHNSON. 
 ' No wonder. Sir, that he is vain ; a man who is perpetually 
 flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many 
 bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by 
 this time become a cinder.' BOSWELL. ' And such bellows 
 too. Lord Mansfield with his cheeks like to burst : Lord 
 
 ' ' Hamilton made a large fortune out of Smollett's History.' Fors- 
 ter's Goldsmith, i. 149. He was also the proprietor of the Critical Re- 
 view. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 82. 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 206, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 19, 1773. Horace 
 Walpole wrote of the year 1773: — 'The rage of duelling had of late 
 much revived, especially in Ireland, and many attempts were made in 
 print and on the stage to curb so horrid and absurd a practice.' Jour- 
 nal of the Reigfi of George III, i. 282. 
 
 * Very likely Boswell. See /(7i-/, April 10, 1778, where he says: — 'I 
 slily introduced Mr. Garrick 's fame, and his assuming the airs of a 
 great man.' 
 
 Chatham
 
 Aetat. G4.] Gavvick' s flatterers, 261 
 
 Chatham like an ^Eolus, I have read such notes from them 
 to him, as were enough to turn his head '.' JOHNSON. ' True. 
 When he whom every body else flatters, flatters me, I then 
 am truely happy.' Mrs. Thrale. ' The sentiment is in Con- 
 greve, I think.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Madam, in The Way of the 
 World: 
 
 " If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see 
 That heart which others bleed for, bleed for me^" 
 
 No, Sir, I should not be surprised though Garrick chained 
 the ocean, and lashed the winds.' BOSWELL. ' Should it not 
 be. Sir, lashed the ocean and chained the winds?' JOHNSON. 
 ' No, Sir, recollect the original : 
 
 "/« Corum at que Eurmn solitus scevire flagellis 
 Barharus, yEoIio Jiitnquafn hoc in carcere passos, 
 Ipsum compcdibus qui vinxerat Efinosigcztun ^"' 
 
 This does very well, when both the winds and the sea are 
 personified, and mentioned by their mythological names, as 
 in Juvenal ; but when they are mentioned in plain language, 
 the application of the epithets suggested by me, is the most 
 obvious ; and accordingly my friend himself, in his imitation 
 of the passage which describes Xerxes, has 
 
 " The waves he lashes, and enchains the wind." ' 
 
 ' In the Garrick Corrcs. up to this date there is no letter from Lord 
 Mansfield which answers Boswell's descriptions. To Lord Chatham 
 Garrick had addressed some verses from Mount Edgecumbe. Chat- 
 ham, on April 3, 1772, sent verses in return, and wrote :—' You have 
 kindly settled upon me a lasting species of property I never dreamed 
 of in that enchanting place ; a far more able conveyancer than any in 
 Chancery-land.' Jtj.\.4rS9- 
 
 ' ' Then I alone the conquest prize. 
 
 When I insult a rival's eyes : 
 If there's, &c.' Act iii. sc. 12. 
 
 * ' But how did he return, this haughty brave. 
 
 Who whipt the winds, and made the sea his slave? 
 (Though Neptune took unkindly to be bound 
 And Euros never such hard usage found 
 In his /iLohan prison under ground).' 
 
 Drydcn, /uvcmzt, X. 180. 
 
 The
 
 262 Suicide, [a.d. 1773. 
 
 The modes of living in different countries, and the various 
 views with which men travel in quest of new scenes, having 
 been talked of, a learned gentleman ' who holds a consider- 
 able office in the law, expatiated on the happiness of a sav- 
 age life*; and mentioned an instance of an officer who had 
 actually lived for some time in the wilds of America, of 
 whom, when in that state, he quoted this reflection with an 
 air of admiration, as if it had been deeply philosophical : 
 ' Here am I, free and unrestrained, amidst the rude magnif- 
 icence of Nature, with this Indian woman by my side, and 
 this gun with which I can procure food when I want it : 
 what more can be desired for human happiness?' It did 
 not require much sagacity to foresee that such a sentiment 
 would not be permitted to pass without due animadversion. 
 Johnson. ' Do not allow yourself. Sir, to be imposed upon 
 by such gross absurdity. It is sad stuff; it is brutish. If 
 a bull could speak, he might as well exclaim, — Here am I 
 with this cow and this grass ; what being can enjoy greater 
 felicity?' 
 
 We talked of the melancholy end of a gentleman ' who 
 had destroyed himself. Johnson. ' It was owing to im- 
 aginary difficulties in his affairs, which, had he talked with 
 any friend, would soon have vanished.' BOSWELL. ' Do you 
 think. Sir, that all who commit suicide are mad?' JOHN- 
 son. ' Sir, they are often not universally disordered in their 
 intellects, but one passion presses so upon them, that they 
 yield to it, and commit suicide, as a passionate man will stab 
 
 ^ Most likely Mr. Pepys, a Master in Chancery, whom Johnson more 
 than once roughly attacked at Streatham. See. post, April i, 1 781, and 
 Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 46. 
 
 ^ See attfe, ii. 83. 
 
 ' 'Jan. 5, 1772. Poor Mr. Fitzherbert hanged himself on Wednes- 
 day. He went to see the convicts executed that morning; and from 
 thence in his boots to his son, having sent his groom out of the way. 
 At three his son said. Sir, you are to dine at Mr. BuUer's ; it is time 
 for you to go home and dress. He went to his own stable and hanged 
 himself with a bridle. They say his circumstances were in great dis- 
 order.' Horace Walpole's Letters, v. 362. See ajite, i. 96, and post, 
 Sept. 15, 1777. 
 
 another.'
 
 Aetat. 64.] The Douglas Cause. 263 
 
 another.' He added, * I have often thought, that after a 
 man has taken the resolution to kill himself, it is not cour- 
 age in him to do any thing, however desperate, because he 
 has nothing to fear.' GOLDSMITH. ' I don't see that.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Nay, but my dear Sir, why should not you see what 
 every one else sees?' Goldsmith. ' It is for fear of some- 
 thing that he has resolved to kill himself ; and will not that 
 timid disposition restrain him ?' JOHNSON. ' It does not 
 signify that the fear of something made him resolve ; it is 
 upon the state of his mind, after the resolution is taken, that 
 I argue. Suppose a man, either from fear, or pride, or con- 
 science, or whatever motive, has resolved to kill himself ; 
 when once the resolution is taken, he has nothing to fear. 
 He may then go and take the King of Prussia by the nose, 
 at the head of his army. He cannot fear the rack, who is 
 resolved to kill himself. When Eustace Budgel ' was walk- 
 ing down to the Thames, determined to drown himself, he 
 might, if he pleased, without any apprehension of danger, 
 have turned aside, and first set fire to St. James's palace.' 
 
 On Tuesday, April 27, Mr. Beauclerk and I called on him 
 in the morning. As we walked up Johnson's-court, I said, 
 ' I have a veneration for this court ;' and was glad to find 
 that Beauclerk had the same reverential enthusiasm ^ We 
 found him alone. We talked of Mr. Andrew Stuart's ele- 
 gant and plausible Letters to Lord Mansfield ^ : a copy of 
 which had been sent by the authour to Dr. Johnson. JOHN- 
 SON. ' They have not answered the end. They have not 
 
 ' Boswell, in his Hebrides (Aug. i8, 1773), says that, ' Budgel was ac- 
 cused of forging a will [Dr. Tindal's] and sunk himself in the Thames, 
 before the trial of its authenticity came on.' Pope, speaking of him- 
 self, says that he — 
 
 ' Let Budgel charge low Grub-street on his quill. 
 And write whatc'cr he plcas'd, except his will.' 
 
 Prologue to the Satires, 1. 378. 
 Budgel drowned himself on May 4, 1737, more than two years after 
 the publication of this Prologue. Gent. iMag.v\\.-})\^. Perhaps the 
 verse is an interpolation in a later edition. 'Sfto.post, April 26, 1776. 
 * ScQ. post, March 15, 1776. 
 
 ' On the Douglas Cause. See ante, ii. 57, -awCi post, March 26, 1776. 
 
 been
 
 264 The Douglas Cause. [a. d. 1773. 
 
 been talked of; I have never heard of them. This is owing 
 to their not being sold. People seldom read a book which 
 is given to them ; and few are given. The way to spread a 
 work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a 
 thing that costs even sixpence, without an intention to read 
 it.' BosWKLL. ' May it not be doubted, Sir, whether it be 
 proper to publish letters, arraigning the ultimate decision of 
 an important cause by the supreme judicature of the nation?' 
 Johnson. ' No, Sir, I do not think it was wrong to publish 
 these letters. If they are thought to do harm, why not an- 
 swer them ? But they will do no harm ; if Mr. Douglas be 
 indeed the son of Lady Jane, he cannot be hurt : if he be not 
 her son, and yet has the great estate of the family of Doug- 
 las, he may well submit to have a pamphlet against him by 
 Andrew Stuart. Sir, I think such a publication does good, 
 as it does good to show us the possibilities of human life. 
 And, Sir, you will not say that the Douglas cause was a cause 
 of easy decision, when it divided your Court as much as it 
 could do, to be determined at all. When your Judges were 
 seven and seven, the casting vote of the President must be 
 given on one side or other : no matter, for my argument, on 
 which ; one or the other must be taken : as when I am to 
 move, there is no matter which leg I move first. And then, 
 Sir, it was otherwise determined here. No, Sir, a more du- 
 bious determination of any question cannot be imagined '.' 
 
 ' I regretted that Dr. Johnson never took the trouble to study a 
 question which interested nations. He would not even read a pam- 
 phlet which I wrote upon it, entitled The Essence of the DoKglas Cause ; 
 which, I have reason to flatter myself, had considerable effect in favour 
 of Mr. Douglas ; of whose legitimate filiation I was then, and am still, 
 firmly convinced. Let me add, that no fact can be more respectably 
 ascertained, than by the judgement of the most august tribunal in the 
 world; a judgement, in which Lord Mansfield and Lord Camden 
 united in 1769, and from which only five of a numerous body entered 
 a protest. Boswell. Boswell, in his Hebrides, records on Oct. 26, 
 1773: — 'Dr. Johnson roused my zeal so much that I took the liberty 
 to tell him that he knew nothing of the [Douglas] Cause.' Lord 
 Shelburne says : — ' I conceived such a prejudice upon the sight of the 
 present Lord Douglas's face and figure, that I could not allow myself 
 
 He
 
 Aetat. G4.] Goldsmith at the ga7ne of jokes. 265 
 
 He said, ' Goldsmith should not be for ever attempting to 
 shine in conversation : he has not temper for it, he is so much 
 mortified when he fails. Sir, a game of jokes is composed 
 partly of skill, partly of chance, a man may be beat at times 
 by one who has not the tenth part of his wit. Now Gold- 
 smith's putting himself against another, is like a man laying 
 a hundred to one who cannot spare the hundred. It is not 
 worth a man's while. A man should not lay a hundred to 
 one, unless he can easily spare it, though he has a hundred 
 chances for him : he can get but a guinea, and he may lose 
 a hundred. Goldsmith is in this state. When he contends, 
 if he gets the better, it is a very little addition to a man of 
 his literary reputation : if he does not get the better, he is 
 miserably vexed.' 
 
 Johnson's own superlative powers of wit set him above 
 any risk of such uneasiness. Garrick had remarked to me 
 of him, a few days before, * Rabelais and all other wits are 
 nothing compared with him. You may be diverted by them ; 
 but Johnson gives you a forcible hug, and shakes laughter 
 out of you, whether you will or no.' 
 
 Goldsmith, however, was often very fortunate in his witty 
 contests, even when he entered the lists with Johnson him- 
 self. Sir Joshua Reynolds was in company with them one 
 day, when Goldsmith said, that he thought he could write a 
 good fable, mentioned the simplicity which that kind of com- 
 position requires, and observed, that in most fables the ani- 
 mals introduced seldom talk in character. ' For instance, 
 (said he,) the fable of the little fishes, who saw birds fly 
 
 to vote in this cause. If ever I saw a Frenchman, he is one.' Fitz- 
 maurice's Shelbur7ic, i. lo. Hume ' was struck,' he writes, ' with a very 
 sensible indignation at the decision. The Cause, though not in the 
 least intricate, is so complicated that it never will be reviewed by the 
 public, who are besides perfectly pleased with the sentence ; being 
 swayed by compassion and a few popular topics. To one who under- 
 stands the Cause as I do, nothing could appear more scandalous than 
 the pleadings of the two law lords.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 423. In 
 Campbell's Chancellors, v. 494, an account is given of a duel between 
 Stuart and Thurlow that arose out of this suit. 
 
 over
 
 266 Dogs and butchers. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 over their heads, and envying them, petitioned Jupiter to 
 be changed into birds. The skill, (continued he,) consists in 
 making them talk like little fishes.' While he indulged him- 
 self in this fanciful reverie, he observed Johnson shaking his 
 sides, and laughing. Upon which he smartly proceeded, 
 ' Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think ; 
 for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like 
 WHALES.' 
 
 Johnson, though remarkable for his great variety of com- 
 position, never exercised his talents in fable, except we allow 
 his beautiful tale' published in Mrs. Williams's iT//j"a'//<r?;/zV.y* 
 to be of that species. I have, however, found among his 
 manuscript collections the following sketch of one : 
 
 ' Glow-worm ^ lying in the garden saw a candle in a neighbour- 
 ing palace, — and complained of the littleness of his own light ; — 
 another observed — wait a little ; — soon dark, — have outlasted ttoXX 
 \inany\ of these glaring lights which are only brighter as they 
 haste to nothinsf.' 
 
 '&• 
 
 On Thursday, April 29, I dined with him at General Ogle- 
 thorpe's, where were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Dr. 
 Goldsmith, and Mr. Thrale. I was very desirous to get Dr. 
 Johnson absolutely fixed in his resolution to go with me to 
 the Hebrides this year ; and I told him that I had received 
 a letter from Dr. Robertson the historian, upon the subject, 
 with which he was much pleased ; and now talked in such 
 a manner of his long-intended tour, that I was satisfied he 
 meant to fulfil his engagement. 
 
 The custom of eating dogs at Otaheite being mentioned. 
 Goldsmith observed, that this was also a custom in China ; 
 that a dog-butcher is as common there as any other butcher; 
 and that when he w^alks abroad all the dogs fall on him. 
 Johnson. ' That is not owing to his killing dogs. Sir. I 
 remember a butcher at Lichfield, whom a dog that was in 
 
 ' The Fountains. Works, ix. 176. ° See ante, \\. 29. 
 
 ^ It has already been observed (ante, ii. 63), that one of his first Es- 
 says was a Latin Poem on a glow-worm ; but whether it be any where 
 extant, has not been ascertained. Malone. 
 
 the
 
 Aetat. 04.] David Mallet. 267 
 
 the house where I lived, always attacked. It is the smell of 
 carnage which provokes this, let the animals he has killed be 
 what they may.' GOLDSMITH. ' Yes, there is a general ab- 
 horrence in animals at the signs of massacre. If you put a 
 tub full of blood into a stable, the horses are like to go mad.' 
 Johnson. ' I doubt that.' Goldsmith. ' Nay, Sir, it is a 
 fact well authenticated.' Thrale. ' You had better prove 
 it before you put it into your book on natural history. You 
 may do it in my stable if you will.' JOHNSON. ' Nay, Sir, I 
 would not have him prove it. If he is content to take his 
 information from others, he may get through his book with 
 little trouble, and without much endangering his reputation. 
 But if he makes experiments for so comprehensive a book 
 as his, there would be no end to them ; his erroneous asser- 
 tions would then fall upon himself, and he might be blamed 
 for not having made experiments as to every particular.' 
 
 The character of Mallet having been introduced, and 
 spoken of slightingly by Goldsmith; JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, 
 Mallet had talents enough to keep his literary reputation 
 alive as long as he himself lived' ; and that, let me tell you, 
 is a good deal.' GOLDSMITH. ' But I cannot agree that it 
 was so. His literary reputation was dead long before his 
 natural death. I consider an authour's literary reputation 
 to be alive only while his name will ensure a good price 
 for his copy from the booksellers. I will get you, (to John- 
 son,) a hundred guineas for any thing whatever that you 
 shall write, if you put your name to it".' 
 
 Dr. Goldsmith's new play, She Stoops to Conquer^ being 
 mentioned ; JOHNSON. ' I know of no comedy for many 
 years that has so much exhilarated an audience, that has 
 
 ' ' Mallet's works are such as a writer, bustling in the world, shew- 
 ing himself in publick, and emerging occasionally from time to time 
 into notice, might keep alive by his personal influence ; but which, 
 conveying little information and giving no great pleasure, must soon 
 give way, as the succession of things produces new topicks of conver- 
 sation and other modes of amusement.' Johnson's IVor/cs, viii. 468. 
 
 ^ Johnson made less money, because he never 'traded ' on his repu- 
 tation. When he had made his name, he almost ceased to write. 
 
 answered
 
 268 Garrick's compliment to the Queen, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 answered so much the great end of comedy — making an 
 audience merry '.' 
 
 Goldsmith having said, that Garrick's comphment to the 
 Queen, which he introduced into the play of The Chances'^, 
 which he had altered and revised this year, was mean and 
 gross flattery; — JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I would not zvrite, I 
 would not give solemnly under my hand, a character beyond 
 what I thought really true ; but a speech on the stage, let 
 it flatter ever so extravagantly, is formular'. It has always 
 been formular to flatter Kings and Queens ; so much so, 
 that even in our church-service we have " our most religious 
 King," used indiscriminately, whoever is King. Nay, they 
 even flatter themselves ; — " we have been graciously pleased 
 to grant." No modern flattery, however, is so gross as 
 that of the Augustan age, where the Emperour was deified. 
 ''■ Prasens Diviis Jiabcbitur Augustus" y And as to meanness, 
 
 * ' May 27, 1773. Dr. Goldsmith has written a comedy — no, it is the 
 lowest of all farces. It is not the subject I condemn, though very 
 vulgar, but the execution. The drift tends to no moral, no edification 
 of any kind. The situations, however, are well imagined, and make 
 one laugh, in spite of the grossness of the dialogue, the forced witti- 
 cisms, and total improbability of the whole plan and conduct. But 
 what disgusts me most is, that though the characters are very low, 
 and aim at low humour, not one of them says a sentence that is natu- 
 ral or marks any character at all. It is set up in opposition to senti- 
 mental comedy, and is as bad as the worst of them.' Horace Walpole's 
 Letters, v. 467. Northcote {Life of Reynolds, i. 286) says that Goldsmith 
 gave him an order to see this comedy. ' The next time I saw him, he 
 inquired of me what my opinion was of it. I told him that I would 
 not presume to be a judge of its merits. He asked, " Did it make you 
 laugh?" I answered, " Exceedingly." " Then," said the Doctor, "that 
 is all I require." ' 
 
 ' Garrick brought out his revised version of this play by Beaumont 
 and Fletcher in 1754-5. Murphy's Garrick, p. 170. The compliment 
 is in a speech by Don Juan, act. v. sc. 2 : — ' Ay, but when things are at 
 the worst, they'll mend ; example does everything, and the fair sex will 
 certainly grow better, whenever the greatest is the best woman in the 
 kingdom.' 
 
 Formidar is not in Johnson's Dictionary. 
 
 ' On earth, a present god, shall Caesar reign.' 
 
 Francis. Horace. Odes, iii. 5. 2. 
 
 (rising 
 
 3
 
 Aetat. 64.] The profession of a player. 269 
 
 (rising into warmth,) how is it mean in a player, — a show- 
 man, — a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling, to flatter 
 his Queen ' ? The attempt, indeed, was dangerous ; for if it 
 had missed, what became of Garrick, and what became of 
 the Queen ? As Sir William Temple says of a great Gen- 
 eral, it is necessary not only that his designs be formed in 
 a masterly manner, but that they should be attended with 
 success ^ Sir, it is right, at a time when the Royal Family 
 is not generally liked ', to let it be seen that the people like 
 at least one of them.' SiR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. ' I do not 
 perceive why the profession of a player should be despised''; 
 for the great and ultimate end of all the employments of 
 mankind is to produce amusement. Garrick produces more 
 amusement than any body.' BOSWELL. ' You say. Dr. John- 
 son, that Garrick exhibits himself for a shilling. In this 
 respect he is only on a footing with a lawyer who exhibits 
 himself for his fee, and even will maintain any nonsense or 
 absurdity, if the case requires it. Garrick refuses a play 
 or a part which he does not like ; a lawyer never refuses.' 
 Johnson. 'Why, Sir, Avhat does this prove? only that a 
 lawyer is worse. Boswell is now like Jack in TJie Tale of 
 a Tub^, who, when he is puzzled by an argument, hangs 
 
 ' See ante, i. 193. 
 
 "^ Johnson refers, I believe, to Temple's Essay Of Heroic Virtue, 
 where he says that ' the excellency of genius ' must not only ' be cul- 
 tivated by education and instruction,' but also ' must be assisted by 
 fortune to preserve it to maturity; because the noblest spirit or genius 
 in the world, if it falls, though never so bravely, in its first enterprises, 
 cannot deserve enough of mankind to pretend to so great a reward as 
 the esteem of heroic virtue.' Temple's Works, iii. 306. 
 
 ^ Sec post, Sept. 17, 1777. 
 
 * In an epitaph that Burke wrote for Garrick, he says : — ' He raised 
 the character of his profession to the rank of a liberal art.' Wind- 
 ham's Diary, p. 361. 
 
 '•' 'The allusion,' as Mr. Lockhart pointed out, ' is not to the Ta/e of 
 a Ti{b,h\i.X. to \\\(i History of fohn J>itir (part ii.ch. 12 and 13). Jack, 
 who hangs himself, is however the youngest of the three brothers of 
 The Tale of a Tiid.'that have made such a clutter in the world' (//;. 
 chap. iij. Jack was unwillingly convinced by Ilabbakkuk's argument 
 
 himself.
 
 2 70 A dinne7' at Mr. Beaucler/Ss. [a.d, 1773. 
 
 himself. He thinks I shall cut him down, but I'll let him 
 hang,' (laughing vociferously.) SiR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 
 ' Mr. Boswell thinks that the profession of a lawyer being 
 unquestionably honourable, if he can show the profession 
 of a player to be more honourable, he proves his argument.' 
 
 On Friday, April 30, I dined with him at Mr. Beauclerk's, 
 where were Lord Charlemont, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and 
 some more members of the LITERARY Club, whom he had 
 obligingly invited to meet me, as I was this evening to 
 be balloted for as candidate for admission into that dis- 
 tinguished society. Johnson had done me the honour to 
 propose me ', and Beauclerk was very zealous for me. 
 
 Goldsmith being mentioned ; JOHNSON. ' It is amazing 
 how little Goldsmith knows. He seldom comes where he is 
 not more ignorant than any one else.' SiR JOSHUA REYN- 
 OLDS. ' Yet there is no man whose company is more liked.' 
 Johnson. ' To be sure. Sir. When people find a man of 
 the most distinguished abilities as a writer, their inferiour 
 while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them. 
 What Goldsmith comically says of himself is very true, — 
 he always gets the better when he argues alone ; meaning, 
 
 that to save his life he must hang himself. Sir Roger, he was prom- 
 ised, before the rope was well about his neck, would break in and cut 
 him down. 
 
 ' He wrote the following letter to Goldsmith, who filled the chair 
 that evening. ' It is,' Mr. Forster says {Life of Goldsmith, ii. 367), ' the 
 only fragment of correspondence between Johnson and Goldsmith 
 
 that has been preserved.' 
 
 'April 23, 1773. 
 
 'Sir, — I beg that you will excuse my absence to the Club; I am 
 
 going this evening to Oxford. 
 
 ' I have another favour to beg. It is that I may be considered as 
 
 proposing Mr. Boswell for a candidate of our society, and that he 
 
 may be considered as regularly nominated. 
 
 ' I am, sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 If Johnson went to Oxford his stay there was brief, as on April 27 
 Boswell found him at home. 
 
 that
 
 Aetat. C4.J Goldsmith in company. 271 
 
 that he is master of a subject in his study, and can write 
 well upon it ; but when he comes into company, grows con- 
 fused, and unable to talk '. Take him as a poet, his Trav- 
 eller is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his Deserted 
 Village, were it not sometimes too much the echo of his 
 Traveller. Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, — as a 
 comick writer, — or as an historian, he stands in the first 
 class.' BOSWELL. ' An historian ! My dear Sir, you surely 
 will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with 
 the works of other historians of this age?' JOHNSON. * Why, 
 who are before him'?' BosWELL. * Hume, — Robertson ^ — 
 Lord Lyttelton.' JOHNSON (his antipathy to the Scotch 
 beginning to rise). 'I have not read Hume; but, doubt- 
 less, Goldsmith's History is better than the verbiage of 
 
 ' ' There are,' says Johnson, speaking of Dryden ( Works, vii. 292), 
 ' men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and 
 whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation.' Sec also 
 ante, i. 478. ' No man,' he said of Goldsmith, 'was more foolish when 
 he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had ;' post, 1780, 
 in Mr. Langton's Collection. Horace Walpole {Letters, viii. 560), who 
 ' knew Hume personally and well,' said, ' Mr. Hume's writings were so 
 superior to his conversation, that I frequently said he understood 
 nothing till he had written upon it.' 
 
 ^ The age of great English historians had not long begun. The 
 first volume of The Decline and Fall was published three years later. 
 Addison had written in 1716 {Freeholder, No. 35), ' Our country, which 
 has produced writers of the first figure in every other kind of work, 
 has been very barren in good historians.' Johnson, in 1751, repeated 
 this obser\-ation in The Rambler, No. 122. Lord Bolingbrokc wrote in 
 '735 {^Vorks, iii.454), 'Our nation has furnished as ample and as im- 
 portant matter, good and bad, for history, as any nation under the 
 sun ; and yet we must yield the palm in writing history most cer- 
 tainly to the Italians and to the French, and I fear cv^cn to the Ger- 
 mans.' 
 
 ^ Gibbon, informing Robertson on March 26, 1788, of the comple- 
 tion of The Decline and Fall, said : — 'The praise which has ever been 
 the most flattering to my ear, is to find my name associated with the 
 names of Robertson and Hume; and provided I can maintain my 
 place in the triumvirate, I am indifferent at what distance I am ranked 
 below my companions and masters.' Dugald Stewart's Robertson, j). 
 
 3^^7. 
 
 Robertson,
 
 272 Goldsmitk as an historian. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 Robertson ', or the foppery of Dalrymple '.' BOSWELL. ' Will 
 you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose History 
 we find such penetration — such painting?' Johnson. 'Sir, 
 you must consider how that penetration and that painting 
 are employed. It is not history, it is imagination. He who 
 describes what he never saw, draws from fancy. Robertson 
 paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history-piece : 
 he imagines an heroic countenance. You must look upon 
 Robertson's work as romance, and try it by that standard '. 
 Histor}' it is not. Besides, Sir, it is the great excellence 
 of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will 
 hold. Goldsmith has done this in his History. Now Robert- 
 son might have put twice as much into his book. Robert- 
 son is like a man who has packed gold in wool ; the wool 
 takes up more room than the gold. No, Sir ; I always 
 thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight, — 
 would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells 
 you shortly all you want to know : Robertson detains you 
 a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cum- 
 brous detail a second time ; but Goldsmith's plain narrative 
 will please again and again. I would say to Robertson what 
 an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils : " Read 
 over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a 
 passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." 
 Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus 
 or Eutropius ; and I will venture to say, that if you com- 
 pare him with Vertot *, in the same places of the Roman 
 
 ■ ' Sir,' said Johnson, ' if Robertson's style be faulty, he owes it to 
 me; that is, having too many words, and those too big ones.' Post, 
 Sept. 19, 1777. Johnson was not singular among the men of his time 
 in condemning Robertson's verbiage. Wesley {Joiirtial, iii. 447) wrote 
 of vol. i. of Charles the Fifth : — ' Here is a quarto volume of eight or 
 ten shillings' price, containing dry, verbose dissertations on feudal 
 government, the substance of all which might be comprised in half a 
 sheet of paper !' Johnson again uses verbiage (a word not given in 
 hAS Dictionary), post, April 9, 1778. 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 241. ^ Se.Q post, Oct. 10, 1779. 
 
 * ' Vertot, ne en Normandie en 1655. Historien agreable et elegant. 
 Mort en 1735.' Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. 
 
 Histor)%
 
 Aetat. 64.] IVestmiiister-abbey and Temp Ic-bar. 273 
 
 History, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has 
 the art of compilintj, and of saying every thing he has to 
 say in a pleasing manner'. He is now writing a Natural 
 History and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale.' 
 
 I cannot dismiss the present topick without observing, 
 that it is probable that Dr. Johnson, who owned that he 
 often ' talked for victory,' rather urged plausible objections 
 to Dr. Robertson's excellent historical works, in the ardour 
 of contest, than expressed his real and decided opinion ; 
 for it is not easy to suppose, that he should so widely differ 
 from the rest of the literary world ^. 
 
 Johnson. ' I remember once being with Goldsmith in 
 Westminster-abbey. While we surveyed the Poet's Corner, 
 I said to him, 
 
 '''' Forsitan et nostrum nomeji miscehitur istis'\^^ 
 
 When we got to Temple-bar he stopped mc, pointed to the 
 heads upon it *, and slily whispered me, 
 
 '''•Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscehitur ISTIS^"' 
 
 ' Even Hume had no higher notion of what was required in a writer 
 of ancient history. He wrote to Robertson, who was, it seems, medi- 
 tating a History of Greece : — ' What can you do in most places with 
 these (the ancient) authors but transcribe and translate them ? No 
 letters or state papers from which you could correct their errors, or 
 authenticate their narration, or supply their defects.' J. H. Burton's 
 Hume, ii. 83. 
 
 " See ajite, ii. 61. Southey, asserting that Robertson had never read 
 the Laws of Alonzo the Wise, says, that ' it is one of the thousand and 
 one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue as long as his 
 volumes last.' Southey's Life, ii. 318. 
 
 ^ Ovid, de Art. Amand. i. iii. v. 13 [339]. Boswell. ' It may be that 
 our name too will mingle with those.' 
 
 * The Gent. Mai(. for Jan. 1766 (p. 45) records, that 'a person was 
 observed discharging musket-balls from a steel crossbow at the two 
 remaining heads upon Temple Bar.' They were the heads of Scotch 
 rebels executed in 1746. Samuel Rogers, who died at the end of 1855. 
 said, ' I well remember one of the heads of the rebels upon a pole at 
 Temple Bar.' Rogers's Table -Talk, \i. 2. 
 
 '■" In allusion to Dr. Johnson's supposed political principles, and per- 
 haps his own. Boswell. 
 
 n. — 18 Johnson
 
 2 74 Monuments in St. Paul's. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 Johnson praised John Bunyan highly. ' His Pilgrims Prog- 
 ress has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and 
 the conduct of the story ; and it has had the best evidence 
 of its merit, the general and continued approbation of man- 
 kind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive 
 sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the 
 poem of Dante ; yet there was no translation of Dante when 
 Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he had read 
 Spenser'.' 
 
 A proposition which had been agitated, that monuments to 
 eminent persons should, for the time to come, be erected 
 in St. Paul's church as well as in Westminster-abbey, was 
 mentioned ; and it was asked, who should be honoured by 
 having his monument first erected there'. Somebody sug- 
 gested Pope. Johnson. 'Why, Sir, as Pope was a Roman 
 Catholick, I would not have his to be first. I think Milton's 
 rather should have the precedence'. I think more highly 
 of him now than I did at twenty '. There is more thinking 
 in him and in Butler, than in any of our poets.' 
 
 Some of the company expressed a wonder why the 
 
 ' ' Dr. Johnson one day took Bishop Percy's little daughter upon 
 his knee, and asked her what she thought of Pilgriins Progress. The 
 child answered that she had not read it. " No!" replied the Doctor; 
 " then I would not give one farthing for you :" and he set her down and 
 took no further notice of her.' Croker's Boswcll, p. 838. Mrs. Piozzi 
 {Ancc. p. 281) says, that Johnson once asked, ' Was there ever yet any 
 thing written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, ex- 
 cepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and The Pilgrinis Progress f 
 
 ^ It was Johnson himself who was thus honoured. See post, under 
 Dec. 20, 1784. 
 
 ^ Here is another instance of his high admiration of Milton as a 
 Poet, notwithstanding his just abhorrence of that sour Republican's 
 political principles. His candour and discrimination are equally con- 
 spicuous. Let us hear no more of his ' injustice to Milton.' Bos- 
 
 WELL. 
 
 * There was an exception to this. In his criticism of Paradise Lost 
 ( Works, vii. 136), he says : — ' The confusion of spirit and matter which 
 pervades the whole narration of the war of Heaven fills it with incon- 
 gruity ; and the book in which it is related is, I believe, the favourite 
 of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased.' 
 
 authour
 
 Aetat. 64.] ThE WhOLE DuTY OF Man, 275 
 
 authour of so excellent a book as TJie Whole Duty of Man^ 
 should conceal himself. JOHNSON. ' There may be differ- 
 ent reasons assigned for this, any one of which would be 
 very sufficient. He may have been a clergyman, and may 
 have thought that his religious counsels would have less 
 weight when known to come from a man whose profession 
 was Theology. He may have been a man whose practice 
 was not suitable to his principles, so that his character might 
 injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a sea- 
 son of penitence. Or he may have been a man of rigid 
 self-denial, so that he would have no reward for his pious 
 labours while in this world, but refer it all to a future 
 state.' 
 
 The eentlemen went awav to their club, and I was left 
 at Beauclerk's till the fate of my election should be an- 
 nounced to me. I sat in a state of anxiety which even the 
 charming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not en- 
 tirely dissipate. In a short time I received the agreeable 
 intelligence that I was chosen ". I hastened to the place of 
 meeting, and was introduced to such a society as can seldom 
 be found. Mr. Edmund Burke, whom I then saw for the 
 first time, and whose splendid talents had long made me 
 ardently wish for his acquaintance; Dr. Nugent, Mr. Gar- 
 rick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones \ 
 and the company with whom I had dined. Upon my en- 
 trance, Johnson placed himself behind a chair, on which he 
 leaned as on a desk or pulpit, and with humorous formality 
 
 ' In the Academy, xxii. 348, 364, 382, Mr. C. E. Doble shews strong 
 grounds for the belief that the author was Richard Allestree, D.D., 
 Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and Provost of Eton. Cowper 
 spoke of it as 'that repository of self-righteousness and pharisaical 
 lumber;' with which opinion Southcy wholly disagreed. Southey's 
 Cmvper, i. 1 16. 
 
 ^ Johnson said to Boswell : — ' Sir, they knew that if they refused 
 you they'd probably never have got in another. I'd have kept them 
 all out. Beauclerk was very earnest for you.' Boswell's Hebrides, 
 Aug. 21, 1773. 
 
 ^ Garrick and Jones had been elected this same spring. See ante, 
 \. SS^^> note 3. 
 
 gave
 
 276 EUGENIO. [A.D. 1773, 
 
 gave me a Charge, pointing out the conduct expected from 
 me as a good member of this club. 
 
 Goldsmith produced some very absurd verses which had 
 been publickly recited to an audience for money '. JOHN- 
 SON. ' I can match this nonsense. There was a poem called 
 Eugenio, which came out some years ago, and concludes 
 thus : 
 
 "And now, ye trifling, self-assuming elves, 
 Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves, 
 Survey Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er. 
 Then sink into yourselves, and be no ^lore^" 
 
 Nay, Dryden in his poem on the Royal Society ', has these 
 lines : 
 
 ' Mr. Langton, in his Collection {post, 1780), mentions an ode brought 
 by Goldsmith to the Club, which had been recited for money. 
 
 "^ Dr. Johnson's memory here was not perfectly accurate : Etigcnio 
 does not conclude thus. There are eight more lines after the last of 
 those quoted by him ; and the passage which he meant to recite is as 
 follows : — 
 
 ' Say now ye fluttering, poor assuming elves, 
 Stark full of pride, of folly, of — yourselves ; 
 Say Where's the wretch of all your impious crew 
 Who dares confront his character to view } 
 Behold Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, 
 Then sink into yourselves, and be no more.' 
 Mr. Reed informs me that the Authour of Eugenio, a Wine Mer- 
 chant at Wrexham in Denbighshire, soon after its publication, viz. 
 17th May, 1737, cut his own throat; and that it appears by Swift's 
 Works that the poem had been shewn to him, and received some of 
 his corrections. Johnson had read Eugenio on his first coming to 
 town, for we see it mentioned in one of his letters to Mr. Cave, which 
 has been inserted in this work; [«;//£', i. 141.] Boswell. See Swift's 
 Wo7-ks, ed. 1803, xix. 153, for his letter to this wine merchant, Thomas 
 Beach by name. 
 
 " These lines are in the Annus Mirabilis (stanza 164) in a digres- 
 sion in praise of the Royal Society ; described by Johnson ( Works, 
 vii. 320) as 'an example seldom equalled of seasonable excursion and 
 artful return.' /^. p. 341, he says: 'Dryden delighted to tread upon 
 the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle. . . . 
 This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew ; and 
 sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which perhaps he was not con- 
 
 " Then
 
 Aetat. 64.] Johusou s contempt for puiis, 277 
 
 "Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go, 
 And see the ocean leaning on the sky ; 
 From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, 
 And on the lunar world securely pry." ' 
 
 Talking of puns, Johnson, who had a great contempt for 
 that species of wit ', deigned to allow that there was one 
 good pun in Menaglana, I think on the word corps'". 
 
 Much pleasant conversation passed, which Johnson rel- 
 ished with great good humour. But his conversation alone, 
 or what led to it, or was interwoven with it, is the business 
 of this work \ 
 
 scious.' He then quotes these lines, and continues: 'They have no 
 
 meaning ; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley on another 
 
 book — 
 
 " Tis so like sense, 'twill serve the turn as well." ' 
 
 Cowley's line is from his Phtdarique Ode to Mr. Hobs : — 
 
 ' 'Tis so like truth, 'twill serve our turn as well.' 
 
 ' In his Dictionary, he defines punster as a lotu tvit,rcvho endeavours 
 
 at reputation by double meaning. See post, April 28, 1778. 
 
 * I formerly thought that I had perhaps mistaken the word, and 
 imagined it to be Corps, from its similarity of sound to the real one. 
 For an accurate and shrewd unknown gentleman, to whom I am 
 indebted for some remarks on my work, observes on this passage — 
 ' O. if not on the word Fort ? A vociferous French preacher said of 
 Bourdaloue, " II preche fort bien, et moi bienfort." ' — Menaglana. See 
 also Anecdotes Litteraires, Article ' Bourdaloue.' But my ingenious 
 and obliging correspondent, Mr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia, has 
 pointed out to me the following passage in Menagiana ; which ren- 
 ders the preceding conjecture unnecessary, and confirms my original 
 statement : 
 
 * Mad""" de Bourdonne, Chanoinesse de Remiremont, venoit d'en- 
 tendre un discours plein de feu et d'esprit, mais fort peu solide. et 
 tres-irregulier. Une de ses amies, qui y prenoit interct pour I'orateur, 
 lui dit en sortant, " Eh bien, Mad""^ que vous semble-t-il de ce que 
 vous venez d'entendre? — Qu'il y a d'esprit.''" — " II y a tant, repondit 
 Mad"" de Bourdonne, que je n'y ai pas vu de corps." ' — Menagiana, 
 tome ii. p. 64. Amsterd. 171 3. Boswf:ll. Menagiana, on Ics bons mots 
 et remarques critiques, Jiistoriques, morales et d' erudition de M. Me- 
 nage, recueillies par ses amis,\izs, published in 1693. Gilles Menage 
 was born 1613, died 1692. 
 
 ' That Johnson only relished the conversation, and did not join in 
 it, is most unlikely. In his charge to Boswcll, he very likely pointed 
 
 On
 
 278 Lay-patro7is and pastors. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 On Saturday, May i, we dined by ourselves at our old 
 rendezvous, the Mitre tavern. He was placid, but not much 
 disposed to talk. Me observed that 'The Irish mix better 
 with the English than the Scotch do ; their language is 
 nearer to English ; as a proof of which, they succeed very 
 well as players, which Scotchmen do not. Then, Sir, they 
 have not that extreme nationality which we find in the 
 Scotch. I will do you, Boswell, the justice to say, that you 
 are the most unscottificd of your countrymen. You are al- 
 most the only instance of a Scotchman that I have known, 
 who did not at every other sentence bring in some other 
 Scotchman '.' 
 
 We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I introduced a ques- 
 tion which has been much agitated in the Church of Scot- 
 land, whether the claim of lay-patrons to present ministers 
 to parishes be well founded ; and supposing it to be well 
 founded, whether it ought to be exercised without the con- 
 currence of the people? That Church is composed of a 
 series of judicatures : a Presbytery, — a Synod, and finally, 
 a General Assembly ; before all of which, this matter may 
 be contended : and in some cases the Presbytery having 
 refused to induct or settle, as they call it, the person pre- 
 sented by the patron, it has been found necessary to ap- 
 peal to the General Assembly. He said, I might see the 
 subject well treated in the Defence of Pluralities'^ ; and al- 
 though he thought that a patron should exercise his right 
 with tenderness to the inclinations of the people of a parish, 
 he was very clear as to his right. Then supposing the ques- 
 tion to be pleaded before the General Assembly, he dictated 
 to me what follows : 
 
 ' Against the right of patrons is commonly opposed, by the infe- 
 riour judicatures, the plea of conscience. Their conscience tells 
 
 out that what was said within was not to be reported without. Bos- 
 well gives only brief reports of the talk at the Club, and these not 
 openly, ^it^post, April 7, 1775, note. 
 
 ' See /o5-/, the passage before Feb. 18, i^TS- 
 
 ^ By the Rev. Henry Wharton, published in 1692. 
 
 them.
 
 Aetat. G4.] The rights of lay-pairo7is. 279 
 
 them, that the people ought to choose their pastor ; their con- 
 science tells them that they ought not to impose upon a congrega- 
 tion a minister ungrateful and unacceptable to his auditors. Con- 
 science is nothing more than a conviction felt by ourselves of 
 something to be done, or something to be avoided ; and in ques- 
 tions of simple unperplexed morality, conscience is very often a 
 guide that may be trusted. But before conscience can determine, 
 the state of the question is supposed to be completely known. In 
 questions of law, or of fact, conscience is very often confounded 
 with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the right of an- 
 other man ' ; they must be known by rational investigation or his- 
 torical enquiry. Opinion, which he that holds it may call his con- 
 science, may teach some men that religion would be promoted, and 
 quiet preserved, by granting to the people universally the choice 
 of their ministers. But it is a conscience very ill informed that 
 violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another. 
 Religion cannot be promoted by injustice : and it was never yet 
 found that a popular election was very quietly transacted. 
 
 ' That justice would be violated by transferring to the people the 
 right of patronage, is apparent to all who know whence that right 
 had its original. The right of patronage was not at first a privi- 
 lege torn by power from unresisting poverty. It is not an authority 
 at first usurped in times of ignorance, and established only by suc- 
 cession and by precedents. It is not a grant capriciously made 
 from a higher tyrant to a lower. It is a right dearly purchased by 
 the first possessors, and justly inherited by those that succeeded 
 them. When Christianity was established in this island, a regular 
 mode of publick worship was prescribed. Publick worship requires 
 a publick place ; and the proprietors of lands, as they were con- 
 verted, built churches for their families and their vassals. For the 
 maintenance of ministers, they settled a certain portion of their 
 lands ; and a district, through which each minister was required to 
 extend his care, was, by that circumscription, constituted a parish. 
 This is a position so generally received in England, that the extent 
 of a manor and of a parish are regularly received for each other. 
 The churches which the proprietors of lands had thus built and 
 thus endowed, they justly thought themselves entitled to provide 
 with ministers ; and where the episcopal government prevails, the 
 liishop has no power to reject a man nominated by the patron, but 
 for some crime that might exclude him from the priesthood. For 
 
 * See ante, ii. 145, for what Johnson said of the inward light. 
 
 the
 
 28o The rights of lay -patro7is. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 the endowment of the church being the gift of the landlord, he was 
 consequently at liberty to give it according to his choice, to any 
 man capable of performing the holy offices. The people did not 
 choose him, because the people did not pay him. 
 
 'We hear it sometimes urged, that this original right is passed 
 out of memory, and is obliterated and obscured by many transla- 
 tions of property and changes of government ; that scarce any 
 church is now in the hands of the heirs of the builders ; and that 
 the present persons have entered subsequently upon the pretended 
 rights by a thousand accidental and unknown causes. Much of 
 this, perhaps, is true. But how is the right of patronage extin- 
 guished ? If the right followed the lands, it is possessed by the 
 same equity by which the lands are possessed. It is, in effect, 
 part of the manor, and protected by the same laws with every 
 other privilege. Let us suppose an estate forfeited by treason, and 
 granted by the Crown to a new family. With the lands were for- 
 feited all the rights appendant to those lands ; by the same power 
 that grants the lands, the rights also are granted. The right lost 
 to the patron falls not to the people, but is either retained by the 
 Crown, or what to the people is the same thing, is by the Crown 
 given away. Let it change hands ever so often, it is possessed by 
 him that receives it with the same right as it was conveyed. It 
 may, indeed, like all our possessions, be forcibly seized or fraudu- 
 lently obtained. But no injury is still done to the people ; for 
 what they never had, they have never lost. Caius may usurp the 
 right of Titius ; but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people ; 
 and no man's conscience, however tender or however active, can 
 prompt him to restore what may be proved to have been never 
 taken away. Supposing, what I think cannot be proved, that a 
 popular election of ministers were to be desired, our desires are 
 not the measure of equity. It were to be desired that power should 
 be only in the hands of the merciful, and riches in the possession 
 of the generous ; but the law must leave both riches and power 
 where it finds them : and must often leave riches with the covetous, 
 and power with the cruel. Convenience may be a rule in little 
 things, where no other rule has been established. But as the great 
 end of government is to give every man his own, no inconvenience 
 is greater than that of making right uncertain. Nor is any man 
 more an enemy to publick peace, than he who fills weak heads 
 with imaginary claims, and breaks the series of civil subordination, 
 by inciting the lower classes of mankind to encroach upon the 
 
 higher. 
 
 * Having
 
 Aetat. 64.] The election of pastors. 281 
 
 ' Having thus shown that the right of patronage, being originally 
 purchased, may be legally transferred, and that it is now in the 
 hands of lawful possessors, at least as certainly as any other right ; 
 — we have left to the advocates of the people no other plea than 
 that of convenience. Let us, therefore, now consider what the peo- 
 ple would really gain by a general abolition of the right of patron- 
 age. What is most to be desired by such a change is, that the 
 country should be supplied with better ministers. But why should 
 we suppose that the parish will make a wiser choice than the pa- 
 tron .'' If we suppose mankind actuated by interest, the patron is 
 more likely to choose with caution, because he will suffer more by 
 choosing wrong. By the deficiencies of his minister, or by his 
 vices, he is equally offended with the rest of the congregation ; but 
 he will have this reason more to lament them, that they will be im- 
 puted to his absurdity or corruption. The qualifications of a min- 
 ister are well known to be learning and piety. Of his learning the 
 patron is probably the only judge in the parish -, and of his piety 
 not less a judge than others ; and is more likely to enquire minute- 
 ly and diligently before he gives a presentation, than one of the 
 parochial rabble, who can give nothing but a vote. It may be 
 urged, that though the parish might not choose better ministers, 
 they would at least choose ministers whom they like better, and 
 who would therefore officiate with greater efiicacy. That ignorance 
 and perverseness should always obtain what they like, was never 
 considered as the end of governmenc ; of which it is the great and 
 standing benefit, that the wise see for the simple, and the regular 
 act for the capricious. But that this argument supposes the peo- 
 ple capable of judging, and resolute to act according to their best 
 judgments, though this be sufficiently absurd, it is not all its ab- 
 surdity. It supposes not only wisdom, but unanimity in those, 
 who upon no other occasions are unanimous or wise. If by some 
 strange concurrence all the voices of a parish should unite in the 
 choice of any single man, though I could not charge the patron 
 with injustice for presenting a minister, I should censure him as 
 unkind and injudicious. But, it is evident, that as in all other pop- 
 ular elections there will be contrariety of judgment and acrimony 
 of passion, a parish upon every vacancy would break into factions, 
 and the contest for the choice of a minister would set neighbours 
 at variance, and bring discord into families. The minister would 
 be taught all the arts of a candidate, would flatter some, and bribe 
 others; and the electors, as in all other cases, would call for holi- 
 days and ale, and break the heads of each other during the jollity 
 
 of
 
 282 The election of pastors, [a.d. 1773. 
 
 of the canvas. The time must, however, come at last, when one 
 of the factions must prevail, and one of the ministers get possession 
 of the church. On what terms does he enter upon his ministry 
 but those of enmity with half his parish ? By what prudence or 
 what diligence can he hope to conciliate the affections of that party 
 by whose defeat he has obtained his living ? Every man who voted 
 against him will enter the church with hanging head and downcast 
 eyes, afraid to encounter that neighbour by whose vote and influ- 
 ence he has been overpowered. He will hate his neighbour for 
 opposing him, and his minister for having prospered by the oppo- 
 sition ; and as he will never see him but with pain, he will never 
 see him but with hatred. Of a minister presented by the patron, 
 the parish has seldom any thing worse to say than that they do 
 not know him. Of a minister chosen by a popular contest, all 
 those who do not favour him, have nursed up in their bosoms prin- 
 ciples of hatred and reasons of rejection. Anger is excited prin- 
 cipally by pride. The pride of a common man is very little exas- 
 perated by the supposed usurpation of an acknowledged superiour. 
 He bears only his little share of a general evil, and suffers in com- 
 mon with the whole parish ; but when the contest is between equals, 
 the defeat has many aggravations ; and he that is defeated by his 
 next neighbour, is seldom satisfied without some revenge ; and it 
 is hard to say what bitterness of malignity would prevail in a par- 
 ish where these elections should happen to be frequent, and the 
 enmity of opposition should be re-kindled before it had cooled.' 
 
 Though I present to my readers Dr. Johnson's masterly 
 thoughts on the subject, I think it proper to declare, that 
 notwithstanding I am myself a lay-patron, I do not entirely 
 subscribe to his opinion. 
 
 On Friday, May 7, I breakfasted with him at Mr. Thrale's 
 in the Borough. While we were alone, I endeavoured 
 as well as I could to apologise for a lady ' who had been 
 
 ' Lady Diana Beauclerk. In 1768 Beauclerk married the eldest 
 daughter of the second Duke of Marlborough, two days after her 
 divorce from her first husband, Viscount Bolingbroke, the nephew of 
 the famous Lord Bolingbroke. She was living when her story, so 
 slightly veiled as it is, was thus published by Boswell. The marriage 
 was not a happy one. Two years after Beauclerk's death, Mr. Burke, 
 looking at his widow's house, said in Miss Burney's presence : — ' I am 
 extremely glad to see her at last so well housed ; poor woman ! the 
 
 divorced
 
 4.etat. 64.] Boswell mingles virtue and vice. 283 
 
 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 obliga- 
 tion ; 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 at- 
 tempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justi- 
 fied ; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable 
 friend gave me a proper check : ' My dear Sir, never ac- 
 custom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman's 
 a whore, and there's an end on't.' 
 
 He described the father' of one of his friends thus: 'Sir, 
 he was so exuberant a talker at publick meeting, that the 
 gentlemen of his county were afraid of him. No business 
 could be done for his declamation.' 
 
 He did not give me full credit when I mentioned that I 
 had carried on a short conversation by signs with some Esqui- 
 maux who were then in London, particularly with one of 
 them who was a priest. He thought I could not make them 
 understand me. No man was more incredulous as to par- 
 ticular facts, which were at all extraordinary^; and there- 
 fore no man was more scrupulously inquisitive, in order to 
 discover the truth. 
 
 I dined with him this day at the house of my friends, 
 
 bowl has long rolled in misery; I rejoice that it has now found its 
 ixilance. I never myself so much enjoyed the si^ht of happiness in 
 another, as in that woman when I first saw her after the death of her 
 husband.' He then drew Beauclerk's character ' in strong and marked 
 expressions, describing the misery he gave his wife, his singular ill- 
 treatment of her, and the necessary relief the death of such a man 
 must give.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 147. 
 
 ' Old Mr. Langton. Croker. See /c?^/, April 26, i 776. 
 
 ' Set post, Sept. 22, 1777. 
 
 Messieurs
 
 284 The migration of the swallows. [a.d. iT'iiS. 
 
 Messieurs Edward and Charles Dilly ', booksellers in the 
 Poultry : there were present, their elder brother Mr. Dilly 
 of Bedfordshire, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Langton, Mr. Clax- 
 ton, Reverend Dr. Mayo a dissenting minister, the Rev- 
 erend Mr. Toplady^ and my friend the Reverend Mr. 
 Temple. 
 
 Hawkesworth's compilation of the voyages to the South 
 Sea being mentioned ; — JOHNSON. ' Sir, if you talk of it as 
 a subject of commerce, it will be gainful' ; if as a book that 
 is to increase human knowledge, I believe there will not be 
 much of that. Hawkesworth can tell only what the voy- 
 agers have told him ; and they have found very little, only 
 one new animal, I think.' BOSWELL. ' But many insects, 
 Sir.' Johnson. ' Why, Sir, as to insects, Ray reckons of 
 British insects twenty thousand species. They might have 
 staid at home and discovered enough in that way.' 
 
 Talking of birds, I mentioned Mr. Daines Barrington's in- 
 genious Essay against the received notion of their migra- 
 tion. Johnson. ' I think we have as good evidence for the 
 migration of woodcocks as can be desired. We find they 
 disappear at a certain time of the year, and appear again at 
 a certain time of the year ; and some of them, when weary 
 in their flight, have been known to alight on the rieCTing of 
 ships far out at sea.' One of the company observed, that 
 there had been instances of some of them found in summer 
 in Essex. Johnson. ' Sir, that strengthens our argument. 
 Exceptio probat rcgulam. Some being found shews, that, 
 if all remained, many would be found. A few sick or lame 
 
 ' See/tfj-/', May 15, 1776. 
 
 ' The writer of hymns. 
 
 = Malone says that ' Hawkesworth was introduced by Garrick to 
 Lord Sandwich, who, thinking to put a few hundred pounds into his 
 pocket, appointed him to revise and publish Cook's Voyages. He 
 scarcely did any thing to the MSS., yet sold it to Cadell and Strahan 
 for ;^6ooo.' Prior's Ma/one, p.z^i. Thurlow, in his speech on copy- 
 right on March 24, 1774, said 'that Hawkesworth's book, which was a 
 mere composition of trash, sold for three guineas by the booksellers' 
 monopolizing.' Pari. Hist. xvii. 1086. See ante, i. 293, note 2, and 
 Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 3. 
 
 ones
 
 Aetat. 64.] Reaso7i and instinct. 285 
 
 ones may be found.' GOLDSMITH. ' There is a partial mi- 
 gration of the swallows ; the stronger ones migrate, the 
 others do not '.' 
 
 BOSWELL. ' I am well assured that the people of Otaheite 
 who have the bread tree, the fruit of which serves them for 
 bread, laughed heartily when they were informed of the 
 tedious process necessary with us to have bread; — plow- 
 ing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, threshing, grinding, baking.' 
 Johnson. ' Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when 
 they are told of the advantages of civilized life. Were you 
 to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon 
 brick, and rafter upon rafter, and that after a house is raised 
 to a certain height, a man tumbles off a scaffold, and breaks 
 his neck ; he would laugh heartily at our folly in building ; 
 but it does not follow that men are better without houses. 
 No, Sir, (holding up a slice of a good loaf,) this is better than 
 the bread tree^' 
 
 He repeated an argument, which is to be found in his 
 Rambler^, against the notion that the brute creation is en- 
 dowed with the faculty of reason : ' birds build by instinct ; 
 they never improve ; they build their first nest as well as 
 any one they ever build.' GOLDSMITH. 'Yet we see if you 
 take away a bird's nest with the eggs in it, she will make a 
 slighter nest and lay again.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, that is because 
 at first she has full time and makes her nest deliberately. 
 In the case you mention she is pressed to lay, and must 
 therefore make her nest quickly, and consequently it will 
 be slight.' Goldsmith. ' The nidification of birds is what 
 is least known in natural history, though one of the most 
 curious things in it.' 
 
 ' Gilbert White held ' that, though most of the swallow kind may 
 migrate, yet that some do stay behind, and bide with us during the 
 winter.' White's Selbornc, Letter xii. See ante, ii. 63. 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 83. 
 
 " No. 41. 'The sparrow that was hatched last spring makes her 
 first nest the ensuing season of the same materials, and with the same 
 art as in any following year; and the hen conducts and shelters her 
 first brood of chickens with all the prudence that she ever attains.' 
 
 I introduced
 
 286 A discussion on toleration. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 I introduced the subject of toleration '. JOHNSON. ' Ev- 
 ery society has a right to preserve pubHck peace and order, 
 and therefore has a good right to prohibit the propagation 
 of opinions which have a dangerous tendency. To say the 
 magistrate has this right, is using an inadequate word : it is 
 the society for which the magistrate is agent. He may be 
 morally or theologically wrong in restraining the propaga- 
 tion of opinions which he thinks dangerous, but he is politi- 
 cally right.' Mayo. ' I am of opinion, Sir, that every man 
 is entitled to liberty of conscience in religion ; and that the 
 magistrate cannot restrain that right.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, I 
 agree with you. Every man has a right to liberty of con- 
 science, and with that the magistrate cannot interfere. Peo- 
 ple confound liberty of thinking with liberty of talking ; 
 nay, wath liberty of preaching. Every man has a physical 
 right to think as he pleases ; for it cannot be discovered 
 how he thinks. He has not a moral right, for he ought to 
 inform himself, and think justly. But, Sir, no member of 
 a society has a right to tcacJi any doctrine contrary to what 
 the society holds to be true. The magistrate, I say, may 
 be wrong in what he thinks : but while he thinks himself 
 right, he may and ought to enforce what he thinks \' Mayo. 
 ' Then, Sir, we are to remain always in errour, and truth 
 never can prevail ; and the magistrate was right in persecut- 
 ing the first Christians.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, the only method by 
 which religious truth can be established is by martyrdom. 
 The magistrate has a right to enforce what he thinks ; and 
 he who is conscious of the truth has a right to suffer. I 
 am afraid there is no other way of ascertaining the truth, 
 
 ' StQposi, April 3, 1776, April 3, 1779, and April 28, 1783. 
 
 ' Rousseau went further than Johnson in this. About eleven years 
 earlier he had, in his Contrat 6't>«rt/, iv. 8, laid down certain 'simple 
 dogmas,' such as the belief in a God and a future state, and said :— 
 ' Sans pouvoir obliger personne a les croire, il [le Souverain] peut 
 bannir de I'Etat quiconque ne les croit pas : . . . Que si quelqu'un, 
 apres avoir reconnu publiquement ces memes dogmes, se conduit 
 comme ne les croyant pas, qu'il soit puni de mort ; il a commis le 
 plus grand des crimes, il a menti devant les lois.' 
 
 but
 
 Aetat. 64.] A clisciissiou Oil toleration. 287 
 
 but by persecution on the one hand and enduring it on the 
 other'.' Goldsmith. 'But how is a man to act, Sir? 
 Though firmly convinced of the truth of his doctrine, may 
 he not think it wrong to expose himself to persecution? 
 Has he a right to do so? Is it not, as it were, commit- 
 ting voluntary suicide?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, as to voluntary 
 suicide, as you call it, there are twenty thousand men in an 
 army who will go without scruple to be shot at, and mount 
 a breach for five-pence a day.' Goldsmith. ' But have 
 they a moral right to do this?' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, if 
 you will not take the universal opinion of mankind, I have 
 nothing to say. If mankind cannot defend their own way 
 of thinking, I cannot defend it. Sir, if a man is in doubt 
 whether it would be better for him to expose himself to 
 martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be con- 
 vinced that he has a delegation from heaven.' GOLDSMITH. 
 ' I would consider whether there is the greater chance of 
 good or evil upon the whole. If I see a man who had fallen 
 into a well, I would wish to help him out ; but if there is 
 a greater probability that he shall pull me in, than that I 
 shall pull him out, I would not attempt it. So were I to 
 go to Turkey, I might wish to convert the Grand Signor to 
 the Christian faith ; but when I considered that I should 
 probably be put to death without effectuating my purpose 
 in any degree, I should keep myself quiet.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, 
 you must consider that we have perfect and imperfect ob- 
 ligations. Perfect obligations, which are generally not to 
 do something, are clear and positive ; as, " thou shalt not 
 kill." But charity, for instance, is not definable by limits. 
 It is a duty to give to the poor ; but no man can say how 
 much another should give to the poor, or when a man has 
 given too little to save his soul. In the same manner it is 
 a duty to instruct the ignorant, and of consequence to con- 
 vert infidels to Christianity ; but no man in the common 
 course of things is obliged to carry this to such a degree as 
 to incur the danger of martyrdom, as no man is obliged to 
 
 ' Ste. post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. 
 
 strip
 
 288 A discussion on toleration. [a. d. 1773. 
 
 strip himself to the shirt in order to give charity. I have 
 said, that a man must be persuaded that he has a particular 
 delegation from heaven.' Goldsmith. ' How is this to be 
 known ? Our first reformers, who were burnt for not be- 
 lieving bread and wine to be CHRIST' — JOHNSON, (inter- 
 rupting him.) ' Sir, they were not burnt for not believing 
 bread and wine to be CHRIST, but for insulting those who 
 did believe it. And, Sir, when the first reformers began, 
 they did not intend to be martyred : as many of them ran 
 away as could.' BOSWELL. ' But, Sir, there was your coun- 
 tryman, Elwal ', who you told me challenged King George 
 with his black-guards, and his red-guards.' JOHNSON. ' My 
 countryman, Elwal, Sir, should have been put in the stocks ; 
 a proper pulpit for him ; and he'd have had a numerous 
 audience. A man who preaches in the stocks will always 
 have hearers enough.' BoswELL. ' But Elwal thought him- 
 self in the right.' JOHNSON. ' We are not providing for 
 mad people ; there are places for them in the neighbour- 
 hood,' (meaning Moorfields.) Mayo. ' But, Sir, is it not 
 very hard that I should not be allowed to teach my children 
 what I really believe to be the truth?' JOHNSON. 'Why, 
 Sir, you might contrive to teach your children extra scan- 
 dahun ; but. Sir, the magistrate, if he knows it, has a right 
 to restrain you. Suppose you teach your children to be 
 thieves?' Mayo. 'This is making a joke of the subject.' 
 Johnson. 'Nay, Sir, take it thus: — that you teach them 
 the community of goods ; for which there are as many 
 plausible arguments as for most erroneous doctrines. You 
 teach them that all things at first were in common, and 
 that no man had a right to any thing but as he laid his 
 hands upon it ; and that this still is, or ought to be, the 
 rule amongst mankind. Here, Sir, you sap a great princi- 
 ple in society, — property. And don't you think the magis- 
 trate would have a right to prevent you ? Or, suppose you 
 should teach your children the notion of the Adamites, 
 
 ' Bosvvell calls Elwal Johnson's countryman, because they both 
 came from the same county. See ante, ii. 189. 
 
 and
 
 Aetat. 64.] A discussioii Oil tolevatioii. 289 
 
 and they should run naked into the streets, would not the 
 magistrate have a right to flog 'em into their doublets ?' 
 Mayo. ' I think the magistrate has no right to interfere 
 till there is some overt act.' BOSWELL. 'So, Sir, though 
 he sees an enemy to the State charging a blunderbuss, he 
 is not to interfere till it is fired off?' Mayo. 'He must 
 be sure of its direction against the State.' JOHNSON. ' The 
 magistrate is to judge of that. — He has no right to restrain 
 your thinking, because the evil centers in yourself. If a 
 man were sitting at this table, and chopping off his fingers, 
 the magistrate, as guardian of the community, has no au- 
 thority to restrain him, however he might do it from kind- 
 ness as a parent. — Though, indeed, upon more consider- 
 ation, I think he may ; as it is probable, that he who is 
 chopping off his own fingers, may soon proceed to chop 
 off those of other people. If I think it right to steal Mr. 
 Billy's plate, I am a bad man ; but he can say nothing to 
 me. If I make an open declaration that I think so, he will 
 keep me out of his house. If I put forth my hand, I shall 
 be sent to Newgate. This is the gradation of thinking, 
 preaching, and acting : if a man thinks erroneously, he may 
 keep his thoughts to himself, and nobody will trouble him ; 
 if he preaches erroneous doctrine, society may expel him ; 
 if he acts in consequence of it, the law takes place, and he 
 is hanged '.' Mayo. ' But, Sir, ought not Christians to have 
 liberty of conscience?' JOHNSON. 'I have already told you 
 so, Sir. You are coming back to where you were.' BOS- 
 WELL. ' Dr. Mayo is always taking a return post - chaise, 
 and going the stage over again. He has it at half price.' 
 Johnson. ' Dr. Mayo, like other champions for unlimited 
 toleration, has got a set of words '^ Sir, it is no matter, 
 
 ' Baretti, in a MS. note on Piozzi Lctter-s, i. 219, says: — 'Johnson 
 would have made an excellent Spanish inquisitor. To his shame be 
 it said, he always was tooth and nail against toleration.' 
 
 ^ Dr. Mayo's calm temper and steady perseverance, rendered him 
 an admirable subject for the exercise of Dr. J(jhnson's powerful abili- 
 ties. He never flinched : l)ut, after reiterated blows, remained seem- 
 ingly unmoved as at the first. The scintillations of Johnson's genius 
 II. — 19 politically,
 
 290 Golds7nitJi s wish to shine. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 politically, whether the magistrate be right or wrong. Sup- 
 pose a club were to be formed, to drink confusion to King 
 George the Third, and a happy restoration to Charles the 
 Third ', this would be very bad with respect to the State ; 
 but every member of that club must either conform to its 
 rules, or be turned out of it. Old Baxter, I remember, main- 
 tains, that the magistrate should " tolerate all things that 
 are tolerable." This is no good definition of toleration 
 upon any principle ; but it shews that he thought some 
 things were not tolerable.' TOPLADY. ' Sir, you have un- 
 twisted this difficult subject with great dexterity \' 
 
 During this argument, Goldsmith sat in restless agitation, 
 from a wish to get in and shine \ Finding himself excluded, 
 he had taken his hat to go away\ but remained for some 
 time with it in his hand, like a gamester, who at the close 
 
 flashed every time he was struck, without his receiving any injury. 
 Hence he obtained the epithet of The Literary Anvil. Boswell. 
 So-G^post, April 15, 1778, for an account of another dinner at Mr. Dilly's, 
 where Johnson and Mayo met. 
 
 ' The Young Pretender, Charles Edward. 
 
 - Mr. Croker, quoting Johnson's letter of May 20, 1775 {Piozzi Let- 
 ters, i. 219), where he says, ' I dined in a large company at a dissent- 
 ing bookseller's yesterday, and disputed against toleration with one 
 Doctor Meyer,' continues : — ' This must have been the dinner noted 
 in the text ; but I cannot reconcile the dates, and the mention of the 
 death of the Queen of Denmark, which happened on May 10, 1775, 
 ascertains that the date of the letter is correct. Boswell . . . must, I 
 think, have misdated and misplaced his note of this conversation.' 
 That the dinner did not take place in May, 1775, is, however, quite 
 clear. By that date Goldsmith had been dead more than a year, and 
 Goldsmith bore a large part in the talk at the Dillys' table. On the 
 other hand, there can be no question about the correctness of the 
 date of the letter. Wesley, in his Journal for 1757 (ii. 340), mentions 
 ' Mr. Meier, chaplain to one of the Hanoverian regiments.' Perhaps 
 he is the man whom Johnson met in 1775. 
 
 ^ See ajtte, i. 490, note 2. 
 
 " 'It is very possible he had to call at Covent-garden on his way, 
 and that for this, and not for Boswell's reason, he had taken his hat 
 early. The actor who so assisted him in Young Marlow was taking 
 his benefit this seventh of May; and for an additional attraction 
 Goldsmith had written him an epilogue.' Forster's Goldstntt/i, ii. 376. 
 
 of
 
 Aetat. 64.] Laugton rebtiked by Johusou. 291 
 
 of a long night, lingers for a little while, to see if he can 
 have a favourable opening to finish with success. Once 
 when he was beginning to speak, he found himself over- 
 powered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the op- 
 posite end of the table, and did not perceive Goldsmith's 
 attempt. Thus disappointed of his wish to obtain the at- 
 tention of the company, Goldsmith in a passion threw down 
 his hat, looking angrily at Johnson, and exclaiming in a 
 bitter tone, ' Take it' When Toplady was going to speak, 
 Johnson uttered some sound, which led Goldsmith to think 
 that he was beginning again, and taking the words from 
 Toplady. Upon which, he seized this opportunity of vent- 
 ing his own envy and spleen, under the pretext of support- 
 ing another person : ' Sir, (said he to Johnson,) the gentle- 
 man has heard you patiently for an hour ; pray allow us 
 now to hear him '.' JOHNSON, (sternly.) ' Sir, I was not in- 
 terrupting the gentleman. I was only giving him a signal 
 of my attention. Sir, you are impertinent.' Goldsmith 
 made no reply, but continued in the company for some 
 time. 
 
 A gentleman present'' ventured to ask Dr. Johnson if 
 there was not a material difference as to toleration of opin- 
 ions 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 highly offended, and said, ' I wonder, Sir, how 
 a gentleman of your piety can introduce this subject in a 
 mixed company.' He told me afterwards, that the impro- 
 priety was, that perhaps some of the company might have 
 
 ' Johnson was not priven to interrupting a speaker. Hawkins {Life, 
 p. 164J, describing his conversation, says : — ' For the pleasure he com- 
 municated to his hearers he expected not the tribute of silence ; on 
 the contrary, he encouraged others, particularly young men, to speak, 
 and paid a due attention to what they said.' Sec post, under April 
 29, 1776, note. 
 
 = That this was Langton can be seen from Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 
 22, 1773, and from Johnson's letters of July 5, i773. Ju'y 5- '774. and 
 Jan. 21, 1775. 
 
 talked
 
 292 Persecutions of Iris Jl Catholicks. [a. d. 1773. 
 
 talked on the subject in such terms as might have shocked 
 him' ; or he might have been forced to appear in their eyes 
 a narrow-minded man. The gentleman, with submissive 
 deference, said, he had only hinted at the question from a 
 desire to hear Dr. Johnson's opinion upon it. JOHNSON. 
 ' Why then, Sir, I think that permitting men to preach any 
 opinion contrary to the doctrine of the established church 
 tends, in a certain degree, to lessen the authority of the 
 church, and consequently, to lessen the influence of relig- 
 ion.' ' It may be considered, (said the gentleman,) whether 
 it would not be politick to tolerate in such a case.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Sir, we have been talking of right : this is another 
 question. I think it is not politick to tolerate in such a 
 case.' 
 
 Though he did not think it fit that so aweful a subject 
 should be introduced in a mixed company, and therefore at 
 this time waved the theological question ; yet his own or- 
 thodox belief in the sacred mystery of the TRINITY is 
 evinced beyond doubt, by the following passage in his pri- 
 vate devotions : . 
 
 ' O Lord, hear my prayer [prayers], for Jesus Christ's sake ; to 
 whom with thee and the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God, 
 be all honour and glory, world without end, Amen '.' 
 
 BOSWELL. 'Pray, Mr. Dilly, how does Dr. Leland's^ His- 
 tory of Ireland s^iXT JOHNSON, (bursting forth with a gen- 
 erous indignation.) ' The Irish are in a most unnatural state; 
 for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority*. 
 There is no instance, even in the ten persecutions ^ of such 
 
 * See/^j-/, April 28, 1783. 
 
 * Pr. and Med. p. 40. BoswELL. 
 ' See ante, i. 566. 
 
 * 'In England,' wrote Burke, 'the Roman Catholics are a sect: in 
 Ireland they are a nation.' Burke's Carres, iv. 89. 
 
 ^ ' The celebrated number of ten persecutions has been determined 
 by the ecclesiastical writers of the fifth century,' who possessed a more 
 distinct view of the prosperous or adverse fortunes of the church, 
 from the age of Nero to that of Diocletian. The ingenious parallels 
 
 severity
 
 Aetat. G4.] Johusons apology to Goldsmith. 293 
 
 severity as that which the protestants of Ireland have ex- 
 ercised against the CathoHcks. Did we tell them we have 
 conquered them, it would be above board : to punish them 
 by confiscation and other penalties, as rebels, was monstrous 
 injustice '. King William was not their lawful sovereign : 
 he had not been acknowledged by the Parliament of Ire- 
 land, when they appeared in arms against him.' 
 
 I here suggested something favourable of the Roman 
 CathoHcks. TOPLADY. ' Does not their invocation of saints 
 suppose omnipresence in the saints?' Johnson. ' No, Sir ; 
 it supposes only pluri -presence, and when spirits are di- 
 vested of matter, it seems probable that they should see 
 with more extent than when in an embodied state. There 
 is, therefore, no approach to an invasion of any of the di- 
 vine attributes, in the invocation of saints. But I think it 
 is will-worship, and presumption. I sec no command for it, 
 and therefore think it is safer not to practise it\' 
 
 He and Mr. Langton and I went together to the Club, 
 where we found Mr. Burke, Mr, Garrick, and some other 
 members, and amongst them our friend Goldsmith, who sat 
 silently brooding over Johnson's reprimand to him after din- 
 ner. Johnson perceived this, and 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 
 
 of the ten plagues of Egypt, and of the ten horns of the Apocalypse, 
 first suggested this calculation to their minds.' Gibbon's Decline and 
 Fall, ch. xvi. ed. 1807, ii. 370. 
 
 ' Sec ante, ii. 139, 150. 
 
 "^ See ante, ii. 120. 
 
 ' Reynolds said • — 'Johnson had one virtue which I hold one of the 
 most difficult to practise. After the heat of contest was over, if he 
 had been informed that his antagonist resented his rudeness, he was 
 the first to seek after a reconciliation.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 457. He 
 wrote to Dr. Taylor in 1756: — 'When I am musing alone; I feel a 
 pang for every moment that any human being has by my peevishness 
 or obstinacy spent in uneasiness.' Notes atid (2ueyles, 6th S., v. 324. 
 More than twenty years later he said in Miss Burney's hearing: — ' I 
 am always sorry when I make bitter speeches, and I never do it but 
 
 answered
 
 294 Addison s deficiency in conversation, [a.d. 1773. 
 
 answered placidly, ' It must be much from you, Sir, that I 
 take ill.' And so at once the difference was over, and they 
 were on as easy terms as ever, and Goldsmith rattled away 
 as usual'. 
 
 In our way to the club to-night, when I regretted that 
 Goldsmith would, upon every occasion, endeavour to shine, 
 by which he often exposed himself, Mr. Langton observed, 
 that he was not like Addison, who was content with the 
 fame of his writings, and did not aim also at excellency in 
 conversation, for which he found himself unfit ; and that he 
 said to a lady who complained of his having talked little 
 in company, ' Madam, I have but ninepence in ready money, 
 but I can draw for a thousand pounds".' I observed, 
 
 when I am insufferably vexed.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 131. 'When 
 the fray was over," writes Murphy {Ltfc, p. 140), ' he generally softened 
 into repentance, and, by conciliating measures, took care that no ani- 
 mosity should be left rankling in the breast of the antagonist.' See 
 ante, ii. 125. 
 
 * Johnson had offended Langton as well as Goldsmith this day, yet 
 of Goldsmith only did he ask pardon. Perhaps this fact increased 
 Langton's resentment, which lasted certainly more than a year. See 
 posi,]vL\y 5, 1774, and Jan. 21, 1775. 
 
 * * Addison, speaking of his own deficiency in conversation, used to 
 say of himself, that with respect to intellectual wealth he could draw 
 bills for a thousand pounds, though he had not a guinea in his pocket.' 
 Johnson's Works, vii. 446. Somewhat the same thought may be found 
 in The Tatlcr, No. 30, where it is said that ' a man endowed with great 
 perfections without good-breeding, is like one who has his pockets 
 full of gold, but always wants change for his ordinary occasions.' I 
 have traced it still earlier, for Burnet in his History of his owjt Times, 
 i. 210, says, that ' Bishop Wilkins used to say Lloyd had the most 
 learning in ready cash of any he ever knew.' Later authors have used 
 che same image. Lord Chesterfield {Letters, ii. 291) in 1749 wrote of 
 Lord Bolingbroke : — ' He has an infinite fund of various and almost 
 universal knowledge, which, from the clearest and quickest concep- 
 tion and happiest memory that ever man was blessed with, he always 
 carries about him. It is his pocket-money, and he never has occa- 
 sion to draw upon a book for any sum.' Southey wrote in 1816 {Life 
 and Corres. iv. 206) : — ' I wish to avoid a conference which will only 
 sink me in Lord Liverpool's judgment ; what there may be in me is 
 not payable at sight ; give me leisure and I feel my strength.' Rous- 
 
 that
 
 Aetat. G4.] Readiucss in talk. 295 
 
 that Goldsmith had a great deal of gold in his cabinet, 
 but, not content with that, was always taking out his purse. 
 Johnson. * Yes, Sir, and that so often an empty purse !' 
 
 Goldsmith's incessant desire of being conspicuous in com- 
 pany was the occasion of his sometimes appearing to such 
 disadvantage as one should hardly have supposed possi- 
 ble in a man of his genius '. When his literary reputation 
 had risen deservedly high, and his society was much courted, 
 he became very jealous of the extraordinary attention which 
 was every where paid to Johnson. One evening, in a circle 
 of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson as 
 entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority. ' Sir, 
 (said he,) you are for making a monarchy of what should be 
 a republick.' 
 
 He was still more mortified, when talking in a company 
 with fluent vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the ad- 
 miration of all who were present ; a German who sat next 
 him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself, as if about to 
 speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, ' Stay, stay, — Toctor 
 Shonson is going to say something.' This was, no doubt, 
 veiy provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, 
 who frequently mentioned it with strong expressions of in- 
 dignation \ 
 
 seau was in want of readiness like Addison : — ' Je fais d'excellens im- 
 promptus a loisir ; mais sur le temps je n'ai jamais rien fait ni dit qui 
 vaille. Je ferais une fort jolie conversation par la poste, comma on 
 dit que les Espagnols jouent aux echecs. Quand je lus le trait d'un 
 Due de Savoye qui se retourna, faisant route, pour crier ; <i 7)otre gorge, 
 viarchand dc Paris, je dis, me voila.' Lcs Cojifcssions, Livre iii. See 
 2X^0 post. May 8, 1778. 
 
 ' ' Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces, or infirm- 
 ity suflers in the human mind, there has often been observed a mani- 
 fest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his 
 writings; and Milton, in a letter to a learned stranger, by whom he 
 had been visited, with great reason congratulates himself upon the 
 consciousness of being found equal to his own character, and having 
 preserved in a private and familiar interview that reputation which 
 his works had procured him.' The Rambler, No. 14. 
 
 ' Prior {Life of Goldsmith, ii. 459) says that it was not a German 
 
 It
 
 296 JoJuisons way of contracting names, [a.d. 1773, 
 
 It may also be observed, that Goldsmith was sometimes 
 content to be treated with an easy familiarity, but, upon 
 occasions, would be consequential and important. An in- 
 stance of this occurred in a small particular. Johnson had 
 a way of contracting the names of his friends ; as Beauclerk, 
 Beau; Boswell, Bozzy ; Langton, Lanky; Murphy, Mur; 
 Sheridan, Sherry'. I remember one day, when Tom Davies 
 was telling that Dr. Johnson said, ' We are all in labour for 
 a name to Goldy s play,' Goldsmith seemed displeased that 
 such a liberty should be taken with his name, and said, ' I 
 hav^e often desired him not to call me Goldy"^.' Tom was re- 
 markably attentive to the most minute circumstance about 
 Johnson. I recollect his telling me once, on my arrival in 
 London, ' Sir, our great friend has made an improvement 
 on his appellation of old Mr. Sheridan. He calls him now 
 Sherry derry' 
 
 'To THE Reverend Mr. Bagshaw, at Bromley'. 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' I return you my sincere thanks for your additions to my Dic- 
 tionary ; but the new edition has been published some time, and 
 
 who interrupted Goldsmith but a Swiss, Mr. Moser. the keeper of the 
 Royal Academy (/6>i-/, June 2, 1783). He adds that at a Royal Acad- 
 emy dinner Moser interrupted another person in the same way, when 
 Johnson seemed preparing to speak, whereupon Goldsmith said, ' Are 
 you sure that you can comprehend what he says ?' 
 
 ' Edmund Burke he called Mund ; Dodsley, Doddy ; Derrick, Der- 
 ry; Cumberland, Cumbey; Monboddo, Monny ; Stockdale, Stockey. 
 Mrs. Piozzi represents him in his youth as calling Edmund Hector 
 'dear Mund.' ^«/^, i. 108, note. Sheridan's father had been known as 
 Sherry amongst Swift and his friends. Swift's Works, ed. 1803, x. 256. 
 
 ^ Mr. Forster {Lzfe of Goldsmiik, ii. 103) on this remarks : — ' It was a 
 courteous way of saying, " I wish j^w [Davies] wouldn't call me Goldy, 
 whatever Mr. Johnson does." ' That he is wrong in this is shown by 
 Boswell, in his letter to Johnson of Feb. 14, 1777. where he says: — 
 'You remember poor Goldsmith, when he grew important, and wished 
 to appear Doctor Major, could not bear your calling him Goldy.' See 
 also Bo?,\\e\\'s Hebrides, Oct. 14, 1773. 
 
 ^ The Reverend Thomas Bagshaw, M.A.,who died on November 
 20, 1787, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, Chaplain of Bromley 
 College, in Kent, and Rector of Southfleet. He had resigned the cure 
 
 therefore
 
 Aetat. 64.] Literary property. 297 
 
 therefore I cannot now make use of them. Whether I shall ever 
 
 revise it more, I know not. If many readers had been as judicious, 
 
 as diligent, and as communicative as yourself, my work had been 
 
 better. The world must at present take it as it is. I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most obliged 
 
 * And most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson. 
 'May 8, 1773.' 
 
 On Sunday, May 8', I dined with Johnson at Mr. Lang- 
 ton's^ with Dr. Beattie and some other company. He des- 
 canted on the subject of Literary Property. ' There seems, 
 (said he,) to be in authours a stronger right of property 
 than that by occupancy; a metaphysical^ right, a right, as 
 it were, of creation, which should from its nature be per- 
 petual ; but the consent of nations is against it, and indeed 
 reason and the interests of learning are against it ; for were 
 it to be perpetual, no book, however useful, could be univer- 
 sally diffused amongst mankind, should the proprietor take 
 it into his head to restrain its circulation. No book could 
 have the advantage of being edited with notes, however 
 
 of Bromley Parish some time before his death. For this, and another 
 letter from Dr. Johnson in 1784, to the same truely respectable man, I 
 am indebted to Dr. John Loveday, of the Commons \antc, i. 534, note 
 3], a son of the late learned and pious John Loveday, Esq., of Cavers- 
 ham in Berkshire, who obligingly transcribed them for me from the 
 originals in his possession. This worthy gentleman, having retired 
 from business, now lives in Warwickshire. The world has been lately 
 obliged to him as the Editor of the late Rev. Dr. Townson's excellent 
 work, modestly entitled A Discourse on the Evangelical History, from 
 the Interment to the AscensioJi of oier Lord and Saviour J esics Christ ; 
 to which is prefixed, a truly interesting and pleasing account of the 
 authour, by the Reverend Mr. Ralph Churton. Boswell. 
 
 ' Sunday was May 9. 
 
 ^ As Langton was found to deeply resent Johnson's hasty expres- 
 sion at the dinner on the 7th, we must assume that he had invited 
 Johnson to dine wltli him before the offence had been given. 
 
 ' In the Dictionary Johnson, as the second definition of jiietaphys- 
 ical, says : — ' In Shakespeare it means sttpernatural or preternatural.' 
 ' Creation ' being beyond the nature of man, the right derived from it 
 is preternatural or metaphysical. 
 
 necessary
 
 298 GoldsmWis envy. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 necessary to its elucidation, should the proprietor per- 
 versely oppose it. For the general good of the world, there- 
 fore, whatever valuable work has once been created by an 
 authour, and issued out by him, should be understood as 
 no longer in his power, but as belonging to the publick ; 
 at the same time the authour is entitled to an adequate 
 reward. This he should have by an exclusive right to his 
 work for a considerable number of years'.' 
 
 He attacked Lord Monboddo's strange speculation on the 
 primitive state of human nature^; observing, ' Sir, it is all 
 conjecture about a thing useless, even were it known to be 
 true. Knowledge of all kinds is good. Conjecture, as to 
 things useful, is good ; but conjecture as to what it would 
 be useless to know, such as whether men went upon all 
 four, is very idle.' 
 
 On Monday, May 9\ as I was to set out on my re- 
 turn to Scotland next morning, I was desirous to see as 
 much of Dr. Johnson as I could. But I first called on Gold- 
 smith to take leave of him. The jealousy and envy which, 
 though possessed of many most amiable qualities, he frankly 
 avowed, broke out violently at this interview. Upon an- 
 other occasion, when Goldsmith confessed himself to be of 
 an envious disposition, I contended with Johnson that we 
 ought not to be angry with him, he was so candid in own- 
 ing it. ' Nay, Sir, (said Johnson,) we must be angry that 
 a man has such a superabundance of an odious quality, that 
 he cannot keep it within his own breast, but it boils over.' 
 In my opinion, however. Goldsmith, had not more of it than 
 other people have, but only talked of it freely'. 
 
 ' See aiite, i. 506. 
 
 ' Hume, on Feb. 24 of this year, mentioned to Adam Smith as a late 
 publication Lord Monboddo's Origin and Progress of Language ; — ' It 
 contains all the absurdity and malignity which I suspected ; but is writ 
 with more ingenuity and in a better style than I looked for.' J. H. 
 Burton's Hiane, ii. 466. See ante, ii. 85. 
 
 * Monday was May 10. 
 
 * See ««/<?, i. 478. Percy wrote of Goldsmith's envy : — 'Whatever ap- 
 peared of this kind was a mere momentary sensation, which he knew 
 not how, like other men, to conceal.' Goldsmith's Misc. Works, i. 117. 
 
 He
 
 Aetat. 64.] Johiiso7t Oil lieivs fuak. 299 
 
 He now seemed very angry that Johnson was going to 
 be a traveller ; said ' he would be a dead weight for me to 
 carry, and that I should never be able to lug him along 
 through the Highlands and Hebrides.' Nor would he pa- 
 tiently allow me to enlarge upon Johnson's wonderful abili- 
 ties ; but exclaimed, ' Is he like Burke, who winds into a 
 subject like a serpent?' ' But, (said I,) Johnson is the Her- 
 cules who strangled serpents in his cradle.' 
 
 I dined with Dr. Johnson at General Paoli's. He was 
 obliged, by indisposition, to leave the company early ; he 
 appointed me, however, to meet him in the evening at Mr. 
 (now Sir Robert) Chambers's in the Temple, where he ac- 
 cordingly came, though he continued to be very ill. Cham- 
 bers, as is common on such occasions, prescribed various 
 remedies to him. JOHNSON, (fretted by pain.) ' Pr'ythee 
 don't tease me. Stay till I am well, and then you shall 
 tell me how to cure myself.' He grew better, and talked 
 with a noble enthusiasm of keeping up the representation 
 of respectable families. His zeal on this subject was a cir- 
 cumstance in his character exceedingly remarkable, when it 
 is considered that he himself had no pretensions to blood. I 
 heard him once say, ' I have great merit in being zealous 
 for subordination and the honours of birth ; for I can hardly 
 tell who was my grandfather'.' He maintained the dignity 
 and propriety of male succession, in opposition to the opin- 
 ion of one of our friends ^ who had that day employed Mr. 
 
 ' He might have applied to himself his own version of Ovid's lines, 
 Genus ct proavos, &c., the motto to The Rafublcr, No. 46 : — 
 ' Nought from my birth or ancestors I claim ; 
 All is my own, my honour and my shame.' 
 See afite, ii. 176. 
 
 ' That Langton is meant is shewn by Johnson's letter of July 5 
 {post, ii. 304). The man who is there described as leaving the town 
 in deep dudgeon was certainly Langton. ' Where is now my legacy ?' 
 writes Johnson. He is referring, I believe, to the last part of his play- 
 ful and boisterous speech, where he says: — 'I hope he has left me a 
 legacy.' Mr. Croker, who is great at suspicions, ridiculously takes the 
 mention of a legacy seriously, and suspects 'some personal diappoint- 
 
 Chambers
 
 3CX) Langtons will. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 Chambers to draw his will, devising his estate to his three 
 sisters, in preference to a remote heir male. Johnson called 
 them ' three doiudies,' 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. It is mighty 
 foolish to let a stranger have it because he marries your 
 daughter, and takes your name. As for an estate newly 
 acquired by trade, you may give it, if you will, to the dog 
 Toivscr, and let him keep his ow7i name.' 
 
 I have known him at times exceedingly diverted at what 
 seemed to others a very small sport '. He now laughed im- 
 moderately, 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 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 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 be- 
 lieves 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 leg- 
 acy. I'd have his will turned into verse, like a ballad.' 
 
 In this playful manner did he run on, exulting in his own 
 pleasantry, which certainly was not such as might be ex- 
 pected from the authour of Tlie Rambler, but which is here 
 preserved, that my readers may be acquainted even with 
 the slightest occasional characteristicks of so eminent a man. 
 
 Mr. Chambers did not by any means relish this jocularity 
 
 ment at the bottom of this strange obstreperous and sour merriment.' 
 He might as well accuse FalstalT of sourness in his mirth. 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773, where Boswell makes the 
 same remark. 
 
 upon
 
 Aetat, 64.] Johusou s '' liidicrous exhibitiofu 301 
 
 upon a matter of which pars magna fiiit ', and seemed im- 
 patient till he got rid of us. Johnson could not stop his 
 merriment, but continued it all the way till we got with- 
 out the Temple -gate. He then burst into such a fit of 
 laughter, that he appeared to be almost in a convul- 
 sion ; and, in order to support himself, laid hold of one 
 of the posts at the side of the foot pavement, and sent 
 forth peals so loud, that in the silence of the night 
 his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to Fleet- 
 ditch. 
 
 This most ludicrous exhibition of the aweful, melancholy, 
 and venerable Johnson ^ happened well to counteract the 
 feelings of sadness which I used to experience when part- 
 ing with him for a considerable time. I accompanied him 
 to his door, where he gave me his blessing. 
 
 He records of himself this year, ' Between Easter and 
 Whitsuntide, having always considered that time as pro- 
 pitious to study, I attempted to learn the Low Dutch 
 
 * ' Et quorum pars magna fui.' 
 
 'Yea, and was no small part thereof.' 
 
 Morris, ^-Enei'ds, ii. 6. 
 
 "^ Johnson, as drawn by Boswell, is too ' awful, melancholy, and ven- 
 erable.' Such ' admirable fooling ' as he describes here is but rarely 
 shown in his pages. Yet he must often have seen equally ' ludicrous 
 exhibitions.' Hawkins {Life, p. 258) says, that 'in the talent of hu- 
 mour there hardly ever was Johnson's equal, except perhaps among 
 the old comedians.' Murphy writes {Lt'fe, ■p. 139): — 'Johnson was 
 surprised to be told, but it is certainly true, that with great powers of 
 mind, wit and humour were his shining talents.' Mrs. Piozzi confirms 
 this. ' Mr. Murphy,' she writes {Ancc. p. 205), 'always said he was in- 
 comparable at buffoonery.' She adds (p. 298) : — ' He would laugh at 
 a stroke of genuine humour, or sudden sally of odd absurdity, as 
 heartily and freely as I ever yet saw any man ; and though the jest 
 was often such as few felt besides himself, yet his laugh was irresisti- 
 ble, and was observed immediately to produce that of the company, 
 not merely from the notion that it was proper to laugh when he did, 
 but purely out of want of power to forbear it.' Miss I^urncy records: 
 — ' Dr. Johnson has more fun, and comical humour, and love of non- 
 sense about him than almost anybody I ever saw.' Mme. D'Arblay's 
 Diary, i. 204. See Boswell's own account, /c^i/, end of vol. iv. 
 
 language.'
 
 302 Mrs. Salusbury. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 language '.' It is to be observed, that he here admits an opin- 
 ion of the human mind being influenced by seasons, which 
 he ridicules in his writings'. His progress, he says, was 
 interrupted by a fever, ' which, by the imprudent use of a 
 small print, left an inflammation in his useful eye'.' We 
 cannot but admire his spirit when we know, that amidst a 
 complication of bodily and mental distress, he was still ani- 
 mated with the desire of intellectual improvement'. Vari- 
 ous notes of his studies appear on difi"erent days, in his 
 manuscript diary of this year, such as, 
 
 ' Inchoavi ledionem Pcntateuchi — Finivi lectionem Conf. Fab. Bur- 
 doni{m\ — Legi primiim actum Troadiwi. — Legi Dissertationem Clerici 
 i)Ostremam de Pent. — 2 of Clark's Sermons. — L. Appolonii pugnam 
 Betriciam. — L. centum versus Ho7nerV 
 
 Let this serve as a specimen of what accessions of litera- 
 ture he was perpetually infusing into his mind, while he 
 charged himself with idleness. 
 
 This year died Mrs. Salusbury, (mother of Mrs. Thrale,) 
 a lady whom he appears to have esteemed much, and whose 
 memory he honoured with an Epitaph °. 
 
 ' Pr. and Med. p. 129. Boswell. See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 
 Collection for Johnson's study of Low Dutch. 
 
 ^ ' Those that laugh at the portentous glare of a comet, and hear a 
 crow with equal tranquillity from the right or left, will yet talk of 
 times and situations proper for intellectual performances,' &c. The 
 Idler, No. xi. See a7ttc, i. 384. 
 
 ^ ' He did not see at all with one of his eyes ' {ante, i. 48). 
 
 * Not six months before his death, he wished me to teach him the 
 Scale of Musick :— ' Dr. Burney, teach me at least the alphabet of your 
 language.' Burney. 
 
 ' Accurata Burdonum [i. e. Scaligerorum] Fabulai Confutatio (auc- 
 tore I. R). Lugduni Batavorum. Apud Ludovicum Elzevirium 
 MDCxvii. Brit. Mus. Catalogue. 
 
 « Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 131- Boswell. Mrs. Piozzi 
 {Ancc. p. 129) describes her mother and Johnson as ' excellent, far be- 
 yond the excellence of any other man and woman I ever yet saw. As 
 her conduct extorted his truest esteem, her cruel illness excited all his 
 tenderness. He acknowledged himself improved by her piety, and 
 astonished at her fortitude, and hung over her bed with the affection 
 
 In
 
 Aetat. G4.] Dr. Beattie 271 London. 
 
 303 
 
 In a letter from Edinburgh, dated the 29th of May, I 
 pressed him to persevere in his resolution to make this year 
 the projected visit to the Hebrides, of which he and I had 
 talked for many years, and which I was confident would 
 afford us much entertainment. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' When your letter came to me, I was so darkened by an in- 
 flammation in my eye, that I could not for some time read it. I 
 can now write without trouble, and can read large prints. My eye 
 is gradually growing stronger ; and I hope will be able to take 
 some delight in the survey of a Caledonian loch. 
 
 ' Chambers is going a Judge, with six thousand a year, to Bengal '. 
 He and I shall come down together as far as Newcastle, and thence 
 I shall easily get to Edinburgh. Let me know the exact time 
 when your Courts intermit. I must conform a little to Chambers's 
 occasions, and he must conform a little to mine. The time which 
 you shall fix, must be the common point to which we will come as 
 near as we can. Except this eye, I am very well. 
 
 ' Beattie is so caressed, and invited, and treated, and liked, and 
 flattered, by the great, that I can see nothing of him. I am in 
 great hope that he will be well provided for, and then we will live 
 upon him at the Marischal College, without pity or modesty \ 
 
 of a parent, and the reverence of a son.' Baretti, in a MS. note on 
 Pioszi Letters, i. 8i, says that 'Johnson could not much bear Mrs. 
 Salusbury, nor Mrs. Salusbury him, when they first knew each other. 
 But her cancer moved his compassion, and made them friends.' 
 Johnson, recording her death, says : — ' Yesterday, as I touched her 
 hand and kissed it, she pressed my hand between her two hands, 
 
 which she probably intended as the parting caress This morning 
 
 being called about nine to feel her pulse, I said at parting, " God bless 
 you • for Jesus Christ's sake." She smiled as pleased.' Pr. and Med. 
 p. 128. 
 
 ' Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor July 22, 1782: — 'Sir Robert Cham- 
 bers slipped this session through the fingers of revocation, but I am 
 in doubt of his continuance. Shelburnc seems to be his enemy. Mrs. 
 Thralc says they will do him no harm. She perhaps thinks there is 
 no harm without hanging. The mere act of recall strips him of eight 
 thousand a year.' Notes a?id Queries, 6th S., v. 462. 
 
 '^ Beattie was Professor of Moral Philosophy. For some years his 
 
 ' left
 
 304 Mr. Langton in deep dudgeoii. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 ' ' 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 ^ ? 
 
 ' I hope your dear lady and her dear baby are both well. I 
 shall see them too when I come ; and I have that opinion of your 
 choice, as to suspect that when I have seen Mrs. Boswell, I shall 
 be less willing to go away. I am, dear Sir, 
 
 * Your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Saini. Johnson.' 
 ' Johnson 's-court, Fleet-street, 
 
 July 5, 1773.' 
 ' Write to me as soon as you can. Chambers is now at Oxford.' 
 
 I again wrote to him, informing him that the Court of 
 Session rose on the twelfth of August, hoping to see him 
 before that time, and expressing perhaps in too extravagant 
 terms, my admiration of him, and my expectation of pleas- 
 ure from our intended tour. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq, 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I shall set out from London on Friday the sixth * of this 
 
 month, and purpose not to loiter much by the way. Which day I 
 
 * English friends had tried to procure for him a permanent provision 
 beyond the very moderate emoluments arising from his office.' Just 
 before Johnson wrote, Beattie had been privately informed that he 
 was to have a pension of ^200 a year. Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, 
 pp. 145, 151. When Johnson heard of this 'he clapped his hands, and 
 cried, " O brave we !" ' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 26. 
 
 ' Langton. See a?//^', ii. 291, note 2. 
 
 ' Langton^his native village. 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 299, note 2. 
 
 * That he set out on this day is shewn by his letter to Mrs. Thrale. 
 Piozzi Letters, i. 103. The following anecdote in the Metnoir of Gold- 
 sjtiit/i, prefixed to his Misc. IVorks (i. no), is therefore inaccurate : — 
 'I was dining at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, Aug. 7, 1773, where were 
 the Archbishop of Tuam and Mr. (now Lord) Eliot, when the latter 
 making use of some sarcastical reflections on Goldsmith, Johnson 
 broke out warmly in his defence, and in the course of a spirited eulo- 
 gium said, " Is there a man, Sir, now who can pen an essay with such 
 ease and elegance as Goldsmith.?"' Johnson did in Aug., 1783, dine 
 at Reynolds's, and meet there the Archbishop of Tuam, ' a man coarse 
 of voice and inelegant of language.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 300. 
 
 shall
 
 Aetat. G4.] Jolinsoii s tour in Scotland. 305 
 
 shall be at Edinburgh, I cannot exactly tell. I suppose I must 
 
 drive to an inn, and send a porter to find you. 
 
 ' I am afraid Beattie will not be at his College soon enough for 
 
 us, and I shall be sorry to miss him ; but there is no staying for 
 
 the concurrence of all conveniences. We will do as well as we can. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 , . , ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'Aug. 3, 1773.' •' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Not being at Mr. Thrale's when your letter came, I had wTit- 
 
 ten the enclosed paper and sealed it ; bringing it hither for a frank, 
 
 I found yours. If any thing could repress my ardour, it would be 
 
 such a letter as yours. To disappoint a friend is unpleasing ; and 
 
 he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed. Think 
 
 only when you see me, that you see a man who loves you, and is 
 
 proud and glad that you love him. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most affectionate 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Aug. 3, 1773. 
 
 To THE Same. 
 
 ' Newcastle, Aug. 11, 1771. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I came hither last night, and hope, but do not absolutely 
 
 promise, to be in Edinburgh on Saturday. Beattie will not come 
 
 so soon. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' My compliments to your lady.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 
 ' Mr. Johnson sends his compliments to Mr. Boswell, being just 
 arrived at Boyd's.' 
 
 ' Saturday night.' 
 
 His stay in Scotland was from the i8th of August', on 
 which day he arrived, till the 22nd of November, when he 
 
 * It was on Saturday the 14th of August that he arrived. 
 II. — 20 set
 
 3o6 Johnson s tour in Scotland. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 set out on his return to London ; and I believe ninety-four 
 days* were never passed by any man in a more vigorous 
 exertion. 
 
 He came by the way of Berwick upon Tweed to Edin- 
 burgh, where he remained a few days, and then went by St. 
 Andrew's, Aberdeen, Inverness, and Fort Augustus, to the 
 Hebrides, to visit which was the principal object he had in 
 view. He visited the isles of Sky, Rasay, Col, Mull, Inch- 
 kenneth, and Icolmkill. He travelled through Argyleshire 
 by Inverary, and from thence by Lochlomond and Dunbar- 
 ton to Glasgow, then by Loudon to Auchinleck in Ayrshire, 
 the seat of my family, and then by Hamilton, back to Edin- 
 burgh, where he again spent some time. He thus saw the 
 four Universities of Scotland \ its three principal cities, and 
 as much of the Highland and insular life as was suf^cient 
 for his philosophical contemplation. I had the pleasure of 
 accompanying him during the whole of this journey. He 
 was respectfully entertained by the great, the learned, and 
 the elegant, wherever he went ; nor was he less delighted 
 with the hospitality which he experienced in humbler life \ 
 
 His various adventures, and the force and vivacity of his 
 mind, as exercised during this peregrination, upon innumer- 
 able topicks, have been faithfully, and to the best of my 
 abilities, displayed in my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 
 to which, as the publick has been pleased to honour it by 
 a very extensive circulation \ I beg leave to refer, as to a 
 
 ' From Aug. 14 to Nov. 22 is one hundred days. 
 
 ^ It is strange that not one of the four conferred on him an hon- 
 orary degree. This same year Beattie had been thus honoured at 
 Oxford. Gray, who visited Aberdeen eight years before Johnson, 
 was offered the degree of doctor of laws, ' which, having omitted to 
 take it at Cambridge, he thought it decent to refuse.' Johnson's 
 Works, viii. 479. 
 
 ' He was long remembered amongst the lower orders of Hebrid- 
 eans by the title of the Sassenach More, the big EnglisJwian. Wal- 
 ter Scott. 
 
 * The first edition was published in September, 1785. In the fol- 
 lowing August, in his preface to the third edition, Boswell speaks of 
 the first two editions ' as large impressions.' 
 
 separate
 
 -•-^i,* -— 
 
 --r gg^-'^ 
 
 DR. JOHNSON IN IIKHRIDEAN COSTUME.
 
 Aetat.64.] Mr. Courtenays lines on Boswell. 307 
 
 separate and remarkable portion of his life ', which may be 
 there seen in detail, and which exhibits as striking a view of 
 his powers in conversation, as his works do of his excellence 
 in writing. Nor can I deny to myself the very flattering 
 gratification of inserting here the character which my friend 
 Mr. Courtenay has been pleased to give of that work: 
 
 'With Reynolds' pencil, vivid, bold, and true, 
 So fervent Boswell gives him to our view : 
 In every trait we see his mind expand; 
 The master rises by the pupil's hand ; 
 We love the writer, praise his happy vein, 
 Grac'd with the naivete of the sage Montaigne. 
 Hence not alone are brighter parts display'd, 
 But e'en the specks of character pourtray'd : 
 We see the Rambler with fastidious smile 
 Mark the lone tree, and note the heath-clad isle ; 
 But when th' heroick tale of Flora's^ charms, 
 Deck'd in a kilt, he wields a chieftain's arms : 
 The tuneful piper sounds a martial strain. 
 And Samuel sings, " The King shall have his ain^ ' 
 
 During his stay at Edinburgh, after his return from the 
 Hebrides, he was at great pains to obtain information con- 
 cerning Scotland ; and it will appear from his subsequent 
 letters, that he was not less solicitous for intelligence on this 
 subject after his return to London. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I came home last night, without any incommodity, danger, 
 or weariness, and am ready to begin a new journey. I shall go 
 
 ' The authour was not a small gainer by this extraordinary Jour- 
 ney ; for Dr. Johnson thus writes to Mrs. Thrale, Nov. 3, 1773 : — ' Bos- 
 well will praise my resolution and perseverance, and I shall in return 
 celebrate his good humour and perpetual cheerfulness. He has bet- 
 ter faculties than I had imagined ; more justness of discernment, and 
 more fecundity of images. It is very convenient to travel with him ; 
 for there is no house where he is not received with kindness and re- 
 spect.' Let. 90, to Mrs. Thrale. [P/ozsi Lc/Z^-rs/i. igS.\ M alone. 
 
 ' ' The celebrated Flora Macdonald. See Boswell's r(3«r.' Courte- 
 nay. 
 
 to
 
 3o8 Mrs. BosweWs guest. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 to Oxford on Monday'. I know Mrs. Boswell wished me well to 
 go ' ; her wishes have not been disappointed. Mrs. Williams has 
 received Sir A's ' letter. 
 
 ' Lord Eldon (at that time Mr. John Scott) has the following remi- 
 niscences of this visit ; — ' I had a walk in New Inn Hall Garden with 
 Dr. Johnson and Sir Robert Chambers [Principal of the Hall]. Sir 
 Robert was gathering snails, and throwing them over the wall into 
 his neighbour's garden. The Doctor reproached him very roughly, 
 and stated to him that this was unmannerly and unneighbourly. 
 " Sir," said Sir Robert, " my neighbour is a Dissenter." " Oh !" said 
 the Doctor, " if so, Chambers, toss away, toss away, as hard as you 
 can." He was very absent. I have seen him standing for a very 
 long time, without moving, with a foot on each side the kennel which 
 was then in the middle of the High Street, with his eyes fixed on the 
 water running in it. In the common-room of University College he 
 was dilating upon some subject, and the then head of Lincoln Col- 
 lege, Dr. Mortimer, occasionally interrupted him, saying, " I deny that." 
 This was often repeated, and observed upon by Johnson, in terms 
 expressive of increasing displeasure and anger. At length upon the 
 Doctor's repeating the words, " I deny that," " Sir, Sir," said Johnson, 
 "you must have forgot that an author has said: Plus negabit zmtis 
 asinus in itna hora quam centinn philosophi probaiieritit in ccnfian 
 annis." ' [Dr. Fisher, who related this story to Mr. Croker, described 
 Dr. Mortimer as ' a Mr. Mortimer, a shallow under-bred man, who had 
 no sense of Johnson's superiority. He flatly contradicted some as- 
 sertion which Johnson had pronounced to be as clear as that two and 
 two make four.' Croker's Boswdl, p. 483.] ' Mrs. John Scott used to 
 relate that she had herself helped Dr. Johnson one evening to fifteen 
 cups of tea.' Twiss's Eldon, i. 87. 
 
 - In this he shewed a very acute penetration. My wife paid him 
 the most assiduous and respectful attention, while he was our guest ; 
 so that I wonder how he discovered her wishing for his departure. 
 The truth is, that his irregular hours and uncouth habits, such as 
 turning the candles with their heads downwards, when they did not 
 burn bright enough, and letting the wax drop upon the carpet, could 
 not but be disagreeable to a lady. Besides, she had not that high 
 admiration of him which was felt by most of those who knew him ; 
 and what was very natural to a female mind, she thought he had too 
 much influence over her husband. She once in a little warmth, made, 
 with more point than justice, this remark upon that subject : ' I have 
 seen many a bear led by a man ; but I never before saw a man led by 
 a bear.' Boswell. See ante, ii. 75. 
 
 ^ Sir Alexander Gordon, one of the Professors at Aberdeen. Bos- 
 well. 
 
 ' Make
 
 Aetat. 64.] The order of the clans. 309 
 
 ' Make my compliments to all those to whom my compliments 
 may be welcome. 
 
 ' Let the box ' be sent as soon as it can, and let me know when 
 to expect it. 
 
 ' Enquire, if you can, the order of the Clans : Macdonald is first. 
 Maclean second ; further I cannot go. Quicken Dr. Webster ''. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Yours affectionately, 
 'Nov.27.1773.' 'Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Dec. 2, 1773. 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' You shall have what information I can procure as to the or- 
 der of the Clans. A gentleman of the name of Grant tells me, 
 that there is no settled order among them ; and he says, that the 
 Macdonalds were not placed upon the right of the army at Cullo- 
 den ^ ; the Stuarts were. I shall, however, examine witnesses of 
 every name that I can find here. Dr. Webster shall be quickened 
 too. I like your little memorandums ; they are symptoms of your 
 being in earnest with your book of northern travels. 
 
 ' Your box shall be sent next week by sea. You will find in it 
 some pieces of the broom bush, which you saw growing on the old 
 castle of Auchinleck. The wood has a curious appearance when 
 sawn across. You may either have a little writing-standish made 
 of it, or get it formed into boards for a treatise on witchcraft, by 
 way of a suitable binding.' 
 
 ' This was a box containing a number of curious things which he 
 had picked up in Scotland, particularly some horn spoons. BoswELL. 
 
 * The Rev. Dr. Alexander Webster, one of the ministers of Edin- 
 burgh, a man of distinguished abilities, who had promised him infor- 
 mation concerning the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Boswell. 
 
 ' The Macdonalds always laid claim to be placed on the right of 
 the whole clans, and those of that tribe assign the breach of this or- 
 der at Cullodcn as one cause of the loss of the day. The Macdon- 
 alds, placed on the left wing, refused to charge, and positively left the 
 field unassailed and unbroken. Lord George Murray in vain endeav- 
 oured to urge them on by saying, that their behaviour would make 
 the left the right, and that he himself would take the name of Mac- 
 donald. Walter Scott. 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell
 
 o 
 
 lo JoJuisoiis forgiving disposition. [a.d. 1773. 
 
 * Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Dec. i8, 1773. 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' You promised me an inscription for a print to be taken from 
 an historical picture of Mary Queen of Scots being forced to resign 
 her crown, which Mr. Hamilton at Rome has painted for me. The 
 two following have been sent to me : 
 
 "■Maria Scotonmi Rcgina meliori secido digna.jus rcgium civilms 
 seditiosis invita 7-esignaty 
 
 " Gives seditiosi Mariatn Scotorum Reginam scse niiincri abdican 
 invitam cognntr 
 
 ' Be so good as to read the passage in Robertson, and see if you 
 cannot give me a better inscription. I must have it both in Latin 
 and English ; so if you should not give me another Latin one, you 
 will at least choose the best of these two, and send a translation 
 of it.' 
 
 -ff Tf TT TT "ff tF "JP 
 
 His humane forgiving disposition was put to a pretty 
 strong test on his return to London, by a liberty which Mr. 
 Thomas Davies had taken with him in his absence, which 
 was, to publish two volumes, entitled, Miscellaneous and fu- 
 gitive Pieces, which he advertised in the news-papers, * By 
 the Authour of the Rambler.' In this collection, several of 
 Dr. Johnson's acknowledged writings, several of his anony- 
 mous performances, and some which he had written for oth- 
 ers, were inserted ; but there were also some in which he had 
 no concern whatever'. He was at first very angry, as he 
 had good reason to be. But, upon consideration of his poor 
 friend's narrow circumstances, and that he had only a little 
 profit in view, and meant no harm, he soon relented, and 
 continued his kindness to him as formerly ^. 
 
 ' The whole of the first volume is Johnson's and three-quarters of 
 the second. A second edition was published the following year, with 
 a third volume added, which also contained pieces by Johnson, but no 
 apology from Davies. 
 
 ■ ' When Davies printed the Fiigitive Pieces without his knowledge 
 or consent ; " How," said I, " would Pope have raved had he been 
 sensed so ?" " We should never," replied he, " have heard the last 
 on't, to be sure ; but then Pope was a narrow man : I will however," 
 
 In
 
 Aetat.64.] His JoURNEY TO THE HEBRIDES. 3II 
 
 In the course of his self-examination with retrospect to 
 this year, he seems to have been much dejected ; for he says, 
 Januar}^ i, 1774, 'This year has passed with so Httle improve- 
 ment, that I doubt whether I have not rather impaired than 
 increased my learning* ;' and yet we have seen how he read, 
 and we know how he talked during that period. 
 
 He was now seriously engaged in writing an account of 
 our travels in the Hebrides, in consequence of which I had 
 the pleasure of a more frequent correspondence with him. 
 
 ' To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' My operations have been hindered by a cough ; at least I 
 flatter mj-self, that if my cough had not come, I should have been 
 
 further advanced. But I have had no intelligence from Dr. W , 
 
 [Webster,] nor from the Excise-office, nor from you. No account 
 of the little borough ^ Nothing of the Erse language. I have yet 
 heard nothing of my box. 
 
 'You must make haste and gather me all you can, and do it 
 quickly, or I will and shall do without it. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, and tell her that I do 
 not love her the less for wishing me away. I gave her trouble 
 enough, and shall be glad, in recompense, to give her any pleas- 
 ure. 
 
 ' I would send some porter into the Hebrides, if I knew which 
 way it could be got to my kind friends there. Enquire, and let me 
 know. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to all the Doctors of Edinburgh, and to 
 all my friends, from one end of Scotland to the other. 
 
 ' Write to me, and send me what intelligence you can : and if 
 
 added he, " storm and bluster myself a little this time ;" — so went to 
 London in all the wrath he could muster up. At his return I asked 
 how the affair ended : " Why," said he, " I was a fierce fellow, and 
 pretended to be very angry, and Thomas was a good-natured fellow, 
 and pretended to be very sorry ; so tlicrc the matter ended : I believe 
 the dog loves me dearly. Mr. Thrale" (turning to my husband), 
 " What shall you and I do that is good for Tom Davies ? We will 
 do something for him to be sure." ' Piozzi's Ancc. p. 55. 
 
 ■ Prayers and Meditations, \).\2^. BOSWKLL. 
 
 " The ancient Burgh of Prestick, in Ayrshire. Boswell. 
 
 any
 
 312 The Hotise of Lords on copy-right, [a. d. 1774. 
 
 any thing is too bulky for the post, let me have it by the carrier. 
 
 I do not like trusting winds and waves. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most, &c. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 •Jan. 29, 1774.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' In a day or two after I had written the last discontented let- 
 ter, I received my box, which was very welcome. But still I must 
 entreat you to hasten Dr. Webster, and continue to pick up what 
 you can that may be useful. 
 
 ' Mr. Oglethorpe was with me this morning, you know his errand. 
 He was not unwelcome. 
 
 ' Tell Mrs. Boswell that my good intentions towards her still 
 continue. I should be glad to do any thing that would either 
 benefit or please her. 
 
 ' Chambers is not yet gone, but so hurried, or so negligent, or so 
 proud, that I rarely see him. I have, indeed, for some weeks past, 
 been very ill of a cold and cough, and have been at Mrs. Thrale's, 
 that I might be taken care of. I am much better : novce redeunt in 
 prcelia vires ' ; but I am yet tender, and easily disordered. How 
 happy it was that neither of us were ill in the Hebrides. 
 
 ' The question of Literary Property is this day before the Lords ^. 
 Murphy ^ drew up the Appellants' case, that is, the plea against the 
 perpetual right. I have not seen it, nor heard the decision. I 
 would not have the right perpetual. 
 
 ' I will write to you as any thing occurs, and do you send me 
 something about my Scottish friends. I have very great kindness 
 
 ' Perhaps Johnson imperfectly remembered, ' novcs rcdiere in pris- 
 tiiia vires.' yEneid, xii. 424. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 506. The decision was given on Feb. 22 against the 
 perpetual right. ' By the above decision near 200,000/. worth of what 
 was honestly purchased at public sale, and which was yesterday 
 thought property, is now reduced to nothing. . . . The English book- 
 sellers have now no other security in future for any literary purchase 
 they may make but the statute of the 8th of Queen Anne, which 
 secures to the author's assigns an exclusive property for 14 years, to 
 revert again to the author, and vest in him for 14 years more.' Ann. 
 7?^^'-. 1774. i. 95. 
 
 ^ Murphy was a barrister as well as author, 
 
 for
 
 Aetat. G5.] Steeveiis s election to The Club. 313 
 
 for them. Let me know likewise how fees come in, and when we 
 
 are to see you. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, yours affectionately, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' London, Feb. 7, 1774.' 
 
 He at this time wrote the following letters to Mr. Steev- 
 ens, his able associate in editing Shakspeare : 
 
 'To George Steevens, Esq., in Hampstead, 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' If I am asked when I have seen Mr. Steevens, you know 
 what answer I must give ; if I am asked when I shall see him, I 
 wish you would tell me what to say. 
 
 ' n you have Lesley's History of Scotland, or any other book 
 about Scotland, except Boetius and Buchanan, it will be a kind- 
 ness if you send them to. Sir, 
 
 ' Your humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Feb. 7, 1774.' 
 
 To the Same. 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' We are thinking to augment our club, and I am desirous of 
 nominating you, if you care to stand the ballot, and can attend on 
 Friday nights at least twice in five weeks : less than this is too lit- 
 tle, and rather more will be expected. Be pleased to let me know 
 before Friday. 
 
 ' I am. Sir, your most, &c., 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Feb. 21, 1774.' 
 
 To the Same. 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' Last night you became a member of the club ; if you call on 
 
 me on Friday, I will introduce you. A gentleman, proposed after 
 
 you, was rejected. 
 
 ' I thank you for Neander, but wish he were not so fine '. I will 
 
 take care of him. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' March 5, 1774.' 
 
 ' Mr. Croker quotes a note by Malonc to show that in the catalogue 
 of Steevens's Library this book is described as a quarto, corio turcico 
 foil is deattratis. 
 
 'To
 
 314 New members of The Club. [a.d. 1774. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Dr. Webster's informations were much less exact and much 
 less determinate than I expected : they are, indeed, much less pos- 
 itive than, if he can trust his own book ' which he laid before me, 
 he is able to give. But I believe it will always be found, that he 
 who calls much for information will advance his work but slowly. 
 
 ' I am, however, obliged to you, dear Sir, for your endeavours 
 to help me, and hope, that between us something will some time 
 be done, if not on this, on some occasion. 
 
 ' Chambers is either married, or almost married, to Miss Wilton, 
 a girl of sixteen, exquisitely beautiful, whom he has, with his law- 
 yer's tongue, persuaded to take her chance with him in the East. 
 
 ' We have added to the club ', Charles Fox ', Sir Charles Bun- 
 bury ^ Dr. Fordyce ^ and Mr. Steevens *. 
 
 ' A manuscript account drawn by Dr. Webster of all the parishes 
 in Scotland, ascertaining their length, breadth, number of inhabitants, 
 and distinguishing Protestants and Roman Catholicks. This book 
 had been transmitted to government, and Dr. Johnson saw a copy of 
 it in Dr. Webster's possession. Boswell. 
 
 ^ Beauclerk, three weeks earlier, had written to Lord Charlemont : 
 — ' Our club has dwindled away to nothing. Nobody attends but Mr. 
 Chambers, and he is going to the East Indies. Sir Joshua and Gold- 
 smith have got into such a round of pleasures that they have no time.' 
 Charlemont's Life, i. 350. Johnson, no doubt, had been kept away by 
 illness {ante, ii. 312). 
 
 ^ Mr. Fox, as Sir James Mackintosh informed me, was brought in 
 by Burke. Croker. 
 
 ■• Sir C. Bunbury was the brother of Mr. H. W. Bunbury, the carica- 
 turist, who married Goldsmith's friend, the elder Miss Horneck — ' Lit- 
 tle Comedy' as she was called. Forster's Goldsinith, ii. 147. 
 
 ^ Rogers ( Tabic- Talk, p. 23) tells how Dr. Fordyce, who sometimes 
 drank a good deal, was summoned to a lady patient when he was con- 
 scious that he had had too much wine. ' Feeling her pulse, and find- 
 ing himself unable to count its beats, he muttered, " Drunk by G — ." 
 Next morning a letter from her was put into his hand. " She too 
 well knew," she wrote, "that he had discovered the unfortunate con- 
 dition in which she had been, and she entreated him to keep the 
 matter secret in consideration of the enclosed (a hundred -pound 
 bank-note)." ' 
 
 ^ Steevens wrote to Garrick on March 6 :— ' Mr. C. Fox pays you 
 but a bad compliment; as he appears, like the late Mr. Secretary 
 
 ' Return
 
 Aetat. 65.] BosweWs Easter visits to London. 315 
 
 ' Return my thanks to Dr. Webster. Tell Dr. Robertson I have 
 not much to reply to his censure of my negligence ; and tell Dr. 
 Blair, that since he has written hither what I said to him, we must 
 now consider ourselves as even, forgive one another, and begin 
 again '. I care not how soon, for he is a very pleasing man. Pay 
 my compliments to all my friends, and remind Lord Elibank of his 
 promise to give me all his works. 
 
 ' I hope Mrs. Boswell and little Miss are well. — When shall I see 
 them again ? She is a sweet lady, only she was so glad to see me 
 go, that I have almost a mind to come again, that she may again 
 have the same pleasure. 
 
 ' Enquire if it be practicable to send a small present of a cask 
 of porter to Dunvegan, Rasay, and Col. I would not wish to be 
 thought forgetful of civilities. 
 
 'March 5, 1774.' 
 
 ' I am. Sir, 
 
 ' Your humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 On the 5th of March I wrote to him, requesting his coun- 
 sel whether I should this spring come to London. I stated 
 to him on the one hand some pecuniary embarrassments, 
 which, together with my wife's situation at that time, made 
 me hesitate ; and, on the other, the pleasure and improve- 
 ment which my annual visit to the metropolis always afford- 
 ed me ; and particularly mentioned a peculiar satisfaction 
 which I experienced in celebrating the festival of Easter in 
 St. Paul's cathedral ; that to my fancy it appeared like go- 
 ing up to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover; and that 
 
 Morris, to enter the society at a time when he has nothing else to do. 
 If the bo}i to?i should prove a contagious disorder among us, it will be 
 curious to trace its progress. I have already seen it breaking out in 
 Dr. G — [Goldsmith] under the form of many a waistcoat, but I believe 
 Dr. G — will be the last man in whom the symptoms of it will be de- 
 tected.' Garrick Corres. i. 613. In less than a month poor Goldsmith 
 was dead. Fox, just before his election to the club, had receiv^ed 
 through one of the door-keepers of the House of Commons the fol- 
 lowing note : — ' Sir, — His Majesty has thought proper to order a new 
 commission of the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not per- 
 ceive your name. North.' 
 
 ' See Boswell's answer, /<?.?/, May 12. 
 
 the
 
 3i6 BoswelVs Easter visits to London, [a.d. 1774. 
 
 the strong devotion which I felt on that occasion diffused 
 its influence on my mind through the rest of the year'. 
 
 *To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 {Not dated"^, but written about 
 the I ^ih of March.] 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I am ashamed to think that since I received your letter I 
 have passed so many days without answering it. 
 
 'I think there is no great difficulty in resolving your doubts. 
 The reasons for which you are inclined to visit London, are, I 
 think, not of sufficient strength to answer the objections. That 
 you should delight to come once a year to the fountain of intel- 
 ligence and pleasure, is very natural ; but both information and 
 pleasure must be regulated by propriety. Pleasure, which cannot 
 be obtained but by unseasonable or unsuitable expence, must al- 
 ways end in pain ; and pleasure, which must be enjoyed at the 
 expence of another's pain, can never be such as a worthy mind 
 can fully delight in. 
 
 ' What improvement you might gain by coming to London, you 
 may easily supply, or easily compensate, by enjoining yourself 
 some particular study at home, or opening some new avenue to in- 
 formation. Edinburgh is not yet exhausted ; and I am sure you 
 will find no pleasure here which can deserve either that you should 
 anticipate any part of your future fortune, or that you should con- 
 demn yourself and your lady to penurious frugality for the rest of 
 the year. 
 
 ' I need not tell you what regard you owe to Mrs. Boswell's en- 
 treaties ; or how much you ought to study the happiness of her 
 who studies yours with so much diligence, and of whose kindness 
 you enjoy such good effects. Life cannot subsist in society but 
 by reciprocal concessions. She permitted you to ramble last year, 
 you must permit her now to keep you at home. 
 
 ' Your last reason is so serious, that I am unwilling to oppose it. 
 Yet you must remember, that your image of worshipping once a 
 year in a certain place, in imitation of the Jews, is but a compari- 
 son ; and simile non est idem ; if the annual resort to Jerusalem was 
 a duty to the Jews, it was a duty because it was commanded ; and 
 you have no such command, therefore no such duty. It may be 
 dangerous to receive too readily, and indulge too fondly, opinions, 
 
 * Stepost, April 1 6, 1775. ^ See ante, i. 141, note 2. 
 
 from
 
 Aetat. 65.] Fancy and reason. 3 1 7 
 
 from which, perhaps, no pious mind is wholly disengaged, of local 
 sanctity and local devotion. You know what strange effects they 
 have produced over a great part of the Christian world. I am now 
 writing, and you, when you read this, are reading under the Eye of 
 Omnipresence. 
 
 ' To what degree fancy is to be admitted into religious offices, it 
 would require much deliberation to determine. I am far from in- 
 tending totally to exclude it. Fancy is a faculty bestowed by our 
 Creator, and it is reasonable that all His gifts should be used to 
 His glory, that all our faculties should co-operate in His worship ; 
 but they are to co-operate according to the will of Him that gave 
 them, according to the order which His wisdom has established. 
 As ceremonies prudential or convenient are less obligatory than 
 positive ordinances, as bodily worship is only the token to others 
 or ourselves of mental adoration, so Fancy is always to act in sub- 
 ordination to Reason, We may take Fancy for a companion, but 
 must follow Reason as our guide. We may allow Fancy to sug- 
 gest certain ideas in certain places ; but Reason must always be 
 heard, when she tells us, that those ideas and those places have no 
 natural or necessary relation. When we enter a church we habit- 
 ually recall to mind the duty of adoration, but we must not omit 
 adoration for want of a temple ; because we know, and ought to 
 remember, that the Universal Lord is every where present ; and 
 that, therefore, to come to Jona ', or to Jerusalem, though it may be 
 useful, cannot be necessary. 
 
 ' Thus I have answered your letter, and have not answered it neg- 
 ligently. I love you too well to be careless when you are serious. 
 
 ■ I think I shall be very diligent next week about our travels, 
 which I have too long neglected. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most, &c., 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' Compliments to Madam and Miss.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' The lady who delivers this has a lawsuit, in which she desires 
 to make use of your skill and eloquence, and she seems to think 
 that she shall have something more of both for a recommendation 
 from me ; which, though 1 know how little you want any external 
 
 ' lona. 
 
 incitement
 
 3i8 Lord Hailess Annals of Scotland, [a.d. 1774. 
 
 incitement to your duty, I could not refuse her, because I know 
 
 that at least it will not hurt her, to tell you that I wish her well. 
 
 'I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'May 10, 1774.' 
 
 ' Mr. Boswfxl to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, May 12, 1774. 
 
 ' Lord Hailes has begged of me to offer you his best respects, 
 and to transmit to you specimens of Annals of Scotland, from the 
 Accession of Malcolm Kemnore to the Death of yames V, in drawing 
 up which, his Lordship has been engaged for some time. His 
 Lordship writes to me thus : " If I could procure Dr. Johnson's 
 criticisms, they would be of great use to me in the prosecution of 
 my work, as they would be judicious and true. I have no right to 
 ask that favour of him. If you could, it would highly oblige me." 
 
 ' Dr. Blair requests you may be assured that he did not write to 
 London what you said to him, and that neither by word nor letter 
 has he made the least complaint of you ; but, on the contrary, has 
 a high respect for you, and loves you much more since he saw you 
 in Scotland. It would both divert and please you to see his eager- 
 ness about this matter.' 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 ' Streatham, June 21, 1774. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Yesterday I put the first sheets of the yoiirney to the Hebrides 
 to the press. I have endeavoured to do you some justice in the 
 first paragraph'. It will be one volume in octavo, not thick. 
 
 ' It will be proper to make some presents in Scotland. You 
 shall tell me to whom I shall give ; and I have stipulated twenty- 
 five for you to give in your own name ^. Some will take the present 
 better from me, others better from you. In this, you who are to 
 
 ' ' I was induced,' he says, '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 suffi- 
 cient to counteract the inconveniences of travel in countries less hos- 
 pitable than we have passed.' Quoted by Boswell in his Hebrides, 
 Aug. 18, 1773. 
 
 " SG.t.post, Nov. 16, 1776. 
 
 live
 
 Aetat. Go.] Golds7nitJi s death. 3 1 9 
 
 live in the place ought to direct. Consider it. Whatever you can 
 get for my purpose send me , and make my compliments to your 
 lady and both the young ones. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, your, &c., 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, June 24, 1774. 
 
 'You do not acknowledge the receipt of the various packets 
 which I have sent to you. Neither can I prevail with you to answer 
 my letters, though you honour me with returns '. You have said 
 nothing to me about poor Goldsmith ^, nothing about Langton ■'. 
 
 ' I have received for you, from the Society for propagating 
 Christian Knowledge in Scotland \ the following Erse books : — 
 The New Testament; Baxters Call; The Confession of Faith of the 
 Assembly of Divines at Westminster; The Mother's Catechism; A 
 Gaclick and English Vocabulary^.' 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I wish you could have looked over my book before the printer, 
 but it could not easily be. I suspect some mistakes ; but as I deal, 
 perhaps, more in notions than in facts, the matter is not great, and 
 the second edition will be mended, if any such there be. The press 
 will go on slowly for a time, because I am going into Wales to- 
 morrow. 
 
 ' I should be very sorry if I appeared to treat such a character as 
 
 ' Boswell wrote to Temple on May 8, 1779:— 'I think Dr. Johnson 
 never answered but three of my letters, though I have had numerous 
 returns from him.' Letters of Boszvell, p. 243. See post, Sept. 29, 1777. 
 
 ^ Dr. Goldsmith died April 4, this year. Boswell. Boswell wrote 
 to Garrick on April 1 1, 1774 : — ' Dr. Goldsmith's death would affect all 
 the club much. I have not been so much affected with any event that 
 has happened of a long time. I wish you would give me, who am at 
 a distance, some particulars with regard to his last appearance.' Gar- 
 rick Carres, i. 622. 
 
 ^ See aftte, ii. 304. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 30, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 29, 1773. 
 
 * These books Dr. Johnson presented to the Bodleian Library. 
 Boswell. 
 
 Lord
 
 320 Walton's Lives. [a.d. 1774. 
 
 Lord Hailes otherwise than with high respect. I return the sheets ', 
 to which I have done what mischief I could ; and finding it so lit- 
 tle, thought not much of sending them. The narrative is clear, 
 lively, and short. 
 
 ' I have done worse to Lord Hailes than by neglecting his 
 sheets : I have run him in debt. Dr. Home, the President of 
 Magdalen College in Oxford, wrote to me about three months ago, 
 that he purposed to reprint Walto/i's Lives, and desired me to con- 
 tribute to the work : my answer was, that Lord Hailes intended 
 the same publication ; and Dr. Home has resigned it to him "'. 
 His Lordship must now think seriously about it. 
 
 ' Of poor dear Dr. Goldsmith there is little to be told, more than 
 the papers have made publick. He died of a fever, 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 ? 
 
 * You may, if you please, put the inscription thus : — 
 
 ''''Maria Scotorum Regina nata 15 — , a suis in exiiium acta 15 — , 
 ab hospita ncci data 15 — ." You must find the years. 
 
 ' Of your second daughter you certainly gave the account your- 
 self, though you have forgotten it. While Mrs. Boswell is well, 
 
 ' On the cover enclosmg them, Dr. Johnson wrote, ' If my delay has 
 given any reason for supposing that I have not a very deep sense of 
 the honour done me by asking my judgement, I am very sorry.' Bos- 
 well. 
 
 ^ Stepost, March 20, 1776. 
 
 ' ' Sir Joshua was much affected by the death of Goldsmith, to 
 whom he had been a very sincere friend. He did not touch the pen- 
 cil for that day, a circumstance most extraordinary for him who passed 
 710 day wit/tout a line.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 325. 
 
 ^ He owed his tailor ^79, though he had paid him ^iio in 1773. In 
 this payment was included ^35 for his nephew's clothes. We find 
 such entries in his own bills as — 
 
 £ s. d 
 
 To Tyrian bloom satin grain and garter blue silk breeches 827 
 To Queen's-blue dress suit -----------11170 
 
 To your blue velvet suit ------------ 21 10 9 
 
 (See ante, ii. 95.) Filby's son said to Mr. Prior : — ' My father attrib- 
 uted no blame to Goldsmith ; he had been a good customer, and had 
 he lived would have paid every farthing.' Prior's Goldsmith, ii. 232. 
 
 never
 
 Aetat. 65.] GoldstuitJis death. 321 
 
 never doubt of a boy. Mrs. Thrale brought, I think, five girls run- 
 ning, but while I was with you she had a boy. 
 
 ' I am obliged to you for all your pamphlets, and of the last 1 
 hope to make some use. I made some of the former. 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most affectionate servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'July 4, 1774.' 
 
 ' My compliments to all the three ladies.' 
 
 'To Bennet Langton, Esq., at Langton, near Spilsby, 
 
 Lincolnshire. 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' You have reason to reproach me that I have left your last 
 letter so long unanswered, but I had nothing particular to say. 
 Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor Goldsmith is gone much 
 further. He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear 
 of distress. He had raised money and squandered it, by every ar- 
 tifice of acquisition, and folly of expence. But let not his frailties 
 be remembered ; he was a very great man \ 
 
 ' I have just begun to print my yourney to the Hebrides, and am 
 leaving the press to take another journey into Wales, whither Mr. 
 Thrale is going, to take possession of, at least, five hundred a year, 
 fallen to his lady. All at Streatham, that are alive ^ are well. 
 
 ' ' Soon after Goldsmith's death certain persons dining with Sir 
 Joshua commented rather freely on some part of his works, which, in 
 their opinion, neither discovered talent nor originality. To this Dr. 
 Johnson listened in his usual growling manner; when, at length, his 
 patience being exhausted, he rose with great dignity, looked them full 
 in the face, and exclaimed, " If nobody was suffered to abuse poor 
 Goldy, but those who could write as v/ell, he would have few cen- 
 sors." ' Northcote's Reyyiolds, i. 327. To Goldsmith might be applied 
 the words that Johnson wrote of Savage {^lVorks,\\\\. 191) : — 'Vanity 
 may surely be readily pardoned in him to whom life afforded no other 
 comforts than barren praises, and the consciousness of deserving them. 
 Those are no proper judges of his conduct who have slumbered away 
 their time on the down of plenty ; nor will any wise man presume to 
 say, " Had I been in Savage's condition, I should have lived or written 
 better than Savage." ' 
 
 ^ Mrs. Thrale's mother died the summer before (ante, ii. 302). Most 
 of her children died early. By 1777 she had lost seven out of eleven. 
 See/^5/, May 3, 1777. 
 
 II. — 21 ' I have
 
 322 Johnsons Greek epitaph 07i Goldsmith, [a.d. 1774. 
 
 * I have never recovered from the last dreadful illness ', but flat- 
 ter myself that I grow gradually better ; much, however, yet remains 
 to mend. \\v[iit k\ir]cjov^ . 
 
 ' If you have the Latin version of Busy, curious, thirsty fly ', be so 
 kind as to transcribe and send it ; but you need not be in haste, 
 for I shall be I know not where, for at least five weeks. I wrote 
 the following tetastrick on poor Goldsmith : — 
 
 ToJ' Tacjjoi' iiaopuciQ toi' 0\if3upoio. KoviT}i> 
 "Acppoai fii) aEfxviiv, Selye, Troheam ttutu ' 
 
 O'lffi ^f^JjXe <pvGic^ nirpwi' x^'P'^j ^PT" TraXaiwJ', 
 KXa/tre TroiT}r))i', laTopiKov, (pvtriKoy . 
 
 'Please to make my most respectful compliments to all the 
 
 ^ Johnson had not seen Langton since early in the summer of 1773. 
 He was then suffering from a fever and an inflammation in the eye, 
 for which he was twice copiously bled. (Pr. and Med. 130.) The fol- 
 lowing winter he was distressed by a cough. {lb. p. 135.) Neither of 
 these illnesses was severe enough to be called dreadful. In the spring 
 of 1770 he was very ill. (Jb. p. 93.) On Sept. 18, 1 771, he records : — 
 ' For the last year I have been slowly recovering from the violence of 
 my last illness.' {lb. p. 104.) On April 18, 1772, in reviewing the last 
 year, he writes : — ' An unpleasing incident is almost certain to hinder 
 my rest ; this is the remainder of my last illness.' {lb. p. 1 1 1.) In the 
 winter of 1772-3, he suffered from a cough. {lb. p. 121.) I think that 
 he must mean the illness of 1770, though it is to be noticed that he 
 wrote to Boswell on July 5, 1773 :— ' Except this eye [the inflamed eye] 
 I am very well.' (See atite, ii. 303.) 
 ^ ' Lord have mercy upon us.' 
 
 ^ See Johnson's Works, i. 172, for his Latin version. D'Israeli {Cu- 
 riosities of Liter attire, ed. r834, vi. 368) says 'that Oldys \a?itc, i. 202] 
 always asserted that he was the author of this song, and as he was a 
 rigid lover of truth I doubt not that he wrote it. I have traced it 
 through a dozen of collections since the year 1740, the first in which 
 I find it. 
 
 * Mr. Seward {Anec. ii. 466) gives the following version of these 
 lines : — 
 
 'Whoe'er thou art with reverence tread 
 
 Where Goldsmith's letter'd dust is laid. 
 
 If nature and the historic page, 
 
 If the sweet muse thy care engage. 
 
 Lament him dead whose powerful mind 
 
 Their various energies combined.' 
 
 ladies,
 
 Aetat. 65.] On a portrait of Mary Qtieeu of Scots. 323 
 
 ladies, and remember me to young George and his sisters. I reckon 
 
 George begins to shew a pair of heels. 
 
 ' Do not be sullen now ', but let me find a letter when I come 
 
 back. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your affectionate, humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'July 5, 1774.' 
 
 'To Mr. Robert Levet. 
 
 ' ' Llewenny^, in Denbighshire, Aug. 16, 1774. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Mr. Thrale's affairs have kept him here a great while, nor do 
 I know exactly when we shall come hence. I have sent you a bill 
 upon Mr. Strahan. 
 
 ' I have made nothing of the Ipecacuanha, but have taken abun- 
 dance of pills, and hope that they have done me good. 
 
 ' Wales, so far as I have yet seen of it, is a very beautiful and rich 
 country, all enclosed, and planted. Denbigh is not a mean town. 
 Make my compliments to all my friends, and tell Frank I hope he 
 remembers my advice. When his money is out, let him have more. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Aug. 30, 1774. 
 'You have given me an inscription for a portrait of Mary 
 Queen of Scots, in which you, in a short and striking manner, 
 point out her hard fate. But you will be pleased to keep in mind, 
 that my picture is a representation of a particular scene in her 
 history ; her being forced to resign her crown, while she was im- 
 prisoned in the castle of Lochlevin. I must, therefore, beg that 
 you will be kind enough to give me an inscription suited to that 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 304. 
 
 ' At Lleweney, the house of Mrs. Thrale's cousin, Mr. Cotton, Dr. 
 Johnson stayed nearly three weeks. Johnson's Journey into North 
 Wales, July 28, 1774. Mr. Fitzmauricc, Lord Shclburnc's brother, had 
 a house there in 1780; for Johnson wrote to Mrs. Tiirale on May 7 of 
 that year : — ' He has almost made me promise to pass part of the sum- 
 mer at Llewenny,' Piozzi Letters, ii. 113. 
 
 particular
 
 324 Johnsoiis notes on Hailess Annals, [a.d. 1774. 
 
 particular scene ; or determine which of the two formerly trans- 
 mitted to you is the best ; and, at any rate, favour me with an Eng- 
 lish translation. It will be doubly kind if you comply with my 
 request speedily, 
 
 ' Your critical notes on the specimen of Lord Hailes's Annals 
 of Scot/and are excellent. I agreed with you in every one of them. 
 He himself objected only to the alteration oi free to brave, in the 
 passage where he says that Edward " departed with the glory due 
 to the conquerour of a free people." He says, " to call the Scots 
 brave would only add to the glory of their conquerour." You will 
 make allowance for the national zeal of our annalist. I now send 
 a few more leaves of the Annals, which I hope you will peruse, 
 and return with observations, as you did upon the former occa- 
 sion. Lord Hailes writes to me thus : — " Mr. Boswell will be 
 pleased to express the grateful sense which Sir David Dalrymple ' 
 has of Dr. Johnson's attention to his little specimen. The further 
 specimen will show, that 
 
 "Even in an Edward h.e can see desert ^" 
 
 ' It gives me much pleasure to hear that a republication of Isaac 
 Walto?is Lives is intended. You have been in a mistake in think- 
 ing that Lord Hailes had it in view. I remember one morning^, 
 while he sat with you in my house, he said, that there should be a 
 new edition of JVallon^s Lives; and you said that "they should be 
 benoted a little." This was all that passed on that subject. You 
 must, therefore, inform Dr. Home, that he may resume his plan. 
 I enclose a note concerning it ; and if Dr. Home will write to me, 
 all the attention that I can give shall be cheerfully bestowed, 
 upon what I think a pious work, the preservation and elucidation 
 of Walton, by whose writings I have been most pleasingly edified.' 
 ******* 
 
 ' Lord Hailes was Sir David Dalrymple. See ante, i. 310. He is not 
 to be confounded with Sir John Dalr^^mple, mentioned ante, ii. 241, 
 
 ' ' E'en in a bishop I can spy desert ; 
 
 Seeker is decent, Rundel has a heart.' 
 
 Pope's Epilog ne to tlie Satires, ii. 70. 
 
 ' In the first two editions forenoon. Boswell, in three other pas- 
 sages, made the same change in the third edition. Forenoon perhaps 
 he considered a Scotticism. The correction above being made in one 
 of his letters, renders it likely that he corrected them before publi- 
 cation. 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell
 
 Aetat. C5.] Johnsons tour to Wales. 325 
 
 'Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Sept. 16, 1774. 
 'Wales has probably detained you longer than I supposed. 
 You -will have become quite a mountaineer, by visiting Scotland 
 one year and Wales another. You must next go to Switzerland. 
 Cambria will complain, if you do not honour her also with some 
 remarks. And I find conccsscre columnce ', the booksellers expect 
 another book. I am impatient to see your Tour to Scot/and and 
 the Hebrides. "^ Might you not send me a copy by the post as soon 
 as it is printed off V 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Yesterday I returned from my Welch journey. I was sorry 
 
 to leave my book suspended so long ; but having an opportunity 
 
 of seeing, with so much convenience, a new part of the island, I 
 
 could not reject it. I have been in five of the six counties of 
 
 North \\'ales ; and have seen St. Asaph and Bangor, the two seats 
 
 of their Bishops ; have been upon Penmanmaur ' and Snowdon *, 
 
 and passed over into Anglesea. But Wales is so little different 
 
 from England, that it offers nothing to the speculation of the 
 
 traveller. 
 
 ' When I came home, I found several of your papers, with some 
 
 pages of Lord Hailes's Annals, which I will consider. I am in 
 
 ' Horace, Ars Poet. 1. 373. 
 
 * ' Do not you long to hear the roarings of the old lion over the 
 bleak mountains of the North.?' wrote Steevens to Garrick. Garrick 
 Corres. ii. 122. 
 
 ' 'Aug. 16. We came to Penmanmaur by daylight, and found a 
 way, lately made, verj' easy and very safe. It was cut smooth and 
 enclosed between parallel walls ; the outer of which secures the pas- 
 senger from the precipice, which is deep and dreadful. . . . The sea 
 beats at the bottom of the way. At evening the moon shone emi- 
 nently bright ; and our thoughts of danger being now past, the rest 
 of our journey was very pleasant. At an hour somewhat late we 
 came to Bangor, where we found a very mean inn, and had some dif- 
 culty to obtain lodging. I lay in a room where the other bed had 
 two men.' Johnson's Journey into North Wah's. 
 
 * He did not go to the top of .Snowdon. He says : — ' On the side 
 of Snowdon are the remains of a large fort, to which we climbed with 
 great labour. I was breathless and harassed.' JO. Aug. 26. 
 
 haste
 
 326 Johnso7is tour to Wales. [a.d. 1774. 
 
 haste to give you some account of myself, lest you should suspect 
 me of negligence in the pressing business which I find recom- 
 mended to my care, and which I knew nothing of till now, when 
 all care is vain '. 
 
 ' In the distribution of my books I purpose to follow your ad- 
 vice, adding such as shall occur to me. I am not pleased with 
 your notes of remembrance added to your names, for I hope I 
 shall not easily forget them. 
 
 ' I have received four Erse books, without any direction, and 
 suspect that they are intended for the Oxford library. If that is 
 the intention, I think it will be proper to add the metrical psalms, 
 and whatever else is printed in Erse, that the present may be 
 complete. The donor's name should be told. 
 
 ' I Avish you could have read the book before it was printed, but 
 our distance does not easily permit it. 
 
 'I am sorry Lord Hailes does not intend to publish Walton; I 
 am afraid it will not be done so well, if it be done at all. 
 
 ' I purpose now to drive the book forward. Make my compli- 
 ments to Mrs. Boswell, and let me hear often from you. 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 'Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' London, Octob. i, 1774.' 
 
 This tour to Wales, which was made in company with Mr. 
 and Mrs. Thrale, though it no doubt contributed to his health 
 and amusement, did not give an occasion to such a discur- 
 sive exercise of his mind as our tour to the Hebrides. I do 
 not find that he kept any journal or notes of what he saw 
 there ^ All that I heard him say of it was, that ' instead of 
 bleak and barren mountains, there were green and fertile 
 ones ; and that one of the castles in Wales would contain all 
 the castles that he had seen in Scotland.' 
 
 Parliament having been dissolved ^ and his friend Mr. 
 
 ' I had written to him, to request his interposition in behalf of a 
 convict, who I thought was very unjustly condemned. Boswell. 
 
 ' He had kept a journal which was edited by Mr. Duppa in 18 16. 
 It will be found /c^/, in vol. v. 
 
 = 'When the general election broke up the delightful society in 
 which we had spent some time at Beconsfield, Dr. Johnson shook the 
 hospitable master of the house [Burke] kindly by the hand, and said, 
 
 Thrale,
 
 Aetat. G5.] ThE PaTRIOT. . 327 
 
 Thrale, who was a steady supporter of government, having 
 again to encounter the storm of a contested election, he 
 wrote a short political pamphlet, entitled TJie Patriot* ad- 
 dressed to the electors of Great - Britain ; a title which, to 
 factious men, who consider a patriot only as an opposer of 
 the measures of government, will appear strangely misap- 
 plied. It was, however, written with energetick vivacity ; 
 and, except those passages in which it endeavours to vindi- 
 cate the glaring outrage of the House of Commons in the 
 case of the Middlesex election, and to justify the attempt to 
 reduce our fellow-subjects in America to unconditional sub- 
 mission, it contained an admirable display of the properties 
 of a real patriot, in the original and genuine sense ; — a sin- 
 cere, steady, rational, and unbiassed friend to the interests 
 and prosperity of his King and country. It must be ac- 
 knowledged, however, that both in this and his two former 
 pamphlets, there was, amidst many powerful arguments, not 
 only a considerable portion of sophistry, but a contemptu- 
 ous ridicule of his opponents, which was very provoking. 
 
 'To Mr. Perkins ^ 
 'Sir, 
 
 'You may do me a very great favour. Mrs. Williams, a 
 
 " Farewell my dear Sir, and remember that I wish you all the success 
 which ought to be wished you, which can possibly be wished you in- 
 deed — by an honest man." ' Piozzi's Anec. p. 242. The dissolution 
 was on Sept. 30. Johnson, with the Thrales, as his Journal shows, had 
 arrived at Beconsfield on the 24th. See ante, ii. 255, for Johnson's 
 opinion of Burke's honesty. 
 
 ' Mr. Perkins was for a number of years the worthy superintendent 
 of Mr. Thrale's great brewery, and after his death became one of the 
 proprietors of it ; and now resides in Mr. Thrale's house in Southwark, 
 which was the scene of so many literary meetings, and in which he 
 continues the liberal hospitality for which it was eminent. Dr. John- 
 son esteemed him nmch. He hung up in the counting-house a fme 
 proof of the admirable mezzotinto of Dr. Johnson, by Doughty; and 
 when Mrs. Thrale asked him somewhat flippantly, ' Why do you put 
 him up in the counting-hou.se ?' he answered, ' Because, Madam, I wish 
 to have one wise man there.' ' Sir,' (said Johnson,) ' I thank you. It 
 is a very handsome compliment, and I believe you speak sincerely.' 
 
 BOSWELL. 
 
 gentlewoman
 
 328 A Southwark electio7i. [a. d. 1774. 
 
 gentlewoman whom you may have seen at Mr. Thrale's, is a peti- 
 tioner for Mr. Hetherington's charity : petitions are this day issued 
 at Christ's Hospital. 
 
 ' I am a bad manager of business in a crowd ; and if I should 
 send a mean man, he may be put away without his errand. I 
 must therefore intreat that you will go, and ask for a petition for 
 Anna Williams, whose paper of enquiries was delivered with an- 
 swers at the counting-house of the hospital on Thursday the 20th. 
 My servant will attend you thither, and bring the petition home 
 when you have it. 
 
 ' The petition, which they are to give us, is a form which they 
 deliver to every petitioner, and which the petitioner is afterwards 
 to fill up, and return to them again. This we must have, or we 
 cannot proceed according to their directions. You need, I believe, 
 only ask for a petition ; if they enquire for whom you ask, you can 
 tell them. 
 
 ' I beg pardon for giving you this trouble ; but it is a matter of 
 
 great importance. 
 
 ' I am. Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'October 25, 1774.' 
 
 ' To James Boswell, Esq, 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 'There has appeared lately in the papers an account of a 
 
 boat overset between Mull and Ulva, in which many passengers 
 
 were lost, and among them Maclean of Col. We, you know, were 
 
 once drowned ' ; I hope, therefore, that the story is either wantonly 
 
 or erroneously told. Pray satisfy me by the next post. 
 
 ' I have printed two hundred and forty pages. I am able to do 
 nothing much worth doing to dear Lord Hailes's book. I will, 
 however, send back the sheets ; and hope, by degrees, to answer 
 all your reasonable expectations. 
 
 ' Mr. Thrale has happily surmounted a very violent and acri- 
 monious opposition " , but all joys have their abatement : Mrs. 
 
 ' In the news-papers. Boswell. 
 
 ^ 'Oct. 16, 1774. In Southwark there has been outrageoas rioting; 
 but I neither know the candidates, their connections, nor success.' 
 Horace Walpole's Letters, V\. 134. Of one Southwark election Mrs. 
 Piozzi writes (^«^f. p. 214) : — 'A Borough election once showed me 
 Mr. Johnson's toleration of boisterous mirth. A rough fellow, a hat- 
 
 Thrale
 
 Aetat. 65.] Yotiiig Col's death. 329 
 
 Thrale has fallen from her horse, and hurt herself very much. 
 
 The rest of our friends, I believe, are well. My compliments to 
 
 Mrs. Boswell. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most affectionate servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' London, Octob. 27, 1774.' 
 
 This letter, which shews his tender concern for an amiable 
 young gentleman to whom he had been very much obliged 
 in the Hebrides, I have inserted according to its date, though 
 before receiving it I had informed him of the melancholy 
 event that the young Laird of Col was unfortunately 
 drowned '. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Last night I corrected the last page of our yoiirney to the 
 Hebrides. The printer has detained it all this time, for I had, 
 before I went into Wales, written all except two sheets. The Pa- 
 triot was called for by my political friends on Friday, was written 
 on Saturday, and I have heard little of it. So vague are conject- 
 ures at a distance °. As soon as I can, I will take care that copies 
 be sent to you, for I would wish that they might be given before 
 they are bought ; but I am afraid that Mr. Strahan will send to 
 you and to the booksellers at the same time. Trade is as diligent 
 as courtesy. I have mentioned all that you recommended. Pray 
 make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell and the younglings. The 
 club has, I think, not yet met. 
 
 ter by trade, seeing his beaver in a state of decay seized it suddenly 
 with one hand, and clapping him on the back with the other, "Ah, 
 Master Johnson," says he, " this is no time to be thinking about 
 hats." " No, no. Sir," replies our Doctor in a cheerful tone, " hats are 
 of no use now, as you say, except to throw up in the air and huzza 
 with," accompanying his words with the true election halloo.' 
 
 ' See YioswcWs //edrufes, Oct. 19, 1773. Johnson thus mentions him 
 {Works, ix. 142): — 'Here we had the last embrace of this amiable 
 man, who, while these pages were preparing to attest his virtues, per- 
 ished in the passage between Ulva and Inch Kenneth.' 
 
 ^ Alluding to a passage in a letter of mine, where speaking of his 
 fourtiey to the Hebrides, I say, ' But has not The Patriot been an inter- 
 ruption, by the time taken to write it, and the time luxuriously spent 
 in listening to its applauses.-*' Boswell. 
 
 ' Tell
 
 3)3^ Mr. Hooles Cleonice. [a.d. 1774. 
 
 ' Tell me, and tell me honestly, what you think and what others 
 
 say of our travels. Shall we touch the continent ' ? 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 * Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Nov. 26, 1774.' 
 
 In his manuscript diary of this year, there is the following 
 entry : — 
 
 'Nov. 27. Advent Sunday. I considered that this day, being 
 the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, was a proper time for a 
 new course of life. I began to read the Greek Testament regu- 
 larly at 160 verses every Sunday. This day I began the Acts. 
 
 ' In this week I read Virgil's Pastorals. I learned to repeat the 
 Pollio and Gallus. I read carelessly the first Georgick.^ 
 
 Such evidences of his unceasing ardour, both for ' divine 
 and human lore,' when advanced into his sixty-fifth year, 
 and notwithstanding his many disturbances from disease, 
 must make us at once honour his spirit, and lament that it 
 should be so grievously clogged by its material tegument. 
 It is remarkable, that he was very fond of the precision 
 which calculation produces\ Thus we find in one of his 
 manuscript diaries, ' 12 pages in 4to. Gr. Test, and 30 pages 
 in Beza's folio, comprize the whole in 40 days.' 
 
 'Dr. Johnson to John Hoole, Esq'. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I have returned your play *, which you will find underscored 
 
 ' We had projected a voyage together up the Baltick, and talked of 
 visiting some of the more northern regions. BoswELL. See Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Sept. i6. 
 
 "^ See ante, i. 83. 
 
 ^ John Hoole, the son of a London watchmaker, was born in Dec. 
 1727, and died on Aug. 2, 1803. At the age of seventeen he was placed 
 as a clerk in the East-India House ; but, like his successors, James 
 and John Stuart Mill, he was an author as well as a clerk. See ante, 
 
 i-443- 
 
 ^ Cleomce. Boswell. Nichols {Lit. A)tec. ii. 407) says that as Cleo- 
 nice was a failure on the stage ' Mr. Hoole returned a considerable 
 
 with
 
 Aetat. GG.] Mr s. Charlotte Leiinox. 331 
 
 with red, where there was a word which I did not Hke. The red 
 will be washed off with a little water. 
 
 * The plot is so Avell framed, the intricacy so artful, and the dis- 
 entanglement so easy, the suspense so affecting, and the passionate 
 parts so properly interposed, that I have no doubt of its success. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' December 19, 1774.' 
 
 1775 : ^TAT. (i6l\ — The first effort of his pen in 1775 was, 
 ' Proposals for publishing the Works of Mrs. Charlotte 
 Lennox Vt in three volumes quarto. In his diary, Janua- 
 ry 2, I find this entry : * Wrote Charlotte's Proposals.' But, 
 indeed, the internal evidence would have been quite suffi- 
 cient. Her claim to the favour of the publick was thus 
 enforced : — 
 
 ' Most of the pieces, as they appeared singly, have been read with 
 approbation, perhaps above their merits, but of no great advantage 
 to the writer. She hopes, therefore, that she shall not be considered 
 as too indulgent to vanity, or too studious of interest, if, from that 
 labour which has hitherto been chiefly gainful to others, she endeav- 
 ours to obtain at last some profit for herself and her children. She 
 cannot decently enforce her claim by the praise of her own per- 
 formances ; nor can she suppose, that, by the most artful and 
 laboured address, any additional notice could be procured to a 
 publication, of which Her Majesty has condescended to be the 
 Patroness.' 
 
 He this year also wrote the Preface to Baretti's Easy Les- 
 sons in Italian a7id English ^f 
 
 'To James Bosvvell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' You never did ask for a book by the post till now, and I did 
 
 part of the money which he had received for the copy-right, alleging 
 that, as the piece was not successful on the stage, it could not be very 
 profitable to the bookseller, and ought not to be a loss.' 
 
 ' See ante, 1. 296. 
 
 " S^tpost, March 20, 1776. 
 
 not
 
 332 The King reads JoJmsons Journey, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 not think on it. You see fiow it is done. I sent one to the King, 
 and I hear he likes it '. 
 
 ' I shall send a parcel into Scotland for presents, and intend to 
 give to many of my friends. In your catalogue you left out Lord 
 Auchinleck. 
 
 ' Let me know, as fast as you read it, how you like it ; and let 
 me know if any mistake is committed, or any thing important left 
 out. I wish you could have seen the sheets. My compliments to 
 Mrs. Boswell, and to Veronica °, and to all my friends. 
 
 ' I am. Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'January 14, 1775.' 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Jan. 19, 1775. 
 ' Be pleased to accept of my best thanks for your yourney to 
 the Hebrides, which came to me by last night's post. I did really 
 ask the favour twice ; but you have been even with me by granting 
 it so speedily. Bis dat qui cito dat \ Though ill of a bad cold, 
 you kept me up the greatest part of the last night ; for I did not 
 stop till I had read every word of your book. I looked back to 
 our first talking of a visit to the Hebrides, which was many years 
 ago, when sitting by ourselves in the Mitre tavern \ in London, I 
 think about witching time 0' night ^ ; and then exulted in contem- 
 plating our scheme fulfilled, and a mo7iumentii7n perenne^ of it erect- 
 ed by your superiour abilities. I shall only say, that your book 
 has afforded me a high gratification. I shall afterwards give you 
 
 ' 'The King,' wrote Horace Walpole on Jan. 21, 1775 (Letters, vi. 
 179), ' sent for the book in MS., and then wondering, said, " I protest, 
 Johnson seems to be a Papist and a Jacobite " — so he did not know 
 why he had been made to give him a pension.' 
 
 "^ Boswell's little daughter. Boswell's //^(^r/*/,?^', Aug. 15, 1773. 
 
 ' ' Bis dat 
 
 Qui cito dat, minimi gratia tarda pretii est.' 
 Alciat's Emblems, Alciati Opera. 1558, p. 821. 
 
 * It was at the Turk's Head coffee-house in the Strand. See a7ite, 
 i. 521. 
 
 ^ Hamlet, act iii. sc. 2. 
 
 * ' Exegi monumentum aere perennius.' 
 
 Horace, Odes, iii. 30. i. 
 my
 
 Aetat. 66.] Dr. Me^nis. 333 
 
 my thoughts on particular passages. In the mean time, I hasten to 
 tell you of your having mistaken two names, which you will correct 
 in London, as I shall do here, that the gentlemen who deserve the 
 valuable compliments which you have paid them, may enjoy their 
 honours. In page 106, for Gordon read Murchison ; and in page 
 357, for Maclean read Macleod\ 
 
 ' But I am now to apply to you for immediate aid in my profes- 
 sion, which you have never refused to grant when I requested it. 
 I enclose you a petition for Dr. Memis, a physician at Aberdeen, in 
 which Sir John Dalrymple has exerted his talents, and which I am 
 to answer as Counsel for the managers of the Royal Infirmary in 
 that city. Mr. Jopp, the Provost, who delivered to you your free- 
 dom ', is one of my clients, and, as a citizen of Aberdeen^ you will 
 support him. 
 
 ' The fact is shortly this. In a translation of the charter of the 
 Infirmary from Latin into English, made under the authority of the 
 managers, the same phrase in the original is in one place rendered 
 Physician, but when applied to Dr. Memis is rendered Doctor of 
 Medicine. Dr. Memis complained of this before the translation was 
 printed, but was not indulged with having it altered ; and he has 
 brought an action for damages, on account of a supposed injury, as 
 if the designation given to him was an inferiour one, tending to 
 make it be supposed he is not a Physician, and, consequently, to 
 hurt his practice. My father has dismissed the action as ground- 
 less, and now he has appealed to the whole Court ^' 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I long to hear how you like the book ; it is, I think, much 
 
 liked here. But Macpherson is very furious " ; can you give me 
 
 ' The second edition was not brought out till the year after John- 
 son's death. These mistakes remain uncorrected. Johnson's Works, 
 ix. 44. 1 50. 
 
 ^ See Boswell's Hebrides, Aup;. 23. 
 
 ^ In the Court of Session of Scotland an action is first tried by one 
 of the Judges, who is called the Lord Ordinary; and if either party is 
 dissatisfied, he may appeal to the whole Court, consisting of fifteen, 
 the Lord President and fourteen other Judges, who have both in and 
 out of Court the title of Lords, from the name of their estates ; as, Lord 
 Auchinleck, Lord Monboddo, &c. Boswell. See ante, ii. 230, note 2. 
 
 * Johnson had thus written of him ( Works, ix. 1 1 5) : — ' I suppose 
 
 any
 
 34 Reynolds and strojtg liquor. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 any more intelligence about him, or his Fingal ? Do what you can 
 and do it quickly. Is Lord Hailes on our side ? 
 
 ' Pray let me know what I owed you when I left you, that I may 
 send it to you. 
 
 ' I am going to write about the Americans '. If you have picked 
 up any hints among your lawyers, who are great masters of the law 
 of nations, or if your own mind suggests any thing, let me know. 
 But mum, it is a secret. 
 
 ' I will send your parcel of books as soon as I can ; but I can- 
 not do as I wish. However, you find every thing mentioned in 
 the book which you recommended. 
 
 ' Langton is here ; we are all that ever we were ^ He is a wor- 
 thy fellow, without malice, though not without resentment. 
 
 ' Poor Beauclerk is so ill, that his life is thought to be in dan- 
 ger ^ Lady Di nurses him with very great assiduity. 
 
 ' Reynolds has taken too much to strong liquor ", and seems to 
 delight in his new character. 
 
 '&' 
 
 my opinion of the poems of Ossian is already discovered. I believe 
 they never existed in any other form than that which we have seen. 
 The editor, or author, never could show the original ; nor can it be 
 shown by any other. To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing 
 evidence is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet 
 acquainted ; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt.' See 
 ante, ii. 145. 
 
 * Taxation no Tyranny. See post, under March 21, 1775. 
 
 ^ See atite, ii. 304. 
 
 ^ In Tickell's Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox to the Hon. John 
 Townshend (1779) are the following lines (p. 11) : — 
 
 ' Soon as to Brooks's thence thy footsteps bend, 
 What gratulations thy approach attend ! 
 
 ^: H-. * H: * * 
 
 See Beauclerk's cheek a tinge of red surprise. 
 And friendship give what cruel health denies.' 
 ■* It should be recollected, that this fanciful description of his friend 
 was given by Johnson after he himself had become a water-drinker. 
 BoswELL. Johnson, /i'j-/, April 18, 1775, describes o"^ ^f his friends 
 as muddy. On April 12, 1776, in a discussion about wine, when Reyn- 
 olds said to him, ' You have sat by, quite sober, and felt an envy of 
 the happiness of those who were drinking,' he replied, ' Perhaps, con- 
 tempt.' On April 28, 1778, he said to Reynolds: ' I won't argue any 
 more with you, Sir. You are too far gone.' See also ante, i. 363, 
 note I, where he said to him: 'Sir, I did not count your glasses of 
 wine, why should you number up my cups of tea ?' 
 
 'This
 
 Aetat. 66.] All inscription fov a picture. 335 
 
 ' This is all the news that I have ; but as you love verses, I will 
 send you a few which I made upon Inchkenneth ' ; but remember 
 the condition, you shall not show them, except to Lord Hailes, 
 whom I love better than any man whom I know so little. If he 
 asks you to transcribe them for him, you may do it, but I think he 
 must promise not to let them be copied again, nor to show them 
 as mine. 
 
 ' I have at last sent back Lord Hailes's sheets. I never think 
 about returning them, because I alter nothing. You will see that I 
 might as well have kept them. However, I am ashamed of my de- 
 lay ; and if I have the honour of receiving any more, promise punct- 
 ually to return them by the next post. Make my compliments to 
 dear Mrs. Boswell, and to Miss Veronica. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Yours most faithfully, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson *.' 
 
 'Jan. 21, 1775.' 
 
 ' See them in Joitr}ial of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 337 
 [Oct. 17]. Boswell. 
 
 ^ He now sent me a Latin inscription for my historical picture of 
 Mary Queen of Scots, and afterwards favoured me with an English 
 translation. Mr. Alderman Boydell, that eminent Patron of the Arts, 
 has subjoined them to the engraving from my picture. 
 
 ' Maria Scotorum Regina 
 
 Hominuni seditiosorum 
 
 Contioneliis lassata, 
 
 Minis territa, clatnoribus victa 
 
 Libello, per quern 
 
 Regno cedit, 
 
 Lacritnans trepidansque 
 
 Nonten apponit' 
 
 ' Mary Queen of Scots, 
 
 Harassed, terrified, and overpowered 
 
 By the insults, menaces, 
 
 And clamours 
 
 Of her rebellious subjects, 
 
 Sets her hand. 
 With tears and confusion. 
 To a resignation of the kingdom.' BoSWELL. 
 Northcote {Life of Reynolds, ii. 234) calls Boydell ' the truest and great- 
 est encourager of English art that England ever saw.' 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell
 
 336 American taxation. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Jan. 27, 1775. 
 
 ******* 
 
 * You rate our lawyers here too high, when you call them great 
 
 masters of the law of nations. 
 
 ******* 
 
 'As for myself, I am ashamed to say I have read little and 
 thought little on the subject of America. I will be much obliged 
 to you, if you will direct me where I shall find the best information 
 of what is to be said on both sides. It is a subject vast in its pres- 
 ent extent and future consequences. The imperfect hints which 
 now float in my mind, tend rather to the formation of an opinion 
 that our government has been precipitant and severe in the reso- 
 lutions taken against the Bostonians '. Well do you know that I 
 have no kindness for that race. But nations, or bodies of men, 
 should, as well as individuals, have a fair trial, and not be con- 
 demned on character alone. Have we not express contracts with 
 our colonies, which afford a more certain foundation of judgement, 
 than general political speculations on the mutual rights of States 
 and their provinces or colonies ? Pray let me know immediately 
 what to read, and I shall diligently endeavour to gather for you any 
 thing that I can find. Is Burke's speech on American taxation 
 published by himself? Is it authentick? I remember to have 
 heard you say, that you had never considered East-Indian affairs ; 
 though, surely, they are of much importance to Great-Britain. Un- 
 der the recollection of this, I shelter myself from the reproach of 
 ignorance about the Americans. If you write upon the subject I 
 shall certainly understand it. But, since you seem to expect that 
 I should know something of it, without your instruction, and that 
 my own mind should suggest something, I trust you will put me in 
 
 the way. 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' What does Becket " mean by the Originals of Fingal and other 
 
 poems of Ossian, which he advertises to have lain in his shop ?' 
 
 ******* 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' You sent me a case to consider, in which I have no facts but 
 
 ' By the Boston Port-Bill, passed in 1774, Boston had been closed 
 as a port for the landing and shipping of goods. Ann. Reg. xvii. 64. 
 * Becket, a bookseller in the Strand, was the publisher of Ossian. 
 
 what
 
 Aetat. 66.] Lies in defence of Macpherson. 337 
 
 what are against us. nor any principles on which to reason. It is 
 vain to try to write thus without materials. The fact seems to be 
 against you ; at least I cannot know nor say any thing to the con- 
 trary. I am glad that you like the book so well. I hear no more 
 of IMacpherson. I shall long to know what Lord Hailes says of it. 
 Lend it him privately. I shall send the parcel as soon as I can. 
 Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, &c.. 
 
 'Jan. 28, 1775.' 
 
 ' Sam. Johnsox.' 
 
 Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Feb. 2, 1775. 
 
 ******* 
 ' As to Macpherson, I am anxious to have from yourself a full 
 and pointed account of what has passed between you and him. It 
 is confidently told here, that before your book came out he sent to 
 you, to let you know that he understood you meant to deny the 
 authenticity of Ossian's poems ; that the originals were in his pos- 
 session ; that you might have inspection of them, and might take 
 the evidence of people skilled in the Erse language ; and that he 
 hoped, after this fair offer, you would not be so uncandid as to 
 assert that he had refused reasonable proof. That you paid no 
 regard to his message, but published your strong attack upon him ; 
 and then he wrote a letter to. you, in such terms as he thought 
 suited to one who had not acted as a man of veracity. You may 
 believe it gives me pain to hear your conduct represented as unfa- 
 vourable, while I can only deny what is said, on the ground that 
 your character refutes it, without having any information to oppose. 
 Let me, I beg it of you, be furnished with a sufficient answer to any 
 calumny upon this occasion. 
 
 ' Lord Hailes writes to me, (for we correspond more than we talk 
 together,) " As to Fingal, I see a controversy arising, and purpose to 
 keep out of its way. There is no doubt that I might mention some 
 circumstances ; but 1 do not choose to commit them to paper '." 
 What his opinion is, I do not know. He says, " I am singularly 
 obliged to Dr. Johnson for his accurate and useful criticisms. Had 
 
 * His Lordship, notwithstanding his resolution, did commit his sen- 
 timents to paper, and in one of his notes affixed to his Collect io7i of 
 Old Scottish Poetry, he says, that ' to doubt the authenticity of those 
 poems is a refinement in Scepticism indeed.' J. Blakewav. 
 
 IL — 22 he
 
 1 
 
 38 Dr, Lawrence. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 he given some strictures on the general plan of the work, it would 
 have added much to his favours." He is charmed with your verses 
 on Inchkenneth, says they are very elegant, but bids me tell you he 
 doubts whether 
 
 " Lcgith7ias faciimt pcdora pura preccs ' " 
 
 be according to the rubrick : but that is your concern ; for, you 
 know, he is a Presbyterian.' 
 
 'To Dr, Lawrence'. 
 
 ' Feb. 7, 1775. 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' One of the Scotch physicians is now prosecuting a corpora- 
 tion that in some publick instrument have stiled him Doctor of 
 Medicine instead of Physician. Boswell desires, being advocate for 
 the corporation, to know whether Doctor of Medicine is not a legiti- 
 mate title, and whether it may be considered as a disadvantageous 
 distinction. I am to write to-night ; be pleased to tell me. 
 
 ' I am. Sir, your most, &c., 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 'My Dear Boswell, 
 
 ' I am surprised that, knowing as you do the disposition of 
 
 ' Mr. Croker writes (Croker's Boszvell, p. 378, note) : — ' The original 
 draft of these verses in Johnson's autograph is now before me. He 
 had first written : — 
 
 " Sunt pro legitimis pectora pura sacris ;" 
 he then wrote — 
 
 " Legitimas faciunt pura labella preces ;" 
 which more nearly approaches Mr. Boswell's version, and alludes, 
 happily I think, to the prayers having been read by the young lady. 
 . . . The line as it stands in the Works [Sint pro legitimis pura la- 
 bella sacris, i. 167], is substituted in Mr. Langton's hand. ... As I have 
 reason to believe that Mr. Langton assisted in editing these Latin 
 poeniata, I conclude that these alterations were his own.' 
 
 ■ The learned and worthy Dr. Lawrence, whom Dr. Johnson re- 
 spected and loved as his physician and friend. Boswell. ' Dr. Law- 
 rence was descended, as Sir Egerton Brj^dges informs me, from Mil- 
 ton's friend [' Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son.' Milton's 
 Sonnets, xx.]. One of his sons was Sir Soulden Lawrence, one of the 
 Judges of the King's Bench.' Croker's Boswell, p. 734. See post, 
 March 19, 1782. 
 
 your
 
 Aetat. GG.] Conspiracy hi national falsehood. 339 
 
 your countrymen to tell lies in favour of each other \ you can be at 
 all affected by any reports that circulate among them. Macpherson 
 never in his life offered me a sight of any original or of any evi- 
 dence of any kind ; but thought only of intimidating me by noise 
 and threats, till my last answer, — that I would not be deterred from 
 detecting what I thought a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian — put 
 an end to our correspondence. 
 
 ' The state of the question is this. He, and Dr. Blair, whom I 
 consider as deceived, say, that he copied the poem from old manu- 
 scripts. His copies, if he had them, and I believe him to have 
 none, are nothing. Where are the manuscripts ? They can be 
 shown if they exist, but they were never shown. De non existaitibus 
 et non apparentibus, says our law, eadcm est ratio. No man has a 
 claim to credit upon his own word, when better evidence, if he had 
 it, may be easily produced. But, so far as we can find, the Erse 
 language was never written till very lately for the purposes of re- 
 ligion. A nation that cannot write, or a language that w^as never 
 written, has no manuscripts. 
 
 ' But whatever he has he never offered to show. If old manu- 
 scripts should now be mentioned, I should, unless there were more 
 evidence than can be easily had, suppose them another proof of 
 Scotch conspiracy in national falsehood. 
 
 ' Do not censure the expression ; you know it to be true. 
 
 ' Dr. Memis's question is so narrow as to allow no speculation ; 
 and I have no facts before me but those which his advocate has 
 produced against you. 
 
 ' I consulted this morning the President of the London College 
 of Physicians \ who says, that with us. Doctor of Fhysick (we do 
 not say Doctor of Medicine) is the highest title that a practicer of 
 physick can have ; that Doctor implies not only Physician, but 
 teacher of physick; that every Doctor is legally a Physician; but 
 no man, not a Doctor, ca.n practice physick but hy licence particularly 
 granted. The Doctorate is a licence of itself. It seems to us a 
 very slender cause of prosecution. 
 
 * My friend has, in this letter, relied upon my testimony, with a con- 
 fidence, of which the ground has escaped my recollection. Boswell. 
 Lord Shelburne said : ' Like the generality of Scotch, Lord Mansfield 
 had no regard to truth whatever.' Fitzmaurice's Shdburnc, i. 89. 
 
 ' Dr. Lawrence. See Johnson's letter 1 3 Warren Hastings of Dec. 
 20, 1 774. See post, beginning of 1 78 1 . 
 
 'I am
 
 340 Johnsoiis letter to Macpherson. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 ' I am now engaged, but in a little time I hope to do all you 
 
 would have. My compliments to Madam and Veronica. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' February 7, 1775.' 
 
 What words were used by Mr, Macpherson in his letter 
 to the venerable Sage, I have never heard ; but they are gen- 
 erally said to have been of a nature very different from the 
 language of literary contest. Dr. Johnson's answer appeared 
 in the newspapers of the day, and has since been frequently 
 re-published ; but not with perfect accuracy. I give it as 
 dictated to me by himself, written down in his presence, and 
 authenticated by a note in his own hand-writing, ' TJiis, I 
 think, is a true copy\' 
 
 'Mr. James Macpherson, 
 
 ' I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence 
 offered me I shall do my best to repel ; and what I cannot do for 
 myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred 
 from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian. 
 
 ' What would you have me retract ? I thought your book an 
 imposture ; I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have 
 given my reasons to the publick, which I here dare you to refute. 
 Your rage I defy. Your abilities, since your Homer'', are not so 
 
 ^ I have deposited it in the British Museum. Boswell. Mr. P. 
 Cunningham says :— ' Of all the MSS. which Boswell says he had de- 
 posited in the British Museum, only the copy of the letter to Lord 
 Chesterfield has been found, and that was not deposited by him, but 
 after his death, " pursuant to the intentions of the late James Bos- 
 well, Esq." ' Croker's Boswell, p. 430. The original letter to Mac- 
 pherson was sold in Mr. Pocock's collection in 1875. It fetched ^50, 
 almost five times as much as Johnson was paid for his London. It 
 differs from the copy, if we can trust the auctioneer's catalogue, where 
 the following passage is quoted : — ' Mr. James Macpherson, I received 
 your foolish and impudent note. Whatever insult is oilered me, I 
 will do my best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself the law 
 shall do for me. I will not desist from detecting what I think a 
 cheat from any fear of the menaces of a Ruffian.' 
 
 ^ In the Gent. Mag. for 1773, p. 192, is announced : ' The Iliad of 
 
 formidable ;
 
 Aetat. G6.] Johnson s fearlessness, 341 
 
 formidable ; and what I hear of your morals, inclines me to pay 
 regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. 
 You may print this if you will. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson'.' 
 
 Mr. IMacpherson little knew the character of Dr. Johnson, 
 if he supposed that he could be easily intimidated ; for no 
 man was ever more remarkable for personal courage. He 
 had, indeed, an aweful dread of death, or rather, ' of some- 
 thing after death'";' and what rational man, wdio seriously 
 thinks of quitting all that he has ever known, and going into 
 a new and unknown state of being, can be without that 
 dread ? But his fear was from reflection ; his courage nat- 
 ural. His fear, in that one instance, was the result of phil- 
 osophical and religious consideration. He feared death, 
 but he feared nothing else, not even what might occasion 
 death'. Many instances of his resolution may be mentioned. 
 One day, at Mr. Beauclerk's house in the country, when two 
 large dogs were fighting, he went up to them, and beat them 
 
 Homer. Translated by James Macpherson, Esq., 2 vols. 410. £2 is. 
 Becket.' Hume writes : — ' Finding the style of his Ossian admired by 
 some, he attempts a translation of Homer in the very same style. He 
 begins and finishes in six weeks a work that was for ever to eclipse 
 the translation of Pope, whom he does not even deign to mention in 
 his preface ; but this joke was still more unsuccessful [than his His- 
 tory of Britain].' J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 478. Hume says of him, 
 that he had ' scarce ever known a man more perverse and unamiable.' 
 lb. p. 470. \ 
 
 ' ' Within a few feet of Johnson lies (by one of those singular coin- 
 cidences in which the Abbey abounds) his deadly enemy, James Mac- 
 pherson.' Stanley's Westminster Abbey, p. 298. 
 
 ^ Hamlet, act iii. sc. i. 
 
 ' ' Fear was indeed a sensation to which Dr. Johnson was an utter 
 stranger, excepting when some sudden apprehensions seized him that 
 he was going to die.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 277. In this respect his char- 
 acter might be likened to that of Fearing, in Pilgrim's Progress (Part 
 ii), as described by Great-Heart: — 'When he came to the Hill Diffi- 
 culty, he made no stick at that, nor did he much fear the Lions; for 
 you must know that his troubles were not about such things as these ; 
 his fear was about his acceptance at last.' 
 
 till
 
 342 Johnsons fearlessness. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 till they separated'; and at another time, when told of the 
 danger there was that a gun might burst if charged with 
 many balls, he put in six or seven, and fired it off against a 
 wall. Mr. Langton told me, that when they were swimming 
 together near Oxford, he cautioned Dr. Johnson against a 
 pool, which was reckoned particularly dangerous ; upon 
 which Johnson directly swam into it. He told me himself 
 that one night he was attacked in the street by four men, to 
 whom he would not yield, but kept them all at bay, till the 
 watch came up, and carried both him and them to the round- 
 house\ In the play-house at Lichfield, as Mr. Garrick in- 
 formed me, Johnson having for a moment quitted a chair 
 which was placed for him between the side-scenes, a gentle- 
 man took possession of it, and when Johnson on his return 
 civilly demanded his seat, rudely refused to give it up ; upon 
 which Johnson laid hold of it, and tossed him and the chair 
 into the pit. Foote, who so successfully revived the old 
 comedy, by exhibiting living characters, had resolved to 
 imitate Johnson on the stage, expecting great profits from 
 his ridicule of so celebrated a man. Johnson being informed 
 of his intention, and being at dinner at Mr. Thomas Davies's 
 the bookseller, from whom I had the story, he asked Mr. 
 Davies * what was the common price of an oak stick ;' and 
 being answered six-pence, ' Why then. Sir, (said he,) give me 
 leave to send your servant to purchase me a shilling one. 
 I'll have a double quantity ; for I am told Foote means to 
 take me off, as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow 
 shall not do it with impunity;' Davies took care to acquaint 
 Foote of this, which effectually checked the wantonness of 
 the mimick^ Mr. Macpherson's menaces made Johnson 
 provide himself with the same implement of defence*; and 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. i8, 1773. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 289, where Garrick humorously foretold the Round- 
 house for Johnson. 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 109. 
 
 * ' It was,' writes Hawkins {Life, p. 491), ' an oak-plant of a tremen- 
 dous size ; a plant, I say, and not a shoot or branch, for it had had a 
 root which, being trimmed to the size of a large orange, became the 
 
 had
 
 Aetat.GG.j JoJiiison s JouRNEY publisJied. 343 
 
 had he been attacked, I have no doubt that, old as he was, 
 he would have made his corporal prowess be felt as much as 
 his intellectual. 
 
 His Jotirney to the Western Islands of Scotland^ '^' is a most 
 valuable performance. It abounds in extensive philosophi- 
 cal views of society, and in ingenious sentiment and lively 
 description. A considerable part of it, indeed, consists of 
 speculations, which many years before he saw the wild re- 
 gions which we visited together, probably had employed his 
 attention, though the actual sight of those scenes undoubt- 
 edly quickened and augmented them. Mr. Orme, the very 
 able historian^, agreed with mc in this opinion, which he 
 thus strongly expressed :— ' There are in that book thoughts, 
 which, by long revolution in the great mind of Johnson, 
 have been formed and polished like pebbles rolled in the 
 ocean !' 
 
 That he was to some degree of excess a true-born EnglisJi- 
 inaji^, so as to have entertained an undue prejudice against 
 both the country and the people of Scotland, must be al- 
 lowed \ But it was a prejudice of the head, and not of the 
 
 head of it. Its height was upwards of six feet, and from about an inch 
 in diameter at the lower end, increased to near three ; this he kept in 
 his bedchamber, so near the chair in which he constantly sat as to be 
 within reach.' Macpherson, like Johnson, was a big man. Dr. A. Car- 
 lyle says {Auto. p. 398) : — ' He was good-looking, of a large size, with 
 very thick legs, to hide which he generally wore boots, though not 
 then the fashion. He appeared to me proud and resei-ved.' 
 
 * Boswell wrote to Temple on April 4: — ' Mr. Johnson has allowed 
 me to write out a supplement to \\\s Journey.' Letters of Bosiucll, 
 p. 186. On May 10 he wrote : — ' I have not written out another line of 
 my remarks on the Hebrides. I found it impossible to do it in Lon- 
 don. Besides, Dr. Johnson does not seem very desirous that I should 
 publish any supplement. Between ourselves, he is not apt to encourage 
 otte to share reputation with hiniself.' Ih. p. 192. 
 
 " Colonel Ncvvcomc, when a lad, ' was for ever talking of India, and 
 the famous deeds of Clive and Lawrence. His favourite book was a 
 history of India — the history of Orme.' Thackeray's Newcotnes, ch. 
 Ixxvi. Sec /w,s7, April 15, 1778. 
 
 ' Richard II, act i. sc. 3. Sec ante, i. 1 50. 
 
 * A passage in the North Briton, No. 34, shews how wide-spread this 
 
 heart.
 
 344 English and Scotch antipathies. [a.d. it75. 
 
 heart. He had no ill-will to the Scotch ; for, if he had been 
 conscious of that, he would never have thrown himself into 
 the bosom of their country, and trusted to the protection of 
 
 prejudice was. The writer gives his ' real, fair, and substantial objec- 
 tions to the administration of this Scot [Lord Bute]. The first is, that 
 he is a Scot. I am certain that reason could never believe that a Scot 
 was fit to have the management of English affairs. A Scot hath no 
 more right to preferment in E)igland than a Hanoverian or a Hotten- 
 tot.' In Humphry Clinker (Letter of July 13) we read : — ' From Don- 
 caster northwards all the windows of all the inns are scrawled with 
 doggrel rhymes in abuse of the Scotch nation.' Horace Walpole, 
 writing of the contest between the House of Commons and the city 
 in 1 77 1, says of the Scotch courtiers: — 'The Scotch wanted to come 
 to blows, and were at least not sorry to see the House of Commons so 
 contemptible.' Illemoirs of the Reign of Geotge III, iv. 301. ' What a 
 nation is Scotland,' he wrote at the end of the Gordon Riots, 'in every 
 reign engendering traitors to the State, and false and pernicious to the 
 kings that favour it the most.' Letters, vii. 400. ice post, March 21, 
 1783. Lord Shelburne, a man of a liberal mind, wrote :: — ' I can scarce 
 conceive a Scotchman capable of liberality, and capable of impartial- 
 ity.' After calling them ' a sad set of innate cold-hearted, impudent 
 rogues,' he continues : — ' It's a melancholy thing that there is no finding 
 any other people that will take pains, or be amenable even to the best 
 purposes.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, iii. 441. Hume wrote to his coun- 
 trjmian, Gilbert Elliot, in 1764: — 'I do not believe there is one Eng- 
 lishman in fifty, who, if he heard I had broke (sic) my neck to-night, 
 would be sorry. Some, because I am not a Whig ; some, because I 
 am not a Christian ; and all, because I am a Scotsman. Can you seri- 
 ously talk of my continuing an Englishman ? Am I, or are you, an 
 Englishman }' Elliot replies : — ' Notwithstanding all you say, we are 
 both Englishmen ; that is, true British subjects, entitled to every 
 emolument and advantage that our happy constitution can bestow.' 
 Burton's Hume, ii. 23S, 240. Hume, in his prejudice against England, 
 went far beyond Johnson in his prejudice against Scotland. In 1769 
 he wrote : — ' I am delighted to see the daily and hourly progress of 
 madness and folly and wickedness in England. The consummation of 
 these qualities are the true ingredients for making a fine narrative in 
 history, especially if followed by some signal and ruinous convulsion 
 — as I hope will soon be the case with that pernicious people.' lb. 
 p. 431. In 1770 he wrote :— ' Our government has become a chimera, 
 and is too perfect, in point of liberty, for so rude a beast as an Eng- 
 lishman ; who is a man, a bad animal too, corrupted by above a cen- 
 tury of licentiousness.' lb. p. 434. 
 
 its
 
 Aetat. 66.] The nakedness of Scotland. 345 
 
 its remote inhabitants with a fearless confidence. His re- 
 mark upon the nakedness of the country, from its being 
 denuded of trees', was made after having travelled two hun- 
 dred miles along the eastern coast, where certainly trees are 
 not to be found near the road ; and he said it was ' a map 
 of the road"' which he gave. His disbelief of the authen- 
 ticity of the poems ascribed to Ossian, a Highland bard, was 
 confirmed in the course of his journey, by a very strict 
 examination of the evidence offered for it ; and although 
 their authenticity was niade too much a national point by 
 the Scotch, there were many respectable persons in that 
 country, who did not concur in this ; so that his judgement 
 upon the question ought not to be decried, even by those 
 who differ from him. As to myself, I can only say, upon a 
 subject now become very uninteresting, that when the frag- 
 ments of Highland poetry first came out, I was much pleased 
 with their wild peculiarity, and was one of those who sub- 
 scribed to enable their editor, Mr. Macpherson, then a young 
 man, to make a search in the Highlands and Hebrides for a 
 long poem in the Erse language, which was reported to be 
 preserved somewhere in those regions. But when there 
 came forth an Epick Poem in six books, with all the com- 
 mon circumstances of former compositions of that nature ; 
 and when, upon an attentive examination of it, there was 
 found a perpetual recurrence of the same images which 
 appear in the fragments ; and when no ancient manuscript, 
 to authenticate the work, was deposited in any publick 
 library, though that was insisted on as a reasonable proof, 
 who could forbear to doubt ^? 
 
 ' ' The love of planting,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, ' which has become 
 almost a passion, is much to be ascribed to Johnson's sarcasms.' Cro- 
 , kcr Corrcs. ii. 34. Lord Jeffrey wrote from Watford in 1833 : — ' What 
 a country this old England is. In a circle of twenty mik-s from this 
 spot (leaving out London and its suburbs), there is more old timber 
 . . . than in all Scotland.' ^ZocVhwrviS Jeffrey, i. 348. See post, March 
 
 21. 1775- 
 
 "^ See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20. 
 
 ' Even David Hume subscribed to the fund. He wrote in 1760: — 
 
 Jolinson's
 
 346 Believers in Ossian. [a. d. 1775. 
 
 Johnson's grateful acknowledgements of kindnesses re- 
 ceived in the course of this tour, completely refute the bru- 
 tal reflections which have been thrown out against him, as if 
 he had made an ungrateful return ; and his delicacy in spar- 
 insf in his book those who we find from his letters to Mrs. 
 Thrale were just objects of censure', is much to be admired. 
 His candour and amiable disposition is conspicuous from his 
 
 ' Certain it is that these poems are in every body's mouth in the High- 
 lands, have been handed down from father to son, and are of an age 
 beyond all memory and tradition. Adam Smith told me that the 
 Piper of the Argyleshire militia repeated to him all those which Mr. 
 Macpherson had translated. We have set about a subscription of a 
 guinea or two guineas apiece, in order to enable Mr. Macpherson to 
 undertake a mission into the Highlands to recover this poem, and 
 other fragments of antiquity.' Mason's Gray, ii. 170. Hume changed 
 his opinion. ' On going to London,' writes Dr. A. Carlyle {Auto. 
 p. 276), ' he went over to the other side, and loudly affirmed the poems 
 to be inventions of Macpherson. I happened to say one day, when 
 he was declaiming against Macpherson, that I had met with nobody 
 of his opinion but William Caddel of Cockenzie, and President Dun- 
 das, which he took ill, and was some time of forgetting.' Gibbon, in 
 the Decline a7td Fall (vol. i. ch. vi.), quoted Ossian, but added : — ' Some- 
 thing of a doubtful mist still hangs over these Highland traditions ; nor 
 can it be entirely dispelled by the most ingenious researches of mod- 
 ern criticism.' On this Hume wrote to him on March 18, 1776: — 'I 
 see you entertain a great doubt with regard to the authenticity of the 
 poems of Ossian. . . . Where a supposition is so contrary to common 
 sense, any positive evidence of it ought never to be regarded. Men 
 run with great avidity to give their evidence in favour of what flat- 
 ters their passions and their national prejudices. You are therefore 
 over and above indulgent to us in speaking of the matter with hesi- 
 tation.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 225. So early as 1763 Hume had 
 asked Dr. Blair for ' proof that these poems were not forged within 
 these five years by James Macpherson. These ^proofs must Jiot be argu- 
 i?ie?its, but testimonies.' J. H. Burton's Hutne, i. 466. Smollett, it should 
 seem, believed in Ossian to the end. In Humphry Clin/cer, in the let-, 
 ter dated Sept. 3, he makes one of his characters write : — ' The poems 
 of Ossian are in every mouth. A famous antiquarian of this country, 
 the laird of Macfarlane, at whose house we dined, can repeat them all 
 in the original Gaelic' See Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 10. 
 
 ' I find in his letters only Sir A. Macdonald {ante, ii. 181) of whom 
 this can be said. 
 
 conduct,
 
 Aetat. G6.] Mr. Detupstev 071 Jolinsous JouRNEY. 347 
 
 conduct, when informed by Mr. Macleod, of Rasay, that he 
 had committed a mistake, which gave that gentleman some 
 uneasiness. He wrote him a courteous and kind letter, and 
 inserted in the news-papers an advertisement, correcting the 
 mistake \ 
 
 The observations of my friend Mr. Dempster in a letter" 
 written to me, soon after he had read Dr. Johnson's book, 
 are so just and liberal, that they cannot be too often re- 
 peated : 
 
 ■M. ^ Jsl. .U. 4(. -^ ^ie 
 
 ■7^ TT" -Jr -!r -7r 'Tr -rr 
 
 'There is nothing in the book, from beginning to end, that a 
 Scotchman need to take amiss. What he says of the country is 
 true ; and his observations on the people are what must naturally 
 occur to a sensible, observing, and reflecting inhabitant of a con- 
 venient metropolis, where a man on thirty pounds a year may be 
 better accommodated with all the little wants of life, than Col or 
 Sir Allan. 
 
 ' I am charmed with his researches concerning the Erse lan- 
 guage, and the antiquity of their manuscripts. I am quite con- 
 vinced ; and I shall rank Ossian and his Fingals and Oscars 
 amongst the nursery tales, not the true history of our country, in 
 all time to come. 
 
 * Upon the whole, the book cannot displease, for it has no pre- 
 tensions. The authour neither says he is a geographer, nor an 
 antiquarian, nor very learned in the history of Scotland, nor a nat- 
 uralist, nor a fossilist ^ The manners of the people, and the face 
 of the country, are all he attempts to describe, or seems to have 
 thought of. Much were it to be wished, that they who have trav- 
 elled into more remote, and of course more curious regions, had 
 all possessed his good sense. Of the state of learning, his obser- 
 vations on Glasgow University show he has formed a very sound 
 judgement. He understands our climate too ; and he has accu- 
 rately observed the changes, however slow and imperceptible to 
 us, which Scotland has undergone, in consequence of the blessings 
 
 of liberty and internal peace.' 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' ^0.0^ Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd ed. p. 520 [p. 431]. Bos- 
 
 WELL. 
 
 ' For the letter, see the end of Boswell's Hebrides. 
 ' Fossilist is not in Johnson's Dictionary. 
 
 Mr. Knox.
 
 348 Mr. Knox oit Johnsons Journey, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 Mr. Knox, another native of Scotland, who has since made 
 the same tour, and published an account of it, is equally 
 liberal. 
 
 ' I have read, (says he,) his book again and again, travelled with 
 him from Berwick to Glenelg, through countries with which I am 
 well acquainted ; sailed with him from Glenelg to Rasay, Sky, 
 Rum, Col, Mull, and Icolmkill, but have not been able to correct 
 him in any matter of consequence. I have often admired the 
 accuracy, the precision, and the justness of what he advances, 
 resjoecting both the country and the people. 
 
 'The Doctor has every where delivered his sentiments with 
 freedom, and in many instances with a seeming regard for the 
 benefit of the inhabitants and the ornament of the country. His 
 remarks on the want of trees and hedges for shade, as well as for 
 shelter to the cattle, are well founded, and merit the thanks, not 
 the illiberal censure of the natives. He also felt for the distresses 
 of the Highlanders, and explodes with great propriety the bad 
 management of the grounds, and the neglect of timber in the 
 Hebrides.' 
 
 Having quoted Johnson's just compliments on the Rasay 
 family', he says, 
 
 'On the other hand, I found this family equally lavish in their 
 encomiums upon the Doctor's conversation, and his subsequent 
 civilities to a young gentleman of that country, who, upon waiting 
 upon him at London, was well received, and experienced all the 
 attention and regard that a warm friend could bestow. Mr. Mac- 
 leod having also been in London, waited upon the Doctor, who 
 provided a magnificent and expensive entertainment in honour of 
 his old Hebridean acquaintance.' 
 
 And talking of the military road by Fort Augustus, he 
 says, 
 
 ' By this road, though one of the most rugged in Great Britain, 
 the celebrated Dr. Johnson passed from Inverness to the Hebride 
 
 ' ' Rasay has little that can detain a traveller, except the laird and 
 his family; but their power wants no auxiliaries. Such a seat of hos- 
 pitality amidst the winds and waters fills the imagination with a 
 delightful contrariety of images.' Wo7-ks, ix. 62. 
 
 Isles.
 
 Aetat. CG.] Air. Tytler on JoJiiisoiis Journey. 349 
 
 Isles. His observations on the country and people are extremely 
 correct, judicious, and instructive '.' 
 
 Mr. Tytler, the acute and able vindicator of Mary Queen 
 of Scots, in one of his letters to Mr. James Elphinstonc, 
 published in that gentleman's Forty Years Correspondence, 
 says, 
 
 ' I read Dr. Johnson's Tour with very great pleasure. Some 
 few errours he has fallen into, but of no great importance, and 
 those are lost in the numberless beauties of his work. 
 
 ' If I had leisure, I could perhaps point out the most exception- 
 able places ; but at present I am in the country, and have not his 
 book at hand. It is plain he meant to speak well of Scotland ; 
 and he has in my apprehension done us great honour in the most 
 capital article, the character of the inhabitants.' 
 
 His private letters to Mrs. Thrale, written during the 
 course of his journey, which therefore may be supposed 
 to convey his genuine feelings at the time, abound in such 
 benignant sentiments towards the people who shewed him 
 civilities ^ that no man whose temper is not very harsh and 
 sour, can retain a doubt of the goodness of his heart. 
 
 It is painful to recollect with what rancour he was assailed 
 by numbers of shallow irritable North Britons, on account 
 of his supposed injurious treatment of their country and 
 countrymen, in his Journey. Had there been any just 
 ground for such a charge, would the virtuous and candid 
 Dempster' have given his opinion of the book, in the terms 
 which I have quoted? Would the patriotick Knox' have 
 spoken of it as he has done? Would Mr. Tytler, surely 
 
 ' a Scot, if ever Scot there were,' 
 
 ' Page 103. BoswELL. 
 
 "^ From Skye he wrote : — ' The hospitality of this remote region is 
 like that of the golden age. We have found ourselves treated at 
 every house as if we came to confer a benefit.' Piozzi Letters, i. 155. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 513, note 2. 
 
 * I observed with much regret, while the first edition of this work 
 was passing through the press (Aug. 1790), that this ingenious gentle- 
 man was dead. Boswell. 
 
 have
 
 350 The jealousy of the Scotch. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 have expressed himself thus ? And let me add, that, citizen 
 of the world as I hold myself to be, I have that degree of 
 predilection for my natale solum, nay, I have that just sense 
 of the merit of an ancient nation, which has been ever re- 
 nowned for its valour, which in former times maintained its 
 independence against a powerful neighbour, and in modern 
 times has been equally distinguished for its ingenuity and 
 industry in civilized life, that I should have felt a generous 
 indignation at any injustice done to it. Johnson treated 
 Scotland no worse than he did even his best friends, whose 
 characters he used to give as they appeared to him, both in 
 light and shade. Some people, who had not exercised their 
 minds sufificiently, condemned him for censuring his friends. 
 But Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose philosophical penetration 
 and justness of thinking were not less known to those who 
 lived with him, than his genius in his art is admired by the 
 world, explained his conduct thus : ' He was fond of dis- 
 crimination, which he could not show without pointing out 
 the bad as well as the good in every character; and as his 
 friends were those whose characters he knew best, they af- 
 forded him the best opportunity for showing the acuteness 
 of his judgement.' 
 
 He expressed to his friend Mr. Windham of Norfolk, his 
 wonder at the extreme jealousy of the Scotch, and their re- 
 sentment at having their country described by him as it 
 really was ; when, to say that it was a country as good as 
 England, would have been a gross falsehood. ' None of us, 
 (said he,) would be offended if a foreigner who has travelled 
 here should say, that vines and olives don't grow in Eng- 
 land.' And as to his prejudice against the Scotch, which I 
 always ascribed to that nationality which he observed in 
 thein,h.e said to the same gentleman, 'When I find a Scotch- 
 man, to whom an Englishman is as a Scotchman, that Scotch- 
 man shall be. as an Englishman to me'.' His intimacy 
 with many gentlemen of Scotland, and his employing so 
 many natives of that country as his amanuenses", prove 
 
 * See rt'«/^, ii. 278. = Sqq atite, 1.216. 
 
 that
 
 Aetat. 6G.] The Irish a fair people. 351 
 
 that his prejudice was not virulent ; and I have deposited 
 in the British Museum, amongst other pieces of his writing, 
 the following note in answer to one from me, asking if he 
 would meet me at dinner at the Mitre, though a friend of 
 mine, a Scotchman, was to be there :— 
 
 . ' Mr. Johnson does not see why Mr. Boswell should suppose a 
 Scotchman less acceptable than any other man. He will be at 
 the Mitre.' 
 
 My much-valued friend Dr. Barnard, now Bishop of Killa- 
 loe, having once expressed to him an apprehension, that if 
 he should visit Ireland he might treat the people of that 
 country more unfavourably than he had done the Scotch, 
 he answered, with strong pointed double-edged wit, ' Sir, 
 you have no reason to be afraid of me. The Irish are not 
 in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations 
 of the merits of their countrymen'. No, Sir; the Irish are 
 a FAIR PEOPLE ; — they never speak well of one another.' 
 
 Johnson told me of an instance of Scottish nationality, 
 which made a very unfavourable impression upon his mind. 
 A Scotchman, of some consideration in London, solicited 
 him to recommend, by the weight of his learned authority, 
 to be master of an English school, a person of whom he who 
 recommended him confessed he knew no more but that he 
 was his countryman. Johnson was shocked at this uncon- 
 scientious conduct \ 
 
 All the miserable cavillings against his jfoiirney, in news- 
 papers', magazines, and other fugitive publications, I can 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 139, 339, and. post, under March 30, 1783. 
 
 * Johnson {Works, ix. 158) says that ' the mediocrity of knowledge ' 
 obtained in the Scotch universities, 'countenanced in general by a 
 national combination so invidious that their friends cannot defend it, 
 and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise so vigorous that 
 their enemies are constrained to praise it, enables them to find, or to 
 make their way, to employment, riches, and distinction.' 
 
 " Macphcrson had great influence with the news-papers. Horace 
 Walpole wrote in February, 1776: — 'Macphcrson, the Ossianite, had 
 a pension of ;^6oo a year from the Court, to supervise the newspa- 
 pers.' In Dec. 1781, Walpole mentions the difficulty of getting 'a 
 
 speak
 
 352 The right way to abuse. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 speak from certain knowledge, only furnished him with 
 sport. At last there came out a scurrilous volume, larger 
 than Johnson's own, filled with malignant abuse, under a 
 name, real or fictitious, of some low man in an obscure 
 corner of Scotland, though supposed to be the work of 
 another Scotchman, who has found means to make him- 
 self well known both in Scotland and England. The effect 
 which it had upon Johnson was, to produce this pleasant 
 observation to Mr. Seward, to whom he lent the book : 
 ' This fellow must be a blockhead. They don't know how 
 to go about their abuse. Who will read a five shilling 
 book against me? No, Sir, if they had wit, they should 
 have kept pelting me with pamphlets'.' 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 'Edinburgh, Feb. i8, 1775. 
 'You would have been very well pleased if you had dined 
 with me to-day. I had for my guests, Macquharrie, young Mac- 
 lean of Col, the successor of our friend, a very amiable man, 
 though not marked with such active qualities as his brother ; Mr. 
 Maclean of Torloisk in Mull, a gentleman of Sir Allan's family ; 
 and two of the clan Grant ; so that the Highland and Hebridean 
 genius reigned. We had a great deal of conversation about you, 
 and drank your health in a bumper. The toast was not proposed 
 by me, which is a circumstance to be remarked, for I am now so 
 connected with you, that any thing that I can say or do to your 
 honour has not the value of an additional compliment. It is only 
 giving you a guinea out of that treasure of admiration which 
 already belongs to you, and which is no hidden treasure ; for I 
 
 vindicatory paragraph' inserted in the papers. 'This was one of the 
 great grievances of the time. Macpherson had a pension of ;{^8oo 
 a year from Court for inspecting newspapers, and inserted what lies 
 he pleased, and prevented whatever he disapproved of being printed.' 
 Journal of tlic Reign of George III, ii. 17. 483. 
 
 ' This book was published in 1779 under the title of 'Remarks on 
 Dr. Saimiel Johnson s Journey to the Hebrides, by the Rev. Donald 
 M'Nicol, A.M., Minister of Lismore, Argyleshire.' In 1817 it was re- 
 printed at Glasgow together with Johnson '3/6';/';'// ^j, in one volume. 
 T\\^ Remarks 2iXQ a few pages shorter than the Journey. By 'another 
 Scotchman,' Boswell certainly meant Macpherson. 
 
 suppose
 
 Aetat. 6G.] BoswclVs belief in Ossian. 353 
 
 suppose my admiration of you is co-existent with the knowledge 
 of my character. 
 
 ' I find that the HighLanders and Hebrideans in general are 
 much fonder of your younicy than the low-country or hither Scots. 
 One of the Grants said to-day, that he was sure you were a man of 
 a good heart, and a candid man, and seemed to hope he should be 
 able to convince you of the antiquity of a good proportion of the 
 poems of Ossian. After all that has passed, I think the matter 
 is capable of being proved to a certain degree. I am told that 
 Macpherson got one old Erse MS. from Clanranald, for the resti- 
 tution of which he executed a formal obligation ; and it is affirmed, 
 that the Gaelick, (call it Erse or call it Irish,) has been written in 
 the Highlands and Hebrides for many centuries. It is reasonable 
 to suppose, that such of the inhabitants as acquired any learning, 
 possessed the art of writing as well as their Irish neighbours, and 
 Celtick cousins ; and the question is, can sufficient evidence be 
 shewn of this ? 
 
 'Those who are skilled in ancient writings can determine the 
 age of MSS. or at least can ascertain the century in which they 
 were written ; and if men of veracity, who are so skilled, shall tell 
 us that MSS. in the possession of families in the Highlands and 
 isles are the works of a remote age, I think we should be con- 
 vinced by their testimony. 
 
 'There is now come to this city, Ranald Macdonald from the 
 Isle of Egg, who has several MSS. of Erse poetry, which he wishes 
 to publish by subscription. I have engaged to take three copies 
 of the book, the price of which is to be six shillings, as I would 
 subscribe for all the Erse that can be printed be it old or new, that 
 the language may be preserved. This man says, that some of his 
 manuscripts are ancient ; and, to be sure, one of them which was 
 shewn to me does appear to have the duskyness of antiquity. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ M- ^ ^ ^ 
 
 ' The enquiry is not yet quite hopeless, and I should think that 
 
 the exact truth may be discovered, if proper means be used. I 
 
 am, &c. 
 
 'James Boswell.' 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I am sorry that I could get no books for my friends in Scot- 
 land. Mr. Strahan has at last promised to send two dozen to 
 you. If they come, put the names of my friends into them ; 
 II. — 23 you
 
 354 Laxity of Highland conversation, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 you may cut them out ", and paste them with a little starch in the 
 book. 
 
 ' You then are going wild about Ossian. Why do you think any 
 part can be proved ? The dusky manuscript of Egg is probably 
 not fifty years old ; if it be an hundred, it proves nothing. The 
 tale of Clanranald is no proof. Has Clanranald told it ? Can he 
 prove it ? There are, I believe, no Erse manuscripts. None of 
 the old families had a single letter in Erse that we heard of. You 
 say it is likely that they could write. The learned, if any learned 
 there were, could ; but knowing by that learning, some written lan- 
 guage, in that language they wrote, as letters had never been applied 
 to their own. If there are manuscripts, let them be shewn, with 
 some proof that they are not forged for the occasion. You say 
 many can remember parts of Ossian. I believe all those parts are 
 versions of the English ; at least there is no proof of their antiquity. 
 
 'Macpherson is said to have made some translations himself; 
 and having taught a boy to write it, ordered him to say that he 
 had learnt it of his grandmother. The boy, when he grew up, 
 told the story. This Mrs. Williams heard at Mr. Strahan's table. 
 Don't be credulous ; you know how little a Highlander can be 
 trusted*. Macpherson is, so far as I know, very quiet. Is not 
 that proof enough ? Every thing is against him. No visible man- 
 uscript ; no inscription in the language : no correspondence among 
 friends : no transaction of business, of which a single scrap re- 
 mains in the ancient families. Macpherson's pretence is, that the 
 character was Saxon. If he had not talked unskilfully of viaini- 
 scripts, he might have fought with oral tradition much longer. As 
 to Mr. Grant's information, I suppose he knows much less of the 
 matter than ourselves. 
 
 ' In the mean time, the bookseller says that the sale^ is sufficiently 
 
 ' From a list in his hand-writing. Boswell. 
 
 ^ ' Such is the laxity of Highland conversation that the enquirer is 
 kept in continual suspense, and by a kind of intellectual retrograda- 
 tion, knows less as he hears more.' Johnson's Works, ix. 47. ' The 
 Highlanders are not much accustomed to be interrogated by others, 
 and seem never to have thought upon interrogating themselves ; so 
 that, if they do not know what they tell to be true, they likewise do 
 not distinctly perceive it to be false.' lb. 114. 
 
 ^ Of \\\=> Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Boswell. It 
 was sold at five shillings a copy. It did not reach a second edition 
 till 1785, when perhaps a fresh demand for it was caused by the publi- 
 
 quick.
 
 Aetat. 66.] BosweWs arrival ill London. 355 
 
 quick. They printed four thousand. Correct your copy wher- 
 ever it is wrong, and bring it up. Your friends will all be glad 
 to see you. I think of going myself into the country about 
 May. 
 
 ' I am sorr}' that I have not managed to send the book sooner. 
 I have left four for you, and do not restrict you absolutely to fol- 
 low my directions in the distribution. You must use your own 
 discretion. 
 
 ' jSIake my compliments to Mrs. Boswell : I suppose she is now 
 just beginning to forgive me. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'Feb. 25. 1775.' 
 
 On Tuesday, March 21, I arrived in London"; and on 
 repairing to Dr. Johnson's before dinner, found him in his 
 study, sitting with ]Mr. Peter Garrick, the elder brother of 
 David, strongly resembling him in countenance and voice, 
 but of more sedate and placid manners \ Johnson informed 
 me, that ' though Mr. Beauclerk was in great pain, it was 
 hoped he was not in danger ^ and that he now wished to 
 consult Dr. Heberden to try the effect of a iiciv nndcrstand- 
 ing! Both at this interview, and in the evening at Mr. 
 Thrale's, where he and Mr, Peter Garrick and I met again, 
 he was vehement on the subject of the Ossian controversy ; 
 observing, ' We do not know that there are any ancient Erse 
 
 cation of Boswell's Hebrides. Boswell, in a nole., post, April 28, 1778, 
 says that 4000 copies were sold very quickly. Hannah More {Memoirs, 
 i. 39) says that Cadell told her that he had sold 4000 copies the first 
 week. This, I think, must be an exaggeration. A German transla- 
 tion was brought out this same year. 
 
 * Boswell, on the way to London, wrote to Temple : — ' I have con- 
 tinual schemes of publication, but cannot fix. I am still very unhappy 
 with my father. We are so totally dilTcrent that a good understand- 
 ing is scarcely possible. He looks on my going to London just now 
 as an expedition, 2& idle and extravagant, when in reality it is highly 
 improving to me, considering the company which I enjoy.' Letters of 
 Bostuelt, p. 182. 
 
 * See /^^A under March 22, 1776. 
 ' See a7tte, ii. 334. 
 
 manuscripts ;
 
 356 Taxation NO Tyranny. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 manuscripts ; and we have no other reason to disbeHeve that 
 there are men with three heads, but that we do not know 
 that there are any such men.' He also was outrageous, 
 upon his supposition that my countrymen ' loved Scotland 
 better than truth ',' saying, ' All of them, — nay not all, — but 
 droves of them, would come up, and attest any thing for the 
 honour of Scotland.' He also persevered in his wild allega- 
 tion, that he questioned if there was a tree between Edin- 
 burgh and the English border older than himself'. I assured 
 him he was mistaken, and suggested that the proper punish- 
 ment would be that he should receive a stripe at every tree 
 above a hundred years old, that was found within that space. 
 He laughed, and said, ' I believe I might submit to it for a 
 baiibcc '/ 
 
 The doubts which, in my correspondence with him, I had 
 ventured to state as to the justice and wisdom of the con- 
 duct of Great-Britain towards the American colonies, while I 
 at the same time requested that he would enable me to in- 
 form myself upon that momentous subject, he had altogeth- 
 er disregarded ; and had recently published a pamphlet, en- 
 titled. Taxation no Tyranny ; an anszver to the Resolutions 
 and Address of the American Congress^ !^ 
 
 He had long before indulged most unfavourable senti- 
 ments of our fellow-subjects in America \ For, as early as 
 1769, I was told by Dr. John Campbell, that he had said 
 
 ' ' A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love 
 Scotland better than truth ; he will always love it better than inquiry; 
 and if falsehood flatters his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect 
 it.' Johnson's Works, ix. ii6. 
 
 ^ At Slanes Castle in Aberdeenshire he wrote : — ' I had now trav- 
 elled two hundred miles in Scotland, and seen only one tree not 
 younger than myself.' Works, ix. 17. Goldsmith wrote from Edin- 
 burgh on Sept. 26, 1753: — 'Every part of the country presents the 
 same dismal landscape. No grove, nor brook lend their music to cheer 
 the stranger, or make the inhabitants forget their poverty.' Forster's 
 Goldsmith, i. 433. 
 
 ^ This, like his pamphlet ox\ Falkland' s Isla7ids,yKZ.'s> published with- 
 out his name. 
 
 ■* See Appendix. 
 
 of
 
 Aetat. 66.] TAXATION NO TyRANNY. 357 
 
 of them, ' Sir, they are a race of convicts', and ought to be 
 thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.' 
 
 Of this performance I avoided to talk with him ; for I had 
 now formed a clear and settled opinion ', that the people of 
 America were well warranted to resist a claim that their fel- 
 low-subjects in the mother-country should have the entire 
 command of their fortunes, by taxing them without their 
 own consent ; and the extreme violence which it breathed, 
 appeared to me so unsuitable to the mildness of a chris- 
 tian philosopher, and so directly opposite to the principles 
 of peace which he had so beautifully recommended in his 
 pamphlet respecting Falkland's Islands \ that I was sorry to 
 see him appear in so unfavourable a light. Besides, I could 
 not perceive in it that ability of argument, or that felicity of 
 expression, for which he was, upon other occasions, so emi- 
 nent. Positive assertion, sarcastical severity, and extrava- 
 gant ridicule, which he himself reprobated as a test of truth, 
 were united in this rhapsody. 
 
 That this pamphlet was written at the desire of those 
 who were then in power, I have no doubt ; and, indeed, he 
 
 ' Convicts were sent to nine of the American settlements. Accord- 
 ing to one estimate about 2,000 had been for many years sent annu- 
 ally. ' Dr. Lang, after comparing different estimates, concludes that 
 the number sent might be about 50,000 altogether.' Penny Cycle. 
 XXV. 138. 
 
 "^ This ' clear and settled opinion ' must have been formed in three 
 days, and between Grantham and London. For from that Lincoln- 
 shire town he had written to Temple on March 18 : — ' As to American 
 affairs, I have really not studied the subject ; it is too much for me 
 perhaps, or I am too indolent or frivolous. From the smattering 
 which newspapers have given me, I have been of different minds sev- 
 eral times. That I am a Tory, a lover of power in monarchy, and a 
 discourager of much liberty in the people, I avow ; but it is not clear 
 to me that our colonics are completely our subjects.' Letters of Bos- 
 well, p. 180. Four years later he wrote to Temple : — ' I must candidly 
 tell you that I think you should not puzzle yourself with political 
 speculations more than I do; neither of us is fit for that sort of men- 
 tal labour.' /l>. 243. See post, Sept. 23, 1777, for a contest between 
 Johnson and Boswcll on this subject. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 154. 
 
 owned
 
 358 Taxation NO Tyranny. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 owned to me, that it had been revised and curtailed by some 
 of them. He told me, that they had struck out one pas- 
 sage, which was to this effect : — 
 
 'That the Colonists could with no solidity argue from their not 
 having been taxed while in their infancy, that they should not now 
 be taxed. We do not put a calf into the plow ; we wait till he is 
 an ox.' 
 
 He said, * They struck it out either critically as too ludicrous, 
 or politically as too exasperating. I care not which. It was 
 their business. If an architect says, I will build five stories, 
 and the man who employs him says, I will have only three, 
 the employer is to decide.' ' Yes, Sir, (said I,) in ordinary 
 cases. But should it be so when the architect gives his skill 
 and labour gratis ?' 
 
 Unfavourable as I am constrained to say my opinion of 
 this pamphlet was, yet, since it was congenial with the sen- 
 timents of numbers at that time, and as every thing relating 
 to the writings of Dr. Johnson is of importance in literary 
 history, I shall therefore insert some passages which were 
 struck out, it does not appear why, either by himself or 
 those who revised it. They appear printed in a few proof 
 leaves of it in my possession, marked with corrections in his 
 own hand-writing. I shall distinguish them by Italicks. 
 
 In the paragraph where he says the Americans were in- 
 cited to resistance by European intelligence from 
 
 ' Men whom they thought their friends, but who were friends 
 only to themselves ',' 
 
 there followed, — 
 
 ''and made by their selfishness, the enemies of their country.^ 
 
 And the next paragraph ran thus : — 
 
 ' On the original contrivers of mischief, rather than on those whom 
 they have deluded, let an insulted nation pour out its vengeance.' 
 
 ' Johnson's Works, vi. 261. 
 
 The
 
 Aetat. 6G.] TAXATION NO TyRANNY. 359 
 
 The paragraph which came next was in these words: — 
 
 ' Unhappy is that cowitry in which vicn can hope for advancement by 
 favouring its enemies. The tranquillity of stable government is not al- 
 ways easily preserved against the tnachinations of single innovators ; 
 but what can be the hope ofguiet, when factions hostile to the legislature 
 can be openly fort?u'd and openly avowed T 
 
 After the paragraph which now concludes the pamphlet, 
 there followed this, in which he certainly means the great 
 Earl of Chatham ', and glances at a certain popular Lord 
 Chancellor ^ 
 
 ' If, by the fortune of war, they drive us bitterly away, what they 
 will do next can only be conjectured. If a neto motiarchy is erected, 
 they 7oill want a King. He who first takes into his hand the sceptre 
 of America, should have a name of good omen. William has been 
 known both as conqueror and deliverer ; a?ul perhaps England, how- 
 ever contcfnned, might yet supply them zoith another William. 
 
 Whigs, indeed, are 7Wt willing to be governed ; and it is possible that 
 King \\' illiaim jfiay be strongly inclined to guide their measures : but 
 
 Whigs have been cheated like other mortals, and suffered their leader 
 to become their tyrant, under the name of their Protector. What 
 more they will receive from Etigland, no man can tell. In their rudi- 
 ments of e77ipire they 7nay want a Chancellor.' 
 
 Then came this paragraph : — 
 
 ' Their numbers are, at present, not quite sufficient for the greatness 
 which, in sorneforin of government or other, is to rival the ancient mon- 
 archies ; but by Dr. Fratiklin's rule of progression ^, they will, in a 
 
 ' Four years earlier he had also attacked him. See antc.n. 155, 
 note I. 
 
 ' Lord Camden, formerly Chief Justice Pratt. See ante, ii. 83, note 
 I ; ^Sid. post, April 14, 1775. 
 
 ' 'Our people,' wrote Franklin in 1751 {Memoirs, \\.-},, 10), ' must at 
 least be doubled every twenty years.' The population he reckoned at 
 upwards of one million. Johnson referred to this rule also in the fol- 
 lowing passage : — ' We are told that the continent of North America 
 contains three millions, not of men merely, but of whigs, of whigs 
 fierce for liberty and disdainful of dominion ; that they multiply with 
 the fecundity of their own rattlesnakes, so that every quarter of a cen- 
 tury doubles their number.' Works, vi. 227. Burke, in his Speech on 
 
 century
 
 360 Johnsons Political Tracts. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 century and a quarter, be more than equal to the inhabitants of Eu- 
 rope. When the Whigs of America are thus multiplied, let the Princes 
 of the earth tremble in their palaces. If they should continue to double 
 and to double, their own hemisphere tuould not contain thcfn. But let 
 not our boldest oppugners of authority look forward with delight to this 
 futurity of Whiggism.^ 
 
 How it ended I know not, as it is cut off abruptly at the 
 foot of the last of these proof pages'. 
 
 His pamphlets in support of the measures of administra- 
 tion were published on his own account, and he aftenvards 
 collected them into a volume, with the title of Political 
 Tracts, by the AutJioiir of the Rambler, with this motto : — 
 
 '' Fallitur egregio quisquis sub Principe credit 
 Servitium ; nunqua7n libcrtas gratior extat 
 
 Quam sub Rege pio.' CLAUDIANUS^ 
 
 Conciliatio7i with America, a fortnight after Johnson's pamphlet ap- 
 peared, said, 'your children do not grow faster from infancy to man- 
 hood than they spread from families to communities, and from villages 
 to nations.' Payne's -S/^r/^^-, i. 169. 
 
 ' Dr. T. Campbell records on April 20, 1775 {Diary, p. 74), that 'John- 
 son said the first thing he would do would be to quarter the army on 
 the cities, and if any refused free quarters, he would pull down that 
 person's house, if it was joined to other houses ; but would burn it if 
 it stood alone. This and other schemes he proposed in the manuscript 
 of Taxation tio Tyranny, but these, he said, the Ministry expunged.' 
 See post, April 15, 1778, where, talking of the Americans, Johnson 
 exclaimed. ' he'd burn and destroy them.' On June 11, 1781, Campbell 
 records {ib. p. 88) that Johnson said to him : — ' Had we treated the 
 Americans as we ought, and as they deserved, we should have at once 
 razed all their towns and let them enjoy their forests.' Campbell 
 justly describes this talk as ' wild rant.' 
 
 ' He errs who deems obedience to a prince 
 
 Slav'ry — a happier freedom never reigns 
 
 Than with a pious monarch.' 
 
 5///. iii. 113. Croker. 
 This volume was published in 1776. The copy in the library of Pem- 
 broke College, Oxford, bears the inscription in Johnson's hand : ' To 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds from the Authour.' On the title-page Sir Joshua 
 has written his own name. 
 
 These
 
 Aetat. 6G.] Dr. Joscph Towers. 361 
 
 These pamphlets drew upon him numerous attacks'. 
 Against the common weapons of hterary warfare he was 
 hardened ; but there were two instances of animadversion 
 which I communicated to him, and from what I could judge, 
 both from his silence and his looks, appeared to me to im- 
 press him much. 
 
 One was, A Letter to Dr. Samuel JoJinson, occasioned by his 
 late political Publications. It appeared previous to his Tax- 
 ation no Tyranny, and was written by Dr. Joseph Towers*. 
 In that performance. Dr. Johnson was treated with the re- 
 spect due to so eminent a man, while his conduct as a polit- 
 ical writer was boldly and pointedly arraigned, as inconsist- 
 ent with the character of one, who, if he did employ his pen 
 upon politics, 
 
 ' It might reasonably be expected should distinguish himself, not 
 by party violence and rancour, but by moderation and by wisdom.' 
 
 It concluded thus : — 
 
 ' I would, however, wish you to remember, should you again ad- 
 dress the publick under the character of a political writer, that lux- 
 uriance of imagination or energy of language will ill compensate 
 for the want of candour, of justice, and of truth. And I shall only 
 add, that should I hereafter be disposed to read, as I heretofore 
 have done, the most excellent of all your performances. The Rambler, 
 the pleasure which I have been accustomed to find in it will be 
 much diminished by the reflection that the writer of so moral, so 
 elegant, and so valuable a work, was capable of prostituting his tal- 
 ents in such productions as The False Alarm, the Thoughts on the 
 Transactions respecting Falklafid^s Islands, and The Patriot.^ 
 
 I am willing to do justice to the merit of Dr. Towers, 
 of whom I will say, that although I abhor his Whiggish 
 
 ' R. B. Sheridan thought of joining in these attacks. In his Life 
 by Moore (i. 151) fragments of his projected answer are given. He 
 intended to attack Johnson on the side of his pension. One thought 
 he varies three times. ' Such pamphlets,' he writes, ' will be as trifling 
 and insincere as the venal quit-rent of a birth-day ode.' This again 
 appears as ' The easy quit-rent of refined panegyric,' and yet again as 
 ' The miserable quit-rent of an annual pamphlet.' 
 
 ' See /<?j-/, beginning of 1781. 
 
 democratical
 
 362 Johnson's pensio7i attacked. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 democratical notions and propensities, (for I will not call 
 them principles,) I esteem him as an ingenious, knowing, 
 and very convivial man. 
 
 The other instance was a paragraph of a letter to me, 
 from my old and most intimate friend, the Reverend Mr. 
 Temple, who wrote the character of Gray, which has had 
 the honour to be adopted both by Mr. Mason and Dr. John- 
 son in their accounts of that poet '. The words were, — 
 
 ' How can your great, I will not say your pious, but your moral 
 friend, support the barbarous measures of administration, which 
 they have not the face to ask even their infidel pensioner Hume to 
 defend I' 
 
 However confident of the rectitude of his own mind, 
 Johnson may have felt sincere uneasiness that his conduct 
 should be erroneously imputed to unworthy motives, by 
 good men ; and that the influence of his valuable writings 
 should on that account be in any degree obstructed or less- 
 ened ^ 
 
 ' See/iJi-/, Aug. 24, 1782. 
 
 ^ Boswell wrote to Temple on June 19, 1775 : — ' Yesterday I met Mr. 
 Hume at Lord Kames's. They joined in attacking Dr. Johnson to an 
 absurd pitch. Mr. Hume said he would give me half-a-crovvn for every 
 page of his Dictionary in which he could not find an absurdity, if I 
 would give him half-a-crown for every page in which he did find one : 
 he talked so insolently really, that I calmly determined to be at him ; 
 so I repeated, by way of telling that Dr. Johnson could be touched, the 
 admirable passage in your letter, how the Ministry had set him to 
 write in a way that they " could not ask even their infidel pensioner 
 Hume to write." When Hume asked if it was from an American, I 
 said. No, it was from an English gentleman. " Would a gentleman 
 write so.?" said he. In short, Davy was finely punished for his treat- 
 ment of my revered friend ; and he deserved it richly, both for his 
 petulance to so great a character and for his talking so before me.' 
 Letters of Boswell, p. 204. Hume's pension was ^400. He obtained 
 it through Lord Hertford, the English ambassador in Paris, under 
 whom he had served as secretary to the embassy. J. \\. Burton's 
 Hume, ii. 289. 
 
 ^ Dr. T. Campbell records on March 16 of this year {Diary, p. 36) : — 
 'Thrale asked Dr. Johnson what Sir Joshua Reynolds said of Taxa- 
 tion no Tyranny. " Sir Joshua," quoth the Doctor, " has not read it." 
 
 He
 
 Aetat. 66.] BosweW s belief in second sight. 363 
 
 He complained to a Right Honourable friend' of dis- 
 tinguished talents and very elegant manners, with whom 
 he maintained a long intimacy, and whose generosity tow- 
 ards him will afterwards appear '\ that his pension having 
 been given to him as a literary character, he had been 
 applied to by administration to write political pamphlets ; 
 and he was even so much irritated, that he declared his 
 resolution to resign his pension. His friend shewed him 
 the impropriety of such a measure, and he afterwards ex- 
 pressed his gratitude, and said he had received good ad- 
 vice. To that friend he once signified a wish to have his 
 pension secured to him for his life ; but he neither asked 
 nor received from government any reward whatsoever for 
 his political labours \ 
 
 On Friday, March 24, 1 met him at the Literary Club, 
 where were Mr. Beauclerk, Mr. Langton, Mr, Colman, Dr. 
 Percy, Mr. Vesey, Sir Charles Bunbury, Dr. George For- 
 dyce, Mr. Steevens, and Mr. Charles Fox. Before he came 
 in, we talked of his Journey to the Western Islands, and of 
 his coming away 'willing to believe the second sight*,' 
 which seemed to excite some ridicule. I was then so im- 
 pressed with the truth of many of the stories of it which 
 I had been told, that I avowed my conviction, saying, ' He 
 is only %villing to believe : I do believe. The evidence is 
 
 " I suppose," quoth Thrale, " he has been very busy of late." " No," 
 says the Doctor, " but I never look at his pictures, so he won't read 
 my writings." He asked Johnson if he had got Miss Reynolds's opin- 
 ion, for she, it seems, is a politician. "As to that," quoth the Doctor, 
 " it is no great matter, for she could not tell after she had read it on 
 which side of the question Mr. Burke's speech was." ' 
 
 1 W. G. Hamilton. 
 
 ^ Sec post, Nov. 19, 1783. 
 
 ^ Sixteen days after this pamphlet was published. Lord North, as 
 Chancellor of the University of Oxford, proposed that the degree of 
 Doctor in Civil Law should be conferred on Johnson (post, ii. 379). 
 Perhaps the Chancellor in this was cheaply rewarding the service that 
 had been done to the Minister. See atitc, i. 432. 
 
 ^ Johnson's yi??^^;'^' to the Western Istatids of Scotland, edit. 1785, 
 p. 256. Qohnson's Works, ix. 108.] Boswell. See ante, ii. 12, note 2. 
 
 enough
 
 364 Swift's Tale of a Tub. [a. d. 1775. 
 
 enough for mc, though not for his great mind. What will 
 not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle. I am filled 
 with belief'.' 'Are you? (said Colman,) then cork it up.' 
 
 I found his Journey the common topick of conversation in 
 .London at this time, wherever I happened to be. At one 
 of Lord Mansfield's formal Sunday evening conversations, 
 strangely called Levees, his Lordship addressed me, ' We 
 have all been reading your travels, Mr. BoswelL' I an- 
 swered, ' I was but the humble attendant of Dr. Johnson.' 
 The Chief Justice replied, with that air and manner -which 
 none, who ever saw and heard, him, can forget, ' He speaks 
 ill of nobody but Ossian.' 
 
 Johnson was in high spirits this evening at the club, and 
 talked with great animation and success. He attacked 
 Swift, as he used to do upon all occasions. The Tale of 
 a Tub is so much superiour to his other writings, that one 
 can hardly believe he was the authour of it": 'there is in 
 
 ^ He had written to Temple six days earlier : — ' Second sight pleases 
 my superstition which, you know, is not small, and being not of the 
 gloomy but the grand species, is an enjoyment ; and I go further than 
 Mr. Johnson, for the facts which I heard convinced me.' Letters of 
 Boswcll, p. 179. When ten years later he published his Tour, he said 
 (Nov. 10, 1773) that he had returned from the Hebrides with a con- 
 siderable degree, of faith; 'but,' he added, 'since that time my belief 
 in those stories has been much weakened.' 
 
 ^ This doubt has been much agitated on both sides, I think without 
 good reason. See Addison's Freeholder, y[a.y 4, 1714 {The Freehold- 
 er was published from Dec. 17 15, to June, 17 16. In the number for 
 May 4 there is no mention of The Tale of a Tub} ; An Apology for the 
 Tale of a Tub [Swift's Works, ed. 1803, iii. 20] ; — Dr. Hawkesworth's 
 Preface to Swift's Works, and Swift's Letter to Tooke the Printer, and 
 Tooke's Answer, in that collection; — Sheridan's Life of Swift ; — Mr. 
 Courtenay's note on p. 3 of his Poetical Review of the Literary and 
 AI oral Character ofDr.fohnson ; and Mr. Cooksey's Essay on the Life 
 and Character of fohn Lord Soiners, Baron of Evesham. 
 
 Dr. Johnson here speaks only to the internal evidence. I take leave 
 to differ from him, having a very high estimation of the powers of Dr. 
 Swift. His Sentiments of a Church-of -England-man, his Sermon on the 
 Trinity, and other serious pieces, prove his learning as well as his 
 acuteness in logick and metaphysicks ; and his various compositions 
 
 it
 
 Aetat. 66.] Sivift's TaLE OF A TuB. 365 
 
 it such a vigour of mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so 
 much of nature, and art, and Hfe'.' I wondered to hear 
 him say of Gulliver s Travels, ' When once you have thought 
 of big men and Httle men, it is very easy to do all the rest.' 
 I endeavoured to make a stand for Swift, and tried to rouse 
 those who were much more able to defend him ; but in 
 vain. Johnson at last, of his own accord, allowed very 
 great merit to the inventory of articles found in the pocket 
 of the Man Mountain, particularly the description of his 
 watch, which it was conjectured was his GoD, as he con- 
 sulted it upon all occasions. He observed, that ' Swift put 
 his name to but two things, (after he had a name to put,) 
 The Plan for the Improvement of the English Language, and 
 the last Drapiers Letter"^.' 
 
 From Swift, there was an easy transition to Mr. Thomas 
 Sheridan. — JOHNSON. ' Sheridan is a wonderful admirer' of 
 the tragedy of Douglas, and presented its authour with a 
 gold medal. Some years ago, at a coffee-house in Oxford, 
 I called to him, " Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Sheridan, how came 
 
 of a different cast exhibit not only wit, humour, and ridicule; but a 
 knowledge ' of nature, and art, and life :' a combination therefore of 
 those powers, when (as the Apology says) ' the authour was young, his 
 invention at the heighth, and his reading fresh in his head,' might 
 surely produce The Talc of a Tub. Boswell. 
 
 ' ' His Tale of a Tub has little resemblance to his other pieces. It 
 exhibits a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images 
 and vivacity of diction such as he afterwards never possessed, or never 
 exerted. It is of a mode so distinct and peculiar that it must be con- 
 sidered by itself; what is true of that is not true of any thing else 
 which he has written.' Johnson's ]Vorks, viii. 220. At the conclusion 
 of the Life of Swift {ib. 228), Johnson allows him one great merit : — 
 ' It was said in a preface to one of the Irish editions that Swift had 
 never been known to take a single thought from any writer, ancient 
 or modern. This is not literally true ; but perhaps no writer can eas- 
 ily be found that has borrowed so little, or that in all his excellencies 
 and all his defects has so well maintained his claim to be considered 
 as original.' See aiite, i. 524. 
 
 ^ Johnson in his Dictionary, under the article sJi07>c, quotes Swift 
 in one example, and in the next Gulliver s Travels, not admitting, it 
 should seem, that Swift had written that book. 
 
 you
 
 o 
 
 66 JoJlu Homes gold medal. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 you to give a gold medal to Home, for writing that foolish 
 play'?" This, you see, was wanton and insolent; but I 
 meant to be wanton and insolent. A medal has no value 
 but as a stamp of merit. And was Sheridan to assume to 
 himself the right of giving that stamp? If Sheridan was 
 magnificent enough to bestow a gold medal as an honorary 
 reward of dramatick excellence, he should have requested 
 one of the Universities to choose the person on whom it 
 should be conferred. Sheridan had no right to give a stamp 
 of merit : it was counterfeiting Apollo's coin\' 
 
 * See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 26, 1773. David Hume wrote of 
 Home's Agi's : — ' I own, though I could perceive fine strokes in that 
 tragedy, I never could in general bring myself to like it : the author, 
 I thought, had corrupted his taste by the imitation of Shakespeare, 
 whom he ought only to have admired.' J. H. Burton's Hiiinc, i. 392. 
 About Douglas he wrote : — ' I am persuaded it will be esteemed the 
 best, and by French critics the only tragedy of our language.' lb. ii. 
 17. Hume perhaps admired it the more as it was written, to use his 
 own words, ' by a namesake of mine.' //;. i. 316. Home is pronounced 
 Hume. He often wrote of his friend as ' Mr. John Hume, alias Home.' 
 A few days before his death he added the following codicil to his will : 
 — ' I leave to my friend Mr. John Home, of Kilduff, ten dozen of my 
 old claret at his choice ; and one single bottle of that other liquor 
 called port. I also leave to him six dozen of port, provided that he at- 
 tests, under his hand, signed John Hume, that he has himself alone fin- 
 ished that bottle at two sittings. By this concession he will at once 
 terminate the only two differences that ever arose between us con- 
 cerning temporal matters.' lb. ii. 506. Sir Walter Scott wrote in his 
 Diary in 1827 :^' I finished the review of John Home's works, which, 
 after all, are poorer than I thought them. Good blank verse, and 
 stately sentiment, but something luke-warmish, excepting Douglas, 
 which is certainly a masterpiece. Even that does not stand the closet. 
 Its merits are for the stage ; and it is certainly one of the best acting 
 plays going.' Lockhart's Scott, ix. 100. 
 
 ^ Sheridan, says Mr. S. Whyte {Miscellanea Nova, p. 45), brought out 
 Douglas at the Dublin Theatre. The first two nights it had great suc- 
 cess. The third night was as usual to be the author's. It had mean- 
 while got abroad that he was a clergyman. This play was considered 
 a profanation, a faction was raised, and the third night did not pay its 
 expenses. It was Whyte who suggested that, by way of consolation, 
 Sheridan should give Home a gold medal. The inscription said that 
 he presented it to him ' for having enriched the stage with a perfect 
 
 On
 
 Aetat. GO.] The Noiijtirors. 367 
 
 On Monday, March 27, I breakfasted with him at Mr, 
 Strahan's. He told us, that he was engaged to go that 
 evening to Mrs. Abington's benefit. ' She was visiting some 
 ladies whom I was visiting, and begged that I would come 
 to her benefit. I told her I could not hear : but she in- 
 sisted so much on my coming, that it would have been 
 brutal to have refused her.' This was a speech quite char- 
 acteristical. He loved to bring forward his having been in 
 the gay circles of life ; and he was, perhaps, a little vain 
 of the solicitations of this elegant and fashionable actress. 
 He told us, the play was to be Tlie Hypocrite, altered from 
 Gibber's Nonjuror', so as to satirize the Methodists. ' I do 
 not think, (said he,) the character of The Hypocrite justly 
 applicable to the Methodists, but it was very applicable to 
 the Nonjurors'. I once said to Dr. Madan', a clergyman 
 of Ireland, who was a great Whig, that perhaps a Non- 
 juror would have been less criminal in taking the oaths 
 imposed by the ruling power, than refusing them ; because 
 refusing them, necessarily laid him under almost an irre- 
 sistible temptation to be more criminal ; for, a man must 
 live, and if he precludes himself from the support furnished 
 by the establishment, will probably be reduced to very 
 wicked shifts to maintain himself'.' BOSWELL. ' I should 
 
 tragedy.' Whj^e took the medal to London. When he was close at 
 his journey's end, ' I was,' he writes, ' stopped by highwaymen, and 
 preserved the medal by the sacrifice of my purse at the imminent peril 
 of my life.' 
 
 ' ' No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims, 
 
 Moliere's old stubble in a moment flames.' 
 The Nonjuror was 'a comedy thrashed out of Moliere's Tartuffe! 
 The Dunciad, i. 253. 
 
 * Sec post, June 9, 1784; also Macaulay's England, ch. xiv. (ed. 1874, 
 V. 94), for remarks on what Johnson here says. 
 
 ' See ante, i. 368, where his name is spelt Madden. 
 
 * This was not merely a cursory remark; for in his Life of Fento7i 
 he observes, ' With many other wise and virtuous men, who at that 
 time of discord and debate (about the beginning of this century) con- 
 sulted conscience [whether] well or ill informed, more than interest, 
 he doubted the legality of the government; and refusing to qualify 
 
 think.
 
 -^68 The Nonjurors. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 o 
 
 think, Sir, that a man who took the oaths contrary to his 
 principles, was a determined wicked man, because he was 
 sure he was committing perjury ; whereas a Nonjuror might 
 be insensibly led to do what was wrong, without being so 
 directly conscious of it.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, a man who 
 goes to bed to his patron's wife is pretty sure that he is 
 committing wickedness.' BOSWELL. ' Did the nonjuring 
 clergymen do so, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'I am afraid many of 
 them did.' 
 
 I was startled at his argument, and could by no means 
 think it convincing. Had not his own father complied 
 with the requisition of government', (as to which he once 
 
 himself for publick employment, by taking the oaths [by the oaths] 
 required, left the University without a degree.' This conduct John- 
 son calls ' perv^erseness of integrity.' [Johnson's Works, viii. 54.] 
 
 The question concerning the morality of taking oaths, of whatever 
 kind, imposed by the prevailing power at the time, rather than to be 
 excluded from all consequence, or even any considerable usefulness 
 in society, has been agitated with all the acuteness of casuistry. It 
 is related, that he who devised the oath of abjuration, profligately 
 boasted, that he had framed a test which should ' damn one half of 
 the nation, and starve the other.' Upon minds not exalted to inflex- 
 ible rectitude, or minds in which zeal for a party is predominant to 
 excess, taking that oath against conviction may have been palliated 
 under the plea of necessity, or ventured upon in heat, as upon the 
 whole producing more good than evil. 
 
 At a county election in Scotland, many years ago, when there was a 
 warm contest between the friends of the Hanoverian succession, and 
 those against it, the oath of abjuration having been demanded, the 
 freeholders upon one side rose to go away. Upon which a very san- 
 guine gentleman, one of their number, ran to the door to stop them, 
 calling out with much earnestness, ' Stay, stay, my friends, and let us 
 swear the rogues out of it !' Boswell. Johnson, writing of the oaths 
 required under the Militia Bill of 1756, says: — 'The frequent miposi- 
 tion of oaths has almost ruined the morals of this unhappy nation, 
 and of a nation without morals it is of small importance who shall be 
 king.' Lit. Mag. 1756, i. 59. 
 
 ' Dr. Harwood sent me the following extract from the book con- 
 taining the proceedings of the corporation of Lichfield : ' 19th July, 
 1712. Agreed that Mr. Michael Johnson be, and he is hereby elected 
 a magistrate and brother of their incorporation ; a day is given him 
 
 observed
 
 Aetat. 66.] Mr. Stvahan s apprentice. 369 
 
 observed to me, when I pressed him upon it, ' That, Sir, he 
 was to settle with himself,') he would probably have thought 
 more unfavourably of a Jacobite who took the oaths : 
 
 had he not resembled 
 
 My father as he swore '.' 
 
 I\Ir. Strahan talked of launching into the great ocean of 
 London, in order to have a chance for rising into eminence ; 
 and. observing that many men were kept back from trying 
 their fortunes there, because they were born to a compe- 
 tency, said, ' Small certainties are the bane of men of tal- 
 ents";' which Johnson confirmed. Mr. Strahan put Johnson 
 in mind of a remark which he had made to him ; ' There 
 are few ways in which a man can be more innocently em- 
 ployed than in getting money.' ' The more one thinks 
 of this, (said Strahan,) the juster it will appear.' 
 
 Mr. Strahan had taken a poor boy from the country as an 
 apprentice, upon Johnson's recommendation. Johnson hav- 
 ing enquired after him, said, ' Mr. Strahan, let me have five 
 guineas on account, and I'll give this boy one. Nay, if a 
 
 to Thursday next to take the oath of fidelity and allegiance, and the 
 oath of a magistrate. Signed, &c.'— '25th July. 1712. Mr. Johnson 
 took the oath of allegiance and that he believed there was no tran- 
 substantiation in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper before, &c.' — 
 Croker. 
 
 ' A parody on Macbeth, act ii. sc. 2. 
 
 "" Lord Southampton asked Bishop Watson of Llandaflf ' how he 
 was to bring up his son so as to make him get forwards in the world. 
 " I !:now of but one way," replied the Bishop ; " give him parts and 
 poverty." " Well then," replied Lord S., " if God has given him parts, 
 I will manage as to the poverty." ' H. C. Robinson's Diary, i. 337. 
 Lord Eldon said that Thurlow promised to give him a post worth 
 about ^160 a year, but he never did. ' In after life,' said Eldon,' I 
 inquired of him why he had not fulfilled his promise. His answer 
 was curious : — " It would have been your ruin. Young men arc very 
 apt to be content when they get something to live upon , so when I 
 saw what you were made of. I determined to break my promise to 
 make you work ;" and I dare say he was right, for there is nothing 
 does a young lawyer so much good as to be half starved." Twiss's 
 Etdon, i. 1 34. 
 
 II.— 24 man
 
 370 Mr. Strahaiis apprentice. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it is sad 
 work. Call him down.' 
 
 I followed him into the court-yard ', behind Mr. Strahan's 
 house ; and there I had a proof of what I had heard him 
 profess, that he talked alike to all. ' Some people tell you 
 that they let themselves down to the capacity of their hear- 
 ers. I never do that. I speak uniformly, in as intelligible 
 a manner as I can^' 
 
 'Well, my boy, how do you go on?' — 'Pretty well, Sir; 
 but they are afraid I an't strong enough for some parts of 
 the business.' JOHNSON. 'Why I shall be sorry for it; for 
 when you consider with how little mental power and corpo- 
 real labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a very 
 desirable occupation for you. Do you hear, — take all the 
 pains you can ; and if this does not do, we must think of 
 some other way of life for you. There's a guinea.' 
 
 Here was one of the many, many instances of his active 
 benevolence. At the same time, the slow and sonorous 
 solemnity with which, while he bent himself down, he ad- 
 dressed a little thick short-legged boy, contrasted with the 
 boy's aukwardness and awe, could not but excite some ludi- 
 crous emotions ^ 
 
 ' In New Street, near Gough Square, in Fleet Street, whither in Feb- 
 ruary, 1770, the King's printing-house was removed from what is still 
 called Printing House Square. Croker. Dr. Spottiswoode, the late 
 President of the Royal Society, was the great-grandson of Mr. Strahan. 
 
 ^ See. post, under March 30, 1783. 
 
 * Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor on April 8 of this year : — ' I have 
 placed young Davenport in the greatest printing house in London, 
 and hear no complaint of him but want of size, which will not hinder 
 him much. He may when he is a journeyman always get a guinea 
 a week.' Notes a?td Queries, 6th S., v. 422. Mr. Jewitt in the Gent. 
 Mag. for Dec. 1878, gives an account of this lad. He was the orphan 
 son of a clergyman, a friend of the Rev. W. Langley, Master of Ash- 
 bourne School (see post, Sept. 14, 1777). Mr. Langley asked John- 
 son's help ' in procuring him a place in some eminent printing office.' 
 Davenport wrote to Mr. Langley nearly eight years later: — 'Accord- 
 ing to your desire, I consulted Dr. Johnson about my future employ- 
 ment in life, and he very laconically told me " to work hard at my 
 trade, as others had done before me." I told him my size and want 
 
 I met
 
 Aetat. 66.] Alrs. Abiugtoiis benefit. 371 
 
 I met him at Drury-lane play-house in the evening. Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, at Mrs. Abington's request, had promised 
 to bring a body of wits to her benefit ; and having secured 
 forty places in the front boxes, had done me the honour to 
 put me in the group. Johnson sat on the seat directly be- 
 hind me'; and as he could neither see nor hear at such a 
 distance from the stage, he was wrapped up in grave abstrac- 
 tion, and seemed quite a cloud, amidst all the sunshine of 
 glitter and gaiety*. I wondered at his patience in sitting 
 
 of strength prevented me from getting so much money as other men. 
 " Then," replied he, " you must get as much as you can." ' The boy 
 was nearly sixteen when he was apprenticed, and had learnt enough 
 Latin to quote Virgil, so that there was nothing in Johnson's speech 
 beyond his understanding. 
 
 ^ Seven years afterwards, Johnson described this evening. Miss 
 Monckton had told him that he must see Mrs. Siddons. ' Well, 
 Madam,' he answered, ' if you desire it, I will go. See her I shall not, 
 nor hear her; but I'll go, and that will do. The last time I was at a 
 play, I was ordered there by Mrs. Abington, or Mrs. Somebody, I do 
 not well remember who ; but I placed myself in the middle of the 
 first row of the front boxes, to show that when I was called I came.' 
 Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 199. At Fontainebleau he went to a 
 comedy {post, Oct. 19, 177$), so that it was not 'the last time he was 
 at a play.' 
 
 * 'One evening in the oratorio season of 1771,' writes Mrs. Piozzi 
 {Ancc. 72), ' Mr. Johnson went with me to Covent Garden theatre. 
 He sat surprisingly quiet, and I flattered myself that he was listening 
 to the music. When we were got home he repeated these verses, 
 which he said he had made at the oratorio ; — 
 
 " In Theatro, March 8, 1771. 
 " Tertii verso quater orbe lustri, 
 Quid theatrales tibi, Crispe, pompae } 
 Quam decet canos male literatos 
 Sera voluptas ! 
 . Tene mulceri fidibus canoris .' 
 Tene cantorum modulis stupere } 
 Tene per pictas, oculo elegante, 
 
 Currere formas } 
 Inter aequalcs, sine felle liber, 
 Codices veri studiosus inter 
 Rectius vives. Sua quisque carpat 
 Gaudia gratus. 
 
 out
 
 372 Garrick's prologues. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 out a play of five acts, and a farce of two. He said very 
 little ; but after the prologue to Bon Ton'' had been spoken, 
 which he could hear pretty well from the more slow and dis- 
 tinct utterance, he talked of prologue-writing, and observed, 
 ' Dryden has written prologues superiour to any that David 
 Garrick has written ; but David Garrick has written more 
 good prologues than Dryden has done. It is wonderful that 
 he has been able to write such variety of them '\' 
 
 At Mr. Beauclerk's, where I supped, was Mr. Garrick, 
 whom I made happy with Johnson's praise of his prologues ; 
 and I suppose, in gratitude to him, he took up one of his 
 favourite topicks, the nationality of the Scotch, which he 
 maintained in a pleasant manner, with the aid of a little po- 
 etical fiction. ' Come, come, don't deny it : they are really 
 national. Why, now, the Adams ^ are as liberal-minded 
 
 Lusibus gaudet puer Gliosis, 
 Luxus oblectat juvenem theatri. 
 At seni fluxo sapienter uti 
 
 Tempore restat." ' 
 
 {WorksX 1 66.) 
 
 ' Bon Ton, or High Life above Stairs, by Garrick. He made King 
 the comedian a present of this farce, and it was acted for the first 
 time on his benefit — a little earUer in the month. Murphy's Garrick, 
 
 PP- 33°. 332. 
 
 " 'August, 1778. An epilogue of Mr. Garrick's to Bondtica was 
 mentioned, and Dr. Johnson said it was a miserable performance : — 
 " I don't know," he said, " what is the matter with David ; I am afraid 
 he is grown superannuated, for his prologues and epilogues used to 
 be incomparable." ' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 64. 
 
 ^ ' Scottish brethren and architects, who had bought Durham Yard, 
 and erected a large pile of buildings under the affected name of the 
 Adelphi. These men, of great taste in their profession, were attached 
 particularly to Lord Bute and Lord Mansfield, and thus by public and 
 private nationality zealous politicians.' Walpole's Memoirs of the 
 Reign of Gcofge III, iv. 173. Hume wrote to Adam Smith in June, 
 1772, at a time where there was ' a universal loss of credit ' : — ' Of all 
 the sufferers, I am the most concerned for the Adams. But their 
 undertakings were so vast, that nothing could support them. They 
 must dismiss 3000 workmen, who, comprehending the materials, must 
 have expended above ^100,000 a year. To me the scheme of the 
 Adelphi always appeared so imprudent, that my wonder is how they 
 
 men
 
 Aetat. 66.] Garvick's mimickry of Johnson. 37 
 
 0/ o 
 
 men as any in the world : but, I don't know how it is, all 
 their workmen are Scotch. You are, to be sure, wonder- 
 fully free from that nationality : but so it happens, that 
 you employ the only Scotch shoe-black in London.' He 
 imitated the manner of his old master with ludicrous exag- 
 geration ; repeating, with pauses and half-whistlings inter- 
 jected, 
 
 ' Os /lomini sublime dcdit, — C(xlu?nquc hicri 
 jfussit, — et credos ad sidera — tollere vultus '; ' 
 
 looking downwards all the time, and, while pronouncing the 
 four last words, absolutely touching the ground with a kind 
 of contorted gesticulation. 
 
 Garrick, however, when he pleased, could imitate Johnson 
 very exactly^; for that great actor, with his distinguished 
 powers of expression which were so universally admired, 
 possessed also an admirable talent of mimickry. He was 
 always jealous that Johnson spoke lightly of him'. I recol- 
 lect his exhibiting him to me one day, as if saying, ' Davy 
 has some convivial pleasantry about him, but 'tis a futile 
 fellow ' ;' which he uttered perfectly with the tone and air 
 of Johnson. 
 
 I cannot too frequently request of my readers, while they 
 peruse my account of Johnson's conversation, to endeavour 
 to keep in mind his deliberate and strong utterance. His 
 
 could have gone on so long.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 460. Garrick 
 lived in the Adelphi. 
 
 » ' Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes, 
 
 Beholds his own hereditary skies.' 
 
 Dryden, Ovid, Mcta. i. 85. 
 
 ' Hannah More {Memoirs, i. 213) says that she was made 'the um- 
 pire in a trial of skill between Garrick and Boswell, which could most 
 nearly imitate Dr. Johnson's manner. I remember I gave it for Bos- 
 well in familiar conversation, and for Garrick in reciting poetry.' 
 
 ' 'Gesticular mimicry and buffoonery Johnson hated, and would 
 often hufT Garrick for exercising it in his presence.' Hawkins's /y//;/- 
 son, p. 386. 
 
 * In the first two editions Johnson is represented as only saying, 
 ' Davy is futile.' 
 
 mode
 
 374 Gray '■a dull fellow' [a.d. 1775. 
 
 mode of speaking was indeed very impressive ' ; and I wish 
 it could be preserved as musick is written, according to the 
 very ingenious method of Mr. Steele °, who has shown how 
 the recitation of Mr. Garrick, and other eminent speakers, 
 might be transmitted to posterity in score''. 
 
 Next day I dined with Johnson at Mr. Thrale's. He at- 
 tacked Gray, calling him ' a dull fellow.' BOSWELL. ' I un- 
 derstand he was reserved, and might appear dull in company ; 
 but surely he was not dull in poetry.' JOHNSON. ' Sir, he 
 was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull every where \ 
 
 ' My noble friend Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, with 
 a happy pleasantry and some truth, that ' Dr. Johnson's sayings would 
 not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bcnv-wow way.' The 
 sayings themselves are generally of sterling merit ; but, doubtless, his 
 mamier was an addition to their effect ; and therefore should be 
 attended to as much as may be. It is necessary however, to guard 
 those who were not acquainted with him, against overcharged imita- 
 tions or caricatures of his manner, which are frequently attempted, 
 and many of which are second-hand copies from the late Mr. Hen- 
 derson the actor, who, though a good mimick of some persons, did 
 not represent Johnson correctly. Boswell. 
 
 "^ See ' Prosodia Rationalis ; or, an Essay towards establishing the 
 Melody and Measure of Speech, to be expressed and perpetuated by 
 peculiar Symbols.' London, 1779. Boswell. 
 
 ^ I use the phrase in score, as Dr. Johnson has explained it in his 
 Dictionary :— ' A song in Score, the words with the musical notes of 
 a song annexed.' But I understand that in scientifick propriety it 
 means all the parts of a musical composition noted down in the char- 
 acters by which it is exhibited to the eye of the skilful. Boswell. 
 It was declamation that Steele pretended to reduce to notation by 
 new characters. This he called the melody of speech, not the har- 
 mony, which the term in score implies. BURNEY. 
 
 ■* Johnson, in his Life of Gray (JVorks, viii. 481), spoke better of 
 him. ' What has occurred to me from the slight inspection of his 
 Letters, in which my undertaking has engaged me, is, that his mind 
 had a large grasp ; that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment 
 cultivated.' Horace Walpole {Letters, ii. 128) allowed that he was bad 
 company. 'Sept. 3, 1748. I agree with you most absolutely in your 
 opinion about Gray ; he is the worst company in the world. From 
 a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much 
 dignity, he never converses easily; all his words are measured and 
 
 He
 
 Aetat.66.] Grays Elegy. 375 
 
 He was dull in a new way, and that made many people 
 think him GREAT. He was a mechanical poet.' He then 
 repeated some ludicrous lines, which have escaped my mem- 
 ory, and said, * Is not that GREAT, like his Odes?' Mrs. 
 Thrale maintained that his Odes were melodious; upon 
 which he exclaimed, 
 
 'Weave the warp, and weave the woof;' — 
 
 I added, in a solemn tone, 
 
 'The winding-sheet of Edward's race.' 
 
 ' There is a good line.' ' Ay, (said he,) and the next line is 
 a good one,' (pronouncing it contemptuously ;) 
 
 ' Give ample verge and room enough '.' — 
 
 ' No, Sir, there are but two good"* stanzas in Gray's poetry, 
 which are in his Elegy in a Country Church-yard' He then 
 repeated the stanza, 
 
 ' For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,' &c, 
 
 mistaking one word; for instead oi precincts he said confines. 
 He added, ' The other stanza I forget'.' 
 
 chosen, and formed into sentences; his writings are admirable; he 
 himself is not agreeable.' 
 
 ' In the original, ' Give ample room and verge enough.' In the 
 Life of Gray {Works, \\\\. \Z6) Johnson says that the slaughtered 
 bards ' are called upon to " Weave the warp, and weave the woof," 
 perhaps with no great propriety ; for it is by crossing the woof with 
 the warp that men weave the web or piece ; and the first line was 
 dearly bought by the admission of its wretched correspondent, " Give 
 ample room and verge enough." He has, however, no other line as 
 bad.' See attic, i. 466. 
 
 ^ This word, which is in the first edition, is not in the second or third. 
 
 ' ' The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirror in 
 every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an 
 echo. The four stanzas, beginning " Yet even these bones," are to 
 me original. I have never seen the notions in any other place ; yet 
 he that reads them here persuades himself that he has always felt 
 them. Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame, and 
 useless to praise him.' IVor/cs, viii. 487. Goldsmith, in his Lzfc of 
 Parnell {Mt'sc. Works, iv. 25), thus seems to sneer at The Elegy : — ' The 
 
 A young
 
 37^ Mean Marriages. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 A young lady' who had married a man much her inferi- 
 our in rank being mentioned, a question arose how a wom- 
 an's relations should behave to her in such a situation; and, 
 while I recapitulate the debate, and recollect what has since 
 happened \ I cannot but be struck in a manner that delicacy 
 forbids me to express. While I contended that she ought 
 to be treated with an inflexible steadiness of displeasure, 
 Mrs. Thrale was all for mildness and forgiveness, and, ac- 
 cording to the vulgar phrase, ' making the best of a bad bar- 
 gain.' Johnson. ' Madam, we must distinguish. Were I 
 a man of rank, I would not let a daughter starve who had 
 made a mean marriage ; but having voluntarily degraded 
 herself from the station which she was originally entitled to 
 hold, I would support her only in that which she herself had 
 chosen ; and would not put her on a level with my other 
 daughters. You are to consider. Madam, that it is our duty 
 to maintain the subordination of civilized society; and when 
 there is a gross and shameful deviation from rank, it should 
 be punished so as to deter others from the same perversion,' 
 
 After frequently considering this subject, I am more and 
 more confirmed in what I then meant to express, and which 
 was sanctioned by the authority, and illustrated by the wis- 
 dom, of Johnson ; and I think it of the utmost consequence 
 to the happiness of Society, to which subordination is abso- 
 lutely necessary \ It is weak, and contemptible, and un- 
 worthy, in a parent to relax in such a case. It is sacrificing 
 general advantage to private feelings. And let it be con- 
 sidered, that the claim of a daughter who has acted thus, to 
 be restored to her former situation, is either fantastical or 
 
 Night Piece on death deserves every praise, and, I should suppose, 
 with very little amendment, might be made to surpass all those night 
 pieces and church-yard scenes that have since appeared.' 
 
 ' Mr. Croker says, ' no doubt Lady Susan Fox who, in 1773, rnarried 
 Mr. William O'Brien, an actor.' It was in 1764 that she was mar- 
 ried, so that it is not likely that she was the subject of this talk. See 
 Horace Walpole's Letters, iv. 221. 
 
 ^ Mrs. Thrale's marriage with Mr. Piozzi. 
 
 ^ See a7tte, i. 472. 
 
 unjust.
 
 Aetat. 66.] Lord Chesterfield's Letters. 377 
 
 unjust. If there be no value in the distinction of rank, what 
 does she suffer by being kept in the situation to which she 
 has descended ? If there be a value in that distinction, it 
 ought to be steadily maintained. If indulgence be shewn 
 to such conduct, and the offenders know that in a longer or 
 shorter time they shall be received as well as if they had not 
 contaminated their blood by a base alliance, the great check 
 upon that inordinate caprice which generally occasions low 
 marriages will be removed, and the fair and comfortable or- 
 der of improved life will be miserably disturbed '. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield's Letters being mentioned, Johnson said, 
 ' It was not to be wondered at that they had so great a sale, 
 considering that they were the letters of a statesman, a wit, 
 one who had been so much in the mouths of mankind, one 
 long accustomed virilin volitare per ora'.' 
 
 On Friday, March 31,1 supped with him and some friends 
 at a tavern I One of the company ' attempted, with too 
 
 ' Boswell was of the same way of thinking as Squire Western, who 
 ' did indeed consider a parity of fortune and circumstances to be phys- 
 ically as necessary an ingredient in marriage as difference of sexes, or 
 any other essential ; and had no more apprehension of his daughter 
 falling in love with a poor man than with any animal of a different 
 species.' To7n Jones, bk. vi. eh. ix. 
 
 " ' Temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim 
 
 Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora.' 
 ' New ways I must attempt, my grovelling name 
 To raise aloft, and wing my flight to fame.' 
 Drvden, Virgil, Georg. iii. 9. ' Chesterfield was at once the most dis- 
 tinguished orator in the Upper House, and the undisputed sovereign 
 of wit and fashion. He held this eminence for about forty years. At 
 last it became the regular custom of the higher circles to laugh when- 
 ever he opened his mouth, without waiting for his bon mot. He used 
 to sit at White's, with a circle of young men of rank around him, 
 applauding every syllable that he uttered.' Macaulay's Life, \. 325. 
 
 = With the Literary Club, as is shewn by Roswell's letter of April 
 4, 1775, in which he says :— ' I dine on Friday at the Turk's Head, 
 Gerrard Street, with our Club, who now dine once a month, and sup 
 every Friday.' Letters of Boswell, p. 186. The meeting of Friday, 
 March 24, is described a7ite, ii. 363. and that of April l,post, ii. 395 
 
 * Very likely Boswell {ante, ii. 96, note 4). 
 
 much
 
 37S The mystery of the Seville oranges, [a.d. 1775, 
 
 much forwardness, to rally him on his late appearance at the 
 theatre ; but had reason to repent of his temerity. ' Why, 
 Sir, did you go to Mrs. Abington's benefit? Did you see?' 
 Johnson. ' No, Sir.' * Did you hear?' JOHNSON. ' No, Sir.' 
 ' Why then, Sir, did you go?' JOHNSON. ' Because, Sir, she 
 is a favourite of the publick; and when the publick cares 
 the thousandth part for you that it does for her, I will go to 
 your benefit too '.' 
 
 Next morning I won a small bet from Lady Diana Beau- 
 clerk, by asking him as to one of his particularities, which 
 her Ladyship laid I durst not do. It seems he had been 
 frequently observed at the Club to put into his pocket the 
 Seville oranges, after he had squeezed the juice of thefn into 
 the drink which he made for himself. Beauclerk and Gar- 
 rick talked of it to me, and seemed to think that he had a 
 strange unwillingness to be discovered. We could not di- 
 vine what he did with them ; and this was the bold question 
 to be put. I saw on his table the spoils of the preceding 
 night, some fresh peels nicely scraped and cut into pieces. 
 ' O, Sir, (said I,) I now partly see what you do with the 
 squeezed oranges which you put into your pocket at the 
 Club.' Johnson. 'I have a great love for them.' BOS- 
 WELL. ' And pray, Sir, what do you do with them ? You 
 scrape them, it seems, very neatly, and what next?' JOHN- 
 SON. 'Let them dry, Sir.' BOSWELL. 'And what next?' 
 Johnson. ' Nay, Sir, you shall know their fate no further.' 
 BosWELL. 'Then the world must be left in the dark. It 
 must be said, (assuming a mock solemnity,) he scraped them, 
 and let them dry, but what he did with them next, he never 
 could be prevailed upon to tell.' JOHNSON. ' Nay, Sir, you 
 should say it more emphatically : — he could not be prevailed 
 upon, even by his dearest friends, to tell ^' 
 
 ' In the Garrick Corres. (ii. 141) is a letter dated March 4, 1776, 
 from (to use Garrick's own words) 'that worst of bad women, Mrs. 
 Abington, to ask my playing for her benefit.' It is endorsed by 
 Garrick: — 'A copy of Mother Abington's Letter about leaving the 
 stage.' 
 
 * Twenty years earlier he had recommended to Miss Boothby as a 
 
 He
 
 Aetat.66.] The Chancellor of Oxford's Letter. 379 
 
 He had this morning received his Diploma as Doctor of 
 Laws from the University of Oxford. He did not vaunt of 
 his new dignity, but I understood he was highly pleased 
 with it. I shall here insert the progress and completion of 
 that high academical honour, in the same manner as I have 
 traced his obtaining that of Master of Arts. 
 
 To the Reverend Dr. Fothergill, Vice-Chaneellor of the University of 
 Oxford, to be communicated to the Heads of Houses, and proposed in 
 Convocation. 
 
 ' Mr. Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen \ 
 
 * The honour of the degree of M. A. by diploma, formerly con- 
 ferred upon Mr. Samuel Johnson, in consequence of his having 
 eminently distinguished himself by the publication of a series of 
 Essays, excellently calculated to form the manners of the people, 
 and in which the cause of religion and morality has been main- 
 tained and recommended by the strongest powers of argument and 
 elegance of language, reflected an equal degree of lustre upon the 
 University itself. 
 
 ' The many learned labours which have since that time employed 
 the attention and displayed the abilities of that great man, so much 
 to the advancement of literature and the benefit of the commu- 
 nity, render him worthy of more distinguished honours in the 
 Republick of letters : and I persuade myself, that I shall act 
 agreeably to the sentiments of the whole University, in desiring 
 that it may be proposed in Convocation to confer on him the 
 degree of Doctor in Civil Law by diploma, to which I readily give 
 my consent ; and am, 
 
 ' Mr. Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, 
 
 ' Your affectionate friend and servant, 
 
 ' North ".' 
 
 ' Downing-street, 
 March 23, 1775.' 
 
 remedy for indigestion dried orange-peel finely powdered, taken in 
 a glass of hot red port. ' I would not,' he adds, ' have you offer it 
 to the Doctor as my medicine. Physicians do not love intruders.' 
 Piozzi Letters, ii. 397. Sec post, April 18, 1783. 
 
 ' The misprint of Chancellor for Gentlemen is found in both the 
 second and third editions. It is not in the first. 
 
 "^ Extracted from the Convocation Register, Oxford. Boswell. 
 
 Dll'LOMA.
 
 380 Jo/msous Diploma of LL.D. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 Diploma. 
 
 ' CANCELLARIUS, Magistri, d Scholarcs Univcrsitatis Oxo7iicnsis 
 omnibus ad quos prcscnfcs LitcrcB pen^encrint, salutem in Domino 
 Sempitcrnam. 
 
 ' SciATis, z'irum illustrem, Samuelem Johnson, in omni humanio- 
 rum literarum genere cniditmn, otnniiwiqtie scicntiarnm comprehensio7ie 
 felicissimum, scriptis snis, ad popnlarium mores formandos sinmna 
 verborum chgantict ac scntcntiarum gravitate compositis, ita olivi incla- 
 ruisse, id dignus vidcretur cui ab AcademiA sua eximia quccdajn laudis 
 pra'mia dcfcrentur \deferrentur'\ quique [///] venerabikm Magistrorum 
 Ordinejn summd cum dignitate cooptaretur : 
 
 ' Ciim verb eimdem darissiimcm virum tot postca tantiquc labores, in 
 pat rid pra:scrtim lingud or nan da d stabilicnda fdidtcr impcnsi, ita in- 
 signivcrint, ut in Literarum Rcpublicd Princeps jam d Primarius 
 jure habcatur ; Nos Cancellarius, Afagistri, et Sdiolares Univer- 
 sitatis OxoJiiensis, qub talis viri merita pari honoris remuneratione 
 exaquentur, et perpetmcni sues simul laudis, nostrceque etgd litcras 
 propensissimce voluntatis cxtet monufnetitum, in solcnni Convocatione 
 JDodorwn et Magistrorum Regejitium, et mm Regentium, pra:diduni 
 Samuelem Johnson Dodorcm in yure Civili rcjuuidavimus et con- 
 stituimus, eumque virtute pra^sentis Diplomatis singulis juribus,privi- 
 legiis et /wnoribus, ad istum graduju quaqud. pertinent ib us, frui et 
 gaudere jussimus. In cujus rci testimonium commune Univcrsitatis 
 Oxoniensis sigillum prccsentibus apponi fccimus. 
 
 ' Datutn in Domo nostrce Convocationis die tricesimo Mensis Martii, 
 Anno Domini Millesimo septingentesiino, scptuagesimo quinto \' 
 
 ' The original is in my possession. He shewed me the Diploma, 
 and allowed me to read it, but would not consent to my taking a copy 
 of it, fearing perhaps that I should blaze it abroad in his life-time. 
 His objection to this appears from his 99th letter to Mrs. Thrale, 
 whom in that letter he thus scolds for the grossness of her flattery of 
 him : — ' The other Oxford news is, that they have sent me a degree 
 of Doctor of Laws, with such praises in the Diploma as perhaps ought 
 to make me ashamed : they are very like your praises. I wonder 
 whether I shall ever shew it \thcm in the original] to you.' 
 
 It is remarkable that he never, so far as I know, assumed his title of 
 Doctor, but called himself Mr. Johnson, as appears from many of his 
 cards or notes to myself ; and I have seen many from him to other 
 persons, in which he uniformly takes that designation. I once ob- 
 served on his table a letter directed to him with the addition of Es- 
 quire, and objected to it as being a designation inferiour to that of 
 
 ' Viro
 
 Aetat. 66.] Jokusou s Letter to the Vice-Chancellor. 38 1 
 
 ^Viro Rroermdo TnoMiE Fothergill, S.T.P. Universitatis Oxo- 
 7iiensis Vice- CaiiccUario. 
 
 ' S. P. D. 
 
 'Sam. Johnson. 
 
 *■ MULTIS lion est opus, ut testimonium quo, te praside, Oxonienses 
 nomen meum posteris cojnmendanmt, quali anii?io acceperim compertum 
 faciam. Nemo sibi placens non ketatur ' ; nemo sibi non placet, qui 
 vobis, literanwi arbitris, placere potuit. Hoc tamen habet incommodi 
 tantujn bencficium, quod mihi luaiquam posthac sine vesfra fatna; detri- 
 mento vel labi liceat vel cessare ; scmpcrque sit timendum, nc quod fni/ii 
 tarn eximice laudi est, vobis aliqtiando fiat opprobrio. Vale'.' 
 
 '7 Id. Apr., 1775.' 
 
 He revised some sheets of Lord Hailes's Annals of Scot- 
 land, and wrote a few notes on the margin with red ink, 
 which he bade me tell his Lordship did not sink into the 
 paper, and might be wiped off with a wet sponge, so that 
 he did not spoil his manuscript. I observed to him that 
 there were very few of his friends so accurate as that I 
 could venture to put down in writing what they told me 
 as his sayings. JOHNSON. * Why should you write down 
 my sayings ?' BOSWELL. ' I write them when they are 
 good.' Johnson. * Nay, you may as well write down 
 the sayings of any one else that are good.' But loJicrc, 
 I might with great propriety have added, can I find such? 
 
 I visited him by appointment in the evening, and we 
 drank tea with Mrs. Williams. He told me that he had 
 been in the company of a gentleman' whose extraordinary 
 
 Doctor ; but he checked me, and seemed pleased with it, because, as I 
 conjectured, he liked to be sometimes taken out of the class of liter- 
 ary men, and to be mertly genteel, — tin gentilho7nmc comme un autre. 
 BoswELL. See post, March 30, 1 781, where Johnson applies the title 
 to himself in speaking, and April 13, 1784, where he does in writing, 
 and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773, note. 
 
 ' ' To make a man pleased with himself, let me tell you, is doing a 
 very great thing.' See post, April 28, 177S. 
 
 "^ ' The original is in the hands of Dr. Fothergill, then Vice-Chancel- 
 lor, who made this transcript.' T. Warton.— BoswELL. 
 
 ^ Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, as is shewn by Pioszi Letters, i. 213. 
 
 travels
 
 382 Colman a7td Lloyd's Odes. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 travels had been much the subject of conversation. But 
 I found that he had not Hstened to him with that full con- 
 fidence, without which there is little satisfaction in the so- 
 ciety of travellers. I was curious to hear what opinion so 
 able a judge as Johnson had formed of his abilities, and I 
 asked if he was not a man of sense. JOHNSON. * Why, Sir, 
 he is not a distinct relater; and I should say, he is neither 
 abounding nor deficient in sense. I did not perceive any 
 superiority of understanding.* BOSWELL. ' But will you 
 not allow him a nobleness of resolution, in penetrating into 
 distant regions?' JOHNSON. 'That, Sir, is not to the pres- 
 ent purpose. We are talking of his sense. A fighting cock 
 has a nobleness of resolution.' 
 
 Next day, Sunday, April 2, I dined with him at Mr. 
 Hoole's. We talked of Pope. JOHNSON. ' He wrote his 
 Dunciad for fame. That was his primary motive. Had 
 it not been for that, the dunces might have railed against 
 him till they were weary, without his troubling himself 
 about them. He delighted to vex them, no doubt ; but he 
 had more delight in seeing how well he could vex them'.' 
 
 The Odes to Obscurity and Oblivion, in ridicule of '■ cool 
 Mason and warm Gray^' being mentioned, Johnson said, 
 
 ' ' That the design [of the Dnnciadi was moral, whatever the author 
 might tell either his readers or himself, I am not convinced. The first 
 motive was the desire of revenging the contempt with which Theo- 
 bald had treated his Shakespeare, and regaining the honour which he 
 had lost, by crushing his opponent.' Johnson's Works,Vm. 338. 
 ' ' Daughter of Chaos and old Night, 
 
 Cimmerian Muse, all hail ! 
 
 That wrapt in never-twinkling gloom canst write, 
 And shadowest meaning with thy dusky veil ! 
 What Poet sings and strikes the strings.' 
 It was the mighty Theban spoke. 
 He from the ever-living lyre 
 With magic hand elicits fire. 
 Heard ye the din of modern rhymers bray.' 
 It was cool M — n ; or warm G — y, 
 Involv'd in tenfold smoke.' 
 Colman's Prose on Several Occasions, ii. 273. 
 
 ' They
 
 Aetat.66.] Masoiis poetry. 383 
 
 * They are Colman's best things.' Upon its being observed 
 that it was beheved these Odes were made by Colman and 
 Lloyd jointly; — JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, how can two peo- 
 ple make an Ode? Perhaps one made one of them, and 
 one the other'.' I observed that two people had made a 
 play, and quoted the anecdote of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 who were brought under suspicion of treason, because while 
 concerting the plan of a tragedy when sitting together at a 
 tavern, one of them was overheard saying to the other, ' I'll 
 kill the King.' JOHNSON. ' The first of these Odes is the 
 best : but they are both good. They exposed a very bad 
 kind of writing.' BOSWELL. ' Surely, Sir, Mr. Mason's El- 
 frida is a fine Poem : at least you will allow there are some 
 good passages in it.' Johnson. ' There are now and then 
 some good imitations of Milton's bad manner.' 
 
 I often wondered at his low estimation of the writings of 
 Gray and Mason. Of Gray's poetry I have in a former part 
 of this work* expressed my high opinion; and for that of 
 Mr. Mason I have ever entertained a warm admiration ^ 
 His Elfrida is exquisite, both in poetical description and 
 moral sentiment; and his Caractaciis is a noble drama \ 
 
 * ' These Odes,' writes Colman, ' were a piece of boys' play with my 
 schoolfellow Lloyd, with whom they were written in concert.' lb. i. 
 xi. In the Conjioisseur {a?ite,\.\Zl^ they had also written in concert. 
 ' Their humour and their talents were well adapted to what they had 
 undertaken ; and Beaumont and Fletcher present what is probably 
 the only parallel instance of literary co-operation so complete, that 
 the portions written by the respective parties are undistinguishable.' 
 Southey's Co7upcr, i. 47. * Sec anfc, i. 465. 
 
 ^ Boswell writing to Temple two days later, recalled the time ' when 
 you and I sat up all night at Cambridge and read Gray with a noble 
 enthusiasm ; when we first used to read Mason's E/fruhi, and when 
 we talked of that elegant knot of worthies. Gray, Mason, Walpole, &c.' 
 Letters of Boswell, p. 185. 
 
 * ' I have heard Mr. Johnson relate how he used to sit in some cof- 
 fee-house at Oxford, and turn M — 's C-r-ct-ti-s into ridicule for the 
 diversion of himself and of chance comcrs-in. " The Elf — da," says 
 he, " was too exquisitely pretty ; I could make no fun out of that." ' 
 Piozzi's Anec. p. 37. I doubt whether Johnson used the word fun, 
 which he describes in his Dictionary as 'a low cant [slangj word.' 
 
 Nor
 
 384 Taxa tion no Tyranny. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 Nor can I omit paying my tribute of praise to some of. his 
 smaller poems, which I have read with pleasure, and which 
 no criticism shall persuade me not to like. If I wondered 
 at Johnson's not tasting the works of Mason and Gray, 
 still more have I wondered at their not tasting his works ; 
 that they should be insensible to his energy of diction, to 
 his splendour of images, and comprehension of thought. 
 Tastes may differ as to the violin, the flute, the hautboy, 
 in short all the lesser instruments : but who can be insensi- 
 ble to the powerful impressions of the majestick organ ? 
 
 His Taxation no Tyranny being mentioned, he said, ' I 
 think I have not been attacked enough for it. Attack is 
 the re-action ; I never think I have hit hard, unless it re- 
 bounds'.' BOSWELL. *I don't know, Sir, what you would 
 be at. Five or six shots of small arms in every news-paper, 
 and repeated cannonading in pamphlets, might, I think, sat- 
 isfy you'. But, Sir, you'll never make out this match, of 
 which we have talked, with a certain political lady, since 
 you are so severe against her principles'.' JOHNSON. 
 ' Nay, Sir, I have the better chance for that. She is like 
 the Amazons of old; she must be courted by the sword. 
 But I have not been severe upon her.' BoswELL. 'Yes, 
 Sir, you have made her ridiculous.' JOHNSON. ' That was 
 already done, Sir. To endeavour to make Jier ridiculous, is 
 like blacking the chimney.' 
 
 I put him in mind that the landlord at Ellon ^ in Scotland 
 
 * Seepos/, March 26, 1779, ^"d Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. i, and under 
 Nov. II, 1773. According to Dr. T. Campbell {Diary, p. 36), Johnson, 
 on March 16, had said that Taxation 710 Tyra7iny did not sell. 
 
 " Six days later he wrote to Dr. Taylor : — ' The patriots pelt me with 
 answers. Four pamphlets, I think, already, besides newspapers and 
 reviews, have been discharged against me. I have tried to read two 
 of them, but did not go through them.' Notes atid (2ucries, 6th S., 
 v. 422. 
 
 ' ' Mrs. Macaulay,' says Mr. Croker, who quotes Johnson's Works, 
 vi. 258, where she is described as ' a female patriot bewailing the mis- 
 eries of her friends and fellow-citizens.' See atite, i. 518. 
 
 * See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 24, 1773, and post, Sept. 24, 1777, for 
 another landlord's account of Johnson. 
 
 said,
 
 Aetat. CO.] Lady Millers Vase. 385 
 
 said, that he heard he was the greatest man in England, — 
 next to Lord Mansfield. ' Ay, Sir, (said he,) the exception 
 defined the idea. A Scotchman could go no farther : 
 
 "The force of Nature could no farther go'.'" 
 
 Lady Miller's collection of verses by fashionable people, 
 which were put into her Vase at Batheaston villa ^ near 
 Bath, in competition for honorary prizes, being mentioned, 
 he held them very cheap: 'Bouts rimes, (said he,) is a mere 
 conceit, and an old conceit noiv ; I wonder how people were 
 persuaded to write in that manner for this lady'.' I named 
 a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the Vase. 
 Johnson. ' He was a blockhead for his pains.' BOSWELL. 
 'The Duchess of Northumberland wrote*.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, 
 
 * From Dryden's lines on Milton. 
 
 ^ Horace Walpole wrote, on Jan. 15, 1775 {Letters, v\. 171) : — 'They 
 [the Millers] hold a Parnassus-fair every Thursday, give out rhymes 
 and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. 
 A Roman Vase, dressed with pink ribands and myrtles, receives the 
 poetry, which is drawn out every festival : six judges of these Olym- 
 pic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the 
 respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss 
 her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle, with — I don't know 
 what.' 
 
 ^ Miss Burney wrote, in 1780: — ' Do you know now that, notwith- 
 standing Bath-Easton is so much laughed at in London, nothing here 
 is more tonish than to visit Lady Miller. She is a round, plump, 
 coarse-looking dame of about forty, and while all her aim is to appear 
 an elegant woman of fashion, all her success is to seem an ordinary 
 woman in very common life, with line clothes on.' Mmc. D'Arblay's 
 Diary, i. 364. 
 
 * 'Yes, on my faith, there are bottts-rimh on a buttered muffin, 
 made by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland.' Walpole's Let- 
 ters, v\. 171. 'She was,' Walpole writes, ' a jovial heap of contradic- 
 tions. She was familiar with the mob, while stifled with diamonds ; 
 and yet was attentive to the most minute privileges of her rank, while 
 almost shaking hands with a cobbler.' Memoirs of t lie Reign of George 
 LIL i. 419. Dr. Percy showed her Goldsmith's ballad of Juiwin and 
 Angelina in MS., and ahe had a few copies privately printed. Forster's 
 Goldsmith, i. 379. 
 
 IL— 25 the
 
 386 Retiring from business. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases : 
 nobody will say any thing to a lady of her high rank. But 
 I should be apt to throw ****-^*'s' verses in his face.' 
 
 I talked of the cheerfulness of Fleet-street, owing to the 
 constant quick succession of people which we perceive pass- 
 ing through it. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, Fleet-street has a very 
 animated appearance ; but I think the full tide of human 
 existence is at Charing-cross\' 
 
 He made the common remark on the unhappiness which 
 men who have led a busy life experience, when they retire 
 in expectation of enjoying themselves at ease, and that they 
 generally languish for want of their habitual occupation, and 
 wish to return to it. He mentioned as strong an instance 
 of this as can well be imagined. ' An eminent tallow-chand- 
 ler in London, who had acquired a considerable fortune, gave 
 up the trade in favour of his foreman, and went to live at a 
 country-house near town. He soon grew weary, and paid 
 frequent visits to his old shop, where he desired they might 
 let him know their melting-days, and he would come and as- 
 sist them ; which he accordingly did. Here, Sir, was a man, 
 to whom the most disgusting circumstance in the business 
 to which he had been used was a relief from idleness ^' 
 
 * Perhaps Mr. Seward, who was something of a Hterary man, and 
 who visited Bath {post, under March 30, 17S3). 
 
 ' ' — rerum 
 
 Fluctibus in mediis et tempestatibus urbis.' 
 Horace, Epistles, ii. 2. 84. See ante, i. 533. 
 
 * ' Qui semel adspexit quantum dimissa petitis 
 
 Praestent, mature redeat repetatque reUcta.' 
 
 Horace, Epistles, i. 7. 96. 
 ' To his first state let him return with speed, 
 Who sees hov>^ far the joys he left exceed 
 His present choice.' Francis. 
 
 Malone says that ' Walpole, after he ceased to be minister, endeav- 
 oured to amuse his mind with reading. But one day when Mr. Wel- 
 bore Ellis was in his library, he heard him say, with tears in his eyes, 
 after having taken up several books and at last thrown away a folio 
 just taken down fromx a shelf, " Alas ! it is all in vain ; I caimot read."' 
 Prior's Malone, p. 379. Lord Eldon, after his retirement, said to an 
 inn-keeper who was thinking of giving up business : — ' Believe me, 
 
 On
 
 Aetat. 66.] Dr. Tliomas CampbeWs Diary. 387 
 
 On Wednesday, April 5, I dined with him at Messieurs 
 Dillys', with Mr. John Scott of Amwell', the Quaker, 
 Mr. Langton, Mr. Miller, (now Sir John,) and Dr. Thomas 
 Campbeir, an Irish Clergyman, whom I took the liberty of 
 
 for I speak from experience, when a man who has been much occu- 
 pied through life arrives at having nothing to do, he is very apt not 
 to know what to do 7inih /u'mscl/.' Later on, he said : — ' It was advice 
 given by me in the spirit of that Principal of Brasenose, who, when 
 he took leave of young men quitting college, used to say to them, 
 " Let me give you one piece of advice. Cave de reszg7iatio7iibtis." And 
 very good advice too.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 246. 
 
 ' S^Q. post, April 10, 1775. He had but lately begun to visit London. 
 ' Such was his constant apprehension of the small-pox, that he lived 
 for twenty years within twenty miles of London, without visiting it 
 more than once.' At the age of thirty-five he was inoculated, and 
 henceforth was oftener in town. Campbell's British Poets, p. 569. 
 
 ^ Mr. S. Raymond, Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New 
 South Wales, published in Sydney in 1854 the Diary of a Visit to 
 England in 1775, by an Iris/iman, {The Rez'. Dr. Thomas Campbell,) 
 with Notes. The MS., the editor says, was discovered behind an old 
 press in one of the offices of his Court. The name of the writer no- 
 where appears in the MS. It is clear, however, that if it is not a forg- 
 ery, the author was Campbell. In the Edinbtirgh Review for Oct. 
 1859, its authenticity is examined, and is declared to be beyond a 
 doubt. Lord Macaulay aided the Reviewer in his investigation. lb. 
 p. 323. He could scarcely, however, have come to his task with a 
 mind altogether free from bias, for the editor ' has contrived,' we are 
 told, • to expose another of Mr. Croker's blunders.' Faith in him can- 
 not be wrong who proves that Croker is not in the right. The value 
 of this Diary is rated too highly by the Reviewer. The Master of 
 Balliol College has pointed out to me that it adds but very little to 
 Johnson's sayings. So far as he is concerned, we are told scarcely 
 any thing of mark that we did not know already. This makes the 
 Master doubt its genuineness. I have noticed one suspicious passage. 
 An account is given of a dinner at Mr. Thrale's on April i, at which 
 Campbell met Murphy, Boswcll, and Baretti. 'Johnson's bons mots 
 were retailed in such plenty that they, like a surfeit, could not lie upon 
 my memory.' In one of the stories told by Murphy, Johnson is made 
 to say, ' Damn the rascal.' Murphy would as soon have made the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury swear as Johnson ; much sooner the Arch- 
 bishop of York. It was Murphy ' who paid him the highest compli- 
 ment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for repeat- 
 inviting
 
 388 Publick speaking. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 inviting to Mr. Dilly's table, having seen him at Mr. Thrale's, 
 and been told that he had come to England chiefly with 
 a view to see Dr. Johnson, for whom he entertained the 
 highest veneration. He has since published A Philosophical 
 Survey of the South of Ii'eland, a very entertaining book, 
 which has, however, one fault; — that it assumes the ficti- 
 tious character of an Englishman. 
 
 We talked of publick speaking. — JOHNSON. 'We must not 
 estimate a man's powers by his being able or not able to de- 
 liver his sentiments in publick. Isaac Hawkins Browne', 
 one of the first wits of this country, got into Parliament, and 
 never opened his mouth. For my own part, I think it is 
 more disgraceful never to try to speak, than to try it and 
 fail ; as it is more disgraceful not to fight, than to fight and 
 be beaten.' This argument appeared to me fallacious ; for 
 if a man has not spoken, it may be said that he would have 
 done very well if he had tried ; whereas, if he has tried and 
 failed, there is nothing to be said for him. ' Why then, (I 
 asked,) is it thought disgraceful for a man not to fight, and 
 not disgraceful not to speak in publick?' JOHNSON. 'Be- 
 cause there may be other reasons for a man's not speaking 
 in publick than want of resolution : he may have nothing to 
 say, (laughing.) Whereas, Sir, you know courage is reckoned 
 
 ing some oaths in the course of telling a story' {post, April 12, 1776). 
 Even supposing that at this time he was ignorant of his character, 
 though the supposition is a wild one, he would at once have been set 
 right by Boswell and the Thrales {post, under March 15, 1776). It 
 is curious, that this anecdote imputing profanity to Johnson is not 
 quoted by the Edinburgh reviewer. On the whole I think that the 
 Diary is genuine, and accordingly I have quoted it more than once. 
 
 ' Mrs. Piozzi {Anec. p. 173) says that Johnson spoke of Browne as 
 ' of all conversers the most delightful with whom he ever was in com- 
 pany.' Pope's bathos, in his lines to Murray : — 
 
 ' Graced as thou art with all the power of words, 
 So known, so honoured, at the House of Lords,' 
 was happily parodied by Browne :— 
 
 ' Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks, 
 And he has chambers in the King's Bench Walks.' 
 Pattison's Satires of Pope, pp. 57, 134. See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 5. 
 
 the
 
 Aetat. GO.] Colley Cibbev. 3S9 
 
 the greatest of all virtues ; because, unless a man has that 
 virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.' 
 
 He observed, that ' the statutes against bribery were in- 
 tended to prevent upstarts with money from getting into 
 Parliament';' adding, that 'if he were a gentleman of landed 
 property, he would turn out all his tenants who did not vote 
 for the candidate whom he supported".' Langton. 'Would 
 not that, Sir, be checking the freedom of election ?' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Sir, the law does not mean that the privilege of vot- 
 ing should be independent of old family interest; of the 
 permanent property of the country.' 
 
 On Thursday, April 6, I dined with him at Mr. Thomas 
 Davies's, with Mr. Hicky^the painter, and my old acquaint- 
 ance Mr. Moody, the player. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, as usual, spoke contemptuously of Colley 
 Cibber. * It is wonderful that a man, who for forty years 
 had lived with the great and the witty, should have ac- 
 quired so ill the talents of conversation: and he had but 
 half to furnish ; for one half of what he said was oaths^' 
 He, however, allowed considerable merit to some of his 
 comedies, and said there was no reason to believe that the 
 
 ' Horace Walpole says of Beckford's Bribery Bill of 1768 : — ' Gren- 
 ville, to flatter the country gentlemen, who can ill afford to com- 
 bat with great lords, nabobs, commissaries, and West Indians, de- 
 claimed in favour of the bill.' Memoirs of the Reig7i of George III. 
 iii. 159. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 192, where he said much the same. Another day, how- 
 ever, he agreed that a landlord ought to give leases to his tenants, 
 and not ' wish to keep them in a wretched dependancc on his will. 
 " It is a man's duty," he said, " to extend comfort and security among 
 as many people as he can. He should not wish to have his tenants 
 mere Ephemera: — mere beings of an hour." ' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 
 
 10,1773- 
 
 ' 'Thomas Hickey is now best remembered by a characteristic por- 
 trait of his friend Tom Davies, engraved with Hickey's name to it.' 
 P. Cunningham. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 106. In the Life of Pope {Works, v\\\. 302), Johnson 
 says that ' the shafts of satire were directed in vain against Cibber, 
 being repelled by his impenetrable impudence.' Pope speaks of Cib- 
 ber's ' impenetrability.' Elwin's Pope, ix, 231. 
 
 Careless
 
 ^ 
 
 90 Charles the Second. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 Careless Husbajid was not written by himself. Davies said, 
 he was the first dramatick- writer who introduced genteel 
 ladies upon the stage. Johnson refuted this observation 
 by instancing several such characters in comedies before his 
 time. Davies, (trying to defend himself from a charge of 
 ignorance.) ' I mean genteel moral characters.' * I think, 
 (said Hicky,) gentility and morality are inseparable.' BOS- 
 WELL. ' By no means, Sir. The genteelest characters are 
 often the most immoral. Does not Lord Chesterfield give 
 precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces? A man, 
 indeed, is not genteel when he gets drunk ; but most vices 
 may be committed very genteelly : a man may debauch his 
 friend's wife genteely : he may cheat at cards genteely.' 
 HiCKY. ' I do not think that is genteel.' BOSWELL. ' Sir, 
 it may not be like a gentleman, but it may be genteel.' 
 Johnson. ' You are meaning two different things. One 
 means exteriour grace ; the other honour. It is certain that 
 a man may be very immoral with exteriour grace. Love- 
 lace, in Clarissa, is a very genteel and a very wicked char- 
 acter. Tom Hervey^, who died t'other day, though a vi- 
 cious man, was one of the genteelest men that ever lived.' 
 Tom Davies instanced Charles the Second. JOHNSON, (tak- 
 ing fire at any attack upon that Prince, for whom he had an 
 extraordinary partiality ^) 'Charles the Second was licen- 
 tious in his practice ; but he always had a reverence for 
 what was good. Charles the Second knew his people, and 
 rewarded merit*. The Church was at no time better filled 
 
 ' He alludes perhaps to a note on the Dimct'ad, ii. 140, in which it is 
 stated that ' the author has celebrated even Gibber himself (presuming 
 him to be the author of the Careless Husband).' Sqg. post. May 15, 
 1776, note. 
 
 ° See ante, ii. 36. 
 
 ^ Burke told Malone that ' Hume, in compiling his History, did not 
 give himself a great deal of trouble in examining records, &c. : and 
 that the part he most laboured at was the reign of King Charles II, 
 for whom he had an unaccountable partiality.' Prior's Malone, p. 368. 
 
 ^ Yet Johnson ( Works, vii. 177) wrote of Otway, who was nine years 
 old when Charles H came to the throne, and who outlived him by 
 only a few weeks : — ' He had what was in those times the common 
 
 than.
 
 Aetat. 66.] George the First's will. 391 
 
 than in his reign. He was the best King we have had 
 from his time till the reign of his present Majesty, ex- 
 cept James the Second, who was a very good King, but 
 unhappily believed that it was necessary for the salvation 
 of his subjects that they should be Roman Catholicks. He 
 had the merit of endeavouring to do what he thought was 
 for the salvation of the souls of his subjects, till he lost a 
 great Empire. We, who thought that we should not be 
 saved if we were Roman Catholicks, had the merit of main- 
 taining our religion, at the expence of submitting ourselves 
 to the government of King William', (for it could not be 
 done otherwise,) — to the government of one of the most 
 worthless scoundrels that ever existed. No ; Charles the 
 
 Second was not such a man as , (naming another King). 
 
 He did not destroy his father's wiir. He took money, 
 
 reward of loyalty ; he lived and died neglected.' Hawkins {Life, p. 51) 
 says that he heard Johnson ' speak of Dr. Hodges who, in the height of 
 the Great Plague of 1665, continued in London, and was almost the 
 only one of his profession that had the courage to oppose his art to the 
 spreading of the contagion. It was his hard fate, a short time after, to 
 die in prison for debt in Ludgate. Johnson related this to us with the 
 tears ready to start from his eyes ; and, with great energy, said, " Such 
 a man would not have been suffered to perish in these times." ' 
 
 ' Johnson in 1742 said that William HI 'was arbitrary, insolent, 
 gloomy, rapacious, and brutal ; that he was at all times disposed to 
 play the tyrant ; that he had, neither in great things nor in small, the 
 manners of a gentleman ; that he was capable of gaining money by 
 mean artifices, and that he only regarded his promise when it was his 
 interest to keep it.' Works, vi. 6. Nearly forty years later, in his Life 
 of K^owc {id. vii. 408), he aimed a fine stroke at that King. ' The fashion 
 of the time,' he wrote, ' was to accumulate upon Lewis all that can 
 raise horrour and detestation ; and whatever good was withheld from 
 him, that it might not be thrown away, was bestowed upon King 
 William.' Yet in the Life of Prior {id. viii. 4) he allowed him great 
 merit. ' His whole life had been action, and none ever denied him 
 the resplendent qualities of steady resolution and personal courage.' 
 See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 24, 1773. 
 
 ' ' The fact of suppressing the will is indubitably true,' wrote Hor- 
 ace Walpole {Letters, vii. 142). ' When the news arrived of the death 
 of George I, my father carried the account from Lord Townshend to 
 the then Prince of Wales. The Council met as soon as possible. 
 
 indeed.
 
 392 Dr. Campbell comes to see Johnson, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 indeed, from France : but he did not betray those over whom 
 he ruled': He did not let the French fleet pass ours. 
 George the First knew nothing, and desired to know noth- 
 ing; did nothing, and desired to do nothing: and the only 
 good thing that is told of him is, that he wished to restore 
 the crown to its hereditary successor^' He roared with 
 prodigious violence against George the Second. When he 
 ceased. Moody interjected, in an Irish tone, and with a com- 
 ick look, ' Ah ! poor George the Second.' 
 
 I mentioned that Dr. Thomas Campbell had come from 
 Ireland to London, principally to see Dr. Johnson. He 
 seemed angry at this observation. Davies. ' Why, you 
 know. Sir, there came a man from Spain to see Livy'; and 
 Corelli came to England to see Purceir, and when he heard 
 he was dead, went directly back again to Italy.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' I should not have wished to be dead to disappoint 
 Campbell, had he been so foolish as you represent him ; but 
 I should have wished to have been a hundred miles off.' 
 This was apparently perverse ; and I do believe it was not 
 his real way of thinking : he could not but like a man who 
 came so far to see him. He laughed with some compla- 
 cency, when I told him Campbell's odd expression to me 
 
 There Archbishop Wake, with whom one copy of the will had been 
 deposited, advanced, and dehvered the will to the King, who put it 
 into his pocket, and went out of Council without opening it, the Arch- 
 bishop not having courage or presence of mind to desire it to be read, 
 as he ought to have done. I was once talking to the late Lady Suf- 
 folk, the former mistress, on that extraordinary event. She said, " I 
 cannot justify the deed to the legatees ; but towards his father, the 
 late King was justifiable, for George I had burnt two wills made in 
 favour of George II." ' 
 
 ' 'Charles II by his affability and politeness made himself the idol 
 of the nation, which he betrayed and sold.' Johnson's Works, vi. 7. 
 
 ^ ' It was maliciously circulated that George was indifferent to his 
 own succession, and scarcely willing to stretch out a hand to grasp 
 the crown within his reach.' Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, i. 57. 
 
 ^ Plin. Epist. lib. ii. ep. 3. Boswell. 
 
 * Mr. Davies was here mistaken. Corelli never was in England. 
 
 BURNEV. 
 
 concerning
 
 Aetat. C6.] Judges e7igaging in trade. 393 
 
 concerning him : ' That having seen such a man, was a thing 
 to talk of a century hence,' — as if he could live so long'. 
 
 We got into an argument whether the Judges who went 
 to India might with propriety engage in trade. Johnson 
 warmly maintained that they might. ' For why, (he urged,) 
 should not Judges get riches, as well as those who deserve 
 them less ?' I said, they should have sufficient salaries, and 
 have nothing to take off their attention from the affairs of 
 the publick. JOHNSON. ' No Judge, Sir, can give his whole 
 attention to his office ; and it is very proper that he should 
 employ what time he has to himself, to his own advantage, 
 in the most profitable manner.' 'Then, Sir, (said Davies, 
 who enlivened the dispute by making it somewhat dramat- 
 ick,) he may become an insurer ; and when he is going to 
 the bench, he may be stopped, — " Your Lordship cannot go 
 yet : here is a bunch of invoices : several ships are about to 
 sail." ' Johnson. ' Sir, you may as well say a Judge should 
 not have a house ; for they may come and tell him, " Your 
 Lordship's house is on fire ;" and so, instead of minding the 
 business of his Court, he is to be occupied in getting the 
 engine with the greatest speed. There is no end of this. 
 Every Judge who has land, trades to a certain extent in corn 
 or in cattle ; and in the land itself, undoubtedly. His stew- 
 ard acts for him, and so do clerks for a great merchant. A 
 Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs^ 
 A Judge may play a little at cards for his amusement ; but 
 
 ' Mr. Croker is wrong in saying that the Irishman in Mrs. Thrale's 
 letter of May 16, 1776 {Pwzsi Letters, i. 329), is Dr. Campbell. The 
 man mentioned there had never met Johnson, though she wrote more 
 than a year after this dinner at Davies's. She certainly quotes one of 
 ' Dr. C — I's phrases,' but she might also have quoted Shakspcare. I 
 have no doubt that Mrs. Thrale's Irishman was a Mr. Musgravc {post, 
 under June 16, 1784, note), who is humorously described in Mme. 
 D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 83. Since writing this note I have seen that 
 the Edinburgh reviewer (Oct. 1859, p. 326) had come to the same 
 conclusion. 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 26, 1773, where Johnson said that * he 
 did not approve of -? Judge's calling himself Farmer Burnett, and 
 going about with a little round hat.' 
 
 he
 
 394 Judges ejigaging iii trade, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 he is not to play at marbles, or at chuck-farthing in the Pi- 
 azza. No, Sir ; there is no profession to which a man gives 
 a very great proportion of his time. It is wonderful, when 
 a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually em- 
 ployed in the discharge of any profession. No man would 
 be a Judge, upon the condition of being totally a Judge. The 
 best employed lawyer has his mind at work but for a small 
 proportion of his time : a great deal of his occupation is 
 merely mechanical'. I once wrote for a magazine : I made a 
 calculation, that if I should write but a page a day, at the 
 same rate, I should, in ten years, write nine volumes in folio, 
 of an ordinary size and print.' BOSWELL. ' Such as Carte's 
 History f Johnson. ' Yes, Sir. When a man writes from 
 his own mind, he writes very rapidly ^ The greatest part 
 of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write : a 
 man will turn over half a library to make one book.' 
 
 I argued warmly against the Judges trading, and men- 
 tioned Hale as an instance of a perfect Judge, who de- 
 voted himself entirely to his ofifice. JOHNSON. ' Hale, Sir, 
 attended to other things besides law : he left a great estate.' 
 BosWELL. ' That was, because what he got, accumulated 
 without any exertion and anxiety on his part.' 
 
 While the dispute went on. Moody once tried to say 
 something upon our side. Tom Davies clapped him on 
 the back, to encourage him. Beauclerk, to whom I men- 
 tioned this circumstance, said, ' that he could not conceive 
 a more humiliating situation than to be clapped on thfe 
 back by Tom Davies.' 
 
 We spoke of Rolt, to whose Dictionary of Cojnmcrce Dr. 
 Johnson wrote the Preface". JOHNSON. 'Old Gardner the 
 
 ' ' If all the employments of life were crowded into the time which 
 it [sic] really occupied, perhaps a few weeks, days, or hours would be 
 sufficient for its accomplishment, so far as the mind was engaged in 
 the performance.' The Rambler, No. 8. 
 
 ^ Johnson certainly did, who had a mind stored with knowledge, 
 and teeming with imagery : but the observation is not applicable to 
 writers in general. Boswell. Sqq post, April 20, 1783. 
 
 ^ See aiite, i. 415. 
 
 bookseller
 
 Aetat. 66.] Smart and The Universal Visitor. 395 
 
 bookseller employed Rolt and Smart to write a monthly mis- 
 cellany, called The Universal Visitor\ There was a formal 
 written contract, which Allen the printer saw. Gardner 
 thought as you do of the Judge. They were bound to write 
 nothing else ; they were to have, I think, a third of the 
 profits of this sixpenny pamphlet ; and the contract was 
 for ninety-nine years. I wish I had thought of giving this 
 to Thurlow, in the cause about Literary Property. What 
 an excellent instance would it have been of the oppression 
 of booksellers towards poor authours^ !' (smiling.) Davies, 
 zealous for the honour of the Trade^, said, Gardner was not 
 properly a bookseller. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir; he certainly 
 was a bookseller. He had served his time regularly, was 
 a member of tlie Stationers' company, kept a shop in the 
 face of mankind, purchased copyright, and was a bibliopole", 
 Sir, in every sense. I wrote for some months in TJie Uni- 
 versal Visitor, for poor Smart, while he was mad, not then 
 knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write, and 
 thinking I was doing him good. I hoped his wits would 
 soon return to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in 
 The Utiiversal Visitor no longer.' 
 
 Friday, April 7, I dined with him at a Tavern, with a 
 numerous company \ JOHNSON. 'I have been reading 
 
 * See ante, i. 354. 
 
 ' There has probably been some mistake as to the terms of this 
 supposed extraordinary contract, the recital of which from hearsay 
 afforded Johnson so much play for his sportive acuteness. Or if it 
 was worded as he supposed, it is so strange that I should conclude it 
 was a joke. Mr. Gardner, I am assured, was a worthy and a liberal 
 man. Boswell. Thurlow, when Attorney-General, had been coun- 
 sel for the Donaldsons, in the appeal before the House of Lords on 
 the Right of Literarj' Property {ante, i. 506, and ii. 312.) In his argu- 
 ment ' he observed (exemplifying his observations by several cases) 
 that the booksellers had not till lately ever concerned themselves 
 about authors.' Gent. Mag. for 1774, p. 51. 
 
 ' 'The booksellers of London are denominated the trade' {post, 
 April 15, 1778, note). 
 
 ■* Bibliopole is not in Johnson's Dietionary. 
 
 " The Literary Club. See ante, ii. 377, note 3. Mr. Croker says that 
 
 Twiss's
 
 396 Addiso7is Italian learning. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 Twiss's Travels in Spain, which arc just come out. They 
 are as good as the first book of travels that you will take 
 up. They are as good as those of Keysler^ or Blainville^; 
 nay, as Addison's, if you except the learning. They are 
 not so good as Brydone's^ but they are better than Po- 
 cocke's*. I have not, indeed, cut the leaves yet; but I 
 have read in them where the pages are open, and I do not 
 suppose that what is in the pages which are closed is worse 
 than what is in the open pages. It would seem, (he added,) 
 that Addison had not acquired much Italian learning, for 
 we do not find it introduced into his writings\ The only 
 instance that I recollect, is his quoting "■ Stavo bene ; per star 
 meglio, sto qiii^."' ' 
 
 I mentioned Addison's having borrowed many of his 
 
 the records of the Club show that, after the first few years, Johnson 
 very rarely attended, and that he and Boswell never met there above 
 seven or eight times. It may be observed, he adds, how very rarely 
 Boswell records the conversation at the club. Except in one instance 
 {^post, April 3, 1778), he says, Boswell confines his report to what John- 
 son or himself may have said. That this is not strictly true is shewn 
 by his report of the dinner recorded above, where we find reported 
 remarks of Beauclerk and Gibbon. Seven meetings besides this are 
 mentioned by Boswell. See afite, ii. 275, 293, 363, 377 ; and post, April 
 3, 1778, April 16, 1779, ^r^d June 22, 1784. Of all but the last there is 
 some report, however brief, of something said. When Johnson was 
 not present, Boswell would have nothing to record in this book. 
 
 ' Travels through Gertnany, Gr^c, 1756-7. 
 
 ^ Travels through Holland, &^c. Translated from the French, 1743. 
 
 ^ See post, March 24, 1776, and May 17, 1778. 
 
 * Descriptio7i of the East, 1743-5. 
 
 * Johnson had made the same remark, and Boswell had mentioned 
 Leandro Alberti, when they were talking in an inn in the Island of 
 Mull. Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 14, 1773. 
 
 " Addison does not mention where this epitaph, which has eluded 
 a very diligent inquiry, is found. Malone. I have found it quoted 
 in old Howell. ' The Italian saying may be well applied to poor Eng- 
 land : — " I was well — would be better — took physic — and died." ' Lett. 
 Jan. 20, 1647. Croker. It is quoted by Addison in The Spectator, 
 No. 25: — 'This letter puts me in mind of an Italian epitaph written 
 on the monument of a Valetudinarian : Stavo ben, tna per star nieglio 
 sto qui, which it is impossible to translate.' 
 
 classical
 
 Aetat. 66.] Preservation of unwritte^i poe^ns. 397 
 
 classical remarks from Leandro Albert!'. Mr. Beauclerk 
 said, ' It was alledged that he had borrowed also from an- 
 other Italian authour.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, all who go 
 to look for what the Classicks have said of Italy, must find 
 the same passages ; and I should think it would be one 
 of the first things the Italians would do on the revival of 
 learning, to collect all that the Roman authours have said 
 of their country.' 
 
 Ossian being mentioned ; — JOHNSON. ' Supposing the 
 Irish and Erse languages to be the same, which I do not 
 believe^, yet as there is no reason to suppose that the in- 
 habitants of the Highlands and Hebrides ever wrote their 
 native language, it is not to be credited that a long poem 
 was preserved among them. If we had no evidence of the 
 art of writing being practised in one of the counties of 
 England, we should not believe that a long poem was pre- 
 served there, though in the neighbouring counties, where 
 the same language was spoken, the inhabitants could write.' 
 Beauclerk. ' The ballad of Lilliburlero was once in the 
 mouths of all the people of this country, and is said to have 
 had a great effect in bringing about the Revolution ^ Yet 
 I question whether any body can repeat it now ; which 
 
 * Lord Chesterfield, as Mr. Croker points out, makes the same ob- 
 servation in one of his Letters to his Son (ii. 351). Boswell, however, 
 does not get it from him, for he had said the same in the Hebrides, six 
 months before the pubhcation of Chesterfield's Letters. Addison, in 
 the preface to his Remarks, says : — ' Before I entered on my voyage I 
 took care to refresh my memory among the classic authors, and to 
 make such collections out of them as I might afterwards have occa- 
 sion for.' 
 
 * See ante, ii. 180. 
 
 ' ' It made an impression on the army that cannot be well imagined 
 by those who saw it not. The whole army, and at last all people both 
 in city and country were singing it perpetually, and perhaps never bad 
 so slight a thing so great an eflect.' Burnet's Own Time, edit. 1818, 
 ii. 430. In Tristram Shandy, vol. i. chap, xxi, when Mr. Shandy ad- 
 vanced one of his hypotheses : — ' My uncle Toby,' we read, ' would never 
 offer to answer this by any other kind of argument than that of whist- 
 ling half-a-dozen bars of Lilliburlero.' 
 
 shews
 
 398 Patriotism. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 shews how improbable it is that much poetry should be 
 preserved by tradition.' 
 
 One of the company suggested an internal objection to 
 the antiquity of the poetry said to be Ossian's, that we do 
 not find the wolf in it, which must have been the case had 
 it been of that age. 
 
 The mention of the wolf had led Johnson to think of 
 other wild beasts; and while Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. 
 Langton were carrying on a dialogue about something which 
 engaged them earnestly, he, in the midst of it, broke out, 
 ' Pennant tells of Bears — ' [what he added, I have forgot- 
 ten.] They went on, which he being dull of hearing, did 
 not perceive, or, if he did, was not willing to break off his 
 talk ; so he continued to vociferate his remarks, and Bear, 
 (' like a word in a catch ' as Beauclerk said,) was repeatedly 
 heard at intervals, which coming from him who, by those 
 who did not know him, had been so often assimilated to 
 that ferocious animal', while we who were sitting around 
 could hardly stifle laughter, produced a very ludicrous 
 effect. Silence having ensued, he proceeded : ' We are 
 told, that the black bear is innocent ; but I should not 
 like to trust myself with him.' Mr. Gibbon muttered, 
 in a low tone of voice, ' I should not like to trust my- 
 self with you' This piece of sarcastick pleasantry was 
 a prudent resolution, if applied to a competition of abil- 
 ities^ 
 
 Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson 
 suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apoph- 
 thegm, at which many will start : ' Patriotism is the last 
 
 * See ante, ii. 76. 
 
 * ' Of Gibbon, Mackintosh neatly remarked that he might have been 
 cut out of a corner of Burke's mind, without his missing it.' Life of 
 Mackintosh, i. 92. It is worthy of notice that Gibbon scarcely men- 
 tions Johnson in his writings. Moreover, in the names that he gives 
 of the members of the Literary Club, ' who form a large and luminous 
 constellation of British stars,' though he mentions eighteen of them, 
 he passes over Boswell. Gihhon's Misc. IVorks, i. 2ig. See also post, 
 April 1 8, 1775. 
 
 refuge
 
 Aetat. 66.] Mvs. Pritchavcl. 399 
 
 refuge of a scoundrer.' But let it be considered, that he 
 did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but 
 that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and 
 countries, have made a cloak for self-interest. I maintain, 
 that certainly all patriots were not scoundrels. Being urged, 
 (not by Johnson,) to name one exception, I mentioned an 
 eminent person ^ whom we all greatly admired. JOHNSON. 
 ' Sir, I do not say that he is 7iot honest ; but we have no 
 reason to conclude from his political conduct that he is 
 honest. Were he to accept of a place from this ministry, 
 he would lose that character of firmness which he has, and 
 might be turned out of his place in a year. This ministry 
 is neither stable ^ nor grateful to their friends, as Sir Robert 
 Walpole w-as, so that he may think it more for his interest 
 to take his chance of his party coming in.' 
 
 Mrs. Pritchard being mentioned, he said, * Her playing was 
 quite mechanical. It is wonderful how little mind she had. 
 Sir, she had never read the tragedy of Macbeth all through. 
 She no more thought of the play out of which her part 
 was taken, than a shoemaker thinks of the skin, out of which 
 the piece of leather, of which he is making a pair of shoes, 
 is cut'.' 
 
 ' We may compare with this Dryden's line : — 
 
 ' Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.' 
 Absalom and Achitophd, 1. 179. Hawkins {Life,-^. 506) says that 'to 
 party opposition Johnson ever expressed great aversion, and of the 
 pretences of patriots always spoke with indignation and contempt.' 
 He had, Hawkins adds, ' partaken of the short-lived joy that infatu- 
 ated the public ' when Walpole fell ; but a few days convinced him 
 that the patriotism of the opposition had been either hatred or ambi- 
 tion. Y ox patriots, see ante, i. 342, note, ^.ndi post, April 6, 1781. 
 
 = Mr. Burke. See rt/z/t', ii. 255, note 4. 
 
 ' Lord North's ministry lasted from 1770 to 1782. 
 
 ♦ Perhaps Johnson had this from Davies, who says {Life of Gar- 
 rick, \. 124): — 'Mrs. Pritchard read no more of the play of Macbeth 
 than her own part, as written out and delivered to her by the prompt- 
 er.' She played the heroine in Ircjic (ante, i. 229) . See post under Sept. 
 30, 1783, where Johnson says that ' in common life she was a vulgar 
 idiot,' and 'Qo?>\s^\\'s Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773. 
 
 On
 
 400 Mrs. Thrales coarse flattery. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 On Saturday, May 8', I dined with him at Mr. Thrale's, 
 where we met the Irish Dr. CampbelP. Johnson had 
 supped the night before at Mrs. Abington's, with some 
 fashionable people whom he named ; and he seemed 
 much pleased w^th having made one in so elegant a 
 circle. Nor did he omit to pique his mistress^ a little 
 with jealousy of her housewifery ; for he said, (with a 
 smile,) ' Mrs. Abington's jelly, my dear Lady, was better 
 than yours.' 
 
 Mrs. Thrale, who frequently practised a coarse mode of 
 flattery, by repeating his bon-mots in his hearing*, told us 
 that he had said, a certain celebrated actor was just fit to 
 stand at the door of an auction-room with a long pole, and 
 cry * Pray gentlemen, walk in ;' and that a certain authour, 
 upon hearing this, had said, that another still more cele- 
 brated actor was fit for nothing better than that, and would 
 pick your pocket after you came out^ JOHNSON. 'Nay, 
 my dear lady, there is no wit in what our friend added ; 
 there is only abuse. You may as well say of any man 
 that he will pick a pocket. Besides, the man who is sta- 
 tioned at the door does not pick people's pockets ; that is 
 done within, by the auctioneer.' 
 
 Mrs. Thrale told us, that Tom Davies repeated, in a very 
 bald manner, the story of Dr. Johnson's first repartee to 
 
 ' A misprint for April 8. 
 
 * Boswell calls him the ' Irish Dr. Campbell,' to distinguish him 
 from the Scotch Dr. Campbell mentioned ante, i. 483. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 572. 
 
 * Barettl, in a MS. note in his copy of Piozzi Letters, i. 374, says : — 
 'Johnson was often fond of saying silly things in strong terms, and 
 the silly Madam [Mrs. Thrale] never failed to echo that beastly kind 
 of wit.' 
 
 ^ According to Dr. T. Campbell, who was present at the dinner 
 {Diary, p. 66), Barry and Garrick were the two actors, and Murphy 
 the author. If Murphy said this in the heat of one of his quarrels 
 with Garrick, he made amends in his Life of that actor (p. 362) : — ' It 
 was with Garrick,' he wrote, ' a fixed principle, that authors were enti- 
 tled to the emolument of their labours, and by that generous way of 
 thinking he held out an invitation to men of genius.' 
 
 . me.
 
 Aetat. 66.] General Oglethorpe. 40 1 
 
 me, which I have related exactly'. He made me say, ' I 
 was born in Scotland,* instead of ' I come from Scotland ;' 
 so that Johnson saying. ' That, Sir, is what a great many of 
 your countrymen cannot help,' had no point, or even mean- 
 ing: and that upon this being mentioned to Mr. Fitzher- 
 bert, he observed, ' It is not every man that can carry a bon 
 mot.' 
 
 On Monday, April 10, I dined with him at General Ogle- 
 thorpe's, with Mr. Langton and the Irish Dr. Campbell, 
 whom the General had obligingly given me leave to bring 
 with me. This learned gentleman was thus gratified with 
 a very high intellectual feast, by not only being in com- 
 pany with Dr. Johnson, but with General Oglethorpe, who 
 had been so long a celebrated name both at home and 
 abroad ^ 
 
 I must, again and again, intreat of my readers not to sup- 
 pose that my imperfect record of conversation contains the 
 whole of what was said by Johnson, or other eminent per- 
 sons who lived with him. What I have preserved, however, 
 has the value of the most perfect authenticity. 
 
 ' See ante, i. 454. Boswell. 
 
 - Let me here be allowed to pay my tribute of most sincere grati- 
 tude to the memory of that excellent person, my intimacy with whom 
 was the more valuable to me, because my first acquaintance with him 
 was unexpected and unsolicited. Soon after the publication of my 
 Account of Corsica, he did me the honour to call on me, and, approach- 
 ing me with a frank courteous air, said, ' My name. Sir, is Oglethorpe, 
 and I wish to be acquainted with you.' I was not a little flattered to 
 be thus addressed by an eminent man, of whom I had read in Pope, 
 from my early years, 
 
 ' Or, driven by strong benevolence of soul. 
 Will fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.' 
 I was fortunate enough to be found worthy of his good opinion, inso- 
 much, that I not only was invited to make one in the many respect- 
 able companies whom he entertained at his table, but had a cover at 
 Iiis hospitable board every day when I happened to be disengaged ; 
 and in his society I never failed to enjoy learned and animated con- 
 versation, seasoned with genuine sentiments of virtue and religion. 
 Boswell. See a7ttc, i. 147, and ii. 67, note i. The couplet from i^ope 
 is from Itni'tatt'otis of Horace, Epist. ii. 2. 276. 
 
 II.— 26 He
 
 402 The present state never happy. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 He this day enlarged upon Pope's melancholy remark, 
 ' Man never is, but always to be blest '.' 
 
 He asserted that tJie present was never a happy state to 
 any human being ; but that, as every part of life, of which 
 we are conscious, was at some point of time a period yet to 
 come, in which felicity was expected, there was some happi- 
 ness produced by hope^ Being pressed upon this subject, 
 and asked if he really was of opinion, that though, in gen- 
 eral, happiness was very rare in human life, a man was not 
 sometimes happy in the moment that was present, he an- 
 swered, 'Never, but when he is drunk ^' 
 
 He urged General Oglethorpe to give the world his Life. 
 He said, ' I know no man whose Life would be more inter- 
 esting. If I were furnished with materials, I should be very 
 glad to write it \' 
 
 Mr. Scott' of Amwell's Elegies were lying in the room. 
 Dr. Johnson observed, ' They are very well ; but such as 
 twenty people might write.' Upon this I took occasion to 
 controvert Horace's maxim, 
 
 ' mediocribiis esse poetis 
 
 Non Di, 11011 hommcs, non concessere coliimncB^.^ 
 
 ' ' Hope springs eternal in the human breast ; 
 
 Man never is, but always to be blest.' 
 
 Essay on Man, i. 95. 
 ^ 'The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to 
 pleasure, but from hope to hope.' The Rambler, No. 2. See post, iii. 
 61, and June 12, 1784. Swift defined happiness as 'a perpetual posses- 
 sion of being well deceived.' Tale of a Ticb, Sect, ix., Swift's Works^ 
 ed. 1803, iii. 154. = Set post, March 29, 1776. 
 
 * The General seemed unwilling to enter upon it at this time ; but 
 upon a subsequent occasion he communicated to me a number of par- 
 ticulars, which I have committed to writing; but I was not sufficiently 
 diligent in obtaining more from him, not apprehending that his friends 
 were so soon to lose him ; for, notwithstanding his great age, he was 
 very healthy and vigorous, and was at last carried off by a violent fe- 
 ver, which is often fatal at any period of life. Boswell. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 387. 
 
 ® ' Mediocribus esse poetis 
 
 Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.' 
 
 For
 
 Aetat. 66.] Good-Friday. 403 
 
 For here, (I observed,) was a very middle- rate poet, who 
 pleased many readers, and therefore poetry of a middle sort 
 was entitled to some esteem ; nor could I see why poetry 
 should not, like every thing else, have different gradations 
 of excellence, and consequently of value. Johnson repeated 
 the common remark, that, ' as there is no necessity for our 
 having poetry at all, it being merely a luxury, an instrument 
 of pleasure, it can have no value, unless when exquisite in 
 its kind.' I declared myself not satisfied. ' Why then, Sir, 
 (said he,) Horace and you must settle it.' He was not much 
 in the humour of talking. 
 
 No more of his conversation for some days appears in 
 my journal', except that when a gentleman told him he had 
 bought a suit of lace for his lady, he said, ' Well, Sir, you 
 have done a good thing and a wise thing.' ' I have done a 
 good thing, (said the gentleman,) but I do not know that 
 I have done a wise thing.' Johnson. 'Yes, Sir; no mon- 
 ey is better spent than what is laid out for domestick 
 satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is drest 
 as well as other people ; and a wife is pleased that she is 
 drest.' 
 
 On Friday, April 14, being Good-Friday, I repaired to him 
 in the morning, according to my usual custom on that day, 
 and breakfasted with him. I observed that he fasted so 
 
 ' But God and man, and Ictter'd post denies 
 That poets ever are of middling size.' 
 
 Francis, Horace, Ars Pod. 1. 372. 
 ' Why he failed to keep his journal may be guessed from his letter 
 to Temple : — ' I am,' he wrote on April 17, ' indeed enjoying this me- 
 tropolis to the full, according to my taste, except that I cannot, I see. 
 have a plenary indulgence from you for Asiatic multiplicity. Be not 
 afraid of me, except when I take too much claret ; and then indeed 
 there is 's. furor brevis as dangerous as anger. ... I have rather had too 
 much dissipation since I came last to town. I try to keep a journal, 
 and shall show you that I have done tolerably : but it is hardly credi- 
 ble what ground I go over, and what a variety of men and manners I 
 contemplate in a day; and all the time I myself am pars vuii^na, for 
 my exuberant spirits will not let mc listen enough.' Letters of Bos- 
 Tiiell, pp. 1 87-9. 
 
 very
 
 404 Weakness of the governme7it. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 very strictly ', that he did not even taste bread, and took no 
 milk with his tea ; I suppose because it is a kind of animal 
 food. 
 
 He entered upon the state of the nation, and thus dis- 
 coursed : ' Sir, the great misfortune now is, that government 
 has too little power. All that it has to bestow must of ne- 
 cessity be given to support itself ; so that it cannot reward 
 merit. No man, for instance, can now be made a Bishop 
 for his learning and piety '^i his only chance for promotion 
 is his being connected with somebody who has parliament- 
 ary interest. Our several ministries in this reign have out- 
 bid each other in concessions to the people. Lord Bute, 
 though a very honourable man, — a man who meant well, — a 
 man who had his blood full of prerogative, — was a theoreti- 
 cal statesman, — a book-minister^ — and thought this coun- 
 try could be governed by the influence of the Crown alone. 
 Then, Sir, he gave up a great deal. He advised the King 
 to agree that the Judges should hold their places for life, 
 instead of losing them at the accession of a new King. Lord 
 Bute, I suppose, thought to make the King popular by this 
 concession ; but the people never minded it ; and it was a 
 most impolitick measure. There is no reason why a Judge 
 should hold his office for life, more than any other per- 
 son in publick trust. A Judge may be partial otherwise 
 than to the Crown : we have seen Judges partial to the 
 
 ' Johnson, in The Rambler, No. no, published on Easter Eve, 1751, 
 thus justifies fasting : — ' Austerity is the proper antidote to indulgence ; 
 the diseases of mind as well as body are cured by contraries, and to 
 contraries we should readily have recourse if we dreaded guilt as we 
 dread pain.' 
 
 2 From this too just observation there are some eminent excep- 
 tions. BoswELL. ' Dr. Johnson said : — " Few bishops are now made 
 for their learning. To be a bishop, a man must be learned in a learned 
 age, factious in a factious age, but always of eminence." ' Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773. 
 
 ^ Lord Shelburne wrote of him : — ' He panted for the Treasury, hav- 
 ing a notion that the King and he understood it from what they had 
 read about revenue and funds while they were at Kew.' Fitzmaurice's 
 Shelburne, i. 141. 
 
 populace.
 
 Aetat. 66.] Lord Butes popular measures. 405 
 
 populace'. A Judge may become corrupt, and yet there may 
 not be legal evidence against him. A Judge may become 
 f reward from age. A Judge may grow unfit for his office 
 in many ways. It was desirable that there should be a 
 possibility of being delivered from him by a new King. 
 That is now gone by an act of Parliament ex gratia of the 
 Crown \ Lord Bute advised the King to give up a very 
 large sum of money \ for which nobody thanked him. It 
 
 ' Chief Justice Pratt (afterwards Lord Camden) became popular by 
 his conduct as a judge in Wilkes's case. In 1764 he received the free- 
 dom of the guild of merchants in Dublin in a gold box, and from Exe- 
 ter the freedom of the city. The city of London gave him its freedom 
 in a gold box, and had his portrait painted by Reynolds. Gent. Mag. 
 1764, pp. 44, 96, 144. See ante', ii. 359, note 2. 
 
 ^ The King, on March 3, 1761, recommended this measure to Par- 
 liament. Part. Hist. xv. 1007. 'This,' writes Horace Walpole, 'was 
 one of Lord Bute's strokes of pedantry. The tenure of the judges 
 had formerly been a popular topic ; and had been secured, as far as 
 was necessar>\ He thought this trifling addition would be popular 
 now, when nobody thought or cared about it.' Memoirs of the Reign 
 of George III, i. 41. 
 
 ^ The money arising from the property of the prizes taken before 
 the declaration of war, which were given to his Majesty by the peace 
 of Paris, and amounted to upwards of _;^7oo,ooo, and from the lands in 
 the ceded islands, which were estimated at ^200,000 more. Surely 
 there was a noble munificence in this gift from a Monarch to his peo- 
 ple. And let it be remembered, that during the Earl of Bute's admin- 
 istration, the King was graciously pleased to give up the hereditary 
 revenues of the Crown, and to accept, instead of them, of the limited 
 sum of £800,000 a year ; upon which Blackstone observes, that ' The 
 hereditary revenues, being put under the same management as the 
 other branches of the publick patrimony, will produce more, and be 
 better collected than heretofore ; and the publick is a gainer of up- 
 wards of £\oo,oQO per annum by this disinterested bounty of his Maj- 
 esty.' Book I. chap. viii. p. 330. Boswell. Lord Bolingbroke ( Works, 
 iii. 286), about the year 1734, pointed out that ' if the funds appropriated 
 produce the double of that immense revenue of £800,000 a year, which 
 hath been so liberally given the King for life, the whole is his without 
 account ; but if they fail in any degree to produce it, the entire national 
 fund is engaged to make up the dilTerence.' lilackstone (edit, of 1778, 
 i.33ij says: — '£800,000 being found insufficient, was increased in 1777 
 to £900,000.' He adds, ' the public is still a gainer of near £100,000.' 
 
 was
 
 4o6 Lord Butes Scotch favourites. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 was of consequence to the King, but nothing to the pub- 
 lick, among whom it was divided. When I say Lord Bute 
 advised, I mean, that such acts were done when he was min- 
 ister, and we arc to suppose that he advised them. — Lord 
 Bute shewed an undue partiahty to Scotchmen. He turned 
 out Dr. Nichols', a very eminent man, from being physician 
 to the King, to make room for one of his countrymen, a 
 man very low in his profession \ He had *-:^****-:^****^ 
 and ***** to go on errands for him. He had occasion for 
 people to go on errands for him ; but he should not have had 
 Scotchmen ; and, certainly, he should not have suffered them 
 to have access to him before the first people in England.' 
 
 ' S&e. post, iii. i86. 
 
 ^ Lord Eldon says that Dundas, ' in broken phrases,' asked the King 
 to confer a baronetcy on ' an eminent Scotch apothecary who had got 
 from Scotland the degree of M. D. The King said; — " What, what, 
 is that all ? It shall be done. I was afraid you meant to ask me to 
 make the Scotch apothecary a physician — that's more difficult." ' He 
 added : — ' They may make as many Scotch apothecaries Baronets as 
 they please, but I shall die by the College.' Twiss's Eldon, ii. 354. A 
 Dr. Duncan, says Mr. Croker, was appointed physician to the King in 
 1 760. Croker's Boswell, p. 448. A doctor of the same name, and no 
 doubt the same man, was made a baronet in Aug. 1764. Jesse's Sel- 
 wyn, i. 287. 
 
 ^ Wedderburne, afterwards Lord Chancellor Loughborough, and 
 Earl of Rosslyn. One of his 'errands' had been to bring Johnson 
 bills in payment of his first quarter's pension. See ante, i. 435. 
 
 * Home, the author of Douglas. Boswell says that ' Home showed 
 the Lord Chief Baron Orde a pair of pumps he had on, and desired 
 his lordship to observe how well they were made, telling him at the 
 same time that they had been made for Lord Bute, but were rather 
 too little for him, so his lordship had made John a present of them. 
 " I think," said the Lord Chief Baron, " you have taken the measure 
 of Lord Bute's foot."' Bosweltiana, p. 252. Dr. A. Carlyle {Auto. 
 p. 335) writes : — ' With Robertson and Home in London I passed the 
 time very agreeably; for though Home was now [1758] entirely at the 
 command of Lord Bute, whose nod made him break every engage- 
 ment — for it was not given above an hour or two before dinner — yet, 
 as he was sometimes at liberty when the noble lord was to dine 
 abroad, like a horse loosened from his stake, he was more sportful 
 than usual.' 
 
 I told
 
 Aetat.66.] A^o Prime Minister. 407 
 
 I told him, that the admission of one of them before the 
 first people in England, which had given the greatest of- 
 fence, was no more than what happens at every minister's 
 leve'e, where those who attend are admitted in the order 
 that they have come, which is better than admitting them 
 according to their rank ; for if that were to be the rule, a 
 man who has waited all the morning might have the mor- 
 tification to see a peer, newly come, go in before him, and 
 keep him waiting still. JOHNSON. 'True, Sir; but **** 
 should not have come to the levee, to be in the way of peo- 
 ple of consequence. He saw Lord Bute at all times ; and 
 could have said what he had to say at any time, as well as 
 at the levee. There is now no Prime Minister: there is 
 only an agent for government in the House of Commons'. 
 We are governed by the Cabinet : but there is no one head 
 there since Sir Robert Walpole's time.' BOSWELL. ' What 
 then. Sir, is the use of Parliament?' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, 
 Parliament is a larger council to the King ; and the advan- 
 tage of such a council is, having a great number of men of 
 property concerned in the legislature, who, for their own in- 
 terest, will not consent to bad laws. And you must have 
 observed. Sir, that administration is feeble and timid, and 
 cannot act with that authority and resolution which is nec- 
 essary. Were I in power, I would turn out every man who 
 dared to oppose me. Government has the distribution of 
 ofHces, that it may be enabled to maintain its authority ^' 
 
 ' Lord North was merely the King's agent. The King was really 
 his own minister at this time, though he had no seat in his own cabi- 
 net councils. 
 
 ■^ Only thirty-four years earlier, on the motion in the Lords for the 
 removal of Walpole, the Duke of Argyle said: — 'If my father or 
 brother took upon him the office of a sole minister, I would oppose 
 it as inconsistent with the constitution, as a high crime and misde- 
 meanour. I appeal to your consciences whether he [Walpole] hath 
 
 not done this He hath turned out men lately for differing with 
 
 him.' Lord Chancellor Hardwicke replied :— ' A sole minister is so 
 illegal an office that it is none. Yet a noble lord says, Superior re- 
 spofidcat,^\\\ch. is laying down a rule for a prime minister; whereas 
 the noble Duke was against any.' The Seeker MS. Pari. Hist. xi. 
 
 ' Lord
 
 4o8 The imme^isity of London. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 ' Lord Bute, (he added,) took down too fast, without build- 
 ing up something new.' BOSWELL. ' Because, Sir, he found 
 a rotten building. The political coach was drawn by a set 
 of bad horses : it was necessary to change them.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' But he should have changed them one by one.' 
 
 I told him that I had been informed by Mr. Ormc ', that 
 many parts of the East-Indies were better mapped than the 
 Highlands of Scotland. JOHNSON. 'That a country may be 
 mapped, it must be travelled over.' * Nay, (said I, meaning 
 to laugh with him at one of his prejudices,) can't you say, 
 it is not wortJi mapping?' 
 
 As we walked to St. Clement's church, and saw several 
 shops open upon this most solemn fast-day of the Christian 
 world, I remarked, that one disadvantage arising from the 
 immensity of London, was, that nobody was heeded by his 
 neighbour; there was no fear of censure for not observing 
 Good-Friday, as it ought to be kept, and as it is kept in 
 country-towns. He said, it was, upon the whole, very well 
 observed even in London. He, however, owned, that Lon- 
 don was too large ; but added, ' It is nonsense to say the 
 head is too big for the body. It would be as much too big, 
 though the body were ever so large ; that is to say, though 
 
 1056-7, In the Protest against the rejection of the motion it was 
 stated : — ' We are persuaded that a sole, or even a first minister, is 
 an officer unknown to the law of Britain, &c.' /^. p. 1215. Johnson re- 
 ports the Chancellor as saying : — ' It has not been yet pretended that 
 he assumes the title oi prime minister, or, indeed, that it is applied to 
 him by any but his enemies. . . . The first minister can, in my opinion, 
 be nothing more than a formidable illusion, which, when one man 
 thinks he has seen it, he shows to another, as easily frighted as him- 
 self,' &c. Johnson's Works, x. 214-15. In his Dictionary, premier is 
 only given as an adjective, and prime minister is not given at all. 
 When the Marquis of Rockingham was forming his cabinet in March, 
 1782, Burke wrote to him: — 'Stand firm on your ground — but one 
 ministry. I trust and hope that your lordship will not let o)ic, even 
 but one branch of the state . . . out of your own hands ; or those which 
 you can entirely rely on.' Burke's Corres. ii. 462. See also post, iii. 
 53, April 1, 1781, Jan. 20, 1782, and April 10, 1783. 
 ^ See ante, ii. 343. 
 
 the
 
 Aetat. 66.] An evening in Johnsons study. 409 
 
 the country were ever so extensive. It has no similarity to 
 a head connected with a body.' 
 
 Dr. Wetherell, Master of University College, Oxford, ac- 
 companied us home from church ; and after he was gone, 
 there came two other gentlemen, one of whom uttered the 
 commonplace complaints, that by the increase of taxes, 
 labour would be dear, other nations would undersell us, and 
 our commerce would be ruined. JOHNSON, (smiling.) ' Never 
 fear, Sir. Our commerce is in a very good state ; and sup- 
 pose we had no commerce at all, we could live very well on 
 the produce of our own country.' I cannot omit to men- 
 tion, that I never knew any man who was less disposed to 
 be querulous than Johnson. Whether the subject was his 
 own situation, or the state of the publick, or the state of 
 human nature in general, though he saw the evils, his mind 
 was turned to resolution, and never to whining or com- 
 plaint '. 
 
 We went again to St. Clement's in the afternoon. He 
 had found fault with the preacher in the morning for not 
 choosing a text adapted to the day. The preacher in the 
 afternoon had chosen one extremely proper : ' It is finished.' 
 
 After the evening service, he said, ' Come, you shall go 
 home with me, and sit just an hour.' But he was better 
 than his word ; for after we had drunk tea' with Mrs. Will- 
 iams, he asked me to go up to his study with him, where 
 we sat a long while together in a serene undisturbed frame 
 of mind, sometimes in silence, and sometimes conversing, as 
 we felt ourselves inclined, or more properly speaking, as Jic 
 was inclined ; for during all the course of my long intima- 
 cy with him, my respectful attention never abated, and my 
 wish to hear him was such, that I constantly watched every 
 
 ' ' As he liberally confessed that all his own disappointments pro- 
 ceeded from himself, he hated to hear others complain of general in- 
 justice.' Piozzi's Atiec. p. 251. Sec post, end of May, 1781, and March 
 23,1783. 
 
 * ' Boswcll and I went to church, but came very late. We then took 
 tea, by Boswcll's desire ; and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not 
 seem to fast ostentatiously.' Pr. and Med. p. 138. 
 
 dawning
 
 4IO The Temple of Fame. [a.d, 1775. 
 
 dawning of communication from that great and illuminated 
 mind. 
 
 He observed, ' All knowledge is of itself of some value. 
 There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable, that I would 
 not rather know it than not. In the same manner, all pow- 
 er, of whatever sort, is of itself desirable. A man would not 
 submit to learn to hem a ruffle, of his wife, or his wife's 
 maid ; but if a mere wish could attain it, he would rather 
 wish to be able to hem a ruffle.' 
 
 He again advised me to keep a journal' fully and minute- 
 ly, but not to mention such trifles as, that meat was too 
 much or too little done, or that the weather was fair or 
 rainy. He had, till very near his death, a contempt for the 
 notion that the weather affects the human frame ^. 
 
 I told him that our friend Goldsmith had said to me, that 
 he had come too late into the world, for that Pope and other 
 poets had taken up the places in the Temple of Fame ; so 
 that, as but a few at any period can possess poetical reputa- 
 tion, a man of genius can now hardly acquire it. JOHNSON. 
 ' That is one of the most sensible things I have ever heard 
 of Goldsmith ^ It is difflcult to get literary fame, and it is 
 
 ' See ante, i. 501. ^ See a7ite, i. 384. 
 
 ^ The following passages shew that the thought, or something like 
 it, was not new to Johnson : — ' Bruyere declares that we are come 
 into the world too late to produce anything new, that nature and life 
 are preoccupied, and that description and sentiment have been long 
 exhausted.' The Rambler, No. 143. ' Some advantage the ancients 
 might gain merely by priority, which put them in possession of the 
 most natural sentiments, and left us nothing but servile repetition or 
 forced conceits.' lb. No. 169. ' My earlier predecessors had the whole 
 field of life before them, untrodden and unsurveyed ; characters of 
 every kind shot up in their way, and those of the most luxuriant 
 growth, or most conspicuous colours, were naturally cropt by the first 
 sickle. They that follow are forced to peep into neglected corners.' 
 The Idler, No. 3. ' The first writers took possession of the most strik- 
 ing objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for 
 fiction.' Rasselas, ch. x. Some years later he wrote : — ' Whatever can 
 happen to man has happened so often that little remains for fancy or 
 invention.' Works,\\\.i\\. See also The Rambler, ^o.%6. In The 
 Adventurer, No. 95, he wrote : — ' The complaint that all topicks are 
 
 every
 
 Aetat. 66.] lujidelity. 411 
 
 every day growing more difficult. Ah, Sir, that should make 
 a man think of securing happiness in another world, which 
 all who trj' sincerely for it may attain. In comparison of 
 that, how little are all other things ! The belief of immor- 
 tality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an 
 impression of it, however they may talk, and though, per- 
 haps, they may be scarcely sensible of it.' I said, it ap- 
 peared to me that some people had not the least notion of 
 immortality ; and I mentioned a distinguished gentleman 
 of our acquaintance. JOHNSON. ' Sir, if it were not for the 
 notion of immortality, he would cut a throat to fill his pock- 
 ets.' When I quoted this to Beauclerk, who knew much 
 more of the gentleman than we did, he said, in his acid man- 
 ner, * He would cut a throat to fill his pockets, if it were not 
 for fear of being hanged.' 
 
 Dr. Johnson proceeded : ' Sir, there is a great cry about 
 infidelity'; but there are, in reality, very few infidels. I 
 have heard a person, originally a Quaker, but now, I am 
 afraid, a Deist, say, that he did not believe there were, in all 
 England, above two hundred infidels.' 
 
 He was pleased to say, ' If you come to settle here, we 
 will have one day in the week on which we will meet by 
 ourselves. That is the happiest conversation where there is 
 no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of 
 sentiments'.' In his private register this evening is thus 
 
 preoccupied is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idle- 
 ness.' See post, under Aug. 29, 1783. Dr. Warton {Essay on Pope, 
 i. 88) says that ' St. Jerome relates that Donatus, explaining that pas- 
 sage in Terence, Nihil est dictum quod non sit dietiaii prizes, railed at 
 the ancients for taking from him his best thoughts. Pereant qui ante 
 nos nostra dixerimt.' 
 
 ' Warburton, in the Dedication of his Divine Legation to the Free- 
 thinkers (vol. i. p. ii.), says :— ' Nothing, I believe, strikes the serious 
 observer with more surprize, in this age of novelties, than that strange 
 propensity to infidelity, so visible in men of almost every condition : 
 amongst whom the advocates of Deism are received with all the 
 applauses due to the inventers of the arts of life, or the deliverers of 
 oppressed and injured nations.' See ante, ii. 93. 
 
 " In The Ratnbler, No. 89, Johnson writes of ' that interchange of 
 
 marked,
 
 412 Easter Day. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 marked, ' Boswell sat with mc till night ; we had some seri- 
 ous talk'.' It also appears from the same record, that after 
 I left him he was occupied in religious duties, in ' giving 
 Francis, his servant, some directions for preparation to com- 
 municate ; in reviewing his life, and resolving on better 
 conduct ^' The humility and piety which he discovers on 
 such occasions, is truely edifying. No saint, however, in the 
 course of his religious warfare, was more sensible of the un- 
 happy failure of pious resolves, than Johnson. He said one 
 day, talking to an acquaintance on this subject, * Sir, Hell is 
 paved with good intentions'.' 
 
 On Sunday, April i6, being Easter Day, after having at- 
 tended the solemn service at St. Paul's*, I dined with Dr. 
 Johnson and Mrs. Williams. I maintained that Horace was 
 wrong in placing happiness in Nil admirari^, for that I 
 
 thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation, where 
 suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence ; 
 where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness 
 to offend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be 
 pleased.' In T/ic Idler, No. 34, he says ' that companion will be often- 
 est welcome whose talk flows out with inoffensive copiousness and 
 unenvied insipidity.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale : — 'Such tattle as 
 filled your last sweet letter prevents one great inconvenience of ab- 
 sence, that of returning home a stranger and an inquirer. The varia- 
 tions of life consist of little things. Important innovations are soon 
 heard, and easily understood. Men that meet to talk of physicks or 
 metaphysicks, or law or history, may be immediately acquainted. We 
 look at each other in silence, only for want of petty talk upon slight 
 occurrences.' Piozzi Letters, \. 354. 
 
 ^ Pr.ajjd Med.^.\T,%. Boswell. 
 
 ' This line is not, as appears, a quotation, but an abstract of p. 139 
 of Pr. and Med. 
 
 ' This is a proverbial sentence. ' Hell,' says Herbert, ' is full of good 
 meanings and wishings.' Jacula Prudentttin, p. 1 1, edit. 1651. Malone. 
 
 ^ Boswell wrote to Temple : — ' I have only to tell you, as my divine, 
 that I yesterday received the holy sacrament in St. Paul's Church, and 
 was exalted in piety.' It was in the same letter that he mentioned 
 ' Asiatic multiplicity ' {ante, ii. 403, note). Letters of Boswell, p. 1 89. 
 
 * ' Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, 
 
 Solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum.' 
 
 Horace, jE^/.y. i. 6. i. 
 
 thought
 
 Aetat. 06.] Admiration and jtidgement. 413 
 
 thought admiration one of the most agreeable of all our 
 feelings ' ; and I regretted that I had lost much of my dis- 
 position to admire, which people generally do as they ad- 
 vance in life. JOHNSON. ' Sir, as a man advances in life, he 
 gets what is better than admiration — judgement, to estimate 
 things at their true value.' I still insisted that admiration 
 was more pleasing than judgement, as love is more pleasing 
 than friendship. The feeling of friendship is like that of 
 being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being 
 enlivened with champagne. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; admira- 
 tion and love are like being intoxicated with champagne ; 
 judgement and friendship like being enlivened. Waller has 
 hit upon the same thought with you°: but I don't believe 
 you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable 
 yourself to borrow more '.' 
 
 He then took occasion to enlarge on the advantages of 
 reading, and combated the idle superficial notion, that knowl- 
 edge enough may be acquired in conversation. ' The foun- 
 dation, (said he,) must be laid by reading. General principles 
 must be had from books, which, however, must be brought 
 
 'Not to admire is all the art I know, 
 To make men happy and to keep them so.' 
 
 Pope's Imitations, adapted from Creech. 
 ^ ' We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love ; 
 
 And even as these are well and wisely fixed, 
 In dignity of being we ascend.' 
 
 Wordsworth's Works, ed. 1857, vi. 135. 
 * ' Amoret's as sweet and good. 
 
 As the most delicious food ; 
 Which but tasted does impart 
 Life and gladness to the heart. 
 Sacharissa's beauty's wine. 
 Which to madness does incline; 
 Such a liquor as no brain 
 That is mortal can sustain.' 
 
 Waller's Epistles, xii. BOSWELL. 
 » Not that he would have wished Boswell ' to talk from books.' 
 ' You and I,' he once said to him, ' do not talk from books.' Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Nov. 3, 1773. See post, iii. 123, note i, for Boswell's want of 
 learning. 
 
 to
 
 414 M'^' Cambridge s villa. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 to the test of real life. In conversation you never get a 
 system. What is said upon a subject is to be gathered 
 from a hundred people. The parts of a truth, which a man 
 gets thus, are at such a distance from each other that he 
 never attains to a full view.' 
 
 'To Bennet Langton, Esq. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I have enquired more minutely about the medicine for the 
 rheumatism, which I am sorry to hear that you still want. The 
 receipt is this : 
 
 'Take equal quantities of flour of sulphur, -ajvA flour of mustard- 
 seed, make them an electuary with honey or treacle ; and take a 
 bolus as big as a nutmeg several times a day, as you can bear it : 
 drinking after it a quarter of a pint of the infusion of the root of 
 Lovage. 
 
 ' Lovage, in Ray's JVofnendature, is Levisticum : perhaps the Bot- 
 anists may know the Latin name. 
 
 ' Of this medicine I pretend not to judge. There is all the ap- 
 pearance of its efficacy, which a single instance can afford : the 
 patient was very old, the pain very violent, and the relief, I think, 
 speedy and lasting. 
 
 ' My opinion of alterative medicine is not high, but quid tentasse 
 
 nocebit ? if it does harm, or does no good, it may be omitted ; but 
 
 that it may do good, you have, I hope, reason to think is desired by, 
 
 ' Sir, your most affectionate, 
 
 ' Humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'April 17, 1775.' 
 
 On Tuesday, April 18, he and I were engaged to go with 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds to dine with Mr. Cambridge \ at his 
 beautiful villa on the banks of the Thames, near Twicken- 
 ham. Dr. Johnson's tardiness was such, that Sir Joshua, 
 who had an appointment at Richmond, early in the day, 
 was obliged to go by himself on horseback, leaving his coach 
 to Johnson and me. Johnson was in such good spirits, that 
 every thing seemed to please him as we drove along. 
 
 Our conversation turned on a variety of subjects. He 
 
 ' St&post, under March 30, 1783. 
 
 thought
 
 Aetat. 66.] Johiisou a good-fmmoured fellow. 415 
 
 thought portrait -painting an improper employment for a 
 woman', ' PubHck practice of any art, (he observed,) and 
 staring in men's faces, is very indehcate in a female.' I hap- 
 pened to start a question, whether, when a man knows that 
 some of his intimate friends are invited to the house of 
 another friend, with whom they are all equally intimate, he 
 may join them without an invitation. JOHNSON. ' No, Sir; 
 he is not to go when he is not invited. They may be in- 
 vited on purpose to abuse him ' (smiling). 
 
 As a curious instance how little a man knows, or wishes 
 to know, his own character in the world, or, rather, as a con- 
 vincing proof that Johnson's roughness was only external, 
 and did not proceed from his heart, I insert the following 
 dialogue. JOHNSON. ' It is wonderful, Sir, how rare a qual- 
 ity good humour is in life. We meet with very few good 
 humoured men.' I mentioned four of our friends \ none 
 of whom he would allow to be good humoured. One was 
 acid, another was mnddy^, and to the others he had objec- 
 tions which have escaped me. Then, shaking his head and 
 stretching himself at ease in the coach, and smiling with 
 much complacency, he turned to me and said, ' I look upon 
 myself as a good humoured fellow.' The epithet fellow, 
 
 ' Yet he sat to Miss Reynolds, as he tells us, perhaps ten times 
 (/^i-/, under June 17, 1783), and ' Miss Reynolds's mind,' he said, 'was 
 very near to purity itself.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 80. Eight years 
 later Barr>^ in his Analysis {post. May, 1783, note), said : — ' Our females 
 are totally, shamefully, and cruelly neglected in the appropriation of 
 trades and employments.' Barry's Works, ii. 333. 
 
 - The four most likely to be mentioned would be, I think. Beau- 
 clerk, Garrick, Langton, and Reynolds. On p. 359, Boswell mentions 
 Beauclerk's ' acid manner.' 
 
 ^ In his Diet iona^y, ]o\\n'&ov\. defines muddy a.s cloudy in, mind, dull; 
 and quotes T/ie ll/inter's Tale, act i. sc. 2. Wesley {Journal, ii. 10) 
 writes : — ' Honest, mtiddy M. B. conducted me to his house.' Johnson 
 {post, March 22, 1776), after telling how an acquaintance of his drank, 
 adds, ' not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is 
 always muddy.' It seems at first sight unlikely that he called Reyn- 
 olds muddy; yet three months earlier he had written: — 'Reynolds 
 has taken tocj much to strong liquor.' See ante, ii. 334, note 4. 
 
 applied
 
 41 6 Learning in Scotlaiid. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 applied to the great Lexicographer, the stately Moralist, the 
 masterly Critick, as if he had been Sam Johnson, a mere 
 pleasant companion, was highly diverting ; and this light 
 notion of himself struck me with wonder. I answered, also 
 smiling, ' No, no. Sir ; that will 7wt do. You are good nat- 
 ured,but not good humoured' : you are irascible. You have 
 not patience with folly and absurdity. I believe you would 
 pardon them, if there were time to deprecate your ven- 
 geance ; but punishment follows so quick after sentence, 
 that they cannot escape.' 
 
 I had brought with me a great bundle of Scotch maga- 
 zines and news-papers, in which his Journey to the Western 
 Islands was attacked in every mode ; and I read a great part 
 of them to him, knowing they would afTord him entertain- 
 ment. I wish the writers of them had been present : they 
 would have been sufficiently vexed. One ludicrous imita- 
 tion of his style, by Mr. Maclaurin^ now one of the Scotch 
 Judges, with the title of Lord Dreghorn, was distinguished 
 by him from the rude mass. ' This, (said he,) is the best. 
 But I could caricature my own style much better myself.' 
 He defended his remark upon the general insufificiency of 
 education in Scotland ; and confirmed to me the authen- 
 ticity of his witty saying on the learning of the Scotch ; — 
 ' Their learning is like bread in a besieged town : every man 
 gets a little, but no man gets a full meaP.' ' There is, (said 
 he,) in Scotland, a diffusion of learning, a certain portion of 
 it widely and thinly spread. A merchant there has as much 
 learning as one of their clergy*,' 
 
 ' In The Rambler, No. 72, Johnson defines good-humour as 'a habit 
 of being pleased ; a constant and perennial softness of manner, easi- 
 ness of approach, and suavity of disposition.' 
 
 "^ See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773. 
 
 ^ ' It is with their learning as with provisions in a besieged town, 
 every one has a mouthful, and no one a bellyful.' Johnson's Works 
 (1787), xi. 200. 
 
 ^ ' Men bred in the Universities of Scotland cannot be expected to 
 be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but 
 they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge between learning and igno- 
 
 He
 
 Aetat. 66.] Isaac Walton. 417 
 
 He talked of Isaac Walton's Lives, which was one of his 
 most favourite books. Dr. Donne's Life, he said, was the 
 most perfect of them. He observed, that ' it was wonderful 
 that Walton, who was in a very low situation in life, should 
 have been familiarly received by so many great men, and 
 that at a time when the ranks of society were kept more 
 separate than they are now.' He supposed that Walton 
 had then given up his business as a linen-draper and semp- 
 ster, and was only an authour' ; and added, ' that he was a 
 great panegyrist.' BOSWELL. ' No quality will get a man 
 more friends than a disposition to admire the qualities of 
 others. I do not mean flattery, but a sincere admiration.' 
 Johnson. ' Nay, Sir, flattery pleases very generally". In 
 the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be 
 true : but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, 
 he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence 
 enough to be flattered.' 
 
 No sooner had we made our bow to Mr. Cambridge, in his 
 library, than Johnson ran eagerly to one side of the room, 
 intent on poring over the backs of the books ^ Sir Joshua 
 
 ranee, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I be- 
 lieve, very widely diffused among them.' Johnson's Works, ix. 158. 
 Lord Shelburne said that the Earl of Bute had 'a great deal of super- 
 ficial knowledge, such as is commonly to be met with in France and 
 Scotland, chiefly upon matters of natural philosophy, mines, fossils, a 
 smattering of mechanics, a little metaphysics, and a very false taste in 
 everything.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 139. 'A gentleman who had 
 heard that Bentley was born in tlie north, said to Porson : " Wasn't 
 he a Scotchman ?" " No, Sir," replied Porson, " Bentley was a great 
 Greek scholar." ' Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 322. 
 
 ' Walton did not retire from business till 1643. But in 1664, Dr. 
 King. Bishop of Chichester, in a letter prefixed to his Lives, mentions 
 his having been familiarly acquainted with him for forty years ; and 
 in 1631 he was so intimate with Dr. Donne that he was one of the 
 friends who attended him on his death-bed. J. Boswell, jun. His 
 first wife's uncle was George Cranmer, the grandson of the Arch- 
 bishop's brother. His second wife was half-sister of Bishop Ken. 
 
 ' Johnson himself, as Boswell tells us, ' was somewhat susceptible of 
 flattery.' See jiJc".?/, end of 1784. 
 
 ' The first time he dined with me, he was shewn into my book- 
 II. — 27 observed,
 
 41 8 Pictures^ books^ and music. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 observed, (aside,) ' He runs to the books, as I do to the pict- 
 ures : but I have the advantage. I can see much more of 
 the pictures than he can of the books.' Mr. Cambridge, 
 upon this, politely said, ' Dr. Johnson, I am going, with your 
 pardon, to accuse myself, for I have the same custom which 
 I perceive you have. But it seems odd that one should 
 have such a desire to look at the backs of books.' Johnson, 
 ever ready for contest, instantly started from his reverie, 
 wheeled about, and answered, ' Sir, the reason is very plain. 
 Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, 
 or we know where we can find information upon it. When 
 we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do 
 is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to 
 
 room, and instantly pored over the lettering of each volume within 
 his reach. My collection of books is very miscellaneous, and I feared 
 there might be some among them that he would not like. But seeing 
 the number of volumes very considerable, he said, ' You are an hon- 
 est man, to have formed so great an accumulation of knowledge.' 
 BURNEY. Miss Burney describes this visit {^Memoirs of Dr.Btirtiey, 
 ii. 93) : — ' Everybody rose to do him honour ; and he returned the at- 
 tention with the most formal courtesie. My father whispered to him 
 that music was going forward, which he would not, my father thinks, 
 have found out ; and, placing him on the best seat vacant, told his 
 daughters to go on with the duet, while Dr. Johnson, intently rolling 
 towards them one eye — for they say he does not see with the other — 
 made a grave nod, and gave a dignified motion with one hand, in 
 silent approvance of the proceeding.' He was next introduced to 
 Miss Burney, but ' his attention was not to be drawn off two minutes 
 longer from the books, to which he now strided his way. He pored 
 over them shelf by shelf, almost brushing them with his eye-lashes 
 from near examination. At last, fixing upon something that happened 
 to hit his fancy, he took it down, and standing aloof from the com- 
 pany, which he seemed clean and clear to forget, he began very com- 
 posedly to read to himself, and as intently as if he had been alone in 
 his own study. We were all excessively provoked, for we were lan- 
 guishing, fretting, expiring to hear him talk.' Dr. Burney, taking up 
 something that Mrs. Thrale had said, ventured to ask him about 
 Bach's concert. 'The Doctor, comprehending his drift, good-nat- 
 uredly put away his book, and see -sawing with a very humorous 
 smile, drolly repeated, " Bach, Sir? Bach's concert? And pray. Sir, 
 who is Bach ? Is he a piper ?" ' 
 
 look
 
 Aetat. 66.] Joluison s extraordinary promptitude. 419 
 
 look at catalogues, and the backs of books in libraries.' Sir 
 Joshua observed to me the extraordinary promptitude with 
 which Johnson flew upon an argument. ' Yes, (said I,) he 
 has no formal preparation, no flourishing with his sword ; 
 he is through your body in an instant'.' 
 
 Johnson was here solaced with an elegant entertainment, 
 a very accomplished family, and much good company ; 
 among whom was Mr. Harris'' of Salisbury, who paid him 
 many compliments on his Journey to the Western Islands. 
 
 The common remark as to the utility of reading history 
 being made; — JOHNSON. 'We must consider how very little 
 history there is; I mean real authentick history. That cer- 
 tain Kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can 
 depend upon as true; but all the colouring, all the philosophy 
 of history is conjecture \' BOSWELL. 'Then, Sir, you would 
 reduce all history to no better than an almanack*, a mere 
 
 ' Reynolds, noting down ' such qualities as Johnson's works cannot 
 convey,' says that ' the most distinguished was his possessing a mind 
 which was, as I may say, always ready for use. Most general subjects 
 had undoubtedly been already discussed in the course of a studious 
 thinking life. In this respect few men ever came better prepared into 
 whatev-er company chance might throw him ; and the love which he had 
 to society gave him a facility in the practice of applying his knowledge 
 of the matter in hand, in which I believe he was never exceeded by any 
 man.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 454. ^ See ante, ii. 258. 
 
 ^ 'Our silly things called Histories,' wrote Burke {Corrcs. i. 337). 
 'The Duke of Richmond, Fox, and Burke,' said Rogers {Table-Talk, 
 p. 82), 'were conversing about history, philosophy, and poetry. The 
 Duke said, " I prefer history to philosophy or poetry, because history 
 is tnitJi." Both Fox and Burke disagreed with him : they thought 
 that poetry was irttth, being a representation of human nature.' 
 Lord Bolingbroke had said ( Works, iii. 322) that the child ' in riper 
 years applies himself to history, or to that which he takes for history, 
 to authorised romance.' 
 
 *■ Mr. Plunkct made a great sensation in the House of Commons 
 (Feb. 28, 1825) by saying that history, if not judiciously read, ' was no 
 better than an old almanack ' — which Mcrcier had already said in his 
 Noiiveau Tableau de Parts — ' Malet du Pan's and such like histories 
 of the revolution are no better than an old almanack.' Boswell,.we 
 see, had anticipated both. Croker. 
 
 chronoloeical
 
 420 Early habits. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 chronological series of remarkable events.' Mr. Gibbon, who 
 must at that time have been employed upon his History\ 
 of which he published the first volume in the following year, 
 was present ; but did not step forth in defence of that species 
 of writing. He probably did not like to trust himself with 
 Johnson'! 
 
 Johnson observed, that the force of our early habits was 
 so great, that though reason approved, nay, though our 
 senses relished a different course, almost every man returned 
 to them. I do not believe there is any observation upon 
 human nature better founded than this; and, in many cases, 
 it is a very painful truth ; for where early habits have been 
 mean and wretched, the joy and elevation resulting from 
 better modes of life must be damped by the gloomy con- 
 sciousness of being under an almost inevitable doom to sink 
 back into a situation which we recollect with disgust. It 
 surely may be prevented, by constant attention and unre- 
 mitting exertion to establish contrary habits of superiour 
 efficacy. 
 
 The Beggar s Opera, and the common question, whether 
 it was pernicious in its effects, having been introduced; — 
 
 * It was at Rome on Oct. 15, 1764, says Gibbon in a famous passage, 
 ' that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started 
 to my mind.' It was not till towards the end of 1772 that he ' under- 
 took the composition of the first volume.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, 
 i. 198, 217-9. 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 398. Boswell. Gibbon, when with Johnson, perhaps 
 felt that timidity which kept him silent in Parliament. ' I was not 
 armed by nature and education,' he writes, ' with the intrepid energy 
 of mind and voice 
 
 Vi7icentem strepitiis, ct nation rebus agendis. 
 Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen dis- 
 couraged the trial of my voice.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 221. Some 
 years before he entered Parliament, he said that his genius was ' bet- 
 ter qualified for the deliberate compositions of the closet, than for 
 the extemporary discourses of the Parliament. An unexpected ob- 
 jection would disconcert me ; and as I am incapable of explaining to 
 others what I do not thoroughly understand myself, I should be medi- 
 tating while I ought to be answering.' lb. ii. 39. 
 
 Johnson.
 
 Aetat.CG.] ThE BeGGAR'S OpERA. 42 1 
 
 Johnson. ' As to this matter, which has been very much 
 contested, I myself am of opinion, that more influence has 
 been ascribed to TJic Beggar s Opera, than it in reaHty ever 
 had; for I do not beHeve that any man was ever made a rogue 
 by being present at its representation. At the same time I 
 do not deny that it may have some influence, by making 
 the character of a rogue famihar, and in some degree pleas- 
 ing'.' Then collecting himself as it were, to give a heavy 
 stroke : ' There is in it such a labefactation of all principles, 
 as may be injurious to morality.' 
 
 While he pronounced .this response, we sat in a comical 
 sort of restraint, smothering a laugh, which we were afraid 
 might burst out. In his Life of Gay, he has been still more 
 decisive as to the inefficiency of The Beggar s Opera in cor- 
 rupting society ^ But I have ever thought somewhat dif- 
 ferently ; for, indeed, not only are the gaiety and heroism of 
 a highwayman very captivating to a youthful imagination, 
 but the arguments for adventurous depredation are so plausi- 
 ble, the allusions so lively, and the contrasts with the ordi- 
 nary and more painful modes of acquiring property are so 
 
 ' A very eminent physician, whose discernment is as acute and pen- 
 etrating in judging of the human character as it is in his own profes- 
 sion, remarked once at a club where I was, that a lively young man, 
 fond of pleasure, and without money, would hardly resist a solicita- 
 tion from his mistress to go upon the highway, immediately after be- 
 ing present at the representation of T/ie Begt^ars Opera. I have been 
 told of an ingenious observation by Mr. Gibbon, that ' T/ie Beggar's 
 Opera may, perhaps, have sometimes increased the number of high- 
 waymen ; but that it has had a beneficial effect in refining that class 
 of men, making them less ferocious, more polite, in short, more like 
 gentlemen.' Upon this Mr. Courtenay said, that 'Gay was the Or- 
 pheus of highwaymen.' BoswELL. 
 
 ^ ' The play like many others was plainly written only to divert 
 without any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good ; 
 nor can it be conceived without more speculation than life requires 
 or admits to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and house- 
 breakers seldom frequent the play-house, or mingle in any elegant 
 diversion ; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob 
 with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.' 
 Works, viii. 68. 
 
 artfully
 
 42 2 The Beggar's Opera. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 artfully displayed, that it requires a cool and strong judge- 
 ment to resist so imposing an aggregate: yet, I own, I should 
 be very sorry to have The Beggar s Opera suppressed; for 
 there is in it so much of real London life, so much brilliant 
 wit, and such a variety of airs, which, from early association 
 of ideas, engage, soothe, and enliven the mind, that no per- 
 formance which the theatre exhibits, delights me more. 
 
 The late '■ wortJiy' Duke of Oueensberry ', as Thomson, in 
 his Seasons, justly characterises him, told me, that when Gay 
 first shewed him The Beggar s Opera, his Grace's observa- 
 tion was, 'This is a very odd thing. Gay; I am satisfied that 
 it is either a very good thing, or a very bad thing.' It 
 proved the former, beyond the warmest expectations of the 
 authour or his friends. Mr. Cambridge, however, shewed us 
 to-day, that there was good reason enough to doubt con- 
 cerning its success. He was told by Quin, that during the 
 first night of its appearance, it was long in a very dubious 
 state ; that there was a disposition to damn it, and that it 
 was saved by the song% 
 
 ' Oh ponder well ! be not severe !' 
 
 the audience being much affected by the innocent looks of 
 Polly, when she came to those two lines, which exhibit at 
 once a painful and ridiculous image, 
 
 ' For on the rope that hangs my Dear, 
 Depends poor Polly's life.' 
 
 ' The worthy Queensb'ry yet laments his Gay.' 
 T/ie Seasons. Summer, 1. 1422. Pope {Pro/ogiec to the Satires, 1. 259) 
 
 says : — 
 
 ' Of all thy blameless life the sole return 
 My verse, and Queensb'ry weeping o'er thy urn.' 
 Johnson ( Works, viii. 69) mentions ' the affectionate attention of the 
 Duke and Duchess of Oueensberry, into whose house he was taken, 
 and with whom he passed the remaining part of his life.' Smollett, 
 in Humphry Clinker, in the letters of Sept. 12 and 13, speaks of the 
 Duke as ' one of the best men that ever breathed,' ' one of those few 
 noblemen whose goodness of heart does honour to human nature.' 
 He died in 1778. 
 
 ° This song is the twelfth air in act i. 
 
 Ouin
 
 Aetat. GG.] R. B. Sheridan s marriage. 423 
 
 Ouin himself had so bad an opinion of it, that he refused 
 the part of Captain Macheath, and gave it to Walker', who 
 acquired great celebrity by his grave yet animated perform- 
 ance of it\ 
 
 We talked of a young gentleman's marriage with an emi- 
 nent singer ^ and his determination that she should no lon- 
 ger sing in publick, though his father was very earnest she 
 should, because her talents would be liberally rewarded, so 
 as to make her a good fortune. It was questioned whether 
 the young gentleman, who had not a shilling in the world\ 
 but was blest with very uncommon talents, was not fool- 
 ishly delicate, or foolishly proud, and his father truely ra- 
 tional without being mean. Johnson, with all the high 
 spirit of a Roman senator, exclaimed, ' He resolved wisely 
 and nobly to be sure. He is a brave man. Would not a 
 gentleman be disgraced by having his wife singing publick- 
 ly for hire? No, Sir, there can be no doubt here. I know 
 not if I should not prepare myself for a publick singer, as 
 readily as let my wife be one.' 
 
 Johnson arraigned the modern politicks of this coun- 
 try, as entirely devoid of all principle of whatever kind. 
 
 ' ' In several parts of tragedy,' writes Tom Davies, ' Walker's look, 
 deportment, and action gave a distinguished glare to tyrannic rage.' 
 Davies's Carrick, i. 24. 
 
 = Pope said of himself and Swift : — ' Neither of us thought it would 
 succeed. We shewed it to Congreve, who said it would either take 
 greatly or be damned confoundedly. We were all at the first night 
 of it in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encour- 
 aged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle say, " It will do — it must do ! 
 I see it in the eyes of them !" This was a good while before the first 
 act was over, and so gave us ease soon : for that duke has a more par- 
 ticular knack than any one now living in discovering the taste of the 
 publick. He was quite right in this, as usual : the good-nature of the 
 audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a 
 clamour of applause.' Spence's Ancc. p. 159. See The Dunciad, iii. 
 330, and post, April 25, 1778. 
 
 ^ R. B. Sheridan married Miss Linley in 1773. 
 
 ^ His wife had 7^3000, settled on her with delicate generosity by a 
 gentleman to whom she had been engaged. Moore's Sheridan, i. 43. 
 
 ' Politicks,
 
 424 Absolute governmefit. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 ' Politicks, (said he,) are now nothing more than means of 
 rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in 
 politicks, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it. How 
 different in that respect is the state of the nation now from 
 what it was in the time of Charles the First, during the 
 Usurpation, and after the Restoration, in the time of Charles 
 the Second. Hndibras affords a strong proof how much 
 hold political principles had then upon the minds of men. 
 There is in Hndibras a great deal of bullion which will 
 always last. But to be sure the brightest strokes of his 
 wit owed their force to the impression of the characters, 
 which was upon men's minds at the time ; to their know- 
 ing them, at table and in the street ; in short, being fa- 
 miliar with them ; and above all, to his satire being di- 
 rected against those whom a little while before they had 
 hated and feared \ The nation in general has ever been 
 loyal, has been at all times attached to the monarch, though 
 a few daring rebels have been wonderfully powerful for a 
 time. The murder of Charles the First was undoubtedly 
 not committed with the approbation or consent of the peo- 
 ple. Had that been the case. Parliament would not have 
 ventured to consign the regicides to their deserved punish- 
 ment. And we know what exuberance of joy there was 
 when Charles the Second was restored. If Charles the 
 Second had bent all his mind to it, had made it his sole 
 object, he might have been as absolute as Louis the Four- 
 teenth.' A gentleman observed he would have done no 
 harm if he had. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, absolute princes 
 seldom do any harm. But they who are governed by them 
 are governed by chance. There is no security for good 
 government.' Cambridge. ' There have been many sad 
 
 * ' Those who had felt the mischief of discord and the tyranny of 
 usurpation read HudibrasWxVh. rapture, for every Hne brought back to 
 memory something known, and gratified resentment by the just cen- 
 sure of something hated. But the book, which was once quoted by 
 princes, and which supplied conversation to all the assemblies of the 
 gay and witty, is now seldom mentioned, and even by those that affect 
 to mention it, is seldom read.' The Idler, No. 59. 
 
 victims
 
 Aetat. C6.] Sir Roger de Cover ley. 425 
 
 victims to absolute government.' Johnson. ' So, Sir, have 
 there been to popular factions.' BOSWELL. ' The question 
 is, which is worst, one wild beast or many ?' 
 
 Johnson praised The Spectator, particularly the character 
 of Sir Roger de Coverley. He said, ' Sir Roger did not die 
 a violent death, as has been generally fancied. He was not 
 killed; he died only because others were to die, and because 
 his death afforded an opportunity to Addison for some very 
 fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making 
 Don Quixote die'. — I never could see why Sir Roger is rep- 
 resented as a little cracked. It appears to me that the 
 story of the widow was intended to have something super- 
 induced upon it : but the superstructure did not come^' 
 
 Somebody found fault with writing verses in a dead lan- 
 guage, maintaining that they were merely arrangements of 
 so many words, and laughed at the Universities of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, for sending forth collections of them not 
 only in Greek and Latin, but even in Syriac, Arabick, and 
 other more unknown tongues. Johnson. ' I would have as 
 many of these as possible ; I would have verses in every 
 language that there are the means of acquiring. Nobody 
 imagines that an University is to have at once two hundred 
 poets ; but it should be able to show two hundred scholars. 
 Pieresc's' death was lamented, I think, in forty languages. 
 
 ' In his Life of Addison, Johnson says ( Works, vii. 431) : — ' The rea- 
 son which induced Cervantes to bring his hero to the grave, /«r« mi 
 solo Jiacio Don Quixote y yo para el [for me alone was Don Quixote 
 born, and I for him], made Addison declare, with undue vehemence 
 of expression, that he would kill Sir Roger ; being of opinion that 
 they were born for one another, and that any other hand would do 
 him wrong.' 
 
 * ' It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up his original 
 delineation. He describes his knight as having his imagination some- 
 what warped ; but of this perversion he has made very little use.' 
 Johnson's Works, \'\\. \'i,\. 
 
 ^ 'The papers left in the closet of Pieresc supplied his heirs with a 
 whole winter's fuel.' The Idler, No. 65. 'A chamber in his house was 
 filled with letters fiom the most eminent scholars of the age. The 
 learned in Europe had addressed Pieresc in their difficulties, who was 
 
 And
 
 426 University-verses. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 And I would have had at every coronation, and every death 
 of a King, every GatidtJim, and every Ljictiis, University- 
 verses, in as many languages as can be acquired. I would 
 have the world to be thus told, " Here is a school where 
 every thing may be learnt." ' 
 
 Having set out next day on a visit to the Earl of Pem- 
 broke, at Wilton', and to my friend Mr. Tern pie ^ at Mam- 
 head, in Devonshire, and not having returned to town till 
 the second of May, I did not see Dr. Johnson for a con- 
 siderable time, and during the remaining part of my stay 
 in London, kept very imperfect notes of his conversation, 
 which had I according to my usual custom written out at 
 large soon after the time, much might have been preserved, 
 which is now irretrievably lost. I can now only record some 
 particular scenes, and a few fragments of his Dicmorabilia. 
 But to make some amends for my relaxation of diligence in 
 one respect, I have to present my readers with arguments 
 upon two law cases, with which he favoured me. 
 
 On Saturday, the sixth of May, we dined by ourselves at 
 the Mitre, and he dictated to me what follows, to obviate 
 the complaint already mentioned ^ which had been made 
 in the form of an action in the Court of Session, by Dr. 
 Memis, of Aberdeen, that in the same translation of a charter 
 in which physicians were mentioned, he was called Doctor of 
 Medicine. 
 
 'There are but two reasons for which a physician can decline 
 
 hence called "the attorney-general of the republic of letters." The 
 niggardly niece, though entreated to permit them to be published, 
 preferred to use these learned epistles occasionally to light her fires.' 
 Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, i. 59. 
 
 ' Boswell was accompanied by Paoli. To justify his visit to Lon- 
 don, he said : — ' I think it is also for my interest, as in time I may get 
 something. Lord Pembroke was very obliging to me when he was in 
 Scotland, and has corresponded with me since. I have hopes from 
 him.' Letters of Boswell, pp. 182, 189, and>«/, iii. 139, note i. Horace 
 "Walpole described Lord Pembroke in 1764 as 'a young profligate.' 
 Memoirs of the Reign of George IIL, i. 41 5. 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 362. Boswell. ' See atite, ii. 333. Boswell. 
 
 the
 
 Aetat. 66.] Physicians and Doctors of Medicine. 427 
 
 the title of Doctor of Medicine, because he supposes himself dis- 
 graced by the doctorship, or supposes the doctorship disgraced by 
 himself. To be disgraced by a title which he shares in common 
 with every illustrious name of his profession, with Boerhaave, with 
 Arbuthnot, and with Cullen, can surely diminish no man's reputa- 
 tion. It is, I suppose, to the doctorate, from which he shrinks, 
 that he owes his right of practising physick. A doctor of Medi- 
 cine is a physician under the protection of the laws, and by the 
 stamp of authority. The physician, who is not a Doctor, usurps 
 a profession, and is authorized only by himself to decide upon 
 health and sickness, and life and death. That this gentleman is 
 a Doctor, his diploma makes evident ; a diploma not obtruded 
 upon him, but obtained by solicitation, and for which fees were 
 paid. With what countenance any man can refuse the title which 
 he has either begged or bought, is not easily discovered. 
 
 ' All verbal injury must comprise in it either some false position, 
 or some unnecessary declaration of defamatory truth. That in 
 calling him Doctor, a false appellation was given him, he himself 
 will not pretend, who at the same time that he complains of the 
 title, would be offended if we supposed him to be not a Doctor. 
 If the title of Doctor be a defamatory truth, it is time to dissolve 
 our colleges ; for why should the publick give salaries to men 
 whose approbation is reproach ? It may likewise deserve the 
 notice of the publick to consider what help can be given to the 
 professors of physick, who all share with this unhappy gentleman 
 the ignominious appellation, and of whom the very boys in the 
 street are not afraid to say. There goes the Doctor. 
 
 ' What is implied by the term Doctor is well known. It distin- 
 guishes him to whom it is granted, as a man who has attained 
 such knowledge of his profession as qualifies him to instruct oth- 
 ers. A Doctor of Laws is a man who can form lawyers by his pre- 
 cepts. A Doctor of Medicine is a man who can teach the art of 
 curing diseases. There is an old axiom which no man has yet 
 thought fit to deny, N'il clat quod non habct. Upon this principle 
 to be Doctor implies skill, for 7ie7no docet quod non didicit. In Eng- 
 land, whoever practises physick, not being a Doctor, must practise 
 by a licence : but the doctorate conveys a licence in itself. 
 
 ' By what accident it happened that he and the other physicians 
 were mentioned in different terms, where the terms themselves 
 were equivalent, or where in effect that which was applied to him 
 was the most honourable, perhaps the)'^ who wrote the paper can- 
 not now remember. Had they expected a lawsuit to have been 
 
 the
 
 428 The Corporation of Stirling. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 the consequence of such petty variation, I hope they would have 
 avoided it '. But, probably, as they meant no ill, they suspected no 
 danger, and, therefore, consulted only what appeared to them pro- 
 priety or convenience.' 
 
 A few days afterwards I consulted him upon a cause, Pat- 
 erson and others against Alexander and others, which had 
 been decided by a casting vote in the Court of Session, de- 
 termining that the Corporation of Stirling was corrupt, and 
 setting aside the election of some of their officers, because it 
 was proved that three of the leading men who influenced 
 the majority had entered into an unjustifiable compact, of 
 which, however, the majority were ignorant. He dictated 
 to me, after a little consideration, the following sentences 
 upon the subject : — 
 
 ' There is a difference between majority and superiority ; ma- 
 jority is applied to number, and superiority to power ; and power, 
 like many other things, is to be estimated nofi nianero sed pondcrc. 
 Now though the greater number is not corrupt, the greater weight 
 is corrupt, so that corruption predominates in the borough, taken 
 coUectlvcly, though, perhaps, taken 7iumerically, the greater part may 
 be uncorrupt. That borough, which is so constituted as to act 
 corruptly, is in the eye of reason corrupt, whether it be by the 
 uncontrolable power of a few, or by an accidental pravity of the 
 multitude. The objection, in which is urged the injustice of mak- 
 ing the innocent suffer with the guilty, is an objection not only 
 against society, but against the possibility of society. All socie- 
 ties, great and small, subsist upon this condition ; that as the 
 individuals derive advantages from union, they may likewise suffer 
 inconveniences ; that as those who do nothing, and sometimes 
 those who do ill, will have the honours and emoluments of general 
 virtue and general prosperity, so those likewise who do nothing, 
 or perhaps do well, must be involved in the consequences of pre- 
 dominant corruption.' 
 
 This in my opinion was a very nice case; but the decision 
 was affirmed in the House of Lords. 
 
 ' In justice to Dr. Memis, though I was against him as an Advocate, 
 I must mention, that he objected to the variation very earnestly, be- 
 fore the translation was printed ofl. Boswell. 
 
 On
 
 Aetat. 66.] A visit to Bedlam. 429 
 
 On Monday, Ma}' 8, we went together and visited the 
 mansions of Bedlam'. I had been informed that he had 
 once been there before with Mr. Wedderburne, (now Lord 
 Loughborough,) Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Foote ; and I had 
 heard Foote give a very entertaining account of Johnson's 
 happening to have his attention arrested by a man who 
 was very furious, and who, while beating his straw ^ sup- 
 posed it was Wilham Duke of Cumberland, whom he was 
 
 ' Mr. Croker quotes The World of June 7, 1753, where a Londoner, 
 ' to gratify the curiosity of a country friend, accompanied him in Easter 
 week to Bedlam. To my great surprise,' he writes, ' I found a hun- 
 dred people, at least, who, having paid their twopence apiece, were 
 suffered unattended to run rioting up and down the wards making 
 sport of the miserable inhabitants. I saw them in a loud laugh of 
 triumph at the ravings they had occasioned.' Young {Uftz'versa I Pas- 
 sion, Sat. v.) describes Britannia's daughters 
 
 ' As unreserved and beauteous as the sun, 
 Through every sign of vanity they run ; 
 Assemblies, parks, coarse feasts in city halls, 
 Lectures and trials, plays, committees, balls; 
 Wells, Bedlams, executions, Smithfield scenes, 
 And fortune-tellers' caves, and lions' dens.' 
 In 1749, William Hutton walked from Nottingham to London, passed 
 three days there in looking about, and returned on foot. The whole 
 journey cost him ten shillings and eight-pence. He says : — ' I wished 
 to see a number of curiosities, but my shallow pocket forbade. One 
 pctiiiy to see Bedla?n was all I could spare.' Button's Life, pp. 71, 74. 
 Richardson {Familiar Letters, No. 153) makes a young lady describe 
 her visit to Bedlam : — ' The distempered fancies of the miserable pa- 
 tients most unaccountably provoked mirth and loud laughter; nay, 
 so shamefully inhuman were some, among whom (I am sorry to say it) 
 were several of my own sex, as to endeavour to provoke the patients 
 into rage to make them sport.' 
 
 ^ In the Life of Dryden {Works, \\\. 304), Johnson writes: — 'Virgil 
 would have been too hasty if he had condemned him [Statins] to straw 
 for one sounding line.' In HumpJiry Clinker (Letter of June 10), Mr. 
 Bramble says to Clinker : — ' The sooner you lose your senses entirely 
 the better for yourself and the community. In that case, some chari- 
 table person might provide you with a dark room and clean straw in 
 Bedlam.' Churchill, in Independejice (Poems, ii. 307), writes : — 
 'To Bethlem with him — give him whips and straw, 
 I'm very sensible he's mad in law.' 
 
 punishing
 
 430 The Duke of Cumberland. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746'. There 
 was nothing peculiarly remarkable this day ; but the gen- 
 eral contemplation of insanity was very affecting. I accom- 
 panied him home, and dined and drank tea with him. 
 
 Talking of an acquaintance of ours", distinguished for 
 knowing an uncommon variety of miscellaneous articles 
 both in antiquities and polite literature, he observed, ' You 
 know. Sir, he runs about with little weight upon his mind.' 
 And talking of another very ingenious gentleman ^ who 
 from the warmth of his temper was at variance with many 
 of his acquaintance, and washed to avoid them, he said, 
 ' Sir, he leads the life of an outlaw.' 
 
 On Friday, May 12*, as he had been so good as to assign 
 
 ' My very honourable friend General Sir George Howard, who 
 served in the Duke of Cumberland's army, has assured me that the 
 cruelties were not imputable to his Royal Highness. Boswell. 
 Horace Walpole shews the Duke's cruelty to his own soldiers. ' In 
 the late rebellion some recruits had been raised under a positive en- 
 gagement of dismission at the end of three years. When the term 
 was expired they thought themselves at liberty, and some of them 
 quitted the corps. The Duke ordered them to be tried as deserters, 
 and not having received a legal discharge, they were condemned. 
 Nothing could mollify him; two were executed.' Memoirs of the 
 Reign of George II, ii. 203. 
 
 ^ It has been suggested that this is Dr. Percy (see post, April 23, 
 1778), but Percy was more than 'an acquaintance of ours,' he was a 
 friend. 
 
 ' Very likely Mr. Steevens. S&epost, April 13, 1778, and May 15, 1784. 
 
 * On this day Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale : — ' Boswell has made 
 me promise not to go to Oxford till he leaves London ; I had no great 
 reason for haste, and therefore might as well gratify a friend. I am 
 always proud and pleased to have my company desired. Boswell 
 would have thought my absence a loss, and I know not who else 
 would have considered my presence as profit. He has entered him- 
 self at the Temple, and I joined in his bond. He is to plead before 
 the Lords, and hopes very nearly to gain the cost of his journey. He 
 lives much with his friend Paoli.' Piozzi Letters, i. 216. Boswell 
 wrote to Temple on June 6: — 'For the last fortnight that I was in 
 London I lay at Paoli's house, and had the command of his coach. . . . 
 I felt more dignity when I had several servants at my devotion, a 
 large apartment, and the convenience and state of a coach. I recol- 
 
 me
 
 Aetat. 66.] Cons2iltations 07i Stinday. 431 
 
 me a room in his house, where I might sleep occasionally, 
 when I happened to sit with him to a late hour, I took 
 possession of it this night, found every thing in excellent 
 order, and was attended by honest Francis with a most 
 civil assiduity. I asked Johnson whether I might go to a 
 consultation with another lawyer upon Sunday, as that ap- 
 peared to me to be doing work as much in my way, as 
 if an artisan should work on the day appropriated for re- 
 ligious rest. Johnson. ' Why, Sir, when you are of con- 
 sequence enough to oppose the practice of consulting upon 
 Sunday, you should do it : but you may go now. It is 
 not criminal, though it is not what one should do, who is 
 anxious for the preservation and increase of piety, to which 
 a peculiar observance of Sunday is a great help. The dis- 
 tinction is clear between what is of moral and what is of 
 ritual obligation.' 
 
 On Saturday, May 13,1 breakfasted with him by invitation, 
 accompanied by Mr. Andrew Crosbie', a Scotch Advocate, 
 whom he had seen at Edinburgh, and the Hon. Colonel 
 (now General) Edward Stopford, brother to Lord Court- 
 own, who was desirous of being introduced to him. His 
 tea and rolls and butter, and whole breakfast apparatus were 
 all in such decorum, and his behaviour was so courteous, 
 
 lected that this dignity in London was honourably acquired by my 
 travels abroad, and my pen after I came home, so I could enjoy it 
 with my own approbation.' Letters of Bosti'ell, -p. 200. A year later 
 he records, that henceforth, while in London, he was Paoli's constant 
 guest till he had a house of his own there {post, iii. 40). 
 
 ' Lord Stowell told Mr. Croker that, among the Scottish literati, 
 Mr. Crosbie was the only man who was disposed to stand up (as the 
 phrase is) to Johnson. Croker's Boszvell, p. 270. It is said that he 
 was the original of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell in Scott's novel of Guy 
 Mamiering. Dr. A. Carlyle {Autobiography, p. 420) says of ' the fa- 
 mous club called The Poker,' which was founded in Edinburgh in 
 1762 : — ' In a laughing humour, Andrew Crosbie was chosen Assassin, 
 in case any officer of that sort should be needed ; but David Hume 
 was added as his Assessor, without whose assent nothing should be 
 done, so that between////.? and ;«/;«/.? there was likely to be no blood- 
 shed.' See \Io?,\\q\\'?> ticbrides, Aug. 16, 1773. 
 
 that
 
 432 The making of gold. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 that Colonel Stopford was quite surprised, and wondered 
 at his having heard so much said of Johnson's slovenli- 
 ness and roughness. I have preserved nothing of what 
 passed, except that Crosbie pleased him much by talking 
 learnedly of alchymy, as to which Johnson was not a posi- 
 tive unbeliever, but rather delighted in considering what 
 progress had actually been made in the transmutation of 
 metals, what near approaches there had been to the mak- 
 ing of gold ; and told us that it was af^rmed, that a per- 
 son in the Russian dominions had discovered the secret, 
 but died without revealing it, as imagining it would be prej- 
 udicial to society. He added, that it was not impossible 
 but it might in time be generally known. 
 
 It being asked whether it was reasonable for a man to be 
 angry at another whom a woman had preferred to him ; — 
 Johnson. ' I do not see. Sir, that it is reasonable for a man 
 to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him : 
 but angry he is, no doubt ; and he is loath to be angry at 
 himself.' 
 
 Before setting out for Scotland on the 23rd', I was 
 
 ' He left on the 22nd. ' Boswell,' wrote Johnson to Mrs. Thrale on 
 May 22, ' went away at two this morning. He got two and forty 
 guineas in fees while he was here. He has, by his wife's persuasion 
 and mine, taken down a present for his mother-in-law.' [? Step- 
 mother, with whom he was always on bad terms; post, iii. 108, note 2.] 
 Piozzi Letters, i. 219. Boswell, the evening of the same day, wrote to 
 Temple from Grantham : — ' I have now eat [sic] a Term's Commons 
 in the Inner Temple. You cannot imagine what satisfaction I had in 
 the form and ceremony of the Hall. . . . After breakfasting with Paoli, 
 and worshipping at St. Paul's, I dined tete-a-tete with my charming 
 Mrs. Stuart. We talked with unreserved freedom, as we had nothing 
 to fear; we were p/it7osop/u'cal,wpon honour — not deep, but feeling; 
 we were pious ; we drank tea, and bid each other adieu as finely as 
 romance paints. She is my wife's dearest friend ; so you see how beau- 
 tiful our intimacy is. I then went to Mr. Johnson's, and he accompa- 
 nied me to Dilly's, where we supped ; and then he went with me to the 
 inn in Holborn, where the Newcastle Fly sets out ; we were warmly 
 affectionate. He is to buy for me a chest of books, of his choosing, 
 off stalls, and I am to read more and drink less ; that was his coun- 
 sel.' Letters 0/ Boswell, p. 196. 
 
 frequently
 
 Aetat. GO.] GarricJS s hiozij ledge of Latin. 433 
 
 frequently in his company at different places, but during 
 this period have recorded only two remarks : one concern- 
 ing Garrick: ' He has not Latin enough. He finds out the 
 Latin by the meaning rather than the meaning by the 
 Latin'.' And another concerning writers of travels, who, 
 he observed, ' were more defective than any other writers'.' 
 
 I passed many hours with him on the 17th', of which 
 I find all my memorial is, ' much laughing.' It should 
 seem he had that day been in a humour for jocularity and 
 
 ' Yet Gilbert Walmsley had called him in his youth ' a good scholar.* 
 Garrick Corres. i. i ; and Boswell wrote to him : — ' Mr. Johnson is ready 
 to bruise any one who calls in question your classical knowledge, and 
 your happy application of it.' Id. p. 622. 
 
 " ' Those whose lot it is to ramble can seldom write, and those who 
 know how to write very seldom ramble.' Johnson to Mrs. Thrale. 
 Piozzi Letters, i. 32. S&q post, April 17, 177S. 
 
 ' A letter from Boswell to Temple on this day helps to fill up the 
 gap in his journal : — ' It gives me acute pain that I have not written 
 more to you since we parted last ; but I have been like a skiff in the 
 sea, driven about by a multiplicity of waves. I am now at Mr. Thrale's 
 villa, at Streatham, a delightful spot. Dr. Johnson is here too. I came 
 yesterday to dinner, and this morning Dr. Johnson and I return to 
 London, and I go with Mr. Beauclerk to see his elegant villa and libra- 
 ry, worth /3000, at Muswell Hill, and return and dine with him. I 
 hope Dr. Johnson will dine with us. I am in that dissipated state of 
 mind that I absolutely cannot write ; I at least imagine so. But while 
 I glow with gaiety, I feel friendship for you, nay, admiration of some 
 of your qualities, as strong as you could wish. My excellent friend, 
 let us ever cultivate that mutual regard which, as it has lasted till 
 now, will, I trust, never fail. On Saturday last I dined with John 
 Wilkes and his daughter, and nobody else, at the Mansion-House ; it 
 was a most pleasant scene. I had that day breakfasted with Dr. John- 
 son. I drank tea with Lord Bute's daughter-in-law, and I supped 
 with Miss Boswell. What variety! Mr. Johnson wen.t with me to 
 Beauclerk's villa, Beauclerk having been ill ; it is delightful, just at 
 Highgate. He has one of the most numerous and splendid private 
 libraries that I ever saw ; green-houses, hot-houses, observatory, lab- 
 oratory for chemical experiments, in short, everything princely. We 
 dined with him at his box at the Adelphi. I have promised to Dr. 
 Johnson to read when I get to Scotland, and to keep an account of 
 what I read ; I shall let you know how I go on. My mind must be 
 nourished.' Letters of Boswell, pp. 193-5. 
 
 H. — 28 merriment,
 
 434 Johnson's latigh. [a.d.1775. 
 
 merriment, and upon such occasions I never knew a man 
 laugh more heartily. Wc may suppose, that the high relish 
 of a state so different from his habitual gloom, produced 
 more than ordinary exertions of that distinguishing faculty 
 of man, which has puzzled philosophers so much to explain'. 
 Johnson's laugh 'was as remarkable as any circumstance in 
 his manner. It was a kind of good humoured growl. Tom 
 Davies described it drolly enough : ' He laughs like a rhi- 
 noceros.' 
 
 'To Bennet Langton, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I have an old amanuensis ^ in great distress. I have given 
 
 ' Swift did not laugh. ' He had a countenance sour and severe, 
 which he seldom softened by any appearance of gaiety. He stub- 
 bornly resisted any tendency to laughter.' Johnson's \]^orks,\\\\. 222. 
 Neither did Pope laugh. ' By no merriment, either of others or his 
 own, was he ever seen excited to laughter.' lb. p. 312. Lord Chester- 
 field wrote {Letters, i. 329) : — ' How low and unbecoming a thing laugh- 
 ter is. I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason no- 
 body has ever heard me laugh.' Mrs. Piozzi records {Anec. p. 298) that 
 ' Dr. Johnson used to say " that the size of a man's understanding 
 might always be justly measured by his mirth ;" and his own was 
 never contemptible.' 
 
 ' The day before he wrote to Mrs. Thrale : — ' Peyton and Macbean 
 (ante, i. 217) are both starving, and I cannot keep them.' Fz'oszz Let- 
 ters, \.2iZ. On April i, 1776, he wrote: — 'Poor Peyton expired this 
 morning. He probably, during many years for which he sat starv- 
 ing by the bed of a wife, not only useless but almost motionless, con- 
 demned by poverty to personal attendance, and by the necessity of 
 such attendance chained down to poverty— he probably thought often 
 how lightly he should tread the path of life without his burthen. Of 
 this thought the admission was unavoidable, and the indulgence 
 might be forgiven to frailty and distress. His wife died at last, and 
 before she was buried he was seized by a fever, and is now going to 
 the grave. Such miscarriages when they happen to those on whom 
 many eyes are fixed, fill histories and tragedies ; and tears have been 
 shed for the sufferings, and wonder excited by the fortitude of those 
 who neither did nor suffered more than Peyton.' /<^. 312. Baretti, 
 in a marginal note on Piozzi Letters, i. 219, writes: — 'Peyton was a 
 fool and a drunkard. I never saw so nauseous a fellow.' But Baretti 
 was a harsh judge. 
 
 what
 
 Aetat. 66.] English ediicatiou for ScotcJwim. 435 
 
 what I think I can give, and begged till I cannot tell where to beg 
 again. I put into his hands this morning four guineas. If you 
 could collect three guineas more, it would clear him from his pres- 
 ent difificulty. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 •May 21, 1775.' 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I make no doubt but you are now safely lodged in your own 
 habitation, and have told all your adventures to Mrs. Boswell and • 
 Miss Veronica. Pray teach Veronica to love me. Bid her not 
 mind mamma. 
 
 ' Mrs. Thrale has taken cold, and been very much disordered, 
 but I hope is grown well. Mr. Langton went yesterday to Lin- 
 colnshire, and has invited Nicolaida ' to follow him. Beauclerk 
 talks of going to Bath. I am to set out on INIonday ; so there is 
 nothing but dispersion. 
 
 ' I have returned Lord Hailes's entertaining sheets ^ but must 
 stay till I come back for more, because it will be inconvenient to 
 send them after me in my vagrant state. 
 
 ' I promised Mrs. Macaulay ^ that I would try to serve her son at 
 Oxford. I have not forgotten it, nor am unwilling to perform it. 
 If they desire to give him an English education, it should be con- 
 sidered whether they cannot send him for a year or two to an Eng- 
 lish school. If he comes immediately from Scotland, he can make 
 no figure in our Universities. The schools in the north, I believe, 
 are cheap ; and, when I was a young man, were eminently good. 
 
 ' There are two little books published by the P'oulis ', Telemachus 
 and CoUins's Poems, each a shilling : I would be glad to have them. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, though she does not 
 love me. You see what perverse things ladies are, and how little 
 
 ' A learned Greek. Boswell. ' He was a nephew of the Patriarch 
 of Constantinople, and had fled from some massacre of the Greeks.' 
 Johnstone's Life of Parr, i. 84. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 318. 
 
 ^ Wife of the Rev. Mr. Kenneth Macaulay, authour of The History 
 of St. Kilda. Boswell. See BuswcH's llcbrides, Aug. 28, 1773. 
 
 ^ 'The Elzevirs of Glasgow,' as Boswell called them. {Hebrides, 
 Oct. 29.) 
 
 fit
 
 436 BoswelVs mind somewhat dark. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 fit to be trusted with feudal estates. When she mends and loves 
 
 me, there may be more hope of her daughters. 
 
 ' I will not send compliments to my friends by name, because I 
 
 would be loath to leave any out in the enumeration. Tell them, 
 
 as you see them, how well I speak of Scotch politeness, and Scotch 
 
 hospitality, and Scotch beauty, and of every thing Scotch,but Scotch 
 
 oat-cakes, and Scotch prejudices. 
 
 ' Let me know the answer of Rasay ', and the decision relating 
 
 to Sir Allan '. 
 
 ' I am, my dearest Sir, with great affection, 
 
 ' Your most obliged, and 
 
 ' Most humble servant, 
 
 -^ , 'Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' May 27, 1775. ■' 
 
 After my return to Scotland, I wrote three letters to him, 
 from which I extract the following passages : — 
 
 ' I have seen Lord Hailes since I came down. He thinks it 
 wonderful that you are pleased to take so much pains in revising 
 his Annals. I told him that you said you were well rewarded by 
 the entertainment which you had in reading them.' 
 
 ' There has been a numerous flight of Hebrideans in Edinburgh 
 this summer, whom I have been happy to entertain at my house. 
 Mr. Donald Macqueen ^ and Lord Monboddo supped with me one 
 evening. They joined in controverting your proposition, that the 
 Gaelick of the Highlands and Isles of Scotland was not written 
 till of late.' 
 
 ' My mind has been somewhat dark this summer \ I have need 
 
 * See in Boswell's Hebrides, Johnson's letter of May 6, 1775. 
 
 ^ A law-suit carried on by Sir Allan Maclean, Chief of his Clan, to 
 recover certain parts of his family estates from the Duke of Argyle. 
 
 BOSWELL. 
 
 ^ A very learned minister in the Isle of Sky, whom both Dr. John- 
 son and I have mentioned with regard. Boswell. Boswell's Heb- 
 rides, Sept. 3, 1773, and Johnson's Works, ix. 54. Johnson in another 
 passage {ib. p. 115) speaks of him as 'a very learned minister. He 
 wished me to be deceived [as regards Ossian] for the honour of his 
 country ; but would not directly and formally deceive me.' Johnson 
 told him this to his face. Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22. His credulity 
 is shewn by the belief he held, that the name of a place called Ainnit 
 in Sky was the same as the Anaitidis deliibrjwi in Lydia. Ib. Sept. 17. 
 
 * This darkness is seen in his letters. He wrote 'June 3, 1775. It 
 
 of
 
 Aetat. 06.] Letter to Boswcll. 437 
 
 of your warming and vivifying rays ; and I hope I shall have them 
 frequently. I am going to pass some time with my father at Auch- 
 inleck.' 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I am returned from the annual ramble into the middle coun- 
 ties '. Having seen nothing I had not seen before, I have nothing 
 
 required some philosophy to bear the change from England to Scot- 
 land. The unpleasing tone, the rude familiarity, the barren conver- 
 sation of those whom I found here, in comparison with what I had 
 left, really hurt my feelings. . . . The General Assembly is sitting, and 
 I practise at its Bar. There is de facto something low and coarse in 
 such employment, though on paper it is a Court of Supreme Judica- 
 ture ; but guineas must be had. . . . Do you know it requires more 
 than ordinary spirit to do what I am to do this very morning : I am 
 to go to the General Assembly and arraign a judgement pronounced 
 last year by Dr. Robertson, John Home, and a good many more of 
 them, and they are to appear on the other side. To speak well, when 
 I despise both the cause and the Judges, is difficult : but I believe I 
 shall do wonderfully. I look forward with aversion to the little, dull 
 labours of the Court of Session. You see, Temple, I have my trou- 
 bles as well as you have. My promise under the venerable yew has 
 kept me sober.' Letters of Boswell, p. 19S. On June 19, he is ' vexed 
 to think myself a coarse labourer in an obscure corner. . . . Mr. Hume 
 says there will in all probability be a change of the Ministry soon, 
 which he regrets. Oh, Temple, while they change so often, how does 
 one feel an ambition to have a share in the great department ! . . . My 
 father is most unhappily dissatisfied with me. He harps on my going 
 over Scotland with a brute (think how shockingly erroneous !) and 
 wandering (or some such phrase) to London !' lb. p. 201. 'Aug. 12. 
 I have had a pretty severe return this summer of that melancholy, or 
 hypochondria, which is inherent in my constitution. . . . While afflicted 
 with melancholy, all the doubts which have ever disturbed thinking 
 men come upon me. I awake in the night dreading annihilation, or 
 being thrown into some horrible state of being.' He recounts a com- 
 plimentary letter he had received from Lord Mayor Wilkes, and con- 
 tinues : — ' Tell me, my dear Temple, if a man who receives so many 
 marks of more than ordinary consideration can be satisfied to drudge 
 in an obscure corner, where the manners of the people are disagreea- 
 ble to him.' lb. p. 209. 
 
 ' He was absent from the end of May till some time in August. 
 He wrote from Oxford on June i : — ' Don't suppose that I live here 
 as we live at Streatham. I went this morning to the chapel at sz'x.' 
 
 to
 
 43^ Mr. Coulsoii of University College, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 to relate. Time has left that part of the island few antiquities ; 
 and commerce has left the people no singularities. I was glad to 
 go abroad, and, perhaps, glad to come home ; which is, in other 
 words, I was, I am afraid, weary of being at home, and weary of 
 being abroad. Is not this the state of life ? But, if we confess 
 this weariness, let us not lament it, for all the wise and all the good 
 say, that we may cure it. 
 
 ' For the black fumes which rise in your mind, I can prescribe 
 nothing but that you disperse them by honest business or innocent 
 pleasure, and by reading, sometimes easy and sometimes serious. 
 Change of place is useful ; and I hope that your residence at Auch- 
 inleck will have many good effects '. ****** 
 
 Piozzi Letters, i. 223. He was the guest of Mr. Coulson, a Fellow of 
 University College. On June 6, he wrote : — ' Such is the uncertainty 
 of all human things that Mr. Coulson has quarrelled with me. He 
 says I raise the laugh upon him, and he is an independent man, and 
 all he has is his own, and he is not used to such things.' lb. p. 226. 
 An eye-witness told Mr. Croker that ' Coulson was going out on a 
 country living, and talking of it with the same pomp as to Lord Stow- 
 elL' [He had expressed to him his doubts whether, after living so 
 long in the great world, he might not grow weary of the comparative 
 retirement of a country parish. Croker's Boswcll, p. 425.] Johnson 
 chose to imagine his becoming an archdeacon, and made himself 
 merry at Coulson's expense. At last they got to warm words, and 
 Johnson concluded the debate by exclaiming emphatically — ' Sir, hav- 
 ing meant you no offence, I will make you no apology.' lb. p. 458. 
 The quarrel was made up, for the next day he wrote : — ' Coulson and 
 I are pretty well again.' Piozzi Letters, i. 229. 
 
 ' Boswell wrote to Temple on Sept. 2 : — ' It is hardly credible how 
 difficult it is for a man of my sensibility to support existence in the 
 family where I now am. My father, whom I really both respect and 
 affectionate (if that is a word, for it is a different feeling from that 
 which is expressed by love, which I can say of you from my soul), is 
 so different from me. We divaricate so much, as Dr. Johnson said, 
 that I am often hurt when, I dare say, he means no harm : and he 
 has a method of treating me which makes me feel myself like a timid 
 boy, which to Boswell (comprehending all that my character does in 
 my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) 
 is intolerable. His wife too, whom in my conscience I cannot con- 
 demn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I don't 
 know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and 
 so suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost 
 
 'That
 
 Aetat. 66.] Erse manuscripts. 439 
 
 'That I should have given pain to Rasay, I am sincerely sorry; 
 and am therefore very much pleased that he is no longer uneasy. 
 He still thinks that I have represented him as personally giving 
 up the Chieftainship. I meant only that it was no longer contested 
 between the two houses, and supposed it settled, perhaps, by the 
 cession of some remote generation, in the house of Dunvegan. I 
 am sorry the advertisement was not continued for three or four 
 times in the paper. 
 
 ' That Lord Monboddo and Mr. Macqueen should controvert a 
 position contrary to the imaginary interest of literary or national 
 prejudice, might be easily imagined ; but of a standing fact there 
 ought to be no controversy : If there are men with tails, catch an 
 Juww caudatus ; if there was writing of old in the Highlands or 
 Hebrides, in the Erse language, produce the manuscripts. Where 
 men write, they will write to one another, and some of their letters, 
 in families studious of their ancestry, will be kept. In Wales there 
 are many manuscripts. 
 
 ' I have now three parcels of Lord Hailes's history, which I pur- 
 pose to return all the next week : that his respect for my little ob- 
 servations should keep his work in suspense, makes one of the 
 evils of my journey. It is in our language, I think, a new mode 
 of history, which tells all that is wanted, and, I suppose, all that is 
 known, without laboured splendour of language, or affected subtilty 
 of conjecture. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder. He 
 seems to have the closeness of Henault ' without his constraint. 
 
 ' Mrs. Thrale was so entertained with your yournaP, that she 
 almost read herself blind. She has a great regard for you. 
 
 exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet. I however 
 have done so all this week to admiration : nay, I have appeared good- 
 humoured ; but it has cost me drinking a considerable quantity of 
 strong beer to dull my faculties.' Letters of Boswell, p. 21 5. 
 
 ' Voltaire wrote of Henault's AbrJge de I'Histoire de la France : — 
 ' II a ete dans I'histoire ce que Fontenelle a ete dans la philosophic. 
 II I'a rendue familierc.' Voltaire's Works, xvii. 99. With a quota- 
 tion from Henault, Carlyle begins his French Revolution. 
 
 ' My Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which that lady read in the 
 original manuscript. Bo.SWELL. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale, ' May 
 22, 1775 :— I am not sorry that you read Bos well 'sy(9//r/w/. Is it not 
 a merry piece ? There is much in it about poor me.' Piozzi Letters, 
 i. 220. 'June 1 1, 1775. You never told me, and I omitted to inquire, 
 how you were entertained by Boswell 's/tf«r«a/. 07ie would think the 
 man had been hired to be a spy upott tne. He was very diligent, and 
 
 *0f
 
 440 
 
 Mrs. Boswell. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 ' Of Mrs. Boswell, though she knows in her heart that she does 
 not love me, I am always glad to hear any good, and hope that 
 she and the little dear ladies will have neither sickness nor any 
 other affliction. But she knows that she does not care what be- 
 comes of me, and for that she may be sure that I think her very 
 much to blame. 
 
 ' Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head to think that 
 I do not love you ; you may settle yourself in full confidence both 
 of my love and my esteem ; I love you as a kind man, I value you 
 as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of 
 exemplary piety. I hold you, as Hamlet has it, " in my heart of 
 hearts ','' and therefore, it is little to say, that I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' London, Aug. 27, 1775.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' If in these papers ^ there is little alteration attempted, do not 
 suppose me negligent. I have read them perhaps more closely 
 than the rest ; but I find nothing worthy of an objection. 
 
 ' Write to me soon, and write often, and tell me all your honest 
 
 heart. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Yours affectionately, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson,' 
 
 'Aug. 30, 1775.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 'My dear Sir, 
 
 ' I now write to you, lest in some of your freaks and humours 
 you should fancy yourself neglected. Such fancies I must entreat 
 you never to admit, at least never to indulge : for my regard for 
 you is so radicated and fixed, that it is become part of my mind, 
 and cannot be effaced but by sonie cause uncommonly violent ; 
 therefore, whether I write or not, set your thoughts at rest. I now 
 
 caught opportunities of writing from time to time.' lb. p. 233. I 
 suspect that the words I have marked by italics are not Johnson's, 
 but are Mrs. Piozzi's interpolation. 
 
 ' ' In my heart of heart! Hamlet, act iii. sc. 2. 
 
 * Another parcel of Lord Hailes's Annals of Scotland. Boswell. 
 
 write
 
 Aetat. 66.] Johnson s tour to France. 441 
 
 write to tell you that I shall not very soon write again, for I am to 
 
 set out to-morrow on another journey. 
 
 ******* 
 
 'Your friends are all well at Streatham, and in Leicester-fields '. 
 Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, if she is in good humour 
 with me. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, &c. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' September 14, 1775.' 
 
 What he mentions in such light terms as, ' I am to set 
 out to-morrow on another journey,' I soon afterwards dis- 
 covered was no less than a tour to France with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Thrale. This was the only time in his life that he 
 went upon the Continent. 
 
 'To Mr, Robert Levet. 
 
 'Sept. 18 ^ 1775. 
 Calais. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 'We are here in France, after a very pleasing passage of no 
 more than six hours. I know not when I shall write again, and 
 therefore I write now, though you cannot suppose that I have 
 much to say. You have seen France yourself ^ From this place 
 we are going to Rouen, and from Rouen to Paris, where Mr. Thrale 
 designs to stay about five or six weeks. We have a regular rec- 
 ommendation to the English resident, so we shall not be taken for 
 vagabonds. We think to go one way and return another, and for 
 [? see] as much as we can. I will try to speak a little French*; I 
 tried hitherto but little, but I spoke sometimes. If I heard better, 
 I suppose I should learn faster. I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' Where Sir Joshua Reynolds lived. Boswell. 
 
 ^ Johnson's birthday. In Pr. and Med. p. 143, is a prayer which was, 
 he writes, ' composed at Calais in a sleepless night, and used before 
 the morn at Notre Dame.' 
 
 ' See ante, i. 282, note i. 
 
 * ' While Johnson was in France, he was generally very resolute in 
 speaking Latin.' See /(9j/, under Nov. 12, 1775. 
 
 To
 
 442 A letter from Paris, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 To THE Same. 
 
 ' Paris, Oct. 22, 1775. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' We are still here, commonly very busy in looking about us. 
 We have been to-day at Versailles. You have seen it, and I shall 
 not describe it. We came yesterday from Fontainebleau, where 
 the Court is now. We went to see the King and Queen at dinner, 
 and the Queen was so impressed by Miss ', that she sent one of 
 the Gentlemen to enquire who she was. I find all true that you 
 have ever told me of Paris. Mr. Thrale is very liberal, and keeps 
 us two coaches, and a very fine table ; but I think our cookery 
 very bad '\ ]\Irs. Thrale got into a convent of English nuns, and I 
 talked with her through the grate, and I am very kindly used by 
 the English Benedictine friars. But upon the whole I cannot 
 make much acquaintance here ; and though the churches, palaces, 
 and some private houses are very magnificent, there is no very 
 great pleasure after having seen many, in seeing more ; at least 
 the pleasure, whatever it be, must some time have an end, and we 
 are beginning to think when we shall come home. Mr. Thrale 
 calculates that, as we left Streatham on the fifteenth of September, 
 we shall see it again about the fifteenth of November. 
 
 ' I think I had not been on this side of the sea five days before 
 I found a sensible improvement in my health. I ran a race in the 
 rain this day, and beat Baretti. Baretti is a fine fellow, and speaks 
 French, I think, quite as well as English ^ 
 
 ' Make my compliments to Mrs. Williams ; and give my love to 
 Francis ; and tell my friends that I am not lost. 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your affectionate humble, &c. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'To Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Oct. 24, 1775. 
 ' My dear Sir, 
 
 ' If I had not been informed that you were at Paris, you 
 
 should have had a letter from me by the earliest opportunity, 
 
 ' Miss Thrale. Boswell. 
 
 ' In \\\?, Journal he records ' their meals are gross ' {post, Oct. 10). 
 We may doubt therefore Mrs. Piozzi's statement that he said of the 
 French : ' They have few sentiments, but they express them neatly ; 
 they have little meat too, but they dress it well.' Piozzi's Artec, p. 102, 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 419, note. 
 
 announcing
 
 Aetat. 66.] BosweWs SOU and heir. 443 
 
 announcing the birth of my son, on the 9th instant ; I have named 
 him Alexander \ after my father. I now write, as I suppose your 
 fellow traveller, Mr. Thrale, will return to London this week, to 
 attend his duty in Parliament, and that you will not stay behind 
 him. 
 
 ' I send another parcel of Lord Hailes's Annals. I have under- 
 taken to solicit you for a favour to him, which he thus requests in 
 a letter to me : "I intend soon to give you The Life of Robert 
 Bruce, which you will be pleased to transmit to Dr. Johnson. I 
 wish that you could assist me in a fancy which I have taken, of 
 getting Dr. Johnson to draw a character of Robert Bruce, from the 
 account that I give of that prince. If he finds materials for it in 
 my work, it will be a proof that I have been fortunate in selecting 
 the most striking incidents." 
 
 ' I suppose by The Life of Robert Bruce, his Lordship means that 
 part of his Annals which relates the history of that prince, and not 
 a separate work. 
 
 ' Shall we have A yourney to Paris from you in the winter ? 
 You will, I hope, at any rate be kind enough to give me some ac- 
 count of your French travels very soon, for I am very impatient. 
 What a different scene have you viewed tliis autumn, from that 
 which you viewed in autumn 1773 ! I ever am, my dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your much obliged and 
 
 ' Affectionate humble servant, 
 
 'James Boswell.' 
 
 *To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, ' 
 
 ' I am glad that the young Laird is born, and an end, as I 
 hope, put to the only difference that you can ever have with Mrs. 
 Boswell ". I know that she does not love me ; but I intend to per- 
 sist in wishing her well till I get the better of her. 
 
 ' Paris is, indeed, a place very different from the Hebrides, but 
 it is to a hasty traveller not so fertile of novelty, nor affords so 
 
 ' Boswell wrote to Temple: — 'You know, my dearest friend, of 
 what importance this is to me ; of what importance it is to the family 
 of Auchinlcck, ivhich you may be 7vell convinced z's my supreme object 
 171 this world. ' Letters of Boswell, p. 2 1 7. Alexander Boswell was killed 
 in a duel in 1822. 
 
 "^ This alludes to my old feudal principle of preferring male to 
 female succession. Boswell. See /i?^^ under Jan. 10, 1776. 
 
 many
 
 444 Tf^^ French way of life, [a.d, 1775. 
 
 many opportunities of remark. I cannot pretend to tell the pub- 
 lick any thing of a place better known to many of my readers than 
 to myself. We can talk of it when we meet. 
 
 ' I shall go next week to Streatham, from whence I purpose to 
 send a parcel of the History every post. Concerning the charac- 
 ter of Bruce, I can only say, that I do not see any great reason for 
 ^vriting it ; but I shall not easily deny what Lord Hailes and you 
 concur in desiring. 
 
 ' I have been remarkably healthy all the journey, and hope you 
 and your family have known only that trouble and danger which 
 has so happily terminated. Among all the congratulations that 
 you may receive, I hope you believe none more warm or sincere, 
 than tiiose of, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most affectionate, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' November i6, 1775 '.' 
 
 'To Mrs. Lucy Porter, in Lichfield*. 
 
 'Dear Madam, 
 
 'This week I came home from Paris. I have brought you 
 a little box, which I thought pretty ; but I know not whether it is 
 properly a snuffbox, or a box for some other use. I will send it, 
 when I can find an opportunity. I have been through the whole 
 journey remarkably well. My fellow-travellers were the same 
 whom you saw at Lichfield ^ only we took Baretti with us. Paris 
 is not so fine a place as you would expect. The palaces and 
 churches, however, are very splendid and magnificent; and what 
 would please you, there are many very fine pictures ; but I do not 
 think their way of life commodious or pleasant \ 
 
 ' He wrote to Dr. Taylor on the same day :— ' I came back last Tues- 
 day from France. Is not mine a kind of life turned upside down .'' 
 Fixed to a spot when I was young, and roving the world when others 
 are contriving to sit still, I am wholly unsettled. I am a kind of ship 
 with a wide sail, and without an anchor.' Notes atid Queries, 6th S., 
 v. 422. 
 
 ^ There can be no doubt that many years previous to 1775 he cor- 
 responded with this lady, who was his step-daughter, but none of his 
 earlier letters to her have been preserved. Boswell. Many of these 
 earlier letters were printed by Malone and Croker in later editions. 
 See i. 594. 
 
 ^ When on their way to Wales. July 7, ijj4,post, vol. v. 
 
 * Smollett wrote ( Travels, i. 88) : — ' Notwithstanding the gay dis- 
 
 'Let
 
 Aetat. 66.] Letters to Mrs. Lucy Porter. 445 
 
 ' Let me know how your health has been all this while. I hope 
 the fine summer has given you strength sufficient to encounter 
 the winter. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to all my friends ; and, if your fingers 
 
 will let you, write to me, or let your maid write, if it be troublesome 
 
 to you. I am, dear Madam, 
 
 'Your most affectionate humble servant,' 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' November 16, 1775.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 ' Dear Madam, 
 
 ' Some weeks ago I wrote to you, to tell you that I was just 
 
 come home from a ramble, and hoped that I should have heard 
 
 from you. I am afraid winter has laid hold on your fingers, and 
 
 hinders you from writing. However, let somebody write, if you 
 
 cannot, and tell me how you do, and a little of what has happened 
 
 at Lichfield among our friends. I hope you are all well. 
 
 ' When I was in France, I thought myself growing young, but 
 am afraid that cold weather will take part of my new vigour from 
 me. Let us, however, take care of ourselves, and lose no part of 
 our health by negligence. 
 
 ' I never knew whether you received the Commentary on the New 
 Testament and the Travels, and the glasses. 
 
 ' Do, my dear love, write to me ; and do not let us forget each 
 other. This is the season of good wishes, and I wish you all good. 
 I have not lately seen Mr. Porter ', nor heard of him. Is he with 
 you? 
 
 ' Be pleased to made my compliments to Mrs. Adey, and Mrs. 
 
 Cobb, and all my friends ; and when I can do any good, let me 
 
 know. 
 
 ' I am, dear Madam, 
 
 ' Yours most affectionately, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' December, 1775.' 
 
 It is to be regretted that he did not write an account of 
 his travels in France ; for as he is reported to have once 
 
 position of the French, their houses are all gloomy. After all it is in 
 England only where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay furni- 
 ture, neatness, and convenience.' 
 
 ' Son of Mrs. Johnson, by her first husband. Bosvvell. 
 
 said,
 
 44^ Johnsons French Journal. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 said, that ' he could write the Life of a Broomstick',' so, not- 
 withstanding so many former travellers have exhausted al- 
 most every subject for remark in that great kingdom, his 
 very accurate observation, and peculiar vigour of thought 
 and illustration, would have produced a valuable work. Dur- 
 ing his visit to it, which lasted but about two months, he 
 wrote notes or minutes of what he saw. He promised to 
 show me them, but I neglected to put him in mind of it ; 
 and the greatest part of them has been lost, or perhaps, 
 destroyed in a precipitate burning of his papers a few days 
 before his death, which must ever be lamented. One small 
 paper-book, however, entitled ' France II,' has been pre- 
 served, and is in my possession. It is a diurnal register of 
 his life and observations, from the loth of October to the 
 4th of November, inclusive, being twenty-six days, and shows 
 an extraordinary attention to various minute particulars. 
 Being the only memorial of this tour that remains, my read- 
 ers, I am confident, will peruse it with pleasure, though his 
 notes are very short, and evidently written only to assist his 
 own recollection. 
 
 'Oct. 10. Tuesday. We saw the Ecole Militaire, in which one 
 hundred and fifty young boys are educated for the army. They 
 have arms of different sizes, according to the age ; — flints of wood. 
 The building is very large, but nothing iine, except the council- 
 room. The French have large squares in the windows ; — they 
 make good iron palisades. Their meals are gross. 
 
 'We visited the Observatory, a large building of a great height. 
 The upper stones of the parapet very large, but not cramped with 
 iron. The flat on the top is very extensive ; but on the insulated 
 part there is no parapet. Though it was broad enough, I did not 
 care to go upon it. Maps were printing in one of the rooms. 
 
 ' We walked to a small convent of the Fathers of the Oratory. 
 In the reading-desk of the refectory lay the lives of the Saints. 
 
 ' ' A gentleman said, " Surely that Vanessa must be an extraordi- 
 nary woman, that could inspire the Dean to write so finely upon her." 
 Mrs. Johnson [Stella] smiled, and answered "that she thought that 
 point not quite so clear ; for it was well known the Dean could write 
 finely upon a broomstick." ' Johnson's Works, viii. 210. 
 
 'Oct. II.
 
 Aetat. 66.] The poor in France. 447 
 
 'Oct. II. Wednesday. We went to see Hotel de Chatlois\ a 
 house not very large, but very elegant. One of the rooms was gilt 
 to a degree that I never saw before. The upper part for servants 
 and their masters was pretty. 
 
 ' Thence we went to Mr. Monville's, a house divided into small 
 apartments, furnished with effeminate and minute elegance. — 
 Porphyry. 
 
 ' Thence we went to St. Roque's church, which is very large ; — 
 the lower part of the pillars incrusted with marble. — Three chapels 
 behind the high altar ; — the last a mass of low arches. — Altars, I 
 believe, all round. 
 
 ' We passed through Place de Vendome, a fine square, about as 
 big as Hanover-square. — Inhabited by the high families. — Lewis 
 XIV. on horse-back in the middle. 
 
 ' Monville is the son of a farmer-general. In the house of Chat- 
 lois is a room furnished with japan, fitted up in Europe. 
 
 ' We dined with Boccage % the Marquis Blanchetti, and his lady. 
 — The sweetmeats taken by the Marchioness Blanchetti, after ob- 
 serving that they were dear. — Mr. Le Roy, Count Manucci, the 
 Abbe', the Prior ^, and Father Wilson, who staid with me, till I took 
 him home in the coach. 
 
 ' Bathiani is gone. 
 
 ' The French have no laws for the maintenance of their poor. — 
 Monk not necessarily a priest. — Benedictines rise at four ; are at 
 church an hour and half ; at church again half an hour before, half 
 an hour after, dinner ; and again from half an hour after seven to 
 eight. They may sleep eight hours. — Bodily labour wanted in 
 monasteries. 
 
 ' The poor taken to hospitals, and miserably kept. — Monks in 
 the convent fifteen : — accounted poor. 
 
 'Oct. 12. Thursday. We went to the Gobelins. — Tapestry 
 makes a good picture ; — imitates flesh exactly. — One piece with a 
 gold ground ; — the birds not exactly coloured. — Thence we went 
 
 ' Horace Walpole wrote from Paris this autumn : — ' I have not yet 
 had time to visit the Hotel du Chatelct.' Letters, vi. 260. On July 
 31st, 1789, writing of the violence of the mob, he says : — ' The hotel of 
 the Due de Chatelet, lately built and superb, has been assaulted, and 
 the furniture sold by auction.' //;. ix. 202. 
 
 ' Sec post, under Nov. 12, 1775, note, and June 25, 1784. 
 
 ^ The Prior of the Convent of the Benedictines where Johnson had 
 a cell appropriated to him. See post, Oct. 31, and under Nov. 12. 
 
 to
 
 44^ Books in a ladys closet. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 to the King's cabinet; — very neat, not, perhaps, perfect. — Gold 
 ore. — Candles of the candle -tree. — Seeds. — Woods. Thence to 
 Gagnier's house, where I saw rooms nine, furnished with a profu- 
 sion of wealth and elegance which I never had seen before. — 
 Vases. — Pictures. — The Dragon china. — The lustre said to be of 
 crystal, and to have cost 3,5001. — The whole furniture said to have 
 cost 125,0001. — Damask hangings covered with pictures. — Porphy- 
 ry. — This house struck me. — Then we waited on the ladies to 
 Monville's. — Captain Irwin with us '. — Spain. — County towns all 
 beggars. — At Dijon he could not find the way to Orleans. — Cross 
 roads of France very bad. — Five soldiers. — Woman. — Soldiers es- 
 caped. The Colonel would not lose live men for the death of 
 
 one woman. — The magistrate cannot seize a soldier but by the 
 Colonel's permission. — Good inn at Nismes. — Moors of Barbary 
 fond of Englishmen. — Gibraltar eminently healthy ; — It has beef 
 from Barbary; — There is a large garden. — Soldiers sometimes fall 
 from the rock. 
 
 ' Oct. 13. Friday. I staid at home all day, only went to find the 
 Prior, who was not at home. — I read something in Canus \ — Nee 
 admiror, ncc multum laudo. 
 
 'Oct. 14. Saturday. We went to the house of Mr. Argenson, 
 which was almost wainscotted with looking-glasses, and covered 
 with gold. — The ladies' closet wainscotted with large squares of 
 glass over painted paper. They always place mirrours to reflect 
 their rooms. 
 
 ' Then we went to Julien's, the Treasurer of the Clergy : — 30,000!. 
 a year. — The house has no very large room, but is set with mir- 
 rours, and covered with gold. — Books of wood here, and in another 
 library. 
 
 ' At D********'s ' I looked into the books in the lady's closet, 
 and, in contempt, shewed them to Mr. T. — Prince Tiii\- BibL dcs 
 
 ' The rest of this paragraph appears to be a minute of what was 
 told by Captain Irwin. Boswell. 
 
 - Melchior Canus, a celebrated Spanish Dominican, who died at 
 Toledo, in 1 560. He wrote a treatise De Loci's Theologicis, in twelve 
 books. Boswell. 
 
 ^ D'Argenson's. Croker. 
 
 * See Macaulay's Essays, i. 355, and Mr. Croker's answer in his note 
 on this passage. His notion that 'this book was exhibited purposely 
 on the lady's table, in the expectation that her English visitors would 
 think it a literary curiosity,' seems absurd. He does not choose to 
 
 Fl^cs,
 
 Aetat. 66.] Visit to Mr. Freron. 449 
 
 Fees, and other books. — She was offended, and shut up, as we heard 
 afterwards, her apartment. 
 
 ' Then we went to Julien Le Roy, the King's watch-maker, a man 
 of character in his business, who shewed a small clock made to find 
 the longitude '. — A decent man. 
 
 'Afterwards we saw the Palais MarchamP, and the Courts of 
 Justice, civil and criminal. — Queries on the ScUctte'^. — This build- 
 ing has the old Gothick passages, and a great appearance of an- 
 tiquity. — Three hundred prisoners sometimes in the gaol \ 
 
 ' Much disturbed ; hope no ill will be '. 
 
 ' In the afternoon I visited Mr. Freron the journalist ". He 
 spoke Latin very scantily, but seemed to understand me. — His 
 house not splendid, but of commodious size. — His family, wife, son, 
 and daughter, not elevated but decent. — I was pleased with my 
 reception. — He is to translate my books, which I am to send him 
 with notes. 
 
 remember the ' Bibl. dcs Fees and other books.' Since I wrote this 
 note Mr. Napier has published an edition of Boswell, in which this 
 question is carefully examined (ii. 550). He sides with Macaulay. 
 
 ' ' Si quelque invention peut suppleer a la connaissance qui nous 
 est refusee des longitudes sur la mer, c'est celle du plus habile horloger 
 de France (M. Leroi) qui dispute cette invention a I'Angleterre.' Vol- 
 taire, Steele de Louis XV, ch. xliii. 
 
 ■' The Palais Marchaiid was properly only the stalls which were 
 placed along some of the galleries of the Palais. They have been all 
 swept away in Louis Philippe's restoration of the Palais. Crokkr. 
 
 ^ ' Petit siege de bois sur lequel on faisait asseoir, pour les interro- 
 ger, ceux qui etaient accuses d'un delit pouvant faire encourir une 
 peine afflictive.' Littre. 
 
 * The Conciergerie, before long to be crowded with the victims of 
 the Revolution. 
 
 ''' This passage, which so many think superstitious, reminds me of 
 Archbishop Laud's Diary. Boswell. Laud, for instance, on Oct. 27, 
 1640, records : — ' In my upper study hung my picture taken by the 
 life ; and coming in, I found it fallen down upon the face, and lying 
 on the floor, the string being broken by which it was hanged against 
 the wall. I am almost every day threatened with my ruin in Parlia- 
 ment. God grant this be no omen.' Perhaps there was nothing su- 
 perstitious in Johnson's entry. He may have felt ill in mind or body, 
 and dreaded to become worse. 
 
 " For a brief account of Freron, father and son, see Carlyle's French 
 Revolution, part ii. bk. i. ch. iv. 
 
 IL— 29 'Oct. 15.
 
 450 Mrs. Fermor. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 ' Oct. 15. Sunday. At Choisi, a royal palace on the banks of the 
 Seine, about 7 m. from Paris. — The terrace noble along the river. 
 — The rooms numerous and grand, but not discriminated from 
 other palaces. — The chapel beautiful, but small. — China globes. 
 — Inlaid tables. — Labyrinth. — Sinking table '. — Toilet tables. 
 
 'Oct. 16. Monday. The Palais Royal very grand, large, and 
 lofty. — A very great collection of pictures. — Three of Raphael. — 
 Two Holy Family. — One small piece of M. Angelo. — One room of 
 Rubens. — I thought the pictures of Raphael fine ^ 
 
 'The Thuilleries. — Statues. — Venus.— ^n. and Anchises in his 
 arms. — Nilus. — Many more. The walks not open to mean per- 
 sons. — Chairs at night hired for two sous apiece. — Pont tour- 
 nant '. 
 
 ' Austin Nuns. — Grate. — Mrs. Fermor, Abbess \ — She knew 
 
 Pope, and thought him disagreeable. — Mrs. has many books ' ; 
 
 — has seen life. — Their frontlet disagreeable. — Their hood. — Their 
 life easy. — Rise about five ; hour and half in chapel. — Dine at ten. 
 — Another hour and half at chapel ; half an hour about three, and 
 half an hour more at seven : — four hours in chapel. — A large gar- 
 den. — Thirteen pensioners °. — Teacher complained. 
 
 ' A round table, the centre of which descended by machinery to a 
 lower floor, so that supper might be served without the presence of 
 servants. It was invented by Lewis XV. during the favour of Madame 
 du Barri. Croker. 
 
 ^ See ante, i. 421, note. 
 
 ' Before the Revolution the passage from the garden of the Tuileries 
 into the Place Louis XV. was over a. po>it toitrnant. Croker. 
 
 * The niece of Arabella Fermor, the Belinda of the Rapt' of the 
 Lock. Johnson thus mentions this lady ( Works, viii. 246) : — ' At Paris, 
 a few years ago, a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English 
 convent, mentioned Pope's works with very little gratitude, rather as 
 an insult than an honour.' She is no doubt the Lady Abbess men- 
 tioned post, March 15, 1776. She told Mrs. Piozzi in 1784 'that she 
 believed there was but little comfort to be found in a house that har- 
 boured poets ; for that she remembered Mr. Pope's praise made her 
 aunt very troublesome and conceited, while his numberless caprices 
 would have employed ten servants to wait on him.' PiozzYs Journey, 
 i. 20. 
 
 * Mrs. Thrale wrote, on Sept. 18, 1777 : — ' When Mr. Thrale dismisses 
 me, I am to take refuge among the Austin Nuns, and study Virgil 
 with dear Miss Canning.' Piozzi Letters, i. 374. 
 
 " Pensionnaires, pupils who boarded in the convent. 
 
 'At
 
 Aetat. 66.] John SOUS affection for his wife. 451 
 
 'At the Boulevards saw nothing, yet was glad to be there. — 
 Rope-dancing and farce. — Egg dance. 
 
 ' N. [Note.] Near Paris, whether on week-days or Sundays, the 
 roads empty. 
 
 'Oct. 17. Tuesday. At the Palais Marchand I bought 
 A snuff-box \ 24 L. 
 
 6 
 
 Table book 15 
 
 Scissars 3 p [pair] 18 
 
 63 — 2 12 6^ 
 
 ' We heard the lawyers plead. — N. As many killed at Paris as 
 there are days in the year. Cha?nbrc dc question ^ — Tournelle ^ at 
 the Palais Marchand. — An old venerable building. 
 
 ' The Palais Bourbon, belonging to the Prince of Conde. Only 
 one small wing shown ; — lofty ; — splendid ; — gold and glass. — The 
 battles of the great Conde are painted in one of the rooms. The 
 present Prince a grandsire at thirty-nine ^ 
 
 ' The sight of palaces, and other great buildings, leaves no very 
 distinct images, unless to those who talk of them. As I entered, 
 my wife was in my mind ° : she would have been pleased. Having 
 now nobody to please, I am little pleased. 
 
 ' N. In France there is no middle rank '. 
 
 ' So many shops open, that Sunday is little distinguished at Paris. 
 — The palaces of Louvre and Thuilleries granted out in lodgings. 
 
 ' In the Palais de Bourbon, gilt globes of metal at the fire-place. 
 
 ' The French beds commended. — Much of the marble, onlv 
 paste. 
 
 - He brought back a snuff-box for Miss Porter. See ante, ii.4i';4. 
 
 * 63 livres=_;^2 \^s. 6d. 
 
 ^ Torture-chamber. See ante, i. 540, note 2. 
 
 * ' Au parlement de Paris la chambre chargee des affaires crimi- 
 nelles.' Littre. 
 
 * The grandson was the Duke d'Enghien who was put to death by 
 Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804. 
 
 " His tender affection for his departed wife, of which there are many 
 evidences in his Prayers and Meditations, appears very feelingly in 
 this passage. Boswell. ' On many occasions I think what she [his 
 wifej would have said or done. When I saw the sea at Brighthelm- 
 stone, I wished for her to have seen it with me.' Pr. and Med. p. 91. 
 
 ' ScQ. post, ii.461. 
 
 'The
 
 452 The French Court, [a. d. 1775. 
 
 ' The Colosseum a mere wooden building, at least much of it. 
 
 'Oct. 18. Wednesday. We went to Fontainebleau, which we 
 found a large mean town, crouded with people. — The forest thick 
 with woods, very extensive. — Manucci ' secured us lodgings. — The 
 appearance of the country pleasant. — No hills, few streams, only 
 one hedge. — I remember no chapels nor crosses on the road. — 
 Pavement still, and rows of trees. 
 
 ' N. Nobody but mean people walk in Paris ^ 
 
 'Oct. 19. Thursday. At Court, we saw the apartments; — the 
 King's bed-chamber and council-chamber extremely splendid. — 
 Persons of all ranks in the external rooms through which the family 
 passes : — servants and masters. — Brunet with us the second time. 
 
 ' The introductor came to us ; — civil to me. — Presenting. — I had 
 scruples. — Not necessary. — We went and saw the King' and Queen 
 at dinner. — We saw the other ladies at dinner — Madame Eliza- 
 beth *, with the Princess of Guimene. — At night we went to a com- 
 edy. I neither saw nor heard. — Drunken women. — Mrs. Th. pre- 
 ferred one to the other. 
 
 ' Oct. 20. Friday. We saw the Queen mount in the forest — 
 Brown habit ; rode aside : one lady rode aside. — The Queen's 
 horse light grey ; martingale. — She galloped. — We then went to 
 the apartments, and admired them. — Then wandered through the 
 palace. — In the passages, stalls and shops. — Painting in Fresco 
 by a great master, worn out. — We saw the King's horses and dogs. 
 — The dogs almost all English. — Degenerate. 
 
 'The horses not much commended. — The stables cool ; the ken- 
 nel filthy. 
 
 ' At night the ladies went to the opera. I refused, but should 
 have been welcome. 
 
 ' The King fed himself with his left hand as we. 
 
 'Saturday, 21. In the night I got ground. — We came home to 
 Paris. — I think we did not see the chapel. — Tree broken by the 
 wind. — -The French chairs made all of boards painted. 
 
 ' ^^^ post, iii. 102. 
 
 * Dr. Moore {Travels in France, i. 31) says that in Paris, ' those who 
 cannot afford carriages skulk behind pillars, or run into shops, to 
 avoid being crushed by the coaches, which are driven as near the 
 wall as the coachman pleases.' Only on the Pont Neuf, and the Pont 
 Royal, and the quays between them were there, he adds, foot-ways. 
 
 ^ Lewis XVI. 
 
 * The King's sister, who was guillotined in the Reign of Terror. 
 
 ' N. Soldiers
 
 Aetat. 66.] Versailles. 453 
 
 ' N. Soldiers at the court of justice. — Soldiers not amenable to 
 the magistrates. — Dijon woman '. 
 
 ' Faggots in the palace. — Every thing slovenly, except in the 
 chief rooms. — Trees in the roads, some tall, none old, many very 
 young and small. 
 
 'Women's saddles seem ill made. — Queen's bridle woven with 
 silver. — Tags to strike the horse. 
 
 ' Sunday, Oct. 22. To Versailles^, a mean town. Carriages of 
 business passing. — Mean shops against the wall. — Our way lay 
 through Seve, where the China manufacture. — Wooden bridge at 
 Seve, in the way to Versailles. — The palace of great extent. — The 
 front long ; I saw it not perfectly. — The Menagerie. Cygnets 
 dark ; their black feet ; on the ground ; tame. — Halcyons, or gulls. 
 — Stag and hind, young. — Aviary, very large ; the net, wire. — Black 
 stag of China, small. — Rhinoceros, the horn broken and pared 
 away, which, I suppose, will grow ; the basis, I think, four inches 
 'cross ; the skin folds like loose cloth doubled over his body, and 
 cross his hips ; a vast animal, though young ; as big, perhaps, as 
 four oxen, — The young elephant, with his tusks just appearing. — 
 The brown bear put out his paws ; — all very tame. — The lion. — 
 The tigers I did not well view.— The camel, or dromedary with 
 two bunches called the Huguin ^, taller than any horse. — Two cam- 
 els with one bunch. — Among the birds was a pelican, who being 
 let out, went to a fountain, and swam about to catch fish. His feet 
 well webbed : he dipped his head, and turned his long bill side- 
 wise. He caught two or three fish, but did not eat them. 
 
 ' Trianon is a kind of retreat appendant to Versailles. It has 
 an open portico ; the pavement, and, I think, the pillars, of marble, 
 — There are many rooms, which I do not distinctly remember — 
 A table of porphyry, about five feet long, and between two and 
 three broad, given to Louis XIV. by the Venetian State. — In the 
 council-room almost all that was not door or window, Avas, I think, 
 
 > See ante, ii. 448. Boswell. 
 
 ^ ' When at Versailles, the people showed us the Theatre. As we 
 stood on the stage looking at some machinery for playhouse pur- 
 poses ; " Now we are here, what shall we act, Mr. Johnson : — The Eng" 
 lishman in Paris " ? " No, no," replied he, " we will try to act Harry 
 the Fifth."' Piozzi's Anec. p. loi. The Englishman in Paris is a 
 comedy by Foote. 
 
 ^ This epithet should be applied to this animal, with one bunch. 
 Boswell. 
 
 looking-glass.
 
 454 '^^^ manufacttcre of looking-glasses, [a.d. 1775. 
 
 looking-glass. — Little Trianon is a small palace like a gentleman's 
 house. — The upper floor paved with brick. — Little Vienne. — The 
 court is ill paved. — The rooms at the top are small, fit to sooth the 
 imagination with privacy. In the front of Versailles are small ba- 
 sons of water on the terrace, and other basons, I think, below them. 
 There are little courts. — The great gallery is wainscotted with mir- 
 rours, not very large, but joined by frames. I suppose the large 
 plates were not yet made. — The play-house was very large. — The 
 chapel I do not remember if we saw — We saw one chapel, but I am 
 not certain whether there or at Trianon. — The foreign office paved 
 with bricks. — The dinner half a Louis each, and, I think, a Louis 
 over. — Money given at Menagerie, three livres ; at palace, six livres. 
 
 'Oct. 23. Monday. Last night I wrote to Levet. We went 
 
 to see the looking-glasses wrought. They come from Normandy 
 in cast plates, perhaps the third of an inch thick. At Paris they 
 are ground upon a marble table, by rubbing one plate upon another 
 with grit between them. The various sands, of which there are 
 said to be five, I could not learn. The handle, by which the up- 
 per glass is moved, has the form of a wheel, which may be moved 
 in all directions. The plates are sent up with their surfaces ground, 
 but not polished, and so continue till they are bespoken, lest time 
 should spoil the surface, as we were told. Those that are to be 
 polished, are laid on a table, covered with several thick cloths, hard 
 strained, that the resistance may be equal ; they are then rubbed 
 with a hand rubber, held down hard by a contrivance which I did 
 not well understand. The powder which is used last seemed to 
 me to be iron dissolved in aqua fortis : they called it, as Baretti 
 said, marc de reau forte, which he thought was dregs. They men- 
 tioned vitriol and saltpetre. The cannon ball swam in the quick- 
 silver. To silver them, a leaf of beaten tin is laid, and rubbed with 
 quicksilver, to which it unites. Then more quicksilver is poured 
 upon it, which, by its mutual [attraction] rises very high. Then a 
 paper is laid at the nearest end of the plate, over which the glass 
 is slided till it lies upon the plate, having driven much of the quick- 
 silver before it. It is then, I think, pressed upon cloths, and then 
 set sloping to drop the superfluous mercury; the slope is daily 
 heightened towards a perpendicular. 
 
 ' In the way I saw the Greve, the Mayor's house, and the Bastile. 
 
 ' We then went to Sans-terre, a brewer '. He brews with about 
 as much malt as Mr. Thrale, and sells his beer at the same price, 
 
 * He who commanded the troops at the execution of Lewis XVI. 
 
 though
 
 Aetat. 66.] The King's library. 455 
 
 though he pays no duty for malt, and Uttle more than half as much 
 for beer. Beer is sold retail at 6d. a bottle. He brews 4,000 bar- 
 rels a year. There are seventeen brewers in Paris, of whom none 
 is supposed to brew more than he : — reckoning them at 3,000 each, 
 they make 51,000 a year. — They make their malt, for malting is 
 here no trade. 
 
 ' The moat of the Bastile is dry. 
 
 ' Oct. 24. Tuesday. We visited the King's library — I saw the 
 Speculum hu7iiancc Salvationist rudely printed, with ink, sometimes 
 pale, sometimes black ; part supposed to be with wooden types, 
 and part with pages cut on boards. — The Bible, supposed to be 
 older than that of Mentz, in 62' : it has no date; it is supposed 
 to have been printed with wooden types. — I am in doubt ; the 
 print is large and fair, in two folios. — Another book was shown 
 me, supposed to have been printed with wooden types ; — I think, 
 Duraudl Saiictuarium ^ in 58. This is inferred from the difference 
 of form sometimes seen in the same letter, which might be struck 
 with different puncheons. — The regular similitude of most letters 
 proves better that they are metal. — I saw nothing but the Speculum 
 which I had not seen, I think, before. 
 
 'Thence to the Sorbonne. — The library very large, not in lat- 
 tices like the King's. Marbone and Durandi, q. collection 14 vol. 
 Scriptorcs de rebus Galllcls, many folios. — Histolrc Ghicalogiquc of 
 France, 9 vol. — Gallia Christiana, the first edition, 4to. the last, f, 
 12 vol. — The Prior and Librarian dined [with us] : — I waited on 
 them home. — Their garden pretty, with covered walks, but small ; 
 yet may hold many students. — The Doctors of the Sorbonne are 
 all equal : — choose those who succeed to vacancies. — Profit little. 
 
 'Oct. 25. Wednesday. I went with the Prior to St. Cloud, to 
 see Dr. Hooke. — We walked round the palace, and had some talk, 
 — I dined with our whole company at the Monastery. — In the li- 
 brary, Beroald, — Cymon, — Titus, from Boccace. — O ratio Proverbialis 
 to the Virgin, from Petrarch ; Falkland to Sandys ; Dryden's Pref- 
 ace to the third vol. of Miscellanies ^ 
 
 ' 1462. 
 
 " I cannot learn of any book of this name. Perhaps Johnson saw 
 Diirandi Rationale Officioruin IJ/7'/noruni, Vthich was printed in 1459, 
 one year later than Johnson mentions. A copy of this he had seen 
 at Blenheim in 1774. YW?, Journey into North Wales, Sept. 22. 
 
 * He means, I suppose, that he read these different pieces while he 
 remained in the library. BoswKLL. 
 
 ' Oct. 26.
 
 456 Luxembourg. [a. d. 1775. 
 
 'Oct. 26. Thursday. We saw the china at Seve, cut, glazed, 
 painted. Bellevue, a pleasing house, not great : fine prospect. — 
 Meudon, an old palace. — Alexander, in Porphyry : hollow between 
 eyes and nose, thin cheeks. — Plato and Aristotle. — Noble terrace 
 overlooks the town. — St. Cloud. — Gallery not very high, nor grand., 
 but pleasing. — In the rooms, Michael Angelo, drawn by himself, 
 Sir Thomas More, Des Cartes, Bochart, Naudaeus, Mazarine. — 
 Gilded wainscot, so common that it is not minded. — Gough and 
 Keene. — Hooke came to us at the inn. — A message from Drum- 
 gold. 
 
 'Oct. 27. Friday, I staid at home. — Gough and Keene, and 
 
 Mrs. S 's friend dined with us. — This day we began to have 
 
 a fire. — The weather is grown very cold, and I fear, has a bad ef- 
 fect upon my breath, which has grown much more free and easy in 
 this country. 
 
 ' Sat. Oct. 28. I visited the Grand Chartreux built by St. Louis. 
 — It is built for forty, but contains only twenty-four, and will not 
 maintain more. The friar that spoke to us had a pretty apart- 
 ment'. — Mr. Baretti says four rooms; I remember but three. — 
 His books seemed to be French. — His garden was neat ; he gave 
 me grapes. — We saw the Place de Victoire, with the statues of the 
 King, and the captive nations. 
 
 ' We saw the palace and gardens of Luxembourg, but the gallery 
 was shut. — We climbed to the top stairs. — I dined with Colbrooke, 
 who had much company : — Foote, Sir George Rodney, Motteux, 
 Udson, Taaf. — Called on the Prior, and found him in bed. 
 
 ' Hotel — a guinea a day. — Coach, three guineas a week. — Valet 
 de place ", three 1. ^ a day. — AvaJitcourcur, a guinea a week. — Ordi- 
 nary dinner, six 1. a head. — Our ordinary seems to be about five 
 guineas a day. — Our extraordinary expences, as diversions, gratui- 
 ties, clothes, I cannot reckon. — Our travelling is ten guineas a day. 
 
 ' Johnson in his Dictionary defines Apartment as A room ; a set of 
 rooms. 
 
 ^ Smollett ( Trai'ds, i. 85) writes of these temporary servants : — ' You 
 cannot conceive with what eagerness and dexterity these rascally 
 valets exert themselves in pillaging strangers. There is always one 
 ready in waiting on your arrival, who begins by assisting your own 
 servant to unload your baggage, and interests himself in your own 
 affairs with such artful officiousness that you will find it difficult to 
 shake him off.' 
 
 ^ Livres — francs we should now say. 
 
 ' White
 
 Aetat. 66.] The Foimdlijig-hospital. 45 7 
 
 'White stockings, 18 1. — Wig. — Hat. 
 
 ' Sunday, Oct. 29. We saw the boarding-school. — The Enfans 
 trouves^. — A room with about eighty -six children in cradles, as 
 sweet as a parlour. — They lose a third ^ ; take in to perhaps more 
 than seven [years old] ; put them to trades ; pin to them the pa- 
 pers sent with them. — Want nurses. — Saw their chapel. 
 
 .' Went to St. Eustatia ; saw an innumerable company of girls 
 catechised, in many bodies, perhaps 100 to a catechist. — Boys 
 taught at one time, girls at another. — The sermon; the preacher 
 wears a cap, which he takes off at the name : — his action uniform, 
 not very violent. 
 
 'Oct. 30. Monday. We saw the library of St. Germain \ — A 
 very noble collection. — Codex Diviuorum Offtciorum, 1459 : — a let- 
 ter, square like that of the Offices, perhaps the same. — The Codex, 
 by Fust and Gernsheym. — Meursius, 12 v. fol. — Atnadis, in French, 
 3 V. fol. — Catholicon sine colophone, but of 1460. — Two other 
 editions ", one by ... . 
 
 Augustin. de Civitate Dei, without name, date, or place, but of Fust's 
 square letter as it seems. 
 
 ' I dined with Col. Drumgold ; — had a pleasing afternoon. 
 
 ' Some of the books of St. Germain's stand in presses from the 
 wall, like those at Oxford. 
 
 'Oct. 31. Tuesday. I lived at the Benedictines; meagre day; 
 soup meagre, herrings, eels, both with sauce ; fryed fish ; lentils, 
 
 ' It was here that Rousseau got rid of his children. ' Je savais que 
 I'education pour eux la moins perilleuse etait celle des enfans trouves ; 
 et je les y mis.' Lcs Reveries, ix»'e pro/nenade. 
 
 ^ Dr. Franklin, in 1785, wrote : — ' I am credibly informed that nine- 
 tenths of them die there pretty soon.' Alemoirs, ill. 187. Lord Kames 
 {S/cetches of the History of Man, iii. 91) says : — ' The Paris almanac for 
 the year 1768 mentions that there were baptised 18,576 infants, of 
 whom the foundling-hospital received 6025.' 
 
 ' St. Germain des Pres. Better known as the Prison of the Ab- 
 baye. 
 
 ^ I have looked in vain into Dc Dure. Mcerman, Mattaire, and other 
 typographical books, for the two editions of the Catholicon, which Dr. 
 Johnson mentions herewith names which I cannot make out. I read 
 ' one by Latinius, one by Bocdinus! I have deposited the original MS. 
 in the British Museum, where the curious may sec it. My grateful 
 acknowledgements are due to Mr. Planta for the trouble he was 
 pleased to take in aiding my researches. Boswell. A Mr. Planta 
 is mentioned in Mme. D'Arblay's Z>/ary, v. 39. 
 
 tasteless
 
 458 Chantilly. [a.d, 1775. 
 
 tasteless in themselves. In the library ; where I found Maffeus's de 
 Historia Indka : Fromontonum flederc, to double the Cape. I parted 
 very tenderly from the Prior and Friar Wilkes'. 
 
 ''Maiire des Arts, 2 y. — Bacc. Theol. 3 y. — Licentiate, 2 y. — Doctor 
 Th. 2 y. in all 9 years. — For the Doctorate three disputations, Ma- 
 jor, Minor, Sorbonica. — Several colleges suppressed, and transferred 
 to that which was the Jesuits' College. 
 
 'Nov. I. Wednesday. We left Paris. — St. Denis, a large town; 
 the church not very large, but the middle isle is very lofty and 
 aweful. — On the left are chapels built beyond the line of the wall, 
 which destroy the symmetry of the sides. The organ is higher 
 above the pavement than any I have ever seen. — The gates are of 
 brass. — On the middle gate is the history of our Lord. — The paint- 
 ed windows are historical, and said to be eminently beautiful. — We 
 were at another church belonging to a convent, of which the portal 
 is a dome ; we could not enter further, and it was almost dark. 
 
 'Nov. 2. Thursday. We came this day to Chantilly, a seat be- 
 longing to the Prince of Conde. — This place is eminently beautified 
 by all varieties of waters starting up in fountains, falling in cas- 
 cades, running in streams, and spread in lakes. — The water seems 
 to be too near the house. — All this water is brought from a source 
 or river three leagues off, by an artificial canal, which for one league 
 is carried under ground. — The house is magnificent. — The cabinet 
 seems well stocked : what I remember was, the jaws of a hip- 
 popotamus, and a young hippopotamus preserved, which, how- 
 ever, is so small, that I doubt its reality. — It seems too hairy for 
 an abortion, and too small for a mature birth. — Nothing was in 
 spirits ; all was dry. — The dog, the deer ; the ant-bear with long 
 snout. — The toucan, long broad beak. — The stables were of 
 very great length. — The kennel had no scents. — There was a 
 mockery of a village. — The Menagerie had few animals ^. — Two 
 
 ' Friar Wilkes visited Johnson in May, 1776. Pioszi Letters, i. 336. 
 On Sept. 18, 1777, Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson : — ' I have got some 
 news that will please you now. Here is an agreeable friend come 
 from Paris, whom you were very fond of when we were there — the 
 Prior of our English Benedictine Convent, Mr. Cowley. . . . He in- 
 quires much for you ; and says Wilkes is very well. No. 45, as they 
 call him in the Convent. A cell is always kept ready for your use he 
 tells me.' lb. p. 373. 
 
 ^ The writing is so bad here, that the names of several of the ani- 
 mals could not be decyphered without much more acquaintance with 
 
 faussans,
 
 Aetat. 66.] Coiupicgne. 459 
 
 faussans *, or Brasilian weasels, spotted, very wild. — There is a 
 forest, and, I think, a park. — I walked till I was very weary, and 
 next morning felt my feet battered, and with pains in the toes. 
 
 ' Nov. 3. Friday. We came to Compiegne, a very large town, 
 with a royal palace built round a pentagonal court. — The court is 
 raised upon vaults, and has, I suppose, an entry on one side by a 
 gentle rise. — Talk of painting". — The church is not very large, but 
 very elegant and splendid. — I had at iirst great difficulty to walk, 
 but motion grew continually easier. — At night we came to Noyon, 
 an episcopal city. — The cathedral is very beautiful, the pillars alter- 
 nately gothick and Corinthian. — We entered a very noble parochial 
 church. — Noyon is walled, and is said to be three miles round. 
 
 ' Nov. 4. Saturday. We rose very early, and came through St. 
 Quintin to Cambray, not long after three. — \\q went to an English 
 nunnery, to give a letter to Father Welch, the confessor, who came 
 to visit us in the evening. 
 
 ' Nov. 5. Sunday. We saw the cathedral. — It is very beautiful, 
 with chapels on each side. — The choir splendid. — The balustrade 
 in one part brass. — The Neff ^ very high and grand. — The altar 
 
 silver as far as it is seen. — The vestments very splendid. At 
 
 the Benedictines church ' 
 
 natural histor)' than I possess. — Dr. Blagden, with his usual polite- 
 ness, most obligingly examined the MS. To that gentleman, and to 
 Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, who also very readily assisted me, 
 I beg leave to express my best thanks. Boswell. For Dr. Blagden 
 s&e. post, 17S0, in Mr. Langton's CoUcctioji. 
 
 ' It is thus written by Johnson, from the French pronunciation of 
 fossanc. It should be observed, that the person who shewed this 
 Menagerie was mistaken in supposing Xh^ fossanc and the Brasilian 
 weasel to be the same^ X}s\^ fossane being a different animal, and a na- 
 tive of Madagascar. I find them, however, upon one plate in Pen- 
 nant's Synopsis of Quadrupeds. BoSWELL. 
 
 "^ How little Johnson relished this talk is shewn by his letter to 
 Mrs. Thrale of May i, 1780, and by her answer. He wrote: — 'The 
 Exhibition, how will you do, either to see or not to see "? The Exhibi- 
 tion is eminently splendid. There is contour, and keeping, and grace, 
 and expression, and all the varieties of artificial excellence.' Piozzi 
 Letters, ii. in. She answered : — ' When did I ever plague you about 
 contour, and grace, and expression ? I have dreaded them all three 
 since that hapless day at Compiegne when you teased me so.' lb. p. 1 16. 
 
 * ' Nef (old French from nave), the body of a church.' Johnson's 
 Dictionary. 
 
 Here
 
 460 Johnsons account of his French tour. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 Here his Journar ends abruptly. Whether he wrote any 
 more after this time, I know not ; but probably not much, as 
 he arrived in England about the 12th of November. These 
 short notes of his tour, though they may seem minute taken 
 singly, make together a considerable mass of information, 
 and exhibit such an ardour of enquiry and acuteness of ex- 
 amination, as, I believe, are found in but few travellers, es- 
 pecially at an advanced age. They completely refute the 
 idle notion which has been propagated, that he could 7iot 
 sce^ ; and, if he had taken the trouble to revise and digest 
 them, he undoubtedly could have expanded them into a 
 very entertaining narrative. 
 
 When I met him in London the following year, the ac- 
 count which he gave me of his French tour, was, ' Sir, I have 
 seen all the visibilities of Paris, and around it ; but to have 
 formed an acquaintance with the people there, would have 
 required more time than I could stay. I was just beginning 
 to creep into acquaintance^ by means of Colonel Drumgold, 
 a very high man. Sir, head of UEcole Militaire, a most com- 
 plete character, for he had first been a professor of rhetorick, 
 and then became a soldier. And, Sir, I was very kindly 
 
 * My worthy and ingenious friend, Mr. Andrew Lumisden, by his 
 accurate acquaintance with France, enabled me to make out many 
 proper names, which Dr. Johnson had written indistinctly, and some- 
 times spelt erroneously. Boswell. Lumisden is mentioned in ^o^- 
 weW's Hebrides, Sept. 13. 
 
 ^ Baretti, in a marginal note on Piozzi Letters, i. 142, says that 'John- 
 son saw next to nothing of Paris.' On p. 159 he adds : — ' He noticed 
 the country so little that he scarcely spoke of it ever after.' He shews, 
 however, his ignorance of Johnson's doings by saying that ' in France 
 he never touched a pen.' 
 
 ^ Hume's reception in 1763 was very different. He wrote to Adam 
 Smith : — 'I have been three days at Paris, and two at Fontainebleau, 
 and have everywhere met with the most extraordinary honours which 
 the most exorbitant vanity could wish or desire.' The Dauphin's 
 three children, afterwards Lewis XVL Lewis XVHL and Charles X, 
 had each to make to him a set speech of congratulation. He was the 
 favourite of the most exclusive coteries. J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 168, 
 177, 208. But at that date, sceptical philosophy was the rage. 
 
 treated
 
 Aetat. 66.] N^o Iiappy middle state in France. 461 
 
 treated by the English Benedictines, and have a cell appro- 
 priated to me in their convent.' 
 
 He observed, ' The great in France live very magnificent- 
 ly, but the rest very miserably. There is no happy middle 
 state as in England'. The shops of Paris are mean; the 
 meat in the markets is such as would be sent to a gaol in 
 England" : and Mr. Thrale justly observed, that the cookery 
 
 ' Horace Walpole wrote from Paris in 1771 {Letters, v. '^,17-1^): — 
 'The distress here is incredible, especially at Court. . . . The middling 
 and common people are not much richer than Job when he had lost 
 everj'thing but his patience.' Rousseau wrote of the French in 1777 : 
 — ' Cette nation qui se pretend si gaie montre peu cette gaite dans 
 ses jeux. Souvent j'allais jadis aux guinguettes pour y voir danser 
 le menu peuple ; mais ses danses etaient si maussades, son maintien 
 si dolent, si gauche, que j'en sortais plutot contriste que rejoui.' Les 
 Reveries, I Xme. promenade. Baretti {Journey to Genoa, iv. 146) denies 
 that the French ' are entitled to the appellation of cheerful.' ' Prov- 
 ence,' he says {ib. 148), ' is the only province in which you see with 
 some sort of frequency the rustic assemblies roused up to cheerfulness 
 by Xh^ fifre and the tambourz'/i.' Mrs. Piozzi describes the absence of 
 'the happy middle state' abroad. 'As soon as Dover is left behind, 
 every man seems to belong to some other man, and no man to him- 
 self.' P'xozzis Joicrney, ii. 341. Voltaire, in his review oi Julia Mande- 
 ville { Works, xliii. 364), says : — ' Pour peu qu'un roman, une tragedie, 
 une comedie ait de succes a Londres, on en fait trois et quatre edi- 
 tions en peu de mois ; c'est que I'etat mitoyen est plus riche et plus 
 instruit en Angleterre qu'en France, &c.' But Barry, the painter {post. 
 May 17, 1783), in 1766, described to Burke, 'the crowds of busy con- 
 tented people which cover (as one may say) the whole face of the 
 country'.' But he was an Irishman comparing France with Ireland. 
 
 ' They make a strong, but melancholy contrast to a miserable 
 
 which I cannot help thinking of sometimes. You will not be at any 
 loss to know that I mean Ireland.' Barry's Works, i. 57. ' Hume,' 
 says Dr. J. H. Burton, ' in his Essay oft The Parties oj Great Britain 
 (published in 1741), alludes to the absence of a middle class in Scot- 
 land, where he says, there are only " two ranks of men, gentlemen who 
 have some fortune and education, and the meanest starving poor; 
 without any considerable number of the middling rank of men, which 
 abounds more in England, both in cities and in the country, than in 
 any other quarter of the world." ' Lije oJ Hume, i. 198. I do not find 
 this passage in the edition of Y{\xm€?, Essays of 1770. 
 
 ' Yet Smollett wrote in 1763 : — ' All manner of butcher's meat and 
 
 of
 
 462 The French an indelicate people. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 of the French was forced upon them by necessity ; for they 
 could not eat their meat, unless they added some taste to 
 it. The French are an indelicate people ; they will spit 
 
 upon any place'. At Madame 's', a literary lady of 
 
 rank, the footman took the sugar in his fingers', and threw 
 it into my coffee. I was going to put it aside ; but hearing 
 it was made on purpose for me, I e'en tasted Tom's fingers. 
 The same lady would needs make tea a V Angloise. The 
 spout of the tea-pot did not pour freely ; she bad the foot- 
 man blow into W. France is worse than Scotland in every 
 thing but climate. Nature has done more for the French ; 
 but they have done less for themselves than the Scotch 
 have done.' 
 
 It happened that Foote was at Paris at the same time 
 with Dr. Johnson, and his description of my friend while 
 there, was abundantly ludicrous. He told me, that the 
 French were quite astonished at his figure and manner, and 
 
 poultry are extremely good in Paris. The beef is excellent.' He 
 adds, ' I can by no means relish their cookery.' Smollett's Travels, i. 
 86. Horace Walpole, in 1765, wrote from Amiens on his way to Paris: 
 — ' I am almost famished for want of clean victuals, and comfortable 
 tea, and bread and butter.' Letters, iv. 401. Goldsmith, in 1770, wrote 
 from Paris : — ' As for the meat of this country I can scarce eat it, 
 and though we pay two good shillings an head for our dinner, I find it 
 all so tough, that I have spent less time with my knife than my pick- 
 tooth.' Forster's Goldsjnith, ii. 219. 
 
 ' Walpole calls Paris ' the ugliest, beastliest town in the universe,' 
 and describes the indelicacy of the talk of women of the first rank. 
 Letters, iv. 435. Sqq post. May 13, 1778, and under Aug. 29, 1783. 
 
 ^ Madame du Boccage, according to Miss Reynolds, whose author- 
 ity was Baretti. Croker's Boswell, p. 467. Sec post, June 25, 1784. 
 
 3 In Edinburgh, Johnson threw a glass of lemonade out of the win- 
 dow because the waiter had put the sugar into it ' with his greasy fin- 
 gers.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 14. 
 
 ^ Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson in 1782 : — ' When we were in France 
 we could form little judgement [of the spread of refinement], as our 
 time was passed chiefly among English ; yet I recollect that one fine 
 lady, who entertained us very splendidly, put her mouth to the tea- 
 pot, and blew in the spout when it did not pour freely.' Piozzi Let- 
 ters, ii. 247. 
 
 at
 
 Aetat. 6G.] Johnso7i s talk with foreig7iers. 463 
 
 at his dress, which he obstinately continued exactly as in 
 London'; — his brown clothes, black stockings, and plain 
 shirt. He mentioned, that an Irish gentleman said to John- 
 son, ' Sir, you have not seen the best French players.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' Players, Sir ! I look on them as no better than creat- 
 ures set upon tables and joint -stools to make faces and 
 produce laughter, like dancing dogs.' — ' But, Sir, you will 
 allow that some players are better than others?' JOHNSON. 
 ' Yes, Sir, as some dogs dance better than others.' 
 
 While Johnson was in France, he was generally very reso- 
 lute in speaking Latin. It was a maxim with him that a 
 man should not let himself down, by speaking a language 
 which he speaks imperfectly. Indeed, we must have often 
 observed how inferiour, how much like a child a man 
 appears, who speaks a broken tongue. When Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, at one of the dinners of the Royal Academy, pre- 
 sented him to a Frenchman of great distinction, he would 
 not deign to speak French, but talked Latin, though his 
 Excellency did not understand it, owing, perhaps, to John- 
 son's English pronunciation": yet upon another occasion 
 
 ' That he did not continue exactly as in London is stated by Bos- 
 well himself. ' He was furnished with a Paris-made wig of handsome 
 construction.' See post, April 28, 1778. His. Journal shews that he 
 bought articles of dress (afite, ii. 456). Hawkins {Lt'fc, p. 517) says that 
 ' he yielded to the remonstrances of his friends so far as to dress in a 
 suit of black and a Bourgeois wig, but resisted their importunity to 
 wear ruffles. By a note in his diary it appears that he laid out near 
 thirty pounds in clothes for this journey.' A story told by Foote we 
 may believe as little as we please. ' Foote is quite impartial,' said 
 Johnson, 'for he tells lies of everybody.' See pas/, under March 15, 
 1776. 
 
 ^ If Johnson's Latin was understood by foreigners in France, but 
 not in England, the explanation may be found in his Lzfc 0/ Milton 
 ( Works, vii. 99), where he says : — ' He who travels, if he speaks Latin, 
 may so soon learn the sounds which ever>' native gives it, that he 
 need make no provision before his journey ; and if strangers visit us, it 
 is their business to practise such conformity to our modes as they ex- 
 pect from us in their own countries.' Johnson was so sturdy an Eng- 
 lishman that likely enough, as he was in London, he would not alter 
 his pronunciation to suit his Excellency's ear. In Priestley's Works, 
 
 he
 
 464 Madame de Boufflers, [a.d. 1775, 
 
 he was observed to speak French to a Frenchman of high 
 rank, who spoke EngHsh ; and being asked the reason, with 
 some expression of surprise, — he answered, ' because I think 
 my French is as good as his EngHsh.' Though Johnson 
 understood French perfectly, he could not speak it readily, 
 as I have observed at his first interview with General Paoli, 
 in 1769' ; yet he wrote it, I imagine, pretty well, as appears 
 from some of his letters in Mrs. Piozzi's collection, of which 
 I shall transcribe one : — 
 
 A Madame La Comtesse de ", 
 
 'July 16, 1775°. 
 
 * Oui, Mada?ne, le moment est arrive, et il faut que je parte. Mais 
 pourquoi faut il partirl Est ce que je m'enmiye? ye m'' erinuyerai 
 ailleurs. Est ce que je cherche ou quelque plaisir, ou quelque soulage- 
 mentl jfe ne cherche rieti,je riespere rieti. AUer voir ce que jai vfi, 
 etre tin peu rejoue, un peic degoute, me resouvenir qtie la vie se passe 
 en vain, fne plaindrc de ??ioi, ?nendurcir aux dehors ; void le tout de 
 ce qiiofi co7npte pour Ics delices de ramiee. Que Dieu vous donne, 
 Madajue, tous les agremens de la vie, avec un esprit qui pent en jouir 
 sans s'y livrcr trop.'' 
 
 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 jus- 
 tice to him it is proper to add, that Dr. Johnson told me I 
 might rely both on the correctness of his memory, and the 
 
 xxiii. 233, a conversation is reported in which Dr. Johnson argued for 
 the Italian method of pronouncing Latin. ' See ante, ii. 92. 
 
 * As Mme. de Boufflers is mentioned in the next paragraph, Bos- 
 well, no doubt, wishes to shew that the letter was addressed to her. 
 She was the mistress of the Prince of Conti. She understood English, 
 and was the correspondent of Hume. There was also a Marquise de 
 Boufflers, mistress of old King Stanislaus. 
 
 ' In the Piozzi Letters (i. 34), this letter is dated May 16, 1771 ; in 
 Boswell's first and second editions, July 16, 1771 ; in the third edition, 
 July 16, 1775. In May, 1771, Johnson, so far as there is any thing to 
 shew, was in London. On July 16, both in 1771 and 1775, he was in 
 Ashbourne. One of Hume's Letters {Private Carres, p. 283), dated 
 April 17, 1775, shews that Mme. de Boufflers was at that time 'speak- 
 ing of coming to England.' 
 
 fidelity
 
 Aetat. 66.] Johiisons Latin conversation, 465 
 
 fidelity of his narrative. ' When Madame de Boufflers was 
 first in England', (said Beauclerk,) she was desirous to see 
 Johnson. I accordingly went with her to his chambers in 
 the Temple, where she was entertained with his conversa- 
 tion 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 noise like thunder. This was occasioned by John- 
 son, who it seems, upon a little recollection, had taken it 
 into his head that he ought to have done the honours of 
 his literary residence to a foreign lady of quality, and eager 
 to shew himself a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the 
 stair-case in violent agitation. He overtook us before w^e 
 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 hanging loose. A considera- 
 ble crowd of people gathered round, and were not a little 
 struck by this singular appearance.' 
 
 He spoke Latin with wonderful fluency and elegance. 
 When Pere Boscovich" was in England, Johnson dined in 
 company with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and at Dr. 
 Douglas's, now Bishop of Salisbury. Upon both occasions 
 that celebrated foreigner expressed his astonishment at John- 
 son's Latin conversation. When at Paris, Johnson thus 
 characterised Voltaire to Freron the Journalist: ' Fz> est 
 acerrinii ingcnii ct paiicarian literarutn' 
 
 'To Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Dec. 5, 1775. 
 'My dear Sir, 
 
 ' Mr. Alexander Maclean, the young Laird of Col, being to set 
 
 * Mme. de Boufflers was in England in the summer of 1763. Jesse's 
 Sel-wyn, i. 235. 
 
 » Boscovich, a learned Jesuit, was born at Ragusa in 1711, and died 
 in 1787. He visited London in 1760, and was elected a Fellow of the 
 Royal Society. Chalmers's Bwg. Diet. See ante, ii. 144. 
 
 H.— 30 out
 
 466 Johisons sayings. [a.d, 1775. 
 
 out to-morrow for London, I give him this letter to introduce him 
 to your acquaintance. The kindness which you and I experienced 
 from his brother, whose unfortunate death we sincerely lament', 
 will make us always desirous to shew attention to any branch of 
 the family. Indeed, you have so much of the true Highland cord- 
 iality, that I am sure you would have thought me to blame if I 
 had neglected to recommend to you this Hebridean prince, in 
 whose island we were hospitably entertained. 
 
 ' I ever am with respectful attachment, my dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most obliged 
 * And most humble servant, 
 
 'James Boswell.' 
 
 Mr. Maclean returned with the most agreeable accounts 
 of the polite attention with which he was received by Dr. 
 Johnson. 
 
 In the course of this year Dr. Burney informs me that Mie 
 very frequently met Dr. Johnson at Mr. Thrale's, at Streat- 
 ham, where they had many long conversations, often sitting 
 up as long as the fire and candles lasted, and much longer 
 than the patience of the servants subsisted ^' 
 
 A few of Johnson's sayings, which that gentleman recol- 
 lects, shall here be inserted. 
 
 * I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a 
 bad night, and then the nap takes me.' 
 
 * The writer of an epitaph should not be considered as 
 saying nothing but what is strictly true. Allowance must 
 be made for some degree of exaggerated praise. In lapi- 
 dary inscriptions a man is not upon oath\' 
 
 ' See aiitc, ii. 329. 
 
 ' Four years later Johnson thus spoke to Miss Burney of her father : 
 — '"I love Burney; my heart goes out to meet him." "He is not 
 ungrateful, Sir," cried I ; " for most heartily does he love you." " Does 
 he, Madam ? I am surprised at that." " Why, Sir? Why should you 
 have doubted it .''" " Because, Madam, Dr. Burney is a man for all the 
 world to love: it is but natural to love him." I could have almost 
 cried with delight at this cordial, unlaboured iloge.' Mme. D'Arblay's 
 Diary, i. 196. 
 
 ^ ' Though a sepulchral inscription is professedly a panegyrick, and 
 therefore not confined to historical impartiality, yet it ought always 
 
 * There
 
 Aetat. C6.] By-roads m education. 467 
 
 ' There is now less flogging in our great schools than for- 
 merly, but then less is learned there ; so that what the 
 boys get at one end they lose at the other'.' 
 
 ' More is learned in publick than in private schools °, from 
 emulation ; there is the collision of mind with mind, or the 
 radiation of many minds pointing to one centre. Though 
 few boys make their own exercises, yet if a good exercise 
 is given up, out of a great number of boys, it is made by 
 somebody.' 
 
 ' I hate by - roads in education. Education is as well 
 known, and has long been as well known, as ever it can 
 be^ Endeavouring to make children prematurely wise is 
 useless labour. Suppose they have more knowledge at five 
 or six years old than other children, what use can be made 
 
 to be written with regard to truth. No man ought to be commended 
 for virtues which he never possessed, but whoever is curious to know 
 his faults must inquire after them in other places.' Johnson's Works, 
 V. 265. See. post, April 24, 1779. 
 
 ' See ante, i. 54. 
 
 * See. post, iii. 13, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22. 
 
 ^ Johnson's Dick Wormwood, in T/ie Idler, No. 83, a man 'whose 
 sole delight is to find everything wrong, triumphs when he talks on 
 the present system of education, and tells us with great vehemence 
 that we are learning words when we should learn things.' In the Lzfe 
 of Milton ( Works, vii. 75), Johnson writes : — ' It is told that in the art 
 of education Milton performed wonders ; and a formidable list is given 
 of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Aldersgate-street, 
 by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age. Those who 
 tell or receive these stories should consider, that nobody can be taught 
 faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited 
 by the power of the horse.' He advised Bosvvell ' not to refine in the 
 education of his children. You must do as other people do.' See 
 post, iii. 192. Yet, in his Life of Barretier ( Works, vi. 380), he says : — 
 ' The first languages which he learnt were the French, German, and 
 Latin, which he was taught, not in the common way, by a multitude 
 of definitions, rules, and exceptions, which fatigue the attention and 
 burden the memory, without any use proportionate to the time which 
 they require and the disgust which they create. The method by which 
 he was instructed was easy and expeditious, and therefore pleasing. 
 He learnt them all in the same manner, and almost at the same time, 
 by conversing in them indifferently with his father.' 
 
 of
 
 4^8 Mrs. Barbauld. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 of it? It will be lost before it is wanted, and the waste 
 of so much time and labour of the teacher can never be 
 repaid. Too much is expected from precocity, and too lit- 
 tle performed. Miss ' was an instance of early culti- 
 vation, but in what did it terminate ? In marrying a little 
 Presbyterian parson, who keeps an infant boarding-school, 
 so that all her employment now is, 
 
 "To suckle fools, and chronicle small-beer^" 
 
 She tells the children, " This is a cat, and that is a dog, with 
 four legs and a tail ; see there ! you are much better than 
 a cat or a dog, for you can speak'." If I had bestowed 
 
 ' Miss Aikin, better known as Mrs. Barbauld. Johnson uses P7'cs- 
 bytcrmn where we should use Unitarian. ' The Unitarians of the 
 present day [1843] are the representatives of that branch of the early 
 Nonconformists who received the denomination of Presbyterians; and 
 they are still known by that name.' Penny Cyclo. xxvi. 6. 
 
 - Othello, act ii. sc. i. 
 
 ' He quotes Barbauld's Lessons for Children (p. 68, ed. of 1878). 
 Mrs. Piozzi {Ancc. p. 16), speaking of books for children, says : — ' Mrs. 
 Barbauld had his best praise ; no man was more struck than Mr. John- 
 son with voluntary descent from possible splendour to painful duty.' 
 Mrs. Piozzi alludes to Johnson's praise of Dr. Watts : — ' Every man 
 acquainted with the common principles of human action, will look 
 with veneration on the writer, who is at one time combating Locke, 
 and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year. 
 A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest 
 lesson that humility can teach.' Works, viii. 384. He praised Milton 
 also, who, when ' writing /"^r^fZ/j-^ Z^^j-/, could condescend from his ele- 
 vation to rescue children from the perplexity of grammatical confu- 
 sion, and the trouble of lessons unnecessarily repeated.' lb. vii. 99. 
 Mrs. Barbauld did what Swift said Gay had shown could be done. 
 ' One may write things to a child without being childish.' Swift's 
 Works, xvii. 221. In her Advertisonent, she says : — ' The task is hum- 
 ble, but not mean ; to plant the first idea in a human mind can be no 
 dishonour to any hand.' ' Ethicks, or morality,' wrote Johnson, ' is one 
 of the studies which ought to begin with the first glimpse of reason, 
 and only end with life itself.' Works, v. 243. This might have been 
 the motto of her book. As the Advertisement was not published till 
 177S (Barbauld's Works, ii. 19) it is possible that Johnson's criticism 
 had reached her, and that it was meant as an answer. Among her 
 
 such
 
 Aetat. 66.] Mustek. 469 
 
 such an education on a daughter, and had discovered that 
 she thought of marrying such a fellow, I would have sent 
 her to the Congress! 
 
 'After having talked slightingly of musick, he was ob- 
 served to listen very attentively while Miss Thrale played 
 on the harpsichord, and with eagerness he called to her, 
 " Why don't you dash away like Burney ?" Dr. Burney 
 upon this said to him, " I believe. Sir, we shall make a 
 musician of you at last." Johnson with candid compla- 
 cency replied, " Sir, I shall be glad to have a new sense 
 given to me'." ' 
 
 pupils were William Taylor of Norwich, Sir William Gell, and the first 
 Lord Denman {ib. i. xxv.-xxx.). Mrs. Barbauld bore Johnson no ill-will. 
 In her Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, she describes some future pil- 
 grims ' from the Blue Mountains or Ontario's Lake.' coming to view 
 ' London's faded glories.' 
 
 'With throbbing bosoms shall the wanderers tread 
 The hallowed mansions of the silent dead. 
 Shall enter the long aisle and vaulted dome 
 Where genius and where valour find a home ; 
 Bend at each antique shrine, and frequent turn 
 To clasp with fond delight some sculptured urn. 
 The ponderous mass of Johnson's form to greet. 
 Or breathe the prayer at Howard's sainted feet.' 
 
 Ib. i. 242, 
 1 According to Mme. D'Arblay he said :— ' Sir, I shall be very glad 
 to have a new sense /z^/ ittto me.' He had been wont to speak slight- 
 ingly of music and musicians. ' The first symptom that he showed of 
 a tendency to conversion was upon hearing the following read aloud 
 from the preface to Dr. Burney 's History of Music while it was yet in 
 manuscript : — *' The love of lengthened tones and modulated sounds 
 seems a passion implanted in human nature throughout the globe ; as 
 we hear of no people, however wild and savage in other particulars, 
 who have not music of some kind or other, with which they seem 
 greatly delighted." " Sir," cried Dr. Johnson after a little pause, "this 
 assertion I believe may be right." And then, sec-sawing a minute or 
 two on his chair, he forcibly added : — " All animated nature loves mu- 
 sic — except myself !" ' Dr. Burney s Metnoirs, ii. ']']. Hawkins {Life, 
 p. 319) says that Johnson said of music, '"it excites in my mind no 
 ideas, and hinders me from contemplating my own." I have some- 
 times thought that music was positive pain to him. Upon his hear- 
 ing a celebrated performer go through a hard composition, and hear- 
 
 'Hc
 
 470 The wear of Garrick's face. [a.d. 1775. 
 
 ' He had come down one morning to the breakfast-room, 
 and been a considerable time by himself before any body 
 appeared. When, on a subsequent day, he was twitted by 
 Mrs. Thrale for being very late, which he generally was, he 
 defended himself by alluding to the extraordinary morning, 
 when he had been too early. " Madam, I do not like to 
 come down to vacuity^ ' 
 
 ' Dr. Burney having remarked that Mr. Garrick was be- 
 ginning to look old, he said, " Why, Sir, you are not to 
 wonder at that; no man's face has had more wear and 
 tear'.'" 
 
 ing it remarked that it was very difficult, he said, " I would it had been 
 impossible." ' Yet he had once bought a flageolet, though he had 
 never made out a tune. ' Had I learnt to fiddle,' he said, ' I should 
 have done nothing else' {post, April 7, 1778, and Boswell's Hebrides, 
 Oct. 15, 1773). Not six months before his death he asked Dr. Burney 
 to teach him the scale of music (cmic, ii. 302, note 4). That ' he ap- 
 peared fond of the bagpipe, and used often to stand for some time 
 with his ear close to the great drone' (Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 15), 
 does not tell for much either way. In his Hebrides {Works, \x. 55), 
 he shews his pleasure in singing. 'After supper,' he writes, 'the la- 
 dies sung Erse songs, to which I listened, as an English audience to 
 an Italian opera, delighted with the sound of words which I did not 
 understand.' Boswell records {Hebrides, Sept. 28) that another day a 
 lady 'pleased him much, by singing Erse songs, and playing on the 
 guitar.' Johnson himself shews that if his ear was dull to music, it 
 was by no means dead to sound. He thus describes a journey by 
 night in the Highlands {Works, ix. 155) : — 'The wind was loud, the 
 rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, 
 the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler 
 chorus of the rough music of nature than it had ever been my chance 
 to hear before.' In 1783, when he was in his seventy-fourth year, he 
 said, on hearing the music of a funeral procession : — ' This is the first 
 time that I have ever been affected by musical sounds.' See post, 
 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. 
 
 ' Miss Burney, in 1778, records that he said : — ' David, Madam, looks 
 much older than he is ; for his face has had double the business of any 
 other man's ; it is never at rest ; when he speaks one minute, he has 
 quite a different countenance to what he assumes the next ; I don't 
 believe he ever kept the same look for half-an-hour together in the 
 whole course of his life ; and such an eternal, restless, fatiguing play 
 
 Not
 
 Aetat. 66.] BosweW s 7norbid suspicions. 471 
 
 Not having heard from him for a longer time than I sup- 
 posed he would be silent, I wrote to him December 18, not 
 in good spirits : — 
 
 ' Sometimes I have been afraid that the cold which has gone 
 over Europe this year like a sort of pestilence ' has seized you 
 severely : sometimes my imagination, which is upon occasions pro- 
 lifick of evil, hath figured that you may have somehow taken 
 offence at some part of my conduct.' 
 
 'To J.^MES BOSWELL, EsQ. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Never dream of any offence. How should you offend me ? 
 I consider your friendship as a possession, which I intend to hold 
 till you take it from me, and to lament if ever by my fault I should 
 lose it. However, when such suspicions find their way into your 
 mind, always give them vent ; I shall make haste to disperse them : 
 but hinder their first ingress if you can. Consider such thoughts 
 as morbid. 
 
 ' Such illness as may excuse my omission to Lord Hailes, I can- 
 not honestly plead. I have been hindered, I know not how, by a 
 succession of petty obstructions. I hope to mend immediately, 
 and to send next post to his Lordship. Mr. Thrale would have 
 written to you if I had omitted ; he sends his cofnpliments and 
 wishes to see you. 
 
 ' You and your lady will now have no more wrangling about 
 feudal inheritance ^. How does the young Laird of Auchinleck ? 
 I suppose Miss Veronica is grown a reader and discourser. 
 
 ' I have just now got a cough, but it has never yet hindered me 
 from sleeping : I have had quieter nights than are common with me. 
 
 of the muscles must certainly wear out a man's face hefore its real 
 time.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 64. Malone fathers this witticism 
 on Foote. Prior's Malone, p. 369. 
 
 ' On Nov. 2 of this year, a proposal was made to Garrick by the 
 proprietors of Covent-Garden Theatre, ' that now in the time of dearth 
 and sickness ' they should open their theatres only five nights in each 
 week. Garrick Corres. ii. 108. 
 
 * Mrs. Boswell no doubt had disliked his wish to pass over his 
 daughters in entailing the Auchinleck estate, in favour of heirs-male 
 however remote. See/(;i-/, ii.474. Johnson, on Feb. 9, 1776, opposing 
 this intention, wrote : — ' I hope I shall get some ground now with Mrs. 
 Boswell.' 
 
 ' I cannot
 
 472 Lord Haiies and HenatclL [a.d. 1776. 
 
 'I cannot but rejoice that Joseph' has had the wit to find the 
 way back. He is a fine fellow, and one of the best travellers in 
 the world. 
 
 'Young Col brought me your letter. He is a very pleasing 
 youth. I took him two days ago to the Mitre, and we dined to- 
 gether. I was as civil as I had the means of being. 
 
 ' I have had a letter from Rasay, acknowledging, with great 
 appearance of satisfaction, the insertion in the Edinburgh paper \ 
 I am very glad that it was done. 
 
 ' My compliments to Mrs. Boswell, who does not love me ; and 
 of all the rest, I need only send them to those that do : and I am 
 afraid it will give you very little trouble to distribute them. 
 ' I am, my dear, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 ' December 23, 1775.' 
 
 1776: ^TAT. 67.] — In 1776, Johnson wrote, so far as I 
 can discover, nothing for the publick : but that his mind 
 was still ardent, and fraught with generous wishes to attain 
 to still higher degrees of literary excellence, is proved by 
 his private notes of this year, which I shall insert in their 
 proper place.* 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I have at last sent you all Lord Hailes's papers. While 
 I was in France, I looked very often into Henault'; but Lord 
 Hailes, in my opinion, leaves him far and far behind. Why I did 
 not dispatch so short a perusal sooner, when I look back, I am 
 utterly unable to discover : but human moments are stolen away 
 by a thousand petty impediments which leave no trace behind 
 them. I have been afflicted, through the whole Christmas, with 
 the general disorder, of which the worst effect was a cough, which 
 is now much mitigated, though the country, on which I look from 
 
 ' Joseph Ritter, a Bohemian, who was in my service many years, 
 and attended Dr. Johnson and me in our Tour to the Hebrides. After 
 having left me for some time, he had now returned to me. Boswell. 
 See artic, ii. 1 19. 
 
 * See Boswell's Hebrides near the end. 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 439. 
 
 a window
 
 Aetat. G7.] Boszvell and his father at variance. 473 
 
 a window at Streatham, is now covered with a deep snow. Mrs. 
 \\'illiams is very ill : every body else is as usual. 
 
 * Among the papers, I found a letter to you, which I think j-ou 
 had not opened ; and a paper for The Chronicle, which I suppose 
 it not necessary now to insert. I return them both. 
 
 ' I have, w^ithin these few days, had the honour of receiving Lord 
 Hailes's first volume, for which I return my most respectful thanks. 
 
 ' I wish you, my dearest friend, and your haughty lady, (for I 
 
 know she does not love me.) and the young ladies, and the young 
 
 Laird, all happiness. Teach the young gentleman, in spite of his 
 
 mamma, to think and speak well of, 
 
 ' Sir, your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Jan. ID, 1776. 
 
 At this time was in agitation a matter of great conse- 
 quence to me and my family, which I should not obtrude 
 upon the world, were it not that the part which Dr. John- 
 son's friendship for me made him take in it, was the oc- 
 casion of an exertion of his abilities, which it would be in- 
 justice to conceal. That what he wrote upon the subject 
 may be understood, it is necessary to give a state of the 
 question, which I shall do as briefly as I can. 
 
 In the year 1504, the barony or manour of Auchinleck, 
 (pronounced Affleck',) in Ayrshire, which belonged to a fam- 
 ily of the same name with the lands, having fallen to the 
 Crown by forfeiture, James the Fourth, King of Scotland, 
 granted it to Thomas Boswell, a branch of an ancient fami- 
 ly in the county of Fife, stiling him in the charter, dilccto 
 fainiliari nostra ; and assigning, as the cause of the grant, 
 pro bono ct fidcli servitio nobis prcustito. Thomas Boswell 
 was slain in battle, fighting along with his Sovereign, at the 
 fatal field of Floddon, in 1513'. 
 
 ' Mr. Croker says that he was informed by Boswell 's grand-daugh- 
 ter, who died in 1836, that it had come to be pronounced Auchinleck. 
 The Rev. James Chrystal, the minister of Auchinleck, in answer to 
 my inquir}^ politely informs me that 'the name "Affleck " is still quite 
 common as applied to the parish, and even Auchinleck House is as 
 often called Place Affleck as otherwise.' 
 
 * See Boswell 's Hebrides, Nov. 4. 
 
 From
 
 474 "^f^^ barony of Atichinleck. [a. d. 1776. 
 
 From this very honourable founder of our family, the es- 
 tate was transmitted, in a direct series of heirs male, to Da- 
 vid Boswell, my father's great grand uncle, who had no sons, 
 but four daughters, who were all respectably married, the 
 eldest to Lord Cathcart. 
 
 David Boswell, being resolute in the military feudal princi- 
 ple of continuing the male succession, passed by his daughters, 
 and settled the estate on his nephew by his next brother, 
 who approved of the deed, and renounced any pretensions 
 which he might possibly have, in preference to his son. But 
 the estate having been burthened with large portions to the 
 daughters, and other debts, it was necessary for the nephew 
 to sell a considerable part of it, and what remained was still 
 much encumbered. 
 
 The frugality of the nephew preserved, and, in some de- 
 gree, relieved the estate. His son, my grandfather, an emi- 
 nent lawyer, not only re-purchased a great part of what had 
 been sold, but acquired other lands ; and my father, who 
 was one of the Judges of Scotland, and had added consid- 
 erably to the estate, now signified his inclination to take 
 the privilege allowed by our law', to secure it to his family 
 in perpetuity by an entail, which, on account of his marriage 
 articles, could not be done without my consent. 
 
 In the plan of entailing the estate, I heartily concurred 
 with him, though I was the first to be restrained by it ; but 
 we unhappily differed as to the series of heirs which should 
 be established, or in the language of our law, called to the 
 succession. My father had declared a predilection for heirs 
 general, that is, males and females indiscriminately. He 
 was willing, however, that all males descending from his 
 
 * Acts of Parliament of Scotland, 1685, cap. 22. Boswell. Cock- 
 burn {Life of Jeffrey, \. 372) mentions ' the statute (i i and 12 Victoria, 
 chap, xxxvi.) which dissolves the iron fetters by which, for about 160 
 years, nearly three-fourths of the whole land in Scotland was made 
 permanently unsaleable, and unattachable for debt, and every acre in 
 the kingdom might be bound up, throughout all ages, in favour of 
 any heirs, or any conditions, that the caprice of each unfettered owner 
 might be pleased to prescribe.' 
 
 grandfather
 
 Aetat. 67.] BosweW s partiality for hcirs male. 475 
 
 grandfather should be preferred to females ; but would not 
 extend that privilege to males deriving their descent from a 
 higher source. I, on the other hand, had a zealous partiality 
 for heirs male, however remote, which I maintained by argu- 
 ments which appeared to me to have considerable weight \ 
 And in the particular case of our family, I apprehended that 
 we were under an implied obligation, in honour and good 
 faith, to transmit the estate by the same tenure which we 
 held it, which was as heirs male, excluding nearer females. 
 
 ' As first, the opinion of some distinguished naturahsts, that our 
 species is transmitted through males only, the female being all along 
 no more than a nidus, or nurse, as Mother Earth is to plants of ever}'- 
 sort ; which notion seems to be confirmed by that text of scripture, 
 ' He was yet in the loins of his father when Melchisedeck met him ' 
 (Heb. vii. lo) ; and consequently, that a man's grandson by a daugh- 
 ter, instead of being his surest descendant as is vulgarly said, has in 
 reality no connection whatever with his blood. — And secondly, in- 
 dependent of this theory, (which, if true, should completely exclude 
 heirs general,) that if the preference of a male to a female, without 
 regard to primogeniture, (as a son, though much younger, nay, even 
 a grandson by a son, to a daughter,) be once admitted, as it univer- 
 sally is, it must be equally reasonable and proper in the most remote 
 degree of descent from an original proprietor of an estate, as in the 
 nearest ; because, — however distant from the representative at the 
 time, — that remote heir male, upon the failure of those nearer to the 
 original proprietor than he is, becomes in fact the nearest male to 
 him, and is, therefore, preferable as his representative, to a female 
 descendant. — A little extension of mind will enable us easily to per- 
 ceive that a son's son, in continuation to whatever length of time, 
 is preferable to a son's daughter, in the succession to an ancient 
 inheritance ; in which regard should be had to the representa- 
 tion of the original proprietor, and not to that of one of his de- 
 scendants. 
 
 I am aware of Blackstone's admirable demonstration of the reason- 
 ableness of the legal succession, upon the principle of there being the 
 greatest probability that the nearest heir of the person who last dies 
 proprietor of an estate, is of the blood of the first purchaser. But 
 supposing a pedigree to be carefully authenticated through all its 
 branches, instead of mere probability there will be a certainty that 
 the nearest heir male, at li'hatever period, has the same right of blood 
 with the first heir .male, namely, the original purchaser s eldest son. 
 
 BOSWELL. 
 
 I therefore,
 
 476 Boswelfs dread of his father. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 I therefore, as I thought conscientiously, objected to my 
 father's scheme. 
 
 My opposition was very displeasing to my father, who 
 was entitled to great respect and deference ; and I had rea- 
 son to apprehend disagreeable consequences from my non- 
 compliance with his wishes'. After much perplexity and 
 uneasiness, I wrote to Dr. Johnson, stating the case, with all 
 its difficulties, at full length, and earnestly requesting that 
 he would consider it at leisure, and favour me with his 
 friendly opinion and advice. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I was much impressed by your letter, and if I can form upon 
 your case any resolution satisfactory to myself, will very gladly 
 impart it : but whether I am quite equal to it, I do not know. 
 It is a case compounded of law and justice, and requires a mind 
 versed in juridical disquisitions. Could not you tell your whole 
 mind to Lord Hailes ? He is, you know, both a Christian and a 
 Lawyer. I suppose he is above partiality, and above loquacity : 
 and, I believe, he will not think the time lost in which he may quiet 
 a disturbed, or settle a wavering mind. Write to me, as any thing 
 occurs to you ; and if I iind myself stopped by want of facts neces- 
 sary to be known, I will make inquiries of you as my doubts arise. 
 
 ' If your former resolutions should be found only fanciful, you 
 decide rightly in judging that your father's fancies may claim the 
 preference ; but whether they are fanciful or rational, is the ques- 
 tion. I really think Lord Hailes could help us. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to dear Mrs. Boswell ; and tell her, that 
 
 I hope to be wanting in nothing that I can contribute to bring you 
 
 all out of your troubles. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, most affectionately, your humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson,' 
 ' London, Jan. 1 5, 1 776.' 
 
 ' Boswell wrote to Temple on Sept. 2, 1775 • — ' What a discouraging 
 reflection is it that my father has in his possession a renunciation of 
 my birthright, which I madly granted to him, and which he has not 
 the generosity to restore now that I am doing beyond his utmost 
 hopes, and that he may incommode and disgrace me by some strange 
 settlements, while all this time not a shilling is secured to my wife 
 and children in case of my death I' Letters of Boswell, p. 216. 
 
 To
 
 Aetat.67.] Johiisofi s first letter on entails. 477 
 
 To THE Same. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I am going to write upon a question which requires more 
 knowledge of local law, and more acquaintance with the general 
 rules of inheritance, than I can claim ; but I write, because 5'ou 
 request it. 
 
 ' Land is, like any other possession, by natural right wholly in 
 the power of its present owner ; and may be sold, given, or be- 
 queathed, absolutely or conditionally, as judgment shall direct, or 
 passion incite. 
 
 ' But natural right would avail little without the protection of 
 law ; and the primary notion of law is restraint in the exercise of 
 natural right. A man is therefore, in society, not fully master of 
 what he calls his own, but he still retains all the power which law 
 does not take from him. 
 
 ' In the exercise of the right which law either leaves or gives, 
 regard is to be paid to moral obligations. 
 
 ' Of the estate which we are now considering, your father still 
 retains such possession, with such power over it, that he can sell it, 
 and do with the money what he will, without any legal impediment. 
 But when he extends his power beyond his own life, by settling 
 the order of succession, the law makes your consent necessary. 
 
 ' Let us suppose that he sells the land to risk the money in some 
 specious adventure, and in that adventure loses the whole ; his 
 posterity would be disappointed ; but they could not think them- 
 selves injured or robbed. If he spent it upon vice or pleasure, his 
 successors could only call him vicious and voluptuous ; they could 
 not say that he was injurious or unjust. 
 
 ' He that may do more may do less. He that, by selling, or 
 squandering, may disinherit a whole family, may certainly disinherit 
 part, by a partial settlement. 
 
 ' Laws are formed by the manners and exigencies of particular 
 times, and it is but accidental that they last longer than their 
 causes : the limitation of feudal succession to the male arose from 
 the obligation of the tenant to attend his chief in war. 
 
 ' As times and opinions are always changing, I know not whether 
 it be not usurpation to prescribe rules to posterity, by presuming 
 to judge of what we cannot know : and 1 know not whether I fully 
 approve either your design or your father's, to limit that succession 
 which descended to you unlimited. If we are to leave sartiim tectum ' 
 
 ' The technical term in Roman law for a building in good repair, 
 
 to
 
 47^ Johnsons first letter on eyitails. [a.d. 177G, 
 
 to posterity, what we have without any merit of our own received 
 from our ancestors, should not choice and free-will be kept unvio- 
 lated ? Is land to be treated with more reverence than liberty ? — 
 If this consideration should restrain your father from disinheriting 
 some of the males, does it leave you the power of disinheriting all 
 the females ? 
 
 ' Can the possessor of a feudal estate make any will ? Can he 
 appoint, out of the inheritance, any portions to his daughters ? 
 There seems to be a very shadowy difference between the power 
 of leaving land, and of leaving money to be raised from land ; be- 
 tween leaving an estate to females, and leaving the male heir, in 
 effect, only their steward. 
 
 ' Suppose at one time a law that allowed only males to inherit, 
 and during the continuance of this law many estates to have de- 
 scended, passing by the females, to remoter heirs. Suppose after- 
 wards the law repealed in correspondence with a change of man- 
 ners, and women made capable of inheritance ; would not then the 
 tenure of estates be changed t Could the women have no benefit 
 from a law made in their favour ? Must they be passed by upon 
 moral principles for ever, because they were once excluded by a 
 legal prohibition .? Or may that which passed only to males by 
 one law, pass likewise to females by another ? 
 
 ' You mention your resolution to maintain the right of your 
 brothers ' : I do not see how any of their rights are invaded. 
 
 ' As your whole difficulty arises from the act of your ancestor, 
 who diverted the succession from the females, you enquire, very 
 properly, what were his motives, and what was his intention ; for 
 you certainly are not bound by his act more than he intended to 
 bind you, nor hold your land on harder or stricter terms than those 
 on which it was granted. 
 
 ' Intentions must be gathered from acts. When he left the es- 
 tate to his nephew, by excluding his daughters, was it, or was it not, 
 in his power to have perpetuated the succession to the males ? If 
 he could have done it, he seems to have shown, by omitting it, that 
 he did not desire it to be done ; and, upon your own principles, 
 you will not easily prove your right to destroy that capacity of suc- 
 cession which your ancestors have left. 
 
 ' If your ancestor had not the power of making a perpetual set- 
 tlement ; and if, therefore, we cannot judge distinctly of his inten- 
 tions, yet his act can only be considered as an example ; it makes 
 
 ' Which term I applied to all the heirs male. Boswell. 
 
 not
 
 Aetat. G7.] Lo7^d Hailes 071 entails. 479 
 
 not an obligation. And, as you observe, he set no example of rig- 
 orous adherence to the line of succession. He that overlooked a 
 brother, would not wonder that little regard is shown to remote 
 relations. 
 
 ' As the rules of succession are, in a great part, purely legal, no 
 man can be supposed to bequeath any thing, but upon legal terms ; 
 he can grant no power which the law denies ; and if he makes no 
 special and definite limitation, he confers all the power which the 
 law allows. 
 
 ' Your ancestor, for some reason, disinherited his daughters ; but 
 it no more follows that he intended this act as a rule for posterity, 
 than the disinheriting of his brother. 
 
 ' If, therefore, you ask by what right your father admits daugh- 
 ters to inheritance, ask yourself, first, by what right you require 
 them to be excluded ? 
 
 ' It appears, upon reflection, that your father excludes nobody ; 
 he only admits nearer females to inherit before males more remote ; 
 and the exclusion is purely consequential. 
 
 'These, dear Sir, are my thoughts, immethodical and deliber- 
 ative ; but, perhaps, you may find in them some glimmering of 
 evidence. 
 
 ' I cannot, however, but again recommend to you a conference 
 with Lord Hailes, whom you know to be both a Lawyer and a 
 Christian. 
 
 ' Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, though she does not 
 
 love me. 
 
 ' I am. Sir, 
 
 ' Your affectionate servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'Feb. 3, 1773'-' 
 
 I had followed his recommendation and consulted Lord 
 Hailes, who upon this subject had a firm opinion contrary 
 to mine. His Lordship obligingly took the trouble to write 
 me a letter, in which he discussed with legal and historical 
 learning, the points in which I saw much difficulty, main- 
 taining that ' the succession of heirs general was the suc- 
 cession, by the law of Scotland, from the throne to the cot- 
 tage, as far as we can learn it by record ;' observing that 
 the estate of our family had not been limited to heirs 
 
 ' A misprint for 1776. 
 
 male ;
 
 480 Johnsons second letter on entails, [a.d. 177G. 
 
 male ; and that though an heir male had in one instance 
 been chosen in preference to nearer females, that had been 
 an arbitrary act, which had seemed to be best in the em- 
 barrassed state of affairs at that time ; and the fact was, 
 that upon a fair computation of the value of land and 
 money at the time, applied to the estate and the burthens 
 upon it, there was nothing given to the heir male but the 
 skeleton of an estate. * The plea of conscience, (said his 
 Lordship,) which you put, is a most respectable one, es- 
 pecially when conscience and self sltq on different sides. But 
 I think that conscience is not well informed, and that self 
 and she ought on this occasion to be of a side.' 
 
 This letter, which had considerable influence upon my 
 mind, I sent to Dr. Johnson, begging to hear from him 
 again, upon this interesting question. 
 
 'To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Having not any acquaintance with the laws or customs of 
 Scotland, I endeavoured to consider your question upon general 
 principles, and found nothing of much validity that I could oppose 
 to this position : " He who inherits a fief unhmited by his ancestors, 
 inherits the power of limiting it according to his own judgement 
 or opinion." If this be true, you may join with your father. 
 
 ' Further consideration produces another conclusion : " He who 
 receives a fief unlimited by his ancestors, gives his heirs some rea- 
 son to complain, if he does not transmit it unlimited to posterity. 
 For why should he make the state of others worse than his own, 
 without a reason ?" If this be true, though neither you nor your 
 father are about to do what is quite right, but as your father vio- 
 lates (I think) the legal succession least, he seems to be nearer the 
 right than yourself. 
 
 ' It cannot but occur that " Women have natural and equitable 
 claims as well as men, and these claims are not to be capriciously 
 or lightly superseded or infringed." When fiefs implied military 
 service, it is easily discerned why females could not inherit them ; 
 but that reason is now at an end. As manners make laws, man- 
 ners likewise repeal them. 
 
 ' These are the general conclusions which I have attained. None 
 of them are very favourable to your scheme of entail, nor perhaps 
 
 to
 
 Aetat. 67.] Joluisoii s third letter on entails. 48 1 
 
 to any scheme. My observation, that only he who acquires an es- 
 tate may bequeath it capriciously ', if it contains any conviction, 
 includes this position likewise, that only he who acquires an estate 
 may entail it capriciously. But I think it may be safely presumed, 
 that '■ he who inherits an estate, inherits all the power legally con- 
 comitant ;" and that '• He who gives or leaves unlimited an estate 
 legally limitable, must be presumed to give that power of limitation 
 which he omitted to take away, and to commit future contingencies 
 to future prudence." In these two positions I believe Lord Hailes 
 will advise you to rest ; every other notion of possession seems to 
 me full of difficulties and embarrassed with scruples. 
 
 'If these axioms be allowed, you have arrived now at full liberty 
 without the help of particular circumstances, which, however, have 
 in your case- great weight. You very rightly observe, that he who 
 passing by his brother gave the inheritance to his nephew, could 
 limit no more than he gave ; and by Lord Hailes's estimate of 
 fourteen years' purchase, what he gave was no more than you may 
 easily entail according to your own opinion, if that opinion should 
 finally prevail. 
 
 ' Lord Hailes's suspicion that entails are encroachments on the 
 dominion of Providence, may be extended to all hereditary privi- 
 leges and all permanent institutions ; I do not see why it may not 
 be extended to any provision for the present hour, since all care 
 about futurity proceeds upon a supposition, that we know at least 
 in some degree what will be future. Of the future we certainly 
 know nothing ; but we may form conjectures from the past ; and 
 the power of forming conjectures, includes, in my opinion, the duty 
 of acting in conformity to that probability which we discover. 
 Providence gives the power, of which reason teaches the use. 
 ' I am, dear Sir, your most faithful servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' Feb. 9, 1776.' 
 
 ' I hope I shall get some ground now with Mrs. Boswell ; make 
 my compliments to her, and to the little people. 
 
 ' Don't burn papers ; they may be safe enough in your own box, 
 — you will wish to see them hereafter.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' To the letters which I have written about your great question 
 
 ' I had reminded him of his observation mentioned, ante, ii. 299. 
 Bos WELL. 
 
 n. — 31 I have
 
 482 Johnsons tJiirci letter on entails. [a.d. 1770. 
 
 I have nothing to add. If your conscience is satisfied, you have 
 now only your prudence to consult. I long for a letter, that I may 
 know how this troublesome and vexatious question is at last de- 
 cided '. I hope that it will at last end well. Lord Hailes's letter 
 was very friendly, and very seasonable, but I think his aversion 
 from entails has something in it like superstition. Providence is 
 not counteracted by any means which Providence puts into our 
 power. The continuance and propagation of families makes a 
 great part of the Jewish law, and is by no means prohibited in the 
 Christian institution, though the necessity of it continues no longer. 
 Hereditary tenures are established in all civilised countries, and 
 are accompanied in most with hereditary authority. Sir William 
 Temple considers our constitution as defective, that there is not 
 an unalienable estate in land connected with a peerage ^ ; and Lord 
 Bacon mentions as a proof that the Turks are Barbarians, their 
 want of Stirpes, as he calls them, or hereditary rank '. Do not let 
 your mind, when it is freed from the supposed necessity of a rig- 
 orous entail, be entangled with contrary objections, and think all 
 
 > The entail framed by my father with various judicious clauses, 
 was settled by him and me, settling the estate upon the heirs male of 
 his grandfather, which I found had been already done by my grand- 
 father, imperfectly, but so as to be defeated only by selling the lands. 
 I was freed by Dr. Johnson from scruples of conscientious obligation, 
 and could, therefore, gratify my father. But my opinion and partial- 
 ity for male succession, in its full extent, remained unshaken. Yet 
 let me not be thought harsh or unkind to daughters: for my no- 
 tion is, that they should be treated with great affection and tender- 
 ness, and always participate of the prosperity of the family. BOS- 
 
 WELL. 
 
 "" Temple, in Popular Discontents ( Works, iii. 62-64), examines the 
 general dissatisfaction with the judicature of the House of Lords. 
 Till the end of Elizabeth's reign, he states, the peers, who were few 
 in number, were generally possessed of great estates which rendered 
 them less subject to corruption. As one remedy for the evil exist- 
 ing in his time, he suggests that the Crown shall create no Baron, 
 who shall not at the same time entail ^^4000 a year upon that honour, 
 whilst it continues in his family ; a Viscount, ^5000 ; an Earl, £pooo ; 
 a Marquis, £7000 ; and a Duke, ^8000. 
 
 ^ 'A cruel tyranny bathed in the blood of their Emperors upon 
 ever>' succession ; a heap of vassals and slaves ; no nobles, no gentle- 
 men, no freemen, no inheritance of land, no stirp of ancient families, 
 [nullae stirpes antiquae].' Spedding's Bacon, vii. 22. 
 
 entails
 
 Aetat. 67.] BosweW s mind ilhiminated. 483 
 
 entails unlaw'ful, till you have cogent arguments, which I believe 
 you will never find. I am afraid of scruples '. 
 
 ' I have now sent all Lord Hailes's papers ; part I found hidden 
 in a drawer in which I had laid them for security, and had forgot- 
 ten them. Part of these are written twice : I have returned both 
 the copies. Part I had read before. 
 
 ' Be so kind as to return Lord Hailes my most respectful thanks 
 for his first volume ; his accuracy strikes me with wonder ; his nar- 
 rative is far superiour to that of Renault, as I have formerly men- 
 tioned. 
 
 ' I am afraid that the trouble, which my irregularity and delay 
 has cost him, is greater, far greater, than any good that I can do 
 him will ever recompense ; but if I have any more copy, I will try 
 to do better. 
 
 ' Pray let me know if Mrs. Boswell is friends with me, and pay 
 my respects to Veronica, and Euphemia, and Alexander. 
 
 'I am. Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 
 'February 15, 1775 [1776].' 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell to Dr. Johnson. 
 
 ' Edinburgh, Feb. 20, 1776. 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' You have illuminated my mind and relieved me from imagi- 
 nary shackles of conscientious obligation. Were it necessary, I 
 could immediately join in an entail upon the series of heirs ap- 
 proved by my father ; but it is better not to act too suddenly.' 
 
 ' Dr. Johnson to Mr. Boswell. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I am glad that what I could think or say has at all contrib- 
 uted to quiet your thoughts. Your resolution not to act, till your 
 opinion is confirmed by more deliberation, is very just. If you 
 have been scrupulous, do not now be rash. I hope that as you 
 think more, and take opportunities of talking with men intelligent 
 
 ' 'Let me warn you very earnestly against scruples,' he wrote on 
 March 5, of this year : — ' I am no friend to scruples,' he had said at 
 St. Andrew's. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19. On his death -bed, he 
 said: — 'Scruples made many men miserable, but few men good.' 
 Croker's Boswell, p. 844. 
 
 in
 
 484 Remedies for melancholy. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 in questions of property, you will be able to free yourself from 
 every difficulty. 
 
 ' When I wrote last, I sent, I think, ten packets. Did you re- 
 ceive them all ? 
 
 ' You must tell Mrs. Boswell that I suspected her to have written 
 without your knowledge ', and therefore did not return any answer, 
 lest a clandestine correspondence should have been perniciously 
 discovered. I will write to her soon. ***** *^ 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 
 ' Most aiifectionately yours, 
 
 * Sam. Johnson.' 
 ' Feb. 24, 1776.' 
 
 Having communicated to Lord Hailes what Dr. Johnson 
 wrote concerning the question which perplexed me so much, 
 his Lordship wrote to me: 'Your scruples have produced 
 more fruit than I ever expected from them ; an excellent 
 dissertation on general principles of morals and law.' 
 
 I wrote to Dr. Johnson on the 20th of February, com- 
 plaining of melancholy, and expressing a strong desire to 
 be with him ; informing him that the ten packets came all 
 safe ; that Lord Hailes was much obliged to him, and said 
 he had almost wholly removed his scruples against entails. 
 
 *To James Boswell, Esq. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I have not had your letter half an hour ; as you lay so much 
 weight upon my notions, I should think it not just to delay my 
 answer. 
 
 ' I am very sorry that your melancholy should return, and should 
 be sorry likewise if it could have no relief but from company. My 
 counsel you may have when you are pleased to require it ; but of 
 my company you cannot in the next month have much, for Mr. 
 Thrale will take me to Italy, he says, on the first of April. 
 
 ' Let me warn you very earnestly against scruples. I am glad 
 that you are reconciled to your settlement, and think it a great 
 honour to have shaken Lord Hailes's opinion of entails. Do not, 
 however, hope wholly to reason away your troubles ; do not feed 
 
 ' A letter to him on the interesting subject of the family settlement, 
 which I had read. Boswell. 
 
 them
 
 Aetat. 67.] The University of Oxford. 48 5 
 
 them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix 
 your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with com- 
 pany, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind'. If you 
 will come to me, you must come very quickly ; and even then I 
 know not but we may scour the country together, for I have a 
 mind to see Oxford and Lichfield, before I set out on this long 
 journey. To this I can only add, that 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, 
 ' Your most affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 •March 5, 1776.' 
 
 To THE Same. 
 'Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Very early in April we leave England, and in the beginning 
 of the next week I shall leave London for a short time ; of this I 
 think it necessary to inform you, that you may not be disappointed 
 in any of your enterprises. I had not fully resolved to go into the 
 country before this day. 
 
 ' Please to make my compliments to Lord Hailes ; and mention 
 very particularly to Mrs. Boswell my hope that she is reconciled to. 
 Sir, 
 
 ' Your faithful servant, 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson.' 
 'March 12, 1776.' 
 
 Above thirty years ago, the heirs of Lord Chancellor Clar- 
 endon presented the University of Oxford with the con- 
 tinuation of his History, and such other of his Lordship's 
 manuscripts as had not been published, on condition that 
 the profits arising from their publication should be applied 
 to the establishment of a Manege in the University. The 
 gift was accepted in full convocation. A person being now 
 
 ' PaoH had given Boswell much the same advice. ' All this,' said 
 Paoli, ' is melancholy. I have also studied metaphysics. I know the 
 arguments for fate and free-will, for the materiality and immateriality 
 of the soul, and even the subtle arguments for and against the exist- 
 ence of matter. Ma lasciamo qiieste dispute ai oziosi. But let us 
 leave these disputes to the idle. lo tcui^o sempre fermo un i:;ran pcu- 
 stero. I hold always firm one great object. I never feel a moment 
 of despondency.' Boswell's Corsica, ed. 1879, p. 193. See post, March 
 14, 1781. 
 
 recommended
 
 486 The Clarendon Press. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 recommended to Dr. Johnson, as fit to superintend this pro- 
 posed riding-school, he exerted himself with that zeal for 
 which he was remarkable upon every similar occasion'. But, 
 on enquiry into the matter, he found that the scheme was 
 not likely to be soon carried into execution ; the profits aris- 
 ing from the Clarendon press being, from some mismanage- 
 ment, very scanty. This having been explained to him by 
 a respectable dignitary of the church, who had good means 
 of knowing it, he wrote a letter upon the subject, which 
 at once exhibits his extraordinary precision and acuteness, 
 and his warm attachment to his Alma Mater. 
 
 ' To THE Reverend Dr. Wetherell, Master of 
 University-College, Oxford. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Few things are more unpleasant than the transaction of busi- 
 ness with men who are above knowing or caring what they have 
 to do ; such as the trustees for Lord Cornbury's institution will, 
 perhaps, appear, when you have read Dr. ****** *'s letter. 
 
 'The last part of the Doctor's letter is of great importance. 
 The complaint' which he makes I have heard long ago, and did 
 not know but it was redressed. It is unhappy that a practice so 
 erroneous has not yet been altered ; for altered it must be, or our 
 press will be useless, with all its privileges. The booksellers, who, 
 like all other men, have strong prejudices in their own favour, are 
 enough inclined to think the practice of printing and selling books 
 by any but themselves, an encroachment on the rights of their fra- 
 ternity ; and have need of stronger inducements to circulate aca- 
 demical publications than those of one another ; for, of that mutual 
 co-operation by which the general trade is carried on, the Univer- 
 sity can bear no part. Of those whom he neither loves nor fears, 
 
 . 1 Johnson, in his letters to the Thrales during the year 1775, men- 
 tions this riding-school eight or nine times. The person recommended 
 was named Carter. Gibbon {Misc. Works, i. 72) says ' the profit of the 
 History has been appHed to the establishment of a riding-school, that 
 the polite exercises might be taught, I know not with what success, 
 in the University.' 
 
 •-' I suppose the complaint was, that the trustees of the Oxford 
 Press did not allow the London booksellers a sufficient profit upon 
 vending their publications. Boswell. 
 
 and
 
 Aetat. G7.] The trade in books. 487 
 
 and from whom he expects no reciprocation of good offices, why- 
 should any man promote the interest but for profit ? I suppose, 
 with all our scholastick ignorance of mankind, we are still too 
 knowing to expect that the booksellers will erect themselves into 
 patrons, and buy and sell under the influence of a disinterested 
 zeal for the promotion of learning. 
 
 ' To the booksellers, if we look for either honour or profit from 
 our press, not only their common profit, but something more must 
 be allowed ; and if books, printed at Oxford, are expected to be 
 rated at a high price, that price must be levied on the publick, and 
 paid by the ultimate purchaser, not by the intermediate agents. 
 What price shall be set upon the book, is, to the booksellers, 
 wholly indifferent, provided that they gain a proportionate profit 
 by negociating the sale. 
 
 ' Why books printed at Oxford should be particularly dear, I 
 am, however, unable to find. We pay no rent ; we inherit many 
 of our instruments and materials ; lodging and victuals are cheaper 
 than at London ; and, therefore, workmanship ought, at least, not 
 to be dearer. Our expences are naturally less than those of book- 
 sellers ; and, in most cases, communities are content with less 
 profit than individuals. 
 
 ' It is, perhaps, not considered through how many hands a book 
 often passes, before it comes into those of the reader ; or what 
 part of the profit each hand must retain, as a motive for transmit- 
 ting it to the next. 
 
 ' We will call our primary agent in London, Mr. Cadell ', who 
 receives our books from us, gives them room in his warehouse, 
 and issues them on demand ; by him they are sold to Mr. Dilly 
 a wholesale bookseller, who sends them into the country ; and the 
 last seller is the country bookseller. Here are three profits to be 
 paid between the printer and the reader, or in the style of com- 
 merce, between the manufacturer and the consumer ; and if any of 
 these profits is too penuriously distributed, the process of com- 
 merce is interrupted. 
 
 ' We are now come to the practical question, what is to be done ? 
 You will tell me, with reason, that I have said nothing, till I de- 
 clare how much, according to my opinion, of the ultimate price 
 ought to be distributed through the whole succession of sale. 
 
 * Cadell published The False Alarfii and The Journey to the Heb- 
 rides. Gibbon described him as ' That honest and liberal bookseller.' 
 Stewart's Life of Robertson, p. 366. 
 
 ' The
 
 488 The trade in books. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 'The deduction, I am afraid, will appear very great: but let it 
 be considered before it is refused. We must allow, for profit, 
 between thirty and thirty-five per cent., between six and seven shil- 
 lings in the pound ; that is, for every book which costs the last 
 buyer twenty shillings, we must charge Mr. Cadell with something 
 less than fourteen. We must set the copies at fourteen shillings 
 each, and superadd what is called the quarterly-book, or for every 
 hundred books so charged we must deliver an hundred and four. 
 
 ' The profits will then stand thus : — 
 
 ' Mr. Cadell, who runs no hazard, and gives no credit, will be 
 paid for warehouse room and attendance by a shilling profit on 
 each book, and his chance of the quarterly-book. 
 
 ' Mr. Dilly, who buys the book for fifteen shillings, and who will 
 expect the quarterly-book if he takes five and twenty, will send it 
 to his country customer at sixteen and six, by which, at the hazard 
 of loss, and the certainty of long credit, he gains the regular profit 
 of ten per cent, which is expected in the wholesale trade. 
 
 'The country bookseller, buying at sixteen and sixpence, and 
 commonly trusting a considerable time, gains but three and six- 
 pence, and if he trusts a year, not much more than two and six- 
 pence ; otherwise than as he may, perhaps, take as long credit as 
 he gives. 
 
 ' With less profit than this, and more you see he cannot have, 
 the country bookseller cannot live ; for his receipts are small, and 
 his debts sometimes bad. 
 
 ' Thus, dear Sir, I have been incited by Dr. *******'$ letter to 
 
 give you a detail of the circulation of books, which, perhaps, every 
 
 man has not had opportunity of knowing ; and which those who 
 
 know it, do not, perhaps, always distinctly consider. 
 
 ' I am, &c. 
 
 ' Sam. Johnson'.' 
 'March 12, 1776.' 
 
 Having arrived in London late on Friday, the 15th of 
 March, I hastened next morning to wait on Dr. Johnson, at 
 his house; but found he was removed from Johnson's-court, 
 
 ' I am happy in giving this full and clear statement to the publick, 
 to vindicate, by the authority of the greatest authour of his age, that 
 respectable body of men, the Booksellers of London, from vulgar re- 
 flections, as if their profits were exorbitant, when, in truth, Dr. Johnson 
 has here allowed them more than they usually demand. Boswell. 
 
 No. 7,
 
 Aetat.67.] Johnso7i s house in Bolt-court. 489 
 
 No. 7, to Bolt-court, No. 8", still keeping to his favourite 
 Fleet-street. My reflection at the time upon this change 
 as marked in my Journal, is as follows: 'I felt a foolish 
 regret that he had left a court which bore his name"; but 
 it was not foolish to be affected with some tenderness of 
 regard for a place in which I had seen him a great deal, 
 from whence I had often issued a better and a happier man 
 than when I went in, and which had often appeared to my 
 imagination while I trod its pavements, in the solemn dark- 
 ness of the night, to be sacred to wisdom and piety ^' Be- 
 ing informed that he was at Mr. Thrale's, in the Borough, 
 I hastened thither, and found Mrs. Thrale and him at break- 
 fast. I was kindly welcomed. 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 to each other while he talked, and our looks ex- 
 pressed our congenial admiration and affection for him. I 
 shall ever recollect this scene with great pleasure. I ex- 
 claimed to her, ' I am now, intellectually, Hcrmippus rcdivi- 
 vus, I am quite restored by him, by transfusion of viind^.' 
 
 ^ ' Behind the house was a garden which he took delight in water- 
 ing ; a room on the ground-floor was assigned to Mrs. Williams, and 
 the whole of the two pair of stairs floor was made a repository for 
 his books ; one of the rooms thereon being his study. Here, in the 
 intervals of his residence at Streatham, he received the visits of his 
 friends, and to the most intimate of them sometimes gave not inele- 
 gant dinners.' Hawkins's /t'/z/w^w, p. 531. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale 
 on Aug. 14, 1780: — 'This is all that I have to tell you, except that I 
 have three bunches of grapes on a vine in my garden : at least this is 
 all that I will now tell of my garden.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 178. This 
 house was burnt down in 1819. Notes and Qtieries, ist S., v. 233. 
 
 * He said, when in Scotland, that he vizs Johnson of that Ilk. Bos- 
 WELL. See post, April 28, 1778, note. 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 263. 
 
 * See ante, i. 434. Boswell. Boswell refers to the work of Dr. 
 Cohausen of Coblentz, Her7mppus Redivivus. Dr. Campbell trans- 
 lated it (ante, i. 483), under the title of Hermippus Redhn-oiis, or rne 
 Sage's Triumph over Old Age and the Grave. Cohausen maintained 
 that life might be prolonged to 115 years by breathing the breath of 
 healthy young women. He founded his theory 'on a Roman inscrip- 
 
 ' There
 
 490 Feudal barbarity. [a.d, 1776. 
 
 ' There are many, (she replied,) who admire and respect Mr. 
 Johnson ; but you and I love him.' 
 
 He seemed very happy in the near prospect of going to 
 Italy with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. ' But, (said he,) before 
 leaving England I am to take a jaunt to Oxford, Birming- 
 ham, my native city Lichfield, and my old friend. Dr. Tay- 
 lor's, at Ashbourn, in Derbyshire. I shall go in a few days, 
 and you, Boswell, shall go with me.' I was ready to ac- 
 company him ; being willing even to leave London to have 
 the pleasure of his conversation. 
 
 I mentioned with much regret the extravagance of the 
 representative of a great family in Scotland, by which there 
 was danger of its being ruined; and as Johnson respected 
 it for its antiquity, he joined with me in thinking it would 
 be happy if this person should die. Mrs. Thrale seemed 
 shocked at this, as feudal barbarity ; and said, ' I do not 
 understand this preference of the estate to its owner ; of 
 the land to the man who walks upon that land.' JOHN- 
 SON. * Nay, Madam, it is not a preference of the land to 
 its owner, it is the preference of a family to an individual. 
 Here is an establishment in a country, which is of impor- 
 tance for ages, not only to the chief but to his people ; 
 an establishment which extends upwards and downwards ; 
 that this should be destroyed by one idle fellow is a sad 
 thing.' 
 
 tion — Allsculapio ct Sanitati L. Colodius Herviipptts qui vixit annos 
 CXV.dies V.puellarum attheh'iic' He maintained that one of the 
 most ehgible conditions of life was that of a Confessor of youthful 
 nuns. Lowndes's Bibl. Man. p. 488, and Ge7it. Mag. xiii. 279. I. D'ls- 
 raeli {Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, ii. 102) describes Campbell's 
 book as a ' curious banter on the hermetic philosophy and the uni- 
 versal medicine ; the grave irony is so closely kept up, that it de- 
 ceived for a length of time the most learned. Campbell assured a 
 friend it was a mere jeu-d' -esprit.' Lord E. Fitzmaurice {Life of 
 Shelburne, iii. 447) says that Ingenhousz, a Dutch physician who lived 
 with Shelburne, combated in one of his works the notion held by cer- 
 tain schoolmasters, that ' it was wholesome to inhale the air which 
 has passed through the lungs of their pupils, closing the windows in 
 order purposely to facilitate that operation.' 
 
 He
 
 DR. JOHNSON S HOUSE, 
 Bolt Court, Fleet Street.
 
 Aetat. 67.] The tise of entails. 49 1 
 
 He said, ' Entails' are good, because it is good to preserve 
 in a country, serieses of men, to whom the people are ac- 
 customed to look up as to their leaders. But I am for leav- 
 ing a quantity of land in-commcrce, to excite industry, and 
 keep money in the country ; for if no land were to be 
 bought in the country, there would be no encouragement 
 to acquire wealth, because a family could not be founded 
 there ; or if it were acquired, it must be carried away to 
 another country where land may be bought. And although 
 the land in every country will remain the same, and be as 
 fertile where there is no money, as where there is, yet all 
 that portion of the happiness of civil life, which is produced 
 by money circulating in a country, would be lost.' BOS- 
 WELL. ' Then, Sir, would it be for the advantage of a coun- 
 try that all its lands were sold at once?' JOHNSON. ' So far. 
 Sir, as money produces good, it would be an advantage; for, 
 then that country would have as much money circulating 
 in it as it is worth. But to be sure this would be counter- 
 balanced by disadvantages attending a total change of pro- 
 prietors.' 
 
 I expressed my opinion that the power of entailing should 
 be limited thus: 'That there should be one third, or perhaps 
 one half of the land of a country kept free for commerce ; 
 that the proportion allowed to be entailed, should be par- 
 celled out so that no family could entail above a certain 
 quantity. Let a family according to the abilities of its rep- 
 resentatives, be richer or poorer in different generations, 
 or always rich if its representatives be always wise : but 
 let its absolute permanency be moderate. In this way wc 
 should be certain of there being always a number of estab- 
 lished roots ; and as in the course of nature, there is in 
 every age an extinction of some families, there would be 
 continual openings for men ambitious of perpetuity, to 
 plant a stock in the entail ground'.' JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, 
 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 24. 
 
 * The privilege of perpetuating in a family an estate and arms inde- 
 fcasibly from generation to generation, is enjoyed by none of his Maj- 
 
 mankind
 
 492 SmitJis Wealth of Nations. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 mankind will be better able to regulate the system of en- 
 tails, when the evil of too much land being locked up by 
 them is felt, than we can do at present when it is not felt.' 
 
 I mentioned Dr. Adam Smith's book on TJie Wealth of 
 Natio)is\ which was just published, and that Sir John Pringle 
 had observed to me, that Dr. Smith, who had never been in 
 trade, could not be expected to write well on that subject 
 any more than a lawyer upon physick. Johnson. ' He is 
 mistaken, Sir : a man who has never been engaged in trade 
 himself may undoubtedly write well upon trade, and there 
 is nothing which requires more to be illustrated by philoso- 
 phy than trade does. As to mere wealth, that is to say, 
 money, it is clear that oire nation or one individual cannot 
 increase its store but by making another poorer : but trade 
 procures what is more valuable, the reciprocation of the 
 peculiar advantages of different countries. A merchant 
 seldom thinks but of his own particular trade. To write a 
 good book upon it, a man must have extensive views. It 
 is not necessary to have practised, to write well upon a sub- 
 ject.' I mentioned law as a subject on which no man could 
 write well without practice. JOHNSON. ' Why, Sir, in Eng- 
 land, where so much money is to be got by the practice of 
 the law, most of our writers upon it have been in practice ; 
 though Blackstone had not been much in practice when he 
 published his Commentaries. But upon the Continent, the 
 
 esty's subjects except in Scotland, where the legal fiction oi fine dSidi 
 recovery is unknown. It is a privilege so proud, that I should think 
 it would be proper to have the exercise of it dependent on the royal 
 prerogative. It seems absurd to permit the power of perpetuating 
 their representation, to men, who having had no eminent merit, have 
 truly no name. The King, as the impartial father of his people, would 
 never refuse to grant the privilege to those who deserved it. Bos- 
 
 WELL. 
 
 ' Boswell wrote to Temple about six weeks later : — ' Murphy says 
 he has read thirty pages of Smith's Wealth, but says he shall read no 
 more ; Smith, too, is now of our Club. It has lost its select merit.' 
 Letters of Bosrucll, p. 233. Johnson can scarcely have read Smith ; if 
 he did, it made no impression on him. His ignorance on many points 
 as to what constitutes the wealth of a nation remained as deep as ever. 
 
 great
 
 Aetat. 67.] The Scotcli Militia Bill. 493 
 
 great writers on law have not all been in practice : Grotius, 
 indeed, was ; but PufYendorf was not, Burlamaqui was not.' 
 
 When we had talked of the great consequence which a 
 man acquired by being employed in his profession, I sug- 
 gested a doubt of the justice of the general opinion, that it 
 is improper in a lawyer to solicit employment ; for why, 
 I urged, should it not be equally allowable to solicit that 
 as the means of consequence, as it is to solicit votes to be 
 elected a member of Parliament ? Mr. Strahan had told 
 me that a countryman of his and mine', who had risen to 
 eminence in the law, had, when first making his way, solic- 
 ited him to get him employed in city causes. JOHNSON. 
 ' Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits ; but when once it is 
 certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong 
 in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, 
 rather than another.' BOSWELL. ' You would not solicit 
 employment. Sir, if you were a lawyer.' Johnson. ' No, 
 Sir, but not because I should think it wrong, but because 
 I should disdain it.' This was a good distinction, which 
 will be felt by men of just pride. He proceeded : ' How- 
 ever, I would not have a lawyer to be wanting to himself 
 in using fair means. I would have him to inject a little 
 hint now and then, to prevent his being overlooked.' 
 
 Lord Mountstuart's bill for a Scotch Militia^ in support- 
 ing which his Lordship had made an able speech in the 
 
 ' Mr. Wedderburne. Croker. 
 
 ^ A similar bill had been thrown out sixteen years earlier by 194 to 
 84. ' A Bill for a Militia in Scotland was not successful ; nor could 
 the disaffected there obtain this mode of having their arms restored. 
 Pitt had acquiesced ; but the young Whigs attacked it with all their 
 force.' Walpole's Reign of George II, iii. 280. Lord Mountstuart's 
 bill was thrown out by 112 to 95, the Ministry being in the minority. 
 The arguments for and against it are stated in the Ann. Reg. xix. 140. 
 See post, iii. i. Henry Mackenzie {Life of fohn Home, i. 26) says: — 
 ' The Poker Club was instituted at a time when Scotland was refused 
 a militia, and thought herself affronted by the refusal. The name was 
 chosen from a quaint sort of allusion to the principles it was meant to 
 excite, as a club to stir up the fire and spirit of the country.' See aiite, 
 ii. 431, note. 
 
 House
 
 494 1^^^^ sticcession to estates. [a. d. 1776. 
 
 House of Commons, was now a pretty general topick of 
 conversation. Johnson. * As Scotland contributes so little 
 land-tax' towards the general support of the nation, it ought 
 not to have a militia paid out of the general fund, unless 
 it should be thought for the general interest, that Scotland 
 should be protected from an invasion, which no man can 
 think will happen ; for what enemy would invade Scotland, 
 where there is nothing to be got? No, Sir; now that the 
 Scotch have not the pay of English soldiers spent among 
 them, as so many troops are sent abroad, they are trying to 
 get money another way, by having a militia paid. If they 
 are afraid, and seriously desire to have an armed force to 
 defend them, they should pay for it. Your scheme is to 
 retain a part of your land-tax, by making us pay and clothe 
 your militia.' BOSWELL. 'You should not talk of ive and 
 yoii, Sir: there is now an Union! JOHNSON. 'There must 
 be a distinction of interest, while the proportions of land-tax 
 are so unequal. If Yorkshire should say, " Instead of pay- 
 ing our land-tax, we will keep a greater number of militia," 
 it would be unreasonable.' In this argument my friend was 
 certainly in the wrong. The land-tax is as unequally pro- 
 portioned between different parts of England, as between 
 England and Scotland ; nay, it is considerably unequal in 
 Scotland itself. But the land-tax is but a small part of the 
 numerous branches of publick revenue, all of which Scotland 
 pays precisely as England does. A French invasion made 
 in Scotland would soon penetrate into England. 
 
 He thus discoursed upon supposed obligation in settling 
 estates: — 'Where a man gets the unlimited property of an 
 estate, there is no obligation upon him in justice to leave it 
 to one person rather than to another. There is a motive of 
 preference from kindness, and this kindness is generally en- 
 tertained for the nearest relation. If I owe a particular man 
 a sum of money, I am obliged to let that man have the next 
 
 ' ' Scotland paid only one fortieth to the land-tax, the very specific 
 tax out of which all the expenses of a militia were to be drawn.' Ann. 
 Reg. xix. 141. 
 
 money
 
 Aetat. 67.] SptcriotlS JOHNSONIANA. 495 
 
 money I get, and cannot in justice let another have it : but 
 if I owe money to no man, I may dispose of what I get as I 
 please. There is not a dcbituni Jiistitice to a man's next 
 heir; there is only a dcbitiun caritatis. It is plain, then, 
 that I have morally a choice, according to my liking. If I 
 have a brother in want, he has a claim from affection to my 
 assistance ; but if I have also a brother in want, whom I like 
 better, he has a preferable claim. The right of an heir at 
 law is only this, that he is to have the succession to an es- 
 tate, in case no other person is appointed to it by the owner. 
 His right is merely preferable to that of the King.' 
 
 We got into a boat to cross over to Black-friars ; and as 
 we moved along the Thames, I talked to him of a little vol- 
 ume, which, altogether unknown to him, was advertised to 
 be published in a few days, under the title of JoJmsoniana, 
 or Bon-Mots of Dr. Johnson'. JOHNSON. ' Sir, it is a mighty 
 impudent thing.' BOSWELL. ' Pray, Sir, could you have no 
 redress if you were to prosecute a publisher for bringing 
 out, under your name, what you never said, and ascribing to 
 you dull stupid nonsense, or making you swear profanely, 
 as many ignorant relaters oi your bon-inots do^?' Johnson. 
 ' No, Sir ; there will always be some truth mixed with the 
 falsehood, and how can it be ascertained how much is true 
 and how much is false ? Besides, Sir, what damages would 
 a jury give me for having been represented as swearing?' 
 BoswELL. ' I think, Sir, you should at least disavow such a 
 publication, because the world and posterity might with 
 much plausible foundation say, " Here is a volume which 
 was publickly advertised and came out in Dr. Johnson's own 
 time, and, by his silence, was admitted by him to be gen- 
 uine." ' Johnson. ' I shall give myself no trouble about 
 the matter.' 
 
 He was, perhaps, above suffering from such spurious 
 
 ' In a new edition of this book, which was published in the follow- 
 ing year, the editor states, that either ' through hurry or inattention 
 some obscene jests had unluckily found a place in the iirst edition.' 
 Sac post, April 28, 1778. ^ See ante, ii. 387, note 2. 
 
 publications;
 
 49^ Tr7it/i essential to a story. [a. d. 1776. 
 
 publications ; but I could not help thinking, that many men 
 would be much injured in their reputation, by having ab- 
 surd and vicious sayings imputed to them ; and that redress 
 ought in such cases to be given. 
 
 He said, * The value of every story depends on its being 
 true. A story is a picture either of an individual or of 
 human nature in general : if it be false, it is a picture of 
 nothing. For instance : suppose a man should tell that 
 Johnson, before setting out for Italy, as he had to cross 
 the Alps, sat down to make himself wings. This many 
 people would believe ; but it would be a picture of noth- 
 ing. *-x-***** ' (naming a worthy friend of ours,) used to 
 think a story, a story, till I shewed him that truth was 
 essential to it\' I observed, that Foote entertained us 
 with stories which were not true ; but that, indeed, it was 
 properly not as narratives that Foote's stories pleased us, 
 but as collections of ludicrous images. JOHNSON. ' Foote 
 is quite impartial, for he tells lies of every body.' 
 
 The importance of strict and scrupulous veracity cannot 
 
 ' The number of the asterisks, taken with the term worthy friend, 
 renders it almost certain that Langton was meant. The story might, 
 however, have been told of Reynolds, for he wrote of Johnson : — 
 ' Truth, whether in great or little matters, he held sacred. From the 
 violation of truth, he said, in great things your character or your in- 
 terest was affected ; in lesser things, your pleasure is equally destroyed. 
 I remember, on his relating some incident, I added something to his 
 relation which I supposed might likewise have happened : " It would 
 have been a better story," says he, " if it had been so ; but it was not." ' 
 Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 457. Mrs. Piozzi records {Anec. p. 116): — '"A 
 story," says Johnson, "is a specimen of human manners, and derives 
 its sole value from its truth. When Foote has told me something, I 
 dismiss it from my mind like a passing shadow; when Reynolds tells 
 me something, I consider myself as possessed of an idea the more." ' 
 
 ^ Boswell felt this when, more than eight years earlier, he wrote : — 
 ' As I have related Paoli's remarkable sayings, I declare upon honour 
 that I have neither added nor diminished ; nay, so scrupulous have I 
 been, that I would not make the smallest variation, even when my 
 friends thought it would be an improvement. I know with how much 
 pleasure we read what is perfectly authentick.' Boswell's Corsica, ed. 
 1879, p. 126. SG.Qpost, iii. 237. 
 
 be
 
 Aetat. G7.] Johusou s scrupulotis veracity. 497 
 
 be too often inculcated. Johnson was known to be so 
 rigidly attentive to it, that even in his common conversa- 
 tion the slightest circumstance was mentioned with exact 
 precision'. The knowledge of his having such a principle 
 and habit made his friends have a perfect reliance on the 
 truth of every thing that he told, however it might have 
 been doubted if told by many others. As an instance of 
 this, I may mention an odd incident which he related as 
 having happened to him one night in Fleet - street. ' A 
 gentlewoman, (said he,) begged I would give her my arm 
 to assist her in crossing the street, which I accordingly did ; 
 upon which she offered me a shilling, supposing me to be 
 the watchman. I perceived that she was somewhat in liq- 
 uor.' This, if told by most people, would have been thought 
 an invention ; when told by Johnson, it was believed by 
 his friends as much as if they had seen what passed. 
 
 We landed at the Temple-stairs, where we parted. 
 
 I found him in the evening in Mrs. Williams's room. We 
 talked of religious orders. He said, ' It is as unreasonable 
 for a man to go into a Carthusian convent for fear of be- 
 ing immoral, as for a man to cut off his hand for fear he 
 should steal. There is, indeed, great resolution in the im- 
 mediate act of dismembering himself ; but when that is 
 once done, he has no longer any merit : for though it is out 
 of his power to steal, yet he may all his life be a thief in 
 his heart. So when a man has once become a Carthusian, 
 
 ■ In his Life of Browne ( Works, vi. 47S) he says of ' innocent frauds ' : 
 — ' But no fraud is innocent ; for the confidence which makes the hap- 
 piness of society is in some degree diminished by every man whose 
 practice is at variance with his words.' ' Mr. Tyers,' writes Murphy 
 {Life, p. 146), 'observed that Dr. Johnson always talked as if he was 
 talking upon oath.' Compared with Johnson's strictness, Rousseau's 
 laxity is striking. After describing ' ces gens qu'on appellc vrais dans 
 le monde,' he continues: — ' L'homme que j'appclle vrai fait tout le 
 contrairc. En choses parfaitcment indilfcrentcs la verite qu'alors 
 I'autre respecte si fort le touche fort peu, et il ne se fera guere de 
 scrupule d'amuser une compagnie par des faits controuves, dont il ne 
 resulte aucun jugement injustc ni pour ni contre qui que cc soit vi- 
 vant ou mort.' Lcs Rc'veries : IV"'' Promenade. 
 
 II. — 32 he
 
 498 Religions austerities. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 he is obliged to continue so, whether he chooses it or not. 
 Their silence, too, is absurd. We read in the Gospel of 
 the apostles being sent to preach, but not to hold their 
 tongues. All severity that does not tend to increase good, 
 or prevent evil, is idle. I said to the Lady Abbess' of a 
 convent, " Madam, you are here, not for the love of virtue, 
 but the fear of vice." She said, " She should remember this 
 as long as she lived." ' I thought it hard to give her this 
 view of her situation, when she could not help it ; and, in- 
 deed, I wondered at the whole of what he now said ; be- 
 cause, both in his Rambler'' and Idlcr^, he treats religious 
 austerities with much solemnity of respect*. 
 
 Finding him still persevering in his abstinence from wine, 
 I ventured to speak to him of it. — JOHNSON. ' Sir, I have 
 no objection to a man's drinking wine, if he can do it 
 in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, 
 and therefore, after having been for some time without it, 
 on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to 
 it". Every man is to judge for himself, according to the 
 effects which he experiences. One of the fathers tells us, 
 he found fasting made him so peevish" that he did not 
 practise it.' 
 
 Though he often enlarged upon the evil of intoxication', 
 
 ' No doubt Mrs. Fermor {ante, ii. 450). 
 
 " No. no. ' No. 52. 
 
 * But see ante, i. 423, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19. 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 9, and post, April 7, 1778. 
 
 ^ Three weeks later, at his usual fast before Easter, Johnson record- 
 ed : — ' I felt myself very much disordered by emptiness, and called for 
 tea with peevish and impatient eagerness.' Pr. and Med. p. 147. 
 
 ' Of the use of spirituous liquors, he wrote ( Works, vi. 26) : — ' The 
 mischiefs arising on every side from this compendious mode of drunk- 
 enness are enormous and insupportable, equally to be found among 
 the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet and distraction, 
 harder to be borne as it cannot be mentioned, and overwhelming mul- 
 titudes with incurable diseases and unpitied poverty.' Yet he found 
 an excuse for drunkenness which few men but he could have found. 
 Stockdale {Memoirs, ii. 189) says that he heard Mrs. Williams 'wonder 
 what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves. " I won- 
 
 he
 
 Aetat. 67.] Practical advice upon drinking. 499 
 
 he was by no means harsh and unforgiving to those who 
 indulged in occasional excess in wine. One of his friends', 
 I \\Q.\\ remember, came to sup at a tavern with him and 
 some other gentlemen, and too plainly discovered that he 
 had drunk too much at dinner. When one who loved mis- 
 chief, thinking to produce a severe censure, asked Johnson, 
 a few days afterwards, ' Well, Sir, what did your friend say 
 to you, as an apology for being in such a situation ?' John- 
 son answered, ' Sir, he said all that a man should say : he 
 said he was sorry for it.' 
 
 I heard him once give a very judicious practical advice 
 upon this subject : ' A man, who has been drinking wine at 
 all freely, should never go into a new company. With those 
 who have partaken of wine v.'ith him, he may be prett)' 
 
 der, Madam," replied Johnson, " that you have not penetration enough 
 to see the strong inducement to this excess ; for he who makes a beast 
 of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." ' 
 
 ' Very likely Boswell. See post, under May 8, 1781, for a like in- 
 stance. In 1775, under a yew tree, he promised Temple to be sober. 
 On Aug. 12, 1775. he wrote: — 'My promise under the solemn yew I 
 have observed wonderfully, having never infringed it till, the other 
 day, a very jovial company of us dined at a tavern, and I unwarily 
 exceeded my bottle of old Hock ; and having once broke over the 
 pale, I run wild, but I did not get drunk. I was, however, intoxicated, 
 and very ill next day.' Letters of Boswell, p. 209. During his present 
 visit to London he wrote : — ' My promise under the solemn yew was 
 not religiously kept, because a little wine hurried me on too much. 
 The General [Paoli] has taken my word of honour that I shall not 
 taste fermented liquor for a year, that I may recover sobriety. I have 
 kept this promise now about three weeks. I was really growing a 
 drunkard.' lb. p. 233. In 1778 he was for a short time a water drinker. 
 Stc post, April 28, 1778. His intemperance grew upon him, and at last 
 carried him off. On Dec. 4, 1790, he wrote to Malone : — 'Courtenay 
 took my word and honour that till March i my allowance of wine per 
 diem should not exceed four good glasses at dinner, and a pint after 
 it, and this I have kept, though I have dined with Jack Wilkes,' &c. 
 On March 8, 1791, he wrote : — ' Your friendly admonition as to excess 
 in wine has been often too applicable. As I am now free from my 
 restriction to Courtenay, I shall be much upon my guard ; for, to tell 
 the truth, I did go too deep the day before yesterday.' Croker's Bos- 
 well, pp. 828, 829. 
 
 well
 
 ^oo Genius and education. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 well in unison ; but he will probably be offensive, or appear 
 ridiculous, to other people,' 
 
 He allowed very great influence to education. ' I do not 
 deny, Sir, but there is some original difference in minds ; but 
 it is nothing in comparison of what is formed by education. 
 We may instance the science of manbers, which all minds 
 are equally capable of attaining' ; yet we find a prodigious 
 difference in the powers of different men, in that respect, 
 after they are grown up, because their minds have been more 
 or less exercised in it : and I think the same cause will ex- 
 plain the difference of excellence in other things, gradations 
 admitting always some difference in the first principles^' 
 
 ' ' Mathematics are perhaps too much studied at our universities. 
 This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I for- 
 get who it is that says, " All men might understand mathematics if 
 they would." ' Goldsmith's Present State of Polite Leammg-, ch. xiii. 
 
 =* ' No, Sir,' he once said, ' people are not born with a particular gen- 
 ius for particular employments or studies, for it would be like saying 
 that a man could see a great way east, but could not west. It is good 
 sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and 
 which by great application grew to be called by the generality of man- 
 kind a particular genius.' Miss Reynolds's Recollections. CrOker's 
 Boswell, p. 833 :— ' Perhaps this is Miss Reynolds's recollection of the 
 following, in Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773: JOHNSON. " I could 
 as easily apply to law as to tragick poetr>\" Boswell. " Yet, Sir, you 
 did apply to tragick poetry, not to law." Johnson. " Because, Sir, I 
 had not money to study law. Sir, the man who has vigour may walk 
 to the east just as well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head 
 that way." ' ' The true genius,' he wrote ( Works, vii. i), ' is a mind of 
 large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular di- 
 rection.' Reynolds held the same doctrine, having got it no doubt 
 from Johnson. He held 'that the superiority attainable in any pur- 
 suit whatever does not originate in an innate propensity of the mind 
 to that pursuit in particular, but depends on the general strength of 
 the intellect, and on the intense and constant application of that 
 strength to a specific purpose. He regarded ambition as the cause of 
 eminence, but accident as pointing out the means.' Northcote's Reyn- 
 olds, i. 1 1. ' Porson insisted that all men are bom with abilities near- 
 ly equal. " Any one," he would say, " might become quite as good a 
 critic as I am, if he would only take the trouble to make himself so. 
 I have made myself what I am by intense labour." ' Rogers's Tablc- 
 
 This
 
 Aetat. G7.] Sca-life. 50 1 
 
 This is a difficult subject ; but it is best to hope that dih- 
 gence may do a great deal. We are sure of what it can do, 
 in increasing our mechanical force and dexterity. 
 
 I again visited him on Monday. He took occasion to en- 
 large, as he often did, upon the wretchedness of a sea-life'. 
 * A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better 
 air, better company, better conveniency of every kind ; and 
 a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger. 
 When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live 
 on land'.' — ' Then, (said I,) it would be cruel in a father to 
 breed his son to the sea.' Johnson. ' It would be cruel in 
 a father who thinks as I do. Men go to sea, before they 
 know the unhappiness of that way of life ; and when they 
 have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because 
 it is then too late to choose another profession ; as indeed is 
 generally the case with men, when they have once engaged 
 in any particular way of life.' 
 
 On Tuesday, March 19, which was fixed for our proposed 
 jaunt, we met in the morning at the Somerset coffee-house 
 
 Talk, p. 305. Hume maintained the opposite. ' This forenoon,' wrote 
 Boswell on June 19, 1775, ' Mr. Hume came in. He did not say much. 
 I only remember his remark, that characters depend more on original 
 formation than on the way we are educated ; " for," said he, " princes 
 are educated uniformly, and yet how different are they! how different 
 was James the Second from Charles the Second!"' Letters of Bos- 
 well, p. 205. Boswell recorded, two years earlier {Hebrides, Sept. 16) : 
 — ' Dr. Johnson denied that any child was better than another, but by 
 difference of instruction ; though, in consequence of greater attention 
 being paid to instruction by one child than another, and of a variety 
 of imperceptible causes, such as instruction being counteracted by 
 servants, a notion was conceived that, of two children equally well 
 educated, one was naturally much worse than another.' 
 
 ' See atzte, i. 403. 
 
 ' The grossness of naval men is shewn in Captain Mirvan, in Miss 
 Barney's E-velina. In her Diary, i. 358, she records : — ' The more I see 
 of sea-captains the less reason I have to be ashamed of Captain Mir- 
 van, for they have all so irresistible a propensity to wanton mischief 
 — to roasting beaus and detesting old women, that I quite rejoice I 
 shewed the book to no one ere printed, lest I should have been pre- 
 vailed upon to soften his character.' 
 
 in
 
 502 A trip to Oxford. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 in the Strand, where we were taken up by the Oxford coach. 
 He was accompanied by Mr. Gwyn', the architect; and a 
 gentleman of Merton College, whom we did not know, had 
 the fourth seat. We soon got into conversation ; for it was 
 very remarkable of Johnson, that the presence of a stranger 
 had no restraint upon his talk. I observed that Garrick, 
 who was about to quit the stage, would soon have an easier 
 life. Johnson. ' I doubt that. Sir.' BOSWELL. ' Why, Sir, 
 he will be Atlas with the burthen off his back.' JOHNSON. 
 ' But I know not, Sir, if he will be so steady without his 
 load. However, he should never play any more, but be en- 
 tirely the gentleman, and not partly the player: he should 
 no longer subject himself to be hissed by a mob, or to be 
 insolently treated by performers, whom he used to rule with 
 a high hand, and who would gladly retaliate.' BosWELL. ' I 
 think he should play once a year for the. benefit of decayed 
 actors, as it has been said he means to do.' JOHNSON. 
 ' Alas, Sir ! he will soon be a decayed actor himself.' 
 
 Johnson expressed his disapprobation of ornamental ar- 
 chitecture, such as magnificent columns supporting a portico, 
 or expensive pilasters supporting merely their own capitals, 
 * because it consumes labour disproportionate to its utility.' 
 For the same reason he satyrised statuary. ' Painting, (said 
 he,) consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect ; but 
 a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make 
 something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value 
 of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value 
 the finest head cut upon a carrot ^' Here he seemed to me 
 
 * Baretti, in a MS. note in Piozzi Letters, i. 349, describes Gwyn as 
 ' the Welsh architect that built the bridge at Oxford." He built Mag- 
 dalen Bridge. 
 
 ^ 'Whence,' asks Goldsmith, 'has proceeded the vain magnificence 
 of expensive architecture in our colleges .'' Is it that men study to 
 more advantage in a palace than in a cell } One single performance 
 of taste or genius confers more real honour on its parent university 
 than all the labours of the chisel.' Present State of Polite Learning, 
 ch. xiii. Newton used to say of his friend, the Earl of Pembroke, ' that 
 he was a lover of stone dolls.' Brewster's Newton, ed. i860, ii. 334. 
 
 to
 
 Aetat. 67.] Mr. Giuyn the architect. 50'' 
 
 J 
 
 to be strangely deficient in taste ; for surely statuary is a 
 noble art of imitation, and preserves a wonderful expression 
 of the varieties of the human frame ; and although it must 
 be allowed that the circumstances of difficulty enhance the 
 value of a marble head, we should consider, that if it re- 
 quires a long time in the performance, it has a proportion- 
 ate value in durability. 
 
 Gwyn was a fine lively rattling fellow. Dr. Johnson kept 
 him in subjection, but with a kindly authority. The spirit 
 of the artist, however, rose against what he thought a Goth- 
 ick attack, and he made a brisk defence. ' What, Sir, will 
 you allow no value to beauty in architecture or in statuary ? 
 Why should we allow it then in writing? Why do you take 
 the trouble to give us so many fine allusions, and bright im- 
 ages, and elegant phrases? You might convey all your in- 
 struction without these ornaments.' Johnson smiled with 
 complacency ; but said, ' Why, Sir, all these ornaments are 
 useful, because they obtain an easier reception for truth ; 
 but a building is not at all more convenient for being deco- 
 rated with superfluous carved work.' 
 
 Gwyn at last was lucky enough to make one reply to Dr. 
 Johnson, which he allowed to be excellent. Johnson cen- 
 sured him for taking down a church which might have stood 
 many years, and building a new one at a different place, for 
 no other reason but that there might be a direct road to 
 a new bridge ; and his expression was, * You are taking a 
 church out of the way, that the people may go in a straight 
 line to the bridge.' — ' No, Sir, (said Gwyn,) I am putting the 
 church /;/ the way, that the people may not go out of the 
 way! Johnson, (with a hearty loud laugh of approbation.) 
 'Speak no more. Rest your colloquial fame upon this.' 
 
 Upon our arrival at Oxford, Dr. Johnson and I went di- 
 rectly to University College, but were disappointed on find- 
 ing that one of the fellows, his friend Mr. Scott', who ac- 
 companied him from Newcastle to Edinburgh, was gone to 
 the country. We put up at the Angel inn, and passed 
 
 ' Afterwards Lord Stowell. See the beginning of Boswcll's Hebrides. 
 
 the
 
 504 The ma7iagement of the mind. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 the evening by ourselves in easy and familiar conversation. 
 Talking of constitutional melancholy, he observed, 'A man 
 so afflicted. Sir, must divert distressing thoughts, and not 
 combat with them.' BOSWELL. ' May not he think them 
 down, Sir?' J0HN8ON. ' No, Sir. To attempt to think them 
 doivn is madness. He should have a lamp constantly burn- 
 ing in his bed-chamber during the night, and if wakefully 
 disturbed, take a book, and read, and compose himself to 
 rest. To have the management of the mind is a great art, 
 and it may be attained in a considerable degree by expe- 
 rience and habitual exercise.' BosWELL. ' Should not he 
 provide amusements for himself? Would it not, for in- 
 stance, be right for him to take a course of chymistry?' 
 Johnson. * Let him take a course of chymistry, or a course 
 of rope-dancing, or a course of any thing to which he is 
 inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many 
 retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it 
 can fly from itself. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy'' is a 
 valuable work. It is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation. 
 But there is great spirit and great power in what Burton 
 says, when he writes from his own mind.' 
 
 Next morning we visited Dr. Wetherell, Master of Uni- 
 versity College, with whom Dr. Johnson conferred on the 
 most advantageous mode of disposing of the books printed 
 at the Clarendon press, on which subject his letter has been 
 inserted in a former page\ I often had occasion to remark, 
 Johnson loved business*, loved to have his wisdom actually 
 operate on real life. Dr. Wetherell and I talked of him 
 without reserve in his own presence. Wetherell. ' I 
 would have given him a hundred guineas if he would have 
 written a preface to his Political Tracts^, by way of a Dis- 
 course on the British Constitution.' BoswELL. ' Dr. John- 
 son, though in his writings, and upon all occasions a great 
 friend to the constitution both in church and state, has 
 
 ' See atite, i. 517. " See ante, ii. 138, and/isi-/, Oct. 27, 1779. 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 486. • ■* See/tf^Y, under April 4, 1781. 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 360. 
 
 never
 
 Aetat. 67.] David Hume and Dr. Adams. 505 
 
 never written expressly in support of either. There is re- 
 ally a claim upon him for both. I am sure he could give a 
 volume of no great bulk upon each, which would comprise 
 all the substance, and with his spirit would effectually main- 
 tain them. He should erect a fort on the confines of each.' 
 I could perceive that he was displeased with this dialogue. 
 He burst out, ' Why should / be always writing' ?' I hoped 
 he was conscious that the debt was just, and meant to dis- 
 charge it, though he disliked being dunned. 
 
 We then went to Pembroke College, and waited on his 
 old friend Dr. Adams, the master of it, whom I found to be 
 a most polite, pleasing, communicative man. Before his 
 advancement to the headship of his college, I had intended 
 to go and visit him at Shrewsbury, where he was rector of 
 St. Chad's, in order to get from him what particulars he 
 could recollect of Johnson's academical life. He now oblig- 
 ingly gave me part of that authentick information, which, 
 with what I afterwards owed to his kindness, will be found 
 incorporated in its proper place in this work. 
 
 Dr. Adams had distinguished himself by an able answer 
 to David Hume's Essay on Aliraclcs. He told me he had 
 once dined in company with Hume in London''; that Hume 
 shook hands with him, and said, ' You have treated me much 
 better than I deserve ;' and that they exchanged visits. I 
 took the liberty to object to treating an infidel vv'riter with 
 smooth civility. Where there is a controversy concerning 
 a passage in a classick authour, or concerning a question in 
 antiquities, or any other subject in which human happiness 
 is not deeply interested, a man may treat his antagonist with 
 politeness and even respect. But where the controversy 
 
 ' See ante, i. 461. 
 
 ' ' Hume told Cadcll, the bookseller, that he had a great desire to 
 be introduced to as many of the persons who had written against 
 him as could be collected. Accordingly, Dr. Douglas, Dr. Adams, 
 &c., were invited by Cadcil to dine at his house, in order to meet 
 Hume. They came ; and Dr. Price, who was of the party, assured 
 me that they were all delighted with David.' Rogers's Table-Talk, 
 p. 106. 
 
 is
 
 5o6 Civility to injidel tvriters. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 is concerning the truth of rehgion, it is of such vast impor- 
 tance to him who maintains it, to obtain the victory, that 
 the person of an opponent ought not to be spared. If 
 a man firmly beheves that rehgion is an invaluable treas- 
 ure ', he will consider a writer who endeavours to deprive 
 mankind of it as a robber ; he will look upon him as odious, 
 though the infidel might think himself in the right. A rob- 
 ber who reasons as the gang do in The Beggar s Opera, who 
 call themselves practical philosophers', and may have as 
 much sincerity as pernicious speculative philosophers, is not 
 the less an object of just indignation. An abandoned prof- 
 ligate may think that it is not wrong to debauch my wife ; 
 but shall I, therefore, not detest him? And if I catch him 
 in making an attempt, shall I treat him with politeness? 
 No, I will kick him down stairs, or run him through the 
 body ; that is, if I really love my wife, or have a true ra- 
 tional notion of honour. An infidel then shall not be 
 treated handsomely by a Christian, merely because he en- 
 deavours to rob with ingenuity. I do declare, however, 
 that I am exceedingly unwilling to be provoked to anger, 
 and could I be persuaded that truth would not suffer from 
 a cool moderation in its defenders, I should wish to pre- 
 serve good humour, at least, in every controversy ; nor, in- 
 deed, do I see why a man should lose his temper while 
 he does all he can to refute an opponent. I think ridicule 
 may be fairly used against an infidel ; for instance, if he be 
 
 ' Boswell, in his Corsica, ed. 1879, p. 204, uses a strange argument 
 against infidelity. ' Belief is favourable to the human mind were it 
 for nothing else but to furnish it entertainment. An infidel, I should 
 think, must frequently suffer from ennui.' In his Hebrides, Aug. 15, 
 note, he attacks Adam Smith for being ' so forgetful of iiwnan com- 
 fort as to give any countenance to that dreary infidelity which would 
 " make us poor indeed." ' 
 
 ^ 'Jemmy Twitcher. Are we more dishonest than the rest of man- 
 kind ? What we win, gentlemen, is our own, by the law of arms and 
 the right of conquest. 
 
 ' Crook-finger'd Jack. "Where shall we find such another set of 
 practical philosophers, who to a man are above the fear of death T 
 The Beggar s Opera, act ii. sc. i. 
 
 an
 
 Aetat. G7.] Oxford co7Jinion rooms. 507 
 
 an ugly fellow, and yet absurdly vain of his person ', we 
 may contrast his appearance with Cicero's beautiful imao-e 
 of Virtue, could she be seen". Johnson coincided with me 
 and said, ' When a man voluntarily engages in an important 
 controversy, he is to do all he can to lessen his antagonist, 
 because authority from personal respect has much weight 
 with most people, and often more than reasoning'. If my 
 antagonist writes bad language, though that may not be 
 essential to the question, I will attack him for his bad 
 language.' Adams. ' You would not jostle a chimney- 
 sweeper.' Johnson. 'Yes, Sir, if it were necessary to jos- 
 tle him doivn! 
 
 Dr. Adams told us, that in some of the Colleges at Ox- 
 ford, the fellows had excluded the students from social 
 intercourse with them in the common room \ JOHNSON. 
 
 ' Boswell, I think, here aims a blow at Gibbon. He says {post, un- 
 der March 19, 17S1), that 'Johnson had talked with some disgust of 
 Mr. Gibbon's ugliness.' He wrote to Temple on May 8, 1779 : — ' Gib- 
 bon is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our literary 
 club to me.' He had before classed him among ' infidel wasps and 
 venomous insects.' Letters of Bosiuell, pp. 233, 242. The younger 
 Colman describes Gibbon as dressed ' in a suit of flowered velvet, 
 with a bag and sword.' Random Records, i. 121. 
 
 ^ ' Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fill, et tamquam faciem honest! 
 vides, " quae si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores " ut ait Plato, 
 " excitaret sapientiae." ' Cicero, De Ojfficiis, \. 5. 
 
 ' Of Beattie's attack on Hume, he said : — ' Treating your adversary 
 with respect, is striking soft in a battle.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15. 
 
 ^ When Gibbon entered Magdalen College in 1752, the ordinary 
 commoners were already excluded. ' As a gentleman commoner,' he 
 writes,' I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly ex- 
 pected that some questions of literature would be the amusing and 
 instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stagnated 
 in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and 
 private scandal ; their dull and deep potations excused the brisk in- 
 temperance of youth ; and their constitutional toasts were not ex- 
 pressive of the most lively loyalty for the House of Hanover.' Gib- 
 bon's Misc. Works, i. 53. In Jesse's edition of White's Selbor7ie, p. 11, 
 it is stated that ' White, as long as his health allowed him, always at- 
 tended the annual election of Fellows at Oriel College, where the gen- 
 tlemen-commoners were allowed the use of the common-room after 
 
 ' They
 
 5o8 Pembroke College common room. [a.d, 1776. 
 
 'They are in the right, Sir: there can be no real conversa- 
 tion, 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.' BOSWELL. * But, Sir, may 
 there not be very good conversation without a contest for 
 superiority?' JOHNSON. 'No animated conversation. Sir, 
 for it cannot be but one or other will come off supcriour. 
 I do not mean that the victor must have the better of the 
 argument, for he may take the weak side ; but his superior- 
 ity of parts and knowledge will necessarily appear: and he 
 to whom he thus shews himself superiour is lessened in the 
 eyes of the young men'. You know it Vv^as s3\d,''Mallc}n 
 cum Scaligero errarc quajn cum Clavio rccte saperc"^." In the 
 same manner take Bentley's and Jason de Nores' Comments 
 upon Horace, you will admire Bentley more when wrong, 
 than Jason when right.' 
 
 We walked with Dr. Adams into the master's garden, and 
 into the common room. JOHNSON, (after a reverie of medi- 
 tation.) ' Ay ! Here I used to play at draughts with Phil. 
 Jones' and Fludyer. Jones loved beer, and did not get very 
 
 dinner. This liberty they seldom availed themselves of, except on 
 the occasion of Mr. White's visits ; for such was his happy manner of 
 telling a story that the room was always filled when he was there.' 
 He died in 1793. 
 
 ^ ' So different are the colours of life as we look forward to the fut- 
 ure, or backward to the past, and so different the opinions and senti- 
 ments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that 
 the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt 
 or pity on either side. . . . One generation is always the scorn and 
 wonder of the other ; and the notions of the old and young are like 
 liquors of different gravity and texture which never can unite.' T/ie 
 Rambler, No. 69. 
 
 ^ ' It was said of a dispute between two mathematicians, " nialiui 
 cum Scaligero err are qiiaai cum Clavio rede sapere," that " it was more 
 eligible to go wrong with one than right with the other." A tenden- 
 cy of the same kind every mind must feel at the perusal of Dryden's 
 prefaces and Rymer's discourses.' Johnson's Works, \i\. 303. 
 
 ^ 'There is evidence of Phil. Jones's love of beer; for we find scrib- 
 bled at the end of the college buttery-books, " O yes, O yes, come 
 forth, Phil. Jones, and answer to your charge for exceeding the batells." 
 
 forward
 
 Aetat. G7.] Johusou dines at University College. 509 
 
 forward in the church. Fludyer turned out a scoundrel', a 
 Whig, and said he was ashamed of having been bred at Ox- 
 ford. He had a living at Putney, and got under the eye of 
 some retainers to the court at that time, and so became a 
 violent Whig : but he had been a scoundrel all along to be 
 sure.' BOSWELL. ' Was he a scoundrel. Sir, in any other 
 way than that of being a political scoundrel? Did lie cheat 
 at draughts?' JOHNSON. ' Sir, we never played for money.' 
 
 He then carried me to visit Dr. Bentham, Canon of Christ- 
 Church, and Divinity Professor, with whose learned and live- 
 ly conversation we were much pleased. He gave us an in- 
 vitation to dinner, which Dr. Johnson told me was a high 
 honour. ' Sir, it is a great thing to dine with the Canons of 
 Christ-Church.' We could not accept his invitation, as we 
 were engaged to dine at University College. We had an 
 excellent dinner there, with the Master and Fellows, it be- 
 ing St. Cuthbert's day, which is kept by them as a festi- 
 val, as he was a saint of Durham, with which this college is 
 much connected'. 
 
 We drank tea with Dr. Home", late President of Mag- 
 dalen College, and Bishop of Norwich, of whose abilities, 
 
 His excess, perhaps, wab in liquor.' Dr. Johnson : His Friends, (S-r., 
 p. 23. 
 
 ' Sec post, iii. i, note 2. 
 
 * Dr. Fisher, ivho was present, told Mr. Croker that ' he recollected 
 one passage of the conversation. Boswell quoted (2itc'!n Dens vult per- 
 derc,prius dcnicniat, and asked where it was. A pause. At last Dr. 
 Chandler said, in Horace. Another pause. Then Fisher remarked that 
 he knew of no metre in Horace to which the words could be reduced ; 
 and Johnson said dictatorially, " The young man is right." ' See post, 
 March 30, 1783. For another of Dr. Fisher's anecdotes, see ante, ii. 
 308, note I. Mark Pattison recorded in his Diary in 1843 {Memoirs, 
 p. 203), on the authority of Mr. (now Cardinal) Newman: — 'About 
 1770, the worst time in the University; a head of Oriel then, who 
 was continually obliged to be assisted to bed by his butler. Gaudies, 
 a scene of wild license. At Christ Church they dined at three, and 
 sat regularly till chapel at nine.' A gaudy is such a festival as the 
 one in the text. 
 
 ^ The author of the Commentary on the Psalms. Sec Boswell 's/A'i^- 
 rides, Aug. 15, note. 
 
 in
 
 5IO Waltoiis Lives. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 in different respects, the publick has had eminent proofs, 
 and the esteem annexed to whose character was increased 
 by knowing him personally. He had talked of publish- 
 ing an edition of Walton's Lives', but had laid aside that 
 design, upon Dr. Johnson's telling him, from mistake, that 
 Lord Hailes intended to do it. I had wished to negociate 
 between Lord Hailes and him, that one or other should 
 perform so good a work. JOIINSON. ' In order to do it 
 well, it will be necessary to collect all the editions of Wal- 
 ton's Lives. By way of adapting the book to the taste of 
 the present age, they have, in a later edition, left out a 
 vision which he relates Dr. Donne had^ but it should be 
 restored ; and there should be a critical catalogue given of 
 the works of the different persons whose lives were writ- 
 ten by Walton, and therefore their works must be carefully 
 read by the editor.' 
 
 We then went to Trinity College, where he introduced 
 me to Mr. Thomas Warton, with whom we passed a part 
 of the evening. We talked of biography. — JOHNSON. ' It 
 is rarely well executed ^ They only who live with a man 
 can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrim- 
 ination ; and few people who have lived with a man know 
 what to remark about him. The chaplain of a late Bishop", 
 whom I was to assist in writing some memoirs of his Lord- 
 ship, could tell me scarcely any thing \' 
 
 ' See anh', ii. 320, 324. 
 
 ^ ' I have seen,' said Mr. Donne to Sir R. Drewry, 'a dreadful vision 
 since I saw you. I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me, through 
 this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead 
 child in her arms.' He learnt that on the same day, and about the 
 very hour, after a long and dangerous labour, she had been delivered 
 of a dead child. Walton's L/fc of Dr. DoJinc, ed. 1838, p. 25. 
 
 ^ ' Biographers so little regard the manners or behaviour of their 
 heroes, that more knowledge may be gained of a man's real character 
 by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal 
 and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree, and ended with his 
 funeral.' The Rambler, No. 60. Se.e posf, iii. 81. 
 
 ■• See/>os/, iii. 128, note 2. 
 
 ^ It has been mentioned to me by an accurate English friend, that 
 
 J said,
 
 Aetat. 67.] Robert Dodsley. 5 1 1 
 
 I said, Mr. Robert Dodsley's life should be written, as he 
 had been so much connected with the wits of his time', 
 and by his literary merit had raised himself from the station 
 of a footman. Mr. Warton said, he had published a little 
 volume under the title of The Muse in Livery'^. JOHNSOX. 
 ' I doubt whether Dodsley's brother' would thank a man 
 who should write his life: yet Dodsley himself was not un- 
 willing that his original low condition should be recollected. 
 When Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues of the Dead came out, 
 one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and 
 Dartineuf, a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, " I knew 
 Dartincuf well, for I was once his footman*." ' 
 
 Dr. Johnson could never have used the phrase almost nothing, as not 
 
 being Enghsh ; and therefore I have put another in its place. At the 
 
 same time, I am not quite convinced it is not good English. For the 
 
 best writers use the phrase ' Little or nothing ;' i. e. almost so little as 
 
 to be nothing. Boswell. Boswell might have left almost nothing in 
 
 his text. Johnson used it in his writings, certainly twice. ' It will 
 
 add almost nothing to the expense.' IVorks, v. 307. ' I have read 
 
 little, almost nothing.' Pr. and Med. p. 176. Moreover, in a letter 
 
 to Mrs. Aston, written on Nov. 5, 1779 (Croker's Bosivcll, p. 640), he 
 
 saj'S : — ' Nothing almost is purchased.' In King Lear, act ii. sc. 2, we 
 
 have : — 
 
 — ' Nothing almost sees miracles- 
 
 But misery.' 
 
 * ' Pope's fortune did not suffer his charity to be splendid and con- 
 spicuous ; but he assisted Dodsley with a hundred pounds, that he 
 might open a shop.' Johnson's Works,\'\\\. 318. 
 
 ' A Muse in Livery : or the Footman's Miscellany. 172,-- A rhyme 
 in the motto on the title-page shows what a Cockney muse Dodsley's 
 was. He writes : — 
 
 ' But when I mount behind the coach, 
 And bear aloft a flaming torch.' 
 The Preface is written with much good feeling. 
 
 ' James Dodsley, many years a bookseller in Pall Mall. He died 
 Feb. 19, 1797. P. Cunningham. He was living, therefore, when this 
 anecdote was published. 
 
 * Horace Walpole {Letters, iii. 135) says : — 'You know how decent, 
 humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is ; how little apt to forget 
 or disguise his having been a footman.' Johnson seems to refer to 
 Dodsley in the following passage, written in 1756 (IForhs, v. 35<S) : — 
 
 Biography
 
 512 Dr. John Ca)npOell. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 Biography led us to speak of Df. John Campbell', who 
 had written a considerable part of the BiograpJiia Britan- 
 nica. Johnson, though he valued him highly, was of opin- 
 ion that there was not so much in his great work, A Polit- 
 ical Survey of Great Britain, as the world had been taught 
 to expect'^; and had said to me, that he believed Camp- 
 bell's disappointment, on account of the bad success of that 
 work, had killed him. He this evening observed of it, 'That 
 work was his death.' Mr. Warton, not adverting to his 
 meaning, answered, ' I believe so ; from the great attention 
 he bestowed on it.' Joi-INSON. ' Nay, Sir, he died of zvaiit 
 of attention, if he died at all by that book.' 
 
 We talked of a work much in vogue at that time, written 
 in a very mellifluous style, but which, under pretext of an- 
 other subject, contained much artful infidelity \ I said it 
 was not fair to attack us thus unexpectedly; he should 
 have warned us of our danger, before we entered his gar- 
 den of flowery eloquence, by advertising, ' Spring-guns and 
 men-traps set here\' The authour had been an Oxonian, 
 
 ' The last century imagined that a man composing in his chariot was 
 a new object of curiosity ; but how much would the wonder have 
 been increased by a footman studying behind it.' 
 
 * See ante, i. 483. 
 
 * Yet surely it is a veiy useful work, and of wonderful research and 
 labour for one man to have executed. Boswell. See Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Oct. 17, 1773. 
 
 ^ Two days earlier, Hume congratulated Gibbon on the first vol- 
 ume of his Decline and Fall: — 'I own that if I had not previously 
 had the happiness of your personal acquaintance, such a performance 
 from an Englishman in our age would have given me some surprise. 
 You may smile at this sentiment, but as it seems to me that your 
 countrjmien, for almost a whole generation, have given themselves 
 up to barbarous and absurd faction, and have totally neglected all 
 polite letters, I no longer expected any valuable production ever to 
 come from them.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 484. 
 
 * Five weeks later Boswell used a dififerent metaphor. ' I think it 
 is right that as fast as infidel wasps or venomous insects, whether 
 creeping or flying, are hatched, they should be crushed.' Letters of 
 Boswell, p. 232. If the infidels were w^asps to the orthodox, the ortho- 
 dox were hornets to the infidels. Gibbon wrote {Misc. Works, i. 273) : 
 
 and
 
 Aetat. 07.] Gibbo)LS conversia)is. 513 
 
 and was remembered there for havinj^ * turned Papist.' I 
 observed, that as he had changed several times — from the 
 Church of England to the Church of Rome, — from the 
 Church of Rome to infidelity, — I did not despair yet of 
 seeing him a methodist preacher. JOHNSON, (laughing.) 
 ' It is said, that his range has been more extensive, and 
 that he has once been Mahometan'. However, now that 
 he has published his infidelity, he will probably persist in 
 it.' BOSWELL. ' I am not quite sure of that. Sir.' 
 
 I mentioned Sir Richard Steele having published his 
 Christian Hero, with the avowed purpose of obliging him- 
 self to lead a religious life^; yet, that his conduct was by 
 
 — ' The freedom of my writings has indeed provoked an implacable 
 tribe ; but as I was safe from the stings, I was soon accustomed to 
 the buzzing of the hornets.' 
 
 ' Macaulay thus examines this report {Essays, i. 360): — 'To what 
 then, it has been asked, could Johnson allude ? Possibly to some an- 
 ecdote or some conversation of which all trace is lost. One conject- 
 ure may be offered, though with diffidence. Gibbon tells us in his 
 memoirs [Misc. Works, i. 56] that at Oxford he took a fancy for study- 
 ing Arabic, and was prevented from doing so by the remonstrances 
 of his tutor. Soon after this, the young man fell in with Bossuet's 
 controversial writings, and was speedily converted by them to the 
 Roman Catholic faith. The apostasy of a gentleman -commoner 
 would of course be for a time the chief subject of conversation in 
 the common room of Magdalene. His whim about Arabic learning 
 would naturally be mentioned, and would give occasion to some jokes 
 about the probability of his turning Mussulman. If such jokes were 
 made, Johnson, who frequently visited Oxford, was very likely to hear 
 of them.' Though Gibbon's Autobiography ends with the year 1788, 
 yet he wrote portions of it, I believe, after the publication of the Life 
 of Johnson. See anti-, ii. 9, note i. I have little doubt that in the 
 following lines he refers to the attack thus made on liim by Boswell 
 and Johnson. ' Many years afterwards, when the name of Gibbon 
 was become as notorious as that of Middleton, it was industriously 
 whispered at Oxford that the historian had formerly " turned Pa- 
 pist;" my character stood exposed to the reproach of inconstancy.' 
 Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 65. 
 
 "^ Steele, in his Apology for Himself afid his Writings (ed. 17 '4. 
 
 p. 80), says of himself: — ' He first became an author when an ensign 
 
 of the Guards, a way of life exposed to much irregularity, and being 
 
 II.— 33 no
 
 514 Tristram Shandy. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 no means strictly suitable. JOHNSON. 'Steele, I believe, 
 practised the lighter vices.' 
 
 Mr. Warton, being engaged, could not sup with us at our 
 inn; we had therefore another evening by ourselves. I asked 
 Johnson, whether a man's' being forward to make himself 
 known to eminent people, and seeing as much of life, and 
 getting as much information as he could in every way, was 
 not yet lessening himself by his forwardness. JOHNSON. 
 ' No, Sir ; a man always makes himself greater as he in- 
 creases his knowledge.' 
 
 I censured some ludicrous fantastick dialogues between 
 two coach-horses and other such stuff, which Barctti had 
 lately published ^ He joined with me, and said, 'Noth- 
 ing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last'.' I 
 
 thoroughly convinced of many things of which he often repented, 
 and which he more often repeated, he writ, for his own private use, 
 a Httle book called the Christian Hero, with a design principally to 
 fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion, in 
 opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures. 
 This secret admonition was too weak ; he therefore printed the book 
 with his name, in hopes that a standing testimony against himself, 
 and the eyes of the world, that is to say of his acquaintance, upon 
 him in a new light, might curb his desires, and make him ashamed of 
 understanding and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so 
 quite contrary a life.' 
 
 * ' A man,' no doubt, is Boswell himself. 
 
 - '" I was sure when I read it that the preface to Baretti's Dia- 
 logties was Dr. Johnson's ; and that I made him confess." "Baretti's 
 Dialogues! What are they about?" "A thimble, and a spoon, and 
 a knife, and a fork ! They are the most absurd, and yet the most 
 laughable things you ever saw. They were written for Miss Thrale, 
 and all the dialogues are between her and him, e.xcept now and then 
 a shovel and a poker, or a goose and a chair happen to step in." ' 
 Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 263. 
 
 ^ ' April 4, 1760. At present nothing is talked of, nothing admired, 
 but what I cannot help calling a very insipid and tedious performance ; 
 it is a kind of novel called The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shan- 
 dy ; the great humour of which consists in the whole narration always 
 going backwards.' Walpole's ZdVA-rj. iii. 298. ' March 7, 1761. The 
 second and third volumes of Tristrajn Shandy, the dregs of nonsense, 
 have universally met the contempt they deserve.' lb. 382. ' " My 
 
 expressed
 
 Aetat. GT.] Burkes stream of mind. 5 1 5 
 
 expressed a desire to be acquainted with a lady who had 
 been much talked of, and universally celebrated for extraor- 
 dinary address and insinuation'. JOHNSON. ' Never believe 
 extraordinary characters which you hear of people. De- 
 pend upon it. Sir, they are exaggerated. You do not see 
 one man shoot a great deal higher than another.' I men- 
 tioned Mr. Burke. JOHNSON. 'Yes; Burke is an extraordi- 
 nary man. His stream of mind is perpetuaP.' It is ver}' 
 pleasing to me to record, that Johnson's high estimation 
 of the talents of this gentleman was uniform from their 
 early acquaintance. Sir Joshua Reynolds informs me, that 
 when Mr. Burke was first elected a member of Parliament, 
 and Sir John Hawkins expressed a wonder at his attain- 
 ing a seat, Johnson said, * Now we who know Mr. Burke, 
 
 good friend," said Dr. Farmer {ante, i. 426), one day in the parlour at 
 Emanuel College, "you young men seem very fond of this Tristratn 
 Shandy ; but mark my words, however much it may be talked about 
 at present, j-ct, depend upon it, in the course of twenty years, should 
 any one wish to refer to it, he will be obliged to go to an antiquary 
 to inquire for it."' Croker's Bosiucll, ed. 1844, ii. 339. See ante, ii. 
 199, note 2, and 254. 
 
 ' Mrs. Rudd. She and the two brothers Perreau were charged with 
 forgery. She was tried first and acquitted, the verdict of the jury 
 being ' not guilty, according to the evidence before us.' The Ann. 
 Reg. xviii. 231, adds: — 'There were the loudest applauses on this ac- 
 quittal almost ever known in a court of justice.' ' The issue of Mrs. 
 Rudd's trial was thought to involve the fate of the Perrcaus ; and 
 the popular fancy had taken the part of the woman as against the 
 men.' They were convicted and hanged, protesting their innocence. 
 Letters of Boswell, pp. 223-230. Boswell wrote to Temple on April 
 28 : — ' You know my curiosity and love of adventure ; I have got 
 acquainted with the celebrated Mrs. Rudd.' Ih. p. 233. Three days 
 later, he wrote :— ' Perhaps the adventure with Mrs. Rudd is very fool- 
 ish, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's approbation.' lb. p. 235. Sec post, 
 iii.9i,and April 28, 1778. 
 
 ' StQpost, May 15, 1784, where Johnson says that Mrs. Montagu has 
 'a constant stream of conversation,' and a second time allows that 
 • Burke is an extraordinary man.' Johnson writes of ' a stream of 
 melody.' Works, \\\\.c)2. ' For Burke's conversation see /<?.?/, April 7, 
 1778, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection, March 21, 1783, and Boswell's 
 Hebrides, Aug. 1 5. 
 
 know,
 
 5i6 England Jiappy in its inns. [a.d. I77u. 
 
 know, that he will be one of the first men in this coun- 
 try'.' And once, when Johnson was ill, and unable to exert 
 himself as much as usual without fatigue, Mr. Burke hav- 
 ing been mentioned, he said, ' That fellow calls forth all 
 my powers. Were I to see Burke now it would kill me\' 
 So much was he accustomed to consider conversation as a 
 contest', and such was his notion of Burke as an opponent. 
 
 Next morning, Thursday, March 2i,we set out in a post- 
 chaise to pursue our ramble. It was a delightful day, and 
 we rode through Blenheim park. When I looked at the mag- 
 nificent bridge built by John Duke of Marlborough, over a 
 small rivulet, and recollected the Epigram made upon it — 
 
 'The lofty arch his high ambition shows, 
 The stream, an emblem of his bounty flows * :' 
 
 and saw that now, by the genius of Brown '\ a magnificent 
 body of water was collected, I said, ' They have drowned the 
 Epigram.* I observed to him, while in the midst of the 
 noble scene around us, * You and I, Sir, have, I think, seen 
 together the extremes of what can be seen in Britain : — the 
 wild rough island of Mull, and Blenheim park.' 
 
 We dined at an excellent inn at Chapel-house, where he 
 expatiated on the felicity of England in its taverns and inns, 
 and triumphed over the French for not having, in any per- 
 fection, the tavern life. ' There is no private house, (said 
 he,) in which people can enjoy themselves so well, as at a 
 capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good 
 things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever 
 
 ' See ante, ii. i8. 
 
 • According to Boswell's record in Boswelliana, p. 273, two sayings 
 are here united. He there writes, on the authority of Mr. Langton ; 
 — ' Dr. Johnson had a very high opinion of Edmund Burke. He said, 
 " That fellow calls forth all my powers ;" and once when he was out 
 of spirits and rather dejected he said, " Were I to see Burke now 
 'twould kill me." ' 
 
 ^ See ante, ii. 115, iii. 27, and under May 8, 1781. 
 
 * In a note on The Diaiciad, ii. 50, the author of this epigram is said 
 to be Dr. Evans. 
 
 ^ Capability Brown, as he was called. S^epost, Oct. 10, i779- 
 
 so
 
 Aetat. G7.] England happy in its inns, 5 1 7 
 
 so much desire that every body should be easy ; in the 
 nature of things it cannot be : there must ahvays be some 
 degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is 
 anxious to entertain his guests ; the guests are anxious to 
 be agreeable to him : and no man, but a very impudent dog 
 indeed, can as freely command what is in another man's 
 house, as if it were his own'. Whereas, at a tavern, there is 
 a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are wel- 
 come : and the more noise you make, the more trouble you 
 give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you 
 are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which 
 waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate 
 reward in proportion as they please. No, Sir ; there is noth- 
 ing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so 
 much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn\' 
 He then repeated, with great emotion, Shenstone's lines : — 
 
 ' Such an 'impudent dog' had Boswell himself been in Corsica. 
 ,• Before I was accustomed to the Corsican hospitality,' he wrote, ' I 
 sometimes forgot myself, and imagining I was in a publick house, 
 called for what I wanted, with the tone which one uses in calling to 
 the waiters at a tavern. I did so at Pino, asking for a variety of things 
 at once, when Signora Tomasi perceiving my mistake, looked in my 
 face and smiled, saying with much calmness and good nature, "una 
 cosa dopo un altra, Signore. One thing after another, Sir." ' Bos- 
 well's Corsica, ^^. 1S79, p. 151. A Corsican gentleman, who knows 
 the Tomasi family, told me that this reply is preserved among them 
 by tradition. 
 
 ' Sir John Hawkins has preserved very few Menwrabilia of John- 
 son. There is, however, to be found, in his bulky tome [p. 87], a very 
 excellent one upon this subject: — 'In contradiction to those, who, 
 having a wife and children, prefer domestick enjoyments to those 
 which a tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that a ia7>crn chair 
 was the ihrotie of human felicity. — " As soon," said he, "as I enter the 
 door of a tavern, I experience an oblivion of care, and a freedom from 
 solicitude : when I am seated, I find the master courteous, and tlie 
 servants obsequious to my call; anxious to know and ready to sup- 
 f;ly my wants: wine there exhilarates my spirits, and prompts me to 
 free conversation and an interchange of discourse with those whom I 
 most love: I dogmatise and am contradicted, and in this conflict of 
 opinions and sentiments I find delight." ' BoswKi.r.. 
 
 ' Whoe'er
 
 5i8 Shenstones lines on an inn. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 'Whoe'er has travell'd Ufe's dull round, 
 Where'er his stages may have been, 
 May sigh to think he still has found 
 The warmest welcome at an inn'.' 
 
 My illustrious friend, I thought, did not sufficiently ad- 
 mire Shenstone^ That ingenious and elegant gentleman's 
 opinion of Johnson appears in one of his letters to Mr. 
 Graves ^ dated Feb. 9, 1760. 'I have lately been reading 
 one or two volumes of The Rambler ; who, excepting against 
 some few hardnesses* in his manner, and the want of more 
 examples to enliven, is one of the most nervous, most per- 
 spicuous, most concise, [and] most harmonious prose writers 
 I know. A learned diction improves by time.' 
 
 In the afternoon, as we were driven rapidly along in the 
 post-chaise, he said to me ' Life has not many things better 
 than this'.' 
 
 We stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon, and drank tea and 
 
 ' We happened to lie this night at the inn at Henley, where Shen-* 
 stone wrote these lines ^. Boswell. 
 
 ^ See Boswell 's Hebrides, Sept. 29. 
 
 ' See Shenstones Works, iii. 311. Rev. Richard Graves, author of 
 The Spiritual (luixote. He and Shenstone were fellow-students at 
 Pembroke College, Oxford. 
 
 ^ ' He too often makes use of the abstract for the concrete.' Shen- 
 stone. Boswell. 
 
 ^ ' I asked him why he doated on a coach so, and received for an- 
 swer, that in the first place the company was shut in with him there, 
 and could not escape as out of a room ; in the next place he heard all 
 that was said in a carriage, where it was my turn to be deaf.' Piozzi's 
 Anec. p. 276. Sqq post, iii. 5, 184. Gibbon, at the end of a journey in 
 a post-chaise, wrote (Jllisc. IVor/cs, i. 408) : — ' I am always so much de- 
 lighted and improved with this union of ease and motion, that, were 
 not the expense enormous, I would travel every year some hundred 
 miles, more especially in England." 
 
 ^ I give them as they are found in the corrected edition of his Works, published after his 
 death. In Dodsley's collection the stanza ran thus: — 
 
 'Whoe"er has travell'd life's dull round, 
 Whate'er his various tour /las been, 
 May sigh to think ^aw oft he found 
 Hii warmest welcome at an Inn.' Boswell. 
 
 coffee ;
 
 Aetat. 67.] Dyers Fleece. 519 
 
 coffee ; and it pleased me to be with him upon the classick 
 ground of Shakspeare's native place. 
 
 He spoke slightingly of Dyer's Flcccc\ — 'The subject, 
 Sir, cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poet- 
 ically of serges and druggets ? Yet you will hear many 
 people talk to you gravely of that excellent poem, TJic 
 Fleece.' Having talked of Grainger's Sugar -Cane, I men- 
 tioned to him Mr. Langton's having told me, that this 
 poem, when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, 
 had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when, 
 after much blank-verse pomp, the poet began a new para- 
 graph thus : — 
 
 ' Now, Muse, let's sing of rats.^ 
 
 And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the com- 
 pany, who slily overlooked the reader, perceived that the 
 word had been originally mice, and had been altered to rats, 
 as more dignified \ 
 
 'tj' 
 
 ' Johnson ( Works, viii. 406) tells the following ' ludicrous story ' of 
 The Fleece. ' Dodsley the bookseller was one day mentioning it to a 
 critical visitor with more expectation of success than the other could 
 easily admit. In the conversation the author's age was asked ; and, 
 being represented as advanced in life, " He will," said the critic, "be 
 buried in woollen." ' To encourage the trade in wool, an Act was 
 passed requiring the dead to be buried in woollen. Burke refers to 
 this when he says of Lord Chatham, who was swathed in flannel 
 owing to the gout : — ' Like a true obeyer of the laws, he will be bur- 
 ied in woollen.' Burke's Corres. ii.201. Hawkins (L//e, p. 231) says: 
 — 'A portrait of Samuel Dyer [s&c post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collec- 
 tion] was painted by Sir Joshua, and from it a mezzotinto was scraped ; 
 the print whereof, as he was little known, sold only to his friends. A 
 singular use was made of it ; Bell, the publisher of T/ie English Poets, 
 caused an engraving to be made from it, and prefixed it to the poems 
 of Mr. John Dyer.' 
 
 - Such is this little laughable incident, which has been often re- 
 lated. Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, who was an intimate friend 
 of Dr. Grainger, and has a particular regard for his memory, has com- 
 municated to me the following explanation : — 
 
 'The passage in question was originally not liable to such a per- 
 version ; for the authour having occasion in that part of his work to 
 
 This
 
 520 Grainger s Sugar-Cane. [a. d. 1776. 
 
 This passage does not appear in the printed work. Dr. 
 Grainger, or some of his friends, it should seem, having be- 
 come sensible that introducing even Rats in a grave poem, 
 might be liable to banter. He, however, could not bring 
 himself to relinquish the idea; for they are thus, in a still 
 more ludicrous manner, periphrastically exhibited in his 
 poem as it now stands : 
 
 ' Nor with less waste the whisker'd vermin race 
 A countless clan despoil the lowland cane.' 
 
 Johnson said, that Dr. Grainger was an agreeable man ; 
 a man who would do any good that was in his power. His 
 translation of Tibullus, he thought, was very well done ; but 
 The Sugar-Canc, a poem, did not please him'; for, he ex- 
 claimed, ' What could he make of a sugar-cane? One might 
 as well write the " Parsley-bed, a Poem ;" or " The Cabbage- 
 garden, a Poem." ' Boswell. ' You must then pickle your 
 cabbage with the sal aiticumi JOHNSON. 'You know there 
 is already The Hop -Garden^ a Poem*: and, I think, one 
 
 mention the havock made by rats and mice, had introduced the sub- 
 ject in a kind of mock heroick, and a parody of Homer's battle of the 
 frogs and mice, invoking the Muse of the old Grecian bard in an ele- 
 gant and well-turned manner. In that state I had seen it ; but after- 
 wards, unknown to me and other friends, he had been persuaded, con- 
 trary to his own better judgement, to alter it, so as to produce the 
 unlucky effect above-mentioned.' 
 
 The above was written by the Bishop wiien he had not the Poem 
 itself to recur to ; and though the account given was true of it at one 
 period, yet as Dr. Grainger afterwards altered the passage in question, 
 the remarks in the text do not now apply to the printed poem. 
 
 The Bishop gives this character of Dr. Grainger :— ' He was not 
 only a man of genius and learning, but had many excellent virtues ; 
 being one of the most generous, friendly, and benevolent men I ever 
 knew.' Boswell. 
 
 ' Dr. Johnson said to me, ' Percy, Sir, was angry with me for laugh- 
 ing at The Sugar-cane : for he had a mind to make a great thing 
 of Grainger's rats.' Boswell. Johnson helped Percy in writing a 
 review of this poem in 1764 {ante, i. 557). 
 
 ' In Poems by Christopher Smart, ed. 1752, p. loo. One line may 
 
 could
 
 Aetat. 67.] A vicciical mails singular history. 5 2 1 
 
 could say a great deal about cabbage. The poem might 
 begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude 
 state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages 
 till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them'; and one 
 might thus shew how arts are propagated by conquest, as 
 they were by the Roman arms.' He seemed to be much 
 diverted with the fertility of his own fancy. 
 
 I told him, that 1 heard Dr. Percy was writing the history 
 of the wolf in Great- Britain. JOHNSON. 'The wolf, Sir! 
 why the wolf? Why does he not write of the bear, which 
 we had formerly? Nay, it is said we had the beaver. Or 
 why does he not write of the grey rat, the Hanover rat, as 
 it is called, because it is said to have come into this coun- 
 try about the time that the family of Hanover came? I 
 should like to see The History of the Grey Rat, by Thomas 
 Percy, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty,' (laugh- 
 ing immoderately). BOSWELL, ' I am afraid a court chap- 
 lain could not decently write of the grey rat.' JOHNSON. 
 ' Sir, he need not give it the name of the Hanover rat.' 
 Thus could he indulge a luxuriant sportive imagination, 
 when talking of a friend whom he loved and esteemed. 
 
 He mentioned to me the singular history of an ingenious 
 acquaintance. ' He had practised physick in various situa- 
 tions with no great emolument. A West-India gentleman, 
 whom he delighted by his conversation, gave him a bond 
 for a handsome annuity during his life, on the condition of 
 his accompanying him to the West-Indies, and living with 
 him there for two years. He accordingly embarked with 
 the gentleman ; but upon the voyage fell in love with a 
 young woman who happened to be one of the passengers, 
 and married the wench. From the imprudence of his dis- 
 position he quarrelled with the gentleman, and declared he 
 would have no connection with him. So he forfeited the 
 
 serve as a sample of the whole poem. Writing of ' Bacchus, God of 
 hops,' the poet says : — 
 
 ' Tis he shall gen'ratc the buxom beer.' 
 ' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22. 
 
 annuity.
 
 52 2 Johnson and Boswell at Birmingham, [a. d. 1776. 
 
 annuity. He settled as a physician in one of the Leeward 
 Islands. A man was sent out to him merely to compound 
 his medicines. This fellow set up as a rival to him in his 
 practice of physick, and got so much the better of him in 
 the opinion of the people of the island that he carried away 
 all the business, upon which he returned to England, and 
 soon after died.' 
 
 On Friday, March 22, having set out early from Henley ', 
 where we had lain the preceding night, we arrived at Bir- 
 mingham about nine o'clock, and, after breakfast, went to 
 call on his old schoolfellow Mr. Hector ^ A very stupid 
 maid, who opened the door, told us, that ' her master was 
 gone out ; he was gone to the country ; she could not tell 
 when he would return.' In short, she gave us a miserable 
 reception ; and Johnson observed, ' She would have behaved 
 no better to people who wanted him in the way of his pro- 
 fession.' He said to her, ' My name is Johnson ; tell him 
 I called. Will you remember the name?' She answered 
 with rustick simplicity, in the Warwickshire pronunciation, 
 'I don't understand you. Sir.* — ' Blockhead, (said he,) I'll 
 write.' I never heard the word blockhead applied to a 
 woman before, though I do not see why it should not, 
 when there is evident occasion for it'. He, however, made 
 
 ' Henley in Arden, thirteen miles from Birmingham. 
 
 - Mr. Hector's house was in the Square — now known as the Old 
 Square. It afterwards formed part of the Stork Hotel, but it was 
 pulled down when Corporation Street was made. A marble tablet 
 had been placed on the house at the suggestion of the late Mr. 
 George Dawson, marking the spot where ' Edmund Hector was the 
 host, Samuel Johnson the guest.' This tablet, together with the 
 wainscoting, the door, and the mantelpiece of one of the rooms, was 
 set up in Aston Hall, at the Johnson Centenar)% in a room that is to 
 be known as Dr. Johnson's Room. 
 
 " My worthy friend Mr. Langton, to whom I am under innumerable 
 obligations in the course of my Johnsonian History, has furnished me 
 with a droll illustration of this question. An honest carpenter, after 
 giving some anecdote in his presence of the ill-treatment which he 
 had received from a clergyman's wife, who v/as a noted termagant, 
 and whom he accused of unjust dealing in some transaction with him, 
 
 another
 
 Aetat. 07.] Mr. Lloyd, the Quaker. 523 
 
 another attempt to make her understand him, and roared 
 loud in her ear, ' Jo/uisou,' and then she catched the sound. 
 
 We next called on Mr. Lloyd, one of the people called 
 Quakers. He too was not at home; but Mrs. Lloyd was, 
 and received us courteously, and asked us to dinner. John- 
 son said to me, ' After the uncertainty of all human things 
 at Hector's, this invitation came very well.' We walked 
 about the town, and he was pleased to see it increasing. 
 
 I talked of legitimation by subsequent marriage, which 
 obtained in the Roman law, and still obtains in the law of 
 Scotland. JOHNSON. 'I think it a bad thing; because the 
 chastity of women being of the utmost importance, as all 
 property depends upon it, they who forfeit it should not 
 have any possibility of being restored to good character; 
 nor should the children, by an illicit connection, attain the 
 full right of lawful children, by the posteriour consent of 
 the offending parties.' His opinion upon this subject de- 
 serves consideration. Upon his principle there may, at 
 times, be a hardship, and seemingly a strange one, upon in- 
 dividuals ; but the general good of society is better secured. 
 And, after all, it is unreasonable in an individual to repine 
 that he has not the advantage of a state which is made dif- 
 ferent from his own, by the social institution under which 
 he is born. A woman does not complain that her brother, 
 who is younger than her, gets their common father's estate. 
 Why then should a natural son complain that a younger 
 brother, by the same parents lawfully begotten, gets it? 
 The operation of law is similar in both cases. Besides, an 
 illegitimate son, who has a younger legitimate brother by 
 the same father and mother, has no stronger claim to the 
 father's estate, than if that legitimate brother had only the 
 same father, from whom alone the estate descends. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd joined us in the street ; and in a little while we 
 met Friend Hector, as Mr. Lloyd called him. It gave me 
 
 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 
 scoundrel: Boswell. 
 
 pleasure
 
 524 The sect of the Quakers. [a.d. 1776, 
 
 pleasure to observe the joy which Johnson and he expressed 
 on seeing each other again. Mr. Lloyd and I left them to- 
 gether, while he obligingly shewed me some of the manu- 
 factures of this very curious assemblage of artificers. We 
 all met at dinner at Mr. Lloyd's, where we were entertained 
 with great hospitality. Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd had been mar- 
 ried the same year with their Majesties, and like them, had 
 been blessed with a numerous family of fine children, their 
 numbers being exactly the same. Johnson said, ' Marriage 
 is the best state for a man in general ; and every man is 
 a worse man, in proportion as he is unfit for the married 
 state.' 
 
 I have always loved the simplicity of manners, and the 
 spiritual-mindedness of the Quakers; and talking with Mr. 
 Lloyd, I observed, that the essential part of religion was pie- 
 ty, a devout intercourse with the Divinity; and that many 
 a man was a Quaker without knowing it. 
 
 As Dr. Johnson had said to me in the morning, while we 
 walked together, that he liked individuals among the Quak- 
 ers, but not the sect ; when we were at Mr. Lloyd's, I kept 
 clear of introducing any questions concerning the peculiari- 
 ties of their faith. But I having asked to look at Basker- 
 ville's edition of Barclay s Apology, Johnson laid hold of it ; 
 and the chapter on baptism happening to open, Johnson re- 
 marked, ' He says there is neither precept nor practice for 
 baptism, in the scriptures; that is false.' Here he was the 
 aggressor, by no means in a gentle manner; and the good 
 Quakers had the advantage of him ; for he had read neg- 
 ligently, and had not observed that Barclay speaks of in- 
 fant baptism'; which they calmly made him perceive. Mr. 
 Lloyd, however, was in as great a mistake ; for when insist- 
 ing that the rite of baptism by water was to cease, when the 
 spiritual administration of CHRIST began, he maintained, 
 that John the Baptist said, ' My baptism shall decrease, but 
 
 ' ' As to the baptism of infants, it is a mere human tradition, for 
 which neither precept nor practice is to be found in all the Scripture.' 
 Barclay's Apology, Proposition xii. ed. 1703, p. 409. 
 
 his
 
 Aetat. 67.] Mr. Boltoiis wovks at So/io. 525 
 
 his shall increase.' Whereas the words are, ^ He must in- 
 crease, but /must decrease'.' 
 
 One of them having objected to the ' observance of days, 
 and months, and years,' Johnson answered, ' The Church 
 does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but 
 as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept 
 as well upon one day of the year as another ; but there 
 should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our 
 Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on 
 any day, will be neglected.' 
 
 He said to mc at another time, 'Sir, the holidays observed 
 by our church are of great use in religion.' There can be 
 no doubt of this, in a limited sense, I mean if the number 
 of such consecrated portions of time be not too extensive. 
 The excellent Mr. Nelson's'' Festivals and Fasts, which has, 
 I understand, the greatest sale of any book ever printed in 
 England, except the Bible, is a most valuable help to de- 
 votion ; and in addition to it I would recommend two ser- 
 mons on the same subject, by Mr. Pott, Archdeacon of St. 
 Alban's, equally distinguished for piety and elegance. I am 
 sorry to have it to say, that Scotland is the only Christian 
 countr>', Catholick or Protestant, where the great events of 
 our religion are not solemnly commemorated by its ecclesi- 
 astical establishment, on days set apart for the purpose. 
 
 Mr. Hector was so good as to accompany me to see the 
 great works of Mr. Bolton, at a place which he has called 
 Soho, about two miles from Birmingham, which the very in- 
 genious proprietor shewed me himself to the best advan- 
 tage. I wish Johnson had been with us: for it was a scene 
 which I should have been glad to contemplate by his light'. 
 
 ' Jo/in iii. 30. BOSWELL. 
 
 = Mr. Seward {Aticc. ii. 223) says that ' Dr. Johnson always supposed 
 that Mr. Richardson had Mr. Nelson in his thoughts when he deline- 
 ated the character of Sir Charles Grandison.' Robert Nelson was 
 born in 1656, and died in 1715. 
 
 ^ ' Mr. Arkwright pronounced Johnson to be the only person who 
 on a first view understood both the principle and powers of his most 
 complicated pieces of machinery.' Johnson's IVor/cs (1787), .xi. 215. 
 
 The
 
 526 Mrs. Careless, Johnsons first-love. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 The vastness and the contrivance of some of the machinery 
 would have ' matched his mighty mind.' I shall never for- 
 get Mr. Bolton's expression to me : 'I sell here, Sir, what 
 all the world desires to have — POWER.' He had about sev- 
 en hundred people at work, I contemplated him as an iron 
 chieftain, and he seemed to be a father to his tribe. One 
 of them came to him, complaining grievously of his land- 
 lord for having distrained his goods. ' Your landlord is in 
 the right, Smith, (said Bolton). But I'll tell you what : find 
 you a friend who will lay down one half of your rent, and 
 I'll lay down the other half ; and you shall have your goods 
 
 agam. 
 
 From Mr. Hector I now learnt many particulars of Dr. 
 Johnson's early life, which, with others that he gave me at 
 different times since, have contributed to the formation of 
 this work. 
 
 Dr. Johnson said to me in the morning, 'You will see, 
 Sir, at Mr, Hector's, his sister, Mrs. Careless', a clergyman's 
 widow. She was the first woman with whom I was in love. 
 It dropt out of my head imperceptibly ; but she and I shall 
 always have a kindness for each other.' He laughed at the 
 
 Arthur Young, who visited Birmingham in 1768, writes: — 'I was 
 nowhere more disappointed than at Birmingham, where I could not 
 gain any intelligence even of the most common nature, through the 
 excessive jealousy of the manufacturers. It seems the French have 
 carried off several of their fabricks, and thereby injured the town not 
 a little. This makes them so cautious that they will show strangers 
 scarce anything.' Tour through the A^orth of England, iii. 279. 
 
 ^ Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale (year not given) : — ' I have passed 
 one day at Birmingham with my old friend Hector — there's a name — 
 and his sister, an old love. My mistress is grown much older than 
 my friend. 
 
 — "O quid habes illius, illius 
 
 Quae spirabat amores 
 Quae me surpuerat mihi." ' 
 
 [' Of her, of her what now remains, 
 
 Who breathed the loves, who charm^ed the swains, 
 
 And snatched me from my heart ?' 
 
 Francis, Horace, Odes, iv. 13. 18.] 
 
 Piozzi Letters, i. 290. 
 
 notion
 
 Aetat. 67.] Mr. Charles Congreve. 527 
 
 notion that a man never can be really in love but once, and 
 considered it as a mere romantick fancy. 
 
 On our return from Mr. Bolton's, Mr. Hector took me to 
 his house, where we found Johnson sitting placidly at tea", 
 with his first love ; who, though now advanced in 3^ears, 
 was a genteel woman, very agreeable, and well-bred. 
 
 Johnson lamented to Mr. Hector the state of one of their 
 school-fellows, Mr. Charles Congreve, a clergyman, which he 
 thus described : ' He obtained, I believe, considerable pre- 
 ferment in Ireland, but now lives in London, quite as a vale- 
 tudinarian, afraid to go into any house but his own. He 
 takes a short airing in his post-chaise every day. He has 
 an elderly woman, whom he calls cousin, who lives with him, 
 and jogs his elbow when his glass has stood too long empty, 
 and encourages him in drinking, in which he is very willing 
 to be encouraged ; not that he gets drunk, for he is a very 
 pious man, but he is always muddy \ He confesses to one 
 bottle of port every day, and he probably drinks more. He 
 is quite unsocial ; his conversation is quite monosyllabical : 
 and when, at my last visit, I asked him what a clock it was? 
 that signal of my departure had so pleasing an effect on 
 him, that he sprung up to look at his watch, like a grey- 
 hound bounding at a hare.' When Johnson took leave of 
 Mr. Hector, he said, ' Don't grow like Congreve ; nor let me 
 grow like him, when you are near me^' 
 
 When he again talked of Mrs. Careless to-night, he seem- 
 ed to have had his affection revived; for he said, 'If I had 
 
 ' Some j-ears later he wrote : — ' Mrs. Careless took me under her 
 care, and told me when I had tea enough.' lb. ii. 205. 
 
 ' See a?ite, ii. 41 5, note 3. 
 
 ^ Johnson, in a letter to Hector, on March 7 of this year, described 
 Congreve as 'very dull, very valetudinary, and very recluse, willing, I 
 am afraid, to forget the world, and content to be forgotten by it, to 
 repose in that sullen sensuality into which men naturally sink who 
 think disease a justification of indulgence, and converse only with 
 those who hope to prosper by indulging them. . . . Infirmity will 
 come, but let us not invite it; indulgence will allure us, but let us 
 turn resolutely away. Time cannot always be defeated, hut let us not 
 yield till we are conquered.' Notes and (Queries, 6th S., iii. 401. 
 
 married
 
 528 The Three Crowns at Lichjiehi. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 married her, it might have been as happy for me'.' BOSWELL. 
 ' Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women 
 in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy, 
 as with any one woman in particular.' Johnson. 'Ay, Sir, 
 fifty thousand.' BoswELL. ' Then, Sir, you are not of opin- 
 ion with some who imagine that certain men and certain 
 women are made for each other; and that they cannot be 
 happy if they miss their counterparts.' JOHNSON. 'To be 
 sure not, Sir. I believe marriages would in general be as 
 happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord 
 Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circum- 
 stances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.' 
 I wished to have staid at Birmingham to-night, to have 
 talked more with Mr. Hector; but my friend was impatient 
 to reach his native city ; so we drove on that stage in the 
 dark, and were long pensive and silent. When we came 
 within the focus of the Lichfield lamps, ' Now, (said he,) 
 we are getting out of a state of death.' We put up at the 
 Three Crowns, not one of the great inns, but a good old 
 fashioned one, which was kept by Mr. Wilkins, and was the 
 very next house to that in which Johnson was born and 
 brought up, and which was still his own property". We 
 had a comfortable supper, and got into high spirits. I felt 
 all my Toryism glow in this old capital of Staffordshire. I 
 could have offered incense gcnio loci; and I indulged in 
 libations of that ale, which Boniface, in The Beaux Strata- 
 gem, recommends with such an eloquent jollity'. 
 
 ' In the same letter he said : — ' I hope dear Mrs. Careless is well, and 
 now and then does not disdain to mention my name. It is happy 
 when a brother and sister live to pass their time at our age together. 
 I have nobody to whom I can talk of my first years — when I go to 
 Lichfield, I see the old places, but find nobody that enjoyed them 
 with me.' 
 
 ^ I went through the house where my illustrious friend was born, 
 with a reverence with which it doubtless will long be visited. An 
 engraved view of it, with the adjacent buildings, is in The Gejit. Mag. 
 for Feb. 1785. Boswell. 
 
 ^ The scene of Farquhar's Beaiix Stratagem is laid in Lichfield. 
 The passage in which the ale is praised begins as follows : — 
 
 Next
 
 Aetat. G7.] Air. Pcter Garrick. 529 
 
 Next morning he introfiuced me to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his 
 step-daughter. She was now an old maid, with much sim- 
 plicity of manner. She had never been in London. Her 
 brother, a Captain in the navy, had left her a fortnnc of ten 
 thousand pounds ; about a third of which she had laid out 
 in building a stately house, and making a handsome garden, 
 in an elevated situation in Lichfield. Johnson, when here 
 by himself, used to live at her house. She reverenced him, 
 and he had a parental tenderness for her'. 
 
 We then visited Mr. Peter Garrick, who had that mornincr 
 received a letter from his brother David, announcing our 
 coming to Lichfield. He was engaged to dinner, but asked 
 us to tea, and to sleep at his house. Johnson, however, 
 would not quit his old acquaintance Wilkins, of the Three 
 Crowns. The family likeness of the Garricks was verj- 
 striking^; and Johnson thought that David's vivacity was 
 
 ' Aimtucll. I have heard your town of Lichfield much famed for 
 ale; I think I'll taste that. 
 
 'Boniface. Sir, I have now in my cellar ten tun of the best ale in 
 Staffordshire ; 'tis smooth as oil, sweet as milk, clear as amber, and 
 strong as brandy; and will be just fourteen year old the fifth day 
 of next March, old style.' Act i. sc. i. Sqq post, April 20, 17S1. 
 
 ' Though his letters to her are very affectionate, yet what he wrote 
 of her to Mrs. Thrale shews that her love for him was not strong. 
 Thus he writes: — 'July 20, 1767. Miss Lucy is more kind and civil 
 than I expected.' Piozzi Letters, i.4. 'July 17, 1771. Lucy is a phi- 
 losopher, and considers me as one of the external and accidental 
 things that are to be taken and left without emotion. If I could 
 learn of Lucy, would it be better? Will you teach me?' Ih. p. 46. 
 'Aug. I, 1775. This was to have been my last letter from this place, 
 but Lucy says I must not go this week. Fits of tenderness with Mrs. 
 Lucy are not common, but she seems now to have a little paroxysm, 
 and I was not willing to counteract it.' lb. p. 293. 'Oct. 27, 1781. 
 Poor Lucy's illness has left her very deaf, and I think, very inarticu- 
 late. . . . But she seems to like me better than she did.' Jh. ii. 208. 
 ' Oct. 31, 1781. Poor Lucy's health is very much broken. . . . Her men- 
 tal powers are not impaired, and her social virtues seem to increase. 
 She never was so civil to me before.' /^. p. 211. On his mother's 
 death he had written to her : — ' Every heart must lean to somebody, 
 and I have nobody but you.' See ante, i. 597. 
 
 * See ante, ii. 355. 
 
 H. — 34 not
 
 530 Air. Jackson, Johnsons schoolfellow, [a.d. 1770. 
 
 not so peculiar to himself as was supposed. ' Sir, (said he,) 
 I don't know but if Peter had cultivated all the arts of 
 gaiety as much as David has done, he might' have been 
 as brisk and lively. Depend upon it, Sir, vivacity is much 
 an art, and depends greatly on habit.' I believe there is 
 a good deal of truth in this, notwithstanding a ludicrous 
 story told me by a lady abroad, of a heavy German baron, 
 who had lived much with the young English at Geneva, 
 and was ambitious to be as lively as they; with which view, 
 he, with assiduous exertion, was jumping over the tables 
 and chairs in his lodgings ; and when the people of the 
 house ran in and asked, with surprize, what was the matter, 
 he answered, ' SJi apprcns fetrejif.' 
 
 We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson', 
 one of Johnson's schoolfellows, whom he treated with much 
 kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and un- 
 taught. He had a coarse grey coat, black waistcoat, greasy 
 leather breeches, and a yellow uncurled wig ; and his coun- 
 tenance had the ruddiness which betokens one who is in no 
 haste to ' leave his can.' He drank only ale. He had tried 
 to be a cutler at Birmingham, but had not succeeded ; and 
 now he lived poorly at home, and had some scheme of dress- 
 ing leather in a better manner than common ; to his indis- 
 tinct account of which, Dr. Johnson listened with patient 
 attention, that he might assist him with his advice. Here 
 was an instance of genuine humanity and real kindness in 
 this great man, who has been most unjustly represented as 
 altogether harsh and destitute of tenderness. A thousand 
 such instances might have been recorded in the course of 
 his long life ; though that his temper was warm and hasty, 
 and his manner often rough, cannot be denied. 
 
 I saw here, for the first time, oat ah ; and oat cakes not 
 hard as in Scotland, but soft like a Yorkshire cake, were 
 served at breakfast. It was pleasant to me to find, that 
 Oats, the food of horses", were so much used as the food 
 
 ' Sqc post, iii. 149. 
 
 * Boswell varies Johnson's definition, which was ' a grain which in 
 
 of
 
 KJ 
 
 bo 

 
 Aetat. 67.] Joliusoii s provi7icial accoits. 531 
 
 of the people in Dr. Johnson's own town. He expatiated in 
 praise of Lichfield and its inhabitants, who, he said, were 
 'the most sober, decent people' in England, the genteelest 
 in proportion to their wealth, and spoke the purest Eng- 
 lish ^' I doubted as to the last article of this eulogy: for 
 they had several provincial sounds ; as there, pronounced 
 like fear, instead of like fair; once pronounced woonse, in- 
 stead of zvujise, or ivonse. Johnson himself never got en- 
 tirely free of those provincial accents \ Garrick sometimes 
 used to take him off, squeezing a lemon into a punch-bowl, 
 with uncouth gesticulations, looking round the company, 
 and calling out, ' Who's iov pooush ?*' 
 
 Very little business appeared to be going forward in Lich- 
 field. I found however two strange manufactures for so 
 inland a place, sail-cloth and streamers for ships; and I 
 observed them making some saddle - cloths, and dressing 
 sheepskins: but upon the whole, the busy hand of industry 
 seemed to be quite slackened. ' Surely, Sir, (said I,) you 
 are an idle set of people.' ' Sir, (said Johnson,) we are a 
 city of philosophers, we work with our heads, and make 
 the boobies of Birmingham' work for us with their hands.' 
 
 England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the 
 people.' See an/c, i. 341, note 3. 
 
 ' '" I remember," said Dr. Johnson, " when all the decent people in 
 Lichfield got drunk every night." ' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19. See 
 post, iii. 89. 
 
 " He had to allow that in literature they were behind the age. 
 Nearly four years after the publication of Evelina, he wrote : — ' What- 
 ever Burney [by Burney he meant Miss Burney] may think of the 
 celerity of fame, the name of Ei'clina had never been heard at Lich- 
 field till I brought it. I am afraid my dear townsmen will be men- 
 tioned in future days as the last part of this nation that was civilised. 
 But the days of darkness are soon to be at an end ; the reading soci- 
 ety ordered it to be procured this week.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 221. 
 
 ' See ante, ii. 182. 
 
 * Garrick himself, like the Lichfieldians, always said — j/z/z/zy///*-, 
 sh uperior. B U R N E V . 
 
 ' Johnson did not always speak so disrespectfully of Birmingham. 
 In his Taxation no Tyranny ( Works, vi. 228), he wrote :— ' The traders 
 of Birmingham have rescued themselves from ail imputation of nar- 
 
 Thcrc
 
 532 Garriclcs conversation. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 There was at this time a company of players performing 
 at Lichfield. The manager, Mr. Stanton, sent his compH- 
 ments, and begged leave to wait on Dr. Johnson. John- 
 son received him very courteously, and he drank a glass of 
 wine with us. He was a plain decent well-behaved man, 
 and expressed his gratitude to Dr. Johnson for having once 
 got him permission from Dr. Taylor at Ashbourne to play 
 there upon moderate terms. Garrick's name was soon in- 
 troduced. Johnson. * Garrick's conversation is gay and 
 grotesque. It is a dish of all sorts, but all good things. 
 There is no solid meat in it : there is a want of sentiment 
 in it. Not but that he has sentiment sometimes, and senti- 
 ment, too, very powerful and very pleasing : but it has not 
 its full proportion in his conversation.' 
 
 When we were by ourselves he told me, ' Forty years ago. 
 Sir, I was in love with an actress here, Mrs. Emmet, who 
 acted Flora, in Hob in the Welt'.'' What merit this lady 
 had as an actress, or what was her figure, or her manner, 
 I have not been informed : but, if we may believe Mr. Gar- 
 rick, his old master's taste in theatrical merit was by no 
 means refined^; he was not an elcgajis foi'inariim specta- 
 tor^. Garrick used to tell, that Johnson said of an actor, 
 who played Sir Harry Wildair* at Lichfield, ' There is a 
 courtly vivacity about the fellov/ ;' when in fact, according 
 to Garrick's account, ' he was the most vulgar rufifian that 
 ever went upon boards! 
 
 We had promised Mr. Stanton to be at his theatre on 
 Monday. Dr. Johnson jocularly proposed me to write a 
 
 row selfishness by a manly recommendation to Parliament of the 
 .^rights and dignity of their native country.' The boobies in this case 
 were sound Tories. 
 
 ' This play was Gibber's Hob ; or The Country Wake, with additions, 
 which in its turn was Dogget's Country Wake reduced. Reed's Biog. 
 Drain, ii. 307. 
 
 " Boswell sa.ys,post, under Sept. 30, 1783, that ' Johnson had thought 
 more upon the subject of acting than might be generally supposed.' 
 
 ^ A nice observer of the female form. Croker. Terence, Eun. 
 iii. 5. 
 
 * In Farquhar's Comedy of S/r Harry Wildair. 
 
 Prologue
 
 Aetat. 67.] Mr. Greeiis museum. 533 
 
 Prologue for the occasion : ' A Prologue, by James Boswell, 
 Esq. from the Hebrides.' I was really inclined to take the 
 hint. Methought, ' Prologue, spoken before Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson, at Lichfield, 1776;' would have sounded as well 
 as, ' Prologue, spoken before the Duke of York, at Oxford,' 
 in Charles the Second's time. Much might have been said 
 of what Lichfield had done for Shakespeare, by producing 
 Johnson and Garrick. But I found he was averse to it. 
 
 We went and viewed the museum of Mr. Richard Green, 
 apothecary here, who told me he was proud of being a re- 
 lation of Dr. Johnson's. It was, truely, a wonderful col- 
 lection, both of antiquities and natural curiosities, and in- 
 genious works of art. He had all the articles accurately 
 arranged, with their names upon labels, printed at his own 
 little press ; and on the staircase leading to it was a board, 
 with the names of contributors marked in gold letters. A 
 printed catalogue of the collection was to be had at a book- 
 seller's. Johnson expressed his admiration of the activity 
 and diligence and good fortune of Mr. Green, in getting 
 together, in his situation, so great a variety of things ; and 
 Mr. Green told me that Johnson once said to him, ' Sir, I 
 should as soon have thought of building a man of war, as of 
 collecting such a museum.' Mr. Green's obliging alacrity in 
 shewing it w^as very pleasing. His engraved portrait, with 
 which he has favoured me, has a motto truely charactcr- 
 istical of his disposition, ' N^cnio sibi vivat.' 
 
 A physician being mentioned who had lost his practice, 
 because his whimsically changing his religion had made peo- 
 ple distrustful of him, I maintained that this was unreason- 
 able, as religion is unconnected with medical skill. JoilX- 
 SON. ' Sir, it is not unreasonable ; for when people see a 
 man absurd in what they understand, they may conclude 
 the same of him in what they do not understand. If a 
 physician were to take to eating of horse-flesh, nobody 
 would employ him; though one may eat horse-flesh, and 
 be a very skilful physician. If a man were educated in an 
 absurd religion, his continuing to profess it would not hurt 
 him, though his changing to it would.' 
 
 Wc
 
 534 Dining with friends. [a.d. ittg. 
 
 We drank tea and coffee at Mr. Peter Garrick's, where 
 was Mrs. Aston, one of the maiden sisters of Mrs. Walms- 
 ley, wife of Johnson's first friend', and sister also of the 
 lady of wdiom Johnson used to speak with the warmest 
 admiration, by the name of Molly Aston \ who was after- 
 wards married to Captain Brodie of the navy. 
 
 On Sunday, March 24, we breakfasted with Mrs. Cobb, a 
 widow lady, who lived in an agreeable sequestered place 
 close by the town, called the Friary, it having been formerly 
 a religious house. She and her niece. Miss Adey, were great 
 admirers of Dr. Johnson ; and he behaved to them with a 
 kindness and easy pleasantry, such as we see between old 
 and intimate acquaintance. He accompanied Mrs. Cobb to 
 St. Mary's church, and I went to the cathedral, where I was 
 very much delighted with the musick, finding it to be pecul- 
 iarly solemn and accordant with the words of the service. 
 
 We dined at Mr. Peter Garrick's, who was in a very lively 
 humour, and verified Johnson's saying, that if he had culti- 
 vated gaiety as much as his brother David, he might have 
 equally excelled in it. He was to-day quite a London nar- 
 rator, telling us a variety of anecdotes with that earnestness 
 and attempt at mimicry which we usually find in the wits 
 of the metropolis. Dr. Johnson went with me to the cathe- 
 dral in the afternoon ^ It was grand and pleasing to con- 
 template this illustrious writer, now full of fame, worship- 
 ping in the 'solemn temple*' of his native city. 
 
 I returned to tea and coffee at Mr. Peter Garrick's, and 
 then found Dr. Johnson at the Reverend Mr. Seward's ^ 
 Canon Residentiary, who inhabited the Bishop's palace", 
 
 ' Gilbert Walmsley, ante, i. 94. - See a7ite, i. 96. 
 
 ^ Cradock {Memoirs, \. 74) says that in the Cathedral porch, a gen- 
 tleman, 'who might, perhaps, be too ambitious to be thought an ac- 
 quaintance of the great Literary Oracle, ventured to say, " Dr. John- 
 son, we have had a most excellent discourse to-day," to which lie 
 replied, " That may be. Sir, but it is impossible for you to know it." ' 
 
 " The Tempest, act. iv. sc. i. ' See post, iii. 172. 
 
 " Johnson, in 1763, advising Miss Porter to rent a house, said : — 'You 
 might have the Palace for twenty pounds.' Croker's Boswell, p. 145. 
 
 in
 
 Aetat. 67.] The Reverend Mr. Seward. 535 
 
 in which Mr. Walmsley lived, and which had been the scene 
 of many happy hours in Johnson's early life. Mr. Seward 
 had, with ecclesiastical hospitality and politeness, asked me 
 in the morning, merely as a stranger, to dine with him ; and 
 in the afternoon, when I was introduced to him, he asked 
 Dr. Johnson and me to spend the evening and sup with 
 him. He was a genteel well-bred dignified clergyman, had 
 travelled with Lord Charles Fitzroy, uncle of the present 
 Duke of Grafton, who died when abroad, and he had lived 
 much in the great world. He was an ingenious and literary 
 man, had published an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 and written verses in Dodsley's collection. His lady was 
 the daughter of Mr. Hunter, Johnson's first schoolmas- 
 ter. And now, for the first time, I had the pleasure 
 of seeing his celebrated daughter. Miss Anna Seward, to 
 whom I have since been indebted for many civilities, 
 as well as some obliging communications concerning John- 
 
 son'. 
 
 Mr. Seward mentioned to us the observations which he 
 had made upon the strata of earth in volcanoes, from which 
 it appeared, that they were so very different in depth at 
 different periods, that no calculation whatever could be 
 made as to the time required for their formation. This 
 fully refuted an anti-mosaical remark introduced into Cap- 
 tain Brydone's entertaining tour, I ho[)e heedlessly, from a 
 kind of vanity which is too common in those who have not 
 sufficiently studied the most important of all subjects. Dr. 
 Johnson, indeed, had said before, independent of this obser- 
 vation, ' Shall all the accumulated evidence of the history 
 of the world ; — shall the authority of what is unquestionably 
 
 ' Boswell, after his book was published, quarrelled with Miss Sew- 
 ard. He said that he was forced to examine these communications 
 'with much caution. They were tinctured with a strong prejudice 
 against Johnson.' His book, he continued, w^as meant to be ' a real 
 history and not a novel,' so that he had ' to suppress all erroneous par- 
 ticulars, however entertaining.' He accused her of attacking John- 
 son with malevolence. Cait. Mag. 1793, P- '°09- ^^'^ BoswcU's sec- 
 ond meeting with her, sec post, iii. 323. 
 
 the
 
 536 The death of Mr. Thrales son. [a.d. 177G. 
 
 the most ancient writing, be overturned by an uncertain 
 remark such as this'?' 
 
 On Monday, March 25, we breakfasted at Mrs. Lucy Por- 
 ter's. Johnson had sent an express to Dr. Taylor's, ac- 
 quainting him of our being at Lichfield \ and Taylor had 
 returned an answer that his post-chaise should come for us 
 this day. While we sat at breakfast. Dr. Johnson received 
 a letter by the post, which seemed to agitate him very 
 much. When he had read it, he exclaimed, ' One of the 
 most dreadful things that has happened in my time.' The 
 phrase my time, like the word age, is usually understood to 
 refer to an event of a publick or general nature. I imag- 
 ined something like an assassination of the King — like a 
 gunpowder plot carried into execution — or like another fire 
 of London. When asked, 'What is it. Sir?' he answered, 
 ' Mr. Thrale has lost his only son' !' This was, no doubt, a 
 very great affliction to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, which their 
 friends would consider accordingly ; but from the manner 
 in which the intelligence of it was communicated by John- 
 son, it appeared for the moment to be comparatively small. 
 I, however, soon felt a sincere concern, and was curious to 
 observe, how Dr. Johnson would be affected. He said, 
 ' This is a total extinction to their family, as much as if 
 
 ' A Signor Recupero had noticed on Etna, the thickness of each 
 stratum of earth between the several strata of lava. ' He tells me,' 
 wrote Brydone, ' he is exceedingly embarrassed by these discoveries 
 in writing the history of the mountain. That Moses hangs like a dead 
 weight upon him, and blunts all his zeal for inquiry; for that really 
 he has not the conscience to make his mountain so young as that 
 prophet makes the world. The bishop, who is strenuously orthodox 
 — for it is an excellent see — has already warned him to be upon his 
 guard, and not to pretend to be a better natural historian than Moses.' 
 Brydone's Tour, i. 141. 
 
 - He wrote : — ' Mr. Boswell is with me, but I will take care that he 
 shall hinder no business, nor shall he know more than )'ou would 
 have him.' Mr. Morison's CoUcctioJt of AuiograpJis, vol. ii. 
 
 ^ 'March 23, 1776. Master Thrale, son of Mr. Thrale, member for 
 the Borough, suddenly before his father's door.' Gent. Mag. 1776, 
 p. 142. 
 
 they
 
 Aetat. G7.] Feeling for others. 537 
 
 they were sold into captivity.' Upon my mentioning that 
 Mr. Thrale had daughters, who might inherit his wealth ; — 
 ' Daughters, (said Johnson, warmly,) he'll no more value his 
 daughters than — ' I was going to speak. — ' Sir, (said he,) 
 don't you know how you yourself think? Sir, he wishes to 
 propagate his name'.' In short, I saw male succession 
 strong in his mind, even where there was no name, no fam- 
 ily of any long standing. I said, it was lucky he was not 
 present when this misfortune happened. JOHNSOX. ' It is 
 lucky for vie. People in distress never think that you feel 
 enough.' BOSWELL. * And, Sir, they will have the hope of 
 seeing you, which will be a relief in the mean time ; and 
 when you get to them, the pain will be so far abated, that 
 they will be capable of being consoled by you, which, in 
 the first violence of it, I believe, would not be the case.' 
 Johnson. ' No, Sir; violent pain of mind, like violent pain 
 of body, viust be severely felt.' BoswELL. ' I own, Sir, I 
 have not so much feeling for the distress of others, as some 
 people have, or pretend to have : but I know this, that I 
 would do all in my power to relieve them.' Johnson. 
 ' Sir, it is affectation to pretend to feel the distress of oth- 
 ers, as much as they do themselves. It is equally so, as 
 if one should pretend to feel as much pain while a friend's 
 leg is cutting off, as he does. No, Sir ; you have expressed 
 the rational and just nature of sympathy. I would have 
 gone to the extremity of the earth to have preserved this 
 boy\' 
 
 He was soon quite calm. The letter was from Mr. Tlirale's 
 clerk, and concluded, ' I need not say how much they wish 
 to see you in London.' Me said, 'We shall hasten back from 
 Taylor's.' 
 
 Mrs. Lucy Porter and some other ladies of the place 
 
 ' See/(9j7, iii. 109. 
 
 * ' Sir,' he said, ' I would walk to the extent of the diameter of the 
 earth to save Beauclerk ' (post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Colltxlion). He 
 had written of the boy the previous summer : — ' Pray give my service 
 to my dear friend Harry, and tell him that Mr. Murphy docs not love 
 him better than I do.' Piozzi Letters, i. 262. 
 
 talked
 
 53S Shakspcares miilberry-tree. [a.d. 177G, 
 
 talked a great deal of him when he was out of the room, 
 not only with veneration but affection. It pleased me to 
 find that he was so much beloved in his native city. 
 
 Mrs. Aston, whom I had seen the preceding night, and 
 her sister, Mrs. Gastrel, a widow lady, had each a house and. 
 garden, and pleasure-ground, prettily situated upon Stow- 
 hill, a gentle eminence, adjoining to Lichfield. Johnson 
 walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself with- 
 out any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility 
 of manners, from which a man has no difficulty in carry- 
 ing a friend to a house where he is intimate ; I felt it very 
 unpleasant to be thus left in solitude in a country town, 
 where I was an entire stranger, and began to think myself 
 unkindly deserted : but I was soon relieved, and convinced 
 that my friend, instead of being deficient in delicacy, had 
 conducted the matter with perfect propriety, for I received 
 the following note in his handwriting : ' Mrs. Gastrel, at the 
 lower house on Stowhill, desires Mr. Boswell's company to 
 dinner at two.' I accepted of the invitation, and had here 
 another proof how amiable his character was in the opin- 
 ion of those who knew him best. I was not informed, till 
 afterwards, that Mrs. Gastrel's husband was the clergyman 
 who, while he lived at Stratford upon Avon, where he was 
 proprietor of Shakspeare's garden, with Gothick barbarity 
 cut down his mulberry-tree', and, as Dr. Johnson told me, 
 did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to 
 believe, on the same authority ^ participated in the guilt of 
 what the enthusiasts for our immortal bard deem almost 
 a species of sacrilege. 
 
 After dinner Dr. Johnson wrote a letter to Mrs. Thrale 
 on the death of her son'. I said it would be very distress- 
 ing to Thrale, but she would soon forget it, as she had so 
 
 ' See an accurate and animated statement of Mr. Gastrel's barbarity, 
 by Mr. Malone, in a note on Some account of the Life of William Shak- 
 speare prefixed to his admirable edition of that poet's works, vol. i. 
 p. 118. BOSWELL. 
 
 • Sec Prior's Life of Malone, p. 142. 
 
 ' L^iozzi Letters, i. 307. 
 
 many
 
 Aetat. G7.] The theatre in Lichjield Town-hall. 539 
 
 many things to think of. JOHNSON. ' No, Sir, Thrale will 
 forget it first. She has many things that she may think 
 of. He has many things that he vutst think of'.' This 
 was a very just remark upon the different effect of those 
 light pursuits which occupy a vacant and easy mind, and 
 those serious engagements which arrest attention, and keep 
 us from brooding over grief. 
 
 He observed of Lord Bute, ' It was said of Augustus, that 
 it would have been better for Rome that he had never been 
 born, or had never died. So it would have been better for 
 this nation if Lord Bute had never been minister, or had 
 never resigned.' 
 
 \\\ the evening we went to the Town-hall, which was con- 
 verted into a temporary theatre, and saw Theodosius, with 
 The Stratford Jubilee. I was happy to see Dr. Johnson 
 sitting in a conspicuous part of the pit, and receiving affec- 
 tionate homage from all his acquaintance. We were quite 
 gay and merry. I afterwards mentioned to him that I 
 condemned myself for being so, when poor Mr. and Mrs. 
 Thrale were in such distress. Johnson. 'You are wrong, 
 Sir ; twenty years hence Mr. and Mrs. Thrale will not suffer 
 much pain from the death of their son. Now, Sir, you are 
 to consider, that distance of place, as well as distance of 
 time, operates upon the human feelings. I would not have 
 you be gay in the presence of the distressed, because it 
 w'ould shock them ; but you may be gay at a distance. 
 Pain for the loss of a friend, or of a relation whom we 
 love, is occasioned by the want which we feel. In time 
 the vacuity is filled with something else ; or sometimes the 
 vacuity closes up of itself.' 
 
 Mr. Seward and Mr. Pearson, another clergyman here, 
 supt with us at our inn, and after they left us, we sat up 
 late as we used to do in London. 
 
 Here I shall record some fragments of my friend's con- 
 versation during this jaunt. 
 
 ' Marriage, Sir, is much more necessary to a man than to 
 
 ' Sec post, iii. 21, note. 
 
 a woman ;
 
 540 Sir Fletcher Norton. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 a woman ; for he is much less able to supply himself with 
 domestick comforts. You will recollect my saying to some 
 ladies the other day, that I had often wondered why young 
 women should marry, as they have so much more freedom, 
 and so much more attention paid to them while unmarried, 
 than when married. I indeed did not mention the strong 
 reason for their marrying — the mechanical reason.' Bos- 
 WELL. * Why that is a strong one. But does not imagina- 
 tion make it much more important than it is in reality? Is 
 it not, to a certain degree, a delusion in us as well as in 
 women?' JOHNSON. 'Why yes. Sir; but it is a delusion 
 that is always beginning again.' BOSWELL. ' I don't know 
 but there is upon the whole more misery than happiness 
 produced by that passion.' JOHNSON. ' I don't think so, 
 Sir.' 
 
 ' Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always 
 indelicate, and may be offensive.' 
 
 'Questioning is not the mode of conversation among 
 gentlemen'. It is assuming a superiority, and it is par- 
 ticularly wrong to question a man concerning himself. 
 There may be parts of his former life which he may not 
 wish to be made known to other persons, or even brought 
 to his own recollection.' 
 
 'A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself 
 to his own disadvantage. People may be amused and laugh 
 at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out 
 against him upon some subsequent occasion.' 
 
 ' Much may be done if a man puts his whole mind to a 
 particular object. By doing so, Norton^ has made himself 
 the great lawyer that he is allowed to be.' 
 
 ' Mr. Hoole wrote of Johnson's last days : — ' Being asked unneces- 
 sary and frivolous questions, he said he often thought of Macbeth [act 
 iii. sc. 4] — "Question enrages him."' Croker's ^^jw^//, p. 843. See 
 post, iii. 66, 304. 
 
 ^ Sir Fletcher Norton, afterwards Speaker of the House of Com- 
 mons, and in 1782 created Baron Grantley. Ma lone. For Norton's 
 ignorance, see ante, ii. 105. Walpole {Letters, iv. 124) described him as 
 'a tough enemy; I don't mean in parts or argument, but one that 
 
 I mentioned
 
 Aetat. C7.] Crazy piety. 541 
 
 I mentioned an acquaintance of mine', a sectary, who 
 •was a very religious man, who not only attended regular- 
 1}' on publick worship with those of his communion, but 
 made a particular study of the Scriptures, and even wrote 
 a commentary on some parts of them, yet was known to 
 be very licentious in indulging himself with women ; main- 
 taining that men are to be saved by faith alone, and that 
 the Christian religion had not prescribed any fixed rule for 
 the intercourse between the sexes. JOHNSON. ' Sir, there 
 is no trusting to that crazy piety.' 
 
 I observed that it was strange how well Scotchmen were 
 know^n to one another in their own country, though born 
 in very distant counties ; for we do not find that the 
 gentlemen of neighbouring counties in England are mut- 
 ually known to each other. Johnson, with his usual 
 acuteness, at once saw and explained the reason of this ; 
 ' Why, Sir, you have Edinburgh, Avhere the gentlemen 
 
 makes an excellent bull-dog.' When in 1770 he was made Speaker, 
 Walpole wrote : — ' Nothing can exceed the badness of his character, 
 even in this bad age.' lb. v. 217. In his i^Icmoirs of the Rci'gn of 
 George III, i. 240, Walpole says: — 'It was known that in private 
 causes he took money from both parties.' Home (afterwards Home 
 Tooke) charged Norton with this practice ; Pari. Hist. xvii. loio; and 
 so did Junius in his Letter xxxix. Churchill, in The Duellist {^Pocms, 
 ed. 1766, ii. 87), writing of him, says : — 
 
 ' HOV/ often :;::;:** :l: 
 
 Hath he ta'cn briefs on false pretence, 
 
 And undertaken the defence 
 
 Of trusting fools, whom in the end 
 
 He meant to ruin, not defend.' 
 Lord Eldon said that ' he was much known by the name of Sir Bull- 
 face Double Fee.' He added that ' he was not a lawyer.' Twiss's 
 Eldon, iii. 98. ' Acting, it was supposed from resentment, having been 
 refused a peerage,' he made on May 7, 1777, a bold speech to the King 
 on presenting the Civil List Rill. ' He told him that his faithful Com- 
 mons, labouring under burthens almost too heavy to be borne, had 
 granted him a very great additional revenue — great beyond example, 
 great beyond his Majesty's highest wants.' /'r?;-/. ///.?/. xix. 213, and 
 \^ 2X^^0X0.' s Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 1 13. 
 
 ' Burns's Holy Willie, like Boswell, was an Ayrshire man. 
 
 from
 
 542 Dr. Taylor at Ashboicrne. [a.d. 17T6. 
 
 from all your counties meet, and which is not so large 
 but they are all known. There is no such common place 
 of collection in England, except London, where from its 
 great size and diffusion, many of those who reside in con- 
 tiguous counties of England, may long remain unknown to 
 each other.' 
 
 On Tuesday, March 26, there came for us an equipage 
 properly suited to a wealthy well-beneficed clergyman ; — 
 Dr. Taylor's large roomy post-chaise, drawn by four stout 
 plump horses, and driven by two steady jolly postillions, 
 which conveyed us to Ashbourne ; where I found my 
 friend's schoolfellow living upon an establishment perfectly 
 corresponding with his substantial creditable equipage : his 
 house, garden, pleasure-grounds, table, in short every thing 
 good, and no scantiness appearing. Every man should form 
 such a plan of living as he can execute completely. Let 
 him not draw an outline wider than he can fill up. I have 
 seen many skeletons of shew and magnificence which excite 
 at once ridicule and pity. Dr. Taylor had a good estate 
 of his own, and good preferment in the church \ being a 
 prebendary of Westminster, and rector of Bosworth. He 
 was a diligent justice of the peace, and presided over the 
 town of Ashbourne, to the inhabitants of whiclr I was told 
 he was very liberal ; and as a proof of this it was mentioned 
 to me, he had the preceding winter distributed two hun- 
 dred pounds among such of them as stood in need of his 
 assistance. He had consequently a considerable political 
 interest in the county of Derby, which he employed to sup- 
 port the Devonshire family ; for though the schoolfellow 
 and friend of Johnson, he was a Whig. I could not per- 
 ceive in his character much congeniality of any sort with 
 that of Johnson, who, however, said to me, ' Sir, he has a 
 
 ' Johnson, on May 16, wrote of him to Mrs. Thrale :— ' He has his 
 head as full as yours at an election. Livings and preferments, as if 
 he were in want with twenty children, run in his head. But a man 
 must have his head on something, small or great.' Piozzi Letters, 
 
 i- 325- 
 
 very
 
 Aetat. 67. j Old men putting themselves to nurse. 54 
 
 very strong understanding'.' His size, and figure, and coun- 
 tenance, and manner, were that of a hearty English 'Squire, 
 with the parson super-induced : and I took particular notice 
 of his upper servant, Mr. Peters, a decent grave man, in pur- 
 ple clothes, and a large white wig, like the butler or major 
 doino of a Bishop. 
 
 Dr. Johnson and Dr. Taylor met with great cordiality ; 
 and Johnson soon gave him the iamc sad account of their 
 schoolfellow, Congreve, that he had given to Mr. Hector^ ; 
 adding a remark of such moment to the rational conduct 
 of a man in the decline of life, that it deserves to be im- 
 printed upon every mind : ' There is nothing against which 
 an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting 
 himself to nurse".' Innumerable have been the melancholy 
 instances of men once distinguished for firmness, resolution, 
 and spirit, who in their latter days have been governed like 
 children, by interested female artifice. 
 
 Dr. Taylor commended a physician who was known to 
 him and Dr. Johnson, and said, ' I fight many battles for 
 him, as many people in the country dislike him.' JOHN- 
 SON. ' But you should consider, Sir, that by every one 
 of your victories he is a loser ; for, eveiy man of whom 
 you get the better, will be very angry, and resolve not to 
 employ him ; whereas if people get the better of you in 
 
 ' Johnson wrote on May 25, 1780 {Piozzi Letters, ii. 136): ' is 
 
 come to town, brisk and vigorous, fierce and fell, to drive on his law- 
 suit. Nothing in all life now can be more proflignter than what he 
 is; and if, in case, that so be, that they persist for to resist him, he is 
 resolved not to spare no money, nor no time.' Taylor, no doubt, is 
 meant, and Baretti. in a marginal note, says: — 'This was the elegant 
 phraseology of that Doctor.' Set post, iii. 205, 
 
 * See ante, ii. 527. 
 
 ' He did not hold with Steele, who in J'/ie Spectator, No. 1 53, writes 
 — ' It was prettily said, " He that would be long an old man must l)r- 
 gin early to be one." ' Mrs. Piozzi {Anec. p. 275) says that ' saying of 
 the old philosopher, that he who wants least is most like the gods 
 who want nothing, was a favourite sentence with Dr. Johnson, wiio 
 required less attendance, sick or well, liian ever 1 saw any iuiman 
 creature.' 
 
 anjument
 
 544 The lustre from dress. [a.d. 1776. 
 
 argument about him, they'll think, " We'll send for Dr. 
 -»**^-«"K-i nevertheless." ' This was an observation deep and 
 sure in human nature. 
 
 Next day we talked of a book^ in which an eminent judge 
 was arraigned before the bar of the publick, as having pro- 
 nounced an unjust decision in a great cause. Dr. Johnson 
 maintained that this publication would not give any uneasi- 
 ness to the judge. ' For, (said he,) either he acted honest- 
 ly, or he meant to do injustice. If he acted honestly, his 
 own consciousness will protect him ; if he meant to do in- 
 justice, he will be glad to see the man who attacks him, 
 so much vexed.' 
 
 Next day, as Dr. Johnson had acquainted Dr. Taylor of 
 the reason for his returning speedily to London, it was re- 
 solved that we should set out after dinner. A few of Dr. 
 Taylor's neighbours were his guests that day. 
 
 Dr. Johnson talked with approbation of one who had 
 attained to the state of the philosophical wise man, that 
 is, to have no want of any thing. ' Then, Sir, (said I,) the 
 savage is a wise man.' ' Sir, (said he,) I do not mean simply 
 being without, — but not having a want.' I maintained, 
 against this proposition, that it was better to have fine 
 clothes, for instance, than not to feel the want of them. 
 Johnson. ' No, Sir; fine clothes are good only as they sup- 
 ply the want of other means of procuring respect. Was 
 Charles the Twelfth, think you, less respected for his coarse 
 blue coat and black stock'? And you find the King of 
 Prussia dresses plain, because the dignity of his charac- 
 ter is sufificient.' I here brought myself into a scrape, for 
 I heedlessly said, 'Would not you, Sir, be the better for 
 
 ' Dr. Butter, of Derby, is mentioned post, iii. 185, and under May 8, 
 1781. 
 
 ^ Andrew Stuart's Letters to Lord Mansfield {ante, ii. 263). 
 
 ^ Johnson was thinking of Charles's meeting with the King of Po- 
 land. ' Charles XII. etait en grosses bottes, ayant pour cravate un taf- 
 fetas noir qui lui serrait le cou ; son habit etait, comme a I'ordinaire, 
 d'un gros drap bleu, avec des boutons de cuivre dore.' Voltaire's 
 Works, ed. 1819, xx. 123. 
 
 velvet
 
 Aetat. 07.1 Bosweirs want of manners. 545 
 
 velvet and embroidery?* JOHNSON. ' Sir, you put an end to 
 all argument when you introduce your opponent himself. 
 Have you no better manners? There is your ivant. I 
 apologised by saying, I had mentioned him as an instance 
 of one who wanted as little as any man in the world, and 
 yet, perhaps, might receive some additional lustre from 
 dress. 
 
 n._35 AITENDIX
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 {Page 19.) 
 
 In the Bodleian is the following autograph record by Johnson 
 of Good Friday, March 28. Easter Sunday, March 30, and May 4, 
 1766, and the copy of the record of Saturday, March 29. They 
 belong to the series published by the Kev. Mr. Strahan under the 
 title oi Prayers ami Meditations, but they are not included in it. 
 
 ' Good Friday, March 28, 1766. — On the night before I used proper 
 Collects, and prayed when I arose in the morniiisj;. I had all the week 
 an awe upon me, not thinking on Passion week till I looked in the 
 almanack. I have wholly forborne M \J meat] and wines, except one 
 glass on Sunday night. 
 
 ' In the morning I rose, ana drank very small tea without milk, and 
 had nothing more that day. 
 
 'This was the day on which Tetty died. I did not mingle much 
 men \J mention] of her with the devotions of this day, because it is 
 dedicated to more holy subjects. I mentioned her at church, and 
 prayed once solemnly at home. I was twice at church, and w^ent 
 through the prayers without perturbation, but heard the sermons 
 imperfectly. I came in both times at the second lesson, not hearing 
 the bell. 
 
 ' When I came home I read the Psalms for the day, and one sermon 
 in Clark. Scruples distract me, but at church I had hopes to conquer 
 them. 
 
 'I bore abstinence this day not well, being at night insupportably 
 heavy, but as fa.sting does not produce slcepyness, I had perhaps 
 rested ill the night before. I prayed in my study for the day, and 
 prayed again in my chamber. I went to bed very early — before 
 eleven. 
 
 ' After church I selected collects for the Sacraments. 
 
 ' Finding myself upon recollection very ignorant of religion, I formed 
 a purpose of studying it. 
 
 ' I went down and sat to tea, but was too heavy to converse. 
 
 * Saturday, 29. — I rose at the time now usual, not fully refreshed. 
 Went to tea. A sudden thought of restraint hiiulered me. I drank 
 but one dish. Took a purge for my health. Still uneasy. Prayed, 
 and went to dinner. Dined sparingly o/i /is/i [arlilcd in dilTcn-nt ink] 
 
 about
 
 54S Appendix A. 
 
 about four. Went to Simpson. Was driven home by my physick. 
 Drank tea, and am much refreshed. I believe that if I had drank tea 
 again yesterday, I had escaped the heaviness of the evening. Fasting 
 that produces inabihty is no duty, but I was unwilling to do less than 
 formerly. 
 
 ' I had lived more abstemiously than is usual the whole week, and 
 taken physick twice, which together made the fast more uneasy. 
 
 ' Thus much I have written medically, to show that he who can fast 
 long must have lived plentifully. 
 
 'Saturday, March 29, 1766. — I was yesterday very heavy. I do not 
 feel myself to-day so much impressed with awe of the approaching 
 mystery. I had this day a doubt, like Baxter, of my state, and found 
 that my faith, though weak, was yet faith. O God ! strengthen it. 
 
 ' Since the last reception of the sacrament I hope I have no other- 
 wise grown worse than as continuance in sin makes the sinner's con- 
 dition more dangerous. 
 
 ' Since last New Year's Eve I have risen every morning by eight, at 
 least not after nine, which is more superiority over my habits than I 
 have ever before been able to obtain. Scruples still distress me. My 
 resolution, with the blessing of God, is to contend with them, and, if 
 I can, to conquer them. 
 
 ' My resolutions are — 
 
 ' To conquer scruples. 
 
 ' To read the Bible this year, 
 
 ' To try to rise more early. 
 
 ' To study Divinity. 
 
 ' To live methodically. 
 
 ' To oppose idleness. 
 
 ' To frequent Divine worship. 
 
 ' Almighty and most merciful Father ! before whom I now appear 
 laden with the sins of another year, suffer me yet again to call upon 
 Thee for pardon and peace. 
 
 ' O God ! grant me repentance, grant me reformation. Grant that I 
 may be no longer distracted with doubts, and harassed with vain ter- 
 rors. Grant that I may no longer linger in perplexity, nor waste in 
 idleness that life which Thou hast given and preserved. Grant that 
 I may serve Thee in firm faith and diligent endeavour, and that I may 
 discharge the duties of my calling with tranquillity and constancy. 
 Take not, O God, Thy holy Spirit from me : but grant that I may so 
 direct my life by Thy holy laws, as that, Vv-hen Thou shalt call me 
 hence, I may pass by a holy and happy death to a life of everlasting 
 and unchangeable joy, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 ' I went to bed (at) one or later ; but did not sleep, tho' I knew not 
 why. 
 
 ' Easter Day, March 30, 1766. — I rose in the morning. Prayed. Took 
 my prayer book to tea ; drank tea ; planned my devotion for the church. 
 I think prayed again. Went to church, was early. Went through the 
 
 prayers
 
 Appendix B. 549 
 
 prayers with fixed attention. Could not hear the sermon. After ser- 
 mon, applied myself to devotion. Troubled with Baxter's scruple, 
 which was quieted as I returned home. It occurred to me that the 
 scruple itself was its own confutation. 
 
 ' I used the prayer against scruples in the foregoing page in the pew, 
 and commended (so far as it was lawful) Tctty, dear Tetty, in a prayer 
 by herself, then my other friends. What collects I do not exactly 
 remember. I gave a shilling. I then went towards the altar that I 
 might hear the service. The communicants were more than I ever 
 saw. I kept back ; used again the foregoing prayer ; again com- 
 mended Tetty, and lifted up my heart for the rest. I prayed in the 
 collect for the fourteen S. after Trinity for encrease of Faith, Hope, 
 and Charity, and deliverance from scruples ; this deliverance was the 
 chief subject of my prayers. O God, hear me. I am now to try to 
 conquer them. After reception I repeated my petition, and again 
 when I came home. My dinner made me a little peevish ; not much. 
 After dinner I retired, and read in an hour and a half the seven first 
 chapters of St. Matthew in Greek. Glory be to God. God grant me 
 to proceed and improve, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 
 
 ' I went to Evening Pravers, and was undisturbed. At church in 
 the morning it occurred to me to consider about example of good any 
 of my friends had set me. This is proper, in order to the thanks re- 
 turned for their good examples. 
 
 ' My attainment of rising gives me comfort and hope. O God, for 
 Jesus Christ's sake, bless me. Amen. 
 
 ' After church, before and after dinner, I read Rotheram on Faith. 
 
 ' After evening prayer I retired, and wrote this account. 
 
 ' I then repeated the prayer of the day, with collects, and my prayer 
 for night, and went down to supper at near ten. 
 
 ' May 4, — 66. I have read since the noon of Easter day the Gospels 
 of St. Matthew and St. Mark in Greek. 
 
 ' I have read Xenophon's Cyropaedia.' 
 
 Bodleian Library. Select Autographs. (Montagu.) 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 {Page 356.) 
 
 Johnson's sentiments towards his fellow-subjects in America 
 have never, so far as I know, been rightly stated. It was not be- 
 cause they fought for liberty that he had come to dislike them. 
 A man who, 'bursting forth with a generous indignation, had said: 
 — " The Irish are in a most unnatural state ; for we see there the 
 
 minorit}'
 
 550 Appendix B. 
 
 minority prevailing over the .majority " ' {ante, \\. 2(^2), was not 
 likely to wish that our plantations should be tyrannically governed. 
 The man who, ' in company with some very grave men at Oxford, 
 gave as his toast, " Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes 
 in the West Indies " ' {post, iii. 228), was not likely to condemn 
 insurrections in general. The key to his feelings is found in his 
 indignant cry, ' How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty 
 among the drivers of negroes ?' (//^.) He hated slavery as per- 
 haps no man of his time hated it. While the Quakers, who were 
 almost the pioneers in tlie Anti-slavery cause, were still slave- 
 holders and slave-dealers, he lifted up his voice against it. So 
 early as 1740, when Washington was but a child of eight, he had 
 maintained ' the natural right of the negroes to liberty and inde- 
 pendence.' ( JF^r/'j-, vi. 313.) In 1756 he described Jamaica as 
 ' a place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants 
 and a dungeon of slaves.' {lb. vi. 130.) In 1759 he wrote : — 'Of 
 black men the numbers are too great who are now repining under 
 English cruelty.' {lb. iv. 407.) In the same year, in describing 
 the cruelty of the Portuguese discoverers, he said : — ' We are openly 
 told that they had the less scruple concerning their treatment of 
 the savage people, because they scarcely considered them as dis- 
 tinct from beasts ; and indeed, the practice of all the European 
 nations, and among others of the English barbarians that cultivate 
 the southern islands of America, proves that this opinion, however 
 absurd and foolish, however wicked and injurious, still continues 
 to prevail. Interest and pride harden the heart, and it is in vain 
 to dispute against avarice and power.' {lb. v. 218.) No miserable 
 sophistry could convince him, with his clear mind and his ardour 
 for liberty, that slavery can be right. 'An individual,' he wrote 
 {post, iii. 230), 'may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime ; but he 
 cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.' How 
 deeply he felt for the wrongs done to helpless races is shown in his 
 dread of discoverers. No man had a more eager curiosity, or more 
 longed that the bounds of knowledge should be enlarged. Yet he 
 wrote : — ' I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always 
 afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.' (Croker's Boswell, 
 p. 248.) In his Life of Savage, written in 1744, he said {\Vorks, 
 viii. 156) : — ' Savage has not forgotten ... to censure those crimes 
 which have been generally committed by the discoverers of new 
 regions, and to expose the enormous wickedness of making war upon 
 
 barbarous
 
 Appendix B. 551 
 
 barbaroiis nations because they cannot resist, and of invading 
 countries because they are fruitful. . . . He has asserted the natural 
 equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which 
 inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power.' 
 He loved the University of Salamanca, because it gave it as its 
 opinion that the conquest of America b}^ the Spaniards was not 
 lawful {ante, i. 527). When, in 1756, the English and French were 
 at war in America, he said that 'such was the contest that no hon- 
 est man could heartily wish success to either party. ... It was only 
 the quarrel of two robbers for the spoils of a passenger ' {ante, i. 
 356, note 4). When, from political considerations, opposition was 
 raised in 1766 to the scheme of translating the Bible into Erse, he 
 wrote : — ' To omit for a year, or for a day, the most efficacious 
 method of advancing Christianity, in compliance with any pur- 
 poses that terminate on this side of the grave, is a crime of which 
 I know not that the world has yet had an example, except in the 
 practice of the planters of America — a race of mortals whom, I sup- 
 pose, no other man wishes to resemble ' {ante, ii. 31). Englishmen, 
 as a nation, had no right to reproach their fellow-subjects in Amer- 
 ica with being drivers of negroes ; for England shared in the guilt 
 and the gain of that infamous traffic. Nay, even as the Virginian 
 delegates to Congress in 1774 complained: — 'Our repeated at- 
 tempts to exclude all further importations of slaves from Africa by 
 prohibition, and by imposing duties which might amount to prohi- 
 bition, have hitherto been defeated by his Majesty's negative — 
 thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs 
 to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of 
 human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.' Bright's 
 Speeches, ed. 1869, i. 171. Franklin {Memoirs, ed. 18 18, iii. 17), writ- 
 ing from London in 1772, speaks of 'the hypocrisy of this country, 
 which encourages such a detestable commerce by laws for promot- 
 ing the Guinea trade ; while it piqued itself on its virtue, love of 
 liberty, and the equity of its courts in setting free a single negro.' 
 From the slightest stain of this hypocrisy Johnson was free. He, 
 at all events, had a right to protest against ' the yelps ' of those 
 who, while they solemnly asserted that among the unalienable 
 rights of all men are liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yet 
 themselves were drivers of negroes. 
 
 TilE END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
 
 
 PR3533 B8H5 1891 v. 2 
 Boswell, James, 1740-1735. 
 Boswell's Life of Johnson 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 NIVERSITY OF CA , RIVI 
 
 3 1210 01220 8821 
 
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 egory Paul, Books 
 O. Dr aw e r G 
 ^rthridge, California
 
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