[193] 'It is boasted that between November [1712] and January, eleven thousand [of The Conduct of the Allies] were sold.... Yet surely whoever surveys this wonder-working pamphlet with cool perusal, will confess that it's efficacy was supplied by the passions of its readers; that it operates by the mere weight of facts, with very little assistance from the hand that produced them.' Johnson's Works, viii. 203.

[194] '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.' Ib viii 266.

[195] See the hard drawing of him in Churchill's Rosciad. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 391, note 2.

[196] For talk, see post, under March 30 1783.

[197] See post, Oct. 6, 1769, and May 8, 1778, where Johnson tosses Boswell.

[198] See post, Sept. 22, 1777, and Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. i, 1773.

[199] See post, Nov. 27, 1773, note, April 7, 1775, and under May 8, 1781.

[200] He wrote the character of Mr. Mudge. See post, under March 20, 1781.

[201] '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.' Pr. and Med. p. 85.

[202] 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. Goldsmith, 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 Academicians, 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 Academy 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; 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.

[203] It has this inscription in a blank leaf:—'Hunc librum D.D. Samuel Johnson, eo quod hic loci studiis interdum 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 prance, he must study at Christ-Church and All-Souls.' BOSWELL.

[204] 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 Oxford. BOSWELL. 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 increase your uneasiness with mine. I hope I grow better. I am very cautious and very timorous.' Piozzi Letters, i. 21.

[205] 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 remarkable 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 Liberta; and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant, as well as a warlike 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 universal attention.' Cradock (Memoirs, i. 217) gives a melancholy account 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 party 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 interest and reputation of their town.' Boswell caught at the proposal eagerly, and writing to Garrick said:—'I please myself with the prospect of attending you at several more Jubilees at Stratford-upon-Avon.' Garrick Corres. i. 414, 435.

[206] Garrick's correspondents not seldom spoke disrespectfully of Johnson. Thus, Mr. Sharp, writing to him in 1769, talks of 'risking the sneer of one of Dr. Johnson's ghastly smiles.' Ib i. 334. Dr. J. Hoadly, in a letter dated July 25, 1775, says:—'Mr. Good-enough has written a kind of parody of Puffy Pensioner's Taxation no Tyranny, under the noble title of Resistance no Rebellion.' Ib ii. 68.

[207] See ante, i. 181.

[208] In the Preface to my Account of Corsica, published in 1768, I thus express myself:

'He who publishes a book affecting not to be an authour, and professing 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 authour, and I have an ardent ambition for literary fame; for, of all possessions, I should imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish a book, which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of having that character lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve an uniform dignity among those who see us every day, is hardly possible; and to aim at it, must put us under the fetters of 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 authour 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 of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy.' The dedication of the first edition and the preface of the third are both dated Oct. 29—one 1767, and the other 1768. Oct. 29 was his birthday.

[209] 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 Assembly the recall of all the Corsican patriots. Paoli was thereupon appointed by Louis XVI. Lieutenant-general and military commandant in Corsica. He resisted the violence of the Convention, and was, in consequence, summoned before it. Refusing to obey, an expedition was sent to arrest him. Napoleon Buonaparte fought in the French army, but Paoli's party proved the stronger. The islanders sought 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 integral 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 their forefathers.

[210] 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 very few minutes after I left the waterside. Surely He who hath been with him from his youth up hath not sent him into England for nothing.' In the Public Advertiser for Oct. 4 there is the following entry, inserted no doubt by Boswell:—'On Sunday last General Paoli, accompanied by James Boswell, Esq., took an airing in Hyde Park in his coach.' Priors Goldsmith, i. 450. Horace Walpole writes:—'Paoli's character had been so advantageously exaggerated by Mr. Boswell's enthusiastic and entertaining account of him, that the Opposition 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 1000 a year on the unheroic fugitive.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 387.

[211] Johnson, writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec., 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 offended with frivolous and empty deviations from exactness? Whoever loads life with unnecessary scruples, Sir," continued he, "provokes 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.

[212] The first edition of Hume's History of England was full of Scotticisms, 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 Scotticisms.' Mr. Burton gives instances of alterations made in the second edition. He says also that 'in none of his historical or philosophical 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.' Ib i. 9. Hume was shown in manuscript Reid's Inquiry 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. Ib ii. 154. Nevertheless, as Dugald Stewart says in his Life of Robertson (p. 214), 'Hume fails frequently both in purity and grammatical correctness.' Even in his later letters I have noticed Scotticisms.

[213] In 1763 Wilkes, as author of The North Briton, 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 certainty, and to bring them, together with their papers.' Such a warrant as this Chief Justice Pratt (Lord Camden) declared to be 'unconstitutional, illegal, and absolutely void.' Ann. Reg. vi. 145.

[214] See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 24, 1773.

[215] In the Spring of this year, at a meeting of the electors of Southwark, '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.

[216] 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 enumerates the advantages which civilisation confers on the Europeans. 'They are surely happy,' said the prince, 'who have all these conveniences.' '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 produced conviction in a single mind.' Piozzi Letters, i. 150. See post, April 21 and May 7, 1773, April 26, 1776, and June 15, 1784.

[217] James Burnet, a Scotch Lord of Session, by the title of Lord Monboddo. 'He was a devout believer in the virtues of the heroic ages, and the deterioration of civilised mankind; a great contemner of luxuries, insomuch that he never used a wheel carriage.' WALTER SCOTT, quoted in Croker's Boswell, p. 227. There is some account of him in Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 175. In his Origin of Language, to which Boswell refers in his next note, after praising Henry Stephen for his Greek Dictionary, he continues:—'But to compile a dictionary of a barbarous language, such as all the modern are compared 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. Monboddo'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.

[218] His Lordship having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of Dr. Johnson, in my company, I on one occasion during the life-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 esteem him to be. BOSWELL.

[219] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 108) 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 certain 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 'Singularities.' After quoting Fontenelle's observation on Newton that 'he was not distinguished from other men by any singularity, either natural 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 (Works, viii. 223):—'Whatever he did, he seemed willing to do in a manner peculiar to himself, without sufficiently considering 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.'

[220] '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.

[221] See post, June 28, 1777, note.

[222] '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 troublesome'

[223]

'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, xxiv. 6.

[224] A Wife, a poem, 1614. BOSWELL.

[225] In the original that.

[226] What a succession of compliments was paid by Johnson's old 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 Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 'neither you nor I like him much the better.' Piozzi Letters, i. 41.

[227] Mr. Langton married the widow of the Earl of Rothes; post, March 20, 1771.

[228] 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 abolition 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, ii. 3.

[229]

'Alexis shunned his fellow swains, Their rural sports and jocund strains, (Heaven 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.

[230] 'In his amorous effusions Prior is less happy; for they are not dictated by nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They have the coldness of Cowley without his wit, the dull exercises of a skilful versifier, resolved at all adventures to write something about Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study.... In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college.' Johnson's Works, viii. 15, 22.

[231] Florizel and Perdita is Garrick's version of The Winters 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. 1.

[232] Horace. Sat. i. 4. 34.

[233] See ante, ii. 66.

[234] Horace Walpole told Malone that 'he was about twenty-two [twenty-four] years old when his father retired; and that he remembered 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. 387. See also post, April 30, 1773, and Oct. 10, 1779.

[235] See ante, i 75, 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 (p. 25), he adds:—'Of whose pious and animated society I had some share.' Southey thus describes Whitefield in his Life of Wesley (i. 126):—'His voice excelled both in melody and compass, and its fine modulations were happily accompanied by that grace of action which he possessed in an eminent degree, 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 comparison conveyed no unapt a notion of the force and vehemence and passion of that oratory which awed the hearers, and made them tremble like Felix before the apostle.' Benjamin Franklin writes (Memoirs, i. 163):—'Mr. Whitefield'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 admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all.'

[236] '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, p. 198.

[237] Mr. Stewart, who in 1768 was sent on a secret mission to Paoli, in his interesting report says:—'Religion seems to sit easy upon Paoli, and notwithstanding what his historian Boswell relates, I take him to be very free 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 Shelburne, ii. 158. See post, April 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.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 30, 1773.

[238] 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.

[239] See post, under Nov. 5, 1775. Hannah More, writing in 1782 (Memoirs, i. 242), says:—'Paoli will not talk in English, and his French is mixed with Italian. He speaks no language with purity.'

[240] Horace Walpole writes:—'Paoli had as much ease as suited a prudence 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. 387

[241] 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.

[242] '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, Love 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 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.'

[243] 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 the 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 Boswell, p. 289.

[244] 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 either laughed aloud or showed they suppressed a laugh.'

[245] 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 0 To a pair of silk stocking breeches 2 5 0 To a pair of _bloom-coloured ditto 1 4 6

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 reason 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.

[246] 'The Characters of Men 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.

[247] 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.

[248] We have here an instance of that reserve which Boswell, in his Dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds (ante, i. 4), says that he has practised. 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.

[249] Yet Johnson, in his Life 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?'

[250] The opposite of this Johnson maintained on April 29, 1778.

[251] '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 versification which had in English poetry no precedent, nor has since had an imitation.' Johnson's Works, viii. 326.

[252] See ante, i. 129.

[253] 'If the flights of Dryden are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing ... Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.' Johnson's Works, viii. 325.

[254] Probably, says Mr. Croker, those quoted by Johnson in The Life of Dryden. Ib vii. 339.

[255] The Duke of Buckingham in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel.

[256] Prologue to the Satires, I. 193.

[257]

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—

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 own affrights me with its echoes.

Act ii. sc. 1.

[258]

'Swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry.'

Romeo and Juliet, act ii. sc. 2. He was a God with whom he ventured to take great liberties. Thus on Jan. 10, 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 Corres., ii. 126. See ante, ii. 78, note 4.

[259] 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 Congreve (Works, viii. 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 The Mourning 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 entertained with any true delineation of natural characters.' Ib, p. 26. In the preface to his Shakespeare, published four years before this conversation, 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 select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.' Ib, 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 prudence, can be collected than he alone has given to his country.' Works, v. 131. 'He that has read Shakespeare with attention will, perhaps, find little new in the crowded world.' Ib, p. 434. 'Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers 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 commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation.' Ib, p. 152. And lastly he quotes Dryden's words [from Dryden's Essay of Dramatick Poesie, edit. of 1701, i. 19] 'that Shakespeare was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.' Ib, 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 prefer Young's description of night to those of Shakespeare and Dryden.' 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 also post, p. 96.

[260] Henry V, act iv., Prologue.

[261] Romeo and Juliet, act iv., sc. 3.

[262] King Lear, act iv., sc. 6.

[263] See ante, July 26, 1763.

[264] See ante, i. 388.

[265] In spite of the gross nonsense that Voltaire has written about Shakespeare, yet it was with justice that in a letter to Horace Walpole (dated July 15, 1768,) he said:—'Je suis le premier qui ait fait connatre Shakespeare aux Franais.... Je peux vous assurer qu'avant moi personne en France ne connaissait la posie anglaise.' Voltaire's Works, liv. 513.

[266] '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 Shakespeare from the misrepresentations of Voltaire; and considering how many young people were misled by his witty, though false observations, Mrs. Montagu's Essay was of service to Shakspeare with a certain class of readers, and is, therefore, entitled to praise. Johnson, I am assured, allowed the merit which I have stated, saying, (with reference to Voltaire,) "it is conclusive ad hominem."' BOSWELL. 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 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 Academy 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 tes un peu fch (sic) de ce que vous venez d'entendre." She replied, "Moi, Monsieur! point du tout! Je ne suis pas amie 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 harangues 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 anything that rises above commonplace in anything 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.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 101. See post, April 7, 1778.

[267] 'Reynolds is fond of her book, and I wonder at it; for neither I, nor Beauclerk, nor Mrs. Thrale, could get through it.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773.

[268] Lord Kames is 'the Scotchman.' See ante, i. 393.

[269] 'When Charles Townshend read some of Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism, he said:—"This is the work of a dull man grown whimsical"—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.' Ib, p. 195. Voltaire (Works, xliii. 302) thus ridicules his book:—'Il nous prouve d'abord que nous avons cinq sens, et que nous sentons moins l'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 tte.'

[270] L'Abb Dubos, 1670-1742. 'Tous les artistes lisent avec fruit ses Rflexions sur la posie, la peinture, et la musique. C'est le livre le plus utile qu'on ait jamais crit sur ces matires chez aucune des nations de l'Europe.' Voltaire's Sicle de Louis XIV, i. 81.

[271] Bouhours, 1628-1702. Voltaire, writing of Bouhours' Manire de bien penser sur les ouvrages d'esprit, says that he teaches young people ' viter l'enflure, l'obscurit, le recherch, et le faux.' Ib, 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 thought to be beautiful which is not just, ... that the basis of all wit is truth.'

[272] Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2.

[273] 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, vi. 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 inconsistent 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 Exchange, which they told me was for the impeachment of a Minister; I always 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.' Parl. Hist., xxxv. 167.

[274] See post, under March 24, 1776.

[275] Mr. Robert Chambers says that the author of the ballad was Elizabeth 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 Boswell, p. 205.

[276] John Ray published, in 1674, A Collection of English Words, &c., and A Collection of English Proverbs. In 1768 the two were published in one volume.

[277] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773.

[278]

'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.'

Macbeth, Act v. se. 5.

[279] 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. Garrick often acts Kitely, Ben Jonson will eclipse his fame.'

[280] '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, August 15 and 16, 1773, where Johnson 'displayed another of his heterodox opinions—a contempt of tragick acting.' 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 expressive 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 the have.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 26, 1773. See post, April 3, 1773.

[281] See post, April 6, 1775, where Johnson, speaking of Cibber's 'talents of conversation,' said:—'He had but half to furnish; for one half of what he said was oaths.'

[282] See ante, June 13, 1763.

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

[284] On Oct. 18, one day, not two days before, four men were hanged at Tyburn for robbery on the highway, one for stealing 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 myself am never absent from a public execution.... When I first attended them, I was shocked to the greatest degree. I was in a manner convulsed 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.

[285] Of Johnson, perhaps, might almost be said what he said of Swift (Works, viii. 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. But such is the lot of man.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 209.

[286] 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. See post, Sept. 14, 1777.

[287] '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. 355.

[288] See post, Feb. 24, 1773, for 'a furious quarrel' between Davies and Baretti.

[289] 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.

[290] 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 Johnson 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.' 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 angry, 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 Oxford;—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 degree. He was constantly in scrapes. When the Provost, Dr. Gower, who was a pedant, sent for him to reprimand him, 'Foote would present 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 immediately interrupt him, and, after begging pardon with great formality, would produce his dictionary, and pretending to find the meaning of the word, would say, "Very well, Sir; now please to go on."' Forster'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 immediately committed to writing, any judge of the language would have pronounced it an excellent and very beautiful style.' The other two were Bishop Atterbury and Dr. Johnson.

[291] Cento. A composition formed by joining scrapes from other authours.' Johnson's Dictionary.

[292] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 30, 1773.

[293] For the position of these chaplains see The Tatler, No. 255, and The Guardian, No. 163.

[294] 'He had been assailed in the grossest manner possible by a woman of the town, and, driving her off with a blow, was set upon by three bullies. He thereupon ran away in great fear, for he was a timid man, and being pursued, had stabbed two of the men with a small knife he carried in his pocket.' 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 evidence as to Baretti's character:—'SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. I have known Mr. Baretti fifteen or sixteen years. He is a man of great humanity, 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 inquiring about him before we heard of this accident. He is secretary for foreign correspondence.' 'DR. JOHNSON. I believe I began to be acquainted with Mr. Baretti about the year '53 or '54. I have been 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 reason 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.' Qu. '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 anybody in the street without great provocation.' 'EDMUND BURKE, ESQ. I have known him between three and four years; he is an ingenious man, a man of remarkable humanity—a thorough good-natured 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 Boswell passes over Reynolds and Goldsmith among the witnesses. Baretti'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 Baretti, 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 Piazzi, ii. 348. Dr. T. Campbell, in his Diary (p. 52), wrote on April 1, 1775:—'Boswell and Baretti, as I learned, are mortal foes; so much so that Murphy and Mrs. Thrale agreed that Boswell expressed a desire that Baretti should be hanged upon that unfortunate affair of his killing, &c.'

[295] Lord Auchinleck, we may assume. Johnson said of Pope, that 'he was one of those few whose labor is their pleasure.' Works, viii. 321.

[296] 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 seldom 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.'

[297] See ante, July 1 and Aug. 2, 1763.

[298] See ante, i. 232.

[299] An Italian quack who in 1765 established medicated baths in Cheney Walk, Chelsea. CROKER.

[300] The same saying is recorded post, 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—ludicrous comparisons and similies; if all failed, with rudeness and overbearing. 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 reconciliation.... That he was not thus strenuous for victory with his intimates in tte—tte 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 entertained that love and affection for him which they all feel and profess for his memory.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 457, 462.

[301] He had written the Introduction to it. Ante, p. 317.

[302] See post, beginning of 1770.

[303] He accompanied Boswell on his tour to the Hebrides. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 18, 1773.

[304] 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.' Ib Aug. 27, 1773. When he was in France he went to a Roman Catholic service; post, Oct. 29, 1775.

[305] See post, March 21, 1772.

[306] See ante, ii. 82.

[307] See post, March 27, 1772.

[308] See post, May 7, 1773, Oct. 10, 1779, and June 9, 1784.

[309] St. James, v. 16.

[310] See post, June 28, 1777, note.

[311] Laceration was properly a term of surgery; hence the italics. See post, Jan. 20, 1780.

[312] See post, April 15, 1778.

[313] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 12, 1773.

[314] He bids us pray 'For faith that panting for a happier seat, Counts death kind nature's signal of retreat.'

[315]

'To die is landing on some silent shore, Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar, Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.'

GARTH. Quoted in Johnson's Works, vi. 61. Bacon, if he was the author 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 (Tuscul. Quaest. i. 8) quotes Epicharmus's saying:—'Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil aestimo.'

[316] See post, beginning of 1773.

[317] See post, April 17, 1778.

[318] Perhaps on is a misprint for or.

[319] 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 enemies than by friends.'

[320] 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 allowance is made for this friendly revision, the author will still retain an ample dividend of praise.... Correction seldom effects more than the suppression of faults: a happy line, or a single elegance, may perhaps be added, but of a large work the general character must always remain.' Works, viii. 41.

[321] An acute correspondent of the European Magazine, April, 1792, has completely exposed a mistake which has been unaccountably frequent in ascribing these lines to Blackmore, notwithstanding that Sir Richard Steele, in that very popular work, The Spectator, mentions them as written by the Authour of The British Princes, the Honourable Edward Howard. The correspondent above mentioned, shews this mistake to be so inveterate, that not only I defended the lines as Blackmore's, in the presence of Dr. Johnson, without any contradiction or doubt of their authenticity, but that the Reverend Mr. Whitaker has asserted in print, that he understands they were suppressed in the late edition or editions of Blackmore. 'After all (says this intelligent 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.'

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 Poetry: 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 Works (1803), xi. 296.

[322] Boswell seems to have borrowed the notion from The 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 constitution would have staid to have flayed the Pict, and made buff of his skin for the wearing of the conqueror.'

[323] See ante, ii. 100, note 1.

[324] 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. Johnson, would you advise me to marry?" "I would advise no man to marry, Sir," returns for answer in a very angry tone Dr. Johnson, "who is not likely to propagate understanding," and so left the room. Our companion looked confounded, and I believe had scarce recovered the consciousness of his own existence, when Johnson came back, and drawing his chair among us, with altered looks and a softened voice, joined in the general chat, insensibly led the conversation to the 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 gentleman,' according to Mr. Hayward (Mrs. Piozzi's Auto. 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 post, May 7, 1773, and April 12 and May 8, 1778.

[325] '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. 41. See also post, Nov. 26, 1774, where Johnson says that 'The Patriot was called for by my political friends on Friday, was written on Saturday.'

[326] 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 1143 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. Parl. Hist. xvi. 437, and Almon's Wilkes, iv. 4. See post, Oct. 12, 1779.

[327] The resolution of expulsion was carried on Feb. 17, 1769. Parl. Hist. xvi. 577. It was expunged on May 3, 1782. Ib xxii. 1407.

[328] In the original it is not rulers, but railers. Johnson's Works, vi. 176.

[329] How slight the change of system was is shown by a passage in Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 388. Mr. Forster mentions a 'memorial in favour of the most worthless of hack-partizans, Shebbeare, which obtained for him his pension of 200 a year. It is signed by fifteen members of the House of Commons, and it asks for a pension "that he may be enabled to pursue that laudable inclination which he has of manifesting his zeal for the service of his Majesty and his Government"; in other words, that a rascal shall be bribed to support a corrupt administration.' Horace Walpole, in 1757 (Letters, iii. 54), described 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 William and the Revolution.' See also post, end of May, 1781.

[330] Johnson could scarcely be soothed by lines such as the following:—

'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.

[331] Stockdale, who was born in 1736 and died in 1811, wrote Memoirs of his Life—a long, dull book, but containing a few interesting anecdotes of Johnson. He thought himself, and the world also, much ill-used by the publishers, when they passed him over and chose Johnson 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, vii. 194), quoting from Stockdale's Life of that poet, calls him 'his last ingenious biographer.' I. D'Israeli says that 'the bookseller Flexney complained that whenever 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.' Calamities of Authors, ed. 1812, ii. 314.

[332] 'I believe most men may review all the lives that have passed within their observation without remembering one efficacious resolution, or being able to tell a single instance of a course of practice suddenly changed in consequence of a change of opinion, or an establishment of determination.' Idler, 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.

[333] Pr. and Med. p. 95. [p. 101.] BOSWELL.

[334] See ante, i. 368.

[335] The passage remains unrevised in the second edition.

[336] 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 years, 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, 'harrasses me much; yet many leave the disease perhaps in a much higher degree, with want of food, fire, and covering, which I find also grievous, with all the succours that riches kindness can buy and give.' (He was staying at Mr. Thrale's) Pr. and Med. pp. 92-95. 'Shall I ever,' he asks on Easter Day, 'receive the Sacrament with tranquility? Surely the time will come.' Ib p. 99.

[337] Son of the learned Mrs. Grierson, who was patronised by the late Lord Granville, and was the editor of several of the Classicks. BOSWELL.

[338]

'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, Epis. II. i. 26.

[339] See ante, i. 131, where Boswell says that 'Johnson afterwards honestly acknowledged the merit of Walpole.'

[340] See post, May 15, 1783.

[341] 'His acquaintance was sought by persons of the first eminence in literature; and his house, in respect of the conversations there, became an academy.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 329. See ante, i. 247, 350, note 3.

[342] Probably Madame de Boufflers. See post, under November 12, 1775.

[343] 'To talk in publick, to think in solitude, to read and hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar.' Rasselas, ch. viii. Miss Burney mentions an amusing instance of a consultation by letter. 'The letter was dated from the Orkneys, and cost Dr. Johnson 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.

[344] '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, viii. 208.

[345] See post, March 31, 1772.

[346] 'He loved the poor,' says Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. 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 beggars? 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 Covent 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. 77, 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.

[347] He was once attacked, though whether by robbers is not made clear. See post, under Feb. 7, 1775.

[348] Perhaps it was this class of people which is described in the following passage:—'It was never against people of coarse life that his contempt was expressed, while poverty of sentiment in men who considered themselves to be company for the parlour, as he called it, was what he would not bear.' Piozzi's Anec. 215.

[349] See ante, i. 320, for one such offer.

[350] See ante, i. 163, note 1, and post, March 30, 1781.

[351] Dr. T. Campbell, in his Survey 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 discoverer, 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 government 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 maxim in the government of Ireland.' Burke's Corres., iii. 378. See post, ii. 130, and May 7, 1773, and Oct. 12, 1779.

[352] See post, just before Feb. 18, 1775.

[353] 'Of Sheridan's writings on elocution, Johnson said, they were a continual renovation of hope, and an unvaried succession of disappointments.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 197. See post, May 17, 1783.

[354] In 1753, Jonas Hanway published his Travels to Persia.

[355] 'Though his journey was completed in eight days he gave a relation of it in two octavo volumes.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 352. See ante, i. 313.

[356] See ante, i. 68, and post, June 9, 1784, note, where he varies the epithet, calling it 'the best piece of parenetic divinity.'

[357] '"I taught myself," Law tells us, "the high Dutch language, on purpose to know the original words of the blessed Jacob."' Overton's Life of Law, p. 181. Behmen, or Bhme, 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 ridiculous. But he was a generative thinker. What he knew he knew for himself. It was not transmitted to him, but fought for.' F.D. Maurice's Moral and Meta. Phil. ii. 325. Of Hudibras's squire, Ralph, it was said:

'He Anthroposophus, and Floud, And Jacob Behmen understood.'

Hudibras, I. i. 541.

Wesley (Journal, i. 359) writes of Behmen's Mysteriun Magnum, '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.'

[358] 'He heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter,' 2 Corinthians, xii. 4.

[359] See ante, i. 458. In Humphry 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.'

[360] '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 800 sermons in a year.' Ib ii. 532. In one of his Appeals to Men of 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 whatever 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 envy 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 continue therein one year, unless he had a full conviction in himself that it was the will of God concerning him?' Southey's Wesley, i. 405.

[361] 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 the Pope said that, he knew that he lied."' Stockdale's Memoirs, ii. 44. In the Life of Somervile, Johnson says:—'If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled prose.' Johnson's Works, viii. 95. See post beginning of 1781.

[362] Ephesians, v. 20.

[363] In the original—'Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain' See post June 12, 1784.

[364] See post under Aug 29, 1783, and Boswell's Hebrides Oct 14, 1773.

[365] 'The chief glory of every people arises from its authours.' Johnson's Works, v 49.

[366] 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.' MALONE. Johnson, in An Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude (Works, v, 299), makes the supposed author say:—'I have lived till I am able to produce in my favour the testimony of time, the inflexible enemy of false hypotheses; the only testimony which it becomes human understanding to oppose to the authority of Newton.'

[367] Murphy (Life, p. 91) places the scene of such a conversation in the house of 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 philosophy, and embraced it afterwards, his words were:—"Fontenellus, ni fallor, in extrema senectute fuit transfuga ad castra Newtoniana."' See post, under Nov. 12, 1775. Boscovitch, the Jesuit astronomer, was a professor in the University 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.

[368] See post, in 1781, the Life of Lyttelton.

[369] The first of Macpherson's forgeries was Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands. Edinburgh, 1760. In 1762, he published 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.

[370] Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 41.

[371] Perhaps Johnson had some ill-will towards attorneys, such as he had towards excisemen (ante, i. 36, note 5 and 294). 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.'

Works, i. 1. In a paper in the Gent. Mag. for following June (p. 287), written, I have little doubt, by him, the profession is this savagely 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 resentment or indignation, had their votes been asked for murderer, an adulterer, a know oppressor, an hireling evidence, an attorney, a gamester, or pimp.' In the Life of Blackmere (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 post, under June 16, 1784.

[372] See ante, i. Appendix F.

[373] Dr. Maxwell is perhaps here quoting the Idler, No. 69, where Johnson, speaking of Bioethics on the Confronts of Philosophy, calls it 'the book which seems to have been the favourite of the middle ages.'

[374] Yet it is Murphy's tragedy of Zenobia 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. "Which 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 Tig and Terry in it." Seeing me laugh most violently, "Why, what would'st have, child?" said he. "I looked at nothing but the dramatis [personae], and there was Tigranes and Tiridates, or Teribaeus, or such stuff. A man can tell but what he knows, and I never got any further than the first pages."' In Zenobia two and Tigranes.

[375] 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.

[376] 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 Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 16, 1773.

[377] 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.' See ante, i. 268.

[378] See ante, ii. 76.

[379] '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 established; 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.

[380] 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.

[381] See post, Sept 21, 1777, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, 1773.

[382] But see ante, i. 299, where Johnson owned that his happier days had come last.

[383]

'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.'

DRYDEN. Virgil, Georgics, iii. 66. In the first edition Dr. Maxwell's Collectanea ended here. What follows was given in the second edition in Additions received after the second edition was printed, i. v.

[384] To Glaucus. Clarke's translation is:—'Ut semper fortissime rem gererem, et superior virtute essem aliis.' Iliad, vi. 208. Cowper's version is:—

'That I should outstrip always all mankind In worth and valour.'

[385] Maxwell calls him his old master, because Sharpe was Master of the Temple when Maxwell was assistant preacher. CROKER.

[386] Dr. T. Campbell, in his Survey of the South of Ireland, p. 185, writes: 'In England the meanest cottager is better fed, better lodged, and better dressed than the most opulent farmers here.' See post, Oct. 19, 1779.

[387] In the vice-royalty of the Duke of Bedford, which began in Dec. 1756, 'in order to encourage tillage a law was passed granting bounties 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. Ib iv. 415.

[388] See ante, i. 434.

[389] See ante, ii. 121. Lord Kames, in his Sketches of the History 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 valorem.' ii. 413. These export duties were selfishly levied in what was supposed to be the interest of England.

[390] 'At this time [1756] appeared Brown's Estimate, a book now remembered 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 cowards 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 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.' Life of Hume, ii. 23. Brown wrote two tragedies, Barbarossa and Athelstan, 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 letter to Garrick (Garrick Corres. i. 220) written on Jan. 19, 1766, in which he talks of going to St. Petersburg, and drawing up a System of Legislation for the Russian Empire. In the following September, in a fit of madness, he made away with himself.

[391] See post, May 8, 1781.

[392] Horace Walpole, writing in May, 1764, says:—'The Earl of Northumberland returned from Ireland, where his profusion and ostentation had been so great that it seemed to lay a dangerous precedent for succeeding governors.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 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.

[393] Johnson thus writes of him (Works, viii. 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 confederated 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.' Ib 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."'

[394] These lines have been discovered by the author's second son in the London Magazine for July 1732, where they form part of a poem on Retirement, copied, with some slight variations, from one of Walsh's smaller poems, entitled The Retirement. 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 variation to have sometimes given them a moral turn, and to have dexterously adapted them to his own sentiments, where the original had a very different tendency. In 1782, when he was at Brighthelmstone, he repeated to Mr. Metcalfe, some verses, as very characteristic of a celebrated historian [Gibbon]. They are found among some anonymous poems appended to the second volume of a collection frequently printed by Lintot, under the title of Pope's Miscellanies:—

'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 post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection, and Boswell's Hebrides Aug. 27, and Oct. 28, 1773.

[395] Juvenal, Sat. iii. 1. 2.

'Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend.'

Johnson's London, 1. 3.

[396] It was published without the authors name.

[397] '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.

[398] 'It is wonderful with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those that hear of it at a distance, 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 proclamation, 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 England's glory, smile in death." The life of a modern soldier is ill-represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable 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 languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, 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 notice 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.

[399] Johnson wrote of the Earl of Chatham:—'This surely is a sufficient answer to the feudal gabble of a man who is every day lessening 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, vi. 197.

[400] Ephesians, vi. 12. Johnson (Works, vi. 198) calls Junius 'one of the few writers of his despicable faction whose name does not disgrace 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?' Ib p. 206.

[401] This softening was made in the later copies of the 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 Reign 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.' Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 172, note. He himself said, 'People will point at me, and cry, "there goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever appeared."' Ib p. 250.

[402] 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 edition both softened and unsoftened.

[403] Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands. BOSWELL.

[404] By comparing the first with the subsequent editions, this curious circumstance of ministerial authorship may be discovered. BOSWELL.

[405] Navigation was the common term for canals, which at that time were getting rapidly made. A writer in Notes and Queries, 6th, xi. 64, shows that Langton, as payment of a loan, undertook to pay Johnson's servant, Frank, an annuity for life, secured on profits from the navigation of the River Wey in Surrey.

[406] 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 of that name married to second husbands. CROKER. Mr. Langton married one of these ladies.

[407] The Hermit of Warkworth: A Ballad in three cantos. T. Davis, 25. 6d. Cradock (Memoirs, i. 207) quotes Johnson's parody on a stanza in The Hermit:

'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."'

[408] '"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 immediate circle of friends.' Ib p. 230. See post, April 17, 1778.

[409] Gibbon (Misc. Works, 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 Fall], which derived 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. See ib. p. 512, for a letter written to Hume on his death-bed by Strahan.

[410] Dr. Franklin, writing of the year 1773, says (Memoirs, i. 398):—'An acquaintance (Mr. Strahan, M.P.) calling 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.'

[411] See post, July 27, 1778.

[412] Hawkins (Life, p. 513) says that Mr. Thrale made the same attempt. '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 perhaps 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. 262), in which he describes a patron as 'one who encumbers a man with help.'