[939]

'No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims, Molire's old stubble in a moment flames.'

The Nonjuror was 'a comedy thrashed out of Molire's Tartuffe.' The Dunciad, i. 253.

[940] See post, June 9, 1784; also Macaulay's England, ch. xiv. (ed. 1874, v. 94), for remarks on what Johnson here says.

[941] See ante, i. 318, where his name is spelt Madden.

[942] This was not merely a cursory remark; for in his Life of Fenton he observes, 'With many other wise and virtuous men, who at that time of discord and debate (about the beginning of this century) consulted conscience [whether] well or ill informed, more than interest, he doubted the legality of the government; and refusing to qualify himself for publick employment, by taking the oaths [by the oaths] required, left the University without a degree.' This conduct Johnson calls 'perverseness 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 inflexible 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 sanguine 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 imposition 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.

[943] Dr. Harwood sent me the following extract from the book containing 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 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 transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper before, &c.'—CROKER.

[944] A parody on Macbeth, act ii. sc. 2.

[945] Lord Southampton asked Bishop Watson of Llandaff 'how he was to bring up his son so as to make him get forwards in the world. "I know 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 are 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 Eldon, i. 134.

[946] In New Street, near Gough Square, in Fleet Street, whither in February 1770 the King's printinghouse 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.

[947] See post, under March 30, 1783.

[948] 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 and 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 Ashbourne School (see post, Sept. 14, 1777). Mr. Langley asked Johnson's help 'in procuring him a place in some eminent printing office.' Davenport wrote to Mr. Langley nearly eight years later:—'According to your desire, I consulted Dr. Johnson about my future employment 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 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.

[949] 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, 1775), so that it was not 'the last time he was at a play.'

[950] 'One evening in the oratorio season of 1771,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. 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 Theatre, March 8, 1771. Tertii verso quater orbe lustri, Quid theatrales tibi, Crispe, pompae? Quam decet canos male literates Sera voluptas! Tene mulceri fidibus canoris? Tene cantorum modulis stupere? Tene per pictas, oculo elegante, Currere formas? Inter aequales, sine felle liber, Codices veri studiosus inter Rectius vives. Sua quisque carpal Gaudia gratus. Lusibus gaudet puer otiosis, Luxus oblectat juvenem theatri, At seni fluxo sapienter uti Tempore restat."'

(Works, i. 166.)

[951] 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 earlier in the month. Murphy's Garrick, pp. 330, 332

[952] 'August, 1778. An epilogue of Mr. Garrick's to Bonduca 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.

[953] '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 George 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 could have gone on so long.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii, 460. Garrick lived in the Adelphi.

[954] 'Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes, Beholds his own hereditary skies.' DRYDEN, Ovid, Meta. i. 85.

[955] Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 213) says that she was made 'the umpire in a trial of skill between Garrick and Boswell, which could most nearly imitate Dr. Johnson's manner. I remember I gave it for Boswell in familiar conversation, and for Garrick in reciting poetry.'

[956] 'Gesticular mimicry and buffoonery Johnson hated, and would often huff Garrick for exercising it his presence.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 386.

[957] In the first two editions Johnson is represented as only saying, 'Davy is futile.'

[958] 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 bow-wow way.' The sayings themselves are generally of sterling merit; but, doubtless, his manner 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 imitations or caricatures of his manner, which are frequently attempted, and many of which are second-hand copies from the late Mr. Henderson the actor, who, though a good mimick of some persons, did not represent Johnson correctly. BOSWELL.

[959] 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.

[960] 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 scientific property it means all the parts of a musical composition noted down in the characters by which it is established to the eye of the skillful. BOSWELL. It was declamation that Steele pretended to reduce to notation by new characters. This he called the melody of speech, not the harmony, which is the term in score implies. BURNEY.

[961] Johnson, in his Life of Gray (Works, viii. 481), spoke better of him. 'What has occurred to me from the slight inspection of his Letters, in which my understanding has engaged me, is, that his mind had a large gap; 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 chosen, his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable.'

[962] In the original, 'Give ample room and verge enough.' In the Life of Gray (Works, vii. 486) 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 ante, i. 402.

[963] This word, which is in the first edition, is not in the second or third.

[964] '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.' Works, viii. 487. Goldsmith, in his Life of Parnell (Misc. Works, iv. 25), thus seems to sneer at The Elegy:—'The 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.'

[965] Mr. Croker says, 'no doubt Lady Susan Fox who, in 1773, married Mr. William O'Brien, an actor.' It was in 1764 that she was married, so that it is not likely that she was the subject of this talk. See Horace Valpole's Letters, iv. 221.

[966] Mrs. Thrale's marriage with Mr. Piozzi.

[967] See ante, i. 408.

[968] Boswell was of the same way of thinking as Squire Western, who 'did indeed consider a parity of fortune and circumstances to be physically 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.' Tom Jones, bk. vi. ch. 9.

[969]

'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.'

DRYDEN, Virgil, Georg. iii. 9. 'Chesterfield was at once the most distinguished 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 whenever 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, i. 325.

[970] With the Literary Club, as is shewn by Boswell'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 ante, p. 318, and that of April 7, post, p. 345.

[971] Very likely Boswell (ante, ii. 84, note 3).

[972] 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.'

[973] Twenty years earlier he had recommended to Miss Boothby as a 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. See post, April 18, 1783.

[974] The misprint of Chancellor for Gentlemen is found in both the second and third editions. It is not in the first.

[975] Extracted from the Convocation Register, Oxford. BOSWELL.

[976] 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 [them 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 observed on his table a letter directed to him with the addition of Esquire, and objected to it as being a designation inferiour to that of 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 literary men, and to be merely genteel,—un gentilhomme comme un autre. Boswell. See post, March 30, 1781, 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.

[977] 'To make a man pleased with himself, let me tell you, is doing a very great thing.' Post, April 28, 1778.

[978] 'The original is in the hands of Dr. Forthergril, then Vice-Chancellor, who made this transcript.' T. WARTON—BOSWELL.

[979] Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, as is shewn by Piozzi Letters, i. 213.

[980] 'That the design [of the Dunciad] 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 Theobald had treated his Shakespeare and regaining the honour which he had lost, by crushing his opponent.' Johnson's Works, viii. 338.

[981]

'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.

[982] 'These Odes,' writes Colman, 'were a piece of boys' play with my schoolfellow Lloyd, with whom they were written in concert.' Ib i. xi. In the Connoisseur (ante, i. 420) 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 Cowper, i. 47.

[983] Ante, i. 402.

[984] 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 Elfrida, and when we talked of that elegant knot of worthies, Gray, Mason, Walpole, &c.' Letters of Boswell, p. 185.

[985] 'I have heard Mr. Johnson relate how he used to sit in some coffee-house at Oxford, and turn M——'s C-r-ct-u-s into ridicule for the diversion of himself and of chance comers-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 [slang] word.'

[986] See post, March 26, 1779, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 1, and under Nov. 11, 1773. According to Dr. T. Campbell (Diary, p. 36), Johnson, on March 16, had said that Taxation no Tyranny did not sell.

[987] 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 and Queries, 6th S., v. 422.

[988] 'Mrs. Macaulay,' says Mr. Croker, who quotes Johnson's Works, vi. 258, where she is described as 'a female patriot bewailing the miseries of her friends and fellow-citizens.' See ante, i. 447.

[989] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 24, 1773, and post, Sept. 24, 1777, for another landlord's account of Johnson.

[990] From Dryden's lines on Milton.

[991] Horace Walpole wrote, on Jan. 15, 1775 (Letters, vi. 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 Olympic 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.'

[992] Miss Burney wrote, in 1780:—'Do you know now that, notwithstanding 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 fine clothes on.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 364.

[993] 'Yes, on my faith, there are bouts-rims on a buttered muffin, made by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland.' Walpole's Letters, vi. 171. 'She was,' Walpole writes, 'a jovial heap of contradictions. 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 the Reign of George III, i. 419. Dr. Percy showed her Goldsmith's ballad of Edwin and Angelina in MS., and she had a few copies privately printed. Forster's Goldsmith, i. 379.

[994] Perhaps Mr. Seward, who was something of a literary man, and who visited Bath (post, under March 30, 1783).

[995]

'—rerum Fluctibus in mediis et tempestatibus urbis.'

Horace, Epistles, ii. 2. 84. See ante, i. 461.

[996]

'Qui semel adspexit quantum dimissa petitis Prstent, mature redeat repetatque relicta.'

Horace, Epistles, i. 7. 96.

'To his first state let him return with speed, Who sees how far the joys he left exceed His present choice.' FRANCIS.

Malone says that 'Walpole, after he ceased to be minister, endeavoured to amuse his mind with reading. But one day when Mr. Welbore 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 from a shelf, "Alas! it is all in vain; I cannot 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, for I speak from experience, when a man who has been much occupied through life arrives at having nothing to do, he is very apt not to know what to do with himself.' 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 resignationibus." And very good advice too.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 246.

[997] See 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.

[998] 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 Irishman (The Rev. 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 nowhere appears in the MS. It is clear, however, that if it is not a forgery, the author was Campbell. In the Edinburgh Review for Oct., 1859, its authenticity is examined, and is declared to be beyond a doubt. Lord Macaulay aided the Reviewer in his investigation. Ib 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 cannot 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 anything 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 1, at which Campbell met Murphy, Boswell, 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 Archbishop of York. It was Murphy 'who paid him the highest compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for repeating 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.

[999] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 173) says that Johnson spoke of Browne as 'of all conversers the most delightful with whom he ever was in company.' 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.

[1000] Horace Walpole says of Beckford's Bribery Bill of 1768:—'Grenville, to flatter the country gentlemen, who can ill afford to combat with great lords, nabobs, commissaries, and West Indians, declaimed in favour of the bill.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 159.

[1001] See ante, ii. 167, where he said much the same. Another day, however, he agreed that a landlord ought to give leases to his tenants, and not 'wish to keep them in a wretched dependance 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 Ephemerae—mere beings of an hour."' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 10, 1773.

[1002] 'Thomas Hickey is now best remembered by a characteristic portrait of his friend Tom Davies, engraved with Hickey's name to it.' P. CUNNINGHAM.

[1003] See ante, ii. 92. In the Life of Pope (Works, viii. 302), Johnson says that 'the shafts of satire were directed in vain against Cibber, being repelled by his impenetrable impudence.' Pope speaks of Gibber's 'impenetrability.' Elwin's Pope, ix. 231.

[1004] He alludes perhaps to a note on the Dunciad, ii, 140, in which it is stated that 'the author has celebrated even Cibber himself (presuming him to be the author of the Careless Husband).' See post, May 15, 1776, note.

[1005] See ante, ii. 32.

[1006] 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.

[1007] Yet Johnson (Works, vii. 177) wrote of Otway, who was nine years old when Charles II. came to the throne, and who outlived him by only a few weeks:—'He had what was in those times the common 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."'

[1008] Johnson in 1742 said that William III. '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 Rowe (ib. 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 (ib. 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.

[1009] 'The fact of suppressing the will is indubitably true,' wrote Horace 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. There Archbishop Wake, with whom one copy of the will had been deposited, advanced, and delivered the will to the King, who put it into his pocket, and went out of Council without opening it, the Archbishop 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 Suffolk, 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."'

[1010] 'Charles II. by his affability and politeness made himself the idol of the nation, which he betrayed and sold.' Johnson's Works, vi. 7.

[1011] '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.

[1012] Plin. Epist. lib. ii. ep. 3. BOSWELL.

[1013] Mr. Davies was here mistaken. Corelli never was in England. BURNEY.

[1014] Mr. Croker is wrong in saying that the Irishman in Mrs. Thrale's letter of May 16, 1776 (Piozzi 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-l's phrases,' but she might also have quoted Shakspeare. I have no doubt that Mrs. Thrale's Irishman was a Mr. Musgrave (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.

[1015] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 26, 1773, where Johnson said that 'he did not approve of a Judge's calling himself Farmer Burnett, and going about with a little round hat.'

[1016] '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.

[1017] 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. See post, April 20, 1783.

[1018] See ante, i. 358.

[1019] See ante, i. 306.

[1020] 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 counsel for the Donaldsons, in the appeal before the House of Lords on the Right of Literary Property (ante, i. 437, and ii. 272). In his argument '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.

[1021] 'The booksellers of London are denominated the trade' (post, April 15, 1778, note).

[1022] Bibliopole is not in Johnson's Dictionary.

[1023] The Literary Club. See ante, p. 330, note 1. Mr. Croker says that 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 Johnson 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 ante, ii. 240, 255, 318, 330; and post, April 3, 1778, April 16, 1779, and 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.

[1024] Travels through Germany, &c., 1756-7.

[1025] Travels through Holland, &c. Translated from the French, 1743.

[1026] See post, March 24, 1776, and May 17, 1778.

[1027] Description of the East, 1743-5.

[1028] 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.

[1029] 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 England:—"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, ma per star meglio sto qui, which it is impossible to translate.'

[1030] Lord Chesterfield, as Mr. Croker points out, makes the same observation 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 publication 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 occasion for.'

[1031] See ante, ii. 156.

[1032] '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 had so slight a thing so great an effect.' Bumet's Own Time, ed. 1818, ii. 430. In Tristram Shandy, vol. i. chap. 21, when Mr. Shandy advanced one of his hypotheses:—'My uncle Toby,' we read, 'would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument than that of whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lilliburlero.'

[1033] See ante, ii. 66.

[1034] '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 mentions 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. Gibbon's Misc. Works, i.219. See also post, April 18, 1775.

[1035] We may compare with this Dryden's line:—

'Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.'

Absalom and Achitophel, l. 179. Hawkins (Life, p. 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 infatuated the public' when Walpole fell; but a few days convinced him that the patriotism of the opposition had been either hatred or ambition. For patriots, see ante, i. 296, note, and post, April 6, 1781.

[1036] Mr. Burke. See ante, p. 222, note 4.

[1037] Lord North's ministry lasted from 1770 to 1782.

[1038] Perhaps Johnson had this from Davies, who says (Life of Garrick, i. l24):—'Mrs. Pritchard read no more of the play of Macbeth than her own part, as written out and delivered to her by the prompter.' She played the heroine in Irene (ante, i. 197). See post under Sept. 30, 1783, where Johnson says that 'in common life she was a vulgar idiot,' and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.

[1039] A misprint for April 8.

[1040] Boswell calls him the 'Irish Dr. Campbell,' to distinguish him from the Scotch Dr. Campbell mentioned ante, i. 417.

[1041] See ante, i. 494.

[1042] Baretti, 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.'

[1043] 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 entitled to the emolument of their labours, and by that generous way of thinking he held out an invitation to men of genius.'

[1044] Page 392, vol. i. BOSWELL.

[1045] Let me here be allowed to pay my tribute of most sincere gratitude 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, approaching 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, insomuch, that I not only was invited to make one in the many respectable companies whom he entertained at his table, but had a cover at his hospitable board every day when I happened to be disengaged; and in his society I never failed to enjoy learned and animated conversation, seasoned with genuine sentiments of virtue and religion. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 127, and ii. 59, note 1. The couplet from Pope is from Imitations of Horace, Epist. ii. 2. 276.

[1046]

'Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.'

Essay on Man, i. 95.

[1047] '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. 53, and June 12, 1784. Swift defined happiness as 'a perpetual possession of being well deceived.' Tale of a Tub, Sect, ix., Swift's Works, ed. 1803, iii. 154.

[1048] See post, March 29, 1776.

[1049] The General seemed unwilling to enter upon it at this time; but upon a subsequent occasion he communicated to me a number of particulars, 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 fever, which is often fatal at any period of life. BOSWELL.

[1050] See ante, p. 338.

[1051]

'Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.' 'But God and man, and letter'd post denies That poets ever are of middling size.'

FRANCIS, Horace, Ars Poet. l. 372.

[1052] 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 metropolis 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 a 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 credible 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 magna, for my exuberant spirits will not let me listen enough.' Letters of Boswell, pp. 187-9.

[1053] Johnson, in The Rambler, No. 110, 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.'

[1054] From this too just observation there are some eminent exceptions, 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.

[1055] Lord Shelburne wrote of him:—'He panted for the Treasury, having 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.

[1056] Chief Justice Pratt (afterwards Lord Camden) became popular by his conduct as a judge in Wilkes's case. In 1764 he received the freedom of the guild of merchants in Dublin in a gold box, and from Exeter 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, p. 314.

[1057] The King, on March 3, 1761, recommended this measure to Parliament. Parl. 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 necessary. 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.

[1058] 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 700,000, 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 people. And let it be remembered, that during the Earl of Bute's administration, 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 upwards of 100,000 per annum by this disinterested bounty of his Majesty.' 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 difference.' Blackstone (edit, of 1778, i. 331) 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.'

[1059] See post, iii. 163.

[1060] 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 1760. 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 Selwyn, i. 287.

[1061] 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. Ante, i. 376.

[1062] 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."' Boswelliana, 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 engagement—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.'

[1063] 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 cabinet councils.

[1064] 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 misdemeanour. 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 respondeat, which is laying down a rule for a prime minister; whereas the noble Duke was against any.' The Secker MS. Parl. Hist. xi. 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. Ib p. 1215. Johnson reports the Chancellor as saying:—'It has not been yet pretended that he assumes the title of 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 himself,' &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 one, 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. 46, April 1, 1781, Jan. 20, 1782, and April 10, 1783.

[1065] See ante, p. 300.

[1066] 'As he liberally confessed that all his own disappointments proceeded from himself, he hated to hear others complain of general injustice.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 251. See post, end of May, 1781, and March 23, 1783.

[1067] 'Boswell and I went to church, but came very late. We then took tea, by Boswell's desire; and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not seem to fast ostentatiously.' Pr. and Med. p. 138.

[1068] See ante, i. 433.

[1069] See ante, i. 332.

[1070] The following passages shew that the thought, or something like it, was not new to Johnson:—'Bruyre 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.' Ib 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 striking 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, vii. 311. See also The Rambler, No. 86. In The Adventurer, No. 95, he wrote:—'The complaint that all topicks are preoccupied is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness.' See post, under Aug. 29, 1783. Dr. Warton (Essay on Pope, i. 88) says that 'St. Jerome relates that Donatus, explaining that passage in Terence, Nihil est dictum quod non sit dictum prius, railed at the ancients for taking from him his best thoughts. Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.'

[1071] 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. 81.

[1072] In The Rambler, No. 89, Johnson writes of 'that interchange of 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 The Idler, No. 34, he says 'that companion will be oftenest 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 absence, that of returning home a stranger and an inquirer. The variations 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, i. 354.

[1073] Pr. and Med. p. 138. BOSWELL.

[1074] This line is not, as appears, a quotation, but an abstract of p. 139 of Pr. and Med.

[1075] This is a proverbial sentence. 'Hell,' says Herbert, 'is full of good meanings and wishings.' Jacula Prudentum, p. 11, edit 1651. MALONE.

[1076] 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 p. 352, note 1). Letters of Boswell, p. 189.

[1077]

'Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici, Solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum'

Horace, Epis. i. 6. 1.

'Not to admire is all the art I know, To make men happy and keep them so'

Pope's Imitations, adapted from Creech.

[1078]

'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.

[1079]

'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.

[1080] 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, 108, note 1, for Boswell's want of learning.

[1081] See post, under March 30, 1783.

[1082] Yet he sat to Miss Reynolds, as he tells us, perhaps ten times (post, 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 Barry, 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.

[1083] The four most likely to be mentioned would be, I think, Beauclerk, Garrick, Langton, and Reynolds. On p. 359, Boswell mentions Beauclerk's 'acid manner.'

[1084] In his Dictionary, Johnson defines muddy as cloudy in mind, dull; and quotes The Winter's Tale, act i. sc. 2. Wesley (Journal, ii. 10) writes:—'Honest, muddy 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 Reynolds muddy; yet three months earlier he had written:—'Reynolds has taken too much to strong liquor.' Ante, p. 292, note 5.

[1085] In The Rambler, No. 72, Johnson defines good-humour as 'a habit of being pleased; a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition.'

[1086] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773.

[1087] '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.

[1088] '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 ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them.' Johnson's Works, ix. 158. Lord Shelburne said that the Earl of Bute had 'a great deal of superficial 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 the 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.

[1089] 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 Archbishop's brother. His second wife was half-sister of Bishop Ken.

[1090] Johnson himself, as Boswell tells us, 'was somewhat susceptible of flattery.' Post, end of 1784.

[1091] The first time he dined with me, he was shewn into my book-room, and instantly poured 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 honest man, to have formed so great an accumulation of knowledge.' BURNEY. Miss Burney describes this visit (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 93):—'Everybody rose to do him honour; and he returned the attention 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 company, which he seemed clean and clear to forget, he began very composedly 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 languishing, 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-naturedly 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?"'

[1092] 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 whatever 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.

[1093] See ante, p. 225.

[1094] 'Our silly things called Histories,' wrote Burke (Corres, 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 truth." Both Fox and Burke disagreed with him: they thought that poetry was truth, 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.'

[1095] Mr. Plunket 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 Mercier had already said in his Nouveau Tableau de Paris—'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.

[1096] 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 'undertook the composition of the first volume.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 198, 217-9.

[1097] See p. 348. 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 Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebus agendis. Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 221. Some years before he entered Parliament, he said that his genius was 'better qualified for the deliberate compositions of the closet, than for the extemporary discourses of the Parliament. An unexpected objection would disconcert me; and as I am incapable of explaining to others what I do not thoroughly understand myself, I should be meditating while I ought to be answering.' Ib ii. 39.

[1098] A very eminent physician, whose discernment is as acute and penetrating in judging of the human character as it is in his own profession, remarked once at a club where I was, that a lively young man, fond of pleasure, and without money, would hardly resist a solicitation from his mistress to go upon the highway, immediately after being present at the representation of The Beggar's Opera. I have been told of an ingenious observation by Mr. Gibbon, that 'The Beggar's Opera may, perhaps, have sometimes increased the number of highwaymen; 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 Orpheus of highwaymen.' BOSWELL.

[1099] '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.

[1100] 'The worthy Queensb'ry yet laments his Gay.'

The Seasons. Summer, l. 1422. Pope (Prologue to the Satires, l. 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 Queensberry, 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.

[1101] This song is the twelfth air in act i.

[1102] 'In several parts of tragedy,' writes Tom Davies, 'Walker's look, deportment, and action gave a distinguished glare to tyrannic rage.' Davies's Garrick, i. 24.

[1103] 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 encouraged 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 particular 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 Anec. p. 159. See The Dundad, iii. 330, and post, April 25, 1778.

[1104] R. B. Sheridan married Miss Linley in 1773.

[1105] His wife had 3000, settled on her with delicate generosity by a gentleman to whom she had been engaged. Moore's Sheridan, i. 43.

[1106] 'Those who had felt the mischief of discord and the tyranny of usurpation read Hudibras with rapture, for every line brought back to memory something known, and gratified resentment by the just censure 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.

[1107] In his Life of Addison, Johnson says (Works, vii. 431):—'The reason which induced Cervantes to bring his hero to the grave, para mi solo nacio 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.'

[1108] 'It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up his original delineation. He describes his knight as having his imagination somewhat warped; but of this perversion he has made very little use.' Johnson's Works, vii. 431.

[1109] '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 from the most eminent scholars of the age. The learned in Europe had addressed Pieresc in their difficulties, who was 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.' D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, i. 59.

[1110] Boswell was accompanied by Paoli. To justify his visit to London, 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 post, iii. 122, note 2. Horace Walpole described Lord Pembroke in 1764 as 'a young profligate.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 415.

[1111] Page 316. BOSWELL.

[1112] Page 291. BOSWELL.

[1113] In justice to Dr. Memis, though I was against him as an Advocate, I must mention, that he objected to the variation very earnestly, before the translation was printed off. BOSWELL.

[1114] 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 hundred 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 (Universal Passion, 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 penny to see Bedlam was all I could spare.' Hutton'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 patients 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.'

[1115] In the Life of Dryden (Works, vii. 304), Johnson writes:—'Virgil would have been too hasty if he had condemned him [Statius] to straw for one sounding line.' In Humphry 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 charitable person might provide you with a dark room and clean straw in Bedlam.' Churchill, in Independence (Poems, ii. 307), writes:—

'To Bethlem with him—give him whips and straw, I'm very sensible he's mad in law.'

[1116] 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 engagement 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.

[1117] 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.

[1118] Very likely Mr. Steevens. See post, April 13, 1778, and May 15, 1784.

[1119] 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 himself 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 recollected 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 Boswell, 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. 34).

[1120] 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 Boswell, p. 270. It is said that he was the original of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell in Scott's novel of Guy Mannering. Dr. A. Carlyle (Autobiography, p. 420) says of 'the famous 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 plus and minus there was likely to be no bloodshed.' See Boswell's Herbrides, Aug. 16, 1773.

[1121] 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. 95, note 1.] 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 tte—tte with my charming Mrs. Stuart. We talked with unreserved freedom, as we had nothing to fear; we were philosophical, upon 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 beautiful our intimacy is. I then went to Mr. Johnson's, and he accompanied 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 counsel.' Letters of Boswell, p. 196.

[1122] Yet Gilbert Walmsley had called him in his youth 'a good scholar.' Garrick Corres. i. 1; 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.' Ib p. 622.

[1123] '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. See post, April 17, 1778.

[1124] 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 library, 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. Johnson. I drank tea with Lord Bute's daughter-in-law, and I supped with Miss Boswell. What variety! Mr. Johnson went 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, laboratory 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.

[1125] Swift did not laugh. 'He had a countenance sour and severe, which he seldom softened by any appearance of gaiety. He stubbornly resisted any tendency to laughter.' Johnson's Works, viii. 222. Neither did Pope laugh. 'By no merriment, either of others or his own, was he ever seen excited to laughter.' Ib p. 312. Lord Chesterfield wrote (Letters i. 329):—'How low and unbecoming a thing laughter is. I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason nobody 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.'

[1126] The day before he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Peyton and Macbean [ante, i 187] are both starving, and I cannot keep them.' Piozzi Letters, i. 218. On April 1, 1776, he wrote:—'Poor Peyton expired this morning. He probably, during many years for which he sat starving by the bed of a wife, not only useless but almost motionless, condemned by poverty to personal 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.' Ib 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.

[1127] 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.

[1128] See ante, p. 278.

[1129] Wife of the Rev. Mr. Kenneth Macaulay, authour of The History of St. Kilda. BOSWELL. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.

[1130] 'The Elzevirs of Glasgow,' as Boswell called them. (Hebrides, Oct. 29.)

[1131] See in Boswell's Hebrides, Johnson's letter of May 6, 1775.

[1132] 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.

[1133] A very learned minister in the Isle of Sky, whom both Dr. Johnson and I have mentioned with regard. BOSWELL. Boswell's Hebrides, 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 delubrum in Lydia. Ib Sept. 17.

[1134] This darkness is seen in his letters. He wrote 'June 3, 1775. It required some philosophy to bear the change from England to Scotland. The unpleasing tone, the rude familiarity, the barren conversation 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 Judicature; 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 Sessions. You see, Temple, I have my troubles as well as you have. My promise under the venerable yew has kept me sober.' Letters of Boswell, p. 198. 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!' Ib 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 complimentary letter he had received from Lord Mayor Wilkes, and continues:—'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 disagreeable to him.' Ib p. 209.

[1135] He was absent from the end of May till some time in August. He wrote from Oxford on June 1:—'Don't suppose that I live here as we live at Streatham. I went this morning to the chapel at six.' 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.' Ib 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 Stowell.' [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 Boswell, 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, having meant you no offence, I will make you no apology.' Ib p. 458. The quarrel was made up, for the next day he wrote:—'Coulson and I are pretty well again.' Piozzi Letters, i. 229.

[1136] 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 condemn 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 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. 215.

[1137] Voltaire wrote of Hnault's Abrg de l' Histoire de la France:—'Il a t dans l'histoire ce que Fontenelle a t dans la philosophie. Il l'a rendue familire.' Voltaire's Works, xvii. 99. With a quotation from Hnault, Carlyle begins his French Revolution.

[1138] My Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which that lady read in the original manuscript. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale, 'May 22, 1775:—I am not sorry that you read Boswell's Journal. Is it not a merry piece? There is much in it about poor me.' Piozzi Letters, i. 220. 'June 11, 1775. You never told me, and I omitted to inquire, how you were entertained by Boswell's Journal. One would think the man had been hired to be a spy upon me. He was very diligent, and caught opportunities of writing from time to time.' Ib p. 233. I suspect that the words I have marked by italics are not Johnson's, but are Mrs. Piozzi's interpolation.

[1139] 'In my heart of heart.' Hamlet, act iii. sc. 2.

[1140] Another parcel of Lord Hailes's Annals of Scotland. BOSWELL.

[1141] Where Sir Joshua Reynolds lived. BOSWELL.

[1142] 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 Ntre Dame.'

[1143] See ante, i. 243, note 3.

[1144] 'While Johnson was in France, he was generally very resolute in speaking Latin.' Post, under Nov. 12, 1775.

[1145] Miss Thrale. BOSWELL.

[1146] In his 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 in meat too, but they dress it well.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 102.

[1147] See ante, i. 362, note 1.

[1148] 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 Auchinleck, which you may be well convinced is my supreme object in this world.' Letters of Boswell, p. 217. Alexander Boswell was killed in a duel in 1822.

[1149] This alludes to my old feudal principle of preferring male to female succession. BOSWELL. See post, under Jan. 10, 1776.

[1150] He wrote to Dr. Taylor on the same day:—'I came back last Tuesday 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 and Queries. 6th S., v. 422.

[1151] There can be no doubt that many years previous to 1775 he corresponded 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. 512.

[1152] When on their way to Wales, July 7, 1774, post, vol. v.

[1153] Smollett wrote (Travels, i. 88):—'Notwithstanding the gay disposition of the French, their houses are all gloomy. After all it is in England only where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay furniture, neatness, and convenience.'

[1154] Son of Mrs. Johnson, by her first husband. BOSWELL.

[1155] 'A gentleman said, "Surely that Vanessa must be an extraordinary 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.

[1156] Horace Walpole wrote from Paris this autumn:—'I have not yet had time to visit the Hotel du Chatelet.' 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.' Ib ix. 202.

[1157] See post, under Nov. 12, 1775, note, and June 25, 1784.

[1158] The Prior of the Convent of the Benedictines where Johnson had a cell appropriated to him. Post, Oct. 31, and under Nov. 12.

[1159] The rest of this paragraph appears to be a minute of what was told by Captain Irwin. BOSWELL.

[1160] Melchior Canus, a celebrated Spanish Dominican, who died at Toledo, in 1560. He wrote a treatise De Locis Theologicis, in twelve books. BOSWELL.

[1161] D'Argenson's. CROKER.

[1162] 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 remember the 'Bibl. des Fes 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.

[1163] 'Si quelque invention peut suppler la connaissance qui nous est refuse des longitudes sur la mer, c'est celle du plus habile horloger de France (M. Leroi) qui dispute cette invention l'Angleterre.' Voltaire, Sicle de Louis XV, ch. 43.

[1164] The Palais Marchand 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. CROKER.

[1165] 'Petit sige de bois sur lequel on faisait asseoir, pour les interroger, ceux qui taient accuss d'un dlit pouvant faire encourir une peine afflictive.' LITTR.

[1166] The Conciergerie, before long to be crowded with the victims of the Revolution.

[1167] 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 Parliament. God grant this be no omen.' Perhaps there was nothing superstitious in Johnson's entry. He may have felt ill in mind or body, and dreaded to become worse.

[1168] For a brief account of Frron, father and son, see Carlyle's French Revolution, part ii. bk. 1. ch. 4.

[1169] 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.

[1170] See ante, i. 363, note 3.

[1171] Before the Revolution the passage from the garden of the Tuileries into the Place Louis XV. was over a pont tournant. CROKER.

[1172] The niece of Arabella Fermor, the Belinda of the Rape 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 mentioned 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 harboured 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.' Piozzi's Journey, i. 20.