Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 by Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

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[191] Johnson, perhaps, was thinking of himself when he thus criticised
the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. 'The variable weather of the
mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time
cloud reason without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit
that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own
design.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 431.

[192] Writing in his old age to Hector, he said,--'My health has been
from my twentieth year such as has seldom afforded me a single day of
ease' (_post_, under March 21, 1782). Hawkins writes, that he once told
him 'that he knew not what it was to be totally free from pain.'
Hawkins, p. 396.

[193] See _post_, Oct. 27, 1784, note.

[194] In the _Rambler_, No. 85, he pointed out 'how much happiness is
gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation
of the body.' See _post_, July 21, 1763, for his remedies against
melancholy.

[195] Thirty-two miles in all. Southey mentions that in 1728, the
Wesleys, to save the more money for the poor, began to perform their
journeys on foot. He adds,--'It was so little the custom in that age for
men in their rank of life to walk any distance, as to make them think it
a discovery that four or five-and-twenty miles are an easy and safe
day's journey.' Southey's _Wesley_, i. 52.

[196] Boswell himself suffered from hypochondria. He seems at times to
boast of it, as Dogberry boasted of his losses; so that Johnson had some
reason for writing to him with seventy, as if he were 'affecting it from
a desire of distinction.' _Post_, July 2, 1776.

[197] Johnson on April 7, 1776, recommended Boswell to read this book,
and again on July 2 of the same year.

[198] On Dec. 24, 1754, writing of the poet Collins, who was either mad
or close upon it, he said,--'Poor dear Collins! I have often been near
his state.' Wooll's _Warton_, p. 229. 'I inherited,' Johnson said, 'a
vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at
least not sober.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 16, 1773. 'When I survey
my past life,' he wrote in 1777, 'I discover nothing but a barren waste
of time, with some disorders of body and disturbances of the mind very
near to madness.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 155. Reynolds recorded that 'what
Dr. Johnson said a few days before his death of his disposition to
insanity was no new discovery to those who were intimate with him.'
Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 455. See also _post_ Sept. 20, 1777.

[199] Ch. 44.

[200] 'Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and
alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.' _Rasselas_, ch. 43.

[201] Boswell refers to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_., pp. 77, 127), and Hawkins
(_Life_, pp. 287-8).

[202] 'Quick in these seeds is might of fire and birth of heavenly
place.' Morris, _Aeneids_, vi. 730.

[203] On Easter Sunday 1716 during service some pieces of stone from the
spire of St. Mary's fell on the roof of the church. The congregation,
thinking that the steeple was coming down, in their alarm broke through
the windows. Johnson, we may well believe, witnessed the scene. The
church was pulled down, and the new one was opened in Dec. 1721.
Harwood's _Lichfield_, p. 460.

[204] 'Sept. 23, 1771. I have gone voluntarily to church on the week day
but few times in my life. I think to mend. April 9, 1773. I hope in time
to take pleasure in public worship. April 6, 1777. I have this year
omitted church on most Sundays, intending to supply the deficience in
the week. So that I owe twelve attendances on worship. I will make no
more such superstitious stipulations, which entangle the mind with
unbidden obligations.' _Pr. and Med_. pp. 108, 121, 161. In the
following passage in the _Life of Milton_, Johnson, no doubt, is
thinking of himself:--'In the distribution of his hours there was no
hour of prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting public
prayers he omitted all.... That he lived without prayer can hardly be
affirmed; his studies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The
neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned
himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death as too often
happens, intercepted his reformation.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 115. See
_post_, Oct. 10, 1779.

[205] We may compare with this a passage in Verecundulus's letter in
_The Rambler_, No. 157:--'Though many among my fellow students [at the
university] took the opportunity of a more remiss discipline to gratify
their passions, yet virtue preserved her natural superiority, and those
who ventured to neglect were not suffered to insult her.' Oxford at this
date was somewhat wayward in her love for religion. Whitefield
records:--'I had no sooner received the sacrament publicly on a week-day
at St. Mary's, but I was set up as a mark for all the polite students
that knew me to shoot at. By this they knew that I was commenced
Methodist, for though there is a sacrament at the beginning of every
term, at which all, especially the seniors, are by statute obliged to be
present, yet so dreadfully has that once faithful city played the
harlot, that very few masters, and no undergraduates but the Methodists
attended upon it. I daily underwent some contempt at college. Some have
thrown dirt at me; others by degrees took away their pay from me.'
Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 19. Story, the Quaker, visiting Oxford in
1731, says, 'Of all places wherever I have been the scholars of Oxford
were the rudest, most giddy, and unruly rabble, and most mischievous.'
Story's _Journal_, p. 675.

[206] John Wesley, who was also at Oxford, writing of about this same
year, says:--'Meeting now with Mr. Law's _Christian Perfection_ and
_Serious Call_ the light flowed in so mightily upon my soul that
everything appeared in a new view.' Wesley's _Journal_, i. 94.
Whitefield writes:--'Before I went to the University, I met with Mr.
Law's _Serious Call_, but had not then money to purchase it. Soon after
my coming up to the University, seeing a small edition of it in a
friend's hand I soon procured it. God worked powerfully upon my soul by
that and his other excellent treatise upon Christian perfection.'
Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 16. Johnson called the _Serious Call_ 'the
finest piece of hortatory theology in any language;' _post_, 1770. A few
months before his death he said:--'William Law wrote the best piece of
parenetic divinity; but William Law was no reasoner;' _post_, June 9,
1784. Law was the tutor of Gibbon's father, and he died in the house of
the historian's aunt. In describing the _Serious Call_ Gibbon
says:--'His precepts are rigid, but they are founded on the gospel; his
satire is sharp, but it is drawn from the knowledge of human life; and
many of his portraits are not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he
finds a spark of piety in his reader's mind he will soon kindle it to a
flame.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 21.

[207] Mrs. Piozzi has given a strange fantastical account of the
original of Dr. Johnson's belief in our most holy religion. 'At the age
of ten years his mind was disturbed by scruples of infidelity, which
preyed upon his spirits, and made him very uneasy, the more so, as he
revealed his uneasiness to none, being naturally (as he said) of a
sullen temper, and reserved disposition. He searched, however,
diligently, but fruitlessly, for evidences of the truth of revelation;
and, at length, _recollecting_ a book he had once seen [_I suppose at
five years old_] in his father's shop, intitled _De veritate
Religionis_, etc., he began to think himself _highly culpable_ for
neglecting such a means of information, and took himself severely to
task for this sin, adding many acts of voluntary, and, to others,
unknown _penance_. The first opportunity which offered, of course, he
seized the book with avidity; but, on examination, _not finding himself
scholar enough to peruse its contents_, set his heart at rest; and not
thinking to enquire whether there were any English books written on the
subject, followed his usual amusements and _considered his conscience as
lightened of a crime_. He redoubled his diligence to learn the language
that contained the information he most wished for; but from the pain
which _guilt [namely having omitted to read what he did not
understand_,] had given him, he now began to deduce the soul's
immortality [_a sensation of pain in this world being an unquestionable
proof of existence in another_], which was the point that belief first
stopped at; _and from that moment resolving to be a Christian_, became
one of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever produced.'
_Anecdotes_, p. 17.

This is one of the numerous misrepresentations of this lively lady,
which it is worth while to correct; for if credit should be given to
such a childish, irrational, and ridiculous statement of the foundation
of Dr. Johnson's faith in Christianity, how little credit would be due
to it. Mrs. Piozzi seems to wish, that the world should think Dr.
Johnson also under the influence of that easy logick, _Stet pro ratione
voluntas_. BOSWELL. On April 28, 1783, Johnson said:--'Religion had
dropped out of my mind. It was at an early part of my life. Sickness
brought it back, and I hope I have never lost it since.' Most likely it
was the sickness in the long vacation of 1729 mentioned _ante_, p. 63.

[208] In his _Life of Milton_, writing of _Paradise Lost_, he
says:--'But these truths are too important to be new; they have been
taught to our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and
familiar conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole
texture of life.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 134.

[209] Acts xvi. 30.

[210] Sept. 7, Old Style, or Sept. 18, New Style.

[211] 'He that peruses Shakespeare looks round alarmed, and starts to
find himself alone.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 71. 'I was many years ago so
shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to
read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them
as an editor.' Ib. p. 175.

[212] He told Mr. Windham that he had never read through the Odyssey
completely. Windham's _Diary_, p. 17. At college, he said, he had been
'very idle and neglectful of his studies.' Ib.

[213] 'It may be questioned whether, except his Bible, he ever read a
book entirely through. Late in life, if any man praised a book in his
presence, he was sure to ask, 'Did you read it through?' If the answer
was in the affirmative, he did not seem willing to believe it.' Murphy's
_Johnson_, p. 12. It would be easy to show that Johnson read many books
right through, though, according to Mrs. Piozzi, he asked, 'was there
ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its
readers excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's
Progress?' Piozzi's Anec., p. 281. Nevertheless in Murphy's statement
there is some truth. See what has been just stated by Boswell, that 'he
hardly ever read any poem to an end,' and _post_, April 19, 1773 and
June 15, 1784. To him might be applied his own description of
Barretier:--'He had a quickness of apprehension and firmness of memory
which enabled him to read with incredible rapidity, and at the same time
to retain what he read, so as to be able to recollect and apply it. He
turned over volumes in an instant, and selected what was useful for his
purpose.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 390.

[214] See _post_, June 15, 1784. Mr. Windham (_Diary_, p. 17) records
the following 'anecdote of Johnson's first declamation at college;
having neglected to write it till the morning of his being (sic) to
repeat it, and having only one copy, he got part of it by heart while he
was walking into the hall, and the rest he supplied as well as he could
extempore.' Mrs. Piozzi, recording the same ancedote, says that 'having
given the copy into the hand of the tutor who stood to receive it as he
passed, he was obliged to begin by chance, and continue on how he
could.... "A prodigious risk, however," said some one. "Not at all,"
exclaims Johnson, "no man, I suppose, leaps at once into deep water who
does not know how to swim."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 30.

[215] He told Dr. Burney that he never wrote any of his works that were
printed, twice over. Dr. Burney's wonder at seeing several pages of his
_Lives of the Poets_, in Manuscript, with scarce a blot or erasure, drew
this observation from him. MALONE. 'He wrote forty-eight of the printed
octavo pages of the _Life of Savage_ at a sitting' (_post_, Feb. 1744),
and a hundred lines of the _Vanity of Human Wishes_ in a day (_post_,
under Feb. 15, 1766). The _Ramblers_ were written in haste as the moment
pressed, without even being read over by him before they were printed
(_post_, beginning of 1750). In the second edition, however, he made
corrections. 'He composed _Rasselas_ in the evenings of one week'
(_post_, under January, 1759). '_The False Alarm_ was written between
eight o'clock on Wednesday night and twelve o'clock on Thursday night.'
Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 41. '_The Patriot_' he says, 'was called for on
Friday, was written on Saturday' (_post_, Nov. 26, 1774).

[216] 'When Mr. Johnson felt his fancy, or fancied he felt it,
disordered, his constant recurrence was to the study of arithmetic.'
Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 77. 'Ethics, or figures, or metaphysical reasoning,
was the sort of talk he most delighted in;' ib. p. 80. See _post_,
Sept. 24, 1777.

[217] 'Sept. 18, 1764, I resolve to study the Scriptures; I hope in the
original languages. 640 verses every Sunday will nearly comprise the
Scriptures in a year.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 58. '1770, 1st Sunday after
Easter. The plan which I formed for reading the Scriptures was to read
600 verses in the Old Testament, and 200 in the New, every week;' ib.
p. 100.

[218] 'August 1, 1715. This being the day on which the late Queen Anne
died, and on which George, Duke and Elector of Brunswick, usurped the
English throne, there was very little rejoicing in Oxford.... There was
a sermon at St. Marie's by Dr. Panting, Master of Pembroke.... He is an
honest gent. His sermon took no notice, at most very little, of the Duke
of Brunswick.' Hearne's _Remains_, ii. 6.

[219] The outside wall of the gateway-tower forms an angle with the wall
of the Master's house, so that any one sitting by the open window and
speaking in a strong emphatic voice might have easily been overheard.

[220] Goldsmith did go to Padua, and stayed there some months. Forster's
_Goldsmith_, i. 71.

[221] I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnson confirmed it.
Bramston, in his _Man of Taste_, has the same thought: 'Sure, of all
blockheads, scholars are the worst.' BOSWELL. Johnson's meaning,
however, is, that a scholar who is a blockhead must be the worst of all
blockheads, because he is without excusc. But Bramston, in the assumed
character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains that _all_ scholars are
blockheads on account of their scholarship. J. BOSWELL, JUN. There is, I
believe, a Spanish proverb to the effect that, 'to be an utter fool a
man must know Latin.' A writer in _Notes and Queries_ (5th S. xii. 285)
suggests that Johnson had in mind Acts xvii. 21.

[222] It was the practice in his time for a servitor, by order of the
Master, to go round to the rooms of the young men, and knocking at the
door to enquire if they were within; and if no answer was returned to
report them absent. Johnson could not endure this intrusion, and would
frequently be silent, when the utterance of a word would have ensured
him from censure, and would join with others of the young men in the
college in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who was thus
diligent in his duty, and this they did with the noise of pots and
candlesticks, singing to the tune of Chevy Chase the words in the
old ballad,--

'To drive the deer with hound and horn!' _Hawkins_, p. 12. Whitefield,
writing of a few years later, says:--'At this time Satan used to terrify
me much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being
my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by
ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would
appear to me every stair I went up.' Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 20.

[223] See _post_, June 12, 1784.

[224] Perhaps his disregard of all authority was in part due to his
genius, still in its youth. In his _Life of Lyttelton_ he says:--'The
letters [Lyttelton's _Persian Letters_] have something of that
indistinct and headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius
always catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as
he passes forward.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 488.

[225] Dr. Hall [formerly Master of the College] says, 'Certainly not
all.' CROKER.

[226] 'I would leave the interest of the fortune I bequeathed to a
college to my relations or my friends for their lives. It is the same
thing to a college, which is a permanent society, whether it gets the
money now or twenty years hence; and I would wish to make my relations
or friends feel the benefit of it;' _post_, April 17, 1778. Hawkins
(_Life_, p. 582,) says that 'he meditated a devise of his house to the
corporation of that city for a charitable use, but, it being freehold he
said, "I cannot live a twelvemonth, and the last statute of Mortmain
stands in my way."' The same statute, no doubt, would have hindered the
bequest to the College.

[227] Garrick refused to act one of Hawkins's plays. The poet towards
the end of a long letter which he signed,--'Your much dissatisfied
humble servant,' said:--'After all, Sir, I do not desire to come to an
open rupture with you. I wish not to exasperate, but to convince; and I
tender you once more my friendship and my play.' _Garrick Corres_. ii.
8. See _post_, April 9, 1778.

[228] See Nash's _History of Worcestershire_, vol. i. p. 529. BOSWELL.
To the list should be added, Francis Beaumont, the dramatic writer; Sir
Thomas Browne, whose life Johnson wrote; Sir James Dyer, Chief Justice
of the King's Bench, Lord Chancellor Harcourt, John Pym, Francis Rous,
the Speaker of Cromwell's parliament, and Bishop Bonner. WRIGHT. Some of
these men belonged to the ancient foundation of Broadgates Hall, which
in 1624 was converted into Pembroke College. It is strange that Boswell
should have passed over Sir Thomas Browne's name. Johnson in his life of
Browne says that he was 'the first man of eminence graduated from the
new college, to which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most
can wish little better than that it may long proceed as it began.'
Johnson's _Works_, vi. 476. To this list Nash adds the name of the Revd.
Richard Graves, author of _The Spiritual Quixote_, who took his degree
of B.A. on the same day as Whitefield, whom he ridiculed in
that romance.

[229] See _post_, Oct. 6, 1769, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773.

[230] In his _Life of Shenstone_ he writes:--'From school Shenstone was
sent to Pembroke College in Oxford, a society which for half a century
has been eminent for English poetry and elegant literature. Here it
appears that he found delight and advantage; for he continued his name
in the book ten years, though he took no degree.' Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 408. Johnson's name would seem to have been in like manner
continued for more than eleven years, and perhaps for the same reasons.
(_Ante_, p. 58 note.) Hannah More was at Oxford in June 1782, during one
of Johnson's visits to Dr. Adams. 'You cannot imagine,' she writes,
'with what delight Dr. Johnson showed me every part of his own
college.... After dinner he begged to conduct me to see the college; he
would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this
Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who
had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of
singing-birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket." [It may be
doubted whether he ever played.] He ran over with pleasure the history
of the juvenile days he passed there. When we came into the Common Room,
we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and hung up that very
morning, with this motto: "And is not Johnson ours, himself a host;"
under which stared you in the face, "From Miss More's _Sensibility_"'
Hannah More's _Memoirs_, i. 261. At the end of 'the ludicrous analysis
of Pocockius' quoted by Johnson in the _Life of Edmund Smith_ are the
following lines:--'Subito ad Batavos proficiscor, lauro ab illis
donandus. Prius vero Pembrochienses voco ad certamen poeticum.' Smith
was at Christ Church. He seems to be mocking the neighbouring 'nest of
singing-birds.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 381.

[231] Taylor matriculated on Feb. 24, 1729. Mr. Croker in his note has
confounded him with another John Taylor who matriculated more than a
year later. Richard West, writing of Christ Church in 1735,
says:--'Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited
by things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country
flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally
unknown.' Gray's _Letters_, ii. I.

[232]

'Si toga sordidula est et rupta
calceus alter
Pelle patet.'
'Or if the shoe be ript, or patches put.'

Dryden, _Juvenal_, iii. 149.

Johnson in his _London_, in describing 'the blockhead's insults,' while
he mentions 'the tattered cloak,' passes over the ript shoe. Perhaps the
wound had gone too deep to his generous heart for him to bear even to
think on it.

[233] 'Yet some have refused my bounties, more offended with my
quickness to detect their wants than pleased with my readiness to
succour them.' _Rasselas_, ch. 25. 'His [Savage's] distresses, however
afflictive, never dejected him; in his lowest state he wanted not spirit
to assert the natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress
that insolence which the superiority of fortune incited; ... he never
admitted any gross familiarities, or submitted to be treated otherwise
than as an equal.... His clothes were worn out; and he received notice
that at a coffee-house some clothes and linen were left for him.... But
though the offer was so far generous, it was made with some neglect of
ceremonies, which Mr. Savage so much resented that he refused the
present, and declined to enter the house till the clothes that had been
designed for him were taken away.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 161 and 169.

[234]

'Haud facile emergunt quorum
virtutibus obstat
Res angusta domi.'

Juvenal, _Sat_. iii. 164.

Paraphrased by Johnson in his _London_, 'Slow rises worth by poverty
depressed.'

[235] Cambridge thirty-six years later neglected Parr as Oxford
neglected Johnson. Both these men had to leave the University through
poverty. There were no open scholarships in those days.

[236] Yet his college bills came to only some eight shillings a week. As
this was about the average amount of an undergraduate's bill it is clear
that, so far as food went, he lived, in spite of Mr. Carlyle's
assertion, as well as his fellow-students.

[237] Mr. Croker states that 'an examination of the college books proves
that Johnson, who entered on the 31st October, 1728, remained there,
even during the vacations, to the 12th December, 1729, when he
personally left the college, and never returned--though his _name_
remained on the books till 8th October, 1731.' I have gone into this
question at great length in my _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His
Critics_, p. 329. I am of opinion that Mr. Croker's general conclusion
is right. The proof of residence is established, and alone established,
by the entries in the buttery books. Now these entries show that
Johnson, with the exception of the week in October 1729 ending on the
24th, was in residence till December 12, 1729. He seems to have returned
for a week in March 1730, and again for a week in the following
September. On three other weeks there is a charge against him of
fivepence in the books. Mr. Croker has made that darker which was
already dark enough by confounding, as I have shewn, two John Taylors
who both matriculated at Christ Church. Boswell's statement no doubt is
precise, but in this he followed perhaps the account given by Hawkins.
He would have been less likely to discover Hawkins's error from the fact
that, as Johnson's name was for about three years on the College books,
he was so long, in name at least, a member of the College. Had Boswell
seen Johnson's letter to Mr. Hickman, quoted by Mr. Croker (Croker's
_Boswell_, p. 20), he would at once have seen that Johnson could not
have remained at college for a little more than three years. For within
three years all but a day of his entrance at Pembroke, he writes to Mr.
Hickman from Lichfield, '_As I am yet unemployed_, I hope you will, if
anything should offer, remember and recommend, Sir, your humble servant,
Sam. Johnson.'

In Boswell's _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ (Aug. 15, 1773) there
is a very perplexing passage bearing on Johnson's residence at College.
'We talked of Whitefield. He said he was at the same college with him,
and knew him before he began to be better than other people.' Now
Johnson, as Boswell tells us, read this journal in manuscript. The
statement therefore seems to be well-established indeed. Yet Whitefield
did not matriculate till Nov. 7, 1732, a full year after Johnson,
according to Boswell, had left Oxford. We are told that, when Johnson
was living at Birmingham, he borrowed Lobo's _Abyssinia_ from the
library of Pembroke College. It is probable enough that a man who
frequently walked from Lichfield to Birmingham and back would have
trudged all the way to Oxford to fetch the book. In that case he might
have seen Whitefield. But Thomas Warton says that 'the first time of his
being at Oxford after quitting the University was in 1754' (_post_,
under July 16, 1754).