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

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'If what I've said can't from the town affright,
Consider other _dangers of the night_;
When brickbats are from upper stories thrown,
And _emptied chamberpots come pouring down
From garret windows_.'

BOSWELL.

See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 14, 1773, where Johnson, on taking his
first walk in Edinburgh, 'grumbled in Boswell's ear, "I smell you in the
dark."' I once spent a night in a town of Corsica, on the great road
between Ajaccio and Bastia, where, I was told, this Edinburgh practice
was universal. It certainly was the practice of the hotel.

[344] His Ode _Ad Urbanum_ probably. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[345] Johnson, on his death-bed, had to own that 'Cave was a penurious
paymaster; he would contract for lines by the hundred, and expect the
long hundred.' See _post_, Dec. 1784.

[346] Cave sent the present by Johnson to the unknown author.

[347] See _post_, p. 151, note 5.

[348] The original letter has the following additional paragraph:--'I
beg that you will not delay your answer.'

[349] In later life Johnson strongly insisted on the importance of fully
dating all letters. After giving the date in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he
would add,--'Now there is a date, look at it' (_Piozzi Letters_, ii.
109); or, 'Mark that--you did not put the year to your last' (_Ib_. p.
112); or, 'Look at this and learn' (_Ib_. p. 138). She never did learn.
The arrangement of the letters in the _Piozzi Letters_ is often very
faulty. For an omission of the date by Johnson in late life see _post_,
under March 5, 1774.

[350] A poem, published in 1737, of which see an account under April 30,
1773--BOSWELL.

[351] The learned Mrs. Elizabeth Carter. BOSWELL. She was born Dec.
1717, and died Feb. 19, 1806. She never married. Her father gave her a
learned education. Dr. Johnson, speaking of some celebrated scholar
[perhaps Langton], said, 'that he understood Greek better than any one
whom he he had ever known, except Elizabeth Carter.' Pennington's
_Carter_, i. 13. Writing to her in 1756 he said, 'Poor dear Cave! I owed
him much; for to him I owe that I have known you' (_Ib_. p. 40). Her
father wrote to her on June 25, 1738:--'You mention Johnson; but that is
a name with which I am utterly unacquainted, Neither his scholastic,
critical, or poetical character ever reached my ears. I a little suspect
his judgement, if he is very fond of Martial' (_Ib_. p. 39). Since 1734
she had written verses for the _Gent. Mag_. under the name of Eliza
(_Ib_. p. 37)! They are very poor. Her _Ode to Melancholy_ her
biographer calls her best. How bad it is three lines will show:--

'Here, cold to pleasure's airy forms,
Consociate with my sister worms,
And mingle with the dead.'

_Gent. Mag_. ix. 599.

Hawkins records that Johnson, upon hearing a lady commended for her
learning, said:--'A man is in general better pleased when he has a good
dinner upon his table than when his wife talks Greek. My old friend,
Mrs. Carter, could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus.'
Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 205. Johnson, joining her with Hannah More
and Fanny Burney, said:--'Three such women are not to be found.' _Post_,
May 15, 1784.

[352] See Voltaire's _Siecle de Louis XIV_, ch. xxv..

[353] At the end of his letter to Cave, quoted _post_, 1742, he
says:--'The boy found me writing this almost in the dark, when I could
not quite easily read yours.' A man who at times was forced to walk the
streets, for want of money to pay for a lodging, was likely also at
times to be condemned to idleness for want of a light.

[354] At the back of this letter is written: 'Sir, Please to publish the
enclosed in your paper of first, and place to acc't of Mr. Edward Cave.
For whom I am, Sir, your hum. ser't J. Bland. St. John's Gate, April 6,
1738.' _London_ therefore was written before April 6.

[355] Boswell misread the letter. Johnson does not offer to allow the
printer to make alterations. He says:--'I will take the trouble of
altering any stroke of satire which you may dislike.' The law against
libel was as unjust as it was severe, and printers ran a great risk.

[356] Derrick was not merely a poet, but also Master of the Ceremonies
at Bath; _post_, May 16, 1763. For Johnson's opinion of _his_ 'Muse' see
_post_ under March 30, 1783. _Fortune, a Rhapsody_, was published in
Nov. 1751. _Gent. Mag_. xxi. 527. He is described in _Humphrey Clinker_
in the letters of April 6 and May 6.

[357] See _post_, March 20, 1776.

[358] Six years later Johnson thus wrote of Savage's _Wanderer_:--'From
a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it might be
reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantage;
nor can it without some degree of indignation and concern be told, that
he sold the copy for ten guineas.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 131. Mrs.
Piozzi sold in 1788 the copyright of her collection of Johnson's Letters
for L500; _post_, Feb. 1767.

[359] The Monks of Medmenham Abbey. See Almon's _Life of Wilkes_, iii.
60, for Wilkes's account of this club. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, i. 92)
calls Whitehead 'an infamous, but not despicable poet.'

[360] From _The Conference_, Churchill's _Poems_, ii. 15.

[361] In the _Life of Pope_ Johnson writes:--'Paul Whitehead, a small
poet, was summoned before the Lords for a poem called _Manners_,
together with Dodsley his publisher. Whitehead, who hung loose upon
society, sculked and escaped; but Dodsley's shop and family made his
appearance necessary.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 297. _Manners_ was
published in 1739. Dodsley was kept in custody for a week. _Gent. Mag_.
ix. 104. 'The whole process was supposed to be intended rather to
intimidate Pope [who in his _Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-Eight_ had
given offence] than to punish Whitehead, and it answered that purpose.'
CHALMERS, quoted in _Parl. Hist_. x. 1325

[362] Sir John Hawkins, p. 86, tells us:--'The event is _antedated_, in
the poem of _London_; but in every particular, except the difference of
a year, what is there said of the departure of Thales, must be
understood of Savage, and looked upon as _true history_.' This
conjecture is, I believe, entirely groundless. I have been assured, that
Johnson said he was not so much as acquainted with Savage when he wrote
his _London_. If the departure mentioned in it was the departure of
Savage, the event was not _antedated_ but _foreseen_; for _London_ was
published in May, 1738, and Savage did not set out for Wales till July,
1739. However well Johnson could defend the credibility of _second
sight_ [see _post_, Feb. 1766], he did not pretend that he himself was
possessed of that faculty. BOSWELL. I am not sure that Hawkins is
altogether wrong in his account. Boswell does not state _of his own
knowledge_ that Johnson was not acquainted with Savage when he wrote
_London_. The death of Queen Caroline in Nov. 1737 deprived Savage of
her yearly bounty, and 'abandoned him again to fortune' (Johnson's
_Works_, viii. 166). The elegy on her that he composed on her birth-day
(March 1) brought him no reward. He was 'for some time in suspense,' but
nothing was done. 'He was in a short time reduced to the lowest degree
of distress, and often wanted both lodging and food' (_Ib_. p. 169). His
friends formed a scheme that 'he should retire into Wales.' 'While this
scheme was ripening' he lodged 'in the liberties of the Fleet, that he
might be secure from his creditors' (_Ib_. p. 170). After many delays a
subscription was at length raised to provide him with a small pension,
and he left London in July 1739 (_Ib_. p 173). _London_, as I have
shewn, was written before April 6, 1738. That it was written with great
rapidity we might infer from the fact that a hundred lines of _The
Vanity of Human Wishes_ were written in a day. At this rate _London_
might have been the work of three days. That it was written in a very
short time seems to be shown by a passage in the first of these letters
to Cave. Johnson says:--'When I took the liberty of writing to you a few
days ago, I did not expect a repetition of the same pleasure so soon;
... but having the enclosed poem, &c.' It is probable that in these few
days the poem was written. If we can assume that Savage's elegy was sent
to the Court not later than March 1--it may have been sent earlier--and
that Johnson's poem was written in the last ten days of March, we have
three weeks for the intervening events. They are certainly not more than
sufficient, if indeed they are sufficient. The coincidence is certainly
very striking between Thales's retirement to 'Cambria's solitary shore'
and Savage's retirement to Wales. There are besides lines in the
poem--additions to Juvenal and not translations--which curiously
correspond with what Johnson wrote of Savage in his _Life_. Thus he says
that Savage 'imagined that he should be transported to scenes of flowery
felicity; ... he could not bear ... to lose the opportunity of
listening, without intermission, to the melody of the nightingale, which
he believed was to be heard from every bramble, and which he did not
fail to mention as a very important part of the happiness of a country
life' (_Ib_. p. 170). In like manner Thales prays to find:--

'Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play,
Some peaceful vale, with nature's paintings gay.

* * * * *

There every bush with nature's musick rings;
There every breeze bears health upon its wings.'

Mr. Croker objects that 'if Thales had been Savage, Johnson could never
have admitted into his poem two lines that point so forcibly at the
drunken fray, in which Savage stabbed a Mr. Sinclair, for which he was
convicted of _murder_:--

"Some frolic _drunkard_, reeling from a feast,
_Provokes_ a broil, and _stabs_ you in a jest."'

But here Johnson is following Juvenal. Mr. Croker forgets that, if
Savage was convicted of murder, 'he was soon after admitted to bail, and
pleaded the King's pardon.' 'Persons of distinction' testified that he
was 'a modest inoffensive man, not inclined to broils or to insolence;'
the witnesses against him were of the lowest character, and his judge
had shewn himself as ignorant as he was brutal. Sinclair had been
drinking in a brothel, and Savage asserted that he had stabbed him 'by
the necessity of self defence' (_Ib_. p. 117). It is, however, not
unlikely that Wales was suggested to Johnson as Thales's retreat by
Swift's lines on Steele, in _Miscellanies in Prose and Verse_ (v. 181),
published only three years before _London_:--

'Thus Steele who owned what others writ,
And flourished by imputed wit,
From perils of a hundred jails
Withdrew to starve and die in Wales.'

[363] The first dialogue was registered at Stationers' Hall, 12th May,
1738, under the title _One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight_. The
second dialogue was registered 17th July, 1738, as _One Thousand Seven
Hundred and Thirty Eight, Dialogue_ 2. Elwin's _Pope_, iii. 455.

David Hume was in London this spring, finding a publisher for his first
work, _A Treatise of Human Nature_. J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 66.

[364] Pope had published _Imitations of Horace_.

[365] P. 269. BOSWELL. 'Short extracts from _London, a Poem_, become
remarkable for having got to the second edition in the space of a week.'
_Gent. Mag_. viii. 269. The price of the poem was one shilling. Pope's
satire, though sold at the same price, was longer in reaching its second
edition (_Ib_. p. 280).

[366]

'One driven by strong benevolence of soul
Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.'

Pope's _Imitations of Horace_, ii. 2. 276.

'General Oglethorpe, died 1785, earned commemoration in Pope's gallery
of worthies by his Jacobite politics. He was, however, a remarkable man.
He first directed attention to the abuses of the London jails. His
relinquishment of all the attractions of English life and fortune for
the settlement of the colony of Georgia is as romantic a story at that
of Bishop Berkeley' (Pattison's _Pope_, p. 152). It is very likely that
Johnson's regard for Oglethorpe was greatly increased by the stand that
he and his brother-trustees in the settlement of Georgia made against
slavery (see _post_, Sept. 23, 1777). 'The first principle which they
laid down in their laws was that no slave should be employed. This was
regarded at the time as their great and fundamental error; it was
afterwards repealed' (Southey's _Wesley_, i. 75). In spite, however, of
Oglethorpe's 'strong benevolence of soul' he at one time treated Charles
Wesley, who was serving as a missionary in Georgia, with great brutality
(_Ib_. p. 88). According to Benjamin Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 162)
Georgia was settled with little forethought. 'Instead of being made with
hardy industrious husbandmen, it was with families of broken
shop-keepers, and other insolvent debtors; many of idle habits, taken
out of the jails, who being set down in the woods, unqualified for
clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement,
perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for.'
Johnson wished to write Oglethorpe's life; _post_, April 10, 1775.

[367] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 548), writing of him 47 years
after _London_ was published, when he was 87 years old, says:--'His
eyes, ears, articulation, limbs, and memory would suit a boy, if a boy
could recollect a century backwards. His teeth are gone; he is a shadow,
and a wrinkled one; but his spirits and his spirit are in full bloom:
two years and a-half ago he challenged a neighbouring gentleman for
trespassing on his manor.'

[368] Once Johnson being at dinner at Sir Joshua's in company with many
painters, in the course of conversation Richardson's _Treatise on
Painting_ happened to be mentioned, 'Ah!' said Johnson, 'I remember,
when I was at college, I by chance found that book on my stairs. I took
it up with me to my chamber, and read it through, and truly I did not
think it possible to say so much upon the art.' Sir Joshua desired of
one of the company to be informed what Johnson had said; and it being
repeated to him so loud that Johnson heard it, the Doctor seemed hurt,
and added, 'But I did not wish, Sir, that Sir Joshua should have been
told what I then said.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 236. Jonathan
Richardson the painter had published several works on painting before
Johnson went to college. He and his son, Jonathan Richardson, junior,
brought out together _Explanatory Notes on Paradise Lost_.

[369] Sir Joshua Reynolds, from the information of the younger
Richardson. BOSWELL. See _post_, Oct. 16, 1769, where Johnson himself
relates this anecdote. According to Murphy, 'Pope said, "The author,
whoever he is, will not be long concealed;" alluding to the passage in
Terence [_Eun_. ii. 3, 4], _Ubi, ubi est, diu celari non potest_.'
Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 35.

[370] Such as _far_ and _air_, which comes twice; _vain_ and _man_,
_despair_ and _bar_.

[371] It is, however, remarkable, that he uses the epithet, which
undoubtedly, since the union between England and Scotland, ought to
denominate the natives of both parts of our island:--

'Was early taught a BRITON'S rights to prize.'

BOSWELL.

Swift, in his _Journal to Stella_ (Nov. 23, 1711), having to mention
England, continues:--'I never will call it _Britain_, pray don't call it
Britain.' In a letter written on Aug. 8, 1738, again mentioning England,
he adds,--'Pox on the modern phrase Great Britain, which is only to
distinguish it from Little Britain, where old clothes and old books are
to be bought and sold' (Swift's _Works_, 1803, xx. 185). George III
'gloried in being born a Briton;' _post_, 1760. Boswell thrice more at
least describes Johnson as 'a true-born Englishman;' _post_, under Feb.
7, 1775, under March 30, 1783, and Boswell's _Hebrides_ under Aug. 11,
1773. The quotation is from _Richard II_, Act i. sc. 3.

[372]

'For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land,
Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?
There none are swept by sudden fate away,
But all, whom hunger spares, with age decay.'

_London_, 1. 9-12.

[373] In the _Life of Savage_, Johnson, criticising the settlement of
colonies, as it is considered by the poet and the politician, seems to
be criticising himself. 'The politician, when he considers men driven
into other countries for shelter, and obliged to retire to forests and
deserts, and pass their lives, and fix their posterity, in the remotest
corners of the world, to avoid those hardships which they suffer or fear
in their native place, may very properly enquire, why the legislature
does not provide a remedy for these miseries, rather than encourage an
escape from them. He may conclude that the flight of every honest man is
a loss to the community.... The poet guides the unhappy fugitive from
want and persecution to plenty, quiet, and security, and seats him in
scenes of peaceful solitude, and undisturbed repose.' Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 156.

[374] Three years later Johnson wrote:--'Mere unassisted merit advances
slowly, if, what is not very common, it advances at all.' _Ib_. vi. 393.

[375] 'The busy _hum_ of men.' Milton's _L'Allegro_, 1. 118.

[376] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 21, 1773, and _post_, March 21,
1775, for Johnson's attack on Lord Chatham. In the _Life of Thomson_
Johnson wrote:--'At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert
Walpole had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man
felt the want, and with care for liberty, which was not in danger.'
Johnson's _Works_, viii. 370. Hawkins says (_Life_, p. 514);--'Of
Walpole he had a high opinion. He said of him that he was a fine fellow,
and that his very enemies deemed him so before his death. He honoured
his memory for having kept this country in peace many years, as also for
the goodness and placability of his temper.' Horace Walpole (_Letters_,
v. 509), says:--'My father alone was capable of acting on one great plan
of honesty from the beginning of his life to the end. He could for ever
wage war with knaves and malice, and preserve his temper; could know
men, and yet feel for them; could smile when opposed, and be gentle
after triumph.'

[377] Johnson in the _Life of Milton_ describes himself:--'Milton was
naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and
disdainful of help or hindrance. From his contemporaries he neither
courted nor received support; there is in his writings nothing by which
the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no
exchange of praise, nor solicitation of support.' Johnson's _Works_,
vii. 142. See _post_ Feb. 1766, for Johnson's opinion on 'courting
great men.'

[378] In a billet written by Mr. Pope in the following year, this school
is said to have been in _Shropshire_; but as it appears from a letter
from Earl Gower, that the trustees of it were 'some worthy gentlemen in
Johnson's neighbourhood,' I in my first edition suggested that Pope must
have, by mistake, written Shropshire, instead of Staffordshire. But I
have since been obliged to Mr. Spearing, attorney-at-law, for the
following information:--'William Adams, formerly citizen and haberdasher
of London, founded a school at Newport, in the county of Salop, by deed
dated 27th November, 1656, by which he granted "the yearly sum of _sixty
pounds_ to such able and learned schoolmaster, from time to time, being
of godly life and conversation, who should have been educated at one of
the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, and had taken the degree of
_Master of Arts_, and was well read in the Greek and Latin tongues, as
should be nominated from time to time by the said William Adams, during
his life, and after the decease of the said William Adams, by the
Governours (namely, the Master and Wardens of the Haberdashers' Company
of the City of London) and their successors." The manour and lands out
of which the revenues for the maintenance of the school were to issue
are situate _at Knighton and Adbaston, in the county of Stafford_.' From
the foregoing account of this foundation, particularly the circumstances
of the salary being sixty pounds, and the degree of Master of Arts being
a requisite qualification in the teacher, it seemed probable that this
was the school in contemplation; and that Lord Gower erroneously
supposed that the gentlemen who possessed the lands, out of which the
revenues issued, were trustees of the charity.

Such was probable conjecture. But in the _Gent. Mag_. for May, 1793,
there is a letter from Mr. Henn, one of the masters of the school of
Appleby, in Leicestershire, in which he writes as follows:--

'I compared time and circumstance together, in order to discover whether
the school in question might not be this of Appleby. Some of the
trustees at that period were "worthy gentlemen of the neighbourhood of
Litchfield." Appleby itself is not far from the neighbourhood of
Litchfield. The salary, the degree requisite, together with the _time of
election_, all agreeing with the statutes of Appleby. The election, as
said in the letter, "could not be delayed longer than the 11th of next
month," which was the 11th of September, just three months after the
annual audit-day of Appleby school, which is always on the 11th of June;
and the statutes enjoin _ne ullius praeceptorum electio diutius tribus
mensibus moraretur, etc_.

'These I thought to be convincing proofs that my conjecture was not
ill-founded, and that, in a future edition of that book, the
circumstance might be recorded as fact.

'But what banishes every shadow of doubt is the _Minute-book_ of the
school, which declares the headmastership to be _at that time_ VACANT.'

I cannot omit returning thanks to this learned gentleman for the very
handsome manner in which he has in that letter been so good as to speak
of this work. BOSWELL.

[379] 'What a pity it is, Sir,' said to him Sir William Scott,
afterwards Lord Stowell, 'that you did not follow the profession of the
law! You might have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain' _Post_,
April 17, 1778.

[380] See _post_, beginning of 1770.

[381] See _post_, March 21, 1775.

[382] In the _Weekly Miscellany_, October 21, 1738, there appeared the
following advertisement:--'Just published, Proposals for printing the
_History of the Council of Trent_, translated from the Italian of Father
Paul Sarpi; with the Authour's Life, and Notes theological, historical,
and critical, from the French edition of Dr. Le Courayer. To which are
added, Observations on the History, and Notes and Illustrations from
various Authours, both printed and manuscript. By S. Johnson. 1. The
work will consist of two hundred sheets, and be two volumes in quarto,
printed on good paper and letter. 2. The price will be 18_s_. each
volume, to be paid, half-a-guinea at the delivery of the first volume,
and the rest at the delivery of the second volume in sheets. 3.
Two-pence to be abated for every sheet less than two hundred. It may be
had on a large paper, in three volumes, at the price of three guineas;
one to be paid at the time of subscribing, another at the delivery of
the first, and the rest at the delivery of the other volumes. The work
is now in the press, and will be diligently prosecuted. Subscriptions
are taken in by Mr. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, Mr. Rivington in St. Paul's
Church-yard, by E. Cave at St. John's Gate, and the Translator, at No.
6, in Castle-street by Cavendish-square.' BOSWELL.

[383] They afterwards appeared in the _Gent. Mag_. [viii. 486] with this
title--'_Verses to Lady Firebrace, at Bury Assizes_.' BOSWELL.

[384] Du Halde's Description of China was then publishing by Mr. Cave in
weekly numbers, whence Johnson was to select pieces for the
embellishment of the _Magazine_. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[385] The premium of forty pounds proposed for the best poem on the
Divine Attributes is here alluded to. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[386] The Compositors in Mr. Cave's printing-office, who appear by this
letter to have then waited for copy. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[387] Twenty years later, when he was lodging in the Temple, he had
fasted for two days at a time; 'he had drunk tea, but eaten no bread;
this was no intentional fasting, but happened just in the course of a
literary life.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 4, 1773. See _post_, Aug.
5, 1763.

[388] Birch MSS. Brit. Mus. 4323. BOSWELL.

[389] See _post_, under Dec. 30, 1747, and Oct. 24, 1780.

[390] See _post_, 1750.

[391] This book was published. BOSWELL. I have not been able to find it.

[392] _The Historie of four-footed beasts and serpents_. By Edward
Topsell. London, 1607. Isaac Walton, in the _Complete Angler_, more than
once quotes Topsel. See p. 99 in the reprint of the first edition, where
he says:--'As our Topsel hath with great diligence observed.'

[393] In this preface he describes some pieces as 'deserving no other
fate than to be hissed, torn, and forgotten. Johnson's _Works_, v. 346.

[394] The letter to Mr. Urban in the January number of this year (p. 3)
is, I believe, by Johnson.

[395] 'Yet did Boerhaave not suffer one branch of science to withdraw
his attention from others; anatomy did not withhold him from chymistry,
nor chymistry, enchanting as it is, from the study of botany.' Johnson's
_Works_, vi. 276. See _post_, under Sept. 9, 1779.