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

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[626] Horace Walpole, while justifying George II. against 'bookish men
who have censured his neglect of literature,' says:--'In truth, I
believe King George would have preferred a guinea to a composition as
perfect as _Alexander's Feast.' Reign of George II_, iii. 304.

[627] 'Dr. Johnson said to an acquaintance of mine, "My other works are
wine and water; but my _Rambler_ is pure wine."' Rogers's _Table
Talk_, p. 10.

[628] See _post_, April 5, 1772; April 19, 1773; and April 9, 1778.

[629] It was executed in the printing-office of Sands, Murray, and
Cochran, with uncommon elegance, upon writing-paper, of a duodecimo
size, and with the greatest correctness; and Mr. Elphinston enriched it
with translations of the mottos. When completed, it made eight handsome
volumes. It is, unquestionably, the most accurate and beautiful edition
of this work; and there being but a small impression, it is now become
scarce, and sells at a very high price. BOSWELL.

[630] Mr. Thomas Ruddiman, the learned grammarian of Scotland, well
known for his various excellent works, and for his accurate editions of
several authours. He was also a man of a most worthy private character.
His zeal for the Royal House of Stuart did not render him less estimable
in Dr. Johnson's eye. BOSWELL.

[631] In the _Gent. Mag_. for Sept. 1750, and for Oct. 1752,
translations of many of the mottoes were given; but in each number there
are several of Elphinston's. Johnson seems to speak of only one.

[632] Writing to Miss Porter on July 12, 1749, he said:--'I was afraid
your letter had brought me ill news of my mother, whose death is one of
the few calamities on which I think with terror.' Crokers _Boswell_,
p. 62.

[633] Mr. Strahan was Elphinston's brother-in-law. _Post_, April 9,
1778.

[634] In the _Gent. Mag_. for January, 1752, in the list of books
published is:--'A correct and beautiful edition of the Rambler in 4
volumes, in 12mo. Price 12s.' The _Rambler_ was not concluded till the
following March. The remaining two volumes were published in July.
_Gent. Mag_. xxii. 338.

[635] According to Hawkins (_Life_, P. 269) each edition consisted of
1250 copies.

[636] No. 55 [59.]. BOSWELL.

[637] Miss Burney records in her Diary that one day at Streatham, while
she and Mrs. Thrale 'were reading this Rambler, Dr. Johnson came in. We
told him what we were about. "Ah, madam!" cried he, "Goldsmith was not
scrupulous; but he would have been a great man had he known the real
value of his own internal resources."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 83.
See _post_, beginning of 1768.

[638] It is possible that Mrs. Hardcastle's drive in _She Stoops to
Conquer_ was suggested by the _Rambler_, No. 34. In it a young gentleman
describes a lady's terror on a coach journey. 'Our whole conversation
passed in dangers, and cares, and fears, and consolations, and stories
of ladies dragged in the mire, forced to spend all the night on a heath,
drowned in rivers, or burnt with lightning.... We had now a new scene of
terror, every man we saw was a robber, and we were ordered sometimes to
drive hard, lest a traveller whom we saw behind should overtake us; and
sometimes to stop, lest we should come up to him who was passing before
us. She alarmed many an honest man by begging him to spare her life as
he passed by the coach.'

[639] Dr. Johnson was gratified by seeing this selection, and wrote to
Mr. Kearsley, bookseller in Fleet-Street, the following note:--

'Mr. Johnson sends compliments to Mr. Kearsley, and begs the favour of
seeing him as soon as he can. Mr. Kearsley is desired to bring with him
the last edition of what he has honoured with the name of BEAUTIES. May
20, 1782.' BOSWELL. The correspondence, _post_, May 15, 1782, shews that
Johnson sent for this book, not because he was gratified, but because he
was accused, on the strength of one of the _Beauties_, of recommending
suicide. On that day, being in the country, he wrote: 'I never saw the
book but by casual inspection, and considered myself as utterly
disengaged from its consequences.' He adds:--'I hope some time in the
next week to have all rectified.' The letter of May 20 shews that on his
return to town he lost little time, if any, in sending for Kearsley.

[640] See _post_, April 12, 1781.

[641] Ecclesiastes vii. 4.

[642] In the original '_separated sooner_ than subdued.' Johnson acted
up to what he said. When he was close on his end, 'all who saw him
beheld and acknowledged the _invictum animum Catonis_ ... Talking of his
illness he said:--"I will be conquered; I will not capitulate."' See
_post_, Oct. 1784.

[643] In the _Spectator_, No. 568, Addison tells of a village in which
'there arose a current report that somebody had written a book against
the 'squire and the whole parish.' The book was _The Whole Duty of Man_.

[644] 'The character of Prospero was, beyond all question, occasioned by
Garrick's ostentatious display of furniture and Dresden china.' Murphy's
_Johnson_, p. 144. If Garrick was aimed at, it is surprising that the
severity of the satire did not bring to an end, not only all friendship,
but even any acquaintance between the two men. The writer describes how
he and Prospero had set out in the world together, and how for a long
time they had assisted each other, till his friend had been lately
raised to wealth by a lucky project. 'I felt at his sudden shoot of
success an honest and disinterested joy.' Prospero reproached him with
his neglect to visit him at his new house. When however he went to see
him, he found that his friend's impatience 'arose not from any desire to
communicate his happiness, but to enjoy his superiority.' He was kept
waiting at the door, and when at length he was shewn up stairs, he found
the staircase carefully secured by mats from the pollution of his feet.
Prospero led him into a backroom, where he told him he always
breakfasted when he had not great company. After the visitor had endured
one act of insolence after another, he says:--'I left him without any
intention of seeing him again, unless some misfortune should restore his
understanding.' _Rambler_, No. 200. See _post_, May 15, 1776, where
Johnson, speaking of the charge of meanness brought against Garrick,
said, 'he might have been much better attacked for living with more
splendour than is suitable to a player.'

[645] In C. C. Greville's _Journal_ (ii. 316) we have an instance how
stories about Johnson grew. He writes:--'Lord Holland told some stories
of Johnson and Garrick which he had heard from Kemble.... When Garrick
was in the zenith of his popularity, and grown rich, and lived with the
great, and while Johnson was yet obscure, the Doctor used to drink tea
with him, and he would say, "Davy, I do not envy you your money nor your
fine acquaintance, but I envy you your power of drinking such tea as
this." "Yes," said Garrick, "it is very good tea, but it is not my best,
nor that which I give to my Lord this and Sir somebody t'other."' There
can be little doubt that the whole story is founded on the following
passage in the character of Prospero: 'Breakfast was at last set, and,
as I was not willing to indulge the peevishness that began to seize me,
I commended the tea. Prospero then told me that another time I should
taste his finest sort, but that he had only a very small quantity
remaining, and reserved it for those whom he thought himself obliged to
treat with particular respect.' See _post_, April 10, 1778, where
Johnson maintained that Garrick bore his good-fortune with modesty.

[646] No 98.

[647] Yet his style did not escape the harmless shafts of pleasant
humour; for the ingenious Bonnell Thornton published a mock Rambler in
the _Drury-lane Journal_. BOSWELL. Murphy (_Life_, p. 157), criticising
the above quotation from Johnson, says:--'He forgot the observation of
Dryden: "If too many foreign words are poured in upon us, it looks as if
they were designed, not to assist the natives, but to conquer them."'

[648] _Idler_, No. 70. BOSWELL. In the same number Johnson writes:--'Few
faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a
more numerous class of readers than the use of hard words.... But words
are hard only to those who do not understand them; and the critic ought
always to inquire, whether he is incommoded by the fault of the writer
or by his own. Every author does not write for every reader.' See
_post_, Sept. 19, 1777, where Johnson says:--'If Robertson's style be
faulty he owes it to me; that is, having too many words, and those too
big ones.'

[649] The following passages in Temple's writings shew that a likeness
may be discovered between his style and Johnson's:--'There may be
firmness and constancy of courage from tradition as well as of belief:
nor, methinks, should any man know how to be a coward, that is brought
up with the opinion, that all of his nation or city have ever been
valiant.' Temple's _Works_, i. 167. 'This is a disease too refined for
this country and people, who are well, when they are not ill, and
pleased, when they are not troubled; are content, because they think
little of it; and seek their happiness in the common eases and
commodities of life, or the increase of riches; not amusing themselves
with the more speculative contrivances of passion, or refinements of
pleasure.' _Ib_. p. 170. 'They send abroad the best of their own butter
into all parts, and buy the cheapest out of Ireland, or the north of
England, for their own usc. In short they furnish infinite luxury which
they never practise, and traffic in pleasures which they never taste.'
_Ib_. p. 195. See _post_, April 9, 1778, where Johnson says:--'Temple
was the first writer who gave cadence to English prosc.'

[650] Dean Stanley calls Ephraim Chambers 'the Father of Cyclopedias.'
_Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, p. 299, note. The epitaph which
Chambers wrote for himself the Dean gives as:--'Multis pervulgatus,
paucis notus, qui vitam inter lucem et umbram, nec eruditus nec
idioticis literis deditus, transegit.' In the _Gent. Mag_. for 1740, p.
262, the last line is given, no doubt correctly, as:--'Nec eruditus nec
idiota, literis deditus.' The second edition of Chambers's _Cyclopaedia_
was published in 1738. There is no copy of his Proposal in the British
Museum or Bodleian. The resemblance between his style and Johnson's is
not great. The following passage is the most Johnsonian that I could
find:--'None of my predecessors can blame me for the use I have made of
them; since it is their own avowed practice. It is a kind of privilege
attached to the office of lexicographer; if not by any formal grant, yet
by connivance at least. I have already assumed the bee for my device,
and who ever brought an action of trover or trespass against that avowed
free-booter? 'Tis vain to pretend anything of property in things of this
nature. To offer our thoughts to the public, and yet pretend a right
reserved therein to oneself, if it be not absurd, yet it is sordid. The
words we speak, nay the breath we emit, is not more vague and common
than our thoughts, when divulged in print.' Chambers's Preface,
p. xxiii.

[651] 'There were giants in the earth in those days.' _Gen_. vi. 4.

[652] A GREAT PERSONAGE first appears in the second edition. In the
first edition we merely find 'by one whose authority,' &c. Boswell in
his _Hebrides_, Aug. 28, 1773, speaks of George III. as 'a Great
Personage.' In his _Letter to the People of Scotland_ (p. 90) he thus
introduces an anecdote about the King--and Paoli:--'I have one other
circumstance to communicate; but it is of the highest value. I
communicate it with a mixture of awe and fondness.--That Great
Personage, who is allowed by all to have the best _memory_ of any man
_born a Briton_, &c. In the _Probationary Odes for the Laureateship_,
published a few months after Boswell's _Letter_, a 'Great Personage' is
ludicrously introduced; pp. xxx. 63.

[653] The first nine lines form the motto.

[654] Horat. _Epist_. Lib. ii. Epist. ii. {1, 110} BOSWELL.

But how severely with themselves proceed
The men, who write such verse as we can read!
Their own strict judges, not a word they spare
That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care,
Howe'er unwillingly it quits its place,
Nay, though at court, perhaps, it may find grace:
Such they'll degrade; and some-times, in its stead,
In downright charity revive the dead;
Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears,
Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years;
Command old words that long have slept to wake,
Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake;
Or bid the new be English, ages hence,
(For use will father what's begot by sense;)
Pour the full tide of eloquence along,
Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong,
Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue.'

Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, ii. 2. 157

[655] 'Horat. _De Arte Poetica_. [1. 48.] BOSWELL.

[656] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 29, 1773, where Boswell says that
up that date he had twice heard Johnson coin words, _peregrinity_ and
_depeditation_.

[657] 'The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge of
foreign languages, or ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness,
by compliance with fashion or lust of innovation, I have registered as
they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others
against the folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the injury of
the natives.... Our language for almost a century has, by the
concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original
Teutonick character, and deviating towards a Gallick structure and
phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recall it, by
making our ancient volumes the groundwork of style.... From the authors
which rose in the time of Elizabeth a speech might be formed adequate to
all the purposes of use and elegance.' Johnson's _Works_, v. pp. 31, 39.
See _post_. May 12, 1778.

[658] If Johnson sometimes indulged his _Brownism_ (see _post_,
beginning of 1756), yet he saw much to censure in Browne's style. 'His
style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous
words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally
appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of
another. He must however be confessed to have augmented our
philosophical diction.... His innovations are sometimes pleasing, and
his temerities happy.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 500. 'It is remarkable
that the pomp of diction, which has been objected to Johnson, was first
assumed in the _Rambler_. His _Dictionary_ was going on at the same
time, and in the course of that work, as he grew familiar with technical
and scholastic words, he thought that the bulk of his readers were
equally learned; or at least would admire the splendour and dignity of
the style.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 156.

'The observation of his having imitated Sir Thomas Brown has been made
by many people; and lately it has been insisted on, and illustrated by a
variety of quotations from Brown, in one of the popular Essays written
by the Reverend Mr. Knox [the Essay is No. xxii. of _Winter Evenings_,
Knox's _Works_, ii 397], master of Tumbridge school, whom I have set
down in my list [_post_, under Dec. 6, 1784] of those who have sometimes
not unsuccessfully imitated Dr. Johnson's style. BOSWELL.

[659] The following observation in Mr. Boswell's _Journal of a Tour to
the Hebrides_ [p. 9] may sufficiently account for that Gentleman's being
'now scarcely esteem'd a Scot' by many of his countrymen:--If he [Dr.
Johnson] was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because
they were more in his way; because he thought their success in England
rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit; and because he
could not but see in them that nationality which, I believe, no
liberal-minded Scotchman will deny.' Mr. Boswell, indeed, is so free
from national prejudices, that he might with equal propriety have been
described as--

'Scarce by _South_ Britons now
esteem'd a Scot.'
COURTENAY. BOSWELL.

[660] Malone says that 'Baretti used sometimes to walk with Johnson
through the streets at night, and occasionally entered into conversation
with the unfortunate women who frequent them, for the sake of hearing
their stories. It was from a history of one of these, which a girl told
under a tree in the King's Bench Walk in the Temple to Baretti and
Johnson, that he formed the story of Misella in the _Rambler_ [Nos. 170
and 171].' Prior's _Malone_, p. 161. 'Of one [of these women] who was
very handsome he asked, for what she thought God had given her so much
beauty. She answered:--"To please gentlemen."' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p.
321. See also _post_, under Dec. 2, 1784.

[661] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 270) had said that 'the characteristics of
Addison's style are feebleness and inanity.' He was thus happily
ridiculed by Person:--'Soon after the publication of Sir John's book, a
parcel of Eton boys, not having the fear of God before their eyes, etc.,
instead of playing truant, robbing orchards, annoying poultry, or
performing any other part of their school exercise, fell foul in print
(see the _Microcosm_, No. 36) upon his Worship's censure of Addison's
_middling_ style.... But what can you expect, as Lord Kames justly
observes, from a school where boys are taught to rob on the highway?'
Person, _Tracts_, p. 339.

[662] _Works_, vii. 473.

[663] When Johnson shewed me a proof-sheet of the character of Addison,
in which he so highly extols his style, I could not help observing, that
it had not been his own model, as no two styles could differ more from
each other.--'Sir, Addison had his style, and I have mine.'--When I
ventured to ask him, whether the difference did not consist in this,
that Addison's style was full of idioms, colloquial phrases, and
proverbs; and his own more strictly grammatical, and free from such
phraseology and modes of speech as can never be literally translated or
understood by foreigners; he allowed the discrimination to be just.--Let
any one who doubts it, try to translate one of Addison's _Spectators_
into Latin, French, or Italian; and though so easy, familiar, and
elegant, to an Englishman, as to give the intellect no trouble; yet he
would find the transfusion into another language extremely difficult, if
not impossible. But a _Rambler_, _Adventurer_, or _Idler_, of Johnson,
would fall into any classical or European language, as easily as if it
had been originally conceived in it. BURNEY. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p.
125) recounts how Johnson recommended Addison's works as a model for
imitation to Mr. Woodhouse, a poetical shoemaker. '"Give nights and
days, Sir, (said he) to the study of Addison, if you mean either to be a
good writer, or, what is more worth, an honest man." When I saw
something like the same expression in his criticism on that author, I
put him in mind of his past injunctions to the young poet, to which he
replied, "That he wished the shoemaker might have remembered them as
well."' Yet he says in his _Life of Pope ( Works_, viii. 284), 'He that
has once studiously formed a style rarely writes afterwards with
complete easc.'

[664] I shall probably, in another work, maintain the merit of Addison's
poetry, which has been very unjustly depreciated. BOSWELL. He proposed
also to publish an edition of Johnson's poems (_ante_, p. 16), an
account of his own travels (_post_, April 17, 1778), a collection, with
notes, of old tenures and charters of Scotland (_post_, Oct. 27, 1779),
and a History of James IV. of Scotland, 'the patron,' as he said, 'of my
family' (Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 23, 1773).

[665] Lewis thus happily translates the lines in _Martial_,--

'Diligat ilia senem quondam: sed et ipsa marito,
Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur, anus.
'Wrinkled with age, may mutual love and truth
To their dim eyes recall the bloom of youth.'

_Rambler_, No. 167.

Some of Johnson's own translations are happy, as:--

'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem
Aut, gelidas hibernus aquas quum fuderit auster,
Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi!
'How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours,
Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs.'

_Ib_. No. 117.

[666] [Greek: Augon ek makaron antaxios eiae amoibae.]

'Celestial powers! that piety regard,
From you my labours wait their last reward.'

A modification of the Greek line is engraved on the scroll in Johnson's
monument in St. Paul's (_post_, Dec. 1784).

[667] 'The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my
own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of
Christianity.... I therefore look back on this part of my work with
pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment.'
_Rambler_, No. 208.

[668] I have little doubt that this attack on the concluding verse is an
indirect blow at Hawkins, who had quoted the whole passage, and had
clearly thought it the more 'awful' on account of the couplet. See
Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 291.

[669] In the original _Raleigh's_.

[670] The italics are Boswell's.

[671] Mrs. Williams is probably the person meant. BOSWELL.

[672] 'In 1750, April 5, _Comus_ was played for her benefit. She had so
little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what
was intended when a benefit was theatre was offered her. The profits of
the night were only L130, though Dr. Newton brought a large
contribution; and L20 were given by Tonson, a man who is to be praised
as often as he is named.... This was the greatest benefaction that
_Paradise Lost_ ever procured the author's descendants; and to this he
who has now attempted to relate his life had the honour of contributing
a Prologue.' Johnson's _Works, vii. 118_. In the _Gent. Mag_. (xx. 152)
we read that, as on 'April 4, the night first appointed, many in
convenient circumstances happened to disappoint the hopes of success,
the managers generously quitted the profits of another night, in which
the theatre was expected to be fuller. Mr. Samuel Johnson's prologue was
afterwards printed for Mrs. Foster's benefit.'

[673] Johnson is thinking of Pope's lines--

'But still the great have kindness in reserve,
He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.'

Prologue to the _Satires_, 1. 247. In the _Life of Milton_ he
writes:--'In our time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey
_To the author of Paradise Lost_ by Mr. Benson, who has in the
inscription bestowed more words upon himself than upon Milton.'
Johnson's _Works_, vii. 112. Pope has a hit at Benson in the _Dunciad_,
iii. 325:--

'On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ!'

Moore, describing Sheridan's funeral, says:--'It was well remarked by a
French Journal, in contrasting the penury of Sheridan's latter years
with the splendour of his funeral, that "France is the place for a man
of letters to live in, and England the place for him to die in."' Moore
himself wrote:--

'How proud they can press to the funeral array
Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow--
How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,
Whose pall shall be held up by Nobles to-morrow.'

Moore's _Sheridan_, ii. 460-2.

[674] Johnson's _Works_, i. 115.

[675] Among the advertisements in the _Gent. Mag_. for February of this
year is the following:--'_An elegy wrote in a country churchyard, 6d_.'

[676] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 17, 1773.

[677] 'Lest there should be any person, at any future period, absurd
enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder's fraud, or had
any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is
proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury,
at the time when he detected the imposition. 'It is to be hoped, nay it
is _expected_, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious
sentiments and inimitable style point out the authour of Lauder's
Preface and Postscript, will no longer allow one to _plume himself with
his feathers_, who appeareth so little to deserve [his] assistance: an
assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had
there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the
instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets.' _Milton no
Plagiary_, 2nd edit. p. 78. And his Lordship has been pleased now to
authorise me to say, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground
whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who
expressed the strongest indignation against Lauder. BOSWELL. To this
letter Lauder had the impudence to add a shameless postscript and some
'testimonies' concerning himself. Though on the face of it it is evident
that this postscript is not by Johnson, yet it is included in his works
(v. 283). The letter was dated Dec. 20, 1750. In the _Gent. Mag_. for
the next month (xxi. 47) there is the following paragraph:--'Mr. Lauder
confesses here and exhibits all his forgeries; for which he assigns one
motive in the book, and after asking pardon assigns another in the
postscript; he also takes an opportunity to publish several letters and
testimonials to his former character.' Goldsmith in Retaliation has a
hit at Lauder:--