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

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"A falcon tow'ring in his pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd."

Let me, however, do them justice. One is a wit and one a scholar.'

[773] To Johnson might be applied what he himself said of Dryden:--'He
appears to have known in its whole extent the dignity of his character,
and to have set a very high value on his own powers and performances.'
_Works_, vii. 291.

[774] In the original _Yet mark_.

[775] In the original _Toil_.

[776] In his _Dictionary_ he defined _patron_ as 'commonly a wretch who
supports with insolence and is paid with flattery.' This definition
disappears in the _Abridgement_, but remains in the fourth edition.

[777] Chesterfield, when he read Johnson's letter to Dodsley, was acting
up to the advice that he had given his own son six years earlier
(_Letters_, ii. 172):--'When things of this kind [bons mots] happen to
be said of you, the most prudent way is to seem not to suppose that they
are meant at you, but to dissemble and conceal whatever degree of anger
you may feel inwardly: and, should they be so plain, that you cannot be
supposed ignorant of their meaning, so join in the laugh of the company
against yourself; acknowledge the hit to be a fair one, and the jest a
good one, and play off the whole thing in seeming good humour; but by no
means reply in the same way; which only shows that you are hurt, and
publishes the victory which you might have concealed.'

[778] See _post_, March 23, 1783, where Johnson said that 'Lord
Chesterfield was dignified, but he was insolent;' and June 27, 1784,
where he said that 'his manner was exquisitely elegant.'

[779]

'Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits,
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.'

Pope's _Dunciad_, iv. 90.

'A true choice spirit we admit;
With wits a fool, with fools a wit.'

Churchill's _Duellist_' Book iii.

'The solemn fop, significant and budge;
A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.'

Cowper's _Poems_, _Conversation_, 1. 299.

According to Rebecca Warner (_Original Letters_, p. 204), Johnson
telling Joseph Fowke about his refusal to dedicate his _Dictionary_ to
Chesterfield, said: 'Sir, I found I must have gilded a rotten post.'

[780] That collection of letters cannot be vindicated from the serious
charge of encouraging, in some passages, one of the vices most
destructive to the good order and comfort of society, which his Lordship
represents as mere fashionable gallantry; and, in others, of inculcating
the base practice of dissimulation, and recommending, with
disproportionate anxiety, a perpetual attention to external elegance of
manners. But it must, at the same time, be allowed, that they contain
many good precepts of conduct, and much genuine information upon life
and manners, very happily expressed; and that there was considerable
merit in paying so much attention to the improvement of one who was
dependent upon his Lordship's protection; it has, probably, been
exceeded in no instance by the most exemplary parent; and though I can
by no means approve of confounding the distinction between lawful and
illicit offspring, which is, in effect, insulting the civil
establishment of our country, to look no higher; I cannot help thinking
it laudable to be kindly attentive to those, of whose existence we have,
in any way, been the cause. Mr. Stanhope's character has been unjustly
represented as diametrically opposite to what Lord Chesterfield wished
him to be. He has been called dull, gross, and awkward; but I knew him
at Dresden, when he was Envoy to that court; and though he could not
boast of the _graces_, he was, in truth, a sensible, civil, well-behaved
man. BOSWELL. See _post_, March 28, 1775, under April, 29, 1776, and
June 27, 1784.

[781] Chesterfield's _Letters_, iii. 129.

[782] Now one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State. BOSWELL.
Afterwards Viscount Melville.

[783] Probably George, second Earl of Macclesfield, who was, in 1752,
elected President of the Royal Society. CROKER. Horace Walpole
(_Letters_, ii. 321) mentions him as 'engaged to a party for finding out
the longitude.'

[784] In another work (_Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_, p.
214), I have shewn that Lord Chesterfield's 'Respectable Hottentot' was
not Johnson. From the beginning of 1748 to the end of 1754 Chesterfield
had no dealings of any kind with Johnson. At no time had there been the
slightest intimacy between the great nobleman and the poor author.
Chesterfield had never seen Johnson eat. The letter in which the
character is drawn opens with the epigram:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nee possum dicere quare,
Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

Chesterfield goes on to show 'how it is possible not to love anybody,
and yet not to know the reason why.... How often,' he says, 'have I, in
the course of my life, found myself in this situation with regard to
many of my acquaintance whom I have honoured and respected, without
being able to love.' He then instances the case of the man whom he
describes as a respectable Hottentot. It is clear that he is writing of
a man whom he knows well and who has some claim upon his affection.
Twice he says that it is impossible to love him. The date of this letter
is Feb. 28, 1751, more than three years after Johnson had for the last
time waited in Chesterfield's outward rooms. Moreover the same man is
described in three other letters (Sept. 22, 1749; Nov. 1749; and May 27,
1753), and described as one with whom Chesterfield lived on terms of
intimacy. In the two former of these letters he is called Mr. L.
Lyttelton did not become Sir George Lyttelton till Sept. 14, 1751. He
was raised to the peerage in 1757. Horace Walpole (_Reign of George
III_, i. 256) says of him:--'His ignorance of mankind, want of judgment,
with strange absence and awkwardness, involved him in mistakes and
ridicule.' Had Chesterfield's letter been published when it was written,
no one in all likelihood would have so much as dreamt that Johnson was
aimed at. But it did not come before the world till twenty-three years
later, when Johnson's quarrel with Chesterfield was known to every one,
when Johnson himself was at the very head of the literary world, and
when his peculiarities had become a matter of general interest.

[785] About four years after this time Gibbon, on his return to England,
became intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Mallet. He thus wrote of them:--'The
most useful friends of my father were the Mallets; they received me with
civility and kindness at first on his account, and afterwards on my own;
and (if I may use Lord Chesterfield's words) I was soon _domesticated_
in their house. Mr. Mallet, a name among the English poets, is praised
by an unforgiving enemy for the ease and elegance of his conversation,
and his wife was not destitute of wit or learning.' Gibbon's _Misc.
Works_, i 115. The 'unforgiving enemy' was Johnson, who wrote (_Works_,
viii. 468):--'His conversation was elegant and easy. The rest of his
character may, without injury to his memory, sink into silence.' Johnson
once said:--'I have seldom met with a man whose colloquial ability
exceeded that of Mallet.' Johnson's _Works_, 1787, xi. 214. See _post_,
March 27, 1772, and April 28, 1783; and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept.
10, 1773.

[786] Johnson had never read Bolingbroke's _Philosophy_. 'I have never
read Bolingbroke's impiety,' he said (_post_, under March 1, 1758). In
the memorable sentence that he, notwithstanding, pronounced upon the
author, he exposed himself to the retort which he had recorded in his
_Life of Boerhaave_ (_Works_, vi. 277). 'As Boerhaave was sitting in a
common boat, there arose a conversation among the passengers upon the
impious and pernicious doctrine of Spinosa, which, as they all agreed,
tends to the utter overthrow of all religion. Boerhaave sat and attended
silently to this discourse for some time, till one of the company ...
instead of confuting the positions of Spinosa by argument began to give
a loose to contumelious language and virulent invectives, which
Boerhaave was so little pleased with, that at last he could not forbear
asking him, whether he had ever read the author he declaimed against.'

[787] Lord Shelburne said that 'Bolingbroke was both a political and
personal coward.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 29.

[788] It was in the summer of this year that Murphy became acquainted
with Johnson. (See _post,_ 1760.) 'The first striking sentence that he
heard from him was in a few days after the publication of Lord
Bolingbroke's posthumous works. Mr. Garrick asked him, "if he had seen
them." "Yes, I have seen them." "What do you think of them?" "Think of
them!" He made a long pause, and then replied: "Think of them! a
scoundrel and a coward! A scoundrel who spent his life in charging a gun
against Christianity; and a coward, who was afraid of hearing the report
of his own gun; but left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the
trigger after his death!" His mind, at this time strained and over
laboured by constant exertion, called for an interval of repose and
indolence. But indolence was the time of danger; it was then that his
spirits, not employed abroad, turned with inward hostility against
himself.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 79, and Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 235. Adam
Smith, perhaps, had this saying of Johnson's in mind, when in 1776 he
refused the request of the dying Hume to edit after his death his
_Dialogues on Natural Religion_. Hume wrote back:--'I think your
scruples groundless. Was Mallet anywise hurt by his publication of Lord
Bolingbroke? He received an office afterwards from the present King and
Lord Bute, the most prudish man in the world.' Smith did not yield. J.
H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 491.

[789] According to Horace Walpole (_Letters_, ii. 374), Pelham died of a
surfeit. As Johnson says (_Works_, viii. 310):--'The death of great men
is not always proportioned to the lustre of their lives. The death of
Pope was imputed by some of his friends to a silver saucepan, in which
it was his delight to heat potted lampreys.' Fielding in _The Voyage to
Lisbon_ (_Works_, x. 201) records:--'I was at the worst on that
memorable day when the public lost Mr. Pelham. From that day I began
slowly, as it were, to draw my feet out of the grave.' '"I shall now
have no more peace," the King said with a sigh; being told of his
Minister's death.' Walpole's _George II_, i. 378.

[790] 'Thomas Warton, the younger brother of Dr. Warton, was a fellow of
Trinity College, Oxford. He was Poetry Professor from 1758 to 1768.
Mant's _Warton_, i. xliv. In 1785 he was made Poet Laureate. _Ib_.
lxxxiii. Mr. Mant, telling of an estrangement between Johnson and the
Wartons, says that he had heard 'on unquestionable authority that
Johnson had lamented, with tears in his eyes, that the Wartons had not
called on him for the last four years; and that he has been known to
declare that Tom Warton was the only man of genius whom he knew without
a heart.' _Ib_. xxxix.

[791] 'Observations on Spenser's Fairy Queen, the first edition of which
was now just published.' WARTON.

[792] 'Hughes published an edition of Spenser.' WARTON. See Johnson's
_Works_, vii.476.

[793] 'His Dictionary.' WARTON.

[794] 'He came to Oxford within a fortnight, and stayed about five
weeks. He lodged at a house called Kettel hall, near Trinity College.
But during this visit at Oxford, he collected nothing in the libraries
for his Dictionary.' WARTON.

[795] Pitt this year described, in the House of Commons, a visit that he
had paid to Oxford the summer before. He and his friends 'were at the
window of the Angel Inn; a lady was desired to sing _God save great
George our King_. The chorus was re-echoed by a set of young lads
drinking at a college over the way [Queen's], but with additions of rank
treason.' Walpole's _George II_, i. 413.

[796] A Fellow of Pembroke College, of Johnson's time, described the
college servants as in 'the state of servitude the most miserable that
can be conceived amongst so many masters.' He says that 'the kicks and
cuffs and bruises they submit to entitle them, when those who were
displeased relent,' to the compensation that is afforded by draughts of
ale. 'There is not a college servant, but if he have learnt to suffer,
and to be officious, and be inclined to tipple, may forget his cares in
a gallon or two of ale every day of his life.' _Dr. Johnson:--His
Friends, &c_., p. 45.

[797] It was against the Butler that Johnson, in his college days, had
written an epigram:--

'Quid mirum Maro quod digne
canit arma virumque,
Quid quod putidulum nostra
Camoena sonat?
Limosum nobis Promus dat callidus
haustum;
Virgilio vires uva Falerna dedit.
Carmina vis nostri scribant
meliora Poetae?
Ingenium jubeas purior haustus
alat.'

[798] Pope, _Eloisa to Abelard_, 1. 38.

[799] Johnson or Warton misquoted the line. It stands:--'Mittit
aromaticas vallis Saronica nubes.' Husbands's _Miscellany_, p. 112.

[800] De Quincey (_Works_, xiii. 162), after saying that Johnson did not
understand Latin 'with the elaborate and circumstantial accuracy
required for the editing critically of a Latin classic,'
continues:--'But if he had less than that, he also had more: he
_possessed_ that language in a way that no extent of mere critical
knowledge could confer. He wrote it genially, not as one translating
into it painfully from English, but as one using it for his original
organ of thinking. And in Latin verse he expressed himself at times with
the energy and freedom of a Roman.'

[801] Mr. Jorden. See _ante_, p. 59.

[802] Boswell (_Hebrides_, Aug. 19, 1773) says that Johnson looked at
the ruins at St. Andrew's 'with a strong indignation. I happened to ask
where John Knox was buried. Dr. Johnson burst out, "I hope in the
highway, I have been looking at his reformations."'

[803] In Reasmus Philipps's _Diary_ it is recorded that in Pembroke
College early in every November 'was kept a great Gaudy [feast], when
the Master dined in public, and the juniors (by an ancient custom they
were obliged to observe) went round the fire in the hall.' _Notes &
Queries_, 2nd S. x. 443.

[804] Communicated by the Reverend Mr. Thomas Warton, who had the
original. BOSWELL. In the imaginary college which was to be opened by
_The Club_ at St. Andrew's, Chambers was to be the professor of the law
of England. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 25, 1773; also _post_, July
5, 1773 and March 30, 1774.

[805] I presume she was a relation of Mr. Zachariah Williams, who died
in his eighty-third year, July 12, 1755. When Dr. Johnson was with me at
Oxford, in 1755, he gave to the Bodleian Library a thin quarto of
twenty-one pages, a work in Italian, with an English translation on the
opposite page. The English titlepage is this: 'An Account of an Attempt
to ascertain the Longitude at Sea, by an exact Variation of the
Magnetical Needle, &c. By Zachariah Williams. London, printed for
Dodsley, 1755.' The English translation, from the strongest internal
marks, is unquestionably the work of Johnson. In a blank leaf, Johnson
has written the age, and time of death, of the authour Z. Williams, as I
have said above. On another blank leaf, is pasted a paragraph from a
newspaper, of the death and character of Williams, which is plainly
written by Johnson. He was very anxious about placing this book in the
Bodleian: and, for fear of any omission or mistake, he entered, in the
great Catalogue, the title-page of it with his own hand.'
WARTON.--BOSWELL.

In this statement there is a slight mistake. The English account, which
was written by Johnson, was the _original_ the Italian was a
_translation_, done by Baretti. See _post_, end of 1755. MALONE. Johnson
has twice entered in his own hand that 'Zachariah Williams, died July
12, 1755, in his eighty-third year,' and also on the title-page that
he was 82.

[806] See _ante_, p. 133.

[807] The compliment was, as it were, a mutual one. Mr. Wise urged
Thomas Warton to get the degree conferred before the _Dictionary_ was
published. 'It is in truth,' he wrote, 'doing ourselves more honour than
him, to have such a work done by an Oxford hand, and so able a one too,
and will show that we have not lost all regard for good letters, as has
been too often imputed to us by our enemies.' Wooll's _Warton_, p. 228.

[808] 'In procuring him the degree of Master of Arts by diploma at
Oxford.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[809] 'Lately fellow of Trinity College, and at this time Radclivian
librarian, at Oxford. He was a man of very considerable learning, and
eminently skilled in Roman and Anglo-Saxon antiquities. He died in
1767.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[810] No doubt _The Rambler_.

[811] 'Collins (the poet) was at this time at Oxford, on a visit to Mr.
Warton; but labouring under the most deplorable languor of body, and
dejection of mind.' WARTON. BOSWELL. Johnson, writing to Dr. Warton on
March 8, 1754, thus speaks of Collins:-'I knew him a few years ago full
of hopes, and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy,
and strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is now under the
government of those who lately would not have been able to comprehend
the least and most narrow of its designs.' Wooll's _Warton_ 1. 219.
Again, on Dec. 24, 1754:--'Poor dear Collins! Let me know whether you
think it would give him pleasure if I should write to him. I have often
been near his state, and therefore have it in great commiseration.'
_Ib_. p. 229. Again, on April 15, 1756:--'That man is no common loss.
The moralists all talk of the uncertainty of fortune, and the
transitoriness of beauty: but it is yet more dreadful to consider that
the powers of the mind are equally liable to change, that understanding
may make its appearance and depart, that it may blaze and expire.' _Ib_.
p. 239. See _post_, beginning of 1763.

[812] 'Of publishing a volume of observations on the best of Spenser's
works. It was hindered by my taking pupils in this College.'
WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[813] 'Young students of the lowest rank at Oxford are so called.'
WARTON.--BOSWELL. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 28, 1773.

[814] 'His Dictionary.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[815] Johnson says (_Works_, viii. 403) that when Collins began to feel
the approaches of his dreadful malady 'with the usual weakness of men so
diseased he eagerly snatched that temporary relief with which the table
and the bottle flatter and seduce.'

[816] 'Petrarch, finding nothing in the word _eclogue_ of rural meaning,
supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own
pastorals aeglogues, by which he meant to express the talk of goatherds,
though it will mean only the talk of goats. This new name was adopted by
subsequent writers.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 390.

[817] 'Of the degree at Oxford.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[818] This verse is from the long-lost _Bellerophon_, a tragedy by
Euripides. It is preserved by Suidas. CHARLES BURNEY. 'Alas! but
wherefore alas? Man is born to sorrow.'

[819]

'Sento venir per allegrezza un tuono
Que fremer l'aria, e rimbombar fa l'onrle:--
Odo di squille,' &c.

_Orlando Furioso_. c. xlvi. s. 2.

[820] 'His degree had now past, according to the usual form, the
surrages of the heads of Colleges; but was not yet finally granted by
the University. It was carried without a single dissentient voice.'
WARTON. BOSWELL.

[821] 'On Spenser.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[822] Lord Eldon wrote of him:--'Poor Tom Warton! He was a tutor at
Trinity; at the beginning of every term he used to send to his pupils to
know whether they would _wish_ to attend lecture that term.' Twiss's
_Eldon_, iii. 302.

[823] The fields north of Oxford.

[824] 'Of the degree.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[825] 'Principal of St. Mary Hall at Oxford. He brought with him the
diploma from Oxford.' WARTON.--BOSWELL. Dr. King (_Anec_. p. 196) says
that he was one of the Jacobites who were presented to the Pretender
when, in September 1750, he paid a stealthy visit to England. The
Pretender in 1783 told Sir Horace Mann that he was in London in that
very month and year and had met fifty of his friends, among whom was the
Earl of Westmoreland, the future Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Mahon's _England_, iv. II. Hume places the visit in 1753. Burton's
_Hume_, ii. 462. See also in Boswell's _Hebrides_, the account of the
Young Pretender. In 1754, writes Lord Shelburne, 'Dr. King in his speech
upon opening the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, before a full theatre
introduced three times the word _Redeat_, pausing each time for a
considerable space, during which the most unbounded applause shook the
theatre, which was filled with a vast body of peers, members of
parliament, and men of property. Soon after the rebellion [of 1745],
speaking of the Duke of Cumberland, he described him as a man, _qui
timet omnia prater Deum_. I presented this same Dr. King to George III.
in 1760.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 35.

[826] 'I suppose Johnson means that my _kind intention_ of being the
_first_ to give him the good news of the degree being granted was
_frustrated_, because Dr. King brought it before my intelligence
arrived.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[827] Dr. Huddesford, President of Trinity College.' WARTON.--BOSWELL.

[828] Extracted from the Convocation-Register, Oxford. BOSWELL.

[829] The Earl of Arran, 'the last male of the illustrious House of
Ormond,' was the third Chancellor in succession that that family had
given to the University. The first of the three, the famous Duke of
Ormond, had, on his death in 1688, been succeeded by his grandson, the
young Duke. (Macaulay's _England_, iii. 159). He, on his impeachment and
flight from England in 1715, was succeeded by his brother, the Earl of
Arran. Richardson, writing in 1754 (_Carres_. ii. 198), said of the
University, 'Forty years ago it chose a Chancellor in despite of the
present reigning family, whose whole merit was that he was the brother
of a perjured, yet weak, rebel.' On Arran's death in 1758, the Earl of
Westmoreland, 'old dull Westmoreland' as Walpole calls him (_Letters_,
i. 290), was elected. It was at his installation that Johnson clapped
his hands till they were sore at Dr. King's speech (_post_, 1759). 'I
hear,' wrote Walpole of what he calls _the coronation at Oxford_, 'my
Lord Westmoreland's own retinue was all be-James'd with true-blue
ribands.' _Letters_, iii. 237. It is remarkable that this nobleman, who
in early life was a Whig, had commanded 'the body of troops which George
I. had been obliged to send to Oxford, to teach the University the only
kind of passive obedience which they did not approve.' Walpole's _George
II_, iii. 167.

[830] The original is in my possession, BOSWELL.

[831] We may conceive what a high gratification it must have been to
Johnson to receive his diploma from the hands of the great Dr. KING,
whose principles were so congenial with his own. BOSWELL.

[832] Johnson here alludes, I believe, to the charge of disloyalty
brought against the University at the time of the famous contested
election for Oxfordshire in 1754. A copy of treasonable verses was
found, it was said, near the market-place in Oxford, and the grand jury
made a presentment thereon. 'We must add,' they concluded, 'that it is
the highest aggravation of this crime to have a libel of a nature so
false and scandalous, published in a famous University, &c. _Gent. Mag_.
xxiv. 339. A reward of L200 was offered in the _London Gazette_ for the
detection of the writer or publisher,' _Ib_. p. 377.

[833] A single letter was a single piece of paper; a second piece of
paper, however small, or any inclosure constituted a double letter; it
was not the habit to prepay the postage. The charge for a single letter
to Oxford at this time was three-pence, which was gradually increased
till in 1812 it was eight-pence. _Penny Cyclo_. xviii. 455.

[834] 'The words in Italicks are allusions to passages in Mr. Warton's
poem, called _The Progress of Discontent_, now lately published.'
WARTON.--BOSWELL.

'And now intent on new designs,
Sighs for a fellowship--and fines.

* * * * *

These fellowships are pretty things,
We live indeed like petty kings.

* * * * *

And ev'ry night I went to bed,
Without a Modus in my head.'

Warton's _Poems_, ii. 192.

For _modus_ and _fines_ see _post_, April 25, 1778.

[835] Lucretius, i. 23

[836]

'Hence ye prophane; I hate ye all,
Both the Great Vulgar and the Small.'

Cowley's _Imit. of Horace_, Odes, iii. 1.

[837] _Journal Britannique_. It was to Maty that Gibbon submitted the
manuscript of his first work. Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 123.

[838] Maty, as Prof. de Morgan pointed out, had in the autumn of 1755
been guilty of 'wilful suppression of the circumstances of Johnson's
attack on Lord Chesterfield.' In an article in his _Journal_ he regrets
the absence from the _Dictionary_ of the _Plan_. 'Elle eut epargne a
l'auteur la composition d'une nouvelle preface, qui ne contient qu'en
partie les memes choses, et qu'on est tente de regarder comme destinee a
faire perdre de vue quelques-unes des obligations que M. Johnson avait
contractees, et le Mecene qu'il avait choisi.' _Notes and Queries_, 2nd
S. iv. 341.