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

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[1297] See _post_ April 15 1778, note.

[1298] Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_ iii. 178), complaining of the high prices
of English books, describes 'the excessive artifices made use of to puff
up a paper of verses into a pamphlet, a pamphlet into an octavo, and an
octavo into a quarto with white-lines, exorbitant margins, &c., to such
a degree that the selling of paper seems now the object, and printing on
it only the pretence.'

[1299] Boswell was on friendly terms with him. He wrote to Erskine on
Dec. 2, 1761:--'I am just now returned from eating a most excellent pig
with the most magnificent Donaldson.' _Boswell and Erskine
Correspondence_, p. 20.

[1300] Dr. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 516) says that Lord Mansfield this year
(1769) 'talking of Hume and Robertson's _Histories_, said that though he
could point out few or no faults in them, yet, when he was reading their
books, he did not think he was reading English.' See _post_, ii. 72, for
Hume's Scotticisms. Hume went to France in 1734 when he was 23 years old
and stayed there three years. Hume's _Autobiography_, p. vii. He never
mastered French colloquially. Lord Charlemont, who met him in Turin in
1748, says:--'His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the
broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more
laughable.' Hardy's _Charlemont_, i. 15. Horace Walpole, who met him in
Paris in 1765, writes (_Letters_, iv. 426):--'Mr. Hume is the only thing
in the world that they [the French] believe implicitly; which they must
do, for I defy them to understand any language that he speaks.' Gibbon
(_Misc. Works_, i. 122) says of Hume's writings:--'Their careless
inimitable beauties often forced me to close the volume with a mixed
sensation of delight and despair.' Dr. Beattie (_Life_, p. 243) wrote on
Jan. 5, 1778:--'We who live in Scotland are obliged to study English
from books, like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot
speak.' He adds:--'I have spent some years in labouring to acquire the
art of giving a vernacular cast to the English we write.' Dr. A. Carlyle
(_Auto_, p. 222) says:--'Since we began to affect speaking a foreign
language, which the English dialect is to us, humour, it must be
confessed, is less apparent in conversation.'

[1301] _Discours sur L'origine et les fondemens de l'inegalite parmi les
hommes_, 1754.

[1302] 'I have indeed myself observed that my banker ever bows lowest to
me when I wear my full-bottomed wig, and writes me Mr. or Esq.,
accordingly as he sees me dressed.' _Spectator_, No. 150.

[1303] Mr. Croker, quoting Mr. Wright, says:--'_See his Quantulumanque_
(sic) _concerning Money_.' I have read Petty's _Quantulumcunque_, but do
not find the passage in it.

[1304] Johnson told Dr. Burney that Goldsmith said, when he first began
to write, he determined to commit to paper nothing but what was _new_;
but he afterwards found that what was _new_ was false, and from that
time was no longer solicitous about novelty. BURNEY. Mr. Forster (_Life
of Goldsmith_, i. 421) says that this note 'is another instance of the
many various and doubtful forms in which stories about Johnson and
Goldsmith are apt to appear when once we lose sight of the trustworthy
Boswell. This is obviously a mere confused recollection of what is
correctly told by Boswell [_post_, March 26, 1779].' There is much truth
in Mr. Forster's general remark: nevertheless Burney likely enough
repeated to the best of his memory what he had himself heard
from Johnson.

[1305] 'Their [the ancient moralists'] arguments have been, indeed, so
unsuccessful, that I know not whether it can be shewn, that by all the
wit and reason which this favourite cause has called forth a single
convert was ever made; that even one man has refused to be rich, when to
be rich was in his power, from the conviction of the greater happiness
of a narrow fortune.' Johnson's _Works_, ii. 278. See _post_, June 3,
1781, and June 3, Sept. 7, and Dec. 7, 1782.

[1306] Johnson (_Works_, vi. 440) shows how much Frederick owed to 'the
difficulties of his youth.' 'Kings, without this help from temporary
infelicity, see the world in a mist, which magnifies everything near
them, and bounds their view to a narrow compass, which few are able to
extend by the mere force of curiosity.' He next points out what Cromwell
'owed to the private condition in which he first entered the world;' and
continues:--'The King of Prussia brought to the throne the knowledge of
a private man, without the guilt of usurpation. Of this general
acquaintance with the world there may be found some traces in his whole
life. His conversation is like that of other men upon common topicks,
his letters have an air of familiar elegance, and his whole conduct is
that of a man who has to do with men.'

[1307] See _ante_ p. 408

[1308] See _ante_, p. 298.

[1309] That this was Mr. Dempster seems likely from the _Letters of
Boswell_ (p. 34), where Boswell says:--'I had prodigious satisfaction to
find Dempster's sophistry (which he has learnt from Hume and Rousseau)
vanquished by the solid sense and vigorous reasoning of Johnson.
Dempster,' he continues, 'was as happy as a vanquished argumentator
could be.' The character of the 'benevolent good man' suits Dempster
(see _post_, under Feb. 7, 1775, where Boswell calls him 'the virtuous
and candid Dempster'), while that of the 'noted infidel writer' suits
Hume. We find Boswell, Johnson, and Dempster again dining together on
May 9, 1772.

[1310]

'Thou wilt at best but suck a bull,
Or sheer swine, all cry and no wool.'

_Hudibras_, Part i. Canto I. 1. 851.

Dr. Z. Grey, in his note on these lines, quotes the proverbial saying
'As wise as the Waltham calf that went nine times to suck a bull.' He
quotes also from _The Spectator_, No. 138, the passage where the Cynic
said of two disputants, 'One of these fellows is milking a ram, and the
other holds the pail.'

[1311] The writer of the article _Vacuum_ in the _Penny Cyclo_. (xxvi.
76), quoting Johnson's words, adds:--'That is, either all space is full
of matter, or there are parts of space which have no matter. The
alternative is undeniable, and the inference to which the modern
philosophy would give the greatest probablility is, that all space is
full of matter in the common sense of the word, but really occupied by
particles of matter with vacuous interstices.'

[1312] 'When any one tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I
immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable that this
person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he
relates should really have happened.' Humes _Essay on Miracles_, Part i.
See _post_ Sept. 22 1777, where Boswell again quoted this passage.

[1313] A coffee-house over against Catherine Street, now the site of a
tourists' ticket office. _Athenaeum_, No. 3041.

[1314] Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, i. 202) that Johnson once said to
him:--'Whenever it is the duty of a young and old man to act at the same
time with a spirit of independence and generosity; we may always have
reason to hope that the young man will ardently perform, and to fear
that the old man will desert, his duty.'

[1315] Boswell thus writes of this evening:--'I learn more from him than
from any man I ever was with. He told me a very odd thing, that he knew
at eighteen as much as he does now; that is to say, his judgment is much
stronger, but he had then stored up almost all the facts he has now, and
he says that he has led but an idle life; only think, Temple, of that!'
_Letters of Boswell_, p. 34. See _ante_, p. 56, and _post_, ii. 36. He
told Windham in 1784 'that he read Latin with as much ease when he went
to college as at present.' Windham's _Diary_, p. 17.

[1316] Johnson in 1739 wrote of 'those distempers and depressions, from
which students, not well acquainted with the constitution of the human
body, sometimes fly for relief to wine instead of exercise, and purchase
temporary ease, by the hazard of the most dreadful consequences.'
_Works_, vi. 271. In _The Rambler_, No. 85, he says:--'How much
happiness is gained, and how much misery is escaped, by frequent and
violent agitation of the body.' Boswell records (_Hebrides_, Sept. 24,
1773):--'Dr. Johnson told us at breakfast, that he rode harder at a
fox-chace than anybody.' Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 206) says:--'He
certainly rode on Mr. Thrale's old hunter with a good firmness, and,
though he would follow the hounds fifty miles an end sometimes, would
never own himself either tired or amused. I think no praise ever went so
close to his heart, as when Mr. Hamilton called out one day upon
Brighthelmstone Downs, "Why Johnson rides as well, for aught I see, as
the most illiterate fellow in England."' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale in
1777:--'No season ever was finer. Barley, malt, beer and money. There is
the series of ideas. The deep logicians call it a _sorites_. _I hope my
master will no longer endure the reproach of not keeping me a horse_.'
_Piozzi Letters_, i. 360. See _post_, March 19 and 28, 1776, Sept. 20,
1777, and Nov. 21, 1778.

[1317] This _one_ Mrs. Macaulay was the same personage who afterwards
made herself so much known as 'the celebrated female historian.'
BOSWELL. Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 234) tells the following story of
Mrs. Macaulay's daughter:--'Desirous from civility to take some notice
of her, and finding she was reading _Shakespeare_, I asked her if she
was not delighted with many parts of _King John_. "I never read the
_Kings_, ma'am," was the truly characteristic reply.' See _post_, April
13, 1773, and May 15, 1776.

[1318] This speech was perhaps suggested to Johnson by the following
passage in _The Government of the Tongue_ (p. 106)--a book which he
quotes in his _Dictionary_:--'Lycurgus once said to one who importuned
him to establish a popular parity in the state, "Do thou," says he,
"begin it first in thine own family."'

[1319] The first volume was published in 1756, the second in 1782.

[1320] Warton, to use his own words, 'did not think Pope at the head of
his profession. In other words, in that species of poetry wherein Pope
excelled, he is superior to all mankind; and I only say that this
species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art.' He disposes
the English poets in four classes, placing in the first only Spenser,
Shakespeare, and Milton. 'In the second class should be ranked such as
possessed the true poetical genius in a more moderate degree, but who
had noble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poetry.' In this
class, in his concluding volume, he says, 'we may venture to assign Pope
a place, just above Dryden. Yet, to bring our minds steadily to make
this decision, we must forget, for a moment, the divine _Music Ode of
Dryden_; and may, perhaps, then be compelled to confess that though
Dryden be the greater genius, yet Pope is the better artist.' Warton's
_Essay_, i. i, vii. and ii. 404. See _post_, March 31, 1772.

[1321] Mr. Croker believes Joseph Warton was meant. His father, however,
had been Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was afterwards Vicar of
Basingstoke and Cobham, and Professor of Poetry in his own University,
so that the son could scarcely be described as being 'originally poor.'
It is, no doubt, after Boswell's fashion to introduce in consecutive
paragraphs the same person once by name and once anonymously; but then
the 'certain author who disgusted Boswell by his forwardness,' mentioned
just before Warton, may be Warton himself.

[1322] 'When he arrived at Eton he could not make a verse; that is, he
wanted a point indispensable with us to a certain rank in our system.
But this wonderful boy, having satisfied the Master [Dr. Barnard] that
he was an admirable scholar, and possessed of genius, was at once placed
at the head of a form. He acquired the rules of Latin verse; tried his
powers; and perceiving that he could not rise above his rivals in
Virgil, Ovid, or the lyric of Horace, he took up the _sermoni propiora_,
and there overshadowed all competitors. In the following lines he
describes the hammer of the auctioneer with a mock sublimity which turns
Horace into Virgil:--

'Jam-jamque cadit, celerique recursu
Erigitur, lapsum retrahens, perque aera nutat.'

Nichols's _Lit. Anec_. viii. 547.

Horace Walpole wrote of him in Sept. 1765 (_Letters_, iv. 411):--'He is
a very extraordinary young man for variety of learning. He is rather too
wise for his age, and too fond of showing it; but when he has seen more
of the world, he will choose to know less.' He died at Rome in the
following year. Hume, on hearing the news, wrote to Adam Smith:--'Were
you and I together, dear Smith, we should shed tears at present for the
death of poor Sir James Macdonald. We could not possibly have suffered a
greater loss than in that valuable young man.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_,
ii. 349. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 5, 1773.

[1323] Boswell says that Macdonald had for Johnson 'a _great_ terrour.'
(_Boswelliana_, p. 216.) Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 329)
says:--'It is a fact that a certain nobleman, an intimate friend of
Reynolds, had strangely conceived in his mind such a formidable idea of
all those persons who had gained great fame as literary characters, that
I have heard Sir Joshua say, he verily believed he could no more have
prevailed upon this noble person to dine at the same table with Johnson
and Goldsmith than with two tigers.' According to Mr. Seward
(_Biographiana_, p. 600), Mrs. Cotterell having one day asked Dr.
Johnson to introduce her to a celebrated writer, 'Dearest madam,' said
he, 'you had better let it alone; the best part of every author is in
general to be found in his book, I assure you.' Mr. Seward refers to
_The Rambler_, No. 14, where Johnson says that 'there has often been
observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an
authour and his writings.'

[1324] See _post_, Jan. 19, 1775. In his _Hebrides_ (p. i) Boswell
writes:--'When I was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned our design to
Voltaire. He looked at me as if I had talked of going to the North Pole,
and said, "You do not insist on my accompanying you?" "No, Sir." "Then I
am very willing you should go."'

[1325] 'When he went through the streets he desired to have one to lead
him by the hand. They asked his opinion of the high church. He answered
that it was a large rock, yet there were some in St. Kilda much higher,
but that these were the best caves he ever saw; for that was the idea
which he conceived of the pillars and arches upon which the church
stands.' M. Martin's _Western Isles_, p. 297. Mr. Croker compares the
passage in _The Spectator_ (No. 50), in which an Indian king is made to
say of St. Paul's:--'It was probably at first an huge misshapen rock
that grew upon the top of the hill, which the natives of the country
(after having cut it into a kind of regular figure) bored and hollowed
with incredible pains and industry.'

[1326] Boswell, writing to Temple the next day, slightly varies these
words:--'He said, "My dear Boswell, it would give me great pain to part
with you, if I thought we were not to meet again."' _Letters of
Boswell_, p. 34.

[1327] Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, i. 43) protests against 'the trite and
lavish praise of the happiness of our boyish years, which is echoed with
so much affectation in the world. That happiness I have never known,
that time I have never regretted. The poet may gaily describe the short
hours of recreation; but he forgets the daily tedious labours of the
school, which is approached each morning with anxious and reluctant
steps.' See _ante_, p. 44, and _post_, under Feb. 27, 1772.

[1328] About fame Gibbon felt much as Johnson did. 'I am disgusted,' he
wrote (_ib_. 272), 'with the affectation of men of letters, who complain
that they have renounced a substance for a shadow, and that their fame
(which sometimes is no insupportable weight) affords a poor compensation
for envy, censure, and persecution. My own experience, at least, has
taught me a very different lesson; twenty happy years have been animated
by the labour of my _History_, and its success has given me a name, a
rank, a character, in the world, to which I should not otherwise have
been entitled.'

[1329] See _ante_, p. 432.

[1330] See _ante_, p. 332.

[1331] This opinion was given by him more at large at a subsequent
period. See _Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 32 [Aug.
16]. BOSWELL. 'That Swift was its author, though it be universally
believed, was never owned by himself, nor very well proved by any
evidence; but no other claimant can be produced, and he did not deny it
when Archbishop Sharpe and the Duchess of Somerset, by showing it to the
Queen, debarred him from a bishoprick.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 197.
See also _post_, March 24, 1775. Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, ii. 61)
that Johnson said 'that if Swift really was the author of _The Tale of
the Tub_, as the best of his other performances were of a very inferior
merit, he should have hanged himself after he had written it.' Scott
(_Life of Swift_, ed. 1834, p. 77) says:--'Mrs. Whiteway observed the
Dean, in the latter years of his life [in 1735], looking over the
_Tale_, when suddenly closing the book he muttered, in an unconscious
soliloquy, "Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!" She
begged it of him, who made some excuse at the moment; but on her
birthday he presented her with it inscribed, "From her affectionate
cousin." On observing the inscription, she ventured to say, "I wish,
Sir, you had said the gift of the author!" The Dean bowed, smiled
good-humouredly, and answered, "No, I thank you," in a very significant
manner.' There is this to be said of Johnson's incredulity about the
_Tale of a Tub_, that the _History of John Bull_ and the _Memoirs of
Martinus Scriblerus_, though both by Arbuthnot, were commonly assigned
to Swift and are printed in his _Works_.

[1332] 'Thomson thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a
man of genius; he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which
Nature bestows only on a poet;--the eye that distinguishes in everything
presented to its view whatever there is on which imagination can delight
to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and
attends to the minute.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 377. See _post_, ii.
63, and April 11, 1776.

[1333] Burke seems to be meant. See _post_, April 25, 1778, and
Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, and Sept. 15, 1773.--It is strange
however that, while in these three places Boswell mentions Burke's name,
he should leave a blank here. In _Boswelliana_, p. 328, Boswell
records:--'Langton said Burke hammered his wit upon an anvil, and the
iron was cold. There were no sparks flashing and flying all about.'

[1334] In _Boswelliana_ (p. 214) this anecdote is thus given:--'Boswell
was talking to Mr. Samuel Johnson of Mr. Sheridan's enthusiasm for the
advancement of eloquence. "Sir," said Mr. Johnson, "it won't do. He
cannot carry through his scheme. He is like a man attempting to stride
the English Channel. Sir, the cause bears no proportion to the effect.
It is setting up a candle at Whitechapel to give light at Westminster."'
See also _ante_, p. 385, and _post_. Oct. 16, 1969, April 18 and May
17, 1783.

[1335] Most likely Boswell himself. See _ante_, p. 410.

[1336] 'Let a Frenchman talk twice with a minister of state, he desires
no more to furnish out a volume.' Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xvi. 197.
Lord Chesterfield wrote from Paris in 1741:--'They [the Parisians]
despise us, and with reason, for our ill-breeding; on the other hand, we
despite them for their want of learning, and we are in the right of it.'
_Supplement to Chesterfield's Letters_, p. 49. See Boswell's _Hebrides_,
Oct. 14, 1773.

[1337] 'Dr. Johnson said that he had been told by an acquaintance of Sir
Isaac Newton, that in early life he started as a clamorous infidel.'
Seward's _Anecdotes_, ii. 324. In Brewster's _Life of Newton_ I find no
mention of early infidelity. On the contrary, Newton had been described
as one who 'had been a searcher of the Scriptures from his youth' (ii.
314). Brewster says that 'some foreign writers have endeavoured to shew
that his theological writings were composed at a late period of life,
when his mind was in its dotage.' It was not so, however. _Ib_. p. 315.

[1338] I fully intended to have followed advice of such weight; but
having staid much longer both in Germany and Italy than I proposed to
do, and having also visited Corsica, I found that I had exceeded the
time allowed me by my father, and hastened to France in my way
homewards. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p. 410.

[1339]

'Has heaven reserved, in pity to the poor,
No pathless waste, or undiscovered shore?
No secret island in the boundless main?
No peaceful desert, yet unclaimed by Spain?'

Johnson looked upon the discovery of America as a misfortune to mankind.
In _Taxation no Tyranny_ (_Works_, vi. 233) he says that 'no part of the
world has yet had reason to rejoice that Columbus found at last
reception and employment. In the same year, in a year hitherto
disastrous to mankind, by the Portuguese was discovered the passage of
the Indies, and by the Spaniards the coast of America.' On March 4,
1773, he wrote (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 248):--'I do not much wish well
to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and
robbery.' See _ante_, p. 308, note 2, and post, March 21, 1775, and
under Dec. 24, 1783.

[1340] See _ante_, p. 394, note 2.

[1341] _Letters written from Leverpoole, Chester, Corke, &c.,_ by Samuel
Derrick, 1767.

[1342] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd ed. p. 104 [Aug. 27,
1773]. BOSWELL.

[1343] Ibid. p. 142 [242, Sept. 22, 1773]. BOSWELL. Johnson added:--'but
it was nothing.' Derrick, in 1760, published Dryden's _Misc. Works_,
with an _Account of his Life_.

[1344] He published a biographical work, containing an account of
eminent writers, in three vols. 8vo. BOSWELL.

[1345]

'Thus the soft gifts of sleep conclude the day,
And stretched on bulks, as usual, poets lay.'

_The Dunciad_, ii. 420.

In _Humphry Clinker_, in the Letter of June 10, in which is described
the dinner given by S---- to the poor authors, of one of them it is
said:--'The only secret which he ever kept was the place of his
lodgings; but it was believed that during the heats of summer he
commonly took his repose upon a bulk.' Johnson defines _bulk_ as _a part
of a building jutting out_.

[1346] 'Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is
confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its
ideas ... without knowing why we always rejoice when we learn, and
grieve when we forget.' _Rasselas_, ch. xi.

[1347] In the days of Old London Bridge, as Mr. Croker points out, even
when the tide would have allowed passengers to shoot it, those who were
prudent landed above the bridge, and walked to some wharf below it.

[1348] All who are acquainted with the history of religion, (the most
important, surely, that concerns the human mind,) know that the
appellation of Methodists was first given to a society of students in
the University of Oxford, who about the year 1730 were distinguished by
an earnest and _methodical_ attention to devout exercises. This
disposition of mind is not a novelty, or peculiar to any sect, but has
been, and still may be found, in many christians of every denomination.
Johnson himself was, in a dignified manner, a Methodist. In his
_Rambler_, No. 110, he mentions with respect 'the whole discipline of
regulated piety;' and in his _Prayers and Meditations_, many instances
occur of his anxious examination into his spiritual state. That this
religious earnestness, and in particular an observation of the influence
of the Holy Spirit, has sometimes degenerated into folly, and sometimes
been counterfeited for base purposes, cannot be denied. But it is not,
therefore, fair to decry it when genuine. The principal argument in
reason and good sense against methodism is, that it tends to debase
human nature, and prevent the generous exertions of goodness, by an
unworthy supposition that GOD will pay no regard to them; although it is
positively said in the scriptures that He 'will reward every man
according to his works.' [St. Matthew xvi. 27.] But I am happy to have
it [in] my power to do justice to those whom it is the fashion to
ridicule, without any knowledge of their tenets; and this I can do by
quoting a passage from one of their best apologists, Mr. Milner, who
thus expresses their doctrine upon this subject. 'Justified by faith,
renewed in his faculties, and constrained by the love of Christ, their
believer moves in the sphere of love and gratitude, and all his _duties_
flow more or less from this principle. And though _they are accumulating
for him in heaven a treasure of bliss proportioned to his faithfulness
and activity, and it is by no means inconsistent with his principles to
feel the force of this consideration_, yet love itself sweetens every
duty to his mind; and he thinks there is no absurdity in his feeling the
love of GOD as the grand commanding principle of his life.' _Essays on
several religious Subjects, &c., by Joseph Milner, A.M., Master of the
Grammar School of Kingston upon-Hull, 1789, p_. 11. BOSWELL. Southey
(_Life of Wesley_, i. 41), mentioning the names given at Oxford to
Wesley and his followers, continues:--'One person with less irreverence
and more learning observed, in reference to their methodical manner of
life, that a new sect of Methodists was sprung up, alluding to the
ancient school of physicians known by that name.' Wesley, in 1744, wrote
_The Humble Address to the King of the Societies in derision called
Methodists. Journal_, i. 437. He often speaks of 'the people called
Methodists,' but sometimes he uses the term without any qualification.
Mrs. Thrale, in 1780, wrote to Johnson:--'Methodist is considered always
a term of reproach, I trust, because I never yet did hear that any one
person called himself a Methodist.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 119.