Chapter XXVIII: Appendix: F (7)

[706] In the original, 'lawful _for_ me.' Much the same prayer Johnson made for his mother. _Pr. and Med_. p. 38. On Easter Day, 1764, he records:--'After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me.' _Ib_. p. 54. On the death of Mr. Thrale he wrote, 'May God that delighteth in mercy _have had_ mercy on thee.' _Ib_. p. 191; and later on, 'for Henry Thrale, so far as is lawful, I humbly implore thy mercy in his present state.' _Ib_. p. 197.

[707] _Pr. and Med_., p. 20. BOSWELL.

[708] Shortly before his death (see _post,_ July 12, 1784) Johnson had a stone placed over her grave with the following inscription:--

Hic conduntur reliquiae ELIZABETHÆ Antiqua Jarvisiorum Leicestrienses, ortae; Formosae, cultae, ingeniosae, piae; Uxoris, primis nuptiis, Henrici Porter, Secundis Samuelis Johnson: Qui multum amatam, diuque defletam Hoc lapide contexit. Obiit Londini Mense Mart. A.D. MDCCLIII

As Mrs. Johnson died in 1752, the date is wrong.

[709] See _post_, Sept. 21. 1777.

[710] He described her as a woman 'whom none, who were capable of distinguishing either moral or intellectual excellence, could know without esteem or tenderness. She was extensively charitable in her judgements and opinions, grateful for every kindness that she received, and willing to impart assistance of every kind to all whom her little power enabled her to benefit. She passed through many months of languor, weakness, and decay without a single murmur of impatience, and often expressed her adoration of that mercy which granted her so long time for recollection and penitence.' Johnson's _Works,_ ix. 523.

[711] See _ante_, p. 187.

[712] Dr. Bathurst, though a Physician of no inconsiderable merit, had not the good fortune to get much practice in London. He was, therefore willing to accept of employment abroad, and, to the regret of all who knew him, fell a sacrifice to the destructive climate, in the expedition against the Havannah. Mr. Langton recollects the following passage in a letter from Dr. Johnson to Mr. Beauclerk: 'The Havannah is taken;--a conquest too dearly obtained; for, Bathurst died before it. "_Vix Priamus tanti totaque Troja fuit_."' BOSWELL.

The quotation is from Ovid, _Heroides_, i. 4. Johnson (_post_, Dec. 21, 1762) wrote to Baretti, 'Bathurst went physician to the army, and died at the Havannah.' Mr. Harwood in his _History of Lichfield_, p. 451, gives two letters from Bathurst to Johnson dated 1757. In the postscript to one he says:--'I know you will call me a lazy dog, and in truth I deserve it; but I am afraid I shall never mend. I have indeed long known that I can love my friends without being able to tell them so.... Adieu my dearest friend.' He calls Johnson 'the best of friends, to whom I stand indebted for all the little virtue and knowledge that I have.' 'Nothing,' he continues, 'I think, but absolute want can force me to continue where I am.' Jamaica he calls 'this execrable region.' Hawkins (_Life_, p. 235) says that 'Bathurst, before leaving England, confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years' exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.' Johnson perhaps had Bathurst in mind when, many years later, he wrote:--'A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual; they that employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a century, a very curious book might be written on the _Fortune of Physicians_.' _Works_, viii. 471.

[713] Mr. Ryland was one of the members of the old club in Ivy Lane who met to dine in 1783. Mr. Payne was another, (_post_, end of 1783).

[714] Johnson revised her volumes: _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783.

[715] Catherine Sawbridge, sister of Mrs. [? Mr.] Alderman Sawbridge, was born in 1733; but it was not till 1760 that she was married to Dr. Macaulay, a physician; so that Barber's account was incorrect either in date or name. CROKER. For Alderman Sawbridge see _post_, May 17, 1778, note.

[716] See _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783. Johnson bequeathed to her a book to keep as a token of remembrance (_post_, Dec. 9, 1784). I find her name in the year 1765 in the list of subscribers to the edition of Swift's _Works_, in 17 vols., so that perhaps she was more 'in the learned way' than Barber thought.

[717] Reynolds did not return to England from Italy till the October of this year, seven months after Mrs. Johnson's death. Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 87. He writes of his 'thirty years' intimacy with Dr. Johnson.' He must have known him therefore at least as early as 1754. _Ib_. ii. 454.

[718] See _ante_, p. 185.

[719] 'Lord Southwell,' said Johnson, 'was the most _qualitied_ man I ever saw.' _Post_, March 23, 1783.

[720] The account given of Levet in _Gent. Mag_. lv. 101, shews that he was a man out of the common run. He would not otherwise have attracted the notice of the French surgeons. The writer says:--'Mr. Levet, though an Englishman by birth, became early in life a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris. The surgeons who frequented it, finding him of an inquisitive turn and attentive to their conversation, made a purse for him, and gave him some instructions in their art. They afterwards furnished him with the means of further knowledge, by procuring him free admission to such lectures in pharmacy and anatomy as were read by the ablest professors of that period.' When he lived with Johnson, 'much of the day was employed in attendance on his patients, who were chiefly of the lowest rank of tradesmen. The remainder of his hours he dedicated to Hunter's lectures, and to as many different opportunities of improvement as he could meet with on the same gratuitous conditions.' 'All his medical knowledge,' said Johnson, 'and it is not inconsiderable, was obtained through the ear. Though he buys books, he seldom looks into them, or discovers any power by which he can be supposed to judge of an author's merit.' 'Dr. Johnson has frequently observed that Levet was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny-loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday. His character was rendered valuable by repeated proof of honesty, tenderness, and gratitude to his benefactor, as well as by an unwearied diligence in his profession. His single failing was an occasional departure from sobriety. Johnson would observe, "he was perhaps the only man who ever became intoxicated through motives of prudence. He reflected that, if he refused the gin or brandy offered him by some of his patients, he could have been no gainer by their cure, as they might have had nothing else to bestow on him. This habit of taking a fee, in whatever shape it was exhibited, could not be put off by advice. He would swallow what he did not like, nay what he knew would injure him, rather than go home with an idea that his skill had been exerted without recompense. Though he took all that was offered him, he demanded nothing from the poor."' The writer adds that 'Johnson never wished him to be regarded as an inferior, or treated him like a dependent.' Mrs. Piozzi says:--'When Johnson raised contributions for some distressed author, or wit in want, he often made us all more than amends by diverting descriptions of the lives they were then passing in corners unseen by anybody but himself, and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house to tend the outpensioners, and of whom he said most truly and sublimely, that

"In misery's darkest caverns known,"' etc. Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 118.

'Levet, madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not in his mind.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 115. 'Whoever called in on Johnson at about midday found him and Levet at breakfast, Johnson, in deshabille, as just risen from bed, and Levet filling out tea for himself and his patron alternately, no conversation passing between them. All that visited him at these hours were welcome. A night's rest and breakfast seldom failed to refresh and fit him for discourse, and whoever withdrew went too soon.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 435.

How much he valued his poor friend he showed at his death, _post_, Jan. 20, 1782.

[721]

'O et praesidium et dulce decus meum.' 'My joy, my guard, and sweetest good.'

CREECH. Horace, _Odes_, i. I. 2.

[722] It was in 1738 that Johnson was living in Castle Street. At the time of Reynolds's arrival in London in 1752 he had been living for some years in Gough Square. Boswell, I suppose, only means to say that Johnson's acquaintance with the Cotterells was formed when he lived in their neighbourhood. Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 69) says that the Cotterells lived 'opposite to Reynolds's,' but his account seems based on a misunderstanding of Boswell.

[723] _Ante_, p. 165.

[724] 'We are both of Dr. Johnson's school,' wrote Reynolds to some friend. 'For my own part, I acknowledge the highest obligations to him. He may be said to have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a great deal of rubbish. Those very persons whom he has brought to think rightly will occasionally criticise the opinions of their master when he nods. But we should always recollect that it is he himself who taught us and enabled us to do it.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 461. Burke, writing to Malone, said:--'You state very properly how much Reynolds owed to the writings and conversation of Johnson; and nothing shews more the greatness of Sir Joshua's parts than his taking advantage of both, and making some application of them to his profession, when Johnson neither understood nor desired to understand anything of painting.' _Ib_. p. 638. Reynolds, there can be little question, is thinking of Johnson in the following passage in his _Seventh Discourse_:--'What partial and desultory reading cannot afford may be supplied by the conversation of learned and ingenious men, which is the best of all substitutes for those who have not the means or opportunities of deep study. There are many such men in this age: and they will be pleased with communicating their ideas to artists, when they see them curious and docile, if they are treated with that respect and deference which is so justly their due. Into such society young artists, if they make it the point of their ambition, will by degrees be admitted. There, without formal teaching, they will insensibly come to feel and reason like those they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste imperceptibly formed in their minds, which they will know how to reduce to a standard, by applying general truth to their own purposes, better perhaps than those to whom they owned [?owed] the original sentiment.' Reynolds's _Works_, edit. 1824, i. 149. 'Another thing remarkable to shew how little Sir Joshua crouched to the great is, that he never gave them their proper titles. I never heard the words "your lordship" or "your ladyship" come from his mouth; nor did he ever say "Sir" in speaking to any one but Dr. Johnson; and when he did not hear distinctly what the latter said (which often happened) he would then say "Sir?" that he might repeat it.' Northcote's _Conversations_, p. 289. Gibbon called Johnson 'Reynolds's oracle.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 149. See also _post_, under Dec. 29, 1778.

[725] The thought may have been suggested to Reynolds by Johnson's writings. In _The Rambler_, No. 87, he had said:--'There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.' In No. 166, he says:--'To be obliged is to be in some respect inferior to another.'

[726] Northcote tells the following story on the authority of Miss Reynolds. It is to be noticed, however, that in her _Recollections_ (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 832) the story is told somewhat differently. Johnson, Reynolds and Miss Reynolds one day called on the Miss Cotterells. 'Johnson was the last of the three that came in; when the maid, seeing this uncouth and dirty figure of a man, and not conceiving he could be one of the company, laid hold of his coat, just as he was going up-stairs, and pulled him back again, saying, "You fellow, what is your business here? I suppose you intended to rob the house." This most unlucky accident threw him into such a fit of shame and anger that he roared out like a bull, "What have I done? What have I done?"' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 73.

[727] Johnson writing to Langton on January 9, 1759, describes him as 'towering in the confidence of twenty-one.' The conclusion of _The Rambler_ was in March 1752, when Langton must have been only fourteen or just fifteen at most; Johnson's first letter to him dated May 6, 1755, shews that at that time their acquaintance had been but short. Langton's subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles in the Register of the University of Oxford was on July 7, 1757. Johnson's first letter to him at Oxford is dated June 28, 1757.

[728] See _post_, March 20, 1782.

[729] 'My friend Maltby and I,' said Samuel Rogers, 'when we were very young men, had a strong desire to see Dr. Johnson; and we determined to call upon him, and introduce ourselves. We accordingly proceeded to his house in Bolt Court; and I had my hand on the knocker when our courage failed us, and we retreated. Many years afterwards I mentioned this circumstance to Boswell, who said, "What a pity that you did not go boldly in! He would have received you with all kindness."' Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 9. For Johnson's levee see _post_, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell's _Collectanea_.

[730] 'George Langton,' writes Mr. Best in his _Memorials_ (p. 66), 'shewed me his pedigree with the names and arms of the families with which his own had intermarried. It was engrossed on a piece of parchment about ten inches broad, and twelve to fifteen feet long. "It leaves off at the reign of Queen Elizabeth," said he.'

[731] Topham Beauclerk was the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk, fifth son of the first Duke of St. Alban's. He was therefore the great-grandson of Charles II. and Nell Gwynne. He was born in Dec. 1739. In my _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_ I have put together such facts as I could find about Langton and Beauclerk.

[732] Mr. Best describes Langton as 'a very tall, meagre, long-visaged man, much resembling a stork standing on one leg near the shore in Raphael's cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. His manners were, in the highest degree, polished; his conversation mild, equable and always pleasing.' Best's _Memorials_, p. 62. Miss Hawkins writes:--'If I were called on to name the person with whom Johnson might have been seen to the fairest advantage, I should certainly name Mr. Langton.' Miss Hawkins's _Memoirs_, i. 144. Mrs. Piozzi wrote in 1817:--'I remember when to have Langton at a man's house stamped him at once a literary character.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 203.

[733] In the summer of 1759. See _post_, under April 15, 1758, and 1759.

[734] Lord Charlemont said that 'Beauclerk possessed an exquisite taste, various accomplishments, and the most perfect good breeding. He was eccentric, often querulous, entertaining a contempt for the generality of the world, which the politeness of his manners could not always conceal; but to those whom he liked most generous and friendly. Devoted at one time to pleasure, at another to literature, sometimes absorbed in play, sometimes in books, he was altogether one of the most accomplished, and when in good humour and surrounded by those who suited his fancy, one of the most agreeable men that could possibly exist.' Lord Charlemont's _Life_, i. 210. Hawkins writes (_Life_, p. 422) that 'over all his behaviour there beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and good-humour as communicated itself to all around him.' Mrs. Piozzi said of him:--'Topham Beauclerk (wicked and profligate as he wished to be accounted) was yet a man of very strict veracity. Oh Lord! how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, i. 348. Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 40) said that 'Beauclerk was a strangely absent person.' He once went to dress for a dinner-party in his own house. 'He forgot all about his guests; thought that it was bed-time, and got into bed. His servant, coming to tell him that his guests were waiting for him, found him fast asleep.'

[735] It was to the Round-house that Captain Booth was first taken in Fielding's _Amelia_, Book i, chap. 2.

[736]

'Blends, in exception to all general rules, Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools.'

Pope, _Moral Essays_, ii. 275.

[737] In the college which _The Club_ was to set up at St. Andrew's, Beauclerk was to have the chair of natural philosophy. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 25, 1773. Goldsmith, writing to Langton in 1771, says: 'Mr. Beauclerk is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle; deep in chymistry and physics.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 283. Boswell described to Temple, in 1775, Beauclerk's villa at Muswell Hill, with its 'observatory, laboratory for chymical experiments.' Boswell's _Letters_, p. 194.

[738] 'I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.' 1 Henry IV. Act v. sc. 4.

[739] 'Bishop. A cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges, and sugar.' Johnson's _Dictionary_.

[740] Mr. Langton has recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are in Lord Lansdowne's Drinking Song to Sleep, and run thus:--

'Short, very short be then thy reign, For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again.' BOSWELL.

Lord Lansdowne was the Granville of Pope's couplet--

'But why then publish? Granville the polite, And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.'

_Prologue to the Satires,_ 1.135.

[741] Boswell in _Hebrides_ (Aug. 18, 1773) says that Johnson, on starting from Edinburgh, left behind in an open drawer in Boswell's house 'one volume of a pretty full and curious Diary of his life, of which I have a few fragments.' He also states (_post_, under Dec 9, 1784):--'I owned to him, that having accidentally seen them [two quarto volumes of his _Life_] I had read a great deal in them.' It would seem that he had also transcribed a portion.

[742] This is inconsistent with what immediately follows, for No. 39 on Sleep was published on March 20.

[743] Hawkesworth in the last number of _The Adventurer_ says that he had help at first from A.; 'but this resource soon failing, I was obliged to carry on the publication alone, except some casual supplies, till I obtained from the gentlemen who have distinguished their papers by T and Z, such assistance as I most wished.' In a note he says that the papers signed Z are by the Rev. Mr. Warton. The papers signed A are written in a light style. In Southey's _Cowper_, i. 47, it is said that Bonnell Thornton wrote them.

[744] Boswell had read the passage carelessly. Statius is mentioned, but the writer goes on to quote _Cowley_, whose Latin lines C. B. has translated. Johnson's _Works_, iv. 10.

[745] Malone says that 'Johnson was fond of him, but latterly owned that Hawkesworth--who had set out a modest, humble man--was one of the many whom success in the world had spoiled. He was latterly, as Sir Joshua Reynolds told me, an affected insincere man, and a great coscomb in his dress. He had no literature whatever.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 441. See _post_, April 11 and May 7, 1773, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 3.

[746] 'Johnson's statement to Warton is definite and is borne out by internal evidence, if internal evidence can be needful when he had once made a definite statement. The papers signed _Misargyrus_, the first of which appeared on March 3, are all below his style. They were not, I feel sure, written by him, and are improperly given in the Oxford edition of his works. I do not find in them even any traces of his hand. The paper on Sleep, No. 39, is I am almost sure, partly his, but I believe it is not wholly. In the frequency of quotations in the first part of it I see another, and probably a younger author. The passage on the 'low drudgery of digesting dictionaries' is almost certainly his. Dr. Bathurst, perhaps, wrote the Essay, and Johnson corrected it. Whether it was Johnson's or not, it was published after the letter to Dr. Warton was written.

[747] See _post_, April 25, 1778, for an instance where Johnson's silence did not imply assent.

[748] 'One evening at the Club Johnson proposed to us the celebrating the birth of Mrs. Lennox's first literary child, as he called her book, [_The Life of Harriet Stuart_, a novel, published Dec. 1750] by a whole night spent in festivity. Our supper was elegant, and Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay-leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an authoress, and had written verses; and further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not till he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows. About five Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 286. See _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 'Collection,' and May 15, 1784.

[749] In a document in the possession of one of Cave's collateral descendants which I have seen dated May 3, 1754, and headed, 'Present state of the late Mr. Edward Cave's effects,' I found entered '_Magazine_, £3,000. _Daily Advertiser_, £900.' The total value of the effects was £8,708.

[750] Johnson records of his friend that 'one of the last acts of reason which he exerted was fondly to press the hand that is now writing this little narrative.' _Works_, vi. 433.

[751] See Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 189.

[752] Lord Chesterfield writing to his son in 1751 (_Letters_, iii. 136) said:--'People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind, as surgeons are to their bodily pains; they see and hear of them all day long, and even of so many simulated ones, that they do not know which has are real, and which are not. Other sentiments are therefore to be applied to than those of mere justice and humanity; their favour must be captivated by the _suaviter in modo_; their love of ease disturbed by unwearied importunity; or their fears wrought upon by a decent intimation of implacable, cool resentment: this is the true _fortiter in re_! He was himself to experience an instance of the true _fortiter in re_.

[753] If Lord Chesterfield had read the last number of _The Rambler_ (published in March, 1752) he could scarcely have flattered himself with these expectations. Johnson, after saying that he would not endeavour to overbear the censures of criticism by the influence of a patron, added:--'The supplications of an author never yet reprieved him a moment from oblivion; and, though greatness sometimes sheltered guilt, it can afford no protection to ignorance or dulness. Having hitherto attempted only the propagation of truth, I will not at last violate it by the confession of terrors which I do not feel; having laboured to maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now degrade it by the meanness of dedication.'

[754] On Nov. 28 and Dec. 5, 1754. _The World_, by Adam Fitz-Adam, Jan. 1753 to Dec. 1765. The editor was Edward Moore. Among the contributors were the Earls of Chesterfield and Corke, Horace Walpole, R. O. Cambridge, and Soame Jenyns. See _post_, July 1, 1763.

[755] With these papers as a whole Johnson would have been highly offended. The anonymous writer hopes that his readers will not suspect him 'of being a hired and interested puff of this work.' 'I most solemnly protest,' he goes on to say, 'that neither Mr. Johnson, nor any booksellers have ever offered me the usual compliment of a pair of gloves or a bottle of wine.' It is a pretty piece of irony for a wealthy nobleman solemnly to protest that he has not been bribed by a poor author, whom seven years before he had repulsed from his door. But Chesterfield did worse than this. By way of recommending a work of so much learning and so much labour he tells a foolish story of an assignation that had failed 'between a fine gentleman and a fine lady.' The letter that had passed between them had been badly spelt, and they had gone to different houses. 'Such examples,' he wrote, 'really make one tremble; and will, I am convinced, determine my fair fellow-subjects and their adherents to adopt and scrupulously conform to Mr. Johnson's rules of true orthography.' Johnson, in the last year of his life, at a time of great weakness and depression, defended the roughness of his manner. 'I have done more good as I am. Obscenity and impiety have always been repressed in my company' (_post_, June 11, 1784).

[756] In the original 'Mr. Johnson.'

[757] In the original 'unnecessary foreign ornaments.'

[758] In the original, 'will now, and, I dare say.'

[759] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 191) says that Chesterfield, further to appease Johnson, sent to him Sir Thomas Robinson (see _post_, July 19, 1763), who was 'to apologise for his lordship's treatment of him, and to make him tenders of his future friendship and patronage. Sir Thomas, whose talent was flattery, was profuse in his commendations of Johnson and his writings, and declared that, were his circumstances other than they were, himself would settle £500 a year on him. 'And who are you,' asked Johnson, 'that talk thus liberally?' 'I am,' said the other, 'Sir Thomas Robinson, a Yorkshire baronet.' 'Sir,' replied Johnson, 'if the first peer of the realm were to make me such an offer, I would shew him the way down stairs.'

[760] _Paradise Lost_, ii. 112.

[761] Johnson, perhaps, was thinking of his interviews with Chesterfield, when in his _Rambler_ on 'The Mischiefs of following a Patron' (No. 163) he wrote:--'If you, Mr. Rambler, have ever ventured your philosophy within the attraction of greatness, you know the force of such language, introduced with a smile of gracious tenderness, and impressed at the conclusion with an air of solemn sincerity.'

[762] Johnson said to Garrick:--'I have sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the English language; and does he now send out two cock-boats to tow me into harbour?' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 74. This metaphor may perhaps have been suggested to Johnson by Warburton. 'I now begin to see land, after having wandered, according to Mr. Warburton's phrase, in this vast sea of words.' _Post_, Feb. 1, 1755.

[763] See _post_, Nov. 22, 1779, and April 8, 1780. Sir Henry Ellis says that 'address' in Johnson's own copy of his letter to Lord Chesterfield is spelt twice with one _d_. Croker's _Corres_. ii. 44. In the series of Letters by Johnson given in _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v, Johnson writes _persuit_ (p. 325); 'I cannot _butt_ (p. 342); 'to retain _council_' (p. 343); _harrassed_ (p. 423); _imbecillity_ (p. 482). In a letter to Nichols quoted by me, _post_, beginning of 1783, he writes _ilness_. He commonly, perhaps always, spelt _Boswell Boswel_, and Nichols's name in one series of letters he spelt Nichols, Nichol, and Nicol. _Post_, beginning of 1781, note.

[764] Dr. Johnson appeared to have had a remarkable delicacy with respect to the circulation of this letter; for Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, informs me that, having many years ago pressed him to be allowed to read it to the second Lord Hardwicke, who was very desirous to hear it (promising at the same time, that no copy of it should be taken), Johnson seemed much pleased that it had attracted the attention of a nobleman of such a respectable character; but after pausing some time, declined to comply with the request, saying, with a smile, 'No, Sir; I have hurt the dog too much already;' or words to that purpose. BOSWELL.

[765] See _post_, June 4, 1781.

[766] In 1790, the year before the _Life of Johnson_ came out, Boswell published this letter in a separate sheet of four quarto pages under the following title:--_The celebrated Letter from Samuel Johnson, LL.D., to Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Now first published with Notes, by James Boswell, Esq., London. Printed by Henry Baldwin: for Charles Dilly in the Poultry, MDCCXC. Price Half-a-Guinea. Entered in the Hall-Book of the Company of Stationers_. It belongs to the same impression as _The Life of Johnson_.

[767] 'Je chante le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre.' Boileau, _L'Art poétique_, iii. 272.

[768] The following note is subjoined by Mr. Langton:--'Dr. Johnson, when he gave me this copy of his letter, desired that I would annex to it his information to me, that whereas it is said in the letter that "no assistance has been received," he did once receive from Lord Chesterfield the sum of ten pounds; but as that was so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find place in a letter of the kind that this was.' BOSWELL. 'This surely is an unsatisfactory excuse,' writes Mr. Croker. He read Johnson's letter carelessly, as the rest of his note shews. Johnson says, that during the seven years that had passed since he was repulsed from Chesterfield's door he had pushed on his work without one act of assistance. These ten pounds, we may feel sure, had been received before the seven years began to run. No doubt they had been given in 1747 as an acknowledgement of the compliment paid to Chesterfield in the _Plan_. He had at first been misled by Chesterfield's one act of kindness, but he had long had his eyes opened. Like the shepherd in Virgil (_Eclogues_, viii. 43) he could say:--'_Nunc_ scio quid sit Amor.'

[769] In this passage Dr. Johnson evidently alludes to the loss of his wife. We find the same tender recollection recurring to his mind upon innumerable occasions: and, perhaps no man ever more forcibly felt the truth of the sentiment so elegantly expressed by my friend Mr. Malone, in his Prologue to Mr. Jephson's tragedy of JULIA [_Julia or the Italian Lover_ was acted for the first time on April 17, 1787. _Gent. Mag_. 1787, p. 354]:--

'Vain--wealth, and fame, and fortune's fostering care, If no fond breast the splendid blessings share; And, each day's bustling pageantry once past, There, only there, our bliss is found at last.' BOSWELL.

Three years earlier, when his wife was dying, he had written in one of the last _Ramblers_ (No 203):--'It is necessary to the completion of every good, that it be timely obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will come too late to give much delight ... What we acquire by bravery or science, by mental or corporal diligence, comes at last when we cannot communicate, and therefore cannot enjoy it.' Chesterfield himself was in no happy state. Less than a month before he received Johnson's letter he wrote (_Works_, iii. 308):--'For these six months past, it seems as if all the complaints that ever attacked heads had joined to overpower mine. Continual noises, headache, giddiness, and impenetrable deafness; I could not stoop to write; and even reading, the only resource of the deaf, was painful to me.' He wrote to his son a year earlier (_Letters_, iv. 43), 'Reading, which was always a pleasure to me in the time even of my greatest dissipation, is now become my only refuge; and I fear I indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes. But what can I do? I must do something. I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary. I will not hoard them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss than not enjoy the use of them.'

[770] '_The English Dictionary_ was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.' Johnson's _Works_ v. 51.

[771] Upon comparing this copy with that which Dr. Johnson dictated to me from recollection, the variations are found to be so slight, that this must be added to the many other proofs which he gave of the wonderful extent and accuracy of his memory. To gratify the curious in composition, I have deposited both the copies in the British Museum. BOSWELL.

[772] Soon after Edwards's _Canons of Criticism_ came out, Johnson was dining at Tonson the Bookseller's with Hayman the Painter and some more company. Hayman related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the conversation having turned upon Edwards's book, the gentlemen praised it much, and Johnson allowed its merit. But when they went farther, and appeared to put that author upon a level with Warburton, 'Nay, (said Johnson,) he has given him some smart hits to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.' BOSWELL. Johnson in his _Preface to Shakespeare_ (_Works_, v. 141) wrote:--'Dr. Warburton's chief assailants are the authors of _The Canons of Criticism_, and of _The Revisal of Shakespeare's Text_.... The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter and returns for more; the other bites like a viper.... When I think on one with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that "girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle;" when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in _Macbeth_:

"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.