Life of Johnson Volume II Part 44

'May 4,--66. I have read since the noon of Easter day the Gospels of St.

Matthew and St. Mark in Greek.

'I have read Xenophon's Cyropaidia.'

BODLEIAN LIBRARY. SELECT AUTOGRAPHS. (MONTAGU.)

APPENDIX B.

(_Page_ 312.)

Johnson's sentiments towards his fellow-subjects in America have never, so far as I know, been rightly stated. It was not because they fought for liberty that he had come to dislike them. A man who, 'bursting forth with a generous indignation, had said:--"The Irish are in a most unnatural state; for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority"' (_ante_, ii. 255), was not likely to wish that our plantations should be tyrannically governed. The man who, 'in company with some very grave men at Oxford, gave as his toast, "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies"' (_post_, iii.

200), was not likely to condemn insurrections in general. The key to his feelings is found in his indignant cry, 'How is it that we hear the loudest _yelps_ for liberty among the drivers of negroes?' (_Ib_) He hated slavery as perhaps no man of his time hated it. While the Quakers, who were almost the pioneers in the Anti-slavery cause, were still slave-holders and slave-dealers, he lifted up his voice against it. So early as 1740, when Was.h.i.+ngton was but a child of eight, he had maintained 'the natural right of the negroes to liberty and independence.' (_Works_, vi. 313.) In 1756 he described Jamaica as 'a place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants and a dungeon of slaves.' (_Ib_ vi. 130.) In 1759 he wrote:--'Of black men the numbers are too great who are now repining under English cruelty.' (_Ib_ iv. 407.) In the same year, in describing the cruelty of the Portuguese discoverers, he said:--'We are openly told that they had the less scruple concerning their treatment of the savage people, because they scarcely considered them as distinct from beasts; and indeed, the practice of all the European nations, and among others of the _English barbarians that cultivate the southern islands of America_, proves that this opinion, however absurd and foolish, however wicked and injurious, still continues to prevail. Interest and pride harden the heart, and it is in vain to dispute against avarice and power.' (_Ib_ v. 218.) No miserable sophistry could convince him, with his clear mind and his ardour for liberty, that slavery can be right. 'An individual,' he wrote (_post_, iii. 202), 'may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.' How deeply he felt for the wrongs done to helpless races is shown in his dread of discoverers. No man had a more eager curiosity, or more longed that the bounds of knowledge should be enlarged. Yet he wrote:--'I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.' (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 248.) In his _Life of Savage_, written in 1744, he said (_Works_, viii. 156):--'Savage has not forgotten ... to censure those crimes which have been generally committed by the discoverers of new regions, and to expose the enormous wickedness of making war upon barbarous nations because they cannot resist, and of invading countries because they are fruitful.... He has a.s.serted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power.' He loved the University of Salamanca, because it gave it as its opinion that the conquest of America by the Spaniards was not lawful (_ante_, i. 455). When, in 1756, the English and French were at war in America, he said that 'such was the contest that no honest man could heartily wish success to either party.... It was only the quarrel of two robbers for the spoils of a pa.s.senger' (_ante_, i. 308, note 2). When, from political considerations, opposition was raised in 1766 to the scheme of translating the Bible into Erse, he wrote:--'To omit for a year, or for a day, the most efficacious method of advancing Christianity, in compliance with any purposes that terminate on this side of the grave, is a crime of which I know not that the world has yet had an example, except in the practice of the planters of America--a race of mortals whom, I suppose, no other man wishes to resemble'

(_ante_, ii. 27). Englishmen, as a nation, had no right to reproach their fellow-subjects in America with being drivers of negroes; for England shared in the guilt and the gain of that infamous traffic. Nay, even as the Virginian delegates to Congress in 1774 complained:--'Our repeated attempts to exclude all further importations of slaves from Africa by prohibition, and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have hitherto been defeated by his Majesty's negative--thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.' Bright's _Speeches_, ed. 1869, i. 171. Franklin (_Memoirs_, ed. 1818, iii. 17), writing from London in 1772, speaks of 'the hypocrisy of this country, which encourages such a detestable commerce by laws for promoting the Guinea trade; while it piqued itself on its virtue, love of liberty, and the equity of its courts in setting free a single negro.' From the slightest stain of this hypocrisy Johnson was free. He, at all events, had a right to protest against 'the yelps' of those who, while they solemnly a.s.serted that among the unalienable rights of all men are liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yet themselves were drivers of negroes.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Had he been 'busily employed' he would, no doubt, have finished the edition in a few months. He himself had recorded at Easter, 1765: 'My time has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind.' _Pr. and Med_., p. 61.

[2] Dedications had been commonly used as a means of getting money by flattery. I. D'Israeli in his _Calamities of Authors_, i. 64, says:--'Fuller's _Church History_ is disgraced by twelve particular dedications. It was an expedient to procure dedication fees; for publis.h.i.+ng books by subscription was an art not yet discovered.' The price of the dedication of a play was, he adds, in the time of George I, twenty guineas. So much then, at least, Johnson lost by not dedicating _Irene_. However, when he addressed the _Plan of his Dictionary_ to Lord Chesterfield (_ante_, i. 183) he certainly came very near a dedication.

Boswell, in the _Hypochondriack_, writes:--'For my own part, I own I am proud enough. But I do not relish the stateliness of not dedicating at all. I prefer pleasure to pride, and it appears to me that there is much pleasure in honestly expressing one's admiration, esteem, or affection in a public manner, and in thus contributing to the happiness of another by making him better pleased with himself.' _London Mag_. for 1782, p.

454. His dedications were dedications of friends.h.i.+p, not of flattery or servility. He dedicated his _Tour to Corsica_ to Paoli, his _Tour to the Hebrides_ to Malone, and his _Life of Johnson_ to Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Goldsmith, in like manner, distrest though he so often was, dedicated his _Traveller_ to his brother, the _Deserted Village_ to Sir Joshua, and _She Stoops to Conquer_ to Johnson.

[3] A pa.s.sage in Boswell's letter to Malone of Jan. 29, 1791 (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 829), shows that it is Reynolds of whom he is writing. 'I am,' he writes, 'to cancel a leaf of the first volume, having found that though Sir Joshua certainly a.s.sured me he had no objection to my mentioning that Johnson wrote a dedication for him, he now thinks otherwise. In that leaf occurs the mention of Johnson having written to Dr. Leland, thanking the University of Dublin for their diploma.' In the first edition, this mention of the letter is followed by the pa.s.sage above about dedications. It was no doubt Reynolds's _Dedication of his Discourses_ to the King in the year 1778 that Johnson wrote. The first sentence is in a high degree Johnsonian. 'The regular progress of cultivated life is from necessaries to accommodations, from accommodations to ornaments.'

[4] 'That is to say,' he added, 'to the last generation of the Royal Family.' See _post_, April 15, 1773. We may hope that the Royal Family were not all like the Duke of Gloucester, who, when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the _Decline and Fall_, 'received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as he laid the quarto on the table, "Another d----d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"' Best's _Memorials_, p. 68.

[5] Such care was needless. Boswell complained (_post_, June 24, 1774), that Johnson did not _answer_ his letters, but only sent him _returns_.

[6] 'On one of the days that my ague disturbed me least, I walked from the convent to Corte, purposely to write a letter to Mr. Samuel Johnson.

I told my revered friend, that from a kind of superst.i.tion agreeable in a certain degree to him as well as to myself, I had, during my travels, written to him from Loca Solennia, places in some measure sacred. That, as I had written to him from the tomb of Melancthon (see _post_, June 28, 1777), sacred to learning and piety, I now wrote to him from the palace of Pascal Paoli, sacred to wisdom and liberty.' Boswell's _Tour to Corsica_, p. 218. How delighted would Boswell have been had he lived to see the way in which he is spoken of by the biographer of Paoli: 'En traversant la Mediterranee sur de freles navires pour venir s'a.s.seoir au foyer de la nationalite Corse, _des hommes graves_ tels que Boswel et Volney obeissaient sans doute a un sentiment bien plus eleve qu' au besoin vulgaire d'une puerile curiosite.' _Histoire de Pascal Paoli_, par A. Arrighi, i. 231. By every Corsican of any education the name of Boswell is known and honoured. One of them told me that it was in Boswell's pages that Paoli still lived for them. He informed me also of a family which still preserved by tradition the remembrance of Boswell's visit to their ancestral home.

[7] The twelve following lines of this letter were published by Boswell in his _Corsica_ (p. 219) without Johnson's leave. (See _post_, March 23, 1768.) Temple, to whom the book had been shewn before publication, had, it should seem, advised Boswell to omit this extract. Boswell replied:--'Your remarks are of great service to me ... but I must have my great preceptor, Mr. Johnson, introduced.' _Letters of Boswell_, p.

122. In writing to excuse himself to Johnson (_post_, April 26, 1768), he says, 'the temptation to publis.h.i.+ng it was so strong.'

[8] 'Tell your Court,' said Paoli to Boswell, 'what you have seen here.

They will be curious to ask you. A man come from Corsica will be like a man come from the Antipodes.' Boswell's _Corsica_, p. 188. He was not indeed the first 'native of this country' to go there. He found in Bastia 'an English woman of Penrith, in c.u.mberland. When the Highlanders marched through that country in the year 1745, she had married a soldier of the French picquets in the very midst of all the confusion and danger, and when she could hardly understand one word he said.' _Ib_, p.

226. Boswell nowhere quotes Mrs. Barbauld's fine lines on Corsica.

Perhaps he was ashamed of the praise of the wife of 'a little Presbyterian parson who kept an infant boarding school.' (See _post_, under Dec. 17, 1775.) Yet he must have been pleased when he read:--

'Such were the working thoughts which swelled the breast Of generous Boswell; when with n.o.bler aim And views beyond the narrow beaten track By trivial fancy trod, he turned his course From polished Gallia's soft delicious vales,' &c.

Mrs. Barbauld's _Poems_, i. 2.

[9] Murphy, in the _Monthly Review_, lxxvi. 376, thus describes Johnson's life in Johnson's Court after he had received his pension.

'His friend Levett, his physician in ordinary, paid his daily visits with a.s.siduity; attended at all hours, made tea all the morning, talked what he had to say, and did not expect an answer; or, if occasion required it, was mute, officious, and ever complying.... There Johnson sat every morning, receiving visits, hearing the topics of the day, and indolently trifling away the time. Chymistry afforded some amus.e.m.e.nt.'

Hawkins (_Life_, p. 452), says:--'An upper room, which had the advantages of a good light and free air, he fitted up for a study. A silver standish and some useful plate, which he had been prevailed on to accept as pledges of kindness from some who most esteemed him, together with furniture that would not have disgraced a better dwelling, banished those appearances of squalid indigence which, in his less happy days, disgusted those who came to see him.' Some of the plate Johnson had bought. See _post_, April 15, 1781.

[10] It is remarkable, that Mr. Gray has employed somewhat the same image to characterise Dryden. He, indeed, furnishes his car with but two horses, but they are of 'ethereal race':

'Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car, Wide o'er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder cloath'd, and long resounding pace.'

_Ode on the Progress of Poesy_. BOSWELL. In the '_Life of Pope (Works_, viii. 324) Johnson says:--'The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition.

Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle.'

[11] In the original _laws or kings_.

[12]

'The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of h.e.l.l, a h.e.l.l of heaven.'

_Paradise Lost_, i. 254.

'Caelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare current.'

Horace, _Epis_. i. II. 27. See also _ante_, i. 381. note 2.

[13] 'I once inadvertently put him,' wrote Reynolds, 'in a situation from which none but a man of perfect integrity could extricate himself.

I pointed at some lines in _The Traveller_ which I told him I was sure he wrote. He hesitated a little; during this hesitation I recollected myself, that, as I knew he would not lie, I put him in a cleft-stick, and should have had but my due if he had given me a rough answer; but he only said, 'Sir, I did not write them, but that you may not imagine that I have wrote more than I really have, the utmost I have wrote in that poem, to the best of my recollection, is not more than eighteen lines.

[Nine seems the actual number.] It must be observed there was then an opinion about town that Dr. Johnson wrote the whole poem for his friend, who was then in a manner an unknown writer.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii.

458. See also _post_, April 9, 1778. For each line of _The Traveller_ Goldsmith was paid 11-1/4d. (_ante_, i. 193, note), Johnson's present, therefore, of nine lines was, if reckoned in money, worth 8/5-1/4.

[14] See _ante_, i. 194, note.

[15] _Respublica et Status Regni Hungariae. Ex Officina Elzeviriana_, 1634, p. 136. This work belongs to the series of _Republics_ mentioned by Johnson, _post_, under April 29, 1776.

[16] '"Luke" had been taken simply for the euphony of the line. He was one of two brothers, Dosa.... The origin of the mistake [of Zeck for Dosa] is curious. The two brothers belonged to one of the native races of Transylvania called Szeklers or Zecklers, which descriptive addition follows their names in the German biographical authorities; and this, through abridgment and misapprehension, in subsequent books came at last to be subst.i.tuted for the family name.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 370.

The iron crown was not the worst of the tortures inflicted.

[17] See _post_, April 15, 1781. In 1748 Johnson had written (_Works_, v. 231): 'At a time when so many schemes of education have been projected.... so many schools opened for general knowledge, and so many lectures in particular sciences attended.' Goldsmith, in his _Life of Nash_ (published in 1762), describes the lectures at Bath 'on the arts and sciences which are frequently taught there in a pretty, superficial manner so as not to tease the understanding while they afford the imagination some amus.e.m.e.nt.' Cunningham's _Goldsmith's Works_, iv 59.

[18] Perhaps Gibbon had read this pa.s.sage at the time when he wrote in his Memoirs:--'It has indeed been observed, nor is the observation absurd, that, excepting in experimental sciences which demand a costly apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many valuable treatises that have been published on every subject of learning may now supersede the ancient mode of oral instruction.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 50. See _post_, March 20, 1776, note.

[19] See _ante_, i. 103.

[20] Baretti was in Italy at the same time as Boswell. That they met seems to be shewn by a pa.s.sage in Boswell's letter (_post_, Nov. 6, 1766). Malone wrote of him:--'He appears to be an infidel.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 399.

[21] Lord Charlemont records (_Life_, i. 235) that 'Mrs. Mallet, meeting Hume at an a.s.sembly, boldly accosted him in these words:--"Mr. Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you; we deists ought to know each other." "Madame," replied Hume, "I am no deist. I do not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appellation."' Hume, in 1763 or 1764, wrote to Dr. Blair about the men of letters at Paris:--'It would give you and Robertson great satisfaction to find that there is not a single deist among them.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 181. There was no deist, I suppose, because they were all atheists. Romilly (_Life_, i. 179) records the following anecdote, which he had from Diderot in 1781:--'Hume dna avec une grande compagnie chez le Baron d'Holbach. Il etait a.s.sis a cote du Baron; on parla de la religion naturelle. "Pour les Athees," disait Hume, "je ne crois pas qu'il en existe; je n'en ai jamais vu." "Vous avez ete un peu malheureux,"

repondit l'autre, "vous voici a table avec dix-sept pour la premiere fois."' It was on the same day that Diderot related this that he said to Romilly, 'Il faut _sabrer_ la theologie.'