Life of Johnson Volume II Part 57

[443] See _ante_, ii. 105.

[444] The pet.i.tion was presented on Feb. 6 of this year. By a majority thrown of 217 to 71 leave was refused for it to be brought up. _Parl.

Hist_. xvii. 245-297. Gibbon, in a letter dated Feb. 8, 1772 (_Misc.

Works_, ii. 74), congratulates Mr. Holroyd 'on the late victory of our dear mamma, the Church of England. She had, last Thursday, 71 rebellious sons, who pretended to set aside her will on account of insanity; but 217 worthy champions, headed by Lord North, Burke, and Charles Fox, though they allowed the thirty-nine clauses of her testament were absurd and unreasonable, supported the validity of it with infinite humour. By the by, Charles Fox prepared himself for that holy war by pa.s.sing twenty-two hours in the pious exercise of hazard; his devotion cost him only about 500 per hour--in all, 11,000.' See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 19, 1773.

[445] 'Lord George Germayne,' writes Horace Walpole, 'said that he wondered the House did not take some steps on this subject with regard to the Universities, where boys were made to subscribe to the Articles without reading them--a scandalous abuse.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 11.

[446] See _ante_, ii. 104.

[447] Burke had thus answered Boswell's proposal:--'What is that Scripture to which they are content to subscribe? The Bible is a vast collection of different treatises; a man who holds the divine authority of one may consider the other as merely human. Therefore, to ascertain Scripture you must have one Article more, and you must define what that Scripture is which you mean to teach.' _Parl. Hist_. xvii. 284.

[448] Dr. Nowell (_post_, June 11, 1784) had this year preached the fast sermon before the House of Commons on Jan. 30, the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, and received the usual vote of thanks. _Parl.

Hist. xvii_. 245. On Feb. 25 the entry of the vote was, without a division, ordered to be expunged. On the publication of the sermon it had been seen that Nowell had a.s.serted that George III was endued with the same virtues as Charles I, and that the members of the House were the descendants of those who had opposed that King. _Ib_ p. 313, and _Ann. Reg_. xv. 79. On March 2, Mr. Montague moved for leave to bring in a bill to abolish the fast, but it was refused by 125 to 97. _Parl.

Hist_. xvii. 319. The fast was abolished in 1859--thirteen years within the century that Johnson was ready to allow it. 'It is remarkable,'

writes Horace Walpole, 'that George III had never from the beginning of his reign gone to church on the 30th of January, whereas George II always did.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 41.

[449] This pa.s.sage puzzled Mr. Croker and Mr. Lockhart. The following extract from the _Gent. Mag_. for Feb. 1772, p. 92, throws light on Johnson's meaning:--'This, say the opposers of the Bill, is putting it in the King's power to change the order of succession, as he may for ever prevent, if he is so minded, the elder branches of the family from marrying, and therefore may establish the succession in the younger. Be this as it may, is it not, in fact, converting the holy inst.i.tution of marriage into a mere state contract?' See also the Protest of fourteen of the peers in _Parl. Hist_. xvii. 391, and _post_, April 15, 1773.

Horace Walpole ends his account of the Marriage Bill by saying:--'Thus within three weeks were the Thirty-nine Articles affirmed and the New Testament deserted.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 37. How carelessly this Act was drawn was shown by Lord Eldon, when Attorney-General, in the case of the marriage of the Duke of Suss.e.x to Lady Augusta Murray. 'Lord Thurlow said to me angrily at the Privy Council, "Sir, why have you not prosecuted under the Act of Parliament all the parties concerned in this abominable marriage?" To which I answered, "That it was a very difficult business to prosecute--that the Act had been drawn by Lord Mansfield and _Mr. Attorney-General Thurlow_, and Mr. Solicitor-General Wedderburne, and unluckily they had made all parties present at the marriage guilty of felony; and as n.o.body could prove the marriage except a person who had been present at it, there could be no prosecution, because n.o.body present could be compelled to be a witness." This put an end to the matter.' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 234.

[450] See _post_, May 9, 1773, and May 13, 1778.

[451] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 25, 1773, where Johnson, discussing the same question, says:--'There is generally a _scoundrelism_ about a low man.'

[452] Mackintosh told Mr. Croker that this friend was Mr. Cullen, afterwards a judge by the name of Lord Cullen. In _Boswelliana_ (pp.

250-2), Boswell mentions him thrice, and always as 'Cullen the mimick.'

His manner, he says, was wretched, and his physiognomy worse than Wilkes's. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 268) says that 'Cullen possessed the talent of mimicry beyond all mankind; for his was not merely an exact imitation of voice and manner of speaking, but a perfect exhibition of every man's manner of thinking on every subject.' Carlyle mentions two striking instances of this.

[453] See _post_, May 15, 1776.

[454] 'The prince of Dublin printers,' as Swift called him. Swift's _Works_ (1803), xviii. 288. He was taken off by Foote under the name of Peter Paragraph, in _The Orators_, the piece in which he had meant to take off Johnson (_ante_, ii. 95). 'Faulkner consoled himself (pending his prosecution of the libeller) by printing the libel, and selling it most extensively.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 287. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 29.

[455] Faulkner had lost one of his legs. 'When Foote had his accident (_ante_, ii. 95), "Now I shall take off old Faulkner indeed to the life," was the first remark he made when what he had to suffer was announced to him.' Forster's _Essays_, ii. 400.

[456] A writer in the _Monthly Review_, lxxvi. 374 (no doubt Murphy), says:--'A large number of friends such as Johnson, Mr. Burke, and Mr.

Murphy dined at Garrick's at Christmas, 1760. Foote was then in Dublin.

It was said at table that he had been horse-whipped by an apothecary for taking him off upon the stage. "But I wonder," said Garrick, "that any man would show so much resentment to Foote; n.o.body ever thought it worth his while to quarrel with him in London." "And I am glad," said Johnson, "to find that the man is rising in the world." The anecdote was afterwards told to Foote, who in return gave out that he would in a short time produce the Caliban of literature on the stage. Being informed of this design, Johnson sent word to Foote, that, the theatre being intended for the reformation of vice, he would go from the boxes on the stage, and correct him before the audience, Foote abandoned the design. No ill-will ensued.'

[457] See _post_, May 15, 1776, where Johnson says:--'I turned Boswell loose at Lichfield, my native city, that he might see for once real _civility_.

[458] In my list of Boswell's projected works (_ante_, i. 225, note 2) I have omitted this.

[459] See _post_, April 7, 1775.

[460] Boswell visited Ireland in the summer of 1760. Prior's _Goldsmith_, i. 450.

[461] Puffendorf states that 'tutors and schoolmasters have a right to the moderate use of gentle discipline over their pupils'--viii. 3-10; adding, rather superfluously, Grotius's _caveat_, that 'it shall not extend to a power of death.' CROKER.

[462] The brother of Sir J. Macdonald, mentioned _ante_, i. 449. Johnson visited him in the Isle of Skye. 'He had been very well pleased with him in London, but he was dissatisfied at hearing heavy complaints of rents racked, and the people driven to emigration.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 2, 1773. He reproached him also with meanness as a host.

[463] Lord Campbell (_Lives of the Chancellors_, v. 449) points out that this conversation followed close on the appointment of 'the incompetent Bathurst' as Chancellor. 'Such a conversation,' he adds, 'would not have occurred during the chancellors.h.i.+p of Lord Hardwicke or Lord Somers.'

[464]

'But if at first he minds his. .h.i.ts, And drinks champagne among the wits,' &c.

Prior's _Chameleon_, 1. 39.

[465] 'Plain truth, _dear Murray_, needs no flowers of speech.' Pope thus addresses him in Epistle vi. Book i. of his _Imitations of Horace_, which he dedicated to him.

[466] See _ante_, 386.

[467] See _post_, March 23, 1776.

[468] Afterwards Lord Ashburton. Described by Johnson (_post_, July 22, 1777), as 'Mr. Dunning, the great lawyer.'

[469] 'Having cleared his tongue from his native p.r.o.nunciation, so as to be no longer distinguished as a Scot, he seems inclined to disenc.u.mber himself from all adherences of his original, and took upon him to change his name from Scotch _Malloch_ to English _Mallet_, without any imaginable reason of preference which the eye or ear can discover. What other proofs he gave of disrespect to his native country I know not, but it was remarked of him that he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 464. See _ante_, i. 268, and _post_, April 28, 1783.

[470] Mr. Love was, so far as is known, the first who advised Boswell to keep a journal. When Boswell was but eighteen, writing of a journey he had taken, he says: 'I kept an exact journal, at the particular desire of my friend, Mr. Love, and sent it to him in sheets every post.'

_Letters of Boswell_, p. 8.

[471] 'That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.' _Hamlet_, iii. 2.

[472] Jeffrey wrote from Oxford, where he spent nine months in 1791-2:--'The only part of a Scotchman I mean to abandon is the language, and language is all I expect to learn in England.' (c.o.c.kburn's _Jeffrey_, i. 46). His biographer says:--'He certainly succeeded in the abandonment of his habitual Scotch. The change was so sudden and so complete, that it excited the surprise of his friends, and furnished others with ridicule for many years.... The result, on the whole, was exactly as described by Lord Holland, who said that though Jeffrey "had lost the broad Scotch at Oxford, he had only gained the narrow English."' c.o.c.kburn, in forgetfulness of Mallet's case, says that 'the acquisition of a pure English accent by a full-grown Scotchman is fortunately impossible.'

[473] Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville. See _post_, under Nov.

29, 1777. Boswell wrote to Temple on May 22, 1775:--'Harry Dundas is going to be made King's Advocate--Lord Advocate at thirty-three! I cannot help being angry and somewhat fretful at this; he has, to be sure, strong parts, but he is a coa.r.s.e, unlettered, unfanciful dog.'

_Letters of Boswell_, p. 195. Horace Walpole describes him as 'the rankest of all Scotchmen, and odious for that b.l.o.o.d.y speech that had fixed on him the nick-name of _Starvation_! _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 479. On p. 637 he adds:--'The happily coined word "starvation" delivered a whole continent from the Northern harpies that meant to devour it.' The speech in which Dundas introduced _starvation_ was made in 1775. Walpole's _Letters_, viii. 30. See _Parl. Hist_., xviii. 387. His character is drawn with great force by c.o.c.kburn. _Life of Jeffrey_, i. 77.

[474] The correspondent of Hume. See J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 320.

[475] See _post_, May 12, 1778.

[476] In the _Plan_ (Works, v. 9), Johnson noticed the difference of the p.r.o.nunciation of _great_. 'Some words have two sounds which may be equally admitted as being equally defensible by authority. Thus _great_ is differently used:--

'For Swift and him despised the farce of state, The sober follies of the wise and great.'--POPE.

'As if misfortune made the throne her seat, And none could be unhappy but the great.'--ROWE.

In the _Preface to the Dictionary_ (_Works_, v. 25), Johnson says that 'the vowels are capriciously p.r.o.nounced, and differently modified by accident or affectation, not only in every province, but in every mouth.' Swift gives both rhymes within ten lines:--

'My lord and he are grown so great-- Always together, tete-a-tete.'

'You, Mr. Dean, frequent the great, Inform us, will the emperor treat?'

Swift's _Works_ (1803), x. 110.

[477] 'Dr. Henry More, of Cambridge, Johnson did not much affect; he was a Platonist, and, in Johnson's opinion, a visionary. He would frequently cite from him, and laugh at, a pa.s.sage to this effect:--"At the consummation of all things, it shall come to pa.s.s that eternity shall shake hands with opacity"' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 543.