Life of Johnson Volume II Part 58

[478] See _post_, April 17, 1778, and May 19, 1784.

[479] See _ante_, i. 240, and ii. 105.

[480] _Revelations_, xiv. 2.

[481] Johnson, in _The Rambler_, No. 78, describes man's death as 'a change not only of the place, but the manner of his being; an entrance into a state not simply which he knows not, but which perhaps he has not faculties to know.'

[482] This fiction is known to have been invented by Daniel Defoe, and was added to Drelincourt's book, to make it sell. The first edition had it not. MALONE. 'More than fifty editions have not exhausted its popularity. The hundreds of thousands who have bought the silly treatise of Drelincourt have borne unconscious testimony to the genius of De Foe.' Forster's _Essays_, ii. 70.

[483] See _ante_, i. 29.

[484] In his _Life of Akenside ( Works_, viii. 475) he says:--'Of Akenside's _Odes_ nothing favourable can be said.... To examine such compositions singly cannot be required; they have doubtless brighter and darker parts; but when they are once found to be generally dull, all further labour may be spared; for to what use can the work be criticised that will not be read?' See _post_, April 10, 1776.

[485] See _post_, just before May 15, 1776.

[486] See _post_, Sept. 23, 1777.

[487] The account of his trial is ent.i.tled:--'_The Grand Question in Religion Considered. Whether we shall obey G.o.d or Man; Christ or the Pope; the Prophets and Apostles, or Prelates and Priests. Humbly offered to the King and Parliament of Great Britain. By E. Elwall. With an account of the Author's Tryal or Prosecution at Stafford a.s.sizes before Judge Denton. London.'_ No date. Elwall seems to have been a Unitarian Quaker. He was prosecuted for publis.h.i.+ng a book against the doctrines of the Trinity, but was discharged, being, he writes, treated by the Judge with great humanity. In his pamphlet he says (p. 49):--'You see what I have already done in my former book. I have challenged the greatest potentates on earth, yea, even the King of Great Britain, whose true and faithful subject I am in all temporal things, and whom I love and honour; also his n.o.ble and valiant friend, John Argyle, and his great friends Robert Walpole, Charles Wager, and Arthur Onslow; all these can speak well, and who is like them; and yet, behold, none of all these cared to engage with their friend Elwall.' See _post_, May 7, 1773. Dr.

Priestley had received an account of the trial from a gentleman who was present, who described Elwall as 'a tall man, with white hair, a large beard and flowing garments, who struck everybody with respect. He spoke about an hour with great gravity, fluency, and presence of mind.' The trial took place, he said, in 1726. 'It is impossible,' adds Priestley (_Works_, ed. 1831, ii. 417), 'for an unprejudiced person to read Elwall's account of his trial, without feeling the greatest veneration for the writer.' In truth, Elwall spoke with all the simple power of the best of the early Quakers.

[488] Boswell, in the _Hypochrondriack_ (_London Mag_. 1783, p. 290), writing on swearing, says:--'I have the comfort to think that my practice has been blameless in this respect.' He continues (p. 293):-- 'To do the present age justice, there is much less swearing among genteel people than in the last age.'

[489] 'The _Life of Dr. Parnell_ is a task which I should very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing.... What such an author has told, who would tell again? I have made an abstract from his larger narrative, and have this gratification from my attempt, that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of Goldsmith. [Greek: Togargerasesti Thanonton].' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 398.

[490] See _ante_, i. 26, and _post_, April 11, 1773.

[491] 'Mr. Ruffhead says of fine pa.s.sages that they are fine, and of feeble pa.s.sages that they are feeble; but recommending poetical beauty is like remarking the splendour of suns.h.i.+ne; to those who can see it is unnecessary, and to those who are blind, absurd.' _Gent. Mag_. May, 1769, p. 255. The review in which this pa.s.sage occurs, is perhaps in part Johnson's.

[492] See _ante_, i. 448.

[493] See _post_, April 5, 1775.

[494] It was Lewis XIV who said it. 'Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mecontens et un ingrat.' Voltaire, _Siecle de Louis XIV_, ch. 26. 'When I give away a place,' said Lewis XIV, 'I make an hundred discontented, and one ungrateful.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 204.

[495] See _post_, May 15, 1783.

[496] This project has since been realized. Sir Henry Liddel, who made a spirited tour into Lapland, brought two rein-deer to his estate in Northumberland, where they bred; but the race has unfortunately perished. BOSWELL.

[497] Dr. Johnson seems to have meant the Address to the Reader with a KEY subjoined to it; which have been prefixed to the modern editions of that play. He did not know, it appears, that several additions were made to _The Rehearsal_ after the first edition. MALONE. In his _Life of Dryden_ (_Works_, vii. 272) Johnson writes:--'Buckingham characterised Dryden in 1671 by the name of Bayes in _The Rehearsal_.... It is said that this farce was originally intended against Davenant, who in the first draught was characterised by the name of Bilboa.... It is said, likewise, that Sir Robert Howard was once meant. The design was probably to ridicule the reigning poet, whoever he might be. Much of the personal satire, to which it might owe its first reception, is now lost or obscured.'

[498] 'The Pantheon,' wrote Horace Walpole (_Letters_, v. 489), a year later than this conversation, 'is still the most beautiful edifice in England.' Gibbon, a few weeks before Johnson's visit to the Pantheon, wrote:--'In point of _ennui_ and magnificence, the Pantheon is the wonder of the eighteenth century and of the British empire.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, ii. 74. Evelina, in Miss Burners novel (vol. i. Letter xxiii.) contrasts the Pantheon and Ranelagh:--'I was extremely struck on entering the Pantheon with the beauty of the building, which greatly surpa.s.sed whatever I could have expected or imagined. Yet it has more the appearance of a chapel than of a place of diversion; and, though I was quite charmed with the magnificence of the room, I felt that I could not be as gay and thoughtless there as at Ranelagh; for there is something in it which rather inspires awe and solemnity than mirth and pleasure.' Ranelagh was at Chelsea, the Pantheon was in Oxford-street.

See _ante_, ii. 119, and _post_, Sept. 23, 1777.

[499] Her husband, Squire G.o.dfrey Bosville, Boswell (_post_, Aug. 24, 1780), calls 'my Yorks.h.i.+re _chief_.' Their daughter was one of the young ladies whom he pa.s.ses in review in his letters to Temple. 'What say you to my marrying? I intend next autumn to visit Miss Bosville in Yorks.h.i.+re; but I fear, my lot being cast in Scotland, that beauty would not be content. She is, however, grave; I shall see.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 81. She married Sir A. Macdonald, Johnson's inhospitable host in Sky (_ante_, ii. 157).

[500] In _The Adventurer_, No. 120, Johnson, after describing 'a gay a.s.sembly,' continues:--'The world in its best state is nothing more than a larger a.s.sembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which they do not feel.' _Works_, iv. 120.

[501] 'Sir Adam Fergusson, who by a strange coincidence of chances got in to be member of Parliament for Ayrs.h.i.+re in 1774, was the great-grandson of a messenger. I was talking with great indignation that the whole (? old) families of the county should be defeated by an upstart.' _Boswelliana_, p. 283.

[502] See _ante_, ii. 60.

[503] See _ante_, i. 424. Hume wrote of the judgment of Charles I.

(_Hist. of Eng_. vii. 148):--'If ever, on any occasion, it were laudable to conceal truth from the populace, it must be confessed that the doctrine of resistance affords such an example; and that all speculative reasoners ought to observe with regard to this principle the same cautious silence which the laws in every species of government have ever prescribed to themselves.'

[504] 'All foreigners remark that the knowledge of the common people of England is greater than that of any other vulgar. This superiority we undoubtedly owe to the rivulets of intelligence [i. e. the newspapers]

which are continually trickling among us, which every one may catch, and of which every one partakes.' _Idler_, No. 7. In a later number (30), he speaks very contemptuously of news-writers. 'In Sir Henry Wotton's jocular definition, _an amba.s.sador is said to be a man of virtue sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country. A newswriter is _a man without virtue, who writes lies at home for his own profit_.'

[505] See _post_, April 3, 1773.

[506] Probably Mr. Elphinston. See _ante_, i. 210, _post_, April 19, 1773, and April i, 1779. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 493) wrote of a friend:--'He had overcome many disadvantages of his education, for he had been sent to a Jacobite seminary of one Elphinstone at Kensington, where his body was starved and his mind also. He returned to Edinburgh to college. He had hardly a word of Latin, and was obliged to work hard with a private tutor.'

[507] 'In progress of time Abel Sampson, _probationer_ of divinity, was admitted to the privileges of a preacher.' _Guy Mannering_, chap. ii.

[508] In his Dictionary he defines _heinous_ as _atrocious; wicked in a high degree_.

[509] _Ephesians_, v. 5.

[510] His second definition of _wh.o.r.emonger_ is _one who converses with a fornicatress_.

[511] It must not be presumed that Dr. Johnson meant to give any countenance to licentiousness, though in the character of an Advocate he made a just and subtle distinction between occasional and habitual transgression. BOSWELL.

[512] Erskine was born in 1750, entered the navy in 1764, the army in 1768, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1776, was called to the Bar in 1778, was made a King's counsel in 1783, and Lord Chancellor in 1806. He died in 1823. Campbell's _Chancellors_, vi. 368-674.

[513] Johnson had called Churchill 'a blockhead.' _Ante_, i. 419. 'I have remarked,' said Miss Reynolds, 'that his dislike of anyone seldom prompted him to say much more than that the fellow is a blockhead.'

Croker's _Boswell_, p. 834. In like manner Goldsmith called Sterne a blockhead; for Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, i. 260) is, no doubt, right in saying that the author of _Tristram Shandy_ is aimed at in the following pa.s.sage in _The Citizen of the World_ (Letter, 74):--'In England, if a bawdy blockhead thus breaks in on the community, he sets his whole fraternity in a roar; nor can he escape even though he should fly to n.o.bility for shelter.' That Johnson did not think so lowly of Fielding's powers is shown by a compliment that he paid Miss Burney, on one of the characters in _Evelina_. '"Oh, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith is the man!" cried he, laughing violently. "Harry Fielding never drew so good a character!"' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 78.

[514] Richardson wrote of Fielding (_Corres_, vi. l54):--'Poor Fielding!

I could not help telling his sister that I was equally surprised at and concerned for his continued lowness. Had your brother, said I, been born in a stable, or been a runner at a sponging-house, we should have thought him a genius, and wished he had had the advantage of a liberal education, and of being admitted into good company.' Other pa.s.sages show Richardson's dislike or jealousy of Fielding. Thus he wrote:--'You guess that I have not read _Amelia_. Indeed, I have read but the first volume.

I had intended to go through with it; but I found the characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty that I imagined I could not be interested for any one of them.' _Ib_ iv. 60. 'So long as the world will receive, Mr. Fielding will write,' _Ib_ p. 285.

[515] Hannah More wrote in 1780 (_Memoirs_, i. 168), 'I never saw Johnson really angry with me but once. I alluded to some witty pa.s.sage in _Tom Jones_; he replied, "I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it: a confession which no modest lady should ever make. I scarcely know a more corrupt work!"

He went so far as to refuse to Fielding the great talents which are ascribed to him, and broke out into a n.o.ble panegyric on his compet.i.tor, Richardson; who, he said, was as superior to him in talents as in virtue; and whom he p.r.o.nounced to be the greatest genius that had shed its l.u.s.tre on this path of literature.' Yet Miss Burney in her Preface to _Evelina_ describes herself as 'exhilarated by the wit of Fielding and humour of Smollett.' It is strange that while Johnson thus condemned Fielding, he should 'with an ardent and liberal earnestness' have revised Smollett's epitaph. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 28, 1773.

Macaulay in his _Speech on Copyright_ (_Writings and Speeches_, p. 615) said of Richardson's novels:--'No writings have done more to raise the fame of English genius in foreign countries. No writings are more deeply pathetic. No writings, those of Shakespeare excepted, show more profound knowledge of the human heart.' Horace. Walpole (_Letters_, iv. 305), on the other hand, spoke of Richardson as one 'who wrote those deplorably tedious lamentations, _Clarissa_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_, which are pictures of high life as conceived by a bookseller, and romances as they would be spiritualised by a methodist teacher.' Lord Chesterfield says of _Sir Charles Grandison_, that 'it is too long, and there is too much mere talk in it. Whenever he goes _ultra crepidam_ into high life, he grossly mistakes the modes; but to do him justice he never mistakes nature, and he has surely great knowledge and skill both in painting and in interesting the heart.' _Ib_ note. See _ante_, ii. 48.

[516] _Amelia_ he read through without stopping. _Post_, April 12, 1776.

Shenstone (_Works_, iii. 70) writes of 'the tedious character of Parson Adams,' and calls the book 'a very mean performance; of which the greater part is unnatural and unhumorous.'

[517] Johnson wrote to Richardson of _Clarissa_, 'though the story is long, every letter is short.' He begged him to add an _index rerum_, 'for _Clarissa_ is not a performance to be read with eagerness, and laid aside for ever; but will be occasionally consulted by the busy, the aged, and the studious.' Richardson's _Corres_, v. 281.

[518] 'Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who draw their origin from the Counts of Habsburg, the lineal descendants of Eltrico, in the seventh century Duke of Alsace. Far different have been the fortunes of the English and German divisions of the family of Habsburg: the former, the knights and sheriffs of Leicesters.h.i.+re, have slowly risen to the dignity of a peerage: the latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened the liberty of the old, and invaded the treasures of the new world. The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of _Tom Jones_, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial, and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 4. Richardson, five years after _Tom Jones_ was published, wrote (_Corres_, v. 275):--'Its run is over, even with us. Is it true that France had virtue enough to refuse a license for such a profligate performance?'

[519] Mr. Samuel Paterson, eminent for his knowledge of books. BOSWELL.

In the first two editions this note does not appear, but Mr. Paterson is described as 'the auctioneer.' See _post_, Aug. 3, 1776.

[520] Mr. Paterson, in a pamphlet, produced some evidence to shew that his work was written before Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_ appeared. BOSWELL.

[521] _Coryat's Crudities hastily gobled up in five Moneths Trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy, etc. London_, 1611.

[522] 'Lord Erskine,' says Mr. Croker, 'was fond of this anecdote. He told it to me the first time that I was in his company, and often repeated it, boasting that he had been a sailor, a soldier, a lawyer, and a parson.'