Life of Johnson Volume II Part 62

[629] See _ante_, i. 252.

[630] 'By inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the publick, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.' BOSWELL.

[631] See an account of this learned and respectable gentleman, and of his curious work in the _Middle State, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3rd edition. p. 371. [Oct. 25.] BOSWELL. See _post_, June 9, 1784.

[632] See _ante_, i. 225, for Boswell's project works, and i. 211.

[633] 'When the efficiency [of men and women] is equal, but the pay unequal, the only explanation that can be given is custom.' J. S. Mill's _Political Economy_, Book ii. ch. xiv. 5.

[634] The day before he told Boswell this he had recorded:--'My general resolution, to which I humbly implore the help of G.o.d, is to methodise my life, to resist sloth. I hope from this time to keep a journal.' _Pr.

and Med_. p. 124. Four times more he recorded the same resolution to keep a journal. See _ante_, i. 433, and _post_, Apr. 14,1775.

[635] See _post_, March 30, 1778, where Johnson says:--'A man loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary or journal.'

[636] 'He who has not made the experiment, or who is not accustomed to require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge and distinctness of imagery ... To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive. They trusted to memory what cannot be trusted safely but to the eye, and told by guess what a few hours before they had known with certainty.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 144.

[637] Goldsmith, in his dedication to Reynolds of the _Deserted Village_, refers no doubt to Johnson's opinion of luxury. He writes:--'I know you will object (and indeed _several of our best and wisest friends_ concur in the opinion) that the depopulation it deplores is nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in the poet's own imagination.... In regretting the depopulation of the country I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past it has been the fas.h.i.+on to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages.' See _post_, April 15, 1778.

[638] Johnson, in his _Parl. Debates_ (_Works_, x. 418), makes General Handasyd say:--'The whole pay of a foot soldier is sixpence a day, of which he is to pay fourpence to his landlord for his diet, or, what is very nearly the same, to carry fourpence daily to the market ...

Twopence a day is all that a soldier had to lay out upon cleanliness and decency, and with which he is likewise to keep his arms in order, and to supply himself with some part of his clothing. If, Sir, after these deductions he can, from twopence a day, procure himself the means of enjoying a few happy moments in the year with his companions over a cup of ale, is not his economy much more to be envied than his luxury?'

[639] The humours of Ballamagairy. BOSWELL.

[640]

'Ah me! when shall I marry me?

Lovers are plenty; but fail to relieve me.

He, fond youth, that could carry me, Offers to love, but means to deceive me.

But I will rally and combat the ruiner: Not a look, nor a smile shall my pa.s.sion discover; She that gives all to the false one pursuing her, Makes but a penitent and loses a lover.'

Boswell, in a letter published in Goldsmith's _Misc. Works_, ii. 116, with the song, says:--'The tune is a pretty Irish air, call _The Humours of Ballamagairy_, to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to adapt words; but he has succeeded very happily in these few lines. As I could sing the tune and was fond of them, he was so good as to give me them. I preserve this little relic in his own handwriting with an affectionate care.'

[641] See _ante_, i. 408, and _post_ April 7, 1776.

[642] See _ante_, ii. 74.

[643] See _ante_, i. 429.

[644] See ante, ii. 169, for Johnson's 'half-a-guinea's worth of inferiority.'

[645] Boswell (_ante_, i. 256) mentions that he knew Lyttelton. For his _History_, see _ante_, ii. 37.

[646] Johnson has an interesting paper 'on lying' in _The Adventurer_, No. 50, which thus begins:--'When Aristotle was once asked what a man could gain by uttering falsehoods, he replied, "Not to be credited when he shall tell the truth."'

[647] Johnson speaks of the past, for Sterne had been dead five years.

Gray wrote on April 22, 1760:--'_Tristram Shandy_ is still a greater object of admiration, the man as well as the book. One is invited to dinner where he dines a fortnight beforehand.' Gray's _Works_, ed.

1858, iii. 241.

[648] 'I was but once,' said Johnson, 'in Sterne's company, and then his only attempt at merriment consisted in his display of a drawing too indecently gross to have delighted even in a brothel.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 214.

[649] Townshend was not the man to make his jokes serve twice. Horace Walpole said of his _Champagne Speech_,--'It was Garrick writing and acting extempore scenes of Congreve.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iii. 25. Sir G. Colebrooke says:--'When Garrick and Foote were present he took the lead, and hardly allowed them an opportunity of shewing their talents of mimicry, because he could excel them in their own art.' _Ib_ p. 101, note. '"Perhaps," said Burke, "there never arose in this country, nor in any country, a man of a more pointed and finished wit."' Payne's _Burke_, i. 146.

[650] The 'eminent public character' is no doubt Burke, and the friend, as Mr. Croker suggests, probably Reynolds. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773, for a like charge made by Johnson against Burke. Boswell commonly describes Burke as 'an eminent friend of ours;' but he could not do so as yet, for he first met him fifteen days later. (_Post_, April 30.)

[651] 'Party,' Burke wrote in 1770 (_Thoughts on the Present Discontents_), 'is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed. For my part I find it impossible to conceive that any one believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice.' Payne's _Burke_, i. 86.

[652] On May 5, and again on Nov. 10, the play was commanded by the King and Queen. Prior's _Goldsmith_, ii. 394.

[653] _Absalom and Achitophel_, part i. l. 872.

[654] Paoli perhaps was thinking of himself. While he was still 'the successful rebel' in Corsica, he had said to Boswell:--'The arts and sciences are like dress and ornament. You cannot expect them from us for some time. But come back twenty or thirty years hence, and we'll shew you arts and sciences.' Boswell's _Corsica_, p.172.

[655] 'The Duke of c.u.mberland had been forbidden the Court on his marriage with Mrs. Horton, a year before; but on the Duke of Gloucester's avowal of his marriage with Lady Waldegrave, the King's indignation found vent in the Royal Marriage Act: which was hotly opposed by the Whigs as an edict of tyranny. Goldsmith (perhaps for Burke's sake) helped to make it unpopular with the people: "We'll go to France", says Hastings to Miss Neville, "for there, even among slaves, the laws of marriage are respected." Said on the first night this had directed repeated cheering to the Duke of Gloucester, who sat in one of the boxes.' Forster's _Goldsmith_, ii. 358. See _ante_, ii. 152.

[656] _Stenography_, by John Angell, 1758.

[657] See _post_, April 10, 1778.

[658] See _ante_, ii.

[659] James Harris, father of the first Earl of Malmesbury, born 1709, died 1780. Two years later Boswell wrote to Temple: 'I am invited to a dinner at Mr. Cambridge's (for the dinner, see _post_, April 18, 1773), where are to be Reynolds, Johnson, and Hermes Harris. "_Do you think so?" said he. "Most certainly, said I_." Do you remember how I used to laugh at his style when we were in the Temple? He thinks himself an ancient Greek from these little peculiarities, as the imitators of Shakspeare, whom the _Spectator_ mentions, thought they had done wonderfully when they had produced a line similar:--

"And so, good morrow to ye, good Master Lieutenant."'

_Letters of Boswell_, p.187. It is not in the _Spectator_, but in _Martinus Scriblerus_, ch. ix. (Swift's _Works_, 1803, xxiii, 53), that the imitators of Shakspeare are ridiculed. Harris got his name of Hermes from his _Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar_. Cradock (_Memoirs_, i, 208) says that, 'A gentleman applied to his friend to lend him some amusing book, and he recommended Harris's _Hermes_. On returning it, the other asked how he had been entertained.

"Not much," he replied; "he thought that all these imitations of _Tristram Shandy_ fell far short of the original."' See _post_, April 7, 1778, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 3, 1773.

[660] Johnson suffers, in Cowper's epitaph on him, from the same kind of praise as Goldsmith gives Harris:--

'Whose verse may claim, grave, masculine and strong, Superior praise to the mere poet's song.'

Cowper's _Works_, v. 119.

[661] See _ante_, 210.

[662] Cave set up his coach about thirty years earlier (_ante_, i, 152, note). Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_, iii, 172) wrote to Mr. Straham in 1784:--'I remember your observing once to me, as we sat together in the House of Commons, that no two journeymen printers within your knowledge had met with such success in the world as ourselves. You were then at the head of your profession, and soon afterwards became a member of parliament. I was an agent for a few provinces, and now act for them all.'

[663] 'Hamilton made a large fortune out of Smollett's _History_.'

Forster's _Goldsmith_, i, 149. He was also the proprietor of the _Critical Review_.

[664] See _ante_, i, 71.

[665] See _ante_, ii, 179, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 19, 1773.

Horace Walpole wrote of the year 1773:--'The rage of duelling had of late much revived, especially in Ireland, and many attempts were made in print and on the stage to curb so horrid and absurd a practice.'

_Journal of the Reign of George III_, i. 282.

[666] Very likely Boswell. See _Post_, April 10, 1778, where he says:--'I slily introduced Mr. Garrick's fame and his a.s.suming the airs of a great man'.

[667] In the _Garrick's Corres_ up to this date there is no letter from Lord Mansfield which answers Boswell's descriptions. To Lord Chatham Garrick had addressed some verses from Mount Edgec.u.mbe. Chatham, on April 3, 1772, sent verses in return, and wrote:--'You have kindly settled upon me a lasting species of property I never dreamed of in that enchanting place; a far more able conveyancer than any in Chancery-land.