Life of Johnson Volume III Part 48

[153] Mr. Langton is certainly meant. It is strange how often his mode of living was discussed by Johnson and Boswell. See _post_, Nov. 16, 1776, July 22, and Sept. 22, 1777, March 18, April 17, 18, and 20, May 12, and July 3, 1778.

[154] Baretti made a brutal attack on Mrs. Piozzi in the _European Mag_.

for 1788, xiii. 313, 393, and xiv. 89. He calls her 'the frontless female, who goes now by the mean appellation of Piozzi; La Piozzi, as my fiddling countrymen term her; who has dwindled down into the contemptible wife of her daughter's singing-master.' His excuse was the attacks made on him by her in the correspondence just published between herself and Johnson (see _Piozzi Letters_, i. 277, 319). He suspected her, and perhaps with reason, of altering some of these letters. Other writers beside Baretti attacked her. To use Lord Macaulay's words, grossly exaggerated though they are, 'She fled from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown.' Macaulay's _Writings and Speeches_, ed. 1871, p.

393. According to Dr. T. Campbell (_Diary_, p. 33) Baretti flattered Mrs. Thrale to her face. 'Talking as we were at tea of the magnitude of the beer vessels, Baretti said there was one thing in Mr. Thrale's house still more extraordinary; meaning his wife. She gulped the pill very prettily--so much for Baretti.' See _post_, Dec. 21, 1776.

[155] Likely enough Boswell himself. On three other occasions he mentions Otaheite; _ante_, May 7, 1773, _post_, June 15, 1784 and in his _Hebrides_, Sept. 23, 1773. He was fond of praising savage life. See _ante_, ii. 73.

[156] Chatterton said that he had found in a chest in St. Mary Redcliffe Church ma.n.u.script poems by Canynge, a merchant of Bristol in the fifteenth century, and a friend of his, Thomas Rowley. He gave some of these ma.n.u.scripts to George Catcot, a pewterer of Bristol, who communicated them to Mr. Barret, who was writing a History of Bristol.

Rose's _Biog. Dict_. vi. 256.

[157] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22.

[158] See _ante_, i. 396.

[159] 'Artificially. Artfully; with skill.' Johnson's _dictionary_.

[160] Mr. Tyrwhitt, Mr. Warton, Mr. Malone. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote on May 16:--'Steevens seems to be connected with Tyrwhitt in publis.h.i.+ng Chatterton's poems; he came very anxiously to know the result of our inquiries, and though he says he always thought them forged, is not well pleased to find us so fully convinced.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 326.

[161] Catcot had been antic.i.p.ated by Smith the weaver (2 _Henry VI_.

iv. 2)--'Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.'

[162] Horace Walpole says (_Works_, iv. 224) that when he was 'dining at the Royal Academy, Dr. Goldsmith drew the attention of the company with an account of a marvellous treasure of ancient poems lately discovered at Bristol, and expressed enthusiastic belief in them; for which he was laughed at by Dr. Johnson, who was present.... You may imagine we did not at all agree in the measure of our faith; but though his credulity diverted me, my mirth was soon dashed; for, on asking about Chatterton, he told me he had been in London, and had destroyed himself.'

[163] Boswell returned a few days earlier. On May 1 he wrote to Temple: --'Luckily Dr. Taylor has begged of Dr. Johnson to come to London, to a.s.sist him in some interesting business; and Johnson loves much to be so consulted, and so comes up. I am now at General Paoli's, quite easy and gay, after my journey; not wearied in body or dissipated in mind. I have lodgings in Gerrard Street, where cards are left to me; but I lie at the General's, whose attention to me is beautiful.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 234. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 6:--'Tomorrow I am to dine, as I did yesterday, with Dr. Taylor. On Wednesday I am to dine with Oglethorpe; and on Thursday with Paoli. He that sees before him to his third dinner has a long prospect.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 320.

[164] See _ante_, May 12, 1775.

[165] In the _Dramatis Personae_ of the play are 'Aimwell and Archer, two gentlemen of broken fortunes, the first as master, and the second as servant.' See _ante_, March 23, 1776, for Garrick's opinion of Johnson's 'taste in theatrical merit.'

[166] Johnson is speaking of the _Respublicae Elzevirianae_, either 36 or 62 volumes. 'It depends on every collector what and how much he will admit.' Ebert's _Bibl. Dict_. iii. 1571. See _ante_, ii. 7.

[167] See _post_, under Oct. 20, 1784, for 'the learned pig.'

[168] In the first edition Mme. de Sevigne's name is printed Sevigne, in the second Sevige, in the third Sevigne. Authors and compositors last century troubled themselves little about French words.

[169] Milton had put the same complaint into Adam's mouth:--

'Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? ...

... As my will Concurred not to my being,' &c.

_Paradise Lost_, x. 743.

[170] See _ante_, April 10, 1775.

[171] Fielding in the _Covent Garden Journal_ for June 2, 1752 (_Works_, x. 80), says of the difficulty of admission at the hospitals:--'The properest objects (those I mean who are most wretched and friendless) may as well aspire at a place at Court as at a place in the Hospital.'

[172] 'We were talking of Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton. "He was the only man," says Mr. Johnson quite seriously, "that did justice to my good breeding; and you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not observing the amazement of his hearers, "no man is so cautious not to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking; no man so steadily refuses preference on himself, or so willingly bestows it on another, as I do; no man holds so strongly as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the breach of it; yet people think me rude; but Barnard did me justice."'

Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 36. On p. 258, Mrs. Piozzi writes:--'No one was indeed so attentive not to offend in all such sort of things as Dr.

Johnson; nor so careful to maintain the ceremonies of life; and though he told Mr. Thrale once, that he had never sought to please till past thirty years old, considering the matter as hopeless, he had been always studious not to make enemies by apparent preference of himself.' See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 27, 1773, where Johnson said:--'Sir, I look upon myself as a very polite man.'

[173] The younger Colman in his boyhood met Johnson and Gibbon. 'Johnson was in his rusty brown and his black worsteds, and Gibbon in a suit of flowered velvet, with a bag and sword. He condescended, once or twice in the course of the evening, to talk with me;--the great historian was light and playful, suiting his matter to the capacity of the boy; but it was done more sua [sic]; still his mannerism prevailed; still he tapped his snuff-box; still he smirked, and smiled, and rounded his periods with the same air of good-breeding, as if he were conversing with men.

His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was a round hole, nearly in the centre of his visage.' _Random Records_, i. 121.

[174] Samuel Sharp's _Letters from Italy_ were published in 1766. See _ante_, ii. 57, note 2, for Baretti's reply to them.

[175] It may be observed, that Mr. Malone, in his very valuable edition of Shakspeare, has fully vindicated Dr. Johnson from the idle censures which the first of these notes has given rise to. The interpretation of the other pa.s.sage, which Dr. Johnson allows to be _disputable_, he has clearly shown to be erroneous. BOSWELL. The first note is on the line in _Hamlet_, act v. sc. 2--

'And many such like as's of great charge.'

Johnson says:--'A quibble is intended between _as_ the conditional particle, and _a.s.s_ the beast of burthen.' On this note Steevens remarked:--'Shakespeare has so many quibbles of his own to answer for, that there are those who think it hard he should be charged with others which perhaps he never thought of.' The second note is on the opening of Hamlet's soliloquy in act iii. sc. i. The line--

'To be, or not to be, that is the question,'

is thus paraphrased by Johnson:--'Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be.'

[176] See _post_, March 30, April 14 and 15, 1778, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 25.

[177] Wesley wrote on Jan. 21, 1767 (_Journal_, iii. 263):--'I had a conversation with an ingenious man who proved to a demonstration that it was the duty of every man that could to be "clothed in purple and fine linen," and to "fare sumptuously every day;" and that he would do abundantly more good hereby than he could do by "feeding the hungry and clothing the naked." O the depth of human understanding! What may not a man believe if he will?' Much the same argument Johnson, thirty-three years earlier, had introduced in one of his _Debates_ (_Works_, xi. 349). He makes one of the speakers say:--'Our expenses are not all equally destructive; some, though the method of raising them be vexatious and oppressive, do not much impoverish the nation, because they are refunded by the extravagance and luxury of those who are retained in the pay of the court.' See _post_, March 23, 1783. The whole argument is nothing but Mandeville's doctrine of 'private vices, public benefits.' See _post_, April 15, 1778.

[178] See _ante_, iii. 24.

[179] Johnson no doubt refers to Walpole in the following pa.s.sage (_Works_, viii. l37):--'Of one particular person, who has been at one time so popular as to be generally esteemed, and at another so formidable as to be universally detested, Mr. Savage observed that his acquisitions had been small, or that his capacity was narrow, and that the whole range of his mind was from obscenity to politicks, and from politicks to obscenity.' This pa.s.sage is a curious comment on Pope's lines on Sir Robert--

'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power.'

_Epilogue to the Satires_, i. 29.

[180] Most likely Boswell himself. See _ante_, March 25, 1776, and _post_, April 10, 1778, for Johnson's dislike of questioning. See also _ante_, ii. 84, note 3.

[181] See _ante_, April 14, 1775.

[182] See _ante_, May 12, 1774.

[183] A Gallicism, which has it appears, with so many others, become vernacular in Scotland. The French call a pulpit, _la chaire de verite_.

CROKER.

[184] As a proof of Dr. Johnson's extraordinary powers of composition, it appears from the original ma.n.u.script of this excellent dissertation, of which he dictated the first eight paragraphs on the 10th of May, and the remainder on the 13th, that there are in the whole only seven corrections, or rather variations, and those not considerable. Such were at once the vigorous and accurate emanations of his mind. BOSWELL.

[185] It is curious to observe that Lord Thurlow has here, perhaps in compliment to North Britain, made use of a term of the Scotch Law, which to an English reader may require explanation. To _qualify_ a wrong, is to point out and establish it. BOSWELL.

[186]

'Quaeque ipse miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.'

'Which thing myself unhappy did behold, Yea, and was no small part thereof.'

Morris, _Aeneids_, ii. 5.