Life of Johnson Volume III Part 60

[568] See _ante_, p. 86.

[569] 'For I bear them record that they have a zeal of G.o.d, but not according to knowledge.' _Romans_, x. 2.

[570] Horace Walpole wrote:--'Feb. 17, 1773. Caribs, black Caribs, have no representatives in Parliament; they have no agent but G.o.d, and he is seldom called to the bar of the House to defend their cause.' Walpole's _Letters_, v. 438. 'Feb. 14, 1774. 'If all the black slaves were in rebellion, I should have no doubt in choosing my side, but I scarce wish perfect freedom to merchants who are the bloodiest of all tyrants. I should think the souls of the Africans would sit heavy on the swords of the Americans.' _Ib_. vi. 60.

[571] See _ante_, ii. 27, 312.

[572] 'We are told that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear,' etc. _Works_, vi. 262. In his _Life of Milton_ (_ib_. vii. 116) he says:--'It has been observed that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.'

[573] See page 76 of this volume. BOSWELL.

[574] The address was delivered on May 23, 1770. The editor of _Rogers's Table Talk_ quotes, on p. 129, Mr. Maltby, the friend of Rogers, who says:--'Dr. C. Burney a.s.sured me that Beckford did not utter one syllable of the speech--that it was wholly the invention of Horne Tooke.

Being very intimate with Tooke, I questioned him on the subject. "What Burney states," he said, "is true. I saw Beckford just after he came from St. James's. I asked him what he had said to the King; and he replied, that he had been so confused, he scarcely knew what he had said. But, cried I, _your speech_ must be sent to the papers; I'll write it for you. I did so immediately, and it was printed forthwith."' Tooke gave the same account to Isaac Reed. Walpole's _Letters_, v. 238, note.

Stephens (_Life of Horne Tooke_, i. 155-8) says, that the King's answer had been antic.i.p.ated and that Horne had suggested the idea of a reply.

Stephens continues:--'The speech in reply, as Mr. Horne lately acknowledged to me, was his composition.' Stephens does not seem to have heard the story that Beckford did not deliver the reply. He says that Horne inserted the account in the newspapers. 'No one,' he continues, 'was better calculated to give copies of those harangues than the person who had furnished the originals; and as to the occurrences at St.

James's, he was enabled to detail the particulars from the lips of the members of the deputation.' Alderman Townshend a.s.sured Lord Chatham that Beckford did deliver the speech. _Chatham Corres_. iii. 460. Horne Tooke's word is not worth much. He did not resign his living till more than seven years after he wrote to Wilkes:--'It is true I have suffered the infectious hand of a bishop to be waved over me; whose imposition, like the sop given to Judas, is only a signal for the devil to enter.'

Stephens's _Horne Tooke_, i. 76. Beckford, dying in his Mayoralty, is oddly connected with Chatterton. 'Chatterton had written a political essay for _The North Briton_, which, though accepted, was not printed on account of Lord Mayor Beckford's death. The patriot thus calculated the death of his great patron:--

s. d.

Lost by his death in this Essay 1 11 6 Gained in Elegies 2.2 in Essays 3.3 ---- 5 5 0 ------------- Am glad he is dead by 3 13 6

D'Israeli's _Calamities of Authors_, i. 54.

[575] At the time that Johnson wrote this there were serfs in Scotland.

An Act pa.s.sed in 1775 (15 Geo. III. c. 22) contains the following preamble:--'Whereas by the law of Scotland, as explained by the judges of the courts of law there, many colliers and salters are in a state of slavery and bondage, bound to the collieries or saltworks where they work for life, transferable with the coalwork and salteries,' etc. The Act was ineffectual in giving relief, and in 1779 by 39 Geo. III. c. 56 all colliers were 'declared to be free from their servitude.' The last of these emanc.i.p.ated slaves died in the year 1844. _Tranent and its Surroundings_, by P. M'Neill, p. 26. See also _Parl. Hist_. xxix.

1109, where Dundas states that it was only 'after several years'

struggle that the bill was carried through both Houses.'

[576] See _ante_, ii. 13.

[577] 'The Utopians do not make slaves of the sons of their slaves; the slaves among them are such as are condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime.' Sir T. More's _Utopia--Ideal Commonwealths_, p. 129.

[578] The Rev. John Newton (Cowper's friend) in 1763 wrote of the slave-trade, in which he had been engaged, 'It is indeed accounted a genteel employment, and is usually very profitable, though to me it did not prove so, the Lord seeing that a large increase of wealth could not be good for me.' Newton's _Life_, p. 148. A ruffian of a London Alderman, a few weeks before _The Life of Johnson_ was published, said in parliament:--'The abolition of the trade would destroy our Newfoundland fishery, which the slaves in the West Indies supported _by consuming that part of the fish which was fit for no other consumption_, and consequently, by cutting off the great source of seamen, annihilate our marine.' _Parl. Hist_. xxix. 343.

[579] Gray's Elegy. Mrs. Piozzi maintained that 'mercy was totally abolished by French maxims; for, if all men are equal, mercy is no more.' Piozzi's _Synonymy_, i. 370. Johnson, in 1740, described slavery as 'the most calamitous estate in human life,' a state 'which has always been found so destructive to virtue, that in many languages a slave and a thief are expressed by the same word.' _Works_, v. 265-6.

Nineteen years later he wrote of the discoveries of the Portuguese:--'Much knowledge has been acquired, and much cruelty been committed; the belief of religion has been very little propagated, and its laws have been outrageously and enormously violated.' _Ib_. p. 219.

Horace Walpole wrote, on July 9, 1754, (_Letters_, ii. 394), 'I was reading t'other day the _Life of Colonel Codrington_. He left a large estate for the propagation of the Gospel, and ordered that three hundred negroes should constantly be employed upon it. Did one ever hear a more truly Christian charity than keeping up a perpetuity of three hundred slaves to look after the Gospel's estate?' Churchill, in _Gotham_, published in 1764 (_Poems_, ii. 101), says of Europe's treatment of the savage race:--

'Faith too she plants, for her own ends imprest, To make them bear the worst, and hope the best.'

[580]

'With stainless l.u.s.tre virtue s.h.i.+nes, A base repulse nor knows nor fears;

Nor claims her honours, nor declines, As the light air of crowds uncertain veers.'

FRANCIS. Horace _Odes_, iii. 2.

[581] Sir Walter Scott, in a note to _Redgauntlet_, Letter 1, says:-- 'Sir John Nisbett of Dirleton's _Doubts and Questions upon the Law especially of Scotland_, and Sir James Stewart's _Dirleton's Doubts and Questions resolved and answered_, are works of authority in Scottish jurisprudence. As is generally the case, the _Doubts_ are held more in respect than the solution.'

[582] When Boswell first made Johnson's acquaintance it was he who suffered from the late hours. _Ante_, i. 434.

[583] See _ante_, ii. 312.

[584] Burke, in _Present Discontents_, says:--'The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength and far less odium, under the name of Influence.' _Influence_ he explains as 'the method of governing by men of great natural interest or great acquired consideration.' Payne's _Burke_, i. 10, 11. 'Influence,'

said Johnson,' must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 18. To political life might be applied what Johnson wrote of domestic life:--'It is a maxim that no man ever was enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S., v. 343.

[585] Boswell falls into what he calls 'the cant transmitted from age to age in praise of the ancient Romans.' _Ante_, i. 311. To do so with Johnson was at once to provoke an attack, for he looked upon the Roman commonwealth as one 'which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind.' _Ib_. Moreover he disliked appeals to history. 'General history,' writes Murphy (_Life_, p. 138), 'had little of his regard.

Biography was his delight. Sooner than hear of the Punic War he would be rude to the person that introduced the subject.' Mrs. Piozzi says (_Anec_. p. 80) that 'no kind of conversation pleased him less, I think, than when the subject was historical fact or general polity.

'What shall we learn from _that_ stuff?' said he. 'He never,' as he expressed it, 'desired to hear of the _Punic War_ while he lived.' The _Punic War_, it is clear, was a kind of humorous catch word with him.

She wrote to him in 1773:--'So here's modern politics in a letter from me; yes and a touch of the _Punic War_ too.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 187.

He wrote to her in 1775, just after she had been at the first regatta held in England:--'You will now find the advantage of having made one at the regatta.... It is the good of public life that it supplies agreeable topics and general conversation. Therefore wherever you are, and whatever you see, talk not of the Punic War; nor of the depravity of human nature; nor of the slender motives of human actions; nor of the difficulty of finding employment or pleasure; but talk, and talk, and talk of the regatta.' _Ib_. p. 260. He was no doubt sick of the constant reference made by writers and public speakers to Rome. For instance, in Bolingbroke's _Dissertation upon Parties_, we find in three consecutive Letters (xi-xiii) five ill.u.s.trations drawn from Rome.

[586] It is strange that Boswell does not mention that on this day they met the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Argyle in the street. That they did so we learn from _Piozzi Letters_, i. 386. Perhaps the d.u.c.h.ess shewed him 'the same marked coldness' as at Inverary. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 25.

[587] At Auchinleck he had 'exhorted Boswell to plant a.s.siduously.'

Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 4.

[588] See _ante_, i. 72. In Scotland it was c.o.c.ker's _Arithmetic_ that he took with him. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 31. He was not always correct in his calculations. For instance, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Ashbourne less than a fortnight after Boswell's departure: 'Mr. Langdon bought at Nottingham fair fifteen tun of cheese; which, at an ounce a-piece, will suffice after dinner for four-hundred-and-eighty thousand men.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 2. To arrive at this number he must have taken a hundredweight as equal to, not 112, but 100, pounds.

[589] Johnson wrote the next day:--'Boswell is gone, and is, I hope, pleased that he has been here; though to look on anything with pleasure is not very common. He has been gay and good-humoured in his usual way, but we have not agreed upon any other expedition.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 384.

[590] He lent him also the original journal of his _Hebrides_, and received in return a complimentary letter, which he in like manner published. Boswell's _Hebrides_, near the end.

[591] 'The landlord at Ellon said that he heard he was the greatest man in England, next to Lord Mansfield.' _Ante_, ii. 336.

[592] See _ante_, under March 15, 1776, where Johnson says that 'truth is essential to a story.'

[593] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Boswell kept his journal very diligently; but then what was there to journalize? I should be glad to see what he says of *********.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 390. The number of stars renders it likely that Beauclerk is meant. See _ante_, p. 195, note 1.

[594] See _ante_, ii. 279.

[595] Mr. Beauclerk. See _ante_, p. 195.

[596] Beauclerk.

[597] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Boswell says his wife does not love me quite well yet, though we have made a formal peace.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 390.

[598] A daughter born to him. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker says that this daughter was Miss Jane Langton, mentioned post, May 10, 1784.

[599] She had already had eleven children, of whom seven were by this time dead. _Ante_, p. 109. This time a daughter was born, and not a young brewer. _Post_, July 3, 1778.

[600] Three months earlier Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'We are not far from the great year of a hundred thousand barrels, which, if three s.h.i.+llings be gained upon each barrel, will bring us fifteen thousand pounds a year.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 357. We may see how here, as elsewhere, he makes himself almost one with the Thrales.

[601] See _ante_, p. 97.

[602] Mrs. Aston. BOSWELL.

[603] See _State Trials_, vol. xi. p. 339, and Mr. Hargrave's argument. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p. 87.