Life of Johnson Volume III Part 69

Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphis?

Qua rosa mirantes tam nova mutat aquas?

Numen, convinvae, praesens agnoscite numen, Nympha pudica_ DEUM _vidit, et erubuit_.' MALONE.

What gave your springs a brightness not their own?

What rose so strange the wond'ring waters flushed?

Heaven's hand, oh guests; heaven's hand may here be known; The spring's coy nymph has seen her G.o.d and blushed.

[896] 'He that made the verse following (some ascribe it to Giraldus Cambrensis) could adore both the sun rising, and the sun setting, when he could so cleanly honour King Henry II, then departed, and King Richard succeeding.

"_Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla sequutaest_."'

Camden's _Remains_ (1870), p. 351.

[897] 'When Mr. Hume began to be known in the world as a philosopher, Mr. White, a decent, rich merchant of London, said to him:--"I am surprised, Mr. Hume, that a man of your good sense should think of being a philosopher. Why, _I_ now took it into my head to be a philosopher for some time, but tired of it most confoundedly, and very soon gave it up." "Pray, Sir," said Mr. Hume, "in what branch of philosophy did you employ your researches? What books did you read?"

"Books?" said Mr. White; "nay sir, I read no books, but I used to sit whole forenoons a-yawning and poking the fire." _Boswelliana_, p. 221.

The French were more successful than Mr. Edwards in the pursuit of philosophy, Horace Walpole wrote from Paris in 1766 (_Letters_, iv.

466):--'The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness.'

[898] See _ante_, ii. 8.

[899] See _ante_, i. 332.

[900] See _ante_, i. 468, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 4.

[901] I am not absolutely sure but this was my own suggestion, though it is truly in the character of Edwards. BOSWELL.

[902] Sixty-nine. He was born in 1709.

[903] See _ante_, i. 75, note 1.

[904]

'O my coevals! remnants of yourselves!

Poor human ruins, tottering o'er the grave!

Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees, Strike deeper their vile roots, and closer cling, Still more enamoured of this wretched soil?'

Young's _Night Thoughts_, Night iv.

[905] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 20, 1773. According to Mrs. Piozzi 'he liked the expression so well that he often repeated it.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 208. He wrote to her:--'Have you not observed in all our conversations that my _genius_ is always in extremes; that I am very noisy or very silent; very gloomy or very merry; very sour or very kind?' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 166. In Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_ (ii. 310) we read that 'Dr. Johnson is never his best when there is n.o.body to draw him out;' and in her _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_ (ii. 107) she adds that 'the masterly manner in which, as soon as any topic was started, he seized it in all its bearings, had so much the air of belonging to the leader of the discourse, that this singularity was unsuspected save by the experienced observation of long years of acquaintance.' Malone wrote in 1783:--'I have always found him very communicative; ready to give his opinion on any subject that was mentioned. He seldom, however, starts a subject himself; but it is very easy to lead him into one.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 92. What Dugald Stewart says of Adam Smith (_Life_, p. 114) was equally true of Johnson:--'He was scarcely ever known to start a new topic himself, or to appear unprepared upon those topics that were introduced by others.' Johnson, in his long fits of silence, was perhaps like Cowper, but when aroused he was altogether unlike. Cowper says of himself:--'The effect of such continual listening to the language of a heart hopeless and deserted is that I can never give much more than half my attention to what is started by others, and very rarely start anything myself.' Southey's _Cowper_, v. 10.

[906] In summer 1792, additional and more expensive decorations having been introduced, the price of admission was raised to two s.h.i.+llings. I cannot approve of this. The company may be more select; but a number of the honest commonalty are, I fear, excluded from sharing in elegant and innocent entertainment. An attempt to abolish the one-s.h.i.+lling gallery at the playhouse has been very properly counteracted. BOSWELL.

[907] _Regale_, as a noun, is not in Johnson's Dictionary. It was a favourite word with Miss Burney.

[908] 'Tyers is described in _The Idler_, No. 48, under the name of Tom Restless; "a circ.u.mstance," says Mr. Nichols, "pointed out to me by Dr. Johnson himself."' _Lit. Anec_. viii. 81. 'When Tom Restless rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom he takes to be reasoners, as to hear their discourse, and endeavours to remember something which, when it has been strained through Tom's head, is so near to nothing, that what it once was cannot be discovered. This he carries round from friend to friend through a circle of visits, till, hearing what each says upon the question, he becomes able at dinner to say a little himself; and as every great genius relaxes himself among his inferiors, meets with some who wonder how so young a man can talk so wisely.'

[909] 'That accurate judge of human life, Dr. Johnson, has often been heard by me to observe, that it was the greatest misfortune which could befall a man to have been bred to no profession, and pathetically to regret that this misfortune was his own.' _More's Practical Piety_, p. 313. MARKLAND.

[910] He had wished to study it. See _ante_, i. 134.

[911] The fourth Earl of Lichfield, the Chancellor of Oxford, died in 1772. The t.i.tle became extinct in 1776, on the death of the fifth earl.

The present t.i.tle was created in 1831. Courthope's _Hist. Peerage_, p. 286.

[912] See _post_, March 23, 1783, where Boswell vexed him in much the same way.

[913] I am not entirely without suspicion that Johnson may have felt a little momentary envy; for no man loved the good things of this life better than he did; and he could not but be conscious that he deserved a much larger share of them, than he ever had. I attempted in a newspaper to comment on the above pa.s.sage, in the manner of Warburton, who must be allowed to have shewn uncommon ingenuity, in giving to any authour's text whatever meaning he chose it should carry. [_Ante_, ii.

37, note 1.] As this imitation may amuse my readers, I shall here introduce it:--

'No saying of Dr. Johnson's has been more misunderstood than his applying to Mr. Burke when he first saw him at his fine place at Beaconsfield, _Non equidem invideo; miror magis_. These two celebrated men had been friends for many years before Mr. Burke entered on his parliamentary career. They were both writers, both members of THE LITERARY CLUB; when, therefore, Dr. Johnson saw Mr. Burke in a situation so much more splendid than that to which he himself had attained, he did not mean to express that he thought it a disproportionate prosperity; but while he, as a philosopher, a.s.serted an exemption from envy, _non equidem invideo_, he went on in the words of the poet _miror magis_; thereby signifying, either that he was occupied in admiring what he was glad to see; or, perhaps, that considering the general lot of men of superiour abilities, he wondered that Fortune, who is represented as blind, should, in this instance, have been so just.' BOSWELL. Johnson in his youth had translated

'Non equidem invideo; miror magis'

(Virgil, _Eclogues_, i. II) by

'My admiration only I exprest, (No spark of envy harbours in my breast).'

_Ante_, i. 51.

[914] See _ante_ ii. 136.

[915] This neglect was avenged a few years after Goldsmith's death, when Lord Camden sought to enter The Literary Club and was black-balled.

'I am sorry to add,' wrote Mr. [Sir William] Jones in 1780, 'that Lord Camden and the Bishop of Chester were rejected. When Bishops and Chancellors honour us by offering to dine with us at a tavern, it seems very extraordinary that we should ever reject such an offer; but there is no reasoning on the caprice of men.' _Life of Sir W. Jones_, p. 240.

[916] Cradock (_Memoirs_, i. 229) was dining with The Literary Club, when Garrick arrived very late, full-dressed. 'He made many apologies; he had been unexpectedly detained at the House of Lords, and Lord Camden had insisted upon setting him down at the door of the hotel in his own carriage. Johnson said nothing, but he looked a volume.'

[917] Miss. [Per Errata; Originally: Mrs.] Burney records this year (1778) that Mrs. Thrale said to Johnson, 'Garrick is one of those whom you suffer n.o.body to abuse but yourself; for if any other person speaks against him, you browbeat him in a minute. "Why, madam," answered he, "they don't know when to abuse him, and when to praise him; I will allow no man to speak ill of David that he does not deserve."' Mme.

D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 65. See _ante_, i. 393, note 1.

[918] The pa.s.sage is in a letter dated Dublin, Oct. 12, 1727. 'Here is my maintenance,' wrote Swift, 'and here my convenience. If it pleases G.o.d to restore me to my health, I shall readily make a third journey; if not we must part, as all human creatures have parted.' He never made the third journey. Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xvii. 154.

[919] See _ante_, ii. 162.

[920] No doubt Percy.

[921] The philosopher was Bias. Cicero, _Paradoxa_, i.

[922] Johnson recorded of this day (_Pr. and Med_. p. 164):--'We sat till the time of wors.h.i.+p in the afternoon, and then came again late, at the Psalms. Not easily, I think, hearing the sermon, or not being attentive, I fell asleep.'

[923] Marshall's _Minutes of Agriculture_.

[924] It was only in hay-time and harvest that Marshall approved of Sunday work. He had seen in the wet harvest of 1775 so much corn wasted that he 'was ambitious to set the patriotic example' of Sunday labour. One Sunday he 'promised every man who would work two s.h.i.+llings, as much roast beef and plumb pudding as he would eat, with as much ale as it might be fit for him to drink.' Nine men and three boys came. In a note in the edition of 1799, he says:--'The Author has been informed that an old law exists (mentioned by Dugdale), which tolerates husbandmen in working on Sundays in harvest; and that, in proof thereof, a gentleman in the north has uniformly carried one load every year on a Sunday.' He adds:--'Jan. 1799. The particulars of this note were furnished by the late Dr. Samuel Johnson; at whose request some considerable part of what was originally written, and _printed_ on this subject was cancelled. That which was published and which is now offered again to the public is, _in effect_, what Dr. Johnson approved; or, let me put it in the most cautious terms, that of which _Dr. Johnson did not disapprove_.' Marshall's _Minutes etc., on Agriculture_, ii. 65-70.

[925] Sat.u.r.day was April 18.

[926] William Duncombe, Esq. He married the sister of John Hughes the poet; was the authour of two tragedies and other ingenious productions; and died 26th Feb. 1769, aged 79. MALONE. In his Life of Hughes (_Works_, vii. 477), Johnson says 'an account of Hughes is prefixed to his works by his relation, the late Mr. Duncombe, a man whose blameless elegance deserved the same respect.'

[927] See _ante_, i. 185, 243, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22.

[928] See _ante_, i. 145.