Life of Johnson Volume III Part 72

[1005] '"Well, Sir," said he, "we had good talk." BOSWELL. "Yes Sir; you tossed and gored several persons."' _Ante_, ii. 66.

[1006] Very likely their host. See _ante_, iii. 48.

[1007] See _ante_, iii. 97.

[1008] _Acts_, X. 1 and 2.

[1009] Mr. Croker says, 'no doubt Dr. Robertson;' see _post_, under June 16, 1784, where Johnson says much the same of 'an authour of considerable eminence.' In this case Mr. Croker says, 'probably Dr.

Robertson.' I have little doubt that Dr. Beattie was there meant. He may be meant also here, for the description of the conversation does not agree with what we are told of Robertson. See _ante_, p. 335. note 1.

Perhaps, however, Dr. Blair was the eminent author. It is in Boswell's manner to introduce the same person in consecutive paragraphs as if there were two persons.

[1010] See _ante_, ii. 256.

[1011] Chappe D'Auteroche writes:--'La douceur de sa physionomie et sa vivacite annoncaient plutot quelque indiscretion que l'ombre d'un crime. Tous ceux que j'ai consultes par la suite m'ont cependant a.s.sure qu'elle etait coupable.' _Voyage en Siberie_, i. 227. Lord Kames says:--'Of whatever indiscretion she might have been guilty, the sweetness of her countenance and her composure left not in the spectators the slightest suspicion of guilt.' She was cruelly knouted, her tongue was cut out, and she was banished to Siberia. Kames's _Sketches_, i. 363.

[1012] Mr. Croker says:--'Here I think the censure is quite unjust.

Lord Kames gives in the clearest terms the same explanation.' Kames made many corrections in the later editions. On turning to the first, I found, as I expected, that Johnson's censure was quite just. Kames says (i. 76):--'Whatever be the cause of high or low interest, I am certain that the quant.i.ty of circulating coin can have no influence.

Supposing the half of our money to be withdrawn, a hundred pounds lent ought still to afford but five pounds as interest; because if the princ.i.p.al be doubled in value, so is also the interest.' This pa.s.sage was struck out in later editions.

[1013] 'Johnson had an extraordinary admiration of this lady, notwithstanding she was a violent Whig. In answer to her high-flown speeches for _Liberty_, he addressed to her the following Epigram, of which I presume to offer a translation:--

'_Liber ut esse velim suasiti pulchra Maria Ut maneam liber pulchra Maria vale_,'

Adieu, Maria! since you'd have me free; For, who beholds thy charms a slave must be.

A correspondent of _The Gentleman's Magazine_, who subscribes himself SCIOLUS, to whom I am indebted for several excellent remarks, observes, 'The turn of Dr. Johnson's lines to Miss Aston, whose Whig principles he had been combating, appears to me to be taken from an ingenious epigram in the _Menagiana_ [vol. iii. p. 376, edit. 1716] on a young lady who appeared at a masquerade, _habillee en Jesuite_, during the fierce contentions of the followers of Molinos and Jansenius concerning free-will:--

"On s'etonne ici que Caliste Ait pris l'habit de Moliniste.

Puisque cette jeune beaute Ote a chacun sa liberte, N'est-ce pas une Janseniste?"

BOSWELL.

Johnson, in his _Criticism upon Pope's Epitaphs_ (_Works_, viii. 355), quotes the opinion of a 'lady of great beauty and excellence.' She was, says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 162), Molly Aston. Mrs. Piozzi, in her _Letters_ (ii. 383), writes:--'n.o.body has ever mentioned what became of Miss Aston's letters, though he once told me they should be the last papers he would destroy.' See _ante_, i. 83.

[1014] See _ante_, ii. 470.

[1015] Pope's _Essay on Man_, iv. 380.

[1016] See _ante_, i. 294.

[1017] 'March 4, 1745. You say you expect much information about Belleisle, but there has not (in the style of the newspapers) the least particular _transpired_.' Horace Walpole's _Letters_, i. 344. 'Jan. 26, 1748. You will not let one word of it _transpire_.' Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_, iv. 35. 'It would be next to a miracle that a fact of this kind should be known to a whole parish, and not _transpire_ any farther.' Fielding's _Tom Jones_, bk. ii. c. 5. _Tom Jones_ was published before the _Dictionary_, but not so Walpole's _Letters_ and Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_. I have not found a pa.s.sage in which Bolingbroke uses the word, but I have not read all his works.

[1018] 'The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own ... I have registered as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others against the folly of naturalising useless foreigners to the injury of the natives.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 31. 'If an academy should be established for the cultivation of our style, which I, who can never wish to see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries, endeavour with all their influence to stop the license of translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.' _Ib_. p. 49. 'I have rarely admitted any words not authorised by former writers; for I believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent will be able to express his thoughts without further help from other nations.' _The Rambler_, No. 208.

[1019] Boswell on one occasion used _it came out_ where a lover of fine words would have said _it transpired_. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, November 1.

[1020] The record no doubt was destroyed with the other papers that Boswell left to his literary executors (_ante_, p. 301, note 1).

[1021] See _ante_, i. 154.

[1022] 'Of Johnson's pride I have heard Reynolds observe, that if any man drew him into a state of obligation without his own consent, that man was the first he would affront by way of clearing off the account.'

Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 71.

[1023] See _post_, May 1, 1779.

[1024] This had happened the day before (May 11) in the writ of error in Horne's case (_ante_, p. 314). _Ann. Reg_. xii. 181.

[1025] '_To enucleate_. To solve; to clear.' Johnson's _Dictionary_.

[1026] In the original _me_.

[1027] Pope himself (_Moral Essays_, iii. 25) attacks the sentiment contained in this stanza. He says:--

'What nature wants (a phrase I must distrust) Extends to luxury, extends to l.u.s.t.'

Mr. Elwin (Pope's _Works_, ii. 462) doubts the genuineness of this suppressed stanza. Montezuma, in Dryden's _Indian Emperour_, act ii. sc.

2, says:--

'That l.u.s.t of power we from your G.o.dheads have, You're bound to please those appet.i.tes you gave.'

[1028] 'Antoine Arnauld, surnomme le grand Arnauld, theologien et philosophe, ne a Paris le 6 fevrier 1612, mort le 6 aout 1694 a Bruxelles.' _Nouv. Biog. Gen_. iii. 282.

[1029] 'It may be discovered that when Pope thinks himself concealed he indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that his book was presented to the King and Queen by the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud that the edition was taken off by the n.o.bility and persons of the first distinction.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 278.

[1030] _Oth.e.l.lo_, act iii. sc. 3.

[1031] Mr. Langton, I have little doubt. Not only does that which Johnson says of sluggishness fit his character, but the fact that he is spoken of in the next paragraph points to him.

[1032] Mr. Langton. See _ante_, iii. 48.

[1033] We may wonder whether _pasted_ is strictly used. It seems likely that the wealthy brewer, who had a taste for the fine arts, afforded Hogarth at least a frame.

[1034] See _ante_, i. 49.

[1035] Baths are called Hummums in the East, and thence these hotels in Covent Garden, where there were baths, were called by that name. CROKER.

[1036] Beauclerk.

[1037] Bolingbroke. _Ante_, ii. 246.

[1038] Lord Clive. _Ante_, p. 334.

[1039] _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2.

[1040] Johnson, or Boswell in reporting him, here falls into an error.

The editor of Chesterfield's _Works_ says (ii. 3l9), 'that being desirous of giving a specimen of his Lords.h.i.+p's eloquence he has made choice of the three following speeches; the first in the strong nervous style of Demosthenes; the two latter in the witty, ironical manner of Tully.' Now the first of these speeches is not Johnson's, for it was reported in _The Gent. Mag_. for July, 1737, p. 409, nine months before his first contribution to that paper. In spite of great differences this report and that in Chesterfield's _Works_ are substantially the same. If Johnson had any hand in the authorised version he merely revised the report already published. Nor did he always improve it, as will be seen by comparing with Chesterfield's _Works_, ii. 336, the following pa.s.sage from the _Gent. Mag_. p. 411:--'My Lords, we ought in all points to be tender of property. Wit is the property of those who are possessed of it, and very often the only property they have. Thank G.o.d, my Lords, this is not our case; we are otherwise provided for.' The other two speeches are his. In the collected works (xi. 420, 489) they are wrongly a.s.signed to Lord Carteret. See _ante_, i. Appendix A.

[1041] See _ante_, p. 340.