Life of Johnson Volume IV Part 42

[47] One evening, in the Haymarket Theatre, 'when Foote lighted the King to his chair, his majesty asked who [sic] the piece was written by? "By one of your Majesty's chaplains," said Foote, unable even then to suppress his wit; "and dull enough to have been written by a bishop."'

Forster's _Essays_, ii. 435. See _ante_, i. 390, note 3.

[48] Bk. v. ch. 1.

[49] See _ante_, ii. 133, note 1; Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 27, and Oct. 28.

[50] The correspondent of _The Gentleman's Magazine_ [1792, p. 214] who subscribes himself SCIOLUS furnishes the following supplement:--

'A lady of my acquaintance remembers to have heard her uncle sing those homely stanzas more than forty-five years ago. He repeated the second thus:--

She shall breed young lords and ladies fair, And ride abroad in a coach and three pair, And the best, &c.

And have a house, &c.

And remembered a third which seems to have been the introductory one, and is believed to have been the only remaining one:--

When the Duke of Leeds shall have made his choice Of a charming young lady that's beautiful and wise, She'll be the happiest young gentlewoman under the skies, As long as the sun and moon shall rise, And how happy shall, &c.

It is with pleasure I add that this stanza could never be more truly applied than at this present time. BOSWELL. This note was added to the second edition.

[51] See _ante_, i. 115, note 1.

[52] See _ante_, i. 82.

[53] Baretti, in a MS. note on _Piozzi Letters_, i. 121, says:--'Johnson was a real _true-born Englishman_. He hated the Scotch, the French, the Dutch, the Hanoverians, and had the greatest contempt for all other European nations; such were his early prejudices which he never attempted to conquer.' Reynolds wrote of Johnson:--'The prejudices he had to countries did not extend to individuals. In respect to Frenchmen he rather laughed at himself, but it was insurmountable. He considered every foreigner as a fool till they had convinced him of the contrary.'

Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 460. Garrick wrote of the French in 1769:--'Their _politesse_ has reduced their character to such a sameness, and their humours and pa.s.sions are so curbed by habit, that, when you have seen half-a-dozen French men and women, you have seen the whole.' _Garrick Corres_. i. 358.

[54] 'There is not a man or woman here,' wrote Horace Walpole from Paris (_Letters_ iv. 434), 'that is not a perfect old nurse, and who does not talk gruel and anatomy with equal fluency and ignorance.'

[55] '"I remember that interview well," said Dr. Parr with great vehemence when once reminded of it; "I gave him no quarter." The subject of our dispute was the liberty of the press. Dr. Johnson was very great.

Whilst he was arguing, I observed that he stamped. Upon this I stamped.

Dr. Johnson said, "Why did you stamp, Dr. Parr?" I replied, "Because you stamped; and I was resolved not to give you the advantage even of a stamp in the argument."' This, Parr said, was by no means his first introduction to Johnson. Field's _Parr_, i. 161. Parr wrote to Romilly in 1811:--'Pray let me ask whether you have ever read some admirable remarks of Mr. Hutcheson upon the word _merit_. I remember a controversy I had with Dr. Johnson upon this very term: we began with theology fiercely, I gently carried the conversation onward to philosophy, and after a dispute of more than three hours he lost sight of my heresy, and came over to my opinion upon the metaphysical import of the term.' _Life of Romilly_, ii. 365. When Parr was a candidate for the masters.h.i.+p of Colchester Grammar School, Johnson wrote for him a letter of recommendation. Johnstone's _Parr_, i. 94.

[56] 'Somebody was praising Corneille one day in opposition to Shakespeare. "Corneille is to Shakespeare," replied Mr. Johnson, "as a clipped hedge is to a forest."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 59.

[57] Johnson, it is clear, discusses here Mrs. Montagu's _Essay on Shakespeare_. She compared Shakespeare first with Corneille, and then with Aeschylus. In contrasting the ghost in _Hamlet_ with the shade of Darius in _The Persians_, she says:--'The phantom, who was to appear ignorant of what was past, that the Athenian ear might be soothed and flattered with the detail of their victory at Salamis, is allowed, for the same reason, such prescience as to foretell their future triumph at Plataea.' p. 161.

[58] Caution is required in everything which is laid before youth, to secure them from unjust prejudices, perverse opinions, and incongruous combinations of images. In the romances formerly written, every transaction and sentiment was so remote from all that pa.s.ses among men, that the reader was in very little danger of making any applications to himself.' _The Rambler_, No. 4.

[59] Johnson says of Pope's _Ode for St. Cecilia's Day_:--'The next stanzas place and detain us in the dark and dismal regions of mythology, where neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow can be found.'

_Works_, viii. 328. Of Gray's _Progress of Poetry_, he says:--'The second stanza, exhibiting Mars' car and Jove's eagle, is unworthy of further notice. Criticism disdains to chase a school-boy to his common-places.' _Ib_. p. 484.

[60] See _ante_, ii. 178.

[61]

'A Wizard-Dame, the Lover's ancient friend, With magic charm has deaft thy husband's ear, At her command I saw the stars descend, And winged lightnings stop in mid career, &c.'

Hammond. _Elegy_, v. In Boswell's _Hebrides_ (Sept. 29), he said 'Hammond's _Love Elegies_ were poor things.'

[62] Perhaps Lord Corke and Orrery. _Ante_, iii. 183. CROKER.

[63] Colman a.s.sumed that Johnson had maintained that Shakespeare was totally ignorant of the learned languages. He then quotes a line to prove 'that the author of _The Taming of the Shrew_ had at least read Ovid;' and continues:--'And what does Dr. Johnson say on this occasion?

Nothing. And what does Mr. Farmer say on this occasion? Nothing.'

Colman's _Terence_, ii. 390. For Farmer, see _ante_, iii. 38.

[64] 'It is most likely that Shakespeare had learned Latin sufficiently to make him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an easy perusal of the Roman authors.' Johnson's _Works_, V. 129. 'The style of Shakespeare was in itself ungrammatical, perplexed, and obscure.' _Ib_. p. 135.

[65]

'May I govern my pa.s.sion with an absolute sway, And grow wiser and better, as my strength wears away, Without gout or stone by a gentle decay.'

_The Old Man's Wish_ was sung to Sir Roger de Coverley by 'the fair one,' after the collation in which she ate a couple of chickens, and drank a full bottle of wine. _Spectator_, No. 410. 'What signifies our wis.h.i.+ng?' wrote Dr. Franklin. 'I have sung that _wis.h.i.+ng song_ a thousand times when I was young, and now find at fourscore that the three contraries have befallen me, being subject to the gout and the stone, and not being yet master of all my pa.s.sions.' Franklin's _Memoirs_, iii. 185.

[66] He uses the same image in _The Life of Milton_ (_Works_, vii.

104):--'He might still be a giant among the pigmies, the one-eyed monarch of the blind.' c.u.mberland (_Memoirs_, i. 39) says that Bentley, hearing it maintained that Barnes spoke Greek almost like his mother tongue, replied:--'Yes, I do believe that Barnes had as much Greek and understood it about as well as an Athenian blacksmith.' See _ante_, iii 284. A pa.s.sage in Wooll's _Life of Dr. Warton_ (i. 313) shews that Barnes attempted to prove that Homer and Solomon were one and the same man. But I. D'Israeli says that it was reported that Barnes, not having money enough to publish his edition of _Homer_, 'wrote a poem, the design of which is to prove that Solomon was the author of the _Iliad_, to interest his wife, who had some property, to lend her aid towards the publication of so divine a work.' _Calamities of Authors_, i. 250.

[67] 'The first time Suard saw Burke, who was at Reynolds's, Johnson touched him on the shoulder and said, "Le grand Burke."' _Boswelliana_, p. 299. See ante, ii. 450.

[68] Miss Hawkins (_Memoirs_, i. 279, 288) says that Langton told her father that he meant to give his six daughters such a knowledge of Greek, 'that while five of them employed themselves in feminine works, the sixth should read a Greek author for the general amus.e.m.e.nt.' She describes how 'he would get into the most fluent recitation of half a page of Greek, breaking off for fear of wearying, by saying, "and so it goes on," accompanying his words with a gentle wave of his hand.'

[69] See post, p. 42.

[70] See ante, i. 326.

[71] This a.s.sertion concerning Johnson's insensibility to the pathetick powers of Otway, is too _round_. I once asked him, whether he did not think Otway frequently tender: when he answered, 'Sir, he is all tenderness.' BURNEY. He describes Otway as 'one of the first names in the English drama.' _Works_, vii. 173.

[72] See ante, April 16, 1779.

[73] Johnson; it seems, took up this study. In July, 1773, he recorded that between Easter and Whitsuntide, he attempted to learn the Low Dutch language. 'My application,' he continues, 'was very slight, and my memory very fallacious, though whether more than in my earlier years, I am not very certain.' _Pr. and Med._ p. 129, and ante, ii. 263. On his death-bed, he said to Mr. Hoole:--'About two years since I feared that I had neglected G.o.d, and that then I had not a _mind_ to give him; on which I set about to read _Thomas a Kempis_ in Low Dutch, which I accomplished, and thence I judged that my mind was not impaired, Low Dutch having no affinity with any of the languages which I knew.'

Croker's _Boswell_, p. 844. See ante, iii. 235.

[74] See post, under July 5, 1783.

[75] See ante, ii. 409, and iii. 197.

[76] One of Goldsmith's friends 'remembered his relating [about the year 1756] a strange Quixotic scheme he had in contemplation of going to decipher the inscriptions on the _written mountains_, though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed to be written.' Goldsmith's _Misc. Works_, ed. 1801, i. 40.

Percy says that Goldsmith applied to the prime minister, Lord Bute, for a salary to enable him to execute 'the visionary project' mentioned in the text. 'To prepare the way, he drew up that ingenious essay on this subject which was first printed in the _Ledger_, and afterwards in his _Citizen of the World_ [No. 107].' _Ib_. p. 65. Percy adds that the Earl of Northumberland, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, regretted 'that he had not been made acquainted with his plan; for he would have procured him a sufficient salary on the Irish establishment.' Goldsmith, in his review of Van Egmont's _Travels in Asia_, says:--'Could we see a man set out upon this journey [to Asia] not with an intent to consider rocks and rivers, but the manners, and the mechanic inventions, and the imperfect learning of the inhabitants; resolved to penetrate into countries as yet little known, and eager to pry into all their secrets, with an heart not terrified at trifling dangers; if there could be found a man who could unite this true courage with sound learning, from such a character we might hope much information.' Goldsmith's _Works_, ed.

1854, iv. 225. Johnson would have gone to Constantinople, as he himself said, had he received his pension twenty years earlier. _Post_, p. 27.

[77] It should be remembered, that this was said twenty-five or thirty years ago, [written in 1799,] when lace was very generally worn. MALONE.

'Greek and Latin,' said Porson, 'are only luxuries.' Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 325.

[78] See _ante_, iii. 8.

[79] Dr. Johnson, in his _Life of Cowley_, says, that these are 'the only English verses which Bentley is known to have written.' I shall here insert them, and hope my readers will apply them.

'Who strives to mount Parna.s.sus' hill, And thence poetick laurels bring, Must first acquire due force and skill, Must fly with swan's or eagle's wing.