Life of Johnson Volume IV Part 43

Who Nature's treasures would explore, Her mysteries and arcana know; Must high as lofty Newton soar, Must stoop as delving Woodward low.

Who studies ancient laws and rites, Tongues, arts, and arms, and history; Must drudge, like Selden, days and nights, And in the endless labour die.

Who travels in religious jars, (Truth mixt with errour, shades with rays;) Like Whiston, wanting pyx or stars, In ocean wide or sinks or strays.

But grant our hero's hope, long toil And comprehensive genius crown, All sciences, all arts his spoil, Yet what reward, or what renown?

Envy, innate in vulgar souls, Envy steps in and stops his rise, Envy with poison'd tarnish fouls His l.u.s.tre, and his worth decries.

He lives inglorious or in want, To college and old books confin'd; Instead of learn'd he's call'd pedant, Dunces advanc'd, he's left behind: Yet left content a genuine Stoick he, Great without patron, rich without South Sea.' BOSWELL.

In Mr. Croker's octavo editions, _arts_ in the fifth stanza is changed into _hearts_. J. Boswell, jun., gives the following reading of the first four lines of the last stanza, not from _Dodsley's Collection_, but from an earlier one, called _The Grove_.

'Inglorious or by wants inthralled, To college and old books confined, A pedant from his learning called, Dunces advanced, he's left behind.'

[80] Bentley, in the preface to his edition of _Paradise Lost_, says:--

'Sunt et mihi carmina; me quoque dic.u.n.t Vatem pastores: sed non ego credulus illis.'

[81] The difference between Johnson and Smith is apparent even in this slight instance. Smith was a man of extraordinary application, and had his mind crowded with all manner of subjects; but the force, acuteness, and vivacity of Johnson were not to be found there. He had book-making so much in his thoughts, and was so chary of what might be turned to account in that way, that he once said to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he made it a rule, when in company, never to talk of what he understood.

Beauclerk had for a short time a pretty high opinion of Smith's conversation. Garrick, after listening to him for a while, as to one of whom his expectations had been raised, turned slyly to a friend, and whispered him, 'What say you to this?--eh? _flabby_, I think.' BOSWELL.

Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 279), says:--'Smith's voice was harsh and enunciation thick, approaching to stammering. His conversation was not colloquial, but like lecturing. He was the most absent man in company that I ever saw, moving his lips, and talking to himself, and smiling in the midst of large companies. If you awaked him from his reverie and made him attend to the subject of conversation, he immediately began a harangue, and never stopped till he told you all he knew about it, with the utmost philosophical ingenuity.' Dugald Stewart (_Life of Adam Smith_, p. 117) says that 'his consciousness of his tendency to absence rendered his manner somewhat embarra.s.sed in the company of strangers.'

But 'to his intimate friends, his peculiarities added an inexpressible charm to his conversation, while they displayed in the most interesting light the artless simplicity of his heart.' _Ib_. p. 113. See also Walpole's _Letters_, vi. 302, and _ante_, ii. 430, note 1.

[82] Garrick himself was a good deal of an infidel: see _ante_, ii. 85, note 7.

[83] _Ante_, i. 181.

[84] The Tempest, act iv. sc. i. In _The Rambler_, No. 127, Johnson writes of men who have 'borne opposition down before them, and left emulation panting behind.' He quotes (_Works_, vii. 261) the following couplet by Dryden:--

'Fate after him below with pain did move, And victory could scarce keep pace above.'

Young in _The Last Day_, book I, had written:--

'Words all in vain pant after the distress.'

[85] I am sorry to see in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, vol. ii, _An Essay on the Character of Hamlet_, written, I should suppose, by a very young man, though called 'Reverend;' who speaks with presumptuous petulance of the first literary character of his age. Amidst a cloudy confusion of words, (which hath of late too often pa.s.sed in Scotland for _Metaphysicks_,) he thus ventures to criticise one of the n.o.blest lines in our language:--'Dr. Johnson has remarked, that "time toil'd after him in vain." But I should apprehend, that this is _entirely to mistake the character_. Time toils after _every great man_, as well after Shakspeare. The _workings_ of an ordinary mind _keep pace_, indeed, with time; they move no faster; _they have their beginning, their middle, and their end_; but superiour natures can _reduce these into a point_. They do not, indeed, _suppress_ them; but they _suspend_, or they _lock them up in the breast_.' The learned Society, under whose sanction such gabble is ushered into the world, would do well to offer a premium to any one who will discover its meaning. BOSWELL.

[86] 'May 29, 1662. Took boat and to Fox-hall, where I had not been a great while. To the old Spring Garden, and there walked long.' Pepys's _Diary_, i. 361. The place was afterwards known as Faux-hall and Vauxhall. See _ante_, iii. 308.

[87] 'One that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar.' _King Lear_, act ii. sc. 2.

[88] Yet W.G. Hamilton said:--'Burke understands everything but gaming and music. In the House of Commons I sometimes think him only the second man in England; out of it he is always the first.' Prior's _Burke_, p.

484. See _ante_, ii. 450. Bismarck once 'rang the bell' to old Prince Metternich. 'I listened quietly,' he said, 'to all his stories, merely jogging the bell every now and then till it rang again. That pleases these talkative old men.' DR. BUSCH, quoted in Lowe's _Prince Bismarck_, i. 130.

[89] See _ante_, i. 470, for his disapproval of 'studied behaviour.'

[90] Johnson had perhaps Dr. Warton in mind. _Ante_, ii. 41, note 1.

[91] See _ante_, i. 471, and iii. 165.

[92] 'Oblivion is a kind of annihilation.' Sir Thomas Browne's _Christian Morals_, sect. xxi.

[93] 'Nec te quaesiveris extra.' Persius, _Sat_. i. 7. We may compare Milton's line,

'In himself was all his state.'

_Paradise Lost_, v. 353.

[94] See _ante,_ iii. 269.

[95] 'A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many imperfections; but West's version, so far as I have considered it, appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities.'

Johnson's _Works,_ viii. 398.

[96] See Boswell's _Hebrides,_ Aug. 25, 1773.

[97] See _ante,_ i. 82, and ii. 228.

[98] See _ante,_ i. 242.

[99] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, under Nov. 11.

[100] A literary lady has favoured me with a characteristick anecdote of Richardson. One day at his country-house at Northend, where a large company was a.s.sembled at dinner, a gentleman who was just returned from Paris, willing to please Mr. Richardson, mentioned to him a very flattering circ.u.mstance,--that he had seen his _Clarissa_ lying on the King's brother's table. Richardson observing that part of the company were engaged in talking to each other, affected then not to attend to it. But by and by, when there was a general silence, and he thought that the flattery might be fully heard, he addressed himself to the gentleman, 'I think, Sir, you were saying something about,--' pausing in a high flutter of expectation. The gentleman provoked at his inordinate vanity, resolved not to indulge it, and with an exquisitely sly air of indifference answered, 'A mere trifle Sir, not worth repeating.' The mortification of Richardson was visible, and he did not speak ten words more the whole day. Dr. Johnson was present, and appeared to enjoy it much. BOSWELL.

[101]

'E'en in a bishop I can spy desert; Seeker is decent, Rundel has a heart.'

Pope, _Epil. to Sat_. ii. 70. Horace Walpole wrote on Aug. 4,1768 (Letters, v. 115):--'We have lost our Pope. Canterbury [Archbishop Seeker] died yesterday. He had never been a Papist, but almost everything else. Our Churchmen will not be Catholics; that stock seems quite fallen.'

[102] Perhaps the Earl of Corke. _Ante_, iii. 183.

[103] Garrick perhaps borrowed this saying when, in his epigram on Goldsmith, speaking of the ideas of which his head was full, he said:--

'When his mouth opened all were in a pother, Rushed to the door and tumbled o'er each other, But rallying soon with all their force again, In bright array they issued from his pen.'

Fitzgerald's _Garrick_, ii. 363. See _ante_, ii. 231.

[104] See _ante_, i. 116, and ii. 52.

[105] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, ix. 318) writes of Boswell's _Life of Johnson:_--'Dr. Blagden says justly, that it is a new kind of libel, by which you may abuse anybody, by saying some dead person said so and so of somebody alive.'

[106] See _ante_, ii. III. In the _Gent. Mag._ 1770, p. 78, is a review of _A Letter to Samuel Johnson, LL.D._, 'that is generally imputed to Mr. Wilkes.'

[107] 'Do you conceive the full force of the word CONSt.i.tUENT? It has the same relation to the House of Commons as Creator to creature.' _A Letter to Samuel Johnson, LL.D._, p. 23.

[108] His profound admiration of the GREAT FIRST CAUSE was such as to set him above that 'Philosophy and vain deceit' [_Colossians_, ii. 8]

with which men of narrower conceptions have been infected. I have heard him strongly maintain that 'what is right is not so from any natural fitness, but because G.o.d wills it to be right;' and it is certainly so, because he has predisposed the relations of things so as that which he wills must be right. BOSWELL. Johnson was as much opposed as the Rev.

Mr. Thwack.u.m to the philosopher Square, who 'measured all actions by the unalterable rule of right and the eternal fitness of things.' _Tom Jones_, book iii. ch. 3.