Life of Johnson Volume IV Part 48

[263] Here Johnson uses his t.i.tle of Doctor (_ante_, ii.332, note 1), but perhaps he does so as quoting the paragraph in the newspaper.

[264] William, the first Viscount Grimston. BOSWELL. Swift thus introduces him in his lines _On Poetry, A Rhapsody_:--

'When death had finished Blackmore's reign, The leaden crown devolved to thee, Great poet of the hollow tree.'

Mr. Nichols, in a note on this, says that Grimston 'wrote the play when a boy, to be acted by his schoolfellows.' Swift's _Works_ (1803), xi.

297. Two editions were published apparently by Grimston himself, one bearing his name but no date, and the other the date of 1705 but no name. By 1705 Grimston was 22 years old--no longer a boy. The former edition was published by Bernard Lintott at the Cross Keys, Fleet-street, and the latter by the same bookseller at the Middle Temple Gate. The grossness of a young man of birth at this period is shewn by the Preface. The third edition with the elephant on the tight-rope was published in 1736. There is another ill.u.s.tration in which an a.s.s is represented bearing a coronet. Grimston's name is not given here, but there is a dedication 'To the Right Sensible the Lord Flame.' Three or four notes are added, one of which is very gross. The election was for St. Alban's, for which borough he was thrice returned.

[265] Dr. T. Campbell records (_Diary_, p. 69) that 'Boswell asked Johnson if he had never been under the hands of a dancing master. "Aye, and a dancing mistress too," says the Doctor; "but I own to you I never took a lesson but one or two; my blind eyes showed me I could never make a proficiency."'

[266] See vol. ii. p.286. BOSWELL.

[267] Miss Burney writes of him in Feb. 1779:--'He is a professed minority man, and very active and zealous in the opposition. Men of such different principles as Dr. Johnson and Sir Philip cannot have much cordiality in their political debates; however, the very superior abilities of the former, and the remarkable good breeding of the latter have kept both upon good terms.' She describes a hot argument between them, and continues:--'Dr. Johnson pursued him with unabating vigour and dexterity, and at length, though he could not convince, he so entirely baffled him, that Sir Philip was self-compelled to be quiet--which, with a very good grace, he confessed. Dr. Johnson then recollecting himself, and thinking, as he owned afterwards, that the dispute grew too serious, with a skill all his own, suddenly and unexpectedly turned it to burlesque.' D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 192.

[268] See _post_, Jan. 20, 1782.

[269] See _ante_, ii.355.

[270] Here Johnson condescended to play upon the words _Long_ and _short_. But little did he know that, owing to Mr. Long's reserve in his presence, he was talking thus of a gentleman distinguised amongst his acquaintance for acuteness of wit; one to whom I think the French expression, '_Il petille d'esprit_,' is particularly He has gratified me by mentioning that he heard Dr. Johnson say, 'Sir, if I were to lose Boswell, it would be a limb amputated.' BOSWELL.

[271] William Weller Pepys, Esq., one of the Masters in the High Court of Chancery, and well known in polite circles. My acquaintance with him is not sufficient to enable me to speak of him from my own judgement.

But I know that both at Eton and Oxford he was the intimate friend of the late Sir James Macdonald, the _Marcellus_ of Scotland [_ante_, i.449], whose extraordinary talents, learning, and virtues, will ever be remembered with admiration and regret. BOSWELL.

[272] See note, _ante_, p. 65, which describes an attack made by Johnson on Pepys more than two months after this conversation.

[273] Johnson once said to Mrs. Thrale:--'Why, Madam, you often provoke me to say severe things by unreasonable commendation. If you would not call for my praise, I would not give you my censure; but it constantly moves my indignation to be applied to, to speak well of a thing which I think contemptible.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i.132. See _ante_, iii.225.

[274] 'Mrs. Thrale,' wrote Miss Burney in 1780, 'is a most dear creature, but never restrains her tongue in anything, nor, indeed, any of her feelings. She laughs, cries, scolds, sports, reasons, makes fun--does everything she has an inclination to do, without any study of prudence, or thought of blame; and, pure and artless as is this character, it often draws both herself and others into sc.r.a.pes, which a little discretion would avoid.' _Ib_. i.386. Later on she writes:--'Mrs.

Thrale, with all her excellence, can give up no occasion of making sport, however unseasonable or even painful... I knew she was not to be safely trusted with anything she could turn into ridicule.' _Ib_.

ii.24 and 29.

[275] Perhaps Mr. Seward, who was constantly at the Thrales' (_ante_, iii. 123).

[276] See _ante_, iii.228, 404.

[277] It was the seventh anniversary of Goldsmith's death.

[278] 'Mrs. Garrick and I,' wrote Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 208), 'were invited to an a.s.sembly at Mrs. Thrale's. There was to be a fine concert, and all the fine people were to be there. Just as my hair was dressed, came a servant to forbid our coming, for that Mr. Thrale was dead.'

[279] _Pr. and Med._ p 191. BOSWELL. The rest of the entry should be given:--'On Wednesday, 11, was buried my dear friend Thrale, who died on Wednesday 4; and with him were buried many of my hopes and pleasures.

[On Sunday, 1st, the physician warned him against full meals, on Monday I pressed him to observance of his rules, but without effect, and Tuesday I was absent, but his wife pressed forbearance upon him again unsuccessfully. At night I was called to him, and found him senseless in strong convulsions. I staid in the room, except that I visited Mrs.

Thrale twice.] About five, I think, on Wednesday morning he expired; I felt, &c. Farewell. May G.o.d that delighteth in mercy have had mercy on thee. I had constantly prayed for him some time before his death. The decease of him from whose friends.h.i.+p I had obtained many opportunities of amus.e.m.e.nt, and to whom I turned my thoughts as to a refuge from misfortunes, has left me heavy. But my business is with myself.' The pa.s.sage enclosed in brackets I have copied from the original MS. Mr.

Strahan, the editor, omitted it, no doubt from feelings of delicacy.

What a contrast in this to the widow who published a letter in which she had written:--'I wish that you would put in a word of your own to Mr.

Thrale about eating less!' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.130. Baretti, in a note on _Piozzi Letters_, ii.142, says that 'n.o.body ever had spirit enough to tell Mr. Thrale that his fits were apoplectic; such is the blessing of being rich that n.o.body dares to speak out.' In Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi.203, it is recorded that 'Johnson, who attended Thrale in his last moments, said, "His servants would have waited upon him in this awful period, and why not his friend?"'

[280] Johnson's letters to the widow show how much he felt Thrale's death. 'April 5, 1781. I am not without my part of the calamity. No death since that of my wife has ever oppressed me like this. April 7. My part of the loss hangs upon me. I have lost a friend of boundless kindness, at an age when it is very unlikely that I should find another.

April 9. Our sorrow has different effects; you are withdrawn into solitude, and I am driven into company. I am afraid of thinking what I have lost. I never had such a friend before. April 11. I feel myself like a man beginning a new course of life. I had interwoven myself with my dear friend.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 191-97. 'I have very often,'

wrote Miss Burney, in the following June, 'though I mention them not, long and melancholy discourses with Dr. Johnson about our dear deceased master, whom, indeed, he regrets incessantly.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 63. On his next birthday, he wrote:--'My first knowledge of Thrale was in 1765. I enjoyed his favour for almost a fourth part of my life.'

_Pr. and Med._ p.191. One or two pa.s.sages in Mrs. Thrale's Letters shew her husband's affection for Johnson. On May 3, 1776, she writes:--'Mr.

Thrale says he shall not die in peace without seeing Rome, and I am sure he will go nowhere that he can help without you.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.317. A few days later, she speaks of 'our dear master, who cannot be quiet without you for a week.' _Ib._ p.329. Johnson, in his fine epitaph on Thrale (_Works_, i.153) broke through a rule which he himself had laid down. In his _Essay on Epitaphs_ (_Ib._ v 263), he said:--'It is improper to address the epitaph to the pa.s.senger [traveller], a custom which an injudicious veneration for antiquity introduced again at the revival of letters.' Yet in the monument in Streatham Church, we find the same _Abi viator_ which he had censured in an epitaph on Henry IV of France.

[281] Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale shew that he had long been well acquainted with the state of her husband's business. In the year 1772, Mr. Thrale was in money difficulties. Johnson writes to her almost as if he were a partner in the business. 'The first consequence of our late trouble ought to be an endeavour to brew at a cheaper rate...Unless this can be done, nothing can help us; and if this be done, we shall not want help.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.57. He urges economy in the household, and continues:--'But the fury of housewifery will soon subside; and little effect will be produced, but by methodical attention and even frugality.' _Ib._ p.64. In another letter he writes:--'This year will undoubtedly be an year of struggle and difficulty; but I doubt not of getting through it; and the difficulty will grow yearly less and less.

Supposing that our former mode of life kept us on the level, we shall, by the present contraction of expense, gain upon fortune a thousand a year, even though no improvements can be made in the conduct of the trade.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 66. Four years later, he writes:--'To-day I went to look into my places at the Borough. I called on Mr. Perkins in the counting-house. He crows and triumphs, as we go on we shall double our business.' _Ib._ p. 333. When the executors first met, he wrote:--'We met to-day, and were told of mountainous difficulties, till I was provoked to tell them, that if there were really so much to do and suffer, there would be no executors in the world. Do not suffer yourself to be terrified.' _Ib._ ii. 197. Boswell says (_ante_, ii. 44l):--'I often had occasion to remark, Johnson loved business, loved to have his wisdom actually operate on real life.' When Boswell had purchased a farm, 'Johnson,' he writes (_ante_, iii. 207), 'made several calculations of the expense and profit; for he delighted in exercising his mind on the science of numbers.' The letter (_ante_, ii. 424) about the book-trade 'exhibits,' to use Boswell's words, 'his extraordinary precision and acuteness.' Boswell wrote to Temple:--'Dr.

Taylor has begged of Dr. Johnson to come to London, to a.s.sist him in some interesting business; and Johnson loves much to be so consulted, and so comes up.' _Ante_, iii. 51, note 3.

[282] Johnson, as soon as the will was read, wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'You have, 500 for your immediate expenses, and, 2000 a year, with both the houses and all the goods.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 192. Beattie wrote on June 1:--'Everybody says Mr. Thrale should have left Johnson 200 a year; which, from a fortune like his, would have been a very inconsiderable deduction.' Beattie's _Life_, ed. 1824, p. 290.

[283] Miss Burney thus writes of the day of the sale:--'Mrs. Thrale went early to town, to meet all the executors, and Mr. Barclay, the Quaker, who was the bidder. She was in great agitation of mind, and told me if all went well she would wave a white handkerchief out of the coach-window. Four o'clock came and dinner was ready, and no Mrs.

Thrale. Queeny and I went out upon the lawn, where we sauntered in eager expectation, till near six, and then the coach appeared in sight, and a white handkerchief was waved from it.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 34.

The brewery was sold for 135,000. See _post_, June 16, 1781.

[284] See _post_, paragraph before June 22, 1784.

[285] Baretti, in a MS. note on _Piozzi Letters_, i. 369, says that 'the two last years of Thrale's life his brewery brought him 30,000 a year neat profit.'

[286] In the fourth edition of his _Dictionary_, published in 1773, Johnson introduced a second definition of _patriot_:--'It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.' Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, ii. 77) wrote on Feb. 21, 1772:--'Charles Fox is commenced patriot, and is already attempting to p.r.o.nounce the words, _country_, _liberty_, _corruption_, &c.; with what success time will discover.' Forty years before Johnson begged not to meet patriots, Sir Robert Walpole said:--'A patriot, Sir! why patriots spring up like mushrooms. I could raise fifty of them within the four-and-twenty hours. I have raised many of them in one night. It is but refusing to gratify an unreasonable or an insolent demand, and up starts a patriot. I have never been afraid of making patriots; but I disdain and despise all their efforts.' c.o.xe's _Walpole_, i. 659. See _ante_, ii. 348, and iii. 66.

[287] He was tried on Feb. 5 and 6, 1781. _Ann. Reg._ xxiv. 217.

[288] Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 210) records a dinner on a Tuesday in this year. (Like Mrs. Thrale and Miss Burney, she cared nothing for dates.) It was in the week after Thrale's death. It must have been the dinner here mentioned by Boswell; for it was at a Bishop's (s.h.i.+pley of St. Asaph), and Sir Joshua and Boswell were among the guests. Why Boswell recorded none of Johnson's conversation may be guessed from what she tells. 'I was heartily disgusted,' she says, 'with Mr. Boswell, who came up stairs after dinner much disordered with wine.' (See _post_, p.

109). The following morning Johnson called on her. 'He reproved me,' she writes, 'with pretended sharpness for reading _Les Pensees de Pascal_, alleging that as a good Protestant I ought to abstain from books written by Catholics. I was beginning to stand upon my defence, when he took me with both hands, and with a tear running down his cheeks, "Child," said he, with the most affecting earnestness, "I am heartily glad that you read pious books, by whomsoever they may be written.'"

[289] On Good-Friday, in 1778, Johnson recorded:--'It has happened this week, as it never happened in Pa.s.sion-week before, that I have never dined at home, and I have therefore neither practised abstinence nor peculiar devotion' _Pr. and Med._ p. 163.

[290] No. 7.

[291] See _ante_, iii. 302.

[292] Richard Berenger, Esq., many years Gentleman of the Horse, and first Equerry to his present Majesty. MALONE. According to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec._ p. 156), he was Johnson's 'standard of true elegance.'

[293] See _ante_, iii. 186.

[294] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 449) thus describes Addison's 'familiar day,' on the authority of Pope:--'He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went afterwards to b.u.t.ton's [coffee-house]. From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late, and drank too much wine.' Spence (_Anec._ p. 286) adds, on the authority of Pope, that 'Addison pa.s.sed each day alike, and much in the manner that Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing; dined _en famille_; and then went to Wills's; only he came home earlier a'nights'

[295] Mr. Foss says of Blackstone:--'Ere he had been long on the bench he experienced the bad effects of the studious habits in which he had injudiciously indulged in his early life, and of his neglect to take the necessary amount of exercise, to which he was specially averse.' He died at the age of 56. Foss's _Judges_, viii. 250. He suffered greatly from his corpulence. His portrait in the Bodleian shews that he was a very fat man. Malone says that Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell) wrote to Blackstone's family to apologise for Boswell's anecdote. Prior's _Malone_, p. 415. Scott would not have thought any the worse of Blackstone for his bottle of port; both he and his brother, the Chancellor, took a great deal of it. 'Lord Eldon liked plain port; the stronger the better.' Twiss's _Eldon_, iii. 486. Some one asked him whether Lord Stowell took much exercise. 'None,' he said, 'but the exercise of eating and drinking.' _Ib._ p. 302. Yet both men got through a vast deal of hard work, and died, Eldon at the age of 86, and Stowell of 90.

[296] See this explained, pp. 52, 53 of this volume. BOSWELL.

[297] See _ante_, ii. 7.

[298] William Scott was a tutor of University College at the age of nineteen. He held the office for ten years--to 1775. He wrote to his father in 1772 about his younger brother John (afterwards Lord Eldon), who had just made a run-away match:--'The business in which I am engaged is so extremely disagreeable in itself, and so destructive to health (if carried on with such success as can render it at all considerable in point of profit) that I do not wonder at his unwillingness to succeed me in it.' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 47, 74.

[299] The account of her marriage given By John Wesley in a letter to his brother-in-law, Mr. Hall, is curious. He wrote on Dec. 22, 1747:--'More than twelve years ago you told me G.o.d had revealed it to you that you should marry my youngest sister ... You asked and gained her consent... In a few days you had a counter-revelation, that you was not to marry her, but her sister. This last error was far worse than the first. But you was not quite above conviction. So, in spite of her poor astonished parents, of her brothers, of all your vows and promises, you shortly after jilted the younger and married the elder sister.' Wesley's _Journal_, ii. 39. Mrs. Hall suffered greatly for marrying a wretch who had so cruelly treated her own sister, Southey's _Wesley_, i. 369.

[300] See _ante_, iii. 269.

[301] The original 'Robinhood' was a debating society which met near Temple-Bar. Some twenty years before this time Goldsmith belonged to it, and, it was said, Burke. Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 287, and Prior's _Burke_, p. 79. The president was a baker by trade. 'Goldsmith, after hearing him give utterance to a train of strong and ingenious reasoning, exclaimed to Derrick, "That man was meant by nature for a Lord Chancellor." Derrick replied, "No, no, not so high; he is only intended for Master of the _Rolls_."' Prior's _Goldsmith_, i. 420. Fielding, in 1752, in _The Covent-Garden Journal_, Nos. 8 and 9, takes off this Society and the baker. A fragment of a report of their discussions which he pretends to have discovered, begins thus:--'This evenin the questin at the Robinhood was, whether relidgin was of any youse to a sosyaty; baken bifor mee To'mmas Whytebred, baker.' Horace Walpole (_Letters_, iv. 288), in 1764, wrote of the visit of a French gentleman to England, 'He has _seen_ ... Jews, Quakers, Mr. Pitt, the Royal Society, the Robinhood, Lord Chief-Justice Pratt, the Arts-and-Sciences, &c.' Romilly (_Life_, i. 168), in a letter dated May 22, 1781, says that during the past winter several of these Sunday religious debating societies had been established. 'The auditors,' he was a.s.sured, 'were mostly weak, well-meaning people, who were inclined to Methodism;' but among the speakers were 'some designing villains, and a few c.o.xcombs, with more wit than understanding.' 'Nothing,' he continues, 'could raise up panegyrists of these societies but what has lately happened, an attempt to suppress them. The Solicitor-General has brought a bill into Parliament for this purpose. The bill is drawn artfully enough; for, as these societies are held on Sundays, and people pay for admittance, he has joined them with a famous tea-drinking house [Carlisle House], involving them both in the same fate, and ent.i.tling his bill, _A Bill to regulate certain Abuses and Profanations of the Lord's Day_.' The Bill was carried; on a division none being found among the Noes but the two tellers. The penalties for holding a meeting were 200 for the master of the house, 100 for the moderator of the meeting, and 50 for each of the servants at the door. _Parl. Hist._ xxii. 262, 279.