Life of Johnson Volume IV Part 53

Taylor:--'Perhaps no nation not absolutely conquered has declined so much in so short a time. We seem to be sinking. Suppose the Irish, having already gotten a free trade and an independent Parliament, should say we will have a King and ally ourselves with the House of Bourbon, what could be done to hinder or overthrow them?' Mr. Morrison's _Autographs_, vol. ii.

[444] In February and March, 1771, the House of Commons ordered eight printers to attend at the bar on a charge of breach of privilege, in publis.h.i.+ng reports of debates. One of the eight, Miller of the _Evening Post_, when the messenger of the House tried to arrest him, gave the man himself into custody on a charge of a.s.sault. The messenger was brought before Lord Mayor Crosby and Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, and a warrant was made out for his commitment. Bail was thereupon offered and accepted for his appearance at the next sessions. The Lord Mayor and Oliver were sent to the Tower by the House. Wilkes was ordered to appear on April 8; but the Ministry, not daring to face his appearance, adjourned the House till the 9th. A committee was appointed by ballot to inquire into the late obstructions to the execution of the orders of the House. It recommended the consideration of the expediency of the House ordering that Miller should be taken into custody. The report, when read, was received with a roar of laughter. Nothing was done. Such was, to quote the words of Burke in the _Annual Register_ (xiv. 70), 'the miserable result of all the pretended vigour of the Ministry.' See _Parl. Hist._ xvii. 58, 186.

[445] Lord Cornwallis's army surrendered at York Town, five days before Sir Henry Clinton's fleet and army arrived off the Chesapeak. _Ann.

Reg._ xxiv. 136.

[446] Johnson wrote on March 30:--'The men have got in whom I have endeavoured to keep out; but I hope they will do better than their predecessors; it will not be easy to do worse.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 706.

[447] This note was in answer to one which accompanied one of the earliest pamphlets on the subject of Chatterton's forgery, ent.i.tled _Cursory Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley_, &c. Mr.

Thomas Warton's very able _Inquiry_ appeared about three months afterwards; and Mr. Tyrwhitt's admirable _Vindication of his Appendix_ in the summer of the same hear, left the believers in this daring imposture nothing but 'the resolution to say again what had been said before.' MALONE.

[448] _Pr. and Med._ p. 207. BOSWELL.

[449] He addressed to him an Ode in Latin, ent.i.tled _Ad Thomam Laurence, medic.u.m doctissimum, quum filium peregre agentem desiderio nimis tristi prosequeretur. Works_, i. 165.

[450] Mr. Holder, in the Strand, Dr. Johnson's apothecary. BOSWELL.

[451] 'Johnson should rather have written "imperatum est." But the meaning of the words is perfectly clear. "If you say yes, the messenger has orders to bring Holder to me." Mr. Croker translates the words as follows:-"If you consent, pray tell the messenger to bring Holder to me." If Mr. Croker is resolved to write on points of cla.s.sical learning, we would advise him to begin by giving an hour every morning to our old friend Corderius.' Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, i 366. In _The Answers to Mr. Macaulay's Criticism_, prefixed to Croker's _Boswell_, p. 13, it is suggested that Johnson wrote either _imperetur_ or _imperator_. The letter may be translated: 'A fresh chill, a fresh cough, and a fresh difficulty in breathing call for a fresh letting of blood. Without your advice, however, I would not submit to the operation. I cannot well come to you, nor need you come to me. Say yes or no in one word, and leave the rest to Holder and to me. If you say yes, let the messenger be bidden (imperetur) to bring Holder to me. May 1, 1782. When _you_ have left, whither shall I turn?'

[452] Soon after the above letter, Dr. Lawrence left London, but not before the palsy had made so great a progress as to render him unable to write for himself. The folio wing are extracts from letters addressed by Dr. Johnson to one of his daughters:--

'You will easily believe with what gladness I read that you had heard once again that voice to which we have all so often delighted to attend.

May you often hear it. If we had his mind, and his tongue, we could spare the rest.

'I am not vigorous, but much better than when dear Dr. Lawrence held my pulse the last time. Be so kind as to let me know, from one little interval to another, the state of his body. I am pleased that he remembers me, and hope that it never can be possible for me to forget him. July 22, 1782.'

'I am much delighted even with the small advances which dear Dr.

Lawrence makes towards recovery. If we could have again but his mind, and his tongue in his mind, and his right hand, we should not much lament the rest. I should not despair of helping the swelled hand by electricity, if it were frequently and diligently supplied.

'Let me know from time to time whatever happens; and I hope I need not tell you, how much I am interested in every change. Aug. 26, 1782.'

'Though the account with which you favoured me in your last letter could not give me the pleasure that I wished, yet I was glad to receive it; for my affection to my dear friend makes me desirous of knowing his state, whatever it be. I beg, therefore, that you continue to let me know, from time to time, all that you observe.

'Many fits of severe illness have, for about three months past, forced my kind physician often upon my mind. I am now better; and hope grat.i.tude, as well as distress, can be a motive to remembrance.

Bolt-court, Fleet-street, Feb. 4, 1783.' BOSWELL.

[453] Mr. Langton being at this time on duty at Rochester, he is addressed by his military t.i.tle. BOSWELL.

[454] Eight days later he recorded:--'I have in ten days written to Aston, Lucy, Hector, Langton, Boswell; perhaps to all by whom my letters are desired.' _Pr. and Med._ 209. He had written also to Mrs. Thrale, but her affection, it should seem from this, he was beginning to doubt.

[455] See _ante_, p. 84.

[456] See _ante_, i. 247.

[457] See _post_, p. 158, note 4.

[458] Johnson has here expressed a sentiment similar to that contained in one of Shenstone's stanzas, to which, in his life of that poet, he has given high praise:--

'I prized every hour that went by, Beyond all that had pleased me before; But now they are gone [past] and I sigh, I grieve that I prized them no more.'

J. BOSWELL, JUN.

[459] She was his G.o.d-daughter. See _post_, May 10, 1784.

[460] 'Dr. Johnson gave a very droll account of the children of Mr.

Langton, "who," he said, "might be very good children, if they were let alone; but the father is never easy when he is not making them do something which they cannot do; they must repeat a fable, or a speech, or the Hebrew alphabet, and they might as well count twenty for what they know of the matter; however, the father says half, for he prompts every other word."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 73. See _ante_, p.

20, note 2.

[461] A part of this letter having been torn off, I have, from the evident meaning, supplied a few words and half-words at the ends and beginnings of lines. BOSWELL.

[462] See vol. ii. p. 459. BOSWELL. She was Hector's widowed sister, and Johnson's first love. In the previous October, writing of a visit to Birmingham, he said:--'Mrs. Careless took me under her care, and told me when I had tea enough.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 205.

[463] This letter cannot belong to this year. In it Johnson says of his health, 'at least it is not worse.' But 1782 found him in very bad health; he pa.s.sed almost the whole of the year 'in a succession of disorders' (_post_, p. 156). What he says of friends.h.i.+p renders it almost certain that the letter was written while he had still Thrale; and him he lost in April, 1781. Had it been written after June, 1779, but before Thrale's death, the account given of health would have been even better than it is (_ante_, iii. 397). It belongs perhaps to the year 1777 or 1778.

[464] 'To a man who has survived all the companions of his youth ...

this full-peopled world is a dismal solitude.' _Rambler_, No. 69.

[465] See _ante_, i. 63.

[466] They met on these days in the years 1772, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 81, and 3.

[467] The ministry had resigned on the 20th. _Ante_, p. 139, note 1.

[468] Thirty-two years earlier he wrote in _The Rambler_, No. 53:-'In the prospect of poverty there is nothing but gloom and melancholy; the mind and body suffer together; its miseries bring no alleviation; it is a state in which every virtue is obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid reproach.' And again in No. 57:--'The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying, that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.' See _ante_. 441.

[469] See _ante_, p. 128.

[470] Hannah More wrote in April of this year (_Memoirs_, i.

249):--'Poor Johnson is in a bad state of health. I fear his const.i.tution is broken up.' (Yet in one week he dined out four times.

_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 237.) At one of these dinners, 'I urged him,' she continues (_ib_. p. 251) 'to take a _little_ wine. He replied, "I can't drink a _little_, child; therefore, I never touch it. Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." He was very good-humoured and gay. One of the company happened to say a word about poetry, "Hush, hush," said he, "it is dangerous to say a word of poetry before her; it is talking of the art of war before Hannibal."'

[471] This book was published in 1781, and, according to Lowndes, reached its seventh edition by 1787. See _ante_, i. 214.

[472] The clergyman's letter was dated May 4. _Gent. Mag._ 1786, p. 93.

Johnson is explaining the reason of his delay in acknowledging it.

[473] What follows appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ of May 29, 1782:--'A correspondent having mentioned, in the _Morning Chronicle_ of December 12, the last clause of the following paragraph, as seeming to favour suicide; we are requested to print the whole pa.s.sage, that its true meaning may appear, which is not to recommend suicide but exercise.

'Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed: but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the a.s.sociation pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disjoined by an easy separation. It was a principle among the ancients, that acute diseases are from Heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death, indeed, falls from Heaven, but we poison it by our own misconduct: to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.' [_The Rambler_, No. 85.] BOSWELL.

[474] The Correspondence may be seen at length in the _Gent. Mag._ Feb.

1786. BOSWELL. Johnson, advising Dr. Taylor 'to take as much exercise as he can bear,' says:-'I take the true definition of exercise to be labour without weariness.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 461.

[475] Here he met Hannah More. 'You cannot imagine,' she writes (_Memoirs_, i. 261), 'with what delight he showed me every part of his own college. Dr. Adams had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry.

We spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner, Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of singing-birds." When we came into the common-room, we spied a fine large print of Johnson, hung up that very morning, with this motto:--_And is not Johnson ours, himself a host?_ Under which stared you in the face--_From Miss More's "Sensibility_."

This little incident amused us; but, alas! Johnson looks very ill indeed--spiritless and wan. However, he made an effort to be cheerful.'

Miss Adams wrote on June 14, 1782:--'On Wednesday we had here a delightful blue-stocking party. Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott and Miss More, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Henderson, &c., dined here. Poor Dr. Johnson is in very bad health, but he exerted himself as much as he could, and being very fond of Miss More, he talked a good deal, and every word he says is worth recording. He took great delight in showing Miss More every part of Pembroke College, and his own rooms, &c., and told us many things about himself when here. .. June 19, 1782. We dined yesterday for the last time in the company with Dr. Johnson; he went away to-day. A warm dispute arose; it was about cider or wine freezing, and all the spirit retreating to the center.' _Pemb. Coll. MSS._

[476] 'I never retired to rest without feeling the justness of the Spanish proverb, "Let him who sleeps too much borrow the pillow of a debtor."' Johnson's _Works_, iv. 14.