Life of Johnson Volume IV Part 69

[965] See vol. ii. p. 126. BOSWELL

[966] '"That may be so," replied the lady, "for ought I know, but they are above my comprehension." "I an't obliged to find you comprehension, Madam, curse me," cried he,' _Roderick Random_, ch. 53. '"I protest,"

cried Moses, "I don't rightly comprehend the force of your reasoning."

"O, Sir," cried the Squire, "I am your most humble servant, I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too."' _Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. 7.

[967] In the first edition, 'as the Honourable Horace Walpole is often called;' in the second edition, 'as Horace, now Earl of Orford, &c.'

Walpole succeeded to the t.i.tle in Dec. 1791. In answer to congratulations he wrote (_Letters_, ix. 364):--'What has happened destroys my tranquillity.... Surely no man of seventy-four, unless superannuated, can have the smallest pleasure in sitting at home in his own room, as I almost always do, and being called by a new name.' He died March 2, 1797.

[968] In _The Rambler_, No. 83, a character of a virtuoso is given which in many ways suits Walpole:--'It is never without grief that I find a man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this secondary cla.s.s of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of gratifying his desire of eminence by expense rather than by labour, and known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness and the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and trinkets for arguments and principles.'

[969] Walpole says:--'I do not think I ever was in a room with Johnson six times in my days.' _Letters_, ix. 319. 'The first time, I think, was at the Royal Academy. Sir Joshua said, "Let me present Dr. Goldsmith to you;" he did. "Now I will present Dr. Johnson to you." "No," said I, "Sir Joshua; for Dr. Goldsmith, pa.s.s--but you shall not present Dr.

Johnson to me."' _Journal &c. of Miss Berry_, i. 305. In his _Journal of the Reign of George III_, he speaks of Johnson as 'one of the venal champions of the Court,' 'a renegade' (i. 430); 'a brute,' 'an old decrepit hireling' (_ib._ p. 472); and as 'one of the subordinate crew whom to name is to stigmatize' (_ib._ ii. 5). In his _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iv. 297, he says:--'With a lumber of learning and some strong parts Johnson was an odious and mean character. His manners were sordid, supercilious, and brutal; his style ridiculously bombastic and vicious, and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster.'

[970] See _ante_, i. 367.

[971] On May 26, 1791, Walpole wrote of Boswell's _Life of Johnson (Letters_ ix. 3l9):--'I expected amongst the excommunicated to find myself, but am very gently treated. I never would be in the least acquainted with Johnson; or, as Boswell calls it, I had not a just value for him; which the biographer imputes to my resentment for the Doctor's putting bad arguments (purposely out of Jacobitism) into the speeches which he wrote fifty years ago for my father in the _Gentleman's Magazine_; which I did not read then, or ever knew Johnson wrote till Johnson died.' Johnson said of these Debates:--'I saved appearances tolerably well; but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.' _Ante_, i. 504. 'Lord Holland said that whenever Boswell came into a company where Horace Walpole was, Walpole would throw back his head, purse up his mouth very significantly, and not speak a word while Boswell remained.' _Autobiographical Recollections of C. R.

Leslie_, i. 155. Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 44) says:--'Boswell, that quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in, which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tapping many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he vented his errand.'

[972] Walpole wrote (_Letters_, vi. 44):--'If _The School for Wives_ and _The Christmas Tale_ were laid to me, so was _The Heroic Espistle_.

I could certainly have written the two former, but not the latter.' See _ante_, iv. 113.

[973] The t.i.tle given by Bishop Pearson to his collection of Hales's Writings is the _Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable John Hales of Eaton College, &c_. It was published in 1659.

[974] I _Henry IV_, act ii. sc. 4. 'Sir James Mackintosh remembers that, while spending the Christmas of 1793 at Beaconsfield, Mr. Burke said to him, 'Johnson showed more powers of mind in company than in his writings; but he argued only for victory; and when he had neither a paradox to defend, nor an antagonist to crush, he would preface his a.s.sent with "Why, no, Sir."' CROKER. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 768.

[975]

Search then the ruling pa.s.sion: There alone The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.'

Pope, _Moral Essays_, i. 174.

'The publick pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.' _The Idler_, No. 18.

[976] _Ante_, ii. 241, and iii. 325.

[977] Boswell refers to Cicero's _Treatise on Famous Orators_.

[978] Boswell here falls into a mistake. About harvest-time in 1766, there were corn-riots owing to the dearness of bread. By the Act of the 15th of Charles II, corn, when under a certain price, might be legally exported. On Sept. 26, 1766, before this price had been reached, the Crown issued a proclamation to prohibit the exportation of grain. When parliament met in November, a bill of indemnity was brought in for those concerned in the late embargo. 'The necessity of the embargo was universally allowed;' it was the exercise by the Crown of a power of dispensing with the laws that was attacked. Some of the ministers who, out of office, 'had set up as the patrons of liberty,' were made the object 'of many sarcasms on the beaten subject of occasional patriotism.' _Ann. Reg._ x. 39-48, and Dicey's _Law of the Const.i.tution_, p. 50.

[979] _St. Mark_, ii. 9.

[980] _Anecdotes_, p. 43. BOSWELL. The pa.s.sage is from the _Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies_, March 22, 1775. Payne's _Burke_, i.

173. The image of the angel and Lord Bathurst was thus, according to Mrs. Piozzi, parodied by Johnson:--'Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent Whigs of the last age, the devil had, not with great impropriety, consented to appear.'

See _ante_, iii. 326, where Johnson said 'the first Whig was the Devil.'

[981] Boswell was stung by what Mrs. Piozzi wrote when recording this parody. She said that she had begged Johnson's leave to write it down directly. 'A trick,' she continues, 'which I have seen played on common occasions of sitting steadily [? stealthily] down at the other end of the room to write at the moment what should be said in company, either by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery in this conduct, that, were it commonly adopted, all confidence would soon be exiled from society.' See _post_, under June 30, 1784, where Boswell refers to this pa.s.sage.

[982]

'Who'er offends, at some unlucky time Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.'

Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, 2 Satires, i. 78.

[983] On March 14, 1770, in a debate on the licentiousness of the press, Townshend joined together Johnson and Shebbeare. Burke, who followed him, said nothing about Johnson. Fitzherbert, speaking of Johnson as 'my friend,' defended him as 'a pattern of morality.' _Cavendish Debates_, i.514. On Feb. 16, 1774, when Fox drew attention to a 'vile libel'

signed _A South Briton_, Townshend said 'Dr. Shebbeare and Dr. Johnson have been pensioned, but this wretched South Briton is to be prosecuted.' It was Fox, and not Burke, who on this occasion defended Johnson. _Parl. Hist._ xvii.1054. As Goldsmith was writing _Retaliation_ at the very time that this second attack was made, it is very likely that it was the occasion, of the change in the line.

[984] In the original _yet_.

[985]

'Sis pecore et multa dives tellure licebit, Tibique Pactolus fluat.'

'Though wide thy land extends, and large thy fold, Though rivers roll for thee their purest gold.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Epodes_, xv. 19.

[986] See Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 404, for Macaulay's appropriation and amplification of this pa.s.sage.

[987] See _ante_, ii. 168.

[988] Mr. Croker suggests the Rev. Martin Sherlock, an Irish Clergyman, 'who published in 1781 his own travels under the t.i.tle of _Letters of an English Traveller translated from the French._' Croker's _Boswell, p.

770. Mason writes of him as 'Mister, or Monsieur, or Signor Sherlock, for I am told he is both [sic] French, English, and Italian in print.'

Walpole's _Letters_, viii. 202. I think, however, that Dr. Thomas Campbell is meant. His _Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland_ Boswell calls 'a very entertaining book, which has, however, one fault;--that it a.s.sumes the fict.i.tious character of an Englishman.'

_Ante_, ii. 339.

[989] See _ante_, iv. 49.

[990] This anecdote is not in the first two editions.

[991] See _ante_, in. 369.

[992] 'I have heard,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 409), 'that in many instances, and in some with tears in his eyes, he has apologised to those whom he had offended by contradiction or roughness of behaviour.'

See _ante_, ii. 109, and 256, note 1.

[993] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 131) describes Savage's 'superst.i.tious regard to the correction of his sheets ... The intrusion or omission of a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour of a single letter as a heavy calamity.'

[994] Compositor in the Printing-house means, the person who adjusts the types in the order in which they are to stand for printing; and arranges what is called the _form_, from which an impression is taken. BOSWELL.

[995] This circ.u.mstance therefore alluded to in Mr. Courtenay's _Poetical Character_ of him is strictly true. My informer was Mrs.

Desmoulins, who lived many years in Dr. Johnson's house. BOSWELL. The following are Mr. Courtenay's lines:--

'Soft-eyed compa.s.sion with a look benign, His fervent vows he offered at thy shrine; To guilt, to woe, the sacred debt was paid, And helpless females blessed his pious aid; s.n.a.t.c.hed from disease, and want's abandoned crew, Despair and anguish from their victims flew; Hope's soothing balm into their bosoms stole, And tears of penitence restored the soul.'

[996] The _Cross Readings_ were said to be formed 'by reading two columns of a newspaper together onwards,' whereby 'the strangest connections were brought about,' such as:--

'This morning the Right Hon. the Speaker was convicted of keeping a disorderly house.

Whereas the said barn was set on fire by an incendiary letter dropped early in the morning.

By order of the Commissioners for Paving An infallible remedy for the stone and gravel.

The sword of state was carried before Sir John Fielding and committed to Newgate.'