Life of Johnson Volume I Part 80

[954] See _post_, May 19, 1777.

[955] See _post_, March 21, 1772.

[956] 'I have often observed with wonder, that we should know less of Ireland than of any other country in Europe.' Temple's _Works_, iii. 82.

[957] The celebrated oratour, Mr. Flood has shewn himself to be of Dr.

Johnson's opinion; having by his will bequeathed his estate, after the death of his wife Lady Frances, to the University of Dublin; 'desiring that immediately after the said estate shall come into their possession, they shall appoint two professors, one for the study of the native Erse or Irish language, and the other for the study of Irish antiquities and Irish history, and for the study of any other European language ill.u.s.trative of, or auxiliary to, the study of Irish antiquities or Irish history; and that they shall give yearly two liberal premiums for two compositions, one in verse, and the other in prose, in the Irish language.' BOSWELL.

[958] Dr. T. Campbell records in his _Diary of a Visit to England_ (p.

62), that at the dinner at Messieurs Dilly's (_post_, April 5, 1775) he 'ventured to say that the first professors of Oxford, Paris, &c., were Irish. "Sir," says Johnson, "I believe there is something in what you say, and I am content with it, since they are not Scotch."'

[959] 'On Mr. Thrale's attack of apoplexy in 1779, Johnson wrote to Mrs.

Thrale:--'I remember Dr. Marsigli, an Italian physician, whose seizure was more violent than Mr. Thrale's, for he fell down helpless, but his case was not considered as of much danger, and he went safe home, and is now a professor at Padua.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 48.

[960] 'Now, or late, Vice-Chancellor.' WARTON.--BOSWELL. He was Vice-Chancellor when Johnson's degree was conferred (_ante_, p. 282), but his term of office had now come to an end.

[961] 'Mr. Warton was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in the preceding year.' WARTON.-BOSWELL.

[962] 'Miss Jones lived at Oxford, and was often of our parties. She was a very ingenious poetess, and published a volume of poems; and, on the whole, was a most sensible, agreeable, and amiable woman. She was a sister to the Reverend River Jones, Chanter of Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford, and Johnson used to call her the _Chantress_. I have heard him often address her in this pa.s.sage from _Il Penseroso_:

"Thee, Chantress, oft the woods among I woo," etc.

She died unmarried.' WHARTON

[963] Tom. iii. p. 482. BOSWELL.

[964] Of _Shakspeare_. BOSWELL.

[965] This letter is misdated. It was written in Jan. 1759, and not in 1758. Johnson says that he is forty-nine. In Jan. 1758 he was forty-eight. He mentions the performance of _Cleane_, which was at the end of 1758; and he says that 'Murphy is to have his _Orphan of China_ acted next month.' It was acted in the spring of 1759.

[966] _Juvenal_, Sat. iii. 1.

'Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel, When injured Thales bids the town farewell, Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend, I praise the hermit, but regret the friend; Resolved at length from vice and London far To breathe in distant fields a purer air, And fixed on Cambria's solitary sh.o.r.e Give to St. David one true Briton more.'

Johnson's _London_, l. 1.

[967] Mr. Garrick. BOSWELL.

[968] Mr. Dodsley, the Authour of _Cleone_. BOSWELL. Garrick, according to Davies, had rejected Dodsley's _Cleone_, 'and had termed it a cruel, b.l.o.o.d.y, and unnatural play.' Davies's _Garrick_, i. 223. Johnson himself said of it:--'I am afraid there is more blood than brains.' _Post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_. The night it was brought out at Covent Garden, Garrick appeared for the first time as Marplot in the _Busy Body_ at Drury Lane. The next morning he wrote to congratulate Dodsley on his success, and asked him at the same time to let him know how he could support his interest without absolutely giving up his own.

To this Dodsley returned a cold reply. Garrick wrote back as follows:--

'Master Robert Dodsley,

When I first read your peevish answer to my well-meant proposal to you, I was much disturbed at it--but when I considered, that some minds cannot bear the smallest portion of success, I most sincerely pitied you; and when I found in the same letter, that you were graciously pleased to dismiss me from your acquaintance, I could not but confess so apparent an obligation, and am with due acknowledgements,

Master Robert Dodsley,

Your most obliged

David Garrick.'

Garrick _Corres_., i. 80 (where the letters that pa.s.sed are wrongly dated 1757). Mrs. Bellamy in her _Life_ (iii. 109) says that on the evening of the performance she was provoked by something that Dodsley said, 'which,' she continues, 'made me answer that good man with a petulance which afterwards gave me uneasiness. I told him that I had a reputation to lose as an actress; but, as for his piece, Mr. Garrick had antic.i.p.ated the d.a.m.nation of it publicly, the preceding evening, at the Bedford Coffee-house, where he had declared that it could not pa.s.s muster, as it was the very worst piece ever exhibited.' Shenstone (_Works_, iii. 288) writing five weeks after the play was brought out, says:--'Dodsley is now going to print his fourth edition. He sold 2000 of his first edition the very first day he published it.' The price was eighteen-pence.

[969] Mrs. Bellamy (_Life_, iii. 108) says that Johnson was present at the last rehearsal. 'When I came to repeat, "Thou shalt not murder," Dr.

Johnson caught me by the arm, and that somewhat too briskly, saying, at the same time, "It is a commandment, and must be spoken, Thou shalt _not_ murder." As I had not then the honour of knowing personally that great genius, I was not a little displeased at his inforcing his instructions with so much vehemence.' The next night she heard, she says, amidst the general applause, 'the same voice which had instructed me in the commandment, exclaim aloud from the pit, "I will write a copy of verses upon her myself." I knew that my success was insured.' See _post_, May 11, 1783.

[970] Dodsley had published his _London_ and his _Vanity of Human Wishes_ (_ante_, pp. 124, 193), and had had a large share in the _Dictionary_, (_ante_, p. 183).

[971] It is to this that Churchill refers in the following lines:--

'Let them [the Muses] with Glover o'er Medea doze; Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes, Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears, Melts as they melt, and weeps with weeping Peers.'

_The Journey_. _Poems_, ii. 328.

[972] See _post_ p. 350, note.

[973] Mr. Samuel Richardson, authour of _Clarissa_. BOSWELL.

[974] In 1753 when in Devons.h.i.+re he charged five guineas a head (Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 89); shortly afterwards, when he removed to London, twelve guineas (_ib_. p. 101); in 1764, thirty guineas; for a whole length 150 guineas (_ib_. p. 224). Northcote writes that 'he sometimes has lamented the being interrupted in his work by idle visitors, saying, "those persons do not consider that my time is worth to me five guineas an hour."' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 83.

[975] 'Miss Reynolds at first amused herself by painting miniature portraits, and in that part of the art was particularly successful. In her attempts at oil-painting, however, she did not succeed, which made Reynolds say jestingly, that her pictures in that way made other people laugh and him cry; and as he did not approve of her painting in oil, she generally did it by stealth.' _Ib_. ii. 160.

[976] Murphy was far from happy. The play was not produced till April; by the date of Johnson's letter, he had not by any means reached the end of what he calls 'the first, and indeed, the last, disagreeable controversy that he ever had with Mr. Garrick.' Murphy's _Garrick_, p. 213.

[977] This letter was an answer to one in which was enclosed a draft for the payment of some subscriptions to his _Shakspeare_. BOSWELL.

[978] In the Preface he says:--(_Works_, v. 52) 'I have not pa.s.sed over with affected superiority what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance.'

[979] Northcote gives the following account of this same garret in describing how Reynolds introduced Roubiliac to Johnson. 'Johnson received him with much civility, and took them up into a garret, which he considered as his library; where, besides his books, all covered with dust, there was an old crazy deal table, and a still worse and older elbow chair, having only three legs. In this chair Johnson seated himself, after having, with considerable dexterity and evident practice, first drawn it up against the wall, which served to support it on that side on which the leg was deficient.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 75.

Miss Reynolds improves on the account. She says that 'before Johnson had the pension he literally dressed like a beggar; and, from what I have been told, he as literally lived as such; at least as to common conveniences in his apartments, wanting even a chair to sit on, particularly in his study, where a gentleman who frequently visited him, whilst writing his _Idlers_, constantly found him at his desk, sitting on one with three legs; and on rising from it, he remarked that Dr.

Johnson never forgot its defect, but would either hold it in his hand, or place it with great composure against some support, taking no notice of its imperfection to his visitor. It was remarkable in Johnson, that no external circ.u.mstances ever prompted him to make any apology, or to seem even sensible of their existence.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 832.

There can be little question that she is describing the same room--a room in a house in which Miss Williams was lodged, and most likely Mr.

Levet, and in which Mr. Burney dined; and in which certainly there must have been chairs. Yet Mr. Carlyle, misled by her account, says:--'In his apartments, at one time, there were unfortunately no chairs.' Carlyle's _Miscellanies_, ed. 1872, iv. 127.

[980] In his _Life of Pope_ (_Works_, viii. 272) Johnson calls Theobald 'a man of heavy diligence, with very slender powers.' In the Preface to Shakspeare he admits that 'what little he did was commonly right.' _Ib_.

v. 137. The Editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_ on the other hand say:--'Theobald, as an Editor, is incomparably superior to his predecessors, and to his immediate successor Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his materials. Many most brilliant emendations are due to him.' On Johnson's statement that 'Warburton would make two-and-fifty Theobalds, cut into slices,' they write:--'From this judgment, whether they be compared as critics or editors, we emphatically dissent.' _Cambridge Shakespeare_, i., x.x.xi., x.x.xiv., note. Among Theobald's 'brilliant emendations' are 'a'babbled of green fields' (_Henry V_, ii. 3), and 'lackeying the varying tide.'

(_Antony and Cleopatra_, i.4).

[981] '_A familiar epistle_ [by Lord Bolingbroke] _to the most impudent man living_, 1749.' _Brit. Mus. Catal_.

[982] 'Mallet, by address or accident, perhaps by his dependence on the prince [of Wales], found his way to Bolingbroke, a man whose pride and petulance made his kindness difficult to gain or keep, and whom Mallet was content to court by an act, which, I hope, was unwillingly performed. When it was found that Pope had clandestinely printed an unauthorised number of the pamphlet called _The Patriot King_, Bolingbroke, in a fit of useless fury, resolved to blast his memory, and employed Mallet (1749) as the executioner of his vengeance. Mallet had not virtue, or had not spirit, to refuse the office; and was rewarded not long after with the legacy of Lord Bolingbroke's works.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 467. See _ante_, p. 268, and Walpole's _Letters_, ii. 159.

[983] _A View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy in Four Letters to a Friend_, 1754-5.

[984] A paper under this name had been started seven years earlier. See _Carter and Talbot Corres_., ii. 33.

[985] In the two years in which Johnson wrote for this paper it saw many changes. The first _Idler_ appeared in No. 2 of the _Universal Chronicle or Weekly Gazette_, which was published not by Newbery, but by J. Payne.

On April 29, this paper took the t.i.tle of _Payne's Universal Chronicle_, etc. On Jan. 6, 1759, it resumed the old t.i.tle and was published by R.