Life of Johnson, Volume 2 1765-1776 (part 2 of 4)

Life of Johnson, Volume 2 1765-1776 (part 2 of 4)

We talked of a young gentleman's marriage with an eminent singer[1104], and his determination that she should no longer sing in publick, though his father was very earnest she should, because her talents would be liberally rewarded, so as to make her a good fortune. It was questioned whether the young gentleman, who had not a shilling in the world[1105], but was blest with very uncommon talents, was not foolishly delicate, or foolishly proud, and his father truely rational without being mean. Johnson, with all the high spirit of a Roman senator, exclaimed, 'He resolved wisely and nobly to be sure. He is a brave man. Would not a gentleman be disgraced by having his wife singing publickly for hire? No, Sir, there can be no doubt here. I know not if I should not prepare myself for a publick singer, as readily as let my wife be one.'

Johnson arraigned the modern politicks of this country, as entirely devoid of all principle of whatever kind. 'Politicks (said he) are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politicks, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it. How different in that respect is the state of the nation now from what it was in the time of Charles the First, during the Usurpation, and after the Restoration, in the time of Charles the Second. Hudibras affords a strong proof how much hold political principles had then upon the minds of men. There is in Hudibras a great deal of bullion which will always last. But to be sure the brightest strokes of his wit owed their force to the impression of the characters, which was upon men's minds at the time; to their knowing them, at table and in the street; in short, being familiar with them; and above all, to his satire being directed against those whom a little while before they had hated and feared[1106]. The nation in general has ever been loyal, has been at all times attached to the monarch, though a few daring rebels have been wonderfully powerful for a time. The murder of Charles the First was undoubtedly not committed with the approbation or consent of the people. Had that been the case, Parliament would not have ventured to consign the regicides to their deserved punishment. And we know what exuberance of joy there was when Charles the Second was restored. If Charles the Second had bent all his mind to it, had made it his sole object, he might have been as absolute as Louis the Fourteenth.' A gentleman observed he would have done no harm if he had. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, absolute princes seldom do any harm. But they who are governed by them are governed by chance. There is no security for good government.' CAMBRIDGE. 'There have been many sad victims to absolute government.' JOHNSON. 'So, Sir, have there been to popular factions.' BOSWELL. 'The question is, which is worst, one wild beast or many?'

Johnson praised The Spectator, particularly the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. He said, 'Sir Roger did not die a violent death, as has been generally fancied. He was not killed; he died only because others were to die, and because his death afforded an opportunity to Addison for some very fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making Don Quixote die[1107].--I never could see why Sir Roger is represented as a little cracked. It appears to me that the story of the widow was intended to have something superinduced upon it: but the superstructure did not come[1108].'

Somebody found fault with writing verses in a dead language, maintaining that they were merely arrangements of so many words, and laughed at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, for sending forth collections of them not only in Greek and Latin, but even in Syriac, Arabick, and other more unknown tongues. JOHNSON. 'I would have as many of these as possible; I would have verses in every language that there are the means of acquiring. Nobody imagines that an University is to have at once two hundred poets; but it should be able to show two hundred scholars. Pieresc's[1109] death was lamented, I think, in forty languages. And I would have had at every coronation, and every death of a King, every Gaudium, and every Luctus, University-verses, in as many languages as can be acquired. I would have the world to be thus told, "Here is a school where every thing may be learnt."'

Having set out next day on a visit to the Earl of Pembroke, at Wilton[1110], and to my friend, Mr. Temple[1111], at Mamhead, in Devonshire, and not having returned to town till the second of May, I did not see Dr. Johnson for a considerable time, and during the remaining part of my stay in London, kept very imperfect notes of his conversation, which had I according to my usual custom written out at large soon after the time, much might have been preserved, which is now irretrievably lost. I can now only record some particular scenes, and a few fragments of his memorabilia. But to make some amends for my relaxation of diligence in one respect, I have to present my readers with arguments upon two law cases, with which he favoured me.

On Saturday, the sixth of May, we dined by ourselves at the Mitre, and he dictated to me what follows, to obviate the complaint already mentioned[1112], which had been made in the form of an action in the Court of Session, by Dr. Memis, of Aberdeen, that in the same translation of a charter in which physicians were mentioned, he was called Doctor of Medicine.

'There are but two reasons for which a physician can decline the title of Doctor of Medicine, because he supposes himself disgraced by the doctorship, or supposes the doctorship disgraced by himself. To be disgraced by a title which he shares in common with every illustrious name of his profession, with Boerhaave, with Arbuthnot, and with Cullen, can surely diminish no man's reputation. It is, I suppose, to the doctorate, from which he shrinks, that he owes his right of practising physick. A doctor of Medicine is a physician under the protection of the laws, and by the stamp of authority. The physician, who is not a Doctor, usurps a profession, and is authorised only by himself to decide upon health and sickness, and life and death. That this gentleman is a Doctor, his diploma makes evident; a diploma not obtruded upon him, but obtained by solicitation, and for which fees were paid. With what countenance any man can refuse the title which he has either begged or bought, is not easily discovered.

'All verbal injury must comprise in it either some false position, or some unnecessary declaration of defamatory truth. That in calling him Doctor, a false appellation was given him, he himself will not pretend, who at the same time that he complains of the title, would be offended if we supposed him to be not a Doctor. If the title of Doctor be a defamatory truth, it is time to dissolve our colleges; for why should the publick give salaries to men whose approbation is reproach? It may likewise deserve the notice of the publick to consider what help can be given to the professors of physick, who all share with this unhappy gentleman the ignominious appellation, and of whom the very boys in the street are not afraid to say, There goes the Doctor.

'What is implied by the term Doctor is well known. It distinguishes him to whom it is granted, as a man who has attained such knowledge of his profession as qualifies him to instruct others. A Doctor of Laws is a man who can form lawyers by his precepts. A Doctor of Medicine is a man who can teach the art of curing diseases. There is an old axiom which no man has yet thought fit to deny, Nil dat quod non habet. Upon this principle to be Doctor implies skill, for nemo docet quod non didicit. In England, whoever practises physick, not being a Doctor, must practise by a licence: but the doctorate conveys a licence in itself.

'By what accident it happened that he and the other physicians were mentioned in different terms, where the terms themselves were equivalent, or where in effect that which was applied to him was the most honourable, perhaps they who wrote the paper cannot now remember. Had they expected a lawsuit to have been the consequence of such petty variation, I hope they would have avoided it[1113]. But, probably, as they meant no ill, they suspected no danger, and, therefore, consulted only what appeared to them propriety or convenience.'

A few days afterwards I consulted him upon a cause, Paterson and others against Alexander and others, which had been decided by a casting vote in the Court of Session, determining that the Corporation of Stirling was corrupt, and setting aside the election of some of their officers, because it was proved that three of the leading men who influenced the majority had entered into an unjustifiable compact, of which, however, the majority were ignorant. He dictated to me, after a little consideration, the following sentences upon the subject:--

'There is a difference between majority and superiority; majority is applied to number, and superiority to power; and power, like many other things, is to be estimated non numero sed pondere. Now though the greater number is not corrupt, the greater weight is corrupt, so that corruption predominates in the borough, taken collectively, though, perhaps, taken numerically, the greater part may be uncorrupt. That borough, which is so constituted as to act corruptly, is in the eye of reason corrupt, whether it be by the uncontrolable power of a few, or by an accidental pravity of the multitude. The objection, in which is urged the injustice of making the innocent suffer with the guilty, is an objection not only against society, but against the possibility of society. All societies, great and small, subsist upon this condition; that as the individuals derive advantages from union, they may likewise suffer inconveniences; that as those who do nothing, and sometimes those who do ill, will have the honours and emoluments of general virtue and general prosperity, so those likewise who do nothing, or perhaps do well, must be involved in the consequences of predominant corruption.'

This in my opinion was a very nice case; but the decision was affirmed in the House of Lords.

On Monday, May 8, we went together and visited the mansions of Bedlam[1114]. I had been informed that he had once been there before with Mr. Wedderburne, (now Lord Loughborough,) Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Foote; and I had heard Foote give a very entertaining account of Johnson's happening to have his attention arrested by a man who was very furious, and who, while beating his straw[1115], supposed it was William Duke of Cumberland, whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746[1116]. There was nothing peculiarly remarkable this day; but the general contemplation of insanity was very affecting. I accompanied him home, and dined and drank tea with him.

Talking of an acquaintance of ours[1117], distinguished for knowing an uncommon variety of miscellaneous articles both in antiquities and polite literature, he observed, 'You know, Sir, he runs about with little weight upon his mind.' And talking of another very ingenious gentleman[1118], who from the warmth of his temper was at variance with many of his acquaintance, and wished to avoid them, he said, 'Sir, he leads the life of an outlaw.'

On Friday, May 12[1119], as he had been so good as to assign me a room in his house, where I might sleep occasionally, when I happened to sit with him to a late hour, I took possession of it this night, found every thing in excellent order, and was attended by honest Francis with a most civil assiduity. I asked Johnson whether I might go to a consultation with another lawyer upon Sunday, as that appeared to me to be doing work as much in my way, as if an artisan should work on the day appropriated for religious rest. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, when you are of consequence enough to oppose the practice of consulting upon Sunday, you should do it: but you may go now. It is not criminal, though it is not what one should do, who is anxious for the preservation and increase of piety, to which a peculiar observance of Sunday is a great help. The distinction is clear between what is of moral and what is of ritual obligation.'

On Saturday, May 13, I breakfasted with him by invitation, accompanied by Mr. Andrew Crosbie[1120], a Scotch Advocate, whom he had seen at Edinburgh, and the Hon. Colonel (now General) Edward Stopford, brother to Lord Courtown, who was desirous of being introduced to him. His tea and rolls and butter, and whole breakfast apparatus were all in such decorum, and his behaviour was so courteous, that Colonel Stopford was quite surprised, and wondered at his having heard so much said of Johnson's slovenliness and roughness. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Crosbie pleased him much by talking learnedly of alchymy, as to which Johnson was not a positive unbeliever, but rather delighted in considering what progress had actually been made in the transmutation of metals, what near approaches there had been to the making of gold; and told us that it was affirmed, that a person in the Russian dominions had discovered the secret, but died without revealing it, as imagining it would be prejudicial to society. He added, that it was not impossible but it might in time be generally known.

It being asked whether it was reasonable for a man to be angry at another whom a woman had preferred to him;--JOHNSON. 'I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him: but angry he is, no doubt; and he is loath to be angry at himself.'

Before setting out for Scotland on the 23rd[1121], I was frequently in his company at different places, but during this period have recorded only two remarks: one concerning Garrick: 'He has not Latin enough. He finds out the Latin by the meaning rather than the meaning by the Latin[1122].' And another concerning writers of travels, who, he observed, 'were more defective than any other writers[1123].'

I passed many hours with him on the 17th[1124], of which I find all my memorial is, 'much laughing.' It should seem he had that day been in a humour for jocularity and merriment, and upon such occasions I never knew a man laugh more heartily. We may suppose, that the high relish of a state so different from his habitual gloom, produced more than ordinary exertions of that distinguishing faculty of man, which has puzzled philosophers so much to explain[1125]. Johnson's laugh was as remarkable as any circumstance in his manner. It was a kind of good humoured growl. Tom Davies described it drolly enough: 'He laughs like a rhinoceros.'

'To BENNET LANGTON, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'I have an old amanuensis[1126] in great distress. I have given what I think I can give, and begged till I cannot tell where to beg again. I put into his hands this morning four guineas. If you could collect three guineas more, it would clear him from his present difficulty.

'I am, Sir, 'Your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'May 21, 1775.'

'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'I make no doubt but you are now safely lodged in your own habitation, and have told all your adventures to Mrs. Boswell and Miss Veronica. Pray teach Veronica to love me. Bid her not mind mamma.

'Mrs. Thrale has taken cold, and been very much disordered, but I hope is grown well. Mr. Langton went yesterday to Lincolnshire, and has invited Nicolaida[1127] to follow him. Beauclerk talks of going to Bath. I am to set out on Monday; so there is nothing but dispersion.

'I have returned Lord Hailes's entertaining sheets[1128], but must stay till I come back for more, because it will be inconvenient to send them after me in my vagrant state.

'I promised Mrs. Macaulay[1129] that I would try to serve her son at Oxford. I have not forgotten it, nor am unwilling to perform it. If they desire to give him an English education, it should be considered whether they cannot send him for a year or two to an English school. If he comes immediately from Scotland, he can make no figure in our Universities. The schools in the north, I believe, are cheap; and, when I was a young man, were eminently good.

'There are two little books published by the Foulis[1130], Telemachus and Collins's Poems, each a shilling: I would be glad to have them.

'Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, though she does not love me. You see what perverse things ladies are, and how little fit to be trusted with feudal estates. When she mends and loves me, there may be more hope of her daughters.

'I will not send compliments to my friends by name, because I would be loath to leave any out in the enumeration. Tell them, as you see them, how well I speak of Scotch politeness, and Scotch hospitality, and Scotch beauty, and of every thing Scotch, but Scotch oat-cakes, and Scotch prejudices.

'Let me know the answer of Rasay[1131], and the decision relating to Sir Allan[1132].

'I am, my dearest Sir, with great affection, 'Your most obliged, and 'Most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'May 27, 1775.'

After my return to Scotland, I wrote three letters to him, from which I extract the following passages:--

'I have seen Lord Hailes since I came down. He thinks it wonderful that you are pleased to take so much pains in revising his Annals. I told him that you said you were well rewarded by the entertainment which you had in reading them.'

'There has been a numerous flight of Hebrideans in Edinburgh this summer, whom I have been happy to entertain at my house. Mr. Donald Macqueen[1133] and Lord Monboddo supped with me one evening. They joined in controverting your proposition, that the Gaelick of the Highlands and Isles of Scotland was not written till of late.'

'My mind has been somewhat dark this summer[1134]. I have need of your warming and vivifying rays; and I hope I shall have them frequently. I am going to pass some time with my father at Auchinleck.'

'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'I am returned from the annual ramble into the middle counties[1135]. Having seen nothing I had not seen before, I have nothing to relate. Time has left that part of the island few antiquities; and commerce has left the people no singularities. I was glad to go abroad, and, perhaps, glad to come home; which is, in other words, I was, I am afraid, weary of being at home, and weary of being abroad. Is not this the state of life? But, if we confess this weariness, let us not lament it, for all the wise and all the good say, that we may cure it.

'For the black fumes which rise in your mind, I can prescribe nothing but that you disperse them by honest business or innocent pleasure, and by reading, sometimes easy and sometimes serious. Change of place is useful; and I hope that your residence at Auchinleck will have many good effects[1136].

'That I should have given pain to Rasay, I am sincerely sorry; and am therefore very much pleased that he is no longer uneasy. He still thinks that I have represented him as personally giving up the Chieftainship. I meant only that it was no longer contested between the two houses, and supposed it settled, perhaps, by the cession of some remote generation, in the house of Dunvegan. I am sorry the advertisement was not continued for three or four times in the paper.

'That Lord Monboddo and Mr. Macqueen should controvert a position contrary to the imaginary interest of literary or national prejudice, might be easily imagined; but of a standing fact there ought to be no controversy: If there are men with tails, catch an homo caudatus; if there was writing of old in the Highlands or Hebrides, in the Erse language, produce the manuscripts. Where men write, they will write to one another, and some of their letters, in families studious of their ancestry, will be kept. In Wales there are many manuscripts.

'I have now three parcels of Lord Hailes's history, which I purpose to return all the next week: that his respect for my little observations should keep his work in suspense, makes one of the evils of my journey. It is in our language, I think, a new mode of history, which tells all that is wanted, and, I suppose, all that is known, without laboured splendour of language, or affected subtilty of conjecture. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder. He seems to have the closeness of Henault[1137] without his constraint.

'Mrs. Thrale was so entertained with your Journal[1138], that she almost read herself blind. She has a great regard for you.

'Of Mrs. Boswell, though she knows in her heart that she does not love me, I am always glad to hear any good, and hope that she and the little dear ladies will have neither sickness nor any other affliction. But she knows that she does not care what becomes of me, and for that she may be sure that I think her very much to blame.

'Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head to think that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety. I hold you, as Hamlet has it, 'in my heart of hearts[1139],' and therefore, it is little to say, that I am, Sir,

'Your affectionate humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'London, Aug. 27, 1775.'

TO THE SAME.

'SIR,

'If in these papers[1140] there is little alteration attempted, do not suppose me negligent. I have read them perhaps more closely than the rest; but I find nothing worthy of an objection.

'Write to me soon, and write often, and tell me all your honest heart.

'I am Sir, 'Yours affectionately, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'Aug. 30, 1775.'

TO THE SAME.

'MY DEAR SIR,

'I now write to you, lest in some of your freaks and humours you should fancy yourself neglected. Such fancies I must entreat you never to admit, at least never to indulge: for my regard for you is so radicated and fixed, that it is become part of my mind, and cannot be effaced but by some cause uncommonly violent; therefore, whether I write or not, set your thoughts at rest. I now write to tell you that I shall not very soon write again, for I am to set out to-morrow on another journey.

* * * * *

'Your friends are all well at Streatham, and in Leicester-fields[1141]. Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, if she is in good humour with me.

'I am, Sir, &c. 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'September 14, 1775.'

What he mentions in such light terms as, 'I am to set out to-morrow on another journey,' I soon afterwards discovered was no less than a tour to France with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. This was the only time in his life that he went upon the Continent.

'To MR. ROBERT LEVET.

'Sept. 18[1142], 1775. Calais.

'DEAR SIR,

'We are here in France, after a very pleasing passage of no more than six hours. I know not when I shall write again, and therefore I write now, though you cannot suppose that I have much to say. You have seen France yourself[1143]. From this place we are going to Rouen, and from Rouen to Paris, where Mr. Thrale designs to stay about five or six weeks. We have a regular recommendation to the English resident, so we shall not be taken for vagabonds. We think to go one way and return another, and for [?see] as much as we can. I will try to speak a little French[1144]; I tried hitherto but little, but I spoke sometimes. If I heard better, I suppose I should learn faster. I am, Sir,

'Your humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

To THE SAME.

'Paris, Oct. 22, 1775.

'DEAR SIR,

'We are still here, commonly very busy in looking about us. We have been to-day at Versailles. You have seen it, and I shall not describe it. We came yesterday from Fontainbleau, where the Court is now. We went to see the King and Queen at dinner, and the Queen was so impressed by Miss[1145], that she sent one of the Gentlemen to enquire who she was. I find all true that you have ever told me of Paris. Mr. Thrale is very liberal, and keeps us two coaches, and a very fine table; but I think our cookery very bad[1146]. Mrs. Thrale got into a convent of English nuns, and I talked with her through the grate, and I am very kindly used by the English Benedictine friars. But upon the whole I cannot make much acquaintance here; and though the churches, palaces, and some private houses are very magnificent, there is no very great pleasure after having seen many, in seeing more; at least the pleasure, whatever it be, must some time have an end, and we are beginning to think when we shall come home. Mr. Thrale calculates that, as we left Streatham on the fifteenth of September, we shall see it again about the fifteenth of November.

'I think I had not been on this side of the sea five days before I found a sensible improvement in my health. I ran a race in the rain this day, and beat Baretti. Baretti is a fine fellow, and speaks French, I think, quite as well as English[1147].

'Make my compliments to Mrs. Williams; and give my love to Francis; and tell my friends that I am not lost.

I am, dear Sir,

'Your affectionate humble, &c.

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

'Edinburgh, Oct. 24, 1775.

'MY DEAR SIR,

'If I had not been informed that you were at Paris, you should have had a letter from me by the earliest opportunity, announcing the birth of my son, on the 9th instant; I have named him Alexander[1148], after my father. I now write, as I suppose your fellow traveller, Mr. Thrale, will return to London this week, to attend his duty in Parliament, and that you will not stay behind him.

'I send another parcel of Lord Hailes's Annals, I have undertaken to solicit you for a favour to him, which he thus requests in a letter to me: "I intend soon to give you The Life of Robert Bruce, which you will be pleased to transmit to Dr. Johnson. I wish that you could assist me in a fancy which I have taken, of getting Dr. Johnson to draw a character of Robert Bruce, from the account that I give of that prince. If he finds materials for it in my work, it will be a proof that I have been fortunate in selecting the most striking incidents."

'I suppose by The Life of Robert Bruce, his Lordship means that part of his Annals which relates the history of that prince, and not a separate work.

'Shall we have A Journey to Paris from you in the winter? You will, I hope, at any rate be kind enough to give me some account of your French travels very soon, for I am very impatient. What a different scene have you viewed this autumn, from that which you viewed in autumn 1773! I ever am, my dear Sir,

'Your much obliged and 'Affectionate humble servant, 'JAMES BOSWELL.'

'TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'I am glad that the young Laird is born, and an end, as I hope, put to the only difference that you can ever have with Mrs. Boswell[1149]. I know that she does not love me; but I intend to persist in wishing her well till I get the better of her.

'Paris is, indeed, a place very different from the Hebrides, but it is to a hasty traveller not so fertile of novelty, nor affords so many opportunities of remark. I cannot pretend to tell the publick any thing of a place better known to many of my readers than to myself. We can talk of it when we meet.

'I shall go next week to Streatham, from whence I purpose to send a parcel of the History every post. Concerning the character of Bruce, I can only say, that I do not see any great reason for writing it; but I shall not easily deny what Lord Hailes and you concur in desiring.

'I have been remarkably healthy all the journey, and hope you and your family have known only that trouble and danger which has so happily terminated. Among all the congratulations that you may receive, I hope you believe none more warm or sincere, than those of, dear Sir,

'Your most affectionate, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'November 16, 1775[1150].'

'TO MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD[1151].

'DEAR MADAM,

'This week I came home from Paris. I have brought you a little box, which I thought pretty; but I know not whether it is properly a snuff-box, or a box for some other use. I will send it, when I can find an opportunity. I have been through the whole journey remarkably well. My fellow-travellers were the same whom you saw at Lichfield[1152], only we took Baretti with us. Paris is not so fine a place as you would expect. The palaces and churches, however, are very splendid and magnificent; and what would please you, there are many very fine pictures; but I do not think their way of life commodious or pleasant[1153].

'Let me know how your health has been all this while. I hope the fine summer has given you strength sufficient to encounter the winter.

'Make my compliments to all my friends; and, if your fingers will let you, write to me, or let your maid write, if it be troublesome to you. I am, dear Madam,

'Your most affectionate humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'November 16, 1775.'

TO THE SAME.

'DEAR MADAM,

'Some weeks ago I wrote to you, to tell you that I was just come home from a ramble, and hoped that I should have heard from you. I am afraid winter has laid hold on your fingers, and hinders you from writing. However, let somebody write, if you cannot, and tell me how you do, and a little of what has happened at Lichfield among our friends. I hope you are all well.

'When I was in France, I thought myself growing young, but am afraid that cold weather will take part of my new vigour from me. Let us, however, take care of ourselves, and lose no part of our health by negligence.

'I never knew whether you received the Commentary on the New Testament and the Travels, and the glasses.

'Do, my dear love, write to me; and do not let us forget each other. This is the season of good wishes, and I wish you all good. I have not lately seen Mr. Porter[1154], nor heard of him. Is he with you?

'Be pleased to make my compliments to Mrs. Adey, and Mrs. Cobb, and all my friends; and when I can do any good, let me know.

'I am, dear Madam, 'Yours most affectionately, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'December, 1775.'

It is to be regretted that he did not write an account of his travels in France; for as he is reported to have once said, that 'he could write the Life of a Broomstick[1155],' so, notwithstanding so many former travellers have exhausted almost every subject for remark in that great kingdom, his very accurate observation, and peculiar vigour of thought and illustration, would have produced a valuable work. During his visit to it, which lasted but about two months, he wrote notes or minutes of what he saw. He promised to show me them, but I neglected to put him in mind of it; and the greatest part of them has been lost, or perhaps, destroyed in a precipitate burning of his papers a few days before his death, which must ever be lamented. One small paper-book, however, entitled 'FRANCE II,' has been preserved, and is in my possession. It is a diurnal register of his life and observations, from the 10th of October to the 4th of November, inclusive, being twenty-six days, and shows an extraordinary attention to various minute particulars. Being the only memorial of this tour that remains, my readers, I am confident, will peruse it with pleasure, though his notes are very short, and evidently written only to assist his own recollection.

'Oct. 10. Tuesday. We saw the Ecole Militaire, in which one hundred and fifty young boys are educated for the army. They have arms of different sizes, according to the age;--flints of wood. The building is very large, but nothing fine, except the council-room. The French have large squares in the windows;--they make good iron palisades. Their meals are gross.

'We visited the Observatory, a large building of a great height. The upper stones of the parapet very large, but not cramped with iron. The flat on the top is very extensive; but on the insulated part there is no parapet. Though it was broad enough, I did not care to go upon it. Maps were printing in one of the rooms.

'We walked to a small convent of the Fathers of the Oratory. In the reading-desk of the refectory lay the lives of the Saints.

'Oct. 11. Wednesday. We went to see Hotel de Chatlois[1156], a house not very large, but very elegant. One of the rooms was gilt to a degree that I never saw before. The upper part for servants and their masters was pretty.

'Thence we went to Mr. Monville's, a house divided into small apartments, furnished with effeminate and minute elegance.--Porphyry.

'Thence we went to St. Roque's church, which is very large;--the lower part of the pillars incrusted with marble.--Three chapels behind the high altar;--the last a mass of low arches.--Altars, I believe, all round.

'We passed through Place de VendA'me, a fine square, about as big as Hanover-square.--Inhabited by the high families.--Lewis XIV. on horse-back in the middle.

'Monville is the son of a farmer-general. In the house of Chatlois is a room furnished with japan, fitted up in Europe.

'We dined with Boccage[1157], the Marquis Blanchetti, and his lady.--The sweetmeats taken by the Marchioness Blanchetti, after observing that they were dear.--Mr. Le Roy, Count Manucci, the AbbA(C), the Prior[1158], and Father Wilson, who staid with me, till I took him home in the coach.

'Bathiani is gone.

'The French have no laws for the maintenance of their poor.--Monk not necessarily a priest.--Benedictines rise at four; are at church an hour and half; at church again half an hour before, half an hour after, dinner; and again from half an hour after seven to eight. They may sleep eight hours.--Bodily labour wanted in monasteries.

'The poor taken to hospitals, and miserably kept.--Monks in the convent fifteen:--accounted poor.

'Oct. 12. Thursday. We went to the Gobelins.--Tapestry makes a good picture;--imitates flesh exactly.--One piece with a gold ground;--the birds not exactly coloured.--Thence we went to the King's cabinet;--very neat, not, perhaps, perfect.--Gold ore.--Candles of the candle-tree.-- Seeds.--Woods. Thence to Gagnier's house, where I saw rooms nine, furnished with a profusion of wealth and elegance which I never had seen before.--Vases.--Pictures.--The Dragon china.--The lustre said to be of crystal, and to have cost 3,500AL.--The whole furniture said to have cost 125,000AL.--Damask hangings covered with pictures.--Porphyry.--This house struck me.--Then we waited on the ladies to Monville's.--Captain Irwin with us[1159].--Spain. County towns all beggars.--At Dijon he could not find the way to Orleans.--Cross roads of France very bad.--Five soldiers.--Woman.--Soldiers escaped.--The Colonel would not lose five men for the death of one woman.--The magistrate cannot seize a soldier but by the Colonel's permission.--Good inn at Nismes.--Moors of Barbary fond of Englishmen.--Gibraltar eminently healthy;--It has beef from Barbary;--There is a large garden.--Soldiers sometimes fall from the rock.

'Oct. 13. Friday. I staid at home all day, only went to find the Prior, who was not at home.--I read something in Canus[1160].--Nec admiror, nec multum laudo.

Oct. 14. Saturday. We went to the house of Mr. Argenson, which was almost wainscotted with looking-glasses, and covered with gold.--The ladies' closet wainscotted with large squares of glass over painted paper. They always place mirrours to reflect their rooms.

'Then we went to Julien's, the Treasurer of the Clergy:--30,000AL a year.--The house has no very large room, but is set with mirrours, and covered with gold.--Books of wood here, and in another library.

'At D----'s[1161] I looked into the books in the lady's closet, and, in contempt, shewed them to Mr. T.--Prince Titi[1162]; Bibl. des FA(C)es, and other books.--She was offended, and shut up, as we heard afterwards, her apartment.

'Then we went to Julien Le Roy, the King's watch-maker, a man of character in his business, who shewed a small clock made to find the longitude[1163].--A decent man.

'Afterwards we saw the Palais Marchand[1164], and the Courts of Justice, civil and criminal.--Queries on the Sellette[1165].--This building has the old Gothick passages, and a great appearance of antiquity.--Three hundred prisoners sometimes in the gaol[1166].

'Much disturbed; hope no ill will be[1167].

'In the afternoon I visited Mr. Freron the journalist[1168]. He spoke Latin very scantily, but seemed to understand me.--His house not splendid, but of commodious size.--His family, wife, son, and daughter, not elevated but decent.--I was pleased with my reception.--He is to translate my books, which I am to send him with notes.

'Oct. 15. Sunday. At Choisi, a royal palace on the banks of the Seine, about 7m. from Paris.--The terrace noble along the river.--The rooms numerous and grand, but not discriminated from other palaces.--The chapel beautiful, but small.--China globes.--Inlaid tables.--Labyrinth. --Sinking table[1169].--Toilet tables.

'Oct. 16. Monday. The Palais Royal very grand, large, and lofty.--A very great collection of pictures.--Three of Raphael.--Two Holy Family.--One small piece of M. Angelo.--One room of Rubens--I thought the pictures of Raphael fine[1170].

'The Thuilleries.--Statues.--Venus.--Aen. and Anchises in his arms.--Nilus.--Many more. The walks not open to mean persons.--Chairs at night hired for two sous apiece.--Pont tournant[1171].

'Austin Nuns.--Grate.--Mrs. Fermor, Abbess[1172].--She knew Pope, and thought him disagreeable.--Mrs. ------- has many books[1173];--has seen life.--Their frontlet disagreeable.--Their hood.--Their life easy.--Rise about five; hour and half in chapel.--Dine at ten.--Another hour and half at chapel; half an hour about three, and half an hour more at seven:--four hours in chapel.--A large garden.--Thirteen pensioners[1174].--Teacher complained.

'At the Boulevards saw nothing, yet was glad to be there.--Rope-dancing and farce.--Egg dance.

'N. [Note.] Near Paris, whether on week-days or Sundays, the roads empty.

'Oct. 17, Tuesday. At the Palais Marchand I bought

A snuff-box[1175], 24 L. ------------- 6 Table book 15 Scissars 3 p [pair] 18 ---- 63--2 12 6[1176]

'We heard the lawyers plead.--N. As many killed at Paris as there are days in the year. Chambre de question[1177].--Tournelle[1178] at the Palais Marchand.--An old venerable building.

'The Palais Bourbon, belonging to the Prince of CondA(C). Only one small wing shown;--lofty;--splendid;--gold and glass.--The battles of the great CondA(C) are painted in one of the rooms. The present Prince a grandsire at thirty-nine[1179].

'The sight of palaces, and other great buildings, leaves no very distinct images, unless to those who talk of them. As I entered, my wife was in my mind[1180]: she would have been pleased. Having now nobody to please, I am little pleased.

'N. In France there is no middle rank[1181].

'So many shops open, that Sunday is little distinguished at Paris.--The palaces of Louvre and Thuilleries granted out in lodgings.

'In the Palais de Bourbon, gilt globes of metal at the fire-place.

'The French beds commended.--Much of the marble, only paste.

'The Colosseum a mere wooden building, at least much of it.

'Oct. 18. Wednesday. We went to Fontainebleau, which we found a large mean town, crowded with people.--The forest thick with woods, very extensive.--Manucci[1182] secured us lodgings.--The appearance of the country pleasant. No hills, few streams, only one hedge.--I remember no chapels nor crosses on the road.--Pavement still, and rows of trees.

'N. Nobody but mean people walk in Paris[1183].

'Oct. 19. Thursday. At Court, we saw the apartments;--the King's bed-chamber and council-chamber extremely splendid--Persons of all ranks in the external rooms through which the family passes:--servants and masters.--Brunet with us the second time.

'The introductor came to us;--civil to me.--Presenting.--I had scruples.--Not necessary.--We went and saw the King[1184] and Queen at dinner.--We saw the other ladies at dinner--Madame Elizabeth[1185], with the Princess of GuimenA(C).--At night we went to a comedy. I neither saw nor heard.--Drunken women.--Mrs. Th. preferred one to the other.

'Oct. 20. Friday. We saw the Queen mount in the forest--Brown habit; rode aside: one lady rode aside.--The Queen's horse light grey; martingale.--She galloped.--We then went to the apartments, and admired them.--Then wandered through the palace.--In the passages, stalls and shops.--Painting in Fresco by a great master, worn out.--We saw the King's horses and dogs.--The dogs almost all English.--Degenerate.

'The horses not much commended.--The stables cool; the kennel filthy.

'At night the ladies went to the opera. I refused, but should have been welcome.

'The King fed himself with his left hand as we.

'Saturday, 21. In the night I got ground.--We came home to Paris.--I think we did not see the chapel.--Tree broken by the wind.--The French chairs made all of boards painted.

N. Soldiers at the court of justice.--Soldiers not amenable to the magistrates.--Dijon woman[1186].

'Faggots in the palace.--Every thing slovenly, except in the chief rooms.--Trees in the roads, some tall, none old, many very young and small.

'Women's saddles seem ill made.--Queen's bridle woven with silver.--Tags to strike the horse.

'Sunday, Oct. 22. To Versailles[1187], a mean town. Carriages of business passing.--Mean shops against the wall.--Our way lay through SA¬ve, where the China manufacture.--Wooden bridge at SA¬ve, in the way to Versailles.--The palace of great extent.--The front long; I saw it not perfectly.--The Menagerie. Cygnets dark; their black feet; on the ground; tame.--Halcyons, or gulls.--Stag and hind, young.--Aviary, very large; the net, wire.--Black stag of China, small.--Rhinoceros, the horn broken and pared away, which, I suppose, will grow; the basis, I think, four inches 'cross; the skin folds like loose cloth doubled over his body, and cross his hips; a vast animal, though young; as big, perhaps, as four oxen.--The young elephant, with his tusks just appearing.--The brown bear put out his paws;--all very tame.--The lion.--The tigers I did not well view.--The camel, or dromedary with two bunches called the Huguin[1188], taller than any horse.--Two camels with one bunch.--Among the birds was a pelican, who being let out, went to a fountain, and swam about to catch fish. His feet well webbed: he dipped his head, and turned his long bill sidewise. He caught two or three fish, but did not eat them.

'Trianon is a kind of retreat appendant to Versailles. It has an open portico; the pavement, and, I think, the pillars, of marble.--There are many rooms, which I do not distinctly remember--A table of porphyry, about five feet long, and between two and three broad, given to Louis XIV. by the Venetian State.--In the council-room almost all that was not door or window, was, I think, looking-glass.--Little Trianon is a small palace like a gentleman's house.--The upper floor paved with brick.--Little Vienne.--The court is ill paved.--The rooms at the top are small, fit to sooth the imagination with privacy. In the front of Versailles are small basons of water on the terrace, and other basons, I think, below them. There are little courts.--The great gallery is wainscotted with mirrors, not very large, but joined by frames. I suppose the large plates were not yet made.--The play-house was very large.--The chapel I do not remember if we saw--We saw one chapel, but I am not certain whether there or at Trianon.--The foreign office paved with bricks.--The dinner half a Louis each, and, I think, a Louis over.--Money given at Menagerie, three livres; at palace, six livres.

'Oct. 23. Monday. Last night I wrote to Levet.--We went to see the looking-glasses wrought. They come from Normandy in cast plates, perhaps the third of an inch thick. At Paris they are ground upon a marble table, by rubbing one plate upon another with grit between them. The various sands, of which there are said to be five, I could not learn. The handle, by which the upper glass is moved, has the form of a wheel, which may be moved in all directions. The plates are sent up with their surfaces ground, but not polished, and so continue till they are bespoken, lest time should spoil the surface, as we were told. Those that are to be polished, are laid on a table, covered with several thick cloths, hard strained, that the resistance may be equal; they are then rubbed with a hand rubber, held down hard by a contrivance which I did not well understand. The powder which is used last seemed to me to be iron dissolved in aqua fortis: they called it, as Baretti said, marc de beau forte, which he thought was dregs. They mentioned vitriol and salt-petre. The cannon ball swam in the quicksilver. To silver them, a leaf of beaten tin is laid, and rubbed with quicksilver, to which it unites. Then more quicksilver is poured upon it, which, by its mutual [attraction] rises very high. Then a paper is laid at the nearest end of the plate, over which the glass is slided till it lies upon the plate, having driven much of the quicksilver before it. It is then, I think, pressed upon cloths, and then set sloping to drop the superfluous mercury; the slope is daily heightened towards a perpendicular.

'In the way I saw the Greve, the Mayor's house, and the Bastile.[1189]

'We then went to Sans-terre, a brewer. He brews with about as much malt as Mr. Thrale, and sells his beer at the same price, though he pays no duty for malt, and little more than half as much for beer. Beer is sold retail at 6d. a bottle. He brews 4,000 barrels a year. There are seventeen brewers in Paris, of whom none is supposed to brew more than he:--reckoning them at 3,000 each, they make 51,000 a year.--They make their malt, for malting is here no trade. The moat of the Bastile is dry.

'Oct. 24, Tuesday. We visited the King's library--I saw the Speculum humanae Salvationis, rudely printed, with ink, sometimes pale, sometimes black; part supposed to be with wooden types, and part with pages cut on boards.--The Bible, supposed to be older than that of Mentz, in 62[1190]: it has no date; it is supposed to have been printed with wooden types.--I am in doubt; the print is large and fair, in two folios.--Another book was shown me, supposed to have been printed with wooden types;--I think, Durandi Sanctuarium[1191] in 58. This is inferred from the difference of form sometimes seen in the same letter, which might be struck with different puncheons.--The regular similitude of most letters proves better that they are metal.--I saw nothing but the Speculum which I had not seen, I think, before.

'Thence to the Sorbonne.--The library very large, not in lattices like the King's. Marbone and Durandi, q. collection 14 vol. Scriptores de rebus Gallicis, many folios.--Histoire GA(C)nA(C)alogique of France, 9 vol.--Gallia Christiana, the first edition, 4to. the last, f. 12 vol.--The Prior and Librarian dined [with us]:--I waited on them home.--Their garden pretty, with covered walks, but small; yet may hold many students.--The Doctors of the Sorbonne are all equal:--choose those who succeed to vacancies.--Profit little.

'Oct. 25. Wednesday. I went with the Prior to St. Cloud, to see Dr. Hooke.--We walked round the palace, and had some talk.--I dined with our whole company at the Monastery.--In the library,Beroald,--Cymon,-- Titus, from Boccace.--Oratio Proverbialis to the Virgin, from Petrarch; Falkland to Sandys; Dryden's Preface to the third vol. of Miscellanies[1192].

'Oct. 26. Thursday. We saw the china at SA¬ve, cut, glazed, painted. Bellevue, a pleasing house, not great: fine prospect.--Meudon, an old palace.--Alexander, in Porphyry: hollow between eyes and nose, thin cheeks.--Plato and Aristotle--Noble terrace overlooks the town.--St. Cloud.--Gallery not very high, nor grand, but pleasing.--In the rooms, Michael Angelo, drawn by himself, Sir Thomas More, Des Cartes, Bochart, Naudacus, Mazarine.--Gilded wainscot, so common that it is not minded.--Gough and Keene.--Hooke came to us at the inn.--A message from Drumgold.

'Oct. 27. Friday. I staid at home.--Gough and Keene, and Mrs. S----'s friend dined with us.--This day we began to have a fire.--The weather is grown very cold, and I fear, has a bad effect upon my breath, which has grown much more free and easy in this country.

'Sat. Oct. 28. I visited the Grand Chartreux built by St. Louis.--It is built for forty, but contains only twenty-four, and will not maintain more. The friar that spoke to us had a pretty apartment[1193].--Mr. Baretti says four rooms; I remember but three.--His books seemed to be French.--His garden was neat; he gave me grapes.--We saw the Place de Victoire, with the statues of the King, and the captive nations.

We saw the palace and gardens of Luxembourg, but the gallery was shut.--We climbed to the top stairs.--I dined with Colbrooke, who had much company:--Foote, Sir George Rodney, Motteux, Udson, Taaf.--Called on the Prior, and found him in bed.

'Hotel--a guinea a day.--Coach, three guineas a week.--Valet de place[1194], three l.[1195] a day.--Avantcoureur, a guinea a week.-- Ordinary dinner, six l. a head.--Our ordinary seems to be about five guineas a day.--Our extraordinary expences, as diversions, gratuities, clothes, I cannot reckon.--Our travelling is ten guineas a day.

'White stockings, 18 l.--Wig.--Hat.

'Sunday, Oct. 29. We saw the boarding-school.--The Enfans trouvA(C)s [1196].--A room with about eighty-six children in cradles, as sweet as a parlour.--They lose a third[1197]; take in to perhaps more than seven [years old]; put them to trades; pin to them the papers sent with them. --Want nurses.--Saw their chapel.

'Went to St. Eustatia; saw an innumerable company of girls catechised, in many bodies, perhaps 100 to a catechist.--Boys taught at one time, girls at another.--The sermon; the preacher wears a cap, which he takes off at the name:--his action uniform, not very violent.

'Oct. 30. Monday. We saw the library of St. Germain[1198].--A very noble collection.--Codex Divinorum Officiorum, 1459:--a letter, square like that of the Offices, perhaps the same.--The Codex, by Fust and Gernsheym.--Meursius, 12 v. fol.--Amadis, in French, 3 v. fol.-- CATHOLICON sine colophone, but of 1460.--Two other editions[1199], one by ... Augustin. de Civitate Dei, without name, date, or place, but of Fust's square letter as it seems.

'I dined with Col. Drumgold;--had a pleasing afternoon.

'Some of the books of St. Germain's stand in presses from the wall, like those at Oxford.

'Oct. 31. Tuesday. I lived at the Benedictines; meagre day; soup meagre, herrings, eels, both with sauce; fryed fish; lentils, tasteless in themselves. In the library; where I found Maffeus's de HistoriAc IndicAc: Promontorium flectere, to double the Cape. I parted very tenderly from the Prior and Friar Wilkes[1200].

Maitre des Arts, 2 y.--Bacc. Theol. 3 y.--Licentiate, 2 y.--Doctor Th. 2 y. in all 9 years.--For the Doctorate three disputations, Major, Minor, Sorbonica.--Several colleges suppressed, and transferred to that which was the Jesuits' College.

'Nov. 1. Wednesday. We left Paris.--St. Denis, a large town; the church not very large, but the middle isle is very lofty and aweful.--On the left are chapels built beyond the line of the wall, which destroy the symmetry of the sides. The organ is higher above the pavement than any I have ever seen.--The gates are of brass.--On the middle gate is the history of our Lord.--The painted windows are historical, and said to be eminently beautiful.--We were at another church belonging to a convent, of which the portal is a dome; we could not enter further, and it was almost dark.

'Nov. 2. Thursday. We came this day to Chantilly, a seat belonging to the Prince of CondA(C).--This place is eminently beautified by all varieties of waters starting up in fountains, falling in cascades, running in streams, and spread in lakes.--The water seems to be too near the house.--All this water is brought from a source or river three leagues off, by an artificial canal, which for one league is carried under ground.--The house is magnificent.--The cabinet seems well stocked: what I remember was, the jaws of a hippopotamus, and a young hippopotamus preserved, which, however, is so small, that I doubt its reality.--It seems too hairy for an abortion, and too small for a mature birth.--Nothing was in spirits; all was dry.--The dog, the deer; the ant-bear with long snout.--The toucan, long broad beak.--The stables were of very great length.--The kennel had no scents.--There was a mockery of a village.--The Menagerie had few animals[1201]. For Dr. Blagden see post, 1780 in Mr. Langton's Collection.--Two faussans[1202], or Brasilian weasels, spotted, very wild.--There is a forest, and, I think, a park.--I walked till I was very weary, and next morning felt my feet battered, and with pains in the toes.

'Nov. 3. Friday. We came to Compiegne, a very large town, with a royal palace built round a pentagonal court.--The court is raised upon vaults, and has, I suppose, an entry on one side by a gentle rise.--Talk of painting[1203],--The church is not very large, but very elegant and splendid.--I had at first great difficulty to walk, but motion grew continually easier.--At night we came to Noyon, an episcopal city.--The cathedral is very beautiful, the pillars alternately gothick and Corinthian.--We entered a very noble parochial church.--Noyon is walled, and is said to be three miles round.

'Nov. 4. Saturday. We rose very early, and came through St. Quintin to Cambray, not long after three.--We went to an English nunnery, to give a letter to Father Welch, the confessor, who came to visit us in the evening.

'Nov. 5. Sunday. We saw the cathedral.--It is very beautiful, with chapels on each side. The choir splendid. The balustrade in one part brass.--The Neff[1204] very high and grand.--The altar silver as far as it is seen.--The vestments very splendid.--At the Benedictines church----'

Here his Journal[1205] ends abruptly. Whether he wrote any more after this time, I know not; but probably not much, as he arrived in England about the 12th of November. These short notes of his tour, though they may seem minute taken singly, make together a considerable mass of information, and exhibit such an ardour of enquiry and acuteness of examination, as, I believe, are found in but few travellers, especially at an advanced age. They completely refute the idle notion which has been propagated, that he could not see[1206]; and, if he had taken the trouble to revise and digest them, he undoubtedly could have expanded them into a very entertaining narrative.

When I met him in London the following year, the account which he gave me of his French tour, was, 'Sir, I have seen all the visibilities of Paris, and around it; but to have formed an acquaintance with the people there, would have required more time than I could stay. I was just beginning to creep into acquaintance[1207] by means of Colonel Drumgold, a very high man, Sir, head of L'Ecole Militaire, a most complete character, for he had first been a professor of rhetorick, and then became a soldier. And, Sir, I was very kindly treated by the English Benedictines, and have a cell appropriated to me in their convent.'

He observed, 'The great in France live very magnificently, but the rest very miserably. There is no happy middle state as in England[1208]. The shops of Paris are mean; the meat in the markets is such as would be sent to a gaol in England[1209]: and Mr. Thrale justly observed, that the cookery of the French was forced upon them by necessity; for they could not eat their meat, unless they added some taste to it. The French are an indelicate people; they will spit upon any place[1210]. At Madame ----'s[1211], a literary lady of rank, the footman took the sugar in his fingers[1212], and threw it into my coffee. I was going to put it aside; but hearing it was made on purpose for me, I e'en tasted Tom's fingers. The same lady would needs make tea A l'Angloise. The spout of the tea-pot did not pour freely; she bad the footman blow into it[1213]. France is worse than Scotland in every thing but climate. Nature has done more for the French; but they have done less for themselves than the Scotch have done.'

It happened that Foote was at Paris at the same time with Dr. Johnson, and his description of my friend while there, was abundantly ludicrous. He told me, that the French were quite astonished at his figure and manner, and at his dress, which he obstinately continued exactly as in London[1214];--his brown clothes, black stockings, and plain shirt. He mentioned, that an Irish gentleman said to Johnson, 'Sir, you have not seen the best French players.' JOHNSON. 'Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint-stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.'--'But, Sir, you will allow that some players are better than others?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, as some dogs dance better than others.'

While Johnson was in France, he was generally very resolute in speaking Latin. It was a maxim with him that a man should not let himself down, by speaking a language which he speaks imperfectly. Indeed, we must have often observed how inferiour, how much like a child a man appears, who speaks a broken tongue. When Sir Joshua Reynolds, at one of the dinners of the Royal Academy, presented him to a Frenchman of great distinction, he would not deign to speak French, but talked Latin, though his Excellency did not understand it, owing, perhaps, to Johnson's English pronunciation[1215]: yet upon another occasion he was observed to speak French to a Frenchman of high rank, who spoke English; and being asked the reason, with some expression of surprise,--he answered, 'because I think my French is as good as his English.' Though Johnson understood French perfectly, he could not speak it readily, as I have observed at his first interview with General Paoli, in 1769[1216]; yet he wrote it, I imagine, pretty well, as appears from some of his letters in Mrs. Piozzi's collection, of which I shall transcribe one:--

A Madame La Comtesse de----[1217]. 'July 16, 1775[1218].

'Oui, Madame, le moment est arrivA(C), et il faut que je parte. Mais pourquoi faut il partir? Est ce que je m'ennuye? Je m'ennuyerai ailleurs. Est ce que je cherche ou quelque plaisir, ou quelque soulagement? Je ne cherche rien, je n'espere rien. Aller voir ce que jai vA", etre un peu rejouA(C), un peu degoutA(C), me resouvenir que la vie se passe en vain, me plaindre de moi, m'endurcir aux dehors; void le tout de ce qu'on compte pour les delices de l'anneA(C). Que Dieu vous donne, Madame, tous les agrA(C)mens de la vie, avec un esprit qui peut en jouir sans s'y livrer trop.'

Here let me not forget a curious anecdote, as related to me by Mr. Beauclerk, which I shall endeavour to exhibit as well as I can in that gentleman's lively manner; and in justice to him it is proper to add, that Dr. Johnson told me I might rely both on the correctness of his memory, and the fidelity of his narrative. 'When Madame de Boufflers was first in England[1219], (said Beauclerk,) she was desirous to see Johnson. I accordingly went with her to his chambers in the Temple, where she was entertained with his conversation for some time. When our visit was over, she and I left him, and were got into Inner Temple-lane, when all at once I heard a noise like thunder. This was occasioned by Johnson, who it seems, upon a little recollection, had taken it into his head that he ought to have done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of quality, and eager to shew himself a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the stair-case in violent agitation. He overtook us before we reached the Temple-gate, and brushing in between me and Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand, and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose. A considerable crowd of people gathered round, and were not a little struck by this singular appearance.'

He spoke Latin with wonderful fluency and elegance. When Pere Boscovich[1220] was in England, Johnson dined in company with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and at Dr. Douglas's, now Bishop of Salisbury. Upon both occasions that celebrated foreigner expressed his astonishment at Johnson's Latin conversation. When at Paris, Johnson thus characterised Voltaire to Freron the Journalist: 'Vir est acerrimi ingenii et paucarum literarum!'

'TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

'Edinburgh, Dec. 5, 1775.

'MY DEAR SIR,

'Mr. Alexander Maclean, the young Laird of Col, being to set out to-morrow for London, I give him this letter to introduce him to your acquaintance. The kindness which you and I experienced from his brother, whose unfortunate death we sincerely lament[1221], will make us always desirous to shew attention to any branch of the family. Indeed, you have so much of the true Highland cordiality, that I am sure you would have thought me to blame if I had neglected to recommend to you this Hebridean prince, in whose island we were hospitably entertained.

'I ever am with respectful attachment, my dear Sir, 'Your most obliged 'And most humble servant, 'JAMES BOSWELL.'

Mr. Maclean returned with the most agreeable accounts of the polite attention with which he was received by Dr. Johnson.

In the course of this year Dr. Burney informs me that 'he very frequently met Dr. Johnson at Mr. Thrale's, at Streatham, where they had many long conversations, often sitting up as long as the fire and candles lasted, and much longer than the patience of the servants subsisted[1222].'

A few of Johnson's sayings, which that gentleman recollects, shall here be inserted.

'I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me.'

'The writer of an epitaph should not be considered as saying nothing but what is strictly true. Allowance must be made for some degree of exaggerated praise. In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath[1223].'

'There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other[1224].'

'More is learned in publick than in private schools[1225], from emulation; there is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one centre. Though few boys make their own exercises, yet if a good exercise is given up, out of a great number of boys, it is made by somebody.'

'I hate by-roads in education. Education is as well known, and has long been as well known, as ever it can be[1226]. Endeavouring to make children prematurely wise is useless labour. Suppose they have more knowledge at five or six years old than other children, what use can be made of it? It will be lost before it is wanted, and the waste of so much time and labour of the teacher can never be repaid. Too much is expected from precocity, and too little performed. Miss----[1227] was an instance of early cultivation, but in what did it terminate? In marrying a little Presbyterian parson, who keeps an infant boarding-school, so that all her employment now is,

"To suckle fools, and chronicle small-beer[1228]."

'She tells the children, "This is a cat, and that is a dog, with four legs and a tail; see there! you are much better than a cat or a dog, for you can speak[1229]." If I had bestowed such an education on a daughter, and had discovered that she thought of marrying such a fellow, I would have sent her to the Congress.'

'After having talked slightingly of musick, he was observed to listen very attentively while Miss Thrale played on the harpsichord, and with eagerness he called to her, "Why don't you dash away like Burney?" Dr. Burney upon this said to him, "I believe, Sir, we shall make a musician of you at last." Johnson with candid complacency replied, "Sir, I shall be glad to have a new sense given to me[1230]."'

'He had come down one morning to the breakfast-room, and been a considerable time by himself before any body appeared. When, on a subsequent day, he was twitted by Mrs. Thrale for being very late, which he generally was, he defended himself by alluding to the extraordinary morning, when he had been too early. "Madam, I do not like to come down to vacuity."'

'Dr. Burney having remarked that Mr. Garrick was beginning to look old, he said, "Why, Sir, you are not to wonder at that; no man's face has had more wear and tear[1231]."'

Not having heard from him for a longer time than I supposed he would be silent, I wrote to him December 18, not in good spirits:--

'Sometimes I have been afraid that the cold which has gone over Europe this year like a sort of pestilence[1232] has seized you severely: sometimes my imagination, which is upon occasions prolifick of evil, hath figured that you may have somehow taken offence at some part of my conduct.'

'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'Never dream of any offence. How should you offend me? I consider your friendship as a possession, which I intend to hold till you take it from me, and to lament if ever by my fault I should lose it. However, when such suspicions find their way into your mind, always give them vent; I shall make haste to disperse them; but hinder their first ingress if you can. Consider such thoughts as morbid.

'Such illness as may excuse my omission to Lord Hailes, I cannot honestly plead. I have been hindered, I know not how, by a succession of petty obstructions. I hope to mend immediately, and to send next post to his Lordship. Mr. Thrale would have written to you if I had omitted; he sends his compliments and wishes to see you.

'You and your lady will now have no more wrangling about feudal inheritance[1233]. How does the young Laird of Auchinleck? I suppose Miss Veronica is grown a reader and discourser.

'I have just now got a cough, but it has never yet hindered me from sleeping: I have had quieter nights than are common with me.

'I cannot but rejoice that Joseph[1234] has had the wit to find the way back. He is a fine fellow, and one of the best travellers in the world.

'Young Col brought me your letter. He is a very pleasing youth. I took him two days ago to the Mitre, and we dined together. I was as civil as I had the means of being.

'I have had a letter from Rasay, acknowledging, with great appearance of satisfaction, the insertion in the Edinburgh paper[1235]. I am very glad that it was done.

'My compliments to Mrs. Boswell, who does not love me; and of all the rest, I need only send them to those that do: and I am afraid it will give you very little trouble to distribute them.

'I am, my dear, dear Sir, 'Your affectionate humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'December, 23, 1775.'

1776: AćTAT. 67--In 1776, Johnson wrote, so far as I can discover, nothing for the publick: but that his mind was still ardent, and fraught with generous wishes to attain to still higher degrees of literary excellence, is proved by his private notes of this year, which I shall insert in their proper place.

'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'I have at last sent you all Lord Hailes's papers. While I was in France, I looked very often into Henault[1236]; but Lord Hailes, in my opinion, leaves him far and far behind. Why I did not dispatch so short a perusal sooner, when I look back, I am utterly unable to discover: but human moments are stolen away by a thousand petty impediments which leave no trace behind them. I have been afflicted, through the whole Christmas, with the general disorder, of which the worst effect was a cough, which is now much mitigated, though the country, on which I look from a window at Streatham, is now covered with a deep snow. Mrs. Williams is very ill: every body else is as usual.

'Among the papers, I found a letter to you, which I think you had not opened; and a paper for The Chronicle, which I suppose it not necessary now to insert. I return them both.

'I have, within these few days, had the honour of receiving Lord Hailes's first volume, for which I return my most respectful thanks.

'I wish you, my dearest friend, and your haughty lady, (for I know she does not love me,) and the young ladies, and the young Laird, all happiness. Teach the young gentleman, in spite of his mamma, to think and speak well of,

'Sir, 'Your affectionate humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'Jan. 10, 1776.'

At this time was in agitation a matter of great consequence to me and my family, which I should not obtrude upon the world, were it not that the part which Dr. Johnson's friendship for me made him take in it, was the occasion of an exertion of his abilities, which it would be injustice to conceal. That what he wrote upon the subject may be understood, it is necessary to give a state of the question, which I shall do as briefly as I can.

In the year 1504, the barony or manour of Auchinleck, (pronounced Affleck[1237],) in Ayrshire, which belonged to a family of the same name with the lands, having fallen to the Crown by forfeiture, James the Fourth, King of Scotland, granted it to Thomas Boswell, a branch of an ancient family in the county of Fife, stiling him in the charter, dilecto familiari nostro; and assigning, as the cause of the grant, pro bono et fideli servitio nobis praestito. Thomas Boswell was slain in battle, fighting along with his Sovereign, at the fatal field of Flodden, in 1513[1238].

From this very honourable founder of our family, the estate was transmitted, in a direct series of heirs male, to David Boswell, my father's great grand uncle, who had no sons, but four daughters, who were all respectably married, the eldest to Lord Cathcart.

David Boswell, being resolute in the military feudal principle of continuing the male succession, passed by his daughters, and settled the estate on his nephew by his next brother, who approved of the deed, and renounced any pretensions which he might possibly have, in preference to his son. But the estate having been burthened with large portions to the daughters, and other debts, it was necessary for the nephew to sell a considerable part of it, and what remained was still much encumbered.

The frugality of the nephew preserved, and, in some degree, relieved the estate. His son, my grandfather, an eminent lawyer, not only re-purchased a great part of what had been sold, but acquired other lands; and my father, who was one of the Judges of Scotland, and had added considerably to the estate, now signified his inclination to take the privilege allowed by our law[1239], to secure it to his family in perpetuity by an entail, which, on account of his marriage articles, could not be done without my consent.

In the plan of entailing the estate, I heartily concurred with him, though I was the first to be restrained by it; but we unhappily differed as to the series of heirs which should be established, or in the language of our law, called to the succession. My father had declared a predilection for heirs general, that is, males and females indiscriminately. He was willing, however, that all males descending from his grandfather should be preferred to females; but would not extend that privilege to males deriving their descent from a higher source. I, on the other hand, had a zealous partiality for heirs male, however remote, which I maintained by arguments which appeared to me to have considerable weight[1240]. And in the particular case of our family, I apprehended that we were under an implied obligation, in honour and good faith, to transmit the estate by the same tenure which we held it, which was as heirs male, excluding nearer females. I therefore, as I thought conscientiously, objected to my father's scheme.

My opposition was very displeasing to my father, who was entitled to great respect and deference; and I had reason to apprehend disagreeable consequences from my non-compliance with his wishes[1241]. After much perplexity and uneasiness, I wrote to Dr. Johnson, stating the case, with all its difficulties, at full length, and earnestly requesting that he would consider it at leisure, and favour me with his friendly opinion and advice.

'To James Boswell, Esq.

'Dear Sir,

'I was much impressed by your letter, and if I can form upon your case any resolution satisfactory to myself, will very gladly impart it: but whether I am quite equal to it, I do not know. It is a case compounded of law and justice, and requires a mind versed in juridical disquisitions. Could not you tell your whole mind to Lord Hailes? He is, you know, both a Christian and a Lawyer. I suppose he is above partiality, and above loquacity: and, I believe, he will not think the time lost in which he may quiet a disturbed, or settle a wavering mind. Write to me, as any thing occurs to you; and if I find myself stopped by want of facts necessary to be known, I will make inquiries of you as my doubts arise.

'If your former resolutions should be found only fanciful, you decide rightly in judging that your father's fancies may claim the preference; but whether they are fanciful or rational, is the question. I really think Lord Hailes could help us.

'Make my compliments to dear Mrs. Boswell; and tell her, that I hope to be wanting in nothing that I can contribute to bring you all out of your troubles.

'I am, dear Sir, most affectionately,

'Your humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'London, Jan. 15, 1776.'

TO THE SAME.

'DEAR SIR,

'I am going to write upon a question which requires more knowledge of local law, and more acquaintance with the general rules of inheritance, than I can claim; but I write, because you request it.

'Land is, like any other possession, by natural right wholly in the power of its present owner; and may be sold, given, or bequeathed, absolutely or conditionally, as judgment shall direct, or passion incite.

'But natural right would avail little without the protection of law; and the primary notion of law is restraint in the exercise of natural right. A man is therefore, in society, not fully master of what he calls his own, but he still retains all the power which law does not take from him.

'In the exercise of the right which law either leaves or gives, regard is to be paid to moral obligations.

'Of the estate which we are now considering, your father still retains such possession, with such power over it, that he can sell it, and do with the money what he will, without any legal impediment. But when he extends his power beyond his own life, by settling the order of succession, the law makes your consent necessary.

'Let us suppose that he sells the land to risk the money in some specious adventure, and in that adventure loses the whole; his posterity would be disappointed; but they could not think themselves injured or robbed. If he spent it upon vice or pleasure, his successors could only call him vicious and voluptuous; they could not say that he was injurious or unjust.

'He that may do more may do less. He that, by selling, or squandering, may disinherit a whole family, may certainly disinherit part, by a partial settlement.

'Laws are formed by the manners and exigencies of particular times, and it is but accidental that they last longer than their causes: the limitation of feudal succession to the male arose from the obligation of the tenant to attend his chief in war.

'As times and opinions are always changing, I know not whether it be not usurpation to prescribe rules to posterity, by presuming to judge of what we cannot know: and I know not whether I fully approve either your design or your father's, to limit that succession which descended to you unlimited. If we are to leave sartum tectum[1242] to posterity, what we have without any merit of our own received from our ancestors, should not choice and free-will be kept unviolated? Is land to be treated with more reverence than liberty?--If this consideration should restrain your father from disinheriting some of the males, does it leave you the power of disinheriting all the females?

'Can the possessor of a feudal estate make any will? Can he appoint, out of the inheritance, any portions to his daughters? There seems to be a very shadowy difference between the power of leaving land, and of leaving money to be raised from land; between leaving an estate to females, and leaving the male heir, in effect, only their steward.

'Suppose at one time a law that allowed only males to inherit, and during the continuance of this law many estates to have descended, passing by the females, to remoter heirs. Suppose afterwards the law repealed in correspondence with a change of manners, and women made capable of inheritance; would not then the tenure of estates be changed? Could the women have no benefit from a law made in their favour? Must they be passed by upon moral principles for ever, because they were once excluded by a legal prohibition? Or may that which passed only to males by one law, pass likewise to females by another?

'You mention your resolution to maintain the right of your brothers[1243]: I do not see how any of their rights are invaded.

'As your whole difficulty arises from the act of your ancestor, who diverted the succession from the females, you enquire, very properly, what were his motives, and what was his intention; for you certainly are not bound by his act more than he intended to bind you, nor hold your land on harder or stricter terms than those on which it was granted.

'Intentions must be gathered from acts. When he left the estate to his nephew, by excluding his daughters, was it, or was it not, in his power to have perpetuated the succession to the males? If he could have done it, he seems to have shown, by omitting it, that he did not desire it to be done; and, upon your own principles, you will not easily prove your right to destroy that capacity of succession which your ancestors have left.

'If your ancestor had not the power of making a perpetual settlement; and if, therefore, we cannot judge distinctly of his intentions, yet his act can only be considered as an example; it makes not an obligation. And, as you observe, he set no example of rigorous adherence to the line of succession. He that overlooked a brother, would not wonder that little regard is shown to remote relations.

'As the rules of succession are, in a great part, purely legal, no man can be supposed to bequeath any thing, but upon legal terms; he can grant no power which the law denies; and if he makes no special and definite limitation, he confers all the power which the law allows.

'Your ancestor, for some reason, disinherited his daughters; but it no more follows that he intended this act as a rule for posterity, than the disinheriting of his brother.

'If, therefore, you ask by what right your father admits daughters to inheritance, ask yourself, first, by what right you require them to be excluded?

'It appears, upon reflection, that your father excludes nobody; he only admits nearer females to inherit before males more remote; and the exclusion is purely consequential.

'These, dear Sir, are my thoughts, immethodical and deliberative; but, perhaps, you may find in them some glimmering of evidence.

'I cannot, however, but again recommend to you a conference with Lord Hailes, whom you know to be both a Lawyer and a Christian.

'Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, though she does not love me.

'I am, Sir, 'Your affectionate servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.

'Feb. 3, 1773'

I had followed his recommendation and consulted Lord Hailes, who upon this subject had a firm opinion contrary to mine. His Lordship obligingly took the trouble to write me a letter, in which he discussed with legal and historical learning, the points in which I saw much difficulty, maintaining that 'the succession of heirs general was the succession, by the law of Scotland, from the throne to the cottage, as far as we can learn it by record;'[1244] observing that the estate of our family had not been limited to heirs male; and that though an heir male had in one instance been chosen in preference to nearer females, that had been an arbitrary act, which had seemed to be best in the embarrassed state of affairs at that time; and the fact was, that upon a fair computation of the value of land and money at the time, applied to the estate and the burthens upon it, there was nothing given to the heir male but the skeleton of an estate. 'The plea of conscience (said his Lordship,) which you put, is a most respectable one, especially when conscience and self are on different sides. But I think that conscience is not well informed, and that self and she ought on this occasion to be of a side.'

This letter, which had considerable influence upon my mind, I sent to Dr. Johnson, begging to hear from him again, upon this interesting question.

'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'Having not any acquaintance with the laws or customs of Scotland, I endeavoured to consider your question upon general principles, and found nothing of much validity that I could oppose to this position: "He who inherits a fief unlimited by his ancestors, inherits the power of limiting it according to his own judgement or opinion." If this be true, you may join with your father.

'Further consideration produces another conclusion: "He who receives a fief unlimited by his ancestors, gives his heirs some reason to complain, if he does not transmit it unlimited to posterity. For why should he make the state of others worse than his own, without a reason?" If this be true, though neither you nor your father are about to do what is quite right, but as your father violates (I think) the legal succession least, he seems to be nearer the right than yourself.

'It cannot but occur that "Women have natural and equitable claims as well as men, and these claims are not to be capriciously or lightly superseded or infringed." When fiefs implied military service, it is easily discerned why females could not inherit them; but that reason is now at an end. As manners make laws, manners likewise repeal them.

'These are the general conclusions which I have attained. None of them are very favourable to your scheme of entail, nor perhaps to any scheme. My observation, that only he who acquires an estate may bequeath it capriciously[1245], if it contains any conviction, includes this position likewise, that only he who acquires an estate may entail it capriciously. But I think it may be safely presumed, that "he who inherits an estate, inherits all the power legally concomitant;" and that "He who gives or leaves unlimited an estate legally limitable, must be presumed to give that power of limitation which he omitted to take away, and to commit future contingencies to future prudence." In these two positions I believe Lord Hailes will advise you to rest; every other notion of possession seems to me full of difficulties and embarrassed with scruples.

'If these axioms be allowed, you have arrived now at full liberty without the help of particular circumstances, which, however, have in your case great weight. You very rightly observe, that he who passing by his brother gave the inheritance to his nephew, could limit no more than he gave; and by Lord Hailes's estimate of fourteen years' purchase, what he gave was no more than you may easily entail according to your own opinion, if that opinion should finally prevail.

'Lord Hailes's suspicion that entails are encroachments on the dominion of Providence, may be extended to all hereditary privileges and all permanent institutions; I do not see why it may not be extended to any provision for the present hour, since all care about futurity proceeds upon a supposition, that we know at least in some degree what will be future. Of the future we certainly know nothing; but we may form conjectures from the past; and the power of forming conjectures, includes, in my opinion, the duty of acting in conformity to that probability which we discover. Providence gives the power, of which reason teaches the use.

'I am, dear Sir, 'Your most faithful servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'Feb. 9. 1776.'

'I hope I shall get some ground now with Mrs. Boswell; make my compliments to her, and to the little people.

'Don't burn papers; they may be safe enough in your own box,--you will wish to see them hereafter.'

To THE SAME.

'DEAR SIR,

'To the letters which I have written about your great question I have nothing to add. If your conscience is satisfied, you have now only your prudence to consult. I long for a letter, that I may know how this troublesome and vexatious question is at last decided[1246]. I hope that it will at last end well. Lord Hailes's letter was very friendly, and very seasonable, but I think his aversion from entails has something in it like superstition. Providence is not counteracted by any means which Providence puts into our power. The continuance and propagation of families makes a great part of the Jewish law, and is by no means prohibited in the Christian institution, though the necessity of it continues no longer. Hereditary tenures are established in all civilised countries, and are accompanied in most with hereditary authority. Sir William Temple considers our constitution as defective, that there is not an unalienable estate in land connected with a peerage[1247]; and Lord Bacon mentions as a proof that the Turks are Barbarians, their want of Stirpes, as he calls them, or hereditary rank[1248]. Do not let your mind, when it is freed from the supposed necessity of a rigorous entail, be entangled with contrary objections, and think all entails unlawful, till you have cogent arguments, which I believe you will never find. I am afraid of scruples[1249].

'I have now sent all Lord Hailes's papers; part I found hidden in a drawer in which I had laid them for security, and had forgotten them. Part of these are written twice: I have returned both the copies. Part I had read before.

'Be so kind as to return Lord Hailes my most respectful thanks for his first volume; his accuracy strikes me with wonder; his narrative is far superiour to that of Henault, as I have formerly mentioned.

'I am afraid that the trouble, which my irregularity and delay has cost him, is greater, far greater, than any good that I can do him will ever recompense; but if I have any more copy, I will try to do better.

'Pray let me know if Mrs. Boswell is friends with me, and pay my respects to Veronica, and Euphemia, and Alexander.

'I am, Sir,

'Your most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'February, 15, 1775 [1776].'

'MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON.

'Edinburgh, Feb. 20, 1776.

* * * * *

'You have illuminated my mind and relieved me from imaginary shackles of conscientious obligation. Were it necessary, I could immediately join in an entail upon the series of heirs approved by my father; but it is better not to act too suddenly.'

'DR. JOHNSON TO MR. BOSWELL.

'DEAR SIR,

'I am glad that what I could think or say has at all contributed to quiet your thoughts. Your resolution not to act, till your opinion is confirmed by more deliberation, is very just. If you have been scrupulous, do not now be rash. I hope that as you think more, and take opportunities of talking with men intelligent in questions of property, you will be able to free yourself from every difficulty.

'When I wrote last, I sent, I think, ten packets. Did you receive them all?

'You must tell Mrs. Boswell that I suspected her to have written without your knowledge[1250], and therefore did not return any answer, lest a clandestine correspondence should have been perniciously discovered. I will write to her soon.

'I am, dear Sir,

'Most affectionately yours,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'Feb. 24, 1776.'

Having communicated to Lord Hailes what Dr. Johnson wrote concerning the question which perplexed me so much, his Lordship wrote to me: 'Your scruples have produced more fruit than I ever expected from them; an excellent dissertation on general principles of morals and law.'

I wrote to Dr. Johnson on the 20th of February, complaining of melancholy, and expressing a strong desire to be with him; informing him that the ten packets came all safe; that Lord Hailes was much obliged to him, and said he had almost wholly removed his scruples against entails.

'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,

'I have not had your letter half an hour; as you lay so much weight upon my notions, I should think it not just to delay my answer.

'I am very sorry that your melancholy should return, and should be sorry likewise if it could have no relief but from company. My counsel you may have when you are pleased to require it; but of my company you cannot in the next month have much, for Mr. Thrale will take me to Italy, he says, on the first of April.

'Let me warn you very earnestly against scruples. I am glad that you are reconciled to your settlement, and think it a great honour to have shaken Lord Hailes's opinion of entails. Do not, however, hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind[1251]. If you will come to me, you must come very quickly; and even then I know not but we may scour the country together, for I have a mind to see Oxford and Lichfield, before I set out on this long journey. To this I can only add, that

'I am, dear Sir,

'Your most affectionate humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'March 5, 1776.'

To THE SAME.

'DEAR SIR,

'Very early in April we leave England, and in the beginning of the next week I shall leave London for a short time; of this I think it necessary to inform you, that you may not be disappointed in any of your enterprises. I had not fully resolved to go into the country before this day.

'Please to make my compliments to Lord Hailes; and mention very particularly to Mrs. Boswell my hope that she is reconciled to, Sir,

'Your faithful servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'March 12, 1776.'

Above thirty years ago, the heirs of Lord Chancellor Clarendon presented the University of Oxford with the continuation of his History, and such other of his Lordship's manuscripts as had not been published, on condition that the profits arising from their publication should be applied to the establishment of a ManA"ge in the University. The gift was accepted in full convocation. A person being now recommended to Dr. Johnson, as fit to superintend this proposed riding-school, he exerted himself with that zeal for which he was remarkable upon every similar occasion[1252]. But, on enquiry into the matter, he found that the scheme was not likely to be soon carried into execution; the profits arising from the Clarendon press being, from some mismanagement, very scanty. This having been explained to him by a respectable dignitary of the church, who had good means of knowing it, he wrote a letter upon the subject, which at once exhibits his extraordinary precision and acuteness, and his warm attachment to his ALMA MATER.

'To THE REVEREND DR. WETHERELL, MASTER OF UNIVERSITY-COLLEGE, OXFORD.

'DEAR SIR,

'Few things are more unpleasant than the transaction of business with men who are above knowing or caring what they have to do; such as the trustees for Lord Cornbury's institution will, perhaps, appear, when you have read Dr. ----'s letter.

'The last part of the Doctor's letter is of great importance. The complaint[1253] which he makes I have heard long ago, and did not know but it was redressed. It is unhappy that a practice so erroneous has not yet been altered; for altered it must be, or our press will be useless, with all its privileges. The booksellers, who, like all other men, have strong prejudices in their own favour, are enough inclined to think the practice of printing and selling books by any but themselves, an encroachment on the rights of their fraternity; and have need of stronger inducements to circulate academical publications than those of one another; for, of that mutual co-operation by which the general trade is carried on, the University can bear no part. Of those whom he neither loves nor fears, and from whom he expects no reciprocation of good offices, why should any man promote the interest but for profit? I suppose, with all our scholastick ignorance of mankind, we are still too knowing to expect that the booksellers will erect themselves into patrons, and buy and sell under the influence of a disinterested zeal for the promotion of learning.

'To the booksellers, if we look for either honour or profit from our press, not only their common profit, but something more must be allowed; and if books, printed at Oxford, are expected to be rated at a high price, that price must be levied on the publick, and paid by the ultimate purchaser, not by the intermediate agents. What price shall be set upon the book, is, to the booksellers, wholly indifferent, provided that they gain a proportionate profit by negociating the sale.

'Why books printed at Oxford should be particularly dear, I am, however, unable to find. We pay no rent; we inherit many of our instruments and materials; lodging and victuals are cheaper than at London; and, therefore, workmanship ought, at least, not to be dearer. Our expences are naturally less than those of booksellers; and, in most cases, communities are content with less profit than individuals.

'It is, perhaps, not considered through how many hands a book often passes, before it comes into those of the reader; or what part of the profit each hand must retain, as a motive for transmitting it to the next.

'We will call our primary agent in London, Mr. Cadell[1254], who receives our books from us, gives them room in his warehouse, and issues them on demand; by him they are sold to Mr. Dilly a wholesale bookseller, who sends them into the country; and the last seller is the country bookseller. Here are three profits to be paid between the printer and the reader, or in the style of commerce, between the manufacturer and the consumer; and if any of these profits is too penuriously distributed, the process of commerce is interrupted.

'We are now come to the practical question, what is to be done? You will tell me, with reason, that I have said nothing, till I declare how much, according to my opinion, of the ultimate price ought to be distributed through the whole succession of sale.

'The deduction, I am afraid, will appear very great: but let it be considered before it is refused. We must allow, for profit, between thirty and thirty-five per cent., between six and seven shillings in the pound; that is, for every book which costs the last buyer twenty shillings, we must charge Mr. Cadell with something less than fourteen. We must set the copies at fourteen shillings each, and superadd what is called the quarterly-book, or for every hundred books so charged we must deliver an hundred and four.

'The profits will then stand thus:--

'Mr. Cadell, who runs no hazard, and gives no credit, will be paid for warehouse room and attendance by a shilling profit on each book, and his chance of the quarterly-book.

'Mr. Dilly, who buys the book for fifteen shillings, and who will expect the quarterly-book if he takes five and twenty, will send it to his country customer at sixteen and six, by which, at the hazard of loss, and the certainty of long credit, he gains the regular profit of ten per cent, which is expected in the wholesale trade.

'The country bookseller, buying at sixteen and sixpence, and commonly trusting a considerable time, gains but three and sixpence, and if he trusts a year, not much more than two and sixpence; otherwise than as he may, perhaps, take as long credit as he gives.

'With less profit than this, and more you see he cannot have, the country bookseller cannot live; for his receipts are small, and his debts sometimes bad.

'Thus, dear Sir, I have been incited by Dr. ----'s letter to give you a detail of the circulation of books, which, perhaps, every man has not had opportunity of knowing; and which those who know it, do not, perhaps, always distinctly consider.

'I am, &c. 'SAM. JOHNSON[1255].'

'March 12, 1776.'

Having arrived in London late on Friday, the 15th of March, I hastened next morning to wait on Dr. Johnson, at his house; but found he was removed from Johnson's-court, No. 7, to Boltcourt, No. 8[1256], still keeping to his favourite Fleet-street. My reflection at the time upon this change as marked in my Journal, is as follows: 'I felt a foolish regret that he had left a court which bore his name[1257]; but it was not foolish to be affected with some tenderness of regard for a place in which I had seen him a great deal, from whence I had often issued a better and a happier man than when I went in, and which had often appeared to my imagination while I trod its pavements, in the solemn darkness of the night, to be sacred to wisdom and piety[1258].' Being informed that he was at Mr. Thrale's, in the Borough, I hastened thither, and found Mrs. Thrale and him at breakfast. I was kindly welcomed. In a moment he was in a full glow of conversation, and I felt myself elevated as if brought into another state of being. Mrs. Thrale and I looked to each other while he talked, and our looks expressed our congenial admiration and affection for him. I shall ever recollect this scene with great pleasure. I exclaimed to her, 'I am now, intellectually, Hermippus redivivus, I am quite restored by him, by transfusion of mind[1259]!' 'There are many (she replied) who admire and respect Mr. Johnson; but you and I love him.'

He seemed very happy in the near prospect of going to Italy with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. 'But, (said he,) before leaving England I am to take a jaunt to Oxford, Birmingham, my native city Lichfield, and my old friend, Dr. Taylor's, at Ashbourn, in Derbyshire. I shall go in a few days, and you, Boswell, shall go with me.' I was ready to accompany him; being willing even to leave London to have the pleasure of his conversation.

I mentioned with much regret the extravagance of the representative of a great family in Scotland, by which there was danger of its being ruined; and as Johnson respected it for its antiquity, he joined with me in thinking it would be happy if this person should die. Mrs. Thrale seemed shocked at this, as feudal barbarity; and said, 'I do not understand this preference of the estate to its owner; of the land to the man who walks upon that land.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Madam, it is not a preference of the land to its owner, it is the preference of a family to an individual. Here is an establishment in a country, which is of importance for ages, not only to the chief but to his people; an establishment which extends upwards and downwards; that this should be destroyed by one idle fellow is a sad thing.'

He said, 'Entails[1260] are good, because it is good to preserve in a country, serieses of men, to whom the people are accustomed to look up as to their leaders. But I am for leaving a quantity of land in commerce, to excite industry, and keep money in the country; for if no land were to be bought in the country, there would be no encouragement to acquire wealth, because a family could not be founded there; or if it were acquired, it must be carried away to another country where land may be bought. And although the land in every country will remain the same, and be as fertile where there is no money, as where there is, yet all that portion of the happiness of civil life, which is produced by money circulating in a country, would be lost.' BOSWELL. 'Then, Sir, would it be for the advantage of a country that all its lands were sold at once?' JOHNSON. 'So far, Sir, as money produces good, it would be an advantage; for, then that country would have as much money circulating in it as it is worth. But to be sure this would be counterbalanced by disadvantages attending a total change of proprietors.'

I expressed my opinion that the power of entailing should be limited thus: 'That there should be one third, or perhaps one half of the land of a country kept free for commerce; that the proportion allowed to be entailed, should be parcelled out so that no family could entail above a certain quantity. Let a family according to the abilities of its representatives, be richer or poorer in different generations, or always rich if its representatives be always wise: but let its absolute permanency be moderate. In this way we should be certain of there being always a number of established roots; and as in the course of nature, there is in every age an extinction of some families, there would be continual openings for men ambitious of perpetuity, to plant a stock in the entail ground[1261].' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, mankind will be better able to regulate the system of entails, when the evil of too much land being locked up by them is felt, than we can do at present when it is not felt.' I mentioned Dr. Adam Smith's book on The Wealth of Nations[1262] which was just published, and that Sir John Pringle had observed to me, that Dr. Smith, who had never been in trade, could not be expected to write well on that subject any more than a lawyer upon physick. JOHNSON. 'He is mistaken, Sir: a man who has never been engaged in trade himself may undoubtedly write well upon trade, and there is nothing which requires more to be illustrated by philosophy than trade does. As to mere wealth, that is to say, money, it is clear that one nation or one individual cannot increase its store but by making another poorer: but trade procures what is more valuable, the reciprocation of the peculiar advantages of different countries. A merchant seldom thinks but of his own particular trade. To write a good book upon it, a man must have extensive views. It is not necessary to have practised, to write well upon a subject.' I mentioned law as a subject on which no man could write well without practice. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, in England, where so much money is to be got by the practice of the law, most of our writers upon it have been in practice; though Blackstone had not been much in practice when he published his Commentaries. But upon the Continent, the great writers on law have not all been in practice: Grotius, indeed, was; but Puffendorf was not, Burlamaqui was not.'

When we had talked of the great consequence which a man acquired by being employed in his profession, I suggested a doubt of the justice of the general opinion, that it is improper in a lawyer to solicit employment; for why, I urged, should it not be equally allowable to solicit that as the means of consequence, as it is to solicit votes to be elected a member of Parliament? Mr. Strahan had told me that a countryman of his and mine[1263], who had risen to eminence in the law, had, when first making his way, solicited him to get him employed in city causes. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits; but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.' BOSWELL. 'You would not solicit employment, Sir, if you were a lawyer.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, but not because I should think it wrong, but because I should disdain it.' This was a good distinction, which will be felt by men of just pride. He proceeded: 'However, I would not have a lawyer to be wanting to himself in using fair means. I would have him to inject a little hint now and then, to prevent his being overlooked.'

Lord Mountstuart's bill for a Scotch Militia[1264], in supporting which his Lordship had made an able speech in the House of Commons, was now a pretty general topick of conversation. JOHNSON. 'As Scotland contributes so little land-tax[1265] towards the general support of the nation, it ought not to have a militia paid out of the general fund, unless it should be thought for the general interest, that Scotland should be protected from an invasion, which no man can think will happen; for what enemy would invade Scotland, where there is nothing to be got? No, Sir; now that the Scotch have not the pay of English soldiers spent among them, as so many troops are sent abroad, they are trying to get money another way, by having a militia paid. If they are afraid, and seriously desire to have an armed force to defend them, they should pay for it. Your scheme is to retain a part of your land-tax, by making us pay and clothe your militia.' BOSWELL. 'You should not talk of we and you, Sir: there is now an Union.' JOHNSON. 'There must be a distinction of interest, while the proportions of land-tax are so unequal. If Yorkshire should say, "Instead of paying our land-tax, we will keep a greater number of militia," it would be unreasonable.' In this argument my friend was certainly in the wrong. The land-tax is as unequally proportioned between different parts of England, as between England and Scotland; nay, it is considerably unequal in Scotland itself. But the land-tax is but a small part of the numerous branches of publick revenue, all of which Scotland pays precisely as England does. A French invasion made in Scotland would soon penetrate into England.

He thus discoursed upon supposed obligation in settling estates:--'Where a man gets the unlimited property of an estate, there is no obligation upon him in justice to leave it to one person rather than to another. There is a motive of preference from kindness, and this kindness is generally entertained for the nearest relation. If I owe a particular man a sum of money, I am obliged to let that man have the next money I get, and cannot in justice let another have it: but if I owe money to no man, I may dispose of what I get as I please. There is not a debitum justitice to a man's next heir; there is only a debitum caritatis. It is plain, then, that I have morally a choice, according to my liking. If I have a brother in want, he has a claim from affection to my assistance; but if I have also a brother in want, whom I like better, he has a preferable claim. The right of an heir at law is only this, that he is to have the succession to an estate, in case no other person is appointed to it by the owner. His right is merely preferable to that of the King.'

We got into a boat to cross over to Black-friars; and as we moved along the Thames, I talked to him of a little volume, which, altogether unknown to him, was advertised to be published in a few days, under the title of Johnsoniana, or Bon-Mots of Dr. Johnson[1266]. JOHNSON, 'Sir, it is a mighty impudent thing.' BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, could you have no redress if you were to prosecute a publisher for bringing out, under your name, what you never said, and ascribing to you dull stupid nonsense, or making you swear profanely, as many ignorant relaters of your bon-mots do[1267]?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; there will always be some truth mixed with the falsehood, and how can it be ascertained how much is true and how much is false? Besides, Sir, what damages would a jury give me for having been represented as swearing?' BOSWELL. 'I think, Sir, you should at least disavow such a publication, because the world and posterity might with much plausible foundation say, "Here is a volume which was publickly advertised and came out in Dr. Johnson's own time, and, by his silence, was admitted by him to be genuine."' JOHNSON. 'I shall give myself no trouble about the matter.'

He was, perhaps, above suffering from such spurious publications; but I could not help thinking, that many men would be much injured in their reputation, by having absurd and vicious sayings imputed to them; and that redress ought in such cases to be given.

He said, 'The value of every story depends on its being true. A story is a picture either of an individual or of human nature in general: if it be false, it is a picture of nothing. For instance: suppose a man should tell that Johnson, before setting out for Italy, as he had to cross the Alps, sat down to make himself wings. This many people would believe; but it would be a picture of nothing. ----[1268] (naming a worthy friend of ours,) used to think a story, a story, till I shewed him that truth was essential to it[1269].' I observed, that Foote entertained us with stories which were not true; but that, indeed, it was properly not as narratives that Foote's stories pleased us, but as collections of ludicrous images. JOHNSON. 'Foote is quite impartial, for he tells lies of every body.'

The importance of strict and scrupulous veracity cannot be too often inculcated. Johnson was known to be so rigidly attentive to it, that even in his common conversation the slightest circumstance was mentioned with exact precision[1270]. The knowledge of his having such a principle and habit made his friends have a perfect reliance on the truth of every thing that he told, however it might have been doubted if told by many others. As an instance of this, I may mention an odd incident which he related as having happened to him one night in Fleet-street. 'A gentlewoman (said he) begged I would give her my arm to assist her in crossing the street, which I accordingly did; upon which she offered me a shilling, supposing me to be the watchman. I perceived that she was somewhat in liquor.' This, if told by most people, would have been thought an invention; when told by Johnson, it was believed by his friends as much as if they had seen what passed.

We landed at the Temple-stairs, where we parted.

I found him in the evening in Mrs. Williams's room. We talked of religious orders. He said, 'It is as unreasonable for a man to go into a Carthusian convent for fear of being immoral, as for a man to cut off his hands for fear he should steal. There is, indeed, great resolution in the immediate act of dismembering himself; but when that is once done, he has no longer any merit: for though it is out of his power to steal, yet he may all his life be a thief in his heart. So when a man has once become a Carthusian, he is obliged to continue so, whether he chooses it or not. Their silence, too, is absurd. We read in the Gospel of the apostles being sent to preach, but not to hold their tongues. All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle. I said to the Lady Abbess[1271] of a convent, "Madam, you are here, not for the love of virtue, but the fear of vice." She said, "She should remember this as long as she lived."' I thought it hard to give her this view of her situation, when she could not help it; and, indeed, I wondered at the whole of what he now said; because, both in his Rambler[1272] and Idler[1273], he treats religious austerities with much solemnity of respect[1274].

Finding him still persevering in his abstinence from wine, I ventured to speak to him of it.--JOHNSON. 'Sir, I have no objection to a man's drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it[1275]. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences. One of the fathers tells us, he found fasting made him so peevish[1276] that he did not practise it.'

Though he often enlarged upon the evil of intoxication[1277], he was by no means harsh and unforgiving to those who indulged in occasional excess in wine. One of his friends[1278], I well remember, came to sup at a tavern with him and some other gentlemen, and too plainly discovered that he had drunk too much at dinner. When one who loved mischief, thinking to produce a severe censure, asked Johnson, a few days afterwards, 'Well, Sir, what did your friend say to you, as an apology for being in such a situation?' Johnson answered, 'Sir, he said all that a man should say: he said he was sorry for it.'

I heard him once give a very judicious practical advice upon this subject: 'A man, who has been drinking wine at all freely, should never go into a new company. With those who have partaken of wine with him, he may be pretty well in unison; but he will probably be offensive, or appear ridiculous, to other people.'

He allowed very great influence to education. 'I do not deny, Sir, but there is some original difference in minds; but it is nothing in comparison of what is formed by education. We may instance the science of numbers, which all minds are equally capable of attaining[1279]; yet we find a prodigious difference in the powers of different men, in that respect, after they are grown up, because their minds have been more or less exercised in it: and I think the same cause will explain the difference of excellence in other things, gradations admitting always some difference in the first principles[1280].' This is a difficult subject; but it is best to hope that diligence may do a great deal. We are sure of what it can do, in increasing our mechanical force and dexterity.

I again visited him on Monday. He took occasion to enlarge, as he often did, upon the wretchedness of a sea-life[1281]. 'A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger. When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land[1282].'--'Then (said I) it would be cruel in a father to breed his son to the sea.' JOHNSON. 'It would be cruel in a father who thinks as I do. Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.'

On Tuesday, March 19, which was fixed for our proposed jaunt, we met in the morning at the Somerset coffee-house in the Strand, where we were taken up by the Oxford coach. He was accompanied by Mr. Gwyn[1283], the architect; and a gentleman of Merton College, whom we did not know, had the fourth seat. We soon got into conversation; for it was very remarkable of Johnson, that the presence of a stranger had no restraint upon his talk. I observed that Garrick, who was about to quit the stage, would soon have an easier life. JOHNSON. 'I doubt that, Sir.' BOSWELL. 'Why, Sir, he will be Atlas with the burthen off his back.' JOHNSON. 'But I know not, Sir, if he will be so steady without his load. However, he should never play any more, but be entirely the gentleman, and not partly the player: he should no longer subject himself to be hissed by a mob, or to be insolently treated by performers, whom he used to rule with a high hand, and who would gladly retaliate.' BOSWELL. 'I think he should play once a year for the benefit of decayed actors, as it has been said he means to do.' JOHNSON. 'Alas, Sir! he will soon be a decayed actor himself.'

Johnson expressed his disapprobation of ornamental architecture, such as magnificent columns supporting a portico, or expensive pilasters supporting merely their own capitals, 'because it consumes labour disproportionate to its utility.' For the same reason he satyrised statuary. 'Painting (said he) consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect; but a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot[1284].' Here he seemed to me to be strangely deficient in taste; for surely statuary is a noble art of imitation, and preserves a wonderful expression of the varieties of the human frame; and although it must be allowed that the circumstances of difficulty enhance the value of a marble head, we should consider, that if it requires a long time in the performance, it has a proportionate value in durability.

Gwyn was a fine lively rattling fellow. Dr. Johnson kept him in subjection, but with a kindly authority. The spirit of the artist, however, rose against what he thought a Gothick attack, and he made a brisk defence. 'What, Sir, will you allow no value to beauty in architecture or in statuary? Why should we allow it then in writing? Why do you take the trouble to give us so many fine allusions, and bright images, and elegant phrases? You might convey all your instruction without these ornaments.' Johnson smiled with complacency; but said, 'Why, Sir, all these ornaments are useful, because they obtain an easier reception for truth; but a building is not at all more convenient for being decorated with superfluous carved work.'

Gwyn at last was lucky enough to make one reply to Dr. Johnson, which he allowed to be excellent. Johnson censured him for taking down a church which might have stood many years, and building a new one at a different place, for no other reason but that there might be a direct road to a new bridge; and his expression was, 'You are taking a church out of the way, that the people may go in a straight line to the bridge.'--'No, Sir, (said Gwyn,) I am putting the church in the way, that the people may not go out of the way.' JOHNSON, (with a hearty loud laugh of approbation,) 'Speak no more. Rest your colloquial fame upon this.'

Upon our arrival at Oxford, Dr. Johnson and I went directly to University College, but were disappointed on finding that one of the fellows, his friend Mr. Scott[1285], who accompanied him from Newcastle to Edinburgh, was gone to the country. We put up at the Angel inn, and passed the evening by ourselves in easy and familiar conversation. Talking of constitutional melancholy, he observed, 'A man so afflicted, Sir, must divert distressing thoughts, and not combat with them.' BOSWELL. 'May not he think them down, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. To attempt to think them down is madness. He should have a lamp constantly burning in his bed-chamber during the night, and if wakefully disturbed, take a book, and read, and compose himself to rest. To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise.' BOSWELL. 'Should not he provide amusements for himself? Would it not, for instance, be right for him to take a course of chymistry?' JOHNSON. 'Let him take a course of chymistry, or a course of rope-dancing, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself[1286]. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy[1287] is a valuable work. It is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation. But there is great spirit and great power in what Burton says, when he writes from his own mind.'

Next morning we visited Dr. Wetherell, Master of University College, with whom Dr. Johnson conferred on the most advantageous mode of disposing of the books printed at the Clarendon press, on which subject his letter has been inserted in a former page[1288]. I often had occasion to remark, Johnson loved business[1289], loved to have his wisdom actually operate on real life. Dr. Wetherell and I talked of him without reserve in his own presence. WETHERELL. 'I would have given him a hundred guineas if he would have written a preface to his Political Tracts[1290], by way of a Discourse on the British Constitution.' BOSWELL. 'Dr. Johnson, though in his writings, and upon all occasions a great friend to the constitution both in church and state, has never written expressly in support of either. There is really a claim upon him for both. I am sure he could give a volume of no great bulk upon each, which would comprise all the substance, and with his spirit would effectually maintain them. He should erect a fort on the confines of each.' I could perceive that he was displeased with this dialogue. He burst out, 'Why should I be always writing[1291]?' I hoped he was conscious that the debt was just, and meant to discharge it, though he disliked being dunned.

We then went to Pembroke College, and waited on his old friend Dr. Adams, the master of it, whom I found to be a most polite, pleasing, communicative man. Before his advancement to the headship of his college, I had intended to go and visit him at Shrewsbury, where he was rector of St. Chad's, in order to get from him what particulars he could recollect of Johnson's academical life. He now obligingly gave me part of that authentick information, which, with what I afterwards owed to his kindness, will be found incorporated in its proper place in this work.

Dr. Adams had distinguished himself by an able answer to David Hume's Essay on Miracles. He told me he had once dined in company with Hume in London[1292]; that Hume shook hands with him, and said, 'You have treated me much better than I deserve;' and that they exchanged visits. I took the liberty to object to treating an infidel writer with smooth civility. Where there is a controversy concerning a passage in a classick authour, or concerning a question in antiquities, or any other subject in which human happiness is not deeply interested, a man may treat his antagonist with politeness and even respect. But where the controversy is concerning the truth of religion, it is of such vast importance to him who maintains it, to obtain the victory, that the person of an opponent ought not to be spared. If a man firmly believes that religion is an invaluable treasure[1293], he will consider a writer who endeavours to deprive mankind of it as a robber; he will look upon him as odious, though the infidel might think himself in the right. A robber who reasons as the gang do in the Beggar's Opera, who call themselves practical philosophers[1294], and may have as much sincerity as pernicious speculative philosophers, is not the less an object of just indignation. An abandoned profligate may think that it is not wrong to debauch my wife, but shall I, therefore, not detest him? And if I catch him in making an attempt, shall I treat him with politeness? No, I will kick him down stairs, or run him through the body; that is, if I really love my wife, or have a true rational notion of honour. An infidel then shall not be treated handsomely by a Christian, merely because he endeavours to rob with ingenuity. I do declare, however, that I am exceedingly unwilling to be provoked to anger, and could I be persuaded that truth would not suffer from a cool moderation in its defenders, I should wish to preserve good humour, at least, in every controversy; nor, indeed, do I see why a man should lose his temper while he does all he can to refute an opponent. I think ridicule may be fairly used against an infidel; for instance, if he be an ugly fellow, and yet absurdly vain of his person[1295], we may contrast his appearance with Cicero's beautiful image of Virtue, could she be seen[1296]. Johnson coincided with me and said, 'When a man voluntarily engages in an important controversy, he is to do all he can to lessen his antagonist, because authority from personal respect has much weight with most people, and often more than reasoning[1297]. If my antagonist writes bad language, though that may not be essential to the question, I will attack him for his bad language.' ADAMS. 'You would not jostle a chimney-sweeper.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, if it were necessary to jostle him down.'

Dr. Adams told us, that in some of the Colleges at Oxford, the fellows had excluded the students from social intercourse with them in the common room[1298]. JOHNSON. 'They are in the right, Sir: there can be no real conversation, no fair exertion of mind amongst them, if the young men are by; for a man who has a character does not choose to stake it in their presence.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, may there not be very good conversation without a contest for superiority?' JOHNSON. 'No animated conversation, Sir, for it cannot be but one or other will come off superiour. I do not mean that the victor must have the better of the argument, for he may take the weak side; but his superiority of parts and knowledge will necessarily appear: and he to whom he thus shews himself superiour is lessened in the eyes of the young men[1299]. You know it was said, "Mallem cum Scaligero errare quam cum Clavio recte sapere[1300]." In the same manner take Bentley's and Jason de Nores' Comments upon Horace, you will admire Bentley more when wrong, than Jason when right.'

We walked with Dr. Adams into the master's garden, and into the common room. JOHNSON, (after a reverie of meditation,) 'Ay! Here I used to play at draughts with Phil. Jones[1301] and Fludyer. Jones loved beer, and did not get very forward in the church. Fludyer turned out a scoundrel[1302], a Whig, and said he was ashamed of having been bred at Oxford. He had a living at Putney, and got under the eye of some retainers to the court at that time, and so became a violent Whig: but he had been a scoundrel all along to be sure.' BOSWELL. 'Was he a scoundrel, Sir, in any other way than that of being a political scoundrel? Did he cheat at draughts?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, we never played for money.'

He then carried me to visit Dr. Bentham, Canon of Christ-Church, and Divinity Professor, with whose learned and lively conversation we were much pleased. He gave us an invitation to dinner, which Dr. Johnson told me was a high honour. 'Sir, it is a great thing to dine with the Canons of Christ-Church.' We could not accept his invitation, as we were engaged to dine at University College. We had an excellent dinner there, with the Master and Fellows, it being St. Cuthbert's day, which is kept by them as a festival, as he was a saint of Durham, with which this college is much connected[1303].

We drank tea with Dr. Home[1304], late President of Magdalen College, and Bishop of Norwich, of whose abilities, in different respects, the publick has had eminent proofs, and the esteem annexed to whose character was increased by knowing him personally. He had talked of publishing an edition of Walton's Lives[1305], but had laid aside that design, upon Dr. Johnson's telling him, from mistake, that Lord Hailes intended to do it. I had wished to negociate between Lord Hailes and him, that one or other should perform so good a work. JOHNSON. 'In order to do it well, it will be necessary to collect all the editions of Walton's Lives. By way of adapting the book to the taste of the present age, they have, in a later edition, left out a vision which he relates Dr. Donne had[1306], but it should be restored; and there should be a critical catalogue given of the works of the different persons whose lives were written by Walton, and therefore their works must be carefully read by the editor.'

We then went to Trinity College, where he introduced me to Mr. Thomas Warton, with whom we passed a part of the evening. We talked of biography.--JOHNSON. 'It is rarely well executed[1307]. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him. The chaplain of a late Bishop[1308], whom I was to assist in writing some memoirs of his Lordship, could tell me scarcely any thing[1309].'

I said, Mr. Robert Dodsley's life should be written, as he had been so much connected with the wits of his time[1310], and by his literary merit had raised himself from the station of a footman. Mr. Warton said, he had published a little volume under the title of The Muse in Livery [1311]. JOHNSON. 'I doubt whether Dodsley's brother[1312] would thank a man who should write his life: yet Dodsley himself was not unwilling that his original low condition should be recollected. When Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues of the Dead came out, one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf, a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, "I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman[1313]."'

Biography led us to speak of Dr. John Campbell[1314], who had written a considerable part of the Biographia Britannica. Johnson, though he valued him highly, was of opinion that there was not so much in his great work, A Political Survey of Great Britain, as the world had been taught to expect[1315]; and had said to me, that he believed Campbell's disappointment, on account of the bad success of that work, had killed him. He this evening observed of it, 'That work was his death.' Mr. Warton, not adverting to his meaning, answered, 'I believe so; from the great attention he bestowed on it.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, he died of want of attention, if he died at all by that book.'

We talked of a work much in vogue at that time, written in a very mellifluous style, but which, under pretext of another subject, contained much artful infidelity[1316]. I said it was not fair to attack us thus unexpectedly; he should have warned us of our danger, before we entered his garden of flowery eloquence, by advertising, 'Spring guns and men-traps set here[1317].' The authour had been an Oxonian, and was remembered there for having 'turned Papist.' I observed, that as he had changed several times--from the Church of England to the Church of Rome,--from the Church of Rome to infidelity,--I did not despair yet of seeing him a methodist preacher. JOHNSON, (laughing.) 'It is said, that his range has been more extensive, and that he has once been Mahometan[1318]. However, now that he has published his infidelity, he will probably persist in it.' BOSWELL. 'I am not quite sure of that, Sir.'

I mentioned Sir Richard Steele having published his Christian Hero, with the avowed purpose of obliging himself to lead a religious life[1319], yet, that his conduct was by no means strictly suitable. JOHNSON. 'Steele, I believe, practised the lighter vices.'

Mr. Warton, being engaged, could not sup with us at our inn; we had therefore another evening by ourselves. I asked Johnson, whether a man's[1320] being forward to make himself known to eminent people, and seeing as much of life, and getting as much information as he could in every way, was not yet lessening himself by his forwardness. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; a man always makes himself greater as he increases his knowledge.'

I censured some ludicrous fantastick dialogues between two coach-horses and other such stuff, which Baretti had lately published[1321]. He joined with me, and said, 'Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last[1322].' I expressed a desire to be acquainted with a lady who had been much talked of, and universally celebrated for extraordinary address and insinuation[1323]. JOHNSON. 'Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, Sir, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.' I mentioned Mr. Burke. JOHNSON. 'Yes; Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual[1324].' It is very pleasing to me to record, that Johnson's high estimation of the talents of this gentleman was uniform from their early acquaintance. Sir Joshua Reynolds informs me, that when Mr. Burke was first elected a member of Parliament, and Sir John Hawkins expressed a wonder at his attaining a seat, Johnson said, 'Now we who know Mr. Burke, know, that he will be one of the first men in this country[1325].' And once, when Johnson was ill, and unable to exert himself as much as usual without fatigue, Mr. Burke having been mentioned, he said, 'That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see Burke now it would kill me[1326].' So much was he accustomed to consider conversation as a contest[1327], and such was his notion of Burke as an opponent.

Next morning, Thursday, March 31, we set out in a post-chaise to pursue our ramble. It was a delightful day, and we rode through Blenheim park. When I looked at the magnificent bridge built by John Duke of Marlborough, over a small rivulet, and recollected the Epigram made upon it--

'The lofty arch his high ambition shows, The stream, an emblem of his bounty flows[1328]:'

and saw that now, by the genius of Brown[1329], a magnificent body of water was collected, I said, 'They have drowned the Epigram.' I observed to him, while in the midst of the noble scene around us, 'You and I, Sir, have, I think, seen together the extremes of what can be seen in Britain:--the wild rough island of Mull, and Blenheim park.'

We dined at an excellent inn at Chapel-house, where he expatiated on the felicity of England in its taverns and inns, and triumphed over the French for not having, in any perfection, the tavern life. 'There is no private house, (said he,) in which people can enjoy themselves so well, as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that every body should be easy; in the nature of things it cannot be: there must always be some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him: and no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another man's house, as if it were his own[1330]. Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome: and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn[1331].' He then repeated, with great emotion, Shenstone's lines:--

'Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn[1332].'

My illustrious friend, I thought, did not sufficiently admire Shenstone[1333]. That ingenious and elegant gentleman's opinion of Johnson appears in one of his letters to Mr. Graves[1334], dated Feb. 9, 1760. 'I have lately been reading one or two volumes of The Rambler; who, excepting against some few hardnesses[1335] in his manner, and the want of more examples to enliven, is one of the most nervous, most perspicuous, most concise, [and] most harmonious prose writers I know. A learned diction improves by time.'

In the afternoon, as we were driven rapidly along in the post-chaise, he said to me 'Life has not many things better than this[1336].'

We stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon, and drank tea and coffee; and it pleased me to be with him upon the classick ground of Shakspeare's native place.

He spoke slightingly of Dyer's Fleece[1337].--'The subject, Sir, cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poetically of serges and druggets? Yet you will hear many people talk to you gravely of that excellent poem, The Fleece.' Having talked of Grainger's Sugar-Cane, I mentioned to him Mr. Langton's having told me, that this poem, when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when, after much blank-verse pomp, the poet began a new paragraph thus:--

'Now, Muse, let's sing of rats'

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company, who slily overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice, and had been altered to rats, as more dignified[1338].

This passage does not appear in the printed work. Dr. Grainger, or some of his friends, it should seem, having become sensible that introducing even Rats in a grave poem, might be liable to banter. He, however, could not bring himself to relinquish the idea; for they are thus, in a still more ludicrous manner, periphrastically exhibited in his poem as it now stands:

'Nor with less waste the whisker'd vermin race A countless clan despoil the lowland cane.'

Johnson said, that Dr. Grainger was an agreeable man; a man who would do any good that was in his power. His translation of Tibullus, he thought, was very well done; but The Sugar-Cane, a poem, did not please him[1339]; for, he exclaimed, 'What could he make of a sugar-cane? One might as well write the "Parsley-bed, a Poem;" or "The Cabbage-garden, a Poem."' BOSWELL. 'You must then pickle your cabbage with the sal atticum.' JOHNSON. 'You know there is already The Hop-Garden, a Poem[1340]: and, I think, one could say a great deal about cabbage. The poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them[1341]; and one might thus shew how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.' He seemed to be much diverted with the fertility of his own fancy.

I told him, that I heard Dr. Percy was writing the history of the wolf in Great-Britain. JOHNSON. 'The wolf, Sir! why the wolf? Why does he not write of the bear, which we had formerly? Nay, it is said we had the beaver. Or why does he not write of the grey rat, the Hanover rat, as it is called, because it is said to have come into this country about the time that the family of Hanover came? I should like to see The History of the Grey Rat, by Thomas Percy, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty,' (laughing immoderately). BOSWELL. 'I am afraid a court chaplain could not decently write of the grey rat.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, he need not give it the name of the Hanover rat.' Thus could he indulge a luxuriant sportive imagination, when talking of a friend whom he loved and esteemed.

He mentioned to me the singular history of an ingenious acquaintance. 'He had practised physick in various situations with no great emolument. A West-India gentleman, whom he delighted by his conversation, gave him a bond for a handsome annuity during his life, on the condition of his accompanying him to the West-Indies, and living with him there for two years. He accordingly embarked with the gentleman; but upon the voyage fell in love with a young woman who happened to be one of the passengers, and married the wench. From the imprudence of his disposition he quarrelled with the gentleman, and declared he would have no connection with him. So he forfeited the annuity. He settled as a physician in one of the Leeward Islands. A man was sent out to him merely to compound his medicines. This fellow set up as a rival to him in his practice of physick, and got so much the better of him in the opinion of the people of the island that he carried away all the business, upon which he returned to England, and soon after died.'

On Friday, March 22, having set out early from Henley[1342], where we had lain the preceding night, we arrived at Birmingham about nine o'clock, and, after breakfast, went to call on his old schoolfellow Mr. Hector[1343]. A very stupid maid, who opened the door, told us, that 'her master was gone out; he was gone to the country; she could not tell when he would return.' In short, she gave us a miserable reception; and Johnson observed, 'She would have behaved no better to people who wanted him in the way of his profession.' He said to her, 'My name is Johnson; tell him I called. Will you remember the name?' She answered with rustick simplicity, in the Warwickshire pronunciation, 'I don't understand you, Sir.'--'Blockhead, (said he,) I'll write.' I never heard the word blockhead applied to a woman before, though I do not see why it should not, when there is evident occasion for it[1344]. He, however, made another attempt to make her understand him, and roared loud in her ear, 'Johnson', and then she catched the sound.

We next called on Mr. Lloyd, one of the people called Quakers. He too was not at home; but Mrs. Lloyd was, and received us courteously, and asked us to dinner. Johnson said to me, 'After the uncertainty of all human things at Hector's, this invitation came very well.' We walked about the town, and he was pleased to see it increasing.

I talked of legitimation by subsequent marriage, which obtained in the Roman law, and still obtains in the law of Scotland. JOHNSON. 'I think it a bad thing; because the chastity of women being of the utmost importance, as all property depends upon it, they who forfeit it should not have any possibility of being restored to good character; nor should the children, by an illicit connection, attain the full right of lawful children, by the posteriour consent of the offending parties.' His opinion upon this subject deserves consideration. Upon his principle there may, at times, be a hardship, and seemingly a strange one, upon individuals; but the general good of society is better secured. And, after all, it is unreasonable in an individual to repine that he has not the advantage of a state which is made different from his own, by the social institution under which he is born. A woman does not complain that her brother, who is younger than her, gets their common father's estate. Why then should a natural son complain that a younger brother, by the same parents lawfully begotten, gets it? The operation of law is similar in both cases. Besides, an illegitimate son, who has a younger legitimate brother by the same father and mother, has no stronger claim to the father's estate, than if that legitimate brother had only the same father, from whom alone the estate descends.

Mr. Lloyd joined us in the street; and in a little while we met Friend Hector, as Mr. Lloyd called him. It gave me pleasure to observe the joy which Johnson and he expressed on seeing each other again. Mr. Lloyd and I left them together, while he obligingly shewed me some of the manufactures of this very curious assemblage of artificers. We all met at dinner at Mr. Lloyd's, where we were entertained with great hospitality. Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd had been married the same year with their Majesties, and like them, had been blessed with a numerous family of fine children, their numbers being exactly the same. Johnson said, 'Marriage is the best state for a man in general; and every man is a worse man, in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.'

I have always loved the simplicity of manners, and the spiritual-mindedness of the Quakers; and talking with Mr. Lloyd, I observed, that the essential part of religion was piety, a devout intercourse with the Divinity; and that many a man was a Quaker without knowing it.

As Dr. Johnson had said to me in the morning, while we walked together, that he liked individuals among the Quakers, but not the sect; when we were at Mr. Lloyd's, I kept clear of introducing any questions concerning the peculiarities of their faith. But I having asked to look at Baskerville's edition of Barclay's Apology, Johnson laid hold of it; and the chapter on baptism happening to open, Johnson remarked, 'He says there is neither precept nor practice for baptism, in the scriptures; that is false.' Here he was the aggressor, by no means in a gentle manner; and the good Quakers had the advantage of him; for he had read negligently, and had not observed that Barclay speaks of infant baptism[1345]; which they calmly made him perceive. Mr. Lloyd, however, was in as great a mistake; for when insisting that the rite of baptism by water was to cease, when the spiritual administration of CHRIST began, he maintained, that John the Baptist said, 'My baptism shall decrease, but his shall increase.' Whereas the words are, 'He must increase, but I must decrease[1346].'

One of them having objected to the 'observance of days, and months, and years,' Johnson answered, 'The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.'

He said to me at another time, 'Sir, the holidays observed by our church are of great use in religion.' There can be no doubt of this, in a limited sense, I mean if the number of such consecrated portions of time be not too extensive. The excellent Mr. Nelson's[1347] Festivals and Fasts, which has, I understand, the greatest sale of any book ever printed in England, except the Bible, is a most valuable help to devotion; and in addition to it I would recommend two sermons on the same subject, by Mr. Pott, Archdeacon of St. Alban's, equally distinguished for piety and elegance. I am sorry to have it to say, that Scotland is the only Christian country, Catholick or Protestant, where the great events of our religion are not solemnly commemorated by its ecclesiastical establishment, on days set apart for the purpose.

Mr. Hector was so good as to accompany me to see the great works of Mr. Bolton, at a place which he has called Soho, about two miles from Birmingham, which the very ingenious proprietor shewed me himself to the best advantage. I wish Johnson had been with us: for it was a scene which I should have been glad to contemplate by his light[1348]. The vastness and the contrivance of some of the machinery would have 'matched his mighty mind.' I shall never forget Mr. Bolton's expression to me: 'I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have--POWER.' He had about seven hundred people at work. I contemplated him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be a father to his tribe. One of them came to him, complaining grievously of his landlord for having distrained his goods.' 'Your landlord is in the right, Smith, (said Bolton). But I'll tell you what: find you a friend who will lay down one half of your rent, and I'll lay down the other half; and you shall have your goods again.'

From Mr. Hector I now learnt many particulars of Dr. Johnson's early life, which, with others that he gave me at different times since, have contributed to the formation of this work.

Dr. Johnson said to me in the morning, 'You will see, Sir, at Mr. Hector's, his sister, Mrs. Careless[1349], a clergyman's widow. She was the first woman with whom I was in love. It dropt out of my head imperceptibly; but she and I shall always have a kindness for each other.' He laughed at the notion that a man never can be really in love but once, and considered it as a mere romantick fancy.

On our return from Mr. Bolton's, Mr. Hector took me to his house, where we found Johnson sitting placidly at tea[1350], with his first love; who, though now advanced in years, was a genteel woman, very agreeable, and well-bred.

Johnson lamented to Mr. Hector the state of one of their school-fellows, Mr. Charles Congreve, a clergyman, which he thus described: 'He obtained, I believe, considerable preferment in Ireland, but now lives in London, quite as a valetudinarian, afraid to go into any house but his own. He takes a short airing in his post-chaise every day. He has an elderly woman, whom he calls cousin, who lives with him, and jogs his elbow when his glass has stood too long empty, and encourages him in drinking, in which he is very willing to be encouraged; not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy[1351]. He confesses to one bottle of port every day, and he probably drinks more. He is quite unsocial; his conversation is quite monosyllabical: and when, at my last visit, I asked him what a clock it was? that signal of my departure had so pleasing an effect on him, that he sprung up to look at his watch, like a greyhound bounding at a hare.' When Johnson took leave of Mr. Hector, he said, 'Don't grow like Congreve; nor let me grow like him, when you are near me[1352].'

When he again talked of Mrs. Careless to-night, he seemed to have had his affection revived; for he said, 'If I had married her, it might have been as happy for me.[1353]' BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy, as with any one woman in particular.' JOHNSON. 'Ay, Sir, fifty thousand.' BOSWELL. 'Then, Sir, you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each other; and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counterparts.' JOHNSON. 'To be sure not, Sir. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.'

I wished to have staid at Birmingham to-night, to have talked more with Mr. Hector; but my friend was impatient to reach his native city; so we drove on that stage in the dark, and were long pensive and silent. When we came within the focus of the Lichfield lamps, 'Now (said he,) we are getting out of a state of death.' We put up at the Three Crowns, not one of the great inns, but a good old fashioned one, which was kept by Mr. Wilkins, and was the very next house to that in which Johnson was born and brought up, and which was still his own property[1354]. We had a comfortable supper, and got into high spirits. I felt all my Toryism glow in this old capital of Staffordshire. I could have offered incense genio loci; and I indulged in libations of that ale, which Boniface, in The Beaux Stratagem, recommends with such an eloquent jollity[1355].

Next morning he introduced me to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his step-daughter. She was now an old maid, with much simplicity of manner. She had never been in London. Her brother, a Captain in the navy, had left her a fortune of ten thousand pounds; about a third of which she had laid out in building a stately house, and making a handsome garden, in an elevated situation in Lichfield. Johnson, when here by himself, used to live at her house. She reverenced him, and he had a parental tenderness for her[1356].

We then visited Mr. Peter Garrick, who had that morning received a letter from his brother David, announcing our coming to Lichfield. He was engaged to dinner, but asked us to tea, and to sleep at his house. Johnson, however, would not quit his old acquaintance Wilkins, of the Three Crowns. The family likeness of the Garricks was very striking[1357]; and Johnson thought that David's vivacity was not so peculiar to himself as was supposed. 'Sir, (said he,) I don't know but if Peter had cultivated all the arts of gaiety as much as David has done, he might have been as brisk and lively. Depend upon it, Sir, vivacity is much an art, and depends greatly on habit.' I believe there is a good deal of truth in this, notwithstanding a ludicrous story told me by a lady abroad, of a heavy German baron, who had lived much with the young English at Geneva, and was ambitious to be as lively as they; with which view, he, with assiduous exertion, was jumping over the tables and chairs in his lodgings; and when the people of the house ran in and asked, with surprize, what was the matter, he answered, 'Sh' apprens t'etre fif.'

We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson[1358], one of Johnson's schoolfellows, whom he treated with much kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and untaught. He had a coarse grey coat, black waistcoat, greasy leather breeches, and a yellow uncurled wig; and his countenance had the ruddiness which betokens one who is in no haste to 'leave his can.' He drank only ale. He had tried to be a cutler at Birmingham, but had not succeeded; and now he lived poorly at home, and had some scheme of dressing leather in a better manner than common; to his indistinct account of which, Dr. Johnson listened with patient attention, that he might assist him with his advice. Here was an instance of genuine humanity and real kindness in this great man, who has been most unjustly represented as altogether harsh and destitute of tenderness. A thousand such instances might have been recorded in the course of his long life; though that his temper was warm and hasty, and his manner often rough, cannot be denied.

I saw here, for the first time, oat ale; and oat cakes not hard as in Scotland, but soft like a Yorkshire cake, were served at breakfast. It was pleasant to me to find, that Oats, the food of horses[1359], were so much used as the food of the people in Dr. Johnson's own town. He expatiated in praise of Lichfield and its inhabitants, who, he said, were 'the most sober, decent people[1360] in England, the genteelest in proportion to their wealth, and spoke the purest English[1361].' I doubted as to the last article of this eulogy: for they had several provincial sounds; as there, pronounced like fear, instead of like fair; once pronounced woonse, instead of wunse, or wonse. Johnson himself never got entirely free of those provincial accents[1362]. Garrick sometimes used to take him off, squeezing a lemon into a punch-bowl, with uncouth gesticulations, looking round the company, and calling out, 'Who's for poonsh?[1363]'

Very little business appeared to be going forward in Lichfield. I found however two strange manufactures for so inland a place, sail-cloth and streamers for ships; and I observed them making some saddle-cloths, and dressing sheepskins: but upon the whole, the busy hand of industry seemed to be quite slackened. 'Surely, Sir, (said I,) you are an idle set of people.' 'Sir, (said Johnson,) we are a city of philosophers, we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham[1364] work for us with their hands.'

There was at this time a company of players performing at Lichfield. The manager, Mr. Stanton, sent his compliments, and begged leave to wait on Dr. Johnson. Johnson received him very courteously, and he drank a glass of wine with us. He was a plain decent well-behaved man, and expressed his gratitude to Dr. Johnson for having once got him permission from Dr. Taylor at Ashbourne to play there upon moderate terms. Garrick's name was soon introduced. JOHNSON. 'Garrick's conversation is gay and grotesque. It is a dish of all sorts, but all good things. There is no solid meat in it: there is a want of sentiment in it. Not but that he has sentiment sometimes, and sentiment, too, very powerful and very pleasing: but it has not its full proportion in his conversation.'

When we were by ourselves he told me, 'Forty years ago, Sir, I was in love with an actress here, Mrs. Emmet, who acted Flora, in Hob in the Well[1365].' What merit this lady had as an actress, or what was her figure, or her manner, I have not been informed: but, if we may believe Mr. Garrick, his old master's taste in theatrical merit was by no means refined[1366]; he was not an elegans formarum spectator[1367]. Garrick used to tell, that Johnson said of an actor, who played Sir Harry Wildair [1368] at Lichfield, 'There is a courtly vivacity about the fellow;' when in fact, according to Garrick's account, 'he was the most vulgar ruffian that ever went upon boards.'

We had promised Mr. Stanton to be at his theatre on Monday. Dr. Johnson jocularly proposed me to write a Prologue for the occasion: 'A Prologue, by James Boswell, Esq. from the Hebrides.' I was really inclined to take the hint. Methought, 'Prologue, spoken before Dr. Samuel Johnson, at Lichfield, 1776;' would have sounded as well as, 'Prologue, spoken before the Duke of York, at Oxford,' in Charles the Second's time. Much might have been said of what Lichfield had done for Shakspeare, by producing Johnson and Garrick. But I found he was averse to it.

We went and viewed the museum of Mr. Richard Green, apothecary here, who told me he was proud of being a relation of Dr. Johnson's. It was, truely, a wonderful collection, both of antiquities and natural curiosities, and ingenious works of art. He had all the articles accurately arranged, with their names upon labels, printed at his own little press; and on the staircase leading to it was a board, with the names of contributors marked in gold letters. A printed catalogue of the collection was to be had at a bookseller's. Johnson expressed his admiration of the activity and diligence and good fortune of Mr. Green, in getting together, in his situation, so great a variety of things; and Mr. Green told me that Johnson once said to him, 'Sir, I should as soon have thought of building a man of war, as of collecting such a museum.' Mr. Green's obliging alacrity in shewing it was very pleasing. His engraved portrait, with which he has favoured me, has a motto truely characteristical of his disposition, 'Nemo sibi vivat.'

A physician being mentioned who had lost his practice, because his whimsically changing his religion had made people distrustful of him, I maintained that this was unreasonable, as religion is unconnected with medical skill. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is not unreasonable; for when people see a man absurd in what they understand, they may conclude the same of him in what they do not understand. If a physician were to take to eating of horse-flesh, nobody would employ him; though one may eat horse-flesh, and be a very skilful physician. If a man were educated in an absurd religion, his continuing to profess it would not hurt him, though his changing to it would.'

We drank tea and coffee at Mr. Peter Garrick's, where was Mrs. Aston, one of the maiden sisters of Mrs. Walmsley, wife of Johnson's first friend[1369], and sister also of the lady of whom Johnson used to speak with the warmest admiration, by the name of Molly Aston[1370], who was afterwards married to Captain Brodie of the navy.

On Sunday, March 24, we breakfasted with Mrs. Cobb, a widow lady, who lived in an agreeable sequestered place close by the town, called the Friary, it having been formerly a religious house. She and her niece, Miss Adey, were great admirers of Dr. Johnson; and he behaved to them with a kindness and easy pleasantry, such as we see between old and intimate acquaintance. He accompanied Mrs. Cobb to St. Mary's church, and I went to the cathedral, where I was very much delighted with the musick, finding it to be peculiarly solemn and accordant with the words of the service.

We dined at Mr. Peter Garrick's, who was in a very lively humour, and verified Johnson's saying, that if he had cultivated gaiety as much as his brother David, he might have equally excelled in it. He was to-day quite a London narrator, telling us a variety of anecdotes with that earnestness and attempt at mimicry which we usually find in the wits of the metropolis. Dr. Johnson went with me to the cathedral in the afternoon[1371]. It was grand and pleasing to contemplate this illustrious writer, now full of fame, worshipping in the 'solemn temple[1372]' of his native city.

I returned to tea and coffee at Mr. Peter Garrick's, and then found Dr. Johnson at the Reverend Mr. Seward's[1373], Canon Residentiary, who inhabited the Bishop's palace[1374], in which Mr. Walmsley lived, and which had been the scene of many happy hours in Johnson's early life. Mr. Seward had, with ecclesiastical hospitality and politeness, asked me in the morning, merely as a stranger, to dine with him; and in the afternoon, when I was introduced to him, he asked Dr. Johnson and me to spend the evening and sup with him. He was a genteel well-bred dignified clergyman, had travelled with Lord Charles Fitzroy, uncle of the present Duke of Grafton, who died when abroad, and he had lived much in the great world. He was an ingenious and literary man, had published an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, and written verses in Dodsley's collection. His lady was the daughter of Mr. Hunter, Johnson's first schoolmaster. And now, for the first time, I had the pleasure of seeing his celebrated daughter, Miss Anna Seward, to whom I have since been indebted for many civilities, as well as some obliging communications concerning Johnson[1375].

Mr. Seward mentioned to us the observations which he had made upon the strata of earth in volcanos, from which it appeared, that they were so very different in depth at different periods, that no calculation whatever could be made as to the time required for their formation. This fully refuted an antimosaical remark introduced into Captain Brydone's entertaining tour, I hope heedlessly, from a kind of vanity which is too common in those who have not sufficiently studied the most important of all subjects. Dr. Johnson, indeed, had said before, independent of this observation, 'Shall all the accumulated evidence of the history of the world;--shall the authority of what is unquestionably the most ancient writing, be overturned by an uncertain remark such as this?[1376]'

On Monday, March 25, we breakfasted at Mrs. Lucy Porter's. Johnson had sent an express to Dr. Taylor's, acquainting him of our being at Lichfield[1377], and Taylor had returned an answer that his postchaise should come for us this day. While we sat at breakfast, Dr. Johnson received a letter by the post, which seemed to agitate him very much. When he had read it, he exclaimed, 'One of the most dreadful things that has happened in my time.' The phrase my time, like the word age, is usually understood to refer to an event of a publick or general nature. I imagined something like an assassination of the King--like a gunpowder plot carried into execution--or like another fire of London. When asked, 'What is it, Sir?' he answered, 'Mr. Thrale has lost his only son![1378]' This was, no doubt, a very great affliction to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, which their friends would consider accordingly; but from the manner in which the intelligence of it was communicated by Johnson, it appeared for the moment to be comparatively small. I, however, soon felt a sincere concern, and was curious to observe, how Dr. Johnson would be affected. He said, 'This is a total extinction to their family, as much as if they were sold into captivity.' Upon my mentioning that Mr. Thrale had daughters, who might inherit his wealth;--'Daughters, (said Johnson, warmly,) he'll no more value his daughters than--'I was going to speak.--'Sir, (said he,) don't you know how you yourself think? Sir, he wishes to propagate his name[1379].' In short, I saw male succession strong in his mind, even where there was no name, no family of any long standing. I said, it was lucky he was not present when this misfortune happened. JOHNSON. 'It is lucky for me. People in distress never think that you feel enough.' BOSWELL. 'And Sir, they will have the hope of seeing you, which will be a relief in the mean time; and when you get to them, the pain will be so far abated, that they will be capable of being consoled by you, which, in the first violence of it, I believe, would not be the case.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; violent pain of mind, like violent pain of body, must be severely felt.' BOSWELL. 'I own, Sir, I have not so much feeling for the distress of others, as some people have, or pretend to have: but I know this, that I would do all in my power to relieve them.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is affectation to pretend to feel the distress of others, as much as they do themselves. It is equally so, as if one should pretend to feel as much pain while a friend's leg is cutting off, as he does. No, Sir; you have expressed the rational and just nature of sympathy. I would have gone to the extremity of the earth to have preserved this boy[1380].'

He was soon quite calm. The letter was from Mr. Thrale's clerk, and concluded, 'I need not say how much they wish to see you in London.' He said, 'We shall hasten back from Taylor's.'

Mrs. Lucy Porter and some other ladies of the place talked a great deal of him when he was out of the room, not only with veneration but affection. It pleased me to find that he was so much beloved in his native city.

Mrs. Aston, whom I had seen the preceding night, and her sister, Mrs. Gastrel, a widow lady, had each a house and garden, and pleasure-ground, prettily situated upon Stowhill, a gentle eminence, adjoining to Lichfield. Johnson walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself without any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility of manners, from which a man has no difficulty in carrying a friend to a house where he is intimate; I felt it very unpleasant to be thus left in solitude in a country town, where I was an entire stranger, and began to think myself unkindly deserted: but I was soon relieved, and convinced that my friend, instead of being deficient in delicacy, had conducted the matter with perfect propriety, for I received the following note in his handwriting: 'Mrs. Gastrel, at the lower house on Stowhill, desires Mr. Boswell's company to dinner at two.' I accepted of the invitation, and had here another proof how amiable his character was in the opinion of those who knew him best. I was not informed, till afterwards, that Mrs. Gastrel's husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at Stratford upon Avon, where he was proprietor of Shakspeare's garden, with Gothick barbarity cut down his mulberry-tree[1381], and, as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to believe, on the same authority[1382], participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts for our immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege.

After dinner Dr. Johnson wrote a letter to Mrs. Thrale on the death of her son[1383]. I said it would be very distressing to Thrale, but she would soon forget it, as she had so many things to think of. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, Thrale will forget it first. She has many things that she may think of. He has many things that he must think of[1384].' This was a very just remark upon the different effect of those light pursuits which occupy a vacant and easy mind, and those serious engagements which arrest attention, and keep us from brooding over grief.

He observed of Lord Bute, 'It was said of Augustus, that it would have been better for Rome that he had never been born, or had never died. So it would have been better for this nation if Lord Bute had never been minister, or had never resigned.'

In the evening we went to the Town-hall, which was converted into a temporary theatre, and saw Theodosius, with The Stratford Jubilee. I was happy to see Dr. Johnson sitting in a conspicuous part of the pit, and receiving affectionate homage from all his acquaintance. We were quite gay and merry. I afterwards mentioned to him that I condemned myself for being so, when poor Mr. and Mrs. Thrale were in such distress. JOHNSON. 'You are wrong, Sir; twenty years hence Mr. and Mrs. Thrale will not suffer much pain from the death of their son. Now, Sir, you are to consider, that distance of place, as well as distance of time, operates upon the human feelings. I would not have you be gay in the presence of the distressed, because it would shock them; but you may be gay at a distance. Pain for the loss of a friend, or of a relation whom we love, is occasioned by the want which we feel. In time the vacuity is filled with something else; or sometimes the vacuity closes up of itself.'

Mr. Seward and Mr. Pearson, another clergyman here, supt with us at our inn, and after they left us, we sat up late as we used to do in London.

Here I shall record some fragments of my friend's conversation during this jaunt.

'Marriage, Sir, is much more necessary to a man than to a woman; for he is much less able to supply himself with domestick comforts. You will recollect my saying to some ladies the other day, that I had often wondered why young women should marry, as they have so much more freedom, and so much more attention paid to them while unmarried, than when married. I indeed did not mention the strong reason for their marrying--the mechanical reason.' BOSWELL. 'Why that is a strong one. But does not imagination make it much more important than it is in reality? Is it not, to a certain degree, a delusion in us as well as in women?' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir; but it is a delusion that is always beginning again.' BOSWELL. 'I don't know but there is upon the whole more misery than happiness produced by that passion.' JOHNSON. 'I don't think so, Sir.'

'Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate, and may be offensive.'

'Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen[1385]. It is assuming a superiority, and it is particularly wrong to question a man concerning himself. There may be parts of his former life which he may not wish to be made known to other persons, or even brought to his own recollection.'

'A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused and laugh at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.'

'Much may be done if a man puts his whole mind to a particular object. By doing so, Norton[1386] has made himself the great lawyer that he is allowed to be.'

I mentioned an acquaintance of mine[1387], a sectary, who was a very religious man, who not only attended regularly on publick worship with those of his communion, but made a particular study of the Scriptures, and even wrote a commentary on some parts of them, yet was known to be very licentious in indulging himself with women; maintaining that men are to be saved by faith alone, and that the Christian religion had not prescribed any fixed rule for the intercourse between the sexes. JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no trusting to that crazy piety.'

I observed that it was strange how well Scotchmen were known to one another in their own country, though born in very distant counties; for we do not find that the gentlemen of neighbouring counties in England are mutually known to each other. Johnson, with his usual acuteness, at once saw and explained the reason of this; 'Why, Sir, you have Edinburgh, where the gentlemen from all your counties meet, and which is not so large but they are all known. There is no such common place of collection in England, except London, where from its great size and diffusion, many of those who reside in contiguous counties of England, may long remain unknown to each other.'

On Tuesday, March 26, there came for us an equipage properly suited to a wealthy well-beneficed clergyman;--Dr. Taylor's large roomy post-chaise, drawn by four stout plump horses, and driven by two steady jolly postillions, which conveyed us to Ashbourne; where I found my friend's schoolfellow living upon an establishment perfectly corresponding with his substantial creditable equipage: his house, garden, pleasure-grounds, table, in short every thing good, and no scantiness appearing. Every man should form such a plan of living as he can execute completely. Let him not draw an outline wider than he can fill up. I have seen many skeletons of shew and magnificence which excite at once ridicule and pity. Dr. Taylor had a good estate of his own, and good preferment in the church[1388], being a prebendary of Westminster, and rector of Bosworth. He was a diligent justice of the peace, and presided over the town of Ashbourne, to the inhabitants of which I was told he was very liberal; and as a proof of this it was mentioned to me, he had the preceding winter distributed two hundred pounds among such of them as stood in need of his assistance. He had consequently a considerable political interest in the county of Derby, which he employed to support the Devonshire family; for though the schoolfellow and friend of Johnson, he was a Whig. I could not perceive in his character much congeniality of any sort with that of Johnson, who, however, said to me, 'Sir, he has a very strong understanding[1389].' His size, and figure, and countenance, and manner, were that of a hearty English 'Squire, with the parson super-induced: and I took particular notice of his upper servant, Mr. Peters, a decent grave man, in purple clothes, and a large white wig, like the butler or major domo of a Bishop.

Dr. Johnson and Dr. Taylor met with great cordiality; and Johnson soon gave him the same sad account of their school-fellow, Congreve, that he had given to Mr. Hector[1390]; adding a remark of such moment to the rational conduct of a man in the decline of life, that it deserves to be imprinted upon every mind: 'There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse[1391].' Innumerable have been the melancholy instances of men once distinguished for firmness, resolution, and spirit, who in their latter days have been governed like children, by interested female artifice.

Dr. Taylor commended a physician who was known to him and Dr. Johnson, and said, 'I fight many battles for him, as many people in the country dislike him.' JOHNSON. 'But you should consider, Sir, that by every one of your victories he is a loser; for, every man of whom you get the better, will be very angry, and resolve not to employ him; whereas if people get the better of you in argument about him, they'll think, "We'll send for Dr. ----[1392] nevertheless."' This was an observation deep and sure in human nature.

Next day we talked of a book[1393] in which an eminent judge was arraigned before the bar of the publick, as having pronounced an unjust decision in a great cause. Dr. Johnson maintained that this publication would not give any uneasiness to the judge. 'For (said he,) either he acted honestly, or he meant to do injustice. If he acted honestly, his own consciousness will protect him; if he meant to do injustice, he will be glad to see the man who attacks him, so much vexed,'

Next day, as Dr. Johnson had acquainted Dr. Taylor of the reason for his returning speedily to London, it was resolved that we should set out after dinner. A few of Dr. Taylor's neighbours were his guests that day.

Dr. Johnson talked with approbation of one who had attained to the state of the philosophical wise man, that is, to have no want of any thing. 'Then, Sir, (said I,) the savage is a wise man.' 'Sir, (said he,) I do not mean simply being without,--but not having a want.' I maintained, against this proposition, that it was better to have fine clothes, for instance, than not to feel the want of them. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect. Was Charles the Twelfth, think you, less respected for his coarse blue coat and black stock[1394]? And you find the King of Prussia dresses plain, because the dignity of his character is sufficient.' I here brought myself into a scrape, for I heedlessly said, 'Would not you, Sir, be the better for velvet and embroidery?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you put an end to all argument when you introduce your opponent himself. Have you no better manners? There is your want.' I apologised by saying, I had mentioned him as an instance of one who wanted as little as any man in the world, and yet, perhaps, might receive some additional lustre from dress.

APPENDIX A. (Page 17.)

In the Bodleian is the following autograph record by Johnson of Good Friday, March 28, Easter Sunday, March 30, and May 4, 1766, and the copy of the record of Saturday, March 29. They belong to the series published by the Rev. Mr. Strahan under the title of Prayers and Meditations, but they are not included in it.

'Good Friday, March 28, 1766.--On the night before I used proper Collects, and prayed when I arose in the morning. I had all the week an awe upon me, not thinking on Passion week till I looked in the almanack. I have wholly forborne M [? meat] and wines, except one glass on Sunday night.

'In the morning I rose, and drank very small tea without milk, and had nothing more that day.

'This was the day on which Tetty died. I did not mingle much men [? mention] of her with the devotions of this day, because it is dedicated to more holy subjects. I mentioned her at church, and prayed once solemnly at home. I was twice at church, and went through the prayers without perturbation, but heard the sermons imperfectly. I came in both times at the second lesson, not hearing the bell.

'When I came home I read the Psalms for the day, and one sermon in Clark. Scruples distract me, but at church I had hopes to conquer them.

'I bore abstinence this day not well, being at night insupportably heavy, but as fasting does not produce sleepyness, I had perhaps rested ill the night before. I prayed in my study for the day, and prayed again in my chamber. I went to bed very early--before eleven.

'After church I selected collects for the Sacraments.

'Finding myself upon recollection very ignorant of religion, I formed a purpose of studying it.

'I went down and sat to tea, but was too heavy to converse.

'Saturday, 29.--I rose at the time now usual, not fully refreshed. Went to tea. A sudden thought of restraint hindered me. I drank but one dish. Took a purge for my health. Still uneasy. Prayed, and went to dinner. Dined sparingly on fish [added in different ink] about four. Went to Simpson. Was driven home by my physick. Drank tea, and am much refreshed. I believe that if I had drank tea again yesterday, I had escaped the heaviness of the evening. Fasting that produces inability is no duty, but I was unwilling to do less than formerly.

'I had lived more abstemiously than is usual the whole week, and taken physick twice, which together made the fast more uneasy.

'Thus much I have written medically, to show that he who can fast long must have lived plentifully.

'Saturday, March 29, 1766.--I was yesterday very heavy. I do not feel myself to-day so much impressed with awe of the approaching mystery. I had this day a doubt, like Baxter, of my state, and found that my faith, though weak, was yet faith. O God! strengthen it.

'Since the last reception of the sacrament I hope I have no otherwise grown worse than as continuance in sin makes the sinner's condition more dangerous.

'Since last New Year's Eve I have risen every morning by eight, at least not after nine, which is more superiority over my habits than I have ever before been able to obtain. Scruples still distress me. My resolution, with the blessing of God, is to contend with them, and, if I can, to conquer them.

'My resolutions are-- 'To conquer scruples. 'To read the Bible this year. 'To try to rise more early. 'To study Divinity. 'To live methodically. 'To oppose idleness. 'To frequent Divine worship.

'Almighty and most merciful Father! before whom I now appear laden with the sins of another year, suffer me yet again to call upon Thee for pardon and peace.

'O God! grant me repentance, grant me reformation. Grant that I may be no longer distracted with doubts, and harassed with vain terrors. Grant that I may no longer linger in perplexity, nor waste in idleness that life which Thou hast given and preserved. Grant that I may serve Thee in firm faith and diligent endeavour, and that I may discharge the duties of my calling with tranquillity and constancy. Take not, O God, Thy holy Spirit from me: but grant that I may so direct my life by Thy holy laws, as that, when Thou shalt call me hence, I may pass by a holy and happy death to a life of everlasting and unchangeable joy, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

'I went to bed (at) one or later; but did not sleep, tho' I knew not why.

'Easter Day, March 30, 1766.--I rose in the morning. Prayed. Took my prayer book to tea; drank tea; planned my devotion for the church. I think prayed again. Went to church, was early. Went through the prayers with fixed attention. Could not hear the sermon. After sermon, applied myself to devotion. Troubled with Baxter's scruple, which was quieted as I returned home. It occurred to me that the scruple itself was its own confutation.

'I used the prayer against scruples in the foregoing page in the pew, and commended (so far as it was lawful) Tetty, dear Tetty, in a prayer by herself, then my other friends. What collects I do not exactly remember. I gave a shilling. I then went towards the altar that I might hear the service. The communicants were more than I ever saw. I kept back; used again the foregoing prayer; again commended Tetty, and lifted up my heart for the rest. I prayed in the collect for the fourteen S. after Trinity for encrease of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and deliverance from scruples; this deliverance was the chief subject of my prayers. O God, hear me. I am now to try to conquer them. After reception I repeated my petition, and again when I came home. My dinner made me a little peevish; not much. After dinner I retired, and read in an hour and a half the seven first chapters of St. Matthew in Greek. Glory be to God. God grant me to proceed and improve, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

'I went to Evening Prayers, and was undisturbed. At church in the morning it occurred to me to consider about example of good any of my friends had set me. This is proper, in order to the thanks returned for their good examples.

'My attainment of rising gives me comfort and hope. O God, for Jesus Christ's sake, bless me. Amen.

'After church, before and after dinner, I read Rotheram on Faith.

'After evening prayer I retired, and wrote this account.

'I then repeated the prayer of the day, with collects, and my prayer for night, and went down to supper at near ten.

'May 4,--66. I have read since the noon of Easter day the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark in Greek.

'I have read Xenophon's Cyropaidia.'

BODLEIAN LIBRARY. SELECT AUTOGRAPHS. (MONTAGU.)

* * * * *

APPENDIX B. (Page 312.)

Johnson's sentiments towards his fellow-subjects in America have never, so far as I know, been rightly stated. It was not because they fought for liberty that he had come to dislike them. A man who, 'bursting forth with a generous indignation, had said:--"The Irish are in a most unnatural state; for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority"' (ante, ii. 255), was not likely to wish that our plantations should be tyrannically governed. The man who, 'in company with some very grave men at Oxford, gave as his toast, "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies"' (post, iii. 200), was not likely to condemn insurrections in general. The key to his feelings is found in his indignant cry, 'How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?' (Ib) He hated slavery as perhaps no man of his time hated it. While the Quakers, who were almost the pioneers in the Anti-slavery cause, were still slave-holders and slave-dealers, he lifted up his voice against it. So early as 1740, when Washington was but a child of eight, he had maintained 'the natural right of the negroes to liberty and independence.' (Works, vi. 313.) In 1756 he described Jamaica as 'a place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants and a dungeon of slaves.' (Ib vi. 130.) In 1759 he wrote:--'Of black men the numbers are too great who are now repining under English cruelty.' (Ib iv. 407.) In the same year, in describing the cruelty of the Portuguese discoverers, he said:--'We are openly told that they had the less scruple concerning their treatment of the savage people, because they scarcely considered them as distinct from beasts; and indeed, the practice of all the European nations, and among others of the English barbarians that cultivate the southern islands of America, proves that this opinion, however absurd and foolish, however wicked and injurious, still continues to prevail. Interest and pride harden the heart, and it is in vain to dispute against avarice and power.' (Ib v. 218.) No miserable sophistry could convince him, with his clear mind and his ardour for liberty, that slavery can be right. 'An individual,' he wrote (post, iii. 202), 'may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.' How deeply he felt for the wrongs done to helpless races is shown in his dread of discoverers. No man had a more eager curiosity, or more longed that the bounds of knowledge should be enlarged. Yet he wrote:--'I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.' (Croker's Boswell, p. 248.) In his Life of Savage, written in 1744, he said (Works, viii. 156):--'Savage has not forgotten ... to censure those crimes which have been generally committed by the discoverers of new regions, and to expose the enormous wickedness of making war upon barbarous nations because they cannot resist, and of invading countries because they are fruitful.... He has asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power.' He loved the University of Salamanca, because it gave it as its opinion that the conquest of America by the Spaniards was not lawful (ante, i. 455). When, in 1756, the English and French were at war in America, he said that 'such was the contest that no honest man could heartily wish success to either party.... It was only the quarrel of two robbers for the spoils of a passenger' (ante, i. 308, note 2). When, from political considerations, opposition was raised in 1766 to the scheme of translating the Bible into Erse, he wrote:--'To omit for a year, or for a day, the most efficacious method of advancing Christianity, in compliance with any purposes that terminate on this side of the grave, is a crime of which I know not that the world has yet had an example, except in the practice of the planters of America--a race of mortals whom, I suppose, no other man wishes to resemble' (ante, ii. 27). Englishmen, as a nation, had no right to reproach their fellow-subjects in America with being drivers of negroes; for England shared in the guilt and the gain of that infamous traffic. Nay, even as the Virginian delegates to Congress in 1774 complained:--'Our repeated attempts to exclude all further importations of slaves from Africa by prohibition, and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have hitherto been defeated by his Majesty's negative--thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.' Bright's Speeches, ed. 1869, i. 171. Franklin (Memoirs, ed. 1818, iii. 17), writing from London in 1772, speaks of 'the hypocrisy of this country, which encourages such a detestable commerce by laws for promoting the Guinea trade; while it piqued itself on its virtue, love of liberty, and the equity of its courts in setting free a single negro.' From the slightest stain of this hypocrisy Johnson was free. He, at all events, had a right to protest against 'the yelps' of those who, while they solemnly asserted that among the unalienable rights of all men are liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yet themselves were drivers of negroes.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Had he been 'busily employed' he would, no doubt, have finished the edition in a few months. He himself had recorded at Easter, 1765: 'My time has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind.' Pr. and Med., p. 61.

[2] Dedications had been commonly used as a means of getting money by flattery. I. D'Israeli in his Calamities of Authors, i. 64, says:--'Fuller's Church History is disgraced by twelve particular dedications. It was an expedient to procure dedication fees; for publishing books by subscription was an art not yet discovered.' The price of the dedication of a play was, he adds, in the time of George I, twenty guineas. So much then, at least, Johnson lost by not dedicating Irene. However, when he addressed the Plan of his Dictionary to Lord Chesterfield (ante, i. 183) he certainly came very near a dedication. Boswell, in the Hypochondriack, writes:--'For my own part, I own I am proud enough. But I do not relish the stateliness of not dedicating at all. I prefer pleasure to pride, and it appears to me that there is much pleasure in honestly expressing one's admiration, esteem, or affection in a public manner, and in thus contributing to the happiness of another by making him better pleased with himself.' London Mag. for 1782, p. 454. His dedications were dedications of friendship, not of flattery or servility. He dedicated his Tour to Corsica to Paoli, his Tour to the Hebrides to Malone, and his Life of Johnson to Sir Joshua Reynolds. Goldsmith, in like manner, distrest though he so often was, dedicated his Traveller to his brother, the Deserted Village to Sir Joshua, and She Stoops to Conquer to Johnson.

[3] A passage in Boswell's letter to Malone of Jan. 29, 1791 (Croker's Boswell, p. 829), shows that it is Reynolds of whom he is writing. 'I am,' he writes, 'to cancel a leaf of the first volume, having found that though Sir Joshua certainly assured me he had no objection to my mentioning that Johnson wrote a dedication for him, he now thinks otherwise. In that leaf occurs the mention of Johnson having written to Dr. Leland, thanking the University of Dublin for their diploma.' In the first edition, this mention of the letter is followed by the passage above about dedications. It was no doubt Reynolds's Dedication of his Discourses to the King in the year 1778 that Johnson wrote. The first sentence is in a high degree Johnsonian. 'The regular progress of cultivated life is from necessaries to accommodations, from accommodations to ornaments.'

[4] 'That is to say,' he added, 'to the last generation of the Royal Family.' See post, April 15, 1773. We may hope that the Royal Family were not all like the Duke of Gloucester, who, when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the Decline and Fall, 'received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as he laid the quarto on the table, "Another d----d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"' Best's Memorials, p. 68.

[5] Such care was needless. Boswell complained (post, June 24, 1774), that Johnson did not answer his letters, but only sent him returns.

[6] 'On one of the days that my ague disturbed me least, I walked from the convent to Corte, purposely to write a letter to Mr. Samuel Johnson. I told my revered friend, that from a kind of superstition agreeable in a certain degree to him as well as to myself, I had, during my travels, written to him from Loca Solennia, places in some measure sacred. That, as I had written to him from the tomb of Melancthon (see post, June 28, 1777), sacred to learning and piety, I now wrote to him from the palace of Pascal Paoli, sacred to wisdom and liberty.' Boswell's Tour to Corsica, p. 218. How delighted would Boswell have been had he lived to see the way in which he is spoken of by the biographer of Paoli: 'En traversant la MA(C)diterranA(C)e sur de frA¬les navires pour venir s'asseoir au foyer de la nationalitA(C) Corse, des hommes graves tels que Boswel et Volney obA(C)issaient sans doute A un sentiment bien plus A(C)levA(C) qu' au besoin vulgaire d'une puerile curiositA(C).' Histoire de Pascal Paoli, par A. Arrighi, i. 231. By every Corsican of any education the name of Boswell is known and honoured. One of them told me that it was in Boswell's pages that Paoli still lived for them. He informed me also of a family which still preserved by tradition the remembrance of Boswell's visit to their ancestral home.

[7] The twelve following lines of this letter were published by Boswell in his Corsica (p. 219) without Johnson's leave. (See post, March 23, 1768.) Temple, to whom the book had been shewn before publication, had, it should seem, advised Boswell to omit this extract. Boswell replied:--'Your remarks are of great service to me ... but I must have my great preceptor, Mr. Johnson, introduced.' Letters of Boswell, p. 122. In writing to excuse himself to Johnson (post, April 26, 1768), he says, 'the temptation to publishing it was so strong.'

[8] 'Tell your Court,' said Paoli to Boswell, 'what you have seen here. They will be curious to ask you. A man come from Corsica will be like a man come from the Antipodes.' Boswell's Corsica, p. 188. He was not indeed the first 'native of this country' to go there. He found in Bastia 'an English woman of Penrith, in Cumberland. When the Highlanders marched through that country in the year 1745, she had married a soldier of the French picquets in the very midst of all the confusion and danger, and when she could hardly understand one word he said.' Ib, p. 226. Boswell nowhere quotes Mrs. Barbauld's fine lines on Corsica. Perhaps he was ashamed of the praise of the wife of 'a little Presbyterian parson who kept an infant boarding school.' (See post, under Dec. 17, 1775.) Yet he must have been pleased when he read:--

'Such were the working thoughts which swelled the breast Of generous Boswell; when with nobler aim And views beyond the narrow beaten track By trivial fancy trod, he turned his course From polished Gallia's soft delicious vales,' &c.

Mrs. Barbauld's Poems, i. 2.

[9] Murphy, in the Monthly Review, lxxvi. 376, thus describes Johnson's life in Johnson's Court after he had received his pension. 'His friend Levett, his physician in ordinary, paid his daily visits with assiduity; attended at all hours, made tea all the morning, talked what he had to say, and did not expect an answer; or, if occasion required it, was mute, officious, and ever complying.... There Johnson sat every morning, receiving visits, hearing the topics of the day, and indolently trifling away the time. Chymistry afforded some amusement.' Hawkins (Life, p. 452), says:--'An upper room, which had the advantages of a good light and free air, he fitted up for a study. A silver standish and some useful plate, which he had been prevailed on to accept as pledges of kindness from some who most esteemed him, together with furniture that would not have disgraced a better dwelling, banished those appearances of squalid indigence which, in his less happy days, disgusted those who came to see him.' Some of the plate Johnson had bought. See post, April 15, 1781.

[10] It is remarkable, that Mr. Gray has employed somewhat the same image to characterise Dryden. He, indeed, furnishes his car with but two horses, but they are of 'ethereal race':

'Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car, Wide o'er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder cloath'd, and long resounding pace.'

Ode on the Progress of Poesy. BOSWELL. In the 'Life of Pope (Works, viii. 324) Johnson says:--'The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle.'

[11] In the original laws or kings.

[12]

'The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'

Paradise Lost, i. 254.

'Caelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare current.'

Horace, Epis. i. II. 27. See also ante, i. 381. note 2.

[13] 'I once inadvertently put him,' wrote Reynolds, 'in a situation from which none but a man of perfect integrity could extricate himself. I pointed at some lines in The Traveller which I told him I was sure he wrote. He hesitated a little; during this hesitation I recollected myself, that, as I knew he would not lie, I put him in a cleft-stick, and should have had but my due if he had given me a rough answer; but he only said, 'Sir, I did not write them, but that you may not imagine that I have wrote more than I really have, the utmost I have wrote in that poem, to the best of my recollection, is not more than eighteen lines. [Nine seems the actual number.] It must be observed there was then an opinion about town that Dr. Johnson wrote the whole poem for his friend, who was then in a manner an unknown writer.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 458. See also post, April 9, 1778. For each line of The Traveller Goldsmith was paid 11-1/4d. (ante, i. 193, note), Johnson's present, therefore, of nine lines was, if reckoned in money, worth 8/5-1/4.

[14] See ante, i. 194, note.

[15] Respublica et Status Regni Hungariae. Ex Officina Elzeviriana, 1634, p. 136. This work belongs to the series of Republics mentioned by Johnson, post, under April 29, 1776.

[16] '"Luke" had been taken simply for the euphony of the line. He was one of two brothers, Dosa.... The origin of the mistake [of Zeck for Dosa] is curious. The two brothers belonged to one of the native races of Transylvania called Szeklers or Zecklers, which descriptive addition follows their names in the German biographical authorities; and this, through abridgment and misapprehension, in subsequent books came at last to be substituted for the family name.' Forster's Goldsmith, i. 370. The iron crown was not the worst of the tortures inflicted.

[17] See post, April 15, 1781. In 1748 Johnson had written (Works, v. 231): 'At a time when so many schemes of education have been projected.... so many schools opened for general knowledge, and so many lectures in particular sciences attended.' Goldsmith, in his Life of Nash (published in 1762), describes the lectures at Bath 'on the arts and sciences which are frequently taught there in a pretty, superficial manner so as not to tease the understanding while they afford the imagination some amusement.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv 59.

[18] Perhaps Gibbon had read this passage at the time when he wrote in his Memoirs:--'It has indeed been observed, nor is the observation absurd, that, excepting in experimental sciences which demand a costly apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many valuable treatises that have been published on every subject of learning may now supersede the ancient mode of oral instruction.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 50. See post, March 20, 1776, note.

[19] See ante, i. 103.

[20] Baretti was in Italy at the same time as Boswell. That they met seems to be shewn by a passage in Boswell's letter (post, Nov. 6, 1766). Malone wrote of him:--'He appears to be an infidel.' Prior's Malone, p. 399.

[21] Lord Charlemont records (Life, i. 235) that 'Mrs. Mallet, meeting Hume at an assembly, boldly accosted him in these words:--"Mr. Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you; we deists ought to know each other." "Madame," replied Hume, "I am no deist. I do not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appellation."' Hume, in 1763 or 1764, wrote to Dr. Blair about the men of letters at Paris:--'It would give you and Robertson great satisfaction to find that there is not a single deist among them.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 181. There was no deist, I suppose, because they were all atheists. Romilly (Life, i. 179) records the following anecdote, which he had from Diderot in 1781:--'Hume dAČna avec une grande compagnie chez le Baron d'Holbach. Il A(C)tait assis A cA'tA(C) du Baron; on parla de la religion naturelle. "Pour les AthA(C)es," disait Hume, "je ne crois pas qu'il en existe; je n'en ai jamais vu." "Vous avez A(C)tA(C) un peu malheureux," rA(C)pondit l'autre, "vous voici A table avec dix-sept pour la premiA"re fois."' It was on the same day that Diderot related this that he said to Romilly, 'Il faut sabrer la thA(C)ologie.'

[22] 'The inference upon the whole is, that it is not from the value or worth of the object which any person pursues that we can determine his enjoyment; but merely from the passion with which he pursues it, and the success which he meets with in his pursuit. Objects have absolutely no worth or value in themselves. They derive their worth merely from the passion. If that be strong and steady and successful, the person is happy. It cannot reasonably be doubted but a little miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives as complete enjoyment as the greatest orator, who triumphs in the splendour of his eloquence, while he governs the passions and resolutions of a numerous assembly.' Hume's Essays, i. 17 (The Sceptic). Pope had written in the Essay on Man (iv. 57):

'Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; Bliss is the same in subject or in King.'

See also post, April 15, 1778.

[23] In Boswelliana, p. 220, a brief account is given of his life, which was not altogether uneventful.

[24] We may compare with this what he says in The Rambler, No. 21, about the 'cowardice which always encroaches fast upon such as spend their time in the company of persons higher than themselves.' In No. 104 he writes:--'It is dangerous for mean minds to venture themselves within the sphere of greatness.' In the court that Boswell many years later paid to Lord Lonsdale, he suffered all the humiliations that the brutality of this petty greatness can inflict. Letters of Boswell, p. 324. See also post, Sept. 22, 1777.

[25] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19, 1773.

[26] Johnson (Works, ix. 107) thus sums up his examination of second-sight:--'There is against it, the seeming analogy of things confusedly seen, and little understood; and for it, the indistinct cry of natural persuasion, which may be, perhaps, resolved at last into prejudice and tradition. I never could advance my curiosity to conviction; but came away at last only willing to believe.' See also post, March 24, 1775. Hume said of the evidence in favour of second-sight--:'As finite added to finite never approaches a hair's breadth nearer to infinite, so a fact incredible in itself acquires not the smallest accession of probability by the accumulation of testimony.' J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 480.

[27] 'I love anecdotes,' said Johnson. Boswell's Hebridge, Aug. 16, 1773. Boswell said that 'Johnson always condemned the word anecdotes, as used in the sense that the French, and we from them, use it, as signifying particulars.' Letters of Boswell, p. 311. In his Dictionary, he defined 'Anecdotes Something yet unpublished; secret history.' In the fourth edition he added: 'It is now used, after the French, for a biographical incident; a minute passage of private life.'

[28] See ante, July 19, 1763.

[29] Boswell, writing to Wilkes in 1776, said:--'Though we differ widely in religion and politics, il y a des points ou nos ames sont animes, as Rouseau said to me in his wild retreat.' Almon's Wilkes, iv. 319.

[30] Rousseau fled from France in 1762. A few days later his arrest was ordered at Geneva. He fled from Neufchatel in 1763, and soon afterwards he was banished from Berne. Nonev. Biog. Gen., Xlii. 750. He had come to England with David Hume a few weeks before this conversation was held, and was at this time in Chiswick. Hume's Private Corres., pp. 125, 145.

[31] Rousseau had by this time published his Nouvelle Helloise and Emile.

[32] Less than three months after the date of this conversation Rousseau wrote to General Conway, one of the Secretaries of State, thanking him for the pension which George III proposed secretly to confer on him. Hume's Private Corres., p. 165. Miss Burney, in her preface to Evelina, a novel which was her introduction to Johnson's strong affection, mentioning Rousseau and Johnson, adds in a footnote:-- 'However superior the capacities in which these great writers deserve to be considered, they must pardon me that, for the dignity of my subject, I here rank the authors of Rasselas and EloA-se as novelists.'

[33] Rousseau thus wrote of himself:

'Dieu est juste; il veut que je souffre; et il sait que je suis innocent. VoilA le motif de ma confiance, mon coeur et ma raison me crient qu'elle ne me trompera pas. Laissons donc faire les hommes et la destinA(C)e; apprenons A souffrir sans murmure; tout doit A la fin rentrer dans Fordre, et mon tour viendra tA't ou tard.' Rousseau's Works, xx. 223.

[34] 'He entertained me very courteously,' wrote Boswell in his Corsica, p. 140.

[35] In this preference Boswell pretended at times to share. See post, Sept. 30, 1769.

[36] Johnson seems once to have held this view to some extent; for, writing of Savage's poem On Public Spirit, he says (Works, viii. 156):--'He has asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power.' See also post, Sept. 23, 1777, where he asserts:--'It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal.' For the opposite opinion, see ante, June 25, 1763.

[37] 'Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes.' 'Manners and towns of various nations viewed.' FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poetica, 1. 142.

[38] By the time Boswell was twenty-six years old he could boast that he had made the acquaintance of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli among foreigners; and of Adam Smith, Robertson, Hume, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Horace Walpole, Wilkes, and perhaps Reynolds, among Englishmen. He had twice at least received a letter from the Earl of Chatham.

[39] In such passages as this we may generally assume that the gentleman, whose name is not given, is Boswell himself. See ante, i. 4, and post, Oct. 16, 1769.

[40] See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 'Collection,' where this assertion is called 'his usual remark.'

[41] See post, April 15, 1778.

[42] These two words may be observed as marks of Mr. Boswell's accuracy. It is a jocular Irish phrase, which, of all Johnson's acquaintances, no one probably, but Goldsmith, would have used.--CROKER.

[43] See ante, May 24, 1763.

[44] Johnson's best justification for the apparent indolences of the latter part of his life may be found in his own words: 'Every man of genius has some arts of fixing the attention peculiar to himself, by which, honestly exerted, he may benefit mankind.... To the position of Tully, that if virtue could be seen she must be loved, may be added, that if truth could be heard she must be obeyed.' The Rambler, No. 87. He fixed the attention best by his talk. For 'the position of Tully,' see post, March 19, 1776.

[45] See ante, i. 192, and post, May 1, 1783. Goldsmith wrote The Traveller and Deserted Village on a very different plan. 'To save himself the trouble of transcription, he wrote the lines in his first copy very wide, and would so fill up the intermediate space with reiterated corrections, that scarcely a word of his first effusions was left unaltered.' Goldsmith's Misc. Works, i. 113.

[46] Mrs. Thrale in a letter to Dr. Johnson, said:--'Don't sit making verses that never will be written.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 183. Baretti noted opposite this in the margin of his copy: 'Johnson was always making Latin or English verses in his mind, but never would write them down.'

[47] Burke entered Parliament as member for Wendover borough on Jan. 14th, 1766. William Burke, writing to Barry the artist on the following March 23, says:--'Ned's success has exceeded our most sanguine hopes; all at once he has darted into fame. He is full of real business, intent upon doing real good to his country, as much as if he was to receive twenty per cent. from the commerce of the whole empire, which he labours to improve and extend.' Barry's Works, i. 42.

[48] It was of these speeches that Macaulay wrote:--'The House of Commons heard Pitt for the last time and Burke for the first time, and was in doubt to which of them the palm of eloquence should be assigned. It was indeed a splendid sunset and a splendid dawn.' Macaulay's Essays (edition 1874), iv. 330.

[49] See post, March 20, 1776.

[50] Boswell has already stated (ante, Oct. 1765) that Johnson's Shakespeare was 'virulently attacked' by Kenrick. No doubt there were other attacks and rejoinders too.

[51] Two days earlier he had drawn up a prayer on entering _Novum Museum_. Pr. and Med., p. 69.

[52] See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection.

[53] Dictionarium Saxonico et Gothico-Latinum. London, 1772. Lye died in 1767. O. Manning completed the work.

[54] See Appendix A.

[55] Mr. Langton's uncle. BOSWELL.

[56] The place of residence of Mr. Peregrine Langton. BOSWELL.

[57] Mr. Langton did not disregard this counsel, but wrote the following account, which he has been pleased to communicate to me:

'The circumstances of Mr. Peregrine Langton were these. He had an annuity for life of two hundred pounds per annum. He resided in a village in Lincolnshire; the rent of his house, with two or three small fields, was twenty-eight pounds; the county he lived in was not more than moderately cheap; his family consisted of a sister, who paid him eighteen pounds annually for her board, and a niece. The servants were two maids, and two men in livery. His common way of living, at his table, was three or four dishes; the appurtenances to his table were neat and handsome; he frequently entertained company at dinner, and then his table was well served with as many dishes as were usual at the tables of the other gentlemen in the neighbourhood. His own appearance, as to clothes, was genteelly neat and plain. He had always a post-chaise, and kept three horses.

'Such, with the resources I have mentioned, was his way of living, which he did not suffer to employ his whole income: for he had always a sum of money lying by him for any extraordinary expences that might arise. Some money he put into the stocks; at his death, the sum he had there amounted to one hundred and fifty pounds. He purchased out of his income his household-furniture and linen, of which latter he had a very ample store; and, as I am assured by those that had very good means of knowing, not less than the tenth part of his income was set apart for charity: at the time of his death, the sum of twenty-five pounds was found, with a direction to be employed in such uses.

'He had laid down a plan of living proportioned to his income, and did not practise any extraordinary degree of parsimony, but endeavoured that in his family there should be plenty without waste; as an instance that this was his endeavour, it may be worth while to mention a method he took in regulating a proper allowance of malt liquor to be drunk in his family, that there might not be a deficiency, or any intemperate profusion: On a complaint made that his allowance of a hogshead in a month, was not enough for his own family, he ordered the quantity of a hogshead to be put into bottles, had it locked up from the servants, and distributed out, every day, eight quarts, which is the quantity each day at one hogshead in a month; and told his servants, that if that did not suffice, he would allow them more; but, by this method, it appeared at once that the allowance was much more than sufficient for his small family; and this proved a clear conviction, that could not be answered, and saved all future dispute. He was, in general, very diligently and punctually attended and obeyed by his servants; he was very considerate as to the injunctions he gave, and explained them distinctly; and, at their first coming to his service, steadily exacted a close compliance with them, without any remission; and the servants finding this to be the case, soon grew habitually accustomed to the practice of their business, and then very little further attention was necessary. On extraordinary instances of good behaviour, or diligent service, he was not wanting in particular encouragements and presents above their wages; it is remarkable that he would permit their relations to visit them, and stay at his house two or three days at a time.

'The wonder, with most that hear an account of his A"conomy, will be, how he was able, with such an income, to do so much, especially when it is considered that he paid for everything he had; he had no land, except the two or three small fields which I have said he rented; and, instead of gaining any thing by their produce, I have reason to think he lost by them; however, they furnished him with no further assistance towards his housekeeping, than grass for his horses, (not hay, for that I know he bought,) and for two cows. Every Monday morning he settled his family accounts, and so kept up a constant attention to the confining his expences within his income; and to do it more exactly, compared those expences with a computation he had made, how much that income would afford him every week and day of the year. One of his A"conomical practices was, as soon as any repair was wanting in or about his house, to have it immediately performed. When he had money to spare, he chose to lay in a provision of linen or clothes, or any other necessaries; as then, he said, he could afford it, which he might not be so well able to do when the actual want came; in consequence of which method, he had a considerable supply of necessary articles lying by him, beside what was in use.

'But the main particular that seems to have enabled him to do so much with his income, was, that he paid for every thing as soon as he had it, except, alone, what were current accounts, such as rent for his house and servantsaEuro(TM) wages; and these he paid at the stated times with the utmost exactness. He gave notice to the tradesmen of the neighbouring market-towns that they should no longer have his custom, if they let any of his servants have anything without their paying for it. Thus he put it out of his power to commit those imprudences to which those are liable that defer their payments by using their money some other way than where it ought to go. And whatever money he had by him, he knew that it was not demanded elsewhere, but that he might safely employ it as he pleased.

'His example was confined, by the sequestered place of his abode, to the observation of few, though his prudence and virtue would have made it valuable to all who could have known it. These few particulars, which I knew myself, or have obtained from those who lived with him, may afford instruction, and be an incentive to that wise art of living, which he so successfully practiced.aEuro(TM) BOSWELL

[58] Of his being in the chair of THE LITERARY CLUB, which at this time met once a week in the evening. BOSWELL. See ante, Feb. 1764, note.

[59] See post, Feb. 1767, where he told the King that 'he must now read to acquire more knowledge.'

[60] The passage omitted alluded to a private transaction. BOSWELL.

[61] The censure of my Latin relates to the Dedication, which was as follows:

VIRO NOBILISSIMO, ORNATISSIMO, JOANNI, VICECOMITI MOUNTSTUART, ATAVIS EDITO REGIBUS EXCELSAE FAMILLAE DE BUTE SPEI ALTERAE; LABENTE SECULO, QUUM HOMINES NULLIUS ORIGINIS GENUS AEQUARE OPIBUS AGGREDIUNTUR, SANGUINIS ANTIQUI ET ILLUSTRIS SEMPER MEMORI, NATALIUM SPLENDOREM VIRTUTIBUS AUGENTI:

AD PUBLICA POPULI COMITIA JAM LEGATO;

IN OPTIMATIUM VERO MAGNAć BRITANNIAć SENATU, JURE HAćREDITARIO, OLIM CONSESSURO:

VIM INSITAM VARIA DOCTRINA PROMOVENTE, NEC TAMEN SE VENDITANTE, PRAćDITO:

PRISCA FIDE, ANIMO LIBERRIMO, ET MORUM ELEGANTIA INSIGNI:

IN ITALIAć VISITANDAć ITINERE, SOCIO SUO HONORATISSIMO, HASCE JURISPRUDENTAć PRIMITIAS DEVINCTISSIMAć AMICITIAć ET OBSERVANTIAć MONUMENTUM, D. D. C Q.

JACOBUS BOSWELL. BOSWELL.

[62] See ante, i. 211.

[63] See post, May 19, 1778.

[64] This alludes to the first sentence of the ProA|mium of my Thesis. 'JURISPRUDENTAć studio nullum uberius, nullum generosius: in legibus enim agitandis, populorum mores, variasque fortunA| vices ex quibus leges oriuntur, contemplari simul solemus_' BOSWELL.

[65] 'Mr. Boswell,' says Malone, 'professed the Scotch and the English law; but had never taken very great pains on the subject. His father, Lord Auchinleck, told him one day, that it would cost him more trouble to hide his ignorance in these professions than to show his knowledge. This Boswell owned he had found to be true.' European Magazine, 1798, p. 376. Boswell wrote to Temple in 1775:--'You are very kind in saying that I may overtake you in learning. Believe me though that I have a kind of impotency of study.' Letters of Boswell, p. 181.

[66] This is a truth that Johnson often enforced. 'Very few,' said the poet; 'live by choice: every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly co-operate.' Rasselas, chap. 16. 'To him that lives well,' answered the hermit, 'every form of life is good; nor can I give any other rule for choice than to remove from all apparent evil.' Ib, chap. 21. 'Young man,' said Omar, 'it is of little use to form plans of life.' The Idler, No. 101.

[67] 'Hace sunt quae nostra liceat te voce moneri.' Aeneid, iii. 461.

[68] The passage omitted explained the transaction to which the preceding letter had alluded. BOSWELL.

[69] See ante, June 10, 1761.

[70] Mr. Croker says:--'It was by visiting Chambers, when a fellow of University College, that Johnson became acquainted with Lord Stowell [at that time William Scott]; and when Chambers went to India, Lord Stowell, as he expressed it to me, seemed to succeed to his place in Johnson's friendship.' Croker's Boswell, p. 90, note. John Scott (Earl of Eldon), Sir William Jones and Mr. Windham, were also members of University College. The hall is adorned with the portraits of these five men. An engraving of Johnson is in the Common Room.

[71] It is not easy to discover anything noble or even felicitous in this Dedication. Works, v. 444.

[72] See ante, i. 148.

[73] See ante, i. 177, note 2.

[74] See ante, i. 158.

[75] See ante, i. 178, note 2.

[76] This poem is scarcely Johnson's, though all the lines but the third in the following couplets may be his.

Whose life not sunk in sloth is free from care, Nor tost by change, nor stagnant in despair; Who with wise authors pass the instructive day And wonder how the moments stole away; Who not retired beyond the sight of life Behold its weary cares, its noisy strife.'

[77] Johnson's additions to these three poems are not at all evident.

[78] In a note to the poem it is stated that Miss Williams, when, before her blindness, she was assisting Mr. Grey in his experiments, was the first that observed the emission of the electrical spark from a human body. The best lines are the following:--

Now, hoary Sage, purse thy happy flight, With swifter motion haste to purer light, Where Bacon waits with Newton and with Boyle To hail thy genius, and applaud thy toil; Where intuition breaks through time and space, And mocks experiment's successive race; Sees tardy Science toil at Nature's laws, And wonders how th' effect obscures the cause. Yet not to deep research or happy guess Is owed the life of hope, the death of peace.'

[79] A gentleman, writing from Virginia to John Wesley, in 1735, about the need of educating the negro slaves in religion, says:--'Their masters generally neglect them, as though immortality was not the privilege of their souls in common with their own.' Wesley's Journal, II. 288. But much nearer home Johnson might have found this criminal enforcement of ignorance. Burke, writing in 1779, about the Irish, accuses the legislature of 'condemning a million and a half of people to ignorance, according to act of parliament.' Burke's Corres. ii. 294.

[80] See post, March 21, 1775, and Appendix.

[81] Johnson said very finely:--'Languages are the pedigree of nations.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 18, 1773.

[82] The Rev. Mr. John Campbell, Minister of the Parish of Kippen, near Stirling, who has lately favoured me with a long, intelligent, and very obliging letter upon this work, makes the following remark:--'Dr. Johnson has alluded to the worthy man employed in the translation of the New Testament. Might not this have afforded you an opportunity of paying a proper tribute of respect to the memory of the Rev. Mr. James Stuart, late Minister of Killin, distinguished by his eminent Piety, Learning and Taste? The amiable simplicity of his life, his warm benevolence, his indefatigable and successful exertions for civilizing and improving the Parish of which he was Minister for upwards of fifty years, entitle him to the gratitude of his country, and the veneration of all good men. It certainly would be a pity, if such a character should be permitted to sink into oblivion.' BOSWELL.

[83] Seven years later Johnson received from the Society some religious works in Erse. See post, June 24, 1774. Yet in his journey to the Hebrides, in 1773 (Works, ix. 101), he had to record of the parochial schools in those islands that 'by the rule of their institution they teach only English, so that the natives read a language which they may never use or understand,'

[84] This paragraph shews Johnson's real estimation of the character and abilities of the celebrated Scottish Historian, however lightly, in a moment of caprice, he may have spoken of his works. BOSWELL.

[85] See ante, i. 210.

[86] This is the person concerning whom Sir John Hawkins has thrown out very unwarrantable reflections both against Dr. Johnson and Mr. Francis Barber. BOSWELL. See post, under Oct. 20, 1784. In 1775, Heely, it appears, applied through Johnson for the post that was soon to be vacant of 'master of the tap' at Ranelagh House. 'He seems,' wrote Johnson, in forwarding his letter of application, 'to have a genius for an alehouse.' Piozzi Letters, i. 210. See also post, Aug. 12, 1784.

[87] See an account of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. BOSWELL. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor to a youthful Earl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or 1739, and died in 1771.

[88] It was republished in The Repository, ii. 227, edition of 1790.

[89] The Hon. Thomas Hervey, whose Letter to Sir Thomas Hanmer in 1742 was much read at that time. He was the second son of John, first Earl of Bristol, and one of the brothers of Johnson's early friend Henry Hervey. He died Jan. 20, 1775. MALONE. See post, April 6, 1775.

[90] See post, under Sept. 22, 1777, for another story told by Beauclerk against Johnson of a Mr. Hervey.

[91] Essays published in the Daily Gazetteer and afterwards collected into two vols. Gent. Mag. for 1748, P. 48.

[92] Mr. Croker regrets that Johnson employed his pen for hire in Hervey's 'disgusting squabbles,' and in a long note describes Hervey's letter to Sir Thomas Hanmer with whose wife he had eloped. But the attack to which Johnson was hired to reply was not made by Hanmer, but, as was supposed, by Sir C. H. Williams. Because a man has wronged another, he is not therefore to submit to the attacks of a third. Williams, moreover, it must be remembered, was himself a man of licentious character.

[93] Buckingham House, bought in 1761, by George III, and settled on Queen Charlotte. The present Buckingham Palace occupies the site. P. CUNNINGHAM. Here, according to Hawkins (Life, p. 470), Johnson met the Prince of Wales (George IV.) when a child, 'and enquired as to his knowledge of the Scriptures; the prince in his answers gave him great satisfaction.' Horace Walpole, writing of the Prince at the age of nineteen, says (Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 503):--'Nothing was coarser than his conversation and phrases; and it made men smile to find that in the palace of piety and pride his Royal Highness had learnt nothing but the dialect of footmen and grooms.'

[94] Dr. Johnson had the honour of contributing his assistance towards the formation of this library; for I have read a long letter from him to Mr. Barnard, giving the most masterly instructions on the subject. I wished much to have gratified my readers with the perusal of this letter, and have reason to think that his Majesty would have been graciously pleased to permit its publication; but Mr. Barnard, to whom I applied, declined it 'on his own account.' BOSWELL. It is given in Mr. Croker's edition, p. 196.

[95] The particulars of this conversation I have been at great pains to collect with the utmost authenticity from Dr. Johnson's own detail to myself; from Mr. Langton who was present when he gave an account of it to Dr. Joseph Warton, and several other friends, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's; from Mr. Barnard; from the copy of a letter written by the late Mr. Strahan the printer, to Bishop Warburton; and from a minute, the original of which is among the papers of the late Sir James Caldwell, and a copy of which was most obligingly obtained for me from his son Sir John Caldwell, by Sir Francis Lumm. To all these gentlemen I beg leave to make my grateful acknowledgements, and particularly to Sir Francis Lumm, who was pleased to take a great deal of trouble, and even had the minute laid before the King by Lord Caermarthen, now Duke of Leeds, then one of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, who announced to Sir Francis the Royal pleasure concerning it by a letter, in these words: 'I have the King's commands to assure you, Sir, how sensible his Majesty is of your attention in communicating the minute of the conversation previous to its publication. As there appears no objection to your complying with Mr. Boswell's wishes on the subject, you are at full liberty to deliver it to that gentleman, to make such use of in his Life of Dr. Johnson, as he may think proper.' BOSWELL. In 1790, Boswell published in a quarto sheet of eight pages A conversation between His Most Sacred Majesty George III. and Samuel Johnson, LLD. Illustrated with Observations. By James Boswell, Esq. London. Printed by Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly in the Poultry. MDCCXC. Price Half-a-Guinea. Entered in the Hall-Book of the Company of Stationers. It is of the same impression as the first edition of the Life of Johnson.

[96] After Michaelmas, 1766. See ante, ii. 25.

[97] See post, May, 31, 1769, note.

[98] Writing to Langton, on May 10, of the year before he had said, 'I read more than I did. I hope something will yet come on it.' Ante, ii. 20.

[99] Boswell and Goldsmith had in like manner urged him 'to continue his labours.' See ante, i. 398, and ii. 15.

[100] Johnson had written to Lord Chesterfield in the Plan of his Dictionary (Works, v. 19), 'Ausonius thought that modesty forbade him to plead inability for a task to which Caesar had judged him equal:--Cur me posse negem posse quod ille pufat?' We may compare also a passage in Mme. D'Arblay's Diary (ii. 377):--'THE KING. "I believe there is no constraint to be put upon real genius; nothing but inclination can set it to work. Miss Burney, however, knows best." And then hastily returning to me he cried; "What? what?" "No, sir, I--I--believe not, certainly," quoth I, very awkwardly, for I seemed taking a violent compliment only as my due; but I knew not how to put him off as I would another person.'

[101] In one part of the character of Pope (Works, viii. 319), Johnson seems to be describing himself:--'He certainly was in his early life a man of great literary curiosity; and when he wrote his Essay on Criticism had for his age a very wide acquaintance with books. When he entered into the living world, it seems to have happened to him as to many others, that he was less attentive to dead masters; he studied in the academy of Paracelsus, and made the universe his favourite volume.... His frequent references to history, his allusions to various kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and nature, with his observations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it.' See ante, i. 57.

[102] Johnson thus describes Warburton (Works, viii. 288):--'About this time [1732] Warburton began to make his appearance in the first ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited enquiry, with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge.' Cradock (Memoirs, i. 188) says that 'Bishop Kurd always wondered where it was possible for Warburton to meet with certain anecdotes with which not only his conversation, but likewise his writings, abounded. "I could have readily informed him," said Mrs. Warburton, "for, when we passed our winters in London, he would often, after his long and severe studies, send out for a whole basketful of books from the circulating libraries; and at times I have gone into his study, and found him laughing, though alone."' Lord Macaulay was, in this respect, the Warburton of our age.

[103] The Rev. Mr. Strahan clearly recollects having been told by Johnson, that the King observed that Pope made Warburton a Bishop. 'True, Sir, (said Johnson,) but Warburton did more for Pope; he made him a Christian:' alluding, no doubt, to his ingenious Comments on the Essay on Man. BOSWELL. The statements both of the King and Johnson are supported by two passages in Johnson's Life of Pope, (Works, viii. 289, 290). He says of Warburton's Comments:--'Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know the full meaning, could by any mode of interpretation be made to mean well.... From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his commentator, and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he introduced him to Mr. Murray, by whose interest he became preacher at Lincoln's Inn; and to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his estate, and by consequence a bishoprick.' See also the account given by Johnson, in Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773. Bishop Law in his Revised Preface to Archbishop King's Origin of Evil (1781), p. xvii, writes:--'I had now the satisfaction of seeing that those very principles which had been maintained by Archbishop King were adopted by Mr. Pope in his Essay on Man; this I used to recollect, and sometimes relate, with pleasure, conceiving that such an account did no less honour to the poet than to our philosopher; but was soon made to understand that anything of that kind was taken highly amiss by one [Warburton] who had once held the doctrine of that same Essay to be rank atheism, but afterwards turned a warm advocate for it, and thought proper to deny the account above-mentioned, with heavy menaces against those who presumed to insinuate that Pope borrowed anything from any man whatsoever.' See post, Oct. 10, 1779.

[104] In Gibbon's Memoirs, a fine passage is quoted from Lowth's Defence of the University of Oxford, against Warburton's reproaches. 'I transcribe with pleasure this eloquent passage,' writes Gibbon, 'without inquiring whether in this angry controversy the spirit of Lowth himself is purified from the intolerant zeal which Warburton had ascribed to the genius of the place.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 47. See BOSWELL'S Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.

[105] See post, April 15, 1773, where Johnson says that Lyttelton 'in his History wrote the most vulgar Whiggism,' and April 10, 1776. Gibbon, who had reviewed it this year, says in his Memoirs (Misc. Works, i. 207): 'The public has ratified my judgment of that voluminous work, in which sense and learning are not illuminated by a ray of genius.'

[106] Hawkins says of him (Life, p. 211):--'He obtained from one of those universities which would scarce refuse a degree to an apothecary's horse a diploma for that of doctor of physic.' He became a great compiler and in one year earned AL1500. In the end he turned quack-doctor. He was knighted by the King of Sweden 'in return for a present to that monarch of his Vegetable System.' He at least thrice attacked Garrick (Murphy's Garrick, pp. 136, 189, 212), who replied with three epigrams, of which the last is well-known:--

'For Farces and Physic his equal there scarce is; His Farces are Physic, his Physic a Farce is.'

Horace Walpole (Letters iii. 372), writing on Jan. 3, 1761, said:--'Would you believe, what I know is fact, that Dr. Hill earned fifteen guineas a week by working for wholesale dealers? He was at once employed on six voluminous works of Botany, Husbandry, &c., published weekly.' Churchill in the Rescind thus writes of him:--

'Who could so nobly grace the motley list, Actor, Inspector, Doctor, Botanist? Knows any one so well--sure no one knows-- At once to play, prescribe, compound, compose?'

Churchill's Poems, i. 6. In the Gent. Mag. xxii. 568, it is stated that he had acted pantomime, tragedy and comedy, and had been damned in all.

[107] Mr. Croker quotes Bishop Elrington, who says, 'Dr. Johnson was unjust to Hill, and showed that he did not understand the subject.' Croker's Boswell, p. 186.

[108] D'Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, i. 201) says that 'Hill, once when he fell sick, owned to a friend that he had over-fatigued himself with writing seven works at once, one of which was on architecture and another on cookery.' D'Israeli adds that Hill contracted to translate a Dutch work on insects for fifty guineas. As he was ignorant of the language, he bargained with another translator for twenty-five guineas. This man, who was equally ignorant, rebargained with a third, who perfectly understood his original, for twelve guineas.

[109] Gibbon (Misc. Works, v. 442), writing on Dec. 20, 1763, of the Journal des Savans, says:--'I can hardly express how much I am delighted with this journal; its characteristics are erudition, precision, and taste.... The father of all the rest, it is still their superior.... There is nothing to be wished for in it but a little more boldness and philosophy; but it is published under the Chancellor's eye.'

[110] Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning (ch. xi.), published in 1759, says;--'We have two literary reviews in London, with critical newspapers and magazines without number. The compilers of these resemble the commoners of Rome, they are all for levelling property, not by increasing their own, but by diminishing that of others.... The most diminutive son of fame or of famine has his we and his us, his firstlys and his secondlys, as methodical as if bound in cow-hide and closed with clasps of brass. Were these Monthly Reviews and Magazines frothy, pert, or absurd, they might find some pardon, but to be dull and dronish is an encroachment on the prerogative of a folio.'

[111] See post, April 10, 1766.

[112] Mr. White, the Librarian of the Royal Society, has, at my request, kindly examined the records of the Royal Society, but has not been able to discover what the 'circumstance' was. Neither is any light thrown on it by Johnson's reviews of Birch's History of the Royal Society and Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlix. (ante, i. 309), which I have examined.

[113] 'Were you to converse with a King, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet-de-chambre; but yet every look, word, and action should imply the utmost respect. What would be proper and well-bred with others much your superior, would be absurd and ill-bred with one so very much so.' Chesterfield's Letters, iii. 203.

[114] Imlac thus described to Rasselas his interview with the Great Mogul:--'The emperor asked me many questions concerning my country and my travels; and though I cannot now recollect anything that he uttered above the power of a common man, he dismissed me astonished at his wisdom, and enamoured of his goodness.' Rasselas, chap. ix. Wraxall (Memoirs, edit. of 1884, i. 283) says that Johnson was no judge of a fine gentleman. 'George III,' he adds, 'was altogether destitute of these ornamental and adventitious endowments.' He mentions 'the oscillations of his body, the precipitation of his questions, none of which, it was said, would wait for an answer, and the hurry of his articulation.' Mr. Wheatley, in a note on this passage, quotes the opinion of 'Adams, the American Envoy, who said, the "King is, I really think, the most accomplished courtier in his dominions."'

[115] 'Dr. Warton made me a most obsequious bow.... He is what Dr. Johnson calls a rapturist, and I saw plainly he meant to pour forth much civility into my ears. He is a very communicative, gay, and pleasant converser, and enlivened the whole day by his readiness upon all subjects.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 236. It is very likely that he is 'the ingenious writer' mentioned post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's 'Collection,' of whom Johnson said, 'Sir, he is an enthusiast by rule.' Mr. Windham records that Johnson, speaking of Warton's admiration of fine passages, said:--'His taste is amazement' (misprinted amusement). Windham's Diary, p. 20. In her Memoirs of Dr. Burney (ii. 82), Mme. D'Arblay says that Johnson 'at times, when in gay spirits, would take off Dr. Warton with the strongest humour; describing, almost convulsively, the ecstasy with which he would seize upon the person nearest to him, to hug in his arms, lest his grasp should be eluded, while he displayed some picture or some prospect.' In that humourous piece, Probationary Odes for the Laureateship (p. xliii), Dr. Joseph is made to hug his brother in his arms, when he sees him descend safely from the balloon in which he had composed his Ode. Thomas Warton is described in the same piece (p. 116) as 'a little, thick, squat, red-faced man.' There was for some time a coolness between Johnson and Dr. Warton. Warton, writing on Jan. 22, 1766, says:--'I only dined with Johnson, who seemed cold and indifferent, and scarce said anything to me; perhaps he has heard what I said of his Shakespeare, or rather was offended at what I wrote to him--as he pleases.' Wooll's Warton, p. 312. Wooll says that a dispute took place between the two men at Reynolds's house. 'One of the company overheard the following conclusion of the dispute. JOHNSON. "Sir, I am not used to be contradicted." WARTON. "Better for yourself and friends, Sir, if you were; our admiration could not be increased, but our love might."' Ib p. 98.

[116] The Good-Natured Man, post p. 45.

[117] 'It has been said that the King only sought one interview with Dr. Johnson. There was nothing to complain of; it was a compliment paid by rank to letters, and once was enough. The King was more afraid of this interview than Dr. Johnson was; and went to it as a schoolboy to his task. But he did not want to have the trial repeated every day, nor was it necessary. The very jealousy of his self-love marked his respect; and if he thought the less of Dr. Johnson, he would have been more willing to risk the encounter.' Hazlitt's Conversations of Northcote, p. 45. It should seem that Johnson had a second interview with the King thirteen years later. In 1780, Hannah More records (Memoirs, i. 174):--'Johnson told me he had been with the King that morning, who enjoined him to add Spenser to his Lives of the Poets.' It is strange that, so far as I know, this interview is not mentioned by any one else. It is perhaps alluded to, post, Dec., 1784, when Mr. Nichols told Johnson that he wished 'he would gratify his sovereign by a Life of Spenser.'

[118] It is proper here to mention, that when I speak of his correspondence, I consider it independent of the voluminous collection of letters which, in the course of many years, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, which forms a separate part of his works; and as a proof of the high estimation set on any thing which came from his pen, was sold by that lady for the sum of five hundred pounds. BOSWELL.

[119] He was away from the London 'near six months.' See ante, ii. 30.

[120] On August 17 he recorded:--'I have communicated with Kitty, and kissed her. I was for some time distracted, but at last more composed. I commended my friends, and Kitty, Lucy, and I were much affected. Kitty is, I think, going to heaven.' Pr. and Med., p. 75.

[121] Pr. and Med., pp. 77 and 78. BOSWELL.

[122] Pr. and Med., p. 73. BOSWELL. On Aug. 17, he recorded:--'By abstinence from wine and suppers I obtained sudden and great relief, and had freedom of mind restored to me, which I have wanted for all this year, without being able to find any means of obtaining it.' Ib p. 74.

[123] Hawkins, in his second edition (p. 347) assigns it to Campbell, 'who,' he says, 'as well for the malignancy of his heart as his terrific countenance, was called horrible Campbell.'

[124] See ante, i. 218.

[125] The book is as dull as it is indecent. The 'drollery' is of the following kind. Johnson is represented as saying:--'Without dubiety you misapprehend this dazzling scintillation of conceit in totality, and had you had that constant recurrence to my oraculous dictionary which was incumbent upon you from the vehemence of my monitory injunctions,' &c. p. 2.

[126] Pr. and Med., p. 81. BOSWELL. 'This day,' he wrote on his birthday, 'has been passed in great perturbation; I was distracted at church in an uncommon degree, and my distress has had very little intermission.... This day it came into my mind to write the history of my melancholy. On this I purpose to deliberate; I know not whether it may not too much disturb me.' See post, April 8, 1780.

[127] It is strange that Boswell nowhere quotes the lines in The Good-Natured Man, in which Paoli is mentioned. 'That's from Paoli of Corsica,' said Lofty. Act v. sc. i.

[128] In the original, 'Pressed by.' Boswell, in thus changing the preposition, forgot what Johnson says in his Plan of an English Dictionary (Works, v. 12):--'We say, according to the present modes of speech, The soldier died of his wounds, and the sailor perished with hunger; and every man acquainted with our language would be offended with a change of these particles, which yet seem originally assigned by chance.'

[129] Boswell, writing to Temple on March 24, says:--'My book has amazing celebrity; Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Walpole, Mrs. Macaulay, and Mr. Garrick have all written me noble letters about it. There are two Dutch translations going forward.' Letters of Boswell, p. 145. It met with a rapid sale. A third edition was called for within a year. Dilly, the publisher, must have done very well by it, as he purchased the copyright for one hundred guineas. Ib, p. 103. 'Pray read the new account of Corsica,' wrote Horace Walpole to Gray on Feb. 18, 1768 (Letters, v. 85). 'The author is a strange being, and has a rage of knowing everybody that ever was talked of. He forced himself upon me at Paris in spite of my teeth and my doors.' To this Gray replied:--'Mr. Boswell's book has pleased and moved me strangely; all, I mean, that relates to Paoli. He is a man born two thousand years after his time! The pamphlet proves, what I have always maintained, that any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.' In The Letters of Boswell (p. 122) there is the following under date of Nov. 9, 1767:--'I am always for fixing some period for my perfection, as far as possible. Let it be when my account of Corsica is published; I shall then have a character which I must support.' In April 16 of the following year, a few weeks after the book had come out, he writes:--'To confess to you at once, Temple, I have since my last coming to town been as wild as ever.' (p. 146.)

[130] Boswell used to put notices of his movements in the newspapers, such as--'James Boswell, Esq., is expected in town.' _Public Advertiser_, Feb. 28, 1768. 'Yesterday James Boswell, Esq., arrived from Scotland at his lodgings in Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly.' Ib March 24, 1768. Prior's Goldsmith, i. 449.

[131] Johnson was very ill during this visit. Mrs. Thrale had at the same time given birth to a daughter, and had been nursed by her mother. His thoughts, therefore, were turned on illness. Writing to Mrs. Thrale, he says:--'To roll the weak eye of helpless anguish, and see nothing on any side but cold indifference, will, I hope, happen to none whom I love or value; it may tend to withdraw the mind from life, but has no tendency to kindle those affections which fit us for a purer and a nobler state.... These reflections do not grow out of any discontent at C's [Chambers's] behaviour; he has been neither negligent nor troublesome; nor do I love him less for having been ill in his house. This is no small degree of praise.' Piozzi Letters, i. 13.

[132] See ante, ii. 3, note.

[133] The editor of the Letters of Boswell justly says (p. 149):--'The detail in the Life of Johnson is rather scanty about this period; dissipation, the History of Corsica, wife-hunting, ... interfered perhaps at this time with Boswell's pursuit of Dr. Johnson.'

[134] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773, for a discussion of the same question. Lord Eldon has recorded (Life, i. 106), that when he first went the Northern Circuit (about 1776-1780), he asked Jack Lee (post, March 20, 1778), who was not scrupulous in his advocacy, whether his method could be justified. 'Oh, yes,' he said, 'undoubtedly. Dr. Johnson had said that counsel were at liberty to state, as the parties themselves would state, what it was most for their interest to state.' After some interval, and when he had had his evening bowl of milk punch and two or three pipes of tobacco, he suddenly said, 'Come, Master Scott, let us go to bed. I have been thinking upon the questions that you asked me, and I am not quite so sure that the conduct you represented will bring a man peace at the last.' Lord Eldon, after stating pretty nearly what Johnson had said, continues:--'But it may be questioned whether even this can be supported.'

[135] Garrick brought out Hugh Kelly's False Delicacy at Drury Lane six days before Goldsmith's Good-Natured Man was brought out at Covent Garden. 'It was the town talk,' says Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, ii. 93), some weeks before either performance took place, 'that the two comedies were to be pitted against each other.' False Delicacy had a great success. Ten thousand copies of it were sold before the season closed. (Ib p. 96.) 'Garrick's prologue to False Delicacy,' writes Murphy (Life of Garrick, p. 287), 'promised a moral and sentimental comedy, and with an air of pleasantry called it a sermon in five acts. The critics considered it in the same light, but the general voice was in favour of the play during a run of near twenty nights. Foote, at last, by a little piece called Piety in Pattens, brought that species of composition into disrepute.' It is recorded in Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 201, that when some one asked Johnson whether they should introduce Hugh Kelly to him, 'No, Sir,' says he, 'I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.' See post, beginning of 1777.

[136] The Provoked Husband, or A Journey to London, by Vanbrugh and Colley Cibber. It was brought out in 1727-8. See post, June 3, 1784.

[137] See ante, i. 213.

[138] April 6, 1772, and April 12, 1776.

[139] Richardson, writing on Dec. 7, 1756, to Miss Fielding, about her Familiar Letters, says:--'What a knowledge of the human heart! Well might a critical judge of writing say, as he did to me, that your late brother's knowledge of it was not (fine writer as he was) comparable to yours. His was but as the knowledge of the outside of a clock-work machine, while yours was that of all the finer springs and movements of the inside.' Richardson Corres. ii. 104. Mrs. Calderwood, writing of her visit to the Low Countries in 1756, says:--'All Richison's [Richardson's] books are translated, and much admired abroad; but for Fielding's the foreigners have no notion of them, and do not understand them, as the manners are so entirely English.' Letters, &c., of Mrs. Calderwood, p. 208

[140] In The Provoked Husband, act iv. sc. 1.

[141] By Dr. Hoadley, brought out in 1747. 'This was the first good comedy from the time of The Provoked Husband in 1727.' Murphy's Garrick, p. 78.

[142] Madame Riccoboni, writing to Garrick from Paris on Sept. 7, 1768, says:--'On ne supporterait point ici l'indA(C)cence de Ranger. Les trA"sindA(C)cens FranASec.aisdeviennent dA(C)licats sur leur thA(C)Actre, A mesure qu'ils le sont moins dans leur conduite.' Garrick's Corres. ii. 548.

[143] 'The question in dispute was as to the heirship of Mr. Archibald Douglas. If he were really the son of Lady Jane Douglas, he would inherit large family estates; but if he were supposititious, then they would descend to the Duke of Hamilton. The Judges of the Court of Session had been divided in opinion, eight against seven, the Lord President Dundas giving the casting vote in favour of the Duke of Hamilton; and in consequence of it he and several other of the judges had, on the reversal by the Lords, their houses attacked by a mob. It is said, but not upon conclusive authority, that Boswell himself headed the mob which broke his own father's windows.' Letters of Boswell, p. 86. See post, April 27, 1773, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 24-26, 1773. Mr. J. H. Burton, in his Life of Hume (ii. 150), says:--'Men about to meet each other in company used to lay an injunction on themselves not to open their lips on the subject, so fruitful was it in debates and brawls.' Boswell, according to the Bodleian catalogue, was the author of Dorando, A Spanish Tale, 1767. In this tale the Douglas cause is narrated under the thinnest disguise. It is reviewed in the Gent. Mag. for 1767, p. 361.

[144] See post, under April 19, 1772, March 15, 1779, and June 2, 1781.

[145] Revd. Kenneth Macaulay. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 27, 1773. He was the great-uncle of Lord Macaulay.

[146] Martin, in his St. Kilda (p. 38), had stated that the people of St. Kilda 'are seldom troubled with a cough, except at the Steward's landing. I told them plainly,' he continues, 'that I thought all this notion of infection was but a mere fancy, at which they seemed offended, saying, that never any before the minister and myself was heard to doubt of the truth of it, which is plainly demonstrated upon the landing of every boat.' The usual 'infected cough,' came, he says, upon his visit. Macaulay (History of St. Kilda, p. 204) says that he had gone to the island a disbeliever, but that by eight days after his arrival all the inhabitants were infected with this disease. See also post, March, 21, 1772, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 2, 1773.

[147] See ante, July 1, 1763.

[148] Post, March 21, 1772.

[149] This is not the case. Martin (p. 9) says that the only landing place is inaccessible except under favour of a neap tide, a north-east or west wind, or with a perfect calm. He himself was rowed to St. Kilda, 'the inhabitants admiring to see us get thither contrary to the wind and tide' (p. 5).

[150] That for one kind of learning Oxford has no advantages, he shows in a letter that he wrote there on Aug. 4, 1777. 'I shall inquire,' he says, 'about the harvest when I come into a region where anything necessary to life is understood.' Piozzi Letters, i. 349. At Lichfield he reached that region. 'My barber, a man not unintelligent, speaks magnificently of the harvest;' Ib p. 351.

[151] See post, Sept. 14, 1777.

[152] See ante, i. 116.

[153] The advancement had been very rapid. 'When Dr. Robertson's career commenced,' writes Dugald Stewart in his Life of that historian (p. 157), 'the trade of authorship was unknown in Scotland.' Smollet, in Humphry Clinker, published three years after this conversation, makes Mr. Bramble write (Letter of Aug. 8):--'Edinburgh is a hot-bed of genius. I have had the good fortune to be made acquainted with many authors of the first distinction; such as the two Humes [David Hume and John Home, whose names had the same pronunciation], Robertson, Smith, Wallace, Blair, Ferguson, Wilkie, &c.' To these might be added Smollett himself, Boswell, Reid, Beattie, Kames, Monboddo. Henry Mackenzie and Dr. Henry began to publish in 1771. Gibbon, writing to Robertson in 1779, says:--'I have often considered with some sort of envy the valuable society which you possess in so narrow a compass.' Stewart's Robertson, p. 363.

[154] See post, April 30, 1773, where Johnson owned that he had not read Hume. J.H. Burton (Life of Hume, ii. 129), after stating that 'Hume was the first to add to a mere narrative of events an enquiry into the progress of the people, &c.,' says:--'There seems to be no room for the supposition that he had borrowed the idea from Voltaire's Essai sur les Moeurs. Hume's own Political Discourses are as close an approach to this method of inquiry as the work of Voltaire; and if we look for such productions of other writers as may have led him into this train of thought, it would be more just to name Bacon and Montesquieu.'

[155] See post, May 8 and 13, 1778.

[156] See post, April 30, 1773, April 29, 1778, and Oct. 10, 1779.

[157] An Essay on the Future Life of Brutes. By Richard Dean, Curate of Middleton, Manchester, 1767. The 'part of the Scriptures' on which the author chiefly relies is the Epistle to the Romans, viii. 19-23. He also finds support for his belief in 'those passages in Isaiah where the prophet speaks of new Heavens, and a new Earth, of the Lion as eating straw like the Ox, &c.' Vol. ii. pp. x, 4.

[158] The words that Addison's Cato uses as he lays his hand on his sword. Act v. sc. 1.

[159] I should think it impossible not to wonder at the variety of Johnson's reading, however desultory it may have been. Who could have imagined that the High Church of England-man would be so prompt in quoting Maupertuis, who, I am sorry to think, stands in the list of those unfortunate mistaken men, who call themselves esprits forts. I have, however, a high respect for that Philosopher whom the Great Frederick of Prussia loved and honoured, and addressed pathetically in one of his Poems,--

'Maupertuis, cher Maupertuis, Que notre vie est peu de chose!'

There was in Maupertuis a vigour and yet a tenderness of sentiment, united with strong intellectual powers, and uncommon ardour of soul. Would he had been a Christian! I cannot help earnestly venturing to hope that he is one now. BOSWELL. Voltaire writing to D'Alembert on Aug. 25, 1759, says:--'Que dites-vous de Maupertuis, mort entre deux capucins?' Voltaire's Works, lxii. 94. The stanza from which Boswell quotes is as follows:--

'O Maupertuis, cher Maupertuis, Que notre vie est peu de chose! Cette fleur, qui brille aujourd'hui Demain se fane A peine A(C)close; Tout pA(C)rit, tout est emportA(C) Par la dure fatalitA(C) Des arrtA¬s de la destinA(C)e; Votre vertu, vos grands talents Ne pourront obtenir du temps Le seul dA(C)lai d'une journA(C)e.' _La vie est un Songe. Euvres de FrA(C)dA(C)ric II (edit. 1849), x. 40.

[160] Johnson does not give Conglobulate in his Dictionary; only conglobe. If he used the word it is not likely that he said 'conglobulate together.'

[161] Gilbert White, writing on Nov. 4, 1767, after mentioning that he had seen swallows roosting in osier-beds by the river, says:--'This seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water.' White's Selborne, Letter xii. See also post, May 7, 1773.

[162] Travels from St. Petersburgh in Russia to divers parts of Asia. By John Bell, Glasgow, 1763: 4to. 2 vols.

[163] I. D'Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, i. 194) ranks this book among Literary Impostures. 'Du Halde never travelled ten leagues from Paris in his life; though he appears by his writings to be familiar with Chinese scenery.' See ante, i. 136.

[164] See post, Oct. 10, 1779.

[165] Boswell, in his correspondence with Temple in 1767 and 1768, passes in review the various ladies whom he proposes to marry. The lady described in this paragraph--for the 'gentleman' is clearly Boswell--is 'the fair and lively Zelide,' a Dutch-woman. She was translating his Corsica into French. On March 24, 1768, he wrote, 'I must have her.' On April 26, he asked his father's permission to go over to Holland to see her. But on May 14 he forwarded to Temple one of her letters. 'Could,' he said, 'any actress at any of the theatres attack me with a keener--what is the word? not fury, something softer. The lightning that flashes with so much brilliance may scorch, and does not her esprit do so?' Letters of Boswell, pp. 144-150.

[166] In the original it is some not many. Johnson's Works, vii. 182.

[167] An account of the Manners and Customs of Italy, by Joseph Baretti, London, 1768. The book would be still more entertaining were it not written as a reply to Sharp's Letters on Italy. Post under April 29, 1776.

[168] Mrs. Piozzi wrote of him: 'His character is easily seen, and his soul above disguise, haughty and insolent, and breathing defiance against all mankind; while his powers of mind exceed most people's, and his powers of purse are so slight that they leave him dependent on all. Baretti is for ever in the state of a stream damned up; if he could once get loose, he would bear down all before him.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 335.

[169] According to Hawkins (Life, p. 460), the watch was new this year, and was, he believed, the first Johnson ever had.

[170] St. John, ix. 4. In Pr. and Med., p. 233, is the following:--'Ejaculation imploring diligence. "O God, make me to remember that the night cometh when no man can work."' Porson, in his witty attack on Sir John Hawkins, originally published in the Gent. Mag. for 1787, quotes the inscription as a proof of Hawkins's Greek. 'Nux gar erchetai. The meaning is (says Sir John) For the night cometh. And so it is, Mr. Urban.' Porson Tracts, p. 337.

[171] He thus wrote of himself from Oxford to Mrs. Thrale:--'This little dog does nothing, but I hope he will mend; he is now reading Jack the Giant-killer. Perhaps so noble a narrative may rouse in him the soul of enterprise.' Piozzi Letters, i. 9.

[172] See ante, ii. 3

[173] Under the same date, Boswell thus begins a letter to Temple:--'Your moral lecture came to me yesterday in very good time, while I lay suffering severely for immorality. If there is any firmness at all in me, be assured that I shall never again behave in a manner so unworthy the friend of Paoli. My warm imagination looks forward with great complacency on the sobriety, the healthfulness, and the worth of my future life.' Letters of Boswell, p. 147

[174] Johnson so early as Aug. 21, 1766, had given him the same advice (ante, ii. 22). How little Boswell followed it is shewn by his letter to the Earl of Chatham, on April 8, 1767, in which he informed him of his intention to publish his Corsica, and concluded:--'Could your Lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter? I have been told how favourably your Lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and with a Chatham is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame.' Chatham Corres., iii. 246. On the same day on which he wrote to Johnson, he said in a letter to Temple, 'Old General Oglethorpe, who has come to see me, and is with me often, just on account of my book, bids me not marry till I have first put the Corsicans in a proper situation. "You may make a fortune in the doing of it," said he; "or, if you do not, you will have acquired such a character as will entitle you to any fortune."' Letters of Boswell, p. 148. Four months later, Boswell wrote:--'By a private subscription in Scotland, I am sending this week AL700 worth of ordnance [to Corsica] ... It is really a tolerable train of artillery.' Ib p. 156. In 1769 he brought out a small volume entitled British Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans. By Several Hands. Collected and published by James Boswell, Esq.

[175] From about the beginning of the fourteenth century, Corsica had belonged to the Republic of Genoa. In the great rising under Paoli, the Corsicans would have achieved their independence, had not Genoa ceded the island to the crown of France.

[176] Boswell, writing to Temple on May 14 of this year, says:--'I am really the great man now. I have had David Hume in the forenoon, and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon of the same day, visiting me. Sir J. Pringle and Dr. Franklin dined with me to-day; and Mr. Johnson and General Oglethorpe one day, Mr. Garrick alone another, and David Hume and some more literati another, dine with me next week. I give admirable dinners and good claret; and the moment I go abroad again, which will be in a day or two, I set up my chariot. This is enjoying the fruit of my labours, and appearing like the friend of Paoli.' Letters of Boswell, p. 151.

[177] See post, April 12, 1778, and May 8, 1781.

[178] The talk arose no doubt from the general election that had just been held amid all the excitement about Wilkes. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, iii. 307), in a letter dated April 16, 1768, describes the riots in London. He had seen 'the mob requiring gentlemen and ladies of all ranks as they passed in their carriages, to shout for Wilkes and liberty, marking the same words on all their coaches with chalk, and No. 45 on every door. I went last week to Winchester, and observed that for fifteen miles out of town there was scarce a door or window shutter next the road unmarked; and this continued here and there quite to Winchester.'

[179] In his Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, he thus writes:--'If I might presume to advise them [the Ministers] upon this great affair, I should dissuade them from any direct attempt upon the liberty of the press, which is the darling of the common people, and therefore cannot be attacked without immediate danger.' Works, v. 344. On p. 191 of the same volume, he shows some of the benefits that arise in England from 'the boundless liberty with which every man may write his own thoughts.' See also in his Life of Milton, the passage about Areopagitica, Ib vii. 82. The liberty of the press was likely to be 'a constant topic.' Horace Walpole (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ii. 15), writing of the summer of 1764, says:--'Two hundred informations were filed against printers; a larger number than had been prosecuted in the whole thirty-three years of the last reign.'

[180] 'The sun has risen, and the corn has grown, and, whatever talk has been of the danger of property, yet he that ploughed the field commonly reaped it, and he that built a house was master of the door; the vexation excited by injustice suffered, or supposed to be suffered, by any private man, or single community, was local and temporary; it neither spread far nor lasted long.' Johnson's Works, vi. 170. See also post, March 31, 1772. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, iii. 215) wrote to the AbbA(C) Morellet, on April 22, 1787:--'Nothing can be better expressed than your sentiments are on this point, where you prefer liberty of trading, cultivating, manufacturing, &c., even to civil liberty, this being affected but rarely, the other every hour.'

[181] See ante, July 6, 1763.

[182] See ante, Oct. 1765.

[183] 'I was diverted with Paoli's English library. It consisted of:--Some broken volumes of the Spectatour and Tatler; Pope's Essay on Man; Gulliver's Travels; A History of France in old English; and Barclay's Apology for the Quakers. I promised to send him some English books... I have sent him some of our best books of morality and entertainment, in particular the works of Mr. Samuel Johnson.' Boswell's Corsica, p. 169.

[184] Johnson, as Boswell believed, only once 'in the whole course of his life condescended to oppose anything that was written against him.' (See ante, i. 314.) In this he followed the rule of Bentley and of Boerhaave. 'It was said to old Bentley, upon the attacks against him, "why, they'll write you down." "No, Sir," he replied; "depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself."' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 1 1773. Bentley shewed prudence in his silence. 'He was right,' Johnson said, 'not to answer; for, in his hazardous method of writing, he could not but be often enough wrong.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 10, 1773. 'Boerhaave was never soured by calumny and detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them; "for they are sparks," said he, "which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves."' Johnson's Works, vi. 288. Swift, in his Lines on Censure which begin,--

'Ye wise instruct me to endure An evil which admits no cure.'

ends by saying:--

'The most effectual way to baulk Their malice is--to let them talk.' Swift's Works, xi. 58.

Young, in his Second Epistle to Pope, had written:--

'Armed with this truth all critics I defy; For if I fall, by my own pen I die.'

Hume, in his Auto. (p. ix.) says:--'I had a fixed resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body.' This is not quite true. See J. H. Burton's Life of Hume, ii. 252, for an instance of a violent reply. The following passages in Johnson's writings are to the same effect:--'I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those that they provoke.' Piozzi Letters ii. 289. 'It is very rarely that an author is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.' Ib p. 110. 'The writer who thinks his works formed for duration mistakes his interest when he mentions his enemies. He degrades his own dignity by shewing that he was affected by their censures, and gives lasting importance to names, which, left to themselves would vanish from remembrance.' Johnson's Works, vii. 294. 'If it had been possible for those who were attacked to conceal their pain and their resentment, the Dunciad might have made its way very slowly in the world.' Ib viii. 276. Hawkins (Life of Johnson, p. 348) says that, 'against personal abuse Johnson was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:--"Alas! reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' In his Parl. Debates (Works, x. 359), Johnson makes Mr. Lyttelton say:--'No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it.' Addison in The Freeholder, No. 40, says, that 'there is not a more melancholy object in the learned world than a man who has written himself down.' See also Boswell's Hebrides, near the end.

[185] Barber had entered Johnson's service in 1752 (ante, i. 239). Nine years before this letter was written he had been a sailor on board a frigate (ante, i. 348), so that he was somewhat old for a boy.

[186] Boswell, writing to Temple on May 14 of this year; says:--'Dr. Robertson is come up laden with his Charles V.--three large quartos; he has been offered three thousand guineas for it.' Letters of Boswell, p. 152.

[187] In like manner the professors at Aberdeen and Glasgow seemed afraid to speak in his presence. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug 23 and Oct 29, 1773. See also post, April 20, 1778.

[188] See ante, July 28, 1763.

[189] Johnson, in inserting this letter, says (Works, viii. 374):--'I communicate it with much pleasure, as it gives me at once an opportunity of recording the fraternal kindness of Thomson, and reflecting on the friendly assistance of Mr. Boswell, from whom I received it.' See post, July 9, 1777, and June 18, 1778.

[190] Murphy, in his Life of Garrick, p. 183, says that Garrick once brought Dr. Munsey--so he writes the name--to call on him. 'Garrick entered the dining-room, and turning suddenly round, ran to the door, and called out, "Dr. Munsey, where are you going?" "Up stairs to see the author," said Munsey. "Pho! pho! come down, the author is here." Dr. Munsey came, and, as he entered the room, said in his free way, "You scoundrel! I was going up to the garret. Who could think of finding an author on the first floor?"' Mrs. Montagu wrote to Lord Lyttelton from Tunbridge in 1760:--'The great Monsey (sic) came hither on Friday ... He is great in the coffee-house, great in the rooms, and great on the pantiles.' Montagu Letters, iv. 291. In Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 271, there is a curious account of him.

[191] See ante, July 26, 1763.

[192] My respectable friend, upon reading this passage, observed, that he probably must have said not simply, 'strong facts,' but 'strong facts well arranged.' His lordship, however, knows too well the value of written documents to insist on setting his recollection against my notes taken at the time. He does not attempt to traverse the record. The fact, perhaps, may have been, either that the additional words escaped me in the noise of a numerous company, or that Dr. Johnson, from his impetuosity, and eagerness to seize an opportunity to make a lively retort, did not allow Dr. Douglas to finish his sentence. BOSWELL.

[193] 'It is boasted that between November [1712] and January, eleven thousand [of The Conduct of the Allies] were sold.... Yet surely whoever surveys this wonder-working pamphlet with cool perusal, will confess that it's efficacy was supplied by the passions of its readers; that it operates by the mere weight of facts, with very little assistance from the hand that produced them.' Johnson's Works, viii. 203.

[194] 'Every great man, of whatever kind be his greatness, has among his friends those who officiously or insidiously quicken his attention to offences, heighten his disgust, and stimulate his resentment.' Ib viii 266.

[195] See the hard drawing of him in Churchill's Rosciad. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 391, note 2.

[196] For talk, see post, under March 30 1783.

[197] See post, Oct. 6, 1769, and May 8, 1778, where Johnson tosses Boswell.

[198] See post, Sept. 22, 1777, and Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. i, 1773.

[199] See post, Nov. 27, 1773, note, April 7, 1775, and under May 8, 1781.

[200] He wrote the character of Mr. Mudge. See post, under March 20, 1781.

[201] 'Sept. 18, 1769. This day completes the sixtieth year of my age.... The last year has been wholly spent in a slow progress of recovery.' Pr. and Med. p. 85.

[202] In which place he has been succeeded by Bennet Langton, Esq. When that truly religious gentleman was elected to this honorary Professorship, at the same time that Edward Gibbon, Esq., noted for introducing a kind of sneering infidelity into his Historical Writings, was elected Professor in Ancient History, in the room of Dr. Goldsmith, I observed that it brought to my mind, 'Wicked Will Whiston and good Mr. Ditton.' I am now also of that admirable institution as Secretary for Foreign Correspondence, by the favour of the Academicians, and the approbation of the Sovereign. BOSWELL. Goldsmith, writing to his brother in Jan., 1770, said:--'The King has lately been pleased to make me Professor of Ancient History in a Royal Academy of Painting, which he has just established, but there is no salary annexed, and I took it rather as a compliment to the institution than any benefit to myself. Honours to one in my situation are something like ruffles to one that wants a shirt.' Prior's Goldsmith, ii. 221. 'Wicked Will Whiston,' &c., comes from Swift's Ode for Music, On the Longitude (Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xxiv. 39), which begins,--

'The longitude miss'd on By wicked Will Whiston; And not better hit on By good Master Ditton.'

It goes on so grossly and so offensively as regards one and the other, that Boswell's comparison was a great insult to Langton as well as to Gibbon.

[203] It has this inscription in a blank leaf:--'Hunc librum D.D. Samuel Johnson, eo quod hic loci studiis interdum vacaret.' Of this library, which is an old Gothick room, he was very fond. On my observing to him that some of the modern libraries of the University were more commodious and pleasant for study, as being more spacious and airy, he replied, 'Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ-Church and All-Souls.' BOSWELL.

[204] During this visit he seldom or never dined out. He appeared to be deeply engaged in some literary work. Miss Williams was now with him at Oxford. BOSWELL. It was more likely the state of his health which kept him at home. Writing from Oxford on June 27 of this year to Mrs. Thrale, who had been ill, he says:--'I will not increase your uneasiness with mine. I hope I grow better. I am very cautious and very timorous.' Piozzi Letters, i. 21.

[205] Boswell wrote a letter, signed with his own name, to the London Magazine for 1769 (p. 451) describing the Jubilee. It is followed by a print of himself 'in the dress of an armed Corsican chief,' and by an account, no doubt written by himself. It says:--'Of the most remarkable masks upon this occasion was James Boswell, Esq., in the dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre about twelve o'clock. On the front of his cap was embroidered in gold letters, Viva La Liberta; and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant, as well as a warlike appearance. He wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room he drew universal attention.' Cradock (Memoirs, i. 217) gives a melancholy account of the festival. The preparations were all behind-hand and the weather was stormy. 'There was a masquerade in the evening, and all zealous friends endeavoured to keep up the spirit of it as long as they could, till they were at last informed that the Avon was rising so very fast that no delay could be admitted. The ladies of our party were conveyed by planks from the building to the coach, and found that the wheels had been two feet deep in water.' Garrick in 1771 was asked by the Stratford committee to join them in celebrating a Jubilee every year, as 'the most likely method to promote the interest and reputation of their town.' Boswell caught at the proposal eagerly, and writing to Garrick said:--'I please myself with the prospect of attending you at several more Jubilees at Stratford-upon-Avon.' Garrick Corres. i. 414, 435.

[206] Garrick's correspondents not seldom spoke disrespectfully of Johnson. Thus, Mr. Sharp, writing to him in 1769, talks of 'risking the sneer of one of Dr. Johnson's ghastly smiles.' Ib i. 334. Dr. J. Hoadly, in a letter dated July 25, 1775, says:--'Mr. Good-enough has written a kind of parody of Puffy Pensioner's Taxation no Tyranny, under the noble title of Resistance no Rebellion.' Ib ii. 68.

[207] See ante, i. 181.

[208] In the Preface to my Account of Corsica, published in 1768, I thus express myself:

'He who publishes a book affecting not to be an authour, and professing an indifference for literary fame, may possibly impose upon many people such an idea of his consequence as he wishes may be received. For my part, I should be proud to be known as an authour, and I have an ardent ambition for literary fame; for, of all possessions, I should imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish a book, which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of having that character lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve an uniform dignity among those who see us every day, is hardly possible; and to aim at it, must put us under the fetters of perpetual restraint. The authour of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superior genius, when he considers that by those who know him only as an authour, he never ceases to be respected. Such an authour, when in his hours of gloom and discontent, may have the consolation to think, that his writings are, at that very time, giving pleasure to numbers; and such an authour may cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages.' BOSWELL. His preface to the third edition thus ends:--'When I first ventured to send this book into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for literary fame. I have obtained my desire: and whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy.' The dedication of the first edition and the preface of the third are both dated Oct. 29--one 1767, and the other 1768. Oct. 29 was his birthday.

[209] Paoli's father had been one of the leaders of the Corsicans in their revolt against Genoa in 1734. Paoli himself was chosen by them as their General-in-chief in 1755. In 1769 the island was conquered by the French. He escaped in an English ship, and settled in England. Here he stayed till 1789, when Mirabeau moved in the National Assembly the recall of all the Corsican patriots. Paoli was thereupon appointed by Louis XVI. Lieutenant-general and military commandant in Corsica. He resisted the violence of the Convention, and was, in consequence, summoned before it. Refusing to obey, an expedition was sent to arrest him. Napoleon Buonaparte fought in the French army, but Paoli's party proved the stronger. The islanders sought the aid of Great Britain, and offered the crown of Corsica to George III. The offer was accepted, but by an act of incredible folly, not Paoli, but Sir Gilbert Eliot, was made Viceroy. Paoli returned to England, where he died in 1807, at the age of eighty-two. In 1796 Corsica was abandoned by the English. By the Revolution it ceased to be a conquered province, having been formally declared an integral part of France. At the present day the Corsicans are proud of being citizens of that great country; no less proud, however, are they of Pascal Paoli, and of the gallant struggle for independence of their forefathers.

[210] According to the Ann. Reg. (xii. 132) Paoli arrived in London on Sept. 21. He certainly was in London on Oct. 10, for on that day he was presented by Boswell to Johnson. Yet Wesley records in his Journal (iii. 370) on Oct. 13:--'I very narrowly missed meeting the great Pascal Paoli. He landed in the dock [at Portsmouth] but a very few minutes after I left the waterside. Surely He who hath been with him from his youth up hath not sent him into England for nothing.' In the Public Advertiser for Oct. 4 there is the following entry, inserted no doubt by Boswell:--'On Sunday last General Paoli, accompanied by James Boswell, Esq., took an airing in Hyde Park in his coach.' Priors Goldsmith, i. 450. Horace Walpole writes:--'Paoli's character had been so advantageously exaggerated by Mr. Boswell's enthusiastic and entertaining account of him, that the Opposition were ready to incorporate him in the list of popular tribunes. The Court artfully intercepted the project; and deeming patriots of all nations equally corruptible, bestowed a pension of AL1000 a year on the unheroic fugitive.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 387.

[211] Johnson, writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec., p. 228), ridiculed a friend 'who, looking out on Streatham Common from our windows, lamented the enormous wickedness of the times, because some bird-catchers were busy there one fine Sunday morning. "While half the Christian world is permitted," said Johnson, "to dance and sing and celebrate Sunday as a day of festivity, how comes your puritanical spirit so offended with frivolous and empty deviations from exactness? Whoever loads life with unnecessary scruples, Sir," continued he, "provokes the attention of others on his conduct, and incurs the censure of singularity, without reaping the reward of superior virtue."' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773.

[212] The first edition of Hume's History of England was full of Scotticisms, many of which he corrected in subsequent editions. MALONE. According to Mr. J. H. Burton (Life of Hume, ii. 79), 'He appears to have earnestly solicited the aid of Lyttelton, Mallet, and others, whose experience of English composition might enable them to detect Scotticisms.' Mr. Burton gives instances of alterations made in the second edition. He says also that 'in none of his historical or philosophical writings does any expression used by him, unless in those cases where a Scotticism has escaped his vigilance, betray either the district or the county of his origin.' Ib i. 9. Hume was shown in manuscript Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind. Though it was an attack on his own philosophy, yet in reading it 'he kept,' he says, 'a watchful eye all along over the style,' so that he might point out any Scotticisms. Ib ii. 154. Nevertheless, as Dugald Stewart says in his Life of Robertson (p. 214), 'Hume fails frequently both in purity and grammatical correctness.' Even in his later letters I have noticed Scotticisms.

[213] In 1763 Wilkes, as author of The North Briton, No. 45, had been arrested on 'a general warrant directed to four messengers to take up any persons without naming or describing them with any certainty, and to bring them, together with their papers.' Such a warrant as this Chief Justice Pratt (Lord Camden) declared to be 'unconstitutional, illegal, and absolutely void.' Ann. Reg. vi. 145.

[214] See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 24, 1773.

[215] In the Spring of this year, at a meeting of the electors of Southwark, 'instructions' had been presented to Mr. Thrale and his brother-member, of which the twelfth was:--'That you promote a bill for shortening the duration of Parliaments.' Gent. Mag. xxxix. 162.

[216] This paradox Johnson had exposed twenty-nine years earlier, in his Life of Sir Francis Drake, Works, vi. 366. In Rasselas, chap. xi., he considers also the same question. Imlac is 'inclined to conclude that, if nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy as our minds take a wider range.' He then enumerates the advantages which civilisation confers on the Europeans. 'They are surely happy,' said the prince, 'who have all these conveniences.' 'The Europeans,' answered Imlac, 'are less unhappy than we, but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.' Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Skye, Johnson said: 'The traveller wanders through a naked desert, gratified sometimes, but rarely, with the sight of cows, and now and then finds a heap of loose stones and turf in a cavity between rocks, where a being born with all those powers which education expands, and all those sensations which culture refines, is condemned to shelter itself from the wind and rain. Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy, but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.' Piozzi Letters, i. 150. See post, April 21 and May 7, 1773, April 26, 1776, and June 15, 1784.

[217] James Burnet, a Scotch Lord of Session, by the title of Lord Monboddo. 'He was a devout believer in the virtues of the heroic ages, and the deterioration of civilised mankind; a great contemner of luxuries, insomuch that he never used a wheel carriage.' WALTER SCOTT, quoted in Croker's Boswell, p. 227. There is some account of him in Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 175. In his Origin of Language, to which Boswell refers in his next note, after praising Henry Stephen for his Greek Dictionary, he continues:--'But to compile a dictionary of a barbarous language, such as all the modern are compared with the learned, is a work which a man of real genius, rather than undertake, would choose to die of hunger, the most cruel, it is said, of all deaths. I should, however, have praised this labour of Doctor Johnson's more, though of the meanest kind,' &c. Monboddo's Origin of Language, v. 274. On p. 271, he says:--'Dr. Johnson was the most invidious and malignant man I have ever known.' See post, March 21, 1772, May 8, 1773, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773.

[218] His Lordship having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of Dr. Johnson, in my company, I on one occasion during the life-time of my illustrious friend could not refrain from retaliation, and repeated to him this saying. He has since published I don't know how many pages in one of his curious books, attempting, in much anger, but with pitiful effect, to persuade mankind that my illustrious friend was not the great and good man which they esteemed and ever will esteem him to be. BOSWELL.

[219] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 108) says:--'Mr. Johnson was indeed unjustly supposed to be a lover of singularity. Few people had a more settled reverence for the world than he, or was less captivated by new modes of behaviour introduced, or innovations on the long-received customs of common life.' In writing to Dr. Taylor to urge him to take a certain course, he says:--'This I would have you do, not in compliance with solicitation or advice, but as a justification of yourself to the world; the world has always a right to be regarded.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 343. In The Adventurer, No. 131, he has a paper on 'Singularities.' After quoting Fontenelle's observation on Newton that 'he was not distinguished from other men by any singularity, either natural or affected,' he goes on:--'Some may be found who, supported by the consciousness of great abilities, and elevated by a long course of reputation and applause, voluntarily consign themselves to singularity, affect to cross the roads of life because they know that they shall not be jostled, and indulge a boundless gratification of will, because they perceive that they shall be quietly obeyed.... Singularity is, I think, in its own nature universally and invariably displeasing.' Writing of Swift, he says (Works, viii. 223):--'Whatever he did, he seemed willing to do in a manner peculiar to himself, without sufficiently considering that singularity, as it implies a contempt of the general practice, is a kind of defiance which justly provokes the hostility of ridicule; he, therefore, who indulges peculiar habits is worse than others, if he be not better.' See ante, Oct. 1765, the record in his Journal:--'At church. To avoid all singularity.'

[220] 'He had many other particularities, for which he gave sound and philosophical reasons. As this humour still grew upon him he chose to wear a turban instead of a periwig; concluding very justly that a bandage of clean linen about his head was much more wholesome, as well as cleanly, than the caul of a wig, which is soiled with frequent perspirations.' Spectator, No. 576.

[221] See post, June 28, 1777, note.

[222] 'Depend upon it,' he said, 'no woman is the worse for sense and knowledge.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 19; 1773--See, however, post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection, where he says:--'Supposing a wife to be of a studious or argumentative turn, it would be very troublesome'

[223]

'Though Artemisia talks by fits Of councils, classics, fathers, wits; Reads Malbranche, Boyle, and Locke: Yet in some things, methinks she fails; 'Twere well if she would pare her nails, And wear a cleaner smock.'

SWIFT. Imitation of English Poets, Works, xxiv. 6.

[224] A Wife, a poem, 1614. BOSWELL.

[225] In the original that.

[226] What a succession of compliments was paid by Johnson's old school-fellow, whom he met a year or two later in Lichfield, who 'has had, as he phrased it, a matter of four wives, for which' added Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 'neither you nor I like him much the better.' Piozzi Letters, i. 41.

[227] Mr. Langton married the widow of the Earl of Rothes; post, March 20, 1771.

[228] Horace Walpole, writing of 1764, says:--'As one of my objects was to raise the popularity of our party, I had inserted a paragraph in the newspapers observing that the abolition of vails to servants had been set on foot by the Duke of Bedford, and had been opposed by the Duke of Devonshire. Soon after a riot happened at Ranelagh, in which the footmen mobbed and ill-treated some gentlemen who had been active in that reformation.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ii. 3.

[229]

'Alexis shunned his fellow swains, Their rural sports and jocund strains, (Heaven guard us all from Cupid's bow!) He lost his crook, he left his flocks; And wandering through the lonely rocks, He nourished endless woe.'

The Despairing Shepherd.

[230] 'In his amorous effusions Prior is less happy; for they are not dictated by nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They have the coldness of Cowley without his wit, the dull exercises of a skilful versifier, resolved at all adventures to write something about Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study.... In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college.' Johnson's Works, viii. 15, 22.

[231] Florizel and Perdita is Garrick's version of The Winters Tale. He cut down the five acts to three. The line, which is misquoted, is in one of Perdita's songs:--

'That giant ambition we never can dread; Our roofs are too low for so lofty a head; Content and sweet cheerfulness open our door, They smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.'

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