Life of Johnson
Chapter 391 : [611] Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures; and the art of the painter of

[611] Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures; and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject.

But it is in painting as in life; what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to G.o.ddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friends.h.i.+p, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.' _The Idler_, No. 45. 'Southey wrote thirty years later:--'I find daily more and more reason to wonder at the miserable ignorance of English historians, and to grieve with a sort of despondency at seeing how much that has been laid up among the stores of knowledge has been neglected and utterly forgotten.' Southey's _Life_, ii. 264. On another occasion he said of Robertson:--'To write his introduction to _Charles V_, without reading these _Laws_ [the _Laws_ of Alonso the Wise], is one of the thousand and one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue, as long as his volumes last. _Ib_. p. 318

[612]

'That eagle's fate and mine are one, Which on the shaft that made him die, Espy'd a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high.'

_Epistle to a Lady._

Anderson's _Poets_, v. 480.

[613] See _ante_, iii. 271.

[614] 'In England there may be reason for raising the rents (in a certain degree) where the value of lands is increased by accession of commerce, ...but here (contrary to all policy) the great men begin at the wrong end, with squeezing the bag, before they have helped the poor tenant to fill it; by the introduction of manufactures.' Pennant's _Scotland_, ed. 1772, p. 191.

[615] Boswell refers, not to a pa.s.sage in _Pennant_, but to Johnson's admission that in his dispute with Monboddo, 'he might have taken the side of the savage, had anybody else taken the side of the shopkeeper.'

_Ante_, p. 83.

[616] 'Boswell, with some of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family and reminded me that the 18th of September is my birthday. The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 134. See _ante_, iii. 157.

[617] 'At Dunvegan I had tasted lotus, and was in danger of forgetting that I was ever to depart, till Mr. Boswell sagely reproached me with my sluggishness and softness.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 67.

[618] Johnson wrote of the ministers:--'I saw not one in the islands whom I had reason to think either deficient in learning, or irregular in life; but found several with whom I could not converse without wis.h.i.+ng, as my respect increased, that they had not been Presbyterians.' _Ib_.

p. 102.

[619] See _ante_, p. 142.

[620] See _ante_, ii. 28.

[621]

'So horses they affirm to be Mere engines made by geometry, And were invented first from engines, As Indian Britons were from penguins.'

_Hudibras_, part i. canto 2, line 57. Z. Gray, in a note on these lines, quotes Selden's note on Drayton's _Polyolbion_:--'About the year 1570, Madoc, brother to David Ap Owen, Prince of Wales, made a sea-voyage to Florida; and by probability those names of Capo de Breton in Norimberg, and Penguin in part of the Northern America, for a white rock and a white-headed bird, according to the British, were relicts of this discovery.'

[622] Published in Edinburgh in 1763.

[623] See ante, ii. 76. 'Johnson used to say that in all family disputes the odds were in favour of the husband from his superior knowledge of life and manners.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 210.

[624] He wrote to Dr. Taylor:--' Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 342.

[625] As I have faithfully recorded so many minute particulars, I hope I shall be pardoned for inserting so flattering an encomium on what is now offered to the publick. BOSWELL.

[626] See _ante_, iv. 109, note 1.

[627] 'The islanders of all degrees, whether of rank or understanding, universally admit it, except the ministers, who universally deny it, and are suspected to deny it in consequence of a system, against conviction.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 106.

[628] The true story of this lady, which happened in this century, is as frightfully romantick as if it had been the fiction of a gloomy fancy.

She was the wife of one of the Lords of Session in Scotland, a man of the very first blood of his country. For some mysterious reasons, which have never been discovered, she was seized and carried off in the dark, she knew not by whom, and by nightly journeys was conveyed to the Highland sh.o.r.es, from whence she was transported by sea to the remote rock of St. Kilda, where she remained, amongst its few wild inhabitants, a forlorn prisoner, but had a constant supply of provisions, and a woman to wait on her. No inquiry was made after her, till she at last found means to convey a letter to a confidential friend, by the daughter of a Catechist, who concealed it in a clue of yarn. Information being thus obtained at Edinburgh, a s.h.i.+p was sent to bring her off; but intelligence of this being received, she was conveyed to M'Leod's island of Herries, where she died.

In CARSTARE'S STATE PAPERS we find an authentick narrative of Connor [Conn], a catholick priest, who turned protestant, being seized by some of Lord Seaforth's people, and detained prisoner in the island of Herries several years; he was fed with bread and water, and lodged in a house where he was exposed to the rains and cold. Sir James Ogilvy writes (June 18, 1667 [1697]), that the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Advocate, and himself, were to meet next day, to take effectual methods to have this redressed. Connor was then still detained; p. 310.--This shews what private oppression might in the last century be practised in the Hebrides.

In the same collection [in a letter dated Sept. 15, 1700], the Earl of Argyle gives a picturesque account of an emba.s.sy from the _great_ M'Neil _of Barra_, as that insular Chief used to be denominated:--'I received a letter yesterday from M'Neil of Barra, who lives very far off, sent by a gentleman in all formality, offering his service, which had made you laugh to see his entry. His style of his letter runs as if he were of another kingdom.'--Page 643 [648]. BOSWELL.

Sir Walter Scott says:--'I have seen Lady Grange's Journal. She had become privy to some of the Jacobite intrigues, in which her husband, Lord Grange (an Erskine, brother of the Earl of Mar, and a Lord of Session), and his family were engaged. Being on indifferent terms with her husband, she is said to have thrown out hints that she knew as much as would cost him his life. The judge probably thought with Mrs.

Peachum, that it is rather an awkward state of domestic affairs, when the wife has it in her power to hang the husband. Lady Grange was the more to be dreaded, as she came of a vindictive race, being the grandchild [according to Mr. Chambers, the child] of that Chiesley of Dalry, who a.s.sa.s.sinated Sir George Lockhart, the Lord President. Many persons of importance in the Highlands were concerned in removing her testimony. The notorious Lovat, with a party of his men, were the direct agents in carrying her off; and St. Kilda, belonging then to Macleod, was selected as the place of confinement. The name by which she was spoken or written of was _Corpach_, an ominous distinction, corresponding to what is called _subject_ in the lecture-room of an anatomist, or _shot_ in the slang of the Westport murderers' [Burke and Hare]. Sir Walter adds that 'it was said of M'Neil of Barra, that when he dined, his bagpipes blew a particular strain, intimating that all the world might go to dinner.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 341.

[629] I doubt the justice of my fellow-traveller's remark concerning the French literati, many of whom, I am told, have considerable merit in conversation, as well as in their writings. That of Monsieur de Buffon, in particular, I am well a.s.sured, is highly instructive and entertaining. BOSWELL. See _ante_, iii. 253.

[630] Horace Walpole, writing of 1758, says:--'Prize-fighting, in which we had horribly resembled the most barbarous and most polite nations, was suppressed by the legislature.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George II_, iii. 99. According to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec._ p. 5), Johnson said that his 'father's brother, Andrew, kept the ring in Smithfield (where they wrestled and boxed) for a whole year, and never was thrown or conquered.

Mr. Johnson was,' she continues, 'very conversant in the art of boxing.'

She had heard him descant upon it 'much to the admiration of those who had no expectation of his skill in such matters.'

[631] See _ante_, ii. 179, 226, and iv. 211.

[632] See _ante_, p. 98.

[633] See _ante_, i, 110.

[634] See _ante_, i. 398, and ii. 15, 35, 441.

[635] Gibbon, thirteen years later, writing to Lord Sheffield about the commercial treaty with France, said (_Misc. Works_, ii. 399):--'I hope both nations are gainers; since otherwise it cannot be lasting; and such double mutual gain is surely possible in fair trade, though it could not easily happen in the mischievous amus.e.m.e.nts of war and gaming.'

[636] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 139), writing of grat.i.tude and resentment, says:--'Though there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will never be wanting mult.i.tudes that will indulge an easy vice.'

[637] _Aul. Gellius_, lib. v. c. xiv. BOSWELL.

[638] 'The difficulties in princes' business are many and great; but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind. For it is common with princes, saith Tacitus, to will contradictories. _Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, et inter se contrariae_. For it is the solecism of power to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean.'

Bacon's _Essays_, No. xix.

[639] Yet Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 30:--'I am now no longer pleased with the delay; you can hear from me but seldom, and I cannot at all hear from you. It comes into my mind that some evil may happen.'

_Piozzi Letters_, i. 148. On Oct. 15 he wrote to Mr. Thrale:--'Having for many weeks had no letter, my longings are very great to be informed how all things are at home, as you and mistress allow me to call it....

I beg to have my thoughts set at rest by a letter from you or my mistress.' _Ib_. p. 166. See _ante_, iii. 4.

[640] Sir Walter Scott thus describes Dunvegan in 1814:--'The whole castle occupies a precipitous ma.s.s of rock overhanging the lake, divided by two or three islands in that place, which form a snug little harbour under the walls. There is a court-yard looking out upon the sea, protected by a battery, at least a succession of embrasures, for only two guns are pointed, and these unfit for service. The ancient entrance rose up a flight of steps cut in the rock, and pa.s.sed into this court-yard through a portal, but this is now demolished. You land under the castle, and walking round find yourself in front of it. This was originally inaccessible, for a brook coming down on the one side, a chasm of the rocks on the other, and a ditch in front, made it impervious. But the late Macleod built a bridge over the stream, and the present laird is executing an entrance suitable to the character of this remarkable fortalice, by making a portal between two advanced towers, and an outer court, from which he proposes to throw a draw-bridge over to the high rock in front of the castle.' Lockhart's _Scott_, ed.

1839, iv. 303.

[641]

'Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube; Quae dat Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.'

[642] Johnson says of this castle:--'It is so nearly entire, that it might have easily been made habitable, were there not an ominous tradition in the family, that the owner shall not long outlive the reparation. The grandfather of the present laird, in defiance of prediction, began the work, but desisted in a little time, and applied his money to worse uses.' _Works_, ix. 64.

[643] Macaulay (_Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 365) ends a lively piece of criticism on Mr. Croker by saying:--'It requires no Bentley or Casaubon to perceive that Philarchus is merely a false spelling for Phylarchus, the chief of a tribe.'

[644] See _ante_, i. 180.

[645] Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1814:--'The monument is now nearly ruinous, and the inscription has fallen down.' Lockhart's _Scott_, iv. 308.