Life of Johnson
Chapter 381 : Dr. Johnson maintained the superiority of Homer. BOSWELL. Johnson told Windham that he

Dr. Johnson maintained the superiority of Homer. BOSWELL. Johnson told Windham that he had never read through the Odyssey in the original.

Windham's _Diary_, p. 17. See _ante_, iii. 193, and May 1, 1783.

[248] Johnson ten years earlier told Boswell that he loved most 'the biographical part of literature.' _Ante_, i. 425. Goldsmith said of biography:--'It furnishes us with an opportunity of giving advice freely and without offence.... Counsels as well as compliments are best conveyed in an indirect and oblique manner, and this renders biography as well as fable a most convenient vehicle for instruction. An ingenious gentleman was asked what was the best lesson for youth; he answered, "The life of a good man." Being again asked what was the next best, he replied, "The life of a bad one."' Prior's _Goldsmith_, i. 395.

[249] See _ante_, p. 57.

[250] Ten years later he said:--'There is now a great deal more learning in the world than there was formerly; for it is universally diffused.' _Ante_, April 29,1783. Windham (_Diary_, p. 17) records 'Johnson's opinion that I could not name above five of my college acquaintances who read Latin with sufficient ease to make it pleasurable.'

[251] See _ante_, ii. 352.

[252] 'Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook without solicitation to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and from month to month continued a vindication of the _Essay on Man_ in the literary journal of that time, called the _Republick of Letters'_ Johnson's _Works_, viii. 289. Pope wrote to Warburton of the _Essay on Man_:--'You understand my work better than I do myself.' Pope's _Works_, ed. 1886, ix. 211.

[253] See _ante_, ii. 37, note I, and Pope's _Works_, ed. 1886, ix. 220.

Allen was Ralph Allen of Prior Park near Bath, to whom Fielding dedicated _Amelia_, and who is said to have been the original of Allworthy in _Tom Jones_. It was he of whom Pope wrote:--

'Let low-born Allen, with an awkward shame, Do good by stealth and blush to find it fame.'

_Epilogue to the Satires_, i. 135.

_Low-born_ in later editions was changed to _humble_. Warburton not only married his niece, but, on his death, became in her right owner of Prior Park.

[254] Mr. Mark Pattison (_Satires of Pope_, p. 158) points out Warburton's 'want of penetration in that subject [metaphysics] which he considered more peculiarly his own.' He said of 'the late Mr. Baxter'

(Andrew Baxter, not Richard Baxter), that 'a few pages of his reasoning have not only more sense and substance than all the elegant discourses of Dr. Berkeley, but infinitely better ent.i.tle him to the character of a great genius.'

[255] It is of Warburton that Churchill wrote in _The Duellist (Poems,_ ed. 1766, ii. 82):--

'To prove his faith which all admit Is at least equal to his wit, And make himself a man of note, He in defence of Scripture wrote; So long he wrote, and long about it, That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it.'

[256] I find some doubt has been entertained concerning Dr. Johnson's meaning here. It is to be supposed that he meant, 'when a king shall again be entertained in Scotland.' BOSWELL.

[257] Perhaps among these ladies was the Miss Burnet of Monboddo, on whom Burns wrote an elegy.

[258] In the _Rambler_, No. 98, ent.i.tled _The Necessity of Cultivating Politeness_, Johnson says:--'The universal axiom in which all complaisance is included, and from which flow all the formalities which custom has established in civilized nations, is, _That no man shall give any preference to himself.'_ In the same paper, he says that 'unnecessarily to obtrude unpleasing ideas is a species of oppression.'

[259] Act ii. sc. 5.

[260] Perhaps he was referring to Polyphemus's club, which was

'Of height and bulk so vast The largest s.h.i.+p might claim it for a mast.'

Pope's _Odyssey_, ix. 382.

Or to Agamemnon's sceptre:--

'Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear.'

_Iliad_, i. 310.

[261] 'We agreed pretty well, only we disputed in adjusting the claims of merit between a shopkeeper of London and a savage of the American wildernesses. Our opinions were, I think, maintained on both sides without full conviction; Monboddo declared boldly for the savage, and I, perhaps for that reason, sided with the citizen.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 115.

[262]

'Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed, From Macedonia's madman to the Swede; The whole strange purpose of their lives to find, Or make, an enemy of all mankind!

Not one looks backward, onward still he goes, Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose.'

_Essay on Man,_ iv. 219.

[263] _Maccaroni_ is not in Johnson's _Dictionary_. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, iv. 178) on Feb. 6, 1764, mentions 'the Maccaroni Club, which is composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-gla.s.ses.' On the following Dec. 16 he says:--'The Maccaroni Club has quite absorbed Arthur's; for, you know, old fools will hobble after young ones.' _Ib._ p. 302. See _post_, Sept. 12, for _buck_.

[264] 'We came late to Aberdeen, where I found my dear mistress's letter, and learned that all our little people were happily recovered of the measles. Every part of your letter was pleasing.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 115. For Johnson's use of the word _mistress_ in speaking of Mrs.

Thrale see _ante_, i. 494.

[265] See _ante_, ii. 455. 'They taught us,' said one of the Professors, 'to raise cabbage and make shoes, How they lived without shoes may yet be seen; but in the pa.s.sage through villages it seems to him that surveys their gardens, that when they had not cabbage they had nothing.'

_Piozzi Letters_, i. 116. Johnson in the same letter says that 'New Aberdeen is built of that granite which is used for the _new_ pavement in London.'

[266] 'In Aberdeen I first saw the women in plaids.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 116.

[267] Seven years later Mackintosh, on entering King's College, found there the son of Johnson's old friend, 'the learned Dr. Charles Burney, finis.h.i.+ng his term at Aberdeen.' Among his fellow-students were also some English Dissenters, among them Robert Hall. Mackintosh's _Life,_ i.

10, 13. In Forbes's _Life of Beattie_ (ed. 1824, p. 169) is a letter by Beattie, dated Oct. 15, 1773, in which the English and Scotch Universities are compared. Colman, in his _Random Records,_ ii. 85, gives an account of his life at Aberdeen as a student.

[268] Lord Bolingbroke (Works, iii. 347) in 1735 speaks of 'the little care that is taken in the training up our youth,' and adds, 'surely it is impossible to take less.' See _ante_, ii. 407, and iii. 12.

[269] _London, 2d May_, 1778. Dr. Johnson acknowledged that he was himself the authour of the translation above alluded to, and dictated it to me as follows:--

Quos laudet vates Graius Roma.n.u.s et Anglus Tres tria temporibus secla dedere suis.

Sublime ingenium Graius; Roma.n.u.s habebat Carmen grande sonans; Anglus utrumque tulit.

Nil majus Natura capit: clarare priores Quae potuere duos tertius unus habet. BOSWELL.

It was on May 2, 1778, that Johnson attacked Boswell with such rudeness that he kept away from him for a week. _Ante_, iii. 337.

[270] 'We were on both sides glad of the interview, having not seen nor perhaps thought on one another for many years; but we had no emulation, nor had either of us risen to the other's envy, and our old kindness was easily renewed.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 117.

[271] Johnson wrote on Sept. 30:--'Barley-broth is a constant dish, and is made well in every house. A stranger, if he is prudent, will secure his share, for it is not certain that he will be able to eat anything else.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. p. 160.

[272] See _ante_. p. 24.

[273] _Genesis_, ix. 6.

[274] My worthy, intelligent, and candid friend, Dr. Kippis, informs me, that several divines have thus explained the mediation of our Saviour.

What Dr. Johnson now delivered, was but a temporary opinion; for he afterwards was fully convinced of the _propitiatory sacrifice_, as I shall shew at large in my future work, _The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D._ BOSWELL. For Dr. Kippis see _ante_, iii. 174, and for Johnson on the propitiatory sacrifice, iv. 124.

[275] _Malachi_, iv. 2.

[276] _St. Luke_, ii 32.

[277] 'Healing _in_ his wings,'_Malachi_, iv. 2.

[278] 'He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be d.a.m.ned.' _St. Mark_, xvi. 16.