Life of Johnson
Chapter 380 : [205] Horace, _Odes_, ii. 14. 1.[206] John Abernethy, a Presbyterian divine. His works

[205] Horace, _Odes_, ii. 14. 1.

[206] John Abernethy, a Presbyterian divine. His works in 7 vols. 8vo.

were published in 1740-51.

[207] Leechman was princ.i.p.al of Glasgow University (_post_, Oct. 29). On his appointment to the Chair of Theology he had been prosecuted for heresy for having, in his _Sermon on Prayer_, omitted to state the obligation to pray in the name of Christ. Dr. A. Carlyle's _Auto_. p.

69. One of his sermons was placed in Hume's hands, apparently that the author might have his suggestions in preparing a second edition. Hume says:--'First the addressing of our virtuous withes and desires to the Deity, since the address has no influence on him, is only a kind of rhetorical figure, in order to render these wishes more ardent and pa.s.sionate. This is Mr. Leechman's doctrine. Now the use of any figure of speech can never be a duty. Secondly, this figure, like most figures of rhetoric, has an evident impropriety in it, for we can make use of no expression, or even thought, in prayers and entreaties, which does not imply that these prayers have an influence. Thirdly, this figure is very dangerous, and leads directly, and even unavoidably, to impiety and blasphemy,' etc. J.H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 161.

[208] Nichols (_Lit. Anec._ ii. 555) records:--'During the whole of my intimacy with Dr. Johnson he rarely permitted me to depart without some sententious advice.... His words at parting were, "Take care of your eternal salvation. Remember to observe the Sabbath. Let it never be a day of business, nor wholly a day of dissipation." He concluded his solemn farewell with, "Let my words have their due weight. They are the words of a dying man." I never saw him more.'

[209] See _ante_, ii. 72.

[210] 'From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century.... The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown.... A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice.

At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice: I told him that it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought so. "This," said he, "is nothing to another a few miles off." I was still less delighted to hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer.

"Nay," said a gentleman that stood by, "I know but of this and that tree in the county."' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 7 'In all this journey [so far as Slains Castle] I have not travelled an hundred yards between hedges, or seen five trees fit for the carpenter.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.120. See _ante_, ii. 301.

[211] One of the Boswells of this branch was, in 1798, raised to the bench under the t.i.tle of Lord Balmuto. It was his sister who was Boswell's step-mother. Rogers's _Boswelliana,_ pp. 4, 82.

[212] 'The colony of Leuchars is a vain imagination concerning a certain fleet of Danes wrecked on Sheughy Dikes.' WALTER SCOTT. 'The fis.h.i.+ng people on that coast have, however, all the appearance of being a different race from the inland population, and their dialect has many peculiarities.' LOCKHART. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 286.

[213] 'I should scarcely have regretted my journey, had it afforded nothing more than the sight of Aberbrothick.' _Works_, ix. 9.

[214] Johnson referred, I believe, to the last of Tillotson's _Sermons preached upon Several Occasions_, ed. 1673, p. 316, where the preacher says:--'Supposing the _Scripture_ to be a Divine Revelation, and that these words (_This is My Body_), if they be in Scripture, must necessarily be taken in the strict and literal sense, I ask now, What greater evidence any man has that these words (_This is My Body_) are in the Bible than every man has that the bread is not changed in the sacrament? Nay, no man has so much, for we have only the evidence of _one_ sense that these words are in the Bible, but that the bread is not changed we have the concurring testimony of _several_ of our senses.'

[215] This also is Tillotson's argument. 'There is no more certain foundation for it [transubstantiation] in Scripture than for our Saviour's being substantially changed into all those things which are said of him, as that he is a _rock_, a _vine_, a _door_, and a hundred other things.' _Ib_. p. 313.

[216] Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. See _St. John's Gospel_, chap. vi. 53, and following verses. BOSWELL.

[217] See _ante_, p. 26.

[218] See _ante_, i. 140, note 5, and v. 50.

[219] Johnson, after saying that the inn was not so good as they expected, continues:--'But Mr. Boswell desired me to observe that the innkeeper was an Englishman, and I then defended him as well as I could.' _Works_, ix. 9.

[220] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on July 29, 1775 (_Piozzi Letters_, i. 292):--' I hope I shall quickly come to Streatham...and catch a little gaiety among you.' On this Baretti noted in his copy:--'_That_ he never caught. He thought and mused at Streatham as he did habitually everywhere, and seldom or never minded what was doing about him.' On the margin of i. 315 Baretti has written:--'Johnson mused as much on the road to Paris as he did in his garret in London as much at a French opera as in his room at Streatham.'

[221] _A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson,_ by Thomas Tyers, Esq. See _ante_, iii. 308.

[222] This description of Dr. Johnson appears to have been borrowed from Tom Jones, bk. xi. ch. ii. 'The other who, like a ghost, only wanted to be spoke to, readily answered, '&c. BOSWELL.

[223] Perhaps he gave the 's.h.i.+lling extraordinary' because he 'found a church,' as he says, 'clean to a degree unknown in any other part of Scotland.' _Works_, ix. 9.

[224] See _ante,_ iii. 22.

[225] See _ante,_ May 9, 1784. Yet Johnson says (_Works_, ix. 10):--'The magnetism of Lord Monboddo's conversation easily drew us out of our way.'

[226] There were several points of similarity between them; learning, clearness of head, precision of speech, and a love of research on many subjects which people in general do not investigate. Foote paid Lord Monboddo the compliment of saying, that he was an Elzevir edition of Johnson.

It has been shrewdly observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive, or _pocket_ edition. BOSWELL. The latter part of this note is not in the first edition.

[227] Lord Elibank (_post_, Sept. 12) said that he would go five hundred miles to see Dr. Johnson; but Johnson never said more than he meant.

[228] _Works_, ix. 10. Of the road to Montrose he remarks:--'When I had proceeded thus far I had opportunities of observing, what I had never heard, that there were many beggars in Scotland. In Edinburgh the the proportion is, I think, not less than in London, and in the smaller places it is far greater than in English towns of the same extent. It must, however, be allowed that they are not importunate, nor clamorous.

They solicit silently, or very modestly.' _Ib._ p. 9. See _post_, p.

116, note 2.

[229] James Mill was born on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left of the high road.' Bain's _Life of James Mill_, p. 1. Boswell and Johnson, on their road to Laurence Kirk, must have pa.s.sed close to the cottage in which he was lying, a baby not five months old.

[230] See _ante_, i. 211.

[231] There is some account of him in Chambers's _Traditions of Edinburgh_, ed. 1825, ii. 173, and in Dr. A. Carlyle's _Auto._ p. 136.

[232] G. Chalmers (_Life of Ruddiman_, p. 270) says:--'In May, 1790, Lord Gardenston declared that he still intended to erect a proper monument in his village to the memory of the late learned and worthy Mr. Ruddiman.'

In 1792 Gardenston, in his _Miscellanies_, p. 257, attacked Ruddiman.

'It has of late become fas.h.i.+onable,' he wrote, 'to speak of Ruddiman in terms of the highest respect.' The monument was never raised.

[233] _A Letter to the Inhabitants of Laurence Kirk_, by F. Garden.

[234] 'Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.' _Hebrews_ xiii, 2.

[235] This, I find, is considered as obscure. I suppose Dr. Johnson meant, that I a.s.siduously and earnestly recommended myself to some of the members, as in a canva.s.s for an election into parliament. BOSWELL.

See _ante_, ii, 235.

[236] Goldsmith in _Retaliation_, a few months later, wrote of William Burke:--'Would you ask for his merits? alas! he had none; What was good was spontaneous, his faults were his own.' See _ante_, iii 362, note 2.

[237] See _ante_, iii. 260, 390, 425.

[238] Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 252) wrote of Monboddo in 1782:--'He is such an extravagant adorer of the ancients, that he scarcely allows the English language to be capable of any excellence, still less the French.

He said we moderns are entirely degenerated. I asked in what? "In everything," was his answer. He loves slavery upon principle. I asked him how he could vindicate such an enormity. He owned it was because Plutarch justified it. He is so wedded to system that, as Lord Barrington said to me the other day, rather than sacrifice his favourite opinion that men were born with tails, he would be contented to wear one himself.'

[239] Scott, in a note on _Guy Mannering_, ed. 1860, iv. 267, writes of Monboddo:--'The conversation of the excellent old man, his high, gentleman-like, chivalrous spirit, the learning and wit with which he defended his fanciful paradoxes, the kind and liberal spirit of his hospitality, must render these _noctes coenaeque_ dear to all who, like the author (though then young), had the honour of sitting at his board.'

[240] Lord c.o.c.kburn, writing of the t.i.tle that Jeffrey took when he was raised to the Bench in 1834, said:--'The Scotch Judges are styled _Lords_; a t.i.tle to which long usage has a.s.sociated feelings of reverence in the minds of the people, who could not now be soon made to respect or understand _Mr. Justice_. During its strongly feudalised condition, the landholders of Scotland, who were almost the sole judges, were really known only by the names of their estates. It was an insult, and in some parts of the country it is so still, to call a laird by his personal, instead of his territorial, t.i.tle. But this a.s.sumption of two names, one official and one personal, and being addressed by the one and subscribing by the other, is wearing out, and will soon disappear entirely.' c.o.c.kburn's _Jeffrey_, i. 365. See _post_, p. 111, note 1.

[241] _Georgics_, i. 1.

[242] Walter Scott used to tell an instance of Lord Monboddo's agricultural enthusiasm, that returning home one night after an absence (I think) on circuit, he went out with a candle to look at a field of turnips, then a novelty in Scotland. CROKER.

[243] Johnson says the same in his _Life of John Philips_, and adds:-- 'This I was told by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose experience was, that "there were many books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much truth as that poem."' _Works_, vii. 234. Miller is mentioned in Walpole's _Letters_, ii. 352:--'There is extreme taste in the park [Hagley]: the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle built by Miller, that would get him his freedom, even of Strawberry: it has the true rust of the Barons' Wars.'

[244] See _ante_, p. 27.

[245] My note of this is much too short. _Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio_. ['I strive to be concise, I prove obscure.' FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. l. 25.] Yet as I have resolved that _the very Journal which Dr.

Johnson read_, shall be presented to the publick, I will not expand the text in any considerable degree, though I may occasionally supply a word to complete the sense, as I fill up the blanks of abbreviation, in the writing; neither of which can be said to change the genuine _Journal_.

One of the best criticks of our age conjectures that the imperfect pa.s.sage above was probably as follows: 'In his book we have an accurate display of a nation in war, and a nation in peace; the peasant is delineated as truly as the general; nay, even harvest-sport, and the modes of ancient theft are described.' BOSWELL. 'One of the best criticks is, I believe, Malone, who had 'perused the original ma.n.u.script.' See _ante_, p. 1; and _post_, Oct. 26, and under Nov. 11.

[246] It was in the Parliament-house that 'the ordinary Lords of Session,' the Scotch Judges, that is to say, held their courts.

_Ante_, p. 39.

[247] Dr. Johnson modestly said, he had not read Homer so much as he wished he had done. But this conversation shews how well he was acquainted with the Maeonian bard; and he has shewn it still more in his criticism upon Pope's _Homer_, in his _Life_ of that Poet. My excellent friend, Mr. Langton, told me, he was once present at a dispute between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke, on the comparative merits of Homer and Virgil, which was carried on with extraordinary abilities on both sides.