Life of Johnson
Chapter 316 : _Aeneid_, i. 378. I fear that Twalmley met with the neglect that so commonly befalls i

_Aeneid_, i. 378. I fear that Twalmley met with the neglect that so commonly befalls inventors. In the _Gent. Mag_. 1783, p. 719, I find in the list of 'B-nk-ts,' Josiah Twamley, the elder, of Warwick, ironmonger.

[607] 'Sir, Hume is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not upon a principle of duty, for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 30. Horace Walpole's opinion was very different. 'Are not atheism and bigotry first cousins? Was not Charles II. an atheist and a bigot? and does Mr. Hume pluck a stone from a church but to raise an altar to tyranny?' _Letters_, v. 444. Hume wrote in 1756:--'My views of _things_ are more conformable to Whig principles; my representations of _persons_ to Tory prejudices.' J.H.

Burton's _Hume_, ii. 11. Hume's Toryism increased with years. He says in his _Autobiography/_ (p. xi.) that all the alterations which he made in the later editions of his _History of the Stuarts_, 'he made invariably to the Tory side.' Dr. Burton gives instances of these; _Life of Hume_, ii. 74. Hume wrote in 1763 that he was 'too much infected with the plaguy prejudices of Whiggism when he began the work.' _Ib_. p. 144. In 1770 he wrote:--'I either soften or expunge many villainous, seditious Whig strokes which had crept into it.' _Ib_. p. 434. This growing hatred of Whiggism was, perhaps, due to pique. John Home, in his notes of Hume's talk in the last weeks of his life, says: 'He recurred to a subject not unfrequent with him--that is, the design to ruin him as an author, by the people that were ministers at the first publication of his _History_, and called themselves Whigs.' _Ib_. p. 500. As regards America, Hume was with the Whigs, as Johnson had perhaps learnt from their common friend, Mr. Strahan. 'He was,' says Dr. Burton, 'far more tolerant of the sway of individuals over numbers, which he looked upon as the means of preserving order and civilization, than of the predominance of one territory over another, which he looked upon as subjugation.' _Ib_. p. 477. Quite at the beginning of the struggle he foretold that the Americans would not be subdued, unless they broke in pieces among themselves. _Ib_. p. 482. He was not frightened by the prospect of the loss of our supremacy. He wrote to Adam Smith:--'My notion is that the matter is not so important as is commonly imagined.

Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our manufactures.' _Ib_. p. 484. Johnson's charge against Hume that he had no principle, is, no doubt, a gross one; yet Hume's advice to a sceptical young clergyman, who had good hope of preferment, that he should therefore continue in orders, was unprincipled enough. 'It is,'

he wrote, 'putting too great a respect on the vulgar and on their superst.i.tions to pique one's self on sincerity with regard to them. Did ever one make it a point of honour to speak truth to children or madmen?

If the thing were worthy being treated gravely, I should tell him that the Pythian oracle, with the approbation of Xenophon, advised every one to wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ds--[Greek: nomo poleos]. I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular. The common duties of society usually require it; and the ecclesiastical profession only adds a little more to an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without which it is impossible to pa.s.s through the world.' _Ib/_. p. 187.

[608] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 48) says that Johnson told her that in writing the story of Gelaleddin, the poor scholar (_Idler_, No. 75), who thought to fight his way to fame by his learning and wit, 'he had his own outset into life in his eye.' Gelaleddin describes how 'he was sometimes admitted to the tables of the viziers, where he exerted his wit and diffused his knowledge; but he observed that where, by endeavour or accident he had remarkably excelled, he was seldom invited a second time.' See _ante_, p. 116.

[609] See ante, p. 115.

[610] Bar. BOSWELL.

[611] Nard. BOSWELL.

[612] Barnard. BOSWELL.

[613] It was reviewed in the _Gent. Mag_. 1781, p. 282, where it is said to have been written by Don Gabriel, third son of the King of Spain.

[614] Though 'you was' is very common in the authors of the last century when one person was addressed, I doubt greatly whether Johnson ever so expressed himself.

[615] See _ante_, i. 311.

[616] Horace Walpole (_Letters_ v. 85) says, 'Boswell, like Cambridge, has a rage of knowing anybody that ever was talked of.' Miss Burney records 'an old trick of Mr. Cambridge to his son George, when listening to a dull story, in saying to the relator "Tell the rest of that to George."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 274. See _ante_, ii. 361.

[617] Virgil, _Eclogues_, i. 47.

[618] 'Mr. Johnson,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 21), 'was exceedingly disposed to the general indulgence of children, and was even scrupulously and ceremoniously attentive not to offend them. He had strongly persuaded himself of the difficulty people always find to erase early impressions either of kindness or resentment.'

[619] _Ante_, ii.171, iv.75; also _post_, May 15, 1784.

[620] Johnson, on May 1, 1780, wrote of the exhibition dinner:--'The apartments were truly very n.o.ble. The pictures, for the sake of a sky-light, are at the top of the house; there we dined, and I sat over against the Archbishop of York. See how I live when I am not under petticoat government.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 111. It was Archbishop Markham whom he met; he is mentioned by Boswell in his _Hebrides, post_, v. 37. In spite of the 'elaboration of homage' Johnson could judge freely of an archbishop. He described the Archbishop of Tuam as 'a man coa.r.s.e of voice and inelegant of language.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 300.

[621] By Lord Perceval, afterwards Earl of Egmont. He carried, writes Horace Walpole (_Letters_, ii. 144), 'the Westminster election at the end of my father's ministry, which he amply described in the history of his own family, a genealogical work called the _History of the House of Yvery_, a work which cost him three thousand pounds; and which was so ridiculous, that he has since tried to suppress all the copies. It concluded with the description of the Westminster election, in these or some such words:--"And here let us leave this young n.o.bleman struggling for the dying liberties of his country."'

[622] Five days earlier Johnson made the following entry in his Diary:--'1783, April 5. I took leave of Mrs. Thrale. I was much moved. I had some expostulations with her. She said that she was likewise affected. I commended the Thrales with great good-will to G.o.d; may my pet.i.tions have been heard.' Hawkins's _Life_, p. 553. This was not 'a formal taking of leave,' as Hawkins says. She was going to Bath (Mme.

D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 264). On May-day he wrote to her on the death of one of her little girls:--'I loved her, for she was Thrale's and yours, and, by her dear father's appointment, in some sort mine: I love you all, and therefore cannot without regret see the phalanx broken, and reflect that you and my other dear girls are deprived of one that was born your friend. To such friends every one that has them has recourse at last, when it is discovered and discovered it seldom fails to be, that the fortuitous friends.h.i.+ps of inclination or vanity are at the mercy of a thousand accidents.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 255. He was sadly thinking how her friends.h.i.+p for him was rapidly pa.s.sing away.

[623] Johnson modestly ended his account of the tour by saying:--'I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on national manners are the thoughts of one who has seen but little.' _Works_, ix. 161. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 22.

[624] See _ib_. Oct. 21.

[625] She says that he was 'the genuine author of the first volume. An ingenious physician,' she continues, 'with the a.s.sistance of several others, continued the work until the eighth volume.' Mrs. Manley's _History of her own Life and Times_, p. 15--a gross, worthless book.

Swift satirised her in _Corinna, a Ballad_. Swift's _Works_ (1803), x. 94.

[626] The real authour was I. P. Marana, a Genoese, who died at Paris in 1693. John Dunton in his _Life_ says, that Mr. _William Bradshaw_ received from Dr. Midgeley forty s.h.i.+llings a sheet for writing part of the _Turkish Spy_; but I do not find that he any where mentions _Sault_ as engaged in that work. MALONE.

[627] See _ante_, ii. 355, iii. 46, and iv. 139.

[628] This was in June, 1783, and I find in Mr. Windham's private diary (which it seems this conversation induced him to keep) the following memoranda of Dr. Johnson's advice: 'I have no great timidity in my own disposition, and am no encourager of it in others. Never be afraid to think yourself fit for any thing for which your friends think you fit.

_You will become an able negotiator--a very pretty rascal_. No one in Ireland wears even the mask of incorruption; no one professes to do for sixpence what he can get a s.h.i.+lling for doing. Set sail, and see where the winds and the waves will carry you. Every day will improve another.

_Dies diem docet_, by observing at night where you failed in the day, and by resolving to fail so no more.' CROKER. The Whigs thought he made 'a very pretty rascal' in a very different way. On his opposition to Whitbread's bill for establis.h.i.+ng parochial schools, Romilly wrote (_Life_, ii. 2l6), 'that a man so enlightened as Windham should take the same side (which he has done most earnestly) would excite great astonishment, if one did not recollect his eager opposition a few months ago to the abolition of the slave trade.' He was also 'most strenuous in opposition' to Romilly's bill for repealing the act which made it a capital offence to steal to the amount of forty s.h.i.+llings in a dwelling-house, _Ib_. p. 316.

[629] We accordingly carried our scheme into execution, in October, 1792; but whether from that uniformity which has in modern times, in a great degree, spread through every part of the Metropolis, or from our want of sufficient exertion, we were disappointed. BOSWELL.

[630] Piozzi's _Anecdotes_, p. 193. See _post_, under June 30, 1784.

[631] Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, ii. 139-143) says that the picture, which was execrable beyond belief, was exhibited in an empty room. Lowe, in 1769 (not in 1771 as Northcote says), gained the gold medal of the Academy for the best historical picture. (_Gent. Mag_. 1770, p. 587.) Northcote says that the award was not a fair one. He adds that Lowe, being sent to Rome by the patronage of the Academy, was dissatisfied with the sum allowed him. 'When Sir Joshua said that he knew from experience that it was sufficient, Lowe pertly answered "that it was possible for a man to live on guts and garbage."' He died at an obscure lodging in Westminster, in 1793. There is, wrote Miss Burney, 'a certain poor wretch of a villainous painter, one Mr. Lowe, whom Dr. Johnson recommends to all the people he thinks can afford to sit for their picture. Among these he applied to Mr. Crutchley [one of Mr. Thrale's executors]. "But now," said Mr. Crutchley to me, "I have not a notion of sitting for my picture--for who wants it? I may as well give the man the money without; but no, they all said that would not do so well, and Dr. Johnson asked me to give _him_ my picture." "And I a.s.sure you, Sir,"

says he, "I shall put it in very good company, for I have portraits of some very respectable people in my dining-room." After all I could say I was obliged to go to the painter's. And I found him in such a condition!

a room all dirt and filth, brats squalling and wrangling... "Oh!" says I, "Mr. Lowe, I beg your pardon for running away, but I have just recollected another engagement; so I poked three guineas in his hand, and told him I would come again another time, and then ran out of the house with all my might."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii.41. A correspondent of the _Examiner_ writing on May 28, 1873, said that he had met one of Lowe's daughters, 'who recollected,' she told him, 'when a child, sitting on Dr. Johnson's knee and his making her repeat the Lord's Prayer.' She was Johnson's G.o.d-daughter. By a committee consisting of Milman, Thackeray, d.i.c.kens, Carlyle and others, an annuity fund for her and her sister was raised. Lord Palmerston gave a large subscription.

[632] See _post_, May 15, 1783.

[633] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, _post_, v. 48.

[634] See _ante_, p. 171.

[635] Quoted by Boswell, _ante_, iii. 324.

[636] It is suggested to me by an anonymous Annotator on my Work, that the reason why Dr. Johnson collected the peels of squeezed oranges may be found in the 58th [358th] Letter in Mrs. Piozzi's _Collection_, where it appears that he recommended 'dried orange-peel, finely powdered,' as a medicine. BOSWELL. See _ante_, ii. 330.

[637] There are two mistakes in this calculation, both perhaps due to Boswell. _Eighty-four_ should be _eighty-eight_, and square-yards should be _yards square_. 'If a wall cost 1000 a mile, 100 would build 176 yards of wall, which would form a square of 44 yards, and enclose an area of 1936 square yards; and 200 would build 352 yards of wall, which would form a square of 88 yards, and inclose an area of 7744 square yards. The cost of the wall in the latter case, as compared with the s.p.a.ce inclosed, would therefore be reduced to one half.' _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. x. 471.

[638] See _ante_, i. 318.

[639] 'Davies observes, in his account of Ireland, that no Irishman had ever planted an orchard.' Johnson's _Works_, ix.7. 'At Fochabars [in the Highlands] there is an orchard, which in Scotland I had never seen before.' _Ib._ p. 21.

[640] Miss Burney this year mentions meeting 'Mr. Walker, the lecturer.

Though modest in science, he is vulgar in conversation.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 237. Johnson quotes him, _Works_, viii. 474.

[641] 'Old Mr. Sheridan' was twelve years younger than Johnson. For his oratory, see _ante_, i. 453, and _post_, April 28 and May 17, 1783.

[642] See _ante_, i. 358, when Johnson said of Sheridan:--'His voice when strained is unpleasing, and when low is not always heard.'

[643] See _ante_, iii. 139.

[644] 'A more magnificent funeral was never seen in London,' wrote Murphy (_Life of Garrick_, p. 349). Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii.

169), wrote on the day of the funeral:--'I do think the pomp of Garrick's funeral perfectly ridiculous. It is confounding the immense s.p.a.ce between pleasing talents and national services.' He added, 'at Lord Chatham's interment there were not half the n.o.ble coaches that attended Garrick's.' _Ib_. p. 171. In his _Journal of the Reign of George III_ (ii. 333), he says:--'The Court was delighted to see a more n.o.ble and splendid appearance at the interment of a comedian than had waited on the remains of the great Earl of Chatham.' Bishop Horne (_Essays and Thoughts_, p. 283) has some lines on 'this grand parade of woe,' which begin:--

'Through weeping London's crowded streets, As Garrick's funeral pa.s.sed, Contending wits and n.o.bles strove, Who should forsake him last.

Not so the world behaved to _him_ Who came that world to save, By solitary Joseph borne Unheeded to his grave.'

Johnson wrote on April 30, 1782: 'Poor Garrick's funeral expenses are yet unpaid, though the undertaker is broken.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 239.

Garrick was buried on Feb. 1, 1779, and had left his widow a large fortune. Chatham died in May, 1778.

[645] Boswell had heard Johnson maintain this; _ante_, ii. 101.

[646] See _post_, p. 238, note 2.