Life of Johnson
Chapter 313 : _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 481.[512] See _ante_, i. 429, _post_, 170, and Boswell&

_Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 481.

[512] See _ante_, i. 429, _post_, 170, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept.

30.

[513] The year after this conversation the General Election of 1784 was held, which followed on the overthrow of the Coalition Ministry and the formation of the Pitt Ministry in December, 1783. The 'King's friends'

were in a minority of one in the last great division in the old Parliament; in the motion on the Address in the new Parliament they had a majority of 168. _Parl. Hist._ xxiv. 744, 843. Miss Burney, writing in Nov. 1788, when the King was mad, says that one of his physicians 'moved me even to tears by telling me that none of their own lives would be safe if the King did not recover, so prodigiously high ran the tide of affection and loyalty. All the physicians received threatening letters daily, to answer for the safety of their monarch with their lives! Sir G. Baker had already been stopped in his carriage by the mob, to give an account of the King; and when he said it was a bad one, they had furiously exclaimed, "The more shame for you."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, iv. 336. Describing in 1789 a Royal tour in the West of England, she writes of 'the crowds, the rejoicings, the hallooing and singing, and garlanding and decorating of all the inhabitants of this old city [Exeter], and of all the country through which we pa.s.sed.' _Ib._ v. 48.

[514] Miss Palmer, Sir Joshua's niece, 'heard Dr. Johnson repeat these verses with the tears falling over his cheek.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 417.

[515] Gibbon remarked that 'Mr. Fox was certainly very shy of saying anything in Johnson's presence.' _Ante_, iii. 267. See _post_, under June 9, 1784, where Johnson said 'Fox is my friend.'

[516] Mr. Greville (_Journal_, ed. 1874, ii. 316) records the following on the authority of Lord Holland:--'Johnson liked Fox because he defended his pension, and said it was only to blame in not being large enough. "Fox," he said, is a liberal man; he would always be _aut Caesar aut nullus_; whenever I have seen him he has been _nullus_. Lord Holland said Fox made it a rule never to talk in Johnson's presence, because he knew all his conversations were recorded for publication, and he did not choose to figure in them.' Fox could not have known what was not the fact. When Boswell was by, he had reason for his silence; but otherwise he might have spoken out. 'Mr. Fox,' writes Mackintosh (_Life_, i. 322) 'united, in a most remarkable degree, the seemingly repugnant characters of the mildest of men and the most vehement of orators. In private life he was so averse from parade and dogmatism as to be somewhat inactive in conversation.' Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, i. 283) tells how Fox spent a day with him at Lausanne:--'Perhaps it never can happen again, that I should enjoy him as I did that day, alone from ten in the morning till ten at night. Our conversation never flagged a moment.' 'In London mixed society,' said Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 74), 'Fox conversed little; but at his own house in the country, with his intimate friends, he would talk on for ever, with all the openness and simplicity of a child.'

[517] Sec _ante_, ii. 450.

[518] Most likely 'Old Mr. Sheridan.'

[519] See _ante_, ii. 166.

[520] Were I to insert all the stories which have been told of contests boldly maintained with him, imaginary victories obtained over him, of reducing him to silence, and of making him own that his antagonist had the better of him in argument, my volumes would swell to an immoderate size. One instance, I find, has circulated both in conversation and in print; that when he would not allow the Scotch writers to have merit, the late Dr. Rose, of Chiswick, a.s.serted, that he could name one Scotch writer, whom Dr. Johnson himself would allow to have written better than any man of the age; and upon Johnson's asking who it was, answered, 'Lord Bute, when he signed the warrant for your pension.' Upon which Johnson, struck with the repartee, acknowledged that this _was_ true.

When I mentioned it to Johnson, 'Sir, (said he,) if Rose said this, I never heard it.' BOSWELL.

[521] This reflection was very natural in a man of a good heart, who was not conscious of any ill-will to mankind, though the sharp sayings which were sometimes produced by his discrimination and vivacity, which he perhaps did not recollect, were, I am afraid, too often remembered with resentment. BOSWELL. When, three months later on, he was struck with palsy, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'I have in this still scene of life great comfort in reflecting that I have given very few reason to hate me. I hope scarcely any man has known me closely but for his benefit, or cursorily but to his innocent entertainment. Tell me, you that know me best, whether this be true, that according to your answer I may continue my practice, or try to mend it.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 287. See _post_, May 19, 1784. Pa.s.sages such as the two following might have shewn him why he had enemies. 'For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent; severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate.'

Bacon's _Essays_, No. xi. ''Tis possible that men may be as oppressive by their parts as their power.' _The Government of the Tongue_, sect.

vii. See _ante_, i. 388, note 2.

[522] 'A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' _Ante_, i. 294. Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, ii. 191) that he heard a Scotch lady, after quoting this definition, say to Johnson, 'I can a.s.sure you that in Scotland we give oats to our horses as well as you do to yours in England.' He replied:--'I am very glad, Madam, to find that you treat your horses as well as you treat yourselves.'

[523] Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote:--'The prejudices he had to countries did not extend to individuals. The chief prejudice in which he indulged himself was against Scotland, though he had the most cordial friends.h.i.+p with individuals. This he used to vindicate as a duty. ... Against the Irish he entertained no prejudice; he thought they united themselves very well with us; but the Scotch, when in England, united and made a party by employing only Scotch servants and Scotch tradesmen. He held it right for Englishmen to oppose a party against them.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 460. See _ante_, ii. 242, 306, and Boswell's _Hebrides, post_, v. 20.

[524] _Ante_, ii. 300.

[525] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 85) says that 'Dr. Johnson, commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, kept his numerous family in Fleet-street upon a settled allowance; but returned to them every Sat.u.r.day to give them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us on the Monday night.'

[526] Lord North's Ministry lasted from 1770, to March, 1782. It was followed by the Rockingham Ministry, and the Shelburne Ministry, which in its turn was at this very time giving way to the Coalition Ministry, to be followed very soon by the Pitt Ministry.

[527] I have, in my _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ [p. 200, Sept.

13], fully expressed my sentiments upon this subject. The Revolution was _necessary_, but not a subject for _glory_; because it for a long time blasted the generous feelings of _Loyalty_. And now, when by the benignant effect of time the present Royal Family are established in our _affections_, how unwise it is to revive by celebrations the memory of a shock, which it would surely have been better that our const.i.tution had not required. BOSWELL. See _ante_, iii. 3, and iv. 40, note 4.

[528] Johnson reviewed this book in 1756. _Ante_, i. 309.

[529] Johnson, four months later, wrote to one of Mrs. Thrale's daughters:--'Never think, my sweet, that you have arithmetick enough; when you have exhausted your master, buy books. ... A thousand stories which the ignorant tell and believe die away at once when the computist takes them in his gripe.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 296. See _post_, April 18, 1783.

[530] See _ante_, p. 116; also iii. 310, where he bore the same topic impatiently when with Dr. Scott.

[531] See _ante_, ii. 357.

[532]

'See nations, slowly wise and meanly just, To buried merit raise the tardy bust.'

Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_.

[533] He was perhaps, thinking of Markland. _Ante_, p. 161, note 3.

[534] 'Dr. Johnson,' writes Mrs. Piozzi, 'was no complainer of ill-usage. I never heard him even lament the disregard shown to _Irene_.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 386. See _ante_, i. 200.

[535] Letter to the People of Scotland against the attempt to diminish the number of the Lords of Session, 1785. BOSWELL. 'By Mr. Burke's removal from office the King's administration was deprived of the a.s.sistance of that affluent mind, which is so universally rich that, as long as British literature and British politicks shall endure, it will be said of Edmund Burke, _Regum equabat [sic] opes animis.'_ p.71.

[536] _Georgics_, iv. 132.

[537] See _ante_, iii. 56, note 2.

[538] Very likely Boswell.

[539] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 22.

[540] Johnson had said:--'Lord Chesterfield is the proudest man this day existing.' _Ante_, i. 265.

[541] Lord Shelburne. At this time he was merely holding office till a new Ministry was formed. On April 5 he was succeeded by the Duke of Portland. His 'coa.r.s.e manners' were due to a neglected childhood. In the fragment of his _Autobiography_ he describes 'the domestic brutality and ill-usage he experienced at home,' in the South of Ireland. 'It cost me,' he continues, 'more to unlearn the habits, manners, and principles which I then imbibed, than would have served to qualify me for any _role_ whatever through life.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 12, 16.

[542] Bentham, it is reported, said of of him that 'alone of his own time, he was a "Minister who did not fear the people."' _Ib._ iii. 572.

[543] Malagrida, a Jesuit, was put to death at Lisbon in 1761, nominally on a charge of heresy, but in reality on a suspicion of his having sanctioned, as confessor to one of the conspirators, an attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate King Joseph of Portugal. Voltaire, _Siecle de Louis XV_, ch.

x.x.xviii. 'His name,' writes Wraxall (_Memoirs_, ed. 1815, i. 67), 'is become proverbial among us to express duplicity.' It was first applied to Lord Shelburne in a squib attributed to Wilkes, which contained a vision of a masquerade. The writer, after describing him as masquerading as 'the heir apparent of Loyola and all the College,' continues:--'A little more of the devil, my Lord, if you please, about the eyebrows; that's enough, a perfect Malagrida, I protest.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, ii. 164. 'George III. habitually spoke of Shelburne as "Malagrida," and the "Jesuit of Berkeley Square."' _Ib._ iii. 8. The charge of duplicity was first made against Shelburne on the retirement of Fox (the first Lord Holland) in 1763. 'It was the tradition of Holland House that Bute justified the conduct of Shelburne, by telling Fox that it was "a pious fraud." "I can see the fraud plainly enough,"

is said to have been Fox's retort, "but where is the piety?"' _Ib_. i.

226. Any one who has examined Reynolds's picture of Shelburne, especially 'about the eyebrows,' at once sees how the name of Jesuit was given.

[544] Beauclerk wrote to Lord Charlemont on Nov. 20, 1773:-'Goldsmith the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers in praise of Lord Mayor Townshend. [Shelburne supported Townshend in opposition to Wilkes in the election of the Lord Mayor. Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, ii. 287.]

The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne at Drury Lane.

I mentioned the circ.u.mstance of the paragraph to him; he said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. "Do you know," answered Goldsmith, "that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, _for_ Malagrida was a very good sort of man." You see plainly what he meant to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. Mr. Walpole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life.' _Life of Charlemont_, i. 344.

[545] Most likely Reynolds, who introduced Crabbe to Johnson. Crabbe's _Works_, ed. 1834, ii. 11.

[546]

'I paint the cot, As truth will paint it, and as Bards will not.

Nor you, ye Poor, of lettered scorn complain, To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; O'ercome by labour, and bowed down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?

Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruined shed?

Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?'

_The Village_, book i.

See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 6.

[547] I shall give an instance, marking the original by Roman, and Johnson's subst.i.tution in Italick characters:--

'In fairer scenes, where peaceful pleasures spring, t.i.tyrus, the pride of Mantuan swains, might sing: But charmed by him, or smitten with his views, Shall modern poets court the Mantuan muse?

From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, Where Fancy leads, or Virgil led the way?'

'_On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign, If t.i.tyrus found the golden age again, Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Mechanick echoes of the Mantuan song?_ From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, _Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?._