Life of Johnson
Chapter 227 : After all, I cannot help entertaining some doubt whether the words, _Difficile est pro

After all, I cannot help entertaining some doubt whether the words, _Difficile est proprie communia dicere_, may not have been thrown in by Horace to form a _separate_ article in a 'choice of difficulties' which a poet has to encounter, who chooses a new subject; in which case it must be uncertain which of the various explanations is the true one, and every reader has a right to decide as it may strike his own fancy. And even should the words be understood as they generally are, to be connected both with what goes before and what comes after, the exact sense cannot be absolutely ascertained; for instance, whether _proprie_ is meant to signify _in an appropriated manner_, as Dr. Johnson here understands it, or, as it is often used by Cicero, _with propriety_, or _elegantly_. In short, it is a rare instance of a defect in perspicuity in an admirable writer, who with almost every species of excellence, is peculiarly remarkable for that quality. The length of this note perhaps requires an apology. Many of my readers, I doubt not, will admit that a critical discussion of a pa.s.sage in a favourite cla.s.sick is very engaging. BOSWELL. Boswell's French in this tedious note is left as he printed it.

[220] Johnson, after describing Settle's attack on Dryden, continues (_Works_, vii. 277):--'Such are the revolutions of fame, or such is the prevalence of fas.h.i.+on, that the man whose works have not yet been thought to deserve the care of collecting them, who died forgotten in an hospital, and whose latter years were spent in contriving shows for fairs ... might with truth have had inscribed upon his stone:--

"Here lies the Rival and Antagonist of Dryden."'

Pope introduces him in _The Dunciad_, i. 87, in the description of the Lord Mayor's Show:--

'Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces, Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners and broad faces.

Now night descending the proud scene was o'er, But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.'

In the third book the ghost of Settle acts the part of guide in the Elysian shade.

[221] Johnson implies, no doubt, that they were both Americans by birth.

Trecothick was in the American trade, but he was not an American.

Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iii. 184, note. Of Beckford Walpole says:--'Under a jovial style of good humour he was tyrannic in Jamaica, his native country.' _Ib_. iv. 156. He came over to England when young and was educated in Westminster School. Stephens's _Horne Tooke_, ii. 278. Cowper describes 'a jocular altercation that pa.s.sed when I was once in the gallery [of the House], between Mr. Rigby and the late Alderman Beckford. The latter was a very incorrect speaker, and the former, I imagine, not a very accurate scholar. He ventured, however, upon a quotation from Terence, and delivered it thus, _Sine Scelere et Baccho friget venus_. The Alderman interrupted him, was very severe upon his mistake, and restored Ceres to her place in the sentence. Mr. Rigby replied, that he was obliged to his worthy friend for teaching him Latin, and would take the first opportunity to return the favour by teaching him English.' Southey's _Cowper_, iii. 317. Lord Chatham, in the House of Lords, said of Trecothick:--'I do not know in office a more upright magistrate, nor in private life a worthier man.'

_Parl. Hist_. xvi. 1101. See _post_, Sept. 23, 1777.

[222]

'Oft have I heard thee mourn the wretched lot Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot, Who, might calm reason credit idle tales, By rancour forged where prejudice prevails, Or starves at home, or practises through fear Of starving arts which d.a.m.n all conscience here.'

Churchill's _Prophecy of Famine, Poems_, i. 105.

[223] For Johnson's praise of Lichfield see _ante_, March 23, 1776. For the use of the word _civility_, see _ante_ ii. 155.

[224] See _ante_, i. 447.

[225] See _ante_, April 18, 1775.

[226] See _post_, April 15, 1778.

[227] It would not become me to expatiate on this strong and pointed remark, in which a very great deal of meaning is condensed. BOSWELL.

[228] 'Mr. Wilkes's second political essay was an ironical dedication to the Earl of Bute of Ben Jonson's play, _The Fall of Mortimer_. "Let me entreat your Lords.h.i.+p," he wrote, "to a.s.sist your friend [Mr. Murphy] in perfecting the weak scenes of this tragedy, and from the crude labours of Ben Jonson and others to give us a _complete play_. It is the warmest wish of my heart that the Earl of Bute may speedily complete the story of Roger Mortimer."' Almon's _Wilkes_, i. 70, 86.

[229] Yet Wilkes within less than a year violently attacked Johnson in parliament. He said, 'The two famous doctors, Shebbeare and Johnson, are in this reign the state hirelings called pensioners.' Their names, he continued, 'disgraced the Civil List. They are the known pensioned advocates of despotism.' _Parl. Hist_. xix. 118. It is curious that Boswell does not mention this attack, and that Johnson a few months after it was made, speaking of himself and Wilkes, said:--'The contest is now over.' _Post_, Sept 21, 1777.

[230] The next day he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'For my part, I begin to settle and keep company with grave aldermen. I dined yesterday in the Poultry with Mr. Alderman Wilkes, and Mr. Alderman Lee, and Counsellor Lee, his brother. There sat you the while, so sober, with your W----'s and your H----'s, and my aunt and her turnspit; and when they are gone, you think by chance on Johnson, what is he doing? What should he be doing? He is breaking jokes with Jack Wilkes upon the Scots. Such, Madam, are the vicissitudes of things.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 325.

[231] See _ante_, March 20, 1776.

[232] If he had said this on a former occasion to a lady, he said it also on a latter occasion to a gentleman--Mr. Spottiswoode. _Post_, April 28, 1778. Moreover, Miss Burney records in 1778, that when Johnson was telling about Bet Flint (_post_, May 8, 1781) and other strange characters whom he had known, 'Mrs. Thrale said, "I wonder, Sir, you never went to see Mrs. Rudd among the rest." "Why, Madam, I believe I should," said he, "if it was not for the newspapers; but I am prevented many frolics that I should like very well, since I am become such a theme for the papers."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 90.

[233] Pope, _Essay on Man_, ii. 2.

[234] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 14 (Tuesday):--'----goes away on Thursday, very well satisfied with his journey. Some great men have promised to obtain him a place, and then a fig for my father and his new wife.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 324. He is writing no doubt of Boswell; yet, as Lord Auchinleck had been married more than six years, it is odd his wife should be called _new_. Boswell, a year earlier, wrote to Temple of his hopes from Lord Pembroke:--'How happy should I be to get an independency by my own influence while my father is alive!' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 182. Johnson, in a second letter to Mrs. Thrale, written two days after Boswell left, says:--'B---- went away on Thursday night, with no great inclination to travel northward; but who can contend with destiny? ... He carries with him two or three good resolutions; I hope they will not mould upon the road.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 333.

[235] 1 _Corinthians_, xiii. 5.

[236] This pa.s.sage, which is found in Act iii, is not in the acting copy of _Douglas_.

[237] Malone was one of these gentlemen. See _post_, under June 30, 1784. Reynolds, after saying that eagerness for victory often led Johnson into acts of rudeness, while 'he was not thus strenuous for victory with his intimates in tete-a-tete conversations when there were no witnesses,' adds:--'Were I to write the Life of Dr. Johnson I would labour this point, to separate his conduct that proceeded from his pa.s.sions, and what proceeded from his reason, from his natural disposition seen in his quiet hours.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 462.

[238] These words must have been in the other copy. They are not in that which was preferred. BOSWELL.

[239] On June 3 he wrote that he was suffering from 'a very serious and troublesome fit of the gout. I enjoy all the dignity of lameness. I receive ladies and dismiss them sitting. _Painful pre-eminence_.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 337. 'Painful pre-eminence' comes from Addison's _Cato_, act iii. sc. 5. Pope, in his _Essay on Man_, iv. 267, borrows the phrase:--

'Painful pre-eminence! yourself to view, Above life's weakness and its comforts too.'

It is humorously introduced into the _Rolliad_ in the description of the Speaker:--

'There Cornewall sits, and oh! unhappy fate!

Must sit for ever through the long debate.

Painful pre-eminence! he hears, 'tis true, Fox, North, and Burke, but hears Sir Joseph too.'

[240] Dean Stanley (_Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, p. 297) says:-- 'One expression at least has pa.s.sed from the inscription into the proverbial Latin of mankind--

"Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit."'

In a note he adds:--'Professor Conington calls my attention to the fact that, if this were a genuine cla.s.sical expression, it would be _ornaret_. The slight mistake proves that it is Johnson's own.' The mistake, of course, is the Dean's and the Professor's, who did not take the trouble to ascertain what Johnson had really written. If we may trust Cradock, Johnson here gave in a Latin form what he had already said in English. 'When a bookseller ventured to say something rather slightingly of Dr. Goldsmith, Johnson retorted:--"Sir, Goldsmith never touches any subject but he adorns it." Once when I found the Doctor very low at his chambers I related this circ.u.mstance to him, and it instantly proved a cordial.' Cradock's _Memoirs_, i. 231.

[241] According to Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, i. 1), he was born on Nov. 10, 1728. There is a pa.s.sage in Goldsmith's _Bee_, No. 2, which leads me to think that he himself held Nov. 12 as his birth-day. He says; 'I shall be sixty-two the twelfth of next November.' Now, as _The Bee_ was published in October 1759, he would be, not sixty-two, but just half that number--thirty-one on his next birth-day. It is scarcely likely that he selected the number and the date at random.

[242] Reynolds chose the spot in Westminster Abbey where the monument should stand. Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 326.

[243] For A. Chamier, see _ante_, i. 478, note 1; and _post_, April 9, 1778: for P. Metcalfe, _post_, under Dec. 20, 1782. W. Vach.e.l.l seems only known to fame as having signed this _Round Robin_, and attended Sir Joshua's funeral. Who Tho. Franklin was I cannot learn. He certainly was not Thomas Francklin, D.D., the Professor of Greek at Cambridge and translator of _Sophocles_ and _Lucian_, mentioned _post_, end of 1780.

The Rev. Dr. Luard, the Registrar of that University, has kindly compared for me six of his signatures ranging from 1739 to 1770. In each of these the _c_ is very distinct, while the writing is unlike the signature in the _Round Robin_.

[244] Horace Walpole wrote in Dec. of this year:--'The conversation of many courtiers was openly in favour of arbitrary power. Lord Huntingdon and Dr. Barnard, who was promised an Irish Bishopric, held such discourse publicly.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 91.

[245] He however upon seeing Dr. Warton's name to the suggestion, that the Epitaph should be in English, observed to Sir Joshua, 'I wonder that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool.' He said too, 'I should have thought Mund Burke would have had more sense.'

Mr. Langton, who was one of the company at Sir Joshua's, like a st.u.r.dy scholar, resolutely refused to sign the _Round Robin_. The Epitaph is engraved upon Dr. Goldsmith's monument without any alteration. At another time, when somebody endeavoured to argue in favour of its being in English, Johnson said, 'The language of the country of which a learned man was a native, is not the language fit for his epitaph, which should be in ancient and permanent language. Consider, Sir; how you should feel, were you to find at Rotterdam an epitaph upon Erasmus _in Dutch_!' For my own part I think it would be best to have Epitaphs written both in a learned language, and in the language of the country; so that they might have the advantage of being more universally understood, and at the same time be secured of cla.s.sical stability. I cannot, however, but be of opinion, that it is not sufficiently discriminative. Applying to Goldsmith equally the epithets of '_Poetae_, _Historici_, _Physici_,' is surely not right; for as to his claim to the last of those epithets, I have heard Johnson himself say, 'Goldsmith, Sir, will give us a very fine book upon the subject; but if he can distinguish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of his knowledge of natural history.' His book is indeed an excellent performance, though in some instances he appears to have trusted too much to Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the science on which he wrote so admirably. For instance, he tells us that the _cow_ sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable errour, which Goldsmith has faithfully transferred into his book. It is wonderful that Buffon, who lived so much in the country, at his n.o.ble seat, should have fallen into such a blunder. I suppose he has confounded the _cow_ with the _deer_. BOSWELL. Goldsmith says:--'At three years old the cow sheds its horns and new ones arise in their place, which continue as long as it lives.' _Animated Nature_, iii. 12. This statement remains in the second edition. Johnson said that the epitaph on Sir J. Macdonald 'should have been in Latin, as everything intended to be universal and permanent should be.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 5, 1773. He treated the notion of an English inscription to Smollett 'with great contempt, saying, "an English inscription would be a disgrace to Dr. Smollett."'

_Ib_. Oct. 28, 1773.

[246] Beside this Latin Epitaph, Johnson honoured the memory of his friend Goldsmith with a short one in Greek. See _ante_, July 5, 1774.

BOSWELL.

[247] See _ante_, Oct. 24, 1775.

[248] Upon a settlement of our account of expences on a Tour to the Hebrides, there was a balance due to me, which Dr. Johnson chose to discharge by sending books. BOSWELL.

[249] See _post_, under Nov. 29, 1777.

[250] Baretti told me that Johnson complained of my writing very long letters to him when I was upon the continent; which was most certainly true; but it seems my friend did not remember it. BOSWELL.

[251] See _ante_, iii. 27.

[252] See _ante_, i. 446, for Johnson's remedies against melancholy.