Life of Johnson
Chapter 169 : [1070] The following pa.s.sages shew that the thought, or something like it, was not n

[1070] The following pa.s.sages shew that the thought, or something like it, was not new to Johnson:--'Bruyere declares that we are come into the world too late to produce anything new, that nature and life are preoccupied, and that description and sentiment have been long exhausted.' _The Rambler_, No. 143. 'Some advantage the ancients might gain merely by priority, which put them in possession of the most natural sentiments, and left us nothing but servile repet.i.tion or forced conceits.' _Ib_ No. 169. 'My earlier predecessors had the whole field of life before them, untrodden and unsurveyed; characters of every kind shot up in their way, and those of the most luxuriant growth, or most conspicuous colours, were naturally cropt by the first sickle. They that follow are forced to peep into neglected corners.' _The Idler_, No. 3.

'The first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction.' _Ra.s.selas_, ch. x. Some years later he wrote:--'Whatever can happen to man has happened so often that little remains for fancy or invention.' _Works_, vii. 311. See also _The Rambler_, No. 86. In _The Adventurer_, No. 95, he wrote:--'The complaint that all topicks are preoccupied is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness.' See _post_, under Aug.

29, 1783. Dr. Warton (_Essay on Pope_, i. 88) says that 'St. Jerome relates that Donatus, explaining that pa.s.sage in Terence, _Nihil est dictum quod non sit dictum prius_, railed at the ancients for taking from him his best thoughts. _Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt_.'

[1071] Warburton, in the Dedication of his _Divine Legation_ to the Free-thinkers (vol. I. p. ii), says:--'Nothing, I believe, strikes the serious observer with more surprize, in this age of novelties, than that strange propensity to infidelity, so visible in men of almost every condition: amongst whom the advocates of Deism are received with all the applauses due to the inventers of the arts of life, or the deliverers of oppressed and injured nations.' See _ante_, ii. 81.

[1072] In _The Rambler_, No. 89, Johnson writes of 'that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation, where suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence; where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness to offend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be pleased.' In _The Idler_, No. 34, he says 'that companion will be oftenest welcome whose talk flows out with inoffensive copiousness and unenvied insipidity.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Such tattle as filled your last sweet letter prevents one great inconvenience of absence, that of returning home a stranger and an inquirer. The variations of life consist of little things. Important innovations are soon heard, and easily understood. Men that meet to talk of physicks or metaphysicks, or law or history, may be immediately acquainted. We look at each other in silence, only for want of petty talk upon slight occurrences.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 354.

[1073] _Pr. and Med_. p. 138. BOSWELL.

[1074] This line is not, as appears, a quotation, but an abstract of p.

139 of _Pr. and Med_.

[1075] This is a proverbial sentence. 'h.e.l.l,' says Herbert, 'is full of good meanings and wis.h.i.+ngs.' _Jacula Prudentum_, p. 11, edit 1651. MALONE.

[1076] Boswell wrote to Temple:--'I have only to tell you, as my divine, that I yesterday received the holy sacrament in St. Paul's Church, and was exalted in piety.' It was in the same letter that he mentioned 'Asiatic multiplicity' (_ante_ p. 352, note 1). _Letters of Boswell_, p. 189.

[1077]

'Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici, Solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum'

Horace, _Epis_. i. 6. 1.

'Not to admire is all the art I know, To make men happy and keep them so'

Pope's _Imitations_, adapted from Creech.

[1078]

'We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love; And even as these are well and wisely fixed, In dignity of being we ascend.'

Wordsworth's _Works_, ed. 1857, vi. 135.

[1079]

'Amoret's as sweet and good, As the most delicious food; Which but tasted does impart Life and gladness to the heart.

Sacharissa's beauty's wine, Which to madness does incline; Such a liquor as no brain That is mortal can sustain.'

Waller's _Epistles_, xii. BOSWELL.

[1080] Not that he would have wished Boswell 'to talk from books.' 'You and I,' he once said to him, 'do not talk from books.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. 3, 1773. See _post_, iii, 108, note 1, for Boswell's want of learning.

[1081] See _post_, under March 30, 1783.

[1082] Yet he sat to Miss Reynolds, as he tells us, perhaps ten times (_post_, under June 17, 1783), and 'Miss Reynolds's mind,' he said, 'was very near to purity itself.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 80. Eight years later Barry, in his _a.n.a.lysis_ (_post_, May, 1783, note), said:--'Our females are totally, shamefully, and cruelly neglected in the appropriation of trades and employments.' Barry's _Works_, ii. 333.

[1083] The four most likely to be mentioned would be, I think, Beauclerk, Garrick, Langton, and Reynolds. On p. 359, Boswell mentions Beauclerk's 'acid manner.'

[1084] In his _Dictionary_, Johnson defines _muddy_ as _cloudy in mind, dull_; and quotes _The Winter's Tale_, act i. sc. 2. Wesley (_Journal_, ii. 10) writes:--'Honest, _muddy_ M. B. conducted me to his house.'

Johnson (_post_, March 22, 1776), after telling how an acquaintance of his drank, adds, 'not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always _muddy_.' It seems at first sight unlikely that he called Reynolds _muddy_; yet three months earlier he had written:--'Reynolds has taken too much to strong liquor.' _Ante_, p.

292, note 5.

[1085] In _The Rambler_, No. 72, Johnson defines good-humour as 'a habit of being pleased; a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition.'

[1086] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 17, 1773.

[1087] 'It is with their learning as with provisions in a besieged town, every one has a mouthful, and no one a bellyful.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 200.

[1088] 'Men bred in the Universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 158. Lord Shelburne said that the Earl of Bute had 'a great deal of superficial knowledge, such as is commonly to be met with in France and Scotland, chiefly upon matters of natural philosophy, mines, fossils, a smattering of mechanics, a little metaphysics, and a very false taste in everything.'

Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 139. 'A gentleman who had heard that Bentley was born in the north, said to Porson: "Wasn't he a Scotchman?"

"No, Sir," replied Porson, "Bentley was a great Greek scholar."'

Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 322.

[1089] Walton did not retire from business till 1643. But in 1664, Dr.

King, Bishop of Chichester, in a letter prefixed to his _Lives_, mentions his having been familiarly acquainted with him for forty years; and in 1631 he was so intimate with Dr. Donne that he was one of the friends who attended him on his death-bed. J. BOSWELL, jun. His first wife's uncle was George Cranmer, the grandson of the Archbishop's brother. His second wife was half-sister of Bishop Ken.

[1090] Johnson himself, as Boswell tells us, 'was somewhat susceptible of flattery.' _Post_, end of 1784.

[1091] The first time he dined with me, he was shewn into my book-room, and instantly poured over the lettering of each volume within his reach.

My collection of books is very miscellaneous, and I feared there might be some among them that he would not like. But seeing the number of volumes very considerable, he said, 'You are an honest man, to have formed so great an acc.u.mulation of knowledge.' BURNEY. Miss Burney describes this visit (_Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, ii. 93):--'Everybody rose to do him honour; and he returned the attention with the most formal courtesie. My father whispered to him that music was going forward, which he would not, my father thinks, have found out; and, placing him on the best seat vacant, told his daughters to go on with the duet, while Dr. Johnson, intently rolling towards them one eye--for they say he does not see with the other--made a grave nod, and gave a dignified motion with one hand, in silent approvance of the proceeding.' He was next introduced to Miss Burney, but 'his attention was not to be drawn off two minutes longer from the books, to which he now strided his way.

He pored over them shelf by shelf, almost brus.h.i.+ng them with his eye-lashes from near examination. At last, fixing upon something that happened to hit his fancy, he took it down, and standing aloof from the company, which he seemed clean and clear to forget, he began very composedly to read to himself, and as intently as if he had been alone in his own study. We were all excessively provoked, for we were languis.h.i.+ng, fretting, expiring to hear him talk.' Dr. Burney, taking up something that Mrs. Thrale had said, ventured to ask him about Bach's concert. 'The Doctor, comprehending his drift, good-naturedly put away his book, and see-sawing with a very humorous smile, drolly repeated, "Bach, Sir? Bach's concert? And pray, Sir, who is Bach? Is he a piper?"'

[1092] Reynolds, noting down 'such qualities as Johnson's works cannot convey,' says that 'the most distinguished was his possessing a mind which was, as I may say, always ready for use. Most general subjects had undoubtedly been already discussed in the course of a studious thinking life. In this respect few men ever came better prepared into whatever company chance might throw him; and the love which he had to society gave him a facility in the practice of applying his knowledge of the matter in hand, in which I believe he was never exceeded by any man.'

Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 454.

[1093] See _ante_, p. 225.

[1094] 'Our silly things called Histories,' wrote Burke (_Corres_, i.

337). 'The Duke of Richmond, Fox, and Burke,' said Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 82), 'were conversing about history, philosophy, and poetry. The Duke said, "I prefer history to philosophy or poetry, because history is _truth_." Both Fox and Burke disagreed with him: they thought that poetry was _truth_, being a representation of human nature.' Lord Bolingbroke had said (_Works_, iii. 322) that the child 'in riper years applies himself to history, or to that which he takes for history, to authorised romance.'

[1095] Mr. Plunket made a great sensation in the House of Commons (Feb.

28, 1825) by saying that history, if not judiciously read, 'was no better than an old almanack'--which Mercier had already said in his _Nouveau Tableau de Paris_--'Malet du Pan's and such like histories of the revolution are no better than an old almanack.' Boswell, we see, had antic.i.p.ated both. CROKER.

[1096] It was at Rome on Oct. 15, 1764, says Gibbon in a famous pa.s.sage, 'that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.' It was not till towards the end of 1772 that he 'undertook the composition of the first volume.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i.

198, 217-9.

[1097] See p. 348. BOSWELL. Gibbon, when with Johnson, perhaps felt that timidity which kept him silent in Parliament. 'I was not armed by nature and education,' he writes, 'with the intrepid energy of mind and voice _Vincentem strepitus, et natum rebus agendis_. Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 221. Some years before he entered Parliament, he said that his genius was 'better qualified for the deliberate compositions of the closet, than for the extemporary discourses of the Parliament. An unexpected objection would disconcert me; and as I am incapable of explaining to others what I do not thoroughly understand myself, I should be meditating while I ought to be answering.' _Ib_ ii. 39.

[1098] A very eminent physician, whose discernment is as acute and penetrating in judging of the human character as it is in his own profession, remarked once at a club where I was, that a lively young man, fond of pleasure, and without money, would hardly resist a solicitation from his mistress to go upon the highway, immediately after being present at the representation of _The Beggar's Opera_. I have been told of an ingenious observation by Mr. Gibbon, that '_The Beggar's Opera_ may, perhaps, have sometimes increased the number of highwaymen; but that it has had a beneficial effect in refining that cla.s.s of men, making them less ferocious, more polite, in short, more like gentlemen.'

Upon this Mr. Courtenay said, that 'Gay was the Orpheus of highwaymen.' BOSWELL.

[1099] 'The play like many others was plainly written only to divert without any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived without more speculation than life requires or admits to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and house-breakers seldom frequent the play-house, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.' _Works_, viii. 68.

[1100] 'The worthy Queensb'ry yet laments his Gay.'

_The Seasons_. Summer, l. 1422. Pope (_Prologue to the Satires_, l. 259) says:--

'Of all thy blameless life the sole return My verse, and Queensb'ry weeping o'er thy urn.'

Johnson (_Works_, viii. 69) mentions 'the affectionate attention of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, into whose house he was taken, and with whom he pa.s.sed the remaining part of his life.' Smollett, in _Humphry Clinker_, in the letters of Sept. 12 and 13, speaks of the Duke as 'one of the best men that ever breathed,' 'one of those few n.o.blemen whose goodness of heart does honour to human nature.' He died in 1778.