Life of Johnson
Chapter 162 : [817] These books Dr. Johnson presented to the Bodleian Library, BOSWELL.[818] On the

[817] These books Dr. Johnson presented to the Bodleian Library, BOSWELL.

[818] On the cover enclosing them, Dr. Johnson wrote, 'If my delay has given any reason for supposing that I have not a very deep sense of the honour done me by asking my judgement, I am very sorry.' BOSWELL.

[819] See _post_, March 20, 1776.

[820] 'Sir Joshua was much affected by the death of Goldsmith, to whom he had been a very sincere friend. He did not touch the pencil for that day, a circ.u.mstance most extraordinary for him who pa.s.sed _no day without a line_. Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 325.

[821] He owed his tailor 79, though he had paid him 110 in 1773. In this payment was included 35 for his nephew's clothes. We find such entries in his own bills as--'To Tyrian bloom satin grain and, garter blue silk beeches 8 2s. 7d. To Queen's-blue dress suit 11 17s. 0d. To your blue velvet suit 21 10s. 9d.' (See _ante_, ii. 83.) Filby's son said to Mr. Prior:--'My father attributed no blame to Goldsmith; he had been a good customer, and had he lived would have paid every farthing.'

Prior's _Goldsmith_, ii. 232.

[822] 'Soon after Goldsmith's death certain persons dining with Sir Joshua commented rather freely on some part of his works, which, in their opinion, neither discovered talent nor originality. To this Dr.

Johnson listened in his usual growling manner; when, at length, his patience being exhausted, he rose with great dignity, looked them full in the face, and exclaimed, "If n.o.body was suffered to abuse poor Goldy, but those who could write as well, he would have few censors."'

Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 327. To Goldsmith might be applied the words that Johnson wrote of Savage (_Works_, viii. 191):--'Vanity may surely be readily pardoned in him to whom life afforded no other comforts than barren praises, and the consciousness of deserving them. Those are no proper judges of his conduct who have slumbered away their time on the down of plenty; nor will any wise man presume to say, "Had I been in Savage's condition, I should have lived or written better than Savage."'

[823] Mrs. Thrale's mother died the summer before (_ante_, p. 263). Most of her children died early. By 1777 she had lost seven out of eleven.

_Post_, May 3, 1777.

[824] Johnson had not seen Langton since early in the summer of 1773. He was then suffering from a fever and an inflammation in the eye, for which he was twice copiously bled. (_Pr. and Med_. 130.) The following winter he was distressed by a cough. (_Ib_ p. 135.) Neither of these illnesses was severe enough to be called dreadful. In the spring of 1770 he was very ill. (_Ib_ p. 93.) On Sept. 18, 1771, he records:--'For the last year I have been slowly recovering from the violence of my last illness.' (_Ib_ p. 104.) On April 18, 1772, in reviewing the last year, he writes:--'An unpleasing incident is almost certain to hinder my rest; this is the remainder of my last illness.' (_Ib_ p. iii.) In the winter of 1772-3, he suffered from a cough. (_Ib_ p. 121.) I think that he must mean the illness of 1770, though it is to be noticed that he wrote to Boswell on July 5, 1773:--'Except this eye [the inflamed eye] I am very well.' (_Ante_, p. 264.)

[825] 'Lord have mercy upon us.'

[826] See Johnson's _Works_, i. 172, for his Latin version. D'Israeli (_Curiosities of Literature_, ed. 1834, vi. 368) says 'that Oldys [_ante_, i. 175] always a.s.serted that he was the author of this song, and as he was a rigid lover of truth I doubt not that he wrote it. I have traced it through a dozen of collections since the year 1740, the first in which I find it.'

[827] Mr. Seward (_Anec_, ii. 466) gives the following version of these lines:

'Whoe'er thou art with reverence tread Where Goldsmith's letter'd dust is laid.

If nature and the historic page, If the sweet muse thy care engage.

Lament him dead whose powerful mind Their various energies combined.'

[828] See _ante_, p. 265.

[829] At Lleweney, the house of Mrs. Thrale's cousin, Mr. Cotton, Dr.

Johnson stayed nearly three weeks. Johnson's _Journey into North Wales_, July 28, 1774. Mr. Fitzmaurice, Lord Shelburne's brother, had a house there in 1780; for Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 7 of that year:--'He has almost made me promise to pa.s.s part of the summer at Llewenny.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 113.

[830] Lord Hailes was Sir David Dalrymple. See _ante_, i. 267. He is not to be confounded with Sir John Dalrymple, mentioned _ante_, ii. 210.

[831]

E'en in a bishop I can spy desert; Seeker is decent, Rundel has a heart.'

Pope's _Epilogue to the Satires_, ii. 70.

[832] In the first two editions _forenoon_. Boswell, in three other pa.s.sages, made the same change in the third edition. _Forenoon_ perhaps he considered a Scotticism. The correction above being made in one of his letters, renders it likely that he corrected them before publication.

[833] Horace, _Ars Poet_. l. 373.

[834] 'Do not you long to hear the roarings of the old lion over the bleak mountains of the North?' wrote Steevens to Garrick. _Garrick Corres_, ii. 122.

[835] 'Aug. 16. We came to Penmanmaur by daylight, and found a way, lately made, very easy and very safe. It was cut smooth and enclosed between parallel walls; the outer of which secures the pa.s.senger from the precipice, which is deep and dreadful.... The sea beats at the bottom of the way. At evening the moon shone eminently bright: and our thoughts of danger being now past, the rest of our journey was very pleasant. At an hour somewhat late we came to Bangor, where we found a very mean inn, and had some difficulty to obtain lodging. I lay in a room where the other bed had two men.' Johnson's _Journey into North Wales_.

[836] He did not go to the top of Snowdon. He says:--'On the side of Snowdon are the remains of a large fort, to which we climbed with great labour. I was breathless and hara.s.sed,' _Ib_ Aug. 26.

[837] I had written to him, to request his interposition in behalf of a convict, who I thought was very unjustly condemned. BOSWELL.

[838] He had kept a journal which was edited by Mr. Duppa in 1816. It will be found _post_, in vol. v.

[839] 'When the general election broke up the delightful society in which we had spent some time at Beconsfield, Dr. Johnson shook the hospitable master of the house [Burke] kindly by the hand, and said, "Farewell my dear Sir, and remember that I wish you all the success which ought to be wished you, which can possibly be wished you indeed--_by an honest man_."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 242. The dissolution was on Sept. 30. Johnson, with the Thrales, as his _Journal_ shows, had arrived at Beconsfield on the 24th. See _ante_, ii. 222, for Johnson's opinion of Burke's honesty.

[840] Mr. Perkins was for a number of years the worthy superintendant of Mr. Thrale's great brewery, and after his death became one of the proprietors of it; and now resides in Mr. Thrale's house in Southwark, which was the scene of so many literary meetings, and in which he continues the liberal hospitality for which it was eminent. Dr. Johnson esteemed him much. He hung up in the counting-house a fine proof of the admirable mizzotinto of Dr. Johnson, by Doughty; and when Mrs. Thrale asked him somewhat flippantly, 'Why do you put him up in the counting-house?' he answered, 'Because, Madam, I wish to have one wise man there.' 'Sir,' (said Johnson,) 'I thank you. It is a very handsome compliment, and I believe you speak sincerely.' BOSWELL.

[841] In the news-papers. BOSWELL.

[842] 'Oct. 16, 1774. In Southwark there has been outrageous rioting; but I neither know the candidates, their connections, nor success.'

Horace Walpole's _Letters_, vi. 134. Of one Southwark election Mrs.

Piozzi writes (_Anec_. p. 214):--'A Borough election once showed me Mr.

Johnson's toleration of boisterous mirth. A rough fellow, a hatter by trade, seeing his beaver in a state of decay seized it suddenly with one hand, and clapping him on the back with the other. "Ah, Master Johnson,"

says he, "this is no time to be thinking about _hats_." "No, no, Sir,"

replies our doctor in a cheerful tone, "hats are of no use now, as you say, except to throw up in the air and huzza with," accompanying his words with the true election halloo.'

[843] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 19, 1773. Johnson thus mentions him (_Works_, ix. 142):--'Here we had the last embrace of this amiable man, who, while these pages were preparing to attest his virtues, perished in the pa.s.sage between Ulva and Inch Kenneth.'

[844] Alluding to a pa.s.sage in a letter of mine, where speaking of his _Journey to the Hebrides_, I say, 'But has not _The Patriot_ been an interruption, by the time taken to write it, and the time luxuriously spent in listening to its applauses?' BOSWELL.

[845] We had projected a voyage together up the Baltic, and talked of visiting some of the more northern regions. BOSWELL. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 16.

[846] See _ante_, i. 72.

[847] John Hoole, the son of a London watchmaker, was born in Dec. 1727, and died on Aug. 2, 1803. At the age of seventeen he was placed as a clerk in the East-India House; but, like his successors, James and John Stuart Mill, he was an author as well as a clerk. See _ante_, i. 383.

[848] _Cleonice_. BOSWELL. Nichols (_Lit. Anec_. ii. 407) says that as _Cleonice_ was a failure on the stage 'Mr. Hoole returned a considerable part of the money which he had received for the copy-right, alleging that, as the piece was not successful on the stage, it could not be very profitable to the bookseller, and ought not to be a loss.'

[849] See _ante_, i. 255.

[850] See _post_, March 20, 1776.

[851] 'The King,' wrote Horace Walpole on Jan. 21, 1775 (_Letters_, vi.

179), 'sent for the book in MS., and then wondering said, "I protest, Johnson seems to be a Papist and a Jacobite--so he did not know why he had been made to give him a pension."'

[852] Boswell's little daughter. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug, 15, 1773.

[853] 'Bis dat qui cito dat, minimi gratia tarda pretii est.' Alciat's _Emblems_, Alciati _Opera_ 1538, p. 821.

[854] It was at the Turk's Head coffee-house in the Strand. See _ante_, i. 450.

[855] _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 2.

[856] 'Exegi monumentum aere perennius.' Horace, _Odes_, iii. 30. I.

[857] The second edition was not brought out till the year after Johnson's death. These mistakes remain uncorrected. Johnson's _Works_, ix. 44. 150.