Life of Johnson
Chapter 145 : Honours to one in my situation are something like ruffles to one that wants a s.h.i.+r

Honours to one in my situation are something like ruffles to one that wants a s.h.i.+rt.' Prior's _Goldsmith_, ii. 221. 'Wicked Will Whiston,'

&c., comes from Swift's _Ode for Music, On the Longitude_ (Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xxiv. 39), which begins,--

'The longitude miss'd on By wicked Will Whiston; And not better hit on By good Master Ditton.'

It goes on so grossly and so offensively as regards one and the other, that Boswell's comparison was a great insult to Langton as well as to Gibbon.

[203] It has this inscription in a blank leaf:--'_Hunc librum D.D.

Samuel Johnson, eo quod hic loci studiis interdum vacaret_.' Of this library, which is an old Gothick room, he was very fond. On my observing to him that some of the _modern_ libraries of the University were more commodious and pleasant for study, as being more s.p.a.cious and airy, he replied, 'Sir, if a man has a mind to _prance_, he must study at Christ-Church and All-Souls.' BOSWELL.

[204] During this visit he seldom or never dined out. He appeared to be deeply engaged in some literary work. Miss Williams was now with him at Oxford. BOSWELL. It was more likely the state of his health which kept him at home. Writing from Oxford on June 27 of this year to Mrs. Thrale, who had been ill, he says:--'I will not increase your uneasiness with mine. I hope I grow better. I am very cautious and very timorous.'

_Piozzi Letters_, i. 21.

[205] Boswell wrote a letter, signed with his own name, to the _London Magazine_ for 1769 (p. 451) describing the Jubilee. It is followed by a print of himself 'in the dress of an armed Corsican chief,' and by an account, no doubt written by himself. It says:--'Of the most remarkable masks upon this occasion was James Boswell, Esq., in the dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre about twelve o'clock.

On the front of his cap was embroidered in gold letters, _Viva La Liberta_; and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and c.o.c.kade, so that it had an elegant, as well as a warlike appearance. He wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room he drew universal attention.' Cradock (_Memoirs_, i. 217) gives a melancholy account of the festival. The preparations were all behind-hand and the weather was stormy. 'There was a masquerade in the evening, and all zealous friends endeavoured to keep up the spirit of it as long as they could, till they were at last informed that the Avon was rising so very fast that no delay could be admitted. The ladies of our party were conveyed by planks from the building to the coach, and found that the wheels had been two feet deep in water.'

Garrick in 1771 was asked by the Stratford committee to join them in celebrating a Jubilee every year, as 'the most likely method to promote the interest and reputation of their town.' Boswell caught at the proposal eagerly, and writing to Garrick said:--'I please myself with the prospect of attending you at several more Jubilees at Stratford-upon-Avon.' _Garrick Corres_. i. 414, 435.

[206] Garrick's correspondents not seldom spoke disrespectfully of Johnson. Thus, Mr. Sharp, writing to him in 1769, talks of 'risking the sneer of one of Dr. Johnson's ghastly smiles.' _Ib_ i. 334. Dr. J.

Hoadly, in a letter dated July 25, 1775, says:--'Mr. Good-enough has written a kind of parody of Puffy Pensioner's _Taxation no Tyranny_, under the n.o.ble t.i.tle of _Resistance no Rebellion_.' _Ib_ ii. 68.

[207] See ante, i. 181.

[208] In the Preface to my _Account of Corsica_, published in 1768, I thus express myself:

'He who publishes a book affecting not to be an authour, and professing an indifference for literary fame, may possibly impose upon many people such an idea of his consequence as he wishes may be received. For my part, I should be proud to be known as an authour, and I have an ardent ambition for literary fame; for, of all possessions, I should imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish a book, which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of having that character lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve an uniform dignity among those who see us every day, is hardly possible; and to aim at it, must put us under the fetters of perpetual restraint. The authour of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superior genius, when he considers that by those who know him only as an authour, he never ceases to be respected. Such an authour, when in his hours of gloom and discontent, may have the consolation to think, that his writings are, at that very time, giving pleasure to numbers; and such an authour may cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great object to the n.o.blest minds in all ages.' BOSWELL. His preface to the third edition thus ends:--'When I first ventured to send this book into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for literary fame. I have obtained my desire: and whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy.' The dedication of the first edition and the preface of the third are both dated Oct. 29--one 1767, and the other 1768. Oct. 29 was his birthday.

[209] Paoli's father had been one of the leaders of the Corsicans in their revolt against Genoa in 1734. Paoli himself was chosen by them as their General-in-chief in 1755. In 1769 the island was conquered by the French. He escaped in an English s.h.i.+p, and settled in England. Here he stayed till 1789, when Mirabeau moved in the National a.s.sembly the recall of all the Corsican patriots. Paoli was thereupon appointed by Louis XVI. Lieutenant-general and military commandant in Corsica. He resisted the violence of the Convention, and was, in consequence, summoned before it. Refusing to obey, an expedition was sent to arrest him. Napoleon Buonaparte fought in the French army, but Paoli's party proved the stronger. The islanders sought the aid of Great Britain, and offered the crown of Corsica to George III. The offer was accepted, but by an act of incredible folly, not Paoli, but Sir Gilbert Eliot, was made Viceroy. Paoli returned to England, where he died in 1807, at the age of eighty-two. In 1796 Corsica was abandoned by the English. By the Revolution it ceased to be a conquered province, having been formally declared an integral part of France. At the present day the Corsicans are proud of being citizens of that great country; no less proud, however, are they of Pascal Paoli, and of the gallant struggle for independence of their forefathers.

[210] According to the _Ann. Reg_. (xii. 132) Paoli arrived in London on Sept. 21. He certainly was in London on Oct. 10, for on that day he was presented by Boswell to Johnson. Yet Wesley records in his _Journal_ (iii. 370) on Oct. 13:--'I very narrowly missed meeting the great Pascal Paoli. He landed in the dock [at Portsmouth] but a very few minutes after I left the waterside. Surely He who hath been with him from his youth up hath not sent him into England for nothing.' In the _Public Advertiser_ for Oct. 4 there is the following entry, inserted no doubt by Boswell:--'On Sunday last General Paoli, accompanied by James Boswell, Esq., took an airing in Hyde Park in his coach.' Priors _Goldsmith_, i. 450. Horace Walpole writes:--'Paoli's character had been so advantageously exaggerated by Mr. Boswell's enthusiastic and entertaining account of him, that the Opposition were ready to incorporate him in the list of popular tribunes. The Court artfully intercepted the project; and deeming patriots of all nations equally corruptible, bestowed a pension of 1000 a year on the unheroic fugitive.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, iii. 387.

[211] Johnson, writes Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_., p. 228), ridiculed a friend 'who, looking out on Streatham Common from our windows, lamented the enormous wickedness of the times, because some bird-catchers were busy there one fine Sunday morning. "While half the Christian world is permitted," said Johnson, "to dance and sing and celebrate Sunday as a day of festivity, how comes your puritanical spirit so offended with frivolous and empty deviations from exactness? Whoever loads life with unnecessary scruples, Sir," continued he, "provokes the attention of others on his conduct, and incurs the censure of singularity, without reaping the reward of superior virtue."' See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 20, 1773.

[212] The first edition of Hume's _History of England_ was full of Scotticisms, many of which he corrected in subsequent editions. MALONE.

According to Mr. J. H. Burton (_Life of Hume_, ii. 79), 'He appears to have earnestly solicited the aid of Lyttelton, Mallet, and others, whose experience of English composition might enable them to detect Scotticisms.' Mr. Burton gives instances of alterations made in the second edition. He says also that 'in none of his historical or philosophical writings does any expression used by him, unless in those cases where a Scotticism has escaped his vigilance, betray either the district or the county of his origin.' _Ib_ i. 9. Hume was shown in ma.n.u.script Reid's _Inquiry into the Human Mind_. Though it was an attack on his own philosophy, yet in reading it 'he kept,' he says, 'a watchful eye all along over the style,' so that he might point out any Scotticisms. _Ib_ ii. 154. Nevertheless, as Dugald Stewart says in his _Life of Robertson_ (p. 214), 'Hume fails frequently both in purity and grammatical correctness.' Even in his later letters I have noticed Scotticisms.

[213] In 1763 Wilkes, as author of _The North Briton_, No. 45, had been arrested on 'a general warrant directed to four messengers to take up any persons without naming or describing them with any certainty, and to bring them, together with their papers.' Such a warrant as this Chief Justice Pratt (Lord Camden) declared to be 'unconst.i.tutional, illegal, and absolutely void.' _Ann. Reg_. vi. 145.

[214] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 24, 1773.

[215] In the Spring of this year, at a meeting of the electors of Southwark, 'instructions' had been presented to Mr. Thrale and his brother-member, of which the twelfth was:--'That you promote a bill for shortening the duration of Parliaments.' _Gent. Mag_. x.x.xix. 162.

[216] This paradox Johnson had exposed twenty-nine years earlier, in his _Life of Sir Francis Drake_, _Works_, vi. 366. In _Ra.s.selas_, chap. xi., he considers also the same question. Imlac is 'inclined to conclude that, if nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy as our minds take a wider range.' He then enumerates the advantages which civilisation confers on the Europeans. 'They are surely happy,' said the prince, 'who have all these conveniences.' 'The Europeans,' answered Imlac, 'are less unhappy than we, but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.' Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Skye, Johnson said: 'The traveller wanders through a naked desert, gratified sometimes, but rarely, with the sight of cows, and now and then finds a heap of loose stones and turf in a cavity between rocks, where a being born with all those powers which education expands, and all those sensations which culture refines, is condemned to shelter itself from the wind and rain. Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy, but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 150. See _post_, April 21 and May 7, 1773, April 26, 1776, and June 15, 1784.

[217] James Burnet, a Scotch Lord of Session, by the t.i.tle of Lord Monboddo. 'He was a devout believer in the virtues of the heroic ages, and the deterioration of civilised mankind; a great contemner of luxuries, insomuch that he never used a wheel carriage.' WALTER SCOTT, quoted in Croker's _Boswell_, p. 227. There is some account of him in Chambers's _Traditions of Edinburgh_, ii. 175. In his _Origin of Language_, to which Boswell refers in his next note, after praising Henry Stephen for his _Greek Dictionary_, he continues:--'But to compile a dictionary of a barbarous language, such as all the modern are compared with the learned, is a work which a man of real genius, rather than undertake, would choose to die of hunger, the most cruel, it is said, of all deaths. I should, however, have praised this labour of Doctor Johnson's more, though of the meanest kind,' &c. Monboddo's _Origin of Language_, v. 274. On p. 271, he says:--'Dr. Johnson was the most invidious and malignant man I have ever known.' See _post_, March 21, 1772, May 8, 1773, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21, 1773.

[218] His Lords.h.i.+p having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of Dr.

Johnson, in my company, I on one occasion during the life-time of my ill.u.s.trious friend could not refrain from retaliation, and repeated to him this saying. He has since published I don't know how many pages in one of his curious books, attempting, in much anger, but with pitiful effect, to persuade mankind that my ill.u.s.trious friend was not the great and good man which they esteemed and ever will esteem him to be. BOSWELL.

[219] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 108) says:--'Mr. Johnson was indeed unjustly supposed to be a lover of singularity. Few people had a more settled reverence for the world than he, or was less captivated by new modes of behaviour introduced, or innovations on the long-received customs of common life.' In writing to Dr. Taylor to urge him to take a certain course, he says:--'This I would have you do, not in compliance with solicitation or advice, but as a justification of yourself to the world; _the world has always a right to be regarded_.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 343. In _The Adventurer_, No. 131, he has a paper on 'Singularities.' After quoting Fontenelle's observation on Newton that 'he was not distinguished from other men by any singularity, either natural or affected,' he goes on:--'Some may be found who, supported by the consciousness of great abilities, and elevated by a long course of reputation and applause, voluntarily consign themselves to singularity, affect to cross the roads of life because they know that they shall not be jostled, and indulge a boundless gratification of will, because they perceive that they shall be quietly obeyed.... Singularity is, I think, in its own nature universally and invariably displeasing.' Writing of Swift, he says (_Works_, viii. 223):--'Whatever he did, he seemed willing to do in a manner peculiar to himself, without sufficiently considering that singularity, as it implies a contempt of the general practice, is a kind of defiance which justly provokes the hostility of ridicule; he, therefore, who indulges peculiar habits is worse than others, if he be not better.' See _ante_, Oct. 1765, the record in his _Journal_:--'At church. To avoid all singularity.'

[220] 'He had many other particularities, for which he gave sound and philosophical reasons. As this humour still grew upon him he chose to wear a turban instead of a periwig; concluding very justly that a bandage of clean linen about his head was much more wholesome, as well as cleanly, than the caul of a wig, which is soiled with frequent perspirations.' _Spectator_, No. 576.

[221] See _post_, June 28, 1777, note.

[222] 'Depend upon it,' he said, 'no woman is the worse for sense and knowledge.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 19; 1773--See, however, _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection, where he says:--'Supposing a wife to be of a studious or argumentative turn, it would be very troublesome'

[223]

'Though Artemisia talks by fits Of councils, cla.s.sics, fathers, wits; Reads Malbranche, Boyle, and Locke: Yet in some things, methinks she fails; 'Twere well if she would pare her nails, And wear a cleaner smock.'

SWIFT. _Imitation of English Poets, Works_, xxiv. 6.

[224] _A Wife_, a poem, 1614. BOSWELL.

[225] In the original _that_.

[226] What a succession of compliments was paid by Johnson's old school-fellow, whom he met a year or two later in Lichfield, who 'has had, as he phrased it, _a matter of four wives_, for which' added Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 'neither you nor I like him much the better.'

_Piozzi Letters_, i. 41.

[227] Mr. Langton married the widow of the Earl of Rothes; _post_, March 20, 1771.

[228] Horace Walpole, writing of 1764, says:--'As one of my objects was to raise the popularity of our party, I had inserted a paragraph in the newspapers observing that the abolition of vails to servants had been set on foot by the Duke of Bedford, and had been opposed by the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re. Soon after a riot happened at Ranelagh, in which the footmen mobbed and ill-treated some gentlemen who had been active in that reformation.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, ii. 3.

[229]

'Alexis shunned his fellow swains, Their rural sports and jocund strains, (Heaven guard us all from Cupid's bow!) He lost his crook, he left his flocks; And wandering through the lonely rocks, He nourished endless woe.'

_The Despairing Shepherd_.

[230] 'In his amorous effusions Prior is less happy; for they are not dictated by nature or by pa.s.sion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They have the coldness of Cowley without his wit, the dull exercises of a skilful versifier, resolved at all adventures to write something about Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study.... In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 15, 22.

[231] _Florizel and Perdita_ is Garrick's version of _The Winters Tale_.

He cut down the five acts to three. The line, which is misquoted, is in one of Perdita's songs:--

'That giant ambition we never can dread; Our roofs are too low for so lofty a head; Content and sweet cheerfulness open our door, They smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.'

Act ii. sc. 1.

[232] Horace. _Sat_. i. 4. 34.

[233] See _ante_, ii. 66.

[234] Horace Walpole told Malone that 'he was about twenty-two [twenty-four] years old when his father retired; and that he remembered his offering one day to read to him, finding that time hung heavy on his hands. "What," said he, "will you read, child?" Mr. Walpole, considering that his father had long been engaged in public business, proposed to read some history. "No," said he, "don't read history to me; that can't be true."' Prior's _Malone_, p. 387. See also _post_, April 30, 1773, and Oct. 10, 1779.

[235] See _ante_, i 75, _post_, Oct 12, 1779, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, August 15, 1773. Boswell himself had met Whitefield; for mentioning him in his _Letter to the People of Scotland_ (p. 25), he adds:--'Of whose pious and animated society I had some share.' Southey thus describes Whitefield in his _Life of Wesley_ (i. 126):--'His voice excelled both in melody and compa.s.s, and its fine modulations were happily accompanied by that grace of action which he possessed in an eminent degree, and which has been said to be the chief requisite of an orator. An ignorant man described his eloquence oddly but strikingly, when he said that Mr.

Whitefield preached like a lion. So strange a comparison conveyed no unapt a notion of the force and vehemence and pa.s.sion of that oratory which awed the hearers, and made them tremble like Felix before the apostle.' Benjamin Franklin writes (_Memoirs_, i. 163):--'Mr.

Whitefield's eloquence had a wonderful power over the hearts and purses of his hearers, of which I myself was an instance.' He happened to be present at a sermon which, he perceived, was to finish with a collection for an object which had not his approbation. 'I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all.'

[236] 'What an idea may we not form of an interview between such a scholar and philosopher as Mr. Johnson, and such a legislatour and general as Paoli.' Boswell's _Corsica_, p. 198.