Life of Johnson
Chapter 91 : [1311] The writer of the article _Vacuum_ in the _Penny Cyclo_. (xxvi.76), quoting John

[1311] The writer of the article _Vacuum_ in the _Penny Cyclo_. (xxvi.

76), quoting Johnson's words, adds:--'That is, either all s.p.a.ce is full of matter, or there are parts of s.p.a.ce which have no matter. The alternative is undeniable, and the inference to which the modern philosophy would give the greatest probablility is, that all s.p.a.ce is full of matter in the common sense of the word, but really occupied by particles of matter with vacuous interstices.'

[1312] 'When any one tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened.' Humes _Essay on Miracles_, Part i.

See _post_ Sept. 22 1777, where Boswell again quoted this pa.s.sage.

[1313] A coffee-house over against Catherine Street, now the site of a tourists' ticket office. _Athenaeum_, No. 3041.

[1314] Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, i. 202) that Johnson once said to him:--'Whenever it is the duty of a young and old man to act at the same time with a spirit of independence and generosity; we may always have reason to hope that the young man will ardently perform, and to fear that the old man will desert, his duty.'

[1315] Boswell thus writes of this evening:--'I learn more from him than from any man I ever was with. He told me a very odd thing, that he knew at eighteen as much as he does now; that is to say, his judgment is much stronger, but he had then stored up almost all the facts he has now, and he says that he has led but an idle life; only think, Temple, of that!'

_Letters of Boswell_, p. 34. See _ante_, p. 56, and _post_, ii. 36. He told Windham in 1784 'that he read Latin with as much ease when he went to college as at present.' Windham's _Diary_, p. 17.

[1316] Johnson in 1739 wrote of 'those distempers and depressions, from which students, not well acquainted with the const.i.tution of the human body, sometimes fly for relief to wine instead of exercise, and purchase temporary ease, by the hazard of the most dreadful consequences.'

_Works_, vi. 271. In _The Rambler_, No. 85, he says:--'How much happiness is gained, and how much misery is escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.' Boswell records (_Hebrides_, Sept. 24, 1773):--'Dr. Johnson told us at breakfast, that he rode harder at a fox-chace than anybody.' Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 206) says:--'He certainly rode on Mr. Thrale's old hunter with a good firmness, and, though he would follow the hounds fifty miles an end sometimes, would never own himself either tired or amused. I think no praise ever went so close to his heart, as when Mr. Hamilton called out one day upon Brighthelmstone Downs, "Why Johnson rides as well, for aught I see, as the most illiterate fellow in England."' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1777:--'No season ever was finer. Barley, malt, beer and money. There is the series of ideas. The deep logicians call it a _sorites_. _I hope my master will no longer endure the reproach of not keeping me a horse_.'

_Piozzi Letters_, i. 360. See _post_, March 19 and 28, 1776, Sept. 20, 1777, and Nov. 21, 1778.

[1317] This _one_ Mrs. Macaulay was the same personage who afterwards made herself so much known as 'the celebrated female historian.'

BOSWELL. Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 234) tells the following story of Mrs. Macaulay's daughter:--'Desirous from civility to take some notice of her, and finding she was reading _Shakespeare_, I asked her if she was not delighted with many parts of _King John_. "I never read the _Kings_, ma'am," was the truly characteristic reply.' See _post_, April 13, 1773, and May 15, 1776.

[1318] This speech was perhaps suggested to Johnson by the following pa.s.sage in _The Government of the Tongue_ (p. 106)--a book which he quotes in his _Dictionary_:--'Lycurgus once said to one who importuned him to establish a popular parity in the state, "Do thou," says he, "begin it first in thine own family."'

[1319] The first volume was published in 1756, the second in 1782.

[1320] Warton, to use his own words, 'did not think Pope at the head of his profession. In other words, in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to all mankind; and I only say that this species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art.' He disposes the English poets in four cla.s.ses, placing in the first only Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. 'In the second cla.s.s should be ranked such as possessed the true poetical genius in a more moderate degree, but who had n.o.ble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poetry.' In this cla.s.s, in his concluding volume, he says, 'we may venture to a.s.sign Pope a place, just above Dryden. Yet, to bring our minds steadily to make this decision, we must forget, for a moment, the divine _Music Ode of Dryden_; and may, perhaps, then be compelled to confess that though Dryden be the greater genius, yet Pope is the better artist.' Warton's _Essay_, i. i, vii. and ii. 404. See _post_, March 31, 1772.

[1321] Mr. Croker believes Joseph Warton was meant. His father, however, had been Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was afterwards Vicar of Basingstoke and Cobham, and Professor of Poetry in his own University, so that the son could scarcely be described as being 'originally poor.'

It is, no doubt, after Boswell's fas.h.i.+on to introduce in consecutive paragraphs the same person once by name and once anonymously; but then the 'certain author who disgusted Boswell by his forwardness,' mentioned just before Warton, may be Warton himself.

[1322] 'When he arrived at Eton he could not make a verse; that is, he wanted a point indispensable with us to a certain rank in our system.

But this wonderful boy, having satisfied the Master [Dr. Barnard] that he was an admirable scholar, and possessed of genius, was at once placed at the head of a form. He acquired the rules of Latin verse; tried his powers; and perceiving that he could not rise above his rivals in Virgil, Ovid, or the lyric of Horace, he took up the _sermoni propiora_, and there overshadowed all compet.i.tors. In the following lines he describes the hammer of the auctioneer with a mock sublimity which turns Horace into Virgil:--

'Jam-jamque cadit, celerique recursu Erigitur, lapsum retrahens, perque aera nutat.'

Nichols's _Lit. Anec_. viii. 547.

Horace Walpole wrote of him in Sept. 1765 (_Letters_, iv. 411):--'He is a very extraordinary young man for variety of learning. He is rather too wise for his age, and too fond of showing it; but when he has seen more of the world, he will choose to know less.' He died at Rome in the following year. Hume, on hearing the news, wrote to Adam Smith:--'Were you and I together, dear Smith, we should shed tears at present for the death of poor Sir James Macdonald. We could not possibly have suffered a greater loss than in that valuable young man.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 349. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 5, 1773.

[1323] Boswell says that Macdonald had for Johnson 'a _great_ terrour.'

(_Boswelliana_, p. 216.) Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 329) says:--'It is a fact that a certain n.o.bleman, an intimate friend of Reynolds, had strangely conceived in his mind such a formidable idea of all those persons who had gained great fame as literary characters, that I have heard Sir Joshua say, he verily believed he could no more have prevailed upon this n.o.ble person to dine at the same table with Johnson and Goldsmith than with two tigers.' According to Mr. Seward (_Biographiana_, p. 600), Mrs. Cotterell having one day asked Dr.

Johnson to introduce her to a celebrated writer, 'Dearest madam,' said he, 'you had better let it alone; the best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I a.s.sure you.' Mr. Seward refers to _The Rambler_, No. 14, where Johnson says that 'there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an authour and his writings.'

[1324] See _post_, Jan. 19, 1775. In his _Hebrides_ (p. i) Boswell writes:--'When I was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned our design to Voltaire. He looked at me as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and said, "You do not insist on my accompanying you?" "No, Sir." "Then I am very willing you should go."'

[1325] 'When he went through the streets he desired to have one to lead him by the hand. They asked his opinion of the high church. He answered that it was a large rock, yet there were some in St. Kilda much higher, but that these were the best caves he ever saw; for that was the idea which he conceived of the pillars and arches upon which the church stands.' M. Martin's _Western Isles_, p. 297. Mr. Croker compares the pa.s.sage in _The Spectator_ (No. 50), in which an Indian king is made to say of St. Paul's:--'It was probably at first an huge misshapen rock that grew upon the top of the hill, which the natives of the country (after having cut it into a kind of regular figure) bored and hollowed with incredible pains and industry.'

[1326] Boswell, writing to Temple the next day, slightly varies these words:--'He said, "My dear Boswell, it would give me great pain to part with you, if I thought we were not to meet again."' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 34.

[1327] Gibbon (_Misc. Works_, i. 43) protests against 'the trite and lavish praise of the happiness of our boyish years, which is echoed with so much affectation in the world. That happiness I have never known, that time I have never regretted. The poet may gaily describe the short hours of recreation; but he forgets the daily tedious labours of the school, which is approached each morning with anxious and reluctant steps.' See _ante_, p. 44, and _post_, under Feb. 27, 1772.

[1328] About fame Gibbon felt much as Johnson did. 'I am disgusted,' he wrote (_ib_. 272), 'with the affectation of men of letters, who complain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow, and that their fame (which sometimes is no insupportable weight) affords a poor compensation for envy, censure, and persecution. My own experience, at least, has taught me a very different lesson; twenty happy years have been animated by the labour of my _History_, and its success has given me a name, a rank, a character, in the world, to which I should not otherwise have been ent.i.tled.'

[1329] See _ante_, p. 432.

[1330] See _ante_, p. 332.

[1331] This opinion was given by him more at large at a subsequent period. See _Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 32 [Aug.

16]. BOSWELL. 'That Swift was its author, though it be universally believed, was never owned by himself, nor very well proved by any evidence; but no other claimant can be produced, and he did not deny it when Archbishop Sharpe and the d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset, by showing it to the Queen, debarred him from a bishop.r.i.c.k.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 197.

See also _post_, March 24, 1775. Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, ii. 61) that Johnson said 'that if Swift really was the author of _The Tale of the Tub_, as the best of his other performances were of a very inferior merit, he should have hanged himself after he had written it.' Scott (_Life of Swift_, ed. 1834, p. 77) says:--'Mrs. Whiteway observed the Dean, in the latter years of his life [in 1735], looking over the _Tale_, when suddenly closing the book he muttered, in an unconscious soliloquy, "Good G.o.d! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!" She begged it of him, who made some excuse at the moment; but on her birthday he presented her with it inscribed, "From her affectionate cousin." On observing the inscription, she ventured to say, "I wish, Sir, you had said the gift of the author!" The Dean bowed, smiled good-humouredly, and answered, "No, I thank you," in a very significant manner.' There is this to be said of Johnson's incredulity about the _Tale of a Tub_, that the _History of John Bull_ and the _Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus_, though both by Arbuthnot, were commonly a.s.signed to Swift and are printed in his _Works_.

[1332] 'Thomson thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet;--the eye that distinguishes in everything presented to its view whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 377. See _post_, ii.

63, and April 11, 1776.

[1333] Burke seems to be meant. See _post_, April 25, 1778, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, and Sept. 15, 1773.--It is strange however that, while in these three places Boswell mentions Burke's name, he should leave a blank here. In _Boswelliana_, p. 328, Boswell records:--'Langton said Burke hammered his wit upon an anvil, and the iron was cold. There were no sparks flas.h.i.+ng and flying all about.'

[1334] In _Boswelliana_ (p. 214) this anecdote is thus given:--'Boswell was talking to Mr. Samuel Johnson of Mr. Sheridan's enthusiasm for the advancement of eloquence. "Sir," said Mr. Johnson, "it won't do. He cannot carry through his scheme. He is like a man attempting to stride the English Channel. Sir, the cause bears no proportion to the effect.

It is setting up a candle at Whitechapel to give light at Westminster."'

See also _ante_, p. 385, and _post_. Oct. 16, 1969, April 18 and May 17, 1783.

[1335] Most likely Boswell himself. See _ante_, p. 410.

[1336] 'Let a Frenchman talk twice with a minister of state, he desires no more to furnish out a volume.' Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xvi. 197.

Lord Chesterfield wrote from Paris in 1741:--'They [the Parisians]

despise us, and with reason, for our ill-breeding; on the other hand, we despite them for their want of learning, and we are in the right of it.'

_Supplement to Chesterfield's Letters_, p. 49. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 14, 1773.

[1337] 'Dr. Johnson said that he had been told by an acquaintance of Sir Isaac Newton, that in early life he started as a clamorous infidel.'

Seward's _Anecdotes_, ii. 324. In Brewster's _Life of Newton_ I find no mention of early infidelity. On the contrary, Newton had been described as one who 'had been a searcher of the Scriptures from his youth' (ii.

314). Brewster says that 'some foreign writers have endeavoured to shew that his theological writings were composed at a late period of life, when his mind was in its dotage.' It was not so, however. _Ib_. p. 315.

[1338] I fully intended to have followed advice of such weight; but having staid much longer both in Germany and Italy than I proposed to do, and having also visited Corsica, I found that I had exceeded the time allowed me by my father, and hastened to France in my way homewards. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p. 410.

[1339]

'Has heaven reserved, in pity to the poor, No pathless waste, or undiscovered sh.o.r.e?

No secret island in the boundless main?

No peaceful desert, yet unclaimed by Spain?'

Johnson looked upon the discovery of America as a misfortune to mankind.

In _Taxation no Tyranny_ (_Works_, vi. 233) he says that 'no part of the world has yet had reason to rejoice that Columbus found at last reception and employment. In the same year, in a year hitherto disastrous to mankind, by the Portuguese was discovered the pa.s.sage of the Indies, and by the Spaniards the coast of America.' On March 4, 1773, he wrote (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 248):--'I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.' See _ante_, p. 308, note 2, and post, March 21, 1775, and under Dec. 24, 1783.

[1340] See _ante_, p. 394, note 2.

[1341] _Letters written from Leverpoole, Chester, Corke, &c.,_ by Samuel Derrick, 1767.

[1342] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd ed. p. 104 [Aug. 27, 1773]. BOSWELL.

[1343] Ibid. p. 142 [242, Sept. 22, 1773]. BOSWELL. Johnson added:--'but it was nothing.' Derrick, in 1760, published Dryden's _Misc. Works_, with an _Account of his Life_.