Life of Johnson
Chapter 84 : [1078] By Colman--'There is nothing else new,' wrote Horace Walpole on March

[1078] By Colman--'There is nothing else new,' wrote Horace Walpole on March 7, 1761 (_Letters,_ in. 382), 'but a very indifferent play, called _The Jealous Wife_, so well acted as to have succeeded greatly.'

[1079] In Chap. 47 of _Ra.s.selas_ Johnson had lately considered monastic life. Imlac says of the monks:--'Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless inactivity.... He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But perhaps every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life; and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat.' See also _post_, March 15, 1776, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 19, 1773.

[1080] Baretti, in the preface to his _Journey_ (p. vi.), says that the method of the book was due to Dr. Johnson. 'It was he that exhorted me to write daily, and with all possible minuteness; it was he that pointed out the topics which would most interest and most delight in a future publication.'

[1081] He advised Boswell to go to Spain. _Post_, June 25 and July 26, 1763.

[1082] Dr. Percy records that 'the first visit Goldsmith ever received from Johnson was on May 31, 1761, [ten days before this letter was written] when he gave an invitation to him, and much other company, many of them literary men, to a supper in his lodgings in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. Percy being intimate with Johnson, was desired to call upon him and take him with him. As they went together the former was much struck with the studied neatness of Johnson's dress. He had on a new suit of clothes, a new wig nicely powdered, and everything about him so perfectly dissimilar from his usual appearance that his companion could not help inquiring the cause of this singular transformation.

"Why, Sir," said Johnson, "I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this night to show him a better example."'

Goldsmith's _Misc. Works_, i. 62.

[1083] _Judges_, v. 20.

[1084] _Psalms_, xix. 2.

[1085] _Psalms_, civ. 19.

[1086] Boswell is ten years out in his date. This work was published in 1752. The review of it in the _Gent. Mag_. for that year, p. 146, was, I believe, by Johnson.

[1087] He accompanied Lord Macartney on his emba.s.sy to China in 1792. In 1797 he published his _Account of the Emba.s.sy_.

[1088] It was taken in 1759, and restored to France in 1763. _Penny Cyclo_. xi. 463.

[1089] W. S. Landor (_Works_, ed. 1876, v. 99) says:--'Extraordinary as were Johnson's intellectual powers, he knew about as much of poetry as of geography. In one of his letters he talks of Guadaloupe as being in another hemisphere. Speaking of that island, his very words are these: "Whether you return hither or stay in another hemisphere."' Guadaloupe, being in the West Indies, is in another hemisphere.

[1090] See _post_, April 12, 1776.

[1091] 'It is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are less dreadful than its extinction.' _The Idler_, No. 58. See also _post_, under March 30, 1783, where he ranks the situation of the Prince of Wales as the happiest in the kingdom, partly on account of the enjoyment of hope.

[1092] Though Johnson wrote this same day to Lord Bute to thank him for his pension, he makes no mention to Baretti of this accession to his fortune.

[1093] See _ante_, p. 245. Mrs. Porter, the actress, lived some time with Mrs. Cotterel and her eldest daughter. CROKER.

[1094] Miss Charlotte Cotterel, married to Dean Lewis. See _post_, Dec.

21, 1762.

[1095] Reynolds's note-book shows that this year he had close on 150 sitters. Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 218.

[1096] He married a woman of the town, who had persuaded him (notwithstanding their place of congress was a small coalshed in Fetter Lane) that she was nearly related to a man of fortune, but was injuriously kept by him out of large possessions. She regarded him as a physician already in considerable practice. He had not been married four months, before a writ was taken out against him for debts incurred by his wife. He was secreted; and his friend then procured him a protection from a foreign minister. In a short time afterwards she ran away from him, and was tried (providentially in his opinion) for picking pockets at the Old Bailey. Her husband was with difficulty prevented from attending the Court, in the hope she would be hanged. She pleaded her own cause and was acquitted. A separation between them took place.'

_Gent. Mag_. lv. 101.

[1097] Richardson had died more than a year earlier,--on July 4, 1761.

That Johnson should think it needful at the date of his letter to inform Baretti of the death of so famous a writer shows how slight was the communication between London and Milan. Nay, he repeats the news in his letter of Dec. 21, 1762.

[1098] On Dec. 8, 1765, he wrote to Hector:--'A few years ago I just saluted Birmingham, but had no time to see any friend, for I came in after midnight with a friend, and went away in the morning.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. iii. 321. He pa.s.sed through Birmingham, I conjecture, on his visit to Lichfield.

[1099] Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield on July 20, 1767, he says:--'Miss Lucy [Porter, his step-daughter, not his daughter-in-law, as he calls her above] is more kind and civil than I expected, and has raised my esteem by many excellencies very n.o.ble and resplendent, though a little discoloured by h.o.a.ry virginity. Everything else recalls to my remembrance years, in which I proposed what I am afraid I have not done, and promised myself pleasure which I have not found.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 4.

[1100] In his _Journey into Wales_ (Aug. 24, 1774), he describes how Mrs. Thrale visited one of the scenes of her youth. 'She remembered the rooms, and wandered over them with recollection of her childhood. This species of pleasure is always melancholy. The walk was cut down and the pond was dry. Nothing was better.'

[1101] This is a very just account of the relief which London affords to melancholy minds. BOSWELL.

[1102] To Devons.h.i.+re.

[1103] See _ante_, p. 322.

[1104] Dr. T. Campbell (_Diary of a visit to England_, p. 32) recorded on March 16, 1775, that 'Baretti said that now he could not live out of London. He had returned a few years ago to his own country, but he could not enjoy it; and he was obliged to return to London to those connections he had been making for near thirty years past.' Baretti had come to England in 1750 (_ante_, p. 302), so that thirty years is an exaggeration.

[1105] How great a sum this must have been in Johnson's eyes is shown by a pa.s.sage in his _Life of Savage_ (_Works_, viii. 125). Savage, he says, was received into Lord Tyrconnel's family and allowed a pension of 200 a year. 'His presence,' Johnson writes, 'was sufficient to make any place of publick entertainment popular; and his approbation and example const.i.tuted the fas.h.i.+on. So powerful is genius when it is invested with the glitter of affluence!' In the last summer of his life, speaking of the chance of his pension being doubled, he said that with six hundred a year 'a man would have the consciousness that he should pa.s.s the remainder of his life _in splendour_, how long soever it might be.'

_Post_, June 30, 1784. David Hume writing in 1751, says:--'I have 50 a year, a 100 worth of books, great store of linens and fine clothes, and near 100 in my pocket; along with order, frugality, a strong spirit of independency, good health, a contented humour, and an unabating love of study. In these circ.u.mstances I must esteem myself one of the happy and fortunate.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 342. Goldsmith, in his _Present State of Polite Learning_ (chap, vii), makes the following observation on pensions granted in France to authors:--'The French n.o.bility have certainly a most pleasing way of satisfying the vanity of an author without indulging his avarice. A man of literary merit is sure of being caressed by the great, though seldom enriched. His pension from the crown just supplies half a competence, and the sale of his labours makes some small addition to his circ.u.mstances; thus the author leads a life of splendid poverty, and seldom becomes wealthy or indolent enough to discontinue an exertion of those abilities by which he rose.' Whether Johnson's pension led to his writing less than he would otherwise have done may be questioned. It is true that in the next seventeen years he did little more than finish his edition of _Shakespeare_, and write his _Journey to the Western Islands_ and two or three political pamphlets.

But since he wrote the last number of _The Idler_ in the spring of 1760 he had done very little. His mind, which, to use Murphy's words (_Life_, p. 80), had been 'strained and overlaboured by constant exertion,' had not recovered its tone. It is likely, that without the pension he would not have lived to write the second greatest of his works--the _Lives of the Poets_.

[1106] Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, i. 281) says:--'Bute's pensions to his Scottish crew showing meaner than ever in Churchill's daring verse, it occurred to the shrewd and wary Wedderburne to advise, for a set off, that Samuel Johnson should be pensioned.' _The Prophecy of Famine_ in which Churchill's attack was made on the pensioned Scots was published in Jan. 1763, nearly half a year after Johnson's pension was conferred.

[1107] For his _Falkland's Islands_ 'materials were furnished to him by the ministry' (_post_, 1771). '_The Patriot_ was called for,' he writes, 'by my political friends' (_post_, Nov. 26, 1774). 'That _Taxation no Tyranny_ was written at the desire of those who were then in power, I have no doubt,' writes Boswell (_post_, under March 21, 1775). 'Johnson complained to a friend that, his pension having been given to him as a literary character, he had been applied to by administration to write political pamphlets' (_Ib_.). Are these statements inconsistent with what Lord Loughborough said, and with Boswell's a.s.sertion (_Ib_.) that 'Johnson neither asked nor received from government any reward whatsoever for his political labours?' I think not. I think that, had Johnson unpensioned been asked by the Ministry to write these pamphlets, he would have written them. He would have been pleased by the compliment, and for pay would have trusted to the sale. Speaking of the first two of these pamphlets--the third had not yet appeared--he said, 'Except what I had from the booksellers, I did not get a farthing by them' (_post_, March 21, 1772). They had not cost him much labour. _The False Alarm_ was written between eight o'clock of one night and twelve o'clock of the next. It went through three editions in less than two months (_post_, 1770). _The Patriot_ was written on a Sat.u.r.day (_post_, Nov. 26, 1774). At all events Johnson had received his pension for more than seven years before he did any work for the ministry. In Croft's _Life of Young_, which Johnson adopted (_Works_, viii. 422), the following pa.s.sage was perhaps intended to be a defence of Johnson as a writer for the Ministry:--'Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner? In all modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been regularly called hirelings, and on the other patriots?'

[1108] See _ante_, p. 294.

[1109] Murphy's account is nearly as follows (_Life_, p. 92):--'Lord Loughborough was well acquainted with Johnson; but having heard much of his independent spirit, and of the downfall of Osborne the bookseller (_ante_, p. 154), he did not know but his benevolence might be rewarded with a folio on his head. He desired me to undertake the task. I went to the chambers in the Inner Temple Lane, which, in fact, were the abode of wretchedness. By slow and studied approaches the message was disclosed.

Johnson made a long pause; he asked if it was seriously intended. He fell into a profound meditation, and his own definition of a pensioner occurred to him. He desired to meet next day, and dine at the Mitre Tavern. At that meeting he gave up all his scruples. On the following day Lord Loughborough conducted him to the Earl of Bute. The conversation that pa.s.sed was in the evening related to me by Dr.

Johnson. He expressed his sense of his Majesty's bounty, and thought himself the more highly honoured, as the favour was not bestowed on him for having dipped his pen in faction. "No, Sir," said Lord Bute, "it is not offered to you for having dipped your pen in faction, nor with a design that you ever should."' The reviewer of Hawkins's _Johnson_ in the _Monthly Review_, lxxvi. 375, who was, no doubt, Murphy, adds a little circ.u.mstance:--'On the next day Mr. Murphy was in the Temple Lane soon after nine; _he got Johnson up and dressed in due time_; and saw him set off at eleven.' Malone's note on what Lord Bute said to Johnson is as follows:--'This was said by Lord Bute, as Dr. Burney was informed by Johnson himself, in answer to a question which he put, previously to his acceptance of the intended bounty: "Pray, my Lord, what am I expected to do for this pension?"'

[1110]

'In Britain's senate he a seat obtains And one more pensioner St. Stephen gains.'

_Moral Essays_, iii. 392.

Johnson left the definition of _pension_ and _pensioner_ unchanged in the fourth edition of the _Dictionary_, corrected by him in 1773.

[1111] He died on March 10, 1792. This paragraph and the letter are not in the first two editions.

[1112] The Treasury, Home Office, Exchequer of Receipt and Audit Office Records have been searched for a warrant granting a pension to Dr.

Johnson without success. In 1782, by Act of Parliament all pensions on the Civil List Establishment were from that time to be paid at the Exchequer. In the Exchequer Order Book, Michaelmas 1782, No. 46, p. 74, the following memorandum occurs:--"Memdum. 3 Dec. 1782. There was issued to the following persons (By order 6th of Nov. 1782) the sums set against their names respectively, etc.:--Persons names: Johnson Saml, LL.D. Pensions p. ann. 300. Due to 5 July 1782, two quarters, 150."

This pension was paid at the Exchequer from that time to the quarter ending 10 Oct. 1784. 'It is clear that the pension was payable quarterly [for confirmation of this, see _post_, Nov. 3, 1762, and July 16, 1765]

and at the old quarter days, July 5, Oct. 10, Jan. 5, April 5, though payment was sometimes delayed. [Once he was paid half-yearly; see _post_, under March 20, 1771.] The expression "bills" was a general term at the time for notes, cheques, and warrants, and no doubt covered some kind of Treasury warrant.' The above information I owe to the kindness of my friend Mr. Leonard H. Courtney, M.P., late Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The 'future favours' are the future payments. His pension was not for life, and depended therefore entirely on the king's pleasure (see _post_, under March 21, 1775). The following letter in the _Grenville Papers_, ii. 68, seems to show that Johnson thought the pension due on the _new_ quarter-day:--

'DR. JOHNSON To MR. GRENVILLE.

'July 2, 1763.

'SIR,

'Be pleased to pay to the bearer seventy-five pounds, being the quarterly payment of a pension granted by his Majesty, and due on the 24th day of June last, to Sir,

'Your most humble servant,