Life of Johnson
Chapter 77 : '_The author's definition being observed by the Commissioners of Excise, they

'_The author's definition being observed by the Commissioners of Excise, they desire the favour of your opinion_. "Qu. Whether it will not be considered as a libel, and if so, whether it is not proper to proceed against the author, printers, and publishers thereof, or any and which of them, by information, or how otherwise?"

'I am of opinion that it is a libel. But under all the circ.u.mstances, I should think it better to give him an opportunity of altering his definition; and, in case he do not, to threaten him with an information.

'29th Nov. 1755. W. Murray.' In one of the Parl. Debates of 1742 Johnson makes Pitt say that 'it is probable that we shall detect bribery descending through a long subordination of wretches combined against the public happiness, from the prime minister surrounded by peers and officers of state to the exciseman dictating politics amidst a company of mechanics whom he debauches at the public expense, and lists in the service of his master with the taxes which he gathers.' _Parl. Hist_., xii. _570_. See _ante_, p. 36, note 5.

[867] He defined _Favourite_ as 'One chosen as a companion by a superiour; a mean wretch, whose whole business is by any means to please:' and _Revolution_ as 'change in the state of a government or country. It is used among us _kat hexochaen_ for the change produced by the admission of King William and Queen Mary.' For these definitions Wilkes attacked him in _The North Briton_, No. xii. In the fourth edition Johnson gives a second definition of _patriot_:--'It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.' Premier and _prime minister_ are not defined. _Post_, April 14, 1775. See also _ante_, p. 264 note, for the definition of _patron_; and _post_, April 28, 1783 for that of _alias_.

[868] 'There have been great contests in the Privy Council about the trial of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford [on a charge of Jacobitism]: Lord Gower pressed it extremely. He asked the Attorney-General his opinion, who told him the evidence did not appear strong enough. Lord Gower said:--"Mr. Attorney, you seem to be very lukewarm for your party." He replied:--"My Lord, I never was lukewarm for my party, _nor ever was but of one party_!"' Walpole's _Letters_, ii. 140. Mr. Croker a.s.sumes that Johnson here 'attempted a pun, and wrote the name (as p.r.o.nounced) Go'er.

Johnson was very little likely to pun, for 'he had a great contempt for that species of wit.' _Post_, April 30, 1773.

[869] Boswell omits the salutation which follows this definition:

Chair Ithakae met haethla, met halgea pikra Haspasios teon oudas ikanomai.

'Dr. Johnson,' says Miss Burney, 'inquired if I had ever yet visited _Grub-street_, but was obliged to restrain his anger when I answered "No;" because he had never paid his respects to it himself. "However,"

says he, "you and I, Burney, will go together; we have a very good right to go, so we'll visit the mansions of our progenitors, and take up our own freedom together."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 415.

[870] Lord Bolingbroke had said (_Works_, in. 317): 'I approve the devotion of a studious man at Christ Church, who was overheard in his oratory entering into a detail with G.o.d, and acknowledging the divine goodness in furnis.h.i.+ng the world with makers of dictionaries. These men court fame, as well as their betters, by such means as G.o.d has given them to acquire it. They deserve encouragement while they continue to compile, and neither affect wit, nor presume to reason.' Johnson himself in _The Adventurer_, No. 39, had in 1753 described a cla.s.s of men who 'employed their minds in such operations as required neither celerity nor strength, in the low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting dictionaries,' &c. Lord Monboddo, in his _Origin of Language_, v. 273, says that 'J. C. Scaliger called the makers of dictionaries _les portefaix de la republique des lettres_.'

[871] Great though his depression was, yet he could say with truth in his Preface:--'Despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress me to negligence.' _Works_, v. 43.

[872] _Ib_. p. 51. 'In the preface the author described the difficulties with which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Horne Tooke, never could read that pa.s.sage without tears.' Macaulay's _Misc. Writings_, p. 382. It is in _A Letter to John Dunning, Esq_. (p.

56) that Horne Tooke, or rather Horne, wrote:--'I could never read his preface without shedding a tear.' See _post_, May 13, 1778. On Oct. 10, 1779, Boswell told Johnson, that he had been 'agreeably mistaken' in saying:--'What would it avail me in this gloom of solitude?'

[873] It appears even by many a pa.s.sage in the Preface--one of the proudest pieces of writing in our language. 'The chief glory,' he writes, 'of every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add anything by my own writings to the reputation of English literature must be left to time.' 'I deliver,' he says, 'my book to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavoured well.... In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the _English Dictionary_ was written with little a.s.sistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.' _Works_, v. pp. 49-51. Thomas Warton wrote to his brother:--'I fear his preface will disgust by the expressions of his consciousness of superiority, and of his contempt of patronage.'

Wooll's _Warton_, p. 231.

[874] That praise was slow in coming is shown by his letter to Mr.

Burney, written two years and eight months after the publication of the _Dictionary_. 'Your praise,' he wrote, 'was welcome, not only because I believe it was sincere, but because praise has been very scarce....

Yours is the only letter of good-will that I have received; though, indeed, I am promised something of that sort from Sweden.' _Post_, Dec. 24, 1757.

[875] In the _Edinburgh Review_ (No. 1, 1755)--a periodical which only lasted two years--there is a review by Adam Smith of Johnson's _Dictionary_. Smith admits the 'very extraordinary merit' of the author.

'The plan,' however, 'is not sufficiently grammatical.' To explain what he intends, he inserts 'an article or two from Mr. Johnson, and opposes to them the same articles, digested in the manner which we would have wished him to have followed.' He takes the words _but_ and _humour_. One part of his definition of humour is curious--'something which comes upon a man by fits, which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness.' This essay has not, I believe, been reprinted.

[876] She died in March 1752; the _Dictionary_ was published in April 1755.

[877] In the Preface he writes (_Works_, v. 49):--'Much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was pa.s.sing over me.' In his fine Latin poem [Greek: Inothi seauton] 'he has left,'

says Mr. Murphy (_Life_, p. 82), 'a picture of himself drawn with as much truth, and as firm a hand, as can be seen in the portraits of Hogarth or Sir Joshua Reynolds.' He wrote it after revising and enlarging his _Dictionary_, and he sadly asks himself what is left for him to do.

Me, pensi immunis c.u.m jam mihi reddor, inertis Desidiae sors dura manet, graviorque labore Tristis et atra quies, et tardae taedia vitae.

Nasc.u.n.tur curis curae, vexatque dolorum Importuna cohors, vacuae mala somnia mentis.

Nunc clamosa juvant nocturnae gaudia mensae, Nunc loca sola placent; frustra te, somne, rec.u.mbens, Alme voco, impatiens noctis, metuensque diei.

Omnia percurro trepidus, circ.u.m omnia l.u.s.tro, Si qua usquam pateat melioris semita vitae, Nec quid agam invenio....

Quid faciam? tenebrisne pigram d.a.m.nare senectam Restat? an accingar studiis gravioribus audax?

Aut, hoc si nimium est, tandem nova lexica poscam?

Johnson's _Works_, i. 164.

[878] A few weeks before his wife's death he wrote in _The Rambler_ (No.

196):--'The miseries of life would be increased beyond all human power of endurance, if we were to enter the world with the same opinions as we carry from it.' He would, I think, scarcely have expressed himself so strongly towards his end. Though, as Dr. Maxwell records, in his _Collectanea_ (_post_, 1770), 'he often used to quote with great pathos those fine lines of Virgil:--

'Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit, &c.'

yet he owned, and the pages of Boswell amply testify, that it was in the latter period of his life that he had his happiest days.

[879] _Macbeth_, Act ii. sc. 3.

[880] In the third edition, published in 1773, he left out the words _perhaps never_, and added the following paragraph:--

'It sometimes begins middle or final syllables in words compounded, as _block-head_, or derived from the Latin, as _compre-hended_.' BOSWELL.

In the _Abridgment_, which was published some years earlier, after _never_ is added 'except in compounded words.'

[881] It was published in the _Gent. Mag_. for April, 1755 (xxv. 190), just below the advertis.e.m.e.nt of the _Dictionary_.

[882] In the original, 'Milton and Shakespeare.'

[883] The number of the French Academy employed in settling their language. BOSWELL.

[884] The maximum reward offered by a bill pa.s.sed in 1714 was 20,000 for a method that determined the longitude at sea to half a degree of a great circle, or thirty geographical miles. For less accuracy smaller rewards were offered. _Ann. Reg_. viii. 114. In 1765 John Harrison received 7,500 for his chronometer; he had previously been paid 2,500; _ib_. 128. In this Act of Parliament 'the legislature never contemplated the invention of a _method_, but only of the means of making existing methods accurate.' _Penny Cyclo_. xiv. 139. An old sea-faring man wrote to Swift that he had found out the longitude. The Dean replied 'that he never knew but two projectors, one of whom ruined himself and his family, and the other hanged himself; and desired him to desist lest one or other might happen to him.' Swift's _Works_ (1803), xvii. 157. In _She Stoops to Conquer_ (Act i. sc. 2), when Tony ends his directions to the travellers by telling them,--'coming to the farmer's barn you are to turn to the right, and then to the left, and then to the right about again, till you find out the old mill;' Marlow exclaims: 'Zounds, man!

we could as soon find out the longitude.'

[885] Joseph Baretti, a native of Piedmont, came to England in 1750 (see Preface to his _Account of Italy_, p. ix). He died in May, 1789. In his _Journey from London to Genoa_ (ii. 276), he says that his father was one of the two architects of the King of Sardinia. Shortly after his death a writer in the _Gent. Mag_. (Iix. 469, 570), who was believed to be Vincent, Dean of Westminster, thus wrote of him:--'Though his severity had created him enemies, his talents, conversation, and integrity had conciliated the regard of many valuable friends and acquaintance. His manners were apparently rough, but not unsocial. His integrity was in every period of his distresses constant and unimpeached. His wants he never made known but in the last extremity. He and Johnson had been friends in distress. One evening, when they had agreed to go to the tavern, a foreigner in the streets, by a specious tale of distress, emptied the Doctor's purse of the last half-guinea it contained. When the reckoning came, what was his surprise upon his recollecting that his purse was totally exhausted. Baretti had fortunately enough to answer the demand, and has often declared that it was impossible for him not to reverence a man, who could give away all that he was worth, without recollecting his own distress.' See _post_, Oct. 20, 1769.

[886] See note by Mr. Warton, _ante_, p. 275. BOSWELL.

[887] 'On Sat.u.r.day the 12th, about twelve at night, died Mr. Zachariah Williams, in his eighty-third year, after an illness of eight months, in full possession of his mental faculties. He has been long known to philosophers and seamen for his skill in magnetism, and his proposal to ascertain the longitude by a peculiar system of the variation of the compa.s.s. He was a man of industry indefatigable, of conversation inoffensive, patient of adversity and disease, eminently sober, temperate, and pious; and worthy to have ended life with better fortune.' BOSWELL.

[888] Johnson's _Works_, v. 49. Malone, in a note on this pa.s.sage, says:--'Johnson appears to have been in this year in great pecuniary distress, having been arrested for debt; on which occasion Richardson became his surety.' He refers to the following letter in the _Richardson Corres_, v. 285:--

'To MR. RICHARDSON.

'Tuesday, Feb. 19, 1756.

'DEAR SIR,

'I return you my sincerest thanks for the favour which you were pleased to do me two nights ago. Be pleased to accept of this little book, which is all that I have published this winter. The inflammation is come again into my eye, so that I can write very little. I am, Sir, your most obliged and most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

The 'little book' is not (as Mr. Croker suggests) Williams's _Longitude_, for it was published in Jan. 1755 (_Gent. Mag_. xxv. 47); but the _Abridgment of the Dictionary_, which was advertised in the _Gent. Mag_. for Jan. 1756. Murphy says (_Life_, p. 86), that he has before him a letter in Johnson's handwriting, which shows the distress of the man who had written _The Rambler_, and finished the great work of his _Dictionary_. It is directed to Mr. Richardson, and is as follows:--

'SIR,--I am obliged to entreat your a.s.sistance. I am now under an arrest for five pounds eighteen s.h.i.+llings. Mr. Strahan, from whom I should have received the necessary help in this case, is not at home, and I am afraid of not finding Mr. Millar. If you will be so good as to send me this sum, I will very gratefully repay you, and add it to all former obligations. I am, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

'SAMUEL JOHNSON.

'Gough-Square, 16 March.'

In the margin of this letter there is a memorandum in these words:--'March 16, 1756. Sent six guineas. Witness, Win. Richardson.' In the _European Mag_., vii. 54, there is the following anecdote recorded, for which Steevens most likely was the authority:--'I remember writing to Richardson' said Johnson, 'from a spunging-house; and was so sure of my deliverance through his kindness and liberality, that before his reply was brought I knew I could afford to joke with the rascal who had me in custody, and did so over a pint of adulterated wine, for which at that instant I had no money to pay.' It is very likely that this anecdote has no other foundation than Johnson's second letter to Richardson, which is dated, not from a spunging-house, but from his own residence. What kind of fate awaited a man who was thrown into prison for debt is shown by the following pa.s.sage in Wesley's _Journal_ (ii.