Life of Johnson
Chapter 74 : [767] 'Je chante le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre.' Boileau, _L'A

[767] 'Je chante le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre.' Boileau, _L'Art poetique_, iii. 272.

[768] The following note is subjoined by Mr. Langton:--'Dr. Johnson, when he gave me this copy of his letter, desired that I would annex to it his information to me, that whereas it is said in the letter that "no a.s.sistance has been received," he did once receive from Lord Chesterfield the sum of ten pounds; but as that was so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find place in a letter of the kind that this was.' BOSWELL. 'This surely is an unsatisfactory excuse,' writes Mr. Croker. He read Johnson's letter carelessly, as the rest of his note shews. Johnson says, that during the seven years that had pa.s.sed since he was repulsed from Chesterfield's door he had pushed on his work without one act of a.s.sistance. These ten pounds, we may feel sure, had been received before the seven years began to run. No doubt they had been given in 1747 as an acknowledgement of the compliment paid to Chesterfield in the _Plan_. He had at first been misled by Chesterfield's one act of kindness, but he had long had his eyes opened. Like the shepherd in Virgil (_Eclogues_, viii. 43) he could say:--'_Nunc_ scio quid sit Amor.'

[769] In this pa.s.sage Dr. Johnson evidently alludes to the loss of his wife. We find the same tender recollection recurring to his mind upon innumerable occasions: and, perhaps no man ever more forcibly felt the truth of the sentiment so elegantly expressed by my friend Mr. Malone, in his Prologue to Mr. Jephson's tragedy of JULIA [_Julia or the Italian Lover_ was acted for the first time on April 17, 1787. _Gent. Mag_.

1787, p. 354]:--

'Vain--wealth, and fame, and fortune's fostering care, If no fond breast the splendid blessings share; And, each day's bustling pageantry once past, There, only there, our bliss is found at last.' BOSWELL.

Three years earlier, when his wife was dying, he had written in one of the last _Ramblers_ (No 203):--'It is necessary to the completion of every good, that it be timely obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will come too late to give much delight ... What we acquire by bravery or science, by mental or corporal diligence, comes at last when we cannot communicate, and therefore cannot enjoy it.' Chesterfield himself was in no happy state. Less than a month before he received Johnson's letter he wrote (_Works_, iii. 308):--'For these six months past, it seems as if all the complaints that ever attacked heads had joined to overpower mine. Continual noises, headache, giddiness, and impenetrable deafness; I could not stoop to write; and even reading, the only resource of the deaf, was painful to me.' He wrote to his son a year earlier (_Letters_, iv. 43), 'Reading, which was always a pleasure to me in the time even of my greatest dissipation, is now become my only refuge; and I fear I indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes. But what can I do? I must do something. I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary. I will not h.o.a.rd them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss than not enjoy the use of them.'

[770] '_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.'

Johnson's _Works_ v. 51.

[771] Upon comparing this copy with that which Dr. Johnson dictated to me from recollection, the variations are found to be so slight, that this must be added to the many other proofs which he gave of the wonderful extent and accuracy of his memory. To gratify the curious in composition, I have deposited both the copies in the British Museum. BOSWELL.

[772] Soon after Edwards's _Canons of Criticism_ came out, Johnson was dining at Tonson the Bookseller's with Hayman the Painter and some more company. Hayman related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the conversation having turned upon Edwards's book, the gentlemen praised it much, and Johnson allowed its merit. But when they went farther, and appeared to put that author upon a level with Warburton, 'Nay, (said Johnson,) he has given him some smart hits to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.' BOSWELL. Johnson in his _Preface to Shakespeare_ (_Works_, v. 141) wrote:--'Dr. Warburton's chief a.s.sailants are the authors of _The Canons of Criticism_, and of _The Revisal of Shakespeare's Text_.... The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter and returns for more; the other bites like a viper.... When I think on one with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriola.n.u.s, who was afraid that "girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle;" when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in _Macbeth_:

"A falcon tow'ring in his pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd."

Let me, however, do them justice. One is a wit and one a scholar.'

[773] To Johnson might be applied what he himself said of Dryden:--'He appears to have known in its whole extent the dignity of his character, and to have set a very high value on his own powers and performances.'

_Works_, vii. 291.

[774] In the original _Yet mark_.

[775] In the original _Toil_.

[776] In his _Dictionary_ he defined _patron_ as 'commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery.' This definition disappears in the _Abridgement_, but remains in the fourth edition.

[777] Chesterfield, when he read Johnson's letter to Dodsley, was acting up to the advice that he had given his own son six years earlier (_Letters_, ii. 172):--'When things of this kind [bons mots] happen to be said of you, the most prudent way is to seem not to suppose that they are meant at you, but to dissemble and conceal whatever degree of anger you may feel inwardly: and, should they be so plain, that you cannot be supposed ignorant of their meaning, so join in the laugh of the company against yourself; acknowledge the hit to be a fair one, and the jest a good one, and play off the whole thing in seeming good humour; but by no means reply in the same way; which only shows that you are hurt, and publishes the victory which you might have concealed.'

[778] See _post_, March 23, 1783, where Johnson said that 'Lord Chesterfield was dignified, but he was insolent;' and June 27, 1784, where he said that 'his manner was exquisitely elegant.'

[779]

'Whate'er of mongrel no one cla.s.s admits, A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.'

Pope's _Dunciad_, iv. 90.

'A true choice spirit we admit; With wits a fool, with fools a wit.'

Churchill's _Duellist_' Book iii.

'The solemn fop, significant and budge; A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.'

Cowper's _Poems_, _Conversation_, 1. 299.

According to Rebecca Warner (_Original Letters_, p. 204), Johnson telling Joseph Fowke about his refusal to dedicate his _Dictionary_ to Chesterfield, said: 'Sir, I found I must have gilded a rotten post.'

[780] That collection of letters cannot be vindicated from the serious charge of encouraging, in some pa.s.sages, one of the vices most destructive to the good order and comfort of society, which his Lords.h.i.+p represents as mere fas.h.i.+onable gallantry; and, in others, of inculcating the base practice of dissimulation, and recommending, with disproportionate anxiety, a perpetual attention to external elegance of manners. But it must, at the same time, be allowed, that they contain many good precepts of conduct, and much genuine information upon life and manners, very happily expressed; and that there was considerable merit in paying so much attention to the improvement of one who was dependent upon his Lords.h.i.+p's protection; it has, probably, been exceeded in no instance by the most exemplary parent; and though I can by no means approve of confounding the distinction between lawful and illicit offspring, which is, in effect, insulting the civil establishment of our country, to look no higher; I cannot help thinking it laudable to be kindly attentive to those, of whose existence we have, in any way, been the cause. Mr. Stanhope's character has been unjustly represented as diametrically opposite to what Lord Chesterfield wished him to be. He has been called dull, gross, and awkward; but I knew him at Dresden, when he was Envoy to that court; and though he could not boast of the _graces_, he was, in truth, a sensible, civil, well-behaved man. BOSWELL. See _post_, March 28, 1775, under April, 29, 1776, and June 27, 1784.

[781] Chesterfield's _Letters_, iii. 129.

[782] Now one of his Majesty's princ.i.p.al Secretaries of State. BOSWELL.

Afterwards Viscount Melville.

[783] Probably George, second Earl of Macclesfield, who was, in 1752, elected President of the Royal Society. CROKER. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, ii. 321) mentions him as 'engaged to a party for finding out the longitude.'

[784] In another work (_Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_, p.

214), I have shewn that Lord Chesterfield's 'Respectable Hottentot' was not Johnson. From the beginning of 1748 to the end of 1754 Chesterfield had no dealings of any kind with Johnson. At no time had there been the slightest intimacy between the great n.o.bleman and the poor author.

Chesterfield had never seen Johnson eat. The letter in which the character is drawn opens with the epigram:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nee possum dicere quare, Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.

Chesterfield goes on to show 'how it is possible not to love anybody, and yet not to know the reason why.... How often,' he says, 'have I, in the course of my life, found myself in this situation with regard to many of my acquaintance whom I have honoured and respected, without being able to love.' He then instances the case of the man whom he describes as a respectable Hottentot. It is clear that he is writing of a man whom he knows well and who has some claim upon his affection.

Twice he says that it is impossible to love him. The date of this letter is Feb. 28, 1751, more than three years after Johnson had for the last time waited in Chesterfield's outward rooms. Moreover the same man is described in three other letters (Sept. 22, 1749; Nov. 1749; and May 27, 1753), and described as one with whom Chesterfield lived on terms of intimacy. In the two former of these letters he is called Mr. L.

Lyttelton did not become Sir George Lyttelton till Sept. 14, 1751. He was raised to the peerage in 1757. Horace Walpole (_Reign of George III_, i. 256) says of him:--'His ignorance of mankind, want of judgment, with strange absence and awkwardness, involved him in mistakes and ridicule.' Had Chesterfield's letter been published when it was written, no one in all likelihood would have so much as dreamt that Johnson was aimed at. But it did not come before the world till twenty-three years later, when Johnson's quarrel with Chesterfield was known to every one, when Johnson himself was at the very head of the literary world, and when his peculiarities had become a matter of general interest.

[785] About four years after this time Gibbon, on his return to England, became intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Mallet. He thus wrote of them:--'The most useful friends of my father were the Mallets; they received me with civility and kindness at first on his account, and afterwards on my own; and (if I may use Lord Chesterfield's words) I was soon _domesticated_ in their house. Mr. Mallet, a name among the English poets, is praised by an unforgiving enemy for the ease and elegance of his conversation, and his wife was not dest.i.tute of wit or learning.' Gibbon's _Misc.

Works_, i 115. The 'unforgiving enemy' was Johnson, who wrote (_Works_, viii. 468):--'His conversation was elegant and easy. The rest of his character may, without injury to his memory, sink into silence.' Johnson once said:--'I have seldom met with a man whose colloquial ability exceeded that of Mallet.' Johnson's _Works_, 1787, xi. 214. See _post_, March 27, 1772, and April 28, 1783; and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept.

10, 1773.

[786] Johnson had never read Bolingbroke's _Philosophy_. 'I have never read Bolingbroke's impiety,' he said (_post_, under March 1, 1758). In the memorable sentence that he, notwithstanding, p.r.o.nounced upon the author, he exposed himself to the retort which he had recorded in his _Life of Boerhaave_ (_Works_, vi. 277). 'As Boerhaave was sitting in a common boat, there arose a conversation among the pa.s.sengers upon the impious and pernicious doctrine of Spinosa, which, as they all agreed, tends to the utter overthrow of all religion. Boerhaave sat and attended silently to this discourse for some time, till one of the company ...

instead of confuting the positions of Spinosa by argument began to give a loose to contumelious language and virulent invectives, which Boerhaave was so little pleased with, that at last he could not forbear asking him, whether he had ever read the author he declaimed against.'

[787] Lord Shelburne said that 'Bolingbroke was both a political and personal coward.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 29.

[788] It was in the summer of this year that Murphy became acquainted with Johnson. (See _post,_ 1760.) 'The first striking sentence that he heard from him was in a few days after the publication of Lord Bolingbroke's posthumous works. Mr. Garrick asked him, "if he had seen them." "Yes, I have seen them." "What do you think of them?" "Think of them!" He made a long pause, and then replied: "Think of them! a scoundrel and a coward! A scoundrel who spent his life in charging a gun against Christianity; and a coward, who was afraid of hearing the report of his own gun; but left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death!" His mind, at this time strained and over laboured by constant exertion, called for an interval of repose and indolence. But indolence was the time of danger; it was then that his spirits, not employed abroad, turned with inward hostility against himself.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 79, and Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 235. Adam Smith, perhaps, had this saying of Johnson's in mind, when in 1776 he refused the request of the dying Hume to edit after his death his _Dialogues on Natural Religion_. Hume wrote back:--'I think your scruples groundless. Was Mallet anywise hurt by his publication of Lord Bolingbroke? He received an office afterwards from the present King and Lord Bute, the most prudish man in the world.' Smith did not yield. J.

H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 491.

[789] According to Horace Walpole (_Letters_, ii. 374), Pelham died of a surfeit. As Johnson says (_Works_, viii. 310):--'The death of great men is not always proportioned to the l.u.s.tre of their lives. The death of Pope was imputed by some of his friends to a silver saucepan, in which it was his delight to heat potted lampreys.' Fielding in _The Voyage to Lisbon_ (_Works_, x. 201) records:--'I was at the worst on that memorable day when the public lost Mr. Pelham. From that day I began slowly, as it were, to draw my feet out of the grave.' '"I shall now have no more peace," the King said with a sigh; being told of his Minister's death.' Walpole's _George II_, i. 378.

[790] 'Thomas Warton, the younger brother of Dr. Warton, was a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He was Poetry Professor from 1758 to 1768.

Mant's _Warton_, i. xliv. In 1785 he was made Poet Laureate. _Ib_.

lx.x.xiii. Mr. Mant, telling of an estrangement between Johnson and the Wartons, says that he had heard 'on unquestionable authority that Johnson had lamented, with tears in his eyes, that the Wartons had not called on him for the last four years; and that he has been known to declare that Tom Warton was the only man of genius whom he knew without a heart.' _Ib_. x.x.xix.

[791] 'Observations on Spenser's Fairy Queen, the first edition of which was now just published.' WARTON.

[792] 'Hughes published an edition of Spenser.' WARTON. See Johnson's _Works_, vii.476.

[793] 'His Dictionary.' WARTON.

[794] 'He came to Oxford within a fortnight, and stayed about five weeks. He lodged at a house called Kettel hall, near Trinity College.

But during this visit at Oxford, he collected nothing in the libraries for his Dictionary.' WARTON.

[795] Pitt this year described, in the House of Commons, a visit that he had paid to Oxford the summer before. He and his friends 'were at the window of the Angel Inn; a lady was desired to sing _G.o.d save great George our King_. The chorus was re-echoed by a set of young lads drinking at a college over the way [Queen's], but with additions of rank treason.' Walpole's _George II_, i. 413.