Life of Johnson
Chapter 62 : [382] In the _Weekly Miscellany_, October 21, 1738, there appeared the following advert

[382] In the _Weekly Miscellany_, October 21, 1738, there appeared the following advertis.e.m.e.nt:--'Just published, Proposals for printing the _History of the Council of Trent_, translated from the Italian of Father Paul Sarpi; with the Authour's Life, and Notes theological, historical, and critical, from the French edition of Dr. Le Courayer. To which are added, Observations on the History, and Notes and Ill.u.s.trations from various Authours, both printed and ma.n.u.script. By S. Johnson. 1. The work will consist of two hundred sheets, and be two volumes in quarto, printed on good paper and letter. 2. The price will be 18_s_. each volume, to be paid, half-a-guinea at the delivery of the first volume, and the rest at the delivery of the second volume in sheets. 3.

Two-pence to be abated for every sheet less than two hundred. It may be had on a large paper, in three volumes, at the price of three guineas; one to be paid at the time of subscribing, another at the delivery of the first, and the rest at the delivery of the other volumes. The work is now in the press, and will be diligently prosecuted. Subscriptions are taken in by Mr. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, Mr. Rivington in St. Paul's Church-yard, by E. Cave at St. John's Gate, and the Translator, at No.

6, in Castle-street by Cavendish-square.' BOSWELL.

[383] They afterwards appeared in the _Gent. Mag_. [viii. 486] with this t.i.tle--'_Verses to Lady Firebrace, at Bury a.s.sizes_.' BOSWELL.

[384] Du Halde's Description of China was then publis.h.i.+ng by Mr. Cave in weekly numbers, whence Johnson was to select pieces for the embellishment of the _Magazine_. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[385] The premium of forty pounds proposed for the best poem on the Divine Attributes is here alluded to. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[386] The Compositors in Mr. Cave's printing-office, who appear by this letter to have then waited for copy. NICHOLS. BOSWELL.

[387] Twenty years later, when he was lodging in the Temple, he had fasted for two days at a time; 'he had drunk tea, but eaten no bread; this was no intentional fasting, but happened just in the course of a literary life.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 4, 1773. See _post_, Aug.

5, 1763.

[388] Birch MSS. Brit. Mus. 4323. BOSWELL.

[389] See _post_, under Dec. 30, 1747, and Oct. 24, 1780.

[390] See _post_, 1750.

[391] This book was published. BOSWELL. I have not been able to find it.

[392] _The Historie of four-footed beasts and serpents_. By Edward Topsell. London, 1607. Isaac Walton, in the _Complete Angler_, more than once quotes Topsel. See p. 99 in the reprint of the first edition, where he says:--'As our Topsel hath with great diligence observed.'

[393] In this preface he describes some pieces as 'deserving no other fate than to be hissed, torn, and forgotten. Johnson's _Works_, v. 346.

[394] The letter to Mr. Urban in the January number of this year (p. 3) is, I believe, by Johnson.

[395] 'Yet did Boerhaave not suffer one branch of science to withdraw his attention from others; anatomy did not withhold him from chymistry, nor chymistry, enchanting as it is, from the study of botany.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 276. See _post_, under Sept. 9, 1779.

[396] _Gent. Mag_. viii. 210, and Johnson's _Works_, i. 170.

[397] What these verses are is not clear. On p. 372 there is an epigram _Ad Elisam Popi Horto Lauras carpentem_, of which on p. 429 there are three translations. That by Urba.n.u.s may be Johnson's.

[398] _Ib_. p. 654, and Johnson's _Works_, i. 170. On p. 211 of this volume of the _Gent. Mag_. is given the epigram 'To a lady who spoke in defence of liberty.' This was 'Molly Aston' mentioned _ante_, p. 83.

[399] To the year 1739 belongs _Considerations on the Case of Dr.

T[rapp]s Sermons. Abridged by Mr. Cave, 1739_; first published in the _Gent. Mag_. of July 1787. (See _post_ under Nov. 5, 1784, note.) Cave had begun to publish in the _Gent. Mag_. an abridgment of four sermons preached by Trapp against Whitefield. He stopped short in the publication, deterred perhaps by the threat of a prosecution for an infringement of copy-right. 'On all difficult occasions,' writes the Editor in 1787, 'Johnson was Cave's oracle; and the paper now before us was certainly written on that occasion.' Johnson argues that abridgments are not only legal but also justifiable. 'The design of an abridgment is to benefit mankind by facilitating the attainment of knowledge ... for as an incorrect book is lawfully criticised, and false a.s.sertions justly confuted ... so a tedious volume may no less lawfully be abridged, because it is better that the proprietors should suffer some damage, than that the acquisition of knowledge should be obstructed with unnecessary difficulties, and the valuable hours of thousands thrown away.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 465. Whether we have here Johnson's own opinion cannot be known. He was writing as Cave's advocate. See also Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 20, 1773.

[400] In his _Life of Thomson_ Johnson writes:--'About this time the act was pa.s.sed for licensing plays, of which the first operation was the prohibition of _Gustavus Vasa_, a tragedy of Mr. Brooke, whom the public recompensed by a very liberal subscription; the next was the refusal of _Edward and Eleonora_, offered by Thomson. It is hard to discover why either play should have been obstructed.' Johnson's Works, viii. 373.

[401] The Inscription and the Translation of it are preserved in the _London Magazine_ for the year 1739, p. 244. BOSWELL. See Johnson's _Works_, vi. 89.

[402] It is a little heavy in its humour, and does not compare well with the like writings of Swift and the earlier wits.

[403] Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 72.

[404]

'Sic fatus senior, telumque imbelle sine ictu Conjecit.' 'So spake the elder, and cast forth a toothless spear and vain.'

Morris, _aeneids_, ii. 544.

[405]

'Get all your verses printed fair, Then let them well be dried; And Curll must have a special care To leave the margin wide.

Lend these to paper-sparing Pope; And when he sits to write, No letter with an envelope Could give him more delight.'

_Advice to the Grub Street Verse-Writers_. (Swift's _Works_, 1803, xi 32.) Nichols, in a note on this pa.s.sage, says:--'The original copy of Pope's _Homer_ is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.' Johnson, in his _Life of Pope_, writes:--'Of Pope's domestic character frugality was a part eminently remarkable.... This general care must be universally approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the _Iliad_, by which perhaps in five years five s.h.i.+llings were saved.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 312.

[406] See note, p. 132. BOSWELL.

[407] The _Marmor Norfolciense_, price one s.h.i.+lling, is advertised in the _Gent. Mag_. for 1739 (p. 220) among the books for April.

[408] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 8. BOSWELL.

[409] According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Every person who knew Dr.

Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the conversation. These were therefore improperly called convulsions, which imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his attention was recovered. Sometimes, indeed, it would be near a minute before he would give an answer, looking as if he laboured to bring his mind to bear on the question' (Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 456). 'I still, however, think,' wrote Boswell, 'that these gestures were involuntary; for surely had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in the public streets' (Boswell's _Hebrides_, under date of Aug. 11, 1773, note). Dr. T. Campbell, in his _Diary of a Visit to England_, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:--'He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature--with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head--he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.' Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:--'Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes of all together.' Mme.

D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 63. See _post_, under March 30, 1783, Boswell's note on Johnson's peculiarities.

[410] 'Solitude,' wrote Reynolds, 'to him was horror; nor would he ever trust himself alone but when employed in writing or reading. He has often begged me to go home with him to prevent his being alone in the coach. Any company was better than none; by which he connected himself with many mean persons whose presence he could command.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 455. Johnson writing to Mrs. Thrale, said:--'If the world be worth winning, let us enjoy it; if it is to be despised, let us despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it is compared with something better. Company is in itself better than solitude, and pleasure better than indolence.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 242.

In _The Idler_, No. 32, he wrote:--'Others are afraid to be alone, and amuse themselves by a perpetual succession of companions; but the difference is not great; in solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert. The end sought in both is forgetfulness of ourselves.' In _The Rambler_, No. 5, he wrote:--'It may be laid down as a position which will seldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life from the equipoise of an empty mind ... or he must be afraid of the intrusion of some unpleasing ideas, and, perhaps, is struggling to escape from the remembrance of a loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other thought of greater horror.'

Cowper, whose temperament was in some respects not unlike Johnson's, wrote:--'A vacant hour is my abhorrence; because, when I am not occupied, I suffer under the whole influence of my unhappy temperament.'

Southey's _Cowper_, vi. 146.

[411] Richardson was of the same way of thinking as Hogarth. Writing of a speech made at the Oxford Commemoration of 1754 by the Jacobite Dr.

King (see _post_, Feb. 1755), he said:--'There cannot be a greater instance of the lenity of the government he abuses than his pestilent harangues so publicly made with impunity furnishes (_sic_) all his readers with.'--_Rich. Corresp_. ii. 197.

[412] Impartial posterity may, perhaps, be as little inclined as Dr.

Johnson was to justify the uncommon rigour exercised in the case of Dr.

Archibald Cameron. He was an amiable and truly honest man; and his offence was owing to a generous, though mistaken principle of duty.

Being obliged, after 1746, to give up his profession as a physician, and to go into foreign parts, he was honoured with the rank of Colonel, both in the French and Spanish service. He was a son of the ancient and respectable family of Cameron, of Lochiel; and his brother, who was the Chief of that brave clan, distinguished himself by moderation and humanity, while the Highland army marched victorious through Scotland.

It is remarkable of this Chief, that though he had earnestly remonstrated against the attempt as hopeless, he was of too heroick a spirit not to venture his life and fortune in the cause, when personally asked by him whom he thought his prince. BOSWELL.

Sir Walter Scott states, in his Introduction to _Redgauntlet_, that the government of George II were in possession of sufficient evidence that Dr. Cameron had returned to the Highlands, _not_, as he alleged on his trial, for family affairs merely, but as the secret agent of the Pretender in a new scheme of rebellion: the ministers, however, preferred trying this indefatigable partisan on the ground of his undeniable share in the insurrection of 1745, rather than rescuing themselves and their master from the charge of harshness, at the expense of making it universally known, that a fresh rebellion had been in agitation so late as 1752. LOCKHART. He was executed on June 7, 1753.

_Gent. Mag_. xxiii. 292. Lord Campbell (_Lives of the Chancellors_, v.

109) says:--'I regard his execution as a wanton atrocity.' Horace Walpole, however, inclined to the belief that Cameron was engaged in a new scheme of rebellion. Walpole's _Memoirs of George II_, i. 333.

[413] Horace Walpole says that towards convicts under sentence of death 'George II's disposition in general was merciful, if the offence was not murder.' He mentions, however, a dreadful exception, when the King sent to the gallows at Oxford a young man who had been 'guilty of a most trifling forgery,' though he had been recommended to mercy by the Judge, who 'had a.s.sured him his pardon.' Mercy was refused, merely because the Judge, Willes, 'was attached to the Prince of Wales.' It is very likely that this was one of Johnson's 'instances,' as it had happened about four years earlier, and as an account of the young man had been published by an Oxonian. Walpole's _Memoirs of the Reign of George II_, i. 175.

[414] It is strange that when Johnson had been sixteen years in London he should not be known to Hogarth by sight. 'Mr. Hogarth,' writes Mrs.

Piozzi, 'was used to be very earnest that I should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible, the friends.h.i.+p of Dr. Johnson, "whose conversation was to the talk of other men, like t.i.tian's painting compared to Hudson's," he said.... Of Dr. Johnson, when my father and he were talking together about him one day, "That man," says Hogarth, "is not contented with believing the Bible, but he fairly resolves, I think, to believe nothing _but_ the Bible."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 136.

[415] On October 29 of this year James Boswell was born.

[416] In this preface is found the following lively pa.s.sage:--'The Roman Gazetteers are defective in several material ornaments of style. They never end an article with the mystical hint, _this occasions great speculation_. They seem to have been ignorant of such engaging introductions as, _we hear it is strongly reported_; and of that ingenious, but thread-bare excuse for a downright lie, _it wants confirmation_.'

[417] The _Lives_ of Blake and Drake were certainly written with a political aim. The war with Spain was going on, and the Tory party was doing its utmost to rouse the country against the Spaniards. It was 'a time,' according to Johnson, 'when the nation was engaged in a war with an enemy, whose insults, ravages, and barbarities have long called for vengeance.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 293.