Life of Johnson Volume II Part 6

'I do not find that I am likely to come back very soon from this place.

I shall, perhaps, stay a fortnight longer; and a fortnight is a long time to a lover absent from his mistress. Would a fortnight ever have an end?

'I am, dear Sir, 'Your most affectionate humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'Brighthelmstone, Sept. 9, 1769.'

After his return to town, we met frequently, and I continued the practice of making notes of his conversation, though not with so much a.s.siduity as I wish I had done. At this time, indeed, I had a sufficient excuse for not being able to appropriate so much time to my Journal; for General Paoli[209], after Corsica had been overpowered by the monarchy of France, was now no longer at the head of his brave countrymen, but having with difficulty escaped from his native island, had sought an asylum in Great Britain; and it was my duty, as well as my pleasure, to attend much upon him[210]. Such particulars of Johnson's conversation at this period as I have committed to writing, I shall here introduce, without any strict attention to methodical arrangement. Sometimes short notes of different days shall be blended together, and sometimes a day may seem important enough to be separately distinguished.

He said, he would not have Sunday kept with rigid severity and gloom, but with a gravity and simplicity of behaviour[211].

I told him that David Hume had made a short collection of Scotticisms[212]. 'I wonder, (said Johnson,) that _he_ should find them.'

He would not admit the importance of the question concerning the legality of general warrants[213]. 'Such a power' (he observed,) 'must be vested in every government, to answer particular cases of necessity; and there can be no just complaint but when it is abused, for which those who administer government must be answerable. It is a matter of such indifference, a matter about which the people care so very little, that were a man to be sent over Britain to offer them an exemption from it at a halfpenny a piece, very few would purchase it.' This was a specimen of that laxity of talking, which I have heard him fairly acknowledge[214]; for, surely, while the power of granting general warrants was supposed to be legal, and the apprehension of them hung over our heads, we did not possess that security of freedom, congenial to our happy const.i.tution, and which, by the intrepid exertions of Mr. Wilkes, has been happily established.

He said, 'The duration of Parliament, whether for seven years or the life of the King, appears to me so immaterial, that I would not give half a crown to turn the scale one way or the other[215]. The _habeas corpus_ is the single advantage which our government has over that of other countries.'

On the 30th of September we dined together at the Mitre. I attempted to argue for the superior happiness of the savage life, upon the usual fanciful topicks. JOHNSON. 'Sir, there can be nothing more false. The savages have no bodily advantages beyond those of civilised men. They have not better health; and as to care or mental uneasiness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, Sir; you are not to talk such paradox[216]: let me have no more on't. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct. Lord Monboddo[217], one of your Scotch Judges, talked a great deal of such nonsense. I suffered _him_; but I will not suffer _you_.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, does not Rousseau talk such nonsense?'

JOHNSON. 'True, Sir, but Rousseau _knows_ he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for staring at him.' BOSWELL. 'How so, Sir?'

JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, a man who talks nonsense so well, must know that he is talking nonsense. But I am _afraid_, (chuckling and laughing,) Monboddo does _not_ know that he is talking nonsense[218].' BOSWELL. 'Is it wrong then, Sir, to affect singularity, in order to make people stare?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, if you do it by propagating errour: and, indeed, it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a general inclination to make people stare; and every wise man has himself to cure of it, and does cure himself[219]. If you wish to make people stare by doing better than others, why, make them stare till they stare their eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare by being absurd. I may do it by going into a drawing-room without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in _The Spectator_, who had a commission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. Now, Sir, abstractedly, the night-cap was best; but, relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the boys run after him[220].'

Talking of a London life, he said, 'The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circ.u.mference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom.' BOSWELL. 'The only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live from one another.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but that is occasioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the other advantages.' BOSWELL. 'Sometimes I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desart.' JOHNSON.

'Sir, you have desart enough in Scotland.'

Although I had promised myself a great deal of instructive conversation with him on the conduct of the married state, of which I had then a near prospect, he did not say much upon that topick. Mr. Seward[221] heard him once say, that 'a man has a very bad chance for happiness in that state, unless he marries a woman of very strong and fixed principles of religion.' He maintained to me, contrary to the common notion, that a woman would not be the worse wife for being learned[222]; in which, from all that I have observed of Artemisias[223], I humbly differed from him.

That a woman should be sensible and well informed, I allow to be a great advantage; and think that Sir Thomas Overbury[224], in his rude versification, has very judiciously pointed out that degree of intelligence which is to be desired in a female companion:

'Give me, next _good_, an _understanding wife_, By Nature _wise_, not _learned_ by much art; Some _knowledge_ on her side will all my life More scope of conversation impart; Besides, her inborne virtue fortifie; They are most firmly good, who[225] best know why.'

When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for marrying a second time, as it shewed a disregard of his first wife, he said, 'Not at all, Sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time[226].'

So ingenious a turn did he give to this delicate question. And yet, on another occasion, he owned that he once had almost asked a promise of Mrs. Johnson that she would not marry again, but had checked himself.

Indeed, I cannot help thinking, that in his case the request would have been unreasonable; for if Mrs. Johnson forgot, or thought it no injury to the memory of her first love,--the husband of her youth and the father of her children,--to make a second marriage, why should she be precluded from a third, should she be so inclined? In Johnson's persevering fond appropriation of his _Tetty_, even after her decease, he seems totally to have overlooked the prior claim of the honest Birmingham trader. I presume that her having been married before had, at times, given him some uneasiness; for I remember his observing upon the marriage of one of our common friends, 'He has done a very foolish thing, Sir; he has married a widow, when he might have had a maid[227].'

We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I had last year the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Thrale at Dr. Johnson's one morning, and had conversation enough with her to admire her talents, and to shew her that I was as Johnsonian as herself. Dr. Johnson had probably been kind enough to speak well of me, for this evening he delivered me a very polite card from Mr. Thrale and her, inviting me to Streatham.

On the 6th of October I complied with this obliging invitation, and found, at an elegant villa, six miles from town, every circ.u.mstance that can make society pleasing. Johnson, though quite at home, was yet looked up to with an awe, tempered by affection, and seemed to be equally the care of his host and hostess. I rejoiced at seeing him so happy.

He played off his wit against Scotland with a good humoured pleasantry, which gave me, though no bigot to national prejudices, an opportunity for a little contest with him. I having said that England was obliged to us for gardeners, almost all their good gardeners being Scotchmen.

JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that is because gardening is much more necessary amongst you than with us, which makes so many of your people learn it.

It is _all_ gardening with you. Things which grow wild here, must be cultivated with great care in Scotland. Pray now (throwing himself back in his chair, and laughing,) are you ever able to bring the _sloe_ to perfection?'

I boasted that we had the honour of being the first to abolish the unhospitable, troublesome, and ungracious custom of giving vails to servants[228]. JOHNSON. 'Sir, you abolished vails, because you were too poor to be able to give them.'

Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the merit of Prior. He attacked him powerfully; said he wrote of love like a man who had never felt it: his love verses were college verses; and he repeated the song 'Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains[229],' &c., in so ludicrous a manner, as to make us all wonder how any one could have been pleased with such fantastical stuff. Mrs. Thrale stood to her gun with great courage, in defence of amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at last silenced her by saying, 'My dear Lady, talk no more of this. Nonsense can be defended but by nonsense[230].'

Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talent for light gay poetry; and, as a specimen, repeated his song in _Florizel and Perdita_, and dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line:

'I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor[231].'

JOHNSON. 'Nay, my dear Lady, this will never do. Poor David! Smile with the simple;--What folly is that? And who would feed with the poor that can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.' I repeated this sally to Garrick, and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a little irritated by it. To sooth him, I observed, that Johnson spared none of us; and I quoted the pa.s.sage in Horace[232], in which he compares one who attacks his friends for the sake of a laugh, to a pushing ox[233], that is marked by a bunch of hay put upon his horns: '_faenum habet in cornu_.' 'Ay, (said Garrick vehemently,) he has a whole _mow_ of it.'

Talking of history, Johnson said, 'We may know historical facts to be true, as we may know facts in common life to be true. Motives are generally unknown. We cannot trust to the characters we find in history, unless when they are drawn by those who knew the persons; as those, for instance, by Sall.u.s.t and by Lord Clarendon[234].'

He would not allow much merit to Whitefield's oratory. 'His popularity, Sir (said he,) is chiefly owing to the peculiarity of his manner. He would be followed by crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit, or were he to preach from a tree[235].' I know not from what spirit of contradiction he burst out into a violent declamation against the Corsicans, of whose heroism I talked in high terms. 'Sir (said he,) what is all this rout about the Corsicans? They have been at war with the Genoese for upwards of twenty years, and have never yet taken their fortified towns. They might have battered down their walls, and reduced them to powder in twenty years. They might have pulled the walls in pieces, and cracked the stones with their teeth in twenty years.' It was in vain to argue with him upon the want of artillery: he was not to be resisted for the moment.

On the evening of October 10, I presented Dr. Johnson to General Paoli.

I had greatly wished that two men, for whom I had the highest esteem, should meet[236]. They met with a manly ease, mutually conscious of their own abilities, and of the abilities of each other. The General spoke Italian, and Dr. Johnson English, and understood one another very well, with a little aid of interpretation from me, in which I compared myself to an isthmus which joins two great continents. Upon Johnson's approach, the General said, 'From what I have read of your works, Sir, and from what Mr. Boswell has told me of you, I have long held you in great veneration.' The General talked of languages being formed on the particular notions and manners of a people, without knowing which, we cannot know the language. We may know the direct signification of single words; but by these no beauty of expression, no sally of genius, no wit is conveyed to the mind. All this must be by allusion to other ideas.

'Sir, (said Johnson,) you talk of language, as if you had never done any thing else but study it, instead of governing a nation.' The General said, '_Questo e un troppo gran complimento_;' this is too great a compliment. Johnson answered. 'I should have thought so, Sir, if I had not heard you talk.' The General asked him, what he thought of the spirit of infidelity which was so prevalent[237]. JOHNSON. 'Sir, this gloom of infidelity, I hope, is only a transient cloud pa.s.sing through the hemisphere[238], which will soon be dissipated, and the sun break forth with his usual splendour.' 'You think then, (said the General,) that they will change their principles like their clothes.'

JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, if they bestow no more thought on principles than on dress, it must be so.' The General said, that 'a great part of the fashionable infidelity was owing to a desire of shewing courage. Men who have no opportunities of shewing it as to things in this life, take death and futurity as objects on which to display it.' JOHNSON. 'That is mighty foolish affectation. Fear is one of the pa.s.sions of human nature, of which it is impossible to divest it. You remember that the Emperour Charles V, when he read upon the tomb-stone of a Spanish n.o.bleman, "Here lies one who never knew fear," wittily said, "Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers."'

He talked a few words of French[239] to the General; but finding he did not do it with facility, he asked for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote the following note:--

'J'ai lu dans la geographie de Lucas de Linda un Pater-noster ecrit dans une langue tout a-fait differente de l'Italienne, et de toutes autres lesquelles se derivent du Latin. L'auteur l'appelle _linguam Corsicae rusticam_; elle a peut-etre pa.s.se peu a peu; mais elle a certainement prevalue autrefois dans les montagnes et dans la campagne. Le meme auteur dit la meme chose en parlant de Sardaigne; qu'il y a deux langues dans l'Isle, une des villes, l'autre de la campagne.'

The General immediately informed him that the _lingua rustica_ was only in Sardinia.

Dr. Johnson went home with me, and drank tea till late in the night. He said, 'General Paoli had the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen[240].' He denied that military men were always the best bred men.

'Perfect good breeding, he observed, consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners; whereas, in a military man, you can commonly distinguish the _brand_ of a soldier, _l'homme d'epee_.'

Dr. Johnson shunned to-night any discussion of the perplexed question of fate and free will, which I attempted to agitate. 'Sir, (said he,) we _know_ our will is free, and _there's_ an end on't[241].'

He honoured me with his company at dinner on the 16th of October, at my lodgings in Old Bond-street, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Garrick, Dr.

Goldsmith, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Bickerstaff[242], and Mr. Thomas Davies.

Garrick played round him with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his coat, and, looking up in his face with a lively archness, complimented him on the good health which he seemed then to enjoy; while the sage, shaking his head, beheld him with a gentle complacency. One of the company not being come at the appointed hour, I proposed, as usual upon such occasions, to order dinner to be served; adding, 'Ought six people to be kept waiting for one?' 'Why, yes, (answered Johnson, with a delicate humanity,) if the one will suffer more by your sitting down, than the six will do by waiting.' Goldsmith, to divert the tedious minutes, strutted about, bragging of his dress, and I believe was seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully p.r.o.ne to such impressions[243]. 'Come, come, (said Garrick,) talk no more of that. You are, perhaps, the worst--eh, eh!'--Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to interrupt him, when Garrick went on, laughing ironically, 'Nay, you will always _look_ like a gentleman[244]; but I am talking of being well or _ill drest_.' 'Well, let me tell you, (said Goldsmith,) when my tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, 'Sir, I have a favour to beg of you. When any body asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water-lane.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour[245].'

After dinner our conversation first turned upon Pope. Johnson said, his characters of men were admirably drawn, those of women not so well[246].

He repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the _Dunciad_[247]. While he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company[248] ventured to say, 'Too fine for such a poem:--a poem on what?' JOHNSON, (with a disdainful look,) 'Why, on _dunces_. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst _thou_ lived in those days! It is not worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits[249].' Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circ.u.mstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive than it was then[250]. Johnson said, his Pastorals were poor things, though the versification was fine[251]. He told us, with high satisfaction, the anecdote of Pope's inquiring who was the authour of his _London_, and saying, he will be soon _deterre_[252]. He observed, that in Dryden's poetry there were pa.s.sages drawn from a profundity which Pope could never reach[253]. He repeated some fine lines on love, by the former, (which I have now forgotten[254],) and gave great applause to the character of Zimri[255].

Goldsmith said, that Pope's character of Addison[256] shewed a deep knowledge of the human heart. Johnson said, that the description of the temple, in the _Mourning Bride_[257], was the finest poetical pa.s.sage he had ever read; he recollected none in Shakspeare equal to it. 'But, (said Garrick, all alarmed for the "G.o.d of his idolatry[258],") we know not the extent and variety of his powers.'

'We are to suppose there are such pa.s.sages in his works. Shakspeare must not suffer from the badness of our memories.' Johnson, diverted by this enthusiastick jealousy, went on with greater ardour: 'No, Sir; Congreve has _nature_;' (smiling on the tragick eagerness of Garrick;) but composing himself, he added, 'Sir, this is not comparing Congreve on the whole, with Shakspeare on the whole; but only maintaining that Congreve has one finer pa.s.sage than any that can be found in Shakspeare. Sir, a man may have no more than ten guineas in the world, but he may have those ten guineas in one piece; and so may have a finer piece than a man who has ten thousand pounds: but then he has only one ten-guinea piece.

What I mean is, that you can shew me no pa.s.sage where there is simply a description of material objects, without any intermixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect[259].' Mr. Murphy mentioned Shakspeare's description of the night before the battle of Agincourt[260]; but it was observed, it had _men_ in it. Mr. Davies suggested the speech of Juliet, in which she figures herself awaking in the tomb of her ancestors[261]. Some one mentioned the description of Dover Cliff[262].

JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; it should be all precipice,--all vacuum. The crows impede your fall. The diminished appearance of the boats, and other circ.u.mstances, are all very good description; but do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea of immense height. The impression is divided; you pa.s.s on by computation, from one stage of the tremendous s.p.a.ce to another. Had the girl in _The Mourning Bride_ said, she could not cast her shoe to the top of one of the pillars in the temple, it would not have aided the idea, but weakened it.'

Talking of a Barrister who had a bad utterance, some one, (to rouse Johnson,) wickedly said, that he was unfortunate in not having been taught oratory by Sheridan[263]. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, if he had been taught by Sheridan, he would have cleared the room.' GARRICK. 'Sheridan has too much vanity to be a good man.' We shall now see Johnson's mode of _defending_ a man; taking him into his own hands, and discriminating.

JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. There is, to be sure, in Sheridan, something to reprehend, and every thing to laugh at; but, Sir, he is not a bad man.

No, Sir; were mankind to be divided into good and bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of good. And, Sir, it must be allowed that Sheridan excels in plain declamation, though he can exhibit no character.'

I should, perhaps, have suppressed this disquisition concerning a person of whose merit and worth I think with respect, had he not attacked Johnson so outrageously in his _Life of Swift_, and, at the same time, treated us, his admirers, as a set of pigmies[264]. He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Mrs. Montagu, a lady distinguished for having written an Essay on Shakspeare, being mentioned. REYNOLDS. 'I think that essay does her honour.' JOHNSON, 'Yes, Sir; it does _her_ honour, but it would do n.o.body else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread, I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say, there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book.' GARRICK. 'But, Sir, surely it shews how much Voltaire has mistaken Shakspeare, which n.o.body else has done[265].' JOHNSON. 'Sir, n.o.body else has thought it worth while. And what merit is there in that? You may as well praise a schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has construed ill. No, Sir, there is no real criticism in it: none shewing the beauty of thought, as formed on the workings of the human heart.'

The admirers of this Essay[266] may be offended at the slighting manner in which Johnson spoke of it; but let it be remembered, that he gave his honest opinion unbiased by any prejudice, or any proud jealousy of a woman intruding herself into the chair of criticism; for Sir Joshua Reynolds has told me, that when the Essay first came out, and it was not known who had written it, Johnson wondered how Sir Joshua could like it[267]. At this time Sir Joshua himself had received no information concerning the authour, except being a.s.sured by one of our most eminent literati, that it was clear its authour did not know the Greek tragedies in the original. One day at Sir Joshua's table, when it was related that Mrs. Montagu, in an excess of compliment to the authour of a modern tragedy, had exclaimed, 'I tremble for Shakspeare;' Johnson said, 'When Shakspeare has got ---- for his rival, and Mrs. Montagu for his defender, he is in a poor state indeed.'

Johnson proceeded: 'The Scotchman[268] has taken the right method in his _Elements of Criticism_. I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way.' MURPHY. 'He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomising the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it.' GOLDSMITH. 'It is easier to write that book, than to read it[269].' JOHNSON. 'We have an example of true criticism in Burke's _Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful_; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos[270]; and Bouhours[271], who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart. In the description of night in _Macbeth_[272], the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,--insp.i.s.sated gloom.'

Politicks being mentioned, he said, 'This pet.i.tioning is a new mode of distressing government, and a mighty easy one. I will undertake to get pet.i.tions either against quarter-guineas or half-guineas, with the help of a little hot wine. There must be no yielding to encourage this. The object is not important enough. We are not to blow up half a dozen palaces, because one cottage is burning[273].'

The conversation then took another turn. JOHNSON. 'It is amazing what ignorance of certain points one sometimes finds in men of eminence. A wit about town, who wrote Latin bawdy verses, asked me, how it happened that England and Scotland, which were once two kingdoms, were now one:--and Sir Fletcher Norton[274] did not seem to know that there were such publications as the Reviews.'