Life of Johnson Volume II Part 48

85). 'The author is a strange being, and has a rage of knowing everybody that ever was talked of. He forced himself upon me at Paris in spite of my teeth and my doors.' To this Gray replied:--'Mr. Boswell's book has pleased and moved me strangely; all, I mean, that relates to Paoli. He is a man born two thousand years after his time! The pamphlet proves, what I have always maintained, that any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.' In _The Letters of Boswell_ (p. 122) there is the following under date of Nov. 9, 1767:--'I am always for fixing some period for my perfection, as far as possible. Let it be when my account of _Corsica_ is published; I shall then have a character which I must support.' In April 16 of the following year, a few weeks after the book had come out, he writes:--'To confess to you at once, Temple, I have since my last coming to town been as wild as ever.' (p. 146.)

[130] Boswell used to put notices of his movements in the newspapers, such as--'James Boswell, Esq., is expected in town.' _Public Advertiser_, Feb. 28, 1768. 'Yesterday James Boswell, Esq., arrived from Scotland at his lodgings in Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly.' _Ib_ March 24, 1768. Prior's _Goldsmith_, i. 449.

[131] Johnson was very ill during this visit. Mrs. Thrale had at the same time given birth to a daughter, and had been nursed by her mother.

His thoughts, therefore, were turned on illness. Writing to Mrs. Thrale, he says:--'To roll the weak eye of helpless anguish, and see nothing on any side but cold indifference, will, I hope, happen to none whom I love or value; it may tend to withdraw the mind from life, but has no tendency to kindle those affections which fit us for a purer and a n.o.bler state.... These reflections do not grow out of any discontent at C's [Chambers's] behaviour; he has been neither negligent nor troublesome; nor do I love him less for having been ill in his house.

This is no small degree of praise.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 13.

[132] See _ante_, ii. 3, note.

[133] The editor of the _Letters of Boswell_ justly says (p. 149):--'The detail in the _Life of Johnson_ is rather scanty about this period; dissipation, the _History of Corsica_, wife-hunting, ... interfered perhaps at this time with Boswell's pursuit of Dr. Johnson.'

[134] See _Boswell's_ Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773, for a discussion of the same question. Lord Eldon has recorded (_Life_, i. 106), that when he first went the Northern Circuit (about 1776-1780), he asked Jack Lee (_post_, March 20, 1778), who was not scrupulous in his advocacy, whether his method could be justified. 'Oh, yes,' he said, 'undoubtedly.

Dr. Johnson had said that counsel were at liberty to state, as the parties themselves would state, what it was most for their interest to state.' After some interval, and when he had had his evening bowl of milk punch and two or three pipes of tobacco, he suddenly said, 'Come, Master Scott, let us go to bed. I have been thinking upon the questions that you asked me, and I am not quite so sure that the conduct you represented will bring a man peace at the last.' Lord Eldon, after stating pretty nearly what Johnson had said, continues:--'But it may be questioned whether even this can be supported.'

[135] Garrick brought out Hugh Kelly's _False Delicacy_ at Drury Lane six days before Goldsmith's _Good-Natured Man_ was brought out at Covent Garden. 'It was the town talk,' says Mr. Forster (_Life of Goldsmith_, ii. 93), some weeks before either performance took place, 'that the two comedies were to be pitted against each other.' _False Delicacy_ had a great success. Ten thousand copies of it were sold before the season closed. (_Ib_ p. 96.) 'Garrick's prologue to _False Delicacy_,' writes Murphy (_Life of Garrick_, p. 287), 'promised a moral and sentimental comedy, and with an air of pleasantry called it a sermon in five acts.

The critics considered it in the same light, but the general voice was in favour of the play during a run of near twenty nights. Foote, at last, by a little piece called _Piety in Pattens_, brought that species of composition into disrepute.' It is recorded in Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 201, that when some one asked Johnson whether they should introduce Hugh Kelly to him, 'No, Sir,' says he, 'I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.' See _post_, beginning of 1777.

[136] _The Provoked Husband, or A Journey to London_, by Vanbrugh and Colley Cibber. It was brought out in 1727-8. See _post_, June 3, 1784.

[137] See _ante_, i. 213.

[138] April 6, 1772, and April 12, 1776.

[139] Richardson, writing on Dec. 7, 1756, to Miss Fielding, about her Familiar Letters, says:--'What a knowledge of the human heart! Well might a critical judge of writing say, as he did to me, that your late brother's knowledge of it was not (fine writer as he was) comparable to yours. His was but as the knowledge of the outside of a clock-work machine, while yours was that of all the finer springs and movements of the inside.' _Richardson Corres_. ii. 104. Mrs. Calderwood, writing of her visit to the Low Countries in 1756, says:--'All Richison's [Richardson's] books are translated, and much admired abroad; but for Fielding's the foreigners have no notion of them, and do not understand them, as the manners are so entirely English.' _Letters, &c., of Mrs.

Calderwood_, p. 208

[140] In _The Provoked Husband_, act iv. sc. 1.

[141] By Dr. Hoadley, brought out in 1747. 'This was the first good comedy from the time of _The Provoked Husband_ in 1727.' Murphy's _Garrick_, p. 78.

[142] Madame Riccoboni, writing to Garrick from Paris on Sept. 7, 1768, says:--'On ne supporterait point ici l'indecence de Ranger. Les tresindecens Francaisdeviennent delicats sur leur theatre, a mesure qu'ils le sont moins dans leur conduite.' _Garrick's Corres_. ii. 548.

[143] 'The question in dispute was as to the heirship of Mr. Archibald Douglas. If he were really the son of Lady Jane Douglas, he would inherit large family estates; but if he were supposit.i.tious, then they would descend to the Duke of Hamilton. The Judges of the Court of Session had been divided in opinion, eight against seven, the Lord President Dundas giving the casting vote in favour of the Duke of Hamilton; and in consequence of it he and several other of the judges had, on the reversal by the Lords, their houses attacked by a mob. It is said, but not upon conclusive authority, that Boswell himself headed the mob which broke his own father's windows.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 86.

See _post_, April 27, 1773, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 24-26, 1773.

Mr. J. H. Burton, in his _Life of Hume_ (ii. 150), says:--'Men about to meet each other in company used to lay an injunction on themselves not to open their lips on the subject, so fruitful was it in debates and brawls.' Boswell, according to the Bodleian catalogue, was the author of _Dorando, A Spanish Tale_, 1767. In this tale the Douglas cause is narrated under the thinnest disguise. It is reviewed in the _Gent. Mag_.

for 1767, p. 361.

[144] See _post_, under April 19, 1772, March 15, 1779, and June 2, 1781.

[145] Revd. Kenneth Macaulay. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 27, 1773.

He was the great-uncle of Lord Macaulay.

[146] Martin, in his _St. Kilda_ (p. 38), had stated that the people of St. Kilda 'are seldom troubled with a cough, except at the Steward's landing. I told them plainly,' he continues, 'that I thought all this notion of infection was but a mere fancy, at which they seemed offended, saying, that never any before the minister and myself was heard to doubt of the truth of it, which is plainly demonstrated upon the landing of every boat.' The usual 'infected cough,' came, he says, upon his visit.

Macaulay (_History of St. Kilda_, p. 204) says that he had gone to the island a disbeliever, but that by eight days after his arrival all the inhabitants were infected with this disease. See also _post_, March, 21, 1772, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 2, 1773.

[147] See _ante_, July 1, 1763.

[148] _Post_, March 21, 1772.

[149] This is not the case. Martin (p. 9) says that the only landing place is inaccessible except under favour of a neap tide, a north-east or west wind, or with a perfect calm. He himself was rowed to St. Kilda, 'the inhabitants admiring to see us get thither contrary to the wind and tide' (p. 5).

[150] That for one kind of learning Oxford has no advantages, he shows in a letter that he wrote there on Aug. 4, 1777. 'I shall inquire,' he says, 'about the harvest when I come into a region where anything necessary to life is understood.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 349. At Lichfield he reached that region. 'My barber, a man not unintelligent, speaks magnificently of the harvest;' _Ib_ p. 351.

[151] See _post_, Sept. 14, 1777.

[152] See _ante_, i. 116.

[153] The advancement had been very rapid. 'When Dr. Robertson's career commenced,' writes Dugald Stewart in his _Life_ of that historian (p.

157), 'the trade of authorship was unknown in Scotland.' Smollet, in _Humphry Clinker_, published three years after this conversation, makes Mr. Bramble write (Letter of Aug. 8):--'Edinburgh is a hot-bed of genius. I have had the good fortune to be made acquainted with many authors of the first distinction; such as the two Humes [David Hume and John Home, whose names had the same p.r.o.nunciation], Robertson, Smith, Wallace, Blair, Ferguson, Wilkie, &c.' To these might be added Smollett himself, Boswell, Reid, Beattie, Kames, Monboddo. Henry Mackenzie and Dr. Henry began to publish in 1771. Gibbon, writing to Robertson in 1779, says:--'I have often considered with some sort of envy the valuable society which you possess in so narrow a compa.s.s.' Stewart's _Robertson_, p. 363.

[154] See _post_, April 30, 1773, where Johnson owned that he had not read Hume. J.H. Burton (_Life of Hume_, ii. 129), after stating that 'Hume was the first to add to a mere narrative of events an enquiry into the progress of the people, &c.,' says:--'There seems to be no room for the supposition that he had borrowed the idea from Voltaire's _Essai sur les Moeurs_. Hume's own _Political Discourses_ are as close an approach to this method of inquiry as the work of Voltaire; and if we look for such productions of other writers as may have led him into this train of thought, it would be more just to name Bacon and Montesquieu.'

[155] See _post_, May 8 and 13, 1778.

[156] See _post_, April 30, 1773, April 29, 1778, and Oct. 10, 1779.

[157] _An Essay on the Future Life of Brutes_. By Richard Dean, Curate of Middleton, Manchester, 1767. The 'part of the Scriptures' on which the author chiefly relies is the _Epistle to the Romans_, viii. 19-23.

He also finds support for his belief in 'those pa.s.sages in _Isaiah_ where the prophet speaks of new Heavens, and a new Earth, of the Lion as eating straw like the Ox, &c.' Vol. ii. pp. x, 4.

[158] The words that Addison's Cato uses as he lays his hand on his sword. Act v. sc. 1.

[159] I should think it impossible not to wonder at the variety of Johnson's reading, however desultory it may have been. Who could have imagined that the High Church of England-man would be so prompt in quoting _Maupertuis_, who, I am sorry to think, stands in the list of those unfortunate mistaken men, who call themselves _esprits forts_. I have, however, a high respect for that Philosopher whom the Great Frederick of Prussia loved and honoured, and addressed pathetically in one of his Poems,--

'Maupertuis, cher Maupertuis, Que notre vie est peu de chose!'

There was in Maupertuis a vigour and yet a tenderness of sentiment, united with strong intellectual powers, and uncommon ardour of soul.

Would he had been a Christian! I cannot help earnestly venturing to hope that he is one now. BOSWELL. Voltaire writing to D'Alembert on Aug. 25, 1759, says:--'Que dites-vous de Maupertuis, mort entre deux capucins?'

Voltaire's _Works_, lxii. 94. The stanza from which Boswell quotes is as follows:--

'O Maupertuis, cher Maupertuis, Que notre vie est peu de chose!

Cette fleur, qui brille aujourd'hui Demain se fane a peine eclose; Tout perit, tout est emporte Par la dure fatalite Des arrtes de la destinee; Votre vertu, vos grands talents Ne pourront obtenir du temps Le seul delai d'une journee.'

_La vie est un Songe. Euvres de Frederic II (edit. 1849), x. 40.

[160] Johnson does not give _Conglobulate_ in his _Dictionary_; only _conglobe_. If he used the word it is not likely that he said 'conglobulate _together_.'

[161] Gilbert White, writing on Nov. 4, 1767, after mentioning that he had seen swallows roosting in osier-beds by the river, says:--'This seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water.' White's _Selborne_, Letter xii. See also _post_, May 7, 1773.

[162] _Travels from St. Petersburgh in Russia to divers parts of Asia_.

By John Bell, Glasgow, 1763: 4to. 2 vols.

[163] I. D'Israeli (_Curiosities of Literature_, ed. 1834, i. 194) ranks this book among Literary Impostures. 'Du Halde never travelled ten leagues from Paris in his life; though he appears by his writings to be familiar with Chinese scenery.' See _ante_, i. 136.

[164] See _post_, Oct. 10, 1779.

[165] Boswell, in his correspondence with Temple in 1767 and 1768, pa.s.ses in review the various ladies whom he proposes to marry. The lady described in this paragraph--for the 'gentleman' is clearly Boswell--is 'the fair and lively Zelide,' a Dutch-woman. She was translating his _Corsica_ into French. On March 24, 1768, he wrote, 'I must have her.'

On April 26, he asked his father's permission to go over to Holland to see her. But on May 14 he forwarded to Temple one of her letters.

'Could,' he said, 'any actress at any of the theatres attack me with a keener--what is the word? not fury, something softer. The lightning that flashes with so much brilliance may scorch, and does not her esprit do so?' _Letters of Boswell_, pp. 144-150.

[166] In the original it is _some_ not _many_. Johnson's _Works_, vii.