Life of Johnson Volume II Part 49

182.

[167] _An account of the Manners and Customs of Italy_, by Joseph Baretti, London, 1768. The book would be still more entertaining were it not written as a reply to Sharp's _Letters on Italy_. _Post_ under April 29, 1776.

[168] Mrs. Piozzi wrote of him: 'His character is easily seen, and his soul above disguise, haughty and insolent, and breathing defiance against all mankind; while his powers of mind exceed most people's, and his powers of purse are so slight that they leave him dependent on all.

Baretti is for ever in the state of a stream d.a.m.ned up; if he could once get loose, he would bear down all before him.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 335.

[169] According to Hawkins (_Life_, p. 460), the watch was new this year, and was, he believed, the first Johnson ever had.

[170] _St. John_, ix. 4. In _Pr. and Med_., p. 233, is the following:--'e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n imploring diligence. "O G.o.d, make me to remember that the night cometh when no man can work."' Porson, in his witty attack on Sir John Hawkins, originally published in the _Gent.

Mag_. for 1787, quotes the inscription as a proof of Hawkins's Greek.

'_Nux gar erchetai_. The meaning is (says Sir John) _For the night cometh_. And so it is, Mr. Urban.' Porson _Tracts_, p. 337.

[171] He thus wrote of himself from Oxford to Mrs. Thrale:--'This little dog does nothing, but I hope he will mend; he is now reading _Jack the Giant-killer_. Perhaps so n.o.ble a narrative may rouse in him the soul of enterprise.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 9.

[172] See _ante_, ii. 3

[173] Under the same date, Boswell thus begins a letter to Temple:--'Your moral lecture came to me yesterday in very good time, while I lay suffering severely for immorality. If there is any firmness at all in me, be a.s.sured that I shall never again behave in a manner so unworthy the friend of Paoli. My warm imagination looks forward with great complacency on the sobriety, the healthfulness, and the worth of my future life.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 147

[174] Johnson so early as Aug. 21, 1766, had given him the same advice (_ante_, ii. 22). How little Boswell followed it is shewn by his letter to the Earl of Chatham, on April 8, 1767, in which he informed him of his intention to publish his _Corsica_, and concluded:--'Could your Lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter? I have been told how favourably your Lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and with a Chatham is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame.' _Chatham Corres_., iii. 246. On the same day on which he wrote to Johnson, he said in a letter to Temple, 'Old General Oglethorpe, who has come to see me, and is with me often, just on account of my book, bids me not marry till I have first put the Corsicans in a proper situation. "You may make a fortune in the doing of it," said he; "or, if you do not, you will have acquired such a character as will ent.i.tle you to any fortune."' _Letters of Boswell_, p.

148. Four months later, Boswell wrote:--'By a private subscription in Scotland, I am sending this week 700 worth of ordnance [to Corsica] ...

It is really a tolerable train of artillery.' _Ib_ p. 156. In 1769 he brought out a small volume ent.i.tled _British Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans. By Several Hands_. Collected and published by James Boswell, Esq.

[175] From about the beginning of the fourteenth century, Corsica had belonged to the Republic of Genoa. In the great rising under Paoli, the Corsicans would have achieved their independence, had not Genoa ceded the island to the crown of France.

[176] Boswell, writing to Temple on May 14 of this year, says:--'I am really the _great man_ now. I have had David Hume in the forenoon, and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon of the same day, visiting me. Sir J.

Pringle and Dr. Franklin dined with me to-day; and Mr. Johnson and General Oglethorpe one day, Mr. Garrick alone another, and David Hume and some more _literati_ another, dine with me next week. I give admirable dinners and good claret; and the moment I go abroad again, which will be in a day or two, I set up my chariot. This is enjoying the fruit of my labours, and appearing like the friend of Paoli.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 151.

[177] See _post_, April 12, 1778, and May 8, 1781.

[178] The talk arose no doubt from the general election that had just been held amid all the excitement about Wilkes. Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_, iii. 307), in a letter dated April 16, 1768, describes the riots in London. He had seen 'the mob requiring gentlemen and ladies of all ranks as they pa.s.sed in their carriages, to shout for Wilkes and liberty, marking the same words on all their coaches with chalk, and No. 45 on every door. I went last week to Winchester, and observed that for fifteen miles out of town there was scarce a door or window shutter next the road unmarked; and this continued here and there quite to Winchester.'

[179] In his _Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage_, he thus writes:--'If I might presume to advise them [the Ministers] upon this great affair, I should dissuade them from any direct attempt upon the liberty of the press, which is the darling of the common people, and therefore cannot be attacked without immediate danger.' _Works_, v. 344.

On p. 191 of the same volume, he shows some of the benefits that arise in England from 'the boundless liberty with which every man may write his own thoughts.' See also in his _Life of Milton_, the pa.s.sage about _Areopagitica_, _Ib_ vii. 82. The liberty of the press was likely to be 'a constant topic.' Horace Walpole (_Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, ii. 15), writing of the summer of 1764, says:--'Two hundred informations were filed against printers; a larger number than had been prosecuted in the whole thirty-three years of the last reign.'

[180] 'The sun has risen, and the corn has grown, and, whatever talk has been of the danger of property, yet he that ploughed the field commonly reaped it, and he that built a house was master of the door; the vexation excited by injustice suffered, or supposed to be suffered, by any private man, or single community, was local and temporary; it neither spread far nor lasted long.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 170. See also _post_, March 31, 1772. Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_, iii. 215) wrote to the Abbe Morellet, on April 22, 1787:--'Nothing can be better expressed than your sentiments are on this point, where you prefer liberty of trading, cultivating, manufacturing, &c., even to civil liberty, this being affected but rarely, the other every hour.'

[181] See _ante_, July 6, 1763.

[182] See _ante_, Oct. 1765.

[183] 'I was diverted with Paoli's English library. It consisted of:--Some broken volumes of the _Spectatour_ and _Tatler_; Pope's _Essay on Man_; _Gulliver's Travels_; A _History of France_ in old English; and Barclay's _Apology for the Quakers_. I promised to send him some English books... I have sent him some of our best books of morality and entertainment, in particular the works of Mr. Samuel Johnson.' Boswell's _Corsica_, p. 169.

[184] Johnson, as Boswell believed, only once 'in the whole course of his life condescended to oppose anything that was written against him.'

(See _ante_, i. 314.) In this he followed the rule of Bentley and of Boerhaave. 'It was said to old Bentley, upon the attacks against him, "why, they'll write you down." "No, Sir," he replied; "depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself."' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 1 1773. Bentley shewed prudence in his silence. 'He was right,'

Johnson said, 'not to answer; for, in his hazardous method of writing, he could not but be often enough wrong.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 10, 1773. 'Boerhaave was never soured by calumny and detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them; "for they are sparks," said he, "which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves."' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 288. Swift, in his _Lines on Censure_ which begin,--

'Ye wise instruct me to endure An evil which admits no cure.'

ends by saying:--

'The most effectual way to baulk Their malice is--to let them talk.'

Swift's _Works_, xi. 58.

Young, in his _Second Epistle to Pope_, had written:--

'Armed with this truth all critics I defy; For if I fall, by my own pen I die.'

Hume, in his _Auto_. (p. ix.) says:--'I had a fixed resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body.' This is not quite true. See J. H. Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 252, for an instance of a violent reply. The following pa.s.sages in Johnson's writings are to the same effect:--'I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those that they provoke.' _Piozzi Letters_ ii. 289. 'It is very rarely that an author is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.' _Ib_ p. 110. 'The writer who thinks his works formed for duration mistakes his interest when he mentions his enemies. He degrades his own dignity by shewing that he was affected by their censures, and gives lasting importance to names, which, left to themselves would vanish from remembrance.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 294. 'If it had been possible for those who were attacked to conceal their pain and their resentment, the _Dunciad_ might have made its way very slowly in the world.' _Ib_ viii. 276. Hawkins (_Life of Johnson_, p. 348) says that, 'against personal abuse Johnson was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:--"Alas! reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' In his _Parl. Debates_ (_Works_, x. 359), Johnson makes Mr. Lyttelton say:--'No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it.' Addison in _The Freeholder_, No. 40, says, that 'there is not a more melancholy object in the learned world than a man who has written himself down.' See also Boswell's _Hebrides_, near the end.

[185] Barber had entered Johnson's service in 1752 (_ante_, i. 239).

Nine years before this letter was written he had been a sailor on board a frigate (_ante_, i. 348), so that he was somewhat old for a boy.

[186] Boswell, writing to Temple on May 14 of this year; says:--'Dr.

Robertson is come up laden with his _Charles V_.--three large quartos; he has been offered three thousand guineas for it.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 152.

[187] In like manner the professors at Aberdeen and Glasgow seemed afraid to speak in his presence. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug 23 and Oct 29, 1773. See also _post_, April 20, 1778.

[188] See _ante_, July 28, 1763.

[189] Johnson, in inserting this letter, says (Works, viii. 374):--'I communicate it with much pleasure, as it gives me at once an opportunity of recording the fraternal kindness of Thomson, and reflecting on the friendly a.s.sistance of Mr. Boswell, from whom I received it.' See _post_, July 9, 1777, and June 18, 1778.

[190] Murphy, in his _Life of Garrick_, p. 183, says that Garrick once brought Dr. Munsey--so he writes the name--to call on him. 'Garrick entered the dining-room, and turning suddenly round, ran to the door, and called out, "Dr. Munsey, where are you going?" "Up stairs to see the author," said Munsey. "Pho! pho! come down, the author is here." Dr.

Munsey came, and, as he entered the room, said in his free way, "You scoundrel! I was going up to the garret. Who could think of finding an author on the first floor?"' Mrs. Montagu wrote to Lord Lyttelton from Tunbridge in 1760:--'The great Monsey (_sic_) came hither on Friday ...

He is great in the coffee-house, great in the rooms, and great on the pantiles.' _Montagu Letters_, iv. 291. In Rogers's _Table-Talk_, p. 271, there is a curious account of him.

[191] See _ante_, July 26, 1763.

[192] My respectable friend, upon reading this pa.s.sage, observed, that he probably must have said not simply, 'strong facts,' but 'strong facts well arranged.' His lordship, however, knows too well the value of written doc.u.ments to insist on setting his recollection against my notes taken at the time. He does not attempt to _traverse_ the record. The fact, perhaps, may have been, either that the additional words escaped me in the noise of a numerous company, or that Dr. Johnson, from his impetuosity, and eagerness to seize an opportunity to make a lively retort, did not allow Dr. Douglas to finish his sentence. BOSWELL.

[193] 'It is boasted that between November [1712] and January, eleven thousand [of _The Conduct of the Allies_] were sold.... Yet surely whoever surveys this wonder-working pamphlet with cool perusal, will confess that it's efficacy was supplied by the pa.s.sions of its readers; that it operates by the mere weight of facts, with very little a.s.sistance from the hand that produced them.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 203.

[194] 'Every great man, of whatever kind be his greatness, has among his friends those who officiously or insidiously quicken his attention to offences, heighten his disgust, and stimulate his resentment.' _Ib_ viii 266.

[195] See the hard drawing of him in Churchill's _Rosciad_. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i. 391, note 2.

[196] For _talk_, see _post_, under March 30 1783.

[197] See _post_, Oct. 6, 1769, and May 8, 1778, where Johnson tosses Boswell.

[198] See _post_, Sept. 22, 1777, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov. i, 1773.

[199] See _post_, Nov. 27, 1773, note, April 7, 1775, and under May 8, 1781.

[200] He wrote the character of Mr. Mudge. See _post_, under March 20, 1781.

[201] 'Sept. 18, 1769. This day completes the sixtieth year of my age.... The last year has been wholly spent in a slow progress of recovery.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 85.

[202] In which place he has been succeeded by Bennet Langton, Esq. When that truly religious gentleman was elected to this honorary Professorship, at the same time that Edward Gibbon, Esq., noted for introducing a kind of sneering infidelity into his Historical Writings, was elected Professor in Ancient History, in the room of Dr. Goldsmith, I observed that it brought to my mind, 'Wicked Will Whiston and good Mr.

Ditton.' I am now also of that admirable inst.i.tution as Secretary for Foreign Correspondence, by the favour of the Academicians, and the approbation of the Sovereign. BOSWELL. Goldsmith, writing to his brother in Jan., 1770, said:--'The King has lately been pleased to make me Professor of Ancient History in a Royal Academy of Painting, which he has just established, but there is no salary annexed, and I took it rather as a compliment to the inst.i.tution than any benefit to myself.