Life of Johnson Volume II Part 56

[411] See _post_, July 27, 1778.

[412] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 513) says that Mr. Thrale made the same attempt. 'He had two meetings with the ministry, who at first seemed inclined to find Johnson a seat.' 'Lord Stowell told me,' says Mr.

Croker, 'that it was understood amongst Johnson's friends that Lord North was afraid that Johnson's help (as he himself said of Lord Chesterfield's) might have been sometimes _embarra.s.sing_. "He perhaps thought, and not unreasonably," added Lord Stowell, "that, like the elephant in the battle, he was quite as likely to trample down his friends as his foes."' Lord Stowell referred to Johnson's letter to Chesterfield (_ante_, i. 262), in which he describes a patron as 'one who enc.u.mbers a man with help.'

[413] Boswell married his cousin Margaret Montgomerie on Nov. 25, 1769.

On the same day his father married for the second time. _Scots Mag_. for 1769, p. 615. Boswell, in his _Letter to the People of Scotland_ (p.

55), published in 1785, describes his wife as 'a true _Montgomerie_, whom I esteem, whom I love, after fifteen years, as on the day when she gave me her hand.' See his _Hebrides_, Aug. 14, 1773.

[414]

'Musis amicus, trist.i.tiam et metus Tradam, &c.

While in the Muse's friendship blest, Nor fear, nor grief, shall break my rest; Bear them, ye vagrant winds, away, And drown them in the Cretan Sea.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Odes_, i. 26. I.

[415] Horace. _Odes_, i. 22. 5.

[416] Lord Elibank wrote to Boswell two years later:--'Old as I am, I shall be glad to go five hundred miles to enjoy a day of Mr. Johnson's company.' Boswell's _Hebrides_ under date of Sept. 12, 1773. See _ib_.

Nov. 10, and _post_, April 5, 1776.

[417] Goldsmith wrote to Langton on Sept. 7, 1771:--'Johnson has been down upon a visit to a country parson, Doctor Taylor, and is returned to his old haunts at Mrs. Thrale's.' Goldsmith's _Misc. Works_, i. 93.

[418] While Miss Burney was examining a likeness of Johnson, 'he no sooner discerned it than he began see-sawing for a moment or two in silence; and then, with a ludicrous half-laugh, peeping over her shoulder, he called out:--"Ah, ha! Sam Johnson! I see thee!--and an ugly dog thou art!"' _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, ii. 180. In another pa.s.sage (p.

197), after describing 'the kindness that irradiated his austere and studious features into the most pleased and pleasing benignity,' as he welcomed her and her father to his house, she adds that a lady who was present often exclaimed, 'Why did not Sir Joshua Reynolds paint Dr.

Johnson when he was speaking to Dr. Burney or to you?'

[419] 'Johnson,' wrote Beattie from London on Sept. 8 of this year, 'has been greatly misrepresented. I have pa.s.sed several entire days with him, and found him extremely agreeable.' Beattie's _Life_, ed. 1824, p. 120.

[420] He was preparing the fourth edition, See _post, March 23, 1772.

[421] 'Sept. 18, 1771, 9 at night. I am now come to my sixty-third year.

For the last year I have been slowly recovering both from the violence of my last illness, and, I think, from the general disease of my life: ... some advances I hope have been made towards regularity. I have missed church since Easter only two Sundays.... But indolence and indifference has [sic] been neither conquered nor opposed.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 104.

[422] 'Let us search and try our ways.' _Lamentations_ iii. 40.

[423] _Pr. and Med_. p. 101 [105]. BOSWELL.

[424] Boswell forgets the fourth edition of his _Dictionary_. Johnson, in Aug. 1771 (_ante_, p. 142), wrote to Langton:--'I am engaging in a very great work, the revision of my _Dictionary_.' In _Pr. and Med_. p.

123, at Easter, 1773, as he 'reviews the last year,' he records:--'Of the spring and summer I remember that I was able in those seasons to examine and improve my _Dictionary_, and was seldom withheld from the work but by my own unwillingness.'

[425] Thus translated by a friend:--

'In fame scarce second to the nurse of Jove, This Goat, who twice the world had traversed round, Deserving both her masters care and love, Ease and perpetual pasture now has found.'

BOSWELL.

[426] c.o.c.kburn (_Life of Jeffrey_, i. 4) says that the High School of Edinburgh, in 1781, 'was cursed by two under master, whose atrocities young men cannot be made to believe, but old men cannot forget, and the criminal law would not now endure.'

[427] Mr. Langton married the Countess Dowager of Rothes. BOSWELL.

[428] From school. See _ante_, ii. 62.

[429] See _ante_, i. 44.

[430] Johnson used to say that schoolmasters were worse than the Egyptian task-masters of old. 'No boy,' says he, 'is sure any day he goes to school to escape a whipping. How can the schoolmaster tell what the boy has really forgotten, and what he has neglected to learn?'

Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 209. 'I rejoice,' writes J. S. Mill (_Auto_. p. 53), 'in the decline of the old, brutal, and tyrannical system of teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who be incapable of doing anything which is disagreeable to them.'

[431] See _ante_, i. 373.

[432] See _ante_, ii. 74.

[433] The ship in which Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander were to have sailed was the Endeavour. It was, they said, unfit for the voyage. The Admiralty altered it in such a way as to render it top-heavy. It was nearly overset on going down the river. Then it was rendered safe by restoring it to its former condition. When the explorers raised their former objections, they were told to take it or none. _Ann. Reg_. xv.

108. See also Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 18, 1773.

[434] I suspect that _Raleigh_ is here an error of Mr. Boswell's pen for _Drake_. CROKER. Johnson had written Drake's _Life_, and therefore must have had it well in mind that it was Drake who went round the world.

[435] _Romeo and Juliet_, act v. sc. 1.

[436] 'TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'_Edinburgh_, May 3, 1792.

'MY DEAR SIR,

'As I suppose your great work will soon be reprinted, I beg leave to trouble you with a remark on a pa.s.sage of it, in which I am a little misrepresented. Be not alarmed; the misrepresentation is not imputable to you. Not having the book at hand, I cannot specify the page, but I suppose you will easily find it. Dr. Johnson says, speaking of Mrs.

Thrale's family, "Dr. Beattie _sunk upon us_ that he was married, or words to that purpose." I am not sure that I understand _sunk upon us_, which is a very uncommon phrase, but it seems to me to imply, (and others, I find, have understood it in the same sense,) _studiously concealed from us his being married_. Now, Sir, this was by no means the case. I could have no motive to conceal a circ.u.mstance, of which I never was nor can be ashamed; and of which Dr. Johnson seemed to think, when he afterwards became acquainted with Mrs. Beattie, that I had, as was true, reason to be proud. So far was I from concealing her, that my wife had at that time almost as numerous an acquaintance in London as I had myself; and was, not very long after, kindly invited and elegantly entertained at Streatham by Mr. and Mrs. Thrale.

'My request, therefore, is, that you would rectify this matter in your new edition. You are at liberty to make what use you please of this letter.

'My best wishes ever attend you and your family. Believe me to be, with the utmost regard and esteem, dear Sir,

'Your obliged and affectionate humble servant, J. BEATTIE.'

I have, from my respect for my friend Dr. Beattie, and regard to his extreme sensibility, inserted the foregoing letter, though I cannot but wonder at his considering as any imputation a phrase commonly used among the best friends. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker says there was a cause for the 'extreme sensibility.' 'Dr. Beattie was conscious that there was something that might give a colour to such an imputation. It became known, shortly after the date of this letter, that the mind of Mrs.

Beattie had become deranged.' Beattie would have found in Johnson's _Dictionary_ an explanation of _sunk upon us_--'_To sink. To suppress; to conceal_. "If sent with ready money to buy anything, and you happen to be out of pocket, _sink_ the money and take up the goods on account."' Swift's _Rules to Servants_, _Works_, viii. 256.

[437] See _ante_, i 450.

[438] See _ante_, ii. 10.

[439] See _Post_, April 15, 1778, note, and June 12, 1784.

[440] See ante, i. 405.

[441] _St. John_, xv. 24

[442] See note, p. 51 of this volume. BOSWELL.