Life of Johnson Volume II Part 64

[696] See _ante_, ii. 210.

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

[698] 'Vertot, ne en Normandie en 1655. Historien agreable et elegant.

Mort en 1735.' Voltaire, _Siecle de Louis XIV_.

[699] Even Hume had no higher notion of what was required in a writer of ancient history. He wrote to Robertson, who was, it seems, meditating a History of Greece:--'What can you do in most places with these (the ancient) authors but transcribe and translate them? No letters or state papers from which you could correct their errors, or authenticate their narration, or supply their defects.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 83.

[700] See _ante_, ii. 53. Southey, a.s.serting that Robertson had never read the Laws of Alonso the Wise, says, that 'it is one of the thousand and one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue as long as his volumes last.' Southey's _Life_, ii. 318.

[701] Ovid. de Art. Amand. i. iii. v. 13 [339]. BOSWELL. 'It may be that our name too will mingle with those.'

[702] The _Gent. Mag_. for Jan. 1766 (p. 45) records, that 'a person was observed discharging musket-b.a.l.l.s from a steel crossbow at the two remaining heads upon Temple Bar.' They were the heads of Scotch rebels executed in 1746. Samuel Rogers, who died at the end of 1855, said, 'I well remember one of the heads of the rebels upon a pole at Temple Bar.'

Rogers's _Table-Talk_, p. 2.

[703] In allusion to Dr. Johnson's supposed political principles, and perhaps his own. BOSWELL.

[704] 'Dr. Johnson one day took Bishop Percy's little daughter upon his knee, and asked her what she thought of _Pilgrim's Progress_. The child answered that she had not read it. "No!" replied the Doctor; "then I would not give one farthing for you:" and he set her down and took no further notice of her.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 838. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_.

p. 281) says, that Johnson once asked, 'Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting _Don Quixote_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and The _Pilgrim's Progress_?'

[705] It was Johnson himself who was thus honoured. _Post_, under Dec.

20, 1784.

[706] Here is another instance of his high admiration of Milton as a Poet, notwithstanding his just abhorrence of that sour Republican's political principles. His candour and discrimination are equally conspicuous. Let us hear no more of his 'injustice to Milton.' BOSWELL.

[707] There was an exception to this. In his criticism of _Paradise Lost_ (_Works_, vii. 136), he says:--'The confusion of spirit and matter which pervades the whole narration of the war of Heaven fills it with incongruity; and the book in which it is related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased.'

[708] In the _Academy_, xxii. 348, 364, 382, Mr. C. E. Doble shews strong grounds for the belief that the author was Richard Allestree, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and Provost of Eton. Cowper spoke of it as 'that repository of self-righteousness and pharisaical lumber;' with which opinion Southey wholly disagreed. Southey's _Cowper_, i. 116.

[709] Johnson said to Boswell:--'Sir, they knew that if they refused you they'd probably never have got in another. I'd have kept them all out.

Beauclerk was very earnest for you.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug.

21, 1773.

[710] Garrick and Jones had been elected this same spring. See _ante_, i. 481, note 3.

[711] Mr. Langton, in his _Collection_ (_post_, 1780), mentions an ode brought by Goldsmith to the Club, which had been recited for money.

[712] Dr. Johnson's memory here was not perfectly accurate: _Eugenio_ does not conclude thus. There are eight more lines after the last of those quoted by him; and the pa.s.sage which he meant to recite is as follows:--

'Say now ye fluttering, poor a.s.suming elves, Stark full of pride, of folly, of--yourselves; Say where's the wretch of all your impious crew Who dares confront his character to view? Behold Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and be no more.'

Mr. Reed informs me that the Author of _Eugenio_, a Wine Merchant at Wrexham in Denbighshire, soon after its publication, viz. 17th May, 1737, cut his own throat; and that it appears by Swift's _Works_ that the poem had been shewn to him, and received some of his corrections.

Johnson had read _Eugenio_ on his first coming to town, for we see it mentioned in one of his letters to Mr. Cave, which has been inserted in this work; _ante_, p. 122. BOSWELL. See Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xix.

153, for his letter to this wine merchant, Thomas Beach by name.

[713] These lines are in the _Annus Mirabilis_ (stanza 164) in a digression in praise of the Royal Society; described by Johnson (_Works_, vii. 320) as 'an example seldom equalled of seasonable excursion and artful return.' _Ib_ p. 341, he says: 'Dryden delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle.... This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he knew; and sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which perhaps he was not conscious.' He then quotes these lines, and continues: 'They have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation of Cowley on another book--

"'Tis so like _sense_, 'twill serve the turn as well."'

Cowley's line is from his _Pindarique Ode to Mr. Hobs_:--

''Tis so like _truth_, 'twill serve _our_ turn as well.'

[714] In his _Dictionary_, he defines _punster as a low wit, who endeavours at reputation by double meaning_. See _post_, April 28, 1778.

[715] I formerly thought that I had perhaps mistaken the word, and imagined it to be _Corps_, from its similarity of sound to the real one.

For an accurate and shrewd unknown gentleman, to whom I am indebted for some remarks on my work, observes on this pa.s.sage--'Q. if not on the word _Fort_? A vociferous French preacher said of Bourdaloue, "Il preche _fort bien, et_ moi _bien fort_."'--Menagiana. See also Anecdotes Litteraires, Article Bourdaloue. But my ingenious and obliging correspondent, Mr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia, has pointed out to me the following pa.s.sage in _Menagiana_; which renders the preceding conjecture unnecessary, and confirms my original statement:

'Madme de Bourdonne, Chanoinesse de Remiremont, venoit d'entendre un discours plein de feu et d'esprit, mais fort peu solide, et tresirregulier. Une de ses amies, qui y prenoit interet pour l'orateur, lui dit en sortant, "Eh bien, Madme que vous semble-t-il de ce que vous venez d'entendre?--Qu'il ya d'esprit?"--"Il y a tant, repondit Madme de Bourdonne, que je n'y ai pas vu de _corps_"'--Menagiana, tome ii. p. 64.

Amsterd. 1713. BOSWELL. _Menagiana, ou les bans mots et remarques critiques, historiqites, morales et derudition de M. Menage, recueillies par ses amis_, published in 1693. Gilles Menage was born 1613, died 1692.

[716] That Johnson only relished the conversation, and did not join in it, is more unlikely. In his _charge_ to Boswell, he very likely pointed out that what was said within was not to be reported without. Boswell gives only brief reports of the talk at the Club, and these not openly.

See _post_, April 7, 1775, note.

[717] See _post_, the pa.s.sage before Feb. 18, 1775.

[718] By the Rev. Henry Wharton, published in 1692.

[719] See _ante_, ii. 126, for what Johnson said of the _inward light_.

[720] Lady Diana Beauclerk. In 1768 Beauclerk married the eldest daughter of the second Duke of Marlborough, two days after her divorce from her first husband, Viscount Bolingbroke, the nephew of the famous Lord Bolingbroke. She was living when her story, so slightly veiled as it is, was thus published by Boswell. The marriage was not a happy one.

Two years after Beauclerk's death, Mr. Burke, looking at his widow's house, said in Miss Burney's presence:--'I am extremely glad to see her at last so well housed; poor woman! the bowl has long rolled in misery; I rejoice that it has now found its balance. I never myself so much enjoyed the sight of happiness in another, as in that woman when I first saw her after the death of her husband.' He then drew Beauclerk's character 'in strong and marked expressions, describing the misery he gave his wife, his singular ill-treatment of her, and the necessary relief the death of such a man must give.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 147.

[721] Old Mr. Langton. CROKER. See _post_, April 26, 1776.

[722] See _post_, Sept. 22, 1777.

[723] See _post_, May 15, 1776.

[724] The writer of hymns.

[725] Malone says that 'Hawkesworth was introduced by Garrick to Lord Sandwich, who, thinking to put a few hundred pounds into his pocket, appointed him to revise and publish _Cook's Voyages_. He scarcely did anything to the MSS., yet sold it to Cadell and Strahan for 6000.'

Prior's _Malone_, p. 441. Thurlow, in his speech on copy-right on March 24, 1774, said 'that Hawkesworth's book, which was a mere composition of trash, sold for three guineas by the booksellers' monopolizing.' _Parl.

Hist_. xvii. 1086. See _ante_, i. 253, note 1, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 3.

[726] Gilbert White held 'that, though most of the swallow kind may migrate, yet that some do stay behind, and bide with us during the winter.' White's _Selborne_, Letter xii. See _ante_, ii. 55.

[727] See _ante_, ii. 73.

[728] No. 41. 'The sparrow that was hatched last spring makes her first nest the ensuing season of the same materials, and with the same art as in any following year; and the hen conducts and shelters her first brood of chickens with all the prudence that she ever attains.'

[729] See _post_, April 3, 1776, April 3, 1779, and April 28, 1783.

[730] Rousseau went further than Johnson in this. About eleven years earlier he had, in his _Contract Social_, iv. 8, laid down certain 'simple dogmas,' such as the belief in a G.o.d and a future state, and said:--'Sans pouvoir obliger personne a les croire, il [le Souverain]

peut bannir de l'Etat quiconque ne les croit pas: ... Que si quelquiun, apres avoir reconne publiquement ces memes dogmes, se conduit comme ne les croyant pas, qu'il soit puni de mort; il a commis le plus grand des crimes, il a menti devant les lois.'

[731] See _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_.