Life of Johnson Volume II Part 73

[1034] 'Of Gibbon, Mackintosh neatly remarked that he might have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind, without his missing it.' _Life of Mackintosh_, i. 92. It is worthy of notice that Gibbon scarcely mentions Johnson in his writings. Moreover, in the names that he gives of the members of the Literary Club, 'who form a large and luminous constellation of British stars,' though he mentions eighteen of them, he pa.s.ses over Boswell. Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i.219. See also _post_, April 18, 1775.

[1035] We may compare with this Dryden's line:--

'Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.'

_Absalom and Achitophel_, l. 179. Hawkins (_Life_, p. 506) says that 'to party opposition Johnson ever expressed great aversion, and of the pretences of patriots always spoke with indignation and contempt.' He had, Hawkins adds, 'partaken of the short-lived joy that infatuated the public' when Walpole fell; but a few days convinced him that the patriotism of the opposition had been either hatred or ambition. For _patriots_, see _ante_, i. 296, note, and _post_, April 6, 1781.

[1036] Mr. Burke. See _ante_, p. 222, note 4.

[1037] Lord North's ministry lasted from 1770 to 1782.

[1038] Perhaps Johnson had this from Davies, who says (_Life of Garrick_, i. l24):--'Mrs. Pritchard read no more of the play of _Macbeth_ than her own part, as written out and delivered to her by the prompter.' She played the heroine in _Irene_ (_ante_, i. 197). See _post_ under Sept. 30, 1783, where Johnson says that 'in common life she was a vulgar idiot,' and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 28, 1773.

[1039] A misprint for April 8.

[1040] Boswell calls him the 'Irish Dr. Campbell,' to distinguish him from the Scotch Dr. Campbell mentioned _ante_, i. 417.

[1041] See _ante_, i. 494.

[1042] Baretti, in a MS. note in his copy of _Piozzi Letters_, i. 374, says:--'Johnson was often fond of saying silly things in strong terms, and the silly Madam [Mrs. Thrale] never failed to echo that beastly kind of wit.'

[1043] According to Dr. T. Campbell, who was present at the dinner (_Diary_, p. 66), Barry and Garrick were the two actors, and Murphy the author. If Murphy said this in the heat of one of his quarrels with Garrick, he made amends in his _Life_ of that actor (p. 362):--'It was with Garrick,' he wrote, 'a fixed principle, that authors were ent.i.tled to the emolument of their labours, and by that generous way of thinking he held out an invitation to men of genius.'

[1044] Page 392, vol. i. BOSWELL.

[1045] Let me here be allowed to pay my tribute of most sincere grat.i.tude to the memory of that excellent person, my intimacy with whom was the more valuable to me, because my first acquaintance with him was unexpected and unsolicited. Soon after the publication of my _Account of Corsica_, he did me the honour to call on me, and, approaching me with a frank courteous air, said, 'My name, Sir, is Oglethorpe, and I wish to be acquainted with you.' I was not a little flattered to be thus addressed by an eminent man, of whom I had read in Pope, from my early years,

'Or, driven by strong benevolence of soul, Will fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.'

I was fortunate enough to be found worthy of his good opinion, insomuch, that I not only was invited to make one in the many respectable companies whom he entertained at his table, but had a cover at his hospitable board every day when I happened to be disengaged; and in his society I never failed to enjoy learned and animated conversation, seasoned with genuine sentiments of virtue and religion. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i. 127, and ii. 59, note 1. The couplet from Pope is from _Imitations of Horace_, _Epist_. ii. 2. 276.

[1046]

'Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never _is_, but always _to be_ blest.'

_Essay on Man_, i. 95.

[1047] 'The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.' _The Rambler_, No. 2. See _post_, iii.

53, and June 12, 1784. Swift defined happiness as 'a perpetual possession of being well deceived.' _Tale of a Tub_, Sect, ix., Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, iii. 154.

[1048] See _post_, March 29, 1776.

[1049] The General seemed unwilling to enter upon it at this time; but upon a subsequent occasion he communicated to me a number of particulars, which I have committed to writing; but I was not sufficiently diligent in obtaining more from him, not apprehending that his friends were so soon to lose him; for, notwithstanding his great age, he was very healthy and vigorous, and was at last carried off by a violent fever, which is often fatal at any period of life. BOSWELL.

[1050] See _ante_, p. 338.

[1051]

'Mediocribus esse poetis _Non homines, non Di_, non concessere columnae.'

'But G.o.d and man, and letter'd post denies That poets ever are of middling size.'

FRANCIS, Horace, _Ars Poet_. l. 372.

[1052] Why he failed to keep his journal may be guessed from his letter to Temple:--'I am,' he wrote on April 17, 'indeed enjoying this metropolis to the full, according to my taste, except that I cannot, I see, have a plenary indulgence from you for Asiatic multiplicity. Be not afraid of me, except when I take too much claret; and then indeed there is a _furor brevis_ as dangerous as anger.... I have rather had too much dissipation since I came last to town. I try to keep a journal, and shall show you that I have done tolerably: but it is hardly credible what ground I go over, and what a variety of men and manners I contemplate in a day; and all the time I myself am _pars magna_, for my exuberant spirits will not let me listen enough.' _Letters of Boswell_, pp. 187-9.

[1053] Johnson, in _The Rambler_, No. 110, published on Easter Eve, 1751, thus justifies fasting:--'Austerity is the proper antidote to indulgence; the diseases of mind as well as body are cured by contraries, and to contraries we should readily have recourse if we dreaded guilt as we dread pain.'

[1054] From this too just observation there are some eminent exceptions, BOSWELL. 'Dr. Johnson said:--"Few bishops are now made for their learning. To be a bishop, a man must be learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age, but always of eminence."' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21, 1773.

[1055] Lord Shelburne wrote of him:--'He panted for the Treasury, having a notion that the King and he understood it from what they had read about revenue and funds while they were at Kew.' Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, i. 141.

[1056] Chief Justice Pratt (afterwards Lord Camden) became popular by his conduct as a judge in Wilkes's case. In 1764 he received the freedom of the guild of merchants in Dublin in a gold box, and from Exeter the freedom of the city. The city of London gave him its freedom in a gold box, and had his portrait painted by Reynolds. _Gent. Mag_. 1764, pp.

44, 96, 144. See _ante_, p. 314.

[1057] The King, on March 3, 1761, recommended this measure to Parliament. _Parl. Hist_. xv. 1007. 'This,' writes Horace Walpole, 'was one of Lord Bute's strokes of pedantry. The tenure of the judges had formerly been a popular topic; and had been secured, as far as was necessary. He thought this trifling addition would be popular now, when n.o.body thought or cared about it.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George III_, i. 41.

[1058] The money arising from the property of the prizes taken before the declaration of war, which were given to his Majesty by the peace of Paris, and amounted to upwards of 700,000, and from the lands in the ceded islands, which were estimated at 200,000 more. Surely there was a n.o.ble munificence in this gift from a Monarch to his people. And let it be remembered, that during the Earl of Bute's administration, the King was graciously pleased to give up the hereditary revenues of the Crown, and to accept, instead of them, of the limited sum of 800,000 a year; upon which Blackstone observes, that 'The hereditary revenues, being put under the same management as the other branches of the publick patrimony, will produce more, and be better collected than heretofore; and the publick is a gainer of upwards of 100,000 _per annum_ by this disinterested bounty of his Majesty.' Book I. Chap. viii. p. 330.

BOSWELL. Lord Bolingbroke (_Works_, iii. 286), about the year 1734, pointed out that 'if the funds appropriated produce the double of that immense revenue of 800,000 a year, which hath been so liberally given the King for life, the whole is his without account; but if they fail in any degree to produce it, the entire national fund is engaged to make up the difference.' Blackstone (edit, of 1778, i. 331) says:--'800,000 being found insufficient, was increased in 1777 to, 900,000.' He adds, 'the public is still a gainer of near 100,000.'

[1059] See _post_, iii. 163.

[1060] Lord Eldon says that Dundas, 'in broken phrases,' asked the King to confer a baronetcy on 'an eminent Scotch apothecary who had got from Scotland the degree of M. D. The King said:--"What, what, is that all?

It shall be done. I was afraid you meant to ask me to make the Scotch apothecary a physician--that's more difficult."' He added:--'They may make as many Scotch apothecaries Baronets as they please, but I shall die by the College.' Twiss's _Eldon_, ii. 354. A Dr. Duncan, says Mr.

Croker, was appointed physician to the King in 1760. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 448. A doctor of the same name, and no doubt the same man, was made a baronet in Aug. 1764. Jesse's _Selwyn_, i. 287.

[1061] Wedderburne, afterwards Lord Chancellor Loughborough, and Earl of Rosslyn. One of his 'errands' had been to bring Johnson bills in payment of his first quarter's pension. _Ante_, i. 376.

[1062] Home, the author of _Douglas_. Boswell says that 'Home showed the Lord Chief Baron Orde a pair of pumps he had on, and desired his lordship to observe how well they were made, telling him at the same time that they had been made for Lord Bute, but were rather too little for him, so his lordship had made John a present of them. "I think,"

said the Lord Chief Baron, "you have taken the measure of Lord Bute's foot."' _Boswelliana_, p. 252. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 335), writes:--'With Robertson and Home in London I pa.s.sed the time very agreeably; for though Home was now [1758] entirely at the command of Lord Bute, whose nod made him break every engagement--for it was not given above an hour or two before dinner--yet, as he was sometimes at liberty when the n.o.ble lord was to dine abroad, like a horse loosened from his stake, he was more sportful than usual.'

[1063] Lord North was merely the King's agent. The King was really his own minister at this time, though he had no seat in his own cabinet councils.

[1064] Only thirty-four years earlier, on the motion in the Lords for the removal of Walpole, the Duke of Argyle said:--'If my father or brother took upon him the office of a sole minister, I would oppose it as inconsistent with the const.i.tution, as a high crime and misdemeanour.

I appeal to your consciences whether he [Walpole] hath not done this...

He hath turned out men lately for differing with him.' Lord Chancellor Hardwicke replied:--'A sole minister is so illegal an office that it is none. Yet a n.o.ble lord says, _Superior respondeat_, which is laying down a rule for a prime minister; whereas the n.o.ble Duke was against any.'

_The Secker MS. Parl. Hist_. xi. 1056-7. In the Protest against the rejection of the motion it was stated:--'We are persuaded that a sole, or even a first minister, is an officer unknown to the law of Britain,'

&c. _Ib_ p. 1215. Johnson reports the Chancellor as saying:--'It has not been yet pretended that he a.s.sumes the t.i.tle of _prime minister_, or, indeed, that it is applied to him by any but his enemies ... The first minister can, in my opinion, be nothing more than a formidable illusion, which, when one man thinks he has seen it, he shows to another, as easily frighted as himself,' &c. Johnson's _Works_, x. 214-15. In his _Dictionary_, _premier_ is only given as an adjective, and _prime minister_ is not given at all. When the Marquis of Rockingham was forming his cabinet in March 1782, Burke wrote to him:--'Stand firm on your ground--but _one_ ministry. I trust and hope that your lordship will not let _one_, even but _one_ branch of the state ... out of your own hands; or those which you can entirely rely on.' Burke's _Corres_.

ii. 462. See also _post_, iii. 46, April 1, 1781, Jan. 20, 1782, and April 10, 1783.

[1065] See _ante_, p. 300.

[1066] 'As he liberally confessed that all his own disappointments proceeded from himself, he hated to hear others complain of general injustice.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 251. See _post_, end of May, 1781, and March 23, 1783.

[1067] 'Boswell and I went to church, but came very late. We then took tea, by Boswell's desire; and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not seem to fast ostentatiously.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 138.

[1068] See ante, i. 433.

[1069] See ante, i. 332.