Life of Johnson Volume II Part 76

220. 'June 11, 1775. You never told me, and I omitted to inquire, how you were entertained by Boswell's _Journal_. _One would think the man had been hired to be a spy upon me_. He was very diligent, and caught opportunities of writing from time to time.' _Ib_ p. 233. I suspect that the words I have marked by italics are not Johnson's, but are Mrs.

Piozzi's interpolation.

[1139] 'In my heart of _heart_.' _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 2.

[1140] Another parcel of Lord Hailes's _Annals of Scotland_. BOSWELL.

[1141] Where Sir Joshua Reynolds lived. BOSWELL.

[1142] Johnson's birthday. In _Pr. and Med_. p. 143, is a prayer which was, he writes, 'composed at Calais in a sleepless night, and used before the morn at Notre Dame.'

[1143] See _ante_, i. 243, note 3.

[1144] 'While Johnson was in France, he was generally very resolute in speaking Latin.' _Post_, under Nov. 12, 1775.

[1145] Miss Thrale. BOSWELL.

[1146] In his _Journal_ he records 'their meals are gross' (_post_, Oct.

10). We may doubt therefore Mrs. Piozzi's statement that he said of the French: 'They have few sentiments, but they express them neatly; they have little in meat too, but they dress it well.' Piozzi's _Anec_.

p. 102.

[1147] See _ante_, i. 362, note 1.

[1148] Boswell wrote to Temple:--'You know, my dearest friend, of what importance this is to me; of what importance it is to the family of Auchinleck, _which you may be well convinced is my supreme object in this world_.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 217. Alexander Boswell was killed in a duel in 1822.

[1149] This alludes to my old feudal principle of preferring male to female succession. BOSWELL. See _post_, under Jan. 10, 1776.

[1150] He wrote to Dr. Taylor on the same day:--'I came back last Tuesday from France. Is not mine a kind of life turned upside down?

Fixed to a spot when I was young, and roving the world when others are contriving to sit still, I am wholly unsettled. I am a kind of ship with a wide sail, and without an anchor.' _Notes and Queries_. 6th S., v. 422.

[1151] There can be no doubt that many years previous to 1775 he corresponded with this lady, who was his step-daughter, but none of his earlier letters to her have been preserved. BOSWELL. Many of these earlier letters were printed by Malone and Croker in later editions.

See i. 512.

[1152] When on their way to Wales, July 7, 1774, _post_, vol. v.

[1153] Smollett wrote (_Travels_, i. 88):--'Notwithstanding the gay disposition of the French, their houses are all gloomy. After all it is in England only where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay furniture, neatness, and convenience.'

[1154] Son of Mrs. Johnson, by her first husband. BOSWELL.

[1155] 'A gentleman said, "Surely that Vanessa must be an extraordinary woman, that could inspire the Dean to write so finely upon her." Mrs.

Johnson [Stella] smiled, and answered "that she thought that point not quite so clear; for it was well known the Dean could write finely upon a broomstick."' Johnson's Works, viii. 210.

[1156] Horace Walpole wrote from Paris this autumn:--'I have not yet had time to visit the Hotel du Chatelet.' _Letters_, vi. 260. On July 31st, 1789, writing of the violence of the mob, he says:--'The hotel of the Due de Chatelet, lately built and superb, has been a.s.saulted, and the furniture sold by auction.' _Ib_ ix. 202.

[1157] See _post_, under Nov. 12, 1775, note, and June 25, 1784.

[1158] The Prior of the Convent of the Benedictines where Johnson had a cell appropriated to him. _Post_, Oct. 31, and under Nov. 12.

[1159] The rest of this paragraph appears to be a minute of what was told by Captain Irwin. BOSWELL.

[1160] Melchior Ca.n.u.s, a celebrated Spanish Dominican, who died at Toledo, in 1560. He wrote a treatise _De Locis Theologicis_, in twelve books. BOSWELL.

[1161] D'Argenson's. CROKER.

[1162] See Macaulay's _Essays_, i. 355, and Mr. Croker's answer in his note on this pa.s.sage. His notion that 'this book was exhibited purposely on the lady's table, in the expectation that her English visitors would think it a literary curiosity,' seems absurd. He does not choose to remember the '_Bibl. des Fees_ and other books.' Since I wrote this note Mr. Napier has published an edition of Boswell, in which this question is carefully examined (ii. 550). He sides with Macaulay.

[1163] 'Si quelque invention peut suppleer a la connaissance qui nous est refusee des longitudes sur la mer, c'est celle du plus habile horloger de France (M. Leroi) qui dispute cette invention a l'Angleterre.' Voltaire, _Siecle de Louis XV_, ch. 43.

[1164] The _Palais Marchand_ was properly only the stalls which were placed along some of the galleries of the Palais. They have been all swept away in Louis Philippe's restoration of the Palais. CROKER.

[1165] 'Pet.i.t siege de bois sur lequel on faisait a.s.seoir, pour les interroger, ceux qui etaient accuses d'un delit pouvant faire encourir une peine afflictive.' LITTRe.

[1166] The Conciergerie, before long to be crowded with the victims of the Revolution.

[1167] This pa.s.sage, which so many think superst.i.tious, reminds me of Archbishop Laud's Diary. BOSWELL. Laud, for instance, on Oct. 27, 1640, records:--'In my upper study hung my picture taken by the life; and coming in, I found it fallen down upon the face, and lying on the floor, the string being broken by which it was hanged against the wall. I am almost every day threatened with my ruin in Parliament. G.o.d grant this be no omen.' Perhaps there was nothing superst.i.tious in Johnson's entry.

He may have felt ill in mind or body, and dreaded to become worse.

[1168] For a brief account of Freron, father and son, see Carlyle's _French Revolution_, part ii. bk. 1. ch. 4.

[1169] A round table, the centre of which descended by machinery to a lower floor, so that supper might be served without the presence of servants. It was invented by Lewis XV. during the favour of Madame du Barri. CROKER.

[1170] See _ante_, i. 363, note 3.

[1171] Before the Revolution the pa.s.sage from the garden of the Tuileries into the Place Louis XV. was over a _pont tournant_. CROKER.

[1172] The niece of Arabella Fermor, the Belinda of the _Rape of the Lock_. Johnson thus mentions this lady (_Works_, viii. 246):--'At Paris, a few years ago, a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English convent, mentioned Pope's works with very little grat.i.tude, rather as an insult than an honour.' She is no doubt the Lady Abbess mentioned _post_, March 15, 1776. She told Mrs. Piozzi in 1784 'that she believed there was but little comfort to be found in a house that harboured poets; for that she remembered Mr. Pope's praise made her aunt very troublesome and conceited, while his numberless caprices would have employed ten servants to wait on him.' Piozzi's _Journey_, i. 20.

[1173] Mrs. Thrale wrote, on Sept. 18, 1777:--'When Mr. Thrale dismisses me, I am to take refuge among the Austin Nuns, and study Virgil with dear Miss Canning.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 374.

[1174] _Pensionnaires_, pupils who boarded in the convent.

[1175] He brought back a snuff-box for Miss Porter. _Ante_, p. 387.

[1176] 63 livres = 2 12s. 6d.

[1177] Torture-chamber. See _ante_, i. 467, note 1.

[1178] 'Au parlement de Paris la chambre chargee des affaires criminelles.' LITTRe.

[1179] The grandson was the Duke d'Enghien who was put to death by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804.

[1180] His tender affection for his departed wife, of which there are many evidences in his _Prayers and Meditations_, appears very feelingly in this pa.s.sage. BOSWELL. 'On many occasions I think what she [his wife]

would have said or done. When I saw the sea at Brighthelmstone, I wished for her to have seen it with me.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 91.

[1181] See _post_, p. 402.

[1182] See _post_, iii. 89.

[1183] Dr. Moore (_Travels in France_, i. 31) says that in Paris, 'those who cannot afford carriages skulk behind pillars, or run into shops, to avoid being crushed by the coaches, which are driven as near the wall as the coachman pleases.' Only on the Pont Neuf, and the Pont Royal, and the quays between them were there, he adds, foot-ways.