Life of Johnson Volume II Part 79

[1264] A similar bill had been thrown out sixteen years earlier by 194 to 84. 'A Bill for a Militia in Scotland was not successful; nor could the disaffected there obtain this mode of having their arms restored.

Pitt had acquiesced; but the young Whigs attacked it with all their force.' Walpole's _Reign of George II_, iii. 280. Lord Mountstuart's bill was thrown out by 112 to 95, the Ministry being in the minority.

The arguments for and against it are stated in the _Ann. Reg_. xix 140.

See _post_, iii. i. Henry Mackenzie (_Life of John Home_, i. 26) says:--'The Poker Club was inst.i.tuted at a time when Scotland was refused a militia, and thought herself affronted by the refusal. The name was chosen from a quaint sort of allusion to the principles it was meant to excite, as a club to stir up the fire and spirit of the country.' See _ante_, p. 376.

[1265] 'Scotland paid only one fortieth to the land-tax, the very specific tax out of which all the expenses of a militia were to be drawn.' _Ann. Reg_. xix. 141.

[1266] In a new edition of this book, which was published in the following year, the editor states, that either 'through hurry or inattention some obscene jests had unluckily found a place in the first edition.' See _post_, April 28, 1778.

[1267] See _ante_, ii. 338, note 2.

[1268] The number of the asterisks, taken with the term _worthy friend_, renders it almost certain that Langton was meant. The story might, however, have been told of Reynolds, for he wrote of Johnson:--'Truth, whether in great or little matters, he held sacred. From the violation of truth, he said, in great things your character or your interest was affected; in lesser things, your pleasure is equally destroyed. I remember, on his relating some incident, I added something to his relation which I supposed might likewise have happened: "It would have been a better story," says he, "if it had been so; but it was not."'

Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 457. Mrs. Piozzi records (_Anec_. p. 116):--'"A story," says Johnson, "is a specimen of human manners, and derives its sole value from its truth, When Foote has told me something, I dismiss it from my mind like a pa.s.sing shadow; when Reynolds tells me something, I consider myself as possessed of an idea the more."'

[1269] Boswell felt this when, more than eight years earlier, he wrote:--'As I have related Paoli's remarkable sayings, I declare upon honour that I have neither added nor diminished; nay, so scrupulous have I been, that I would not make the smallest variation, even when my friends thought it would be an improvement. I know with how much pleasure we read what is perfectly authentick.' Boswell's _Corsia_, ed.

1879, p. 126. See _post_, iii. 209.

[1270] In his _Life of Browne_ (_Works_, vi. 478) he sayd of 'innocent frauds':--'But no fraud is innocent; for the confidence which makes the happiness of society is in some degree diminished by every man whose practice is at variance with his words.' 'Mr. Tyers,' writes Murphy (_Life_, p. 146), 'observed that Dr. Johnson always talked as if he was talking upon oath.' Compared with Johnson's strictness, Rouseau's laxity is striking. After describing 'ces gens qu'on appelle vrais dans le monde,' he continues;--'L'homme que j'appele _vrai_ fait tout le contraire. En choses parfaitnement indifferentes la verite qu'alors l'autre respecte si fort le touche fort peu, et il ne se fera guere de scrupule d'amuser une compagnie par des faits controuve, dont il ne resulte aucun jugement injuste ni pour ni contre qui que ce soit vivant ou mort.' _Les Reveries: IVine Promenade_.

[1271] No doubt Mrs. Fermor (_ante_, p. 392.)

[1272] No. 110.

[1273] No. 52.

[1274] But see _ante_, ii. 365, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 19.

[1275] See _ante_, ii. 8, and _post_, April 7, 1778.

[1276] Three weeks later, at his usual fast before Easter, Johnson recorded:--'I felt myself very much disordered by emptiness, and called for tea with peevish and impatient eagerness.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 147.

[1277] Of the use of spirituous liquors, he wrote (_Works_, vi.

26):--'The mischiefs arising on every side from this compendious mode of drunkenness are enormous and insupportable, equally to be found among the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet and distraction, harder to be borne as it cannot be mentioned, and overwhelming mult.i.tudes with incurable diseases and unpitied poverty.' Yet he found an excuse for drunkenness which few men but he could have found.

Stockdale (_Memoirs_, ii. 189) says that he heard Mrs. Williams 'wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves. "I wonder, Madam," replied Johnson, "that you have not penetration enough to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."'

[1278] Very likely Boswell. See _post_, under May 8, 1781, for a like instance. In 1775, under a yew tree, he promised Temple to be sober. On Aug. 12, 1775, he wrote:--'My promise under the solemn yew I have observed wonderfully, having never infringed it till, the other day, a very jovial company of us dined at a tavern, and I unwarily exceeded my bottle of old Hock; and having once broke over the pale, I run wild, but I did not get drunk. I was, however, intoxicated, and very ill next day.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 209. During his present visit to London he wrote:--'My promise under the solemn yew was not religiously kept, because a little wine hurried me on too much. The General [Paoli] has taken my word of honour that I shall not taste fermented liquor for a year, that I may recover sobriety. I have kept this promise now about three weeks. I was really growing a drunkard.' _Ib_ p. 233. In 1778 he was for a short time a water drinker. _Post_, April 28, 1778. His intemperance grew upon him, and at last carried him off. On Dec. 4, 1790, he wrote to Malone:--'Courtenay took my word and honour that till March 1 my allowance of wine per diem should not exceed four good gla.s.ses at dinner, and a pint after it, and this I have kept, though I have dined with Jack Wilkes, &c. On March 8, 1791, he wrote:--'Your friendly admonition as to excess in wine _has_ been often too applicable. As I am now free from my restriction to Courtenay, I shall be much upon my guard; for, to tell the truth, I did go too deep the day before yesterday.' Croker's _Boswell_, pp. 828, 829.

[1279] 'Mathematics are perhaps too much studied at our universities.

This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's _Present Stale of Polite Learning_, ch. 13.

[1280] 'No, Sir,' he once said, 'people are not born with a particular genius for particular employments or studies, for it would be like saying that a man could see a great way east, but could not west. It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called by the generality of mankind a particular genius.' Miss Reynolds's _Recollections_. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 833:--'Perhaps this is Miss Reynolds's recollection of the following, in Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773':--JOHNSON. 'I could as easily apply to law as to tragick poetry.' BOSWELL. 'Yet, Sir, you did apply to tragick poetry, not to law.' JOHNSON. 'Because, Sir, I had not money to study law. Sir, the man who has vigour may walk to the east just as well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head that way.'

'The true genius,' he wrote (_Works_, vii. 1), 'is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.'

Reynolds held the same doctrine, having got it no doubt from Johnson. He held 'that the superiority attainable in any pursuit whatever does not originate in an innate propensity of the mind to that pursuit in particular, but depends on the general strength of the intellect, and on the intense and constant application of that strength to a specific purpose. He regarded ambition as the cause of eminence, but accident as pointing out the _means_.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. II. 'Porson insisted that all men are born with abilities nearly equal. "Any one,"

he would say, "might become quite as good a critic as I am, if he would only take the trouble to make himself so. I have made myself what I am by intense labour."' Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 305. Hume maintained the opposite. 'This forenoon,' wrote Boswell on June 19, 1775, 'Mr. Hume came in. He did not say much. I only remember his remark, that characters depend more on original formation than on the way we are educated; "for," said he, "princes are educated uniformly, and yet how different are they! how different was James the Second from Charles the Second!"' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 205. Boswell recorded, two years earlier (_Hebrides_, Sept. 16):--'Dr. Johnson denied that any child was better than another, but by difference of instruction; though, in consequence of greater attention being paid to instruction by one child than another, and of a variety of imperceptible causes, such as instruction being counteracted by servants, a notion was conceived that, of two children equally well educated, one was naturally much worse than another.'

[1281] See _ante_, i. 348.

[1282] The grossness of naval men is shewn in Captain Mirvan, in Miss Burney's _Evelina_. In her _Diary_, i. 358, she records:--'The more I see of sea-captains the less reason I have to be ashamed of Captain Mirvan, for they have all so irresistible a propensity to wanton mischief--to roasting beaus and detesting old women, that I quite rejoice I shewed the book to no one ere printed, lest I should have been prevailed upon to soften his character.'

[1283] Baretti, in a MS. note in _Piozzi Letters_, i. 349, describes Gwyn as 'the Welsh architect that built the bridge at Oxford.' He built Magdalen Bridge.

[1284] 'Whence,' asks Goldsmith, 'has proceeded the vain magnificence of expensive architecture in our colleges? Is it that men study to more advantage in a palace than in a cell? One single performance of taste or genius confers more real honour on its parent university than all the labours of the chisel.' _Present State of Polite Learning_, ch. 13.

Newton used to say of his friend, the Earl of Pembroke, 'that he was a lover of stone dolls.' Brewster's _Newton_, ed. 1860, ii. 334.

[1285] Afterwards Lord Stowell. See the beginning of Boswell's _Hebrides_.

[1286] See _ante_, i. 446.

[1287] See _ante_, ii. 121, and _post_, Oct. 27, 1779.

[1288] See _ante_, p. 424.

[1289] See _post_, under April 4, 1781.

[1290] See _ante_, p. 315.

[1291] See _ante_, i. 398.

[1292] 'Hume told Cadell, the bookseller, that he had a great desire to be introduced to as many of the persons who had written against him as could be collected. Accordingly, Dr. Douglas, Dr. Adams, &c., were invited by Cadell to dine at his house, in order to meet Hume. They came; and Dr. Price, who was of the party, a.s.sured me that they were all delighted with David.' Rogers's _Table Talk_, p. 106.

[1293] Boswell, in his _Corsica_, ed. 1879, p. 204, uses a strange argument against infidelity. 'Belief is favourable to the human mind were it for nothing else but to furnish it entertainment. An infidel, I should think, must frequently suffer from ennui.' In his _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, note, he attacks Adam Smith for being 'so forgetful of _human comfort_ as to give any countenance to that dreary infidelity which would "make us poor indeed."'

[1294] 'JEMMY TWITCHER. Are we more dishonest than the rest of mankind?

What we win, gentlemen, is our own, by the law of arms and the right of conquest. CROOK-FINGER'D JACK. Where shall we find such another set of practical philosophers, who to a man are above the fear of death?' _The Beggar's Opera_, act ii. sc. i.

[1295] Boswell, I think, here aims a blow at Gibbon. He says (_post_, under March 19, 1781), that 'Johnson had talked with some disgust of Mr.

Gibbon's ugliness.' He wrote to Temple on May 8, 1779:--'Gibbon is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our literary club to me.'

He had before cla.s.sed him among 'infidel wasps and venomous insects.'

_Letters of Boswell_, pp. 233, 242. The younger Coleman describes Gibbon as dressed 'in a suit of flowered velvet, with a bag and sword.' _Random Records_, i. 121.

[1296] 'Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fili, et tamquam faciem honesti vides, "quae si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores" ut ait Plato, "excitaret sapientiae."' Cicero, De _Off_. i. 5.

[1297] Of Beattie's attack on Hume, he said:--'Treating your adversary with respect, is striking soft in a battle.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15.

[1298] When Gibbon entered Magdalen College in 1752, the ordinary commoners were already excluded. 'As a gentleman commoner,' he writes, 'I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal; their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth; and their const.i.tutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 53. In Jesse's edition of White's _Selborne_, p. ii, it is stated that 'White, as long as his health allowed him, always attended the annual election of Fellows at Oriel College, where the gentlemen-commoners were allowed the use of the common-room after dinner. This liberty they seldom availed themselves of, except on the occasion of Mr. White's visits; for such was his happy manner of telling a story that the room was always filled when he was there.' He died in 1793.

[1299] 'So different are the colours of life as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past, and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.... One generation is always the scorn and wonder of the other; and the notions of the old and young are like liquors of different gravity and texture which never can unite.' _The Rambler_, No. 69.

[1300] 'It was said of a dispute between two mathematicians, "_malim c.u.m Scaligero errare quam c.u.m Clavio recte sapere_" that "it was more eligible to go wrong with one than right with the other." A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the perusal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's discourses.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 303.

[1301] 'There is evidence of Phil. Jones's love of beer; for we find scribbled at the end of the college b.u.t.tery-books, "O yes, O yes, come forth, Phil. Jones, and answer to your charge for exceeding the batells." His excess, perhaps, was in liquor.' _Dr. Johnson: His Friends, &c_., p. 23.

[1302] See _post_, iii. 1.

[1303] Dr. Fisher, who was present, told Mr. Croker that 'he recollected one pa.s.sage of the conversation. Boswell quoted _Quern Deus vult perdere, prius dementat_, and asked where it was. A pause. At last Dr.

Chandler said, in Horace. Another pause. Then Fisher remarked that he knew of no metre in Horace to which the words could be reduced: and Johnson said dictatorially, "The young man is right."' See _post_, March 30, 1783. For another of Dr. Fisher's anecdotes, see _ante_, p. 269.

Mark Pattison recorded in his _Diary_ in 1843 (_Memoirs_, p. 203), on the authority of Mr. (now Cardinal) Newman:--'About 1770, the worst time in the University; a head of Oriel then, who was continually obliged to be a.s.sisted to bed by his butler. Gaudies, a scene of wild license. At Christ Church they dined at three, and sat regularly till chapel at nine.' A gaudy is such a festival as the one in the text.

[1304] The author of the _Commentary on the Psalms_. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, note.