Life of Johnson Volume III Part 62

[637] The first edition was in 1492. Between that period and 1792, according to this account, there were 3600 editions. But this is very improbable. MALONE. Malone a.s.sumes, as Mr. Croker points out, that this rate of publication continued to the year 1792. But after all, the difference is trifling. Johnson here forgot to use his favourite cure for exaggeration--counting. See _post_, April 18, 1783. 'Round numbers,'

he said, 'are always false.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 198. Horace Walpole (_Letters_, viii. 300), after making a calculation, writes:--'I may err in my calculations, for I am a woeful arithmetician; but no matter, one large sum is as good as another.'

[638] The original pa.s.sage is: 'Si non potes te talem facere, qualem vis, quomodo poteris alium ad tuum habere beneplacitum?' _De Imit.

Christ_. lib. i. cap. xvi. J. BOSWELL, Jun.

[639] See p. 29 of this vol. BOSWELL.

[640] Since this was written the attainder has been reversed; and Nicholas Barnewall is now a peer of Ireland with this t.i.tle. The person mentioned in the text had studied physick, and prescribed _gratis_ to the poor. Hence arose the subsequent conversation. MALONE.

[641] See Franklin's _Autobiography_ for his conversion from vegetarianism.

[642] See _ante_, ii. 217, where Johnson advised Boswell to keep a journal. 'The great thing to be recorded, is the state of your own mind.'

[643] 'n.o.body can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and, once uttered, are sullenly supported.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 23.

[644] _Literary Magazine_, 1756, p. 37. BOSWELL. Johnson's _Works_, vi. 42. See _post_, Oct. 10, 1779.

[645]

'Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'

'For while upon such monstrous scenes we gaze, They shock our faith, our indignation raise.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. 188. Johnson speaks of 'the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder.' _Works_, vii. 2. 'Wonders,' he says, 'are willingly told, and willingly heard.' _Ib_. viii. 292.

Speaking of Voltaire he says:--'It is the great failing of a strong imagination to catch greedily at wonders.' _Ib_. vi. 455. See _ante_, i.

309, note 3, ii. 247, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 19, 1773. According to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 137) Hogarth said:--'Johnson, though so wise a fellow, is more like King David than King Solomon; for he says in his haste that all men are liars.'

[646] The following plausible but over-prudent counsel on this subject is given by an Italian writer, quoted by '_Rhedi de generatione insectarum_,' with the epithet of '_divini poetae_:'

'_Sempre a quel ver ch'ha faccia di menzogna Dee l'uom chiuder le labbra quanto ei puote; Per che senza colpa fa vergogna_.' BOSWELL.

It is strange that Boswell should not have discovered that these lines were from Dante. The following is Wright's translation:--

'That truth which bears the semblance of a lie, Should never pa.s.s the lips, if possible; Tho' crime be absent, still disgrace is nigh.'

_Infern_. xvi. 124. CROKER.

[647] See _ante_, i. 7, note 1.

[648] See _ante_, i. 405.

[649] 'Of John Wesley he said:--"He can talk well on any subject."'

_Post_, April 15, 1778. Southey says that 'his manners were almost irresistibly winning, and his cheerfulness was like perpetual sunshine.'

_Life of Wesley_, i. 409. Wesley recorded on Dec. 18, 1783 (_Journal_, iv. 258):--'I spent two hours with that great man Dr. Johnson, who is sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.'

[650] 'When you met him in the street of a crowded city, he attracted notice, not only by his band and ca.s.sock, and his long hair white and bright as silver, but by his pace and manner, both indicating that all his minutes were numbered, and that not one was to be lost. "Though I am always in haste," he says of himself, "I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit."' Southey's _Wesley_, ii. 397.

[651] No doubt the Literary Club. See _ante_, ii. 330, 345. Mr. Croker says 'that it appears by the books of the Club that the company on that evening consisted of Dr. Johnson president, Mr. Burke, Mr. Boswell, Dr. George Fordyce, Mr. Gibbon, Dr. Johnson (again named), Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Upper Ossory, and Mr. R. B. Sheridan.' E. no doubt stands for Edmund Burke, and J. for Joshua Reynolds. Who are meant by the other initials cannot be known. Mr. Croker hazards some guesses; but he says that Sir James Mackintosh and Chalmers were as dubious as himself.

[652] See Langhorne's _Plutarch_, ed. 1809, ii. 133.

[653] 'A man came in balancing a straw upon his nose, and the audience were clapping their hands in all the raptures of applause.' _The Citizen of the World_, Letter xxi. According to Davis (_Life of Garrick_, i. 113), 'in one year, after paying all expenses, 11,000 were the produce of Mr. Maddocks (the straw-man's agility), added to the talents of the players at Covent Garden theatre.'

[654] See _ante_, i. 399.

[655] 'Sir' said Edwards to Johnson (_post_, April 17, 1778), 'I remember you would not let us say _prodigious_ at College.'

[656] 'Emigration was at this time a common topick of discourse.

Dr. Johnson regretted it as hurtful to human happiness.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773.

[657] In 1766 Johnson wrote a paper (first published in 1808) to prove that 'the bounty upon corn has produced plenty.' 'The truth of these principles,' he says, 'our ancestors discovered by reason, and the French have now found it by experience. In this regulation we have the honour of being masters to those who, in commercial policy, have been long accounted the masters of the world.' _Works_, v. 323, 326, and _ante_, i. 518. 'In 1688 was granted the parliamentary bounty upon the exportation of corn. The country gentlemen had felt that the money price of corn was falling. The bounty was an expedient to raise it artificially to the high price at which it had frequently been sold in the times of Charles I. and II.' Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, book I. c.

xi. The year 1792, the last year of peace before the great war, was likewise the last year of exportation. _Penny Cyclo_. viii. 22.

[658]

'Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote.'

Goldsmith's _Retaliation_.

Horace Walpole says of Lord Mansfield's speech on the _Habeas Corpus Bill_ of 1758:--'Perhaps it was the only speech that in my time at least had real effect; that is, convinced many persons.' _Reign of George II_, iii. 120.

[659] Gibbon, who was now a member of parliament, was present at this dinner. In his _Autobiography_ (_Misc. Works_, i. 221) he says:--'After a fleeting illusive hope, prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute.... Timidity was fortified by pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial of my voice. But I a.s.sisted at the debates of a free a.s.sembly; I listened to the attack and defence of eloquence and reason; I had a near prospect of the character, views, and pa.s.sions of the first men of the age.... The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian.'

[660] Horace, _Odes_, iii. 24, 46.

[661] Lord Bolingbroke, who, however detestable as a metaphysician, must be allowed to have had admirable talents as a political writer, thus describes the House of Commons, in his 'Letter to Sir William Wyndham:'

--'You know the nature of that a.s.sembly; they grow, like hounds, fond of the man who shews them game, and by whose halloo they are used to be encouraged.' BOSWELL. Bolingbroke's _Works_, i. 15.

[662] Smollett says (_Journey_, i. 147) that he had a musquetoon which could carry eight b.a.l.l.s. 'This piece did not fail to attract the curiosity and admiration of the people in every place through which we pa.s.sed. The carriage no sooner halted than a crowd surrounded the man to view the blunderbuss, which they dignified with the name of _pet.i.t canon_. At Nuys in Burgundy, he fired it in the air, and the whole mob dispersed, and scampered off like a flock of sheep.'

[663] Smollett does not say that he frightened the n.o.bleman. He mistook him for a postmaster and spoke to him very roughly. The n.o.bleman seems to have been good-natured; for, at the next stage, says Smollett, 'observing that one of the trunks behind was a little displaced, he a.s.sisted my servant in adjusting it.' His name and rank were learnt later on. _Journey_, i. p. 134.

[664] The two things did not happen in the same town. 'I am sure, writes Thicknesse (_Travels_, ii. 147), 'there was but that single French n.o.bleman in this mighty kingdom, who would have submitted to such insults as the Doctor _says_ he treated him with; nor any other town but Sens [it was Nuys] where the firing of a gun would have so terrified the inhabitants.'

[665] Both Smollett and Thicknesse were great grumblers.

[666] Lord Bolingbroke said of Lord Oxford:--'He is naturally inclined to believe the worst, which I take to be a certain mark of a mean spirit and a wicked soul; at least I am sure that the contrary quality, when it is not due to weakness of understanding, is the fruit of a generous temper and an honest heart.' Bolingbroke's _Works_, i. 25. Lord Eldon asked Pitt, not long before his death, what he thought of the honesty of mankind. 'His answer was, that he had a favourable opinion of mankind upon the whole, and that he believed that the majority was really actuated by fair meaning and intention.' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 499.

[667] Johnson wrote in 175l:--'We are by our occupations, education, and habits of life, divided almost into different species, which regard one another, for the most part, with scorn and malignity.'

_The Rambler_, No. 160. In No. 173 he writes of 'the general hostility which every part of mankind exercises against the rest to furnish insults and sarcasm.' In 1783 he said:--'I am ready now to call a man _a good man_ upon easier terms than I was formerly.' _Post_, under Aug. 29, 1783.

[668] Johnson thirty-four years earlier, in the _Life of Savage_ (_Works_, viii. 188), had written:--'The knowledge of life was indeed his chief attainment; and it is not without some satisfaction that I can produce the suffrage of Savage in favour of human nature.' On April 14, 1781, he wrote:--'The world is not so unjust or unkind as it is peevishly represented. Those who deserve well seldom fail to receive from others such services as they can perform; but few have much in their power, or are so stationed as to have great leisure from their own affairs, and kindness must be commonly the exuberance of content. The wretched have no compa.s.sion; they can do good only from strong principles of duty.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 199.

[669] Pope thus introduces this story:

'Faith in such case if you should prosecute, I think Sir G.o.dfrey should decide the suit, Who send the thief who [that] stole the cash away, And punish'd him that put it in his way.'

_Imitations of Horace_, book II. epist. ii. [l. 23]. BOSWELL.