Life of Johnson Volume III Part 65

[744] Johnson's addressing himself with a smile to Mr. Harris is explained by a reference to what Boswell said (_ante_, p. 245) of Harris's a.n.a.lytic method in his _Hermes_.

[745] 'Dr. Johnson said of a modern Martial [no doubt Elphinston's], "there are in these verses too much folly for madness, I think, and too much madness for folly."' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 61. Burns wrote on it the following epigram:--

'O thou whom Poetry abhors, Whom Prose has turned out of doors, Heard'st thou that groan--proceed no further, 'Twas laurell'd. Martial roaring murder.'

For Mr. Elphinston see _ante_, i. 210.

[746] It was called _The Siege of Aleppo_. Mr. Hawkins, the authour of it, was formerly Professor of Poetry at Oxford. It is printed in his _Miscellanies_, 3 vols. octavo. BOSWELL. 'Hughes's last work was his tragedy, _The Siege of Damascus_, after which a _Siege_ became a popular t.i.tle.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 477. See _ante_, i. 75, note 2.

Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 200) mentions another _Siege_ by a Mrs. B.

This lady asked Johnson to 'look over her _Siege of Sinope_; he always found means to evade it. At last she pressed him so closely that he refused to do it, and told her that she herself, by carefully looking it over, would be able to see if there was anything amiss as well as he could. "But, Sir," said she, "I have no time. I have already so many irons in the fire." "Why then, Madame," said he, quite out of patience, "the best thing I can advise you to do is to put your tragedy along with your irons."' Mrs. B. was Mrs. Brooke. See Baker's _Biog. Dram_. iii.

273, where no less than thirty-seven _Sieges_ are enumerated.

[747] That the story was true is shewn by the _Garrick Corres_. ii. 6.

Hawkins wrote to Garrick in 1774:--'You rejected my _Siege of Aleppo_ because it was "wrong in the first concoction," as you said.' He added that his play 'was honoured with the _entire_ approbation of Judge Blackstone and Mr. Johnson.'

[748] The manager of Covent Garden Theatre.

[749] Hawkins wrote:--'In short, Sir, the world will be a proper judge whether I have been candidly treated by you.' Garrick, in his reply, did not make the impertinent offer which he here boasts of.

Hawkins lived in Dorsetshire, not in Devonshire; as he reminds Garrick who had misdirected his letter. _Garrick Corres_. ii. 7-11.

[750] See _ante_, i. 433.

[751] 'BOSWELL. "Beauclerk has a keenness of mind which is very uncommon." JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir; and everything comes from him so easily.

It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing." BOSWELL. "You are loud, Sir, but it is not an effort of mind."' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21. See _post_, under May 2, 1780.

[752] Boswell seems to imply that he showed Johnson, or at least read to him, a portion of his journal. Most of his _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ had been read by him. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 18, and Oct. 26.

[753] Hannah More wrote of this evening (_Memoirs_, i. 146):--'Garrick put Johnson into such good spirits that I never knew him so entertaining or more instructive. He was as brilliant as himself, and as good-humoured as any one else.'

[754] He was, perhaps, more steadily under Johnson than under any else.

In his own words he was 'of Johnson's school.' (_Ante_, p. 230). Gibbon calls Johnson Reynolds's oracle. Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 149.

[755] Boswell never mentions Sir John Scott (Lord Eldon) who knew Johnson (_ante_, ii. 268), and who was Solicitor-General when the _Life of Johnson_ was published. Boswell perhaps never forgave him the trick that he and others played him at the Lancaster a.s.sizes about the years 1786-8. 'We found,' said Eldon, 'Jemmy Boswell lying upon the pavement--inebriated. We subscribed at supper a guinea for him and half-a-crown for his clerk, and sent him next morning a brief with instructions to move for the writ of _Quare adhaesit pavimento_, with observations calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it. He sent all round the town to attornies for books, but in vain. He moved however for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge was astonished and the audience amazed. The judge said, "I never heard of such a writ--what can it be that adheres _pavimento_? Are any of you gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?" The Bar laughed. At last one of them said, "My Lord, Mr. Boswell last night _adhaesit pavimento_.

There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement."' Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 130. Boswell wrote to Temple in 1789:--'I hesitate as to going the Spring Northern Circuit, which costs 50, and obliges me to be in rough, unpleasant company four weeks.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 274.

See _ante_, ii. 191, note 2.

[756] 'Johnson, in accounting for the courage of our common people, said (_Works_, vi. 151):--'It proceeds from that dissolution of dependence which obliges every man to regard his own character. While every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts; he may always have wages for his labour, and is no less necessary to his employer than his employer is to him.'

[757] He says of a laird's tenants:--'Since the islanders no longer content to live have learned the desire of growing rich, an ancient dependant is in danger of giving way to a higher bidder, at the expense of domestick dignity and hereditary power. The stranger, whose money buys him preference, considers himself as paying for all that he has, and is indifferent about the laird's honour or safety. The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego.' _Ib_. ix. 83.

[758] 'Every old man complains ... of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was pa.s.sed; a happy age, which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.' _The Rambler_, No. 50.

[759] Boswell, perhaps, had in mind _The Rambler_, No. 146:--'It is long before we are convinced of the small proportion which every individual bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn how few can be interested in the fortune of any single man; how little vacancy is left in the world for any new object of attention; to how small extent the brightest blaze of merit can be spread amidst the mists of business and of folly.'

[760] See _ante_, ii. 227.

[761]

'Fortunam reverenter habe, quic.u.mque repente Dives ab exili progrediere loco.'

Ausonius, _Epigrammata_, viii. 7.

Stockdale records (_Memoirs_, ii. 186), that Johnson said to him:--'Garrick has undoubtedly the merit of an una.s.suming behaviour; for more pains have been taken to spoil that fellow than if he had been heir apparent to the Empire of India.'

[762] A lively account of Quin is given in _Humphry Clinker_, in the letters of April 30 and May 6.

[763] See _ante_, i. 216.

[764] A few days earlier Garrick wrote to a friend:--'I did not hear till last night that your friends have generously contributed to your and their own happiness. No one can more rejoice at this circ.u.mstance than I do; and as I hope we shall have a bonfire upon the occasion, I beg that you will light it with the inclosed.' The inclosed was a bond for 280. _Garrick Corres_. ii. 297. Murphy says:--'Dr. Johnson often said that, when he saw a worthy family in distress, it was his custom to collect charity among such of his friends as he knew to be affluent; and on those occasions he received from Garrick more than from any other person, and always more than he expected.' _Life of Garrick_, p. 378. 'It was with Garrick a fixed principle that authors were int.i.tled to the emolument of their labours, and by that generous way of thinking he held out an invitation to men of genius.' _Ib_. p. 362. See _ante_, p. 70, and _post_, April 24, 1779.

[765] When Johnson told this little anecdote to Sir Joshua Reynolds, he mentioned a circ.u.mstance which he omitted to-day:--'Why (said Garrick) it is as red as blood.' BOSWELL. A pa.s.sage in Johnson's answer to Hanway's _Essay on Tea_ (_ante_, i. 314) shews that tea was generally made very weak. 'Three cups,' he says, 'make the common quant.i.ty, so slightly impregnated that, perhaps, they might be tinged with the Athenian cicuta, and produce less effects than these letters charge upon tea.' _Works_, vi. 24.

[766] To Garrick might be applied what Johnson said of Swift:--'He was frugal by inclination, but liberal by principle.' _Works_, viii. 222.

[767] See _post_, under March 30, 1783. In Fitzmaurice's _Shelburne_, ii. 329, is a paper by Lord Shelburne in which are very clearly laid down rules of economy--rules which, to quote his own words (p. 337), 'require little, if any, more power of mind, than to be sure to put on a clean shirt every day.' Boswell records (_Hebrides_, Aug. 18) that Johnson said:--'If a man is not of a sluggish mind, he may be his own steward.'

[768] 'Lady Macbeth urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a glittering idea which has dazzled mankind from age to age, and animated sometimes the housebreaker, and sometimes the conqueror.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 69.

[769] Smollett, who had been a ship's doctor, describes the hospital in a man-of-war:--'Here I saw about fifty miserable distempered wretches, suspended in rows, so huddled one upon another, that not more than fourteen inches s.p.a.ce was allotted for each with his bed and bedding; and deprived of the light of the day as well as of fresh air; breathing nothing but a noisome atmosphere ... devoured with vermin.'

&c. The doctor, when visiting the sick, 'thrust his wig in his pocket, and stript himself to his waistcoat; then creeping on all fours under their hammocks, and forcing up his bare pate between two, kept them asunder with one shoulder until he had done his duty.' _Roderick Random_, i. ch. 25 and 26.

[770] See _ante_, ii. 339.

[771] 'The qualities which commonly make an army formidable are long habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline, and great confidence in the commander ... But the English troops have none of these requisites in any eminent degree. Regularity is by no means part of their character.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 150.

[772] See _ante_, i. 348.

[773] In the _Marmor Norfolciense_ (_Works_, vi. 101) he describes the soldier as 'a red animal, that ranges uncontrolled over the country, and devours the labours of the trader and the husbandman; that carries with it corruption, rapine, pollution, and devastation; that threatens without courage, robs without fear, and is pampered without labour.' In _The Idler_, No. 21, he makes an imaginary correspondent say:--'I pa.s.sed some years in the most contemptible of all human stations, that of a soldier in time of peace.' 'Soldiers, in time of peace,' he continues, 'long to be delivered from the tyranny of idleness, and restored to the dignity of active beings.' _Ib_. No. 30, he writes:--'Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warriour and relater of wars dest.i.tute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.' Many years later he wrote (_Works_, viii. 396):--'West continued some time in the army; though it is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or much neglected the pursuit of learning.'

[774] See _ante_, p. 9.

[775] See _post_, March 21, 1783.

[776] The reference seems to be to a pa.s.sage in Plutarch's _Alcibiades_, where Phaeax is thus described:--'He seemed fitter for soliciting and persuading in private than for stemming the torrent of a public debate; in short, he was one of those of whom Eupolis says:--"True he can talk, and yet he is no speaker."' Langhome's _Plutarch_, ed. 1809, ii. 137.

How the quotation was applied is a matter only for conjecture.

[777] 'Was there,' asked Johnson, 'ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting _Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe_, and _The Pilgrim's Progress_?' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 281.

[778] See _ante_, i. 406.

[779] See _ante_, March 25, 1776.

[780] In the _Gent. Mag_. for 1776, p. 382, this hulk seems to be mentioned:--'The felons sentenced under the new convict-act began to work in clearing the bed of the Thames about two miles below Barking Creek. In the vessel wherein they work there is a room abaft in which they are to sleep, and in the forecastle a kind of cabin for the overseer.' _Ib_. p. 254, there is an admirable paper, very likely by Bentham, on the punishment of convicts, which Johnson might have read with advantage.

[781] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 25.

[782] Malone says that he had in vain examined Dodsley's _Collection_ for the verses. My search has been equally in vain.

[783] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 373) praises Smith's 'excellent Latin ode on the death of the great Orientalist, Dr. Poc.o.c.k.' He says that he does not know 'where to find it equalled among the modern writers.' See _ante_, ii. 187, note 3.