Life of Johnson Volume III Part 68

[864] See _A Letter to W. Mason, A.M. from J. Murray, Bookseller in London_; 2d edition, p. 20. BOSWELL.

[865] 'The righteous hath hope in his death.' _Proverbs_, xiv. 32.

[866] See _post_, June 12, 1784.

[867] Johnson, in _The Convict's Address_ (_ante_, p. 141), makes Dodd say:--'Possibly it may please G.o.d to afford us some consolation, some secret intimations of acceptance and forgiveness. But these radiations of favour are not always felt by the sincerest penitents. To the greater part of those whom angels stand ready to receive, nothing is granted in this world beyond rational hope; and with hope, founded on promise, we may well be satisfied.'

[868] 'I do not find anything able to reconcile us to death but extreme pain, shame or despair; for poverty, imprisonment, ill fortune, grief, sickness and old age do generally fail.' _Swift's Works_, ed.

1803, xiv. 178.

[869] 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.' 2 _Timothy_, iv. 7 and 8.

[870] See _ante_, p. 154.

[871] 'Inde illud Maecenatis turp.i.s.simum votum, quo et debilitatem non recusat, et deformitatem, et novissime acutam crucem dummodo inter haec mala spiritus prorogetur.

"Debilem facito manu, Debilem pede, c.o.xa; Tuber adstrue gibberum, Lubricos quate dentes; Vita dum superest, bene est; Hanc mihi vel acuta Si sedeam cruce sustine."'

Seneca's _Epistles_, No. 101.

Dryden makes Gonsalvo say in _The Rival Ladies_, act iv. sc. 1:--

'For men with horrour dissolution meet, The minutes e'en of painful life are sweet.'

In Paradise Lost Moloch and Belial take opposite sides on this point:--

MOLOCH.

'What doubt we to incense His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged, Will either quite consume us, and reduce To nothing this essential; happier far Than miserable to have eternal being.'

Bk. ii. 1. 94.

BELIAL.

'Who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?'

1. 146.

Cowper, at times at least, held with Moloch. He wrote to his friend Newton:--'I feel--I will not tell you what--and yet I must--a wish that I had never been, a wonder that I am, and an ardent but hopeless desire not to be.' Southey's _Cowper_, vi. 130. See _ante_, p. 153, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 12.

[872] Johnson recorded in _Pr. and Med_. p. 202:--'At Ashbourne I hope to talk seriously with Taylor.' Taylor published in 1787 _A Letter to Samuel Johnson on the Subject of a Future State_. He writes that 'having heard that Johnson had said that he would prefer a state of torment to that of annihilation, he told him that such a declaration, coming from him, might be productive of evil consequences. Dr. J.

desired him to arrange his thoughts on the subject.' Taylor says that Johnson's entry about the serious talk refers to this matter. _Gent.

Mag_. 1787, p. 521. I believe that Johnson meant to warn Taylor about the danger _he_ was running of 'entering the state of torment.'

[873] Wesley, like Johnson, was a wide reader. On his journeys he read books of great variety, such as _The Odyssey_, Rousseau's _Emile_, Boswell's _Corsica_, Swift's _Letters_, Hoole's _Ta.s.so_, Robertson's _Charles V., Quintus Curtius_, Franklin's _Letters on Electricity_, besides a host of theological works. Like Johnson, too, he was a great dabbler in physic and a reader of medical works. His writings covered a great range. He wrote, he says, among other works, an English, a Latin, a Greek, a Hebrew, and a French Grammar, a Treatise on Logic and another on Electricity. In the British Isles he had travelled perhaps more than any man of his time, and he had visited North America and more than one country of Europe. He had seen an almost infinite variety of characters.

See _ante_, p. 230.

[874] The story is recorded in Wesley's _Journal_, ed. 1827, iv. 316.

It was at Sunderland and not at Newcastle where the scene was laid.

The ghost did not prophesy ill of the attorney. On the contrary, it said to the girl:--'Go to Durham, employ an attorney there, and the house will be recovered.' She went to Durham, 'and put the affair into Mr.

Hugill the attorney's hands.' 'A month after,' according to the girl, 'the ghost came about eleven. I said, "Lord bless me! what has brought you here again?" He said, "Mr. Hugill has done nothing but wrote one letter."' On this Wesley writes by way of comment:--'So he [the ghost]

had observed him [the attorney] narrowly, though unseen.' See _post_, under May 3, 1779.

[875] Johnson, with his horror of annihilation, caught at everything which strengthened his belief in the immortality of the soul. Boswell mentions _ante_, ii. 150, 'Johnson's elevated wish for more and more evidence for spirit,' and records the same desire, _post_, June 12, 1784. Southey (_Life of Wesley_, i. 25) says of supernatural appearances:--'With regard to the good end which they may be supposed to answer, it would be end sufficient if sometimes one of those unhappy persons, who looking through the dim gla.s.s of infidelity see nothing beyond this life, and the narrow sphere of mortal existence, should, from the established truth of one such story (trifling and objectless as it might otherwise appear), be led to a conclusion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.' See _ante_, p. 230, and _post_, April 15, 1781.

[876] Miss Jane Harry. In Miss Seward's _Letters_, i. 97, is an account of her, which Mr. Croker shows to be inaccurate. There is, too, a long and lifeless report of the talk at this dinner.

[877] See _ante_, ii. 14, 105.

[878] Mrs. Knowles, not satisfied with the fame of her needlework, the '_sutile pictures_' mentioned by Johnson, in which she has indeed displayed much dexterity, nay, with the fame of reasoning better than women generally do, as I have fairly shewn her to have done, communicated to me a Dialogue of considerable length, which after many years had elapsed, she wrote down as having pa.s.sed between Dr. Johnson and herself at this interview. As I had not the least recollection of it, and did not find the smallest trace of it in my _Record_ taken at the time, I could not in consistency with my firm regard to authenticity, insert it in my work. It has, however, been published in _The Gent. Mag_. for June, 1791. It chiefly relates to the principles of the sect called _Quakers_; and no doubt the Lady appears to have greatly the advantage of Dr. Johnson in argument as well as expression. From what I have now stated, and from the internal evidence of the paper itself, any one who may have the curiosity to peruse it, will judge whether it was wrong in me to reject it, however willing to gratify Mrs.

Knowles. BOSWELL. Johnson mentioned the '_sutile pictures_' in a letter dated May 16, 1776, describing the dinner at Messrs. Dilly's. 'And there,' he wrote, 'was Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker, that works the sutile [misprinted by Mrs. Piozzi _futile_] pictures. She is a Staffordshire woman, and I am to go and see her. Staffordshire is the nursery of art; here they grow up till they are transplanted to London.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 326. He is pleasantly alluding to the fact that he was a Staffordshire man. In the _Dialogue_ in _The Gent. Mag_. for 1791, p.

502, Mrs. Knowles says that, the wrangle ended thus:--'Mrs. K. "I hope, Doctor, thou wilt not remain unforgiving; and that you will renew your friendship, and joyfully meet at last in those bright regions where pride and prejudice can never enter." Dr. Johnson. "Meet _her_! I never desire to meet fools anywhere." This sarcastic turn of wit was so pleasantly received that the Doctor joined in the laugh; his spleen was dissipated, he took his coffee, and became, for the remainder of the evening, very cheerful and entertaining.' Did Miss Austen find here the t.i.tle of _Pride and Prejudice_, for her novel?

[879] Of this day he recorded (_Pr. and Med_. p. 163):--'It has happened this week, as it never happened in Pa.s.sion Week before, that I have never dined at home, and I have therefore neither practised abstinence nor peculiar devotion.'

[880] See _ante_, iii. 48, note 4.

[881] I believe, however, I shall follow my own opinion; for the world has shewn a very flattering partiality to my writings, on many occasions. BOSWELL. In _Boswelliana_, p. 222, Boswell, after recording a story about Voltaire, adds:--'In contradiction to this story, see in my _Journal_ the account which Tronchin gave me of Voltaire.' This _Journal_ was probably destroyed by Boswell's family. By his will, he left his ma.n.u.scripts and letters to Sir W. Forbes, Mr. Temple, and Mr.

Malone, to be published for the benefit of his younger children as they shall decide. The Editor of _Boswelliana_ says (p. 186) that 'these three literary executors did not meet, and the entire business of the trust was administered by Sir W. Forbes, who appointed as his law-agent, Robert Boswell, cousin-german of the deceased. By that gentleman's advice, Boswell's ma.n.u.scripts were left to the disposal of his family; and it is believed that the whole were immediately destroyed.' The indolence of Malone and Temple, and the brutish ignorance of the Boswells, have indeed much to answer for. See _ante_, i. 225, note 2, and _post_, May 12, 1778.

[882] 'He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.' _The Idler_, No. 97.

[883] See _ante_, ii. 377.

[884] Johnson recorded (_Pr. and Med_. p. 163):--'Boswell came in to go to Church ... Talk lost our time, and we came to Church late, at the Second Lesson.'

[885] See _ante_, i. 461.

[886] Oliver Edwards entered Pembroke College in June, 1729. He left in April, 1730.

[887] _Pr. and Med_. p. 164. BOSWELL.

[888] 'Edwards observed how many we have outlived. I hope, yet hope, that my future life shall be better than my past.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 166.

[889] See _post_, April 30, 1778.

[890] See _ante_, p. 221.

[891] 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.' _Ante_, i. 471.

[892] Johnson said to me afterwards, 'Sir, they respected me for my literature; and yet it was not great but by comparison. Sir, it is amazing how little literature there is in the world.' BOSWELL.

[893] See _ante_, i. 320.

[894] Very near the College, facing the pa.s.sage which leads to it from Pembroke Street, still stands an old alehouse which must have been old in Johnson's time.

[895] This line has frequently been attributed to Dryden, when a King's Scholar at Westminster. But neither Eton nor Westminster have in truth any claim to it, the line being borrowed, with a slight change, from an Epigram by Crashaw:--

'Joann. 2,

'_Aquae in vinum versae.