Life of Johnson Volume III Part 74

[1081] Langton.

[1082]

'He plunging downward shot his radiant head: Dispelled the breathing air that broke his flight; Shorn of his beams, a man to mortal sight.'

Dryden, quoted in Johnson's _Dictionary_ under _shorn_. The phrase first appears in _Paradise Lost_, i. 596.

[1083] Mrs. Thrale, this same summer, 'asked whether Mr. Langton took any better care of his affairs. "No, madam," cried the doctor, "and never will. He complains of the ill-effects of habit, and rests contentedly upon a confessed indolence. He told his father himself that he had _no turn to economy_, but a thief might as well plead that he had no _turn to honesty_!"' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 75.

[1084] Locke, in his last words to Collins, said:--'This world affords no solid satisfaction but the consciousness of well-doing, and the hopes of another life.' Warburton's _Divine Legation_, i. xxvi.

[1085] Not the young brewer who was hoped for (_ante_, iii. 210); therefore she is called 'poor thing.' One of Mr. Thrale's daughters lived to Nov. 5, 1858.

[1086] On Oct. 15 Johnson wrote:--'Is my master [i.e. Mr. Thrale, _ante_, i. 494, note 3] come to himself? Does he talk, and walk, and look about him, as if there were yet something in the world for which it is worth while to live? Or does he yet sit and say nothing? To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them.' _Piozzi Letters_. ii. 22. Nine days later he wrote:--'You appear to me to be now floating on the spring-tide of prosperity. I think it very probably in your power to lay up 8000 a-year for every year to come, increasing all the time, what needs not be increased, the splendour of all external appearance. And surely such a state is not to be put into yearly hazard for the pleasure of _keeping the house full_, or the ambition of _out-brewing Whitbread_? _Piozzi Letters_, p. 24.

[1087] See _ante_, ii. 136. The following letter, of which a fac-simile is given at the beginning of vol. iii. of Dr. Franklin's _Memoirs_, ed.

1818, tells of 'a difference' between the famous printer of Philadelphia and the King's Printer of London.

'Philada., July 5, 1775.

'Mr. Strahan,

'You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my Country to Destruction.--You have begun to burn our Towns, and murder our People.--Look upon your Hands!--They are stained with the Blood of your Relations! You and I were long friends:--You are now my Enemy,--and

'I am, yours,

'B. FRANKLIN.'

When peace was made between the two countries the old friendship was renewed. _Ib_. iii. 147.

[1088] On this day he wrote a touching letter to Mr. Elphinston, who had lost his wife (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 66, note). Perhaps the thoughts thus raised in him led him to this act of reconciliation.

[1089] Dr. Johnson here addresses his worthy friend, Bennet Langton, Esq., by his t.i.tle as Captain of the Lincolnshire militia, in which he has since been most deservedly raised to the rank of Major. BOSWELL.

[1090] President of the Royal Society.

[1091] The King visited Warley Camp on Oct. 20. _Ann. Reg_. xxi. 237.

[1092] He visited c.o.xheath Camp on Nov. 23. _Ib_. Horace Walpole, writing of April of this year when, in the alarm of a French invasion, the militia were called out, says:--'The King's behaviour was childish and absurd. He ordered the camp equipage, and said he would command the army himself.' Walpole continues:--'It is reported, that in a few days will be published in two volumes, folio, an accurate account of _His Majesty's Journeys to Chatham and Portsmouth, together with a minute Description of his numerous Fatigues, Dangers, and hair-breadth Escapes; to which will be added the Royal Bon-mots_. And the following week will be published an _History of all the Campaigns of the King of Prussia_, in one volume duodecimo.' _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 262, 264.

[1093] Boswell, eleven years later, wrote of him:--'My second son is an extraordinary boy; he is much of his father (vanity of vanities). He is of a delicate const.i.tution, but not unhealthy, and his spirit never fails him. He is still in the house with me; indeed he is quite my companion, though only eleven in September.' _Letters of Boswell_, p.

315. Mr. Croker, who knew him, says that 'he was very convivial, and in other respects like his father--though altogether on a smaller scale.'

He edited a new edition of Malone's _Shakespeare_. He died in 1822.

Croker's _Boswell_, p. 620.

[1094] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 30, 1773.

[1095] _Ib_. Nov. 1.

[1096] Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church. Johnson wrote in 1783:--'At home I see almost all my companions dead or dying.

At Oxford I have just left [lost] Wheeler, the man with whom I most delighted to converse.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 302. See _post_, Aug. 30, 1780.

[1097] Johnson, in 1784, wrote about a visit to Oxford:--'Since I was there my convivial friend Dr. Edwards and my learned friend Dr. Wheeler are both dead, and my probabilities of pleasure are very much diminished.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 371.

[1098] Dr. Edwards was preparing an edition of Xenophon's _Memorabilia_.

CROKER.

[1099] Johnson wrote on the 14th:--'Dr. Burney had the luck to go to Oxford the only week in the year when the library is shut up. He was, however, very kindly treated; as one man is translating Arabick and another Welsh for his service.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 38.

[1100] Johnson three years later, hearing that one of Dr. Burney's sons had got the command of a ship, wrote:--'I question if any ship upon the ocean goes out attended with more good wishes than that which carries the fate of Burney. I love all of that breed whom I can be said to know, and one or two whom I hardly know I love upon credit, and love them because they love each other.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 225. See _post_, Nov. 16, 1784.

[1101] Vol. ii. p. 38. BOSWELL.

[1102] Miss Carmichael. BOSWELL.

[1103] See Appendix D.

[1104] See _ante_, ii. 382, note 1.

[1105] See _ante_, i. 446.

[1106] See _ante_, iii. 99, note 4.

[1107] It was the collected edition containing the first seven _Discourses_, which had each year been published separately. 'I was present,' said Samuel Rogers (_Table-Talk_, p. 18), 'when Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered his last lecture at the Royal Academy. On entering the room, I found that a semicircle of chairs immediately in front of the pulpit was reserved for persons of distinction, being labelled "Mr.

Burke," "Mr. Boswell," &c.'

[1108] In an unfinished sketch for a _Discourse_, Reynolds said of those already delivered:--'Whatever merit they may have must be imputed, in a great measure, to the education which I may be said to have had under Dr.

Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to the credit of these _Discourses_ if I could say it with truth, that he contributed even a single sentiment to them; but he qualified my mind to think justly.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, ii. 282. See _ante_, i. 245.

[1109] The error in grammar is no doubt Boswell's. He was so proud of his knowledge of languages that when he was appointed Secretary for Foreign Correspondence to the Royal Academy (_ante_, ii. 67, note 1), 'he wrote his acceptance of the honour in three separate letters, still preserved in the Academy archives, in English, French, and Italian.'

_The Athenaeum_, No. 3041.

[1110] The remaining six volumes came out, not in 1780, but in 1781. See _post_, 1781. He also wrote this year the preface to a translation of _Oedipus Tyrannus_, by Thomas Maurice, in _Poems and Miscellaneous Pieces_. (See preface to _Westminster Abbey with other Poems_, 1813.)

[1111] See _ante_, ii. 272.

[1112] _Life of Watts_ [_Works_, viii. 380]. BOSWELL.

[1113] See _ante_, ii. 107.

[1114] See _ante_, iii. 126.

[1115] 'Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's _Choice_.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 222.

[1116] Johnson, in his _Life of Yalden_ (_Ib_. viii. 83), calls the following stanza from his _Hymn to Darkness_ 'exquisitely beautiful':--

'Thou dost thy smiles impartially bestow, And know'st no difference here below: All things appear the same by thee, Though Light distinction makes, thou giv'st equality.'

It is strange that Churchill was left out of the collection.