Life of Johnson Volume III Part 75

[1117] Murphy says, though certainly with exaggeration, that 'after Garrick's death Johnson never talked of him without a tear in his eyes.

He offered,' he adds, 'if Mrs. Garrick would desire it of him, to be the editor of his works and the historian of his life.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 145. c.u.mberland (_Memoirs_, ii. 210) said of Garrick's funeral:--'I saw old Samuel Johnson standing beside his grave, at the foot of Shakespeare's monument, and bathed in tears.' Sir William Forbes was told that Johnson, in going to the funeral, said to William Jones:--'Mr.

Garrick and his profession have been equally indebted to each other. His profession made him rich, and he made his profession respectable.'

Forbes's _Beattie_, Appendix CC.

[1118] See _ante_, i. 456.

[1119] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 23.

[1120] The anniversary of the death of Charles I.

[1121] See _ante_, i. 211.

[1122] He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a very handsome present. BOSWELL.

[1123] On March 10 he wrote:--'I got my _Lives_, not yet quite printed, put neatly together, and sent them to the King; what he says of them I know not. If the king is a Whig, he will not like them; but is any king a Whig?' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 43.

[1124] 'He was always ready to a.s.sist any authors in correcting their works, and selling them to booksellers. "I have done writing," said he, "myself, and should a.s.sist those that do write."' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 202. See _ante_, ii. 195.

[1125] In _The Rehearsal_. See _ante_, ii. 168.

[1126] Johnson wrote on Nov. 21, 1778:--'Baretti has told his musical scheme to B---- and B---- _will neither grant the question nor deny_. He is of opinion that if it does not fail, it will succeed, but if it does not succeed he conceives it must fail.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 41.

Baretti, in a marginal note on his copy, says that B---- is Dr. Burney.

He adds:--'The musical scheme was the _Carmen Seculare_. That brought me 150 in three nights, and three times as much to Philidor. It would have benefited us both greatly more, if Philidor had not proved a scoundrel.'

'The complaisant Italian,' says the _Gent Mag_. (xlix. 361), 'in compliment to our island chooses "to drive destructive war and pestilence" _ad Mauros, Seras et Indos_, instead of _ad Persas atque Britannos_.' Mr. Tasker, the clergyman, went a step further. 'I,' he says in his version of the _Carmen_,

'Honour and fame prognosticate To free-born Britain's naval state And to her Patriot-King.' _Ib_.

[1127] We may compare with this the scene in _Le Misanthrope_ (Act i.

sc. 2), where Oronte reads his sonnet to Alceste; who thrice answers: --'Je ne dis pas cela, mais--.' See _ante_, iii. 320.

[1128] This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informed me that this portrait is so accurately drawn, that being, some years after the publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know, but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it appeared that he was indeed the author of _The Warlike Genius of Britain_. CROKER.

[1129] The poet was preparing a second edition of his _Ode_. 'This animated Pindaric made its first appearance the latter end of last year (1778). It is well calculated to rouse the martial spirit of the nation, and is now reprinted with considerable additions.' _Gent. Mag_. July, 1779, p. 357. In 1781 he published another volume of his poems with a poetical preface, in which he thus attacks his brother-in-law:--

'To suits litigious, ignorant and raw, Compell'd by an unletter'd brother-in-law.'

_Ib_. 1781, p. 227.

[1130] Boswell must have misheard what Johnson said. It was not Anson, but Amherst whom the bard praised. _Ode_, p. 7.

[1131] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Foote's death:--'Now, will any of his contemporaries bewail him? Will Genius change _his s.e.x_ to weep?'

_Piozzi Letters_, i. 396.

[1132]

'Genius of Britain! to thy office true, On c.o.x-Heath reared the waving banners view.

In martial vest By Venus and the Graces drest, To yonder tent, who leads the way?

Art thou Britannia's Genius? say.'

_Ode_, p. 8.

[1133] Twenty-nine years earlier he wrote:--'There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness.' _The Rambler_, No. 2. In _The Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx, George says of his book:--'The learned world said nothing to my paradoxes, nothing at all, Sir.... I suffered the cruellest mortification, neglect.' See _ante_, ii. 61, 335. Hume said:--'The misfortune of a book, says Boileau, is not the being ill spoke [sic] of, but the not being spoken of at all.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 412

[1134] The account given in Northcote's _Reynolds_ (ii. 94-97) renders it likely that Sir Joshua is 'the friend of ours.' Northcote, quoting Mr. Courtenay, writes:--'His table was frequented by men of the first talents. Politics and party were never introduced. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians, lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group.' At one of these dinners Mr. Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, was the first who came. 'On entering, he said, "Well, Sir Joshua, and who [sic] have you got to dine with you to-day? for the last time I dined with you the a.s.sembly was of such a sort, that, by G--, I believe all the rest of the world were at peace, for that afternoon at least."' See _post_, under June 16, 1784, note. Boswell, in his _Letter to the People of Scotland_ (p. 95), boasts that he too is 'a very universal man.' 'I can drink, I can laugh, I can converse in perfect humour with Whigs, with republicans, with dissenters, with Independents, with Quakers, with Moravians, with Jews. But I would vote with Tories and pray with a Dean and Chapter.'

[1135] 'Finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I therefore drest up three paradoxes with some ingenuity. They were false, indeed, but they were new.' _Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx. See _ante_, i. 441, where Johnson says:--'When I was a boy, I used always to choose the wrong side of a debate, because most ingenious things, that is to say, most new things, could be said upon it.' In the _Present State of Polite Learning_ (ch. vii.), Goldsmith says:--'Nothing can be a more certain sign that genius is in the wane than its being obliged to fly to paradox for support, and attempting to be erroneously agreeable.'

[1136] The whole night spent in playing at cards (see next page) may account for part of his negligence. He was perhaps unusually dissipated this visit.

[1137] See _ante_, ii. 135.

[1138] 'Three men,' writes Horace Walpole, 'were especially suspected, Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and W. G. Hamilton. Hamilton was most generally suspected.' _Memoirs of George III_, iii. 401. According to Dr. T.

Campbell (_Diary_, p. 35) Johnson in 1775 'said that he looked upon Burke to be the author of _Junius_, and that though he would not take him _contra mundum_, yet he would take him against any man.'

[1139] Sargeant Bettersworth, enraged at Swift's lines on him, 'demanded whether he was the author of that poem. "Mr. Bettesworth,"

answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who knowing my disposition to satire advised me that if any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, _Are you the author of this paper_? I should tell him that I was not the author; and therefore I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines."'

Johnson's Works, viii. 216. See _post_, June 13, 1784.

[1140] Mr. S. Whyte (_Miscellanea Nova_, p. 27) says that Johnson mistook the nature of the compliment. Sheridan had fled to France from his debtors. In 1766 an Insolvent Debtors' Relief Bill was brought into the House in his absence. Mr. Whyte, one of his creditors, pet.i.tioned the House to have Sheridan's name included. A very unusual motion was made, 'that pet.i.tioner shall not be put to his oath; but the facts set forth in his pet.i.tion be admitted simply on his word.' The motion was seconded by an instantaneous Ay! Ay! without a dissenting voice.

Sheridan wrote to Mr. Whyte:--'As the thing has pa.s.sed with so much credit to me, the whole honour and merit of it is yours'.

[1141] In _The Rambler_, No. 39, he wrote of this kind of control:--'It may be urged in extenuation of this crime which parents, not in any other respect to be numbered with robbers and a.s.sa.s.sins, frequently commit, that, in their estimation, riches and happiness are equivalent terms.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'There wanders about the world a wild notion which extends over marriage more than over any transaction. If Miss ---- followed a trade, would it be said that she was bound in conscience to give or refuse credit at her father's choice? ... The parent's moral right can arise only from his kindness, and his civil right only from his money.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 83. See _ante_, i. 346.

[1142] See p. 186 of this volume. BOSWELL.

[1143] He refers to Johnson's letter of July 3, 1778, _ante_, p. 363.

[1144] See _ante_, iii. 5, 178.

[1145] 'By seeing London,' said Johnson, 'I have seen as much of life as the world can show.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 11. 'London,' wrote Hume in 1765, 'never pleased me much. Letters are there held in no honour; Scotmen are hated; superst.i.tion and ignorance gain ground daily.' J.H.

Burton's _Hume_, ii. 292.

[1146] See _ante_, i. 82.

[1147] 'I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations ... many brought thither by the desire of living after their own manner without observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of mult.i.tudes; for in a city populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.' _Ra.s.selas_, ch.

xii. Gibbon wrote of London (_Misc. Works_, ii. 291):--'La liberte d'un simple particulier se fortifie par l'immensite de la ville.'

[1148] Perhaps Mr. Elphinston, of whom he said (_ante_, ii. 171), 'His inner part is good, but his outer part is mighty awkward.'

[1149] _Worthy_ is generally applied to Langton. His foibles were a common subject of their talk. _Ante_, iii. 48.

[1150] By the Author of _The Whole Duty of Man_. See _ante_, ii. 239, note 4. Johnson often quotes it in his _Dictionary_.

[1151] 'The things done in his body.' 2 _Corinthians_, v. 10.