Life of Johnson Volume III Part 77

[1185] According to Mr. Croker this was Andrew Millar, but I doubt it.

See ante, i. 287, note 3.

[1186] 'The Chevalier Taylor, Ophthalmiator Pontifical, Imperial, and Royal,' as he styled himself. _Gent. Mag_. x.x.xi. 226. Lord Eldon said that--'Taylor, dining with the barristers upon the Oxford circuit, having related many wonderful things which he had done, was asked by Bearcroft, "Pray, Chevalier, as you have told us of a great many things which you have done and can do, will you be so good as to try to tell us anything which you cannot do?" "Nothing so easy," replied Taylor, "I cannot pay my share of the dinner bill: and that, Sir, I must beg of you to do."' Twiss's _Eldon_, i 321.

[1187] Pope mentions Ward in the Imitations of Horace_, 2 Epistle, i. 180:--

'He serv'd a 'prenticeship who sets up shop; Ward try'd on puppies, and the poor, his drop.'

Fielding, in _Tom Jones_, bk. viii. ch. 9, says that 'interest is indeed a most excellent medicine, and, like Ward's pill, flies at once to the particular part of the body on which you desire to operate.' In the introduction to the _Voyage to Lisbon_ he speaks very highly of Ward's remedies and of Ward himself, who 'endeavoured, he says, 'to serve me without any expectation or desire of fee or reward.'

[1188] 'Every thing,' said Johnson, 'comes from Beauclerk so easily. It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21. See _post_, under May 2, 1780. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 219) mentions another great-grandson of Charles II.

(Commissioner Cardonnel) who was 'the most agreeable companion that ever was. He excelled in story-telling, like his great-grandfather, Charles II., but he seldom or ever repeated them.'

[1189] No doubt Burke. _Ante_, ii. 222, note 4.

[1190] General Paoli's house, where for some years Boswell was 'a constant guest while he was in London.' _Ante_, p. 35

[1191] Allan Ramsay's residence: No. 67, Harley-street. P. CUNNINGHAM.

[1192] It is strange that he does not mention their visit in a letter in which he tells Temple that he is lame, and that his 'spirits sank to dreary dejection;' and utters what the editor justly calls an ambiguous prayer:--'Let us hope for gleams of joy here, and a _blaze_ hereafter.' This letter, by the way, and the one that follows it, are both wrongly dated. _Letters of Boswell_, p. 237.

[1193] See p. 344 of this Volume. BOSWELL.

[1194] 'Johnson's first question was, "What kind of a man was Mr. Pope in his conversation?" His Lordship answered, that if the conversation did not take something of a lively or epigrammatic turn, he fell asleep, or perhaps pretended to do so.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 200.

Johnson in his _Life of Pope (Works_, viii. 309) says that 'when he wanted to sleep he "nodded in company."'

[1195] Boswell wrote to Temple late on this day, 'Let us not dispute any more about political notions. It is now night. Dr. Johnson has dined, drunk tea, and supped with only Mr. Charles Dilly and me, and I am confirmed in my Toryism.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 238.

[1196] In the original _or_. Boswell quotes the line correctly, _ante_, p. 220.

[1197] 'I do not (says Mr. Malone) see any difficulty in this pa.s.sage, and wonder that Dr. Johnson should have acknowledged it to be _inaccurate_. The Hermit, it should be observed, had no actual experience of the world whatsoever: all his knowledge concerning it had been obtained in two ways; from _books_, and from the _relations_ of those country swains, who had seen a little of it. The plain meaning, therefore, is, "To clear his doubts concerning Providence, and to obtain some knowledge of the world by actual experience; to see whether the accounts furnished by books, or by the oral communications of swains, were just representations of it; [I say, _swains_,] for his oral or _viva voce_ information had been obtained from that part of mankind _alone_, &c." The word _alone_ here does not relate to the whole of the preceding line, as has been supposed, but, by a common licence, to the words,--_of all mankind_, which are understood, and of which it is restrictive.'

Mr. Malone, it must be owned, has shewn much critical ingenuity in the explanation of this pa.s.sage. His interpretation, however, seems to me much too recondite. The _meaning_ of the pa.s.sage may be certain enough; but surely the _expression_ is confused, and one part of it contradictory to the other. BOSWELL. This note is first given in the third edition.

[1198] See ante, p. 297.

[1199] State is used for statement. 'He sate down to examine Mr. Owen's states.' Rob Roy, ed. 1860, viii. 101.

[1200] Johnson started for Lichfield and Ashbourne about May 20, and returned to London towards the end of June. _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 44, 55. 'It is good,' he wrote, 'to wander a little, lest one should dream that all the world was Streatham, of which one may venture to say, _none but itself can be its parallel_.' _Ib_. p. 47. 'None but thyself can be thy parallel' is from Theobald's _Double Falsehood_. Pope calls it 'a marvellous line,' and thus introduces it in _The Dunciad_, first edition, iii. 271:--'For works like these let deathless Journals tell, "None but thyself can be thy parallel."'

[1201] See _post_, Boswell's letter of Aug. 24, 1780, and Johnson's letter of Dec. 7, 1782.

[1202] Boswell, on his way to Scotland, wrote to Temple from this house:--'I am now at Southill, to which place Mr. Charles Dilly has accompanied; it is the house of Squire John Dilly, his elder brother.

The family of Dilly have been land-proprietors in this county for two hundred years.... I am quite the great man here, and am to go forward on the North road to-morrow morning. Poor Mr. Edward Dilly is fast a-dying; he cried with affection at seeing me here; he is in as agreeable a frame as any Christian can be.... I am edified here.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 239.

[1203] On June 18 in the following year he recorded:--'In the morning of this day last year I perceived the remission of those convulsions in my breast, which had distressed me for more than twenty years. I returned thanks at church for the mercy granted me, which has now continued a year.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 183. Three days later he wrote:--'It was a twelvemonth last Sunday since the convulsions in my breast left me. I hope I was thankful when I recollected it; by removing that disorder a great improvement was made in the enjoyment of life. I am now as well as men at my age can expect to be, and I yet think I shall be better.'

_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 163.

[1204] From a stroke of apoplexy. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'You really do not use me well in thinking that I am in less pain on this occasion than I ought to be. There is n.o.body left for me to care about but you and my master, and I have now for many years known the value of his friendship, and the importance of his life, too well not to have him very near my heart.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 56. To him he wrote shortly after the attack, no doubt with a view to give the sick man confidence:--'To shew you how well I think of your health, I have sent you an hundred pounds to keep for me.' _Ib_. p. 54. Miss Burney wrote very soon after the attack:--'At dinner everybody tried to be cheerful, but a dark and gloomy cloud hangs over the head of poor Mr. Thrale which no flashes of merriment or beams of wit can pierce through; yet he seems pleased that everybody should be gay.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 220.

The attack was in June. _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 47. On Aug. 3, Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor:--'Mr. Thrale has perfectly recovered all his faculties and all his vigour.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 461.

[1205] Which I communicated to him from his Lordship, but it has not yet been published. I have a copy of it. BOSWELL. The few notices concerning Dryden, which Lord Hailes had collected, the authour afterwards gave to Mr. Malone. MALONE. Malone published a _Life of Dryden_.

[1206] He recorded of his birth-day this year:--'On the 17th Mr. Chamier (_ante_, i. 478) took me away with him from Streatham. I left the servants a guinea for my health, and was content enough to escape into a house where my birth-day not being known could not be mentioned.

I sat up till midnight was past, and the day of a new year, a very awful day, began.' _Pr. and Med_. pp. 181, 225.

[1207] See _ante_, ii. 427, note 1.

[1208] In one of his ma.n.u.script Diaries, there is the following entry, which marks his curious minute attention: 'July 26, 1768. I shaved my nail by accident in whetting the knife, about an eighth of an inch from the bottom, and about a fourth from the top. This I measure that I may know the growth of nails; the whole is about five eighths of an inch.'

Another of the same kind appears, 'Aug. 7, 1779, _Partem brachii dextri carpo proximam et cutem pectoris circa mamillam dextram rasi, ut notum fieret quanta temporis pili renovarentur_.'

And, 'Aug. 15, 1773. I cut from the vine 41 leaves, which weighed five oz. and a half, and eight scruples:--I lay them upon my book-case, to see what weight they will lose by drying.' BOSWELL.

In _The Idler_, No. 31, we have in Mr. Sober a portrait of Johnson drawn by himself. He writes:--'The art is to fill the day with petty business, to have always something in hand which may raise curiosity, but not solicitude, and keep the mind in a state of action, but not of labour.

This art has for many years been practised by my old friend Sober with wonderful success.... His chief pleasure is conversation; there is no end of his talk or his attention; to speak or to hear is equally pleasing; for he still fancies that he is teaching or learning something, and is free for the time from his own reproaches. But there is one time at night when he must go home that his friends may sleep; and another time in the morning when all the world agrees to shut out interruption. These are the moments of which poor Sober trembles at the thought. But the misery of these tiresome intervals he has many means of alleviating.... His daily amus.e.m.e.nt is chymistry. He has a small furnace which he employs in distillation, and which has long been the solace of his life. He draws oils and waters, and essences and spirits, which he knows to be of no use; sits and counts the drops as they come from his retort, and forgets that whilst a drop is falling a moment flies away.'

Mrs. Piozzi says (_Anec_. p. 236):--'We made up a sort of laboratory at Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with drawing essences and colouring liquors. But the danger Mr. Thrale found his friend in one day, when he got the children and servants round him to see some experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment.'

[1209] Afterwards Mr. Stuart Wortley. He was the father of the first Lord Wharncliffe. CROKER.

[1210] Horace Walpole, in April 1778, wrote:--'It was very remarkable that on the militia being ordered out, two of Lord Bute's younger sons offered, as Bedfordshire gentlemen, to take any rank in the militia in that county. I warned Lord Ossory, the Lord Lieutenant, against so dangerous a precedent as admitting Scots in the militia. A militia can only be safe by being officered by men of property in each county.'

_Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 252.

[1211] Walpole wrote in Dec. 1778:--'His Majesty complained of the difficulty of recruiting. General Keppel replied aloud, "It is owing to the Scots, who raise their clans in and about London." This was very true; the Master of Lovat had received a Royal gift of 6000 to raise a regiment of his clan, and had literally picked up boys of fifteen in London and Westminster.' _Ib_. p. 316.

[1212] He made his will in his wife's life-time, and appointed her and Sir William Forbes, or the survivor of them, 'tutors and curators' to his children. _Boswelliana_, p. 186.

[1213] Head gardener at Stowe, and afterwards at Hampton Court and Windsor. He got his nickname from his habit of saying that grounds which he was asked to lay out had _capabilities_. Lord Chatham wrote of him:--'He writes Lancelot Brown Esquire, _en t.i.tre d'office_: please to consider, he shares the private hours of--[the King], dines familiarly with his neighbour of Sion [the Duke of Northumberland], and sits down at the tables of all the House of Lords, &c.' _Chatham Corres_. iv. 178, 430.

[1214] See _ante_, pp. 334, 350. Clive, before the Committee of the House of Commons, exclaimed:--'By G.o.d, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.' Macaulay's _Essays_, iii. 198.

[1215] See _ante_, p. 216.

[1216] Yet, according to Johnson, 'the poor in England were better provided for than in any other country of the same extent.' _Ante_, ii.

130.

[1217] See _ante_, ii. 119.

[1218] See _ante_, i. 67, note 2.

[1219] The Rev. Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, in the Preface to his valuable edition of Archbishop King's _Essay on the Origin of Evil_ [ed.

1781, p. xvii], mentions that the principles maintained in it had been adopted by Pope in his _Essay on Man_; and adds, 'The fact, notwithstanding such denial (Bishop Warburton's), might have been strictly verified by an unexceptionable testimony, _viz_ that of the late Lord Bathurst, who saw the very same system of the [Greek: to beltion] (taken from the Archbishop) in Lord Bolingbroke's own hand, lying before Mr. Pope, while he was composing his _Essay_.' This is respectable evidence; but that of Dr. Blair is more direct from the fountain-head, as well as more full. Let me add to it that of Dr. Joseph Warton; 'The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly a.s.sured me that he had read the whole scheme of _The Essay on Man_, in the hand-writing of Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions, which Pope was to versify and ill.u.s.trate.' _Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope_, vol. ii. p. 62. BOSWELL. In the above short quotation from Law are two parentheses. According to Paley, the Bishop was once impatient at the slowness of his Carlisle printer. '"Why does not my book make its appearance?" said he to the printer. "My Lord, I am extremely sorry; but we have been obliged to send to Glasgow for a pound of parentheses."'

Best's _Memorials_, p. 196.

[1220] Johnson, defining _ascertain_ in its first meaning as _establish_, quotes from Hooker: 'The divine law _ascertaineth_ the truth of other laws.'

[1221] 'To those who censured his politicks were added enemies yet more dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his qualifications for a translator of Homer. To these he made no publick opposition; but in one of his letters escapes from them as well as he can. At an age like his, for he was not more than twenty-five, with an irregular education, and a course of life of which much seems to have pa.s.sed in conversation, it is not very likely that he overflowed with Greek. But when he felt himself deficient he sought a.s.sistance; and what man of learning would refuse to help him?' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 252.

Johnson refers, I think, to Pope's letter to Addison of Jan. 30, 1713-14.