Life of Johnson Volume III Part 81

[1338] In the first two editions _will_. Boswell, in the third edition, corrected most of his Scotticisms.

[1339] In the _Life of Savage_ (_Works_, viii. 183) Johnson wrote of the keeper of the Bristol gaol:--'Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in that state which makes it most difficult; and therefore the humanity of a gaoler certainly deserves this publick attestation; and the man whose heart has not been hardened by such an employment may be justly proposed as a pattern of benevolence. If an inscription was once engraved "to the honest toll-gatherer," less honours ought not to be paid "to the tender gaoler."' This keeper, Dagge by name, was one of Whitefield's disciples.

In 1739 Whitefield wrote:--'G.o.d having given me great favour in the gaoler's eyes, I preached a sermon on the Penitent Thief, to the poor prisoners in Newgate.' He began to read prayers and preach to them every day, till the Mayor and Sheriffs forbade Mr. Dagge to allow him to preach again. Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 179.

[1340] Vol. ii. p. 163. Mrs. Piozzi has omitted the name, she best knows why. BOSWELL.

[1341] Now settled in London. BOSWELL.

[1342] I had been five years absent from London. BEATTIE.

[1343] '--sic fata ferebant.' _aeneid, ii. 34_.

[1344] Meaning his entertaining _Memoirs of David Garrick, Esq_., of which Johnson (as Davies informed me) wrote the first sentence; thus giving, as it were, the key-note performance. It is, indeed, very characteristical of its authour, beginning with a maxim, and proceeding to ill.u.s.trate.--'All excellence has a right to be recorded. I shall, therefore, think it superfluous to apologise for writing the life of a man, who by an uncommon a.s.semblage of private virtues, adorned the highest eminence in a publick profession.' BOSWELL.

[1345] Davies had become bankrupt. See _ante_, p. 223. Young, in his first _Epistle to Pope_, says:--

'For bankrupts write when ruined shops are shut As maggots crawl from out a perished nut.'

Davies's _Memoirs of Garrick_, published this spring, reached its third edition by the following year.

[1346] I wish he had omitted the suspicion expressed here, though I believe he meant nothing but jocularity; for though he and I differed sometimes in opinion, he well knew how much I loved and revered him.

BEATTIE.

[1347] The Thrales fled from Bath where a riot had broken out, and travelled about the country in alarm for Mr. Thrale's 'personal safety,'

as it had been maliciously a.s.serted in a Bath and Bristol paper that he was a Papist. Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 399.

[1348] On May 30 he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'I have been so idle that I know not when I shall get either to you, or to any other place; for my resolution is to stay here till the work is finished.... I hope, however, to see standing corn in some part of the earth this summer, but I shall hardly smell hay, or suck clover flowers.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 140.

[1349] It will, no doubt, be remarked how he avoids the _rebellious_ land of America. This puts me in mind of an anecdote, for which I am obliged to my worthy social friend, Governour Richard Penn: 'At one of Miss E. Hervey's a.s.semblies, Dr. Johnson was following her up and down the room; upon which Lord Abingdon observed to her, "Your great friend is very fond of you; you can go no where without him."--"Ay, (said she), he would follow me to any part of the world."--"Then (said the Earl), ask him to go with you to _America_.'" BOSWELL. This lady was the niece of Johnson's friends the Herveys [_ante_, i. 106]. CROKER.

[1350] _Essays on the History of Mankind_. BOSWELL. Johnson could scarcely have known that Dunbar was an active opponent of the American war. Mackintosh, who was his pupil, writes of him:--'I shall ever be grateful to his memory for having contributed to breathe into my mind a strong spirit of liberty.' Mackintosh's _Life_, i. 12. The younger Colman, who attended, or rather neglected to attend his lectures, speaks of him as 'an acute frosty-faced little Dr. Dunbar, a man of much erudition, and great goodnature.' _Random Records_, ii. 93.

[1351] Mr. Seward (_Biographiana_, p. 601) says that this clergyman was 'the son of an old and learned friend of his'--the Rev. Mr. Hoole, I conjecture.

[1352] See _post_, iv. 12, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 19.

[1353] Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore. BOSWELL

[1354] Johnson, in 1764, pa.s.sed some weeks at Percy's rectory. _Ante_, i. 486.

[1355] See _ante_, p. 366.

[1356] See _ante,_, i. 458

[1357] 'O praeclarum diem quum ad illud divinum animorum concilium c'tumque profiscar.' Cicero's _De Senectute_, c. 23.

[1358] See _ante_, p. 396.

[1359] See _ante_, ii. 162.

[1360] I had not then seen his letters to Mrs. Thrale. BOSWELL.

[1361] In the _Life of Edmund Smith_. See _ante_, i. 81, and Johnson's _Works_, vii. 380.

[1362] Unlike Walmsley and Johnson, of whom one was a Whig, the other a Tory. 'Walmsley was a Whig,' wrote Johnson, 'with all the virulence and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart. I honoured him, and he endured me.'

[1363] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2.

[1364] Miss Burney described an evening spent by Johnson at Dr. Burney's some weeks earlier:--'He was in high spirits and good humour, talked all the talk, affronted n.o.body, and delighted everybody. I never saw him more sweet, nor better attended to by his audience.' In December she wrote:--'Dr. Johnson is very gay, and sociable, and comfortable, and quite as kind to me as ever.' A little later she wrote to Mrs.

Thrale:--'Does Dr. Johnson continue gay and good-humoured, and "valuing n.o.body" in a morning?' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 412, 429, 432.

[1365] _Pr. and Med_. p. 185. BOSWELL.

[1366] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 27.

[1367] The Charterhouse.

[1368] Macbean was, on Lord Thurlow's nomination, admitted 'a poor brother of the Charterhouse.' _Ante_, i. 187. Johnson, on Macbean's death on June 26, 1784, wrote:--'He was one of those who, as Swift says, _stood as a screen between me and death_. He has, I hope, made a good exchange. He was very pious; he was very innocent; he did no ill; and of doing good a continual tenour of distress allowed him few opportunities; he was very highly esteemed in the house [the Charterhouse].' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 373. The quotation from Swift is found in the lines _On the Death of Dr. Swift_:--

'The fools, my juniors by a year, Are tortured with suspense and fear, Who wisely thought my age a screen, When death approached, to stand between.'

Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xi. 246.

[1369] Johnson, in May, had persuaded Mrs. Thrale to come up from Bath to canva.s.s for Mr. Thrale. 'My opinion is that you should come for a week, and show yourself, and talk in high terms. Be brisk, and be splendid, and be publick. The voters of the Borough are too proud and too little dependant to be solicited by deputies; they expect the gratification of seeing the candidate bowing or curtseying before them.

If you are proud, they can be sullen. Mr. Thrale certainly shall not come, and yet somebody must appear whom the people think it worth the while to look at.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 114.

[1370] Hawkins's _Johnsons Works_, xi. 206. It is curious that Psalmanazar, in his _Memoirs_, p. 101, uses the mongrel word _transmogrify_.

[1371] Taylor's _Life of Reynolds_, ii. 459.

[1372] Boswell, when in the year 1764 he was starting from Berlin for Geneva, wrote to Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, the English Minister at Berlin:--'I shall see Voltaire; I shall also see Switzerland and Rousseau. These two men are to me greater objects than most statues or pictures.' Nichols's _Lit. Hist_. ed. 1848, vii. 319.

[1373] See _post,_ iv. 261, note 3 for Boswell's grievance against Pitt.

THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.