Life of Johnson Volume IV Part 47

D'Arblay's _Diary_, i.118, 126. 'Mrs. Montagu's dinners and a.s.semblies,'

writes Wraxall, 'were princ.i.p.ally supported by, and they fell with, the giant talents of Johnson, who formed the nucleus round which all the subordinate members revolved.' Wraxall's _Memoirs_, ed. 1815, i.160.

[224] Described by the author as 'a body of original essays.' 'I consider _The Observer,'_ he arrogantly continues, 'as fairly enrolled amongst the standard cla.s.sics of our native language.' c.u.mberland's _Memoirs_, ii.199. In his account of this _Feast of Reason_ he quite as much satirises Mrs. Montagu as praises her. He introduces Johnson in it, annoyed by an impertinent fellow, and saying to him:--'Have I said anything, good Sir, that you do not comprehend?' 'No, no,' replied he, 'I perfectly well comprehend every word you have been saying.' 'Do you so, Sir?' said the philosopher, 'then I heartily ask pardon of the company for misemploying their time so egregiously.' _The Observer_, No. 25.

[225] Miss Burney gives an account of an attack made by Johnson, at a dinner at Streatham, in June 1781, on Mr. Pepys (_post_, p. 82), 'one of Mrs. Montagu's steadiest abettors.' 'Never before,' she writes, 'have I seen Dr. Johnson speak with so much pa.s.sion. "Mr. Pepys," he cried, in a voice the most enraged, "I understand you are offended by my _Life of Lord Lyttelton_. What is it you have to say against it? Come forth, man!

Here am I, ready to answer any charge you can bring."' After the quarrel had been carried even into the drawing-room, Mrs. Thrale, 'with great spirit and dignity, said that she should be very glad to hear no more of it. Everybody was silenced, and Dr. Johnson, after a pause, said:--"Well, Madam, you _shall_ hear no more of it; yet I will defend myself in every part and in every atom."... Thursday morning, Dr.

Johnson went to town for some days, but not before Mrs. Thrale read him a very serious lecture upon giving way to such violence; which he bore with a patience and quietness that even more than made his peace with me.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 45. Two months later the quarrel was made up. 'Mr. Pepys had desired this meeting by way of a reconciliation; and Dr. Johnson now made amends for his former violence, as he advanced to him, as soon as he came in, and holding out his hand to him received him with a cordiality he had never shewn him before. Indeed he told me himself that he thought the better of Mr. Pepys for all that had pa.s.sed.' _Ib._ p. 82. Miss Burney, in Dec. 1783, described the quarrel to Mr. Cambridge:--'"I never saw Dr. Johnson really in a pa.s.sion but then; and dreadful indeed it was to see. I wished myself away a thousand times. It was a frightful scene. He so red, poor Mr. Pepys so pale." "It was behaving ill to Mrs. Thrale certainly to quarrel in her house."

"Yes, but he never repeated it; though he wished of all things to have gone through just such another scene with Mrs. Montagu; and to refrain was an act of heroic forbearance. She came to Streatham one morning, and I saw he was dying to attack her." "And how did Mrs. Montagu herself behave?" Very stately, indeed, at first. She turned from him very stiffly, and with a most distant air, and without even courtesying to him, and with a firm intention to keep to what she had publicly declared--that she would never speak to him more. However, he went up to her himself, longing to begin, and very roughly said:--"Well, Madam, what's become of your fine new house? I hear no more of it." "But how did she bear this?" "Why, she was obliged to answer him; and she soon grew so frightened--as everybody does--that she was as civil as ever."

He laughed heartily at this account. But I told him Dr. Johnson was now much softened. He had acquainted me, when I saw him last, that he had written to her upon the death of Mrs. Williams [see _post_, Sept. 18, 1783, note], because she had allowed her something yearly, which now ceased. "And I had a very kind answer from her," said he. "Well then, Sir," cried I, "I hope peace now will be again proclaimed." "Why, I am now," said he, "come to that time when I wish all bitterness and animosity to be at an end."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 290.

[226] January, 1791. BOSWELL. Hastings's trial had been dragging on for more than three years when _The Life of Johnson_ was published. It began in 1788, and ended in 1795.

[227] _Gent. Mag_. for 1785, p. 412.

[228] Afterwards Sir Robert Chambers, one of his Majesty's Judges in India. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i.274.

[229] 'He conceived that the cultivation of Persian literature might with advantage be made a part of the liberal education of an English gentleman; and he drew up a plan with that view. It is said that the University of Oxford, in which Oriental learning had never, since the revival of letters, been wholly neglected, was to be the seat of the inst.i.tution which he contemplated.' Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, iii. 338.

[230] Lord North's. Feeble though it was, it lasted eight years longer.

[231] Jones's _Persian Grammar_. Boswell. It was published in 1771.

[232] _Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland_. BOSWELL.

[233] See _ante_, ii. 296.

[234] Macaulay wrote of Hastings's answer to this letter:--'It is a remarkable circ.u.mstance that one of the letters of Hastings to Dr.

Johnson bears date a very few hours after the death of Nuncomar. While the whole settlement was in commotion, while a mighty and ancient priesthood were weeping over the remains of their chief, the conqueror in that deadly grapple sat down, with characteristic self-possession, to write about the _Tour to the Hebrides_, Jones's _Persian Grammar_, and the history, traditions, arts, and natural productions of India.'

Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, iii.376.

[235] Johnson wrote the Dedication, _Ante_, i.383.

[236] See _ante_, ii.82, note 2.

[237] _Copy_ is _ma.n.u.script for printing_.

[238] Published by Kearsley, with this well-chosen motto:--'From his cradle He was a SCHOLAR, and a ripe and good one: And to add greater honours to his age Than man could give him, he died fearing Heaven.'

SHAKSPEARE. BOSWELL. This quotation is a patched up one from _Henry VIII_, act iv. sc.2. The quotation in the text is found on p. 89 of this _Life of Johnson_.

[239] Mr. Thrale had removed, that is to say, from his winter residence in the Borough. Mrs. Piozzi has written opposite this pa.s.sage in her copy of Boswell:--'Spiteful again! He went by direction of his physicians where they could easiest attend to him.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, i. 91. There was, perhaps, a good deal of truth in Boswell's supposition, for in 1779 Johnson had told her that he saw 'with indignation her despicable dread of living in the Borough.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.92. Johnson had a room in the new house. 'Think,' wrote Hannah More, 'of Johnson's having apartments in Grosvenor-square! but he says it is not half so convenient as Bolt-court.' H. More's _Memoirs_, i.2O7.

[240] See _ante_, iii. 250.

[241] Shakspeare makes Hamlet thus describe his father:--

'See what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald, Mercury, New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every G.o.d did seem to set his seal, To give the world a.s.surance of a man.!

[Act iii. sc. 4.]

Milton thus pourtrays our first parent, Adam:--

'His fair large front and eye sublime declar'd Absolute rule; and hyacinthin locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clus'tring, but not beneath his shoulders broad.'

[_P.L._ iv. 300.] BOSWELL.

[242] 'Grattan's Uncle, Dean Marlay [afterwards Bishop of Waterford], had a good deal of the humour of Swift. Once, when the footman was out of the way, he ordered the coachman to fetch some water from the well.

To this the man objected, that _his_ business was to drive, not to run on errands. "Well, then," said Marlay, "bring out the coach and four, set the pitcher inside, and drive to the well;"--a service which was several times repeated, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the village.' Rogers's _Table-Talk_, p.176.

[243] See _ante_, ii. 241, for Johnson's contempt of puns.

[244] 'He left not faction, but of that was left.' _Absalom and Achitophel_, l. 568.

[245] Boswell wrote of Gibbon in 1779:--'He is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our Literary Club to me.' _Letters of Boswell_, p.242. See _ante_, ii.443, note 1.

[246] _The schools_ in this sense means a University.

[247] See _ante_, ii.224.

[248] Up to the year 1770, controverted elections had been tried before a Committee of the whole House. By the _Grenville Act_ which was pa.s.sed in that year they were tried by a select committee. _Parl. Hist._ xvi.

902. Johnson, in _The False Alarm_ (1770), describing the old method of trial, says;--'These decisions have often been apparently partial, and sometimes tyrannically oppressive.' _Works, vi. 169._ _In The Patriot_ (1774), he says:--'A disputed election is now tried with the same scrupulousness and solemnity as any other t.i.tle.' _Ib._ p.223. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Nov.10.

[249] Miss Burney describes a dinner at Mr. Thrale's, about this time, at which she met Johnson, Boswell, and Dudley Long. Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, ii. 14.

[250] See _ante_, ii.171, _post_, two paragraphs before April 10, 1783, and May 15, 1784.

[251] Johnson wrote on May i, 1780:--'There was the Bishop of St. Asaph who comes to every place.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 111. Hannah More, in 1782, describes an a.s.sembly at this Bishop's. 'Conceive to yourself 150 or 200 people met together dressed in the extremity of the fashion, painted as red as Baccha.n.a.ls...ten or a dozen card-tables crammed with dowagers of quality, grave ecclesiastics and yellow admirals.'

_Memoirs_, i.242. He was elected a member of the Literary Club, 'with the sincere approbation and eagerness of all present,' wrote Mr.

(afterwards Sir William) Jones; elected, too, on the same day on which Lord Chancellor Camden was rejected (_ante_, iii. 311, note 2). Two or three years later Sir William married the Bishop's daughter. _Life of Sir W Jones_, pp.240, 279.

[252] 'Trust not to looks, nor credit outward show; The villain lurks beneath the ca.s.socked beau.' Churchill's _Poems_ (ed. 1766), ii.41.

[253] No. 2.

[254] See vol. i p. 378. BOSWELL.

[255] Northcote, according to Hazlitt, said of this character with some truth, that 'it was like one of Kneller's portraits--it would do for anybody.' Northcote's _Conversations_, p.86.

[256] See _post_, p.98.

[257] _London Chronicle_, May 2, 1769. This respectable man is there mentioned to have died on the 3rd of April, that year, at Cofflect, the seat of Thomas Veale, Esq., in his way to London. BOSWELL.

[258] Dr. Harte was the tutor of Mr. Eliot and of young Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's illegitimate son. 'My morning hopes,' wrote Chesterfield to his son at Rome, 'are justly placed in Mr. Harte, and the masters he will give you; my evening ones in the Roman ladies: pray be attentive to both.' Chesterfield's _Letters_, ii.263. See _ante_, i.163, note 1, ii.120, and _post_, June 27, 1784.

[259] Robertson's _Scotland_ is in the February list of books in the _Gent. Mag_. for 1759; Harte's _Gustavus Adolphus_ and Hume's _England under the House of Tudor_ in the March list. Perhaps it was from Hume's compet.i.tion that Harte suffered.

[260] _Essays on Husbandry_, 1764.

[261] See _ante_, iii. 381.

[262] 'Christmas Day, 1780. I shall not attempt to see Vestris till the weather is milder, though it is the universal voice that he is the only perfect being that has dropped from the clouds, within the memory of man or woman...When the Parliament meets he is to be thanked by the Speaker.' Walpole's _Letters_, vii. 480.