Life of Johnson Volume IV Part 51

For his lordship's tragedy see _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783.

[369] Men of rank and fortune, however, should be pretty well a.s.sured of having a real claim to the approbation of the publick, as writers, before they venture to stand forth. Dryden, in his preface to _All for Love_, thus expresses himself:--

'Men of pleasant conversation (at least esteemed so) and endued with a trifling kind of fancy, perhaps helped out by [with] a smattering of Latin, are ambitious to distinguish themselves from the herd of gentlemen, by their poetry:

_"Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in ilia Fortuna,"----[Juvenal_, viii. 73.]

And is not this a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their nakedness to publick view? Not considering that they are not to expect the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their flatterers after the third bottle: If a little glittering in discourse has pa.s.sed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity of undeceiving the world? Would a man who has an ill t.i.tle to an estate, but yet is in possession of it, would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talents [talent], yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right where he said, "That no man is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented because the poets will not admit them of their number.' BOSWELL. Boswell, it should seem, had followed Swift's advice:--

'Read all the prefaces of Dryden, For these our critics much confide in; Though merely writ at first for filling, To raise the volume's price a shilling.'

Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xi. 293.

[370] See _ante_, i. 402.

[371] Wordsworth, it should seem, held with Johnson in this. When he read the article in the _Edinburgh Review_ on Lord Byron's early poems, he remarked that 'though Byron's verses were probably poor enough, yet such an attack was abominable,--that a young n.o.bleman, who took to poetry, deserved to be encouraged, not ridiculed.' Rogers's _Table-Talk_, p. 234, note.

[372] Dr. Barnard, formerly Dean of Derry. See _ante_, iii. 84.

[373] This gave me very great pleasure, for there had been once a pretty smart altercation between Dr. Barnard and him, upon a question, whether a man could improve himself after the age of forty-five; when Johnson in a hasty humour, expressed himself in a manner not quite civil. Dr.

Barnard made it the subject of a copy of pleasant verses, in which he supposed himself to learn different perfections from different men. They concluded with delicate irony:--

'Johnson shall teach me how to place In fairest light each borrow'd grace; From him I'll learn to write; Copy his clear familiar style, And by the roughness of his file Grow, like _himself, polite_.'

I know not whether Johnson ever saw the poem, but I had occasion to find that as Dr. Barnard and he knew each other better, their mutual regard increased. BOSWELL. See Appendix A.

[374] See _ante_, ii. 357, iii. 309, and _post_, March 23, 1783.

[375] 'Sir Joshua once asked Lord B---- to dine with Dr. Johnson and the rest, but though a man of rank and also of good information, he seemed as much alarmed at the idea as if you had tried to force him into one of the cages at Exeter-Change.' Hazlitt's _Conversations of Northcote_, p. 41.

[376] Yet when he came across them he met with much respect. At Alnwick he was, he writes, 'treated with great civility by the Duke of Northumberland.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 108. At Inverary, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Argyle shewed him great attention. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct.

25. In fact, all through his Scotch tour he was most politely welcomed by 'the great.' At Chatsworth, he was 'honestly pressed to stay' by the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire (_post_, Sept. 9, 1784). See _ante_, iii.

21. On the other hand, Mrs. Barbauld says:--'I believe it is true that in England genius and learning obtain less personal notice than in most other parts of Europe.' She censures 'the contemptuous manner in which Lady Wortley Montagu mentioned Richardson:--"The doors of the Great,"

she says, "were never opened to him."' _Richardson Corres._ i. clxxiv.

[377] When Lord Elibank was seventy years old, he wrote:--'I shall be glad to go five hundred miles to enjoy a day of his company.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 12.

[378] _Romans_, x. 2.

[379] I _Peter_, iii. 15.

[380] Horace Walpole wrote three years earlier:--' Whig principles are founded on sense; a Whig may be a fool, a Tory must be so.'

_Letters_, vii. 88.

[381] Mr. Barclay, a descendant of Robert Barclay, of Ury, the celebrated apologist of the people called Quakers, and remarkable for maintaining the principles of his venerable progenitor, with as much of the elegance of modern manners, as is consistent with primitive simplicity, BOSWELL.

[382] Now Bishop of Llandaff, one of the _poorest_ Bishop.r.i.c.ks in this kingdom. His Lordship has written with much zeal to show the propriety of _equalizing_ the revenues of Bishops. He has informed us that he has burnt all his chemical papers. The friends of our excellent const.i.tution, now a.s.sailed on every side by innovators and levellers, would have less regretted the suppression of some of this Lordship's other writings. BOSWELL. Boswell refers to _A Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury by Richard, Lord Bishop of Landaff_, 1782. If the revenues were made more equal, 'the poorer Bishops,' the Bishop writes, 'would be freed from the necessity of holding ecclesiastical preferments _in commendam_ with their Bishop.r.i.c.ks,' p. 8.

[383] De Quincey says that Sir Humphry Davy told him, 'that he could scarcely imagine a time, or a condition of the science, in which the Bishop's _Essays_ would be superannuated.' De Quincey's _Works_, ii.

106. De Quincey describes the Bishop as being 'always a discontented man, a railer at the government and the age, which could permit such as his to pine away ingloriously in one of the humblest among the Bishop.r.i.c.ks.' _Ib_. p. 107. He was, he adds, 'a true Whig,' and would have been made Archbishop of York had his party staid in power a little longer in 1807.'

[384] _Ra.s.selas_, chap. xi.

[385] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 30.

[386] 'They heard the voice of the Lord G.o.d walking in the garden.'

_Genesis_, iii. 8.

[387]

... 'Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam, Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.'

'And sure the man who has it in his power To practise virtue, and protracts the hour, Waits like the rustic till the river dried; Still glides the river, and will ever glide.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Epist_. i. 2. 41.

[388] See _ante_, p. 59.

[389] See _ante_, iii. 251.

[390] See _ante_, iii. 136.

[391] This a.s.sertion is disproved by a comparison of dates. The first four satires of Young were published in 1725; The South Sea scheme (which appears to be meant,) was in 1720. MALONE. In Croft's _Life of Young_, which Johnson adopted, it is stated:--'By the _Universal Pa.s.sion_ he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than 3000. A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South Sea.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 430. Some of Young's poems were published before 1720.

[392] Crabbe got Johnson to revise his poem, _The Village_ (_post_, under March 23, 1783). He states, that 'the Doctor did not readily comply with requests for his opinion; not from any unwillingness to oblige, but from a painful contention in his mind between a desire of giving pleasure and a determination to speak truth.' Crabbe's _Works_, ii. 12. See _ante_, ii. 51, 195, and iii. 373.

[393] Pope's _Essay on Man_, iv. 390. See _ante_, iii. 6, note 2.

[394] He had within the last seven weeks gone up drunk, at least twice, to a lady's drawing-room. _Ante_, pp. 88, note 1, and 109.

[395] Mr. Croker, though without any authority, prints _unconscious_.

[396] I Corinthians, ix. 27. See _ante_, 295.

[397] 'We walk by faith, not by sight.' 2 Corinthians, v. 7

[398] Dr. Ogden, in his second sermon _On the Articles of the Christian Faith_, with admirable acuteness thus addresses the opposers of that Doctrine, which accounts for the confusion, sin and misery, which we find in this life: 'It would be severe in G.o.d, you think, to _degrade_ us to such a sad state as this, for the offence of our first parents: but you can allow him to _place_ us in it without any inducement. Are our calamities lessened for not being ascribed to Adam? If your condition be unhappy, is it not still unhappy, whatever was the occasion? with the aggravation of this reflection, that if it was as good as it was at first designed, there seems to be somewhat the less reason to look for its amendment.' BOSWELL.

[399] 'Which taketh away the sin' &c. St. John, i. 29.

[400] See Boswell's Hebrides, August 22.

[401] This unfortunate person, whose full name was Thomas Fysche Palmer, afterwards went to Dundee, in Scotland, where he officiated as minister to a congregation of the sect who called themselves _Unitarians_, from a notion that they distinctively worship ONE G.o.d, because they _deny_ the mysterious doctrine of the TRINITY. They do not advert that the great body of the Christian Church, in maintaining that mystery, maintain also the _Unity_ of the G.o.dHEAD; the 'TRINITY in UNITY!--three persons and ONE G.o.d.' The Church humbly adores the DIVINITY as exhibited in the holy Scriptures. The Unitarian sect vainly presumes to comprehend and define the ALMIGHTY. Mr. Palmer having heated his mind with political speculations, became so much dissatisfied with our excellent Const.i.tution, as to compose, publish, and circulate writings, which were found to be so seditious and dangerous, that upon being found guilty by a Jury, the Court of Justiciary in Scotland sentenced him to transportation for fourteen years. A loud clamour against this sentence was made by some Members of both Houses of Parliament; but both Houses approved of it by a great majority; and he was conveyed to the settlement for convicts in New South Wales. BOSWELL. This note first appears in the third edition. Mr. Palmer was sentenced to seven (not fourteen) years transportation in Aug. 1793. It was his fellow prisoner, Mr. Muir, an advocate, who was sentenced to fourteen years. _Ann. Reg._ 1793, p. 40. When these sentences were brought before the House of Commons, Mr. Fox said that it was 'the Lord-Advocate's fervent wish that his native principles of justice should be introduced into this country; and that on the ruins of the common law of England should be erected the infamous fabric of Scottish persecution. ... If that day should ever arrive, if the tyrannical laws of Scotland should ever be introduced in opposition to the humane laws of England, it would then be high time for my hon. friends and myself to settle our affairs, and retire to some happier clime, where we might at least enjoy those rights which G.o.d has given to man, and which his nature tells him he has a right to demand.'

_Parl. Hist._ x.x.x. 1563. For _Unitarians_, see _ante_, ii. 408, note I.

[402] Taken from Herodotus. [Bk. ii. ch. 104.] BOSWELL.

[403] 'The mummies,' says Blakesley, 'have straight hair, and in the paintings the Egyptians are represented as red, not black.' _Ib_. note.