Life of Johnson Volume V Part 30

Quidni! peremptum clade tuentibus Plus semper illo qui moritur pati Datur, doloris dum profundos Pervia mens aperit recessus.

Valete luctus;--hinc lacrymabiles Arcete visus:--ibimus, ibimus Superbienti qua theatro Fingaliae memorantur aulae.

Ill.u.s.tris hospes! mox spatiabere Qua mens ruinae ducta meatibus Gaudebit explorare coetus, Buccina qua cecinit triumphos;

Audin? resurgens spirat anhelitu Dux usitato, suscitat efficax Poeta manes, ingruitque Vi solita redivivus horror.

Ahaena qua.s.sans tela gravi manu Sic ibat atrox Ossiani pater: Quiescat urna, stet fidelis Phersonius vigil ad favillam.

_Preparing for the Press, in one Volume Quarto_,

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

BY _JAMES BOSWELL_, ESQ.

Mr. Boswell has been collecting materials for this work for more than twenty years, during which he was honoured with the intimate friendship of Dr. Johnson; to whose memory he is ambitious to erect a literary monument, worthy of so great an authour, and so excellent a man. Dr.

Johnson was well informed of his design, and obligingly communicated to him several curious particulars. With these will be interwoven the most authentick accounts that can be obtained from those who knew him best; many sketches of his conversation on a multiplicity of subjects, with various persons, some of them the most eminent of the age; a great number of letters from him at different periods, and several original pieces dictated by him to Mr. Boswell, distinguished by that peculiar energy, which marked every emanation of his mind.

Mr. Boswell takes this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging the many valuable communications which he has received to enable him to render his _Life of Dr. Johnson_ more complete. His thanks are particularly due to the Rev. Dr. Adams, the Rev. Dr. Taylor, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr.

Langton, Dr. Brocklesby, the Rev. Thomas Warton, Mr. Hector of Birmingham, Mrs. Porter, and Miss Seward.

He has already obtained a large collection of Dr. Johnson's letters to his friends, and shall be much obliged for such others as yet remain in private hands; which he is the more desirous of collecting, as all the letters of that great man, which he has yet seen, are written with peculiar precision and elegance; and he is confident that the publication of the whole of Dr. Johnson's epistolary correspondence will do him the highest honour.

APPENDIX A.

(_Page_ 80.)

As no one reads Warburton now--I bought the five volumes of his _Divine Legation_ in excellent condition, bound in calf, for ten pence--one or two extracts from his writing may be of interest. His Dedication of that work to the Free-Thinkers is as vigorous as it is abusive. It has such pa.s.sages as the following:--'Low and mean as your buffoonery is, it is yet to the level of the people:' p. xi. 'I have now done with your buffoonery, which, like chewed bullets, is against the law of arms; and come next to your scurrilities, those stink-pots of your offensive war.' _Ib. p. xxii_. On page xl. he returns again to their '_cold_ buffoonery.' In the Appendix to vol. v, p. 414, he thus wittily replies to Lowth, who had maintained that 'idolatry was punished under the DOMINION of Melchisedec'(p. 409):--'Melchisedec's story is a short one; he is just brought into the scene to _bless_ Abraham in his return from conquest. This promises but ill. Had this _King and Priest of Salem_ been brought in _cursing_, it had had a better appearance: for, I think, punishment for opinions which generally ends in a _f.a.got_ always begins with a _curse_. But we may be misled perhaps by a wrong translation.

The Hebrew word to _bless_ signifies likewise to _curse_, and under the management of an intolerant priest good things easily run into their contraries. What follows is his taking _tythes_ from Abraham. Nor will this serve our purpose, unless we interpret these _tythes_ into _fines for non-conformity_; and then by the _blessing_ we can easily understand _absolution_. We have seen much stranger things done with the _Hebrew verity_. If this be not allowed, I do not see how we can elicit fire and f.a.got from this adventure; for I think there is no inseparable connexion between _tythes_ and _persecution_ but in the ideas of a Quaker.--And so much for King Melchisedec. But the learned _Professor_, who has been hardily brought up in the keen atmosphere of WHOLESOME SEVERITIES and early taught to distinguish between _de facto_ and _de jure_, thought it 'needless to enquire into _facts_, when he was secure of the _right_'.

This 'keen atmosphere of wholesome severities' reappears by the way in Mason's continuation of Gray's Ode to Vicissitude:--

'That breathes the keen yet wholesome air Of rugged penury.'

And later in the first book of Wordsworth's _Excursion_ (ed. 1857, vi. 29):--

'The keen, the wholesome air of poverty.'

Johnson said of Warburton: 'His abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such contemptuous superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the cause.

He seems to have adopted the Roman Emperour's determination, _oderint dum metuant_; he used no allurements of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 288.

See _ante_, ii. 36, and iv. 46.

APPENDIX B.

(_Page_ 158.)

Johnson's Ode written in Sky was thus translated by Lord Houghton:--

'Where constant mist enshrouds the rocks, Shattered in earth's primeval shocks, And n.i.g.g.ard Nature ever mocks The labourer's toil, I roam through clans of savage men, Untamed by arts, untaught by pen; Or cower within some squalid den O'er reeking soil.

Through paths that halt from stone to stone, Amid the din of tongues unknown, One image haunts my soul alone, Thine, gentle Thrale!

Soothes she, I ask, her spouse's care?

Does mother-love its charge prepare?

Stores she her mind with knowledge rare, Or lively tale?

Forget me not! thy faith I claim, Holding a faith that cannot die, That fills with thy benignant name These sh.o.r.es of Sky.'

Hayward's _Piozzi_, i. 29.

APPENDIX C.

(_Page_ 307.)

Johnson's use of the word _big_, where he says 'I wish thy books were twice as big,' enables me to explain a pa.s.sage in _The Life of Johnson (ante_, iii. 348) which had long puzzled me. Boswell there represents him as saying:--'A man who loses at play, or who runs out his fortune at court, makes his estate less, in hopes of making it _bigger_.' Boswell adds in a parenthesis:--'I am sure of this word, which was often used by him.' He had been criticised by a writer in the _Gent. Mag_. 1785, p.

968, who quoting from the text the words 'a _big_ book,' says:--'Mr.

Boswell has made his friend (as in a few other pa.s.sages) guilty of a _Scotticism_. An Englishman reads and writes a _large_ book, and wears a _great_ (not a _big_ or _bag_) coat.' When Boswell came to publish _The Life of Johnson_, he took the opportunity to justify himself, though he did not care to refer directly to his anonymous critic. This explanation I discovered too late to insert in the text.

A JOURNEY

INTO

NORTH WALES,

IN

THE YEAR 1774.[1160]

TUESDAY, JULY 5.

We left Streatham 11 a.m.

Price of four horses 2s. a mile.

JULY 6.

Barnet 1.40 p.m.