Life of Johnson Volume V Part 55

It is remarkable that this postscript is so expressed, as not to point out the person who said that Mrs. Thrale could not get through Mrs.

Montague's book; and therefore I think it necessary to remind Mrs.

Piozzi, that the a.s.sertion concerning her was Dr. Johnson's, and not mine. The second observation that I shall make on this postscript is, that it does not deny the fact a.s.serted, though I must acknowledge from the praise it bestows on Mrs. Montague's book, it may have been designed to convey that meaning.

What Mrs. Thrale's opinion is or was, or what she may or may not have said to Dr. Johnson concerning Mrs. Montague's book, it is not necessary for me to enquire. It is only inc.u.mbent on me to ascertain what Dr.

Johnson said to me. I shall therefore confine myself to a very short state of the fact. The unfavourable opinion of Mrs. Montague's book, which Dr. Johnson, is here reported to have given, is, known to have been that which he uniformly expressed, as many of his friends well remember. So much, for the authenticity of the paragraph, as far as it relates to his own sentiments. The words containing the a.s.sertion, to which Mrs. Piozzi objects, are printed from my ma.n.u.script Journal, and were taken down at the time. The Journal was read by Dr. Johnson, who pointed out some inaccuracies, which I corrected, but did not mention any inaccuracy in the paragraph in question: and what is still more material, and very flattering to me, a considerable part of my Journal, containing this paragraph, _was read several years ago by, Mrs. Thrale herself _[see _ante_, ii. 383], who had it for some time in her possession, and returned it to me, without intimating that Dr. Johnson had mistaken her sentiments.

When the first edition of my Journal was pa.s.sing through the press, it occurred to me that a peculiar delicacy was necessary to be observed in reporting the opinion of one literary lady concerning the performance of another; and I had such scruples on that head, that in the proof sheet I struck out the name of Mrs. Thrale from the above paragraph, and two or three hundred copies of my book were actually printed and published without it; of these Sir Joshua Reynolds's copy happened to be one. But while the sheet was working off, a friend, for whose opinion I have great respect, suggested that I had no right to deprive Mrs. Thrale of the high honour which Dr. Johnson had done her, by stating her opinion along with that of Mr. Beauclerk, as coinciding with, and, as it were, sanctioning his own. The observation appeared to me so weighty and conclusive, that I hastened to the printing-house, and, as a piece of justice, restored Mrs. Thrale to that place from which a too scrupulous delicacy had excluded her. On this simple state of facts I shall make no observation whatever. BOSWELL. This note was first published in the form of a letter to the Editor of _The Gazetteer_ on April 17, 1786.

[678] See _ante_, p. 215, for his knowledge of coining and brewing, and _post_, p. 263, for his knowledge of threshing and thatching. Now and then, no doubt, 'he talked ostentatiously,' as he had at Fort George about Gunpowder (_ante_, p. 124). In the _Gent. Mag._ for 1749, p. 55, there is a paper on the _Construction of Fireworks_, which I have little doubt is his. The following pa.s.sage is certainly Johnsonian:--'The excellency of a rocket consists in the largeness of the train of fire it emits, the solemnity of its motion (which should be rather slow at first, but augmenting as it rises), the straightness of its flight, and the height to which it ascends.'

[679] Perhaps Johnson refers to Stephen Hales's _Statical Essays_ (London, 1733), in which is an account of experiments made on the blood and blood-vessels of animals.

[680] Evidence was given at the Tichborne Trial to shew that it takes some years to learn the trade.

[681] Not the very tavern, which was burned down in the great fire. P.

CUNNINGHAM.

[682] I do not see why I might not have been of this club without lessening my character. But Dr. Johnson's caution against supposing one's self concealed in London, may be very useful to prevent some people from doing many things, not only foolish, but criminal. BOSWELL.

[683] See _ante_, iii. 318.

[684] Johnson defines _airy_ as _gay, sprightly, full of mirth_, &c.

[685] 'A man would be drowned by claret before it made him drunk.'

_Ante_, iii. 381.

[686] _Ante_, p. 137.

[687] See _ante_ ii. 261.

[688] Lord Chesterfield wrote in 1747 (_Misc. Works_, iv. 231):-- Drinking is a most beastly vice in every country, but it is really a ruinous one to Ireland; nine gentlemen in ten in Ireland are impoverished by the great quant.i.ty of claret, which from mistaken notions of hospitality and dignity, they think it necessary should be drunk in their houses. This expense leaves them no room to improve their estates by proper indulgence upon proper conditions to their tenants, who must pay them to the full, and upon the very day, that they may pay their wine-merchants.' In 1754 he wrote (_ib._p.359):--If it would but please G.o.d by his lightning to blast all the vines in the world, and by his thunder to turn all the wines now in Ireland sour, as I most sincerely wish he would, Ireland would enjoy a degree of quiet and plenty that it has never yet known.'

[689] See _ante_, p. 95.

[690] 'The sea being broken by the mult.i.tude of islands does not roar with so much noise, nor beat the storm with such foamy violence as I have remarked on the coast of Suss.e.x. Though, while I was in the Hebrides, the wind was extremely turbulent, I never saw very high billows.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 65.

[691] Johnson this day thus wrote of Mr. M'Queen to Mrs. Thrale:--'You find that all the islanders even in these recesses of life are not barbarous. One of the ministers who has adhered to us almost all the time is an excellent scholar.' _Piozzi Letters,_ i. 157.

[692] See _post_, Nov. 6.

[693] This was a dexterous mode of description, for the purpose of his argument; for what he alluded to was, a Sermon published by the learned Dr. William Wishart, formerly princ.i.p.al of the college at Edinburgh, to warn men _against_ confiding in a death-bed _repentance_ of the inefficacy of which he entertained notions very different from those of Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL.

[694] The Rev. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 441) thus writes of the English clergy whom he met at Harrogate in 1763:--'I had never seen so many of them together before, and between this and the following year I was able to form a true judgment of them. They are, in general--I mean the lower order--divided into bucks and prigs; of which the first, though inconceivably ignorant, and sometimes indecent in their morals, yet I held them to be most tolerable, because they were una.s.suming, and had no other affectation but that of behaving themselves like gentlemen.

The other division of them, the prigs, are truly not to be endured, for they are but half learned, are ignorant of the world, narrow-minded, pedantic, and overbearing. And now and then you meet with a _rara avis_ who is accomplished and agreeable, a man of the world without licentiousness, of learning without pedantry, and pious without sanctimony; but this _is_ a _rara avis_'.

[695] See _ante_, i. 446, note 1.

[696] Johnson defines _manage_ in this sense _to train a horse to graceful action_, and quotes Young:--

'They vault from hunters to the managed steed.'

[697] Of Sir William Forbes of a later generation, Lockhart (_Life of Scott_, ix. 179) writes as follows:--'Sir William Forbes, whose banking-house was one of Messrs. Ballantyne's chief creditors, crowned his generous efforts for Scott's relief by privately paying the whole of Abud's demand (nearly 2000) out of his own pocket.'

[698] This scarcity of cash still exists on the islands, in several of which five shilling notes are necessarily issued to have some circulating medium. If you insist on having change, you must purchase something at a shop. WALTER SCOTT.

[699] 'The payment of rent in kind has been so long disused in England that it is totally forgotten. It was practised very lately in the Hebrides, and probably still continues, not only in St. Kilda, where money is not yet known, but in others of the smaller and remoter islands.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 110.

[700] 'A place where the imagination is more amused cannot easily be found. The mountains about it are of great height, with waterfalls succeeding one another so fast, that as one ceases to be heard another begins.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 157.

[701] See _ante_, i. 159.

[702] Johnson seems to be speaking of Hailes's _Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain in the reign of James I and of Charles I_.

[703] See _ante_, ii. 341.

[704] See _ante_, iii. 91.

[705] 'In all ages of the world priests have been enemies to liberty, and it is certain that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking and of expressing our thoughts is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.... Hence it must happen in such a government as that of Britain, that the established clergy, while things are in their natural situation, will always be of the _Court_-party; as, on the contrary, dissenters of all kinds will be of the _Country_-party.' Hume's _Essays_, Part 1, No. viii.

[706] In the original _Every island's but a prison._ The song is by a Mr. Coffey, and is given in Ritson's _English Songs_ (1813), ii. 122.

It begins:--

'Welcome, welcome, brother debtor, To this poor but merry place, Where no bailiff, dun, nor setter, Dares to show his frightful face.'

See _ante_, iii. 269.

[707] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale the day before (perhaps it was this day, and the copyist blundered):--' I am still in Sky. Do you remember the song--

We have at one time no boat, and at another may have too much wind; but of our reception here we have no reason to complain.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 143.

[708] My ingenuously relating this occasional instance of intemperance has I find been made the subject both of serious criticism and ludicrous banter. With the banterers I shall not trouble myself, but I wonder that those who pretend to the appellation of serious criticks should not have had sagacity enough to perceive that here, as in every other part of the present work, my princ.i.p.al object was to delineate Dr. Johnson's manners and character. In justice to him I would not omit an anecdote, which, though in some degree to my own disadvantage, exhibits in so strong a light the indulgence and good humour with which he could treat those excesses in his friends, of which he highly disapproved.

In some other instances, the criticks have been equally wrong as to the true motive of my recording particulars, the objections to which I saw as clearly as they. But it would be an endless task for an authour to point out upon every occasion the precise object he has in view, Contenting himself with the approbation of readers of discernment and taste, he ought not to complain that some are found who cannot or will not understand him. BOSWELL.

[709] In the original, 'wherein is excess.'

[710] See Chappell's _Popular Music of the Olden Time_, i. 231.

[711] See _ante_, iii. 383.

[712] see _ante_, p. 184.

[713] See _ante_, ii. 120, where he took upon his knee a young woman who came to consult him on the subject of Methodism.

[714] See _ante_, pp. 215, 246.