Life of Johnson Volume V Part 57

[743] See _ante_, ii. 61, 335; iii. 375, and _post_, under Nov. 11.

[744] Beattie had attacked Hume in his _Essay on Truth_ (_ante_, ii. 201 and v. 29). Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his _Essay_ under his arm. 'The angel of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy, Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at his approach, and the princ.i.p.al head in this group is made an exact likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very indignant at it, and said:--"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the s.p.a.ce of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 300. Another of the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes (_Life of Beattie_, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire. Beattie's _Essay_ is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his _Life of Hume_.

Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie's side:--

'Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung His _Minstrel_ lays; Or tore, with n.o.ble ardour stung, The _Sceptic's_ bays.'

(_The Vision_, part ii.)

[745] See _ante_, ii. 441.

[746] William Tytler published in 1759 an _Examination of the Histories of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume with respect to Mary Queen of Scots_. It was reviewed by Johnson. _Ante_, i. 354.

[747] Johnson's _Ra.s.selas_ was published in either March or April, and Goldsmith's _Polite Learning_ in April of 1759.I do not find that they published any other works at the same time. If these are the works meant, we have a proof that the two writers knew each other earlier than was otherwise known.

[748] 'A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of _Phalaris_; and after having complimented him on that n.o.ble piece of criticism (the _Answer_ to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be discouraged at this run upon him, for tho' they had got the laughers on their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a work of so much merit. To which the other replied, "Indeed Dr. S.

[Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter. For I hold it as certain, that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."'

_Warburton on Pope_, iv. 159, quoted in Person's _Tracts_, p. 345.

'Against personal abuse,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 348), 'Johnson was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:--"Alas!

reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' He wrote to Baretti:--'A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.' _Ante_, i. 381. Voltaire in his _Essay Sur les inconveniens attaches a la Litterature_ (_Works_, ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win the favour of the critics, continues:--'Tous vos soins n'empechent pas que quelque journaliste ne vous dechire. Vous lui repondez; il replique; vous avez un proces par ecrit devant le public, qui cond.a.m.ne les deux parties au ridicule.' See _ante_, ii. 61, note 4.

[749] However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he says:--'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' _Tom Jones_, bk. xi. ch. 1.

[750] It is strange that Johnson should not have known that the _Adventures of a Guinea_ was written by a namesake of his own, Charles Johnson. Being disqualified for the bar, which was his profession, by a supervening deafness, he went to India, and made some fortune, and died there about 1800. WALTER SCOTT.

[751] Salusbury, not Salisbury.

[752] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, .ii 57) mentions in 1746 his cousin Sir John Philipps, of Picton Castle; 'a noted Jacobite.'... He thus mentions Lady Philipps in 1788 when she was 'very aged.' 'They have a favourite black, who has lived with them a great many years, and is remarkably sensible. To amuse Lady Philipps under a long illness, they had read to her the account of the Pelew Islands. Somebody happened to say we were sending a ship thither; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, "Then there is an end of their happiness." What a satire on Europe!' _Ib_.

ix. 157.

Lady Philips was known to Johnson through Miss Williams, to whom, as a note in Croker's _Boswell_ (p. 74) shews, she made a small yearly allowance.

[753] 'To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of _Manners_, and Castiglione in his _Courtier_; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance.'

Johnson's _Works_, vii. 428. _The Courtier_ was translated into English so early as 1561. Lowndes's _Bibl. Man_. ed. 1871, p. 386.

[754] Burnet (_History of His Own Time_, ii. 296) mentions Whitby among the persons who both managed and directed the controversial war' against Popery towards the end of Charles II's reign. 'Popery,' he says, 'was never so well understood by the nation as it came to be upon this occasion.' Whitby's Commentary _on the New Testament_ was published in 1703-9.

[755] By Henry Mackenzie, the author of _The Man of Feeling. Ante_, i.

360. It had been published anonymously this spring. The play of the same name is by Macklin. It was brought out in 1781.

[756] No doubt Sir A. Macdonald. _Ante_, p. 148. This 'penurious gentleman' is mentioned again, p. 315.

[757] Moliere's play of _L'Avare_.

[758]

'...facit indignatio versum.'

Juvenal, _Sat_. i. 79.

[759] See _ante_, iii. 252.

[760] He was sixty-four.

[761] Still, perhaps, in the _Western Isles_, 'It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.' Tennyson's _Ulysses._

[762] See _ante_, ii, 51.

[763] See _ante_, ii. 150.

[764] Sir Alexander Macdonald.

[765] 'To be or not to be: that is the question.' _Hamlet_, act iii. sc.

1.

[766] Virgil, _Eclogues_, iii. III.

[767] 'The stormy Hebrides.' Milton's _Lycidas_, 1. 156.

[768] Boswell was thinking of the pa.s.sage (p. xxi.) in which Hawkesworth tells how one of Captain Cook's ships was saved by the wind falling.

'If,' he writes, 'it was a natural event, providence is out of the question; at least we can with no more propriety say that providentially the wind ceased, than that providentially the sun rose in the morning.

If it was not,' &c. According to Malone the attacks made on Hawkesworth in the newspapers for this pa.s.sage 'affected him so much that from low spirits he was seized with a nervous fever, which on account of the high living he had indulged in had the more power on him; and he is supposed to have put an end to his life by intentionally taking an immoderate dose of opium.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 441. Mme. D'Arblay says that these attacks shortened his life. _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, i. 278. He died on Nov. 17 of this year. See _ante_, i. 252, and ii. 247.

[769] 'After having been detained by storms many days at Sky we left it, as we thought, with a fair wind; but a violent gust, which Bos had a great mind to call a tempest, forced us into Col.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.

167. 'The wind blew against us in a short time with such violence, that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest... The master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties might, perhaps, have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr. Maclean of Col... piloted us safe into his own harbour.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 117. Sir Walter Scott says, 'Their risque, in a sea full of islands, was very considerable. Indeed, the whole expedition was highly perilous, considering the season of the year, the precarious chance of getting sea-worthy boats, and the ignorance of the Hebrideans, who, notwithstanding the opportunities, I may say the _necessities_, of their situation, are very careless and unskilful sailors.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 362.

[770] For as the tempest drives, I shape my way. FRANCIS. [Horace, _Epistles_, i. 1. 15.] BOSWELL.

[771]

'Imberbus juvenis, tandem custode remoto, Gaudet equis canibusque, et aprici gramine campi.'

'The youth, whose will no froward tutor bounds, Joys in the sunny field, his horse and hounds.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. 161.

[772] _Henry VI_, act i. sc. 2.

[773] See _ante_, i. 468, and iii. 306.

[774] Johnson describes him as 'a gentleman who has lived some time in the East Indies, but, having dethroned no nabob, is not too rich to settle in his own country.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 117.

[775] This curious exhibition may perhaps remind some of my readers of the ludicrous lines, made, during Sir Robert Walpole's administration, on Mr. George (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, though the figures of the two personages must be allowed to be very different:--

'But who is this astride the pony; So long, so lean, so lank, so bony?

Dat be de great orator, Littletony.'

BOSWELL.

These lines were beneath a caricature called _The Motion_, described by Horace Walpole in his letter of March 25, 1741, and said by Mr.