Life of Johnson Volume VI Part 17

_Johnson's unpublished sermons_.

(Vol. v, p. 67, n. i.)

'JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ., TO JAMES ABERCROMBIE, ESQ., of Philadelphia.

'June 11, 1792.

"I have not yet been able to discover any more of Johnson's sermons besides those left for publication by Dr. Taylor. I am informed by the Lord Bishop of Salisbury, that he gave an excellent one to a clergyman, who preached and published it in his own name on some public occasion.

But the Bishop has not as yet told me the name, and seems unwilling to do it. Yet I flatter myself I shall get at it."'

--Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 315.

_Tillotson's argument against the doctrine of transubstantiation._

(Vol. v, p. 71.)

Gibbon, writing of his reconversion from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism in the year 1754, after allowing something to the conversation of his Swiss tutor, says:--

'I must observe that it was princ.i.p.ally effected by my private reflections; and I still remember my solitary transport at the discovery of a philosophical argument against the doctrine of transubstantiation-- _that_ the text of scripture which seems to inculcate the real presence is attested only by a single sense-- our sight; while the real presence itself is disproved by three of our senses--the sight, the touch, and the taste.'

--_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1827, i. 67.

_Jean Pierre de Crousaz_.

(Vol. v, p. 80.)

Gibbon, describing his education at Lausanne, says:--'The principles of philosophy were a.s.sociated with the examples of taste; and by a singular chance the book as well as the man which contributed the most effectually to my education has a stronger claim on my grat.i.tude than on my admiration. M. de Crousaz, the adversary of Bayle and Pope, is not distinguished by lively fancy or profound reflection; and even in his own country, at the end of a few years, his name and writings are almost obliterated. But his philosophy had been formed in the school of Locke, his divinity in that of Limborch and Le Clerc; in a long and laborious life several generations of pupils were taught to think and even to write; his lessons rescued the Academy of Lausanne from Calvinistic prejudice; and he had the rare merit of diffusing a more liberal spirit among the clergy and people of the Pays de Vaud.'

--_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1827, i. 66.

_The new pavement in London._

(Vol. v, p. 84, n. 3.)

'By an Act pa.s.sed in 1766, _For the better cleansing, paving, and enlightning the City of London and Liberties thereof_, &c., powers are granted in pursuance of which the great streets have been paved with whyn-quarry stone, or rock-stone, or stone of a flat surface.'

--_A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain_, ed. 1769, vol. ii, p. 121.

_Boswell's Projected Works._

(Vol. v, p. 91, n. 2.)

To this list should be added an account of a Tour to the Isle of Man (_ante_, iii. 80).

_A cancel in the first edition of Boswell's 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_.'

(Vol. v, p. 151.)

In my note on the suppression of offensive pa.s.sages in the second edition of Boswell's _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ (_ante_, v. 148), I mention that Rowlandson in one of his _Caricatures_ paints Boswell begging Sir Alexander Macdonald for mercy, while on the ground lie pages 165, 167, torn out. I have discovered, though too late to mention in the proper place, that in the first edition the leaf containing pages 167, 168, was really cancelled. In my own copy I noticed between pages 168 and 169 a narrow projecting slip of paper. I found the same in the copy in the British Museum. Mr. Horace Hart, the printer to the University, who has kindly examined my copy, informs me that the leaf was cancelled after the sheets had been st.i.tched together. It was cut out, but an edge was left to which the new one was attached by paste. The leaf thus treated begins with the words 'talked with very high respect' (_ante_, v. 149) and ends 'This day was little better than a blank' (_ante_, v. 151). This conclusion was perhaps meant to be significant to the observant reader.

_Boswell's conversation with the King about the t.i.tle proper to be given to the Young Pretender._

(Vol. v, p. 185, n. 4.)

Dr. Lort wrote to Bishop Percy on Aug. 15, 1785:--

'Boswell's book [_The Tour to the Hebrides_], I suppose, will be out in the winter. The King at his levee talked to him, as was natural, on this subject. Boswell told his majesty that he had another work on the anvil--a _History of the Rebellion in_ 1745 (_ante_, iii. 162); but that he was at a loss how to style the princ.i.p.al person who figured in it. "How would you style him, Mr. Boswell?" "I was thinking, Sire, of calling him the grandson of the unfortunate James the Second." "That I have no objection to; my t.i.tle to the Crown stands on firmer ground --on an Act of Parliament." This is said to be the _substance_ of a conversation which pa.s.sed at the levee. I wish I was certain of the exact words.'

--Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 472.

_Shakespeare's popularity_.

(Vol. v, p. 244, n. 2.)

Gibbon, after describing how he used to attend Voltaire's private theatre at Monrepos in 1757 and 1758, continues:--

'The habits of pleasure fortified my taste for the French theatre, and that taste has perhaps abated my idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which is inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman.'

--_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1837, i. 90.

_Archibald Campbell_.

(Vol. v, p. 357.)

Mr. C. E. Doble informs me that in the Bodleian Library 'there is a characteristic letter of Archibald Campbell in a _Life of Francis Lee_ in Rawlinson, J., 4to. 2. 197; and also a skeleton life of him in Rawlinson, J., 4to. 5. 301.'

_Cocoa Tree Club._

(Vol. v, p. 386, n. 1.)

Gibbon records in his Journal on November 24, 1762, a visit to the Cocoa Tree Club:--

'That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom in point of fashion and fortune, supping at little tables covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat or a sandwich, and drinking a gla.s.s of punch.

At present we are full of king's counsellors and lords of the bed-chamber, who, having jumped into the ministry, make a very singular medley of their old principles and language with their modern ones.'

--_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1827, i. 131.