Life of Johnson Volume I Part 70

[637] Miss Burney records in her Diary that one day at Streatham, while she and Mrs. Thrale 'were reading this Rambler, Dr. Johnson came in. We told him what we were about. "Ah, madam!" cried he, "Goldsmith was not scrupulous; but he would have been a great man had he known the real value of his own internal resources."' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 83.

See _post_, beginning of 1768.

[638] It is possible that Mrs. Hardcastle's drive in _She Stoops to Conquer_ was suggested by the _Rambler_, No. 34. In it a young gentleman describes a lady's terror on a coach journey. 'Our whole conversation pa.s.sed in dangers, and cares, and fears, and consolations, and stories of ladies dragged in the mire, forced to spend all the night on a heath, drowned in rivers, or burnt with lightning.... We had now a new scene of terror, every man we saw was a robber, and we were ordered sometimes to drive hard, lest a traveller whom we saw behind should overtake us; and sometimes to stop, lest we should come up to him who was pa.s.sing before us. She alarmed many an honest man by begging him to spare her life as he pa.s.sed by the coach.'

[639] Dr. Johnson was gratified by seeing this selection, and wrote to Mr. Kearsley, bookseller in Fleet-Street, the following note:--

'Mr. Johnson sends compliments to Mr. Kearsley, and begs the favour of seeing him as soon as he can. Mr. Kearsley is desired to bring with him the last edition of what he has honoured with the name of BEAUTIES. May 20, 1782.' BOSWELL. The correspondence, _post_, May 15, 1782, shews that Johnson sent for this book, not because he was gratified, but because he was accused, on the strength of one of the _Beauties_, of recommending suicide. On that day, being in the country, he wrote: 'I never saw the book but by casual inspection, and considered myself as utterly disengaged from its consequences.' He adds:--'I hope some time in the next week to have all rectified.' The letter of May 20 shews that on his return to town he lost little time, if any, in sending for Kearsley.

[640] See _post_, April 12, 1781.

[641] Ecclesiastes vii. 4.

[642] In the original '_separated sooner_ than subdued.' Johnson acted up to what he said. When he was close on his end, 'all who saw him beheld and acknowledged the _invictum animum Catonis_ ... Talking of his illness he said:--"I will be conquered; I will not capitulate."' See _post_, Oct. 1784.

[643] In the _Spectator_, No. 568, Addison tells of a village in which 'there arose a current report that somebody had written a book against the 'squire and the whole parish.' The book was _The Whole Duty of Man_.

[644] 'The character of Prospero was, beyond all question, occasioned by Garrick's ostentatious display of furniture and Dresden china.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 144. If Garrick was aimed at, it is surprising that the severity of the satire did not bring to an end, not only all friendship, but even any acquaintance between the two men. The writer describes how he and Prospero had set out in the world together, and how for a long time they had a.s.sisted each other, till his friend had been lately raised to wealth by a lucky project. 'I felt at his sudden shoot of success an honest and disinterested joy.' Prospero reproached him with his neglect to visit him at his new house. When however he went to see him, he found that his friend's impatience 'arose not from any desire to communicate his happiness, but to enjoy his superiority.' He was kept waiting at the door, and when at length he was shewn up stairs, he found the staircase carefully secured by mats from the pollution of his feet.

Prospero led him into a backroom, where he told him he always breakfasted when he had not great company. After the visitor had endured one act of insolence after another, he says:--'I left him without any intention of seeing him again, unless some misfortune should restore his understanding.' _Rambler_, No. 200. See _post_, May 15, 1776, where Johnson, speaking of the charge of meanness brought against Garrick, said, 'he might have been much better attacked for living with more splendour than is suitable to a player.'

[645] In C. C. Greville's _Journal_ (ii. 316) we have an instance how stories about Johnson grew. He writes:--'Lord Holland told some stories of Johnson and Garrick which he had heard from Kemble.... When Garrick was in the zenith of his popularity, and grown rich, and lived with the great, and while Johnson was yet obscure, the Doctor used to drink tea with him, and he would say, "Davy, I do not envy you your money nor your fine acquaintance, but I envy you your power of drinking such tea as this." "Yes," said Garrick, "it is very good tea, but it is not my best, nor that which I give to my Lord this and Sir somebody t'other."' There can be little doubt that the whole story is founded on the following pa.s.sage in the character of Prospero: 'Breakfast was at last set, and, as I was not willing to indulge the peevishness that began to seize me, I commended the tea. Prospero then told me that another time I should taste his finest sort, but that he had only a very small quant.i.ty remaining, and reserved it for those whom he thought himself obliged to treat with particular respect.' See _post_, April 10, 1778, where Johnson maintained that Garrick bore his good-fortune with modesty.

[646] No 98.

[647] Yet his style did not escape the harmless shafts of pleasant humour; for the ingenious Bonnell Thornton published a mock Rambler in the _Drury-lane Journal_. BOSWELL. Murphy (_Life_, p. 157), criticising the above quotation from Johnson, says:--'He forgot the observation of Dryden: "If too many foreign words are poured in upon us, it looks as if they were designed, not to a.s.sist the natives, but to conquer them."'

[648] _Idler_, No. 70. BOSWELL. In the same number Johnson writes:--'Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous cla.s.s of readers than the use of hard words.... But words are hard only to those who do not understand them; and the critic ought always to inquire, whether he is incommoded by the fault of the writer or by his own. Every author does not write for every reader.' See _post_, Sept. 19, 1777, where Johnson says:--'If Robertson's style be faulty he owes it to me; that is, having too many words, and those too big ones.'

[649] The following pa.s.sages in Temple's writings shew that a likeness may be discovered between his style and Johnson's:--'There may be firmness and constancy of courage from tradition as well as of belief: nor, methinks, should any man know how to be a coward, that is brought up with the opinion, that all of his nation or city have ever been valiant.' Temple's _Works_, i. 167. 'This is a disease too refined for this country and people, who are well, when they are not ill, and pleased, when they are not troubled; are content, because they think little of it; and seek their happiness in the common eases and commodities of life, or the increase of riches; not amusing themselves with the more speculative contrivances of pa.s.sion, or refinements of pleasure.' _Ib_. p. 170. 'They send abroad the best of their own b.u.t.ter into all parts, and buy the cheapest out of Ireland, or the north of England, for their own use. In short they furnish infinite luxury which they never practise, and traffic in pleasures which they never taste.'

_Ib_. p. 195. See _post_, April 9, 1778, where Johnson says:--'Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose.'

[650] Dean Stanley calls Ephraim Chambers 'the Father of Cyclopedias.'

_Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, p. 299, note. The epitaph which Chambers wrote for himself the Dean gives as:--'Multis pervulgatus, paucis notus, qui vitam inter lucem et umbram, nec eruditus nec idioticis literis deditus, transegit.' In the _Gent. Mag_. for 1740, p.

262, the last line is given, no doubt correctly, as:--'Nec eruditus nec idiota, literis deditus.' The second edition of Chambers's _Cyclopaedia_ was published in 1738. There is no copy of his Proposal in the British Museum or Bodleian. The resemblance between his style and Johnson's is not great. The following pa.s.sage is the most Johnsonian that I could find:--'None of my predecessors can blame me for the use I have made of them; since it is their own avowed practice. It is a kind of privilege attached to the office of lexicographer; if not by any formal grant, yet by connivance at least. I have already a.s.sumed the bee for my device, and who ever brought an action of trover or trespa.s.s against that avowed free-booter? 'Tis vain to pretend anything of property in things of this nature. To offer our thoughts to the public, and yet pretend a right reserved therein to oneself, if it be not absurd, yet it is sordid. The words we speak, nay the breath we emit, is not more vague and common than our thoughts, when divulged in print.' Chambers's Preface, p. xxiii.

[651] 'There were giants in the earth in those days.' _Gen_. vi. 4.

[652] A GREAT PERSONAGE first appears in the second edition. In the first edition we merely find 'by one whose authority,' &c. Boswell in his _Hebrides_, Aug. 28, 1773, speaks of George III. as 'a Great Personage.' In his _Letter to the People of Scotland_ (p. 90) he thus introduces an anecdote about the King--and Paoli:--'I have one other circ.u.mstance to communicate; but it is of the highest value. I communicate it with a mixture of awe and fondness.--That Great Personage, who is allowed by all to have the best _memory_ of any man _born a Briton_, &c. In the _Probationary Odes for the Laureateship_, published a few months after Boswell's _Letter_, a 'Great Personage' is ludicrously introduced; pp. x.x.x. 63.

[653] The first nine lines form the motto.

[654] Horat. _Epist_. Lib. ii. Epist. ii. {1, 110} BOSWELL.

But how severely with themselves proceed The men, who write such verse as we can read!

Their own strict judges, not a word they spare That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care, Howe'er unwillingly it quits its place, Nay, though at court, perhaps, it may find grace: Such they'll degrade; and some-times, in its stead, In downright charity revive the dead; Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears, Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years; Command old words that long have slept to wake, Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake; Or bid the new be English, ages hence, (For use will father what's begot by sense;) Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong, Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue.'

Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, ii. 2. 157

[655] 'Horat. _De Arte Poetica_. [1. 48.] BOSWELL.

[656] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 29, 1773, where Boswell says that up that date he had twice heard Johnson coin words, _peregrinity_ and _depeditation_.

[657] 'The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness, by compliance with fashion or l.u.s.t of innovation, I have registered as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others against the folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the injury of the natives.... Our language for almost a century has, by the concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original Teutonick character, and deviating towards a Gallick structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recall it, by making our ancient volumes the groundwork of style.... From the authors which rose in the time of Elizabeth a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance.' Johnson's _Works_, v. pp. 31, 39.

See _post_. May 12, 1778.

[658] If Johnson sometimes indulged his _Brownism_ (see _post_, beginning of 1756), yet he saw much to censure in Browne's style. 'His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another. He must however be confessed to have augmented our philosophical diction.... His innovations are sometimes pleasing, and his temerities happy.' Johnson's _Works_, vi. 500. 'It is remarkable that the pomp of diction, which has been objected to Johnson, was first a.s.sumed in the _Rambler_. His _Dictionary_ was going on at the same time, and in the course of that work, as he grew familiar with technical and scholastic words, he thought that the bulk of his readers were equally learned; or at least would admire the splendour and dignity of the style.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 156.

'The observation of his having imitated Sir Thomas Brown has been made by many people; and lately it has been insisted on, and ill.u.s.trated by a variety of quotations from Brown, in one of the popular Essays written by the Reverend Mr. Knox [the Essay is No. xxii. of _Winter Evenings_, Knox's _Works_, ii 397], master of Tumbridge school, whom I have set down in my list [_post_, under Dec. 6, 1784] of those who have sometimes not unsuccessfully imitated Dr. Johnson's style. BOSWELL.

[659] The following observation in Mr. Boswell's _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ [p. 9] may sufficiently account for that Gentleman's being 'now scarcely esteem'd a Scot' by many of his countrymen:--If he [Dr.

Johnson] was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because they were more in his way; because he thought their success in England rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit; and because he could not but see in them that nationality which, I believe, no liberal-minded Scotchman will deny.' Mr. Boswell, indeed, is so free from national prejudices, that he might with equal propriety have been described as--

'Scarce by _South_ Britons now esteem'd a Scot.'

COURTENAY. BOSWELL.

[660] Malone says that 'Baretti used sometimes to walk with Johnson through the streets at night, and occasionally entered into conversation with the unfortunate women who frequent them, for the sake of hearing their stories. It was from a history of one of these, which a girl told under a tree in the King's Bench Walk in the Temple to Baretti and Johnson, that he formed the story of Misella in the _Rambler_ [Nos. 170 and 171].' Prior's _Malone_, p. 161. 'Of one [of these women] who was very handsome he asked, for what she thought G.o.d had given her so much beauty. She answered:--"To please gentlemen."' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p.

321. See also _post_, under Dec. 2, 1784.

[661] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 270) had said that 'the characteristics of Addison's style are feebleness and inanity.' He was thus happily ridiculed by Person:--'Soon after the publication of Sir John's book, a parcel of Eton boys, not having the fear of G.o.d before their eyes, etc., instead of playing truant, robbing orchards, annoying poultry, or performing any other part of their school exercise, fell foul in print (see the _Microcosm_, No. 36) upon his Worship's censure of Addison's _middling_ style.... But what can you expect, as Lord Kames justly observes, from a school where boys are taught to rob on the highway?'

Person, _Tracts_, p. 339.

[662] _Works_, vii. 473.

[663] When Johnson shewed me a proof-sheet of the character of Addison, in which he so highly extols his style, I could not help observing, that it had not been his own model, as no two styles could differ more from each other.--'Sir, Addison had his style, and I have mine.'--When I ventured to ask him, whether the difference did not consist in this, that Addison's style was full of idioms, colloquial phrases, and proverbs; and his own more strictly grammatical, and free from such phraseology and modes of speech as can never be literally translated or understood by foreigners; he allowed the discrimination to be just.--Let any one who doubts it, try to translate one of Addison's _Spectators_ into Latin, French, or Italian; and though so easy, familiar, and elegant, to an Englishman, as to give the intellect no trouble; yet he would find the transfusion into another language extremely difficult, if not impossible. But a _Rambler_, _Adventurer_, or _Idler_, of Johnson, would fall into any cla.s.sical or European language, as easily as if it had been originally conceived in it. BURNEY. Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p.

125) recounts how Johnson recommended Addison's works as a model for imitation to Mr. Woodhouse, a poetical shoemaker. '"Give nights and days, Sir, (said he) to the study of Addison, if you mean either to be a good writer, or, what is more worth, an honest man." When I saw something like the same expression in his criticism on that author, I put him in mind of his past injunctions to the young poet, to which he replied, "That he wished the shoemaker might have remembered them as well."' Yet he says in his _Life of Pope ( Works_, viii. 284), 'He that has once studiously formed a style rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.'

[664] I shall probably, in another work, maintain the merit of Addison's poetry, which has been very unjustly depreciated. BOSWELL. He proposed also to publish an edition of Johnson's poems (_ante_, p. 16), an account of his own travels (_post_, April 17, 1778), a collection, with notes, of old tenures and charters of Scotland (_post_, Oct. 27, 1779), and a History of James IV. of Scotland, 'the patron,' as he said, 'of my family' (Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 23, 1773).

[665] Lewis thus happily translates the lines in _Martial_,--

'Diligat ilia senem quondam: sed et ipsa marito, Tunc quoque c.u.m fuerit, non videatur, a.n.u.s.

'Wrinkled with age, may mutual love and truth To their dim eyes recall the bloom of youth.'

_Rambler_, No. 167.

Some of Johnson's own translations are happy, as:--

'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem Aut, gelidas hibernus aquas quum fuderit auster, Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi!

'How sweet in sleep to pa.s.s the careless hours, Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs.'

_Ib_. No. 117.

[666] [Greek: Augon ek makaron antaxios eiae amoibae.]

'Celestial powers! that piety regard, From you my labours wait their last reward.'

A modification of the Greek line is engraved on the scroll in Johnson's monument in St. Paul's (_post_, Dec. 1784).

[667] 'The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity.... I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment.'