Olivia Lloyd.
(Vol. i, p. 92.)
I am, no doubt, right in identifying Olivia Lloyd, the young quaker, with whom Johnson was much enamoured when at Stourbridge School, with Olive Lloyd, the daughter of the first Sampson Lloyd, of Birmingham, and aunt of the Sampson Lloyd with whom he had an altercation (ante, ii. 458 and post, p. liii). ‘A fine likeness of her is preserved by Thomas Lloyd, The Priory, Warwick,’ as I learn from an interesting little work called Farm and its Inhabitants, with some Account of the Lloyds of Dolobran, by Rachel J. Lowe. Privately printed, 1883, p. 24. Her elder brother married a Miss Careless; ib. p. 23. Johnson’s ‘first love,’ Hector’s sister, married a Mr. Careless (ante, ii. 459).
Henry Porter, of Edgbaston.
(Vol. i, p. 94, n. 3.)
In St. Mary’s Church, Warwick, is a monument to —
’Anna Norton, Henrici Porter
Filia
Nuper de Edgberston in Com. Warw. Generosi;
Vidua Thomae Norton….
Haec annis et pietate matura vitam deposuit.
Maii 14, 1698.’
A Brief Description of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary in Warwick, published by Grafton and Reddell, Birmingham; no date.
Mrs. Williams’s account of Mrs. Johnson and her sons by her former marriage. (Vol. i, p. 95.)
The following note by Malone I failed to quote in the right place. It is copied from a paper, written by Lady Knight.
‘Mrs. Williams’s account of Mrs. Johnson was, that she had a good understanding and great sensibility, but inclined to be satirical. Her first husband died insolvent [this is a mistake, see ante, i. 95, n. 3]; her sons were much disgusted with her for her second marriage; … however, she always retained her affection for them. While they [Mr. and Mrs. Johnson] resided in Gough Square, her son, the officer, knocked at the door, and asked the maid if her mistress was at home. She answered, “Yes, Sir, but she is sick in bed.” “Oh,” says he, “if it’s so, tell her that her son Jervis called to know how she did;” and was going away. The maid begged she might run up to tell her mistress, and, without attending his answer, left him. Mrs. Johnson, enraptured to hear her son was below, desired the maid to tell him she longed to embrace him. When the maid descended the gentleman was gone, and poor Mrs. Johnson was much agitated by the adventure; it was the only time he ever made an effort to see her. Dr. [Mr.] Johnson did all he could to console his wife, but told Mrs. Williams: “Her son is uniformly undutiful; so I conclude, like many other sober men, he might once in his life be drunk, and in that fit nature got the better of his pride.”’
Johnson’s application for the mastership of the Grammar School at Solihull in Warwickshire.
(Vol. i, p. 96.)
Johnson, a few weeks after his marriage, applied for the mastership of
Solihull Grammar School, as is shown by the following letter, preserved
in the Pembroke College MSS., addressed to Mr. Walmsley, and quoted by
Mr. Croker. I failed to insert it in my notes.
‘Solihull, the 30 August 1735.
‘SIR,
‘I was favoured with yours of the 13th inst. in due time, but deferred answering it til now, it takeing up some time to informe the Foeofees of the contents thereof; and before they would return an Answer, desired some time to make enquiry of the caracter of Mr. Johnson, who all agree that he is an excellent scholar, and upon that account deserves much better than to be schoolmaster of Solihull. But then he has the caracter of being a very haughty, ill-natured gent., and that he has such a way of distorting his Face (which though he can’t help) the gent, think it may affect some young ladds; for these two reasons he is not approved on, the late master Mr. Crompton’s huffing the Foeofees being stil in their memory. However, we are all exstreamly obliged to you for thinking of us, and for proposeing so good a schollar, but more especially is, dear sir,
‘Your very humble servant,
‘HENRY GRESWOLD.’
Johnson’s knowledge of Italian.
(Vol. i, p. 115.)
Boswell says that he does not know ‘at what time, or by what means Johnson had acquired a competent knowledge of Italian.’ In my note on this I say ‘he had read Petrarch “when but a boy.”’ As Petrarch wrote chiefly in Latin, it is quite possible that Johnson did not acquire his knowledge of Italian so early as I had thought.
Johnson’s deference for the general opinion.
(Vol. i, p. 200.)
Miss Burney records an interesting piece of criticism by Johnson. ‘There are,’ he said, ‘three distinct kinds of judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed by the rules.’ — Mine. D’Arblay’s Diary, i. 180. Later on she writes:— ‘The natural feelings of untaught hearers ought never to be slighted; and Dr. Johnson has told me the same a thousand times;’ ib. ii. 128.
Johnson in the Green Room.
(Vol. i, p. 201.)
Mr. Richard Herne Shepherd, in Watford’s Antiquarian for January, 1887, p. 34, asserts that the actual words which Johnson used when he told Garrick that he would no longer frequent his Green Room were indecent; so indecent that Mr. Shepherd can only venture to satisfy those whom he calls students by informing them of them privately. For proof of this charge against the man whose boast it was that ‘obscenity had always been repressed in his company’ (ante, iv. 295) he brings forward John Wilkes. The story, indeed, as it is told by Boswell, is not too trustworthy, for he had it through Hume from Garrick. As it reaches Mr. Shepherd it comes from Garrick through Wilkes. Garrick, no doubt, as Johnson says (ante, v. 391), was, as a companion, ‘restrained by some principle,’ and had ‘some delicacy of feeling.’ Nevertheless, in his stories, he was, we may be sure, no more on oath than a man is in lapidary inscriptions (ante, ii. 407). It is possible that he reported Johnson’s very words to Hume, and that Hume did not change them in reporting them to Boswell. Whatever they were, they were spoken in 1749 and published in 1791, when Johnson had been dead six years, Garrick twelve years, and Hume fourteen years. It is idle to dream that they can now be conjecturally emended. But it is worse than idle to bring in as evidence John Wilkes. What entered his ear as purity itself might issue from his mouth as the grossest obscenity. He had no delicacy of feeling. No principle restrained him. When he comes to bear testimony, and aims a shaft at any man’s character, the bow that he draws is drawn with the weakness of the hand of a worn-out and shameless profligate.
Mr. Shepherd quotes an unpublished letter of Boswell to Wilkes, dated Rome, April 22, 1765, to show ‘that the two men had become familiars, not only long before Wilkes’s famous meeting with Dr. Johnson was brought about, but before even the friendship of Boswell himself with Johnson had been consolidated.’ It needs no unpublished letters to show that. It must be known to every attentive reader of Boswell. See ante, i. 395, and ii. 11.
Frederick III, King of Prussia.
(Vol. i, p. 308.)
Boswell should have written Frederick II.
Boswell’s visit to Rousseau and Voltaire.
(Vol. i, p. 434; and vol. ii, p. 11.)
Boswell to Andrew Mitchell, Esq., His Britannic Majesty’s Minister at Berlin.
‘Berlin, 28 August, 1764.
… ‘I have had another letter from my father, in which he continues of opinion that travelling is of very little use, and may do a great deal of harm. … I esteem and love my father, and I am determined to do what is in my power to make him easy and happy. But you will allow that I may endeavour to make him happy, and at the same time not to be too hard upon myself. I must use you so much with the freedom of a friend as to tell you that with the vivacity which you allowed me I have a melancholy disposition. I have made excursions i
nto the fields of amusement, perhaps of folly. I have found that amusement and folly are beneath me, and that without some laudable pursuit my life must be insipid and wearisome….. My father seems much against my going to Italy, but gives me leave to go from this, and pass some months in Paris. I own that the words of the Apostle Paul, “I must see Rome,” are strongly borne in upon my mind. It would give me infinite pleasure. It would give taste for a life-time, and I should go home to Auchinleck with serene contentment.’
After stating that he is going to Geneva, he continues: —
‘I shall see Voltaire; I shall also see Switzerland and Rousseau. These two men are to me greater objects than most statues or pictures.’ — Nichols’s Literary History, vii. 318.
Superficiality of the French writers.
(Vol. i, p. 454.)
Gibbon, writing of the year 1759, says: —
‘In France, to which my ideas [in the Essay on the Study of Literature] were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal societies of Paris; the new appellation of Erudits was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon; and I was provoked to hear (see M. d’Alembert, Discours préliminaire à l’Encyclopedie) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the judgment.’ — Memoirs of Edward Gibbon, ed. 1827, i. 104.
A Synod of Cooks.
(Vol. i, p. 470.)
When Johnson spoke of ‘a Synod of Cooks’ he was, I conjecture, thinking of Milton’s ‘Synod of Gods,’ in Beelzebub’s speech in Paradise Lost, book ii. line 391.
Johnson and Bishop Percy.
(Vol. i, p. 486.)
Bishop Percy in a letter to Boswell says: ‘When in 1756 or 1757 I became acquainted with Johnson, he told me he had lived twenty years in London, but not very happily.’ — Nichols’s Literary History, vii. 307.
Barclay’s Answer to Kenrick’s Review of Johnson’s ‘Shakespeare.’
(Vol. i, p. 498.)
Neither in the British Museum nor in the Bodleian have I been able to find a copy of this book. A Defence of Mr. Kenricks Review, 1766, does not seem to contain any reply to such a work as Barclay’s.
Mrs. Piozzi’s ‘Collection of Johnson s Letters.’
(Vol. ii, p. 43, n. 2.)
MR. BOSWELL TO BISHOP PERCY.
‘Feb. 9, 1788.
‘I am ashamed that I have yet seven years to write of his life. … Mrs. (Thrale) Piozzi’s Collection of his letters will be out soon. … I saw a sheet at the printing-house yesterday… It is wonderful what avidity there still is for everything relative to Johnson. I dined at Mr. Malone’s on Wednesday with Mr. W. G. Hamilton, Mr. Flood, Mr. Windham, Mr. Courtenay, &c.; and Mr. Hamilton observed very well what a proof it was of Johnson’s merit that we had been talking of him all the afternoon.’ — Nichols’s Literary History, vii. 309.
Johnson on romantic virtue.
(Vol. ii, P. 76.)
‘Dr. Johnson used to advise his friends to be upon their guard against romantic virtue, as being founded upon no settled principle. “A plank,” said he, “that is tilted up at one end must of course fall down on the other.” ‘ — William Seward, Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, ii. 461.’
‘Old’ Baxter on toleration.
(Vol. ii, p. 253.)
The Rev. John Hamilton Davies, B.A., F.R.H.S., Rector of St. Nicholas’s, Worcester, and author of The Life of Richard Baxter of Kidderminster, Preacher and Prisoner (London, Kent & Co., 1887), kindly informs me, in answer to my inquiries, that he believes that Johnson may allude to the following passage in the fourth chapter of Baxter’s Reformed Pastor: —
‘I think the Magistrate should be the hedge of the Church. I am against the two extremes of universal license and persecuting tyranny. The Magistrate must be allowed the use of his reason, to know the cause, and follow his own judgment, not punish men against it. I am the less sorry that the Magistrate doth so little interpose.’
England barren in good historians.
(Vol. ii, p. 236, n. 2.)
Gibbon, writing of the year 1759, says:
‘The old reproach that no British altars had been raised to the muse of history was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts.’ — Memoirs of Edward Gibbon, ed. 1827, i. 103.
An instance of Scotch nationality.
(Vol. ii, p. 307.)
Lord Camden, when pressed by Dr. Berkeley (the Bishop’s son) to appoint a Scotchman to some office, replied: ‘I have many years ago sworn that I never will introduce a Scotchman into any office; for if you introduce one he will contrive some way or other to introduce forty more cousins or friends.’ — G. M. Berkeley’s Poems, p. ccclxxi.
Mortality in the Foundling Hospital of London.
(Vol. ii, p. 398.)
‘From March 25, 1741, to December 31, 1759, the number of children received into the Foundling Hospital is 14,994, of which have died to December 31, 1759, 8,465.’ — A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. 1769, vol. ii, p. 121. A great many of these died, no doubt, after they had left the Hospital.
Mr. Planta.
(Vol. ii, p. 399, n. 2.)
The reference is no doubt to Mr. Joseph Planta, Assistant-Librarian of the British Museum 1773, Principal Librarian 1799-1827. See Edwards’ Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, pp. 517 sqq.; and Nichols’s Illustrations of Literature, vol. vii, pp. 677-8.
‘Unitarian’.
(Vol. ii, p. 408, n. 1.)
John Locke in his Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity quotes from Mr. Edwards whom he answers:— ‘This gentleman and his fellows are resolved to be Unitarians; they are for one article of faith as well as One person in the Godhead.’ — Locke’s Works, ed. 1824, vi, 200.
The proposed Riding School for Oxford.
(Vol. ii, p. 424.)
My friend, Mr. C. E. Doble, has pointed out to me the following passage in Collectanea, First Series, edited by Mr. C. R. L. Fletcher, Fellow of All Souls College, and printed for the Oxford Historical Society, Oxford, 1885.
‘The Advertisement to Religion and Policy, by Edward Earl of Clarendon, runs as follows: —
“Henry Viscount Cornbury, who was called up to the House of Peers by the title of Lord Hyde, in the lifetime of his father, Henry Earl of Rochester, by a codicil to his will, dated Aug. 10, 1751, left divers MSS. of his great grandfather, Edward Earl of Clarendon, to Trustees, with a direction that the money to arise from the sale or publication thereof, should be employed as a beginning of a fund for supporting a Manage or Academy for riding and other useful exercises in Oxford; a plan of this sort having been also recommended by Lord Clarendon in his Dialogue on Education. Lord Cornbury dying before his father, this bequest did not take effect. But Catharine, one of the daughters of Henry Earl of Rochester, and late Duchess Dowager of Queensbury, whose property these MSS. became, afterwards by deed gave them, together with all the monies which had arisen or might arise from the sale or publication of them, to [three Trustees] upon trust for the like purposes as those expressed by Lord Hyde in his codicil.”
‘The preface to the Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, written by himself., has words to the same effect. (See also Notes and Queries, Ser. I. x. 185, and xi. 32.)
‘From a letter in Notes and Queries, Ser. II. x. p. 74, it appears that in 1860 the available sum, in the hands of the Trustees of the Clarendon Bequest, amounted to £10,000. The University no longer needed a riding-school, and the claims of Physical Science were urgent; and in 1872 the announcement was made, that by the liberality of the Clarendon Trustees an additional wing had been added to the University Museum, containing the lecture-rooms and laboratories of the department of Experimental Philosophy.’ Vol. i. p. 305.
Boswell and Mrs. Rudd.
(Vol. ii, p. 450, n. 1.)
In Mr. Alfred Morrison’s Collection of Autographs, vol. i. p. 103, mention is made among Boswell’s autographs of verses entitled Lurgan Clanbrassil, a supposed Irish song.’
I have learnt, through Mr. Morrison’s kindness, that ‘on the document itself there is the following memorandum, signed, so far as can be made out, H. W. R.: —
“The enclosed song was written and composed by James Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, in commemoration of a tour he made with Mrs. Rudd whilst she was under his protection, for living with whom he displeased his father so much that he threatened to disinherit him.
“Mrs. Rudd had lived with one of the Perreaus, who were tried and executed for forgery. She was tried at the same time and acquitted.
“My father having heard that Boswell used to sing this song at the Home
Circuit, requested it of him, and he wrote it and gave it him. H.W. R.”’
“Feb. 1828.”
Christopher Smart.
(Vol. ii, p. 454, n. 3.)
Mr. Robert Browning, in his Parleyings with Christopher Smart, under the similitude of ‘some huge house,’ thus describes the general run of that unfortunate poet’s verse: —
’All showed the Golden Mean without a hint
Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule.
The master of the mansion was no fool
Assuredly, no genius just as sure!
Safe mediocrity had scorned the lure
Of now too much and now too little cost,
And satisfied me sight was never lost
Of moderate design’s accomplishment
In calm completeness.’
Mr. Browning goes on to liken one solitary poem to a Chapel in the house, in which is found —
’from floor to roof one evidence
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 866
