The Life of Samuel Johnson

by James Boswell

  a [Perhaps affecting.]

  a Dr. Johnson here addresses his worthy friend, Bennet Langton, Esq., by his title as Captain of the Lincolnshire militia, in which he has since been most deservedly raised to the rank of Major.

  a Vol. ii, p. 38.

  b Miss Carmichael.

  a Life of Watts.

  a He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a very handsome present.

  a p. 173.

  a See ante, pp. 116, 680.

  a See ante, pp. 709–10.

  a ‘I do not (says Mr. Malone,) see any difficulty in this passage, and wonder that Dr. Johnson should have acknowledged it to be inaccurate. The Hermit, it should be observed, had no actual experience of the world whatsoever: all his knowledge concerning it had been obtained in two ways; from books, and from the relations of those country swains, who had seen a little of it. The plain meaning, therefore, is, “To clear his doubts concerning Providence, and to obtain some knowledge of the world by actual experience; to see whether the accounts furnished by books, or by the oral communications of swains, were just representations of it; [I say, swains,] for his oral or viva voce information had been obtained from that part of mankind alone, &c.” The word alone here does not relate to the whole of the preceeding line, as has been supposed, but, by a common licence, to the words, –of all mankind, which are understood, and of which it is restrictive.’

  Mr. Malone, it must be owned, has shewn much critical ingenuity in the explanation of this passage. His interpretation, however, seems to me much too recondite. The meaning of the passage may be certain enough; but surely the expression is confused, and one part of it contradictory to the other.

  a Which I communicated to him from his Lordship, but it has not yet been published. I have a copy of it. [The few notices concerning Dryden, which Lord Hailes had collected, the author afterwards gave to Mr. Malone.]

  b In one of his manuscript Diaries, there is the following entry, which marks his curious minute attention: ‘July 26, 1768. I shaved my nail by accident in whetting the knife, about an eighth of an inch from the bottom, and about a fourth from the top. This I measure that I may know the growth of nails; the whole is about five eighths of an inch.’

  Another of the same kind appears, ‘Aug. 7, 1779, Partem brachii dextri carpo proximam et cutem pectoris circa mamillam dextram rasi, ut notum fieret quanto temporis pili renovarentur.’913

  And, ‘Aug. 15, 1773. I cut from the vine 41 leaves, which weighed five oz. and a half, and eight scruples: – I lay them upon my book-case, to see what weight they will lose by drying.’

  a The Rev. Dr. Law, Bishop of Carlisle, in the Preface to his valuable edition of Archbishop King’s Essay on the Origin of Evil, mentions that the principles maintained in it had been adopted by Pope in his Essay on Man; and adds, The fact, notwithstanding such denial (Bishop Warburton’s), might have been strictly verified by an unexceptionable testimony, viz. that of the late Lord Bathurst, who saw the very same system of the $$914 (taken from the Archbishop) in Lord Bolingbroke’s own hand, lying before Mr. Pope, while he was composing his Essay.’ This is respectable evidence; but that of Dr. Blair is more direct from the fountain-head, as well as more full. Let me add to it that of Dr. Joseph Warton; The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly assured me that he had read the whole scheme of The Essay on Man, in the hand-writing of Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions, which Pope was to versify and illustrate.’ Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, vol. ii. p. 62.

  a The Spleen, a Poem.917

  b 1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand. 2. Greenwich. 3. Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square.4. Castle-street, Cavendish-square, No.6. 5. Strand.6. Boswell-court. 7. Strand, again. 8. Bow-street. 9. Holborn. 10. Fetter-lane. 11. Holborn, again. 12. Gough-square. 13. Staple Inn. 14. Gray’s Inn. 15. Inner Temple-lane, No. 1. 16. Johnson’s-court, No. 7. 17. Bolt-court, No. 8.

  a Now the Lady of Sir Henry Dashwood, Bart.

  b The False Alarm.

  a Miss Letitia Barnston.

  a I have a valuable collection made by my Father, which, with some additions and illustrations of my own, I intend to publish. I have some hereditary claim to be an Antiquary; not only from my Father, but as being descended, by the mother’s side, from the able and learned Sir John Skene, whose merit bids defiance to all the attempts which have been made to lessen his fame.

  a Thomas Percy.

  b His regiment was afterwards ordered to Jamaica, where he accompanied it, and almost lost his life by the climate. This impartial order I should think a sufficient refutation of the idle rumour that ‘there was still something behind the throne greater than the throne itself.’

  a Requesting me to inquire concerning the family of a gentleman927 who was then paying his addresses to Miss Doxy.

  b See ante, p. 722.

  a [Mr. Beauclerk’s library was sold by publick auction in April and May 1781, for £5011.]

  b By a fire in Northumberland-house, where he had an apartment, in which I have passed many an agreeable hour.

  a Dr. John Hinchliffe.

  b A kind of nick-name given to Mrs. Thrale’s eldest daughter, whose name being Esther, she might be assimilated to a Queen.

  c Mr. Thrale.

  d In Johnson’s Dictionary is neither dawling nor dawdling. He uses dawdle, post, p. 833.

  e I have taken the liberty to leave out a few lines.

  a Spectator, 470.

  a Vol. ii, p. 143, et seq. I have selected passages from several letters, without mentioning dates.

  b June 2.

  a [Lord George Gordon and his followers, during these outrages, wore blue ribbands in their hats.]

  a Vol. ii, p. 163. Mrs. Piozzi has omitted the name, she best knows why.

  a Now settled in London.

  b Meaning his entertaining Memoirs of David Garrick, Esq., of which Johnson (as Davies informed me) wrote the first sentence; thus giving, as it were, the key-note to the performance. It is, indeed, very characteristical of its authour, beginning with a maxim, and proceeding to illustrate. – ‘All excellence has a right to be recorded. I shall, therefore, think it superfluous to apologise for writing the life of a man, who by an uncommon assemblage of private virtues, adorned the highest eminence in a publick profession.’

  c I wish he had omitted the suspicion expressed here, though I believe he meant nothing but jocularity; for though he and I differed sometimes in opinion, he well knew how much I loved and revered him. Beattie.

  a It will, no doubt, be remarked how he avoids the rebellious land of America. This puts me in mind of an anecdote, for which I am obliged to my worthy social friend, Governour Richard Penn: ‘At one of Miss E. Hervey’s assemblies, Dr. Johnson was following her up and down the room; upon which Lord Abingdon observed to her, “Your great friend is very fond of you; you can go no where without him.” – “Ay, (said she,) he would follow me to any part of the world.” – “Then (said the Earl,) ask him to go with you to America”’

  b Essays on the History of Mankind.

  a Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore.

  a I had not then seen his letters to Mrs. Thrale.

  a Pr. and Med. p. 185.

  a Secretary to the British Herring Fishery, remarkable for an extraordinary number of occasional verses, not of eminent merit.

  b Luke vii. 50.

  a [In a letter written by Johnson to a friend in 1742-3, he says: – ‘I never see Garrick.’]

  a Here Lord Macartney remarks, ‘A Bramin or any cast of the Hindoos will neither admit you to be of their religion, nor be converted to yours; – a thing which struck the Portuguese with the greatest astonishment, when they discovered the East Indies.’

  a The correspondent of The Gentleman’s Magazine who subscribes himself Sciolus furnishes the following supplement: –

  ‘A lady of my acquaintance remembers to have heard her uncle954 sing those homely stanzas more than 45 years ago. He repeated the second thus;

&
nbsp; “She shall breed young lords and ladies fair,

  And ride abroad in a coach and three pair,

  And the best, &c.

  And have a house, &c.”

  And remembered a third which seems to have been the introductory one, and is believed to have been the only remaining one: –

  “When the Duke of Leeds shall have made his choice

  Of a charming young lady that’s beautiful and wise,

  She’ll be the happiest young gentlewoman under the skies,

  As long as the sun and moon shall rise,

  And how happy shall, &c.”’955

  It is with pleasure I add that this stanza could never be more truly applied than at this present time.

  a [It should be remembered, that this was said twenty-five or thirty years ago, when lace was very generally worn.]

  a Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, says, that these are ‘the only English verses which Bentley is known to have written.’ I shall here insert them, and hope my readers will apply them.

  ‘Who strives to mount Parnassus’ hill,966

  And thence poetick laurels bring,

  Must first acquire due force and skill,

  Must fly with swan’s or eagle’s wing.

  Who Nature’s treasures would explore,

  Her mysteries and arcana know;

  Must high as lofty Newton soar,

  Must stoop as delving Woodward low.

  Who studies ancient laws and rites,

  Tongues, arts, and arms, and history;

  Must drudge, like Selden, days and nights,

  And in the endless labour die.

  Who travels in religious jars,

  (Truth mixt with errour, shades with rays;)

  Like Whiston, wanting pyx or stars,

  In ocean wide or sinks or strays.

  But grant our hero’s hope, long toil

  And comprehensive genius crown,

  All sciences, all arts his spoil,

  Yet what reward, or what renown?

  Envy, innate in vulgar souls,

  Envy steps in and stops his rise,

  Envy with poison’d tarnish fouls

  His lustre, and his worth decries.

  He lives inglorious or in want,

  To college and old books confin’d;

  Instead of learn’d he’s call’d pedant,

  Dunces advanc’d, he’s left behind:

  Yet left content a genuine Stoick he,

  Great without patron, rich without South Sea.967

  b The difference between Johnson and Smith is apparent even in this slight instance. Smith was a man of extraordinary application, and had his mind crowded with all manner of subjects; but the force, acuteness, and vivacity of Johnson were not to be found there. He had book-making so much in his thoughts, and was so chary of what might be turned to account in that way, that he once said to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he made it a rule, when in company, never to talk of what he understood. Beauclerk had for a short time a pretty high opinion of Smith’s conversation. Garrick, after listening to him for a while, as to one of whom his expectations had been raised, turned slyly to a friend,968 and whispered him, ‘What say you to this? – eh? flabby, I think.’

  a I am sorry to see in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. ii, An Essay on the Character of Hamlet, written, I should suppose, by a very young man,970 though called ‘Reverend’; who speaks with presumptuous petulance of the first literary character of his age. Amidst a cloudy confusion of words, (which hath of late too often passed in Scotland for Metaphysicks,) he thus ventures to criticise one of the noblest lines in our language: – ‘Dr. Johnson has remarked, that “time toil’d after him in vain.” But I should apprehend, that this is entirely to mistake the character. Time toils after every great man, as well as after Shakspeare. The workings of an ordinary mind keep pace, indeed, with time; they move no faster; they have their beginning, their middle, and their end; but superiour natures can reduce these into a point. They do not, indeed, suppress them; but they suspend, or they lock them up in the breast.’ The learned Society, under whose sanction such gabble is ushered into the world, would do well to offer a premium to any one who will discover its meaning.

  a A literary lady has favoured me with a characteristick anecdote of Richardson. One day at his country-house at Northend, where a large company was assembled at dinner, a gentleman who was just returned from Paris, willing to please Mr. Richardson, mentioned to him a very flattering circumstance, – that he had seen his Clarissa lying on the King’s brother’s table. Richardson observing that part of the company were engaged in talking to each other, affected then not to attend to it. But by and by, when there was a general silence, and he thought that the flattery might be fully heard, he addressed himself to the gentleman, ‘I think, Sir, you were saying something about, – ‘ pausing in a high flutter of expectation. The gentleman, provoked at his inordinate vanity, resolved not to indulge it, and with an exquisitely sly air of indifference answered, ‘A mere trifle, Sir, not worth repeating.’ The mortification of Richardson was visible, and he did not speak ten words more the whole day. Dr. Johnson was present, and appeared to enjoy it much.

  a His profound admiration of the Great First Cause was such as to set him above that ‘Philosophy and vain deceit’976 with which men of narrower conceptions have been infected. I have heard him strongly maintain that ‘what is right is not so from any natural fitness, but because God wills it to be right;’ and it is certainly so, because He has predisposed the relations of things so as that which He wills must be right.

  b I hope the authority of the great Master of our language will stop that curtailing innovation, by which we see critic, public, &c, frequently written instead of critick, publick, &c.

  a sterne is of a direct contrary opinion. see his sentimental journey, article, ‘the mystery.’

  a Pr. and Med. p. 190.

  b Ib. p. 174.

  c His design is thus announced in his Advertisement: ‘The Booksellers having determined to publish a body of English Poetry, I was persuaded to promise them a Preface to the works of each authour; an undertaking, as it was then presented to my mind, not very tedious or difficult.

  ‘My purpose was only to have allotted to every poet an Advertisement, like that which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates, and a general character; but I have been led beyond my intention, I hope by the honest desire of giving useful pleasure.’

  a Thus: – ‘In the Life of Waller, Mr. Nichols will find a reference to the Parliamentary History from which a long quotation is to be inserted. If Mr. Nichols cannot easily find the book, Mr. Johnson will send it from Streatham.’

  ‘Clarendon is here returned.’

  ‘By some accident, I laid your note upon Duke up so safely, that I cannot find it. Your informations have been of great use to me. I must beg it again; with another list of our authours, for I have laid that with the other. I have sent Stepney’s Epitaph. Let me have the revises as soon as can be. Dec. 1778.’

  ‘I have sent Phillips, with his Epitaphs, to be inserted. The fragment of a preface is hardly worth the impression, but that we may seem to do something. It may be added to the Life of Philips. The Latin page is to be added to the Life of Smith. I shall be at home to revise the two sheets of Milton. March 1, 1779.’

  ‘Please to get me the last edition of Hughes’s Letters; and try to get Dennis upon Blackmore, and upon Cato, and any thing of the same writer against Pope. Our materials are defective.’

  ‘As Waller professed to have imitated Fairfax, do you think a few pages of Fairfax would enrich our edition? Few readers have seen it, and it may please them. But it is not necessary.’

  ‘ “An account of the Lives and works of some of the most eminent English Poets. By,” &c. – “The English Poets, biographically and critically considered, by Sam. JOHNSON.” – Let Mr. Nichols take his choice, or make another to his mind. May, 1781.’

  ‘You somehow forgo
t the advertisement for the new edition. It was not inclosed. Of Gay’s Letters I see not that any use can be made, for they give no information of any thing. That he was a member of the Philosophical Society is something; but surely he could be but a corresponding member. However, not having his life here, I know not how to put it in, and it is of little importance.’

  See several more in The Gent. Mag., 1785. The Editor of that Miscellany, in which Johnson wrote for several years, seems justly to think that every fragment of so great a man is worthy of being preserved.

  a Life of Sheffield.983

  b [See, however, p. 768 of this volume, where the same remark is made and Johnson is there speaking of prose.]

  c The original reading is enclosed in crotchets, and the present one is printed in Italicks.

  a See An Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, London, 1787; which is very well written, making a proper allowance for the democratical bigotry of its authour; whom I cannot however but admire for his liberality in speaking thus of my illustrious friend: –

  ‘He possessed extraordinary powers of understanding, which were much cultivated by study, and still more by meditation and reflection. His memory was remarkably retentive, his imagination uncommonly vigorous, and his judgement keen and penetrating. He had a strong sense of the importance of religion; his piety was sincere, and sometimes ardent; and his zeal for the interests of virtue was often manifested in his conversation and in his writings. The same energy which was displayed in his literary productions was exhibited also in his conversation, which was various, striking, and instructive; and perhaps no man ever equalled him for nervous and pointed repartees.