Cradock's _Memoirs_, p. 208.[351] See _ante_, iii. 382, note 1.[352] Next day I endeavoured to give what had happened the mostingenious turn I could, by the following verses:--To THE HONOURABLE Miss MONCKTON.'Not that with th' excellent MontroseI had the happiness to dine;Not that I late from table rose,From Graham's wit, from generous wine.It was not these alone which ledOn sacred manners to encroach;And made me feel what most I dread,JOHNSON'S just frown, and self-reproach.But when I enter'd, not abash'd,From your bright eyes were shot such rays,At once intoxication flash'd,And all my frame was in a blaze.But not a brilliant blaze I own,Of the dull smoke I'm yet asham'd;I was a dreary ruin grown,And not enlighten'd though inflam'd.Victim at once to wine and love,I hope, MARIA, you'll forgive;While I invoke the powers above,That henceforth I may wiser live.'The lady was generously forgiving, returned me an obliging answer, and Ithus obtained an _Act of Oblivion_, and took care never to offendagain. BOSWELL.[353] See _ante_, ii. 436, and iv. 88, note I.[354] On May 22 Horace Walpole wrote (_Letters_, viii. 44):--'Boswell,that quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in,which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tappingmany topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, hevented his errand. "Had I seen Dr. Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_?" Isaid slightly, "No, not yet;" and so overlaid his whole impertinence.'[355] See _ante_, iii. 1.[356] See _ante_, ii. 47, note 2; 352, note I; and iii. 376, forexplanations of like instances of Boswell's neglect.[357] See _ante_, i. 298, note 4.[358] 'He owned he sometimes talked for victory.' Boswell's _Hebrides_,opening pages.[359] The late Right Hon. William Gerard Hamilton. MALONE.[360] Dr. Johnson, being told of a man who was thankful for beingintroduced to him, 'as he had been convinced in a long dispute that anopinion which he had embraced as a settled truth was no better than avulgar error, "Nay," said he, "do not let him be thankful, for he wasright, and I was wrong." Like his Uncle Andrew in the ring atSmithfield, Johnson, in a circle of disputants, was determined neitherto be thrown nor conquered.' Murphy's _Johnson_, p. 139. Johnson, in_The Adventurer_, No. 85, seems to describe his own talk. He writes:--'While the various opportunities of conversation invite us to try everymode of argument, and every art of recommending our sentiments, we arefrequently betrayed to the use of such as are not in themselves strictlydefensible; a man heated in talk, and eager of victory, takes advantageof the mistakes or ignorance of his adversary, lays hold of concessionsto which he knows he has no right, and urges proofs likely to prevail onhis opponent, though he knows himself that they have no force.' J. S.Mill gives somewhat the same account of his own father. 'I am inclinedto think,' he writes, 'that he did injustice to his own opinions by theunconscious exaggerations of an intellect emphatically polemical; andthat when thinking without an adversary in view, he was willing to makeroom for a great portion of the truths he seemed to deny.' Mill's_Autobiography_, p. 201. See also _ante_, ii. 100, 450, in. 23, 277,331; and _post_, May 18, 1784, and Steevens's account of Johnson justbefore June 22, 1784.[361] Thomas Shaw, D.D., author of _Travels to Barbary and the Levant_.[362] See ante, iii. 314.[363] The friend very likely was Boswell himself. He was one of 'these_tanti_ men.' 'I told Paoli that in the very heat of youth I felt the_nom est tanti_, the _omnia vanitas_ of one who has exhausted all thesweets of his being, and is weary with dull repetition. I told him thatI had almost become for ever incapable of taking a part in active life.'Boswell's _Corsica_, ed. 1879, p. 193.[364] _Letters on the English Nation: By Batista Angeloni, a Jesuit, whoresided many years in London. Translated from the original Italian bythe Author of the Marriage Act. A Novel_. 2 vols. London [no printer'sname given], 1755. Shebbeare published besides six _Letters to thePeople of England_ in the years 1755-7, for the last of which he wassentenced to the pillory. _Ante_, iii. 315, note I. Horace Walpole(_Letters_, iii. 74) described him in 1757 as 'a broken Jacobitephysician, who has threatened to write himself into a place orthe pillory.'[365] I recollect a ludicrous paragraph in the newspapers, that the Kinghad pensioned both a _He_-bear and a _She_-bear. BOSWELL. See _ante_,ii. 66, and _post_, April 28, 1783.[366]Witness, ye chosen trainWho breathe the sweets of his Saturnian reign;Witness ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scots, Shebbeares,Hark to my call, for some of you have ears.'_Heroic Epistle_. See _post_, under June 16, 1784.[367] In this he was unlike the King, who, writes Horace Walpole,'expecting only an attack on Chambers, bought it to tease, and beganreading it to, him; but, finding it more bitter on himself, flung itdown on the floor in a passion, and would read no more.' _Journal of theReign of George III_, i. 187.[368] They were published in 1773 in a pamphlet of 16 pages, and, withthe good fortune that attends a muse in the peerage, reached a thirdedition in the year. To this same earl the second edition of Byron's_Hours of Idleness_ was 'dedicated by his obliged ward and affectionatekinsman, the author.' In _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, he isabused in the passage which begins:--'No muse will cheer with renovating smile,The paralytic puling of Carlisle.'In a note Byron adds:--'The Earl of Carlisle has lately published aneighteen-penny pamphlet on the state of the stage, and offers his planfor building a new theatre. It is to be hoped his lordship will bepermitted to bring forward anything for the stage--except his owntragedies.' In the third canto of _Childe Harold_ Byron makes amends. Inwriting of the death of Lord Carlisle's youngest son at Waterloo,he says:--'Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine;Yet one I would select from that proud throng,Partly because they blend me with his line,And partly that I did his Sire some wrong.'For his lordship's tragedy see _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783.[369] Men of rank and fortune, however, should be pretty well assured ofhaving a real claim to the approbation of the publick, as writers,before they venture to stand forth. Dryden, in his preface to _All forLove_, thus expresses himself:--'Men of pleasant conversation (at least esteemed so) and endued with atrifling kind of fancy, perhaps helped out by [with] a smattering ofLatin, are ambitious to distinguish themselves from the herd ofgentlemen, by their poetry:_"Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in iliaFortuna,"----[Juvenal_, viii. 73.]And is not this a wretched affectation, not to be contented with whatfortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, butthey must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose theirnakedness to publick view? Not considering that they are not to expectthe same approbation from sober men, which they have found from theirflatterers after the third bottle: If a little glittering in discoursehas passed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity ofundeceiving the world? Would a man who has an ill title to an estate,but yet is in possession of it, would he bring it of his own accord tobe tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talents [talent],yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what canbe urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty toscribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselvesridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right where he said, "That noman is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, becausehe is not rich; and the rich are discontented because the poets will notadmit them of their number.' BOSWELL. Boswell, it should seem, hadfollowed Swift's advice:--'Read all the prefaces of Dryden,For these our critics much confide in;Though merely writ at first for filling,To raise the volume's price a shilling.'Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xi. 293.[370] See _ante_, i. 402.[371] Wordsworth, it should seem, held with Johnson in this. When heread the article in the _Edinburgh Review_ on Lord Byron's early poems,he remarked that 'though Byron's verses were probably poor enough, yetsuch an attack was abominable,--that a young nobleman, who took topoetry, deserved to be encouraged, not ridiculed.' Rogers's_Table-Talk_, p. 234, note.[372] Dr. Barnard, formerly Dean of Derry. See _ante_, iii. 84.[373] This gave me very great pleasure, for there had been once a prettysmart altercation between Dr. Barnard and him, upon a question, whethera man could improve himself after the age of forty-five; when Johnson ina hasty humour, expressed himself in a manner not quite civil. Dr.Barnard made it the subject of a copy of pleasant verses, in which hesupposed himself to learn different perfections from different men. Theyconcluded with delicate irony:--'Johnson shall teach me how to placeIn fairest light each borrow'd grace;From him I'll learn to write;Copy his clear familiar style,And by the roughness of his fileGrow, like _himself, polite_.'I know not whether Johnson ever saw the poem, but I had occasion to findthat as Dr. Barnard and he knew each other better, their mutual regardincreased. BOSWELL. See Appendix A.[374] See _ante_, ii. 357, iii. 309, and _post_, March 23, 1783.[375] 'Sir Joshua once asked Lord B---- to dine with Dr. Johnson and therest, but though a man of rank and also of good information, he seemedas much alarmed at the idea as if you had tried to force him into one ofthe cages at Exeter-Change.' Hazlitt's _Conversations of Northcote_,p. 41.[376] Yet when he came across them he met with much respect. At Alnwickhe was, he writes, 'treated with great civility by the Duke ofNorthumberland.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 108. At Inverary, the Duke andDuchess of Argyle shewed him great attention. Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct.25. In fact, all through his Scotch tour he was most politely welcomedby 'the great.' At Chatsworth, he was 'honestly pressed to stay' by theDuke and Duchess of Devonshire (_post_, Sept. 9, 1784). See _ante_, iii.21. On the other hand, Mrs. Barbauld says:--'I believe it is true thatin England genius and learning obtain less personal notice than in mostother parts of Europe.' She censures 'the contemptuous manner in whichLady Wortley Montagu mentioned Richardson:--"The doors of the Great,"she says, "were never opened to him."' _Richardson Corres._ i. clxxiv.[377] When Lord Elibank was seventy years old, he wrote:--'I shall beglad to go five hundred miles to enjoy a day of his company.' Boswell's_Hebrides_, Sept. 12.[378] _Romans_, x. 2.[379] I _Peter_, iii. 15.[380] Horace Walpole wrote three years earlier:--' Whig principles arefounded on sense; a Whig may be a fool, a Tory must be so.'_Letters_, vii. 88.[381] Mr. Barclay, a descendant of Robert Barclay, of Ury, thecelebrated apologist of the people called Quakers, and remarkable formaintaining the principles of his venerable progenitor, with as much ofthe elegance of modern manners, as is consistent with primitivesimplicity, BOSWELL.[382] Now Bishop of Llandaff, one of the _poorest_ Bishopricks in thiskingdom. His Lordship has written with much zeal to show the proprietyof _equalizing_ the revenues of Bishops. He has informed us that he hasburnt all his chemical papers. The friends of our excellentconstitution, now assailed on every side by innovators and levellers,would have less regretted the suppression of some of this Lordship'sother writings. BOSWELL. Boswell refers to _A Letter to the Archbishopof Canterbury by Richard, Lord Bishop of Landaff_, 1782. If the revenueswere made more equal, 'the poorer Bishops,' the Bishop writes, 'would befreed from the necessity of holding ecclesiastical preferments _incommendam_ with their Bishopricks,' p. 8.[383] De Quincey says that Sir Humphry Davy told him, 'that he couldscarcely imagine a time, or a condition of the science, in which theBishop's _Essays_ would be superannuated.' De Quincey's _Works_, ii.106. De Quincey describes the Bishop as being 'always a discontentedman, a railer at the government and the age, which could permit such ashis to pine away ingloriously in one of the humblest among theBishopricks.' _Ib_. p. 107. He was, he adds, 'a true Whig,' and wouldhave been made Archbishop of York had his party staid in power a littlelonger in 1807.'[384] _Rasselas_, chap. xi.[385] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 30.[386] 'They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.'_Genesis_, iii. 8.[387]... 'Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam,Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at illeLabitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.''And sure the man who has it in his powerTo practise virtue, and protracts the hour,Waits like the rustic till the river dried;Still glides the river, and will ever glide.'FRANCIS. Horace, _Epist_. i. 2. 41.[388] See _ante_, p. 59.[389] See _ante_, iii. 251.[390] See _ante_, iii. 136.[391] This assertion is disproved by a comparison of dates. The firstfour satires of Young were published in 1725; The South Sea scheme(which appears to be meant,) was in 1720. MALONE. In Croft's _Life ofYoung_, which Johnson adopted, it is stated:--'By the _UniversalPassion_ he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than L3000. A considerablesum had already been swallowed up in the South Sea.' Johnson's _Works_,viii. 430. Some of Young's poems were published before 1720.[392] Crabbe got Johnson to revise his poem, _The Village_ (_post_,under March 23, 1783). He states, that 'the Doctor did not readilycomply with requests for his opinion; not from any unwillingness tooblige, but from a painful contention in his mind between a desire ofgiving pleasure and a determination to speak truth.' Crabbe's _Works_,ii. 12. See _ante_, ii. 51, 195, and iii. 373.[393] Pope's _Essay on Man_, iv. 390. See _ante_, iii. 6, note 2.[394] He had within the last seven weeks gone up drunk, at least twice,to a lady's drawing-room. _Ante_, pp. 88, note 1, and 109.[395] Mr. Croker, though without any authority, prints _unconscious_.[396] I Corinthians, ix. 27. See _ante_, 295.[397] 'We walk by faith, not by sight.' 2 Corinthians, v. 7[398] Dr. Ogden, in his second sermon _On the Articles of the ChristianFaith_, with admirable acuteness thus addresses the opposers of thatDoctrine, which accounts for the confusion, sin and misery, which wefind in this life: 'It would be severe in GOD, you think, to _degrade_us to such a sad state as this, for the offence of our first parents:but you can allow him to _place_ us in it without any inducement. Areour calamities lessened for not being ascribed to Adam? If yourcondition be unhappy, is it not still unhappy, whatever was theoccasion? with the aggravation of this reflection, that if it was asgood as it was at first designed, there seems to be somewhat the lessreason to look for its amendment.' BOSWELL.[399] 'Which taketh away the sin' &c. St. John, i. 29.[400] See Boswell's Hebrides, August 22.[401] This unfortunate person, whose full name was Thomas Fysche Palmer,afterwards went to Dundee, in Scotland, where he officiated as ministerto a congregation of the sect who called themselves _Unitarians_, from anotion that they distinctively worship ONE GOD, because they _deny_ themysterious doctrine of the TRINITY. They do not advert that the greatbody of the Christian Church, in maintaining that mystery, maintain alsothe _Unity_ of the GODHEAD; the 'TRINITY in UNITY!--three persons andONE GOD.' The Church humbly adores the DIVINITY as exhibited in the holyScriptures. The Unitarian sect vainly presumes to comprehend and definethe ALMIGHTY. Mr. Palmer having heated his mind with politicalspeculations, became so much dissatisfied with our excellentConstitution, as to compose, publish, and circulate writings, which werefound to be so seditious and dangerous, that upon being found guilty bya Jury, the Court of Justiciary in Scotland sentenced him totransportation for fourteen years. A loud clamour against this sentencewas made by some Members of both Houses of Parliament; but both Housesapproved of it by a great majority; and he was conveyed to thesettlement for convicts in New South Wales. BOSWELL. This note firstappears in the third edition. Mr. Palmer was sentenced to seven (notfourteen) years transportation in Aug. 1793. It was his fellow prisoner,Mr. Muir, an advocate, who was sentenced to fourteen years. _Ann. Reg._1793, p. 40. When these sentences were brought before the House ofCommons, Mr. Fox said that it was 'the Lord-Advocate's fervent wish thathis native principles of justice should be introduced into this country;and that on the ruins of the common law of England should be erected theinfamous fabric of Scottish persecution. ... If that day should everarrive, if the tyrannical laws of Scotland should ever be introduced inopposition to the humane laws of England, it would then be high time formy hon. friends and myself to settle our affairs, and retire to somehappier clime, where we might at least enjoy those rights which God hasgiven to man, and which his nature tells him he has a right to demand.'_Parl. Hist._ xxx. 1563. For _Unitarians_, see _ante_, ii. 408, note I.[402] Taken from Herodotus. [Bk. ii. ch. 104.] BOSWELL.[403] 'The mummies,' says Blakesley, 'have straight hair, and in thepaintings the Egyptians are represented as red, not black.' _Ib_. note.[404] See _ante_, i. 441, and _post_, March 28, and June 3, 1782.[405] Mr. Dawkins visited Palmyra in 1751. He had 'an escort of the Agaof Hassia's best Arab horsemen.' Johnson was perhaps astonished at thesize of their caravan, 'which was increased to about 200 persons.' Thewriter treats the whole matter with great brevity. Wood's _Ruins ofPalmyra_, p. 33. On their return the travellers discovered a party ofArab horsemen, who gave them an alarm. Happily these Arabs were stillmore afraid of them, and were at once plundered by the escort, 'wholaughed at our remonstrances against their injustice.' Wood's _Ruins ofBalbec_, p. 2.[406] He wrote a _Life of Watts_, which Johnson quoted. _Works_, viii.382.[407] See _ante_, iii. 422, note 6.
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