JOHNSON. ‘If Betterton were to walk into this room with Foote, Foote would soon drive him out of it. Foote, Sir, quatenus Foote, has powers superiour to them all.’
On Monday, September 22, when at breakfast, I unguardedly said to Dr. Johnson, ‘I wish I saw you and Mrs. Macaulay together.’ He grew very angry; and, after a pause, while a cloud gathered on his brow, he burst out, ‘No, Sir; you would not see us quarrel, to make you sport. Don’t you know that it is very uncivil to PIT two people against one another?’ Then, checking himself, and wishing to be more gentle, he added, ‘I do not say you should be hanged or drowned for this; but it IS very uncivil.’ Dr. Taylor thought him in the wrong, and spoke to him privately of it; but I afterwards acknowledged to Johnson that I was to blame, for I candidly owned, that I meant to express a desire to see a contest between Mrs. Macaulay and him; but then I knew how the contest would end; so that I was to see him triumph. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, you cannot be sure how a contest will end; and no man has a right to engage two people in a dispute by which their passions may be inflamed, and they may part with bitter resentment against each other. I would sooner keep company with a man from whom I must guard my pockets, than with a man who contrives to bring me into a dispute with somebody that he may hear it. This is the great fault of ——,(naming one of our friends,) endeavouring to introduce a subject upon which he knows two people in the company differ.’ BOSWELL. ‘But he told me, Sir, he does it for instruction.’ JOHNSON. ‘Whatever the motive be, Sir, the man who does so, does very wrong. He has no more right to instruct himself at such risk, than he has to make two people fight a duel, that he may learn how to defend himself.’
He found great fault with a gentleman of our acquaintance for keeping a bad table. ‘Sir, (said he,) when a man is invited to dinner, he is disappointed if he does not get something good. I advised Mrs. Thrale, who has no card-parties at her house, to give sweet-meats, and such good things, in an evening, as are not commonly given, and she would find company enough come to her; for every body loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.’ Such was his attention to the minutiae of life and manners.
Mr. Burke’s Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the affairs of America, being mentioned, Johnson censured the composition much, and he ridiculed the definition of a free government, viz. ‘For any practical purpose, it is what the people think so.’–‘I will let the King of France govern me on those conditions, (said he,) for it is to be governed just as I please.’ And when Dr. Taylor talked of a girl being sent to a parish workhouse, and asked how much she could be obliged to work, ‘Why, (said Johnson,) as much as is reasonable: and what is that? as much as SHE THINKS reasonable.’
Dr. Johnson obligingly proposed to carry me to see Islam, a romantick scene, now belonging to a family of the name of Port, but formerly the seat of the Congreves. I suppose it is well described in some of the Tours. Johnson described it distinctly and vividly, at which I could not but express to him my wonder; because, though my eyes, as he observed, were better than his, I could not by any means equal him in representing visible objects. I said, the difference between us in this respect was as that between a man who has a bad instrument, but plays well on it, and a man who has a good instrument, on which he can play very imperfectly.
I recollect a very fine amphitheatre, surrounded with hills covered with woods, and walks neatly formed along the side of a rocky steep, on the quarter next the house with recesses under projections of rock, overshadowed with trees; in one of which recesses, we were told, Congreve wrote his Old Bachelor. We viewed a remarkable natural curiosity at Islam; two rivers bursting near each other from the rock, not from immediate springs, but after having run for many miles under ground. Plott, in his History of Staffordshire, gives an account of this curiosity; but Johnson would not believe it, though we had the attestation of the gardener, who said, he had put in corks, where the river Manyfold sinks into the ground, and had catched them in a net, placed before one of the openings where the water bursts out. Indeed, such subterraneous courses of water are found in various parts of our globe.
Talking of Dr. Johnson’s unwillingness to believe extraordinary things I ventured to say, ‘Sir, you come near Hume’s argument against miracles, “That it is more probable witnesses should lie, or be mistaken, than that they should happen.” JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right. But the Christian revelation is not proved by the miracles alone, but as connected with prophecies, and with the doctrines in confirmation of which the miracles were wrought.’
In the evening, a gentleman-farmer, who was on a visit at Dr. Taylor’s, attempted to dispute with Johnson in favour of Mungo Campbell, who shot Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune, upon his having fallen, when retreating from his Lordship, who he believed was about to seize his gun, as he had threatened to do. He said, he should have done just as Campbell did. JOHNSON. ‘Whoever would do as Campbell did, deserves to be hanged; not that I could, as a juryman, have found him legally guilty of murder; but I am glad they found means to convict him.’ The gentleman-farmer said, ‘A poor man has as much honour as a rich man; and Campbell had THAT to defend.’ Johnson exclaimed, ‘A poor man has no honour.’ The English yeoman, not dismayed, proceeded: ‘Lord Eglintoune was a damned fool to run on upon Campbell, after being warned that Campbell would shoot him if he did.’ Johnson, who could not bear any thing like swearing, angrily replied, “He was NOT a DAMNED fool: he only thought too well of Campbell. He did not believe Campbell would be such a DAMNED scoundrel, as to do so DAMNED a thing.’ His emphasis on DAMNED, accompanied with frowning looks, reproved his opponent’s want of decorum in HIS presence.
During this interview at Ashbourne, Johnson seemed to be more uniformly social, cheerful, and alert, than I had almost ever seen him. He was prompt on great occasions and on small. Taylor, who praised every thing of his own to excess; in short, ‘whose geese were all swans,’ as the proverb says, expatiated on the excellence of his bull-dog, which, he told us, was ‘perfectly well shaped.’ Johnson, after examining the animal attentively, thus repressed the vain-glory of our host:–‘No, Sir, he is NOT well shaped; for there is not the quick transition from the thickness of the fore-part, to the TENUITY–the thin part–behind,–which a bull-dog ought to have.’ This TENUITY was the only HARD WORD that I heard him use during this interview, and it will be observed, he instantly put another expression in its place. Taylor said, a small bull-dog was as good as a large one. JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; for, in proportion to his size, he has strength: and your argument would prove, that a good bull-dog may be as small as a mouse.’ It was amazing how he entered with perspicuity and keenness upon every thing that occurred in conversation. Most men, whom I know, would no more think of discussing a question about a bull-dog, than of attacking a bull.
I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost. Though a small particular may appear trifling to some, it will be relished by others; while every little spark adds something to the general blaze: and to please the true, candid, warm admirers of Johnson, and in any degree increase the splendour of his reputation, I bid defiance to the shafts of ridicule, or even of malignity. Showers of them have been discharged at my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides; yet it still sails unhurt along the stream of time, and, as an attendant upon Johnson,
‘Pursues the triumph, and partakes the gale.’
One morning after breakfast, when the sun shone bright, we walked out together, and ‘pored’ for some time with placid indolence upon an artificial water-fall, which Dr. Taylor had made by building a strong dyke of stone across the river behind the garden. It was now somewhat obstructed by branches of trees and other rubbish, which had come down the river, and settled close to it. Johnson, partly from a desire to see it play more freely, and partly from that inclination to activity which will animate, at times, the most inert and sluggish mortal, took a long pole which was lying on a bank, and pushed down several parcels of this wreck with painful assiduity, while I stood quietly by, wondering to behold the sage thus curiously employed, and smiling with an humorous satisfaction each time when he carried his point. He worked till he was quite out of breath; and having found a large dead cat so heavy that he could not move it after several efforts, ‘Come,’ said he, (throwing down the pole,) ‘YOU shall take it now;’ which I accordingly did, and being a fresh man, soon made the cat tumble over the cascade. This may be laughed at as too trifling to record; but it is a small characteristick trait in the Flemish picture which I give of my friend, and in which, therefore I mark the most minute particulars. And let it be remembered, that Aesop at play is one of the instructive apologues of antiquity.
Talking of Rochester’s Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens to castrate for the edition of the poets, to which he was to write Prefaces. Dr. Taylor (the only time I ever heard him say any thing witty) observed, that if Rochester had been castrated himself, his exceptionable poems would not have been written.’ I asked if Burnet had not given a good Life of Rochester. JOHNSON. ‘We have a good Death: there is not much Life.’ I asked whether Prior’s Poems were to be printed entire: Johnson said they were. I mentioned Lord Hailes’s censure of Prior, in his Preface to a collection of Sacred Poems, by various hands, published by him at Edinburgh a great many years ago, where he mentions, ‘those impure tales which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious authour.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, Lord Hailes has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hailes thinks there is, he must be more combustible than other people.’ I instanced the tale of Paulo Purganti and his Wife. JOHNSON. Sir, there is nothing there, but that his wife wanted to be kissed when poor Paulo was out of pocket. No, Sir, Prior is a lady’s book. No lady is ashamed to have it standing in her library.’
The hypochondriack disorder being mentioned, Dr. Johnson did not think it so common as I supposed. ‘Dr. Taylor (said he,) is the same one day as another. Burke and Reynolds are the same; Beauclerk, except when in pain, is the same. I am not so myself; but this I do not mention commonly.’
Dr. Johnson advised me to-day, to have as many books about me as I could; that I might read upon any subject upon which I had a desire for instruction at the time. ‘What you read THEN (said he,) you will remember; but if you have not a book immediately ready, and the subject moulds in your mind, it is a chance if you again have a desire to study it.’ He added, ‘If a man never has an eager desire for instruction, he should prescribe a task for himself. But it is better when a man reads from immediate inclination.’
He repeated a good many lines of Horace’s Odes, while we were in the chaise. I remember particularly the Ode Eheu fugaces.
He told me that Bacon was a favourite authour with him; but he had never read his works till he was compiling the English Dictionary, in which, he said, I might see Bacon very often quoted. Mr. Seward recollects his having mentioned, that a Dictionary of the English Language might be compiled from Bacon’s writings alone, and that he had once an intention of giving an edition of Bacon, at least of his English works, and writing the Life of that great man. Had he executed this intention, there can be no doubt that he would have done it in a most masterly manner.
Wishing to be satisfied what degree of truth there was in a story which a friend of Johnson’s and mine had told me to his disadvantage, I mentioned it to him in direct terms; and it was to this effect: that a gentleman who had lived in great intimacy with him, shewn him much kindness, and even relieved him from a spunging-house, having afterwards fallen into bad circumstances, was one day, when Johnson was at dinner with him, seized for debt, and carried to prison; that Johnson sat still undisturbed, and went on eating and drinking; upon which the gentleman’s sister, who was present, could not suppress her indignation: ‘What, Sir, (said she,) are you so unfeeling, as not even to offer to go to my brother in his distress; you who have been so much obliged to him?’ And that Johnson answered, ‘Madam, I owe him no obligation; what he did for me he would have done for a dog.’
Johnson assured me, that the story was absolutely false: but like a man conscious of being in the right, and desirous of completely vindicating himself from such a charge, he did not arrogantly rest on a mere denial, and on his general character, but proceeded thus:–‘Sir, I was very intimate with that gentleman, and was once relieved by him from an arrest; but I never was present when he was arrested, never knew that he was arrested, and I believe he never was in difficulties after the time when he relieved me. I loved him much; yet, in talking of his general character, I may have said, though I do not remember that I ever did say so, that as his generosity proceeded from no principle, but was a part of his profusion, he would do for a dog what he would do for a friend: but I never applied this remark to any particular instance, and certainly not to his kindness to me. If a profuse man, who does not value his money, and gives a large sum to a whore, gives half as much, or an equally large sum to relieve a friend, it cannot be esteemed as virtue. This was all that I could say of that gentleman; and, if said at all, it must have been said after his death. Sir, I would have gone to the world’s end to relieve him. The remark about the dog, if made by me, was such a sally as might escape one when painting a man highly.’
On Tuesday, September 23, Johnson was remarkably cordial to me. It being necessary for me to return to Scotland soon, I had fixed on the next day for my setting out, and I felt a tender concern at the thought of parting with him. He had, at this time, frankly communicated to me many particulars, which are inserted in this work in their proper places; and once, when I happened to mention that the expence of my jaunt would come to much more than I had computed, he said, ‘Why, Sir, if the expence were to be an inconvenience, you would have reason to regret it: but, if you have had the money to spend, I know not that you could have purchased as much pleasure with it in any other way.’
I perceived that he pronounced the word heard, as if spelt with a double e, heerd, instead of sounding it herd, as is most usually done. He said, his reason was, that if it was pronounced herd, there would be a single exception from the English pronunciation of the syllable ear, and he thought it better not to have that exception.
In the evening our gentleman-farmer, and two others, entertained themselves and the company with a great number of tunes on the fiddle. Johnson desired to have ‘Let ambition fire thy mind,’ played over again, and appeared to give a patient attention to it; though he owned to me that he was very insensible to the power of musick. I told him, that it affected me to such a degree, as often to agitate my nerves painfully, producing in my mind alternate sensations of pathetick dejection, so that I was ready to shed tears; and of daring resolution, so that I was inclined to rush into the thickest part of the battle. ‘Sir, (said he,) I should never hear it, if it made me such a fool.’
This evening, while some of the tunes of ordinary composition were played with no great skill, my frame was agitated, and I was conscious of a generous attachment to Dr. Johnson, as my preceptor and friend, mixed with an affectionate regret that he was an old man, whom I should probably lose in a short time. I thought I could defend him at the point of my sword. My reverence and affection for him were in full glow. I said to him, ‘My dear Sir, we must meet every year, if you don’t quarrel with me.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, Sir, you are more likely to quarrel with me, than I with you. My regard for you is greater almost than I have words to express; but I do not choose to be always repeating it; write it down in the first leaf of your pocket-book, and never doubt of it again.’
I talked to him of misery being ‘the doom of man’ in this life, as displayed in his Vanity of Human Wishes. Yet I observed that things were done upon the supposition of happiness; grand houses were built, fine gardens were made, splendid places of publick amusement were contrived, and crowded with company. JOHNSON. ‘Alas, Sir, these are all only struggles for happiness. When I first entered Ranelagh, it gave an expansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I never experienced any where else. But, as Xerxes wept when he viewed his immense army, and considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterwards, so it went to my heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle, that was not afraid to go home and think; but that the thoughts of each individual there, would be distressing when alone.’
I suggested, that being in love, and flattered with hopes of success; or having some favourite scheme in view for the next day, might prevent that wretchedness of which we had been talking. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, it may sometimes be so as you suppose; but my conclusion is in general but too true.’
While Johnson and I stood in calm conference by ourselves in Dr. Taylor’s garden, at a pretty late hour in a serene autumn night, looking up to the heavens, I directed the discourse to the subject of a future state. My friend was in a placid and most benignant frame. ‘Sir, (said he,) I do not imagine that all things will be made clear to us immediately after death, but that the ways of Providence will be explained to us very gradually.’ He talked to me upon this aweful and delicate question in a gentle tone, and as if afraid to be decisive.
After supper I accompanied him to his apartment, and at my request he dictated to me an argument in favour of the negro who was then claiming his liberty, in an action in the Court of Session in Scotland. He had always been very zealous against slavery in every form, in which I, with all deference, thought that he discovered ‘a zeal without knowledge.’ Upon one occasion, when in company with some very grave men at Oxford, his toast was, ‘Here’s to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.’ His violent prejudice against our West Indian and American settlers appeared whenever there was an opportunity. Towards the conclusion of his Taxation no Tyranny, he says, ‘how is it that we hear the loudest YELPS for liberty among the drivers of negroes?’
When I said now to Johnson, that I was afraid I kept him too late up. ‘No, Sir, (said he,) I don’t care though I sit all night with you.’ This was an animated speech from a man in his sixty-ninth year.
Had I been as attentive not to displease him as I ought to have been, I know not but this vigil might have been fulfilled; but I unluckily entered upon the controversy concerning the right of Great-Britain to tax America, and attempted to argue in favour of our fellow-subjects on the other side of the Atlantick. I insisted that America might be very well governed, and made to yield sufficient revenue by the means of INFLUENCE, as exemplified in Ireland, while the people might be pleased with the imagination of their participating of the British constitution, by having a body of representatives, without whose consent money could not be exacted from them. Johnson could not bear my thus opposing his avowed opinion, which he had exerted himself with an extreme degree of heat to enforce; and the violent agitation into which he was thrown, while answering, or rather reprimanding me, alarmed me so, that I heartily repented of my having unthinkingly introduced the subject. I myself, however, grew warm, and the change was great, from the calm state of philosophical discussion in which we had a little before been pleasingly employed.
We were fatigued by the contest, which was produced by my want of caution; and he was not then in the humour to slide into easy and cheerful talk. It therefore so happened, that we were after an hour or two very willing to separate and go to bed.
On Wednesday, September 24, I went into Dr. Johnson’s room before he got up, and finding that the storm of the preceding night was quite laid, I sat down upon his bed-side, and he talked with as much readiness and good-humour as ever. He recommended to me to plant a considerable part of a large moorish farm which I had purchased, and he made several calculations of the expence and profit: for he delighted in exercising his mind on the science of numbers. He pressed upon me the importance of planting at the first in a very sufficient manner, quoting the saying ‘In bello non licet bis errare:’ and adding, ‘this is equally true in planting.’
I spoke with gratitude of Dr. Taylor’s hospitality; and, as evidence that it was not on account of his good table alone that Johnson visited him often, I mentioned a little anecdote which had escaped my friend’s recollection, and at hearing which repeated, he smiled. One evening, when I was sitting with him, Frank delivered this message: ‘Sir, Dr. Taylor sends his compliments to you, and begs you will dine with him to-morrow. He has got a hare.’–‘My compliments (said Johnson,) and I’ll dine with him–hare or rabbit.’
After breakfast I departed, and pursued my journey northwards. I took my post-chaise from the Green Man, a very good inn at Ashbourne, the mistress of which, a mighty civil gentlewoman, courtseying very low, presented me with an engraving of the sign of her house; to which she had subjoined, in her own hand-writing, an address in such singular simplicity of style, that I have preserved it pasted upon one of the boards of my original Journal at this time, and shall here insert it for the amusement of my readers:–
‘M. KILLINGLEY’s duty waits upon Mr. Boswell, is exceedingly obliged to him for this favour; whenever he comes this way, hopes for a continuance of the same. Would Mr. Boswell name the house to his extensive acquaintance, it would be a singular favour conferr’d on one who has it not in her power to make any other return but her most grateful thanks, and sincerest prayers for his happiness in time, and in a blessed eternity.–Tuesday morn.’
I cannot omit a curious circumstance which occurred at Edensor-inn, close by Chatsworth, to survey the magnificence of which I had gone a considerable way out of my road to Scotland. The inn was then kept by a very jolly landlord, whose name, I think, was Malton. He happened to mention that ‘the celebrated Dr. Johnson had been in his house.’ I inquired WHO this Dr. Johnson was, that I might hear mine host’s notion of him. ‘Sir, (said he,) Johnson, the great writer; ODDITY, as they call him. He’s the greatest writer in England; he writes for the ministry; he has a correspondence abroad, and lets them know what’s going on.’
My friend, who had a thorough dependance upon the authenticity of my relation without any EMBELLISHMENT, as FALSEHOOD or FICTION is too gently called, laughed a good deal at this representation of himself.
On Wednesday, March 18,* I arrived in London, and was informed by good Mr. Francis that his master was better, and was gone to Mr. Thrale’s at Streatham, to which place I wrote to him, begging to know when he would be in town. He was not expected for some time; but next day having called on Dr. Taylor, in Dean’s-yard, Westminster, I found him there, and was told he had come to town for a few hours. He met me with his usual kindness, but instantly returned to the writing of something on which he was employed when I came in, and on which he seemed much intent. Finding him thus engaged, I made my visit very short.
* 1778.
On Friday, March 20, I found him at his own house, sitting with Mrs. Williams, and was informed that the room formerly allotted to me was now appropriated to a charitable purpose; Mrs. Desmoulins, and I think her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael, being all lodged in it. Such was his humanity, and such his generosity, that Mrs. Desmoulins herself told me, he allowed her half-a-guinea a week. Let it be remembered, that this was above a twelfth part of his pension.
His liberality, indeed, was at all periods of his life very remarkable. Mr. Howard, of Lichfield, at whose father’s house Johnson had in his early years been kindly received, told me, that when he was a boy at the Charter-House, his father wrote to him to go and pay a visit to Mr. Samuel Johnson, which he accordingly did, and found him in an upper room, of poor appearance. Johnson received him with much courteousness, and talked a great deal to him, as to a school-boy, of the course of his education, and other particulars. When he afterwards came to know and understand the high character of this great man, he recollected his condescension with wonder. He added, that when he was going away, Mr. Johnson presented him with half-a-guinea; and this, said Mr. Howard, was at a time when he probably had not another.
We retired from Mrs. Williams to another room. Tom Davies soon after joined us. He had now unfortunately failed in his circumstances, and was much indebted to Dr. Johnson’s kindness for obtaining for him many alleviations of his distress. After he went away, Johnson blamed his folly in quitting the stage, by which he and his wife got five hundred pounds a year. I said, I believed it was owing to Churchill’s attack upon him,
‘He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone.’
JOHNSON. ‘I believe so too, Sir. But what a man is he, who is to be driven from the stage by a line? Another line would have driven him from his shop.’
He returned next day to Streatham, to Mr. Thrale’s; where, as Mr. Strahan once complained to me, ‘he was in a great measure absorbed from the society of his old friends.’ I was kept in London by business, and wrote to him on the 27th, that a separation from him for a week, when we were so near, was equal to a separation for a year, when we were at four hundred miles distance. I went to Streatham on Monday, March 30. Before he appeared, Mrs. Thrale made a very characteristical remark:–‘I do not know for certain what will please Dr. Johnson: but I know for certain that it will displease him to praise any thing, even what he likes, extravagantly.’
At dinner he laughed at querulous declamations against the age, on account of luxury,–increase of London,–scarcity of provisions,– and other such topicks. ‘Houses (said he,) will be built till rents fall: and corn is more plentiful now than ever it was.’
I had before dinner repeated a ridiculous story told me by an old man who had been a passenger with me in the stage-coach to-day. Mrs. Thrale, having taken occasion to allude to it in talking to me, called it ‘The story told you by the old WOMAN.’–‘Now, Madam, (said I,) give me leave to catch you in the fact; it was not an old WOMAN, but an old MAN, whom I mentioned as having told me this.’ I presumed to take an opportunity, in presence of Johnson, of shewing this lively lady how ready she was, unintentionally, to deviate from exact authenticity of narration.
Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth, even in the most minute particulars. ‘Accustom your children (said he,) constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.’ BOSWELL. ‘It may come to the door: and when once an account is at all varied in one circumstance, it may by degrees be varied so as to be totally different from what really happened.’ Our lively hostess, whose fancy was impatient of the rein, fidgeted at this, and ventured to say, ‘Nay, this is too much. If Mr. Johnson should forbid me to drink tea, I would comply, as I should feel the restraint only twice a day; but little variations in narrative must happen a thousand times a day, if one is not perpetually watching.’ JOHNSON. ‘Well, Madam, and you OUGHT to be perpetually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.’
He was indeed so much impressed with the prevalence of falsehood, voluntary or unintentional, that I never knew any person who upon hearing an extraordinary circumstance told, discovered more of the incredulus odi. He would say, with a significant look and decisive tone, ‘It is not so. Do not tell this again.’ He inculcated upon all his friends the importance of perpetual vigilance against the slightest degrees of falsehood; the effect of which, as Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me, has been, that all who were of his SCHOOL are distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy, which they would not have possessed in the same degree, if they had not been acquainted with Johnson.
Talking of ghosts, he said, ‘It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.’
He said, ‘John Wesley’s conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do.’
On Friday, April 3, I dined with him in London, in a company* where were present several eminent men, whom I shall not name, but distinguish their parts in the conversation by different letters.
* The Club. Hill identifies E. as Burke and J. as Sir Joshua Reynolds.–ED.
E. ‘We hear prodigious complaints at present of emigration. I am convinced that emigration makes a country more populous.’ J. ‘That sounds very much like a paradox.’ E. ‘Exportation of men, like exportation of all other commodities, makes more be produced.’ JOHNSON. ‘But there would be more people were there not emigration, provided there were food for more.’ E. ‘No; leave a few breeders, and you’ll have more people than if there were no emigration.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, Sir, it is plain there will be more people, if there are more breeders. Thirty cows in good pasture will produce more calves than ten cows, provided they have good bulls.’ E. ‘There are bulls enough in Ireland.’ JOHNSON. (smiling,) ‘So, Sir, I should think from your argument.’
E. ‘I believe, in any body of men in England, I should have been in the Minority; I have always been in the Minority.’ P. ‘The House of Commons resembles a private company. How seldom is any man convinced by another’s argument; passion and pride rise against it.’ R. ‘What would be the consequence, if a Minister, sure of a majority in the House of Commons, should resolve that there should be no speaking at all upon his side.’ E. ‘He must soon go out. That has been tried; but it was found it would not do.’ . . . .
JOHNSON. ‘I have been reading Thicknesse’s Travels, which I think are entertaining.’ BOSWELL. ‘What, Sir, a good book?’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, to read once; I do not say you are to make a study of it, and digest it; and I believe it to be a true book in his intention.’
E. ‘From the experience which I have had,–and I have had a great deal,–I have learnt to think BETTER of mankind.’ JOHNSON. ‘From my experience I have found them worse in commercial dealings, more disposed to cheat, than I had any notion of; but more disposed to do one another good than I had conceived.’ J. ‘Less just and more beneficent.’ JOHNSON. ‘And really it is wonderful, considering how much attention is necessary for men to take care of themselves, and ward off immediate evils which press upon them, it is wonderful how much they do for others. As it is said of the greatest liar, that he tells more truth than falsehood; so it may be said of the worst man, that he does more good than evil.’ BOSWELL. ‘Perhaps from experience men may be found HAPPIER than we suppose.’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; the more we enquire, we shall find men the less happy.’
E. ‘I understand the hogshead of claret, which this society was favoured with by our friend the Dean, is nearly out; I think he should be written to, to send another of the same kind. Let the request be made with a happy ambiguity of expression, so that we may have the chance of his sending IT also as a present.’ JOHNSON. ‘I am willing to offer my services as secretary on this occasion.’ P. ‘As many as are for Dr. Johnson being secretary hold up your hands.–Carried unanimously.’ BOSWELL. ‘He will be our Dictator.’ JOHNSON. ‘No, the company is to dictate to me. I am only to write for wine; and I am quite disinterested, as I drink none; I shall not be suspected of having forged the application. I am no more than humble SCRIBE.’ E. ‘Then you shall PREscribe.’ BOSWELL. ‘Very well. The first play of words to-day.’ J. ‘No, no; the BULLS in Ireland.’ JOHNSON. ‘Were I your Dictator you should have no wine. It would be my business cavere ne quid detrimenti Respublica caperet, and wine is dangerous. Rome was ruined by luxury,’ (smiling.) E. ‘If you allow no wine as Dictator, you shall not have me for your master of horse.’
On Saturday, April 4, I drank tea with Johnson at Dr. Taylor’s, where he had dined.
He was very silent this evening; and read in a variety of books: suddenly throwing down one, and taking up another.
He talked of going to Streatham that night. TAYLOR. ‘You’ll be robbed if you do: or you must shoot a highwayman. Now I would rather be robbed than do that; I would not shoot a highwayman.’ JOHNSON. ‘But I would rather shoot him in the instant when he is attempting to rob me, than afterwards swear against him at the Old- Bailey, to take away his life, after he has robbed me. I am surer I am right in the one case than in the other. I may be mistaken as to the man, when I swear: I cannot be mistaken, if I shoot him in the act. Besides, we feel less reluctance to take away a man’s life, when we are heated by the injury, than to do it at a distance of time by an oath, after we have cooled.’ BOSWELL. ‘So, Sir, you would rather act from the motive of private passion, than that of publick advantage.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, Sir, when I shoot the highwayman I act from both.’ BOSWELL. ‘Very well, very well– There is no catching him.’ JOHNSON. ‘At the same time one does not know what to say. For perhaps one may, a year after, hang himself from uneasiness for having shot a man. Few minds are fit to be trusted with so great a thing.’ BOSWELL. ‘Then, Sir, you would not shoot him?’ JOHNSON. ‘But I might be vexed afterwards for that too.’
Thrale’s carriage not having come for him, as he expected, I accompanied him some part of the way home to his own house. I told him, that I had talked of him to Mr. Dunning a few days before, and had said, that in his company we did not so much interchange conversation, as listen to him; and that Dunning observed, upon this, ‘One is always willing to listen to Dr. Johnson:’ to which I answered, ‘That is a great deal from you, Sir.’–‘Yes, Sir, (said Johnson,) a great deal indeed. Here is a man willing to listen, to whom the world is listening all the rest of the year.’ BOSWELL. ‘I think, Sir, it is right to tell one man of such a handsome thing, which has been said of him by another. It tends to increase benevolence.’ JOHNSON. ‘Undoubtedly it is right, Sir.’
On Tuesday, April 7, I breakfasted with him at his house. He said, ‘nobody was content.’ I mentioned to him a respectable person in Scotland whom he knew; and I asserted, that I really believed he was always content. JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir, he is not content with the present; he has always some new scheme, some new plantation, something which is future. You know he was not content as a widower; for he married again.’ BOSWELL. ‘But he is not restless.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, he is only locally at rest. A chymist is locally at rest; but his mind is hard at work. This gentleman has done with external exertions. It is too late for him to engage in distant projects.’ BOSWELL. ‘He seems to amuse himself quite well; to have his attention fixed, and his tranquillity preserved by very small matters. I have tried this; but it would not do with me.’ JOHNSON. (laughing,) ‘No, Sir; it must be born with a man to be contented to take up with little things. Women have a great advantage that they may take up with little things, without disgracing themselves: a man cannot, except with fiddling. Had I learnt to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.’ BOSWELL. ‘Pray, Sir, did you ever play on any musical instrument?’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir. I once bought me a flagelet; but I never made out a tune.’ BOSWELL. ‘A flagelet, Sir!–so small an instrument? I should have liked to hear you play on the violoncello. THAT should have been YOUR instrument.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, I might as well have played on the violoncello as another; but I should have done nothing else. No, Sir; a man would never undertake great things, could he be amused with small. I once tried knotting. Dempster’s sister undertook to teach me; but I could not learn it.’ BOSWELL. ‘So, Sir; it will be related in pompous narrative, “Once for his amusement he tried knotting; nor did this Hercules disdain the distaff.”‘ JOHNSON. ‘Knitting of stockings is a good amusement. As a freeman of Aberdeen I should be a knitter of stockings.’ He asked me to go down with him and dine at Mr. Thrale’s at Streatham, to which I agreed. I had lent him An Account of Scotland, in 1702, written by a man of various enquiry, an English chaplain to a regiment stationed there. JOHNSON. ‘It is sad stuff, Sir, miserably written, as books in general then were. There is now an elegance of style universally diffused. No man now writes so ill as Martin’s Account of the Hebrides is written. A man could not write so ill, if he should try. Set a merchant’s clerk now to write, and he’ll do better.’
He talked to me with serious concern of a certain female friend’s ‘laxity of narration, and inattention to truth.’–‘I am as much vexed (said he,) at the ease with which she hears it mentioned to her, as at the thing itself. I told her, “Madam, you are contented to hear every day said to you, what the highest of mankind have died for, rather than bear.”–You know, Sir, the highest of mankind have died rather than bear to be told they had uttered a falsehood. Do talk to her of it: I am weary.’
BOSWELL. ‘Was not Dr. John Campbell a very inaccurate man in his narrative, Sir? He once told me, that he drank thirteen bottles of port at a sitting.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever lied with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he told you in conversation: if there was fact mixed with it. However, I loved Campbell: he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for religion. Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; and he did nothing grossly wrong that I have heard.’
Talking of drinking wine, he said, ‘I did not leave off wine, because I could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it. University College has witnessed this.’ BOSWELL. ‘Why, then, Sir, did you leave it off?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, because it is so much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated, never to lose the power over himself. I shall not begin to drink wine again, till I grow old, and want it.’ BOSWELL. ‘I think, Sir, you once said to me, that not to drink wine was a great deduction from life.’ JOHNSON. ‘It is a diminution of pleasure, to be sure; but I do not say a diminution of happiness. There is more happiness in being rational.’ BOSWELL. ‘But if we could have pleasure always, should not we be happy? The greatest part of men would compound for pleasure.’ JOHNSON. ‘Supposing we could have pleasure always, an intellectual man would not compound for it. The greatest part of men would compound, because the greatest part of men are gross.’
I mentioned to him that I had become very weary in a company where I heard not a single intellectual sentence, except that ‘a man who had been settled ten years in Minorca was become a much inferiour man to what he was in London, because a man’s mind grows narrow in a narrow place.’ JOHNSON. ‘A man’s mind grows narrow in a narrow place, whose mind is enlarged only because he has lived in a large place: but what is got by books and thinking is preserved in a narrow place as well as in a large place. A man cannot know modes of life as well in Minorca as in London; but he may study mathematicks as well in Minorca.’ BOSWELL. ‘I don’t know, Sir: if you had remained ten years in the Isle of Col, you would not have been the man that you now are.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, if I had been there from fifteen to twenty-five; but not if from twenty-five to thirty-five.’ BOSWELL. ‘I own, Sir, the spirits which I have in London make me do every thing with more readiness and vigour. I can talk twice as much in London as any where else.’
Of Goldsmith he said, ‘He was not an agreeable companion, for he talked always for fame. A man who does so never can be pleasing. The man who talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you. An eminent friend of ours is not so agreeable as the variety of his knowledge would otherwise make him, because he talks partly from ostentation.’
Soon after our arrival at Thrale’s, I heard one of the maids calling eagerly on another, to go to Dr. Johnson. I wondered what this could mean. I afterwards learnt, that it was to give her a Bible, which he had brought from London as a present to her.
He was for a considerable time occupied in reading Memoires de Fontenelle, leaning and swinging upon the low gate into the court, without his hat.
At dinner, Mrs. Thrale expressed a wish to go and see Scotland. JOHNSON. ‘Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England. It is seeing the flower gradually fade away to the naked stalk. Seeing the Hebrides, indeed, is seeing quite a different scene.’
On Thursday, April 9, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, with the Bishop of St. Asaph, (Dr. Shipley,) Mr. Allan Ramsay, Mr. Gibbon, Mr. Cambridge, and Mr. Langton.
Goldsmith being mentioned, Johnson observed, that it was long before his merit came to be acknowledged. That he once complained to him, in ludicrous terms of distress, ‘Whenever I write any thing, the publick MAKE A POINT to know nothing about it:’ but that his Traveller brought him into high reputation. LANGTON. ‘There is not one bad line in that poem; not one of Dryden’s careless verses. SIR JOSHUA. ‘I was glad to hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English language.’ LANGTON. ‘Why was you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before.’ JOHNSON. ‘No; the merit of The Traveller is so well established, that Mr. Fox’s praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it.’ SIR JOSHUA. ‘But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him.’ JOHNSON. Nay, Sir, the partiality of his friends was always against him. It was with difficulty we could give him a hearing. Goldsmith had no settled notions upon any subject; so he talked always at random. It seemed to be his intention to blurt out whatever was in his mind, and see what would become of it. He was angry too, when catched in an absurdity; but it did not prevent him from falling into another the next minute. I remember Chamier, after talking with him for some time, said, “Well, I do believe he wrote this poem himself: and, let me tell you, that is believing a great deal.” Chamier once asked him, what he meant by slow, the last word in the first line of The Traveller,
“Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.”
Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something without consideration, answered, “Yes.” I was sitting by, and said, “No, Sir; you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean, that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude.” Chamier believed then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me write it. Goldsmith, however, was a man, who, whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do. He deserved a place in Westminster-Abbey, and every year he lived, would have deserved it better. He had, indeed, been at no pains to fill his mind with knowledge. He transplanted it from one place to another; and it did not settle in his mind; so he could not tell what was in his own books.’
We talked of living in the country. JOHNSON. ‘No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance: if he is to shut himself up for a year to study a science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he shall walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life; and “The proper study of mankind is man,” as Pope observes.’ BOSWELL. ‘I fancy London is the best place for society; though I have heard that the very first society of Paris is still beyond any thing that we have here.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, I question if in Paris such a company as is sitting round this table could be got together in less than half a year. They talk in France of the felicity of men and women living together: the truth is, that there the men are not higher than the women, they know no more than the women do, and they are not held down in their conversation by the presence of women.’
We talked of old age. Johnson (now in his seventieth year,) said, ‘It is a man’s own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.’ The Bishop asked, if an old man does not lose faster than he gets. JOHNSON. ‘I think not, my Lord, if he exerts himself.’ One of the company rashly observed, that he thought it was happy for an old man that insensibility comes upon him. JOHNSON. (with a noble elevation and disdain,) ‘No, Sir, I should never be happy by being less rational.’ BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH. ‘Your wish then, Sir, is [Greek text omitted].’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, my Lord.’
This season there was a whimsical fashion in the newspapers of applying Shakspeare’s words to describe living persons well known in the world; which was done under the title of Modern Characters from Shakspeare; many of which were admirably adapted. The fancy took so much, that they were afterwards collected into a pamphlet. Somebody said to Johnson, across the table, that he had not been in those characters. ‘Yes (said he,) I have. I should have been sorry to be left out.’ He then repeated what had been applied to him,
‘I must borrow GARAGANTUA’S mouth.’
Miss Reynolds not perceiving at once the meaning of this, he was obliged to explain it to her, which had something of an aukward and ludicrous effect. ‘Why, Madam, it has a reference to me, as using big words, which require the mouth of a giant to pronounce them. Garagantua is the name of a giant in Rabelais.’ BOSWELL. ‘But, Sir, there is another amongst them for you:
“He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for his power to thunder.”‘
JOHNSON. ‘There is nothing marked in that. No, Sir, Garagantua is the best.’ Notwithstanding this ease and good humour, when I, a little while afterwards, repeated his sarcasm on Kenrick, which was received with applause, he asked, ‘WHO said that?’ and on my suddenly answering, Garagantua, he looked serious, which was a sufficient indication that he did not wish it to be kept up.
When we went to the drawing-room there was a rich assemblage. Besides the company who had been at dinner, there were Mr. Garrick, Mr. Harris of Salisbury, Dr. Percy, Dr. Burney, Honourable Mrs. Cholmondeley, Miss Hannah More, &c. &c.
After wandering about in a kind of pleasing distraction for some time, I got into a corner, with Johnson, Garrick, and Harris. GARRICK. (to Harris,) ‘Pray, Sir, have you read Potter’s Aeschylus?’ HARRIS. ‘Yes; and think it pretty.’ GARRICK. (to Johnson,) ‘And what think you, Sir, of it?’ JOHNSON. ‘I thought what I read of it VERBIAGE: but upon Mr. Harris’s recommendation, I will read a play. (To Mr. Harris,) Don’t prescribe two.’ Mr. Harris suggested one, I do not remember which. JOHNSON. ‘We must try its effect as an English poem; that is the way to judge of the merit of a translation. Translations are, in general, for people who cannot read the original.’ I mentioned the vulgar saying, that Pope’s Homer was not a good representation of the original. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, it is the greatest work of the kind that has ever been produced.’ BOSWELL. ‘The truth is, it is impossible perfectly to translate poetry. In a different language it may be the same tune, but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a flagelet.’ HARRIS. ‘I think Heroick poetry is best in blank verse; yet it appears that rhyme is essential to English poetry, from our deficiency in metrical quantities. In my opinion, the chief excellence of our language is numerous prose.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before his time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded.’
GARRICK. ‘Of all the translations that ever were attempted, I think Elphinston’s Martial the most extraordinary. He consulted me upon it, who am a little of an epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely, “You don’t seem to have that turn.” I asked him if he was serious; and finding he was, I advised him against publishing. Why, his translation is more difficult to understand than the original. I thought him a man of some talents; but he seems crazy in this.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, you have done what I had not courage to do. But he did not ask my advice, and I did not force it upon him, to make him angry with me.’ GARRICK. ‘But as a friend, Sir–.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, such a friend as I am with him– no.’ GARRICK. ‘But if you see a friend going to tumble over a precipice?’ JOHNSON. ‘That is an extravagant case, Sir. You are sure a friend will thank you for hindering him from tumbling over a precipice; but, in the other case, I should hurt his vanity, and do him no good. He would not take my advice. His brother-in-law, Strahan, sent him a subscription of fifty pounds, and said he would send him fifty more, if he would not publish.’ GARRICK. ‘What! eh! is Strahan a good judge of an Epigram? Is not he rather an OBTUSE man, eh?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, he may not be a judge of an Epigram: but you see he is a judge of what is not an Epigram.’ BOSWELL. ‘It is easy for you, Mr. Garrick, to talk to an authour as you talked to Elphinston; you, who have been so long the manager of a theatre, rejecting the plays of poor authours. You are an old Judge, who have often pronounced sentence of death. You are a practiced surgeon, who have often amputated limbs; and though this may have been for the good of your patients, they cannot like you. Those who have undergone a dreadful operation, are not very fond of seeing the operator again.’ GARRICK. ‘Yes, I know enough of that. There was a reverend gentleman, (Mr. Hawkins,) who wrote a tragedy, the SIEGE of something, which I refused.’ HARRIS. ‘So, the siege was raised.’ JOHNSON. ‘Ay, he came to me and complained; and told me, that Garrick said his play was wrong in the CONCOCTION. Now, what is the concoction of a play?’ (Here Garrick started, and twisted himself, and seemed sorely vexed; for Johnson told me, he believed the story was true.) GARRICK. ‘I–I–I–said FIRST concoction.’ JOHNSON. (smiling,) ‘Well, he left out FIRST. And Rich, he said, refused him IN FALSE ENGLISH: he could shew it under his hand.’ GARRICK. ‘He wrote to me in violent wrath, for having refused his play: “Sir, this is growing a very serious and terrible affair. I am resolved to publish my play. I will appeal to the world; and how will your judgement appear?” I answered, “Sir, notwithstanding all the seriousness, and all the terrours, I have no objection to your publishing your play; and as you live at a great distance, (Devonshire, I believe,) if you will send it to me, I will convey it to the press.” I never heard more of it, ha! ha! ha!’
On Friday, April 10, I found Johnson at home in the morning. We resumed the conversation of yesterday. He put me in mind of some of it which had escaped my memory, and enabled me to record it more perfectly than I otherwise could have done. He was much pleased with my paying so great attention to his recommendation in 1763, the period when our acquaintance began, that I should keep a journal; and I could perceive he was secretly pleased to find so much of the fruit of his mind preserved; and as he had been used to imagine and say that he always laboured when he said a good thing– it delighted him, on a review, to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.
I said to him, ‘You were yesterday, Sir, in remarkably good humour: but there was nothing to offend you, nothing to produce irritation or violence. There was no bold offender. There was not one capital conviction. It was a maiden assize. You had on your white gloves.’
He found fault with our friend Langton for having been too silent. ‘Sir, (said I,) you will recollect, that he very properly took up Sir Joshua for being glad that Charles Fox had praised Goldsmith’s Traveller, and you joined him.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, I knocked Fox on the head, without ceremony. Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present. He is under the Fox star and the Irish constellation. He is always under some planet.’ BOSWELL. ‘There is no Fox star.’ JOHNSON. ‘But there is a dog star.’ BOSWELL. ‘They say, indeed, a fox and a dog are the same animal.’
We dined together with Mr. Scott (now Sir William Scott his Majesty’s Advocate General,) at his chambers in the Temple, nobody else there. The company being small, Johnson was not in such spirits as he had been the preceding day, and for a considerable time little was said.
Talking of fame, for which there is so great a desire, I observed how little there is of it in reality, compared with the other objects of human attention. ‘Let every man recollect, and he will be sensible how small a part of his time is employed in talking or thinking of Shakspeare, Voltaire, or any of the most celebrated men that have ever lived, or are now supposed to occupy the attention and admiration of the world. Let this be extracted and compressed; into what a narrow space will it go!’ I then slily introduced Mr. Garrick’s fame, and his assuming the airs of a great man. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, it is wonderful how LITTLE Garrick assumes. No, Sir, Garrick fortunam reverenter habet. Consider, Sir: celebrated men, such as you have mentioned, have had their applause at a distance; but Garrick had it dashed in his face, sounded in his ears, and went home every night with the plaudits of a thousand in his CRANIUM. Then, Sir, Garrick did not FIND, but MADE his way to the tables, the levees, and almost the bed-chambers of the great. Then, Sir, Garrick had under him a numerous body of people; who, from fear of his power, and hopes of his favour, and admiration of his talents, were constantly submissive to him. And here is a man who has advanced the dignity of his profession. Garrick has made a player a higher character.’ SCOTT. ‘And he is a very sprightly writer too.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir; and all this supported by great wealth of his own acquisition. If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me, to knock down every body that stood in the way. Consider, if all this had happened to Cibber or Quin, they’d have jumped over the moon– Yet Garrick speaks to US.’ (smiling.) BOSWELL. ‘And Garrick is a very good man, a charitable man.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, a liberal man. He has given away more money than any man in England. There may be a little vanity mixed; but he has shewn, that money is not his first object.’ BOSWELL. ‘Yet Foote used to say of him, that he walked out with an intention to do a generous action; but, turning the corner of a street, he met with the ghost of a half-penny, which frightened him.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, that is very true, too; for I never knew a man of whom it could be said with less certainty to-day, what he will do to-morrow, than Garrick; it depends so much on his humour at the time.’ SCOTT. ‘I am glad to hear of his liberality. He has been represented as very saving.’ JOHNSON. ‘With his domestick saving we have nothing to do. I remember drinking tea with him long ago, when Peg Woffington made it, and he grumbled at her for making it too strong.* He had then begun to feel money in his purse, and did not know when he should have enough of it.’
* When Johnson told this little anecdote to Sir Joshua Reynolds, he mentioned a circumstance which he omitted to-day:–‘Why, (said Garrick,) it is as red as blood.’–BOSWELL.
We talked of war. JOHNSON. ‘Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.’ BOSWELL. ‘Lord Mansfield does not.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, if Lord Mansfield were in a company of General Officers and Admirals who have been in service, he would shrink; he’d wish to creep under the table.’ BOSWELL. ‘No; he’d think he could TRY them all.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, if he could catch them: but they’d try him much sooner. No, Sir; were Socrates and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden both present in any company, and Socrates to say, “Follow me, and hear a lecture on philosophy;” and Charles, laying his hand on his sword, to say, “Follow me, and dethrone the Czar;” a man would be ashamed to follow Socrates. Sir, the impression is universal; yet it is strange.’
He talked of Mr. Charles Fox, of whose abilities he thought highly, but observed, that he did not talk much at our CLUB. I have heard Mr. Gibbon remark, ‘that Mr. Fox could not be afraid of Dr. Johnson; yet he certainly was very shy of saying any thing in Dr. Johnson’s presence.’
He expressed great indignation at the imposture of the Cock-lane Ghost, and related, with much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting the cheat, and had published an account of it in the news-papers. Upon this subject I incautiously offended him, by pressing him with too many questions, and he shewed his displeasure. I apologised, saying that ‘I asked questions in order to be instructed and entertained; I repaired eagerly to the fountain; but that the moment he gave me a hint, the moment he put a lock upon the well, I desisted.’–‘But, Sir, (said he), that is forcing one to do a disagreeable thing:’ and he continued to rate me. ‘Nay, Sir, (said I,) when you have put a lock upon the well, so that I can no longer drink, do not make the fountain of your wit play upon me and wet me.’
He sometimes could not bear being teazed with questions. I was once present when a gentleman asked so many as, ‘What did you do, Sir?’ ‘What did you say, Sir?’ that he at last grew enraged, and said, ‘I will not be put to the QUESTION. Don’t you consider, Sir, that these are not the manners of a gentleman? I will not be baited with WHAT, and WHY; what is this? what is that? why is a cow’s tail long? why is a fox’s tail bushy?’ The gentleman, who was a good deal out of countenance, said, ‘Why, Sir, you are so good, that I venture to trouble you.’ Johnson. ‘Sir, my being so GOOD is no reason why you should be so ILL.’
He talked with an uncommon animation of travelling into distant countries; that the mind was enlarged by it, and that an acquisition of dignity of character was derived from it. He expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I really believed I should go and see the wall of China had I not children, of whom it was my duty to take care. ‘Sir, (said he,) by doing so, you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China. I am serious, Sir.’
When we had left Mr. Scott’s, he said ‘Will you go home with me?’ ‘Sir, (said I,) it is late; but I’ll go with you for three minutes.’ JOHNSON. ‘Or four.’ We went to Mrs. Williams’s room, where we found Mr. Allen the printer, who was the landlord of his house in Bolt-court, a worthy, obliging man, and his very old acquaintance; and what was exceedingly amusing, though he was of a very diminutive size, he used, even in Johnson’s presence, to imitate the stately periods and slow and solemn utterance of the great man.–I this evening boasted, that although I did not write what is called stenography, or short-hand, in appropriated characters devised for the purpose, I had a method of my own of writing half words, and leaving out some altogether so as yet to keep the substance and language of any discourse which I had heard so much in view, that I could give it very completely soon after I had taken it down.
On Sunday, April 12, I found him at home before dinner. He and I, and Mrs. Williams, went to dine with the Reverend Dr. Percy.
And here I shall record a scene of too much heat between Dr. Johnson and Dr. Percy, which I should have suppressed, were it not that it gave occasion to display the truely tender and benevolent heart of Johnson, who, as soon as he found a friend was at all hurt by any thing which he had ‘said in his wrath,’ was not only prompt and desirous to be reconciled, but exerted himself to make ample reparation.
Books of Travels having been mentioned, Johnson praised Pennant very highly, as he did at Dunvegan, in the Isle of Sky. Dr. Percy, knowing himself to be the heir male of the ancient Percies, and having the warmest and most dutiful attachment to the noble House of Northumberland, could not sit quietly and hear a man praised, who had spoken disrespectfully of Alnwick-Castle and the Duke’s pleasure grounds, especially as he thought meanly of his travels. He therefore opposed Johnson eagerly. JOHNSON. ‘Pennant in what he has said of Alnwick, has done what he intended; he has made you very angry.’ PERCY. ‘He has said the garden is TRIM, which is representing it like a citizen’s parterre, when the truth is, there is a very large extent of fine turf and gravel walks.’ JOHNSON. ‘According to your own account, Sir, Pennant is right. It IS trim. Here is grass cut close, and gravel rolled smooth. Is not that trim? The extent is nothing against that; a mile may be as trim as a square yard. Your extent puts me in mind of the citizen’s enlarged dinner, two pieces of roast-beef, and two puddings. There is no variety, no mind exerted in laying out the ground, no trees.’ PERCY. ‘He pretends to give the natural history of Northumberland, and yet takes no notice of the immense number of trees planted there of late.’ JOHNSON. ‘That, Sir, has nothing to do with the NATURAL history; that is CIVIL history. A man who gives the natural history of the oak, is not to tell how many oaks have been planted in this place or that. A man who gives the natural history of the cow, is not to tell how many cows are milked at Islington. The animal is the same, whether milked in the Park or at Islington.’ PERCY. ‘Pennant does not describe well; a carrier who goes along the side of Loch-lomond would describe it better.’ JOHNSON. ‘I think he describes very well.’ PERCY. ‘I travelled after him.’ JOHNSON. ‘And I travelled after him.’ PERCY. ‘But, my good friend, you are short-sighted, and do not see so well as I do.’ I wondered at Dr. Percy’s venturing thus. Dr. Johnson said nothing at the time; but inflammable particles were collecting for a cloud to burst. In a little while Dr. Percy said something more in disparagement of Pennant. JOHNSON. (pointedly,) ‘This is the resentment of a narrow mind, because he did not find every thing in Northumberland.’ PERCY. (feeling the stroke,) ‘Sir, you may be as rude as you please.’ JOHNSON. ‘Hold, Sir! Don’t talk of rudeness; remember, Sir, you told me (puffing hard with passion struggling for a vent,) I was shortsighted. We have done with civility. We are to be as rude as we please.’ PERCY. ‘Upon my honour, Sir, I did not mean to be uncivil.’ JOHNSON. ‘I cannot say so, Sir; for I DID mean to be uncivil, thinking YOU had been uncivil.’ Dr. Percy rose, ran up to him, and taking him by the hand, assured him affectionately that his meaning had been misunderstood; upon which a reconciliation instantly took place. JOHNSON. ‘My dear Sir, I am willing you shall HANG Pennant.’ PERCY. (resuming the former subject,) ‘Pennant complains that the helmet is not hung out to invite to the hall of hospitality. Now I never heard that it was a custom to hang out a HELMET.’ JOHNSON. ‘Hang him up, hang him up.’ BOSWELL. (humouring the joke,) ‘Hang out his skull instead of a helmet, and you may drink ale out of it in your hall of Odin, as he is your enemy; that will be truly ancient. THERE will be Northern Antiquities.’ JOHNSON. ‘He’s a WHIG, Sir; a SAD DOG. (smiling at his own violent expressions, merely for political difference of opinion.) But he’s the best traveller I ever read; he observes more things than any one else does.’
On Monday, April 13, I dined with Johnson at Mr. Langton’s, where were Dr. Porteus, then Bishop of Chester, now of London, and Dr. Stinton. He was at first in a very silent mood. Before dinner he said nothing but ‘Pretty baby,’ to one of the children. Langton said very well to me afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson’s conversation before dinner, as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus:–
‘CHAP. LXXII. Concerning snakes.
‘There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.’
Mr. Topham Beauclerk came in the evening, and he and Dr. Johnson and I staid to supper. It was mentioned that Dr. Dodd had once wished to be a member of THE LITERARY CLUB. JOHNSON. ‘I should be sorry if any of our Club were hanged. I will not say but some of them deserve it.’ BEAUCLERK. (supposing this to be aimed at persons for whom he had at that time a wonderful fancy, which, however, did not last long,) was irritated, and eagerly said, ‘You, Sir, have a friend, (naming him) who deserves to be hanged; for he speaks behind their backs against those with whom he lives on the best terms, and attacks them in the newspapers. HE certainly ought to be KICKED.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, we all do this in some degree, “Veniam petimus damusque vicissim.” To be sure it may be done so much, that a man may deserve to be kicked.’ BEAUCLERK. ‘He is very malignant.’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; he is not malignant. He is mischievous, if you will. He would do no man an essential injury; he may, indeed, love to make sport of people by vexing their vanity. I, however, once knew an old gentleman who was absolutely malignant. He really wished evil to others, and rejoiced at it.’ BOSWELL. ‘The gentleman, Mr. Beauclerk, against whom you are so violent, is, I know, a man of good principles.’ BEAUCLERK. ‘Then he does not wear them out in practice.’
Dr. Johnson, who, as I have observed before, delighted in discrimination of character, and having a masterly knowledge of human nature, was willing to take men as they are, imperfect and with a mixture of good and bad qualities, I suppose though he had said enough in defence of his friend, of whose merits, notwithstanding his exceptional points, he had a just value; and added no more on the subject.
On Wednesday, April 15, I dined with Dr. Johnson at Mr. Dilly’s, and was in high spirits, for I had been a good part of the morning with Mr. Orme, the able and eloquent historian of Hindostan, who expressed a great admiration of Johnson. ‘I do not care (said he,) on what subject Johnson talks; but I love better to hear him talk than any body. He either gives you new thoughts, or a new colouring. It is a shame to the nation that he has not been more liberally rewarded. Had I been George the Third, and thought as he did about America, I would have given Johnson three hundred a year for his Taxation no Tyranny alone.’ I repeated this, and Johnson was much pleased with such praise from such a man as Orme.
At Mr. Dilly’s to-day were Mrs. Knowles, the ingenious Quaker lady, Miss Seward, the poetess of Lichfield, the Reverend Dr. Mayo, and the Rev. Mr. Beresford, Tutor to the Duke of Bedford. Before dinner Dr. Johnson seized upon Mr. Charles Sheridan’s Account of the late Revolution in Sweden, and seemed to read it ravenously, as if he devoured it, which was to all appearance his method of studying. ‘He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs. Knowles;) he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.’ He kept it wrapt up in the tablecloth in his lap during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one entertainment in readiness when he should have finished another; resembling (if I may use so coarse a simile) a dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he eats something else which has been thrown to him.
The subject of cookery having been very naturally introduced at a table where Johnson, who boasted of the niceness of his palate, owned that ‘he always found a good dinner,’ he said, ‘I could write a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written; it should be a book upon philosophical principles. Pharmacy is now made much more simple. Cookery may be made so too. A prescription which is now compounded of five ingredients, had formerly fifty in it. So in cookery, if the nature of the ingredients be well known, much fewer will do. Then as you cannot make bad meat good, I would tell what is the best butcher’s meat, the best beef, the best pieces; how to choose young fowls; the proper seasons of different vegetables; and then how to roast and boil, and compound.’ DILLY. ‘Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery, which is the best, was written by Dr. Hill. Half the TRADE know this.’ JOHNSON. ‘Well, Sir. This shews how much better the subject of cookery may be treated by a philosopher. I doubt if the book be written by Dr. Hill; for, in Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery, which I have looked into, salt-petre and sal-prunella are spoken of as different substances whereas sal-prunella is only salt-petre burnt on charcoal; and Hill could not be ignorant of this. However, as the greatest part of such a book is made by transcription, this mistake may have been carelessly adopted. But you shall see what a Book of Cookery I shall make! I shall agree with Mr. Dilly for the copy-right.’ Miss SEWARD. ‘That would be Hercules with the distaff indeed.’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Madam. Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of Cookery.’
Mrs. Knowles affected to complain that men had much more liberty allowed them than women. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Madam, women have all the liberty they should wish to have. We have all the labour and the danger, and the women all the advantage. We go to sea, we build houses, we do everything, in short, to pay our court to the women.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘The Doctor reasons very wittily, but not convincingly. Now, take the instance of building; the mason’s wife, if she is ever seen in liquor, is ruined; the mason may get himself drunk as often as he pleases, with little loss of character; nay, may let his wife and children starve.’ JOHNSON. ‘Madam, you must consider, if the mason does get himself drunk, and let his wife and children starve, the parish will oblige him to find security for their maintenance. We have different modes of restraining evil. Stocks for the men, a ducking-stool for women, and a pound for beasts. If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honour. And women have not the same temptations that we have: they may always live in virtuous company; men must mix in the world indiscriminately. If a woman has no inclination to do what is wrong being secured from it is no restraint to her. I am at liberty to walk into the Thames; but if I were to try it, my friends would restrain me in Bedlam, and I should be obliged to them.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘Still, Doctor, I cannot help thinking it a hardship that more indulgence is allowed to men than to women. It gives a superiority to men, to which I do not see how they are entitled.’ JOHNSON. ‘It is plain, Madam, one or other must have the superiority. As Shakspeare says, “If two men ride on a horse, one must ride behind.”‘ DILLY. ‘I suppose, Sir, Mrs. Knowles would have them to ride in panniers, one on each side.’ JOHNSON. ‘Then, Sir, the horse would throw them both.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘Well, I hope that in another world the sexes will be equal.’ BOSWELL. ‘That is being too ambitious, Madam. WE might as well desire to be equal with the angels. We shall all, I hope, be happy in a future state, but we must not expect to be all happy in the same degree. It is enough if we be happy according to our several capacities. A worthy carman will get to heaven as well as Sir Isaac Newton. Yet, though equally good, they will not have the same degrees of happiness.’ JOHNSON. ‘Probably not.’
Dr. Mayo having asked Johnson’s opinion of Soame Jenyns’s View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion;–JOHNSON. ‘I think it a pretty book; not very theological indeed; and there seems to be an affectation of ease and carelessness, as if it were not suitable to his character to be very serious about the matter.’ BOSWELL. ‘He may have intended this to introduce his book the better among genteel people, who might be unwilling to read too grave a treatise. There is a general levity in the age. We have physicians now with bag-wigs; may we not have airy divines, at least somewhat less solemn in their appearance than they used to be?’ JOHNSON. ‘Jenyns might mean as you say.’ BOSWELL. ‘YOU should like his book, Mrs. Knowles, as it maintains, as you FRIENDS do, that courage is not a Christian virtue.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘Yes, indeed, I like him there; but I cannot agree with him, that friendship is not a Christian virtue.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Madam, strictly speaking, he is right. All friendship is preferring the interest of a friend, to the neglect, or, perhaps, against the interest of others; so that an old Greek said, “He that has FRIENDS has NO FRIEND.” Now Christianity recommends universal benevolence, to consider all men as our brethren, which is contrary to the virtue of friendship, as described by the ancient philosophers. Surely, Madam, your sect must approve of this; for, you call all men FRIENDS.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘We are commanded to do good to all men, “but especially to them who are of the household of Faith.”‘ JOHNSON. ‘Well, Madam. The household of Faith is wide enough.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘But, Doctor, our Saviour had twelve Apostles, yet there was ONE whom he LOVED. John was called “the disciple whom JESUS loved.”‘ JOHNSON. (with eyes sparkling benignantly,) ‘Very well, indeed, Madam. You have said very well.’ BOSWELL. ‘A fine application. Pray, Sir, had you ever thought of it?’ JOHNSON. ‘I had not, Sir.’
From this pleasing subject, he, I know not how or why, made a sudden transition to one upon which he was a violent aggressor; for he said, ‘I am willing to love all mankind, EXCEPT AN AMERICAN:’ and his inflammable corruption bursting into horrid fire, he ‘breathed out threatenings and slaughter;’ calling them, Rascals– Robbers–Pirates;’ and exclaiming, he’d ‘burn and destroy them.’ Miss Seward, looking to him with mild but steady astonishment, said, ‘Sir, this is an instance that we are always most violent against those whom we have injured.’ He was irritated still more by this delicate and keen reproach; and roared out another tremendous volley, which one might fancy could be heard across the Atlantick. During this tempest I sat in great uneasiness, lamenting his heat of temper; till, by degrees, I diverted his attention to other topicks.
Talking of Miss ——, a literary lady, he said, ‘I was obliged to speak to Miss Reynolds, to let her know that I desired she would not flatter me so much.’ Somebody now observed, ‘She flatters Garrick.’ JOHNSON. ‘She is in the right to flatter Garrick. She is in the right for two reasons; first, because she has the world with her, who have been praising Garrick these thirty years; and secondly, because she is rewarded for it by Garrick. Why should she flatter ME? I can do nothing for her. Let her carry her praise to a better market. (Then turning to Mrs. Knowles.) You, Madam, have been flattering me all the evening; I wish you would give Boswell a little now. If you knew his merit as well as I do, you would say a great deal; he is the best travelling companion in the world.’
Somebody mentioned the Reverend Mr. Mason’s prosecution of Mr. Murray, the bookseller, for having inserted in a collection of Gray’s Poems, only fifty lines, of which Mr. Mason had still the exclusive property, under the statute of Queen Anne; and that Mr. Mason had persevered, notwithstanding his being requested to name his own terms of compensation. Johnson signified his displeasure at Mr. Mason’s conduct very strongly; but added, by way of shewing that he was not surprized at it, ‘Mason’s a Whig.’ MRS. KNOWLES. (not hearing distinctly,) ‘What! a Prig, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘Worse, Madam; a Whig! But he is both.’
Of John Wesley, he said, ‘He can talk well on any subject.’ BOSWELL. ‘Pray, Sir, what has he made of his story of a ghost?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, he believes it; but not on sufficient authority. He did not take time enough to examine the girl. It was at Newcastle, where the ghost was said to have appeared to a young woman several times, mentioning something about the right to an old house, advising application to be made to an attorney, which was done; and, at the same time, saying the attorneys would do nothing, which proved to be the fact. “This (says John,) is a proof that a ghost knows our thoughts.” Now (laughing,) it is not necessary to know our thoughts, to tell that an attorney will sometimes do nothing. Charles Wesley, who is a more stationary man, does not believe the story. I am sorry that John did not take more pains to inquire into the evidence for it.’ MISS SEWARD, (with an incredulous smile,) ‘What, Sir! about a ghost?’ JOHNSON. (with solemn vehemence,) ‘Yes, Madam: this is a question which, after five thousand years, is yet undecided; a question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the most important that can come before the human understanding.’
Mrs. Knowles mentioned, as a proselyte to Quakerism, Miss ——, a young lady well known to Dr. Johnson, for whom he had shewn much affection; while she ever had, and still retained, a great respect for him. Mrs. Knowles at the same time took an opportunity of letting him know ‘that the amiable young creature was sorry at finding that he was offended at her leaving the Church of England and embracing a simpler faith;’ and, in the gentlest and most persuasive manner, solicited his kind indulgence for what was sincerely a matter of conscience. JOHNSON. (frowning very angrily,) ‘Madam, she is an odious wench. She could not have any proper conviction that it was her duty to change her religion, which is the most important of all subjects, and should be studied with all care, and with all the helps we can get. She knew no more of the Church which she left, and that which she embraced, than she did of the difference between the Copernican and Ptolemaick systems.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘She had the New Testament before her.’ JOHNSON. ‘Madam, she could not understand the New Testament, the most difficult book in the world, for which the study of a life is required.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘It is clear as to essentials.’ JOHNSON. ‘But not as to controversial points. The heathens were easily converted, because they had nothing to give up; but we ought not, without very strong conviction indeed, to desert the religion in which we have been educated. That is the religion given you, the religion in which it may be said Providence has placed you. If you live conscientiously in that religion, you may be safe. But errour is dangerous indeed, if you err when you choose a religion for yourself.’ MRS. KNOWLES. ‘Must we then go by implicit faith?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Madam, the greatest part of our knowledge is implicit faith; and as to religion, have we heard all that a disciple of Confucius, all that a Mahometan, can say for himself?’ He then rose again into passion, and attacked the young proselyte in the severest terms of reproach, so that both the ladies seemed to be much shocked.
We remained together till it was pretty late. Notwithstanding occasional explosions of violence, we were all delighted upon the whole with Johnson. I compared him at this time to a warm West- Indian climate, where you have a bright sun, quick vegetation, luxuriant foliage, luscious fruits; but where the same heat sometimes produces thunder, lightning, earthquakes, in a terrible degree.
April 17, being Good Friday, I waited on Johnson, as usual. I observed at breakfast that although it was a part of his abstemious discipline on this most solemn fast, to take no milk in his tea, yet when Mrs. Desmoulins inadvertently poured it in, he did not reject it. I talked of the strange indecision of mind, and imbecility in the common occurrences of life, which we may observe in some people. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, I am in the habit of getting others to do things for me.’ BOSWELL. ‘What, Sir! have you that weakness?’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir. But I always think afterwards I should have done better for myself.’
I expressed some inclination to publish an account of my Travels upon the continent of Europe, for which I had a variety of materials collected. JOHNSON. ‘I do not say, Sir, you may not publish your travels; but I give you my opinion, that you would lessen yourself by it. What can you tell of countries so well known as those upon the continent of Europe, which you have visited?’ BOSWELL. ‘But I can give an entertaining narrative, with many incidents, anecdotes, jeux d’esprit, and remarks, so as to make very pleasant reading.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, most modern travellers in Europe who have published their travels, have been laughed at: I would not have you added to the number. The world is now not contented to be merely entertained by a traveller’s narrative; they want to learn something. Now some of my friends asked me, why I did not give some account of my travels in France. The reason is plain; intelligent readers had seen more of France than I had. YOU might have liked my travels in France, and THE CLUB might have liked them; but, upon the whole, there would have been more ridicule than good produced by them.’ BOSWELL. ‘I cannot agree with you, Sir. People would like to read what you say of any thing. Suppose a face has been painted by fifty painters before; still we love to see it done by Sir Joshua.’ JOHNSON. ‘True, Sir, but Sir Joshua cannot paint a face when he has not time to look on it.’ BOSWELL. ‘Sir, a sketch of any sort by him is valuable. And, Sir, to talk to you in your own style (raising my voice, and shaking my head,) you SHOULD have given us your travels in France. I am SURE I am right, and THERE’S AN END ON’T.’
I said to him that it was certainly true, as my friend Dempster had observed in his letter to me upon the subject, that a great part of what was in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland had been in his mind before he left London. JOHNSON. ‘Why yes, Sir, the topicks were; and books of travels will be good in proportion to what a man has previously in his mind; his knowing what to observe; his power of contrasting one mode of life with another. As the Spanish proverb says, “He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.” So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.’ BOSWELL. ‘The proverb, I suppose, Sir, means, he must carry a large stock with him to trade with.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir.’
It was a delightful day: as we walked to St. Clement’s church, I again remarked that Fleet-street was the most cheerful scene in the world. ‘Fleet-street (said I,) is in my mind more delightful than Tempe.’ JOHNSON. ‘Ay, Sir; but let it be compared with Mull.’
There was a very numerous congregation to-day at St. Clement’s church, which Dr. Johnson said he observed with pleasure.
And now I am to give a pretty full account of one of the most curious incidents in Johnson’s life, of which he himself has made the following minute on this day: ‘In my return from church, I was accosted by Edwards, an old fellow-collegian, who had not seen me since 1729. He knew me, and asked if I remembered one Edwards; I did not at first recollect the name, but gradually as we walked along, recovered it, and told him a conversation that had passed at an ale-house between us. My purpose is to continue our acquaintance.’
It was in Butcher-row that this meeting happened. Mr. Edwards, who was a decent-looking elderly man in grey clothes, and a wig of many curls, accosted Johnson with familiar confidence, knowing who he was, while Johnson returned his salutation with a courteous formality, as to a stranger. But as soon as Edwards had brought to his recollection their having been at Pembroke-College together nine-and-forty years ago, he seemed much pleased, asked where he lived, and said he should be glad to see him in Bolt-court. EDWARDS. ‘Ah, Sir! we are old men now.’ JOHNSON. (who never liked to think of being old,) ‘Don’t let us discourage one another.’ EDWARDS. ‘Why, Doctor, you look stout and hearty, I am happy to see you so; for the news-papers told us you were very ill.’ JOHNSON. ‘Ay, Sir, they are always telling lies of US OLD FELLOWS.’
Wishing to be present at more of so singular a conversation as that between two fellow-collegians, who had lived forty years in London without ever having chanced to meet, I whispered to Mr. Edwards that Dr. Johnson was going home, and that he had better accompany him now. So Edwards walked along with us, I eagerly assisting to keep up the conversation. Mr. Edwards informed Dr. Johnson that he had practised long as a solicitor in Chancery, but that he now lived in the country upon a little farm, about sixty acres, just by Stevenage in Hertfordshire, and that he came to London (to Barnard’s Inn, No. 6), generally twice a week. Johnson appearing to me in a reverie, Mr. Edwards addressed himself to me, and expatiated on the pleasure of living in the country. BOSWELL. ‘I have no notion of this, Sir. What you have to entertain you, is, I think, exhausted in half an hour.’ EDWARDS. ‘What? don’t you love to have hope realized? I see my grass, and my corn, and my trees growing. Now, for instance, I am curious to see if this frost has not nipped my fruit-trees.’ JOHNSON. (who we did not imagine was attending,) ‘You find, Sir, you have fears as well as hopes.’–So well did he see the whole, when another saw but the half of a subject.
When we got to Dr. Johnson’s house, and were seated in his library, the dialogue went on admirably. EDWARDS. ‘Sir, I remember you would not let us say PRODIGIOUS at College. For even then, Sir, (turning to me,) he was delicate in language, and we all feared him.’* JOHNSON. (to Edwards,) ‘From your having practised the law long, Sir, I presume you must be rich.’ EDWARDS. ‘No, Sir; I got a good deal of money; but I had a number of poor relations to whom I gave a great part of it.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, you have been rich in the most valuable sense of the word.’ EDWARDS. ‘But I shall not die rich.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, sure, Sir, it is better to LIVE rich than to DIE rich.’ EDWARDS. ‘I wish I had continued at College.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why do you wish that, Sir?’ EDWARDS. ‘Because I think I should have had a much easier life than mine has been. I should have been a parson, and had a good living, like Bloxam and several others, and lived comfortably.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, the life of a parson, of a conscientious clergyman, is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. No, Sir, I do not envy a clergyman’s life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.’ Here taking himself up all of a sudden, he exclaimed, ‘O! Mr. Edwards! I’ll convince you that I recollect you. Do you remember our drinking together at an alehouse near Pembroke gate? At that time, you told me of the Eton boy, who, when verses on our SAVIOUR’S turning water into wine were prescribed as an exercise, brought up a single line, which was highly admired,–
“Vidit et erubuit lympha pudica DEUM,”
and I told you of another fine line in Camden’s Remains, an eulogy upon one of our Kings, who was succeeded by his son, a prince of equal merit:–
“Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla secuta est.”‘
* Johnson said to me afterwards, ‘Sir, they respected me for my literature: and yet it was not great but by comparison. Sir, it is amazing how little literature there is in the world.’–BOSWELL
EDWARDS. ‘You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.’–Mr. Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Courtenay, Mr. Malone, and, indeed, all the eminent men to whom I have mentioned this, have thought it an exquisite trait of character. The truth is, that philosophy, like religion, is too generally supposed to be hard and severe, at least so grave as to exclude all gaiety.
EDWARDS. ‘I have been twice married, Doctor. You, I suppose, have never known what it was to have a wife.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, I have known what it was to have a wife, and (in a solemn, tender, faultering tone) I have known what it was to LOSE A WIFE.–It had almost broke my heart.’
EDWARDS. ‘How do you live, Sir? For my part, I must have my regular meals, and a glass of good wine. I find I require it.’ JOHNSON. ‘I now drink no wine, Sir. Early in life I drank wine: for many years I drank none. I then for some years drank a great deal.’ EDWARDS. ‘Some hogs-heads, I warrant you.’ JOHNSON. ‘I then had a severe illness, and left it off, and I have never begun it again. I never felt any difference upon myself from eating one thing rather than another, nor from one kind of weather rather than another. There are people, I believe, who feel a difference; but I am not one of them. And as to regular meals, I have fasted from the Sunday’s dinner to the Tuesday’s dinner, without any inconvenience. I believe it is best to eat just as one is hungry: but a man who is in business, or a man who has a family, must have stated meals. I am a straggler. I may leave this town and go to Grand Cairo, without being missed here or observed there.’ EDWARDS. ‘Don’t you eat supper, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir.’ EDWARDS. ‘For my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must pass, in order to get to bed.’
JOHNSON. ‘You are a lawyer, Mr. Edwards. Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with. They have what he wants.’ EDWARDS. ‘I am grown old: I am sixty-five.’ JOHNSON. ‘I shall be sixty-eight next birth-day. Come, Sir, drink water, and put in for a hundred.’
This interview confirmed my opinion of Johnson’s most humane and benevolent heart. His cordial and placid behaviour to an old fellow-collegian, a man so different from himself; and his telling him that he would go down to his farm and visit him, showed a kindness of disposition very rare at an advanced age. He observed, ‘how wonderful it was that they had both been in London forty years, without having ever once met, and both walkers in the street too!’ Mr. Edwards, when going away, again recurred to his consciousness of senility, and looking full in Johnson’s face, said to him, ‘You’ll find in Dr. Young,
“O my coevals! remnants of yourselves.”‘
Johnson did not relish this at all; but shook his head with impatience. Edwards walked off, seemingly highly pleased with the honour of having been thus noticed by Dr. Johnson. When he was gone, I said to Johnson, I thought him but a weak man. JOHNSON. ‘Why, yes, Sir. Here is a man who has passed through life without experience: yet I would rather have him with me than a more sensible man who will not talk readily. This man is always willing to say what he has to say.’ Yet Dr. Johnson had himself by no means that willingness which he praised so much, and I think so justly; for who has not felt the painful effect of the dreary void, when there is a total silence in a company, for any length of time; or, which is as bad, or perhaps worse, when the conversation is with difficulty kept up by a perpetual effort?
Johnson once observed to me, ‘Tom Tyers described me the best: “Sir, (said he,) you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to.”‘
The gentleman whom he thus familiarly mentioned was Mr. Thomas Tyers, son of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the founder of that excellent place of publick amusement, Vauxhall Gardens, which must ever be an estate to its proprietor, as it is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show,–gay exhibition, musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear;–for all which only a shilling is paid; and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale. Mr. Thomas Tyers was bred to the law; but having a handsome fortune, vivacity of temper, and eccentricity of mind, he could not confine himself to the regularity of practice. He therefore ran about the world with a pleasant carelessness, amusing everybody by his desultory conversation. He abounded in anecdote, but was not sufficiently attentive to accuracy. I therefore cannot venture to avail myself much of a biographical sketch of Johnson which he published, being one among the various persons ambitious of appending their names to that of my illustrious friend. That sketch is, however, an entertaining little collection of fragments. Those which he published of Pope and Addison are of higher merit; but his fame must chiefly rest upon his Political Conferences, in which he introduces several eminent persons delivering their sentiments in the way of dialogue, and discovers a considerable share of learning, various knowledge, and discernment of character. This much may I be allowed to say of a man who was exceedingly obliging to me, and who lived with Dr. Johnson in as easy a manner as almost any of his very numerous acquaintance.
Mr. Edwards had said to me aside, that Dr. Johnson should have been of a profession. I repeated the remark to Johnson that I might have his own thoughts on the subject. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, it WOULD have been better that I had been of a profession. I ought to have been a lawyer.’ BOSWELL. ‘I do not think, Sir, it would have been better, for we should not have had the English Dictionary.’ JOHNSON. ‘But you would have had Reports.’ BOSWELL. ‘Ay; but there would not have been another, who could have written the Dictionary. There have been many very good Judges. Suppose you had been Lord Chancellor; you would have delivered opinions with more extent of mind, and in a more ornamented manner, than perhaps any Chancellor ever did, or ever will do. But, I believe, causes have been as judiciously decided as you could have done.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir. Property has been as well settled.’
Johnson, however, had a noble ambition floating in his mind, and had, undoubtedly, often speculated on the possibility of his supereminent powers being rewarded in this great and liberal country by the highest honours of the state. Sir William Scott informs me, that upon the death of the late Lord Lichfield, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford, he said to Johnson, ‘What a pity it is, Sir, that you did not follow the profession of the law. You might have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, and attained to the dignity of the peerage; and now that the title of Lichfleld, your native city, is extinct, you might have had it.’ Johnson, upon this, seemed much agitated; and, in an angry tone, exclaimed, ‘Why will you vex me by suggesting this, when it is too late?’
But he did not repine at the prosperity of others. The late Dr. Thomas Leland, told Mr. Courtenay, that when Mr. Edmund Burke shewed Johnson his fine house and lands near Beaconsfield, Johnson coolly said, ‘Non equidem invideo; miror magis.’*
* I am not entirely without suspicion that Johnson may have felt a little momentary envy; for no man loved the good things of this life better than he did and he could not but be conscious that he deserved a much larger share of them, than he ever had.–BOSWELL.
Yet no man had a higher notion of the dignity of literature than Johnson, or was more determined in maintaining the respect which he justly considered as due to it. Of this, besides the general tenor of his conduct in society, some characteristical instances may be mentioned.
He told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that once when he dined in a numerous company of booksellers, where the room being small, the head of the table, at which he sat, was almost close to the fire, he persevered in suffering a great deal of inconvenience from the heat, rather than quit his place, and let one of them sit above him.
Goldsmith, in his diverting simplicity, complained one day, in a mixed company, of Lord Camden. ‘I met him (said he,) at Lord Clare’s house in the country, and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an ordinary man. The company having laughed heartily, Johnson stood forth in defence of his friend. ‘Nay, Gentlemen, (said he,) Dr. Goldsmith is in the right. A nobleman ought to have made up to such a man as Goldsmith; and I think it is much against Lord Camden that he neglected him.’
Nor could he patiently endure to hear that such respect as he thought due only to higher intellectual qualities, should be bestowed on men of slighter, though perhaps more amusing talents. I told him, that one morning, when I went to breakfast with Garrick, who was very vain of his intimacy with Lord Camden, he accosted me thus:–‘Pray now, did you–did you meet a little lawyer turning the corner, eh?’–‘No, Sir, (said I). Pray what do you mean by the question?’–‘Why, (replied Garrick, with an affected indifference, yet as if standing on tip-toe,) Lord Camden has this moment left me. We have had a long walk together.’ JOHNSON. ‘Well, Sir, Garrick talked very properly. Lord Camden WAS A LITTLE LAWYER to be associating so familiarly with a player.’
Sir Joshua Reynolds observed, with great truth, that Johnson considered Garrick to be as it were his PROPERTY. He would allow no man either to blame or to praise Garrick in his presence, without contradicting him.
Having fallen into a very serious frame of mind, in which mutual expressions of kindness passed between us, such as would be thought too vain in me to repeat, I talked with regret of the sad inevitable certainty that one of us must survive the other. JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, that is an affecting consideration. I remember Swift, in one of his letters to Pope, says, “I intend to come over, that we may meet once more; and when we must part, it is what happens to all human beings.”‘ BOSWELL. ‘The hope that we shall see our departed friends again must support the mind.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why yes, Sir.’ BOSWELL. ‘There is a strange unwillingness to part with life, independent of serious fears as to futurity. A reverend friend of ours (naming him) tells me, that he feels an uneasiness at the thoughts of leaving his house, his study, his books.’ JOHNSON. ‘This is foolish in *****. A man need not be uneasy on these grounds; for, as he will retain his consciousness, he may say with the philosopher, Omnia mea mecum porto.’ BOSWELL. ‘True, Sir: we may carry our books in our heads; but still there is something painful in the thought of leaving for ever what has given us pleasure. I remember, many years ago, when my imagination was warm, and I happened to be in a melancholy mood, it distressed me to think of going into a state of being in which Shakspeare’s poetry did not exist. A lady whom I then much admired, a very amiable woman, humoured my fancy, and relieved me by saying, “The first thing you will meet in the other world, will be an elegant copy of Shakspeare’s works presented to you.”‘ Dr. Johnson smiled benignantly at this, and did not appear to disapprove of the notion.
We went to St. Clement’s church again in the afternoon, and then returned and drank tea and coffee in Mrs. Williams’s room; Mrs. Desmoulins doing the honours of the tea-table. I observed that he would not even look at a proof-sheet of his Life of Waller on Good- Friday.
On Saturday, April 14, I drank tea with him. He praised the late Mr. Duncombe, of Canterbury, as a pleasing man. ‘He used to come to me: I did not seek much after HIM. Indeed I never sought much after any body.’ BOSWELL. ‘Lord Orrery, I suppose.’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; I never went to him but when he sent for me.’ BOSWELL. ‘Richardson?’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir. But I sought after George Psalmanazar the most. I used to go and sit with him at an alehouse in the city.’
I am happy to mention another instance which I discovered of his SEEKING AFTER a man of merit. Soon after the Honourable Daines Barrington had published his excellent Observations on the Statutes, Johnson waited on that worthy and learned gentleman; and, having told him his name, courteously said, ‘I have read your book, Sir, with great pleasure, and wish to be better known to you.’ Thus began an acquaintance, which was continued with mutual regard as long as Johnson lived.
Talking of a recent seditious delinquent, he said, ‘They should set him in the pillory, that he may be punished in a way that would disgrace him.’ I observed, that the pillory does not always disgrace. And I mentioned an instance of a gentleman who I thought was not dishonoured by it. JOHNSON. ‘Ay, but he was, Sir. He could not mouth and strut as he used to do, after having been there. People are not willing to ask a man to their tables who has stood in the pillory.’
Johnson attacked the Americans with intemperate vehemence of abuse. I said something in their favour; and added, that I was always sorry when he talked on that subject. This, it seems, exasperated him; though he said nothing at the time. The cloud was charged with sulphureous vapour, which was afterwards to burst in thunder.– We talked of a gentleman who was running out his fortune in London; and I said, ‘We must get him out of it. All his friends must quarrel with him, and that will soon drive him away.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, Sir; we’ll send YOU to him. If your company does not drive a man out of his house, nothing will.’ This was a horrible shock, for which there was no visible cause. I afterwards asked him why he had said so harsh a thing. JOHNSON. Because, Sir, you made me angry about the Americans.’ BOSWELL. ‘But why did you not take your revenge directly?’ JOHNSON. (smiling,) ‘Because, Sir, I had nothing ready. A man cannot strike till he has his weapons.’ This was a candid and pleasant confession.
He shewed me to-night his drawing-room, very genteelly fitted up; and said, ‘Mrs. Thrale sneered when I talked of my having asked you and your lady to live at my house. I was obliged to tell her, that you would be in as respectable a situation in my house as in hers. Sir, the insolence of wealth will creep out.’ BOSWELL. ‘She has a little both of the insolence of wealth, and the conceit of parts.’ JOHNSON. ‘The insolence of wealth is a wretched thing; but the conceit of parts has some foundation. To be sure it should not be. But who is without it?’ BOSWELL. ‘Yourself, Sir.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, I play no tricks: I lay no traps.’ BOSWELL. ‘No, Sir. You are six feet high, and you only do not stoop.’
We talked of the numbers of people that sometimes have composed the household of great families. I mentioned that there were a hundred in the family of the present Earl of Eglintoune’s father. Dr. Johnson seeming to doubt it, I began to enumerate. ‘Let us see: my Lord and my Lady two.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, Sir, if you are to count by twos, you may be long enough.’ BOSWELL. ‘Well, but now I add two sons and seven daughters, and a servant for each, that will make twenty; so we have the fifth part already.’ JOHNSON. ‘Very true. You get at twenty pretty readily; but you will not so easily get further on. We grow to five feet pretty readily; but it is not so easy to grow to seven.’
On Monday, April 20, I found him at home in the morning. We talked of a gentleman who we apprehended was gradually involving his circumstances by bad management. JOHNSON. ‘Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means. If it were a stream, they’d stop it. You must speak to him. It is really miserable. Were he a gamester, it could be said he had hopes of winning. Were he a bankrupt in trade, he might have grown rich; but he has neither spirit to spend nor resolution to spare. He does not spend fast enough to have pleasure from it. He has the crime of prodigality, and the wretchedness of parsimony. If a man is killed in a duel, he is killed as many a one has been killed; but it is a sad thing for a man to lie down and die; to bleed to death, because he has not fortitude enough to sear the wound, or even to stitch it up.’ I cannot but pause a moment to admire the fecundity of fancy, and choice of language, which in this instance, and, indeed, on almost all occasions, he displayed. It was well observed by Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore, ‘The conversation of Johnson is strong and clear, and may be compared to an antique statue, where every vein and muscle is distinct and bold. Ordinary conversation resembles an inferiour cast.’
On Saturday, April 25, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, with the learned Dr. Musgrave, Counsellor Leland of Ireland, son to the historian, Mrs. Cholmondeley, and some more ladies.
‘Demosthenes Taylor, as he was called, (that is, the Editor of Demosthenes) was the most silent man, the merest statue of a man that I have ever seen. I once dined in company with him, and all he said during the whole time was no more than Richard. How a man should say only Richard, it is not easy to imagine. But it was thus: Dr. Douglas was talking of Dr. Zachary Grey, and ascribing to him something that was written by Dr. Richard Grey. So, to correct him, Taylor said, (imitating his affected sententious emphasis and nod,) “RICHARD.”‘
Mrs. Cholmondeley, in a high flow of spirits, exhibited some lively sallies of hyperbolical compliment to Johnson, with whom she had been long acquainted, and was very easy. He was quick in catching the MANNER of the moment, and answered her somewhat in the style of the hero of a romance, ‘Madam, you crown me with unfading laurels.’
We talked of a lady’s verses on Ireland. MISS REYNOLDS. ‘Have you seen them, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Madam. I have seen a translation from Horace, by one of her daughters. She shewed it me.’ MISS REYNOLDS. ‘And how was it, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, very well for a young Miss’s verses;–that is to say, compared with excellence, nothing; but, very well, for the person who wrote them. I am vexed at being shewn verses in that manner.’ MISS REYNOLDS. ‘But if they should be good, why not give them hearty praise?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Madam, because I have not then got the better of my bad humour from having been shown them. You must consider, Madam; beforehand they may be bad, as well as good. Nobody has a right to put another under such a difficulty, that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth, or hurt himself by telling what is not true.’ BOSWELL. ‘A man often shews his writings to people of eminence, to obtain from them, either from their good-nature, or from their not being able to tell the truth firmly, a commendation, of which he may afterwards avail himself.’ JOHNSON. ‘Very true, Sir. Therefore the man, who is asked by an authour, what he thinks of his work, is put to the torture, and is not obliged to speak the truth; so that what he says is not considered as his opinion; yet he has said it, and cannot retract it; and this authour, when mankind are hunting him with a cannister at his tail, can say, “I would not have published, had not Johnson, or Reynolds, or Musgrave, or some other good judge, commended the work.” Yet I consider it as a very difficult question in conscience, whether one should advise a man not to publish a work, if profit be his object; for the man may say, “Had it not been for you, I should have had the money.” Now you cannot be sure; for you have only your own opinion, and the publick may think very differently.’ SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. ‘You must upon such an occasion have two judgements; one as to the real value of the work, the other as to what may please the general taste at the time.’ JOHNSON. ‘But you can be SURE of neither; and therefore I should scruple much to give a suppressive vote. Both Goldsmith’s comedies were once refused; his first by Garrick, his second by Colman, who was prevailed on at last by much solicitation, nay, a kind of force, to bring it on. His Vicar of Wakefield I myself did not think would have had much success. It was written and sold to a bookseller before his Traveller; but published after; so little expectation had the bookseller from it. Had it been sold after the Traveller he might have had twice as much money for it, though sixty guineas was no mean price. The bookseller had the advantage of Goldsmith’s reputation from The Traveller in the sale, though Goldsmith had it not in selling the copy.’ SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. ‘The Beggar’s Opera affords a proof how strangely people will differ in opinion about a literary performance. Burke thinks it has no merit.’ JOHNSON. ‘It was refused by one of the houses; but I should have thought it would succeed, not from any great excellence in the writing, but from the novelty, and the general spirit and gaiety of the piece, which keeps the audience always attentive, and dismisses them in good humour.’
We went to the drawing-room, where was a considerable increase of company. Several of us got round Dr. Johnson, and complained that he would not give us an exact catalogue of his works, that there might be a complete edition. He smiled, and evaded our entreaties. That he intended to do it, I have no doubt, because I have heard him say so; and I have in my possession an imperfect list, fairly written out, which he entitles Historia Studiorum. I once got from one of his friends a list, which there was pretty good reason to suppose was accurate, for it was written down in his presence by this friend, who enumerated each article aloud, and had some of them mentioned to him by Mr. Levett, in concert with whom it was made out; and Johnson, who heard all this, did not contradict it. But when I shewed a copy of this list to him, and mentioned the evidence for its exactness, he laughed, and said, ‘I was willing to let them go on as they pleased, and never interfered.’ Upon which I read it to him, article by article, and got him positively to own or refuse; and then, having obtained certainty so far, I got some other articles confirmed by him directly; and afterwards, from time to time, made additions under his sanction.