Life of Johnson Volume II Part 54

[346] 'He loved the poor,' says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 84), 'as I never yet saw any one else do, with an earnest desire to make them happy.

"What signifies," says some one, "giving half-pence to common beggars?

they only lay it out in gin or tobacco." "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence?" says Johnson.' The harm done by this indiscriminate charity had been pointed out by Fielding in his _Covent Garden Journal_ for June 2, 1752. He took as the motto for the paper:

'O bone, ne te Frustrere, insanis et tu';

which he translates, 'My good friend, do not deceive thyself; for with all thy charity thou also art a silly fellow.' 'Giving our money to common beggars,' he describes as 'a kind of bounty that is a crime against the public.' Fielding's _Works_, x. 77, ed. 1806. Johnson once allowed (_post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_) that 'one might give away 500 a year to those that importune in the streets, and not do any good.' See also _post_, Oct. 10, 1779.

[347] He was once attacked, though whether by robbers is not made clear.

See _post_, under Feb. 7, 1775.

[348] Perhaps it was this cla.s.s of people which is described in the following pa.s.sage:--'It was never against people of coa.r.s.e life that his contempt was expressed, while poverty of sentiment in men who considered themselves to be company _for the parlour_, as he called it, was what he would not bear.' Piozzi's _Anec_. 215.

[349] See _ante_, i. 320, for one such offer.

[350] See _ante_, i. 163, note 1, and _post_, March 30, 1781.

[351] Dr. T. Campbell, in his _Survey of the South of Ireland_, ed. 1777 (_post_, April 5, 1775), says:--'By one law of the penal code, if a Papist have a horse worth fifty, or five hundred pounds, a Protestant may become the purchaser upon paying him down five. By another of the same code, a son may say to his father, "Sir, if you don't give me what money I want, I'll turn _discoverer_, and in spite of you and my elder brother too, on whom at marriage you settled your estate, I shall become heir,"' p. 251. Father O'Leary, in his _Remarks on Wesley's Letter_, published in 1780 (_post_, _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773), says (p.

41):--'He has seen the venerable matron, after twenty-four years'

marriage, banished from the perjured husband's house, though it was proved in open court that for six months before his marriage he went to ma.s.s. But the law requires that he should be a year and a day of the same religion.' Burke wrote in 1792: 'The Castle [the government in Dublin] considers the out-lawry (or what at least I look on as such) of the great ma.s.s of the people as an unalterable maxim in the government of Ireland.' _Burke's Corres_., iii. 378. See _post_, ii. 130, and May 7, 1773, and Oct. 12, 1779.

[352] See post, just before Feb. 18, 1775.

[353] 'Of Sheridan's writings on elocution, Johnson said, they were a continual renovation of hope, and an unvaried succession of disappointments.' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 197. See _post_, May 17, 1783.

[354] In 1753, Jonas Hanway published his _Travels to Persia_.

[355] 'Though his journey was completed in eight days he gave a relation of it in two octavo volumes.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 352. See _ante_, i. 313.

[356] See _ante_, i. 68, and _post_, June 9, 1784, note, where he varies the epithet, calling it 'the best piece of _parenetic_ divinity.'

[357] '"I taught myself," Law tells us, "the high Dutch language, on purpose to know the original words of the blessed Jacob."' Overton's _Life of Law_, p. 181. Behmen, or Bohme, the mystic shoemaker of Gorlitz, was born in 1575, and died in 1624. 'His books may not hold at all honourable places in libraries; his name may be ridiculous. But he _was_ a generative thinker. What he knew he knew for himself. It was not transmitted to him, but fought for.' F.D. Maurice's _Moral and Meta.

Phil_. ii. 325. Of Hudibras's squire, Ralph, it was said:

'He Anthroposophus, and Floud, And Jacob Behmen understood.'

_Hudibras_, I. i. 541.

Wesley (_Journal_, i. 359) writes of Behmen's _Mysteriun Magnum_, 'I can and must say thus much (and that with as full evidence as I can say two and two make four) it is most sublime nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paralleled.'

[358] 'He heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter,' 2 Corinthians, xii. 4.

[359] See _ante_, i. 458. In _Humphry Clinker_, in the Letter of June 11, the turnkey of Clerkenwell Prison thus speaks of a Methodist:--'I don't care if the devil had him; here has been nothing but canting and praying since the fellow entered the place. Rabbit him! the tap will be ruined--we han't sold a cask of beer nor a dozen of wine, since he paid his garnish--the gentlemen get drunk with nothing but your d.a.m.ned religion.'

[360] 'John Wesley probably paid more for turnpikes than any other man in England, for no other person travelled so much.' Southey's _Wesley_, i. 407. 'He tells us himself, that he preached about 800 sermons in a year.' _Ib_ ii. 532. In one of his _Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion_, he asks:--'Can you bear the summer sun to beat upon your naked head? Can you suffer the wintry rain or wind, from whatever quarter it blows? Are you able to stand in the open air, without any covering or defence, when G.o.d casteth abroad his snow like wool, or scattereth his h.o.a.r-frost like ashes? And yet these are some of the smallest inconveniences which accompany field-preaching. For beyond all these, are the contradiction of sinners, the scoffs both of the great vulgar and the small; contempt and reproach of every kind--often more than verbal affronts--stupid, brutal violence, sometimes to the hazard of health, or limbs, or life. Brethren, do you envy us this honour?

What, I pray you, would buy you to be a field-preacher? Or what, think you, could induce any man of common sense to continue therein one year, unless he had a full conviction in himself that it was the will of G.o.d concerning him?' Southey's _Wesley_, i. 405.

[361] Stockdale reported to Johnson, that Pope had told Lyttelton that the reason why he had not translated Homer into blank verse was 'that he could translate it more easily into rhyme. "Sir," replied Johnson, "when the Pope said that, he knew that he lied."' Stockdale's _Memoirs_, ii.

44. In the _Life of Somervile_, Johnson says:--'If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled prose.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 95.

See _post_ beginning of 1781.

[362] _Ephesians_, v. 20.

[363] In the original--'Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain' See _post_ June 12, 1784.

[364] See _post_ under Aug 29, 1783, and Boswell's _Hebrides_ Oct 14, 1773.

[365] 'The chief glory of every people arises from its authours.'

Johnson's _Works_, v 49.

[366] In a Discourse by Sir William Jones, addressed to the Asiatick Society [in Calcutta], Feb. 24, 1785, is the following pa.s.sage:--

'One of the most sagacious men in this age who continues, I hope, to improve and adorn it, Samuel Johnson [he had been dead ten weeks], remarked in my hearing, that if Newton had flourished in ancient Greece, he would have been wors.h.i.+pped as a Divinity.' MALONE. Johnson, in _An Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude_ (_Works_, v, 299), makes the supposed author say:--'I have lived till I am able to produce in my favour the testimony of time, the inflexible enemy of false hypotheses; the only testimony which it becomes human understanding to oppose to the authority of Newton.'

[367] Murphy (_Life_, p. 91) places the scene of such a conversation in the house of the Bishop of Salisbury. 'Boscovitch,' he writes, 'had a ready current flow of that flimsy phraseology with which a priest may travel through Italy, Spain, and Germany. Johnson scorned what he called colloquial barbarisms. It was his pride to speak his best. He went on, after a little practice, with as much facility as if it was his native tongue. One sentence this writer well remembers. Observing that Fontenelle at first opposed the Newtonian philosophy, and embraced it afterwards, his words were:--"Fontenellus, ni fallor, in extrema senectute fuit transfuga ad castra Newtoniana."' See _post_, under Nov.

12, 1775. Boscovitch, the Jesuit astronomer, was a professor in the University of Pavia. When Dr. Burney visited him, 'he complained very much of the silence of the English astronomers, who answer none of his letters.' Burney's _Tour in France and Italy_, p. 92.

[368] See _post_, in 1781, the _Life of Lyttelton_.

[369] The first of Macpherson's forgeries was _Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands_. Edinburgh, 1760. In 1762, he published in London, _The Works of Ossian, the son of Fingal_, 2 vols.

Vol. i. contained _Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem_, in six Books. See _post_, Jan 1775.

[370] Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 41.

[371] Perhaps Johnson had some ill-will towards attorneys, such as he had towards excis.e.m.e.n (_ante_, i. 36, note 5 and 294). In _London_, which was published in May, 1738, he couples them with street robbers:

'Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.'

_Works_, i. 1. In a paper in the _Gent. Mag_. for following June (p.

287), written, I have little doubt, by him, the profession is this savagely attacked:--'Our ancestors, in ancient times, had some regard to the moral character of the person sent to represent them in their national a.s.semblies, and would have shewn some degree of resentment or indignation, had their votes been asked for murderer, an adulterer, a know oppressor, an hireling evidence, an attorney, a gamester, or pimp.'

In the _Life of Blackmere_ (_Works_, viii. 36) he has a sly hit at the profession. 'Sir Richard Blackmore was the son of Robert Blackmore, styled by Wood gentleman, and supposed to have been an attorney.' We may compare Goldsmith's lines in _Retaliation_:--'Then what was his failing?

come tell it, and burn ye,--

'He was, could he help it? a special attorney.'

See also _post_, under June 16, 1784.

[372] See _ante_, i. Appendix F.

[373] Dr. Maxwell is perhaps here quoting the _Idler_, No. 69, where Johnson, speaking of _Bioethics on the Confronts of Philosophy_, calls it 'the book which seems to have been the favourite of the middle ages.'

[374] Yet it is Murphy's tragedy of _Zen.o.bia_ that Mrs. Piozzi writes (_Anec_. p. 280):--'A gentleman carried Dr. Johnson his tragedy, which because he loved the author, he took, and it lay about our rooms some time. "Which answer did you give your friend, Sir?" said I, after the book had been called for. "I told him," replied he, "that there was too _Tig and Terry_ in it." Seeing me laugh most violently, "Why, what would'st have, child?" said he. "I looked at nothing but the _dramatis_ [_personae_], and there was _Tigranes_ and _Tiridates_, or _Teribaeus_, or such stuff. A man can tell but what he knows, and I never got any further than the _first_ pages."' In _Zen.o.bia_ two and Tigranes.

[375] Hume was one who had this idle dream. Shortly before his death one of his friends wrote:--'He still maintains that the national debt must be the ruin of Britain; and laments that the two most civilised nations, the English and French, should be on the decline; and the barbarians, the Goths and Vandals of Germany and Russia, should be rising in power and renown.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 497.

[376] Hannah More was with Dr. Kennicott at his death. 'Thus closed a life,' she wrote (_Memoirs_, i. 289), 'the last thirty years of which were honourably spent in collating the Hebrew Scriptures.' See also Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 16, 1773.

[377] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 467) says that Mallet, in return for what he wrote against Byng, 'had a considerable pension bestowed upon him, which he retained to his death.' See _ante_, i. 268.