Life of Johnson Volume II Part 59

[523] 185,000. 2 _Kings_, xix. 35.

[524] Lord Chatham wrote on Oct. 12, 1766, to Lord Shelburne that he 'had extremely at heart to obtain this post for Lord Cardross, a young n.o.bleman of great talents, learning, and accomplishments, and son of the Earl of Buchan, an intimate friend of Lord Chatham, from the time they were students together at Utrecht.' _Chatham Corres_. iii. 106. Horace Walpole wrote on Oct. 26, 'Sir James Gray goes to Madrid. The emba.s.sy has been sadly hawked about it.' Walpole's _Letters_, v. 22. 'Sir James Gray's father was first a box-keeper, and then footman to James II.'

_Ib_ ii. 366.

[525] See _ante_, ii. 134, for Johnson's attack on Lord Chatham's 'feudal gabble.'

[526] In Boswell's _Hebrides_, on Aug. 25, 1773, Johnson makes much the same answer to a like statement by Boswell. See _post_, March 21, 1783.

[527] See _ante_, i. 343, 405, and _post_, April 10, 1772.

[528] 'I cannot,' wrote John Wesley, (_Journal_, iv. 74), 'give up to all Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft, till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and profane. And at the present time, I have not only as strong but stronger proofs of this from eye and ear witnesses than I have of murder; so that I cannot rationally doubt of one any more the than the other.'

[529] See this curious question treated by him with most acute ability, _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 33. [Aug. 16.]

BOSWELL. Johnson, in his _Observations on Macbeth_ (_Works_, v. 55-7), shews his utter disbelief in witchcraft. 'These phantoms,' he writes, 'have indeed appeared more frequently in proportion as the darkness of ignorance has been more gross; but it cannot be shewn that the brightest gleams of knowledge have at any time been sufficient to drive them out of the world.' He describes the spread of the belief in them in the middle ages, and adds:--'The reformation did not immediately arrive at its meridian, and though day was gradually increasing upon us, the goblins of witchcraft still continued to hover in the twilight.' See _post_, April 8, 1779 and 1780, in Mr. Langton's _Collection_.

[530] The pa.s.sage to which Johnson alluded is to be found (I conjecture) in the _Phoenissae_, I. 1120. J. BOSWELL, JUN.

[531] Boswell (_Letters_, p. 324), on June 21, 1790, described to Temple the insults of that 'brutal fellow,' Lord Lonsdale, and continued:--'In my fretfulness I used such expressions as irritated him almost to fury, so that he used such expressions towards me that I should have, according to the irrational laws of honour sanctioned by the world, been under the necessity of risking my life, had not an explanation taken place.' Boswell's eldest son, Sir Alexander Boswell, lost his life in a duel.

[532] Johnson might have quoted the lieutenant in _Tom Jones_, Book vii.

chap. 13. 'My dear boy, be a good Christian as long as you live: but be a man of honour too, and never put up an affront; not all the books, nor all the parsons in the world, shall ever persuade me to that. I love my religion very well, but I love my honour more. There must be some mistake in the wording of the text, or in the translation, or in the understanding it, or somewhere or other. But however that be, a man must run the risk, for he must preserve his honour.' See _post_, April 19, 1773, and April 20, 1783, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 19, 1773.

[533] Oglethorpe was born in 1698. In 1714 he entered the army. Prince Eugene's campaigns against the Turks in which Oglethorpe served were in 1716-17. Rose's _Biog. Dict_. vii. 266 and x. 381. He was not therefore quite so young as Boswell thought.

[534] In the first two editions _Bender_. Belgrade was taken by Eugene in 1717.

[535] 'Idem velle atque idem nolle ea demum firma amicitia est.'

Sall.u.s.t, _Catilina_, xx. 4.

[536] More than one conjecture has been hazarded as to the pa.s.sage to which Johnson referred. I believe that he was thinking of the lines--

'Et variis albae junguntur saepe columbae; Et niger a viridi turtur amatur ave.'

_Sappho to Phaon_, line 37.

'Turtles and doves of differing hues unite, And glossy jet is paired with s.h.i.+ning white.' (POPE.)

Goldsmith had said that people to live in friends.h.i.+p together must have the same likings and aversions. Johnson thereupon calls to mind Sappho, who had shown that there could be love where there was little likeness.

[537] It was not published till after Goldsmith's death. It is in the list of new books in the _Gent. Mag_. for Aug. 1774, p. 378. See _post_, under June 22, 1776, the note on Goldsmith's epitaph.

[538] 'Upon my opening the door the young women broke off their discourse, but my landlady's daughters telling them that it was n.o.body but the Gentleman (for that is the name that I go by in the neighbourhood as well as in the family), they went on without minding me.' _Spectator_, No. 12.

[539] The author also of the _Ballad of c.u.mnor Hall_. See Scott's _Introduction to Kenilworth. Bishop Horne says that 'Mickle inserted in the _Lusiad_ an angry note against Garrick, who, as he thought, had used him ill by rejecting a tragedy of his.' Shortly afterwards, he saw Garrick act for the first time. The play was _Lear_. 'During the first three acts he said not a word. In a fine pa.s.sage of the fourth he fetched a deep sigh, and turning to a friend, "I wish," said he, "the note was out of my book."' Horne's _Essays_, ed. 1808, p. 38. See _post_, under Dec. 24, 1783, and Garrick's letter in Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 23,1773.

[540] The farmer's son told Mr. Prior that 'he had felt much reluctance in erasing during necessary repairs these memorials.' Prior's _Goldsmith_, ii. 335.

[541] See _ante_, ii. 178.

[542] Here was a blank, which may be filled up thus:--'_was told by an apparition_;'--the writer being probably uncertain whether he was asleep or awake, when his mind was impressed with the solemn presentiment with which the fact afterwards happened so wonderfully to correspond.

BOSWELL. 'Lord Hardinge, when Secretary at War,' writes Mr. Croker, 'informed me, that it appears that Colonel Sir Thomas Prendergast, of the twenty-second foot, was killed at Malplaquet, Aug. 31, 1709; but no trace can be found of any _Colonel_ Cecil in the army at that period.

Colonel W. Cecil, who was sent to the Tower in 1744, could hardly have been, in 1709, of the age and rank which Oglethorpe's anecdote seems to imply.' Prendergast, or Prendergra.s.s, in the year 1696, informed the government of the plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate William III., in which Friend was one of the leaders. Macaulay (_Hist. of Eng_. chap. 21), calls Prendergra.s.s 'a Roman Catholic gentleman of known courage and honour.'

Swift, attacking Prendergast's son, attacks Prendergast himself:--

'What! thou the sp.a.w.n of him who shamed our isle, Traitor, a.s.sa.s.sin, and informer vile.'

Swift's _Works_, xi. 319.

[543] Locke says:--'When once it comes to be a trial of skill, contest for mastery betwixt you and your child, you must be sure to carry it, whatever blows it costs, if a nod or words will not prevail.' He continues:--'A prudent and kind mother of my acquaintance was, on such an occasion, forced to whip her little daughter, at her first coming home from nurse, eight times successively the same morning, before she could master her stubbornness, and obtain a compliance in a very easy and indifferent matter.... As this was the first time, so I think it was the last, too, she ever struck her.' _Locke on Education_ (ed. 1710), p. 96.

[544] Andrew Crosbie, arguing for the schoolmaster, had said:--'Supposing it true that the respondent had been provoked to use a little more severity than he wished to do, it might well be justified on account of the ferocious and rebellious behaviour of his scholars, some of whom cursed and swore at him, and even went so far as to wrestle with him, in which case he was under a necessity of subduing them as he best could.' _Scotch Appeal Cases_, xvii. p. 214. The judgment of the House of Lords is given in Paton's _Reports of Cases upon Appeal from Scotland_, ii. 277, as follows:--'A schoolmaster, appointed by the Magistrates and Town Council of Cambelton, without any mention being made as to whether his office was for life or at pleasure: Held that it was a public office, and that he was liable to be dismissed for a just and reasonable cause, and that acts of cruel chastis.e.m.e.nt of the boys were a justifiable cause for his dismissal; reversing the judgment of the Court of Session.... The proof led before his dismission went to shew that scarce a day pa.s.sed without some of the scholars coming home with their heads cut, and their bodies discoloured. He beat his pupils with wooden squares, and sometimes with his fists, and used his feet by kicking them, and dragged them by the hair of the head. He had also entered into the trade of cattle grazing and farming--dealt in black cattle--in the s.h.i.+pping business--and in herring fis.h.i.+ng.'

[545] These six Methodists were in 1768 expelled St. Edmund's Hall, by the Vice-Chancellor, acting as 'visitor.' Nominally they were expelled for their ignorance; in reality for their active Methodism. That they were 'mighty ignorant fellows' was shown, but ignorance was tolerated at Oxford. One of their number confessed his ignorance, and declined all examination. But 'as he was represented to be a man of fortune, and declared that he was not designed for holy orders, the Vice-Chancellor did not think fit to remove him for this reason only, though he was supposed to be one of "the righteous over-much."' _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_, pp. 51-57. Horace Walpole, Whig though he was, thought as Johnson. 'Oxford,' he wrote (_Letters_ v. 97), 'has begun with these rascals, and I hope Cambridge will wake.'

[546] Much such an expulsion as this Johnson had justified in his _Life of Cheynel_ (_Works_, vi. 415). 'A temper of this kind,' he wrote, 'is generally inconvenient and offensive in any society, but in a place of education is least to be tolerated ... He may be justly driven from a society, by which he thinks himself too wise to be governed, and in which he is too young to teach, and too opinionative to learn.'

[547] Johnson wrote far otherwise of the indulgence shown to Edmund Smith, the poet. 'The indecency and licentiousness of his behaviour drew upon him, Dec. 24, 1694, while he was yet only bachelor, a publick admonition, entered upon record, in order to his expulsion. Of this reproof the effect is not known. He was probably less notorious. At Oxford, as we all know, much will be forgiven to literary merit.... Of his lampoon upon Dean Aldrich, [Smith was a Christ-Church man], I once heard a single line too gross to be repeated. But he was still a genius and a scholar, and Oxford was unwilling to lose him; he was endured with all his pranks and his vices two years longer; but on Dec. 20, 1705, at the instance of all the Canons, the sentence declared five years before was put in execution. The execution was, I believe, silent and tender.'

_Works_, vii. 373-4.

[548] See post, p. 193, note i.

[549] 'Our bottle-conversation,' wrote Addison, 'is infected with party-lying.' _The Spectator_, No. 507.

[550] Mrs. Piozzi, in her _Anecdotes_, p. 261, has given an erroneous account of this incident, as of many others. She pretends to relate it from recollection, as if she herself had been present; when the fact is that it was communicated to her by me. She has represented it as a personality, and the true point has escaped her. BOSWELL. She tells the story against Boswell. 'I fancy Mr. B---- has not forgotten,'

she writes.

[551] See post, April 11, 1776.

[552] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines _manufacturer_ as a _workman; an artificer_.

[553] Johnson had no fear of popular education. In his attack on Jenyns's _Enquiry_ (ante, i. 315), he wrote (_Works_, vi. 56):--'Though it should be granted that those who are _born to poverty and drudgery_ should not be _deprived_ by an _improper education_ of the _opiate_ of _ignorance_, even this concession will not be of much use to direct our practice, unless it be determined, who are those that are _born to poverty_. To entail irreversible poverty upon generation after generation, only because the ancestor happened to be poor, is in itself cruel, if not unjust.... I am always afraid of determining on the side of envy or cruelty. The privileges of education may sometimes be improperly bestowed, but I shall always fear to withhold them, lest I should be yielding to the suggestions of pride, while I persuade myself that I am following the maxims of policy.' In _The Idler_, No. 26, he attacked those who 'hold it little less than criminal to teach poor girls to read and write,' and who say that 'they who are born to poverty are born to ignorance, and will work the harder the less they know.'

[554] Tacitus's Agricola, ch. xii, was no doubt quoted in reference to the shortness of the northern winter day.

[555] It is remarkable, that Lord Monboddo, whom, on account of his resembling Dr. Johnson in some particulars, Foote called an Elzevir edition of him, has, by coincidence, made the very same remark. _Origin and Progress of Language_, vol. iii. 2nd ed. p. 219. BOSWELL. See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 21, note.

[556] On Sat.u.r.day night Johnson recorded:--'I resolved last Easter to read within the year the whole Bible, a very great part of which I had never looked upon. I read the Greek Testament without construing, and this day concluded the Apocalypse.... Easter Day. After twelve at night.

The day is now begun on which I hope to begin a new course, [Greek: hosper aph husplaeggon], [as if from the starting-place.]

My hopes are from this time-- To rise early, To waste less time, To appropriate something to charity.'

A week later he recorded:--'It is a comfort to me that at last, in my sixty-third year, I have attained to know even thus hastily, confusedly, and imperfectly, what my Bible contains. I have never yet read the Apocrypha. I have sometimes looked into the Maccabees, and read a chapter containing the question, _Which is the strongest?_ I think, in Esdras' [I Esdras, ch. iii. v. 10]. _Pr. and Med_. pp. 112-118.

[557] _Pr. and Med_. p. iii. BOSWELL.

[558] 'Perfect through sufferings.' _Hebrews_, ii. 10.

[559] 'I was always so incapable of learning mathematics,' wrote Horace Walpole (_Letters_, ix. 467), 'that I could not even get by heart the multiplication table, as blind Professor Sanderson honestly told me, above three-score years ago, when I went to his lectures at Cambridge.