Life of Johnson Volume III Part 56

May 1782. At least once. _Post_, under March 19, 1782, and _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 240.

Yet he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, 'I am of the chymical sect, which holds phlebotomy in abhorrence.' _Ib_. ii. 240. 'O why,' asks Wesley, who was as strongly opposed to bleeding as he was fond of poulticing, 'will physicians play with the lives of their patients? Do not others (as well as old Dr. c.o.c.kburn) know that "no end is answered by bleeding in a pleurisy, which may not be much better answered without it?"' Wesley's _Journal_, ii. 310. 'Dr. Cheyne,' writes Pope, 'was of Mr. Cheselden's opinion, that bleeding might be frequently repeated with safety, for he advised me to take four or five ounces every full moon.' Elwin and Courthope's _Pope's Works_, ix. 162.

[432] 'It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature.' _Sir Thomas Browne _quoted in Johnson's _Works_, vi. 485. See _post_, April 15, 1778, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 12, 1773.

[433] In the last number of _The Idler_ Johnson says:--'There are few things not purely evil of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, _this is the last_.... The secret horrour of the last is inseparable from a thinking being whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful.'

[434] In the first edition for _scarce any man_ we find _almost no man_. See _ante_, March 20, 1776, note.

[435] Bacon, in his _Essay on Death_, says:--'It is worthy the observing, that there is no pa.s.sion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him.' In the _De Aug. Sci_. vi. 3. 12, he says:--'Non invenias inter humanos affetum tam pusillum, qui si intendatur paullo vehementius, non mortis metum superet.'

[436] Johnson, in his _Lives of Addison and Parnell_ (_Works_, vii. 399, 449), mentions that they drank too freely. See _post_, under Dec. 2, 1784.

[437] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_. 3d edit. p. 240 [Sept. 22].

BOSWELL.

[438] In the _Life of Addison_ (_Works_, vii. 444) he says:--'The necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent monuments and records; but Lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost for ever.

What is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it might be told, it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of conduct, are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice, obstinacy, frolick and folly, however they might delight in the description, should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives is now bringing me among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself "walking upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished," and coming to the time of which it will be proper rather to say "nothing that is false, than all that is true."'

See _ante_, i. 9, and 30.

[439] Dr. Taylor was very ready to make this admission, because the party with which he was connected was not in power. There was then some truth in it, owing to the pertinacity of factious clamour. Had he lived till now, it would have been impossible for him to deny that his Majesty possesses the warmest affection of his people. BOSWELL. See _post_, March 21, 1783.

[440] The Duke of York in 1788, speaking in the House of Lords on the King's illness, said:--'He was confident that his Royal Highness [the Prince of Wales] understood too well the sacred principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain ever to a.s.sume or exercise any power, be his claim what it might, not derived from the will of the people, expressed by their representatives, and their lords.h.i.+ps in parliament a.s.sembled.' _Parl. Hist_. xxvii. 678.

[441] See _ante_, i. 430.

[442] See Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 18, 1773, and _post_, under date of Sept. 9, 1779, note.

[443] 'The return of my birth-day,' he wrote in 1773, 'if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 134. In 1781 he viewed the day with calmness, _if not with cheerfulness_. He writes:--'I rose, breakfasted, and gave thanks at church for my creation, preservation and redemption. As I came home, I thought I had never begun any period of life so placidly. I have always been accustomed to let this day pa.s.s unnoticed, but it came this time into my mind that some little festivity was not improper. I had a dinner; and invited Allen and Levet.' _Pr. and Med_. p. 198. In 1783 he again had 'a little dinner,' and invited four friends to keep the day. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 739. At Streatham the day, it would seem, was always kept. Mrs. Piozzi writes (_Anec_. p.

211):--'On the birthday of our eldest daughter, and that of our friend, Dr. Johnson, the 17th and 18th of September, we every year made up a little dance and supper to divert our servants and their friends.'

[444] The son of a Mr. c.o.xeter, 'a gentleman,' says Johnson, 'who was once my friend,' enlisted in the service of the East India Company.

Johnson asked Mr. Thrale to use his influence to get his discharge.

_Piozzi Letters_, i. 33.

[445] The bookseller whom Johnson beat, _ante_, i. 154.

[446] 'When a well-known author published his poems in the year 1777, "Such a one's verses are come out," said I: "Yes," replied Johnson, "and this frost has struck them in again. Here are some lines I have written to ridicule them; but remember that I love the fellow dearly now--for all I laugh at him.

'Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong; Phrase that time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.'"'

Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 64.

Thomas Warton in 1777 published a volume of his poems. He, no doubt, is meant.

[447] In _The Rambler_, No. 121. Johnson, twenty-six years earlier, attacked 'the imitation of Spenser, which, by the influence of some men of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age.... They seem to conclude that, when they have disfigured their lines with a few obsolete syllables, they have accomplished their design, without considering that they ought, not only to admit old words, but to avoid new. The laws of imitation are broken by every word introduced since the time of Spenser.'

[448] Warton's _Ode on the First of April_ is found a line which may have suggested these two lines:--'The morning h.o.a.r, and evening chill.'

[449] 'Collins affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 404. Goldsmith, eleven years earlier, said in his _Life of Parnell_ (_Misc. Works_, iv. 22):--'These misguided innovators have not been content with restoring antiquated words and phrases, but have indulged themselves in the most licentious transpositions and the harshest constructions, vainly imagining that the more their writings are unlike prose, the more they resemble poetry.'

Collins and Warton might have quoted by way of defence the couplet in Milton's _L'Allegro_.--

'While the c.o.c.k with lively din Scatters the rear of _darkness thin_.'

[450] As some of my readers may be gratified by reading the progress of this little composition, I shall insert it from my notes. 'When Dr.

Johnson and I were sitting _tete-a-tete_ at the Mitre tavern, May 9, 1778, he said "_Where_ is bliss," would be better. He then added a ludicrous stanza, but would not repeat it, lest I should take it down.

It was somewhat as follows; the last line I am sure I remember:

"While I thus cried, The h.o.a.ry seer reply'd, Come, my lad, and drink some beer."

In spring, 1779, when in better humour, he made the second stanza, as in the text. There was only one variation afterwards made on my suggestion, which was changing _h.o.a.ry_ in the third line to _smiling_, both to avoid a sameness with the epithet in the first line, and to describe the hermit in his pleasantry. He was then very well pleased that I should preserve it.' BOSWELL.

[451] When I mentioned Dr. Johnson's remark to a lady of admirable good sense and quickness of understanding, she observed, 'It is true, all this excludes only one evil; but how much good does it let in?'--To this observation much praise has been justly given. Let me then now do myself the honour to mention that the lady who made it was the late Margaret Montgomerie, my very valuable wife, and the very affectionate mother of my children, who, if they inherit her good qualities, will have no reason to complain of their lot. _Dos magna parentum virtus_. BOSWELL.

The latter part of this note was first given in the second edition. The quotation if from Horace:--

'Cos est magna parentium Virtus.'

'The lovers there for dowry claim The father's virtue and the mother's fame.'

FRANCIS, Horace, Odes, iii. 24. 21.

[452] He saw it in 1774 on his way to Wales; but he must, I think, have seen it since, for it does not appear from his _Journal of a Tour into Wales_ that he then saw Lord Scarsdale. He met him also at Dr. Taylor's in July 1775. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 267.

[453] I do not find the description in Young's _Six Months' Tour through the North of England_, but in Pilkington's _Present State of Derbys.h.i.+re_, ii. 120.

[454]

'Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?'

'What place, what land in all the earth but with our grief is stored?'

Morris, _aeneids_, i. 460.

[455] See _ante_, March 21 and 28, 1776.

[456] At Derby.

[457] Baretti in his _Italy_, i. 236, says:--'It is the general custom for our authors to make a present of their works to booksellers, who in return scarcely give a few copies when printed.' The Venetian bookseller to whom Metastasio gave his cleared, Baretti says, more than 10,000.

Goldoni scarcely got for each of his plays ten pounds from the manager of the Venetian theatre, and much less from the booksellers. 'Our learned stare when they are told that in England there are numerous writers who get their bread by their productions only.'

[458] I am now happy to understand, that Mr. John Home, who was himself gallantly in the field for the reigning family, in that interesting warfare, but is generous enough to do justice to the other side, is preparing an account of it for the press. BOSWELL. Dr. A. Carlyle, who knew Home well, says (_Auto_. p. 295):--'All his opinions of men and things were prejudices, which, though it did not disqualify him for writing admirable poetry, yet made him unfit for writing history.' See _ante_, i. 225, for Boswell's projected works.

[459] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale the next day:--'The finer pieces [of the Derby china] are so dear that perhaps silver vessels of the same capacity may be sometimes bought at the same price; and I am not yet so infected with the contagion of china-fancy as to like anything at that rate which can so easily be broken.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 380.

[460] See _ante_, April 14, 1775.

[461] See Hutton's _History of Derby_, a book which is deservedly esteemed for its information, accuracy, and good narrative. Indeed the age in which we live is eminently distinguished by topographical excellence. BOSWELL. According to Hutton the Italians at the beginning of the eighteenth century had 'the exclusive art of silk-throwing.'

Lombe went to Italy, and by bribery got admittance into the works.

Having mastered the secret he returned to England with two of the workmen. About the year 1717 he founded a great silk-mill at Derby. He died early, being poisoned, it was a.s.serted, by an Italian woman who had been sent over to destroy him. In this mill, Hutton, as a child, 'had suffered intolerable severity.' Hutton's _Derby_, pp. 193-205.