Life of Johnson Volume V Part 41

_'The a.s.sembly-man_ (or the character of an a.s.sembly-man) written 1647, _Lond._ 1662-3, in three sheets in qu. The copy of it was taken from the author by those who said they could not rob, because all was theirs; so excised what they liked not; and so mangled and reformed it, that it was no character of an a.s.sembly, but of themselves. At length, after it had slept several years, the author published it to avoid false copies. It is also reprinted in a book ent.i.t. _Wit and Loyalty revived_, in a collection of some smart satyrs in verse and prose on the late times.

_Lond._ 1682, qu. said to be written by Abr. Cowley, Sir John Birkenhead, and Hudibras, alias Sam. Butler.'--For this information I am indebted to Mr. Reed, of Staple Inn. BOSWELL. This tract is in the _Harleian Misc_., ed. 1810, vi. 57. Mr. Reed's quotation differs somewhat from it.

[169] 'When a Scotchman was talking against Warburton, Johnson said he had more literature than had been imported from Scotland since the days of Buchanan. Upon the other's mentioning other eminent writers of the Scotch; "These will not do," said Johnson, "Let us have some more of your northern lights; these are mere farthing candles."' Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 208. Dr. T. Campbell records (_Diary_, p. 61) that at the dinner at Mr. Dilly's, described _ante_, ii. 338, 'Dr. Johnson compared England and Scotland to two lions, the one saturated with his belly full, and the other prowling for prey. He defied any one to produce a cla.s.sical book written in Scotland since Buchanan. Robertson, he said, used pretty words, but he liked Hume better; and neither of them would he allow to be more to Clarendon than a rat to a cat. "A Scotch surgeon may have more learning than an English one, and all Scotland could not muster learning enough for Lowth's _Prelections_."'

See _ante_, ii. 363, and March 30, 1783.

[170] The poem is ent.i.tled _Gualterus Danistonus ad Amicos_. It begins:--

'Dum studeo fungi fallentis munere vitae'

Which Prior imitates:--

'Studious the busy moments to deceive.'

Sir Walter Scott thought that the poem praised by Johnson was 'more likely the fine epitaph on John, Viscount of Dundee, translated by Dryden, and beginning _Ultime Scotoruml_' Archibald Pitcairne, M.D., was born in 1652, and died in 1713.

[171] My Journal, from this day inclusive, was read by Dr. Johnson.

BOSWELL. It was read by Johnson up to the second paragraph of Oct. 26.

Boswell, it should seem, once at least shewed Johnson a part of the Journal from which he formed his _Life_. See _ante_, iii. 260, where he says:--'It delighted him on a review to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.'

[172] See _ante_, ii. 20, note 4.

[173] Goldsmith, in his _Present State of Polite Learning_, published in 1759, says, (ch. x):--'When the great Somers was at the helm, patronage was fas.h.i.+onable among our n.o.bility ... Since the days of a certain prime minister of inglorious memory [Sir Robert Walpole] the learned have been kept pretty much at a distance. ... The author, when unpatronised by the Great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller. There cannot be perhaps imagined a combination more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one to allow as little for writing, and of the other to write as much as possible; accordingly tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavours.'

[174] In the first number of _The Rambler_, Johnson shews how attractive to an author is the form of publication which he was himself then adopting:--'It heightens his alacrity to think in how many places he shall have what he is now writing read with ecstacies to-morrow.'

[175] Yet he said 'the inhabitants of Lichfield were the most sober, decent people in England.' _Ante_, ii. 463.

[176] At the beginning of the eighteenth century, says Goldsmith, 'smoking in the rooms [at Bath] was permitted.' When Nash became King of Bath he put it down. Goldsmith's _Works_, ed. 1854, iv. 51. 'Johnson,'

says Boswell (_ante_, i. 317), 'had a high opinion of the sedative influence of smoking.'

[177] Dr. Johnson used to practise this himself very much. BOSWELL.

[178] In _The Tatler_, for May 24, 1709, we are told that 'rural esquires wear s.h.i.+rts half a week, and are drunk twice a day.' In the year 1720, Fenton urged Gay 'to sell as much South Sea stock as would purchase a hundred a year for life, "which will make you sure of a clean s.h.i.+rt and a shoulder of mutton every day."' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 65.

In _Tristram Shandy_, ii. ch. 4, published in 1759, we read:--'It was in this year [about 1700] that my uncle began to break in upon the daily regularity of a clean s.h.i.+rt.' In _the Spiritual Quixote_, published in 1773 (i. 51), Tugwell says to his master:--'Your Wors.h.i.+p belike has been used to s.h.i.+ft you twice a week.' Mrs. Piozzi (_Journey_, i. 105, date of 1789) says that she heard in Milan 'a travelled gentleman telling his auditors how all the men in London, _that were n.o.ble_, put on a clean s.h.i.+rt every day.' Johnson himself owned that he had 'no pa.s.sion for clean linen.' _Ante_, i. 397.

[179] Scott, in _Old Mortality_, ed. 1860, ix. 352, says:--'It was a universal custom in Scotland, that, when the family was at dinner, the outer-gate of the court-yard, if there was one, and if not, the door of the house itself, was always shut and locked.' In a note on this he says:--'The custom of keeping the door of a house or chateau locked during the time of dinner probably arose from the family being anciently a.s.sembled in the hall at that meal, and liable to surprise.'

[180] Johnson, writing of 'the chapel of the alienated college,'

says:--'I was always by some civil excuse hindered from entering it.'

_Works_, ix. 4.

[181] George Marline's _Reliquiae divi Andreae_ was published in 1797.

[182] See _ante_, ii. 171, and iv. 75.

[183] Mr. Chambers says that Knox was buried in a place which soon after became, and ever since has been, a high-way; namely, the old church-yard of St. Giles in Edinburgh. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 283.

[184] In _The Rambler_, No. 82, Johnson makes a virtuoso write:--'I often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.' He had in 1754 'viewed with indignation the ruins of the Abbeys of Oseney and Rewley near Oxford.' Ante, i. 273. Smollett, in _Humphry Clinker_ (Letrer of Aug. 8), describes St. Andrews as 'the skeleton of a venerable city.'

[185] 'Some talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others readily allowed that there was a time when the claims of the publick were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself to review his life and purify his heart.' _Ra.s.selas_, ch. 22.

[186] See _ante_, ii. 423.

[187] See _ante_, iv. 5, note 2, and v. 27.

[188] 'He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But, perhaps, every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life, and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat.' _Ra.s.selas_, ch. 47. See _ante_, ii. 435.

[189] 'A youthful pa.s.sion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged.' _Ante_, ii. 10. The hermit in _Ra.s.selas_ (ch. 21) says:--'The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.' In Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 203, we read that 'Johnson thought worse of the vices of retirement than of those of society.' Southey (_Life of Wesley_, i. 39) writes:--'Some time before John Wesley's return to the University, he had travelled many miles to see what is called "a serious man." This person said to him, "Sir, you wish to serve G.o.d and go to heaven. Remember, you cannot serve Him alone; you must therefore find companions or make them; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion." Wesley never forgot these words.'

[190] [Erga neon, boulai de meson euchai de gerunton. _Hesiodi Fragmenta_, Lipsiae 1840, p. 371]

Let youth in deeds, in counsel man engage; Prayer is the proper duty of old age.

BOSWELL.

[191] One 'sorrowful scene' Johnson was perhaps too late in the year to see. Wesley, who visited St. Andrews on May 27, 1776, during the vacation, writes (_Journal_, iv. 75):--'What is left of St. Leonard's College is only a heap of ruins. Two colleges remain. One of them has a tolerable square; but all the windows are broke, like those of a brothel. We were informed the students do this before they leave the college.'

[192] 'He was murdered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 3. In May 1546 the Cardinal had Wishart the Reformer killed, and at the end of the same month he got killed himself.

[193] Johnson says (_Works_, ix. 5):--'The doctor, by whom it was shown, hoped to irritate or subdue my English vanity by telling me that we had no such repository of books in England.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale (_Piozzi Letters_, i. 113):--'For luminousness and elegance it may vie at least with the new edifice at Streatham.' 'The new edifice' was, no doubt, the library of which he took the touching farewell. _Ante_, iv. 158.

[194] 'Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and hara.s.sing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain.' _The Rambler_, No. 47. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on the death of her son:--'Do not indulge your sorrow; try to drive it away by either pleasure or pain; for, opposed to what you are feeling, many pains will become pleasures.'

_Piozzi Letters_, i. 310.

[195] See ante, ii. 151.

[196] The Pembroke College grace was written by Camden. It was as follows:--'Gratias tibi agimus, Deus misericors, pro acceptis a tua bonitate alimentis; enixe comprecantes ut serenissimum nostrum Regem Georgium, totam regiam familiam, populumque tuum universum tuta in pace semper custodies.'

[197] Sharp was murdered on May 3, 1679, in a moor near St. Andrews.

Burnet's _History of his Own time_, ed. 1818, ii. 82, and Scott's _Old Mortality_, ed, 1860, ix. 297, and x. 203.

[198] 'One of its streets is now lost; and in those that remain there is the silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy depopulation.... St. Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and education.... The students, however, are represented as, at this time, not exceeding a hundred. I saw no reason for imputing their paucity to the present professors.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 4. A student, he adds, of lower rank could get his board, lodging, and instruction for less than ten pounds for the seven months of residence. Stockdale says (_Memoirs_, i. 238) that 'in St. Andrews, in 1756, for a good bedroom, coals, and the attendance of a servant I paid one s.h.i.+lling a week.'

[199] _The Compleat Fencing-Master_, by Sir William Hope. London, 1691.

[200] 'In the whole time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of kindness, and entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality'

Johnson's _Works_, ix. 3.

[201] Dugald Stewart (_Life of Adam Smith_, p. 107) writes:--'Mr. Smith observed to me not long before his death, that after all his practice in writing he composed as slowly, and with as great difficulty as at first.

He added at the same time that Mr. Hume had acquired so great a facility in this respect, that the last volumes of his _History_ were printed from his original copy, with a few marginal corrections.' See _ante_, iii. 437 and iv. 12.

[202] Of these only twenty-five have been published: Johnson's _Works_, ix. 289-525. See _ante_, iii. 19, note 3, and 181. Johnson wrote on April 20, 1778:--'I have made sermons, perhaps as readily as formerly.'

_Pr. and Med._ p. 170. 'I should think,' said Lord Eldon, 'that no clergyman ever wrote as many sermons as Lord Stowell. I advised him to burn all his ma.n.u.scripts of that kind. It is not fair to the clergymen to have it known he wrote them.' Twiss's _Eldon_, iii. 286. Johnson, we may be sure, had no copy of any of his sermons. That none of them should be known but those he wrote for Taylor is strange.

[203] He made the same statement on June 3, 1781 (_ante_, iv. 127), adding, 'I should be glad to see it [the translation] now.' This shows that he was not speaking of his translation of _Lobo_, as Mr. Croker maintains in a note on this pa.s.sage. I believe he was speaking of his translation of Courayer's _Life of Paul Sarpi. Ante_, i. 135.

[204] 'As far as I am acquainted with modern architecture, I am aware of no streets which, in simplicity and manliness of style, or general breadth and brightness of effect, equal those of the New Town of Edinburgh. But, etc.' Ruskin's _Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, p. 2.