vants resolved not to drink it. They were at some loss how to notify their resolution, being afraid of offending their master, who they knew liked Foote much as a companion. At last they fixed upon a little black boy, who was rather a favourite, to be their deputy and deliver their remonstrance; and having invested him with the whole authority of the kitchen, he was to inform Mr. Fitzherbert in all their names, upon a certain day, that they would drink Foote's small-beer no longer. On that day Foote hap The cheering sound of 'Dinner is upon the table,' dissolved his reverie, and we all sat down without any symptom of ill humour. | There were present-beside Mr. Wilkes, and Mr. Arthur Lee, who was an old companion of mine when he studied physic at EdinburghMr. (now Sir John) Miller, Dr. Lettsom, and Mr. Slater the druggist. Mr. Wilkes placed himself next to Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and politeness that he gained upon him insensibly. No man ate more heartily than Johnson, or loved better.pened to dine at Fitzherbert's, and this boy what was nice and delicate. Mr. Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some fine veal. 'Pray give me leave, sir ;-It is better here-A little of the brown-Some fat, sir-A little of the stuffing-Some gravy-Let me have the pleasure of giving you some butter-Allow me to recommend a squeeze of this orange; or the lemon perhaps may have more zest.'-'Sir, sir, I am obliged to you, sir,' cried Johnson, bowing, and turning his head to him with a look for some time of 'surly virtue,' but in a short while of complacency. Foote being mentioned, Johnson said, 'He is not a good mimic.' One of the company added, 'A merry- Andrew, a buffoon!' JOHNSON 'But he has wit too, and is not deficient in ideas or in fertility and variety of imagery, and not empty of reading; he has knowledge enough to fill up his part. One species of wit he has in an eminent degree, that of escape. You drive him into a corner with both hands; but he's gone, sir, when you think you have got him-like an animal that jumps over your head. Then he has a great range for wit; he never lets truth stand between him and a jest, and he is sometimes mighty coarse. Garrick is under many restraints from which Foote is free.' WILKES: Garrick's wit is more like Lord Chesterfield's.' JOHNSON: 'The first time I was in company with Foote was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased; and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him; but the dog was so very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back upon my chair, and fairly laugh it out. No, sir, he was irresistible. He upon one occasion experienced, in an extraordinary degree, the efficacy of his powers of entertaining. Amongst the many and various modes which he tried of getting money, he became a partner with a small-beer brewer, and he was to have a share of the profits for procuring customers amongst his numerous acquaintance. Fitzherbert was one who took Lis small-beer; but it was so bad that the ser Johnson's London, a Poem, v. 145.-BOSWELL. 1 Foote told me that Johnson said to him, 'For loud, thetreperous, broad-faced mirth, I know not his equal.' -BUEWELL served at table; he was so delighted with Foote's stories, and merriment, and grimace, that when he went down-stairs he told them, "This is the finest man I have ever seen. I will not deliver your message. I will drink his small-beer."" Somebody observed that Garrick could not have done this. WILKES: Garrick would have made the small-beer still smaller. He is now leaving the stage; but he will play Scrub all his life.' I knew that Johnson would let nobody attack Garrick but himself, as Garrick said to me, and I had heard him praise his liberality; so, to bring out his commendation of his celebrated pupil, I said, loudly, 'I have heard Garrick is liberal.' JOHNSON: 'Yes, sir, I know that Garrick has given away more money than any man in England that I am acquainted with, and that not from ostentatious views. Garrick was very poor when he began life; so when he came to have money, he probably was very unskilful in giving away, and saved when he should not. But Garrick began to be liberal as soon as he could; and I am of opinion the reputation of avarice, which he has had, has been very lucky for him, and prevented his having many enemies. You despise a man for avarice, but do not hate him. Garrick might have been much better attacked for living with more splendour than is suitable to a player: if they had had the wit to have assaulted him in that quarter, they might have galled him more. But they have kept clamouring about his avarice, which has rescued him from much obloquy and envy.' Talking of the great difficulty of obtaining authentic information for biography, Johnson told us, When I was a young fellow I wanted to write the Life of Dryden, and in order to get materials I applied to the only two persons then alive who had seen him; these were old Swinney,' and old Cibber. Swinney's information was no more than this, "That at Will's coffeehouse Dryden had a particular chair for 1 Owen M'Swinney, who died in 1754, and bequeathed his fortune to Mrs. Woffington, the actress. He had been a manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and afterwards of the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket. He was also a dramatic writer, having produced a comedy, entitled The Quacks, or Love's the Physician, 1705, and two operas.-MALONE. himself, which was set by the fire in winter, 6 BOSWELL: And his plays are good.' JOHNSON: 'Yes; but that was his trade; l'esprit du corps; he had been all his life among players and play writers. I wondered that he had so little to say in conversation, for he had kept the best company, and learnt all that can be got by the ear. He abused Pindar to me, and then showed me an ode of his own, with an absurd couplet making a linnet soar on an eagle's wing. I told him that when the ancients made a simile, they always made it like something real.' Mr. Wilkes remarked, that among all the bold flights of Shakspeare's imagination, the boldest was making Birnam Wood march to Dunsinane, creating a wood where there never was a shrub;-a wood in Scotland! ha! ha! ha! And he also observed, that the clannish slavery of the Highlands of Scotland was the single exception to Milton's remark of "The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty," being worshipped in all hilly countries. When I was at Inverary,' said he, on a visit to my old friend, Archibald Duke of Argyle, his dependants congratulated me on being such a favourite of his Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus, Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus." You will easier make a tragedy out of the Iliad than on any subject not handled before.' JOHNSON: 'He means that it is difficult to appropriate to particular persons qualities which are common to all mankind, as Homer has done.' WILKES: We have no City Poet now: that is an office which has gone into disuse. The last was Elkanah Settle. There is something in names which one cannot help feeling. Now Elkanah Settle sounds so queer, who can expect much from that name? We should have no ference to Elkanah Settle, from the names hesitation to give it for John Dryden, in preonly, without knowing their different merits.' JOHNSON: 'I suppose, sir, Settle did as well for Aldermen in his time, as John Home could do now. Where did Beckford and Trecothick learn English?' Mr. Arthur Lee mentioned some Scotch who had taken possession of a barren part of America, and wondered why they should choose it. JOHNThe Scotch would not know it to be barren.' SON: Why, sir, all barrenness is comparative. BOSWELL: Come, come, he is flattering the English. You have now been in Scotland, sir, and say if you did not see meat and drink enough there.' JOHNSON: Why, yes, sir; meat and drink enough to give the inhabitants sufficient strength to run away from home.' All these quick and lively sallies were said sportively, quite in jest, and with a smile, which showed that he meant only wit. Upon this topic, he and Mr. Wilkes could perfectly them, and I was conscious that as both of them assimilate ; here was a bond of union between had visited Caledonia, both were fully satisfied Grace. I said, "It is, then, gentlemen, truly imagine that it is a land of famine. But they of the strange narrow ignorance of those who lucky for me; for if I had displeased the Duke, amused themselves with persevering in the old and he had wished it, there is not a Campbell jokes. When I claimed a superiority for Scotamong you but would have been ready to bring land over England in one respect, that no John Wilkes's head to him in a charger. It would have been only man can be arrested there for a debt merely because another swears it against him, but there must first be the judgment of a court of law ascertaining its justice; and that a seizure of the person, before judgment is obtained, can take place only if his creditor should swear that he is about to fly from the country, or, as it is technically expressed, is in meditatione fuga: WILKES: That, I should think, may be safely sworn of all the Scotch nation.' JOHNSON (to Mr. Wilkes): You must know, sir, I lately took my friend Boswell and showed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield, my native city, that he might see for once real civility: for you know he lives among savages in Scotland, and "Off with his head! So much for Aylesbury.” I was then member for Aylesbury.' Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes talked of the contested passage in Horace's Art of Poetry, 'Difficile est propriè communia dicere.' Mr. Wilkes, according to my note, gave the interpretation thus: 'It is difficult to speak with propriety of common things; as, if a poet had to speak of Queen Caroline drinking tea, he must endeavour to avoid the vulgarity of cups and saucers.' But, upon reading my note, he tells me that he meant to say, that 'the word communia, being a Roman law-term, signifies here things communis juris, that is to say, what among rakes in London.' WILKES: Except when he is with grave, sober, decent people, like you and me.' JOHNSON (smiling): And we ashamed of him." They were quite frank and easy. Johnson told the story of his asking Mrs. Macaulay to allow her footman to sit down with them, to prove the ridiculousness of the argument for the equality of mankind; and he said to me afterwards, with a nod of satisfaction, 'You saw Mr. Wilkes acquiesced.' Wilkes talked with all imaginable freedom of the ludicrous title given to the Attorney-General, Diabolus Regis; adding, "I have reason to know something about that officer; for I was prosecuted for a libel.' Johnson, who many people would have supposed must have been furiously angry at hearing this talked of so lightly, said not a word. He was now, indeed, a good-humoured fellow.' After dinner we had an accession of Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker lady, well known for her various talents, and of Mr. Alderman Lee. Amidst some patriotic groans, somebody, I think the Alderman, said, 'Poor old England is lost.' JOHNSON: Sir, it is not so much to be lamented that old England is lost, as that the Scotch have found it." WILKES: 'Had Lord Bute governed Scotland only, I should not have taken the trouble to write his eulogy, and dedicate' MORTIMER' to him.' Mr. Wilkes held a candle to show a fine print of a beautiful female figure which hung in the room, and pointed out the elegant contour of the bosom with the finger of an arch-connoisseur. He afterwards, in a conversation with me, waggishly insisted that all the time Johnson showed visible signs of a fervent admiration of the corresponding charms of the fair Quaker. This record, though by no means so perfect as I could wish, will serve to give a notion of a very curious interview, which was not only pleasing at the time, but had the agreeable and benignant effect of reconciling any animosity, and sweetening any acidity, which in the various bustle of political contest had been produced in the minds of two men, who, though widely different, had so many things in common-classical learning, modern literature, wit and humour, and ready reparteethat it would have been much to be regretted, if they had been for ever at a distance from each other. Mr. Burke gave me much credit for this successful negotiation; and pleasantly said, 'that there was nothing equal to it in the whole history of the Corps Diplomatique.' I attended Dr. Johnson home, and had the satisfaction to hear him tell Mrs. Williams how 1 It would not become me to expatiate on this strong and pointed remark, in which a very great deal of meaning is condensed.-BOSWELL. much he had been pleased with Mr. Wilkes's company, and what an agreeable day he had passed. I talked a good deal to him of the celebrated Margaret Caroline Rudd, whom I had visited, induced by the fame of her talents, address, and irresistible power of fascination. To a lady who disapproved of my visiting her he said, on a former occasion, Nay, madam, Boswell is in the right; I should have visited her myself, were it not that they have now a trick of putting everything into the newspapers.' This evening he exclaimed, ‘I envy him his acquaintance with Mrs. Rudd.' I mentioned a scheme which I had of making a tour to the Isle of Man, and giving a full account of it; and that Mr. Burke had playfully suggested as a motto, "The proper study of mankind is MAN.' JOHNSON: Sir, you will get more by the book than the jaunt will cost you; so you will have your diversion for nothing, and add to your reputation.' On the evening of the next day, I took leave of Johnson, being to set out for Scotland. I thanked him with great warmth for all his kind'Sir,' said he, 'you are very welcome. Nobody repays it with more.' ness. CHAPTER XXXIX. 1776-1777. How very false is the notion that has gone round the world, of the rough, and passionate, and harsh manners of this great and good man! That Johnson had occasional sallies of heat of temper, and that he was sometimes, perhaps, too easily provoked' by absurdity and folly, and sometimes too desirous of triumph in colloquial contest, must be allowed. The quickness both of his perception and sensibility disposed him to sudden explosions of satire; to which his extraordinary readiness of wit was a strong and almost irresistible incitement. To adopt one of the finest images in Mr. Home's Douglas, 'On each glance of thought Decision followed, as the thunderbolt Pursues the flash!' I admit that the beadle within him was often so eager to apply the lash, that the judge had not time to consider the case with sufficient deliberation. That he was occasionally remarkable for violence of temper may be granted: but let us ascertain the degree, and not let it be supposed that he was in a perpetual rage, and never without a club in his hand to knock down every one who approached him. On the contrary, the truth is, that by much the greatest part of his time he was civil, obliging, nay, polite in the true sense of the word; so much so, that many gentlemen who were long acquainted with him never received, or even heard a strong expression from him. The following letters, concerning an Epitaph which he wrote for the monument of Dr. Goldsmith, in Westminster Abbey, afford at once a proof of his unaffected modesty, his carelessness as to his own writings, and of the great respect which he entertained for the taste and judgment of the excellent and eminent person to whom they are addressed : 6 TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 'May 16, 1776. 'DEAR SIR,-I have been kept away from you, I know not well how, and of those vexatious hindrances I know not when there will be an end. I therefore send you the poor dear Doctor's epitaph. Read it first yourself; and if you then think it right, show it to the Club. I am, you know, willing to be corrected. If you think anything much amiss, keep it to yourself till we come together. I have sent two copies, but prefer the card. The dates must be settled by Dr. Percy.-I am, sir, your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' TO THE SAME. 'June 22, 1776. 'SIR,-Miss Reynolds has a mind to send the Epitaph to Dr. Beattie; I am very willing, but having no copy, cannot immediately recollect it. She tells me you have lost it. Try to recollect, and put down as much as you retain; you perhaps may have kept what I have dropt. The lines for which I am at a loss are something of rerum civilium sive naturalium. It was a sorry trick to lose it; help me if you can.-I am, sir, your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON. "The gout grows better but slowly.' It was, I think, after I had left London in this year, that this epitaph gave occasion to a Remonstrance to the MONARCH OF LITERATURE, for an account of which I am indebted to Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo. That my readers may have the subject more fully and clearly before them, I shall first insert the epitaph: OLIVARII GOLDSMITH,— 1 These words must have been in the other copy. They are not in that which was preferred.-BOSWELL Sodalium amor, Amicorum fides, Lectorum veneratio. Natus in Hibernia Forniæ Longfordiensis, Obiit Londini, April IV. MDCCLXXIV.2 Sir William Forbes writes to me thus:'I enclose the Round Robin. This jeu d'esprit took its rise one day at dinner, at our friend Sir Joshua Reynolds's. All the company present, except myself, were friends and acquaintance of Dr. Goldsmith. The epitaph written for him by Dr. Johnson became the subject of conversation, and various emendations were suggested, which it was agreed should be submitted to the Doctor's consideration. But the question was, who should have the courage to propose them to him? At last it was hinted that there could be no way so good as that of a Round Robin, as the sailors call it, which they make use of when they enter into a conspiracy, so as not to let it be known who puts his name first or last to the paper. This proposition was instantly assented to; and Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, now Bishop of Killaloe,3 drew up an address to Dr. Johnson on the occasion, replete with wit and humour, but which it was feared the Doctor might think treated the subject with too much levity. Mr. Burke then proposed the address as it stands in the paper in writing, to which I had the honour to officiate as clerk. 'Sir Joshua agreed to carry it to Dr. Johnson, who received it with much good humour,' and 1 This was a mistake, which was not discovered till after Goldsmith's monument was put in Westminster Abbey. He was born November 29, 1728; and therefore, when he died, he was in his 47th year.-MALONE 2 Besides this Latin Epitaph, Johnson honoured the memory of his friend Goldsmith with one short one in Greek.-BOSWELL. 3 This prelate, who was afterwards translated to the See of Limerick, died at Wimbledon, in Surrey, June 7, 1806, in his eightieth year. The original Round Robin remained in his possession; the paper, which Sir William Forbes transmitted to Mr. Boswell, being only a copy.-MALONE. 4 He, however, upon seeing Dr. Warton's name to the suggestion that the Epitaph should be in English, observed to Sir Joshua, 'I wonder that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool.' He said, too, I should have thought Mund Burke would have had more sense.' Mr. Langton, who was one of the company at Sir Joshua's, like a sturdy scholar, refused resolutely to sign the Round Robin. The Epitaph is engraved upon Dr. Goldsmith's monument without any alteration. At another time, when somebody endeavoured to argue in favour of its being in English, Johnson said, 'The language of the country of which a learned man was a native, is not the language fit for his epitaph, which should be in ancient and permanent language. Consider, sir, how you should feel were you to find, at Rotterdam, an epitaph upon Erasmus in Dutch!' For my own part, I think it would be best to Ponetcalfe Gibbon. Jos Warton. & Franklinie an intended Epitaph for the Monument of ing an ornament, which we also know to Glolman. have epitaphs written both in a learned language, and in the language of the country; so that they might have the advantage of being more universally understood, and at the same time be secured of classical stability. I cannot, however, but be of opinion that it is not sufficiently discriminative. Applying to Goldsmith equally the epithets of 'Poeta, Historici, Physici,' is surely not right; for as to his claim to the last of those epithets, I have heard Johnson himself say, 'Goldsmith, sir, will give us a very fine book pon the subject; but if he can distinguish a cow from a horse, that I believe may be the extent of his knowledge of natural history.' His book is, indeed, an excellent performance, though in some instances he appears to have trusted too much to Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the science on which he wrote so admirably. For instance, he tells us that the cow sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable error, which Goldsmith has faithfully transferred into his book. It is wonderful that Buffon, who lived so much in the country, at his noble seat, should have fallen into such a blunder. I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer.BOSWELL. |