"TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "DEAR SIR, making notes of his conversation, though not with so much assiduity as I wish I had done. At this time, indeed, I had a sufficient excuse for not being able to appropriate so much time to my journal; for General Paoli, after Corsica had been overpowered by the monarchy of France, was now no longer at the head of his brave countrymen, but having with difficulty escaped from his native island, had sought an asylum in Great Britain; and it was my duty, as well as my pleasure, to attend much upon him. Such particulars of Johnson's conversation at this period as I have com "WHY do you charge me with unkindness? I have omitted nothing that could do you good, or give you pleasure, unless it be that I have forborne to tell you my opinion of your "Account of Corsica." I believe my opinion, if you think well of my judgement, might have given you pleasure; but when it is considered how much vanity is excited by praise, I am not sure that it would have done you good. Your History is like other histories, but your Journal is in a very high degree curious and delightful. There is between the history and the jour-mitted to writing, I shall here introduce, nal that difference which there will always be found between notions borrowed from without, and notions generated within. Your history was copied from books; your journal rose out of your own experience and observation. You express images which operated strongly upon yourself, and you have impressed them with great force upon your readers. I know not whether I could name any narrative by which curiosity is better excited, or better gratified. "I am glad that you are going to e married; and as I wish you well in things of less importance, wish you well with proportionate ardour in this crisis of your life. What I can contribute to your happiness, I should be very unwilling to withhold; for I have always loved and valued you, and shall love you and value you still more, as you become more regular and useful: effects which a happy marriage will hardly fail to produce. "I do not find that I am likely to come back very soon from this place. I shall, perhaps, stay a fortnight longer; and a fortnight is a long time to a lover absent from his mistress." Would a fortnight ever "I am, dear Sir, have an end? "Your most affectionate humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON. "Brighthelmstone, Sept. 9, 1769." After his return to town, we met frequently, and I continued the practice of author, and professing an indifference for literary fame, may possibly impose upon many people such an idea of his consequence as he wishes may be received. For my part, I should be proud to be known as an author, and 1 have an ardent ambition for literary fame; for, of all possessions, I should imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish a book, which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of having that character lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve a uniform dignity among those who see us every day is hardly possible; and to aim at it, must put us under the fetters of perpetual restraint. The author of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an casy play, and yet indulge the pride of superior genius, when he considers that by those who know him only as an author, he never ceases to be respected. Such an author, when in his hours of gloom and discontent, may have the consolation to think, that his writings are, at that very time, giving pleasure to numbers; and such an author may cherish the hope of being remembered after death. which has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages." without any strict attention to methodical arrangement. Sometimes, short notes of different days shall be blended together, and sometimes a day may seem important enough to be separately distinguished. He said, he would not have Sunday kept with rigid severity and gloom, but with a gravity and simplicity of behaviour. I told him that David Hume had made a short collection of Scotticisms. "I wonder (said Johnson), that he should find them.”* He would not admit the importance of the question concerning the legality of general warrants. "Such a power (he observed) must be vested in every government, to answer particular cases of necessity; and there can be no just complaint but when it is abused, for which those who administer government must be answerable. It is a inatter of such indifference, a matter about which the people care so very little, that were a man to be sent over Britain to offer them an exemption from it at a halfpenny a piece, very few would purchase it." This was a specimen of that laxity of talking, which I had heard him fairly acknowledge; for, surely, while the power of granting general warrants was supposed to be legal, and the apprehension of them hung over our heads, we did not possess that security of freedom, congenial to our happy constitution, and which, by the intrepid exertions of Mr. Wilkes, has been happily established. He said, "The duration of Parliament, whether for seven years, or the life of the King, appears to me so immaterial, that I would not give half a crown to turn the scale one way or the other. The habeas corpus is the single advantage which our government has over that of other countries" On the 30th of September we dined together at the Mitre. I attempted to argue for the superior happiness of the savage fife, upon the usual fanciful topics. JOHNSON: Sir, there can be nothing more false. The Savages have no bodily advantages beyond those of civilized men. better health; and as to care or mental unThey have not [The first edition of Hume's History of England was full of Scotticisms, many of which he corrected in subsequent editions. M.] easiness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, Sir; you are not to talk such paradox: let me have no more on't. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct. Lord Monboddo, one of your Scotch judges, talked a great deal of such nonsense. I suffered him; but I will not suffer you."-BOSWELL: "But, Sir, does not Rousseau talk such nonsense?" JOHNSON: "True, Sir, but Rousseau knows he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for staring at him." BOSWELL: "How so, Sir?" JOHNSON : Why, Sir, a man who talks nonsense so well, must know that he is talking nonsense. But I am afraid (chuckling and laughing), Monboddo does not know that he is talking nonsense. ." BOSWELL: "Is it wrong then, Sir, to affect singularity, in order to make people stare?" JOHNSON: "Yes, if you do it by propagating error: and, indeed, it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a general inclination to make people stare: and every wise man has himself to cure of it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare by doing better than others, why, make them stare till they stare their eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare, by being absurd. I may do it by going into a drawing-room without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in The Spectator,' who had a commission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. Now, Sir, abstractedly, the night-cap was best; but, relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the boys run after him." Talking of a London life, he said, "The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom." BOSWELL: "The only disadvantage is, the great distance at which people live from one another." JOHNSON: "Yes, Sir; but that is occasioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the other advantages." BosWELL: "Sometimes I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desert." JoHNSON: "Sir, you have desert enough in Scotland." Although I had promised myself a great deal of instructive conversation with him on the conduct of the married state, of which I had then a near prospect, he did not say much upon that topic. Mr. Seward heard him once say, that " a man has a very bad chance for happiness in that state, unless he marries a woman of very strong and fixed principles of religion." He maintained to me, contrary to the common notion, that a woman would not be the worse wife for being learned; in which, from all that I have observed of Artemisias, I humbly dif fered from him. That a woman should be sensible and well-informed, I allow to be a great advantage; and think that Sir Thomas Overbury, in his rude versification, has very judiciously pointed out that degree of intelligence which is to be desired in a female companion: "Give me, next good, an understanding wife, By Nature wise, not learned by much art: They are most firmly good, who best know why." When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for marrying a second time, as it shewed a disregard of his first wife, he said, "Not at all, Sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time." So ingenious a turn did he give to this delicate question. And yet, on another occasion, he owned that he once had almost asked a promise of Mrs. Johnson, that she would not marry again, but had checked himself. Indeed I cannot help thinking, that in his case the request would have been unreasonable; for if Mrs. Johnson forgot, or thought it no injury to the memory of her first love,-the husband of her youth and the father of her children, -to make a second marriage, why should she be precluded from a third, should she be so inclined? In Johnson's persevering fond appropriation of his Tetty, even after her decease, he seems totally to have overlooked the prior claim of the honest Birmingham trader. I presume that her having been married before had, at times, given him some uneasiness; for I remember his observing upon the marriage of one of our common friends, "He has done a very foolish thing, Sir; he has married a widow, when he might have had a maid." We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I had last year the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Thrale at Dr. Johnson's one morning, and had conversation enough with her to admire her talents; and to shew her that I was as Johnsonian as herself. Dr. Johnson had His Lordship having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of Dr. Johnson, in my company, I on one occasion during the lifetime of my illustrious friend could not refrain from retaliation, and repeated to him this saying. He has since published I don't know how many pages in one of his curious books, attempting, inviting me to Streatham. much anger, but with pitiful effect, to persuade mankind that my illustrious friend was not the great and good man which they esteemed and ever will esteem him to be. probably been kind enough to speak well of me, for this evening he delivered me a very polite card from Mr. Thrale and her, in On the 6th of October I complied with "A Wife," a pocm, 1614. Y this obliging invitation, and found, at an elegant villa, six miles from town, every circumstance that can make society pleasing. Johnson, though quite at home, was yet looked up to with an awe, tempered by affection, and seemed to be equally the care of his host and hostess. I rejoiced at seeing him so happy. SON: 66 He played off his wit against Scotland with a good-humoured pleasantry, which gave me, though no bigot to national preJudices, an opportunity for a little contest with him. I having said that England was obliged to us for gardeners, almost all their good gardeners being Scotsmen ;-JOHNWhy, Sir, that is because gardening is much more necessary amongst you than with us, which makes so many of your people learn it. It is all gardening with you. Things, which grow wild here, must be cultivated with great care in Scotland. Pray now (throwing himself back in his chair, and laughing), are you ever able to bring the sloe to perfection ?" I boasted that we had the honour of being the first to abolish the unhospitable, troublesome, and ungracious custom of giving vails to servants. JOHNSON: "Sir, you abolished vails, because you were too poor to be able to give them." Talking of history, Johnson said, “We may know historical facts to be true, as we may know facts in common life to be true. Motives are generally unknown. We cannot trust to the characters we find in history, unless when they are drawn by those who knew the persons; as those, for instance, by Sallust and by Lord Clarendon." He would not allow much merit to Whit field's oratory. "His popularity, Sir, (said he,) is chiefly owing to the peculiarity of his manner. He would be followed by crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit, or were he to preach from a tree." I know not from what spirit of contradiction he burst out into a violent declamation against the Corsicans, of whose heroism I talked in high terms. "Sir, (said he,) what is all this rout about the Corsicans? They have been at war with the Genoese for upwards of twenty years, and have never yet taken their fortified towns. They might have battered down their walls, and reduced them to powder in twenty years. might have pulled the walls in pieces, and cracked the stones with their teeth in twenty years." It was in vain to argue with him upon the want of artillery: he was not to be resisted for the moment. They On the evening of October 10, I present. Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the ed Dr. Johnson to General Paoli. I had merit of Prior. He attacked him power-greatly wished that two men, for whom I fully; said he wrote of love like a man who had the highest esteem, should meet. They had never felt it his love-verses were col- met with a manly ease, mutually conscious lege verses; and he repeated the song, of their own abilities, and of the abilities of "Alexis shunn'd his fellow swains," &c. in each other. The General spoke Italian, and so ludicrous a manner, as to make us all Dr. Johnson English, and understood one wonder how any one could have been pleased another very well, with a little aid of interwith such fantastical stuff. Mrs. Thrale pretation from me, in which I compared stood to her gun with great courage, in de- myself to an isthmus which joins two great fence of amorous ditties, which Johnson de- continents. Upon Johnson's approach, the spised, till he at last silenced her by saying, General said, "From what I have read of "My dear lady, talk no more of this. Non- your works, Sir, and from what Mr. Bossense can be defended but by nonsense." well has told me of you, I have long held you in great veneration." The General talked of languages being formed on the particular notions and manners of a people, without knowing which, we cannot know the language. We may know the direct signification of single words; but by these no beauty of expression, no sally of genius, no wit is conveyed to the mind. All this must be by allusion to other ideas. "Sir, (said Johnson,) you talk of language, as if you had never done any thing else but study it, instead of governing a nation." The General said, “Questo è un troppo gran complimento;" this is too great a compli ment. Johnson answered, I should have thought so, Sir, if I had not heard you talk." The General asked him what he thought of the spirit of infidelity which was so prevalent. JOHNSON: "Sir, this gloom of infidelity, I hope, is only a transient cloud passing through the hemisphere, which will soon be dissipated, and the sun break forth Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talents for light gay poetry; and, as a specimen, repeated his song in "Florizel and Perdita," and dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line: "I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor." JOHNSON: "Nay, my dear Lady, this will never do. Poor David! Smile with the simple-What folly is that? And who would feed with the poor that can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich." I repeated this sally to Garrick, and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a little irritated by it. To soothe him, I observed, that Johnson spared none of us; and I quoted the passage in Horace, in which he compares one who attacks his friends for the sake of a laugh, to a pushing ox, that is marked by a bunch of hay put upon his horns: fanum habet in Ay, (said Garrick, vehemently,) he has a whole mow of it." cornu. | with his usual splendour." "You think then, (said the General,) that they will change their principles like their clothes." JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, if they bestow no more thought on principles than on dress, it must be so." The General said, that "a great part of the fashionable infidelity was owing to a desire of shewing courage. Men who have no opportunities of shewing it as to things in this life, take death and futurity as objects on which to display it." JOHNSON: "That is mighty foolish affectation. Fear is one of the passions of human nature, of which it is impossible to divest it. You remember that the Emperor Charles V. when he read upon the tomb-stone of a Spanish nobleman, Here lies one who never knew fear,' wittily said, "Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers.'" He talked a few words of French to the General; but finding he did not do it with facility, he asked for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote the following note: "J'ai lu dans la geographie de Lucas de Linda un Pater-noster écrit dans une langue tout-à-fait differente de l'Italienne, et de toutes autres lesquelles se derivent du Latin. L'auteur rappelle linguam Corsica rusticam; elle a peut-être passé, peu à peu; mais elle a certainement prevalue autrefois dans les montagnes et dans la campagne. Le même auteur dit la même chose en parlant de Sardaigne; qu'il y a deur langues dans l'Isle, une des villes, l'autre de la campagne." The General immediately informed him that the lingua rustica was only in Sardinia. Dr. Johnson went home with me, and drank tea till late in the night. He said, "General Paoli had the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen." He denied that military men were always the best bred men. "Perfect good breeding," he observed, "consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners; whereas, in a military man, you can commonly distinguish the brand of a soldier, l'homme d'épée.' Dr. Johnson shunned to-night any discussion of the perplexed question of fate and free-will, which I attempted to agitate: Sir, (said he,) we know our will is free, and there's an end on't." He honoured me with his company at dinner on the 16th of October, at my lodgings in Old Bond-street, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Bickerstaff, and Mr. Thomas Davies. Garrick played round him with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the breasts of his coat, and looking up in his face with a lively archness, complimented him on the good health which he seemed then to enjoy; while the sage, shaking his head, beheld him with a gentle complacen | upon such occasions, to order dinner to be served; adding, "Ought six people to be kept waiting for one? "Why, yes, (answered Johnson, with a delicate humanity,) if the one will suffer more by your sitting down, than the six will do by waiting." Goldsmith, to divert the tedious minutes, strutted about, bragging of his dress, and I believe was seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such impressions. "Come, come, (said Garrick,) talk no more of that. You are, perhaps, the worst-eh, eh!" Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to interrupt him, when Garrick went on, aughing ironically," Nay, you will always look like a gentleman; but I am talking of being well or ill drest." "Well, let me tell you, (said Goldsmith,) when my tailor brought home my bloomcoloured coat, he said, Sir, I have a favour to beg of you. When any body asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in Waterlane."" JOHNSON: " Why, Sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they | might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat, even of so absurd a colour." After dinner our conversation first turned upon Pope. Johnson said, his characters of men were admirably drawn, those of women not so well. He repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the Dunciad. While he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company ventured to say, "Too fine for such a poem :-a poem on what?" JOHNSON, (with a disdainful look,)" Why, on dunces. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst thou lived in those days! It is not worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits." Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive than it was then. Johnson said, his Pastorals were poor things, though the versification was fine. He told us, with high satisfaction, the anecdote of Pope's inquiring who was the author of his "London," and saying, he will be soon deterré. He observed, that in Dryden's poetry there were passages drawn from a profundity which Pope could never reach. He repeated some fine lines on love, by the former, (which I have now forgotten,) and gave great applause to the character of Zimri. Goldsmith said, that Pope's character of Addison shewed a deep knowledge of the human heart. Johnson said, that the description of the temple, in "The Mourn ing Bride,' was the finest poetical passage he had ever read; he recollected none in Shakspeare equal to it." But, (said Gar [Act ii sc. 3. M] rick, all alarmed for the god of his idola- | Talking of a Barrister who had a bad utterance, some one (to rouse Johnson) wickedly said, that he was unfortunate in not having been taught oratory by Sheridan. JOHNSON: "Nay, Sir, if he had been taught by Sheridan, he would have cleared the room." GARRICK: "Sheridan has too much vanity to be a good man."-We shall now see Johnson's mode of defending a man; taking him into his own hands, and discriminating. JOHNSON: "No, Sir. There is, to be sure,in Sheridan, some thing to reprehend, and every thing to laugh at; but, Sir, he is not a bad man. No, Sir; were mankind to be divided into good and bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of good. And, Sir, it must be allowed that Sheridan * [In Congreve's description there seems to be an intermixture of moral notions; as the affecting power of the passage arises from the vivid impression of the described objects on the mind of the speaker: "And shoots a chillness," Sac. K.] excels in plain declamation, though he can exhibit no character.” I should, perhaps, have suppressed this disquisition concerning a person of whose merit and worth I think with respect, had he not attacked Johnson so outrageously in his Life of Swift, and, at the same time, treated us his admirers as a set of pigmies. He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it. Mrs. Montague, a lady distinguished for having written an Essay on Shakspeare, being mentioned ;-REYNOLDS: "I think that essay does her honour." JOHNSON: "Yes, Sir, it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it pack-thread, I do not expect, by looking farther, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say, there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book." GARRICK: " But, Sir, surely it shews how much Voltaire has mistaken Shakspeare, which nobody else has done.” JOHNSON: "Sir, nobody else has thought it worth while. And what merit is there in that? You may as well praise a schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has construed ill. No, Sir, there is no real criticism in it: none shewing the beauty of thought, as formed on the workings of the human heart." The admirers of this Essay+ may be offended at the slighting manner in which Johnson spoke of it; but let it be remembered, that he gave his honest opinion unbiassed by any prejudice, or any proud jealousy of a woman intruding her. self into the chair of criticism; for Sir Joshua Reynolds has told me, that when the Essay first came out, and it was not known who had written it, Johnson wondered how Sir Joshua could like it. At this time Sir Joshua himself had received no information concerning the author, except being assured by one of our most eminent literati, that it was clear its author did not know the Greek tragedies in the origi nal. One day at Sir Joshua's table, when it was related that Mrs. Montague, in an excess of compliment to the author of a modern tragedy, had exclaimed, “I tremble for Shakspeare;" Johnson said, "When Shakspeare has got -for his rival, and Mrs. Montague for his defender, he is in a poor state indeed." + Of whom I acknowledge myself to be one, considering it as a piece of the secondary or comparative spe cies of criticism; and not of that profound species which alone Dr. Johnson would allow to be "real cr and has done effectually what it professed to do, namely ticism." It is, besides, clearly and elegantly expressed, vindicated Shakspeare from the misrepresentations Voltaire; and, considering how many young people were misled by his witty, though false observations Mrs. Montague's Essay was of service to Shakspeare with a certain class of readers, and is, therefore e titled to praise. Johnson, I am assured, allowed the merit which I have stated, saying, (with reference to Voltaire,) it is conclusive ad hominem." |