Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

figure and manner, and at his dress, which he obstinately continued exactly as in London';-his brown clothes, black stockings, and plain shirt. He mentioned, that an Irish gentleman said to Johnson, "Sir, you have not seen the best French players." JOHNSON. "Players, sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools, to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs." "But, sir, you will allow that some players are better than others?" JOHNSON. "Yes, sir, as some dogs dance better than others."

Recoll.

[In the same spirit, but of more vehemence and Reyn. greater injustice, were his statements to Sir Joshua and Miss Reynolds, who has noted them in her Recollections.

JOHNSON. "The French, sir, are a very silly people. They have no common life. Nothing but the two ends, beggary and nobility. Sir, they are made up in every thing of two extremes. They have no common sense, they have no common manners, no common learning-gross ignorance, or les belles lettres." A LADY [Mrs. Thrale]. "Indeed, even in their dress their frippery finery, and their beggarly coarse linen. They had, I thought, no politeness; their civilities never indicated more good-will than the talk of a parrot, indiscriminately using the same set of superlative phrases, " à la merveille!" to every one alike. They really seemed to have no expressions

66

Mr. Foote seems to have embellished a little in saying that Johnson did not alter his dress at Paris; as in his journal is a memorandum about white stockings, wig, and hat. In another place we are told that "during his travels in France he was furnished with a French-made wig of handsome construction." That Johnson was not inattentive to his appearance is certain, from a circumstance related by Mr. Steevens, and inserted by Mr. Boswell, between June 15 and June 22, 1784.-J. BLAKEWAY. Mr. Blakeway's observation is further confirmed by a note in Johnson's diary (quoted by Sir John Hawkins, "Life of Johnson," p. 517), by which it appears that he had laid out thirty pounds in clothes for his French journey.-MALONE.

VOL. III.

U

Reyn.
Recoll.

for sincerity and truth." JOHNSON. "They are much behind-hand, stupid, ignorant creatures. At Fontainebleau I saw a horse-race-every thing was wrong; the heaviest weight was put upon the weakest horse, and all the jockeys wore the same colour coat." A GENTLEMAN. "Had you any acquaintance in Paris?" JOHNSON. "No, I did not stay long enough to make any. I spoke only Latin, and I could not have much conversation. There is no good in letting the French have a superiority over you every word you speak. Baretti was sometimes displeased with us for not liking the French." MISS REYNOLDS. Perhaps he had a kind of partiality for that country, because it was in the way to Italy, and perhaps their manners resembled the Italians." JOHNSON. "No. He was the showman, and we did not like his show; that was all."]

66

["On telling Mr. Baretti of the proof that Johnson gave of the stupidity of the French in the management of their horse-races; that all the jockeys wore the same colour coat, &c., he said that was 'like Johnson's remarks-He could not see.'-But it was observed that he could inquire.-'yes,' and it was by the answers he received that he was misled, for he asked what did the first jockey wear? answer, green; what the second? green; what the third? green, which was true; but, then, the greens were all different greens, and very easily distinguished.— Johnson was perpetually making mistakes; so, on going to Fontainebleau, when we were about three-fourths of the way, he exclaimed with amazement, that now we were between Paris and the King of France's court, and yet we had not met one carriage coming from thence, or even one going thither! On which all the company in the coach burst out a laughing, and immediately cried out, Look, look, there is a coach gone by, there is a chariot, there is a postchaise!' I dare say we saw a hundred carriages, at least, that were going to or coming from Fontainebleau."-Baretti in Miss Reynolds's Recollections. It should be added, however, that Miss Reynolds thought that Baretti returned from this tour with some dislike of Johnson, and Johnson not without some coolness towards Baretti, on account, as Baretti said, of Madame du Bocage having paid more attention to him than to Johnson; but this latter assertion could not be true, for Johnson, in his letter to Mr. Levett (ante, p. 265), speaks highly and cordially of Baretti many days after the supposed offence. Miss Reynolds adds that the final rupture between Johnson and Baretti was occasioned by "a most audacious falsehood that the latter told Johnson, that he had beaten Omiah at chess, at Sir Joshua's for the reverse was the fact." This produced contradiction, dispute, and a violent quarrel, which never was completely made up.-ED.]

2 [This accounts (not quite satisfactorily, perhaps, in a moral view) for the violent prejudices and consequent misrepresentations which his conversation on his return exhibited.-ED.]

While Johnson was in France, he was generally very resolute in speaking Latin. It was a maxim with him that a man should not let himself down by speaking a language which he speaks imperfectly. Indeed, we must have often observed how inferiour, how much like a child a man appears, who speaks a broken tongue. When Sir Joshua Reynolds, at one of the dinners of the royal academy, presented him to a Frenchman of great distinction, he would not deign to speak French, but talked Latin, though his excellency did not understand it, owing, perhaps, to Johnson's English pronunciation: yet upon another occasion he was observed to speak French to a Frenchman of high rank, who spoke English; and being asked the reason, with some expression of surprise, he answered, "because I think my French is as good as his English." Though Johnson understood French perfectly, he could not speak it readily, as I have observed at his first interview with General Paoli, in 1769; yet he wrote it, I imagine, pretty well, as appears from some of his letters in Mrs. Piozzi's collection, of which I shall transcribe one :

[ocr errors]

"A MADAME LA COMTESSE DE

"16th May, 1771.

Oui, madame, le moment est arrivé, et il faut que je parte. Mais pourquoi faut il partir? Est ce que je m'ennuye? Je m'ennuyerai ailleurs. Est ce que je cherche ou quelque plaisir, ou quelque soulagement? Je ne cherche rien, je n'espere rien. Aller voir

1

[See ante, vol. i. p. 87, where it is conjectured that this note was addressed to Madame de Boufflers, which the editor now sees reason to doubt. The date in Mrs. Piozzi's collection, where it first appeared, was 16th May, 1771. In Mr. Boswell's first edition it became 16th July, 1771; and in all the later editions, by a more elaborate error, 16th July, 1775. These two latter dates are manifest mistakes. Madame de Boufflers' visit was in 1769, and in the May of 1771, Johnson was in London, without any intention of leaving it-so that the editor is wholly at a loss to guess to whom or on what occasion the letter was written. Perhaps it was an exercise.-ED.]

Mur.

91.

p.

ce que j'ai vu, etre un peu rejoué1, un peu degouté, me resouvenir que la vie se passe, et qu'elle se passe en vain, me plaindre de moi, m'er.durcir aux dehors; voici le tout de ce qu'on compte pour les delices de l'année. Que Dieu vous donne, madame, tous les agrémens de la vie, avec un esprit qui peut en jouir sans s'y livrer trop."

3

He spoke Latin with wonderful fluency and elegance. When Pere Boscovich was in England, Johnson dined in company with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and at Dr. Douglas's, now Bishop of Salisbury. Upon both occasions that celebrated foreigner expressed his astonishment at Johnson's Latin conversation. [The conversation at Dr. Douglas's Life, was at first mostly in French. Johnson, though thoroughly versed in that language, and a professed admirer of Boileau and La Bruyere, did not understand its pronunciation, nor could he speak it himself with propriety. For the rest of the evening the talk was in Latin. Boscovich had a ready current flow of that flimsy phraseology with which a priest may travel through Italy, Spain, and Germany. Johnson scorned what he called colloquial barbarisms. It was his pride to speak his best. He went on, after a little practice, with as much facility as if it was his native tongue. One sentence Mr. Murphy remembered. Observing that Fontenelle at first opposed the Newtonian philosophy, and embraced it afterwards, his words were: Fontinellus, ni fallor, in extremá senectute, fuit transfuga ad castra Newtoniana] When at Paris, Johnson thus charac

[This letter, notwithstanding some faults, is very tolerable French; rejoué is probably a printer's error for rejoni, and peut should be puisse.-ED.] 2 [Ilere followed the ancedote relative to Madame de Boufflers, transferred to v. i. p. 428-ED.]

3 [See ante, vol. i. p. 384. Boscovich was a jesuit, born at Ragusa in 1711, who first introduced the Newtonian philosophy into Italy. He visited London in 1760, and was there elected into the Royal Society. He died in 1787.—Ed.]

4 [This phrase seems rather too pompous for the occasion. Johnson had probably in his mind a passage in Seneca, quoted in Menagiana (v. ii. p. 46),

terised Voltaire to Freron the journalist: “Vir est acerrimi ingenii et paucarum literarum.”

“TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON,

"Edinburgh, 5th Dec. 1775.

"MY DEAR SIR,-Mr. Alexander Maclean, the young laird of Col, being to set out to-morrow for London, I give him this letter to introduce him to your acquaintance. The kindness which you and I experienced from his brother, whose unfortunate death we sincerely lament, will make us always desirous to show attention to any branch of the family Indeed, you have so much of the true Highland cordiality, that I am sure you would have thought me to blame if I had neglected to recommend to you this Hebridean prince, in whose island we were hospitably entertained. I ever am with respectful attachment, my dear sir, your most obliged and most humble servant, "JAMES BOSWELL.”

Mr. Maclean returned with the most agreeable accounts of the polite attention with which he was received by Dr. Johnson.

In the course of the year Dr. Burney informs me that "he very frequently met Dr. Johnson at Mr. Thrale's, at Streatham, where they had many long conversations, often sitting up as long as the fire and candles lasted, and much longer than the patience of the servants subsisted."

A few of Johnson's sayings, which that gentleman recollects, shall here be inserted.

"I never take a nap after dinner but when I have Burney. had a bad night, and then the nap takes me."

"The writer of an epitaph should not be considered as saying nothing but what is strictly true.

"Sénéque voulant dire qu'il profitait de ce qu'il y avait de bon dans les auteurs dit, Solon sæpe in aliena castra transire; non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam explorator ;" and this is rendered the more probable because in the same volume of the Menagiana, and within a few pages of each other, are found two other Latin quotations, which Johnson has made use of, the one from Thuanus, "Fami non fama scribere existimatus Xylandrus." See ante, vol. i. p. 182, n. The other from J. C. Scaliger, "Homo ex alieno ingenio poeta, ex suo tantum versificator:" which is the motto Johnson prefixed to his version of the Messiah: ante, v. i. p. 33.—ED.]

« AnteriorContinuar »