66 66 66 other end. Burke, Sir, is such a man, that if began to be better than other people (smiling); you met him for the first time in the street, that he believed he sincerely meant well, but where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, had a mixture of politics and ostentation: and you and he stepped aside to take shelter whereas Wesley thought of religion only.? but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a Robertson said, Whitfield had strong natural manner, that, when you parted, you would say, eloquence, which, if cultivated, would have This is an extraordinary man. Now, you may done great things. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, I be long enough with me, without finding any take it he was at the height of what his abilities thing extraordinary." He said, he believed could do, and was sensible of it. He had the Burke was intended for the law; but either ordinary advantages of education; but he had not money enough to follow it, or had not chose to pursue that oratory which is for the diligence enough. He said, he could not un- mob." BOSWELL. "He had great effect on derstand how a man could apply to one thing, the passions." JOHNSON. Why, Sir, I don't and not to another. Robertson said, one man think so. He could not represent a succession had more judgment, another more imagination. of pathetic images. He vociferated, and made JOHNSON. No, Sir; it is only, one man has an impression. There, again, was a mind like more mind than another. He may direct it a hammer." Dr. Johnson now said, a certain differently; he may, by accident, see the suc-eminent political friend 3 of ours was wrong in cess of one kind of study, and take a desire to excel in it. I am persuaded that had Sir Isaac Newton applied to poetry, he would have made a very fine epic poem. I could as easily apply to law as to tragic poetry." Boswell." Yet, Sir, you did apply to tragic poetry, not to law." JOHNSON. "Because, Sir, I had not money to study law. Sir, the man who has vigour may walk to the east, just as well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head that way." BOSWELL. 66 'But, Sir, 'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man may naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down." JOHNSON. Nay, Sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that manner. One mind is a vice, and holds fast; there's a good memory. Another is a file; and he is a disputant, a controversialist. Another is a razor; and he is sarcastical." We talked of Whitfield. He said he was at the same college with him, and knew him before he How much a man deceives himself! Of all Johnson's literary efforts, his tragic poetry was the least successful. CROKER. Dryden says, "The same parts and the same application which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning and less honesty than myself. Ded. of the Third Miscellany.. -P. CUNNINGHAM. 2 That cannot be said now, after the flagrant part which Mr. John Wesley took against our American brethren, when, in his own name, he threw amongst his enthusiastic flock the very individual combustibles of Dr. Johnson's " Taxation no Tyranny;" and after the intolerant spirit which he manifested against our fellow Christians of the Roman Catholic communion, for which that able champion, Father O'Leary, has given him so hearty a drubbing. But I should think my. self very unworthy, if I did not at the same time acknowledge Mr. John Wesley's merit, as a veteran "soldier of Jesus Christ," who has, I do believe, turned many from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan to the living God. BOSWELL. 3 Mr. Burke. See antè, p. 249. CROKER. 4 If due attention were paid to this observation, there would be more virtue even in politics. What Dr. Johnson justly condemned has, I am sorry to say, greatly increased in the present reign. At the distance of four years from this conversation, 21st of February, 1777, my Lord Archbishop of York, in his Sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," thus indignantly describes the then state of parties:-"Parties once had a principle belonging to them, absurd, perhaps, and indefensible, but still carrying a notion of duty, by which honest minds might easily be caught. But they are now combinations of individuals, who, instead of being the sons and his maxim of sticking to a certain set of men on all occasions. I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party," said he, “that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars, it may be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks, to be sure; and they cannot well be separated. But, to bind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may be right to-day, and wrong to-morrow), without any general preference of system, I must disapprove." He told us of Cooke, who translated Hesiod, and lived twenty years on a translation of Plautus, for which he was always taking subscriptions; and that he presented Foote to a club in the following singular manner: "This is the nephew of the gentleman who was lately hung in chains for murdering his brother."5 servants of the community, make a league for advancing their private interests. It is their business to hold high the notion of political honour. I believe and trust, it is not injurious to say, that such a bond is no better than that by which the lowest and wickedest combinations are held together; and that it denotes the last stage of political depravity." To find a thought, which just showed itself to us from the mind of Johnson, thus appearing again at such a distance of time, and without any communication between them, enlarged to full growth in the mind of Markham, is a curious object of philosophical contemplation. That two such great and luminous minds should have been so dark in one corner; that they should have held it to be "wicked rebellion" in the British subjects established in America, to resist the abject condition of holding all their property at the mercy of British subjects remaining at home, while their allegiance to our common lord the king was to be preserved inviolate, is a striking proof, to me, either that he who sitteth in heaven" scorns the loftiness of human pride, or that the evil spirit, whose personal existence I strongly believe, and even in this age am confirmed in that belief by a Fell, nav, by a Hur, has more power than some choose to allow. - BOSWELL. It may be suspected that Archbishop Markham's observations were covertly aimed at Mr. Burke's doctrine of party allegiance (ante, p. 253. n. 3). Markham and Burke had been intimate political as well as private friends, but when the prospect of high church preferment opened upon Markham, he seems to have broken off from Mr. Burke as too violent a politician. See Burke's Correspondence. — CROKER, 1846 5 Mr. Foote's mother was the sister of Sir J. Dinely Goodere, Bart, and of Captain Goodere, who commanded H. M. S. Ruby, on board which, when lying in King's Road, In the evening I introduced to Mr. Johnson1 two good friends of mine, Mr. William Nairne, advocate, and Mr. Hamilton of Sundrum, my neighbour in the country, both of whom supped with us. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Dr. Johnson displayed another of his heterodox opinions- a contempt of tragic acting. He said, the action of all players in tragedy is bad. It should be a man's study to repress those signs of emotion and passion, as they are called." He was of a directly contrary opinion to that of Fielding, in his Tom Jones;" who makes Partridge say of Garrick, "Why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did." For, when I asked him, "Would not you, Sir, start as Mr. Garrick does, if you saw a ghost?" he answered, "I hope not. If I did, I should frighten the ghost." 66 Monday, August 16th. DR. WILLIAM ROBERTSON came to breakfast. We talked of Ogden on Prayer. Dr. Johnson said, "The same arguments which are used against God's hearing prayer, will serve against his rewarding good, and punishing evil. He has resolved, he has declared, in the former case as in the latter." He had last night looked into Lord Hailes's "Remarks on the History of Scotland." Dr. Robertson and I said, it was a pity Lord Hailes did not write greater things. His lordship had not then published his Bristol, in January, 1741, the captain caused his brother to be foreiby carried, and there buccomplices, executed for this murdered. Captain Goodere was, with two of his crime in the April following. The circumstances of this extravagant case, and some other facts connnected with this family, lead to an opinion that Captain Goodere was insane; and some unhappy circumstances in Foote's life render it probable that he had not wholly escaped this hereditary irregularity of mind. The last baronet, who called himself Sir John Dinely, died in 1809, a poor Knight of Windsor insane and in indigence. CROKER. Foote's first publication was a pamphlet in defence of his uncle's memory.WALTER SCOTT. It may be observed, that I sometimes call my great friend Mr. Johnson, sometimes Dr. Johnson; though he had at this time a Doctor's degree from Trinity College, Dublin. The University of Oxford afterwards conferred it upon him by a diploma, in very honourable terms. It was some 6 "I re "Annals of Scotland." JOHNSON. member I was once on a visit at the house of a lady for whom I had a high respect. There was a good deal of company in the room. When they were gone, I said to this lady, What foolish talking have we had!'-'Yes,' said she, but while they talked, you said nothing.' I was struck with the reproof. How much better is the man who does any thing that is innocent, than he who does nothing! Besides, I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made. If a man is to wait till he weaves anecdotes into a system, we may be long in getting them, and get but few, in comparison of what we might get." Dr. Robertson said, the notions of Eupham Macallan, a fanatic woman, of whom Lord Hailes gives a sketch, were still prevalent among some of the presbyterians; and therefore, it was right in Lord Hailes, a man of known piety, to undeceive them. We walked out, that Dr. Johnson might see some of the things which we have to show at Edinburgh. We went to the Parliamenthouse, where the parliament of Scotland sat, and where the ordinary lords of session hold their courts, and to the new session-house adjoining to it, where our court of fifteen (the fourteen ordinaries, with the lord president at their head) sit as a court of review. We went to the advocate's library, of which Dr. Johnson took a cursory view; and then to what is called the Laigh (or under) Parliament-house, where the records of Scotland, which has an universal security by register, are deposited, till the great register office be finished. I was pleased to behold Dr. Samuel Johnson rolling about in this old magazine of antiquities. There was, by this time, a pretty numerous circle of us attending upon him. Somebody talked of happy moments for composition, and how a man can write at one time, and not at another. Nay," said Dr. Johnson, "a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to time before I could bring myself to call him Doctor; but, as he has been long known by that title, I shall give it to him in the rest of this Journal. - BOSWELL. Johnson never, it seems, called himself Doctor. See antè, p. 168. —CROKER. 2 It was on this visit to the parliament-house, that Mr. Henry Erskine (brother of Lord Buchan and Lord Erskine), after being presented to Dr. Johnson by Mr. Boswell, and having made his bow, slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it was for the sight of his bear. - WALTER SCOTT. This was the subject of a cotemporary caricature. -WRIGHT. 3 This great Register Office is now one of the architectural beauties of Edinburgh.- CROKER. 4 This word is commonly used to signify sullenly, gloomily; and in that sense alone it appears in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. I suppose he meant by it," with an obstinate resolution, similar to that of a sullen man."- -BOSWELL. our union with England, we were no more; our independent kingdom was lost. JOHNSON. "Sir, never talk of your independency, who could let your queen remain twenty years in captivity, and then be put to death, without even a pretence of justice, without your ever attempting to rescue her; and such a queen too! as every man of any gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for." Worthy MR. JAMES KERR, keeper of the records. "Half our nation was bribed by English money." JOHNSON. "Sir, that is no defence: that makes you worse.' Good MR. BROWN, keeper of the advocates' library. "We had better say nothing about it." BoSWELL. "You would have been glad, however, to have had us last war, Sir, to fight your battles! " JOHNSON. "We should have had you for the same price, though there had been no union, as we might have had Swiss, or other troops. No, no, I shall agree to a separation. You have only to go home." Just as he had said this, I, to divert the subject, showed him the signed assurances of the three successive kings of the Hanover family, to maintain the presbyterian establishment in Scotland. "We'll give you that," said he, "into the bargain.' We next went to the great church of St. Giles, which has lost its original magnificence in the inside, by being divided into four places of presbyterian worship. "Come," said Dr. Johnson jocularly to Principal Robertson 2, "let me see what was once a church!" We entered that division which was formerly called the New Church, and of late the High Church, so well known by the eloquence of Dr. Hugh Blair. It is now very elegantly fitted up; but it was then shamefully dirty. Dr. Johnson said nothing at the time; but when we came to the great door of the royal infirmary, where, upon a board, was this inscription, "Clean your feet!" he turned about slyly, and said, "There is no occasion for putting this at the doors of your churches!" We then conducted him down the Posthouse-stairs, Parliament-close, and made him look up from the Cowgate to the highest building in Edinburgh (from which he had just descended), being thirteen floors or stories from the ground upon the back elevation; the front wall being built upon the edge of the hill, and the back wall rising from the bottom of the hill several stories before it comes to a level with the front wall. We proceeded to the college, with the Principal at our head. This seems to have been a touch of Jacobite jocularity, meaning that Johnson would be willing, in consideration of the dissolution of the Union, to allow the Hanover family to reign in Scotland, inferring, of course, that the Stuarts were to reign in England. - CROKER. Perhaps, Johnson meant that they, the Scotch, were welcome not only to stay at home, but to keep their kirk too-as inferior to the church as Scotland to England.LOCKHART. 2 I have hitherto called him Dr. William Robertson, to distinguish him from Dr. James Robertson, who is soon to make his appearance; but Principal, from his being the head of our college, is his usual designation, and is shorter: so I shall use it hereafter.- BOSWELL. Dr. Adam Fergusson, whose "Essay on the History of Civil Society "gives him a respectable place in the ranks of literature, was with us. As the college buildings are indeed very mean, the Principal said to Dr. Johnson, that he must give them the same epithet that a Jesuit did when showing a poor college abroad: "Ha miseriæ nostræ." Dr. Johnson was, however, much pleased with the library, and with the conversation of Dr. James Robertson, professor of Oriental languages, the librarian. We talked of Kennicot's edition of the Hebrew Bible, and hoped it would be quite faithful. JOHNSON. "Sir, I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit, as poisoning the sources of eternal truth." I pointed out to him where there formerly stood an old wall enclosing part of the college, which I remember bulged out in a threatening manner, and of which there was a common tradition similar to that concerning Bacon's study at Oxford, that it would fall upon some very learned man. It had some time before this been taken down, that the street might be widened, and a more convenient wall built. Dr. Johnson, glad of an opportunity to have a pleasant hit at Scottish learning, said, "They have been afraid it never would fall." We showed him the royal infirmary, for which, and for every other exertion of generous public spirit in his power, that noble-minded citizen of Edinburgh, George Drummond*, will be ever held in honourable remembrance. And we were too proud not to carry him to the abbey of Holyrood House, that beautiful piece of architecture, but, alas! that deserted mansion of royalty, which Hamilton of Bangour, in one of his elegant poems calls, "A virtuous palace, where no monarch dwells." I was much entertained while Principal Robertson fluently harangued to Dr. Johnson, upon the spot, concerning scenes of his celebrated History of Scotland. We surveyed Duke of Hamilton, as keeper, in which our that part of the palace appropriated to the beautiful Queen Mary lived, and in which David Rizzio was murdered, and also the state rooms. Dr. Johnson was a great reciter of all sorts of things, serious or comical. I overheard him repeating here, in a kind of muttering tone, a line of the old ballad, "Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night." "And ran him through the fair body!"s We returned to my house, where there met 3 This lofty house was burnt down in 1824. The site is now occupied by Sir William Forbes's bank. - CHAMBERS. 4 This excellent magistrate died in 1766. Some years after his death, a bust of him, by Nollekens, was placed in the public hall of the hospital, with this inscription from the pen of Robertson:-" George Drummond, to whom this country is indebted for all the benefit which it derives from the royal infirmary."- BosWELL. 5 The stanza from which he took this line is — "But then rose up all Edinburgh, They rose up by thousands three; A cowardly Scot came John behind, And ran him through the fair body !"- BOSWELL him, at dinner, the Duchess of Douglas', Sir He seemed to me to have an unaccountable 66 CROSBIE. (Dr. blasphemy to suppose evil spirits counteracting the Deity, and raising storms, for instance, to destroy his creatures. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, if moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not physical evil be also consistent with it? It is not more strange that there should be evil spirits than evil men: evil unembodied spirits, than evil embodied spirits. And as to storms, we know there are such things; and it is no worse that evil spirits raise them than that they rise." "But it is not credible that witches should have effected what they are said in stories to have done." JOHNSON. "Sir, I am not defending their credibility. I am only saying that your arguments are not good, and will not overturn the belief of witchcraft. Fergusson said to me aside, 'He is right.') And then, Sir, you have all mankind, rude and civilised, agreeing in the belief of the agency of preternatural powers. You must take evidence; you must consider that wise and great men have condemned witches to die." CROSBIE. "But an act of parliament put an end to witchcraft." JOHNSON. No, Sir, witchcraft had ceased; and, therefore, an act of parliament was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many other things." Dr. Cullen, to keep up the gratification of mysterious disquisition, with the grave address for which he is remarkable in his companionable as in his professional hours, talked in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep. I am very sorry I have no note of this.5 We talked of the ouran-outang, and of Lord Monboddo's thinking that he might be taught to speak. Dr. Johnson treated this with ridicule. Mr. Crosbie said that Lord Monboddo believed the existence of every thing possible; in short, that all which is in posse might be found in esse. JOHNSON. "But, Sir, it is as possible that the ouran-outang does not speak, as that he speaks. However, I shall not contest the point. I should have thought it not possible to find a Monboddo; yet he exists." I again mentioned the stage. JOHNSON. "The appearance of a player, with At supper we had Dr. Cullen, his son the whom I have drunk tea, counteracts the imaadvocate, Dr. Adam Fergusson, and Mr. Cros-gination that he is the character he represents. bie, advocate. Witchcraft was introduced. Mr. Crosbie said he thought it the greatest Sir Adolphus Oughton, then our deputy commander in chief, who was not only an excellent officer, but one of the most universal scholars I ever knew, had learned the Erse language, and expressed his belief in the authenticity of Ossian's Poetry. Dr. Johnson took the opposite side of that perplexed question, and I was afraid the dispute would have run high between them. But Sir Adolphus, who had a very sweet temper, changed the discourse, grew playful, laughed at Lord Monboddo's notion of men having tails, and called him a judge à posteriori, which amused Dr. Johnson, and thus hostilities were prevented. Nay, you know, nobody imagines that he is the character he represents. They say, 'See 1 Margaret, daughter of James Douglas, Esq., of the Mains. An old lady," writes Dr. Johnson, "who talks broad Scotch with a paralytic voice, and is scarce understood by her own countrymen. - Letters.- CROKER. There probably was no opportunity for what could be in strictness called personal offence, as they had never met; but I suspect that the affair of the Dublin degree (antè, P. 37.) may have created this prejudice. But what could Johnson mean by calling Swift "shallow?" If he be shallow, who, in his department of literature, is profound? Without admitting that Swift was "inferior in coarse humour to Arbuthnot" (of whose precise share in the works to which he is supposed to have contributed, we know little or nothing), it may be observed, that he who is second to the greatest masters of different styles may be said to be the first on the whole. It is as certain that the Tale of a Tub was Swift's as that the Rambler was Johnson's. CROKER. 3 Lord Stowell remembered with pleasure the elegance and extent of Sir Adolphus Oughton's literature, and the suavity of his manners. CROKER. 4 A question perplexed only by national prejudices, heightened, in a few cases, by individual obstinacy. See post, Sept. 23. 1773.-CROKER. There is in the Life of Blacklock, in Anderson's Brit. Poets, an anecdote of Dr. Blacklock's somnambulism, which may very probably have been one of the topics on this occasion.— CROKER. him, and some whom I am persuaded he will think not unworthy of his esteem. I wish he would make the experiment. He sometimes cracks his jokes upon us; but he will find that we can distinguish between the stabs of malevolence and the rebukes of the righteous, which are like excellent oil', and break not the head. Offer my best compliments to him, and assure him that I shall be happy to have the satisfaction of seeing him under my roof." To Dr. Beattie I wrote, "The chief intention of this letter is to inform you, that I now seriously believe Mr. Samuel Johnson will visit Scotland this year: but I wish that every power of attraction may be employed to secure our having so valuable an acquisition, and therefore I hope you will, without delay, write to me what I know you think, that I may read it to the mighty sage, with proper emphasis, before I leave London, which I must do soon. He talks of you with the same warmth that he did last year. We are to see as much of Scotland as we can, in the months of August and September. We shall not be long of being at Marischal College. He is particularly desirous of seeing some of the Western Islands." Dr. Beattie did better: ipse venit. He was, however, so polite as to wave his privilege of nil mihi rescribas, and wrote from Edinburgh as follows: "Your very kind and agreeable favour of the 20th of April overtook me here yesterday, after having gone to Aberdeen, which place I left about a week ago. I am to set out this day for London, and hope to have the honour of paying my respects to Mr. Johnson and you, about a week or ten days hence. I shall then do what I can to enforce the topic you mention; but at present I cannot enter upon it, as I am in a very great hurry, for I intend to begin my journey within an hour or two." He was as good as his word, and threw some pleasing motives into the northern scale. But, indeed, Mr. Johnson loved all that he heard, from one whom he tells us, in his Lives of the Poets, Gray found "a poet, a philosopher, and a good man." My Lord Elibank did not answer my letter to his lordship for some time. The reason will appear when we come to the Isle of Sky. I shall then insert my letter, with letters from his lordship, both to myself and Mr. Johnson. I beg it may be understood, that I insert my own letters, as I relate my own sayings, rather as keys to what is valuable belonging to others, than for their own sake. Luckily Mr. Justice (now Sir Robert) Chambers, who was about to sail for the East Indies, was going to take leave of his relations at Newcastle, and he conducted Dr. Johnson 1 Our friend Edmund Burke, who, by this time, had received some pretty severe strokes from Dr. Johnson, on account of the unhappy difference in their politics, upon my repeating this passage to him, exclaimed, “ Oil of vitriol!" BOSWELL. to that town; whence he wrote me the following: soon. 66 : JOHNSON TO BOSWELL. "Newcastle, August 11. 1773. "DEAR SIR, I came hither last night, and hope, but do not absolutely promise, to be in Edinburgh on Saturday. Beattie will not come so I am, Sir, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON. My compliments to your lady." Mr. Scott, of University College, Oxford, afterwards Sir William Scott and Lord Stowell, accompanied him from thence to Edinburgh. With such propitious convoys did he proceed to my native city. But, lest metaphor should make it be supposed he actually went by sea, I choose to mention that he travelled in post-chaises, of which the rapid motion was one of his most favourite amusements. Dr. Samuel Johnson's character, religious, moral, political, and literary, nay, his figure and manner, are, I believe, more generally known than those of almost any man; yet it may not be superfluous here to attempt a sketch of him. Let my readers, then, remember that he was a sincere and zealous Christian, of high church of England and monarchical principles, which he would not tamely suffer to be questioned; steady and inflexible in maintaining the obligations of piety and virtue, both from a regard to the order of society, and from a veneration for the Great Source of all order; correct, nay, stern in his taste; hard to please, and easily offended; impetuous and irritable in his temper, but of a most humane and be nevolent heart; having a mind stored with a vast and various collection of learning and liar perspicuity and force, in rich and choice knowledge, which he communicated with pecuexpression. He united a most logical head with a most fertile imagination, which gave him an extraordinary advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he saw best for the moment. He could, when he chose it, be the greatest sophist that ever wielded a weapon in the schools of declamation, but he indulged this only in conversation; for he owned he sometimes talked for victory; he was too conscientious to make error permanent and pernicious, by deliberately writing it. He was conscious of his superiority. He loved praise when it was brought to him; but was too proud to seek for it. He was somewhat susceptible of flattery. His mind was so full of imagery, that he might have been perpetually a poet. It has often been remarked, that in his poetical pieces, which it is to be regretted are so few, because so excellent, his style is easier than in his prose. There is 2 This, I find, is a Scotticism. I should have said, "It will not be long before we shall be at Marischal College.". BOSWELL. In spite of this warning, Walter Scott fell into the same error, The light foot of Mordaunt was not long of bearing him to Jarlok." Pirate, c. viii. — CROKER, 1846. |