James Boswell - THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON - All 6 Volumes in One Edition

[122] See post , March 27, 1775.

[123] ‘I remember, that being in bed with my mother one morning, I was told by her of the two places to which the inhabitants of this world were received after death: one a fine place filled with happiness, called Heaven; the other, a sad place, called Hell. That this account much affected my imagination I do not remember.’ Annals , p. 19.

[124] Johnson’s Works , vi. 406.

[125] Mr. Croker disbelieves the story altogether. ‘Sacheverel,’ he says, ‘by his sentence pronounced in Feb. 1710, was interdicted for three years from preaching; so that he could not have preached at Lichfield while Johnson was under three years of age. Sacheverel, indeed, made a triumphal progress through the midland counties in 1710; and it appears by the books of the corporation of Lichfield that he was received in that town, and complimented by the attendance of the corporation, “and a present of three dozen of wine,” on June 16, 1710; but then “the infant Hercules of Toryism ” was just nine months old.’ It is quite possible that the story is in the main correct. Sacheverel was received in Lichfield in 1710 on his way down to Shropshire to take possession of a living. At the end of the suspension in March 1713 he preached a sermon in London, for which, as he told Swift, ‘a bookseller gave him £100, intending to print 30,000’ (Swift’s Journal to Stella , April 2, 1713). It is likely enough that either on his way up to town or on his return journey he preached at Lichfield. In the spring of 1713 Johnson was three years old.

[126] See post , p. 48, and April 25,1778 note; and Boswell’s Hebrides , Oct. 28, 1773.

[127] Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson , by Hester Lynch Piozzi, p. 11. Life of Dr. Johnson_, by Sir John Hawkins, p. 6. BOSWELL.

[128] ‘My father had much vanity which his adversity hindered from being fully exerted.’ Annals , p. 14.

[129] This anecdote of the duck, though disproved by internal and external evidence, has nevertheless, upon supposition of its truth, been made the foundation of the following ingenious and fanciful reflections of Miss Seward, amongst the communications concerning Dr. Johnson with which she has been pleased to favour me: ‘These infant numbers contain the seeds of those propensities which through his life so strongly marked his character, of that poetick talent which afterwards bore such rich and plentiful fruits; for, excepting his orthographick works, every thing which Dr. Johnson wrote was Poetry, whose essence consists not in numbers, or in jingle, but in the strength and glow of a fancy, to which all the stores of nature and of art stand in prompt administration; and in an eloquence which conveys their blended illustrations in a language “more tuneable than needs or rhyme or verse to add more harmony.”

‘The above little verses also shew that superstitious bias which “grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength,” and, of late years particularly, injured his happiness, by presenting to him the gloomy side of religion, rather than that bright and cheering one which gilds the period of closing life with the light of pious hope.’

This is so beautifully imagined, that I would not suppress it. But like many other theories, it is deduced from a supposed fact, which is, indeed, a fiction. BOSWELL.

[130] Prayers and Meditations , p. 27. BOSWELL.

[131] Speaking himself of the imperfection of one of his eyes, he said to Dr. Burney, ‘the dog was never good for much.’ MALONE.

[132] Boswell’s Hebrides , Sept. 1, 1773.

[133] ‘No accidental position of a riband,’ wrote Mrs. Piozzi, ‘escaped him, so nice was his observation, and so rigorous his demands of propriety.’ Piozzi’s Anec . p. 287. Miss Burney says:— ‘Notwithstanding Johnson is sometimes so absent and always so near-sighted, he scrutinizes into every part of almost everybody’s appearance [at Streatham].’ And again she writes:—‘his blindness is as much the effect of absence [of mind] as of infirmity, for he sees wonderfully at times. He can see the colour of a lady’s top-knot, for he very often finds fault with it.’ Mme. D’Arblays Diary , i. 85, ii. 174. ‘He could, when well, distinguish the hour on Lichfield town-clock.’ Post , p. 64.

[134] See post , Sept. 22, 1777.

[135] This was Dr. Swinfen’s opinion, who seems also to have attributed Johnson’s short-sightedness to the same cause. ‘My mother,’ he says, ‘thought my diseases derived from her family.’ Annals , p. 12. When he was put out at nurse, ‘She visited me,’ he says, ‘every day, and used to go different ways, that her assiduity might not expose her to ridicule.’

[136] In 1738 Carte published a masterly ‘Account of Materials, etc., for a History of England with the method of his undertaking.’ ( Gent. Mag . viii. 227.) He proposed to do much of what has been since done under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. He asked for subscriptions to carry on his great undertaking, for in its researches it was to be very great. In 1744 the City of London resolved to subscribe £50 for seven years (ib. xiv: 393). In vol. i. of his history, which only came down to the reign of John (published in 1748), he went out of his way to assert that the cure by the king’s touch was not due to the ‘regal unction ‘; for he had known a man cured who had gone over to France, and had been there ‘touched by the eldest lineal descendant of a race of kings who had not at that time been crowned or anointed .’ (ib. xviii. 13.) Thereupon the Court of Common Council by a unanimous vote withdrew its subscription, (ib. 185.) The old Jacobites maintained that the power did not descend to Mary, William, or Anne. It was for this reason that Boswell said that Johnson should have been taken to Rome; though indeed it was not till some years after he was ‘touched’ by Queen Anne that the Pretender dwelt there. The Hanoverian kings never ‘touched.’ The service for the ceremony was printed in the Book of Common Prayer as late as 1719. ( Penny Cyclo . xxi. 113.) ‘It appears by the newspapers of the time,’ says Mr. Wright, quoted by Croker, ‘that on March 30, 1712, two hundred persons were touched by Queen Anne.’ Macaulay says that ‘Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred thousand persons…. The expense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year.’ Macaulay’s England , ch. xiv.

[137] See post , p. 91, note.

[138] Anecdotes , p. 10. BOSWELL.

[139] Johnson, writing of Addison’s schoolmasters, says:—‘Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously diminished. I would therefore trace him through the whole process of his education.’ Johnson’s Works , vii. 418.

[140] Neither the British Museum nor the Bodleian Library has a copy.

[141] ‘When we learned Propria qua maribus , we were examined in the Accidence; particularly we formed verbs, that is, went through the same person in all the moods and tenses. This was very difficult to me, and I was once very anxious about the next day, when this exercise was to be performed in which I had failed till I was discouraged. My mother encouraged me, and I proceeded better. When I told her of my good escape, “We often,” said she, dear mother! “come off best when we are most afraid.” She told me that, once when she asked me about forming verbs I said, “I did not form them in an ugly shape.” “You could not,” said she “speak plain; and I was proud that I had a boy who was forming verbs” These little memorials soothe my mind.’ Annals , p. 22.