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

[181] Seven years before Johnson’s time, on Nov. 5, ‘Mr. Peyne, Bachelor of Arts, made an oration in the hall suitable to the day.’ Philipps’s Diary .

[182] Boswell forgot Johnson’s criticism on Milton’s exercises on this day. ‘Some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason might have been spared.’ Johnson’s Works , vii. 119.

[183] It has not been preserved. There are in the college library four of his compositions, two of verse and two of prose. One of the copies of verse I give post , under July 16, 1754. Both have been often printed. As his prose compositions have never been published I will give one:—

‘Mea nec Falernae

Temperant Vites, neque Formiani Pocula Colles.’

‘Quaedam minus attente spectata absurda videntur, quae tamen penitus perspecta rationi sunt consentanea. Non enim semper facta per se, verum ratio occasioque faciendi sunt cogitanda. Deteriora ei offerre cui meliorum ingens copia est, cui non ridiculum videtur? Quis sanus hirtam agrestemque vestem Lucullo obtulisset, cujus omnia fere Serum opificia, omnia Parmae vellera, omnes Tyri colores latuerunt? Hoc tamen fecisse Horatium non puduit, quo nullus urbanior, nullus procerum convictui magis assuetus. Maecenatem scilicet nôrat non quaesiturum an meliora vina domi posset bibere, verum an inter domesticos quenquam propensiori in se animo posset invenire. Amorem, non lucrum, optavit patronus ille munifentissimus ( sic ). Pocula licet vino minus puro implerentur, satis habuit, si hospitis vultus laetitia perfusus sinceram puramque amicitiam testaretur. Ut ubi poetam carmine celebramus, non fastidit, quod ipse melius posset scribere, verum poema licet non magni facit ( sic ), amorem scriptoris libenter amplectitur, sic amici munuscula animum gratum testantia licet parvi sint, non nisi a superbo et moroso contemnentur. Deos thuris fumis indigere nemo certè unquam credidit, quos tamen iis gratos putarunt, quia homines se non beneficiorum immemores his testimoniis ostenderunt.’

[184] ‘The accidental perusal of some Latin verses gained Addison the patronage of Dr. Lancaster, afterwards Provost of Queen’s College, by whose recommendation he was elected into Magdalen College as a Demy’ [a scholar]. Johnson’s Works , vii. 420. Johnson’s verses gained him nothing but ‘estimation.’

[185] He is reported to have said:—‘The writer of this poem will leave it a question for posterity, whether his or mine be the original.’ Hawkins, p. 13.

[186] ‘A Miscellany of Poems by several hands. Published by J. Husbands, A.M., Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxon., Oxford. Printed by Leon. Lichfield, near the East-Gate, In the year MDCCXXXI.’ Among the subscribers I notice the name of Richard Savage, Esq., for twenty copies. It is very doubtful whether he paid for one. Pope did not subscribe. Johnson’s poem is thus mentioned in the preface:—‘The translation of Mr. Pope’s Messiah was deliver’d to his Tutor as a College Exercise by Mr. Johnson, a commoner of Pembroke College in Oxford, and ‘tis hoped will be no discredit to the excellent original.’

[187] See post , under July 16, 1754.

[188] See Boswell’s Hebrides , Sept. 6, 1773.

[189] Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson, by John Courtenay, Esq., M.P. BOSWELL.

[190] Hector, in his account of Johnson’s early life, says:—‘After a long absence from Lichfield, when he returned, I was apprehensive of something wrong in his constitution which might either impair his intellect or endanger his life; but, thanks to Almighty God, my fears have proved false.’ Hawkins, p. 8. The college books show that Johnson was absent but one week in the Long Vacation of 1729. It is by no means unlikely that he went to Lichfield in that week to consult Dr. Swinfen about his health. In that case his first attack, when he tried to overcome the malady by frequently walking to Birmingham, must have been at an earlier date. In his time students often passed the vacation at the University. The following table shows the number of graduates and undergraduates in residence in Pembroke College at the end of each fourth week, from June to December 1729:—

Members in residence.

June 20, 1729 … 54

July 18, ” … 34

Aug. 15, ” … 25

Sept. 12, ” … 16

Oct. 10, ” … 30

Nov. 7, ” … 52

Dec. 5, ” … 49

At Christmas there were still sixteen men left in the college. That under a zealous tutor the vacation was by no means a time of idleness is shown by a passage in Wesley’s Journal , in which he compares the Scotch Universities with the English. ‘In Scotland,’ he writes, ‘the students all come to their several colleges in November, and return home in May. So they may study five months in the year, and lounge all the rest! O where was the common sense of those who instituted such colleges? In the English colleges everyone may reside all the year, as all my pupils did; and I should have thought myself little better than a highwayman if I had not lectured them every day in the year but Sundays.’ Wesley’s Journal , iv. 75. Johnson lived to see Oxford empty in the Long Vacation. Writing on Aug. 1, 1775, he said:—‘The place is now a sullen solitude.’ Piozzi Letters , i. 294.

[191] Johnson, perhaps, was thinking of himself when he thus criticised the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. ‘The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design.’ Johnson’s Works , vii. 431.

[192] Writing in his old age to Hector, he said,—‘My health has been from my twentieth year such as has seldom afforded me a single day of ease’ ( post , under March 21, 1782). Hawkins writes, that he once told him ‘that he knew not what it was to be totally free from pain.’ Hawkins, p. 396.

[193] See post , Oct. 27, 1784, note.

[194] In the Rambler , No. 85, he pointed out ‘how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.’ See post , July 21, 1763, for his remedies against melancholy.

[195] Thirty-two miles in all. Southey mentions that in 1728, the Wesleys, to save the more money for the poor, began to perform their journeys on foot. He adds,—‘It was so little the custom in that age for men in their rank of life to walk any distance, as to make them think it a discovery that four or five-and-twenty miles are an easy and safe day’s journey.’ Southey’s Wesley , i. 52.

[196] Boswell himself suffered from hypochondria. He seems at times to boast of it, as Dogberry boasted of his losses; so that Johnson had some reason for writing to him with seventy, as if he were ‘affecting it from a desire of distinction.’ Post , July 2, 1776.

[197] Johnson on April 7, 1776, recommended Boswell to read this book, and again on July 2 of the same year.

[198] On Dec. 24, 1754, writing of the poet Collins, who was either mad or close upon it, he said,—‘Poor dear Collins! I have often been near his state.’ Wooll’s Warton , p. 229. ‘I inherited,’ Johnson said, ‘a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.’ Boswell’s Hebrides , Sept. 16, 1773. ‘When I survey my past life,’ he wrote in 1777, ‘I discover nothing but a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body and disturbances of the mind very near to madness.’ Pr. and Med . p. 155. Reynolds recorded that ‘what Dr. Johnson said a few days before his death of his disposition to insanity was no new discovery to those who were intimate with him.’ Taylor’s Reynolds , ii. 455. See also post Sept. 20, 1777.