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

[291] Sir Walter Scott has recorded Lord Auchinleck’s ‘sneer of most sovereign contempt,’ while he described Johnson as ‘a dominie, monan auld dominie; he keeped a schule, and cau’d it an acaadamy.’ Croker’s Boswell , p. 397, note.

[292] ‘Edial is two miles west of Lichfield.’ Harwood’s Lichfield , p. 564.

[293] Johnson in more than one passage in his writings seems to have in mind his own days as a schoolmaster. Thus in the Life of Milton he says:—‘This is the period of his life from which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but, since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.’ Johnson’s Works , vii. 75. In the Life of Blackmore he says:—‘In some part of his life, it is not known when, his indigence compelled him to teach a school, an humiliation with which, though it certainly lasted but a little while, his enemies did not forget to reproach him, when he became conspicuous enough to excite malevolence; and let it be remembered for his honour, that to have been once a schoolmaster is the only reproach which all the perspicacity of malice, animated by wit, has ever fixed upon his private life.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 36.

[294] In the original To teach. Seasons, Spring , l. 1149, Thomson is speaking, not of masters, but of parents.

[295] In the Life of Milton , Johnson records his own experience. ‘Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.’ Johnson’s Works , vii. 76.

[296]

‘As masters fondly soothe their boys to read With cakes and sweetmeats.’

Francis , Hor. i. Sat . I. 25.

[297] As Johnson kept Garrick much in awe when present, David, when his back was turned, repaid the restraint with ridicule of him and his dulcinea, which should be read with great abatement. PERCY. He was not consistent in his account, for ‘he told Mrs. Thrale that she was a little painted puppet of no value at all.’ ‘He made out,’ Mrs. Piozzi continues, ‘some comical scenes, by mimicking her in a dialogue he pretended to have overheard. I do not know whether he meant such stuff to be believed or no, it was so comical. The picture I found of her at Lichfield was very pretty, and her daughter said it was like. Mr. Johnson has told me that her hair was eminently beautiful, quite blonde like that of a baby.’ Piozzi’s Anec . p. 148.

[298] Mr. Croker points out that in this paper ‘there are two separate schemes, the first for a school—the second for the individual studies of some young friend.’

[299] In the Rambler , No. 122, Johnson, after stating that ‘it is observed that our nation has been hitherto remarkably barren of historical genius,’ praises Knolles, who, he says, ‘in his History of the Turks , has displayed all the excellencies that narration can admit.’

[300] Both of them used to talk pleasantly of this their first journey to London. Garrick, evidently meaning to embellish a little, said one day in my hearing, ‘we rode and tied.’ And the Bishop of Killaloe informed me, that at another time, when Johnson and Garrick were dining together in a pretty large company, Johnson humorously ascertaining the chronology of something, expressed himself thus: ‘that was the year when I came to London with twopence half-penny in my pocket.’ Garrick overhearing him, exclaimed, ‘eh? what do you say? with twopence half-penny in your pocket?’—JOHNSON, ‘Why yes; when I came with twopence half-penny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three half-pence in thine.’ BOSWELL.

[301] See Gent. Mag ., xxiv. 333.

[302] Mr. Colson was First Master of the Free School at Rochester. In 1739 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. MALONE. Mrs. Piozzi ( Anec . p. 49) says that ‘by Gelidus the philosopher ( Rambler , No. 24), Johnson meant to represent Colson.’

[303] This letter is printed in the Garrick Corres . i. 2. There we read I doubt not .

[304] One curious anecdote was communicated by himself to Mr. John Nichols. Mr. Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an authour, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a significant look, said, ‘You had better buy a porter’s knot.’ He however added, ‘Wilcox was one of my best friends.’ BOSWELL. Hawkins ( Life , p. 43) states that Johnson and Garrick had soon exhausted their small stock of money in London, and that on Garrick’s suggestion they applied for a loan to Wilcox, of whom he had a slight knowledge. ‘Representing themselves to him, as they really were, two young men, friends and travellers from the same place, and just arrived with a view to settle here, he was so moved with their artless tale, that on their joint note he advanced them all that their modesty would permit them to ask (five pounds), which was soon after punctually repaid.’ Perhaps Johnson was thinking of himself when he recorded the advice given by Cibber to Fenton, ‘When the tragedy of Mariamne was shewn to Cibber, it was rejected by him, with the additional insolence of advising Fenton to engage himself in some employment of honest labour, by which he might obtain that support which he could never hope from his poetry. The play was acted at the other theatre; and the brutal petulance of Cibber was confuted, though perhaps not shamed, by general applause.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 56. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations (Book i. ch. 2) says that ‘the difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street-porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.’ Wilcox’s shop was in Little Britain. Benjamin Franklin, in 1725, lodged next door to him. ‘He had,’ says Franklin ( Memoirs , i. 64), ‘an immense collection of second-hand books. Circulating libraries were not then in use; but we agreed that on certain reasonable terms I might read any of his books.’

[305] Bernard Lintot ( post , July 19, 1763) died Feb. 3, 1736. Gent. Mag . vi. 110. This, no doubt, was his son.

[306] Dr. A. Carlyle ( Auto . p. 195) says that being in London in 1746 he dined frequently with a club of officers, where they had an excellent dinner at ten-pence. From what he adds it is clear that the tavern-keeper made his profit on the wine. At Edinburgh, four years earlier, he and his fellow-students used to get ‘at four-pence a-head a very good dinner of broth and beef, and a roast and potatoes every day, with fish three or four times a-week, and all the small beer that was called for till the cloth was removed’ ( ib . p. 63). W. Hutton, who in 1750 opened a very small book-shop in Birmingham, for which he paid rent at a shilling a week, says ( Life of Hutton , p. 84): ‘Five shillings a week covered every expense; as food, rent, washing, lodging, &c.’ He knew how to live wretchedly.

[307] On April 17, 1778, Johnson said: ‘Early in life I drank wine; for many years I drank none. I then for some years drank a great deal. I then had a severe illness, and left it off, and I have never begun it again.’ Somewhat the same account is given in Boswell’s Hebrides , Sept. 16, 1773. Roughly speaking, he seems to have been an abstainer from about 1736 to at least as late as 1757, and from about 1765 to the end of his life. In 1751 Hawkins ( Life , p. 286) describes him as drinking only lemonade ‘in a whole night spent in festivity’ at the Ivy Lane Club. In 1757 he described himself ‘as a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only tea’ (Johnson’s Works , vi. 21). It was, I believe, in his visit to Oxford in 1759 that ‘University College witnessed his drinking three bottles of port without being the worse for it’ ( post , April 7, 1778). When he was living in the Temple (between 1760-65) he had the frisk with Langton and Beauclerk when they made a bowl of Bishop ( post , 1753). On his birthday in 1760, he ‘resolved to drink less strong liquors’ ( Pr. and Med . p. 42). In 1762 on his visit to Devonshire he drank three bottles of wine after supper. This was the only time Reynolds had seen him intoxicated. (Northcote’s Reynolds , ii. 161). In 1763 he affected Boswell’s nerves by keeping him up late to drink port with him ( post , July 14, 1763). On April 21, 1764, he records: ‘From the beginning of this year I have in some measure forborne excess of strong drink’ ( Pr. and Med . p. 51). On Easter Sunday he records: ‘Avoided wine’ ( id . p. 55). On March 1, 1765, he is described at Cambridge as ‘giving Mrs. Macaulay for his toast, and drinking her in two bumpers.’ It was about this time that he had the severe illness ( post , under Oct. 17, 1765, note). In Feb. 1766, Boswell found him no longer drinking wine. He shortly returned to it again; for on Aug. 2, 1767, he records, ‘I have for some days forborne wine;’ and on Aug. 17, ‘By abstinence from wine and suppers I obtained sudden and great relief’ ( Pr. and Med . pp. 73, 4). According to Hawkins, Johnson said:—‘After a ten years’ forbearance of every fluid except tea and sherbet, I drank one glass of wine to the health of Sir Joshua Reynolds on the evening of the day on which he was knighted’ (Hawkins’s Johnson’s Works (1787), xi. 215). As Reynolds was knighted on April 21, 1769 (Taylor’s Reynolds , i. 321), Hawkins’s report is grossly inaccurate. In Boswell’s Hebrides , Sept. 16, 1773, and post , March 16, 1776, we find him abstaining. In 1778 he persuaded Boswell to be ‘a water-drinker upon trial’ ( post , April 28, 1778). On April 7, 1779, ‘he was persuaded to drink one glass of claret that he might judge of it, not from recollection.’ On March 20, 1781, Boswell found that Johnson had lately returned to wine. ‘I drink it now sometimes,’ he said, ‘but not socially.’ He seems to have generally abstained however. On April 20, 1781, he would not join in drinking Lichfield ale. On March 17, 1782, he made some punch for himself, by which in the night he thought ‘both his breast and imagination disordered’ ( Pr. and Med . p. 205). In the spring of this year Hannah More urged him to take a little wine. ‘I can’t drink a little , child,’ he answered; ‘therefore I never touch it’ (H. More’s Memoirs , i. 251). On July 1, 1784, Beattie, who met him at dinner, says, ‘he cannot be prevailed on to drink wine’ (Beattie’s Life , p. 316). On his death-bed he refused any ‘inebriating sustenance’ ( post , Dec. 1784). It is remarkable that writing to Dr. Taylor on Aug. 5, 1773, he said:—‘Drink a great deal, and sleep heartily;’ and that on June 23, 1776, he again wrote to him:—‘I hope you presever in drinking. My opinion is that I have drunk too little, and therefore have the gout, for it is of my own acquisition, as neither my father had it nor my mother’ ( Notes and Queries , 6th S. v. pp. 422, 3). On Sept. 19, 1777 ( post ), he even ‘owned that in his opinion a free use of wine did not shorten life.’ Johnson disapproved of fermented liquors only in the case of those who, like himself and Boswell, could not keep from excess.