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

‘Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play,

Some peaceful vale, with nature’s paintings gay.

*

There every bush with nature’s musick rings;

There every breeze bears health upon its wings.’

Mr. Croker objects that ‘if Thales had been Savage, Johnson could never have admitted into his poem two lines that point so forcibly at the drunken fray, in which Savage stabbed a Mr. Sinclair, for which he was convicted of murder :—

“Some frolic drunkard , reeling from a feast, Provokes a broil, and stabs you in a jest.”’

But here Johnson is following Juvenal. Mr. Croker forgets that, if Savage was convicted of murder, ‘he was soon after admitted to bail, and pleaded the King’s pardon.’ ‘Persons of distinction’ testified that he was ‘a modest inoffensive man, not inclined to broils or to insolence;’ the witnesses against him were of the lowest character, and his judge had shewn himself as ignorant as he was brutal. Sinclair had been drinking in a brothel, and Savage asserted that he had stabbed him ‘by the necessity of self defence’ ( Ib . p. 117). It is, however, not unlikely that Wales was suggested to Johnson as Thales’s retreat by Swift’s lines on Steele, in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (v. 181), published only three years before London :—

‘Thus Steele who owned what others writ,

And flourished by imputed wit,

From perils of a hundred jails

Withdrew to starve and die in Wales.’

[363] The first dialogue was registered at Stationers’ Hall, 12th May, 1738, under the title One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight . The second dialogue was registered 17th July, 1738, as One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight, Dialogue 2. Elwin’s Pope , iii. 455.

David Hume was in London this spring, finding a publisher for his first work, A Treatise of Human Nature . J. H. Burton’s Hume , i. 66.

[364] Pope had published Imitations of Horace .

[365] P. 269. BOSWELL. ‘Short extracts from London, a Poem , become remarkable for having got to the second edition in the space of a week.’ Gent. Mag . viii. 269. The price of the poem was one shilling. Pope’s satire, though sold at the same price, was longer in reaching its second edition ( Ib . p. 280).

[366]

‘One driven by strong benevolence of soul

Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.’

Pope’s Imitations of Horace , ii. 2. 276.

‘General Oglethorpe, died 1785, earned commemoration in Pope’s gallery of worthies by his Jacobite politics. He was, however, a remarkable man. He first directed attention to the abuses of the London jails. His relinquishment of all the attractions of English life and fortune for the settlement of the colony of Georgia is as romantic a story at that of Bishop Berkeley’ (Pattison’s Pope , p. 152). It is very likely that Johnson’s regard for Oglethorpe was greatly increased by the stand that he and his brother-trustees in the settlement of Georgia made against slavery (see post , Sept. 23, 1777). ‘The first principle which they laid down in their laws was that no slave should be employed. This was regarded at the time as their great and fundamental error; it was afterwards repealed’ (Southey’s Wesley , i. 75). In spite, however, of Oglethorpe’s ‘strong benevolence of soul’ he at one time treated Charles Wesley, who was serving as a missionary in Georgia, with great brutality ( Ib . p. 88). According to Benjamin Franklin ( Memoirs , i. 162) Georgia was settled with little forethought. ‘Instead of being made with hardy industrious husbandmen, it was with families of broken shop-keepers, and other insolvent debtors; many of idle habits, taken out of the jails, who being set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for.’ Johnson wished to write Oglethorpe’s life; post , April 10, 1775.

[367] Horace Walpole ( Letters , viii. 548), writing of him 47 years after London was published, when he was 87 years old, says:—‘His eyes, ears, articulation, limbs, and memory would suit a boy, if a boy could recollect a century backwards. His teeth are gone; he is a shadow, and a wrinkled one; but his spirits and his spirit are in full bloom: two years and a-half ago he challenged a neighbouring gentleman for trespassing on his manor.’

[368] Once Johnson being at dinner at Sir Joshua’s in company with many painters, in the course of conversation Richardson’s Treatise on Painting happened to be mentioned, ‘Ah!’ said Johnson, ‘I remember, when I was at college, I by chance found that book on my stairs. I took it up with me to my chamber, and read it through, and truly I did not think it possible to say so much upon the art.’ Sir Joshua desired of one of the company to be informed what Johnson had said; and it being repeated to him so loud that Johnson heard it, the Doctor seemed hurt, and added, ‘But I did not wish, Sir, that Sir Joshua should have been told what I then said.’ Northcote’s Reynolds , i. 236. Jonathan Richardson the painter had published several works on painting before Johnson went to college. He and his son, Jonathan Richardson, junior, brought out together Explanatory Notes on Paradise Lost .

[369] Sir Joshua Reynolds, from the information of the younger Richardson. BOSWELL. See post , Oct. 16, 1769, where Johnson himself relates this anecdote. According to Murphy, ‘Pope said, “The author, whoever he is, will not be long concealed;” alluding to the passage in Terence [ Eun . ii. 3, 4], Ubi, ubi est, diu celari non potest .’ Murphy’s Johnson , p. 35.

[370] Such as far and air , which comes twice; vain and man , despair and bar .

[371] It is, however, remarkable, that he uses the epithet, which undoubtedly, since the union between England and Scotland, ought to denominate the natives of both parts of our island:—

‘Was early taught a BRITON’S rights to prize.’

Swift, in his Journal to Stella (Nov. 23, 1711), having to mention England, continues:—‘I never will call it Britain , pray don’t call it Britain.’ In a letter written on Aug. 8, 1738, again mentioning England, he adds,—‘Pox on the modern phrase Great Britain, which is only to distinguish it from Little Britain, where old clothes and old books are to be bought and sold’ (Swift’s Works , 1803, xx. 185). George III ‘gloried in being born a Briton;’ post , 1760. Boswell thrice more at least describes Johnson as ‘a true-born Englishman;’ post , under Feb. 7, 1775, under March 30, 1783, and Boswell’s Hebrides under Aug. 11, 1773. The quotation is from Richard II , Act i. sc. 3.

[372]

‘For who would leave, unbrib’d, Hibernia’s land,

Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?

There none are swept by sudden fate away,

But all, whom hunger spares, with age decay.’

London , 1. 9-12.

[373] In the Life of Savage , Johnson, criticising the settlement of colonies, as it is considered by the poet and the politician, seems to be criticising himself. ‘The politician, when he considers men driven into other countries for shelter, and obliged to retire to forests and deserts, and pass their lives, and fix their posterity, in the remotest corners of the world, to avoid those hardships which they suffer or fear in their native place, may very properly enquire, why the legislature does not provide a remedy for these miseries, rather than encourage an escape from them. He may conclude that the flight of every honest man is a loss to the community…. The poet guides the unhappy fugitive from want and persecution to plenty, quiet, and security, and seats him in scenes of peaceful solitude, and undisturbed repose.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 156.