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

[392] The Historie of four-footed beasts and serpents . By Edward Topsell. London, 1607. Isaac Walton, in the Complete Angler , more than once quotes Topsel. See p. 99 in the reprint of the first edition, where he says:—‘As our Topsel hath with great diligence observed.’

[393] In this preface he describes some pieces as ‘deserving no other fate than to be hissed, torn, and forgotten. Johnson’s Works , v. 346.

[394] The letter to Mr. Urban in the January number of this year (p. 3) is, I believe, by Johnson.

[395] ‘Yet did Boerhaave not suffer one branch of science to withdraw his attention from others; anatomy did not withhold him from chymistry, nor chymistry, enchanting as it is, from the study of botany.’ Johnson’s Works , vi. 276. See post , under Sept. 9, 1779.

[396] Gent. Mag . viii. 210, and Johnson’s Works , i. 170.

[397] What these verses are is not clear. On p. 372 there is an epigram Ad Elisam Popi Horto Lauras carpentem , of which on p. 429 there are three translations. That by Urbanus may be Johnson’s.

[398] Ib . p. 654, and Johnson’s Works , i. 170. On p. 211 of this volume of the Gent. Mag . is given the epigram ‘To a lady who spoke in defence of liberty.’ This was ‘Molly Aston’ mentioned ante , p. 83.

[399] To the year 1739 belongs Considerations on the Case of Dr. T[rapp]s Sermons. Abridged by Mr. Cave, 1739 ; first published in the Gent. Mag . of July 1787. (See post under Nov. 5, 1784, note.) Cave had begun to publish in the Gent. Mag . an abridgment of four sermons preached by Trapp against Whitefield. He stopped short in the publication, deterred perhaps by the threat of a prosecution for an infringement of copyright. ‘On all difficult occasions,’ writes the Editor in 1787, ‘Johnson was Cave’s oracle; and the paper now before us was certainly written on that occasion.’ Johnson argues that abridgments are not only legal but also justifiable. ‘The design of an abridgment is to benefit mankind by facilitating the attainment of knowledge … for as an incorrect book is lawfully criticised, and false assertions justly confuted … so a tedious volume may no less lawfully be abridged, because it is better that the proprietors should suffer some damage, than that the acquisition of knowledge should be obstructed with unnecessary difficulties, and the valuable hours of thousands thrown away.’ Johnson’s Works , v. 465. Whether we have here Johnson’s own opinion cannot be known. He was writing as Cave’s advocate. See also Boswell’s Hebrides , Aug. 20, 1773.

[400] In his Life of Thomson Johnson writes:—‘About this time the act was passed for licensing plays, of which the first operation was the prohibition of Gustavus Vasa , a tragedy of Mr. Brooke, whom the public recompensed by a very liberal subscription; the next was the refusal of Edward and Eleonora , offered by Thomson. It is hard to discover why either play should have been obstructed.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 373.

[401] The Inscription and the Translation of it are preserved in the London Magazine for the year 1739, p. 244. BOSWELL. See Johnson’s Works , vi. 89.

[402] It is a little heavy in its humour, and does not compare well with the like writings of Swift and the earlier wits.

[403] Hawkins’s Johnson , p. 72.

[404]

‘Sic fatus senior, telumque imbelle sine ictu Conjecit.’ ‘So spake the elder, and cast forth a toothless spear and vain.’

Morris, Æneids , ii. 544.

[405]

‘Get all your verses printed fair,

Then let them well be dried;

And Curll must have a special care

To leave the margin wide.

Lend these to paper-sparing Pope;

And when he sits to write,

No letter with an envelope

Could give him more delight.’

Advice to the Grub Street Verse-Writers . (Swift’s Works , 1803, xi 32.) Nichols, in a note on this passage, says:—‘The original copy of Pope’s Homer is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.’ Johnson, in his Life of Pope , writes:—‘Of Pope’s domestic character frugality was a part eminently remarkable…. This general care must be universally approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad , by which perhaps in five years five shillings were saved.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 312.

[406] See note, p. 132. BOSWELL.

[407] The Marmor Norfolciense , price one shilling, is advertised in the Gent. Mag . for 1739 (p. 220) among the books for April.

[408] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides , 3rd edit. p. 8. BOSWELL.

[409] According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘Every person who knew Dr. Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the conversation. These were therefore improperly called convulsions, which imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his attention was recovered. Sometimes, indeed, it would be near a minute before he would give an answer, looking as if he laboured to bring his mind to bear on the question’ (Taylor’s Reynolds , ii. 456). ‘I still, however, think,’ wrote Boswell, ‘that these gestures were involuntary; for surely had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in the public streets’ (Boswell’s Hebrides , under date of Aug. 11, 1773, note). Dr. T. Campbell, in his Diary of a Visit to England , p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—‘He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil’s jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.’ Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:—‘Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes of all together.’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary , i. 63. See post , under March 30, 1783, Boswell’s note on Johnson’s peculiarities.

[410] ‘Solitude,’ wrote Reynolds, ‘to him was horror; nor would he ever trust himself alone but when employed in writing or reading. He has often begged me to go home with him to prevent his being alone in the coach. Any company was better than none; by which he connected himself with many mean persons whose presence he could command.’ Taylor’s Reynolds , ii. 455. Johnson writing to Mrs. Thrale, said:—‘If the world be worth winning, let us enjoy it; if it is to be despised, let us despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it is compared with something better. Company is in itself better than solitude, and pleasure better than indolence.’ Piozzi Letters , i. 242. In The Idler , No. 32, he wrote:—‘Others are afraid to be alone, and amuse themselves by a perpetual succession of companions; but the difference is not great; in solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert. The end sought in both is forgetfulness of ourselves.’ In The Rambler , No. 5, he wrote:—‘It may be laid down as a position which will seldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life from the equipoise of an empty mind … or he must be afraid of the intrusion of some unpleasing ideas, and, perhaps, is struggling to escape from the remembrance of a loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other thought of greater horror.’