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

‘Diligat ilia senèm quondam: sed et ipsa marito,

Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur, anus.

‘Wrinkled with age, may mutual love and truth

To their dim eyes recall the bloom of youth.’

Rambler , No. 167.

Some of Johnson’s own translations are happy, as:—

‘Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem

Aut, gelidas hibernus aquas quum fuderit auster,

Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi!

‘How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours,

Lull’d by the beating winds and dashing show’rs.’

Ib . No. 117.

[666] [Greek: Augon ek makaron antaxios eiae amoibae.]

‘Celestial powers! that piety regard,

From you my labours wait their last reward.’

A modification of the Greek line is engraved on the scroll in Johnson’s monument in St. Paul’s ( post , Dec. 1784).

[667] ‘The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity…. I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment.’ Rambler , No. 208.

[668] I have little doubt that this attack on the concluding verse is an indirect blow at Hawkins, who had quoted the whole passage, and had clearly thought it the more ‘awful’ on account of the couplet. See Hawkins’s Johnson , p. 291.

[669] In the original Raleigh’s .

[670] The italics are Boswell’s.

[671] Mrs. Williams is probably the person meant. BOSWELL.

[672] ‘In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was theatre was offered her. The profits of the night were only £130, though Dr. Newton brought a large contribution; and £20 were given by Tonson, a man who is to be praised as often as he is named…. This was the greatest benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author’s descendants; and to this he who has now attempted to relate his life had the honour of contributing a Prologue.’ Johnson’s Works, vii. 118 . In the Gent. Mag . (xx. 152) we read that, as on ‘April 4, the night first appointed, many in convenient circumstances happened to disappoint the hopes of success, the managers generously quitted the profits of another night, in which the theatre was expected to be fuller. Mr. Samuel Johnson’s prologue was afterwards printed for Mrs. Foster’s benefit.’

[673] Johnson is thinking of Pope’s lines—

‘But still the great have kindness in reserve,

He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.’

Prologue to the Satires , 1. 247. In the Life of Milton he writes:—‘In our time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey To the author of Paradise Lost by Mr. Benson, who has in the inscription bestowed more words upon himself than upon Milton.’ Johnson’s Works , vii. 112. Pope has a hit at Benson in the Dunciad , iii. 325:—

‘On poets’ tombs see Benson’s titles writ!’

Moore, describing Sheridan’s funeral, says:—‘It was well remarked by a French Journal, in contrasting the penury of Sheridan’s latter years with the splendour of his funeral, that “France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the place for him to die in.”’ Moore himself wrote:—

‘How proud they can press to the funeral array

Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow—

How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,

Whose pall shall be held up by Nobles to-morrow.’

Moore’s Sheridan , ii. 460-2.

[674] Johnson’s Works , i. 115.

[675] Among the advertisements in the Gent. Mag . for February of this year is the following:—’ An elegy wrote in a country churchyard, 6d .’

[676] See Boswell’s Hebrides , Aug. 17, 1773.

[677] ‘Lest there should be any person, at any future period, absurd enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder’s fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, at the time when he detected the imposition. ‘It is to be hoped, nay it is expected , that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the authour of Lauder’s Preface and Postscript, will no longer allow one to plume himself with his feathers , who appeareth so little to deserve [his] assistance: an assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets.’ Milton no Plagiary , 2nd edit. p. 78. And his Lordship has been pleased now to authorise me to say, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who expressed the strongest indignation against Lauder. BOSWELL. To this letter Lauder had the impudence to add a shameless postscript and some ‘testimonies’ concerning himself. Though on the face of it it is evident that this postscript is not by Johnson, yet it is included in his works (v. 283). The letter was dated Dec. 20, 1750. In the Gent. Mag . for the next month (xxi. 47) there is the following paragraph:—‘Mr. Lauder confesses here and exhibits all his forgeries; for which he assigns one motive in the book, and after asking pardon assigns another in the postscript; he also takes an opportunity to publish several letters and testimonials to his former character.’ Goldsmith in Retaliation has a hit at Lauder:—

‘Here Douglas retires from his toils to relax,

The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks.

New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over,

No countryman living their tricks to discover.’

Dr. Douglas was afterwards Bishop of Salisbury ( ante , p. 127). See post , June 25, 1763, for the part he took in exposing the Cock Lane Ghost imposture.

[678] Scott writing to Southey in 1810 said:—‘A witty rogue the other day, who sent me a letter signed Detector, proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida’s Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of.’ The passage alleged to be stolen ends with,—

‘When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!’

which in Vida ad Eranen. El . ii. v. 21, ran,—

‘Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor,

Fungeris angelico sola ministerio.’

‘It is almost needless to add,’ says Mr. Lockhart, ‘there are no such lines.’ Life of Scott , iii. 294.

[679] The greater part of this Preface was given in the Gent. Mag . for August 1747 (xvii. 404).

[680] ‘Persuasive’ is scarcely a fit description for this noble outburst of indignation on the part of one who knew all the miseries of poverty. After quoting Dr. Newton’s account of the distress to which Milton’s grand-daughter had been reduced, he says:—‘That this relation is true cannot be questioned: but surely the honour of letters, the dignity of sacred poetry, the spirit of the English nation, and the glory of human nature require—that it should be true no longer…. In an age, which amidst all its vices and all its follies has not become infamous for want of charity, it may be surely allowed to hope, that the living remains of Milton will be no longer suffered to languish in distress.’ Johnson’s Works , v. 270.

[681] Hawkins’s Johnson , p. 275.

[682] In the original retrospection . Johnson’s Works , v. 268.