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

[756] In the original ‘Mr. Johnson.’

[757] In the original ‘unnecessary foreign ornaments.’

[758] In the original, ‘will now, and, I dare say.’

[759] Hawkins ( Life , p. 191) says that Chesterfield, further to appease Johnson, sent to him Sir Thomas Robinson (see post , July 19, 1763), who was ‘to apologise for his lordship’s treatment of him, and to make him tenders of his future friendship and patronage. Sir Thomas, whose talent was flattery, was profuse in his commendations of Johnson and his writings, and declared that, were his circumstances other than they were, himself would settle £500 a year on him. ‘And who are you,’ asked Johnson, ‘that talk thus liberally?’ ‘I am,’ said the other, ‘Sir Thomas Robinson, a Yorkshire baronet.’ ‘Sir,’ replied Johnson, ‘if the first peer of the realm were to make me such an offer, I would shew him the way down stairs.’

[760] Paradise Lost , ii. 112.

[761] Johnson, perhaps, was thinking of his interviews with Chesterfield, when in his Rambler on ‘The Mischiefs of following a Patron’ (No. 163) he wrote:—‘If you, Mr. Rambler, have ever ventured your philosophy within the attraction of greatness, you know the force of such language, introduced with a smile of gracious tenderness, and impressed at the conclusion with an air of solemn sincerity.’

[762] Johnson said to Garrick:—‘I have sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the English language; and does he now send out two cock-boats to tow me into harbour?’ Murphy’s Johnson , p. 74. This metaphor may perhaps have been suggested to Johnson by Warburton. ‘I now begin to see land, after having wandered, according to Mr. Warburton’s phrase, in this vast sea of words.’ Post , Feb. 1, 1755.

[763] See post , Nov. 22, 1779, and April 8, 1780. Sir Henry Ellis says that ‘address’ in Johnson’s own copy of his letter to Lord Chesterfield is spelt twice with one d . Croker’s Corres . ii. 44. In the series of Letters by Johnson given in Notes and Queries , 6th S. v, Johnson writes persuit (p. 325); ‘I cannot butt (p. 342); ‘to retain council ‘ (p. 343); harrassed (p. 423); imbecillity (p. 482). In a letter to Nichols quoted by me, post , beginning of 1783, he writes ilness . He commonly, perhaps always, spelt Boswell Boswel , and Nichols’s name in one series of letters he spelt Nichols, Nichol, and Nicol. Post , beginning of 1781, note.

[764] Dr. Johnson appeared to have had a remarkable delicacy with respect to the circulation of this letter; for Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, informs me that, having many years ago pressed him to be allowed to read it to the second Lord Hardwicke, who was very desirous to hear it (promising at the same time, that no copy of it should be taken), Johnson seemed much pleased that it had attracted the attention of a nobleman of such a respectable character; but after pausing some time, declined to comply with the request, saying, with a smile, ‘No, Sir; I have hurt the dog too much already;’ or words to that purpose. BOSWELL.

[765] See post , June 4, 1781.

[766] In 1790, the year before the Life of Johnson came out, Boswell published this letter in a separate sheet of four quarto pages under the following title:— The celebrated Letter from Samuel Johnson, LL.D., to Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Now first published with Notes, by James Boswell, Esq., London. Printed by Henry Baldwin: for Charles Dilly in the Poultry, MDCCXC. Price Half-a-Guinea. Entered in the Hall-Book of the Company of Stationers . It belongs to the same impression as The Life of Johnson .

[767] ‘Je chante le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre.’ Boileau, L’Art poétique , iii. 272.

[768] The following note is subjoined by Mr. Langton:—‘Dr. Johnson, when he gave me this copy of his letter, desired that I would annex to it his information to me, that whereas it is said in the letter that “no assistance has been received,” he did once receive from Lord Chesterfield the sum of ten pounds; but as that was so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find place in a letter of the kind that this was.’ BOSWELL. ‘This surely is an unsatisfactory excuse,’ writes Mr. Croker. He read Johnson’s letter carelessly, as the rest of his note shews. Johnson says, that during the seven years that had passed since he was repulsed from Chesterfield’s door he had pushed on his work without one act of assistance. These ten pounds, we may feel sure, had been received before the seven years began to run. No doubt they had been given in 1747 as an acknowledgement of the compliment paid to Chesterfield in the Plan . He had at first been misled by Chesterfield’s one act of kindness, but he had long had his eyes opened. Like the shepherd in Virgil ( Eclogues , viii. 43) he could say:—’ Nunc scio quid sit Amor.’

[769] In this passage Dr. Johnson evidently alludes to the loss of his wife. We find the same tender recollection recurring to his mind upon innumerable occasions: and, perhaps no man ever more forcibly felt the truth of the sentiment so elegantly expressed by my friend Mr. Malone, in his Prologue to Mr. Jephson’s tragedy of JULIA [ Julia or the Italian Lover was acted for the first time on April 17, 1787. Gent. Mag . 1787, p. 354]:—

‘Vain—wealth, and fame, and fortune’s fostering care,

If no fond breast the splendid blessings share;

And, each day’s bustling pageantry once past,

There, only there, our bliss is found at last.’ BOSWELL.

Three years earlier, when his wife was dying, he had written in one of the last Ramblers (No 203):—‘It is necessary to the completion of every good, that it be timely obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will come too late to give much delight … What we acquire by bravery or science, by mental or corporal diligence, comes at last when we cannot communicate, and therefore cannot enjoy it.’ Chesterfield himself was in no happy state. Less than a month before he received Johnson’s letter he wrote ( Works , iii. 308):—‘For these six months past, it seems as if all the complaints that ever attacked heads had joined to overpower mine. Continual noises, headache, giddiness, and impenetrable deafness; I could not stoop to write; and even reading, the only resource of the deaf, was painful to me.’ He wrote to his son a year earlier ( Letters , iv. 43), ‘Reading, which was always a pleasure to me in the time even of my greatest dissipation, is now become my only refuge; and I fear I indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes. But what can I do? I must do something. I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary. I will not hoard them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss than not enjoy the use of them.’

[770] ‘ The English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.’ Johnson’s Works v. 51.

[771] Upon comparing this copy with that which Dr. Johnson dictated to me from recollection, the variations are found to be so slight, that this must be added to the many other proofs which he gave of the wonderful extent and accuracy of his memory. To gratify the curious in composition, I have deposited both the copies in the British Museum. BOSWELL.

[772] Soon after Edwards’s Canons of Criticism came out, Johnson was dining at Tonson the Bookseller’s with Hayman the Painter and some more company. Hayman related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the conversation having turned upon Edwards’s book, the gentlemen praised it much, and Johnson allowed its merit. But when they went farther, and appeared to put that author upon a level with Warburton, ‘Nay, (said Johnson,) he has given him some smart hits to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.’ BOSWELL. Johnson in his Preface to Shakespeare ( Works , v. 141) wrote:—‘Dr. Warburton’s chief assailants are the authors of The Canons of Criticism , and of The Revisal of Shakespeare’s Text …. The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter and returns for more; the other bites like a viper…. When I think on one with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that “girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle;” when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in Macbeth :