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

[806] See ante , p. 133.

[807] The compliment was, as it were, a mutual one. Mr. Wise urged Thomas Warton to get the degree conferred before the Dictionary was published. ‘It is in truth,’ he wrote, ‘doing ourselves more honour than him, to have such a work done by an Oxford hand, and so able a one too, and will show that we have not lost all regard for good letters, as has been too often imputed to us by our enemies.’ Wooll’s Warton , p. 228.

[808] ‘In procuring him the degree of Master of Arts by diploma at Oxford.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[809] ‘Lately fellow of Trinity College, and at this time Radclivian librarian, at Oxford. He was a man of very considerable learning, and eminently skilled in Roman and Anglo-Saxon antiquities. He died in 1767.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[810] No doubt The Rambler .

[811] ‘Collins (the poet) was at this time at Oxford, on a visit to Mr. Warton; but labouring under the most deplorable languor of body, and dejection of mind.’ WARTON. BOSWELL. Johnson, writing to Dr. Warton on March 8, 1754, thus speaks of Collins:-‘I knew him a few years ago full of hopes, and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is now under the government of those who lately would not have been able to comprehend the least and most narrow of its designs.’ Wooll’s Warton 1. 219. Again, on Dec. 24, 1754:—‘Poor dear Collins! Let me know whether you think it would give him pleasure if I should write to him. I have often been near his state, and therefore have it in great commiseration.’ Ib . p. 229. Again, on April 15, 1756:—‘That man is no common loss. The moralists all talk of the uncertainty of fortune, and the transitoriness of beauty: but it is yet more dreadful to consider that the powers of the mind are equally liable to change, that understanding may make its appearance and depart, that it may blaze and expire.’ Ib . p. 239. See post , beginning of 1763.

[812] ‘Of publishing a volume of observations on the best of Spenser’s works. It was hindered by my taking pupils in this College.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[813] ‘Young students of the lowest rank at Oxford are so called.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL. See Boswell’s Hebrides , Aug. 28, 1773.

[814] ‘His Dictionary.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[815] Johnson says ( Works , viii. 403) that when Collins began to feel the approaches of his dreadful malady ‘with the usual weakness of men so diseased he eagerly snatched that temporary relief with which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce.’

[816] ‘Petrarch, finding nothing in the word eclogue of rural meaning, supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own pastorals aeglogues, by which he meant to express the talk of goatherds, though it will mean only the talk of goats. This new name was adopted by subsequent writers.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 390.

[817] ‘Of the degree at Oxford.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[818] This verse is from the long-lost Bellerophon , a tragedy by Euripides. It is preserved by Suidas. CHARLES BURNEY. ‘Alas! but wherefore alas? Man is born to sorrow.’

[819]

‘Sento venir per allegrezza un tuono

Que frêmer l’aria, e rimbombar fa l’onrle:—

Odo di squille,’ &c.

Orlando Furioso . c. xlvi. s. 2.

[820] ‘His degree had now past, according to the usual form, the surrages of the heads of Colleges; but was not yet finally granted by the University. It was carried without a single dissentient voice.’ WARTON. BOSWELL.

[821] ‘On Spenser.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[822] Lord Eldon wrote of him:—‘Poor Tom Warton! He was a tutor at Trinity; at the beginning of every term he used to send to his pupils to know whether they would wish to attend lecture that term.’ Twiss’s Eldon , iii. 302.

[823] The fields north of Oxford.

[824] ‘Of the degree.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[825] ‘Principal of St. Mary Hall at Oxford. He brought with him the diploma from Oxford.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL. Dr. King ( Anec . p. 196) says that he was one of the Jacobites who were presented to the Pretender when, in September 1750, he paid a stealthy visit to England. The Pretender in 1783 told Sir Horace Mann that he was in London in that very month and year and had met fifty of his friends, among whom was the Earl of Westmoreland, the future Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Mahon’s England , iv. II. Hume places the visit in 1753. Burton’s Hume , ii. 462. See also in Boswell’s Hebrides , the account of the Young Pretender. In 1754, writes Lord Shelburne, ‘Dr. King in his speech upon opening the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, before a full theatre introduced three times the word Redeat , pausing each time for a considerable space, during which the most unbounded applause shook the theatre, which was filled with a vast body of peers, members of parliament, and men of property. Soon after the rebellion [of 1745], speaking of the Duke of Cumberland, he described him as a man, qui timet omnia prater Deum . I presented this same Dr. King to George III. in 1760.’ Fitzmaurice’s Shelburne , i. 35.

[826] ‘I suppose Johnson means that my kind intention of being the first to give him the good news of the degree being granted was frustrated , because Dr. King brought it before my intelligence arrived.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[827] Dr. Huddesford, President of Trinity College.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[828] Extracted from the Convocation-Register, Oxford. BOSWELL.

[829] The Earl of Arran, ‘the last male of the illustrious House of Ormond,’ was the third Chancellor in succession that that family had given to the University. The first of the three, the famous Duke of Ormond, had, on his death in 1688, been succeeded by his grandson, the young Duke. (Macaulay’s England , iii. 159). He, on his impeachment and flight from England in 1715, was succeeded by his brother, the Earl of Arran. Richardson, writing in 1754 ( Carres . ii. 198), said of the University, ‘Forty years ago it chose a Chancellor in despite of the present reigning family, whose whole merit was that he was the brother of a perjured, yet weak, rebel.’ On Arran’s death in 1758, the Earl of Westmoreland, ‘old dull Westmoreland’ as Walpole calls him ( Letters , i. 290), was elected. It was at his installation that Johnson clapped his hands till they were sore at Dr. King’s speech ( post , 1759). ‘I hear,’ wrote Walpole of what he calls the coronation at Oxford , ‘my Lord Westmoreland’s own retinue was all be-James’d with true-blue ribands.’ Letters , iii. 237. It is remarkable that this nobleman, who in early life was a Whig, had commanded ‘the body of troops which George I. had been obliged to send to Oxford, to teach the University the only kind of passive obedience which they did not approve.’ Walpole’s George II , iii. 167.

[830] The original is in my possession, BOSWELL.

[831] We may conceive what a high gratification it must have been to Johnson to receive his diploma from the hands of the great Dr. KING, whose principles were so congenial with his own. BOSWELL.

[832] Johnson here alludes, I believe, to the charge of disloyalty brought against the University at the time of the famous contested election for Oxfordshire in 1754. A copy of treasonable verses was found, it was said, near the market-place in Oxford, and the grand jury made a presentment thereon. ‘We must add,’ they concluded, ‘that it is the highest aggravation of this crime to have a libel of a nature so false and scandalous, published in a famous University, &c. Gent. Mag . xxiv. 339. A reward of £200 was offered in the London Gazette for the detection of the writer or publisher,’ Ib . p. 377.