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

[833] A single letter was a single piece of paper; a second piece of paper, however small, or any inclosure constituted a double letter; it was not the habit to prepay the postage. The charge for a single letter to Oxford at this time was three-pence, which was gradually increased till in 1812 it was eight-pence. Penny Cyclo . xviii. 455.

[834] ‘The words in Italicks are allusions to passages in Mr. Warton’s poem, called The Progress of Discontent , now lately published.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

‘And now intent on new designs,

Sighs for a fellowship—and fines.

*

These fellowships are pretty things,

We live indeed like petty kings.

*

And ev’ry night I went to bed,

Without a Modus in my head.’

Warton’s Poems , ii. 192.

For modus and fines see post , April 25, 1778.

[835] Lucretius, i. 23

[836]

‘Hence ye prophane; I hate ye all,

Both the Great Vulgar and the Small.’

Cowley’s Imit. of Horace , Odes, iii. 1.

[837] Journal Britannique . It was to Maty that Gibbon submitted the manuscript of his first work. Gibbon’s Misc. Works , i. 123.

[838] Maty, as Prof. de Morgan pointed out, had in the autumn of 1755 been guilty of ‘wilful suppression of the circumstances of Johnson’s attack on Lord Chesterfield.’ In an article in his Journal he regrets the absence from the Dictionary of the Plan . ‘Elle eût épargné à l’auteur la composition d’une nouvelle préface, qui ne contient qu’en partie les mêmes choses, et qu’on est tenté de regarder comme destinée à faire perdre de vue quelques-unes des obligations que M. Johnson avait contractées, et le Mécène qu’il avait choisi.’ Notes and Queries , 2nd S. iv. 341.

[839] He left London in 1751 and returned to it in 1760. Memoirs of Dr. Barney , i. 85, 133.

[840] See ante , p. 183, note 2.

[841] Sir John Hawkins, p. 341, inserts two notes as having passed formally between Andrew Millar and Johnson, to the above effect. I am assured this was not the case. In the way of incidental remark it was a pleasant play of raillery. To have deliberately written notes in such terms would have been morose. BOSWELL.

[842] ‘Talking one day of the patronage the great sometimes affect to give to literature and literary men, “Andrew Millar,” says Johnson, “is the Maecenas of the age.”’ Johnson’s Works (1787), xi. 200. Horace Walpole, writing on May 18, 1749 ( Letters ii. 163), says:—‘Millar the bookseller has done very generously by Fielding; finding Tom Jones , for which he had given him six hundred pounds, sell so greatly, he has since given him another hundred.’ Hume writing on July 6, 1759, says:—‘Poor Andrew Millar is declared bankrupt; his debts amount to above £40,000, and it is said his creditors will not get above three shillings in the pound. All the world allows him to have been diligent and industrious; but his misfortunes are ascribed to the extravagance of his wife, a very ordinary case in this city.’ J. H. Burton’s Hume , ii. 64. He must soon have recovered his position, for Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 434) met Millar at Harrogate in 1763. In the inn were several baronets, and great squires, members of parliament, who paid Millar civility for the use of his two newspapers which came to him by every post. ‘Yet when he appeared in the morning, in his well-worn suit of clothes, they could not help calling him Peter Pamphlet; for the generous patron of Scotch authors, with his city wife and her niece, were sufficiently ridiculous when they came into good company.’ Mr. Croker ( Boswell , p. 630) says that Millar was the bookseller described by Johnson, post , April 24, 1779. as ‘habitually and equably drunk.’ He is, I think, mistaken.

[843] His Dictionary . BOSWELL.

[844] ‘A translation of Apollonius Rhodius was now intended by Mr. Warton.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[845] Kettel Hall is an ancient tenement built about the year 1615 by Dr. Ralph Kettel, President of Trinity College, for the accommodation of commoners of that Society. It adjoins the College; and was a few years ago converted into a private house. MALONE.

[846] ‘At Ellsfield, a village three miles from Oxford.’ WARTON.—BOSWELL.

[847] It was published on April 15, 1755, in two vols. folio, price £4 10_s_. bound. Johnson’s Works , v. 51.

[848] ‘Booksellers concerned in his Dictionary .’ WARTON.—BOSWELL. ‘June 12, Mr. Paul Knapton, bookseller. June 18, Thos. Longman, Esq., bookseller.’ Gent. Mag ., xxv. 284. The ‘Esq.’ perhaps is a sign that even so early as 1755 the Longmans ranked higher than most of their brethren.

[849] 1. Own not in the original. Johnson’s Works , v. 36.

[850] ‘I have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations.’ Johnson’s Works , p. 41.

[851] In the Plan of an English Dictionary ( ib . p. 16) Johnson, writing of ‘the word perfection ‘ says:—‘Though in its philosophical and exact sense it can be of little use among human beings, it is often so much degraded from its original signification, that the academicians have inserted in their work, the perfection of a language , and, with a little more licentiousness, might have prevailed on themselves to have added the perfection of a Dictionary .’ In the Preface to the fourth edition he writes:—‘He that undertakes to compile a Dictionary undertakes that, which if it comprehends the full extent of his design, he knows himself unable to perform.’ Ib . p. 52.

[852] Ib . p. 51.

[853] See post , under May 19, 1777.

[854] See ante , p. 186, note 5.

[855] He defines both towards the wind . The definitions remain unchanged in the fourth edition, the last corrected by Johnson, and also in the third edition of the abridgment, though this abridgment was made by him. Pastern also remains unaltered in this latter edition. In the fourth edition he corrected it. ‘The drawback of his character,’ wrote Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘is entertaining prejudices on very slight foundations; giving an opinion, perhaps, first at random, but from its being contradicted he thinks himself obliged always to support it, or, if he cannot support, still not to acquiesce. Of this I remember an instance of a defect or forgetfulness in his Dictionary . I asked him how he came not to correct it in the second edition. “No,” says he, “they made so much of it that I would not flatter them by altering it.”’ Taylor’s Reynolds , ii. 461.

[856] In his Preface ( Works , v. 50) he anticipated errors and laughter. ‘A few wild blunders and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter and harden ignorance into contempt’ In a letter written nearly thirty years later he said:—‘Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.’ Piozzi Letters , ii. 406.

[857] See post , under July 20, 1762.

[858] ‘Network. Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.’ Reticulated is defined ‘Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.’

[859] ‘That part of my work on which I expect malignity most frequently to fasten is the Explanation …. Such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated.’ Johnson’s Works , v. 34.