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

[1176] Horace Walpole writing on June 12, 1759 ( Letters , iii. 231), says:—‘A war that reaches from Muscovy to Alsace, and from Madras to California, don’t produce an article half so long as Mr. Johnson’s riding three horses at once.’ I have a curious copper-plate showing Johnson standing on one, or two, and leading a third horse in full speed.’ It bears the date of November 1758. See post , April 3, 1778.

[1177] In the impudent Correspondence (pp. 63, 65) which Boswell and Andrew Erskine published this year, Boswell shows why he wished to enter the Guards. ‘My fondness for the Guards,’ he writes, ‘must appear very strange to you, who have a rooted antipathy at the glare of scarlet. But I must inform you, that there is a city called London, for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress…. I am thinking of the brilliant scenes of happiness, which I shall enjoy as an officer of the guards. How I shall be acquainted with all the grandeur of a court, and all the elegance of dress and diversions; become a favourite of ministers of state, and the adoration of ladies of quality, beauty, and fortune! How many parties of pleasure shall I have in town! How many fine jaunts to the noble seats of dukes, lords, and members of parliament in the country! I am thinking of the perfect knowledge which I shall acquire of men and manners, of the intimacies which I shall have the honour to form with the learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary anecdotes which I shall pick up,’ etc. Boswell, in his Hebrides (Aug. 18, 1773), says of himself:—‘His inclination was to be a soldier; but his father, a respectable Judge, had pressed him into the profession of the law.’

[1178] A row of tenements in the Strand, between Wych Street and Temple Bar, and ‘so called from the butchers’ shambles on the south side.’ ( Strype , B. iv. p. 118.) Butcher Row was pulled down in 1813, and the present Pickett Street erected in its stead. P. CUNNINGHAM. In Humphry Clinker , in the letter of June 10, one of the poor authors is described as having been ‘reduced to a woollen night-cap and living upon sheep’s-trotters, up three pair of stairs backward in Butcher Row.’

[1179] Cibber was poet-laureate from 1730 to 1757. Horace Walpole describes him as ‘that good humoured and honest veteran, so unworthily aspersed by Pope, whose Memoirs , with one or two of his comedies, will secure his fame, in spite of all the abuse of his contemporaries.’ His successor Whitehead, Walpole calls ‘a man of a placid genius.’ Reign of George II , iii. 81. See ante , pp. 149, 185, and post , Oct. 19, 1769, May 15, 1776, and Sept. 21, 1777.

[1180] The following quotations show the difference of style in the two poets:—

‘When her pride, fierce in arms,

Would to Europe give law;

At her cost let her come,

To our cheer of huzza!

Not lightning with thunder more terrible darts,

Than the burst of huzza from our bold British hearts.’

Gent. Mag . xxv. 515.

‘Ye guardian powers, to whose command,

At Nature’s birth, th’ Almighty mind

The delegated task assign’d

To watch o’er Albion’s favour’d land,

What time your hosts with choral lay,

Emerging from its kindred deep,

Applausive hail’d each verdant steep,

And white rock, glitt’ring to the new-born day!’

Ib . xxix. 32.

[1181] See ante , p. 167.

[1182] ‘Whitehead was for some while Garrick’s “reader” of new plays for Drury-lane.’ Forster’s Goldsmith , ii. 41. See post , April 25, 1778, note. The verses to Garrick are given in Chalmers’s English Poets , xvii. 222.

[1183] ‘In 1757 Gray published The Progress of Poetry and The Bard , two compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability to understand them…. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Some hardy champions undertook to rescue them from neglect; and in a short time many were content to be shown beauties which they could not see.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 478. See post , March 28, and April 2, 1775, and 1780 in Mr. Langton’s Collection . Goldsmith, no doubt, attacked Gray among ‘the misguided innovators,’ of whom he said in his Life of Parnell :—‘They have adopted a language of their own, and call upon mankind for admiration. All those who do not understand them are silent, and those who make out their meaning are willing to praise to show they understand.’ Goldsmith’s Misc. Works , iv. 22.

[1184] Johnson, perhaps, refers to the anonymous critic quoted by Mason in his notes on this Ode, who says:—‘This abrupt execration plunges the reader into that sudden fearful perplexity which is designed to predominate through the whole.’ Mason’s Gray , ed. 1807, i. 96.

[1185] ‘Of the first stanza [of The Bard ] the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his subject that has read the ballad of Johnny Armstrong .’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 485.

[1186] My friend Mr. Malone, in his valuable comments on Shakspeare, has traced in that great poet the disjecta membra of these lines. BOSWELL. Gray, in the edition of The Bard of the year 1768, in a note on these lines had quoted from King John , act v. sc. 1:—‘Mocking the air with colours idly spread.’ Gosse’s Gray , i. 41. But Malone quotes also from Macbeth , act i. sc. 2:—

‘Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold.’

‘Out of these passages,’ he said, ‘Mr. Gray seems to have framed the first stanza of his celebrated Ode .’ Malone’s Shakespeare , xv. 344.

[1187] Cradock records ( Memoirs , 1.230) that Goldsmith said to him:—‘You are so attached to Kurd, Gray, and Mason, that you think nothing good can proceed but out of that formal school;—now, I’ll mend Gray’s Elegy by leaving out an idle word in every line.

“The curfew tolls the knell of day,

The lowing herd winds o’er the lea

The ploughman homeward plods his way

And—-“

Enough, enough, I have no ear for more.’

[1188] So, less than two years later, Boswell opened his mind to Paoli. ‘My time passed here in the most agreeable manner. I enjoyed a sort of luxury of noble sentiment. Paoli became more affable with me. I made myself known to him.’ Boswell’s Corsica , p. 167.

[1189] See ante , p. 67.

[1190] See post , Sept. 22, 1777.

[1191] See post , March 30, 1778, where in speaking of the appearance of spirits after death he says:—‘All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.’ See also ante , p. 343, and post , April 15, 1778, under May 4, 1779, April 15, 1781, and June 12, 1784.

[1192] The caricature begins:—

‘Pomposo, insolent and loud

Vain idol of a scribbling crowd, Whose very name inspires an awe Whose ev’ry word is Sense and Law.’

Churchill’s Poems , i. 216.

[1193] The chief impostor, a man of the name of Parsons, had, it should seem, set his daughter to play the part of the ghost in order to pay out a grudge against a man who had sued him for a debt. The ghost was made to accuse this man of poisoning his sister-in-law, and to declare that she should only be at ease in her mind if he were hanged. ‘When Parsons stood on the Pillory at the end of Cock Lane, instead of being pelted, he had money given him.’ Gent. Mag . xxxii. 43, 82, and xxxiii. 144.