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

[1227] The Traveller (price one shilling and sixpence) was published in December 1764, and The Vicar of Wakefield in March 1766. In August 1765 the fourth edition of The Traveller appeared, and the ninth in the year Goldsmith died. He received for it £21. Forster’s Goldsmith , i. 364, 374, 409. See ante , p. 193, note i.

[1228] ‘“Miss Burney,” said Mrs. Thrale [to Dr. Johnson], “is fond of The Vicar of Wakefield , and so am I. Don’t you like it, Sir?” “No, madam, it is very faulty; there is nothing of real life in it, and very little of nature. It is a mere fanciful performance.”’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary , i. 83. ‘There are a hundred faults in this Thing,’ said Goldsmith in the preface, ‘and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.’ See post , April 25, 1778.

[1229] Anecdotes of Johnson , p. 119. BOSWELL.

[1230] Life of Johnson , p. 420. BOSWELL.

[1231] In his imprudence he was like Savage, of whom Johnson says ( Works , viii. 161):—‘To supply him with money was a hopeless attempt; for no sooner did he see himself master of a sum sufficient to set him free from care for a day, than he became profuse and luxurious.’ When Savage was ‘lodging in the liberties of the Fleet, his friends sent him every Monday a guinea, which he commonly spent before the next morning, and trusted, after his usual manner, the remaining part of the week to the bounty of fortune.’ Ib . p. 170.

[1232] It may not be improper to annex here Mrs. Piozzi’s account of this transaction, in her own words, as a specimen of the extreme inaccuracy with which all her anecdotes of Dr. Johnson are related, or rather discoloured and distorted:—‘I have forgotten the year, but it could scarcely, I think, be later than 1765 or 1766 that he was called abruptly from our house after dinner , and returning in about three hours , said he had been with an enraged authour, whose landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira, to drown care, and fretting over a novel, which, when finished , was to be his whole fortune , but he could not get it done for distraction , nor could he step out of doors to offer it for sale. Mr. Johnson, therefore, sent away the bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and desiring some immediate relief ; which when he brought back to the writer, he called the ‘woman of the house directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment.’ Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson , p. 119. BOSWELL. The whole transaction took place in 1762, as is shown, ante , p. 415, note 1; Johnson did not know the Thrales till 1764.

[1233] Through Goldsmith Boswell became acquainted with Reynolds. In his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 99), he says:—‘I exhort you, my friends and countrymen, in the words of my departed Goldsmith , who gave me many nodes Atticae , and gave me a jewel of the finest water—the acquaintance of Sir Joshua Reynolds.’

[1234] See post , July 30, 1763.

[1235] See post , March 20, 1776, and Boswell’s Hebrides , Oct. 17, 1773.

[1236] See post , March 15, 1776.

[1237] ‘Dr. Campbell was an entertaining story-teller, which [ sic ] sometimes he rather embellished; so that the writer of this once heard Dr. Johnson say:—“Campbell will lie, but he never lies on paper.”’ Gent. Mag . for 1785, p. 969.

[1238] I am inclined to think that he was misinformed as to this circumstance. I own I am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. For though Milton could without remorse absent himself from publick worship [Johnson’s Works , vii. 115] I cannot. On the contrary, I have the same habitual impressions upon my mind, with those of a truely venerable Judge, who said to Mr. Langton, ‘Friend Langton, if I have not been at church on Sunday, I do not feel myself easy.’ Dr. Campbell was a sincerely religious man. Lord Macartney, who is eminent for his variety of knowledge, and attention to men of talents, and knew him well, told me, that when he called on him in a morning, he found him reading a chapter in the Greek New Testament, which he informed his Lordship was his constant practice. The quantity of Dr. Campbell’s composition is almost incredible, and his labours brought him large profits. Dr. Joseph Warton told me that Johnson said of him, ‘He is the richest authour that ever grazed the common of literature.’ BOSWELL.

[1239] See post , April 7, 1778. Campbell complied with one of the Monita Padagogica of Erasmus. ‘Si quem praeteribis natu grandem, magistratum, sacerdotem, doctorem…. memento aperire caput…. Itidem facito quum praeteribis asdem sacram.’ Erasmus’s Colloquies , ed. 1867, i. 36.

[1240] Reynolds said of Johnson:—‘He was not easily imposed upon by professions to honesty and candour; but he appeared to have little suspicion of hypocrisy in religion.’ Taylor’s Reynolds , ii. 459. Boswell, in one of his penitent letters, wrote to Temple on July 21, 1790:—‘I am even almost inclined to think with you, that my great oracle Johnson did allow too much credit to good principles, without good practice.’ Letters of Boswell , p. 327.

[1241] Campbell lived in ‘the large new-built house at the north-west-corner of Queen Square, Bloomsbury, whither, particularly on a Sunday evening, great numbers of persons of the first eminence for science and literature resorted for the enjoyment of conversation.’ Hawkins’s Johnson , p. 210.

[1242] Churchill, in his first poem, The Rosciad (Poems, i. 4), mentions Johnson without any disrespect among those who were thought of as judge.

‘For Johnson some, but Johnson, it was feared,

Would be too grave; and Sterne too gay appeared.’

In The Author (ib. ii. 36), if I mistake not, he grossly alludes to the convulsive disorder to which Johnson was subject. Attacking the pensioners he says—the italics are his own:—

‘Others, half-palsied only, mutes become, And what makes Smollett write makes Johnson dumb.’

[1243] See post , April 6, 1772, where Johnson called Fielding a blockhead.

[1244] Churchill published his first poem, The Rosciad , in March or April 1761 ( Gent. Mag . xxxi. 190); The Apology in May or June ( Ib . p. 286); Night in Jan. 1762 ( Ib . xxxii. 47); The First and Second Parts of The Ghost in March ( ib . p. 147); The Third Part in the autumn ( ib . p. 449); The Prophecy of Famine in Jan. 1763 ( ib . xxxiii. 47), and The Epistle to Hogarth in this month of July ( ib . p. 363). He wrote the fourth part of The Ghost , and nine more poems, and died on Nov. 4, 1764, aged thirty-two or thirty-three.

[1245] ‘Cowper had a higher opinion of Churchill than of any other contemporary writer. “It is a great thing,” he said, “to be indeed a poet, and does not happen to more than one man in a century; but Churchill, the great Churchill, deserved that name.” He made him, more than any other writer, his model.’ Southey’s Cowper , i. 87, 8.

[1246] Mr. Forster says that ‘Churchill asked five guineas for the manuscript of The Rosciad (according to Southey, but Mr. Tooke says he asked twenty pounds).’ Finding no purchaser he brought the poem out at his own risk. Mr. Forster continues:—‘The pulpit had starved him on forty pounds a year; the public had given him a thousand pounds in two months.’ Forster’s Essays , ii. 226, 240. As The Rosciad was sold at one shilling a copy, it seems incredible that such a gain could have been made, even with the profits of The Apology included. ‘Blotting and correcting was so much Churchill’s abhorrence that I have heard from his publisher he once energetically expressed himself, that it was like cutting away one’s own flesh.’ D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature , ed. 1834, iii. 129. D’Israeli ‘had heard that after a successful work he usually precipitated the publication of another, relying on its crudeness being passed over by the public curiosity excited by its better brother. He called this getting double pay, for thus he secured the sale of a hurried work.’