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

[1350] In the original, struck .

[1351] Epigram , Lib. ii. ‘In Elizabeth. Angliae Reg.’ MALONE.

[1352] See Boswell’s Hebrides , Aug. 23.

[1353] Virgil, Eclogues , i. 5. Johnson, when a boy, turned the line thus:—‘And the wood rings with Amarillis’ name.’ Ante , p. 51.

[1354] Boswell said of Paoli’s talk about great men:—‘I regret that the fire with which he spoke upon such occasions so dazzled me, that I could not recollect his sayings, so as to write them down when I retired from his presence.’ Corsica , p. 197.

[1355] More passages than one in Boswell’s Letters to Temple shew this absence of relish. Thus in 1775 he writes:—‘I perceive some dawnings of taste for the country’ (p. 216); and again:—‘I will force a taste for natural beauties’ (p. 219).

[1356] Milton’s L’Allegro , 1. 118.

[1357] See post , April 2, 1775, and April 17, 1778.

[1358] My friend Sir Michael Le Fleming. This gentleman, with all his experience of sprightly and elegant life, inherits, with the beautiful family Domain, no inconsiderable share of that love of literature, which distinguished his venerable grandfather, the Bishop of Carlisle. He one day observed to me, of Dr. Johnson, in a felicity of phrase, ‘There is a blunt dignity about him on every occasion.’ BOSWELL.

[1359] Wordsworth’s lines to the Baronet’s daughter, Lady Fleming, might be applied to the father:—

‘Lives there a man whose sole delights

Are trivial pomp and city noise,

Hardening a heart that loathes or slights

What every natural heart enjoys?’

Wordsworth’s Poems , iv. 338.

[1360] Afterwards Lord Stowell. He was a member of Doctors’ Commons, the college of Civilians in London, who practised in the Ecclesiastical Courts and the Court of the Admiralty. See Boswell’s Hebrides , Aug. 14, 1773.

[1361] He repeated this advice on the death of Boswell’s father, post , Sept. 7, 1782.

[1362] Johnson ( Works , ix. 159) describes ‘the sullen dignity of the old castle.’ See also Boswell’s Hebrides , Nov. 4. 1773.

[1363] Probably Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society , published in 1756 when Burke was twenty-six.

[1364] See ante , p. 421.

[1365] Boswell wrote to Temple on July 28, 1763:—‘My departure fills me with a kind of gloom that quite overshadows my mind. I could almost weep to think of leaving dear London, and the calm retirement of the Inner Temple. This is very effeminate and very young, but I cannot help it.’ Letters of Boswell , p. 46.

[1366] Mrs. Piozzi says ( Anec . p. 297) that ‘Johnson’s eyes were so wild, so piercing, and at times so fierce, that fear was, I believe, the first emotion in the hearts of all his beholders.’

[1367] Johnson was, in fact, the editor of this work, as appears from a letter of Mr. T. Davies to the Rev. Edm. Bettesworth:—‘Reverend Sir,—I take the liberty to send you Roger Ascham’s works in English. Though Mr. Bennet’s name is in the title, the editor was in reality Mr. Johnson, the author of the Rambler , who wrote the life of the author, and added several notes. Mr. Johnson gave it to Mr. Bennet, for his advantage,’ &c.—CROKER. Very likely Davies exaggerated Johnson’s share in the book. Bennet’s edition was published, not in 1763, but in 1761.

[1368] ‘Lord Sheffield describes the change in Gibbon’s opinions caused by the reign of terror:—‘He became a warm and zealous advocate for every sort of old establishment. I recollect in a circle where French affairs were the topic and some Portuguese present, he, seemingly with seriousness, argued in favour of the Inquisition at Lisbon, and said he would not, at the present moment, give up even that old establishment.’ Gibbons’s Misc. Works , i. 328. One of Gibbon’s correspondents told him in 1792, that the Wealth of Nations had been condemned by the Inquisition on account of ‘the lowness of its style and the looseness of the morals which it inculcates.’ Ib . ii. 479. See also post , May 7, 1773.

[1369] Johnson wrote on Aug. 17, 1773:—‘This morning I saw at breakfast Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, who does not remember to have seen light, and is read to by a poor scholar in Latin, Greek, and French. He was originally a poor scholar himself. I looked on him with reverence.’ Piozzi Letters , i. 110. See also Boswell’s Hebrides , Aug. 17, 1773. Spence published an Account of Blacklock , in which he meanly omitted any mention of Hume’s great generosity to the blind poet. J. H. Burton’s Hume , i. 392. Hume asked Blacklock whether he connected colour and sound. ‘He answered, that as he met so often with the terms expressing colours, he had formed some false associations, but that they were of the intellectual kind. The illumination of the sun, for instance, he supposed to resemble the presence of a friend.’ Ib . p. 389.

[1370] They left London early and yet they travelled only 51 miles that day. The whole distance to Harwich is 71 miles. Paterson’s Itinerary , i. 323.

[1371] Mackintosh ( Life , ii. 162) writing of the time of William III, says that ‘torture was legal in Scotland, and familiar in every country of Europe but England. Was there a single writer at that time who had objected to torture? I think not.’ In the Gent. Mag . for 1742 (p. 660) it is stated that ‘the King of Prussia has forbid the use of torture in his dominions.’ In 1747 (p. 298) we read that Dr. Blackwell, an English physician, had been put to the torture in Sweden. Montesquieu in the Esprit des Lois , vi. 17, published in 1748, writing of ‘la question ou torture centre les criminels,’ says:—‘Nous voyons aujourd’hui une nation très-bien policée [la nation anglaise] la rejeter sans inconvénient. Elle n’est donc pas nécessaire par sa nature.’ Boswell in 1765 found that Paoli tortured a criminal with fire. Corsica , p. 158. Voltaire, in 1777, after telling how innocent men had been put to death with torture in the reign of Lewis XIV, continues—‘Mais un roi a-t-il le temps de songer à ces menus details d’horreurs au milieu de ses fètes, de ses conquêtes, et de ses mattresses? Daignez vous en occuper, ô Louis XVI, vous qui n’avez aucune de ces distractions!’ Voltaire’s Works , xxvi. 332. Johnson, two years before Voltaire thus wrote, had been shown la chambre de question —the torture-chamber- in Paris . Post , Oct. 17, 1775. It was not till the Revolution that torture was abolished in France. One of the Scotch judges in 1793, at the trial of Messrs. Palmer and Muir for sedition ( post , June 3, 1781, note), ‘asserted that now the torture was banished, there was no adequate punishment for sedition.’ Parl. Hist . xxx. 1569.

[1372] ‘A cheerful and good heart will have a care of his meat and drink.’ Ecclesiasticus , xxx. 25.

‘Verecundari neminem apud mensam decet, Nam ibi de divinis atque humanis cernitur.’ Trinummus , act 2, sc. 4.

Mrs. Piozzi ( Anec . p. 149) records that ‘Johnson often said, “that wherever the dinner is ill got, there is poverty, or there is avarice, or there is stupidity; in short, the family is somehow grossly wrong; for,” continued he, “a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner; and if he cannot get that well dressed, he should be suspected of inaccuracy in other things.”’ Yet he ‘used to say that a man who rode out for an appetite consulted but little the dignity of human nature.’ Johnson’s Works (1787), xi. 204.