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

[1373] This essay is more against the practices of the parasite than gulosity. It is entitled The art of living at the cost of others . Johnson wrote to one of Mrs. Thrale’s children:—‘Gluttony is, I think, less common among women than among men. Women commonly eat more sparingly, and are less curious in the choice of meat; but if once you find a woman gluttonous, expect from her very little virtue. Her mind is enslaved to the lowest and grossest temptation.’ Piozzi Letters , ii. 298.

[1374] Hawkins ( Life , p. 355) mentions ‘the greediness with which he ate, his total inattention to those among whom he was seated, and his profound silence at the moment of refection.’

[1375] Cumberland ( Memoirs , i. 357) says:—‘He fed heartily, but not voraciously, and was extremely courteous in his commendations of any dish that pleased his palate.’

[1376] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on July 10, 1780:—‘Last week I saw flesh but twice and I think fish once; the rest was pease. You are afraid, you say, lest I extenuate myself too fast, and are an enemy to violence; but did you never hear nor read, dear Madam, that every man has his genius , and that the great rule by which all excellence is attained and all success procured, is to follow genius ; and have you not observed in all our conversations that my genius is always in extremes; that I am very noisy or very silent; very gloomy or very merry; very sour or very kind? And would you have me cross my genius when it leads me sometimes to voracity and sometimes to abstinence?’ Piozzi Letters , ii. 166.

[1377] ‘This,’ he told Boswell, ‘was no intentional fasting, but happened just in the course of a literary life.’ Boswell’s Hebrides , Oct. 4, 1773. See post , April 17, 1778.

[1378] In the last year of his life, when he knew that his appetite was diseased, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—‘I have now an inclination to luxury which even your table did not excite; for till now my talk was more about the dishes than my thoughts . I remember you commended me for seeming pleased with my dinners when you had reduced your table; I am able to tell you with great veracity, that I never knew when the reduction began, nor should have known what it was made, had not you told me. I now think and consult to-day what I shall eat to-morrow. This disease will, I hope, be cured .’ Piozzi Letters , ii. 362.

[1379] Johnson’s visit to Gordon and Maclaurin are just mentioned in Boswell’s Hebrides , under Nov. 11, 1772.

[1380] The only nobleman with whom he dined ‘about the same time’ was Lord Elibank. After dining with him, ‘he supped,’ says Boswell, ‘with my wife and myself.’ Ib .

[1381] See post , April 15, 1778.

[1382] Mrs. Piozzi ( Anec . p. 102) says, ‘Johnson’s own notions about eating were nothing less than delicate; a leg of pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal-pie with plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef were his favourite dainties.’ Cradock saw Burke at a tavern dinner send Johnson a very small piece of a pie, the crust of which was made with bad butter. ‘Johnson soon returned his plate for more. Burke exclaimed:—“I am glad that you are able so well to relish this pie.” Johnson, not at all pleased that what he ate should ever be noticed, retorted:—“There is a time of life, Sir, when a man requires the repairs of a table.”’ Cradock’s Memoirs , i. 229. A passage in Baretti’s Italy , ii. 316, seems to show that English eating in general was not delicate. ‘I once heard a Frenchman swear,’ he writes, ‘that he hated the English, “parce qu’ils versent du beurre fondu sur leur veau rod.”’

[1383] ‘He had an abhorrence of affectation,’ said Mr. Langton. Post , 1780, in Mr. Langton’s Collection .

[1384] At college he would not let his companions say prodigious . Post , April 17, 1778.

[1385] See post , Sept. 19, 1777, and 1780 in Mr. Langton’s Collection . Dugald Stewart quotes a saying of Turgot:—‘He who had never doubted of the existence of matter might be assured he had no turn for metaphysical disquisitions.’ Life of Reid , p. 416.

[1386] Claude Buffier, born 1661, died 1737. Author of Traité despremières vérités et de la source de nos jugements .

[1387]

‘Not when a gilt buffet’s reflected pride

Turns you from sound philosophy aside.’

Pope’s Satires , ii. 5.

[1388] Mackintosh ( Life , i. 71) said that ‘Burke’s treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful is rather a proof that his mind was not formed for pure philosophy; and if we may believe Boswell that it was once the intention of Mr. Burke to have written against Berkeley, we may be assured that he would not have been successful in answering that great speculator; or, to speak more correctly, that he could not have discovered the true nature of the questions in dispute, and thus have afforded the only answer consistent with the limits of the human faculties.’

[1389] Goldsmith’s Retaliation .

[1390] I have the following autograph letter written by Johnson to Dr. Taylor three weeks after Boswell’s departure.

‘Having with some impatience reckoned upon hearing from you these two last posts, and been disappointed, I can form to myself no reason for the omission but your perturbation of mind, or disorder of body arising from it, and therefore I once more advise removal from Ashbourne as the proper remedy both for the cause and the effect.

‘You perhaps ask, whither should I go? any whither where your case is not known, and where your presence will cause neither looks nor whispers. Where you are the necessary subject of common talk, you will not safely be at rest.

‘If you cannot conveniently write to me yourself let somebody write for you to

‘Dear Sir,

‘Your most affectionate,

‘August 25, 1763.

‘To the Reverend Dr. Taylor

in Ashbourne,

Derbyshire.’

Five other letters on the same subject are given in Notes and Queries , 6th S. v. pp. 324, 342, 382. Taylor and his wife ‘never lived very well together’ (p. 325), and at last she left him. On May 22nd of the next year Johnson congratulated Taylor ‘upon the happy end of so vexatious an affair, the happyest [sic] that could be next to reformation and reconcilement’ (p. 382). Taylor did not follow the advice to leave Ashbourne; for on Sept. 3 Johnson wrote to him:—‘You seem to be so well pleased to be where you are, that I shall not now press your removal; but do not believe that every one who rails at your wife wishes well to you. A small country town is not the place in which one would chuse to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy.’ Ib . p. 343.

[1391] According to Mrs. Piozzi ( Anec . p. 210) he was accompanied by his black servant Frank. ‘I must have you know, ladies,’ said he, ‘that Frank has carried the empire of Cupid further than most men. When I was in Lincolnshire so many years ago he attended me thither; and when we returned home together, I found that a female haymaker had followed him to London for love.’ If this story is generally true, it bears the mark of Mrs. Piozzi’s usual inaccuracy. The visit was paid early in the year, and was over in February; what haymakers were there at that season?

[1392] Boswell by his quotation marks refers, I think, to his Hebrides , Oct. 24, 1773, where Johnson says:—‘Nobody, at times, talks more laxly than I do.’ See also post , ii. 73.