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

‘Come home, however, and take your chance. I long to see you, and to hear you; and hope that we shall not be so long separated again. Come home, and expect such a welcome as is due to him whom a wise and noble curiosity has led, where perhaps no native of this country ever was before[8].

‘I have no news to tell you that can deserve your notice; nor would I willingly lessen the pleasure that any novelty may give you at your return. I am afraid we shall find it difficult to keep among us a mind which has been so long feasted with variety. But let us try what esteem and kindness can effect.

‘As your father’s liberality has indulged you with so long a ramble, I doubt not but you will think his sickness, or even his desire to see you, a sufficient reason for hastening your return. The longer we live, and the more we think, the higher value we learn to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends. Parents we can have but once; and he promises himself too much, who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends. Upon some motive, I hope, that you will be here soon; and am willing to think that it will be an inducement to your return, that it is sincerely desired by, dear Sir,

‘Your affectionate humble servant,

‘SAM. JOHNSON.’

‘Johnson’s Court, Fleet-street,

January 14, 1766.’

I returned to London in February, and found Dr. Johnson in a good house in Johnson’s Court, Fleet-street[9], in which he had accommodated Miss Williams with an apartment on the ground floor, while Mr. Levett occupied his post in the garret: his faithful Francis was still attending upon him. He received me with much kindness. The fragments of our first conversation, which I have preserved, are these: I told him that Voltaire, in a conversation with me, had distinguished Pope and Dryden thus:—‘Pope drives a handsome chariot, with a couple of neat trim nags; Dryden a coach, and six stately horses.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, the truth is, they both drive coaches and six; but Dryden’s horses are either galloping or stumbling: Pope’s go at a steady even trot[10].’ He said of Goldsmith’s Traveller , which had been published in my absence, ‘There has not been so fine a poem since Pope’s time.’

And here it is proper to settle, with authentick precision, what has long floated in publick report, as to Johnson’s being himself the authour of a considerable part of that poem. Much, no doubt, both of the sentiments and expression, were derived from conversation with him; and it was certainly submitted to his friendly revision: but in the year 1783, he, at my request, marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are only line 420th,

‘To stop too fearful, and too faint to go;’

and the concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one, which I distinguish by the Italick character:

‘How small of all that human hearts endure,

That part which kings or laws[11] can cause or cure.

Still to ourselves in every place consign’d,

Our own felicity we make or find[12];

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,

Glides the smooth current of domestick joy:

The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, Luke’s iron crown, and Damien’s bed of steel , To men remote from power, but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.’

He added, ‘These are all of which I can be sure[13].’ They bear a small proportion to the whole, which consists of four hundred and thirty-eight verses. Goldsmith, in the couplet which he inserted, mentions Luke as a person well known, and superficial readers have passed it over quite smoothly; while those of more attention have been as much perplexed by Luke , as by Lydiat [14], in The Vanity of Human Wishes . The truth is, that Goldsmith himself was in a mistake. In the Respublica Hungarian [15], there is an account of a desperate rebellion in the year 1514, headed by two brothers, of the name of Zeck , George and Luke. When it was quelled, George , not Luke , was punished by his head being encircled with a red-hot iron crown: ‘ coronâ candescente ferreâ coronatur [16].’ The same severity of torture was exercised on the Earl of Athol, one of the murderers of King James I. of Scotland.

Dr. Johnson at the same time favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith’s Deserted Village , which are only the last four:

‘That trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay,

As ocean sweeps the labour’d mole away:

While self-dependent power can time defy,

As rocks resist the billows and the sky.’

Talking of education, ‘People have now a days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures[17], except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures[18]!’

At night I supped with him at the Mitre tavern, that we might renew our social intimacy at the original place of meeting. But there was now a considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain from it, and drank only water, or lemonade[19].

I told him that a foreign friend of his[20], whom I had met with abroad, was so wretchedly perverted to infidelity, that he treated the hopes of immortality with brutal levity; and said, ‘As man dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog.’ JOHNSON. ‘ If he dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog.’ I added, that this man said to me, ‘I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, he must be very singular in his opinion, if he thinks himself one of the best of men; for none of his friends think him so.’—He said, ‘no honest man could be a Deist; for no man could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity.’ I named Hume[21]. JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishoprick of Durham, that he had never read the New Testament with attention.’ I mentioned Hume’s notion[22], that all who are happy are equally happy; a little miss with a new gown at a dancing school ball, a general at the head of a victorious army, and an orator, after having made an eloquent speech in a great assembly. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied , but not equally happy . Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher.’ I remember this very question very happily illustrated in opposition to Hume, by the Reverend Mr. Robert Brown[23], at Utrecht. ‘A small drinking-glass and a large one, (said he,) may be equally full; but the large one holds more than the small.’

Dr. Johnson was very kind this evening, and said to me, ‘You have now lived five-and-twenty years, and you have employed them well.’ ‘Alas, Sir, (said I,) I fear not. Do I know history? Do I know mathematicks? Do I know law?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, though you may know no science so well as to be able to teach it, and no profession so well as to be able to follow it, your general mass of knowledge of books and men renders you very capable to make yourself master of any science, or fit yourself for any profession.’ I mentioned that a gay friend had advised me against being a lawyer, because I should be excelled by plodding block-heads. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, in the formulary and statutory part of law, a plodding block-head may excel; but in the ingenious and rational part of it a plodding block-head can never excel.’