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

‘Do not let such evils overwhelm you as thousands have suffered, and thousands have surmounted; but turn your thoughts with vigour to some other plan of life, and keep always in your mind, that, with due submission to Providence, a man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself[1124]. Your Patron’s weakness or insensibility will finally do you little hurt, if he is not assisted by your own passions. Of your love I know not the propriety, nor can estimate the power; but in love, as in every other passion, of which hope is the essence, we ought always to remember the uncertainty of events. There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman; and if all would happen that a lover fancies, I know not what other terrestrial happiness would deserve pursuit. But love and marriage are different states. Those who are to suffer the evils together, and to suffer often for the sake of one another, soon lose that tenderness of look, and that benevolence of mind, which arose from the participation of unmingled pleasure and successive amusement. A woman, we are sure, will not be always fair; we are not sure she will always be virtuous: and man cannot retain through life that respect and assiduity by which he pleases for a day or for a month. I do not, however, pretend to have discovered that life has any thing more to be desired than a prudent and virtuous marriage; therefore know not what counsel to give you.

[Page 382: Johnson’s Life of Collins. A.D. 1763.]

‘If you can quit your imagination of love and greatness, and leave your hopes of preferment and bridal raptures to try once more the fortune of literature and industry, the way through France is now open[1125]. We flatter ourselves that we shall cultivate, with great diligence, the arts of peace; and every man will be welcome among us who can teach us any thing we do not know[1126]. For your part, you will find all your old friends willing to receive you.

‘Reynolds still continues to increase in reputation and in riches. Miss Williams, who very much loves you, goes on in the old way. Miss Cotterel is still with Mrs. Porter. Miss Charlotte is married to Dean Lewis, and has three children. Mr. Levet has married a street-walker[1127]. But the gazette of my narration must now arrive to tell you, that Bathurst went physician to the army, and died at the Havannah[1128].

‘I know not whether I have not sent you word that Huggins[1129] and Richardson[1130] are both dead. When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed for ever.

‘I pray GOD to bless you, and am, Sir,

‘Your most affectionate humble servant,

‘Write soon.’

[Page 383: A dedication to the Queen. Ætat 54.]

1763: ÆTAT. 54.—In 1763 he furnished to The Poetical Calendar , published by Fawkes and Woty, a character of Collins[*], which he afterwards ingrafted into his entire life of that admirable poet[1131], in the collection of lives which he wrote for the body of English poetry, formed and published by the booksellers of London. His account of the melancholy depression with which Collins was severely afflicted, and which brought him to his grave, is, I think, one of the most tender and interesting passages in the whole series of his writings[1132]. He also favoured Mr. Hoole with the Dedication of his translation of Tasso to the Queen ,[*] which is so happily conceived and elegantly expressed, that I cannot but point it out to the peculiar notice of my readers[1133].

[Page 384: Boswell’s youthful compositions. A.D. 1763.]

[Page 385: Johnson’s quarrel with Sheridan. Ætat 54.]

This is to me a memorable year; for in it I had the happiness to obtain the acquaintance of that extraordinary man whose memoirs I am now writing; an acquaintance which I shall ever esteem as one of the most fortunate circumstances in my life. Though then but two-and-twenty[1134], I had for several years read his works with delight and instruction, and had the highest reverence for their authour, which had grown up in my fancy into a kind of mysterious veneration[1135], by figuring to myself a state of solemn elevated abstraction, in which I supposed him to live in the immense metropolis of London. Mr. Gentleman, a native of Ireland, who passed some years in Scotland as a player, and as an instructor in the English language, a man whose talents and worth were depressed by misfortunes[1136], had given me a representation of the figure and manner of DICTIONARY JOHNSON, as he was then generally called[1137]; and during my first visit to London, which was for three months in 1760, Mr. Derrick the poet[1138], who was Gentleman’s friend and countryman, flattered me with hopes that he would introduce me to Johnson, an honour of which I was very ambitious. But he never found an opportunity; which made me doubt that he had promised to do what was not in his power; till Johnson some years afterwards told me, ‘Derrick, Sir, might very well have introduced you. I had a kindness for Derrick, and am sorry he is dead.’

In the summer of 1761 Mr. Thomas Sheridan was at Edinburgh, and delivered lectures upon the English Language and Publick Speaking to large and respectable audiences. I was often in his company, and heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson’s extraordinary knowledge, talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed sayings, describe his particularities, and boast of his being his guest sometimes till two or three in the morning. At his house I hoped to have many opportunities of seeing the sage, as Mr. Sheridan obligingly assured me I should not be disappointed.

[Page 386: Sheridan’s pension. A.D. 1763.]

When I returned to London in the end of 1762, to my surprise and regret I found an irreconcileable difference had taken place between Johnson and Sheridan. A pension of two hundred pounds a year had been given to Sheridan. Johnson, who, as has been already mentioned, thought slightingly of Sheridan’s art, upon hearing that he was also pensioned, exclaimed, ‘What! have they given him a pension? Then it is time for me to give up mine.’ Whether this proceeded from a momentary indignation, as if it were an affront to his exalted merit that a player should be rewarded in the same manner with him, or was the sudden effect of a fit of peevishness, it was unluckily said, and, indeed, cannot be justified. Mr. Sheridan’s pension was granted to him not as a player, but as a sufferer in the cause of government, when he was manager of the Theatre Royal in Ireland, when parties ran high in 1753[1139]. And it must also be allowed that he was a man of literature, and had considerably improved the arts of reading and speaking with distinctness and propriety.

Besides, Johnson should have recollected that Mr. Sheridan taught pronunciation to Mr. Alexander Wedderburne[1140], whose sister was married to Sir Harry Erskine[1141], an intimate friend of Lord Bute, who was the favourite of the King; and surely the most outrageous Whig will not maintain, that, whatever ought to be the principle in the disposal of offices , a pension ought never to be granted from any bias of court connection. Mr. Macklin[1142], indeed, shared with Mr. Sheridan the honour of instructing Mr. Wedderburne; and though it was too late in life for a Caledonian to acquire the genuine English cadence, yet so successful were Mr. Wedderburne’s instructors, and his own unabating endeavours, that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only as much of the ‘native wood-note wild[1143],’ as to mark his country; which, if any Scotchman should affect to forget, I should heartily despise him. Notwithstanding the difficulties which are to be encountered by those who have not had the advantage of an English education, he by degrees formed a mode of speaking to which Englishmen do not deny the praise of elegance. Hence his distinguished oratory, which he exerted in his own country as an advocate in the Court of Session, and a ruling elder of the Kirk , has had its fame and ample reward, in much higher spheres. When I look back on this noble person at Edinburgh, in situations so unworthy of his brilliant powers, and behold LORD LOUGHBOROUGH at London, the change seems almost like one of the metamorphoses in Ovid ; and as his two preceptors, by refining his utterance, gave currency to his talents, we may say in the words of that poet, ‘ Nam vos mutastis [1144],’