Sir, it in right, at a time when the “*** a family is not generally liked, to let it be see that the people like at least one of them." SR JOSHUA Resorts "I do not poreciva way the profession of a player should be despised, for the great and ultimate end of ai the employments of mankind is to produce amusement. Garrick produces more amusement than any body." Howwert "You any, Dr. Johnson, that Carrick nehibits himself for a shilling. In this respect he is only in a footading with a lawyer, who nehibits himself for his ad and even will maintain any nonsense of Lapis Lerary reputation absurdity, if the ease require it Garrick res tuses a play or a part which he does not like: a lawyer never refuses" donNOR. "Why, thi vasalis Sir, what does this prove? only that a lawyer Hoswell is now like Jack in The Tale of a Tub, who, when he is puzzled by an argument, hangs himself. He thinks I shall cut him down, but I'll let him hang (laughing vociferously) Nie Joanna RTNOLDS, "Mr. Hoswell thinks that the profes sion of a lawyer being unquestionably honourTAV, She Stoops to able, if he can show the profession of a player ed:-JOHNSON. "I to be more honourable, he proves his arr FOLDSMITH :s tea long here as is worse. Toder 1: 13:Jurs „terary rve his name will *** copy from the book onson) a hundred atever that you shall me to it." many years that has audience, that has at end of comedy that Garrick's comwhich he introduced Cances," which he had the rear, was mean and →ENSON. “Why, Sir, I d not give solemnly ...aracter beyond what I out a speech on the o extravagantly, is ⚫ave been formular to : so much so, that eve have our most tiscriminately, whohey even flatter them ciously pleased to attery, however, is so stan age, where the Presens Divus habe to meanness". ment." CHAPTER XXIX. 1773. of the Seasons on the Mind. the Hebrides, On Friday, April 30, I dined ** ** -how is it mean in Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some mom as dangerous; for if it e of Garrick, and what As Sir William Temple is ned in a masterly man to be balloted for as candidate à Goldsmith being mentione ould be attended with is amazing how little Goldsmith things are at the worst they'll arg, and the fair sex will cer the greatest is the best woman TL-WRIGHT. * proclaimed a Deity," shall Augustus he, Hor. Od. iii. v. 2—CROKER. where NewATE 3 The allusion is not to the Tale of Thờ Nx Ne History of John Bull, part iv. chap. II. does not hang himself for any such reason, but CDC 268, xp sentation turned the laugh against Boswell, and that mas al Johnson cared for. -LOCKHART 6 narrative will please again and again. I would Say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: 'Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldsmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art of compiling, and of saying every thing he has to say in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and will make it as entertaining as a Persian tale.” I cannot dismiss the present topic_without observing, that it is probable that Dr. Johnson, who owned that he often "talked for victory," rather urged plausible objections to Dr. Robertson's excellent historical works, in the ardour of contest, than expressed his real and decided opinion; for it is not easy to suppose, that he should so widely differ from the rest of the literary world.2 seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than any one else." SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. "Yet there is no man whose company is more liked." JOHNSON. "To be sure, Sir. When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer, their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them. What Goldsmith comically says of himself is very true, he always gets the better when he argues alone; meaning, that he is master of a subject in his study, and can write well upon it; but when he comes into company, grows confused, and unable to talk. Take him as a poet, his Traveller' is a very fine performance; ay, and so is his 'Deserted Village,' were it not sometimes too much the echo of his Traveller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, -as a comic writer,-or as an historian, he stands in the first class." BOSWELL. "An historian! My dear Sir, you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of this age?" JOHNSON. "Why, who are before him?" BOSWELL. "Hume, Robertson,-Lord Lyttelton." JOHNSON (his JOHNSON. "I remember once being with antipathy to the Scotch beginning to rise). Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. While we "I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Gold-surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said to him, smith's History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple." BOSWELL. "Will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose History we find such penetration, such painting?" JOHN'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS.' Sir, you must consider how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is Johnson praised John Bunyan highly. "His not history, it is imagination. He who de- Pilgrim's Progress' has great merit, both for scribes what he never saw, draws from fancy. invention, imagination, and the conduct of the Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints story; and it has had the best evidence of its faces in a history-piece: he imagines an heroic merit, the general and continued approbation countenance. You must look upon Robert- of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had son's work as romance, and try it by that a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that standard. History it is not. Besides, Sir, it it begins very much like the poem of Dante; is the great excellence of a writer to put into yet there was no translation of Dante when his book as much as his book will hold. Gold-Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that smith has done this in his History. Now he had read Spenser." Robertson might have put twice as much into his book. Robertson is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, Sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight, - would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too" Why, Sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholic, I long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain SON. 66 1 Robertson's Charles V. and Goldsmith's Roman History were both published in 1769.- WRIGHT. 2 See ante. Mr. Boswell's friendship for both Johnson and Robertson is here sorely perplexed - but there seems no ground for doubting that his real and decided opinion' of Robertson's works was very low he, on every occasion, repeats it with contemptuous consistency. - CROKER. And our name may, perhaps, be mixed with theirs! Ovid. de Art. Amand. i. iii. v. 339.- C. 4 The heads of Messrs. Fletcher and Townley, executed on the 31st July, 1746, for the rebellion of 1745, were placed on Temple Bar: whether the heads of the rebels of 1715 remained there, or whether others were afterwards added. I do not know. - CROKER. 5 In allusion to Dr. Johnson's supposed political principles, 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istís.'3 When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered me, "5 A proposition which had been agitated, that monuments to eminent persons should, for the time to come, be erected in St. Paul's church, as well as in Westminster Abbey, was mentioned; and it was asked, who should be honoured by having his monument first erected there. Somebody suggested Pope. JOHNSON. would not have his to be first. I think Milton's rather should have the precedence. I think and perhaps his own. - BoSWELL. Goldsmith was certainly not a Jacobite, though he was a Tory. In a letter to Langton (Sept. 7. 1771) he says of some criticisms on his History of England: "However, they set me down as an arrant Tory, and consequently an honest man."- Prior's Life, ii. 330. CROKER, 1846. 6 Here is another instance of his high admiration of Milton as a poet, notwithstanding his just abhorrence of that sour republican's political principles. His candour and discrimination are equally conspicuous. Let us hear no more of his injustice to Milton." BOSWELL. A monument to Milton in St. Paul's Cathedral would, as Dr. Hall observes, be the more appropriate from his having received his early education in the adjoining school. - CROKER. more highly of him now than I did at twenty. There is more thinking in him and in Butler, than in any of our poets." Some of the company expressed a wonder why the author of so excellent a book as "The Whole Duty of Man" should conceal himself.' JOHNSON. "There may be different reasons assigned for this, any one of which would be very sufficient. He may have been a clergyman, and may have thought that his religious counsels would have less weight when known to come from a man whose profession was theology. He may have been a man whose practice was not suitable to his principles, so that his character might injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a season of penitence. Or he may have been a man of rigid self-denial, so that he would have no reward for his pious labours while in this world, but refer it all to a future state." The gentlemen went away to their club, and I was left at Beauclerk's till the fate of my election should be announced to me. I sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate. In a short time I received the agreeable intelligence that I was chosen. I hastened to the place of meeting, and was introduced to such a society as can seldom be found. Mr. Edmund Burke, whom I then saw for the first time, and whose splendid talents had long made me ardently wish for his acquaintance; Dr. Nugent, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones, and the company with whom I had dined. Upon my entrance, Johnson placed himself behind a chair, on which he leaned as on a desk or pulpit, and with humorous formality gave me a charge, pointing out the conduct expected from me as a good member of this club. Goldsmith produced some very absurd verses which had been publicly recited to an audience for money. JOHNSON. "I can match this non 1 In a manuscript in the Bodleian Library several circumstances are stated, which strongly incline me to believe that Dr. Accepted Frewen, Archbishop of York, was the author of this work. - MALONE. See, on the subject of the author of this celebrated and excellent work, Gent. Mag. vol. xxiv. p. 26., and Ballard's Memoirs of Learned Ladies, p. 300. The late eccentric but learned Dr. Barrett, of Trinity College, Dublin, believed, I know not on what evidence, that Dr. Chapel, formerly provost of that college, was the author. - CROKER. 2 Dr. Johnson's memory here was not perfectly accurate : "Eugenio" does not conclude thus. There are eight more lines after the last of those quoted by him; and the passage which he meant to recite is as follows: "Say now, ye fluttering, poor assuming elves, Mr. Reed informs me that the author of Eugenio, Thomas Beech, a wine-merchant at Wrexham in Denbighshire, soon after its publication, viz. May 17. 1737, cut his own throat; and that it appears by Swift's works, that the poem had been shown to him, and received some of his corrections. Johnson had read "Eugenio" on his first coming to town, for we see it mentioned in one of his letters to Mr. Cave, which has been inserted in this work. - BosWELL. One wonders at sense. There was a poem called 'Eugenio,' • And now, ye trifling, self-assuming elves, Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go, Talking of puns, Johnson, who had a great contempt for that species of wit, deigned to allow that there was one good pun in "Menagiana," I think on the word corps.* Much pleasant conversation passed, which Johnson relished with great good humour. But his conversation alone, or what led to it, or was interwoven with it, is the business of this work. On Saturday, May 1., we dined by ourselves at our old rendezvous, the Mitre tavern. He was placid, but not much disposed to talk. He observed, that "the Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do; their language is nearer to English; as a proof of which, they succeed very well as players, which Scotchmen do not. Then, Sir, they have not that extreme nationality which we find in the Scotch. I will do you, Boswell, the justice to say, that you are the most unscottified of your countrymen. You are almost the only instance of a Scotchman that I have known, who did not at every other sentence bring in some other Scotchman." ♪ We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I introduced a question which has been much agitated in the church of Scotland, whether the claim of lay-patrons to present ministers to parishes be well founded; and supposing it to be well the patience and good nature with which Swift read and corrected this stupid poem. - CROKER. 3 There is no such poem ;-the lines are part of an allusion to the Royal Society, in the Annus Mirabilis, stanza 164.-CROKER 4 I formerly thought that I had perhaps mistaken the word, and imagined it to be corps, from its similarity of sound to the real one. For an accurate and shrewd unknown gentleman, to whom I am indebted for some remarks on my work, observes on this passage:-" Q. if not on the word, fort? A vociferous French preacher said of Bourdaloue, Il prêche fort bien, et moi bien fort.' - Menagiana. See also Anecdotes Littéraires, art. Bourdaloue." But my ingenious and obliging correspondent, Mr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia, has pointed out to me the following passage; which renders the preceding conjecture unnecessary, and confirms my original statement : - "Madame de Bourdonne, chanoinesse de Remiremont, venoit d'entendre un discours plein de feu et d'esprit, mais fort peu solide, et très-irrégulier. Une de ses amies, qui y prenoit intérêt pour l'orateur, lui dit en sortant, * Eh bien, Madame, que vous semble-t-il de ce que vous venez d'entendre? Qu'il y a d'esprit? Il y a tant,' répondit Madame de Bourdonne, que je n'y ai pas vu de corps.' Menagiana, tome ii. p. 64. BOSWELL. 5 Boswell confesses that Garrick used to rally him on his nationality, and there are abundant instances in these volumes to show that he was not exempt from that amiable prejudice. CROKER. |