"I wish I had written sooner, lest, writing now, I should renew your grief; but I would not forbear saying what I have now said. "This loss is, I hope, the only misfortune of a family to whom no misfortune at all should happen, if my wishes could avert it. Let me know how you all go on Has Mr. Langton got him the little horse that I recommended? It would do him good to ride about his estate in fine weather. "Be pleased to make my compliments to Mrs. Langton, and to dear Miss Langton, and Miss Di, and Miss Juliet, and to every body else. his income; and to do it more exactly, compared those expenses with a computation he had made, how much that income would afford him every week and day of the year. One of his economical practices was, as soon as any repair was wanting in or about his house, to have it immediately performed. When he had money to spare, he chose to lay in a provision of linen or clothes, or any other necessaries; as then, he said, he could afford it, which he might not be so well able to do when the actual want came; in consequence of which method, he had a considerable supply of necessary articles lying by him, beside what was in use. "But the main particular that seems to have enabled him to do so much with his income, was, that he paid for every thing as soon as he had it, except, alone, what were current accounts, such as rent for his house, and servants' wages; and these he paid at the stated times with the utmost exactness. He gave notice to the tradesmen of the neighbouring market towns, that they should no longer have his custom, if they let any of his servants have any thing without their paying for it. Thus he put it out of his power to commit those imprudences to which those are liable that defer their payments by using their money some other way than where it ought to go. And whatever money he had by him, he knew that it was not demanded elsewhere, but that he might safely employ it as he pleased. "His example was confined, by the sequestered place of his abode, to the observation of few, though his prudence and virtue would have made it valuable to all who could have known it. These few particulars, which I knew myself, or have obtained from those who lived with him, may afford instruction, and be an incentive to that wise art of living, which he so successfully practised." With all our respect for Mr. Bennet Langton's acknowledged character for accuracy and veracity, there seems something in the foregoing relation, absolutely incomprehensible-a house, a good table, frequent company, four servants (two of them men in livery), a carriage and three horses on two hundred pounds a year! Economy and ready-money payments will do much to diminish current expenses, but what effect can they have had on rent, taxes, wages, and other permanent charges of a respectable domestic establishment?-Croker. "THE CLUB holds very well together. Monday is my night.' I continue to rise tolerably well, and read more than I did. I hope something will yet come of it. I am, Sir, your most affectionate servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." After I had been some time in Scotland, I mentioned to him in a letter that "On my first return to my native country, after some years of absence, I was told of a vast number of my acquaintance who were all gone to the land of forgetfulness, and I found myself like a man stalking over a field of battle, who every moment perceives some one lying dead." I complained of irresolution, and mentioned my having made a vow as a security for good conduct. I wrote to him again without being able to move his indolence: nor did I hear from him till he had received a copy of my inaugural Exercise, or Thesis in Civil Law, which I published at my admission as an Advocate, as is the custom in Scotland. He then wrote to me as follows:: "DEAR SIR, TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "London, August 10, 1766. "The reception of your Thesis put me in mind of my debt to you. Why did you . . . I will punish you for it, by telling you that your Latin wants correction. In the beginning, Spei altera, not to urge that it should be primæ, is not grammatical; alteræ should be alteri. 1 Of his being in the chair of the Literary Club, which at this time met once a week in the evening. 2 The passage omitted alluded to a private transaction. * This censure of my Latin relates to the dedication, which was as follows:-" Viro nobilissimo, ornatissimo, Joanni, Vicecomiti Mountstuart, atavis edito regibus, excelsæ familiæ de Bute spei alteræ; labente seculo, quum homines nullius originis genus æquare opibus aggrediuntur, sanguinis antiqui et illustris semper memori, natalium splendorem virtutibus augenti ad publica populi comitia jam legato; in optimatium vero Magnæ Britanniæ senatu, jure hæreditario, olim consessuro: vim insitam variâ doctrinâ promovente, nec tamen se venditante, prædito: priscâ fide, animo liberrimo, et morum elegantiâ insigni: in Italiæ visitandæ itinere socio suo honoratissimo: hasce jurisprudentiæ primitias, devinctissimæ amicitiæ et observantiæ, monumentum, D. D. C. Q. Jacobus Boswell." In the next line you seem to use genus absolutely, for what we call family, that is, for illustrious extraction, I doubt without authority. Homines nullius originis, for nullis orti majoribus, or nullo loco nati, is, as I am afraid, barbarous.-Ruddiman is dead. "I have now vexed you enough, and will try to please you. Your resolution to obey your father I sincerely approve; but do not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility by vows; they will sometime leave a thorn in your mind, which you will, perhaps, never be able to extract or eject. Take this warning; it is of great importance. "The study of the law is what you very justly term it, copious and generous; and in adding your name to its professors, you have done exactly what I always wished, when I wished you best. I hope that you will continue to pursue it vigorously and constantly. You gain, at least, what is no small advantage, security from those troublesome and wearisome discontents, which are always obtruding themselves upon minds vacant, unemployed, and undetermined. "You ought to think it no small inducement to diligence and perseverance, that they will please your father. We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty. "Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent : deliberation which those who begin it by prudence, and continue it with subtilty, must, after long expense of thought, conclude by chance. To prefer one future mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires faculties which it has not pleased our Creator to give us. "If, therefore, the profession you have chosen has some unexpected inconveniences, console yourself by reflecting that no profession is without them; and that all the importunities and perplexities of business are softness and luxury, compared with the incessant cravings of vacancy, and the unsatisfactory expedients of idleness. 'Hæc sunt quæ nostrâ potui te voce monere ; 1 This alludes to the first sentence of the Procemium of my Thesis. "Jurisprudentiæ studio nullum uberius, nullum generosius in legibus enim agitandis, populorum mores, variasque fortunæ vices ex quibus leges oriuntur, contemplari simul solemus." 2 "Hæc sunt, quæ nostra liceat te voce moneri. Vade age."-En. iii. 461-2.-Editor. "As to your History of Corsica,' you have no materials which others have not, or may not have. You have, somehow or other, warmed your imagination. I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession. Mind your own affairs, and leave the Corsicans to theirs.-I am, dear Sir, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON.” TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. "MUCH ESTEEMED AND DEAR SIR, "I plead not guilty to "Auchinlech, Nov. 6, 1766. "Having thus, I hope, cleared myself of the charge brought against me, I presume you will not be displeased if I escape the punishment which you have decreed for me unheard. If you have discharged the arrows of criticism against an innocent man, you must rejoice to find they have missed him, or have not been pointed so as to wound him. "To talk no longer in allegory, I am, with all deference, going to offer a few observations in defence of my Latin, which you have found fault with. "You think I should have used spei primæ instead of spei altera. Spes is, indeed, often used to express something on which we have a future dependence, as in Virg. Eclog. i. 14. modo namque gemellos Spem gregis, ah! silice in nudâ connixa reliquit :' and in Georg. iii. 473.— 'Spemque gregemque simul,' for the lambs and the sheep. Yet it is also used to express any thing on which we have a present dependence, and is well applied to a man of distinguished influence,-our support, our refuge, our præsidium, as Horace calls Mæcenas. So, Æneid xii. 57, Queen Amata addresses her son-in-law, Turnus :-'Spes tu nunc una:' and he was then no future hope, for she adds,—— decus imperiumque Latini Te penes ;' 1 The passage omitted explained the transaction to which the preceding letter had alluded. which might have been said of my Lord Bute some years ago. Now I consider the present Earl of Bute to be 'Excelsæ familiæ de Bute spes prima;' and my Lord Mountstuart, as his eldest son, to be 'spes altera.' So in Æneid xii. 1. 168, after having mentioned Pater Æneas, who was the present spes, the reigning spes, as my German friends would say, the spes prima, the poet adds, 'Et juxta Ascanius, magnæ spes altera Romæ.'1 "You think altera ungrammatical, and tell me it should have been alteri. You must recollect, that in old times alter was declined regularly; and when the ancient fragments preserved in the Juris Civilis Fontes were written, it was certainly declined in the way that I use it. This, I should think, may protect a lawyer who writes alteræ in a dissertation upon part of his own science. But as I could hardly venture to quote fragments of old law to so classical a man as Mr. Johnson, I have not made an accurate search into these remains, to find examples of what I am able to produce in poetical composition. We find in Plaut. Rudens, act. iii. scene 4.— 'Nam huic altera patria quæ sit profecto nescio.' Plautus is, to be sure, an old comic writer; but in the days of Scipio and Lelius, we find Terent. Heautontim. act ii. scene 3. hoc ipsa in itinere altera Dum narrat, forte audivi.' "You doubt my having authority for using genus absolutely, for what we call family, that is, for illustrious extraction. Now I take genus in Latin to have much the same signification with birth in English; both in their primary meaning expressing simply descent, but both made to stand kar' oxny for noble descent. Genus is thus used in Hor. lib. ii. Sat. v. 8.— 1 It is very strange that Johnson, who in his letter quotes the Æneid, should not have recollected this obvious and decisive authority for spes altera, nor yet the remarkable use of these words, attributed to Cicero, by Servius and Donatus: the expressions of the latter are conclusive in Mr. Boswell's favour :-"At cum Cicero quosdam versus (Virgilii) audisset, in fine ait: Magnæ spes altera Romæ.'—Quasi ipse linguæ Latina spes prima fuisset, et Maro futurus esset secunda." Donat. vit. Virg. § 41.Croker. |