Attacks on authors useful to them.

Oct. 1.] 311 meddling in that business; but then he considered, he had meant to do him all the service in his power, and he took another resolution; he told him he would do what he could for him, and did so; and the boy was satisfied. He said, he did not know how his pamphlet was done, as he had read very little of it. The boy made a good figure at Oxford, but died'. He remarked, that attacks on authors did them. much service. A man who tells me my play is very bad, is less my enemy than he who lets it die in silence. A man whose business it is to be talked of, is much helped by being attacked'.' Garrick, I observed, had been often so helped. JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; though Garrick had more opportunities than almost any man, to keep the publick in mind of him, by exhibiting himself to such numbers, he would not have had so much reputation, had he not been so much attacked. Every attack produces a defence; and so attention is engaged. There is no sport in mere praise, when people are all of a mind.' BOSWELL. Then Hume is not the worse for Beattie's attack'?' JOHNSON. He is, because Beattie has

1 See ante, i. 576.

' See ante, ii. 70, 384; iii. 426, and post, under Nov. 11.

'Beattie had attacked Hume in his Essay on Truth (ante, ii. 231 and v. 31). Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his Essay under his arm. 'The angel of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy, Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very indignant at it, and said :—"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 300. Another of the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes (Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire. Beattie's Essay is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his Life of

confuted

312

Old Bentley's saying.

[Oct. 1.

confuted him. I do not say, but that there may be some attacks which will hurt an author. Though Hume suffered from Beattie, he was the better for other attacks.' (He certainly could not include in that number those of Dr. Adams', and Mr. Tytler'.) BOSWELL. 'Goldsmith is the better for attacks.' JOHNSON. Yes, Sir; but he does not think so yet. When Goldsmith and I published, each of us something, at the same time', we were given to understand that we might review each other. Goldsmith was for accepting the offer. I said, No; set Reviewers at defiance. It was said to old Bentley, upon the attacks against him, "Why, they'll write you down." "No, Sir," he replied; "depend upon it, no man was ever written down but by himself'."'

Hume. Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie's side:

'Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung

His Minstrel lays;

Or tore, with noble ardour stung,

1 See ante, ii. 505.

The Sceptic's bays.'

(The Vision, part ii.)

' William Tytler published in 1759 an Examination of the Histories of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume with respect to Mary Queen of Scots. It was reviewed by Johnson. Ante, i. 410.

'Johnson's Rasselas was published in either March or April, and Goldsmith's Polite Learning in April of 1759. I do not find that they published any other works at the same time. If these are the works meant, we have a proof that the two writers knew each other earlier than was otherwise known.

A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of Phalaris; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of criticism (the Answer to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be discouraged at this run upon him, for tho' they had got the laughers on their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a work of so much merit. To which the other replied, "Indeed Dr. S. [Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter. For I hold it as certain, that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself." Warburton on Pope, iv. 159, quoted in Porson's Tracts, p. 345. Against personal abuse,' says Hawkins (Life, p. 348), ' Johnson was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:-"Alas! reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every concealed enemy to deprive

He

Oct. 2.]

Attacks on authors.

313

He observed to me afterwards, that the advantages authors derived from attacks, were chiefly in subjects of taste, where you cannot confute, as so much may be said on either side'. He told me he did not know who was the author of the Adventures of a Guinea', but that the bookseller had sent the first volume to him in manuscript, to have his opinion if it should be printed; and he thought it should.

The weather being now somewhat better, Mr. James M'Donald, factor to Sir Alexander M'Donald in Slate, insisted that all the company at Ostig should go to the house at Armidale, which Sir Alexander had left, having gone with his lady to Edinburgh, and be his guests, till we had an opportunity of sailing to Mull. We accordingly got there to dinner; and passed our day very cheerfully, being no less than fourteen in number.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2.

Dr. Johnson said, that 'a Chief and his Lady should make

us of it."

He wrote to Baretti :-' A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.' Ante, i. 441. Voltaire in his Essay Sur les inconvéniens attachés à la Littérature (Works, ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win the favour of the critics, continues:- Tous vos soins n'empêchent pas que quelque journaliste ne vous déchire. Vous lui répondez; il réplique; vous avez un procès par écrit devant le public, qui condamne les deux parties au ridicule.' See ante, ii. 70, note 2.

'However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he says:- Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book." Tom Jones, bk. xi. ch. 1.

2

It is strange that Johnson should not have known that the Adventures of a Guinea was written by a namesake of his own, Charles Johnson. Being disqualified for the bar, which was his profession, by a supervening deafness, he went to India, and made some fortune, and died there about 1800. WALTER SCOTT.

314 The training of gentlemen's daughters. [Oct. 2. their house like a court. They should have a certain number of the gentlemen's daughters to receive their education in the family, to learn pastry and such things from the housekeeper, and manners from my lady. That was the way in the great families in Wales; at Lady Salisbury's', Mrs. Thrale's grandmother, and at Lady Philips's'. I distinguish the families by the ladies, as I speak of what was properly their province. There were always six young ladies at Sir John Philips's: when one was married, her place was filled up. There was a large school-room, where they learnt needle-work and other things.' I observed, that, at some courts in Germany, there were academies for the pages, who are the sons of gentlemen, and receive their education without any expence to their parents. Dr. Johnson said, that manners were best learned at those courts. You are admitted with great facility to the prince's company, and yet must treat him with much respect. At a great court, you are at such a distance that you get no good.' I said, 'Very true: a man sees the court of Versailles, as if he saw it on a theatre.' He said, 'The best book that ever was written upon good breeding, Il Corteggiano, by Castiglione,

'Salusbury, not Salisbury.

'Horace Walpole (Letters, ii. 57) mentions in 1746 his cousin Sir John Philipps, of Picton Castle; 'a noted Jacobite.' . . . He thus mentions Lady Philipps in 1788 when she was 'very aged.' 'They have a favourite black, who has lived with them a great many years, and is remarkably sensible. To amuse Lady Philipps under a long illness, they had read to her the account of the Pelew Islands. Somebody happened to say we were sending a ship thither; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, "Then there is an end of their happiness." What a satire on Europe!' Ib. ix. 157.

Lady Philips was known to Johnson through Miss Williams, to whom, as a note in Croker's Boswell (p. 74) shews, she made a small yearly allowance.

36

'To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of Manners, and Castiglione

grew

Oct. 2.]

Goldsmith's love of talk.

315

grew up at the little court of Urbino, and you should read it.' I am glad always to have his opinion of books. At Mr. M'Pherson's, he commended Whitby's Commentary', and said, he had heard him called rather lax; but he did not perceive it. He had looked at a novel, called The Man of the World', at Rasay, but thought there was nothing in it. He said to-day, while reading my Journal, 'This will be a great treasure to us some years hence.'

Talking of a very penurious gentleman of our acquaintance', he observed, that he exceeded L'Avare in the play'. I concurred with him, and remarked that he would do well, if introduced in one of Foote's farces; that the best way to get it done, would be to bring Foote to be entertained at his house for a week, and then it would be facit indignatio°. JOHNSON. Sir, I wish he had him. I, who have eaten his bread will not give him to him; but I should be glad he came honestly by him.

He said, he was angry at Thrale, for sitting at General Oglethorpe's without speaking. He censured a man for degrading himself to a non-entity. I observed, that Goldsmith. was on the other extreme; for he spoke at all ventures.

in his Courtier; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance.' Johnson's Works, vii. 428. The Courtier was translated into English so early as 1561. Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. 1871, p. 386.

1 Burnet (History of His Own Time, ii. 296) mentions Whitby among 'the persons who both managed and directed the controversial war against Popery towards the end of Charles II's reign. 'Popery,' he says, 'was never so well understood by the nation as it came to be upon this occasion.' Whitby's Commentary on the New Testament was published in 1703-9.

2

By Henry Mackenzie, the author of The Man of Feeling.

Ante,

i. 417. It had been published anonymously this spring. The play of the same name is by Macklin. It was brought out in 1781. No doubt Sir A. Macdonald. Ante, p. 169.

tleman' is mentioned again, p. 358.

• Molière's play of L'Avare.

. . . facit indignatio versum.'

This 'penurious gen

'See ante, iii. 286.

Juvenal, Sat. i. 79.

JOHNSON.