not be required of the plaintiff, but that the judges should decide according as probability shall appear to preponderate, granting to the defendant the presumption of filiation to be strong in his favour. And I think too, that a good deal of weight should be allowed to the dying declarations, because they were spontaneous. There is a great difference between what is said without our being urged to it, and what is said from a kind of compulsion. If I praise a man's book without being asked my opinion of it, that is honest praise, to which one may trust. But if an authour asks me if I like his book, and I give him something like praise, it must not be taken as my real opinion." "I have not been troubled for a long time with authours desiring my opinion of their works. I used once to be sadly plagued with a man who wrote verses, but who literally had no other notion of a verse but that it consisted of ten syllables. Lay your knife and your fork across your plate, was to him a verse: Lay your knife and your fōrk, acrōss your plate. As he wrote a great number of verses, he sometimes by chance made good ones, though he did not know it." p. 216, 217. 66 [Dr. Johnson did not like that his Piozzi, friends should bring their manuscripts for him to read, and he liked still less to read them when they were brought sometimes, however, when he could not refuse, he would take the play or poem, or whatever it was, and give the people his opinion from some one page that he had peeped into. A gentleman! carried him his tragedy, which, because he loved the authour, Johnson took, and it lay about our rooms at Streatham some time. What answer did you give your friend, sir?" asked Mrs. Thrale, after the book had been called for. "I told him," replied he," that there was too much Tig and Tirry in it." Seeing her laugh most violently, "Why, what wouldst have, child?" said he. "I looked at nothing but the dramatis, and there was Tigranes and Tiridates, or Teribazus, or such stuff. A man can tell but what he knows, and I never got any farther than the first page."] He renewed his promise of coming to Scotland, and going with me to the Hebrides, but said he would now content himself with seeing one or two of the most curious of them. He said, " Macaulay, who writes the account of St. Kilda, set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and wanted to be a smart modern thinker; and yet affirms for a [No doubt Mr. Murphy, in whose tragedy of Zenobia, acted in 1768, there are two personages named Tigranes and Teribazus.-ED.] truth, that when a ship arrives there all the inhabitants are seized with a cold." 21 Mar. 1772. 2 Oct. 1773. Dr. John Campbell, the celebrated 2 writer, took a great deal of pains to ascertain this fact, and attempted to account for it on physical principles, from the effect of effluvia from human bodies. Johnson, at another time, praised Macaulay for his "magnanimity," in asserting this wonderful story, because it was well attested. A lady of Norfolk, by a letter to my friend Dr. Burney, has favoured me with the following solution: "Now for the explication of this seeming mystery, which is so very obvious as, for that reason, to have escaped the penetration of Dr. Johnson and his friend, as well as that of the authour. Reading the book with my ingenious friend, the late Rev. Mr. Christian of Docking-after ruminating a little, The cause,' says he,' is a natural one. The situation of St. Kilda renders a north-east wind indispensably necessary before a stranger can land. The wind, not the stranger, occasions an epidemick cold.' If I am not mistaken, M. Macaulay is dead; if living, this solution might please him, as I hope it will Mr. Boswell, in return for the many agreeable hours his works have afforded us." Johnson expatiated on the advantages of Oxford for learning. "There is here, sir," said he, "such a progressive emulation. The students are anxious to appear well to their tutors; the tutors are anxious to have their pupils appear well in the college; the colleges are anxious to have their students appear well in the university; and there are excellent rules of discipline in every college. That the rules are sometimes ill observed may be true, but is nothing against the system. The members of an university may, for a season, be unmindful of their duty. I am arguing for the excellency of the institution." Of Guthrie, he said, "Sir, he is a man of parts. He has no great regular fund of knowledge; but by reading so long, and writing so long, he no doubt has picked up a good deal." He said he had lately been a long while at Lichfield, but had grown very weary before he left it. BosWELL. "I wonder at that, sir; it is your native place." JOHNSON. Why so is Scotland your native place." His prejudice against Scotland appeared remarkably strong at this time. When I talked of our advancement in literature, "Sir," said he," you have learnt a little from us, and you think yourselves very great men. Hume would never have written his * [See ante, 1st July, 1763.-ED.] tory, had not Voltaire written it before him. | pion within a circle of burning coals; that it He is an echo of Voltaire." BOSWELL. ran round and round in extreme pain; and "But, sir, we have Lord Kames." JOHN- finding no way to escape, retired to the cenSON. "You have Lord Kames. Keep him; tre, and like a true Stoick philosopher, dartha, ha, ha! We don't envy you him. Do ed its sting into its head, and thus at once you ever see Dr. Robertson?" BOSWELL. freed itself from its woes. "This must "Yes, sir." JOHNSON. "Does the dog end 'em." I said, this was a curious fact, as talk of me?" BOSWELL. "Indeed, sir, he it showed deliberate suicide in a reptile. does, and loves you." Thinking that I Johnson would not admit the fact. He now had him in a corner, and being solici- said, Maupertuis 3 was of opinion that it tous for the literary fame of my country, I does not kill itself, but dies of the heat; pressed him for his opinion on the merit of that it gets to the centre of the circle as the Dr. Robertson's History of Scotland. But, coolest place; that its turning its tail in up to my surprise, he escaped. Sir, I love on its head is merely a convulsion, and that Robertson, and I won't talk of his book." it does not sting itself. He said he would It is but justice both to him and Dr. be satisfied if the great anatomist MorgagRobertson to add, that though he indulgedni, after dissecting a scorpion on which the himself in this sally of wit, he had too good taste not to be fully sensible of the merits of that admirable work 1. στ An essay, written by Mr. Deane, a divine of the church of England, maintaining the future life of brutes 2, by an explication of certain parts of the scriptures, was mentioned, and the doctrine insisted on by a gentleman who seemed fond of curious speculation. Johnson, who did not like to hear of any thing concerning a future state which was not authorised by the regular canons of orthodoxy, discouraged this talk; and being offended at its continuation, he watched an opportunity to give the gentleman a blow of reprehension. So, when the poor speculatist, with a serious metaphysical pensive face, addressed him, "But really, sir, when we see a very sensible dog, we don' know what to think of him." Jonnson, rolling with joy at the thought which beamed in his eye, turned quickly round, and replied, "True, sir: and when we see a very foolish fellow, we don't know what to think of him." He then rose up, strided to the fire, and stood for some time laughing and exulting. I told him that I had several times, when in Italy, seen the experiment of placing a scor [It is to be regretted that Mr. Boswell should have persisted in repeating these assertions. Dr. Johnson, on every occasion, seems to have expressed a great contempt for Dr. Robertson's works-very unjustly indeed; but, however Mr. Boswell might lament Johnson's prejudice, he was not justified in thus repeatedly misstating the fact. See ante, p. 237. See post, sub 19th April, 1772, where Boswell suppresses, and 30th April, 1773, where he again misrepresents Johnson's opinions of Dr. Robertson.-ED.] experiment had been tried, should certify that its sting had penetrated into its head. He seemed pleased to talk of natural philosophy 4. "That woodcocks (said he) fly over the northern countries is proved, because they have been observed at sea. Swallows certainly sleep all the winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lie in the bed of a river." He told us, one of his first essays was a Latin poem upon the glow-worm; I am sorry I did not ask where it was to be found. Talking of the Russians and the Chinese, he advised me to read Bell's Travels 5. I asked him whether I should read Du Halde's Account of China. "Why yes (said he), as one reads such a book; that is to say, consult it." He talked of the heinousness of the crime ? I should think it impossible not to wonder at the variety of Johnson's reading, however desultory it might have been. Who could have imagined that the high church of England-mau would be so prompt in quoting Maupertuis, who, I am sorry to think, stands in the list of those unfortunate mistaken men, who call themselves esprits forts. I have, however, a high respect for that philosopher whom the Great Frederick of Prussia loved and honoured, and addressed pathetically in one of his poems "Maupertuis cher Maupertuis Que notre vie est peu de chose." There was in Maupertuis a vigour and yet a tenderness of sentiment, united with strong intellectual powers, and uncommon ardour of soul. Would he had been a Christian! I cannot help earnestly venturing to hope that he is one now. BOSWELL [Mr. Boswell seems to contemplate the possibility of a post mortem conversion to Christianity.-ED.]; but Maupertuis died in 1759 at the age of sixty-two, in the arms of the Ber noullis, très chrétiennement.-BURNEY. 4 [Mr. Boswell means natural history.-ED.] [John Bell, of Antermony, who published, about 1763, “Travels from St. Petersburgh, in Russia, to divers parts of Asia."—ED.] [An Essay on the Future Life of Brute Creatures, by Richard Deane, curate of Middleton. This work is reviewed in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1768, p. 177, in a style very like Johnson's; and a story of "a very sensible dog" is noticed with censure. 5 It is, therefore, not improbable that it may have been written by Johnson.-ED.] of adultery, by which the peace of families was destroyed. He said, "Confusion of progeny constitutes the essence of the crime; and therefore a woman who breaks her marriage vows is much more criminal than a man who does it. A man, to be sure, is criminal in the sight of Gop; but he does not do his wife a very material injury, if he does not insult her; if, for instance, from mere wantonness of appetite, he steals privately to her chambermaid. Sir, a wife ought not greatly to resent this. I would not receive home a daughter who had run away from her husband on that account. A wife should study to reclaim her husband by more attention to please him. Sir, a man will not, once in a hundred instances, leave his wife and go to a harlot, if his wife has not been negligent of pleasing." man if you can find such, out of a fancy that she will be less constant than an ugly one; or condemn yourself to the society of coarseness and vulgarity for fear of the expenses or other dangers of elegance and personal charms, which have been always acknowledged as a positive good, and for the want of which there should be always given some weighty compensation. I have, however (continued Dr. Johnson), seen some prudent fellows who forbore to connect themselves with beauty lest coquetry should be near, and with wit or birth lest insolence should lurk behind them, till they have been forced by their discretion to linger life away in tasteless stupidity, and choose to count the moments by remem brance of pain instead of enjoyment of pleasure." But of the various states and Here he discovered that acute discrimina- conditions of humanity, he despised none tion, that solid judgment, and that knowl- more than the man who marries for a mainedge of human nature, for which he was tenance: and of a friend who made his alupon all occasions remarkable. Taking liance on no higher principles, he said once, care to keep in view the moral and reli-" Now has that fellow (it was a nobleman gious duty, as understood in our nation, he showed clearly, from reason and good sense, the greater degree of culpability in the one sex deviating from it than the other; and, at the same time, inculcated a very useful lesson as to the way to keep him. I asked him if it was not hard that one deviation from chastity should so absolutely | ruin a young woman. JOHNSON. "Why no, sir; it is the great principle which she is taught. When she has given up that principle, she has given up every notion of female honour and virtue, which are all included in chastity." A gentleman talked to him of a lady whom he greatly admired and wished to marry, but was afraid of her superiority of talents. "Sir (said he), you need not be afraid; marry her. Before a year goes about, you'll find that reason much weaker, and that wit not so bright." Yet the gentleman may be justified in his apprehension by one of Dr. Johnson's admirable sentences in his life of Waller: "He_doubtless praised many whom he would have been afraid to marry; and, perhaps, married one whom he would have been ashamed to praise. Many qualities contribute to domestick happiness, upon which poetry has no colours to bestow; and many airs and sallies may delight imagination, which he who flatters them never can approve." Piozzi, p. 192, of whom they were speaking) at length obtained a certainty of three meals a day, and for that certainty, like his brother dog in the fable, he will get his neck galled for life with a collar."] He praised Signor Baretti. "His account of Italy is a very entertaining book; and, sir, I know no man who carries his head higher in conversation than Baretti. There are strong powers in his mind. He has not, indeed, many hooks; but with what hooks he has, he grapples very forcibly." At this time I observed upon the dialplate of his watch a short Greek inscription, taken from the New Testament, Nu gag gras, being the first words of our Saviour's solemn admonition to the improvement of that time which is allowed to us to prepare for eternity; "the night cometh when no man can work." He some time afterwards laid aside this dial-plate; and when I asked him the reason, he said, 'It might do very well upon a clock which a man keeps in his closet; but to have it upon his watch which he carries about with him, and which is often looked at by others, might be censured as ostentatious." Mr. Steevens is now possessed of the dialplate inscribed as above. Letters to He remained at Oxford a considerable time; [where he was for some time confined to Mr. Chambers's Piozzi, apartments in New-inn Hall by vol. i. a fit of illness.] I was obliged to go to London, where I received this letter, which had been returned from Scotland. p. 14. [The general and constant advice he gave too, when consulted about 193, 194. the choice of a wife, a profession, or whatever influences a man's particular and immediate happiness, was always to reject no positive good from fears 1 ["For the night cometh." The inscription of its contrary consequences. "Do not was, however, made unintelligible by the mistake (said he) forbear to marry a beautiful wo-of writing vu for vu. Hawk. p. 461.-ED.] TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "Oxford, 23d March, 1768. "MY DEAR BOSWELL, I have omitted a long time to write to you, without knowing very well why. I could now tell why I should not write; for who would write to men who publish the letters of their friends, without their leave? Yet I write to you in spite of my caution, to tell you that I shall be glad to see you, and that I wish you would empty your head of Corsica, which I think has filled it rather too long. But, at all events, I shall be glad, very glad to see you.-I am, sir, yours affectionately, "SAM. JOHNSON." I answered thus: "TO MR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. "London, 26th April, 1768. MY DEAR SIR,-I have received your last letter, which, though very short, and by no means complimentary, yet gave me real pleasure, because it contains these words, I shall be glad, very glad to see you.'-Surely you have no reason to complain of my publishing a single paragraph of one of your letters; the temptation to it was so strong. An irrevocable grant of your friendship, and your dignifying my desire of visiting Corsica with the epithet of a wise and noble curiosity,' are to me more valuable than many of the grants of kings. "But how can you bid me 'empty my head of Corsica?' My noble-minded friend, do you not feel for an oppressed nation bravely struggling to be free? Consider fairly what is the case. The Corsicans never received any kindness from the Genoese. They never agreed to be subject to them. They owe them nothing, and when reduced to an abject state of slavery, by force, shall they not rise in the great cause of liberty, and break the galling yoke? And shall not every liberal soul be warm for them? Empty my head of Corsica? Empty it of honour, empty it of humanity, empty it of friendship, empty it of piety. No! while I live, Corsica, and the cause of the brave islanders, shall ever employ much of my attention, shall ever interest me in the sincerest manner. "I am, &c. "JAMES BOSWELL." "DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE. "Oxford, 24th March, 1768. Letters, vol. i. p. 11. this occasion; the slaves of power, and the solicitors of favour, were driven hither from the remotest corners of the kingdom, but judex honestum prætulit utili. The virtue of Oxford has once more prevailed. "The death of Sir Walter Bagot, a little before the election, left them no great time to deliberate, and they therefore joined Sir Roger Newdigate, their old representative, an Oxfordshire gentleman, of no name, no great interest, nor perhaps any other merit than that of being on the right side; yet when the poll was numbered, it produced, For Sir R. Newdigate Mr. Page Mr. Jenkinson Dr. Hay 852 296 198 62 "Of this I am sure you must be glad; for, without inquiring into the opinions or conduct of any party, it must be for ever pleasing to see men adhering to their principles against their interest, especially when you consider that those voters are poor, and never can be much less poor by the favour of those whom they are now opposing."} "TO MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD. "Oxford, 18th April, 1768. Malone. "MY DEAR DEAR LOVE,-You have had a very great loss. To lose an old friend, is to be cut off from a great part of the little pleasure that this life allows. But such is the condition of our nature, that as we live on we must see those whom we love drop successively, and find our circle of relations grow less and less, till we are almost unconnected with the world; and then it must soon be our turn to drop into the grave. There is always this consolation, that we have one Protector who can never be lost but by our own fault, and every new experience of the uncertainty of all other comforts should determine us to fix our hearts where true joys are to be found. All union with the inhabitants of earth must in time be broken; and all the hopes that terminate here, must on (one) part or other end in disappointment. "I am glad that Mrs. Adey and Mrs. Cobb do not leave you alone. Pay my respects to them, and the Sewards, and all my friends. When Mr. Porter comes, he will direct you. Let me know of his arri val, and I will write to him. "When I go back to London, I will take care of your reading glass. Whenever I can do anything for you, remember, my dear darling, that one of my greatest plea"Our election was yesterday. Ev-sures is to please you. ery possible influence of hope and fear was, I believe, enforced on 1 [Mr. Boswell, in his " Journal of a Tour in Corsica," had printed the second and third paragraphs of Johnson's letter to him of the 14th January, 1766. See ante, p. 224 -Ep.1 32* VOL. I. "The punctuality of your correspondence I consider as a proof of great regard. When we shall see each other, I know not, but let with tenderness. Do not forget me in your us often think on each other, and think prayers. I have for a long time back been very poo ly; but of what use is it to com- Upon his arrival in London in May, he surprised me one morning with a visit at my lodging in Half-moon-street, was quite satisfied with my explanation, and was in the kindest and most agreeable frame of mind. As he had objected to a part of one of his letters being published, I thought it right to take this opportunity of asking him explicitly whether it would be improper to publish his letters after his death. His answer was, "Nay, sir, when I am dead, you may do as you will." Hawk. p. 347. [Johnson's silence, with regard to Kenrick's attacks, proceeded not more from his contempt of such an adversary, than from a settled resolution he had formed, of declining all controversy in de fence either of himself or of his writings. Against personal abuse he 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 us of it;" and he defied all attacks on his writings by an answer of Dr. Bentley to one who threatened to write him down, that "no authour was ever written down but by himself." open as concealed enemies, and the malev olence of those anonymous scribblers whose trade is slander, and wages infamy.] His steady perseverance in this resolution afforded him great satisfaction whenever he He talked in his usual style with a rough reflected on it; and he would often felicicontempt of popular liberty." They make tate himself that, throughout his life, he a rout about universal liberty, without con- had had firmness enough to treat with considering that all that is to be valued, or in-tempt the calumny and abuse as well of deed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty. Political liberty is good only so far as it produces private liberty. Now, sir, there is the liberty of the press, which you know is a constant topick. Suppose you and I and two hundred more were restrained from printing our thoughts: what then? What proportion would that restraint upon us bear to the private happiness of the nation 1?" This mode of representing the inconveniencies of restraint as light and insignificant was a kind of sophistry in which he delighted to indulge himself, in opposition to the extreme laxity for which it has been fashionable for too many to argue, when it is evident, upon reflection, that the very essence of government is restraint; and certain it is, that as government produces rational happiness, too much restraint is better than too little. But when restraint is unnecessary, and so close as to gall those who are subject to it, the people may and ought to remonstrate; and, if relief is not granted, to resist. Of this manly and spirited principle, no man was more convinced than Johnson himself. About this time Dr. Kenrick attacked him, through my sides, in a pamphlet, entitled "An Epistle to James Boswell, Esq. occasioned by his having transmitted the moral writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson to Pascal Paoli, General of the Corsicans." I was at first inclined to answer this pamphlet; but Johnson, who knew that my doing so would only gratify Kenrick, by keeping alive what would soon die away of [Would Johnson have talked in this way in the days of the Marmor Norfolciense? ante, p. 55.) If we lost the liberty of the press, what security could we have for any other right?-ED.] His sincere regard for Francis Barber, his faithful negro servant, made him so desirous of his further improvement, that he now placed him at a school at Bishop Stortford, in Hertfordshire 2. This humane attention does Johnson's heart much honour. Out of many letters which Mr. Barber received from his master, he has preserved three, which he kindly gave me, and which I shall insert according to their dates. 2 [The sending his negro servant, now probably little short of thirty years of age, to a boarding school, seems a very strange exercise of his good-nature. It was a very unpopular one with some of Johnson's inmates when Mrs. Williams and Francis quarrelled, as was very frequent, the lady would complain to the doctor, adding, "This is your scholar, on whose education you have spent 3001.” Dr. Johnson, in the conclusion of the letter, calls him a " 'boy," but sixteen years had already elapsed since he entered Johnson's own service.-ED.] |