" play of "The Chances," which he had altered and inferior while he is with them, it must be highly revised this year, was mean and gross flattery. gratifying to them. What Goldsmith comically JOHNSON: Why, Sir, I would not write, I says of himself is very true-he always gets the would not give solemnly under my hand, a cha- better when he argues alone; meaning, that he is racter beyond what I thought really true; but a master of a subject in his study, and can write speech on the stage, let it flatter ever so extrava- well upon it; but when he comes into company, gantly, is formular. It has always been formular grows confused, and unable to talk. Take him to flatter kings and queens: so much so, that even as a poet, his Traveller' is a very fine performin our church-service we have our most religious ance; aye, and so is his Deserted Village,' were king,' used indiscriminately, whoever is king. it not sometimes too much the echo of his 'TraNay, they even flatter themselves-we have been veller.' Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, graciously pleased to grant.' No modern flattery, as a comic writer, or as an historian, he stands in however, is so gross as that of the Augustan age, the first class." BOSWELL: "An historian? My where the emperor was deified. 'Præsens Divus dear Sir, you surely will not rank his compilation habebitur Augustus.' And as to meanness (rising of the Roman History with the works of other into warmth), how is it mean in a player-a show- historians of this age? JOHNSON: "Why, who man-a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling, are before him?" BOSWELL: "Hume, Robertto flatter his queen? The attempt, indeed, was son, Lord Lyttelton." JOHNSON (his antipathy to dangerous; for if it had missed, what became of the Scotch beginning to rise): "I have not read Garrick, and what became of the queen? As Sir Hume; but doubtless, Goldsmith's history is William Temple says of a great general, it is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the necessary not only that his designs be formed in a foppery of Dalrymple." BOSWELL: "Will you masterly manner, but that they should be attended not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose with success. Sir, it is right, at a time when the history we find such penetration-such painting?" royal family is not generally liked, to let it be JOHNSON: "Sir, you must consider how that seen that the people like at least one of them." penetration and that painting are employed. It SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: "I do not perceive is not history, it is imagination. He who describes why the profession of a player should be despised; what he never saw, draws from fancy. Robertson for the great and ultimate end of all the employ-paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history ments of mankind is to produce amusement. Garrick produces more amusement than any body. BOSWELL: "You say, Dr. Johnson, that Garrick exhibits himself for a shilling. In this respect he is only on a footing with a lawyer who exhibits himself for his fee, and even will maintain any nonsense or absurdity, if the case require it. Garrick refuses a play or a part which he does not like: a lawyer never refuses." JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, what does this prove? only that a lawyer is worse. Boswell 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). SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: "Mr. Boswell thinks that the profession of a lawyer being unquestionably honourable, if he can show the profession of a player to be more honourable, he proves his argument. " " CHAPTER XXI.-1773. On Friday, April 30, I dined with him at Mr. Beauclerk's, where were Lord Charlemont, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some more members of the LITERARY CLUB, whom he had obligingly invited to meet me, as I was this evening to be balloted for as candidate for admission into that distinguished society. Johnson had done me the honour to propose me, and Beauclerk was very zealous for me. Goldsmith being mentioned, JOHNSON: "It is amazing how little Goldsmith knows. He 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 piece: he imagines an heroic countenance. You 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. JOHNSON: "I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. While we surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said to him, 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS.'” † Johnson praised John Bunyan highly: "His Pilgrim's Progress' has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he had read Spenser." 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: "Why, Sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholic, I would not have his to be first, I think Milton's rather should have the precedence. I think 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 * Our name, perhaps, may be mixed with theirs.-OVID. de Art. Amand. i. iii. v. 13. + In allusion to Dr. Johnson's supposed political principles, and perhaps his own.-BOSWELL. Here is another instance of his high admiration of Milton as a poet, notwithstanding his just abhorence 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. 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. 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 nonsense. There was a poem called 'Eugenio,' which came out some years ago, and concludes thus: And now, ye trifling, self-assuming elves, Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves, Survey Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and be no more." Nay, Dryden, in his poem on the Royal Society, has these lines: • 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.t 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 Dr. Johnson's memory here was not perfectly accurate: Eugenio" does not conclude thus. There are cight 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, Stark full of pride, of folly, of-yourselves; Mr. Reed informs me that the Author of "Eugenio," Thomas Beech, a wine merchant, at Wrexham, in Den bighshire, soon after its publication, viz., 17th May, 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. + 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 unmarks on my work, observes on this passage-"Q. If not known gentleman to whom I am indebted for some reon the word, Fort! A vociferous French preacher said of Bourdaloue, Il prêche fort bien, et moi bien fort."" Menagiana. See also "Anecdotes Littéraires," Article Bourdaloue. But my ingenious and obliging correspon. dent, Mr. Abercrombie, of Philadelphia, has pointed out to me the following passage in "Menagiana; renders the preceding conjecture unnecessary, and confirms my original statement: which "Madame de Bourdonne, Chanoinesse de Remiremont, venoit d'entendre un discours plein de feu et d'esprit, mais fort peu solide, et très irregulier. Une de ces 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.' re pondit Madame de Bourdonne,que, je n'y ai pas vu de corps."" Menagiana, tome ii. p. 64. Amsterd. 1719 BOSWELL. 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 unscotchified 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." an authority at first usurped in times of ignorance, and established only by succession and by precedents. It is not a grant capriciously made from a higher tyrant to a lower. It is a right dearly purchased by the first possessors, and justly inherited by those that succeeded them. When Christianity was established in this island, a regular mode of public worship was prescribed. Public worship requires a public place; and the proprietors of lands, as they were converted, built churches for their families and their vassals. For the maintenance of ministers, they settled a certain portion of their lands; and a district through We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I introduced which each minister was required to extend his a question which has been much agitated in the care, was, by that circumscription, constituted a Church of Scotland, whether the claim of lay- parish. This is a position so generally received in patrons to present ministers to parishes be well England, that the extent of a manor and of a founded; and supposing it to be well founded, parish are regularly received for each other. The whether it ought to be exercised without the churches which the proprietors of lands had thus concurrence of the people? That Church is built and thus endowed, they justly thought themcomposed of a series of judicatures;-a Presby-selves entitled to provide with ministers; and tery; a Synod; and finally, a General Assembly; where the episcopal government prevails the before all of which, this matter may be con- Bishop has no power to reject a man nominated by tended and in some cases the Presbytery having the patron, but for some crime that might exclude refused to induct or settle, as they call it, the him from the priesthood. For the endowment of person presented by the patron, it has been found the church being the gift of the landlord, he was necessary to appeal to the General Assembly. consequently at liberty to give it according to his He said, I might see the subject well treated in choice, to any man capable of performing the "The Defence of Pluralities;" and although he holy offices. The people did not choose him bethought that a patron should exercise his right cause the people did not pay him. with tenderness to the inclinations of the people of a parish, he was very clear as to his right. Then supposing the question to be pleaded before the General Assembly, he dictated to me what follows: "Against the right of patrons is commonly opposed, by the inferior judicatures, the plea of conscience. Their conscience tells them, that the people ought to choose their pastor; their conscience tells them, that they ought not to impose upon a congregation a minister ungrateful and unacceptable to his auditors. Conscience is nothing more than a conviction felt by ourselves of something to be done, or something to be avoided; and in questions of simple unperplexed morality, conscience is very often a guide that may be trusted. But before conscience can determine, the state of the question is supposed to be completely known. In questions of law, or of fact, conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation, or historical inquiry. Opinion, which he that holds it may call his conscience, may teach some men that religion would be promoted, and quiet preserved by granting to the people universally the choice of their ministers. But it is a conscience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another. Religion cannot be promoted by injustice; and it was never yet found that a popular election was very quietly transacted. "That justice would be violated by transferring to the people the right of patronage, is apparent to all who know whence that right had its original. The right of patronage was not at first a privilege torn by power from unresisting poverty. It is not "We hear it sometimes urged that this original right is passed out of memory, and is obliterated and obscured by many translations of property and changes of government; that scarce any church is now in the hands of the heirs of the builders; and that the present persons have entered subsequently upon the pretended rights by a thousand accidental and unknown causes. Much of this, perhaps, is true. But how is the right of patronage extinguished? If the right followed the lands, it is possessed by the same equity by which the lands are possessed. It is, in effect, part of the manor, and protected by the same laws with every other privilege. Let us suppose an estate forfeited by treason, and granted by the Crown to a new family. With the lands were forfeited all the rights appendant to those lands; by the same power that grants the lands, the rights also are granted. The right lost by the patron falls not to the people, but is either retained by the Crown, or what to the people is the same thing, is by the Crown given away. Let it change hands ever so often, it is possessed by him that receives it with the same right as it was conveyed. It may, indeed, like all our possessions, be forcibly seized or fraudulently obtained: but no injury is still done to the people: for what they never had, they have never lost. Caius may usurp the right of Titius, but neither Caius nor Titius injures the people; and no man's conscience, however tender or however active, can prompt him to restore what may be proved to have never been taken away. Supposing, what I think cannot be proved, that a popular election of ministers were to be desired, our desires are not the measures of equity. It were to be desired that power should be only in the hands of the merciful, and riches in the possession of the generous; but the law must leave both riches and power where it finds them; and must often leave riches with the covetous, and power with the cruel. Convenience may be a rule in little things, where no other rule has been established. But as the great end of government is to give every man his own, no inconvenience is greater than that of making right uncertain. Nor is any man more an enemy to public peace, than he who fills weak heads with imaginary claims, and breaks the series of civil subordination, by inciting the lower classes of mankind to encroach upon the higher. "Having thus shown that the right of patronage, being originally purchased, may be legally transferred, and that it is now in the hands of lawful possessors, at least as certainly as any other right, -we have left to the advocates of the people no other plea than that of convenience. Let us, therefore, now consider what the people would really gain by a general abolition of the right of patronage. What is most to be desired by such a change is, that the country should be supplied with better ministers. But why should we suppose that the parish will make a wiser choice than the patron? If we suppose mankind actuated by interest, the patron is more likely to choose with caution, because he will suffer more by choosing wrong. By the deficiencies of his minister, or by his vices, he is equally offended with the rest of the congregation; but he will have this reason more to lament them, that they will be imputed to his absurdity or corruption. The qualifications of a minister are well known to be learning and piety. Of his learning the patron is probably the only judge in the parish, and of his piety not less a judge than others; and is more likely to inquire minutely and diligently before he gives a presentation, than one of the parochial rabble, who can give nothing but a vote. It may be urged, that though the parish might not choose better ministers, they would at least choose ministers whom they like better, and who therefore officiate with greater efficacy. That ignorance and perverseness should always obtain what they like, was never considered as the end of government; of which it is the great and standing benefit, that the wise see for the simple, and the regular act for the capricious. But that this argument supposes the people capable of judging, and resolute to act according to their best judgments, though this be sufficiently absurd, it is not all its absurdity. It supposes not only wisdom, but unanimity in those who, upon no other occasions, are unanimous or wise. If, by some strange concurrence all the voices of a parish should unite in the choice of any single man, though I could not charge the patron with injustice in presenting a minister, I should censure him as unkind and injudicious. But it is evident, that as in all other popular elections, there will be contrariety of judgment and acrimony of passion, a parish upon every vacancy would break into factions, and the contest for the choice of a minister would set neighbours at variance, and bring discord into families. The minister would be taught all the arts of a candidate, would flatter some, and bribe others; and the electors, as in all other cases, would call for holidays, and ale, and break the heads of each other during the jollity of the canvass. The time must, however, come at last, when one of the factions must pre vail, and one of the ministers get possession of the church. On what terms does he enter upon his ministry but those of enmity with half his parish? By what prudence or what diligence can he hope to conciliate the affections of that party by whose defeat he has obtained his living? Every man who voted against him will enter the church with hanging head and downcast eyes, afraid to encounter that neighbour by whose vote and influence he has been overpowered. He will hate his neighbour for opposing him, and his minister for having prospered by the opposition; and as he will never see him but with pain, he will never see him but with hatred. Of a minister presented by the patron the parish has seldom anything worse to say than that they do not know him. Of a minister chosen by a popular contest, all those who do not favour him have nursed up in their bosoms principles of hatred and reasons of rejection. Anger is excited principally by pride. The pride of a common man is very little exasperated by the supposed usurpation of an acknowledged superior. He bears only his little share of a general evil, and suffers in common with the whole parish; but when the contest is between equals, the defeat has many aggravations; and he that is defeated by his next neighbour is seldom satisfied without some revenge: and it is hard to say what bitterness of malignity would prevail in a parish where these elections should happen to be frequent, and the enmity of opposition should be rekindled before it had cooled." Though I present to my readers Dr. Johnson's masterly thoughts on the subject, I think it proper to declare that, notwithstanding I am myself a lay-patron, I do not entirely subscribe to his opinion. On Friday, May 7, I breakfasted with him at Mr. Thrale's, in the Borough. While we were alone, I endeavoured as well as I could to apologise for a lady who had been divorced from her husband by act of Parliament. I said that he had used her very ill, had behaved brutally to her, and that she could not continue to live with him without having her delicacy contaminated; that all affection for him was thus destroyed; that the essence of conjugal union being gone, there remained only a cold form, a mere civil obligation; that she was in the prime of life, with qualities to produce happiness; that these ought not to be lost: and that the gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justified; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check: "My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman's a whore, and there's an end on't." He described the father of one of his friends thus: "Sir, he was so exuberant a talker at public meetings, that the gentlemen of his county were afraid of him. No business could be done for his declamation." He did not give me full credit when I mentioned that I had carried on a short conversation by signs with some Esquimaux, who were then in London, particularly with one of them who was a priest. He thought I could not make them understand me. No man was more incredulous as to particular facts, which were at all extraordinary; and therefore no man was more scrupulously inquisitive, in order to discover the truth. I dined with him this day at the house of my friends, Messrs. Edward and Charles Dilly, booksellers in the Poultry: there were present, their elder brother, Mr. Dilly, of Bedfordshire, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Langton, Mr. Claxton, Reverend Dr. Mayo, a dissenting minister, the Reverend Mr. Toplady, and my friend the Reverend Mr. Temple. Hawkesworth's compilation of the voyages to the South Sea being mentioned:-JOHNSON: "Sir, if you talk of it as a subject of commerce, it will be gainful; if as a book that is to increase human knowledge, I believe there will not be much of that. Hawkesworth can tell only what the voyagers have told him; and they have found very little, only one new animal, I think." BOSWELL: "But many insects, Sir." JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, as to insects, Ray reckons of British insects twenty thousand species. They might have stayed at home and discovered enough in that way. in it, she will make a slighter nest and lay again." JOHNSON: Sir, that is because at first she has full time and makes her nest deliberately. In the case you mention she is pressed to lay, and must therefore make her nest quickly and consequently it will be slight." GOLDSMITH: "The nidification of birds is what is least known in natural history, though one of the most curious things in it." I introduced the subject of toleration. JOHNSON: "Every society has a right to preserve public peace and order, and therefore has a good right to prohibit the propagation of opinions which have a dangerous tendency. To say the magistrate has this right, is using an inadequate word; it is the society for which the magistrate is agent. He may be morally or theologically wrong in restraining the propagation of opinions which he thinks dangerous, but he is politically right." MAYO: "I am of opinion, Sir, that every man is entitled to liberty of conscience in religion; and that the magistrate cannot restrain_that right." JOHNSON: "Sir, I agree with you. Every man has a right to liberty of conscience, and with that the magistrate cannot interfere. People confound liberty of thinking with liberty of talking; nay, with liberty of preaching. Every man has a physical right to think as he pleases; for it can. Talking of birds, I mentioned Mr. Daines Bar- not be discovered how he thinks. He has not a rington's ingenious essay against the received moral right, for he ought to inform himself, and notion of their migration. JOHNSON: "I think think justly. But, Sir, no member of a society we have as good evidence for the migration of has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what woodcocks as can be desired. We find they dis- the society holds to be true. The magistrate, I appear at a certain time of the year, and appear say, may be wrong in what he thinks; but while again at a certain time of the year; and ome of he thinks himself right, he may and ought to them, when weary in their flight, have been enforce what he thinks." MAYO: "Then, Sir, known to alight on the rigging of ships far out at we are to remain always in error, and truth never One of the company observed, that there can prevail; and the magistrate was right in perhad been instances of some of them found in sum-secuting the first Christians." JOHNSON: "Sir, mer in Essex. JOHNSON: "Sir, that strengthens the only method by which religious truth can be our argument. Exceptio probat regulam. Some established is by martyrdom. The magistrate has being found, shows that, if all remained, many a right to enforce what he thinks; and he who is would be found. A few sick or lame ones may be conscious of the truth has a right to suffer. I am found." GOLDSMITH: "There is a partial migra- afraid there is no other way of ascertaining the tion of the swallows; the stronger ones migrate, truth but by persecution on the one hand and the others do not.' enduring it on the other." GOLDSMITH: "But how is a man to act, Sir? Though firmly convinced of the truth of his doctrine, may he not think it wrong to expose himself to persecution? Has he a right to do so? Is it not, as it were, committing voluntary suicide?" JOHNSON: "Sir, as to voluntary suicide, as you call it, there are twenty thousand men in an army, who will go without scruple to be shot at, and mount a breach for fivepence a day." GOLDSMITH: "But have they a moral right to do this?" JOHNSON: Nay, Sir, if you will not take the universal opinion of mankind, I have nothing to say. If mankind cannot defend their own way of thinking, I cannot defend it. Sir, if a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from Heaven." GOLDSMITH: "I would consider whether there is the greater chance of good or evil upon the whole. If I see a man who has fallen into a well, I would wish to help him out: but if there is a greater probability that he shall pull me in, than that I shall pull him out, I would not attempt it. So were I to go to Turkey, I sea." BOSWELL: "I am well assured that the people of Otaheite, who have the bread tree, the fruit of which serves them for bread, laughed heartily when they were informed of the tedious process necessary with us to have bread-ploughing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, threshing, grinding, baking." JOHNSON: Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when they are told of the advantages of civilised life. Were you to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon brick, and rafter upon rafter, and then after a house is raised to a certain height, a man tumbles off a scaffold, and breaks his neck; he would laugh heartily at our folly, in building; but it does not follow that men are better without houses. No, Sir (holding up a slice of a good loaf), this is better than the bread tree." He repeated an argument which is to be found in his "Rambler" against the notion that the brute creation is endowed with the faculty of reason: "Birds build by instinct; they never improve; they build their first nest as well as any one they ever build." GOLDSMITH: "Yet we see if you take away a bird's nest with the eggs ་ |