Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 - Boswell
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[344] It is the custom in Scotland for the judges of the Court of
Session to have the title of _lords_, from their estates; thus Mr.
Burnett is Lord _Monboddo_, as Mr. Home was Lord _Kames_. There is
something a little awkward in this; for they are denominated in deeds by
their _names_, with the addition of 'one of the Senators of the College
of Justice;' and subscribe their Christian and surnames, as _James
Burnett_, _Henry Home_, even in judicial acts. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p.
77, note 4.
[345] See _ante_, ii. 344, where Johnson says:--'A judge may be a
farmer, but he is not to geld his own pigs.'
[346]
'Not to admire is all the art I know
To make men happy and to keep them so.'
Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, Epistles, i. vi. 1.
[347] See _ante_, i. 461.
[348] See _ante_, iv. 152.
[349] See _ante_, iii. 322.
[350] In the _Gent. Mag._ for 1755, p. 42, among the deaths is entered
'Sir James Lowther, Bart., reckoned the richest commoner in Great
Britain, and worth above a million.' According to Lord Shelburne, Lord
Sunderland, who had been advised 'to nominate Lowther one of his
Treasury on account of his great property,' appointed him to call on
him. After waiting for some time he rang to ask whether he had come,
'The servants answered that nobody had called; upon his repeating the
inquiry they said that there was an old man, somewhat wet, sitting by
the fireside in the hall, who they supposed had some petition to deliver
to his lordship. When he went out it proved to be Sir James Lowther.
Lord Sunderland desired him to be sent about his business, saying that
no such mean fellow should sit at his Treasury.' Fitzmaurice's
_Shelburne_, i. 34.
[351] I do not know what was at this time the state of the parliamentary
interest of the ancient family of Lowther; a family before the Conquest;
but all the nation knows it to be very extensive at present. A due
mixture of severity and kindness, oeconomy and munificence,
characterises its present Representative. BOSWELL. Boswell, most
unhappily not clearly seeing where his own genius lay, too often sought
to obtain fame and position by the favour of some great man. For some
years he courted in a very gross manner 'the present Representative,'
the first Earl of Lonsdale, who treated him with great brutality.
_Letters of Boswell_, pp. 271, 294, 324, and _ante_, iv. May 15, 1783.
In the _Ann. Reg._ 1771, p. 56, it is shewn how by this bad man 'the
whole county of Cumberland was thrown into a state of the greatest
terror and confusion; four hundred ejectments were served in one day.'
Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto._ p. 418) says that 'he was more detested than any
man alive, as a shameless political sharper, a domestic bashaw, and an
intolerable tyrant over his tenants and dependants.' Lord Albemarle
(_Memoirs of Rockingham,_ ii. 70) describes the 'bad Lord Lonsdale. He
exacted a serf-like submission from his poor and abject dependants. He
professed a thorough contempt for modern refinements. Grass grew in the
neglected approaches to his mansion.... Awe and silence pervaded the
inhabitants [of Penrith] when the gloomy despot traversed their streets.
He might have been taken for a Judge Jefferies about to open a royal
commission to try them as state criminals... In some years of his life
he resisted the payment of all bills.' Among his creditors was
Wordsworth's father, 'who died leaving the poet and four other helpless
children. The executors of the will, foreseeing the result of a legal
contest with _a millionaire,_ withdrew opposition, trusting to Lord
Lonsdale's sense of justice for payment. They leaned on a broken reed,
the wealthy debtor "Died and made no sign."' [2 _Henry VI,_ act iii. sc.
3.] See De Quincey's _Works,_ iii. 151.
[352] 'Let us not,' he says, 'make too much haste to despise our
neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded
dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the
time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence.' _Works_, ix. 20.
[353] Note by Lord _Hailes_. 'The cathedral of Elgin was burnt by the
Lord of Badenoch, because the Bishop of Moray had pronounced an award
not to his liking. The indemnification that the see obtained was, that
the Lord of Badenoch stood for three days bare-footed at the great gate
of the cathedral. The story is in the Chartulary of Elgin.' BOSWELL. The
cathedral was rebuilt in 1407-20, but the lead was stripped from the
roof by the Regent Murray, and the building went to ruin. Murray's
_Handbook_, ed. 1867, p. 303. 'There is,' writes Johnson (_Works_, ix.
20), 'still extant in the books of the council an order ... directing
that the lead, which covers the two cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen,
shall be taken away, and converted into money for the support of the
army.... The two churches were stripped, and the lead was shipped to be
sold in Holland. I hope every reader will rejoice that this cargo of
sacrilege was lost at sea.' On this Horace Walpole remarks (_Letters_,
vii. 484):--'I confess I have not quite so heinous an idea of sacrilege
as Dr. Johnson. Of all kinds of robbery, that appears to me the lightest
species which injures nobody. Dr. Johnson is so pious that in his
journey to your country he flatters himself that all his readers will
join him in enjoying the destruction of two Dutch crews, who were
swallowed up by the ocean after they had robbed a church.'
[354] I am not sure whether the Duke was at home. But, not having the
honour of being much known to his grace, I could not have presumed to
enter his castle, though to introduce even so celebrated a stranger. We
were at any rate in a hurry to get forward to the wildness which we came
to see. Perhaps, if this noble family had still preserved that
sequestered magnificence which they maintained when catholicks,
corresponding with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, we might have been induced
to have procured proper letters of introduction, and devoted some time
to the contemplation of venerable superstitious state. BOSWELL. Burnet
(_History of his own Times_, ii. 443, and iii. 23) mentions the Duke of
Gordon, a papist, as holding Edinburgh Castle for James II. in 1689.
[355] 'In the way, we saw for the first time some houses with
fruit-trees about them. The improvements of the Scotch are for immediate
profit; they do not yet think it quite worth their while to plant what
will not produce something to be eaten or sold in a very little time.'
_Piozzi Letters_, i. 121.
[356] 'This was the first time, and except one the last, that I found
any reason to complain of a Scottish table.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 19.
[357] The following year Johnson told Hannah More that 'when he and
Boswell stopt a night at the spot (as they imagined) where the Weird
Sisters appeared to Macbeth, the idea so worked upon their enthusiasm,
that it quite deprived them of rest. However they learnt the next
morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were
quite in another part of the country' H. More's _Memoirs_, i. 50.
[358] See _ante_, p. 76.
[359] Murphy (_Life_, p. 145) says that 'his manner of reciting verses
was wonderfully impressive.' According to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 302),
'whoever once heard him repeat an ode of Horace would be long before
they could endure to hear it repeated by another.'
[360] Then pronounced _Affleck_, though now often pronounced as it is
written. Ante, ii. 413.
[361] At this stage of his journey Johnson recorded:--'There are more
beggars than I have ever seen in England; they beg, if not silently, yet
very modestly.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 122. See ante, p. 75, note 1.
[362] Duncan's monument; a huge column on the roadside near Fores, more
than twenty feet high, erected in commemoration of the final retreat of
the Danes from Scotland, and properly called Swene's Stone.
WALTER SCOTT.
[363] Swift wrote to Pope on May 31, 1737:--'Pray who is that Mr.
Glover, who writ the epick poem called _Leonidas_, which is reprinting
here, and has great vogue?' Swift's _Works_ (1803), xx. 121. 'It passed
through four editions in the first year of its publication (1737-8).'
Lowndes's _Bibl. Man_. p. 902. Horace Walpole, in 1742, mentions
_Leonidas_ Glover (_Letters_, i. 117); and in 1785 Hannah More writes
(_Memoirs_, i. 405):--'I was much amused with hearing old Leonidas
Glover sing his own fine ballad of _Hosier's Ghost_, which was very
affecting. He is past eighty [he was seventy-three]. Mr. Walpole coming
in just afterwards, I told him how highly I had been pleased. He begged
me to entreat for a repetition of it. It was the satire conveyed in this
little ballad upon the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole's ministry which is
thought to have been a remote cause of his resignation. It was a very
curious circumstance to see his son listening to the recital of it with
so much complacency.'
[364] See ante, i. 125.
[365] See _ante_, i. 456, and _post_, Sept. 22.
[366] See _ante_, ii. 82, and _post_, Oct. 27.
[367] 'Nairne is the boundary in this direction between the highlands
and lowlands; and until within a few years both English and Gaelic were
spoken here. One of James VI.'s witticisms was to boast that in Scotland
he had a town "sae lang that the folk at the tae end couldna understand
the tongue spoken at the tother."' Murray's _Handbook for Scotland_, ed.
1867, p. 308. 'Here,' writes Johnson (_Works_, ix. 21), 'I first saw
peat fires, and first heard the Erse language.' As he heard the girl
singing Erse, so Wordsworth thirty years later heard The
Solitary Reaper:--
'Yon solitary Highland Lass
Reaping and singing by herself.'
[368]
'Verse softens toil, however rude the sound;
She feels no biting pang the while she sings;
Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitude of things.'
_Contemplation._ London: Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall, and sold
by M. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster-Row, 1753.
The author's name is not on the title-page. In the _Brit. Mus. Cata._
the poem is entered under its title. Mr. Nichols (_Lit. Illus._ v. 183)
says that the author was the Rev. Richard Gifford [not Giffard] of
Balliol College, Oxford. He adds that 'Mr. Gifford mentioned to him with
much satisfaction the fact that Johnson quoted the poem in his
_Dictionary_.' It was there very likely that Boswell had seen the lines.
They are quoted under _wheel_ (with changes made perhaps intentionally
by Johnson), as follows:
'Verse sweetens care however rude the sound;
All at her work the village maiden sings;
Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.'
_Contemplation_, which was published two years after Gray's _Elegy_, was
suggested by it. The rising, not the parting day, is described. The
following verse precedes the one quoted by Johnson:--
'Ev'n from the straw-roofed cot the note of joy
Flows full and frequent, as the village-fair,
Whose little wants the busy hour employ,
Chanting some rural ditty soothes her care.'
Bacon, in his _Essay Of Vicissitude of Things_ (No. 58), says:--'It is
not good to look too long upon these turning _wheels of vicissitude_
lest we become _giddy_' This may have suggested Gifford's last two
lines. _Reflections on a Grave, &c._ (_ante_, ii. 26), published in
1766, and perhaps written in part by Johnson, has a line borrowed from
this poem:--
'These all the hapless state of mortals show
The sad vicissitude of things below.'
Cowper, _Table-Talk_, ed. 1786, i. 165, writes of
'The sweet vicissitudes of day and night.'
The following elegant version of these lines by Mr. A. T. Barton, Fellow
and Tutor of Johnson's own College, will please the classical reader:--
Musa levat duros, quamvis rudis ore, labores;
Inter opus cantat rustica Pyrrha suum;
Nec meminit, secura rotam dum versat euntem,
Non aliter nostris sortibus ire vices.
[369] He was the brother of the Rev. John M'Aulay (_post_, Oct. 25), the
grandfather of Lord Macaulay.
[370] See _ante_, ii. 51.
[371] In Scotland, there is a great deal of preparation before
administering the sacrament. The minister of the parish examines the
people as to their fitness, and to those of whom he approves gives
little pieces of tin, stamped with the name of the parish as _tokens_,
which they must produce before receiving it. This is a species of
priestly power, and sometimes may be abused. I remember a lawsuit
brought by a person against his parish minister, for refusing him
admission to that sacred ordinance. BOSWELL.
[372] See _ post_, Sept. 13 and 28.
[373] Mr. Trevelyan (_Life of Macaulay_, ed.1877, i. 6) says: 'Johnson
pronounced that Mr. Macaulay was not competent to have written the book
that went by his name; a decision which, to those who happen to have
read the work, will give a very poor notion my ancestor's abilities.'
[374]
'The thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman.'
_Macbeth_, act i. sc. 3.
[375] According to Murray's _Handbook,_ ed. 1867, p. 308, no part of the
castle is older than the fifteenth century.
[376] See _post_, Nov. 5.
[377] The historian. _Ante_, p. 41.
[378] See _ante_, iii. 336, and _post_, Nov. 7.
[379] See _post_, Oct. 27.
[380] Baretti was the Italian. Boswell disliked him (_ante_, ii. 98
note), and perhaps therefore described him merely as 'a man of _some_
literature.' Baretti complained to Malone that 'the story as told gave
an unfair representation of him.' He had, he said, 'observed to Johnson
that the petition _lead us not into temptation_ ought rather to be
addressed to the tempter of mankind than a benevolent Creator. "Pray,
Sir," said Johnson, "do you know who was the author of the Lord's
Prayer?" Baretti, who did not wish to get into any serious dispute and
who appears to be an Infidel, by way of putting an end to the
conversation, only replied:--"Oh, Sir, you know by _our_ religion (Roman
Catholic) we are not permitted to read the Scriptures. You can't
therefore expect an answer."' Prior's _Malone_, p. 399. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, on hearing this from Malone, said:--'This turn which Baretti
now gives to the matter was an after-thought; for he once said to me
myself:--"There are various opinions about the writer of that prayer;
some give it to St. Augustine, some to St. Chrysostom, &c. What is your
opinion? "' _Ib_. p. 394. Mrs. Piozzi says that she heard 'Baretti tell
a clergyman the story of Dives and Lazarus as the subject of a poem he
once had composed in the Milanese district, expecting great credit for
his powers of invention.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 348.
[381] Goldsmith (_Present Slate of Polite Learning_, chap. 13) thus
wrote of servitorships: 'Surely pride itself has dictated to the fellows
of our colleges the absurd passion of being attended at meals, and on
other public occasions, by those poor men who, willing to be scholars,
come in upon some charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction for
men to be at once learning the _liberal_ arts, and at the same time
treated as _slaves_; at once studying freedom and practising servitude.'
Yet a young man like Whitefield was willing enough to be a servitor. He
had been a waiter in his mother's inn; he was now a waiter in a college,
but a student also. See my _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his
Critics_, p. 27.
[382] Dr. Johnson did not neglect what he had undertaken. By his
interest with the Rev. Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke College, Oxford,
where he was educated for some time, he obtained a servitorship for
young M'Aulay. But it seems he had other views; and I believe went
abroad. BOSWELL. See _ante_, ii. 380.
[383] 'I once drank tea,' writes Lamb, 'in company with two Methodist
divines of different persuasions. Before the first cup was handed round,
one of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due
solemnity, whether he chose to _say anything_. It seems it is the custom
with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. His
reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an
explanation, with little less importance he made answer that it was not
a custom known in his church.' _Essay on Grace before Meat_.
[384] He could not bear to have it thought that, in any instance
whatever, the Scots are more pious than the English. I think grace as
proper at breakfast as at any other meal. It is the pleasantest meal we
have. Dr. Johnson has allowed the peculiar merit of breakfast in
Scotland. BOSWELL. 'If an epicure could remove by a wish in quest of
sensual gratification, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in
Scotland.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 52.
[385] Bruce, the Abyssinian Traveller, found in the annals of that
region a king named _Brus_, which he chooses to consider the genuine
orthography of the name. This circumstance occasioned some mirth at the
court of Gondar. WALTER SCOTT.
[386] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2, and _post_, Sept. 2. Johnson, so far
as I have observed, spelt the name _Boswel_.
[387] Sir Eyre Coote was born in 1726. He took part in the battle of
Plassey in 1757, and commanded at the reduction of Pondicherry in 1761.
In 1770-71 he went by land to Europe. In 1780 he took command of the
English army against Hyder Ali, whom he repeatedly defeated. He died in
1783. Chalmers's _Biog. Dict_. x. 236. There is a fine description of
him in Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, iii. 385.
[388] See _ante_, iii. 361.
[389] Reynolds wrote of Johnson:--'He sometimes, it must be confessed,
covered his ignorance by generals rather than appear ignorant' Taylor's
_Reynolds_, ii. 457.
[390] 'The barracks are very handsome, and form several regular and good
streets.' Pennant's _Tour_, p. 144.
[391] See _ante_, p. 45.
[392] Here Dr. Johnson gave us part of a conversation held between a
Great Personage and him, in the library at the Queen's Palace, in the
course of which this contest was considered. I have been at great pains
to get that conversation as perfectly preserved as possible. It may
perhaps at some future time be given to the publick. BOSWELL. For 'a
Great Personage' see _ante_, i. 219; and for the conversation, ii. 33.
[393] See _ante_, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 4 and June 15, 1784.
[394] See _ante_, i. 167, note 1.
[395] Booth acted _Cato_, and Wilks Juba when Addison's _Cato_ was
brought out. Pope told Spence that 'Lord Bolingbroke's carrying his
friends to the house, and presenting Booth with a purse of guineas for
so well representing the character of a person "who rather chose to die
than see a general for life," carried the success of the play much
beyond what they ever expected.' Spence's _Anec_. p. 46. Bolingbroke
alluded to the Duke of Marlborough. Pope in his _Imitations of Horace_,
2 Epist. i. 123 introduces 'well-mouth'd Booth.'
[396] See _ante_, iii. 35, and under Sept. 30, 1783.
[397] 'Garrick used to tell, that Johnson said of an actor who played
Sir Harry Wildair at Lichfield, "There is a courtly vivacity about the
fellow;" when, in fact, according to Garrick's account, "he was the most
vulgar ruffian that ever went upon _boards_."' _Ante_, ii. 465.
[398] Mrs. Cibber was the sister of Dr. Arne the musical composer, and
the wife of Theophilus Cibber, Colley Cibber's son. She died in 1766,
and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Baker's _Biog.
Dram._ i. 123.
[399] See _ante_, under Sept. 30, 1783.
[400] See _ante_, i. 197, and ii. 348.
[401] Johnson had set him to repeat the ninth commandment, and had with
great glee put him right in the emphasis. _Ante_, i. 168.
[402] Act iii. sc. 2.
[403] Boswell's suggestion is explained by the following passage in
Johnson's _Works_, viii. 463:--'Mallet was by his original one of the
Macgregors, a clan that became about sixty years ago, under the conduct
of Robin Roy, so formidable and so infamous for violence and robbery,
that the name was annulled by a legal abolition.'
[404] See _ante_, iii. 410, where he said to an Irish gentleman:--'Do
not make an union with us, Sir. We should unite with you, only to rob
you. We should have robbed the Scotch, if they had had anything of which
we could have robbed them.'
[405] It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson read this gentle remonstrance,
and took no notice of it to me. BOSWELL. See _post_, Oct. 12, note.
[406] _St. Matthew_, v. 44.
[407] It is odd that Boswell did not suspect the parson, who, no doubt,
had learnt the evening before from Mr. Keith that the two travellers
would be present at his sermon. Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, ii. 283)
says that one day at Sir Joshua's dinner-table, when his host praised
Malone very highly for his laborious edition of _Shakespeare_, he
(Northcote) 'rather hastily replied, "What a very despicable creature
must that man be who thus devotes himself, and makes another man his
god;" when Boswell, who sat at my elbow, and was not in my thoughts at
the time, cried out "Oh! Sir Joshua, then that is me!"'
[408] Johnson (_Works_, ix. 23) more cautiously says:--'Here is a
castle, called the castle of Macbeth.'
[409] 'This short dialogue between Duncan and Banquo, whilst they are
approaching the gates of Macbeth's castle, has always appeared to me a
striking instance of what in painting is termed _repose_. Their
conversation very naturally turns upon the beauty of its situation, and
the pleasantness of the air; and Banquo, observing the martlet's nests
in every recess of the cornice, remarks that where those birds most
breed and haunt the air is delicate. The subject of this quiet and easy
conversation gives that repose so necessary to the mind after the
tumultuous bustle of the preceding scenes, and perfectly contrasts the
scene of horror that immediately succeeds. It seems as if Shakespeare
asked himself, what is a prince likely to say to his attendants on such
an occasion? whereas the modern writers seem, on the contrary, to be
always searching for new thoughts, such as would never occur to men in
the situation which is represented. This also is frequently the practice
of Homer, who from the midst of battles and horrors relieves and
refreshes the mind of the reader by introducing some quiet rural image,
or picture of familiar domestick life.' Johnson's _Shakespeare_.
Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 144-151) quotes other notes
by Reynolds.
[410] In the original _senses_. Act i, sc. 6.
[411] Act i. sc. 5.
[412] Boswell forgets _scoundrelism_, _ante_, p. 106, which, I suppose,
Johnson coined.
[413] See _ante_, ii. 154, note 3. Peter Paragraph is one of the
characters in Foote's Comedy of _The Orators_.
[414] When upon the subject of this _peregrinity_, he told me some
particulars concerning the compilation of his _Dictionary_, and
concerning his throwing off Lord Chesterfield's patronage, of which very
erroneous accounts have been circulated. These particulars, with others
which he afterwards gave me,--as also his celebrated letter to Lord
Chesterfield, which he dictated to me,--I reserve for his _Life._
BOSWELL. See _ante,_ i. 221, 261.
[415] See _ante,_ ii. 326, 371, and v. 18.
[416] It is the third edition, published in 1778, that first bears this
title. The first edition was published in 1761, and the second in 1762.
[417] 'One of them was a man of great liveliness and activity, of whom
his companion said that he would tire any horse in Inverness. Both of
them were civil and ready-handed Civility seems part of the national
character of Highlanders.' _Works,_ ix. 25.
[418] 'The way was very pleasant; the rock out of which the road was cut
was covered with birch trees, fern, and heath. The lake below was
beating its bank by a gentle wind.... In one part of the way we had
trees on both sides for perhaps half a mile. Such a length of shade,
perhaps, Scotland cannot shew in any other place.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.
123. The travellers must have passed close by the cottage where James
Mackintosh was living, a child of seven.
[419] Boswell refers, I think, to a passage in act iv. sc. I of
Farquhar's Comedy, where Archer says to Mrs. Sullen:--'I can't at this
distance, Madam, distinguish the figures of the embroidery.' This
passage is copied by Goldsmith in _She Stoops to Conquer_, act iii.,
where Marlow says to Miss Hardcastle: 'Odso! then you must shew me your
embroidery.'
[420] Johnson (_Works_, ix. 28) gives a long account of this woman.
'Meal she considered as expensive food, and told us that in spring, when
the goats gave milk, the children could live without it.'
[421] It is very odd, that when these roads were made, there was no care
taken for _Inns_. The _King's House_, and the _General's Hut_, are
miserable places; but the project and plans were purely military. WALTER
SCOTT. Johnson found good entertainment here, 'We had eggs and bacon and
mutton, with wine, rum, and whisky. I had water.' _Piozzi Letters_,
i. 124.
[422] 'Mr. Boswell, who between his father's merit and his own is sure
of reception wherever he comes, sent a servant before,' &c. Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 30.