Life of Johnson, Volume 4 · Chapter 39Footnotes: (7)
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[507] On the same day he wrote to Dr. Taylor:-'This, my dear Sir, is the last day of a very sickly and melancholy year. Join your prayers with mine, that the next may be more happy to us both. I hope the happiness which I have not found in this world will by infinite mercy be granted in another.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462.
[508] 'Jan. 4, 1783. Dr. Johnson came so very late that we had all given him up; he was very ill, and only from an extreme of kindness did he come at all. When I went up to him to tell how sorry I was to find him so unwell, "Ah," he cried, taking my hand and kissing it, "who shall ail anything when Cecilia is so near? Yet you do not think how poorly I am."
All dinner time he hardly opened his mouth but to repeat to me:—"Ah! you little know how ill I am." He was excessively kind to me in spite of all his pain.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 228. Cecilia was the name of her second novel (post, May 26, 1783). On Jan. 10 he thus ended a letter to Mr. Nichols:—'Now I will put you in a way of shewing me more kindness. I have been confined by ilness (sic) a long time, and sickness and solitude make tedious evenings. Come sometimes and see, Sir,
'Your humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
MS. in the British Museum.
[509] 'Dr. Johnson found here [at Auchinleck] Baxter's Anacreon, which he told me he had long inquired for in vain, and began to suspect there was no such book.' Boswell's Hebrides, Nov.2. See post, under Sept. 29, 1783.
[510] 'The delight which men have in popularity, fame, honour, submission, and subjection of other men's minds, wills, or affections, although these things may be desired for other ends, seemeth to be a thing in itself, without contemplation of consequence, grateful and agreeable to the nature of man.' Bacon's Nat. Hist. Exper. No. 1000. See ante, ii. 178.
[511] In a letter to Dr. Taylor on Jan. 21 of this year, he attacked the scheme of equal representation.' Pitt, on May 7, 1782, made his first reform motion. Johnson thus ended his letter:—'If the scheme were more reasonable, this is not a time for innovation. I am afraid of a civil war. The business of every wise man seems to be now to keep his ground.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 481.
[512] See ante, i. 429, post, 170, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept.
30.
[513] The year after this conversation the General Election of 1784 was held, which followed on the overthrow of the Coalition Ministry and the formation of the Pitt Ministry in December, 1783. The 'King's friends' were in a minority of one in the last great division in the old Parliament; in the motion on the Address in the new Parliament they had a majority of 168. Parl. Hist. xxiv. 744, 843. Miss Burney, writing in Nov. 1788, when the King was mad, says that one of his physicians 'moved me even to tears by telling me that none of their own lives would be safe if the King did not recover, so prodigiously high ran the tide of affection and loyalty. All the physicians received threatening letters daily, to answer for the safety of their monarch with their lives! Sir G. Baker had already been stopped in his carriage by the mob, to give an account of the King; and when he said it was a bad one, they had furiously exclaimed, "The more shame for you."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, iv. 336. Describing in 1789 a Royal tour in the West of England, she writes of 'the crowds, the rejoicings, the hallooing and singing, and garlanding and decorating of all the inhabitants of this old city [Exeter], and of all the country through which we passed.' Ib. v. 48.
[514] Miss Palmer, Sir Joshua's niece, 'heard Dr. Johnson repeat these verses with the tears falling over his cheek.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 417.
[515] Gibbon remarked that 'Mr. Fox was certainly very shy of saying anything in Johnson's presence.' Ante, iii. 267. See post, under June 9, 1784, where Johnson said 'Fox is my friend.'
[516] Mr. Greville (Journal, ed. 1874, ii. 316) records the following on the authority of Lord Holland:—'Johnson liked Fox because he defended his pension, and said it was only to blame in not being large enough. "Fox," he said, is a liberal man; he would always be aut Caesar aut nullus; whenever I have seen him he has been nullus. Lord Holland said Fox made it a rule never to talk in Johnson's presence, because he knew all his conversations were recorded for publication, and he did not choose to figure in them.' Fox could not have known what was not the fact. When Boswell was by, he had reason for his silence; but otherwise he might have spoken out. 'Mr. Fox,' writes Mackintosh (Life, i. 322) 'united, in a most remarkable degree, the seemingly repugnant characters of the mildest of men and the most vehement of orators. In private life he was so averse from parade and dogmatism as to be somewhat inactive in conversation.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 283) tells how Fox spent a day with him at Lausanne:—'Perhaps it never can happen again, that I should enjoy him as I did that day, alone from ten in the morning till ten at night. Our conversation never flagged a moment.' 'In London mixed society,' said Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 74), 'Fox conversed little; but at his own house in the country, with his intimate friends, he would talk on for ever, with all the openness and simplicity of a child.'
[517] Sec ante, ii. 450.
[518] Most likely 'Old Mr. Sheridan.'
[519] See ante, ii. 166.
[520] Were I to insert all the stories which have been told of contests boldly maintained with him, imaginary victories obtained over him, of reducing him to silence, and of making him own that his antagonist had the better of him in argument, my volumes would swell to an immoderate size. One instance, I find, has circulated both in conversation and in print; that when he would not allow the Scotch writers to have merit, the late Dr. Rose, of Chiswick, asserted, that he could name one Scotch writer, whom Dr. Johnson himself would allow to have written better than any man of the age; and upon Johnson's asking who it was, answered, 'Lord Bute, when he signed the warrant for your pension.' Upon which Johnson, struck with the repartee, acknowledged that this was true. When I mentioned it to Johnson, 'Sir, (said he,) if Rose said this, I never heard it.' BOSWELL.
[521] This reflection was very natural in a man of a good heart, who was not conscious of any ill-will to mankind, though the sharp sayings which were sometimes produced by his discrimination and vivacity, which he perhaps did not recollect, were, I am afraid, too often remembered with resentment. BOSWELL. When, three months later on, he was struck with palsy, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'I have in this still scene of life great comfort in reflecting that I have given very few reason to hate me. I hope scarcely any man has known me closely but for his benefit, or cursorily but to his innocent entertainment. Tell me, you that know me best, whether this be true, that according to your answer I may continue my practice, or try to mend it.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 287. See post, May 19, 1784. Passages such as the two following might have shewn him why he had enemies. 'For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent; severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate.' Bacon's Essays, No. xi. ''Tis possible that men may be as oppressive by their parts as their power.' The Government of the Tongue, sect. vii. See ante, i. 388, note 2.
[522] 'A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' Ante, i. 294. Stockdale records (Memoirs, ii. 191) that he heard a Scotch lady, after quoting this definition, say to Johnson, 'I can assure you that in Scotland we give oats to our horses as well as you do to yours in England.' He replied:—'I am very glad, Madam, to find that you treat your horses as well as you treat yourselves.'
[523] Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote:—'The prejudices he had to countries did not extend to individuals. The chief prejudice in which he indulged himself was against Scotland, though he had the most cordial friendship with individuals. This he used to vindicate as a duty. ... Against the Irish he entertained no prejudice; he thought they united themselves very well with us; but the Scotch, when in England, united and made a party by employing only Scotch servants and Scotch tradesmen. He held it right for Englishmen to oppose a party against them.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 460. See ante, ii. 242, 306, and Boswell's Hebrides, post, v. 20.
[524] Ante, ii. 300.
[525] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 85) says that 'Dr. Johnson, commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, kept his numerous family in Fleet-street upon a settled allowance; but returned to them every Saturday to give them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us on the Monday night.'
[526] Lord North's Ministry lasted from 1770, to March, 1782. It was followed by the Rockingham Ministry, and the Shelburne Ministry, which in its turn was at this very time giving way to the Coalition Ministry, to be followed very soon by the Pitt Ministry.
[527] I have, in my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides [p. 200, Sept. 13], fully expressed my sentiments upon this subject. The Revolution was necessary, but not a subject for glory; because it for a long time blasted the generous feelings of Loyalty. And now, when by the benignant effect of time the present Royal Family are established in our affections, how unwise it is to revive by celebrations the memory of a shock, which it would surely have been better that our constitution had not required. BOSWELL. See ante, iii. 3, and iv. 40, note 4.
[528] Johnson reviewed this book in 1756. Ante, i. 309.
[529] Johnson, four months later, wrote to one of Mrs. Thrale's daughters:—'Never think, my sweet, that you have arithmetick enough; when you have exhausted your master, buy books. ... A thousand stories which the ignorant tell and believe die away at once when the computist takes them in his gripe.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 296. See post, April 18, 1783.
[530] See ante, p. 116; also iii. 310, where he bore the same topic impatiently when with Dr. Scott.
[531] See ante, ii. 357.
[532]
[533] He was perhaps, thinking of Markland. Ante, p. 161, note 3.
[534] 'Dr. Johnson,' writes Mrs. Piozzi, 'was no complainer of ill-usage. I never heard him even lament the disregard shown to Irene.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 386. See ante, i. 200.
[535] Letter to the People of Scotland against the attempt to diminish the number of the Lords of Session, 1785. BOSWELL. 'By Mr. Burke's removal from office the King's administration was deprived of the assistance of that affluent mind, which is so universally rich that, as long as British literature and British politicks shall endure, it will be said of Edmund Burke, Regum equabat [sic] opes animis.' p.71.
[536] Georgics, iv. 132.
[537] See ante, iii. 56, note 2.
[538] Very likely Boswell.
[539] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22.
[540] Johnson had said:—'Lord Chesterfield is the proudest man this day existing.' Ante, i. 265.
[541] Lord Shelburne. At this time he was merely holding office till a new Ministry was formed. On April 5 he was succeeded by the Duke of Portland. His 'coarse manners' were due to a neglected childhood. In the fragment of his Autobiography he describes 'the domestic brutality and ill-usage he experienced at home,' in the South of Ireland. 'It cost me,' he continues, 'more to unlearn the habits, manners, and principles which I then imbibed, than would have served to qualify me for any rôle whatever through life.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 12, 16.
[542] Bentham, it is reported, said of of him that 'alone of his own time, he was a "Minister who did not fear the people."' Ib. iii. 572.
[543] Malagrida, a Jesuit, was put to death at Lisbon in 1761, nominally on a charge of heresy, but in reality on a suspicion of his having sanctioned, as confessor to one of the conspirators, an attempt to assassinate King Joseph of Portugal. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XV, ch. xxxviii. 'His name,' writes Wraxall (Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 67), 'is become proverbial among us to express duplicity.' It was first applied to Lord Shelburne in a squib attributed to Wilkes, which contained a vision of a masquerade. The writer, after describing him as masquerading as 'the heir apparent of Loyola and all the College,' continues:—'A little more of the devil, my Lord, if you please, about the eyebrows; that's enough, a perfect Malagrida, I protest.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, ii. 164. 'George III. habitually spoke of Shelburne as "Malagrida," and the "Jesuit of Berkeley Square."' Ib. iii. 8. The charge of duplicity was first made against Shelburne on the retirement of Fox (the first Lord Holland) in 1763. 'It was the tradition of Holland House that Bute justified the conduct of Shelburne, by telling Fox that it was "a pious fraud." "I can see the fraud plainly enough," is said to have been Fox's retort, "but where is the piety?"' Ib. i. 226. Any one who has examined Reynolds's picture of Shelburne, especially 'about the eyebrows,' at once sees how the name of Jesuit was given.
[544] Beauclerk wrote to Lord Charlemont on Nov. 20, 1773:-'Goldsmith the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers in praise of Lord Mayor Townshend. [Shelburne supported Townshend in opposition to Wilkes in the election of the Lord Mayor. Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, ii. 287.] The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne at Drury Lane. I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him; he said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. "Do you know," answered Goldsmith, "that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man." You see plainly what he meant to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. Mr. Walpole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life.' Life of Charlemont, i. 344.
[545] Most likely Reynolds, who introduced Crabbe to Johnson. Crabbe's Works, ed. 1834, ii. 11.
[546]
See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 6.
[547] I shall give an instance, marking the original by Roman, and Johnson's substitution in Italick characters:—
Here we find Johnson's poetical and critical powers undiminished. I must, however, observe, that the aids he gave to this poem, as to The Traveller and Deserted Village of Goldsmith, were so small as by no means to impair the distinguished merit of the authour. BOSWELL.
[548] In the Gent. Mag. 1763, pp. 602, 633, is a review of his Observations on Diseases of the Army. He says that the register of deaths of military men proves that more than eight times as many men fall by what was called the gaol fever as by battle. His suggestions are eminently wise. Lord Seaford, in 1835, told Leslie 'that he remembered dining in company with Dr. Johnson at Dr. Brocklesby's, when he was a boy of twelve or thirteen. He was impressed with the superiority of Johnson, and his knocking everybody down in argument.' C.R. Leslie's Recollections, i. 146.
[549] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 28.
[550] See ante, i. 433, and ii. 217, 358.
[551] "In his Life of Swift (Works, viii. 205) he thus speaks of this Journal:-'In the midst of his power and his politicks, he kept a journal of his visits, his walks, his interviews with ministers, and quarrels with his servant, and transmitted it to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, to whom he knew that whatever befell him was interesting, and no accounts could be too minute. Whether these diurnal trifles were properly exposed to eyes which had never received any pleasure from the presence of the dean, may be reasonably doubted: they have, however, some odd attraction: the reader, finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to consider as important, goes on in hope of information; and, as there is nothing to fatigue attention, if he is disappointed, he can hardly complain.'"
[552] On his fifty-fifth birthday he recorded:—'I resolve to keep a journal both of employment and of expenses. To keep accounts.' Pr. and Med. 59. See post, Aug. 25, 1784, where he writes to Langton:—'I am a little angry at you for not keeping minutes of your own acceptum et expensum, and think a little time might be spared from Aristophanes for the res familiares.'
[553] This Mr. Chalmers thought was George Steevens. CROKER. D'Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, vi. 76) describes Steevens as guilty of 'an unparalleled series of arch deception and malicious ingenuity.' He gives curious instances of his literary impostures. See ante, iii. 281, and post, May 15, 1784.
[554] If this be Lord Mansfield, Boswell must use late in the sense of in retirement; for Mansfield was living when the Life of Johnson was published. He retired in 1788. Johnson in 1772, said that he had never been in his company (ante, ii. 158). The fact that Mansfield is mentioned in the previous paragraph adds to the probability that he is meant.
[555] See ante, ii. 318.
[556] In Scotland, Johnson spoke of Mansfield's 'splendid talents.' Boswell's Hebrides, under Nov. 11.
[557] 'I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.' 2 Henry IV, act i. sc. 2.
[558] Knowing as well as I do what precision and elegance of oratory his Lordship can display, I cannot but suspect that his unfavourable appearance in a social circle, which drew such animadversions upon him, must be owing to a cold affectation of consequence, from being reserved and stiff. If it be so, and he might be an agreeable man if he would, we cannot be sorry that he misses his aim. BOSWELL. Wedderburne, afterwards Lord Loughborough, is mentioned (ante, ii. 374), and again in Murphy's Life of Johnson, p. 43, as being in company with Johnson and Foote. Boswell also has before (ante, i. 387) praised the elegance of his oratory. Henry Mackenzie (Life of John Home, i. 56) says that Wedderburne belonged to a club at the British Coffee-house, of which Garrick, Smollett, and Dr. Douglas were members.
[559] Boswell informed the people of Scotland in the Letter that he addressed to them in 1785 (p. 29), that 'now that Dr. Johnson is gone to a better world, he (Boswell) bowed the intellectual knee to Lord Thurlow.' See post, June 22, 1784.
[560] Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 27.
[561]
[562] He had published a series of seventy Essays under the title of The Hypochondriack in the London Magazine from 1777 to 1783.
[563] Juvenal, Satires, x. 365. The common reading, however, is 'Nullum numen habes,' &c. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 218) records this saying, but with a variation. '"For," says Mr. Johnson, "though I do not quite agree with the proverb, that Nullum numen adest si sit prudentia, yet we may very well say, that Nullum numen adest, ni sit prudentia."'
[564] It has since appeared. BOSWELL.
[565] Miss Burney mentions meeting Dr. Harington at Bath in 1780. 'It is his son,' she writes, 'who published those very curious remains of his ancestor [Sir John Harington] under the title Nugae Antiquae which my father and all of us were formerly so fond of.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 341.
[566]
[567]
[568] He would not have been a troublesome patient anywhere, for, according to Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 275),'he required less attendance, sick or well, than ever I saw any human creature.'
[569] 'That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the mind grows old with the body; and that he whom we are now forced to confess superiour is hastening daily to a level with ourselves.' Johnson's Works, vii. 212.
[570] With the following elucidation of the saying-Quos Deus (it should rather be-Quem Jupiter) vult perdere, prius dementat-Mr. Boswell was furnished by Mr. Pitts:—'Perhaps no scrap of Latin whatever has been more quoted than this. It occasionally falls even from those who are scrupulous even to pedantry in their Latinity, and will not admit a word into their compositions, which has not the sanction of the first age. The word demento is of no authority, either as a verb active or neuter.—After a long search for the purpose of deciding a bet, some gentlemen of Cambridge found it among the fragments of Euripides, in what edition I do not recollect, where it is given as a translation of a Greek Iambick: [Greek: Ou Theos thelei apolesoi' apophreuai.]
'The above scrap was found in the hand-writing of a suicide of fashion, Sir D. O., some years ago, lying on the table of the room where he had destroyed himself. The suicide was a man of classical acquirements: he left no other paper behind him.'
Another of these proverbial sayings,
I, in a note on a passage in The Merchant of Venice [act iii. sc. 5], traced to its source. It occurs (with a slight variation) in the Alexandreis of Philip Gualtier (a poet of the thirteenth century), which was printed at Lyons in 1558. Darius is the person addressed:—
A line not less frequently quoted was suggested for enquiry in a note on The Rape of Lucrece:—
Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris—:
But the author of this verse has not, I believe, been discovered. MALONE. The 'Greek lambick' in the above note is not Greek. To a learned friend I owe the following note. 'The Quem Jupiter vult perdere, &c., is said to be a translation of a fragment of Euripides by Joshua Barnes. There is, I believe, no such fragment at all. In Barnes's Euripides, Cantab. 1694, fol. p. 515, is a fragment of Euripides with a note which may explain the muddle of Boswell's correspondent:—
"[Greek: otau de daimonn handri porsunae kaka ton noun heblapse proton,]"
on which Barnes writes:—"Tale quid in Franciados nostrae [probably his uncompleted poem on Edward III.] l. 3. Certe ille deorum Arbiter ultricem cum vult extendere dextram Dementat prius."' See ante, ii. 445, note 1. Sir D. O. is, perhaps, Sir D'Anvers Osborne, whose death is recorded in the Gent. Mag. 1753, p. 591. 'Sir D'Anvers Osborne, Bart., Governor of New York, soon after his arrival there; in his garden.' Solamen miseris, &c., is imitated by Swift in his Verses on Stella's Birthday, 1726-7:—
Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xi. 22. The note on Lucrece was, I conjecture, on line 1111:—
'Grief best is pleased with grief's society.'
[571]
Baptistae Mantuani Carmelitae Adolescentia, seu Bucolica. Ecloga I, published in 1498. 'Scaliger,' says Johnson (Works, viii. 391), 'complained that Mantuan's Bucolicks were received into schools, and taught as classical. ... He was read, at least in some of the inferiour schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present [eighteenth] century.'
[572] See ante, i. 368.
[573] See ante, i. 396.
[574] I am happy, however, to mention a pleasing instance of his enduring with great gentleness to hear one of his most striking particularities pointed out:—Miss Hunter, a niece of his friend Christopher Smart, when a very young girl, struck by his extraordinary motions, said to him, 'Pray, Dr. Johnson, why do you make such strange gestures?' 'From bad habit,' he replied. 'Do you, my dear, take care to guard against bad habits.' This I was told by the young lady's brother at Margate. BOSWELL. Boswell had himself told Johnson of some of them, at least in writing. Johnson read in manuscript his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Boswell says in a note on Oct. 12:—'It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying anything on the subject, which I hoped he would have done.'
[575] See ante, ii. 42, note 2, and iii. 324.
[576] Johnson, after stating that some of Milton's manuscripts prove that 'in the early part of his life he wrote with much care,' continues:—'Such reliques show how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.' Works, vii. 119. Lord Chesterfield (Letters, iii. 146) had made the same rule as Johnson:—'I was,' he writes, 'early convinced of the importance and powers of eloquence; and from that moment I applied myself to it. I resolved not to utter one word even in common conversation that should not be the most expressive and the most elegant that the language could supply me with for that purpose; by which means I have acquired such a certain degree of habitual eloquence, that I must now really take some pains if I would express myself very inelegantly.'
[577] 'Dr. Johnson,' wrote Malone in 1783, 'is as correct and elegant in his common conversation as in his writings. He never seems to study either for thoughts or words. When first introduced I was very young; yet he was as accurate in his conversation as if he had been talking to the first scholar in England.' Prior's Malone, p. 92. See post, under Aug. 29, 1783.
[578] See ante, iii. 216.
[579] See ante, ii. 323.
[580] The justness of this remark is confirmed by the following story, for which I am indebted to Lord Eliot:—A country parson, who was remarkable for quoting scraps of Latin in his sermons, having died, one of his parishioners was asked how he liked his successor. 'He is a very good preacher,' was his answer, 'but no latiner.' BOSWELL. For the original of Lord Eliot's story see Twells's Life of Dr. E. Pocock, ed. 1816, p. 94. Reynolds said that 'Johnson always practised on every occasion the rule of speaking his best, whether the person to whom he addressed himself was or was not capable of comprehending him. "If," says he, "I am understood, my labour is not lost. If it is above their comprehension, there is some gratification, though it is the admiration of ignorance;" and he said those were the most sincere admirers; and quoted Baxter, who made a rule never to preach a sermon without saying something which he knew was beyond the comprehension of his audience, in order to inspire their admiration.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 456. Addison, in The Spectator, No. 221, tells of a preacher in a country town who outshone a more ignorant rival, by quoting every now and then a Latin sentence from one of the Fathers. 'The other finding his congregation mouldering every Sunday, and hearing at length what was the occasion of it, resolved to give his parish a little Latin in his turn; but being unacquainted with any of the Fathers, he digested into his sermons the whole book of Quae Genus, adding, however, such explications to it as he thought might be for the benefit of his people. He afterwards entered upon As in praesenti, which he converted in the same manner to the use of his parishioners. This in a very little time thickened his audience, filled his church, and routed his antagonist.'
[581] See ante, ii. 96
[582] '"Well," said he, "we had good talk." BOSWELL. "Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons."' Ante, ii. 66.
[583] Dr. J. H. Burton says of Hume (Life, ii. 31):—'No Scotsman could write a book of respectable talent without calling forth his loud and warm eulogiums. Wilkie was to be the Homer, Blacklock the Pindar, and Home the Shakespeare or something still greater of his country.' See ante, ii. 121, 296, 306.
[584] The Present State of Music in France and Italy, I vol. 1771, and The Present State of Music in Germany, &c., 2 vols. 1773. Johnson must have skipped widely in reading these volumes, for though Dr. Burney describes his travels, yet he writes chiefly of music.
[585] Boswell's son James says that he heard from his father, that the passage which excited this strong emotion was the following:—
[586] Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 338) mentions this book at some length. On March 13, 1780, he wrote:—'Yesterday was published an octavo, pretending to contain the correspondence of Hackman and Miss Ray that he murdered.' See ante, iii. 383.
[587] Hawkins (Life, p. 547), recording how Johnson used to meet Psalmanazar at an ale-house, says that Johnson one day 'remarked on the human mind, that it had a necessary tendency to improvement, and that it would frequently anticipate instruction. "Sir," said a stranger that overheard him, "that I deny; I am a tailor, and have had many apprentices, but never one that could make a coat till I had taken great pains in teaching him."' See ante, iii. 443. Robert Hall was influenced in his studies by 'his intimate association in mere childhood with a tailor, one of his father's congregation, who was an acute metaphysician.' Hall's Works, vi. 5.
[588] Johnson had never been in Grub-street. Ante, i. 296, note 2.
[589] The Honourable Horace Walpole, late Earl of Orford, thus bears testimony to this gentleman's merit as a writer:—'Mr. Chambers's Treatise on Civil Architecture is the most sensible book, and the most exempt from prejudices, that ever was written on that science.'—Preface to Anecdotes of Painting in England. BOSWELL. Chambers was the architect of Somerset House. See ante, p. 60, note 7.