Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  Dr. Adams told us, that in some of the Colleges at Oxford, the fellows had excluded the students from social intercourse with them in the common room. JOHNSON. ‘They are in the right, Sir: there can be no real conversation, no fair exertion of mind amongst them, if the young men are by; for a man who has a character does not choose to stake it in their presence.’ BOSWELL. ‘But, Sir, may there not be very good conversation without a contest for superiority?’ JOHNSON. ‘No animated conversation, Sir, for it cannot be but one or other will come off superiour. I do not mean that the victor must have the better of the argument, for he may take the weak side; but his superiority of parts and knowledge will necessarily appear: and he to whom he thus shews himself superiour is lessened in the eyes of the young men. You know it was said, “Mallem cum Scaligero errare quam cum Clavio recte sapere.” In the same manner take Bentley’s and Jason de Nores’ Comments upon Horace, you will admire Bentley more when wrong, than Jason when right.’

  We walked with Dr. Adams into the master’s garden, and into the common room. JOHNSON, (after a reverie of meditation,) ‘Ay! Here I used to play at draughts with Phil. Jones and Fludyer. Jones loved beer, and did not get very forward in the church. Fludyer turned out a scoundrel, a Whig, and said he was ashamed of having been bred at Oxford. He had a living at Putney, and got under the eye of some retainers to the court at that time, and so became a violent Whig: but he had been a scoundrel all along to be sure.’ BOSWELL. ‘Was he a scoundrel, Sir, in any other way than that of being a political scoundrel? Did he cheat at draughts?’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, we never played for money.’

  He then carried me to visit Dr. Bentham, Canon of Christ-Church, and Divinity Professor, with whose learned and lively conversation we were much pleased. He gave us an invitation to dinner, which Dr. Johnson told me was a high honour. ‘Sir, it is a great thing to dine with the Canons of Christ-Church.’ We could not accept his invitation, as we were engaged to dine at University College. We had an excellent dinner there, with the Master and Fellows, it being St. Cuthbert’s day, which is kept by them as a festival, as he was a saint of Durham, with which this college is much connected.

  We drank tea with Dr. Home, late President of Magdalen College, and Bishop of Norwich, of whose abilities, in different respects, the publick has had eminent proofs, and the esteem annexed to whose character was increased by knowing him personally. He had talked of publishing an edition of Walton’s Lives, but had laid aside that design, upon Dr. Johnson’s telling him, from mistake, that Lord Hailes intended to do it. I had wished to negociate between Lord Hailes and him, that one or other should perform so good a work. JOHNSON. ‘In order to do it well, it will be necessary to collect all the editions of Walton’s Lives. By way of adapting the book to the taste of the present age, they have, in a later edition, left out a vision which he relates Dr. Donne had, but it should be restored; and there should be a critical catalogue given of the works of the different persons whose lives were written by Walton, and therefore their works must be carefully read by the editor.’

  We then went to Trinity College, where he introduced me to Mr. Thomas Warton, with whom we passed a part of the evening. We talked of biography. — JOHNSON. ‘It is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him. The chaplain of a late Bishop, whom I was to assist in writing some memoirs of his Lordship, could tell me scarcely any thing.’

  I said, Mr. Robert Dodsley’s life should be written, as he had been so much connected with the wits of his time, and by his literary merit had raised himself from the station of a footman. Mr. Warton said, he had published a little volume under the title of The Muse in Livery . JOHNSON. ‘I doubt whether Dodsley’s brother would thank a man who should write his life: yet Dodsley himself was not unwilling that his original low condition should be recollected. When Lord Lyttelton’s Dialogues of the Dead came out, one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf, a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, “I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman.”’

  Biography led us to speak of Dr. John Campbell, who had written a considerable part of the Biographia Britannica. Johnson, though he valued him highly, was of opinion that there was not so much in his great work, A Political Survey of Great Britain, as the world had been taught to expect; and had said to me, that he believed Campbell’s disappointment, on account of the bad success of that work, had killed him. He this evening observed of it, ‘That work was his death.’ Mr. Warton, not adverting to his meaning, answered, ‘I believe so; from the great attention he bestowed on it.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, Sir, he died of want of attention, if he died at all by that book.’

  We talked of a work much in vogue at that time, written in a very mellifluous style, but which, under pretext of another subject, contained much artful infidelity. I said it was not fair to attack us thus unexpectedly; he should have warned us of our danger, before we entered his garden of flowery eloquence, by advertising, ‘Spring guns and men-traps set here.’ The authour had been an Oxonian, and was remembered there for having ‘turned Papist.’ I observed, that as he had changed several times — from the Church of England to the Church of Rome, — from the Church of Rome to infidelity, — I did not despair yet of seeing him a methodist preacher. JOHNSON, (laughing.) ‘It is said, that his range has been more extensive, and that he has once been Mahometan. However, now that he has published his infidelity, he will probably persist in it.’ BOSWELL. ‘I am not quite sure of that, Sir.’

  I mentioned Sir Richard Steele having published his Christian Hero, with the avowed purpose of obliging himself to lead a religious life, yet, that his conduct was by no means strictly suitable. JOHNSON. ‘Steele, I believe, practised the lighter vices.’

  Mr. Warton, being engaged, could not sup with us at our inn; we had therefore another evening by ourselves. I asked Johnson, whether a man’s being forward to make himself known to eminent people, and seeing as much of life, and getting as much information as he could in every way, was not yet lessening himself by his forwardness. JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; a man always makes himself greater as he increases his knowledge.’

  I censured some ludicrous fantastick dialogues between two coach-horses and other such stuff, which Baretti had lately published. He joined with me, and said, ‘Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.’ I expressed a desire to be acquainted with a lady who had been much talked of, and universally celebrated for extraordinary address and insinuation. JOHNSON. ‘Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, Sir, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.’ I mentioned Mr. Burke. JOHNSON. ‘Yes; Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual.’ It is very pleasing to me to record, that Johnson’s high estimation of the talents of this gentleman was uniform from their early acquaintance. Sir Joshua Reynolds informs me, that when Mr. Burke was first elected a member of Parliament, and Sir John Hawkins expressed a wonder at his attaining a seat, Johnson said, ‘Now we who know Mr. Burke, know, that he will be one of the first men in this country.’ And once, when Johnson was ill, and unable to exert himself as much as usual without fatigue, Mr. Burke having been mentioned, he said, ‘That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see Burke now it would kill me.’ So much was he accustomed to consider conversation as a contest, and such was his notion of Burke as an opponent.

  Next morning, Thursday, March 31, we set out in a post-chaise to pursue our ramble. It was a delightful day, and we rode through Blenheim park. When I looked at the magnificent bridge built by John Duke of Marlborough, over a small rivulet, and recollected the Epigram made upon it —

  ‘The lofty arch his high ambition shows,

  The stream, an emblem of his bounty flows:’

  and saw that now, by the genius of Brown, a magnificent body of water was collected, I said, ‘They have drowned the Epigram.�
�� I observed to him, while in the midst of the noble scene around us, ‘You and I, Sir, have, I think, seen together the extremes of what can be seen in Britain: — the wild rough island of Mull, and Blenheim park.’

  We dined at an excellent inn at Chapel-house, where he expatiated on the felicity of England in its taverns and inns, and triumphed over the French for not having, in any perfection, the tavern life. ‘There is no private house, (said he,) in which people can enjoy themselves so well, as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that every body should be easy; in the nature of things it cannot be: there must always be some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him: and no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another man’s house, as if it were his own. Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome: and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.’ He then repeated, with great emotion, Shenstone’s lines: —

  ‘Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round,

  Where’er his stages may have been,

  May sigh to think he still has found

  The warmest welcome at an inn.’

  My illustrious friend, I thought, did not sufficiently admire Shenstone. That ingenious and elegant gentleman’s opinion of Johnson appears in one of his letters to Mr. Graves, dated Feb. 9, 1760. ‘I have lately been reading one or two volumes of The Rambler; who, excepting against some few hardnesses in his manner, and the want of more examples to enliven, is one of the most nervous, most perspicuous, most concise, [and] most harmonious prose writers I know. A learned diction improves by time.’

  In the afternoon, as we were driven rapidly along in the post-chaise, he said to me ‘Life has not many things better than this.’

  We stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon, and drank tea and coffee; and it pleased me to be with him upon the classick ground of Shakspeare’s native place.

  He spoke slightingly of Dyer’s Fleece.— ‘The subject, Sir, cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poetically of serges and druggets? Yet you will hear many people talk to you gravely of that excellent poem, The Fleece.’ Having talked of Grainger’s Sugar-Cane, I mentioned to him Mr. Langton’s having told me, that this poem, when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when, after much blank-verse pomp, the poet began a new paragraph thus: —

  ‘Now, Muse, let’s sing of rats’

  And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company, who slily overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice, and had been altered to rats, as more dignified.

  This passage does not appear in the printed work. Dr. Grainger, or some of his friends, it should seem, having become sensible that introducing even Rats in a grave poem, might be liable to banter. He, however, could not bring himself to relinquish the idea; for they are thus, in a still more ludicrous manner, periphrastically exhibited in his poem as it now stands:

  ‘Nor with less waste the whisker’d vermin race

  A countless clan despoil the lowland cane.’

  Johnson said, that Dr. Grainger was an agreeable man; a man who would do any good that was in his power. His translation of Tibullus, he thought, was very well done; but The Sugar-Cane, a poem, did not please him; for, he exclaimed, ‘What could he make of a sugar-cane? One might as well write the “Parsley-bed, a Poem;” or “The Cabbage-garden, a Poem.”’ BOSWELL. ‘You must then pickle your cabbage with the sal atticum.’ JOHNSON. ‘You know there is already The Hop-Garden, a Poem: and, I think, one could say a great deal about cabbage. The poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers introduced them; and one might thus shew how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.’ He seemed to be much diverted with the fertility of his own fancy.

  I told him, that I heard Dr. Percy was writing the history of the wolf in Great-Britain. JOHNSON. ‘The wolf, Sir! why the wolf? Why does he not write of the bear, which we had formerly? Nay, it is said we had the beaver. Or why does he not write of the grey rat, the Hanover rat, as it is called, because it is said to have come into this country about the time that the family of Hanover came? I should like to see The History of the Grey Rat, by Thomas Percy, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty,’ (laughing immoderately). BOSWELL. ‘I am afraid a court chaplain could not decently write of the grey rat.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, he need not give it the name of the Hanover rat.’ Thus could he indulge a luxuriant sportive imagination, when talking of a friend whom he loved and esteemed.

  He mentioned to me the singular history of an ingenious acquaintance. ‘He had practised physick in various situations with no great emolument. A West-India gentleman, whom he delighted by his conversation, gave him a bond for a handsome annuity during his life, on the condition of his accompanying him to the West-Indies, and living with him there for two years. He accordingly embarked with the gentleman; but upon the voyage fell in love with a young woman who happened to be one of the passengers, and married the wench. From the imprudence of his disposition he quarrelled with the gentleman, and declared he would have no connection with him. So he forfeited the annuity. He settled as a physician in one of the Leeward Islands. A man was sent out to him merely to compound his medicines. This fellow set up as a rival to him in his practice of physick, and got so much the better of him in the opinion of the people of the island that he carried away all the business, upon which he returned to England, and soon after died.’

  On Friday, March 22, having set out early from Henley, where we had lain the preceding night, we arrived at Birmingham about nine o’clock, and, after breakfast, went to call on his old schoolfellow Mr. Hector. A very stupid maid, who opened the door, told us, that ‘her master was gone out; he was gone to the country; she could not tell when he would return.’ In short, she gave us a miserable reception; and Johnson observed, ‘She would have behaved no better to people who wanted him in the way of his profession.’ He said to her, ‘My name is Johnson; tell him I called. Will you remember the name?’ She answered with rustick simplicity, in the Warwickshire pronunciation, ‘I don’t understand you, Sir.’— ‘Blockhead, (said he,) I’ll write.’ I never heard the word blockhead applied to a woman before, though I do not see why it should not, when there is evident occasion for it. He, however, made another attempt to make her understand him, and roared loud in her ear, ‘Johnson’, and then she catched the sound.

  We next called on Mr. Lloyd, one of the people called Quakers. He too was not at home; but Mrs. Lloyd was, and received us courteously, and asked us to dinner. Johnson said to me, ‘After the uncertainty of all human things at Hector’s, this invitation came very well.’ We walked about the town, and he was pleased to see it increasing.

  I talked of legitimation by subsequent marriage, which obtained in the Roman law, and still obtains in the law of Scotland. JOHNSON. ‘I think it a bad thing; because the chastity of women being of the utmost importance, as all property depends upon it, they who forfeit it should not have any possibility of being restored to good character; nor should the children, by an illicit connection, attain the full right of lawful children, by the posteriour consent of the offending parties.’ His opinion upon this subject deserves consideration. Upon his principle there may, at times, be a hardship, and seemingly a strange one, upon individuals; but the general good of society is better secured. And, after all, it is unreasonable in an individual to repine that he has no
t the advantage of a state which is made different from his own, by the social institution under which he is born. A woman does not complain that her brother, who is younger than her, gets their common father’s estate. Why then should a natural son complain that a younger brother, by the same parents lawfully begotten, gets it? The operation of law is similar in both cases. Besides, an illegitimate son, who has a younger legitimate brother by the same father and mother, has no stronger claim to the father’s estate, than if that legitimate brother had only the same father, from whom alone the estate descends.

  Mr. Lloyd joined us in the street; and in a little while we met Friend Hector, as Mr. Lloyd called him. It gave me pleasure to observe the joy which Johnson and he expressed on seeing each other again. Mr. Lloyd and I left them together, while he obligingly shewed me some of the manufactures of this very curious assemblage of artificers. We all met at dinner at Mr. Lloyd’s, where we were entertained with great hospitality. Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd had been married the same year with their Majesties, and like them, had been blessed with a numerous family of fine children, their numbers being exactly the same. Johnson said, ‘Marriage is the best state for a man in general; and every man is a worse man, in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.’