The Life of Samuel Johnson

by James Boswell

  Thursday, September 18. Last night Dr. Johnson had proposed that the crystal lustre, or chandelier, in Dr. Taylor’s large room, should be lighted up some time or other. Taylor said, it should be lighted up next night. ‘That will do very well, (said I,) for it is Dr. Johnson’s birth-day.’ When we were in the Isle of Sky, Johnson had desired me not to mention his birth-day. He did not seem pleased atthis time that Imentioned it, and said (somewhat sternly,) ‘he would not have the lustre lighted the next day.’

  Some ladies, who had been present yesterday when I mentioned his birth-day, came to dinner to-day, and plagued him unintentionally, by wishing him joy. I know not why he disliked having his birth-day mentioned, unless it were that it reminded him of his approaching nearer to death, of which he had a constant dread.

  I mentioned to him a friend of mine694 who was formerly gloomy from low spirits, and much distressed by the fear of death, but was now uniformly placid, and contemplated his dissolution without any perturbation. ‘sir, (said Johnson,) this is only a disordered imagination taking a different turn.’

  We talked of a collection being made of all the English Poets who had published a volume of poems. Johnson told me ‘that a Mr. Coxeter, whom he knew, had gone the greatest length towards this; having collected, I think, about five hundred volumes of poets whose works were little known; but that upon his death Tom Osborne bought them, and they were dispersed, which he thought a pity, as it was curious to see any series complete; and in every volume of poems something good may be found.’

  He observed, that a gentleman of eminence in literature695 had got into a bad style of poetry of late. ‘He puts (said he,) a very common thing in a strange dress till he does not know it himself, and thinks other people do not know it.’ BOSWELL. ‘That is owing to his being so much versant in old English poetry.’ JOHNSON. ‘What is that to the purpose, Sir? If I say a man is drunk, and you tell me it is owing to his taking much drink, the matter is not mended. No, Sir, — has taken to an odd mode. For example, he’d write thus:

  “Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,

  Wearing out life’s evening gray.”

  Gray evening is common enough; but evening gray he’d think fine. – Stay; – we’ll make out the stanza:

  “Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,

  Wearing out life’s evening gray;

  Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell,

  What is bliss? and which the way?”’

  BOSWELL. ‘But why smite his bosom, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, to shew he was in earnest,’ (smiling.) – He at an after period added the following stanza:

  ‘Thus I spoke; and speaking sigh’d;

  – Scarce repress’d the starting tear;–

  When the smiling sage reply’d –

  – Come, my lad, and drink some beer.a

  I cannot help thinking the first stanza very good solemn poetry, as also the three first lines of the second. Its last line is an excellent burlesque surprise on gloomy sentimental enquirers. And, perhaps, the advice is as good as can be given to a low-spirited dissatisfied being: – ‘Don’t trouble your head with sickly thinking: take a cup, and be merry.’

  Friday, September 19, after breakfast Dr. Johnson and I set out in Dr. Taylor’s chaise to go to Derby. The day was fine, and we resolved to go by Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsdale, that I might see his Lordship’s fine house. I was struck with the magnificence of the building; and the extensive park, with the finest verdure, covered with deer, and cattle, and sheep, delighted me. The number of old oaks, of an immense size, filled me with a sort of respectful admiration: for one of them sixty pounds was offered. The excellent smooth gravel roads; the large piece of water formed by his Lordship from some small brooks, with a handsome barge upon it; the venerable Gothick church, now the family chapel, just by the house; in short, the grand group of objects agitated and distended my mind in a most agreeable manner. ‘One should think (said I,) that the proprietor of all this must be happy.’ – ‘Nay, Sir, (said Johnson,) all this excludes but one evil – poverty.’a

  Our names were sent up, and a well-drest elderly housekeeper, a most distinct articulator, shewed us the house; which I need not describe, as there is an account of it published in Adam’s Works in Architecture. Dr. Johnson thought better of it to-day than when he saw it before; for he had lately attacked it violently, saying, ‘It would do excellently for a town-hall. The large room with the pillars (said he,) would do for the Judges to sit in at the assizes; the circular room for a jury-chamber; and the rooms above for prisoners.’ Still he thought the large room ill lighted, and of no use but for dancing in; and the bed-chambers but indifferent rooms; and that the immense sum which it cost was injudiciously laid out. Dr. Taylor had put him in mind of his appearing pleased with the house. ‘But (said he,) that was when Lord Scarsdale was present. Politeness obliges us to appear pleased with a man’s works when he is present. No man will be so ill bred as to question you. You may therefore pay compliments without saying what is not true. I should say to Lord Scarsdale of his large room, ”My Lord, this is the most costly room that I ever saw;” which is true.’

  Dr. Manningham, physician in London, who was visiting at Lord Scarsdale’s, accompanyed us through many of the rooms, and soon afterwards my Lord himself, to whom Dr. Johnson was known, appeared, and did the honours of the house. We talked of Mr. Langton. Johnson, with a warm vehemence of affectionate regard, exclaimed, ‘The earth does not bear a worthier man than Bennet Langton.’ We saw a good many fine pictures, which I think are described in one of Young’s Tours. There is a printed catalogue of them which the housekeeper put into my hand; I should like to view them at leisure. I was much struck with Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream697 by Rembrandt. We were shown a pretty large library. In his Lordship’s dressing-room lay Johnson’s small Dictionary: he shewed it to me, with some eagerness, saying, ‘Look’ye! Quæ terra nostri non plena laboris.’698 He observed, also, Goldsmith’s Animated Nature; and said, ‘Here’s our friend! The poor Doctor would have been happy to hear of this.’

  In our way, Johnson strongly expressed his love of driving fast in a post-chaise. ‘If (said he,) I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman; but she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation.’ I observed, that we were this day to stop just where the Highland army did in 1745. JOHNSON. ‘It was a noble attempt.’ BOSWELL. ‘I wish we could have an authentick history of it.’ JOHNSON. ‘If you were not an idle dog you might write it, by collecting from every body what they can tell, and putting down your authorities.’ BOSWELL. ‘But I could not have the advantage of it in my life-time.’ JOHNSON. ‘You might have the satisfaction of its fame, by printing it in Holland; and as to profit, consider how long it was before writing came to be considered in a pecuniary view. Baretti says, he is the first man that ever received copy-money in Italy.’ I said that I would endeavour to do what Dr. Johnson suggested; and I thought that I might write so as to venture to publish my History of the Civil War in Great-Britain in 1745 and 1746, without being obliged to go to a foreign press.a

  When we arrived at Derby, Dr. Butter accompanied us to see the manufactory of china there. I admired the ingenuity and delicate art with which a man fashioned clay into a cup, a saucer, or a tea-pot, while a boy turned round a wheel to give the mass rotundity. I thought this as excellent in its species of power, as making good verses in its species. Yet I had no respect for this potter. Neither, indeed, has a man of any extent of thinking for a mere verse-maker, in whose numbers, however perfect, there is no poetry, no mind. The china was beautiful, but Dr. Johnson justly observed it was too dear; for that he could have vessels of silver, of the same size, as cheap as what were here made of porcelain.

  I felt a pleasure in walking about Derby such as I always have in walking about any town to which I am not accustomed. There is an immediate sensation of novelty; and one speculates on the way in which
life is passed in it, which, although there is a sameness every where upon the whole, is yet minutely diversified. The minute diversities in every thing are wonderful. Talking of shaving the other night at Dr. Taylor’s, Dr. Johnson said, ‘sir, of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.’ I thought this not possible, till he specified so many of the varieties in shaving; – holding the razor more or less perpendicular; – drawing long or short strokes; – beginning at the upper part of the face, or the under; – at the right side or the left side. Indeed, when one considers what variety of sounds can be uttered by the windpipe, in the compass of a very small aperture, we may be convinced how many degrees of difference there may be in the application of a razor.

  We dined with Dr. Butter, whose lady is daughter of my cousin, Sir John Douglas, whose grandson is now presumptive heir of the noble family of Queensberry. Johnson and he had a good deal of medical conversation. Johnson said, he had somewhere or other given an account of Dr. Nichols’s discourse De Animä Medicä. He told us ‘that whatever a man’s distemper was, Dr. Nichols would not attend him as a physician, if his mind was not at ease; for he believed that no medicines would have any influence. He once attended a man in trade, upon whom he found none of the medicines he prescribed had any effect: he asked the man’s wife privately whether his affairs were not in a bad way? She said no. He continued his attendance some time, still without success. At length the man’s wife told him, she had discovered that her husband’s affairs were in a bad way. When Goldsmith was dying, Dr. Turton said to him, ”Your pulse is in greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever which you have: is your mind at ease?” Goldsmith answered it was not.’

  After dinner, Mrs. Butter went with me to see the silk-mill which Mr. John Lombe hada had a patent for, having brought away the contrivance from Italy. I am not very conversant with mechanicks; but the simplicity of this machine, and its multiplied operations, struck me with an agreeable surprize. I had learnt from Dr. Johnson, during this interview, not to think with a dejected indifference of the works of art, and the pleasures of life, because life is uncertain and short; but to consider such indifference as a failure of reason, a morbidness of mind; for happiness should be cultivated as much as we can, and the objects which are instrumental to it should be steadily considered as of importance, with a reference not only to ourselves, but to multitudes in successive ages. Though it is proper to value small parts, as

  ‘Sands make the mountain, moments make the year;’b699

  yet we must contemplate, collectively, to have a just estimation of objects. One moment’s being uneasy or not, seems of no consequence; yet this may be thought of the next, and the next, and so on, till there is a large portion of misery. In the same way one must think of happiness, of learning, of friendship. We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. We must not divide objects of our attention into minute parts, and think separately of each part. It is by contemplating a large mass of human existence, that a man, while he sets a just value on his own life, does not think of his death as annihilating all that is great and pleasing in the world, as if actually contained in his mind, according to Berkeley’s reverie. If his imagination be not sickly and feeble, it ‘wings its distant way’ far beyond himself, and views the world in unceasing activity of every sort. It must be acknowledged, however, that Pope’s plaintive reflection, that all things would be as gay as ever, on the day of his death, is natural and common. We are apt to transfer to all around us our own gloom, without considering that at any given point of time there is, perhaps, as much youth and gaiety in the world as at another. Before I came into this life, in which I have had so many pleasant scenes, have not thousands and ten thousands of deaths and funerals happened, and have not families been in grief for their nearest relations? But have those dismal circumstances at all affected me? Why then should the gloomy scenes which I experience, or which I know, affect others? Let us guard against imagining that there is an end of felicity upon earth, when we ourselves grow old, or are unhappy.

  Dr. Johnson told us at tea, that when some of Dr. Dodd’s pious friends were trying to console him by saying that he was going to leave ‘a wretched world,’ he had honesty enough not to join in the cant: – ‘No, no, (said he,) it has been a very agreeable world to me.’ Johnson added, ‘I respect Dodd for thus speaking the truth; for, to be sure, he had for several years enjoyed a life of great voluptuousness.’

  He told us, that Dodd’s city friends stood by him so, that a thousand pounds were ready to be given to the gaoler, if he would let him escape. He added, that he knew a friend of Dodd’s who walked about Newgate for some time on the evening before the day of his execution, with five hundred pounds in his pocket, ready to be paid to any of the turnkeys who could get him out: but it was too late; for he was watched with much circumspection. He said, Dodd’s friends had an image of him made of wax, which was to have been left in his place; and he believed it was carried into the prison.

  Johnson disapproved of Dr. Dodd’s leaving the world persuaded that The Convict’s Address to his unhappy Brethren was of his own writing. ‘But, Sir, (said I,) you contributed to the deception; for when Mr. Seward expressed a doubt to you that it was not Dodd’s own, because it had a great deal more force of mind in it than any thing known to be his, you answered, – ”Why should you think so? Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” ‘ JOHNSON. ‘sir, as Dodd got it from me to pass as his own, while that could do him any good, there was an implied promise that I should not own it. To own it, therefore, would have been telling a lie, with the addition of breach of promise, which was worse than simply telling a lie to make it be believed it was Dodd’s. Besides, Sir, I did not directly tell a lie: I left the matter uncertain. Perhaps I thought that Seward would not believe it the less to be mine for what I said; but I would not put it in his power to say I had owned it.’

  He praised Blair’s sermons: ‘Yet,’ said he, (willing to let us see he was aware that fashionable fame, however deserved, is not always the most lasting,) ‘perhaps, they may not be reprinted after seven years; at least not after Blair’s death.’

  He said, ‘Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late. There appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young; though when he had got high in fame, one of his friends700 began to recollect something of his being distinguished at College. Goldsmith in the same manner recollected more of that friend’s early years, as he grew a greater man.’

  I mentioned that Lord Monboddo told me, he awaked every morning at four, and then for his health got up and walked in his room naked, with the window open, which he called taking an air bath; after which he went to bed again, and slept two hours more. Johnson, who was always ready to beat down any thing that seemed to be exhibited with disproportionate importance, thus observed: ‘I suppose, Sir, there is no more in it than this, he awakes at four, and cannot sleep till he chills himself, and makes the warmth of the bed a grateful sensation.’

  I talked of the difficulty of rising in the morning. Dr. Johnson told me, ‘that the learned Mrs. Carter, at that period when she was eager in study, did not awake as early as she wished, and she therefore had a contrivance, that, at a certain hour, her chamber-light should burn a string to which a heavy weight was suspended, which then fell with a strong sudden noise: this roused her from sleep, and then she had no difficulty in getting up.’ But I said that was my difficulty; and wished there could be some medicine invented which would make one rise without pain, which I never did, unless after lying in bed a very long time. Perhaps there may be something in the stores of Nature which could do this. I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my internal inclination. I would have something that can dissipate
the vis inertiæ701 and give elasticity to the muscles. As I imagine that the human body may be put, by the operation of other substances, into any state in which it has ever been; and as I have experienced a state in which rising from bed was not disagreeable, but easy, nay, sometimes agreeable; I suppose that this state may be produced, if we knew by what. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.

  Johnson observed, that ‘a man should take a sufficient quantity of sleep, which Dr. Mead says is between seven and nine hours.’ I told him, that Dr. Cullen said to me, that a man should not take more sleep than he can take at once. JOHNSON. ‘This rule, Sir, cannot hold in all cases; for many people have their sleep broken by sickness; and surely, Cullen would not have a man to get up, after having slept but an hour. Such a regimen would soon end in a long sleep.’a Dr. Taylor remarked, I think very justly, that ‘a man who does not feel an inclination to sleep at the ordinary time, instead of being stronger than other people, must not be well; for a man in health has all the natural inclinations to eat, drink, and sleep, in a strong degree.’

  Johnson advised me to-night not to refine in the education of my children. ‘Life (said he,) will not bear refinement: you must do as other people do.’

  As we drove back to Ashbourne, Dr. Johnson recommended to me, as he had often done, to drink water only: ‘For (said he,) you are then sure not to get drunk; whereas if you drink wine you are never sure.’ I said, drinking wine was a pleasure which I was unwilling to give up. ‘Why, Sir, (said he,) there is no doubt that not to drink wine is a great deduction from life; but it may be necessary.’ He however owned, that in his opinion a free use of wine did not shorten life; and said, he would not give less for the life of a certain Scotch Lord702 (whom he named) celebrated for hard drinking, than for that of a sober man. ‘But stay, (said he, with his usual intelligence, and accuracy of enquiry,) does it take much wine to make him drunk?’ I answered, ‘a great deal either of wine or strong punch.’ – ‘Then (said he,) that is the worse.’ I presume to illustrate my friend’s observation thus: ‘A fortress which soon surrenders has its walls less shattered than when a long and obstinate resistance is made.’