The Life of Samuel Johnson

by James Boswell

  ‘Perhaps I do not flatter myself unreasonably when I imagine that you may wish to know something of me. I can gratify your benevolence with no account of health. The hand of time, or of disease, is very heavy upon me. I pass restless and uneasy nights, harassed with convulsions of my breast, and flatulencies at my stomach; and restless nights make heavy days. But nothing will be mended by complaints, and therefore I will make an end. When we meet, we will try to forget our cares and our maladies, and contribute, as we can, to the chearfulness of each other. If I had gone with you, I believe I should have been better; but I do not know that it was in my power. I am, dear Sir, your most humble servant,

  ‘Feb. 3, 1778.’ ‘SAM. JOHNSON.’

  This letter, while it gives admirable advice how to travel to the best advantage, and will therefore be of very general use, is another eminent proof of Johnson’s warm and affectionate heart.a

  ‘TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

  ‘MY DEAR SIR, ‘Edinburgh, Feb. 26, 1778.

  ‘Why I have delayed, for near a month, to thank you for your last affectionate letter, I cannot say; for my mind has been in better health these three weeks than for some years past. I believe I have evaded till I could send you a copy of Lord Hailes’s opinion on the negro’s cause, which he wishes you to read, and correct any errours that there may be in the language; for, says he, “we live in a critical, though not a learned age; and I seek to screen myself under the shield of Ajax.”747 I communicated to him your apology for keeping the sheets of his Annals so long. He says, “I am sorry to see that Dr. Johnson is in a state of languor. Why should a sober Christian, neither an enthusiast nor a fanatick, be very merry or very sad?” I envy his Lordship’s comfortable constitution: but well do I know that languor and dejection will afflict the best, however excellent their principles. I am in possession of Lord Hailes’s opinion in his own hand-writing, and have had it for some time. My excuse then for procrastination must be, that I wanted to have it copied; and I have now put that off so long, that it will be better to bring it with me than send it, as I shall probably get you to look at it sooner, when I solicit you in person.

  ‘My wife, who is, I thank God, a good deal better, is much obliged to you for your very polite and courteous offer of your apartment: but, if she goes to London, it will be best for her to have lodgings in the more airy vicinity of Hyde-Park. I, however, doubt much if I shall be able to prevail with her to accompany me to the metropolis; for she is so different from you and me, that she dislikes travelling; and she is so anxious about her children, that she thinks she should be unhappy if at a distance from them. She therefore wishes rather to go to some country place in Scotland, where she can have them with her.

  ‘I purpose being in London about the 20th of next month, as I think it creditable to appear in the House of Lords as one of Douglas’s Counsel, in the great and last competition between Duke Hamilton and him.…

  ‘I am sorry poor Mrs. Williams is so ill: though her temper is unpleasant, she has always been polite and obliging to me. I wish many happy years to good Mr. Levett, who I suppose holds his usual place at your breakfast table.b I ever am, my dear Sir, your affectionate humble servant,

  JAMES BOSWELL.’

  TO THE SAME

  ‘MY DEAR SIR, ‘Edinburgh, Feb. 28, 1778.

  ‘You are at present busy amongst the English poets, preparing, for the publick instruction and entertainment, Prefaces, biographical and critical. It will not, therefore, be out of season to appeal to you for the decision of a controversy which has arisen between a lady and me concerning a passage in Parnell. That poet tells us, that his Hermit quitted his cell

  “—to know the world by sight,

  To find if books or swains report it right;

  (For yet by swains alone the world he knew,

  Whose feet came wand’ring o’er the nightly dew.”)748

  I maintain, that there is an inconsistency here; for as the Hermit’s notions of the world were formed from the reports both of books and swains, he could not justly be said to know by swains alone. Be pleased to judge between us, and let us have your reasons.a

  ‘What do you say to Taxation no Tyranny, now, after Lord North’s declaration, or confession, or whatever else his conciliatory speech should be called?749 I never differed from you in politicks but upon two points, – the Middlesex Election, and the Taxation of the Americans by the British Houses of Representatives. There is a charm in the word Parliament, soI avoid it. As I am a steady and a warm Tory, I regret that the King does not see it to be better for him to receive constitutional supplies from his American subjects by the voice of their own assemblies, where his Royal Person is represented, than through the medium of his British subjects. I am persuaded that the power of the Crown, which I wish to increase, would be greater when in contact with all its dominions, than if “the rays of regal bounty”b were to shine upon America through that dense and troubled body, a modern British Parliament. But, enough of this subject; for your angry voice at Ashbourne upon it, still sounds aweful “in my mind’s ears.”750I ever am, my dear Sir, your most affectionate humble servant,

  ‘JAMES BOSWELL.’

  TO THE SAME

  ‘MY DEAR SIR, ‘Edinburgh, March 12, 1778.

  ‘The alarm of your late illness distressed me but a few hours; for on the evening of the day that it reached me, I found it contradicted in The London Chronicle, which I could depend upon as authentick concerning you, Mr. Strahan being the printer of it. I did not see the paper in which “the approaching extinction of a bright luminary” was announced. Sir William Forbes told me of it; and he says, he saw me so uneasy, that he did not give me the report in such strong terms as he had read it. He afterwards sent me a letter from Mr. Langton to him, which relieved me much. I am, however, not quite easy, as I have not heard from you; and now I shall not have that comfort before I see you, for I set out for London to-morrow before the post comes in. I hope to be with you on Wednesday morning; and I ever am, with the highest veneration, my dear Sir, your much obliged, faithful, and affectionate, humble servant.

  ‘JAMES BOSWELL.’

  On Wednesday, March 18, I arrived in London, and was informed by good Mr. Francis that his master was better, and was gone to Mr. Thrale’s at Streatham, to which place I wrote to him, begging to know when he would be in town. He was not expected for some time; but next day having called on Dr. Taylor, in Dean’s-yard, Westminster, I found him there, and was told he had come to town for a few hours. He met me with his usual kindness, but instantly returned to the writing of something on which he was employed when I came in, and on which he seemed much intent. Finding him thus engaged, I made my visit very short, and had no more of his conversation, except his expressing a serious regret that a friend of ours751 was living at toomuchexpence, considering how poor an appearance he made: ‘If (said he,) a man has splendour from his expence, if he spends his money in pride or in pleasure, he has value: but if he lets others spend it for him, which is most commonly the case, he has no advantage from it.’

  On Friday, March 20, I found him at his own house, sitting with Mrs. Williams, and was informed that the room formerly allotted to me was now appropriated to a charitable purpose; Mrs. Desmoulins,a and I think her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael, being all lodged in it. Such was his humanity, and such his generosity, that Mrs. Desmoulins herself told me, he allowed her half-a-guinea a week. Let it be remembered, that this was above a twelfth part of his pension.

  His liberality, indeed, was at all periods of his life very remarkable. Mr. Howard, of Lichfield, at whose father’s house Johnson had in his early years been kindly received, told me, that when he was a boy at the Charter-House, his father wrote to him to go and pay a visit to Mr. Samuel Johnson, which he accordingly did, and found him in an upper room, of poor appearance. Johnson received him with much courteousness, and talked a great deal to him, as to a school-boy, of the course of his education, and other particulars. When he afterwards came to know and understand t
he high character of this great man, he recollected his condescension with wonder. He added, that when he was going away, Mr. Johnson presented him with half-a-guinea; and this, said Mr. Howard, was at a time when he probably had not another.

  We retired from Mrs. Williams to another room. Tom Davies soon after joined us. He had now unfortunately failed in his circumstances, and was much indebted to Dr. Johnson’s kindness for obtaining for him many alleviations of his distress. After he went away, Johnson blamed his folly in quitting the stage, by which he and his wife got five hundred pounds a year. I said, I believed it was owing to Churchill’s attack upon him,

  ‘He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone.’752

  JOHNSON. ‘I believe so too, Sir. But what a man is he, who is to be driven from the stageby a line? Another line would have driven him from his shop.’

  I told him, that I was engaged as Counsel at the bar of the House of Commons to oppose a road-bill in the county of Stirling, and asked him what mode he would advise me to follow in addressing such an audience. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, you must provide yourself with a good deal of extraneous matter, which you are to produce occasionally, so as to fill up the time; for you must consider, that they do not listen much. If you begin with the strength of your cause, it may be lost before they begin to listen. When you catch a moment of attention, press the merits of the question upon them.’ He said, as to one point of the merits, that he thought ‘it would be a wrong thing to deprive the small landholders of the privilege of assessing themselves for making and repairing the high roads; it was destroying a certain portion of liberty, without a good reason, which was always a bad thing.’ When I mentioned this observation next day to Mr. Wilkes, he pleasantly said, ‘What! does he talk of liberty? Liberty is as ridiculous in his mouth as Religion in mine.’ Mr. Wilkes’s advice, as to the best mode of speaking at the bar of the House of Commons, was not more respectful towards the senate, than that of Dr. Johnson. ‘Be as impudent as you can, as merry as you can, and say whatever comes uppermost. Jack Lee is the best heard there of any Counsel; and he is the most impudent dog, and always abusing us.’

  In my interview with Dr. Johnson this evening, I was quite easy, quite as his companion; upon which I find in my Journal the following reflection: ‘So ready is my mind to suggest matter for dissatisfaction, that I felt a sort of regret that I was so easy. I missed that aweful reverence with which I used to contemplate Mr. Samuel Johnson, in the complex magnitude of his literary, moral, and religious character. I have a wonderful superstitious love of mystery; when, perhaps, the truth is, that it is owing to the cloudy darkness of my own mind. I should be glad that I am more advanced in my progress of being, so that I can view Dr. Johnson with a steadier and clearer eye. My dissatisfaction to-night was foolish. Would it not be foolish to regret that we shall have less mystery in a future state? That we “now see in a glass darkly,” but shall “then see face to face”?’753 This reflection, which I thus freely communicate, will be valued by the thinking part of my readers, who may have themselves experienced a similar state of mind.

  He returned next day to Streatham, to Mr. Thrale’s; where, as Mr. Strahan once complained to me, ‘he was in a great measure absorbed from the society of his old friends.’ I was kept in London by business, and wrote to him on the 27th, that a separation from him for a week, when we were so near, was equal to a separation for a year, when we were at four hundred miles distance. I went to Streatham on Monday, March 30. Before he appeared, Mrs. Thrale made a very characteristical remark: – ‘I do not know for certain what will please Dr. Johnson: but I know for certain that it will displease him to praise any thing, even what he likes, extravagantly.’

  At dinner he laughed at querulous declamations against the age, on account of luxury, – increase of London, – scarcity of provisions, – and other such topicks. ‘Houses (said he,) will be built till rents fall: and corn is more plentiful now than ever it was.’

  I had before dinner repeated a ridiculous story told me by an old man who had been a passenger with me in the stage-coach to-day. Mrs. Thrale, having taken occasion to allude to it in talking to me, called it ‘The story told you by the old woman.’ – ‘Now, Madam, (said I,) give me leave to catch you in the fact; it was not an old woman, but an old man, whom I mentioned as having told me this.’ I presumed to take an opportunity, in presence of Johnson, of shewing this lively lady how ready she was, unintentionally, to deviate from exact authenticity of narration.

  Thomas à Kempis (he observed,) must be a good book, as the world has opened its arms to receive it. It is said to have been printed, in one language or other, as many times as there have been months since it first came out.a I always was struck with this sentence in it: ‘Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.’754

  He said, ‘I was angry with Hurd about Cowley, for having published a selection of his works: but, upon better consideration, I think there is no impropriety in a man’s publishing as much as he chooses of any authour, if he does not put the rest out of the way. A man, for instance, may print the Odes of Horace alone.’ He seemed to be in a more indulgent humour, than when this subject was discussed between him and Mr. Murphy.b

  When we were at tea and coffee, there came in Lord Trimlestown, in whose family was an ancient Irish peerage, but it suffered by taking the generous side in the troubles of the last century.c He was a man of pleasing conversation, and was accompanied by a young gentleman, his son.

  I mentioned that I had in my possession the Life of Sir Robert Sibbald, the celebrated Scottish antiquary, and founder of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh, in the original manuscript in his own handwriting; and that it was I believed the most natural and candid account of himself that ever was given by any man. As an instance, he tells that the Duke of Perth, then Chancellor of Scotland, pressed him very much to come over to the Roman Catholic faith: that he resisted all his Grace’s arguments for a considerable time, till one day he felt himself, as it were, instantaneously convinced, and with tears in his eyes ran into the Duke’s arms, and embraced the ancient religion; that he continued very steady in it for some time, and accompanied his Grace to London one winter, and lived in his household; that there he found the rigid fasting prescribed by the church very severe upon him; that this disposed him to reconsider the controversy, and having then seen that he was in the wrong, he returned to Protestantism. I talked of some time or other publishing this curious life. MRS. THRALE. ‘I think you had as well let alone that publication. To discover such weakness, exposes a man when he is gone.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, it is an honest picture of human nature. How often are the primary motives of our greatest actions as small as Sibbald’s, for his re-conversion.’ MRS. THRALE. ‘But may they not as well be forgotten?’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Madam, a man loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.’ LORD TRIMLESTOWN. ‘True, Sir. As the ladies love to see themselves in a glass; so a man likes to see himself in his journal.’ BOSWELL. ‘A very pretty allusion.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, indeed.’ BOSWELL. ‘And as a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.’ I next year found the very same thought in Atterbury’s Funeral Sermon on Lady Cutts; where, having mentioned her Diary, he says, ‘In this glass she every day dressed her mind.’ This is a proof of coincidence, and not of plagiarism; for I had never read that sermon before.

  Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth, even in the most minute particulars. ‘Accustom your children (said he,) constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.’ BOSWELL. ‘It may come to the door: and when once an account is at all varied in one circumstance, it may by degrees be varied so as t
o be totally different from what really happened.’ Our lively hostess, whose fancy was impatient of the rein, fidgeted at this, and ventured to say, ‘Nay, this is too much. If Mr. Johnson should forbid me to drink tea, I would comply, as I should feel the restraint only twice a day; but little variations in narrative must happen a thousand times a day, if one is not perpetually watching.’ JOHNSON. ‘Well, Madam, and you ought to be perpetually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.’

  In his review of Dr. Warton’s Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, Johnson has given the following salutary caution upon this subject: –

  ‘Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated, as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think, as what they know; some men of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on, without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.’a

  Had he lived to read what Sir John Hawkins and Mrs. Piozzi have related concerning himself, how much would he have found his observation illustrated. He was indeed so much impressed with the prevalence of falsehood, voluntary or unintentional, that I never knew any person who upon hearing an extraordinary circumstance told, discovered more of the incredulus odi.755 He would say, with a significant look and decisive tone, ‘It is not so. Do not tell this again.’b He inculcated upon all his friends the importance of perpetual vigilance against the slightest degrees of falsehood; the effect of which, as Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me, has been, that all who were of his school are distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy, which they would not have possessed in the same degree, if they had not been acquainted with Johnson.