The Life of Samuel Johnson

by James Boswell

  80. Life of Johnson, below, p. 700.

  81. Ibid., p. 656. Cf. the information about Johnson’s drinking supplied to Boswell in November 1787 by William Bowles: ‘He had formerly drank a good deal (often two bottles at a sitting) and had often stayed in company till he was unable to walk out of it but he never found liquor affect his powers of thinking it affected only his limbs’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. 192-3). James Abercrombie also recollected Johnson’s animation on the subject of drinking (ibid., p. 411).

  82. ‘It is so much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated, never to lose the power over himself (Life of Johnson, below, p. 656).

  83. ‘When I drank wine, I scorned to drink it when in company. I have drunk many a bottle by myself; in the first place, because I had need of it to raise my spirits; in the second place, because I would have nobody to witness its effects upon me’ (ibid., p. 540); ‘Drinking may be practised with great prudence; a man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk… I used to slink home, when I had drunk too much’ (ibid., p. 733).

  84. Richard B. Schwartz, ‘Boswell and Hume: The Deathbed Interview’, in Clingham, ed., New Light on Boswell, pp. 115–25. For an account of the function of the figure of Hume in the Life, see Greg Clingham, James Boswell: The Life of Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 97–103. Another such antagonism would be that with Jonathan Swift, whom Johnson attacked ‘upon all occasions’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 433), and who he felt enjoyed ‘a higher reputation than he deserves’ (ibid., p. 238); on this see Claude Rawson, ‘The Character of Swift’s Satire: Reflections on Swift, Johnson, and Human Restlessness’, in Order From Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature from Swift to Cowper (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985), pp. 3-67. Compare also Dalrymple’s contrasting of the characters of Swift and Johnson (Life of Johnson, below, p. 229).

  85. Life of Johnson, below, p. 234.

  86. Ibid. The reference is presumably to that period of his life when Johnson was ‘a sort of lax talker against religion’, before he read William Law’s Serious Call (ibid., p. 43).

  87. Ibid., p. 870.

  88. Ibid., p. 348; cf. p. 857 and David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), sect. V, ‘Why Utility Pleases’.

  89. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 350, 376, 546, 676; cf. David Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’ (1754).

  90. Life of Johnson, below, p. 883; cf. David Hume, ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’ (1752).

  91. Life of Johnson, below, p. 292, 742; cf. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, sect. IV, ‘Of Political Society’.

  92. Life of Johnson, below, p. 605. Compare the three papers on death which Boswell wrote for the London Magazine between November 1778 and January 1779, which were also informed by the experience of visiting Hume on his deathbed (Bailey, ed., Boswell’s Column, pp. 83–98).

  93. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), sect. X, ‘Of Miracles’, Part I: ‘When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.’ Boswell himself noted that Johnson sometimes approached this argument of Hume’s: ‘Talking of Dr. Johnson’s unwillingness to believe extraordinary things, I ventured to say, “Sir, you come near Hume’s argument against miracles, ‘That it is more probable witnesses should lie, or be mistaken, than that they should happen.”’ JOHNSON. “Why, Sir, Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right”’ (Life of Johnson, below, pp. 624-5.

  94. The ambivalence in Johnson’s attitude towards Hume which is smothered by his avowals of disdain is detectable also in his attitude towards other notorious literary figures of the eighteenth century. As Boswell points out, in the Dictionary Johnson quotes ‘no authour whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and morality’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 107; on the subject of the principles of citation in the Dictionary, see now Allen Reddick, The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), especially ch. 7). Nevertheless, we find Johnson echoing Bolingbroke on the character of a patriot king (Life of Johnson, below, p. 321), praising Mandeville for opening his ‘views into real life very much’ (ibid., p. 682), and befriending Fox (ibid., p. 926).

  95. The recent and occasionally tempestuous debate on Johnson’s politics can be traced in the following: Howard Erskine-Hill, ‘The Political Character of Samuel Johnson’, in Isobel Grundy, ed., Samuel Johnson: New Critical Essays (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1984), pp. 107–36; J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), esp. pp. 186-9; Donald Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, 2nd edn (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), ‘Introduction’, pp. ix-lxv; J. C. D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); The Age of Johnson, vols. 7 and 8 (1996 and 1997); Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill (eds.), Samuel Johnson in Historical Context (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). There are wise words on this debate to be found in Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 158–60.

  96. A letter to Boswell from an anonymous reader of the Life in 1792 comments on the political complexion of the west Midlands in the eighteenth century: ‘I will venture to say that if you will take a Journey into the Parts of Wales, contiguous to Shropshire and Cheshire you will meet with Anecdotes very much to your Taste from many of the Gentlemen, resident in those parts, who are very little removed from Jacobitism’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 389).

  97. Life of Johnson, below, p. 25. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (see n. 109) a number of state oaths were imposed on office-holders in Church and state, which required them to swear allegiance and supremacy, i.e. an acknowledgement that the sovereign was supreme governor of England in spiritual and temporal matters (OED, 1), and (after the Hanoverian succession in 1714) to abjure the House of Stuart. For Johnson on subscription, see ibid., p. 341 – a comment which takes on relevance, given the importance which has been attached to whether or not Johnson himself subscribed the oaths. Elsewhere Johnson condemned a refusal to subscribe as ‘perverseness of integrity’ (ibid., p. 434).

  98. Ibid., p. 26. On Sacheverell, see Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Dr Sacheverell (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973). On Jacobitism and its geographical distribution, see Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

  99. For instance, in 1740, before William Hogarth: Life of Johnson, below, p. 85.

  100. Ibid., p. 293. For typically contemptuous comments on liberty, and on the human appetite for it, consider Johnson’s pamphlet against the American colonists, Taxation No Tyranny (1775): ‘We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties: an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?’ (Donald J. Greene, ed., Samuel Johnson: Political Writings, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. X (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 454. The Lives of the Poets also presented Johnson with opportunities to condemn the English enthusiasm for liberty: ‘At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the want, and with care for liberty, which was not in danger. Thomson, in his travels on the continent, found or fancied so many evils arising from th
e tyranny of other governments, that he resolved to write a very long poem, in five parts, upon Liberty’; ‘It has been observed that they who most boldly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it’ (G. Birkbeck Hill, ed., Lives of the English Poets by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), III, 289 (‘Life of Thomson’) and I, 157 (‘Life of Milton’)).

  101. Life of Johnson, below, p. 233. There was of course no necessary conflict between a prizing of subordination (‘the condition of being subordinate, inferior, or dependent; subjection, subservience’ –OED, 2) and Whiggism.

  102. Ibid., pp. 277-8.

  103. Ibid., p. 101. Cf. also Johnson’s whispered conversation with Oliver Goldsmith before Temple Bar (ibid., p. 386). Johnson was clear that the ‘45 was illegal, citing in 1770 the Highlanders’ greatest want as ‘the want of law’ (ibid., p. 326).

  104. Ibid., p. 76.

  105. Ibid., pp. 434, 922. Nonjurors were beneficed clergymen who refused to take an oath of allegiance in 1689 to William and Mary and their successors (OED, 1).

  106. Ibid., p. 827: my emphasis. The comment was made in 1781, the pension granted nineteen years earlier in 1762 (ibid., p. 199–200). Note also William Strahan’s testimonial to Johnson’s ‘perfect good affection’ for George III in 1771 (ibid., p. 332). The famous interview between Johnson and George III corroborates Strahan’s opinion (ibid., p. 281-5).

  107. Ibid., p. 377. Compare Edward Gibbon on the positive effects of the establishment of a militia in the mid eighteenth century: ‘The most beneficial effect of this institution was to eradicate among the Country gentlemen the relicks of Tory, or rather of Jacobite prejudice. The accession of a British king [George III] reconciled them to the government, and even to the court; but they have been since accused of transferring their passive loyalty from the Stuarts to the family of Brunswick; and I have heard Mr. Burke exclaim in the house of Commons, “They have changed the Idol, but they have preserved the Idolatry”’ (The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon, ed. John Murray (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 182 (draft ‘B’)). Johnson’s Whiggish friend Dr Taylor elicited from him on the subject of monarchical title the acknowledgement that ‘Possession is sufficient, where no better right can be shown… for as to the first beginning of the right, we are in the dark’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 607).

  108. Life of Johnson, below, p. 396.

  109. Ibid., p. 859. The Glorious Revolution – sometimes referred to simply as 1688 – refers to the invasion of Britain that year by William of Orange, who had been invited to defend the English from encroachments on their religion and property by his father-in-law, James II, and who became king as William III. 1688 was ‘necessary’ for Johnson presumably because in no other way could the Church of England be maintained (ibid.). The pre-eminence of religion over politics in Johnson’s thought which this reveals is helpful in trying to understand the movements in his political sympathies, and their perpetually conflicted nature: for him, religious truth and political right were never aligned.

  110. Ibid., p. 351. Johnson’s position here is close to that of Swift, who in The Examiner 33 (22 March 1710) had contrasted the true, Tory, idea of passive obedience with its Whig caricature, and had insisted that the true idea of passive obedience included an ultimate safeguard to the people: ‘The Crown may be sued as well as a private Person; and if an arbitrary King of England should send his Officers to seize my Lands or Goods against Law; I can lawfully resist them. The Ministers by whom he acts are liable to Prosecution and Impeachment, although his own Person be Sacred. But, if he interpose his Royal Authority to support their Insolence, I see no Remedy, until it grows a general Grievance, or untill the Body of the People have Reason to apprehend it will be so; after which it becomes a Case of Necessity; and then I suppose, a free People may assert their own Rights, yet without any Violation to the Person or lawful Power of the Prince’ (Jonathan Swift, The Examiner and Other Pieces Written in 1710–11, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Shakespeare Head, 1941), p. 114). Consider also Swift’s comment in his sermon ‘Upon the Martyrdom of King Charles I’: ‘When oppressions grow too great and universal to be borne, nature or necessity may find a remedy’ (Jonathan Swift, Irish Tracts 1720–1723 and Sermons, ed. Louis Landa (Oxford: Shakespeare Head, 1948), p. 229).

  111. Section 209, in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 404–5.

  112. Life of Johnson, below, p. 321. Boswell also underlined Johnson’s fervour for ‘constitutional liberty’, in contrast to his reputation for being ‘abjectly submissive to power’ (ibid., p. 167); cf. also Johnson’s aversion to the destruction of liberty (ibid., p. 645). For Johnson on the decline of party in the eighteenth century, see ibid., p. 75. Maxwell derided Johnson’s reputation for supporting ‘slavish and arbitrary principles of government’ by reference to his indomitableness of character, for he was ‘extremely jealous of his personal liberty and independence, and could not brook the smallest appearance of neglect or insult, even from the highest personages’ (ibid., p. 322). It was this disposition of character which also led Johnson to reflect critically on Burke’s arguments for party discipline, presumably in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, which had been published three years earlier in 1770: ibid., p. 378.

  113. Ibid., p. 341.

  114. Ibid., pp. 227-8. Boswell supposes the ‘violent Whig’ to have been Gilbert Walmsley (1680–1751). Consider too Johnson’s dictum that ‘A wise Tory and a wise Whig, I believe, will agree’ (ibid., p. 828) – an opinion which seems to have made a deep impression on that notable Whig Samuel Parr (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 353).

  115. Life of Johnson, below, p. 730.

  116. Ibid., pp. 606-7.

  117. Ibid., p. 606.

  118. Ibid., p. 1141.

  119. Ibid., pp. 57, 42. Boswell records Johnson’s belief that he inherited this melancholic disposition from his father, Michael Johnson, and that in consequence he was ‘mad all his life, at least not sober’ (ibid., p. 25); cf. also p. 235.

  120. As it was in the mental world, so it was for Johnson in the physical: ‘for though indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution, whenever he made an exertion he did more than any one else’ (ibid., p. 30).

  121. Ibid., p. 43. Cf. Johnson’s reply to William Seward’s surprise that irreligious people existed: ‘Sir, you need not wonder at this, when you consider how large a proportion of almost every man’s life is passed without thinking of it. I myself was for some years totally regardless of religion. It had dropped out of my mind. It was at an early part of my life. Sickness brought it back, and I hope I have never lost it since’ (ibid., p. 882).

  122. Ibid., p. 929; cf. also pp. 313–14.

  123. Ibid., p. 215; cf. ‘There are few people to whom I take so much to as you’ (p. 237).

  124. Doctrine of the Trinity: ibid., pp. 396-7. Predestination and theodicy: ibid., p. 313. Roman Catholicism: ibid., p. 314; though note the strongly Protestant character of his deathbed comments on religion (ibid., p. 997).

  125. On Johnson’s informal legal education, see ibid., p. 530. For his attempt to follow a legal career, see ibid., p. 78. For his irritation in later life at being told (‘when it is too late’) that he might have been a great lawyer, see ibid., pp. 690–91. Johnson employed his legal knowledge when he collaborated with the Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, Sir Robert Chambers, on the latter’s A Course of Lectures on the English Law (delivered 1767–73; first published 1986): see Thomas M. Curley, Sir Robert Chambers: Law, Literature, and Empire in the Age of Johnson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), pp. 42–127. For evidence of the accuracy of Johnson’s legal knowledge, see for example Life of Johnson, below, pp. 224-5 (a correct explanation of the principle that the king can do no wrong), and ibid., pp. 364-7 (a discussion of a point of Scottish law). Cf. also Johnson’s correction of Charles I’s opinion on why he could not be a lawyer, which thr
ows a keen sidelight on the attractions of legal pleading for Johnson (ibid., p. 374).

  126. For accounts of the history of the Boswell papers and of the drama of their discovery, see David Buchanan, The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974) and Frederick Pottle, Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).

  127. Waingrow’s edition of the Correspondence includes a ‘Chronology of the Making of the Life’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. xlix-lxix).

  128. Ibid., p. 61.

  129. Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica and France, 1765–1766, ed. F. Brady and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), p. 106. In 1768 Boswell suggested to Johnson the possibility of publishing his letters after his death (Life of Johnson, below, p. 293).

  130. Life of Johnson, below, p. 19.

  131. Boswell for the Defence, 1769—1774, ed. W. K. Wimsatt and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 86. Note also the comment in a letter to Garrick of 10 September 1772: ‘If I survive Mr. Johnson, I shall publish a Life of him, for which I have a store of materials’ (The Correspondence of James Boswell with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone, ed. P. S. Baker et al. (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 45.

  132. Life of Johnson, below, p. 349. Cf. the later, similar comment for 11 April 1773: ‘I again solicited him to communicate to me the particulars of his early life. He said, “You shall have them all for twopence. I hope you shall know a great deal more of me before you write my Life.” He mentioned to me this day many circumstances, which I wrote down when I went home, and have interwoven in the former part of this narrative’ (ibid., p. 375).