And such was the tenderness of his conscience, that a short time before his death he expressed his regret for his having been the author of fictions, which had passed for realities. He nevertheless agreed with me in thinking, that the debates which he had framed were to be valued as orations upon questions of public importance. They have accordingly been collected in volumes, properly arranged, and recommended to the notice of parliamentary speakers by a preface, written by no inferior hand. (1) I must, however, observe, that, although there is in those debates a wonderful store of political information, and very powerful eloquence, I cannot agree that they exhibit the manner of each particular speaker, as Sir John Hawkins seems to think. But, indeed, what opinion can we have of his judgment, and taste in public speaking, who presumes to give, as the characteristics of two celebrated orators, "the deepmouthed rancour of Pulteney, and the yelping pertinacity of Pitt?" (2) (1) I am assured that the editor is Mr. George Chalmers, whose commercial works are well known and esteemed. BOSWELL. This collection is stated in the Preface to the Parliamentary History, vol. xii., to be very incomplete: of thirty-two debates, twelve are given under wrong dates, and several of Johnson's best compositions are wholly omitted; amongst others, the important debate of Feb. 13. 1741, on Mr. Sandys's motion for the removal of Sir Robert Walpole; other omissions, equally striking, are complained of. - CROKER. (2) [Mr. Murphy says: -"That Johnson was the author of the debates during that period (Nov. 19. 1740, to Feb. 1742-3) was not generally known; but the secret transpired several years afterwards, and was avowed by himself on the following occasion:-) - Mr. Wedderburne (afterwards Lord Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn), Dr. Johnson, Dr. Francis (the translator of Horace), the present writer, and others, dined with the late Mr. Foote. An important debate towards the end of Sir Robert Walpole's administration being mentioned, Dr. Francis observed," that Mr. Pitt's speech on that occasion was the best he had ever read." He added, "that he had employed eight years of his life in the study of Demosthenes, and finished a translation of that celebrated orator, with all the decorations of style and language within the reach of his capacity; but he had met with nothing equal to the speech above mentioned." Many of the company remembered the debate; and some passages were cited with the approbation and applause of all present. During the ardour of conversation, Johnson remained silent. As soon as the warmth of praise subsided, he opened with these words: "That speech I wrote in a garret in Exeter Street." The company was struck with astonishment. After staring at each other in silent amaze, Dr. Francis asked how that speech could be written by him? 66 Sir," said Johnson, "I wrote it in Exeter Street.* I never had been in the gallery of the House of Commons but once. Cave had interest with the doorkeepers. He, and the persons employed under him, gained admittance: they brought away the subject of discussion, the names of the speakers, the sides they took, and the order in which they rose, together with notes of the arguments advanced in the course of the debate. The whole was afterwards communicated to me, and I composed the speeches in the form which they now have in the Parliamentary Debates." To this discovery Dr. Francis made answer:-"Then, sir, you have exceeded Demosthenes himself; for to say that you have exceeded Francis's Demosthenes, would be saying nothing." The rest of the company bestowed lavish encomiums on Johnson: one, in particular, praised his impartiality; observing, that he dealt out reason and eloquence with an equal hand to both parties. "That is not quite true," said Johnson; "I saved appearances tolerably well, but I took care that the WHIG DCGS should not have the best of it." The passage in Hawkins to which Boswell alludes, at p. 169., is as follows: -"In the perusal of these debates, we cannot but wonder at the powers that produced them. The author had never passed those gradations that lead to the knowledge of men and business: born to a narrow fortune, of no profession, conversant chiefly with books, unacquainted with the style of any other than academical disputation, and so great a stranger to senatorial manners, that he never was within the walls of either house of parliament. † That a man, under these disadvantages, should be able to frame a system of debate; to compose speeches of such excellence, both in matter and form, as scarcely to be *There is here some inaccuracy; the debate in question was written in 1741. In Mr. Boswell's list of Johnson's residences, he appears not to have resided in Exeter Street after his return to London in 1737.-CROKER. + [But once: see preceding paragraph. — MARKLAND.] equalled by those of the most able and experienced statesmen; is, I say, matter of astonishment, and a proof of talents that qualified him for a speaker in the most august assembly on earth. "Cave, who had no idea of the powers of eloquence over the human mind, became sensible of its effects in the profits it brought him he had long thought that the success of his Magazine proceeded from those parts of it that were conducted by himself; which were the abridgment of weekly papers written against the ministry, such as the Craftsman, Fog's Journal, Common Sense, the Weekly Miscellany, the Westminster Journal, and others; and also marshalling the pastorals, the elegies, and the songs, the epigrams, and the rebuses, that were sent him by various correspondents; and was scarcely able to see the causes that at this time increased the sale of his pamphlet from ten to fifteen thousand copies a month, But if he saw not, he felt them, and manifested his good fortune by buying an old coach and a pair of older horses; and, that he might avoid the suspicion of pride in setting up an equipage, he displayed to the world the source of his affluence, by a representation of St. John's Gate, instead of his arms, on the door-panel. This, he told me himself, was the reason of distinguishing his carriage from others, by what some might think a whimsical device, and also for causing it to be engraven on all his plate. "Johnson had his reward, over and above the pecuniary recompence vouchsafed him by Cave, in the general applause of his labours, which the increased demand for the Magazine implied*; but this, as his performances fell short of his powers, gratified him but little; on the contrary, he disapproved the deceit he was compelled to practise: his notions of morality were so strict, that he would scarcely allow the violation of truth in the most trivial instances, and saw, in falsehood of all kinds, a turpitude that he could never be thoroughly reconciled to; and, though the fraud was perhaps not greater than the fictitious relations in Sir Thomas More's Utopia, Lord Bacon's Nova Atlantis, and Bishop Hall's Mundus alter et idem, Johnson was not easy till he had disclosed the deception. "In the mean time, it was curious to observe how the deceit operated. It has above been remarked, that Johnson had the art to give different colours to the several speeches; so that some appear to be declamatory and energetic, resembling the orations of Demosthenes; others, like those of Cicero, calm, persuasive; others, more particularly those attributed to such country gentlemen, merchants, and seamen as had seats in par Sir J. Hawkins seems (as well as the other biographers) to have overrated the value, to Cave and the public, of Johnson's Parliamentary Debates. It is shown in the preface to the Parliamentary History for 1738 (ed. 1812), that one of Cave's rivals, the London Magazine, often excelled the Gentleman's Magazine, in the priority and accuracy of its parliamentary reports, which were contributed by Gordon, the translator of Tacitus.- CROKER. liament, bear the characteristic of plainness, bluntness, and an affected honesty, as opposed to the plausibility of such as were understood or suspected to be courtiers. The artifice had its effect: Voltaire was betrayed by it into a declaration, that the eloquence of ancient Greece and Rome was revived in the British senate; and a speech of the late Earl of Chatham, when Mr. Pitt, in opposition to one of Mr. Horatio Walpole, received the highest applause, and was, by all that read it, taken for genuine. "It must be owned, that, with respect to the general principles avowed in the speeches, and the sentiments therein contained, they agree with the characters of the persons to whom they are ascribed. Thus, to instance in those of the Upper House, the speeches of the Duke of Newcastle, the Lords Carteret and Ilay, are calm, temperate, and persuasive; those of the Duke of Argyle and Lord Talbot, furious and declamatory; and Lord Chesterfield's and Lord Hervey's florid but flimsy. In the other House, the speeches may be thus characterised: the minister's, mild and conciliatory; Mr. Pulteney's, nervous, methodical, and weighty; Mr. Shippen's, blunt and dogmatical; Sir John Barnard's, clear, especially on commercial subjects; Lyttelton's, stiff, and imitative of the Roman oratory; and Pitt's, void of argument, but rhapsodically and diffusively eloquent. "The confession of Johnson above mentioned was the first that revealed the secret that the debates inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine were fictitious, and composed by himself. After that, he was free, and indeed industrious, in the communication of it; for, being informed that Dr. Smollett was writing a History of England, and had brought it down to the last reign, he cautioned him not to rely on the debates as given in the Magazine, for that they were not authentic, but, excepting as to their general import, the work of his own imagination." HAWKINS, Life, p. 122. 129.] It is very remarkable that Dr. Maty, who wrote the Life and edited the Works of Lord Chesterfield, with the use of his Lordship's papers, under the eye of his surviving friends, and in the lifetime of Johnson, should have published, as "specimens of his Lordship's eloquence, in the strong nervous style of Demosthenes, as well as in the witty ironical manner of Tully," three speeches, which are certainly the composition of Dr. Johnson. See Chesterfield's Works, vol. ii. p. 319.-CROKER. CHAPTER VII. 1741-1744. Johnson finishes "Irene" - Writes 66 Essay on the Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough" Lives of Burman and Sydenham “Proposals for printing Bibliotheca Harleiana.". Projects a History of Parliament. Writes "Considerations on the Dispute between Crousaz and Warburton, on Pope's Essay on Man"— "Dedication to James's Dictionary". 66 ― Friendship, an Case Ode." Writes "Preface THIS year I find that his tragedy of IRENE had been for some time ready for the stage, and that his necessities made him desirous of getting as much as he could for it without delay; for there is the following letter from Mr. Cave to Dr. Birch, in the same volume of manuscripts in the British Museum, from which I copied those above quoted. They were most obligingly pointed out to me by Sir William Musgrave (1), one of the curators of that noble repository. (1) [Sir William Musgrave, Bart., commissioner for auditing the public accounts, died in 1800.] |