THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. CHAPTER I. 1769. Gene. Paoli-Observance of Sunday-Rousseau and Monboddo - Love of Singularity-Lon dor ife-Artemisias-Second Marriages-Scotch Gardening-Vails-Prior-Garrick's Poetry-History-Whitfield-The Corsicans-Good Breeding-Fate and Free-will-Go! 1smith's Tailor-The Dunciad-Dryden-Congreve-Sheridan-Mrs. Montagu's Essay-Lord Kames-Burke-Ballad of Hardyknute-Fear of Death-Sympathy with Distress-FooteBuchanan-Baretti's Trial-Mandeville. AFTER his return to town, we met frequently, and I continued the practice of making notes of his conversation, though not with so much assiduity as I wish I had done. At this time, indeed, I had a sufficient excuse for not being able to appropriate so much time to my journal; for General Paoli,' after Corsica had been overpowered by the monarchy of France, was now no longer at the head of his brave countrymen; but having with difficulty escaped from his native island, had sought an asylum in Great Britain; and it was my duty, as well as my pleasure, to attend much upon him. Such 1 In 1755, Pascal Paoli was appointed first magistrate and general of Corsica. He had been educated at Naples, and was a captain in the service of King Don Carlos. He was tall, young, handsome, learned, and eloquent. In 1769, a French army, commanded by Marshal de Vaux, landed in Corsica. The inhabitants fought resolutely; but, driven to the south of the island, Paoli embarked, June 16, in an English ship at Porto-Vecchio, landed at Leghorn, crossed the continent, and repaired to London, where he was every where received with tokens of the greatest admiration, both by the people and their princes-NAPOLEON BONA PARTE, Mémoires, tom. iv. p. 36. particulars of Johnson's conversation at this period as I have committed to writing, I shall here introduce, without any strict atten tion to methodical arrangement. Sometimes short notes of different days shall be blended together, and sometimes a day may seem important enough to be separately distinguished. He said he would not have Sunday kept with rigid severity and gloom, but with a gravity and simplicity of behaviour.' I told him that David Hume had made a short collection of Scotticisms. "I wonder," said Johnson, "that he should find them." He would not admit the importance of the question concerning the legality of general warrants. "Such a power," he observed, "must be vested in every government, to answer particular cases of necessity; and there can be no just complaint but when it is abused, for which those who administer government must be answerable. It is a matter of such indifference, a matter about which the people care so very little, that were a man to be sent over Britain to offer them an exemption from it at a halfpenny apiece, very few would purchase it." This was a specimen of that laxity of talking, which I had heard him fairly acknowledge; for, surely, while the power of granting general warrants was supposed to be legal, and the apprehension of them hung over our heads, we did not possess that security of freedom, congenial to our happy constitution, and which by the intrepid exertions of Mr. Wilkes, has been happily estab lished. He said, "The duration of parliament, whether for seven years or the life of the king, appears to me so immaterial, that I would not give half a crown to turn the scale one way or the other. The habeas corpus is the single advantage which our government has over that of other countries." 1 He ridiculed a friend who, looking out on Streatham Common from our windows one day, lamented the enormous wickedness of the times, because some birdcatchers were busy there one fine Sunday morning. "While half the Christian world is permitted," said he, "to dance and sing, and celebrate Sunday as a day of festivity, how comes your puritanical spirit so offended with frivolous and empty deviations from exactness? Whoever loads life with unne cessary scruples, Sir," continued he, "provokes the attention of others on his conduct, and incurs the censure of singularity without reaping the reward of superior virtue "-Piozzi. 2 The first edition of Hume's History of England was full of Scotticisms, many of which h corrected in subsequent editions.-M. 3 Did he reckon the power of the Commons over the public purse as nothing? and did he ÆTAT. 60. ROUSSEAU AND MONBODDO. 11 On the 30th of September we dined together at the Mire. I attempted to argue for the superior happiness of the savage life, upon the usual fanciful topics. JOHNSON. "Sir, there can be nothing more false. The savages have no bodily advantages beyond those of civilised men. They have not better health; and as to care or mental uneasiness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, Sir; you are not to talk such paradox: let me have no more on't. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct. Lord Monboddo, one of your Scotch judges, talked a great deal of such nonsense. I suffered him; but I will not suffer you." BOSWELL. "But, Sir, does not Rousseau talk such nonsense?" JOHNSON. "True, Sir r; but. Rousseau knows he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for staring at him." BOSWELL. "How so, Sir ?" JOHNSON. Why, Sir, a man who talks nonsense so well, must know that he is talking nonsense. But I am afraid (chuckling and laughing), Monboddo does not know that he is talking nonsense." BOSWELL. "Is it wrong then, Sir, to affect singularity, in order to make people stare?" JOHNSON. "Yes, if you do it by propagating error: and, indeed, it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a general inclination to make people stare; and every wise man has himself to cure of it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare, by doing better than others, why, make them stare till they stare their eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare, by being absurd. I may do it by going into a drawing-room without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in 'The Spectator' [No. 576] who had a commission of Lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. Now, Sir, abstractedly, the night cap was best: but, relatively, the advantage was over-balanced by his making the boys "un after him.” 2 1 calculate how long the habeas corpus might exist, if the freedom of the press were destroyed, and the duration of parliaments unlimited?-C. 1 His lordship having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of Dr. Johnson in my company, I, on one occasion, during the lifetime of my illustrious friend, could not refrain from retaliation, and repeated to him this saying. He has since published I don't know how many pages in one of his curious books, attempting in much anger, but with pitiful effect, to persuade mankind that my illustrious friend was not the great and good man which they esteemed and ever will esteem him to be. 2 Few people had a more settled reverence for the world than Dr. Johnson, or were 'est Talking of a London life, he said, "The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom." BOSWELL. "The only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live from one another." JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir; but that is occasioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the other advantages." BoswELL. "Sometimes I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desert." JOHNSON. "Sir, you have desert enough in Scotland." Although I had promised myself a great deal of instructive conversation with him on the conduct of the married state, of which I then had a near prospect, he did not say much upon that topic. Mr. Seward' heard him once say, that " a man has a very bad chance for happiness in that state, unless he marries a woman of very strong and fixed principles of religion." He maintained to me, contrary to the common notion, that a woman would not be the worse wife for being learned; in which, from all that I have observed of Artemisias, I humbly differed from him. That a woman should be sensible and well informed, I allow to be a great advantage; and think that Sir Thomas Overbury, in his rude versifica captivated by innovations on the long-received customs of common life. We met a friend driving six very small ponies, and stopped to admire them. "Why does nobody," said our Doctor, "begin the fashion of driving six spavined horses, all spavined of the same leg? it would have a mighty pretty effect, and produce the distinction of doing something worse than the common way." He hated the way of leaving a company without taking notice to the lady of the house that he was going; and did not much like any of the contrivances by which ease Las been lately introduced into society instead of ceremony, which had more of his approbation. Cards, dress, and dancing, however, all found their advocates in Dr. Johnson, who inculcated, upon principle, the cultivation of those arts, which many a moralist thinks himself bound to reject, and many a Christian holds unfit to be practised. "No person," said he, one day, goes under-dressed till he thinks himself of consequence enough to forbear carrying the badge of his rank upon his back." And, in answer to the arguments urged hy Puritans, Quakers, &c. against showy decorations of the human figure, I once heard him exclaim, "Oh, let us not be found, when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues! Let us all conform in outward customs, which are of no consequence, to the manners of those whom we live among, and desp'e such paltry distinctions. Alas! Sir," continued he, "a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one." - Piozzi. 66 1 William Seward, Esq. F.R.S., editor of "Anecdotes of some Distinguished Persons," &c. in four volumes, Svo., well known to a numerous and valuable acquaintance for his lite rature, love of the fine arts, and social virtues. I am indebted to him for several communica tions concerning Johnson.-B. ÆTAT. 60. SECOND MARRIAGES. 13 tion, bas very judiciously pointed out that degree of intelligence which is to be desired in a female companion :— "Give me, next good, an understanding wife, By nature wise, not learned by much art; They are most firmly good, who best know why." When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for marrying a second time, as it shewed a disregard of his first wife, he said, "Not at all, Sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time." So ingenious a turn did he give to this delicate question. And yet, on another occasion, he owned that, he once had almost asked a promise of Mrs. Johnson that she would not marry again, but had checked himself. Indeed I cannot help thinking, that in his case the request would have been unreasonable; for if Mrs. Johnson forgot, or thought it no injury to the memory of her first love-the husband of her youth and the father of her children-to make a second marriage, why should she be precluded from a third, should she be so inclined? In Johnson's persevering fond appropriation of his Tetty, even after her decease, he seems totally to have overlooked the prior claim of the honest Birmingham trader.' I presume that her having been married before had, at times, given him some uneasiness; for I remember his observing upon the marriage of one of our common friends, "He has done a very foolish thing, Sir; he has married a widow, when he might have had a maid." We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I had last year the pleasure. of seeing Mrs. Thrale at Dr. Johnson's one morning, and had conversation enough with her to admire her talents; and to shew her her that I was as Johnsonian as herself. Dr. Johnson had probably Yet his inquisitive mind might have been struck by his friend Hervey's startling applica tion of the scriptural question to Sir Thomas Hanmer, relative to the lady who was the caus of their contention :-" In heaven, whose wife shall she be ?" See Vol. I. p. 18.-C. |