what he has said of me would appear. He durst not have printed it while he was alive." Dr. ADAMS. "I believe his 'Dissertatious on the Prophecies' is his great work." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, it is Tom's great work; but how far it is great, or how much of it is Tom's, are other questions. I fancy a considerable part of it was borrowed" Dr. ADAMS." He was a very successful man." JOHNSON." I don't think so, Sir. He did not get very high. He was late in getting what he did get; and he did not get it by the best means. believe he was a gross flatterer."

I

I fulfilled my intention by going to London, and returned to Oxford on Wednesday the 9th of June, when I was happy to find myself again in the same agreeable circle at Pembroke College, with the comfortable prospect of making some stay. Johnson welcomed my return with more than ordinary glee.

He talked with great regard of the Honourable Archibald Campbell, whose character he had given at the Duke of Argyll's table when we were at Inverary,' and at this time wrote out for me in his own hand, a fuller account of that learned and venerable writer, which I have published in its proper place. Johnson made a remark this evening which struck me a good deal. "I never," said he, "knew a nonjurer who could reason. Surely he did not mean to

2

hurt and offended at the malevolence that predominates in every part. Some passages, it must be allowed, are judicious and well-written, but make not sufficient compensation for so much spleen and ill-humour. Never was any biographer more sparing of his praise, or more abundant in his censures. He seemingly delights more in exposing blemishes, than in recommending beauties; slightly passes over excellences, enlarges upon imperfections, and, not content with his own severe reflections, revives old scandal, and produces large quotations from the forgotten works of former critics. His reputation was so high in the republic of letters, that it wanted not to be raised upon the ruins of others. But these essays, instead of raising a higher idea than was before entertained of his understanding, have certainly given the world a worse opinion of his temper. The bishop was therefore the more surprised and concerned for his townsman, for he respected him not only for his genius and learning, but valued him much for the more amiable part of his character—his humanity and charity, his morality and religion."

The last sentence we may consider as the general and permanent opinion of Bishop Newton, the remarks which precede it must, by all who have read Johnson's admirable work, be imputed to the disgust and peevishness of old age. I wish they had not appeared, and that Dr. Johnson had not been provoked by them to express himself not in respectful terms of a prelate whose labours were certainly of considerable advantage both to literature and reli gion.

1 "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides."-C.

2 The Rev. Mr. Agutter has favoured me with a note of a dialogue between Mr. John Fen

1

deny that faculty to many of their writers-to Hickes, Brett, and other eminent divines of that persuasion; and did not recollect that the seven bishops, so justly celebrated for their magnanimous resistance of arbitrary power, were yet nonjurers 1 to the new government. The nonjuring clergy of Scotland, indeed, who, excepting a few, have lately, by a sudden stroke, cut off all ties of allegiance to the house of Stuart, and resolved to pray for our present lawful sovereign by name, may be thought to have confirmed this remark; as it may be said, that the divine indefeasible hereditary right which they professed to believe, if ever true, must be equally true still. Many of my readers will be surprised when I mention that Johnson assured me he had never in his life been in a nonjuring meeting-house. Next morning at breakfast, he pointed out a passage in Savage's "Wanderer," saying "These are fine verses." "If,” said he, I had written with hostility of Warburton in my Shakspeare, I should have quoted this couplet :

'Here Learning, blinded first, and then beguiled,

Looks dark as Ignorance, as Frenzy wild.'

Dr. ADAMS.

You see they'd have fitted him to a T," (smiling.) "But you did not write against Warburton." JOHNSON. "No, Sir, I treated him with great respect both in my preface and in my notes."

Mrs. Kennicott spoke of her brother, the Reverend Mr. Chamberlayne, who had given up great prospects in the Church of England'

derson and Dr. Johnson on this topic, as related by Mr. Henderson, and it is evidently so authentic that I shall here insert it:-HENDERSON. "What do you think, Sir, of William Law?" JOHNSON "William Law, Sir, wrote the best piece of parenetic divinity; but William Law was no reasoner." HENDERSON. "Jeremy Collier, Sir?" JOHNSON. "Jeremy Collier fought without a rival, and therefore could not claim the victory." Mr. Henderson mentioned Ken and Kettlewell; but some objections were made; at last he said, "But, Sir, what do you think of Lesley?" JOHNSON. "Charles Lesley I had forgotten. Lesley was a reasoner, and a reaFoner who was not to be reasoned against."

1 Mr. Boswell is mistaken: two of the seven bishops (Lloyd, of St. Asaph's, and Trelawney) were not nonjurors -C.

Mr. Hallam informs me that there is here an inaccuracy. Mr. George Chamberlayne was a clerk in the Treasury, and never was in the Church of England. He became a Romish priest and died in London within the last twenty years. His elder brother, Edward Chamberlayne, was made Secretary of the Treasury in 1782, but was so overcome by a nervous terror of the responsibility of the office, that he committed suicide, by throwing himself out of the window, 6th April, 1782. See Gent. Mag. loco, and Hannah More's Life, vol. i. p. 245. -C. 1835.

Johnson, who

on his conversion to the Roman Catholic faith. warmly admired every man who acted from a conscientious regard to principle, erroneous or not, exclaimed fervently, "God bless him."

Mrs. Kennicott, in confirmation of Dr. Johnson's opinion that the present was not worse than former ages, mentioned that her brother assured her there was now less infidelity on the continent than there had been ;' Voltaire and Rousseau were less read. I asserted from good authority, that Hume's infidelity was certainly less read. JOHNSON. "" "All infidel writers drop into oblivion when personal connexions and the floridness of novelty are gone; though now and then a foolish fellow, who thinks he can be witty upon them, may bring them again into notice. There will sometimes start up a college joker, who does not consider that what is a joke in a college will not do in the world. To such defenders of religion I would apply a stanza of a poem which I remember to have seen in some old collection :

'Henceforth be quiet and agree,

Each kiss his empty brother:

Religion scorns a foe like thee,

But dreads a friend like t' other.'

The point is well, though the expression is not correct: one, and not thee, should be opposed to t'other." "

On the Roman Catholic religion he said, "If you join the papists externally, they will not interrogate you strictly as to your belief in their tenets. No reasoning papist believes every article of

1 A few years afforded lamentable evidence how utterly mistaken was this opinion.-C. 2 I have inserted the stanza as Johnson repeated it from memory; but I have since found the poem itself, in "The Foundling Hospital for Wit," printed at London, 1749. It is as follows:

"EPIGRAM, occasioned by a religious dispute at Bath.

"On reason, faith, and mystery high,

Two wits harangue the table;

The disputants alluded to in this epigram are supposed to have been Bentley (the son of the

doctor and the friend of Walpole) and Beau Nash.-C.

their faith. There is one side on which a good man might be persuaded to embrace it. A good man of a timorous disposition, in great doubt of his acceptance with God, and pretty credulous, may be glad to be of a church where there are so many helps to get to heaven.' I would be a papist if I could. I have fear enough; but an obstinate rationality prevents me. I shall never be a papist, unless on the near approach of death, of which I have a very great terror. I wonder that women are not all papists." BosWELL. They are not more afraid of death than men are." JOHNSON. "Because they are less wicked." Dr. ADAMS. 'They are more pious." JOHNSON. "No, hang 'em, they are not more pious. A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. all at piety."

He'll beat you

He argued in defence of some of the peculiar tenets of the church of Rome. As to the giving the bread only to the laity, he said, "They may think, that in what is merely ritual,' deviations from the primitive mode may be admitted on the ground of convenience; and I think they are as well warranted to make this alteration, as we are to substitute sprinkling in the room of the ancient baptism.' As to the invocation of saints, he said, "Though I do not think it authorised, it appears to me, that 'communion of saints' in the Creed means the communion with the saints in Heaven, as connected with 'The holy Catholic church.' He admitted the influence of

1 This facility, however it may, in their last moments, delude the timorous and credulous, is, as Jeremy Taylor observes, proportionably injurious if previously calculated upon. When addressing a convert to the Romish church, he says, "If I had a mind to live an evil life, and yet hope for heaven at last, I would be of your religion above any in the world.”— "— Works, vol. xi. p. 190.-C.

2 The Bishop of Ferns very justly observes, that the sacrament is not merely ritual. Had it been an institution of the church of Rome, they might have modified it; but it was a solemn and specific ordinance of our Saviour himself, which no church could justifiably alter.-C.

3 I do not recollect any scriptural authority that primitive baptism should necessarily be by immersion. From the Acts, ii. 41, it may be inferred that 3000 persons were baptized in Jerusalem in one day, and the jailor of Philippi and his family were baptized hastily at night, and, as it would seem, within the purlieus of the prison (Acts, xvi. 88). These baptisms could hardly have been by immersion.-C.

4 Waller, in his "Divine Poesie," canto first, has the same thought finely expressed :

"The church triumphant and the church below

In songs of praise their present union show:
Their joys are full, our expectation long;
In life we differ, but we join in song:

evil spirits upon our minds, and said, "Nobody who believes the New Testament can deny it."

I brought a volume of Dr. Hurd, the Bishop of Worcester's Sermons, and read to the company some passages from one of them, upon this text, "Resist the Devil, and he will fly from you," James iv. 7. I was happy to produce so judicious and elegant a supporter of a doctrine which, I know not why, should, in this world of imperfect knowledge, and therefore of wonder and mystery in a thousand instances, be contested by some with an unthinking assurance and flippancy.

After dinner, when one of us talked of there being a great enmity between Whig and Tory :-JOHNSON. "Why, not so much, I think,

Angels and we, assisted by this art,

May sing together, though we dwell apart."

1 The sermon thus opens:

"That there are angels and spirits good and bad; that at the head of these last there is ONE more considerable and malignant than the rest, who in the form or under the name of a serpent was deeply concerned in the fall of man, and whose head, as the prophetic language is, the Son of Man was one day to bruise; that this evil spirit, though that prophecy be in part completed, has not yet received his death's wound, but is still permitted, for ends unsearchable to us, and in ways which we cannot particularly explain, to have a certain degree of power in this world hostile to its virtue and happiness, and sometimes exerted with too much success; all this is so clear from Scripture, that no believer, unless he be first of all spoiled by philosophy and vain deceit, can possible entertain a doubt of it."

Having treated of possessions, his lordship says,—

"As I have no authority to affirm that there are now any such, so neither may I presume to say with confidence that there are not any." "But then, with regard to the influence of evil spirits at this day upon the SOULS of men, I shall take leave to be a great deal more peremptory. (Then, having stated the various proofs, he adds,)—All this, I say, is so manifest to every one who reads the Scriptures, that if we respect their authority, the question concerning the reality of the demoniac influence upon the minds of men is clearly deter mined."

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Let it be remembered, that these are not the words of an antiquated or obscure enthusiast, but of a learned and polite prelate now alive; and were spoken not to a vulgar congregation, but to the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn. His lordship in this sermon explains the words "deliver us from evil," in the Lord's Prayer, as signifying a request to be protected from "the evil one," that is, the Devil. This is well illustrated in a short but excellent Commentary by my late worthy friend the Reverend Dr. Lort, of whom it may truly be said, Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit. It is remarkable that Waller, in his "Reflections on the several Petitions in that sacred Form of Devotion," has understood this in the same sense :"Guard us from all temptations of the FOE."-Boswell.

On this important subject two other distinguished prelates have, as appears by their pub. lished discourses, addressed the same learned society whilst preachers of Lincoln's Inn. See Bishop Van Mildert's Sermons, vol ii. p. 124, and Bishop Heber's Sermons, preached in England, Sermon IV.-MARKLAND.