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We have now been favoured with the concluding volume, in which, to use a parliamentary expression, he has explained, so as not to appear quite so adverse to the opinion of the world, concerning Pope, as was at first thought; and we must all agree, that his work is a most valuable accession to English literature.

A writer of deserved eminence being mentioned, Johnson said, "Why, sir, he is a man of good parts, but being originally poor, he has got a love of mean company and low jocularity; a very bad thing, sir. To laugh is good, and to talk is good. But you ought no more to think it enough if you laugh, than you are to think it enough if you talk. You may laugh in as many ways as you talk; and surely every way of talking that is practised cannot be esteemed."

I spoke of Sir James Macdonald 2 as a young man of most distinguished merit, who united the highest reputation at Eton and Oxford, with the patriarchal spirit of a great highland chieftain. I mentioned that Sir James had said to me, that he had never seen Mr. Johnson, but he had a great respect for him, though at the same time it was mixed with some degree of terrour. JOHNSON. 66 Sir, if he were to be acquainted with me, it might lessen both." The mention of this gentleman led us to talk of the Western Islands of Scotland, to visit which he expressed a wish that then appeared to me a very romantick fancy, which I little thought would be afterwards realised. He told me that his father had put Martin's account of those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St. Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock 3; a circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed his attention. He said he would

[It is not easy to say who was here meant. Murphy, who was born poor, was distinguished for elegance of manners and conversation; and Fielding, who could not have been spoken of as alive in 1763, was born to better prospects, though he kept low company; and had it been Goldsmith, Boswell would probably have had no scruple in naming him.-ED.]

2 [See post, 27th March, 1772, and 5th September, 1773.-Ed.]

[In the Spectator, No. 50, Addison makes the Indian king suppose that St. Paul's was carved out of a rock.-ED.]

He maintained that a boy at school was the happiest of human beings. I supported a different opinion, from which I have never yet varied, that a man is happier: and I enlarged upon the anxiety and sufferings which are endured at school. JOHNSON. Ah! sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. Men have a solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it." I silently asked myself, "Is it possible that the great SAMUEL JOHNSON really entertains any such apprehension, and is not confident that his exalted fame is established upon a foundation never to be shaken?"

He this evening drank a bumper to Sir David Dalrymple, [afterwards Lord Hailes,] "as a man of worth, a scholar, and a wit." "I have (said he) never heard of him, except from you; but let him know my opinion of him: for he does not show himself much in the world, he should have the praise of the few who hear of him."

On Tuesday, July 26, I found Mr. Johnson alone. It was a very wet day, and I again complained of the disagreeabe effects of such weather 4. JOHNSON. "Sir, this is all imagination which physicians encourage; for man lives in air, as a fish lives in water; so that if the atmosphere press heavy from above, there is an equal resistance from below. To be sure, bad weather is hard upon people who are obliged to be abroad; and men cannot labour so well in the open air in bad weather, as in good; but, sir, a smith or a tailor, whose work is within weather, as in fair. Some very delicate doors, will surely do as much in rainy frames, indeed, may be affected by wet

weather; but not common constitutions."

and I asked him what he thought was best We talked of the education of children; to teach them first. JOHNSON. "Sir, it

4 [See ante pp. 142 and 193.-ED.]

is no matter what you teach them first, any | more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them both."

On Thursday, July 28, we again supped in private at the Turk's-head coffee-house. JOHNSON. "Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves. His excellence is strong sense; for his humour, though very well, is not remarkably good. I doubt whether the Tale of a Tub' be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his usual manner 1."

"Thomson, I think, had as much of the poet about him as most writers. Every thing appeared to him through the medium of his favourite pursuit. He could not have viewed those two candles burning but with a poetical eye.

"Has not -2 a great deal of wit, sir?" JOHNSON. "I do not think so, sir. He is, indeed, continually attempting wit, but he fails. And I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit, and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it."

He laughed heartily when I mentioned to him a saying of his concerning Mr. Thomas Sheridan, which Foote took a wicked pleasure to circulate. "Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in nature."-" So (said he), I allowed him all his own merit." He now added, "Sheridan cannot bear I bring his declamation to a point 3. I ask him a plain question, What do you

me.

1 This opinion was given by him more at large at a subsequent period. See post, 16th Aug. 1773.-BOSWELL. [How could Johnson doubt that Swift was the author of the Tale of a Tub, when, as he himself relates in his Life of Swift, "No other claimants can be produced; and when Archbishop Sharpe and the Duchess of Somerset, by showing it to Queen Anne, debarred Swift of a bishoprick, he did not deny it." We have, moreover, Swift's own acknowledgment of it, in his letter to Ben. Tooke the printer, 29th June, 1710.-Ed.]

2

[There is no doubt that this blank must be filled with the name of Mr. Burke. See post, 15th Aug. and 15th Sept. 1773, and 25th April, 1778.-ED.]

3 [He endeavours to assign a reason for Sheridan's dissatisfaction very different from the true one; there is even reason to suppose, from Mr. Boswell's own account, that Johnson and Sheridan never met after Johnson's insult to Sheridan on the subject of the pension. See ante, p. 176.ED.]

mean to teach? Besides, sir, what influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country, by his narrow exertions? Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover, to show light at Calais."

Talking of a young man who was uneasy from thinking that he was very deficient in learning and knowledge, he said, "A man has no reason to complain who holds a middle place, and has many below him, and perhaps he has not six of his years above him; perhaps not one. Though he may not know any thing perfectly, the general mass of knowledge that he has acquired is considerable. Time will do for him all that is wanting."

The conversation then took a philosophical turn. JOHNSON. "Human experience, which is constantly contradicting theory, is the great test of truth. A system built upon the discoveries of a great many minds is always of more strength, than what is produced by the mere workings of any one mind, which, of itself, can do little. There is not so poor a book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators. The French writers are superficial, because they are not scholars, and so proceed upon the mere power of their own minds; and we see how very little power they have."

"As to the Christian religion, sir, besides the strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance in its favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton 4 set out an infidel, and came to be a very firm believer."

He this evening again recommended to me to perambulate Spain 5. I said it would

[Where, the Bishop of Ferns asks, did Johnson learn this? It is true that Dr. Horsely declined publishing some papers on religious subjects which Newton left behind him-some have suspected that they were tainted with Unitarianism ; others (probably from a consideration of his work on the Revelations) believed that they were in a strain of mysticism not (in the opinion of his friends) worthy of so great a genius; and the recent publication of his two letters to Locke, in a style of infantine simplicity (see Lord King's Life of Locke), give additional colour to this latter opinion: but for Johnson's assertion that he set out an infidel, there appears no authority, and all the inferences are the other way.-ED.]

5 I fully intended to have followed advice of such weight; but having staid much longer both in Germany and Italy than I proposed to do, and

you give, my lad, to know about the Argonauts?" "Sir," said the boy, "I would give what I have." Johnson was much pleased with his answer, and we gave him a double fare. Dr. Johnson then turning to me, "Sir," said he, "a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge."

We landed at the Old Swan 1, and walked to Billings-gate, where we took oars, and moved smoothly along the silver Thames. It was a very fine day. We were entertained with the immense number and variety of ships that were lying at anchor, and with the beautiful country on each side of the river.

I talked of preaching, and of the great success which those called methodists? have.

[The erection of a new London bridge may render it useful to observe that with the ebb-tide it is dangerous to pass through, or shoot, as it is called, the arches of the old bridge: passengers, therefore, land above the bridge, and walk to some wharf below it.-ED.]

2 All who are acquainted with the history of religion (the most important, surely, that concerns the human mind), know that the appellation of Methodists was first given to a society of students in the university of Oxford, who, about the year 1730, were distinguished by an earnest and methodical attention to devout exercises. This disposition of mind is not a novelty, or peculiar to any sect, but has been and still may be found, in many Christians of every denomination. Johnson himself was, in a dignified manner, a methodist. In his Rambler, No. 110, he mentions with respect "the whole discipline of regulated piety;" and in his "Prayers and Meditations," many instances occur of his anxious examination into his spiritual state. That this religious earnestness, and in particular an observation of the influence of the Holy Spirit, has sometimes degenerated into folly, and sometimes been counterfeited for base purposes, cannot be denied. But it is not, therefore, fair to decry it when genuine. The principal argument in reason and good sense against methodism is, that it tends to debase human nature, and prevent the generous exertions of goodness, by an unworthy supposition that God will pay no regard to them; although it is positively said in the scriptures, that he "will reward every man according to his works." But I am happy to have it in my power to do justice to those whom it is the fashion to ridicule, without any knowledge of their tenets; and this I can do by quoting a passage from one of their best apologists, Mr. Milner, who thus expresses their doctrine upon this subject: "Justified by faith, renewed in his faculties, and constrained by the love of Christ, their believer moves in the sphere of love and gratitude, and all his duties flow more or less from this principle. And though they are accumulating for him in heaven a treasure of bliss proportioned to his faithfulness and activity, and it is by no means inconsistent with his

JOHNSON. "Sir, it is owing to their expressing themselves in a plain and familiar manner, which is the only way to do good to the common people, and which clergymen of genius and learning ought to do from a principle of duty, when it is suited to their congregations; a practice, for which they will be praised by men of sense. To insist against drunkenness as a crime, because it debases reason, the noblest faculty of man, would be of no service to the common people: but to tell them that they may die in a fit of drunkenness, and show them how dreadful that would be, cannot fail to make a deep impression. Sir, when your Scotch clergy give up their homely manner, religion will soon decay in that country.". Let this observation, as Johnson meant it, be ever remembered.

I was much pleased to find myself with Johnson at Greenwich, which he celebrates in his "London" as a favourite scene. had the poem in my pocket, and read the lines aloud with enthusiasm:

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"On Thames's banks in silent thought we stood, Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood: Pleased with the seat which gave ELIZA birth, We kneel, and kiss the consecrated earth."

He remarked that the structure of Green

wich hospital was too magnificent for a place of charity, and that its parts wefe too much detached, to make one great whole3.

Buchanan, he said, was a very fine poet1; and observed, that he was the first who complimented a lady, by ascribing to her the different perfections of the heathen goddesses 5; but that Johnstone improved upon

principles to feel the force of this consideration, yet love itself sweetens every duty to his mind; and he thinks there is no absurdity in his feeling the love of God as the grand commanding principle of his life." Essays on several religious Subjects, &c. by Joseph Milner, A. M. master of the grammar school of Kingston-upon-Hull, 1789. p. 11.-BOSWELL. [Mr. Joseph Milner was brother of Dr. Isaac Milner, who died Dean of Carlisle.-ED.]

3

[A very just criticism, which, considering Johnson's defective vision, and his consequent imperfect judgment on all the fine arts, may be suspected to have been suggested to him by his friend Mr. Gwynne, the architect.-Ed.]

4 [See post, sub. 30th March, 1783.-ED.] 5 Epigram, Lib. II. "In Elizabeth. Angliæ Reg."I suspect that the authour's memory here deceived him, and that Johnson said, "the first modern poet;" for there is a well known Epigram in the ANTHOLOGIA, containing this kind of eulogy.-MALONE.

6 [Arthur Johnstone, born near Aberdeen in 1587, an elegant Latin poet. His principal works are a volume of epigrams, (in which is to be found that to which Dr. Johnson alludes,) and a Latin paraphrase of the Psalms. He died at Oxford in 1641.-ED.]