64

Sorrow inherent in humanity.

[August 19.

abundantly vain of it, for he seriously said to Dr. Johnson, ‘you have not such a one in England'.'

The professors entertained us with a very good dinner. Present: Murison, Shaw, Cook, Hill, Haddo, Watson, Flint, Brown. I observed, that I wondered to see him eat so well, after viewing so many sorrowful scenes of ruined religious magnificence. Why, said he, I am not sorry, after seeing these gentlemen; for they are not sorry.' Murison said, all sorrow was bad, as it was murmuring against the dispensations of Providence. JOHNSON. 'Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow 2. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which wear out the past. You need not murmur, though you are sorry.' MURISON. But St. Paul says, "I have learnt, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content." JOHNSON. 'Sir, that relates to riches and poverty; for we see St. Paul, when he had a thorn in the flesh, prayed earnestly to have it removed; and then he could not be content.' Murison, thus refuted, tried to be smart, and drank to Dr. Johnson, 'Long may you lecture!' Dr. Johnson afterwards, speaking of his not drinking wine, said, 'The Doctor spoke of lecturing (looking to him). I give all these lectures on water.'

He defended requiring subscription in those admitted to universities, thus: 'As all who come into the country must

I

Johnson says (Works, ix. 5):'The doctor, by whom it was shown, hoped to irritate or subdue my English vanity by telling me that we had no such repository of books in England.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi Letters, i. 113):— 'For luminousness and elegance it may vie at least with the new edifice at Streatham.' 'The new edifice' was, no doubt, the library of which he took the touching farewell. Ante, iv. 158.

2 'Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are

fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain.' The Rambler, No. 47. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on the death of her son :-'Do not indulge your sorrow; try to drive it away by either pleasure or pain; for, opposed to what you are feeling, many pains will become pleasures.' Piozzi Letters, i. 310.

obey

August 19.]

Dinner with the Professors.

65

obey the king, so all who come into an university must be of the church '.'

And here I must do Dr. Johnson the justice to contradict a very absurd and ill-natured story, as to what passed at St. Andrews. It has been circulated, that, after grace was said in English, in the usual manner, he with the greatest marks of contempt, as if he had held it to be no grace in an university, would not sit down till he had said grace aloud in Latin. This would have been an insult indeed to the gentlemen who were entertaining us. But the truth was precisely thus. In the course of conversation at dinner, Dr. Johnson, in very good humour, said, 'I should have expected to have heard a Latin grace, among so many learned men: we had always a Latin grace at Oxford. I believe I can repeat it? Which he did, as giving the learned men in one place a specimen of what was done by the learned men in another place.

We went and saw the church, in which is Archbishop Sharp's monument3. I was struck with the same kind of feelings with which the churches of Italy impressed me. I was much pleased, to see Dr. Johnson actually in St. Andrews, of which we had talked so long. Professor Haddo was with us this afternoon, along with Dr. Watson. We looked at St. Salvador's College. The rooms for students seemed very commodious, and Dr. Johnson said, the chapel was the neatest place of worship he had seen. The key of the library could not be found; for it seems Professor Hill, who was out of town, had taken it with him. Dr. Johnson told a joke he had heard of a monastery abroad, where the key of the library could never be found.

It was somewhat dispiriting, to see this ancient archiepiscopal city now sadly deserted. We saw in one of its streets a

66

Instructions for composition.

[August 19.

remarkable proof of liberal toleration; a nonjuring clergyman, strutting about in his canonicals, with a jolly countenance and a round belly, like a well-fed monk.

We observed two occupations united in the same person, who had hung out two sign-posts. Upon one was, 'James Hood, White Iron Smith' (i.e. Tin-plate Worker). Upon another, 'The Art of Fencing taught, by James Hood.'-Upon this last were painted some trees, and two men fencing, one of whom had hit the other in the eye, to shew his great dexterity; so that the art was well taught. JOHNSON. 'Were I studying here, I should go and take a lesson. I remember Hope, in his book on this art', says, "the Scotch are very good fencers."

We returned to the inn, where we had been entertained at dinner, and drank tea in company with some of the Professors, of whose civilities I beg leave to add my humble and very grateful acknowledgement to the honourable testimony of Dr. Johnson, in his Fourney'.

We talked of composition, which was a favourite topick of Dr. Watson's, who first distinguished himself by lectures on rhetorick, JOHNSON. 'I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he çan, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy3 WATSON. I own I am for much attention to accuracy in

eminently adapted to study and education. . . . The students, however, are represented as, at this time, not exceeding a hundred. I saw no reason for imputing their paucity to the present professors.' Johnson's Works, ix. 4. A student, he adds, of lower rank could get his board, lodging, and instruction for less than ten pounds for the seven months of residence. Stockdale says (Memoirs, i. 238) that 'in St. Andrews, in 1756, for a good bedroom, coals, and the attendance of a servant I paid one shilling a week.'

The Compleat Fencing-Master, by Sir William Hope. London, 1691.

In the whole time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of kindness, and entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality.' Johnson's Works, ix. 3.

3

Dugald Stewart (Life of Adam Smith, p. 107) writes :—‘Mr. Smith observed to me not long before his death, that after all his practice in writing he composed as slowly, and with as great difficulty as at first. He added at the same time that Mr. Hume had acquired so great a facility in this respect, that the last volumes of his History were printed from his original copy, with a few marginal corrections.' See ante, iii. 437 and iv. 12.

composing,

August 19.]

Johnson's rapid composition.

67

composing, lest one should get bad habits of doing it in a slovenly manner.' JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, you are confounding doing inaccurately with the necessity of doing inaccurately. A man knows when his composition is inaccurate, and when he thinks fit he'll correct it. But, if a man is accustomed to compose slowly, and with difficulty, upon all occasions, there is danger that he may not compose at all, as we do not like to do that which is not done easily; and, at any rate, more time is consumed in a small matter than ought to be.' WATSON. 'Dr. Hugh Blair has taken a week to compose a sermon.' JOHNSON. 'Then, Sir, that is for want of the habit of composing quickly, which I am insisting one should acquire.' WATSON. 'Blair was not composing all the week, but only such hours as he found himself disposed for composition.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, unless you tell me the time he took, you tell me nothing. If I say I took a week to walk a mile, and have had the gout five days, and been ill otherwise another day, I have taken but one day. I myself have composed about forty sermons'. I have begun a sermon after dinner, and sent it off by the post that night. I wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting; but then I sat up all night. I have also written six sheets in a day of translation from the French 2' BOSWELL. 'We have all observed how one man dresses himself slowly, and another fast.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir: it is wonderful how much time some people will consume in dressing; taking up a thing and looking at it, and laying it down, and taking it up again. Every one should get the habit of doing it quickly.

Of these only twenty-five have been published: Johnson's Works, ix. 289-525. See ante, iii. 19, note 3, and 181. Johnson wrote on April 20, 1778:-'I have made sermons, perhaps as readily as formerly.' Pr. and Med. p. 170. 'I should think,' said Lord Eldon, that no clergyman ever wrote as many sermons as Lord Stowell. I advised him to burn all his manuscripts of that kind. It is not fair to the clergymen to have it known he wrote them.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 286. Johnson, we may

be sure, had no copy of any of his sermons. That none of them should be known but those he wrote for Taylor is strange.

F 2

2 He made the same statement on June 3, 1781 (ante, iv. 127), adding, 'I should be glad to see it [the translation] now.' This shows that he was not speaking of his translation of Lobo, as Mr. Croker maintains in a note on this passage. I believe he was speaking of his translation of Courayer's Life of Paul Sarpi. Ante, i. 135.

I would

68

Leechman on Prayer.

[August 20.

I would say to a young divine, "Here is your text; let me see

how soon you can make a sermon." how much better you can make it." powers and his judgement.'

Then I'd say, "Let me see
Thus I should see both his

We all went to Dr. Watson's to supper. Miss Sharp, great grandchild of Archbishop Sharp, was there; as was Mr. Craig, the ingenious architect of the new town of Edinburgh' and nephew of Thomson, to whom Dr. Johnson has since done so much justice, in his Lives of the Poets.

I

We talked of memory, and its various modes. JOHNSON. 'Memory will play strange tricks. One sometimes loses a single word. I once lost fugaces in the Ode Posthume, Posthume?? mentioned to him, that a worthy gentleman of my acquaintance actually forgot his own name. JOHNSON. 'Sir, that was a morbid oblivion.'

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20.

Dr. Shaw, the professor of divinity, breakfasted with us. I took out my Ogden on Prayer, and read some of it to the company. Dr. Johnson praised him. 'Abernethy3, (said he,) allows only of a physical effect of prayer upon the mind, which may be produced many ways, as well as by prayer; for instance, by meditation. Ogden goes farther. In truth, we have the consent of all nations for the efficacy of prayer, whether offered up by individuals, or by assemblies; and Revelation has told us, it will be effectual.' I said, 'Leechman seemed to incline to Abernethy's doctrine.' Dr. Watson observed, that Leechman meant to shew, that, even admitting no effect to be produced by prayer, respecting the Deity, it was useful to our own minds.

'As far as I am acquainted with modern architecture, I am aware of no streets which, in simplicity and manliness of style, or general breadth and brightness of effect, equal those of the New Town of Edinburgh. But, etc.' Ruskin's Lectures on Architecture and Painting, p. 2.

2

7 Horace, Odes, ii. 14. 1.

3 John Abernethy, a Presbyterian divine. His works in 7 vols. 8vo. were published in 1740-51.

⚫ Leechman was principal of Glas

gow University (post, Oct. 29). On his appointment to the Chair of Theology he had been prosecuted for heresy for having, in his Sermon on Prayer, omitted to state the obligation to pray in the name of Christ. Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 69. One of his sermons was placed in Hume's hands, apparently that the author might have his suggestions in preparing a second edition. Hume says:-'First the addressing of our virtuous wishes and desires to He