124 Payment for London. [A.D. 1738. observe the diffidence with which its authour brought it forward into publick notice, while he is so cautious as not to avow it to be his own production; and with what humility he offers to allow the printer to 'alter any stroke of satire which he might dislike. That any such alteration was made, we do not know. If we did, we could not but feel an indignant regret; but how painful is it to see that a writer of such vigorous powers of mind was actually in such distress, that the small profit which so short a poem, however excellent, could yield, was courted as a ' relief.' It has been generally said, I know not with what truth, that Johnson offered his London to several booksellers, none of whom would purchase it. To this circumstance Mr. Derrick alludes in the following lines of his Fortune, a Rhapsody: 'Will no kind patron JOHNSON own? Shall JOHNSON friendless range the town? The offspring of his happy Muse 2?' But we have seen that the worthy, modest, and ingenious Mr. Robert Dodsley3 had taste enough to perceive its uncommon merit, and thought it creditable to have a share in it. The fact is, that, at a future conference, he bargained for the whole property of it, for which he gave Johnson ten guineas; who told me, 'I might, perhaps, have accepted of less; but that Paul Whitehead had a little before got ten guineas for a poem and I would not take less than Paul Whitehead,' Boswell misread the letter. Johnson does not offer to allow the printer to make alterations. He says:-" -'I will take the trouble of altering any stroke of satire which you may dislike.' The law against libel was as unjust as it was severe, and printers ran a great risk. 2 Derrick was not merely a poet, but also Master of the Ceremonies at Bath; post, May 16, 1763. For Johnson's opinion of his 'Muse' see post, under March 30, 1783. Fortune, a Rhapsody, was published in Nov. 1751. Gent. Mag. xxi. 527. He is Six years later Johnson thus wrote of Savage's Wanderer:-'From a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantage; nor can it without some degree of indignation and concern be told, that he sold the copy for ten guineas.' Johnson's Works, viii. 131. Mrs. Aetat. 29.] Paul Whitehead. 125 I may here observe, that Johnson appeared to me to undervalue Paul Whitehead upon every occasion when he was mentioned, and, in my opinion, did not do him justice; but when it is considered that Paul Whitehead was a member of a riotous and profane club', we may account for Johnson's having a prejudice against him. Paul Whitehead was, indeed, unfortunate in being not only slighted by Johnson, but violently attacked by Churchill, who utters the following imprecation : 'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?) Be born a Whitehead, and baptiz'd a Paul?!' yet I shall never be persuaded to think meanly of the authour of so brilliant and pointed a satire as Manners3. Johnson's London was published in May, 1738; and it is Piozzi sold in 1788 the copyright of her collection of Johnson's Letters for £500; post, Feb. 1767. 1 The Monks of Medmenham Abbey. See Almon's Life of Wilkes, iii. 60, for Wilkes's account of this club. Horace Walpole (Letters, i. 92) calls Whitehead 'an infamous, but not despicable poet.' * From The Conference, Churchill's Poems, ii. 15. 3 In the Life of Pope Johnson writes:Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the Lords for a poem called Manners, together with Dodsley his publisher. Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, sculked and escaped; but Dodsley's shop and family made his appearance necessary.' Johnson's Works, viii. 297. Manners was published in 1739. Dodsley was kept in custody for a week. Gent. Mag. ix. 104. The whole process was supposed to be intended rather to intimidate Pope [who in his Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-Eight had given offence] than to punish Whitehead, and it answered that purpose.' CHALMERS, quoted in Parl. Hist. x. 1325. 4 Sir John Hawkins, p. 86, tells us:'The event is antedated, in the poem of London; but in every particular, except the difference of a year, what is there said of the departure of Thales, must be understood of Savage, and looked upon as true history. This conjecture is, I believe, entirely groundless. I have been assured, that Johnson said he was not so much as acquainted with Savage when he wrote his London. If the departure mentioned in it was the departure of Savage, the event was not antedated but foreseen; for London was published in May, 1738, and Savage did not set out for Wales till July, 1739. However well Johnson could defend the credibility of second sight [see post, Feb. 1766], he did not pretend that he himself was possessed of that faculty. BOSWEll. I am not sure that Hawkins is altogether wrong in his account. Boswell does not state of his own knowledge that Johnson was not acquainted with Savage when he wrote London. The death of Queen Caroline in Nov. 1737 deprived Savage of her yearly bounty, and ‘abandoned him again to fortune' Johnson's Works, viii. 166). remarkable, 126 Was Richard Savage Thales? [A.D. 1738. remarkable, that it came out on the same morning with Pope's The elegy on her that he composed on her birth-day (March 1) brought him no reward. He was 'for some time in suspense,' but nothing was done. 'He was in a short time reduced to the lowest degree of distress, and often wanted both lodging and food' (Ib. p. 169). His friends formed a scheme that 'he should retire into Wales.' 'While this scheme was ripening' he lodged 'in the liberties of the Fleet, that he might be secure from his creditors' (Ib. p. 170). After many delays a subscription was at length raised to provide him with a small pension, and he left London in July 1739 (Ib. p. 173). London, as I have shewn, was written before April 6, 1738. That it was written with great rapidity we might infer from the fact that a hundred lines of The Vanity of Human Wishes were written in a day. At this rate London might have been the work of three days. That it was written in a very short time seems to be shown by a passage in the first of these letters to Cave. Johnson says :-'When I took the liberty of writing to you a few days ago, I did not expect a repetition of the same pleasure so soon; . . . but having the enclosed poem, &c.' It is probable that in these few days the poem was written. If we can assume that Savage's elegy was sent to the Court not later than March 1-it may have been sent earlier and that Johnson's poem was written in the last ten days of March, we have three weeks for the intervening events. They are certainly not more than sufficient, if indeed they are sufficient. The coincidence is certainly very striking between Thales's retirement to 'Cambria's solitary shore' and Savage's retirement to Wales. There are besides lines in the poem-additions to Juvenal and not translations-which curiously correspond with what Johnson wrote of Savage in his Life. Thus he says that Savage 'imagined that he should be transported to scenes of flowery felicity; . . . he could not bear... to lose the opportunity of listening, without intermission, to the melody of the nightingale, which he believed was to be heard from every bramble, and which he did not fail to mention as a very important part of the happiness of a country life' (Ib. p. 170). In like manner Thales prays to find : 'Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play, Some peaceful vale, with nature's paintings gay. There every bush with nature's musick rings; There every breeze bears health upon its wings.' Mr. Croker objects that 'if Thales had been Savage, Johnson could never have admitted into his poem two lines that point so forcibly at the drunken fray, in which Savage stabbed a Mr. Sinclair, for which he was convicted of murder:"Some frolic drunkard, reeling from a feast, Provokes a broil, and stabs you in a jest."' But here Johnson is following Juvenal. Mr. Croker forgets that, if Savage was convicted of murder, 'he was soon after admitted to bail, and pleaded the King's pardon.' 'Persons of distinction' testified that he was 'a modest inoffensive man, not inclined to broils or to insolence;' the witnesses against him were of the lowest character, and his judge had shewn himself as ignorant as he was brutal. Sinclair had been drinking in a brothel, and Savage asserted that he had stabbed him by the necessity of self defence' (Ib. p. 117). satire, Aetat. 29.] General Oglethorpe. 127 satire, entitled '1738';' so that England had at once its Juvenal and Horace as poetical monitors. The Reverend Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, to whom I am indebted for some obliging communications, was then a student at Oxford, and remembers well the effect which London produced. Every body was delighted with it; and there being no name to it, the first buz of the literary circles was 'here is an unknown poet, greater even than Pope.' And it is recorded in the Gentleman's Magazine of that year3, that it 'got to the second edition in the course of a week.' One of the warmest patrons of this poem on its first appearance was General Oglethorpe, whose 'strong benevolence of soul"," 'One driven by strong benevo It is, however, not unlikely that Wales was suggested to Johnson as Thales's retreat by Swift's lines on Steele, in Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (v. 181), published only three years before London:— 'Thus Steele who owned what And flourished by imputed wit, The first dialogue was registered at Stationers' Hall, 12th May, 1738, under the title One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight. The second dialogue was registered 17th July, 1738, as One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight,Dialogue 2. Elwin's Pope, iii. 455. David Hume was in London this spring, finding a publisher for his first work, A Treatise of Human Nature. J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 66. 4 lence of soul Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.' Pope's Imitations of Horace, ii. 2. 276. 'General Oglethorpe, died 1785, earned commemoration in Pope's gallery of worthies by his Jacobite politics. He was, however, a remarkable man. He first directed attention to the abuses of the London jails. His relinquishment of all the attractions of English life and fortune for the settlement of the colony of Georgia is as romantic a story at that of Bishop Berkeley' (Pattison's Pope, p. 152). It is very likely that Johnson's regard for Oglethorpe was greatly increased by the stand that he and his brothertrustees in the settlement of Georgia made against slavery (see post, Sept. 23, 1777). The first principle which they laid down in their laws was that no slave should be employed. Pope had published Imitations of This was regarded at the time as Horace. 3 P. 269. BosWELL. 'Short extracts from London, a Poem, become remarkable for having got to the second edition in the space of a week.' Gent. Mag. viii. 269. The price of the poem was one shilling. Pope's satire, though sold at the same price, was longer in reaching its second edition (16. p. 280). their great and fundamental error; it was afterwards repealed' (Southey's Wesley, i. 75). In spite, however, of Oglethorpe's 'strong benevolence of soul' he at one time treated Charles Wesley, who was serving as a missionary in Georgia, with great brutality (Ib. p. 88). According to Benjamin Franklin (Memoirs, i. 162) Georgia was settled with little forethought. was 128 Pope admires London. [A.D. 1738. was unabated during the course of a very long life'; though it is painful to think, that he had but too much reason to become cold and callous, and discontented with the world, from the neglect which he experienced of his publick and private worth, by those in whose power it was to gratify so gallant a veteran with marks of distinction. This extraordinary person was as remarkable for his learning and taste, as for his other eminent qualities; and no man was more prompt, active, and generous, in encouraging merit. I have heard Johnson gratefully acknowledge, in his presence, the kind and effectual support which he gave to his London, though unacquainted with its authour. Pope, who then filled the poetical throne without a rival, it may reasonably be presumed, must have been particularly struck by the sudden appearance of such a poet; and, to his credit, let it be remembered, that his feelings and conduct on the occasion were candid and liberal. He requested Mr. Richardson, son of the painter2, to endeavour to find out who this new authour was. Mr. Richardson, after some inquiry, having informed him that he had discovered only that his name was Johnson, and that he 'Instead of being made with hardy industrious husbandmen, it was with families of broken shop-keepers, and other insolvent debtors; many of idle habits, taken out of the jails, who being set down in the woods, unqualified for clearing land, and unable to endure the hardships of a new settlement, perished in numbers, leaving many helpless children unprovided for.' Johnson wished to write Oglethorpe's life; post, April 10, 1775. Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 548), writing of him 47 years after London was published, when he was 87 years old, says :—' His eyes, ears, articulation, limbs, and memory would suit a boy, if a boy could recollect a century backwards. His teeth are gone; he is a shadow, and a wrinkled one; but his spirits and his spirit are in full bloom: two years and a-half ago he challenged a neighbouring gentleman for trespassing on his manor.' 2 'Once Johnson being at dinner at Sir Joshua's in company with many painters, in the course of conversation Richardson's Treatise on Painting happened to be mentioned. "Ah!" said Johnson, "I remember, when I was at college, I by chance found that book on my stairs. I took it up with me to my chamber, and read it through, and truly I did not think it possible to say so much upon the art.' Sir Joshua desired of one of the company to be informed what Johnson had said; and it being repeated to him so loud that Johnson heard it, the Doctor seemed hurt, and added, "But I did not wish, Sir, that Sir Joshua should have been told what I then said." Northcote's Reynolds, i. 236. Jonathan Richardson the painter had published several works on painting before Johnson went to college. was |