Aetat. 54.] Journal-keeping. 433 undisguised converse with such a man. May I beg you to present my best respects to him, and to assure him of the veneration which I entertain for the authour of the Rambler and of Rasselas? Let me recommend this last work to you; with the Rambler you certainly are acquainted. In Rasselas you will see a tender-hearted operator, who probes the wound only to heal it. Swift, on the contrary, mangles human nature. He cuts and slashes, as if he took pleasure in the operation, like the tyrant who said, Ita feri ut se sentiat emori1. Johnson seemed to be much gratified by this just and wellturned compliment. He recommended to me to keep a journal of my life, full and unreserved. He said it would be a very good exercise, and would yield me great satisfaction when the particulars were faded from my remembrance. I was uncommonly fortunate in having had a previous coincidence of opinion with him upon this subject, for I had kept such a journal for some time3; and it was no small pleasure to me to have this to tell him, and to receive his approbation. He counselled me to keep it private, and said I might surely have a friend who would burn it in case of my death. From this habit I have been enabled to give the world so many anecdotes, which would otherwise have been lost to posterity. I mentioned that I was afraid I put into my journal too many little incidents. JOHNSON. There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible*.' 1 'Ita feri ut se mori sentiat.' Suetonius, Caligula, chap. xxx. * Johnson himself was constantly purposing to keep a journal. On April 11, 1773, he told Boswell 'that he had twelve or fourteen times attempted to keep a journal of his life,' post, April 11, 1773. The day before he had recorded:-'I hope from this time to keep a journal.' Pr. and Med. p. 124. Like records follow, as :— 'Sept. 24, 1773. My hope is, for resolution I dare no longer call it, to divide my time regularly, and to keep such a journal of my time, as may give me comfort in reviewing it.' Ib. VOL. I. Ff p. 132. April 6, 1777. My purpose once more is To keep a journal.' Ib. p. 161. Jan. 2, 1781. My hope is To keep a journal.' Ib. p. 188. See also post, April 14, 1775, and April 10, 1778. 3 Boswell, when he was only eighteen, going with his father to the [Scotch] Northern Circuit, ‘kept,' he writes, 'an exact journal.' Letters of Boswell, p. 8. In the autumn of 1762 he also kept a journal which he sent to Temple to read. ib. p. 19. 'It has been well observed, that the misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming Next 434 Sir Thomas Robinson. [A.D. 1763. Next morning Mr. Dempster happened to call on me, and was so much struck even with the imperfect account which I gave him of Dr. Johnson's conversation, that to his honour be it recorded, when I complained that drinking port and sitting up late with him affected my nerves for some time after, he said, 'One had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep company with such a man'.' On Tuesday, July 182, I found tall Sir Thomas Robinson3 sitting with Johnson. Sir Thomas said, that the king of Prussia valued himself upon three things;-upon being a hero, a musician, and an authour. JOHNSON. 'Pretty well, Sir, for one man. As to his being an authour, I have not looked at his poetry; but his prose is poor stuff. He writes just as you might suppose Voltaire's footboy to do, who has been his amanuensis. He has such parts as the valet might have, and about as much of the colouring of the style as might be got by transcribing his works.' When I was at Ferney, I repeated this to Voltaire, in order to evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.' Johnson's Works, viii. 333. The main of life is indeed composed of small incidents and petty occurrences.' Ib. ii. 322. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, i. 199) says:- Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.' · 1 Boswell wrote the next day:'We sat till between two and three. He took me by the hand cordially, and said, "My dear Boswell, I love you very much." Now Temple, can I help indulging vanity?' Letters of Boswell, p. 27. Fourteen years later Boswell was afraid that he kept Johnson too late up. 'No, Sir,' said he, 'I don't care though I sit all night with you.' Post, Sept. 23, 1777. See also post, April 7, 1779, where Johnson, speaking of these early days, said to Boswell, 'it was not the wine that made your head ache, but the sense that I put into it.' 3 The elder brother of the first Lord Rokeby, called long Sir Thomas Robinson, on account of his height, and to distinguish him from Sir Thomas Robinson, first Lord Grantham. It was on his request for an epigram that Lord Chesterfield made the distich: "Unlike my subject will I make my song, It shall be witty, and it shan't be long," and to whom he said in his last illness, “Ah, Sir Thomas, it will be sooner over with me than it would be with you, for I am dying by inches." Lord Chesterfield was very short.' CROKER. Southey, writing of Rokeby Hall, which belonged to Robinson, says that 'Long Sir Thomas found a portrait of Richardson in the house; thinking Mr. Richardson a very unfit personage to be suspended in effigy among lords, ladies, and baronets, he ordered the painter to put him on the star and blue riband, and then christened the picture Sir Robert Wal reconcile Aetat. 54.] The King of Prussia. 435 reconcile him somewhat to Johnson, whom he, in affecting the English mode of expression', had previously characterised as a superstitious dog;' but after hearing such a criticism on Frederick the Great, with whom he was then on bad terms, he exclaimed, 'An honest fellow!' But I think the criticism much too severe; for the Memoirs of the House of Brandenburgh are written as well as many works of that kind. His poetry, for the style of which he himself makes a frank apology, 'Fargonnant un François barbare,' though fraught with pernicious ravings of infidelity, has, in many places, great animation, and in some a pathetick tenderness3. Upon this contemptuous animadversion on the King of Prussia, I observed to Johnson, 'It would seem then, Sir, that much less parts are necessary to make a King, than to make an Authour; for the King of Prussia is confessedly the greatest King now in Europe, yet you think he makes a very poor figure as an Authour.' Mr. Levet this day shewed me Dr. Johnson's library, which was contained in two garrets over his Chambers, where Lintot, son of the celebrated bookseller of that name, had formerly his warehouse. I found a number of good books, but very dusty pole.' Southey's Life, iii. 346. See also ante, p. 259 note 2, and post, 1770, near the end of Dr. Maxwell's Collectanea. Pennant, who visited Voltaire in 1765, says that, in his attempt to speak English he satisfied us that he was perfect master of our oaths and curses.' Pennant's Literary Life, p. 6. tated a little, and acknowledged his ignorance in the spirit of a philosophical poet by repeating as a very happy allusion a passage in Thomson's Seasons—“Aye," said he, "Where sleep the winds when it is calm ?" London Mag. 1783, p. 157. The passage is in Thomson's Winter, 1. 116: * Johnson (Works, vi. 440) had written of Frederick the Great in 1756-His skill in poetry and in the French language has been loudly praised by Voltaire, a judge without exception if his honesty were equal to his knowledge.' Boswell, in his Hypochondriacks, records a conversation that he had with Voltaire on memory:-'I asked him if he could give me any notion of the situation of our ideas which we have totally forgotten at the time, yet shall afterwards recollect. He paused, mediFf2 In what far-distant region of the 3 See post, ii. 54, note 3. Bernard Lintot, the father, published Pope's Iliad and Odyssey. Over the sale of the Odyssey a quarrel arose between the two men. Johnson's Works, viii. 251, 274. Lintot is attacked in the Dunciad, i. 40 and ii. 53. He was High-Sheriff for Sussex in 1736-the year of his death. and 436 Johnson's library. [A.D. 1763. and in great confusion'. The floor was strewed with manuscript leaves, in Johnson's own hand-writing, which I beheld with a degree of veneration, supposing they perhaps might contain portions of The Rambler or of Rasselas. I observed an apparatus for chymical experiments, of which Johnson was all his life very fond. The place seemed to be very favourable for retirement and meditation. Johnson told me, that he went up thither without mentioning it to his servant, when he wanted to study, secure from interruption; for he would not allow his servant to say he was not at home when he really was. 'A servant's strict regard for truth, (said he) must be weakened by such a practice. A philosopher may know that it is merely a form of denial; but few servants are such nice distinguishers. If I accustom a servant to tell a lie for me, have I not reason to apprehend that he will tell many lies for himself. I am, however, satisfied that every servant, of any degree of intelligence, understands saying his master is not at home, not at all as the affirmation of a fact, but as customary words, intimating that his master wishes not to be seen; so that there can be no bad effect from it. Mr. Temple, now vicar of St. Gluvias, Cornwall3, who had Gent. Mag. vi. 110. The son is mentioned in Johnson's Works, viii. 282. 1 'July 19, 1763. I was with Mr. Johnson to-day. I was in his garret up four pair of stairs; it is very airy, commands a view of St. Paul's and many a brick roof. He has many good books, but they are all lying in confusion and dust.' Letters of Boswell, p. 30. On Good Friday, 1764, Johnson made the following entry:-'I hope to put my rooms in order: Disorder I have found one great cause of idleness.' On his birth-day in the same year he wrote:-To-morrow I purpose to regulate my room.' Pr. and Med. pp. 50, 60. See ante, p. 140, and post, under Sept. 9, 1779. 3 Afterwards Rector of Mamhead, Devonshire. He is the grandfather of the present Bishop of London. He and Boswell had been fellowstudents at the University of Edinburgh, and seemed in youth to have had an equal amount of conceit. 'Recollect,' wrote Boswell, 'how you and I flattered ourselves that we were to be the greatest men of our age.' Letters of Boswell, p. 159. They began to correspond at least as early as 1758. The last letter was one from Boswell on his deathbed. Johnson thus mentions Temple (Works, viii. 480) :—‘Gray's character I am willing to adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, from a letter written to my friend Mr. Boswell by the Revd. Mr. Temple, Rector of St. Gluvias in Cornwall; and am as willing as his warmest well-wisher to believe it true.' been Aetat. 54.] Copyright in books. 437 been my intimate friend for many years, had at this time chambers in Farrar's-buildings, at the bottom of Inner Temple-lane, which he kindly lent me upon my quitting my lodgings, he being to return to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. I found them particularly convenient for me, as they were so near Dr. Johnson's. On Wednesday, July 20, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Dempster, and my uncle Dr. Boswell, who happened to be now in London, supped with me at these Chambers. JOHNSON. 'Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason, We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them. When I am on my way to dine with a friend, and finding it late, have bid the coachman make haste, if I happen to attend when he whips his horses, I may feel unpleasantly that the animals are put to pain, but I do not wish him to desist. No, Sir, I wish him to drive on.' Mr. Alexander Donaldson, bookseller of Edinburgh, had for some time opened a shop in London, and sold his cheap editions. of the most popular English books, in defiance of the supposed common-law right of Literary Property'. Johnson, though he concurred in the opinion which was afterwards sanctioned by a judgement of the House of Lords, that there was no such right, Johnson (Works, vii. 240) quotes the following by Edmund Smith, written some time after 1708:-'It will sound oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wise, most learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick should be better secured than that of a scholar! that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest products of the brain! that it should be felony to rob a cobbler of a pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best authour of his whole subsistence! that nothing should make a man a sure title to his own writings but the stupidity of them! See post, May 8, 1773, and Feb. 7, 1774; and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17 and 20, 1773. 2 The question arose, after the passing of the first statute respecting literary property in 1710, whether by certain of its provisions this perpetual copyright at common law was extinguished for the future. The question was solemnly argued before the Court of King's Bench, when Lord Mansfield presided, in 1769. The result was a decision in favour of the common-law right as unaltered by the statute, with the disapproval however of Mr. Justice Yates. In 1774 the same point was brought before the House of Lords, and the decision of the court below reversed was |