government. If .you will not oppose at the expense of losing your place, your opposition will not be honest, you will feel no serious grievance; and the present opposition is only a contest to get what others have. Sir Robert Walpole acted as I would do. As to the American war, the sense of the nation is with the ministry. The majority of those who can understand is with it; the majority of those who can only hear is against it; and as those who can only hear are more numerous than those who can understand, and opposition is always loudest, a majority of the rabble will be for opposition." This boisterous vivacity' entertained us; but the truth in my opinion was, that those who could understand the best were against the American war, as almost every man now is, when the question has been coolly considered. Mrs. Thrale gave high praise to Mr. Dudley Long (now North). JOHNSON. "Nay, my dear ady, don't talk so. Mr. Long's character is very short. It is nothing. He fills a chair. He is a man of genteel appearance, and that is ll. I know nobody who blasts by praise as You do: for whenever there is exaggerated raise, every body is set against a character. They are provoked to attack it. Now there is Pepys you praised that man with such disroportion, that I was incited to lessen him, erhaps more than he deserves. His blood is pon your head. By the same principle, your alice defeats itself; for your censure is too iolent. And yet (looking to her with a leerig smile) she is the first woman in the world, ould she but restrain that wicked tongue of ers; —she would be the only woman, could e but command that little whirligig." Upon the subject of exaggerated praise I ok the liberty to say, that I thought there ight be very high praise given to a known aracter which deserved it, and therefore it ould not be exaggerated. Thus, one might y of Mr. Edmund Burke, he is a very wonrful man. 61 JOHNSON. No, Sir, you would ot be safe, if another man had a mind perrsely to contradict. He might answer, Where is all the wonder? Burke is, to be re, a man of uncommon abilities; with a eat quantity of matter in his mind, and a eat fluency of language in his mouth. But are not to be stunned and astonished by m.' So you see, Sir, even Burke would sufr, not from any fault of his own, but from ur folly." Mrs. Thrale mentioned a gentleman who had quired a fortune of four thousand a year in 7. This is "boisterous vivacity," because Boswell happened have taken up the other side of the question. - CROKER, Here Johnson condescended to play upon the words long I short. But little did he know that, owing to Mr. Long's erve in his presence, he was talking thus of a gentleman Anguished amongst his acquaintance for acuteness of wit; I to whom, I think, the French expression, "Il pétille He has gratified ine by prit," is particularly suited. itioning that he heard Dr Johnson say," Sir, if I were trade, but was absolutely miserable because he could not talk in company; so miserable, that he was impelled to lament his situation in the street to ******, whom he hates, and who he knows despises him. "I am a most unhappy man," said he. "I am invited to conversations; I go to conversations; but, alas! I have no conversation." JOHNSON. "Man commonly cannot be successful in different ways. This gentleman has spent, in getting four thousand pounds a year, the time in which he might have learnt to talk; and now he cannot talk." Mr. Perkins made a shrewd and droll remark: "If he had got his four thousand a year as a mountebank, he might have learnt to talk at the same time that he was getting his fortune." The con Some other gentlemen came in. versation concerning the person whose character Dr. Johnson had treated so slightingly, as he did not know his merit, was resumed. Mrs. Thrale said, "You think so of him, Sir, because he is quiet, and does not exert himself with force. You'll be saying the same thing of Mr. ****** there, who sits as quiet." This was not well bred; and Johnson did not let it pass without correction. " Nay, Madam, what right have you to talk thus ? Both Mr. ****** and I have reason to take it ill. You may talk so of Mr. ******; but why do you make me do it? Have I said anything against Mr. ****** ? You have set him, that I might shoot him: but I have not shot him." One of the gentlemen said he had seen three folio volumes of Dr. Johnson's sayings collected by me. "I must put you right, Sir," said I; "for I am very exact in authenticity. You could not see folio volumes, for I have none: you might have seen some in quarto and octavo. This is an inattention which one should guard against." JOHNSON. “Sir, it is a want of concern about veracity. He does not know that he saw any volumes. If he had seen them, he could have remembered their size." Mr. Thrale appeared very lethargic to-day. I saw him again on Monday evening, at which time he was not thought to be in immediate danger: but early in the morning of Wednesday the 4th he expired. Upon that day there was a call of the Literary Club; but Johnson apologised for his absence by the following note: Wednesday, (4th April.) "Mr. Johnson knows that Sir Joshua Reynolds and the other gentlemen will excuse his incom pliance with the call, when they are told that Mr. Thrale died this morning." to lose Boswell, it would be a limb amputated."- BOSWELL. See ante, p. 678. n. 7.-C. 3 William Weller Pepys, Esq., one of the masters in the High Court of Chancery, and well known in polite circles. My acquaintance with him is not sufficient to enable me to speak of him from my own judgment. But I know that both at Eton and Oxford he was the intimate friend of the late Sir James Macdonald, the Marcellus of Scotland, whose extraordinary talents, learning, and virtues will ever be remembered with admiration and regret.-BOSWELL. See anté, p. 644.-C. Johnson was in the house, and thus mentions was to be disposed of, answered, "We are no the event:here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the drea of avarice.”3 On Wed "Good Friday, April 13th, 1781. nesday, 11th, was buried my dear friend Thrale, who died on Wednesday, 4th; and with him were buried many of my hopes and pleasures. About five, I think, on Wednesday morning, he expired. I felt almost the last flutter of his pulse, and looked for the last time upon the face that for fifteen years had never been turned upon me but with respect or benignity.' Farewell. May God, that delighteth in mercy, have had mercy on thee! I had constantly prayed for him some time before his death. The decease of him, from whose friendship I had obtained many opportunities of amusement, and to whom I turned my thoughts as to a refuge from misfortunes, has left me heavy. But my business is with myself." (Pr. and Med., p. 187.2) Mr. Thrale's death was a very essential loss to Johnson, who, although he did not foresee all that afterwards happened, was sufficiently convinced that the comforts which Mr. Thrale's family afforded him would now in a great measure cease. He, however, continued to show a kind attention to his widow and children as long as it was acceptable; and he took upon him, with a very earnest concern, the office of one of his executors; the importance of which seemed greater than usual to him, from his circumstances having been always such that he had scarcely any share in the real business of life. His friends of the Club were in hopes that Mr. Thrale might have made a liberal provision for him for his life, which, as Mr. Thrale left no son and a very large fortune, it would have been highly to his honour to have done; and, considering Dr. Johnson's age, could not have been of long duration; but he bequeathed him only two hundred pounds, which was the legacy given to each of his executors. I could not but be somewhat diverted by hearing Johnson talk in a pompous manner of his new office, and particularly of the concerns of the brewery, which it was at last resolved should be sold. Lord Lucan tells a very good story, which, if not precisely exact, is certainly characteristical; that when the sale of Thrale's brewery was going forward, Johnson appeared bustling about, with an inkhorn and pen in his button-hole, like an exciseman; and on being asked what he really considered to be the value of the property which 1 Johnson's expressions on this occasion remind us of Isaac Walton's eulogy on Whitgift, in his Life of Hooker. "He lived to be present at the expiration of her (Queen Elizabeth's) last breath, and to behold the closing of those eyes that had long looked upon him with reverence and affection." KEARNEY. 2 At a subsequent date he added, on the same paper: -"18th September. My first knowledge of Thrale was in 1765. I enjoyed his favour for almost a fourth part of my life." See ante, p. 169. CROKER. 3 The brewery was sold by Dr. Johnson and his brother executor, to Messrs. BARCLAY, PERKINS, & Co., for 135,000. While on his Tour to the Hebrides, in 1773, Johnson mentioned that Thrale "paid 20,000l. a year to the revenue, and that he had four vats, each of which held 1600 barrels, above a thousand hogsheads." The establishment in Park Street, [JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE. "London, April 5. 179.. "DEAREST MADAM, Of your injunctions to neither unobserved; and I hope to find you willing pray for you and write to you, I hope to leave in a short time to alleviate your trouble by son other exercise of the mind. I am not without me part of the calamity. No death since that of my wife has ever oppressed me like this. But let remember that we are in the hands of Him knows when to give and when to take away, wh will look upon us with mercy through all our var ations of existence, and who invites us to cali him in the day of trouble. Call upon him in t: great revolution of life, and call with confider..” You will then find comfort for the past, and supp. ? in marriage, to a degree of which, without perso He that has given you happie knowledge, I should have thought the descript fabulous, can give you another mode of happres as a mother, and at last the happiness of lus all temporal cares in the thoughts of an eternity heaven. for the future. "I do not exhort you to reason yourself tranquillity. We must first pray, and then labour first implore the blessing of God, and [use] th means, which he puts into our hands. Cultiva ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by law. business has little room for useless regret. "We read the will to-day; but I will not fil first letter with any account than that, with all zeal for your advantage, I am satisfied; and t than I, commended it for wisdom and equity. the other executors, more used to consider proper why should I not tell you that you have t hundred pounds for your immediate expenses, a two thousand pounds a year, with both the bas and all the goods? "Let us pray for one another, that the t whether long or short, that shall yet be granted may be well spent ; and that when this life, t at the longest is very short, shall come to an et a better may begin which shall never end."] - Letters. On Friday, April 6.', he carried me to d at a club which, at his desire, had been late formed at the Queen's Arms in St. P... Churchyard. He told Mr. Hoole that wished to have a city Club, and asked him collect one; but, said he, "Don't let them in the Borough, is now the largest of its kind in the wor The buildings extend over ten acres, and the machineTM cludes two steam-engines. The store cellars contar vats, varying in their contents from 4000 barrels d 500. About 160 horses are employed in conveying be different parts of London. The quantity brewed" * was 380,180 barrels, upon which a duty of ten shilling barrel, 180,0907, was paid to the revenue; and, in the year, the malt consumed exceeded 100,000 quarters. WRIGHT, 1835. 4 It seems unfeeling to have dined at a tavern the dayone after poor Thrale's death; but he was afraid to his own morbid grief. He writes to Mrs. Thrale," Our row has different effects; you are driven into walitale, lo" driven into company. I give my affliction a litle ** and amuse it as I can." - Свокли, patriots." The company were to-day very sensible, well-behaved men. I have preserved only two particulars of his conversation. He said he was glad Lord George Gordon had escaped, rather than that a precedent should be established for hanging a man for constructive treason, which, in consistency with his true, manly, constitutional Toryism, he considered would be a dangerous engine of arbitrary power. And upon its being mentioned that an opulent and very indolent Scotch nobleman, who totally resigned the management of his affairs to a man of knowledge and abilities, had claimed some merit by saying, "The next best thing to managing a man's own affairs well is being sensible of incapacity, and not attempting it, but having a full confidence in one who can do it". JOHNSON. "Nay, Sir, this is paltry. There is a middle course. Let a man give application; and depend upon it he will soon get above a despicable state of helplessness, and attain the power of acting for himself." On Saturday, April 7., I dined with him at Mr. Hoole's with Governor Bouchier and Captain Orme, both of whom had been long in the East Indies; and, being men of good sense and observation, were very entertaining. Johnson defended the oriental regulation of different castes of men, which was objected to as totally destructive of the hopes of rising in society by personal merit. He showed that there was a principle in it sufficiently plausible by analogy. We see," said he, "in metals that there are different species; and so likewise in animals, though one species may not differ very widely from another, as, in the species of dogs, the cur, the spaniel, the mastiff. The Bramins are the mastiffs of mankind."2 On Thursday, April 12., I dined with him at a bishop's, where were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Berenger, and some more company. He had dined the day before at another bishop's.3 I have unfortunately recorded none of his conversation at the bishop's where we dined together but I have preserved his ingenious defence of his dining twice abroad in Passionweek; a laxity in which I am convinced he would not have indulged himself at the time when he wrote his solemn paper in "The Rambler" upon that awful season. It appeared to me, that by being much more in company, and enjoying more luxurious living, he had contracted a keener relish for pleasure, and was consequently less rigorous in his religious rites. This he would not acknowledge; but he reasoned with admirable sophistry as fol See The truth is, that the patriots had driven him away from Mr Joshua's Club, which he latterly seldom attended. ate p. 529. n. 1. CROKER. Rajapouts, the military caste; the Bramins, pacific and bstemious. KEARNEY. The only bishops at whose houses Johnson is recorded have dined were Shipley of St. Asaph and Porteus of hester, afterwards of London. By a letter, post, April, 1782, ! appears that he dined two consecutive days, in April of hat year, with the Bishops of St. Asaph's and Chester. It lows: "Why, Sir, a bishop's calling company together in this week is, to use the vulgar phrase, not the thing. But you must consider laxity is a bad thing; but preciseness is also a bad thing; and your general character may be more hurt by preciseness than by dining with a bishop in Passion-week. There might be a handle for reflection. It might be said, 'He refuses to dine with a bishop in Passion-week, but was three Sundays absent from church." BOSWELL. "Very true, Sir. But suppose a man to be uniformly of good conduct, would it not be better that he should refuse to dine with a bishop in this week, and so not encourage a bad practice by his example?" JOHNSON. Why, Sir, you are to consider whether you might not do more harm by lessening the influence of a bishop's character by your disapprobation in refusing him, than by going to him."4 66 JOHNSON TO MRS. PORTER. "London, April 12. 1781. "DEAR MADAM, Life is full of troubles. I have just lost my dear friend Thrale. I hope he is happy; but I have had a great loss. I am otherwise pretty well. I require some care of myself, but that care is not ineffectual; and when I am out of order, I think it often my own fault. "The spring is now making quick advances. As it is the season in which the whole world is enlivened and invigorated, I hope that both you and Lichfield; but being left executor to my friend, I I shall partake of its benefits. My desire is to see for it is now long since we saw one another; and know not whether I can be spared; but I will try, how little we can promise ourselves many more interviews, we are taught by hourly examples of mortality. Let us try to live so as that mortality may not be an evil. Write to me soon, my dearest : your letters will give me great pleasure. Be so "I am sorry that Mr. Porter has not had his box; but by sending it to Mr. Mathias, who very readily undertook its conveyance, I did the best I could, and perhaps before now he has it. kind as to make my compliments to my friends. I have a great value for their kindness, and hope to enjoy it before summer is past. Do write to me. I am, dearest love, your, &c., "SAM. JOHNSON." On Friday, April 13., being Good Friday, I went to St. Clement's church with him as usual. There I saw again his old fellow-collegian, Edwards, to whom I said, "I think, Sir, Dr. Johnson and you meet only at church." "Sir," said he, "it is the best place we can meet in, except heaven, and I hope we shall meet there too." Dr. Johnson told me that is odd that he should, in two succeeding Aprils, have dined on two successive days with these two bishops, but it seems nevertheless certain. The matter is of some little importance, for we had rather be assured that Bishop Porteus were not the bishop here alluded to. See post, 26th April, 1782. - CROKER. 4 This is a very poor excuse for many reasons, but one is very obvious that the refusal need neither have been public nor motivé, as the French say. — CROKER, 1847. there was very little communication between “Sir,” said he, “it is generally known; it is Edwards and him after their unexpected re- known to all who are acquainted with the litenewal of acquaintance. But," said he, smil-rary history of that period: it is as well known ing, "he met me once and said, 'I am told you as that he wrote Cato.' Mr. Thomas Sherihave written a very pretty book called The dan once defended Addison to me, by alleging Rambler.' I was unwilling that he should that he did it in order to cover Steele's goods leave the world in total darkness, and sent him from other creditors, who were going to seize them." 2 a set." Mr. Berenger visited him to-day, and was very pleasing. We talked of an evening society for conversation at a house in town, of which we were all members, but of which Johnson said, "It will never do, Sir. There is nothing served about there; neither tea, nor coffee, nor lemonade, nor anything whatever; and depend upon it, Sir, a man does not love to go to a place from whence he comes out exactly as he went in." I endeavoured, for argument's sake, to maintain that men of learning and talents might have very good intellectual society, without the aid of any little gratifications of the senses. Berenger joined with Johnson, and said that without these any meeting would be dull and insipid. He would therefore have all the slight refreshments; nay, it would not be amiss to have some cold meat, and a bottle of wine upon a sideboard. "Sir," said Johnson to me, with an air of triumph, "Mr. Berenger knows the world. Every body loves to have good things furnished to them without any trouble. I told Mrs. Thrale once, that, as she did not choose to have card-tables, she should have a profusion of the best sweetmeats, and she would be sure to have company enough come to her." I agreed with my illustrious friend upon this subject; for it has pleased God to make man a composite animal, and where there is nothing to refresh the body, the mind will languish. We talked of the difference between the mode of education at Oxford and that in those colleges where instruction is chiefly conveyed by lectures. JOHNSON. “Lectures were once useful; but now, when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary. If your attention fails, and you miss a part of the lecture, it is lost; you cannot go back as you do upon a book." Dr. Scott agreed with him "But yet," said I, "Dr. Scott, you yourself gave lectures at Oxford." He smiled. “You laughed," then said I, "at those who came to you." Dr. Scott left us, and soon afterwards we went to dinner. Our company consisted of Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Desmoulins, Mr. Levett, Mr. Allen, the printer, (Mr. Macbean), and Mrs. Hall, sister of the Reverend Mr. John Wesley, and resembling him, as I thought, both in figure and manner. Johnson produced now, for the first time, some handsome silver salvers, which he told me he had bought fourteen years ago; so it was a great day. I was not a little amused by observing Allen perpe tually struggling to talk in the manner of Johnson, like the little frog in the fable blowing himself up to resemble the stately ox. I mentioned a kind of religious Robin-Hood society, which met every Sunday evening Coachmakers'-Hall, for free debate; and that the subject for this night was, the text which relates, with other miracles which happened at our Saviour's death, "And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." Mrs. Hall said n was a very curious subject, and she should like to hear it discussed. JOHNSON (Somewhat warmly). "One would not go to such a place to hear it, one would not be seen in such a place, to give countenance to such a meeting." I, however, resolved that I would go. "But, Sir," said she to Johnson, "I should I told him, that in a company where I had like to hear you discuss it." He seemed relately been, a desire was expressed to know luctant to engage in it. She talked of the rehis authority for the shocking story of Addi-surrection of the human race in general, and son's sending an execution into Steele's house. On Sunday, April 15., being Easter-day, after solemn worship in St. Paul's church, I found him alone. Dr. Scott, of the Commons, came in. He talked of its having been said, that Addison wrote some of his best papers in "The Spectator" when warm with wine. Dr. Johnson did not seem willing to admit this. Dr. Scott, as a confirmation of it, related that Blackstone, a sober man, composed his "Commentaries" with a bottle of port before him; and found his mind invigorated and supported in the fatigue of his great work, by a temperate use of it. 1 Richard Berenger, many years Gentleman of the Horse to her present majesty, and author of The History and Art of Horsemanship, 2 vols. 4to. 1771.- MALONE. Mr. Berenger's mother was sister of Lord Cobham and of Lady Lyttel ton, mother of the first lord. Talking of good manners, Johnson named Mr. Berenger as the standard of true elegance; but some one objecting that he too much resembled the gentlemen in Congreve's comedies, Johnson said, "Well then, we must fix on the famous Thomas Hervey," [antè, p. 183. n. 4.]-Piozzi. "I dined the other day," says Hannah More, "at Mrs. Boscawen's, very pleasantly, for Berenger maintained that we shall be raised with the was there, and was all himself, all chivalry, blank verum, and 3 The original Robin-Hood was a debating club, same bodies. JOHNSON. "Nay, Madam, we see that it is not to be the same body; for the scripture uses the illustration of grain sown, and we know that the grain which grows is not the same with what is sown. You cannot suppose that we shall rise with a diseased body; it is enough if there be such a sameness as to distinguish identity of person." She seemed desirous of knowing more, but he left the question in obscurity. Of apparitions, he observed, "A total disbelief of them is adverse to the opinion of the existence of the soul between death and the last day; the question simply is, whether departed spirits ever have the power of making themselves perceptible to us: a man who thinks he has seen an apparition can only be convinced himself; his authority will not convince another; and his conviction, if rational, must be founded on being told something which cannot be known but by supernatural means." "An He mentioned a thing as not unfrequent, of which I had never heard before, being called, that is, hearing one's name pronounced by the voice of a known person at a great distance, far beyond the possibility of being reached by any sound uttered by human organs. acquaintance, on whose veracity I can depend, told me, that walking home one evening to Kilmarnock, he heard himself called from a wood, by the voice of a brother who had gone to America: and the next packet brought accounts of that brother's death." Macbean asserted that this inexplicable calling was a thing very well known. Dr. Johnson said, that one day at Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly call- Sam. She was then at Lichfield; but nothing ensued. This phenomenon is, I think, as wonderful as any other mysterious fact, which many people are very slow to believe, or rather, indeed, reeet with an obstinate contempt. Some time after this, upon his making a remark which escaped my attention, Mrs. Wiliams and Mrs. Hall were both together strivng to answer him. He grew angry, and called out loudly, "Nay, when you both speak at once, it is intolerable." But checking himelf, and softening, he said, "This one may say, hough, you are ladies." Then he brightened to gay humour, and addressed them in the words of one of the songs in "The Beggar's Opera," But two at a time there's no mortal can bear." "What, Sir," said I, "are you going to turn "aptain Macheath?" There was something as leasantly ludicrous in this scene as can be imagined. The contrast between Macheath, Polly, and Lucy- and Dr. Samuel Johnson, blind, peevish Mrs. Williams, and lean, lank, preaching Mrs. Hall, was exquisite. I stole away to Coachmakers'-hall, and heard the difficult text of which we had talked, discussed with great decency, and some intelligence, by several speakers. There was a difference of opinion as to the appearance of ghosts in modern times, though the argument for it, supported by Mr. Addison's authority, preponderated. The immediate subject of debate was embarrassed by the bodies of the saints having been said to rise, and by the question what became of them afterwards: - did they return again to their graves? or were they translated to heaven? Only one evangelist mentions the fact (Matthew, xxvii. 52, 53.), and the commentators whom I have looked at do not make the passage clear. There is, however, no occasion for our understanding it farther than to know that it was one of the extraordinary manifestations of divine power which accompanied the most important `event that ever happened. mons. CHAPTER LXXIII. 1781. Dinner at Mrs. Garrick's. Miss Hannah More.- 16 sions. Original Sin. ON Friday, April 20., I spent with him one of the happiest days that I remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life. Mrs. Garrick, whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with her. The company was, Miss Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she called her chaplain; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua fond of the mysterious, and perhaps upon some occasions may have directed the conversation to those topics, when they would not spontaneously have suggested themselves to Johnson's mind; but that he also had a love for speculations of that nature may be gathered from his writings throughout. -J. BOSWELL, jun. 2 Garrick had been dead two years and three months.CROKER, 1847. |
