Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

*

1773.

In 1773. his only publication was an edition of his folio Dictionary, with additions and corrections; nor did he, so far as is known, furnish any produc- Etat. 64. tions of his fertile pen to any of his numerous friends or dependants, except the Preface to his old amanuenfis Macbean's "Dictionary of ancient Geography." His Shakspeare, indeed, which had been received with high approbation by the publick, and gone through feveral editions, was this year re-published by George Steevens, Efq. a gentleman not only deeply skilled in ancient learning, and of very extenfive reading in English literature, especially the early writers, but at the fame time of acute difcernment and elegant taste. It is almost unneceffary to fay, that by his great and valuable additions to Dr. Johnson's work, he juftly obtained confiderable reputation :

[blocks in formation]

"I HAVE read your kind letter much more than the elegant Pindar which it accompanied. I am always glad to find myself not forgotten, and to be forgotten by you would give me great uneafinefs. My northern friends have never been unkind to me: I have from you, dear Sir, teftimonies of affection, which I have not often been able to excite; and Dr. Beattie rates the testimony which I was defirous of paying to his merit, much higher than I should have thought it reasonable to expect.

"I have heard of your masquerade. What fays your Synod to fuch innovations? I am not studiously scrupulous, nor do I think a masquerade either evil in itself, or very likely to be the occafion of evil; yet as the world thinks it a very licentious relaxation of manners, I would not have been one of the firft mafquers in a country where no masquerade had ever been before*.

"A new edition of my great Dictionary is printed, from a copy which I was perfuaded to revife; but having made no preparation, I was able to do very little. Some fuperfluities I have expunged, and fome faults I have corrected, and here and there have scattered a remark; but the main fabrick of the work remains as it was. I had looked very little into it fince I wrote it, and, I think, I found it full as often better, as worse, than I expected.

"Baretti and Davies have had a furious quarrel; a quarrel, I think, irreconcileable. Dr. Goldfmith has a new comedy, which is expected in, the

2 There had been mafquerades in Scotland before; but not for a very long time.

fpring,

1773.

fpring. No name is yet given it. The chief diversion arises from a stratagem Etat. 64. by which a lover is made to mistake his future father-in-law's house for an inn. This, you fee, borders upon farce. The dialogue is quick and gay, and the incidents are fo prepared as not to feem improbable.

"I am forry that you lost your caufe of Intromiffion, because I yet think the arguments on your fide unanswerable. But you feem, I think, to say that you gained reputation even by your defeat; and reputation you will daily gain, if you keep Lord Auchinleck's precept in your mind, and endeavour to consolidate in your mind a firm and regular system of law, instead of picking up occafional fragments.

"My health feems in general to improve; but I have been troubled for many weeks with a vexatious catarrh, which is fometimes fufficiently distressful. I have not found any great effects from bleeding and phyfick; and am afraid, that I must expect help from brighter days and fofter air.

"Write to me now and then; and whenever any good befalls you, make hafte to let me know it, for no one will rejoice at it more than, dear Sir, "Your most humble fervant,

SAM. JOHNSON.

"London, Feb 24, 1773.
"You continue to stand very high in the favour of Mrs. Thrale."

On Saturday, April 3, the day after my arrival in London this year, I went to his house late in the evening, and fat with Mrs. Williams till he came home. I found in the London Chronicle, Dr. Goldfmith's apology to the publick for beating Evans, a bookfeller, on account of a paragraph in a newspaper published by him, which Goldsmith thought impertinent to him and to a lady of his acquaintance. The apology was written fo much in Dr. Johnson's manner, that both Mrs. Williams and I fuppofed it to be his; but when he came home he foon undeceived us. When he faid to Mrs. Williams, "Well, Dr. Goldfmith's manifefto has got into your paper;" I asked him if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, with an air that made him fee I fufpected it was his, though fubfcribed by Goldfmith. JOHNSON. "Sir, Dr. Goldsmith would no more have afked me to write fuch a thing as that for him, than he would have asked me to feed him with a fpoon, or to do any thing elfe that denoted his imbecillity. I as much believe that he wrote it, as if I had feen him do it. Sir, had he fhewn it to any one friend, he would not have been allowed to publish it. He has, indeed, done it very well; but it is a foolish thing well 'done. I fuppofe he has been fo much elated with the fuccefs of his new

[ocr errors]

comedy,

comedy, that he has thought every thing that concerned him must be of importance to the publick." BOSWELL. "I fancy, Sir, this is the first time that he has been engaged in such an adventure." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, I believe it is the first time he has beat; he may have been beaten before. This, Sir, is a new plume to him."

I mentioned Sir John Dalrymple's "Memoirs of Great-Britain and Ireland," and his discoveries to the prejudice of Lord Ruffel and Algernon Sydney. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, every body who had just notions of government thought them rascals before. It is well that all mankind now fee them to be rafcals.' BOSWELL. "But, Sir, may not those discoveries be true without their being rafcals." JOHNSON. "Confider, Sir; would any of them have been willing to have had it known that they intrigued with France? Depend upon it, Sir, he who does what he is afraid fhould be known, has fomething rotten about him. This Dalrymple seems to be an honeft fellow; for he tells equally what makes against both fides. But nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing: it is the mere bouncing of a school-boy. Great He! but greater She! and fuch stuff."

I could not agree with him in this criticism; for though Sir John Dalrymple's style is not regularly formed in any respect, and one cannot help fmiling fometimes at his affected grandiloquence, there is in his writing a pointed vivacity, and much of a gentlemanly spirit.

If

At Mr. Thrale's, in the evening, he repeated his usual paradoxical declamation against action in publick speaking. "Action can have no effect upon reasonable minds. It may augment noife, but it never can enforce argument. you speak to a dog, you use action; you hold up your hand thus, - because he is a brute; and in proportion as men are removed from brutes, action will. have the lefs influence upon them." MRS. THRALE. "What then, Sir, becomes of Demofthenes's faying? Action, action, action!" JOHNSON. "Demofthenes, Madam, spoke to an assembly of brutes; to a barbarous people."

[ocr errors]

I thought it extraordinary, that he fhould deny the power of rhetorical action upon human nature, when it is proved by innumerable facts in all stages of fociety. Reasonable beings are not folely reasonable. They have fancies which may be pleased, paffions which may be roused.

Lord Chesterfield being mentioned, Johnfon remarked, that almost all of that celebrated nobleman's witty fayings were puns. He, however, allowed the merit of good wit to his Lordship's faying of Lord Tyrawley and himself, when both very old and infirm: "Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years; but we don't choose to have it known."

He

1773.

Etet. 64.

1773.

Etat. 64.

He talked with approbation of an intended edition of "The Spectator," with notes; two volumes of which had been prepared by a gentleman eminent in the literary world, and the materials which he had collected for the remainder had been transferred to another hand. He obferved, that all works which defcribe manners, require notes in fixty or seventy years, or lefs; and told us, he had communicated all he knew that could throw light upon "The Spectator." He faid, "Addifon had made his Sir Andrew Freeport a true Whig, arguing against giving charity to beggars, and throwing out other fuch ungracious fentiments; but that he had thought better, and made amends by. making him found an hofpital for decayed farmers." He called for the volume of "The Spectator" in which that account is contained, and read it aloud to us. He read fo well, that every thing acquired additional weight and grace from his utterance.

The conversation having turned on modern imitations of ancient ballads, and some one having praised their fimplicity, he treated them with that ridicule which he always difplayed when this fubject was mentioned.

He difapproved of introducing fcripture phrases into fecular discourse. This feemed to me a queftion of fome difficulty. A fcripture expreffion may be used, like a highly claffical phrase, to produce an inftantaneous strong impreffion; and it may be done without being at all improper. Yet I own there is danger, that applying the language of our facred book to ordinary fubjects may tend to leffen our reverence for it. If therefore it be introduced at all, it should be with very great caution.

On Thursday, April 8, I fat a good part of the evening with him, but he was very filent. He faid, "Burnet's Hiftory of his own Times,' is very entertaining. The ftyle, indeed, is mere chit-chat. I do not believe that Burnet intentionally lyed; but he was fo much prejudiced, that he took no pains to find out the truth. He was like a man who refolves to regulate his time by a certain watch; but will not inquire whether the watch is right

[merged small][ocr errors]

Though he was not difpofed to talk, he was unwilling that I fhould leave him; and when I looked at my watch, and told him it was twelve o'clock, he cried, "What's that to you and me?" and ordered Frank to tell Mrs. Williams that we were coming to drink tea with her, which we did. It was fettled that we should go to church together next day.

On the 9th of April, being Good Friday, 1 breakfafted with him on tea and cross-buns; Doctor Levet, as Frank called him, making the tea. He carried me with him to the church of St. Clement Danes, where he had his feat; and

1773.

his behaviour was, as I had imaged to myself, folemnly devout. I never shall forget the tremulous earnestness with which he pronounced the aweful petition Atat. 64. in the Litany: "In the hour of death, and at the day of judgement, good LORD deliver us."

We went to church both in the morning and evening. In the interval between the two fervices we did not dine, but he read in the Greek New Testament, and I turned over feveral of his books.

In Archbishop Laud's Diary, I found the following paffage, which I read to Dr. Johnson:

1623. February 1, Sunday. I ftood by the most illuftrious Prince Charles', at dinner. He was then very merry, and talked occasionally of many things with his attendants. Among other things, he faid, that if he were neceffitated to take any particular profeffion of life, he could not be a lawyer, adding his reafons: I cannot (faith he,) defend a bad, nor yield in a good caufe." JOHNSON. "Sir, this is false reasoning; because every cause has a bad fide: and a lawyer is not overcome, though the cause which he has endeavoured to fupport be determined against him.”

I told him that Goldfinith had faid to me a few days before, "As I take my fhoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the taylor, so I take my religion from the priest." I regretted this loose way of talking. JOHNSON. "Sir, he knows nothing; he has made up his mind about nothing."

To my great furprize, he asked me to dine with him on Eafter-day. I never supposed that he had a dinner at his house; for I had not then heard of any one of his friends having been entertained at his table. He told me, " I generally have a meat pye on Sunday: it is baked at a publick oven, which is very properly allowed, because one man can attend it; and thus the advantage is obtained of not keeping servants from church to drefs dinners."

April 11, being Easter-Sunday, after having attended divine fervice at St. Paul's, I repaired to Dr. Johnson's. I had gratified my curiosity much in dining with JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, while he lived in the wilds of Neufchatel: I had as great a curiosity to dine with DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, in the dusky recefs of a court in Fleet-street. I fuppofed we should scarcely have knives and forks, and only fome ftrange uncouth ill-dreft difh: but I found every thing in very good order. We had no other company but Mrs. Williams and a young woman whom I did not know, As a dinner here was confidered as a fingular phænomenon, and as I was frequently interrogated on the fubject, my

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »