Boswell's Life of Johnson
not to fight, and not disgraceful not to speak in publick?' JOHNSON.
'Because there may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick
than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say, (laughing.)
Whereas, Sir, you know courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues;
because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving
any other.'
On Thursday, April 6, I dined with him at Mr. Thomas Davies's, with Mr.
Hicky, the painter, and my old acquaintance Mr. Moody, the player.
Dr. Johnson, as usual, spoke contemptuously of Colley Cibber. 'It is
wonderful that a man, who for forty years had lived with the great and
the witty, should have acquired so ill the talents of conversation: and
he had but half to furnish; for one half of what he said was oaths.' He,
however, allowed considerable merit to some of his comedies, and said
there was no reason to believe that the Careless Husband was not
written by himself. Davies said, he was the first dramatick writer
who introduced genteel ladies upon the stage. Johnson refuted this
observation by instancing several such characters in comedies before his
time. DAVIES. (trying to defend himself from a charge of ignorance,)
'I mean genteel moral characters.' 'I think (said Hicky,) gentility and
morality are inseparable.' BOSWELL. 'By no means, Sir. The genteelest
characters are often the most immoral. Does not Lord Chesterfield give
precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces? A man, indeed, is
not genteel when he gets drunk; but most vices may be committed very
genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly: he may cheat
at cards genteelly.' HICKY. 'I do not think THAT is genteel.' BOSWELL.
'Sir, it may not be like a gentleman, but it may be genteel.' JOHNSON.
'You are meaning two different things. One means exteriour grace;
the other honour. It is certain that a man may be very immoral with
exteriour grace. Lovelace, in Clarissa, is a very genteel and a very
wicked character. Tom Hervey, who died t'other day, though a vicious
man, was one of the genteelest men that ever lived.' Tom Davies
instanced Charles the Second. JOHNSON. (taking fire at any attack upon
that Prince, for whom he had an extraordinary partiality,) 'Charles the
Second was licentious in his practice; but he always had a reverence for
what was good. Charles the Second knew his people, and rewarded merit.
The Church was at no time better filled than in his reign. He was
the best King we have had from his time till the reign of his present
Majesty, except James the Second, who was a very good King, but
unhappily believed that it was necessary for the salvation of his
subjects that they should be Roman Catholicks. HE had the merit of
endeavouring to do what he thought was for the salvation of the souls
of his subjects, till he lost a great Empire. WE, who thought that
we should NOT be saved if we were Roman Catholicks, had the merit of
maintaining our religion, at the expence of submitting ourselves to the
government of King William, (for it could not be done otherwise,)--to
the government of one of the most worthless scoundrels that ever
existed. No; Charles the Second was not such a man as -----, (naming
another King). He did not destroy his father's will. He took money,
indeed, from France: but he did not betray those over whom he ruled: he
did not let the French fleet pass ours. George the First knew nothing,
and desired to know nothing; did nothing, and desired to do nothing: and
the only good thing that is told of him is, that he wished to restore
the crown to its hereditary successor.' He roared with prodigious
violence against George the Second. When he ceased, Moody interjected,
in an Irish tone, and with a comick look, 'Ah! poor George the Second.'
I mentioned that Dr. Thomas Campbell had come from Ireland to London,
principally to see Dr. Johnson. He seemed angry at this observation.
DAVIES. 'Why, you know, Sir, there came a man from Spain to see Livy;
and Corelli came to England to see Purcell, and when he heard he was
dead, went directly back again to Italy.' JOHNSON. 'I should not have
wished to be dead to disappoint Campbell, had he been so foolish as you
represent him; but I should have wished to have been a hundred miles
off.' This was apparently perverse; and I do believe it was not his real
way of thinking: he could not but like a man who came so far to see
him. He laughed with some complacency, when I told him Campbell's odd
expression to me concerning him: 'That having seen such a man, was a
thing to talk of a century hence,'--as if he could live so long.
We got into an argument whether the Judges who went to India might with
propriety engage in trade. Johnson warmly maintained that they might.
'For why (he urged,) should not Judges get riches, as well as those who
deserve them less?' I said, they should have sufficient salaries,
and have nothing to take off their attention from the affairs of the
publick. JOHNSON. 'No Judge, Sir, can give his whole attention to his
office; and it is very proper that he should employ what time he has to
himself, to his own advantage, in the most profitable manner.' 'Then,
Sir, (said Davies, who enlivened the dispute by making it somewhat
dramatick,) he may become an insurer; and when he is going to the bench,
he may be stopped,--"Your Lordship cannot go yet: here is a bunch of
invoices: several ships are about to sail."' JOHNSON. Sir, you may as
well say a Judge should not have a house; for they may come and tell
him, "Your Lordship's house is on fire;" and so, instead of minding the
business of his Court, he is to be occupied in getting the engine with
the greatest speed. There is no end of this. Every Judge who has land,
trades to a certain extent in corn or in cattle; and in the land itself,
undoubtedly. His steward acts for him, and so do clerks for a great
merchant. A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs.
A Judge may play a little at cards for his amusement; but he is not to
play at marbles, or at chuck-farthing in the Piazza. No, Sir; there is
no profession to which a man gives a very great proportion of his time.
It is wonderful, when a calculation is made, how little the mind is
actually employed in the discharge of any profession. No man would be
a Judge, upon the condition of being totally a Judge. The best employed
lawyer has his mind at work but for a small proportion of his time; a
great deal of his occupation is merely mechanical. I once wrote for a
magazine: I made a calculation, that if I should write but a page a day,
at the same rate, I should, in ten years, write nine volumes in folio,
of an ordinary size and print.' BOSWELL. 'Such as Carte's History?'
JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir. When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very
rapidly. The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in
order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.'
We spoke of Rolt, to whose Dictionary of Commerce Dr. Johnson wrote the
Preface. JOHNSON. 'Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart
to write a monthly miscellany, called The Universal Visitor. There was a
formal written contract, which Allen the printer saw. Gardner thought as
you do of the Judge. They were bound to write nothing else; they were to
have, I think, a third of the profits of this sixpenny pamphlet; and the
contract was for ninety-nine years. I wish I had thought of giving this
to Thurlow, in the cause about Literary Property. What an excellent
instance would it have been of the oppression of booksellers towards
poor authours!' (smiling.) Davies, zealous for the honour of THE TRADE,
said, Gardner was not properly a bookseller. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir; he
certainly was a bookseller. He had served his time regularly, was a
member of the Stationers' company, kept a shop in the face of mankind,
purchased copyright, and was a bibliopole, Sir, in every sense. I wrote
for some months in The Universal Visitor, for poor Smart, while he was
mad, not then knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write, and
thinking I was doing him good. I hoped his wits would soon return
to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in The Universal Visitor no
longer.
Friday, April 7, I dined with him at a Tavern, with a numerous company.
One of the company suggested an internal objection to the antiquity
of the poetry said to be Ossian's, that we do not find the wolf in it,
which must have been the case had it been of that age.
The mention of the wolf had led Johnson to think of other wild beasts;
and while Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Langton were carrying on a
dialogue about something which engaged them earnestly, he, in the midst
of it, broke out, 'Pennant tells of Bears--' [what he added, I have
forgotten.] They went on, which he being dull of hearing, did not
perceive, or, if he did, was not willing to break off his talk; so he
continued to vociferate his remarks, and BEAR ('like a word in a catch'
as Beauclerk said,) was repeatedly heard at intervals, which coming from
him who, by those who did not know him, had been so often assimilated
to that ferocious animal, while we who were sitting around could hardly
stifle laughter, produced a very ludicrous effect. Silence having
ensued, he proceeded: 'We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but
I should not like to trust myself with him.' Mr. Gibbon muttered, in a
low tone of voice, 'I should not like to trust myself with YOU.' This
piece of sarcastick pleasantry was a prudent resolution, if applied to a
competition of abilities.
Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered,
in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will
start: 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' But let it
be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our
country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and
countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.
Mrs. Prichard being mentioned, he said, 'Her playing was quite
mechanical. It is wonderful how little mind she had. Sir, she had never
read the tragedy of Macbeth all through. She no more thought of the play
out of which her part was taken, than a shoemaker thinks of the skin,
out of which the piece of leather, of which he is making a pair of
shoes, is cut.'
On Saturday, April 8, I dined with him at Mr. Thrale's, where we met
the Irish Dr. Campbell. Johnson had supped the night before at Mrs.
Abington's, with some fashionable people whom he named; and he seemed
much pleased with having made one in so elegant a circle. Nor did he
omit to pique his MISTRESS a little with jealousy of her housewifery;
for he said, (with a smile,) 'Mrs. Abington's jelly, my dear lady, was
better than yours.'
Mrs. Thrale, who frequently practised a coarse mode of flattery, by
repeating his bon-mots in his hearing, told us that he had said,
a certain celebrated actor was just fit to stand at the door of an
auction-room with a long pole, and cry 'Pray gentlemen, walk in;' and
that a certain authour, upon hearing this, had said, that another still
more celebrated actor was fit for nothing better than that, and would
pick your pocket after you came out. JOHNSON. 'Nay, my dear lady, there
is no wit in what our friend added; there is only abuse. You may as
well say of any man that he will pick a pocket. Besides, the man who
is stationed at the door does not pick people's pockets; that is done
within, by the auctioneer.'
On Monday, April 10, I dined with him at General Oglethorpe's, with
Mr. Langton and the Irish Dr. Campbell, whom the General had obligingly
given me leave to bring with me. This learned gentleman was thus
gratified with a very high intellectual feast, by not only being in
company with Dr. Johnson, but with General Oglethorpe, who had been so