Boswell's Life of Johnson
narrative, Sir? He once told me, that he drank thirteen bottles of port
at a sitting.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever lied
with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he told
you in conversation: if there was fact mixed with it. However, I loved
Campbell: he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for religion.
Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; and he did
nothing grossly wrong that I have heard.'
Talking of drinking wine, he said, 'I did not leave off wine, because I
could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the
worse for it. University College has witnessed this.' BOSWELL. 'Why,
then, Sir, did you leave it off?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, because it is so
much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated,
never to lose the power over himself. I shall not begin to drink wine
again, till I grow old, and want it.' BOSWELL. 'I think, Sir, you once
said to me, that not to drink wine was a great deduction from life.'
JOHNSON. 'It is a diminution of pleasure, to be sure; but I do not say
a diminution of happiness. There is more happiness in being rational.'
BOSWELL. 'But if we could have pleasure always, should not we be
happy? The greatest part of men would compound for pleasure.' JOHNSON.
'Supposing we could have pleasure always, an intellectual man would not
compound for it. The greatest part of men would compound, because the
greatest part of men are gross.'
I mentioned to him that I had become very weary in a company where I
heard not a single intellectual sentence, except that 'a man who had
been settled ten years in Minorca was become a much inferiour man to
what he was in London, because a man's mind grows narrow in a narrow
place.' JOHNSON. 'A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place, whose
mind is enlarged only because he has lived in a large place: but what is
got by books and thinking is preserved in a narrow place as well as in
a large place. A man cannot know modes of life as well in Minorca as in
London; but he may study mathematicks as well in Minorca.' BOSWELL. 'I
don't know, Sir: if you had remained ten years in the Isle of Col, you
would not have been the man that you now are.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, if I
had been there from fifteen to twenty-five; but not if from twenty-five
to thirty-five.' BOSWELL. 'I own, Sir, the spirits which I have in
London make me do every thing with more readiness and vigour. I can talk
twice as much in London as any where else.'
Of Goldsmith he said, 'He was not an agreeable companion, for he talked
always for fame. A man who does so never can be pleasing. The man who
talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you. An eminent
friend of ours is not so agreeable as the variety of his knowledge would
otherwise make him, because he talks partly from ostentation.'
Soon after our arrival at Thrale's, I heard one of the maids calling
eagerly on another, to go to Dr. Johnson. I wondered what this could
mean. I afterwards learnt, that it was to give her a Bible, which he had
brought from London as a present to her.
He was for a considerable time occupied in reading Memoires de
Fontenelle, leaning and swinging upon the low gate into the court,
without his hat.
At dinner, Mrs. Thrale expressed a wish to go and see Scotland. JOHNSON.
'Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England. It is seeing
the flower gradually fade away to the naked stalk. Seeing the Hebrides,
indeed, is seeing quite a different scene.'
On Thursday, April 9, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, with
the Bishop of St. Asaph, (Dr. Shipley,) Mr. Allan Ramsay, Mr. Gibbon,
Mr. Cambridge, and Mr. Langton.
Goldsmith being mentioned, Johnson observed, that it was long before
his merit came to be acknowledged. That he once complained to him, in
ludicrous terms of distress, 'Whenever I write any thing, the publick
MAKE A POINT to know nothing about it:' but that his Traveller brought
him into high reputation. LANGTON. 'There is not one bad line in that
poem; not one of Dryden's careless verses. SIR JOSHUA. 'I was glad to
hear Charles Fox say, it was one of the finest poems in the English
language.' LANGTON. 'Why was you glad? You surely had no doubt of
this before.' JOHNSON. 'No; the merit of The Traveller is so well
established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure
diminish it.' SIR JOSHUA. 'But his friends may suspect they had too
great a partiality for him.' JOHNSON. Nay, Sir, the partiality of his
friends was always against him. It was with difficulty we could give
him a hearing. Goldsmith had no settled notions upon any subject; so
he talked always at random. It seemed to be his intention to blurt out
whatever was in his mind, and see what would become of it. He was angry
too, when catched in an absurdity; but it did not prevent him from
falling into another the next minute. I remember Chamier, after talking
with him for some time, said, "Well, I do believe he wrote this poem
himself: and, let me tell you, that is believing a great deal." Chamier
once asked him, what he meant by slow, the last word in the first line
of The Traveller,
"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow."
Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something
without consideration, answered, "Yes." I was sitting by, and said,
"No, Sir; you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean, that
sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude." Chamier
believed then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me
write it. Goldsmith, however, was a man, who, whatever he wrote, did
it better than any other man could do. He deserved a place in
Westminster-Abbey, and every year he lived, would have deserved
it better. He had, indeed, been at no pains to fill his mind with
knowledge. He transplanted it from one place to another; and it did not
settle in his mind; so he could not tell what was in his own books.'
We talked of living in the country. JOHNSON. 'No wise man will go to
live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better
done in the country. For instance: if he is to shut himself up for a
year to study a science, it is better to look out to the fields, than
to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there
is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in
London, he is not sure when he shall walk in again. A great city is, to
be sure, the school for studying life; and "The proper study of mankind
is man," as Pope observes.' BOSWELL. 'I fancy London is the best place
for society; though I have heard that the very first society of Paris is
still beyond any thing that we have here.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I question
if in Paris such a company as is sitting round this table could be got
together in less than half a year. They talk in France of the felicity
of men and women living together: the truth is, that there the men are
not higher than the women, they know no more than the women do, and they
are not held down in their conversation by the presence of women.'
We talked of old age. Johnson (now in his seventieth year,) said, 'It is
a man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in
old age.' The Bishop asked, if an old man does not lose faster than he
gets. JOHNSON. 'I think not, my Lord, if he exerts himself.' One of the
company rashly observed, that he thought it was happy for an old man
that insensibility comes upon him. JOHNSON. (with a noble elevation and
disdain,) 'No, Sir, I should never be happy by being less rational.'
BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH. 'Your wish then, Sir, is [Greek text omitted].'
JOHNSON. 'Yes, my Lord.'
This season there was a whimsical fashion in the newspapers of applying
Shakspeare's words to describe living persons well known in the world;
which was done under the title of Modern Characters from Shakspeare;
many of which were admirably adapted. The fancy took so much, that they
were afterwards collected into a pamphlet. Somebody said to Johnson,
across the table, that he had not been in those characters. 'Yes (said
he,) I have. I should have been sorry to be left out.' He then repeated
what had been applied to him,
'I must borrow GARAGANTUA'S mouth.'
Miss Reynolds not perceiving at once the meaning of this, he was obliged
to explain it to her, which had something of an aukward and ludicrous
effect. 'Why, Madam, it has a reference to me, as using big words, which
require the mouth of a giant to pronounce them. Garagantua is the name
of a giant in Rabelais.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, there is another amongst
them for you:
"He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for his power to thunder."'
JOHNSON. 'There is nothing marked in that. No, Sir, Garagantua is the
best.' Notwithstanding this ease and good humour, when I, a little while
afterwards, repeated his sarcasm on Kenrick, which was received with
applause, he asked, 'WHO said that?' and on my suddenly answering,
Garagantua, he looked serious, which was a sufficient indication that he
did not wish it to be kept up.
When we went to the drawing-room there was a rich assemblage. Besides
the company who had been at dinner, there were Mr. Garrick, Mr. Harris
of Salisbury, Dr. Percy, Dr. Burney, Honourable Mrs. Cholmondeley, Miss
Hannah More, &c. &c.
After wandering about in a kind of pleasing distraction for some time,
I got into a corner, with Johnson, Garrick, and Harris. GARRICK. (to
Harris,) 'Pray, Sir, have you read Potter's Aeschylus?' HARRIS. 'Yes;
and think it pretty.' GARRICK. (to Johnson,) 'And what think you, Sir,
of it?' JOHNSON. 'I thought what I read of it VERBIAGE: but upon Mr.
Harris's recommendation, I will read a play. (To Mr. Harris,) Don't
prescribe two.' Mr. Harris suggested one, I do not remember which.
JOHNSON. 'We must try its effect as an English poem; that is the way to
judge of the merit of a translation. Translations are, in general, for
people who cannot read the original.' I mentioned the vulgar saying,
that Pope's Homer was not a good representation of the original.
JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is the greatest work of the kind that has ever
been produced.' BOSWELL. 'The truth is, it is impossible perfectly to
translate poetry. In a different language it may be the same tune,
but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a
flagelet.' HARRIS. 'I think Heroick poetry is best in blank verse;
yet it appears that rhyme is essential to English poetry, from our
deficiency in metrical quantities. In my opinion, the chief excellence
of our language is numerous prose.' JOHNSON. 'Sir William Temple was
the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before his time they
were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended
with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of
speech it was concluded.'
GARRICK. 'Of all the translations that ever were attempted, I think
Elphinston's Martial the most extraordinary. He consulted me upon it,
who am a little of an epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely,
"You don't seem to have that turn." I asked him if he was serious; and
finding he was, I advised him against publishing. Why, his translation
is more difficult to understand than the original. I thought him a man
of some talents; but he seems crazy in this.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you have
done what I had not courage to do. But he did not ask my advice, and I
did not force it upon him, to make him angry with me.' GARRICK. 'But as
a friend, Sir--.' JOHNSON. 'Why, such a friend as I am with him--no.'
GARRICK. 'But if you see a friend going to tumble over a precipice?'
JOHNSON. 'That is an extravagant case, Sir. You are sure a friend will