Boswell's Life of Johnson
of hunger. This happens only in so large a place as London, where people
are not known. What we are told about the great sums got by begging is
not true: the trade is overstocked. And, you may depend upon it, there
are many who cannot get work. A particular kind of manufacture fails:
those who have been used to work at it, can, for some time, work at
nothing else. You meet a man begging; you charge him with idleness:
he says, "I am willing to labour. Will you give me work?"--"I
cannot."--"Why, then you have no right to charge me with idleness."' We
left Mr. Strahan's at seven, as Johnson had said he intended to go to
evening prayers. As we walked along, he complained of a little gout
in his toe, and said, 'I shan't go to prayers to-night; I shall go
to-morrow: Whenever I miss church on a Sunday, I resolve to go another
day. But I do not always do it.' This was a fair exhibition of that
vibration between pious resolutions and indolence, which many of us have
too often experienced.
I went home with him, and we had a long quiet conversation.
BOSWELL. 'Why, Sir, do people play this trick which I observe now, when
I look at your grate, putting the shovel against it to make the fire
burn?' JOHNSON. 'They play the trick, but it does not make the fire
burn. THERE is a better; (setting the poker perpendicularly up at right
angles with the grate.) In days of superstition they thought, as it made
a cross with the bars, it would drive away the witch.'
BOSWELL. 'By associating with you, Sir, I am always getting an accession
of wisdom. But perhaps a man, after knowing his own character--the
limited strength of his own mind, should not be desirous of having too
much wisdom, considering, quid valeant humeri, how little he can carry.'
JOHNSON. 'Sir, be as wise as you can; let a man be aliis laetus, sapiens
sibi:
"Though pleas'd to see the dolphins play,
I mind my compass and my way."
You may be wise in your study in the morning, and gay in company at a
tavern in the evening. Every man is to take care of his own wisdom and
his own virtue, without minding too much what others think.'
He said, 'Dodsley first mentioned to me the scheme of an English
Dictionary; but I had long thought of it.' BOSWELL. 'You did not know
what you were undertaking.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, I knew very well what
I was undertaking,--and very well how to do it,--and have done it very
well.' BOSWELL. 'An excellent climax! and it HAS availed you. In your
Preface you say, "What would it avail me in this gloom of solitude?" You
have been agreeably mistaken.'
In his Life of Milton he observes, 'I cannot but remark a kind
of respect, perhaps unconsciously, paid to this great man by his
biographers: every house in which he resided is historically mentioned,
as if it were an injury to neglect naming any place that he honoured by
his presence.' I had, before I read this observation, been desirous of
shewing that respect to Johnson, by various inquiries. Finding him this
evening in a very good humour, I prevailed on him to give me an exact
list of his places of residence, since he entered the metropolis as an
authour, which I subjoin in a note.*
* 1. Exeter-street, off Catherine-street, Strand. 2.
Greenwich. 3. Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square. 4.
Castle-street, Cavendish-square, No. 6. 5. Strand. 6.
Boswell-Court. 7. Strand, again. 8. Bow-street. 9.
Holborn. 10. Fetter-lane. 11. Holborn, again. 12.
Gough-square. 13. Staple Inn. 14. Gray's Inn. 15. Inner
Temple-lane, No. 1. 16. Johnson's-court, No. 7. 17.
Bolt-court. No. 8.--BOSWELL.
On Tuesday, October 12, I dined with him at Mr. Ramsay's, with Lord
Newhaven, and some other company, none of whom I recollect, but a
beautiful Miss Graham, a relation of his Lordship's, who asked Dr.
Johnson to hob or nob with her. He was flattered by such pleasing
attention, and politely told her, he never drank wine; but if she would
drink a glass of water, he was much at her service. She accepted. 'Oho,
Sir! (said Lord Newhaven,) you are caught.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, I do not see
HOW I am CAUGHT; but if I am caught, I don't want to get free again. If
I am caught, I hope to be kept.' Then when the two glasses of water were
brought, smiling placidly to the young lady, he said, 'Madam, let us
RECIPROCATE.'
Lord Newhaven and Johnson carried on an argument for some time,
concerning the Middlesex election. Johnson said, 'Parliament may be
considered as bound by law as a man is bound where there is nobody to
tie the knot. As it is clear that the House of Commons may expel and
expel again and again, why not allow of the power to incapacitate for
that parliament, rather than have a perpetual contest kept up between
parliament and the people.' Lord Newhaven took the opposite side; but
respectfully said, 'I speak with great deference to you, Dr. Johnson; I
speak to be instructed.' This had its full effect on my friend. He bowed
his head almost as low as the table, to a complimenting nobleman; and
called out, 'My Lord, my Lord, I do not desire all this ceremony; let
us tell our minds to one another quietly.' After the debate was over, he
said, 'I have got lights on the subject to-day, which I had not before.'
This was a great deal from him, especially as he had written a pamphlet
upon it.
Of his fellow-collegian, the celebrated Mr. George Whitefield, he said,
'Whitefield never drew as much attention as a mountebank does; he did
not draw attention by doing better than others, but by doing what was
strange. Were Astley to preach a sermon standing upon his head on a
horse's back, he would collect a multitude to hear him; but no wise
man would say he had made a better sermon for that. I never treated
Whitefield's ministry with contempt; I believe he did good. He had
devoted himself to the lower classes of mankind, and among them he
was of use. But when familiarity and noise claim the praise due to
knowledge, art, and elegance, we must beat down such pretensions.'
What I have preserved of his conversation during the remainder of my
stay in London at this time, is only what follows: I told him that when
I objected to keeping company with a notorious infidel, a celebrated
friend of ours said to me, 'I do not think that men who live laxly in
the world, as you and I do, can with propriety assume such an authority.
Dr. Johnson may, who is uniformly exemplary in his conduct. But it is
not very consistent to shun an infidel to-day, and get drunk to-morrow.'
JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, this is sad reasoning. Because a man cannot be right
in all things, is he to be right in nothing? Because a man sometimes
gets drunk, is he therefore to steal? This doctrine would very soon
bring a man to the gallows.'
He, I know not why, shewed upon all occasions an aversion to go to
Ireland, where I proposed to him that we should make a tour. JOHNSON.
'It is the last place where I should wish to travel.' BOSWELL. 'Should
you not like to see Dublin, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir! Dublin is only a
worse capital.' BOSWELL. 'Is not the Giant's-Causeway worth seeing?'
JOHNSON. 'Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.'
Yet he had a kindness for the Irish nation, and thus generously
expressed himself to a gentleman from that country, on the subject of an
UNION which artful Politicians have often had in view--'Do not make an
union with us, Sir. We should unite with you, only to rob you. We should
have robbed the Scotch, if they had had any thing of which we could have
robbed them.'
Of an acquaintance of ours, whose manners and every thing about him,
though expensive, were coarse, he said, 'Sir, you see in him vulgar
prosperity.'
A foreign minister of no very high talents, who had been in his company
for a considerable time quite overlooked, happened luckily to mention
that he had read some of his Rambler in Italian, and admired it
much. This pleased him greatly; he observed that the title had been
translated, Il Genio errante, though I have been told it was rendered
more ludicrously, Il Vagabondo; and finding that this minister gave
such a proof of his taste, he was all attention to him, and on the first
remark which he made, however simple, exclaimed, 'The Ambassadour says
well--His Excellency observes--' And then he expanded and enriched
the little that had been said, in so strong a manner, that it appeared
something of consequence. This was exceedingly entertaining to the
company who were present, and many a time afterwards it furnished a
pleasant topick of merriment: 'The Ambassadour says well,' became a
laughable term of applause, when no mighty matter had been expressed.
I left London on Monday, October 15, and accompanied Colonel Stuart to
Chester, where his regiment was to lye for some time.
1780: AETAT. 71.]--In 1780, the world was kept in impatience for the
completion of his Lives of the Poets, upon which he was employed so far
as his indolence allowed him to labour.
His friend Dr. Lawrence having now suffered the greatest affliction to
which a man is liable, and which Johnson himself had felt in the most
severe manner; Johnson wrote to him in an admirable strain of sympathy
and pious consolation.
'TO DR. LAWRENCE.
'DEAR SIR,--At a time when all your friends ought to shew their
kindness, and with a character which ought to make all that know you
your friends, you may wonder that you have yet heard nothing from me.
'I have been hindered by a vexatious and incessant cough, for which
within these ten days I have been bled once, fasted four or five times,
taken physick five times, and opiates, I think, six. This day it seems
to remit.
'The loss, dear Sir, which you have lately suffered, I felt many years
ago, and know therefore how much has been taken from you, and how little
help can be had from consolation. He that outlives a wife whom he has
long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same
hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he
has shared much good or evil; and with whom he could set his mind at
liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity
of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is
stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless, till it is driven
by external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspense is
dreadful.
'Our first recourse in this distressed solitude, is, perhaps for want
of habitual piety, to a gloomy acquiescence in necessity. Of two mortal
beings, one must lose the other; but surely there is a higher and better
comfort to be drawn from the consideration of that Providence which
watches over all, and a belief that the living and the dead are equally
in the hands of God, who will reunite those whom he has separated;
or who sees that it is best not to reunite. I am, dear Sir, your most
affectionate, and most humble servant,
'January 20, 1780.'
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
On the 2nd of May I wrote to him, and requested that we might have
another meeting somewhere in the North of England, in the autumn of this
year.
From Mr. Langton I received soon after this time a letter, of which I
extract a passage, relative both to Mr. Beauclerk and Dr. Johnson.
'The melancholy information you have received concerning Mr. Beauclerk's
death is true. Had his talents been directed in any sufficient degree
as they ought, I have always been strongly of opinion that they were
calculated to make an illustrious figure; and that opinion, as it had
been in part formed upon Dr. Johnson's judgment, receives more and more
confirmation by hearing what, since his death, Dr. Johnson has said
concerning them; a few evenings ago, he was at Mr. Vesey's, where Lord
Althorpe, who was one of a numerous company there, addressed Dr. Johnson