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Fludyer. Jones loved beer, and did not get very forward in the Church. Fludyer turned out a scoundrel, a Whig, and said he was ashamed of having been bred at Oxford. He had a living at Putney, and got under the eye of some retainers to the Court at that time, and so became a violent Whig: but he had been a scoundrel all along, to be sure.' BOSWELL: 'Was he a scoundrel, sir, in any other way than that of being a political scoundrel? Did he cheat at draughts?' JOHNSON: 'Sir, we never played for money.'

He then carried me to visit Dr. Bentham, canon of Christ Church, and divinity professor, with whose learned and lively conversation we were much pleased. He gave us an invitation to dinner, which Dr. Johnson told me was a high honour. Sir, it is a great thing to dine with the canons of Christ Church.' We could not accept his invitation, as we were engaged to dine at University College. We had an excellent dinner there, with the Master and fellows, it being St. Cuthbert's day, which is kept by them as a festival, as he was a saint of Durham, with which this college is much connected.

We drank tea with Dr. Horne, late President of Magdalen College, and Bishop of Norwich, of whose abilities, in different respects, the public | has had eminent proofs, and the esteem annexed to whose character was increased by knowing him personally. He had talked of publishing an edition of Walton's Lives, but had laid aside that design upon Dr. Johnson's telling him, from mistake, that Lord Hailes intended to do it. I had wished to negotiate between Lord Hailes and him, that one or other should perform so good a work. JOHNSON: In order to do it well, it would be necessary to collect all the editions of Walton's Lives. By way of adapting the book to the taste of the present age, they have in a late edition left out a vision which he relates Dr. Donne had, but it should be restored; and there should be a critical catalogue given of the works of the different persons whose lives were written by Walton, and therefore their works must be carefully read by the editor.'

We

We then went to Trinity College, where he introduced me to Mr. Thomas Warton, with whom we passed a part of the evening. talked of biography. JOHNSON: It is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about

1 The vision which Johnson speaks of, was not in the original publication of Walton's Life of Dr. Donne, in 1640. It is not found in the three earliest editions; but was first introduced into the fourth, in 1765. I have not been able to discover what modern republicaton is alluded to, in which it was omitted. It has V properly been restored by Dr. Zouch.-JAMES BOSWELL, jun

him. The chaplain of a late bishop, whom I was to assist in writing some memoirs of his lordship, could tell me scarcely anything.'1

I said Mr. Robert Dodsley's life should be written, as he had been so much connected with the wits of his time, and by his literary merit had raised himself from the station of a footman. Mr Warton said he had published a little volume under the title of The Muse in Livery. JOHNSON: 'I doubt whether Dodsley's brother would thank a man who should write his life; yet Dodsley himself was not unwilling that his original low condition should be recollected. When Lord Lyttleton's Dialogues of the Dead came out, one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf, a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, "I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman."'

Biography led us to speak of Dr. John Campbell, who had written a considerable part of The Biographia Britannica. Johnson, though he valued him highly, was of opinion that there was not so much in his great work, A Political Survey of Great Britain, as the world had been taught to expect; 2 and had said to me that he believed Campbell's disappointment on account of the bad success of that work had killed him, He this evening observed of it, 'That work was his death.' Mr Warton, not adverting to

his meaning, answered, 'I believe so; from the great attention he bestowed on it.' JOHNSON: 'Nay, sir, he died of want of attention, if he died at all by that book.'

We talked of a work much in vogue at that time, written in a very mellifluous style, but which, under pretext of another subject, contained much artful infidelity. I said it was not fair to attack us unexpectedly; he should have warned us of our danger before we entered his garden of flowery eloquence, by advertising 'Spring-guns and men-traps set here.' The author had been an Oxonian, and was remembered there for having 'turned Papist.' I observed, that as he had changed several timesfrom the Church of England to the Church of Rome, from the Church of Rome to infidelity--I did not despair yet of seeing him a Methodist preacher. JOHNSON (laughing): 'It is said that his range has been more extensive, and that he has once been Mahometan. However, now that he has published his infidelity, he will probably

1 It has been mentioned to me by an accurate English friend, that Dr. Johnson could never have used the phrase almost nothing, as not being English; and therefore I have put another in its place. At the same time, I am not quite convinced it is not good English. For the best writers use this phrase, 'little or nothing;' i.e., almost so little as to be nothing.BOSWELL.

2 Yet surely it is a very useful work, and of wonderful research and labour for one man to have executed. -BOSWELL

3 Gibbon and his history are here referred to, undoubtedly.

persist in it.' BOSWELL: 'I am not quite sure of that, sir.'

I mentioned Sir Richard Steele having published his Christian Hero with the avowed purpose of obliging himself to lead a religious life; yet that his conduct was by no means strictly suitable. JOHNSON: 'Steele, I believe, practised the lighter vices.'

Mr. Warton, being engaged, could not sup with us at our inn; we had therefore another evening by ourselves. I asked Johnson whether a man's being forward to make himself known to eminent people, and seeing as much of life and getting as much information as he could in every way, was not yet lessening himself by his forwardness? JOHNSON: 'No, sir; a man always makes himself greater as he increases his knowledge.'

I censured some ludicrous fantastic dialogues between two coach-horses, and other such stuff, which Baretti had lately published. He joined with me, and said, 'Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.' I expressed a desire to be acquainted with a lady who had been much talked of, and universally celebrated for extraordinary address and insinuation.' JOHNSON: Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, sir, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.' I mentioned Mr. Burke. JOHNSON: "Yes, Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual.' It is very pleasing to me to record that Johnson's high estimation of the talents of this gentleman was uniform from their early acquaintance. Sir Joshua Reynolds informs me that when Mr. Burke was first elected a member of Parliament, and Sir John Hawkins expressed a wonder at his attaining a seat, Johnson said: 'Now, we who know Mr. Burke, know that he will be one of the first men in the country.' And once, when Johnson was ill, and unable to exert himself as much as usual without fatigue, Mr. Burke having been mentioned, he said, 'That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see Burke now, it would kill me.' So much was he accustomed to consider conversation as a contest, and such was his notion of Burke as an opponent.

Next morning, Thursday, March 21, we set out in a post-chaise to pursue our ramble. It was a delightful day, and we rode through Blenheim Park. When I looked at the magnificent bridge built by John, Duke of Marlborough, over a small rivulet, and recollected the epigram made upon it:

The lofty arch his high ambition shows;

The stream an emblem of his bounty flows:' and saw that now, by the genius of Brown, a magnificent body of water was collected, I said, "They have drowned the epigram.' I observed

1 Margaret Caroline Rudd.

to him, while in the midst of the noble scene around us, 'You and I, sir, have, I think, seen together the extremes of what can be seen in Britain-the wild, rough island of Mull, and Blenheim Park.'

We dined at an excellent inn at Chapel House, where he expatiated on the felicity of England in its taverns and inns, and triumphed over the French for not having, in any perfection, the tavern life. There is no private house,' said he, in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that everybody should be easy, in the nature of things it cannot be: there must always be some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his gueststhe guests are anxious to be agreeable to him; and no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another man s house, as if it were his own. Whereas at a tavern there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome; and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. No, sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. He then repeated, with great emotion, Shenstone's lines:

"Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.'2

My illustrious friend, I thought, did not suffi

1 Sir John Hawkins has preserved very few me morabilia of Johnson. There is, however, to be found in his bulky tome a very excellent one upon this subject. In contradiction to those who, having a wife and children, prefer domestic enjoyments to those which a tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity.—“ As soon," said he, "as I enter the door of a tavern, I

experience an oblivion of care and a freedom from

solicitude. When I am seated, I find the master courteous, and the servants obsequious to my call; anxious to know and ready to supply my wants; wine there exhilarates my spirits, and prompts me to free conver sation and an interchange of discourse with those whom I most love; I dogmatize and am contradicted, and in this conflict of opinion and sentiments I find delight."-BOSWELL.

2 We happened to lie this night at the inn at Henley, where Shenstone wrote these lines. I give them as they are found in the corrected edition of his works published after his death. In Dodsley's collection the stanza ran thus:

"Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round,
Whate'er his various tour has been,
May sigh to think how oft he found
His warmest welcome at an inn.'

-BOSWELL

ciently admire Shenstone. That ingenious and elegant gentleman's opinion of Johnson appears in one of his letters to Mr. Greaves, dated Feb. 9, 1760: I have lately been reading one or two volumes of the Rambler; who, excepting against some few hardnesses' in his manner, and the want of more examples to enliven, is one of the most nervous, most perspicuous, most concise, most harmonious prose writers I know. A learned diction improves by time.'

In the afternoon, as we were driving rapidly along in the post-chaise, he said to me, 'Life has not many things better than this.'

We stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon, and drank tea and coffee; and it pleased me to be with him upon the classic ground of Shakspeare's native place.

He spoke slightingly of Dyer's Fleece.-The subject, sir, cannot be made poetical. How can

a man write poetically of serges and druggets? Yet you will hear many people talk to you gravely of that excellent poem The Fleece.' Having talked of Grainger's Sugar Cane, I mentioned to him Mr. Langton's having told me that this poem, when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when, after much blankverse pomp, the poet began a new paragraph thus:

'Now Muse, let's sing of rats.'

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company, who slily overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice, and had been altered to rats, as more dignified.

This passage does not appear in the printed work,-Dr. Grainger, or some of his friends, it

1 He too often makes use of the abstract for the concrete.-BOSWELL

2 Such is this little laughable incident, which has been often related. Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, who was an intimate friend of Dr. Grainger, and has a particular regard for his memory, has communicated to me the following explanation :

The passage in question was originally not liable to such perversion; for the author having occasion in that part of his work to mention the havoc made by rats and mice, had introduced the subject in a kind of mock heroic, and a parody of Homer's battle of the frogs and mice, invoking the Muse of the old Grecian bard in an elegant and well-turned manner. In that state I had seen it; but afterwards, unknown to me and other friends, he had been persuaded, contrary to his own better judgment, to alter it, so as to produce the unlucky effect above mentioned.'

The above was written by the Bishop when he had not the poem itself to recur to; and though the account given was true of it at one period, yet as Dr. Grainger afterwards altered the passage in question, the remarks in the text do not now apply to the printed poem.

The Bishop gives this character of Dr. Grainger :'He was not only a man of genius and learning, but had many excellent virtues; being one of the most generous, friendly, and benevolent men I ever knew.' -BOSWELL

should seem, having become sensible that introducing even rats in a grave poem might be liable to banter. He however could not bring himself to relinquish the idea; for they are thus, in a still more ludicrous manner, periphrastically exhibited in his poem as it now stands :

'Nor with less waste the whisker'd vermin race, A countless clan, despoil the lowland cane.' Johnson said that Dr. Grainger was an agreeable man; a man who would do any good that was in his power. His translation of Tibullus, he thought, was very well done; but The Sugar Cane, a Poem,' did not please him; for he exclaimed, 'What could be made of a sugar-cane? One might as well write The Parsley Bed, a Poem; or, The Cabbage Garden, a Poem.' BosWELL: You must then pickle your cabbage with the sal atticum.' JOHNSON: 'You know there is already The Hop Garden, a Poem; and, I think, one could say a great deal about cabbage. The poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them; and one might thus show how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.' He seemed to be much diverted with the fertility of his own fancy.

I told him that I heard Dr. Percy was writing the history of the wolf in Great Britain. JOHNSON: The wolf, sir! why the wolf? Why does he not write of the bear, which we had formerly? Nay, it is said we had the beaver. Or why does he not write of the grey rat,-the Hanover rat, as it is called, because it is said to have come into this country about the time that the family of Hanover came? I should like to see The History of the Grey Rat, by Thomas Percy, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty' (laughing immoderately). BOSWELL: 'I am afraid a Court chaplain could not decently write of the grey rat.' JOHNSON: Sir, he need not give it the name of the Hanover rat.' Thus could he indulge a luxuriant, sportive imagination, when talking of a friend whom

he loved and esteemed.

He mentioned to me the singular history of an ingenious acquaintance: 'He had practised physic in various situations with no great emolument. A West India gentleman, whom he delighted by his conversation, gave him a bond for a handsome annuity during his life, on the condition of his accompanying him into the West Indies, and living with him there for two years. He accordingly embarked with the gentleman; but upon the voyage fell in love with a young woman who happened to be one of the passengers, and married the wench. From the imprudence of his disposition, he

1 Dr. Johnson said to me, 'Percy, sir, was angry with me for laughing at the Sugar Cane; for he had a mind to make a great thing of Grainger's rats.'-Bos

WELL

quarrelled with the gentleman, and declared he would have no connection with him. So he forfeited the annuity. He settled as a physician in one of the Leeward Islands. A man was sent out to him merely to compound his medicines. This fellow set up as a rival to him in his practice of physic, and got so much the better of him in the opinion of the people of the island, that he carried away all the business, upon which he returned to England and soon after died.'

On Friday, March 22, having set out early from Henley, where we had lain the preceding night, we arrived at Birmingham about nine o'clock, and, after breakfast, went to call on his old schoolfellow, Mr. Hector. A very stupid maid, who opened the door, told us that her master was gone out; he was gone to the country; she could not tell when he would return.' In short, she gave us a miserable reception; and Johnson observed, 'She would have behaved no better to people who wanted him in the way of his profession.' He said to her, ‘My name is Johnson; tell him I called. Will you remember the name?' She answered, with rustic simplicity, in the Warwickshire pronunciation, I don't understand you, sir.' 'Blockhead!' said he, 'I'll write.' I never heard the word blockhead applied to a woman before, though I do not see why it should not, when there is evident occasion for it.' He however, made another attempt to make her understand him, and roared loud in her ear, Johnson,' and then she catched the sound.

We next called on Mr. Lloyd, one of the people called Quakers. He too was not at home, but Mrs. Lloyd was, and received us courteously and asked us to dinner. Johnson said to me, 'After the uncertainty of all human things at Hector's, this invitation came very well.' We walked about the town, and he was pleased to see it increasing.

I talked of legitimation by subsequent marriage, which obtained in the Roman law, and still obtains in the law of Scotland. JOHNSON: 'I think it a bad thing; because the chastity of women being of the utmost importance, as all property depends upon it, they who forfeit it should not have any possibility of being restored to good character; nor should the children by an illicit connection attain the full right of lawful children by the posterior consent of the

1 My worthy friend Mr. Langton, to whom I am under innumerable obligations in the course of my Johnsonian History, has furnished me with a droll illustration of this question. An honest carpenter, after giving some anecdote, in his presence, of the illtreatment which he had received from a clergyman's wife, who was a noted termagant, and whom he accused of unjust dealing in some transaction with him, added, 'I took care to let her know what I thought of her. And being asked, 'What did you say?' answered, 'I told her she was a scoundrel.'-BOSWELL.

offending parties.' His opinion upon this subject deserves consideration. Upon his principle there may at times be a hardship, and seemingly a strange one, upon individuals; but the general good of society is better secured. And, after all, it is unreasonable in an individual to repine that he has not the advantage of a state which is made different from his own by the social institution under which he is born. A woman does not complain that her brother who is younger than her gets their common father's estate. Why, then, should a natural son complain that a younger brother, by the same parents lawfully begotten, gets it? The operation of law is similar in both cases. Besides, an illegitimate son, who has a younger legitimate brother by the same father and mother, has no stronger claim to the father's estate, than if that legitimate brother had only the same father, from whom alone the estate descends.

Mr. Lloyd joined us in the street, and in a little while we met Friend Hector, as Mr. Lloyd called him. It gave me pleasure to observe the joy which Johnson and he expressed on seeing each other again. Mr. Lloyd and I left them together, while he obligingly showed me some of the manufactures of this very curious assemblage of artificers. We all met at dinner at Mr. Lloyd's, where we were entertained with great hospitality. Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd had been married the same year with their Majesties, and, like them, had been blessed with a numerous family of fine children, their numbers being exactly the same. Johnson said, 'Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.'

I have always loved the simplicity of manners and the spiritual-mindedness of the Quakers; and, talking with Mr. Lloyd, I observed that the essential part of religion was piety-a devout intercourse with the Divinity, and that many a man was a Quaker without knowing it.

As Dr. Johnson had said to me in the morning, while we walked together, that he liked individuals among the Quakers, but not the sect, when we were at Mr. Lloyd's I kept clear of introducing any questions concerning the peculiarities of their faith. But I having asked to look at Baskerville's edition of Barclay's Apology, Johnson laid hold of it; and the chapter on baptism happening to open, Johnson remarked, 'He says there is neither precept nor practice for baptism in the Scriptures. That is false.' Here he was the aggressor, by no means in a gentle manner : and the good Quakers had the advantage of him, for he had read negligently, and had not observed that Barclay speaks of infant baptism, Lloyd, however, was in a great mistake; for, which they calmly made him perceive. Mr. when insisting that the rite of baptism by water was to cease when the spiritual administration of Christ began, he maintained that John the Baptist said, 'My baptism shall decrease, but his

shall increase;

whereas the words are, He shall always have a kindness for each other.' He must increase, but I must decrease.'1 laughed at the notion that a man can never be really in love but once, and considered it as a mere romantic fancy.

One of them having objected to the observance of days, and months, and years,' Johnson answered, 'The Church does not superstitiously observe days merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day will be neglected.'

He said to me at another time, 'Sir, the holidays observed by our Church are of great use in religion.' There can be no doubt of this in a limited sense-I mean if the number of such consecrated portions of time be not too extensive. The excellent Mr. Nelson's Festivals and Fasts, which has, I understand, the greatest sale of any book ever printed in England-except the Bible-is a most valuable help to devotion; and in addition to it I would recommend two sermons on the same subject by Mr. Pott, Archdeacon of St. Alban's, equally distinguished for piety and elegance. I am sorry to have it to say that Scotland is the only Christian country, Catholic or Protestant, where the great events of our religion are not solemnly commemorated by its ecclesiastical establishment on days set apart for the purpose.

Mr. Hector was so good as to accompany me to see the great works of Mr. Boulton, at a place which he has called Soho, about two miles from Birmingham, which the very ingenious proprietor showed me himself to the best advantage. I wished Johnson had been with us; for it was a scene which I should have been glad to contemplate by his light. The vastness and the contrivance of some of the machinery would have ' matched his mighty mind.' I shall never forget Mr. Boulton's expression to me, 'I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have-POWER.' He had about seven hundred people at work. I contemplated him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be a father to his tribe. One of them came to him, complaining grievously of his landlord for having distrained his goods. Your landlord is in the right, Smith,' said Boulton. 'But I'll tell you what-find you a friend who will lay down one half of your rent, and I'll lay down the other half, and you shall have your goods again.'

From Mr. Hector I now learnt many particulars of Dr. Johnson's early life which, with others that he gave me at different times since, have contributed to the formation of this work. Dr. Johnson said to me in the morning, 'You will see, sir, at Mr. Hector's, his sister, Mrs. Careless, a clergyman's widow. She was the first woman with whom I was in love. It dropt out of my head imperceptibly; but she and I

1 John iii. 30.-BOSWELL.

On our return from Mr. Boulton's, Mr. Hector took me to his house, where we found Johnson sitting placidly at tea, with his first love; who, though now advanced in years, was a genteel woman, very agreeable and well bred.

Johnson lamented to Mr. Hector the state of one of their schoolfellows, Mr. Charles Congreve, a clergyman, which he thus described: 'He obtained, I believe, considerable preferment in Ireland, but now lives in London, quite as a valetudinarian, afraid to go into any house but his own. He takes a short airing in his postchaise every day. He has an elderly woman, whom he calls cousin, who lives with him, and jogs his elbow when his glass has stood too long empty and encourages him in drinking, in which he is very willing to be encouraged; not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy. He confesses to one bottle of port every day, and he probably drinks more. He is quite unsocial; his conversation is quite monosyllabical; and when, at my last visit, I asked him what o'clock it was, that signal of my departure had so pleasing an effect on him, that he sprung up to look at his watch like a greyhound bounding at a hare.' When Johnson took leave of Mr. Hector, he said, 'Don't grow like Congreve: nor let me grow like him, when you are near me.'

When he again talked of Mrs. Careless tonight, he seemed to have had his affection revived; for he said, 'If I had married her, it might have been as happy for me.' BOSWELL: 'Pray, sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular?' JOHNSON: 'Ay, sir, fifty thousand.' BOSWELL: Then, sir, you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each other, and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counterparts.' JOHNSON: To be sure not, sir. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.'

I wished to have stayed at Birmingham tonight, to have talked more with Mr. Hector; but my friend was impatient to reach his native city; so we drove on that stage in the dark, and were long pensive and silent. When we came within the focus of the Lichfield lamps, 'Now,' said he, we are getting out of a state of death.' We put up at the 'Three Crowns,' not one of the great inns, but a good old-fashioned one, which was kept by Mr. Wilkins, and was the very next house to that in which Johnson was born

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