monarch, though a few daring rebels have been wonderfully powerful for a time. The murder of Charles the First was undoubtedly not committed with the approbation or consent of the people. Had that been the case, parliament would not have ventured to consign the regicides to their deserved punishment. And we know what exuberance of joy there was when Charles the Second was restored. If Charles the Second had bent all his mind to it, had made it his sole object, he might have been as absolute as Louis the Fourteenth.' A gentleman observed, he would have done no harm if he had. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, absolute princes seldom do any harm. But they who are governed by them are governed by chance. There is no security for good government." CAMBRIDGE. "There have been many sad victims to absolute government.' JOHNSON. "So, Sir, have there been to popular factions.” BOSWELL. "The question is, which is worst, one wild beast or many?"

66

Johnson praised "The Spectator," particularly the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. He said, "Sir Roger did not die a violent death, as has been generally fancied. He was not killed; he died only because others were to die, and because his death afforded an opportunity to Addison for some very fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making Don Quixote die. I never could see why Sir Roger is represented as a little cracked. It appears to me that the story of the widow was intended to have something superinduced upon it; but the superstructure did not come."

Somebody found fault with writing verses in a dead language, maintaining that they were merely arrangements of so many words, and laughed at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, for sending forth collections of them, not only in Greek and Latin, but even in Syriac, Arabic, and other more unknown tongues.' JOHNSON. "I

1

"In foreign universities,

When a king's born, or weds, or dies,
Straight other studies are laid by,
And all apply to poetry;

Some write in Hebrew, some in Greek,

And some (more wise) in Arabic,

T' avoid the critic and th' expense

1

would have as many of these as possible; I would have verses in every language that there are the means of acquiring. Nobody imagines that an university is to have at once two hundred poets: but it should be able to show two hundred scholars. Peiresc's death was lamented, I think, in forty languages. And I would have had at every coronation, and every death of a king, every Gaudium, and every Luctus, university-verses, in as many languages as can be acquired. I would have the world be thus told, Here is a school where every thing may be learnt.'"

Having set out next day on a visit to the Earl of Pembroke, at Wilton, and to my friend Mr. Temple, at Mamhead, in Devonshire, and not having returned to town till the 2nd of May, I did not see Dr. Johnson for a considerable time, and during the remaining part of my stay in London kept very imperfect notes of his conversation, which had I according to my usual custom written out at large soon after the time, much might have been preserved, which is now irretrievably lost. I can now only record some particular scenes, and a few fragments of his memorabilia. But to make some amends for my relaxation of diligence in one respect, I can present my readers with arguments upon two law cases, with which he favoured me.

On Saturday, the 6th of May, we dined by ourselves at the Mitre, and he dictated to me what follows, to obviate the complaint already mentioned 2 which had been made in the form of an action in the Court of Session by Dr. Memis, of Aberdeen, that in the same translation of a charter in which physicians were mentioned, he was called Doctor of Medicine.

“There are but two reasons for which a physician can decline the title of Doctor of Medicine-because he supposes himself disgraced by the doctorship, or supposes the doctorship disgraced

Of difficulter wit and sense,

And seem more learnedish than those

That at a greater charge compose."-Butler.
P. Cunningham.

His

1 This learned Frenchman was born in 1580, and died 1637. Life, written in Latin by Gassendi, was translated into English by Dr. Rand, and dedicated to Evelyn.-Wright. 2 See p. 271 of this volume.

by himself. To be disgraced by a title which he shares in common with every illustrious name of his profession, with Boerhaave, with Arbuthnot, and with Cullen, can surely diminish no man s reputation. It is, I suppose, to the doctorate, from which he shrinks, that he owes his right of practising physic. A doctor of medicine is a physician under the protection of the laws, and by the stamp of authority. The physician who is not a doctor usurps a profession, and is authorized only by himself to decide upon health and sickness, and life and death. That this gentleman is a doctor, his diploma makes evident; a diploma not obtruded upon him, but obtained by solicitation, and for which fees were paid. With what countenance any man can refuse the title which he has either begged or bought, is not easily discovered.

"All verbal injury must comprise in it either some false position, or some unnecessary declaration of defamatory truth. That in calling him doctor, a false appellation was given him, he himself will not pretend, who at the same time that he complains of the title would be offended if we supposed him to be not a doctor. If the title of doctor be a defamatory truth, it is time to dissolve our colleges; for why should the public give salaries to men whose approbation is reproach? It may likewise deserve the notice of the public to consider what help can be given to the professors of physic, who all share with this unhappy gentleman the ignominious appellation, and of whom the very boys in the street are not afraid to say, There goes the doctor.

"What is implied by the term doctor is well known. It distinguishes him to whom it is granted, as a man who has attained such knowledge of his profession as qualifies him to instruct others. A doctor of law is a man who can form lawyers by his precepts. A doctor of medicine is a man who can teach the art of curing diseases. This is an old axiom which no man has yet thought fit to deny. Nil dat quod non habet. Upon this principle to be doctor implies skill, for nemo docet quod non didicit. In England, whoever practises physic, not being a doctor, must practise by licence: but the doctorate conveys a licence in itself.

"By what accident it happened that he and the other physicians were mentioned in different terms, where the terms themselves were equivalent, or where in effect that which was applied to him was the most honourable, perhaps they who wrote the paper cannot now remember. Had they expected a lawsuit to have been the consequence of such petty variation, I hope they would have

avoided it.1 But, probably, as they meant no ill, they suspected no danger, and, therefore, consulted only what appeared to them propriety or convenience."

A few days afterwards, I consulted him upon a cause, Paterson and others against Alexander and others, which had been decided by a casting vote in the Court of Session, determining that the corporation of Stirling was corrupt, and setting aside the election of some of their officers, because it was proved that three of the leading men who influenced the majority had entered into an unjustifiable compact, of which, however, the majority were ignorant. He dictated to me after a little consideration, the following sentences upon the subject.

"There is a difference between majority and superiority: majority is applied to number, and superiority to power; and power, like many other things, is to be estimated non numero scd pondere. Now though the greater number is not corrupt, the greater weight is corrupt, so that corruption predominates in the borough, taken collectively, though, perhaps, taken numerically, the greater part may be uncorrupt. That borough, which is so constituted as to act corruptly, is in the eye of reason corrupt, whether it be by the uncontrollable power of a few, or by an accidental pravity of the multitude. The objection, in which is urged the injustice of making the innocent suffer with the guilty, is an objection not only against society, but against the possibility of society. All societies, great and small, subsist upon this condition; that as the individuals derive advantages from union, they may likewise suffer inconveniences; that as those who do nothing, and sometimes those who do ill, will have the honours and emoluments of general virtue and general prosperity, so those likewise who do nothing, or perhaps do well, must be involved in the consequences of predominant corruption."

This, in my opinion, was a very nice case; but the decision was affirmed in the House of Lords.

On Monday, May 8, we went together and visited the

In justice to Dr. Memis, though I was against him as an advocate, I must mention that he objected to the variation very earnestly, before the translation was printed off.

mansions of Bedlam.' I had been informed that he had once been there before with Mr. Wedderburne (now Lord Loughborough), Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Foote; and I had heard Foote give a very entertaining account of Johnson's happening to have his attention arrested by a man who was very furious, and who, while beating his straw, supposed it was William, Duke of Cumberland, whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746.2 There was nothing peculiarly remarkable this day; but the general contemplation of insanity was very affecting. I accompanied him home, and dined and drank tea with him. Talking of an acquaintance of ours, distinguished for knowing an uncommon variety of miscellaneous articles both in antiquities and polite literature, he observed, “You know, Sir, he runs about with little weight upon his mind." And talking of another very ingenious gentleman,* who, from the warmth of his temper, was at variance with many of his acquaintance, and wished to avoid them, he said, "Sir, he lives the life of an outlaw."

3

On Friday, May 12, as he had been so good as to assign

Old Bedlam was one of the sights of London, like the Abbey and the Tower. (See Tatler, No. 70). The public were admitted for a small fee to perambulate long galleries into which the cells opened (these Boswell calls the mansions), and even to converse with the maniacs. "To gratify the curiosity of a country friend, I accompanied him a few weeks ago to Bedlam. It was in the Easter week, when, to my great surprise, I found a hundred people at least, who, having paid their twopence apiece, were suffered, unattended, to run rioting up and down the wards, making sport and diversion of the miserable inhabitants," &c.-The World, No. 23, June 7, 1753. See also Plate 8 of Hogarth's Rake's Progress, where two lady visitors seem to have been admitted into the cell of the maniacs.--Croker.

2 My very honourable friend, General Sir George Howard, who served in the Duke of Cumberland's army, has assured me that the cruelties were not imputable to his Royal Highness.

On the morning of the battle of Culloden, Lord George Murray, the chief of the Pretender's staff, issued an order to give no quarter to the royal forces. The Jacobites affected to say that this was the act of the individual and not of the Prince or his party; but it is undeniable that such a general order was given, and that it became the excuse, though certainly not a justification, of the severities which followed the battle on the part of the conquerors.-Croker.

3 Probably Dr. Percy.-Croker.

No doubt Mr. George Steevens.- Croker.