'Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner; but no man alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of the bear but his skin.' In 1769, so far as I can discover, the public was favoured with nothing of Johnson's composition, either for himself or any of his friends. His Meditations too strongly prove that he suffered much both in body and mind; yet was he perpetually striving against evil, and nobly endeavouring to advance his intellectual and devotional improvement. Every generous and grateful heart must feel for the distresses of so eminent a benefactor to mankind; and now that his unhappiness is certainly known, must respect that dignity of character which prevented him from complaining.

His Majesty having the preceding year instituted the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Johnson had now the honour of being appointed Professor in Ancient Literature. In the course of the year he wrote some letters to Mrs. Thrale, passed some part of the summer at Oxford and at Lichfield, and when at Oxford he wrote the following letter:

'TO THE REVEREND MR. THOMAS WARTON. May 31, 1769. 'DEAR SIR,-Many years ago, when I used to read in the library of your college, I promised to recompense the college for that permission, by adding to their books a Baskerville's Virgil.

I have now sent it, and desire you to deposit it on the shelves in my name.2

'If you will be pleased to let me know when you have an hour of leisure, I will drink tea with you. I am engaged for the afternoon to-morrow, and on Friday: all my mornings are my own. -I am, etc., 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

3

I came to London in the autumn, and having informed him that I was going to be married in a

1 In which place he has been succeeded by Bennet Langton, Esq. When that truly religious gentleman was elected to this honorary Professorship, at the same time that Edward Gibbon, Esq., noted for introducing a kind of sneering infidelity into his Historical Writings, was elected Professor in Ancient History, in the room of Dr. Goldsmith, I observed that it brought to my mind, 'Wicked Will Whiston and good Mr. Ditton.' -I am now also of that admirable institution as Secretary for Foreign Correspondence, by the favour of the Academicians and the approbation of the Sovereign.-BOSWELL.

2 It has this inscription in a blank leaf: 'Hunc librum D. D. Samuel Johnson, eo quod hic loci studiis interdum vacaret. Of this library, which is an old Gothic room, he was very fond. On my observing to him that some of the modern libraries of the University were more commodious and pleasant for study, as being more spacious and airy, he replied, "Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All-Souls."-WARTON.

3. During this visit he seldom or never dined out. He appeared to be deeply engaged in some literary work. Miss Williams was now with him at Oxford.'-WARTON.

few months, I wished to have as much of his conversation as I could before engaging in a state of life which would probably keep me more in Scotland, and prevent me seeing him so often as when I was a single man; but I found he was at Brighthelmstone with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. I was very sorry that I had not his company with me at the Jubilee, in honour of Shakspeare, at Stratford-upon-Avon, the great poet's native town. Johnson's connection both with Shakspeare and Garrick founded a double claim to his presence; and it would have been highly gratifying to Mr. Garrick. Upon this occasion I particularly lamented that he had not that warmth of friendship for his brilliant pupil, which we may suppose would have had a benignant effect on both. When almost every man of eminence in the literary world was happy to partake in this festival of genius, the absence of Johnson could not but be wondered at and regretted. The only trace of him there, was in the whimsical advertisement of a haberdasher, who sold Shakspearian ribands of various dyes; and, by way of illustrating their appropriation to the bard, introduced a line from the celebrated Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre:

'Each change of many-coloured life he drew.' the following letter, which they who may think From Brighthelmstone Dr. Johnson wrote me I ought to have suppressed, must have less ardent

feelings than I have always avowed: 1—

TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. 'BRIGHTHELMSTONE, Sept. 9, 1769. 'DEAR SIR,-Why do you charge me with unkindness? I have omitted nothing that could do you good, or give you pleasure, unless it be that I have forborne to tell you my opinion of your

In the Preface of my Account of Corsica, published in 1768, I thus express myself: 'He who publishes a book affecting not to be an author, and professing an indifference for literary fame, may possibly impose upon many people such an idea of his consequence as he wishes may be received. For my part, I should be proud to be known as an author, and I have an ardent ambition for literary fame; for, of all possessions, I should imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish a book, which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of having that character lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve an uniform dignity among those who see us every day, is hardly possible; and to aim at it, must put us under the fetters of perpetual restraint. The author of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superior genius, when he considers that by those who know him only as an author, he never ceases to be respected. Such an author, when in his hours of gloom and discontent, may have the consolation to think that his writings are at that very time giving pleasure to numbers; and such an author may cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages.'- BOSWELL. L

Account of Corsica. I believe my opinion, if you think well of my judgment, might have given you pleasure; but when it is considered how much vanity is excited by praise, I am not sure that it would have done you good. Your history is like other histories, but your journal is, in a very high degree, curious and delightful. There is between the history and the journal that difference which there will always be found between notions borrowed from without, and notions generated within. Your history was copied from books; your journal rose out of your own experience and observation. You express images which operated strongly upon yourself, and you have impressed them with great force upon your readers. I know not whether I could name any narrative by which curiosity is better excited or better gratified.

'I am glad that you are going to be married; and as I wish you well in things of less importance, wish you well, with proportionate ardour, in this crisis of your life. What I can contribute to your happiness, I should be very unwilling to withhold: for I have always loved and valued you, and shall love you and value you still more, as you become more regular and useful-effects which a happy marriage will hardly fail to produce.

'I do not find that I am likely to come back very soon from this place. I shall perhaps stay a fortnight longer: and a fortnight is a long time to a lover absent from his mistress. Would a fortnight ever have an end?-I am, dear sir, your most affectionate humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

CHAPTER XX. 1769.

AFTER Johnson's return to town, we met frequently, and I continued the practice of making notes of his conversation, though not with so much assiduity as I wish I had done. At this time, indeed, I had a sufficient excuse for not being able to appropriate so much time to my journal; for General Paoli, after Corsica had been overpowered by the monarchy of France, was now no longer at the head of his brave countrymen, but having with difficulty escaped from his native island, had sought an asylum in Great Britain; and it was my duty, as well as my pleasure, to attend much upon him. Such particulars of Johnson's conversation at this period as I have committed to writing, I shall here introduce, without any strict attention to methodical arrangement. Sometimes short notes of different days shall be blended together, and sometimes a day may seem important enough to be separately distinguished.

He said he would not have Sunday kept with rigid severity and gloom, but with a gravity and simplicity of behaviour.

I told him that David Hume had made a short collection of Scotticisms. 'I wonder,' said Johnson, that he should find them."1 He would not admit the importance of the question concerning the legality of general warrants. Such a power,' he observed, 'must be vested in every government, to answer particular cases of necessity; and there can be no just complaint but when it is abused, for which those who administer government must be answerable. It is a matter of such indifference, a matter about which the people care so very little, that were a man to be sent over Britain to offer them an exemption from it at a halfpenny a piece, very few would purchase it.' This was a specimen of that laxity of talking which I had heard him fairly acknowledge; for, surely, while the power of granting general warrants was supposed to be legal, and the apprehension of them hung over our heads, we did not possess that security of freedom congenial to our happy constitution, and which, by the intrepid exertions of Mr. Wilkes, has been happily established.

He said, 'The duration of Parliament, whether for seven years or the life of the King, appears to me so immaterial, that I would not give halfa-crown to turn the scale one way or the other. The habeas corpus is the single advantage which our government has over that of other countries.'

On the 30th of September we dined together at the Mitre. I attempted to argue for the superior happiness of the savage life, upon the usual fanciful topics. JOHNSON: Sir, there can be nothing more false. The savages have no bodily advantages beyond those of civilised men. They have not better health; and as to care or mental uneasiness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, sir; you are not to talk such paradox: let me have no more on't. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct. Lord Monboddo, one of your Scotch judges, talked a great deal of such nonsense. I suffered him, but I will not suffer you.' BOSWELL: 'But, sir, does not Rousseau talk such nonsense?' JOHNSON: True, sir, but Rousseau knows he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for staring at him.' BOSWELL: 'How so, sir?' JOHNSON: "Why, sir, a man who talks nonsense so well, must know that he is talking nonsense. But I am afraid (chuckling and laughing) Monboddo does not know that he is talking nonsense. BOSWELL: Is it wrong, then, sir, to

2

1 The first edition of Hume's History of England was full of Scotticisms, many of which he corrected in subsequent editions.-MALONE.

2 His lordship having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of Dr. Johnson in my company, I on one occasion, during the lifetime of my illustrious friend, could not refrain from retaliation, and repeated to him this saying. He has since published I don't know how many pages in one of his curious books, attempting, in much anger, but with pitiful effect, to

affect singularity, in order to make people stare?' JOHNSON: Yes, if you do it by propagating error; and, indeed, it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a general inclination to make people stare; and every wise man has himself to cure of it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare by doing better than others, why, make them stare till they stare their eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare, by being absurd. I may do it by going into a drawing-room without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in the Spectator who had a commission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. Now, sir, abstractedly, the night-cap was best; but, relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the boys run after him.'1

Talking of a London life, he said, 'The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom.' BOSWELL: "The only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live from one another.' JOHNSON: 'Yes, sir; but that is occasioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the other advantages.' BOSWELL: 'Sometimes I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desert.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, you have desert enough in Scotland.'

Although I had promised myself a great deal of instructive conversation with him on the conduct of the married state, of which I had then a near prospect, he did not say much upon that topic. Mr. Seward heard him once say, that 'a man has a very bad chance for happiness in that state, unless he marries a woman of very strong and fixed principles of religion.' He maintained to me, contrary to the common notion, that a woman would not be the worse wife for being learned; in which, from all that I have observed of Artemisias, I humbly differed from him. That a woman should be sensible and well informed, I allow to be a great advantage; and think that Sir Thomas Overbury, in his rude versification, has very judiciously pointed out that degree of intelligence which is to be desired in a female companion:

2

'Give me next good, an understanding wife, By Nature wise, not learned by much art; Some knowledge on her side with all my life More scope of conversation impart; Besides, her inborne virtue fortifie;

They are most firmly good, who best know why.'

When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for marrying a second time, as it showed a disregard of his first wife, he said, 'Not at all, sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.' So ingenious a turn did he give to this delicate question. And yet, on another occasion, he owned that he once had almost asked a promise of Mrs. Johnson that she would not marry again, but had checked himself. Indeed, I cannot help thinking that in his case the request would have been unreasonable; for if Mrs. Johnson forgot, or thought it no injury to the memory of her first love-the husband of her youth and the father of her children-to make a second marriage, why should she be precluded from a third, should she be so inclined? In Johnson's persevering fond appropriation of his Tetty, even after her decease, he seems totally to have overlooked the prior claim of the honest Birmingham trader. I presume that her having been married before had at times given him some uneasiness: for I remember his observing, upon the marriage of one of our common friends, He has done a very foolish thing; he has married a widow, when he might have had a maid.'

We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I had last year the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Thrale at Dr. Johnson's one morning, and had conversation enough with her to admire her talents, and to show her that I was as Johnsonian as herself. Dr. Johnson had probably been kind enough to speak well of me, for this evening he delivered me a very polite card from Mr. Thrale and her, inviting me to Streatham.

On the 5th of October I complied with this obliging invitation, and found at an elegant villa, six miles from town, every circumstance that can make society pleasing. Johnson, though quite at home, was yet looked up to with an awe, tempered by affection, and seemed to be equally the care of his host and hostess. I rejoiced at seeing him so happy.

He played off his wit against Scotland with a good-humoured pleasantry, which gave me, though no bigot to national prejudices, an opportunity for a little contest with him. I having said that England was obliged to us for gardeners, almost all their good gardeners being Scotchmen -JOHNSON: Why, sir, that is because gardening is much more necessary amongst you than with us, which makes so many of your people

learn it. It is all gardening with you. Things which grow wild here, must be cultivated with great care in Scotland. Pray now,' throwing himself back in his chair, and laughing, are you ever able to bring the sloe to perfection?' I boasted that we had the honour of being the first to abolish the unhospitable, troublesome, and ungracious custom of giving veils to servants. JOHNSON: 'Sir, you abolished veils because you were too poor to be able to give them.' Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the merit of Prior. He attacked him powerfully; said he wrote of love like a man who had never felt it his love verses were college verses; and he repeated the song, 'Alexis shunn'd his fellowswains,' etc., in so ludicrous a manner, as to make us all wonder how any one could have been pleased with such fantastical stuff. Thrale stood to her gun with great courage in defence of amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at last silenced her by saying, 'My dear lady, talk no more of this. Nonsense can be defended but by nonsense.'

Mrs.

Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talents for light gay poetry; and, as a specimen, repeated his song in Florizel and Perdita, and dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line:

'I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.' JOHNSON: Nay, my dear lady, this will never do. Poor David! Smile with the simple. What folly is that? And who would feed with the poor that can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.' I repeated this sally to Garrick, and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a little irritated by it. To soothe him, I observed that Johnson spared none of us; and I quoted the passage in Horace, in which he compares one who attacks his friends for the sake of a laugh, to a pushing ox, that is marked by a bunch of hay put upon his horns: fænum habet in cornu.' 'Ay,' said Garrick vehemently, he has a whole mow of it.' Talking of history, Johnson said, 'We may know historical facts to be true, as we may know facts in common life to be true. Motives are generally unknown. We cannot trust to the characters we find in history, unless when they are drawn by those who knew the persons; as those, for instance, by Sallust and by Lord Clarendon.'

He would not allow much merit to Whitfield's oratory. 'His popularity, sir,' said he, 'is chiefly owing to the peculiarity of his manner. He would be followed by crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit, or were he to preach from a tree.'

I know not from what spirit of contradiction he burst out into a violent declamation against the Corsicans, of whose heroism I talked in high terms. Sir,' said he, 'what is all this rout about the Corsicans? They have been at war with the Genoese for upwards of twenty years, and have never yet taken their fortified

towns. They might have battered down their walls and reduced them to powder in twenty years. They might have pulled the walls in peices, and cracked the stones with their teeth in twenty years.' It was in vain to argue with him upon the want of artillery; he was not to be resisted for the moment.

On the evening of October 10, I presented Dr. Johnson to General Paoli. I had greatly wished that two men, for whom I had the highest esteem, should meet. They met with a manly ease, mutually conscious of their own abilities, and of the abilities of each other. The General spoke Italian, and Dr. Johnson English, and understood one another very well, with a little aid of interpretation from me, in which I compared myself to an isthmus which joins two great continents. Upon Johnson's approach, the General said, 'From what I have read of your works, sir, and from what Mr. Boswell has told me of you, I have long held you in great veneration.' The General talked of languages being formed on the particular notions and manners of a people, without knowing which, we cannot know the the language. We may know the direct signification of single words; but by these no beauty of expression, no sally of genius, no wit, is conveyed to the mind. All this must be by allusion to other ideas. 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'you talk of language as if you had never done anything else but study it, instead of governing a nation.' The General said, 'Questo è un troppo gran complimento: this is too great a compliment. Johnson answered, 'I should have thought so, sir, if I had not heard you talk.' The General asked him what he thought of the spirit of infidelity which was so prevalent. JOHNSON: 'Sir, this gloom of infidelity, I hope, is only a transient cloud passing through the hemisphere, which will soon be dissipated, and the sun break forth with his usual splendour.' 'You think, then,' said the General, that they will change their principles like their clothes.' JOHNSON:

Why, sir, if they bestow no more thought on principles than on dress, it must be so.' The General said, that a great part of the fashionable infidelity was owing to a desire of showing courage. Men who have no opportunities of showing it as to things in this life, take death and futurity as objects on which to display it.' JOHNSON: "That is mighty foolish affectation. Fear is one of the passions of human nature, of which it is impossible to divest it. You remember that the Emperor Charles V., when he read upon the tombstone of a Spanish noble"Here lies one who never knew fear," wittily said, "Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers.""

man,

He talked a few words of French to the General; but finding he did not do it with facility, he asked for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote the following note:

'J'ai lu dans la géographie de Lucas de Linda