Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 773
On Friday, April 10, I found Johnson at home in the morning. We resumed the conversation of yesterday. He put me in mind of some of it which had escaped my memory, and enabled me to record it more perfectly than I otherwise could have done. He was much pleased with my paying so great attention to his recommendation in 1763, the period when our acquaintance began, that I should keep a journal; and I could perceive he was secretly pleased to find so much of the fruit of his mind preserved; and as he had been used to imagine and say that he always laboured when he said a good thing — it delighted him, on a review, to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.
I said to him, ‘You were yesterday, Sir, in remarkably good humour: but there was nothing to offend you, nothing to produce irritation or violence. There was no bold offender. There was not one capital conviction. It was a maiden assize. You had on your white gloves.’
He found fault with our friend Langton for having been too silent. ‘Sir, (said I,) you will recollect, that he very properly took up Sir Joshua for being glad that Charles Fox had praised Goldsmith’s Traveller, and you joined him.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, I knocked Fox on the head, without ceremony. Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present. He is under the Fox star and the Irish constellation. He is always under some planet.’ BOSWELL. ‘There is no Fox star.’ JOHNSON. ‘But there is a dog star.’ BOSWELL. ‘They say, indeed, a fox and a dog are the same animal.’
I reminded him of a gentleman, who, Mrs. Cholmondeley said, was first talkative from affectation, and then silent from the same cause; that he first thought, ‘I shall be celebrated as the liveliest man in every company;’ and then, all at once, ‘O! it is much more respectable to be grave and look wise.’ ‘He has reversed the Pythagorean discipline, by being first talkative, and then silent. He reverses the course of Nature too: he was first the gay butterfly, and then the creeping worm.’ Johnson laughed loud and long at this expansion and illustration of what he himself had told me.
We dined together with Mr. Scott (now Sir William Scott, his Majesty’s Advocate General,) at his chambers in the Temple, nobody else there. The company being small, Johnson was not in such spirits as he had been the preceding day, and for a considerable time little was said. At last he burst forth, ‘Subordination is sadly broken down in this age. No man, now, has the same authority which his father had, — except a gaoler. No master has it over his servants: it is diminished in our colleges; nay, in our grammar-schools.’ BOSWELL. ‘What is the cause of this, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why the coming in of the Scotch,’ (laughing sarcastically). BOSWELL. ‘That is to say, things have been turned topsy turvey. — But your serious cause.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, there are many causes, the chief of which is, I think, the great increase of money. No man now depends upon the Lord of a Manour, when he can send to another country, and fetch provisions. The shoe-black at the entry of my court does not depend on me. I can deprive him but of a penny a day, which he hopes somebody else will bring him; and that penny I must carry to another shoe-black, so the trade suffers nothing. I have explained, in my Journey to the Hebrides, how gold and silver destroy feudal subordination. But, besides, there is a general relaxation of reverence. No son now depends upon his father as in former times. Paternity used to be considered as of itself a great thing, which had a right to many claims. That is, in general, reduced to very small bounds. My hope is, that as anarchy produces tyranny, this extreme relaxation will produce freni strictio.’
Talking of fame, for which there is so great a desire, I observed how little there is of it in reality, compared with the other objects of human attention. ‘Let every man recollect, and he will be sensible how small a part of his time is employed in talking or thinking of Shakspeare, Voltaire, or any of the most celebrated men that have ever lived, or are now supposed to occupy the attention and admiration of the world. Let this be extracted and compressed; into what a narrow space will it go!’ I then slily introduced Mr. Garrick’s fame, and his assuming the airs of a great man. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, it is wonderful how little Garrick assumes. No, Sir, Garrick fortunam reverenter habet. Consider, Sir: celebrated men, such as you have mentioned, have had their applause at a distance; but Garrick had it dashed in his face, sounded in his ears, and went home every night with the plaudits of a thousand in his cranium. Then, Sir, Garrick did not find, but made his way to the tables, the levees, and almost the bed-chambers of the great. Then, Sir, Garrick had under him a numerous body of people; who, from fear of his power, and hopes of his favour, and admiration of his talents, were constantly submissive to him. And here is a man who has advanced the dignity of his profession. Garrick has made a player a higher character.’ SCOTT. ‘And he is a very sprightly writer too.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir; and all this supported by great wealth of his own acquisition. If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me, to knock down every body that stood in the way. Consider, if all this had happened to Cibber or Quin they’d have jumped over the moon. — Yet Garrick speaks to us.’ (smiling.) BOSWELL. ‘And Garrick is a very good man, a charitable man.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, a liberal man. He has given away more money than any man in England. There may be a little vanity mixed; but he has shewn, that money is not his first object.’ BOSWELL. ‘Yet Foote used to say of him, that he walked out with an intention to do a generous action; but, turning the corner of a street, he met with the ghost of a halfpenny, which frightened him.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, that is very true, too; for I never knew a man of whom it could be said with less certainty to-day, what he will do to-morrow, than Garrick; it depends so much on his humour at the time.’ SCOTT. ‘I am glad to hear of his liberality. He has been represented as very saving.’ JOHNSON. ‘With his domestick saving we have nothing to do. I remember drinking tea with him long ago, when Peg Woffington made it, and he grumbled at her for making it too strong. He had then begun to feel money in his purse, and did not know when he should have enough of it.’
On the subject of wealth, the proper use of it, and the effects of that art which is called oeconomy, he observed: ‘It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly incomes, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend. Lord Shelburne told me, that a man of high rank, who looks into his own affairs, may have all that he ought to have, all that can be of any use, or appear with any advantage, for five thousand pounds a year. Therefore, a great proportion must go in waste; and, indeed, this is the case with most people, whatever their fortune is.’ BOSWELL. ‘I have no doubt, Sir, of this. But how is it? What is waste?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, breaking bottles, and a thousand other things. Waste cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how destructive it is. OEconomy on the one hand, by which a certain income is made to maintain a man genteely, and waste on the other, by which, on the same income, another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing: as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell how.’
We talked of war. JOHNSON. ‘Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.’ BOSWELL. ‘Lord Mansfield does not.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, if Lord Mansfield were in a company of General Officers and Admirals who have been in service, he would shrink; he’d wish to creep under the table.’ BOSWELL. ‘No; he’d think he could try them all.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, if he could catch them: but they’d try him much sooner. No, Sir; were Socrates and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden both present in any company, and Socrates to say, “Follow me, and hear a lecture on philosophy;” and Charles, laying his hand on his sword, to say, “Follow me, and dethrone the Czar;” a man would be ashamed to follow Socrates. Sir, the impression is universal; yet it is strange. As to the sailor, when you look down from the quarter deck to the space below, you see the utmost extremity of human misery; such crouding, such filth, such stench!’ BOSWELL. ‘Yet sailors are happy.’ JOHNSON. ‘They are happy as brutes are happy, with a piece of fresh meat, — with the grossest sensuality. But, Sir, the profession of soldiers and sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence those who have got over fear, which is so general a weakness.’ SCOTT. ‘But is not courage mechanical, and to be acquired?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why yes, Sir, in a collective sense. Soldiers consider themselves only as parts of a great machine.’ SCOTT. ‘We find people fond of being sailors.’ JOHNSON. ‘I cannot account for that, any more than I can account for other strange perversions of imagination.’
His abhorrence of the profession of a sailor was uniformly violent; but in conversation he always exalted the profession of a soldier. And yet I have, in my large and various collection of his writings, a letter to an eminent friend, in which he expresses himself thus: ‘My god-son called on me lately. He is weary, and rationally weary, of a military life. If you can place him in some other state, I think you may increase his happiness, and secure his virtue. A soldier’s time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.’ Such was his cool reflection in his study; but whenever he was warmed and animated by the presence of company, he, like other philosophers, whose minds are impregnated with poetical fancy, caught the common enthusiasm for splendid renown.
He talked of Mr. Charles Fox, of whose abilities he thought highly, but observed, that he did not talk much at our CLUB. I have heard Mr. Gibbon remark, ‘that Mr. Fox could not be afraid of Dr. Johnson; yet he certainly was very shy of saying any thing in Dr. Johnson’s presence.’ Mr. Scott now quoted what was said of Alcibiades by a Greek poet, to which Johnson assented.
He told us, that he had given Mrs. Montagu a catalogue of all Daniel Defoe’s works of imagination; most, if not all of which, as well as of his other works, he now enumerated, allowing a considerable share of merit to a man, who, bred a tradesman, had written so variously and so well. Indeed, his Robinson Crusoe is enough of itself to establish his reputation.
He expressed great indignation at the imposture of the Cocklane Ghost, and related, with much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting the cheat, and had published an account of it in the news-papers. Upon this subject I incautiously offended him, by pressing him with too many questions, and he shewed his displeasure. I apologised, saying that ‘I asked questions in order to be instructed and entertained; I repaired eagerly to the fountain; but that the moment he gave me a hint, the moment he put a lock upon the well, I desisted.’— ‘But, Sir, (said he,) that is forcing one to do a disagreeable thing:’ and he continued to rate me. ‘Nay, Sir, (said I,) when you have put a lock upon the well, so that I can no longer drink, do not make the fountain of your wit play upon me and wet me.’
He sometimes could not bear being teazed with questions. I was once present when a gentleman asked so many as, ‘What did you do, Sir?’ ‘What did you say, Sir?’ that he at last grew enraged, and said, ‘I will not be put to the question. Don’t you consider, Sir, that these are not the manners of a gentleman? I will not be baited with what, and why; what is this? what is that? why is a cow’s tail long? why is a fox’s tail bushy?’ The gentleman, who was a good deal out of countenance, said, ‘Why, Sir, you are so good, that I venture to trouble you.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, my being so good is no reason why you should be so ill.’
Talking of the Justitia hulk at Woolwich, in which criminals were punished, by being confined to labour, he said, ‘I do not see that they are punished by this: they must have worked equally had they never been guilty of stealing. They now only work; so, after all, they have gained; what they stole is clear gain to them; the confinement is nothing. Every man who works is confined: the smith to his shop, the tailor to his garret.’ BOSWELL. ‘And Lord Mansfield to his Court.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, you know the notion of confinement may be extended, as in the song, “Every island is a prison.” There is, in Dodsley’s Collection, a copy of verses to the authour of that song.’
Smith’s Latin verses on Pococke, the great traveller, were mentioned.
He repeated some of them, and said they were Smith’s best verses.
He talked with an uncommon animation of travelling into distant countries; that the mind was enlarged by it, and that an acquisition of dignity of character was derived from it. He expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I really believed I should go and see the wall of China had I not children, of whom it was my duty to take care. ‘Sir, (said he,) by doing so, you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China. I am serious, Sir.’
When we had left Mr. Scott’s, he said, ‘Will you go home with me?’ ‘Sir, (said I,) it is late; but I’ll go with you for three minutes.’ JOHNSON. ‘Or four.’ We went to Mrs. Williams’s room, where we found Mr. Allen the printer, who was the landlord of his house in Bolt-court, a worthy obliging man, and his very old acquaintance; and what was exceedingly amusing, though he was of a very diminutive size, he used, even in Johnson’s presence, to imitate the stately periods and slow and solemn utterance of the great man. — I this evening boasted, that although I did not write what is called stenography, or short-hand, in appropriated characters devised for the purpose, I had a method of my own of writing half words, and leaving out some altogether so as yet to keep the substance and language of any discourse which I had heard so much in view, that I could give it very completely soon after I had taken it down. He defied me, as he had once defied an actual short-hand writer, and he made the experiment by reading slowly and distinctly a part of Robertson’s History of America, while I endeavoured to write it in my way of taking notes. It was found that I had it very imperfectly; the conclusion from which was, that its excellence was principally owing to a studied arrangement of words, which could not be varied or abridged without an essential injury.
On Sunday, April 12, I found him at home before dinner; Dr. Dodd’s poem entitled Thoughts in Prison was lying upon his table. This appearing to me an extraordinary effort by a man who was in Newgate for a capital crime, I was desirous to hear Johnson’s opinion of it: to my surprize, he told me he had not read a line of it. I took up the book and read a passage to him. JOHNSON. ‘Pretty well, if you are previously disposed to like them.’ I read another passage, with which he was better pleased. He then took the book into his own hands, and having looked at the prayer at the end of it, he said, ‘What evidence is there that this was composed the night before he suffered? I do not believe it.’ He then read aloud where he prays for the King, &c. and observed, ‘Sir, do you think that a man the night before he is to be hanged cares for the succession of a royal family? — Though, he may have composed this prayer, then. A man who has been canting all his life, may cant to the last. — And yet a man who has been refused a pardon after so much petitioning, would hardly be praying thus fervently for the King.’
