across the spacious Atlantic, and settle in America itself, the sure consequences of our beloved whiggism.' 2 This I thought a thing so very particular, that I begged his leave to write it down directly, before any thing could intervene that might make me forget the force of the expressions1: a trick, which I have however seen played on common occasions, of sitting steadily down at the other end of the room to write at the moment what should be said in company, either by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery in this conduct, that were it commonly adopted, all confidence would soon be exiled from society, and a conversation assembly-room would become tremendous as a court of justice 3. A set of acquaintance joined in familiar chat may say a thousand things, which (as the phrase is) pass well enough at the time, though they cannot stand the test of critical examination; and as all talk beyond that which is necessary to the purposes of actual business is a kind of game, there will be ever found ways of playing fairly or unfairly at it, which distin 'Mrs. Thrale,' writes Boswell, 'has published as Johnson's a kind of parody or counterpart of a fine poetical passage in one of Mr. Burke's speeches on American Taxation. It is vigorously but somewhat coarsely executed; and I am inclined to suppose, is not quite correctly exhibited. I hope he did not use the words "vile agents" for the Americans in the House of Parliament; and if he did so, in an extempore effusion, I wish the lady had not committed it to writing.' Life, iv. 317. venial to violate one of the first and most sacred laws of society by publishing private and unguarded conversation of unsuspecting company into which he was accidentally admitted.' Percy had more than once suffered from this publication. Life, ii. 64; iii. 271. 46 'Sir, a game of jokes is composed partly of skill, partly of chance, a man may be beat at times by one who has not the tenth part of his wit.' Ib. ii. 231. 'And then also for men's reputation; and that either in point of wisdom or of wit. There is hardly anything which (for the most part) falls under a greater chance. . . . Nay, even where there is a real stock of wit, yet the wittiest sayings and sentences will be found in a great measure the issues of chance, and nothing else but so many lucky hits of a roving fancy.' South's Sermons, ed. 1823, i. 218-220. guish the gentleman from the juggler. Dr. Johnson, as well as many of my acquaintance, knew that I kept a common-place book'; and he one day said to me good-humouredly, that he would give me something to write in my repository. 'I warrant (said he) there is a great deal about me in it: you shall have at least one thing worth your pains; so if you will get the pen and ink, I will repeat to you Anacreon's Dove directly; but tell at the same time, that as I never was struck with any thing in the Greek language till I read that, so I never read any thing in the same language since, that pleased me as much. I hope my translation (continued he) is not worse than that of Frank Fawkes. Seeing me disposed to laugh, 'Nay, nay (said he), Frank Fawkes had done them very finely.' Lovely courier of the sky, Whence and whither dost thou fly? 1 Boswell in his Tour to the Hebrides, which was published before the Anecdotes, had not attacked Mrs. Piozzi, so that her attack on him would seem unprovoked. She suspected him, however, of being the author of anonymous attacks in the newspapers. In the Life, iv. 343, he replies: 'I have had occasion several times, in the course of this work, to point out the incorrectness of Mrs. Thrale, as to particulars which consisted with my own knowledge. But indeed she has, in flippant terms enough, expressed her disapprobation of that anxious desire of authenticity which prompts a person who is to record conversations, to write them down at the moment. Unquestionably, if they are to be recorded at all, the sooner it is done the better.... She boasts of her having kept a common-place book; and we find she noted, at one time or other, in a very lively manner, specimens of the conversation of Dr. Johnson, and of those who talked with him; but had she done it recently, they probably would have been less erroneous; and we should have been relieved from those disagreeable doubts of their authenticity, with which we must now peruse them.' 'From 1776 to 1809 Mrs. Piozzi kept a copious diary and note-book called Thraliana.' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 6. 2 Francis Fawkes was the author of The Brown Jug. Campbell's British Poets, ed. 1845, p. 544. In 1761 he published Original Poems and Translations, for a copy of which on superfine paper Johnson subscribed. In conjunction with Woty, Fawkes published in 1763 The Poetical Calendar, to which Johnson contributed a character of Collins. Life, i. 382. 'Soft 'Soft Anacreon's vows I bear, Vows to Myrtale the fair; Grac'd with all that charms the heart, Venus, courted by an ode, On the bard her Dove bestow'd. Round his chamber dance and play; Drop asleep upon his lyre. This is all, be quick and go, More than all thou canst not know; Let me now my pinions ply, I have chatter'd like a pye.' When I had finished, 'But you must remember to add (says Mr. Johnson) that though these verses were planned, and even begun, when I was sixteen years old, I never could find time to make an end of them before I was sixty-eight '.' He had perhaps shown these verses, or as many of them as were VOL. I. N finished, to Miss Boothby in 1755; for writing to him in that year she This This facility of writing, and this dilatoriness ever to write, Mr. Johnson always retained, from the days that he lay a-bed and dictated his first publication to Mr. Hector, who acted as his amanuensis, to the moment he made me copy out those variations in Pope's Homer which are printed in the Poets' Lives: 'And now (said he, when I had finished it for him) I fear not Mr. Nichols3 of a pin.'-The fine Rambler on the subject of Procrastination was hastily composed, as I have heard, in Sir Joshua Reynolds's parlour, while the boy waited to carry it to press*: and numberless are the instances of his writing under immediate pressure of importunity or distress. He told me that the character of Sober5 in the Idler, was by himself intended as his own portrait; and that he had his own outset into life in his eye when he wrote the eastern story of Gelaleddin. Of the allegorical papers in the Rambler, Labour and Rest' was his favourite; but Serotinus, the man in work or conversation.' Letters, ii. 46 n. Miss Boothby wrote to him in 1754:-'You can write amidst the tattle of women, because your attention is so strong to sense that you are deaf to sound. An Account of the Life of Dr. Johnson, &c., 1805, i. 80. says:-'I will tell you some time what I think of Anacreon.' An Account of the Life of Dr. Johnson, &c., 1805, p. 109. His translation of Lobo's Abyssinia. Life, i. 86. 2 Works, viii. 256. 3 The printer of the Lives. Life, iv. 36. The Life of Pope was one of the last to be written. Letters, ii. 196, n. 5. In the proof of the Life of Johnson I found 'the following sentence in one of Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale, "I have finished Prior; so a fig for Mr. Nichols." Boswell struck it out. • The Rambler on Procrastination, No. 134, was published on June 29, 1751. Reynolds left England for Italy in May, 1749, and returned in October, 1752 (Taylor's Reynolds, i. 35, 87), seven months after the last Rambler had appeared. For Johnson's hasty composition, see Life, i. 203, 331; iii. 42. He wrote part of the Lives of the Poets in the parlour at Stow Hill, 'surrounded by five or six ladies engaged 5 Idler, No. 31. Life, iii. 398, n. 3. Ib. No. 75. Gelaleddin is a Persian student amiable in his manners and beautiful in his form, of boundless curiosity, incessant diligence, and irresistible genius, of quick apprehension and tenacious memory, accurate without narrowness and eager for novelty without inconstancy. "I will instruct the modest," he said, "with easy gentleness, and repress the ostentatious by seasonable superciliousness."... He was sometimes admitted to the tables of the viziers, where he exerted his wit and diffused his knowledge; but he observed that where by endeavour or accident he had remarkably excelled he was seldom invited a second time.' ... 7 No. 33. It contains a passage who who returns late in life to receive honours in his native country, and meets with mortification instead of respect, was by him considered as a masterpiece in the science of life and manners 1. The character of Prospero in the fourth volume, Garrick took to be his; and I have heard the author say, that he never forgave the offence. Sophron was likewise a picture drawn from reality3; and by Gelidus the philosopher, he meant to represent Mr. Coulson, a mathematician, who formerly lived at Rochester*. The man immortalised for purring like a cat was, as he told me, one Busby, a proctor in the Commons 5. He who barked so ingeniously, and then called the drawer to drive away the dog, was father to Dr. Salter of the Charterhouse. He who sung a song and by correspondent motions of his arm chalked out a giant on the wall, was one Richardson, an attorney'. The letter signed Sunday, was written by Miss Talbot; and he which being, I suspect, borrowed by Rogers suggested to Dickens, as he confessed, in his Old Curiosity Shop, 'the beautiful thought of Nell's grandfather wandering about after her death as if looking for her.' Johnson describes how where Rest came, 'Nothing was seen on every side but multitudes wandering about they knew not whither, in quest they knew not of what.' Rogers writes in his Italy, Ginevra : 'And long was to be seen An old man wandering as in quest of something, Something he could not find-he knew not what.' I No. 165. The rich man describing his deliberations about his return to his native town says:-' The acclamations of the populace I purposed to reward with six hogsheads of ale and a roasted ox, and then recommend to them to return to their work.' No. 200. Life, i. 216. 3 Idler, No. 57 Rambler, No. 24; Life, i. 101. N 2 5 Doctors' Commons, the College of Civilians in London who practised in the Ecclesiastical Courts and the Court of Admiralty. Dr. Salter's father belonged to Johnson's Ivy Lane Club. Life, i. 191, n. 5. Hawkins describes him as 'a dignitary of the Church; he was well-bred, courteous and affable.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 220. 7 'One I have known for fifteen years the darling of a weekly club because every night, precisely at eleven, he begins his favourite song, and during the vocal performance by corresponding motions of his hand chalks out a giant upon the wall. Another has endeared himself to a long succession of acquaintances by purring like a cat and then pretending to be frighted; and another by yelping like a hound and calling to the drawers to drive out the dog.' Rambler, No. 188. 8 No. 30. For Miss Talbot, see Carter and Talbot Correspondence, vol. i. Preface, p. 6. fancied |