said they were as ancient as the siege of Thebes, which he proved by a passage in one of the tragedies of Euripides 1. I started the question, whether duelling was consistent with moral duty. The brave old general fired at this, and said, with a lofty air, "Undoubtedly a man has a right to defend his honour." GOLDSMITH (turning to me). "I ask you first, sir, what would you do if you were affronted ?" were affronted ?" I answered, I should think it necessary to fight. Why then," replied Goldsmith," that solves the question." JOHNSON. "No, sir, it does not solve the question. It does not follow, that what a man would do is therefore right." I said, I wished to have it settled, whether duelling was contrary to the laws of christianity. Johnson immediately entered on the subject, and treated it in a masterly manner; and so far as I have been able to recollect, his thoughts were these: "Sir, as men become in a high degree refined, various causes of offence arise; which are considered to be of such importance, that life must be staked to atone for them, though in reality they are not so. A body that has received a very fine polish may be easily hurt. Before men arrive at this artificial refinement, The passage to which Johnson alluded, is to be found (as I conjecture) in the PHENISSE, 1. 1120. Και πρῶτα μὲν προσῆγε, κ. τ. λ. Ο της κυναγου Παρθενοπαῖος εκγονός, ΕΠΙΣΗΜ, ἔχων ΟΙΚΕΙΟΝ εν μέσω σωκει.-J. BoSWELL. [The meaning is that "Parthenopaus had, in the centre of his shield, the domestic sign--Atalanta killing the Ætolian boar;" but this, admitting that the story of Atalanta was the "armorial bearing" of Parthenopaus, would only prove them to be as ancient as Euripides, who flourished (442 A. C.) near 800 years after the siege of Thebes (1225 A. C.) Homer, whom the chronologists place 500 years before Euripides, describes a sculptured shield; and there can be little doubt that very soon after ingenuity had made a shield, taste would begin to decorate it. The words "domestic sign" are certainly very curious, yet probably mean no more than that he bore on his shield the representation of a family story. The better opinion seems to be that it was not till the visor concealed the face of the warrior, that the ornaments of the shields and crests became distinctive of individuals and families in that peculiar manner which we understand by the terms "armorial bearings."-ED.] if one tells his neighbour, he lies, his neighbour tells him, he lies; if one gives his neighbour a blow, his neighbour gives him a blow: but in a state of highly polished society, an affront is held to be a serious injury. It must, therefore, be resented, or rather a duel must be fought upon it; as men have agreed to banish from their society one who puts up with an affront without fighting a duel. Now, sir, it is never unlawful to fight in self-defence. He, then, who fights a duel, does not fight from passion against his antagonist, but out of self-defence; to avert the stigma of the world, and to prevent himself from being driven out of society. I could wish there was not that superfluity of refinement; but while such notions prevail, no doubt, a man may lawfully fight a duel1." Let it be remembered, that this justification is applicable only to the person who receives an affront. All mankind must condemn the aggressor. The general told us, that when he was a very young man, I think only fifteen, serving under Prince Eugene of Savoy, he was sitting in a company at table with a Prince of Wirtemberg. The prince took up a glass of wine, and, by a fillip, made some of it fly in Oglethorpe's face. Here was a nice dilemma. To have challenged him instantly might have fixed a quarrelsome character upon the young soldier to have taken no notice of it might have been considered as cowardice. Oglethorpe, therefore, keeping his eye upon the prince, and smiling all the time, as if he took what his highness had done in jest, said, "Mon prince-" I forget the French words he used, the purpo:t however was "That's a [The frequent disquisitions on this subject bring painfully to recollection the death of Mr. Boswell's eldest son, Sir Alexander, who was killed in a duel in 1824.-ED.] good joke: but we do it much better in England;" and threw a whole glass of wine in the prince's face. An old general, who sat by, said, “Il a bien fait, mon prince, vous l'avez commencé :" and thus all ended in good-humour. Dr. Johnson said, " Pray, general, give us an account of the siege of Belgrade." Upon which the general, pouring a little wine upon the table, described every thing with a wet finger. "Here we were, here were the Turks," &c. &c. Johnson listened with the closest attention. A question was started, how far people who disagree in a capital point can live in friendship together. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the idem velle atque idem nolle-the same likings and the same aversions. JOHNSON. "Why, sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke: I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party." GOLDSMITH. "But, sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard. 'You may look into all the chambers but one.' But we should have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject." JOHNSON (with a loud voice). "Sir, I am not saying that you could live in friendship with a man from whom you differ as to some point; I am only saying that I could do it. You put me in mind of Sappho in Ovid." [Of which Mr. Burke was a leading member.-ED.] 2 Mr. Boswell's note here being rather short, as taken at the time (with a view perhaps to future revision), Johnson's remark is obscure, and requires to be a little opened. What he said probably was, "You seem to think that Goldsmith told us, that he was now busy in writing a Natural History'; and that he might have full leisure for it, he had taken lodgings, at a farmer's house, near to the six mile-stone, on the Edgwareroad, and had carried down his books in two returned post-chaises. He said, he He said, he believed the farmer's family thought him an odd character, similar to that in which the Spectator appeared to his landlady and her children: he was The Gentle man. Mr. Mickle, the translator of "The Lusiad," and I, went to visit him at this place a few days afterwards. He was not at home; but having a curiosity to see his apartment, we went in, and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals, scrawled upon the wall with a black lead pencil. The subject of ghosts being introduced, Johnson two friends, to live well together, must be in a perfect harmony with each other; that each should be to the other, what Sappho boasts she was to her lover, and uniformly agree in every particular; but this is by no means necessary," &c. The words of Sappho alluded to, are "omnique à parte placebam.”—Ovid. Epist. Sapp. ad Phaonem. I. 51.-MALONE. I should rather conjecture that the passage which Johnson had in view was the following, 1. 45 : "Si, nisi quæ facie poterit te digna videri Nulla futura tua est; nulla futura tua est." His reasoning and its illustration I take to be this. If you are determined to associate with no one whose sentiments do not universally coincide with your own, you will by such a resolution exclude yourself from all society, for no two men can be found who, on all points, invariably think alike. So Sappho in Ovid tells Phaon, that if he will not unite himself to any one who is not a complete resemblance of himself, it will be impossible for him to form any union at all. The lines which I have quoted are thus expanded in Pope's Paraphrase, which, to say the truth, I suspect was at this moment more in Johnson's recollection than the original: "If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign By none, alas! by none, thou canst be moved, JAMES BOSWELL. [Published soon after, under the title of a History of the Earth and of Animated Nature.-ED.] 2 [William Julius Mickle, the son of a Scotch clergyman, was born in 1734. He lived the life that poets lived in those days; that is, in difficulties and distress till 1779, when being appointed secretary to Commodore Johnson, he realised by prize agencies a moderate competence; he died in 1788. His translation of the Lusiad is still read; his original pieces are almost all forgotten.ED.] VOL. II. N repeated what he had told me of a friend of his1, an honest man, and a man of sense, having asserted to him, that he had seen an apparition. Goldsmith told us, he was assured by his brother, the Reverend Mr. Goldsmith, that he also had seen one. General Oglethorpe told us, that Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marlborough's army, had mentioned to many of his friends, that he should die on a particular day; that upon that day a battle took place with the French; that after it was over, and Prendergast was still alive, his brother officers, while they were yet in the field, jestingly asked him, where was his prophecy now. Prendergast gravely answered, "I shall die, notwithstanding what you see." see." Soon afterwards, there came a shot from a French battery, to which the orders for a cessation of arms had not reached, and he was killed upon the spot. Colonel Cecil, who took possession of his effects, found in his pocket-book the following solemn entry: [Here the date.] "Dreamt-or2. Sir John Friend meets me." (Here the very day on which he was killed was mentioned). Prendergast 1 Mr. Cave. See ante, p. 173. Here was a blank, which may be filled up thus: "was told by an apparition;" the writer being probably uncertain whether he was asleep or awake, when his mind was impressed with the solemn presentiment with which the fact afterwards happened so wonderfully to correspond.-BOSWELL. [My friend, Sir Henry Hardinge, secretary at war, is so kind as to inform me that it appears that Colonel Sir Thomas Prendergast, of the twenty-second foot, was killed at Malplaquet, August 31, 1709, but no trace can be found of Colonel Cecil. There were one or two subalterns, of the name of Cecil, at that time in the army, but it does not appear that they rose to the rank of fieldofficers. Is it not very strange, if this story made so great a noise, we should read of it nowhere else; and, as so much curiosity was excited, that the paper should not have been preserved, or, at least, so generally shown as to be mentioned by some other witness?-the paper would have been exceedingly curious; but the hearsay that there had been such a paper is nothing, and indeed, in point of evidence, worse than nothing; for if a paper had existed, thousands must have seen it, and Oglethorpe himself does not state that even he saw it. At the time of the battle of Malplaquet, Oglethorpe was only eleven years old. Pope's inquiries were probably made when the story was recent. Is it likely that Oglethorpe at the age of eleven was present at Pope's interview with Colonel Cecil, and even if he were, what credit is to be given to the recollections, after the lapse of sixty-three years, of what a boy of eleven had heard ? -ED.] |