Complete works of samuel.., p.824
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 824
Priestley expresses himself ill, but his meaning can be made out. Parr answered Boswell in the March number of the Gent. Mag. for 1795, p. 179. But the evidence that he brings is rendered needless by Priestley’s positive statement. May peace henceforth fall on ‘Priestley’s injured name.’ (Mrs. Barbauld’s Poems, ii. 243.)
When Boswell asserts that Johnson ‘was particularly resolute in not giving countenance to men whose writings he considered as pernicious to society,’ he forgets that that very summer of 1783 he had been willing to dine at Wilkes’s house (ante, p. 224, note 2).
Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, ed. 1833, iii. 157) wrote to Dr. Price in 1784:— ‘It is said that scarce anybody but yourself and Dr. Priestley possesses the art of knowing how to differ decently.’ Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 304), describing in 1789 the honestest members of the French Assembly, calls them ‘a set of wild visionaries, like our Dr. Price, who gravely debate, and dream about the establishment of a pure and perfect democracy of five and twenty millions, the virtues of the golden age, and the primitive rights and equality of mankind.’ Admiration of Price made Samuel Rogers, when a boy, wish to be a preacher. ‘I thought there was nothing on earth so grand as to figure in a pulpit. Dr. Price lived much in the society of Lord Lansdowne [Earl of Shelburne] and other people of rank; and his manners were extremely polished. In the pulpit he was great indeed.’ Rogers’s Table Talk, p. 3.
The full title of the tract mentioned by Boswell is, A small Whole-Length of Dr. Priestley from his Printed Works. It was published in 1792, and is a very poor piece of writing.
Johnson had refused to meet the Abbé Raynal, the author of the Histoire Philosophique et Politique du Commerce des Deux Indes, when he was over in England in 1777. Mrs. Chapone, writing to Mrs. Carter on June 15 of that year, says: —
‘I suppose you have heard a great deal of the Abbé Raynal, who is in London. I fancy you would have served him as Dr. Johnson did, to whom when Mrs. Vesey introduced him, he turned from him, and said he had read his book, and would have nothing to say to him.’ Mrs. Chapone’s Posthumous Works, i. 172.
See Walpole’s Letters, v. 421, and vi. 444. His book was burnt by the common hangman in Paris. Carlyle’s French Revolution, ed. 1857, i. 45.
APPENDIX C.
(Page 253.)
Hawkins gives the two following notes: —
‘DEAR SIR,
‘As Mr. Ryland was talking with me of old friends and past times, we warmed ourselves into a wish, that all who remained of the club should meet and dine at the house which once was Horseman’s, in Ivy-lane. I have undertaken to solicit you, and therefore desire you to tell on what day next week you can conveniently meet your old friends.
‘I am, Sir,
‘Your most humble servant,
‘SAM. JOHNSON.’
‘Bolt-court, Nov. 22, 1783.’
‘DEAR SIR,
‘In perambulating Ivy-lane, Mr. Ryland found neither our landlord Horseman, nor his successor. The old house is shut up, and he liked not the appearance of any near it; he therefore bespoke our dinner at the Queen’s Arms, in St. Paul’s Church-yard, where, at half an hour after three, your company will be desired to-day by those who remain of our former society.
‘Your humble servant,
‘SAM. JOHNSON.’
‘Dec. 3.’
Four met — Johnson, Hawkins, Ryland, and Payne (ante, i. 243).
‘We dined,’ Hawkins continues, ‘and in the evening regaled with coffee. At ten we broke up, much to the regret of Johnson, who proposed staying; but finding us inclined to separate, he left us with a sigh that seemed to come from his heart, lamenting that he was retiring to solitude and cheerless meditation.’ Hawkins’s Johnson, p. 562.
Hawkins is mistaken in saying that they had a second meeting at a tavern at the end of a month; for Johnson, on March 10, 1784, wrote: —
‘I have been confined from the fourteenth of December, and know not when I shall get out.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 351.
He thus describes these meetings: —
‘Dec. 13. I dined about a fortnight ago with three old friends; we had not met together for thirty years, and one of us thought the other grown very old. In the thirty years two of our set have died; our meeting may be supposed to be somewhat tender.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 339.
‘Jan. 12, 1784. I had the same old friends to dine with me on Wednesday, and may say that since I lost sight of you I have had one pleasant day.’ Ib. p. 346.
‘April 15, 1784. Yesterday I had the pleasure of giving another dinner to the remainder of the old club. We used to meet weekly, about the year fifty, and we were as cheerful as in former times; only I could not make quite so much noise, for since the paralytick affliction my voice is sometimes weak.’ Ib. p. 361.
‘April 19, 1784. The people whom I mentioned in my letter are the remnant of a little club that used to meet in Ivy-lane about three and thirty years ago, out of which we have lost Hawkesworth and Dyer; the rest are yet on this side the grave. Our meetings now are serious, and I think on all parts tender.’ Ib. 363.
See ante, i. 191, note 5.
APPENDIX D.
(Page 254.)
It is likely that Sir Joshua Reynolds refused to join the Essex Head Club because he did not wish to meet Barry. Not long before this time he had censured Barry’s delay in entering upon his duties as Professor of painting.
‘Barry answered:— “If I had no more to do in the composition of my lectures than to produce such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses, I should soon have done my work, and be prepared to read.” It is said this speech was delivered with his fist clenched, in a menacing posture.’ (Northcote’s Life of Reynolds, ii. 146.)
The Hon. Daines Barrington was the author of an Essay on the Migration of Birds (ante, ii. 248) and of Observations on the Statutes (ante, iii. 314). Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. 24, 1780 (Letters, vii. 464): —
‘I am sorry for the Dean of Exeter; if he dies I conclude the leaden mace of the Antiquarian Society will be given to Judge Barrington.’ (He was ‘second Justice of Chester.’)
For Dr. Brocklesby see ante, pp. 176, 230, 338, 400.
Of Mr. John Nichols, Murphy says that ‘his attachment to Dr. Johnson was unwearied.’ Life of Johnson, p. 66. He was the printer of The Lives of the Poets (ante, p. 36), and the author of Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, Printer, ‘the last of the learned printers,’ whose apprentice he had been (ante, p. 369). Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 259) says: —
‘I scarce ever saw a book so correct as Mr. Nichols’s Life of Mr. Bowyer. I wish it deserved the pains he has bestowed on it every way, and that he would not dub so many men great. I have known several of his heroes, who were very little men.’
The Life of Bowyer being recast and enlarged was republished under the title of Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. From 1778 till his death in 1826 the Gentleman’s Magazine was in great measure in his hands. Southey, writing in 1804, says: —
‘I have begun to take in here at Keswick the Gentleman’s Magazine, alias the Oldwomania, to enlighten a Portuguese student among the mountains; it does amuse me by its exquisite inanity, and the glorious and intense stupidity of its correspondents; it is, in truth, a disgrace to the age and the country.’ Southey’s Life and Correspondence, ii. 281.
Mr. William Cooke, ‘commonly called Conversation Cooke,’ wrote Lives of Macklin and Foote. Forster’s Essays, ii. 312, and Gent. Mag. 1824, p. 374. Mr. Richard Paul Joddrel, or Jodrell, was the author of The Persian Heroine, a Tragedy, which, in Baker’s Biog. Dram. i. 400, is wrongly assigned to Sir R.P. Jodrell, M.D. Nichols’s Lit. Anec. ix. 2.
For Mr. Paradise see ante, p. 364, note 2.
Dr. Horsley was the controversialist, later on Bishop of St. David’s and next of Rochester. Gibbon makes splendid mention of him (Misc. Works, i. 232) when he tells how ‘Dr. Priestley’s Socinian shield has repeatedly been pierced by the mighty spear of Horsley.’ Windham, however, in his Diary in one place (p. 125) speaks of him as having his thoughts ‘intent wholly on prospects of Church preferment;’ and in another place (p. 275) says that ‘he often lays down with great confidence what turns out afterwards to be wrong.’ In the House of Lords he once said that ‘he did not know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with the laws but to obey them.’ Parl. Hist. xxxii. 258. Thurlow rewarded him for his Letters to Priestley by a stall at Gloucester, ‘saying that “those who supported the Church should be supported by it.”’ Campbell’s Chancellors, ed. 1846, v. 635.
For Mr. Windham, see ante, p. 200.
Hawkins (Life of Johnson, p. 567) thus writes of the formation of the Club: —
‘I was not made privy to this his intention, but all circumstances considered, it was no matter of surprise to me when I heard that the great Dr. Johnson had, in the month of December 1783, formed a sixpenny club at an ale-house in Essex-street, and that though some of the persons thereof were persons of note, strangers, under restrictions, for three pence each night might three nights in a week hear him talk and partake of his conversation.’
Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 103) says: —
‘Boswell was well justified in his resentment of my father’s designation of this club as a sixpenny club, meeting at an ale-house. ... Honestly speaking, I dare say my father did not like being passed over.’
Sir Joshua Reynolds, writing of the club, says: —
‘Any company was better than none; by which Johnson connected himself with many mean persons whose presence he could command. For this purpose he established a club at a little ale-house in Essex-street, composed of a strange mixture of very learned and very ingenious odd people. Of the former were Dr. Heberden, Mr. Windham, Mr. Boswell, Mr. Steevens, Mr. Paradise. Those of the latter I do not think proper to enumerate.’ Taylor’s Life of Reynolds, ii. 455.
It is possible that Reynolds had never seen the Essex Head, and that the term ‘little ale-house’ he had borrowed from Hawkins’s account. Possibly too his disgust at Barry here found vent. Murphy (Life of Johnson, p. 124) says: —
‘The members of the club were respectable for their rank, their talents, and their literature.’
The ‘little ale-house’ club saw one of its members, Alderman Clarke (ante, p. 258), Lord Mayor within a year; another, Horsley, a Bishop within five years; and a third, Windham, Secretary at War within ten years. Nichols (Literary Anecdotes, ii. 553) gives a list of the ‘constant members’ at the time of Johnson’s death.
APPENDIX E.
(Page 399.)
Miss Burney’s account of Johnson’s last days is interesting, but her dates are confused more even than is common with her. I have corrected them as well as I can.
‘Dec. 9. He will not, it seems, be talked to — at least very rarely. At times indeed he re-animates; but it is soon over and he says of himself:— “I am now like Macbeth — question enrages me.”’
‘Dec. 10. At night my father brought us the most dismal tidings of dear Dr. Johnson. He had thanked and taken leave of all his physicians. Alas! I shall lose him, and he will take no leave of me. My father was deeply depressed. I hear from everyone he is now perfectly resigned to his approaching fate, and no longer in terror of death.’
‘Dec. 11. My father in the morning saw this first of men. He was up and very composed. He took his hand very kindly, asked after all his family, and then in particular how Fanny did. “I hope,” he said, “Fanny did not take it amiss that I did not see her. I was very bad. Tell Fanny to pray for me.” After which, still grasping his hand, he made a prayer for himself, the most fervent, pious, humble, eloquent, and touching, my father says, that ever was composed. Oh! would I had heard it! He ended it with Amen! in which my father joined, and was echoed by all present; and again, when my father was leaving him, he brightened up, something of his arch look returned, and he said: “I think I shall throw the ball at Fanny yet.”’
‘Dec. 12. [Miss Burney called at Bolt-court.] All the rest went away but a Mrs. Davis, a good sort of woman, whom this truly charitable soul had sent for to take a dinner at his house. [See ante, p. 239, note 2.] Mr. Langton then came. He could not look at me, and I turned away from him. Mrs. Davis asked how the Doctor was. “Going on to death very fast,” was his mournful answer. “Has he taken,” said she, “anything?” “Nothing at all. We carried him some bread and milk — he refused it, and said:— ‘The less the better.’”’
‘Dec. 20. This day was the ever-honoured, ever-lamented Dr. Johnson committed to the earth. Oh, how sad a day to me! My father attended. I could not keep my eyes dry all day; nor can I now in the recollecting it; but let me pass over what to mourn is now so vain.’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 333-339.
APPENDIX F.
(Notes on Boswell’s note on pages 403-405.)
[F-1] In a letter quoted in Mr. Croker’s Boswell, p. 427, Dr. Johnson calls Thomas Johnson ‘cousin,’ and says that in the last sixteen months he had given him £40. He mentions his death in 1779. Piozzi Letters, ii. 45.
[F-2] Hawkins (Life, p. 603) says that Elizabeth Herne was Johnson’s first-cousin, and that he had constantly — how long he does not say — contributed £15 towards her maintenance.
[F-3] For Mauritius Lowe, see ante, iii. 324, and iv. 201.
[F-4] To Mr. Windham, two days earlier, he had given a copy of the New Testament, saying:— ‘Extremum hoc munus morientis habeto.’ Windham’s Diary, p. 28.
[F-5] For Mrs. Gardiner see ante, i. 242.
[F-6] Mr. John Desmoulins was the son of Mrs. Desmoulins (ante, iii. 222, 368), and the grandson of Johnson’s god-father, Dr. Swinfen (ante, i. 34). Johnson mentions him in a letter to Mrs. Thrale in 1778. ‘Young Desmoulins is taken in an under-something of Drury Lane; he knows not, I believe, his own denomination.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 25.
[F-7] The reference is to The Rambler, No. 41 (not 42 as Boswell says), where Johnson mentions ‘those vexations and anxieties with which all human enjoyments are polluted.’
[F-8] Bishop Sanderson described his soul as ‘infinitely polluted with sin.’ Walton’s Lives, ed. 1838, p. 396.
[F-9] Hume, writing in 1742 about his Essays Moral and Political, says: —
‘Innys, the great bookseller in Paul’s Church-yard, wonders there is not a new edition, for that he cannot find copies for his customers.’ J.H. Burton’s Hume, i. 143.
[F-10] Nichols (Lit. Anec. ii. 554) says that, on Dec. 7,
‘Johnson asked him whether any of the family of Faden the printer were living. Being told that the geographer near Charing Cross was Faden’s son, he said, after a short pause:— “I borrowed a guinea of his father near thirty years ago; be so good as to take this, and pay it for me.”’
[F-11] Nowhere does Hawkins more shew the malignancy of his character than in his attacks on Johnson’s black servant, and through him on Johnson. With the passage in which this offensive caveat is found he brings his work to a close. At the first mention of Frank (Life, p. 328) he says: —
‘His first master had in great humanity made him a Christian, and his last for no assignable reason, nay rather in despite of nature, and to unfit him for being useful according to his capacity, determined to make him a scholar.’
But Hawkins was a brutal fellow. See ante, i. 27, note 2, and 28, note
1.
[F-12] Johnson had written to Taylor on Oct. 23 of this year: —
‘“Coming down from a very restless night I found your letter, which made me a little angry. You tell me that recovery is in my power. This indeed I should be glad to hear if I could once believe it. But you mean to charge me with neglecting or opposing my own health. Tell me, therefore, what I do that hurts me, and what I neglect that would help me.” This letter is endorsed by Taylor: “This is the last letter. My answer, which were (sic) the words of advice he gave to Mr. Thrale the day he dyed, he resented extremely from me.”’ Mr. Alfred Morrison’s Collection of Autographs, &c., ii. 343.
‘The words of advice’ which were given to Mr. Thrale the day before the fatal fit seized him, were that he should abstain from full meals. Ante, iv. 84, note 4. Johnson’s resentment of Taylor’s advice may account for the absence of his name in his will.
[F-13] They were sold in 650 Lots, in a four days’ sale. Besides the books there were 146 portraits, of which 61 were framed and glazed. These prints in their frames were sold in lots of 4, 8, and even 10 together, though certainly some of them — and perhaps many — were engravings from Reynolds. The Catalogue of the sale is in the Bodleian Library.
APPENDIX G.
(Notes on Boswell’s note on page 408.)
[G-1] Mrs. Piozzi records (Anecdotes, p. 120) that Johnson told her, —
‘When Boyse was almost perishing with hunger, and some money was produced to purchase him a dinner, he got a bit of roast beef, but could not eat it without ketch-up; and laid out the last half-guinea he possessed in truffles and mushrooms, eating them in bed too, for want of clothes, or even a shirt to sit up in.’
Hawkins (Life, p. 159) gives 1740 as the year of Boyse’s destitution.
‘He was,’ he says, ‘confined to a bed which had no sheets; here, to procure food, he wrote; his posture sitting up in bed, his only covering a blanket, in which a hole was made to admit of the employment of his arm.’
Two years later Boyse wrote the following verses to Cave from a spunging-house: —
‘Hodie, teste coelo summo,
Sine pane, sine nummo,
Sorte positus infeste,
Scribo tibi dolens moeste.
