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 3."

sir. You are sure a friend will thank you | conversation of yesterday. He put me in for hindering him from tumbling over a precipice: but, in the other case, I should hurt his vanity, and do him no good. He would not take my advice. His brother-inlaw, Strahan, sent him a subscription of fifty pounds, and said he would send him fifty more, if he would not publish." GARRICK. "What! eh! is Strahan a good judge of an epigram? Is not he rather an obtuse man, eh?" JOHNSON. "Why, sir, he may not be a judge of an epigram: but you see he is a judge of what is not an epigram." BOSWELL. "It is easy for you, Mr. Garrick, to talk to an authour as you talked to Elphinston; you, who have been so long the manager of a theatre, rejecting the plays of poor authours. You are an old judge, who have often pronounced sentence of death. You are a practised surgeon, who have often amputated limbs; and though this may have been for the good of your patients, they cannot like you. Those He found fault with our friend Langton who have undergone a dreadful operation for having been too silent. Sir," said I, are not very fond of seeing the operator" you will recollect that he very properly again." GARRICK, "Yes, I know enough took up Sir Joshua for being glad that of that. There was a reverend gentleman Charles Fox had praised Goldsmith's (Mr. Hawkins), who wrote a tragedy, the Traveller,' and you joined him." JOHNSIEGE of something, which I refused." SON. "Yes, sir, I knocked Fox on the HARRIS. "So, the siege was raised." | head, without ceremony. Reynolds is too JOHNSON. "Ay, he came to me and com- much under Fox and Burke at present 1. plained; and told me, that Garrick said his He is under the Fox Star, and the Irish play was wrong in the concoction. Now, constellation. He is always under some what is the concoction of a play?" (Here planet." BOSWELL. "There is no Fox Garrick started, and twisted himself, and star 5." JOHNSON. "But there is a dog seemed sorely vexed; for Johnson told me, star." BosWELL. "They say, indeed, a he believed the story was true). GAR- fox and a dog are the same animal.".. RICK. “I—I—I—said, first concoction 2." JOHNSON (smiling). "Well, he left out first. And Rich, he said, refused him in false English: he could show it under his hand." GARRICK. "He wrote to me in violent wrath, for having refused his play: Sir, this is growing a very serious and terrible affair. I am resolved to publish my play. I will appeal to the world; and how will your judgment appear?' I answered, 'Sir, notwithstanding all the seriousness, and all the terrours, I have no objection to your publishing your play: and as you live at a great distance (Devonshire, I believe), if you will send it to me, I will convey it to the press.' I never heard more of it, ha! ha! ha!"

On Friday, April 10, I found Johnson at home in the morning. We resumed the

1 It was called "The Siege of Aleppo." Mr. Hawkins, the authour of it, was formerly professor of poetry at Oxford. It is printed in his "Miscellanies," 3 vols. 8vo.-BOSWELL.

2 Garrick had high authority for this expression, Dryden uses it in his preface to " "Edipus." MALONE. [And surely concoction" alone was as good as "first concoction," which latter phrase Johnson was willing to admit.-ED.]

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 andTM 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 advocategeneral), 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

3 [At an assize, where there has been no capital conviction, the judge receives a pair of white gloves.-ED.]

[This seems to support the Editor's conjecture, as to Mr. Fox, ante, v. i. p. 309.-ED.] [There is a constellation called the Fox.ED.]

-66

considerable time little was said. At last made a player a higher character." SCOTT. he burst forth: "Subordination is sadly" And he is a very sprightly writer too." broken down in this age. No man, now, JOHNSON. "Yes, sir; and all this supported has the same authority which his father by great wealth of his own acquisition. If had-except a gaoler. No master has it all this had happened to me, I should have over his servants; it is diminished in our had a couple of fellows with long poles colleges; nay, in our grammar-schools." walking before me, to knock down every BOSWELL. "What is the cause of this, body that stood in the way. Consider, if sir?" JOHNSON. "Why, the coming in all this had happened to Cibber or Quin, of the Scotch," laughing sarcastically. they'd have jumped over the moon. Yet BOSWELL. "That is to say, things have Garrick speaks to us" (smiling). Bosbeen turned topsy-turvy.—But your serious WELL. "And Garrick is a very good man, cause." JOHNSON. "Why, sir, there are a charitable man." JOHNSON. Sir, a many causes, the chief of which is, I think, liberal man. He has given away more the great increase of money. No man money than any man in England. There now depends upon the lord of a manor, may be a little vanity mixed: but he has when he can send to another country and shown, that money is not his first object 1." fetch provisions. The shoe-black at the BOSWELL. "Yet Foote used to say of entry of my court does not depend on me. him, that he walked out with an intention I can deprive him but of a penny a day, to do a generous action; but, turning the which he hopes somebody else will bring corner of a street, he met with the ghost him; and that penny I must carry to another of a half-penny, which frightened him." shoe-black, so the trade suffers nothing. I JOHNSON. 66 Why, sir, that is very true, have explained in my Journey to the too; for I never knew a man of whom it Hebrides,' how gold and silver destroy could be said with less certainty to-day, feudal subordination. But, besides, there is what he will do to-morrow, than Garrick; a general relaxation of reverence. No son it depends so much on his humour at the now depends upon his father, as in formertime." SCOTT. "I am glad to hear of 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.” ̧·

his liberality. He has been represented as very saving." JOHNSON. "With his domestic saving we have nothing to do. I remember drinking tea with him long ago,

[Miss Hawkins says, "At Hampton, and in Talking of fame, for which there is so its neighbourhood, Mr. and Mrs. Garrick took the great a desire, I observed, how little there rank of the noblesse-every thing was in good is of it in reality, compared with the other drove four horses when going to town. taste, and his establishment distinguished-he """ She objects of human attention. "Let every adds the following description of his personal apman recollect, and he will be sensible how pearance: "I see him now in a dark blue coat, small a part of his time is employed in talk- the button-holes bound with gold, a small cocked ing or thinking of Shakspeare, Voltaire, or hat laced with gold, his waistcoat very open, and any of the most celebrated men that have his countenance never at rest, and, indeed, seldom ever lived, or are now supposed to occupy his person; for, in the relaxation of the country, the attention and admiration of the world. he gave way to all his natural volatility, and with Let this be extracted and compressed; into my father was perfectly at ease, sometimes sitting what a narrow space will it go!" I then on a table, and then, if he saw my brothers at a slily introduced Mr. Garrick's fame, and distance on the lawn, shooting off like an arrow his assuming the airs of a great man. out of a bow in a spirited chase of them. round JOHNSON. "Sir, it is wonderful how little the garden. I remember-when my father, Garrick assumes. No, sir, Garrick fortu having me in his hand, met him on the common, nam reverenter habet. Consider, sir; cele-riding his pretty pony-his moving my compas brated men such as you have mentioned, sion by lamenting the misery of being summoned have had their applause at a distance; but to town in hot weather (I think August, to play Garrick had it dashed in his face, sounded before the King of Denmark. I thought him in his ears, and went home every night with sincere, and his case pitiable, till my father assured me that he was in reality very well pleased, and the plaudits of a thousand in his cranium. that what he groaned at as labour, was an honour Then, sir, Garrick did not find, but made paid to his talents. The natural expression of his his way to the tables, the levees, and almost countenance was far from placidity. I confess I the bed-chambers of the great. Then, sir, was afraid of him; more so than I was of JohnGarrick had under him a numerous body son, whom I knew not to be, nor could suppose of people; who, from fear of his power, he ever would be thought to be, an extraordinary and hopes of his favour, and admiration of man. Garrick had a frown and spoke impetuoushis talents, were constantly submissive to ly. Johnson was slow and kind in his way to him. And here is a man who has advanced children."-Miss Hawkins's Memoirs, vol. i. p. the dignity of his profession. Garrick has 21-ED.]

sence, to imitate the stately periods and He, and 1, and Mrs. Williams, went to slow and solemn utterance of the great dine with the Reverend Dr. Percy. Talkman. I this evening boasted, that although ing of Goldsmith, Johnson said, he was I did not write what is called stenography, very envious. I defended him, by observor short-hand, in appropriated characters ing, that he owned it frankly upon all occadevised for the purpose, I had a method of sions. JOHNSON. "Sir, you are enforcing Ι my own of writing half words, and leaving the charge. He had so much envy, that out some altogether, so as yet to keep the he could not conceal it. He was so full of substance and language of any discourse it, that he overflowed. He talked of it, to which I had heard so much in view, that I be sure, often enough. Now, sir, what a could give it very completely soon after I man avows, he is not ashamed to think; had taken it down. He defied me, as he though many a man thinks what he is had once defied an actual short-hand wri- ashamed to avow. We are all envious ter; and he made the experiment by reading naturally; but by checking envy, we get slowly and distinctly a part of Robertson's the better of it. So we are all thieves natHistory of America," while I endeavouredurally; a child always tries to get at what to write it in my way of taking notes. It it wants the nearest way: by good instruewas found that I had it very imperfectly; tion and good habits this is cured, till a man the conclusion from which was, that its has not even an inclination to seize what is excellence was principally owing to a stud- another's; has no struggle with himself ied arrangement of words, which could not about it." 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 surprise, 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 previQusly 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 2."

[This is odd reasoning. Most readers would have come to the more obvious conclusion, that Boswell had failed in his experiment at short-hand. This passage may account for some verbal errors and obscurities in this work: when copying his notes, after a considerable lapse of time, Mr. Boswell probably misunderstood his own abbreviations.-ED.]

[It does not seem consistent that Johnson should have thus spoken of one, in the sincerity of whose repentance he had so much confidence as to desire to have the benefit of his prayers, (ante, p. 108). The observation, too, on the prayer" for the king seems inconsiderate; because, if Dodd was a sincere penitent, he would be

And here I shall record a scene of too much heat between Dr. Johnson and Dr. Percy, which I should have suppressed, were it not that it gave occasion to display the truly tender and benevolent heart of Johnson, who, as soon as he found a friend was at all hurt by any thing which he had "said in his wrath," was not only prompt and desirous to be reconciled, but exerted himself to make ample reparation.

-Books of travels having been mentioned, Johnson praised Pennant very highly, as he did at Dunvegan, in the Isle of Sky 3. Dr. Percy knowing himself to be the heir male of the ancient Percies 4, and having the

anxious to reconcile himself with all mankind, and, as the king might have saved his life, and would not, Dodd's prayer for him was probably neither form nor flattery, (for what could they avail him at that hour?) but the proof of contrition, and of the absence of all personal__resent ment.-ED.]

3 [See ante, vol. i. p. 395.-ED.]

See this accurately stated, and the descent of his family from the Earls of Northumberland clearly deduced in the Rev. Dr. Nash's excellent The Doctor has subjoined a note, in which he "History of Worcestershire, vol. ii. p. 318. says, "The editor hath seen, and carefully examined the proofs of all the particulars above mentioned, now in the possession of the Rev Thomas Percy." The same proofs I have also myself carefully examined, and have seen some additional proofs which have occurred since the Doctor's book was published; and both as a lawyer accustomed to the consideration of evidence, and as a genealogist versed in the study of pedigrees, I am fully satisfied. I cannot help observing, as a circumstance of no small moment, that in tracing the Bishop of Dromore's genealegy, essential aid was given by the late Elizabeth Duchess of Northumberland, heiress of that illustrious house; a lady not only of high dignity of spirit, such as became her noble blood, but of excellent understanding and lively talents.

With