CHAPTER II. 1768. State of Johnson's Mind. Visit to Town-malling. tice of the Law. Douglas Cause. Prac Novels and Comedies. The Reading MSS. - St. Kilda. Oxford.-Guthrie. Hume. - Robertson. Future Scorpions.- Maupertuis.-Wood Life of Brutes. cocks. Swallows. · Bell's Travels. - Choice of a Wife. Baretti's Italy. — Liberty. · Kenrick. Thomson. Monsey. Swift. Lord Eglintoune.-Letter on the Formation of a Library. · Boswell at the Stratford Jubilee. Opinion of the "Account of Corsica." IT appears from his notes of the state of his mind, that he suffered great perturbation and distraction in 1768. "Town-malling, in Kent, (1) 18th Sept. 1768, at night. - I have now begun the sixtieth year of my life. How the last year has past, I am unwilling to terrify myself with thinking. This day has been past in great perturbation: I was distracted at church in an uncommon degree, and my distress has had very little intermission. I have found myself somewhat relieved by reading, which I therefore intend to practise when I am able. This day it came into my mind to write the history of my melancholy. On this I purpose to deli (1) [At Town-malling Johnson occasionally visited Mr. Brooke. See post, August 23. 1777.] berate; I know not whether it may not too much disturb me." * Nothing of his writings was given to the public this year, except the Prologue to his friend Goldsmith's comedy of "The Good-natured Man." The first lines of this Prologue are strongly characteristical of the dismal gloom of his mind; which in his case, as in the case of all who are distressed with the same malady of imagination, transfers to others its own feelings. Who could suppose it was to introduce a comedy, when Mr. Bensley solemnly began, "Press'd with the load of life, the weary mind Surveys the general toil of human kind." But this dark ground might make Goldsmith's humour shine the more. (') In the spring of this year, having published my "Account of Corsica, with the Journal of a Tour to that Island," I returned to London, very desirous to see Dr. Johnson, and hear him upon the subject. I found he was at Oxford, with his friend Mr. Chambers, who was now Vinerian Professor, and lived in New-Inn Hall. Having had no letter from him since that in which he criticised the Latinity of my Thesis, and having been told by somebody that he was offended at my having put into my book an (1) In this prologue, after the line-" And social sorrow loses half its pain," the following couplet was inserted : — "Amidst the toils of this returning year, Goldsmith So the prologue appeared in the Public Advertiser. probably thought that the lines printed in Italic characters might give offence, and therefore prevailed on Johnson to omit them. The epithet little, which perhaps the author thought might diminish his dignity, was also changed to anxious. — M. extract of his letter to me at Paris, I was impatient to be with him, and therefore followed him to Oxford, where I was entertained by Mr. Chambers, with a civility which I shall ever gratefully remember. I found that Dr. Johnson had sent a letter to me to Scotland, and that I had nothing to complain of but his being more indifferent to my anxiety than I wished him to be. Instead of giving, with the circumstances of time and place, such fragments of his conversation as I preserved during this visit to Oxford, I shall throw them together in continuation. I asked him whether, as a moralist, he did not think that the practice of the law, in some degree, hurt the nice feeling of honesty. JOHNSON. "Why no, Sir, if you act properly. You are not to deceive your clients with false representations of your opinion: you are not to tell lies to a Judge." Boswell. "But what do you think of supporting a cause which you know to be bad?" JOHNSON. "Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines it. I have said that you are to state facts fairly; so that your thinking, or what you call knowing, a cause to be bad, must be from reasoning, must be from your supposing your arguments to be weak and inconclusive. But, Sir, that is not enough. An argument which does not convince yourself, may convince the Judge to whom you urge it: and if it does convince him, why, then, Sir, you are wrong, and he is right. It is his business to judge; and you are not to be confident in your own opinion that a cause is bad, but to say all you can for your client, and then hear the Judge's opinion." BOSWELL. "But, Sir, does not affecting a warmth when you have no warmth, and appearing to be clearly of one opinion when you are in reality of another opinion, does not such dissimulation impair one's honesty? Is there not some danger that a lawyer may put on the same mask in common life, in the intercourse with his friends?" JOHNSON. "Why no, Sir. Every body knows you are paid for affecting warmth for your client; and it is, therefore, properly no dissimulation: the moment you come from the bar you resume your usual behaviour. Sir, a man will no more carry the artifice of the bar into the common intercourse of society, than a man who is paid for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble upon his hands when he should walk on his feet.” (1) Talking of some of the modern plays, he said, "False Delicacy" (2) was totally void of character. He praised Goldsmith's "Good-natured Man;" said it was the best comedy that had appeared since (1) See post, Aug. 15. 1773, where Johnson has supported the same argument. -J. BosWELL, jun. Cicero touches this question more than once, but never with much confidence. "Atqui etiam hoc præceptum officii diligenter tenendum est, ne quem unquam innocentem judicio capitis arcessas; id, enim, sine scelere fieri nullo pacto potest. Nec tamen, ut hoc fugiendum est, ita habendum est religioni, nocentem aliquando, modo ne nefarium impiumque, defendere. Vult hoc multitudo, patitur consuetudo, fert etiam humanitas. Judicis est semper in causas verum sequi patroni, nonnunquam verisimile, etiamsi minus sit verum, defendere." (De Off. 1. 2. c. 14.) We might have expected a less conditional and apologetical defence of his own profession from the great philosophical orator. -CROKER. (2) [By Hugh Kelly, an Irishman, originally apprenticed to a staymaker in Dublin, and afterwards clerk in an attorney's office in London, who became a writer for the booksellers, and was called to the bar; he died, an. ætat, 38, Feb. 3. 1777,] "The Provoked Husband," and that there had not been of late any such character exhibited on the stage as that of Croaker. I observed it was the Suspirius of his Rambler [No. 59.]. He said, Goldsmith had owned he had borrowed it from thence. "Sir," continued he "there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and there is the difference between the characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood, by a more superficial observer, than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart." It always appeared to me, that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly (1), and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding. (2) In comparing those two writers, he used this expression; “ that there was as great a difference between them, as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and figurative state of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners. cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial-plates are brighter. Fielding's characters, though they do not expand But I (1) See antè, Vol. I. p. 273., and post, April 6. 1772. — C. (2) [How charming, how wholesome, Fielding is! To take him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick-room heated by stoves into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May. COLERIDGE, Table Talk.] |