ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

LONDON.

"LONDON (said Johnson) is nothing to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the place. And there is no place where economy can be so well practised as in Lon'don. More can be had here for the money, even by ladies, than any where else. You cannot play tricks with your fortune in a small place; you must make an uniform appearance. Here a lady may have well-furnished apartments, and elegant dress, without any meat in her kitchen."

Mr. Boswell once expressing much regret at leaving London, where he had formed many agreeable connexions, " Sir (said Johnson), I don't wonder at it; no man fond of letters leaves London without regret. But remember, Sir, you have seen and enjoyed a great deal; you have seen life in its highest decorations, and the world has nothing new to exhibit.-No man is so well qualified to leave publick life as he who has long tried it, and known it well. We are always hankering after untried situations, and imagining greater felicity from them than they can afford. Sir, knowledge and virtue may be acquired in all countries."

Talking of the little attachment which subsist

ed between near relations in London, "Sir (said Johnson), in a country so commercial as ours, where every man can do for himself, there is not so much occasion for that attachment. No man is thought the worse of here, whose brother was hanged. In commercial countries, many of the branches of a family must depend on the stock; so in order to make the head of the family take care of them, they are represented as connected with his reputation, that, self-love being interested, he may exert himself to promote their interest. You have first large circles or clans; as commerce increases, the connection is confined to families. By degrees that too goes. off as having become unnecessary, and there being few opportunities of intercourse. One brother is a merchant in the city, and another is an officer in the guards. How little intercourse can these two have!"

On the state of the poor in London, Johnson said, "Saunders Welch, the Justice, who was once high constable of Holborn, and had the best opportunities of knowing the state of the poor, told me, that I under-rated the number, when I computed that twenty a week, that is above a thousand a year, died of hunger; not absolutely of immediate hunger, but of the wasting and other diseases which are the consequences of hunger. This happens only in so large a place

[ocr errors]

as London, where people are not known. What we are told about the great sums got by begging. is not true; the trade is overstocked: and you may depend upon it, there are many who cannot. get work. A particular kind of manufacture fails: those who have been used to work at it can, for some time, work at nothing else. You meet a man begging; you charge him with idleness: he says, I'm willing to labour. Will you give me work? I cannot.' Why then you have no right to charge me with idleness.""

4

Talking of living in the country, he said, "No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance; if he is to shut him-, self up for a year to study a science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then if a man walks out in the country there is nobody to keep him from walking in again; but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he shall walk in again. A great city is to be sure the school for studying life; and The proper, study of mankind is man,' as Pope observes.". BOSWELL. "I fancy London is the best place for society; though I have heard that the very first society of Paris is still beyond any thing that we have here."-JOHNSON." Sir, I question if in Paris such a company as is sitting round this table could be got together in less than half a year. They

[ocr errors]

talk in France of the felicity of men and women living together; the truth is, that there the men are not higher than the women, they know no more than the women do, and they are not held down in their conversation by the presence of women." Mr. Ramsay said, "Literature is upon the growth, it is in its spring in France; here it is rather passée."—J. “Literature was in France long before we had it. Paris was the second city for the revival of letters; Italy had it first, to be sure. What have we done for literature, equal to what was done by the Stephani and others in France? Our literature came to us through France. Caxton printed only two books, Chaucer and Gower, that were not translations from the French; and Chaucer we know took much from the Italians. No, Sir, if literature be in its spring in France, it is a second spring; it is after a winter. We are now before the French in literature; but we had it long after them."

Johnson was always much attached to London; he observed, that a man stored his mind better there than any where else; and that in remote situations a man's body might be feasted, but his mind was starved, and his faculties apt to degenerate, from want of exercise and competition. No place (he said) cured a man's vanity or arrogance so well as London; for as no man was either great or good per se, but as compared with

[blocks in formation]

others not so good or great, he was sure to find in the Metropolis many his equals, and some his superiors. He observed that a man in London was in less danger of falling in love indiscreetly, than any where else; for there the difficulty of deciding between the conflicting pretensions of a vast variety of objects kept him safe. He said, that he had frequently been offered country preferment if he would consent to take orders; but he could not leave the improved society of the capital, or consent to exchange the exhilarating joys and splendid decorations of public life, for the obscurity, insipidity, and uniformity of remote situations.

At another time he observed, "Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists*."

"I have often (says Mr. Boswell) amused myself with thinking how different a place London is to different people. They, whose narrow minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular pursuit, view it only through that medium. A politician thinks of it merely as the seat of government in its different departments; a grazier as a vast market for cattle; a mercantile

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »