We talked of translation. I said, I could not define it, nor could I think of a similitude to illustrate it; but that it appeared to me the translation of poetry could be only imitation. JOHNSON. "You may translate books of science exactly. You may also translate history, in so far as it is not embellished with oratory, which is poetical. Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language, if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language." A gentleman maintained that the art of printing had hurt real learning, by disseminating idle writings. JOHNSON. "Sir, if it had not been for the art of printing, we should now have no learning at all; for books would have perished faster than they could have been transcribed." This observation seems not just, considering for how many ages books were preserved by writing alone. The same gentleman maintained, that a general diffusion of knowledge among a people was a disadvantage; for it made the vulgar rise above their humble sphere. JOHNSON. "Sir, while knowledge is a distinction, those who are possessed of it will naturally rise above those who are not. Merely to read and write was a distinction at first; but we see when reading and writing have become general, the common people keep their stations. And so, were higher attainments to become general, the effect would be the same." "Goldsmith," he said, "referred every thing to vanity; his virtues and his vices too were from that motive. He was not a social man. He never exchanged mind with you." ! We spent the evening at Mr. Hoole's. Mr. Mickle, the excellent translator of "The Lusiad," was there. I have preserved little of the conversation of this evening. Dr. Johnson said, "Thomson had a true poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light. His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly peep through. Shiels, who compiled 'Cibber's Lives of the Poets,' was one day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large portion of him, and then asked, - Is not this fine? Shiels having expressed the highest admiration 'Well, Sir,' said I, 'I have omitted every other line."" I related a dispute between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley, one day when they and I were dining at Tom Davies's, in 1762. Goldsmith asserted, that there was no poetry produced in this age. Dodsley appealed to his own collection, and maintained, that though you could not find a palace like Dryden's "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," you had villages composed of very pretty houses; and he mentioned particularly "The Spleen." JOHNSON. "I think Dodsley gave up the question. He and Goldsmith said the same thing; only be said it in a softer manner than Goldsmith did; for he acknowledged there was no poetry, nothing that towered above the common mark. You may find wit and humour in verse, and yet no poetry. Hudibras' has a profusion of these; yet it is not to be reckoned a poem. "The Spleen,' in Dodsley's collection, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry." BosWELL. "Does not Gray's poetry, Sir, tower above the common mark?" JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir; but we must attend to the difference between what men in general cannot do if they would, and what every man may do if he would. Sixteen-string Jack towered above the conmon mark." BOSWELL. "Then, Sir, what is poetry?" JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is." On Friday, April 12., I dined with him at our friend Tom Davies's, where we met Mr. Cradock 4, of Leicestershire, author of "Zobeide," a tragedy; a very pleasing gentlema to whom my friend Dr. Farmer's very excellent Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare is addressed; and Dr. Harwood, who has written and published various works, particularly fantastical translation of the New Testament in modern phrase, and with a Socinian twist I introduced Aristotle's doctrine, in his "Art of Poetry," of "kabapoic Twv zadηuaron, the purging of the passions," as the purpose of tragedy.6 "But how are the passions to se purged by terror and pity?" said I, with an assumed air of ignorance, to incite him to talk, for which it was often necessary to employ some address. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, you are to consider what is the meaning of purging in the original sense. It is to expel impurities from the human body. The mind is subject to the same imperfection. The passions are the great movers of human actions; but they are mixed with such impurities, that it is necessary they should be purged or refined by means of terror and pity. For instance, ambition is a noble passion; but by seeing upon the stage, that a man who is so excessively ambitious as to raise himself by injustice is punished, we are terrified at the fatal consequences of such a passion. In the same manner, a certain degree of resentment is necessary; but if we see that a man carries it too far, we pity the object of it, and are taught to moderate that passion." My record upon this occasion does great injustice to Johnson's expression, which was so forcible and brilliant, that Mr. Cradock whispered me, “O that his words were written in a book!" having paid him the highest compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for repeating some oaths in the course of telling a story. Johnson and I supped this evening at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in company with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Mr. Nairne, now one of the Scotch judges, with the title of Lord Dunsinan 5, and my very worthy friend, Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo. We discussed the question, whether drinking improved conversation and benevolence. Sir Joshua maintained, it did. JOHNSON. “No, Sir: before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk. When they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous: but he is not improved: he is only not sensible of his defects." Sir Joshua said the Doctor was talking of the effects of excess in wine; but that a moderate glass enlivened the mind, by giving a proper circulation to the blood, "I am," said he, "in very good spirits when I I observed, the great defect of the tragedy get up in the morning. By dinner-time I am of "Othello" was, that it had not a moral; for exhausted; wine puts me in the same state as that no man could resist the circumstances of when I got up: and I am sure that moderate suspicion which were artfully suggested to drinking makes people talk better." JOHNSON. Othello's mind. JOHNSON. "In the first place, "No, Sir: wine gives not light, gay, ideal hiSir, we learn from Othello this very useful larity; but tumultuous, noisy, clamorous mermoral, not to make an unequal match; in the riment. I have heard none of those drunken, second place, we learn not to yield too readily nay, drunken is a coarse word, none of to suspicion. The handkerchief is merely a those vinous flights." SIR JOSHUA. "Betrick, though a very pretty trick; but there cause you have sat by, quite sober, and felt an are no other circumstances of reasonable susenvy of the happiness of those who were drinkpicion, except what is related by Iago of Cas-ing." JOHNSON. "Perhaps, contempt. And, sio's warm expressions concerning Desdemona in his sleep; and that depended entirely upon the assertion of one man. No, Sir, I think Othello has more moral than almost any play." Talking of a penurious gentleman of our acquaintance, Johnson said, "Sir, he is narrow, not so much from avarice, as from impotence to spend his money. He cannot find in his heart to pour out a bottle of wine; but he would not much care if it should sour.' He said, he wished to see "John Dennis's Critical Works" collected. Davies said, they would not sell. Dr. Johnson seemed to think otherwise. Davies said of a well-known dramatic author3, that "he lived upon potted stories, and that he ruade his way as Hannibal did, by vinegar; having begun by attacking people, particularly the players." He reminded Dr. Johnson of Mr. Murphy's Perhaps, as Dr. Hall observed, an allusion to Job xix. 23. Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! - CROXER I suspect this was said of Garrick in one of those alternations of censure and praise, in which he used to talk of him, and which Sir Joshua Reynolds recorded in two, not altogether imaginary, dialogues, pro and con.- CROKER. > Sir James Mackintosh thought Cumberland was meant. I am now satisfied that it was Arthur Murphy. — CROKER, 1835. Sir, it is not necessary to be drunk one's self, to relish the wit of drunkenness. Do we not judge of the drunken wit of the dialogue between Iago and Cassio, the most excellent in its kind, when we are quite sober? Wit is wit, by whatever means it is produced; and, if good, will appear so at all times. I admit that the spirits are raised by drinking, as by the common participation of any pleasure: cockfighting or bear-baiting will raise the spirits of a company, as drinking does, though surely they will not improve conversation. I also admit, that there are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits which are not good till they are rotten. There are such men, but they are medlars. I indeed allow that there have been a very few men of talents who were improved by drinking; but I maintain that I am right as to the effects of drinking in general: and let it be considered, 4 Hawkins says that when a libertine of some note (probably Tom Hervey, p. 183.) was talking before him, and interlarding his stories with oaths, Johnson said, “Sir, all this swearing will do nothing for our story; I beg you will not swear." The narrator went on swearing: Johnson said, " I must again entreat you not to swear." He swore again; Johnson quitted the room. - CROKER. 5 See antè, p. 280. n. 4. — C. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. that there is no position, however false in its I observed, that wine did some people harm, by inflaming, confusing, and irritating their minds; but that the experience of mankind had declared in favour of moderate drinking. JOHNSON. "Sir, I do not say it is wrong to produce self-complacency by drinking; I only deny that it improves the mind. When I drank wine', I scorned to drink it when in company. I have drunk many a bottle by myself; in the first place, because I had need of it to raise my spirits; in the second place, because I would have nobody to witness its effects upon me." He told us, "almost all his Ramblers were written just as they were wanted for the press; that he sent a certain portion of the copy of an essay, and wrote the remainder, while the former part of it was printing. When it was wanted, and he had fairly sat down to it, he was sure it would be done." He said, that, for general improvement, a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompts him to; though, to be sure, if a man has a science to learn, he must regularly and resolutely advance. "What we read with inclination makes a much He added, stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read." read Fielding's He told us, he "Amelia" through without stopping.2 He said, "If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it, to go to the beginning. He may, perhaps, not feel again the inclination." Sir Joshua mentioned Mr. Cumberland's Odes," which were just published. JOHNSON. Why, Sir, they would have been thought as good as odes commonly are, if Cumberland had not put his name to them; but a name imme 1776. diately draws censure, unless it be a name that bears down every thing before it. Nay, Cumberland has made his 'Odes' subsidiary to the fame of another man. They might have run well enough by themselves; but he has not only loaded them with a name, but has made them carry double." spoke of them as he did at Thrale's. Sir Joshua We talked of the reviews, and Dr. Johnson said, what I have often thought, that he wondered to find so much good writing employed in them, when the authors were to remain unknown, and so could not have the motive of fame. JOHNSON. "Nay, Sir, those who write in them, write well in order to be paid well." [JOHNSON TO MISS REYNOLDS. "DEAREST MADAM, "April 15. 1776. Thrale, I find by enquiry that she was really When you called on Mrs. abroad. The same thing happened to Mrs. Montagu, of which I beg you to inform her, for she Your visits, however, are kindly paid, and very went likewise by my opinion. The denial, if it had been feigned, would not have pleased me. kindly taken. We are going to Bath this morning; but I could not part without telling you the real state of your visit. I am, dearest Madam, &c., —Reynolds MS. "SAM. JOHNSON."] Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. I had never seen that Soon after this day, he went to Bath with tunity of visiting it while Johnson was there. beautiful city, and wished to take the oppor Having written to him, I received the following answer: JOHNSON TO BOSWELL. therefore, as soon as you can. — But I have a little "DEAR SIR, Why do you talk of neglect? When did I neglect you? If you will come to Bath, we shall all be glad to see you. Come, business for you at London. Bid Francis look in chamber, for two cases'; one for the attorneythe paper drawer of the chest of drawers in my bedgeneral, and one for the solicitor-general. They lie, I think, at the top of my papers; otherwise they are somewhere else, and will give me more trouble. 1 The strongest liquors, says Hawkins, and in very large quantities, produced no other effect on him than moderate exhilaration. Once, and but once, he is known to have had his dose; a circumstance which he himself discovered, on finding one of his sesquipedalian words hang fire; he then started up, and gravely observed, "I think it time we should go to bed." Mrs. Piozzi tells us that his favourite beverage was port, in large draughts, sweetened with sugar or capillaire: but that was in his earlier day. "After a ten years' forbearance of every fluid except tea and sherbet, I drank," said he to Hawkins, " one glass of wine to the health of Sir Joshua Reynolds, on the evening of the day [Dec. 1768] on which he was knighted. drop, till old Madeira was prescribed to me as a cordial I never swallowed another during my present indisposition; but this liquor did not relish as formerly, and I therefore discontinued it."CROKER. 2 We have here an involuntary testimony to the excellence of this admirable writer, to whom we have seen that Dr. Johnson directly allowed so little merit. BoswELL. Johnson appears to have been particularly pleased with the character of the heroine of this novel. 3 Mr. Romney, the painter, who has now deservedly esta 4 These cases related probably to a law-suit which Dr. Taylor was carrying on, and in which Dr. Johnson assisted him with his advice. CROKER. On the 26th April, I went to Bath; and on my arrival at the Pelican inn, found lying for me an obliging invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, by whom I was agreeably entertained almost constantly during my stay. They were gone to the rooms: but there was a kind note from Dr. Johnson, that he should sit at home all the evening. I went to him directly; and before Mr. and Mrs. Thrale returned, we had by ourselves some hours of tea-drinking and talk. I shall group together such of his sayings as I preserved during the few days that I was at Bath. Of a person [Mr. Burke] who differed from him in politics, he said, "In private life he is a very honest gentleman; but I will not allow him to be so in public life. People may be honest, though they are doing wrong: that is, between their Maker and them. But we, who are suffering by their pernicious conduct, are to destroy them. We are sure that [Burke] acts from interest. We know what his genuine principles were.' They who allow their passions to confound the distinctions between right and wrong, are criminal. They may be convinced; but they have not come honestly by their conviction." He means, that, in earlier life, they, at the Club, knew that Burke was not what Johnson would call a Whig.Mr. Burke ended as he began→ "This sun of empire, where he rose, he set !"— Croker. The elder Mr. Langton. - Hawk. Mem. It is not easy to understand how any filtration could have cured a mind of such an error as this. CROKER. I am sorry that there are no memoirs of the Rev. Robert Blair, the author of this poem. He was the representative of the ancient family of Blair, of Blair, in Ayrshire; but the estate had descended to a female, and afterwards passed to It having been mentioned, I know not with what truth, that a certain female political writer [Mrs. Macaulay], whose doctrines he disliked, had of late become very fond of dress, sat hours together at her toilet, and even put on rouge:-JOHNSON." She is better employed at her toilet, than using her pen. It is better she should be reddening her own cheeks, than blackening other people's characters." He told us that "Addison wrote Budgell's papers in the Spectator, at least mended them so much that he made them almost his own; and that Draper, Tonson's partner, assured Mrs. Johnson, that the much admired Epilogue to 'The Distressed Mother,' which came out in Budgell's name, was in reality written by Addison." "The mode of government by one may be ill adapted to a small society, but is best for a great nation. The characteristic of our own government at present is imbecility. The magistrates dare not call the guards for fear of being hanged. The guards will not come for fear of being given up to the blind rage of popular juries." Of the father of one of our friends he observed, "He never clarified his notions, by filtrating them through other minds. He had a canal upon his estate, where at one place the bank was too low. I dug the canal deeper," said he. He told me that "so long ago as 1748, he had read 'The Grave, a Poem,' but did not like it much." I differed from him; for though it is not equal throughout, and is seldom elegantly correct, it abounds in solemn thought and poetical imagery beyond the common reach. The world has differed from him; for the poem has passed through many editions, and is still much read by people of a serious cast of mind. A literary lady of large fortune [Mrs. Montagu] was mentioned, as one who did good to many, but by no means "by stealth;" and instead of "blushing to find it fame," acted evidently from vanity. JOHNSON. "I have seen no beings who do as much good from benevolence, as she does, from whatever motive. If there are such under the earth, or in the clouds, I wish they would come up, or come down. What Soame Jenyns says upon this subject is not to be minded; he is a wit. No, Sir; to act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive."+ He was the son of her husband by another marriage. minister of the parish of Athelstaneford, where Mr. John Home was his successor; so that it may truly be called classic ground. His son, who is of the same name, and a man eminent for talents and learning, is now, with universal approbation, solicitor-general of Scotland. - BOSWELL. And was afterwards Lord President of the Court of Session. A life of Blair is given in the editions of the English Poets by Anderson and Chalmers. He died in 1746, in his fortyseventh year. - CROKER. 4 The pension which Mrs. Montagu had lately settled on BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 1 He would not allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing, "She does not gain upon me, Sir; I think her empty-headed." He was, indeed, a stern critic upon characters and manners. Even Mrs. Thrale did not escape his friendly animadversion at times. When he and I were one day endeavouring to ascertain, article by article, how one of our friends could possibly spend as much money in his family as he told us he did, she interrupted us by a lively extravagant sally, on the expense of clothing his children, describing it in a very ludicrous and fanciful manner. Johnson looked a little angry, and said, "Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.' another time, when she said, perhaps affectAt edly, "I don't like to fly;"-JOHNSON. "With your wings, Madam, you must fly but have a care, there are clippers abroad." well was this said, and how fully has experience How very proved the truth of it! But have they not clipped rather rudely, and gone a great deal closer than was necessary?3 A gentleman expressed a wish to go and live three years at Otaheité, or New Zealand, in order to obtain a full acquaintance with people so totally different from all that we have ever known, and be satisfied what pure nature can do for man. JOHNSON. "What could you learn, Sir? What can savages tell, but what they themselves have seen? Of the past or the invisible they can tell nothing. The inhabitants of Otaheité and New Zealand are not in a state of pure nature; for it is plain they broke off from some other people. Had they grown out of the ground, you might have judged of a state of pure nature. Fanciful people may talk of a mythology being amongst them; but it must be invention. They have once had religion, which has been gradually debased. And what account of their religion can you suppose to be learnt from savages? Only consider, Sir, our own state: our religion is in a book; we have an order of men whose duty it is to teach it; we have one day in the week set apart for it, and this is in general pretty well observed: yet ask the first ten gross men you meet, and hear what they can tell of their religion." On Monday, April 29., he and I made an excursion to Bristol, where I was entertained Miss Williams (see antè, p. 458.) would naturally account for this defence of that lady's beneficence, but it seems also to have induced Johnson to speak of her intellectual powers in a strain of panegyric as excessive as his former depreciation; but I can scarcely believe that he ever could have spoken of her in such terms as the good-natured Miss Reynolds relates. "Sir," he would say, "that lady exerts more mind in conversation than any person I ever met with: Sir, she displays such powers of ratiocination - such radiations of intellectual excellence, as are amazing !"- CROKER. This has been supposed to be Miss Hannah More; yet it seems hard to conceive in what wayward fancy he could call her "empty-headed."-- C., 1830. I am glad to find, from Hannah More's Letters, recently published, that my doubt was well founded. She was at this time in London, and could not have been the person meant.- CROKER, 1835. 2 Mr. Langton. - CROKER. 1776. with seeing him enquire upon the spot into the authenticity of "Rowley's poetry," as I had seen him enquire upon the spot into the authenticity of "Ossian's poetry." George Catcot, the pewterer, who was as zealous for Rowley as Dr. Hugh Blair was for Ossian (I trust my reverend friend will excuse the comparison), attended us at our inn, and with a triumphant air of lively simplicity, called out, "I'll make Dr. Johnson a convert." Dr. Johnson, at his desire, read aloud some of Chatterton's fabricated verses; while Catcot stood at pendulum, and beating time with his feet, and the back of his chair, moving himself like a now and then looking into Dr. Johnson's face, wondering that he was not yet convinced. We some of the originals, as they were called, which called on Mr. Barret, the surgeon, and saw were executed very artificially ; but from a of the circumstances with which they were careful inspection of them, and a consideration attended, we were quite satisfied of the imposture, which, indeed, has been clearly demonable critics.5 strated from internal evidence, by several whatever to any objections, but insisted, as an Honest Catcot seemed to pay no attention him to the tower of the church of St. Mary, end of all controversy, that we should go with Redcliff, and view with our own eyes the ancient chest in which the manuscripts were found. To this Dr. Johnson good-naturedly agreed: and, though troubled with a shortness of breathing, laboured up a long flight of steps. till we came to the place where the wondrous chest stood. bouncing confident credulity, "there is the "There," said Catcot, with a very chest itself." After this ocular demonstration, there was no more to be said. He brought to my recollection a Scotch Highlander, a man of learning too, and who had seen the world, attesting, and at the same time giving his reasons for, the authenticity of Fingal: "I have heard all that poem when I have you heard?" "I have heard 'Ossian, was young. "Have you, Sir? Pray what Oscar, and every one of them." Johnson said of Chatterton, "This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things." We were by no means pleased with our inn |