'EDINBURGH, Feb. 26, 1778. 'MY DEAR SIR,-Why I have delayed, for near a month, to thank you for your last affectionate letter, I cannot say; for my mind has been in better health these three weeks than for some years past. I believe I have evaded till I could send you a copy of Lord Hailes's opinion on the negro's cause, which he wishes you to read, and correct any errors that there may be in the language; for, says he, we live in a critical, though not in a learned age; and I seek to screen myself under the shield of Ajax." I communicated to him your apology for keeping the sheets of his Annals so long. He says, "I am sorry to see that Dr. Johnson is in a state of languor. Why should a sober Christian, neither an enthusiast nor a fanatic, be very merry or very sad?" I envy his Lordship's comfortable constitution; but well do I know that languor and dejection will afflict the best, however excellent their principles. I am in possession of Lord Hailes's opinion in his own handwriting, and have had it for some time. My excuse, then, for procrastination must be, that I wanted to have it copied; and I have now put that off so long, that it will be better to bring it with me than send it, as I shall probably get you to look at it sooner when I solicit you in person.

'My wife, who is, I thank GOD, a good deal better, is much obliged to you for your very polite and courteous offer of your apartment: but if she goes to London, it will be best for her to have lodgings in the more airy vicinity of Hyde Park. I, however, doubt much if I shall be able to prevail with her to accompany me to the metropolis; for she is so different from you and me, that she dislikes travelling; and she is so anxious about her children, that she thinks she should be unhappy if at a distance from them. She therefore wishes rather to go to some country place in Scotland, where she can have them with her.

I purpose being in London about the 20th of next month, as I think it creditable to appear in the House of Lords as one of Douglas's counsel,

1 The friendship between Mr. Welch and him was unbroken. Mr. Welch died not many months before him, and bequeathed him five guineas for a ring, which Johnson received with tenderness, as a kind memorial. His regard was constant for his friend Mr. Welch's daughters; of whom, Jane is married to Mr. Nollekens, the statuary, whose merit is too well known to require any praise from me.-BOSWELL

in the great and last competition between Duke Hamilton and him.

I am sorry poor Mrs. Williams is so ill: though her temper is unpleasant, she has always been polite and obliging to me. I wish many happy years to good Mr. Levett, who I suppose holds his usual place at your breakfast-table.'I ever am, my dear sir, your affectionate humble servant, 'JAMES BOSWELL.'

TO THE SAME.

EDINBURGH, Feb. 28, 1778. 'MY DEAR SIR,-You are at present busy amongst the English poets, preparing, for the public instruction and entertainment, Prefaces, biographical and critical. It will not therefore be out of season to appeal to you for the decision of a controversy which has arisen between a lady and me concerning a passage in Parnell. That poet tells us, that his Hermit quitted his cell

66

to know the world by sight,

To find if books or swains report it right;
(For yet by swains alone the world he knew,

Whose feet came wand'ring o'er the nightly dew.)"

I maintain that there is an inconsistency here: for as the hermit's notions of the world were formed from the reports both of books and swains, he could not justly be said to know by and let us have your reasons.2 swains alone. Be pleased to judge between us,

'What do you say to Taxation no Tyranny now, after Lord North's declaration, or confession, or whatever else his conciliatory speech should be called? I never differed from you in politics but upon two points-the Middlesex Election, and the Taxation of the Americans by the British Houses of Representatives. There is a charm in the word Parliament, so I avoid it. As I am a steady and a warm Tory, I regret that the King does not see it to be better for him to receive constitutional supplies from his American subjects by the voice of their own assemblies, where his Royal person is represented, than through the medium of his British subjects. I am persuaded that the power of the Crown, which I wish to increase, would be greater when in contact with all its dominions, than if "the

1 Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, humorously observed, that Levett used to breakfast on the crust of a roll, which Johnson, after tearing out the crumb for himself, threw to his humble friend.-BOSWELL. Perhaps the word threw is here too strong. Dr. Johnson never treated Levett with contempt; it is clear indeed, from various circumstances, that he had great kindness for him. I have often seen Johnson at breakfast, accompanied, or rather attended, by Levett, who had always the management of the tea-kettle.MALONE.

2 See the subject discussed in a subsequent page, under May 3, 1779.-MALONE

'EDINBURGH, March 12, 1778. 'MY DEAR SIR,-The alarm of your late illness distressed me but a few hours, for on the evening of the day that it reached me I found it contradicted in the London Chronicle, which I could depend upon as authentic concerning you, Mr. Strahan being the printer of it. I did not see the paper in which "the approaching extinction of a bright luminary" was announced. Sir William Forbes told me of it; and he says he saw me so uneasy, that he did not give me the report in such strong terms as he read it. He afterwards sent me a letter from Mr. Langton to him, which relieved me much. I am, however, not quite easy, as I have not heard from you; and now I shall not have that comfort before I see you, for I set out for London to-morrow before the post comes in. I hope to be with you on Wednesday morning: and I ever am, with the highest veneration, my dear sir, your most obliged, faithful, and affectionate humble servant, 'JAMES BOSWELL.'

CHAPTER XLIII.

1778.

ON Wednesday, March 18, I arrived in London, and was informed by good Mr. Francis that his master was better, and was gone to Mr. Thrale's at Streatham, to which place I wrote to him, begging to know when he would be in town. He was not expected for some time; but next day having called on Dr. Taylor, in Dean's Yard, Westminster, I found him there, and was told he had come to town for a few hours. He met me with his usual kindness, but instantly returned to the writing of something on which he was employed when I came in, and on which he seemed much intent. Finding him thus engaged, I made my visit very short, and had no more of his conversation, except his expressing a serious regret that a friend of ours 2 was living at too much expense, considering how poor an appearance he made. 'If,' said he, 'a man has splendour from his expense, if he spends his money in pride or in pleasure, he has value; but if he lets others spend it for him, which is most commonly the case, he has no advantage from it.'

1 Alluding to a line in his Vanity of Human Wishes, describing Cardinal Wolsey in his state of elevation :"Through him the rays of regal bounty shine.' -BOSWELL.

2 Mr. Langton.

On Friday, March 20, I found him at his own house, sitting with Mrs. Williams, and was informed that the room formerly allotted to me was now appropriated to a charitable purpose; Mrs. Desmoulins,' and I think her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael, being all lodged in it. Such was his humanity, and such his generosity, that Mrs. Desmoulins herself told me he allowed her half-a-guinea a week. Let it be remembered that this was above a twelfth part of his pension.

His liberality, indeed, was at all periods of his life very remarkable. Mr. Howard, of Lichfield, at whose father's house Johnson had in his early years been kindly received, told me that when he was a boy at the Charter-house, his father wrote to him to go and pay a visit to Mr. Samuel Johnson, which he accordingly did, and found him in an upper room, of poor appearance. Johnson received him with much courteousness, and talked a great deal to him as to a schoolboy, of the course of his education, and other particulars. When he afterwards came to know and understand the high character of this great man, he recollected his condescension with wonder. He added, that when he was going away, Mr. Johnson presented him with half-a-guinea; and this, said Mr. Howard, was at a time when he probably had not another.

room.

We retired from Mrs. Williams to another He Tom Davies soon after joined us. had now unfortunately failed in his circumstances, and was much indebted to Dr. Johnson's kindness in obtaining for him many alleviations of his distress. After he went away, Johnson blamed his folly in quitting the stage, by which he and his wife got £500 a year. I said I believed it was owing to Churchill's attack upon him:

'He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone.' JOHNSON: 'I believe so too, sir. But what a man is he, who is to be driven from the stage by a line? Another line would have driven him from his shop.'

I told him that I was engaged as counsel at the bar of the House of Commons to oppose a road bill in the county of Stirling, and asked him what mode he would advise me to follow in addressing such an audience. JOHNSON: Why, sir, you must provide yourself with a good deal of extraneous matter, which you are to produce occasionally, so as to fill up the time; for you must consider that they do not listen much. If you begin with the strength of your cause, it may be lost before they begin to listen. When you catch a moment of attention, press the merits of the question upon them.' He said, as to one point of the merits, that he

1 Daughter of Dr. Swinfen, Johnson's godfather, and widow of Mr. Desmoulins, a writing-master.--Bos

WELL.

for a considerable time, till one day he felt himself, as it were, instantaneously convinced, and with tears in his eyes ran into the Duke's arms, and embraced the ancient religion; that he continued very steady in it for some time, and accompanied his Grace to London one winter, and lived in his household; that there he found the rigid fasting prescribed by the church very severe upon him; that this disposed him to reconsider the controversy, and having then seen that he was in the wrong, he returned to Protestantism. I talked of some time or other publishing this curious life. MRS. THRALE: 'I think you had as well let alone that publication. To discover such weakness exposes a man when he is gone.' JOHNSON: Nay, it is an honest picture of human nature. How often are the primary motives of our greatest actions as small as Sibbald's for his re-conversion!' MRS. THRALE: But may they not as well be forgotten?' JOHNSON: 'No, madam, a man loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.' LORD TRIMLESTOWN: ‘True, sir. As the ladies love to see themselves in a glass, so a man likes to see himself in his journal.' BosWELL: A very pretty allusion.' JOHNSON: 'Yes, indeed.' BOSWELL: And as a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.' I next year found the very same thought in Atterbury's Funeral Sermon on Lady Cutts; where, having mentioned her diary, he says, In this glass she every day dressed her mind.' This is a proof of coincidence, and not of plagiarism; for I had never read that serinon before.

Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth, even in the most minute particulars. 'Accustom your children,' said he, constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.' BOSWELL: 'It may come to the door: and when once an account is at all varied in one circumstance, it may by degrees be varied so as to be totally different from what really happened.' Our lively hostess, whose fancy was impatient of the rein, fidgeted at this, and ventured to say, 'Nay, this is too much. If Mr. Johnson should forbid me to drink tea, I would comply, as I should feel the restraint only twice a day; but little variations in narrative must happen a thousand times aday, if one is not perpetually watching.' JOHNSON: 'Well, madam, and you ought to be perpetually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.'

In his review of Dr. Warton's Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, Johnson has

care.

given the following salutary caution upon this subject:-'Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated, as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think, as what they know ; some men of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on, without thought or A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.' Had he lived to read what Sir John Hawkins and Mrs. Piozzi have related concerning himself, how much would he have found his observation illustrated! He was indeed so much impressed with the preva lence of falsehood, voluntary or unintentional, that I never knew any person who, upon hearing an extraordinary circumstance told, discovered more of the incredulus odi. He would say, with a significant look and decisive tone, 'It is not so. Do not tell this again.' He inculcated upon all his friends the importance of perpetual vigilance against the slightest degrees of falsehood; the effect of which, as Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me, has been, that all who were of his school are distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy, which they would not have possessed in the same degree, if they had not been acquainted with Johnson.

Talking of ghosts, he said, 'It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.'

He said, 'John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do.'

3

On Friday, April 3, I dined with him in London, in a company where were present several eminent men, whom I shall not name, but distinguish their parts in the conversation by different letters.

F.: I have been looking at this famous antique marble dog of Mr. Jennings, valued at a thousand guineas, said to be Alcibiades' dog.' JOHNSON: His tail, then, must be docked. That was the mark of Alcibiades' dog.' E.: A thousand guineas! The representation of

1 Literary Magazine, 1756, p. 37.-BOSWELL.

2 The following plausible but over-prudent counsel on this subject is given by an Italian writer [Dante), quoted by Redi, de Generatione Insectorum, with the epithet of 'divini poetæ :'

'Sempre à quel ver che a faccia di menzogna
Dei l'uom chiuder le labbra quanto ei puote
Però che senza colpa fa vergogna.'

-BOSWELL.

3 Believed to be THE CLUB.

no animal whatever is worth so much. At this rate a dead dog would indeed be better than a living lion.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, it is not the worth of the thing, but of the skill in forming it, which is so highly estimated. Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. The first man who balanced a straw upon his nose; Johnson, who rode upon three horses at a time; in short, all such men deserved the applause of mankind, not on account of the use of what they did, but of the dexterity which they exhibited.' BOSWELL: 'Yet a misapplication of time and assiduity is not to be encouraged. Addison, in one of his Spectators, commends the judgment of a king, who, as a suitable reward to a man that by long perseverance had attained to the art of throwing a barley-corn through the eye of a needle, gave him a bushel of barley.' JOHNSON: 'He must have been a king of Scotland, where barley is scarce.' F. One of the most remarkable antique figures of an animal is the boar at Florence.' JOHNSON: "The first boar that is well made in marble should be preserved as a wonder. When men arrive at a facility of making boars well, then the workmanship is not of such value, but they should however be preserved as examples, and as a greater security for the restoration of the art, should it be lost.' E. We hear prodigious complaints at present of emigration. I am convinced that emigration makes a country more populous.' J.: 'That sounds very much like a paradox.' E.: 'Exportation of men, like exportation of all other commodities, makes more be produced.' JOHNSON: 'But there would be more people were there not emigration, provided there were food for more.' E.: 'No; leave a few breeders, and you'll have more people than if there were no emigration.' JOHNSON: 'Nay, sir, it is plain there will be more people, if there are more breeders. Thirty cows in good pasture will produce more calves than ten cows, provided they have good bulls.' E. 'There are bulls enough in Ireland.' JOHNSON (smiling): "So, sir, I should think from your argument.' BOSWELL: 'You said, exportation of men, like exportation of other commodities, makes more be produced. But a bounty is given to encourage the exportation of corn, and no bounty is given for the exportation of men; though, indeed, those who go gain by it.' R.: 'But the bounty on the exportation of corn is paid at home.' E.: That's the same thing.' JOHNSON: 'No sir.' R.: 'A man who stays at home gains nothing by his neighbour's emigrating.' BOSWELL: I can understand that emigration may be the cause that more people may be produced in a country; but the country will not therefore be the more populous; for the people issue from it. It can only be said that there is a flow of people. It is an encourage.

ment to have children, to know that they can get a living by emigration.' R.: 'Yes, if there were an emigration of children under six years of age. But they don't emigrate till they could earn their livelihood in some way at home.' C. It is remarkable that the most unhealthy countries, where there are the most destructive diseases, such as Egypt and Bengal, are the most populous.' JOHNSON: 'Countries which are the most populous have the most destructive diseases. That is the true state of the proposition.' C.: 'Holland is very unhealthy, yet it is exceedingly populous.' JOHNSON: 'I know not that Holland is unhealthy. But its populousness is owing to an influx of people from all other countries. Disease cannot be the cause of populousness; for it not only carries off a great proportion of the people, but those who are left are weakened, and unfit for the purposes of increase.'

R.: Mr. E., I don't mean to flatter, but when posterity reads one of your speeches in Parliament, it will be difficult to believe that you took so much pains, knowing with certainty that it could produce no effect, that not one vote would be gained by it.' E.: 'Waiving your compliment to me, I shall say in general, that it is very well worth while for a man to take pains to speak well in Parliament. A man who has vanity, speaks to display his talents; and if a man speaks well, he gradually establishes a certain reputation and consequence in the general opinion, which sooner or later will have its political reward. Besides, though not one vote is gained, a good speech has its effect. Though an act which has been ably opposed passes into a law, yet in its progress it is modelled, it is softened in such a manner, that we see plainly the minister has been told that the members attached to him are so sensible of its injustice or absurdity from what they have heard, that it must be altered.' JOHNSON: And, sir, there is a gratification of pride. Though we cannot out-vote them, we will out-argue them. They shall not do wrong without its being shown both to themselves and to the world.' E.: 'The House of Commons is a mixed body (I except the minority, which I hold to be pure [smiling], but I take the whole House). It is a mass by no means pure; but neither is it wholly corrupt, though there is a large proportion of corruption in it. There are many members who generally go with the minister, who will not go all lengths. There are many honest well-meaning country gentlemen who are in Parliament only to keep up the consequence of their families. Upon most of these a good speech will have influence.' JOHNSON: We are all more or less governed by interest. But interest will not make us do everything. In a case which admits of doubt, we try to think on the side which is for our interest, and generally bring ourselves to act accordingly. But the subject must admit of diversity of