for forty years had lived with the great and the witty, should have acquired so ill the talents of conversation: and he had but half to furnish; for one half of what he said was oaths." He, however, allowed considerable merit to some of his comedies, and said there was no reason to believe that the "Careless Husband" was not written by himself. Davies said, he was the first dramatick writer who introduced genteel ladies upon the stage. Johnson refuted his observation by instancing several such characters in comedies before his time. DAVIES (trying to defend himself from a charge of ignorance). "I mean genteel moral characters." "I think," said Hicky, "gentility and morality are inseparable." BOSWELL. "By no means, sir. The genteelest characters are often the most immoral. Does not Lord Chesterfield give precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces? A man, indeed, is not genteel when he gets drunk; but most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly." HICKY. "I do not think that is genteel." BOSWELL. "Sir, it may not be like a gentleman, but it may be genteel." JOHNSON. "You are meaning two different things. One means exteriour grace; the other honour. It is certain that a man may be very immoral with exteriour grace. Lovelace, in 'Clarissa,' is a very genteel and a very wicked character. Tom Hervey1, who died t'other day, though a vicious man, was one of the genteelest men that ever lived." Tom Davies instanced Charles the Second. JOHNSON (taking fire at any attack upon that Prince, for whom he had an extraordinary partiality). "Charles the Second was licentious in his practice; but he always had a reverence, for what was good. Charles the Second knew his people, and rewarded merit. The

church was at no time better filled than in his reign. He was the best king we have had from his time till the reign of his present majesty, except James the Second, who was a very good king', but unhappily believed that it was necessary for the salvation of his subjects that they should be Roman Catholicks. He had the merit of endeavouring to do what he thought was for the salvation of the souls of his subjects, till he lost a great empire. We, who thought that we should not be saved if we were Roman Catholicks, had the merit of maintaining our religion, at the expense of submitting ourselves to the government of King William, (for it could not be done otherwise,)— to the government of one of the most worthless scoundrels that ever existed. No, Charles the Second was not such a man as 3, (naming another king). He did not destroy his father's will. He took money, indeed, from France: but he did not betray those over whom he ruled: he did not let the

[All this seems so contrary to historical truth and common sense, that no explanation can be given of it; but it excites a lively curiosity to know more of Dr. Johnson's personal history during the years 1745 and 1746, during which Boswell could find no trace of him. See ante, vol. i. p. 152.-ED.]

2

He was always vehement against King William: a gentleman who dined at a nobleman's table in his company and that of Mr. Thrale, who related the anecdote, was willing to enter the lists in defence of King William's character, and, having opposed and contradicted Johnson two or three times petulantly enough, the master of the house began to feel uneasy, and expect disagreeable. consequences; to avoid which he said, loud enough for the Doctor to hear, "Our friend here has no meaning now in all this, except just to relate at club to-morrow how he teased Johnson at dinner to-day-this is all to do himself honour." "No, upon my word," replied the other, "I see no honour in it, whatever you may do." "Well, sir," returned Dr. Johnson, sternly, "if you do not see the honour, I am sure I feel the disgrace."--Piozzi, p. 156.—ED.]

3 [George the Second-The story of the will is told by Horace Walpole, in his very amusing (but often inaccurate) Reminiscences: "At the first council held by the new sovereign, Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the will of the late king, and delivered it to the successor, expecting it would be opened and read in council. On the contrary, his majesty put it into his pocket and stalked out of the room, without uttering a word on the subject. The poor prelate was thunderstruck, and had not the presence of mind or the courage to demand the testament's being opened, or at least to have it registered. No man present chose to be more hardy than the person to whom the deposit had been intrusted; perhaps none of them immediately conceived the possible violation of so solemn an act, so notoriously existent. Still, as the king never mentioned the will more, whispers, only by degrees, informed the public that the will was burnt, at least that its injunctions were never fulfilled." —Reminiscences, ch. vi, -ED.]

French fleet pass ours. George the First knew nothing, and desired to know nothing; did nothing, and desired to do nothing; and the only good thing that is told of him is, that he wished to restore the crown to its hereditary successor." He roared with prodigious violence against George the Second. When he ceased, Moody interjected, in an Irish tone, and with a comick look, "Ah! poor George the Second."

I mentioned that Dr. Thomas Campbell had come from Ireland to London, principally to see Dr. Johnson. He seemed angry at this observation. DAVIES. "Why, you know, sir, there came a man from Spain to see Livy'; and Corelli came to England to see Purcell, and when he heard he was dead, went directly back again to Italy." JOHNSON. "I should not have wished to be dead to disappoint Campbell, had he been so foolish as you represent him; but I should have wished to have been a hundred miles off." This was apparently perverse; and I do believe it was not his real way of thinking: he could not but like a man who came so far to see him. He laughed with some complacency, when I told him Campbell's odd expression to me concerning him: “That having seen such a man, was a thing to talk of a century hence," as if he could live so long 3.

Plin. Epist. Lib. ii. Ep. 3.-BOSWELL."

2 Mr. Davies was here mistaken. Corelli never was in England.-BURNEY. 3 [Mrs. Thrale gives, in her lively style, a sketch of this gentleman: "We have a flashy friend here (at Bath) already, who is much your adorer. I wonder how you will like him? An Irishman he is; very handsome, very hotheaded, loud and lively, and sure to be a favourite with you, he tells us, for he can live with a man of ever so odd a temper. My master laughs, but likes him, and it diverts me to think what you will do when he professes that he would clean shoes for you; that he would shed his blood for you; with twenty more extravagant flights; and you say I flatter! Upon my honour, sir, and indeed now, as Dr. Campbell's phrase is, I am but a twitter to him."-Letters, 16th May, 1776. Johnson, in his reply, 18th May, 1776, asks "who can be this new friend of mine?" The Editor is unable to reconcile Mrs. Thrale's wonder "how Johnson would like him," and Johnson's ignorance of "who he was," in May, 1776, with Boswell's statement, that Campbell had dined thrice in his company, in April, 1775-one of the places being Mr. and Mrs. Thrale's own house: see post, 8th May. There can be no error in the date of the letters 1776,

We got into an argument whether the judges who went to India might with propriety engage in trade. Johnson warmly maintained that they might, “For why," he urged, "should not judges get riches, as well as those who deserve them less ?" I said, they should have sufficient salaries, and have nothing to take off their attention from the affairs of the publick. JOHNSON. "No judge, sir, can give his whole attention to his office; and it is very proper that he should employ what time he has to himself to his own advantage, in the most profitable manner 1." "Then, sir," said Davies, who enlivened the dispute by making it somewhat dramatick," he may become an insurer; and when he is going to the bench, he may be stopped, Your lordship cannot go yet; here is a bunch of invoices; several ships are about to sail."" JOHNSON. "Sir, you may as well say a judge should not have a house; for they may come and tell him"Your lordship's house is on fire;' and so, instead of minding the business of his court, he is to be occupied in getting the engine with the greatest speed. There is no end of this. Every judge who has land trades to a certain extent in corn or in cattle, and in the land itself: undoubtedly his steward acts for him, and so do clerks for a great merchant. A judge may be a farmer, but he is not to geld his own pigs. A judge may play a little at cards for his amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing

because they were written while Mrs. Thrale was at Bath, after the loss of her son, which event took place in March, 1776, and is alluded to in the letters. Nor can Mr. Boswell's date be mistaken, for he says, that Campbell dined at Mr. Dilly's on Wednesday the 5th April, and the 5th April fell on a Wednesday in 1775. Mr. Boswell had, moreover, left London in 1776, prior to the date of Mrs. Thrale's, so that he could not have met Dr. Campbell in that year. The discrepancy is on a point of no importance, but it seems inexplicable.-ED.]

[This must have been said in a mere spirit of argumentation, for we have seen (ante, v. ii. p. 341.) that he was angry at a judge's being so much like an ordinary gentleman as even to wear a round hat in his own country house, and he censured him for being so much of a farmer as to farm a part of his demesne for his own amusement.-ED.]

in the Piazza. No, sir, there is no profession to which a man gives a very great proportion of his time. It is wonderful, when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession. No man would be a judge, upon the condition of being totally a judge. The best employed lawyer has his mind at work but for a small proportion of his time; a great deal of his occupation is merely mechanical. I once wrote for a magazine: I made a calculation, that if I should write but a page a day, at the same rate, I should, in ten years, write nine volumes in folio, of an ordinary size and print." BOSWELL. "Such as Carte's History?' JOHNSON. "Yes, sir; when a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly 1. The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library, to make one book."

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I argued warmly against the judges trading, and mentioned Hale as an instance of a perfect judge, who devoted himself entirely to his office. JOHNSON. "Hale, sir, attended to other things besides law; he left a great estate." BOSWELL. "That was because what he got accumulated without any exertion and anxiety on his part."

While the dispute went on, Moody once tried to say something on our side. Tom Davies clapped him on the back, to encourage him. Beauclerk, to whom I mentioned this circumstance, said, "that he could not conceive a more humiliating situation than to be clapped on the back by Tom Davies."

We spoke of Rolt, to whose 'Dictionary of Commerce' Dr. Johnson wrote the preface. JOHNSON.

1 Johnson certainly did, who had a mind stored with knowledge, and teeming with imagery; but the observation is not applicable to writers in general.— BOSWELL.