Castle to counteract the "Baratarian Letters," an Irish imitation of Junius, which, attacking the lord-lieutenant's government, received contributions from Flood, and first published Grattan's character of Chatham. Previous to the recall of the lord-lieutenant he gave Courtenay the place of barrack-master of Kinsale, and soon after his return to England appointed him secretary to the master-general of the ordnance. Though in that confidential relation to a minister, Courtenay agreed more in opinion, and was more connected with the Opposition, as may be pretty certainly inferred from his intimacy with Mr. Windham, than an oppositionist of more than common violence, who used to meet him often at the Thatched-house, as Courtenay said, to drink a glass to the health of General Washington. political opponents in times of much heat. Mr. Windham and Lord Stowell, Mr. Malone, and even Mr. Burke, continued to show kindness to him. He was frequently a guest of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of whose table he gave an amusing description [which is inserted ante, p. 78.] His parliamentary speeches, by which he was best known, did injustice to his powers. He was in truth a man of fine talents, and of various accomplishments, which rendered his conversation agreeable, as his good-nature and kind heart obtained for him the attachment of many excellent friends. But, from his speeches, strangers mistook him for a jester by profession. Every Irishman has wit, but Courtenay's drollery had not that polish and urbanity, of which pleasantry stands in greater need than perhaps any other endowment. seldom happens) he retorts in a poignant and refined vein of satire, peculiarly his own." In the same criticism he makes reparation to Mr. Canning, by owning that "his wit is keen," but he tries to excuse himself by adding, “ that it is sometimes flippant.' In 1780, Lord Townshend gave him a seat for He fell into two not easily forgotten mistakes; Tamworth, which he long retained. He some- the one was a somewhat unrefined attack on Mr. times made ineffectual attempts to vindicate his Canning, whom he mistook for a declaiming consistency in voting for the minister, on the plea schoolboy; the other was an attack on Mr. Wilthat he could no longer support the Americans berforce, whose meekness and gentleness he unafter they had received French aid; as if those, luckily regarded, before he knew him, as proofs whom he considered as exposing themselves to of want of wit. The following extract from some destruction in a righteous cause, might not lawful- criticism on parliamentary speakers written by ly seek for succour wherever they could find it. him long after, is an agreeable proof that, in the This, however, was the period of his chief success case of Mr. Wilberforce, he discovered his error, in parliament. He was then invited often to the and was willing to acknowledge the justice of the evening convivial parties of Rigby, a man of wit chastisement. He (Mr. W.) is quick and acute and pleasure he became an intimate friend of in debate, and always prompt to answer and reMr. Gerard Hamilton, a man of considerable liter-ply. When he is provoked to personality (which ature and of fastidious taste in his companions, and of Boswell, a zealous but good-natured tory. At the coalition, in 1783, he was appointed surveyor-general of the ordnance. After the expulsion of that administration, he refused to retain the office, which was handsomely offered to him by the Duke of Richmond: the letters of both do them credit. Henceforwards he attached himself to Mr. Fox, during a long and rigid exclusion from office. On one occasion he took a step not To the early connexion of Mr. Courtenay with believed to be agreeable to that great man. At a General Fraser, in the family of Lord Townsdinner at Lord Lauderdale's, in Leicester-square, hend, the writer of this note, (who is the Generin spring 1792, he put his name, with others, of al's grand-nephew) owed the beginning of a whom the present writer was one, to the Associ- kindness which lasted till Courtenay's death. ation of the "Friends of the People for the pro- Fraser was Lord Townshend's aid-de-camp at motion of Parliamentary Reform," saying, as he Quebec in 1759, where by means of some French pushed the writing materials on to his next neigh-acquired when an officer in the Scotch regiments bour, "There goes Tamworth." Mr. Fox, with difficulty, saved him from the necessity of leaving England in 1796 and in 1802, by procuring a seat for him. In 1806, Mr. Fox wished to have restored him to the ordnance, but a high influence obtained that place for another, and Courtenay, after twenty-five years of opposition, had a twelvemonth's seat at the treasury. In 1812, when aged, lonely, infirm, and nearly bed-ridden, he was rescued from cruel sufferings by the generosity of the late Lord Thanet. Even in that situation, when found at his dinner, conesting of the claw of a lobster, by one of his few visiters, he used to make his repast a subject of merriment. The happy marriages of two daughters were, for a short time, bright spots in his little sphere; bat though his life was unprosperous, it was not, thanks to his temper, unhappy. The consolations of friendship he deserved and possessed among He died at his humble lodging, in Duke-street, Portland-place, on the 21st of March, 1815, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. in the service of the states-general, he had the good fortune to render a more important service than is usually within the reach of an officer of the rank which he held at that time. When rowing down the river St. Lawrence, and on the point of landing, the night before the battle, they were observed by a French sentinel, who called to him for "the word," which the British officers did not know. Fraser answered in an audible whisper in French, "Hold your tongue; they will overhear us." The sentinel believed them to be a French reinforcement, and they effected their landing without disturbance. He went with Lord Townshend to Ireland, and he was killed in Burgoyne's army at Stillwater, near Saratoga, on the 7th October, 1777. His death has been affectingly represented by the pencil and the pen. The writer attended Mr. Courtenay's funeral, almost the only duty of a friend and an executor which circumstances left for him to perform; unless he may be allowed to consider as another of these duties the present attempt to preserve a short A generous tear will Caledonia shed? 1 "A Scotchman must be a sturdy moralist, who does not prefer Scotland to truth." Johnson's Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland.-COURTENAY. 2 The Poems of Dr. Watts were, by my recommendation, inserted in this collection; the readers of which are to impute to me whatever pleasure or weariness they may find in the perusal of Blackmore, Watts, Pomfret, and Yalden." Johnson's Life of Watts. The following specimen of their productions may be sufficient to enable the reader to judge of their respective merits: "Alas, Jerusalem! alas where 's now Thy pristine glory, thy unmatch'd renown, Eleazar's Lamentation over Jerusalem, "Before the Almighty Artist framed the sky, His first command was for thy light; He view'd the lovely birth, and bless'd it: In purple swaddling bands it struggling lay, And from thy beauteous form did first presage its own." "My cheerful soul now all the day Sits waiting here and sings; O, rather let this flesh decay, The ruins wider grow; Till, glad to see the enlarged way, [The Editor is not without some apprehensions, that he | With poignant taunt mild Shenstone's life arraigns, A sceptick once, he taught the letter'd throng 4 JOHNSON. "I would tell truth of the two Georges, or of that scoundrel, King William." Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, ante, v. i. p. 410-COURTENAY. > See his letter to Lord Thurlow, in which he seems to approve of the application (though he was not prev ously consulted), thanks his lordship for having made it, and even seems to express some degree of surprise and resentment on the proposed addition to his pension being refused.-COURTENAY. (It seems very strange. that after Sir Joshua Reynolds had received Lord Thurlow's letter of the 18th Nov. 1784, he should still have permitted Dr. Johnson and all his friends to remain 18 the belief, that the king had been applied to and had refused. See ante, p 413.-ED.] 3 He seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift. He said to-day, "I doubt if the Tale of a Tub' was his; it has so much more thinking, more knowledge, more power, more colour, than any of the works that are indisputably his. If it was his, I shall only say, he was impar sibi."-Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, p. 38. Dr. Johnson's "unaccountable prejudice against Swift" may probably be derived from the same source as Blackmore's, if we may venture to form a judgment from the panegyrick he bestows on the following groundless invective, expressly aimed at Swift, as the authour of "A Tale of a Tub," which he quotes in his life of Blackmore: "Several, in their books, have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most audacious example in the book entitled 'A Tale of a Tub. Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the authour would have received the punish-bishop Tillotson and Mr. Locke reason more philosophiment he deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for, in a protestant kingdom, zealous of their civil and religious immunities, he has not only escaped affronts, and the effects of publick resentment, but has been caressed and patronized by persons of great figure of all denominations." The malevolent dulness bigotry alone could have inspired Blackmore with 6"If (added Dr. Johnson) God had never spoken fig. uratively, we might hold that he speaks literally, when he says, This is my body."" Boswell's Tour, p. 67. Here his only objection to transubstantiation seems to rest on the style of the scripture being figurative else where as well as in this passage. Hence we may infer, that he would otherwise have believed in it. But arch cally, by asserting, that "no doctrine, however clearly expressed in scripture, is to be admitted, if it contradi the evidence of our senses:-For our evidence for the truth of revealed religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses, because, even in the first author of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evideat it inust diminish in passing from them to us, through the On Scotland's kirk he vents a bigot's gall', [Mr. medium of human testimony."-COURTENAY. Courtenay's sneer at Dr. Johnson's opinion on transubstantiation is surely unmerited. No doubt, if there were no other figurative expressions in the scriptures, this single text must have been understood literally by Dr. Johnson, or any other man of common sense; and as to what Mr. Courtenay adds about the evidence of our senses, and attributes to Mr. Locke and Archbishop Tillotson, these writers, and particularly Tillotson, appear to limit their assertion to doctrines, the subjects of which are properly within the evidence of our senses. Could Mr. Courtenay doubt that Tillotson believed in the Trinity-Yet how stands that doctrine with the mere evidence of our senses?-ED.] 1 See his conversation with Lord Auchinlock. Boswell's Tour, ante, vol. i. p. 458.-COURTENAY. 2 See the First Book of Samuel, ch. x-COURTENAY. "And I commend to thy fatherly goodness the soul of my departed wife, beseeching thee to grant her whatever is best in her present state." Johnson's Meditations.COURTENAY. "I returned home, but could not settle my mind. At last 1 read a chapter. Then went down about six or seven, and ate two cross-buns." Meditations, p. 154.— COURTENAY. "I fasted, though less rigorously than at other times. 1 by negligence poured some milk into my tea." Ibid. p. 146. Yesterday I fasted, as I have always, or commonly done, since the death of Tetty: the fast was more painful than usual."-COURTENAY. 6 PURPOSES. "To keep a journal. To begin this day (September 18th, 1766). To spend four hours in study every day, and as much more as I can. "To read a portion of scripture in Greek every Sunday. "To rise at eight.-Oct. 3d. Of all this I have done nothing." Ibid.-COURTENAY. 7 I resolved last Easter to read, within the year, the whole Bible; a great part of which I had never looked upon. Meditations -COURTENAY. 8I have never yet read the Apocrypha. When I was a boy I have read or heard Bel and the Dragon." Meditations.-COURTENAY. (It is not worth while to show that, in several of the foregoing allusions, the verse above is often a misrepresentation of the prose below, and that Mr. Courtenay plays the mere verbal critic on these expressions, while the spirit escapes him. If, indeed (as from Dr. Strahan's preface might be believed), Dr. Johnson had directed the publication of these" Meditations as an example of his own piety, or an incentive to that of others, Mr. Courtenay might have been forgiven if he had made his satire still more poignant. It is hoped, however, that, after the explanations given (ante, preface, vol. i. p. 97, and ii. p. 427, that Dr. Johnson will hereafter receive the full credit for the piety which prompted these "Meditations," without any of the ridicule or obloquy of having prepared them for publication.-Eo.] 9 See the First Book of Samuel, ch. v. and vi., in which an account is given of the punishment of the Philistines for looking into the ark.-COURTENAY. 10 The Rev. Dr. Adams, of Oxford, distinguished for his answer to David Hume's "Essay on Miracles."COURTENAY. 11 From the following letter there is reason to apprehend that Dr. Adams would not support Mr. Strahan, if he should add this to the other singular anecdotes that he has published relative to Dr. Johnson. 66 VOL. II. A coward wish, long stigmatized by fame, How had he groan'd, with sacred horrors pale, Or when Moll Tofts, by throes parturient vex'd, "Orford, 22d Oct. 1785. "MR. URBAN,-In your last month's review of books, you have asserted, that the publication of Dr. Johnson's 'Prayers and Meditations' appears to have been at the instance of Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford. This, I think, is more than you are warranted by the editor's preface to say; and is so far from being true, that Dr. Adams never saw a line of these compositions, before they appeared in print, nor ever heard from Dr. Johnson, or the editor, that any such existed. Had he been consulted about the publication, he would certainly have given his voice against it: and he therefore hopes that you will clear him, in as public a manner as you can, from being any way accessary to it. WM. ADAMS."-COURTENAY. 12 Debilen facito manu, Si sedeam cruce, sustine."-Senec. Epist. Dr. Johnson, in his last illness, is said to have declared (in the presence of Doctors H. and B.) that he would prefer a state of existence in eternal pain to annihilation.— COURTENAY. [The Editor finds no evidence of this, and the subsequent testimony of Drs. Heberden and Brocklesby inclines him to disbelieve it. It is not very clear here, whether Mr. Courtenay meant to censure Johnson for a "kindred" wish to that of Mecenas, or to praise him as a "christian saint," for aspiring after even a painful immortality; but is really of no importance. All these flippancies of Mr. Courtenay may be regretted on his own account, but they cannot affect the character of Dr. Johnson.-ED.] 13 This last comet, which appeared in the year 1680, I may well call the most remarkable one that ever appeared; since, besides the former consideration, I shall presently show, that it is no other than that very comet, which came by the earth at the time of Noah's deluge, and which was the cause of the same." Whiston's Theory of the Earth, p. 188.-COURTENAY. 14 Since 575 years appear to be the period of the comet that caused the deluge, what a learned friend, who was the occasion of my examination of this matter, suggests, will deserve to be considered; viz. Whether the story of the phoenix, that celebrated emblem of the resurrection in christian antiquity, (that it returns once after five centuries, and goes to the altar and city of the sun, and is there burnt, and another arises out of its ashes, and carries away the remains of the former, &c.) be not an allegorical representation of this comet, which returns once after five centuries, and goes down to the sun, and is there vehemently heated, and i's outward regions dissolved; yet that it flies off again, and carries away what remains after that terrible burning, &c.; and whether the conflagration and renovation of things, which some such comet may bring on the earth, be not hereby prefigured, I will not here be positive: but I own, that I do not know of any solution of this famous piece of mythology and hieroglyphics, as this seems to be, that can be compared with it." Ibid. p. 196.-COURTENAY, 15 "Tis here foretold (by Esdras) that there should be signs in the woman; and before all others this predic To him such signs, prepared by mystick grace, By grateful bards his name be ever sung, Whose sterling touch has fix'd the English tongue! Fortune's dire weight, the patron's cold disdain, "Shook off, like dew-drops from the lion's mane 1;" Unknown, unaided, in a friendless state 2, tion has been verified in the famous rabbit-woman of Surrey, in the days of King George I. This story has been so unjustly laughed out of countenance, that I must distinctly give my reasons for believing it to be true, and alleging it here as the fulfilling of this ancient prophecy 1st. The man-midwife, Mr. Howard, of Godalmin, Surrey, a person of very great honesty, skill and before us. reputation in his profession, attested it. It was believed by King George to be real; and it was also believed by my old friends, the speaker and Mr. Samuel Collet, as they told me themselves, and was generally by sober persons in the neighbourhood. Nay, Mr. Molyneux, the prince's secretary, a very inquisitive person, and my very worthy friend, assured me he had at first so great a diflidence in the truth of the fact, and was so little biassed by the other believers, even by the king himself, that he would not be satisfied till he was permitted both to see and feel the rabbit, in that very passage, whence we all come into this world."-Whiston's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 110.COURTENAY. 1 "The incumbrances of fortune were shaken from his mind, like dew-drops from the lion's mane." Johnson's Preface to his edition of Shakspeare.-COURTENAY. 2 Every reader of sensibility must be strongly affected by the following pathetic passages:-"Much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away, and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations and distant ages gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle."-"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the authour, and the world is little solicitous to know whence procceded the faults of that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow." Preface to Dr. Johnson's Dictionary.-COURTENAY, 3 See Swift's letter to Lord Oxford for the institution of an academy to improve and fix the English language. -COURTENAY. 4 The great French and Italian Dictionaries were not the productions of an individual, but were compiled by a body of academicians in each country.-COURTENAY. 5" In times and regions so disjoined from each other, In scientifick phrase affects to smile, His taste we censure, but the work we praise: Though Johnson's merits thus I freely scan, And paint the foibles of this wondrous man; Yet can I coolly read, and not admire, When learning, wit, and poetry conspire To shed a radiance o'er his moral page, And spread truth's sacred light to many an age: For all his works with innate lustre shine, Strength all his own, and energy divine: While through life's maze he darts his piercing view, His mind expansive to the object grew. In judgment keen he acts the critic's part, By reason proves the feelings of the heart; In thought profound, in nature's study wise, Shows from what source our fine sensations rise; With truth, precision, fancy's claims defines, And throws new splendour o'er the poet's lines. The source of evil, hidden still from man; When specious sophists with presumption scan that there can scarcely be imagined any communication of sentiments, either by commerce or tradition, as p vailed a general and uniform expectation of proptinę God by corporeal austerities, of anticipating his vege by voluntary inflictions, and appeasing his justice bra speedy and cheerful submission to a less penalty when a greater is incurred." Rambler, No. 110.-COURTENAY 6 The style of the "Ramblers" seems to have been formed on that of Sir Thomas Brown's Valzar Errors and Christian Morals." "But ice is water congealed by the frigidity of the air, whereby it acquireth no e form, but rather a consistence or determination of it deffluency, and amitteth not its essence, but condition of fluidity. Neither doth there any thing properly coglaciate but water, or watery humidity, for the determ nation of quicksilver is properly fixation, that of mik coagulation, and that of oil and unctuous bodies only incrassation."-Is this written by Brown or Johase?COURTENAY. [This criticism is not just, or at least t well placed. Brown is treating of scientific effects, nses learned language; any other writer would probably have done the same: the real objection is that which Mr. Courtenay states afterwards-namely, that Johass these learned words on inappropriate occasions-Ea 7 In the "Ramblers" the abstract too often occus in stead of the concrete ;-one of Dr. Johnson's peculiarities, -COURTENAY. 8 See "Victoria's Letter," Rambler, No. 133-1 w metick discipline, part of which was a regular lustration never permitted to sleep till I had passed through the cos performed with bean-flower water and may dews; y hair was perfumed with a variety of unguents, by some of which it was to be thickened, and by others to be care The softness of my hands was secured by reciented gloves, and my bosom rubbed with a pomade prepared by my mother, of virtue to discuss dimples and clear dis colorations."-COURTENAY. 9 See his admirable "Lives of the Poets," and partacularly his disquisition on metaphysical and religious poetry.-COURTENAY. 10 See his review of Soame Jennings's (Jenys) “Es on the Origin of Evil;" a masterpiece of composition, Revive Arabian tales, and vainly hope To pathless wastes, where wilder'd sages stray ; Impressive truth, in splendid fiction drest 3, Checks the vain wish, and calms the troubled breast; O'er the dark mind a light celestial throws, both for vigour of style and precision of ideas.-COURTE NAY. 1 Pope's, or rather Bolingbroke's, system was borrowed from the Arabian metaphysicians.-COURTENAY. 2 The scheme of the "Essay on Man" was given by Lord Bolingbroke to Pope.-COURTENAY. [Dr. Johnson doubted this, and there seems good reason to believe that Bolingbroke's contribution towards the Essay on Man has been greatly overstated.-ED.] See that sublime and beautiful tale, The Prince of Abyssinia," and "The Rambler," No. 65, 204, &c. &c.— COURTENAY. The world is disposed to call this a discovery of Dr. Franklin's (from his paper inserted in the "Philosophical Transactions,") but in this they are much mistaken. Pliny, Plutarch, and other naturalists were acquainted with it." Ea natura est olei, ut lucem afferat, ac tranquillat omnia, etiam mare, quo non aliud elementum implacabilius." Memoirs of the Society of Manchester. -COURTENAY. Dr. Johnson's extraordinary facility of composition is well known from many circumstances. He wrote forty pages of the "Life of Savage" in one night. He composed seventy lines of his "Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal," and wrote them down from memory, without altering a word. In the prologue on opening Drury-lane theatre, he changed but one word, and that in compliment to Mr. Garrick. Some of his "Ramblers" were written while the printer's messenger was waiting to carry the copy to the press. Many of the "Idlers" were written at Oxford; Dr. Johnson often began his task only just in time not to miss the post, and sent away the paper without reading it over.-COURTENAY. His 6 The dignified and affecting letter written by him to the king in the name of Dr. Dodd, after his condemnation, is justly and, I believe, universally admired. benevolence, indeed, was uniform and unbounded. I have been assured, that he has often been so much affected by the sight of several unfortunate women, whom he has seen almost perishing in the streets, that he has taken them to his own house; had them attended with care and tenderness; and, on their recovery, clothed, and placed them in a way of life to earn their bread by honest industry.-COURTENAY. [See ante, p. 395. Such a circumstance may have happened once, but it is absurd to represent it as habitual as Mr. Courtenay has done. Dr. Johnson's house never was without the superintendence of a respectable lady, who, of course, would not have tolerated any frequent practice of such irregular charity.-ED.] Snatch'd from disease, and want's abandon'd crew, Despair and anguish from their victims flew : Hope's soothing balm into their bosoms stole, And tears of penitence restored the soul. But hark, he sings! the strain even Pope ad mires; Indignant Virtue her own bard inspires; name. 9 Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands, How few distinguish'd of the studious train 7" London," a Satire, and "The Vanity of Human Wishes," are both imitated from Juvenal. On the publication of "London" in 1738, Mr. Pope was so much struck by it, that he desired Mr. Dodsley, his bookseller, to find out the author. Dodsley having sought him in vain for some time, Mr. Pope said he would very soon be deterre. Afterwards Mr. Richardson, the painter, found out Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Pope recommended him to Lord Gower.-COURTENAY. 8 See the prologue spoken by Mr. Garrick in 1747, on the opening of Drury-lane theatre.-COURTENAY. 9 Inter ignote strepitus loquela." Ode to Mrs Thrale-COURTENAY. See ante, vol. i. p. 375-ED.] 10" A good continued speech (says Bacon in his Essays") without a good speech of interlocution, shows slowness; and a good reply, or second speech, without a good settled speech, showeth shallowness and weakness. As we see in beasts, that those that are weakest in the course, are yet nimblest in their turn; as it is be twixt the greyhound and the hare." If this observation be just, Dr. Johnson is an exception to the rule; for he was certainly as strong "in the course, as nimble in the turn;" as ready in "reply," as in "a settled speech.”— COURTENAY. (Sce ante, vol. i. p. 275, n, Lord St. |