give you pleasure, unless it be that I have forborne to tell you my opinion of your Account of Corsica.' I believe my opinion, if you think well of my judgment, might have given you pleasure; but when it is considered how much vanity is excited by praise, I am not sure that it would have done you good. Your History is like other histories, but your Journal is in a very high degree curious and delightful. There is between the history and the journal that difference which there will always be found between notions borrowed from without, and notions generated within. Your history was copied from books; your journal rose out of your own experience and observation. You express images which operated strongly upon yourself, and you have impressed them with great force upon your readers. I know not whether I could name any narrative by which curiosity is better excited, or better gratified. "I am glad that you are going to be married; and as I wish you well in things of less importance, wish you well with proportionate ardour in this crisis of your life. What I can contribute to your happiness I should be very unwilling to withhold; for I have always loved and valued you, and shall love you and value you still more as you become more regular and useful: effects which a happy marriage will hardly fail to produce. "I do not find that I am likely to come back very soon from this place. I shall, perhaps, stay put us under the fetters of perpetual restraint. The authour of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superiour genius, when he considers that by those who know him only as an authour he never ceases to be respected. Such an authour, when in his hours of gloom and discontent, may have the consolation to think that his writings are, at that very time, giving pleasure to numbers; and such an authour may cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages." a fortnight longer; and a fortnight is a long time to a lover absent from his mistress. Would a fortnight ever have an end? 66 I am, DEAR SIR, "Your most affectionate humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." "Brighthelmstone, Sept. 9, 1769." After his return to town, we met frequently, and I continued the practice of making notes of his conversation, though not with so much assiduity as I wish I had done. At this time, indeed, I had a sufficient excuse for not being able to appropriate so much time to my journal; for General Paoli, after Corsica had been overpowered by the monarchy of France, was now no longer at the head of his brave countrymen, but having with difficulty escaped from his native island, had sought an asylum in Great Britain; and it was my duty, as well as my pleasure, to attend much upon him. Such particulars of Johnson's conversation, at this period, as I have committed to writing I shall here introduce, without any strict attention to methodical arrangement. Sometimes short notes of different days shall be blended together, and sometimes a day may seem important enough to be separately distinguished. He said, he would not have Sunday kept with rigid severity and gloom, but with a gravity and simplicity of behaviour. I told him that David Hume had made a short collection of Scotticisms. "I wonder (said Johnson) that he should find them 1." He would not admit the importance of the question concerning the legality of general war [The first edition of Hume's History of England was full of Scotticisms, many of which he corrected in subsequent editions. M.] rants. "Such a power (he observed) must be vested in every government, to answer particular cases of necessity; and there can be no just complaint but when it is abused, for which those who administer government must be answerable. It is a matter of such indifference, a matter about which the people care so very little, that were a man to be sent over Britain to offer them an exemption from it at a halfpenny a piece, very few would purchase it." This was a specimen of that laxity of talking which I had heard him fairly acknowledge; for, surely, while the power of granting general warrants was supposed to be legal, and the apprehension of them hung over our heads, we did not possess that security of freedom congenial to our happy constitution, and which, by the intrepid exertions of Mr. Wilkes, has been happily established. He said, "The duration of Parliament, whether for seven years or the life of the King, appears to me so immaterial that I would not give half a crown to turn the scale one way or the other. The habeas corpus is the single advantage which our government has over that of other countries." On the 30th of September we dined together at the Mitre. I attempted to argue for the superiour happiness of the savage life, upon the usual fanciful topicks. JOHNSON. "Sir, there can be nothing more false. The savages have no bodily advantages beyond those of civilized men. They have not better health; and as to care or mental uneasiness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, sir; you are not to talk such paradox: let me have no more on't. entertain, far less can it instruct. boddo, one of your Scotch Judges, talked a great deal of such nonsense. I suffered him; but I will not suffer you." BOSWELL. "But, sir, does It cannot Lord Mon JOHNSON. not Rousseau talk such nonsense?" "True, sir, but Rousseau knows he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for staring at him." BOSWELL. "How so, sir?" JOHNSON. "Why, sir, a man who talks nonsense so well must know that he is talking nonsense. But I am afraid, (chuckling and laughing), Monboddo does not know that he is talking nonsense"." BOSWELL. "Is it wrong then, sir, to affect singularity in order to make people stare?" JOHNSON. "Yes, if you do it by propagating errour: and, indeed, it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a general inclination to make people stare; and every wise man has himself to cure of it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare by doing better than others, why, make them stare till they stare their eyes out. But consider 6 how easy it is to make people stare by being absurd. I may do it by going into a drawingroom without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in The Spectator,' who had a commission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a nightcap. Now, sir, abstractedly, the nightcap was best: but relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the boys run after him." Talking of a London life, he said, "The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit than in all the rest of the kingdom." Boswell. 2 His Lordship having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of Dr. Johnson, in my company, I on one occasion during the lifetime of my illustrious friend, could not refrain from retaliation, and repeated to him this saying. He has since published I don't know how many pages in one of his curious books, attempting, in much anger, but with pitiful effect, to persuade mankind that my illustrious friend was not the great and good man which they esteemed and ever will esteem him to be. "The only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live from one another." JOHNSON. "Yes, sir; but that is occasioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the other advantages. BOSWELL. "Sometimes I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desert." JOHNSON. "Sir, you have desert enough in Scotland." Although I had promised myself a great deal of instructive conversation with him on the conduct of the married state, of which I had then a near prospect, he did not say much upon that topick. Mr. Seward heard him once say, that "a man has a very bad chance for happiness in that state, unless he marries a woman of very strong and fixed principles of religion." He maintained to me, contrary to the common notion, that a woman would not be the worse wife for being learned; in which, from all that I have observed of Artemisias, I humbly differed from him. That a woman should be sensible and well informed, I allow to be a great advantage; and think that Sir Thomas Overbury3, in his rude versification, has very judiciously pointed out that degree of intelligence which is to be desired in a female companion: "Give me, next good, an understanding wife, By nature wise, not learned by much art; Some knowledge on her side will all my life Besides, her inborne virtue fortifie; They are most firmly good who best know why." When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for marrying a second time, as it showed a disregard of his first wife, he said, "Not at all, On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife 3 "A Wife," a poem, 1614. sir. VOL. II. G |