442 Love and marriage. [A.D. 1762. which arose from the participation of unmingled pleasure and successive amusement. A woman, we are sure, will not be always fair; we are not sure she will always be virtuous: and man cannot retain through life that respect and assiduity by which he pleases for a day or for a month. I do not, however, pretend to have discovered that life has any thing more to be desired than a prudent and virtuous marriage; therefore know not what counsel to give you. 'If you can quit your imagination of love and greatness, and leave your hopes of preferment and bridal raptures to try once more the fortune of literature and industry, the way through France is now open'. We flatter ourselves that we shall cultivate, with great diligence, the arts of peace; and every man will be welcome among us who can teach us any thing we do not know. For your part, you will find all your old friends willing to receive you. 'Reynolds still continues to increase in reputation and in riches. Miss Williams, who very much loves you, goes on in the old way. Miss Cotterel is still with Mrs. Porter. Miss Charlotte is married to Dean Lewis, and has three children. Mr. Levet has married a street-walker'. But the gazette of my narration must now arrive to tell you, that Bathurst went physician to the army, and died at the Havannah'. 'I know not whether I have not sent you word that Huggins' and Richardson® are both dead. When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed for ever. 'I pray God to bless you, and am, Sir, 'Write soon.' 'Your most affectionate humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' ' The preliminaries of peace between England and France had been signed on Nov. 3 of this year. Ann. Reg. v. 246. Of Baretti's Travels through Spain, &c., Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale - That Baretti's book would please you all I made no doubt. I know not whether the world has ever seen such Travels before. Those whose lot it is to ramble can seldom write, and those who know how to write very seldom ramble.' Piozzi Letters, i. 32. Huggins had quarrelled with Johnson and Baretti (Croker's Boswell, 129, note). See also post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. • See ante, p. 428, Aetat. 54.] Johnson's LIFE OF COLLINS. 443 1763 ÆTAT. 54.]-IN 1763 he furnished to The Poetical Calendar, published by Fawkes and Woty, a character of Collins*, which he afterwards ingrafted into his entire life of that admirable poet', in the collection of lives which he wrote for the body of English poetry, formed and published by the booksellers of London. His account of the melancholy depression with which Collins was severely afflicted, and which brought him to his grave, is, I think, one of the most tender and interesting passages in the whole series of his writings'. He also favoured Mr. Hoole with the Dedication of his translation of Tasso to the Queen,* which is so happily conceived and elegantly expressed, that I cannot but point it out to the peculiar notice of my readers'. 1 Cowper, writing in 1784 about Collins, says :-' Of whom I did not know that he existed till I found him there'-in the Lives of the Poets, that is to say. Southey's Cowper, v. 11. 'To this passage Johnson, nearly twenty years later, added the following (Works, viii. 403) :—' Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse, and whom I yet remember with tenderness.' ''MADAM, To approach the high and the illustrious has been in all ages the privilege of Poets; and though translators cannot justly claim the same honour, yet they naturally follow their authours as attendants; and I hope that in return for having enabled TASSO to diffuse his fame through the British dominions, I may be introduced by him to the presence of YOUR MAJESTY. TASSO has a peculiar claim to YOUR MAJESTY's favour, as follower and panegyrist of the House of Este, which has one common ancestor with the House of HANOVER; and in reviewing his life it is not easy to forbear a wish that he had lived in a happier time, when he might, among the descendants of that illustrious family, have found a more liberal and potent patronage. I cannot but observe, MADAM, how unequally reward is proportioned to merit, when I reflect that the happiness which was withheld from TASSO is reserved for me; and that the poem which once hardly procured to its authour the countenance of the Princess of Ferrara, has attracted to its translator the favourable notice of a BRITISH QUEEN. Had this been the fate of TASSO, he would have been able to have 444 Boswell meets Johnson. [A.D. 1763. This is to me a memorable year; for in it I had the happiness to obtain the acquaintance of that extraordinary man whose memoirs I am now writing; an acquaintance which I shall ever esteem as one of the most fortunate circumstances in my life. Though then but two-and-twenty', I had for celebrated the condescension of YOUR MAJESTY in nobler language, but could not have felt it with more ardent gratitude, than -BOSWELL. MADAM, Your MAJESTY'S Most faithful and devoted servant.' 'Young though Boswell was, he had already tried his hand at more than one kind of writing. In 1761 he had published anonymously an Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady, with an Epistle from Menalcas to Lycidas. (Edinburgh, Donaldson.) The Elegy is full of such errors as 'Thou liv'd,' 'Thou led,' but is recommended by a puffing preface and three letters-one of which is signed J— B—. About the same time he brought out a piece that was even more impudent. It was An Ode to Tragedy. By a gentleman of Scotland. (Edinburgh, Donaldson, 1761. Price sixpence.) In the 'Dedication to James Boswell, Esq.,' he says:- I have no intention to pay you compliments— To entertain agreeable notions of one's own character is a great incentive to act with propriety and spirit. But I should be sorry to contribute in any degree to your acquiring an excess of self-sufficiency ... I own indeed that when ... to display my extensive erudition, I have quoted Greek, Latin, and French sentences one after another with astonishing celerity; or have got into my Old-hock humour and fallen a-raving about princes and lords, knights and geniuses, ladies of quality and harpsichords; you, with a peculiar comic smile, have gently reminded me of the importance of a man to himself, and slily left the room with the witty Dean lying open at-P.P. clerk of this parish [Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xxiii. 142]. I, Sir, who enjoy the pleasure of your intimate acquaintance, know that many of your hours of retirement are devoted to thought.' The Ode is serious. He describes himself as having 'A soul by nature formed to feel Grief sharper than the tyrant's steel, From ancient lore's remembrance brought.' In the winter of 1761-2 he had helped as a contributor and part-editor in bringing out a Collection of Original Poems. (Boswell and Erskine's Letters, p. 27.) His next publication, also anonymous, was The Cub several Aetat. 54.] Dictionary Johnson. 445 several years read his works with delight and instruction, and had the highest reverence for their authour, which had grown up in my fancy into a kind of mysterious veneration', by figuring to myself a state of solemn elevated abstraction, in which I supposed him to live in the immense metropolis of London. Mr. Gentleman, a native of Ireland, who passed some years in Scotland as a player, and as an instructor in the English language, a man whose talents and worth were depressed by misfortunes', had given me a representation of the figure and manner of DICTIONARY JOHNSON! as he was then generally called'; and during my first visit to London, at Newmarket, written, as the Preface says, 'in the Newmarket Coffee Room, in which the author, being elected a member of the Jockey Club, had the happiness of passing several sprightly good-humoured evenings.' It is very poor stuff. In the winter of 1762–3 he joined in writing the Critical Strictures, mentioned post, June 25, 1763. Just about the time that he first met Johnson he and his friend the Hon. Andrew Erskine had published in their own names a very impudent little volume of the correspondence that had passed between them. Of this I published an edition with notes in 1879, together with Boswell's Journal of a Tour to Corsica. (Messrs. Thos. De La Rue & Co.) 1 Boswell, in 1768, in the preface to the third edition of his Corsica described 'the warmth of affection and the dignity of veneration' with which he never ceased to think of Mr. Johnson. In the Garrick Corres. (ii. 83) there is a confused letter from this unfortunate man, asking Garrick for the loan of five guineas. He had a scheme for delivering dramatic lectures at Eton and Oxford; 'but,' he added, my externals have so unfavourable an appearance that I cannot produce myself with any comfort or hope of success.' Garrick sent him five guineas. He had been a Major in the army, an actor, and dramatic author. For the last seven years of his life he struggled under sickness and want to a degree of uncommon misery.' Gent. Mag. for 1784, p. 959. 'As great men of antiquity such as Scipio Africanus had an epithet added to their names, in consequence of some celebrated action, so my illustrious friend was often called DICTIONARY JOHNSON, from that wonderful atchievement of genius and labour, his Dictionary of the English Language; the merit of which I contemplate with more and more admiration. BoSWELL. In like manner we have Hermes Harris, Pliny Melmoth,' Demosthenes Taylor,' 'Persian Jones,' 446 Johnson's quarrel with Sheridan. [A.D. 1763. which was for three months in 1760, Mr. Derrick the poet', who was Gentleman's friend and countryman, flattered me with hopes that he would introduce me to Johnson, an honour of which I was very ambitious. But he never found an opportunity; which made me doubt that he had promised to do what was not in his power; till Johnson some years afterwards told me, 'Derrick, Sir, might very well have introduced you. I had a kindness for Derrick, and am sorry he is dead.' In the summer of 1761 Mr. Thomas Sheridan was at Edinburgh, and delivered lectures upon the English Language and Publick Speaking to large and respectable audiences. I was often in his company, and heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson's extraordinary knowledge, talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed sayings, describe his particularities, and boast of his being his guest sometimes till two or three in the morning. At his house I hoped to have many opportunities of seeing the sage, as Mr. Sheridan obligingly assured me I should not be disappointed. When I returned to London in the end of 1762, to my surprise and regret I found an irreconcileable difference had taken place between Johnson and Sheridan. A pension of two hundred pounds a year had been given to Sheridan. Johnson, who, as has been already mentioned, thought slightingly of Sheridan's art, upon hearing that he was also pensioned, exclaimed, 'What! have they given him a pension? Then it is time for me to give up mine.' Whether this proceeded from a momentary indignation, as if it were an affront to his exalted merit that a player should be rewarded in the same manner with him, or was the sudden effect of a fit of peevishness, it was unluckily said, and, indeed, cannot be justified. Mr. Sheridan's pension was granted to him not as a player, but as a sufferer in the cause of government, when 'Abyssinian Bruce,' 'Microscope Baker,' 'Leonidas Glover,' Hesiod Cooke,' and 'Corsica Boswell.' 1 1 See ante, p. 144. He introduced Boswell to Davies, who was the immediate introducer.' Post, under June 18, 1783, note. he |