Etat. 65] JOHNSON'S INTEREST IN ERSE 479 myself, lest you should suspect me of negligence in the pressing business which I find recommended to my care, and which I knew nothing of till now, when all care is vain.* "In the distribution of my books I purpose to follow your advice, adding such as shall occur to me. I am not pleased with your notes of remembrance added to your names, for I hope I shall not easily forget them. "I have received four Erse books, without any direction, and suspect that they are intended for the Oxford library. If that is the intention, I think it will be proper to add the metrical Psalms, and whatever else is printed in Erse, that the present may be complete. The donor's name should be told. "I wish you could have read the book before it was printed, but our distance does not easily permit it. 66 "I am sorry Lord Hailes does not intend to publish Walton; I am afraid it will not be done so well, if it be done at all. "I purpose now to drive the book forward. Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, and let me hear often from you. This tour to Wales, which was made in company with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, though it no doubt contributed to his health and amusement, did not give an occasion to such a discursive exercise of his mind as our tour to the Hebrides. I do not find that he kept any journal or notes of what he saw there. All that I heard him say of * I had written to him to request his interposition in behalf of a convict, who I thought was very unjustly condemned. † [Boswell was mistaken in supposing that Johnson kept no Journal of his Welsh tour; on the contrary, OLIVER GOLDSMITH (b. 1728, d. 1774) Goldsmith is here depicted in the act of writing at a round table; he is dressed in claret-coloured coat, ruffles, and a black cap. The photograph from which this characteristic portrait of Goldsmith was taken was very dark, but it was the only one available. it was that "instead of bleak and barren mountains, there were green and fertile ones; and that one of the castles in Wales would contain all the castles that he had seen in Scotland." Parliament having been dissolved, and his friend Mr. Thrale, who was a steady supporter of Government, having again to encounter the storm of a contested election, he wrote a short political pamphlet, entitled "The Patriot," [*] addressed to the electors of Great Britain; a title which, to factious men who consider a patriot only as an opposer of the measures of government, will appear strangely misapplied. It was, however, written with energetic vivacity; and, except those passages in which it endeavours to vindicate the glaring outrage of the House of Commons in the case of the Middlesex election, and to justify the attempt to reduce our fellowsubjects in America to unconditional submission, it contained an admirable display of the properties of a real patriot, in the original and genuine sense; a sincere, steady, rational, and unbiassed friend in the interests and prosperity of his king and country. It must be acknowledged, however, that both in this and his two former pamphlets, there was, amidst many powerful arguments, not only a considerable portion of sophistry, but a contemptuous ridicule of his opponents, which was very provoking. "SIR, 66 TO MR. PERKINS.* "You may do me a very great favour. Mrs. Williams, a gentlewoman whom you may have seen at Mr. Thrale's, is a petitioner for Mr. Hetherington's charity : petitions are this day issued at Christ's Hospital. he “I am a bad manager of business in a crowd; and if I should send a mean man, may be put away without his errand. I must therefore entreat that you will go, and ask for a petition for Anna Williams, whose paper of inquiries was delivered with answers at the counting-house of the hospital on Thursday, the 20th. My servant will attend you thither, and bring the petition home when you have it. "The petition, which they are to give to us, is a form which they deliver to every petitioner, and which the petitioner is afterwards to fill up, and return to them again. This we must have, or we cannot proceed according to their directions. You need, I believe, only ask for a petition; if they inquire for whom you ask, you can tell them. "I beg pardon for giving you this trouble; but it is a matter of great importance. "October 25, 1774." "I am, Sir, "Your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON. he kept a minute diary, of the same kind as that which Boswell published of his subsequent visit to Paris. The diary was preserved by Francis Barber, and first published in 1816 by Mr. Duppa. Croker reprinted the Journal in his edition of Boswell.] * Mr. Perkins was for a number of years the worthy superintendent of Mr. Thrale's great brewery, and after his death became one of the proprietors of it; and now resides in Mr. Thrale's house in Southwark, which was the scene of so many literary meetings, and in which he continues the liberal hospitality for which it was eminent. Dr. Johnson esteemed him much. He hung up in the counting-house a fine proof of the admirable mezzotinto of Dr. Johnson, by Doughty; and when Mrs. Thrale asked him, somewhat flippantly, "Why do you put him up in the counting-house? He answered, Because, Madam, I wish to have one wise man there.' Sir (said Johnson), I thank you. It is a very handsome compliment, and I believe you speak sincerely." " Etat. 65] "DEAR SIR,— THE PATRIOT " 66 TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. 481 "THERE has appeared lately in the papers an account of a boat overset between Mull and Ulva, in which many passengers were lost, and among them Maclean of Col. We, you know, were once drowned; * I hope, therefore, that the story is either wantonly or erroneously told. Pray satisfy me by the next post. I have printed two hundred and forty pages. I am able to do nothing much worth doing to dear Lord Hailes's book. I will, however, send back the sheets; and hope, by degrees, to answer all your reasonable expectations. 66 "Mr. Thrale has happily surmounted a very violent and acrimonious opposition; but all joys have their abatement: Mrs. Thrale has fallen from her horse, and hurt herself very much. The rest of our friends, I believe, are well. My compliments to Mrs. Boswell. This letter, which shows his tender concern for an amiable young gentleman to whom he had been very much obliged in the Hebrides, I have inserted according to its date, though before receiving it I had informed him of the melancholy event, that the young Laird of Col was unfortunately drowned. "DEAR SIR, 66 TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "LAST night I corrected the last page of our Journey to the Hebrides.' The printer has detained it all this time, for I had, before I went into Wales, written all except two sheets. 'The Patriot' was called for by my political friends on Friday, was written on Saturday, and I have heard little of it. So vague are conjectures at a distance.† As soon as I can, I will take care that copies be sent to you, for I would wish that they might be given before they are bought; but I am afraid that Mr. Strahan will send to you and to the booksellers at the same time. Trade is as diligent as courtesy. I have mentioned all that you recommended. Pray make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, and the younglings. The club, has, I think, not yet met. 66 'Tell me, and tell me honestly, what you think and what others say of our travels. Shall we touch the Continent? + Nov. 26, 1774." "I am, dear Sir, "Your most humble servant, * In the newspapers. † Alluding to a passage in a letter of mine, where, speaking of his " Journey to the Hebrides," I say, "But has not The Patriot' been an interruption, by the time taken to write it, and the time luxuriously spent in listening to its applauses ? We had projected a voyage together up the Baltic, and talked of visiting some of the more northern regions. 31-(2279) In his manuscript diary of this year, there is the following entry : "Nov. 27. Advent Sunday. I considered that this day, being the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, was proper time for a new course of life. I began to read the Greek Testament regularly at 160 verses every Sunday. This day I began the Acts. "In this week I read Virgil's 'Pastorals.' I learned to repeat the Pollio and Gallus. I read carelessly the first Georgic.' Such evidences of his unceasing ardour, both for "divine and human lore," when advanced into his sixty-fifth year, and notwithstanding his many disturbances from disease, must make us at once honour his spirit, and lament that it should be so grievously clogged by its material tegument. It is remarkable that he was very fond of the precision which calculation produces. Thus we find in one of his manuscript diaries, " 12 pages in 4to. Gr. Test. and 30 pages in Beza's folio, comprise the whole in forty days." "DEAR SIR, 66 DR. JOHNSON TO JOHN HOOLE, ESQ. "I HAVE returned your play,* which you will find underscored with red, where there was a word which I did not like. The red will be washed off with a little water. "The plot is so well framed, the intricacy so artful, and the disentanglement so easy, the suspense so affecting, and the passionate parts so properly interposed, that I have no doubt of its success. * Cleonice. ' Written by John Hoole, the translator of Tasso and Ariosto. The play was produced at Covent Garden in March, 1775. CHAPTER XXV-1775 JOHNSON AND MACPHERSON Johnson and Mrs. Charlotte Lennox-His Preface to Baretti's Easy Lessons-Correspondence with Boswell-Questions the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems-His Letter to James Macpherson-His Personal Courage-Defeats Foote's Intended Mimicry—“ Journey to the Western Islands," Published-The Ossian Controversy. 66 THE first effort of his pen, in 1775, was, Proposals for publishing the Works of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox,"* [f] in three volumes quarto. In his diary, January 2, I find this entry: "Wrote Charlotte's Proposals.' But, indeed, the internal evidence would have been quite sufficient. Her claim to the favour of the public was thus enforced : "Most of the pieces, as they appeared singly, have been read with approbation, perhaps above their merits, but of no great advantage to the writer. She hopes, *[" Mrs. Lennox, a lady now well known to the literary world, had written a novel entitled "The Life of Harriot Stuart,' which in the spring of 1751 was ready for publication. One evening at the [Ivy Lane] Club, Johnson proposed to us the celebrating the birth of Mrs. Lennox's first literary child, as he called her book, by a whole night spent in festivity. Upon his mentioning it to me, I told him I had never sat up a whole night in my life; but he, continuing to press me, and saying that I should find great delight in it, I, as did all the rest of the company, consented. The place appointed was the Devil Tavern, and there, about the hour of eight, Mrs. Lennox and her husband, and a lady of her acquaintance still [1785] living, as also the Club, and friends to the number of nearly twenty assembled. The supper was elegant, and Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an authoress, and had written verses; and, further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not until he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows. The night passed, as must be imagined, in pleasant conversation and harmless mirth, intermingled at different periods with the refreshments of coffee and tea. About five, Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had only been lemonade; but the far greater part of the company had deserted the colours of Bacchus, and were with difficulty rallied to partake of a second refreshment of coffee, which was scarcely ended when the day began to dawn. This phenomenon began to put us in mind of our reckoning; but the waiters were all so overcome with sleep that it was two hours before a bill could be had, and it was not till near eight that the creaking of the street door gave the signal for our departure."-Hawkins.] THE PATRIOT. Addreffed to the ELECTORS of GREAT BRITAIN. TREY bawl for Freedom in their fenfelefs tnood, LONDON: Printed for T. CADELL, in the Strand, Facsimile title-page (reduced) of one of Johnson's anonymous political pamphlets |