CHAPTER XXI.

1765-1767.

Boswell's Thesis-Study of the Law-Rash Vows-Streatham-Oxford-London Improve. ments-Dedications-Mrs. Williams's Miscellanies-Mr. William Drummond-Translation of the Bible into the Gaelic-Case of Heely-Dr. Robertson-Cuthbert Shaw-"Tom Hervey " -Johnson's Interview with King George III.-Warburton and Lowth-Lord Lyttleton's History-Dr. Hill-Literary Journals-Visit to Lichfield-Death of Catherine ChambersLexiphanes-Mrs. Aston.

AFTER I had been some time in Scotland, I mentioned to him in a letter that "On my first return to my native country, after some years of absence, I was told of a vast number of my acquaintance who were all gone to the land of forgetfulness, and I found myself like a man stalking over a field of battle, who every moment perceives some one lying dead." I complained of irresolution, and mentioned my having made a vow as a security for good conduct. I wrote to him again without being able to move his indolence : nor did I hear from him till he had received a copy of my inaugural Exercise, or Thesis in Civil Law, which I published at my admission as an Advocate, as is the custom in Scotland. He then wrote to me as follows:

LETTER 100.

TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

"London, August 10, 1766.

"DEAR SIR,-The reception of your Thesis put me in mind of my debt to you. Why did you . . . .?1 I will punish you for it, by telling you that your Latin wants correction. In the beginning, Spei alteræ, not to urge that

The passage omitted alluded to a private transaction.

2 This censure of my Latin relates to the dedication, which was as follows:-"Viro nobilissimo, ornatissimo, Joanni, Vicecomiti Mountstuart, atavis edito regibus, excelsæ familiæ de Bute spei altera; labente seculo, quum homines nullius originis genus æquare opibus aggrediunter, sanguinis antiqui et illustris semper memori, natalium splendorem virtutibus augenti: ad publica populi comitia jam legato; in optimatium vero Magnæ Britanniæ senatu, jure hæreditario, olim consessuro: vim insitam variâ doctrinâ promovente, nec tamen se ven

it should be primæ, is not grammatical; alteræ should be alteri. In the next line you seem to use genus absolutely, for what we call family, that is, for illustrious extraction, I doubt without authority. Homines nullius originis, for nullis orti majoribus, or nullo loco nati, is, as I am afraid, barbarous.—Ruddiman is dead.

I have now vexed you enough, and will try to please you. Your resolution to obey your father I sincerely approve; but do not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility by vows; they will sometime leave a thorn in your mind, which you will, perhaps, never be able to extract or eject. Take this warning; it is of great importance.

1

"The study of the law is what you very justly term it, copious and generous; and in adding your name to its professors, you have done exactly what I always wished, when I wished you best. I hope that you will continue to pursue it vigorously and constantly. You gain, at least, what is no small advantage, security from those troublesome and wearisome discontents, which are always obtruding themselves upon a mind vacant, unemployed, and undetermined.

"You ought to think it no small inducement to diligence and perseverance, that they will please your father. We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty.

"Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent: deliberation which those who begin it by prudence, and continue it with subtilty, must, after long expense of thought, conclude by chance. To prefer one future mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires faculties which it has not pleased our creator to give us.

"If, therefore, the profession you have chosen has some unexpected inconveniences, console yourself by reflecting that no profession is without them; and that all the importunities and perplexities of business are softness and luxury, compared with the incessant cravings of vacancy, and the unsatisfactory expedients of idleness.

'Hæc sunt quæ nostrâ potui te voce monere;
Vade, age.'

"As to your History of Corsica, you have no materials which others have not, or may not have. You have, somehow or other, warmed your imagina tion. I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.

ditante, prædito: priscâ fide, animo liberrimo, et morum elegantiâ insigni: in Italiæ visitandæ itinere socio suo honoratissimo: hasce jurisprudentiæ primitias, devinctissimæ amicitia et observantiæ, monumentum, D. D. C. Q. Jacobus Boswell."

1 This alludes to the first sentence of the Prooemium of my Thesis. "Jurisprudentiæ studio nullum uberius, nullum generosius: in legibus enim agitandis, populorum mores, variasque fortunæ vices ex quib:is leges oriuntur, contemplari simul solemus."

Mind your own affairs, and leave the Corsicans to theirs.—I am, your most humble servant,

dear Sir,

LETTER 101.

"SAM. JOHNSON."

TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

"Auchinlech, Nov. 6, 1766.

"MUCH ESTEEMED AND DEAR SIR,-I plead not guilty to

'Having thus, I hope, cleared myself of the charge brought against me, I presume you will not be displeased if I escape the punishment which you have decreed for me unheard. If you have discharged the arrows of criticism against an innocent man, you must rejoice to find they have missed him, or have not been pointed so as to wound him.

"To talk no longer in allegory, I am, with all deference, going to offer a few observations in defence of my Latin, which you have found fault with. "You think I should have used spei primæ instead of spei alteræ. Spes is, indeed, often used to express something on which we have a future dependence, as in Virg. Eclog. i. 1. 14.—

modo namque gemellos

Spem gregis, ah! silice in nudâ connixa reliquit :'

and in Georg. iii. I. 473.—

'Spemque gregemque simul,'

for the lambs and the sheep. Yet it is also used to express anything on which we have a present dependence, and is well applied to a man of distinguished influence,- —our support, our refuge, our præsidium, as Horace calls Mæcenas. So, Eneid xii. 1. 57, Queen Amata addresses her son-in-law, Turnus :--' spes tu nunc una:' and he was then no future hope, for she adds,

decus imperiumque Latini

Te penes ;'

Now I con

which might have been said of my Lord Bute some years ago. sider the present Earl of Bute to be 'Excelsæ familiæ de Bute spes prima;' and my Lord Mountstuart, as his eldest son, to be 'spes altera. So in Æneid xii. 1. 168, after having mentioned Pater Æneas, who was the present spes, the reigning spes, as my German friends would say, the spes prima, the poet adds,

'Et juxta Ascanius, magnæ spes altera Romæ.'

“You think altera ungrammatical, and you tell me it should have been alteri.

1 The passage omitted explained the transaction to which the preceding letter had alluded.

You must recollect, that in old times alter was declined regularly; and when the ancient fragments preserved in the Juris Civilis Fontes were written, it was certainly declined in the way that I use it. This, I should think, may protect a lawyer who writes altera in a dissertation upon part of his own science. But as I could hardly venture to quote fragments of old law to so classical a man as Mr. Johnson, I have not made an accurate search into these remains, to find examples of what I am able to produce in poetical composition. We find in Plaut. Rudens, act iii. scene 4,—

'Nam huic alteræ patria quæ sit profecto nescio.'

Plautus is, to be sure, an old comic writer; but in the days of Scipio and Lelius, we find Terent. Heautontim. act ii. scene 3,

— hoc ípsa in itinere altera Dum narrat, forte audivi.'

"You doubt my having authority for using genus absolutely, for what we call family, that is, for illustrious extraction. Now I take genus in Latin to have much the same signification with birth in English; both in their primary meaning expressing simply descent, but both made to stand kaт, ěžoxηv for noble descent. Genus is thus used in Hor. lib. ii. Sat. v. l. 8,—

'Et genus et virtus, nisi cum re, vilior algâ est.'

And in lib. i. Epist. vi. 1. 37,

'Et genus et formam Regina Pecunia donat.'

And in the celebrated contest between Ajax and Ulysses, Ovid's Metamorph. lib. xiii. 1. 140,

'Nam genus et proavos, et quæ non fecimus ipsi,

Vix ea nostra voco.'

"Homines nullius originis, for nullis orti majoribus or nullo loco nati, is, 'you are afraid, barbarous.'

"Origo is used to signify extraction, as in Virg. Æneid i. 286,

'Nascetur pulchrâ Trojanus origine Cæsar:'

and in Eneid x. I. 618,

'Ille tamen nostrâ deducit origine nomen.'

and as nullus is used for obscure, is it not in the genius of the Latin language to write nullius originis, for obscure extraction?

"I have defended myself as well as I could.

Might I venture to differ from you with regard to the utility of vows? I

am sensible that it would be very dangerous to make vows rashly, and without a due consideration. But I cannot help thinking that they may often be of great advantage to one of a variable judgment and irregular inclination. I always remember a passage in one of your letters to our Italian friend Baretti; where, talking of the monastic life, you say you do not wonder that serious men should put themselves under the protection of a religious order, when they have found how unable they are to take care of themselves. For my own part, without affecting to be a Socrates, I am sure I have a more than ordinary struggle to maintain with the Evil Principle; and all the methods I can devise are little enough to keep me tolerably steady in the paths of rectitude. "I am ever, with the highest veneration, your affectionate humble servant, "JAMES BOSWELL."

It appears from Johnson's diary, that he was this year at Mr. Thrale's,' from before Midsummer till after Michaelmas, and that he afterwards passed a month at Oxford. He had then contracted a great intimacy with Mr. Chambers of that University, afterwards Sir Robert Chambers, one of the Judges in India.

He published nothing this year in his own name; but the noble Dedication to the King, of Gwyn's "London and Westminster Improved," was written by him; and he furnished the Preface,† and several of the pieces, which composed a volume of Miscellanies by Mrs. Anna Williams, the blind lady who had an asylum in his house. Of these, there are his "Epitaph on Philips ;"* ."*"Trans

1 In the year 1766, Mr. Johnson's health grew so bad, that he could not stir out of his room, in the court he inhabited, for many weeks together-I think months. Mr. Thrale's attentions and my own now became so acceptable to him, that he often lamented to us the horrible condition of his mind, which he said was nearly distracted; and though he charged us to make him odd solemn promises of secrecy on so strange a subject, yet when we waited on him one morning, and heard him, in the most pathetic terms, beg the prayers of Dr. Delap [Rector of Lewes] who had left him as we came in, I felt excessively affected with grief, and well remember that my husband involuntarily lifted up one hand to shut his mouth, from provocation at hearing a man so wildly proclaim what he could at last persuade no one to believe, and what, if true, would have been so very unfit to reveal. Mr. Thrale went away soon after, leaving me with him, and bidding me prevail on him to quit his close habitation In the court and come with us to Streatham, where I undertook the care of his health, and had the honour and happiness of contributing to its restoration.-PIOZZI.

2 As to her poems, she many years attempted to publish them: the half-crowns she had got towards the publication, she confessed to me, went for necessaries, and that the greatest pain she ever felt was from the appearance of defrauding her subscribers; "but what can I do? the Doctor [Johnson] always puts me off with 'Well, we'll think about it;' and Goldsmith says, 'Leave it to me.'" However, two of her friends, under her directions, made a new subscription at a crown, the whole price of the work, and in a very little time raised sixty pounds. Mrs. Carter was applied to by Mrs. Williams's desire, and she, with the utmost activity and Vindness, procured a long list of names. At length the work was published, in which is a fine