It appears from his notes of the state of his mind, that he suffered great perturbation and distraction in 1768. Nothing of his writings was given to the public this year, except the Prologue to his friend Goldsmith's comedy of "The Goodnatured Man." The first lines of this Prologue are strongly characteristical of the dismal gloom of his mind; which in his case, as in the case of all who are distressed with the same malady of imagination, transfers to others its own feelings. Who could suppose it was to introduce a comedy, when Mr. Bensley solemnly began, "Press'd with the load of life, the weary mind But this dark ground might make Goldsmith's humour shine the more.2 In the spring of this year, having published my "Account of Corsica, with the Journal of a Tour to that Island," I returned to London, very desirous to see Dr. Johnson, and hear him. upon the subject. I found he was at Oxford, with his friend 1 Prayers and Meditations p. 81. 2 [In this Prologue, as Mr. John Taylor informs me, after the fourth line Our little bard without complaint may share So the Prologue appeared in "the Publick Advertiser," (the theatrical gazette of that day,) soon after the first representation of this comedy in 1768.— Goldsmith probably thought that the lines printed in Italick characters, which, however, seem necessary, or at least improve the sense, might give offence, and therefore prevailed on Johnson to omit them. The epithet little, which perhaps the authour thought might diminish his dignity, was also changed to anxious.-MALONE] [Boswell's book-An Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to that Island; and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. By James boswell, Esq.; Illustrated with a New and Accurate Map of Corsica-was dedicated to Pascal Paoli, General of the Corsicans, and dated at Auchinleck, 29 October, 1767. “He who has any experience of mankind," wrote Boswell," will be cautious to whom he dedicates. Publickly to bestow praise on merit of which the publick is not sensible, or to raise flattering expectations which are never fulfilled, must sink the character of an authour, and make him appear a cringing parasite, or a fond enthusiast. I am under no apprehensions of that nature, when Í inscribe this book to Pascal Paoli. Your virtues, Sir, are universally acknowledged; they dignify the pages which I venture to present to you; and it is my singular felicity that my book is the voucher of its dedication." In his AGE 59.] BOSWELL'S "ACCOUNT OF CORSICA." 39 Mr. Chambers, who was now Vinerian Professor, and lived in New Inn Hall. Having had no letter from him since that in preface Boswell hopes that if his book at any future period should be reprinted, printers will not omit the "k" after "c," and "u" in the last syllable of words ending in "our," though of late it had become the fashion so "to render our language more neat and trim;" for "the illustrious Mr. Samuel Johnson, who has alone executed in England what was the task of whole academies in other countries, has been careful in his Dictionary to preserve the 'k' as a mark of Saxon original." There was no "k" in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, but later usage has dropped the final "k," in words like "public," visibly classical, and retained it in words like "thick" and "trick," that are, or seem to be, Teutonic. This accords with the principle adopted by Johnson and here enforced by Boswell as to the spelling words that end in "our"; those taken direct from the Latin he spelt with "or," and those coming to us through the French with "our." In describing Paoli to his readers Boswell does not let them forget his other hero. He says, "I gave Paoli the character of my revered friend Mr. Samuel Johnson. I have often regretted that illustrious men, such as humanity produces a few times in the revolution of many ages, should not see each other; and when such arise in the same age, though at the distance of half the globe, I have been astonished how they could forbear to meet. "As steel sharpeneth steel, so doth a man the countenance of his friend,' says the wise monarch. What an idea may we not form of an interview between such a scholar and philosopher as Mr. Johnson, and such a legislatour and general as Paoli! "I repeated to Paoli several of Mr. Johnson's sayings, so remarkable for strong sense and original humour. I now recollect these two. "When I told Mr. Johnson that a certain authour affected in conversation to maintain, that there was no distinction between virtue and vice, he said, 'Why Sir, if the fellow does not think as he speaks, he is lying; and I see not what honour he can propose to himself from having the character of a lyar. But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.' "Of modern infidels and innovatours, he said, 'Sir, these are all vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.' "I felt an elation of mind to see Paoli delighted with the sayings of Mr. Johnson, and to hear him translate them with Italian energy to the Corsican heroes. "I repeated Mr. Johnson's sayings as nearly as I could, in his own peculiar forcible language, for which prejudiced or little criticks have taken upon them to find fault with him. He is above making any answer to them, but I have found a sufficient answer in a general remark in one of his excellent papers. Difference of thoughts will produce difference of language. He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning.' "I hope to be pardoned for this digression, wherein I pay a just tribute of veneration and gratitude to one from whose writings and conversation I have received instructions of which I experience the value in every scene of my life."] which he criticised the Latinity of my Thesis, and having been told by somebody that he was offended at my having put into my book an extract of his letter to me at Paris, I was impatient to be with him, and therefore followed him to Oxford, where I was entertained by Mr. Chambers with a civility which I shall ever gratefully remember. I found that Dr. Johnson had sent a letter to me to Scotland, and that I had nothing to complain of but his being more indifferent to my anxiety than I wished him to be. Instead of giving, with the circumstances of time and place, such fragments of his conversation as I preserved during this visit to Oxford, I shall throw them together in continuation. I asked him whether, as a moralist, he did not think that the practice of the law, in some degree, hurt the nice feeling of honesty. JOHNSON. "Why no, Sir, if you act properly. You are not to deceive your clients with false representations of your opinion you are not to tell lies to a Judge." BOSWELL. "But what do you think of supporting a cause which you know to be bad?" JOHNSON. "Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines it. I have said that you are to state facts fairly; so that your thinking, or what you call knowing, a cause to be bad, must be from reasoning, must be from your supposing your arguments to be weak and inconclusive. But, Sir, that is not enough. An argument which does not convince yourself, may convince the Judge to whom you urge it; and if it does convince him, why, then, Sir, you are wrong, and he is right. It is his business to judge; and you are not to be confident in your own opinion that a cause is bad, but to say all you can for your client, and then hear the Judge's opinion." BOSWELL. "But, Sir, does not affecting a warmth when you have no warmth, and appearing to be clearly of one opinion when you are in reality of another opinion, does not such dissimulation impair one's honesty? Is there not some danger that a lawyer may put on the same mask in common life, in the intercourse with his friends?" JOHNSON. "Why no, Sir. Every body knows you are paid for affecting warmth for your client; and it is, therefore, properly no dissimulation; the moment you come from the bar you resume HUGH KELLY'S “FALSE DELICACY" 41 AGE 59.] your usual behaviour. Sir, a man will no more carry the artifice of the bar into the common intercourse of society, than a man who is paid for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble upon his hands when he should walk on his feet." 1 Talking of some of the modern plays, he said, "False Delicacy" was totally void of character. He praised Goldsmith's 1 See "The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," 4th edit. p. 14, where Johnson has supported the same argument. 2 [False Delicacy was by Hugh Kelly, whose age in 1768 was twenty-nine, and Goldsmith's forty. Kelly had been a staymaker's apprentice in Dublin, and when he came to London to earn by his pen, had to make, at first, some use of his craft as a staymaker to earn his bread. He wrote then for an attorney till he found work in magazines and newspapers. Next he satirised the actors in a piece called Thespis, a very weak imitation of Churchill's Rosciad, then a recent poem. Kelly had a good-humoured flow of small wit, lived in chambers near Goldsmith, and was a welcome member of Goldsmith's modest and easy Wednesday Club at the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street. To the society of Johnson and Reynolds Kelly aspired in vain ; when he sought converse with Johnson the reply was "Sir, I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read." While intimate with Goldsmith, Kelly said nothing to him of the comedy he was writing, and Goldsmith was annoyed when he found that Garrick intended to run this first comedy of Kelly's, False Delicacy, against his own Good-natured Man, and give it the first start. Kelly's comedy was produced on the 23rd of January, 1768. Its prologue and epilogue were written by Garrick. It was played eight nights-the management being pledged not to run any piece to the ninth night, and was repeated more than twenty times during the season. Three thousand copies of the play-book were sold before two o'clock on the morning of its publication, and ten thousand before the end of the season. Goldsmith's play was produced six days later than Kelly's at the rival house on Friday the 29th of January. Its first night would have been a failure but for Shuter's acting of Croaker. The club had agreed to hold a special meeting after Goldsmith's play. It is thus chronicled in John Forster's Life of Goldsmith: By the time he arrived there, his spirits had to all appearance returned. He had forgotten the hisses. The members might have seen that he ate no supper, but he chatted gaily, as if nothing had happened amiss. Nay, to impress his friends still more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity, he even sung his favourite song, which he never consented to sing but on special occasions, about An Old Woman tossed in a Blanket seventeen times as high as the Moon; and was altogether very noisy and loud. But some time afterwards, when he and Johnson were dining with Percy at the chaplain's table at St. James's, he confessed what his feelings this night had really been; made, said Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, a very comical and unnecessarily exact recital of them; and told how the night had ended. 'All this while,' he said, 'I was suffering horrid tortures; and verily believe that if I had put a bit into my mouth it would have strangled me on the spot, I was so excessively ill; but I made more noise than usual to cover all that, and so they never perceived my not eating, nor I believe at all imaged to themselves the anguish of my heart. But when all were gone except Johnson here, I burst out a-crying, and even swore by that I would never write again.' "Good-natured Man;" said, it was the best comedy that had appeared since "The Provoked Husband," and that there had not been of late any such character exhibited on the stage as that of Croaker. I observed it was the Suspirius of his Rambler. He said, Goldsmith had owned he had borrowed it from thence. "Sir (continued he) there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and there is the difference between the characters of Fielding, and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood by a more superficial observer than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart." It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding. In comparing those two writers, he used this expression; "that there was as great a difference between them, as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and figurative state of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners. But I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial-plates are brighter. Fielding's characters, though they do not expand themselves so widely in dissertation, are as just pictures of human nature, and I will Johnson sat in amazement while Goldsmith made the confession, and then confirmed it. 'All which, Doctor,' he said, 'I thought had been a secret between you and me; and I am sure I would not have said anything about it, for the world.' That is very certain. No man so unlikely as Johnson, when he had a friend's tears to wipe away, critically to ask himself, or afterwards discuss, whether or not they ought to have been shed; but none so likely, if they came to be discussed by others, to tell you how much he despised them. What he says must thus be taken with what he does, more especially in all his various opinions of Goldsmith. When Mrs. Thrale asked him of this matter, he spoke of it with contempt, and said that 'no man should be expected to sympathise with the sorrows of vanity.' But he had sympathised with them, at least to the extent of consoling them. Goldsmith never flung himself in vain on that great, rough, tender heart." Goldsmith's Good-natured Man ran for ten nights, was acted once more during the season, and afterwards only about four times in Goldsmith's lifetime.] |