word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. "The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks1. "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early 2, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it 3 ; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the publick should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. "Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation. My lord, your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant, "SAM. JOHNSON 4." Madden, some years after, gave him the same sum for revising a work of his, Johnson said that the Doctor" was very generous, for ten guineas was to me, at that time, a great sum' (see post, 1756). When Johnson alleged against Lord Chesterfield such a trifle as the waiting in his anteroom, he ought not to have omitted a pecuniary obligation, however inconsiderable.-ED.] [The editor confesses that he does not see the object of this allusion; if some more ingenious eye should discover a meaning, it must still be admitted to be pedantic.-Ed.] 2 [The notice could not have been, for any useful purpose, taken earlier. Johnson might have complained that notice of some other kind had not been taken, but the notice which his lordship was pleased to take" was peculiarly well timed, and could not properly have come sooner. ED.] 3 In this passage Dr. Johnson evidently alludes to the loss of his wife. We find the same tender recollection recurring to his mind upon innumerable occasions and perhaps no man ever more forcibly felt the truth of the sentiment so elegantly expressed by my friend Mr. Malone, in his prologue to Mr. Jephson's tragedy of Julia: "Vain-wealth, and fame, and fortune's fostering care, If no fond breast the splendid blessings share; There, only there, our bliss is found at last."-Boswell. 4 Upon comparing this copy with that which Dr. Johnson dictated to me from recollection, the variations are found to be so slight, that this must be added to the many other proofs which he gave of the wonderful extent and accuracy of his memory. To gratify the curious in composition, I have deposited both the copies in the British Museum.-BOSWELL. "While this was the talk of the town', (says Dr. Adams, in a letter to me) I happened to visit Dr. Warburton, who, finding that I was acquainted with Johnson, desired me earnestly to carry his compliments to him, and to tell him, that he honoured him for his manly behaviour in rejecting these condescensions of Lord Chesterfield, and for resenting the treatment he had received from him with a proper spirit. Johnson was visibly pleased with this compliment, for he had always a high opinion of Warburton .' Indeed, the force of mind which appeared in this letter was congenial with that which Warburton himself amply possessed. There is a curious minute circumstance which struck me, in comparing the various editions of Johnson's Imitations of Juvenal. In the tenth Satire one of the couplets upon the vanity of wishes even for literary distinction stood thus: "Yet think what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the garret, and the jail." But after experiencing the uneasiness which Lord Chesterfield's fallacious patronage made him feel, he dismissed the word garret from the sad group, and in all the subsequent editions the line stands, Toil, envy, want, the Patron, and the jail." That Lord Chesterfield must have been mortified by the lofty contempt, and polite, yet keen, satire with which Johnson exhibited him to himself in this [If this letter was the talk of the town, it appears, from all the evidence, that it must have become known through Lord Chesterfield, as Johnson always refused to let it be seen.-ED.] 2 Soon after Edwards's "Canons of Criticism" came out, Johnson was dining at Tonson the bookseller's with Hayman the painter and some more company. Hayman related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the conversation having turned upon Edwards's book, the gentlemen praised it much, and Johnson allowed its merit. But when they went farther, and appeared to put that authour upon a level with Warburton, "Nay (said Johnson), he has given him some smart hits, to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, sir, may sting a stately horse, and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still."-Boswell. letter, it is impossible to doubt. He, however, with that glossy duplicity which was his constant study, affected to be quite unconcerned. Dr. Adams mentioned to Mr. Robert Dodsley that he was sorry Johnson had written his letter to Lord Chesterfield. Dodsley, with the true feelings of trade, said, "he was very sorry too; for that he had a property in the Dictionary, to which his lordship's patronage might have been of consequence." He then told Dr. Adams, that Lord Chesterfield had shown him the letter. “I should have imagined (replied Dr. Adams) that Lord Chesterfield would have concealed it." "Poh! (said Dodsley) do you think a letter from Johnson could hurt Lord Chesterfield? Not at all, sir. It lay upon his table, where any body might see it. He read it to me; said, this man has great powers,' pointed out the severest passages, and observed how well they were expressed." The air of indifference, which imposed upon the worthy Dodsley, was certainly nothing but a specimen of that dissimulation 1 which Lord Chesterfield inculcated as one of the most essential lessons for the conduct of life. His lordship endeavoured to justify himself to Dodsley from the charges brought against him by Johnson; but we may judge of the flimsiness of his defence, from his having excused his neglect of Johnson, by saying, that "he had heard he had changed his lodgings, and did not know where he lived;" as if there could have been the smallest difficulty to inform himself of that circumstance, by inquiring in the literary circle 1 [Why? If, as may have been the case, Lord Chesterfield felt that Johnson was unjust towards him, he would not have been mortified—Il n'y a que la verité qui blesse. By Mr. Boswell's own confession it appears that Johnson did not give copies of this letter; that for many years Boswell had in vain solicited him to do so, and that he, after the lapse of twenty years, did so reJuctantly. With all these admissions, how can Mr. Boswell attribute to any thing but conscions rectitude Lord Chesterfield's exposure of a letter which the author was so willing to bury in oblivion ?-ED.] with which his lordship was well acquainted, and was, indeed, himself, one of its ornaments. Dr. Adams expostulated with Johnson, and suggested, that his not being admitted when he called on him, was probably not to be imputed to Lord Chesterfield; for his lordship had declared to Dodsley, that "he would have turned off the best servant he ever had, if he had known that he denied him to a man who would have been always more than welcome;" and in confirmation of this, he insisted on Lord Chesterfield's general affability and easiness of access, especially to literary men. "Sir (said Johnson), that is not Lord Chesterfield; he is the proudest man this day existing." "No (said Dr. Adams), there is one person, at least, as proud; I think, by your own account, you are the prouder man of the two." "But mine (replied Johnson instantly) was defensive pride." This, as Dr. Adams well observed, was one of those happy turns1 for which he was so remarkably ready. Johnson having now explicitly avowed his opinion of Lord Chesterfield, did not refrain from expressing himself concerning that nobleman with pointed freedom: "This man (said he) I thought had been at lord among wits: but, I find, he is only a wit among lords!" And when his Letters to his natural son were published, he observed, that "they teach the morals of a prostitute, and the manners of a dancingmaster 2." [This, like all the rest of the affair, seems discoloured by prejudice. Lord Chesterfield made no attack on Johnson, who certainly acted on the offensive, and not the defensive.-ED.] 2 That collection of letters cannot be vindicated from the serious charge of encouraging, in some passages, one of the vices most destructive to the good order and comfort of society, which his lordship represents a mere fashionable gallantry; and, in others, of inculcating the base practice of dissimulation, and recommending, with disproportionate anxiety, a perpetual attention to external elegance of manners. But it must, at the same time, be allowed, that they contain many good precepts of conduct, and much genuine information upon life and manners, very happily expressed; and that there was considerable merit in The character of a "respectable Hottentot," in Lord Chesterfield's Letters, has been generally understood to be meant for Johnson, and I have no doubt that it was. But I remember when the literary property of those letters was contested in the court of session in Scotland, and Mr. Henry Dundas 1, one of the counsel for the proprietors, read this character as an exhibition of Johnson, Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, one of the judges, maintained, with some warmth, that it was not intended as a portrait of Johnson, but of a late noble lord 2, distinguished for abstruse science. I have heard Johnson himself talk of the character, and say that it was meant for George Lord Lyttelton, in which I could by no means agree; for his lordship had nothing of that violence which is a conspicuous feature in the composition. Finding that my illustrious friend could bear to have it supposed that it might be meant for him, I said, laughingly, that there was one trait which unquestionably did not belong to him "he throws his meat any paying so much attention to the improvement of one who was dependent upon his lordship's protection; it has, probably, been exceeded in no instance by the most exemplary parent; and though I can by no means approve of confounding the distinction between lawful and illicit offspring, which is, in effect, insulting the civil establishment of our country, to look no higher; I cannot help thinking it laudable to be kindly attentive to those, of whose existence we have, in any way, been the cause. Mr. Stanhope's character has been unjustly represented as diametrically opposite to what Lord Chesterfield wished him to be. He has been called dull, gross, and awkward: but I knew him at Dresden, when he was envoy to that court; and though he could not boast of the graces, he was, in truth, a sensible, civil, well-behaved man.-BOSWELL. Now (1792) one of his majesty's principal secretaries of state.-BOSWELL. [And afterwards Viscount Melville. ED.] [Probably George, second Earl of Macclesfield, who published, in 1751, a learned pamphlet on the alteration of the style, and was, in 1752, elected president of the Royal Society. Lord Macclesfield's manner was, no doubt, awkward and embarrassed, but little else in his character resembles that of the "respectable Hottentot," which more probably was, as the world has supposed, intended for Johnson. Lord Macclesfield assisted Lord Chesterfield in the bill for changing the style; and Lord Chesterfield very candidly confessed that his own lighter and more graceful way of treating a subject which he understood but superficially ran away with the applause which was more justly due to the superior information and science of Lord Macclesfield. See Lord Chesterfield's Life by Maty, p. 199. -ED.] |