go that evening to Mrs. Abingdon's benefit. "She was visiting some ladies whom I was visiting, and begged that I would come to her benefit. I told her I could not hear: but she insisted so much on my coming, that it would have been brutal to have refused her." This was a speech quite characteristical. He loved to bring forward his having been in the gay circles of life; and he was, perhaps, a little vain of the solicitations of this elegant and fashionable actress. He told us, the play was to be "The Hypocrite,' altered from Cibber's "Nonjuror," so as to satirize the methodists. "I do not think," said he, "the character of the Hypocrite justly applicable to the methodists, but it was very applicable to the Nonjurors. I once said to Dr. Madan ', a clergyman of Ireland, who was a great whig, that perhaps a Nonjuror would have been less criminal in taking the oaths imposed by the ruling power, than refusing them; because refusing them necessarily laid him under almost an irresistible temptation to be more criminal; for a man must live, and if he precludes himself from the support furnished by the establishment will probably be reduced to very wicked shifts to maintain himself." BOSWELL. "I should think, sir, that a

[No doubt a mistake for Dr. Madden, already mentioned. See ante, vol. i. p. 306.-ED.]

2 This was not merely a cursory remark; for, in his Life of Fenton, he observes, "With many other wise and virtuous men, who, at that time of discord and debate (about the beginning of this century), consulted conscience, well or ill formed, more than interest, he doubted the legality of the government; and refusing to qualify himself for publick employment, by taking the oaths required, left the University without a degree.' This conduct Johnson calls " perverseness of integrity." The question concerning the morality of taking oaths, of whatever kind, imposed by the prevailing power at the time, rather than to be excluded from all consequence, or even any considerable usefulness in society, has been agitated with all the acuteness of casuistry. It is related, that he who devised the oath of abjuration profligately boasted, that he had framed a test which should "damn one half of the nation, and starve the other." Upon minds not exalted to inflexible rectitude, or minds in which zeal for a party is predominant to excess, taking that oath against conviction may have been palliated under the plea of necessity, or ventured upon in heat, as upon the whole producing more good than evil. At a county election in Scotland,

man who took the oaths contrary to his principles was a determined wicked man, because he was sure he was committing perjury; whereas a Nonjuror might be insensibly led to do what was wrong, without being so directly conscious of it." JOHNSON. "Why, sir, a man who goes to bed to his patron's wife is pretty sure that he is committing wickedness." BosWELL. "Did the nonjuring clergyman do so, sir?" “I am afraid many of them did'."

I was startled at this argument, and could by on means think it convincing. Had not his own father complied with the requisition of government3, (as to which he once observed to me, when I pressed him upon it," That, sir, he was to settle with himself,”) he would probably have thought more unfavourably of a Jacobite who took the oaths:

many years ago, when there was a warm contest between the friends of the Hanoverian succession, and those against it, the oath of abjuration having been demanded, the freeholders upon one side rose to go away. Upon which a very sanguine gentleman, one of their number, ran to the door to stop them, calling out with much earnestness, "Stay, stay, my friends, and let us swear the rogues out of it!"-BoswELL. [What a proof is this of the impolicy and inefficacy of these sorts of tests when we find a man of Johnson's morality and religious scruples characterising a conscientious refusal to take the oaths as a perverse integrity, and justifying a compliance by such loose talk as he used on this occasion!-ED.]

[What evidence is there of this being the prevailing sin of the nonjuring clergy beyond Cibber's comedy, which, slight evidence as a comedy would be in any such case, is next to none at all on this occasion, for Cibber's play was a mere adaptation of Moliere's Tartuffe ?-ED.]

2

[Mr. Boswell was too civil when he called this an argument. It seems very lax sophistry. Why should it follow, that because a man is conscientious in one point, he should be profligate in another ?-ED.]

3 [Extract from the book containing the proceedings of the corporation of Lichfield: "19th July, 1712, Agreed that Mr. Michael Johnson be, and he is hereby elected a magistrate and brother of their incorporation; a day is given him to Thursday next to take the oath of fidelity and allegiance, and the oath of a magistrate. Signed, &c."-" 25th July, 1712. Mr. Johnson took the oath of allegiance, and that he believed there was no transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, before, &c."—HARWOOD.]

ocean of London, in order to have a chance for rising into eminence; and observing that many men were kept back from trying their fortunes there, because they were born to a competency, said, "Small certainties are the bane of men of talents;" which Johnson confirmed. Mr. Strahan put Johnson in mind of a remark which he had made to him: "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money." "The more one thinks of this," said Strahan, "the juster it will appear."

Mr. Strahan had taken a poor boy from the country as an apprentice, upon Johnson's recommendation. Johnson having inquired after him, said, "Mr. Strahan, let me have five guineas on account, and I'll give this boy one. Nay, if a man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it is sad work. him down."

Call

I followed him into the court-yard', behind Mr. Strahan's house; and there I had a proof of what I had heard him profess, that he talked alike to all. "Some people tell you that they let themselves down to the capacity of their hearers. I never do that. I speak uniformly, in as intelligible a manner as I can.”

66

"Well, my boy, how do you go on?" Pretty well, sir; but they are afraid I ar'n't strong enough for some parts of the business." JOHNSON. "Why I shall be sorry for it; for when you consider with how little mental power and corporeal labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a very desirable occupation for you. Do you hear-take all the pains

66

[This was surveillance," as the French call it, with a vengeance! and this fact, which Mr. Boswell owns with such amusing simplicity, may be taken as a specimen of the "espionage" which he exercised over Johnson. The reader will have observed, that two French phrases are here used, because, though Mr. Boswell's affectionate curiosity led him into such courses, English manners have no such practice, nor the English language a term to describe it. -ED.]

you can; and if this does not do, we must think of some other way of life for you. There's a guinea."

Here was one of the many, many instances of his active benevolence. At the same time, the slow and sonorous solemnity with which, while he bent himself down, he addressed a little thick short-legged boy, contrasted with the boy's awkwardness and awe, could not but excite some ludicrous emotions.

I met him at Drury-lane playhouse in the evening. Sir Joshua Reynolds, at Mrs. Abington's request, had promised to bring a body of wits to her benefit; and having secured forty places in the front boxes, had done me the honour to put me in the group. Johnson sat on the seat directly behind me; and as he could neither see nor hear at such a distance from the stage, he was wrapped up in grave abstraction, and seemed quite a cloud, amidst all the sunshine of glitter and gaiety. I wondered at his patience in sitting out a play of five acts, and a farce of two. He said very little; but after the prologue to “ Bon Ton" had been spoken, which he could hear pretty well from the more slow and distinct utterance, he talked on prologue-writing, and observed, "Dryden has written prologues superiour to any that David Garrick has written; but David Garrick has written more good prologues than Dryden has done. It is wonderful that he has been able to write such variety of them."

At Mr. Beauclerk's, where I supped, was Mr. Garrick, whom I made happy with Johnson's praise of his prologues; and I suppose in gratitude to him, he took up one of his favourite topicks, the nationality of the Scotch, which he maintained in a pleasant manner, with the aid of a little poetical fiction. "Come, come, don't deny it: they are really national. Why, now, the Adams are as liberal-minded men as

any in the world: but, I don't know how it is, all their workmen are Scotch. You are, to be sure, wonderfully free from that nationality: but so it happens, that you employ the only Scotch shoeblack in London 1." He imitated the manner of his old master with ludicrous exaggeration; repeating, with pauses and half-whistlings interjected,

"Os homini sublime dedit,-cælumque tueri,

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus,"

looking downwards all the time, and, while pronouncing the four last words, absolutely touching the ground with a kind of contorted gesticulation 3.

Garrick, however, when he pleased, could imitate Johnson very exactly; for that great actor, with his distinguished powers of expression which were so universally admired, possessed also an admirable talent of mimickry. Johnson spoke lightly of him.

4

He was always jealous that
I recollect his ex-

[See ante, vol. ii. p. 229 and n.—ED.]

[This exhibition of Johnson's downward look and gesticulations while reciting os sublime and tollere vultus, resembles one which Lord Byron describes. "Mr. Grattan's manners in private life were odd, but natural. Curran used to take him off, bowing to the very ground, and thanking God that he had no peculiarity of gesture or appearance,' in a way irresistibly ridiculous.”—Moore's Life of Byron, vol. i. p. 405.-Ed.]

3 [Mr. Whyte has related an anecdote of Johnson's violence of gesticulation, which, but for this evidence of Garrick's, one could have hardly believed. "The house on the right at the bottom of Beaufort Buildings was occupied by Mr. Chamberlaine, Mrs. Sheridan's eldest brother (an eminent surgeon), by whom Johnson was often invited in the snug way with the family party. At one of those social meetings Johnson as usual sat next the lady of the house; the dessert still continuing, and the ladies in no haste to withdraw, Mrs. Chamberlaine had moved a little back from the table, and was carelessly dangling her foot backwards and forwards as she sat, enjoying the feast of reason and the flow of soul.' Johnson, the while, in a moment of abstraction, was convulsively working his hand up and down, which the lady observing, she roguishly edged her foot within his reach, and, as might partly have been expected, Johnson clenched hold of it, and drew off her shoe; she started, and hastily exclaimed, 'O, fie! Mr. Johnson!' The company at first knew not what to make of it: but one of them, perceiving the joke, tittered. Johnson, not improbably aware of the trick, apologised. Nay, madam, recollect yourself; I know not that I have justly incurred your rebuke; the emotion was involuntary, and the action not intentionally rude.""-Whyte's Miscel. Nova, p. 50.-ED.] 4 [On the contrary, the anecdote which follows rather proves that Garrick had learned to repel Johnson's contemptuous expressions with an easy gaiety. -ED.]