Aetat. 67.] Mrs. Piozzi and Baretti. 49 possibly spend as much money in his family as he told us he did, she interrupted us by a lively extravagant sally, on the expence of clothing his children, describing it in a very ludicrous and fanciful manner. Johnson looked a little angry, and said, 'Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.' At another time, when she said, perhaps affectedly, 'I don't like to fly.' JOHNSON. With your wings, Madam, you must fly: but have a care, there are clippers abroad.' How very well was this said, and how fully has experience proved the truth of it! But have they not clipped rather rudely, and gone a great deal closer than was necessary1? A gentleman' expressed a wish to go and live three years at Otaheité, or New-Zealand, in order to obtain a full acquaintance with people, so totally different from all that we have ever known, and be satisfied what pure nature can do for man. JOHNSON. 'What could you learn, Sir? What can savages tell, but what they themselves have seen? Of the past, or the invisible, they can tell nothing. The inhabitants of Otaheité and New-Zealand are not in a state of pure nature; for it is plain they broke off from some other people. Had they grown It is strange how often his mode of 'Baretti made a brutal attack on Mrs. Piozzi in the European Mag. for 1788, xiii. 313, 393, and xiv. 89. He calls her 'the frontless female, who goes now by the mean appellation of Piozzi; La Piozzi, as my fiddling countrymen term her; who has dwindled down into the contemptible wife of her daughter's singingmaster.' His excuse was the attacks made on him by her in the correspondence just published between herself and Johnson (see Piozzi Letters, i. 277, 319). He suspected her, and perhaps with reason, of altering some of these letters. Other writers besides Baretti attacked her. VOL. III. E To use Lord Macaulay's words, grossly exaggerated though they are, 'She fled from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown.' Macaulay's Writings and Speeches, ed. 1871, p. 393. According to Dr. T. Campbell (Diary, p. 33) Baretti flattered Mrs. Thrale to her face. Talking as we were at tea of the magnitude of the beer vessels, Baretti said there was one thing in Mr. Thrale's house still more extraordinary; meaning his wife. She gulped the pill very prettily-so much for Baretti.' See post, Dec. 21, 1776. 2 * Likely enough Boswell himself. On three other occasions he mentions Otaheité; ante, May 7, 1773, post, June 15, 1784, and in his Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773. He was fond of praising savage life. See ante, ii. 73. out 50 Chatterton's fabricated verses. [A.D. 1776. out of the ground, you might have judged of a state of pure nature. Fanciful people may talk of a mythology being amongst them; but it must be invention. They have once had religion, which has been gradually debased. And what account of their religion can you suppose to be learnt from savages? Only consider, Sir, our own state: our religion is in a book; we have an order of men whose duty it is to teach it; we have one day in the week set apart for it, and this is in general pretty well observed: yet ask the first ten gross men you meet, and hear what they can tell of their religion.' On Monday, April 29, he and I made an excursion to Bristol, where I was entertained with seeing him enquire upon the spot, into the authenticity of 'Rowley's Poetry',' as I had seen him enquire upon the spot into the authenticity of 'Ossian's Poetry George Catcot, the pewterer, who was as zealous for Rowley, as Dr. Hugh Blair3 was for Ossian, (I trust my Reverend friend will excuse the comparison,) attended us at our inn, and with a triumphant air of lively simplicity called out, 'I'll make Dr. Johnson a convert.' Dr. Johnson, at his desire, read aloud some of Chatterton's fabricated verses, while Catcot stood at the back of his chair, moving himself like a pendulum, and beating time with his feet, and now and then looking into Dr. Johnson's face, wondering that he was not yet convinced. We called on Mr. Barret, the surgeon, and saw some of the originals as they were called, which were executed very artificially; but from a careful inspection of them, and a consideration of the circumstances with which they were attended, we were quite satisfied of the imposture, which, indeed, has been clearly demonstrated from internal evidence, by several able criticks".' 1 Chatterton said that he had found in a chest in St. Mary Redcliffe Church manuscript poems by Canynge, a merchant of Bristol in the fifteenth century, and a friend of his, Thomas Rowley. He gave some of these manuscripts to George Catcot, a pewterer of Bristol, who communicated them to Mr. Barret, who was writing a History of Bristol. Rose's Biog. Dict. vi. 256. 2 See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22. 3 See ante, i. 396. 'Artificially. Artfully; with skill.' Johnson's Dictionary. 5 Mr. Tyrwhitt, Mr. Warton, Mr. Malone. BosWELL. Johnson wrote on May 16:-'Steevens seems to be Honest Aetat. 67.] Catcot's ocular demonstration. 51 Honest Catcot seemed to pay no attention whatever to any objections, but insisted, as an end of all controversy, that we should go with him to the tower of the church of St. Mary, Redcliff, and view with our own eyes the ancient chest in which the manuscripts were found. To this, Dr. Johnson goodnaturedly agreed; and though troubled with a shortness of breathing, laboured up a long flight of steps, till we came to the place where the wonderous chest stood. 'There, (said Catcot, with a bouncing confident credulity,) there is the very chest itself. After this ocular demonstration, there was no more to be said. He brought to my recollection a Scotch Highlander, a man of learning too, and who had seen the world, attesting, and at the same time giving his reasons for the authenticity of Fingal:-'I have heard all that poem when I was young.'—'Have you, Sir? Pray what have you heard?' 'I have heard Ossian, Oscar, and every one of them.' Johnson said of Chatterton, 'This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things".' We were by no means pleased with our inn at Bristol. 'Let us see now, (said I,) how we should describe it.' Johnson was ready with his raillery. Describe it, Sir?-Why, it was so bad that Boswell wished to be in Scotland!' After Dr. Johnson's return to London3, I was several times connected with Tyrwhitt in publishing Chatterton's poems; he came very anxiously to know the result of our inquiries, and though he says he always thought them forged, is not well pleased to find us so fully convinced.' Piozzi Letters, i. 326. 'Catcot had been anticipated by Smith the weaver (2 Henry VI. iv. 2) -Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.' 2 Horace Walpole says (Works, iv. 224) that when he was 'dining at the Royal Academy, Dr. Goldsmith drew the attention of the company with an account of a marvellous treasure of ancient poems lately dis covered at Bristol, and expressed enthusiastic belief in them; for which he was laughed at by Dr. Johnson, who was present. . . . You may imagine we did not at all agree in the measure of our faith; but though his credulity diverted me, my mirth was soon dashed; for, on asking about Chatterton, he told me he had been in London, and had destroyed himself.' 3 Boswell returned a few days earlier. On May he wrote to Temple :-'Luckily Dr. Taylor has begged of Dr. Johnson to come to London, to assist him in some interesting business; and Johnson loves much to be so consulted, and so comes up. I am now at General with 52 Garrick in the part of Archer. [A.D. 1776. with him at his house, where I occasionally slept, in the room that had been assigned to me1. I dined with him at Dr. Taylor's, at General Oglethorpe's, and at General Paoli's. To avoid a tedious minuteness, I shall group together what I have preserved of his conversation during this period also, without specifying each scene where it passed, except one, which will be found so remarkable as certainly to deserve a very particular relation. Where the place or the persons do not contribute to the zest of the conversation, it is unnecessary to encumber my page with mentioning them. To know of what vintage our wine is, enables us to judge of its value, and to drink it with more relish but to have the produce of each vine of one vineyard, in the same year, kept separate, would serve no purpose. To know that our wine, (to use an advertising phrase,) is of the stock of an Ambassadour lately deceased,' heightens its flavour: but it signifies nothing to know the bin where each bottle was once deposited. Garrick (he observed,) does not play the part of Archer in The Beaux Stratagem well. The gentleman should break out through the footman, which is not the case as he does it.' 'Where there is no education, as in savage countries, men will have the upper hand of women. Bodily strength, no doubt, contributes to this; but it would be so, exclusive of that; for it is mind that always governs. When it comes to dry understanding, man has the better.' 'The little volumes entitled Respublica3, which are very well done, were a bookseller's work,' Paoli's, quite easy and gay, after my journey; not wearied in body or dissipated in mind. I have lodgings in Gerrard Street, where cards are left to me; but I lie at the General's, whose attention to me is beautiful.' Letters of Boswell, p. 234. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on May 6 :'To-morrow I am to dine, as I did yesterday, with Dr. Taylor. On Wednesday I am to dine with Oglethorpe; and on Thursday with Paoli. He that sees before him to his third dinner has a long prospect.' Piozzi Letters, i. 320. Aetat. 67.] Lord Chesterfield's LETTERS. 53 'There is much talk of the misery which we cause to the brute creation; but they are recompensed by existence'. If they were not useful to man, and therefore protected by him, they would not be nearly so numerous.' This argument is to be found in the able and benignant Hutchinson's Moral Philosophy. But the question is, whether the animals who endure such sufferings of various kinds, for the service and entertainment of man, would accept of existence upon the terms on which they have it. Madame Sévigné2, who, though she had many enjoyments, felt with delicate sensibility the prevalence of misery, complains of the task of existence having been imposed upon her without her consent3. 'That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment*.' 'Though many men are nominally entrusted with the administration of hospitals and other publick institutions, almost all the good is done by one man, by whom the rest are driven on; owing to confidence in him, and indolence in them"." 'Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, I think, might be made a very pretty book. Take out the immorality, and it should be put into the hands of every young gentleman. An elegant manner and easiness of behaviour are acquired gradually and imperceptibly. No man can say "I'll be genteel." There are ten genteel women for one genteel man, because they are more restrained. A man without some degree of restraint is insufferable; but we are all less restrained than women. 1 See post, under Oct. 20, 1784, for 'the learned pig.' 2 In the first edition Mme. de Sévigné's name is printed Sevigné, in the second Sevigé, in the third Sevigne. Authors and compositors last century troubled themselves little about French words. 3 Milton had put the same complaint into Adam's mouth :'Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? Were As my will Concurred not to my being,' &c. Paradise Lost, x. 743 4 See ante, April 10, 1775. 5 Fielding in the Covent Garden Journal for June 2, 1752 (Works, x. 80), says of the difficulty of admission at the hospitals:-'The properest objects (those I mean who are most wretched and friendless) may as well aspire at a place at Court as at a place in the Hospital.' a woman |