S. C. Roberts

“ Mrs Thrale, she was short, plump, and brisk. She has herself given us a lively view of the idea which Johnson had of her person, on her appearing before him in a dark-coloured gown; 'You little creatures should never wear those sort of clothes, however; they are unsuitable in every way. What! have not all insects gay colours?' Mr Thrale gave his wife a liberal indulgence, both in the choice of their company, and in the mode of entertaining them. He understood and valued Johnson, without remission, from their first acquaintance to the day of his death. ”

“ Johnson, for his part, never quite got rid of his feeling of contempt for the actor's profession. He often discussed it with Boswell:
"Boswell. 'Sir ..., you never will allow merit to a player.' Johnson. 'Merit, Sir! what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer, or a ballad-singer?' Boswell. 'No, Sir: but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments and can express them gracefully.' Johnson. ”

“ Nowadays it is difficult for us to imagine a three-year-old baby insisting on hearing a sermon, say, by the Dean of St Paul's or even a speech by the Prime Minister. But Johnson, as we shall see, was no ordinary child; and to the end of his life he was no ordinary hater of the Whigs.
Living, as he did, in the atmosphere of a bookshop, it was natural that the boy should be more inclined than others towards learning. ”

“ Boswell was really interested in the things Johnson talked about and, without any pretence, enjoyed the same kind of pleasures—dining out, arguing over a good bottle of port, staying at friends' houses, examining cathedrals, wandering up and down Fleet Street, coming down late to breakfast. "No man," as Johnson said, "is a hypocrite in his pleasures."
Moreover, Johnson "loved the acquaintance of young people."
"Sir," he said "young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect. ”

“ For we that live to please, must please to live.
The truth was, as Sir Joshua Reynolds said:
"Johnson considered Garrick to be as it were his property. He would allow no man either to blame or to praise Garrick in his presence, without contradicting him."
Boswell discovered this, as we have seen, at the famous meeting in Tom Davies's back parlour.
Garrick died in 1779 and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. His death provoked one of the most famous of all Johnson's sentences:
"That stroke of death" he wrote, "has eclipsed the gaiety of nations." ”

“ He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them. He used to mention one curious instance of his casual reading, when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to search for them. ”

“ What he insisted on was that men should not deceive themselves and others by thinking foolishly. "Clear your mind" he said "of cant."
"Such," to quote Boswell for the last time, "was Samuel Johnson." Though he was the foremost man of letters of his generation, it is not for his scholarship or his writings, but rather for his pluck and his patriotism, his humour and his oddities, his blunt common-sense and his large humanity, and, above all, for the expression of these qualities in his talk, that he is best loved and remembered. For to appreciate Johnson's talk one need not be literary ”

“ We shall do better to choose one or two of the passages which should move us even now, when we picture to ourselves the years of industry and poverty in the gloomy Gough Square house: "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add anything by my own writings to the reputation of English literature must be left to time." ”

“ He rejoiced in the "animated appearance" of Fleet Street and "the full tide of life" at Charing Cross, [Pg 150] not so much because he loved shops and pavements better than fields and hedgerows, as because London held his friends, his books, and his amusements. Boswell once suggested that he himself might grow tired of the city if he lived continuously in it:
"Johnson. 'Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford'" ”

“ This is from the point of view of the literary man, the "true lover" of Boswell; but the Life is a long and, outwardly, formidable work with which many, who might have been true lovers, have, through lack of an introduction, hardly attained even to a casual acquaintance.
The usefulness, then, of such a book as this can be tested by one question: Is a man more, or less, likely to read Boswell and to read him with enjoyment, because, as a boy, he has been told the story of Dr Johnson in simpler form? ”

“ The Prologue, which was written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably, till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be strangled upon the stage, and was to speak two lines with the bow-string round her neck. The audience cried out 'Murder! Murder!' She several times attempted to speak; but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off the stage alive."
This was Johnson's one adventure as a writer of plays and he no doubt enjoyed it. Everyone loves to go "behind the scenes." ”

“ I love the young dogs of this age: they have more wit and humour and knowledge of life than we had; but then the dogs are not so good scholars."
Boswell was certainly "a young dog"; and even the fact that he came from Scotland must have been a source of pleasure to Johnson, who, when he had no other retort ready, could always bring out the old joke in a new form. ”

“ A few years after the publication of the Dictionary Tobias Smollett, the novelist, had referred to Johnson as "the great Cham of literature." The title was adapted from that of the fierce chiefs of the Tartars, and it suits Johnson well enough. He held the foremost place in the literary society of his day and in taverns and great men's halls alike could proclaim his opinions on literature and art, history and politics, morality and religion to [Pg 43] men who, though "eminent in their departments," regarded it as an honour to be allowed to listen to him. ”

“ What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere amusement, 'not voyages and travels, but all literature, Sir, all ancient writers, all manly.'"
Johnson's father at this time used to set up a bookstall on market-days at neighbouring towns. One day he asked his son to go with him to Uttoxeter. Samuel refused, being too proud to stand at the stall in the market-place.
Again we feel inclined to think our hero rather a prig of a fellow—too lazy to do regular work of his own, too proud to help his father. ”

“ Boswell. 'The great difficulty of resisting wine is from benevolence. For instance, a good worthy man asks you to taste his wine, which he has had twenty years in his cellar.' Johnson. 'Sir, all this notion about benevolence arises from a man's imagining himself to be of more importance to others, than he really is. They don't care a farthing whether he drinks or not.' Sir Joshua Reynolds. 'Yes, they do for the time'.... I was at this time myself a water-drinker, upon trial, by Johnson's recommendation. Johnson. ”

“ In spite of his oddities, Johnson was, before everything, a social man. The great business of his life, he said, was to escape from himself, and he would never trust himself alone, "but when employed in writing or reading." He would beg a friend to go home with him simply to avoid being alone in the coach. ”

“ Johnson having enquired 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. Call him down.' I followed him into the court-yard, behind Mr Strahan's house.... 'Well, my boy, how do you go on?'—'Pretty well, Sir; but they are afraid I an'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. ”

“ Had he so chosen, Johnson might have entered Parliament. To the friends of the king, it was urged, he would be found a lamb, to his enemies a lion.
But Johnson knew that he was better fitted to be a public oracle in Fleet Street than to catch the Speaker's eye at Westminster.
A true-born Englishman, he extolled the English virtues of honesty and courage. Of the 'English common soldier' he wrote:
"Our nation may boast, beyond any other people in the world, of a kind of epidemick bravery, diffused equally through all its ranks. ”

“ From the accounts we have of Mrs Williams we cannot imagine her to have been an easy companion. Her blindness made her peevish and quarrelsome and we may wonder, with Boswell, at Johnson's patience with her. But she was a good talker and that was a great merit in Johnson's eyes. He made many efforts to brighten her life and increase her tiny income; Garrick was induced to give her a benefit performance and Mrs Montagu to provide her with a small pension. ”

“ As it is said of the greatest liar, that he tells more truth than falsehood; so it may be said of the worst [Pg 68] man, that he does more good than evil.' Boswell. 'Perhaps from experience men may be found happier than we suppose.' Johnson. 'No, Sir; the more we enquire, we shall find men the less happy....'
"Boswell. 'I have known a man resolved to put friendship to the test, by asking a friend to lend him money merely with that view, when he did not want it.' Johnson. ”

“ He considers himself as deputed to promote the publick good, and to preserve his constituents, with the rest of his countrymen, not only from being hurt by others, but from hurting themselves."
Johnson had no patience with a popular cry for liberty, such as was raised by the crowds that rallied round John Wilkes. "They make a rout" he said "about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty." ”

“ So, in his last illness in November 1784, he came to London to die. A month later he was buried in Westminster Abbey; Edmund Burke and Bennet Langton helped to bear the pall and Dr Taylor read the service. His monument, which Reynolds did not wish to see in the overcrowded Abbey, was erected in St Paul's Cathedral, and it is fitting that the nation's memorial of Dr Johnson should be within sound of Fleet Street.
If London meant life to Johnson, it meant the life of England. ”

“ Johnson was before long talking in his usual domineering way about poets and players, and eventually he and Wilkes found at least one "bond of union"—a common prejudice against Scotland. So they "amused themselves with persevering in the old jokes."
"Johnson (to Mr Wilkes) . 'You must know, Sir, I lately took my friend Boswell and shewed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield, my native city, that he might see for once real civility: for you know he lives among savages in Scotland, and among rakes in London.' Wilkes. ”

“ To see Dr Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the Isle of Sky, in the house of Miss Flora Macdonald, struck me with such a group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed through the mind. He smiled, and said, 'I have had no ambitious thoughts in it.' The room was decorated with a great variety of maps and prints. Among others was Hogarth's print of Wilkes grinning, with a cap of liberty on a pole by him....
At breakfast he said, he would have given a good deal rather than not have lain in that bed. I owned he was the lucky man ”

“ Oxford can see the rooms pretty much as they were in Johnson's day. Elsewhere in the college he may examine (or "contemplate with veneration," as Boswell would have done) many Johnsonian relics—his writing-desk and tea-pot among them.
From what we already know of Johnson's boyhood, we cannot picture him as a lively undergraduate; for poverty and ill-health make it difficult for a young man to enjoy life with his fellows, and Johnson suffered from both. ”

“ The accession of George the Third to the throne of these kingdoms, opened a new and brighter prospect to men of literary merit, who had been honoured with no mark of royal favour in the preceding reign. His present Majesty's education in this country, as well as his taste and beneficence, prompted him to be patron of science and the arts; and early this year Johnson, having been represented to him as a very learned and good man, without any certain provision, his Majesty was pleased to grant him a pension of three hundred pounds a year. ”

“ There was another reason, too, which made it necessary for Johnson to write something besides definitions. 1500 guineas was not much on which to keep six assistants and himself for eight years. "When the expence of amanuenses and paper, and other articles are deducted, his clear profit was very inconsiderable." But Johnson, being a true adventurer, did not grumble. When Boswell said to him "I am sorry, Sir, you did not get more for your Dictionary," his answer was "I am sorry too. But it was very well. The booksellers are generous, liberal-minded men." ”

“ Certainly Boswell may be allowed the phrase "much of a John Bull."
Honesty of heart, truth in the inward parts, was with Johnson the one thing needful.
[Pg 155]
To him no fraud could be innocent; the security of human society depended on truth and was weakened by a man whose words were at variance with his practice.
"Every man" he said (and here John Bull spoke again) "has a right to utter what he thinks truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it." ”

“ When they were travelling together in Scotland Johnson frankly told him a little more about the election, and Boswell as frankly tells us:
"He told me, 'Sir, you got into our club by doing what a man can do. Several of the members wished to keep you out. Burke told me, he doubted if you were fit for it: but, now you are in, none of them are sorry. Burke says, that you have so much good humour naturally, it is scarce a virtue.' Boswell. 'They were afraid of you, Sir, as it was you who proposed me.' Johnson. ”