of Paris is still beyond anything that we have here.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, I question if in Paris such a company as is sitting round this table could be got together in less than half a year. They talk in France of the felicity of men and women living together: the truth is, that there the men are not higher than the women, they know no more than the women do, and they are not held down in their conversation by the presence of women.' RAMSAY: 'Literature is upon the growth; it is in its spring in France; here it is rather passée.' JOHNSON: Literature was in France long before we had it. Paris was the second city for the revival of letters : Italy had it first, to be sure. What have we done for literature equal to what was done by the Stephani and others in France? Our literature came to us through France. Caxton printed only two books, Chaucer and Gower, that were not translated from the French; and Chaucer, we know, took much from the Italians. No, sir, if literature be in its spring in France, it is a second spring; it is after a winter. We are now before the French in literature; but we had it long after them. In England, any man who wears a sword and a powdered wig is ashamed to be illiterate. I believe it is not so in France. Yet there is probably a great deal of learning in France, because they have such a number of religious establishments; so many men who have nothing else to do but to study. I do not know this; but I take it upon the common principles of chance. Where there are many shooters some will hit.'

We talked of old age. Johnson (now in his seventieth year) said, 'It is a man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.' The bishop asked if an old man does not lose faster than he gets. JOHNSON: 'I think not, my Lord, if he exerts himself.' One of the company rashly observed that he thought it was happy for an old man that insensibility comes upon him. JOHNSON (with a noble elevation and disdain): 'No, sir, I should never be happy by being less rational.' BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH: Your wish then, sir, is ynpox didacnipivos.' JOHNSON: 'Yes, my Lord.' His Lordship mentioned a charitable establishment in Wales where people were maintained and supplied with everything, upon the condition of their contributing the weekly produce of their labour; and he said they grew quite torpid for the want of property. JOHNSON: They have no object for hope. Their condition cannot be better. It is rowing without a port.'

enough that they mean to denote even a very small possession, provided it be a man's own: 'Est aliquid, quocunque loco, quocunque recessu, Unius sese dominum fecisse lacerta.'

This season there was a whimsical fashion in the newspapers of applying Shakspeare's words to describe living persons well known in the world; which was done under the title of Modern Characters from Shakspeare; many of which were admirably adapted. The fancy took so much, that they were afterwards collected into a pamphlet. Somebody said to Johnson, across the table, that he had not been in those characters. 'Yes,' said he, 'I have. I should have been sorry to be left out.' He then repeated what had been applied to him,

'You must borrow me GARAGANTUA's mouth.' Miss Reynolds, not perceiving at once the meaning of this, he was obliged to explain it to her, which had something of an awkward and ludicrous effect. Why, madam, it has a reference to me, as using big words, which require the mouth of a giant to pronounce them. Garagantua is the name of a giant in Rabelais.' BosWELL: But, sir, there is another amongst them for you:

"He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for his power to thunder."' JOHNSON: 'There is nothing marked in that. No, sir, Garagantua is the best.' Notwithstanding this ease and good humour, when I a little while afterwards repeated his sarcasm on Kenrick, which was received with applause, he asked, Who said that?' and on my suddenly answering Garagantua, he looked serious, which was a sufficient indication that he did not wish it to be kept up.

When we went to the drawing-room there was a rich assemblage. Besides the company who had been at dinner, there were Mr. Garrick, Mr. Harris of Salisbury, Dr. Percy, Dr. Burney, the Honourable Mrs. Cholmondeley, Miss Hannah More, etc. etc.

1

produced.' BosWELL: The truth is, it is impossible perfectly to translate poetry. In a different language it may be the same tune, but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a flageolet.' HARRIS: 'I think heroic poetry is best in blank verse; yet it appears that rhyme is essential to English poetry, from our deficiency in metrical quantities. In my opinion, the chief excellence of our language is numerous prose.' JOHNSON: 'Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before this time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded.' Mr. Langton, who now had joined us, commended Clarendon. JOHNSON: He is objected to for his parentheses, his involved clauses, and his want of harmony. But he is supported by his matter. It is, indeed, owing to a plethory of matter that his style is so faulty: every substance (smiling to Mr. Harris) has so many accidents. To be distinct, we must talk analytically. If we analyse language, we must speak of it grammatically; if we analyse argument, we must speak of it logically.' GARRICK: 'Of all the translations that ever were attempted, I think Elphinston's Martial the most extraordinary. He consulted me upon it, who am a little of an epigrammatist myself, you know. I told him freely, 'You don't seem to have that turn." I asked him if he was serious; and finding he was, I advised him against publishing. Why, his translation is more difficult to understand than the original. I thought him a man of some talents; but he seems crazy in this.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, you have done what I had not courage to do. But he did not ask my advice, and I did not force it upon him to make him angry with me.' GARRICK: 'But as a friend, sir' JOHNSON: Why, such a friend as I am with him-no.' GARRICK: 'But if you see a friend going to tumble over a precipice?' JOHNSON: That is an extravagant case, sir. You are sure a friend will thank you for hindering him from tumbling over a precipice; but in the other case, I should hurt his vanity, and do him no good. He would not take my advice. His brother-in-law, Strahan, sent him a subscription of £50, and said he would send him £50 more, if he would not publish.' GARRICK: What! eh! is Strahan a good judge of an epigram? Is not he rather an obtuse man, eh?' JOHNSON: Why, sir, he may not be a judge of an epigram; but you see he is a judge of what is not an epigram.' BOSWELL: 'It is easy for you, Mr. Garrick, to talk to an author as you talked to Elphinston; you, who have been so long the manager of a theatre, rejecting the

66

1 A celebrated scholar and statesman. He was born in 1628, and died in 1700

plays of poor authors. You are an old judge, who have often pronounced sentence of death. You are a practised surgeon, who have often amputated limbs: and though this may have been for the good of your patients, they cannot like you. Those who have undergone a dreadful operation are not very fond of seeing the operator again.' GARRICK: 'Yes, I know enough of that. There was a reverend gentleman (Mr. Hawkins), who wrote a tragedy, the SIEGE of something, which I refused.' HARRIS: 'So the siege was raised.' JOHNSON: 'Ay, he came to me and complained; and told me that Garrick said his play was wrong in the concoction. Now, what is the concoction of a play? (Here Garrick started, and twisted himself, and seemed sorely vexed; for Johnson told me he believed the story was true.) GARRICK: ‘I—I—I—said, first concoction.' JOHNSON (smiling): 'Well, he left out first. And Rich, he said, refused him in false English: he could show it under his hand.' GARRICK: 'He wrote to me in violent wrath for having refused his play: "Sir, this is growing a very serious and terrible affair. I am resolved to publish my play. I will appeal to the world; and how will your judgment appear!" I answered, "Sir, notwithstanding all the seriousness, and all the terrors, I have no objection to your publishing your play; and as you live at a great distance (Devonshire, I believe), if you will send it to me, I will convey it to the press." I never heard more of it-ha! ha! ha!'

On Friday, April 10, I found Johnson at home in the morning. We resumed the conversation of yesterday. He put me in mind of some of it which escaped my memory, and enabled me to record it more perfectly than I otherwise could have done. He was much pleased with my paying so great attention to his recommendation in 1763, the period when our acquaintance began, that I should keep a journal; and I could perceive he was secretly pleased to find so much of the fruit of his mind preserved; and as he had been used to imagine and say that he always laboured when he said a good thing, it delighted him, on a review, to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.

I said to him, 'You were yesterday, sir, in remarkably good humour; but there was nothing to offend you, nothing to produce irritation or violence. There was no bold offender. There was not one capital conviction. It was a maiden assize. You had on your white gloves." He found fault with our friend Langton for

1 It was called The Siege of Aleppo. Mr. Hawkins, the author of it, was formerly Professor of Poetry at Oxford. It is printed in his Miscellanies, 3 vols. 8vo.BOSWELL.

2 Garrick had high authority for this expression. Dryden uses it in his preface to Edipus.-MALONE. 3 At an assize, when there has been no capital con viction, the judge receives a pair of white gloves.

having been too silent. 'Sir,' said I, 'you will recollect that he very properly took up Sir Joshua for being glad that Charles Fox had praised Goldsmith's Traveller, and you joined him.' JOHNSON: Yes, sir, I knocked Fox on the head, without ceremony. Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present. He is under the Fox star, and the Irish constellation. He is always under some planet.' BOSWELL: "There is no Fox star.' JOHNSON: 'But there is a Dog star.' BOSWELL: "They say, indeed, a fox and a dog are the same animal.'

I reminded him of a gentleman who, Mrs. Cholmondeley said, was first talkative from affectation, and then silent from the same cause; that he first thought, 'I shall be celebrated as the liveliest man in every company;' and then, all at once, 'Oh! it is much more respectable to be grave, and look wise.' 'He has reversed the Pythagorean discipline, by being first talkative, and then silent. He reverses the course of nature too; he was first the gay butterfly, and then the creeping worm.' Johnson laughed loud and long at this expansion and illustration of what he himself had told me.

We dined together with Mr. Scott (now Sir William Scott, his Majesty's Advocate-General) at his chambers in the Temple; nobody else there. The company being small, Johnson was not in such spirits as he had been the preceding day, and for a considerable time little was said.

At last he burst forth: 'Subordination is sadly broken down in this age. No man, now, has the same authority which his father had-except a gaoler. No master has it over his servants; it is diminished in our colleges: nay, in our grammar schools.' BOSWELL: 'What is the cause of this, sir?' JOHNSON: 'Why, the coming in of the Scotch' (laughing sarcastically). BOSWELL: That is to say, things have been turned topsy-turvy. But your serious cause? JOHNSON: 'Why, sir, there are many causes, the chief of which is, I think, the great increase of money. No man now depends upon the lord of a manor, when he can send to another country and fetch provisions. The shoeblack at the entry of my court does not depend on me. I can deprive him but of a penny a day, which he hopes somebody else will bring him; and that penny I must carry to another shoeblack; so the trade suffers nothing. I have explained, in my Journey to the Hebrides, how gold and silver destroy feudal subordination. But, besides, there is a general relaxation of reverence. No son now depends upon his father, as in former times. Paternity used to be considered as of itself a great thing, which had a right to many claims. That is, in general, reduced to very small bounds. My hope is, that as anarchy produces tyranny, this extreme relaxation will produce freni strictio.'

Talking of fame, for which there is so great a desire, I observed how little there is of it in reality, compared with the other objects of human attention. 'Let every man recollect, and he will be sensible how small a part of his time is employed in talking or thinking of Shakspeare, Voltaire, or any of the most celebrated men that have ever lived, or are now supposed to occupy the attention and admiration of the world. Let this be extracted and compressed; into what a narrow space will it go!' I then slily introduced Mr. Garrick's fame, and his assuming the airs of a great man. JOHNSON: 'Sir, it is wonderful how little Garrick assumes. No, sir, Garrick fortunam reverenter habet. Consider, sir,-celebrated men, such as you have mentioned, have had their applause at a distance; but Garrick had it dashed in his face, sounded in his ears, and went home every night with the plaudits of a thousand in his cranium. Then, sir, Garrick did not find, but made his way to the tables, the levees, and almost the bed-chambers of the great. Then, sir, Garrick had under him a numerous body of people; who, from fear of his power and hopes of his favour, and admiration of his talents, were constantly submissive to him. And here is a man who has advanced the dignity of his profession. Garrick has made a player a higher character.' SCOTT: 'And he is a very sprightly writer too.' JOHNSON: Yes, sir; and all this supported by great wealth of his own acquisition. If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me, to knock down everybody that stood in the way. Consider, if all this had happened to Cibber or Quin, they'd have jumped over the moon. Yet Garrick speaks to us' (smiling). BOSWELL: 'And Garrick is a very good man, a charitable man.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, a liberal man. He has given away more money than any man in England. There may be a little vanity mixed; but he has shown that money is not his first object.' BOSWELL: 'Yet Foote used to say of him, that he walked out with an intention to do a generous action; but turning the corner of a street, he met with the ghost of a halfpenny, which frightened him.' JOHNSON: Why, sir, that is very true, too; for I never knew a man of whom it could be said with less certainty to-day, what he will do to-morrow, than Garrick; it depends so much on his humour at the time.' SCOTT: 'I am glad to hear of his liberality. He has been represented as very saving.' JOHNSON: 'With his domestic saving we have nothing to do. I remember drinking tea with him long ago, when Peg Woffington made it, and he grumbled at her for making it too strong. He had then

1

1 When Johnson told this little anecdote to Sir Joshua Reynolds, he mentioned a circumstance which he omitted to-day :-'Why,' said Garrick, 'it is as red as blood.'-BOSWELL

He sometimes could not bear being teased with questions. I was once present when a gentleman asked so many, as, 'What did you do, sir?'-'What did you say, sir?' that he at last grew enraged, and said, 'I will not be put to the question. Don't you consider, sir, that these are not the manners of a gentleman? I will not be baited with what and why; what is this? what is that? why is a cow's tail long? why is a fox's tail bushy?' The gentleman, who was a good deal out of countenance, said, 'Why, sir, you are so good, that I venture to trouble you.' JOHNSON: Sir, my being so good is no reason why you should be so ill.'

Talking of the Justitia hulk at Woolwich, in which criminals were punished by being confined to labour, he said, 'I do not see that they are punished by this: they must have worked equally, had they never been guilty of stealing. They now only work; so, after all, they have gained; what they stole is clear gain to them; the confinement is nothing. Every man who works is confined: the smith to his shop, the tailor to his garret.' BOSWELL: And Lord Mansfield to his Court.' JOHNSON: Yes, sir. You know the notion of confinement may be extended, as in the song, "Every island is a prison." There is, in Dodsley's collection, a copy of verses to the author of that song.'

Smith's Latin verses on Pococke, the great traveller,' were mentioned. He repeated some of them, and said they were Smith's best verses.

He talked with an uncommon animation of travelling into distant countries; that the mind was enlarged by it, and that an acquisition of dignity of character was derived from it. He expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I really believed I should go and see the wall of China, had I not children, of whom it was my duty to take care. 'Sir,' said he, by doing so, you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China-I am serious, sir.'

When we had left Mr. Scott's, he said, 'Will you go home with me?'-'Sir,' said I, 'it is late; but I'll go with you for three minutes.' JOHNSON: Or four.' We went to Mrs. Williams's room, where we found Mr. Allen, the printer, who was the landlord of his house in Bolt Court, a worthy, obliging man, and his very old acquaintance; and what was exceed

1 Smith's verses are on Edward Pococke, the great Oriental linguist. He travelled, it is true; but Dr. Richard Pococke, late Bishop of Ossory, who published Travels through the East, is usually called the great traveller.-KEARNEY.

tive size, he used, even in Johnson's presence, to imitate the stately periods and slow and solemn utterance of the great man. I this evening boasted that although I did not write what is called stenography, or short-hand, in appropriated characters devised for the purpose, I had a method of my own of writing half words, and leaving out some altogether, so as yet to keep the substance and language of any discourse which I had heard so much in view, that I could give it very completely soon after I had taken it down. He defied me, as he had once defied an actual short-hand writer; and he made the experiment by reading slowly and distinctly a part of Robertson's History of America, while I endeavoured to write it in my way of taking notes. It was found that I had it very imperfectly; the conclusion from which was, that its excellence was principally owing to a studied arrangement of words, which could not be varied or abridged without an essential injury.

On Sunday, April 12, I found him at home before dinner; Dr. Dodd's poem, entitled Thoughts in Prison, was lying upon his table. This appearing to me an extraordinary effort by a man who was in Newgate for a capital crime, I was desirous to hear Johnson's opinion of it ; to my surprise he told me he had not read a line of it. I took up the book, and read a passage to him. JOHNSON: Pretty well, if you are previously disposed to like them.' I read another passage, with which he was better pleased. He then took the book into his own hands, and having looked at the prayer at the end of it, he said, 'What evidence is there that this was composed the night before he suffered? I do not believe it.' He then read aloud where he prays for the King, etc., and observed, 'Sir, do you think that a man, the night before he is to be. hanged, cares for the succession of a royal family?-Though he may have composed this prayer then. A man who has been canting all his life, may cant to the last.-And yet a man, who has been refused a pardon, after so much petitioning, would hardly be praying thus fervently for the King.'

He and I, and Mrs. Williams, went to dine with the Reverend Dr. Percy. Talking of Goldsmith, Johnson said he was very envious. I defended him, by observing that he owned it frankly upon all occasions. JOHNSON: 'Sir, you are enforcing the charge. He had so much envy that he could not conceal it. He was so full of it that he overflowed. He talked of it, to be sure, often enough. Now, sir, what a man avows he is not ashamed to think; though many a man thinks what he is ashamed to avow. We are all envious naturally; but by checking envy we get the better of it. So we are all thieves naturally; a child always tries to get at what it wants the nearest way. By good in