APPENDIX. THE RAMBLER. I. (Page 10.)-" I mentioned Mallett's 'Elvira,' which had been acted the preceding winter at Drury Lane, and that the Hon. Andrew Erskine, Mr. Dempster, and myself, had joined in writing a pamphlet, entitled 'Critical Stricture,' against it. That the mildness of Dempster's disposition had, however, relented; and he had candidly said, 'We have hardly a right to abuse this tragedy; for bad as it is, how vain should either of us be to write one not near so good.' Johnson. 'Why no, sir; this is not just reasoning. You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables."-Birkbeck Hill's Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. i., 408. II. (Page 23.) - Matthew Prior (1641-1721), of whose poetry Dr. Johnson speaks rather slightingly, had good reason to extol the Duke of Dorset. As a youth, Prior was employed by his uncle, who kept a fashionable tavern at Charing Cross. The lad, who had been educated at Westminster School under Dr. Busby, was, for his years, an accomplished classical scholar. One day Lord Dorset and some other gentlemen fell into a dispute in the tavern over a passage in the Odes of Horace, when one of the company exclaimed, “I find we are not like to agree in our criticisms; but if I am not mistaken, there is a young fellow in the house who is able to set us all right." Prior was accordingly summoned, and immediately solved the difficulty. Lord Dorset was so much impressed with the youth's ability and learning, that he sent him in 1682 to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1686, and was soon afterwards elected a Fellow. III. (Page 30.) - Exactly the opposite was the case with Dr. Johnson himself, the affluence, vigour, and wit of whose talk was phenomenal. There IV. (Page 31.)-Johnson to Boswell: "All the complaints which are made of the world are unjust. I never knew a man of merit neglected; it was generally by his own fault that he failed of success. is no reason why any person should exert himself for a man who has written a good book; he has not written it for any individual."-Hill's Boswell, vol. iv., 172. V. (Page 75.)-"When I was running about this town a very poor fellow, I was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty; but I was, at the same time, very sorry to be poor. Sir, all the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil, show it to be evidently a great evil. You never find people labouring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune. So you hear people talking how miserable a king must be; and yet they all wish to be in his place."Dr. Johnson to Mr. Dempster, thirteen years later, 1763.-Hill's Boswell, vol. i., 441. VI. (Page 80.)--" Dr. Johnson went home with me (1772) to my lodgings in Conduit Street and drank tea, previous to our going to the Pantheon, which neither of us had seen before. He said, 'Goldsmith's Life of Parnell is poor; not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials; for nobody can write the life of a man but those who have ate and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.'"Hill's Boswell's Life, vol. ii. 166. VII. (Page 83.) - Francis de Malherbe, French poet, 1555-1628. VIII. (Page 95.) " To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage, of which when it is, as it must be taken finally away, he that travels on alone, will wonder how his esteem could be so little. Do not forget me; you see that I do not forget you. It is pleasing in the silence of solitude to think, that there is one at least, however distant, of whose benevolence there is little doubt, and whom there is yet hope of seeing again."-Dr. Johnson (Ætat 79) writing to Captain Langton from Bolt Court, March 20, 1782.-Hill's Boswell, vol. iv., 145. "He said to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair." -Hill's Boswell, vol. i., 300. IX. (Page 106.)—“ Johnson: 'It is wonderful, sir, how rare a quality good-humour is in life. We meet with very few goodhumoured men.' I mentioned four of our friends, none of whom he would allow to be good-humoured. One was acid, another was muddy, and to the others he had objections, which have escaped me. Then, shaking his head, and stretching himself at ease in the coach, and smiling with much complacency, he turned to me, and said, 'I look upon myself as a good-humoured fellow.'"-Hill's Boswell, vol. ii., 362. X. (Page 119.)-Alphonsus V., King of Arragon, surnamed the Magnanimous, 1384-1458. A great patron of learning, and the most accomplished sovereign of his time. XI. (Page 138.) " Yet think what ills the scholar's life assail, XII. (Page 143.)-Dr. Johnson's sly definition of Grub Street is worth recalling in this connection:-"Grub Street, the name of a street in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called Grub Street." XIII. (Page 150.)" Sir, you know courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues, because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other."-Hill's Boswell, vol. ii., 339. XIV. (Page 180.) – The allusion is, of course, to two of the labours of Hercules. Erymanthus, a mountain of Arcadia, where the hero captured alive an enormous boar, and in the forest around Nemea he choked the lion which ravaged the country around Mycenæ. XV. (Page 181.)-When asked how he felt upon the ill success of his tragedy (Irene), he replied "Like the monument;" meaning that he continued firm and unmoved as that column. And let it be remembered, as an admonition to the genus irritabile of dramatick writers, that this great man, instead of peevishly complaining of the bad trade of the town, submitted to the decision without a murmur. He had, indeed, upon all occasions, a great deference for the general opinion : "A man (said he) who writes a book, thinks himself wiser and wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct or amuse them, and the public, to whom he appeals, must, after all, be the judge of his pretensions."-Hill's Boswell's Life, i., 199. XVI. (Page 196.)-I mentioned that I was afraid I put into my journal too many little incidents. Johnson: "There is nothing, sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible."-Hill's Boswell, vol. i., 433. XVII. (Page 198.) - Johnson's own lack of punctuality was notorious; like other moralists, there were not wanting occasions when the wisdom of his lips uttered bitter things against the folly of his life. XVIII. (Page 211.)-In the closing sentence of the next and final Rambler Dr. Johnson expresses the hope that he may be yet numbered with those authors who have given "ardour to virtue and confidence to truth." That his hope has been fully realised is now a matter of common comment. The great moralist's wife died on the day on which the last number of the Rambler was published, and her removal from his side threw a gloom over his life, which time lessened but never effaced. THE ADVENTURER. XIX. (Page 220.)—“ He inculcated upon all his friends the importance of perpetual vigilance against the slightest degrees of falsehood; the effect of which, as Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me, has been that all who were of his school are distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy, which they would not have possessed in the same degree if they had not been acquainted with Johnson."-Hill's Boswell, vol. iii., 229. XX. (Page 230.)-Hermann Boerhaave (b. 1668, d. 1738) held the chairs of medicine and botany at the University of Leyden. A man of stainless character, whose fame rests chiefly on his Institutiones Medicae, published in 1708, and translated into every language in Europe. "An XXI. (Page 242.)—He made the common remark on the unhappiness which men who have led a busy life experience, when they retire in expectation of enjoying themselves at ease, and that they generally languish for want of their habitual occupation and wish to return to it. He mentioned as strong an instance of this as can well be imagined. eminent tallow-chandler in London, who had acquired a considerable fortune, gave up the trade in favour of his foreman, and went to live at a country-house near town. He soon grew weary, and paid frequent visits to his old shop, where he desired they might let him know their melting-days, and he would come and assist them; which he accordingly did. Here, sir, was a man, to whom the most disgusting circumstance in the business to which he had been used was a relief from idleness."-Hill's Boswell, vol. ii., 337. XXII. (Page 262.)-It was his custom to observe certain days with a pious abstraction-viz., New Year's day, the day of his wife's death, Good Friday, Easter-day, and his own birthday. He this year (1764) says-" I have now spent fifty-five years in resolving, having from the earliest time almost that I can remember, being forming schemes of a better life. I have done nothing. The need of doing, therefore, is pressing, since the time of doing is short. O God, grant me to resolve aright, and to keep my resolutions, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." Prayers and Meditations, Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. i., 483. XXIII. (Page 265.) -" People in general do not willingly read, if they can have anything else to amuse them. There must be an external impulse; emulation or vanity, or avarice. The progress which the understanding makes through a book has more pain than pleasure in it. Language is scanty and inadequate to express the nice gradations and mixtures of our feelings. No man reads a book of science from pure inclination."-Hill's Boswell, vol iv., 218. XXIV. (Page 272.)-" An account of the labours and productions of authors was for a long time among the deficiencies of English literature; but as the caprice of man is always starting from too little to too much, we have now among other disturbers of human quiet, a numerous body of reviewers and remarkers." -Johnson's Preliminary Discourse to the London Chronicle. |
