said that though he could point out few or no faults in them, yet, when he was reading their books, he did not think he was reading English.’ See post, ii. 72, for Hume’s Scotticisms. Hume went to France in 1734 when he was 23 years old and stayed there three years. Hume’s Autobiography, p. vii. He never mastered French colloquially. Lord Charlemont, who met him in Turin in 1748, says:—‘His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable.’ Hardy’s Charlemont, i. 15. Horace Walpole, who met him in Paris in 1765, writes (Letters, iv. 426):—‘Mr. Hume is the only thing in the world that they [the French] believe implicitly; which they must do, for I defy them to understand any language that he speaks.’ Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 122) says of Hume’s writings:—‘Their careless inimitable beauties often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair.’ Dr. Beattie (Life, p. 243) wrote on Jan. 5, 1778:—‘We who live in Scotland are obliged to study English from books, like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot speak.’ He adds:—‘I have spent some years in labouring to acquire the art of giving a vernacular cast to the English we write.’ Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto, p. 222) says:—‘Since we began to affect speaking a foreign language, which the English dialect is to us, humour, it must be confessed, is less apparent in conversation.’
[1301] Discours sur L’origine et les fondemens de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, 1754.
[1302] ‘I have indeed myself observed that my banker ever bows lowest to me when I wear my full-bottomed wig, and writes me Mr. or Esq., accordingly as he sees me dressed.’ Spectator, No. 150.
[1303] Mr. Croker, quoting Mr. Wright, says:—’See his Quantulumanque (sic) concerning Money.’ I have read Petty’s Quantulumcunque, but do not find the passage in it.
[1304] Johnson told Dr. Burney that Goldsmith said, when he first began to write, he determined to commit to paper nothing but what was new; but he afterwards found that what was new was false, and from that time was no longer solicitous about novelty. BURNEY. Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, i. 421) says that this note ‘is another instance of the many various and doubtful forms in which stories about Johnson and Goldsmith are apt to appear when once we lose sight of the trustworthy Boswell. This is obviously a mere confused recollection of what is correctly told by Boswell [post, March 26, 1779].’ There is much truth in Mr. Forster’s general remark: nevertheless Burney likely enough repeated to the best of his memory what he had himself heard from Johnson.
[1305] ‘Their [the ancient moralists’] arguments have been, indeed, so unsuccessful, that I know not whether it can be shewn, that by all the wit and reason which this favourite cause has called forth a single convert was ever made; that even one man has refused to be rich, when to be rich was in his power, from the conviction of the greater happiness of a narrow fortune.’ Johnson’s Works, ii. 278. See post, June 3, 1781, and June 3, Sept. 7, and Dec. 7, 1782.
[1306] Johnson (Works, vi. 440) shows how much Frederick owed to ‘the difficulties of his youth.’ ‘Kings, without this help from temporary infelicity, see the world in a mist, which magnifies everything near them, and bounds their view to a narrow compass, which few are able to extend by the mere force of curiosity.’ He next points out what Cromwell ‘owed to the private condition in which he first entered the world;’ and continues:—‘The King of Prussia brought to the throne the knowledge of a private man, without the guilt of usurpation. Of this general acquaintance with the world there may be found some traces in his whole life. His conversation is like that of other men upon common topicks, his letters have an air of familiar elegance, and his whole conduct is that of a man who has to do with men.’
[1307] See ante p. 408
[1308] See ante, p. 298.
[1309] That this was Mr. Dempster seems likely from the Letters of Boswell (p. 34), where Boswell says:—‘I had prodigious satisfaction to find Dempster’s sophistry (which he has learnt from Hume and Rousseau) vanquished by the solid sense and vigorous reasoning of Johnson. Dempster,’ he continues, ‘was as happy as a vanquished argumentator could be.’ The character of the ‘benevolent good man’ suits Dempster (see post, under Feb. 7, 1775, where Boswell calls him ‘the virtuous and candid Dempster’), while that of the ‘noted infidel writer’ suits Hume. We find Boswell, Johnson, and Dempster again dining together on May 9, 1772.
[1310]
‘Thou wilt at best but suck a bull,
Or sheer swine, all cry and no wool.’
Hudibras, Part i. Canto I. 1. 851.
Dr. Z. Grey, in his note on these lines, quotes the proverbial saying ‘As wise as the Waltham calf that went nine times to suck a bull.’ He quotes also from The Spectator, No. 138, the passage where the Cynic said of two disputants, ‘One of these fellows is milking a ram, and the other holds the pail.’
[1311] The writer of the article Vacuum in the Penny Cyclo. (xxvi. 76), quoting Johnson’s words, adds:—‘That is, either all space is full of matter, or there are parts of space which have no matter. The alternative is undeniable, and the inference to which the modern philosophy would give the greatest probablility is, that all space is full of matter in the common sense of the word, but really occupied by particles of matter with vacuous interstices.’
[1312] ‘When any one tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened.’ Humes Essay on Miracles, Part i. See post Sept. 22 1777, where Boswell again quoted this passage.
[1313] A coffee-house over against Catherine Street, now the site of a tourists’ ticket office. Athenaeum, No. 3041.
[1314] Stockdale records (Memoirs, i. 202) that Johnson once said to him:—‘Whenever it is the duty of a young and old man to act at the same time with a spirit of independence and generosity; we may always have reason to hope that the young man will ardently perform, and to fear that the old man will desert, his duty.’
[1315] Boswell thus writes of this evening:—‘I learn more from him than from any man I ever was with. He told me a very odd thing, that he knew at eighteen as much as he does now; that is to say, his judgment is much stronger, but he had then stored up almost all the facts he has now, and he says that he has led but an idle life; only think, Temple, of that!’ Letters of Boswell, p. 34. See ante, p. 56, and post, ii. 36. He told Windham in 1784 ‘that he read Latin with as much ease when he went to college as at present.’ Windham’s Diary, p. 17.
[1316] Johnson in 1739 wrote of ‘those distempers and depressions, from which students, not well acquainted with the constitution of the human body, sometimes fly for relief to wine instead of exercise, and purchase temporary ease, by the hazard of the most dreadful consequences.’ Works, vi. 271. In The Rambler, No. 85, he says:—‘How much happiness is gained, and how much misery is escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.’ Boswell records (Hebrides, Sept. 24, 1773):—‘Dr. Johnson told us at breakfast, that he rode harder at a fox-chace than anybody.’ Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 206) says:—‘He certainly rode on Mr. Thrale’s old hunter with a good firmness, and, though he would follow the hounds fifty miles an end sometimes, would never own himself either tired or amused. I think no praise ever went so close to his heart, as when Mr. Hamilton called out one day upon Brighthelmstone Downs, “Why Johnson rides as well, for aught I see, as the most illiterate fellow in England.”’ He wrote to Mrs. Thrale
