by the malignant prejudices of that shallow writer, who, having quarrelled with Mr. Burke, carried his enmity even to Mr. Burke’s friends.’ Prior’s Malone, p. 419. See also ante, p. 27. Hawkins (Life, p. 420) said of Goldsmith:—‘As he wrote for the booksellers, we at the Club looked on him as a mere literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and translating, but little capable of original, and still less of poetical composition.’
[1407] Life of Johnson, p. 425. BOSWELL. Hawkins is ‘equally inaccurate’ in saying’ that Johnson was so constant at our meetings as never to absent himself.’ (Ib. p. 424.) See post, Johnson’s letter to Langton of March 9, 1766, where he says:—‘Dyer is constant at the Club; Hawkins is remiss; I am not over diligent.’
[1408] Letters to and from Dr. Johnson. Vol. ii. p. 278 [387]. BOSWELL. The passage is as follows:—‘“If he does apply,” says our Doctor to Mr. Thrale, “I’ll black-ball him.” “Who, Sir? Mr. Garrick, your friend, your companion,—black-ball him!” “Why, Sir, I love my little David dearly, better than all or any of his flatterers do, but surely one ought, &c.”’
[1409] Pope’s Moral Essays, iii. 242.
[1410] Malone says that it was from him that Boswell had his account of Garrick’s election, and that he had it from Reynolds. He adds that ‘Johnson warmly supported Garrick, being in reality a very tender affectionate man. He was merely offended at the actors conceit.’ He continues:—‘On the former part of this story it probably was that Hawkins grounded his account that Garrick never was of the Club, and that Johnson said he never ought to be of it. And thus it is that this stupid biographer, and the more flippant and malicious Mrs. Piozzi have miscoloured and misrepresented almost every anecdote that they have pretented to tell of Dr. Johnson.’ Prior’s Malone, p. 392. Whatever was the slight cast upon Garrick, he was nevertheless the sixth new member elected. Four, as I have shown, were added by 1768. The next elections were in 1773 (Croker’s Boswell, ed. 1844. ii. 326), when five were added, of whom Garrick was the second, and Boswell the fifth. In 1774 five more were elected, among whom were Fox and Gibbon. Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 249) says that ‘upon Garrick’s death, when numberless applications were made to succeed him [in the Club], Johnson was deaf to them all. He said, “No, there never could be found any successor worthy of such a man;” and he insisted upon it there should be a year’s widowhood in the club, before they thought of a new election.’
[1411] Grainger wrote to Percy on April 6, 1764:—‘Sam. Johnson says he will review it in The Critical‘ In August, 1765, he wrote:—‘I am perfectly satisfied with the reception the Sugar Cane has met with, and am greatly obliged to you and Mr. Johnson for the generous care you took of it in my absence.’ Prior’s Goldsmith, i. 238. He was absent in the West Indies. He died on Dec. 16, 1766. Ib. p. 241. The review of the Sugar Cane in the Critical Review (p. 270) is certainly by Johnson. The following passage is curious:—‘The last book begins with a striking invocation to the genius of Africa, and goes on to give proper instructions for the buying and choice of negroes…. The poet talks of this ungenerous commerce without the least appearance of detestation; but proceeds to direct these purchasers of their fellow-creatures with the same indifference that a groom would give instructions for choosing a horse.
‘Clear roll their ample eye; their tongue be red;
Broad swell their chest; their shoulders wide expand;
Not prominent their belly; clean and strong
Their thighs and legs in just proportion rise.’
See also post, March 21, 1776.
[1412] Johnson thus ends his brief review:—‘Such in the poem on which we now congratulate the public as on a production to which, since the death of Pope, it not be easy to find anything equal.’ Critical Review, p. 462.
[1413] Pr. and Med. p. 50. BOSWELL. He adds:—
‘I hope
To put my rooms in order.
Disorder I have found one great cause of idleness.’
[1414] Ib. p. 51. BOSWELL.
[1415] It was on his birth-day that he said this. He wrote on the same day:—‘I have outlived many friends. I have felt many sorrows. I have made few improvements.’
[1416] Prayers and Meditations, p. 58. BOSWELL. In his Vision of Theodore (Works, ix. 174) he describes the state of mind which he has recorded in his Meditations:—‘There were others whose crime it was rather to neglect Reason than to disobey her; and who retreated from the heat and tumult of the way, not to the bowers of Intemperance, but to the maze of Indolence. They had this peculiarity in their condition, that they were always in sight of the road of Reason, always wishing for her presence, and always resolving to return to-morrow.’
[1417] See Appendix F.
[1418] It used to be imagined at Mr. Thrale’s, when Johnson retired to a window or corner of the room, by perceiving his lips in motion, and hearing a murmur without audible articulation, that he was praying: but this was not always the case, for I was once, perhaps unperceived by him, writing at a table, so near the place of his retreat, that I heard him repeating some lines in an ode of Horace, over and over again, as if by iteration, to exercise the organs of speech, and fix the ode in his memory:
Audiet cives acuisse ferrum
Quo graves Persas melius perirent,
Audiet pugnas….
Odes, i. 2, 21.
[‘Our sons shall hear, shall hear to latest times,
Of Roman arms with civil gore imbrued,
Which better had the Persian foe subdued.’
Francis.]
It was during the American War. BURNEY. Boswell in his Hebrides (Oct. 12, 1773) records, ‘Dr. Johnson is often uttering pious ejaculations, when he appears to be talking to himself; for sometimes his voice grows stronger, and parts of the Lord’s Prayer are heard.’ In the same passage he describes other ‘particularities,’ and adds in a note:—‘It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying anything on the subject, which I hoped he would have done.’ See post, Dec. 1784, note.
[1419] Churchill’s Poems, i. 16. See ante, p. 391.
[1420] ‘It is in vain to try to find a meaning in every one of his particularities, which, I suppose, are mere habits contracted by chance; of which every man has some that are more or less remarkable.’ Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 12, 1773. ‘The love of symmetry and order, which is natural to the mind of man, betrays him sometimes into very whimsical fancies. “This noble principle,” says a French author, “loves to amuse itself on the most trifling occasions. You may see a profound philosopher,” says he, “walk for an hour together in his chamber, and industriously treading at every step upon every other board in the flooring.”’ The Spectator, No. 632.
[1421] Mr. S. Whyte (Miscellanea Nova, p. 49) tells how from old Mr. Sheridan’s house in Bedford-street, opposite Henrietta-street, with an opera-glass he watched Johnson approaching. ‘I perceived him at a good distance working along with a peculiar solemnity of deportment, and an awkward sort of measured step.
