Be this as it may, is it not, in fact, converting the holy institution of marriage into a mere state contract?' See also the Protest of fourteen of the peers in Parl. Hist. xvii. 391, and post, April 15, 1773. Horace Walpole ends his account of the Marriage Bill by saying:--'Thus within three weeks were the Thirty-nine Articles affirmed and the New Testament deserted.' Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 37. How carelessly this Act was drawn was shown by Lord Eldon, when Attorney-General, in the case of the marriage of the Duke of Sussex to Lady Augusta Murray. 'Lord Thurlow said to me angrily at the Privy Council, "Sir, why have you not prosecuted under the Act of Parliament all the parties concerned in this abominable marriage?" To which I answered, "That it was a very difficult business to prosecute--that the Act had been drawn by Lord Mansfield and Mr. Attorney-General Thurlow, and Mr. Solicitor-General Wedderburne, and unluckily they had made all parties present at the marriage guilty of felony; and as nobody could prove the marriage except a person who had been present at it, there could be no prosecution, because nobody present could be compelled to be a witness." This put an end to the matter.' Twiss's Eldon, i. 234.
[450] See post, May 9, 1773, and May 13, 1778.
[451] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 25, 1773, where Johnson, discussing the same question, says:--'There is generally a scoundrelism about a low man.'
[452] Mackintosh told Mr. Croker that this friend was Mr. Cullen, afterwards a judge by the name of Lord Cullen. In Boswelliana (pp. 250-2), Boswell mentions him thrice, and always as 'Cullen the mimick.' His manner, he says, was wretched, and his physiognomy worse than Wilkes's. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 268) says that 'Cullen possessed the talent of mimicry beyond all mankind; for his was not merely an exact imitation of voice and manner of speaking, but a perfect exhibition of every man's manner of thinking on every subject.' Carlyle mentions two striking instances of this.
[453] See post, May 15, 1776.
[454] 'The prince of Dublin printers,' as Swift called him. Swift's Works (1803), xviii. 288. He was taken off by Foote under the name of Peter Paragraph, in The Orators, the piece in which he had meant to take off Johnson (ante, ii. 95). 'Faulkner consoled himself (pending his prosecution of the libeller) by printing the libel, and selling it most extensively.' Forster's Goldsmith, i. 287. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 29.
[455] Faulkner had lost one of his legs. 'When Foote had his accident (ante, ii. 95), "Now I shall take off old Faulkner indeed to the life," was the first remark he made when what he had to suffer was announced to him.' Forster's Essays, ii. 400.
[456] A writer in the Monthly Review, lxxvi. 374 (no doubt Murphy), says:--'A large number of friends such as Johnson, Mr. Burke, and Mr. Murphy dined at Garrick's at Christmas, 1760. Foote was then in Dublin. It was said at table that he had been horse-whipped by an apothecary for taking him off upon the stage. "But I wonder," said Garrick, "that any man would show so much resentment to Foote; nobody ever thought it worth his while to quarrel with him in London." "And I am glad," said Johnson, "to find that the man is rising in the world." The anecdote was afterwards told to Foote, who in return gave out that he would in a short time produce the Caliban of literature on the stage. Being informed of this design, Johnson sent word to Foote, that, the theatre being intended for the reformation of vice, he would go from the boxes on the stage, and correct him before the audience, Foote abandoned the design. No ill-will ensued.'
[457] See post, May 15, 1776, where Johnson says:--'I turned Boswell loose at Lichfield, my native city, that he might see for once real civility.
[458] In my list of Boswell's projected works (ante, i. 225, note 2) I have omitted this.
[459] See post, April 7, 1775.
[460] Boswell visited Ireland in the summer of 1760. Prior's Goldsmith, i. 450.
[461] Puffendorf states that 'tutors and schoolmasters have a right to the moderate use of gentle discipline over their pupils'--viii. 3-10; adding, rather superfluously, Grotius's caveat, that 'it shall not extend to a power of death.' CROKER.
[462] The brother of Sir J. Macdonald, mentioned ante, i. 449. Johnson visited him in the Isle of Skye. 'He had been very well pleased with him in London, but he was dissatisfied at hearing heavy complaints of rents racked, and the people driven to emigration.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 2, 1773. He reproached him also with meanness as a host.
[463] Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, v. 449) points out that this conversation followed close on the appointment of 'the incompetent Bathurst' as Chancellor. 'Such a conversation,' he adds, 'would not have occurred during the chancellorship of Lord Hardwicke or Lord Somers.'
[464]
'But if at first he minds his hits, And drinks champagne among the wits,' &c.
Prior's Chameleon, 1. 39.