19.
[413] To him Boswell dedicated his Thesis as excelsae familiae de Bute spei alterae (ante, ii. 20). In 1775, he wrote of him:--'He is warmly my friend and has engaged to do for me.' Letters of Boswell, p. 186
[414] He was mistaken in this. See ante, i. 260; also iii. 420.
[415] In England in like manner, and perhaps for the same reason, all Attorneys have been converted into Solicitors.
[416] 'There is at Edinburgh a society or corporation of errand boys, called Cawdies, who ply in the streets at night with paper lanthorns, and are very serviceable in carrying messages.' Humphrey Clinker. Letter of Aug. 8.
[417] Their services in this sense are noticed in the same letter.
[418]
'The formal process shall be turned to sport, And you dismissed with honour by the Court.' FRANCIS. Horace, Satires, ii.i.86.
[419] Mr. Robertson altered this word to jocandi, he having found in Blackstone that to irritate is actionable. BOSWELL.
[420] Quoted by Johnson, ante, ii. l97.
[421] His god-daughter. See post May 10, 1784.
[422] See post, under Dec. 20, 1782
[423] See ante, i. 155
[424] The will of King Alfred, alluded to in this letter, from the original Saxon, in the library of Mr. Astle, has been printed at the expense of the University of Oxford. BOSWELL.
[425] He was a surgeon in this small Norfolk town. Dr. Burney's Memoirs, i. 106.
[426] Burney visited Johnson first in 1758, when he was living in Gough Square. Ante, i. 328.
[427] Mme. D'Arblay says that Dr. Johnson sent them to Dr. Burney's house, directed 'For the Broom Gentleman.' Dr. Burney's Memoirs, ii. 180.
[428] 'Sept. 14, 1781. Dr. Johnson has been very unwell indeed. Once I was quite frightened about him; but he continues his strange discipline--starving, mercury, opium; and though for a time half demolished by its severity, he always in the end rises superior both to the disease and the remedy, which commonly is the most alarming of the two.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 107. On Sept. 18, his birthday, he wrote:--'As I came home [from church], I thought I had never begun any period of life so placidly. I have always been accustomed to let this day pass unnoticed, but it came this time into my mind that some little festivity was not improper. I had a dinner, and invited Allen and Levett.' Pr. and Med. p. 199.
[429] This remark, I have no doubt, is aimed at Hawkins, who (Life, p. 553) pretends to account for this trip.
[430] Pr. and Med. p. 201. BOSWELL.
[431] He wrote from Lichfield on the previous Oct. 27:--'All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tediousness of time; a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned. But such is the lot of man.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 209.
[432] The truth of this has been proved by sad experience. BOSWELL. Mrs. Boswell died June 4, 1789. MALONE.
[433] See account of him in the Gent. Mag. Feb. 1785. BOSWELL, see ante, i. 243, note 3.
[434] Mrs. Piozzi (Synonymy, ii. 79), quoting this verse, under Officious, says;--'Johnson, always thinking neglect the worst misfortune that could befall a man, looked on a character of this description with less aversion than I do.'
[435]
'Content thyself to be obscurely good.'
Addisons Cato, act. iv. sc. 4.
[436] In both editions of Sir John Hawkins's Life of Dr. Johnson, 'letter'd ignorance' is printed. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker (Boswell, p. I) says that 'Mr. Boswell is habitually unjust to Sir J. Hawkins.' As some kind of balance, I suppose, to this injustice, he suppresses this note.
[437] Johnson repeated this line to me thus:--
'And Labour steals an hour to die.'
But he afterwards altered it to the present reading. BOSWELL. This poem is printed in the Ann. Reg. for 1783, p. 189, with the following variations:--l. 18, for 'ready help' 'useful care': l. 28, 'His single talent,' 'The single talent'; l. 33, 'no throbs of fiery pain,' 'no throbbing fiery pain'; l. 36, 'and freed,' 'and forced.' On the next page it is printed John Gilpin.
[438] Mr. Croker says that this line shows that 'some of Gray's happy expressions lingered in Johnson's memory' He quotes a line that comes at the end of the Ode on Vicissitude--'From busy day, the peaceful night.' This line is not Gray's, but Mason's.
[439] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:--'If you want events, Here is Mr. Levett just come in at fourscore from a walk to Hampstead, eight miles, in August.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177.
[440] In the original, March 20. On the afternoon of March 20 Lord North announced in the House of Commons 'that his Majesty's Ministers were no more.' Parl. Hist. xxii. 1215.
[441] Pr. and Med. p. 209 [207]. BOSWELL.
[442] See ante, ii. 355, iii. 46, iv. 81, 100. Mr. Seward records in his Biographiana, p. 600--without however giving the year--that 'Johnson being asked what the Opposition meant by their flaming speeches and violent pamphlets against Lord North's administration, answered: "They mean, Sir, rebellion; they mean in spite to destroy that country which they are not permitted to govern."'
[443] In the previous December the City of London in an address, writes Horace Walpole, 'besought the King to remove both his public and private counsellors, and used these stunning and memorable words:--"Your armies are captured; the wonted superiority of your navies is annihilated, your dominions are lost." Words that could be used to no other King; no King had ever lost so much without losing all. If James II.