On April 5 he was succeeded by the Duke of Portland. His 'coarse manners' were due to a neglected childhood. In the fragment of his Autobiography he describes 'the domestic brutality and ill-usage he experienced at home,' in the South of Ireland. 'It cost me,' he continues, 'more to unlearn the habits, manners, and principles which I then imbibed, than would have served to qualify me for any role whatever through life.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 12, 16.
[542] Bentham, it is reported, said of of him that 'alone of his own time, he was a "Minister who did not fear the people."' Ib. iii. 572.
[543] Malagrida, a Jesuit, was put to death at Lisbon in 1761, nominally on a charge of heresy, but in reality on a suspicion of his having sanctioned, as confessor to one of the conspirators, an attempt to assassinate King Joseph of Portugal. Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XV, ch. xxxviii. 'His name,' writes Wraxall (Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 67), 'is become proverbial among us to express duplicity.' It was first applied to Lord Shelburne in a squib attributed to Wilkes, which contained a vision of a masquerade. The writer, after describing him as masquerading as 'the heir apparent of Loyola and all the College,' continues:--'A little more of the devil, my Lord, if you please, about the eyebrows; that's enough, a perfect Malagrida, I protest.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, ii. 164. 'George III. habitually spoke of Shelburne as "Malagrida," and the "Jesuit of Berkeley Square."' Ib. iii. 8. The charge of duplicity was first made against Shelburne on the retirement of Fox (the first Lord Holland) in 1763. 'It was the tradition of Holland House that Bute justified the conduct of Shelburne, by telling Fox that it was "a pious fraud." "I can see the fraud plainly enough," is said to have been Fox's retort, "but where is the piety?"' Ib. i. 226. Any one who has examined Reynolds's picture of Shelburne, especially 'about the eyebrows,' at once sees how the name of Jesuit was given.
[544] Beauclerk wrote to Lord Charlemont on Nov. 20, 1773:-'Goldsmith the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers in praise of Lord Mayor Townshend. [Shelburne supported Townshend in opposition to Wilkes in the election of the Lord Mayor. Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, ii. 287.] The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne at Drury Lane. I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him; he said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. "Do you know," answered Goldsmith, "that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man." You see plainly what he meant to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. Mr. Walpole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life.' Life of Charlemont, i. 344.
[545] Most likely Reynolds, who introduced Crabbe to Johnson. Crabbe's Works, ed. 1834, ii. 11.
[546]
'I paint the cot, As truth will paint it, and as Bards will not. Nor you, ye Poor, of lettered scorn complain, To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; O'ercome by labour, and bowed down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruined shed? Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?'
The Village, book i.
See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 6.
[547] I shall give an instance, marking the original by Roman, and Johnson's substitution in Italick characters:--
'In fairer scenes, where peaceful pleasures spring, Tityrus, the pride of Mantuan swains, might sing: But charmed by him, or smitten with his views, Shall modern poets court the Mantuan muse? From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, Where Fancy leads, or Virgil led the way?' 'On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign, If Tityrus found the golden age again, Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Mechanick echoes of the Mantuan song? From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?.
Here we find Johnson's poetical and critical powers undiminished. I must, however, observe, that the aids he gave to this poem, as to The Traveller and Deserted Village of Goldsmith, were so small as by no means to impair the distinguished merit of the authour. BOSWELL.
[548] In the Gent. Mag. 1763, pp. 602, 633, is a review of his Observations on Diseases of the Army. He says that the register of deaths of military men proves that more than eight times as many men fall by what was called the gaol fever as by battle. His suggestions are eminently wise. Lord Seaford, in 1835, told Leslie 'that he remembered dining in company with Dr. Johnson at Dr. Brocklesby's, when he was a boy of twelve or thirteen. He was impressed with the superiority of Johnson, and his knocking everybody down in argument.' C.R. Leslie's Recollections, i.