I am far from desiring to be numbered among the exaggerators of Chinese excellence. I consider them as great, or wise, only in comparison with the nations that surround them; and have no intention to place them in competition either with the antients or with the moderns of this part of the world; yet they must be allowed to claim our notice as a distinct and very singular race of men: as the inhabitants of a region divided by its situation from all civilized countries, who have formed their own manners, and invented their own arts, without the assistance of example.' BOSWELL.
[591] The last execution at Tyburn was on Nov. 7, 1783, when one man was hanged. The first at Newgate was on the following Dec. 9, when ten were hanged. Gent. Mag. 1783, pp. 974, 1060.
[592] We may compare with this 'loose talk' Johnson's real opinion, as set forth in The Rambler, No. 114, entitled:--The necessity of proportioning punishments to crimes. He writes:--'The learned, the judicious, the pious Boerhaave relates that he never saw a criminal dragged to execution without asking himself, "Who knows whether this man is not less culpable than me?" On the days when the prisons of this city are emptied into the grave, let every spectator of this dreadful procession put the same question to his own heart. Few among those that crowd in thousands to the legal massacre, and look with carelessness, perhaps with triumph, on the utmost exacerbations of human misery, would then be able to return without horror and dejection.' He continues:--'It may be observed that all but murderers have, at their last hour, the common sensations of mankind pleading in their favour.... They who would rejoice at the correction of a thief, are yet shocked at the thought of destroying him. His crime shrinks to nothing compared with his misery, and severity defeats itself by exciting pity.'
[593] Richardson, in his Familiar Letters, No. 160, makes a country gentleman in town describe the procession of five criminals to Tyburn, and their execution. He should have heard, he said, 'the exhortation spoken by the bell-man from the wall of St. Sepulchre's church-yard; but the noise of the officers and the mob was so great, and the silly curiosity of people climbing into the cart to take leave of the criminals made such a confused noise that I could not hear them. They are as follow: "All good people pray heartily to God for these poor sinners, who now are going to their deaths; for whom this great bell doth toll. You that are condemned to die, repent with lamentable tears.... Lord have mercy upon you! Christ have mercy upon you!" which last words the bell-man repeats three times. All the way up Holborn the crowd was so great, as at every twenty or thirty yards to obstruct the passage; and wine, notwithstanding a late good order against that practice, was brought the malefactors, who drank greedily of it. After this the three thoughtless young men, who at first seemed not enough concerned, grew most shamefully daring and wanton. They swore, laughed, and talked obscenely. At the place of execution the scene grew still more shocking; and the clergyman who attended was more the subject of ridicule than of their serious attention. The psalm was sung amidst the curses and quarrelling of hundreds of the most abandoned and profligate of mankind. As soon as the poor creatures were half-dead, I was much surprised to see the populace fall to haling and pulling the carcases with so much earnestness as to occasion several warm rencounters and broken heads. These, I was told, were the friends of the persons executed, or such as for the sake of tumult chose to appear so; and some persons sent by private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection.' The psalm is mentioned in a note on the line in The Dunciad, i. 4l, 'Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines:'--'It is an ancient English custom,' says Pope, 'for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn.'
[594] The rest of these miscellaneous sayings were first given in the Additions to Dr. Johnson's Life at the beginning of vol. I of the second edition.
[595] Hume (Auto. p. 6) speaks of Hurd as attacking him 'with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility which distinguish the Warburtonian school.' 'Hurd,' writes Walpole, 'had acquired a great name by several works of slender merit, was a gentle, plausible man, affecting a singular decorum that endeared him highly to devout old ladies.' Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 50. He is best known to the present generation by his impertinent notes on Addison's Works. By reprinting them, Mr. Bohn did much to spoil what was otherwise an excellent edition of that author. See ante, p. 47, note 2.
[596] The Rev. T. Twining, one of Dr. Burney's friends, wrote in 1779:--'You use a form of reference that I abominate, i.e. the latter, the former. "As long as you have the use of your tongue and your pen," said Dr. Johnson to Dr. Burney, "never, Sir, be reduced to that shift."' Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the XVIIIth Century, p.