He says in his Autobiography/ (p. xi.) that all the alterations which he made in the later editions of his History of the Stuarts, 'he made invariably to the Tory side.' Dr. Burton gives instances of these; Life of Hume, ii. 74. Hume wrote in 1763 that he was 'too much infected with the plaguy prejudices of Whiggism when he began the work.' Ib. p. 144. In 1770 he wrote:--'I either soften or expunge many villainous, seditious Whig strokes which had crept into it.' Ib. p. 434. This growing hatred of Whiggism was, perhaps, due to pique. John Home, in his notes of Hume's talk in the last weeks of his life, says: 'He recurred to a subject not unfrequent with him--that is, the design to ruin him as an author, by the people that were ministers at the first publication of his History, and called themselves Whigs.' Ib. p. 500. As regards America, Hume was with the Whigs, as Johnson had perhaps learnt from their common friend, Mr. Strahan. 'He was,' says Dr. Burton, 'far more tolerant of the sway of individuals over numbers, which he looked upon as the means of preserving order and civilization, than of the predominance of one territory over another, which he looked upon as subjugation.' Ib. p. 477. Quite at the beginning of the struggle he foretold that the Americans would not be subdued, unless they broke in pieces among themselves. Ib. p. 482. He was not frightened by the prospect of the loss of our supremacy. He wrote to Adam Smith:--'My notion is that the matter is not so important as is commonly imagined. Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our manufactures.' Ib. p. 484. Johnson's charge against Hume that he had no principle, is, no doubt, a gross one; yet Hume's advice to a sceptical young clergyman, who had good hope of preferment, that he should therefore continue in orders, was unprincipled enough. 'It is,' he wrote, 'putting too great a respect on the vulgar and on their superstitions to pique one's self on sincerity with regard to them. Did ever one make it a point of honour to speak truth to children or madmen? If the thing were worthy being treated gravely, I should tell him that the Pythian oracle, with the approbation of Xenophon, advised every one to worship the gods--[Greek: nomo poleos]. I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular. The common duties of society usually require it; and the ecclesiastical profession only adds a little more to an innocent dissimulation, or rather simulation, without which it is impossible to pass through the world.' Ib/. p. 187.
[608] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 48) says that Johnson told her that in writing the story of Gelaleddin, the poor scholar (Idler, No. 75), who thought to fight his way to fame by his learning and wit, 'he had his own outset into life in his eye.' Gelaleddin describes how 'he was sometimes admitted to the tables of the viziers, where he exerted his wit and diffused his knowledge; but he observed that where, by endeavour or accident he had remarkably excelled, he was seldom invited a second time.' See ante, p. 116.
[609] See ante, p. 115.
[610] Bar. BOSWELL.
[611] Nard. BOSWELL.
[612] Barnard. BOSWELL.
[613] It was reviewed in the Gent. Mag. 1781, p. 282, where it is said to have been written by Don Gabriel, third son of the King of Spain.
[614] Though 'you was' is very common in the authors of the last century when one person was addressed, I doubt greatly whether Johnson ever so expressed himself.
[615] See ante, i. 311.
[616] Horace Walpole (Letters v. 85) says, 'Boswell, like Cambridge, has a rage of knowing anybody that ever was talked of.' Miss Burney records 'an old trick of Mr. Cambridge to his son George, when listening to a dull story, in saying to the relator "Tell the rest of that to George."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 274. See ante, ii. 361.
[617] Virgil, Eclogues, i. 47.
[618] 'Mr. Johnson,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 21), 'was exceedingly disposed to the general indulgence of children, and was even scrupulously and ceremoniously attentive not to offend them. He had strongly persuaded himself of the difficulty people always find to erase early impressions either of kindness or resentment.'
[619] Ante, ii.171, iv.75; also post, May 15, 1784.
[620] Johnson, on May 1, 1780, wrote of the exhibition dinner:--'The apartments were truly very noble. The pictures, for the sake of a sky-light, are at the top of the house; there we dined, and I sat over against the Archbishop of York. See how I live when I am not under petticoat government.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 111. It was Archbishop Markham whom he met; he is mentioned by Boswell in his Hebrides, post, v. 37. In spite of the 'elaboration of homage' Johnson could judge freely of an archbishop. He described the Archbishop of Tuam as 'a man coarse of voice and inelegant of language.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 300.
[621] By Lord Perceval, afterwards Earl of Egmont. He carried, writes Horace Walpole (Letters, ii. 144), 'the Westminster election at the end of my father's ministry, which he amply described in the history of his own family, a genealogical work called the History of the House of Yvery, a work which cost him three thousand pounds; and which was so ridiculous, that he has since tried to suppress all the copies.