If this book should again be reprinted, I shall with the utmost readiness correct any errours I may have committed, in stating conversations, provided it can be clearly shewn to me that I have been inaccurate. But I am slow to believe, (as I have elsewhere observed[1158]) that any man's memory, at the distance of several years, can preserve facts or sayings with such fidelity as may be done by writing them down when they are recent: and I beg it may be remembered, that it is not upon memory, but upon what was written at the time, that the authenticity of my Journal rests.
* * * * *
No. II.
Verses written by Sir Alexander (now Lord) Macdonald; addressed and presented to Dr. Johnson, at Armidale in the Isle of Sky[1159].
Viator, o qui nostra per aequora Visurus agros Skiaticos venis, En te salutantes tributim Undique conglomerantur oris.
Donaldiani,--quotquot in insulis Compescit arctis limitibus mare; Alitque jamdudum, ac alendos Piscibus indigenas fovebit.
Ciere fluctus siste, Procelliger, Nec tu laborans perge, precor, ratis, Ne conjugem plangat marita, Ne doleat soboles parentem.
Nec te vicissim poeniteat virum Luxisse;--vestro scimus ut aestuant In corde luctantes dolores, Cum feriant inopina corpus.
Quidni! peremptum clade tuentibus Plus semper illo qui moritur pati Datur, doloris dum profundos Pervia mens aperit recessus.
Valete luctus;--hinc lacrymabiles Arcete visus:--ibimus, ibimus Superbienti qua theatro Fingaliae memorantur aulae.
Illustris hospes! mox spatiabere Qua mens ruinae ducta meatibus Gaudebit explorare coetus, Buccina qua cecinit triumphos;
Audin? resurgens spirat anhelitu Dux usitato, suscitat efficax Poeta manes, ingruitque Vi solita redivivus horror.
Ahaena quassans tela gravi manu Sic ibat atrox Ossiani pater: Quiescat urna, stet fidelis Phersonius vigil ad favillam.
Preparing for the Press, in one Volume Quarto,
THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
BY JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
Mr. Boswell has been collecting materials for this work for more than twenty years, during which he was honoured with the intimate friendship of Dr. Johnson; to whose memory he is ambitious to erect a literary monument, worthy of so great an authour, and so excellent a man. Dr. Johnson was well informed of his design, and obligingly communicated to him several curious particulars. With these will be interwoven the most authentick accounts that can be obtained from those who knew him best; many sketches of his conversation on a multiplicity of subjects, with various persons, some of them the most eminent of the age; a great number of letters from him at different periods, and several original pieces dictated by him to Mr. Boswell, distinguished by that peculiar energy, which marked every emanation of his mind.
Mr. Boswell takes this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging the many valuable communications which he has received to enable him to render his Life of Dr. Johnson more complete. His thanks are particularly due to the Rev. Dr. Adams, the Rev. Dr. Taylor, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Dr. Brocklesby, the Rev. Thomas Warton, Mr. Hector of Birmingham, Mrs. Porter, and Miss Seward.
He has already obtained a large collection of Dr. Johnson's letters to his friends, and shall be much obliged for such others as yet remain in private hands; which he is the more desirous of collecting, as all the letters of that great man, which he has yet seen, are written with peculiar precision and elegance; and he is confident that the publication of the whole of Dr. Johnson's epistolary correspondence will do him the highest honour.
APPENDIX A.
(Page 80.)
As no one reads Warburton now--I bought the five volumes of his Divine Legation in excellent condition, bound in calf, for ten pence--one or two extracts from his writing may be of interest. His Dedication of that work to the Free-Thinkers is as vigorous as it is abusive. It has such passages as the following:--'Low and mean as your buffoonery is, it is yet to the level of the people:' p. xi. 'I have now done with your buffoonery, which, like chewed bullets, is against the law of arms; and come next to your scurrilities, those stink-pots of your offensive war.' Ib. p. xxii. On page xl. he returns again to their 'cold buffoonery.' In the Appendix to vol. v, p. 414, he thus wittily replies to Lowth, who had maintained that 'idolatry was punished under the DOMINION of Melchisedec'(p. 409):--'Melchisedec's story is a short one; he is just brought into the scene to bless Abraham in his return from conquest. This promises but ill. Had this King and Priest of Salem been brought in cursing, it had had a better appearance: for, I think, punishment for opinions which generally ends in a fagot always begins with a curse.