[235] This, I find, is considered as obscure. I suppose Dr. Johnson meant, that I assiduously and earnestly recommended myself to some of the members, as in a canvass for an election into parliament. BOSWELL. See ante, ii, 235.
[236] Goldsmith in Retaliation, a few months later, wrote of William Burke:--'Would you ask for his merits? alas! he had none; What was good was spontaneous, his faults were his own.' See ante, iii 362, note 2.
[237] See ante, iii. 260, 390, 425.
[238] Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 252) wrote of Monboddo in 1782:--'He is such an extravagant adorer of the ancients, that he scarcely allows the English language to be capable of any excellence, still less the French. He said we moderns are entirely degenerated. I asked in what? "In everything," was his answer. He loves slavery upon principle. I asked him how he could vindicate such an enormity. He owned it was because Plutarch justified it. He is so wedded to system that, as Lord Barrington said to me the other day, rather than sacrifice his favourite opinion that men were born with tails, he would be contented to wear one himself.'
[239] Scott, in a note on Guy Mannering, ed. 1860, iv. 267, writes of Monboddo:--'The conversation of the excellent old man, his high, gentleman-like, chivalrous spirit, the learning and wit with which he defended his fanciful paradoxes, the kind and liberal spirit of his hospitality, must render these noctes coenaeque dear to all who, like the author (though then young), had the honour of sitting at his board.'
[240] Lord Cockburn, writing of the title that Jeffrey took when he was raised to the Bench in 1834, said:--'The Scotch Judges are styled Lords; a title to which long usage has associated feelings of reverence in the minds of the people, who could not now be soon made to respect or understand Mr. Justice. During its strongly feudalised condition, the landholders of Scotland, who were almost the sole judges, were really known only by the names of their estates. It was an insult, and in some parts of the country it is so still, to call a laird by his personal, instead of his territorial, title. But this assumption of two names, one official and one personal, and being addressed by the one and subscribing by the other, is wearing out, and will soon disappear entirely.' Cockburn's Jeffrey, i. 365. See post, p. 111, note 1.
[241] Georgics, i. 1.
[242] Walter Scott used to tell an instance of Lord Monboddo's agricultural enthusiasm, that returning home one night after an absence (I think) on circuit, he went out with a candle to look at a field of turnips, then a novelty in Scotland. CROKER.
[243] Johnson says the same in his Life of John Philips, and adds:-- 'This I was told by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose experience was, that "there were many books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much truth as that poem."' Works, vii. 234. Miller is mentioned in Walpole's Letters, ii. 352:--'There is extreme taste in the park [Hagley]: the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle built by Miller, that would get him his freedom, even of Strawberry: it has the true rust of the Barons' Wars.'
[244] See ante, p. 27.
[245] My note of this is much too short. Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio. ['I strive to be concise, I prove obscure.' FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. l. 25.] Yet as I have resolved that the very Journal which Dr. Johnson read, shall be presented to the publick, I will not expand the text in any considerable degree, though I may occasionally supply a word to complete the sense, as I fill up the blanks of abbreviation, in the writing; neither of which can be said to change the genuine Journal. One of the best criticks of our age conjectures that the imperfect passage above was probably as follows: 'In his book we have an accurate display of a nation in war, and a nation in peace; the peasant is delineated as truly as the general; nay, even harvest-sport, and the modes of ancient theft are described.' BOSWELL. 'One of the best criticks is, I believe, Malone, who had 'perused the original manuscript.' See ante, p. 1; and post, Oct. 26, and under Nov. 11.
[246] It was in the Parliament-house that 'the ordinary Lords of Session,' the Scotch Judges, that is to say, held their courts. Ante, p. 39.
[247] Dr. Johnson modestly said, he had not read Homer so much as he wished he had done. But this conversation shews how well he was acquainted with the Maeonian bard; and he has shewn it still more in his criticism upon Pope's Homer, in his Life of that Poet. My excellent friend, Mr. Langton, told me, he was once present at a dispute between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke, on the comparative merits of Homer and Virgil, which was carried on with extraordinary abilities on both sides. Dr. Johnson maintained the superiority of Homer. BOSWELL. Johnson told Windham that he had never read through the Odyssey in the original. Windham's Diary, p. 17. See ante, iii. 193, and May 1, 1783.