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A GREAT WORK.

CHAPTER XXXIX

LIVES OF THE POETS" CONCLUDED-CHARACTERISTIC LETTER — THE DOCTOR AN EXECUTOR-CONVERSATIONS.

(1781.)

"SOME time in March (1781) I finished 'The Lives of the Poets,' which I wrote in my usual way, dilatorily and hastily, unwilling to work, and working with vigour and haste.

Written, I hope, in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of piety."

This was Johnson's last and greatest contribution to the literature of our country; and it is a masterly piece of work. Written at any period of our Author's life it must have been called a triumph of mind, but, conceived of as written at the age of threescore years and ten, it must be held a triumph of mind over matter. It is the sharpest, clearest, fullest, richest, and easiest of all the Doctor's writings: the ripest fruit of his massive intellect and great heart. It is not a mere book made; it is a great work done. It is a noble series of philosophical discussions, moral paintings, and critical dissertations all combined: a body of literary biography in the strictest sense of the word. We should be willing to stake our Author's credit as the intellectual hero of his time on this work alone.

The lives of Cowley, Dryden, Pope, Milton, and Savage are specially admirable.

We admit that a few of the authors have, though only in one or two respects, received scant justice from their biographer. The Doctor has certainly been unfair to the poetry of Gray and to the politics of Milton: he did not understand the one, and he did not like the other. But, on the whole, we must claim for these "Lives of the Poets" the merit of grand impartiality, in addition to all

A CHARACTERISTIC LETTER.

377

their other excellences. What Johnson said of those who assailed him at the time for his alleged injustice to one or two of the poets, he would have repeated now as a sufficient answer to more recent objectors: "Sir, I considered myself as entrusted with a certain portion of truth. I have given my opinion sincerely: let them show where they think me wrong." But even then all sounds of blame were quickly drowned by loud applause; and any condemnatory judgments of our own time would be still more easily put down. As the Doctor himself says magnificently in a letter to Mrs. Thrale: "The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed." And his is one of those ever-burning flames, which cannot be blown out, and has no chance of dying in the socket.

In the February of this year Boswell wrote to Johnson complaining of having been vexed by a recurrence of a question that troubled him often-that of Liberty and Necessity-and mentioning that he hoped to meet the Doctor soon in London. The Doctor's reply is brief, but thoroughly characteristic:

"DEAR SIR,

"TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

"March 14, 1781.

"I hoped you had got rid of all this hypocrisy of misery. What have you to do with Liberty and Necessity? Or what more than to hold your tongue about it? Do not doubt but I shall be most heartily glad to see you here again, for I love every part about you but your affectation of distress.

"I have at last finished my Lives, and have laid up for you a load of copy, all out of order, so that it will amuse you a long time to set it right. Come to me, my dear Bozzy, and let us be as We will go again to the Mitre, and talk old

happy as we can. times over.

"I am, dear Sir,

"Yours affectionately,

"SAM. JOHNSON."

Two sentences of this little letter ought to be written in gold:

378

THE DOCTOR'S PECULIARITIES.

"What have you to do with Liberty and Necessity? Or what more than to hold your tongue about it?"

But Necessity and Liberty both combined to take Boswell periodically to London : it seemed to be necessary that he should resolve to go, and then he luckily found himself at liberty to carry out his resolution.

On the last occasion he had found his friend in bed this time he met him walking in Fleet Street. The Doctor's walk was peculiar, and has been thus described: "When he walked the streets, what with the constant roll of his head and the concomitant motion of his body, he appeared to make his way by that motion, independent of his feet." He was usually much stared at as he moved along, but his large size effectually checked all tendency to laughter. Mr. Langton saw him one day, in a fit of absent-mindedness, inadvertently drive the load off a porter's back, and then walk briskly on as if nothing had happened. The porter was mightily enraged, and had evidently thoughts of following to take his revenge, but he looked again at the retreating figure and decided he had better not.

Speaking of the Doctor's walk reminds us of another remarkable peculiarity of his which we shall let Boswell describe: "This was his anxious care to go out or in at a door or passage, by a certain number of steps from a certain point, or at least so as that either his right or his left foot (I am not certain which) should constantly make the first actual movement when he came close to the door or passage. Thus I conjecture; for I have, upon innumerable occasions, observed him suddenly stop, and then seem to count his steps with a deep earnestness; and when he had neglected, or gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put himself in a proper posture to begin the cere mony, and having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and join his companion.”

When the two friends met in Fleet Street that day they were hurrying in different directions; so Boswell could only promise to call on the morrow. The Doctor said he was engaged to go out in the morning. "Early, Sir ?"-" Why, Sir, a London morning does not go with the sun."

THE DOCTOR'S CHARADE.

379

The Thrales had removed from the Borough to Grosvenor Square, presumably for Mr. Thrale's health; and there Boswell met the Doctor soon after his arrival in London. A playful sally of Burke's upon Dean Marlay was quoted: "I don't like the Deanery of Ferns," he had said, "it sounds so like a barren title." Boswell had proposed that "Dr. Heath should have it." Johnson [graciously contracting himself to smaller people's dimensions] was pleased to suggest Dr. Moss.

While the Doctor is in this playful mood we may venture to quote a Charade he once made on his friend Dr. Barnard :—

CHARADE.

My first shuts out thieves from your house or your room,

My second expresses a Syrian perfume.

My whole is a man in whose converse is shared,

The strength of a Bar and the sweetness of Nard."

It was said of a member of parliament sitting upon an election committee that he read the newspapers or slept while the merits of a vote were being examined by the counsel, and that when challenged by the chairman for his improper behaviour, he bluntly answered, "I had made up my mind upon that case." Johnson, with indignant contempt, said, "If he was such a rogue as to make up his mind upon a case without hearing it, he should not have been such a fool as to tell it." "I think," said Mr. Dudley Long, "the Doctor has pretty plainly made him out to be both rogue and fool."

Friday, March 30th: SIR JOSHUA Reynolds's.

Boswell mentioned the Doctor's scale of liquors :-claret for boys,-port for men,-brandy for heroes. "Then," said Mr. Burke, "let me have claret: I love to be a boy; to have the careless gaiety of boyish days."-JOHNSON: "I should drink claret too, if it would give me that; but it does not it neither makes boys men, nor men boys. You'll be drowned by it, before it has any effect upon you."

380 THE DOCTOR DECIDEDLY JOCULAR.

A ludicrous paragraph had appeared in the newspapers recently, stating that Dr. Johnson was taking dancing-lessons from Vestris. A secret conclave having been held by several members of the party, it was decided, by a great majority, that it was safe to venture an inquiry of the Doctor himself.

LORD CHARLEMONT [courteously]: "Pray, Sir, is it true that you are taking lessons of Vestris ?"-JOHNSON [startled, and a little angry]: "How can your lordship ask so simple a question?" But he caught the humour of the joke and went on: "Nay, but if anybody were to answer the paragraph, and contradict it, I'd have a reply, and would say, that he who contradicted it was no friend either to Vestris or me. For why should not Dr. Johnson add to his other powers a little corporeal agility? Socrates learned to dance at an advanced age, and Cato learned Greek at an advanced age. Then it might proceed to say, that this Johnson, not content with dancing on the ground, might dance on the rope; and they might introduce the elephant dancing on the rope. A nobleman wrote a play, called 'Love in a Hollow Tree.' He found out that it was a bad one, and therefore wished to buy up all the copies, and burn them. The Duchess of Marlborough had kept one; and when he was against her at an election, she had a new edition of it printed, and prefixed to it, as a frontispiece, an elephant dancing on a rope; to show that his lordship's writing comedy was as awkward as an elephant dancing on a rope."

April 1st: MR. THRALE'S.

Mrs. Thrale praised Mr. Dudley Long.

JOHNSON: "Nay, my dear lady, don't talk so. Mr. Long's character is very short. It is nothing. He fills a chair. He is a man of genteel appearance, and that is all. I know nobody who blasts by praise as you do: for whenever there is exaggerated praise, everybody is set against a character. They are provoked to attack it. Now there is Pepys; you praised that man with such disproportion, that I was incited to lessen him, perhaps more than he deserves. His blood is upon your head. By the same principle, your malice defeats itself; for your censure is too violent. And yet [looking to her with a leering smile] she is