'Old Lovat was beheaded yesterday,' wrote Horace Walpole on April 10, 1747, 'and died extremely well: without passion, affectation, buffoonery, or timidity; his behaviour was natural and intrepid.' Letters, ii. 77.
[525] See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection.
[526] My friend, Mr. Courtenay, whose eulogy on Johnson's Latin Poetry has been inserted in this Work [ante, p. 62], is no less happy in praising his English Poetry.
But hark, he sings! the strain ev'n Pope admires; Indignant virtue her own bard inspires. Sublime as juvenal he pours his lays, And with the Roman shares congenial praise;-- In glowing numbers now he fires the age, And Shakspeare's sun relumes the clouded stage.
BOSWELL.
[527] The play is by Ambrose Philips. 'It was concluded with the most successful Epilogue that was ever yet spoken on the English theatre. The three first nights it was recited twice; and not only continued to be demanded through the run, as it is termed, of the play; but, whenever it is recalled to the stage, where by peculiar fortune, though a copy from the French, it yet keeps its place, the Epilogue is still expected, and is still spoken.' Johnson's Works, viii. 389. See post, April 21, 1773, note on Eustace Budgel. The Epilogue is given in vol. v. p. 228 of Bonn's Addison, and the great success that it met with is described in The Spectator, No. 341.
[528] Such poor stuff as the following is certainly not by Johnson:--
'Let musick sound the voice of joy! Or mirth repeat the jocund tale; Let Love his wanton wiles employ, And o'er the season wine prevail.'
[529] 'Dodsley first mentioned to me the scheme of an English Dictionary; but I had long thought of it.' Post, Oct. 10, 1779.
[530] It would seem from the passage to which Boswell refers that Pope had wished that Johnson should undertake the Dictionary. Johnson, in mentioning Pope, says:--'Of whom I may be justified in affirming that were he still alive, solicitous as he was for the success of this work, he would not be displeased that I have undertaken it.' Works, v. 20. As Pope died on May 30, 1744, this renders it likely that the work was begun earlier than Boswell thought.
[531] In the title-page of the first edition after the name of Hirch comes that of L. Hawes.
[532] 'During the progress of the work he had received at different times the amount of his contract; and when his receipts were produced to him at a tavern-dinner given by the booksellers, it appeared that he had been paid a hundred pounds and upwards more than his due.' Murphy's Johnson. p. 78. See post, beginning of 1756.
[533] 'The truth is, that the several situations which I have been in having made me long the plastron [butt] of dedications, I am become as callous to flattery as some people are to abusc.' Lord Chesterfield, date of Dec. 15, 1755; Chesterfield's Misc. Works, iv. 266.
[534] September 22, 1777, going from Ashbourne in Derbyshire, to see Islam. BOSWELL.
[535] Boswell here says too much, as the following passages in the Plan prove:--'Who upon this survey can forbear to wish that these fundamental atoms of our speech might obtain the firmness and immutability of the primogenial and constituent particles of matter?' 'Those translators who, for want of understanding the characteristical difference of tongues, have formed a chaotick dialect of heterogeneous phrases;' 'In one part refinement will be subtilised beyond exactness, and evidence dilated in another beyond perspicuity.' Johnson's Works, v. 12, 21, 22.
[536] Ausonius, Epigram i. 12.
[537] Whitehead in 1757 succeeded Colley Cibber as poet-laureate, and dying in 1785 was followed by Thomas Warton. From Warton the line of succession is Pye, Southey, Wordsworth, Tennyson. See post, under June 13, 1763.
[538] Hawkins (Life, p. 176) likewise says that the manuscript passed through Whitehead and 'other hands' before it reached Chesterfield. Mr. Croker had seen 'a draft of the prospectus carefully written by an amanuensis, but signed in great form by Johnson's own hand. It was evidently that which was laid before Lord Chesterfield. Some useful remarks are made in his lordship's hand, and some in another. Johnson adopted all these suggestions.'
[539] This poor piece of criticism confirms what Johnson said of Lord Orrery:--'He grasped at more than his abilities could reach; tried to pass for a better talker, a better writer, and a better thinker that he was.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, 1773. See post, under April 7, 1778.
[540] Birch, MSS. Brit. Mus. 4303. BOSWELL.
[541] 'When I survey the Plan which I have laid before you, I cannot, my Lord, but confess that I am frighted at its extent, and, like the soldiers of Caesar, look on Britain as a new world, which it is almost madness to invade.' Johnson's Works, v. 21.
[542] There might be applied to him what he said of Pope:--"Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings. He, indeed, who forms his opinion of himself in solitude without knowing the powers of other men, is very liable to error; but it was the felicity of Pope to rate himself at his real value." Johnson's Works, viii, 237.