[868] 'There have been great contests in the Privy Council about the trial of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford [on a charge of Jacobitism]: Lord Gower pressed it extremely. He asked the Attorney-General his opinion, who told him the evidence did not appear strong enough. Lord Gower said:--"Mr. Attorney, you seem to be very lukewarm for your party." He replied:--"My Lord, I never was lukewarm for my party, nor ever was but of one party!"' Walpole's Letters, ii. 140. Mr. Croker assumes that Johnson here 'attempted a pun, and wrote the name (as pronounced) Go'er. Johnson was very little likely to pun, for 'he had a great contempt for that species of wit.' Post, April 30, 1773.
[869] Boswell omits the salutation which follows this definition:
Chair Ithakae met haethla, met halgea pikra Haspasios teon oudas ikanomai.
'Dr. Johnson,' says Miss Burney, 'inquired if I had ever yet visited Grub-street, but was obliged to restrain his anger when I answered "No;" because he had never paid his respects to it himself. "However," says he, "you and I, Burney, will go together; we have a very good right to go, so we'll visit the mansions of our progenitors, and take up our own freedom together."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 415.
[870] Lord Bolingbroke had said (Works, in. 317): 'I approve the devotion of a studious man at Christ Church, who was overheard in his oratory entering into a detail with God, and acknowledging the divine goodness in furnishing the world with makers of dictionaries. These men court fame, as well as their betters, by such means as God has given them to acquire it. They deserve encouragement while they continue to compile, and neither affect wit, nor presume to reason.' Johnson himself in The Adventurer, No. 39, had in 1753 described a class of men who 'employed their minds in such operations as required neither celerity nor strength, in the low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting dictionaries,' &c. Lord Monboddo, in his Origin of Language, v. 273, says that 'J. C. Scaliger called the makers of dictionaries les portefaix de la republique des lettres.'
[871] Great though his depression was, yet he could say with truth in his Preface:--'Despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress me to negligence.' Works, v. 43.
[872] Ib. p. 51. 'In the preface the author described the difficulties with which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Horne Tooke, never could read that passage without tears.' Macaulay's Misc. Writings, p. 382. It is in A Letter to John Dunning, Esq. (p. 56) that Horne Tooke, or rather Horne, wrote:--'I could never read his preface without shedding a tear.' See post, May 13, 1778. On Oct. 10, 1779, Boswell told Johnson, that he had been 'agreeably mistaken' in saying:--'What would it avail me in this gloom of solitude?'
[873] It appears even by many a passage in the Preface--one of the proudest pieces of writing in our language. 'The chief glory,' he writes, 'of every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add anything by my own writings to the reputation of English literature must be left to time.' 'I deliver,' he says, 'my book to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavoured well.... In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.' Works, v. pp. 49-51. Thomas Warton wrote to his brother:--'I fear his preface will disgust by the expressions of his consciousness of superiority, and of his contempt of patronage.' Wooll's Warton, p. 231.
[874] That praise was slow in coming is shown by his letter to Mr. Burney, written two years and eight months after the publication of the Dictionary. 'Your praise,' he wrote, 'was welcome, not only because I believe it was sincere, but because praise has been very scarce.... Yours is the only letter of good-will that I have received; though, indeed, I am promised something of that sort from Sweden.' Post, Dec. 24, 1757.
[875] In the Edinburgh Review (No. 1, 1755)--a periodical which only lasted two years--there is a review by Adam Smith of Johnson's Dictionary. Smith admits the 'very extraordinary merit' of the author. 'The plan,' however, 'is not sufficiently grammatical.' To explain what he intends, he inserts 'an article or two from Mr. Johnson, and opposes to them the same articles, digested in the manner which we would have wished him to have followed.' He takes the words but and humour. One part of his definition of humour is curious--'something which comes upon a man by fits, which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness.' This essay has not, I believe, been reprinted.