473) is a piteous letter in bad French, written from St. Malo, by Bickerstaff to Garrick, endorsed by Garrick, 'From that poor wretch Bickerstaff: I could not answer it.'
[243] Boswell, only a couple of years before he published The Life of Johnson, in fact while he was writing it, had written to Temple:--'I was the great man (as we used to say) at the late Drawing-room, in a suit of imperial blue, lined with rose-coloured silk, and ornamented with rich gold-wrought buttons.' Letters of Boswell, p. 289.
[244] Miss Reynolds, in her Recollections (Croker's Boswell, p. 831), says, 'One day at Sir Joshua Reynolds's Goldsmith was relating with great indignation an insult he had just received from some gentleman he had accidentally met. "The fellow," he said, "took me for a tailor!" on which all the company either laughed aloud or showed they suppressed a laugh.'
[245] In Prior's Goldsmith, ii. 232, is given Filby's Bill for a suit of clothes sent to Goldsmith this very day:--
Oct. 16.-- L s. d. To making a half-dress suit of ratteen, lined with satin 12 12 0 To a pair of silk stocking breeches 2 5 0 To a pair of bloom-coloured ditto 1 4 6
Nothing is said in this bill of the colour of the coat; it is the breeches that are bloom-coloured. The tailor's name was William, not John, Filby; Ib i. 378, Goldsmith in his Life of Nash had said:--'Dress has a mechanical influence upon the mind, and we naturally are awed into respect and esteem at the elegance of those whom even our reason would teach us to contemn. He seemed early sensible of human weakness in this respect; he brought a person genteelly dressed to every assembly.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 46.
[246] 'The Characters of Men and Women are the product of diligent speculation upon human life; much labour has been bestowed upon them, and Pope very seldom laboured in vain.... The Characters of Men, however, are written with more, if not with deeper thought, and exhibit many passages exquisitely beautiful.... In the women's part are some defects.' Johnson's Works, viii. 341.
[247] Mr. Langton informed me that he once related to Johnson (on the authority of Spence), that Pope himself admired those lines so much that when he repeated them his voice faltered: 'and well it might, Sir,' said Johnson, 'for they are noble lines.' J. BOSWELL, JUN.
[248] We have here an instance of that reserve which Boswell, in his Dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds (ante, i. 4), says that he has practised. In one particular he had 'found the world to be a great fool,' and, 'I have therefore,' as he writes, 'in this work been more reserved;' yet the reserve is slight enough. Everyone guesses that 'one of the company' was Boswell.
[249] Yet Johnson, in his Life of Pope (Works, viii. 276), seems to be much of Boswell's opinion; for in writing of The Dunciad, he says:--'The subject itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to know that one or another scribbler was a dunce?'
[250] The opposite of this Johnson maintained on April 29, 1778.
[251] 'It is surely sufficient for an author of sixteen ... to have obtained sufficient power of language and skill in metre, to exhibit a series of versification which had in English poetry no precedent, nor has since had an imitation.' Johnson's Works, viii. 326.
[252] See ante, i. 129.
[253] 'If the flights of Dryden are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing ... Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.' Johnson's Works, viii. 325.
[254] Probably, says Mr. Croker, those quoted by Johnson in The Life of Dryden. Ib vii. 339.
[255] The Duke of Buckingham in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel.
[256] Prologue to the Satires, I. 193.
[257]
Almeria.--'It was a fancy'd noise; for all is hush'd.
Leonora.--It bore the accent of a human voice.
Almeria.--It was thy fear, or else some transient wind Whistling thro' hollows of this vaulted aisle; We'll listen--
Leonora.--Hark!
Almeria.--No, all is hush'd and still as death,--'Tis dreadful! How reverend is the face of this tall pile, Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads, To bear aloft its arch'd and ponderous roof, By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable, Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe And terror on my aching sight; the tombs And monumental caves of death look cold, And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart. Give me thy hand, and let me hear thy voice; Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear Thy voice--my own affrights me with its echoes.
Act ii. sc. 1.
[258]
'Swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry.'
Romeo and Juliet, act ii. sc. 2. He was a God with whom he ventured to take great liberties. Thus on Jan. 10, 1776, he wrote:--'I have ventured to produce Hamlet with alterations. It was the most imprudent thing I ever did in all my life; but I had sworn I would not leave the stage till I had rescued that noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth act.