MALONE.
[680] 'Mallet's works are such as a writer, bustling in the world, shewing himself in publick, and emerging occasionally from time to time into notice, might keep alive by his personal influence; but which, conveying little information and giving no great pleasure, must soon give way, as the succession of things produces new topicks of conversation and other modes of amusement.' Johnson's Works, viii. 468.
[681] Johnson made less money, because he never 'traded' on his reputation. When he had made his name, he almost ceased to write.
[682] 'May 27, 1773. Dr. Goldsmith has written a comedy--no, it is the lowest of all farces. It is not the subject I condemn, though very vulgar, but the execution. The drift tends to no moral, no edification of any kind. The situations, however, are well imagined, and make one laugh, in spite of the grossness of the dialogue, the forced witticisms, and total improbability of the whole plan and conduct. But what disgusts me most is, that though the characters are very low, and aim at low humour, not one of them says a sentence that is natural or marks any character at all. It is set up in opposition to sentimental comedy, and is as bad as the worst of them.' Horace Walpole's Letters, v. 467. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 286) says that Goldsmith gave him an order to see this comedy. 'The next time I saw him, he inquired of me what my opinion was of it. I told him that I would not presume to be a judge of its merits. He asked, "Did it make you laugh?" I answered, "Exceedingly." "Then," said the Doctor, "that is all I require."'
[683] Garrick brought out his revised version of this play by Beaumont and Fletcher in 1754-5. Murphy's Garrick, p. 170. The compliment is in a speech by Don Juan, act v. sc. 2: 'Ay, but when things are at the worst, they'll mend; example does everything, and the fair sex will certainly grow better, whenever the greatest is the best woman in the kingdom.'
[684] Formular is not in Johnson's Dictionary.
[685]
'On earth, a present god, shall Caesar reign.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Odes, iii. 5.2.
[686] See ante, i. 167.
[687] Johnson refers, I believe, to Temple's Essay Of Heroic Virtue, where he says that 'the excellency of genius' must not only 'be cultivated by education and instruction,' but also 'must be assisted by fortune to preserve it to maturity; because the noblest spirit or genius in the world, if it falls, though never so bravely, in its first enterprises, cannot deserve enough of mankind to pretend to so great a reward as the esteem of heroic virtue.' Temple's Works, iii. 306.
[688] See post, Sept. 17, 1777.
[689] In an epitaph that Burke wrote for Garrick, he says: 'He raised the character of his profession to the rank of a liberal art.' Windham's Diary, p. 361.
[690] 'The allusion,' as Mr. Lockhart pointed out, 'is not to the Tale of a Tub, but to the History of John Bull' (part ii. ch 12 and 13). Jack, who hangs himself, is however the youngest of the three brothers of The Tale of a Tub, 'that have made such a clutter in the work' (ib. chap ii). Jack was unwillingly convinced by Habbakkuk's argument that to save his life he must hang himself. Sir Roger, he was promised, before the rope was well about his neck, would break in and cut him down.
[691] He wrote the following letter to Goldsmith, who filled the chair that evening. 'It is,' Mr. Forster says (Life of Goldsmith, ii. 367), 'the only fragment of correspondence between Johnson and Goldsmith that has been preserved.'
'April 23, 1773.
'SIR,--I beg that you will excuse my absence to the Club; I am going this evening to Oxford.
'I have another favour to beg. It is that I may be considered as proposing Mr. Boswell for a candidate of our society, and that he may be considered as regularly nominated.
'I am, sir,
'Your most humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
If Johnson went to Oxford his stay there was brief, as on April 27 Boswell found him at home.
[692] 'There are,' says Johnson, speaking of Dryden (Works, vii. 292), 'men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation.' See also ante, i. 413. 'No man,' he said of Goldsmith, 'was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had;' post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 560), who 'knew Hume personally and well,' said, 'Mr. Hume's writings were so superior to his conversation, that I frequently said he understood nothing till he had written upon it.'
[693] The age of great English historians had not long begun. The first volume of The Decline and Fall was published three years later. Addison had written in 1716 (Freeholder, No. 35), 'Our country, which has produced writers of the first figure in every other kind of work, has been very barren in good historians.' Johnson, in 1751, repeated this observation in The Rambler, No. 122. Lord Bolingbroke wrote in 1735 (Works, iii. 454), 'Our nation has furnished as ample and as important matter, good and bad, for history, as any nation under the sun; and yet we must yield the palm in writing history most certainly to the Italians and to the French, and I fear even to the Germans.'
[694] Gibbon, informing Robertson on March 26, 1788, of the completion of The Decline and Fall, said:--'The praise which has ever been the most flattering to my ear, is to find my name associated with the names of Robertson and Hume; and provided I can maintain my place in the triumvirate, I am indifferent at what distance I am ranked below my companions and masters.' Dugald Stewart's Robertson, p.