367.
[695] 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'if Robertson's style be faulty, he owes it me; that is, having too many words, and those too big ones.' Post, Sept. 19, 1777. Johnson was not singular among the men of his time in condemning Robertson's verbiage. Wesley (Journal, iii. 447) wrote of vol. i. of Charles the Fifth:--'Here is a quarto volume of eight or ten shillings' price, containing dry, verbose dissertations on feudal government, the substance of all which might be comprised in half a sheet of paper!' Johnson again uses verbiage (a word not given in his Dictionary), post, April 9, 1778.
[696] See ante, ii. 210.
[697] See post, Oct. 10, 1779.
[698] 'Vertot, ne en Normandie en 1655. Historien agreable et elegant. Mort en 1735.' Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV.
[699] Even Hume had no higher notion of what was required in a writer of ancient history. He wrote to Robertson, who was, it seems, meditating a History of Greece:--'What can you do in most places with these (the ancient) authors but transcribe and translate them? No letters or state papers from which you could correct their errors, or authenticate their narration, or supply their defects.' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 83.
[700] See ante, ii. 53. Southey, asserting that Robertson had never read the Laws of Alonso the Wise, says, that 'it is one of the thousand and one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue as long as his volumes last.' Southey's Life, ii. 318.
[701] Ovid. de Art. Amand. i. iii. v. 13 [339]. BOSWELL. 'It may be that our name too will mingle with those.'
[702] The Gent. Mag. for Jan. 1766 (p. 45) records, that 'a person was observed discharging musket-balls from a steel crossbow at the two remaining heads upon Temple Bar.' They were the heads of Scotch rebels executed in 1746. Samuel Rogers, who died at the end of 1855, said, 'I well remember one of the heads of the rebels upon a pole at Temple Bar.' Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 2.
[703] In allusion to Dr. Johnson's supposed political principles, and perhaps his own. BOSWELL.
[704] 'Dr. Johnson one day took Bishop Percy's little daughter upon his knee, and asked her what she thought of Pilgrim's Progress. The child answered that she had not read it. "No!" replied the Doctor; "then I would not give one farthing for you:" and he set her down and took no further notice of her.' Croker's Boswell, p. 838. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 281) says, that Johnson once asked, 'Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and The Pilgrim's Progress?'
[705] It was Johnson himself who was thus honoured. Post, under Dec. 20, 1784.
[706] Here is another instance of his high admiration of Milton as a Poet, notwithstanding his just abhorrence of that sour Republican's political principles. His candour and discrimination are equally conspicuous. Let us hear no more of his 'injustice to Milton.' BOSWELL.
[707] There was an exception to this. In his criticism of Paradise Lost (Works, vii. 136), he says:--'The confusion of spirit and matter which pervades the whole narration of the war of Heaven fills it with incongruity; and the book in which it is related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased.'
[708] In the Academy, xxii. 348, 364, 382, Mr. C. E. Doble shews strong grounds for the belief that the author was Richard Allestree, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and Provost of Eton. Cowper spoke of it as 'that repository of self-righteousness and pharisaical lumber;' with which opinion Southey wholly disagreed. Southey's Cowper, i. 116.
[709] Johnson said to Boswell:--'Sir, they knew that if they refused you they'd probably never have got in another. I'd have kept them all out. Beauclerk was very earnest for you.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773.
[710] Garrick and Jones had been elected this same spring. See ante, i. 481, note 3.
[711] Mr. Langton, in his Collection (post, 1780), mentions an ode brought by Goldsmith to the Club, which had been recited for money.
[712] Dr. Johnson's memory here was not perfectly accurate: Eugenio does not conclude thus. There are eight more lines after the last of those quoted by him; and the passage which he meant to recite is as follows:--
'Say now ye fluttering, poor assuming elves, Stark full of pride, of folly, of--yourselves; Say where's the wretch of all your impious crew Who dares confront his character to view? Behold Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er, Then sink into yourselves, and be no more.'
Mr. Reed informs me that the Author of Eugenio, a Wine Merchant at Wrexham in Denbighshire, soon after its publication, viz. 17th May, 1737, cut his own throat; and that it appears by Swift's Works that the poem had been shewn to him, and received some of his corrections. Johnson had read Eugenio on his first coming to town, for we see it mentioned in one of his letters to Mr. Cave, which has been inserted in this work; ante, p. 122. BOSWELL. See Swift's Works, ed.