156.
[1032] 'It made an impression on the army that cannot be well imagined by those who saw it not. The whole army, and at last all people both in city and country were singing it perpetually, and perhaps never had so slight a thing so great an effect.' Bumet's Own Time, ed. 1818, ii. 430. In Tristram Shandy, vol. i. chap. 21, when Mr. Shandy advanced one of his hypotheses:--'My uncle Toby,' we read, 'would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument than that of whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lilliburlero.'
[1033] See ante, ii. 66.
[1034] 'Of Gibbon, Mackintosh neatly remarked that he might have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind, without his missing it.' Life of Mackintosh, i. 92. It is worthy of notice that Gibbon scarcely mentions Johnson in his writings. Moreover, in the names that he gives of the members of the Literary Club, 'who form a large and luminous constellation of British stars,' though he mentions eighteen of them, he passes over Boswell. Gibbon's Misc. Works, i.219. See also post, April 18, 1775.
[1035] We may compare with this Dryden's line:--
'Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.'
Absalom and Achitophel, l. 179. Hawkins (Life, p. 506) says that 'to party opposition Johnson ever expressed great aversion, and of the pretences of patriots always spoke with indignation and contempt.' He had, Hawkins adds, 'partaken of the short-lived joy that infatuated the public' when Walpole fell; but a few days convinced him that the patriotism of the opposition had been either hatred or ambition. For patriots, see ante, i. 296, note, and post, April 6, 1781.
[1036] Mr. Burke. See ante, p. 222, note 4.
[1037] Lord North's ministry lasted from 1770 to 1782.
[1038] Perhaps Johnson had this from Davies, who says (Life of Garrick, i. l24):--'Mrs. Pritchard read no more of the play of Macbeth than her own part, as written out and delivered to her by the prompter.' She played the heroine in Irene (ante, i. 197). See post under Sept. 30, 1783, where Johnson says that 'in common life she was a vulgar idiot,' and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.
[1039] A misprint for April 8.
[1040] Boswell calls him the 'Irish Dr. Campbell,' to distinguish him from the Scotch Dr. Campbell mentioned ante, i. 417.
[1041] See ante, i. 494.
[1042] Baretti, in a MS. note in his copy of Piozzi Letters, i. 374, says:--'Johnson was often fond of saying silly things in strong terms, and the silly Madam [Mrs. Thrale] never failed to echo that beastly kind of wit.'
[1043] According to Dr. T. Campbell, who was present at the dinner (Diary, p. 66), Barry and Garrick were the two actors, and Murphy the author. If Murphy said this in the heat of one of his quarrels with Garrick, he made amends in his Life of that actor (p. 362):--'It was with Garrick,' he wrote, 'a fixed principle, that authors were entitled to the emolument of their labours, and by that generous way of thinking he held out an invitation to men of genius.'
[1044] Page 392, vol. i. BOSWELL.
[1045] Let me here be allowed to pay my tribute of most sincere gratitude to the memory of that excellent person, my intimacy with whom was the more valuable to me, because my first acquaintance with him was unexpected and unsolicited. Soon after the publication of my Account of Corsica, he did me the honour to call on me, and, approaching me with a frank courteous air, said, 'My name, Sir, is Oglethorpe, and I wish to be acquainted with you.' I was not a little flattered to be thus addressed by an eminent man, of whom I had read in Pope, from my early years,
'Or, driven by strong benevolence of soul, Will fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.'
I was fortunate enough to be found worthy of his good opinion, insomuch, that I not only was invited to make one in the many respectable companies whom he entertained at his table, but had a cover at his hospitable board every day when I happened to be disengaged; and in his society I never failed to enjoy learned and animated conversation, seasoned with genuine sentiments of virtue and religion. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 127, and ii. 59, note 1. The couplet from Pope is from Imitations of Horace, Epist. ii. 2. 276.
[1046]
'Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.'
Essay on Man, i. 95.
[1047] 'The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.' The Rambler, No. 2. See post, iii. 53, and June 12, 1784. Swift defined happiness as 'a perpetual possession of being well deceived.' Tale of a Tub, Sect, ix., Swift's Works, ed. 1803, iii. 154.
[1048] See post, March 29, 1776.
[1049] The General seemed unwilling to enter upon it at this time; but upon a subsequent occasion he communicated to me a number of particulars, which I have committed to writing; but I was not sufficiently diligent in obtaining more from him, not apprehending that his friends were so soon to lose him; for, notwithstanding his great age, he was very healthy and vigorous, and was at last carried off by a violent fever, which is often fatal at any period of life.