BOSWELL.
[1114] Mr. Croker quotes The World of June 7, 1753, where a Londoner, 'to gratify the curiosity of a country friend, accompanied him in Easter week to Bedlam. To my great surprise,' he writes, 'I found a hundred people, at least, who, having paid their twopence apiece, were suffered unattended to run rioting up and down the wards making sport of the miserable inhabitants. I saw them in a loud laugh of triumph at the ravings they had occasioned.' Young (Universal Passion, Sat. v.) describes Britannia's daughters
'As unreserved and beauteous as the sun, Through every sign of vanity they run; Assemblies, parks, coarse feasts in city halls, Lectures and trials, plays, committees, balls; Wells, Bedlams, executions, Smithfield scenes, And fortune-tellers' caves, and lions' dens.'
In 1749, William Hutton walked from Nottingham to London, passed three days there in looking about, and returned on foot. The whole journey cost him ten shillings and eight-pence. He says:--'I wished to see a number of curiosities, but my shallow pocket forbade. One penny to see Bedlam was all I could spare.' Hutton's Life, pp. 71, 74. Richardson (Familiar Letters, No. 153) makes a young lady describe her visit to Bedlam:--'The distempered fancies of the miserable patients most unaccountably provoked mirth and loud laughter; nay, so shamefully inhuman were some, among whom (I am sorry to say it) were several of my own sex, as to endeavour to provoke the patients into rage to make them sport.'
[1115] In the Life of Dryden (Works, vii. 304), Johnson writes:--'Virgil would have been too hasty if he had condemned him [Statius] to straw for one sounding line.' In Humphry Clinker (Letter of June 10), Mr. Bramble says to Clinker:--'The sooner you lose your senses entirely the better for yourself and the community. In that case, some charitable person might provide you with a dark room and clean straw in Bedlam.' Churchill, in Independence (Poems, ii. 307), writes:--
'To Bethlem with him--give him whips and straw, I'm very sensible he's mad in law.'
[1116] My very honourable friend General Sir George Howard, who served in the Duke of Cumberland's army, has assured me that the cruelties were not imputable to his Royal Highness. BOSWELL. Horace Walpole shews the Duke's cruelty to his own soldiers. 'In the late rebellion some recruits had been raised under a positive engagement of dismission at the end of three years. When the term was expired they thought themselves at liberty, and some of them quitted the corps. The Duke ordered them to be tried as deserters, and not having received a legal discharge, they were condemned. Nothing could mollify him; two were executed.' Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ii. 203.
[1117] It has been suggested that this is Dr. Percy (see post, April 23, 1778), but Percy was more than 'an acquaintance of ours,' he was a friend.
[1118] Very likely Mr. Steevens. See post, April 13, 1778, and May 15, 1784.
[1119] On this day Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Boswell has made me promise not to go to Oxford till he leaves London; I had no great reason for haste, and therefore might as well gratify a friend. I am always proud and pleased to have my company desired. Boswell would have thought my absence a loss, and I know not who else would have considered my presence as profit. He has entered himself at the Temple, and I joined in his bond. He is to plead before the Lords, and hopes very nearly to gain the cost of his journey. He lives much with his friend Paoli.' Piozzi Letters, i. 216. Boswell wrote to Temple on June 6:--'For the last fortnight that I was in London I lay at Paoli's house, and had the command of his coach.... I felt more dignity when I had several servants at my devotion, a large apartment, and the convenience and state of a coach. I recollected that this dignity in London was honourably acquired by my travels abroad, and my pen after I came home, so I could enjoy it with my own approbation.' Letters of Boswell, p. 200. A year later he records, that henceforth, while in London, he was Paoli's constant guest till he had a house of his own there (post, iii. 34).
[1120] Lord Stowell told Mr. Croker that, among the Scottish literati, Mr. Crosbie was the only man who was disposed to stand up (as the phrase is) to Johnson. Croker's Boswell, p. 270. It is said that he was the original of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell in Scott's novel of Guy Mannering. Dr. A. Carlyle (Autobiography, p. 420) says of 'the famous club called the Poker,' which was founded in Edinburgh in 1762:--'In a laughing humour, Andrew Crosbie was chosen Assassin, in case any officer of that sort should be needed; but David Hume was added as his Assessor, without whose assent nothing should be done, so that between plus and minus there was likely to be no bloodshed.' See Boswell's Herbrides, Aug. 16, 1773.
[1121] He left on the 22nd. 'Boswell,' wrote Johnson to Mrs. Thrale on May 22, 'went away at two this morning. He got two and forty guineas in fees while he was here.