[1248] 'A cruel tyranny bathed in the blood of their Emperors upon every succession; a heap of vassals and slaves; no nobles, no gentlemen, no freeman, no inheritance of land, no strip of ancient families, [nullae stirpes antiquae].' Spedding Bacon, vii. 22.
[1249] 'Let me warn you very earnestly against scruples,' he wrote on March 5, of this year:--'I am no friend to scruples,' he had said at St. Andrew's. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19. 'On his many, men miserable, but few men good.' Croker's Boswell, p. 844.
[1250] A letter to him on the interesting subject of the family settlement, which I had read. BOSWELL.
[1251] Paoli had given Boswell much the same advice. 'All this,' said Paoli, 'is melancholy. I have also studied metaphysics. I know the arguments for fate and free-will, for the materiality and immateriality of the soul, and even the subtle arguments for and against the existence of matter. Ma lasciamo queste dispute ai oziosi. But let us leave these disputes to the idle. Io tengo sempre fermo un gran pensiero. I hold always firm one great object. I never feel a moment of despondency.' Boswell's Corsica, ed. 1879, p. 193. See post, March 14, 1781.
[1252] Johnson, in his letters to the Thrales during the year 1775, mentions this riding-school eight or nine times. The person recommended was named Carter. Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 72) says 'the profit of the History has been applied to the establishment of a riding-school, that the polite exercises might be taught, I know not with what success, in the University.'
[1253] I suppose the complaint was, that the trustees of the Oxford Press did not allow the London booksellers a sufficient profit upon vending their publications. BOSWELL.
[1254] Cadell published The False Alarm and The Journey to the Hebrides. Gibbon described him as 'That honest and liberal bookseller.' Stewart's Life of Robertson, p. 366.
[1255] I am happy in giving this full and clear statement to the publick, to vindicate, by the authority of the greatest authour of his age, that respectable body of men, the Booksellers of London, from vulgar reflections, as if their profits were exorbitant, when, in truth, Dr. Johnson has here allowed them more than they usually demand.
[1256] 'Behind the house was a garden which he took delight in watering; a room on the ground-floor was assigned to Mrs. Williams, and the whole of the two pair of stairs floor was made a repository for his books; one of the rooms thereon being his study. Here, in the intervals of his residence at Streatham, he received the visits of his friends, and to the most intimate of them sometimes gave not inelegant dinners.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 531. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:--'This is all that I have to tell you, except that I have three bunches of grapes on a vine in my garden: at least this is all that I will now tell of my garden.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 178. This house was burnt down in 1819. Notes and Queries, 1st S., v. 233.
[1257] He said, when in Scotland, that he was Johnson of that Ilk. ROSWELL. See post, April 28, 1778, note.
[1258] See ante, ii. 229.
[1259] See vol. i. p. 375. BOSWELL. Boswell refers to the work of Dr. Cohausen of Coblentz, Hermippus Redivivus. Dr. Campbell translated it (ante, i. 417), under the title of Hermippus Redivivus, or the Sage's Triumph over Old Age and the Grave. Cohausen maintained that life might be prolonged to 115 years by breathing the breath of healthy young women. He founded his theory 'on a Roman inscription--AEsculapio et Sanitati L. Colodius Hermippus qui vixit annos CXV. dies V. puellarum anhelitu.' He maintained that one of the most eligible conditions of life was that of a Confessor of youthful nuns. Lowndes's Bibl. Man. p. 488, and Gent. Mag. xiii. 279. I. D'Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, ed. 1834, ii. 102) describes Campbell's book as a 'curious banter on the hermetic philosophy and the universal medicine; the grave irony is so closely kept up, that it deceived for a length of time the most learned. Campbell assured a friend it was a mere jeu-d'-esprit.' Lord E. Fitzmaurice (Life of Shelburne, iii. 447) says that Ingenhousz, a Dutch physician who lived with Shelburne, combated in one of his works the notion held by certain schoolmasters, that 'it was wholesome to inhale the air which has passed through the lungs of their pupils, closing the windows in order purposely to facilitate that operation.'
[1260] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 24.
[1261] The privilege of perpetuating in a family an estate and arms indefeasibly from generation to generation, is enjoyed by none of his Majesty's subjects except in Scotland, where the legal fiction of fine and recovery is unknown. It is a privilege so proud, that I should think it would be proper to have the exercise of it dependent on the royal prerogative. It seems absurd to permit the power of perpetuating their representation, to men, who having had no eminent merit, have truly no name. The King, as the impartial father of his people, would never refuse to grant the privilege to those who deserved it.