For another of Dr. Fisher's anecdotes, see ante, p. 269. Mark Pattison recorded in his Diary in 1843 (Memoirs, p. 203), on the authority of Mr. (now Cardinal) Newman:--'About 1770, the worst time in the University; a head of Oriel then, who was continually obliged to be assisted to bed by his butler. Gaudies, a scene of wild license. At Christ Church they dined at three, and sat regularly till chapel at nine.' A gaudy is such a festival as the one in the text.
[1304] The author of the Commentary on the Psalms. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, note.
[1305] See ante, pp. 279, 283.
[1306] 'I have seen,' said Mr. Donne to Sir R. Drewry, 'a dreadful vision since I saw you. I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me, through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms.' He learnt that on the same day, and about the very hour, after a long and dangerous labour, she had been delivered of a dead child. Walton's Life of Dr. Donne, ed. 1838, p. 25.
[1307] 'Biographers so little regard the manners or behaviour of their heroes, that more knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree, and ended with his funeral.' The Rambler, No. 60. See post, iii. 71.
[1308] See post, iii. 112.
[1309] It has been mentioned to me by an accurate English friend, that Dr. Johnson could never have used the phrase almost nothing, as not being English; and therefore I have put another in its place. At the same time, I am not quite convinced it is not good English. For the best writers use the phrase 'Little or nothing;' i.e. almost so little as to be nothing. BOSWELL. Boswell might have left almost nothing in his text. Johnson used it in his writings, certainly twice. 'It will add almost nothing to the expense.' Works, v. 307. 'I have read little, almost nothing.' Pr. and Med. p. 176. Moreover, in a letter to Mrs. Aston, written on Nov. 5, 1779 (Croker's Boswell, p. 640), he says:--'Nothing almost is purchased.' In King Lear, act ii. sc. 2, we have:--
'Nothing almost sees miracles But misery.'
[1310] 'Pope's fortune did not suffer his charity to be splendid and conspicuous; but he assisted Dodsley with a hundred pounds, that he might open a shop.' Johnson's Works, viii. 318.
[1311] A Muse in Livery: or the Footman's Miscellany. 1732. A rhyme in the motto on the title-page shows what a Cockney muse Dodsley's was. He writes:--
'But when I mount behind the coach, And bear aloft a flaming torch.'
The Preface is written with much good feeling.
[1312] James Dodsley, many years a bookseller in Pall Mall. He died Feb. 19, 1797. P. CUNNINGHAM. He was living, therefore, when this anecdote was published.
[1313] Horace Walpole (Letters, iii. 135) says:--'You know how decent, humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is; how little apt to forget or disguise his having been a footman.' Johnson seems to refer to Dodsley in the following passage, written in 1756 (Works, v. 358):--'The last century imagined that a man composing in his chariot was a new object of curiosity; but how much would the wonder have been increased by a footman studying behind it.'
[1314] See ante, i. 417.
[1315] Yet surely it is a very useful work, and of wonderful research and labour for one man to have executed. BOSWELL. See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 17, 1773.
[1316] Two days earlier, Hume congratulated Gibbon on the first volume of his Decline and Fall:--'I own that if I had not previously had the happiness of your personal acquaintance, such a performance from an Englishman in our age would have given me some surprise. You may smile at this sentiment, but as it seems to me that your countrymen, for almost a whole generation, have given themselves up to barbarous and absurd faction, and have totally neglected all polite letters, I no longer expected any valuable production ever to come from them.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 484.
[1317] Five weeks later Boswell used a different metaphor. 'I think it is right that as fast as infidel wasps or venomous insects, whether creeping or flying, are hatched, they should be crushed.' Letters of Boswell, p. 232. If the infidels were wasps to the orthodox, the orthodox were hornets to the infidels. Gibbon wrote (Misc. Works, i. 273):--'The freedom of my writings has indeed provoked an implacable tribe; but as I was safe from the stings, I was soon accustomed to the buzzing of the hornets.'
[1318] Macaulay thus examines this report (Essays, i. 360):--'To what then, it has been asked, could Johnson allude? Possibly to some anecdote or some conversation of which all trace is lost. One conjecture may be offered, though with diffidence. Gibbon tells us in his memoirs [Misc. Works, i. 56] that at Oxford he took a fancy for studying Arabic, and was prevented from doing so by the remonstrances of his tutor. Soon after this, the young man fell in with Bossuet's controversial writings, and was speedily converted by them to the Roman Catholic faith.