p. 168.
Johnson, this same year, speaking of a friend who had gone to the East Indies, said:--
'I had some intention of accompanying him. Had I thought then as I do now, I should have gone.' Ante, iii. 20. According to Mr. Tyers he once offered to attend another friend to India. Moreover 'he talked much of travelling into Poland to observe the life of the Palatines, the account of which struck his curiosity very much.' Johnsoniana, ed. 1836, p. 157.
1777. Boswell wrote to Johnson this year (ante, iii. 107):--
'You have, I believe, seen all the cathedrals in England except that of Carlisle.'
This was not the case, yet most of them he had already seen or lived to see. With Lichfield, Oxford, and London he was familiar. Winchester and Exeter he had seen in 1762 on his tour to Devonshire (ante, i. 377), Peterborough, Ely, Lincoln, York, and Durham he no doubt saw in 1773 on his way to Scotland. The first three he might also have seen in 1764 on his visit to Langton (ante, i. 476). Chester, St. Asaph, Bangor, and Worcester he visited in 1774 in his journey to Wales (post, v. 435, 436, 448, 456). Through Canterbury he almost certainly passed in 1775 on his way to France (ante, ii. 384). Bristol he saw in 1776 (ante, iii. 51). To Chichester he drove from Brighton in 1782 (post, iv. 160). Rochester and Salisbury he visited in the summer of 1783 (post, iv. 233). Wells he might easily have seen when he was at Bath in 1776 (ante, iii. 44), and possibly Gloucester. Through Norwich he perhaps came on his return from Lincolnshire in 1764 (ante, i. 476). Hereford, I think, he could not have visited.
When in the September of this year Johnson and Boswell were driving in Dr. Taylor's chaise to Derby, 'Johnson strongly expressed his love of driving fast in a post-chaise. "If," said he, "I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman; but she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation"' (ante, iii. 162). He had previously said (ante, ii. 453), as he was driven rapidly along in a post-chaise, 'Life has not many things better than this.'
1778. Boswell wrote to Johnson:--
'My wife is so different from you and me that she dislikes travelling.' Ante, iii. 219.
Later on in the year Boswell records:--
'Dr. Johnson expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I really believed I should go and see the wall of China had I not children, of whom it was my duty to take care. "Sir, (said he,) by doing so you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China. I am serious, Sir."' Ante, iii. 269.
1780. In August he wrote to Boswell:--
'I know not whether I shall get a ramble this summer.... I hope you and I may yet shew ourselves on some part of Europe, Asia, or Africa.' Ante, iii. 435.
In the same year Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--
'I hope you have no design of stealing away to Italy before the election, nor of leaving me behind you; though I am not only seventy, but seventy-one.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177.
On Oct. 17 he wrote:--
'The summer has been foolishly lost, like many other of my summers and winters. I hardly saw a green field, but staid in town to work, without working much.' Ante, iii. 441.
1784. Johnson's wish to go to Italy in the last year of his life was caused by the hope that it might be good for his health. 'I do not,' he wrote, 'travel for pleasure or curiosity; yet if I should recover,' he added, 'curiosity would revive.' Post, iv. 348.
Mrs. Piozzi, without however giving the year, records:--
'Dr. Johnson was very angry with a gentleman at our house for not being better company, and urged that he had travelled into Bohemia and seen Prague. "Surely," added he, "the man who has seen Prague might tell us something new and something strange, and not sit silent for want of matter to put his lips in motion."' Piozzi's Journey, ii. 317.
All these passages shew, what indeed is evident enough from the text, that it was not travelling in general but travelling between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four, with a character unformed, a memory unstored, and a judgment untrained, that Johnson attacked. It was a common habit in his day to send young men of fortune to make the tour of Europe, as it was called, at an age when they would now be sent to either Oxford or Cambridge. Lord Charlemont was but eighteen when he left England. Locke, at the end of his work on Education, said in 1692 much the same as Johnson said in 1778.
'The ordinary time of travel,' he wrote, 'is from sixteen to one and twenty.' He would send any one either at a younger age than sixteen under a tutor, or at an older age than twenty-one without a tutor; 'when he is of age to govern himself, and make observations of what he finds in other countries worthy his notice ...