16]; for he thus writes to Mrs. Thrale; Letters, vol. i. p. 366:--
'Ashbourne, Sept. 13, 1777.
'BOSWELL, I believe, is coming. He talks of being here to day: I shall be glad to see him: but he shrinks from the Baltick expedition, which, I think, is the best scheme in our power: what we shall substitute I know not. He wants to see Wales; but, except the woods of Bachycraigh, what is there in Wales, that can fill the hunger of ignorance, or quench the thirst of curiosity? We may, perhaps, form some scheme or other; but, in the phrase of Hockley in the Hole, it is a pity he has not a better bottom.'
Such an ardour of mind, and vigour of enterprise, is admirable at any age: but more particularly so at the advanced period at which Johnson was then arrived. I am sorry now that I did not insist on our executing that scheme. Besides the other objects of curiosity and observation, to have seen my illustrious friend received, as he probably would have been, by a Prince so eminently distinguished for his variety of talents and acquisitions as the late King of Sweden; and by the Empress of Russia, whose extraordinary abilities, information, and magnanimity, astonish the world, would have afforded a noble subject for contemplation and record. This reflection may possibly be thought too visionary by the more sedate and cold-blooded part of my readers; yet I own, I frequently indulge it with an earnest, unavailing regret. BOSWELL. In The Spectator, No. 436, Hockley in the Hole is described as 'a place of no small renown for the gallantry of the lower order of Britons.' Fielding mentions it in Jonathan Wild, bk. i. ch. 2:-- 'Jonathan married Elizabeth, daughter of Scragg Hollow, of Hockley in the Hole, Esq., and by her had Jonathan, who is the illustrious subject of these memoirs.' In The Beggar's Opera, act i. Mrs. Peachum says to Filch: 'You should go to Hockley in the Hole, and to Marylebone, child, to learn valour. These are the schools that have bred so many brave men.' Hockley in the Hole was in Clerkenwell. That Johnson had this valour was shewn two years earlier, when he wrote to Mrs. Thrale about a sum of L14,000 that the Thrales had received: 'If I had money enough, what would I do? Perhaps, if you and master did not hold me, I might go to Cairo, and down the Red Sea to Bengal, and take a ramble in India. Would this be better than building and planting? It would surely give more variety to the eye, and more amplitude to the mind. Half fourteen thousand would send me out to see other forms of existence, and bring me back to describe them.' Piozzi Letters, i. 266. To the 'King of Sweden' late was added in the second edition; Gustavus III having been assassinated in March 1792. The story is somewhere told that George III, on hearing the news, cried out, 'What, what, what! Shot, shot, shot!' The Empress of Russia was Catherine II.
[394] It so happened. The letter was forwarded to my house at Edinburgh. BOSWELL. Arthur Young (Tour through the North of England, iv. 431-5) describes, in 1768, some of the roads along which Boswell was to travel nine years later. 'I would advise all travellers to consider the country between Newcastle-under-Line and Preston as sea, and as soon think of driving into the ocean as venturing into such detestable roads. I am told the Derby way to Manchester is good, but further is not penetrable.' The road from Wigan to Preston he calls 'infernal,' and 'cautions all travellers, who may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one they break their necks or their limbs. They will here meet with ruts which I actually measured four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer; what therefore must it be after a winter?'
[395] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 15, 1777:--'Last night came Boswell. I am glad that he is come. He seems to be very brisk and lively, and laughs a little at ---- [no doubt Taylor].' Piozzi Letters, i. 368. On the 18th he wrote:--'Boswell is with us in good humour, and plays his part with his usual vivacity.' On this Baretti noted in his copy:--'That is, he makes more noise than anybody in company, talking and laughing loud.' On p. 216 in vol. i. he noted:--'Boswell is not quite right-headed in my humble opinion.'
[396] In the Gent. Mag. for 1777, p. 458, it is described as a 'violent shock.'
[397] 'Grief has its time' he once said (post, June 2, 1781). 'Grief is a species of idleness,' he wrote to Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi Letters, i. 77). He constantly taught that it is a duty not to allow the mind to prey on itself. 'Gaiety is a duty when health requires it' (Croker's Boswell, p. 529). 'Encourage yourself in bustle, and variety, and cheerfulness,' he wrote to Mrs. Thrale ten weeks after the death of her only surviving son (Piozzi Letters, i. 341). 'Even to think in the most reasonable manner,' he said at another time, 'is for the present not useful as not to think.' Ib i. 202. When Mr. Thrale died, he wrote to his widow:--'I think business the best remedy for grief, as soon as it can be admitted.' Ib.