Croker's Boswell, p. 739. At Streatham the day, it would seem, was always kept. Mrs. Piozzi writes (Anec. p. 211):--'On the birthday of our eldest daughter, and that of our friend, Dr. Johnson, the 17th and 18th of September, we every year made up a little dance and supper to divert our servants and their friends.'
[444] The son of a Mr. Coxeter, 'a gentleman,' says Johnson, 'who was once my friend,' enlisted in the service of the East India Company. Johnson asked Mr. Thrale to use his influence to get his discharge. Piozzi Letters, i. 33.
[445] The bookseller whom Johnson beat, ante, i. 154.
[446] 'When a well-known author published his poems in the year 1777, "Such a one's verses are come out," said I: "Yes," replied Johnson, "and this frost has struck them in again. Here are some lines I have written to ridicule them; but remember that I love the fellow dearly now--for all I laugh at him.
'Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong; Phrase that time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.'"'
Piozzi's Anec. p. 64.
Thomas Warton in 1777 published a volume of his poems. He, no doubt, is meant.
[447] In The Rambler, No. 121. Johnson, twenty-six years earlier, attacked 'the imitation of Spenser, which, by the influence of some men of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age.... They seem to conclude that, when they have disfigured their lines with a few obsolete syllables, they have accomplished their design, without considering that they ought, not only to admit old words, but to avoid new. The laws of imitation are broken by every word introduced since the time of Spenser.'
[448] Warton's Ode on the First of April is found a line which may have suggested these two lines:--'The morning hoar, and evening chill.'
[449] 'Collins affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry.' Johnson's Works, viii. 404. Goldsmith, eleven years earlier, said in his Life of Parnell (Misc. Works, iv. 22):--'These misguided innovators have not been content with restoring antiquated words and phrases, but have indulged themselves in the most licentious transpositions and the harshest constructions, vainly imagining that the more their writings are unlike prose, the more they resemble poetry.' Collins and Warton might have quoted by way of defence the couplet in Milton's L'Allegro.--
'While the cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin.'
[450] As some of my readers may be gratified by reading the progress of this little composition, I shall insert it from my notes. 'When Dr. Johnson and I were sitting tete-a-tete at the Mitre tavern, May 9, 1778, he said "Where is bliss," would be better. He then added a ludicrous stanza, but would not repeat it, lest I should take it down. It was somewhat as follows; the last line I am sure I remember:
"While I thus cried, The hoary seer reply'd, Come, my lad, and drink some beer."
In spring, 1779, when in better humour, he made the second stanza, as in the text. There was only one variation afterwards made on my suggestion, which was changing hoary in the third line to smiling, both to avoid a sameness with the epithet in the first line, and to describe the hermit in his pleasantry. He was then very well pleased that I should preserve it.' BOSWELL.
[451] When I mentioned Dr. Johnson's remark to a lady of admirable good sense and quickness of understanding, she observed, 'It is true, all this excludes only one evil; but how much good does it let in?'--To this observation much praise has been justly given. Let me then now do myself the honour to mention that the lady who made it was the late Margaret Montgomerie, my very valuable wife, and the very affectionate mother of my children, who, if they inherit her good qualities, will have no reason to complain of their lot. Dos magna parentum virtus. BOSWELL. The latter part of this note was first given in the second edition. The quotation if from Horace:--
'Cos est magna parentium Virtus.' 'The lovers there for dowry claim The father's virtue and the mother's fame.'
FRANCIS, Horace, Odes, iii. 24. 21.
[452] He saw it in 1774 on his way to Wales; but he must, I think, have seen it since, for it does not appear from his Journal of a Tour into Wales that he then saw Lord Scarsdale. He met him also at Dr. Taylor's in July 1775. Piozzi Letters, i. 267.
[453] I do not find the description in Young's Six Months' Tour through the North of England, but in Pilkington's Present State of Derbyshire, ii. 120.
[454]
'Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?' 'What place, what land in all the earth but with our grief is stored?'
Morris, AEneids, i. 460.
[455] See ante, March 21 and 28, 1776.
[456] At Derby.
[457] Baretti in his Italy, i.