Hist. xix. 477.
[564]
'Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee.'
Line 154.
[565] See ante, ii. 168. Boswell, when a widower, wrote to Temple of a lady whom he seemed not unwilling to marry:--'She is about seven-and-twenty, and he [Sir William Scott] tells me lively and gay-- a Ranelagh girl--but of excellent principles, insomuch that she reads prayers to the servants in her father's family every Sunday evening.' Letters of Boswell, p. 336.
[566] Pope mentions [Dunciad, iv. 342],
'Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair.'
But I recollect a couplet quite apposite to my subject in Virtue an Ethick Epistle, a beautiful and instructive poem, by an anonymous writer, in 1758; who, treating of pleasure in excess, says:--
'Till languor, suffering on the rack of bliss, Confess that man was never made for this.' BOSWELL.
[567] See post, June 12, 1784.
[568] See ante, p. 86.
[569] 'For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.' Romans, x. 2.
[570] Horace Walpole wrote:--'Feb. 17, 1773. Caribs, black Caribs, have no representatives in Parliament; they have no agent but God, and he is seldom called to the bar of the House to defend their cause.' Walpole's Letters, v. 438. 'Feb. 14, 1774. 'If all the black slaves were in rebellion, I should have no doubt in choosing my side, but I scarce wish perfect freedom to merchants who are the bloodiest of all tyrants. I should think the souls of the Africans would sit heavy on the swords of the Americans.' Ib. vi. 60.
[571] See ante, ii. 27, 312.
[572] 'We are told that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear,' etc. Works, vi. 262. In his Life of Milton (ib. vii. 116) he says:--'It has been observed that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.'
[573] See page 76 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[574] The address was delivered on May 23, 1770. The editor of Rogers's Table Talk quotes, on p. 129, Mr. Maltby, the friend of Rogers, who says:--'Dr. C. Burney assured me that Beckford did not utter one syllable of the speech--that it was wholly the invention of Horne Tooke. Being very intimate with Tooke, I questioned him on the subject. "What Burney states," he said, "is true. I saw Beckford just after he came from St. James's. I asked him what he had said to the King; and he replied, that he had been so confused, he scarcely knew what he had said. But, cried I, your speech must be sent to the papers; I'll write it for you. I did so immediately, and it was printed forthwith."' Tooke gave the same account to Isaac Reed. Walpole's Letters, v. 238, note. Stephens (Life of Horne Tooke, i. 155-8) says, that the King's answer had been anticipated and that Horne had suggested the idea of a reply. Stephens continues:--'The speech in reply, as Mr. Horne lately acknowledged to me, was his composition.' Stephens does not seem to have heard the story that Beckford did not deliver the reply. He says that Horne inserted the account in the newspapers. 'No one,' he continues, 'was better calculated to give copies of those harangues than the person who had furnished the originals; and as to the occurrences at St. James's, he was enabled to detail the particulars from the lips of the members of the deputation.' Alderman Townshend assured Lord Chatham that Beckford did deliver the speech. Chatham Corres. iii. 460. Horne Tooke's word is not worth much. He did not resign his living till more than seven years after he wrote to Wilkes:--'It is true I have suffered the infectious hand of a bishop to be waved over me; whose imposition, like the sop given to Judas, is only a signal for the devil to enter.' Stephens's Horne Tooke, i. 76. Beckford, dying in his Mayoralty, is oddly connected with Chatterton. 'Chatterton had written a political essay for The North Briton, which, though accepted, was not printed on account of Lord Mayor Beckford's death. The patriot thus calculated the death of his great patron:--
L s. d. Lost by his death in this Essay 1 11 6 Gained in Elegies L2.2 in Essays L3.3 ---- 5 5 0 ------------- Am glad he is dead by L3 13 6
D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors, i. 54.
[575] At the time that Johnson wrote this there were serfs in Scotland. An Act passed in 1775 (15 Geo. III. c. 22) contains the following preamble:--'Whereas by the law of Scotland, as explained by the judges of the courts of law there, many colliers and salters are in a state of slavery and bondage, bound to the collieries or saltworks where they work for life, transferable with the coalwork and salteries,' etc. The Act was ineffectual in giving relief, and in 1779 by 39 Geo. III. c.