and Med. p. 163):--'It has happened this week, as it never happened in Passion Week before, that I have never dined at home, and I have therefore neither practised abstinence nor peculiar devotion.'
[880] See ante, iii. 48, note 4.
[881] I believe, however, I shall follow my own opinion; for the world has shewn a very flattering partiality to my writings, on many occasions. BOSWELL. In Boswelliana, p. 222, Boswell, after recording a story about Voltaire, adds:--'In contradiction to this story, see in my Journal the account which Tronchin gave me of Voltaire.' This Journal was probably destroyed by Boswell's family. By his will, he left his manuscripts and letters to Sir W. Forbes, Mr. Temple, and Mr. Malone, to be published for the benefit of his younger children as they shall decide. The Editor of Boswelliana says (p. 186) that 'these three literary executors did not meet, and the entire business of the trust was administered by Sir W. Forbes, who appointed as his law-agent, Robert Boswell, cousin-german of the deceased. By that gentleman's advice, Boswell's manuscripts were left to the disposal of his family; and it is believed that the whole were immediately destroyed.' The indolence of Malone and Temple, and the brutish ignorance of the Boswells, have indeed much to answer for. See ante, i. 225, note 2, and post, May 12, 1778.
[882] 'He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.' The Idler, No. 97.
[883] See ante, ii. 377.
[884] Johnson recorded (Pr. and Med. p. 163):--'Boswell came in to go to Church ... Talk lost our time, and we came to Church late, at the Second Lesson.'
[885] See ante, i. 461.
[886] Oliver Edwards entered Pembroke College in June, 1729. He left in April, 1730.
[887] Pr. and Med. p. 164. BOSWELL.
[888] 'Edwards observed how many we have outlived. I hope, yet hope, that my future life shall be better than my past.' Pr. and Med. p. 166.
[889] See post, April 30, 1778.
[890] See ante, p. 221.
[891] 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.' Ante, i. 471.
[892] Johnson said to me afterwards, 'Sir, they respected me for my literature; and yet it was not great but by comparison. Sir, it is amazing how little literature there is in the world.' BOSWELL.
[893] See ante, i. 320.
[894] Very near the College, facing the passage which leads to it from Pembroke Street, still stands an old alehouse which must have been old in Johnson's time.
[895] This line has frequently been attributed to Dryden, when a King's Scholar at Westminster. But neither Eton nor Westminster have in truth any claim to it, the line being borrowed, with a slight change, from an Epigram by Crashaw:--
'Joann. 2,
'Aquae in vinum versae. Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphis? Qua rosa mirantes tam nova mutat aquas? Numen, convinvae, praesens agnoscite numen, Nympha pudica DEUM vidit, et erubuit.' MALONE.
What gave your springs a brightness not their own? What rose so strange the wond'ring waters flushed? Heaven's hand, oh guests; heaven's hand may here be known; The spring's coy nymph has seen her God and blushed.
[896] 'He that made the verse following (some ascribe it to Giraldus Cambrensis) could adore both the sun rising, and the sun setting, when he could so cleanly honour King Henry II, then departed, and King Richard succeeding.
"Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla sequutaest."'
Camden's Remains (1870), p. 351.
[897] 'When Mr. Hume began to be known in the world as a philosopher, Mr. White, a decent, rich merchant of London, said to him:--"I am surprised, Mr. Hume, that a man of your good sense should think of being a philosopher. Why, I now took it into my head to be a philosopher for some time, but tired of it most confoundedly, and very soon gave it up." "Pray, Sir," said Mr. Hume, "in what branch of philosophy did you employ your researches? What books did you read?" "Books?" said Mr. White; "nay sir, I read no books, but I used to sit whole forenoons a-yawning and poking the fire." Boswelliana, p. 221. The French were more successful than Mr. Edwards in the pursuit of philosophy, Horace Walpole wrote from Paris in 1766 (Letters, iv. 466):--'The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness.'
[898] See ante, ii. 8.
[899] See ante, i. 332.
[900] See ante, i. 468, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 4.
[901] I am not absolutely sure but this was my own suggestion, though it is truly in the character of Edwards. BOSWELL.
[902] Sixty-nine. He was born in 1709.
[903] See ante, i. 75, note 1.
[904]
'O my coevals! remnants of yourselves! Poor human ruins, tottering o'er the grave! Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees, Strike deeper their vile roots, and closer cling, Still more enamoured of this wretched soil?'
Young's Night Thoughts, Night iv.