Ib. xxix. 91. Before the seven years had run out, Shebbeare was pensioned. Smollett, in the preface to Humphry Clinker, represents the publisher of that novel as writing to the imaginary author:--'If you should be sentenced to the pillory your fortune is made. As times go, that's a sure step to honour and preferment. I shall think myself happy if I can lend you a lift.' See also in the same book Mr. Bramble's Letter of June 2.
[932] See p. 275 of this volume. BOSWELL. Why Boswell mentions this gentleman at all, seeing that nothing that he says is reported, is not clear. Perhaps he gave occasion to Johnson's attack on the Americans. It is curious also why both here and in the account given of Dr. Percy's dinner his name is not mentioned. In the presence of this unknown gentleman Johnson violently attacked first Percy, and next Boswell.
[933] Mr. Langton no doubt. See ante, iii. 48. He had paid Johnson a visit that morning. Pr. and Med. p. 165.
[934] See ante, p. 216.
[935] See ante, i. 494, where Johnson says that 'her learning is that of a schoolboy in one of the lower forms.'
[936] On this day Johnson recorded in his review of the past year:-- 'My nights have been commonly, not only restless, but painful and fatiguing.' He adds, 'I have written a little of the Lives of the Poets, I think with all my usual vigour.... This year the 28th of March passed away without memorial. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldest thou have lived!' Pr. and Med. pp. 169, 170.
[937] Mr. Langton. See ante, iii. 48.
[938] Malone was told by Baretti that 'Dr. James picked up on a stall a book of Greek hymns. He brought it to Johnson, who ran his eyes over the pages and returned it. A year or two afterwards he dined at Sir Joshua Reynolds's with Dr. Musgrave, the editor of Euripides. Musgrave made a great parade of his Greek learning, and among other less known writers mentioned these hymns, which he thought none of the company were acquainted with, and extolled them highly. Johnson said the first of them was indeed very fine, and immediately repeated it. It consisted of ten or twelve lines.' Prior's Malone, p. 160.
[939] By Richard Tickell, the grandson of Addison's friend. Walpole's Letters, vii. 54
[940] She was a younger sister of Peg Woffington (ante, p. 264). Johnson described her as 'a very airy lady.' (Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773.) Murphy (Life, p. 137) says that 'Johnson, sitting at table with her, took hold of her hand in the middle of dinner, and held it close to his eye, wondering at the delicacy and the whiteness, till with a smile she asked:--"Will he give it to me again when he has done with it?"' He told Miss Burney that 'Mrs. Cholmondeley was the first person who publicly praised and recommended Evelina among the wits.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 180. Miss Burney wrote in 1778:--'Mrs. Cholmondeley has been praising Evelina; my father said that I could not have had a greater compliment than making two such women my friends as Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Cholmondeley, for they were severe and knowing, and afraid of praising a tort et a travers, as their opinions are liable to be quoted.' Ib. i. 47. To Mrs. Cholmondeley Goldsmith, just before his death, shewed a copy in manuscript of his Retaliation. No one else, it should seem, but Burke had seen it. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 412.
[941] Dr. Johnson is supported by the usage of preceding writers. So in Musarum Deliciae, 8vo. 1656 (the writer is speaking of Suckling's play entitled Aglaura, printed in folio):--
'This great voluminous pamphlet may be said To be like one that hath more hair than head.'
MALONE.
Addison, in The Spectator, No. 529 says that 'the most minute pocket-author hath beneath him the writers of all pamphlets, or works that are only stitched. As for a pamphleteer he takes place of none but of the authors of single sheets.' The inferiority of a pamphlet is shewn in Johnson's Works, ed. 1787, xi. 216:--'Johnson would not allow the word derange to be an English word. "Sir," said a gentleman who had some pretensions to literature, "I have seen it in a book." "Not in a bound book," said Johnson; "disarrange is the word we ought to use instead of it."' In his Dictionary he gives neither derange nor disarrange. Dr. Franklin, who had been a printer and was likely to use the term correctly, writing in 1785, mentions 'the artifices made use of to puff up a paper of verses into a pamphlet.' Memoirs, iii. 178.
[942] See post, March 16, 1779, for 'the exquisite address' with which Johnson evaded a question of this kind.
[943] Garrick insisted on great alterations being made in The Good Natured Man. When Goldsmith resisted this, 'he proposed a sort of arbitration,' and named as his arbitrator Whitehead the laureate. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 41. It was of Whitehead's poetry that Johnson said 'grand nonsense is insupportable.' Ante, i. 402. The Good Natured Man was brought out by Colman, as well as She Stoops to Conquer.