p. 49. 'I have rarely admitted any words not authorised by former writers; for I believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent will be able to express his thoughts without further help from other nations.' The Rambler, No. 208.
[1019] Boswell on one occasion used it came out where a lover of fine words would have said it transpired. See Boswell's Hebrides, November 1.
[1020] The record no doubt was destroyed with the other papers that Boswell left to his literary executors (ante, p. 301, note 1).
[1021] See ante, i. 154.
[1022] 'Of Johnson's pride I have heard Reynolds observe, that if any man drew him into a state of obligation without his own consent, that man was the first he would affront by way of clearing off the account.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 71.
[1023] See post, May 1, 1779.
[1024] This had happened the day before (May 11) in the writ of error in Horne's case (ante, p. 314). Ann. Reg. xii. 181.
[1025] 'To enucleate. To solve; to clear.' Johnson's Dictionary.
[1026] In the original me.
[1027] Pope himself (Moral Essays, iii. 25) attacks the sentiment contained in this stanza. He says:--
'What nature wants (a phrase I must distrust) Extends to luxury, extends to lust.'
Mr. Elwin (Pope's Works, ii. 462) doubts the genuineness of this suppressed stanza. Montezuma, in Dryden's Indian Emperour, act ii. sc. 2, says:--
'That lust of power we from your Godheads have, You're bound to please those appetites you gave.'
[1028] 'Antoine Arnauld, surnomme le grand Arnauld, theologien et philosophe, ne a Paris le 6 fevrier 1612, mort le 6 aout 1694 a Bruxelles.' Nouv. Biog. Gen. iii. 282.
[1029] 'It may be discovered that when Pope thinks himself concealed he indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that his book was presented to the King and Queen by the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first distinction.' Johnson's Works, viii. 278.
[1030] Othello, act iii. sc. 3.
[1031] Mr. Langton, I have little doubt. Not only does that which Johnson says of sluggishness fit his character, but the fact that he is spoken of in the next paragraph points to him.
[1032] Mr. Langton. See ante, iii. 48.
[1033] We may wonder whether pasted is strictly used. It seems likely that the wealthy brewer, who had a taste for the fine arts, afforded Hogarth at least a frame.
[1034] See ante, i. 49.
[1035] Baths are called Hummums in the East, and thence these hotels in Covent Garden, where there were baths, were called by that name. CROKER.
[1036] Beauclerk.
[1037] Bolingbroke. Ante, ii. 246.
[1038] Lord Clive. Ante, p. 334.
[1039] Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.
[1040] Johnson, or Boswell in reporting him, here falls into an error. The editor of Chesterfield's Works says (ii. 3l9), 'that being desirous of giving a specimen of his Lordship's eloquence he has made choice of the three following speeches; the first in the strong nervous style of Demosthenes; the two latter in the witty, ironical manner of Tully.' Now the first of these speeches is not Johnson's, for it was reported in The Gent. Mag. for July, 1737, p. 409, nine months before his first contribution to that paper. In spite of great differences this report and that in Chesterfield's Works are substantially the same. If Johnson had any hand in the authorised version he merely revised the report already published. Nor did he always improve it, as will be seen by comparing with Chesterfield's Works, ii. 336, the following passage from the Gent. Mag. p. 411:--'My Lords, we ought in all points to be tender of property. Wit is the property of those who are possessed of it, and very often the only property they have. Thank God, my Lords, this is not our case; we are otherwise provided for.' The other two speeches are his. In the collected works (xi. 420, 489) they are wrongly assigned to Lord Carteret. See ante, i. Appendix A.
[1041] See ante, p. 340.
[1042] These words are quoted by Kames, iii. 267. In his abbreviation he perhaps passed over by accident the words that Johnson next quotes. If Clarendon did not believe the story, he wished his readers to believe it. He gives more than five pages to it, and he ends by saying:-- 'Whatever there was of all this, it is a notorious truth, that when the news of the duke's murder (which happened within few months after) was brought to his mother, she seemed not in the least degree surprised; but received it as if she had foreseen it.' According to the story, he had told her of the warning which had come to him through his father's ghost. Clarendon's History, ed. 1826, i. 74.
[1043] Kames maintains (iii. 95) that schools are not needful for the children of the labouring poor. They would be needful, 'if without regular education we could have no knowledge of the principles of religion and of morality. But Providence has not left man in a state so imperfect: religion and morality are stamped on his heart; and none can be ignorant of them, who attend to their own perceptions.'
[1044] 'Oct.