If the king is a Whig, he will not like them; but is any king a Whig?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 43.
[1124] 'He was always ready to assist any authors in correcting their works, and selling them to booksellers. "I have done writing," said he, "myself, and should assist those that do write."' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 202. See ante, ii. 195.
[1125] In The Rehearsal. See ante, ii. 168.
[1126] Johnson wrote on Nov. 21, 1778:--'Baretti has told his musical scheme to B---- and B---- will neither grant the question nor deny. He is of opinion that if it does not fail, it will succeed, but if it does not succeed he conceives it must fail.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 41. Baretti, in a marginal note on his copy, says that B---- is Dr. Burney. He adds:--'The musical scheme was the Carmen Seculare. That brought me L150 in three nights, and three times as much to Philidor. It would have benefited us both greatly more, if Philidor had not proved a scoundrel.' 'The complaisant Italian,' says the Gent Mag. (xlix. 361), 'in compliment to our island chooses "to drive destructive war and pestilence" ad Mauros, Seras et Indos, instead of ad Persas atque Britannos.' Mr. Tasker, the clergyman, went a step further. 'I,' he says in his version of the Carmen,
'Honour and fame prognosticate To free-born Britain's naval state And to her Patriot-King.' Ib.
[1127] We may compare with this the scene in Le Misanthrope (Act i. sc. 2), where Oronte reads his sonnet to Alceste; who thrice answers: --'Je ne dis pas cela, mais--.' See ante, iii. 320.
[1128] This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informed me that this portrait is so accurately drawn, that being, some years after the publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know, but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it appeared that he was indeed the author of The Warlike Genius of Britain. CROKER.
[1129] The poet was preparing a second edition of his Ode. 'This animated Pindaric made its first appearance the latter end of last year (1778). It is well calculated to rouse the martial spirit of the nation, and is now reprinted with considerable additions.' Gent. Mag. July, 1779, p. 357. In 1781 he published another volume of his poems with a poetical preface, in which he thus attacks his brother-in-law:--
'To suits litigious, ignorant and raw, Compell'd by an unletter'd brother-in-law.'
Ib. 1781, p. 227.
[1130] Boswell must have misheard what Johnson said. It was not Anson, but Amherst whom the bard praised. Ode, p. 7.
[1131] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Foote's death:--'Now, will any of his contemporaries bewail him? Will Genius change his sex to weep?' Piozzi Letters, i. 396.
[1132]
'Genius of Britain! to thy office true, On Cox-Heath reared the waving banners view.
* * * * *
In martial vest By Venus and the Graces drest, To yonder tent, who leads the way? Art thou Britannia's Genius? say.'
Ode, p. 8.
[1133] Twenty-nine years earlier he wrote:--'There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness.' The Rambler, No. 2. In The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xx, George says of his book:--'The learned world said nothing to my paradoxes, nothing at all, Sir.... I suffered the cruellest mortification, neglect.' See ante, ii. 61, 335. Hume said:--'The misfortune of a book, says Boileau, is not the being ill spoke [sic] of, but the not being spoken of at all.' J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 412
[1134] The account given in Northcote's Reynolds (ii. 94-97) renders it likely that Sir Joshua is 'the friend of ours.' Northcote, quoting Mr. Courtenay, writes:--'His table was frequented by men of the first talents. Politics and party were never introduced. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians, lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group.' At one of these dinners Mr. Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, was the first who came. 'On entering, he said, "Well, Sir Joshua, and who [sic] have you got to dine with you to-day? for the last time I dined with you the assembly was of such a sort, that, by G--, I believe all the rest of the world were at peace, for that afternoon at least."' See post, under June 16, 1784, note. Boswell, in his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 95), boasts that he too is 'a very universal man.' 'I can drink, I can laugh, I can converse in perfect humour with Whigs, with republicans, with dissenters, with Independents, with Quakers, with Moravians, with Jews. But I would vote with Tories and pray with a Dean and Chapter.'
[1135] 'Finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I therefore drest up three paradoxes with some ingenuity. They were false, indeed, but they were new.' Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xx. See ante, i.