I maintain Mrs. ---- [Desmoulins] and her daughter. Other good of myself I know not where to find, except a little charity.' Ib. p. 175.
[1155] Mauritius Lowe, the painter. Ante, p. 324.
[1156] See ante ii 249.
[1157] 'Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put 'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick, and cried, "Down wantons, down!"' King Lear, act ii. sc. 4.
[1158] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, where Johnson, speaking of claret, said that 'there were people who died of dropsies, which they contracted in trying to get drunk.'
[1159] 'If,' wrote Johnson in one of his Debates (Works xi. 392), 'the felicity of drunkenness can be more cheaply obtained by buying spirits than ale, it is easy to see which will be preferred.' See post, March 30, 1781.
[1160] Dempster, to whom Boswell complained that his nerves were affected, replied:--'One had better be palsied at eighteen than not keep company with such a man.' Ante, i. 434.
[1161] Marquis of Graham, afterwards third Duke of Montrose. In The Rolliad (ed. 1795) he is thus attacked:--
'Superior to abuse He nobly glories in the name of Goose; Such Geese at Rome from the perfidious Gaul Preserved the Treas'ry-Bench and Capitol.'
He was one of the Lords of the Treasury. See also The Rolliad, p. 60
[1162] Johnson, however, when telling Mrs. Thrale that, in case of her husband's death, she ought to carry on his business, said:--'Do not be frighted; trade could not be managed by those who manage it if it had much difficulty. Their great books are soon understood, and their language,
"If speech it may be called, that speech is none Distinguishable in number, mood, or tense,"
is understood with no very laborious application.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 91. See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 18.
[1163] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 26.
[1164] See ante, iii. 88, note 1.
[1165] The Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, with whom she lived seventeen years, and by whom she had nine children. Ann. Reg. xxii. 206. The Duke of Richmond attacked her in the House of Lords as one 'who was supposed to sell favours in the Admiralty for money.' Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 248, and Parl. Hist. xix. 993. It so happened that on the day on which Hackman was hanged 'Fox moved for the removal of Lord Sandwich [from office] but was beaten by a large majority.' Walpole's Letters, vii. 194. One of her children was Basil Montague, the editor of Bacon. Carlyle writes of him:--'On going to Hinchinbrook, I found he was strikingly like the dissolute, questionable Earl of Sandwich; who, indeed, had been father of him in a highly tragic way.' Carlyle's Reminiscences, i. 224. Hackman, who was a clergyman of the Church, had once been in the army. Cradock's Memoirs, i. 140.
[1166] On the following Monday Boswell was present at Hackman's execution, riding to Tyburn with him in a mourning coach. London Mag. for 1779, p. 189.
[1167] At the Club. CROKER. See ante, ii. 345, note 5.
[1168] See ante, p. 281, for a previous slight altercation, and p. 195 for a possible cause of unfriendly feeling between the two men. If such a feeling existed, it passed away, at all events on Johnson's side, before Beauclerk's death. See post, iv. 10.
[1169] This gentleman who loved buttered muffins reappears in Pickwick (ch. 44), as 'the man who killed himself on principle,' after eating three-shillings' worth of crumpets. Mr. Croker says that Mr. Fitzherbert is meant; but he hanged himself. Ante, ii. 228, note 3.
[1170] 'It is not impossible that this restless desire of novelty, which gives so much trouble to the teacher, may be often the struggle of the understanding starting from that to which it is not by nature adapted, and travelling in search of something on which it may fix with greater satisfaction. For, without supposing each man particularly marked out by his genius for particular performances, it may be easily conceived that when a numerous class of boys is confined indiscriminately to the same forms of composition, the repetition of the same words, or the explication of the same sentiments, the employment must, either by nature or accident, be less suitable to some than others.... Weariness looks out for relief, and leisure for employment, and surely it is rational to indulge the wanderings of both.' Johnson's Works, v. 232. See post, iv. 21.
[1171] 'See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept 10, and Johnson's Works, viii. 466. Mallet had the impudence to write to Hume that the book was ready for the press; 'which,' adds Hume, 'is more than I or most people expected.' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 139.
[1172] The name is not given in the first two editions. See ante, i. 82.
[1173] See p. 289 of this vol., and vol. i. p. 207. BOSWELL. The saying is from Diogenes Laertius, bk. v. ch. I, and is attributed to Aristotle --[Greek: ho philoi oudeis philos.]
[1174]
'Love, the most generous passion of the mind, The softest refuge innocence can find; The safe director of unguided youth, Fraught with kind wishes, and secured by truth; That cordial drop Heaven in our cup has thrown, To make the nauseous draught of life go down.'
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, A Letter from Artemisia, Chalmers's Poets, viii.