Come sometimes and see, Sir,
'Your humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
MS. in the British Museum.
[509] 'Dr. Johnson found here [at Auchinleck] Baxter's Anacreon, which he told me he had long inquired for in vain, and began to suspect there was no such book.' Boswell's Hebrides, Nov.2. See post, under Sept. 29, 1783.
[510] 'The delight which men have in popularity, fame, honour, submission, and subjection of other men's minds, wills, or affections, although these things may be desired for other ends, seemeth to be a thing in itself, without contemplation of consequence, grateful and agreeable to the nature of man.' Bacon's Nat. Hist. Exper. No. 1000. See ante, ii. 178.
[511] In a letter to Dr. Taylor on Jan. 21 of this year, he attacked the scheme of equal representation.' Pitt, on May 7, 1782, made his first reform motion. Johnson thus ended his letter:--'If the scheme were more reasonable, this is not a time for innovation. I am afraid of a civil war. The business of every wise man seems to be now to keep his ground.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 481.
[512] See ante, i. 429, post, 170, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 30.
[513] The year after this conversation the General Election of 1784 was held, which followed on the overthrow of the Coalition Ministry and the formation of the Pitt Ministry in December, 1783. The 'King's friends' were in a minority of one in the last great division in the old Parliament; in the motion on the Address in the new Parliament they had a majority of 168. Parl. Hist. xxiv. 744, 843. Miss Burney, writing in Nov. 1788, when the King was mad, says that one of his physicians 'moved me even to tears by telling me that none of their own lives would be safe if the King did not recover, so prodigiously high ran the tide of affection and loyalty. All the physicians received threatening letters daily, to answer for the safety of their monarch with their lives! Sir G. Baker had already been stopped in his carriage by the mob, to give an account of the King; and when he said it was a bad one, they had furiously exclaimed, "The more shame for you."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, iv. 336. Describing in 1789 a Royal tour in the West of England, she writes of 'the crowds, the rejoicings, the hallooing and singing, and garlanding and decorating of all the inhabitants of this old city [Exeter], and of all the country through which we passed.' Ib. v. 48.
[514] Miss Palmer, Sir Joshua's niece, 'heard Dr. Johnson repeat these verses with the tears falling over his cheek.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 417.
[515] Gibbon remarked that 'Mr. Fox was certainly very shy of saying anything in Johnson's presence.' Ante, iii. 267. See post, under June 9, 1784, where Johnson said 'Fox is my friend.'
[516] Mr. Greville (Journal, ed. 1874, ii. 316) records the following on the authority of Lord Holland:--'Johnson liked Fox because he defended his pension, and said it was only to blame in not being large enough. "Fox," he said, is a liberal man; he would always be aut Caesar aut nullus; whenever I have seen him he has been nullus. Lord Holland said Fox made it a rule never to talk in Johnson's presence, because he knew all his conversations were recorded for publication, and he did not choose to figure in them.' Fox could not have known what was not the fact. When Boswell was by, he had reason for his silence; but otherwise he might have spoken out. 'Mr. Fox,' writes Mackintosh (Life, i. 322) 'united, in a most remarkable degree, the seemingly repugnant characters of the mildest of men and the most vehement of orators. In private life he was so averse from parade and dogmatism as to be somewhat inactive in conversation.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 283) tells how Fox spent a day with him at Lausanne:--'Perhaps it never can happen again, that I should enjoy him as I did that day, alone from ten in the morning till ten at night. Our conversation never flagged a moment.' 'In London mixed society,' said Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 74), 'Fox conversed little; but at his own house in the country, with his intimate friends, he would talk on for ever, with all the openness and simplicity of a child.'
[517] Sec ante, ii. 450.
[518] Most likely 'Old Mr. Sheridan.'
[519] See ante, ii. 166.
[520] Were I to insert all the stories which have been told of contests boldly maintained with him, imaginary victories obtained over him, of reducing him to silence, and of making him own that his antagonist had the better of him in argument, my volumes would swell to an immoderate size. One instance, I find, has circulated both in conversation and in print; that when he would not allow the Scotch writers to have merit, the late Dr. Rose, of Chiswick, asserted, that he could name one Scotch writer, whom Dr. Johnson himself would allow to have written better than any man of the age; and upon Johnson's asking who it was, answered, 'Lord Bute, when he signed the warrant for your pension.' Upon which Johnson, struck with the repartee, acknowledged that this was true. When I mentioned it to Johnson, 'Sir, (said he,) if Rose said this, I never heard it.' BOSWELL.