Johnson frequently quoted the fourth couplet of these lines. Boswell does not give the last--
'I'm tired with waiting for this chemic gold Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.'
[928] Johnson, speaking of the companions of his college days, said:-- 'It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick.' Ante, i. 73.
[929]
'--to thee I call But with no friendly voice, and add thy name O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams.'
Milton's Paradise Lost, iv. 35.
[930] Yet there is no doubt that a man may appear very gay in company who is sad at heart. His merriment is like the sound of drums and trumpets in a battle, to drown the groans of the wounded and dying. BOSWELL.
[931] Mme. D'Arblay (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 103) tells how Johnson was one day invited to her father's house at the request of Mr. Greville, 'the finest gentleman about town,' as she earlier described him (ib. i. 25), who desired to make his acquaintance. This 'superb' gentleman was afraid to begin to speak. 'Assuming his most supercilious air of distant superiority he planted himself, immovable as a noble statue, upon the hearth, as if a stranger to the whole set.' Johnson, who 'never spoke till he was spoken to' (ante, in. 307)--this habit the Burneys did not as yet know--'became completely absorbed in silent rumination; very unexpectedly, however, he shewed himself alive to what surrounded him, by one of those singular starts of vision, that made him seem at times, though purblind to things in common, gifted with an eye of instinct for espying any action that he thought merited reprehension; for all at once, looking fixedly on Mr. Greville, who without much self-denial, the night being very cold, kept his station before the chimney-piece, he exclaimed:--"If it were not for depriving the ladies of the fire, I should like to stand upon the hearth myself." A smile gleamed upon every face at this pointed speech. Mr. Greville tried to smile himself, though faintly and scoffingly. He tried also to hold his post; and though for two or three minutes he disdained to move, the awkwardness of a general pause impelled him ere long to glide back to his chair; but he rang the bell with force as he passed it to order his carriage.'
[932] Page 139. BOSWELL.
[933] On this same day Miss Adams wrote to a friend:--'Dr. Johnson, tho' not in good health, is in general very talkative and infinitely agreeable and entertaining.' Pemb. Coll. MSS.
[934] Johnson said 'Milton was a Phidias, &c.' Ante, p. 99, note 1. In his Life of Milton (Works, vii. 119) he writes:--'Milton never learnt the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a Lion that had no skill in dandling the kid.'
['Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid.'
Paradise Lost, iv. 343.]
[935] Cardinal Newman (History of my Religious Opinions, ed. 1865, p. 361) remarks on this:--'As to Johnson's case of a murderer asking you which way a man had gone, I should have anticipated that, had such a difficulty happened to him, his first act would have been to knock the man down, and to call out for the police; and next, if he was worsted in the conflict, he would not have given the ruffian the information he asked, at whatever risk to himself. I think he would have let himself be killed first. I do not think that he would have told a lie.'
[936] See ante, iii. 376.
[937] Book ii. 1. 142.
[938] The annotator calls them 'amiable verses.' BOSWELL. The annotators of the Dunciad were Pope himself and Dr. Arbuthnot. Johnson's Works, viii. 280.
[939] Boswell was at this time corresponding with Miss Seward. See post, June 25.
[940] By John Dyer. Ante, ii. 453.
[941] Lewis's Verses addressed to Pope were first published in a Collection of Pieces on occasion of The Dunciad, 8vo., 1732. They do not appear in Lewis's own Miscellany, printed in 1726.--Grongar Hill was first printed in Savage's Miscellanies as an Ode, and was reprinted in the same year in Lewis's Miscellany, in the form it now bears.
In his Miscellanies, 1726, the beautiful poem,--'Away, let nought to love displeasing,'--reprinted in Percy's Reliques, vol. i. book iii. No. 13, first appeared. MALONE.
[942] See ante, p. 58.
[943] See ante, i. 71, and ii. 226.
[944] Captain Cook's third voyage. The first two volumes by Captain Cook; the last by Captain King.
[945] See ante, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 49.
[946]
'--quae mollissima fandi Tempora.' '--time wherein the word May softliest be said.'
MORRIS. Virgil, Aeneids, iv. 293.
[947] See ante, i. 71.
[948] See ante, i. 203, note 6.
[949] Boswell began to eat dinners in the Inner Temple so early as 1775. Ante, ii. 377, note 1. He was not called till Hilary Term, 1786. Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 143.
[950] Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Jones wrote two years earlier (Life, p. 268):--'Whether it be a wise part to live uncomfortably in order to die wealthy, is another question; but this I know by experience, and have heard old practitioners make the same observation, that a lawyer who is in earnest must be chained to his chambers and the bar for ten or twelve years together.'
[951] Johnson's Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre.