There were 88 capital convictions, of which 21 were at Winchester. Ib. 224. In the summer assizes and at the Old Bailey Sessions for July there were 149 capital convictions. At Maidstone a man on being sentenced 'gave three loud cheers, upon which the judge gave strict orders for his being chained to the floor of the dungeon.' Ib. pp. 311, 633. The hangman was to grow busier yet. This increase in the number of capital punishments was attributed by Romilly in great part to Madan's Thoughts on Executive Justice; 'a small tract, in which, by a mistaken application of the maxim "that the certainty of punishment is more efficacious than its severity for the prevention of crimes," he absurdly insisted on the expediency of rigidly enforcing, in every instance, our penal code, sanguinary and barbarous as it was. In 1783, the year before the book was published, there were executed in London only 51 malefactors; in 1785, the year after the book was published, there were executed 97; and it was recently after the publication of the book that was exhibited a spectacle unseen in London for a long course of years before, the execution of nearly 20 criminals at a time.' Life of Romilly, i. 89. Madan's Tract was published in the winter of 1784-5. Boswell's fondness for seeing executions is shewn, ante, ii. 93.
[1016] See ante, ii. 82, 104; iii. 290; and v. 7l.
[1017] A friend of mine happened to be passing by a field congregation in the environs of London, when a Methodist preacher quoted this passage with triumph. BOSWELL. On Dec. 26, 1784, John Wesley preached the condemned criminals' sermon to forty-seven who were under sentence of death. He records:--'The power of the Lord was eminently present, and most of the prisoners were in tears. A few days after, twenty of them died at once, five of whom died in peace. I could not but greatly approve of the spirit and behaviour of Mr. Villette, the Ordinary; and I rejoiced to hear that it was the same on all similar occasions.' Wesley's Journal, ed. 1827, iv. 287.
[1018] I trust that THE CITY OF LONDON, now happily in unison with THE COURT, will have the justice and generosity to obtain preferment for this Reverend Gentleman, now a worthy old servant of that magnificent Corporation. BOSWELL. In like manner, Boswell in 1768 praised the Rev. Mr. Moore, Mr. Villette's predecessor. 'Mr. Moore, the Ordinary of Newgate, discharged his duty with much earnestness and a fervour for which I and all around me esteemed and loved him. Mr. Moore seems worthy of his office, which, when justly considered, is a very important one.' London Mag. 1783, p. 204. For the quarrel between the City and the Court, see ante, iii. 201.
[1019] See ante, i. 387.
[1020] Knox in Winter Evenings, No. xi. (Works, ii. 348), attacks Johnson's biographers for lowering his character by publishing his private conversation. 'Biography,' he complains, 'is every day descending from its dignity.' See ante, i. 222, note 1.
[1021] Piozzi Letters, ii. 256.
[1022] Johnson wrote on April 15:--'I am still very weak, though my appetite is keen and my digestion potent. ... I now think and consult to-day what I shall eat to-morrow. This disease likewise will, I hope, be cured.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 362. Beattie, who dined with Johnson on June 27, wrote:--'Wine, I think, would do him good, but he cannot be prevailed on to drink it. He has, however, a voracious appetite for food. I verily believe that on Sunday last he ate as much to dinner as I have done in all for these ten days past.' Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 315. It was said that Beattie latterly indulged somewhat too much in wine. Ib. p. 432.
[1023] Horace Walpole wrote in April 1750 (Letters, ii. 206):--'There is come from France a Madame Bocage who has translated Milton: my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord's approbation.' It was this lady who bade her footman blow into the spout of the tea-pot. Ante, ii. 403. Dr. J. H. Burton writes of her in his Life of Hume, ii. 213:--'The wits must praise her bad poetry if they frequented her house. "Elle etait d'une figure aimable," says Grimm, "elle est bonne femme; elle est riche; elle pouvait fixer chez elle les gens d'esprit et de bonne compagnie, sans les mettre dans l'embarras de lui parler avec peu de sincerite de sa Colombiade ou de ses Amazones."'
[1024] It is the sea round the South Pole that she describes in her Elegy (not Ode). The description begins:--
'While o'er the deep in many a dreadful form, The giant Danger howls along the storm, Furling the iron sails with numbed hands, Firm on the deck the great Adventurer stands; Round glitt'ring mountains hear the billows rave, And the vast ruin thunder on the wave.'
In the Gent. Mag. 1793, p. 197, were given extracts abusive of Johnson from some foolish letters that passed between Miss Seward and Hayley, a poet her equal in feebleness.