4.
[181] George Marline's Reliquiae divi Andreae was published in 1797.
[182] See ante, ii. 171, and iv. 75.
[183] Mr. Chambers says that Knox was buried in a place which soon after became, and ever since has been, a high-way; namely, the old church-yard of St. Giles in Edinburgh. Croker's Boswell, p. 283.
[184] In The Rambler, No. 82, Johnson makes a virtuoso write:--'I often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.' He had in 1754 'viewed with indignation the ruins of the Abbeys of Oseney and Rewley near Oxford.' Ante, i. 273. Smollett, in Humphry Clinker (Letrer of Aug. 8), describes St. Andrews as 'the skeleton of a venerable city.'
[185] 'Some talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others readily allowed that there was a time when the claims of the publick were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself to review his life and purify his heart.' Rasselas, ch. 22.
[186] See ante, ii. 423.
[187] See ante, iv. 5, note 2, and v. 27.
[188] 'He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But, perhaps, every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life, and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat.' Rasselas, ch. 47. See ante, ii. 435.
[189] 'A youthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged.' Ante, ii. 10. The hermit in Rasselas (ch. 21) says:--'The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.' In Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 203, we read that 'Johnson thought worse of the vices of retirement than of those of society.' Southey (Life of Wesley, i. 39) writes:--'Some time before John Wesley's return to the University, he had travelled many miles to see what is called "a serious man." This person said to him, "Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember, you cannot serve Him alone; you must therefore find companions or make them; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion." Wesley never forgot these words.'
[190] [Erga neon, boulai de meson euchai de gerunton. Hesiodi Fragmenta, Lipsiae 1840, p. 371]
Let youth in deeds, in counsel man engage; Prayer is the proper duty of old age.
BOSWELL.
[191] One 'sorrowful scene' Johnson was perhaps too late in the year to see. Wesley, who visited St. Andrews on May 27, 1776, during the vacation, writes (Journal, iv. 75):--'What is left of St. Leonard's College is only a heap of ruins. Two colleges remain. One of them has a tolerable square; but all the windows are broke, like those of a brothel. We were informed the students do this before they leave the college.'
[192] 'He was murdered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.' Johnson's Works, ix. 3. In May 1546 the Cardinal had Wishart the Reformer killed, and at the end of the same month he got killed himself.
[193] Johnson says (Works, ix. 5):--'The doctor, by whom it was shown, hoped to irritate or subdue my English vanity by telling me that we had no such repository of books in England.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi Letters, i. 113):--'For luminousness and elegance it may vie at least with the new edifice at Streatham.' 'The new edifice' was, no doubt, the library of which he took the touching farewell. Ante, iv. 158.
[194] 'Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain.' The Rambler, No. 47. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on the death of her son:--'Do not indulge your sorrow; try to drive it away by either pleasure or pain; for, opposed to what you are feeling, many pains will become pleasures.' Piozzi Letters, i. 310.
[195] See ante, ii. 151.
[196] The Pembroke College grace was written by Camden. It was as follows:--'Gratias tibi agimus, Deus misericors, pro acceptis a tua bonitate alimentis; enixe comprecantes ut serenissimum nostrum Regem Georgium, totam regiam familiam, populumque tuum universum tuta in pace semper custodies.'
[197] Sharp was murdered on May 3, 1679, in a moor near St. Andrews. Burnet's History of his Own time, ed. 1818, ii. 82, and Scott's Old Mortality, ed, 1860, ix. 297, and x. 203.
[198] 'One of its streets is now lost; and in those that remain there is the silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy depopulation.... St. Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and education.... The students, however, are represented as, at this time, not exceeding a hundred. I saw no reason for imputing their paucity to the present professors.' Johnson's Works, ix. 4. A student, he adds, of lower rank could get his board, lodging, and instruction for less than ten pounds for the seven months of residence.