227):--'Dr. Young has published a new book, on purpose, he says himself, to have an opportunity of telling a story that he has known these forty years. Mr. Addison sent for the young Lord Warwick, as he was dying, to shew him in what peace a Christian could die--unluckily he died of brandy--nothing makes a Christian die in peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath, where you are.'
[730] 'His [Young's] plan seems to have started in his mind at the present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.... His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear. But with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.' Johnson's Works, viii. 458, 462. Mrs. Piozzi (Synonymy, ii. 371) tells why 'Dr. Johnson despised Young's quantity of common knowledge as comparatively small. 'Twas only because, speaking once upon the subject of metrical composition, he seemed totally ignorant of what are called rhopalick verses, from the Greek word, a club--verses in which each word must be a syllable longer than that which goes before, such as:
Spes deus aeternae stationis conciliator.'
[731] He had said this before. Ante, ii. 96.
[732]
'Brunetta's wise in actions great and rare, But scorns on trifles to bestow her care. Thus ev'ry hour Brunetta is to blame, Because th' occasion is beneath her aim. Think nought a trifle, though it small appear; Small sands the mountains, moments make the year, And trifles life. Your care to trifles give, Or you may die before you truly live.'
Love of Fame, Satire vi. Johnson often taught that life is made up of trifles. See ante, i. 433.
[733]
"But hold," she cries, "lampooner, have a care; Must I want common sense, because I'm fair?" O no: see Stella; her eyes shine as bright, As if her tongue was never in the right; And yet what real learning, judgment, fire! She seems inspir'd, and can herself inspire: How then (if malice rul'd not all the fair) Could Daphne publish, and could she forbear? We grant that beauty is no bar to sense, Nor is't a sanction for impertinence.
Love of Fame, Satire v.
[734] Johnson called on Young's son at Welwyn in June, 1781. Ante, iv. 119. Croft, in his Life of Young (Johnson's Works, viii. 453), says that 'Young and his housekeeper were ridiculed with more ill-nature than wit in a kind of novel published by Kidgell in 1755, called The Card, under the name of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.'
[735] Memoirs of Philip Doddridge, ed. 1766, p. 171.
[736] So late as 1783 he said 'this Hanoverian family is isolee here.' Ante, iv. 165.
[737] See ante, ii. 81, where he hoped that 'this gloom of infidelity was only a transient cloud.'
[738] Boswell has recorded this saying, ante, iv. 194.
[739] In 1755 an English version of this work had been published. Gent. Mag. 1755, p. 574. In the Chronological Catalogue on p. 343 in vol. 66 of Voltaire's Works, ed. 1819, it is entered as 'Histoire de la Guerre de 1741, fondue en partie dans le Precis du siecle de Louis XV.'
[740] Boswell is here merely repeating Johnson's words, who on April 11 of this year, advising him to keep a journal, had said, 'The great thing to be recorded is the state of your own mind.' Ante, ii. 217.
[741] This word is not in his Dictionary.
[742] See ante, i. 498.
[743] See ante, ii. 61, 335; iii. 375, and post, under Nov. 11.
[744] Beattie had attacked Hume in his Essay on Truth (ante, ii. 201 and v. 29). Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his Essay under his arm. 'The angel of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy, Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very indignant at it, and said:--"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 300. Another of the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes (Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire. Beattie's Essay is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his Life of Hume. Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie's side:--
'Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung His Minstrel lays; Or tore, with noble ardour stung, The Sceptic's bays.'
(The Vision, part ii.)
[745] See ante, ii.