Life of Edmond Malone/Maloniana/Part 1
EDMOND MALONE, 1783.
“Conviva est, commessatorque libellus.”
It is not generally known that Middleton, in his Life of Cicero, was much indebted to a book entitled De Tribus Luminibus Romanorum, written by a Scotchman named Bellenden, and printed at Paris, in folio, 1633. It is a history of Cicero’s life and times, extracted from his letters and orations, and in his own language. It was, I believe, the writer’s intention to have published two other works of the same kind, but not having seen the book,[1] I know not who the other two Luminæ were. A gentleman who was acquainted with Middleton (who has not mentioned this book, though so much indebted to it), in order to try him, once told him he wondered among all the authors he had examined when he was compiling his Life of Cicero, he had never looked into Bellenden. He seemed very much disconcerted, and, after recollecting himself a little, only said, “he did not know how it happened.”
Dr. Warton, in his Essay on Pope, has mentioned that three of our celebrated poets died singular deaths. He might have added Shenstone to the number. He had a housekeeper who lived with him in the double capacity of maid and mistress; and being offended with her on some occasion, he went out of his house and sat all night in his post-chaise in much agitation, in consequence of which he caught a cold that eventually caused his death.
Mr. Hamilton (Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland) informs me that Johnson has written his own life.[2] He once saw it on his table. He had thoughts of writing a second part to his admirable work Rasselas, but I know not whether he ever executed it.[3] It is much to be lamented that he did not translate Tacitus, a work that I have heard he once had thoughts of undertaking. How well he would have done it, may be collected from his translation of part of Milton’s Panegyric on Cromwell.
I should be glad to see some of his very earliest prose productions before he came to London, in order to ascertain whether from the first he adopted the style by which he has been so much distinguished. Lobo being a translation from the French, is not a fair specimen. In the preface to it his style is clearly discernible. I imagine there are three periods or epochs in his style. At first he was certainly simpler than afterwards. Between the years 1750 and 1758 his style was, I think, in its hardest and most laboured state. Of late, it is evidently improved.
His last work, the Lives of the Poets, has all the vigour and energy of the Rambler, without so much artificial niceness in the construction of the sentences, and without the hardness of phraseology that distinguishes that work. He formed his style, I imagine, on Hooker, Sir Thomas Brown, and the author of the Decay of Piety—an admirable writer, who deserves to be much more studied than he is, on account of the energy of his style, and the very lively imagery in which he everywhere abounds, both in the work already mentioned and the Government of the Tongue. There is a little too much of cant in his works, and somewhat too gloomy and austere an enforcement of religious doctrines. Had he written on any other subject than religion, he would have been, I believe, a very popular author.
Mr. Hamilton, the gentleman above-mentioned, is master of an admirable style, and very happy in short characteristick expressions. Being asked what he thought of the two most distinguished orators of the present day, Mr. C. Fox and young Mr. Pitt, he said the oratory of the latter appeared to him only “languid elegance;” that of Mr. Fox, “spirited vulgarity.”
It is a striking circumstance and presumptive proof that Mr. Fox[4] is little better than a popular declaimer, and ready and dexterous parliamentary disputant (which he is universally allowed to be), but with no pretensions to the character of a real orator; that no marked or singularly happy expression of his has ever been quoted after any debate in a period of ten years. This was not the case with Lord Chatham, Mr. Charles Townshend, Mr. Flood, and Mr. Hussey Burgh (the last two of Ireland), the most distinguished orators of the present age.
Mr. Hamilton, in conversation with the late Bishop Warburton, asked him, what his opinion was of Eikon Basilike? That he was almost afraid of delivering his own sentiments of that work, but that really it appeared to him, notwithstanding all the noise made about it and all the editions it had gone through, to have very little merit. “You are very right,” said the bishop; “it has mostly been supported by the cry of party.” “Well,” said Mr. Hamilton, “since I find I have the sanction of your lordship’s concurrence so far, I will venture to go a little farther, and own that I cannot see any very extraordinary merit in another much talked of and much admired work—Lord Clarendon’s History of the Civil Wars.” “Ah, now you have undone yourself with me,” replied the bishop. “It is one of the finest compositions that was ever written. I have read it at least a dozen times, and filled every leaf with manuscript observations.”
Mr. Hamilton, talking to me on this subject, said he still continued of the same opinion. Speaking of the endless parentheses and tedious length of his sentences, he observed, in his usual marked manner, that “there was not only all the formality of the old courtier and Lord Chancellor in the work, but his very wig, and gown, and band, and mace, too.” I agree with him entirely with respect to the style, and yet surely the book is worth reading for the sake of the characters alone. The simplicity and probity of the writer, too,[5] conspicuous throughout the work, are very captivating. Hume says very justly, that “he is not near so partial in fact as he appears to be,” for he shows a perpetual wish to apologize for Charles, and yet, in truth, states fairly and correctly enough all those enormities, which afterwards cost him his crown and his life.
[The Clarendon’s History above-mentioned, with Warburton’s Notes, he bequeathed to his friend Dr. Hurd, in whose possession it now is.]
Dr. Warburton had scribbled a good deal in many other of his books. He bequeathed them, I think, to be sold for the benefit of the Bath Hospital; but his wife having notice of it, and the old man being for the two or three last years of his life in nearly a state of dotage, she disposed of them in his lifetime, if I mistake not, to Payne, the bookseller, and they are now dispersed.
He inherited all Mr. Pope’s copies of the old quarto editions of Shakspeare, which he bound up in two volumes; but in 1766, on Mr. Steevens republishing them, he disposed of those valuable copies to Payne, who put them into the sale of Mr. Mallet’s books, which at the time were selling by auction. They were not numbered in Mallet’s catalogue, but sold at the end of his quarto plays for three guineas; but I never could learn to whom.
Pope’s collection of the pieces written against him, on account of the Dunciad, are in Bishop Hurd’s possession.
Mr. Warburton, about the year 1750 or 1752, being in company with Quin, the player, at Mr. Allen’s, near Bath, took several opportunities of being sharp upon him, on the subject of his love of eating and his voluptuous life. However, in the course of the evening, he said he should be obliged to Quin for “a touch of his quality,” as he could never again see him on the stage. Quin said that plays were then quite out of his head; however, he believed he remembered a few lines of Pierre; on which he got up, and looking directly at Mr. Allen, repeated ore rotunda—
Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves
Repose and fatten.”
Warburton gave him no further trouble for the rest of the evening.
The late Lord Bath (formerly Mr. Pultney) used to say that Quin was incomparably the best performer of Sir John Brute; Cibber, the worst; and Garrick, next to Quin.
I have never been able to meet with any person who had seen Betterton or Booth; but am persuaded that their manner was very pompous and false, and that they spoke in a high, unnatural tone. Yet if we are to believe the Tatler’s description of Betterton’s Hamlet, it was all nature. I am, however, incredulous; because Booth, undoubtedly, copied Betterton; and old Cibber copied both in tragedy as well as he could. He was, indeed, a very bad tragedian; but from his manner, though unhappy and extravagant (and there are some now living that remember him), one may form some guess what effect the same general manner, more chastened and correct (as it probably was in Betterton), would have. Ryan, who died about the year 1758, was the last actor of the old school.
Mr. Glover, author of Leonidas, told me he well remembered Garrick’s first appearance at Goodman’s Fields. He was then intimate with the old Lord Cobham. This nobleman had seen Betterton; and told Glover that Garrick was infinitely a better actor; and that till he appeared, no performer had even attempted the quick, lively, and natural display of the passions for which he was so much distinguished.
Mr. Pope also saw Garrick in 1743, and was greatly struck by him. He said the young man would be in danger of being spoiled, for he would have no competitor.
Lord Mansfield told Mr. W. Gerard Hamilton this winter (1783), that what he most regretted to have lost by the burning of his house (at the time of the riots, set on foot about three years ago by that wicked canting hypocrite Lord George Gordon) was a speech that he had made on the question how far the privilege of Parliament extended; that it contained all the eloquence and all the law he was master of; that it was fairly written out; and that he had no other copy. Mr. Daines Barrington informed me that the book here alluded to contained eight speeches made in the House of Lords; all fairly written for the press, and now irreparably lost.
When Lord Mansfield (then Mr. Murray) was examined before the Privy Council about the year 1747, for drinking the Pretender’s health on his knees (which he certainly did), it was urged against him, among other things, to show how strong a well-wisher he was to the cause of the exiled family, that, when he was employed as Solicitor-General against the rebels who were tried in 1746, he had never used that term, but always called them unfortunate gentlemen. When he came to his defence he said the fact was true; and he should only say that “he pitied that man’s loyalty, who thought that epithets could add to the guilt of treason!” an admirable instance of a dexterous and subtle evasion.
Lord Mansfield’s general method in his speeches in the House of Lords is to lay down some clear first principles, commonly those which the adverse party have most relied upon. He allows all the force of the precedents quoted, and the propriety of the general doctrines in favour of constitutional liberty for which the patriots of the last two centuries have struggled so hard; and then by some nice and subtle distinctions, to show that the particular case under consideration is distinguished from all former ones, and that no ill precedent can be established by agreeing to the proposal made by the minister of the day, whoever he happens to be. The late Mr. Charles Townshend happened one day to be in the House of Lords, when he was speaking on some great constitutional question. After parading for a good while in the manner I have mentioned, on the high ground of general liberty, he all of a sudden slided into the doctrine that it was necessary to maintain, in order to prove what the Ministry had done to be constitutional. "What a damn’d crane-necked fellow it is!" said Mr. Townshend, who stood within a few yards of him. Mr. Hutchinson (the late Prime Sergeant and present Provost of the University of Dublin) generally pursues this method in the House of Commons of Ireland.
Lord Mansfield told Mr. Hamilton that what Dr. Johnson says of Pope, that “he was a dull companion,” is not true. “He was very lively and entertaining when at his ease; and in a small company very communicative.”[6]
Pope talking once to Lord Mansfield about posthumous fame, said that the surest method of securing it would be to leave a sum of money to be laid out in an entertainment to be given once every year to the first form of Westminster School for ever; and that the testator would by this means ensure eulogiums and Latin verses to the end of the world.
The late Lord Chatham (when Mr. Pitt) on some occasion made a very long and able speech in the Privy Council, relative to some naval matter. Every one present was struck by the force of his eloquence. Lord Anson, who was no orator, being then at the head of the Admiralty, and differing entirely in opinion from Mr. Pitt, got up, and only said these words, “My lords, Mr. Secretary is very eloquent, and has stated his own opinion very plausibly. I am no orator, and all I shall say is, that he knows nothing at all of what he has been talking about.” This short reply, together with the confidence the Council had in Lord Anson’s professional skill, had such an effect on every one present, that they immediately determined against Mr. Pitt’s proposition.
A few weeks before Lord Chatham died, Lord Camden paid him a visit. Lord Chatham’s son, the present celebrated W. Pitt, left the room on Lord Camden’s coming in. “You see that young man” (said the old lord); “what I now say, be assured, is not the fond partiality of a parent, but grounded on a very accurate examination. Rely upon it, that young man will be more distinguished in this country than ever his father was.” His prophecy is in part accomplished. At the age of twenty-four he was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and before he had attained his twenty-fifth year had been offered, and refused, the place of First Minister.[7]
When the late Mr. Harris of Salisbury made his first speech in the House of Commons, Charles Townshend asked, with an affected surprise, who he was? He had never seen him before. “Ah! you must, at least, have heard of him. That’s the celebrated Mr. Harris of Salisbury, who has written a very ingenious book on grammar, and another on virtue.”—“What the devil then brings him here? I am sure he will neither find the one nor the other in the House of Commons.”
Mr. Townshend knew Mr. Harris well enough; but it was a common practice with him, as with other wits, to lay traps for saying good things.
Mr. Lees (of the post-office in Ireland), who was originally a clerk in the Townshend family, told me that it was Mr. Charles Townshend’s usual practice to dictate speeches on every great question; that he had himself frequently written down for him three or four speeches on the same subject; that afterwards he used to ride out and converse with various people, both those who were likely to be on the same side with himself, and those of the opposite party. When he had sucked all their arguments out of them, he would then dictate another speech on a different side of the question from that which he had before taken. In the House, however, he never spoke any of these speeches; but some of the language he had employed in dictating them, would naturally recur to his mind, and he always interlaced a great deal of new matter in answer to what had fallen in the course of the debate. This method seems unquestionably the best, having all the sprightliness of extempore speaking, with the grace and elegance of composition. This kind of preparation was peculiarly proper for a man who did not always know when he came into the House, on which side of the question the convenience or circumstances of the day might induce him to get up to speak.
I have heard that the best speech he ever made was after drinking two bottles of champagne in the Parliament coffee-house. There is nothing of his now remaining, I believe, except a pamphlet, entitled a Defence of the Minority, on the question of General Warrants, published I think in 1766; the inscription on his brother, Roger Townshend, in Westminster Abbey; and two or three small poems in Dodsley’s collection.
Some little management and dexterity is necessary even in telling truths. Secretary Craggs used to relate of himself that, when he first came into office, he made it a rule to tell every person who applied to him for a favour the exact truth;[8] that he was either engaged to give the place in question to some one else, or if that were not the case, that he could not possibly promise the office, as other persons with superior pretensions might have a claim to it. But he found by experience that this method rendered him universally odious; and that the only way of being popular, is—whether you comply with men’s solicitations or not—to soothe them with hopes and fair speeches.
Lord Chesterfield, when Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, being asked one day whom he thought the greatest man of the time, said—“The last man who arrived from England, be he who he might.” There is some truth in this. Dublin depends a great deal on London for topics of conversation, as every secondary metropolis must; and the last man who arrives from the great scene of action (if of any degree of consequence) is courted as being supposed to know many little particulars not communicated by letters or the public prints. Every person in a distant county-town in England experiences something of this on the arrival of a friend from the metropolis.
The late Lord Southwell (Thomas, third lord), who was a relation of Lord Chesterfield, told me that he had left Memoirs of his own Times behind him, which he (Lord S.) had seen in the possession of Sir W. Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield’s brother. But they have never been published.
Lord Bath’s Memoirs of the same period are, I believe, in the hands of Dr. Douglas, his chaplain;[9] and I know not why they are kept from the world. The only piece that I have seen of his writing is, Seasonable Hints from an Honest Man, published about 1761. He wrote some of the papers of the Craftsman, but I know not which of them.
Quin, the player, might have been mentioned in addition to Cibber, as proof of the false taste and bad manner of the old actors. He came on the stage about the year 1720, and of consequence played some years with Booth, whose manner therefore in tragedy probably bore some general resemblance to his. Quin, like all the other actors of that time, used to make inordinate long pauses by way of adding weight and dignity to a passage. When Garrick first came on the stage, the admirers of the old manner could not reconcile themselves to the new mode of playing introduced by him, and were clamorous in all public places in praise of Quin. At last it was fixed that they should perform in the same piece, and the admirers of the old stage had no doubt they should be triumphant. The Fair Penitent was the play chosen, in which Garrick performed Lothario, and Quin, Horatio. The first act took up an hour in the performance, from the contention between the parties who should be loudest and longest in the applause of their favourite; and from Quin’s slow and solemn recitation. At last a trivial circumstance gave Garrick the victory. In the last scene of the second act, Lothario challenges Horatio: “Two hours ere noon to-morrow, I expect thee.” Quin, with his usual stateliness paused so long before he gave an answer, that some simple fellow in the gallery grew impatient, and cried out: “D— your blood! why don’t you tell the little gentleman whether you’ll meet him or no?” This entirely disconcerted Quin, and the contest was decided in favour of his rival.
Mr. Jephson,[10] who knew him, told me however that his manner of reciting in private, though pompous, had a certain natural weight and dignity which, after you were a little used to it, was not disagreeable. He was fond of quoting Milton—the only English poet that he much studied except Shakspeare; and so little was the latter author read at that time, and so false the taste of that age, that Quin, who very frequently used to repeat passages of Macbeth in company, always quoted the wretched alteration of that drama made by Sir Wm. Davenant and published in 1674. Probably he had never read the original play. So little relish had the nation in general for the real beauties of Shakspeare, and so little was he read, that this insult to his memory was suffered to keep possession of the stage for nearly seventy years. It is a singular circumstance that the late Mrs. Pritchard, who was celebrated in the part of Lady Macbeth, owned not long before she died that she had never read the play, nor knew any more of it than what was contained in her own part, written for her by the prompter.
Darius Tibertus, an Italian, abridged the Lives of Plutarch, in Latin; but I have never met with the book.
I have never been able to find out in what author a line that is often quoted is to be found—
Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.
Probably it is in some modern Latin poem.
[Here is recorded the introduction of Dr. Johnson to Lord Chesterfield. The slight of being kept waiting in his hall, &c, which from being generally known, is not necessary to reprint. It appears that Malone heard these and other particulars not through the medium of Boswell, but previous to their acquaintance.]
Lord C. is supposed to have had Johnson in his thoughts in his description of a very awkward literary man in one of his letters to his son.
Johnson was also offended that his lordship, though engaged in writing occasionally in the periodical paper called the World, did not recommend the English Dictionary to the public till it was on the verge of publication. A few weeks before it appeared he wrote two essays in its favour. “While I was floating on a tempestuous ocean” (said Johnson on that occasion) “he would not afford me the smallest succour; but when I had got within sight of land, and almost touched the shore, he sent out two little frigates to my assistance.”
Soon afterwards he wrote a letter to Lord Chesterfield not inferior to any of his compositions; but he was prevailed upon not to print it. “In my first address to your lordship” (says he in some part of it) “having exhausted all the compliments that an uncourtly and sequestered scholar could devise, I expected a different return than personal slight and neglect, or the more mortifying condescension of a lukewarm patronage. At length indeed you have thought proper to recommend me to the public; but your recommendation comes too late. The notice which your lordship has been pleased to take of me and my labours, had it been early, would have been kind; but it has been protracted so long as to be neither a service nor a favour; till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not need it.”[11]
These few passages of this celebrated letter were repeated to me by a person to whom Dr. Johnson had read it.
When Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son were published, Dr. J. said they inculcated the morals of a strumpet, and the manners of a dancing-master. Some other wit has not unhappily called them the Scoundrel’s Primer.
After all, these Letters have been, I think, unreasonably decried; for supposing a young man to be properly guarded against the base principles of dissimulation, &c, which they enforce, he may derive much advantage from the many minute directions which they contain, that other instructors and even parents don’t think it worth while to mention. In this and almost everything else, the world generally seizes on two or three obviously ridiculous circumstances, talks a great deal about them, and passes over all the valuable parts that may still be found in the work or in the character they are criticizing. I have heard persons laugh at the noble writer’s laying weight upon such trifling matters as paring nails, or opening a dirty pocket handkerchief in company. Yet trifling as these instructions are, I have observed these very people greatly negligent in those very particulars.
Lord Chesterfield however by his perpetual attention to propriety, decorum, bienséance, &c, had so veneered his manners, that though he lived on good terms with all the world he had not a single friend. The fact was I believe that he had no warm affections. His excessive and unreasonable attention to decorum and studied manner attended him almost to his last hour. Nearly the last words he spoke were, “Fetch Derolles a chair.” Derolles had been patronized by him, and came to see him and sit by his bedside in his last illness.
The heart, however, is a much better preceptor for politeness (which is nothing but attention to others, and preferring them often to yourself) than all his lordship’s lessons. I have never met with a really good-natured man that was not perfectly polite and well-bred in the true sense of those words though he had never seen St. James’s. Lord Charlemont is the politest man I have ever seen. In him politeness is no effort. It arises naturally and necessarily from his warm and affectionate heart.
Mr. Melmoth, in a very entertaining book, Fitzosborne’s Letters, has many criticisms on Pope’s translation of Homer. However great its merit—and a most admirable work it undoubtedly is—he sometimes praises it injudiciously. It has been often said that Pope’s version is beautiful, but not sufficiently Homerick. The following passage is a remarkable instance of the peculiar force and energy of the original being lost in the graces of the translation. “It is quoted” (says Melmoth) “by a celebrated author of antiquity as an instance of the true sublime. I will leave it to you” (he adds) “to determine whether the translation has not, at least, as just a claim to that character as the original.”
Ες μισγαλκειαν συμβαλλετον οβριμον νδῶρ,
Κρουνων εκμεγαλων, κοιλης εντοσθε χαραδρης,
Των δε τε τηλοσε δουπον εν ουρεσιν εκλυεποιμην,
Ως των μισγομενων γενετο ιαχη τε φοβος τε.
With rage impetuous down their echoing hills,
Rush to the vales, and pour’d along the plain,
Roar through a thousand channels to the main;
The distant shepherd trembling hears the sound;
So mix both hosts, and so their cries rebound.
Pope.
It is observable, as an ingenious friend remarked to me, that Pope has here omitted some of the circumstances that give peculiar force and propriety to this simile, and introduced others that are inconsistent with Homer’s idea.
In the original, two torrents are particularly mentioned (as is marked by the dual number being used), corresponding with the two armies described. Pope has lost this propriety by using a general term, torrents. These torrents too, in Homer, are winter torrents, which the translator has overlooked. Afterwards, however, these torrents become swollen. By what?—By “num’rous rills,” the prettiest word he could have chosen. What do they do?—They rush to the vales, and then are dispersed through a thousand different channels till they reach the ocean. In the original there is not a word of this. The two torrents rush from the mountains into a hollow valley, and being there pent up, the mountain shepherd is stunned by the noise of the conflicting waters. But a very close translation with which the same gentleman furnished me, will best prove how the beautiful simile has suffered in Pope’s hands.
Of neighbouring mountains, rush with rapid might,
And mix their foaming waves with stunning sound
Struggling within some valley’s hollow bound;
The mountain shepherd hears the din from far;
Such the tremendous shoutings of the mingled war.”
It is rather extraordinary that so good a critic as Mr. Melmoth overlooked these circumstances, and should have chosen these lines of Pope’s in particular for so high an eulogium.
When Dr. Johnson was struck with the palsy a few days ago (June 1783), after the first shock was over and he had time to recollect himself, he attempted to speak in English. Unable as he found himself to pronounce the words, he tried what he could do with Latin, but here he found equal difficulty. He then attempted Greek, and could utter a few words, but slowly and with pain. In the evening he called for paper, and wrote a Latin Hymn, addressed to the Creator, the prayer of which was that so long as the Almighty should suffer him to live, he should be pleased to allow him the enjoyment of his understanding; that his intellectual powers and his body should expire together,—a striking instance of fortitude, piety, and resignation!
On one of Sir J. Reynolds’s friends observing to Dr. Johnson (who had long lived in great intimacy with that excellent painter) that it was extraordinary the King should have taken so little notice of him, having on all occasions employed Ramsay, West, &c., in preference to Sir Joshua, he said he thought it a matter of little consequence,—“His Majesty’s neglect could never do him any prejudice; but it would reflect eternal disgrace on the King not to have employed Sir Joshua Reynolds.”
The following sarcastic lines on William III. (which I believe have never appeared in print) are so much in the manner of Swift, and agree so exactly with his political Tory principles, that I strongly suspect him to have been the author of them:—
Here lives a man, who, by relation,
Depends upon predestination;
For which the learned and the wise
His understanding much despise;
But I pronounce with loyal tongue
Him in the right, them in the wrong;
For how should such a wretch succeed,
But that alas! it was decreed?
Vita Ambrogii Commandolensis, par l'Abbe Mahus, printed at Florence, in folio, in 1772, contains, as Dr. Stock informs me, a fuller account of the manner in which the original MSS. of the Greek and Roman classics were discovered and preserved than any other book extant.
Dean Tucker’s state of the great leading principles on which the present dispute between the Crown and the House of Commons—which has a few days since (March 24, 1784) ended in a dissolution of the latter—is in Lord Mansfield’s opinion perfect. It is preserved in the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 54, p. 202.
Mr. Flood, himself one of the greatest orators of the present age, speaking to me on the subject of the distinguishing characteristics of the two eminent persons mentioned in a preceding page (Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox), said that neither of them appeared to him to merit the title of eloquent speakers. Mr. Pitt’s speeches, he called didactick declamations; those of Mr. Fox, argumentative conversations. Mr. Pitt’s style of eloquence, he said, had something of an historical cast. It was a compound of the perspicuity and precision of Sir Wm. Blackstone, with the elegance of Robertson; and his periods particularly reminded him of that writer, whom he thought he resembled much more than he did Bolingbroke, Cicero, or Demosthenes. Mr. Fox’s style of speaking he did not think the best, but that he was perfect in that style. Mr. Pitt’s style of eloquence he considered much superior, but then he was not near so perfect in that style as he might be.
The celebrated Mr. Wilkes, about the time when his North Briton began to be much noticed, probably when the first fifteen or twenty numbers had appeared, dined one day with Mr. Rigby, and after dinner honestly confessed that he was a ruined man, not worth a shilling; that his principal object in writing was to procure himself some place, and that he should be particularly pleased with one that should remove him from the clamour and importunity of his creditors. He mentioned the office of Governor of Canada, and requested Mr. Rigby’s good offices with the Duke of Bedford, so as to prevail on that nobleman to apply to Lord Bute for that place. Mr. Rigby said, the duke had not much intercourse with Lord Bute; neither could it be supposed that his lordship would purchase Mr. Wilkes’ silence by giving him a good employment. Besides, he could have no security that the same hostile attacks would not be still made against him by Mr. Wilkes’ coadjutors, Lloyd and Churchill, after he had left England. Wilkes solemnly assured him there need not be the least apprehension of that; for that he would make Churchill his chaplain, and Lloyd his secretary, and take them both with him to Canada.
The duke, at Rigby’s request, made the application. Lord Bute would not listen to it, and even treated the affair with contempt. When this was told to Mr. Wilkes, he observed to Mr. Rigby that Lord B. had acted very foolishly, and that he might live to lament that he and his colleagues had not quitted England, as much as King Charles did that Hampden and Cromwell had not gone to America, after the famous representation of the state of the nation in 1641; for now he should never cease his attacks till he had made him the most unpopular man in England. He kept his word.
[From the information of Mr. J. Courtenay, who had it from Mr. Rigby.]
The following epigram on Mr. Wilkes, in consequence of becoming a favourite at Court in April 1784, and having once more come into Parliament for Middlesex in conjunction with the Court candidate, Mr. Mainwaring, is better than the generality of newspaper productions:—
What! Liberty-Wilkes, of oppression the hater,
Call’d a turncoat, a Judas, a rogue, and a traitor!
What has made all our patriots so angry and sore?
Has Wilkes done that now which he ne’er did before?
For he loved his best friends as he loved his own wife;[12]
In his actions he always kept self in his view,
Though false to the world to John Wilkes he was true!
Selemnus, a river in Achaia, is said by Pausanias to have possessed the quality of making those who bathed in it forget the object of their affection. Were there really such a water, how valuable would it be!
Lexiphanes, which was written in ridicule of Dr. Johnson’s style, is by many supposed to have been the work of Mr. Kenrick; but it was really written by a Mr. Campbell, son of a Scotch professor; and who was likewise the author of a book entitled The Sale of Authors. He some years since went to the West Indies or North America, in one of which places he died.[13]
The concealed author of Lyrick Odes, by Peter Pindar, Esquire, is one Woolcot, a clergyman, who abjured the gown, and now lives in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, under the character of a physician. He is likewise author of a scurrilous epistle lately published, addressed to James Boswell, Esq., March 4th, 1786. He is noted for impudence, lewdness, and almost every species of profligacy.
Dr. Johnson was no admirer of the Duke of Buckingham’s Rehearsal. On a high eulogium being once pronounced upon it in his presence, he said: “It had not wit enough to keep it sweet; it had not sufficient vitality to preserve it from putrefaction.”
Mrs. Thrale has caught something of this story and marred it in the telling, as she has many other of her anecdotes of the Doctor just now published. On the whole, however, the publick is indebted to her for her lively, though very inaccurate and artful, account of Dr. Johnson.
After Pope’s death, Lord Bolingbroke, in consequence of a clause in his will, had the command of his study. Among the sweepings was the following Satire, which was left unfinished by the poet. It fell after Bolingbroke’s death into the hands of a kinsman or friend of his, and has since by some strange accident strayed into Ireland. I saw it there about the year 1774, in the possession of the Rev. Dr. Wilson, Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, together with a pocket-book of Parnell’s, Dryden’s Limberham, corrected by himself, Pope’s Farewell to London, and several other papers found in the same drawer.[14] The Satire I have copied by Dr. Wilson s permission. It is in Pope’s handwriting, and I have followed closely all his interlineations, corrections, alterations, &c. &c. His MSS. in the Museum are often found in the same state. This in short is a facsimile in every respect except the handwriting which I have not attempted to imitate.
[Here follows a transcript of the Satire One Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty, which as it was printed in 1797 in Dr. Warton’s edition of Pope, need not appear here. Malone gave him the clue to its depository with much other information for his volumes. Dr. Wilson in communicating it, writes thus to Warton:—
[“This poem I transcribed from a rough draft in Pope’s own hand. He left many blanks for fear of the Argus eyes of those who, if they cannot find, can fabricate treason; yet spite of his precaution it fell into the hands of his enemies. To the hieroglyphics there are direct allusions, I think, in some of the notes on the Dunciad. It was lent me by a grandson of Lord Chetwynd, an intimate friend of the famous Lord Bolingbroke, who gratified his curiosity by a boxful of the rubbish and sweepings of Pope’s study, whose executor he was, in conjunction with Lord Marchmont."
[To the transcript Malone appends this note:—“Lord Marchmont in his conversation with Dr. Johnson relative to Pope, mentioned this Satire. He said he and Lord [indistinct] had often heard of it from Pope, and much lamented that he could not find it among Pope’s papers.”
[The following specimens give us some idea of the poet’s idler hours.]
From the same collection (Pope’s manuscript).
Thro’ thy blest shades, Latour, I seem to rove;
I see thy fountains fall, thy waters roll,
And breathe soft zephyrs that refresh thy grove.
Vilette’s soft voice, and St. John’s silver lyre.
From a letter of Pope to Bolingbroke.
From the same collection (this in Pope’s handwriting).
His most sacred Majesty!
Not God, but
George II.
By divine, hereditary right,
King of Great Britain,
And France (when he can get it),
And to
His more sacred Minister,
By divine, that is, royal permission,
King over him,
These
Gazetteers,
In defence of corruption and abuse of liberty
(Drawn for and from the said Minister),
Are here offered
Bound and sold
(Like their authors)
‘By both their Majesties’
Sworn and devoted
Subjects and hirelings,
B. Courteville, W. Papple.
J. Morley, Th. Cook, W. Billers, Th. Cibber, &c. &c.
From the same collection (this in Pope’s handwriting.)
The first thing he set up for her all his life.
Stood thus:—
Her sons descended from the British line,
Her martial sons whose valour still remains
On French records for twenty long campaigns;
Led captive to a prison from a throne,
Gain’d Europe’s liberty to lose her own.
From the same collection.
You would know if your brains were not addle:
Under your Tragedy write humdrum,
And under your Comedy fidde-faddle.
From the same.
And those more fools who let have her will.
That some few moments beats about the breast
Sad thought, or thoughtless folly all the rest.
And ne’er consider that the world sees them.
Compassion lessens not the truly great,
Gold easiest melts, but melting keeps its weight.
How to get in th’ ambitious aim no doubt,
Let them consider how they shall get out.
Some men’s wits run away with them like,
Compassion lessens not the truly great,
So melts the gold, but melting keeps its weight.
Verbal scholars in nudo verbarum cultu ludent.
An able judge or abler second still.
Amusement is the happiness of those that don’t think Gaming is the amusement of fools and the art of knaves.
Otes walked Whitehall, and never blush’d at Court.
Who’s next a knave? who with a knave will dine.
Who next a harlot? she that drinks her wine.
Know in their heart that he that she adore,
The wit of knaves, the courage of a whore:
And trust my word, that woman or that man
Will be the thing they worship if they can.
Knows not, good man, a satire from a praise;
Yet he can make a mount, or turn a maze.
Gay in the box, resistless in the ball, &c.
When the Quaker who purchased the property of Mr. Thrale’s brewery, &c., asked Dr. Johnson, who was one of the executors, what it was that he was going to purchase—how many were the brewing tubs, drays, &c. &c. “Sir,” says Johnson, “I cannot enumerate them; but it is of more consequence to you to know that you have the potentiality of growing rich beyond even the dreams of avarice.”
Mr. Burke told me he was well acquainted with David Hume, and that he was a very easy, pleasant, unaffected man, till he went to Paris as secretary to Lord Hertford. There the attention paid him by the French belles savants had the effect of making him somewhat of a literary coxcomb.
Mr. Burke said that Hume in compiling his history did not give himself a great deal of trouble in examining records, &c.; and that the part he most laboured at was the reign of King Charles II., for whom he had an unaccountable partiality.
When some one observed to Foote that Garrick’s features still had great effect notwithstanding his age, “Yes,” said Foote, “wonderfully so, considering all the wear and tear they have gone through.”
On Lord Kelly, a remarkable red-faced, drunken lord, coming into a room in a coat much embroidered but somewhat tarnished, Foote said he was an exact representation of Monmouth Street in flames.
“Who is this Pope that I hear so much about?” said George II.; “I cannot discover what is his merit. Why will not my subjects write in prose? I hear a great deal, too, of Shakspeare, but I cannot read him, he is such a bombast fellow.”
Dr. Beattie, with whom I dined at Sir J. Reynolds’ in July 1787, mentioned that Mr. Hume was a very tall, large man, near six feet high, and his countenance rather vacant. All that knew him concur in opinion of his having been a very unaffected, good-humoured man. He acknowledged to Mr. Boswell that he did not take much pains in examining the old historians while writing the early part of his history. He dipped only into them so as to make out a pleasing narrative. It is manifest to me on reading Bacon’s Life of Henry VII, that that was the model on which Hume founded his plan. Bacon particularly recommends to the historian a review at the end of every reign of the laws enacted; of the progress of manners, arts, &c., which Hume has so successfully followed.
It is surprising, on examining any particular point, how superficial Hume is, and how many particulars are omitted that would have made his book much more entertaining; but perhaps we have no right to expect this in a general history. For my own part, I am much more entertained with memoirs and letters written at the time, in which everything is alive, and passes in motion before the eye.
Mr. Burke, speaking of Dr. Warburton, told me he was so much struck by him the first time they dined together in company, that he conjectured it must be Warburton who was talking and sitting next him. After some little conversation, he could not help exclaiming, “Sir, I think it is impossible I can mistake. You must be the celebrated Dr. Warburton, aut Erasmus aut Diabolus.” Warburton, though so furious a controversialist in print, was very easy and good-humoured in company, and sometimes entertaining.
Mr. Burke, who avowed he knew little of art, though he admired it and knew many of its professors, was acquainted with Blakey the artist, who made the drawing for the frontispiece to Warburton’s edition of Pope’s works. He told him it was by Warburton’s particular desire that he made him the principal figure, and Pope only secondary; and that the light, contrary to the rules of art, goes upward from Warburton to Pope. A gentleman who was present when Mr. B. mentioned this circumstance, remarked that it was observable the poet and his commentator were looking different ways.
Mr. Lock, of Norbury Park, well known for his collection of pictures, statues, &c., was a natural son. On his marriage with the daughter of Lady Schaub who had been very gallant, Horace Walpole said very happily, “Then everybody’s daughter is married to nobody’s son.”
On Mr. Pulteney’s complaining to old Lady Townshend that he had been much out of order with a pain in his side, she asked him which was his side, for that she never knew he had one. “Oh,” said he, “you must at least acknowledge that I have a nether side.” “I know nothing about it,” replied Lady T. “All the world knows that your wife has one.” The allusion was to the well-known anecdote of Pulteneys insisting upon having some papers read in the House of Commons, one of which turned out to be a letter dated by one of his wife’s gallants, concluding with a distich too coarse for quotation here.
[Some other anecdotes of the previous age are noticed as examples of the licence of language not uncommon then even with ladies.]
Few classical quotations have ever been more neatly applied than the following: Mr. Burke had been speaking in the House of Commons for some time, and paused. He soon proceeded, and some time afterwards paused again so long (which with him is very uncommon) that Sir Wm. Bagot thought he had done, and got up to speak, “Sir” (said Mr. B.), “I have not finished.” Sir W. B. made an apology, and said, “As the hon. gentleman had spoken a long time, and had paused unusually long also, he imagined that he had concluded, but he found he was mistaken. Some allowance, however, he hoped would be made for him as a country gentleman, for
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.’”
Let it, however, be remembered that this was a mere happiness of application, for in truth the “labitur” and “labetur” of Mr. B., though inexhaustible, is never tiresome, but always teeming with the richest stores of knowledge of every species, ornamented with a profusion of the happiest imagery almost running to waste.
The following verses, written by the Hon. Thomas Erskine, have not I believe appeared in print. They were written on a Yorkshire lady, known by the name of Peg Waldron in that county, who is supposed to be worth two hundred thousand pounds and is remarkably dirty:—
The thanks a grateful heart repays,
Thou useful lesson to defy
The charms of vain philosophy.
The truths of sacred writ deny’d;
And to myself I still have said,
Sure mankind ne’er of dirt was made;
But you, dear Peg, reverse my creed,
And show me, we are dirt indeed.
For these last five years, that is from 1782 to 1787, scarce one of the monthly publications have been without some extravagant praise of two very moderate versifiers, Mr. Hayley and Miss Anna Seward; and generally they have written the most high-flown encomiums on each other.
Some of the old Italian writers would have condemned them in a future state to lash each other from morning till night with nettles, for their folly and vanity. A modern wit, a few days since, inflicted on them a milder punishment.
Dialogue between Miss Seward and Mr. Hayley.
Mr. Hayley, that is you———”
“Ma’am, you carry all before you,
Trust me, Lichfield Swan, you do———”
“Ode, didactick, epick, sonnet,
Mr. Hayley, you’re divine———”
“Ma’am, I’ll take my oath upon it,
You alone are all the Nine!”
Nov. 1787
The celebrated writer Sterne, after being long the idol of this town, died in a mean lodging without a single friend who felt interest in his fate except Becket, his bookseller, who was the only person that attended his interment. He was buried in a graveyard near Tyburn, belonging to the parish of Marylebone, and the corpse being marked by some of the resurrection men (as they are called), was taken up soon afterward and carried to an anatomy professor of Cambridge. A gentleman who was present at the dissection told me, he recognized Sterne’s face the moment he saw the body.
Mrs. Bracegirdle, being once in company with Mr. Garrick, happened to quote from Hamlet—
To have seen what I have seen, seeing what I see?
which she spoke in the manner of our own time, and so ill, that Garrick told Mr. Langton he was sure from that specimen she could not speak a single line as it ought to be spoken.
She lived, I believe, till the year 1760.
Dr. Young, the poet, who was born in 1681 and had often seen Betterton, told Mr. Langton that Garrick was but a boy to Betterton as an actor. Lord Cobham, however, who had seen both, gave a very different account of their respective powers.
Hume, the historian, had not the least relish for Shakspeare, nor any sense of his transcendent merit. His criticism on him in his history was originally much more severe and tasteless than now appears. It was much qualified and softened by Lord Kames, who feared the historian would have been disgraced by confessing total insensibility to what the English nation has so long and so justly admired.—(From Mr. Boswell, who had it from Lord Kames.)
Mr. Burke told me a few days ago that the first Lord Lyttleton informed him, that Lord Bolingbroke never wrote down any of his works, but dictated them to a secretary. This may account for their endless tautology. In company, according to Lord Lyttleton, he was very eloquent, speaking with great fluency and authority on every subject, and generally in the form of harangue rather than colloquial table talk. His company all looked up to him, and very few dared to interrupt or contradict him.—Dec. 1787.
Mr. Soame Jenyns, who died a few days ago, had (as Mr. Wm. Gerard Hamilton, who sat for six years at the Board of Trade with him, informed me) no notion of ratiocination, no rectitude of mind; nor could he be made without much labour to comprehend an argument. If however there was anything weak, or defective, or ridiculous in what another said, he always laid hold of it and played upon it with success. He looked at everything with a view to pleasantry alone. This being his grand object, and he being no reasoner, his best friends were at a loss to know whether his book upon Christianity was serious or ironical.
He twice endeavoured to speak in the House of Commons, and every one was prepared with a half-grin before he uttered a word; but he failed miserably. He had a most inharmonious voice, and a laugh scarcely human. He laughed all his life at patriotism and public spirit; and supposed all oppression of the people by those in power was merely imaginary. Among other whimsical collections he had forty-seven Petitions or Remonstrances of the City of London complaining of grievances, all of which he said had the same, that is, no foundation; for in each it was mentioned that if the measure complained of were pursued, the constitution would be annihilated. He was so great a coward that at an election at Cambridge, he was almost ready to faint at some huzza of the mob lest they should assault him, as his counsel, Mr. Graham, told me.
Mr. Garrick always took care to leave company with a good impression in his favour. After he had told some good story, or defeated an antagonist by wit or raillery, he often disappointed people who hoped that he would continue to entertain them and receive the praise and admiration they were ready enough to give. But he was so artificial that he could break away in the midst of the highest festivity, merely in order to secure the impression he had made. On this part of his character it was well said by Coleman, that he never came into company without laying a plot for an escape out of it.
The part of the Clandestine Marriage which he wrote was Lord Ogilby and Mrs. Heidelberg, as Cautherly, who was in his house at the time, told Mr. Kemble. Cautherly was employed to transcribe the parts for the use of the theatre.
In the Jealous Wife he assisted by writing the character of Major Oakley. In that play as written originally, the whole of the farce of the Musical Lady was introduced; but Garrick persuaded Coleman to leave it out.
Having lately read over a great number of letters written by various friends to my father near fifty years ago, and among others several from Dr. Taylor, of Isleworth, with whom he was very intimate, I became desirous of seeing him once more and having some talk about old times. I have been acquainted with him several years, and occasionally had slept at his house, but never happened to converse on the events of former days. I was even doubtful whether he still lived; and therefore wrote a note that I would call upon him on Saturday, January 12th, 1788. He replied by a most cordial invitation, saying he should be very glad of the meeting, but must receive me in his bedchamber, being afflicted with the rheumatism and St. Anthony’s fire.
I did not reach his house till past three (in consequence of paying a visit elsewhere first), and wished to have passed the evening with him; but he was in such pain, that I feared it would have been troublesome, nor indeed did he ask me. He however gave me a mutton chop (for he had himself dined), but I was sadly disappointed with respect to intelligence of former days. I well knew that he was a superficial, good-humoured, easy man, who had never thought or read much; but there was a chance at least of having some few anecdotes from him. He told me however but one worth recording. He married my father to Miss Collier at Greenwich in 1736. Old Mr. Collier was a very vain man who had made his fortune in the South Sea year, and having been originally a merchant, was very fond after he had retired to live upon his fortune, of a great deal of display and parade. (Here is told the story of the wedding already given.)
His story is a curious trait of the manners of the times. For I suppose the whim only of an individual was answerable for the excess in numbers; and that it was common for the party at a wedding-dinner to visit the bride and bridegroom in bed. Taylor, nearly the same age with my father who if he were living would be eighty-three, remembered my grandfather, Richard Malone, very well, but could give no discriminative account of him. He had never heard him plead. He resembled he said his third son, Richard, more than his other sons; a tall, black, handsome man, with much dignity in his appearance.
Dr. Taylor remembered Swift very well; the print done for him in Ireland (a mezzotinto) he thought very like. The only anecdote he mentioned of the Dean was, that a very well-dressed man having come to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on a Sunday, and being seated in one of the vacant stalls during the time of service bowed frequently to different persons in the church. When Swift came out he called the verger, and desired him never to permit that person (pointing to him) to come into his church again, for he was sure he was not a gentleman.
About the year 1735, when Dr. Taylor was in Dublin, the people used to run after Swift’s coach to get a sight of him, as they did in London after Lady Coventry when she appeared in public.
I asked him whether he (Taylor) could amuse himself by reading? No, he said, he could read nothing but the newspaper. ‘‘What, at his time of life, should he read for?”
I have in general observed that very few old people can bear to read—a very melancholy circumstance! for what a relief would this be to pass away tedious hours! Dr. Taylor several years ago lost his only child, and ten years since his wife. Almost every friend of his youth is now dead; but luckily for himself he has by no means a feeling mind. If a man has a turn for literary pursuits, and possesses a benevolent heart, he may in some measure defy old age. The mines of science are inexhaustible; and objects for the exercise of beneficence may for ever be found.
Those who have not been early tinctured with letters, and have been much immersed in politicks or other business, cannot, any more than the aged, derive much pleasure from books.
Sir Robert Walpole, after he ceased to be minister, endeavoured to amuse his mind with reading at Houghton. But one day when the present Mr. Welbore Ellis was in his library, he heard him say with tears in his eyes, after having taken up several books and at last thrown away a folio just taken down from a shelf, “Alas! it is all in vain; I CANNOT read.”
Having heard much of there being an original picture of Shakspeare at Teddington, near Strawberry Hill, in the possession of Mr. Douglass, I called there before I went to Dr. Taylor’s, by which means (it proving to be two miles farther than I reckoned) I was too late at Isleworth. However, as I might not soon again have an opportunity of seeing this picture, I was glad I had not omitted to go. It is a small picture about 18 inches by 14, on canvas. It is not I think an original, but I suspect the very picture which was formerly in the possession of Wright, the painter and printseller in Covent Garden, from which the handsome mezzotinto was made by Simon. That picture according to Wright was painted by Zoust or Zoast, but he lived in the time of Charles II. The earliest known picture of Zoust is painted in 1657. He died about 1681; Shakspeare in 1616. The only thing that looks original about this picture is the hard manner in which it is done, and the size, which is one of which the old painters were so fond—a size smaller than life yet not miniature. This picture has quite a different air from that belonging to the Duke of Chandos; no earrings; a very small collar or band, no strings to it; the hair on the crown of the head negligently thrown about without any appearance of baldness.
There was a picture of Shakspeare painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and presented by him to Dryden; but I have never met with it. Perhaps it fell into Congreve’s hands. Kneller probably copied the picture which Betterton then had, and which the Duke of Chandos now possesses. It might however have fallen into the hands of Charles Earl of Dorset, Dryden’s patron; and it may be the very picture of Shakspeare now at Knowle.[15]
Swift used often to make extempore distichs. Having preached one Sunday at St. Ann’s Church, in Dublin, where there is only the basement of a tower without any spire, the building never having been finished, the present Archdeacon Mahon who was then a boy, followed Swift from curiosity when he went out of the church, and heard him grumble out—
A church and no steeple!
(Ex relatione Mr. Downes, brother-in-law to Mr. Mahon.)
Mr. Drumgoold, who had resided long at St. Germains, told Mr. Burke that old Grammont, whose memoirs are so entertaining, was a very cross, unpleasant old fellow. Count Hamilton, who really wrote the book, invented several of the anecdotes told in it, and mixed them with such facts as he could pick up from the old man, who was pleased to hear these tales when put into a handsome dress.
When Sir J. Reynolds, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Burke, and others went to Lord Mansfield’s house to bail Baretti, his lordship, without paying much attention to the business, immediately and abruptly began with some very flimsy and boyish observations on the contested passage in Othello, “Put out the light,” &c. This was by way of showing off to Garrick, whose opinion of him however was not much raised by this impotent and untimely endeavour to shine on a subject with which he was little acquainted. Sir J. Reynolds, who had never seen him before (who told me the story), was grievously disappointed in finding this great lawyer so little at the same time.
Mr. Gibbon, the historian, is so exceedingly indolent that he never even pares his nails. His servant, while Gibbon is reading, takes up one of his hands, and when he has performed the operation lays it down, and then manages the other—the patient in the meanwhile scarcely knowing what is going on, and quietly pursuing his studies.
The picture of him painted by Sir J. Reynolds, and the prints made from it, are as like the original as it is possible to be. When he was introduced to a blind French lady, the servant happening to stretch out her mistress hand to lay hold of the historian’s cheek, she thought, upon feeling its rounded contour, that some trick was being played upon her with the sitting part of a child, and exclaimed, “Fidonc!”
Mr. Gibbon is very replete with anecdotes, and tells them with great happiness and fluency.
It would be very satisfactory if contemporaries would hand down to posterity their opinion concerning the likenesses of portraits of celebrated men of their own time. It is for that I have introduced Mr. G.’s portrait above. Sir J. Reynolds is in general as happy in his likenesses as he is masterly in the execution of his pictures. His portraits of Dr. Johnson, of Mr. Boswell, Lord Thurlow, Lord Mansfield, Lord Loughborough, Lord Camden, Mr. Fox, Mr. Windham, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Burke, Charles Townshend, Dr. Burney, Baretti, Foote, Goldsmith, Mr. W. Mason, Mr. Andrew Stuart, and Mr. Pott are all extremely like. Concerning all these I speak according to the best of my judgment from personal knowledge. I do not think the portraits of Dr. and Thomas Warton are like.
Mr. Raftor, the brother of Mrs. Clive, the actress, was but a bad actor, but had some dry humour. Having described some wretched situation in which he had once been, Garrick said he had no patience with him for not having made some effort to relieve himself. “Why, what would you have me do?” replied Raftor; “I was cut down twice!”
Harward, the Irish lawyer, with the help of a great brogue, a strong and a peculiar cough, or long h-e-m, was sometimes happy in a retort. Harward had read a great deal of law, but it was all a confused mass; he had little judgment or discrimination. Having however made one of his best harangues and stated, as he usually did, a great deal of doubtful law, which yet he thought very sound, Lord Chief Justice Clayton, who though one of the weakest and most ignorant boors I have ever known, had got the common blackletter of Westminster Hall pretty ready, as soon as Harward had done, exclaimed, “You don’t suppose, Mr. Harward, that I take this to be law?” “Indeed, my Lord,” replied Harward, with his usual shrug and cough, ‘‘I don’t suppose you do!”
April 15, 1788.—Mr. Courtenay happening to dine yesterday with Lord Lansdown, took occasion to mention the Harley Papers which his lordship was said to have bought from the executors of Mr. West. The fact was so; but the much-talked-of letter of the Duke of Marlborough was not among them. Lord Lansdown said that Harley intended at first to have sent the original letter to Lord Duplin, but on second thoughts substituted an exact copy, lest the duke should destroy the original. When this copy was shown to the duke, he desired it might be given to him, and is supposed to have destroyed it. (See further particulars on this subject, p. 440.)
When the thermometer is as low as thirty-six, all vegetation ceases.—Sir J. Banks.
In a late conversation with Mr. Flood, speaking of my late uncle, Anthony Malone, he observed that such was Mr. Malone’s perspicuity and method, that, during the many years they sat in Parliament together, Mr. Flood never remembered a single instance where any one part of Mr. M.’s speech could be transferred with advantage. Every part seemed to follow what preceded it so naturally that no change could be made for the better.
On my mentioning what I have said in the character I have given of this extraordinary man in the new Irish Peerage, that he seemed to argue with somewhat less of his usual vigour when engaged on the wrong side of the question, Mr. Flood happily observed that “he could not escape from the force of his own understanding.”—Feb. 1789.
Pope had an original picture of Bishop Atterbury painted by Kneller. Of this picture he used to make Worsdale the painter make copies for three or four guineas; and whenever he wished to pay a particular compliment to one of his friends, he gave him an original picture of Atterbury. Of these originals, Worsdale had painted five or six.—(From Mr. Walpole.)
The origin of venison being sold by fishmongers was this. Many noblemen having more bucks than they had occasion for, wished to dispose of them, but were ashamed to take money. They therefore sent them to their fishmongers, and received fish in return. This practice commenced about forty years ago; and the fishmongers still continue to sell venison, though they do not obtain it in the same way. For the owners of parks now feel no reluctance in receiving cash for a certain number of bucks every season at a stipulated price.
Soon after Pope’s acquaintance with Warburton commenced, and the latter had published some of his heavy commentaries on that poet, his friend Lord Marchmont told him that he was convinced he was one of the vainest men living. “How so?” says Pope. “Because, you little rogue,” replied Lord Marchmont, “it is manifest from your close connection with your new commentator you want to show posterity what an exquisite poet you are, and what a quantity of dulness you can carry down on your back without sinking under the load.”
When Sir Robert Walpole was attacked in the House of Commons in the latter end of 1741, Sir Spencer Compton though ill of a fever, got out of bed and went down to vote for him, as Mr. Horace Walpole told me. He thought much to Sir Spencer’s honour, as they had been rival candidates for the place of Prime Minister on the accession of King George II.[16]
Sir Robert lived about three years after being dismissed from office and created Earl of Orford. He spent about half the year at Houghton and the remainder in London. Being afflicted with the gravel he could not take much exercise, but sometimes rode out.
[The following anecdote has been noticed in a previous page, but it is satisfactory to have this verification of it, with additional circumstances.]
Having heard from Mr. Courtenay, who had it from Mr. W. Ellis, that Lord Orford had once taken up three or four books in his library, and at length threw down the last of them, with tears in his eyes, exclaiming, “It is all in vain—I cannot read!” I was curious to know the truth of this story, and therefore mentioned it to Mr. Walpole (March 15, 1789). He said he was about twenty-two years old when his father retired; and that he remembered very well his offering one day to read to Lord Orford, finding that time hung heavy on his hands. “What,” said Lord Orford, “will you read, child?” Mr. Walpole, considering that his father had been long engaged in publick business, proposed to read some history. “No,” said Lord Orford, “don’t read history to me; that can’t be true.”
He read Sydenham’s works, and admired him much; but this admiration was the cause of his death; for meeting with Dr. Jusin’s pamphlet on Mrs. Steevens’ medicine for the stone, and thinking that Jusin’s hypothesis agreed with Sydenham’s, he took the medicine which dissolved the stone, but lacerated his bladder in such a way as to be the cause of his death. He was near seventy years of age, and had been very handsome. I could not find from Mr. Walpole that his father read any other book but Sydenham in his retirement; so probably Mr. Ellis’s anecdote is true.
Mr. Hamilton once observed to Bishop Warburton that he thought Pope was a cold man, notwithstanding all his talk about friendship and philosophy. “No,” said the Bishop, “you are entirely mistaken; he had as tender a heart as any man that ever lived.”
(Query—Is the Bishop a fair and impartial witness on this point?)
Warburton told Mr. Hamilton that Pope and others had undoubted proofs that Walsh at one time was reduced to such distress by prodigality as to become the hostler of an inn.
When Bishop Secker spoke in the House of Lords in favour of the Gin Bill, among other of the evils arising from its immoderate use he with great gravity mentioned that it occasioned promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. The House could not stand this, and burst into a fit of laughter.
Secker was very irritable in temper, and in order to guard himself against passion he made it a rule always to speak in a very slow and measured tone, which had the effect he wished.
The two portraits which Sir Joshua Reynolds has lately painted of Mr. William Windham, of Norfolk, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan are so like the originals, that they seem almost alive and ready to speak to you. Painting, in point of resemblance, can go no farther.
Mr. George Selwyn, who is now seventy-three or seventy-four years old, remembers Mrs. Oldfield, and was once carried by her in a coach to the play, which was Mary Queen of Scots. He says she had very fine eyes, and that her son, the present Colonel Churchill, is very like her. Him I have seen, and he is certainly not handsome. Mr. Selwyn being once in the green room with Quin, asked him whether he had seen Betterton, and his opinion of him. Quin replied that he was certainly a great actor but added, “He would not, however, do now.”—(From Mr. Kemble, April 26, 1789.)
This conversation was probably after Garrick had appeared in 1741; for in 1741 Selwyn was but about twenty-five, at which time he probably did not go among the wits of the green room, nor was he probably much interested about the merits of the old actors. Quin himself had acted with Booth, who had acted with Betterton; and Quin’s manner was formed on Booth’s, as Booth’s was upon that of Betterton. Quin therefore could not mean that between the death of Betterton and the middle period of his own acting, which was about 1735, the publick taste was altered, and must have alluded to the very different mode of acting introduced by Mr. Garrick. The conversation, therefore, probably passed about the year 1744 or 1745.
The first book that gave Sir Joshua Reynolds a turn for painting was the Jesuit’s Perspective, a book which happened to be in the parlour window in the house of his father, who was a clergyman. He made himself at eight years old so completely master of this book that he has never had occasion to study any other work on the subject; and the knowledge of perspective then acquired has seryed him ever since.—(From Sir J. R. himself.)
In one of his Italian tours, Baretti picked up at a house where he stopped for refreshment a little book which his host let him have for a trifle, and which contained the seeds of Ariosto’s great poem. He afterwards gave the book to Mr. Croft, and it was sold at the auction of his books to Mr. Steevens for some exorbitant price. I forget the title of the book.
When Cuzzoni[17] was somewhat in the decline of her reputation on her second visit here, Baretti went with a friend to see her. She was leaning pensively on her arm; on which Baretti’s friend asked her how she came to be in such low spirits. “How can I be otherwise,” said Cuzzoni, “when I have had no dinner, and have not a shilling to buy one?” “Well,” said the other, “I am not very rich; I have but two guineas in my purse; here is one of them, and let us hear no more of your low spirits. You can now dine as soon as you will.” Cuzzoni rang the bell, gave her servant the guinea, and bade him go to a famous wine-merchant, and get from him a pint of cape (sic) wine and a penny roll. The man after some time returned and said the merchant would not let him have a roll—that he was not a baker, but had sent the wine. “Get you gone,” said Cuzzoni; “unless he sends me a roll I’ll have no wine.” “Well,” said the wine-merchant, on the boy’s return, “since she insists on it, there is a penny; go to the next baker’s and buy her a roll.” On getting her bread and wine she poured the cape (which cost a guinea) into a bowl, and crumbling the bread into it drank off the contents. Not many years afterwards Baretti saw her selling greens at a stall at Bologna.
May 8, 1789.—I little expected when I dined with the man mentioned in the preceding pages, that he would so soon be numbered with the dead. Baretti, on the day on which I met him at Mr. Courtenay’s, seemed in remarkably good health. He told us then I think that he was in his seventy-third year. He was very entertaining; and a good deal of that roughness for which he was formerly distinguished had gone off. He died last Tuesday, 6th instant, at his house in Edward Street, of gout in his stomach, of which he had complained but a few days. He was in indigent circumstances. He had a small pension of 80l. per annum which was his chief support. He had lately revised his dictionary and made it (as he told us at Mr. Courtenay’s) a much better work; the original having been copied from the dictionaries that had gone before. By re-trenching several faulty expressions, &c., he reduced the size from two volumes to one which the booksellers, who estimate works by their bulk, did not much approve of. He was to have 100l. for his labour, and having delivered in his MS. complete to Messrs. Cadell and Robinson, and being distressed for money, he pressed for the payment. Some words which passed between him and the latter of these booksellers inflamed him so much as in some measure to prey upon his mind and accelerate his death. Cadell at length relented, and sent 50l., half the money agreed upon, but it did not reach Barettis house till after his death.
He was certainly a man of extraordinary talents, and perhaps no one ever made himself so completely master of a foreign language as he did of English. He came to England, I imagine, about the year 1750, and resided here principally ever since. He has, I find, given particular directions to prevent his body falling into the hands of the surgeons.
Not very long after the institution of the Club, Sir J. Reynolds was speaking of it to Garrick. “I like it much,” says he, “I think I’ll be of you.” When Sir J. R. mentioned this to Dr. Johnson, he was much displeased at the actor’s conceit. ‘‘He’ll be of us,” says Johnson, “how does he know we will permit him? The first duke in England has no right to hold such language?” However, when Garrick was regularly proposed some time afterwards, Johnson warmly supported him, being in reality a very tender affectionate man. He was merely offended at the actor’s conceit.[18]
On the former part of this story it probably was that Sir John Hawkins grounded his account that Garrick never was of the Literary Club, and that Johnson said he never ought to be of it. And thus it is that this stupid biographer, and the more flippant and malicious Mrs. Piozzi, have miscoloured and misrepresented almost every anecdote that they have pretended to tell of Dr. Johnson.—(The fact from Sir J. Reynolds.)
Soon after Gainsborough settled in London, Sir J. Reynolds thought himself bound in civility to pay him a visit. Gainsborough took not the least notice of him for several years, but at length called and solicited him to sit for his picture. Sir Joshua sat once; but being soon afterwards affected by a slight paralytick stroke, he was obliged to go to Bath. On his return to town perfectly restored to health, he sent Gainsborough word that he was returned; to which Gainsborough only replied that he was glad to hear he was well; and never after desired him to sit, or called upon him, or had any other intercourse with him till he was dying, when he sent and thanked him for the very handsome manner in which he had always spoken of him; a circumstance which the President has thought worth recording in his fourteenth discourse. Gainsborough was so enamoured of his art that he had many of the pictures he was then working upon brought to his bedside to show them to Reynolds, and flattered himself that he should live to finish them.—(From the same.)
He was a very dissolute capricious man, imordinately fond of women, and not very delicate in his sentiments of honour. He was first put forward in the world, I think by a Mr. Fonnereaux, who lent him 300l. Gainsborough having a vote for an election in which his benefactor had some concern, voted against him. His conscience however remonstrating against such conduct, he kept himself in a state of intoxication from the time he set out to vote till his return to town, that he might not relent of his ingratitude.—(From Mr. Windham.)
On mentioning to Sir Joshua Reynolds the conversation that I had had with Baretti, on my return from Mr. Courtenay’s about the Lord’s Prayer, he said, “This turn which B. now gives to the matter was an after-thought; for he once said to me myself, ‘there are various opinions about the writer of that prayer; some give it to St. Augustine, some to St. Chrysostom, &c. What is your opinion?’”
On examining the indexes at the Signet Office yesterday (June 19, 1789) to ascertain when Sir George Buck was made Master of the Revels to King James the First, I happened to turn back to the reign of Elizabeth, and under the year 1590, was surprised to find in the letter S., “Edmund Spenser Peñson.” On examining the minute of the grant, I found it entered as follows: “Feb. 1590 (i. e. 1591) An Annuity of 50l. per ann. to Edmund Spenser during life.”—(D. Aubrey.)
This particular has, I think, escaped all our biographers. Fifty pounds a year was then, all circumstances being considered, at least equal to 200l. a year now, so that he could not be in such extreme poverty at his death as is usually represented. I suppose that contemporary writers meant he was comparatively poor; for he had possessed a large estate in Ireland which was lost in the troubles. He was in Ireland in 1598, as appears by a curious letter from Queen Elizabeth which I found in the Museum, recommending him to be Sheriff of the County of Cork in that year. . . . . (See it in my Shakspeare.)
Yesterday (June 19) I passed an hour very agreeably in Furnival’s Inn with Mr. P. H. Neve, a young gentleman who has lately printed some miscellaneous observations on the English poets, and is much devoted to literary pursuits. His chambers look on the garden of Furnival’s Inn, a very sequestered spot which I had never before happened to look at. Yet he complained that it was not private enough, and talked of moving elsewhere. He showed me many rare autographs, and a curious memorandum which he found lately in Milton’s book in defence of the people of England; in which the former possessor of the book says in Latin, that Milton’s brother (who was, I think, a judge of one of the courts at Westminster)<-- Christopher Milton --> told him that with all the legal arguments in that book, Milton was furnished by the celebrated Bradshaw, president of the court that put Charles I. to death.
Dr. Donne, the poet, in 1602 married the daughter of Sir George Moore privately against her father’s consent, who was so enraged that he not only turned him and his wife out of his house, but got Lord Chancellor Egerton to turn him out of his office as Secretary to the Great Seal. Donne and his wife took refuge in a house at , in the neighbourhood of his father-in-law, who lived at Lothesby, in the county of Surrey, where the first thing he did was to write on a pane of glass—
An Donne
Undone.
These words were visible at that house in 1749. It should be remembered that Donne’s name was formerly pronounced Dun.—(From a similar notice found by Mr. Neve in an old book.)
Mr. Welbore Ellis, who was well acquainted with the late Twisden, Bishop of Raphoe, assured me at the Marquis Townshend’s about a month ago, that the strange story which has been long current in Ireland, of the bishop being shot in attempting to rob on the highway in England, was an absolute falsehood. Mr. Ellis said he saw the physician who attended him, who told him he died of a fever. The stories which are told of this bishop’s levity or vivacity are probably however true; for Mr. Ellis owned that Twisden once laid a wager that he would leap over a cow as she lay in the field. Just at the instant of the attempt, the cow got up, and the bishop dislocated his shoulder.[19]
“Pope’s house at Twickenham,” says Dr. Taylor (who is now living at Isleworth, and eighty-five years old) in a letter to my father in Ireland, written soon after the poet’s death, “I believe will be bought by Sir William Stanhope. They say the whole purchase will come within 1,500l. Pope died worth 4,000l. The King of Sardinia’s watch, which is mentioned in his will, is a common plain gold one, not worth twenty guineas.”
“People here,” he adds in the same letter, “do not talk of the Anglesey affair in the same strain they seem to do in Ireland. The verdict here is generally condemned. Bacon told me he heard Sir John Strange lately say at Tom’s that he had read the printed trial, and that the Pl. appeared clearly from thence to him to be a bastard; and that he was astonished at the charge and at the verdict.—Concanen arrived in London last night.”
Mr. Parsons, an ingenious picture cleaner and painter from whom I bought eight drawings yesterday done by the elder Richardson called upon me this morning, June 2nd, 1789. He says that the great sale of Richardson’s drawings was in 1746–7. At that sale the younger Richardson was a considerable purchaser, and he afterwards added greatly to his collection, which upon his own death about the year 1772, was sold by auction. There Mr. P. bought the drawings; two of Pope; two of Milton, one of them very highly finished; two of Shakspeare, one of them from the picture now in the Duke of Chandos’ possession, and the other from the print prefixed to his poems in 1640; one of the elder Richardson; and one of the late Dr. Birch.
Mrs. Thrale has grossly misrepresented the story which she has told of Dr. Johnson’s saying a harsh thing to her at table (see her Anecdotes). The fact was this. A Mr. Thrale, related to Mr. Thrale, Johnson’s friend, for whom they both had a great regard, had gone some time before to the East or West Indies. Dr. Johnson had not yet heard of his fate; and Mrs. Thrale very abruptly while she was eating some larks most ravenously, laid down her knife and fork—“Oh dear, Dr. Johnson, do you know what has happened? The last letters from abroad have brought us an account that poor Tom Thrale’s head was taken off by a cannon ball in the action of .” Johnson, who was shocked both at the fact and at her gross manner of telling it, replied,—“Madam, it would give you very little concern if all your relations were spitted like those larks, and dressed for Presto’s supper.” Presto was the dog which lay under the table, and which Mrs. Thrale was feeding just as she mentioned the death of Mr. Thrale’s cousin.
Mr. Boswell has mentioned in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, that Johnson once met with an Italian in London who did not know who was the author of the Lord's Prayer|Lord’s Prayer. The Italian, whom Mr. Boswell out of tenderness forbore to name, was Baretti. As I walked home with him from Mr. Courtenay’s, he mentioned that the story as told gave an unfair representation of him. The fact he said was this. In a conversation with Dr. Johnson concerning the Lord’s Prayer, Baretti observed (profanely enough) that the petition, lead us not into temptation, ought rather to be addressed to the tempter of mankind than a benevolent Creator who delighted in the happiness of his creatures. “Pray, sir,” said Johnson” (who could not bear that any part of our holy religion should be spoken lightly of), ‘‘do you know who was the author of the Lord’s Prayer?” Baretti (who did not wish to get into any serious dispute, and who appears to be an Infidel), by way of putting an end to the conversation, only replied,—“Oh, sir, you know by our religion (Roman Catholic), we are not permitted to read the Scriptures. You can’t therefore expect an answer.”
The two drawings of Pope are marked at the back with Richardson’s R, but have no date. Milton is in profile, “13th February, 1737 R.” The other Milton, “4th December, 1734 R.” The Shakspeare from the old picture, “R., 21st April, 1733.” The copy from the print thus: “From an old print, before an early edition of his poems, R.—Shakspeare, 20th October, 1732.” “Richardson, senior, 24th August, 1736.” “Mr. Birch, R., 21st November, 1739.” I have put these dates down here lest, being written in pencil with which the drawings were made, they should hereafter be defaced.
Mr. Parsons had a university education, and was originally intended for the Church, but his love of painting led him to his present profession. He set out as a painter, and copied in his youth a vast number of Sir Peter Lely’s pictures which have deceived some connoisseurs, and were taken for originals. Being carried down by Lord Craven about thirty years ago to view his great collection of old pictures, he found them in a miserable condition, and cleaned them so well that he has ever since had so much employment in that way as to have had scarcely time to paint an original picture. He has however made a great many copies in that time; amongst others, one of Fenton, the poet, for a Mr. Fenton in . Fenton, of whom I did not know there had been any picture, was he says a very handsome man. Addison’s daughter, he informs me, is now living in Warwickshire, and is possessed of an original picture of Dryden, which belonged to her father, and, which Parsons copied some time ago for a Mr. Sneyd of Staffordshire.
He has been lately much employed by Lord Warwick and Lord Scarsdale, and sold the latter about six months ago a very great curiosity, a portrait of Shakspeare by Vandyke. It is now at Lord Scarsdale’s, in Derbyshire. It was brought to Parsons last winter by a dealer with two or three other old pictures; and having been much conversant with Vandyke’s pictures he knew the hand at once.
He is equally clear that it is a portrait of Shakspeare. It has more resemblance he says to the picture said to be painted by Zoest, of which there is a mezzotinto by Simon, than to the Duke of Chandos picture. Vandyke came to England, I think, about the year 1630;[20] so that he must have copied this picture from that from which the print prefixed to the first folio, 1623, was made, or from the old picture formerly in the possession of Davenant, and now belonging to the Duke of Chandos, or from some other original. There is, Parsons says, great spirit in the portrait; it contains a hand which, according to Vandyke’s manner, is spread on the left side of the body. The drapery is black without any figure or flowers in it.
My two ruins of Rome, Parsons thinks were done by Viviani, after Panini; and he inclines to think that my Duke of Monmouth which in my grandfather Collier’s catalogue is called Sir Peter Lely’s, was painted either by Mrs. Bale or the elder Richardson. The landscape, in the large picture of the Creation painted by De Foss, was done he says by , who always was employed by De Foss in that part of his pictures.
I had thought my large landscape by Abraham Houdens, 1687, was a great rarity as well as a very fine picture, because Mr. Walpole has said he painted very few pictures, or that there are very few of his hand in England; but this is not so; Mr. Parsons has had above a hundred of his go through his hands. He allows the picture however, though it has not the merit of rarity, to be admirably executed.
On looking a few days since over the General Advertiser, 1748, for Macklin’s letter relative to Ford and Shakspeare which I have proved to be fiction, I found Mrs. Pritchard, the actress, was in that year weak enough to think of performing the part of George Barnwell for her husband’s benefit. However, before the day came she thought better of it, and performed Lady Macbeth instead.
Mr. Fenton mentions in his notes on Waller’s Poems, pp. 29, 46, that Spencer was matriculated at Cambridge, on the 20th May, 1569; and supposing him to have been in his sixteenth year, he concluded that this poet was born in 1553; but at that time it was much more common to go to the university at twelve years old than at sixteen. If he was but twelve in 1569, he was born in 1557. His birth took place in East Smithfield in the parish of St. Botolph. I examined the register of that parish in vain for his baptism. I did not commence I found till 1550.
There is I suppose some mistake with respect to the portrait shown as Sacharissa’s at |Mr. Waller’s house; for on my mentioning to Lord Macartney at our club, how little she was entitled to Waller’s praise, he told me that two fine pictures of her and her sister by Vandyke were at Petworth in Sussex (Lord Egremont’s), and that Sacharissa appeared to have been very handsome.
Lady Falconberg, Cromwell’s daughter, lived till the year 1712. Old Lord Ilchester told Lord Macartney that he remembered her when he was a boy visiting at his father’s, and that all the younger part of the family used always to get near her on account of her having a great quantity of perfumes about her.
Sir J. Reynolds when he called on me yesterday (July 10), on looking over the elder Richardson’s drawings, said he understood his art very well scientifically; but that his manner was cold and hard. He was Sir Joshua’s pictorial grandfather, being Hudson’s master. He was always drawing either himself or Pope, whom he scarcely ever visited without taking some sketch of his face. His son was intended for a painter, but being very near-sighted soon gave up all thoughts of that profession. He was a great news and anecdote monger; and in the latter part of his life spent much of his time in gathering and communicating intelligence concerning the King of Prussia and other topics of the day; as Dr. Burney, who knew him very well, informs me. His Richardsoniana are not uninteresting.
I this day (July 24, 1789) perused Wentworth Lord Roscommon’s will at Doctors’ Commons. He having been once the owner of my estate in Westmeath, in Ireland, I feel an interest about him, and should be glad to meet with his picture by Carlo Maratti which is somewhere extant. His will is very short. He expresses the strongest hope of a resurrection and redemption by the merits of our Saviour, and commits his wretched body to the earth. He makes his (second) wife Isabella (daughter of Matthew Baynton, Yorkshire, Esq., whom he married in 1674) his executrix, and bequeathes her all his estate real and personal after payment of his debts. His will was made January 4, 1684–5, and proved the latter end of that month.
Knightly Chetwood, who has left MS. memoirs of him—now in the public library at Cambridge—was one of the witnesses to his will. I think he says in those memoirs that Lord Roscommon resembled his uncle Lord Strafford in the countenance. His widow married the father of the late Thomas Carter, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and died in Dublin in 1722. I hoped to have found her picture in the possession of Mr. Carter’s heir, but he has it not.
Sir Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton in Devonshire, in 1723. One of the first portraits he ever painted is in the possession of a Mr. Hamilton, nephew to Lord Abercorn. As he himself told me, when about the age of nineteen or twenty, he became very careless about his profession, and lived for near three years at Plymouth in a great deal of dissipation with but indifferent company, at least such company as from whom no improvement could be gained. He now much laments the loss of these three years. However, he saw his error in time, and sat down seriously to his art about the year 1743 or 1744. Soon afterwards he painted the portrait above-mentioned, Captain Hamilton being a naval officer who married the present Lord Eliot’s mother.
This Captain Hamilton was a very uncommon character; very obstinate, very whimsical, very pious, a rigid disciplinarian, yet very kind to his men. He lost his life as he was proceeding from his ship to land at Plymouth. The wind and sea were extremely high, and his officers remonstrated against the imprudence of venturing in a boat where the danger seemed imminent. But he was impatient to see his wife, and would not be persuaded. In a few minutes after he left the ship, the boat was upset and turned keel upward. The captain being a good swimmer, trusted to his skill, and would not accept of a place on the keel in order to make room for others, and then clung to the edge of the boat. Unluckily he had kept on his greatcoat. At length, seeming exhausted, those on the keel exhorted him to take a place beside them, and he attempted to throw off the coat, but finding his strength fail, told the men he must yield to his fate and soon afterwards sank while singing a psalm.—(From Lord Eliot.)
Hayman, the painter, though but an ordinary artist, had some humour. Among the set with whom he lived much, there was one who was always complaining of ill-health and low spirits without being able to assign any particular malady as the cause. One evening at Hayman’s club, it was mentioned that this maladie imaginaire had been married the day before. “Is he! and be dd to him!” said Hayman; “now he’ll know what ails him!”—(From Sir J. Reynolds.)
Mendez, the Jew poet, sat to him for his picture, but requested he would not put it in his show-room, as he wished to keep the matter a secret. However, as Hayman had but little business in portraits, he could not afford to let his new work remain in obscurity, so out it went with the few others that he had to display. A new picture being a rarity in Hayman’s room, the first friend that came in took notice of it and asked whose portrait it was? “Mendez’.” “Good heavens!” said the friend, “you are wonderfully out of luck here. It has not a trait of his countenance.” “Why, to tell you the truth,” said the painter, “he desired it might not be known.”
The present Duke of Marlborough has been always remarkably shy and reserved. Among other small talents that he possesses he plays Quinze uncommonly well. He told Sir J. Reynolds one day, when speaking of the defect in himself already mentioned, of which he is very sensible, that having once made a master-stroke at that game by which he should have made a hundred pounds, he put his cards into the heap, and lost what he had set on them, knowing that if he had shown them, which it was necessary to do to win the money, all the company at the different tables would have come round him, and the fineness of the stroke have been their topic for half an hour. This he acknowledged he could not stand; adding, however, ‘‘I am not so shy now.” And yet to common observers he is still unaccountably so, considering his birth, education, and commerce with the world.—(From Sir Josh. R.)
Captain Hamilton, half-brother of the present Lord Eliot, gave a still more extraordinary proof of the force of mauvaise honte. He was appointed governor of some foreign settlement—Newfoundland, I think. During the voyage he often talked of the embarrassments of such a situation, and how painful it would be to him to have a concourse of people perpetually about him, and to be so marked an object as he must be whenever he stirred out. All this lay very heavy on his mind; however, he endeavoured to shake off his apprehensions during the voyage; but when he came near the shore, and saw the crowd of people ready to receive him, and heard their huzzas, it entirely overcame him, and he retired into his cabin and shot himself.—(From Sir Josh. R.)
Serjeant Davy was often employed at the Bar of the House of Commons. On one occasion he called a witness to prove some point, and put a question of no great importance which was immediately objected to by the opposite counsel. The counsel on both sides, according to the usual form, were ordered to withdraw, and the House began to debate on the propriety of the question. The discussion lasted for some hours; but at length the determination being in favour of Davy, he was called in, and the Speaker informed him he might put his question. “I protest, Mr. Speaker,” replied Davy, “I entirely forget what it was.” This, as may easily be believed, threw the House into a roar of laughter.
His brother-serjeant, Whitaker, was still more celebrated for his wit, or rather dry humour. On some contested election before the House of Commons, he argued that the testimony of a Mr. Smith would be very material for his client. The adverse party were very desirous that the witness should not be produced, and urged that he was in so bad a state of health it might be extremely prejudicial to him to remain for some hours in so hot a place as a full House of Commons. At length it was determined that Mr. Smith should be examined; and to give a colour to what had been alleged, he was brought in muffled up, and supported by a friend. All the members were very attentive when Whitaker rose to examine him, expecting some question that would get to the bottom of the business. The serjeant got up with great gravity, and began his examination with—“Pray, Mr. Smith, how do you do?” The greater part of the House being in the secret, or at least suspecting that his illness was mere pretence, burst into a roar of laughter not less violent than that produced by Davy’s sally on a former occasion.—(This and the former from Mr. Gerard Hamilton.)
Petrarch observes in one of his letters (Epist. Fam. l. ii. ep. 2) that the Romans before the time of Sylla were buried entire in the earth, and that the practice of cremation began with the dictator, who apprehending that some of the Marian faction would treat his own remains as ill as he had done those of Marius, ordered his dead body to be burned.
Dr. Arthur Charlette in the last age corresponded with almost all the celebrated persons of that time, and preserved all their letters. An immense collection of them, which he had made and bound in several folio volumes, fell into the hands of Mr. Ballard, author of the Memoirs of Learned Ladies of Great Britain, and are now in the Bodleian Library. They contain, as Mr. Warton informs me, many curious anecdotes.
August 6, 1791.—I dined at Sir William Scott’s in the Commons, with Mr. Windham, Mr. Erskine, Sir William Wynne, Sir J. Reynolds, and a Mr. De Vyme. The latter, who was the son of a French refugee, and spoke English perfectly well, had lived in Portugal for forty years, and was at Lisbon at the time of the earthquake; of which he gave us a curious account.
It happened about ten in the morning on All Souls’ Day, when many of the people were in the parish churches. He was sitting in his counting-house in his night-gown, and the first symptom he heard was a very loud whizzing noise; soon afterwards he found his house shake, and called immediately to his clerks to follow him. They all ran out behind his house, and proceeded as fast as possible to a high ground, where they remained in safety and saw the town falling on every side. After continuing there about forty-eight hours, he ventured to go down into the town, where generally there reigned total silence. Almost every step he took was over a dead body. Among other shocking scenes he saw a woman dead with a child at her breast without its head. He made his way however through the ruins to his own house, which being situated on a rock, he hoped might not have been wholly destroyed; and with the help of eight or ten persons who had escaped like himself and whom he paid highly, cleared away the rubbish sufficiently to get to his strong box in the counting-house, from which he carried away notes to the amount of eighteen thousand pounds. He, however, by the inability of others to fulfil their contracts, lost 40,000l. that day.
Very soon after the first shock, the air, by whirlwinds of smoke and dust from the city falling and taking fire (for the small pans of coals with which they warm themselves soon produced that effect), became entirely dark; and the first sensation of every one was that the end of the world had arrived. The total number of inhabitants of Portugal is about two and a half millions, so that it is less populous than Ireland, where about four millions are now reckoned. The people of Lisbon amount, as is supposed, to one hundred thousand, of whom about eleven hundred perished in the earthquake. The town is built upon seven hills, and was twice destroyed by earthquakes before.
After the last visitation it was proposed to the minister, Pombal, to rebuild the town on a new site, two miles inland, and more distant from the sea; but from some unknown motive he adhered to the old position; and there is no doubt that the same causes which operated before will at some time or other destroy the town again.
Mr. De Vyme having now quitted Lisbon, on account of his health, and settled in England, wishes to sell his country-house in Portugal, but such is the poverty of the people that he cannot get a purchaser. It is almost a palace, the purchase-money required being above 30,000l. The Queen herself wishes to be the owner, but it has been represented to her that if she should spare so much money from building churches (for she is a great devotee) she ought rather, for the good of her people, to lay it out in building one herself. Mr. De Vyme was the first who introduced pineapples into Portugal. He, the Queen, and one of her ministers, are the only persons who now grow them.
The Portuguese have a great quantity of specie among them, and yet are not very rich. Spain, he said, at present contains about eleven millions of people, and is capable of sustaining at least twenty-two millions. While he was in Portugal he spent two hundred and forty thousand pounds. He brought home with him one hundred thousand; and left in the house at Lisbon twelve hundred thousand.
August 9, at Mr. Windham’s.—The company, Sir William Scott, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Laurence, Sir Henry Englefield, and myself. A very pleasant day.
Sir Joshua and Sir W. Scott, in talking concerning that despicable woman Mrs. Piozzi, mentioned the letter which she wrote to Johnson in answer to his objurgatory one relative to her proposed marriage with an Italian singer.[21] She has suppressed both letters in her book, and hers to Johnson happened by some accident not to be returned to her with the rest of her letters. She said in it among other things, as both Sir W. Scott and Sir Joshua agreed, that however she might have disgraced Miss Salisbury by marrying the brewer, she could not disgrace Mrs. Thrale by marrying Piozzi—that his profession was a liberal one which could not be said of the other; and she was told he excelled very much in his own way.
Of this kind of excellence however she all her life affected to be so little of a judge, as always to join with Dr. Johnson in inattention to musick; and soon after her present caro sposo came to England, she said once to Dr. Burney, as he told me, “We are all mightily pleasant and happy; but there is no bearing that fellow squaring his elbows at the harpsichord.” This was at Dr. Burney’s house; and the fellow was Piozzi.
When she first resolved to marry him, Miss Burney (the authoress) lived with her, or was there on a visit; and on being consulted, remonstrated strongly on the impropriety of such a step. At length a promise was solemnly given that she would relinquish all thoughts of it. In a day or two afterwards she acted like a bedlamite, tore her hair, knocked her head against the wall, &c., and told Miss Burney she could not survive unless she had Piozzi. Soon afterwards she married him; and Miss Burney and she are now entirely alienated. She is now wholly unconnected with all her former friends.
Mr. Lysons, though a great friend of hers, showed Dr. Laurence who dined with us this day, a little account of her pretty poem, The Three Warnings. Of this piece, Lysons said, from some information he had got, that “the first hint was given to her by Johnson; that she brought it to him very incorrect; and that he not only revised it throughout, but supplied several new lines.” Under this account, which was written by Lysons and shown to Mrs. Piozzi, she had added with respect to the statement of its being suggested by Johnson, “That is not true,” acknowledging by the exception that the rest was true. But she was careless about truth, and therefore not to be trusted.
Dr. Akenside, as Sir J. Reynolds told me, soon after the publication of Goldsmith’s Traveller, was very liberal in its praise. A report then prevailed that it was in fact written by Johnson; but Akenside maintained that it was impossible, and he particularly relied on two lines which he said Johnson would not have written—
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door.”
Perhaps Johnson would not have used the familiar but forcible expression in the second line; and yet it is not Goldsmith’s, but Shakspeare’s—
Not bear the knife myself.”—Macbeth.
And “houseless” he had from King Lear.
Akenside however, while he pointed out these lines as unlike Johnson’s manner, had not sagacity enough to observe some others which at once discovered his vigorous pen and cast of thought—
Our own felicity we make or find.”
Johnson, in fact, wrote about sixteen lines of this beautiful poem, and no more, as he himself told Mr. Boswell.[22] But Akenside never found this out.
Mr. Cator, the money-lender, once speaking about drunkenness, instead of enlarging on the common topics, the universality of it, its obscuring men’s faculties, producing quarrels, &c., observed that it was a most injurious practice, and might be attended with very bad effects; for no man who goes into company and indulges in wine, can know when he may be called out to make a bargain!
Sir William Scott having occasionally mentioned that Sir William Blackstone composed his Commentaries with a bottle of port-wine before him, Mr. Boswell has inserted this anecdote in his new Life of Dr. Johnson. Sir William felt concerned at the disclosure, and wrote to his family to apologize. He was sorry that Mr. Boswell had inserted it without apprising him, as from the words employed it might be inferred that Sir William Blackstone was a drunkard, which was by no means the case.
The fact, as Sir W. Scott observed, was, that Blackstone was of a languid, phlegmatick constitution, in consequence of which he required a cheerful glass of wine to rouse and animate him; and after he returned from college in the evening to his chamber, had some wine frequently left in the room while writing, in order to correct or prevent the depression sometimes attendant on close study. That he did not use it to excess the Commentaries themselves, one of the most methodical, perspicuous, and elegant books in our language, clearly show. The late Dr. Lowth, Bishop of London, in this respect resembled Blackstone, being very indolent, taking little exercise, and eating heartily; in consequence of which he generally drank what is called a cheerful glass of wine.
Thomson, the poet, was so extremely indolent, that half his mornings were spent in bed. Dr. Burney having called on him one day at two o’clock, expressed surprise at finding him still there, and asked how he came to lie so long?—“Ecod, mon, because I had no mot-tive[23] to rise,” was his sole answer. (From Dr. Burney.)
The late Lord Chesterfield’s bons mots were all studied. Dr. Warren, who attended him for some months before his death, told me that he had always one ready for him each visit, but never gave him a second on the same day.
The late Duchess of N was very large and fat, had good sense, but was not very refined or delicate in her expressions, nor much addicted to reading. At one of the great assemblies in N{bar|3}} House, Lady Talbot, a very slight, delicate woman who affected literature, happening to stand near a door where there was a great throng, exclaimed, “Good Lord, this is as difficult a pass as the Straits of Thermopyle!” “I don’t know what street you mean,” replied the duchess, “but I am afraid I shall never get my through it.” The consternation of the learned lady may be easily conceived.—(From Mr. Burke.)
It happens sometimes to celebrated wits by too great an effort to render a day from which much was expected quite abortive. Not long before Garrick’s death, he invited Charles Fox, Mr. Burke, Mr. Gibbon, Mr. Sheridan, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Beauclerc, and some others to dine at Hampton. Soon after dinner he began to read a copy of verses, written by himself on some of the most celebrated men of the time, including two or three of those who were present. They were not very well satisfied with their characters, and still less when describing Lord Thurlow, who was not present, he introduced the words “superior parts.” Mr. Burke, speaking of his own character, said afterwards to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he was almost ready to have spat in his face. Garrick, finding the company uncommonly grave, in consequence of his unlucky verses, before they had drunk half a dozen glasses of wine proposed to adjourn to his lawn, where they would find some amusement. When there, the whole amusement consisted in an old man and a young one running backwards and forwards between two baskets filled with stones, and whoever emptied his basket first was to be the victor. Garrick expected that his guests would have been interested and have betted on the runners; but between ill-humour with his verses and being dragged from table the instant dinner had been finished, no interest whatever was expressed in what, from the anticipations of their host, so much had been expected. All was cold and spiritless—one of the most vapid days they had ever spent. If Garrick had not laid these plots for merriment, but let conversation taken its common course, all would have gone well. Such men as I have mentioned could not have passed a dull day.—(From Sir Joshua Reynolds. )
Sir Joshua Reynolds remembers Quin in Falstaff, and also remembers being exceedingly disappointed by him in that character. Some of the graver part of the character he did well, but had none of the natural festivity of Falstaff, and in all the gayer part was very inefficient.
From a slight specimen which Garrick gave of Falstaff when the Jubilee was represented at Drury Lane, Sir Joshua thinks he would have played it inimitably well, could he have sustained the continued effort during the whole part necessary for assuming the voice of a very fat man, &c. He had often thoughts of playing that character.
It has long been a question who was the author of the letters which appeared under the signature of Junius in 1769 and 1770. Many have ascribed them to Mr. Wm. Gerard Hamilton, who is certainly capable of having written them, but his style is very different. He would have had still more point than they exhibit, and certainly more Johnsonian energy.[24]
Besides, he has all his life been distinguished for political timidity and indecision. Neither would he, even under a mask, have entered into such decided warfare with many persons whom it might be necessary afterwards to have as colleagues. What is still more decisive, he could not have divested himself of the apprehension of a discovery, having long accustomed his mind to too refined a policy, and being very apt to suppose that many things are brought about by scheme and machination which are merely the offspring of chance. He would have suspected that even the penny post could not be safe; and that sir W. Draper or any other antagonist would have managed so as to command every one of those offices within the bills of mortality.
Many have supposed Junius to have been written by Mr. Hamilton’s old friend, the well-known and deservedly celebrated Edmund Burke. Dr. Johnson being once asked whether he thought Burke capable of writing Junius, said he thought him fully equal to it; but that he did not believe him the author because he himself had told him so; and he did not believe he would deliberately assert a falsehood.
Mr. Burke however, it is extremely probable, had a considerable share in the production of those papers in furnishing materials, suggesting hints, constructing and amending sentences, &c. &c. He has acknowledged to Sir Joshua Reynolds that he knew the author. Sir Joshua with very great probability thinks that the late Mr. Samuel Dyer was the author, assisted by Mr. Burke, and by Mr. William Burke, his cousin, now in India. Of Mr. Dyer, a long character may be found in Sir John Hawkins’ Life of Dr. Johnson (pp. 222–231, 1st ed.), greatly overcharged and discoloured by the malignant prejudices of that shallow writer, who having quarrelled with Mr. Burke (who in p. 231 is darkly alluded to, together with his cousin, under the words, “Some persons of desperate fortunes”), carried his enmity even to Mr. Burke’s friends.
Mr. Dyer was a man of uncommon understanding and attainments, but so modest and reserved, that he frequently sat silent in company for an hour, and seldom spoke unless appealed to; in which case he generally showed himself most intimately acquainted with whatever happened to be the subject. Goldsmith the poet, who used to rattle away upon all subjects, had been talking somewhat loosely relative to musick. Some one of the Literary Club (for this happened before I was a member) wished for Mr. Dyer’s opinion, which he gave with his usual strength and accuracy. “Why,” says Goldsmith (turning round to Dyer, whom he had scarcely noticed before), “you seem to know a good deal of this matter.” “If I had not,” replied Dyer, ‘‘I should not, in this company, have said a word upon the subject.”
Mr. Dyer was one of the original members of our club about the year 1762, when it only met once a week on Friday evening, and then it was, I believe, that Mr. Burke’s acquaintance with him commenced—an acquaintance which afterwards grew up into the strictest intimacy.
Mr. Dyer, by the favour of M. Chamier of the Treasury, got the place of commissary, or other office connected with the army; and it is observable that Junius in his second letter displays an intimate acquaintance with the then state of that department. It is also observable that there are one or two Gallicisms in Junius, that the author was apparently much used to French reading, for when he has occasion to divide his paragraphs numerically, he adopts the French mode 1°. 2°., &c., of which I have never met with an instance in any other English writer. Dyer was two years abroad; was a complete master of French and Italian; and one of his first literary attempts was the translation of Les Mœurs, of which however he performed but a part from dislike to its drudgery. It has long been supposed that the author of Junius died soon after the papers were discontinued. The first letter of Junius is dated “21st Jan. 1769,” and the last “21st Jan. 1771.” Dyer died Sept. 15th, 1772. Immediately after his death, Mr. William Burke went to his lodgings, and cut many of his papers into very minute fragments, there being no fire then to destroy them. Sir J. Reynolds saw these broken papers strewed all over the room.
The hypothesis now stated explains many circumstances which have puzzled all the conjecturers on this subject. It accounts for the accurate and quick intelligence which is exhibited in these letters shortly after the event, or negotiation, or whatever else is the subject of discussion. From this some have argued that the author must either have been closely connected with those in immediate opposition to Government, or have been himself one of the opposers; for Dyer lived in such intimacy with Burke, that from him he could learn everything that was going on, or even meditated. It accounts also for the novelty of the style. It is not likely that Mr. Burke, though he could easily imitate any known style, should have originally struck out a new one for these letters, so totally differing from his own. He might however in corrections and intercalations have adopted the style of his friend; and now and then there certainly may be found passages extremely Burkish.
It accounts also for the minute knowledge which Junius shows of Irish matters and phraseology, and particularly for the passage in his fourth letter (the seventh of the collection), “a job to accommodate two persons by particular imterest and management at the castle.” This local phraseology, though the familiar language of Hibernians, and of men much conversant with Ireland, would not have occurred to an Englishman.
The castle is the residence of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and answers to St. James’s. It accounts likewise for many images which any one well acquainted with Mr. Burke would almost swear to be the offspring of his mind. I particularly allude to that passage where the Duke of Grafton is said to have gone through each of the signs of the zodiac, and at last settled in Virgo; and another where the sacramental cup is mentioned. It may have given origin also to the kind of law which Junius so often displays; frequently strong and well applied, but not always perfectly sound. It is not the law of a practiser, but of one who had laid in considerable stores of legal and constitutional knowledge, but never followed the profession. This was precisely Mr. Burke’s case; and certainly whatever legal knowledge Mr. Dyer possessed must have been of this kind.
Mr. Dyer translated two of Plutarch’s Lives for the edition printed by Tonson in 1758, Pericles and Demetrius, and revised the whole work. The former which I have lately read with a view of comparison, is admirably executed; but in a translation, an author’s own manner is less discernible. He also, as has been said, translated part of Les Mœurs. I know not whether he ever published anything original but Junius, if that be his, as from all these concurring circumstances is in the highest degree probable. I think there appears in Junius something of a personal enmity to the Duke of Grafton, quite distinct from any consideration of his political character. I remember when I first read these letters that it occurred to me as probable that the author was connected with some woman who had been ill-treated by the duke. Mr. Dyer, if Sir John Hawkins is to be trusted, was sufficiently likely to have been connected with such a woman; and at some future time perhaps this circumstance may be discovered, and furnish an additional proof to the many here collected on this subject.
Sir J. Reynolds painted the portrait of Mr. Dyer, which is now in Mr. Burke’s possession. There is a mezzotinto from it, which has been copied for the Lives of the Poets by mistake, as if it were the portrait of John Dyer, author of a poem called the Fleece.[25]
It is not commonly known that the translation of Bacon’s Essays into Latin, which was published in 1619, was done by the famous John Selden; but this is proved decisively by a letter from N. N. (John Selden N.) to Camden (See Camden Epistol., 4to, 1691, p. 278). In the General Dict. and several other books, this translation is ascribed to Bishop Hacket and Ben Jonson. One Willymot, a schoolmaster, was foolish enough to re-translate these essays into English in the beginning of this century. The first edition of these admirable essays was in 1597, the next in 1598, another in 1606, another in 1612, another in 1618; in the dedication to which he speaks of several editions having been then printed.
The last and most perfect is in 4to in 1625, the year preceding the author’s death. There are a great many changes and additions in all the editions subsequent to the first.
September 19th, 1791.—I met Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, at Sir Joshua Reynolds’, and had a good deal of conversation with him relative to Mr. Dyer. He said that they all at the Club had such a high opinion of his knowledge and respect for his judgment as to appeal to him constantly, and that his sentence was final. At the same time he was so modest and unassuming that everybody loved as well as respected him. His manner was uncommonly happy. With respect to Sir John Hawkins’ character of him, that it was on the whole a gross misrepresentation.
The bishop concurred with every other person I have heard speak of Hawkins, in saying that he was a most detestable fellow. He was the son of a carpenter, and set out in life in the very lowest line of the law. Dyer knew him well at one time, and the bishop heard him give a character of Hawkins once that painted him in the blackest colours; though Dyer was by no means apt to deal in such portraits. Dyer said he was a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition, and that he knew instances of his setting a husband against a wife, and a brother against a brother; fomenting their animosity by anonymous letters. With respect to what Sir J. Hawkins has thrown in that he loved Dyer as a brother, this the bishop said was inserted from malignancy and art, to make the world suppose that nothing but the gross vices of Dyer could have extorted such a character from him; while in truth Dyer was so amiable that he never could possibly have lived in any great degree of intimacy with the other at any period of his life. After Dyer’s death, Mr. Burke wrote a character of him, which was inserted in one of the publick papers, I believe the London Chronicle.
A few days afterwards I had some conversation with Sir J. Reynolds relative to both Hawkins and Dyer. He said Dyer had so ill an opinion of Hawkins, that latterly at the Club he would not speak to him. Sir Joshua observed that Hawkins, though he assumed great outward sanctity, was not only mean and grovelling in disposition but absolutely dishonest. After the death of Dr. Johnson, he as one of his executors laid hold of his watch and several trinkets, coins, &c., which he said he should take to himself for his trouble—a pretty liberal construction of the rule of law, that an executor may satisfy his own demands in the first instance. Sir Joshua and Sir Wm. Scott, the other executors, remonstrated against this, and with great difficulty compelled him to give up the watch, which Dr. Johnson’s servant, Francis Barber, now has; but the coins and old pieces of money they could never get.
He likewise seized on a gold-headed cane which some one had by accident left in Dr. Johnson’s house previous to his death. They in vain urged that Francis had a right to this till an owner appeared, and should hold it in usum jus habentes. He would not restore it; and his house being soon afterwards consumed by fire, he said it was there burnt. The executors had several meetings relative to the business of their trust. Sir John Hawkins was paltry enough to bring them in a bill, charging his coach hire for every time they met. With all this meanness, if not dishonesty, he was a regular churchman, assuming the character of a most rigid and sanctimonious censurer of the lightest foibles of others. He never lived in any real intimacy with Dr. Johnson, who never opened his heart to him, or had in fact any accurate knowledge of his character.
If the person who erects his own monument has any vulnerable point of character, the experiment is a dangerous one. The following epitaph, affixed about thirty years ago on a tomb which Dr. Cox, Archbishop of Cashell, in Ireland (second son of Lord Chancellor Cox, the historian), had erected in his lifetime to his wife, leaving a vacant space for an inscription on himself, may serve as a caution against challenging in this manner the pen of the satirist:—
Thou ne’er hadst left this ostentatious space,
Nor given thine enemies such ample room,
To tell posterity upon thy tomb,
A truth by friends and foes alike confess’d,
That by this blank thy life is best express’d.
Mr. Gilbert Cooper was the last of the benevolists, or sentimentalists, who were much in vogue between 1750 and 1760, and dealt in general admiration of virtue. They were all tenderness in words; their finer feelings evaporated in the moment of expression, for they had no connection with their practice. He was the person whom, when lamenting most piteously that his son then absent might be ill or even dead, Mr. Fitzherbert so grievously disconcerted by saying, in a growling tone, “Can’t you take a post chaise, and go and see him?” Mr. Boswell has recorded this anecdote, but did not know the name of the complainer. He was much in the world then, and used to depreciate Johnson as much as he could, by terming him “Nothing more than a literary Caliban.” “Well then,” said Johnson, when this was told him, “you must allow that he is the Punchinello of literature.”
Cooper was round and fat. He was, as Mr. Burke, who knew him well, told me, a master of French and Italian, well acquainted with the English poets, and a good classical scholar; but an insufferable coxcomb. Dr. Warton one day, when dining with Johnson and Burke, urged these circumstances in his favour: “He was at least very well-informed, and a good scholar.” “Yes,” said Johnson, “it cannot be denied that he has good materials for playing the fool; and he makes abundant use of them.”
The history of the Duke of Portland’s house at Bulstrode, near which I now write, is singular. It was built by Praise God Barebones, for a gentleman of the name of Bulstrode. It was then purchased by the infamous Chancellor Jeffries, who used to hold his seal in the great hall, and made the equity lawyers at the end of the term come down twenty miles to attend him there. From his son, Lord Jeffries, it was purchased by King William’s favourite, the Earl of Portland.
Sir Joshua Reynolds once saw Pope. It was about the year 1740, at an auction of books or pictures. He remembers that there was a lane formed to let him pass freely through the assemblage, and he proceeded along bowing to those who were on each side. He was, according to Sir Joshua’s account, about four feet six high; very humpbacked and deformed; he wore a black coat; and according to the fashion of that time, had on a little sword. Sir Joshua adds that he had a large and very fine eye, and a long handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which always are found in the mouths of crooked persons; and the muscles which run across the cheek were so strongly marked as to appear like small cords. Roubilliac, the statuary, who made a bust of him from life, observed that his countenance was that of a person who had been much afflicted with headache, and he should have known the fact from the contracted appearance of the skin between his eyebrows, though he had not been otherwise apprised of it. This bust of Roubilliac is now (1791) in possession of Mr. Bindley, Commissioner of Stamps.
Speaking of Sir Godfrey Kneller, on whom the conversation turned last night when we had done with Pope, Sir Joshua observed that he painted so very carelessly during the latter part of his life that his pictures done at that time were wretched in the extreme. On the contrary, several of his early pictures were equal to the best of Vandyck.—Nov. 1, 1791.
It is remarkable that of twelve passages objected to in Spencer’s Essay on the English Odyssey, two only are found in those books which were translated by Pope.—(This comes from Mr. Langton, who had his information from Mr. Spence.)
The books of the Odyssey which Pope translated were the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, tenth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, seventeenth, twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-fourth. Fenton translated the first, fourth, nineteenth, and twentieth books. Broome the second, sixth, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, eighteenth, and twenty-third.
When Spence carried his preface to Gorboduck, which I think was published in 1736, to Pope, he asked the poet his opinion of it. Pope said, “It would do very well; there was nothing pert or low in it.”[26] Spence was satisfied with this praise, which however was an implied censure on his other writings, and not without foundation; for in his Essay on the Odyssey (the only piece of his that I at present recollect to have read) he appears very fond of the familiar vulgarisms of common talk. In this respect he is the reverse of Johnson. The book however is not without merit. Mr. Cambridge, who is now above seventy and was acquainted with Spence, says he was a poor creature though a very worthy man.
The late Dr. informed Dr. Warton that when Warburton resided at Newark, he and several others held a club, where Warburton used to produce and read weekly essays in refutation of Pope’s Essay on Man. This poem he afterwards found it convenient to defend in the Works of the Learned. Such palinode, it is well known, gained him Pope’s friendship, and finally by his introduction to Allen, made his fortune and station in life.
Sir William Blackstone, as Sir Wm. Scott of the Commons observed to me a few days ago, was extremely irritable. He was the only man, my informant said, he had ever known who acknowledged and lamented his bad temper. He was an accomplished man in very various departments of science, with a store of general knowledge. He was particularly fond of architecture, and had written upon that subject. The notes which he gave me on Shakspeare show him to have been a man of excellent taste and accuracy, and a good critick. The total sum which he made by his Commentaries, including the profits of his lectures, the sale of the books while he kept the copyright in his own hands, and the final sale of the proprietorship to Mr. Cadell, amounted to fourteen thousand pounds. Probably the bookseller in twenty years from the time of that sale will clear ten thousand pounds by his bargain, and the book prove to be an estate to his heirs.
Blackstone made 600l. a year by his professorship and lectures, which however he thought it wise to relinquish for the chance of succeeding in Westminster Hall. Not having acquired a facility of expression, nor promptness of applying his law by early practice, he was always an embarrassed advocate. There were more new trials granted in causes which came before him on circuit, than were granted on the decisions of any other judge who sat at Westminster in his time. The reason was that being extremely diffident of his opinion, he never supported it with much warmth or pertinacity in the court above, if a new trial was moved for. With the little failings already mentioned, he was one of the finest writers and most profound lawyers that England has produced, considering law merely as a science. He was also a strictly conscientious honest man. In his Commentaries he was much indebted to Hall and Wood (particularly the latter) for the method and arrangement he has observed; but the perspicuity, the vigour, the luminous statement, the elegant illustration, and the classical grace by which his Commentaries are so eminently distinguished, were all his own.—Dec. 20, 1791.
[The notice of the death of Reynolds occurs here—but he goes on with remarks on the symptoms and treatment.]
A depression of spirits is, I am told, the usual accompaniment of any disorder of the liver, as is also loss of appetite, fulness, and indigestion. With all these indications, that the physicians should not have been led to explore that part, and to apply such remedies as the Materia Medica furnishes, is unaccountable any way but one. In the East Indies, by anointing the body with mercury, extraordinary cures have been performed in this disease; and had a consultation been held in December to investigate his malady and the remedy been tried, the world would probably not have been deprived of this most amiable and accomplished man for some years.
At length, about a fortnight before his death, this consultation was called, and then the two physicians who had uniformly declared that he had no particular or specific ailment, concurred with Dr. Heberben and Dr. Carmichael Smith in saying that his liver was affected. Soon afterward when almost in the languor of death, mercury was applied in vain.
Though durimg his whole illness from December to 23rd February, he felt and therefore thought that his malady was mortal, he submitted to the Divine will with perfect resignation, at the same time following the prescriptions of his physicians, though with little or no hope of their being useful. He died with very little pain.
From the time of our being first acquainted, he always showed me great kindness and partiality. Beside our usual and very frequent intercourse durmg the winter, we were drawn for several years past still more near to each other in the summer, the greater part of which we both passed in London, my late edition of Shakspeare, on which I was employed from 1784 to 1791 (I mean in the business of the printing house), not permitting me to be long absent from town. He was as fond of London as Dr. Johnson; always maintaining that it was the only place in England where a pleasant society might be found; and no one I believe ever drew together a more pleasant and distinguished society than he did.
I remember one day to have sat down with fifteen persons at his table, the greater part of whom had made a conspicuous figure in the world. Mr. Burke, Mr. Gibbon, two Wartons, Sir William Scott, Mr. Erskine, &c. &c. He was the original founder of our Literary Club about the year 1762, the first thought of which he started to Dr. Johnson at his own fireside. His having made me an executor to his will in conjunction with Mr. Burke and Mr. Metcalf (with the former of whom he had lived in great intimacy for thirty-four years, and with the latter for thirty-eight years), I consider as a very great honour, and hope my children if I should have any, will carefully preserve that memorial of his friendship which he has bequeathed me.[27]
He took very particular pains in drawing my picture.[28] I think I did not in the whole sit for it less than twelve or fourteen times. He painted it first in the year 1778, when I sat seven or eight times. Again, about ten years afterwards, he repainted it, making several alterations in the hair, drapery, &c. The last three pictures which he painted of persons much known, were those of our common friend Mr. Windham, of Felbrig, in Norfolk; Mr. Cholmondeley, Commissioner of Excise; and Mr. R. B. Sheridan, all of them master-pieces of art.[29]
On the Tuesday after his death our club happened to meet; and I was much pleased that the members present unanimously concurred in a motion which I made, that a marble bust or portrait of our much-lamented founder should be procured at the expense of the body and placed in our club-room.
His will was made on the 5th November, 1791, and begins with this melancholy paragraph:—“As it is probable that I shall soon be totally deprived of sight, and may not have an opportunity of making a formal will, I desire that the following memorandums may be considered as my last will and testament.”—Feb. 28, 1792.
- ↑ Since this was written I have purchased it, but it gives no information relative to its title.—Mal. M. de Quincey in one of his essays adverts to the subject of Middleton’s obligations to Bellenden.
- ↑ This was doubtless the sketch of his childhood, recognized as genuine.
- ↑ I have since found that he never did.—Mal. Mr. Hamilton was William Gerard, noticed in the Life.
- ↑ When I wrote this, I had not often heard Mr. Fox. I have since, and now think him, if not a consummate orator, a most able, vigorous, and impressive speaker. He is always logical, acute, various, rapid, copious, and energetick, and perfectly exhausts, though he seldom adorns his subject. He is also uncommonly dexterous and able in displaying the weak parts of his adversary’s arguments.—Mal.
- ↑ “Yet still I love the language of his heart,” is fully as applicable to him as to Cowley.
- ↑ Lord Mansfield’s account is different from every other, and I believe not true. He is not to be trusted on this head; for he must then have been greatly flattered by being in Pope’s company. Besides, his own conversation was never very brilliant, and he was always very fond of bad jokes and dull stories, so that his taste and judgment on this subject may be suspected.—Mal.
- ↑ Afterwards, in 1784, he was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and continued in office till January 1802.—Mal.
- ↑ Statesman, yet friend to truth, &c.—Pope.
- ↑ Since made Bishop of Carlisle, and afterwards removed to Salisbury.
- ↑ The dramatist.
- ↑ This story has been long familiar in the pages of Boswell, but when written by Malone, in his Memoranda, was little known. It is retained here in proof of his sources of information being good, and his notes accurately made.
- ↑ Whom he married for money, and deserted.
- ↑ He is said to have been a purser (now called paymaster) in the Royal Navy.—P.
- ↑ They were lent to Dr. Wilson by Lord Chetwynd.
- ↑ The pictures of Mr. Douglass were sold by auction by Christie in January 1792, but this picture of Shakspeare was not sent with the rest.
- ↑ He was then, and had been long before, Lord Wilmington. The struggle—if such it can be called—of the rivals for power is told at length by Lord Hervey.—Memoirs of George II., vol. i. chap. i. to iv.
- ↑ Or (according to her married name) Sandoni, once a celebrated opera singer, of whom and Handel an amusing story is told. Handel had composed for her the song of Falsa Imagine in Otho, which occasioned so severe a dispute between them on account of her refusing to sing it, that at last Handel threatened to throw the refractory signora out of the window; telling her “that he always knew she was a very devil, but that he should now let her know, in her turn, that he was Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils.” He then seized her by the waist and lifted up the sash. Alarmed at this process, Cuzzoni now consented, and by exquisite grace and pathos, added to the ornaments with which she executed and diversified the few simple notes that compose the air, added more to her reputation than by any other performance.
- ↑ I mentioned this anecdote to Mr. Boswell, and he has introduced it into his Life of Johnson.—M.
- ↑ It was often said formerly that many of the bishops sent from England to fill Irish sees were such as would not have been tolerated in England.
- ↑ Probably before that time; for in 1632 he was in high repute, was knighted, and received a pension.
- ↑ Piozzi—the story so well known in literary history.
- ↑ In this, Malone or Boswell slightly errs. The latter says: “In the year 1783, he (Johnson) at my request marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are only line 420th: ‘To stop too fearful and too faint to go,’ and the concluding ten lines except the last couplet but one.”
- ↑ So our Scottish brethren pronounce the word motive.
- ↑ See the answer which he wrote (with some aid from Mr. Burke) for Lord Halifax, when as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, he refused an addition of 4,000l. a year to his salary. Gent. Mag. 1762, p. 133—also p. 224.—M.
- ↑ In the numberless discussions about Junius, many of the surmises here thrown out by Malone will be familiar to the reader, though their source is now first made public. They had stolen forth unappropriated; but the majority were made known to me for the second edition of the Life of Burke, vol. i. pp. 186–198. A strong impression then prevailed in the family of Burke that he was more or less concerned in the authorship, and I thought it proper to state in detail all that they knew bearing upon the subject. More recent circumstances have dispelled this impression—none more perhaps than by the recently printed letters addressed by Junius to Mr. Grenville, noticed in my fifth edition of Burke’s Life. These clearly evince that the writer could not be Burke. Neither would he probably countenance anything bearing so severely upon the Duke of Grafton, who while a minister exhibited kindly feeling, and recommended him strongly to office under Lord Chatham, “as the readiest man upon all points in the House.” In the alleged avowal of knowledge of the author by Burke to Sir Joshua, there is probably some misapprehension. All the partics save Dyer were alive (1791) when Malone wrote his notes; and he does not expressly say that Reynolds made him any such communication. Who it was made to, if ever made, does not appear. Malone enjoyed his highest confidence and esteem, in proof of which he made him an executor; and therefore, if he ever expressly mentioned the avowal to any one it would have been to him. The whole is probably conjecture or hearsay—and Sir Philip Francis may still stand first on the list of candidates for the authorship of Junius. The following is Burke’s notice of the death of Dyer: “On Tuesday morning (14th September, 1772) died at his lodgings in Castle Street, Leicester Fields, Samuel Dyer, Esq., Fellow of the Royal Society. He was a man of profound and general erudition; and his sagacity and judgment were fully equal to the extent of his learning. His mind was candid, sincere, and benevolent, his friendship disinterested and unalterable. The modesty, simplicity, and sweetness of his manners rendered his conversation as amiable as it was instructive; and endeared him to those few who had the happiness of knowing intimately that valuable and unostentatious man, and his death is to them a loss irreparable.”
- ↑ From Mr. Langton.
- ↑ The choice of one of his pictures.
- ↑ Now in the possession of the Rev. Thomas R. Rooper—said to be a good likeness, and bearing evidence of the pains bestowed upon it. An engraving of it is prefixed to this volume.
- ↑ On a question of art, I find the following note among Malone’s letters:—“Dear Sir,—I always thought Sir Joshua Reynolds had Paul Veronese in view when he painted those pictures for the Dilletanti, particularly that next the door; and upon applying to him one day there at dinner, he told me I was right. ‘‘P. Veronese delighted much in representing his figures as they appear in the open air or under the slight shade of an open portico without any forced effect of light and shade, such as (for example) Rembrandt sometimes used. I write this in great haste, almost too late for dinner.
“Ever yours,
“Sunday.“St. Beaumont.”