A horrour at life in general is more consonant with Johnson's habitual gloomy cast of thought.
I have heard him repeat with great energy the following verses, which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for April this year; but I have no authority to say they were his own. Indeed one of the best criticks of our age[1] suggests to me, that 'the word indifferently being used in the sense of without concern,' and being also very unpoetical, renders it improbable that they should have been his composition.
'On Lord Lovat's Execution.
'Pity'd by gentle minds Kilmarnock. died;
The brave, Balmerino, were on thy side;
Radcliffe, unhappy in his crimes of youth[2],
Steady in what he still mistook for truth,
Beheld his death so decently unmov'd.
The soft lamented, and the brave approv'd.
- ↑ Malone most likely is meant. Mr. Croker says:—'Johnson has "indifferently" in the sense of "without concern" in his Dictionary, with this example from Shakespeare, 'And I will look on death indifferently."' Johnson however here defines indifferently as in a neutral state; without wish or aversion; which is not the same as without concern. The passage, which is from Julius Cæsar, i. 2, is not correctly given. It is—
'Set honour in one eye and death i' the other
And I will look on both indifferently.'We may compare Johnson's use of indifferent in his Letter to Chesterfield, Post, Feb. 7, 1755:—'The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours . . . has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it.'
- ↑ 'Radcliffe. when quite a boy, had been engaged in the rebellion of 1715, and being attainted had escaped from Newgate. . . . During the insurrection [of 1745], having been captured on board a French vessel bound for Scotland, he was arraigned on his original sentence which had slumbered so long. The only trial now conceded to him was confined to his identity. For such a course there was no precedent, except in the case of Sir Walter Raleigh, which had brought shame upon the reign of James I.' Campbell's Chancellors (edit. 1846), V. 108. Campbell adds, 'his execution, I think, reflects great disgrace upon Lord Hardwicke [the Lord Chancellor].'
