To leave the margin wide.
Lend these to paper-sparing Pope;
And when he sits to write,
No letter with an envelope
Could give him more delight.’
Advice to the Grub Street Verse-Writers. (Swift’s Works, 1803, xi 32.) Nichols, in a note on this passage, says:—‘The original copy of Pope’s Homer is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.’ Johnson, in his Life of Pope, writes:—‘Of Pope’s domestic character frugality was a part eminently remarkable…. This general care must be universally approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which perhaps in five years five shillings were saved.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 312.
[406] See note, p. 132. BOSWELL.
[407] The Marmor Norfolciense, price one shilling, is advertised in the Gent. Mag. for 1739 (p. 220) among the books for April.
[408] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 8. BOSWELL.
[409] According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘Every person who knew Dr. Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the conversation. These were therefore improperly called convulsions, which imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his attention was recovered. Sometimes, indeed, it would be near a minute before he would give an answer, looking as if he laboured to bring his mind to bear on the question’ (Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 456). ‘I still, however, think,’ wrote Boswell, ‘that these gestures were involuntary; for surely had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in the public streets’ (Boswell’s Hebrides, under date of Aug. 11, 1773, note). Dr. T. Campbell, in his Diary of a Visit to England, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—‘He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil’s jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.’ Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:—‘Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes of all together.’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, i. 63. See post, under March 30, 1783, Boswell’s note on Johnson’s peculiarities.
[410] ‘Solitude,’ wrote Reynolds, ‘to him was horror; nor would he ever trust himself alone but when employed in writing or reading. He has often begged me to go home with him to prevent his being alone in the coach. Any company was better than none; by which he connected himself with many mean persons whose presence he could command.’ Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 455. Johnson writing to Mrs. Thrale, said:—‘If the world be worth winning, let us enjoy it; if it is to be despised, let us despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it is compared with something better. Company is in itself better than solitude, and pleasure better than indolence.’ Piozzi Letters, i. 242. In The Idler, No. 32, he wrote:—‘Others are afraid to be alone, and amuse themselves by a perpetual succession of companions; but the difference is not great; in solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert. The end sought in both is forgetfulness of ourselves.’ In The Rambler, No. 5, he wrote:—‘It may be laid down as a position which will seldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life from the equipoise of an empty mind … or he must be afraid of the intrusion of some unpleasing ideas, and, perhaps, is struggling to escape from the remembrance of a loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other thought of greater horror.’
Cowper, whose temperament was in some respects not unlike Johnson’s, wrote:—‘A vacant hour is my abhorrence; because, when I am not occupied, I suffer under the whole influence of my unhappy temperament.’ Southey’s Cowper, vi. 146.
[411] Richardson was of the same way of thinking as Hogarth. Writing of a speech made at the Oxford Commemoration of 1754 by the Jacobite Dr. King (see post, Feb. 1755), he said:—‘There cannot be a greater instance of the lenity of the government he abuses than his pestilent harangues so publicly made with impunity furnishes (sic) all his readers with.’—Rich. Corresp. ii. 197.
[412] Impartial posterity may, perhaps, be as little inclined as Dr. Johnson was to justify the uncommon rigour exercised in the case of Dr. Archibald Cameron. He was an amiable and truly honest man; and his offence was owing to a generous, though mistaken principle of duty. Being obliged, after 1746, to give up his profession as a physician, and to go into foreign parts, he was honoured with the rank of Colonel, both in the French and Spanish service. He was a son of the ancient and respectable family of Cameron, of Lochiel; and his brother, who was the Chief of that brave clan, distinguished himself by moderation and humanity, while the Highland army marched victorious through Scotland. It is remarkable of this Chief, that though he had earnestly remonstrated against the attempt as hopeless, he was of too heroick a spirit not to venture his life and fortune in the cause, when personally asked by him whom he thought his prince. BOSWELL.
Sir Walter Scott states, in his Introduction to Redgauntlet, that the government of George II were in possession of sufficient evidence that Dr. Cameron had returned to the Highlands, not, as he alleged on his trial, for family affairs merely, but as the secret agent of the Pretender in a new scheme of rebellion: the ministers, however, preferred trying this indefatigable partisan on the ground of his undeniable share in the insurrection of 1745, rather than rescuing themselves and their master from the charge of harshness, at the expense of making it universally known, that a fresh rebellion had been in agitation so late as 1752. LOCKHART. He was executed on June 7, 1753. Gent. Mag. xxiii. 292. Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, v. 109) says:—‘I regard his execution as a wanton atrocity.’ Horace Walpole, however, inclined to the belief that Cameron was engaged in a new scheme of rebellion. Walpole’s Memoirs of George II, i. 333.
[413] Horace Walpole says that towards convicts under sentence of death ‘George II’s disposition in general was merciful, if the offence was not murder.’ He mentions, however, a dreadful exception, when the King sent to the gallows at Oxford a young man who had been ‘guilty of a most trifling forgery,’ though he had been recommended to mercy by the Judge, who ‘had assured him his pardon.’ Mercy was refused, merely because the Judge, Willes, ‘was attached to the Prince of Wales.’ It is very likely that this was one of Johnson’s ‘instances,’ as it had happened about four years earlier, and as an account of the young man had been published by an Oxonian. Walpole’s Memoirs of the Reign of George II, i. 175.
[414] It is strange that when Johnson had been sixteen years in London he should not be known to Hogarth by sight. ‘Mr. Hogarth,’ writes Mrs. Piozzi, ‘was used to be very earnest that I should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible, the friendship of Dr. Johnson, “whose conversation was to the talk of other men, like Titian’s painting compared to Hudson’s,” he said…. Of Dr. Johnson, when my father and he were talking together about him one day, “That man,” says Hogarth, “is not contented with believing the Bible, but he fairly resolves, I think, to believe nothing but the Bible.”’ Piozzi’s Anec. p. 136.
[415] On October 29 of this year James Boswell was born.
[416] In this preface is found the following lively passage:—‘The Roman Gazetteers are defective in several material ornaments of style. They never end an article