If Garrick was aimed at, it is surprising that the severity of the satire did not bring to an end, not only all friendship, but even any acquaintance between the two men. The writer describes how he and Prospero had set out in the world together, and how for a long time they had assisted each other, till his friend had been lately raised to wealth by a lucky project. ‘I felt at his sudden shoot of success an honest and disinterested joy.’ Prospero reproached him with his neglect to visit him at his new house. When however he went to see him, he found that his friend’s impatience ‘arose not from any desire to communicate his happiness, but to enjoy his superiority.’ He was kept waiting at the door, and when at length he was shewn up stairs, he found the staircase carefully secured by mats from the pollution of his feet. Prospero led him into a backroom, where he told him he always breakfasted when he had not great company. After the visitor had endured one act of insolence after another, he says:—‘I left him without any intention of seeing him again, unless some misfortune should restore his understanding.’ Rambler, No. 200. See post, May 15, 1776, where Johnson, speaking of the charge of meanness brought against Garrick, said, ‘he might have been much better attacked for living with more splendour than is suitable to a player.’
[645] In C. C. Greville’s Journal (ii. 316) we have an instance how stories about Johnson grew. He writes:—‘Lord Holland told some stories of Johnson and Garrick which he had heard from Kemble…. When Garrick was in the zenith of his popularity, and grown rich, and lived with the great, and while Johnson was yet obscure, the Doctor used to drink tea with him, and he would say, “Davy, I do not envy you your money nor your fine acquaintance, but I envy you your power of drinking such tea as this.” “Yes,” said Garrick, “it is very good tea, but it is not my best, nor that which I give to my Lord this and Sir somebody t’other.”’ There can be little doubt that the whole story is founded on the following passage in the character of Prospero: ‘Breakfast was at last set, and, as I was not willing to indulge the peevishness that began to seize me, I commended the tea. Prospero then told me that another time I should taste his finest sort, but that he had only a very small quantity remaining, and reserved it for those whom he thought himself obliged to treat with particular respect.’ See post, April 10, 1778, where Johnson maintained that Garrick bore his good-fortune with modesty.
[646] No 98.
[647] Yet his style did not escape the harmless shafts of pleasant humour; for the ingenious Bonnell Thornton published a mock Rambler in the Drury-lane Journal. BOSWELL. Murphy (Life, p. 157), criticising the above quotation from Johnson, says:—‘He forgot the observation of Dryden: “If too many foreign words are poured in upon us, it looks as if they were designed, not to assist the natives, but to conquer them.”’
[648] Idler, No. 70. BOSWELL. In the same number Johnson writes:—‘Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers than the use of hard words…. But words are hard only to those who do not understand them; and the critic ought always to inquire, whether he is incommoded by the fault of the writer or by his own. Every author does not write for every reader.’ See post, Sept. 19, 1777, where Johnson says:—‘If Robertson’s style be faulty he owes it to me; that is, having too many words, and those too big ones.’
[649] The following passages in Temple’s writings shew that a likeness may be discovered between his style and Johnson’s:—‘There may be firmness and constancy of courage from tradition as well as of belief: nor, methinks, should any man know how to be a coward, that is brought up with the opinion, that all of his nation or city have ever been valiant.’ Temple’s Works, i. 167. ‘This is a disease too refined for this country and people, who are well, when they are not ill, and pleased, when they are not troubled; are content, because they think little of it; and seek their happiness in the common eases and commodities of life, or the increase of riches; not amusing themselves with the more speculative contrivances of passion, or refinements of pleasure.’ Ib. p. 170. ‘They send abroad the best of their own butter into all parts, and buy the cheapest out of Ireland, or the north of England, for their own use. In short they furnish infinite luxury which they never practise, and traffic in pleasures which they never taste.’ Ib. p. 195. See post, April 9, 1778, where Johnson says:—‘Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose.’
[650] Dean Stanley calls Ephraim Chambers ‘the Father of Cyclopedias.’ Memorials of Westminster Abbey, p. 299, note. The epitaph which Chambers wrote for himself the Dean gives as:—‘Multis pervulgatus, paucis notus, qui vitam inter lucem et umbram, nec eruditus nec idioticis literis deditus, transegit.’ In the Gent. Mag. for 1740, p. 262, the last line is given, no doubt correctly, as:—‘Nec eruditus nec idiota, literis deditus.’ The second edition of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia was published in 1738. There is no copy of his Proposal in the British Museum or Bodleian. The resemblance between his style and Johnson’s is not great. The following passage is the most Johnsonian that I could find:—‘None of my predecessors can blame me for the use I have made of them; since it is their own avowed practice. It is a kind of privilege attached to the office of lexicographer; if not by any formal grant, yet by connivance at least. I have already assumed the bee for my device, and who ever brought an action of trover or trespass against that avowed free-booter? ‘Tis vain to pretend anything of property in things of this nature. To offer our thoughts to the public, and yet pretend a right reserved therein to oneself, if it be not absurd, yet it is sordid. The words we speak, nay the breath we emit, is not more vague and common than our thoughts, when divulged in print.’ Chambers’s Preface, p. xxiii.
[651] ‘There were giants in the earth in those days.’ Gen. vi. 4.
[652] A GREAT PERSONAGE first appears in the second edition. In the first edition we merely find ‘by one whose authority,’ &c. Boswell in his Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773, speaks of George III. as ‘a Great Personage.’ In his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 90) he thus introduces an anecdote about the King—and Paoli:—‘I have one other circumstance to communicate; but it is of the highest value. I communicate it with a mixture of awe and fondness.—That Great Personage, who is allowed by all to have the best memory of any man born a Briton, &c. In the Probationary Odes for the Laureateship, published a few months after Boswell’s Letter, a ‘Great Personage’ is ludicrously introduced; pp. xxx. 63.
[653] The first nine lines form the motto.
[654] Horat. Epist. Lib. ii. Epist. ii. {1, 110} BOSWELL.
But how severely with themselves proceed
The men, who write such verse as we can read!
Their own strict judges, not a word they spare
That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care,
Howe’er unwillingly it quits its place,
Nay, though at court, perhaps, it may find grace:
Such they’ll degrade; and sometimes, in its stead,
In downright charity revive the dead;
Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears,
Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years;
Command old words that long have slept to wake,
Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake;
Or bid the new be English, ages hence,
(For use will father what’s begot by sense;)
Pour the full tide of eloquence along,
Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong,
Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue.’
Pope, Imitations of Horace, ii. 2. 157
[655] ‘Horat. De Arte Poetica. [1. 48.] BOSWELL.
[656] See Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 29, 1773, where Boswell says that up that date he had twice heard Johnson coin words, peregrinity and depeditation.
[657] ‘The words which our authors