the oppression inflicted by the perversion of legal authority, says:—‘Equally dangerous and equally detestable are the cruelties often exercised in private families, under the venerable sanction of parental authority.’ He continues:—‘Even though no consideration should be paid to the great law of social beings, by which every individual is commanded to consult the happiness of others, yet the harsh parent is less to be vindicated than any other criminal, because he less provides for the happiness of himself.’ See also post, March 29, 1779. A passage in one of Boswell’s Letters to Temple (p. 111) may also be quoted here:—‘The time was when such a letter from my father as the one I enclose would have depressed; but I am now firm, and, as my revered friend, Mr. Samuel Johnson, used to say, I feel the privileges of an independent human being; however, it is hard that I cannot have the pious satisfaction of being well with my father.’
[1039] Perhaps ‘Van,’ for Vansittart.
[1040] Lord Stowell informs me that Johnson prided himself in being, during his visits to Oxford, accurately academic in all points: and he wore his gown almost ostentatiously. CROKER.
[1041] Dr. Robert Vansittart, of the ancient and respectable family of that name in Berkshire. He was eminent for learning and worth, and much esteemed by Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL. Johnson perhaps proposed climbing over the wall on the day on which ‘University College witnessed him drink three bottles of port without being the worse for it.’ Post, April 7, 1778.
[1042] Gentleman’s Magazine, April, 1785. BOSWELL. The speech was made on July 7, 1759, the last day of ‘the solemnity of the installment’ of the Earl of Westmoreland as Chancellor of the University. On the 3rd ‘the ceremony began with a grand procession of noblemen, doctors, &c., in their proper habits, which passed through St. Mary’s, and was there joined by the Masters of Arts in their proper habits; and from thence proceeded to the great gate of the Sheldonian Theatre, in which the most numerous and brilliant assembly of persons of quality and distinction was seated, that had ever been seen there on any occasion.’ Gent. Mag. xxix. 342. Would that we had some description of Johnson, as, in his new and handsome gown, he joined the procession among the Masters! See ante, p. 281.
[1043] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3d edit. p. 126 [Aug. 31]. BOSWELL. The chance of death from disease would seem also to have been greater on the ship than in a jail. In The Idler (No. 38) Johnson estimates that one in four of the prisoners dies every year. In his Review of Hanway’s Essay on Tea (Works, vi. 31) he states that he is told that ‘of the five or six hundred seamen sent to China, sometimes half, commonly a third part, perish in the voyage.’ See post, April 10, 1778.
[1044] Ibid. p. 251 [Sept. 23]. BOSWELL.
[1045] In my first edition this word was printed Chum, as it appears, in one of Mr. Wilkes’s Miscellanies, and I animadverted on Dr. Smollet’s ignorance; for which let me propitiate the manes of that ingenious and benevolent gentleman. CHUM was certainly a mistaken reading for Cham, the title of the Sovereign of Tartary, which is well applied to Johnson, the Monarch of Literature; and was an epithet familiar to Smollet. See Roderick Random, chap. 56. For this correction I am indebted to Lord Palmerston, whose talents and literary acquirements accord well with his respectable pedigree of TEMPLE BOSWELL.
After the publication of the second edition of this work, the author was furnished by Mr. Abercrombie, of Philadelphia, with the copy of a letter written by Dr. John Armstrong, the poet, to Dr. Smollet at Leghorne, containing the following paragraph:—‘As to the K. Bench patriot, it is hard to say from what motive he published a letter of yours asking some triffling favour of him in behalf of somebody, for whom the great CHAM of literature, Mr. Johnson, had interested himself.’ MALONE. In the first edition Boswell had said:—‘Had Dr. Smollet been bred at an English University, he would have know that a chum is a student who lives with another in a chamber common to them both. A chum of literature is nonsense.’
[1046] In a note to that piece of bad book-making, Almon’s Memoirs of Wilkes (i. 47), this allusion is thus explained:-‘A pleasantry of Mr. Wilkes on that passage in Johnson’s Grammar of the English Tongue, prefixed to the Dictionary—”H seldom, perhaps never, begins any but the first syllable.”’ For this ‘pleasantry’ see ante, p. 300.
[1047] Mr. Croker says that he was not discharged till June 1760. Had he been discharged at once he would have found Johnson moving from Gough Square to Staple Inn; for in a letter to Miss Porter, dated March 23, 1739, given in the Appendix, Johnson said:-‘I have this day moved my things, and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn.’
[1048] Prayers and Meditations , pp. 30 [39] and 40. BOSWELL.
[1049] ‘I have left off housekeeping’ wrote Johnson to Langton on Jan. 9, 1759. Murphy (Life, p. 90), writing of the beginning of the year 1759, says:—‘Johnson now found it necessary to retrench his expenses. He gave up his house in Gough Square. Mrs. Williams went into lodgings [See post, July 1, 1763]. He retired to Gray’s-Inn, [he had first moved to Staple Inn], and soon removed to chambers in the Inner Temple-lane, where he lived in poverty, total idleness, and the pride of literature, Magni stat nominis umbra. Mr. Fitzherbert used to say that he paid a morning visit to Johnson, intending from his chambers to send a letter into the city; but, to his great surprise, he found an authour by profession without pen, ink, or paper.’ (It was Mr. Fitzherbert, who sent Johnson some wine. See ante, p. 305, note 2. See also post, Sept. 15, 1777). The following documents confirm Murphy’s statement of Johnson’s poverty at this time:
‘May 19, 1759.
‘I promise to pay to Mr. Newbery the sum of forty-two pounds, nineteen shillings, and ten pence on demand, value received. £42 19 10.
‘Sam. Johnson.’
‘March 20, 1760.
‘I promise to pay to Mr. Newbery the sum of thirty pounds upon demand., £30 0 0.
‘Sam. Johnson.’
In 1751 he had thrice borrowed money of Newbery, but the total amount of the loans was only four guineas. Prior’s Goldsmith, i. 340. With Johnson’s want of pen, ink, and paper we may compare the account that he gives of Savage’s destitution (Works, viii. 3):—‘Nor had he any other conveniences for study than the fields or the streets allowed him; there he used to walk and form his speeches, and afterwards step into a shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen and ink, and write down what he had composed upon paper which he had picked up by accident.’ Hawkins (Life, p. 383) says that Johnson’s chambers were two doors down the Inner Temple Lane. ‘I have been told,’ he continues, ‘by his neighbour at the corner, that during the time he dwelt there, more inquiries were made at his shop for Mr. Johnson, than for all the inhabitants put together of both the Inner and Middle Temple.’ In a court opening out of Fleet Street, Goldsmith at this very time was still more miserably lodged. In the beginning of March 1759, Percy found him ‘employed in writing his Enquiry into Polite Learning in a wretched dirty room, in which there was but one chair, and when he from civility offered it to his visitant, himself was obliged to sit in the window.’ Goldsmith’s Misc. Works, i. 61.
[1050] Sir John Hawkins (Life, p. 373) has given a long detail of it, in that manner vulgarly, but significantly, called rigmarole; in which, amidst an ostentatious exhibition of arts and artists, he talks of ‘proportions of a column being taken from that of the human figure, and adjusted by Nature—masculine and feminine—in a man, sesquioctave of the head, and in a woman sesquinonal;’ nor has he failed to introduce a jargon of musical terms, which do not seem much to correspond with the subject, but serve to make up the heterogeneous mass. To follow the Knight through all this, would be an useless fatigue to myself, and not a little disgusting to my readers. I shall, therefore, only make a few remarks upon his statement.—He seems to exult in having detected Johnson in procuring ‘from a person eminently skilled in Mathematicks and the principles of architecture, answers to a string of questions drawn up by himself, touching the comparative strength of semicircular and elliptical arches.’