hear, shall hear to latest times,
Of Roman arms with civil gore imbrued,
Which better had the Persian foe subdued.’
Francis.]
It was during the American War. BURNEY. Boswell in his Hebrides (Oct. 12, 1773) records, ‘Dr. Johnson is often uttering pious ejaculations, when he appears to be talking to himself; for sometimes his voice grows stronger, and parts of the Lord’s Prayer are heard.’ In the same passage he describes other ‘particularities,’ and adds in a note:—‘It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying anything on the subject, which I hoped he would have done.’ See post, Dec. 1784, note.
[1419] Churchill’s Poems, i. 16. See ante, p. 391.
[1420] ‘It is in vain to try to find a meaning in every one of his particularities, which, I suppose, are mere habits contracted by chance; of which every man has some that are more or less remarkable.’ Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 12, 1773. ‘The love of symmetry and order, which is natural to the mind of man, betrays him sometimes into very whimsical fancies. “This noble principle,” says a French author, “loves to amuse itself on the most trifling occasions. You may see a profound philosopher,” says he, “walk for an hour together in his chamber, and industriously treading at every step upon every other board in the flooring.”’ The Spectator, No. 632.
[1421] Mr. S. Whyte (Miscellanea Nova, p. 49) tells how from old Mr. Sheridan’s house in Bedford-street, opposite Henrietta-street, with an opera-glass he watched Johnson approaching. ‘I perceived him at a good distance working along with a peculiar solemnity of deportment, and an awkward sort of measured step. Upon every post as he passed along, he deliberately laid his hand; but missing one of them, when he had got at some distance he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and immediately returning carefully performed the accustomed ceremony, and resumed his former course, not omitting one till he gained the crossing. This, Mr. Sheridan assured me, was his constant practice.’
[1422] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 316. BOSWELL. ‘The day that we left Talisker, he bade us ride on. He then turned the head of his horse back towards Talisker, stopped for some time; then wheeled round to the same direction with ours, and then came briskly after us.’ Boswell’s Hebrides‘, Oct. 12, 1773.
[1423] Sir Joshua’s sister, for whom Johnson had a particular affection, and to whom he wrote many letters which I have seen, and which I am sorry her too nice delicacy will not permit to be published. BOSWELL. ‘Whilst the company at Mr. Thrale’s were speculating upon a microscope for the mind, Johnson exclaimed:—“I never saw one that would bear it, except that of my dear Miss Reynolds, and hers is very near to purity itself.”’ Northcote’s Reynolds, i. 80. Once, said Northcote, there was a coolness between her and her brother. She wished to set forth to him her grievances in a letter. Not finding it easy to write, she consulted Johnson, ‘who offered to write a letter himself, which when copied should pass as her own.’ This he did. It began: ‘I am well aware that complaints are always odious, but complain I must.’ Such a letter as this she saw would not pass with Sir Joshua as her own, and so she could not use it. Ib. p. 203. Of Johnson’s letters to her Malone published one, and Mr. Croker several more. Mme. D’Arblay, in the character she draws of her (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 332), says that ‘Dr. Johnson tried in vain to cure her of living in an habitual perplexity of mind and irresolution of conduct, which to herself was restlessly tormenting, and to all around her was teazingly wearisome.’
[1424] See Appendix C.
[1425] Pr. and Med. p. 61. BOSWELL.
[1426] See ante, p. 346.
[1427] His quarter’s pension. See ante, P. 376.
[1428] Mr. Croker, misunderstanding a passage in Hawkins, writes:—‘Hawkins says that he disliked to be called Doctor, as reminding him that he had been a schoolmaster.’ What Hawkins really says (Life, p. 446) is this:—‘His attachment to Oxford prevented Johnson from receiving this honour as it was intended, and he never assumed the title which it conferred. He was as little pleased to be called Doctor in consequence of it, as he was with the title of Domine, which a friend of his once incautiously addressed him by. He thought it alluded to his having been a schoolmaster.’ It is clear that ‘it’ in the last line refers only to the title of Domine. Murphy (Life, p. 98) says that Johnson never assumed the title of Doctor, till Oxford conferred on him the degree. Boswell states (post, March 31, 1775, note):—‘It is remarkable that he never, so far as I know, assumed his title of Doctor, but called himself Mr. Johnson.’ In this, as I show there, Boswell seems to be not perfectly accurate. I do not believe Hawkins’s assertion that Johnson ‘was little pleased to be called Doctor in consequence of his Dublin degree.’ In Boswell’s Hebrides, most of which was read by him before he received his Oxford degree, he is commonly styled Doctor. Boswell says in a note on Aug. 15, 1773:—‘It was some time before I could bring myself to call him Doctor.’ Had Johnson disliked the title it would have been known to Boswell. Mrs. Thrale, it is true, in her letters’ to him, after he had received both his degrees, commonly speaks of him as Mr. Johnson. We may assume that he valued his Oxford degree of M.A. more highly than the Dublin degree of LL.D.; for in the third edition of the Abridgment of his Dictionary, published in 1766, he is styled Samuel Johnson, A.M. In his Lives of the Poets he calls himself simply Samuel Johnson. He had by that time risen above degrees. In his Journey to the Hebrides (Works, ix. 14), after stating that ‘An English or Irish doctorate cannot be obtained by a very young man,’ he continues:—‘It is reasonable to suppose … that he who is by age qualified to be a doctor, has in so much time gained learning sufficient not to disgrace the title, or wit sufficient not to desire it.’
[1429] Trinity College made him, it should seem, Armiger at the same time that it made him Doctor of Laws.
[1430] See Appendix D for this letter.
[1431] Pr. and Med. p. 66. BOSWELL.
[1432] Single-speech Hamilton, as he was commonly called, though in the House of Commons he had spoken more than once. For above thirty sessions together, however, he held his tongue. Prior’s Burke, p. 67.
[1433] See Appendix E for an explanation.
[1434] Pr. and Med. p. 67 BOSWELL.
[1435] See Appendix F.
[1436] Mr. Blakeway, in a note on this passage, says:—‘The predecessor of old Thrale was Edmund Halsey, Esq.; the nobleman who married his daughter was Lord Cobham. The family of Thrale was of some consideration in St. Albans; in the Abbey-church is a handsome monument to the memory of Mr. John Thrale, late of London, merchant, who died in 1704.’ He describes the arms on the monument. Mr. Hayward, in Mrs. Piozzis Autobiography, i. 9, quotes her marginal note on this page in Boswell. She says that Edmund Halsey, son of a miller at St. Albans, married the only daughter of his master, old Child, of the Anchor Brewhouse, Southwark, and succeeded to the business upon Child’s death. ‘He sent for one of his sister’s sons to London (my Mr. Thrale’s father); said he would make a man of him, and did so; but made him work very hard, and treated him very roughly.’ He left him nothing at his death, and Thrale bought the brewery of Lord and Lady Cobham.
[1437] See post, under April 4, 1781, and June 16, 1781.
[1438] Mrs. Burney informs me that she heard Dr. Johnson say, ‘An English Merchant is a new species of Gentleman.’ He, perhaps, had in his mind the following ingenious passage in The Conscious Lovers, act iv. scene ii, where Mr. Sealand thus addresses Sir John Bevil: ‘Give me leave to say, that we merchants are a species of gentry that have grown into the world this last century, and are as honourable, and almost as useful as you landed-folks, that have always thought yourselves so much above us; for your trading forsooth is extended no farther than a load of hay, or a fat ox.—You are pleasant people indeed! because you are generally bred up to be lazy, therefore, I warrant