[1455] George III, at all events, did not share in this blind admiration. ‘Was there ever,’ cried he, ‘such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? only one must not say so. But what think you? What? Is there not sad stuff? What? What?’ ‘Yes, indeed, I think so, Sir, though mixed with such excellencies that—’ ‘O!’ cried he, laughing good-humouredly, ‘I know it is not to be said! but it’s true. Only it’s Shakespeare, and nobody dare abuse him.’ Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii, 398.
[1456] That Johnson did not slur his work, as has been often said, we have the best of all evidence—his own word. ‘I have, indeed,’ he writes (Works, v. 152), ‘disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no slight solicitude. Not a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt which I have not attempted to restore; or obscure which I have not attempted to illustrate.’
[1457] Steevens wrote to Garrick:—‘To say the truth, the errors of Warburton and Johnson are often more meritorious than such corrections of them as the obscure industry of Mr. Farmer and myself can furnish. Disdaining crutches, they have sometimes had a fall; but it is my duty to remember, that I, for my part, could not have kept on my legs at all without them.’ Garrick Corres. ii, 130. ‘Johnson’s preface and notes are distinguished by clearness of thought and diction, and by masterly common sense.’ Cambridge Shakespeare, i. xxxvi.
[1458] Kenrick later on was the gross libeller of Goldsmith, and the far grosser libeller of Garrick. ‘When proceedings were commenced against him in the Court of King’s Bench [for the libel on Garrick], he made at once the most abject submission and retractation.’ Prior’s Goldsmith, i. 294. In the Garrick Carres, (ii. 341) is a letter addressed to Kenrick, in which Garrick says:—‘I could have honoured you by giving the satisfaction of a gentleman, if you could (as Shakespeare says) have screwed your courage to the sticking place, to have taken it.’ It is endorsed:—‘This was not sent to the scoundrel Dr. Kenrick…. It was judged best not to answer any more of Dr. Kenrick’s notes, he had behaved so unworthily.’
[1459] Ephraim Chambers, in the epitaph that he made for himself (ante, p. 219), had described himself as multis pervulgatus paucis notus.’ Gent. Mag. x. 262.
[1460] See Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 1, 1773.
[1461] Johnson had joined Voltaire with Dennis and Rymer. ‘Dennis and Rymer think Shakespeare’s Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire, perhaps, thinks decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident…. His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to show an usurper and a murderer, not only odious, but despicable; he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.’ Johnson’s Works, v. 109. Johnson had previously attacked Voltaire, in his Memoirs of Frederick the Great. (Ante, i. 435, note 2.) In these Memoirs he writes:—‘Voltaire has asserted that a large sum was raised for her [the Queen of Hungary’s] succour by voluntary subscriptions of the English ladies. It is the great failing of a strong imagination to catch greedily at wonders. He was misinformed, and was perhaps unwilling to learn, by a second enquiry, a truth less splendid and amusing.’ Ib. vi. 455. See post, Oct. 27, 1779.
[1462] ‘Voltaire replied in the Dictionnaire Philosophique. (Works, xxxiii. 566.) ‘J’ai jeté les yeux sur une édition de Shakespeare, donnée par le sieur Samuel Johnson. J’y ai vu qu’on y traite de petits esprits les étrangers qui sont étonnés que dans les pièces de ce grand Shakespeare un sénateur romain fasse le bouffon; et gu’un roi paraisse sur le théâtre en ivrogne. Je ne veux point soupçonner le sieur Johnson d’ètre un mauvais plaisant, et d’aimer trop le vin; mais je trouve un peu extraordinaire qu’il compte la bouffonnerie et l’ivrognerie parmi les beautes du théatre tragique; la raison qu’il en donne n’est pas moins singulière. Le poète, dit-il, dédaigne ces distinctions accidentelles de conditions et de pays, comme un peintre qui, content d’avoir peint la figure, néglige la draperie. La comparaison serait plus juste, s’il parlait d’un peintre qui, dans un sujet noble, introduirait des grotesques ridicules, peindrait dans la bataille d’Arbelles Alexandre-le Grand monte sur un âne, et la femme de Darius buvant avec des goujats dans un cabaret.’ Johnson, perhaps, had this attack in mind when, in his Life of Pope (Works, viii. 275), he thus wrote of Voltaire:—‘He had been entertained by Pope at his table, when he talked with so much grossness, that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope discovered by a trick that he was a spy for the court, and never considered him as a man worthy of confidence.’
[1463] See post, under May 8, 1781.
[1464] See post, ii. 74.
[1465] He was probably proposing to himself the model of this excellent person, who for his piety was named the Seraphic Doctor. BOSWELL.
[1466]
‘E’en in a bishop I can spy desert,
Secker is decent, Rundel has a heart.’
Pope. Epil, Sat. II. 70.
[1467] So Smollett calls him in his History of England, iii. 16.
[1468] Six of these twelve guineas Johnson appears to have borrowed from Mr. Allen, the printer. See Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 366 n. MALONE.
[1469] Written by mistake for 1759. On the outside of the letter of the 13th was written by another hand—‘Pray acknowledge the receipt of this by return of post, without fail.’ MALONE.
[1470] Catherine Chambers, Mrs. Johnson’s maid-servant. She died in October, 1767. MALONE. See post, ii. 43.
[1471] This letter was written on the second leaf of the preceding, addressed to Miss Porter. MALONE.
[1472] Mrs. Johnson probably died on the 20th or 21st January, and was buried on the day this letter was written. MALONE. On the day on which his mother was buried Johnson composed a prayer, as being ‘now about to return to the common comforts and business of the world.’ Pr. and Med. p. 38. After his wife”s death he had allowed forty days to pass before his ‘return to life.’ See ante, p. 234, note 2.
[1473] See ante, p. 80.
[1474] Barnaby Greene had just published The Laureat, a Poem, in which Johnson is abused. It is in the February list of books in the Gent. Mag. for 1765.
[1475] Sir Cloudesly Shovel’s monument is thus mentioned by Addison in The Spectator, No. 26:—‘It has very often given me great offence; instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state.’
[1476]
‘That live-long wig, which Gorgon’s self might own,
Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.’
Pope’s Moral Essays, iii. 295.
[1477] Milton’s Epigram is in his Sylvarum Liber, and is entitled In Effigiei ejus Sculptorem.
[1478] Johnson’s acquaintance, Bishop Newton (post, June 3, 1784), published an edition of Milton.
[1479] It was no doubt by the Master of Emanuel College, his friend Dr. Farmer (ante, p. 368), that