Part 7 (1/2)
We parted at his door one evening when I had teased him for many weeks to write a recommendatory letter of a little boy to his schoolmaster; and after he had faithfully promised to do this prodigious feat before we met again--”Do not forget dear d.i.c.k, sir,” said I, as he went out of the coach. He turned back, stood still two minutes on the carriage-step--”When I have written my letter for d.i.c.k, I may hang myself, mayn't I?” and turned away in a very ill humour indeed.
Though apt enough to take sudden likings or aversions to people he occasionally met, he would never hastily p.r.o.nounce upon their character; and when, seeing him justly delighted with Solander's conversation, I observed once that he was a man of great parts who talked from a full mind--”It may be so,” said Mr. Johnson, ”but you cannot know it yet, nor I neither: the pump works well, to be sure! but how, I wonder, are we to decide in so very short an acquaintance, whether it is supplied by a spring or a reservoir?” He always made a great difference in his esteem between talents and erudition; and when he saw a person eminent for literature, though wholly unconversible, it fretted him. ”Teaching such tonies,” said he to me one day, ”is like setting a lady's diamonds in lead, which only obscures the l.u.s.tre of the stone, and makes the possessor ashamed on't.” Useful and what we call everyday knowledge had the most of his just praise. ”Let your boy learn arithmetic, dear madam,” was his advice to the mother of a rich young heir: ”he will not then be a prey to every rascal which this town swarms with. Teach him the value of money, and how to reckon it; ignorance to a wealthy lad of one-and-twenty is only so much fat to a sick sheep: it just serves to call the _rooks_ about him.”
”And all that prey in vice or folly Joy to see their quarry fly; Here the gamester light and jolly, There the lender grave and sly.”
These improviso lines, making part of a long copy of verses which my regard for the youth on whose birthday they were written obliges me to suppress, lest they should give him pain, show a mind of surprising activity and warmth; the more so as he was past seventy years of age when he composed them; but nothing more certainly offended Mr. Johnson than the idea of a man's faculties (mental ones, I mean) decaying by time. ”It is not true, sir,” would he say; ”what a man could once do, he would always do, unless, indeed, by dint of vicious indolence, and compliance with the nephews and the nieces who crowd round an old fellow, and help to tuck him in, till he, contented with the exchange of fame for ease, e'en resolves to let them set the pillows at his back, and gives no further proof of his existence than just to suck the jelly that prolongs it.”
For such a life or such a death Dr. Johnson was indeed never intended by Providence: his mind was like a warm climate, which brings everything to perfection suddenly and vigorously, not like the alembicated productions of artificial fire, which always betray the difficulty of bringing them forth when their size is disproportionate to their flavour. ”Je ferois un Roman tout comme un autre, mais la vie n'est point un Roman,” says a famous French writer; and this was so certainly the opinion of the author of the ”Rambler,” that all his conversation precepts tended towards the dispersion of romantic ideas, and were chiefly intended to promote the cultivation of
”That which before thee lies in daily life.”
MILTON.
And when he talked of authors, his praise went spontaneously to such pa.s.sages as are sure in his own phrase to leave something behind them useful on common occasions, or observant of common manners. For example, it was not the two _last_, but the two _first_ volumes of ”Clarissa” that he prized; ”for give me a sick-bed and a dying lady,” said he, ”and I'll be pathetic myself. But Richardson had picked the kernel of life,” he said, ”while Fielding was contented with the husk.” It was not King Lear cursing his daughters, or deprecating the storm, that I remember his commendations of; but Iago's ingenious malice and subtle revenge; or Prince Hal's gay compliance with the vices of Falstaff, whom he all along despised. Those plays had indeed no rivals in Johnson's favour: ”No man but Shakespeare,” he said, ”could have drawn Sir John.”
His manner of criticising and commending Addison's prose was the same in conversation as we read it in the printed strictures, and many of the expressions used have been heard to fall from him on common occasions. It was notwithstanding observable enough (or I fancied so) that he did never like, though he always thought fit to praise it; and his praises resembled those of a man who extols the superior elegance of high painted porcelain, while he himself always chooses to eat off _plate_. I told him so one day, and he neither denied it nor appeared displeased.
Of the pathetic in poetry he never liked to speak, and the only pa.s.sage I ever heard him applaud as particularly tender in any common book was Jane Sh.o.r.e's exclamation in the last act--
”Forgive me! _but_ forgive me!”
It was not, however, from the want of a susceptible heart that he hated to cite tender expressions, for he was more strongly and more violently affected by the force of words representing ideas capable of affecting him at all than any other man in the world, I believe: and when he would try to repeat the celebrated Prosa Ecclesiastica pro Mortuis, as it is called, beginning ”Dies irae, Dies illa,” he could never pa.s.s the stanza ending thus, ”Tantus labor non sit ca.s.sus,” without bursting into a flood of tears; which sensibility I used to quote against him when he would inveigh against devotional poetry, and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble, and unworthy the subject, which ought to be treated with higher reverence, he said, than either poets or painters could presume to excite or bestow. Nor can anything be a stronger proof of Dr.
Johnson's piety than such an expression; for his idea of poetry was magnificent indeed, and very fully was he persuaded of its superiority over every other talent bestowed by heaven on man. His chapter upon that particular subject in his ”Ra.s.selas” is really written from the fulness of his heart, and quite in his best manner, I think. I am not so sure that this is the proper place to mention his writing that surprising little volume in a week or ten days' time, in order to obtain money for his journey to Lichfield when his mother lay upon her last sick-bed.
Prompt.i.tude of thought, indeed, and quickness of expression, were among the peculiar felicities of Johnson; his notions rose up like the dragon's teeth sowed by Cadmus all ready clothed, and in bright armour too, fit for immediate battle. He was therefore (as somebody is said to have expressed it) a tremendous converser, and few people ventured to try their skill against an antagonist with whom contention was so hopeless.
One gentleman, however, who dined at a n.o.bleman's house in his company, and that of Mr. Thrale, to whom I was obliged for the anecdote, was willing to enter the lists in defence of King William's character, and having opposed and contradicted Johnson two or three times petulantly enough, the master of the house began to feel uneasy, and expect disagreeable consequences; to avoid which he said, loud enough for the Doctor to hear, ”Our friend here has no meaning now in all this, except just to relate at club to-morrow how he teased Johnson at dinner to-day--this is all to do himself _honour_.” ”No, upon my word,” replied the other, ”I see no _honour_ in it, whatever you may do.” ”Well, sir!”
returned Mr. Johnson, sternly, ”if you do not _see_ the _honour_, I am sure I _feel_ the _disgrace_.”
A young fellow, less confident of his own abilities, lamenting one day that he had lost all his Greek--”I believe it happened at the same time, sir,” said Johnson, ”that I lost all my large estate in Yorks.h.i.+re.”
But however roughly he might be suddenly provoked to treat a harmless exertion of vanity, he did not wish to inflict the pain he gave, and was sometimes very sorry when he perceived the people to smart more than they deserved. ”How harshly you treated that man to-day,” said I once, ”who harangued us so about gardening.” ”I am sorry,” said he, ”if I vexed the creature, for there is certainly no harm in a fellow's rattling a rattle- box, only don't let him think that he thunders.” The Lincolns.h.i.+re lady who showed him a grotto she had been making, came off no better, as I remember. ”Would it not be a pretty cool habitation in summer,” said she, ”Mr. Johnson?” ”I think it would, madam,” replied he, ”for a toad.”
All desire of distinction, indeed, had a sure enemy in Mr. Johnson. We met a friend driving six very small ponies, and stopped to admire them.
”Why does n.o.body,” said our Doctor, ”begin the fas.h.i.+on of driving six spavined horses, all spavined of the same leg? It would have a mighty pretty effect, and produce the distinction of doing something worse than the common way.”
When Mr. Johnson had a mind to compliment any one he did it with more dignity to himself, and better effect upon the company, than any man. I can recollect but few instances, indeed, though perhaps that may be more my fault than his. When Sir Joshua Reynolds left the room one day, he said, ”There goes a man not to be spoilt by prosperity.” And when Mrs.
Montague showed him some China plates which had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth, he told her ”that they had no reason to be ashamed of their present possessor, who was so little inferior to the first.” I likewise remember that he p.r.o.nounced one day at my house a most lofty panegyric upon Jones the Orientalist, who seemed little pleased with the praise, for what cause I know not. He was not at all offended when, comparing all our acquaintance to some animal or other, we pitched upon the elephant for his resemblance, adding that the proboscis of that creature was like his mind most exactly, strong to buffet even the tiger, and pliable to pick up even the pin. The truth is, Mr. Johnson was often good humouredly willing to join in childish amus.e.m.e.nts, and hated to be left out of any innocent merriment that was going forward. Mr. Murphy always said he was incomparable at buffoonery; and I verily think, if he had had good eyes, and a form less inflexible, he would have made an admirable mimic.
He certainly rode on Mr. Thrale's old hunter with a good firmness, and though he would follow the hounds fifty miles on end sometimes, would never own himself either tired or amused. ”I have now learned,” said he, ”by hunting, to perceive that it is no diversion at all, nor ever takes a man out of himself for a moment: the dogs have less sagacity than I could have prevailed on myself to suppose; and the gentlemen often call to me not to ride over them. It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasure should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.” He was, however, proud to be amongst the sportsmen; and I think no praise ever went so close to his heart as when Mr. Hamilton called out one day upon Brighthelmstone Downs, ”Why, Johnson rides as well, for aught I see, as the most illiterate fellow in England.”
Though Dr. Johnson owed his very life to air and exercise, given him when his organs of respiration could scarcely play, in the year 1766, yet he ever persisted in the notion that neither of them had anything to do with health. ”People live as long,” said he, ”in Pepper Alley as on Salisbury Plain; and they live so much happier, that an inhabitant of the first would, if he turned cottager, starve his understanding for want of conversation, and perish in a state of mental inferiority.”
Mr. Johnson, indeed, as he was a very talking man himself, had an idea that nothing promoted happiness so much as conversation. A friend's erudition was commended one day as equally deep and strong. ”He will not talk, sir,” was the reply, ”so his learning does no good, and his wit, if he has it, gives us no pleasure. Out of all his boasted stores I never heard him force but one word, and that word was _Richard_.” With a contempt not inferior he received the praises of a pretty lady's face and behaviour. ”She says nothing, sir,” answers Johnson; ”a talking blackamoor were better than a white creature who adds nothing to life, and by sitting down before one thus desperately silent, takes away the confidence one should have in the company of her chair if she were once out of it.” No one was, however, less willing to begin any discourse than himself. His friend, Mr. Thomas Tyers, said he was like the ghosts, who never speak till they are spoken to: and he liked the expression so well, that he often repeated it. He had, indeed, no necessity to lead the stream of chat to a favourite channel, that his fulness on the subject might be shown more clearly whatever was the topic; and he usually left the choice to others. His information best enlightened, his argument strengthened, and his wit made it ever remembered. Of him it might have been said, as he often delighted to say of Edmund Burke, ”that you could not stand five minutes with that man beneath a shed while it rained, but you must be convinced you had been standing with the greatest man you had ever yet seen.”
As we had been saying, one day, that no subject failed of receiving dignity from the manner in which Mr. Johnson treated it, a lady at my house said she would make him talk about love, and took her measures accordingly, deriding the novels of the day because they treated about love. ”It is not,” replied our philosopher, ”because they treat, as you call it, about love, but because they treat of nothing, that they are despicable. We must not ridicule a pa.s.sion which he who never felt never was happy, and he who laughs at never deserves to feel--a pa.s.sion which has caused the change of empires and the loss of worlds--a pa.s.sion which has inspired heroism and subdued avarice.” He thought he had already said too much. ”A pa.s.sion, in short,” added he, with an altered tone, ”that consumes me away for my pretty f.a.n.n.y here, and she is very cruel,”
speaking of another lady in the room. He told us, however, in the course of the same chat, how his negro Francis had been eminent for his success among the girls. Seeing us all laugh, ”I must have you know, ladies,”
said he, ”that Frank has carried the empire of Cupid further than most men. When I was in Lincolns.h.i.+re so many years ago he attended me thither; and when we returned home together, I found that a female haymaker had followed him to London for love.” Francis was indeed no small favourite with his master, who retained, however, a prodigious influence over his most violent pa.s.sions.
On the birthday of our eldest daughter, and that of our friend Dr.
Johnson, the 17th and the 18th of September, we every year made up a little dance and supper, to divert our servants and their friends, putting the summer-house into their hands for the two evenings, to fill with acquaintance and merriment. Francis and his white wife were invited, of course. She was eminently pretty, and he was jealous, as my maids told me. On the first of these days' amus.e.m.e.nts (I know not what year) Frank took offence at some attentions paid his Desdemona, and walked away next morning to London in wrath. His master and I driving the same road an hour after, overtook him. ”What is the matter, child,”
says Dr. Johnson, ”that you leave Streatham to-day. _Art sick_?” ”He is jealous,” whispered I. ”Are you jealous of your wife, you stupid blockhead?” cries out his master in another tone. The fellow hesitated, and, ”_To be sure_, _sir_, _I don't quite approve_, _sir_,” was the stammering reply. ”Why, what do they _do_ to her, man? Do the footmen kiss her?” ”No, sir, no! Kiss my _wife_, sir! _I hope not_, sir.”