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the same regard which you express for me on every other occasion, will incline you to forgive me. I am often, very often, ill; and, when I am well, am obliged to work: and, indeed, have never much used myself to punctuality. You are however, not to make unkind inferences, when I forbear to reply to your kindness; for be assured, I never receive a letter from you without great pleasure, and a very warm sense of your generosity and friendship, which I heartily blame myself for not cultivating with more care. In this, as in many other cases, I go wrong, in opposition to conviction; for I think scarce any temporal good equally to be desired with the regard and familiarity of worthy men. I hope we shall be some time nearer to each other, and have a more ready way of pouring out our hearts.

"I am glad that you still find encouragement to proceed in your publication, and shall beg the favour of six more volumes to add to my former six, when you can with any convenience send them me. Please to present a set in my name to Mr. Ruddiman', of whom, I hear, that his learning is not his highest excellence. I have transcribed the mottos, and returned them, I hope not too late, of which I think many very happily performed. Mr. Cave has put the last in the magazine 2, in which I think he did well. I beg of you to write soon, and to write often, and to write long letters, which I hope in time to repay you; but you must be a patient creditor. I have, however, this of gratitude, that I think of you with regard, when I do not, perhaps, give the proofs which I ought, of being, sir, your most obliged and most humble servant,

"SAM. JOHNSON."

This year he wrote to the same gentleman another letter upon a mournful occasion.

66

TO MR. JAMES ELPHINSTON... "September 25, 1750. "DEAR SIR,-You have, as I find by every kind of evidence, lost an excellent mother; and I hope you will not think me incapable of partaking of your grief. I have a mother, now eighty-two years of age, whom, therefore, I must soon lose, unless it please God that she should rather mourn for me. I read the letters in which you relate your mother's death to Mrs. Strahan 3, and think I do myself honour, when I tell you that I read them with tears; but tears are neither to you nor to me of any farther use, when once the tribute of nature has been paid. The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation. The greatest benefit which one friend can confer upon another is to guard, and excite, and elevate, his virtues. This your mother will still perform, if you diligently preserve the memory of her life, and of her death: a life, so far as I can learn, useful, wise, and innocent; and a death resigned, peaceful, and holy. I cannot forbear to mention, that neither reason nor revelation denies you to hope, that you may increase her happiness by obeying her precepts; and that she may, in her present state, look with pleasure upon every act of virtue to which her instructions or example have contributed 4. Whether this be more than a pleasing dream, or a just opinion of separate spirits, is, indeed, of no great importance to us, when we consider ourselves as acting under the eye of God; yet, surely, there is something pleasing in the belief, that our separation from those whom we love is merely corporeal; and it may be a great incitement to virtuous friendship, if it can be made probable that that union that has received the divine approbation shall continue to eternity.

"There is one expedient by which you may, in some degree, continue her presence. 1 Mr. Thomas Ruddiman, the learned gramma- If you write down minutely what you rerian of Scotland, well known for his various ex-member of her from her earliest years, you cellent works, and for his accurate editions of several authours. He was also a man of a most worthy private character. His zeal for the royal House of Stuart did not render him less estimable in Dr. Johnson's eye.-BoswELL.

2 If the Magazine here referred to be that for October, 1752 (see Gent. Mag. vol. 22, p. 468), then this letter belongs to a later period. If it relates to the Magazine for September, 1750 (see Gent. Mag. vol. 20, p. 406), then it may be ascribed to the month of October in that year, and should have followed the subsequent letter.-MALONE. [It seems clear from the expression of the letter that it refers to Cave's first publication of the mottos, and was probably written in Oct. 1750; but in either case it should have followed the letter of the 25th Sept.; though the editor has not thought it worth while to disturb Mr. Boswell's original arrangement.-ED.]

will read it with great pleasure, and receive from it many hints of soothing recollection, when time shall remove her yet farther from you, and your grief shall be matured to veneration. To this, however painful for the present, I cannot but advise you, as to a source of comfort and satisfaction in the time to come; for all comfort and all satis

3 [Sister to Mr. Elphinston.-Gent. Mag. 1785, p. 755. It is to be observed, that, for many of his early acquaintance, Johnson was indebted to the society of Mr. Strahan.-ED.]

[This letter may, as the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine observes (loc. cit.), be read as a commentary on the celebrated passages in Johnson's Meditations, relative to the intermediate state of departed friends.-ED.]

faction is sincerely wished you by, dear sir, | ous, considering how universally those volyour most obliged, most obedient, and most humble servant,

"SAM. JOHNSON."

umes are now disseminated. Even the most condensed and brilliant sentences which they contain, and which have very properly been selected under the name of "BEAUTIES2," are of considerable bulk. But I may shortly observe, that the Rambler furnishes such an assemblage of discourses on practical reli

The Rambler has increased in fame as in age. Soon after its first folio edition was concluded it was published in six duodecimo volumes 1; and its author lived to see ten nu-gion and moral duty, of critical investigamerous editions of it in London, beside those of Ireland and Scotland.

tions, and allegorical and oriental tales, that no mind can be thought very deficient that I profess myself to have ever entertained has, by constant study and meditation, asa profound veneration for the astonishing similated to itself all that may be found force and vivacity of mind which the Ram- there. No. 7, written in Passion-week, on bler exhibits. That Johnson had penetra- abstraction and self-examination, and No. tion enough to see, and, seeing, would not 110, on penitence and the placability of the disguise, the general misery of man in this Divine Nature, cannot be too often read. state of being, may have given rise to the No. 54, on the effect which the death of a superficial notion of his being too stern a friend should have upon us, though rather philosopher. But men of reflection will be too dispiriting, may be occasionally very sensible that he has given a true representa- medicinal to the mind. Every one must tion of human existence, and that he has, at suppose the writer to have been deeply imthe same time, with a generous benevolence, pressed by a real scene; but he told me that displayed every consolation which our state was not the case; which shows how well his affords us; not only those arising from the fancy could conduct him to the "house of hopes of futurity, but such as may be at- mourning." Some of these more solemn tained in the immediate progress through papers, I doubt not, particularly attracted life. He has not depressed the soul to de- the notice of Dr. Young, the author of spondency and indifference. He has every" The Night Thoughts," of whom my estiwhere inculcated study, labour, and exertion. Nay, he has shown, in a very odious light, a man, whose practice is to go about darkening the views of others, by perpetual complaints of evil, and awakening those considerations of danger and distress, which are, for the most part, lulled into a quiet oblivion. This he has done very strongly in his character of Suspirius, (No. 55) from which Goldsmith took that of Croaker, in his comedy of "The good-natured Man," as Johnson told me he acknowledged to him, and which is, indeed, very obvious.

To point out the numerous subjects which the Rambler treats, with a dignity and perspicuity which are there united in a manner which we shall in vain look for any where else, would take up too large a portion of my book, and would, I trust, be superflu

mation is such, as to reckon his applause an honour even to Johnson. I have seen some volumes of Dr. Young's copy of the Rambler, in which he has marked the passages which he thought particularly excellent, by folding down a corner of the page; and such as he rated in a supereminent degree are marked by double folds. I am sorry that some of the volumes are lost. Johnson was pleased when told of the minute attention with which Young had signified his approbation of his essays.

I will venture to say, that in no writings whatever can be found more bark and steel for the mind, if I may use the expression; more that can brace and invigorate every manly and noble sentiment. No. 32, on patience, even under extreme misery, is wonderfully lofty, and as much above the rant of stoicism, as the sun of Revelation is This is not quite accurate. In the Gent. brighter than the twilight of Pagan philosoMag. for Nov. 1751, while the work was yet phy. I never read the following sentence proceeding, is an advertisement, announcing that without feeling my frame thrill: "I think four volumes of the Rambler would speedily be there is some reason for questioning whethpublished; and, it is believed, that they were pub-er the body and mind are not so proportionlished in the next month. The fifth and sixth vol-ed, that the one can bear all which can be umes, with tables of contents, and translations of inflicted on the other; whether virtue canthe mottos, were published in July, 1752, by Payne (the original publisher), three months after the close of the work. When the Rambler was collected into volumes, Johnson revised and correct-in Fleet street, the following note:ed it throughout. Mr. Boswell was not aware of "Mr. Johnson sends compliments to Mr. Kears this circumstance, which has lately been discov-ley, and begs the favour of seeing him as soon ered, and accurately stated, by Mr. Alexander Chalmers, in a new edition of these and various other periodical essays, under the title of "The British Essayists."-MALONE.

2 Dr. Johnson was gratified by seeing this selection, and wrote to Mr. Kearsley, bookseller,

as he can. Mr. Kearsley is desired to bring with him the last edition of what he has honoured with the name of BEAUTIES. May 20, 1782." -BOSWELL.

not stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul well principled will not be sooner separated than subdued."

Piozzi,

p. 37.

its pointed satire. [Sophron was
likewise a picture drawn from reali-
ty; and by Gelidus, the philosopher, he
meant to represent Mr. Coulson, a mathe-
matician, who formerly lived at Roches-
ter. The man immortalized for purring
like a cat was, as he told Mrs. Piozzi, one
Busby, a proctor in the Commons. He
who barked so ingeniously, and then called
the drawer to drive away the dog, was fathe-
to Dr. Salter, of the Charterhouse. He who
sung a song, and, by correspondent motions
of his arm, chalked out a giant on the wall,
was one Richardson, an attorney 1.]

Though instruction be the predominant purpose of the Rambler, yet it is enlivened with a considerable portion of amusement. Nothing can be more erroneous than the notion which some persons have entertained, that Johnson was then a retired authour, ignorant of the world; and, of consequence, that he wrote only from his imagination, when he described characters and manners. He said to me that, before he wrote that work, he had been "running about the world," as he expressed it, more than al- For instances of fertility of fancy, and acmost any body; and I have heard him relate, curate description of real life, I appeal to with much satisfaction, that several of the No. 19, a man who wanders from one procharacters in the Rambler were drawn so fession to another, with most plausible reanaturally, that when it first circulated in sons for every change: No. 34, female fasnumbers, a club in one of the towns in Es-tidiousness and timorous refinement: No. sex imagined themselves to be severally ex-82, a virtuoso who has collected curiosities: hibited in it, and were much incensed against a person who, they suspected, had thus made them objects of publick notice; nor were they quieted till authentick assurance was given them, that the Rambler was written by a person who had never heard of any one of them. Some of the characters are believed to have been actually drawn from the life 2, particularly that of Prospero from Garrick 3, who never entirely forgave

1 [This anecdote was, according to Mrs. Piozzi, communicated to Johnson by Mr. Murphy, but (as the lady tells it), with details which savour more of a desire to make a good story than to tell a true one. See Piozzi, p. 180.-ED.]

2 That of GELIDUS, in No. 24, from Professor Colson, and that of EUPHUES in the same paper, which, with many others, was doubtless drawn from the life. EUPHUES, I once thought, might have been intended to represent either Lord Chesterfield or Soame Jenyns; but Mr. Bindley, with more probability, thinks that George Bubb Doddington, who was remarkable for the homeliness of his person, and the finery of his dress, was the person meant under that character. MALONE. [See (ante, p. 38) reasons for doubting that Gelidus could be meant for Professor Colson. The folly of such guesses at characters is forcibly exemplified in Mr. Malone's producing three such different candidates for that of Euphues, as Lord Chesterfield, Soame Jenyns, and Bubb Doddington!-ED.]

3 [Having just seen Garrick's generous and successful endeavours to advance the fame and improve the fortunes of his friend, it were melancholy to be obliged, by the evidence of Boswell, Murphy, and Mrs. Piozzi, to believe that Johnson meant to satirize that amiable, inoffensive, and (to him) most friendly man, whose profession, as well as his personal feelings, rendered him peculiarly sensitive to such attacks. Mr. Murphy, with less taste and good nature than is usual to him, seems to make light of poor Garrick's vexation; but amongst the many instances which have been adduced of that infirmity of

No. 88, petty modes of entertaining a company, and conciliating kindness: No. 182, fortune-hunting: No. 194-195, a tutor's account of the follies of his pupil: No. 197 -198, legacy-hunting: He has given a specimen of his nice observation of the mere external appearances of life, in the following passage in No. 179, against affectation, that frequent and most disgusting quality: "He that stands to contemplate the crowds that fill the streets of a populous city will see will be difficult to behold without contempt many passengers, whose air and motions it and laughter: but if he examine what are the appearances that thus powerfully excite his risibility, he will find among them neither poverty nor disease, nor any involuntary or painful defect. The disposition to derision and insult is awakened by the softness of foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly trip, the stately walk, the formal strut, and the lofty mien; by gestures intended to catch the eye, and by looks

Johnson's temper, which almost amounted to envy, there is none that seems, all the circumstances considered, more unjustifiable than this would have been. Hawkins, however, who seldom missed an opportunity of displaying Johnson's faults or frailties, does not, even, when censuring his conduct towards Garrick, allude to this offence. (See Life p. 421). Let us therefore hope, that the other biographers made an application of the character of Prospero which Johnson did not intend.-ED.]

4 [These characters are alluded to in the conclusion of the 188th Rambler, but so slightly that it seems hardly worth while to inquire whether the hints were furnished by observation or invention. As to the anecdote told of the elder Dr. Salter, it could have only been, as Mr. Chalmers observes, the repetition of some story of his youthful days, for he was 70 years of age before he became a member of the Ivy-lane club.-ED.]

elaborately formed as evidences of impor- | idle charge has been echoed from one bab

tance."

Piozzi, p. 3.

[Of the allegorical papers in the Rambler, Labour and Rest (No. 33) was Johnson's favourite; but Serotinus (No 165), the man who returns late in life to receive honours in his native country, and meets with mortification instead of respect, was considered by him as a masterpiece in the science of life and manners.]

Every page of the Rambler shows a mind teeming with classical allusions and poetical imagery: illustrations from other writers are, upon all occasions, so ready, and mingle so easily, in his periods, that the whole appears of one uniform vivid texture.

The style of this work has been censured by some shallow criticks as involved and turgid, and abounding with antiquated and hard words. So ill-founded is the first part of this objection, that I will challenge all who may honour this book with a perusal, . to point out any English writer whose language conveys his meaning with equal force and perspicuity. It must, indeed, be allowed, that the structure of his sentences is expanded, and often has somewhat of the inversion of Latin; and that he delighted to express familiar thoughts in philosophical language; being in this the reverse of Socrates, who, it is said, reduced philosophy to the simplicity of common life. But let us attend to what he himself says in his concluding paper: "When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarized the terms of philosophy, by applying them to popular ideas." And, as to the second part of this objection, upon a late careful revision of the work, I can with confidence say, that it is amazing how few of those words, for which it has been unjustly characterised, are actually to be found in it: I am sure not the proportion of one to each paper 2. This

No. 70.

bler to another, who have confounded Johnson's Essays with Johnson's Dictionary; and because he thought it right in a lexicon of our language to collect many words which had fallen into disuse, but were supported by great authorities, it has been imagined that all of these have been interwoven into his own compositions. That some of them have been adopted by him unnecessarily, may, perhaps, be allowed; but, in general, they are evidently an advantage, for without them his stately ideas would be confined and cramped. "He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of a larger meaning 3." He Idler, once told me, that he had formed word not authorized by former writers; but where are we to seek authorities for resuscitation, orbity, volant, fatuity, divaricate, asinine, narand innumerable others of the same stamp, which cotic, vulnerary, empireumatic, papilionaceous,' abound in and disgrace his pages?-for obtund, disruption, sensory, or panoply,' all occurring in the short compass of a single essay in the Rambler;-or for cremation, horticulture, germination, and decussation,' within a few pages in his Life of Browne? They may be found, perhaps, in the works of former writers, but they make no part of the English language. They are the illegitimate offspring of learning by vanity." It is wonderful, that, instead of asking where these words were to be found, Dr. Burrowes did not think of referring to Johnson's own dictionary. He would have found good authorities for almost every one of them; for instance, for resuscitation, Milton and Bacon are quoted; for volant, Milton and Phillips; for fatuity, Arbuthnot; for asinine, Milton; for narcotic and vulnerary, Browne; for germination, Bacon, and so on. But although these authorities, which Dr. Burrowes might have found in the dictionary, are a sufficient answer to his question, let it be also observed, that many of these words were in use in more familiar authors than Johnson chose to quote, and that the majority of them are now become familiar, which is a sufficient proof that the English language has not considered them as illegitimate

3

1 Yet his style did not escape the harmless shafts of pleasant humour; for the ingenious Bonnell Thornton published a mock Rambler in the Dru--ED.] ry-lane Journal.-BOSWELL.-[And Mr. Murphy, in commenting on this passage, quotes the witty observation of Dryden: "If so many foreign words are poured in upon us, it looks as if they were designed not to assist the natives but to conquer them." Life, p. 157.-ED.]

2

[Mr. Boswell's zeal carries him too far: Johnson's style, especially in the Rambler, is frequently turgid, even to ridicule; but he has been too often censured with a malicious flippancy, which Boswell may be excused for resenting; and even graver critics have sometimes treated him with inconsiderate injustice; for instance, The Rev. Dr. Burrowes (now Dean of Cork), in "Essay on the Style of Dr. Johnson," published in the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy (1787), observes: "Johnson says that he has rarely admitted any VOL. I. 12

an

[This is a truism in the disguise of a sophism. "He that thinks with more extent will," no doubt, "want words of a larger meaning," but the words themselves may be plain and simple; the number of syllables, and oro-rotundity (if one may venture to use the expression) of the sound of a word can never add much, and may, in some cases, do injury to the meaning. What words were ever written of a larger meaning than the following, which, however, are the most simple and elementary that can be found" God said, Let there be light, and there was light!" If we were to convert the proposition in the Idler, and say, that "he who thinks feebly needs bigger words to cover his inanity," we should be nearer the truth. But it must be admitted (as Mr. Boswell soon after observes) that Johnson (though he, in some of his works, pushed his peculiarities

Hawk.

p. 271.

his style upon that of Sir William Temple, | name him, would stamp a reverence on the and upon "Chambers's Proposal for his opinion. Dictionary." He certainly was mistaken; or if he imagined at first that he was imitating Temple, he was very unsuccessful 2; for nothing can be more unlike than the simplicity of Temple, and the richness of Johnson. Their styles differ as plain cloth and brocade. Temple, indeed, seems equally erroneous in supposing that he himself had formed his style upon Sandys's View of the State of Religion in the Western Parts of the World.

The style of Johnson was, undoubtedly, much formed upon that of the great writers in the last century, Hooker, Bacon, Sanderson, Hakewill, and others; those" GIANTS," as they were well characterised by a GREAT PERSONAGE 3, whose authority, were I to

to an absurd extent) has been on the whole a benefactor to our language; he has introduced more dignity into our style, more regularity into our grammatical construction, and given a fuller and more sonorous sound to the march of our sentences and the cadence of our periods.-ED.]

The paper here alluded to was, I believe, Chamber's Proposal for a second and improved edition of his Dictionary, which, I think, appeared in 1738. This proposal was probably in circulation in 1737, when Johnson first came to London.-MALONE.

[That Johnson owed his excellence as a writer to the divines and others of the last century, Sir John Hawkins attests, from having been the witness of his course of reading, and heard him declare his sentiments of their works. Hooker he admired for his logical precision, Sanderson for his acuteness, and Taylor for his amazing erudition; Sir Thomas Browne for his penetration, and Cowley for the ease and unaffected structure of his periods. The tinsel of Sprat disgusted him, and he could but just endure the smooth verbosity of Tillotson. Hammond and Barrow he thought involved; and of the latter that he was unnecessarily prolix 4.]

We may, with the utmost propriety, ap♦ ply to his learned style that passage of Horace, a part of which he has taken as the motto to his Dictionary:

"Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti;
Audebit quæcumque parûm splendoris habebunt
Et sine pondere erunt, et honore indigna ferentur,
Verba movere loco, quamvis invita recedant,
Et versentur adhuc intra penetralia Vestæ.
Obscurata diù populo bonus eruet, atque
Proferet in lucem speciosa vocabula rerum,
Quæ priscis memorata Catonibus atque Cethegis,
Nunc situs informis premit et deserta vetustas:
Adsciscet nova, quæ genitor produxerit usus:
Vehemens, et liquidus, puroque simillimus amni,
Fundet opes Latiumque beabit divite linguâ.”

Epist. 1. ii. e. 2.

2 The author appears to me to have misunderstood Johnson in this instance. He did not, I conceive, mean to say that, when he first began to write, he made Sir William Temple his model, with a view to form a style that should resemble his in all its parts; but that he formed his style on that of Temple and others, by taking from each those characteristic excellencies which were most worthy of imitation. See this matter further explained under April 9, 1778; where, in a conversation at Sir Joshua Reynold's, Johnson himself mentions the particular improvements which Temple made in the English style. These, Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum, doubtless, were the objects of his imitation, so far as that writer was his model.—MALONE.

To so great a master of thinking, to one of such vast and various knowledge as Johnson, might have been allowed a liberal indulgence of that licence which Horace claims in another place:

3

to me,

Si forté necesse est

vi. 4.
It is to be observed, that Mr. Boswell, in
his first edition, attributed this anecdote to "one
whose authority, &c.:" in subsequent editions he
changed "one" into "GREAT PERSONAGE.'
-ED.]

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[Here is an instance of the difficulty of explaining, after the lapse of a very few years, circumstances once of great notoriety. My learned and excellent friend, the Bishop of Ferns, writes "State that this Great Personage was 4 [The editor has thought it right to preserve his late majesty, George the Third. Every one the foregoing, as the evidence of an eye-witness to knows it now, but who will know it fifty years Johnson's course of reading; though it may be hence?" No doubt the generality of readers well doubted whether Sir J. Hawkins has prehave understood Mr. Boswell to refer to the late served exactly the characteristic qualities which king; but, although the Editor has made very ex- he attributed to these illustrious men. It is not tensive inquiries amongst those who were most easy to conceive how the erudition of Taylor or likely to know, he has not been able to discover the penetration of Browne could have improved any precise authority on this point, nor has he Johnson's style; nor is it likely that Johnson would obtained even a conjecture as to the person to have celebrated the eloquent and subtile Taylor whom, or the occasion on which, his majesty for erudition alone, or the pious and learned used this happy expression. The editor had for-Browne for mere penetration. Johnson's friend, merly heard, but he does not recollect from whom, that when, on some occasion, the great divines of the 17th century were mentioned in the king's presence, his majesty said, "Yes-there were GIANTS in those days,"-in allusion to Genesis,

Mr. Fitzherbert, said (see post, 8th April, 1775) that "it was not every man who could carry a bon mot;" certainly Hawkins was not a man likely to convey adequately Dr. Johnson's critical opinion of Jeremy Taylor.-ED.]

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