Johnson, who was staying In Lichfield with his stepdaughter’s family (I have a problem calling her his stepdaughter, since she was only six years younger than him), was so fond of London that despite feeling very welcome at her home, he decided to return to London to die. It was partly, Boswell says, due to his love of company – Johnson once said “I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance”, and maybe also the false hope that London doctors, who treated him for free, could still do something for him. He fell out with Mrs Thrale and Boswell had to leave for Scotland (I’m not sure why), but he still was attended by a number of good friends. Boswell records a number of death-bed anecdotes, if they can be called this way: Johnson feeling despondent and quoting Macbeth “canst thou not minister to a mind diseased”, and his physician quoting back at him from the same play “therein the patient/must minister to himself”, which Johnson appreciated very much, or him saying to a friend who was placing a pillow under his head “that will do – all that a pillow can do”. Finally he asks one of his doctors to tell him honestly whether there is any hope for him, and on hearing the negative answer, awaits his death with composure, declining all drugs, to keep his mind clear, and eating only very little. Boswell cites the testimonies of various friends who confirmed that in his final days Johnson finally dropped the fear of death that had plagued him all his life, took the sacrament, wrote a touching prayer and died on December 13, 1784, “as virtuous men pass mildly away”, so gently that his attendants hardly noticed.
James Boswell
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
We are nearing the end of the selection from Dr Johnson’s biography, which has to be, inevitably, his death. He described his first stroke in a letter to his friend Mrs Thrale: it happened to him when he woke up at night and felt dizzy. He prayed to God that however he chooses to punish his body, he would leave him at least his clarity of mind, and being Dr Johnson, he put this prayer in form of Latin verses, in order to check whether his faculties are intact. The verses were not very good, but at least he could himself tell that, so he thought his judgement unimpaired. He lost the ability to speak, but otherwise felt quite well. He drank two glasses of wine to bring his voice back (which I’m sure is not the medical procedure recommended now with stroke patients, so don’t try it, guys), but it didn’t help, so he went to sleep and slept quite well. When he woke up in the morning, he wrote a few letters, explaining what happened – the first one to his servant, others to his landlord and friend Mr Allen and to his doctors. In the afternoon he got his voice back and was able to recite the Lord’s Prayer passably well. Later during the year he recuperated enough to socialize with his friends, and Boswell treats us to two stories from his life. The first one is about the only time when he was disobedient as a son and refused to go with his father to Uttoxeter to help him with his book stall, feeling too ashamed to be seen working there. A few years ago he went to Uttoxeter and stood a long time bareheaded in the rain in the place where his father’s stall used to stand. The second anecdote is about Miss Seward, a friend and a poet, telling him that she saw a learned pig in Nottingham, performing all the tricks that dogs do. Johnson is very amused by this story and says that perhaps we don’t give pigs their due, because they mostly don’t have time to develop their faculties, being killed at one year old. A friend comments that the pig must have undergone a rather cruel training to be able to do all these tricks, and Johnson says, certainly, but at least the education allowed it to live to the age of three.
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
Johnson and Wilkes continue to fraternize over shared jokes about the poverty of Scotland, but Boswell doesn’t mind, because he knows they are just joking. He says in defence of his country that in one respect the Scottish law is superior to the English: no debtor can be put in prison before he is found guilty in a court of law, or unless his creditor can prove that he is preparing to run away, or “in meditatione fugae”. This provides a set-up for Wilkes to say that every Scotchman is actually in this condition. Johnson tells Wilkes that he took Boswell to his home town of Lichfield, to show him the decent English life, because in Scotland he lives among savages and in London among rakes. Wilkes says “Except when he is with grave, sober, decent people like you and me”, to which Johnson answers with a smile “And we ashamed of him”. He also tells the anecdote about how Mrs Macaulay, for all her egalitarian beliefs, wouldn’t sit at one table with her footman and observes with satisfaction that Wilkes acquiesced. On the whole, Boswell is very happy that he managed to bring together the two people who, despite all their differences, shared the love of learning, books, and wit. It reminds me a bit of the friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the late Antonin Scalia.
In a conversation about how misery is the common lot of man, Boswell observes that people do a lot of things in pursuit of happiness: they build houses, and gardens, and places of public amusement. Johnson says that they are just struggles for happiness. When he went to the pleasure garden in Ramelagh for the first time, he felt very happy, but soon he felt melancholy, like Xerxes, who wept to think that out of his vast army nobody would be alive in one hundred years. Johnson thought how every person in this gay crowd would eventually have to return home to their own unhappy thoughts.
In a company, Johnson once talked about a respected author who married a printer’s devil, which is less scary than it sounds, because printer’s devils were apprentices, probably called so because they were dirty because of the constant contact with the ink. This is mentioned by one of his listeners, but Johnson says that probably before they were married, the author had her wash herself and put on some new clothes. He says that she actually turned out to be a very good wife, because she “had a bottom of good sense”. This unexpected expression causes some titters in the company, and Johnson, who hated to be laughed at when he was not telling a joke, looks sternly around and says with a loud voice “she was fundamentally sensible”, and this time nobody dares to laugh.
The next anecdote is about Bet Flint, a prostitute who wrote her memoirs in verse and tried to talk Johnson into writing a preface for them. She was once charged with stealing a counterpane, but got off, because the judge had a soft spot for her, and after she was discharged, she said that now the counterpane was hers, she was going to turn it into a petticoat.
In another conversation, Boswell says he would like to be in Parliament, but Johnson points out to him that he would either have to support every government, or impoverish himself because of the expense (MPs had no salaries in these days.) Boswell agrees and says that maybe it’s just as well, because he would get very vexed about politics. Johnson tells him that it’s cant, just something that people like to pay lip service too, because sure, even he got angry with this or another news report, but he neither lost his appetite nor a minute of sleep over it. He advises Boswell to clear his mind of cant: he may talk like it, because it’s the socially acceptable way of talking (“I’m awfully sorry that you got wet”, while in fact we don’t care, or “we live in terrible times”, while it doesn’t make us sleep any worse), but he shouldn’t think like it.
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
Dinner is served and John Wilkes sits down next to Johnson. He is so attentive to Dr Johnson, helping him to the best morsels, that Johnson, who rather liked his food, can’t but warm to him a little bit. Then Boswell gives us, as was his wont, the detailed transcript of the conversation (did he take notes at the table, I wonder?) which, even though he seems to have thought so, is not that interesting to the modern reader. The conversation turns to the actor Samuel Foote (whom, as you recall, Johnson once threatened to beat up) and Johnson admits he’s a funny fellow. The first time he met him he was determined not to like him, having heard about him before, but he found him so amusing he was finally forced to drop down his fork and knife and laugh out loud. He also quotes an anecdote about how Foote tried to supplement his income by partnering with a brewer who specialised in small beer (a weak beer for servants). Foote was responsible for marketing, or for talking his numerous friends and fans into buying his beer. It was so bad that the servants of one of his friends finally rebelled and picked a little black boy, who was their master’s favourite, to serve as an envoy. But the boy, having served at dinner where Foote was invited, went back to the kitchen and said the man was so funny he would drink his bad beer.
The conversation then turns to Garrick, who was commonly accused of being stingy. Johnson, who never let anybody criticise his former pupil but himself, defends Garrick, saying that Garrick was very poor early in his life and it took him some time to learn to be generous, but overall he is very generous. Moreover, it’s better for him to be considered stingy, because at least this reputation doesn’t attract hate, only ridicule. Johnson then talks about the difficulty of gathering material for his biographies: when he wrote The Life of Dryden, there were only two people alive who remembered him, the poets MacSwinney and Cibber, and all they could tell him was meaningless (MacSwinney remembered that Dryden had his favourite chair in a tavern, which was moved according to the season of the year either closer to the fire or to the balcony, and Cibber just that he was a decent old man.) The conversation that turns to Cibber, whom Johnson considers to be a decent playwright, though a lousy poet. Wilkes than says that among all Shakespeare’s flight of fancy the most fanciful is the invention of Birnam Wood, because there are only shrubs in Scotland, and then talks about how slavishly Scottish highlanders are attached to their lords, belying the myth about how all mountain people always love freedom.
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
The Dilly brothers, booksellers and friends of Boswell and Johnson, invited Boswell to have dinner with them. They mention that there will be other gentlemen present, including John Wilkes, and Boswell suggests they should invite Dr Johnson as well. Now, in order to understand the enormity of this guest pairing, we have to remember that John Wilkes as a radical Whig MP, a supporter of American independence and a renowned libertine was everything Johnson hated the most. So naturally Dilly balks at this suggestion, but Boswell promises to take upon himself convincing Johnson.
Boswell knows he can’t invite Johnson to dine with John Wilkes right away, so starts by saying that Mr Dilly would like to invite him to dinner. Johnson says sure, and Boswell then adds, provided you like the other guests. Johnson says, do you think I am such a rube that I should dictate to my hosts who other guests should be? Boswell says, well, perhaps there will be “his patriotic friends” (“patriotic” being there a Tory word for “disgusting Radicals”. Johnson says he doesn’t care. Boswell says, perhaps even Jack Wilkes could be there. Johnson, carried away by his need to prove he is a man of the world, repeats he doesn’t care. So Boswell carries the good news back to Mr Dilly.
On the day of the dinner, Boswell comes to pick Johnson up, and find him, much to his dismay, busy dusting his books and completely unprepared to go out. Johnson claims he has forgotten about the dinner and has already made an appointment to dine in with Mrs Williams, his blind roommate. To Boswell’s expostulations that Mr Dilly will be very disappointed, he tells him to talk about it with Mrs Williams first. Boswell knows that Johnson is so careful about Mrs Williams’ tender feelings that he won’t do anything which could hurt her. So he goes to her and placates her with “you have his company all the time, Mr Dilly prepared a dinner and invited guests, I promised him Johnson would be there, you realize how it would make me look if he didn’t” etc. Mrs Williams finally relents and lets Johnson go.
Entering Mr Dilly’s house, Johnson, seeing so many unknown men, seems quite tense. He asks whispering who this or another gentleman is. Having learnt that they are Arthur Lee, “not only a patriot, but an American“, and the notorious John Wilkes, Johnson retreats into a window seat with a book he is reading, or at least pretends to read. But gradually he decides he has to live up to what he’s told Boswell about how he can dine with anybody and composes himself.
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
Johnson once, when the conversation turned to the evils of gaming, argued that there are other far more dangerous and ruinous habits, like for instance “adventurous trade”, but nobody attacks that. In fact, very few people are ruined by gaming, and when his interlocutor says “well, maybe not totally ruined, but a great deal of people lose money”, Johnson argued people lose money over other things as well, but for some reason everybody is up in arms against gambling. Boswell takes this opportunity to observe that Johnson was a contrarian and loved disputing the generally accepted pieties just for fun, so much so that when he started “Why, Sir, as for the good or evil of card playing”, Garrick commented that in this very moment he was deciding which side he was going to take. Of course, since Johnson was a deeply religious man, his irreverence had its clearly delineated limits. Boswell quotes Lord Elibank, who said that Johnson perhaps not always convinced him, but at least always showed him that he had good arguments for whatever view he chose to uphold.
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
Dr Johnson had a very strong fear of death, or not exactly the moment of death itself, but what happens later. Boswell compares his mind to the Colisseum, with his reason as the ancient gladiator, who manages to fight off the wild animals (his fear of death) and push them back into their cages, but they are still there, ready to attack him. When Boswell tried to convince him that one can get over the fear of death, citing the examples of some acquaintances of his, including the philosopher David Hume, who said they had no fear of dying, Johnson said vehemently they were lying and then got so agitated he practically threw Boswell out of his apartment.
The next excerpt is about the famous controversy about the Ossian poems, which Johnson identified correctly as a forgery. The excerpt begins with a letter in which Boswell asks Johnson what happened between him and Macpherson, because the story circulated around here is that Macpherson wrote Johnson a letter, offering to show him his manuscripts of the alleged ancient Scottish poems. and Johnson declined, so Macpherson wrote him a second letter “in such terms as the thought suited to one who had not acted as a man of veracity”. The editing here is a bit patchy – they leave out a section explaining what really happened, so I assume Macpherson never produced the original manuscripts, because they never existed, and Macpherson’s actual letter, even though Boswell never saw it, was quite rude. Johnson’s answer, which Boswell quotes, is “I don’t care for you and I’m not scared of your threats”. And indeed, as Boswell says, Johnson was a man of great physical courage. Boswell illustrates it with a number of examples, like when Johnson separated two fighting dogs with his bare hands, or when he heard that the actor Samuel Foote was going to send him up on stage and said to their mutual friend that he was going to equip himself with a strong oak stick, which the friend repeated to Foote and Foote immediately gave up the idea. Now Johnson equipped himself with a similar stick, in case Macpherson’s threats came true, and Boswell has no doubt that even though at this point he was in his late 60s, he would be able to fight anybody off.
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
Dr Johnson once told Boswell that “he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else”, and indeed, he was very fond of his food, even though, as Boswell observes, at other occasions he spoke and wrote against gluttony. When eating in company, he was so intent on eating that he hardly spoke to anybody or noticed anything around him, and could even seem disgusting, getting all sweaty and the veins dropping out on his forehead. Boswell explains this paradox by saying that Johnson could be abstemious but never moderate in eating: with him, it was either feast or famine. Johnson told him that he had once fasted for two days without much inconvenience and that he had been hungry only once in his life, which I don’t quite understand – how can one fast and not feel hungry, unless one is having norovirus?
The next excerpt is about Johnson’s meeting with the king George III. (This was after Johnson received his royal pension and finally became reconciled with the Hannoverians sitting on the British throne.) Johnson used to visit the library in the Queen’s house, which he valued very highly. The librarian there told the king about his visits and the king asked him to tell him the next time Johnson comes. So he did, and the king came to meet Johnson. Some pleasantries are exchanged, the conversation revolves around the relative superiority of Oxford to Cambridge and which college in Oxford is the biggest, etc. Then it’s the inevitable “what are you working on right now?”, Johnson answers that nothing in particular, because he thinks he’s done his part as a writer, and the king says “I should have thought so, too, if you had not written so well”. Johnson accepts this rather bland compliment with grateful silence, because, as he explained it later to Boswell, he didn’t think it appropriate to engage in the usual conversational game of refusing compliments when his king was talking to him.
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
The next excerpt contains a characteristic of Oliver Goldsmith, another literary friend of Johnson. Boswell perceives Goldsmith as talented but lacking depth, and so narcissistic that he was reputed once, when watching a puppet show and hearing a friend admiring the puppeteer’s skill, to exclaim “I can do it better myself”. Then Boswell describes a dinner during which one hapless Scotchman dared to suggest that there is some fertile land around Edinburgh, to which Goldsmith responded with a sneering laugh (quite unrightly, as Boswell claims). Then the same Scotchman said that “Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects”, and Dr Johnson couldn’t resist making the joke that “the noblest prospect that a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road which leads him to England”. The next excerpt is one of the many conversations Johnson and Boswell had in a coffee house. Johnson turns out to be one of the very few people in the history of mankind who doesn’t think the younger generation is worse than his. He says he likes to befriend young people for the pragmatic reason that these friendships last longer, but also because young people are more virtuous and generous. He says specifically that young people nowadays have more wit and humour and knowledge of life than his generation had, but they may be not as good scholars. He says that he studied very hard when he was young, remembering the advice of an old man that one has to study when one is young, because as you grow old, you’ll find learning more tedious, and indeed, Johnson can’t say he’s learnt much more since he was eighteen. Another topic of conversation is the respect due to rank. Johnson insists it is necessary and illustrates it with an anecdote about his conversation with Catherine Macaulay, a radical and a feminist. He told her once mockingly that she managed to convince him about the necessity of equality and so he now proposes they all should take tea together with her footman. Apparently Mrs Macaulay was quite cool towards Johnson ever since. Johnson says all these “levellers” only want to level the upper classes down to them, but won’t hear about levelling lower classes up to them, and although I do not share his views, I think he’s got a point.
James Boswell – “The Life of Samuel Johnson” (excerpts)
Finally we get to the happy year 1763, when Boswell met his hero. It happened in a bookshop of a Mr Davies, who was also an actor and whose bookshop Johnson sometimes frequented. One afternoon, when Boswell is drinking tea with the Davieses, Johnson comes in. The introduction is made and Boswell observes Johnson looks very much like in the portrait by Joshua Reynolds (I suppose he means the one below, as he refers to Johnson reposing there, not to the more popular one of him reading.) Boswell asked previously his host not to reveal that he’s Scottish, knowing Johnson’s dislike of Scots, Mr Davies teasingly reveals it, and Boswell adds, hoping to turn it into a joke “I come from Scotland, but I can’t help it”, to which Johnson retorts, with his usual quickness, that a great many of his countrymen can’t help it, either. The conversation turns to Garrick refusing to give Johnson tickets to a play, because he knows he can sell them very profitably. Boswell tries to insert himself in the conversation, saying that he’s sure Garrick wouldn’t refuse Johnson such a trifle. Johnson doesn’t take it very well and tells Boswell he’s known Garrick longer than Boswell has. Boswell is somewhat crest-fallen, but then the conversation goes quite well, even when on occasions he is left alone with Johnson.
A few days later he asks Davies whether it would be OK for him to visit Johnson at his apartment, and Davies says sure. On the 24th of May (Boswell remembers the date like others remember the date of their first kiss) he visits Johnson and is somewhat taken aback by the slovenliness of his dress (he has no slippers but wears unbuckled shoes at home), but when Johnson starts talking, he forgets his misgivings. In a flashback he recollects a conversation with a fellow Scotsman Dr Blair, who visited Johnson with another clergyman Dr Fordyce. Songs of Ossian were then a hot topic, Johnson being one of the very few people who didn’t believe in their authenticity and didn’t think highly of them, so when Dr Fordyce asks him whether he thinks any modern man could write them, he answers disparagingly “many men, women and children”. He doesn’t know that Dr Blair has just published a paper comparing Ossian with Homer and Vergil, and when he learns about it, he is displeased at giving offence unintentionally, but also thinks the men were asking for it, leading him on in this way.
Back in the present, there are also other guests with Johnson, and when they leave, Boswell also rises to go, but Johnson presses him to stay. The conversation, of which Boswell kept notes, thus starting his habit of noting down everything Johnson said, turns to madness. Johnson uses the example of his friend the poet Christopher Smart, to claim that symptoms of madness are often just small deviations from the regular custom; for instance Smart, seized by religious mania, took to praying in the streets, but as Johnson says, it’s greater madness not to pray at all, and yet a great deal of such people are not put in the asylum. Here Boswell cuts to a later conversation between Johnson and Dr Burney (Frances Burney’s father). Burney asks Johnson how Smart is doing, Johnson says sadly there is not much hope for recovery, but he doesn’t think Smart should be shut up. He never posed any harm: he wanted people to pray with him and he didn’t like clean linen “and I hold no great passion for it”.
Reading The Norton Anthology of English Literature 