1763. Finding him in a placid humour, and wishing to avail myself of the opportunity which I fortunately had of confulting a fage, to hear whose wisdom, I Etat. 54. conceived in the ardour of youthful imagination, that men filled with a noble enthusiasm for intellectual improvement would gladly have resorted from diftant lands; I opened my mind to him ingenuously, and gave him a little sketch of my life, to which he was pleased to listen with great attention. I acknowledged, that though educated very strictly in the principles of religion, I had for fome time been misled into a certain degree of infidelity; but that I was come now to a better way of thinking, and was fully fatisfied of the truth of the Chriftian revelation, though I was not clear as to every point confidered to be orthodox. Being at all times a curious examiner of the human mind, and pleased with an undisguised display of what had paffed in it, he called to me with warmth, "Give me your hand; I have taken a liking to you." He then began to defcant upon the force of teftimony, and the little we could know of final caufes; fo that the objections of, why was it fo? or why was it not fo? ought not to disturb us: adding, that he himself had at one period been guilty of a temporary neglect of religion, but that it was not the refult of argument, but mere abfence of thought. After having given credit to reports of his bigotry, I was agreeably furprized when he expreffed the following very liberal fentiment, which has the additional value of obviating an objection to our holy religion, founded upon the difcordant tenets of Chriftians themselves: "For my part, Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papifts or Proteftants, agree in the effential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.” We talked of belief in ghofts. He faid, "Sir, I make a distinction between what a man may experience by the mere ftrength of his imagination, and what imagination cannot poffibly produce. Thus, fuppofe I fhould think that I faw a form, and heard a voice cry Johnfon, you are a very wicked fellow, and unless you repent you will certainly be punished;' my own unworthiness is fo deeply impreffed upon my mind, that I might imagine I thus faw and heard, and therefore I fhould not believe that an external communication had been made to me. But if a form fhould appear, and a voice fhould tell me that a particular man had died at a particular place, and a particular hour, a fact which I had no apprehenfion of, nor any means of knowing, and this fact with all its circumftances fhould afterwards be unquestionably proved, I should, in that case be perfuaded that I had fupernatural intelligence imparted to me." Here it is proper, once for all, to give a true and fair statement of Johnson's way of thinking upon the queftion whether departed fpirits are ever permitted 1763. Etat. 54. to appear in this world, or in any way to operate upon human life. He has Our 3 The account was as follows: "On the night of the 1ft of February, many gentlemen, eminent for their rank and character, were, by the invitation of the Reverend Mr. Aldrich, of Clerkenwell, affembled at his house, for the examination of the noises fuppofed to be made by a departed fpirit, for the detection of fome enormous crime. "About ten at night the gentlemen met in the chamber in which the girl supposed to be difturbed by a spirit, had, with proper caution, been put to bed by feveral ladies. They fat rather more than an hour, and hearing nothing, went down ftairs, when they interrogated the father of the girl, who denied, in the strongest terms, any knowledge or belief of fraud. "The supposed spirit had before publickly promifed, by an affirmative knock, that it would attend one of the gentlemen into the vault under the church of St. John, Clerkenwell, where the body is depofited, and give a token of her prefence there, by a knock upon her coffin; it was therefore determined to make this trial of the existence or veracity of the fuppofed fpirit. 1763. Our conversation proceeded. "Sir, (faid he) I am a friend to fubordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal Etat. 54pleasure in governing and being governed." "Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now have as an authour, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been loose in his principles, but he is coming right." I mentioned Mallet's tragedy of ELVIRA, which had been acted the preceding winter at Drury-lane, and that the Honourable Andrew Erfkine, Mr. Dempfter, and myself, had joined in writing a pamphlet, entitled "Critical Strictures" against it. That the mildness of Dempster's disposition had, however, relented; and he had candidly faid, "We have hardly a right to abuse this tragedy; for, bad as it is, how vain should either of us be to write one not near fo good." JOHNSON. "Why no, Sir; this is not just reasoning. You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables." When I talked to him of the paternal estate to which I was heir, he said, "Sir, let me tell you, that to be a Scotch landlord, where you have a number of families dependent upon you, and attached to you, is, perhaps, as high a fituation as humanity can arrive at. A merchant upon the 'Change of London, with a hundred thousand pounds, is nothing; an English duke, "While they were enquiring and deliberating, they were fummoned into the girl's chamber by some ladies who were near her bed, and who had heard knocks and scratches. When the gentlemen entered, the girl declared that, fhe felt the spirit like a mouse upon her back, and was required to hold her hands out of bed. From that time, though the spirit was very folemnly required to manifest its existence by appearance, by impreffion on the hand or body of any prefent, by fcratches, knocks, or any other agency, no evidence of any preter-natural power was exhibited. "The spirit was then very seriously advertised that the perfon to whom the promise was made of striking the coffin, was then about to vifit the vault, and that the performance of the promise was then claimed. The company at one o'clock went into the church, and the gentleman to whom the promise was made, went with another into the vault. The spirit was folemnly required to perform its promife, but nothing more than filence enfued: the perfon fuppofed to be accufed by the fpirit, then went down with feveral others, but no effect was perceived. Upon their return they examined the girl, but could draw no confeffion from her. Between two and three she defired and was permitted to go home with her father. "It is, therefore, the opinion of the whole affembly, that the child has fome art of making or counterfeiting a particular noise, and that there is no agency of any higher cause." 4 The Critical Review, in which Mallet himself fometimes wrote, characterised this pamphlet as "the crude efforts of envy, petulance, and felf-conceit." There being thus three epithets, we the three authours had a humourous contention how each should be appropriated. 1763. Etat. 54. with an immense fortune, is nothing: he has no tenants who confider themfelves as under his patriarchal care, and who will follow him to the field upon any emergency." His notion of the dignity of a Scotch landlord had been formed upon what he had heard of the Highland Chiefs; for it is long fince a lowland landlord has been fo curtailed in his feudal authority, that he has little more influence over his tenants than an English landlord; and of late years most of the Highland Chiefs have deftroyed, by means too well known, the princely power which they once enjoyed. He proceeded: "Your going abroad, Sir, and breaking off idle habits, may be of great importance to you. I would go where there are courts and learned men. There is a good deal of Spain that has not been perambulated. I would have you go thither. A man of inferiour talents to yours may furnish us with useful observations upon that country." His fuppofing me, at that period of life, capable of writing an account of my travels that would deferve to be read, elated me not a little. I appeal to every impartial reader whether this faithful detail of his franknefs, complacency, and kindness to a young man, a ftranger and a Scotchman, does not refute the unjust opinion of the harshness of his general demeanour. His occafional reproofs of folly, impudence, or impiety, and even the fudden fallies of his conftitutional irritability of temper, which have been preserved for the poignancy of their wit, have produced that opinion among those who have not confidered that fuch inftances, though collected by Mrs. Piozzi into a small volume, and read over in a few hours, were, in fact, scattered through a long series of years; years, in which his time was chiefly spent in inftructing and delighting mankind by his writings and converfation, in acts of piety to GOD, and good-will to men. I complained to him that I had not yet acquired much knowledge, and afked his advice as to my studies. He faid, "Don't talk of study now. I will give you a plan; but it will require fome time to confider of it." "It is very good in you, Mr. Johnson, (I replied) to allow me to be with you thus. Had it been foretold to me fome years ago that I fhould pass an evening with the authour of the RAMBLER, how fhould I have exulted!" What I then expreffed was fincerely from the heart. He was fatisfied that it was, and cordially anfwered, "Sir, I am glad we have met. I hope we fhall pafs many evenings and mornings too, together." We finished a couple of bottles of port, and fat till between one and two in the morning. 1763. He wrote this year in the Critical Review the account of "Telemachus, a Mask," by the Reverend George Graham, of Eton College. The subject of Etat. 54. this beautiful poem was particularly interefting to Johnson, who had much experience of "the conflict of oppofite principles," which he describes as, "The contention between pleasure and virtue, a ftruggle which will always be continued while the prefent fyftem of nature fhall fubfift: nor can history or poetry exhibit more than pleasure triumphing over virtue, and virtue fubjugating pleasure." As Dr. Oliver Goldfmith will frequently appear in this narrative, I fhall endeavour to make my readers in fome degree acquainted with his fingular character. He was a native of Ireland, and a contemporary with Mr. Burke, at Trinity College, Dublin, but did not then give much promife of future celebrity. He, however, obferved to Mr. Malone, that "though he made no great figure in mathematicks, which was a study in much repute there, he could turn an Ode of Horace better than any of them." He afterwards. studied phyfick at Edinburgh, and upon the Continent; and I have been informed, was enabled to pursue his travels on foot, partly by demanding at Universities to enter the lifts as a difputant, by which, according to the custom of many of them, he was entitled to the premium of a crown, when luckily for him his challenge was not accepted; fo that, as I once obferved to Dr. Johnson, he difputed his paffage through Europe. He then came to England, and was employed fucceffively in the capacities of an ufher to an academy, a corrector of the press, a reviewer, and a writer for a newspaper. He had fagacity enough to cultivate affiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, and his faculties were gradually enlarged by the contemplation of fuch a model. To me and many others it appeared that he ftudiously copied the manner of Johnson, though, indeed, upon a smaller scale. At this time I think he had published nothing with his name, though it was pretty generally known that one Dr. Goldsmith was the authour of " An Effay on. the prefent State of polite Literature," and of "The Citizen of the World," a series of letters supposed to be written from London by a Chinese. No man had the art of difplaying with more advantage as a writer, whatever literary acquifitions he made. "Nihil quod tetigit non ornavit "." His mind resembled a fertile, but thin foil. There was a quick, but not a strong vegetation, of whatever chanced to be thrown upon it. No deep root could be ftruck. The oak of the foreft did not grow there; but the elegant 5 5 See his Epitaph in Westminster Abbey, written by Dr. Johnson. fhrubbery |