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in whose History we find fuch penetration,-fuch painting?" JOHNSON. "Sir, you must confider how that penetration and that painting are employed. Etat. 64. It is not hiftory, it is imagination. He who defcribes what he never faw, draws from fancy. Robertfon paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a hiftory-piece he imagines an heroick countenance. You must look upon Robertfon's work as romance, and try it by that standard., History it is not. Besides, Sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his Hiftory. Now Robertfon might have put twice as much into his book. Robertfon is like a man who has packed gold in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold. No, Sir; I always thought Robertson would be crushed by his own weight,-would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldfmith tells you fhortly all you want to know: Robertson detains you a great deal too long. No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time; but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I would fay to Robertson what an old tutor of a College faid to one of his pupils: Read over your compofitions, and wherever you meet with a paffage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.' Goldfmith's abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to fay, that if you compare him with Vertot, in the fame places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art of compiling, and of faying every thing he has to fay in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and will make it as entertaining as a Perfian Tale.”

I cannot difmifs the present topick without obferving, that it is probable that Dr. Johnson, who owned that he often "talked for victory," rather urged plausible objections to Dr. Robertfon's excellent hiftorical works, in the ardour of conteft, than expreffed his real and decided opinion; for it is not easy to suppose, that he should fo widely differ from the reft of the literary world. JOHNSON. "I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster-abbey. While we furveyed the Poets' Corner, I faid to him,

Forfitan et noftrum nomen mifcebitur iftis".

When we got to Temple-bar he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it,› and flily whispered me,

In allufion to Dr. Johnson's fuppofed political principles, and perhaps his own.

Johnfon

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Johnfon praised John Bunyan highly. "His Pilgrim's Progrefs' has Etat. 64. great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued appro'bation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extenfive fale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no tranflation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reafon to think that he had read Spencer."

A propofition which had been agitated, that monuments to eminent perfons fhould, for the time to come, be erected in St. Paul's church as well as in Westminster-abbey, was mentioned; and it was asked, who should be honoured by having his monument first erected there. Somebody fuggefted Pope. JOHNSON. " Why, Sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholick, I would not have his to be first. I think Milton's rather fhould have the precedence. I think more highly of him now than I did at twenty. There is more thinking in him and in Butler than in any of our poets."

Some of the company expreffed a wonder why the authour of fo excellent a book as "The whole Duty of Man" fhould conceal himself. JOHNSON. "There may be different reasons affigned for this, any one of which would be very fufficient. He may have been a clergyman, and may have thought that his religious counfels would have lefs weight when known to come from a man whose profeffion was Theology. He may have been a man whofe practice was not fuitable to his principles; fo that his character might injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a season of penitence. Or he may have been a man of rigid felf-denial, fo that he would have no reward for his pious labours while in this world, but refer it all to a future ftate."

The gentlemen went away to their club, and I was left at Beauclerk's till the fate of my election fhould be announced to me. In a fhort time I received the agreeable intelligence that I was chofen. I haftened to the place of meeting, and was introduced to fuch a fociety as can feldom be found. Mr. Edmund Burke, whom I then faw for the firft time, and whofe fplendid talents had long made me ardently with for his acquaintance; Dr. Nugent, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. (now Sir William,) Jones, and the company with whom I had dined. Upon my entrance, Johnfon placed himself behind a chair, on which he leaned as on a defk or pulpit, and with humorous formality gave me a Charge, pointing out the conduct expected from me as a good member of this club.

Goldfmith produced fome very abfurd verfes which had been publickly recited to an audience for money. JOHNSON. "I can match this nonsense. There

There was a poem called 'Eugenio,' which came out fome years ago, and concluded thus:

And now, ye trifling felf-affuming elves,

Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves,

Survey Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er,

Then fink into yourselves, and be no more.'

'Nay, Dryden in his poem on the Royal Society, has these lines:

Then we upon our globe's last verge fhall go,

And fee the ocean leaning on the sky;

From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,

And on the lunar world fecurely pry."

Talking of puns, Johnson, who had a great contempt for that fpecies of wit, deigned to allow that there was one good pun in "Menagiana," I think on the word corps.

Much pleasant conversation paffed, which Johnson relished with great good humour. But his converfation alone, or what led to it, or was interwoven with it, is the business of this work.

On Saturday, May 1, we dined by ourselves at our old rendezvous, the Mitre tavern. He was placid, but not much difpofed to talk. He observed, that "The Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do; their language is nearer to English; as a proof of which, they fucceed very well as players, which Scotchmen do not. Then, Sir, they have not that extreme nationality which we find in the Scotch. I will do you, Bofwell, the justice to say, that you are the most unfcottified of your countrymen. You are almost the only inftance of a Scotchman that I have known, who did not at every other sentence bring in fome other Scotchman."

We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I introduced a queftion which has been much agitated in the Church of Scotland, whether the claim of lay-patrons to prefent minifters to parishes be well founded; and fuppofing it to be well founded, whether it ought to be exercised without the concurrence of the people? That Church is compofed of a series of judicatures: a Presbytery,— a Synod,—and, finally, a General Affembly; before all of which, this matter may be contended: and in fome cafes the Prefbytery having refused to induct or fettle, as they call it, the perfon presented by the patron, it has been found neceffary to appeal to the General Affembly. He faid, I might fee the subject

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Etat. 64.

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well treated in the "Defence of Pluralities;" and although he thought that a Etat. 64. patron fhould exercise his right with tenderness to the inclinations of the people of a parish, he was very clear as to his right. Then fuppofing the question to be pleaded before the General Affembly, he dictated to me what follows: "AGAINST the right of patrons is commonly oppofed, by the inferiour judicatures, the plea of confcience. Their confcience tells them, that the people ought to choose their paftor; their confcience tells them that they ought not to impofe upon a congregation a minister ungrateful and unacceptable to his auditors. Confcience is nothing more than a conviction felt by ourfelves of fomething to be done, or something to be avoided; and, in questions of fimple unperplexed morality, confcience is very often a guide that may be trufted. But before confcience can determine, the ftate of the queftion is fuppofed to be completely known. In queftions of law, or of fact, confcience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's confcience can tell him the rights of another man: they must be known by rational investigation or historical enquiry. Opinion, which he that holds it may call his confcience, may teach forme men that religion would be promoted, and quiet preserved, by granting to the people univerfally the choice of their minifters. But it is a confcience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another. Religion cannot be promoted by injustice: and it was never yet found that a popular election was very quietly transacted.

"That justice would be violated by transferring to the people the right of patronage, is apparent to all who know whence that right had its original. The right of patronage was not at first a privilege torne by power from unrefifting poverty. It is not an authority at firft ufurped in times of ignorance, and established only by fucceffion and by precedents. It is not a grant capriciously made from a higher tyrant to a lower. It is a right dearly purchased by the firft poffeffors, and juftly inherited by thofe that fucceeded them. When Christianity was established in this island, a regular mode of publick worship was prescribed. Publick worship requires a publick place; and the proprietors of lands, as they were converted, built churches for their families and their vaffals. For the maintenance of minifters, they fettled a certain portion of their lands; and a district, through which each minifter was required to extend his care, was, by that circumfcription, conftituted a parish. This is a pofition fo generally received in England, that the extent of a manor and of a parish are regularly received for each other. The churches which the proprietors of lands had thus built and thus endowed, they juftly thought themselves entitled to provide with minifters, and where the epifcopal govern

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ment prevails, the Bishop has no power to reject a man nominated by the patron, but for fome crime that might exclude him from the priesthood. Etat. 64. For the endowment of the church being the gift of the landlord, he was confequently at liberty to give it according to his choice, to any man capable of performing the holy offices. The people did not choose him, because the people did not pay him.

"We hear it fometimes urged, that this original right is paffed out of memory, and is obliterated and obfcured by many tranflations of property and changes of government; that scarce any church is now in the hands of the heirs of the builders; and that the prefent perfons have entered fubfequently upon the pretended rights by a thousand accidental and unknown caufes. Much of this, perhaps, is true. But how is the right of patronage extinguifhed? If the right followed the lands, it is poffeffed by the fame equity by which the lands are poffeffed. It is, in effect, part of the manor, and protected by the fame laws with every other privilege. Let us fuppofe an eftate forfeited by treason, and granted by the Crown to a new family. With the lands were forfeited all the rights appendant to those lands; by the fame power that grants the lands, the rights alfo are granted. The right loft to the patron falls not to the people, but is either retained by the Crown, or, what to the people is the fame thing, is by the Crown given away. Let it change hands ever so often, it is poffeffed by him that receives it with the fame right as it was conveyed. It may, indeed, like all our poffeffions, be forcibly seized or fraudulently obtained. But no injury is still done to the people; for what they never had, they have never loft. Caius may ufurp the right of Titius; but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people: and no man's conscience, however tender or however active, can prompt him to restore what may be proved to have been never taken away. Suppofing, what I think cannot be proved, that a popular election of ministers were to be defired, our defires are not the measure of equity. It were to be defired that power should be only in the hands of the merciful, and riches in the poffeffion of the generous; but the law must leave both riches and power where it finds them; and must often leave riches with the covetous, and power with the cruel. Convenience may be a rule in little things, where no other rule has been established. But as the great end of government is to give every man his own, no inconvenience is greater than that of making right uncertain. Nor is any man more an enemy to publick peace, than he who fills weak heads with imaginary claims, and breaks the series of civil fubordination, by inciting the lower claffes of mankind to encroach upon the higher.

Ggg,2

"Having