The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [130]
‘Iste tulit pretium jam nunc certaminis hujus,
Qui, cùm victus erit, mecum certasse feretur.’135
But, indeed, the good Mr. Hanway laid himself so open to ridicule, that Johnson’s animadversions upon his attack were chiefly to make sport.
The generosity with which he pleads the cause of Admiral Byng is highly to the honour of his heart and spirit. Though Voltaire affects to be witty upon the fate of that unfortunate officer, observing that he was shot ‘pour encourager les autres,’136 the nation has long been satisfied that his life was sacrificed to the political fervour of the times. In the vault belonging to the Torrington family, in the church of Southill, in Bedfordshire, there is the following Epitaph upon his monument, which I have transcribed:
‘To the perpetual Disgrace
of public Justice,
The Honourable John Byng, Esq.
Admiral of the Blue,
Fell a Martyr to political
Persecution,
March 14, in the Year, 1757;
when Bravery and Loyalty
were insufficient Securities
for the Life and Honour of
a Naval Officer.’
Johnson’s most exquisite critical essay in the Literary Magazine, and indeed any where, is his review of Soame Jenyns’s Inquiry into the Origin of Evil. Jenyns was possessed of lively talents, and a style eminently pure and easy, and could very happily play with a light subject, either in prose or verse; but when he speculated on that most difficult and excruciating question, the Origin of Evil, he ‘ventured far beyond his depth,’ and, accordingly, was exposed by Johnson, both with acute argument and brilliant wit. I remember when the late Mr. Bicknell’s humourous performance, entitled The Musical Travels of Joel Collyer, in which a slight attempt is made to ridicule Johnson, was ascribed to Soame Jenyns, ‘Ha! (said Johnson) I thought I had given him enough of it.’
His triumph over Jenyns is thus described by my friend Mr. Courtenay in his Poetical Review of the literary and moral Character of Dr. Johnson; a performance of such merit, that had I not been honoured with a very kind and partial notice in it, I should echo the sentiments of men of the first taste loudly in its praise:
‘When specious sophists with presumption scan
The source of evil hidden still from man;
Revive Arabian tales, and vainly hope
To rival St. John, and his scholar Pope:
Though metaphysicks spread the gloom of night,
By reason’s star he guides our aching sight;
The bounds of knowledge marks, and points the way
To pathless wastes, where wilder’d sages stray;
Where, like a farthing link-boy, Jenyns stands,
And the dim torch drops rom his feeble hands.a
This year Mr. William Payne, brother of the respectable Bookseller of that name, published An Introduction to the Game of Draughts, to which Johnson contributed a Dedication to the Earl of Rochford,∗ and a Preface,∗ both of which are admirably adapted to the treatise to which they are prefixed. Johnson, I believe, did not play at draughts after leaving College, by which he suffered; for it would have afforded him an innocent soothing relief from the melancholy which distressed him so often. I have heard him regret that he had not learnt to play at cards; and the game of draughts we know is peculiarly calculated to fix the attention without straining it. There is a composure and gravity in draughts which insensibly tranquillises the mind; and, accordingly, the Dutch are fond of it, as they are of smoaking, of the sedative influence of which, though he himself never smoaked, he had a high opinion.a Besides, there is in draughts some exercise of the faculties; and, accordingly, Johnson wishing to dignify the subject in his Dedication with what is most estimable in it, observes,
‘Triflers may find or make any thing a trifle; but since it is the great characteristick of a wise man to see events in their causes, to obviate consequences, and ascertain contingencies, your Lordship will think nothing a trifle by which the mind