The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [141]
‘T. SMOLLET.’
Mr. Wilkes, who upon all occasions has acted, as a private gentleman, with most polite liberality, applied to his friend Sir George Hay, then one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty; and Francis Barber was discharged, as he has told me, without any wish of his own. He found his old master in Chambers in the Inner Temple, and returned to his service.
What particular new scheme of life Johnson had in view this year, I have not discovered; but that he meditated one of some sort, is clear from his private devotions, in which we find,a ‘the change of outward things which I am now to make;’ and, ‘Grant me the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that the course which I am now beginning may proceed according to thy laws, and end in the enjoyment of thy favour.’ But he did not, in fact, make any external or visible change.
At this time, there being a competition among the architects of London to be employed in the building of Blackfriars-bridge,153 a question was very warmly agitated whether semicircular or elliptical arches were preferable. In the design offered by Mr. Mylne the elliptical form was adopted, and therefore it was the great object of his rivals to attack it. Johnson’s regard for his friend Mr. Gwyn induced him to engage in this controversy against Mr. Mylne;b and after being at considerable pains to study the subject, he wrote three several letters in the Gazetteer, in opposition to his plan.
If it should be remarked that this was a controversy which lay quite out of Johnson’s way, let it be remembered, that after all, his employing his powers of reasoning and eloquence upon a subject which he had studied on the moment, is not more strange than what we often observe in lawyers, who, as Quicquid agunt homines156 is the matter of law-suits, are sometimes obliged to pick up a temporary knowledge of an art or science, of which they understood nothing till their brief was delivered, and appear to be much masters of it. In like manner, members of the legislature frequently introduce and expatiate upon subjects of which they have informed themselves for the occasion.
1760: ÆTAT. 51.] – In 1760 he wrote An Address of the Painters to George III. on his Accession to the Throne of these Kingdoms which no monarch ever ascended with more sincere congratulations from his people. Two generations of foreign princes had prepared their minds to rejoice in having again a King, who gloried in being ‘born a Briton.’ He also wrote for Mr. Baretti the Dedication! of his Italian and English Dictionary, to the Marquis of Abreu, then Envoy-Extraordinary from Spain at the Court of Great Britain.
Johnson was now either very idle, or very busy with his Shakspeare; for I can find no other publick composition by him except an Introduction to the proceedings of the Committee for cloathing the French Prisoners;∗157 one of the many proofs that he was ever awake to the calls of humanity; and an account which he gave in the Gentleman’s Magazine of Mr. Tytler’s acute and able vindication of Mary Queen of Scots.∗ The generosity of Johnson’s feelings shines forth in the following sentence: –
‘It has now been fashionable, for near half a century, to defame and vilify the house of Stuart, and to exalt and magnify the reign of Elizabeth. The Stuarts have found few apologists, for the dead cannot pay for praise; and who will, without reward, oppose the tide