The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [310]
He complained to a Right Honourable friend434 of distinguished talents and very elegant manners, with whom he maintained a long intimacy, and whose generosity towards him will afterwards appear, that his pension having been given to him as a literary character, he had been applied to by administration to write political pamphlets; and he was even so much irritated, that he declared his resolution to resign his pension. His friend shewed him the impropriety of such a measure, and he afterwards expressed his gratitude, and said he had received good advice. To that friend he once signified a wish to have his pension secured to him for his life; but he neither asked nor received from government any reward whatsoever for his political labours.
On Friday, March 24, I met him at the LITERARY CLUB, where were Mr. Beauclerk, Mr. Langton, Mr. Colman, Dr. Percy, Mr. Vesey, Sir Charles Bunbury, Dr. George Fordyce, Mr. Steevens, and Mr. Charles Fox. Before he came in, we talked of his Journey to the Western Islands, and of his coming away ‘willing to believe the second sight,’a which seemed to excite some ridicule. I was then so impressed with the truth of many of the stories of it which I had been told, that I avowed my conviction, saying, ‘He is only willing to believe: I do believe. The evidence is enough for me, though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief.’ ‘Are you? (said Colman,) then cork it up.’
I found his Journey the common topick of conversation in London at this time, wherever I happened to be. At one of Lord Mansfield’s formal Sunday evening conversations, strangely called Levees, his Lordship addressed me, ‘We have all been reading your travels, Mr. BOSWELL.’ I answered, ‘I was but the humble attendant of Dr. JOHNSON.’ The Chief Justice replied, with that air and manner which none, who ever saw and heard him, can forget, ‘He speaks ill of nobody but Ossian.’
Johnson was in high spirits this evening at the club, and talked with great animation and success. He attacked Swift, as he used to do upon all occasions. The Tale of a Tub is so much superiour to his other writings, that one can hardly believe he was the authour of it.b ‘There is in it such a vigour of mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so much of nature, and art, and life.’ I wondered to hear him say of Gulliver’s Travels, ‘When once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest.’ I endeavoured to make a stand for Swift, and tried to rouse those who were much more able to defend him; but in vain. Johnson at last, of his own accord, allowed very great merit to the inventory of articles found in the pockets of the Man Mountain, particularly the description of his watch, which it was conjectured was his God, as he consulted it upon all occasions. He observed, that ‘Swift put his name to but two things, (after he had a name to put,) The Plan for the Improvement of the English Language, and the last Drapier’s Letter.’
From Swift, there was an easy transition to Mr. Thomas Sheridan. – JOHNSON. ‘Sheridan is a wonderful admirer of the tragedy of Douglas, and presented its authour with a gold medal. Some years ago, at a coffee-house in Oxford, I called to him, “Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Sheridan, how came you to give a gold medal to Home, for writing that foolish play?” This, you see, was wanton and insolent; but I meant to be wanton and insolent. A medal has no value but as a stamp of merit. And was Sheridan to assume to himself the right of giving that stamp? If Sheridan was magnificent enough to bestow a gold medal as an honorary reward of dramatick excellence, he should have requested one of the Universities to choose the person on whom it should be conferred. Sheridan had no right to give a stamp of merit: it was counterfeiting Apollo’s coin.’435
On Monday, March 27, I breakfasted with