The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [424]
In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr. Hamilton of Bangour, which I had brought with me: I had been much pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet and a good critick, who thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about among his friends. He said the imitation of Ne sit ancillæ tibi amor, &c.692 was too solemn; he read part of it at the beginning. He read the beautiful pathetick song, Ah the poor shepherd’s mournful fate, and did not seem to give attention to what I had been used to think tender elegant strains, but laughed at the rhyme, in Scotch pronunciation, wishes and blushes, reading wushes – and there he stopped. He owned that the epitaph on Lord Newhall was pretty well done. He read the Inscription in a Summer-house, and a little of the imitations of Horace’s Epistles; but said, he found nothing to make him desire to read on. When I urged that there were some good poetical passages in the book. ‘Where (said he,) will you find so large a collection without some?’ I thought the description of Winter might obtain his approbation:
‘See Winter, from the frozen north
Drives his iron chariot forth!
His grisly hand in icy chains
Fair Tweeda’s silver flood constrains,’ &c.693
He asked why an ‘iron chariot’? and said ‘icy chains’ was an old image. I was struck with the uncertainty of taste, and somewhat sorry that a poet whom I had long read with fondness, was not approved by Dr. JOHNSON. I comforted myself with thinking that the beauties were too delicate for his robust perceptions. Garrick maintained that he had not a taste for the finest productions of genius: but I was sensible, that when he took the trouble to analyse critically, he generally convinced us that he was right.
In the evening, the Reverend Mr. Seward, of Lichfield, who was passing through Ashbourne in his way home, drank tea with us. Johnson described him thus: – ‘sir, his ambition is to be a fine talker; so he goes to Buxton, and such places, where he may find companies to listen to him. And, Sir, he is a valetudinarian, one of those who are always mending themselves. I do not know a more disagreeable character than a valetudinarian, who thinks he may do any thing that is for his ease, and indulges himself in the grossest freedoms: Sir, he brings himself to the state of a hog in a stye.’
Dr. Taylor’s nose happening to bleed, he said, it was because he had omitted to have himself blooded four days after a quarter of a year’s interval. Dr. Johnson, who was a great dabbler in physick, disapproved much of periodical bleeding. ‘For (said he,) you accustom yourself to an evacuation which Nature cannot perform of herself, and therefore she cannot help you, should you, from forgetfulness or any other cause, omit it; so you may be suddenly suffocated. You may accustom yourself to other periodical evacuations, because should you omit them, Nature can supply the omission; but Nature cannot open a vein to blood you.’ – ‘I do not like to take an emetick, (said Taylor,) for fear of breaking some small vessels.