The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [461]
Soon after our arrival at Thrale’s, I heard one of the maids calling eagerly on another, to go to Dr. JOHNSON. I wondered what this could mean. I afterwards learnt, that it was to give her a Bible, which he had brought from London as a present to her.
He was for a considerable time occupied in reading Memoires de Fontenelle, leaning and swinging upon the low gate into the court, without his hat.
I looked into Lord Kames’s Sketches of the History of Man; and mentioned to Dr. Johnson his censure of Charles the Fifth, for celebrating his funeral obsequies in his life-time, which, I told him, I had been used to think a solemn and affecting act. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, a man may dispose his mind to think so of that act of Charles; but it is so liable to ridicule, that if one man out of ten thousand laughs at it, he’ll make the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine laugh too.’ I could not agree with him in this.
Sir John Pringle had expressed a wish that I would ask Dr. Johnson’s opinion what were the best English sermons for style. I took an opportunity to-day of mentioning several to him. –‘Atterbury?’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, one of the best.’ BOSWELL. ‘Tillotson? JOHNSON. ‘Why, not now. I should not advise a preacher at this day to imitate Tillotson’s style: though I don’t know; I should be cautious of objecting to what has been applauded by so many suffrages. –South is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of language. –Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. – Jortin’s sermons are very elegant. –Sherlock’s style too is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study. – And you may add Smallridge. All the latter preachers have a good style. Indeed, nobody now talks much of style: every body composes pretty well. There are no such unharmonious periods as there were a hundred years ago. I should recommend Dr. Clarke’s sermons, were he orthodox. However, it is very well known where he was not orthodox, which was upon the doctrine of the Trinity, as to which he is a condemned heretick; so one is aware of it.’ BOSWELL. ‘I like Ogden’s Sermons on Prayer very much, both for neatness of style and subtilty of reasoning.’ JOHNSON. ‘I should like to read all that Ogden has written.’ BOSWELL. ‘What I wish to know is, what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence.’ JOHNSON. ‘We have no sermons addressed to the passions that are good for any thing; if you mean that kind of eloquence.’ A CLERGYMAN:773 (whose name I do not recollect.) ‘Were not Dodd’s sermons addressed to the passions?’ JOHNSON. ‘They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may.’
At dinner, Mrs. Thrale expressed a wish to go and see Scotland. JOHNSON. ‘Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England. It is seeing the flower gradually fade away to the naked stalk. Seeing the Hebrides, indeed, is seeing quite a different scene.’
Our poor friend, Mr. Thomas Davies, was soon to have a benefit at Drury-lane theatre, as some relief to his unfortunate circumstances. We were all warmly interested for his success, and had contributed to it. However, we thought there was no harm in having our joke, when he could not be hurt by it. I proposed that he should be brought on to speak a Prologue upon the occasion; and I began to mutter fragments of what it might be: as, that when now grown old, he was obliged to cry, ‘Poor Tom’s a-cold;’774 – that he owned he had been driven from the stage by a Churchill, but that this was no disgrace, for a Churchill had beat the French; – that he had been satyrised as ‘mouthing a sentence as curs mouth a bone,’ but he was now glad of a bone to pick. – ‘Nay, (said Johnson,) I would have him to say,
“Mad Tom is come to see the world again.”’775
He and I returned to town in the evening. Upon the road, I endeavoured to maintain, in argument, that a landed gentleman is not under any obligation to reside upon his estate; and that by living in London he does no injury