The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [904]
87. Ibid., p. 870.
88. Ibid., p. 348; cf. p. 857 and David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), sect. V, ‘Why Utility Pleases’.
89. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 350, 376, 546, 676; cf. David Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’ (1754).
90. Life of Johnson, below, p. 883; cf. David Hume, ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’ (1752).
91. Life of Johnson, below, p. 292, 742; cf. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, sect. IV, ‘Of Political Society’.
92. Life of Johnson, below, p. 605. Compare the three papers on death which Boswell wrote for the London Magazine between November 1778 and January 1779, which were also informed by the experience of visiting Hume on his deathbed (Bailey, ed., Boswell’s Column, pp. 83–98).
93. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), sect. X, ‘Of Miracles’, Part I: ‘When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.’ Boswell himself noted that Johnson sometimes approached this argument of Hume’s: ‘Talking of Dr. Johnson’s unwillingness to believe extraordinary things, I ventured to say, “Sir, you come near Hume’s argument against miracles, ‘That it is more probable witnesses should lie, or be mistaken, than that they should happen.”’ JOHNSON. “Why, Sir, Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right”’ (Life of Johnson, below, pp. 624-5.
94. The ambivalence in Johnson’s attitude towards Hume which is smothered by his avowals of disdain is detectable also in his attitude towards other notorious literary figures of the eighteenth century. As Boswell points out, in the Dictionary Johnson quotes ‘no authour whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and morality’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 107; on the subject of the principles of citation in the Dictionary, see now Allen Reddick, The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), especially ch. 7). Nevertheless, we find Johnson echoing Bolingbroke on the character of a patriot king (Life of Johnson, below, p. 321), praising Mandeville for opening his ‘views into real life very much’ (ibid., p. 682), and befriending Fox (ibid., p. 926).
95. The recent and occasionally tempestuous debate on Johnson’s politics can be traced in the following: Howard Erskine-Hill, ‘The Political Character of Samuel Johnson’, in Isobel Grundy, ed., Samuel Johnson: New Critical Essays (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1984), pp. 107–36; J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), esp. pp. 186-9; Donald Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, 2nd edn (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), ‘Introduction’, pp. ix-lxv; J. C. D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); The Age of Johnson, vols. 7 and 8 (1996 and 1997); Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill (eds.), Samuel Johnson in Historical Context (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). There are wise words on this debate to be found in Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 158–60.
96. A letter to Boswell from an anonymous reader of the Life in 1792 comments on the political complexion of the west Midlands in the eighteenth century: ‘I will venture to say that if you will take a Journey into the Parts of Wales, contiguous to Shropshire and Cheshire you will meet with Anecdotes very much to your Taste from many of the Gentlemen, resident in those parts, who are very little removed from Jacobitism’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence