Life of Johnson, Volume 5 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 730 pages of information about Life of Johnson, Volume 5.

Life of Johnson, Volume 5 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 730 pages of information about Life of Johnson, Volume 5.

[131] One of Garrick’s correspondents speaks of ’the sneer of one of Johnson’s ghastly smiles.’ Garrick Corres. i. 334.  ‘Ghastly smile’ is borrowed from Paradise Lost, ii. 846.

[132] See ante, iii. 212.  In Chambers’s Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 158, is given a comic poem entitled The Court of Session Garland, written by Boswell, with the help, it was said, of Maclaurin.

[133] Dr. John Gregory, Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh, died on Feb. 10 of this year.  It was his eldest son James who met Johnson.  ’This learned family has given sixteen professors to British Universities.’  Chalmers’s Biog.  Dict. xvi. 289.

[134] See ante, i. 257, note 3.

[135] See ante, i. 228.

[136] See ante, ii. 196.

[137] In the original, cursed the form that, &c.  Johnson’s Works, i. 21.

[138] Mistress of Edward IV.  BOSWELL.

[139] Mistress of Louis XIV.  BOSWELL.  Voltaire, speaking of the King and Mlle. de La Valliere (not Valiere, as Lord Hailes wrote her name), says:—­’Il gouta avec elle le bonheur rare d’etre aime uniquement pour lui-meme.’ Siecle de Louis XIV, ch. 25.  He describes her penitence in a fine passage. Ib. ch. 26.

[140] Malone, in a note on the Life of Boswell under 1749, says that ’this lady was not the celebrated Lady Vane, whose memoirs were given to the public by Dr. Smollett [in Peregrine Pickle], but Anne Vane, who was mistress to Frederick Prince of Wales, and died in 1736, not long before Johnson settled in London.’  She is mentioned in a note to Horace Walpole’s Letters, 1. cxxxvi.

[141] Catharine Sedley, the mistress of James II, is described by Macaulay, Hist of Eng. ed. 1874, ii. 323.

[142] Dr. A Carlyle (Auto. p. 114) tells how in 1745 he found ’Professor Maclaurin busy on the walls on the south side of Edinburgh, endeavoring to make them more defensible [against the Pretender].  He had even erected some small cannon.’  See ante, iii, 15, for a ridiculous story told of him by Goldsmith.

[143]

      ’Crudelis ubique
Luctus, ubique pavor, et plurima
  mortis imago:’ 
    ’grim grief on every side,
And fear on every side there is,
  and many-faced is death.’

Morris, Virgil Aeneids, ii. 368.

[144] Mr. Maclaurin’s epitaph, as engraved on a marble tomb-stone, in the Grey-Friars church-yard, Edinburgh:—­

     Infra situs est
     COLIN MACLAURIN,
     Mathes. olim in Acad.  Edin.  Prof. 
     Electus ipso Newtono suadente. 
     H.L.P.F. 
     Non ut nomini paterno consulat,
     Nam tali auxilio nil eget;
     Sed ut in hoc infelici campo,
     Ubi luctus regnant et pavor,
     Mortalibus prorsus non absit solatium;
     Hujus enim scripta evolve,
     Mentemque tantarum rerum capacem
     Corpori caduco superstitem crede.

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Life of Johnson, Volume 5 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.