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.

[735] Memoirs of Philip Doddridge, ed. 1766, p. 171.

[736] So late as 1783 he said ‘this Hanoverian family is isolee here.’ Ante, iv. 165.

[737] See ante, ii. 81, where he hoped that ’this gloom of infidelity was only a transient cloud.’

[738] Boswell has recorded this saying, ante, iv. 194.

[739] In 1755 an English version of this work had been published. Gent.  Mag. 1755, p. 574.  In the Chronological Catalogue on p. 343 in vol. 66 of Voltaire’s Works, ed. 1819, it is entered as ’Histoire de la Guerre de 1741, fondue en partie dans le Precis du siecle de Louis XV.’

[740] Boswell is here merely repeating Johnson’s words, who on April 11 of this year, advising him to keep a journal, had said, ’The great thing to be recorded is the state of your own mind.’ Ante, ii. 217.

[741] This word is not in his Dictionary.

[742] See ante, i. 498.

[743] See ante, ii. 61, 335; iii. 375, and post, under Nov. 11.

[744] Beattie had attacked Hume in his Essay on Truth (ante, ii. 201 and v. 29).  Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his Essay under his arm.  ’The angel of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy, Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact likeness of Voltaire.  When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very indignant at it, and said:—­“It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer."’ Northcote’s Reynolds, i. 300.  Another of the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes (Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire.  Beattie’s Essay is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his Life of Hume.  Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie’s side:—­

     ’Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung
               His Minstrel lays;
      Or tore, with noble ardour stung,
               The Sceptic’s bays.’

(The Vision, part ii.)

[745] See ante, ii. 441.

[746] William Tytler published in 1759 an Examination of the Histories of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume with respect to Mary Queen of Scots.  It was reviewed by Johnson. Ante, i. 354.

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