Levett,and a clergyman,who had come to submit some poetical pieces to his revision.It is wonderful what a number and variety of writers,some of them even unknown to him,prevailed on his good-nature to look over their works,and suggest corrections and improvements.My arrival interrupted for a little while the important business of this true representative of Bayes;upon its being resumed,I found that the subject under immediate consideration was a tanslation,yet in manu,of the Carmen Seculare of Horace,which had this year been set to musick,and performed as a publick entertainment in London,for the joint benefit of monsieur Philidor and Signor Baretti.When Johnson had done reading,the authour asked him bluntly,'If upon the whole it was a good translation?'Johnson,whose regard for truth was uncommonly strict,seemed to be puzzled for a moment,what answer to make;as he certainly could not honestly commend the performance:with exquisite address he evaded the question thus,'Sir,I do not say that it may not be made a very good translation.'Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed,and yet the writer was not shocked.A printed Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain,came next in review;the bard was a lank bony figure,with short black hair;he was writhing himself in agitation,while Johnson read,and shewing his teeth in a grin of earnestness,exclaimed in broken sentences,and in a keen sharp tone,'Is that poetry,Sir?--Is it Pindar?'JOHNSON.'Why,Sir,there is here a great deal of what is called poetry.'Then,turning to me,the poet cried,'My muse has not been long upon the town,and (pointing to the Ode)it trembles under the hand of the great critick.'Johnson,in a tone of displeasure,asked him,'Why do you praise Anson?'I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question.He proceeded,'Here is an errour,Sir;you have made Genius feminine.''Palpable,Sir;(cried the enthusiast,)Iknow it.But (in a lower tone,)it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire,with which her Grace was pleased.She is walking across Coxheath,in the military uniform,and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain.'JOHNSON.'Sir,you are giving a reason for it;but that will not make it right.You may have a reason why two and two should make five;but they will still make but four.'
Although I was several times with him in the course of the following days,such it seems were my occupations,or such my negligence,that I have preserved no memorial of his conversation till Friday,March 26,when I visited him.He said he expected to be attacked on account of his Lives of the Poets.'However (said he,)I would rather be attacked than unnoticed.For the worst thing you can do to an authour is to be silent as to his works.An assault upon a town is a bad thing;but starving it is still worse;an assault may be unsuccessful;you may have more men killed than you kill;but if you starve the town,you are sure of victory.'
Talking of a friend of ours associating with persons of very discordant principles and characters;I said he was a very universal man,quite a man of the world.JOHNSON.'Yes,Sir;but one may be so much a man of the world as to be nothing in the world.I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield,which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge:"I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."'BOSWELL.'That was a fine passage.'JOHNSON.'Yes,Sir:there was another fine passage too,which be struck out:"When I was a young man,being anxious to distinguish myself,I was perpetually starting new propositions.
But I soon gave this over;for,I found that generally what was new was false."'I said I did not like to sit with people of whom Ihad not a good opinion.JOHNSON.'But you must not indulge your delicacy too much;or you will be a tete-a-tete man all your life.'
During my stay in London this spring,I find I was unaccountably negligent in preserving Johnson's sayings,more so than at any time when I was happy enough to have an opportunity of hearing his wisdom and wit.There is no help for it now.I must content myself with presenting such scraps as I have.But I am nevertheless ashamed and vexed to think how much has been lost.It is not that there was a bad crop this year;but that I was not sufficiently careful in gathering it in.I,therefore,in some instances can only exhibit a few detached fragments.
Talking of the wonderful concealment of the authour of the celebrated letters signed Junius;he said,'I should have believed Burke to be Junius,because I know no man but Burke who is capable of writing these letters;but Burke spontaneously denied it to me.
The case would have been different had I asked him if he was the authour;a man so questioned,as to an anonymous publication,may think he has a right to deny it.'
On Wednesday,March 31,when I visited him,and confessed an excess of which I had very seldom been guilty;that I had spent a whole night in playing at cards,and that I could not look back on it with satisfaction;instead of a harsh animadversion,he mildly said,'Alas,Sir,on how few things can we look back with satisfaction.'
