66

decided opinion ; for it is not easy to suppose, that he should so widely ditler from the rest of the literary world.

Johnsos: “I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. While we surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said to him,

* Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.' When we got to Temple-bar, he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered me,

• Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS.'" 2 Johnson praised John Bunyan highly : “ His ‘Pilgrim's Progress' has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante ; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he had read Spenser."

A proposition which had been agitated, that monuments to eminent persons should, for the time to come, be erected in St. Paul's church as well as in Westminster Abbey, was mentioned ; and it was asked who should be honoured by having his monument first erected there. Somebody suggested Pope. Johnson : Why, Sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholic, I would not have his to be first. I think Milton's rather should have the precedence. I think inore highly of him now than I did at twenty. There is more thinking in him and in Butler, than in any of our poets.”

Some of the company expressed a wonder why the author of so excellent a book as “ The Whole Duty of Man,” should conceal himself.4 JOHNSON : “ There may be different reasons assigned for this, any one of which would be very sufficient. He may have been a clergyman, and may have thought that his religious counsels would have less weight when known to come from a man whose profession was theology. He may have been a man whose practice was not suitable to his principles, so that his character might injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a season of penitence. Or he may have been a man of rigid self-denial, so that he would have no reward for his pious labours while in this world, but refer it all to a future state.”

clerk's till the fate of my election should be announced to me. I sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate. In a short time I received the agreeable intelligence that I was chosen. I hastened to the place of meeting, and was introduced to such a society as can seldom be found. Mr. Edmund Burke, whom I then saw for the first time, and whose splendid talents had long made me ardently wish for his acquaintance ; Dr. Nugent, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones, and the company with whom I had dined. Upon my entrance, Johnson placed himself behind a chair, on which he leaned as on a desk or pulpit, and with humorous formality gave me a Charge, pointing out the conduct expected from me as a good member of this club.

Goldsmith produced some very absurd verses which had been publicly recited to an audience for

money.
Johnson :

I can match this There was a poem called 'Eugenio,' which came out some years ago, and concludes thus :

• And now, ye trifling, self-assuming elves,
Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves,
Survey Eugenio, view him o'er and o’er,

Then sink into yourselves, and be no more.'!
Nay, Dryden, in his poem on the Royal Society, has these lines :-

Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,

And see the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,

And on the lunar world securely pry.'”
Talking of puns, Johnson, who had a great contempt for that species
of wit, deigned to allow that there was one good pun in “Menagiana,”
I think on the word corps.?

nonsense.

1 Dr. Johnson's memory here was not perfectly accurate : “Eugenio" does not conclude thus. There are eight more lines after the last of those quoted by him; and the passage which he meant to recite is as follows:

Say now ye fluttering, poor assuming elves,
Stark full of pride, of folly, of—yourselves;
Say where's the wretch of all your impious crew
Who dares confront his character to view ?
Behold Eugenio, view him o'er and o'er,

Much pleasant conversation passed, which Johnson relished with great good humour. But his conversation alone, or what led to it, or was interwoven with it, is the business of this work.

On Saturday, May 1, we dined by ourselves at our old rendezvous, the Mitre tavern. He was placid, but not much disposed to talk. He observed, that “ The Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do ; their language is nearer to English ; as a proof of which, they succeed

very well as players, which Scotchmen do not. Then, Sir, they have not that extreme nationality which we find in the Scotch. I will do you, Boswell, the justice to say, that you are the most unscotchified of your countrymen. You are almost the only instance of a Scotchman that I have known, who did not at every other sentence bring in some other Scotchman.”

We drank tea with Mrs. Williams. I introduced a question which has been much agitated in the Church of Scotland, whether the claim of lay-patrons to present ministers to parishes be well founded ; and supposing it to be well founded, whether it ought to be exercised without the concurrence of the people? That Church is composed of a series of judicatures ;-a Presbytery; a Synod; and finally, a General Assembly; before all of which, this matter may be contended : and in some cases the Presbytery having refused to induct or settle, as they call it, the person presented by the patron, it has been found necessary to appeal to the General Assembly. He said, I might see the subject well treated in “ The Defence of Pluralities ;” and although he thought that a patron should exercise his right with tenderness to the inclinations of the people of a parish, he was very clear as to his right. Then supposing the question to be pleaded before the General Assembly, he dictated to me what follows:

Against the right of patrons is commonly opposed, by the inferior judicatures, the plea of conscience. Their conscience tells them, that the people ought to choose their pastor ; their conscience tells them, that they ought not to impose upon a congregation a minister ungrateful and unacceptable to his auditors. Conscience is nothing more than a conviction felt by ourselves of something to be done, or something to be avoided ; and in questions of simple unperplexed morality, conscience is very often a guide that may be trusted. But before conscience can determine, the state of the question is supposed to be completely known. In questions of law, or of fact, conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the right of another Bourdaloue. But my ingenious and obliging correspondent, Mr. Abercrombie, of Philadelphia, has pointed out to me the following passage in “Menagiana ;" which renders the preceding conjecture unnecessary, and confirms my original statement:

“Madame de Bourdonne, Chanoinesse de Remiremont, venoit d'entendre un discours plein de feu et d'esprit, mais fort peu solide, et tres irregulier. Une de ses amies, qui y prenoit intêret pour l'orateur, lui dit eu sortant, “Eh bien, Madame que vous semblet-il dece que vous venez d'entendre? Qu'il y a d'esprit ?'— Il y a tant,' repondit Madame de Bourdonne, que, je n'y ai pas vû de corps.'" Menagiana, tome ii. p. 64. Amsterd. 1713.-BosWELL,

man; they must be known by rational investigation, or historical inquiry. Opinion, which he that holds it may call his conscience, may teach some men that religion would be promoted, and quiet preserved by granting to the people universally the choice of their ministers. But it is a conscience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another. Religion cannot be promoted by injustice; and it was never yet found that a popular election was very quietly transacted.

“That justice would be violated by transferring to the people the right of patronage, is apparent to all who know whence that right had its original. The right of patronage was not at first a privilege torn by power from unresisting poverty. It is not an authority at first usurped in times of ignorance, and established only by succession and by precedents. It is not a grant capriciously made from a higher tyrant to a lower. It is a right dearly purchased by the first possessors, and justly inherited by those that succeeded them. When Christianity was established in this island, a regular mode of public worship was prescribed. Public worship requires a public place; and the proprietors of lands, as they were converted, built churches for their families and their vassals. For the maintenance of ministers, they settled a certain portion of their lands; and a district through which each minister was required to extend his care, was, by that circumscription, constituted a parish. This is a position so generally received in England, that the extent of a manor and of a parish are regularly received for each other. The churches which the proprietors of lands had thus built and thus endowed, they justly thought themselves entitled to provide with ministers ; and where the episcopal government prevails the Bishop has no power to reject a man nominated by the patron, but for some crime that might exclude him from the priesthood. For the endowment of the church being the gift of the landlord, he was consequently at liberty to give it according to his choice, to any man capable of performing the holy offices. The people did not choose him because the people did not pay him.

“We hear it sometimes urged, that this original right is passed out of memory, and is obliterated and obscured by many translations of property and changes of government ; that scare any church is now in the hands of the heirs of the builders; and that the present persons have entered subsequently upon the pretended rights by a thousand accidental and unknown causes. Much of this, perhaps, is true. But how is the right of patronage extinguished ? If the right followed the lands, it is possessed by the same equity by which the lands are possessed. It is, in effect, part of the manor, and protected by the same laws with every other privilege. Let us suppose an estate forfeited by treason, and granted by the Crown to a new family. With the lands were forfeited all the rights appendant to those lands; by the same power that grants the lands, the rights also are granted. The right lost by the patron falls not to the people, but is either retained by the Crown, or what to the people is the same thing, is by the Crown given away. Let it change hands ever so often, it is possessed by him that receives it with the same right as it was conveyed. It may, indeed, like all our possessions, be forcibly seized or frauclulently obtained ; but no injury is still done to the people ; for what they never had, they have never Jost. Caius may usurp the right of Titius, but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people ; and no man's conscience, however tender or however active, can