Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

commit it to your memory, with refpect of the cir'cumstances when you fhall fpeak it. Let never • oath be heard to come out of your mouth nor word of ribaldry: deteft it in others; fo fhall cuftom make to yourself a law against it in yourself. Be modeft in each affembly, and rather be rebuked of light fellows for maidenlike shamefacednefs, than of your fad friends for pert boldness. Think upon every word that you will speak before you utter it, ⚫ and remember how nature hath rampired up (as it were) the tongue with teeth, lips, yea and hair without the lips, and all betokening reins or bridles ⚫ for the loose use of that member. Above all things tell no untruth, no not in trifles. The cuftom of it is naught, and let it not fatisfy you that for a time the hearers take it for a truth, for after it will be known as it is, to your fhame, for there cannot be a greater reproach to a gentleman than to be accounted a liar. Study and endeavour yourself to be virtuously occupied; fo fhall you make fuch an habit of well-doing in you that you fhall not know how to do evil, though you would. Remember, my fon, the noble blood you are defcended of by your mo⚫ther's fide, and think that only by virtuous life and

[ocr errors]

с

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

good action you may be an ornament to that illuftrious family, and otherwise, through vice and floth you fhall be counted labes generis, one of the greatest curfes that can happen to man.

• Well (my little Philip) this is enough for me, and too much I fear for you: but if I fhall find that this light meal of digeftion nourish any thing the ‹ weak ftomach of your young capacity, I will,

as

• as I find the fame grow ftronger, feed it with tougher

• food,

Your loving father, fo long as
'you live in the fear of God,
H. SYDNEY.'

The hopeful documents contained in this inftitute of politeness, lord Chesterfield's letters to his fon, failed in a great measure of their end. His lordship's intereft with the ministry, founded on a feat in parliament, which, though a great declaimer against corruption, he bought as he would have done a horfe, procured him the appointment of an envoy-extraordinary to the court of Drefden. We find not that the young man had any female attachments, but that on the contrary he had more grace than his father. He married a woman, who becoming a widow, and provoked by real or imaginary ill treatment of lord Chefterfield, published thofe letters, which, had he been living, he would have given almost any thing to have fuppreffed, as they fhew him to have been a man devoted to pleasure, and actuated by vanity, without religious, moral, or political principles, a fmatterer in learning, and in manners a coxcomb,

Such was the perfon whom Johnson in the fimplicity of his heart chofe for a patron, and was betrayed to celebrate as the Mecænas of the age; and fuch was the opinion he had conceived of his skill in literature, his love of eloquence, and his zeal for the interefts of learning, that he approached him with the utmost respect, and that he might not err in his manner of expreffing

Sydney papers, vol. 1. page 8.

it, the ftile and language of that addrefs which his plan includes are little less than adulatory. With a view farther to fecure his patronage, he waited on him in perfon, and was honoured by him with conversations on the subject of literature, in which he found him fo deficient as gave him occafion to repent the choice he had made, and to fay, that the labour he had bestowed in his addrefs to lord Chesterfield resembled that of gilding a rotten poft, that he was a wit among lords and a lord among wits, and that his accomplishments were only thofe of a dancingmaster.

It is pretty well understood that, as Johnson had chofen this nobleman for his patron, he meant to have dedicated to him his work, and he might poffibly have done fo, even after he had discovered that he was unworthy of that honour; but the earl's behaviour in a particular inftance prevented him. Johnfon one day made him a morning vifit, and being admitted into an anti-chamber, was told, that his lordship was engaged with a gentleman, but would fee him as foon as the gentleman went. It was not till after an hour's waiting that Johnson discovered that this gentleman was Colley Cibber, which he had no fooner done, than he rushed out of the house with a refolution never to enter it more.

What impreffion Johnson's vifits made upon his lordship, we are told by the latter in a character of him, which, as well for the fake of the one as the other, I wish to be held forth to the public. Speaking, as his lordship is ever doing, to his fon of the engaging manners, the pleafing attentions, the graces, with the reft of that nonfenfe which was ever floating in his

mind, he thus delineates the perfon, who, in language the most nervous and elegant had endeavoured to render him refpectable in the republic of letters, and in that particular to do for him what he was never able to do for himself. There is a man whofe moral cha<racter, deep learning, and fuperior parts, I acknow

[ocr errors]

ledge, admire, and refpect; but whom it is fo impoffible for me to love, that I am almost in a fever whenever I am in his company. His figure (without ⚫ being deformed) seems made to disgrace or ridicule ⚫ the common structure of the human body. His legs and arms are never in the pofition which, according to the fituation of his body, they ought to be in, but ⚫ constantly employed in committing acts of hoftility < upon the graces. He throws any where, but down his throat, whatever he means to drink, and only C mangles what he means to carve. Inattentive to all

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

the regards of focial life, he mif-times and mif-places every thing. He difputes with heat, and indifcriminately, mindlefs of the rank, character, and fituation of them with whom he difputes: abfolutely ⚫ ignorant of the feveral gradations of familiarity and refpect, he is exactly the fame to his fuperiors, his equals, and his inferiors; and therefore, by a ne< ceffary confequence, abfurd to two of the three. Is it poffible to love fuch a man? No. The utmost I can do for him, is, to confider him as a refpectable • Hottentot*.' Had Socrates been living, and not learned, as we are told he did in his old age, to dance, lord Chesterfield had paffed the fame cenfure on him.

Johnson was, by this time, able to determine on a fact which, in his addrefs to this nobleman, he ex

[blocks in formation]

preffes a doubt of, viz. whether the unexpected diftinction his lordship had shewn him, was to be rated among the happy incidents of his life: he was now convinced that it was not, and that, far from every thing like encouragement or affistance, or what else is included in the idea of patronage, his lordship's approbation of his plan was to be the only recompence for the labour of drawing it out and reducing it to form. Befides declaring, whenever occafion required it, his mistake in fuppofing that lord Chesterfield was either a judge of or a friend to literature, he expreffed in a letter to his lordship himself his refentment of the affront he had received at his laft vifit, and concluded it with a formal renunciation for ever of his lordship's patronage.

If Johnson had reflected a moment on the little effect likely to be produced by a letter in which he profeffed to reject that which he could not retain, he would never have wrote it. Thofe evils which cannot be remedied must be borne with patience, and to refent injuries when we cannot enforce redrefs, is to give our adverfaries an occafion of triumph: lord Chefterfield knew this, and made no reply: when the dictionary was completed and about to be publifhed, he wrote two effays in a periodical paper, intitled The World,” that contain fome forced compliments of the author, which being mentioned to Johnfon he rejected with fcorn.

Further to appease him, his lordship fent two perfons, the one a fpecious but empty man, Sir Thomas Robinson, more diftinguished by the tallness of his

perfon

« ZurückWeiter »