ROGERS'S COMMONPLACE BOOK 307 Dr. Johnson's Ivy Lane Club, is said to have written the eight papers marked 'A.' Dr. Joseph Warton wrote twenty-four papers, and Dr. Johnson is known to have written twenty-nine. Rogers's statement about Dr. Hawkesworth is rendered probable by the fact that his degree was a Lambeth one, conferred by Archbishop Herring, and that he was a man of no early education. It is difficult nowadays to understand the esteem in which The Adventurer' was held. Horne Tooke told Rogers that he could never forget the pleasure he felt in retiring to read it at the age of seventeen; and Dr. Burney tells us that in his day it was in everyone's library. The scale of remuneration for it belongs to the day of small things for periodical literature. Here are other items bearing on the same subject Griffiths has 428. per sheet (printed) for the authorship of the Monthly Review.'-Dr. Gillies. Millar gave 100l. for Joseph Andrews,' Fielding's first novel.-Cadell. Warburton wrote the preface to the first edition of 'Clarissa.' Warton wrote the essay On the Use and Abuse of Poetry,' quoted in Essay on Pope,' vol. i. Colman read the School for Scandal' before it was acted to Burke, Reynolds, Windham, &c.-Windham. Sheridan of Pitt: His is a brain that never works but when his tongue is set a-going, like some machines that are set in motion by a pendulum or some such thing. Gray made Nicholls promise before he went abroad that he would not call upon Voltaire.-Nicholls. Lord Hampden's father did the same.-Ld. H. When Sir C. Wren's plan for rebuilding London after the fire was rejected—'A set of blockheads,' he exclaimed, ‘they don't deserve to have their city burnt.'-Priestley. Lord Chesterfield willing away 50,000l. to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster (with whom he had had a lawsuit) in case his nephew could be proved to have ever been in Italy or at Newmarket. Garrick and Reynolds entering Rome-the first out on the coach-box, the last unable to sit up or look out of the window. When Wilkes's windows were broken he smiled and said : Some of my own journeymen set up for themselves.' Lord Chesterfield in person compared to a stunted giant. When driving out slowly in the Park in his old age said he was rehearsing. Mrs. Warburton, provoked by the bishop's silence, once threw a book at his head-'If you won't answer me you'll answer a book.' Dr. Douglas in the bishop's palace at Salisbury said to the archbishop of Narbonne : Your Grace should not be discouraged when you recollect that the house in which you now are, was for fourteen years a public inn' [during the Commonwealth]. Dr. Franklin had a mirror obliquely fixed near his window by which he could see the person that knocked at his door, and deny himself or not accordingly.--Este. Florence is so pretty a town it should be only seen on a Sunday. Un François. A young man who is undazzled and unattracted by the glitter of life is either above or below the common level, and he is generally below it. Such a man was the Duke of Hamilton. We may call it a love of ease, but it generally shows a want of energy.-Aikin. ROGERS'S COMMONPLACE BOOK 309 A regiment in France had a great regard for the memory of their old Colonel, and when asked why, replied: 'He said, Allons, mes amis !" the present says, " Allez, mes amis ! 66 66 Barwell lost an election by canvassing with his gloves on. Boswell drunk at Lord Falmouth's in Cornwall, kicking about his bed at midnight, swearing at the house in which he said there was no bed to lie on, and no wine to drink. Of papers the old Duke of Cumberland said: ‘D-n them, they breed!' When Sheridan is writing he requires a great many lights. -Spencer. I will make you a Baronet. Baron, if you please. The net at the end is a net only to catch fools with. His forte was fancy-his foible was ignorance.-Burke on Lord Chatham. Grattan. The following appear to be Rogers's own reflections; some of them recur in his poems, and some in letters to his friends Plant nettles on the grave of a satirist―stinging nettles. We cannot compare places, we only compare impressions. 'Tis thus we deceive ourselves. Mountains, like fine ladies, are subject to vapours. Close to the earth there is a refreshing fragrance--lost when you elevate yourself. Remark in a clover field. More ennui in society than out of it. Men of fashion are mannerists, and all manner is bad; a natural character, manners ever varying with the thoughts and feelings, how superior to that uniform and monotonous thing called high breeding! Women are ever ready to make confidants of each other in everything but love. Poets the best prose writers: Shakespeare, Cowley, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, and Addison. Burke and Rousseau began with poetry, as did also Voltaire. The heart, like a musical instrument, has a thousand rich melodies, which may slumber there for ever if not called forth by the various offices and duties of social and domestic life; each of which excites its peculiar set of feelings and sympathies. The soul of music slumbers in the shell Till waked to rapture by the master's spell, And thy young heart, when rightly touched, shall pour A few items of chat, attributed to Richard Sharp will appropriately conclude the extracts from the Commonplace Book Sir Joshua Reynolds told Sharp that he never painted a picture, or part of a picture, well till he had done it several times. Hoppner drew the waterfall at Melincourt, near Neath, and slept at a miller's near the spot. At night through a crevice of his chamber he saw his host breaking off a piece of his chalk, which he had left with his sketch below, and slily treasuring it up in his bureau. Terror is a powerful engine, but when overstrained is the weakest of all. Inspire a man with fear and you are his master, with despair and he is yours. A nation in a state of despotism is like a giant asleep, with his arms entrusted to a dwarf. DR. PRIESTLEY AND DR. JOHNSON 311 In the spring of 1795 Dr. Parr called public attention to a misstatement of Boswell's as to the interview which Dr. Johnson and Dr. Priestley had with one another at the house of Mr. Paradise.1 Boswell in a note to a new edition of his third volume declared his firm belief that the two men never met. He based this conviction on two circumstances: firstly, that his "illustrious friend was particularly resolute in not giving countenance to men whose writings he considered as pernicious to society;" and secondly, that when one day at Oxford Dr. Price came into a room where Johnson was, Johnson instantly left the room. Dr. Parr thereupon wrote to Dr. E. Johnstone of Birmingham, where in 1790 he had heard Priestley speak of the interview, and Dr. Johnstone at once wrote to say that he remembered Dr. Priestley's statement that he met Johnson under the idea that Johnson had sought the interview and that it was mutually satisfactory. Mr. Bearcroft wrote from Francis Street that he had only in April or May, 1794, heard Dr. Priestley remind Mr. Paradise of the particular civility with which Dr. Johnson had behaved towards him when they dined together at Mr. Paradise's house. Mr. Bearcroft adds that having mentioned the subject this afternoon to Mr. Paradise, he told me that, though he did not clearly recollect the motive by which he had been induced to bring Dr. Johnson and Dr. Priestley together, he well remembered Dr. Johnson having been previously informed that Dr. Priestley would be one of the company, very 1 Mr. Paradise was a member of Johnson's evening club at the Essex Head.' |