was for many years invited to the tables of the great, to which neither Johnson nor Savage was permitted to approach; but that, on such festive occasions, he was never known to have disgraced himself by a beastly combination of gluttony and drunkenness. But now comes the doleful act of recrimination, in which the friends of Thomson have indulged. They assert that every one of the three negatives against him, applies with peculiar stringency to Johnson himself; and, leaving the two minor charges to their fate, they refer to one of Boswell's revelations on this subject, concerning which he observes, with more than his ordinary prudence :-" It would not be proper to record the particulars of such a conversation, in moments of unreserved frankness, when nobody was present on whom it could have any hurtful effect." Every one will recollect Johnson's remarks on Thomson, when in company with Hoole, Mickle, and Boswell:"Thomson had a true poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light. His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly peep through. Shiels was one day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large portion of him, and then asked, Is not this fine?' Shiels having expressed the highest admiration, 'Well, sir,' said I, 'I have omitted every other line."" Now, had any one, on the strength of this random assertion, tried the absurd experiment of omitting every other line in Thomson's poetry, no one sooner than Johnson would have ridiculed the insane attempt; and he would have likewise laughed as heartily at the thoughts of any man employing himself in a serious endeavour to repudiate the testimony of Savage, whose claim to be credited on such subjects he has wofully damaged in his own account of that unfortunate person; and who is commonly reputed to have been the author of the cognate piece of scandal respecting our poet's choosing the convivial society of the Earl of Hertford rather than the refined company of his poetical Countess. Johnson evidently intended the praise, with which he closes the hearsay paragraph, to neutralize any wrong impression which the doubtful evidence of Savage might have produced but this is most completely effected by the fine sentence with which he concludes his Life of our poet :-"The highest praise which he has received ought not to be suppressed: It is said by Lord Lyttelton, in the prologue to his posthumous play, that his Works contained 'no line which, dying, he could wish to blot."" This was the sober view which Boswell ultimately took of Johnson's animadversions on Thomson, against whose moral character he had most unworthily tried to excite a sinister impression. In reply to Johnson's inquiries after 'some additional information concerning Thomson," Boswell says at the conclusion of his letter, dated July 9, 1777, "My own notion is, that Thomson was a much coarser man than his friends are willing to acknowledge. His 'Seasons' are indeed full of elegant and pious sentiments; but a rank soil, nay, a dunghill, will produce beautiful flowers." Boswell was but Johnson's echo in most of his opinions: he had formerly heard him accuse the deceased poet of having been "a man of gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners." But when he wrote his "Life of Johnson," knowing the alteration of the sage's views, he complaisantly adds to the last quotation these words :-"I was very much afraid that, in writing Thomson's Life, Dr. Johnson would have treated his private character with a stern severity; but I was agreeably disappointed: and I may claim a little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him authentic accounts of the affectionate and generous conduct of that poet to his sisters," &c. |