10 Equality in happiness. [A.D. 1766. 'No, Sir; Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishoprick of Durham, that he had never read the New Testament with attention.' I mentioned Hume's notion', that all who are happy are equally happy; a little miss with a new gown at a dancing-school ball, a general at the head of a victorious army, and an orator, after having made an eloquent speech in a great assembly. JOHNSON. 'Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher.' I remember this very question very happily illustrated in opposition to Hume, by the Reverend Mr. Robert Brown', at Utrecht. 'A small drinking Hume, ii. 181. There was no deist, I suppose, because they were all atheists. Romilly (Life, i. 179) records the following anecdote, which he had from Diderot in 1781 :- Hume dîna avec une grande compagnie chez le Baron d'Holbach. Il était assis à côté du Baron; on parla de la religion naturelle. "Pour les Athées," disait Hume, “je ne crois pas qu'il en existe; je n'en ai jamais vu." "Vous avez été un peu malheureux," répondit l'autre, “vous voici à table avec dix-sept pour la première fois." It was on the same day that Diderot related this that he said to Romilly, 'Il faut sabrer la théologie.' ''The inference upon the whole is, that it is not from the value or worth of the object which any person pursues that we can determine his enjoyment; but merely from the passion with which he pursues it, and the success which he meets with in his pursuit. Objects have absolutely no worth or value in themselves. They derive their worth merely from the passion. If that be strong and steady and successful, the person is happy. It cannot reasonably be doubted but a little miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives as complete enjoyment as the greatest orator, who triumphs in the splendour of his eloquence, while he governs the passions and resolutions of a numerous assembly.' Hume's Essays, i. 17 (The Sceptic). Pope had written in the Essay on Man (iv. 57) : 'Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; See also post, April 15, 1778. ' In Boswelliana, p. 220, a brief account is given of his life, which was not altogether uneventful. glass Aetat. 57.] Courting great men. II glass and a large one, (said he,) may be equally full; but the large one holds more than the small.' Dr. Johnson was very kind this evening, and said to me, 'You have now lived five-and-twenty years, and you have employed them well.' 'Alas, Sir, (said I,) I fear not. Do I know history? Do I know mathematicks? Do I know law?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, though you may know no science so well as to be able to teach it, and no profession so well as to be able to follow it, your general mass of knowledge of books and men renders you very capable to make yourself master of any science, or fit yourself for any profession.' I mentioned that a gay friend had advised me against being a lawyer, because I should be excelled by plodding block-heads. JOHNSON. Why, Sir, in the formulary and statutory part of law, a plodding block-head may excel; but in the ingenious and rational part of it a plodding block-head can never excel.' I talked of the mode adopted by some to rise in the world, by courting great men, and asked him whether he had ever submitted to it. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I never was near enough to great men, to court them. You may be prudently attached to great men and yet independent. You are not to do what you think wrong; and, Sir, you are to calculate, and not pay too dear for what you get. You must not give a shilling's worth of court for six-pence worth of good. But if you can get a shilling's worth of good for six-pence worth of court, you are a fool if you do not pay court '.' He said, 'If convents should be allowed at all, they should only be retreats for persons unable to serve the publick, or 'We may compare with this what he says in The Rambler, No. 21, about the 'cowardice which always encroaches fast upon such as spend their time in the company of persons higher than themselves.' In No. 104 he writes:-" It is dangerous for mean minds to venture themselves within the sphere of greatness.' In the court that Boswell many years later paid to Lord Lonsdale, he suffered all the humiliations that the brutality of this petty greatness can inflict. Letters of Boswell, p. 324. See also post, Sept. 22, 1777. who 12 Rousseau and Wilkes. [A.D. 1766. who have served it. It is our first duty to serve society, and, after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls. A youthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged '.' I introduced the subject of second-sight, and other mysterious manifestations; the fulfilment of which, I suggested, might happen by chance. JOHNSON. Yes, Sir; but they have happened so often, that mankind have agreed to think them not fortuitous".' I talked to him a great deal of what I had seen in Corsica, and of my intention to publish an account of it. He encouraged me by saying, 'You cannot go to the bottom of the subject; but all that you tell us will be new to us. Give us as many anecdotes as you can'.' Our next meeting at the Mitre was on Saturday the 15th of February, when I presented to him my old and most intimate friend, the Reverend Mr. Temple', then of Cambridge. I having mentioned that I had passed some time with Rousseau in his wild retreat, and having quoted some remark 1 See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 19, 1773. 2 Johnson (Works, ix. 107) thus sums up his examination of secondsight: There is against it, the seeming analogy of things confusedly seen, and little understood; and for it, the indistinct cry of natural persuasion, which may be, perhaps, resolved at last into prejudice and tradition. I never could advance my curiosity to conviction; but came away at last only willing to believe.' See also post, March 24, 1775. Hume said of the evidence in favour of second-sight :—' As finite added to finite never approaches a hair's breadth nearer to infinite, so a fact incredible in itself acquires not the smallest accession of probability by the accumulation of testimony.' J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 480. I love anecdotes,' said Johnson. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 16, 1773. Boswell said that 'Johnson always condemned the word anecdotes, as used in the sense that the French, and we from them, use it, as signifying particulars.' Letters of Boswell, p. 311. In his Dictionary, he defined Anecdote Something yet unpublished; secret history.' In the fourth edition he added: 'It is now used, after the French, for a biographical incident; a minute passage of private life.' See ante, July 19, 1763. ៩ Boswell, writing to Wilkes in 1776, said:-'Though we differ. made Aetat. 57.]' Rousseau and Voltaire. 13 made by Mr. Wilkes, with whom I had spent many pleasant hours in Italy, Johnson said (sarcastically,) 'It seems, Sir, you have kept very good company abroad, Rousseau and Wilkes!' Thinking it enough to defend one at a time, I said nothing as to my gay friend, but answered with a smile, 'My dear Sir, you don't call Rousseau bad company. Do you really think him a bad man?' JOHNSON. "Sir, if you are talking jestingly of this, I don't talk with you. If you mean to be serious, I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three or four nations have expelled him; and it is a shame that he is protected in this country'.' BosWELL. 'I don't deny, Sir, but that his novel' may, perhaps, do harm; but I cannot think his intention was bad.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, that will not do. We cannot prove any man's intention to be bad. You may shoot a man through the head, and say you intended to miss him; but the Judge will order you to be hanged. An alleged want of intention, when evil is committed, will not be allowed in a court of justice. Rousseau, Sir, is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations'.' BOSWELL. Sir, do you widely in religion and politics, il y a des points où nos âmes sont unies, as Rousseau said to me in his wild retreat.' Almon's Wilkes, iv. 319. ' Rousseau fled from France in 1762. A few days later his arrest was ordered at Geneva. He fled from Neufchatel in 1763, and soon afterwards he was banished from Berne. Nouv. Biog. Gén. xli1. 750. He had come to England with David Hume a few weeks before this conversation was held, and was at this time in Chiswick. Hume's Private Corres. pp. 125, 145. 2 Rousseau had by this time published his Nouvelle Héloïse and Emile. "Less than three months after the date of this conversation Rousseau wrote to General Conway, one of the Secretaries of State, thanking him for the pension which George III proposed secretly to confer on him. Hume's Private Corres. p. 165. Miss Burney, in her preface to Evelina, a novel which was her introduction to Johnson's strong affection, mentioning Rousseau and Johnson, adds in a foot 14 Subordination. [A.D. 1766. think him as bad a man as Voltaire?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them '.' This violence seemed very strange to me, who had read many of Rousseau's animated writings with great pleasure, and even edification; had been much pleased with his society', and was just come from the Continent, where he was very generally admired. Nor can I yet allow that he deserves the very severe censure which Johnson pronounced upon him. His absurd preference of savage to civilised life', and other singularities, are proofs rather of a defect in his understanding, than of any depravity in his heart. And notwithstanding the unfavourable opinion which many worthy men have expressed of his 'Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard,' I cannot help admiring it as the performance of a man full of sincere reverential submission to Divine Mystery, though beset with perplexing doubts; a state of mind to be viewed with pity rather than with anger. On his favourite subject of subordination, Johnson said, 'So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal', note :- However superior the capacities in which these great writers deserve to be considered, they must pardon me that, for the dignity of my subject, I here rank the authors of Rasselas and Eloïse as novelists.' Rousseau thus wrote of himself:-' Dieu est juste; il veut que je souffre; et il sait que je suis innocent. Voilà le motif de ma confiance, mon cœur et ma raison me crient qu'elle ne me trompera pas. Laissons donc faire les hommes et la destinée; apprenons à souffrir sans murmure; tout doit à la fin rentrer dans l'ordre, et mon tour viendra tôt ou tard.' Rousseau's Works, xx. 223. ''He entertained me very courteously,' wrote Boswell in his Corsica, p. 140. 'In this preference Boswell pretended at times to share. See post, Sept. 30, 1769. 4 Johnson seems once to have held this view to some extent; for, writing of Savage's poem On Public Spirit, he says (Works, viii. 156) : -'He has asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power.' See also post, Sept. 23, 1777, where he asserts: -'It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal.' For the opposite opinion, see ante, June 25, 1763. that |