Next morning, Thursday, March 31 , we set out in a post-chaise to pursue our ramble. It was a delightful day, and we rode through Blenheim park. I observed to him, while in the midst of the noble scene around us,
'You and I, Sir, have, I think, seen together the extremes of what can be seen in Britain:— the wild rough island of Mull, and Blenheim park.'
We dined at an excellent inn at Chapel-house, where he expatiated on the felicity of England in its taverns and inns, and triumphed over the French for not having, in any perfection, the tavern life.
'There is no private house, (said he,) in which people can enjoy themselves so well, as at a capital tavern.
‘Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that every body should be easy; in the nature of things it cannot be: there must always be some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him: and no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another man's house, as if it were his own.
‘Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome: and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please.
‘No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.'
He then repeated, with great emotion, Shenstone's lines:—
'Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.'
In the afternoon, as we were driven rapidly along in the post-chaise, he said to me 'Life has not many things better than this.'
We stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon, and drank tea and coffee; and it pleased me to be with him upon the classick ground of Shakspeare's native place.
Johnson said, that Dr. Grainger was an agreeable man; a man who would do any good that was in his power. His translation of Tibullus, he thought, was very well done; but The Sugar-Cane, a poem, did not please him; for, he exclaimed, 'What could he make of a sugar-cane? One might as well write the "Parsley-bed, a Poem;" or "The Cabbage-garden, a Poem": and, I think, one could say a great deal about cabbage.
The poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them; and one might thus shew how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.'
He seemed to be much diverted with the fertility of his own fancy.
I told him, that I heard Dr. Percy was writing the history of the wolf in Great-Britain.
JOHNSON. 'The wolf, Sir! why the wolf? Why does he not write of the bear, which we had formerly? Nay, it is said we had the beaver. Or why does he not write of the grey rat, the Hanover rat, as it is called, because it is said to have come into this country about the time that the family of Hanover came? I should like to see The History of the Grey Rat, by Thomas Percy, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty,' (laughing immoderately).
BOSWELL. 'I am afraid a court chaplain could not decently write of the grey rat.'
JOHNSON. 'Sir, he need not give it the name of the Hanover rat.'
Thus could he indulge a luxuriant sportive imagination, when talking of a friend whom he loved and esteemed.
He mentioned to me the singular history of an ingenious acquaintance.
'He had practised physick in various situations with no great emolument. A West-India gentleman, whom he delighted by his conversation, gave him a bond for a handsome annuity during his life, on the condition of his accompanying him to the West-Indies, and living with him there for two years.
He accordingly embarked with the gentleman; but upon the voyage fell in love with a young woman who happened to be one of the passengers, and married the wench. From the imprudence of his disposition he quarrelled with the gentleman, and declared he would have no connection with him. So he forfeited the annuity. He settled as a physician in one of the Leeward Islands. A man was sent out to him merely to compound his medicines. This fellow set up as a rival to him in his practice of physick, and got so much the better of him in the opinion of the people of the island that he carried away all the business, upon which he returned to England, and soon after died.'
(classix comix™ is underwritten by the Bob’s Bowery Bar Foundation for the Uncommercial Graphic and Literary Arts: “Yes, the weatherman tells us another heatwave is on its way, but fear not, ye inhabitants of un-airconditioned tenement shotgun flats, and join me down at the ever welcoming Bob’s Bowery Bar with its newly-installed central air-conditioning system. Tell them ‘Horace sent me’, and get your first schooner of Bob’s icy cold basement-brewed bock free, gratis and for nothing!
Sorry, offer only good once a day per customer!” – Horace P. Sternwall, your host of Bob’s Bowery Bar Presents the Philip Morris Commander Television Playhouse, broadcast live Mondays at 9pm (EST) exclusively on the Dumont Television Network; this week’s play: Diary of a Demimondaine, by Helvetia Percival St. Stephen, starring Hyacinth Wilde, Angus Strongbow, and Shirley De LaSalle, and featuring Miss Kitty Carlisle as “Madame Georges”; directed by Artemis Boldwater.)
part 129
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