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One of Rochefoucauld's maxims is: "Young women who do not wish to appear coquette, and men of advanced years who do not wish to appear ridiculous, should never speak of love as of a thing in which they might take part." Mrs. Thrale relates an amusing instance of Johnson's adroitness in escaping from the dilemma: "As we had been saying one day that no subject failed of receiving dignity from the manner in which Mr. Johnson treated it, a lady at my house said, she would make him talk about love; and took her measures accordingly, deriding the novels of the day because they treated about love. 'It is not,' replied our philosopher, 'because they treat, as you call it, about love, but because they treat of nothing, that they are despicable: we must not ridicule a passion which he who never felt, never was happy, and he who laughs at, never deserves to feel—a passion which has caused the change of empires, and the loss of worlds—a passion which has inspired heroism and subdued avarice.' He thought he had already said too much. 'A passion, in short,' added he, with an altered tone, 'that consumes me away for my pretty Fanny here, and she 'is very cruel,' speaking of another lady (Miss Burney) in the room."
As the high-flown language which he occasionally employed in addressing or discussing women, has originated a theory that the basis or essence of his character was romance, it may be as well to contrast what he said in soberer moods on love. He remarked to Dr. Maxwell, that "its violence and ill-effects were much exaggerated; for who knows any real sufferings on that head, more than from the exorbitancy of any other passion?" On Boswell asking him whether he did not suppose that there are fifty women in the world with any of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular, he replied, "Ay, Sir, fifty thousand. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the lord-chancellor upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances without the parties having any choice in the matter." On another occasion he observed that sensible men rarely married for love.
These peculiarities throw light on more questions than one relating to Johnson's prolonged intimacy and alleged quarrel with Mrs. Thrale. His gallantry, and the flattering air of deferential tenderness which he threw into his commerce with his female favourites, may have had little less to do with his domestication at Streatham than his celebrity, his learning, or his wit. The most submissive wife will manage to dislodge an inmate who is displeasing to her, "Aye, a marriage, man," said Bucklaw to his led captain, "but wherefore droops thy mighty spirit? The board will have a corner, and the corner will have a trencher, and the trencher will have a glass beside it; and the board end shall be filled, and the trencher and the glass shall be replenished for thee, if all the petticoats in Lothian had sworn the contrary." "So says many an honest fellow," said Craigenfelt, "and some of my special friends; but curse me if I know the reason, the women could never bear me, and always contrived to trundle me out before the honey-moon was over."[1]
[1] Bride of Lammermoor.
It was all very well for Johnson to tell Boswell, "I know no man who is more master of his wife and family than Thrale. If he holds up a finger, he is obeyed." The sage never acted on the theory, and instead of treating the wife as a cipher, lost no opportunity of paying court to her, though in a manner quite compatible with his own lofty spirit of independence and self-respect. Thus, attention having been called to some Italian verses by Baretti, he converted them into an elegant compliment to her by an improvised paraphrase:
"Viva! viva la padrona!
Tutta bella, e tutta buona,
La padrona e un angiolella
Tutta buona e tutta bella;
Tutta bella e tutta buona;
Viva! viva la padrona!"
"Long may live my lovely Hetty!
Always young and always pretty;
Always pretty, always young,
Live my lovely Hetty long!
Always young and always pretty;
Long may live my lovely Hetty!"
Her marginal note in the copy of the "Anecdotes" presented by her to Sir James Fellowes in 1816 is:—"I heard these verses sung at Mr. Thomas's by three voices not three weeks ago."
It was in the eighth year of their acquaintance that Johnson solaced his fatigue in the Hebrides by writing a Latin ode to her. "About fourteen years since," wrote Sir Walter Scott, in 1829, "I landed in Sky with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was the first idea on every one's mind at landing. All answered separately that it was this ode." Thinking Miss Cornelia Knight's version too diffuse, I asked Mr. Milnes for a translation or paraphrase, and he kindly complied by producing these spirited stanzas:
"Where constant mist enshrouds the rocks,
Shattered in earth's primeval shocks,
And niggard Nature ever mocks
The labourer's toil,
I roam through clans of savage men,
Untamed by arts, untaught by pen;
Or cower within some squalid den
O'er reeking soil.
Through paths that halt from stone to stone,
Amid the din of tongues unknown,
One image haunts my soul alone,
Thine, gentle Thrale!
Soothes she, I ask, her spouse's care?
Does mother-love its charge prepare?
Stores she her mind with knowledge rare,
Or lively tale?
Forget me not! thy faith I claim,
Holding a faith that cannot die,
That fills with thy benignant name
These shores of Sky."
"On another occasion," says Mrs. Thrale, in the "Anecdotes," "I can boast verses from Dr. Johnson. As I went into his room the morning of my birthday once and said to him, 'Nobody sends me any verses now, because I am five-and-thirty years old; and Stella was fed with them till forty-six, I remember.' My being just recovered from illness and confinement will account for the manner in which he burst out suddenly, for so he did without the least previous hesitation whatsoever, and without having entertained the smallest intention towards it half a minute before:
"Oft in danger, yet alive,
We are come to thirty-five;
Long may better years arrive,
Better years than thirty-five.
Could philosophers contrive
Life to stop at thirty-five,
Time his hours should never drive
O'er the bounds of thirty-five.
High to soar, and deep to dive,
Nature gives at thirty-five.
Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
Trifle not at thirty-five;
For howe'er we boast and strive,
Life declines from thirty-five;
He that ever hopes to thrive
Must begin by thirty-five;
And all who wisely wish to wive
Must look on Thrale at thirty-five."
"'And now,' said he, as I was writing them down, 'you may see what it is to come for poetry to a dictionary-maker; you may observe that the rhymes run in alphabetical order exactly.' And so they do."
Byron's estimate of life