In our way,Johnson strongly expressed his love of driving fast in a post-chaise.'If (said he,)I had no duties,and no reference to futurity,I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman;but she should be one who could understand me,and would add something to the conversation.'I observed,that we were this day to stop just where the Highland army did in 1745.
JOHNSON.'It was a noble attempt.'BOSWELL.'I wish we could have an authentick history of it.'JOHNSON.'If you were not an idle dog you might write it,by collecting from every body what they can tell,and putting down your authorities.'BOSWELL.'But I could not have the advantage of it in my life-time.'JOHNSON.
'You might have the satisfaction of its fame,by printing it in Holland;and as to profit,consider how long it was before writing came to be considered in a pecuniary view.Baretti says,he is the first man that ever received copy-money in Italy.'I said that Iwould endeavour to do what Dr.Johnson suggested and I thought that I might write so as to venture to publish my History of the Civil War in Great-Britain in 1745and 1746,without being obliged to go to a foreign press.
When we arrived at Derby,Dr.Butter accompanied us to see the manufactory of china there.I admired the ingenuity and delicate art with which a man fashioned clay into a cup,a saucer,or a tea-pot,while a boy turned round a wheel to give the mass rotundity.
I thought this as excellent in its species of power,as making good verses in ITS species.Yet I had no respect for this potter.
Neither,indeed,has a man of any extent of thinking for a mere verse-maker,in whose numbers,however perfect,there is no poetry,no mind.The china was beautiful,but Dr.Johnson justly observed it was too dear;for that he could have vessels of silver,of the same size,as cheap as what were here made of porcelain.
I felt a pleasure in walking about Derby such as I always have in walking about any town to which I am not accustomed.There is an immediate sensation of novelty;and one speculates on the way in which life is passed in it,which,although there is a sameness every where upon the whole,is yet minutely diversified.The minute diversities in every thing are wonderful.Talking of shaving the other night at Dr.Taylor's,Dr.Johnson said,'Sir,of a thousand shavers,two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.'I thought this not possible,till he specified so many of the varieties in shaving;--holding the razor more or less perpendicular;--drawing long or short strokes;--beginning at the upper part of the face,or the under;--at the right side or the left side.Indeed,when one considers what variety of sounds can be uttered by the windpipe,in the compass of a very small aperture,we may he convinced how many degrees of difference there may be in the application of a razor.
We dined with Dr.Butter,whose lady is daughter of my cousin Sir John Douglas,whose grandson is now presumptive heir of the noble family of Queensberry.Johnson and he had a good deal of medical conversation.Johnson said,he had somewhere or other given an account of Dr.Nichols's discourse De Animia Medica.He told us 'that whatever a man's distemper was,Dr.Nichols would not attend him as a physician,if his mind was not at ease;for he believed that no medicines would have any influence.He once attended a man in trade,upon whom he found none of the medicines he prescribed had any effect:he asked the man's wife privately whether his affairs were not in a bad way?She said no.He continued his attendance some time,still without success.At length the man's wife told him,she had discovered that her husband's affairs WEREin a bad way.When Goldsmith was dying,Dr.Turton said to him,"Your pulse is in greater disorder than it should be,from the degree of fever which you have:is your mind at ease?"Goldsmith answered it was not.'
Dr.Johnson told us at tea,that when some of Dr.Dodd's pious friends were trying to console him by saying that he was going to leave 'a wretched world,'he had honesty enough not to join in the cant:--'No,no,(said he,)it has been a very agreeable world to me.'Johnson added,'I respect Dodd for thus speaking the truth;for,to be sure,he had for several years enjoyed a life of great voluptuousness.
He told us,that Dodd's city friends stood by him so,that a thousand pounds were ready to be given to the gaoler,if he would let him escape.He added,that he knew a friend of Dodd's,who walked about Newgate for some time on the evening before the day of his execution,with five hundred pounds in his pocket,ready to be paid to any of the turnkeys who could get him out:but it was too late;for he was watched with much circumspection.He said,Dodd's friends had an image of him made of wax,which was to have been left in his place;and he believed it was carried into the prison.
Johnson disapproved of Dr.Dodd's leaving the world persuaded that The Convict's Address to his unhappy Brethren was of his own writing.'But,Sir,(said I,)you contributed to the deception;for when Mr.Seward expressed a doubt to you that it was not Dodd's own,because it had a great deal more force of mind in it than any thing known to be his,you answered,--"Why should you think so?
Depend upon it,Sir,when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight,it concentrates his mind wonderfully."'JOHNSON.Sir,as Dodd got it from me to pass as his own,while that could do him any good,there was an IMPLIED PROMISE that I should not own it.
To own it,therefore,would have been telling a lie,with the addition of breach of promise,which was worse than simply telling a lie to make it be believed it was Dodd's.Besides,Sir,I did not DIRECTLY tell a lie:I left the matter uncertain.Perhaps Ithought that Seward would not believe it the less to be mine for what I said;but I would not put it in his power to say I had owned it.'