Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/187

 i2s. vii. AUG. 21, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

151

MACAULAY QUERIES. (12 S. vii. 130.)

SECCOMBE in his 1908 edition of ' Bos- well's Letters to Temple ' states (p. xii.) ^that much of the 1857 edition was destroyed JMacaulay never read the work It is fortunate for Boswell's reputation that Macaulay was ignorant of the existence of the Letters in 1831 when he reviewed Croker's edition of Boswell limb from limb for his letter of Mar. 31, 1789 :
 * by fire. It is not improbable therefore that
 * Boswell's Johnson,' for he would have torn

" It is utter folly in Pitt not to reward and attach to his administration a man of my popular a.nd pleasant talents .... He did not answer several letters which I wrote .... I lately wrote to him that such behaviour is not just . . . .and I doubt if it be wise. . . .About two months have -elapsed and he has made no sign."

Although English Biography owes a very .great debt to Boswell, the Temple corres- pondence establishes :

1. That Boswell was not a genius although he has been called one e.g. Sichel's ' Sterne : a Study,' 1910, p. 2.

2. That Johnson was long-suffering in tolerating at his elbow a man whose nature limitless vanity :
 * could thus sacrifice a young lady to his

" There is a Miss Silverton in the fly with me, -an amiable creature who has been in France. I can unite little fondnesses with perfect conjugal <love. Bemember to put my letters in a book neatly (May 22, 1776)."

So self-enamoured that he could write :

" I got into the fly at Buckden. . . .An agreeable young widow nursed me, and supported my Jame foot on her knee. Am I not fortunate in having something about me that interests most people at first sight in my favour ? (May 8, 1779)."

3. That Boswell deliberately suppressed conversations and thereby misled subsequent biographers. He made Gibbon appear so ^colourless that Cotter Morison in his excellent life of the historian was constrained to remark :

" Gibbon's name occurs in Boswell, but nearly always as a persona muta. Certainly the arena where Johnson and Burke encountered each other was not fitted to bring out a shy. . . .man. . . .If he ever felt the weight of Ursa Major's pe,w it is not -surprising."

A complete misconception. Gibbon, one of the greatest masters of the English

language, was well able to hold his own. George Colman, the younger, thus testifies to his conversational powers :

" On the day I first sat down with Johnson in his rusty brown and his black worsteads, Gibbon was placed opposite to me in a suit of flower'd velvet, with a bag and sword .... Johnson's style was grand and Gibbon's elegant .... Johnson march'd to kettle-drums and trumpets ; Gibbon moved to flutes and hautboys ; Johnson hew'd passages through the Alps, while Gibbon levell'd walks through parks and gardens. Maul'd as I had been by Johnson, Gibbon pour'd balm upon my bruises, by condescending .... to talk with me ; the great historian was light and playful, suiting his manner to the capacity of the boy.... he tapp'd his snuff, box. . . .he smirk'd and smiled ; and rounded his periods with the same air of good- breeding as if he was conversing with men (' Ran- dom Records,' vol. i., pp. 121, 1830)."

The Temple letters supply the key to Boswell's disingenuousness. The " agreeable widow," despite her great kindness to Boswell, kindled feelings of no charitable order within his self -applauding breast, for in the same letter he sets down this un- surpassed gem :

" Gibbon is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our literary Club to me."

In other words Gibbon would brook no irrelevant interruptions from Boswell, and probably rounded on him sharply when he interposed his puerile remarks with the object of drawing Johnson and of making copy. Had Boswell been a much abler man than he was he would have realised that Johnson and Gibbon in conversation was the precise moment for the ordinary mortal to preserve a respectful silence.

In the face of such evidence it becomes a grave question how much reliance can be be placed on the portrait of Goldsmith that Boswell has handed to posterity. Was he half as vain and jealous as he is painted, or have we a malicious caricature ?

J. PAUL DE CASTRO.

1 Essex Court, Temple.

FINKLE STREET" (12 S. v. 69, 109. 279; vi. 25, 114, 176 f 198, 319). While on another quest I happened to-day on the following Royal charters in the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland in the year 1476-7, all of subjects in Berwick-on-Tweed, viz. :

" (1) 19th January, of a tenement of land in Hidegate adjoining Finkilstrete ; (2) 3rd March, of a piece of waste land in Finkil Street ; and (3) 3rd March, of a tenement in the Street called Finkilstrete."

j. L. ANDERSON.

Edinburgh.