Aetat. 67.] The character of a soldier. 9 had been acquainted. JOHNSON. 'I wrote something1 for Lord Charles; and I thought he had nothing to fear from a courtmartial. I suffered a great loss when he died; he was a mighty pleasing man in conversation, and a reading man. The character of a soldier is high. They who stand forth the foremost in danger, for the community, have the respect of mankind. An officer is much more respected than any other man who has as little money. In a commercial country, money will always purchase respect. But you find, an officer, who has, properly speaking, no money, is every where well received and treated with attention. The character of a soldier always stands him in stead?. BOSWELL. 'Yet, Sir, I think that common soldiers are worse thought of than other men in the same rank of life; such as labourers.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, a common soldier is usually a very gross man3, and any quality which procures respect may be overwhelmed by grossness. A man of learning may be so vicious or so ridiculous that you cannot respect him. A common soldier too, generally eats more than he can pay for. But when a common soldier is civil in his quarters, his red coat procures him a degree of respect. The peculiar See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection. Hay was third in command in the expedition to North America in 1757. It was reported that he said that 'the nation's wealth was expended in making sham-fights and planting cabbages.' He was put under arrest and sent home to be tried. Gent. Mag. 1758, p. 170. Mr. Croker says that 'the real state of the case was that he had gone mad, and was in that state sent home.' He died before the sentence of the court-martial was promulgated. Croker's Boswell, p. 497. In Thoughts on the Coronation of George III (Works, v. 458) he ex pressed himself differently, if indeed the passage is of his writing (see ante, i. 361). He says:-'It cannot but offend every Englishman to see troops of soldiers placed between him and his sovereign, as if they were the most honourable of the people, or the King required guards to secure his person from his subjects. As their station makes them think themselves important, their insolence is always such as may be expected from servile authority.' In his Journey to the Hebrides (ib. ix. 30) he speaks of 'that courtesy which is so closely connected with the military character.' See post, April 10, 1778. 3 It is not in the power even of God to make a polite soldier.' Menander; quoted by Hume, Essays, Part i. 20, note. In Johnson's Debates for 1741 (Works, x. 387) is one on the quarrespect 10 Good humour in disputations. [A.D. 1776. respect paid to the military character in France was mentioned. BOSWELL. I should think that where military men are numerous, they would be less valued as not being rare.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, wherever a particular character or profession is high in the estimation of a people, those who are of it will be valued above other men. We value an Englishman highly in this country, and yet Englishmen are not rare in it.' Mr. Murray praised the ancient philosophers for the candour and good humour with which those of different sects disputed with each other. JOHNSON. 'Sir, they disputed with good humour, because they were not in earnest as to religion. Had the ancients been serious in their belief, we should not have had their Gods exhibited in the manner we find them represented in the Poets. The people would not have suffered it. They disputed with good humour upon their fanciful theories, because they were not interested in the truth of them: when a man has nothing to lose, he may be in good humour with his opponent. Accordingly you see in Lucian, the Epicurean, who argues only negatively, keeps his temper; the Stoick, who has something positive to preserve, grows angry'. controverts an opinion which you sequence of the uneasiness which tering of soldiers. By the Mutiny Act the innkeeper was required to find each foot-soldier lodging, diet, and small beer for fourpence a day. By the Act as amended that year if he furnished salt, vinegar, smallbeer, candles, fire, and utensils to dress their victuals, without payment, he had not to supply diet except on a march. Ib. pp. 416, 420. The allowance of small-beer was fixed at five pints a day, though it was maintained that it should be six. Lord Baltimore, according to Johnson, said that 'as every gentleman's servants each consumed daily six pints, it surely is not to be required that a soldier should live in a perpetual state of warfare with his constitution.' Ib. p. 418. Burke, writing in 1794, says 'In quarters the inn Being angry with one who value, is a necessary conyou feel. Every man who keepers are obliged to find for the This alludes to the pleadings of a Stoic and an Epicurean for and against the existence of the Divinity in Lucian's Jupiter the Tragic. CROKER. attacks Aetat. 67.] Attacks on a man's belief. I I attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy'. Those only who believed in revelation have been angry at having their faith called in question; because they only had something upon which they could rest as matter of fact.' MURRAY. 'It seems to me that we are not angry at a man for controverting an opinion which we believe and value; we rather pity him.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir; to be sure when you wish a man to have that belief which you think is of infinite advantage, you wish well to him; but your primary consideration is your own quiet. If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards. No, Sir; every man will dispute with great good humour upon a subject in which he is not interested. I will dispute very calmly upon the probability of another man's son being hanged; but if a man zealously enforces the probability that my own son will be hanged, I shall certainly not be in a very good humour with him.' I added this illustration, 'If a man endeavours to convince me that my wife, whom I love very much, and in whom I place great confidence, is a disagreeable woman, and is even unfaithful to me, I shall be very angry, for he is putting me in fear of being unhappy.' MURRAY. 'But, Sir, truth will always bear an examination.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, but it is painful to be forced to defend it. Consider, Sir, how should you like, 'There is a time when every man is weary of raising difficulties only to task himself with the solution, and desires to enjoy truth without the labour or hazard of contest.' Johnson's Works, vi. 497. See ante, May 7, 1773, and post, April 3, 1779, where he says, 'Sir, you are to a certain degree hurt by knowing that even one man does not believe.' Hume, in his Essay Of Parties in General, had written :-'Such is the nature of the human mind, that it always takes hold of every mind that ap proaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified and corroborated by an unanimity of sentiments, so is it shocked and disturbed by any contrariety.' 'Carlyle was fond of quoting a sentence of Novalis :-"My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it." Saturday Review, No. 1538, p. 521. 'The introducing of new doctrines,' said Bacon, 'is an affectation of tyranny over the understandings and beliefs of men.' Bacon's Nat. Hist., Experiment 1000. though 12 Education at great schools. [A.D. 1776. though conscious of your innocence, to be tried before a jury for a capital crime, once a week.' We talked of education at great schools; the advantages and disadvantages of which Johnson displayed in a luminous manner; but his arguments preponderated so much in favour of the benefit which a boy of good parts' might receive at one of them, that I have reason to believe Mr. Murray was very much influenced by what he had heard to-day, in his determination to send his own son to Westminster school'.—I have acted in the same manner with regard to my own two sons; having placed the eldest at Eton, and the second at Westminster. I cannot say which is best3. But in justice to both those noble seminaries, I with high satisfaction declare, that my boys have derived from them a great deal of good, and no evil: and I trust they will, like Horace, be grateful to their father for giving them so valuable an education. I I introduced the topick, which is often ignorantly urged, that 'We must own,' said Johnson, 'that neither a dull boy, nor an idle boy, will do so well at a great school as at a private one.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 22, 1773. See ante, under Dec. 5, 1775. On June 16, 1784, he said of a very timid boy:- Placing him at a public school is forcing an owl upon day.' Lord Shelburne says that the first Pitt told him 'that his reason for preferring private to public education was, that he scarce observed a boy who was not cowed for life at Eton; that a public school might suit a boy of a turbulent forward disposition, but would not do where there was any gentleness.' maurice's Shelburne, i. 72. Fitz 2 'There are,' wrote Hume in 1767, 'several advantages of a Scots education; but the question is, whether that of the language does not counterbalance them, and determine the preference to the English.' He decides it does. He continues :-' The only inconvenience is, that few Scotsmen that have had an English education have ever settled cordially in their own country; and they have been commonly lost ever after to their friends.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 403. 3 He wrote to Temple on Nov. 28, 1789-'My eldest son has been at Eton since the 15th of October. You cannot imagine how miserable he has been; he wrote to me for some time as if from the galleys, and intreated me to come to him.' Letters of Boswell, p. 314. On July 21, 1790, he wrote of his second son who was at home ill:-'I am in great concern what should be done with him, for he is so oppressed at Westminster School by the big boys that I am almost afraid to send him thither.' Ib. p. 327. On April 6, 1791, he wrote:-Your little friend James is quite reconciled to Westminster.' Ib. p. 337. Southey, who was at Westminster with young Boswell, describes the capricious and dangerous tyranny' under which he himself had suffered. Southey's Life, i. 138. 4 Horace, Satires, i. 6. 65-88. the Aetat. 67.] The English Universities. 13 the Universities of England are too rich'; so that learning does not flourish in them as it would do, if those who teach had smaller salaries, and depended on their assiduity for a great part of their income. JOHNSON. 'Sir, the very reverse of this is the truth; the English Universities are not rich enough. Our fellowships are only sufficient to support a man during his studies to fit him for the world, and accordingly in general they are held no longer than till an opportunity offers of getting away. Now and then, perhaps, there is a fellow who grows old in his college; but this is against his will, unless he be a man very indolent indeed. A hundred a year is reckoned a good fellowship, and that is no more than is necessary to keep a man decently as a scholar. We do not allow our fellows to marry, because we consider academical institutions as preparatory to a settlement in the world. It is only by being employed as a tutor, that a fellow can obtain any thing more than a livelihood. To be sure a man, who has enough without teaching, will probably not teach; for we would all be idle if we could. In the same manner, a man who is to get nothing by teaching, will not exert himself. Gresham-College was intended as a place of instruction for London; able professors were to read lectures gratis, they contrived to have no scholars; whereas, if they had been allowed to receive but sixpence a lecture from each scholar, they would have been emulous to have had many scholars. Every body will agree that it should be the interest of those who teach to have scholars; and this is the case in our Universities. That they are too rich is certainly not true; he wrote:-'He well remembered that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to perform.' Ib. p. 58. Boswell, post, end of Nov. 1784, blames Dr. Knox for 'ungraciously attacking his venerable Alma Mater. Knox, who was a Fellow of St. John's, left Oxford in 1778. In his Liberal Education, published in 1781, he wrote :-'I saw immorality, habitual drunkenness, idleness and ignorance, boastingly obtruding themselves on public view.' Knox's Works, iv. 138. The general tendency of the universities is favour for |