110. Ibid., p. 351. Johnson’s position here is close to that of Swift, who in The Examiner 33 (22 March 1710) had contrasted the true, Tory, idea of passive obedience with its Whig caricature, and had insisted that the true idea of passive obedience included an ultimate safeguard to the people: ‘The Crown may be sued as well as a private Person; and if an arbitrary King of England should send his Officers to seize my Lands or Goods against Law; I can lawfully resist them. The Ministers by whom he acts are liable to Prosecution and Impeachment, although his own Person be Sacred. But, if he interpose his Royal Authority to support their Insolence, I see no Remedy, until it grows a general Grievance, or untill the Body of the People have Reason to apprehend it will be so; after which it becomes a Case of Necessity; and then I suppose, a free People may assert their own Rights, yet without any Violation to the Person or lawful Power of the Prince’ (Jonathan Swift, The Examiner and Other Pieces Written in 1710–11, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Shakespeare Head, 1941), p. 114). Consider also Swift’s comment in his sermon ‘Upon the Martyrdom of King Charles I’: ‘When oppressions grow too great and universal to be borne, nature or necessity may find a remedy’ (Jonathan Swift, Irish Tracts 1720–1723 and Sermons, ed. Louis Landa (Oxford: Shakespeare Head, 1948), p. 229).
111. Section 209, in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 404–5.
112. Life of Johnson, below, p. 321. Boswell also underlined Johnson’s fervour for ‘constitutional liberty’, in contrast to his reputation for being ‘abjectly submissive to power’ (ibid., p. 167); cf. also Johnson’s aversion to the destruction of liberty (ibid., p. 645). For Johnson on the decline of party in the eighteenth century, see ibid., p. 75. Maxwell derided Johnson’s reputation for supporting ‘slavish and arbitrary principles of government’ by reference to his indomitableness of character, for he was ‘extremely jealous of his personal liberty and independence, and could not brook the smallest appearance of neglect or insult, even from the highest personages’ (ibid., p. 322). It was this disposition of character which also led Johnson to reflect critically on Burke’s arguments for party discipline, presumably in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, which had been published three years earlier in 1770: ibid., p. 378.
113. Ibid., p. 341.
114. Ibid., pp. 227-8. Boswell supposes the ‘violent Whig’ to have been Gilbert Walmsley (1680–1751). Consider too Johnson’s dictum that ‘A wise Tory and a wise Whig, I believe, will agree’ (ibid., p. 828) – an opinion which seems to have made a deep impression on that notable Whig Samuel Parr (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 353).
115. Life of Johnson, below, p. 730.
116. Ibid., pp. 606-7.
117. Ibid., p. 606.
118. Ibid., p. 1141.
119. Ibid., pp. 57, 42. Boswell records Johnson’s belief that he inherited this melancholic disposition from his father, Michael Johnson, and that in consequence he was ‘mad all his life, at least not sober’ (ibid., p. 25); cf. also p. 235.
120. As it was in the mental world, so it was for Johnson in the physicaclass="underline" ‘for though indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution, whenever he made an exertion he did more than any one else’ (ibid., p. 30).
121. Ibid., p. 43. Cf. Johnson’s reply to William Seward’s surprise that irreligious people existed: ‘Sir, you need not wonder at this, when you consider how large a proportion of almost every man’s life is passed without thinking of it. I myself was for some years totally regardless of religion. It had dropped out of my mind. It was at an early part of my life. Sickness brought it back, and I hope I have never lost it since’ (ibid., p. 882).
122. Ibid., p. 929; cf. also pp. 313–14.
123. Ibid., p. 215; cf. ‘There are few people to whom I take so much to as you’ (p. 237).
124. Doctrine of the Trinity: ibid., pp. 396-7. Predestination and theodicy: ibid., p. 313. Roman Catholicism: ibid., p. 314; though note the strongly Protestant character of his deathbed comments on religion (ibid., p. 997).
125. On Johnson’s informal legal education, see ibid., p. 530. For his attempt to follow a legal career, see ibid., p. 78. For his irritation in later life at being told (‘when it is too late’) that he might have been a great lawyer, see ibid., pp. 690–91. Johnson employed his legal knowledge when he collaborated with the Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, Sir Robert Chambers, on the latter’s A Course of Lectures on the English Law (delivered 1767–73; first published 1986): see Thomas M. Curley, Sir Robert Chambers: Law, Literature, and Empire in the Age of Johnson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), pp. 42–127. For evidence of the accuracy of Johnson’s legal knowledge, see for example Life of Johnson, below, pp. 224-5 (a correct explanation of the principle that the king can do no wrong), and ibid., pp. 364-7 (a discussion of a point of Scottish law). Cf. also Johnson’s correction of Charles I’s opinion on why he could not be a lawyer, which throws a keen sidelight on the attractions of legal pleading for Johnson (ibid., p. 374).
126. For accounts of the history of the Boswell papers and of the drama of their discovery, see David Buchanan, The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974) and Frederick Pottle, Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).
127. Waingrow’s edition of the Correspondence includes a ‘Chronology of the Making of the Life’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. xlix-lxix).
128. Ibid., p. 61.
129. Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica and France, 1765–1766, ed. F. Brady and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), p. 106. In 1768 Boswell suggested to Johnson the possibility of publishing his letters after his death (Life of Johnson, below, p. 293).
130. Life of Johnson, below, p. 19.
131. Boswell for the Defence, 1769—1774, ed. W. K. Wimsatt and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 86. Note also the comment in a letter to Garrick of 10 September 1772: ‘If I survive Mr. Johnson, I shall publish a Life of him, for which I have a store of materials’ (The Correspondence of James Boswell with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone, ed. P. S. Baker et al. (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 45.
132. Life of Johnson, below, p. 349. Cf. the later, similar comment for 11 April 1773: ‘I again solicited him to communicate to me the particulars of his early life. He said, “You shall have them all for twopence. I hope you shall know a great deal more of me before you write my Life.” He mentioned to me this day many circumstances, which I wrote down when I went home, and have interwoven in the former part of this narrative’ (ibid., p. 375).