expected a different return than personal slight and neglect, or the more mortifying condescension of a lukewarm patronage. At length indeed you have thought proper to recommend me to the public; but your recommendation comes too late. The notice which your lordship has been pleased to take of me and my labours, had it been early, would have been kind; but it has been protracted so long as to be neither a service nor a favour; till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not need it.”[1]
These few passages of this celebrated letter were repeated to me by a person to whom Dr. Johnson had read it.
When Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son were published, Dr. J. said they inculcated the morals of a strumpet, and the manners of a dancing-master. Some other wit has not unhappily called them the Scoundrel’s Primer.
After all, these Letters have been, I think, unreasonably decried; for supposing a young man to be properly guarded against the base principles of dissimulation, &c, which they enforce, he may derive much advantage from the many minute directions which they contain, that other instructors and even parents don’t think it worth while to mention. In this and almost everything else, the world generally
- ↑ This story has been long familiar in the pages of Boswell, but when written by Malone, in his Memoranda, was little known. It is retained here in proof of his sources of information being good, and his notes accurately made.
