A profitable way to spend such a day! Being forced to
dispense with church-going, I have occupied myself in reading a great deal, and
writing a little, which latter duty is a favorite task of mine after church on
Sundays. But this evening, the mosquitoes are so savage that writing became impossible,
until Miriam and I instituted a grand extermination process, which we partly
accomplished by extraordinary efforts. She lay on the bed with the bar
half-drawn over her, and half-looped up, while I was commissioned to fan the
wretches from all corners into the pen. It was rather fatiguing, and in spite
of the numbers slain, hardly recompensed me for the trouble of hunting them
around the room; but still, Miriam says exercise is good for me, and she ought
to know.
I have been reading that old disguster, Boswell. Bah! I have
no patience with the toady! I suppose “my mind is not yet thoroughly impregnated
with the Johnsonian ether,” and that is the reason why I cannot appreciate him,
or his work. I admire him for his patience and minuteness in compiling such
trivial details. He must have been an amiable man, to bear Johnson's brutal,
ill-humored remarks; but seems to me if I had not spirit enough to resent the
indignity, I would at least not publish it to the world! Briefly, my opinion,
which this book has only tended to confirm, is that Boswell was a vain,
conceited prig, a fool of a jackanape, an insupportable sycophant, a — whatever
mean thing you please; there is no word small enough to suit him. As to
Johnson, he is a surly old bear; in short, an old brute of a tyrant. All his
knowledge and attainments could not have made me tolerate him, I am sure. I
could have no respect for a man who was so coarse in speech and manners, and
who eat like an animal. Fact is, I am not a Boswellian, or a Johnsonian,
either. I do not think him such an extraordinary man. I have heard many
conversations as worthy of being recorded as nineteen-twentieths of his. In
spite of his learning, he was narrow-minded and bigoted, which I despise above
all earthly failings. Witness his tirades against Americans, calling us
Rascals, Robbers, Pirates, and saying he would like to burn us! Now I have
railed at many of these ordinary women here, for using like epithets for the
Yankees, and have felt the greatest contempt for their absurd abuse. These poor
women do not aspire to Johnsonian wisdom, and their ignorance may serve as an
excuse for their narrow-mindedness; but the wondrous Johnson to rave and bellow
like any Billingsgate nymph! Bah! He is an old disguster!
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 114-6
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