d a fool, he hated a rogue, and
he hated a Whig: he was a very good hater," was exactly applicable to
himself. For us the word Whig has come to mean a dignified aristocrat
who, by the pressure of family tradition, maintains a painful
association with vulgar Radicals: for Johnson it meant a rebel against
the principle of authority. From that point of view he was accustomed
to say with perfect justice that the first Whig was the Devil. His
sallies at the general expense of the enemies of "Church and King" must
not be confused with those on many other subjects, as, for instance, on
the Scotch, which were partly humorous in intention as well as in
expression. He trounced the Scotch to annoy Boswell and amuse himself.
He trounced Whigs, Quakers and Presbyterians because he loved authority
both in Church and State. These latter outbursts represented definite
opinions which were held, as usually happens, with all the {143} more
passion because reason had not been allowed to play her full part in
their maturing. Johnson could hold no views to which he had not been
able to supply a rational foundation: but in these matters passion had
been given a free hand in the superstructure.

In this way his Tory outbursts have a smack of life about them not
always to be found in the utterances of sages. High Tories were not
often seen in the intellectual London world of these days: they were to
be found rather in country parsonages and college common-rooms. In
London Whiggery sat enthroned and complacent. It is, therefore, with a
pleasant sense of the fluttering of Whig dovecotes that we watch
Johnson, always, as Miss Burney said, the first man in any company in
which he appeared, startling superior persons by taking the high Tory
tone. He once astonished an old gentleman to whose niece he was
talking by saying to her, "My dear, I hope you are a Jacobite"; and
answered the uncle's protest by saying, "Why, sir, I meant no offence
to your niece, I meant her a great compliment. A Jacobite, sir,
believes in the divine right of kings. He that believes in the divine
right of kings believes in a Divinity. A Jacobite believes in the
divine right of Bishops. He that believes in the divine right of
Bishops believes in the {144} divine authority of the Christian
religion. Therefore, sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist nor a
Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig: for _Whiggism is a negation of
all principle_." But it was not often th