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Updated: June 5, 2025
Johnson, indeed, looked upon him as little less than a saint; but then, as Sir Joshua Reynolds tells us, though 'Johnson was not easily imposed upon by professions to honesty and candour, he appeared to have little suspicion of hypocrisy in religion. It was in the year 1704 that Psalmanazar published his Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa.
In the confession of his fraud Psalmanazar seems to keep back nothing. His repentance appears to be sincere, and his later life, there can be little question, was regular. Yet, as I have said, even his confessions apparently are not free from the old leaven of hypocrisy.
Thrale certainly shall not come, and yet somebody must appear whom the people think it worth the while to look at. Piozzi Letters, ii. 114. Hawkins's Johnsons Works, xi. 206. It is curious that Psalmanazar, in his Memoirs, p. 101, uses the mongrel word transmogrify. Taylor's Life of Reynolds, ii. 459. Boswell, when in the year 1764 he was starting from Berlin for Geneva, wrote to Mr.
N.B. The Scene wherein Thyestes eats his own children is to be performed by the famous Mr. Psalmanazar lately arrived from Formosa: The whole Supper being set to Kettle-drums. On the passage in the text Macaulay in his Review of Croker's Edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson partly founds the following criticism:
Hoole having answered, 'My uncle, Sir, who was a taylor; Johnson, recollecting himself, said, 'Sir, I knew him; we called him the metaphysical taylor. He was of a club in Old-street, with me and George Psalmanazar, and some others: but pray, Sir, was he a good taylor? Mr. In pleasant reference to himself and Mr.
Among the latter, Psalmanazar, who, if he was a Spanish Jesuit, as has been said, and wrote this article, might be induced by the Amor Patriæ, to ascribe to his Countrymen the honour of having, first discoved America.
'He used to come to me: I did not seek much after HIM. Indeed I never sought much after any body. BOSWELL. 'Lord Orrery, I suppose. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; I never went to him but when he sent for me. BOSWELL. 'Richardson? JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir. But I sought after George Psalmanazar the most. I used to go and sit with him at an alehouse in the city.
Among other men of interest with whom he may be said to have been intimate at one time or another in his life may be mentioned his old pupil David Garrick, the most famous and perhaps the greatest of English actors, whom he loved and abused and would allow no one else to abuse: Richardson, the author of Clarissa, who once came to his rescue when he was arrested for debt, and of whose powers he had such a high opinion that he declared that there was "more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all Tom Jones"; the two Wartons, Joseph, the Headmaster of Winchester and editor of Pope, and Thomas the author of the history of English Poetry and himself Poet Laureate; both good scholars and critics who partly anticipated the poetic tastes of the nineteenth century: Paoli, the hero of Boswell and the Corsicans, with whom Johnson loved to dine: Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, who wrote against Hume and edited Clarendon; Savage, the poet of mysterious birth whose homeless life he sometimes shared and finally recorded: George Psalmanazar, the converted impostor, an even more mysterious person, whom Johnson reverenced and said he "sought after" more than any man: booksellers like Cave and Davies and the brothers Dilly: scholarly lawyers like Sir William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell, whom he made executor to his will, and Sir Robert Chambers whom he reproved for tossing snails over a wall into his neighbour's garden till he heard the neighbour was a Dissenter, on which he said, "Oh, if so, toss away, Chambers, toss away"; and physicians like Heberden, beloved of Cowper, whom Johnson called ultimus Romanorum, and Laurence, President of the College of Physicians, to whom he addressed a Latin Ode.
His Lordship's manner was not impressive, and I learnt afterwards that Johnson did not find out that the person who talked to him was a Prelate; if he had, I doubt not that he would have treated him with more respect; for once talking of George Psalmanazar , whom he reverenced for his piety, he said, 'I should as soon think of contradicting a BISHOP . One of the company provoked him greatly by doing what he could least of all bear, which was quoting something of his own writing, against what he then maintained.
In his Description of Formosa he wrote it Psalmanaazaar, and in later life Psalmanazar. This man found in him a tool ready made to his hand. He had at once seen through his roguery, but he used his knowledge only to plunge him deeper in his guilt.
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