Life of Johnson, Volume 1
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Title: Life of Johnson, Volume 1
Author: James Boswell
Editor: George Birkbeck Norman Hill
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8918]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8918
Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David King and PG Distributed Proofreaders
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHNSON, VOLUME 1 ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David King and PG Distributed Proofreaders
_BOSWELL'S_
_LIFE OF JOHNSON_
_INCLUDING BOSWELL'S JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES
AND JOHNSON'S DIARY OF A JOURNEY INTO NORTH WALES_
EDITED BY
GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L.
PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD
IN SIX VOLUMES
VOLUME I.--LIFE (1709-1765)
M DCCC LXXXVII
THE
LIFE
OF
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
COMPREHENDING
AN ACCOUNT OF HIS STUDIES
AND NUMEROUS WORKS,
IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER;
A SERIES OF HIS EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE
AND CONVERSATIONS WITH MANY EMINENT PERSONS;
AND
VARIOUS ORIGINAL PIECES OF HIS COMPOSITION,
NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED:
THE WHOLE EXHIBITING A VIEW OF LITERATURE AND
LITERARY MEN IN GREAT-BRITAIN, FOR NEAR
HALF A CENTURY, DURING WHICH
HE FLOURISHED.
_BY JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ_.
--_Quò fit ut_ OMNIS
_Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella_
VITA SENIS.--
HORAT.
THE THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED,
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY H. BALDWIN AND SON,
FOR CHARLES DILLY, IN THE POULTRY.
* * * * *
M DCC XCIX.
TO
THE REVEREND BENJAMIN JOWETT, M.A.,
MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
HONORARY LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
HONORARY D.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN
WHO IS NOT ONLY
'AN ACUTE AND KNOWING CRITIC'
BUT ALSO
'JOHNSONIANISSIMUS'
IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF THE
KINDLY INTEREST THAT HE HAS THROUGHOUT TAKEN
IN THE PROGRESS OF THIS WORK
This Edition
OF
BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON
Is Dedicated
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
PAGE
DEDICATION TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE THIRD EDITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
CHRONOLOGICAL CATALOGUE OF THE PROSE WORKS OF
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON (SEPT. 18, 1709-OCTOBER 1765) . . . . 1-500
APPENDICES
A. JOHNSON'S DEBATES IN PARLIAMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
B. JOHNSON'S LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER AND MISS PORTER
IN 1759 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
C. JOHNSON AT CAMBRIDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
D. JOHNSON'S LETTER TO DR. LELAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
E. JOHNSON'S 'ENGAGING IN POLITICKS WITH H----N'. . . . . . 518
F. JOHNSON'S FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE THRALES
AND HIS SERIOUS ILLNESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, &c.
1. SAMUEL JOHNSON, after the Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the
National Gallery
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ to VOL. I.
2. FACSIMILE OF JOHNSON'S HANDWRITING IN HIS 20TH YEAR
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. I, p. 60.
3. FACSIMILE OF A LETTER OF JOHNSON relating to _Rasselas_
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. I, p. 340.
4. SAMUEL JOHNSON, from the Portrait painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
1756
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. I, p. 392.
5. SAMUEL JOHNSON, after the Bust by Nollekens
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ to VOL. II.
6. FACSIMILE OF JOHNSON'S HANDWRITING IN HIS 54TH YEAR
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. II, _to follow Frontispiece_.
7. SAMUEL JOHNSON, after the Painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1770
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece to_ VOL. III.
8. FACSIMILE OF THE ROUND ROBIN ADDRESSED TO DR. JOHNSON
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. III, p. 82.
9. OPIE'S PORTRAIT OF JOHNSON, from the Engraving in the Common
Room of University College
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. III, _to face_ p. 245.
10. FACSIMILE OF DR. JOHNSON'S HANDWRITING A MONTH BEFORE
HIS DEATH
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. IV, _to face_ p. 377.
11. JAMES BOSWELL OF AUCHINLECK, Esq., from the painting by Sir
Joshua Reynolds
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece to_ VOL. V.
12. FACSIMILE OF BOSWELL'S HANDWRITING, 1792, from a Letter in the
Bodleian Library
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. V, _to follow Frontispiece_.
13. MAP OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL'S TOUR THROUGH SCOTLAND AND
THE HEBRIDES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOL. V, _to face_ p. 5.
14. CHART OF JOHNSON'S CONTEMPORARIES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece to VOL. VI.
PREFACE.
Fielding, it is said, drank confusion to the man who invented the fifth
act of a play. He who has edited an extensive work, and has concluded
his labours by the preparation of a copious index, might well be
pardoned, if he omitted to include the inventor of the Preface among the
benefactors of mankind. The long and arduous task that years before he
had set himself to do is done, and the last thing that he desires is to
talk about it. Liberty is what he asks for, liberty to range for a time
wherever he pleases in the wide and fair fields of literature. Yet with
this longing for freedom comes a touch of regret and a doubt lest the
'fresh woods and pastures new' may never wear the friendly and familiar
face of the plot of ground within whose narrower confines he has so long
been labouring, and whose every corner he knows so well. May-be he finds
hope in the thought that should his new world seem strange to him and
uncomfortable, ere long he may be called back to his old task, and in
the preparation of a second edition find the quiet and the peace of mind
that are often found alone in 'old use and wont.'
With me the preparation of these volumes has, indeed, been the work of
many years. Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ I read for the first time in my
boyhood, when I was too young for it to lay any hold on me. When I
entered Pembroke College, Oxford, though I loved to think that Johnson
had been there before me, yet I cannot call to mind that I ever opened
the pages of Boswell. By a happy chance I was turned to the study of the
literature of the eighteenth century. Every week we were required by the
rules of the College to turn into Latin, or what we called Latin, a
passage from _The Spectator_. Many a happy minute slipped by while, in
forgetfulness of my task, I read on and on in its enchanting pages. It
was always with a sigh that at last I tore myself away, and sat
resolutely down to write bad Latin instead of reading good English. From
Addison in the course of time I passed on to the other great writers of
his and the succeeding age, finding in their exquisitely clear style,
their admirable common sense and their freedom from all the tricks of
affectation, a delightful contrast to so many of the eminent authors of
our own time. Those troublesome doubts, doubts of all kinds, which since
the great upheaval of the French Revolution have harassed mankind, had
scarcely begun to ruffle the waters of their life. Even Johnson's
troubled mind enjoyed vast levels of repose. The unknown world alone was
wrapped in stormy gloom; of this world 'all the complaints which were
made were unjust[1].' Though I was now familiar with many of the great
writers, yet Boswell I had scarcely opened since my boyhood. A happy day
came just eighteen years ago when in an old book-shop, almost under the
shadow of a great cathedral, I bought a second-hand copy of a somewhat
early edition of the _Life_ in five well-bound volumes. Of all my books
none I cherish more than these. In looking at them I have known what it
is to feel Bishop Percy's 'uneasiness at the thoughts of leaving his
books in death[2].' They became my almost inseparable companions. Before
long I began to note the parallel passages and allusions not only in
their pages, but in the various authors whom I studied. Yet in these
early days I never dreamt of preparing a new edition. It fell to my lot
as time went on to criticise in some of our leading publications works
that bore both on Boswell and Johnson. Such was my love for the subject
that on one occasion, when I was called upon to write a review that
should fall two columns of a weekly newspaper, I read a new edition of
the _Life_ from beginning to end without, I believe, missing a single
line of the text or a single note. At length, 'towering in the
confidence'[3] of one who as yet has but set his foot on the threshold
of some stately mansion in which he hopes to find for himself a home, I
was rash enough more than twelve years ago to offer myself as editor of
a new edition of Boswell's _Life of Johnson_. Fortunately for me another
writer had been already engaged by the publisher to whom I applied, and
my offer was civilly declined. From that time on I never lost sight of
my purpose but when in the troubles of life I well-nigh lost sight of
every kind of hope. Everything in my reading that bore on my favourite
author was carefully noted, till at length I felt that the materials
which I had gathered from all sides were sufficient to shield me from a
charge of rashness if I now began to raise the building. Much of the
work of preparation had been done at a grievous disadvantage. My health
more than once seemed almost hopelessly broken down. Nevertheless even
then the time was not wholly lost. In the sleepless hours of many a
winter night I almost forgot my miseries in the delightful pages of
Horace Walpole's Letters, and with pencil in hand and some little hope
still in heart, managed to get a few notes taken. Three winters I had to
spend on the shores of the Mediterranean. During two of them my malady
and my distress allowed of no rival, and my work made scarcely any
advance. The third my strength was returning, and in the six months that
I spent three years ago in San Remo I wrote out very many of the notes
which I am now submitting to my readers.
An interval of some years of comparative health that I enjoyed between
my two severest illnesses allowed me to try my strength as a critic and
an editor. In _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_, which I
published in the year 1878, I reviewed the judgments passed on Johnson
and Boswell by Lord Macaulay and Mr. Carlyle, I described Oxford as it
was known to Johnson, and I threw light on more than one important
passage in the _Life_. The following year I edited Boswell's _Journal of
a Tour to Corsica_ and his curious correspondence with the Hon. Andrew
Erskine. The somewhat rare little volume in which are contained the
lively but impudent letters that passed between these two friends I had
found one happy day in an old book-stall underneath the town hall of
Keswick. I hoped that among the almost countless readers of Boswell
there would be many who would care to study in one of the earliest
attempts of his joyous youth the man whose ripened genius was to place
him at the very head of all the biographers of whom the world can boast.
My hopes were increased by the elegance and the accuracy of the
typography with which my publishers, Messrs. De La Rue & Co., adorned
this reprint. I was disappointed in my expectations. These curious
Letters met with a neglect which they did not deserve. Twice, moreover,
I was drawn away from the task that I had set before me by other works.
By the death of my uncle, Sir Rowland Hill, I was called upon to edit
his _History of the Penny Postage_, and to write his _Life_. Later on
General Gordon's correspondence during the first six years of his
government of the Soudan was entrusted to me to prepare for the press.
In my _Colonel Gordon in Central Africa_ I attempted to do justice to
the rare genius, to the wise and pure enthusiasm, and to the exalted
beneficence of that great man. The labour that I gave to these works
was, as regards my main purpose, by no means wholly thrown away. I was
trained by it in the duties of an editor, and by studying the character
of two such men, who, though wide as the poles asunder in many things,
were as devoted to truth and accuracy as they were patient in their
pursuit, I was strengthened in my hatred of carelessness and error.
With all these interruptions the summer of 1885 was upon me before I was
ready for the compositors to make a beginning with my work. In revising
my proofs very rarely indeed have I contented myself in verifying my
quotations with comparing them merely with my own manuscript. In almost
all instances I have once more examined the originals. 'Diligence and
accuracy,' writes Gibbon, 'are the only merits which an historical
writer may ascribe to himself; if any merit indeed can be assumed from
the performance of an indispensable duty[4].' By diligence and accuracy
I have striven to win for myself a place in Johnson's _school_--'a
school distinguished,' as Sir Joshua Reynolds said, 'for a love of truth
and accuracy[5].' I have steadily set before myself Boswell's example
where he says:--'Let me only observe, as a specimen of my trouble, that
I have sometimes been obliged to run half over London, in order to fix a
date correctly; which, when I had accomplished, I well knew would obtain
me no praise, though a failure would have been to my discredit[6].' When
the variety and the number of my notes are considered, when it is known
that a great many of the authors I do not myself possess, but that they
could only be examined in the Bodleian or the British Museum, it will be
seen that the labour of revising the proofs was, indeed, unusually
severe. In the course of the eighteen months during which they have been
passing through the press, fresh reading has given fresh information,
and caused many an addition, and not a few corrections moreover to be
made, in passages which I had previously presumed to think already
complete. Had it been merely the biography of a great man of letters
that I was illustrating, such anxious care would scarcely have been
needful. But Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, as its author with just pride
boasts on its title-page, 'exhibits a view of literature and literary
men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which Johnson
flourished.' Wide, indeed, is the gulf by which this half-century is
separated from us. The reaction against the thought and style of the age
over which Pope ruled in its prime, and Johnson in its decline,--this
reaction, wise as it was in many ways and extravagant as it was perhaps
in more, is very far from having spent its force. Young men are still
far too often found in our Universities who think that one proof of
their originality is a contempt of authors whose writings they have
never read. Books which were in the hands of almost every reader of the
_Life_ when it first appeared are now read only by the curious.
Allusions and quotations which once fell upon a familiar and a friendly
ear now fall dead. Men whose names were known to every one, now often
have not even a line in a Dictionary of Biography. Over manners too a
change has come, and as Johnson justly observes, 'all works which
describe manners require notes in sixty or seventy years, or less[7].'
But it is not only Boswell's narrative that needs illustration. Johnson
in his talk ranges over a vast number of subjects. In his capacious
memory were stored up the fruits of an almost boundless curiosity, and a
wide and varied reading. I have sought to follow him wherever a remark
of his required illustration, and have read through many a book that I
might trace to its source a reference or an allusion. I have examined,
moreover, all the minor writings which are attributed to him by Boswell,
but which are not for the most part included in his collected works. In
some cases I have ventured to set my judgment against Boswell's, and
have refused to admit that Johnson was the author of the feeble pieces
which were fathered on him. Once or twice in the course of my reading I
have come upon essays which had escaped the notice of his biographer,
but which bear the marks of his workmanship. To these I have given a
reference. While the minute examination that I have so often had to make
of Boswell's narrative has done nothing but strengthen my trust in his
statements and my admiration of his laborious truthfulness, yet in one
respect I have not found him so accurate as I had expected. 'I have,' he
says, 'been extremely careful as to the exactness of my quotations[8].'
Though in preparing his manuscript he referred in each case 'to the
originals,' yet he did not, I conjecture, examine them once more in
revising his proof-sheets. At all events he has allowed errors to slip
in. These I have pointed out in my notes, for in every case where I
could I have, I believe, verified his quotations.
I have not thought that it was my duty as an editor to attempt to refute
or even to criticise Johnson's arguments. The story is told that when
Peter the Great was on his travels and far from his country, some
members of the Russian Council of State in St. Petersburgh ventured to
withstand what was known to be his wish. His walking-stick was laid upon
the table, and silence at once fell upon all. In like manner, before
that editor who should trouble himself and his readers with attempting
to refute Johnson's arguments, paradoxical as they often were, should be
placed Reynolds's portrait of that 'labouring working mind[9].' It might
make him reflect that if the mighty reasoner could rise up and meet him
face to face, he would be sure, on which ever side the right might be,
even if at first his pistol missed fire to knock him down with the
butt-end of it[10]. I have attempted therefore not to criticise but to
illustrate Johnson's statements. I have compared them with the opinions
of the more eminent men among his contemporaries, and with his own as
they are contained in other parts of his _Life_, and in his writings. It
is in his written works that his real opinion can be most surely found.
'He owned he sometimes talked for victory; he was too conscientious to
make error permanent and pernicious by deliberately writing it[11].' My
numerous extracts from the eleven volumes of his collected works will, I
trust, not only give a truer insight into the nature of the man, but
also will show the greatness of the author to a generation of readers
who have wandered into widely different paths.
In my attempts to trace the quotations of which both Johnson and Boswell
were somewhat lavish, I have not in every case been successful, though I
have received liberal assistance from more than one friend. In one case
my long search was rewarded by the discovery that Boswell was quoting
himself. That I have lighted upon the beautiful lines which Johnson
quoted when he saw the Highland girl singing at her wheel[12], and have
found out who was 'one Giffard,' or rather Gifford, 'a parson,' is to me
a source of just triumph. I have not known many happier hours than the
one in which in the Library of the British Museum my patient
investigation was rewarded and I perused _Contemplation_.
Fifteen hitherto unpublished letters of Johnson[13]; his college
composition in Latin prose[14]; a long extract from his manuscript
diary[15]; a suppressed passage in his _Journey to the Western
Islands_[16]; Boswell's letters of acceptance of the office of Secretary
for Foreign Correspondence to the Royal Academy[17]; the proposal for
the publication of a _Geographical Dictionary_ issued by Johnson's
beloved friend, Dr. Bathurst[18]; and Mr. Recorder Longley's record of
his conversation with Johnson on Greek metres[19], will, I trust, throw
some lustre on this edition.
In many notes I have been able to clear up statements in the text which
were not fully understood even by the author, or were left intentionally
dark by him, or have become obscure through lapse of time. I would
particularly refer to the light that I have thrown on Johnson's engaging
in politics with William Gerard Hamilton[20], and on Burke's 'talk of
retiring[21].' In many other notes I have established Boswell's accuracy
against attacks which had been made on it apparently with success. It
was with much pleasure that I discovered that the story told of
Johnson's listening to Dr. Sacheverel's sermon is not in any way
improbable[22], and that Johnson's 'censure' of Lord Kames was quite
just[23]. The ardent advocates of total abstinence will not, I fear, be
pleased at finding at the end of my long note on Johnson's wine-drinking
that I have been obliged to show that he thought that the gout from
which he suffered was due to his temperance. 'I hope you persevere in
drinking,' he wrote to his friend, Dr. Taylor. 'My opinion is that I
have drunk too little[24].'
In the Appendices I have generally treated of subjects which demanded
more space than could be given them in the narrow limits of a foot-note.
In the twelve pages of the essay on Johnson's _Debates in
Parliament_[25] I have compressed the result of the reading of many
weeks. In examining the character of George Psalmanazar[26] I have
complied with the request of an unknown correspondent who was naturally
interested in the history of that strange man, 'after whom Johnson
sought the most[27].' In my essay on Johnson's Travels and Love of
Travelling[28] I have, in opposition to Lord Macaulay's wild and wanton
rhetoric, shown how ardent and how elevated was the curiosity with which
Johnson's mind was possessed. In another essay I have explained, I do
not say justified, his strong feelings towards the founders of the
United States[29]; and in a fifth I have examined the election of the
Lord Mayors of London, at a time when the City was torn by political
strife[30]. To the other Appendices it is not needful particularly to
refer.
In my Index, which has cost me many months' heavy work, 'while I bore
burdens with dull patience and beat the track of the alphabet with
sluggish resolution[31],' I have, I hope, shown that I am not unmindful
of all that I owe to men of letters. To the dead we cannot pay the debt
of gratitude that is their due. Some relief is obtained from its
burthen, if we in our turn make the men of our own generation debtors to
us. The plan on which my Index is made will, I trust, be found
convenient. By the alphabetical arrangement in the separate entries of
each article the reader, I venture to think, will be greatly facilitated
in his researches. Certain subjects I have thought it best to form into
groups. Under America, France Ireland, London, Oxford, Paris, and
Scotland, are gathered together almost all the references to those
subjects. The provincial towns of France, however, by some mistake I did
not include in the general article. One important but intentional
omission I must justify. In the case of the quotations in which my notes
abound I have not thought it needful in the Index to refer to the book
unless the eminence of the author required a separate and a second
entry. My labour would have been increased beyond all endurance and my
Index have been swollen almost into a monstrosity had I always referred
to the book as well as to the matter which was contained in the passage
that I extracted. Though in such a variety of subjects there must be
many omissions, yet I shall be greatly disappointed if actual errors are
discovered. Every entry I have made myself, and every entry I have
verified in the proof-sheets, not by comparing it with my manuscript,
but by turning to the reference in the printed volumes. Some indulgence
nevertheless may well be claimed and granted. If Homer at times nods, an
index-maker may be pardoned, should he in the fourth or fifth month of
his task at the end of a day of eight hours' work grow drowsy. May I
fondly hope that to the maker of so large an Index will be extended the
gratitude which Lord Bolingbroke says was once shown to lexicographers?
'I approve,' writes his Lordship, 'the devotion of a studious man at
Christ Church, who was overheard in his oratory entering into a detail
with God, and acknowledging the divine goodness in furnishing the world
with makers of dictionaries[32].'
In the list that I give in the beginning of the sixth volume of the
books which I quote, the reader will find stated in full the titles
which in the notes, through regard to space, I was forced to compress.
The Concordance of Johnson's sayings which follows the Index[33] will be
found convenient by the literary man who desires to make use of his
strong and pointed utterances. Next to Shakespeare he is, I believe,
quoted and misquoted the most frequently of all our writers. 'It is not
every man that can _carry_ a _bon-mot_[34].' Bons-mots that are
miscarried of all kinds of good things suffer the most. In this
Concordance the general reader, moreover, may find much to delight him.
Johnson's trade was wit and wisdom[35], and some of his best wares are
here set out in a small space. It was, I must confess, with no little
pleasure that in revising my proof-sheets I found that the last line in
my Concordance and the last line in my six long volumes is Johnson's
quotation of Goldsmith's fine saying; 'I do not love a man who is
zealous for nothing.'
In the 'forward' references in the notes to other passages in the book,
the reader may be surprised at finding that while often I only give the
date under which the reference will be found, frequently I am able to
quote the page and volume. The explanation is a simple one: two sets of
compositors were generally at work, and two volumes were passing through
the press simultaneously.
In the selection of the text which I should adopt I hesitated for some
time. In ordinary cases the edition which received the author's final
revision is the one which all future editors should follow. The second
edition, which was the last that was brought out in Boswell's life-time,
could not, I became convinced, be conveniently reproduced. As it was
passing through the press he obtained many additional anecdotes and
letters. These he somewhat awkwardly inserted in an Introduction and an
Appendix. He was engaged on his third edition when he died. 'He had
pointed out where some of these materials should be inserted,' and 'in
the margin of the copy which he had in part revised he had written
notes[36].' His interrupted labours were completed by Edmond Malone, to
whom he had read aloud almost the whole of his original manuscript, and
who had helped him in the revision of the first half of the book when it
was in type[37]. 'These notes,' says Malone, 'are faithfully preserved.'
He adds that 'every new remark, not written by the author, for the sake
of distinction has been enclosed within crotchets[38].' In the third
edition therefore we have the work in the condition in which it would
have most approved itself to Boswell's own judgment. In one point only,
and that a trifling one, had Malone to exercise his judgment. But so
skilful an editor was very unlikely to go wrong in those few cases in
which he was called upon to insert in their proper places the additional
material which the author had already published in his second edition.
Malone did not, however, correct the proof-sheets. I thought it my duty,
therefore, in revising my work to have the text of Boswell's second
edition read aloud to me throughout. Some typographical errors might, I
feared, have crept in. In a few unimportant cases early in the book I
adopted the reading of the second edition, but as I read on I became
convinced that almost all the verbal alterations were Boswell's own.
Slight errors, often of the nature of Scotticisms, had been corrected,
and greater accuracy often given. Some of the corrections and additions
in the third edition that were undoubtedly from his hand were of
considerable importance.
I have retained Boswell's spelling in accordance with the wish that he
expressed in the preface to his _Account of Corsica_. 'If this work,' he
writes, 'should at any future period be reprinted, I hope that care will
be taken of my orthography[39].' The punctuation too has been preserved.
I should be wanting in justice were I not to acknowledge that I owe much
to the labours of Mr. Croker. No one can know better than I do his great
failings as an editor. His remarks and criticisms far too often deserve
the contempt that Macaulay so liberally poured on them. Without being
deeply versed in books, he was shallow in himself. Johnson's strong
character was never known to him. Its breadth and length, and depth and
height were far beyond his measure. With his writings even he shows few
signs of being familiar. Boswell's genius, a genius which even to Lord
Macaulay was foolishness, was altogether hidden from his dull eye. No
one surely but a 'blockhead,' a 'barren rascal[40],' could with scissors
and paste-pot have mangled the biography which of all others is the
delight and the boast of the English-speaking world. He is careless in
small matters, and his blunders are numerous. These I have only noticed
in the more important cases, remembering what Johnson somewhere points
out, that the triumphs of one critic over another only fatigue and
disgust the reader. Yet he has added considerably to our knowledge of
Johnson. He knew men who had intimately known both the hero and his
biographer, and he gathered much that but for his care would have been
lost for ever. He was diligent and successful in his search after
Johnson's letters, of so many of which Boswell with all his persevering
and pushing diligence had not been able to get a sight. The editor of
Mr. Croker's _Correspondence and Diaries_[41] goes, however, much too
far when, in writing of Macaulay's criticism, he says: 'The attack
defeated itself by its very violence, and therefore it did the book no
harm whatever. Between forty and fifty thousand copies have been sold,
although Macaulay boasted with great glee that he had smashed it.' The
book that Macaulay attacked was withdrawn. That monstrous medley reached
no second edition. In its new form all the worst excrescences had been
cleared away, and though what was left was not Boswell, still less was
it unchastened Croker. His repentance, however, was not thorough. He
never restored the text to its old state; wanton transpositions of
passages still remain, and numerous insertions break the narrative. It
was my good fortune to become a sound Boswellian before I even looked at
his edition. It was not indeed till I came to write out my notes for the
press that I examined his with any thoroughness.
'Notes,' says Johnson, 'are often necessary, but they are necessary
evils[42].' To the young reader who for the first time turns over
Boswell's delightful pages I would venture to give the advice Johnson
gives about Shakespeare:--
'Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and
who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read
every play from the first scene to the last with utter negligence of all
his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop
at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged let
it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let
him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and
corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his
interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased let
him attempt exactness and read the commentators[43].'
So too let him who reads the _Life of Johnson_ for the first time read
it in one of the _Pre-Crokerian_ editions. They are numerous and good.
With his attention undiverted by notes he will rapidly pass through one
of the most charming narratives that the world has ever seen, and if his
taste is uncorrupted by modern extravagances, will recognise the genius
of an author who, in addition to other great qualities, has an admirable
eye for the just proportions of an extensive work, and who is the master
of a style that is as easy as it is inimitable.
Johnson, I fondly believe, would have been pleased, perhaps would even
have been proud, could he have foreseen this edition. Few distinctions
he valued more highly than those which he received from his own great
University. The honorary degrees that it conferred on him, the gown that
it entitled him to wear, by him were highly esteemed. In the Clarendon
Press he took a great interest[44]. The efforts which that famous
establishment has made in the excellence of the typography, the quality
of the paper, and the admirably-executed illustrations and facsimiles to
do honour to his memory and to the genius of his biographer would have
highly delighted him. To his own college he was so deeply attached that
he would not have been displeased to learn that his editor had been
nursed in that once famous 'nest of singing birds.' Of Boswell's
pleasure I cannot doubt. How much he valued any tribute of respect from
Oxford is shown by the absurd importance that he gave to a sermon which
was preached before the University by an insignificant clergyman more
than a year and a half after Johnson's death[45]. When Edmund Burke
witnessed the long and solemn procession entering the Cathedral of St.
Paul's, as it followed Sir Joshua Reynolds to his grave, he wrote:
'Everything, I think, was just as our deceased friend would, if living,
have wished it to be; for he was, as you know, not altogether
indifferent to this kind of observances[46].' It would, indeed, be
presumptuous in me to flatter myself that in this edition everything is
as Johnson and Boswell would, if living, have wished it. Yet to this
kind of observances, the observances that can be shown by patient and
long labour, and by the famous press of a great University, neither man
was altogether indifferent.
Should my work find favour with the world of readers, I hope again to
labour in the same fields. I had indeed at one time intended to enlarge
this edition by essays on Boswell, Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and perhaps on
other subjects. Their composition would, however, have delayed
publication more than seemed advisable, and their length might have
rendered the volumes bulky beyond all reason. A more favourable
opportunity may come. I have in hand a _Selection of the Wit and Wisdom
of Dr. Johnson_. I purpose, moreover, to collect and edit all of his
letters that are not in the _Life_. Some hundreds of these were
published by Mrs. Piozzi; many more are contained in Mr. Croker's
edition; while others have already appeared in _Notes and Queries_[47].
Not a few, doubtless, are still lurking in the desks of the collectors
of autographs. As a letter-writer Johnson stands very high. While the
correspondence of David Garrick has been given to the world in two large
volumes, it is not right that the letters of his far greater friend
should be left scattered and almost neglected. 'He that sees before him
to his third dinner,' says Johnson, 'has a long prospect[48].' My
prospect is still longer; for, if health be spared, and a fair degree of
public favour shown, I see before me to my third book. When I have
published my _Letters_, I hope to enter upon a still more arduous task
in editing the _Lives of the Poets_.
In my work I have received much kind assistance, not only from friends,
but also from strangers to whom I had applied in cases where special
knowledge could alone throw light on some obscure point. My
acknowledgments I have in most instances made in my notes. In some
cases, either through want of opportunity or forgetfulness, this has not
been done. I gladly avail myself of the present opportunity to remedy
this deficiency. The Earl of Crawford and Balcarres I have to thank for
so liberally allowing the original of the famous Round Robin, which is
in his Lordship's possession, to be reproduced by a photographic process
for this edition. It is by the kindness of Mr. J.L.G. Mowat, M.A.,
Fellow and Bursar of Pembroke College, Oxford, that I have been able to
make a careful examination of the Johnsonian manuscripts in which our
college is so rich. If the vigilance with which he keeps guard over
these treasures while they are being inspected is continued by his
successors in office, the college will never have to mourn over the loss
of a single leaf. To the Rev. W.D. Macray, M.A., of the manuscript
department of the Bodleian, to Mr. Falconer Madan, M.A., Sub-Librarian
of the same Library, and to Mr. George Parker, one of the Assistants, I
am indebted for the kindness with which they have helped me in my
inquiries. To Mr. W.H. Allnutt, another of the Assistants, I owe still
more. When I was abroad, I too frequently, I fear, troubled him with
questions which no one could have answered who was not well versed in
bibliographical lore. It was not often that his acuteness was baffled,
while his kindness was never exhausted. My old friend Mr. E.J. Payne,
M.A., Fellow of University College, Oxford, the learned editor of the
_Select Works of Burke_ published by the Clarendon Press, has allowed
me, whenever I pleased, to draw on his extensive knowledge of the
history and the literature of the eighteenth century. Mr. C.G. Crump,
B.A., of Balliol College, Oxford, has traced for me not a few of the
quotations which had baffled my search. To Mr. G.K. Fortescue,
Superintendent of the Reading Room of the British Museum, my most
grateful acknowledgments are due. His accurate and extensive knowledge
of books and his unfailing courtesy and kindness have lightened many a
day's heavy work in the spacious room over which he so worthily
presides. But most of all am I indebted to Mr. C.E. Doble, M.A., of the
Clarendon Press. He has read all my proof-sheets, and by his almost
unrivalled knowledge of the men of letters of the close of the
seventeenth and of the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, he has
saved my notes from some blunders and has enriched them with much
valuable information. In my absence abroad he has in more instances than
I care to think of consulted for me the Bodleian Library. It is some
relief to my conscience to know that the task was rendered lighter to
him by his intimate familiarity with its treasures, and by the deep love
for literature with which he is inspired.
There are other thanks due which I cannot here fittingly express. 'An
author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and
married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and
disappointments, griefs and joys like a courtier or a statesman[49].' In
the hopes and fears, in the expectations and disappointments, in the
griefs and joys--nay, in the very labours of his literary life, if his
hearth is not a solitary one, he has those who largely share.
I have now come to the end of my long labours. 'There are few things not
purely evil,' wrote Johnson, 'of which we can say without some emotion
of uneasiness, _this is the last_[50].' From this emotion I cannot feign
that I am free. My book has been my companion in many a sad and many a
happy hour. I take leave of it with a pang of regret, but I am cheered
by the hope that it may take its place, if a lowly one, among the works
of men who have laboured patiently but not unsuccessfully in the great
and shining fields of English literature.
G. B. H.
CLARENS, SWITZERLAND:
_March_ 16, 1887.
ERRATA.
Vol. I, page 140, _n_. 5, l. 2, _read 'of.'_
" " 176, _n_. 2, l. 22, _for_ 1774 _read_ 1747.
" " 262, _n_. 3 of p. 261, l. 3, _for_ guineas _read_ pounds.
" " 480, l. 20, _for_ language, _read_ language.'
Vol. II, page 34, _n_. 1, l. 40, _for_ proper. _read_ proper.'
" " 445, l. 8, _for_ Masters _read_ Master
Vol. III, page 18, l. 13, _read_ accessary.
" " 81, _n_. 1, l. 2, _for_ 1784, _read_ 1784.
" " 312, _n_. 1, l. 1, _for_ Mrs. Burney _read_ Miss Burney
Vol. IV, page 323, _n_. 1, l. 21, _for_ Wharton _read_ Warton
" " 379, l. 19, _read_ after
Vol. V, page 49, _n_. 4, l. 2, _for 'Boswell' read 'Johnson.'_
Vol. VI. " 74, col. 2, _insert_ Eccles, Rev. W., i. 360.
DEDICATION.
_TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS_.
MY DEAR SIR,
Every liberal motive that can actuate an Authour in the dedication of
his labours, concurs in directing me to you, as the person to whom the
following Work should be inscribed.
If there be a pleasure in celebrating the distinguished merit of a
contemporary, mixed with a certain degree of vanity not altogether
inexcusable, in appearing fully sensible of it, where can I find one, in
complimenting whom I can with more general approbation gratify those
feelings? Your excellence not only in the Art over which you have long
presided with unrivalled fame, but also in Philosophy and elegant
Literature, is well known to the present, and will continue to be the
admiration of future ages. Your equal and placid temper[51], your variety
of conversation, your true politeness, by which you are so amiable in
private society, and that enlarged hospitality which has long made your
house a common centre of union for the great, the accomplished, the
learned, and the ingenious; all these qualities I can, in perfect
confidence of not being accused of flattery, ascribe to you.
If a man may indulge an honest pride, in having it known to the world,
that he has been thought worthy of particular attention by a person of
the first eminence in the age in which he lived, whose company has been
universally courted, I am justified in availing myself of the usual
privilege of a Dedication, when I mention that there has been a long and
uninterrupted friendship between us.
[Page 2: Dedication.]
If gratitude should be acknowledged for favours received, I have this
opportunity, my dear Sir, most sincerely to thank you for the many happy
hours which I owe to your kindness,--for the cordiality with which you
have at all times been pleased to welcome me,--for the number of
valuable acquaintances to whom you have introduced me,--for the _noctes
coenaeque Deûm_[52], which I have enjoyed under your roof[53].
If a work should be inscribed to one who is master of the subject of it,
and whose approbation, therefore, must ensure it credit and success, the
_Life of Dr. Johnson_ is, with the greatest propriety, dedicated to Sir
Joshua Reynolds, who was the intimate and beloved friend of that great
man; the friend, whom he declared to be 'the most invulnerable man he
knew; whom, if he should quarrel with him, he should find the most
difficulty how to abuse[54].' You, my dear Sir, studied him, and knew him
well: you venerated and admired him. Yet, luminous as he was upon the
whole, you perceived all the shades which mingled in the grand
composition; all the little peculiarities and slight blemishes which
marked the literary Colossus. Your very warm commendation of the
specimen which I gave in my _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, of my
being able to preserve his conversation in an authentick and lively
manner, which opinion the Publick has confirmed, was the best
encouragement for me to persevere in my purpose of producing the whole
of my stores[55].
In one respect, this Work will, in some passages, be different from the
former. In my _Tour_, I was almost unboundedly open in my
communications, and from my eagerness to display the wonderful fertility
and readiness of Johnson's wit, freely shewed to the world its
dexterity, even when I was myself the object of it. I trusted that I
should be liberally understood, as knowing very well what I was about,
and by no means as simply unconscious of the pointed effects of the
satire. I own, indeed, that I was arrogant enough to suppose that the
tenour of the rest of the book would sufficiently guard me against such
a strange imputation. But it seems I judged too well of the world; for,
though I could scarcely believe it, I have been undoubtedly informed,
that many persons, especially in distant quarters, not penetrating
enough into Johnson's character, so as to understand his mode of
treating his friends, have arraigned my judgement, instead of seeing
that I was sensible of all that they could observe.
It is related of the great Dr. Clarke[56], that when in one of his
leisure hours he was unbending himself with a few friends in the most
playful and frolicksome manner, he observed Beau Nash approaching; upon
which he suddenly stopped:--'My boys, (said he,) let us be grave: here
comes a fool.' The world, my friend, I have found to be a great fool, as
to that particular, on which it has become necessary to speak very
plainly. I have, therefore, in this Work been more reserved[57]; and
though I tell nothing but the truth, I have still kept in my mind that
the whole truth is not always to be exposed. This, however, I have
managed so as to occasion no diminution of the pleasure which my book
should afford; though malignity may sometimes be disappointed of its
gratifications.
[Page 4: Dedication.]
I am,
My dear Sir,
Your much obliged friend,
And faithful humble servant,
JAMES BOSWELL.
London,
April 20, 1791.
ADVERTISEMENT
TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
I at last deliver to the world a Work which I have long promised, and of
which, I am afraid, too high expectations have been raised[58]. The delay
of its publication must be imputed, in a considerable degree, to the
extraordinary zeal which has been shewn by distinguished persons in all
quarters to supply me with additional information concerning its
illustrious subject; resembling in this the grateful tribes of ancient
nations, of which every individual was eager to throw a stone upon the
grave of a departed Hero, and thus to share in the pious office of
erecting an honourable monument to his memory[59].
[Page 6: Advertisement to the First Edition.]
The labour and anxious attention with which I have collected and
arranged the materials of which these volumes are composed, will hardly
be conceived by those who read them with careless facility[60]. The
stretch of mind and prompt assiduity by which so many conversations were
preserved[61], I myself, at some distance of time, contemplate with
wonder; and I must be allowed to suggest, that the nature of the work,
in other respects, as it consists of innumerable detached particulars,
all which, even the most minute, I have spared no pains to ascertain
with a scrupulous authenticity, has occasioned a degree of trouble far
beyond that of any other species of composition. Were I to detail the
books which I have consulted, and the inquiries which I have found it
necessary to make by various channels, I should probably be thought
ridiculously ostentatious. Let me only observe, as a specimen of my
trouble, that I have sometimes been obliged to run half over London, in
order to fix a date correctly; which, when I had accomplished, I well
knew would obtain me no praise, though a failure would have been to my
discredit. And after all, perhaps, hard as it may be, I shall not be
surprized if omissions or mistakes be pointed out with invidious
severity. I have also been extremely careful as to the exactness of my
quotations; holding that there is a respect due to the publick which
should oblige every Authour to attend to this, and never to presume to
introduce them with,--'_I think I have read_;'--or,--'_If I remember
right_;'--when the originals may be examined[62].
I beg leave to express my warmest thanks to those who have been pleased
to favour me with communications and advice in the conduct of my Work.
But I cannot sufficiently acknowledge my obligations to my friend Mr.
_Malone_, who was so good as to allow me to read to him almost the whole
of my manuscript, and make such remarks as were greatly for the
advantage of the Work[63]; though it is but fair to him to mention, that
upon many occasions I differed from him, and followed my own judgement.
I regret exceedingly that I was deprived of the benefit of his revision,
when not more than one half of the book had passed through the press;
but after having completed his very laborious and admirable edition of
_Shakspeare_, for which he generously would accept of no other reward
but that fame which he has so deservedly obtained, he fulfilled his
promise of a long-wished-for visit to his relations in Ireland; from
whence his safe return _finibus Atticis_ is desired by his friends here,
with all the classical ardour of _Sic te Diva potens Cypri_[64]; for
there is no man in whom more elegant and worthy qualities are united;
and whose society, therefore, is more valued by those who know him.
It is painful to me to think, that while I was carrying on this Work,
several of those to whom it would have been most interesting have died.
Such melancholy disappointments we know to be incident to humanity; but
we do not feel them the less. Let me particularly lament the Reverend
_Thomas Warton_, and the Reverend Dr. _Adams_. Mr. _Warton_, amidst his
variety of genius and learning, was an excellent Biographer. His
contributions to my Collection are highly estimable; and as he had a
true relish of my _Tour to the Hebrides_, I trust I should now have been
gratified with a larger share of his kind approbation. Dr. _Adams_,
eminent as the Head of a College, as a writer[65], and as a most amiable
man, had known _Johnson_ from his early years, and was his friend
through life. What reason I had to hope for the countenance of that
venerable Gentleman to this Work, will appear from what he wrote to me
upon a former occasion from Oxford, November 17, 1785:--'Dear Sir, I
hazard this letter, not knowing where it will find you, to thank you for
your very agreeable _Tour_, which I found here on my return from the
country, and in which you have depicted our friend so perfectly to my
fancy, in every attitude, every scene and situation, that I have thought
myself in the company, and of the party almost throughout. It has given
very general satisfaction; and those who have found most fault with a
passage here and there, have agreed that they could not help going
through, and being entertained with the whole. I wish, indeed, some few
gross expressions had been softened, and a few of our hero's foibles had
been a little more shaded; but it is useful to see the weaknesses
incident to great minds; and you have given us Dr. Johnson's authority
that in history all ought to be told[66].'
Such a sanction to my faculty of giving a just representation of Dr.
_Johnson_ I could not conceal. Nor will I suppress my satisfaction in
the consciousness, that by recording so considerable a portion of the
wisdom and wit of '_the brightest ornament of the eighteenth
century_[67].' I have largely provided for the instruction and
entertainment of mankind.
London, April 20, 1791[68].
ADVERTISMENT
TO THE
SECOND EDITION.
That I was anxious for the success of a Work which had employed much of
my time and labour, I do not wish to conceal: but whatever doubts I at
any time entertained, have been entirely removed by the very favourable
reception with which it has been honoured[69]. That reception has excited
my best exertions to render my Book more perfect; and in this endeavour
I have had the assistance not only of some of my particular friends, but
of many other learned and ingenious men, by which I have been enabled to
rectify some mistakes, and to enrich the Work with many valuable
additions. These I have ordered to be printed separately in quarto, for
the accommodation of the purchasers of the first edition[70]. May I be
permitted to say that the typography of both editions does honour to the
press of Mr. _Henry Baldwin_, now Master of the Worshipful Company of
Stationers, whom I have long known as a worthy man and an obliging
friend.
In the strangely mixed scenes of human existence, our feelings are often
at once pleasing and painful. Of this truth, the progress of the present
Work furnishes a striking instance. It was highly gratifying to me that
my friend, Sir _Joshua Reynolds_, to whom it is inscribed, lived to
peruse it, and to give the strongest testimony to its fidelity; but
before a second edition, which he contributed to improve, could be
finished, the world has been deprived of that most valuable man[71]; a
loss of which the regret will be deep, and lasting, and extensive,
proportionate to the felicity which he diffused through a wide circle of
admirers and friends[72].
[Page 11: Advertisement to the Second Edition.]
In reflecting that the illustrious subject of this Work, by being more
extensively and intimately known, however elevated before, has risen in
the veneration and love of mankind, I feel a satisfaction beyond what
fame can afford. We cannot, indeed, too much or too often admire his
wonderful powers of mind, when we consider that the principal store of
wit and wisdom which this Work contains, was not a particular selection
from his general conversation, but was merely his occasional talk at
such times as I had the good fortune to be in his company[73]; and,
without doubt, if his discourse at other periods had been collected with
the same attention, the whole tenor of what he uttered would have been
found equally excellent.
His strong, clear, and animated enforcement of religion, morality,
loyalty, and subordination, while it delights and improves the wise and
the good, will, I trust, prove an effectual antidote to that detestable
sophistry which has been lately imported from France, under the false
name of _Philosophy_, and with a malignant industry has been employed
against the peace, good order, and happiness of society, in our free and
prosperous country; but thanks be to _GOD_, without producing the
pernicious effects which were hoped for by its propagators.
It seems to me, in my moments of self-complacency, that this extensive
biographical work, however inferior in its nature, may in one respect be
assimilated to the _ODYSSEY_. Amidst a thousand entertaining and
instructive episodes the _HERO_ is never long out of sight; for they are
all in some degree connected with him; and _HE_, in the whole course of
the History, is exhibited by the Authour for the best advantage of his
readers.
'--Quid virtus et quid sapientia possit,
Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssen[74].'
Should there be any cold-blooded and morose mortals who really dislike
this Book, I will give them a story to apply. When the great _Duke of
Marlborough_, accompanied by _Lord Cadogan_, was one day reconnoitering
the army in Flanders, a heavy rain came on, and they both called for
their cloaks. _Lord Cadogan's_ servant, a good humoured alert lad,
brought his Lordship's in a minute. The Dukes servant, a lazy sulky dog,
was so sluggish, that his Grace being wet to the skin, reproved him, and
had for answer with a grunt, 'I came as fast as I could,' upon which the
Duke calmly said, '_Cadogan_, I would not for a thousand pounds have
that fellow's temper!'
There are some men, I believe, who have, or think they have, a very
small share of vanity. Such may speak of their literary fame in a
decorous style of diffidence. But I confess, that I am so formed by
nature and by habit, that to restrain the effusion of delight, on having
obtained such fame, to me would be truly painful. Why then should I
suppress it? Why 'out of the abundance of the heart' should I not
speak[75]? Let me then mention with a warm, but no insolent exultation,
that I have been regaled with spontaneous praise of my work by many and
various persons eminent for their rank, learning, talents and
accomplishments; much of which praise I have under their hands to be
reposited in my archives at _Auchinleck_[76]. An honourable and reverend
friend speaking of the favourable reception of my volumes, even in the
circles of fashion and elegance, said to me, 'you have made them all
talk Johnson.'--Yes, I may add, I have _Johnsonised_ the land; and I
trust they will not only _talk_, but _think_, Johnson.
To enumerate those to whom I have been thus indebted, would be tediously
ostentatious. I cannot however but name one whose praise is truly
valuable, not only on account of his knowledge and abilities, but on
account of the magnificent, yet dangerous embassy, in which he is now
employed[77], which makes every thing that relates to him peculiarly
interesting. Lord MACARTNEY favoured me with his own copy of my book,
with a number of notes, of which I have availed myself. On the first
leaf I found in his Lordship's hand-writing, an inscription of such
high commendation, that even I, vain as I am, cannot prevail on myself
to publish it.
July 1, 1793[78].
ADVERTISEMENT
TO THE
THIRD EDITION.
Several valuable letters, and other curious matter, having been
communicated to the Author too late to be arranged in that chronological
order which he had endeavoured uniformly to observe in his work, he was
obliged to introduce them in his Second Edition, by way of _ADDENDA_, as
commodiously as he could. In the present edition these have been
distributed in their proper places. In revising his volumes for a new
edition, he had pointed out where some of these materials should be
inserted; but unfortunately in the midst of his labours, he was seized
with a fever, of which, to the great regret of all his friends, he died
on the 19th of May, 1795[79]. All the Notes that he had written in the
margin of the copy which he had in part revised, are here faithfully
preserved; and a few new Notes have been added, principally by some of
those friends to whom the Author in the former editions acknowledged his
obligations. Those subscribed with the letter _B_ were communicated by
Dr. _Burney_: those to which the letters _J B_ are annexed, by the Rev.
_J. Blakeway_, of Shrewsbury, to whom Mr. _Boswell_ acknowledged himself
indebted for some judicious remarks on the first edition of his work:
and the letters _J B-O_. are annexed to some remarks furnished by the
Author's second son, a Student of Brazen-Nose College in Oxford. Some
valuable observations were communicated by _James Bindley_, Esq., First
Commissioner in the Stamp-Office, which have been acknowledged in their
proper places. For all those without any signature, Mr. _Malone_ is
answerable.--Every new remark, not written by the Author, for the sake
of distinction has been enclosed within crotchets: in one instance,
however, the printer by mistake has affixed this mark to a note relative
to the Rev. _Thomas Fysche Palmer_, which was written by Mr. Boswell.
and therefore ought not to have been thus distinguished.
[Page 15: Advertisement to the Third Edition.]
I have only to add, that the proof-sheets of the present edition not
having passed through my hands, I am not answerable for any
typographical errours that may be found in it. Having, however, been
printed at the very accurate press of Mr. _Baldwin_, I make no doubt it
will be found not less perfect than the former edition; the greatest
care having been taken, by correctness and elegance to do justice to one
of the most instructive and entertaining works in the English language.
_EDMOND MALONE_[80].
April 8, 1799.
A
CHRONOLOGICAL CATALOGUE
OF THE
_PROSE WORKS[81] OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D_.
[N.B. To those which he himself acknowledged is added _acknowl_. To
those which may be fully believed to be his from internal evidence, is
added _intern. evid_.]
1735. Abridgement and translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia,
_acknowl_.
1738. Part of a translation of Father Paul Sarpi's History of the
Council of Trent. _acknowl_.
[N.B. As this work after some sheets were printed, suddenly stopped, I
know not whether any part of it is now to be found.]
_For the Gentleman's Magazine_.
Preface. _intern. evid_.
Life of Father Paul. _acknowl_.
1739. A complete vindication of the Licenser of the Stage from the
malicious and scandalous aspersions of Mr. Brooke, authour of Gustavus
Vasa. _acknowl_.
_Marmor Norfolciense_: or, an Essay on an ancient prophetical
inscription in monkish rhyme, lately discovered near Lynne in Norfolk;
by PROBUS BRITANNICUS. _acknowl_.
[Page 17: A Chronological Catalogue of Prose Works]
_For the Gentleman's Magazine_.
Life of Boerhaave. _acknowl_.
Address to the Reader. _intern. evid_.
Appeal to the Publick in behalf of the Editor. _intern. evid_.
Considerations on the case of Dr. Trapp's Sermons; a plausible attempt
to prove that an authour's work may be abridged without injuring his
property. _acknowl_.
1740. _For the Gentleman's Magazine_.
Preface. _intern. evid_.
Life of Admiral Drake. _acknowl_.
Life of Admiral Blake. _acknowl_.
Life of Philip Barretier. _acknowl_.
Essay on Epitaphs. _acknowl_.
1741. _For the Gentleman's Magazine_.
Preface. _intern. evid_.
A free translation of the Jests of Hierocles, with an introduction.
_intern. evid_.
Debate on the _Humble Petition and Advice_ of the Rump Parliament to
Cromwell in 1657, to assume the Title of King; abridged, methodized and
digested. _intern. evid_.
Translation of Abbé Guyon's Dissertation on the Amazons. _intern. evid_.
Translation of Fontenelle's Panegyrick on Dr. Morin. _intern. evid_.
1742. _For the Gentleman's Magazine_.
Preface. _intern. evid_.
Essay on the Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough.
_acknowl_.
An Account of the Life of Peter Burman. _acknowl_.
The Life of Sydenham, afterwards prefixed to Dr. Swan's Edition of his
Works. _acknowl_.
Proposals for printing Bibliotheca Harleiana, or a Catalogue of the
Library of the Earl of Oxford, afterwards prefixed to the first Volume
of that Catalogue, in which the Latin Accounts of the Books were written
by him. _acknowl_.
Abridgement intitled, Foreign History. _intern. evid_.
Essay on the Description of China, from the French of Du Halde. _intern.
evid_.
1743. Dedication to Dr. Mead of Dr. James's Medicinal Dictionary.
_intern. evid_.
_For the Gentleman's Magazine_.
Preface, _intern. evid_.
Parliamentary Debates under the Name of Debates in the Senate of
Lilliput, from Nov. 19, 1740, to Feb. 23, 1742-3, inclusive. _acknowl_.
Considerations on the Dispute between Crousaz and Warburton on Pope's
Essay on Man. _intern. evid_.
A Letter announcing that the Life of Mr. Savage was speedily to be
published by a person who was favoured with his Confidence. _intern.
evid_.
Advertisement for Osborne concerning the Harleian Catalogue. _intern.
evid_.
1744. Life of Richard Savage. _acknowl_.
Preface to the Harleian Miscellany. _acknowl_.
_For the Gentleman's Magazine_.
Preface. _intern. evid_.
1745. Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks
on Sir T.H.'s (Sir Thomas Hanmer's) Edition of Shakspeare, and proposals
for a new Edition of that Poet. _acknowl_.
1747. Plan for a Dictionary of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE, addressed to Philip
Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield. _acknowl_.
_For the Gentleman's Magazine_.
1748. Life of Roscommon. _acknowl_.
Foreign History, November. _intern. evid_.
_For Dodsley's_ PRECEPTOR.
Preface. _acknowl_.
Vision of Theodore the Hermit. _acknowl_.
1750. The RAMBLER, the first Paper of which was published 20th of March
this year, and the last 17th of March 1752, the day on which Mrs.
Johnson died. _acknowl_.
Letter in the General Advertiser to excite the attention of the Publick
to the Performance of Comus, which was next day to be acted at
Drury-Lane Playhouse for the Benefit of Milton's Grandaughter.
_acknowl_.
Preface and Postscript to Lauder's Pamphlet intitled, 'An Essay on
Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in his Paradise Lost.'
_acknowl_.
1751. Life of Cheynel in the Miscellany called 'The Student.' _acknowl_.
Letter for Lauder, addressed to the Reverend Dr. John Douglas,
acknowledging his Fraud concerning Milton in Terms of suitable
Contrition. _acknowl_.
Dedication to the Earl of Middlesex of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's 'Female
Quixotte.' _intern. evid_.[82]
1753. Dedication to John Earl of Orrery, of Shakspeare Illustrated, by
Mrs. Charlotte Lennox. _acknowl_.
During this and the following year he wrote and gave to his much loved
friend Dr. Bathurst the Papers in the Adventurer, signed T. _acknowl_.
1754. Life of Edw. Cave in the Gentleman's Magazine. _acknowl_.
1755. A DICTIONARY, with a Grammar and History, of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
_acknowl_.
An Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea, by an exact
Theory of the Variations of the Magnetical Needle, with a Table of the
Variations at the most remarkable Cities in Europe from the year 1660 to
1860. _acknowl_. This he wrote for Mr. Zachariah Williams, an ingenious
ancient Welch Gentleman, father of Mrs. Anna Williams whom he for many
years kindly lodged in his House. It was published with a Translation
into Italian by Signor Baretti. In a Copy of it which he presented to
the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is pasted a Character of the late Mr.
Zachariah Williams, plainly written by Johnson. _intern. evid_.
1756. An Abridgement of his Dictionary. _acknowl_.
Several Essays in the Universal Visitor, which there is some difficulty
in ascertaining. All that are marked with two Asterisks have been
ascribed to him, although I am confident from internal Evidence, that we
should except from these 'The Life of Chaucer,' 'Reflections on the
State of Portugal,' and 'An Essay on Architecture:' And from the same
Evidence I am confident that he wrote 'Further Thoughts on Agriculture,'
and 'A Dissertation on the State of Literature and Authours.' The
Dissertation on the Epitaphs written by Pope he afterwards acknowledged,
and added to his 'Idler.'
Life of Sir Thomas Browne prefixed to a new Edition of his Christian
Morals. _acknowl_.
_In the Literary Magazine; or, Universal Review_, which began in January
1756.
His _Original Essays_ are
Preliminary Address, _intern. evid_..
An introduction to the Political State of Great Britain, _intern.
evid_..
Remarks on the Militia Bill, _intern. evid_..
Observations on his Britannick Majesty's Treaties with the Empress of
Russia and the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel. _intern. evid_..
Observations on the Present State of Affairs. _intern. evid_..
Memoirs of Frederick III. King of Prussia. _intern. evid_..
In the same Magazine his Reviews_ are of the following Books:
'Birch's History of the Royal Society.'--'Browne's Christian
Morals.'--'Warton's Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, Vol.
I.'--'Hampton's Translation of Polybius.'--'Sir Isaac Newton's Arguments
in Proof of a Deity.'--'Borlase's History of the Isles of
Scilly.'--'Home's Experiments on Bleaching.'--'Browne's History of
Jamaica.'--'Hales on Distilling Sea Waters, Ventilators in Ships, and
curing an ill Taste in Milk.'--'Lucas's Essay on Waters.'--'Keith's
Catalogue of the Scottish Bishops.'--'Philosophical Transactions, Vol.
XLIX.'--'Miscellanies by Elizabeth Harrison.'--'Evans's Map and Account
of the Middle Colonies in America.'--'The Cadet, a Military
Treatise.'--'The Conduct of the Ministry relating to the present War
impartially examined.' _intern. evid_..
'Mrs. Lennox's Translation of Sully's Memoirs.'--'Letter on the Case of
Admiral Byng.'--'Appeal to the People concerning Admiral
Byng.'--'Hanway's Eight Days' Journey, and Essay on Tea.'--'Some further
Particulars in Relation to the Case of Admiral Byng, by a Gentleman of
Oxford.' _acknowl_.
Mr. Jonas Hanway having written an angry Answer to the Review of his
Essay on Tea, Johnson in the same Collection made a Reply to it.
_acknowl_. This is the only Instance, it is believed, when he
condescended to take Notice of any Thing that had been written against
him; and here his chief Intention seems to have been to make Sport.
Dedication to the Earl of Rochford of, and Preface to, Mr. Payne's
Introduction to the Game of Draughts, _acknowl_.
Introduction to the London Chronicle, an Evening Paper which still
subsists with deserved credit. _acknowl_.
1757. Speech on the Subject of an Address to the Throne after the
Expedition to Rochefort; delivered by one of his Friends in some publick
Meeting: it is printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for October 1785.
_intern. evid_.
The first two Paragraphs of the Preface to Sir William Chambers's
Designs of Chinese Buildings, &c. _acknowl_.
1758. THE IDLER, which began April 5, in this year, and was continued
till April 5, 1760. _acknowl_.
An Essay on the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers was added to it
when published in Volumes. _acknowl_.
1759. Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia, a Tale. _acknowl_.
Advertisement for the Proprietors of the Idler against certain Persons
who pirated those Papers as they came out singly in a Newspaper called
the Universal Chronicle or Weekly Gazette. _intern. evid_.
For Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's English Version of Brumoy,--'A Dissertation
on the Greek Comedy,' and the General Conclusion of the Book. _intern.
evid_.
Introduction to the World Displayed, a Collection of Voyages and
Travels. _acknowl_.
Three Letters in the Gazetteer, concerning the best plan for Blackfriars
Bridge. _acknowl_.
1760. Address of the Painters to George III. on his Accession to the
Throne. _intern. evid_.
Dedication of Baretti's Italian and English Dictionary to the Marquis of
Abreu, then Envoy-Extraordinary from Spain at the Court of
Great-Britain. _intern. evid_.
Review in the Gentleman's Magazine of Mr. Tytler's acute and able
Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots. _acknowl_.
Introduction to the Proceedings of the Committee for Cloathing the
French Prisoners. _acknowl_.
1761. Preface to Rolfs Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. _acknowl_.
Corrections and Improvements for Mr. Gwyn the Architect's Pamphlet,
intitled 'Thoughts on the Coronation of George III.' _acknowl_.
1762. Dedication to the King of the Reverend Dr. Kennedy's Complete
System of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures, Quarto
Edition. _acknowl_.
Concluding Paragraph of that Work. _intern. evid_.
Preface to the Catalogue of the Artists' Exhibition. _intern. evid_.
1763.
Character of Collins in the Poetical Calendar, published by Fawkes and
Woty. _acknowl_.
Dedication to the Earl of Shaftesbury of the Edition of Roger Ascham's
English Works, published by the Reverend Mr. Bennet. _acknowl_.
The Life of Ascham, also prefixed to that edition. _acknowl_.
Review of Telemachus, a Masque, by the Reverend George Graham of Eton
College, in the Critical Review. _acknowl_.
Dedication to the Queen of Mr. Hoole's Translation of Tasso. _acknowl_.
Account of the Detection of the Imposture of the Cock-Lane Ghost,
published in the Newspapers and Gentleman's Magazine. _acknowl_.
1764.
Part of a Review of Grainger's 'Sugar Cane, a Poem,' in the London
Chronicle. _acknowl_.
Review of Goldsmith's Traveller, a Poem, in the Critical Review.
_acknowl_.
1765.
The Plays of William Shakspeare, in eight volumes, 8vo. with Notes.
_acknowl_.
1766.
The Fountains, a Fairy Tale, in Mrs. Williams's Miscellanies. _acknowl_.
1767.
Dedication to the King of Mr. Adams's Treatise on the Globes. _acknowl_.
1769.
Character of the Reverend Mr. Zachariah Mudge, in the London Chronicle.
_acknowl_.
1770.
The False Alarm. _acknowl_.
1771.
Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands.
_acknowl_.
1772.
Defence of a Schoolmaster; dictated to me for the House of Lords.
_acknowl_.
Argument in Support of the Law of _Vicious Intromission_; dictated to me
for the Court of Session in Scotland. _acknowl_.
1773.
Preface to Macbean's 'Dictionary of Ancient Geography.' _acknowl_.
Argument in Favour of the Rights of Lay Patrons; dictated to me for the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. _acknowl_.
1774.
The Patriot. _acknowl_.
1775.
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. _acknowl_.
Proposals for publishing the Works of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, in Three
Volumes Quarto. _acknowl_.
Preface to Baretti's Easy Lessons in Italian and English. _intern.
evid_.
Taxation no Tyranny; an Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the
American Congress. _acknowl_.
Argument on the Case of Dr. Memis; dictated to me for the Court of
Session in Scotland. _acknowl_.
Argument to prove that the Corporation of Stirling was corrupt; dictated
to me for the House of Lords. _acknowl_.
1776.
Argument in Support of the Right of immediate, and personal reprehension
from the Pulpit; dictated to me. _acknowl_.
Proposals for publishing an Analysis of the Scotch Celtick Language, by
the Reverend William Shaw. _acknowl_.
1777.
Dedication to the King of the Posthumous Works of Dr. Pearce, Bishop of
Rochester. _acknowl_.
Additions to the Life and Character of that Prelate; prefixed to those
Works. _acknowl_.
Various Papers and Letters in Favour of the Reverend Dr. Dodd.
_acknowl_.
1780.
Advertisement for his Friend Mr. Thrale to the Worthy Electors of the
Borough of Southwark. _acknowl_.
The first Paragraph of Mr. Thomas Davies's Life of Garrick, _acknowl_.
1781.
Prefaces Biographical and Critical to the Works of the most eminent
English Poets; afterwards published with the Title of Lives of the
English Poets[83]. _acknowl_.
Argument on the Importance of the Registration of Deeds; dictated to me
for an Election Committee of the House of Commons. _acknowl_.
On the Distinction between TORY and WHIG; dictated to me. _acknowl_.
On Vicarious Punishments, and the great Propitiation for the Sins of the
World, by JESUS CHRIST; dictated to me. _acknowl_.
Argument in favour of Joseph Knight, an African Negro, who claimed his
Liberty in the Court of Session in Scotland, and obtained it; dictated
to me. _acknowl_.
Defence of Mr. Robertson, Printer of the Caledonian Mercury, against the
Society of Procurators in Edinburgh, for having inserted in his Paper a
ludicrous Paragraph against them; demonstrating that it was not an
injurious Libel; dictated to me. _acknowl_.
1782.
The greatest part, if not the whole, of a Reply, by the Reverend Mr.
Shaw, to a Person at Edinburgh, of the Name of Clark, refuting his
arguments for the authenticity of the Poems published by Mr. James
Macpherson as Translations from Ossian. _intern. evid_.
1784. List of the Authours of the Universal History, deposited in the
British Museum, and printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for December,
this year, _acknowl_.
_Various Years_.
Letters to Mrs. Thrale. _acknowl_.
Prayers and Meditations, which he delivered to the Rev. Mr. Strahan,
enjoining him to publish them, _acknowl_.
Sermons _left for Publication_ by John Taylor, LL.D. Prebendary of
Westminster, and given to the World by the Reverend Samuel Hayes, A.M.
_intern. evid_.
Such was the number and variety of the Prose Works of this extraordinary
man, which I have been able to discover, and am at liberty to mention;
but we ought to keep in mind, that there must undoubtedly have been many
more which are yet concealed; and we may add to the account, the
numerous Letters which he wrote, of which a considerable part are yet
unpublished. It is hoped that those persons in whose possession they
are, will favour the world with them.
_JAMES BOSWELL_.
* * * * *
'After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions,
To keep mine honour from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith[84].'
SHAKSPEARE, _Henry VIII. [Act IV. Sc. 2_.]
THE LIFE OF
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
To write the Life of him who excelled all mankind in writing the lives
of others, and who, whether we consider his extraordinary endowments, or
his various works, has been equalled by few in any age, is an arduous,
and may be reckoned in me a presumptuous task.
Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion
which he has given[85], that every man's life may be best written by
himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that
clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed
so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most
perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited. But although he at
different times, in a desultory manner, committed to writing many
particulars of the progress of his mind and fortunes, he never had
persevering diligence enough to form them into a regular composition[86].
Of these memorials a few have been preserved; but the greater part was
consigned by him to the flames, a few days before his death.
[Page 26: The Author's qualifications.]
As I had the honour and happiness of enjoying his friendship for upwards
of twenty years; as I had the scheme of writing his life constantly in
view; as he was well apprised of this circumstance[87], and from time to
time obligingly satisfied my inquiries, by communicating to me the
incidents of his early years; as I acquired a facility in recollecting,
and was very assiduous in recording, his conversation, of which the
extraordinary vigour and vivacity constituted one of the first features
of his character; and as I have spared no pains in obtaining materials
concerning him, from every quarter where I could discover that they were
to be found, and have been favoured with the most liberal communications
by his friends; I flatter myself that few biographers have entered upon
such a work as this, with more advantages; independent of literary
abilities, in which I am not vain enough to compare myself with some
great names who have gone before me in this kind of writing.
[Page 27: The Life by Sir J. Hawkins.]
Since my work was announced, several Lives and Memoirs of Dr. Johnson
have been published[88], the most voluminous of which is one compiled for
the booksellers of London, by Sir John Hawkins, Knight[89], a man, whom,
during my long intimacy with Dr. Johnson, I never saw in his company, I
think but once, and I am sure not above twice. Johnson might have
esteemed him for his decent, religious demeanour, and his knowledge of
books and literary history; but from the rigid formality of his manners,
it is evident that they never could have lived together with
companionable ease and familiarity[90]; nor had Sir John Hawkins that
nice perception which was necessary to mark the finer and less obvious
parts of Johnson's character. His being appointed one of his executors,
gave him an opportunity of taking possession of such fragments of a
diary and other papers as were left; of which, before delivering them up
to the residuary legatee, whose property they were, he endeavoured to
extract the substance. In this he has not been very successful, as I
have found upon a perusal of those papers, which have been since
transferred to me. Sir John Hawkins's ponderous labours, I must
acknowledge, exhibit a _farrago_, of which a considerable portion is not
devoid of entertainment to the lovers of literary gossiping; but besides
its being swelled out with long unnecessary extracts from various works
(even one of several leaves from Osborne's Harleian Catalogue, and those
not compiled by Johnson, but by Oldys), a very small part of it relates
to the person who is the subject of the book; and, in that, there is
such an inaccuracy in the statement of facts, as in so solemn an authour
is hardly excusable, and certainly makes his narrative very
unsatisfactory. But what is still worse, there is throughout the whole
of it a dark uncharitable cast, by which the most unfavourable
construction is put upon almost every circumstance in the character and
conduct of my illustrious friend[91]; who, I trust, will, by a true and
fair delineation, be vindicated both from the injurious
misrepresentations of this authour, and from the slighter aspersions of
a lady who once lived in great intimacy with him[92].
[Page 28: Warburton's view of biography.]
[Page 29: The author's mode of procedure.]
There is, in the British Museum, a letter from Bishop Warburton to Dr.
Birch, on the subject of biography; which, though I am aware it may
expose me to a charge of artfully raising the value of my own work, by
contrasting it with that of which I have spoken, is so well conceived
and expressed, that I cannot refrain from here inserting it:--
'I shall endeavor, (says Dr. Warburton,) to give you what satisfaction I
can in any thing you want to be satisfied in any subject of Milton, and
am extremely glad you intend to write his life. Almost all the
life-writers we have had before Toland and Desmaiseaux[93], are indeed
strange insipid creatures; and yet I had rather read the worst of them,
than be obliged to go through with this of Milton's, or the other's life
of Boileau, where there is such a dull, heavy succession of long
quotations of disinteresting passages, that it makes their method quite
nauseous. But the verbose, tasteless Frenchman seems to lay it down as a
principle, that every life must be a book, and what's worse, it proves a
book without a life; for what do we know of Boileau, after all his
tedious stuff? You are the only one, (and I speak it without a
compliment) that by the vigour of your stile and sentiments, and the
real importance of your materials, have the art, (which one would
imagine no one could have missed,) of adding agreements to the most
agreeable subject in the world, which is literary history[94].'
'Nov. 24, 1737.'
[Page 30: Not a panegyrick, but a Life.]
Instead of melting down my materials into one mass, and constantly
speaking in my own person, by which I might have appeared to have more
merit in the execution of the work, I have resolved to adopt and enlarge
upon the excellent plan of Mr. Mason, in his Memoirs of Gray[95].
Wherever narrative is necessary to explain, connect, and supply, I
furnish it to the best of my abilities; but in the chronological series
of Johnson's life, which I trace as distinctly as I can, year by year, I
produce, wherever it is in my power, his own minutes, letters, or
conversation, being convinced that this mode is more lively, and will
make my readers better acquainted with him, than even most of those were
who actually knew him, but could know him only partially; whereas there
is here an accumulation of intelligence from various points, by which
his character is more fully understood and illustrated[96].
Indeed I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any man's life,
than not only relating all the most important events of it in their
order, but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought;
by which mankind are enabled as it were to see him live, and to 'live
o'er each scene[97]' with him, as he actually advanced through the
several stages of his life. Had his other friends been as diligent and
ardent as I was, he might have been almost entirely preserved. As it is,
I will venture to say that he will be seen in this work more completely
than any man who has ever yet lived[98].
And he will be seen as he really was; for I profess to write, not his
panegyrick, which must be all praise, but his Life; which, great and
good as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect. To be as he
was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state of
being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and
when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself recommended,
both by his precept and his example[99].
[Page 31: Conversation best displays character.]
'If the biographer writes from personal knowledge, and makes haste to
gratify the publick curiosity, there is danger lest his interest, his
fear, his gratitude, or his tenderness overpower his fidelity, and tempt
him to conceal, if not to invent. There are many who think it an act of
piety to hide the faults or failings of their friends, even when they
can no longer suffer by their detection; we therefore see whole ranks of
characters adorned with uniform panegyrick, and not to be known from one
another but by extrinsick and casual circumstances. "Let me remember,
(says Hale,) when I find myself inclined to pity a criminal, that there
is likewise a pity due to the country." If we owe regard to the memory
of the dead, there is yet more respect to be paid to knowledge, to
virtue and to truth[100].'
What I consider as the peculiar value of the following work, is, the
quantity it contains of Johnson's conversation; which is universally
acknowledged to have been eminently instructive and entertaining; and of
which the specimens that I have given upon a former occasion[101], have
been received with so much approbation, that I have good grounds for
supposing that the world will not be indifferent to more ample
communications of a similar nature.
That the conversation of a celebrated man, if his talents have been
exerted in conversation, will best display his character, is, I trust,
too well established in the judgment of mankind, to be at all shaken by
a sneering observation of Mr. Mason, in his _Memoirs of Mr. William
Whitehead_, in which there is literally no _Life_, but a mere dry
narrative of facts[102]. I do not think it was quite necessary to attempt
a depreciation of what is universally esteemed, because it was not to be
found in the immediate object of the ingenious writer's pen; for in
truth, from a man so still and so tame, as to be contented to pass many
years as the domestick companion of a superannuated lord and lady[103],
conversation could no more be expected, than from a Chinese mandarin on
a chimney-piece, or the fantastick figures on a gilt leather skreen.
[Page 32: Dr. Johnson on biography.]
If authority be required, let us appeal to Plutarch, the prince of
ancient biographers. [Greek: Oute tais epiphanestatais praxesi pantos
enesti daelosis aretaes ae kakias, alla pragma brachu pollakis, kai
raema, kai paidia tis emphasin aethous epoiaesen mallon ae machai
murionekroi, kai parataxeis ai megistai, kai poliorkiai poleon.] Nor is
it always in the most distinguished atchievements that men's virtues or
vices may be best discerned; but very often an action of small note, a
short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person's real character
more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles[104].'
To this may be added the sentiments of the very man whose life I am
about to exhibit.
'The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those
performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the
thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of
daily life, where exteriour appendages are cast aside, and men excel
each other only by prudence and by virtue. The account of Thuanus is
with great propriety said by its authour to have been written, that it
might lay open to posterity the private and familiar character of that
man, _cujus ingenium et candorem ex ipsius scriptis sunt olim semper
miraturi_, whose candour and genius will to the end of time be by his
writings preserved in admiration.
'There are many invisible circumstances, which whether we read as
enquirers after natural or moral knowledge, whether we intend to enlarge
our science, or increase our virtue, are more important than publick
occurrences. Thus Sallust, the great master of nature, has not forgot in
his account of Catiline to remark, that his walk was now quick, and
again slow, as an indication of a mind revolving[105] with violent
commotion. Thus the story of Melanchthon affords a striking lecture on
the value of time, by informing us, that when he had made an
appointment, he expected not only the hour, but the minute to be fixed,
that the day might not run out in the idleness of suspence; and all the
plans and enterprises of De Witt are now of less importance to the world
than that part of his personal character, which represents him as
careful of his health, and negligent of his life.
'But biography has often been allotted to writers, who seem very little
acquainted with the nature of their task, or very negligent about the
performance. They rarely afford any other account than might be
collected from publick papers, but imagine themselves writing a life,
when they exhibit a chronological series of actions or preferments;[106]
and have so little regard to the manners[106] or behaviour of their
heroes, that more knowledge may be gained of a man's real character, by
a short conversation with one of his servants, than from a formal and
studied narrative, begun with his pedigree, and ended with his funeral.
[Page 33: Reply to possible objections.]
'There are indeed, some natural reasons why these narratives are often
written by such as were not likely to give much instruction or delight,
and why most accounts of particular persons are barren and useless. If a
life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for
impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents
which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent
kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are transmitted[107] by
tradition. We know how few can pourtray a living acquaintance, except by
his most prominent and observable particularities, and the grosser
features of his mind; and it may be easily imagined how much of this
little knowledge may be lost in imparting it, and how soon a succession
of copies will lose all resemblance of the original[108].'
I am fully aware of the objections which may be made to the minuteness
on some occasions of my detail of Johnson's conversation, and how
happily it is adapted for the petty exercise of ridicule, by men of
superficial understanding and ludicrous fancy; but I remain firm and
confident in my opinion, that minute particulars are frequently
characteristick, and always amusing, when they relate to a distinguished
man. I am therefore exceedingly unwilling that any thing, however
slight, which my illustrious friend thought it worth his while to
express, with any degree of point, should perish. For this almost
superstitious reverence, I have found very old and venerable authority,
quoted by our great modern prelate, Secker, in whose tenth sermon there
is the following passage:
'_Rabbi David Kimchi_, a noted Jewish Commentator, who lived about five
hundred years ago, explains that passage in the first Psalm, _His leaf
also shall not wither_, from Rabbins yet older than himself, thus: That
_even the idle talk_, so he expresses it, _of a good man ought to be
regarded_; the most superfluous things he saith are always of some
value. And other ancient authours have the same phrase, nearly in the
same sense.'
[Page 34: Johnson's birth and baptism. A.D. 1709.]
Of one thing I am certain, that considering how highly the small portion
which we have of the table-talk and other anecdotes of our celebrated
writers is valued, and how earnestly it is regretted that we have not
more, I am justified in preserving rather too many of Johnson's sayings,
than too few; especially as from the diversity of dispositions it cannot
be known with certainty beforehand, whether what may seem trifling to
some and perhaps to the collector himself, may not be most agreeable to
many; and the greater number that an authour can please in any degree,
the more pleasure does there arise to a benevolent mind.
To those who are weak enough to think this a degrading task, and the
time and labour which have been devoted to it misemployed, I shall
content myself with opposing the authority of the greatest man of any
age, JULIUS CÆSAR, of whom Bacon observes, that 'in his book of
Apothegms which he collected, we see that he esteemed it more honour to
make himself but a pair of tables, to take the wise and pithy words of
others, than to have every word of his own to be made an apothegm or an
oracle[109].'
Having said thus much by way of introduction, I commit the following
pages to the candour of the Publick.
* * * * *
SAMUEL[110] JOHNSON was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th
of September, N.S., 1709; and his initiation into the Christian Church
was not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St.
Mary's parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his
birth. His father is there stiled _Gentleman_, a circumstance of which
an ignorant panegyrist has praised him for not being proud; when the
truth is, that the appellation of Gentleman, though now lost in the
indiscriminate assumption of _Esquire_[111], was commonly taken by those
who could not boast of gentility. His father was Michael Johnson, a
native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction[112], who settled in Lichfield
as a bookseller and stationer[113].
[Page 35: His parentage. A.D. 1709]
His mother was Sarah Ford, descended of an ancient race of substantial
yeomanry in Warwickshire[114]. They were well advanced in years when they
married, and never had more than two children, both sons; Samuel, their
first born, who lived to be the illustrious character whose various
excellence I am to endeavour to record, and Nathanael, who died in his
twenty-fifth year.
[Page 36: Character of Michael Johnson. A.D. 1709]
Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of a large and robust body, and of a
strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound
substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that
disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the
effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about
those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general
sensation of gloomy wretchedness[115]. From him then his son inherited,
with some other qualities, 'a vile melancholy,' which in his too strong
expression of any disturbance of the mind, 'made him mad all his life,
at least not sober[116].' Michael was, however, forced by the narrowness
of his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not only in his
shop[117], but by occasionally resorting to several towns in the
neighbourhood[118], some of which were at a considerable distance from
Lichfield[119]. At that time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of
England were very rare, so that there was not one even in Birmingham, in
which town old Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market-day. He was
a pretty good Latin scholar, and a citizen so creditable as to be made
one of the magistrates of Lichfield[120]; and, being a man of good sense,
and skill in his trade, he acquired a reasonable share of wealth, of
which however he afterwards lost the greatest part, by engaging
unsuccessfully in a manufacture of parchment[121]. He was a zealous
high-church man and royalist, and retained his attachment to the
unfortunate house of Stuart, though he reconciled himself, by
casuistical arguments of expediency and necessity, to take the oaths
imposed by the prevailing power[122].
[Page 37: An incident in his life. A.D. 1709]
There is a circumstance in his life somewhat romantick, but so well
authenticated, that I shall not omit it. A young woman of Leek, in
Staffordshire, while he served his apprenticeship there, conceived a
violent passion for him; and though it met with no favourable return,
followed him to Lichfield, where she took lodgings opposite to the house
in which he lived, and indulged her hopeless flame. When he was informed
that it so preyed upon her mind that her life was in danger, he with a
generous humanity went to her and offered to marry her, but it was then
too late: her vital power was exhausted; and she actually exhibited one
of the very rare instances of dying for love. She was buried in the
cathedral of Lichfield; and he, with a tender regard, placed a stone
over her grave with this inscription:
Here lies the body of
Mrs. ELIZABETH BLANEY, a stranger.
She departed this life
20 of September, 1694.
[Page 38: Sarah Johnson. A.D. 1712.]
Johnson's mother was a woman of distinguished understanding. I asked his
old school-fellow, Mr. Hector, surgeon of Birmingham, if she was not
vain of her son. He said, 'she had too much good sense to be vain, but
she knew her son's value.' Her piety was not inferiour to her
understanding; and to her must be ascribed those early impressions of
religion upon the mind of her son, from which the world afterwards
derived so much benefit. He told me, that he remembered distinctly
having had the first notice of Heaven, 'a place to which good people
went,' and hell, 'a place to which bad people went,' communicated to him
by her, when a little child in bed with her[123]; and that it might be the
better fixed in his memory, she sent him to repeat it to Thomas Jackson,
their man-servant; he not being in the way, this was not done; but there
was no occasion for any artificial aid for its preservation.
In following so very eminent a man from his cradle to his grave, every
minute particular, which can throw light on the progress of his mind, is
interesting. That he was remarkable, even in his earliest years, may
easily be supposed; for to use his own words in his Life of Sydenham,
'That the strength of his understanding, the accuracy of his
discernment, and ardour of his curiosity, might have been remarked from
his infancy, by a diligent observer, there is no reason to doubt. For,
there is no instance of any man, whose history has been minutely
related, that did not in every part of life discover the same proportion
of intellectual vigour[124].'
In all such investigations it is certainly unwise to pay too much
attention to incidents which the credulous relate with eager
satisfaction, and the more scrupulous or witty enquirer considers only
as topicks of ridicule: Yet there is a traditional story of the infant
Hercules of toryism, so curiously characteristick, that I shall not
withhold it. It was communicated to me in a letter from Miss Mary Adye,
of Lichfield:
[Page 39: Anecdotes of Johnson's childhood.]
'When Dr. Sacheverel was at Lichfield, Johnson was not quite three years
old. My grandfather Hammond observed him at the cathedral perched upon
his father's shoulders, listening and gaping at the much celebrated
preacher. Mr. Hammond asked Mr. Johnson how he could possibly think of
bringing such an infant to church, and in the midst of so great a croud.
He answered, because it was impossible to keep him at home; for, young
as he was, he believed he had caught the publick spirit and zeal for
Sacheverel, and would have staid for ever in the church, satisfied with
beholding him[125].'
Nor can I omit a little instance of that jealous independence of spirit,
and impetuosity of temper, which never forsook him. The fact was
acknowledged to me by himself, upon the authority of his mother. One
day, when the servant who used to be sent to school to conduct him home,
had not come in time, he set out by himself, though he was then so
near-sighted, that he was obliged to stoop down on his hands and knees
to take a view of the kennel before he ventured to step over it. His
school-mistress, afraid that he might miss his way, or fall into the
kennel, or be run over by a cart, followed him at some distance. He
happened to turn about and perceive her. Feeling her careful attention
as an insult to his manliness, he ran back to her in a rage, and beat
her, as well as his strength would permit.
Of the power of his memory, for which he was all his life eminent to a
degree almost incredible[126], the following early instance was told me in
his presence at Lichfield, in 1776, by his step-daughter, Mrs. Lucy
Porter, as related to her by his mother.
[Page 40: Johnson's infant precocity. A.D. 1712.]
When he was a child in petticoats, and had learnt to read, Mrs. Johnson
one morning put the common prayer-book into his hands, pointed to the
collect for the day, and said, 'Sam, you must get this by heart.' She
went up stairs, leaving him to study it: But by the time she had reached
the second floor, she heard him following her. 'What's the matter?' said
she. 'I can say it,' he replied; and repeated it distinctly, though he
could not have read it more than twice.
But there has been another story of his infant precocity generally
circulated, and generally believed, the truth of which I am to refute
upon his own authority. It is told[127], that, when a child of three years
old, he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the eleventh of a brood, and
killed it; upon which, it is said, he dictated to his mother the
following epitaph:
'Here lies good master duck,
Whom Samuel Johnson trod on;
If it had liv'd, it had been _good luck_,
For then we'd had an _odd one_.'
There is surely internal evidence that this little composition combines
in it, what no child of three years old could produce, without an
extension of its faculties by immediate inspiration; yet Mrs. Lucy
Porter, Dr. Johnson's step-daughter, positively maintained to me, in his
presence, that there could be no doubt of the truth of this anecdote,
for she had heard it from his mother. So difficult is it to obtain an
authentick relation of facts, and such authority may there be for
errour; for he assured me, that his father made the verses, and wished
to pass them for his child's. He added, 'my father was a foolish old
man[128]; that is to say, foolish in talking of his children[129].'
[Page 41: His eyesight.]
[Page 42: The king's evil.]
Young Johnson had the misfortune to be much afflicted with the
scrophula, or king's evil, which disfigured a countenance naturally well
formed, and hurt his visual nerves so much, that he did not see at all
with one of his eyes, though its appearance was little different from
that of the other. There is amongst his prayers, one inscribed '_When
my_ EYE _was restored to its use_[130],' which ascertains a defect that
many of his friends knew he had, though I never perceived it[131]. I
supposed him to be only near-sighted; and indeed I must observe, that in
no other respect could I discern any defect in his vision; on the
contrary, the force of his attention and perceptive quickness made him
see and distinguish all manner of objects, whether of nature or of art,
with a nicety that is rarely to be found. When he and I were travelling
in the Highlands of Scotland, and I pointed out to him a mountain which
I observed resembled a cone, he corrected my inaccuracy, by shewing me,
that it was indeed pointed at the top, but that one side of it was
larger than the other[132]. And the ladies with whom he was acquainted
agree, that no man was more nicely and minutely critical in the elegance
of female dress[133]. When I found that he saw the romantick beauties of
Islam, in Derbyshire, much better than I did, I told him that he
resembled an able performer upon a bad instrument[134]. How false and
contemptible then are all the remarks which have been made to the
prejudice either of his candour or of his philosophy, founded upon a
supposition that he was almost blind. It has been said, that he
contracted this grievous malady from his nurse[135]. His mother yielding
to the superstitious notion, which, it is wonderful to think, prevailed
so long in this country, as to the virtue of the regal touch; a notion,
which our kings encouraged, and to which a man of such inquiry and such
judgement as Carte[136] could give credit; carried him to London, where he
was actually touched by Queen Anne. Mrs. Johnson indeed, as Mr. Hector
informed me, acted by the advice of the celebrated Sir John Floyer[137],
then a physician in Lichfield. Johnson used to talk of this very
frankly; and Mrs. Piozzi has preserved his very picturesque description
of the scene, as it remained upon his fancy. Being asked if he could
remember Queen Anne, 'He had (he said) a confused, but somehow a sort of
solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood[138].'
This touch, however, was without any effect. I ventured to say to him,
in allusion to the political principles in which he was educated, and of
which he ever retained some odour, that 'his mother had not carried him
far enough; she should have taken him to ROME.'
[Page 43: Johnson at a dame's school.]
He was first taught to read English by Dame Oliver[139], a widow, who kept
a school for young children in Lichfield. He told me she could read the
black letter, and asked him to borrow for her, from his father, a bible
in that character. When he was going to Oxford, she came to take leave
of him, brought him, in the simplicity of her kindness, a present of
gingerbread, and said, he was the best scholar she ever had. He
delighted in mentioning this early compliment: adding, with a smile,
that 'this was as high a proof of his merit as he could conceive.' His
next instructor in English was a master, whom, when he spoke of him to
me, he familiarly called Tom Brown, who, said he, 'published a
spelling-book, and dedicated it to the UNIVERSE; but, I fear, no copy of
it can now be had[140].'
[Page 44: Lichfield School.]
He began to learn Latin[141] with Mr. Hawkins, usher, or under-master of
Lichfield school, 'a man (said he) very skilful in his little way.' With
him he continued two years[142], and then rose to be under the care of Mr.
Hunter, the head-master, who, according to his account, 'was very
severe, and wrong-headedly severe. He used (said he) to beat us
unmercifully; and he did not distinguish between ignorance and
negligence; for he would beat a boy equally for not knowing a thing, as
for neglecting to know it. He would ask a boy a question; and if he did
not answer it, he would beat him, without considering whether he had an
opportunity of knowing how to answer it. For instance, he would call up
a boy and ask him Latin for a candlestick, which the boy could not
expect to be asked. Now, Sir, if a boy could answer every question,
there would be no need of a master to teach him.'
[Page 45: Johnson's school-fellows.]
It is, however, but justice to the memory of Mr. Hunter to mention, that
though he might err in being too severe, the school of Lichfield was
very respectable in his time[143]. The late Dr. Taylor, Prebendary of
Westminster, who was educated under him, told me, that 'he was an
excellent master, and that his ushers were most of them men of eminence;
that Holbrook, one of the most ingenious men, best scholars, and best
preachers of his age, was usher during the greatest part of the time
that Johnson was at school[144]. Then came Hague, of whom as much might be
said, with the addition that he was an elegant poet. Hague was succeeded
by Green, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, whose character in the learned
world is well known[145]. In the same form with Johnson was Congreve[146],
who afterwards became chaplain to Archbishop Boulter, and by that
connection obtained good preferment in Ireland. He was a younger son of
the ancient family of Congreve, in Staffordshire, of which the poet was
a branch. His brother sold the estate. There was also Lowe, afterwards
Canon of Windsor[147].'
[Page 46: Mr. Hunter.]
Indeed Johnson was very sensible how much he owed to Mr. Hunter. Mr.
Langton one day asked him how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of
Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time; he
said, 'My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have
done nothing.' He told Mr. Langton, that while Hunter was flogging his
boys unmercifully, he used to say, 'And this I do to save you from the
gallows.' Johnson, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation of
enforcing instruction by means of the rod[148]. 'I would rather (said he)
have the rod to be the general terrour to all, to make them learn, than
tell a child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than
your brothers or sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in
itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and
there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of
superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make
brothers and sisters hate each other[149].'
When Johnson saw some young ladies in Lincolnshire who were remarkably
well behaved, owing to their mother's strict discipline and severe
correction[150], he exclaimed, in one of Shakspeare's lines a little
varied,
'_Rod_, I will honour thee for this thy duty[151].'
[Page 47: Johnson a King of men.]
That superiority over his fellows, which he maintained with so much
dignity in his march through life, was not assumed from vanity and
ostentation, but was the natural and constant effect of those
extraordinary powers of mind, of which he could not but be conscious by
comparison; the intellectual difference, which in other cases of
comparison of characters, is often a matter of undecided contest, being
as clear in his case as the superiority of stature in some men above
others. Johnson did not strut or stand on tip-toe: He only did not
stoop. From his earliest years his superiority was perceived and
acknowledged[152]. He was from the beginning [Greek: anax andron], a king
of men. His schoolfellow, Mr. Hector, has obligingly furnished me with
many particulars of his boyish days[153]: and assured me that he never
knew him corrected at school, but for talking and diverting other boys
from their business. He seemed to learn by intuition; for though
indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution,
whenever he made an exertion he did more than any one else. In short, he
is a memorable instance of what has been often observed, that the boy is
the man in miniature: and that the distinguishing characteristicks of
each individual are the same, through the whole course of life. His
favourites used to receive very liberal assistance from him; and such
was the submission and deference with which he was treated, such the
desire to obtain his regard, that three of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector
was sometimes one, used to come in the morning as his humble attendants,
and carry him to school. One in the middle stooped, while he sat upon
his back, and one on each side supported him; and thus he was borne
triumphant. Such a proof of the early predominance of intellectual
vigour is very remarkable, and does honour to human nature. Talking to
me once himself of his being much distinguished at school, he told me,
'they never thought to raise me by comparing me to any one; they never
said, Johnson is as good a scholar as such a one; but such a one is as
good a scholar as Johnson; and this was said but of one, but of Lowe;
and I do not think he was as good a scholar.'
[Page 48: Johnson's tenacious memory.]
He discovered a great ambition to excel, which roused him to counteract
his indolence. He was uncommonly inquisitive; and his memory was so
tenacious, that he never forgot any thing that he either heard or read.
Mr. Hector remembers having recited to him eighteen verses, which, after
a little pause, he repeated _verbatim_, varying only one epithet, by
which he improved the line.
He never joined with the other boys in their ordinary diversions: his
only amusement was in winter, when he took a pleasure in being drawn
upon the ice by a boy barefooted, who pulled him along by a garter fixed
round him; no very easy operation, as his size was remarkably large. His
defective sight, indeed, prevented him from enjoying the common sports;
and he once pleasantly remarked to me, 'how wonderfully well he had
contrived to be idle without them.' Lord Chesterfield, however, has
justly observed in one of his letters, when earnestly cautioning a
friend against the pernicious effects of idleness, that active sports
are not to be reckoned idleness in young people; and that the listless
torpor of doing nothing, alone deserves that name[154]. Of this dismal
inertness of disposition, Johnson had all his life too great a share.
Mr. Hector relates, that 'he could not oblige him more than by
sauntering away the hours of vacation in the fields, during which he was
more engaged in talking to himself than to his companion.'
[Page 49: His fondness for romances.]
Dr. Percy[155], the Bishop of Dromore, who was long intimately acquainted
with him, and has preserved a few anecdotes concerning him, regretting
that he was not a more diligent collector, informs me, that 'when a boy
he was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry, and he
retained his fondness for them through life; so that (adds his Lordship)
spending part of a summer[156] at my parsonage-house in the country, he
chose for his regular reading the old Spanish romance of _Felixmarte of
Hircania_, in folio, which he read quite through[157]. Yet I have heard
him attribute to these extravagant fictions that unsettled turn of mind
which prevented his ever fixing in any profession.'
[Page 50: Stourbridge School.]
1725: ÆTAT. 16.--After having resided for some time at the house of his
uncle, Cornelius Ford[158], Johnson was, at the age of fifteen, removed to
the school of Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, of which Mr. Wentworth was
then master. This step was taken by the advice of his cousin, the
Reverend Mr. Ford, a man in whom both talents and good dispositions were
disgraced by licentiousness[159], but who was a very able judge of what
was right.
At this school he did not receive so much benefit as was expected. It
has been said, that he acted in the capacity of an assistant to Mr.
Wentworth, in teaching the younger boys. 'Mr. Wentworth (he told me) was
a very able man, but an idle man, and to me very severe; but I cannot
blame him much. I was then a big boy; he saw I did not reverence him;
and that he should get no honour by me. I had brought enough with me, to
carry me through; and all I should get at his school would be ascribed
to my own labour, or to my former master. Yet he taught me a great
deal.'
He thus discriminated, to Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, his progress at
his two grammar-schools. 'At one, I learnt much in the school, but
little from the master; in the other, I learnt much from the master, but
little in the school.'
The Bishop also informs me, that 'Dr. Johnson's father, before he was
received at Stourbridge, applied to have him admitted as a scholar and
assistant to the Reverend Samuel Lea, M.A., head master of Newport
school, in Shropshire (a very diligent, good teacher, at that time in
high reputation, under whom Mr. Hollis[160] is said, in the Memoirs of his
Life, to have been also educated[161]). This application to Mr. Lea was
not successful; but Johnson had afterwards the gratification to hear
that the old gentleman, who lived to a very advanced age, mentioned it
as one of the most memorable events of his life, that 'he was very near
having that great man for his scholar.'
He remained at Stourbridge little more than a year, and then returned
home, where he may be said to have loitered, for two years, in a state
very unworthy his uncommon abilities. He had already given several
proofs of his poetical genius, both in his school-exercises and in other
occasional compositions. Of these I have obtained a considerable
collection, by the favour of Mr. Wentworth, son of one of his masters,
and of Mr. Hector, his school-fellow and friend; from which I select the
following specimens:
[Page 51: Johnson's youthful compositions.]
_Translation of_ VIRGIL. Pastoral I.
MELIBOEUS.
Now, Tityrus, you, supine and careless laid,
Play on your pipe beneath this beechen shade;
While wretched we about the world must roam,
And leave our pleasing fields and native home,
Here at your ease you sing your amorous flame,
And the wood rings with Amarillis' name.
TITYRUS.
Those blessings, friend, a deity bestow'd,
For I shall never think him less than God;
Oft on his altar shall my firstlings lie,
Their blood the consecrated stones shall dye:
He gave my flocks to graze the flowery meads,
And me to tune at ease th' unequal reeds.
MELIBOEUS.
My admiration only I exprest,
(No spark of envy harbours in my breast)
That, when confusion o'er the country reigns,
To you alone this happy state remains.
Here I, though faint myself, must drive my goats,
Far from their ancient fields and humble cots.
This scarce I lead, who left on yonder rock
Two tender kids, the hopes of all the flock.
Had we not been perverse and careless grown,
This dire event by omens was foreshown;
Our trees were blasted by the thunder stroke, )
And left-hand crows, from an old hollow oak, )
Foretold the coming evil by their dismal croak. )
_Translation of_ HORACE. Book I. Ode xxii.
The man, my friend, whose conscious heart
With virtue's sacred ardour glows,
Nor taints with death the envenom'd dart,
Nor needs the guard of Moorish bows:
Though Scythia's icy cliffs he treads,
Or horrid Africk's faithless sands;
Or where the fam'd Hydaspes spreads
His liquid wealth o'er barbarous lands.
For while by Chloe's image charm'd,
Too far in Sabine woods I stray'd;
Me singing, careless and unarm'd,
A grizly wolf surprised, and fled.
No savage more portentous stain'd
Apulia's spacious wilds with gore;
No fiercer Juba's thirsty land,
Dire nurse of raging lions, bore.
Place me where no soft summer gale
Among the quivering branches sighs;
Where clouds condens'd for ever veil
With horrid gloom the frowning skies:
Place me beneath the burning line,
A clime deny'd to human race;
I'll sing of Chloe's charms divine,
Her heav'nly voice, and beauteous face.
_Translation of_ HORACE. Book II. Ode ix.
Clouds do not always veil the skies,
Nor showers immerse the verdant plain;
Nor do the billows always rise,
Or storms afflict the ruffled main.
Nor, Valgius, on th' Armenian shores
Do the chain'd waters always freeze;
Not always furious Boreas roars,
Or bends with violent force the trees.
But you are ever drown'd in tears,
For Mystes dead you ever mourn;
No setting Sol can ease your care,
But finds you sad at his return.
The wise experienc'd Grecian sage
Mourn'd not Antilochus so long;
Nor did King Priam's hoary age
So much lament his slaughter'd son.
Leave off, at length, these woman's sighs,
Augustus' numerous trophies sing;
Repeat that prince's victories,
To whom all nations tribute bring.
Niphates rolls an humbler wave,
At length the undaunted Scythian yields,
Content to live the Roman's slave,
And scarce forsakes his native fields.
_Translation of part of the Dialogue between_ HECTOR _and_
ANDROMACHE;
_from the Sixth Book of_ HOMER'S ILIAD.
She ceas'd: then godlike Hector answer'd kind,
(His various plumage sporting in the wind)
That post, and all the rest, shall be my care;
But shall I, then, forsake the unfinished war?
How would the Trojans brand great Hector's name!
And one base action sully all my fame,
Acquired by wounds and battles bravely fought!
Oh! how my soul abhors so mean a thought.
Long since I learn'd to slight this fleeting breath,
And view with cheerful eyes approaching death
The inexorable sisters have decreed
That Priam's house, and Priam's self shall bleed:
The day will come, in which proud Troy shall yield,
And spread its smoking ruins o'er the field.
Yet Hecuba's, nor Priam's hoary age,
Whose blood shall quench some Grecian's thirsty rage,
Nor my brave brothers, that have bit the ground,
Their souls dismiss'd through many a ghastly wound,
Can in my bosom half that grief create,
As the sad thought of your impending fate:
When some proud Grecian dame shall tasks impose,
Mimick your tears, and ridicule your woes;
Beneath Hyperia's waters shall you sweat,
And, fainting, scarce support the liquid weight:
Then shall some Argive loud insulting cry,
Behold the wife of Hector, guard of Troy!
Tears, at my name, shall drown those beauteous eyes,
And that fair bosom heave with rising sighs!
Before that day, by some brave hero's hand
May I lie slain, and spurn the bloody sand.
_To a_ YOUNG LADY _on her_ BIRTH-DAY[162].
This tributary verse receive my fair,
Warm with an ardent lover's fondest pray'r.
May this returning day for ever find
Thy form more lovely, more adorn'd thy mind;
All pains, all cares, may favouring heav'n remove,
All but the sweet solicitudes of love!
May powerful nature join with grateful art,
To point each glance, and force it to the heart!
O then, when conquered crouds confess thy sway,
When ev'n proud wealth and prouder wit obey,
My fair, be mindful of the mighty trust,
Alas! 'tis hard for beauty to be just.
Those sovereign charms with strictest care employ;
Nor give the generous pain, the worthless joy:
With his own form acquaint the forward fool,
Shewn in the faithful glass of ridicule;
Teach mimick censure her own faults to find, )
No more let coquettes to themselves be blind, )
So shall Belinda's charms improve mankind. )
THE YOUNG AUTHOUR[163].
When first the peasant, long inclin'd to roam,
Forsakes his rural sports and peaceful home,
Pleas'd with the scene the smiling ocean yields,
He scorns the verdant meads and flow'ry fields:
Then dances jocund o'er the watery way,
While the breeze whispers, and the streamers play:
Unbounded prospects in his bosom roll,
And future millions lift his rising soul;
In blissful dreams he digs the golden mine,
And raptur'd sees the new-found ruby shine.
Joys insincere! thick clouds invade the skies,
Loud roar the billows, high the waves arise;
Sick'ning with fear, he longs to view the shore,
And vows to trust the faithless deep no more.
So the young Authour, panting after fame,
And the long honours of a lasting name,
Entrusts his happiness to human kind,
More false, more cruel, than the seas or wind.
'Toil on, dull croud, in extacies he cries,
For wealth or title, perishable prize;
While I those transitory blessings scorn,
Secure of praise from ages yet unborn.'
This thought once form'd, all council comes too late,
He flies to press, and hurries on his fate;
Swiftly he sees the imagin'd laurels spread,
And feels the unfading wreath surround his head.
Warn'd by another's fate, vain youth be wise,
Those dreams were Settle's[164] once, and Ogilby's[165]:
The pamphlet spreads, incessant hisses rise,
To some retreat the baffled writer flies;
Where no sour criticks snarl, no sneers molest,
Safe from the tart lampoon, and stinging jest;
There begs of heaven a less distinguish'd lot,
Glad to be hid, and proud to be forgot.
EPILOGUE, _intended to have been spoken by a_ LADY _who was to personate
the Ghost of_ HERMIONE[166].
Ye blooming train, who give despair or joy,
Bless with a smile, or with a frown destroy;
In whose fair cheeks destructive Cupids wait,
And with unerring shafts distribute fate;
Whose snowy breasts, whose animated eyes,
Each youth admires, though each admirer dies;
Whilst you deride their pangs in barb'rous play, }
Unpitying see them weep, and hear them pray, }
And unrelenting sport ten thousand lives away; }
For you, ye fair, I quit the gloomy plains;
Where sable night in all her horrour reigns;
No fragrant bowers, no delightful glades,
Receive the unhappy ghosts of scornful maids.
For kind, for tender nymphs the myrtle blooms,
And weaves her bending boughs in pleasing glooms:
Perennial roses deck each purple vale,
And scents ambrosial breathe in every gale:
Far hence are banish'd vapours, spleen, and tears,
Tea, scandal, ivory teeth, and languid airs:
No pug, nor favourite Cupid there enjoys
The balmy kiss, for which poor Thyrsis dies;
Form'd to delight, they use no foreign arms,
Nor torturing whalebones pinch them into charms;
No conscious blushes there their cheeks inflame,
For those who feel no guilt can know no shame;
Unfaded still their former charms they shew,
Around them pleasures wait, and joys for ever new.
But cruel virgins meet severer fates;
Expell'd and exil'd from the blissful seats,
To dismal realms, and regions void of peace,
Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss.
O'er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh,
And pois'nous vapours, black'ning all the sky,
With livid hue the fairest face o'ercast,
And every beauty withers at the blast:
Where e'er they fly their lover's ghosts pursue,
Inflicting all those ills which once they knew;
Vexation, Fury, Jealousy, Despair,
Vex ev'ry eye, and every bosom tear;
Their foul deformities by all descry'd,
No maid to flatter, and no paint to hide.
Then melt, ye fair, while crouds around you sigh,
Nor let disdain sit lowring in your eye;
With pity soften every awful grace,
And beauty smile auspicious in each face;
To ease their pains exert your milder power,
So shall you guiltless reign, and all mankind adore.'
[Page 57: His wide reading. ÆTAT. 19.]
The two years which he spent at home, after his return from Stourbridge,
he passed in what he thought idleness[167], and was scolded by his father
for his want of steady application[168]. He had no settled plan of life,
nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read
a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as
chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through
them. He used to mention one curious instance of his casual reading,
when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples
behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he
climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio
proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as
one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity having been thus
excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a great part of the book.
What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere
amusement, 'not voyages and travels, but all literature, Sir, all
ancient writers, all manly: though but little Greek, only some of
Anacreon and Hesiod; but in this irregular manner (added he) I had
looked into a great many books, which were not commonly known at the
Universities, where they seldom read any books but what are put into
their hands by their tutors; so that when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams,
now master of Pembroke College, told me I was the best qualified for the
University that he had ever known come there[169].'
In estimating the progress of his mind during these two years, as well
as in future periods of his life, we must not regard his own hasty
confession of idleness; for we see, when he explains himself, that he
was acquiring various stores; and, indeed he himself concluded the
account with saying, 'I would not have you think I was doing nothing
then.' He might, perhaps, have studied more assiduously; but it may be
doubted whether such a mind as his was not more enriched by roaming at
large in the fields of literature than if it had been confined to any
single spot. The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the
parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular.
The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher
flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same
difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are
confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?
[Page 58: Johnson enters Oxford. A.D. 1728.]
That a man in Mr. Michael Johnson's circumstances should think of
sending his son to the expensive University of Oxford, at his own
charge, seems very improbable. The subject was too delicate to question
Johnson upon. But I have been assured by Dr. Taylor that the scheme
never would have taken place had not a gentleman of Shropshire, one of
his schoolfellows, spontaneously undertaken to support him at Oxford, in
the character of his companion; though, in fact, he never received any
assistance whatever from that gentleman[170].
He, however, went to Oxford, and was entered a Commoner of Pembroke
College on the 31st of October, 1728[171], being then in his nineteenth
year[172].
[Page 59: His first tutor. ÆTAT. 19.]
The Reverend Dr. Adams, who afterwards presided over Pembroke College
with universal esteem, told me he was present, and gave me some account
of what passed on the night of Johnson's arrival at Oxford[173]. On that
evening, his father, who had anxiously accompanied him, found means to
have him introduced to Mr. Jorden, who was to be his tutor. His being
put under any tutor reminds us of what Wood says of Robert Burton,
authour of the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' when elected student of Christ
Church: 'for form's sake, _though he wanted not a tutor_, he was put
under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxon[174].'
His father seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the
company he was a good scholar, and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His
figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved modestly, and
sat silent, till upon something which occurred in the course of
conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted Macrobius; and thus he
gave the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had
indulged himself.
His tutor, Mr. Jorden, fellow of Pembroke, was not, it seems, a man of
such abilities as we should conceive requisite for the instructor of
Samuel Johnson, who gave me the following account of him. 'He was a very
worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his
instructions. Indeed, I did not attend him much[175]. The first day after
I came to college I waited upon him, and then staid away four. On the
sixth, Mr. Jorden asked me why I had not attended. I answered I had been
sliding in Christ-Church meadow[176]. And this I said with as much
nonchalance as I am now[177] talking to you. I had no notion that I was
wrong or irreverent to my tutor[178]. BOSWELL: 'That, Sir, was great
fortitude of mind.' JOHNSON: 'No, Sir; stark insensibility[179].'
[Page 60: The fifth of November. A.D. 1728.]
The fifth of November[180] was at that time kept with great solemnity at
Pembroke College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were
required[181]. Johnson neglected to perform his, which is much to be
regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of language, would
probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot[182]. To
apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled
Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in
his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such
subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:' but
the versification was truly Virgilian[183].
[Page 61: Johnson's version of Pope's Messiah. ÆTAT. 19.]
He had a love and respect for Jorden, not for his literature, but for
his worth. 'Whenever (said he) a young man becomes Jorden's pupil, he
becomes his son.'
Having given such a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr.
Jorden, to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, as a Christmas
exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a
manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept
him high in the estimation of his College, and, indeed, of all the
University[184].
It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of
strong approbation[185]. Dr. Taylor told me, that it was first printed for
old Mr. Johnson, without the knowledge of his son, who was very angry
when he heard of it. A Miscellany of Poems collected by a person of the
name of Husbands, was published at Oxford in 1731[186]. In that Miscellany
Johnson's Translation of the Messiah appeared, with this modest motto
from Scaliger's Poeticks. _Ex alieno ingenio Poeta, ex suo tantum
versificator_.
[Page 62: Mr. Courtenays eulogy. A.D. 1728.]
I am not ignorant that critical objections have been made to this and
other specimens of Johnson's Latin Poetry[187]. I acknowledge myself not
competent to decide on a question of such extreme nicety. But I am
satisfied with the just and discriminative eulogy pronounced upon it by
my friend Mr, Courtenay.
'And with like ease his vivid lines assume
The garb and dignity of ancient Rome.--
Let college _verse-men_ trite conceits express,
Trick'd out in splendid shreds of Virgil's dress;
From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase,
And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays:
Then with mosaick art the piece combine,
And boast the glitter of each dulcet line:
Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse
His vigorous sense into the Latian muse;
Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light,
And with a Roman's ardour _think_ and write.
He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire,
And, like a master, wak'd the soothing lyre:
Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim,
While Sky's wild rocks resound his Thralia's name[188].
Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands,
To bloom a while, factitious heat demands:
Though glowing Maro a faint warmth supplies,
The sickly blossom in the hot-house dies:
By Johnson's genial culture, art, and toil,
Its root strikes deep, and owns the fost'ring soil;
Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins,
And grows a native of Britannia's plains[189].'
[Page 63: Johnson's 'morbid melancholy'. Ætat 19.]
The 'morbid melancholy,' which was lurking in his constitution, and to
which we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to regular
life, which, at a very early period, marked his character, gathered such
strength in his twentieth year, as to afflict him in a dreadful manner.
While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729[190],
he felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with
perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection,
gloom, and despair, which made existence misery[191]. From this dismal
malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours,
and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful
influence[192]. How wonderful, how unsearchable are the ways of GOD!
Johnson, who was blest with all the powers of genius and understanding
in a degree far above the ordinary state of human nature, was at the
same time visited with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it
by dire experience, will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was,
in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that
inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He told Mr.
Paradise[193] that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he
could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.
[Page 64: Johnson consults Dr. Swinfen. A.D. 1729.]
Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to
overcome it by forcible exertions[194]. He frequently walked to Birmingham
and back again[195], and tried many other expedients, but all in vain. His
expression concerning it to me was 'I did not then know how to manage
it.' His distress became so intolerable, that he applied to Dr. Swinfen,
physician in Lichfield, his god-father, and put into his hands a state
of his case, written in Latin. Dr. Swinfen was so much struck with the
extraordinary acuteness, research, and eloquence of this paper, that in
his zeal for his godson he shewed it to several people. His daughter,
Mrs. Desmoulins, who was many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson's
house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had
communicated his case, he was so much offended, that he was never
afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be
offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately
betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had
been entrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his
young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the
generality of mankind, is attended with contempt and disgrace[196].
[Page 65: Johnson an hypochondriack. ÆTAT. 20.]
But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an
HYPOCHONDRIACK, was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and
pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the title of 'The English
Malady[197].' Though he suffered severely from it, he was not therefore
degraded. The powers of his great mind might be troubled, and their full
exercise suspended at times; but the mind itself was ever entire. As a
proof of this, it is only necessary to consider, that, when he was at
the very worst, he composed that state of his own case, which shewed an
uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgement. I am
aware that he himself was too ready to call such a complaint by the name
of _madness_[198]; in conformity with which notion, he has traced its
gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the chapters of his
RASSELAS[199]. But there is surely a clear distinction between a disorder
which affects only the imagination and spirits, while the judgement is
sound, and a disorder by which the judgement itself is impaired. This
distinction was made to me by the late Professor Gaubius of Leyden,
physician to the Prince of Orange, in a conversation which I had with
him several years ago, and he expanded it thus: 'If (said he) a man
tells me that he is grievously disturbed, for that he _imagines_ he sees
a ruffian coming against him with a drawn sword, though at the same time
he is _conscious_ it is a delusion, I pronounce him to have a disordered
imagination; but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in
consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be _mad_.'
[Page 66: Johnson's dread of insanity. A.D. 1729.]
It is a common effect of low spirits or melancholy, to make those who
are afflicted with it imagine that they are actually suffering those
evils which happen to be most strongly presented to their minds. Some
have fancied themselves to be deprived of the use of their limbs, some
to labour under acute diseases, others to be in extreme poverty; when,
in truth, there was not the least reality in any of the suppositions; so
that when the vapours were dispelled, they were convinced of the
delusion. To Johnson, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his
reason, the disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most
to be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the object of his most dismal
apprehension[200]; and he fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to
it, at the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary
soundness and vigour of judgement. That his own diseased imagination
should have so far deceived him, is strange; but it is stranger still
that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless
opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally
fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to
depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this
circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation[201].
Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have
felt in its full extent, but many have experienced in a slighter degree,
Johnson, in his writings, and in his conversation, never failed to
display all the varieties of intellectual excellence. In his march
through this world to a better, his mind still appeared grand and
brilliant, and impressed all around him with the truth of Virgil's noble
sentiment--
'_Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo_.'[202]
[Page 67: His reluctance to go to church. Ætat 20.]
The history of his mind as to religion is an important article. I have
mentioned the early impressions made upon his tender imagination by his
mother, who continued her pious care with assiduity, but, in his
opinion, not with judgement. 'Sunday (said he) was a heavy day to me
when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read
"The Whole Duty of Man," from a great part of which I could derive no
instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which
from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced
that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of
knowledge. A boy should be introduced to such books, by having his
attention directed to the arrangement, to the style, and other
excellencies of composition; that the mind being thus engaged by an
amusing variety of objects, may not grow weary.'
[Page 68: Law's Serious Call. A.D. 1729.]
[Page 69: Johnson grounded in religion. Ætat 20.]
He communicated to me the following particulars upon the subject of his
religious progress. 'I fell into an inattention to religion, or an
indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in
which we had a seat, wanted reparation[203], so I was to go and find a
seat in other churches; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about
this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit
continued till my fourteenth year; and still I find a great reluctance
to go to church[204]. I then became a sort of lax _talker_ against
religion, for I did not much _think_ against it; and this lasted till I
went to Oxford, where it would not be _suffered_[205]. When at Oxford, I
took up 'Law's _Serious Call to a Holy Life_,'[206] 'expecting to find it
a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it.
But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first
occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable
of rational inquiry[207].' From this time forward religion was the
predominant object of his thoughts[208]; though, with the just sentiments
of a conscientious Christian, he lamented that his practice of its
duties fell far short of what it ought to be.
This instance of a mind such as that of Johnson being first disposed, by
an unexpected incident, to think with anxiety of the momentous concerns
of eternity, and of 'what he should do to be saved[209],' may for ever be
produced in opposition to the superficial and sometimes profane contempt
that has been thrown upon, those occasional impressions which it is
certain many Christians have experienced; though it must be acknowledged
that weak minds, from an erroneous supposition that no man is in a state
of grace who has not felt a particular conversion, have, in some cases,
brought a degree of ridicule upon them; a ridicule of which it is
inconsiderate or unfair to make a general application.
[Page 70: Johnson's studies at Oxford. A.D. 1729.]
How seriously Johnson was impressed with a sense of religion, even in
the vigour of his youth, appears from the following passage in his
minutes kept by way of diary: Sept. 7[210], 1736. I have this day entered
upon my twenty-eighth year. 'Mayest thou, O God, enable me, for JESUS
CHRIST'S sake, to spend this in such a manner that I may receive comfort
from it at the hour of death, and in the day of judgement! Amen.'
[Page 71: His rapid reading and composition. Ætat 20.]
The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the
time of vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced. Enough has
been said of his irregular mode of study. He told me that from his
earliest years he loved to read poetry, but hardly ever read any poem to
an end; that he read Shakspeare at a period so early, that the speech of
the ghost in Hamlet terrified him when he was alone[211]; that Horace's
Odes were the compositions in which he took most delight, and it was
long before he liked his Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read
_solidly_ at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer[212]
and Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of
which he was the most fond was Metaphysicks, but he had not read much,
even in that way. I always thought that he did himself injustice in his
account of what he had read, and that he must have been speaking with
reference to the vast portion of study which is possible, and to which a
few scholars in the whole history of literature have attained; for when
I once asked him whether a person, whose name I have now forgotten,
studied hard, he answered 'No, Sir; I do not believe he studied hard. I
never knew a man who studied hard. I conclude, indeed, from the effects,
that some men have studied hard, as Bentley and Clarke.' Trying him by
that criterion upon which he formed his judgement of others, we may be
absolutely certain, both from his writings and his conversation, that
his reading was very extensive. Dr. Adam Smith, than whom few were
better judges on this subject, once observed to me that 'Johnson knew
more books than any man alive.' He had a peculiar facility in seizing at
once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of
perusing it from beginning to end[213]. He had, from the irritability of
his constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either
read or wrote. A certain apprehension, arising from novelty, made him
write his first exercise at College twice over[214]; but he never took
that trouble with any other composition; and we shall see that his most
excellent works were struck off at a heat, with rapid exertion[215].
[Page 72: Johnson's rooms in College. A.D. 1729.]
Yet he appears, from his early notes or memorandums in my possession, to
have at various times attempted, or at least planned, a methodical
course of study, according to computation, of which he was all his life
fond, as it fixed his attention steadily upon something without, and
prevented his mind from preying upon itself[216]. Thus I find in his
hand-writing the number of lines in each of two of Euripides' Tragedies,
of the Georgicks of Virgil, of the first six books of the Æneid, of
Horace's Art of Poetry, of three of the books of Ovid's Metamorphosis,
of some parts of Theocritus, and of the tenth Satire of Juvenal; and a
table, shewing at the rate of various numbers a day (I suppose verses to
be read), what would be, in each case, the total amount in a week,
month, and year[217].
No man had a more ardent love of literature, or a higher respect for it
than Johnson. His apartment in Pembroke College was that upon the second
floor, over the gateway. The enthusiasts of learning will ever
contemplate it with veneration. One day, while he was sitting in it
quite alone, Dr. Panting[218], then master of the College, whom he called
'a fine Jacobite fellow,' overheard[219] him uttering this soliloquy in
his strong, emphatick voice: 'Well, I have a mind to see what is done in
other places of learning. I'll go and visit the Universities abroad.
I'll go to France and Italy. I'll go to Padua[220].--And I'll mind my
business. For an _Athenian_ blockhead is the worst of all
blockheads[221].'
[Page 73: Johnson a frolicksome fellow. Ætat 20.]
Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, 'was
caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicksome[222]
fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life.' But this is a
striking proof of the fallacy of appearances, and how little any of us
know of the real internal state even of those whom we see most
frequently; for the truth is, that he was then depressed by poverty, and
irritated by disease. When I mentioned to him this account as given me
by Dr. Adams, he said, 'Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. It was
bitterness which they mistook for frolick[223]. I was miserably poor, and
I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded
all power and all authority[224].'
[Page 74: Dr. Adams. A.D. 1730.]
The Bishop of Dromore observes in a letter to me,
'The pleasure he took in vexing the tutors and fellows has been often
mentioned. But I have heard him say, what ought to be recorded to the
honour of the present venerable master of that College, the Reverend
William Adams, D.D., who was then very young, and one of the junior
fellows; that the mild but judicious expostulations of this worthy man,
whose virtue awed him, and whose learning he revered, made him really
ashamed of himself, "though I fear (said he) I was too proud to own it."
'I have heard from some of his cotemporaries that he was generally seen
lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students round him,
whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies, if
not spiriting them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which
in his maturer years he so much extolled.'
He very early began to attempt keeping notes or memorandums, by way of a
diary of his life. I find, in a parcel of loose leaves, the following
spirited resolution to contend against his natural indolence:
'_Oct. 1729. Desidiæ valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac
aurem obversurus_.--I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth
not to listen to her syren strains.'
I have also in my possession a few leaves of another _Libellus_, or
little book, entitled ANNALES, in which some of the early particulars of
his history are registered in Latin.
[Page 75: A nest of singing-birds. Ætat 21.]
I do not find that he formed any close intimacies with his
fellow-collegians. But Dr. Adams told me that he contracted a love and
regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last. A short time
before his death he sent to that College a present of all his works, to
be deposited in their library[225]; and he had thoughts of leaving to it
his house at Lichfield; but his friends who were about him very properly
dissuaded him from it, and he bequeathed it to some poor relations[226].
He took a pleasure in boasting of the many eminent men who had been
educated at Pembroke. In this list are found the names of Mr. Hawkins
the Poetry Professor[227], Mr. Shenstone, Sir William Blackstone, and
others[228]; not forgetting the celebrated popular preacher, Mr. George
Whitefield, of whom, though Dr. Johnson did not think very highly[229], it
must be acknowledged that his eloquence was powerful, his views pious
and charitable, his assiduity almost incredible; and, that since his
death, the integrity of his character has been fully vindicated. Being
himself a poet, Johnson was peculiarly happy in mentioning how many of
the sons of Pembroke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive
triumph, 'Sir, we are a nest of singing birds[230].'
[Page 76: Dr. Taylor at Christ Church. A.D. 1730.]
[Page 77: Johnson's worn-out shoes. Ætat 21.]
He was not, however, blind to what he thought the defects of his own
College; and I have, from the information of Dr. Taylor, a very strong
instance of that rigid honesty which he ever inflexibly preserved.
Taylor had obtained his father's consent to be entered of Pembroke, that
he might be with his schoolfellow Johnson, with whom, though some years
older than himself, he was very intimate. This would have been a great
comfort to Johnson. But he fairly told Taylor that he could not, in
conscience, suffer him to enter where he knew he could not have an able
tutor. He then made inquiry all round the University, and having found
that Mr. Bateman, of Christ Church, was the tutor of highest reputation,
Taylor was entered of that College[231]. Mr. Bateman's lectures were so
excellent, that Johnson used to come and get them at second-hand from
Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme that his shoes were worn out,
and his feet appeared through them, he saw that this humiliating
circumstance was perceived by the Christ Church men, and he came no
more[232]. He was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a
pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation[233].
How must we feel when we read such an anecdote of Samuel Johnson!
His spirited refusal of an eleemosynary supply of shoes, arose, no
doubt, from a proper pride. But, considering his ascetick disposition at
times, as acknowledged by himself in his 'Meditations,' and the
exaggeration with which some have treated the peculiarities of his
character, I should not wonder to hear it ascribed to a principle of
superstitious mortification; as we are told by Tursellinus, in his Life
of St. Ignatius Loyola, that this intrepid founder of the order of
Jesuits, when he arrived at Goa, after having made a severe pilgrimage
through the Eastern deserts persisted in wearing his miserable shattered
shoes, and when new ones were offered him rejected them as an unsuitable
indulgence.
[Page 78: Johnson leaves Oxford. A.D. 1731.]
The _res angusta domi_[234] prevented him from having the advantage of a
complete academical education[235]. The friend to whom he had trusted for
support had deceived him. His debts in College, though not great, were
increasing[236]; and his scanty remittances from Lichfield, which had all
along been made with great difficulty, could be supplied no longer, his
father having fallen into a state of insolvency. Compelled, therefore,
by irresistible necessity, he left the College in autumn, 1731, without
a degree, having been a member of it little more than three years[237].
[Page 79: His destitute state. Ætat 22.]
Dr. Adams, the worthy and respectable master of Pembroke College, has
generally had the reputation of being Johnson's tutor. The fact,
however, is, that in 1731 Mr. Jorden quitted the College, and his pupils
were transferred to Dr. Adams; so that had Johnson returned, Dr. Adams
_would have been his tutor_. It is to be wished, that this connection
had taken place. His equal temper, mild disposition, and politeness of
manners, might have insensibly softened the harshness of Johnson, and
infused into him those more delicate charities, those _petites morales_,
in which, it must be confessed, our great moralist was more deficient
than his best friends could fully justify. Dr. Adams paid Johnson this
high compliment. He said to me at Oxford, in 1776, 'I was his nominal
tutor[238]; but he was above my mark.' When I repeated it to Johnson, his
eyes flashed with grateful satisfaction, and he exclaimed, 'That was
liberal and noble.'
[Page 80: Michael Johnson's death. A.D. 1731.]
And now (I had almost said _poor_) Samuel Johnson returned to his native
city, destitute, and not knowing how he should gain even a decent
livelihood. His father's misfortunes in trade rendered him unable to
support his son[239]; and for some time there appeared no means by which
he could maintain himself. In the December of this year his father died.
The state of poverty in which he died, appears from a note in one of
Johnson's little diaries of the following year, which strongly displays
his spirit and virtuous dignity of mind.
'1732, _Julii_ 15. _Undecim aureos deposui, quo die quicquid ante matris
funus (quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperari licet, viginti
scilicet libras, accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. Interea,
ne paupertate vires animi languescant, nee in flagilia egestas abigat,
cavendum_.--I layed by eleven guineas on this day, when I received
twenty pounds, being all that I have reason to hope for out of my
father's effects, previous to the death of my mother; an event which I
pray GOD may be very remote. I now therefore see that I must make my own
fortune. Meanwhile, let me take care that the powers of my mind may not
be debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any
criminal act.'
Johnson was so far fortunate, that the respectable character of his
parents, and his own merit, had, from his earliest years, secured him a
kind reception in the best families at Lichfield. Among these I can
mention Mr. Howard[240], Dr. Swinfen, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Levett[241], Captain
Garrick, father of the great ornament of the British stage; but above
all, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley[242], Register of the Prerogative Court of
Lichfield, whose character, long after his decease, Dr. Johnson has, in
his Life of Edmund Smith[243], thus drawn in the glowing colours of
gratitude:
[Page 81: Gilbert Walmsley. Ætat 22.]
'Of Gilbert Walmsley[244], thus presented to my mind, let me indulge
myself in the remembrance. I knew him very early; he was one of the
first friends that literature procured me, and I hope that, at least, my
gratitude made me worthy of his notice.
'He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy, yet he never
received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence
and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us
apart. I honoured him and he endured me.
'He had mingled with the gay world without exemption from its vices or
its follies; but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind. His
belief of revelation was unshaken; his learning preserved his
principles; he grew first regular, and then pious.
'His studies had been so various, that I am not able to name a man of
equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did
not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find. Such was
his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication,
that it may be doubted whether a day now passes, in which I have not
some advantage from his friendship.
'At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with
companions, such as are not often found--with one who has lengthened,
and one who has gladdened life; with Dr. James[245], whose skill in
physick will be long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to
have gratified with this character of our common friend. But what are
the hopes of man! I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has
eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the publick stock of
harmless pleasure[246].'
[Page 82: Lichfield society. A.D. 1732.]
In these families he passed much time in his early years. In most of
them, he was in the company of ladies, particularly at Mr. Walmsley's,
whose wife and sisters-in-law, of the name of Aston, and daughters of a
Baronet, were remarkable for good breeding; so that the notion which has
been industriously circulated and believed, that he never was in good
company till late in life, and, consequently had been confirmed in
coarse and ferocious manners by long habits, is wholly without
foundation. Some of the ladies have assured me, they recollected him
well when a young man, as distinguished for his complaisance.
And that this politeness was not merely occasional and temporary, or
confined to the circles of Lichfield, is ascertained by the testimony of
a lady, who, in a paper with which I have been favoured by a daughter of
his intimate friend and physician, Dr. Lawrence, thus describes Dr.
Johnson some years afterwards:
'As the particulars of the former part of Dr. Johnson's life do not seem
to be very accurately known, a lady hopes that the following information
may not be unacceptable.
[Page 83: Molly Aston. Ætat 23.]
'She remembers Dr. Johnson on a visit to Dr. Taylor, at Ashbourn, some
time between the end of the year 37, and the middle of the year 40; she
rather thinks it to have been after he and his wife were removed to
London[247]. During his stay at Ashbourn, he made frequent visits to Mr.
Meynell[248], at Bradley, where his company was much desired by the ladies
of the family, who were, perhaps, in point of elegance and
accomplishments, inferiour to few of those with whom he was afterwards
acquainted. Mr. Meynell's eldest daughter was afterwards married to Mr.
Fitzherbert[249], father to Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, lately minister to
the court of Russia. Of her, Dr. Johnson said, in Dr. Lawrence's study,
that she had the best understanding he ever met with in any human
being[250]. At Mr. Meynell's he also commenced that friendship with Mrs.
Hill Boothby[251], sister to the present Sir Brook Boothby, which
continued till her death. _The young woman whom he used to call Molly
Aston_[252], was sister to Sir Thomas Aston, and daughter to a Baronet;
she was also sister to the wife of his friend Mr. Gilbert Walmsley[253].
Besides his intimacy with the above-mentioned persons, who were surely
people of rank and education, while he was yet at Lichfield he used to
be frequently at the house of Dr. Swinfen, a gentleman of a very ancient
family in Staffordshire, from which, after the death of his elder
brother, he inherited a good estate. He was, besides, a physician of
very extensive practice; but for want of due attention to the management
of his domestick concerns, left a very large family in indigence. One of
his daughters, Mrs. Desmoulins, afterwards found an asylum in the house
of her old friend, whose doors were always open to the unfortunate, and
who well observed the precept of the Gospel, for he "was kind to the
unthankful and to the evil[254]."'
[Page 84: Johnson an usher. A.D. 1732.]
In the forlorn state of his circumstances, he accepted of an offer to be
employed as usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire,
to which it appears, from one of his little fragments of a diary, that
he went on foot, on the 16th of July.--'_Julii 16. Bosvortiam pedes
petii_[255].' But it is not true, as has been erroneously related, that he
was assistant to the famous Anthony Blackwall, whose merit has been
honoured by the testimony of Bishop Hurd[256], who was his scholar; for
Mr. Blackwall died on the 8th of April, 1730[257], more than a year before
Johnson left the University[258].
This employment was very irksome to him in every respect, and he
complained grievously of it in his letters to his friend Mr. Hector, who
was now settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. The letters are lost; but
Mr. Hector recollects his writing 'that the poet had described the dull
sameness of his existence in these words, "_Vitam continet una dies_"
(one day contains the whole of my life); that it was unvaried as the
note of the cuckow; and that he did not know whether it was more
disagreeable for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules.'
His general aversion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a
disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixey, the patron of the
school, in whose house, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of
domestick chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was
treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness[259]; and, after
suffering for a few months such complicated misery[260], he relinquished a
situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the
strongest aversion, and even a degree of horrour[261]. But it is probable
that at this period, whatever uneasiness he may have endured, he laid
the foundation of much future eminence by application to his studies.
[Page 85: His life in Birmingham. Ætat 23.]
Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass
some time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr.
Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was the
first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to
Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade,
by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the assistance of
his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical Essay printed in the
news-paper, of which Warren was proprietor[262]. After very diligent
inquiry, I have not been able to recover those early specimens of that
particular mode of writing by which Johnson afterwards so greatly
distinguished himself.
[Page 86: Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. A.D. 1733.]
He continued to live as Mr. Hector's guest for about six months, and
then hired lodgings in another part of the town[263], finding himself as
well situated at Birmingham[264] as he supposed he could be any where,
while he had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of
subsistence. He made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom
were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr.
Taylor[265], who by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his
success in trade, acquired an immense fortune. But the comfort of being
near Mr. Hector, his old school-fellow and intimate friend, was
Johnson's chief inducement to continue here.
In what manner he employed his pen at this period, or whether he derived
from it any pecuniary advantage, I have not been able to ascertain. He
probably got a little money from Mr. Warren; and we are certain, that he
executed here one piece of literary labour, of which Mr. Hector has
favoured me with a minute account. Having mentioned that he had read at
Pembroke College a Voyage to Abyssinia, by Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit,
and that he thought an abridgment and translation of it from the French
into English might be an useful and profitable publication, Mr. Warren
and Mr. Hector joined in urging him to undertake it. He accordingly
agreed; and the book not being to be found in Birmingham, he borrowed it
of Pembroke College. A part of the work being very soon done, one
Osborn, who was Mr. Warren's printer, was set to work with what was
ready, and Johnson engaged to supply the press with copy as it should be
wanted; but his constitutional indolence soon prevailed, and the work
was at a stand. Mr. Hector, who knew that a motive of humanity would be
the most prevailing argument with his friend, went to Johnson, and
represented to him, that the printer could have no other employment till
this undertaking was finished, and that the poor man and his family were
suffering. Johnson upon this exerted the powers of his mind, though his
body was relaxed. He lay in bed with the book, which was a quarto,
before him, and dictated while Hector wrote. Mr. Hector carried the
sheets to the press, and corrected almost all the proof sheets, very few
of which were even seen by Johnson. In this manner, with the aid of Mr.
Hector's active friendship, the book was completed, and was published in
1735, with LONDON upon the title-page, though it was in reality printed
at Birmingham, a device too common with provincial publishers. For this
work he had from Mr. Warren only the sum of five guineas[266].
This being the first prose work of Johnson, it is a curious object of
inquiry how much may be traced in it of that style which marks his
subsequent writings with such peculiar excellence; with so happy an
union of force, vivacity, and perspicuity. I have perused the book with
this view, and have found that here, as I believe in every other
translation, there is in the work itself no vestige of the translator's
own style; for the language of translation being adapted to the thoughts
of another person, insensibly follows their cast, and, as it were, runs
into a mould that is ready prepared[267].
Thus, for instance, taking the first sentence that occurs at the opening
of the book, p. 4.
'I lived here above a year, and completed my studies in divinity; in
which time some letters were received from the fathers of Ethiopia, with
an account that Sultan Segned[268], Emperour of Abyssinia, was converted
to the church of Rome; that many of his subjects had followed his
example, and that there was a great want of missionaries to improve
these prosperous beginnings. Every body was very desirous of seconding
the zeal of our fathers, and of sending them the assistance they
requested; to which we were the more encouraged, because the Emperour's
letter informed our Provincial, that we might easily enter his dominions
by the way of Dancala; but, unhappily, the secretary wrote Geila[269] for
Dancala, which cost two of our fathers their lives.'
Every one acquainted with Johnson's manner will be sensible that there
is nothing of it here; but that this sentence might have been composed
by any other man.
But, in the Preface, the Johnsonian style begins to appear; and though
use had not yet taught his wing a permanent and equable flight, there
are parts of it which exhibit his best manner in full vigour. I had once
the pleasure of examining it with Mr. Edmund Burke, who confirmed me in
this opinion, by his superiour critical sagacity, and was, I remember,
much delighted with the following specimen:
'The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his
countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantick absurdity, or
incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at
least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of
probability, has a right to demand that they should believe him who
cannot contradict him.
'He appears, by his modest and unaffected narration, to have described
things as he saw them, to have copied nature from the life, and to have
consulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no basilisks
that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without
tears, and his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening the
neighbouring inhabitants[270].
'The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable
barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom,
or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid
of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private or social
virtues. Here are no Hottentots without religious polity or articulate
language[271]; no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all
sciences; he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent
and impartial enquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found, there
is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and
that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has
balanced, in most countries, their particular inconveniencies by
particular favours.'
Here we have an early example of that brilliant and energetick
expression, which, upon innumerable occasions in his subsequent life,
justly impressed the world with the highest admiration.
Nor can any one, conversant with the writings of Johnson, fail to
discern his hand in this passage of the Dedication to John Warren, Esq.
of Pembrokeshire, though it is ascribed to Warren the bookseller:
'A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly
than an eminent degree of curiosity[272]; nor is that curiosity ever more
agreeably or usefully employed, than in examining the laws and customs
of foreign nations. I hope, therefore, the present I now presume to
make, will not be thought improper; which, however, it is not my
business as a dedicator to commend, nor as a bookseller to depreciate.'
It is reasonable to suppose, that his having been thus accidentally led
to a particular study of the history and manners of Abyssinia, was the
remote occasion of his writing, many years afterwards, his admirable
philosophical tale[273], the principal scene of which is laid in that
country.
[Page 90: Proposals to print Politian. A.D. 1734.]
Johnson returned to Lichfield early in 1734, and in August[274] that year
he made an attempt to procure some little subsistence by his pen; for he
published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin Poems of
Politian[275]: '_Angeli Politiani Poemata Latina, quibus, Notas cum
historiâ Latinæ poeseos, à Petrarchæ ævo ad Politiani tempora deductâ,
et vitâ Politiani fusius quam antehac enarratâ, addidit_ SAM.
JOHNSON[276].'
It appears that his brother Nathanael[277] had taken up his father's
trade; for it is mentioned that 'subscriptions are taken in by the
Editor, or N. Johnson, bookseller, of Lichfield.' Notwithstanding the
merit of Johnson, and the cheap price at which this book was offered,
there were not subscribers enough to insure a sufficient sale; so the
work never appeared, and probably, never was executed.
[Page 91: First letter to Edward Cave. Ætat 25.]
We find him again this year at Birmingham, and there is preserved the
following letter from him to Mr. Edward Cave[278], the original compiler
and editor of the _Gentleman's Magazine_:
TO MR. CAVE.
_Nov_. 25, 1734.
'Sir,
'As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the defects of your
poetical article, you will not be displeased, if, in order to the
improvement of it, I communicate to you the sentiments of a person, who
will undertake, on reasonable terms, sometimes to fill a column.
'His opinion is, that the publick would not give you a bad reception,
if, beside the current wit of the month, which a critical examination
would generally reduce to a narrow compass, you admitted not only poems,
inscriptions, &c. never printed before, which he will sometimes supply
you with; but likewise short literary dissertations in Latin or English,
critical remarks on authours ancient or modern, forgotten poems that
deserve revival, or loose pieces, like Floyer's[279], worth preserving. By
this method, your literary article, for so it might be called, will, he
thinks, be better recommended to the publick than by low jests, awkward
buffoonery, or the dull scurrilities of either party.
'If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased to inform
me in two posts, what the conditions are on which you shall expect it.
Your late offer[280] gives me no reason to distrust your generosity. If
you engage in any literary projects besides this paper, I have other
designs to impart, if I could be secure from having others reap the
advantage of what I should hint.
[Page 92: Verses on a sprig of myrtle. A.D. 1734.]
'Your letter by being directed to _S. Smith_, to be left at the Castle
in[281] Birmingham, Warwickshire, will reach
'Your humble servant.'
Mr. Cave has put a note on this letter, 'Answered Dec. 2.' But whether
any thing was done in consequence of it we are not informed.
Johnson had, from his early youth, been sensible to the influence of
female charms. When at Stourbridge school, he was much enamoured of
Olivia Lloyd, a young quaker, to whom he wrote a copy of verses, which I
have not been able to recover; but with what facility and elegance he
could warble the amorous lay, will appear from the following lines which
he wrote for his friend Mr. Edmund Hector.
[Page 93: Boswell's controversy with Miss Seward. Ætat 25.]
VERSES _to a_ LADY, _on receiving from her a_ SPRIG of MYRTLE.
'What hopes, what terrours does thy gift create,
Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate:
The myrtle, ensign of supreme command,
Consign'd by Venus to Melissa's hand;
Not less capricious than a reigning fair,
Now grants, and now rejects a lover's prayer.
In myrtle shades oft sings the happy swain,
In myrtle shades despairing ghosts complain;
The myrtle crowns the happy lovers' heads,
The unhappy lovers' grave the myrtle spreads:
O then the meaning of thy gift impart,
And ease the throbbings of an anxious heart!
Soon must this bough, as you shall fix his doom,
Adorn Philander's head, or grace his tomb[282].'
[Page 94: Johnson's personal appearance. A.D. 1734.]
His juvenile attachments to the fair sex were, however, very transient;
and it is certain that he formed no criminal connection whatsoever. Mr.
Hector, who lived with him in his younger days in the utmost intimacy
and social freedom, has assured me, that even at that ardent season his
conduct was strictly virtuous in that respect[283]; and that though he
loved to exhilarate himself with wine, he never knew him intoxicated but
once[284].
[Page 95: Mrs. Porter. Ætat 25.]
In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious
indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is
exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally
concentrated in one object. This was experienced by Johnson, when he
became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband's
death[285]. Miss Porter told me, that when he was first introduced to her
mother, his appearance was very forbidding: he was then lean and lank,
so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the
eye, and the scars of the scrophula were deeply visible[286]. He also wore
his hair[287], which was straight and stiff, and separated behind: and he
often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which
tended to excite at once surprize and ridicule[288]. Mrs. Porter was so
much engaged by his conversation that she overlooked all these external
disadvantages, and said to her daughter, 'this is the most sensible man
that I ever saw in my life.'
Though Mrs. Porter was double the age of Johnson[289], and her person and
manner, as described to me by the late Mr. Garrick, were by no means
pleasing to others, she must have had a superiority of understanding and
talents, as she certainly inspired him with a more than ordinary
passion; and she having signified her willingness to accept of his hand,
he went to Lichfield to ask his mother's consent to the marriage, which
he could not but be conscious was a very imprudent scheme, both on
account of their disparity of years, and her want of fortune[290]. But
Mrs. Johnson knew too well the ardour of her son's temper, and was too
tender a parent to oppose his inclinations.
[Page 96: Johnson's marriage. A.D. 1736.]
I know not for what reason the marriage ceremony was not performed at
Birmingham; but a resolution was taken that it should be at Derby, for
which place the bride and bridegroom set out on horseback, I suppose in
very good humour. But though Mr. Topham Beauclerk used archly to mention
Johnson's having told him, with much gravity, 'Sir, it was a love
marriage on both sides,' I have had from my illustrious friend the
following curious account of their journey to church upon the nuptial
morn:
9th July:--'Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her
head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover
like a dog. So, Sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she
could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed
me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave
of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore
pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The road lay
between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived
that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be
in tears.'
This, it must be allowed, was a singular beginning of connubial
felicity; but there is no doubt that Johnson, though he thus shewed a
manly firmness, proved a most affectionate and indulgent husband to the
last moment of Mrs. Johnson's life: and in his _Prayers and
Meditations_, we find very remarkable evidence that his regard and
fondness for her never ceased, even after her death.
[Page 97: His School at Edial. Ætat 27.]
He now set up a private academy[291], for which purpose he hired a large
house, well situated near his native city. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_
for 1736, there is the following advertisement:
'At Edial, near Lichfield[292], in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are
boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by SAMUEL JOHNSON.'
But the only pupils that were put under his care were the celebrated
David Garrick and his brother George, and a Mr. Offely, a young
gentleman of good fortune who died early. As yet, his name had nothing
of that celebrity which afterwards commanded the highest attention and
respect of mankind. Had such an advertisement appeared after the
publication of his _London_, or his _Rambler_, or his _Dictionary_, how
would it have burst upon the world! with what eagerness would the great
and the wealthy have embraced an opportunity of putting their sons under
the learned tuition of SAMUEL JOHNSON. The truth, however, is, that he
was not so well qualified for being a teacher of elements, and a
conductor in learning by regular gradations, as men of inferiour powers
of mind. His own acquisitions had been made by fits and starts, by
violent irruptions into the regions of knowledge; and it could not be
expected that his impatience would be subdued, and his impetuosity
restrained, so as to fit him for a quiet guide to novices. The art of
communicating instruction, of whatever kind, is much to be valued; and I
have ever thought that those who devote themselves to this employment,
and do their duty with diligence and success, are entitled to very high
respect from the community, as Johnson himself often maintained[293]. Yet
I am of opinion that the greatest abilities are not only not required
for this office, but render a man less fit for it.
[Page 98: Garrick Johnson's pupil. A.D. 1736.]
While we acknowledge the justness of Thomson's beautiful remark,
'Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
And teach[294] the young idea how to shoot!'
we must consider that this delight is perceptible only by 'a mind at
ease,' a mind at once calm and clear; but that a mind gloomy and
impetuous like that of Johnson, cannot be fixed for any length of time
in minute attention, and must be so frequently irritated by unavoidable
slowness and errour in the advances of scholars, as to perform the duty,
with little pleasure to the teacher, and no great advantage to the
pupils[295]. Good temper is a most essential requisite in a Preceptor.
Horace paints the character as _bland_:
'... _Ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi
Doctores, elementa velint ut discere_[296].'
[Page 99: Mrs. Johnson. Ætat 27.]
Johnson was not more satisfied with his situation as the master of an
academy, than with that of the usher of a school; we need not wonder,
therefore, that he did not keep his academy above a year and a half.
From Mr. Garrick's account he did not appear to have been profoundly
reverenced by his pupils. His oddities of manner, and uncouth
gesticulations, could not but be the subject of merriment to them; and,
in particular, the young rogues used to listen at the door of his
bed-chamber, and peep through the key-hole, that they might turn into
ridicule his tumultuous and awkward fondness for Mrs. Johnson, whom he
used to name by the familiar appellation of _Tetty_ or _Tetsey_, which,
like _Betty_ or _Betsey_, is provincially used as a contraction for
_Elisabeth_, her Christian name, but which to us seems ludicrous, when
applied to a woman of her age and appearance. Mr. Garrick described her
to me as very fat, with a bosom of more than ordinary protuberance, with
swelled cheeks of a florid red, produced by thick painting, and
increased by the liberal use of cordials; flaring and fantastick in her
dress, and affected both in her speech and her general behaviour. I have
seen Garrick exhibit her, by his exquisite talent of mimickry, so as to
excite the heartiest bursts of laughter; but he, probably, as is the
case in all such representations, considerably aggravated the
picture[297].
That Johnson well knew the most proper course to be pursued in the
instruction of youth, is authentically ascertained by the following
paper[298] in his own hand-writing, given about this period to a relation,
and now in the possession of Mr. John Nichols:
'SCHEME _for the_ CLASSES _of a_ GRAMMAR SCHOOL.
'When the introduction, or formation of nouns and verbs, is perfectly
mastered, let them learn:
'Corderius by Mr. Clarke, beginning at the same time to translate out of
the introduction, that by this means they may learn the syntax. Then let
them proceed to:
'Erasmus, with an English translation, by the same authour.
'Class II. Learns Eutropius and Cornelius Nepos, or Justin, with the
translation.
'N.B. The first class gets for their part every morning the rules which
they have learned before, and in the afternoon learns the Latin rules of
the nouns and verbs.
[Page 100: A scheme of study. A.D. 1736.]
'They are examined in the rules which they have learned every Thursday
and Saturday.
'The second class does the same whilst they are in Eutropius; afterwards
their part is in the irregular nouns and verbs, and in the rules for
making and scanning verses. They are examined as the first.
'Class III. Ovid's Metamorphoses in the morning, and Caesar's
Commentaries in the afternoon.
'Practise in the Latin rules till they are perfect in them; afterwards
in Mr. Leeds's Greek Grammar. Examined as before.
'Afterwards they proceed to Virgil, beginning at the same time to write
themes and verses, and to learn Greek; from thence passing on to Horace,
&c. as shall seem most proper.
'I know not well what books to direct you to, because you have not
informed me what study you will apply yourself to. I believe it will be
most for your advantage to apply yourself wholly to the languages, till
you go to the University. The Greek authours I think it best for you to
read are these:
'Cebes.
'Ælian. }
'Lucian by Leeds. } Attick.
'Xenophon. }
'Homer. Ionick.
'Theocritus. Dorick.
'Euripides. Attick and Dorick.
'Thus you will be tolerably skilled in all the dialects, beginning with
the Attick, to which the rest must be referred.
'In the study of Latin, it is proper not to read the latter authours,
till you are well versed in those of the purest ages; as Terence, Tully,
Cæsar, Sallust, Nepos, Velleius Paterculus, Virgil, Horace, Phædrus.
'The greatest and most necessary task still remains, to attain a habit
of expression, without which knowledge is of little use. This is
necessary in Latin, and more necessary in English; and can only be
acquired by a daily imitation of the best and correctest authours.
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
While Johnson kept his academy, there can be no doubt that he was
insensibly furnishing his mind with various knowledge; but I have not
discovered that he wrote any thing except a great part of his tragedy of
_Irene_. Mr. Peter Garrick, the elder brother of David, told me that he
remembered Johnson's borrowing the _Turkish History_[299] of him, in order
to form his play from it. When he had finished some part of it, he read
what he had done to Mr. Walmsley, who objected to his having already
brought his heroine into great distress, and asked him, 'how can you
possibly contrive to plunge her into deeper calamity?' Johnson, in sly
allusion to the supposed oppressive proceedings of the court of which
Mr. Walmsley was register, replied, 'Sir, I can put her into the
Spiritual Court!'
[Page 101: Johnson tries his fortune in London. Ætat 27.]
Mr. Walmsley, however, was well pleased with this proof of Johnson's
abilities as a dramatick writer, and advised him to finish the tragedy,
and produce it on the stage.
Johnson now thought of trying his fortune in London, the great field of
genius and exertion, where talents of every kind have the fullest scope,
and the highest encouragement. It is a memorable circumstance that his
pupil David Garrick went thither at the same time[300], with intention to
complete his education, and follow the profession of the law, from which
he was soon diverted by his decided preference for the stage.
This joint expedition of those two eminent men to the metropolis, was
many years afterwards noticed in an allegorical poem on Shakspeare's
Mulberry Tree, by Mr. Lovibond, the ingenious authour of _The Tears of
Old-May-day_[301].
They were recommended to Mr. Colson[302], an eminent mathematician and
master of an academy, by the following letter from Mr. Walmsley:
[Page 102: Mr. Walmsley's Letter. A.D. 1737.]
'To THE REVEREND MR. COLSON.
'Lichfield, March 2, 1737.
'DEAR SIR,
'I had the favour of yours, and am extremely obliged to you; but I
cannot say I had a greater affection for you upon it than I had before,
being long since so much endeared to you, as well by an early
friendship, as by your many excellent and valuable qualifications; and,
had I a son of my own, it would be my ambition, instead of sending him
to the University, to dispose of him as this young gentleman is.
'He, and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. Samuel Johnson, set out this
morning for London together. Davy Garrick is to be with you early the
next week, and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to
get himself employed in some translation, either from the Latin or the
French. Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes
will turn out a fine tragedy-writer. If it should any way lie in your
way, doubt[303] not but you would be ready to recommend and assist your
countryman.
'G. WALMSLEY.'
[Page 103: Like in London. Ætat 28.]
How he employed himself upon his first coming to London is not
particularly known[304]. I never heard that he found any protection or
encouragement by the means of Mr. Colson, to whose academy David Garrick
went. Mrs. Lucy Porter told me, that Mr. Walmsley gave him a letter of
introduction to Lintot[305] his bookseller, and that Johnson wrote some
things for him; but I imagine this to be a mistake, for I have
discovered no trace of it, and I am pretty sure he told me that Mr. Cave
was the first publisher by whom his pen was engaged in London.
He had a little money when he came to town, and he knew how he could
live in the cheapest manner. His first lodgings were at the house of Mr.
Norris, a staymaker, in Exeter-street, adjoining Catharine-street, in
the Strand. 'I dined (said he) very well for eight-pence, with very good
company, at the Pine Apple in New-street, just by. Several of them had
travelled. They expected to meet every day; but did not know one
another's names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank
wine; but I had a cut of meat for six-pence, and bread for a penny, and
gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better
than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing[306].'
[Page 104: Abstinence from wine. A.D. 1737.]
He at this time, I believe, abstained entirely from fermented liquors: a
practice to which he rigidly conformed for many years together, at
different periods of his life[307].
[Page 105: An Irish Ofellus. Ætat 28.]
His Ofellus in the _Art of Living in London_, I have heard him relate,
was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practised
his own precepts of oeconomy for several years in the British
capital[308]. He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was then meditating to
try his fortune in London, but was apprehensive of the expence, 'that
thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live there without
being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said
a man might live in a garret at eighteen-pence a week; few people would
inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, 'Sir, I am
to be found at such a place.' By spending three-pence in a coffee-house,
he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine
for six-pence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without
supper. On _clean-shirt-day_ he went abroad, and paid visits.' I have
heard him more than once talk of this frugal friend, whom he recollected
with esteem and kindness, and did not like to have one smile at the
recital. 'This man (said he, gravely) was a very sensible man, who
perfectly understood common affairs: a man of a great deal of knowledge
of the world, fresh from life, not strained through books[309]. He
borrowed a horse and ten pounds at Birmingham. Finding himself master of
so much money, he set off for West Chester[310], in order to get to
Ireland. He returned the horse, and probably the ten pounds too, after
he got home.'
[Page 106: Mr. Henry Hervey. A.D. 1737.]
Considering Johnson's narrow circumstances in the early part of his
life, and particularly at the interesting aera of his launching into the
ocean of London, it is not to be wondered at, that an actual instance,
proved by experience of the possibility of enjoying the intellectual
luxury of social life, upon a very small income, should deeply engage
his attention, and be ever recollected by him as a circumstance of much
importance. He amused himself, I remember, by computing how much more
expence was absolutely necessary to live upon the same scale with that
which his friend described, when the value of money was diminished by
the progress of commerce. It maybe estimated that double the money might
now with difficulty be sufficient.
Amidst this cold obscurity, there was one brilliant circumstance to
cheer him; he was well acquainted with Mr. Henry Hervey[311], one of the
branches of the noble family of that name, who had been quartered at
Lichfield as an officer of the army, and had at this time a house in
London, where Johnson was frequently entertained, and had an opportunity
of meeting genteel company. Not very long before his death, he mentioned
this, among other particulars of his life, which he was kindly
communicating to me; and he described this early friend, 'Harry Hervey,'
thus: 'He was a vicious man, but very kind to me. If you call a dog
HERVEY, I shall love him.'
He told me he had now written only three acts of his _Irene_, and that
he retired for some time to lodgings at Greenwich, where he proceeded in
it somewhat further, and used to compose, walking in the Park[312]; but
did not stay long enough at that place to finish it.
At this period we find the following letter from him to Mr. Edward Cave,
which, as a link in the chain of his literary history, it is proper to
insert:
[Page 107: Johnson returns to Lichfield. Ætat 28.]
'To MR. CAVE.
'Greenwich, next door to the Golden Heart,
'Church-street, July 12, 1737.
'SIR,
'Having observed in your papers very uncommon offers of encouragement to
men of letters, I have chosen, being a stranger in London, to
communicate to you the following design, which, I hope, if you join in
it, will be of advantage to both of us.
'The History of the Council of Trent having been lately translated into
French, and published with large Notes by Dr. Le Courayer[313], the
reputation of that book is so much revived in England, that, it is
presumed, a new translation of it from the Italian, together with Le
Courayer's Notes from the French, could not fail of a favourable
reception.
'If it be answered, that the History is already in English, it must be
remembered, that there was the same objection against Le Courayer's
undertaking, with this disadvantage, that the French had a version by
one of their best translators, whereas you cannot read three pages of
the English History without discovering that the style is capable of
great improvements; but whether those improvements are to be expected
from the attempt, you must judge from the specimen, which, if you
approve the proposal, I shall submit to your examination.
'Suppose the merit of the versions equal, we may hope that the addition
of the Notes will turn the balance in our favour, considering the
reputation of the Annotator.
'Be pleased to favour me with a speedy answer, if you are not willing to
engage in this scheme; and appoint me a day to wait upon you, if you
are.
'I am, Sir,
'Your humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
It should seem from this letter, though subscribed with his own name,
that he had not yet been introduced to Mr. Cave. We shall presently see
what was done in consequence of the proposal which it contains.
[Page 108: Irene. A.D. 1737.]
In the course of the summer he returned to Lichfield, where he had left
Mrs. Johnson, and there he at last finished his tragedy, which was not
executed with his rapidity of composition upon other occasions, but was
slowly and painfully elaborated. A few days before his death, while
burning a great mass of papers, he picked out from among them the
original unformed sketch of this tragedy, in his own hand-writing, and
gave it to Mr. Langton, by whose favour a copy of it is now in my
possession. It contains fragments of the intended plot, and speeches for
the different persons of the drama, partly in the raw materials of
prose, partly worked up into verse; as also a variety of hints for
illustration, borrowed from the Greek, Roman, and modern writers. The
hand-writing is very difficult to be read, even by those who were best
acquainted with Johnson's mode of penmanship, which at all times was
very particular. The King having graciously accepted of this manuscript
as a literary curiosity, Mr. Langton made a fair and distinct copy of
it, which he ordered to be bound up with the original and the printed
tragedy; and the volume is deposited in the King's library[314]. His
Majesty was pleased to permit Mr. Langton to take a copy of it for
himself.
The whole of it is rich in thought and imagery, and happy expressions;
and of the _disjecta membra_[315] scattered throughout, and as yet
unarranged, a good dramatick poet might avail himself with considerable
advantage. I shall give my readers some specimens of different kinds,
distinguishing them by the Italick character.
'Nor think to say, here will I stop,
Here will I fix the limits of transgression,
Nor farther tempt the avenging rage of heaven.
When guilt like this once harbours in the breast,
Those holy beings, whose unseen direction
Guides through the maze of life the steps of man,
Fly the detested mansions of impiety,
And quit their charge to horrour and to ruin.'
A small part only of this interesting admonition is preserved in the
play, and is varied, I think, not to advantage:
'The soul once tainted with so foul a crime,
No more shall glow with friendship's hallow'd ardour,
Those holy beings whose superior care
Guides erring mortals to the paths of virtue,
Affrighted at impiety like thine,
Resign their charge to baseness and to ruin[316].'
'_I feel the soft infection
Flush in my cheek, and wander in my veins.
Teach me the Grecian arts of soft persuasion.'
'Sure this is love, which heretofore I conceived the dream of idle
maids, and wanton poets.'
'Though no comets or prodigies foretold the ruin of Greece, signs which
heaven must by another miracle enable us to understand, yet might it be
foreshewn, by tokens no less certain, by the vices which always bring it
on_.'
This last passage is worked up in the tragedy itself, as follows:
LEONTIUS.
'----That power that kindly spreads
The clouds, a signal of impending showers,
To warn the wand'ring linnet to the shade,
Beheld, without concern, expiring Greece,
And not one prodigy foretold our fate.
DEMETRIUS.
'A thousand horrid prodigies foretold it;
A feeble government, eluded laws,
A factious populace, luxurious nobles,
And all the maladies of sinking States.
When publick villainy, too strong for justice,
Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin,
Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders,
Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard?
When some neglected fabrick nods beneath
The weight of years, and totters to the tempest,
Must heaven despatch the messengers of light,
Or wake the dead, to warn us of its fall[317]?'
MAHOMET (to IRENE). 'I have tried thee, and joy to find that thou
deservest to be loved by Mahomet,--with a mind great as his own. Sure,
thou art an errour of nature, and an exception to the rest of thy sex,
and art immortal; for sentiments like thine were never to sink into
nothing. I thought all the thoughts of the fair had been to select the
graces of the day, dispose the colours of the flaunting (flowing) robe,
tune the voice and roll the eye, place the gem, choose the dress, and
add new roses to the fading cheek, but--sparkling.'
[Page 110: Johnson settles in London. A.D. 1737.]
Thus in the tragedy:
'Illustrious maid, new wonders fix me thine;
Thy soul completes the triumphs of thy face:
I thought, forgive my fair, the noblest aim,
The strongest effort of a female soul
Was but to choose the graces of the day,
To tune the tongue, to teach the eyes to roll,
Dispose the colours of the flowing robe,
And add new roses to the faded cheek[318].'
I shall select one other passage, on account of the doctrine which it
illustrates. IRENE observes,
'That the Supreme Being will accept of virtue, whatever outward
circumstances it may be accompanied with, and may be delighted with
varieties of worship: _but is answered_, that variety cannot affect that
Being, who, infinitely happy in his own perfections, wants no external
gratifications; nor can infinite truth be delighted with falsehood; that
though he may guide or pity those he leaves in darkness, he abandons
those who shut their eyes against the beams of day.'
Johnson's residence at Lichfield, on his return to
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