The Life of Samuel Johnson

^a See Mr. Malone’s Preface to his edition of Shakspeare.

^a I do not here include his Poetical Works; for, excepting his Latin Translation of Pope’s Messiah, his London, and his Vanity of Human Wishes imitated from Juvenal; his Prologue on the opening of Drury-Lane Theatre by Mr. Garrick, and his Irene, a Tragedy, they are very numerous, and in general short; and I have promised a complete edition of them, in which I shall with the utmost care ascertain their authenticity, and illustrate them with notes and various readings.

^a See Dr. Johnson’s letter to Mrs. Thrale, dated Ostick in Skie, September 30, 1773: – ‘Boswell writes a regular Journal of our travels, which I think contains as much of what I say and do, as of all other occurrences together; “for such a faithful chronicler is Griffith.””’

^a Idler, No. 84.

^b The greatest partofthis book was written while Sir John Hawkins was alive; andIavow, that one object of my strictures was to make him feel some compunction for his illiberal treatment of Dr. Johnson. Since his decease, I have suppressed several of my remarks upon his work. But though I would not ‘war with the dead’ offensively, I think it neces-sarytobe strenuous in defence of myillustrious friend, which I cannot bewithout strong animadversions upon a writer who has greatly injured him. Let me add, that though I doubt I should not have been very prompt to gratify Sir John Hawkins with any compliment in his life-time, I do now frankly acknowledge, that, in my opinion, his volume, however inadequate and improper as a life of Dr. Johnson, and however discredited by unpardonable inaccuracies in other respects, contains a collection of curious anecdotes and observations, which few men but its author could have brought together.

^a Brit. Mus. 4320, Ayscough’s Catal., Sloane MSS.

^a Rambler, No. 60.

^a Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, Langhorne’s Translation.

^a Rambler, No. 60.

^a Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, Book 1.

^a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 213 {16 Sept.}.

^b Extract of a letter, dated ‘Trentham, St. Peter’s day, 1716,’ written by the Rev. George Plaxton, Chaplain at that time to Lord Gower, which may serve to show the high estimation in which the Father of our great Moralist was held: ‘Johnson, the Litchfield Librarian, is now here; he propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth knowledge to its just height; all the Clergy here are his Pupils, and suck all they have from him; Allen cannot make a warrant without his precedent, nor our quondam John Evans draw a recognizance sine directione Michaelis.’ Gentleman’s Magazine, October, 1791.

^a Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, by Hester Lynch Piozzi, p. 11. Life of Dr. Johnson, by Sir John Hawkins, p. 6.

^b This anecdote of the duck, though disproved by internal and external evidence, has nevertheless, upon supposition of its truth, been made the foundation of the following ingenious and fanciful reflections of Miss Seward, amongst the communications concerning Dr. Johnson with which she has been pleased to favour me: ‘These infant numbers contain the seeds of those propensities which through his life so strongly marked his character, of that poetick talent which afterwards bore such rich and plentiful fruits; for, excepting his orthographick works, every thing which Dr. Johnson wrote was Poetry, whose essence consists not in numbers, or in jingle, but in the strength and glow of a fancy, to which all the stores of nature and of art stand in prompt administration; and in an eloquence which conveys their blended illustrations in a language “more tuneable than needs or rhyme or verse to add more harmony.” ‘The above little verses also shew that superstitious bias which “grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength,” and, of late years particularly, injured his happiness, by presenting to him the gloomy side of religion, rather than that bright and cheering one which gilds the period of closing life with the light of pious hope.’

This is so beautifully imagined, that I would not suppress it. But like many other theories, it is deduced from a supposed fact, which is, indeed, a fiction.

^a Prayers and Meditations, p. 27.

^b [Speaking himself of the imperfection of one of his eyes, he said to Dr. Burney, ‘the dog was never good for much.’]

^c Anecdotes, p. 10.

^a [Johnson’s observation to Dr. Rose, on this subject, deserves to be recorded. Rose was praising the mild treatment of children at school, at a time when flogging began to be less practised than formerly: ‘But then, (said Johnson,) they get nothing else: and what they gain at one end, they lose at the other.’ B.]

^a He is said to be original of the parson in Hogarth’s Modern Midnight Conversation.

^a As was likewise the Bishop of Dromore many years afterwards.

^a Mr. Hector informs me, that this was made almost impromptu, in his presence.

^a This he inserted, with many alterations, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1743 {p. 378}.

^b Some young ladies at Lichfield having proposed to act The Distressed Mother,²⁵ Johnson wrote this, and gave it to Mr. Hector to convey it privately to them.

^a Athen. Oxon. edit. 1721, i. 627.

^b Oxford, 20th March, 1776.

^c It ought to be remembered that Dr. Johnson was apt, in his literary as well as moral exercises, to overcharge his defects. Dr. Adams informed me, that he attended his tutor’s lectures, and also the lectures in the College Hall, very regularly.

^a Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson, by John Courtenay, Esq., M.P.

^a Mrs. Piozzi has given a strange fantastical account of the original of Dr. Johnson’s belief in our most holy religion. ‘At the age of ten years his mind was disturbed by scruples of infidelity, which preyed upon his spirits, and made him very uneasy, the more so, as he revealed his uneasiness to none, being naturally (as he said) of a sullen temper, and reserved disposition. He searched, however, diligently, but fruitlessly, for evidences of the truth of revelation; and, at length, recollecting a book he had once seen [I suppose at five years old] in his father’s shop, intitled De veritate Religionis,³² etc., he began to think himself highly culpable for neglecting such a means of information, and took himself severely to task for this sin, adding many acts of voluntary, and, to others, unknown penance. The first opportunity which offered, of course, he seized the book with avidity; but, on examination, not finding himself scholar enough to peruse its contents, set his heart at rest; and not thinking to enquire whether there were any English books written on the subject, followed his usual amusements and considered his conscience as lightened of a crime. He redoubled his diligence to learn the language that contained the information he most wished for; but from the pain which guilt [namely having omitted to read what he did not understand] had given him, he now began to deduce the soul’s immortality [a sensation of pain in this world being an unquestionable proof of existence in another], which was the point that belief first stopped at; and from that moment resolving to be a Christian, became one of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever produced.’ Anecdotes, p. 17.

^a [He told Dr. Burney that he never wrote any of his works that were printed, twice over. Dr. Burney’s wonder at seeing several pages of his Lives of the Poets, in Manuscript, with scarce a blot or erasure, drew this observation from him.]

^a I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnson confirmed it. Bramston, in his Man of Taste, has the same thought:

‘Sure, of all blockheads, scholars are the worst.’

^a See Nash’s History of Worcestershire, vol. i. p. 529.

^a Mr. Warton informs me, ‘that this early friend of Johnson was entered a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged seventeen, in 1698; and is the authour of many Latin verse translations in the Gent. Mag. (vol. xv. 102). One of them is a translation of

“My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent,” &c.’³⁸

He died Aug. 3, 1751, and a monument to his memory has been erected in the Cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward, one of the Prebendaries.

^a The words of Sir John Hawkins, p. 316.

^b Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in January, 1724–5, left one son, named Thomas also, and eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine married Johnson’s friend, the Hon. Henry Hervey; Margaret, Gilbert Walmsley. Another of these ladies married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell; Mary, or Molly Aston, as she was usually called, became the wife of Captain Brodie of the navy.

^a [Bishop Hurd does not praise Blackwall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth, headmaster of the grammar school at Brewood, who had himself been bred under Blackwall.]

^b See Gent. Mag. Dec. 1784, p. 957.

^c [It appears from a letter of Johnson’s to a friend, dated Lichfield, July 27, 1732, that he had left Sir Wolstan Dixie’s house recently, before that letter was written.]

^a See Rambler, No. 103.

^b May we not trace a fanciful similarity between Politian and Johnson? Huetius, speaking of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, says,’… in quo Natura, ut olim in Angelo Politiano, deformitatem oris excellentis ingenii praestantia compensavit.’⁴² Comment. de reb. ad eum pertin. Edit. Amstel. 1718, p. 200.

^c ‘The Latin Poems of Angelus Politianus, edited by Samuel Johnson with notes, a history of Latin poetry from Petrarch to Politian, and a fuller life of Politian than has hitherto been written.’ The book was to contain more than thirty sheets, the price to be two shillings and sixpence at the time of subscribing, and two shillings and sixpence at the delivery of a perfect book in quires.

^d Miss Cave, the grand-niece of Mr. Edward Cave, has obligingly shewn me the originals of this and the other letters of Dr. Johnson, to him, which were first published in the Gent. Mag.,⁴³ with notes by Mr. John Nichols, the worthy and indefatigable editor of that valuable miscellany, signed N.; some of which I shall occasionally transcribe in the course of this work.

^a Sir John Floyer’s Treatise on Cold Baths. Gent. Mag. 1734, p. 197.

^b A prize of fifty pounds for the best poem on ‘Life, Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell.’ See Gent. Mag. vol. iv. p. 560. N.

^a Mrs. Piozzi gives the following account of this little composition from Dr. Johnson’s own relation to her, on her inquiring whether it was rightly attributed to him: – ‘I think it is now just forty years ago, that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on – Sit still a moment, (says I) dear Mund, and I’ll fetch them thee – So stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir about.’ Anec. p. 34.

In my first edition I was induced to doubt the authenticity of this account, by the following circumstantial statement in a letter to me from Miss Seward, of Lichfield: – ‘ I know those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather’s, and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he showed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for the Verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a Sprig of Myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom. We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable of the mean vanity of applying to herself a compliment not intended for her.’ Such was this lady’s statement, which I make no doubt she supposed to be correct; but it shows how dangerous it is to trust too implicitly to traditional testimony and ingenious inference; for Mr. Hector has lately assured me that Mrs. Piozzi’s account is in this instance accurate, and that he was the person for whom Johnson wrote those verses, which have been erroneously ascribed to Mr. Hammond.

I am obliged in so many instances to notice Mrs. Piozzi’s incorrectness of relation, that I gladly seize this opportunity of acknowledging, that however often, she is not always inaccurate.

The author having been drawn into a controversy with Miss Anna Seward, in consequence of the preceding statement, (which may be found in the Gent. Mag. vol. liii. and liv.) received the following letter from Mr. Edmund Hector, on the subject: –

‘DEAR SIR, – I am sorry to see you are engaged in altercation with a Lady, who seems unwilling to be convinced of her errors. Surely it would be more ingenuous to acknowledge, than to persevere.

‘Lately, in looking over some papers I meant to burn, I found the original manuscript of the Myrtle, with the date on it, 1731, which I have inclosed.

‘The true history (which I could swear to) is as follows: Mr. Morgan Graves, the elder brother of a worthy Clergyman near Bath, with whom I was acquainted, waited upon a lady in this neighbourhood, who at parting presented him the branch. He shewed it me, and wished much to return the compliment in verse. I applied to Johnson, who was with me, and in about half an hour dictated the verses which I sent to my friend.

‘I most solemnly declare, at that time Johnson was an entire stranger to the Porter family; and it was almost two years after that I introduced him to the acquaintance of Porter, whom I bought my cloaths of.

‘If you intend to convince this obstinate woman, and to exhibit to the publick the truth of your narrative, you are at liberty to make what use you please of this statement.

‘I hope you will pardon me for taking up so much of your time. Wishing you multos et felices annos,⁴⁴I shall subscribe myself, ‘Your obliged humble servant,

‘E. Hector.’

‘Birmingham, Jan. 9th, 1794.’

^a [Mrs. Johnson was born on Feb. 4, 1688–9.]

^a Both of them used to talk pleasantly of this their first journey to London. Garrick, evidently meaning to embellish a little, said one day in my hearing, ‘we rode and tied.’ And the Bishop of Killaloe informed me, that at another time, when Johnson and Garrick were dining together in a pretty large company, Johnson humorously ascertaining the chronology of something, expressed himself thus: ‘that was the year when I came to London with two-pence half-penny in my pocket.’ Garrick over-hearing him, exclaimed, ‘Eh? what do you say? with two-pence half-penny in your pocket?’ – Johnson, ‘Why yes; when I came with two-pence half-penny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three half-pence in thine.’

^a [Mr. Colson was First Master of the Free School at Rochester. In 1739 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge.]

^b One curious anecdote was communicated by himself to Mr. John Nichols. Mr. Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an authour, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a significant look, said, ‘You had better buy a porter’s knot.’⁴⁹ He however added, ‘Wilcox was one of my best friends.’

^a The honourable Henry Hervey, third son of the first Earl of Bristol, quitted the army and took orders. He married a sister of Sir Thomas Aston, by whom he got the Aston Estate, and assumed the name and arms of that family. Vide Collins’s Peerage.

^a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 232 {20 Sept.}.

^a While in the course of my narrative I enumerate his writings, I shall take care that my readers shall not be left to waver in doubt, between certainty and conjecture, with regard to their authenticity; and, for that purpose, shall mark with an asterisk (∗) those which he acknowledged to his friends, and with a dagger (†) those which are ascertained to be his by internal evidence. When any other pieces are ascribed to him, I shall give my reasons.

^a A translation of this Ode, by an unknown correspondent, appeared in the Magazine for the month of May following:

‘Hail, Urban! indefatigable man,

Unwearied yet by all thy useful toil!

Whom num’rous slanderers assault in vain;

Whom no base calumny can put to foil.

But still the laurel on thy learned brow

Flourishes fair, and shall for ever grow.

What mean the servile imitating crew,

What their vain blust’ring, and their empty noise,

Ne’er seek; but still thy noble ends pursue,

Unconquer’d by the rabble’s venal voice.

Still to the Muse thy studious mind apply,

Happy in temper as in industry.

The senseless sneerings of an haughty tongue,

Unworthy thy attention to engage,

Unheeded pass: and tho’ they mean thee wrong,

By manly silence disappoint their rage.

Assiduous diligence confounds its foes,

Resistless, tho’ malicious crouds oppose.

Exert thy powers, nor slacken in the course,

Thy spotless fame shall quash all false reports:

Exert thy powers, nor fear a rival’s force,

But thou shalt smile at all his vain efforts:

Thy labours shall be crown’d with large success;

The Muse’s aid thy Magazine shall bless.

No page more grateful to th’ harmonious nine

Than that wherein thy labours we survey;

Where solemn themes in fuller splendour shine,

(Delightful mixture,) blended with the gay,

Where in improving, various joys we find,

A welcome respite to the wearied mind.

Thus when the nymphs in some fair verdant mead,

Of various flow’rs a beauteous wreath compose,

The lovely violet’s azure-painted head

Adds lustre to the crimson-blushing rose.

Thus splendid Iris,⁵³ with her varied dye,

Shines in the æther, and adorns the sky. BRITON.’

^a How much poetry he wrote, I know not: but he informed me, that he was the authour of the beautiful little piece, The Eagle and Robin Redbreast, in the collection of poems entitled The Union, though it is there said to be written by Archibald Scott, before the year 1600.

^a I own it pleased me to find amongst them one trait of the manners of the age in London, in the last century, to shield from the sneer of English ridicule, which was some time ago too common a practice in my native city of Edinburgh: –

‘If what I’ve said can’t from the town affright,

Consider other dangers of the night;

When brickbats are from upper stories thrown,

And emptied chamberpots come pouring down

From garret windows.”

^a His Ode Ad Urbanum probably. Nichols.

^a A poem, published in 1737, of which see an account under April 30, 1773.

^b The learned Mrs. Elizabeth Carter.

^a Sir John Hawkins, p. 86, tells us ‘The event is antedated, in the poem of London; but in every particular, except the difference of a year, what is there said of the departure of Thales, must be understood of Savage, and looked upon as true history.’ This conjecture is, I believe, entirely groundless. I have been assured, that Johnson said he was not so much as acquainted with Savage when he wrote his London. If the departure mentioned in it was the departure of Savage, the event was not antedated but foreseen; for London was published in May, 1738, and Savage did not set out for Wales till July, 1739. However well Johnson could defend the credibility of second sight, he did not pretend that he himself was possessed of that faculty.

^b P. 269.

^a Sir Joshua Reynolds, from the information of the younger Richardson.

^b It is, however, remarkable, that he uses the epithet, which undoubtedly, since the union between England and Scotland, ought to denominate the natives of both parts of our island: –

^a In a billet written by Mr. Pope in the following year, this school is said to have been in Shropshire; but as it appears from a letter from Earl Gower, that the trustees of it were ‘some worthy gentlemen in Johnson’s neighbourhood,’ I in my first edition suggested that Pope must have, by mistake, written Shropshire, instead of Staffordshire. But I have since been obliged to Mr. Spearing, attorney-at-law, for the following information: – ‘William Adams, formerly citizen and haberdasher of London, founded a school at Newport, in the county of Salop, by deed dated 27th November, 1656, by which he granted “the yearly sum of sixty pounds to such able and learned schoolmaster, from time to time, being of godly life and conversation, who should have been educated at one of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, and had taken the degree of Master of Arts, and was well read in the Greek and Latin tongues, as should be nominated from time to time by the said William Adams, during his life, and after the decease of the said William Adams, by the Governours (namely, the Master and Wardens of the Haberdashers’ Company of the City of London) and their successors.” The manour and lands out of which the revenues for the maintenance of the school were to issue are situate at Knighton and Adbaston in the county of Stafford.’ From the foregoing account of this foundation, particularly the circumstances of the salary being sixty pounds, and the degree of Master of Arts being a requisite qualification in the teacher, it seemed probable that this was the school in contemplation; and that Lord Gower erroneously supposed that the gentlemen who possessed the lands, out of which the revenues issued, were trustees of the charity.

^a In the Weekly Miscellany, October 21, 1738, there appeared the following advertisement: – ‘Just published, Proposals for printing the History of the Council of Trent, translated from the Italian of Father Paul Sarpi; with the Authour’s Life, and Notes theological, historical, and critical, from the French edition of Dr. Le Courayer. To which are added, Observations on the History, and Notes and Illustrations from various Authours, both printed and manuscript. By S. Johnson. 1. The work will consist of two hundred sheets, and be two volumes in quarto, printed on good paper and letter. 2. The price will be 18s. each volume, to be paid, half-a-guinea at the time of subscribing, half-a-guinea at the delivery of the first volume, and the rest at the delivery of the second volume in sheets. 3. Two-pence to be abated for every sheet less than two hundred. It may be had on a large paper, in three volumes, at the price of three guineas; one to be paid at the time of subscribing, another at the delivery of the first, and the rest at the delivery of the other volumes. The work is now in the press, and will be diligently prosecuted. Subscriptions are taken in by Mr. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, Mr. Rivington in St. Paul’s Church-yard, by E. Cave at St. John’s Gate, and the Translator, at No. 6, in Castle-street, by Cavendish-square.’

^a They afterwards appeared in the Gent. Mag. 1738 {viii. 486} with this title –Verses to Lady Firebrace, at Bury Assizes.

^b Du Halde’s Description of China was then publishing by Mr. Cave in weekly numbers, whence Johnson was to select pieces for the embellishment of the Magazine. NICHOLS.

^a The premium of forty pounds proposed for the best poem on the Divine Attributes is here alluded to. NICHOLS.

^b The Compositors in Mr. Cave’s printing-office, who appear by this letter to have then waited for copy. NICHOLS.

^a Birch MSS. Brit. Mus. 4323.

^b This book was published.

^a The Inscription and the Translation of it are preserved in the London Magazine for the year 1739, p. 244.

^a See note, p. 76.

^a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 8 {introduction}.

^a Impartial posterity may, perhaps, be as little inclined as Dr. Johnson was to justify the uncommon rigour exercised in the case of Dr. Archibald Cameron. He was an amiable and truly honest man; and his offence was owing to a generous, though mistaken principle of duty. Being obliged, after 1746, to give up his profession as a physician, and to go into foreign parts, he was honoured with the rank of Colonel, both in the French and Spanish service. He was a son of the ancient and respectable family of Cameron, of Lochiel; and his brother, who was the Chief of that brave clan, distinguished himself by moderation and humanity, while the Highland army marched victorious through Scotland. It is remarkable of this Chief, that though he had earnestly remonstrated against the attempt as hopeless, he was of too heroick a spirit not to venture his life and fortune in the cause, when personally asked by him whom he thought his Prince.

^a I suppose in another compilation of the same kind.

^b Doubtless, Lord Hardwick.

^c Birch’s MSS. in the British Museum, 4302.

^d I am assured that the editor is Mr. George Chalmers, whose commercial works are well known and esteemed.

^a Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 100.

^b A bookseller of London.

^c Not the Royal Society; but the Society for the encouragement of learning, of which Dr. Birch was a leading member. Their object was to assist authors in printing expensive works. It existed from about 1735 to 1746, when having incurred a considerable debt, it was dissolved.

^d There is no erasure here, but a mere blank; to fill up which may be an exercise for ingenious conjecture.

^e Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 167 {10 Sept.}.

^a The Plain Dealer was published in 1724, and contained some account of Savage.

^b I have not discovered what this was.

^a Angliacas inter pulcherrima Laura puellas, / Mox uteri pondus depositura grave, / Adsit, Laura, tibi facilis Lucina dolenti, / Neve tibi noceat praznituisse De&.⁶⁶

Mr. Hector was present when this Epigram was made impromptu. The first line was proposed by Dr. James, and Johnson was called upon by the company to finish it, which he instantly did.

^a

To DR. MEAD.

‘SIR, – That the Medicinal Dictionary is dedicated to you, is to be imputed only to your reputation for superior skill in those sciences which I have endeavoured to explain and facilitate: and you are, therefore, to consider this address, if it be agreeable to you, as one of the rewards of merit; and if otherwise, as one of the inconveniences of eminence.

‘However you shall receive it, my design cannot be disappointed; because this publick appeal to your judgement will shew that I do not found my hopes of approbation upon the ignorance of my readers, and that I fear his censure least, whose knowledge is most extensive. I am, Sir, your most obedient humble servant,

‘R. JAMES.’

^a As a specimen of his temper, I insert the following letter from him to a noble Lord⁶⁷ to whom he was under great obligations, but who, on account of his bad conduct, was obliged to discard him. The original was in the hands of the late Francis Cockayne Cust, Esq., one of His Majesty’s Counsel learned in the law:

‘Right Honourable BRUTE, and BOOBY,

‘I find you want (as Mr. — is pleased to hint,) to swear away my life, that is, the life of your creditor, because he asks you for a debt. – The publick shall soon be acquainted with this, to judge whether you are not fitter to be an Irish Evidence, than to be an Irish Peer. – I defy and despise you. I am, your determined adversary, R.S.

^a Sir John Hawkins gives the world to understand, that Johnson, ‘being an admirer of genteel manners, was captivated by the address and demeanour of Savage, who, as to his exterior, was, to a remarkable degree, accomplished.’ Hawkins’s Life, p. 52. But Sir John’s notions of gentility must appear somewhat ludicrous, from his stating the following circumstance as presumptive evidence that Savage was a good swordsman: ‘That he understood the exercise of a gentleman’s weapon, may be inferred from the use made of it in that rash encounter which is related in his life.’ The dexterity here alluded to was, that Savage, in a nocturnal fit of drunkenness, stabbed a man at a coffee-house, and killed him; for which he was tried at the Old-Bailey, and found guilty of murder.

Johnson, indeed, describes him as having ‘a grave and manly deportment, a solemn dignity of mien; but which, upon a nearer acquaintance, softened into an engaging easiness of manners.’ How highly Johnson admired him for that knowledge which he himself so much cultivated, and what kindness he entertained for him, appears from the following lines in the Gentleman’s Magazine for April, 1738, which I am assured were written by Johnson:

‘AdRICARDUM SAVAGE.

‘Humani studium generis cui pectore fervet

O colat humanum te foveatque genus.’⁶⁸

^b [The following striking proof of Johnson’s extreme indigence, when he published the Life of Savage, was communicated to the author, by Mr. Richard Stow, of Apsley, in Bedfordshire, from the information of Mr. Walter Harte, author of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus:

Soon after Savage’s Life was published, Mr. Harte dined with Edward Cave, and occasionally praised it. Soon after, meeting him, Cave said, ‘You made a man very happy t’other day.’ – ‘How could that be,’ says Harte; ‘nobody was there but ourselves.’ Cave answered, by reminding him that a plate of victuals was sent behind a screen, which was to Johnson, dressed so shabbily, that he did not choose to appear; but on hearing the conversation, was highly delighted with the encomiums on his book.]

^a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit.p.35{p.55,19 Aug.}.

^a I suspect Dr. Taylor was inaccurate in this statement. The emphasis should be equally upon shalt and not, as both concur to form the negative injunction; and false witness, like the other acts prohibited in the Decalogue, should not be marked by any peculiar emphasis, but only be distinctly enunciated.

^b This character of the Life of Savage was not written by Fielding as has been supposed, but most probably by Ralph, who, as appears from the minutes of the partners of The Champion, in the possession of Mr. Reed of Staple Inn, succeeded Fielding in his share of the paper, before the date of that eulogium.

^a The late Francis Cockayne Cust, Esq., one of his Majesty’s Counsel.

^b 1697.

^c [The story on which Mr. Cust so much relies, that Savage was a supposititious child, not the son of Lord Rivers and Lady Macclesfield, but the offspring of a shoemaker, introduced in consequence of her real son’s death, was, without doubt, grounded on the circumstance of Lady Macclesfield having, in 1696, previously to the birth of Savage, had a daughter by the Earl Rivers, who died in her infancy; a fact which was proved in the course of the proceedings on Lord Macclesfield’s Bill of Divorce. Most fictions of this kind have some admixture of truth in them.]

^a Johnson’s companion appears to have persuaded that lofty-minded man, that he resembled him in having a noble pride; for Johnson, after painting in strong colours the quarrel between Lord Tyrconnel and Savage, asserts that ‘the spirit of Mr. Savage, indeed, never suffered him tosolicit areconciliation:he returned reproach for reproach, and insult for insult.’ But the respectable gentleman to whom I have alluded, has in his possession a letter from Savage, after Lord Tyrconnel had discarded him, addressed to the Reverend Mr. Gilbert, his Lordship’s Chaplain, in which he requests him, in the humblest manner, to represent his case to the Viscount.

^b Trusting to Savage’s information, Johnson represents this unhappy man’s being received as a companion by Lord Tyrconnel, and pensioned by his Lordship, as if posteriour to Savage’s conviction and pardon. But I am assured, that Savage had received the voluntary bounty of Lord Tyrconnel, and had been dismissed by him, long before the murder was committed, and that his Lordship was very instrumental in procuring Savage’s pardon, by his intercession with the Queen, through Lady Hertford. If, therefore, he had been desirous of preventing the publication by Savage, he would have left him to his fate. Indeed I must observe, that although Johnson mentions that Lord Tyrconnel’s patronage of Savage was ‘upon his promise to lay aside his design of exposing the cruelty of his mother,’ the great biographer has forgotten that he himself has mentioned, that Savage’s story had been told several years before in The Plain Dealer; from which he quotes this strong saying of the generous Sir Richard Steele, that ‘the inhumanity of his mother had given him a right to find every good man his father.’ At the same time it must be acknowledged, that Lady Macclesfield and her relations might still wish that her story should not be brought into more conspicuous notice by the satirical pen of Savage.

^a Miss Mason, after having forfeited the title of Lady Macclesfield by divorce, was married to Colonel Brett, and, it is said, was well known in all the polite circles. Colley Cibber, I am informed, had so high an opinion of her taste and judgement as to genteel life, and manners, that he submitted every scene of his Careless Husband to Mrs. Brett’s revisal and correction. Colonel Brett was reported to be too free in his gallantry with his Lady’s maid. Mrs. Brett came into a room one day in her own house, and found the Colonel and her maid both fast asleep in two chairs. She tied a white handkerchief round her husband’s neck, which was a sufficient proof that she had discovered his intrigue; but she never at any time took notice of it to him. This incident, as I am told, gave occasion to the well-wrought scene of Sir Charles and Lady Easy and Edging.

^a [In the Universal Visiter, to which Johnson contributed, the mark which is affixed to some pieces unquestionably his, is also found subjoined to others, of which he certainly was not the author. The mark therefore will not ascertain the poems in question to have been written by him. They were probably the productions of Hawkesworth, who, it is believed, was afflicted with the gout.]

^a These verses are somewhat too severe on the extraordinary person who is the chief figure in them, for he was undoubtedly brave. His pleasantry during his solemn trial (in which, by the way, I have heard Mr. David Hume observe, that we have one of the very few speeches of Mr. Murray, now Earl of Mansfield, authentically given) was very remarkable. When asked if he had any questions to put to Sir Everard Fawkener, who was one of the strongest witnesses against him, he answered, I only wish him joy of his young wife.’ And after sentence of death, in the horrible terms in cases of treason, was pronounced upon him, and he was retiring from the bar, he said, ‘Fare you well, my Lords, we shall not all meet again in one place.’ He behaved with perfect composure at his execution, and called out ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.’⁷³

^b My friend, Mr. Courtenay, whose eulogy on Johnson’s Latin Poetry has been inserted in this Work, is no less happy in praising his English Poetry.

But hark, he sings! the strain ev’n Pope admires;

Indignant virtue her own bard inspires.

Sublime as Juvenal he pours his lays,

And with the Roman shares congenial praise; –

In glowing numbers now he fires the age,

And Shakspeare’s sun relumes the clouded stage.

^a September 22, 1777, going from Ashbourne in Derbyshire, to see Islam.

^a Birch, MSS. Brit. Mus. 4303.

^b See Sir John Hawkins’s Life of Johnson.

^c See post, under April 10, 1776.

^a He was afterwards for several years Chairman of the Middlesex Justices, and upon occasion of presenting an address to the King, accepted the usual offer of Knighthood. He is authour of ‘A History of Musick,’ in five volumes in quarto. By assiduous attendance on Johnson in his last illness, he obtained the office of one of his executors; in consequence of which, the booksellers of London employed him to publish an edition of Dr. Johnson’s works, and to write his Life.

^a Sir John Hawkins, with solemn inaccuracy, represents this poem as a consequence of the indifferent reception of his tragedy. But the fact is, that the poem was published on the 9th of January, and the tragedy was not acted till the 6th of the February following.

^b ‘Nov. 25, 1748. I received of Mr. Dodsley fifteen guineas, for which I assign to him the right of copy of an imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, written by me; reserving to myself the right of printing one edition. ‘SAM. JOHNSON.’

^a From Mr. Langton.

^b In this poem one of the instances mentioned of unfortunate learned men is Lydiat:

‘Hear Lydiat’s life, and Galileo’s end.’

The history of Lydiat being little known, the following account of him may be acceptable to many of my readers. It appeared as a note in the Supplement to the Gent. Mag. for 1748, in which some passages extracted from Johnson’s poem were inserted, and it should have been added in the subsequent editions. – A very learned divine and mathematician, fellow of New College, Oxon, and Rector of Okerton, near Banbury. He wrote, among many others, a Latin treatise De Natura cæli, etc., in which he attacked the sentiments of Scaliger and Aristotle, not bearing to hear it urged, that some things are true in philosophy and false in divinity. He made above 600 Sermons on the harmony of the Evangelists. Being unsuccessful in publishing his works, he lay in the prison of Bocardo at Oxford, and in the King’s Bench, till Bishop Usher, Dr. Laud, Sir William Boswell, and Dr. Pink, released him by paying his debts. He petitioned King Charles I, to be sent into Ethiopia, etc., to procure MSS. Having spoken in favour of monarchy and bishops, he was plundered by the parliament forces, and twice carried away prisoner from his rectory; and afterwards had not a shirt to shift him in three months, without he borrowed it, and died very poor in 1646.

^a Mahomet was, in fact, played by Mr. Barry, and Demetrius by Mr. Garrick; but probably at this time the parts were not yet cast.

^a The expression used by Dr. Adams was ‘soothed.’ I should rather think the audience was awed by the extraordinary spirit and dignity of the following lines:

‘Be this at least his praise, be this his pride,

To force applause no modern arts are tried:

Should partial catcalls all his hopes confound,

He bids no trumpet quell the fatal sound;

Should welcome sleep relieve the weary wit,

He rolls no thunders o’er the drowsy pit;

No snares to captivate the judgement spreads,

Nor bribes your eyes to prejudice your heads.

Unmov’d, though witlings sneer and rivals rail,

Studious to please, yet not asham’d to fail,

He scorns the meek address, the suppliant strain,

With merit needless, and without it vain;

In Reason, Nature, Truth, he dares to trust;

Ye fops be silent, and ye wits be just!’

^b Aaron Hill (vol. ii. p. 355), in a letter to Mr. Mallett, gives the following account of Irene after having seen it: ‘I was at the anomalous Mr. Johnson’s benefit, and found the play his proper representative; strong sense ungraced by sweetness or decorum.’

^a I have heard Dr. Warton mention, that he was at Mr. Robert Dodsley’s with the late Mr. Moore, and several of his friends, considering what should be the name of the periodical paper which Moore had undertaken. Garrick proposed The Sallad, which, by a curious coincidence, was afterwards applied to himself by Goldsmith:

‘Our Garrick’s a sallad, for in him we see

Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree!’

At last, the company having separated, without any thing of which they approved having been offered, Dodsley himself thought of The World.

^b Prayers and Meditations, p. 9.

^c [In the original folio edition of The Rambler the concluding paper is dated Saturday, March 17. But Saturday was in fact March 14. This circumstance is worth notice, for Mrs. Johnson died on the 17th.]

^d Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 28 {16 Aug.}.

^a Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 268 {p. 265}.

^a This most beautiful image of the enchanting delusion of youthful prospect has not been used in any of Johnson’s essays.

^a Sir John Hawkins has selected from this little collection of materials, what he calls the ‘Rudiments of two of the papers of The Rambler.’ But he has not been able to read the manuscript distinctly. Thus he writes, p. 266, ‘Sailor’s fate any mansion;’ whereas the original is ‘Sailor’s life my aversion.’ He has also transcribed the unappropriated hints on Writers for bread, in which he decyphers these notable passages, one in Latin, fatui non famce, instead of fami non famce; Johnson having in his mind what Thuanus says of the learned German antiquary and linguist, Xylander, who, he tells us, lived in such poverty, that he was supposed fami non famce scribere;⁸⁶ and another in French, Degentede fate et affamid’ argent, instead of Degoute de fame, (an old word for renommee) et affame d’argent.⁸⁷ The manuscript being written in an exceedingly small hand, is indeed very hard to read; but it would have been better to have left blanks than to write nonsense.

^a It was executed in the printing-office of Sands, Murray, and Cochran, with uncommon elegance, upon writing-paper, of a duodecimo size, and with the greatest correctness; and Mr. Elphinston enriched it with translations of the mottos. When completed, it made eight handsome volumes. It is, unquestionably, the most accurate and beautiful edition of this work; and there being but a small impression, it is now become scarce, and sells at a very high price.

^a Mr. Thomas Ruddiman, the learned grammarian of Scotland, well known for his various excellent works, and for his accurate editions of several authours. He was also a man of a most worthy private character. His zeal for the Royal House of Stuart did not render him less estimable in Dr. Johnson’s eye.

^a No. 55 {59}.

^a Dr. Johnson was gratified by seeing this selection, and wrote to Mr. Kearsley, bookseller in Fleet-Street, the following note: –

‘Mr. Johnson sends compliments to Mr. Kearsley, and begs the favour of seeing him as soon as he can. Mr. Kearsley is desired to bring with him the last edition of what he has honoured with the name of Beauties. May 20, 1782.’

^a Yet his style did not escape the harmless shafts of pleasant humour; for the ingenious Bonnell Thornton published a mock Rambler in the Drury-lane Journal.

^b Idler, No. 70.

^c Horat. Epist. Lib. ii. Epist. ii. {l. 110}.

^a The observation of his having imitated Sir Thomas Brown has been made by many people; and lately it has been insisted on, and illustrated by a variety of quotations from Brown, in one of the popular Essays written by the Reverend Mr. Knox, master of Tunbridge school, whom I have set down in my list of those who have sometimes not unsuccessfully imitated Dr. Johnson’s style.

^a The following observation in Mr. Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides {introduction} may sufficiently account for that Gentleman’s being ‘now scarcely esteem’d a Scot’ by many of his countrymen: – ‘If he [Dr. Johnson] was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because they were more in his way; because he thought their success in England rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit; and because he could not but see in them that nationality which, I believe, no liberal-minded Scotchman will deny.’ Mr. Boswell, indeed, is so free from national prejudices, that he might with equal propriety have been described as –

‘Scarce by South Britons now esteem’d a Scot.’

COURTENAY.

^a I shall probably, in another work, maintain the merit of Addison’s poetry, which has been very unjustly depreciated.

^a Mrs. Williams is probably the person meant.

^a Lest there should be any person, at any future period, absurd enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder’s fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, at the time when he detected the imposition. ‘It is to be hoped, nay it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the authour of Lauder’s Preface and Postscript, will no longer allow one to plume himself with his feathers, who appeareth so little to deserve assistance: an assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets.’ Milton no Plagiary, 2nd edit. p. 78. And his Lordship has been pleased now to authorise me to say, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who expressed the strongest indignation against Lauder.

^a [In the Gent. Mag. for February, 1794 (p. 100) was printed a letter pretending to be that written by Johnson on the death of his wife. But it is merely a transcript of the 41st number of The Idler. A fictitious date (March 17, 1751, O.S.) was added by some person previous to this paper being sent to the publisher of that miscellany, to give a colour to this deception.]

^b Francis Barber was born in Jamaica, and was brought to England in 1750 by Colonel Bathurst, father of Johnson’s very intimate friend, Dr. Bathurst. He was sent, for some time, to the Reverend Mr. Jackson’s school, at Barton, in Yorkshire. The Colonel by his will left him his freedom, and Dr. Bathurst was willing that he should enter into Johnson’s service, in which he continued from 1752 till Johnson’s death, with the exception of two intervals; in one of which, upon some difference with his master, he went and served an apothecary in Cheapside, but still visited Dr. Johnson occasionally; in another, he took a fancy to go to sea. Part of the time, indeed, he was, by the kindness of his master, at a school in North amptonshire, that he might have the advantage of some learning. So early and so lasting a connection was there between Dr. Johnson and this humble friend.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 19.

^b Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 316.

^c Pr. and Med. p. 20.

^a Dr. Bathurst, though a Physician of no inconsiderable merit, had not the good fortune to get much practice in London. He was, therefore, willing to accept of employment abroad, and, to the regret of all who knew him, fell a sacrifice to the destructive climate, in the expedition against the Havannah.⁹⁸ Mr. Langton recollects the following passage in a letter from Dr. Johnson to Mr. Beauclerk: ‘The Havannah is taken; – a conquest too dearly obtained; for, Bathurst died before it. “Vix Priamus tanti totaque Troja fuit.” ‘⁹⁹

^a Mr. Langton has recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are in Lord Lansdowne’s Drinking Song to Sleep, and run thus: –

‘Short, very short be then thy reign,

For I’m in haste to laugh and drink again.’

^a Dr. Johnson appeared to have had a remarkable delicacy with respect to the circulation of this letter; for Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, informs me that, having many years ago pressed him to be allowed to read it to the second Lord Hardwicke, who was very desirous to hear it (promising at the same time, that no copy of it should be taken), Johnson seemed much pleased that it had attracted the attention of a nobleman of such a respectable character; but after pausing some time, declined to comply with the request, saying, with a smile, ‘No, Sir; I have hurt the dog too much already;’ or words to that purpose.

^a The following note is subjoined by Mr. Langton: – ‘Dr. Johnson, when he gave me this copy of his letter, desired that I would annex to it his information to me, that whereas it is said in the letter that “no assistance has been received,” he did once receive from Lord Chesterfield the sum of ten pounds; but as that was so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find place in a letter of the kind that this was.’

^b In this passage Dr. Johnson evidently alludes to the loss of his wife. We find the same tender recollection recurring to his mind upon innumerable occasions; and, perhaps no man ever more forcibly felt the truth of the sentiment so elegantly expressed by my friend Mr. Malone, in his Prologue to Mr. Jephson’s tragedy of Julia: – ‘Vain – wealth, and fame, and fortune’s fostering care, / If no fond breast the splendid blessings share; / And, each day’s bustling pageantry once past, / There, only there, our bliss is found at last.’

^a Upon comparing this copy with that which Dr. Johnson dictated to me from recollection, the variations are found to be so slight, that this must be added to the many other proofs which he gave of the wonderful extent and accuracy of his memory. To gratify the curious in composition, I have deposited both the copies in the British Museum.

^b Soon after Edwards’s Canons of Criticism came out, Johnson was dining at Tonson the Bookseller’s, with Hayman the Painter and some more company. Hayman related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the conversation having turned upon Edwards’s book, the gentlemen praised it much, and Johnson allowed its merit. But when they went farther, and appeared to put that authour upon a level with Warburton, ‘Nay, (said Johnson,) he has given him some smart hits to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.’

^a That collection of letters cannot be vindicated from the serious charge of encouraging, in some passages, one of the vices most destructive to the good order and comfort of society,¹⁰⁹ which his Lordship represents as mere fashionable gallantry; and, in others, of inculcating the base practice of dissimulation, and recommending, with dispro portionate anxiety, a perpetual attention to external elegance of manners. But it must, at the same time, be allowed, that they contain many good precepts of conduct, and much genuine information upon life and manners, very happily expressed; and that there was considerable merit in paying so much attention to the improvement of one who was dependent upon his Lordship’s protection; it has probably been exceeded in no instance by the most exemplary parent; and though I can by no means approve of confounding the distinction between lawful and illicit offspring, which is, in effect, insulting the civil establishment of our country, to look no higher; I cannot help thinking it laudable to be kindly attentive to those, of whose existence we have, in any way, been the cause. Mr. Stanhope’s character has been unjustly represented as diametrically opposite to what Lord Chesterfield wished him to be. He has been called dull, gross, and aukward; but I knew him at Dresden, when he was envoy to that court; and though he could not boast of the graces, he was, in truth, a sensible, civil, well-behaved man.

^a Now one of his Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State.

^a Communicated by the Reverend Mr. Thomas Warton, who had the original.

^a ‘I presume she was a relation of Mr. Zachariah Williams, who died in his eighty-third year, July 12, 1755. When Dr. Johnson was with me at Oxford, in 1775, he gave to the Bodleian Library a thin quarto of twenty-one pages, a work in Italian, with an English translation on the opposite page. The English title-page is this: “An Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea, by an exact Variation of the Magnetical Needle, &c. By Zachariah Williams. London, printed for Dodsley, 1755.” The English translation, from the strongest internal marks, is unquestionably the work of Johnson. In a blank leaf, Johnson has written the age, and time of death, of the authour Z. Williams, as I have said above. On another blank leaf, is pasted a paragraph from a newspaper, of the death and character of Williams, which is plainly written by Johnson. He was very anxious about placing this book in the Bodleian: and, for fear of any omission or mistake, he entered, in the great Catalogue, the title-page of it with his own hand.’ Warton. [In this statement there is a slight mistake. The English account, which was written by Johnson, was the original; the Italian was a translation, done by Baretti. See post, end of 1755.]

^b ‘In procuring him the degree of Master of Arts by diploma at Oxford.’ Warton.

^a ‘Lately fellow of Trinity College, and at this time Radclivian librarian, at Oxford. He was a man of very considerable learning, and eminently skilled in Roman and Anglo-Saxon antiquities. He died in 1767.’ Warton.

^b ‘Collins (the poet) was at this time at Oxford, on a visit to Mr. Warton; but labouring under the most deplorable languor of body, and dejection of mind.’ Warton.

^c ‘Of publishing a volume of observations on the rest of Spenser’s works. It was hindered by my taking pupils in this College.’ Warton.

^d ‘Young students of the lowest rank at Oxford are so called.’ Warton.

^e ‘His Dictionary.’Warton.

^f ‘Of the degree at Oxford.’Warton.

^a ‘His degree had now past, according to the usual form, the suffrages of the heads of Colleges; but was not yet finally granted by the University. It was carried without a single dissentient voice.’ Warton.

^b ‘On Spenser.’ Warton.

^a ‘Of the degree.’ Warton.

^b ‘Principal of St. Mary Hall at Oxford. He brought with him the diploma from Oxford.’ WARTON.

^c ‘I suppose Johnson means that my kind intention of being the first to give him the good news of the degree being granted was frustrated, because Dr. King brought it before my intelligence arrived.’ WARTON.

^d ‘Dr. Huddesford, President of Trinity College.’ WARTON.

^e Extracted from the Convocation-Register, Oxford.

^a We may conceive what a high gratification it must have been to Johnson to receive his diploma from the hands of the great Dr. King, whose principles were so congenial with his own.

^b The original is in my possession.

^c ‘The words in Italicks are allusions to passages in Mr. Warton’s poem, called The Progress of Discontent, now lately published.’ Warton.

^a Sir John Hawkins, p. 341, inserts two notes as having passed formally between Andrew Millar and Johnson, to the above effect. I am assured this was not the case. In the way of incidental remark it was a pleasant play of raillery. To have deliberately written notes in such terms would have been morose.

^b His Dictionary.

^a ‘A translation of Apollonius Rhodius was now intended by Mr. Warton.’ Warton.

^b [Kettel Hall is an ancient tenement built about the year 1615 by Dr. Ralph Kettel, President of Trinity College, for the accommodation of commoners of that Society. It adjoins the College; and was a few years ago converted into a private house.]

^c ‘At Ellsfield, a village three miles from Oxford.’ Warton.

^d ‘Booksellers concerned in his Dictionary.’ Warton.

^a He thus defines Excise: ‘A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid.’ The Commissioners of Excise being offended by this severe reflection, consulted Mr. Murray, then Attorney General, to know whether redress could be legally obtained. I wished to have procured for my readers a copy of the opinion which he gave, and which may now be justly considered as history; but the mysterious secrecy of office, it seems, would not permit it. I am, however, informed, by very good authority, that its import was, that the passage might be considered as actionable; but that it would be more prudent in the board not to prosecute. Johnson never made the smallest alteration in this passage. We find he still retained his early prejudice against Excise; for in The Idler, No. 65, there is the following very extraordinary paragraph: ‘The authenticity of Clarendon’s history, though printed with the sanction of one of the first Universities of the world, had not an unexpected manuscript been happily discovered, would, with the help of factious credulity, have been brought into question by the two lowest of all human beings, a Scribbler for a party, and a Commissioner of Excise.’ – The persons to whom he alludes were Mr. John Oldmixon, and George Ducket, Esq.

^a In the third {fourth} edition, published in 1773, he left out the words perhaps never, and added the following paragraph: –

‘It sometimes begins middle or final syllables in words compounded, as block-head, or derived from the Latin, as compre-hended.’

^b The number of the French Academy employed in settling their language.

^a See note by Mr. Warton, ante, p. 149.

^b ‘On Saturday the 12th, about twelve at night, died Mr. Zachariah Williams, in his eighty-third year, after an illness of eight months, in full possession of his mental faculties. He has been long known to philosophers and seamen for his skill in magnetism, and his proposal to ascertain the longitude by a peculiar system of the variation of the compass. He was a man of industry indefatigable, of conversation inoffensive, patient of adversity and disease, eminently sober, temperate, and pious; and worthy to have ended life with better fortune.’

^a Prayers and Meditations p. 40 {p. 25}.

^b Ib., p. 27.

^a Some time after Dr. Johnson’s death there appeared in the newspapers and magazines an illiberal and petulant attack upon him, in the form of an Epitaph, under the name of Mr. Soame Jenyns, very unworthy of that gentleman, who had quietly submitted to the critical lash while Johnson lived. It assumed, as characteristicks of him, all the vulgar circumstances of abuse which had circulated amongst the ignorant. It was an unbecoming indulgence of puny resentment, at a time when he himself was at a very advanced age, and had a near prospect of descending to the grave. I was truly sorry for it; for he was then become an avowed, and (as my Lord Bishop of London, who had a serious conversation with him on the subject, assures me) a sincere Christian. He could not expect that Johnson’s numerous friends would patiently bear to have the memory of their master stigmatized by no mean pen, but that, at least, one would be found to retort. Accordingly, this unjust and sarcastick Epitaph was met in the same publick field by an answer, in terms by no means soft, and such as wanton provocation only could justify:

‘epitaph,

‘Prepared for a creature not quite dead yet.

‘Here lies a little ugly nauseous elf,

Who judging only from its wretched self,

Feebly attempted, petulant and vain,

The “Origin of Evil” to explain.

A mighty Genius at this elf displeas’d,

With a strong critick grasp the urchin squeez’d.

For thirty years its coward spleen it kept,

Till in the dust the mighty Genius slept;

Then stunk and fretted in expiring snuff,

And blink’d at Johnson with its last poor puff.’

^a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 48 {19 Aug.}.

^a They have been reprinted by Mr. Malone, in the Preface to his edition of Shakspeare.

^a The celebrated oratour, Mr. Flood, has shown himself to be of Dr. Johnson’s opinion; having by his will bequeathed his estate, after the death of his wife Lady Frances, to the University of Dublin; ‘desiring that immediately after the said estate shall come into their possession, they shall appoint two professors, one for the study of the native Erse or Irish language, and the other for the study of Irish antiquities and Irish history, and for the study of any other European language illustrative of, or auxiliary to, the study of Irish antiquities or Irish history; and that they shall give yearly two liberal premiums for two compositions, one in verse, and the other in prose, in the Irish language.’

^b ‘Now, or late, Vice-Chancellor.’ Warton.

^c ‘Mr. Warton was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in the preceding year.’ Warton.

^d ‘Miss Jones lived at Oxford, and was often of our parties. She was a very ingenious poetess, and published a volume of poems; and, on the whole, was a most sensible, agreeable, and amiable woman. She was a sister to the Reverend River Jones, Chanter of Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford, and Johnson used to call her the Chantress. I have heard him often address her in this passage from Il Penseroso:

“Thee, Chantress, oft the woods among

I woo,” etc.¹⁴⁰

She died unmarried.’ Warton.

^a Tom. iii, p. 482.

^b Of Shakspeare.

^a Mr. Garrick.

^b Mr. Dodsley, the Authour of Cleone.

^c Mr. Samuel Richardson, authour of Clarissa.

^a This letter was an answer to one in which was enclosed a draft for the payment of some subscriptions to his Shakspeare.

^a Prayers and Meditations, p. 30 {p. 36}.

^a This paper may be found in Stockdale’s supplemental volume of Johnson’s Miscellaneous Pieces.

^b ‘Receipts for Shakspeare.’ Warton.

^c ‘Then of Lincoln College. Now Sir Robert Chambers, one of the Judges in India.’ Warton.

^a ‘Mr. Langton.’ Warton.

^b ‘Part of the impression of the Shakespeare, which Dr. Johnson conducted alone, and published by subscription. This edition came out in 1765.’ Warton.

^a Major-General Alexander Dury, of the first regiment of foot-guards, who fell in the gallant discharge of his duty, near St. Cas, in the well-known unfortunate expedition against France, in 1758. His lady and Mr. Langton’s mother were sisters. He left an only son, Lieutenant-Colonel Dury, who has a company in the same regiment.

^b Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 395.

^a [See post, June 2, 1781. Finding it then accidentally in a chaise with Mr. Boswell, he read it eagerly. This was doubtless long after his declaration to Sir Joshua Reynolds.]

^b Ecclesiastes, i. 14.

^a Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson, 1786.

^b This paper was in such high estimation before it was collected into volumes, that it was seized on with avidity by various publishers of news-papers and magazines, to enrich their publications. Johnson, to put a stop to this unfair proceeding, wrote for the Universal Chronicle the following advertisement; in which there is, perhaps, more pomp of words than the occasion demanded:

‘London, January 5, 1759. Advertisement. The proprietors of the paper intitled The Idler, having found that those essays are inserted in the news-papers and magazines with so little regard to justice or decency, that the Universal Chronicle, in which they first appear, is not always mentioned, think it necessary to declare to the publishers of those collections, that however patiently they have hitherto endured these injuries, made yet more injurious by contempt, they have now determined to endure them no longer. They have already seen essays, for which a very large price is paid, transferred, with the most shameless rapacity, into the weekly or monthly compilations, and their right, at least for the present, alienated from them, before they could themselves be said to enjoy it. But they would not willingly be thought to want tenderness, even for men by whom no tenderness hath been shewn. The past is without remedy, and shall be without resentment. But those who have been thus busy with their sickles in the fields of their neighbours, are henceforward to take notice, that the time of impunity is at an end. Whoever shall, without our leave, lay the hand of rapine upon our papers, is to expect that we shall vindicate our due, by the means which justice prescribes, and which are warranted by the immemorial prescriptions of honourable trade. We shall lay hold, in our turn, on their copies, degrade them from the pomp of wide margin and diffuse typography, contract them into a narrow space, and sell them at an humble price; yet not with a view of growing rich by confiscations, for we think not much better of money got by punishment than by crimes. We shall, therefore, when our losses are repaid, give what profit shall remain to the Magdalens; for we know not who can be more properly taxed for the support of penitent prostitutes, than prostitutes in whom there yet appears neither penitence nor shame.’

^a Dr. Robert Vansittart, of the ancient and respectable family of that name in Berkshire. He was eminent for learning and worth, and much esteemed by Dr. Johnson.

^b Gentleman’s Magazine, April, 1785.

^c Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3d edit. p. 126 {31 Aug.}.

^d Ibid. p. 251 {23 Sept.}.

^e In my first edition this word was printed Chum, as it appears in one of Mr. Wilkes’s Miscellanies, and I animadverted on Dr. Smollet’s ignorance; for which let me propitiate the manes¹⁵¹ of that ingenious and benevolent gentleman. Chum was certainly a mistaken reading for Cham, the title of the Sovereign of Tartary, which is well applied to Johnson, the Monarch of Literature; and was an epithet familiar to Smollet. See Roderick Random, chap. 56. For this correction I am indebted to Lord Palmerston, whose talents and literary acquirements accord well with his respectable pedigree of Temple. [After the publication of the second edition of this work, the authour was furnished by Mr. Abercrombie, of Philadelphia, with the copy of a letter written by Dr. John Armstrong, the poet, to Dr. Smollet at Leghorne, containing the following paragraph: – ‘As to the K. Bench patriot, it is hard to say from what motive he published a letter of yours asking some trifling favour of him in behalf of somebody, for whom the great Cham of literature, Mr. Johnson, had interested himself.’]

^a Prayers and Meditations, pp. 30 {39} and 40.

^b Sir John Hawkins (Life, p. 373) has given a long detail of it, in that manner vulgarly, but significantly, called rigmarole; in which, amidst an ostentatious exhibition of arts and artists, he talks of ‘proportions of a column being taken from that of the human figure, and adjusted by Nature – masculine and feminine – in a man, sesquioctave of the head, and in a woman sesquinonal;’¹⁵⁴ nor has he failed to introduce a jargon of musical terms, which do not seem much to correspond with the subject, but serve to make up the heterogeneous mass. To follow the Knight through all this, would be an useless fatigue to myself, and not a little disgusting to my readers. I shall, therefore, only make a few remarks upon his statement. – He seems to exult in having detected Johnson in procuring ‘from a person eminently skilled in Mathematicks and the principles of architecture, answers to a string of questions drawn up by himself, touching the comparative strength of semicircular and elliptical arches.’ Now I cannot conceive how Johnson could have acted more wisely. Sir John complains that the opinion of that excellent mathematician, Mr. Thomas Simpson, did not preponderate in favour of the semicircular arch. But he should have known, that however eminent Mr. Simpson was in the higher parts of abstract mathematical science, he was little versed in mixed and practical mechanicks. Mr. Muller, of Woolwich Academy, the scholastick father of all the great engineers which this country has employed for forty years, decided the question by declaring clearly in favour of the elliptical arch.

It is ungraciously suggested, that Johnson’s motive for opposing Mr. Mylne’s scheme may have been his prejudice against him as a native of North Britain; when, in truth, as has been stated, he gave the aid of his able pen to a friend, who was one of the candidates; and so far was he from having any illiberal antipathy to Mr. Mylne, that he afterwards lived with that gentleman upon very agreeable terms of acquaintance, and dined with him at his house. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, gives full vent to his own prejudice in abusing Blackfriars-bridge, calling it ‘an edifice, in which beauty and symmetry are in vain sought for; by which the citizens of London have perpetuated their own disgrace, and subjected a whole nation to the reproach of foreigners.’ Whoever has contemplated, placido lumine,¹⁵⁵ this stately, elegant, and airy structure, which has so fine an effect, especially on approaching the capital on that quarter, must wonder at such unjust and ill-tempered censure; and I appeal to all foreigners of good taste, whether this bridge be not one of the most distinguished ornaments of London. As to the stability of the fabrick, it is certain that the City of London took every precaution to have the best Portland stone for it; but as this is to be found in the quarries belonging to the publick, under the direction of the Lords of the Treasury, it so happened that parliamentary interest, which is often the bane of fair pursuits, thwarted their endeavours. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, it is well known that not only has Blackfriars-bridge never sunk either in its foundation or in its arches, which were so much the subject of contest, but any injuries which it has suffered from the effects of severe frosts have been already, in some measure, repaired with sounder stone, and every necessary renewal can be completed at a moderate expence.

^a Prayers and Meditations, p. 42.

^a [The paper mentioned in the text is No. 38 of the second series of the Gray’s-Inn Journal, published on June 15, 1754; which is a translation from the French version of Johnson’s Rambler, No. 190.]

^a Topham Beauclerk, Esq.

^b Essays with that title, written about this time by Mr. Langton, but not published.

^c Mrs. Sheridan was authour of Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, a novel of great merit, and of some other pieces. – See her character, post, beginning of 1763, pp. 206–7.

^d Prayers and Meditations, p. 44.

^a I have had inquiry made in Ireland as to this story, but do not find it recollected there. I give it on the authority of Dr. Johnson, to which maybeadded that of the Biographical Dictionary, and Biographia Dramatica; in both of which it has stood many years. Mr. Malone observes, that the truth probably is, not that an edition was published with Rolt’s name in the title-page, but, that the poem being then anonymous, Rolt acquiesced in its being attributed to him in conversation.

^b I have both the books. Innes was the clergyman who brought Psalmanazar to England, and was an accomplice in his extraordinary fiction.

^a The originals of Dr. Johnson’s three letters to Mr. Baretti, which are among the very best he ever wrote, were communicated to the proprietors of that instructive and elegant monthly miscellany, The European Magazine, in which they first appeared.

^a This is a very just account of the relief which London affords to melancholy minds.

^a At one of these seats Dr. Amyat, Physician in London, told me he happened to meet him. In order to amuse him till dinner should be ready, he was taken out to walk in the garden. The master of the house, thinking it proper to introduce something scientifick into the conversation, addressed him thus: ‘Are you a botanist, Dr. Johnson?’ ‘No, Sir, (answered Johnson,) I am not a botanist; and, (alluding, no doubt, to his near sightedness) should I wish to become a botanist, I must first turn myself into a reptile.’

^b See ante, p. 161.

^a ‘MADAM, – To approach the high and the illustrious has been in all ages the privilege of Poets; and though translators cannot justly claim the same honour, yet they naturally follow their authours as attendants; and I hope that in return for having enabled Tasso to diffuse his fame through the British dominions, I may be introduced by him to the presence of YOUR MAJESTY.

‘TASSO has a peculiar claim to YOUR MAJESTY’S favour, as follower and panegyrist of the House of Este, which has one common ancestor with the House of HANOVER; and in reviewing his life it is not easy to forbear a wish that he had lived in a happier time, when he might, among the descendants of that illustrious family, have found a more liberal and potent patronage.

‘I cannot but observe, MADAM, how unequally reward is proportioned to merit, when I reflect that the happiness which was withheld from TASSO is reserved for me; and that the poem which once hardly procured to its authour the countenance of the Princes of Ferrara, has attracted to its translator the favourable notice of a BRITISH QUEEN.

‘Had this been the fate of TASSO, he would have been able to have celebrated the condescension of YOUR MAJESTY in nobler language, but could not have felt it with more ardent gratitude, than MADAM, YOUR MAJESTY’S most faithful and devoted servant.’

^b As great men of antiquity such as Scipio Africanus had an epithet added to their names, in consequence of some celebrated action, so my illustrious friend was often called Dictionary Johnson, from that wonderful atchievement of genius and labour, his Dictionary of the English Language; the merit of which I contemplate with more and more admiration.

^a P. 447.

^b My position has been very well illustrated by Mr. Belsham of Bedford, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry. ‘The fashionable doctrine (says he) both of moralists and criticks in these times is, that virtue and happiness are constant concomitants; and it is regarded as a kind of dramatick impiety to maintain that virtue should not be rewarded, nor vice punished in the last scene of the last act of every tragedy. This conduct in our modern poets is, however, in my opinion, extremely injudicious; for, it labours in vain to inculcate a doctrine in theory, which every one knows to be false in fact, viz. that virtue in real life is always productive of happiness; and vice of misery. Thus Congreve concludes the Tragedy of The Mourning Bride with the following foolish couplet: –

“For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds,

And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.”

‘When a man eminently virtuous, a Brutus, a Cato, or a Socrates, finally sinks under the pressure of accumulated misfortune, we are not only led to entertain a more indignant hatred of vice than if he rose from his distress, but we are inevitably induced to cherish the sublime idea that a day of future retribution will arrive when he shall receive not merely poetical, but real and substantial justice.’ Essays Philosophical, Historical, and Literary, London, 1791, vol. II. 8vo. p. 317.

This is well reasoned and well expressed. I wish, indeed, that the ingenious authour had not thought it necessary to introduce any instance of ‘a man eminently virtuous;’ as he would then have avoided mentioning such a ruffian as Brutus under that description. Mr. Belsham discovers in his Essays so much reading and thinking, and good composition, that I regret his not having been fortunate enough to be educated a member of our excellent national establishment. Had he not been nursed in nonconformity, he probably would not have been tainted with those heresies (as I sincerely, and on no slight investigation, think them) both in religion and politicks, which, while I read, I am sure, with candour, I cannot read without offence.

^a No. 8. – The very place where I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the illustrious subject of this work, deserves to be particularly marked. I never pass by it without feeling reverence and regret.

^a Mr. Murphy, in his Essay on the Life and Genius of Dr. Johnson, has given an account of this meeting considerably different from mine, I am persuaded without any consciousness of errour. His memory, at the end of near thirty years, has undoubtedly deceived him, and he supposes himself to have been present at a scene, which he has probably heard inaccurately described by others. In my note taken on the very day, in which I am confident I marked every thing material that passed, no mention is made of this gentleman; and I am sure, that I should not have omitted one so well known in the literary world. It may easily be imagined that this, my first interview with Dr. Johnson, with all its circumstances, made a strong impression on my mind, and would be registered with peculiar attention.

^b That this was a momentary sally against Garrick there can be no doubt; for at Johnson’s desire he had, some years before, given a benefit-night at his theatre to this very person, by which she had got two hundred pounds. Johnson, indeed, upon all other occasions, when I was in his company, praised the very liberal charity of Garrick. I once mentioned to him, ‘It is observed, Sir, that you attack Garrick yourself, but will suffer nobody else to do it.’ Johnson, (smiling) ‘Why, Sir, that is true.’

^a Mr. Sheridan was then reading lectures upon Oratory at Bath, where Derrick was Master of the Ceremonies; or, as the phrase is, King.

^a My friend Mr. Malone, in his valuable comments on Shakspeare, has traced in that great poet the disjecta membra of these lines.

^a The account was as follows: – ‘On the night of the 1st of February {1762} many gentlemen eminent for their rank and character were, by the invitation of the Reverend Mr. Aldrich, of Clerkenwell, assembled at his house, for the examination of the noises supposed to be made by a departed spirit, for the detection of some enormous crime.

‘About ten at night the gentlemen met in the chamber in which the girl, supposed to be disturbed by a spirit, had, with proper caution, been put to bed by several ladies. They sat rather more than an hour, and hearing nothing, went down stairs, when they interrogated the father of the girl, who denied, in the strongest terms, any knowledge or belief of fraud.

‘The supposed spirit had before publickly promised, by an affirmative knock, that it would attend one of the gentlemen into the vault under the Church of St. John, Clerkenwell, where the body is deposited, and give a token of her presence there, by a knock upon her coffin; it was therefore determined to make this trial of the existence or veracity of the supposed spirit.

‘While they were enquiring and deliberating, they were summoned into the girl’s chamber by some ladies who were near her bed, and who had heard knocks and scratches. When the gentlemen entered, the girl declared that she felt the spirit like a mouse upon her back, and was required to hold her hands out of bed. From that time, though the spirit was very solemnly required to manifest its existence by appearance, by impression on the hand or body of any present, by scratches, knocks, or any other agency, no evidence of any preter-natural power was exhibited.

‘The spirit was then very seriously advertised that the person to whom the promise was made of striking the coffin, was then about to visit the vault, and that the performance of the promise was then claimed. The company at one o’clock went into the church, and the gentleman to whom the promise was made, went with another into the vault. The spirit was solemnly required to perform its promise, but nothing more than silence ensued: the person supposed to be accused by the spirit, then went down with several others, but no effect was perceived. Upon their return they examined the girl, but could draw no confession from her. Between two and three she desired and was permitted to go home with her father.

‘It is, therefore, the opinion of the whole assembly, that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting a particular noise, and that there is no agency of any higher cause.’

^a The Critical Review, in which Mallet himself sometimes wrote, characterised this pamphlet as ‘the crude efforts of envy, petulance and self-conceit.’ There being thus three epithets, we, the three authours, had a humourous contention how each should be appropriated.

^a See his Epitaph in Westminster Abbey, written by Dr. Johnson.

^b In allusion to this, Mr. Horace Walpole, who admired his writings, said he was ‘an inspired ideot;’ and Garrick described him as one

‘—— for shortness call’d Noll,

Who wrote like an angel, and talk’d like poor Poll.’

Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned to me that he frequently heard Goldsmith talk warmly of the pleasure of being liked, and observe how hard it would be if literary excellence should preclude a man from that satisfaction, which he perceived it often did, from the envy which attended it; and therefore Sir Joshua was convinced that he was intentionally more absurd, in order to lessen himself in social intercourse, trusting that his character would be sufficiently supported by his works. If it indeed was his intention to appear absurd in company, he was often very successful. But with due deference to Sir Joshua’s ingenuity, I think the conjecture too refined.

^c Miss Hornecks, one of whom is now married to Henry Bunbury, Esq., and the other to Colonel Gwyn.

^d He went home with Mr. Burke to supper; and broke his shin by attempting to exhibit to the company how much better he could jump over a stick than the puppets.

^a I am willing to hope that there may have been some mistake as to this anecdote though I had it from a Dignitary of the Church.¹⁸⁶ Dr. Isaac Goldsmith, his near relation, was Dean of Cloyne, in 1747.

^b Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 119.

^c Life of Johnson, p. 420.

^d It may not be improper to annex here Mrs. Piozzi’s account of this transaction, in her own words, as a specimen of the extreme inaccuracy with which all her anecdotes of Dr. Johnson are related, or rather discoloured and distorted: – ‘I have forgotten the year, but it could scarcely, I think, be later than 1765 or 1766, that he was called abruptly from our house after dinner, and returning in about three hours, said he had been with an enraged authour, whose landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira, to drown care, and fretting over a novel, which, when finished, was to be his whole fortune, but he could not get it done for distraction, nor could he step out of doors to offer it for sale. Mr. Johnson, therefore, sent away the bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and desiring some immediate relief; which when he brought back to the writer, he called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment. Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, p. 119.

^d I am inclined to think that he was misinformed as to this circumstance. I own I am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. For though Milton could without remorse absent himself from publick worship I cannot. On the contrary, I have the same habitual impressions upon my mind, with those of a truly venerable Judge, who said to Mr. Langton, ‘Friend Langton, if I have not been at church on Sunday, I do not feel myself easy.’ Dr. Campbell was a sincerely religious man. Lord Macartney, who is eminent for his variety of knowledge, and attention to men of talents, and knew him well, told me, that when he called on him in a morning, he found him reading a chapter in the Greek New Testament, which he informed his Lordship was his constant practice. The quantity of Dr. Campbell’s composition is almost incredible, and his labours brought him large profits. Dr. Joseph Warton told me that Johnson said of him, ‘He is the richest authour that ever grazed the common of literature.’

^a The northern bard mentioned page 223. When I asked Dr. Johnson’s permission to introduce him, he obligingly agreed; adding, however, with a sly pleasantry, ‘but he must give us none of his poetry.’ It is remarkable that Johnson and Churchill, however much they differed in other points, agreed on this subject. See Churchill’s Journey. It is, however, but justice to Dr. Ogilvie to observe, that his Day of Judgement has no inconsiderable share of merit.

^a When I mentioned the same idle clamour to him several years afterwards, he said, with a smile, ‘I wish my pension were twice as large, that they might make twice as much noise.’

^a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 402 {10 Nov.}.

^b He used to tell, with great humour, from my relation to him, the following little story of my early years, which was literally true: ‘Boswell, in the year 1745, was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James, till one of his uncles (General Cochran) gave him a shilling on condition that he should pray for King George, which he accordingly did. So you see (says Boswell) that Whigs of all ages are made the same way.’

^c Letter to Rutland on Travel, i6mo. 1569.

^a This one Mrs. Macaulay was the same personage who afterwards made herself so much known as ‘the celebrated female historian.’

^a This opinion was given by him more at large at a subsequent period. See Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 32 {16 Aug.}.

^a I fully intended to have followed advice of such weight; but having staid much longer both in Germany and Italy than I proposed to do, and having also visited Corsica, I found that I had exceeded the time allowed me by my father, and hastened to France in my way homewards.

^b Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 104 {27 Aug.}.

^c Ibid. p. 142 {p. 242, 22 Sept.}.

^a He published a biographical work, containing an account of eminent writers, in three vols. 8vo.

^a All who are acquainted with the history of religion, (the most important, surely, that concerns the human mind,) know that the appellation of Methodists was first given to a society of students in the University of Oxford, who about the year 1730 were distinguished by an earnest and methodical attention to devout exercises. This disposition of mind is not a novelty, or peculiar to any sect, but has been, and still may be found, in many Christians of every denomination. Johnson himself was, in a dignified manner, a Methodist. In his Rambler, No. 110, he mentions with respect ‘the whole discipline of regulated piety;’ and in his Prayers and Meditations, many instances occur of his anxious examination into his spiritual state. That this religious earnestness, and in particular an observation of the influence of the Holy Spirit, has sometimes degenerated into folly, and sometimes been counterfeited for base purposes, cannot be denied. But it is not, therefore, fair to decry it when genuine. The principal argument in reason and good sense against methodism is, that it tends to debase human nature, and prevent the generous exertions of goodness, by an unworthy supposition that God will pay no regard to them; although it is positively said in the Scriptures that He ‘will reward every man according to his works.’ But I am happy to have it {in} my power to do justice to those whom it is the fashion to ridicule, without any knowledge of their tenets; and this I can do by quoting a passage from one of their best apologists, Mr. Milner, who thus expresses their doctrine upon this subject. ‘Justified by faith, renewed in his faculties, and constrained by the love of Christ, their believer moves in the sphere of love and gratitude, and all his duties flow more or less from this principle. And though they are accumulating for him in heaven a treasure of bliss proportioned to his faithfulness and activity, and it is by no means inconsistent with his principles to feel the force of this consideration, yet love itself sweetens every duty to his mind; and he thinks there is no absurdity in his feeling the love of God as the grand commanding principle of his life.’ Essays on several Religious Subjects, &c., by Joseph Milner, A.M., Master of the Grammar School of Kingston-upon-Hull, 1789, p. 11.

^a [Epigram, Lib. ii. ‘In Elizabeth. Angliae Reg.’]

^a My friend Sir Michael Le Fleming. This gentleman, with all his experience of sprightly and elegant life, inherits, with the beautiful family Domain, no inconsiderable share of that love of literature, which distinguished his venerable grandfather, the Bishop of Carlisle. He one day observed to me, of Dr. Johnson, in a felicity of phrase, ‘There is a blunt dignity about him on every occasion.’

^a [The second edition is here spoken of.]

^b Life of Johnson, p. 425.

^c From Sir Joshua Reynolds.

^d Life of Johnson, p. 425.

^a Letters to and from Dr. Johnson. Vol. ii. p. 278 {p. 387}.

^b Pr. and Med. p. 50.

^c Ibid. p. 51.

^d Ibid. p. 58.

^a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 316.

^a Sir Joshua’s sister, for whom Johnson had a particular affection, and to whom he wrote many letters which I have seen, and which I am sorry her too nice delicacy will not permit to be published.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 61.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 66.

^b Pr. and Med. p. 67.

^a Mrs. Burney informs me that she heard Dr. Johnson say, ‘An English Merchant is a new species of Gentleman.’ He, perhaps, had in his mind the following ingenious passage in The Conscious Lovers,²¹⁸ act iv. scene ii, where Mr. Sealand thus addresses Sir John Bevil: ‘Give me leave to say, that we merchants are a species of gentry that have grown into the world this last century, and are as honourable, and almost as useful as you landed-folks, that have always thought yourselves so much above us; for your trading forsooth is extended no farther than a load of hay, or a fat ox. – You are pleasant people indeed! because you are generally bred up to be lazy, therefore, I warrant you, industry is dishonourable.’

^a Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes, p. 279.

^a He was probably proposing to himself the model of this excellent person, who for his piety was named the Seraphic Doctor.

^a It is remarkable, that Mr. Gray has employed somewhat the same image to characterise Dryden. He, indeed, furnishes his car with but two horses, but they are of ‘ethereal race’:

‘Behold where Dryden’s less presumptuous car,

Wide o’er the fields of glory bear

Two coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder cloath’d, and long resounding pace.’

Ode on the Progress of Poesy.

^a Mr. Langton’s uncle.

^b The place of residence of Mr. Peregrine Langton.

^c Mr. Langton did not disregard this counsel, but wrote the following account, which he has been pleased to communicate to me:

‘The circumstances of Mr. Peregrine Langton were these. He had an annuity for life of two hundred pounds per annum. He resided in a village in Lincolnshire; the rent of his house, with two or three small fields, was twenty-eight pounds; the county he lived in was not more than moderately cheap; his family consisted of a sister, who paid him eighteen pounds annually for her board, and a niece. The servants were two maids, and two men in livery. His common way of living, at his table, was three or four dishes; the appurtenances to his table were neat and handsome; he frequently entertained company at dinner, and then his table was well served with as many dishes as were usual at the tables of the other gentlemen in the neighbourhood. His own appearance, as to clothes, was genteelly neat and plain. He had always a post-chaise, and kept three horses.

‘Such, with the resources I have mentioned, was his way of living, which he did not suffer to employ his whole income: for he had always a sum of money lying by him for any extraordinary expences that might arise. Some money he put into the stocks; at his death, the sum he had there amounted to one hundred and fifty pounds. He purchased out of his income his household furniture and linen, of which latter he had a very ample store; and, as I am assured by those that had very good means of knowing, not less than the tenth part of his income was set apart for charity: at the time of his death, the sum of twenty-five pounds was found, with a direction to be employed in such uses.

‘He had laid down a plan of living proportioned to his income, and did not practise any extraordinary degree of parsimony, but endeavoured that in his family there should be plenty without waste; as an instance that this was his endeavour, it may be worth while to mention a method he took in regulating a proper allowance of malt liquor to be drunk in his family, that there might not be a deficiency, or any intemperate profusion: On a complaint made that his allowance of a hogshead in a month, was not enough for his own family, he ordered the quantity of a hogshead to be put into bottles, had it locked up from the servants, and distributed out, every day, eight quarts, which is the quantity each day at one hogshead in a month; and told his servants, that if that did not suffice, he would allow them more; but, by this method, it appeared at once that the allowance was much more than sufficient for his small family; and this proved a clear conviction, that could not be answered, and saved all future dispute. He was, in general, very diligently and punctually attended and obeyed by his servants; he was very considerate as to the injunctions he gave, and explained them distinctly; and, at their first coming to his service, steadily exacted a close compliance with them, without any remission; and the servants finding this to be the case, soon grew habitually accustomed to the practice of their business, and then very little further attention was necessary. On extraordinary instances of good behaviour, or diligent service, he was not wanting in particular encouragements and presents above their wages; it is remarkable that he would permit their relations to visit them, and stay at his house two or three days at a time.

‘The wonder, with most that hear an account of his Æconomy, will be, how he was able, with such an income, to do so much, especially when it is considered that he paid for everything he had; he had no land, except the two or three small fields which I have said he rented; and, instead of gaining any thing by their produce, I have reason to think he lost by them; however, they furnished him with no further assistance towards his housekeeping, than grass for his horses, (not hay, for that I know he bought,) and for two cows. Every Monday morning he settled his family accounts, and so kept up a constant attention to the confining his expences within his income; and to do it more exactly, compared those expences with a computation he had made, how much that income would afford him every week and day of the year. One of his Æconomical practices was, as soon as any repair was wanting in or about his house, to have it immediately performed. When he had money to spare, he chose to lay in a provision of linen or clothes, or any other necessaries; as then, he said, he could afford it, which he might not be so well able to do when the actual want came; in consequence of which method, he had a considerable supply of necessary articles lying by him, beside what was in use.

‘But the main particular that seems to have enabled him to do so much with his income, was, that he paid for every thing as soon as he had it, except, alone, what were current accounts, such as rent for his house and servants’ wages; and these he paid at the stated times with the utmost exactness. He gave notice to the tradesmen of the neighbouring market-towns that they should no longer have his custom, if they let any of his servants have anything without their paying for it. Thus he put it out of his power to commit those imprudences to which those are liable that defer their payments by using their money some other way than where it ought to go. And whatever money he had by him, he knew that it was not demanded elsewhere, but that he might safely employ it as he pleased.

‘His example was confined, by the sequestered place of his abode, to the observation of few, though his prudence and virtue would have made it valuable to all who could have known it. – These few particulars, which I knew myself, or have obtained from those who lived with him, may afford instruction, and be an incentive to that wise art of living, which he so successfully practised.’

^a Of his being in the chair of The Literary Club, which at this time met once a week in the evening.

^a The passage omitted alluded to a private transaction.²²⁶

^b This censure of my Latin relates to the Dedication, which was as follows:

VIRO NOBILISSIMO, ORNATISSIMO,

JOANNI,

VICECOMITI MOUNTSTUART,

ATAVIS EDITO REGIBUS

EXCELS,! FAMILIE DE BUTE SPEI ALTERS;

LABENTE SECULO,

QUUM HOMINES NULLIUS ORIGINIS

GENUS SQUARE OPIBUS AGGREDIUNTUR,

SANGUINIS ANTIQUI ET ILLUSTRIS

SEMPER MEMORI,

NATALIUM SPLENDOREM VIRTUTIBUS AUGENTI:

AD PUBLICA POPULI COMITIA

JAM LEGATO;

IN OPTIMATIUM VERO MAGNi BRITANNIA SENATU,

JURE FSREDITARIO,

OLIM CONSESSURO:

VIM INSITAM VARIA DOCTRINA PROMOVENTE,

NEC TAMEN SE VENDITANTE,

PR^DITO:

PRISCA FIDE, ANIMO LIBERRIMO,

ET MORUM ELEGANTIA

INSIGNI:

IN ITALIC VISITAND^ ITINERE,

SOCIO SUO HONORATISSIMO,

HASCE JURISPRUDENTS PRIMITIAS

DEVINCTISSIM^ AMICITS ET OBSERVANTS

MONUMENTUM,

D. D. C. Q.

JACOBUS BOSWELL.²²⁷

^c This alludes to the first sentence of the Vrocemium of my Thesis: ‘Jurisprudents studio nullum uberius, nullum generosius: in legibus enim agitandis, populorum mores, variasque fortunes vices ex quibus leges oriuntur, contemplari simul solemus.’²²⁸

^a The passage omitted explained the transaction to which the preceding letter had alluded.

^a The Rev. Mr. John Campbell, Minister of the Parish of Kippen, near Stirling, who has lately favoured me with a long, intelligent, and very obliging letter upon this work, makes the following remark: – ‘Dr. Johnson has alluded to the worthy man employed in the translation of the New Testament. Might not this have afforded you an opportunity of paying a proper tribute of respect to the memory of the Rev. Mr. James Stuart, late Minister of Killin, distinguished by his eminent Piety, Learning and Taste? The amiable simplicity of his life, his warm benevolence, his indefatigable and successful exertions for civilizing and improving the Parish of which he was Minister for upwards of fifty years, entitle him to the gratitude of his country, and the veneration of all good men. It certainly would be a pity, if such a character should be permitted to sink into oblivion.’

^a This paragraph shews Johnson’s real estimation of the character and abilities of the celebrated Scottish Historian, however lightly, in a moment of caprice, he may have spoken of his works.

^b This is the person concerning whom Sir John Hawkins has thrown out very unwarrantable reflections both against Dr. Johnson and Mr. Francis Barber.

^a See an account of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786.

^b [The Hon. Thomas Hervey, whose Letter to Sir Thomas Hanmer in 1742 was much read at that time. He was the second son of John, first Earl of Bristol, and one of the brothers of Johnson’s early friend, Henry Hervey. He died Jan. 20, 1775.]

^a Dr. Johnson had the honour of contributing his assistance towards the formation of this library; for I have read a long letter from him to Mr. Barnard, giving the most masterly instructions on the subject. I wished much to have gratified my readers with the perusal of this letter, and have reason to think that his Majesty would have been graciously pleased to permit its publication; but Mr. Barnard, to whom I applied, declined it ‘on his own account.’

^a The particulars of this conversation I have been at great pains to collect with the utmost authenticity from Dr. Johnson’s own detail to myself; from Mr. Langton who was present when he gave an account of it to Dr. Joseph Warton, and several other friends, at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s; from Mr. Barnard; from the copy of a letter written by the late Mr. Strahan the printer, to Bishop Warburton; and from a minute, the original of which is among the papers of the late Sir James Caldwell, and a copy of which was most obligingly obtained for me from his son Sir John Caldwell, by Sir Francis Lumm. To all these gentlemen I beg leave to make my grateful acknowledgements, and particularly to Sir Francis Lumm, who was pleased to take a great deal of trouble, and even had the minute laid before the King by Lord Caermarthen, now Duke of Leeds, then one of his Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, who announced to Sir Francis the Royal pleasure concerning it by a letter, in these words: ‘I have the King’s commands to assure you, Sir, how sensible his Majesty is of your attention in communicating the minute of the conversation previous to its publication. As there appears no objection to your complying with Mr. Boswell’s wishes on the subject, you are at full liberty to deliver it to that gentleman, to make such use of in his Life of Dr. Johnson, as he may think proper.’

^a The Rev. Mr. Strahan clearly recollects having been told by Johnson, that the King observed that Pope made Warburton a Bishop. ‘True, Sir, (said Johnson,) but Warburton did more for Pope; he made him a Christian:’ alluding, no doubt, to his ingenious Comments on the Essay on Man.

^a It is proper here to mention, that when I speak of his correspondence, I consider it independent of the voluminous collection of letters which, in the course of many years, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, which forms a separate part of his works; and as a proof of the high estimation set on any thing which came from his pen, was sold by that lady for the sum of five hundred pounds.

^a Pr. and Med., pp. 77 and 78.

^b Ib., p. 73. On Aug. 17, he recorded: – ‘By abstinence from wine and suppers I obtained sudden and great relief, and had freedom of mind restored to me, which I have wanted for all this year, without being able to find any means of obtaining it.’ Ib. p. 74.

^c Ib., p. 81.

^a I should think it impossible not to wonder at the variety of Johnson’s reading, however desultory it may have been. Who could have imagined that the High Church of England-man would be so prompt in quoting Maupertuis, who, I am sorry to think, stands in the list of those unfortunate mistaken men, who call themselves esprits forts.²⁵² I have, however, a high respect for that Philosopher whom the Great Frederick of Prussia loved and honoured, and addressed pathetically in one of his Poems, –

‘Maupertuis, cher Maupertuis,

Que notre vie est peu de chose!’²⁵³

There was in Maupertuis a vigour and yet a tenderness of sentiment, united with strong intellectual powers, and uncommon ardour of soul. Would he had been a Christian! I cannot help earnestly venturing to hope that he is one now.

^a My respectable friend, upon reading this passage, observed, that he probably must have said not simply, ‘strong facts,’ but ‘strong facts well arranged.’ His lordship, however, knows too well the value of written documents to insist on setting his recollection against my notes taken at the time. He does not attempt to traverse the record. The fact, perhaps, may have been, either that the additional words escaped me in the noise of a numerous company, or that Dr. Johnson, from his impetuosity, and eagerness to seize an opportunity to make a lively retort, did not allow Dr. Douglas to finish his sentence.

^a See the hard drawing of him in Churchill’s Rosciad.

^b In which place he has been succeeded by Bennet Langton, Esq. When that truly religious gentleman was elected to this honorary Professorship, at the same time that Edward Gibbon, Esq., noted for introducing a kind of sneering infidelity into his Historical Writings, was elected Professor in Ancient History, in the room of Dr. Goldsmith, I observed that it brought to my mind, ‘Wicked Will Whiston and good Mr. Ditton.’²⁵⁶ I am now also of that admirable institution as Secretary for Foreign Correspondence, by the favour of the Academicians, and the approbation of the Sovereign.

^a It has this inscription in a blank leaf: –‘Hunc librum D. D. Samuel Johnson, eo quod hic loci studiis interdum vacaret.’²⁵⁷ Of this library, which is an old Gothick room, he was very fond. On my observing to him that some of the modern libraries of the University were more commodious and pleasant for study, as being more spacious and airy, he replied, ‘Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ-Church and All-Souls.’

^b During this visit he seldom or never dined out. He appeared to be deeply engaged in some literary work. Miss Williams was now with him at Oxford.

^c In the Preface to my Account of Corsica, published in 1768, I thus express myself:

‘He who publishes a book affecting not to be an authour, and professing an indifference for literary fame, may possibly impose upon many people such an idea of his consequence as he wishes may be received. For my part, I should be proud to be known as an authour, and I have an ardent ambition for literary fame; for, of all possessions, I should imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish a book, which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of having that character lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve an uniform dignity among those who see us every day, is hardly possible; and to aim at it, must put us under the fetters of perpetual restraint. The authour of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superior genius, when he considers that by those who know him only as an authour, he never ceases to be respected. Such an authour, when in his hours of gloom and discontent, may have the consolation to think, that his writings are, at that very time, giving pleasure to numbers; and such an authour may cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages.’

^a [The first edition of Hume’s History of England was full of Scotticisms, many of which he corrected in subsequent editions.]

^a His Lordship having frequently spoken in an abusive manner of Dr. Johnson, in my company, I on one occasion during the life-time of my illustrious friend could not refrain from retaliation, and repeated to him this saying. He has since published I don’t know how many pages in one of his curious books, attempting, in much anger, but with pitiful effect, to persuade mankind that my illustrious friend was not the great and good man which they esteemed and ever will esteem him to be.

^b A Wife, a poem, 1614.

^a Of whom I acknowledge myself to be one, considering it as a piece of the secondary or comparative species of criticism; and not of that profound species which alone Dr. Johnson would allow to be ‘real criticism.’ It is, besides, clearly and elegantly expressed, and has done effectually what it professed to do, namely, vindicated Shakspeare from the misrepresentations of Voltaire; and considering how many young people were misled by his witty, though false observations, Mrs. Montagu’s Essay was of service to Shakspeare with a certain class of readers, and is, therefore, entitled to praise. Johnson, I am assured, allowed the merit which I have stated, saying, (with reference to Voltaire,) ‘it is conclusive ad hominem.’²⁷⁶

^a When Mr. Foote was at Edinburgh, he thought fit to entertain a numerous Scotch company, with a great deal of coarse jocularity, at the expense of Dr. Johnson, imagining it would be acceptable. I felt this as not civil to me; but sat very patiently till he had exhausted his merriment on that subject; and then observed, that surely Johnson must be allowed to have some sterling wit, and that I had heard him say a very good thing of Mr. Foote himself. ‘Ah, my old friend Sam (cried Foote,) no man says better things; do let us have it.’ Upon which I told the above story, which produced a very loud laugh from the company. But I never saw Foote so disconcerted. He looked grave and angry, and entered into a serious refutation of the justice of the remark.’What, Sir, (said he,) talk thus of a man of liberal education; – a man who for years was at the University of Oxford; – a man who has added sixteen new characters to the English drama of his country!’

^a I have since had reason to think that I was mistaken; for I have been informed by a lady, who was long intimate with her, and likely to be a more accurate observer of such matters, that she had acquired such a niceness of touch, as to know, by the feeling on the outside of the cup, how near it was to being full.

^a An acute correspondent of the European Magazine, April, 1792, has completely exposed a mistake which has been unaccountably frequent in ascribing these lines to Blackmore, notwithstanding that Sir Richard Steele, in that very popular work, The Spectator, mentions them as written by the Authour of The British Princes, the Honourable Edward Howard. The correspondent above mentioned, shews this mistake to be so inveterate, that not only I defended the lines as Blackmore’s, in the presence of Dr. Johnson, without any contradiction or doubt of their authenticity, but that the Reverend Mr. Whitaker has asserted in print, that he understands they were suppressed in the late edition or editions of Blackmore. ‘After all (says this intelligent writer) it is not unworthy of particular observation, that these lines so often quoted do not exist either in Blackmore or Howard.’ In The British Princes, 8vo. 1669, now before me, p. 96, they stand thus: –

‘A vest as admir’d Voltiger had on,

Which, from this Island’s foes, his grandsire won,

Whose artful colour pass’d the Tyrian dye,

Oblig’d to triumph in this legacy.’

It is probable, I think, that some wag, in order to make Howard still more ridiculous than he really was, has formed the couplet as it now circulates.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 95 {p. 101}.

^a Son of the learned Mrs. Grierson, who was patronised by the late Lord Granville, and was the editor of several of the Classicks.

^a [In a Discourse by Sir William Jones, addressed to the Asiatick Society, Feb. 24, 1785, is the following passage: – ‘One of the most sagacious men in this age who continues, I hope, to improve and adorn it, Samuel Johnson, remarked in my hearing, that if Newton had flourished in ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a Divinity.’]

^a [These lines have been discovered by the author’s second son in the London Magazine for July, 1732, where they form part of a poem on Retirement, copied, with some slight variations, from one of Walsh’s smaller poems, entitled The Retirement. They exhibit another proof that Johnson retained in his memory fragments of neglected poetry. In quoting verses of that description, he appears by a slight variation to have sometimes given them a moral turn, and to have dexterously adapted them to his own sentiments, where the original had a very different tendency. In 1782, when he was at Brighthelmstone, he repeated to Mr. Metcalfe, some verses, as very characteristick of a celebrated historian.³⁰⁵ They are found among some anonymous poems appended to the second volume of a collection frequently printed by Lintot, under the title of Rope’s Miscellanies: –

‘See how the wand’ring Danube flows,

Realms and religions parting;

A friend to all true christian foes,

To Peter, Jack, and Martin.

Now Protestant, and Papist now,

Not constant long to either,

At length an infidel does grow,

And ends his journey neither.

Thus many a youth I’ve known set out,

Half Protestant, half Papist,

And rambling long the world about,

Turn infidel or atheist.’]

^a Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland’s Islands.

^b By comparing the first with the subsequent editions, this curious circumstance of ministerial authorship may be discovered.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 101 {p.105}.

^b Thus translated by a friend: –

In fame scarce second to the nurse of Jove,

This Goat, who twice the world had traversed round,

Deserving both her master’s care and love,

Ease and perpetual pasture now has found.’

^a Mr. Langton married the Countess Dowager of Rothes.

^a ‘To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

‘MY DEAR SIR,– ‘Edinburgh, May3, 1792.

‘As I suppose your great work will soon be reprinted, I beg leave to trouble you with a remark on a passage of it, in which I am a little misrepresented. Be not alarmed; the misrepresentation is not imputable to you. Not having the book at hand, I cannot specify the page, but I suppose you will easily find it. Dr. Johnson says, speaking of Mrs. Thrale’s family, “Dr. Beattie sunk upon us that he was married,” or words to that purpose. I am not sure that I understand sunk upon us, which is a very uncommon phrase, but it seems to me to imply, (and others, I find, have understood it in the same sense,) studiously concealed from us his being married. Now, Sir, this was by no means the case. I could have no motive to conceal a circumstance, of which I never was nor can be ashamed; and of which Dr. Johnson seemed to think, when he afterwards became acquainted with Mrs. Beattie, that I had, as was true, reason to be proud. So far was I from concealing her, that my wife had at that time almost as numerous an acquaintance in London as I had myself; and was, not very long after, kindly invited and elegantly entertained at Streatham by Mr. and Mrs. Thrale.

‘My request, therefore, is, that you would rectify this matter in your new edition. You are at liberty to make what use you please of this letter.

‘My best wishes ever attend you and your family. Believe me to be, with the utmost regard and esteem, dear Sir,

‘Your obliged and affectionate humble servant, ‘J. BEATTIE.’

I have, from my respect for my friend Dr. Beattie, and regard to his extreme sensibility, inserted the foregoing letter, though I cannot but wonder at his considering as any imputation a phrase commonly used among the best friends.

^a See p. 289.

^a [This fiction is known to have been invented by Daniel Defoe, and was added to Drelincourt’s book, to make it sell. The first edition had it not.]

^a This project has since been realized. Sir Henry Liddel, who made a spirited tour into Lapland, brought two reindeer to his estate in Northumberland, where they bred; but the race has unfortunately perished.

^b [There is no Preface to The Rehearsal as originally published. Dr. Johnson seems to have meant the Address to the Reader with a Key subjoined to it; which have been prefixed to the modern editions of that play. He did not know, it appears, that several additions were made to The Rehearsal after the first edition.]

^a it must not be presumed that dr. johnson meant to give any countenance to licentiousness, though in the character of an advocate he made a just and subtle distinction between occasional and habitual transgression.

^a Mr. Samuel Paterson, eminent for his knowledge of books.

^b Mr. Paterson, in a pamphlet, produced some evidence to show that his work was written before Sterne’s Sentimental Journey appeared.

^a See this curious question treated by him with most acute ability, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 33 {16 Aug.}.

^a Here was a blank, which may be filled up thus: – ‘was told by an apparition;’ – the writer being probably uncertain whether he was asleep or awake, when his mind was impressed with the solemn presentiment with which the fact afterwards happened so wonderfully to correspond.

^a It is remarkable, that Lord Monboddo, whom, on account of his resembling Dr. Johnson in some particulars, Foote called an Elzevir edition³⁴² of him, has, by coincidence, made the very same remark. Origin and Progress of Language, vol. iii. 2nd edit. p. 219.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 111.

^a Mrs. Piozzi, to whom I told this anecdote, has related it, as if the gentleman had given ‘the natural history of the mouse.’ Anec. p. 191.

^a Wilson against Smith and Armour.

^a Lord Kames, in his Historical Law Tracts.

^a He, however, wrote, or partly wrote, an Epitaph on Mrs. Bell, wife of his friend John Bell, Esq., brother of the Reverend Dr. Bell, Prebendary of Westminster, which is printed in his Works {i. 151}. It is in English prose, and has so little of his manner, that I did not believe he had any hand in it, till I was satisfied of the fact by the authority of Mr. Bell.

^b Given by a lady at Edinburgh.

^c There had been masquerades in Scotland; but not for a very long time.

^a This gentleman,³⁵⁸ who now resides in America in a publick character of considerable dignity, desired that his name might not be transcribed at full length.

^a Now Doctor White, and Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania. During his first visit to England in 1771, as a candidate for holy orders, he was several times in company with Dr. Johnson, who expressed a wish to see the edition of his Rasselas, which Dr. White told him had been printed in America. Dr. White, on his return immediately sent him a copy.

^a Afterwards Charles I.

^a ‘By inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the publick, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.’

^b See an account of this learned and respectable gentleman, and of his curious work on the Middle State, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 371 {25 Oct.}.

^a The humours of Ballamagairy.

^a I regretted that Dr. Johnson never took the trouble to study a question which interested nations. He would not even read a pamphlet which I wrote upon it, entitled The Essence of the Douglas Cause; which, I have reason to flatter myself, had considerable effect in favour of Mr. Douglas; of whose legitimate filiation I was then, and am still, firmly convinced. Let me add, that no fact can be more respectably ascertained, than by the judgement of the most august tribunal in the world; a judgement, in which Lord Mansfield and Lord Camden united in 1769, and from which only five of a numerous body entered a protest.

^a [It has already been observed (ante, 291), that one of his first Essays was a Latin Poem on a glow-worm; but whether it be any where extant, has not been ascertained.]

^a Ovid. de Art. Amand. i. iii. v. 13.

^b In allusion to Dr. Johnson’s supposed political principles, and perhaps his own.

^a Here is another instance of his high admiration of Milton as a Poet, notwithstanding his just abhorrence of that sour Republican’s political principles. His candour and discrimination are equally conspicuous. Let us hear no more of his ‘injustice to Milton’.

^a Dr. Johnson’s memory here was not perfectly accurate: Eugenio does not conclude thus. There are eight more lines after the last of those quoted by him; and the passage which he meant to recite is as follows: –

‘Say now ye fluttering, poor assuming elves,

Stark full of pride, of folly, of – yourselves;

Say where’s the wretch of all your impious crew

Who dares confront his character to view?

Behold Eugenio, view him o’er and o’er,

Then sink into yourselves, and be no more.’

Mr. Reed informs me that the Authour of Eugenio,³⁸⁰ a Wine Merchant at Wrexham in Denbighshire, soon after its publication, viz. 17th May, 1737, cut his own throat; and that it appears by Swift’s Works that the poem had been shewn to him, and received some of his corrections. Johnson had read Eugenio on his first coming to town, for we see it mentioned in one of his letters to Mr. Cave, which has been inserted in this work {p. 72}.

^b I formerly thought that I had perhaps mistaken the word, and imagined it to be Corps, from its similarity of sound to the real one. For an accurate and shrewd unknown gentleman, to whom I am indebted for some remarks on my work, observes on this passage – ‘Q. if not on the word Fort? A vociferous French preacher said of Bourdaloue, “Il preche fort bien, et moi bien fort.”³⁸³ - Menagiana. See also Anecdotes Litteraires, Article Bourdaloue.’ But my ingenious and obliging correspondent, Mr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia, has pointed out to me the following passage in Menagiana; which renders the preceding conjecture unnecessary, and confirms my original statement:

Mad de Bourdonne, Chanoinesse de Remiremont, venoit d entendre un discours plein de feu et d’esprit, mais fort peu solide, et tres-irregulier. Une de ses amies, qui y prenoit interet pour l’orateur, lui dit en sortant, “Eh bien, Mad, que vous semble-t-il de ce que vous venez d’entendre? – Qu’il y a d’esprit?” – “Il y a tant, repondit Mad de Bourdonne, que je n’y ai pas vu de corps.”³⁸⁴ – Menagiana, tome ii. p. 64. Amsterd. 1713.

^a Dr. Mayo’s calm temper and steady perseverance rendered him an admirable subject for the exercise of Dr. Johnson’s powerful abilities. He never flinched; but, after reiterated blows, remained seemingly unmoved as at the first. The scintillations of Johnson’s genius flashed every time he was struck, without his receiving any injury. Hence he obtained the epithet of The Literary Anvil.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 40.

^a The Reverend Thomas Bagshaw, M.A., who died on November 20, 1787, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, Chaplain of Bromley College, in Kent, and Rector of Southfleet. He had resigned the cure of Bromley Parish some time before his death. For this, and another letter from Dr. Johnson in 1784, to the same truely respectable man, I am indebted to Dr. John Loveday, of the Commons, a son of the late learned and pious John Loveday, Esq., of Caversham in Berkshire, who obligingly transcribed them for me from the originals in his possession. This worthy gentleman, having retired from business, now lives in Warwickshire. The world has been lately obliged to him as the Editor of the late Rev. Dr. Townson’s excellent work, modestly entitled, A Discourse on the Evangelical History, from the Interment to the Ascension of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; to which is prefixed, a truly interesting and pleasing account of the authour, by the Reverend Mr. Ralph Churton.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 129.

^b Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 131.

^a [The authour was not a small gainer by this extraordinary Journey; for Dr. Johnson thus writes to Mrs. Thrale, Nov. 3, 1773: – ‘Boswell will praise my resolution and perseverance, and I shall in return celebrate his good humour and perpetual cheerfulness. He has better faculties than I had imagined; more justness of discernment, and more fecundity of images. It is very convenient to travel with him; for there is no house where he is not received with kindness and respect.’ Let. 90, to Mrs. Thrale.]

^b Yet surely it is a very useful work, and of wonderful research and labour for one man to have executed.

^a In this he shewed a very acute penetration. My wife paid him the most assiduous and respectful attention, while he was our guest; so that I wonder how he discovered her wishing for his departure. The truth is, that his irregular hours and uncouth habits, such as turning the candles with their heads downwards, when they did not burn bright enough, and letting the wax drop upon the carpet, could not but be disagreeable to a lady. Besides, she had not that high admiration of him which was felt by most of those who knew him; and what was very natural to a female mind, she thought he had too much influence over her husband. She once in a little warmth, made, with more point than justice, this remark upon that subject: ‘I have seen many a bear led by a man: but I never before saw a man led by a bear.’

^b Sir Alexander Gordon, one of the Professors at Aberdeen.

^c This was a box containing a number of curious things which he had picked up in Scotland, particularly some horn spoons.

^a The Rev. Dr. Alexander Webster, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, a man of distinguished abilities, who had promised him information concerning the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 129.

^b The ancient Burgh of Prestwick, in Ayrshire.

^a A manuscript account drawn up by Dr. Webster of all the parishes in Scotland, ascertaining their length, breadth, number of inhabitants, and distinguishing Protestants and Roman Catholicks. This book had been transmitted to government, and Dr. Johnson saw a copy of it in Dr. Webster’s possession.

^a Iona.

^a Dr. Goldsmith died April 4, this year.

^a These books Dr. Johnson presented to the Bodleian Library.

^b On the cover enclosing them, Dr. Johnson wrote, ‘If my delay has given any reason for supposing that I have not a very deep sense of the honour done me by asking my judgement, I am very sorry.’

^a I HAD WRITTEN TO HIM, TO REQUEST HIS INTERPOSITION IN BEHALF OF A CONVICT,⁴¹⁶ WHO I THOUGHT WAS VERY UNJUSTLY CONDEMNED.

^a Mr. Perkins was for a number of years the worthy superintendant of Mr. Thrale’s great brewery, and after his death became one of the proprietors of it; and now resides in Mr. Thrale’s house in Southwark, which was the scene of so many literary meetings, and in which he continues the liberal hospitality for which it was eminent. Dr. Johnson esteemed him much. He hung up in the counting-house a fine proof of the admirable mezzotinto of Dr. Johnson, by Doughty; and when Mrs. Thrale asked him somewhat flippantly, ‘Why do you put him up in the counting-house?’ he answered, ‘Because, Madam, I wish to have one wise man there.’ ‘Sir,’ (said Johnson,) ‘I thank you. It is a very handsome compliment, and I believe you speak sincerely.’

^b In the news-papers.

^a Alluding to a passage in a letter of mine, where speaking of his Journey to the Hebrides, I say, ‘But has not The Patriot been an interruption, by the time taken to write it, and the time luxuriously spent in listening to its applauses?’

^b We had projected a voyage together up the Baltick, and talked of visiting some of the more northern regions.

^c Cleonice.

^a In the Court of Session of Scotland an action is first tried by one of the Judges, who is called the Lord Ordinary; and if either party is dissatisfied, he may appeal to the whole Court, consisting of fifteen, the Lord President and fourteen other Judges, who have both in and out of Court the title of Lords, from the name of their estates; as, Lord Auchinleck, Lord Monboddo, &c.

^a It should be recollected, that this fanciful description of his friend was given by Johnson after he himself had become a water-drinker.

^b See them in Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 337 {17 Oct.}.

^c He now sent me a Latin inscription for my historical picture of Mary Queen of Scots, and afterwards favoured me with an English translation. Mr. Alderman Boydell, that eminent Patron of the Arts, has subjoined them to the engraving from my picture.

‘Maria Scotorum Regina

Hominum seditiosorum

Contumeliis lassata,

Minis territa, clamoribus victa,

Libello, per quern

Regno cedit,

Lacrimans trepidansque

Nomen apponit/

‘Mary Queen of Scots,

Harassed, terrified, and overpowered

By the insults, menaces,

And clamours

Of her rebellious subjects,

Sets her hand,

With tears and confusion,

To a resignation of the kingdom.’

^a The learned and worthy Dr. Lawrence, whom Dr. Johnson respected and loved as his physician and friend.

^b My friend has, in this letter, relied upon my testimony, with a confidence, of which the ground has escaped my recollection.

^a I have deposited it in the British Museum.

^a See Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 520 {p. 431, conclusion}.

^a Page 103.

^a I observed with much regret, while the first edition of this work was passing through the press (Aug. 1790), that this ingenious gentleman was dead.

^a From a list in his hand-writing.

^a Of his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

^a Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, ed. 1775, p. 256.

^b This doubt has been much agitated on both sides, I think without good reason. See Addison’s Freeholder, May 4, 1714; –An Apology for the Tale of a Tub; – Dr. Hawkesworth’s Preface to Swift’s Works, and Swift’s Letter to Tooke the Printer, and Tooke’s Answer, in that collection; – Sheridan’s Life of Swift; – Mr. Courtenay’s note on p. 3 of his Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson; and Mr. Cooksey’s Essay onthe Life and Character of John Lord Somers, Baron of Evesham.

Dr. Johnson here speaks only to the internal evidence. I take leave to differ from him, having a very high estimation of the powers of Dr. Swift. His Sentiments of a Church-of England-man, his Sermon on the Trinity, and other serious pieces, prove his learning as well as his acuteness in logick and metaphysicks; and his various compositions of a different cast exhibit not only wit, humour, and ridicule; but a knowledge ‘of nature, and art, and life:’ a combination therefore of those powers, when (as the Apology says,) ‘the authour was young, his invention at the heighth, and his reading fresh in his head,’ might surely produce The Tale of a Tub.

^a This was not merely a cursory remark; for in his Life of Fenton he observes, ‘With many other wise and virtuous men, who at that time of discord and debate (about the beginning of this century) consulted conscience {whether} well or ill informed, more than interest, he doubted the legality of the government; and refusing to qualify himself for publick employment, by taking the oaths required, left the University without a degree.’ This conduct Johnson calls ‘perverseness of integrity.’

The question concerning the morality of taking oaths, of whatever kind, imposed by the prevailing power at the time, rather than to be excluded from all consequence, or even any considerable usefulness in society, has been agitated with all the acuteness of casuistry. It is related, that he who devised the oath of abjuration,⁴³⁷ profligately boasted that he had framed a test which should ‘damn one half of the nation, and starve the other.’ Upon minds not exalted to inflexible rectitude, or minds in which zeal for a party is predominant to excess, taking that oath against conviction may have been palliated under the plea of necessity, or ventured upon in heat, as upon the whole producing more good than evil.

At a county election in Scotland, many years ago, when there was a warm contest between the friends of the Hanoverian succession, and those against it, the oath of abjuration having been demanded, the freeholders upon one side rose to go away. Upon which a very sanguine gentleman, one of their number, ran to the door to stop them, calling out with much earnestness, ‘Stay, stay, my friends, and let us swear the rogues out of it!’

^a My noble friend Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, with a happy pleasantry and some truth, that ‘Dr. Johnson’s sayings would not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bow-wow way.’ The sayings themselves are generally of sterling merit; but, doubtless, his manner was an addition to their effect; and therefore should be attended to as much as may be. It is necessary, however, to guard those who were not acquainted with him, against overcharged imitations or caricatures of his manner, which are frequently attempted, and many of which are second-hand copies from the late Mr. Henderson the actor, who, though a good mimick of some persons, did not represent Johnson correctly.

^b See ‘Prosodia Rationalis; or, an Essay towards establishing the Melody and Measure of Speech, to be expressed and perpetuated by peculiar Symbols.’ London, 1779.

^c I use the phrase in score, as Dr. Johnson has explained it in his Dictionary: – ‘ A song in Score, the words with the musical notes of a song annexed.’ But I understand that in scientifick propriety it means all the parts of a musical composition noted down in the characters by which it is exhibited to the eye of the skilful.

^a Extracted from the Convocation Register, Oxford.

^b The original is in my possession. He shewed me the Diploma, and allowed me to read it, but would not consent to my taking a copy of it, fearing perhaps that I should blaze it abroad in his life-time. His objection to this appears from his 99th letter to Mrs. Thrale, whom in that letter he thus scolds for the grossness of her flattery of him: – ‘The other Oxford news is, that they have sent me a degree of Doctor of Laws, with such praises in the Diploma as perhaps ought to make me ashamed: they are very like your praises. I wonder whether I shall ever shew it to you.’

It is remarkable that he never, so far as I know, assumed his title of Doctor, but called himself Mr. Johnson, as appears from many of his cards or notes to myself; and I have seen many from him to other persons, in which he uniformly takes that designation. I once observed on his table a letter directed to him with the addition of Esquire, and objected to it as being a designation inferiour to that of Doctor; but he checked me, and seemed pleased with it, because, as I conjectured, he liked to be sometimes taken out of the class of literary men, and to be merely genteel, – un gentilhomme comme un autre.⁴⁴⁷

^a ‘The original is in the hands of Dr. Fothergill, then Vice-Chancellor, who made this transcript.’ T. Warton.

^a Johnson certainly did, who had a mind stored with knowledge, and teeming with imagery: but the observation is not applicable to writers in general.

^a There has probably been some mistake as to the terms of this supposed extraordinary contract, the recital of which from hearsay afforded Johnson so much play for his sportive acuteness. Or if it was worded as he supposed, it is so strange that I should conclude it was a joke. Mr. Gardner, I am assured, was a worthy and a liberal man.

^a There has probably been some mistake as to the terms of this supposed extraordinary contract, the recital of which from hearsay afforded Johnson so much play for his sportive acuteness. Or if it was worded as he supposed, it is so strange that I should conclude it was a joke. Mr. Gardner, I am assured, was a worthy and a liberal man.

^a ‘I was well; I would be better; and here I am.’

[Addison does not mention where this epitaph, which has eluded a very diligent inquiry, is found.]

^a See ante, p. 208.

^a Let me here be allowed to pay my tribute of most sincere gratitude to the memory of that excellent person, my intimacy with whom was the more valuable to me, because my first acquaintance with him was unexpected and unsolicited. Soon after the publication of my Account of Corsica, he did me the honour to call on me, and, approaching me with a frank courteous air, said, ‘My name, Sir, is Oglethorpe, and I wish to be acquainted with you.’ I was not a little flattered to be thus addressed by an eminent man, of whom I had read in Pope, from my early years,

‘Or, driven by strong benevolence of soul, Will fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.’⁴⁶⁵

I was fortunate enough to be found worthy of his good opinion, insomuch, that I not only was invited to make one in the many respectable companies whom he entertained at his table, but had a cover at his hospitable board every day when I happened to be disengaged; and in his society I never failed to enjoy learned and animated conversation, seasoned with genuine sentiments of virtue and religion.

^b The General seemed unwilling to enter upon it at this time; but upon a subsequent occasion he communicated to me a number of particulars, which I have committed to writing; but I was not sufficiently diligent in obtaining more from him, not apprehending that his friends were so soon to lose him; for, notwithstanding his great age, he was very healthy and vigorous, and was at last carried off by a violent fever, which is often fatal at any period of life.

^a From this too just observation there are some eminent exceptions.

^a The money arising from the property of the prizes taken before the declaration of war, which were given to his Majesty by the peace of Paris, and amounted to upwards of £700,000, and from the lands in the ceded islands, which were estimated at £200,000 more. Surely there was a noble munificence in this gift from a Monarch to his people. And let it be remembered, that during the Earl of Bute’s administration, the King was graciously pleased to give up the hereditary revenues of the Crown, and to accept, instead of them, of the limited sum of £800,000 a year; upon which Blackstone observes, that ‘The hereditary revenues, being put under the same management as the other branches of the publick patrimony, will produce more, and be better collected than heretofore; and the publick is a gainer of upwards of £100,000 per annum by this disinterested bounty of his Majesty.’ Book I. Chap. viii. p. 330.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 138.

^a [This is a proverbial sentence. ‘Hell,’ says Herbert, ‘is full of good meanings and wishings.’ Jacula Prudentum, p. 11, edit. 1651.]

^b

‘Amoret’s as sweet and good,

As the most delicious food;

Which but tasted does impart

Life and gladness to the heart.

Sacharissa’s beauty’s wine,

Which to madness does incline;

Such a liquor as no brain

That is mortal can sustain.’⁴⁸¹

^a See ante, p. 448.

^b A very eminent physician,⁴⁸⁷ whose discernment is as acute and penetrating in judging of the human character as it is in his own profession, remarked once at a club where I was, that a lively young man, fond of pleasure, and without money, would hardly resist a solicitation from his mistress to go upon the highway, immediately after being present at the representation of The Beggar’s Opera. I have been told of an ingenious observation by Mr. Gibbon, that ‘The Beggar’s Opera may, perhaps, have sometimes increased the number of highwaymen; but that it has had a beneficial effect in refining that class of men, making them less ferocious, more polite, in short, more like gentlemen.’ Upon this Mr. Courtenay said, that ‘Gay was the Orpheus of highwaymen.’

^a See ante, p. 432.

^b See ante, p. 418.

^a In justice to Dr. Memis, though I was against him as an Advocate, I must mention, that he objected to the variation very earnestly, before the translation was printed off.

^a My very honourable friend General Sir George Howard, who served in the Duke of Cumberland’s army, has assured me that the cruelties were not imputable to his Royal Highness.

^a A learned Greek.

^b Wife of the Rev. Mr. Kenneth Macaulay, authour of The History of St. Kilda.

^a A law-suit carried on by Sir Allan Maclean, Chief of his Clan, to recover certain parts of his family estates from the Duke of Argyle.

^b A very learned minister in the Isle of Sky, whom both Dr. Johnson and I have mentioned with regard.

^a My Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which that lady read in the original manuscript.

^a Another parcel of Lord Hailes’s Annals of Scotland.

^b Where Sir Joshua Reynolds lived.

^a Miss Thrale.

^a This alludes to my old feudal principle of preferring male to female succession.

^b There can be no doubt that many years previous to 1775 he corresponded with this lady, who was his step-daughter, but none of his earlier letters to her have been preserved.

^a Son of Mrs. Johnson, by her first husband.

^a The rest of this paragraph appears to be a minute of what was told by Captain Irwin.

^a Melchior Canus, a celebrated Spanish Dominican, who died at Toledo in 1560. He wrote a treatise De Locis Theologicis, in twelve books.

^b This passage, which some may think superstitious, reminds me of Archbishop Laud’s Diary.

^a His tender affection for his departed wife, of which there are many evidences in his Prayers and Meditations, appears very feelingly in this passage.

^a See p. 470.

^b This epithet should be applied to this animal, with one bunch.

^a He means, I suppose, that he read these different pieces while he remained in the library.

^a I have looked in vain into De Bure, Meerman, Mattaire, and other typographical books, for the two editions of the Catholicon, which Dr. Johnson mentions here, with names which I cannot make out. I read ‘one by Latinius {Lathomi}, one by Boedinus {Badius}.’ I have deposited the original MS. in the British Museum, where the curious may see it. My grateful acknowledgements are due to Mr. Planta for the trouble he was pleased to take in aiding my researches.

^a The writing is so bad here, that the names of several of the animals could not be decyphered without much more acquaintance with natural history than I possess. – Dr. Blagden, with his usual politeness, most obligingly examined the MS. To that gentleman, and to Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, who also very readily assisted me, I beg leave to express my best thanks.

^b It is thus written by Johnson, from the French pronunciation of fossane. It should be observed, that the person who shewed this Menagerie was mistaken in supposing the fossane and the Brasilian weasel to be the same, the fossane being a different animal, and a native of Madagascar. I find them, however, upon one plate in Pennant’s Synopsis of Quadrupeds.

^a My worthy and ingenious friend, Mr. Andrew Lumisden, by his accurate acquaintance with France, enabled me to make out many proper names, which Dr. Johnson had written indistinctly, and sometimes spelt erroneously.

^a Joseph Ritter, a Bohemian, who was in my service many years, and attended Dr. Johnson and me in our Tour to the Hebrides. After having left me for some time, he had now returned to me.

^a Acts of Parliament of Scotland, 1685, cap. 22.

^a As first, the opinion of some distinguished naturalists, that our species is transmitted through males only, the female being all along no more than a nidus, or nurse, as Mother Earth is to plants of every sort; which notion seems to be confirmed by that text of scripture, ‘He was yet in the loins of his father when Melchisedeck met him’ (Heb. vii. 10); and consequently, that a man’s grandson by a daughter, instead of being his surest descendant as is vulgarly said, has in reality no connection whatever with his blood. – And secondly, independent of this theory, (which, if true, should completely exclude heirs general,) that if the preference of a male to a female, without regard to primogeniture, (as a son, though much younger, nay, even a grandson by a son, to a daughter,) be once admitted, as it universally is, it must be equally reasonable and proper in the most remote degree of descent from an original proprietor of an estate, as in the nearest; because, – however distant from the representative at the time, – that remote heir male, upon the failure of those nearer to the original proprietor than he is, becomes in fact the nearest male to him, and is, therefore, preferable as his representative, to a female descendant. – A little extension of mind will enable us easily to perceive that a son’s son, in continuation to whatever length of time, is preferable to a son’s daughter, in the succession to an ancient inheritance; in which regard should be had to the representation of the original proprietor, and not to that of one of his descendants.

I am aware of Blackstone’s admirable demonstration of the reasonableness of the legal succession, upon the principle of there being the greatest probability that the nearest heir of the person who last dies proprietor of an estate, is of the blood of the first purchaser. But supposing a pedigree to be carefully authenticated through all its branches, instead of mere probability there will be a certainty that the nearest heir male, at whatever period, has the same right of blood with the first heir male, namely, the original purchaser’s eldest son.

^a Which term I applied to all the heirs male.

^a I had reminded him of his observation mentioned, ante, p. 400.

^a The entail framed by my father with various judicious clauses, was executed by him and me, settling the estate upon the heirs male of his grandfather, which I found had been already done by my grandfather, imperfectly, but so as to be defeated only by selling the lands. I was freed by Dr. Johnson from scruples of conscientious obligation, and could, therefore, gratify my father. But my opinion and partiality for male succession, in its full extent, remained unshaken. Yet let me not be thought harsh or unkind to daughters: for my notion is, that they should be treated with great affection and tenderness, and always participate of the prosperity of the family.

^a A letter to him on the interesting subject of the family settlement, which I had read.

^a I suppose the complaint was, that the trustees of the Oxford Press did not allow the London booksellers a sufficient profit upon vending their publications.

^a I am happy in giving this full and clear statement to the publick, to vindicate, by the authority of the greatest authour of his age, that respectable body of men, the Booksellers of London, from vulgar reflections, as if their profits were exorbitant, when, in truth, Dr. Johnson has here allowed them more than they usually demand.

^b He said, when in Scotland, that he was Johnson of that Ilk.

^c See ante, p. 221.

^a The privilege of perpetuating in a family an estate and arms indefeasibly from generation to generation, is enjoyed by none of his Majesty’s subjects except in Scotland, where the legal fiction of fine and recovery is unknown. It is a privilege so proud, that I should think it would be proper to have the exercise of it dependent on the royal prerogative. It seems absurd to permit the power of perpetuating their representation, to men, who having had no eminent merit, have truly no name. The King, as the impartial father of his people, would never refuse to grant the privilege to those who deserved it.

^a It has been mentioned to me by an accurate English friend, that Dr. Johnson could never have used the phrase almost nothing, as not being English;⁵⁵⁵ and therefore I have put another in its place. At the same time, I am not quite convinced it is not good English. For the best writers use the phrase ‘Little or nothing;’ i.e. almost so little as to be nothing.

^a Sir John Hawkins has preserved very few Memorabilia of JOHNSON. There is, however, to be found, in his bulky tome, a very excellent one upon this subject: – ‘In contradiction to those, who, having a wife and children, prefer domestick enjoyments to those which a tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity. – “As soon,” said he, “as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude: when I am seated, I find the master courteous, and the servants obsequious to my call; anxious to know and ready to supply my wants: wine there exhilarates my spirits, and prompts me to free conversation and an interchange of discourse with those whom I most love: I dogmatise and am contradicted, and in this conflict of opinions and sentiments I find delight.” ‘⁵⁶¹

^b We happened to lie this night at the inn at Henley, where Shenstone wrote these lines. I give them as they are found in the corrected edition of his Works, published after his death. In Dodsley’s collection the stanza ran thus: –

‘Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round,

Whate’er his various tour has been.

May sigh to think how oft he found

His warmest welcome at an Inn.’

^c ‘He too often makes use of the abstract for the concrete.’ Shenstone.

^a Such is this little laughable incident, which has been often related. Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, who was an intimate friend of Dr. Grainger, and has a particular regard for his memory, has communicated to me the following explanation: –

‘The passage in question was originally not liable to such a perversion; for the authour having occasion in that part of his work to mention the havock made by rats and mice, had introduced the subject in a kind of mock heroick, and a parody of Homer’s battle of the frogs and mice,⁵⁶³ invoking the Muse of the old Grecian bard in an elegant and well-turned manner. In that state I had seen it; but afterwards, unknown to me and other friends, he had been persuaded, contrary to his own better judgement, to alter it, so as to produce the unlucky effect above-mentioned.’

The above was written by the Bishop when he had not the Poem itself to recur to; and though the account given was true of it at one period, yet as Dr. Grainger afterwards altered the passage in question, the remarks in the text do not now apply to the printed poem.

The Bishop gives this character of Dr. Grainger: – ‘He was not only a man of genius and learning, but had many excellent virtues; being one of the most generous, friendly, and benevolent men I ever knew.’

^a Dr. Johnson said to me, ‘Percy, Sir, was angry with me for laughing at The Sugar-Cane: for he had a mind to make a great thing of Grainger’s rats.’

^a My worthy friend Mr. Langton, to whom I am under innumerable obligations in the course of my Johnsonian History, has furnished me with a droll illustration of this question. An honest carpenter, after giving some anecdote in his presence of the ill-treatment which he had received from a clergyman’s wife, who was a noted termagant, and whom he accused of unjust dealing in some transaction with him, added, ‘I took care to let her know what I thought of her.’ And being asked, ‘What did you say?’ answered, ‘I told her she was a scoundrel.’

^a John iii. 30.

^a I went through the house where my illustrious friend was born, with a reverence with which it doubtless will long be visited. An engraved view of it, with the adjacent buildings, is in The Gent. Mag. for Feb. 1785.

^a See an accurate and animated statement of Mr. Gastrel’s barbarity, by Mr. Malone, in a note on Some account of the Life of William Shakspeare, prefixed to his admirable edition of that poet’s works, vol. i. p. 118.

^a [Sir Fletcher Norton, afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons, and in 1782 created Baron Grantley.]

^a Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 176.

^a The phrase ‘vexing thoughts,’ is, I think, very expressive. It has been familiar to me from my childhood; for it is to be found in the Psalms in Metre, used in the churches (I believe I should say kirks) of Scotland, Psal. xliii. v. 5;

‘Why art thou then cast down, my soul?

What should discourage thee?

And why with vexing thoughts art thou

Disquieted in me?’

Some allowance must no doubt be made for early prepossession. But at a maturer period of life, after looking at various metrical versions of the Psalms, I am well satisfied that the version used in Scotland is, upon the whole, the best; and that it is vain to think of having a better. It has in general a simplicity and unction of sacred Poesy; and in many parts its transfusion is admirable.

^a Dr. Adam Smith, who was for some time a Professor in the University of Glasgow, has uttered, in his Wealth of Nations, some reflections upon this subject which are certainly not well founded, and seem to be invidious.

^a Dr. Goldsmith was dead before Mr. Maclaurin discovered the ludicrous errour. But Mr. Nourse, the bookseller, who was the proprietor of the work, upon being applied to by Sir John Pringle, agreed very handsomely to have the leaf on which it was contained cancelled, and re-printed without it, at his own expence.

^b What Dr. Johnson has here said, is undoubtedly good sense; yet I am afraid that law, though defined by Lord Coke ‘the perfection of reason,’ is not altogether with him; for it is held in the books, that an attack on the reputation even of a dead man, may be punished as a libel, because tending to a breach of the peace. There is, however, I believe, no modern decided case to that effect. In the King’s Bench, Trinity Term, 1790, the question occurred on occasion of an indictment, The King v. Topham, who, as a proprietor of a news-paper entitled The World, was found guilty of a libel against Earl Cowper, deceased, because certain injurious charges against his Lordship were published in that paper. An arrest of Judgement having been moved for, the case was afterwards solemnly argued. My friend Mr. Const, whom I delight in having an opportunity to praise, not only for his abilities but his manners; a gentleman whose ancient German blood has been mellowed in England, and who may be truely said to unite the Baron and the Barrister, was one of the Counsel for Mr. Topham. He displayed much learning and ingenuity upon the general question; which, however, was not decided, as the Court granted an arrest chiefly on the informality of the indictment. No man has a higher reverence for the law of England than I have; but, with all deference I cannot help thinking, that prosecution by indictment, if a defendant is never to be allowed to justify, must often be very oppressive, unless Juries, whom I am more and more confirmed in holding to be judges of law as well as of fact, resolutely interpose. Of late an act of Parliament has passed declaratory of their full right to one as well as the other, in matter of libel; and the bill having been brought in by a popular gentleman,⁵⁸⁵ many of his party have in most extravagant terms declaimed on the wonderful acquisition to the liberty of the press. For my own part I ever was clearly of opinion that this right was inherent in the very constitution of a Jury, and indeed in sense and reason inseparable from their important function. To establish it, therefore, by Statute, is, I think, narrowing its foundation, which is the broad and deep basis of Common Law. Would it not rather weaken the right of primogeniture, or any other old and universally-acknowledged right, should the legislature pass an act in favour of it? In my Letter to the People of Scotland, against diminishing the number of the Lords of Session, published in 1785, there is the following passage, which, as a concise, and I hope a fair and rational state of the matter, I presume to quote: ‘The Juries of England are Judges of law as well as of fact, in many civil, and in all criminal trials. That my principles of resistance may not be misapprehended any more than my principles of submission, I protest that I should be the last man in the world to encourage Juries to contradict rashly, wantonly, or perversely, the opinion of the Judges. On the contrary, I would have them listen respectfully to the advice they receive from the Bench, by which they may be often well directed in forming their own opinion; which, “and not another’s,” is the opinion they are to return upon their oaths. But where, after due attention to all that the Judge has said, they are decidedly of a different opinion from him, they have not only a power and a right, but they are bound in conscience to bring in a verdict accordingly.’

^a A gentleman, who from his extraordinary stores of knowledge, has been stiled omniscient. Johnson, I think very properly, altered it to all-knowing, as it is a verbum solenne,⁵⁸⁷ appropriated to the Supreme Being.

^a This Mr. Ellis was, I believe, the last of that profession called Scriveners, which is one of the London companies, but of which the business is no longer carried on separately, but is transacted by attornies and others. He was a man of literature and talents. He was the authour of a Hudibrastick version of Maphaeus’s Canto, in addition to the ALneid; of some poems in Dodsley’s Collections; and various other small pieces; but being a very modest man, never put his name to anything. He shewed me a translation which he had made of Ovid’s Epistles, very prettily done. There is a good engraved portrait of him by Pether, from a picture by Fry, which hangs in the hall of the Scriveners’ company. I visited him October 4, 1790, in his ninety-third year, and found his judgement distinct and clear, and his memory, though faded so as to fail him occasionally, yet, as he assured me, and I indeed perceived, able to serve him very well, after a little recollection. It was agreeable to observe, that he was free from the discontent and fretfulness which too often molest old age. He in the summer of that year walked to Rotherhithe, where he dined, and walked home in the evening. He died on the 31st of December, 1791.

^a Lord Macartney, who with his other distinguished qualities, is remarkable also for an elegant pleasantry, told me, that he met Johnson at Lady Craven’s, and that he seemed jealous of any interference: ‘So, (said his Lordship, smiling,) I kept back.’

^b There is an account of him in Sir John Hawkins’s Life of Johnson.

^c I have in vain endeavoured to find out what parts Johnson wrote for Dr. James. Perhaps medical men may.

^a Patrick, Lord Elibank, who died in 1778.

^a ‘Nunquam enim nisi navi plena tollo vectorem.’⁵⁹⁰ Lib. ii. c. vi.

^a In the Monthly Review for May, 1792, there is such a correction of the above passage, as I should think myself very culpable not to subjoin. ‘This account is very inaccurate. The following statement of facts we know to be true, in every material circumstance: – Shiels was the principal collector and digester of the materials for the work: but as he was very raw in authourship, an indifferent writer in prose, and his language full of Scotticisms, Cibber, who was a clever, lively fellow, and then soliciting employment among the booksellers, was engaged to correct the style and diction of the whole work, then intended to make only four volumes, with power to alter, expunge, or add, as he liked. He was also to supply notes, occasionally, especially concerning those dramatick poets with whom he had been chiefly conversant. He also engaged to write several of the Lives; which, (as we are told,) he, accordingly, performed. He was farther useful in striking out the Jacobitical and Tory sentiments, which Shiels had industriously interspersed wherever he could bring them in: – and, as the success of the work appeared, after all, very doubtful, he was content with twenty-one pounds for his labour beside a few sets of the books, to disperse among his friends. – Shiels had nearly seventy pounds, beside the advantage of many of the best Lives in the work being communicated by friends to the undertaking; and for which Mr. Shiels had the same consideration as for the rest, being paid by the sheet, for the whole. He was, however, so angry with his Whiggish supervisor, (Theo., like his father, being a violent stickler for the political principles which prevailed in the Reign of George the Second,) for so unmercifully mutilating his copy, and scouting his politicks, that he wrote Cibber a challenge: but was prevented from sending it, by the publisher, who fairly laughed him out of his fury. The proprietors, too, were discontented, in the end, on account of Mr. Cibber’s unexpected industry; for his corrections and alterations in the proof-sheets were so numerous and considerable, that the printer made for them a grievous addition to his bill; and, in fine, all parties were dissatisfied. On the whole, the work was productive of no profit to the undertakers, who had agreed, in case of success, to make Cibber a present of some addition to the twenty guineas which he had received, and for which his receipt is now in the booksellers’ hands. We are farther assured, that he actually obtained an additional sum; when he, soon after, (in the year 1758,) unfortunately embarked for Dublin, on an engagement for one of the theatres there: but the ship was cast away, and every person on board perished. There were about sixty passengers, among whom was the Earl of Drogheda, with many other persons of consequence and property.

‘As to the alledged design of making the compilement pass for the work of old Mr. Cibber, the charges seem to have been founded on a somewhat uncharitable construction. We are assured that the thought was not harboured by some of the proprietors, who are still living; and we hope that it did not occur to the first designer of the work, who was also the printer of it, and who bore a respectable character.

‘We have been induced to enter thus Circumstantially into the foregoing detail of facts relating to The Lives of the Poets, compiled by Messrs. Cibber and Shiels, from a sincere regard to that sacred principle of Truth, to which Dr. Johnson so rigidly adhered, according to the best of his knowledge; and which we believed, no consideration would have prevailed on him to violate. In regard to the matter, which we now dismiss, he had, no doubt, been misled by partial and wrong information: Shiels was the Doctor’s amanuensis; he had quarrelled with Cibber; it is natural to suppose that he told his story in his own way; and it is certain that he was not “a very sturdy moralist”.’ This explanation appears to me very satisfactory. It is, however, to be observed, that the story told by Johnson does not rest solely upon my record of his conversation; for he himself has published it in his Life of Hammond, where he says, ‘the manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession.’ Very probably he had trusted to Shiels’s word, and never looked at it so as to compare it with The Lives of the Poets, as published under Mr. Cibber’s name. What became of that manuscript I know not. I should have liked much to examine it. I suppose it was thrown into the fire in that impetuous combustion of papers, which Johnson I think rashly executed, when moribundus.⁵⁹⁴

^a Sir Edward Barry, Baronet.

^a See ante, note, p. 534.

^b A noted highwayman, who after having been several times tried and acquitted, was at last hanged. He was remarkable for foppery in his dress, and particularly for wearing a bunch of sixteen strings at the knees of his breeches.

^c See an ingenious Essay on this subject by the late Dr. Moor, Greek Professor at Glasgow.

^a We have here an involuntary testimony to the excellence of this admirable writer, to whom we have seen that Dr. Johnson directly allowed so little merit.

^b Mr. Romney, the painter, who has now deservedly established a high reputation.

^c See ante, p. 535.

^a I am sorry that there are no memoirs of the Reverend Robert Blair, the authour of this poem. He was the representative of the ancient family of Blair, of Blair, in Ayrshire, but the estate had descended to a female, and afterwards passed to the son of her husband by another marriage. He was minister of the parish of Athelstanford, where Mr. John Home was his successor; so that it may truely be called classick ground. His son, who is of the same name, and a man eminent for talents and learning, is now, with universal approbation, Solicitor-General of Scotland.

^a Mr. Tyrwhitt, Mr. Warton, Mr. Malone.

^a It may be observed, that Mr. Malone, in his very valuable edition of Shakspeare, has fully vindicated Dr. Johnson from the idle censures which the first of these notes has given rise to. The interpretation of the other passage, which Dr. Johnson allows to be disputable, he has clearly shown to be erroneous.

^a As a proof of Dr. Johnson’s extraordinary powers of composition, it appears from the original manuscript of this excellent dissertation, of which he dictated the first eight paragraphs on the 10th of May, and the remainder on the 13th, that there are in the whole only seven corrections, or rather variations, and those not considerable. Such were at once the vigorous and accurate emanations of his mind.

^a It is curious to observe that Lord Thurlow has here, perhaps in compliment to North Britain, made use of a term of the Scotch Law, which to an English reader may require explanation. To qualify a wrong, is to point out and establish it.

^a this has been circulated as if actually said by johnson; when the truth is, it was only supposed by me.

^a See p. 522.

^a Johnson’s London, a poem, v. 145.

^a Foote told me that Johnson said of him, ‘For loud obstreperous broad-faced mirth, I know not his equal.’

^a See ante, p. 213.

^a My very pleasant friend himself, as well as others who remember old stories, will no doubt be surprized, when I observe that John Wilkes here shews himself to be of the Warburtonian School. It is nevertheless true, as appears from Dr. Hurd the Bishop of Worcester’s very elegant commentary and notes on the ‘Epistola ad Pisones.‘⁶⁴³

It is necessary to a fair consideration of the question, that the whole passage in which the words occur should be kept in view:

‘Si quid inexpertum scence committis, et audes

Personam formare novam, servetur ad imum

Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.

Difficile est proprie communia dicere: tuque

Rectius lliacum carmen deducts in actus,

Quäm siproferres ignota indictaque primus.

Publica materies privati juris erit, si

Non circa vilem patulumque moraberis orbem,

Nee verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus

Interpres; nee desilies imitator in artum

Unde pedem proferre pudor vetet aut opens lex.’⁶⁴⁴

The ‘Commentary’ thus illustrates it: ‘But the formation of quite new characters is a work of great difficulty and hazard. For here there is no generally received and fixed archetype to work after, but every one judges of common right, according to the extent and comprehension of his own idea; therefore he advises to labour and refit old characters and subjects, particularly those made known and authorised by the practice of Homer and the Epick writers.’

The ‘Note’ is,

‘Difficile est proprie communia dicere.’ Lambin’s Comment is ‘Communia hoc loco appellat Horatius argumenta fabularum a nullo adhuc tractata: et ita, quce cuivis exposita sunt et in medio quodammodo posita, quasi vacua et ä nemine occupata.’⁶⁴⁵ And that this is the true meaning of communia is evidently fixed by the words ignota indictaque,⁶⁴⁶ which are explanatory of it; so that the sense given it in the commentary is unquestionably the right one. Yet, notwithstanding the clearness of the case, a late critick has this strange passage: ‘Difficile quidem esse proprie communia dicere, hoc est, materiam vulgärem, notam et e medio petitam, ita immutare atque exornare, ut nova et scriptori propria videatur, ultro concedimus; et maximi procul dubio ponderis ista est observatio. Sed omnibus utrinque collatis, et turn difficilis, turn venusti, tarn judicii quam ingenii ratione habitä, major videtur esse gloria fabulam formare penitus novam, quäm veterem, uteunque mutatam, de

novo exhibere.’ (Poet. Prael. v. ii. p. 164.)⁶⁴⁷ Where, having first put a wrong construction on the word communia, he employs it to introduce an impertinent criticism. For where does the poet prefer the glory of refitting old subjects to that of inventing new ones? The contrary is implied in what he urges about the superiour difficulty of the latter, from which he dissuades his countrymen, only in respect of their abilities and inexperience in these matters; and in order to cultivate in them, which is the main view of the Epistle, a spirit of correctness, by sending them to the old subjects, treated by the Greek writers.

For my own part (with all deference for Dr. Hurd, who thinks the case clear,) I consider the passage, ‘Difficile est proprie communia dicere,’ to be a crux for the criticks on Horace.

The explication which My Lord of Worcester treats with so much contempt, is nevertheless countenanced by authority which I find quoted by the learned Baxter in his edition of Horace: ‘Difficile est proprie communia dicere, h. e. res vulgares disertis verbis enarrare, vel humile thema cum dignitate tractare. Difficile est communes res propriis explicare verbis. Vet. Schol.’⁶⁴⁸I was much disappointed to find that the great critick, Dr. Bentley, has no note upon this very difficult passage, as from his vigorous and illuminated mind I should have expected to receive more satisfaction than I have yet had.

Sanadon thus treats of it: ‘Proprie communia dicere; c’est a dire, qu’il n’est pas aise de former Ü ces personnages d’imagination, des caracteres particuliers et cependant vraisemblables. Comme Von a ete le maitre de les former tels qu’on a voulu, les fautes que Von fait en cela sont moins pardonnables. C’est pourquoi Horace conseille de prendre toujours des sujets connus tels que sont par exemple ceux que Von peut tirer des poemes d‘Homere.’⁶⁴⁹

And Dacier observes upon it, ‘Apres avoir marque les deux qualites qu’il faut donner aux personnages qu’on invente, il conseille aux Poetes tragiques, de n’user pas trop facilement de cette liberte quils ont d’en inventer, car il est tres difficile de reussir dans ces nouveaux caracteres. Il est mal aise, dit Horace, de traiter propre-ment, c’est Ü dire convenablement, des sujets communs; c’est Ü dire, des sujets inventes, et qui n’ont aucun fondement ni dans V Histoire ni dans la Fable; et il les appelle communs, parce qu’ils sont en disposition ä tout le monde, et que tout le monde a le droit de les inventer, et qu’ils sont, comme on dit, au premier occupant.’⁶⁵⁰ See his observations at large on this expression and the following.

After all, I cannot help entertaining some doubt whether the words, Difficile est proprie communia dicere, may not have been thrown in by Horace to form a separate article in a ‘choice of difficulties’ which a poet has to encounter, who chooses a new subject; in which case it must be uncertain which of the various explanations is the true one, and every reader has a right to decide as it may strike his own fancy. And even should the words be understood as they generally are, to be connected both with what goes before and what comes after, the exact sense cannot be absolutely ascertained; for instance, whether proprie is meant to signify in an appropriated manner, as Dr. Johnson here understands it, or, as it is often used by Cicero, with propriety, or elegantly. In short, it is a rare instance of a defect in perspicuity in an admirable writer, who with almost every species of excellence, is peculiarly remarkable for that quality. The length of this note perhaps requires an apology. Many of my readers, I doubt not, will admit that a critical discussion of a passage in a favourite classick is very engaging.

^a It would not become me to expatiate on this strong and pointed remark, in which a very great deal of meaning is condensed.

^a These words must have been in the other copy. They are not in that which was preferred.

^a He however, upon seeing Dr. Warton’s name to the suggestion, that the Epitaph should be in English, observed to Sir Joshua, ‘I wonder that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool.’ He said too, ‘I should have thought Mund Burke would have had more sense.’ Mr. Langton, who was one of the company at Sir Joshua’s, like a sturdy scholar, resolutely refused to sign the Round Robin. The Epitaph is engraved upon Dr. Goldsmith’s monument without any alteration. At another time, when somebody⁶⁵⁷ endeavoured to argue in favour of its being in English, Johnson said, ‘The language of the country of which a learned man was a native, is not the language fit for his epitaph, which should be in ancient and permanent language. Consider, Sir; how you should feel, were you to find at Rotterdam an epitaph upon Erasmus in Dutch!’ For my own part I think it would be best to have Epitaphs written both in a learned language, and in the language of the country; so that they might have the advantage of being more universally understood, and at the same time be secured of classical stability. I cannot, however, but be of opinion, that it is not sufficiently discriminative. Applying to Goldsmith equally the epithets of ‘Poetæ, Historici, Physici,’ is surely not right; for as to his claim to the last of those epithets, I have heard Johnson himself say, ‘Goldsmith, Sir, will give us a very fine book upon the subject; but if he can distinguish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of his knowledge of natural history.’ His book is indeed an excellent performance, though in some instances he appears to have trusted too much to Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the science on which he wrote so admirably. For instance, he tells us that the cow sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable errour, which Goldsmith has faithfully transferred into his book. It is wonderful that Buffon, who lived so much in the country, at his noble seat, should have fallen into such a blunder. I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer.

^a Beside this Latin Epitaph, Johnson honoured the memory of his friend Goldsmith with a short one in Greek. See ante, July 5, 1774.

^b Upon a settlement of our account of expences on a Tour to the Hebrides, there was a balance due to me, which Dr. Johnson chose to discharge by sending books.

^c Baretti told me that Johnson complained of my writing very long letters to him when I was upon the continent; which was most certainly true; but it seems my friend did not remember it.

^a The son of Johnson’s old friend, Mr. William Drummond. (See pp. 279–81.) He was a young man of such distinguished merit, that he was nominated to one of the medical professorships in the College of Edinburgh without solicitation while he was at Naples. Having other views, he did not accept of the honour, and soon afterwards died.

^a A Florentine nobleman, mentioned by Johnson in his Notes of his Tour in France. I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with him in London, in the spring of this year.

^a Why his Lordship uses the epithet pleasantly, when speaking of a grave piece of reasoning, I cannot conceive. But different men have different notions of pleasantry. I happened to sit by a gentleman one evening at the Opera-house in London, who, at the moment when Medea appeared to be in great agony at the thought of killing her children, turned to me with a smile, and said, ‘funny enough.’

^b Dr. Johnson afterwards told me, that he was of opinion that a clergyman had this right.

^a For this and Dr. Johnson’s other letters to Mr. Levett, I am indebted to my old acquaintance Mr. Nathaniel Thomas, whose worth and ingenuity have been long known to a respectable, though not a wide circle; and whose collection of medals would do credit to persons of greater opulence.

^a Pr. and Med. p. 155.

^b Ib. p. 158.

^a For a character of this very amiable man, see Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 36 {17 Aug.}.

^b By the then course of the post, my long letter of the 14th had not yet reached him.

^c History of Philip the Second.

^a Johnson is the most common English formation of the Sirname from John; Johnston the Scotch. My illustrious friend observed that many North Britons pronounced his name in their own way.

^b On account of their differing from him as to religion and politicks.