Dr. Johnson’s knowledge and esteem of what we call low or coarse life was indeed prodigious; and he did not like that the upper ranks should be dignified with the name ofthe world. Sir Joshua Reynolds said one day that nobodyworelaced coats now; and that once everybody wore them. “See, now,” says Johnson, “how absurd that is; as if the bulk of mankind consisted of fine gentlemen that came to him to sit for their pictures. If every man who wears a laced coat (that he can pay for) was extirpated, who would miss them?” With all this haughty contempt of gentility, no praise was more welcome to Dr. Johnson than that which said he had the notions or manners of a gentleman: which character I have heard him define with accuracy, and describe with elegance. “Officers,” he said, “were falsely supposed to have the carriage of gentlemen; whereas no profession left a stronger brand behind it than that of a soldier; and it was the essence of a gentleman’s character to bear the visible mark of no profession whatever.” He once named Mr. Berenger as the standard of true elegance; but some one objecting that he too much resembled the gentleman in Congreve’s comedies, Mr. Johnson said, “We must fix them upon the famous Thomas Hervey, whose manners were polished even to acuteness and brilliancy, though he lost but little in solid power of reasoning, and in genuine force of mind.” Mr. Johnson had, however, an avowed and scarcely limited partiality for all who bore the name or boasted the alliance of an Aston or a Hervey; and when Mr. Thrale once asked him which had been the happiest period of his past life? he replied, “It was that year in which he spent one whole evening with M---y As--n. That, indeed,” said he, “was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year.” I must add that the evening alluded to was not passed tete-a-tete, but in a select company, of which the present Lord Killmorey was one. “Molly,” says Dr. Johnson, “was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a Whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty: and so I made this epigram upon her. She was the loveliest creature I ever saw!!!
“‘Liber ut esse velim, suasisti pulchra Maria,Ut maneam liber—pulchra Maria, vale!’”
“‘Liber ut esse velim, suasisti pulchra Maria,Ut maneam liber—pulchra Maria, vale!’”
“Will it do this way in English, sir?” said I.
“Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you;If freedom we seek—fair Maria, adieu!”
“Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you;If freedom we seek—fair Maria, adieu!”
“It will do well enough,” replied he, “but it is translated by a lady, and the ladies never loved M---y As--n.” I asked him what his wife thought of this attachment? “She was jealous, to be sure,” said he, “and teased me sometimes when I would let her; and one day, as a fortune-telling gipsy passed us when we were walking out in company with two or three friends in the country, she made the wench look at my hand, but soon repented her curiosity; ‘for,’ says the gipsy, ‘your heart is divided, sir, between a Betty and a Molly: Betty loves you best, but you take most delight in Molly’s company.’ When I turned about to laugh, I saw my wife was crying. Pretty charmer! she had no reason!”
It was, I believe, long after the currents of life had driven him to a great distance from this lady, that he spent much of his time with Mrs. F-tzh--b--t, of whom he always spoke with esteem and tenderness, and with a veneration very difficult to deserve. “That woman,” said he, “loved her husband as we hope and desire to be loved by our guardian angel. F-tzh--b--t was a gay, good-humoured fellow, generous of his money and of his meat, and desirous of nothing but cheerful society among people distinguished insomeway, inany way, I think; for Rousseau and St. Austin would have been equally welcome to his table and to his kindness. The lady, however, was of another way of thinking: her first care was to preserve her husband’s soul from corruption; her second, to keep his estate entire for their children: and I owed my good reception in the family to the idea she had entertained, that I was fit company for F-tzh--b--t, whom I loved extremely. ‘They dare not,’ said she, ‘swear, and take other conversation-liberties beforeyou.’” I asked if her husband returned her regard? “He felt her influence too powerfully,” replied Mr. Johnson; “no man will be fond of what forces him daily to feel himself inferior. She stood at the door of her paradise in Derbyshire, like the angel with a flaming sword, to keep the devil at a distance. But she was not immortal, poor dear! she died, and her husband felt at once afflicted and released.” I inquired if she was handsome? “She would have been handsome for a queen,” replied the panegyrist; “her beauty had more in it of majesty than of attraction, more of the dignity of virtue than the vivacity of wit.” The friend of this lady, Miss B--thby, succeeded her in the management of Mr. F-tzh--b--t’s family, and in the esteem of Dr. Johnson, though he told me she pushed her piety to bigotry, her devotion to enthusiasm, that she somewhat disqualified herself for the duties ofthislife, by her perpetual aspirations after thenext. Such was, however, the purity of her mind, he said, and such the graces of her manner, that Lord Lyttelton and he used to strive for her preference with an emulation that occasioned hourly disgust, and ended in lasting animosity. “You may see,” said he to me, when the “Poets’ Lives” were printed, “that dear B--thby is at my heart still. Shewoulddelight in that fellow Lyttelton’s company though, all that I could do; and I cannot forgive even his memory the preference given by a mind like hers.” I have heard Baretti say that when this lady died, Dr. Johnson was almost distracted with his grief, and that the friends about him had much ado to calm the violence of his emotion. Dr. Taylor, too, related once to Mr. Thrale and me, that when he lost his wife, the negro Francis ran away, though in the middle of the night, to Westminster, to fetch Dr. Taylor to his master, who was all but wild with excess of sorrow, and scarce knew him when he arrived. After some minutes, however, the Doctor proposed their going to prayers, as the only rational method of calming the disorder this misfortune had occasioned in both their spirits. Time, and resignation to the will of God, cured every breach in his heart before I made acquaintance with him, though he always persisted in saying he never rightly recovered the loss of his wife. It is in allusion to her that he records the observation of a female critic, as he calls her, in Gay’s “Life;” and the lady of great beauty and elegance, mentioned in the criticisms upon Pope’s epitaphs, was Miss Molly Aston. The person spoken of in his strictures upon Young’s poetry is the writer of these anecdotes, to whom he likewise addressed the following verses when he was in the Isle of Skye with Mr. Boswell. The letters written in his journey, I used to tell him, were better than the printed book; and he was not displeased at my having taken the pains to copy them all over. Here is the Latin ode:—
“Permeo terras, ubi nuda rupesSaxeas miscet nebulis ruinas,Torva ubi rident steriles coloniRura labores.“Pervagor gentes, hominum ferorumVita ubi nullo decorata cultu,Squallet informis, tigurique fumisFaeda latescit.“Inter erroris salebrosa longi,Inter ignotae strepitus loquelae,Quot modis mecum, quid agat requiroThralia dulcis?“Seu viri curas pia nupta mulcet,Seu fovet mater sobolem benigna,Sive cum libris novitate pascitSedula mentem:“Sit memor nostri, fideique merces,Stet fides constans, meritoque blandumThraliae discant resonare nomenLittora Skiae.”
“Permeo terras, ubi nuda rupesSaxeas miscet nebulis ruinas,Torva ubi rident steriles coloniRura labores.
“Pervagor gentes, hominum ferorumVita ubi nullo decorata cultu,Squallet informis, tigurique fumisFaeda latescit.
“Inter erroris salebrosa longi,Inter ignotae strepitus loquelae,Quot modis mecum, quid agat requiroThralia dulcis?
“Seu viri curas pia nupta mulcet,Seu fovet mater sobolem benigna,Sive cum libris novitate pascitSedula mentem:
“Sit memor nostri, fideique merces,Stet fides constans, meritoque blandumThraliae discant resonare nomenLittora Skiae.”
On another occasion I can boast verses from Dr. Johnson. As I went into his room the morning of my birthday once, and said to him, “Nobody sends me any verses now, because I am five-and-thirty years old, and Stella was fed with them till forty-six, I remember.” My being just recovered from illness and confinement will account for the manner in which he burst out, suddenly, for so he did without the least previous hesitation whatsoever, and without having entertained the smallest intention towards it half a minute before:
“Oft in danger, yet alive,We are come to thirty-five;Long may better years arrive,Better years than thirty-five.Could philosophers contriveLife to stop at thirty-five,Time his hours should never driveO’er the bounds of thirty-five.High to soar, and deep to dive,Nature gives at thirty-five.Ladies, stock and tend your hive,Trifle not at thirty-five:For howe’er we boast and strive,Life declines from thirty-five.He that ever hopes to thriveMust begin by thirty-five;And all who wisely wish to wiveMust look on Thrale at thirty-five.”
“Oft in danger, yet alive,We are come to thirty-five;Long may better years arrive,Better years than thirty-five.Could philosophers contriveLife to stop at thirty-five,Time his hours should never driveO’er the bounds of thirty-five.High to soar, and deep to dive,Nature gives at thirty-five.Ladies, stock and tend your hive,Trifle not at thirty-five:For howe’er we boast and strive,Life declines from thirty-five.He that ever hopes to thriveMust begin by thirty-five;And all who wisely wish to wiveMust look on Thrale at thirty-five.”
“And now,” said he, as I was writing them down, “you may see what it is to come for poetry to a dictionary-maker; you may observe that the rhymes run in alphabetical order exactly.” And so they do.
Mr. Johnson did indeed possess an almost Tuscan power of improvisation. When he called to my daughter, who was consulting with a friend about a new gown and dressed hat she thought of wearing to an assembly, thus suddenly, while she hoped he was not listening to their conversation—
“Wear the gown and wear the hat,Snatch thy pleasures while they last;Hadst thou nine lives like a cat,Soon those nine lives would be past.”
“Wear the gown and wear the hat,Snatch thy pleasures while they last;Hadst thou nine lives like a cat,Soon those nine lives would be past.”
It is impossible to deny to such little sallies the power of the Florentines, who do not permit their verses to be ever written down, though they often deserve it, because, as they express it, Cosi se perde-rebbe la poca gloria.
As for translations, we used to make him sometimes run off with one or two in a good humour. He was praising this song of Metastasio:—
“Deh, se piacermi vuoi,Lascia i sospetti tuoi,Non mi turbar conquestoMolesto dubitar:Chi ciecamente crede,Impegna a serbar fede:Chi sempre inganno aspetta,Alletta ad ingannar.”
“Deh, se piacermi vuoi,Lascia i sospetti tuoi,Non mi turbar conquestoMolesto dubitar:Chi ciecamente crede,Impegna a serbar fede:Chi sempre inganno aspetta,Alletta ad ingannar.”
“Should you like it in English,” said he, “thus?”
“Would you hope to gain my heart,Bid your teasing doubts depart;He who blindly trusts, will findFaith from every generous mind:He who still expects deceit,Only teaches how to cheat.”
“Would you hope to gain my heart,Bid your teasing doubts depart;He who blindly trusts, will findFaith from every generous mind:He who still expects deceit,Only teaches how to cheat.”
Mr. Baretti coaxed him likewise one day at Streatham out of a translation of Emirena’s speech to the false courtier Aquileius, and it is probably printed before now, as I think two or three people took copies; but perhaps it has slipped their memories.
“Ah! tu in corte invecchiasti, e giurereiChe fra i pochi non sei tenace ancoraDell’ antica onesta: quando bisogna,Saprai sereno in voltoVezzeggiare un nemico: accio vi cada,Aprirgli innanzi un precipizio, e poiPiangerne la caduta. Offrirti a tuttiE non esser che tuo; di false lodiVestir le accuse, ed aggravar le colpeNel farne la difesa, ognor dal tronoI buoni allontanar; d’ogni castigoLasciar Vodio allo seettro, c d’ogni donoIl merito usurpar: tener nascostoSotto un zelo apparente un empio fine,Ne fabbricar che sulle altrui rouine.”“Grown old in courts, thou art not surely oneWho keeps the rigid rules of ancient honour;Well skilled to soothe a foe with looks of kindness,To sink the fatal precipice before him,And then lament his fall with seeming friendship:Open to all, true only to thyself,Thou know’st those arts which blast with envious praise,Which aggravate a fault with feigned excuses,And drive discountenanced virtue from the throne;That leave blame of rigour to the prince,And of his every gift usurp the merit;That hide in seeming zeal a wicked purpose,And only build upon another’s ruin.”
“Ah! tu in corte invecchiasti, e giurereiChe fra i pochi non sei tenace ancoraDell’ antica onesta: quando bisogna,Saprai sereno in voltoVezzeggiare un nemico: accio vi cada,Aprirgli innanzi un precipizio, e poiPiangerne la caduta. Offrirti a tuttiE non esser che tuo; di false lodiVestir le accuse, ed aggravar le colpeNel farne la difesa, ognor dal tronoI buoni allontanar; d’ogni castigoLasciar Vodio allo seettro, c d’ogni donoIl merito usurpar: tener nascostoSotto un zelo apparente un empio fine,Ne fabbricar che sulle altrui rouine.”
“Grown old in courts, thou art not surely oneWho keeps the rigid rules of ancient honour;Well skilled to soothe a foe with looks of kindness,To sink the fatal precipice before him,And then lament his fall with seeming friendship:Open to all, true only to thyself,Thou know’st those arts which blast with envious praise,Which aggravate a fault with feigned excuses,And drive discountenanced virtue from the throne;That leave blame of rigour to the prince,And of his every gift usurp the merit;That hide in seeming zeal a wicked purpose,And only build upon another’s ruin.”
These characters Dr. Johnson, however, did not delight in reading, or in hearing of: he always maintained that the world was not half so wicked as it was represented; and he might very well continue in that opinion, as he resolutely drove from him every story that could make him change it; and when Mr. Bickerstaff’s flight confirmed the report of his guilt, and my husband said, in answer to Johnson’s astonishment, that he had long been a suspected man: “By those who look close to the ground, dirt will be seen, sir,” was the lofty reply. “I hope I see things from a greater distance.”
His desire to go abroad, particularly to see Italy, was very great; and he had a longing wish, too, to leave some Latin verses at the Grand Chartreux. He loved, indeed, the very act of travelling, and I cannot tell how far one might have taken him in a carriage before he would have wished for refreshment. He was therefore in some respects an admirable companion on the road, as he piqued himself upon feeling no inconvenience, and on despising no accommodations. On the other hand, however, he expected no one else to feel any, and felt exceedingly inflamed with anger if any one complained of the rain, the sun, or the dust. “How,” said he, “do other people bear them?” As for general uneasiness, or complaints of lone confinement in a carriage, he considered all lamentations on their account as proofs of an empty head, and a tongue desirous to talk without materials of conversation. “A mill that goes without grist,” said he, “is as good a companion as such creatures.”
I pitied a friend before him, who had a whining wife that found everything painful to her, and nothing pleasing. “He does not know that she whimpers,” says Johnson; “when a door has creaked for a fortnight together, you may observe—the master will scarcely give sixpence to get it oiled.”
Of another lady, more insipid than offensive, I once heard him say, “She has some softness indeed, but so has a pillow.” And when one observed, in reply, that her husband’s fidelity and attachment were exemplary, notwithstanding this low account at which her perfections were rated—“Why, sir,” cries the Doctor, “being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited, and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are butcreepersat best, and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.”
For a lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband’s seat in Wales with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had a rougher denunciation. “That woman,” cries Johnson, “is like sour small-beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she lives in: like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even that bad thing is spoiled.” This was in the same vein of asperity, and I believe with something like the same provocation, that he observed of a Scotch lady, “that she resembled a dead nettle; were she alive,” said he, “she would sting.”
Mr. Johnson’s hatred of the Scotch is so well known, and so many of his bons mots expressive of that hatred have been already repeated in so many books and pamphlets, that ’tis perhaps scarcely worth while to write down the conversation between him and a friend of that nation who always resides in London, and who at his return from the Hebrides asked him, with a firm tone of voice, “What he thought of his country?” “That it is a very vile country, to be sure, sir,” returned for answer Dr. Johnson. “Well, sir!” replies the other, somewhat mortified, “God made it.” “Certainly He did,” answers Mr. Johnson again, “but we must always remember that He made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. S---; but God made hell.”
Dr. Johnson did not, I think, much delight in that kind of conversation which consists in telling stories. “Everybody,” said he, “tells stories of me, and I tell stories of nobody. I do not recollect,” added he, “that I have ever toldyou, that have been always favourites, above three stories; but I hope I do not play the Old Fool, and force people to hear uninteresting narratives, only because I once was diverted with them myself.” He was, however, no enemy to that sort of talk from the famous Mr. Foote, “whose happiness of manner in relating was such,” he said, “as subdued arrogance and roused stupidity.Hisstories were truly like those of Biron in Love’s Labour’s Lost, soveryattractive—
‘That aged ears played truant with his tales,And younger hearings were quite ravished,So sweet and voluble was his discourse.’
‘That aged ears played truant with his tales,And younger hearings were quite ravished,So sweet and voluble was his discourse.’
Of all conversers, however,” added he, “the late Hawkins Browne was the most delightful with whom I ever was in company: his talk was at once so elegant, so apparently artless, so pure, so pleasing, it seemed a perpetual stream of sentiment, enlivened by gaiety, and sparkling with images.” When I asked Dr. Johnson who was the best man he had ever known? “Psalmanazar,” was the unexpected reply. He said, likewise, “that though a native of France, as his friend imagined, he possessed more of the English language than any one of the other foreigners who had separately fallen in his way.” Though there was much esteem, however, there was, I believe, but little confidence between them; they conversed merely about general topics, religion and learning, of which both were undoubtedly stupendous examples; and, with regard to true Christian perfection, I have heard Johnson say, “That George Psalmanazar’s piety, penitence, and virtue exceeded almost what we read as wonderful even in the lives of saints.”
I forget in what year it was this extraordinary person lived and died at a house in Old Street, where Mr. Johnson was witness to his talents and virtues, and to his final preference of the Church of England, after having studied, disgraced, and adorned so many modes of worship. The name he went by was not supposed by his friend to be that of his family, but all inquiries were vain. His reasons for concealing his original were penitentiary; he deserved no other name than that of the impostor, he said. That portion of the Universal History which was written by him does not seem to me to be composed with peculiar spirit, but all traces of the wit and the wanderer were probably worn out before he undertook the work. His pious and patient endurance of a tedious illness, ending in an exemplary death, confirmed the strong impression his merit had made upon the mind of Mr. Johnson. “It is soverydifficult,” said he, always, “for a sick man not to be a scoundrel. Oh! set the pillows soft, here is Mr. Grumbler a-coming. Ah! let no air in for the world, Mr. Grumbler will be here presently.”
This perpetual preference is so offensive, where the privileges of sickness are, besides, supported by wealth, and nourished by dependence, that one cannot much wonder that a rough mind is revolted by them. It was, however, at once comical and touchant (as the French call it), to observe Mr. Johnson so habitually watchful against this sort of behaviour, that he was often ready to suspect himself of it; and when one asked him gently, how he did?—“Ready to become a scoundrel, madam,” would commonly be the answer; “with a little more spoiling you will, I think, make me a complete rascal!”
His desire of doing good was not, however, lessened by his aversion to a sick chamber. He would have made an ill man well by any expense or fatigue of his own, sooner than any of the canters. Canter, indeed, was he none: he would forget to ask people after the health of their nearest relations, and say in excuse, “That he knew they did not care: why should they?” says he; “every one in this world has as much as they can do in caring for themselves, and few have leisure really tothinkof their neighbours’ distresses, however they may delight their tongues withtalkingof them.”
The natural depravity of mankind and remains of original sin were so fixed in Mr. Johnson’s opinion, that he was indeed a most acute observer of their effects; and used to say sometimes, half in jest, half in earnest, that they were the remains of his old tutor Mandeville’s instructions. As a book, however, he took care always loudly to condemn the “Fable of the Bees,” but not without adding, “that it was the work of a thinking man.”
I have in former days heard Dr. Collier of the Commons loudly condemned for uttering sentiments, which twenty years after I have heard as loudly applauded from the lips of Dr. Johnson, concerning the well-known writer of that celebrated work: but if people will live long enough in this capricious world, such instances of partiality will shock them less and less by frequent repetition. Mr. Johnson knew mankind, and wished to mend them: he therefore, to the piety and pure religion, the untainted integrity, and scrupulous morals of my earliest and most disinterested friend, judiciously contrived to join a cautious attention to the capacity of his hearers, and a prudent resolution not to lessen the influence of his learning and virtue, by casual freaks of humour and irregular starts of ill-managed merriment. He did not wish to confound, but to inform his auditors; and though he did not appear to solicit benevolence, he always wished to retain authority, and leave his company impressed with the idea that it was his to teach in this world, and theirs to learn. What wonder, then, that all should receive with docility from Johnson those doctrines, which, propagated by Collier, they drove away from them with shouts! Dr. Johnson was not grave, however, because he knew not how to be merry. No man loved laughing better, and his vein of humour was rich and apparently inexhaustible; though Dr. Goldsmith said once to him, “We should change companions oftener, we exhaust one another, and shall soon be both of us worn out.” Poor Goldsmith was to him, indeed, like the earthen pot to the iron one in Fontaine’s fables; it had been better forhim, perhaps, that they had changed companions oftener; yet no experience of his antagonist’s strength hindered him from continuing the contest. He used to remind me always of that verse in Berni—
“Il pover uomo che non sen’ era accorto,Andava combattendo—ed era morto.”
“Il pover uomo che non sen’ era accorto,Andava combattendo—ed era morto.”
Mr. Johnson made him a comical answer one day, when seeming to repine at the success of Beattie’s “Essay on Truth”—“Here’s such a stir,” said he, “about a fellow that has written one book, and I have written many.” “Ah, Doctor,” says his friend, “there go two-and-forty sixpences, you know, to one guinea.”
They had spent an evening with Eaton Graham, too, I remember hearing it was at some tavern; his heart was open, and he began inviting away; told what he could do to make his college agreeable, and begged the visit might not be delayed. Goldsmith thanked him, and proposed setting out with Mr. Johnson for Buckinghamshire in a fortnight. “Nay, hold, Dr.Minor,” says the other, “I did not invite you.”
Many such mortifications arose in the course of their intimacy, to be sure, but few more laughable than when the newspapers had tacked them together as the pedant and his flatterer in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Dr. Goldsmith came to his friend, fretting and foaming, and vowing vengeance against the printer, etc., till Mr. Johnson, tired of the bustle, and desirous to think of something else, cried out at last, “Why, what would’st thou have, dear Doctor! who the plague is hurt with all this nonsense? and how is a man the worse, I wonder, in his health, purse, or character, for being called Holofernes?” “I do not know,” replies the other, “how you may relish being called Holofernes, but I do not like at least to play Goodman Dull.”
Dr. Johnson was indeed famous for disregarding public abuse. When the people criticised and answered his pamphlets, papers, etc., “Why, now, these fellows are only advertising my book,” he would say; “it is surely better a man should be abused than forgotten.” When Churchill nettled him, however, it is certain he felt the sting, or that poet’s works would hardly have been left out of the edition. Of that, however, I have no right to decide; the booksellers, perhaps, did not put Churchill on their list. I know Mr. Johnson was exceedingly zealous to declare how very little he had to do with the selection. Churchill’s works, too, might possibly be rejected by him upon a higher principle; the highest, indeed, if he was inspired by the same laudable motive which made him reject every authority for a word in his dictionary that could only be gleaned from writers dangerous to religion or morality. “I would not,” said he, “send people to look for words in a book, that by such a casual seizure of the mind might chance to mislead it for ever.” In consequence of this delicacy, Mrs. Montague once observed, “That were an angel to give the imprimatur, Dr. Johnson’s works were among those very few which would not be lessened by a line.” That such praise from such a lady should delight him, is not strange; insensibility in a case like that must have been the result alone of arrogance acting on stupidity. Mr. Johnson had indeed no dislike to the commendations which he knew he deserved. “What signifies protesting so against flattery!” would he cry; “when a person speaks well of one, it must be either true or false, you know; if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion; if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me than to sit silent when he need say nothing.”
That natural roughness of his manner so often mentioned would, notwithstanding the regularity of his notions, burst through them all from time to time; and he once bade a very celebrated lady, who praised him with too much zeal, perhaps, or perhaps too strong an emphasis (which always offended him), “Consider what her flattery was worth before she chokedhimwith it.” A few more winters passed in the talking world showed him the value of that friend’s commendations, however; and he was very sorry for the disgusting speech he made her.
I used to think Mr. Johnson’s determined preference of a cold, monotonous talker over an emphatical and violent one would make him quite a favourite among the men of ton, whose insensibility, or affectation of perpetual calmness, certainly did not give to him the offence it does to many. He loved “conversation without effort,” he said; and the encomiums I have heard him so often pronounce on the manners of Topham Beaucler in society constantly ended in that peculiar praise, that “it was withouteffort.”
We were talking of Richardson, who wrote “Clarissa.” “You think I love flattery,” says Dr. Johnson, “and so I do; but a little too much always disgusts me. That fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.”
With regard to slight insults from newspaper abuse, I have already declared his notions. “They sting one,” says he, “but as a fly stings a horse; and the eagle will not catch flies.” He once told me, however, that Cummyns, the famous Quaker, whose friendship he valued very highly, fell a sacrifice to their insults, having declared on his death-bed to Dr. Johnson that the pain of an anonymous letter, written in some of the common prints of the day, fastened on his heart, and threw him into the slow fever of which he died.
Nor was Cummyns the only valuable member so lost to society. Hawkesworth, the pious, the virtuous, and the wise, for want of that fortitude which casts a shield before the merits of his friend, fell a lamented sacrifice to wanton malice and cruelty, I know not how provoked; but all in turn feel the lash of censure in a country where, as every baby is allowed to carry a whip, no person can escape except by chance. The unpublished crimes, unknown distresses, and even death itself, however, daily occurring in less liberal governments and less free nations, soon teach one to content oneself with such petty grievances, and make one acknowledge that the undistinguishing severity of newspaper abuse may in some measure diminish the diffusion of vice and folly in Great Britain, and while they fright delicate minds into forced refinements and affected insipidity, they are useful to the great causes of virtue in the soul and liberty in the State; and though sensibility often sinks under the roughness of their prescriptions, it would be no good policy to take away their licence.
Knowing the state of Mr. Johnson’s nerves, and how easily they were affected, I forbore reading in a new magazine, one day, the death of a Samuel Johnson who expired that month; but my companion snatching up the book, saw it himself, and contrary to my expectation, “Oh!” said he, “I hope Death will now be glutted with Sam Johnsons, and let me alone for some time to come; I read of another namesake’s departure last week.” Though Mr. Johnson was commonly affected even to agony at the thoughts of a friend’s dying, he troubled himself very little with the complaints they might make to him about ill-health. “Dear Doctor,” said he one day to a common acquaintance, who lamented the tender state of hisinside, “do not be like the spider, man, and spin conversation thus incessantly out of thy own bowels.” I told him of another friend who suffered grievously with the gout. “He will live a vast many years for all that,” replied he, “and then what signifies how much he suffers! But he will die at last, poor fellow; there’s the misery; gout seldom takes the fort by a coup-de-main, but turning the siege into a blockade, obliges it to surrender at discretion.”
A lady he thought well of was disordered in her health. “What help has she called in?” inquired Johnson. “Dr. James, sir,” was the reply. “What is her disease?” “Oh, nothing positive; rather a gradual and gentle decline.” “She will die, then, pretty dear!” answered he. “When Death’s pale horse runs away with a person on full speed, an active physician may possibly give them a turn; but if he carries them on an even, slow pace, down-hill, too! no care nor skill can save them!”
When Garrick was on his last sick-bed, no arguments, or recitals of such facts as I had heard, would persuade Mr. Johnson of his danger. He had prepossessed himself with a notion, that to say a man was sick was very near wishing him so; and few things offended him more than prognosticating even the death of an ordinary acquaintance. “Ay, ay,” said he, “Swift knew the world pretty well when he said that—
‘Some dire misfortune to portend,No enemy can match a friend.’”
‘Some dire misfortune to portend,No enemy can match a friend.’”
The danger, then, of Mr. Garrick, or of Mr. Thrale, whom he loved better, was an image which no one durst present before his view; he always persisted in the possibility and hope of their recovering disorders from which no human creatures by human means alone ever did recover. His distress for their loss was for that very reason poignant to excess. But his fears of his own salvation were excessive. His truly tolerant spirit and Christian charity, whichhopeth all things, andbelieveth all things, made him rely securely on the safety of his friends; while his earnest aspiration after a blessed immortality made him cautious of his own steps, and timorous concerning their consequences. He knew how much had been given, and filled his mind with fancies of how much would be required, till his impressed imagination was often disturbed by them, and his health suffered from the sensibility of his too tender conscience. A real Christian issoapt to find his talk above his power of performance!
Mr. Johnson did not, however, give in to ridiculous refinements either of speculation or practice, or suffer himself to be deluded by specious appearances. “I have had dust thrown in my eyes too often,” would he say, “to be blinded so. Let us never confound matters of belief with matters of opinion.” Some one urged in his presence the preference of hope to possession; and as I remember produced an Italian sonnet on the subject. “Let us not,” cries Johnson, “amuse ourselves with subtleties and sonnets, when speaking about hope, which is the follower of faith and the precursor of eternity; but if you only mean those air-built hopes which to-day excite and to-morrow will destroy, let us talk away, and remember that we only talk of the pleasures of hope; we feel those of possession, and no man in his senses would change the last for the first. Such hope is a mere bubble, that by a gentle breath may be blown to what size you will almost, but a rough blast bursts it at once. Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.” The truth is, Mr. Johnson hated what he called unprofitable chat; and to a gentleman who had disserted some time about the natural history of the mouse—“I wonder what such a one would have said,” cried Johnson, “if he had ever had the luck to see alion!”
I well remember that at Brighthelmstone once, when he was not present, Mr. Beauclerc asserted that he was afraid of spirits; and I, who was secretly offended at the charge, asked him, the first opportunity I could find, “what ground he had ever given to the world for such a report?” “I can,” replied he, “recollect nothing nearer it than my telling Dr. Lawrence, many years ago, that a long time after my poor mother’s death I heard her voice call ‘Sam!’” “What answer did the Doctor make to your story, sir?” said I. “None in the world,” replied he, and suddenly changed the conversation. Now, as Mr. Johnson had a most unshaken faith, without any mixture of credulity, this story must either have been strictly true, or his persuasion of its truth the effect of disordered spirits. I relate the anecdote precisely as he told it me, but could not prevail on him to draw out the talk into length for further satisfaction of my curiosity.
As Johnson was the firmest of believers, without being credulous, so he was the most charitable of mortals, without being what we call an active friend. Admirable at giving counsel, no man saw his way so clearly; but he would not stir a finger for the assistance of those to whom he was willing enough to give advice: besides that, he had principles of laziness, and could be indolent by rule. To hinder your death, or procure you a dinner, I mean if really in want of one; his earnestness, his exertions could not be prevented, though health and purse and ease were all destroyed by their violence. If you wanted a slight favour, you must apply to people of other dispositions; for not a step would Johnson move to obtain a man a vote in a society, to repay a compliment which might be useful or pleasing, to write a letter of request, or to obtain a hundred pounds a year more for a friend, who perhaps had already two or three. No force could urge him to diligence, no importunity could conquer his resolution of standing still. “What good are we doing with all this ado?” would he say; “dearest lady, let’s hear no more of it!” I have, however, more than once in my life forced him on such services, but with extreme difficulty.
We parted at his door one evening when I had teased him for many weeks to write a recommendatory letter of a little boy to his schoolmaster; and after he had faithfully promised to do this prodigious feat before we met again—“Do not forget dear Dick, sir,” said I, as he went out of the coach. He turned back, stood still two minutes on the carriage-step—“When I have written my letter for Dick, I may hang myself, mayn’t I?” and turned away in a very ill humour indeed.
Though apt enough to take sudden likings or aversions to people he occasionally met, he would never hastily pronounce upon their character; and when, seeing him justly delighted with Solander’s conversation, I observed once that he was a man of great parts who talked from a full mind—“It may be so,” said Mr. Johnson, “but you cannot know it yet, nor I neither: the pump works well, to be sure! but how, I wonder, are we to decide in so very short an acquaintance, whether it is supplied by a spring or a reservoir?” He always made a great difference in his esteem between talents and erudition; and when he saw a person eminent for literature, though wholly unconversible, it fretted him. “Teaching such tonies,” said he to me one day, “is like setting a lady’s diamonds in lead, which only obscures the lustre of the stone, and makes the possessor ashamed on’t.” Useful and what we call everyday knowledge had the most of his just praise. “Let your boy learn arithmetic, dear madam,” was his advice to the mother of a rich young heir: “he will not then be a prey to every rascal which this town swarms with. Teach him the value of money, and how to reckon it; ignorance to a wealthy lad of one-and-twenty is only so much fat to a sick sheep: it just serves to call therooksabout him.”
“And all that prey in vice or follyJoy to see their quarry fly;Here the gamester light and jolly,There the lender grave and sly.”
“And all that prey in vice or follyJoy to see their quarry fly;Here the gamester light and jolly,There the lender grave and sly.”
These improviso lines, making part of a long copy of verses which my regard for the youth on whose birthday they were written obliges me to suppress, lest they should give him pain, show a mind of surprising activity and warmth; the more so as he was past seventy years of age when he composed them; but nothing more certainly offended Mr. Johnson than the idea of a man’s faculties (mental ones, I mean) decaying by time. “It is not true, sir,” would he say; “what a man could once do, he would always do, unless, indeed, by dint of vicious indolence, and compliance with the nephews and the nieces who crowd round an old fellow, and help to tuck him in, till he, contented with the exchange of fame for ease, e’en resolves to let them set the pillows at his back, and gives no further proof of his existence than just to suck the jelly that prolongs it.”
For such a life or such a death Dr. Johnson was indeed never intended by Providence: his mind was like a warm climate, which brings everything to perfection suddenly and vigorously, not like the alembicated productions of artificial fire, which always betray the difficulty of bringing them forth when their size is disproportionate to their flavour. “Je ferois un Roman tout comme un autre, mais la vie n’est point un Roman,” says a famous French writer; and this was so certainly the opinion of the author of the “Rambler,” that all his conversation precepts tended towards the dispersion of romantic ideas, and were chiefly intended to promote the cultivation of
“That which before thee lies in daily life.”Milton.
“That which before thee lies in daily life.”
Milton.
And when he talked of authors, his praise went spontaneously to such passages as are sure in his own phrase to leave something behind them useful on common occasions, or observant of common manners. For example, it was not the twolast, but the twofirstvolumes of “Clarissa” that he prized; “for give me a sick-bed and a dying lady,” said he, “and I’ll be pathetic myself. But Richardson had picked the kernel of life,” he said, “while Fielding was contented with the husk.” It was not King Lear cursing his daughters, or deprecating the storm, that I remember his commendations of; but Iago’s ingenious malice and subtle revenge; or Prince Hal’s gay compliance with the vices of Falstaff, whom he all along despised. Those plays had indeed no rivals in Johnson’s favour: “No man but Shakespeare,” he said, “could have drawn Sir John.”
His manner of criticising and commending Addison’s prose was the same in conversation as we read it in the printed strictures, and many of the expressions used have been heard to fall from him on common occasions. It was notwithstanding observable enough (or I fancied so) that he did never like, though he always thought fit to praise it; and his praises resembled those of a man who extols the superior elegance of high painted porcelain, while he himself always chooses to eat offplate. I told him so one day, and he neither denied it nor appeared displeased.
Of the pathetic in poetry he never liked to speak, and the only passage I ever heard him applaud as particularly tender in any common book was Jane Shore’s exclamation in the last act—
“Forgive me!butforgive me!”
“Forgive me!butforgive me!”
It was not, however, from the want of a susceptible heart that he hated to cite tender expressions, for he was more strongly and more violently affected by the force of words representing ideas capable of affecting him at all than any other man in the world, I believe: and when he would try to repeat the celebrated Prosa Ecclesiastica pro Mortuis, as it is called, beginning “Dies irae, Dies illa,” he could never pass the stanza ending thus, “Tantus labor non sit cassus,” without bursting into a flood of tears; which sensibility I used to quote against him when he would inveigh against devotional poetry, and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble, and unworthy the subject, which ought to be treated with higher reverence, he said, than either poets or painters could presume to excite or bestow. Nor can anything be a stronger proof of Dr. Johnson’s piety than such an expression; for his idea of poetry was magnificent indeed, and very fully was he persuaded of its superiority over every other talent bestowed by heaven on man. His chapter upon that particular subject in his “Rasselas” is really written from the fulness of his heart, and quite in his best manner, I think. I am not so sure that this is the proper place to mention his writing that surprising little volume in a week or ten days’ time, in order to obtain money for his journey to Lichfield when his mother lay upon her last sick-bed.
Promptitude of thought, indeed, and quickness of expression, were among the peculiar felicities of Johnson; his notions rose up like the dragon’s teeth sowed by Cadmus all ready clothed, and in bright armour too, fit for immediate battle. He was therefore (as somebody is said to have expressed it) a tremendous converser, and few people ventured to try their skill against an antagonist with whom contention was so hopeless. One gentleman, however, who dined at a nobleman’s house in his company, and that of Mr. Thrale, to whom I was obliged for the anecdote, was willing to enter the lists in defence of King William’s character, and having opposed and contradicted Johnson two or three times petulantly enough, the master of the house began to feel uneasy, and expect disagreeable consequences; to avoid which he said, loud enough for the Doctor to hear, “Our friend here has no meaning now in all this, except just to relate at club to-morrow how he teased Johnson at dinner to-day—this is all to do himselfhonour.” “No, upon my word,” replied the other, “I see nohonourin it, whatever you may do.” “Well, sir!” returned Mr. Johnson, sternly, “if you do notseethehonour, I am sure Ifeelthedisgrace.”
A young fellow, less confident of his own abilities, lamenting one day that he had lost all his Greek—“I believe it happened at the same time, sir,” said Johnson, “that I lost all my large estate in Yorkshire.”
But however roughly he might be suddenly provoked to treat a harmless exertion of vanity, he did not wish to inflict the pain he gave, and was sometimes very sorry when he perceived the people to smart more than they deserved. “How harshly you treated that man to-day,” said I once, “who harangued us so about gardening.” “I am sorry,” said he, “if I vexed the creature, for there is certainly no harm in a fellow’s rattling a rattle-box, only don’t let him think that he thunders.” The Lincolnshire lady who showed him a grotto she had been making, came off no better, as I remember. “Would it not be a pretty cool habitation in summer,” said she, “Mr. Johnson?” “I think it would, madam,” replied he, “for a toad.”
All desire of distinction, indeed, had a sure enemy in Mr. Johnson. We met a friend driving six very small ponies, and stopped to admire them. “Why does nobody,” said our Doctor, “begin the fashion of driving six spavined horses, all spavined of the same leg? It would have a mighty pretty effect, and produce the distinction of doing something worse than the common way.”
When Mr. Johnson had a mind to compliment any one he did it with more dignity to himself, and better effect upon the company, than any man. I can recollect but few instances, indeed, though perhaps that may be more my fault than his. When Sir Joshua Reynolds left the room one day, he said, “There goes a man not to be spoilt by prosperity.” And when Mrs. Montague showed him some China plates which had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth, he told her “that they had no reason to be ashamed of their present possessor, who was so little inferior to the first.” I likewise remember that he pronounced one day at my house a most lofty panegyric upon Jones the Orientalist, who seemed little pleased with the praise, for what cause I know not. He was not at all offended when, comparing all our acquaintance to some animal or other, we pitched upon the elephant for his resemblance, adding that the proboscis of that creature was like his mind most exactly, strong to buffet even the tiger, and pliable to pick up even the pin. The truth is, Mr. Johnson was often good humouredly willing to join in childish amusements, and hated to be left out of any innocent merriment that was going forward. Mr. Murphy always said he was incomparable at buffoonery; and I verily think, if he had had good eyes, and a form less inflexible, he would have made an admirable mimic.
He certainly rode on Mr. Thrale’s old hunter with a good firmness, and though he would follow the hounds fifty miles on end sometimes, would never own himself either tired or amused. “I have now learned,” said he, “by hunting, to perceive that it is no diversion at all, nor ever takes a man out of himself for a moment: the dogs have less sagacity than I could have prevailed on myself to suppose; and the gentlemen often call to me not to ride over them. It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasure should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.” He was, however, proud to be amongst the sportsmen; and I think no praise ever went so close to his heart as when Mr. Hamilton called out one day upon Brighthelmstone Downs, “Why, Johnson rides as well, for aught I see, as the most illiterate fellow in England.”
Though Dr. Johnson owed his very life to air and exercise, given him when his organs of respiration could scarcely play, in the year 1766, yet he ever persisted in the notion that neither of them had anything to do with health. “People live as long,” said he, “in Pepper Alley as on Salisbury Plain; and they live so much happier, that an inhabitant of the first would, if he turned cottager, starve his understanding for want of conversation, and perish in a state of mental inferiority.”
Mr. Johnson, indeed, as he was a very talking man himself, had an idea that nothing promoted happiness so much as conversation. A friend’s erudition was commended one day as equally deep and strong. “He will not talk, sir,” was the reply, “so his learning does no good, and his wit, if he has it, gives us no pleasure. Out of all his boasted stores I never heard him force but one word, and that word wasRichard.” With a contempt not inferior he received the praises of a pretty lady’s face and behaviour. “She says nothing, sir,” answers Johnson; “a talking blackamoor were better than a white creature who adds nothing to life, and by sitting down before one thus desperately silent, takes away the confidence one should have in the company of her chair if she were once out of it.” No one was, however, less willing to begin any discourse than himself. His friend, Mr. Thomas Tyers, said he was like the ghosts, who never speak till they are spoken to: and he liked the expression so well, that he often repeated it. He had, indeed, no necessity to lead the stream of chat to a favourite channel, that his fulness on the subject might be shown more clearly whatever was the topic; and he usually left the choice to others. His information best enlightened, his argument strengthened, and his wit made it ever remembered. Of him it might have been said, as he often delighted to say of Edmund Burke, “that you could not stand five minutes with that man beneath a shed while it rained, but you must be convinced you had been standing with the greatest man you had ever yet seen.”
As we had been saying, one day, that no subject failed of receiving dignity from the manner in which Mr. Johnson treated it, a lady at my house said she would make him talk about love, and took her measures accordingly, deriding the novels of the day because they treated about love. “It is not,” replied our philosopher, “because they treat, as you call it, about love, but because they treat of nothing, that they are despicable. We must not ridicule a passion which he who never felt never was happy, and he who laughs at never deserves to feel—a passion which has caused the change of empires and the loss of worlds—a passion which has inspired heroism and subdued avarice.” He thought he had already said too much. “A passion, in short,” added he, with an altered tone, “that consumes me away for my pretty Fanny here, and she is very cruel,” speaking of another lady in the room. He told us, however, in the course of the same chat, how his negro Francis had been eminent for his success among the girls. Seeing us all laugh, “I must have you know, ladies,” said he, “that Frank has carried the empire of Cupid further than most men. When I was in Lincolnshire so many years ago he attended me thither; and when we returned home together, I found that a female haymaker had followed him to London for love.” Francis was indeed no small favourite with his master, who retained, however, a prodigious influence over his most violent passions.
On the birthday of our eldest daughter, and that of our friend Dr. Johnson, the 17th and the 18th of September, we every year made up a little dance and supper, to divert our servants and their friends, putting the summer-house into their hands for the two evenings, to fill with acquaintance and merriment. Francis and his white wife were invited, of course. She was eminently pretty, and he was jealous, as my maids told me. On the first of these days’ amusements (I know not what year) Frank took offence at some attentions paid his Desdemona, and walked away next morning to London in wrath. His master and I driving the same road an hour after, overtook him. “What is the matter, child,” says Dr. Johnson, “that you leave Streatham to-day.Art sick?” “He is jealous,” whispered I. “Are you jealous of your wife, you stupid blockhead?” cries out his master in another tone. The fellow hesitated, and, “To be sure,sir,I don’t quite approve,sir,” was the stammering reply. “Why, what do theydoto her, man? Do the footmen kiss her?” “No, sir, no! Kiss mywife, sir!I hope not, sir.” “Why, whatdothey do to her, my lad?” “Why, nothing, sir, I’m sure, sir.” “Why, then go back directly and dance, you dog, do; and let’s hear no more of such empty lamentations.” I believe, however, that Francis was scarcely as much the object of Mr. Johnson’s personal kindness as the representative of Dr. Bathurst, for whose sake he would have loved anybody or anything.
When he spoke of negroes, he always appeared to think them of a race naturally inferior, and made few exceptions in favour of his own; yet whenever disputes arose in his household among the many odd inhabitants of which it consisted, he always sided with Francis against the others, whom he suspected (not unjustly, I believe) of greater malignity. It seems at once vexatious and comical to reflect that the dissensions those people chose to live constantly in distressed and mortified him exceedingly. He really was oftentimes afraid of going home, because he was so sure to be met at the door with numberless complaints; and he used to lament pathetically to me, and to Mr. Sastres, the Italian master, who was much his favourite, that they made his life miserable from the impossibility he found of making theirs happy, when every favour he bestowed on one was wormwood to the rest. If, however, I ventured to blame their ingratitude, and condemn their conduct, he would instantly set about softening the one and justifying the other; and finished commonly by telling me, that I knew not how to make allowances for situations I never experienced.
“To thee no reason who know’st only good,But evil hast not tried.”Milton.
“To thee no reason who know’st only good,But evil hast not tried.”
Milton.
Dr. Johnson knew how to be merry with mean people, too, as well as to be sad with them; he loved the lower ranks of humanity with a real affection: and though his talents and learning kept him always in the sphere of upper life, yet he never lost sight of the time when he and they shared pain and pleasure in common. A borough election once showed me his toleration of boisterous mirth, and his content in the company of people whom one would have thought at first sight little calculated for his society. A rough fellow one day on such an occasion, a hatter by trade, seeing Mr. Johnson’s beaver in a state of decay, seized it suddenly with one hand, and clapping him on the back with the other, “Ah, Master Johnson,” says he, “this is no time to be thinking abouthats.” “No, no, sir,” replied our Doctor in a cheerful tone, “hats are of no use now, as you say, except to throw up in the air and huzza with,” accompanying his words with a true election halloo.
But it was never against people of coarse life that his contempt was expressed, while poverty of sentiment in men who considered themselves to be company forthe parlour, as he called it, was what he could not bear. A very ignorant young fellow, who had plagued us all for nine or ten months, died at last consumptive. “I think,” said Mr. Johnson, when he heard the news, “I am afraid I should have been more concerned for the death of thedog; but—” (hesitating a while) “I am not wrong now in all this, for the dog acted up to his character on every occasion that we know; but that dunce of a fellow helped forward the general disgrace of humanity.” “Why, dear sir,” said I, “how odd you are! you have often said the lad was not capable of receiving further instruction.” “He was,” replied the Doctor, “like a corked bottle, with a drop of dirty water in it, to be sure; one might pump upon it for ever without the smallest effect; but when every method to open and clean it had been tried, you would not have me grieve that the bottle was broke at last.”
This was the same youth who told us he had been reading “Lucius Florus;” Florus Delphini was the phrase. “And my mother,” said he, “thought it had something to do with Delphos; but of that I know nothing.” “Who founded Rome, then ?” inquired Mr. Thrale. The lad replied, “Romulus.” “And who succeeded Romulus?” said I. A long pause, and apparently distressful hesitation, followed the difficult question. “Why will you ask him in terms that he does not comprehend?” said Mr. Johnson, enraged. “You might as well bid him tell you who phlebotomised Romulus. This fellow’s dulness is elastic,” continued he, “and all we do is but like kicking at a woolsack.”
The pains he took, however, to obtain the young man more patient instructors were many, and oftentimes repeated. He was put under the care of a clergyman in a distant province; and Mr. Johnson used both to write and talk to his friends concerning his education. It was on that occasion that I remember his saying, “A boy should never be sent to Eton or Westminster School before he is twelve years old at least; for if in his years of babyhood he escapes that general and transcendent knowledge without which life is perpetually put to a stand, he will never get it at a public school, where, if he does not learn Latin and Greek, he learns nothing.” Mr. Johnson often said, “that there was too much stress laid upon literature as indispensably necessary: there is surely no need that everybody should be a scholar, no call that every one should square the circle. Our manner of teaching,” said he, “cramps and warps many a mind, which if left more at liberty would have been respectable in some way, though perhaps not in that. We lop our trees, and prune them, and pinch them about,” he would say, “and nail them tight up to the wall, while a good standard is at last the only thing for bearing healthy fruit, though it commonly begins later. Let the people learn necessary knowledge; let them learn to count their fingers, and to count their money, before they are caring for the classics; for,” says Mr. Johnson, “though I do not quite agree with the proverb, that Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia, yet we may very well say, that Nullum numen adest--ni sit prudentia.”
We had been visiting at a lady’s house, whom as we returned some of the company ridiculed for her ignorance. “She is not ignorant,” said he, “I believe, of anything she has been taught, or of anything she is desirous to know: and I suppose if one wanted a littlerun tea, she might be a proper person enough to apply to.”
When I relate these various instances of contemptuous behaviour shown to a variety of people, I am aware that those who till now have heard little of Mr. Johnson will here cry out against his pride and his severity; yet I have been as careful as I could to tell them that all he did was gentle, if all he said was rough. Had I given anecdotes of his actions instead of his words, we should, I am sure, have had nothing on record but acts of virtue differently modified, as different occasions called that virtue forth: and among all the nine biographical essays or performances which I have heard will at last be written about dear Dr. Johnson, no mean or wretched, no wicked or even slightly culpable action will, I trust, be found, to produce and put in the scale against a life of seventy years, spent in the uniform practice of every moral excellence and every Christian perfection, save humility alone, says a critic, but that I thinkmustbe excepted. He was not, however, wanting even in that to a degree seldom attained by man, when the duties of piety or charity called it forth.
Lowly towards God, and docile towards the Church; implicit in his belief of the Gospel, and ever respectful towards the people appointed to preach it; tender of the unhappy, and affectionate to the poor, let no one hastily condemn as proud a character which may perhaps somewhat justly be censured as arrogant. It must, however, be remembered again, that even this arrogance was never shown without some intention, immediate or remote, of mending some fault or conveying some instruction. Had I meant to make a panegyric on Mr. Johnson’s well-known excellences, I should have told his deeds only, not his words—sincerely protesting, that as I never saw him once do a wrong thing, so we had accustomed ourselves to look upon him almost as an excepted being: and I should as much have expected injustice from Socrates, or impiety from Paschal, as the slightest deviation from truth and goodness in any transaction one might be engaged in with Samuel Johnson. His attention to veracity was without equal or example: and when I mentioned Clarissa as a perfect character; “On the contrary,” said he, “you may observe there is always something which she prefers to truth. Fielding’s Amelia was the most pleasing heroine of all the romances,” he said, “but that vile broken nose, never cured, ruined the sale of perhaps the only book, which being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night.”
Mr. Johnson’s knowledge of literary history was extensive and surprising. He knew every adventure of every book you could name almost, and was exceedingly pleased with the opportunity which writing the “Poets’ Lives” gave him to display it. He loved to be set at work, and was sorry when he came to the end of the business he was about. I do not feel so myself with regard to these sheets: a fever which has preyed on me while I wrote them over for the press, will perhaps lessen my power of doing well the first, and probably the last work I should ever have thought of presenting to the public. I could doubtless wish so to conclude it, as at least to show my zeal for my friend, whose life, as I once had the honour and happiness of being useful to, I should wish to record a few particular traits of, that those who read should emulate his goodness; but feeling the necessity of making even virtue and learning such ashisagreeable, that all should be warned against such coarseness of manners, as drove even fromhimthose who loved, honoured, and esteemed him. His wife’s daughter, Mrs. Lucy Porter, of Lichfield, whose veneration for his person and character has ever been the greatest possible, being opposed one day in conversation by a clergyman who came often to her house, and feeling somewhat offended, cried out sudden, “Why, Mr. Pearson,” said she, “you are just like Dr. Johnson, I think: I do not mean that you are a man of the greatest capacity in all the world like Dr. Johnson, but that you contradict one every word one speaks, just like him.”
Mr. Johnson told me the story: he was present at the giving of the reproof. It was, however, observable, that with all his odd severity, he could not keep even indifferent people from teasing him with unaccountable confessions of silly conduct, which one would think they would scarcely have had inclination to reveal even to their tenderest and most intimate companions; and it was from these unaccountable volunteers in sincerity that he learned to warn the world against follies little known, and seldom thought on by other moralists.
Much of his eloquence, and much of his logic, have I heard him use to prevent men from making vows on trivial occasions; and when he saw a person oddly perplexed about a slight difficulty, “Let the man alone,” he would say, “and torment him no more about it; there is a vow in the case, I am convinced; but is it not very strange that people should be neither afraid nor ashamed of bringing in God Almighty thus at every turn between themselves and their dinner?” When I asked what ground he had for such imaginations, he informed me, “That a young lady once told him in confidence that she could never persuade herself to be dressed against the bell rung for dinner, till she had made a vow to heaven that she would never more be absent from the family meals.”
The strangest applications in the world were certainly made from time to time towards Mr. Johnson, who by that means had an inexhaustible fund of ancecdote, and could, if he pleased, tell the most astonishing stories of human folly and human weakness that ever were confided to any man not a confessor by profession.
One day, when he was in a humour to record some of them, he told us the following tale:—“A person,” said he, “had for these last five weeks often called at my door, but would not leave his name or other message, but that he wished to speak with me. At last we met, and he told me that he was oppressed by scruples of conscience. I blamed him gently for not applying, as the rules of our Church direct, to his parish priest or other discreet clergyman; when, after some compliments on his part, he told me that he was clerk to a very eminent trader, at whose warehouses much business consisted in packing goods in order to go abroad; that he was often tempted to take paper and packthread enough for his own use, and that he had indeed done so so often, that he could recollect no time when he ever had bought any for himself. ‘But probably,’ said I, ‘your master was wholly indifferent with regard to such trivial emoluments. You had better ask for it at once, and so take your trifles with content.’ ‘Oh, sir!’ replies the visitor, ‘my master bid me have as much as I pleased, and was half angry when I talked to him about it.’ ‘Then pray, sir,’ said I, ‘tease me no more about such airy nothings,’ and was going on to be very angry, when I recollected that the fellow might be mad, perhaps; so I asked him, ‘When he left the counting-house of an evening?’ ‘At seven o’clock, sir.’ ‘And when do you go to bed, sir?’ ‘At twelve o’clock.’ ‘Then,’ replied I, ‘I have at least learnt thus much by my new acquaintance—that five hours of the four-and-twenty unemployed are enough for a man to go mad in; so I would advise you, sir, to study algebra, if you are not an adept already in it. Your head would get lessmuddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.’ It is perhaps needless to add that this visitor came no more.”
Mr. Johnson had, indeed, a real abhorrence of a person that had ever before him treated a little thing like a great one; and he quoted this scrupulous gentleman with his packthread very often, in ridicule of a friend who, looking out on Streatham Common from our windows, one day, lamented the enormous wickedness of the times because some bird-catchers were busy there one fine Sunday morning. “While half the Christian world is permitted,” said he, “to dance and sing and celebrate Sunday as a day of festivity, how comes your Puritanical spirit so offended with frivolous and empty deviations from exactness? Whoever loads life with unnecessary scruples, sir,” continued he, “provokes the attention of others on his conduct, and incurs the censure of singularity without reaping the reward of superior virtue.”
I must not, among the anecdotes of Dr. Johnson’s life, omit to relate a thing that happened to him one day, which he told me of himself. As he was walking along the Strand a gentleman stepped out of some neighbouring tavern, with his napkin in his hand, and no hat, and stopping him as civily as he could, “I beg your pardon, sir, but you are Dr. Johnson, I believe?” “Yes, sir.” “We have a wager depending on your reply. Pray, sir, is it irreparable or irrepairable that one should say?” “Thelast, I think, sir,” answered Dr. Johnson, “for the adverb ought to follow the verb; but you had better consult my ‘Dictionary’ than me, for that was the result of more thought than you will now give me time for.” “No, no,” replied the gentleman, gaily, “the book I have no certainty at all of, but here is theauthor, to whom I referred. Is he not, sir?”—to a friend with him. “I have won my twenty guineas quite fairly, and am much obliged to you, sir;” and so shaking Mr. Johnson kindly by the hand, he went back to finish his dinner or dessert.
Another strange thing he told me once which there was no danger of forgetting; how a young gentleman called on him one morning, and told him that his father having, just before his death, dropped suddenly into the enjoyment of an ample fortune, he (the son) was willing to qualify himself for genteel society by adding some literature to his other endowments, and wished to be put in an easy way of obtaining it. Dr. Johnson recommended the university, “for you read Latin, sir, withfacility?” “I read it a little, to be sure, sir.” “But do you read itwith facility, I say?” “Upon my word, sir, I do not very well know, but I rather believe not.” Mr. Johnson now began to recommend other branches of science, when he found languages at such an immeasurable distance, and advising him to study natural history, there arose some talk about animals, and their divisions into oviparous and viviparous. “And the cat here, sir,” said the youth, who wished for instruction; “pray in what class is she?” Our Doctor’s patience and desire of doing good began now to give way to the natural roughness of his temper. “You would do well,” said he, “to look for some person to be always about you, sir, who is capable of explaining such matters, and not come to us”—there were some literary friends present, as I recollect—“to know whether the cat lays eggs or not. Get a discreet man to keep you company: there are so many who would be glad of your table and fifty pounds a year.” The young gentleman retired, and in less than a week informed his friends that he had fixed on a preceptor to whom no objections could be made; but when he named as such one of the most distinguished characters in our age or nation, Mr. Johnson fairly gave himself up to an honest burst of laughter; and seeing this youth at such a surprising distance from common knowledge of the world, or of anything in it, desired to see his visitor no more.
He had not much better luck with two boys that he used to tell of, to whom he had taught the classics, “so that,” he said, “they were no incompetent or mean scholars.” It was necessary, however, that something more familiar should be known, and he bid them read the History of England. After a few months had elapsed he asked them, “If they could recollect who first destroyed the monasteries in our island?” One modestly replied that he did not know; the other saidJesus Christ!
Of the truth of stories which ran currently about the town concerning Dr. Johnson it was impossible to be certain, unless one asked him himself, and what he told, or suffered to be told, before his face without contradicting, has every public mark, I think, of real and genuine authenticity. I made, one day, very minute inquiries about the tale of his knocking down the famous Tom Osborne with his own “Dictionary” in the man’s own house. “And how was that affair? In earnest? Do tell me, Mr. Johnson?” “There is nothing to tell, dearest lady, but that he was insolent, and I beat him, and that he was a blockhead, and told of it, which I should never have done. So the blows have been multiplying and the wonder thickening for all these years, as Thomas was never a favourite with the public. I have beat many a fellow, but the rest had the wit to hold their tongues.”
I have heard Mr. Murphy relate a very singular story, while he was present, greatly to the credit of his uncommon skill and knowledge of life and manners. When first the “Ramblers” came out in separate numbers, as they were the objects of attention to multitudes of people, they happened, as it seems, particularly to attract the notice of a society who met every Saturday evening during the summer at Romford in Essex, and were known by the name of the Bowling-Green Club. These men seeing one day the character of Leviculus, the fortune-hunter, or Tetrica, the old maid: another day some account of a person who spent his life in hoping for a legacy, or of him who is always prying into other folks’ affairs, began sure enough to think they were betrayed, and that some of the coterie sate down to divert himself by giving to the public the portrait of all the rest. Filled with wrath against the traitor of Romford, one of them resolved to write to the printer, and inquire the author’s name. Samuel Johnson, was the reply. No more was necessary; Samuel Johnson was the name of the curate, and soon did each begin to load him with reproaches for turning his friends into ridicule in a manner so cruel and unprovoked. In vain did the guiltless curate protest his innocence; one was sure that Aligu meant Mr. Twigg, and that Cupidus was but another name for neighbour Baggs, till the poor parson, unable to contend any longer, rode to London, and brought them full satisfaction concerning the writer, who, from his own knowledge of general manners, quickened by a vigorous and warm imagination, had happily delineated, though unknown to himself, the members of the Bowling-Green Club.
Mr. Murphy likewise used to tell before Dr. Johnson, of the first timetheymet, and the occasion of their meeting, which he related thus. That being in those days engaged in a periodical paper, he found himself at a friend’s house out of town; and not being disposed to lose pleasure for the sake of business, wished rather to content his bookseller by sending some unstudied essay to London by the servant, than deny himself the company of his acquaintance, and drive away to his chambers for the purpose of writing something more correct. He therefore took up a French Journal Litteraire that lay about the room, and translating something he liked from it, sent it away without further examination. Time, however, discovered that he had translated from the French a “Rambler” of Johnson’s, which had been but a month before taken from the English; and thinking it right to make him his personal excuses, he went next day, and found our friend all covered with soot like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, with an intolerable heat and strange smell, as if he had been acting Lungs in the ‘Alchymist,’ making aether. “Come, come,” says Dr. Johnson, “dear Mur, the story is black enough now; and it was a very happy day for me that brought you first to my house, and a very happy mistake about the ‘Ramblers.’”
Dr. Johnson was always exceeding fond of chemistry; and we made up a sort of laboratory at Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with drawing essences and colouring liquors. But the danger Mr. Thrale found his friend in one day when I was driven to London, and he had got the children and servants round him to see some experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment, so well was the master of the house persuaded that his short sight would have been his destruction in a moment, by bringing him close to a fierce and violent flame. Indeed, it was a perpetual miracle that he did not set himself on fire reading a-bed, as was his constant custom, when exceedingly unable even to keep clear of mischief with our best help; and accordingly the fore-top of all his wigs were burned by the candle down to the very net work. Mr. Thrale’s valet de chambre, for that reason, kept one always in his own hands, with which he met him at the parlour-door when the bell had called him down to dinner, and as he went upstairs to sleep in the afternoon, the same man constantly followed him with another.
Future experiments in chemistry, however, were too dangerous, and Mr. Thrale insisted that we should do no more towards finding the Philosopher’s Stone.
Mr. Johnson’s amusements were thus reduced to the pleasures of conversation merely. And what wonder that he should have an avidity for the sole delight he was able to enjoy? No man conversed so well as he on every subject; no man so acutely discerned the reason of every fact, the motive of every action, the end of every design. He was indeed often pained by the ignorance or causeless wonder of those who knew less than himself, though he seldom drove them away with apparent scorn, unless he thought they added presumption to stupidity. And it was impossible not to laugh at the patience he showed, when a Welsh parson of mean abilities, though a good heart, struck with reverence at the sight of Dr. Johnson, whom he had heard of as the greatest man living, could not find any words to answer his inquiries concerning a motto round somebody’s arms which adorned a tombstone in Ruabon churchyard. If I remember right the words were—
“Heb Dw, Heb Dym,Dw o’ diggon.”
“Heb Dw, Heb Dym,Dw o’ diggon.”