washerwoman with half-a-dozen children dependent on her daily labour for their daily bread.* Lord Macaulay thus portrays the objects of Johnson's hospitality as soon as he had got a house to cover them. "It was the home of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together. At the head of the establishment he had placed an old lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness and her poverty. But in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was generally addressed as Mrs. Carmichael, but whom her generous host called Polly. An old quack doctor called Levet, who bled and dosed coalheavers and hackney coachmen, and received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and sometimes a little copper, completed this menagerie.” † Mrs. Williams was the daughter of a physician, and of a good Welsh family, who did not leave her dependent on Johnson. She is termed by Madame D'Arblay a very pretty poet, and was treated with uniform re * "It's weel wi' you gentles that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as any hammer." The Antiquary. For this very reason the "gentles" commonly suffer most. spect by him.* All the authorities for the account of Levet were collected by Hawkins †: from these it appears that his patients were "chiefly of the lowest class of tradesmen," and that, although he took all that was offered him by way of fee, including meat and drink, he demanded nothing from the poor, nor was known in any instance to have enforced the payment of even what was justly his due. Hawkins adds that he (Levet) had acted for many years in the capacity of surgeon and apothecary to Johnson under the direction of Dr. Law rence. "When fainting Nature called for aid, No summons mocked by chill delay, Johnson's verses, compared with Lord Macaulay's prose, strikingly shew how the same subject can be degraded or elevated by the mode of treatment; and how easily the historian or biographer, who expands his authorities by picturesque details, may brighten or darken characters at will. To complete the picture of Johnson's interior, it should be added that the inmates of his house were Miss Cornelia Knight, in her "Autobiography," warmly vindicates her respectability, and refers to a memoir, by Lady Knight, in the "European Magazine" for Oct. 1799. † Life of Johnson, p. 396-400. quarrelling from morning to night with one another, with his negro servant, or with himself. In one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale, he says, "Williams hates everybody: Levet hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams: Desmoulins hates them both: Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them." In a conversation at Streatham, reported by Madame D'Arblay, the menagerie was thus humorously described: "Mrs. Thrale. - Mr. Levet, I suppose, Sir, has the office of keeping the hospital in health? for he is an apothecary. "Dr. J.-Levet, Madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not his mind. "Mr. Thrale. But how do you get your dinners drest? "Dr. J.-Why De Mullin has the chief management of the kitchen; but our roasting is not magnificent, for we have no jack. "Mr. T.-No jack? Why how do they manage without? "Dr. J.- Small joints, I believe, they manage with a string, and larger are done at the tavern. I have some thoughts (with a profound gravity) of buying a jack, because I think a jack is some credit to a house. "Mr. T.-Well, but you will have a spit, too? "Dr. J.-No, Sir, no; for we shall never use it; will be presumed! that would be superfluous; and if a jack is seen, a spit "Mrs. T.-But pray, Sir, who is the Poll you talk of? She that you used to abet in her quarrels with Mrs. Williams, and call out, 'At her again, Poll! Never flinch, Poll!' "Dr. J.-Why I took to Poll very well at first, but she won't do upon a nearer examination. "Mrs. T. How came she among you, Sir? - “Dr. J. — Why I don't rightly remember, but we could spare her very well from us. Poll is a stupid slut; I had some hopes of her at first; but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her; she was wiggle waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical." The effect of an unbroken residence with such inmates, on a man of irritable temper subject to morbid melancholy, may be guessed; and the merit of the Thrales in rescuing him from it, and in soothing down his asperities, can hardly be over-estimated. Lord Macaulay says, they were flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated preferred their house to every other in London; and suggests that even the peculiarities which seem to unfit him for civilised society, including his gesticulations, his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, and the ravenous eagerness with which he devoured his food, increased the interest which his new associates took in him. His hostess does not appear to have viewed them in that light, and she was able to command the best company of the intellectual order without the aid of a "lion," or a bear. If his conversation attracted many, it drove away many, and silenced more. He accounted for the little attention paid him by the great, by saying that "great lords and great ladies do not like to have their mouths stopped," as if this was peculiar to them as a class. "My leddie,” remarks Cuddie in "Old Mortality," "canna weel bide to be contradicted, as I ken neabody likes, if they could help themselves." Johnson was in the zenith of his fame when literature, politics, and fashion began to blend together again by hardly perceptible shades, like the colours in shotsilk, as they had partially done in the Augustan age of Queen Anne. One marked sign was the formation of the Literary Club (The Club, as it still claims to be called), which brought together Fox, Burke, Gibbon, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, and Beauclerc, besides blackballing a bishop (the Bishop of Chester), and a lord-chancellor (Camden).* Yet it is curious to observe within how narrow a circle of good houses the Doctor's engagements were restricted. Reynolds, Paoli, Beauclerc, Allan Ramsay, Hoole, Dilly, Strahan, Lord Lucan, Langton, Garrick, and the Club formed his main reliance as regards dinners; and we find Boswell recording with manifest symptoms of exultation in 1781: "I dined with him at a bishop's where were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Berenger, and some more company. He had dined the day before at another bishop's." His reverence for the episcopal bench well merited some return on their part. Mr. Canning was blackballed the first time he was proposed. He was elected in 1798, Mr. Windham being his proposer, and Dr. Burney his seconder. |