About this time the Reverend Mr. John Hussey, who had been some time in trade, and was then a clergyman of the church of England, being about to undertake a journey to Aleppo, and other parts of the east, which he accomplished, Dr. Johnson (who had long been in habits of intimacy with him) honoured him with the following letter: t TO MR. JOHN HUSSEY. "29th December, 1778. "DEAR SIR,—I have sent you the Grammar,' and have left you two books more, by which I hope to be remembered: write my name in them; we may, perhaps, see each other no more; you part with my good wishes, nor do I despair of seeing you return. Let no opportunities of vice corrupt you; let no bad example seduce you; let the blindness of Mahometans confirm you in Christianity. God bless you. I am, dear sir, your affectionate humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." 201 Pemb. ["DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. ASTON. "London, Bolt-court, Fleet-street, 2d Jan. 1779. "DEAR MADAM,-Now the new year is come, of which I wish you em and dear Mrs. Gastrell many and many returns, it is fit that I give you some account of the year past. In the beginning of it I had a difficulty of breathing, and other illness, from which, however, I by degrees recovered, and from which I am now tolerably free. In the spring and summer I flattered myself that I should come to Lichfield, and forbore to write till I could tell of my intentions with some certainty, and one thing or other making the journey always improper, as I did not come, I omitted to write, till at last I grew afraid of hearing ill news. But the other day Mr. Prujean 2 called and left word, that you, dear madam, are grown better; and I know not when ĺ heard any thing that pleased me so much. I shall now long more and more to see Lichfield, and partake the happiness of your recovery. "Now you begin to mend, you have great encouragement to take care of yourself. Do not omit any thing that can conduce to your health, and when I come, I shall hope to enjoy with you, and dearest Mrs. Gastrell, many pleasing hours. Johnson this year expressed great satisfaction at the publication of the first volume of "Discourses to the Royal Academy," by Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom he always considered as one of his literary school. Much praise indeed is due to those "Do not be angry at my long omission excellent Discourses, which are so univer- to write, but let me hear how you both do, sally admired, and for which the authour for you will write to nobody, to whom received from the Empress of Russia a gold your welfare will give more pleasure, than snuff-box, adorned with her profile in basto, dearest madam, your most humble serrelief, set in diamonds; and containing, what is infinitely more valuable, a slip of paper, on which are written with her imperial majesty's own hand, the following words: "Pour le Chevalier Reynolds, en temoignage du contentement que j'ai ressentie à la lecture de ses excellens discours sur la peinture." This year Johnson gave the world a luminous proof that the vigour of his mind in all its faculties, whether memory, judgment, or imagination, was not in the least abated; for this year came out the first four volumes of his "Prefaces, biographical and critical, to the most eminent of the English Poets,*" published by the booksellers of London. The remaining volumes came out in the year 1780. The poets were selected by the several booksellers who had the honorary copyright, which is still preserved among them by mutual compact, notwithstanding the decision of the house of lords against the perpetuity of literary property. We have his own authority, that by his recommendation the poems of Blackmore, Watts, Pomfret, and Yalden, were added to the collection. Of this work I shall speak more particularly hereafter. 'Life of Watts.-BOSWELL. VOL II 26 vant, "SAM. JOHNSON."] ["DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. LUCY PORTER Pearson "Bolt-court, Fleet-street, 2d Jan. 1779. "DEAREST LOVE,—Though have so long omitted to write, I will omit it no longer. I hope the new year finds you not worse than you have formerly been; and I wish that many years may pass over you without bringing either pain or discontent. For my part, I think my health, though not good, yet rather better than when I left you. My purpose was to have paid you my annual visit in the summer, but it happened otherwise, not by any journey another way, for I have never been many miles from London, but by such hindrances as it is hard to bring to any account. "Do not follow my bad example, but write to me soon again, and let me know of you what you have to tell; I hope it is all good. "Please to make my compliments to Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Adey, and Miss Adey, and all the ladies and gentlemen that frequent your mansion. 2 [Mr. Prujean married the youngest of the Misses Aston.-Harwood.] "If you want any books, or any thing else that I can send you, let me know. I am, dear madam, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON."] On the 22d of January, I wrote to him on several topicks, and mentioned that as he had been so good as to permit me to have the proof sheets of his "Lives of the Poets," I had written to his servant, Francis, to take care of them for me. 66 MR. BOSWELL TO DR. JOHNSON. "Edinburgh, 2d February, 1779. "MY DEAR SIR,-Garrick's death is a striking event; not that we should be surprised with the death of any man, who has lived sixty-two years 1; but because there was a vivacity in our late celebrated friend, which drove away the thoughts of death from any association with him. I am sure you will be tenderly affected with his departure; and I would wish to hear from you upon the subject. I was obliged to him in my days of effervescence in London, when poor Derrick was my governour; and since that time I received many civilities from him. Do you remember how pleasing it was, when I received a letter from him at Inverary, upon our first return to civilized living after our Hebridean journey? Ishall always remember him with affection as well as admiration. "On Saturday last, being the 30th of January, I drank coffee and old port, and had solemn conversation with the Reverend Mr. Falconer, a nonjuring bishop, a very learned and worthy man. He gave two toasts, which you will believe I drank with cordiality, Dr. Samuel Johnson and Flora Macdonald. I sat about four hours with him, and it was really as if I had been living in the last century. The episcopal church of Scotland, though faithful to the royal house of Stuart, has never accepted of any congé d'élire since the revolution; it is the only true episcopal church in Scotland, as it has its own succession of bishops. For as to the episcopal clergy, who take the oaths to the present government, they indeed follow the rites of the church of England, but, as Bishop Falconer observed, 'they are not episcopals; for they are under no bishop, as a bishop cannot have authority beyond his diocese.' This.venerable gentleman did me the honour to dine 1 On Mr. Garrick's monument in Lichfield Cathedral, he is said to have died, "aged 64 years." But it is a mistake, and Mr. Boswell is perfectly correct. Garrick was baptised at Here ford, Feb. 28, 1716-17, and died at his house in London, Jan. 20, 1779. The inaccuracy of lapidary inscriptions is well known.-MALONE. [The inscription, as given in Harwood's History of Lichfield, has sixty-three years.-ED.] with me yesterday, and he laid his hands upon the heads of my little ones. We had a good deal of curious literary conversation, particularly about Mr. Thomas Ruddiman, with whom he lived in great friendship. "Any fresh instance of the uncertainty of life makes one embrace more closely a valuable friend. My dear and much respected sir, may God preserve you long in this world while I am in it. I am ever, your much obliged, and affectionate humble servant, "JAMES BOSWELL." p. 145-6, [When Garrick was on his last sick-bed, no arguments or recitals Piozzi, of such facts as reached him would persuade Dr. 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, 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, which hopeth all things, and believeth 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 is so apt to find his task above his power of performance !] ["DR. JOHNSON TO MISS REYNolds. 15th February, 1779. "DEAREST MADAM,-I have never deserved to be treated as you treat Reyn. me. MS. fore, I undertook your affair2 and succeedWhen you employed me beed, but then I succeeded by choosing a Proper time, and a proper time I will try to choose again. "I have about a week's work to do, and 2 [This seems to allude to some favour (probably a pecuniary one) which Johnson was to solicit from Sir Joshua for Miss Reynolds:-ED.] then I shall come to live in town, and will first wait on you in Dover-street. You are not to think that I neglect you, for your nieces will tell you how rarely they have seen me. I will wait on you as soon as I can, and yet you must resolve to talk things over without anger, and you must leave me to catch opportunities, and be assured, dearest dear, that I should have very little enjoyment of that day in which I had neglected any opportunity of doing good to you. I am, dearest madam, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON."] you soon. "I have seen Mr. Pearson, and am pleased to find that he has got a living. I was hurried when he was with me, but had time to hear that my friends were all well. "Poor Mrs. Adey was, I think, a good woman, and therefore her death is less to be lamented; but it is not pleasant to think how uncertain it is, that, when friends part, they will ever meet again. "My old complaint of flatulence, and tight and short breath, oppress me heavily. My nights are very restless. I think of consulting the doctor to-morrow. "This has been a mild winter, for which I hope you have been the better. Take what care you can of yourself, and do not forget to drink. I was somehow or other hindered from coming into the country last summer, but I think of coming this year. I am, dear love, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON."] MSS. ["TO MRS. ASTON. Bolt-court, Fleet-street, 4th March, 1779. "DEAR MADAM,-Mrs. Gastrell Pemb. and you are very often in my thoughts, though I do not write so often as might be expected from so much love and so much respect. I please myself with thinking that I shall see you again, and shall find you better. But futurity is uncertain: poor David had doubtless many futurities in his head, which death has intercepted a death, I believe, totally unexpected: he did not in his last hour seem to think his life in danger. My old complaints hang heavy on me, and my nights are very uncomfortable and unquiet; and sleepless nights make heavy days. I think to go to my physician, and try what can be done. For why should not I grow better as well as you? 1 [Mr. Garrick.-ED.] · "I got my Lives, not yet quite printed, put neatly together, and sent them to the king: what he says of them I know not. If the king is a whig, he will not like them: but is any king a whig?"] On the 23d of February I had written to him again, complaining of his silence, as I had heard he was ill, and had written to Mr. Thrale for information concerning him: and I announced my intention of soon being again in London. "TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "13th March, 1779. "DEAR SIR,-Why should you take such delight to make a bustle, to write to Mr. Thrale that I am negligent, and to Francis to do what is so very unnecessary? Thrale, you may be sure, cared not about it; and I shall spare Francis the trouble, by ordering a set both of the Lives and Poets to dear Mrs. Boswell 2, in acknowledgement of her marmalade. Persuade her to accept them, and accept them kindly. If I thought she would receive them scornfully, I would send them to Miss Boswell, who, I hope, has yet none of her mamma's ill-will to me. "I would send sets of Lives, four volumes, to some other friends, to Lord Hailes first. His second volume lies by my bed-side; a book surely of great labour, and to every just thinker of great delight. Write me word to whom I shall send besides. Would it please Lord Auchinleck? Mrs. Thrale waits in the coach. I am, dear sir, &c. "SAM. JOHNSON." This letter crossed me on the road to London, where I arrived on Monday, March 15, and next morning, at a late hour, found Dr. Johnson sitting over his tea, attended by Mrs. Desmoulins, Mr. Levett, and a clergyman, who had come to He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a very handsome present.-Bos WELL. nine.". " Palpable, sir (cried the enthusiast); I know it. But (in a lower tone) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath 3 in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain." JOHNSON. Sir, you are giving a reason for it; but that will not make it right. You may have a reason why two and two should make five; but they will still make but four." submit some poetical pieces to his revision. | errour, sir; you have made Genius femiIt is wonderful what a number and variety of writers, some of them even unknown to him, prevailed on his good-nature to look over their works, and suggest corrections and improvements. My arrival interrupted, for a little while, the important business of this true representative of Bayes; upon its being resumed, I found that the subject under immediate consideration was a translation, yet in manuscript, of the "Carmen Seculare" of Horace, which had this year been set to musick, and performed as a Although I was several times with him publick entertainment in London, for the in the course of the following days, such it joint benefit of Monsieur Philidor and Sig- seems were my occupations, or such my nor Baretti. When Johnson had done read- negligence, that I have preserved no memoing, the authour asked him bluntly, "If rial of his conversation till Friday, March upon the whole it was a good translation?" 26, when I visited him. He said he exJohnson, whose regard for truth was un-pected to be attacked on account of his commonly strict, seemed to be puzzled for a moment what answer to make, as he certainly could not honestly commend, the performance: with exquisite address he evaded the question thus, "Sir, I do not say that it may not be made a very good translation." Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed" Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain" came next in review. The bard 1 was a lank bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing himself in agitation, while Johnson read, and, showing his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, “Is that poetry, sir?-Is it Pindar?" JOHNSON. 66 Why, sir, there is here a great deal of what is called poetry." Then, turning to me, the poet cried, "My muse has not been long upon the town, and (pointing to the Ode) it trembles under the hand of the great critick." Johnson, in a tone of displeasure, asked him, "Why do you praise Anson?" I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question 2. He proceeded:-" Here is an 1 [This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informs the Editor, that this portrait is so accurately drawn, that, being, some years after the publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know, but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it appeared that he was indeed the authour of "The Warlike Genius of Britain."-ED.] 2 [He disliked Lord Anson probably from local politics. On one occasion he visited Lord Anson's seat, and although, as he confessed, "well received and kindly treated, he, with the true gratitude of a wit, ridiculed the master of the house before he had left it half an hour." the grounds there is a temple of the winds, on which he made the following epigram : In "Lives of the Poets." "However," said p. 140. Talking of a friend 4 of ours associating with persons of very discordant principles and characters; I said he was a very universal man, quite a man of the world. JOHNSON. "Yes, sir; but one may be so much a man of the world, as to be nothing in the world. I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield,' which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge. I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.'" BOSWELL. "That was a fine passage." JOHNSON. "Yes, sir: there was another fine passage too, which he struck out: When I was a young man, f being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for I found that generally what was new was false 5." I Gratum animum laudo; Qui debuit omnia ventis, 3 [Where there was a camp at this period; see ante, p. 199.-ED.] 4 [Probably Sir Joshua Reynolds; see ante, p. 156.-ED.] 5 Dr. Burney, in a note introduced in a former page, has mentioned this circumstance, concerning Goldsmith, as communicated to him by Dr. Johnson, not recollecting that it occurred here. His said I did not like to sit with people of whom I had not a good opinion. JOHNSON. "But you must not indulge your delicacy too much, or you will be a tête-à-tête man all your life." ["DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE. Letters, p. 43. "18th March, 1779. cerning insolvent debtors 2. "Thus to be singled out," said he, " by a legislature, as an object of public consideration and kindness, is a proof of no common merit." Piozzi, P. 20. At Streatham, on Monday, March 29, at breakfast, he maintained that a father had no right to control the inclinations of his daughter in marriage. [Of pa"On Monday I came late to Mrs. rental authority, indeed, few people vol. ii. Vesey. Mrs. Montagu was there; thought with a lower degree of esI called for the print 1, and got good timation. Mrs. Thrale one day mentioned words. The evening was not brilliant, the resignation of Cyrus to his father's will, but I had thanks for my company. The as related by Xenophon, when, after all his night was troublesome. On Tuesday I fast-conquests, he requested the consent of ed, and went to the doctor: he ordered bleed- Cambyses to his marriage with a neighing. On Wednesday I had the tea-pot, fasted, and was blooded. Wednesday night was better. To-day I have dined at Mr. Strahan's, at Islington, with his new wife. To-night there will be opium; tomorrow the tea-pot; then heigh for Saturday. I wish the doctor would bleed me again. Yet every body that I meet says that I look better than when I was last met."]. During my stay in London this spring, I find I was unaccountably negligent in preserving Johnson's sayings, more so than at any time when I was happy enough to have an opportunity of hearing his wisdom and wit. There is no help for it now. I must content myself with presenting such scraps as I have. But I am nevertheless ashamed and vexed to think how much has been lost. It is not that there was a bad crop this year, but that I was not sufficiently careful in gathering it in. I therefore, in some instances, can only exhibit a few detached fragments. Talking of the wonderful concealment of the authour of the celebrated letters signed Junius, he said, "I should have believed Burke to be Junius, because I know no man but Burke who is capable of writing these letters; but Burke spontaneously denied it to me. The case would have been different, had I asked him if he was the authour; a man so questioned, as to an anonymous publication, may think he has a right to deny it." He observed that his old friend, Mr. Sheridan, had been honoured with extraordinary attention in his own country, by having had an exception made in his favour in an Irish act of parliament con remark, however, is not wholly superfluous, as it ascertains that the words which Goldsmith had put into the mouth of a fictitious character in the "Vicar of Wakefield," and which, as we learn from Dr. Johnson, he afterwards expunged, related, like many other passages in his novel, to himself. -MALONE. [Mrs. Montagu's portrait.-ED.] bouring princess; and she added Rollin's applause and recommendation of the example. "Do you not perceive, then," says Johnson, "that Xenophon on this occasion commends like a pedant, and Pere Rollin applauds like a slave? If Cyrus, by his conquests, had not purchased emancipation, he had conquered to little purpose indeed. Can you forbear to see the folly of a fellow who has in his care the lives of thousands, when he begs his papa's permission to be married, and confesses his inability to decide in a matter which concerns no man's happiness but his own?" Dr. Johnson caught Mrs. Thrale another time reprimanding the daughter of her house-keeper for having sat down unpermitted in her mother's presence. "Why, she gets her living, does she not," said he, "without her mother's help? Let the wench alone," continued he. And when they were again out of the women's sight who were concerned in the dispute, Poor people's children, dear lady," said he, "never respect them. I did not respect my own mother, though I loved her: and one day, when in anger, she called me a puppy, I asked her if she knew what they called a puppy's mother."] On Wednesday, 31st March, when I visited him, and confessed an excess of which I had very seldom been guilty-that I had spent a whole night in playing at cards, and that I could not look back on it with satisfaction-instead of a harsh animadversion, he mildly said, "Alas, sir, on how 2 [This is a total mistake. Mr. Whyte tells members of a committee of the Irish house of us of the personal civility with which some commons on a bill for the relief of insolvent debtors treated Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Whyte who appeared on his behalf, but there is no exception in the act. Sheridan's name is one of some hundreds, and has no distinction whatsoever. The favour he sought was, to be included in the act without being in actual custody, as he was resident in France; this he obtained, but not specially, for one hundred and twenty other persons, in similar circumstances, are also included. See Schedule to Irish Statute, 5th Geo. 3d, chap. 23.-ED.]. |