up at the Three Crowns, not one of the great inns, but a good old-fashioned one, which was kept by Mr. Wilkins, and was the very next house to that in which Johnson was born and brought up, and which was still his own property. We had a comfortable supper, and got into high spirits. I felt all my toryism glow in this old capital of Staffordshire. I could have offered incense genio loci; and I indulged in libations of that ale, which Boniface, in "The Beaux Stratagem," recommends with such an eloquent jollity. man baron, who had lived much with the young English at Geneva, and was ambitious to be as lively as they; with which view, he, with assiduous exertion, was jumping over the tables and chairs in his lodgings; and when the people of the house ran in and asked, with surprise, what was the matter, he answered, "Sh' apprens l'etre fif" We dined at our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson 3, one of Johnson's schoolfellows, whom he treated with much kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and untaught. He had a coarse gray coat, black waistcoat, greasy leather breeches, and a yellow uncurled wig; and his countenance had the ruddiness which betokens one who is in no haste to "leave his can." He drank only ale. He had tried to be a cutler at Birmingham, but had not succeeded; and now he lived poorly at home, and had some scheme of dressing leather in a better manner than common; to his indistinct account of which, Dr. Johnson listen Next morning he introduced me to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his step-daughter. She was now an old maid, with much simplicity of manner. She had never been in London. Her brother, a captain in the navy, had left her a fortune of ten thousand pounds; about a third of which she had laid out in building a stately house, and making a handsome garden, in an elevated situation in Lichfield. Johnson, when here by himself, used to live at her house. She reverenced him, and he had a parental tender-ed with patient attention, that he might asness for her. We then visited Mr. Peter Garrick, who had that morning received a letter from his brother David, announcing our coming to Lichfield. He was engaged to dinner, but asked us to tea, and to sleep at his house. Johnson, however, would not quit his old acquaintance Wilkins of the Three Crowns. The family likeness of the Garricks was very striking; and Johnson thought that David's vivacity was not so peculiar to himself as was supposed. "Sir," said he, "I don't know but if Peter had cultivated all the arts of gaiety as much as David has done, he might have been as brisk and lively. Depend upon it, sir, vivacity is much an art 2, and depends greatly on habit." I believe there is a good deal of truth in this, notwithstanding a ludicrous story told me by a lady abroad, of a heavy Ger were susceptible of instruction), to observe, that on this visit to his native town, Johnson found his own near relation as much behind hand with life as the poor Hebridean, and found also oats, which he had sneered at as the food of men in Scotland, to be the food, also, of his own fellow townsmen.-ED.] I went through the house where my illustririous friend was born, with a reverence with which it doubtless will long be visited. An engraved view of it, with the adjacent buildings, is in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for Feoruary, 1785.-BoswELL. [It appears that quite a contrary conclusion might be drawn from the premises; for the liveliness of the Garrick family was obviously natural and hereditary, and (except perhaps in degree) independent of art or habit. The family was of French extraction, and preserved the vivacity of their original race.-ED.] sist him with his advice. Here was an instance of genuine humanity and real kindness in this great man, who has been most unjustly represented as altogether harsh and destitute of tenderness. A thousand such instances might have been recorded in the course of his long life; though that his temper was warm and hasty, and his manner often rough, cannot be denied. I saw here, for the first time, oat ale; and oat-cakes, not hard as in Scotland, but soft like a Yorkshire cake, were served at breakfast. It was pleasant to me to find, that " oats," the "food of horses," were so much used as the food of the people in Dr. Johnson's own town. He expatiated in praise of Lichfield and its inhabitants, who, he said, were "the most sober, decent people in England, the genteelest in proportion to their wealth, and spoke the purest English." I doubted as to the last article of this eulogy; for they had several provincial sounds; as, there, pronounced like fear, instead of like fair; once pronounced woonse, instead of wunse or wonse. Johnson himself never got entirely free of those provincial accents. Garrick sometimes used to take him off, squeezing a lemon into a punch-bowl, with uncouth gesticulations, 3 [This person's name was Henry See post, 1st Sept. 1777. The scheme for dressing leather" renders it probable that he was related to the Thomas Jackson, mentioned ante, vol. i. p. 13, by Mr. Boswell, as a servant, and by Mrs. Piozzi as a workman (in truth, probably, a partner) of old Mr. Johnson's, about the time when the failure of some scheme for dressing leather or parchment accelerated his bankruptcy, -ED.] looking round the company, and calling | really inclined to take the hint. Methought, out, "Who's for poonsh 12" Very little business appeared to be going forward in Lichfield. I found, however, two strange manufactures for so inland a place, sail-cloth and streamers for ships; and I observed them making some saddlecloths, and dressing sheep-skins: but upon the whole, the busy hand of industry seemed to be quite slackened. "Surely, sir," said I," you are an idle set of people." "Sir," said Johnson, we are a city of philosophers; we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.". There was at this time a company of players performing at Lichfield. The manager, Mr. Stanton, sent his compliments, and begged leave to wait on Dr. Johnson. Johnson received him very courteously, and he drank a glass of wine with us. He was a plain, decent, well-behaved man, and expressed his gratitude to Dr. Johnson for having once got him permission from Dr. Taylor at Ashbourne to play there upon moderate terms. Garrick's name was soon introduced. JOHNSON. "Garrick's conversation is gay and grotesque. It is a dish of all sorts, but all good things. There is no solid meat in it: there is a want of sentiment in it. Not but that he has sentiment sometimes, and sentiment too very powerful and very pleasing: but it has not its full proportion in his conversation." When we were by ourselves he told me, "Forty years ago, sir, I was in love with an actress here, Mrs. Emmet, who acted Flora, in Hob in a Well." " What merit this lady had as an actress, or what was her figure, or her manner, I have not been informed; but, if we may believe Mr. Garrick, his old master's taste in theatrical merit was by no means refined; he was not an elegans formarum spectator. Garrick used to tell, that Johnson said of an actor, who played Sir Harry Wildair at Lichfield, There is a courtly vivacity about the fellow;" when, in fact, according to Garrick's account, "he was the most vulgar ruffian that ever went upon boards." We had promised Mr. Stanton to be at his theatre on Monday. Dr. Johnson jocularly proposed to me to write a prologue for the occasion: "A Prologue, by James Boswell, Esq. from the Hebrides." I was "Prologue, spoken before Dr. Samuel Johnson, at Lichfield, 1776," would have sounded as well as "Prologue, spoken before the Duke of York at Oxford," in Charles the Second's time. Much might have been. said of what Lichfield had done for Shakspeare, by producing Johnson and Garrick. But I found he was averse to it. We went and viewed the museum of Mr. Richard Green, apothecary here, who told me he was proud of being a relation of Dr. Johnson's. It was, truly, a wonderful collection, both of antiquities and natural curiosities, and ingenious works of art. He had all the articles accurately arranged, with their names upon labels, printed at his own little press; and on the staircase leading to it was a board, with the names of contributors marked in gold letters. A printed catalogue of the collection was to be had at a bookseller's. Johnson expressed his admiration of the activity and diligence and good fortune of Mr. Green, in getting together, in his situation, so great a variety of things; and Mr. Green told me that Johnson once said to him, "Sir, I should as soon have thought of building a man of war, as of collecting such a museum." Mr. Green's obliging alacrity in showing it was very pleasing. His engraved portrait, with which he has favoured me, has a motto truly characteristical of his disposition," Nemo sibi vivat." A physician being mentioned who had lost his practice, because his whimsically changing his religion had made people distrustful of him, I maintained that this was unreasonable, as religion is unconnected with medical skill. JOHNSON. "Sir, it is not unreasonable; for when people see a man absurd in what they understand, they may conclude the same of him in what they do not understand. If a physician were to take to eating of horse-flesh, nobody would employ him; though one may eat horseflesh, and be a very skilful physician. If a man were educated in an absurd religion, his continuing to profess it would not hurt him, though his changing to it would 2." We drank tea and coffee at Mr. Peter Garrick's, where was Mrs. Aston, one of the maiden sisters of Mrs. Walmsley, wife of Johnson's first friend, and sister also of the lady of whom Johnson used to speak with 2 Fothergill, a quaker, and Schomberg, a jew, had the greatest practice of any two physicians of their time.-BURNEY. [Mr. D'Israeli thinks it possible, that Ralph Schomberg (the second son of Dr. Meyer Schomberg), the person mentioned by Dr. Burney, was the person alluded to in the text. Ralph Schomberg was driven from practice and out of society, for some dishonest tampering with the funds of an hospital, with which he was connected.-ED.] the warmest admiration, by the name of Molly Aston, who was afterwards married to Captain Brodie of the navy. On Sunday, March 24, we breakfasted with Mrs. Cobb, a widow lady, who lived in an agreeable sequestered place close by the town, called the Friary, it having been formerly a religious house. She and her niece, Miss Adey, were great admirers of Dr. Johnson; and he behaved to them with a kindness and easy pleasantry, such as we see between old and intimate acquaintance. He accompanied Mrs. Cobb to St. Mary's Church, and I went to the cathedral, where I was very much delighted with the musick, finding it to be peculiarly solemn, and accordant with the words of the service. We dined at Mr. Peter Garrick's, who was in a very lively humour, and verified Johnson's saying, that if he had cultivated gaiety as much as his brother David, he might have equally excelled in it. He was to-day quite a London narrator, telling us a variety of anecdotes with that earnestness and attempt at mimickry which we usually find in the wits of the metropolis. Dr. Johnson went with me to the cathedral in | the afternoon. It was grand and pleasing to contemplate this illustrious writer, now full of fame, worshipping in "the solemn temple" of his native city. quired for their formation. This fully refuted an antimosaical remark introduced into Captain Brydone's entertaining tour 1, I hope heedlessly, from a kind of vanity which is too common in those who have not sufficiently studied the most important of all subjects. Dr. Johnson, indeed, had said before, independent of this observation, "Shall all the accumulated evidence of the history of the world-shall the authority of what is unquestionably the most ancient writing, be overturned by an uncertain remark such as this?" On Monday, March 25, we breakfasted at Mrs. Lucy Porter's. Johnson had sent an express to Dr. Taylor's, acquainting him of our being at Lichfield, and Taylor had returned an answer that his post-chaise should come for us this day. While we sat at breakfast, Dr. Johnson received a letter by the post, which seemed to agitate him very much. When he had read it, he exclaimed, “One of the most dreadful things that has happened in my time." The phrase my time, like the word age, is usually understood to refer to an event of a publick or general nature. I imagined something like an assassination of the kinglike a gunpowder plot carried into execution or like another fire of London. When asked, "What is it, sir?" he answered, I returned to tea and coffee at Mr. Peter" Mr. Thrale has lost his only son!" This Garrick's, and then found Dr. Johnson at the Reverend Mr. Seward's, canon residentiary, who inhabited the bishop's palace, in which Mr. Walmsley lived, and which had been the scene of many happy hours in Johnson's early life. Mr. Seward had, with ecclesiastical hospitality and politeness, asked me in the morning, merely as a stranger, to dine with him; and in the afternoon, when I was introduced to him, he asked Dr. Johnson and me to spend the evening, and sup with him. He was a genteel, well-bred, dignified clergyman, had travelled with Lord Charles Fitzroy, uncle of the present Duke of Grafton, who died when abroad, and he had lived much in the great world. He was an ingenious and literary man, had published an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, and written verses in Dodsley's collection. His lady was the daughter of Mr. Hunter, Johnson's first schoolmaster. And now, for the first time, I had the pleasure of seeing his celebrated daughter, Miss Anna Seward, to whom I have since been indebted for many civilities, as well as some obliging communications concerning Johnson. Mr. Seward mentioned to us the observations which he had made upon the strata of earth in volcanoes, from which it appeared, that they were so very different in depth at different periods, that no calculation whatever could be made as to the time re was, no doubt, a very great affliction to Mr. 1 وو 1 [In Sicily and Malta.-ED.] JOHNSON. "No, sir; violent pain of mind, like violent pain of body, must be severely felt." BOSWELL. "I own, sir, I have not so much feeling for the distress of others as some people have, or pretend to have: but I know this, that I would do all in my power to relieve them." JOHNSON. “Sir, it is affectation to pretend to feel the distress of others as much as they do themselves. It is equally so, as if one should pretend to feel as much pain while a friend's leg is cutting off, as he does. No, sir; you have expressed the rational and just nature of sympathy. I would have gone to the extremity of the earth to have preserved this boy." He was soon quite calm. The letter was from Mr. Thrale's clerk, and concluded, "I need not say how much they wish to see you in London." He said, "We shall hasten back from Taylor's." Mrs. Lucy Porter and some other ladies of the place talked a great deal of him when he was out of the room, not only with veneration but affection. It pleased me to find that he was so much beloved in his native city. Mrs. Aston, whom I had seen the preceding night, and her sister, Mrs. Gastrel, a widow lady, had each a house, and garden, and pleasure-ground, prettily situated upon Stowhill, a gentle eminence, adjoining to Lichfield. Johnson walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself without any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility of manners, from which a man has no difficulty in carrying a friend to a house where he is intimate; I felt it very unpleasant to be thus left in solitude in a country town, where I was an entire stranger, and began to think myself unkindly deserted; but I was soon relieved, and convinced that my friend, instead of being deficient in delicacy, had conducted the matter with perfect propriety, for I received the following note in his handwriting: "Mrs. Gastrel, at the lower house on Stowhill, desires Mr. Boswell's company to dinner at two." I accepted of the invitation, and had here another proof how amiable his character was in the opinion of those who knew him best. I was not informed, till afterwards, that Mrs. Gastrel's husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at Stratford-uponAvon, where he was proprietor of Shakspeare's garden, with Gothic barbarity cut down his mulberry-tree, and, as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to believe, on the 1 See an accurate and animated statement of Mr. Gastrel's barbarity, by Mr. Malone, in a note on "Some Account of the Life of William Shakspeare," prefixed to his admirable edition of that poet's works, vol. i. p. 118.-BOSWELL. same authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts of our immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege. After dinner Dr. Johnson wrote [the following] letter to Mrs. Thrale, on the death of her son: ["TO MRS. THRALE. Letters, "Lichfield, 25th March, 1776. "DEAR MADAM,-This letter will not, I hope, reach you many days be- v. i. fore me; in a distress which can be p. 307. so little relieved, nothing remains for a friend but to come and partake it. "Poor, dear, sweet, little boy! When I read the letter this day to Mrs. Aston, she said, 'Such a death is the next to translation.' Yet, however I may convince myself of this, the tears are in my eyes, and yet I could not love him as you loved him, nor reckon upon him for a future comfort as you and his father reckoned upon him. "He is gone, and we are going! We could not have enjoyed him long, and shall not long be separated from him. He has probably escaped many such pangs as you are now feeling. "Nothing remains, but that with humble confidence we resign ourselves to Almighty Goodness, and fall down, without irreverent murmurs, before the Sovereign Distributor of Good and Evil, with hope that though sorrow endureth for a night, yet joy may come in the morning. "I have known you, madam, too long to think that you want any arguments for submission to the Supreme Will; nor can my consolation have any effect, but that of showing that I wish to comfort you. What can be done you must do for yourself. Remember first, that your child is happy; and then, that he is safe, not only from the ills of this world, but from those more formidable dangers which extend their mischief to eternity. You have brought into the world a rational being; have seen him happy during the little life that has been granted to him; and can have no doubt but that his happiness is now permanent and immutable. "When you have obtained by prayer such tranquillity as nature will admit, force your attention, as you can, upon your accustomed duties and accustomed entertainments. You can do no more for our dear boy, but you must not therefore think less on those whom your attention may make fitter for the place to which he is gone. I am, dearest, dearest madam, your most affectionate humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON."] I said this loss would be very distressing to Thrale, but she would soon forget it, as she had so many things to think of. JOHNSON. "No, sir, Thrale will forget it first. She has many things that she may think I did not mention the strong reason for their of. He has many things that he must marrying-the mechanical reason." Bosthink of." This was a very just remark WELL."Why that is a strong one. But upon the different effects of those light pur- does not imagination make it much more suits which occupy a vacant and easy mind, important than it is in reality? Is it not, and those serious engagements which ar- to a certain degree, a delusion in us as well rest attention, and keep us from brooding as in women?" JOHNSON. "Why yes, over grief. sir; but it is a delusion that is always beginning again." BOSWELL. "I do n't know but there is upon the whole more misery than happiness produced by that passion." JOHNSON. "I don't think so, sir." "Never speak of a man in his own presIt is always indelicate, and may be 66 Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen. It is assuming a superiority, and it is particularly wrong to question a man concerning himself. There may be parts of his former life which he may not wish to be made known to other persons, or even brought to his own recollection." He observed of Lord Bute, "It was said of Augustus, that it would have been better for Rome that he had never been born, or had never died. So it would have been better for this nation if Lord Bute had never been minister, or had never resigned." In the evening we went to the Town-ence. hall, which was converted into a temporary offensive." theatre, and saw "Theodosius," with " The Stratford Jubilee." I was happy to see Dr. Johnson sitting in a conspicuous part of the pit, and receiving affectionate homage from all his acquaintance. We were quite gay and merry. I afterwards mentioned to him that I condemned myself for being so, when poor Mr. and Mrs. Thrale were in such distress. JOHNSON. "You are wrong, sir; twenty years hence Mr. and Mrs. Thrale will not suffer much pain from the death of their son. Now, sir, you are to consider, that distance of place, as well as distance of time, operates upon the human feelings. I would not have you be gay in the presence of the distressed, because it would shock them; but you may be gay at a distance. Pain for the loss of a friend, or of a relation whom we love, is occasioned by the want which we feel. In time the vacuity is filled with something else; or sometimes the vacuity closes up of itself." Mr. Seward and Mr. Pearson 1, another clergyman here, supped with us at our inn, and after they left us, we sat up late as we used to do in London. "A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused and laugh at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion." "Much may be done if a man puts his whole mind to a particular object. By doing so, Norton 3 has made himself the great lawyer that he is allowed to be." I mentioned an acquaintance of mine, a sectary, who was a very religious man, who not only attended regularly on publick worship with those of his communion, but made a particular study of the Scriptures, and even wrote a commentary on some parts of them, yet was known to be very licentious in indulging himself with women; maintaining that men are to be saved by faith alone, and that the Christian religion had not prescribed any fixed rule for the intercourse between the sexes. JOHNSON. Sir, there is no trusting to that crazy piety." Here I shall record some fragments of my friend's conversation during this jaunt. "Marriage, sir, is much more necessary to a man than to a woman: for he is much" less able to supply himself with domestick comforts. You will recollect my saying to some ladies the other day, that I had often wondered why young women should marry, as they have so much more freedom, and so much more attention paid to them while unmarried, than when married. I indeed I observed that it was strange how well Scotchmen were known to one another in their own country, though born in very distant counties; for we do not find that the gentlemen of neighbouring counties in England are mutually known to each other. [This very just observation explains why the conversation of princes, and of those who ape princes, consists of so large a proportion of questions. The badauds of all nations used to wonder at Buonaparte's active curiosity and desire of knowledge from the multitude of his questions, while in fact he was only playing at KING." [This was the gentleman whose lady inherited Miss Porter's property, and has contributed so many of her manuscripts to this edition. It was to him that Miss Porter addressed, in the presence of Dr. Johnson, that two-edged reproof, which Dr. Johnson repeated to Mrs. Piozzi. Mr. Pearson having opposed Miss Porter in some argument, she was offended, and exclaimed, "Mr.-ED.] Pearson, you are just like Dr. Johnson-you con- 3 Sir Fletcher Norton, afterwards speaker of tradict every word one speaks."-Piozzi, p. 172. the house of commons, and in 1782 created Bar-ED.] on Grantly.-MALONE. |