to The Good Me? Colson one M. Johnson, 2 together: Davy ext week, & M. gedy & to see to get hin either from is a very good I will turn out a Y liquors a practice to which he rigidly conformed for many years together, at different periods of his life.' 2 His Ofellus in the art of living in London, I have heard him relate, was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practised his own precepts of economy for several years in the British capital. He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was then meditating to try his fortune in London, but was apprehensive of the expense, "that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence a week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending three-pence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt-day he went abroad, 'At this time his abstinence from wine may, perhaps, be attributed to poverty, but in his subsequent life he was restrained from that indulgence by, as it appears, moral, or rather medical considerations. He found by experience that wine, though it dissipated for a moment, yet eventually aggravated the hereditary disease under which he suffered; and perhaps it may have been owing to a long course of abstinence, that his mental health seems to have been better in the latter than in the earlier portion of his life. He says, in his Prayers and Meditations (Aug. 17th, 1767), "By abstinence from wine and suppers, I obtained sudden and great relief, and had freedom of mind restored to me; which I have wanted for all this year, without being able to find any means of obtaining it." See also post, Sept. 16th, 1773. These remarks are important, because depression of spirits is too often treated on a contrary system, from ignorance of, or inattention, to what may be its real cause.-Croker. 2 Both Boswell and Croker spell the name Ofellus, instead of Ofella. Neither is Croker right when, in a note on this passage, he calls Ofella, a Roman rustic. Horace (Sat. ii. 2. 133) informs us that, in his youth, Ofella was the owner of an estate near Venusia, which was taken from him and conferred on a veteran named Umbrenus. "Nunc ager Umbreni sub nomine, nuper Ofellæ and that as "colonus," he rented a farm on the estate which had been formerly his own.-Editor. and paid visits." I have heard him more than once talk of his frugal friend, whom he recollected with esteem and kindness, and did not like to have one smile at the recital. "This man,” said he, gravely, "was a very sensible man, who perfectly understood common affairs: a man of a great deal of knowledge of the world, fresh from life, not strained through books. He borrowed a horse and ten pounds at Birmingham. Finding himself master of so much money, he set off for West Chester, in order to get to Ireland. He returned the horse, and probably the ten pounds too, after he had got home.” Considering Johnson's narrow circumstances in the early part of his life, and particularly at the interesting era of his launching into the ocean of London, it is not to be wondered at, that an actual instance, proved by experience, of the possibility of enjoying the intellectual luxury of social life upon a very small income, should deeply engage his attention, and be ever recollected by him as a circumstance of much importance. He amused himself, I remember, by computing how much more expense was absolutely necessary to live upon the same scale with that which his friend described, when the value of money was diminished by the progress of commerce. It may be estimated that double the money might now with difficulty be sufficient. Amidst this cold obscurity, there was one brilliant circumstance to cheer him; he was well acquainted with Mr. Henry Hervey,' one of the branches of the noble family of that name, 1 The Hon. Henry Hervey, third [fourth] son of the first Earl of Bristol [born 1700], quitted the army and took orders. He married [in 1730, Catherine the eldest] sister of Sir Thomas Aston, by whom he got the Aston Estate, and assumed the name and arms of that family. Vide Collins' Peerage, third ed., vol. iii., p. 384. Mr. Hervey's acquaintance and kindness Johnson owed, no doubt, to his friend Mr. Walmsley; who, it will be recollected, married Mrs. Hervey's sister, Margaret Aston. But I doubt whether Mr. Boswell does not antedate this intimacy with Hervey and Johnson's love of that name by a couple of years-for the first edition of London contained a sneer at Lord Hervey (Henry's brother), for whose name that of Clodio was afterwards substituted.-Croker. Mr. Croker in the preceding note questions the existence of any inti |