NECDOTES OF THE LATE SAMUEL
JOHNSON, LL.D.
IN WEEKLY VOLUMES, price 3d. ; or in Cloth, 6d.
CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
Edited by HENRY MORLEY, LL.D.
List of Second Year's Volumes, now in course of publication.
53. The Christian Year JOHN KEBLE.
54. Wanderings in South America .- .. CHARLES WATHRTON.
55 . The Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.
5 6. The Hunchback, and The Love-Chase .. T. SHERIDAN KNOWLES.
57. Crotchet Castle THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
58. Lives of Pericles, Fabius Maximus, &c. . PLUTARCH.
59. Lays of Ancient Rome, &c .. LORD MACAULAY.
60 Sermons on Evil-Speaking .. .. .. ISAAC KARROW. D.D.
61 The Diary of Samuel Pepys (16631664).
62 The Tempest .. WM. SHAKESPEARE.
63. Rosalind THOMAS LODGE.
64. Isaac Biekerstaff .. STEELE and AUDISON.
65. Gtebir, and Count Julian W. S. LANDOR.
66. The Earl of Chatham LORD MACAULAY.
67. The Discovery of Guiana, &c. .. . SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
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2vols. REV. GILBERT WHITE.
70. The Angel in the House COVENTRY PATMORE.
71. Trips to the Moon LUCIAN.
72. Cato the Younger, Agia, Cleomenes, &o. . PLUTARCH.
73. Julius Csesar WM. SHAKESPEARE.
74. The Diary of Samuel Pepys (16641665).
75. An Essay on Man, and other Poems . . ALEXANDER POPE.
76. A Tour in Ireland. 1776 1779 .. .. ARTHUR YOUNG.
77 & 78. Knickerbocker's History of New
rork. 2vols WASHINGTON IRVING.
79. A Midsummer-Night's Dream .. .. WM. SHAKESPEARE.
80 The Banquet of Plato, and other Pieces PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
81 A Voyage to Lisbon HENRY FIHLDING.
82. My Beautiful Lady, &e. THOMAS WOOLNER.
83 & 84. Travels in the Interior of Africa.
avols MUNGOPARK.
85. The Temple GEORGE HERBERT.
86 The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Jan. to Oct., 1666).
87 Kinct Henry VIII WM SHAKESPEARE.
88. An Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful EDMUND BURKE.
89. Lives of Timoleon.Paulus -Emihus, &c. PLUTARCH.
90. Endymion, and other Poems .. .. JOHN KEATS.
91. A Voyage to Abyssinia FATHER JEROME LOBO.
92. Sintram and his Companions, &c LA MOTTE FOUQUE.
03 Human Nature, and other Sermons . . BISHOP BUTLER.
94. The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Nov., 1666, to May, 1667).
95. The Life and Death of King John .. WM. SHAKESPEARE.
96. The History of the Caliph Vathek .. WILLIAM BECKFORD.
97. Poems .. JOHN DRYDEN.
98. Colloquies on Society ROBERT SUUTHEY.
99. Lives of Agesilaus, Pompey, & Phocion PLUTARCH.
100. The Winter's Tale WM. SHAKESPEARE.
101. The Table-Talk of John Selden.
102. The Diary of Samuel Pepys (June to Oct., 1667).
103. An Essay upon Projects DANIEL DEFOE.
104. The Cricket on the Hearth CHARLES DICKENS.
105. Anecdotes ot Samuel Johnson, LL.D. . HESTHEK LYNCH PIOZZI
The next Volume will be
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-^ CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
ANECDOTES
OF THE LATE
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
DURING THE LAST
TWENTY YEARS OF HIS LIFE.
BY
HESTHEK LYNCH PIOZZI.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.
1887.
Pa
INTEODUCTION
[RS. PIOZZI, by her second marriage, was by her
first marriage the Mrs. Thrale in whose house at
Streatham Doctor Johnson was, after the year of
his first introduction, 1765, in days of infirmity, an
honoured and a cherished friend. The year of the
beginning of the friendship was the year in which
Johnson, fifty-six years old, obtained his degree of
LL.D. from Dublin, and though he never called
himself Doctor was thenceforth called Doctor by
all his friends.
Before her marriage Mrs. Piozzi had been Miss
Hesther Lynch Salusbury, a young lady of a good
Welsh family. She was born in the year 1740,
and she lived until the year 1821. She celebrated
her eightieth birthday on the 27th of January, 1820,
by a concert, ball, and supper to six or seven hun
dred people, and led off the dancing at the ball
with an adopted son for partner. When Johnson
6 INTRODUCTION.
was first introduced to her, as Mrs. Thrale, she was
a lively, plump little lady, twenty-five years old,
short of stature, broad of build, with an animated
face, touched, according to the fashion of life in
her early years, with rouge, which she continued to
use when she found that it had spoilt her com
plexion. Her hands were rather coarse, but her
handwriting was delicate.
Henry Thrale, whom she married, was the head
of the great brewery house now known as that of
Barclay and Perkins. Henry Thrale's father had
succeeded Edmund Halsey, who began life by run
ning away from his father, a miller at St. Albans.
Halsey was taken in as a clerk-of-all-work at the
Anchor Brewhouse in Southwark, became a house-
clerk, able enough to please Child, his master, and
handsome enough to please his master's daughter.
He married the daughter and succeeded to Child's
Brewery, made much money, and had himself an
only daughter, whom he married to a lord. Henry
Thrale's father was a nephew of Halsey's, who had
worked in the brewery for twenty years, when,
after Halsey's death, he gave security for thirty
INTRODUCTION. 7
thousand pounds as the price of the business, to
whichanoble lord could not succeed. In eleven years
he had paid the purchase-money, and was making
a large fortune. To this business his son, who was
Johnson's friend, Henry Thrale, succeeded ; and
upon Thrale's death it was bought for 1 50,000 by
a member of the Quaker family of Barclay, who
took Thrale's old manager, Perkins, into partner
ship.
Johnson became, after 1765, familiar in the house
of the Thrales at Streatham. There was much com
pany. Mrs. Thrale had a taste for literary guests; and ;
literary guests had, on their part, a taste for her good t
dinners. Johnson was the lion-in-chief. There
was Dr. Johnson's room always at his disposal; and
a tidy wig kept for his special use, because his own
was apt to be singed up the middle by close con
tact with the candle, which he put, being short
sighted, between his eyes and a book. Mrs. Thrale
had skill in languages, read Latin, French, Italian,
and Spanish. She read literature, could quote
aptly, and put knowledge as well as playful life
into her conversation. Johnson's regard for the
8 INTRODUCTION.
Thrales was very real, and it was heartily returned,
though Mrs. Thrale had, like her friend, some
weaknesses, in common with most people who feed
lions and wish to pass for wits among the witty.
About fourteen years after Johnson's first ac
quaintance with the Thrales when Johnson was
seventy years old and Mrs. Thrale near forty the
little lady, who had also lost several children,
was unhappy in the thought that she had ceased to
be appreciated by her husband. Her husband's
temper became affected by the commercial troubles
of 1762, and Mrs. Thrale became jealous of the
regard between him and Sophy Streatfield, a rich
widow's daughter. Under January, 1779, she
wrote in her "Thraliana," "Mr. Thrale has fallen in
love, really and seriously, with Sophy Streatfield ;
but there is no wonder in that ; she is very pretty,
very gentle, soft, and insinuating ; hangs about
him, dances round him, cries when she parts from
him, squeezes his hand slily, and with her sweet
eyes full of tears looks so fondly in his face and
all for love of me, as she pretends, that I can
hardly sometimes help laughing in her face. A
INTRODUCTION. , 9
man must not be a man but an it to resist such
artillery." Mrs. Thrale goes on to record con
quests made by this irresistible Sophy in other
directions, showing the same temper of jealousy.
Thrale died on the 4th of April, 1781.
Mrs. Thrale had entered in her "Thraliana"
under July, 1780, being then at Brighton, "I have
picked up Piozzi here, the great Italian singer.
He is amazingly like my father. He shall teach
Hesther." On the 25th of July, 1784, being at
Bath, her entry was, " I am returned from church
the happy wife of my lovely, faithful Piozzi ....
subject of my prayers, object of my wishes, my
sighs, my reverence, my esteem." Her age then
was forty-four, and on the 13th of December in
the same year Johnson died. The newspapers of
the day dealt hardly with her. They called her an
amorous widow, and Piozzi a fortune-hunter. Her
eldest daughter (afterwards Viscountess Keith)
refused to recognise the new father, and shut
herself up in a house at Brighton with a nurse,
Tib, where she lived upon two hundred a year. Two
younger sisters, who were at school, lived after-
10 INTRODUCTION.
wards with the eldest. Only the fourth daughter,
the youngest, went with her mother and her
mother's new husband to Italy. Johnson, too, was
grieved by the marriage, and had shown it, but
had written afterwards most kindly. Mrs. Piozzi
in Florence was playing at literature with the
poetasters of " The Florence Miscellany " and
" The British Album " when she was working at
these " Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson."
Her book of anecdotes was planned at Florence in
1785, the year after her friend's death, finished at
Florence in October, 1785, and published in the
year 1786. There is a touch of bitterness in the
book which she thought of softening, but her
" lovely, faithful Piozzi " wished it to remain.
H. M.
AUTHORS PREFACE.
I HAVE somewhere heard or read that the preface
before a book, like the portico before a house, should
be contrived so as to catch, but not detain, the attention
of those who desire admission to the family within, or
leave to look over the collection of pictures made by
one whose opportunities of obtaining them we know to
have been not unfrequent. I wish not to keep my
readers long from such intimacy with the manners of
Dr. Johnson, or such knowledge of his sentiments as
these pages can convey. To urge my distance from
England as an excuse for the book's being ill-written
would be ridiculous ; it might indeed serve as a just
reason for my having written it at all ; because, though
others may print the same aphorisms and stories, I
cannot here be sure that they have done so. As the
Duke says, however, to the Weaver, in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, " Never excuse ; if your play be a bad
one, keep at least the excuses to yourself."
I am aware that many will say I have not spoken
highly enough of Dr. Johnson ; but it will be difficult
12 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
for those who say so to speak more highly. If I have
described his manners as they were, I have been
careful to show his superiority to the common forms
of common life. It is surely no dispraise to an oak
that it does not bear jessamine ; and he who should
plant honeysuckle round Trajan's column would not be
thought to adorn, but to disgrace it.
When I have said that he was more a man of genius
than of learning, I mean not to take from the one part
of his character that which I willingly give to the
other. The erudition of Mr. Johnson proved his
genius ; for he had not acquired it by long or profound
study : nor can I think those characters the greatest
which have most learning driven into their heads, any
more than I can persuade myself to consider the River
Jenisca as superior to the Nile, because the first re
ceives near seventy tributary streams in the course of
its unmarked progress to the sea, while the great
parent of African plenty, flowing from an almost
invisible source, and unenriched by any extraneous
waters, except eleven nameless rivers, pours his majestic
torrent into the ocean by seven celebrated mouths.
But I must conclude my preface, and begin my book,
the first I ever presented before the public ; from
whose awful appearance in some measure to defend
and conceal myself, I have thought fit to retire behind
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 13
the Telamonian shield, and show as little of myself as
possible, well aware of the exceeding difference there
is between fencing in the school and fighting in the
field. Studious, however, to avoid offending, and care
less of that offence which can be taken without a cause,
I here not unwillingly submit my slight performance
to the decision of that glorious country, which I have
the daily delight to hear applauded in others, as
eminently just, generous, and humane.
ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
Too much intelligence is often as pernicious to bio
graphy as too little ; the mind remains perplexed
by contradiction of probabilities, and finds difficulty
in separating report from truth. If Johnson then
lamented that so little had ever been said about Butler,
I might with more reason be led to complain that so
much has been said about himself ; for numberless in
formers but distract or cloud information, as glasses
which multiply will for the most part be found also to
obscure. Of a life, too, which for the last twenty
years was passed in the very front of literature, every
leader of a literary company, whether officer or subal
tern, naturally becomes either author or critic, so that
little less than the recollection that it was once the
request of the deceased, and twice the desire of those
whose will I ever delighted to comply with, should
have engaged me to add my little book to the number
of those already written on the subject. I used to urge
another reason for forbearance, and say, that all the
readers would, on this singular occasion, be the writers
of his life : like the first representation of the Masque
of Comus, which, by changing their characters from
spectators to performers, was acted by the lords and
.
16 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
ladies it was written to entertain. This objection is,
however, now at an end, as I have found friends, far
remote indeed from literary questions, who may yet
be diverted from melancholy by my description of
Johnson's manners, warmed to virtue even by the
distant reflection of his glowing excellence, and en
couraged by the relation of his animated zeal to persist
'\in the profession as well as practice of Christianity.
Samuel Johnson was the son of Michael Johnson, a
Bookseller at Lichfield, in Staffordshire ; a very pious
^ ~and worthy man, but wrong-headed, positive, and
vN[ afflicted with melancholy, as his son, from whom alone
; N I had the information, once told me : his business,
yfhowever, leading him to be much on horseback, con
tributed to the preservation of his bodily health and
mental sanity, which, when he stayed long at home,
would sometimes be about to give way ; and Mr.
Johnson said, that when his workshop, a detached
building, had fallen half down for want of money to
repair it, his father was not less diligent to lock the
door every night, though he saw that anybody might
walk in at the back part, and knew that there was no
security obtained by barring the front door. " This, 1 '
says his son, " was madness, you may see, and would
have been discoverable in other instances of the pre
valence of imagination, but that poverty prevented it
from playing such tricks as riches and leisure en
courage." Michael was a man of still larger size and
greater strength than his son, who was reckoned very
like him, but did not delight in talking much of his
family: "One has," says he, "so little pleasure in
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 17
reciting the anecdotes of beggary." One day, how
ever, hearing me praise a favourite friend with partial
tenderness as well as true esteem : " Why do you like
that man's acquaintance so ? " said he. " Because,'*
replied I, " he is open and confiding, and tells me
stories of his uncles and cousins ; I love the light parts
of a solid character." " Nay, if you are for family
history," says Mr. Johnson, good-humouredly, " I can
fit you : I had an uncle, Cornelius Ford, who, upon a
journey, stopped and read an inscription written on a
stone he saw standing by the wayside, set up, as it
proved, in honour of a man who had leaped a certain leap
thereabouts, the extent of which was specified upon the
stone : ' Why now,' says my uncle, ' I could leap it in my
boots ; ' and he did leap it in his boots. I had likewise
another uncle, Andrew," continued he, "my father's
brother, who kept the ring in Smithfield (where they
wrestled and boxed) for a whole year, and never was
thrown or conquered. Here now are uncles for you, Mis
tress, if that's the way to your heart." Mr. Johnson was
very conversant in the art of attack and defence by box
ing, which science he had learned from this uncle Andrew,
I believe ; and I have heard him descant upon the age
when people were received, and when rejected, in the
schools once held for that brutal amusement, much to
the admiration of those who had no expectation of his
skill in such matters, from the sight of a figure which
precluded all possibility of personal prowess ; though,
because he saw Mr. Thrale one day leap over a cabriolet
stool, to show that he was not tired after a chase of
fifty miles or more, lie suddenly jumped over it too,
18 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
but in a way so strange and so unwieldy, that our
terror lest he should break his bones took from us even
the power of laughing.
Michael Johnson was past fifty years old when he
married his wife, who was upwards of forty, yet I
think her son told me she remained three years child
less before he was born into the world, who so greatly
contributed to improve it. In three years more she
brought another son, Nathaniel, who lived to be twenty-
seven or twenty-eight years old, and of whose manly
spirit I have heard his brother speak with pride and
pleasure, mentioning one circumstance, particular
enough, that when the company were one day lament
ing the badness of the roads, he inquired where they
could be, as he travelled the country more than most
people, and had never seen a bad road in his life. The
two brothers did not, however, much delight in each
other's company, being always rivals for the mother's
fondness ; and many of the severe reflections on
domestic life in Basselas took their source from its
author's keen recollections of the time passed in his
early years. Their father, Michael, died of an inflam
matory fever at the age of seventy -six, as Mr. Johnson
told me, their mother at eighty-nine, of a gradual
decay. She was slight in her person, he said, and
rather below than above the common size. So excel
lent was her character, and so blameless her life, that
when an oppressive neighbour once endeavoured to
take from her a little field she possessed, he could per
suade no attorney to undertake the cause against a
woman so beloved in her narrow circle : and it is this
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 19
incident he alludes to in the line of his "Vanity of
Human Wishes," calling her
" The general favourite as the general friend."
Nor could any one pay more willing homage to such a
character, though she had not been related to him,
than did Dr. Johnson on every occasion that offered :
his disquisition on Pope's epitaph placed over Mrs.
Corbet is a proof of that preference always given by
him to a noiseless life over a bustling one ; but how
ever taste begins, we almost always see that it ends in
simplicity ; the glutton finishes by losing his relish for
anything highly sauced, and calls for his boiled chicken
at the close of many years spent in the search of
dainties ; the connoisseurs are soon weary of Rubens,
and the critics of Lucan ; and the refinements of every
kind heaped upon civil life always sicken their pos
sessors before the close of it.
At the age of two years Mr. Johnson was brought
up to London by his mother, to be touched by Queen
Anne for the scrofulous evil, which terribly afflicted
his childhood, andleft such marks as greatly disfigured
a countenance naturally harsh and rugged, beside doing
irreparable damage to the auj^Qular organs, which never
could perform their functions since I knew him ; and
it was owing to that horrible disorder, too, that one
eye was perfectly useless to him ; that defect, however,
was not observable, the eyes looked both alike. As
Mr. Johnson had an astonishing memory, I asked him
if he could remember Queen Anne at all ? " He had,"
he said, " a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn,
20 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
^ recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black
hood."
The christening of his brother he remembered with
all its circumstances, and said his mother taught him to
spell and pronounce the words little Natty, syllable by
syllable, making him say it over in the evening to her
husband and his guests. The trick which most parents
play with their children, that of showing off their
newly-acquired accomplishments, disgusted Mr. John-
son beyond expression. He had been treated so him
self, he said, till he absolutely loathed his father's
caresses, because he knew they were . sure to precede
some unpleasing display of his early abilities ; and he
used, when neighbours came o' visiting, to run up a
tree that he might not be found and exhibited, such, as
no doubt he was, a prodigy of early understanding.
v/ His epitaph upon the duck he killed by treading on it
at five years old
" Here lies poor duck
That Samuel Johnson trod on ;
If it had liv'd it had been good luck,
For it would have been an odd one "
is a striking example of early expansion of mind and
knowledge of language ; yet he always seemed more
mortified at the recollection of the bustle his parents
made with his wit than pleased with the thoughts of
possessing it. " That," said he to me one day, " is the
great misery of late marriages ; the unhappy produce
of them becomes the plaything of dotage. An old
man's child," continued he, " leads much such a life, I
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 21
think, as a little boy's dog, teased with awkward fond
ness, and forced, perhaps, to sit up and beg, as we call
it, to divert a company, who at last go away complain
ing of their disagreeable entertainment." In conse
quence of these maxims, and full of indignation against
such parents as delight to produce their young ones
early into the talking world, I have known Mr. John
son give a good deal of pain by refusing to hear the
verses the children could recite, or the songs they
could, sing, particularly one friend who told him that
his two sons should repeat Gray's " Elegy " to him
alternately, that he might judge who had the happiest
cadence. '' No, pray, sir," said he, " let the dears both
speak it at once ; more noise will by that means be made,
and the noise will be sooner over." He told me the
story himself, but I have forgot who the father was.
Mr. Johnson's mother was daughter to a gentleman
in the country, such as there were many of in those
days, who possessing, perhaps, one or two hundred
pounds a year in land, lived on the profits, and sought
not to increase their income. She was, therefore, in
clined to think higher of herself than of her husband,
whose conduct in money matters being but indifferent,
she had a trick of teasing him about it, and was, by
her son's account, very importunate with regard to her
fears of spending more than they could afford, though
she never arrived at knowing how much that was, a
fault common, as he said, to most women who pride
themselves on their economy. They did not, however,
as I could understand, live ill together on the whole.
" My father," says he, " could always take his horse
22 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
and ride away for orders when things went badly."
The lady's maiden name was Ford; and the parson
who sits next to the punch-bowl in Hogarth's " Modern
Midnight Conversation " was her brother's son. This
Ford was a man who chose to be eminent only for
vice, with talents that might have made him con
spicuous in literature, and respectable in any profes
sion he could have chosen. His cousin has mentioned
him in the lives of Fenton and of Broome; and when
lie spoke of him to me it was always with tenderness,
praising his acquaintance with life and manners, and
recollecting one piece of advice that no man surely
ever followed more exactly : " Obtain," says Ford,
" some general principles of every science ; he who
can talk only on one subject, or act only in one depart
ment, is seldom wanted, and perhaps never wished for,
while the man of general knowledge can often benefit,
and always please." He used to relate, however,
another story less to the credit of his cousin's penetra
tion, how Ford on some occasion said to him, " You
will make your way the more easily in the world, I
see, as you are contented to dispute no man's claim
to conversation excellence ; they will, therefore, more
willingly allow your pretensions as a writer." Can
one, on such an occasion, forbear recollecting the pre
dictions of Boileau's father, when stroking the head of
the young satirist ? " Ce petit bon homme" says he,
" n'a point trop d'esprit, mais il ne dira jamais mal de
personne." Such are the prognostics formed by men
of wit and sense, as these two certainly were, concern
ing the future character and conduct of those for
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 23
whose welfare they were honestly and deeply con
cerned ; and so late do those features of peculiarity
come to their growth, which mark a character to all
succeeding generations.
Dr. Johnson first learned to read of his mother and
her old maid Catharine, in whose lap he well remem
bered sTRmg" while she explained to him the story of
St. George and the Dragon. I know not whether this
is the proper place to add that such was his tenderness,
and such his gratitude, that he took a journey to Lich-
field fifty-seven years afterwards to support and com
fort her in her last illness ; he had inquired for his
nurse, and she was dead. The recollection of such
reading as had delighted him in his infancy made him
always persist in fancying that it was the only reading
which could please an infant ; and he used to condemn
me for putting Newbery's books into their hands as
too trifling to engage their attention. " Babies do not
want," said he, " to hear about babies ; they like to be
told of giants and castles, and of somewhat which can
stretch and stimulate their little minds." When in
answer I would urge the numerous editions and quick
sale of " Tommy Prudent " or " Goody Two-Shoes."
" Remember always," said he, " that the parents buy the
books, and that the children never read them." Mrs.
Barbauld, however, had his best praise, and deserved
it ; no man was more struck than Mr. Johnson with
voluntary descent from possible splendour to painful
duty.
At eight years old he went to school, for his health
would not permit him to be sent sooner ; and at the
24 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
age of ten years his mind was disturbed by scruples of
^infidelity, which preyed upon his spirits and made
him very uneasy, the more so as he revealed his un
easiness to no one, being naturally, as he said, " of a
sullen temper and reserved disposition." He_searched,
however, diligently but fruitlessly, for evidences of
the truth of revelation ; and at length, recollecting a
book he had once seen in his father's shop, entitled
"De Yeritate Religionis," &c., he began to think himself
highly culpable for neglecting such a means of infor
mation, and took himself severely to task for this sin,
adding many acts of voluntary, and to others unknown,
.penance. The first opportunity which offered, of
course, lie seized the hook witli avidity, but on
examination, not finding himself scholar enough to
peruse its contents, set his heart at rest ; and, not
thinking to inquire whether there were any English
books written on the subject, followed his usual amuse
ments, and considered his conscience as lightened of
a crime. He redoubled his diligence to learn the
language that contained the information he most
wished for, but from the pain which guilt had given
him he now began to deduce the soul's immortality,
which was the point that belief first stopped at; and
from that moment, resolving to be a Christian, became
one of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever
^produced. When he had told me this odd anecdote
of his childhood, " I cannot imagine," said he, " what
makes me talk of myself to you so, for I really never
mentioned this foolish story to anybody except Dr.
Taylor, not even to my dear, dear Bathurst, whom I
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 25
loved better than ever I loved any human creature ;
but poor Bathurst is dead ! " Here a long pause
and a few tears ensued. " Why, sir," said I, " how
like is all this to Jean Jacques Rousseau as like, I
mean, as the sensations of frost and fire, when my
child complained yesterday that the ice she was eating
burned her mouth." Mr. Johnson laughed at the in
congruous ideas, but the first thing which presented
itself to the mind of an ingenious and learned friend
whom I had the pleasure to pass some time with here
at Florence was the same resemblance, though I think
the two characters had little in common, further than
an early attention to things beyond the capacity of
other babies, a keen sensibility of right and wrong,
and a warmth of imagination little consistent with
sound and perfect health. I have heard him relate
another odd thing of himself too, but it is one which
everybody has heard as well as me : how, when he was
about nine years old, having got the play of Hamlet
in his hand, and reading it quietly in his father's
kitchen, he kept on steadily enough till, coming to the
Ghost scene, he suddenly hurried upstairs to the street
door that he might see people about him. Such an
incident, as he was not unwilling to relate it, is pro
bably in every one's possession now ; he told it as a
testimony to the merits of Shakespeare. But one day,
when my son was going to school, and dear Dr. John
son followed as far as the garden gate, praying for his
salvation in a voice which those who listened atten
tively could hear plain enough, he said to me suddenly,
" Make your boy tell you his dreams : the first corruption
26 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
that entered into my heart was communicated in a
dream." " What was it, sir ? " said I. " Do not ask
me," replied he, with much violence, and walked away
in apparent agitation. I never durst make any further
inquiries. He retained a strong aversion for the
memory of Hunter, one of his schoolmasters, who, he
said, once was a brutal fellow, " so brutal," added he,
" that no man who had been educated by him ever sent
his son to the same school." I have, however, heard
him acknowledge his scholarship to be very great.
His next master he despised, as knowing less than
himself, I found, but the name of that gentleman lias
slipped my memory. Mr. Johnson was himself ex
ceedingly disposed to the general indulgence of chil
dren, and was even scrupulously and ceremoniously
attentive not to oil'end them ; lie had strongly per
suaded himself of the difficulty people always find to
erase early impressions either of kindness or resent
ment, and said "he should never have so loved his
mother when a man had she not given him coffee she
could ill afford, to gratify his appetite when a boy."
" If you had had children, sir," said I, " would you
have taught them anything ? " "I hope," replied he,
" that I should have willingly lived on bread and
water to obtain instruction for them ; but I would not
have set their future friendship to hazard for the sake
of thrusting into their heads knowledge of things for
which they might not perhaps have either taste or
necessity. You teach your daughters the diameters of
the planets, and wonder when you have done that they
do not delight in your company. No .science can be
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 27
communicated by mortal creatures without attention
from the scholar ; no attention can be obtained from
children without the infliction of pain, and pain is
never remembered without resentment." That some
thing should be learned was, however, so certainly his
opinion that I have heard him say how education had
been often compared to agriculture, yet that it resem
bled it chiefly in this : " That if nothing is sown, no
crop," says he, " can be obtained." His contempt of
the lady who fancied her son could be eminent with
out study, because Shakespeare was found wanting
in scholastic learning, was expressed in terms so
gross and so well known, I will not repeat them
here.
;To recollect, however, and to repeat the sayings of
r. Johnson, is almost all that can be done by the
writers of his life, as his life, at least since my
y acquaintance with him, consisted ' in little else than
talking, when he was not absolutely employed in some
serious piece of work ; and whatever work he did
seemed so much below his powers of performance tha<C> ,.
hg_appeared the idlest of all human beings, evermiosing--i--i-c
till he was called out to coHvorij^. and conversing 1 till
the fatigue of his friends, or the promptitude of his \*s ,
own temper to take offence, consigned him back again '
to silent meditation. J
the remembrance of what had passed in his own^
childhood made Mr. Johnson very solicitous to pre
serve the felicity of children : and when he had per
suaded Dr. Sumner to remit the tasks usually given
to fill up boys' time during the. holidays, he rejoiced
28 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
exceedingly in the success of his negotiation, and told
me that he had never ceased representing to all the
eminent schoolmasters in England the 'absurd tyranny
of poisoning the hour of permitted pleasure by keeping
future misery before the children's eyes, and tempting
them by bribery or falsehood to evade it. "Bob
Sumner," said he, "however, I have at length pre
vailed upon. I know not, indeed, whether his tender
ness was persuaded, or his reason convinced, but the
effect will always be the same. Poor Dr. Sumner died,
however, before the next vacation."
Mr. Johnson was of opinion, too, that young people
should have positive, not general, rules given for their
direction. " My mother," said he, " was always telling
me that I did not behave myself properly, that I should
endeavour to learn behaviour, and such cant ; but when
I replied that she ought to tell me what to do, and
what to avoid, her admonitions were commonly, for
that time at least, at an end."
This I fear was, however, at best a momentary
refuge found out by perverseness. No man knew
better than Johnson in how many nameless and
numberless actions behaviour consists actions which
can scarcely be reduced to rule, and which come under
no description. Of these he retained so many very
strange ones, that I suppose no one who saw his... odd
manner of gesticulating much blamed or wondered
at the good lady's solicitude concerning her son's
behaviour.
Though he was attentive to the peace of children in
general, no man had a stronger contempt than he
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 29
for such parents as openly profess that they cannot
govern their children. " How," says he, " is an army
governed ? Such people, for the most part, multiply
prohibitions till obedience becomes impossible, and
authority appears absurd, and never suspect that they
tease their family, their friends, and themselves, only
because conversation runs low, and something must be
said."
Of parental authority, indeed, few people thought
with a lower degree of estimation. I one day men
tioned the resignation of Cyrus to his father's will, as
related by Xenophon, when, after all his conquests, he
requested the consent of Cambyses to his marriage
with a neighbouring princess, and I added Bollin's
applause and recommendation of the example. "Do
you not perceive, then," says Johnson, "that Xeno
phon on this occasion commends like a pedant, and
Pere Bollin 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 permission
to be married, and confesses his inability to decide in
a matter which concerns no man's happiness but his
own?" Mr. Johnson caught me another time repri
manding the daughter of my housekeeper 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 we were again out of the women's
sight who were concerned in the dispute : " Poor
30 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
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." We were talking of a young fellow
who used to come often to the house; he was about
fifteen years old, or less, if I remember right, and had
a manner at once sullen and sheepish. "That lad,"
says Mr. Johnson, " looks like the son of a school
master, which," added he, " is one of the very worst
conditions of childhood. Such a boy has no father, or
worse than none ; he never can reflect on his parent
but the reflection brings to his mind some idea of pain
inflicted, or of sorrow suffered."
I will relate one thing more that Dr. Johnson said
about babyhood before I quit the subject ; it was this :
" That little people should be encouraged always to
tell whatever they hear particularly striking to some
brother, sister, or servant immediately, before the im
pression is erased by the intervention of newer occur
rences. He perfectly remembered the first time he
ever heard of Heaven and Hell," he said, " because
when his mother had made out such a description of
both places as she thought likely to seize the attention
of her infant auditor, who was then in bed with her,
she got up, and dressing him before the usual time,
sent him directly to call a favourite workman in the
house, to whom he knew he would communicate the
conversation while it was yet impressed upon his mind.
The event was what she wished, and it was to that
method chiefly that he owed his uncommon felicity of
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 31
remembering distant occurrences and long past con
versations."
At the age of eighteen Dr. Johnson quitted school,
and escaped from the tuition of those he hated or those
he despised. I have heard him relate very few college
adventures. He used to say that our best accounts of
his behaviour there would be gathered from Dr. Adams
and Dr. Taylor, and that he was sure they would
always tell the truth. He told me, however, one day
how, when he was first entered at the University, he
passed a morning, in compliance with the customs of
the place, at his tutor's chambers ; but, finding him no
scholar, went no more. In about ten days after, meet
ing the same gentleman, Mr. Jordan, in the street, he
offered to pass by without saluting him ; but the tutor
stopped, and inquired, not roughly neither, what he
had been doing? " Sliding on the ice," was the reply,
and so turned away with disdain. He laughed very
heartily at the recollection of his own insolence,
and said they endured it from him with wonderful
acquiescence, and a gentleness that, whenever he
thought of it, astonished himself. He told me, too,
that when he made his first declamation, he wrote over
but one copy, and that coarsely ; and having given it
into the hand of the tutor, who stood to receive it as
he passed, was obliged to begin by chance and con
tinue on how he could, for he had got but little of it
by heart ; so fairly trusting to his present powers for
immediate supply, he finished by adding astonishment
to the applause of all who knew how little was owing
to study. A prodigious risk, however, said some one.
32 ANECDOTES OF THE
K- ^
" Not at all ! " exclaims Johnson. " No man, I sup
pose, leaps at once into deep water who does not know
how to swim."
I doubt not but this j story will be told by many of
his biographers, and said so to him when he told it me
on the 18th of July, 1773. " And who will be my
biographer," said he, " do you think ? " " Goldsmith,
no doubt," replied I, " and he will do it the best among
us." " The dog would write it best, to be sure," replied
he ; " but his particular malice towards me, and general
disregard for truth, would make the book useless to all,
and injurious to my character." " Oh ! as to that,"
said I, "we should all fasten upon him, and force him
to do you justice ; but the worst is, the Doctor does not
know your life ; nor can I tell indeed who does, except
Dr. Tavlor of Ashbourne." " Why, Taylor," said he,
" is better acquainted with iny heart than any man or
woman now alive and the history of my Oxford ex
ploits lies all between him and Adams ; but Dr. James
knows my very early days better than he. After my
^coming to London to drive the world about a little, you
must all go to Jack Hawkesworth for anecdotes. I
lived in great familiarity with him (though I think
^ there was not much affection) from the year 1753 till
^the time Mr. Thrale and you took me up. I intend,
however, to disappoint the rogues, and either make you
_' write the life, with Taylor's intelligence, or, which is
better, do it myself, after outliving you all. I am
now," added he, " keeping a diary, in hopes of using it
for that purpose some time." Here the conversation
stopped, from my accidentally looking in an old
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 33
magazine of the year 1768, where I saw the following
lines with his name to them, and asked if they
were his :
Verses said to be written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, at
the request of a gentleman to whom a lady had
given a sprig of myrtle.
" What hopes, what terrors, does thy gift create,
Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate ;
The myrtle, ensign of supreme command,
Consigned by Venus to Melissa's hand :
Not less capricious than a reigning fair,
Now grants, and now rejects a lover's prayer.
In myrtle shades oft sings the happy swain,
In myrtle shades despairing ghosts complain :
The myrtle crowns the happy lovers' heads,
The unhappy lover's grave the myrtle spreads :
Oh, then, the meaning of thy gift impart,
And ease the th robbings of an anxious heart !
Soon must this bough, as you shall fix his doom,
Adorn Philander's head, or grace his tomb."
"Why, now, do but see how the world is gaping for
a wonder ! " cries Mr. Johnson. " I think it is now
just forty years ago that a young fellow had a sprig of
myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me
to write him some verses that he might present her in
return. I promised, but forgot ; and when he called
sfor his lines at the time agreed on ' Sit still a
moment,' says I, ' dear Mund, and I'll fetch them
thee,' so stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the
nonsense you now keep such a stir about."
Upon revising these anecdotes, it is impossible not
to be struck with shame and regret that one treasured
B 105
34 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
uo more of them up ; but no experience is sufficient
to cure the vice of negligence. Whatever one sees
constantly, or might see constantly, becomes un
interesting; and we suffer every trivial occupation,
every slight amusement, to hinder us from writing
down what, indeed, we cannot choose but remember,
but what we should wish to recollect with pleasure,
uiipoisoued by remorse for not remembering more.
While I write this, I neglect impressing my mind
with the wonders of art and beauties of nature that
now surround me ; and shall one day, perhaps, think on
the hours I might have profitably passed in the Floren
tine Gallery, and reflecting on Raphael's St. John at
that time, as upon Johnson's conversation in this
moment, may justly exclaim of the months spent by
me most delightfully in Italy
' ' That I prized every hour that passed by,
Beyond all that had pleased me before ;
But now they are past, and I sigh
And I grieve that I prized them no more."
SHENSTONE.
Dr. Johnson delighted in his own partiality for
Oxford ; and one day, at my house, entertained five
members of the other University with various instances
of the superiority of Oxford, enumerating the gigantic
names of many men whom it had produced, with
apparent triumph. At last I said to him, "Why, there
happens to be no less than five Cambridge men in the
room now." " I did not," said he, " think of that till
you told me ; but the wolf don't count the sheep."
When the company were retired, we happened to be
DB. SAMTJEL JOHNSON. 35
talking of Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton, who died
about that time ; and after a long and just eulogium on
his wit, his learning, and his goodness of heart, " He
was the only man, too," says Mr. Johnson, quite
seriously, " that did justice to my good breeding ; and
you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of
needless scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not
observing the amazement of his hearers, " no man is so
cauHous not to interrupt another ; no man thinks it so
necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking ;
no man so steadily refuses preference to himself, or so
willingly bestows it on another, as I do ; nobody holds
so strongly as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the
ill effects which follow the breach of it, yet people
think me rude ; but Barnard did me justice." " 'Tis
pity," said I, laughing, " that he had not heard you
compliment the Cambridge men after dinner to-day."
" Why," replied he," I was inclined to down them sure
enough ; but then a fellow deserves to be of Oxford
that talks so." I have heard him at other times relate
how he used so sit in some coffee-house there, and turn
M 's " C-r-ct-c-s " into ridicule for the diversion of
himself and of chance comers-in. " The 'Elf da,'" says
he, " was too exquisitely pretty ; I could make no fun
out of that." When upon some occasions he would
express his astonishment that he should have an enemy
in the world, while he had been doing nothing but
good to his neighbours, I used to make him recollect
these circumstances. "Why, child," said he, "what
harm could that do the fellow ? I always thought very
well of M- n for a Cambridge man ; he is, I believe,
36 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
a mighty blameless character." Such tricks were, how
ever, the more unpardonable in Mr. Johnson, because
no none could harangue like him about the difficulty
always found in forgiving petty injuries, or in provok
ing by needless offence. Mr. Jordan, his tutor, had
much of his affection, though he despised his want of
scholastic learning. " That creature would," said he,
" defend his pupils to the last : no young lad under his
care should suffer for committing slight improprieties,
while he had breath to defend, or power to protect
them. If I had had sons to send to College," added he,
" Jordan should have been their tutor."
Sir William Browne, the physician, who lived to a
very extraordinary age, and was in other respects an
odd mortal, with more genius than understanding, and
more self-sufficiency than wit, was the only person who
ventured to oppose Mr. Johnson when he had a mind
to shine by exalting his favourite university, and to
express his contempt of the Whiggish notions which
prevail at Cambridge. He did it once, however, with
surprising felicity. His antagonist having repeated
with an air of triumph the famous epigram written by
Dr. Trapp
" Our royal master saw, with heedful eyes,
The wants of his two universities :
Troops he to Oxford sent, as knowing why
That learned body wanted loyalty :
But books to Cambridge gave, as well discerning
That that right loyal body wanted learning."
Which, says Sir William, might well be answered"
thus :
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
" The King to Oxford sent his troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force ;
With equal care to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument. "
Mr. Johnson did him the justice to say it was one
of the happiest extemporaneous productions he ever
met with, though he once comically confessed that he
hated to repeat the wit of a Whig urged in support of
Whiggism. Says Garrick to him one day, " Why did
not you make me a Tory, when we lived so much
together ? You love to make people Tories." " Why,"
says Johnson, pulling a heap of halfpence from his
pocket, " did not the king make these guineas ? "
Of Mr. Johnson's Toryism the world has long been
witness, and the political pamphlets written by him in
defence of his party are vigorous and elegant. He
often delighted his imagination with the thoughts of
having destroyed Junius, an anonymous writer who
flourished in the years 1769 and 1770, and who kept
himself so ingeniously concealed from every endeavour
to detect him that no probable guess was, I believe,
ever formed concerning the author's name, though at
that time the subject of general conversation. Mr.
Johnson made us all laugh one day, because I had
received a remarkably fine Stilton cheese as a present
from some person who had packed and directed it
carefully, but without mentioning whence it came.
Mr. Thrale, desirous to know who we were obliged to,
asked every friend as they came in, -but nobody owned
it. "Depend upon it, sir," says Johnson, "it was sent
by Junius,"
38 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
The " False Alarm," his first and favourite pamphlet,
was written at our house between eight o'clock on
Wednesday night and twelve o'clock on Thursday
night. "We read it to Mr. Thrale when he came very
late home from the House of Commons ; the other
political tracts followed in their order. I have for
gotten which contains the stroke at Junius, but shall
for ever remember the pleasure it gave him to have
written it. It was, however, in the year 1775 that
Mr. Edmund Burke made the famous speech in Par
liament that struck even foes with admiration, and
friends with delight. Among the nameless thousands
who are contented to echo those praises they have not
skill to invent, I ventured, before Dr. Johnson him
self, to applaud with rapture the beautiful passage in
it concerning Lord Bathurst and the Angel, which,
said our Doctor, had I been in the house, I would have
answered thus :
" Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton or to
Marlborough, or to any of the eminent Whigs of the
last age, the devil had, not with any great impropriety,
consented to appear, he would, perhaps, in somewhat
like these words, have commenced the conversation :
" ' You seem, my lord, to be concerned at the judicious
apprehension that while you are sapping the founda
tions of royalty at home, and propagating here
the dangerous doctrine of resistance, the distance of
America may secure its inhabitants from your arts,
though active. But I will unfold to you the gay
prospects of futurity. This people, now so innocent
and harmless, shall draw the sword against their
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 39
mother country, and bathe its point in the blood of
their benefactors ; this people, now contented with a
little, shall then refuse to spare what they themselves
confess they could not miss ; and these men, now so
honest and so grateful, shall, in return for peace and
for protection, see their vile agents in the House of
Parliament, there to sow the seeds of sedition, and
propagate confusion, perplexity, and pain. Be not
dispirited, then, at the contemplation of their present
happy state : I promise you that anarchy, poverty, and
death shall, by my care, be carried even across the
spacious Atlantic, and settle in America itself, the
sure consequences of our beloved Whiggism.' "
This I thought a thing so very particular that I
begged his leave to write it down directly, before any
thing could intervene that might make me forget the
force of the expressions. A trick which I have, how
ever, seen played on common occasions, of sitting
steadily down at the other end of the room to write
at the moment what should be said in company, eithev
by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself,
nor approved of in another. There is something~so7
ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery in this con-|
duct, that were it commonly adopted all confidence)
would soon be exiled from society, and a conversation/
assembly-room would become tremendous as a court
of justice. A set of acquaintance joined in familiar
chat may say a thousand things which, as the phrase
is, pass well enough at the time, though they cannot
stand the test of critical examination ; and as all talk
beyond that which is necessary to the purposes of
40 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
actual business is a kind of game, there will be ever
found ways of playing fairly or unfairly at it, which
distinguish the gentleman from the juggler. Dr.
Johnson, as well as many of my acquaintance, knew
that I kept a common-place book, and he one day said
to me good-humouredly that he would give me some
thing to write in my repository. " I warrant," said
he, " there is a great deal about me in it. You shall
have at least one thing worth your pains, so if you will
get the pen and ink I will repeat to you Anacreon's
'Dove' directly; but tell at the same time that as I
never was struck with anything in the Greek language
till I read that, so I never read anything in the same
language since that pleased me as much. I hope my
translation," continued he, " is not worse than that of
Frank Fawkes." Seeing me disposed to laugh, " Nay,
nay," said he, " Frank Fawkes has done them very
finely."
" Lovely courier of the sky,
"Whence and whither dost thou fly ?
Scatt'ring, as thy pinions play,
Liquid fragrance all the way.
Is it business ? is it love ?
Tell me, tell me, gentle Dove.
' Soft Anacreon's vows I bear,
Vows to Myrtale the fair ;
Graced with all that charms the heart,
Blushing nature, smiling art.
Venus, courted by an ode,
On the bard her Dove bestowed.
Vested with a master's right
Now Anacreon rules my flight ;
His the letters that you see,
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 41
Weighty charge consigned to me ;
Think not yet my service hard,
Joyless task without reward ;
Smiling at my master's gates,
Freedom my return awaits.
But the liberal grant in vain
Tempts me to be wild again.
Can a prudent Dove decline
Blissful bondage such as mine ?
Over hills and fields to roam,
Fortune's guest without a home ;
Under leaves to hide one's head,
Slightly sheltered, coarsely fed ;
Now my better lot bestows
Sweet repast, and soft repose ;
Now the generous bowl I sip
As it leaves Anacr eon's lip ;
Void of care, and free from dread,
From his fingers snatch his bread,
Then with luscious plenty gay,
Eound his chamber dance and play ;
Or from wine, as courage springs,
O'er his face extend my wings ;
And when feast and frolic tire,
Drop asleep upon his lyre.
This is all, be quick and go,
More than all thou canst not know ;
Let me now my pinions ply,
I have chattered like a pie.' "
When I Lad finished, " But you must remember to
add," says Mr. Johnson, "that though these verses
were planned, and even begun, when I was sixteen
years old, I never could find time to make an end of
them before I was sixty-eight."
This facility of writing, and this dilatoriness ejtar
to write^Mr. Johnson always retained,1rom the days
p
42 I ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
that he lay abed and dictated his first publication to
Mr. Hector, who acted as his amantiei!paig r to the
moment he made me copy out those variations in
Pope's "Homer "which are printed in the Poets' Lives.
" And now," said he, when I had finished it for him,
"I fear not Mr. Nicholson of a pin." The fine
Rambler, on the subject of Procrastination, was
hastily composed, as I have heard, in Sir Joshua
Reynolds's parlour, while the boy waited to carry it
to press ; and numberless are the instances of his
writing under immediate pressure of importunity or
distress. He told me that the character of Sober in
the Idler was by himself intended as Ms own por-
nd lhat lie had his own outset into life in~hTs
eye when he wrote the Eastern story of " Gelaleddin."
Of the allegorical papers in the Rambler, Labour
and Rest was his favourite ; but Serotinus, the man
who returns late in life to receive honours in his native
country, and meets with mortification instead of re
spect, was by him considered as a masterpiece in_the_
science of life and; manners. The character of Pros-
pero in the fourth volume G-arrick took to be his ; and
I have heard the author say that he never forgave the
offence. Sophron was likewise a picture drawn from
reality, and by Gelidus, the philosopher, he meant to
represent Mr. Coulson, a mathematician, who formerly
lived at Rochester. The man immortalised for purr
ing like a cat was, as he told me, one Busby, a
proctor in the Commons. He who barked so ingeni
ously, and then called the drawer to drive away the
dog, was father to Dr. Salter, of the Charterhouse.
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 43
He who sang a song, and by correspondent motions
of his arm chalked out a giant on the wall, was one
Richardson, an attorney. The letter signed " Sunday"
was written by Miss Talbot ; and he fancied the billets
in the first volume of the Rambler were sent him
by Miss Mulso, now Mrs. Chapone. The papers con
tributed by Mrs. Carter had much of his esteem,
though he always blamed me for preferring the letter
signed " Chariessa" to the allegory, where religion and
superstition are indeed most masterly delineated.
When Dr. Johnson read his own. satire, in which
the _lifo of a scholar is painted, with the various
obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and to fame,
he burst into a passion of tears one day. The family
and Mr. Scott only were present, who, in a jocose way,
clapped him on the back, and said, " What's all this,
my dear sir ? Why, you and I and Hercules, jon
know, were all troubled with melancholy." As there
are "many gentlemen of the same name, I should say,
perhaps, that it was a Mr. Scott who married Miss
Robinson, and that I think I have heard Mr. Tlirale
call him George Lewis, or George Augustus, I have
forgot which. He was a very large man, however,
and made out the triumvirate with Johnson and Her
cules comically enough. The Doctor was so delighted
at his odd sally that he suddenly embraced him, and
the subject was immediately changed. I never saw
Mr. Scott but that once in my life.
Dr. Johnson was liberal enough in granting literary
assistance to others, I think ; and innumerable are the
prefaces, sermons, lectures, and dedications which he
44 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
used to make for people who begged of him. Mr.
Murphy related in his and my hearing one day, and he
did not deny it, that when Murphy joked him the
week before for having been so diligent of late be
tween Dodd's sermon and Kelly's prologue, Dr.
Johnson replied, " Why, sir, when they come to me
with a dead staymaker and a dying parson, what can
a man do ? " He said, however, that " he hated to
give away literary performances, or even to sell them
too cheaply. The next generation shall not accuse
me," added he, " of beating down the price of litera
ture. One hates, besides, ever to give that which one
has been accustomed to sell. Would not you, sir,"
turning to Mr. Thrale, " rather give away money than
porter ? "
Mr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a
close student, and used to advise young people never
to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at bye-
times when they had nothing else to do. " It has
been by that means," said he to a boy at our house one
day, " that all my knowledge has been gained, except
what I have picked up by running about the world
with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready
to talk. |_A man is seldom in a humour to unlock his
bookcase, set his desk in order, and betake himself to
serious study ; but a retentive memory will do some
thing, and a fellow shall have strange credit given
him, if he can but recollect striking passages from
different books, keep the authors separate in his head,
and bring his stock of knowledge artfully into play.
How else," added he, " do the gamesters manage when
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 45
they play for more money than they are worth ? "
His Dictionary, however, could not, one would think,
have been written by running up and down ; but he
really did not consider it as a great performance ; and
used to say " that he might have done it easily in two
years had not his health received several shocks during
the timej
When Mr. Thrale, in consequence of this declara
tion, teased him in the year 1768 to give a new edition
of it, because, said he, there are four or five gross
faults : " Alas ! sir," replied Johnson, " there are four
or five hundred faults instead of four or five ; but you
do not consider that it would take me up three whole
months' labour, and when the time was expired the
work would not be done." When the booksellers set
him about it, however, some years after, he went
cheerfully to the business, said he was well paid, and
that they deserved to have it done carefully. His
reply to the person who complimented him on its
coming out first, mentioning the ill success of the
French in a similar attempt, is well known, and, I
trust, has been often recorded. "Why, what would
you expect, dear sir," said he, " from fellows that eat
frogs ? " I have, however, often thought Dr. Johnson
more free than prudent in professing so loudly his little
skill in the Greek language ; for though he considered
it as a proof of a narrow mind to be too careful of
literary reputation, yet no man could be more enraged
than he if an enemy, taking advantage of this con
fession, twitted him with his ignorance; and I re
member when the King of Denmark was in England
46 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
oiie of his noblemen was brought by Mr. Colman to
see Dr. Johnson at our country house, and having
heard, he said, that he was not famous for Greek
literature, attacked him on the weak side, politely
adding that he chose that conversation on purpose to
favour himself. Our Doctor, however, displayed so
copious, so compendious a knowledge of authors,
books, and every branch of learning in that language,
that the gentleman appeared astonished. When he
was gone home, says Johnson, "Now, for all this
triumph I may thank Thrale's Xenophou here, as I
think, excepting that one, I have not looked in a Greek
book these ten years; but see what haste my dear
friends were all in," continued he, " to tell this poor
innocent foreigner that I knew nothing of Greek !
Oh, no, he knows nothing of Greek ! " with a loud
burst of laughing.
When Davies printed the " Fugitive Pieces " without
his knowledge or consent, " How," said I, " would
Pope have raved, had he been served so ! " " We
should never," replied he, " have heard the last on't, to
be sure ; but then Pope was a narrow man. I will,
however," added he, " storm and bluster myself & little
this time," so went to London in all the wrath he
could muster up. At his return I asked how the affair
ended. "Why," said he, "I was a fierce fellow,
and pretended to be very angry; and Thomas was
a good-natured fellow, and pretended to be very
sorry; so there the matter ended. I believe the
dog loves me dearly. Mr. Thrale," turning to my
husband, " what shall you and I do that is good for
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 47
Tom Davies ? We will do something for him, to be
sure."
Of Pope as a writer he had the highest opinion, and
once when a lady at our house talked of his preface to
Shakespeare as superior to Pope's, "I fear not, madam,"
said he " the little fellow has done wonders." His
superior reverence of Dryden, notwithstanding, still
appeared in his talk as in his writings ; and when some
one mentioned the ridicule thrown on him in the Re
hearsal, as having hurt his general character as an
author, " On the contrary," says Mr. Johnson, " the
greatness of Dryden's reputation is now the only
principle of vitality which keeps the Duke of Bucking- >
ham's play from putrefaction."
It was not very easy, however, for people not quite
intimate with Dr. Johnson to get exactly his opinion
of a writer's merit, as he would now and then divert
himself by confounding those who thought themselves
obliged to say to-morrow what he had said yesterday ;
and even Garrick, who ought to have been better ac
quainted with his tricks, professed himself mortified
that one time when he was extolling Dryden in a
rapture that I suppose disgusted his friend, Mr.
Johnson suddenly challenged him to produce twenty
lines in a series that would not disgrace the poet and
his admirer. Garrick produced a passage that he had
once heard the Doctor commend, in which he now
found, if I remember rightly, sixteen faults, and made
Garrick look silly at his own table. When I told Mr.
Johnson the story, " Why, what a monkey was David
now," says he, " to tell of his own disgrace ! " And
48 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
in the course of that hour's chat he told me how he
used to tease Garrick by commendations of the tomb-
scene in Congreve's Mourning Bride, protesting that
Shakespeare had in the same line of excellence nothing
as good. " All which is strictly true," said he ; " but
that is no reason for supposing Gpngreve is to stand
in competition with Shakespeare jjhese fellows know
not how to blame, nor how to commend." I forced him
one day, in a similar humour, to prefer Young's de
scription of " Night " to the so much admired ones of
Dryden and Shakespeare, as more forcible and more
general. Every reader is not either a lover or a tyrant,
but every reader is interested when he hears that
" Creation sleeps ; 'tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and nature made a pause ;
An awful pause prophetic of its end."
"This," said he, "is true; but remember that, taking
the compositions of Young in general, they are but like
bright stepping-stones over a miry road. Young
froths and foams, and bubbles sometimes very vigor
ously ; but we must not compare the noise made by
your tea-kettle here with the roaring of the ocean."
Somebody was praising Corneille one day in opposi
tion to Shakespeare. " Corneille is to Shakespeare,"
replied Mr. Johnson, "as a clipped hedge is to a
forest." When we talked of Steele's Essays, " They
are too thin," says our critic, " for an Englishman's
taste : mere superficial observations on life and man
ners, without erudition enough to make them keep,
like the light French wines, which turn sour with
standing awhile for want of body, as we call it."^"j
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 49
Of a much-admired poem, when extolled as beautiful,
he replied, "That it had indeed the beauty of a bubble.
The colours are gay," said he, "but the substance slight."
Of James Harris's Dedication to his " Hermes," I have
heard him observe that, though but fourteen lines long,
there were six grammatical faults in it. A friend was
praising the style of Dr. Swift ; Mr. Johnson did not
find himself in the humour to agree with him : the
critic was driven from one of his performances to the
other. At length, "You must allow me," said the
gentleman, " that there are strong facts in the account
of ' The Four Last Years of Queen Anne.' " " Yes,
surely, sir," replies Johnson, "and so there are in the
Ordinary of Newgate's account." This was like the
story which Mr. Murphy tells, and Johnson always
acknowledged : how Mr. Rose of Hammersmith, con
tending for the preference of Scotch writers over the
English, after having set up his authors like ninepins,
while the Doctor kept bowling them down again ; at
last, to make sure of victory, he named Ferguson
upon " Civil Society," and praised the book for being
written in, a new manner. "I do not," says Johnson,
" perceive the value of this new manner ; it is only like
Buckinger, who had no hands, and so wrote with his
feet." Of a modern Martial, when it came out :
" There are in these verses," says Dr. Johnson, " too
much folly for madness, I think, and too much madness
for folly." If, however, Mr. Johnson lamented that
the nearer he approached to his own times, the more
enemies he should make, by telling biographical truths
in his " Lives of the Later Poets," what may I not
50 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE f
apprehend, who, if I relate anecdotes of Mr. Johnson,
am obliged to repeat expressions of severity, and
sentences of contempt ? Let me at least soften them
a little by saying that he did not hate the persons he
treated with roughness, or despise them whom he drove
from him by apparent scorn. He really loved and
respected many whom he would not suffer to love him.
And when he related to me a short dialogue that passed
between himself and a writer of the first eminence in
the world, when he was in Scotland, I was shocked to
think how he must have disgusted him. " Dr.
asked me," said he, " why I did not join in their public
worship when among them ? for," said he, " I went to
your churches often when in England." " So," replied
Johnson, " I have read that the Siamese sent ambassa
dors to Louis Quatorze, but I never heard that the
King of France thought it worth his while to send
ambassadors from his court to that of Siam." He was
no gentler with myself, or those for whom I had the
greatest regard. When I one day lamented the loss of
a first cousin killed in America, " Prithee, my dear,"
said he, "have done with canting. How would the
world be worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations
were at once spitted like larks, and roasted for Presto's
supper ? " Presto was the dog that lay under the table
while we talked. When we went into Wales together,
and spent some time at Sir Robert Cotton's, at Lleweny,
one day at dinner I meant to please Mr. Johnson par
ticularly with a dish of very young peas. " Are not
they charming ? " said I to him, while he was eating
them. " Perhaps," said he, " they would be so to a
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 51
pig-" I only instance these replies, to excuse my
mentioning those he made to others?/
When a well-known author published his poems in
the year 1777: "Such a one's verses are come out,"
said I. " Yes," replied Johnson, " and this frost has
struck them in again. Here are some lines I have
written to ridicule them; but remember that I love
the fellow dearly now, for all I laugh at him :
" ' Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new ;
Endless labour all along,
Endless labour to be wrong ;
Phrase that Time has flung away ;
Uncouth words in disarray,
Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.' "
When he parodied the verses of another eminent
writer, it was done with more provocation, I believe,
and with some merry malice. A serious translation of
the same lines, which I think are from Euripides,
may be found in Burney's " History of Music." Here
are the burlesque ones :
" Err shall they not, who resolute explore
Time's gloomy backward with judicious eyes ;
And scanning right the practices of yore,
Shall deem our hoar progenitors unwise.
" They to the dome where smoke with curling play
Announced the dinner to the regions round,
Summoned the singer blithe, and harper gay,
And aided wine with dulcet streaming sound.
" The better use of notes, or sweet or shrill,
By quivering string, or modulated wind ;
52 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
Trumpet or lyre to their harsh bosoms chill,
Admission ne'er had sought, or could not find.
" Oh ! send them to the sullen mansions dun,
Her baleful eyes where Sorrow rolls around ;
Where gloom-enamoured Mischief loves to dwell,
And Murder, all blood-boltered, schemes the wound.
" When cates luxuriant pile the spacious dish,
And purple nectar glads the festive hour ;
The guest, without a want, without a wish,
Can yield no room to Music's soothing power."
Some of the" old legendary stories put in verse by
modern writers provoked him to caricature them thus
one day at Streatham ; but they are already well
known, I am sure.
" The tender infant, meek and mild,
Fell down upon the stone ;
The nurse took up the squealing child,
But still the child squealed on."
A famous ballad also, beginning Rio verde, Rio
verde, when I commended the translation of it, he
said he could do it better himself as thus :
" Glassy water, glassy water,
Down whose current clear and strong,
Chiefs confused in mutual slaughter,
Moor and Christian roll along."
" But, sir," said I, " this is not ridiculous at all."
" Why, no," replied he, " why should I always write
ridiculously? Perhaps because I made these verses
to imitate such a one," naming him :
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 53
" ' Hermit hoar, in solemn cell
Wearing out life's evening grey ;
Strike thy bosom, sage ! and tell
What is bliss, and which the way ? '
" Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed,
Scarce repressed the starting tear,
When the hoary sage replied,
' Come, my lad, and drink some beer.' "
I could give another comical instance of ftari qatura.
.imitation. Recollecting some day, when praising these
verses of Lopez de Yega
" Se acquien los leones vencc,
Vence una muger hermosa,
el de flaco averguence,
O ella di ser mas furiosa,"
more than he thought they deserved, Mr. Johnson
instantly observed " that they were founded on a trivial
conceit, and that conceit ill-explained and ill-expressed
besides. The lady, we all know, does not conquer in
the same manner as the lion does. "Pis a mere play
of words," added he, " and you might as well say that
" ' If the man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,
'Tis a proof that he had rather
Have a turnip than his father.'"
And this humour is of the same sort with which he
answered the friend who commended the following
line :
" Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free."
" To be sure," said Dr. Johnson
54 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
" ' Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.' "
This readiness of finding a parallel, or making one,
was shown by him perpetually in the course of con
versation. When the French verses of a certain panto
mime were quoted thus :
" Je mis Cassandre descendue des cieux,
Pour vous faire entendre, mesdames et messieurs,
Qucje suis Cassandre descendue des cieux,"
he cried out gaily and suddenly, almost in a moment
" I am Cassandra come down from the sky,
To tell each bystander what none can deny,
That I am Cassandra come down from the sky."
The pretty Italian verses, too, at the end of Baretti's
book called " Easy Phraseology," he did all' improviso,
in the same manner :
" Viva 1 viva la padrona I
Tutta beUa, e tutta buona,
La padrona & un angiolella
Tutta buona e tutta bella j
Tutta bella e tutta buona ;
Viva I viva la padrona I "
" Long may live my lovely Hetty !
Always young and always pretty,
Always pretty, always young,
Live my lovely Hetty long !
Always young and always pretty !
Long may live my lovely Hetty ! "
The famous distich, too, of an Italian improwsatore,
when the Duke of Modena ran away from the comet
in the year 1742 or 1743 :
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 55
" Se al venir veslro i principi sen' vanno,
Deh venga ogni di durate un anno ; "
" which," said he, " would do just as well in our
language thus :
" ' If at your coming princes disappear,
Comets ! come every day and stay a year.' *
When some one in company commended the verses
of M. de Benserade a son Lit :
" The&tre des ris et des pleurs,
Lit I ou je nais, et ou je meurs,
Tu nous fais voir comment voisins
Sont nos plaisirs et nos chagrins."
To which he replied without hesitating
" ' In bed we laugh, in bed we cry,
And born in bed, in bed we die ;
The near approach a bed may show
Of human bliss to human woe. "
The inscription on the collar of Sir Joseph Banks's
goat, which had been on two of his adventurous ex
peditions with him, and was then, by the humanity of
her amiable master, turned out to graze in Kent as
a recompense for her utility and faithful service, was
given me by Johnson in the year 1777, I think, and I
have never yet seen it printed :
" Perpetui, ambita, bis terra, premia lactis,
HCEC habet allrici Capra secunda Jbws."
The epigram written at Lord Anson's house many
years ago, " where," says Mr. Johnson, " I was well
56 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
received and kindly treated, and with the true grati
tude of a wit ridiculed the master of the house before
I had left it an hour," has been falsely printed in
many papers since his death. I wrote it down from
his own lips one evening in August, 1772, not neglect
ing the little preface accusing himself of making so
graceless a return for the civilities shown him. He
had, among other elegancies about the park and
gardens, been made to observe a temple to the winds,
when this thought naturally presented itself to a wit :
" Gratum animum laudo ; Qui debuit omnia ventis,
Quam bene ventorum, surgere templa jubet I "
A translation of Dryden's epigram, too, I used to
fancy I had to myself :
" Quos laudet vates, Grains, Romanus, et Anglus,
Tres tria temporibus sccla dedere suis :
Sublime ingenium Grains, Romanus habebat
Carmen grande sonans, An;/lus utrumque tulit.
Nil majus natura capit : clarare priores
Quce potuere duos, lertius unus habet : "
from the famous lines written under Milton's picture :
" Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn ;
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty ; in both the last.
The force of Nature oould no further go,
To make a third she joined the former two."
One evening in the oratorio season of the year 1771
Mr. Johnson went with me to Covent Garden Theatre,
and though he was for the most part an exceedingly
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 57
bad playhouse companion, as his person drew people's
eyes upon the box, and the loudness of his voice made
it difficult for me to hear anybody but himself, he sat
surprisingly quiet, and I flattered myself that he was
listening to the m sic. When we were got home,
however, he repeated these verses, which he said he
had made at the oratorio, and he bade me translate
them -.
IN THEATEO.
" Tertii verso quater orbe lustri
Quid theatrales tibi crispe pompce t
Quam decet canos male literatos
Sera voluptas /
" Tene mulceri fidibus canoris?
Tene cantorum modulis stupere ?
Tene per pictas oculo elegante
Currere formas f
" Inter equates sine j "die liber,
Codices veri studiosus inter
Eectius vives, sua quisque carpat
Gaudia gratus.
" Lusibus gaudet puer otiosis
Luxus obleclat juvenem theatri,
At senifluxo sapienter uti
Tempore restat."
I gave him the following lines in imitation, which he
likod well enough, I think :
'* When threescore years have chilled thee quite,
Still can theatric scenes delight ?
Ill suits this place with learned wight,
May Bates or Coulson cry.
58 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
" The scholar's pride can Brent disarm?
His heart can soft Guadagni warm ?
Or scenes with sweet delusion charm
The climacteric eye ?
" The social club, the lonely tower,
Far better suit thy midnight hour ;
Let each according to his power
In worth or wisdom shine !
"And while play pleases idle boys,
And wanton mirth fond youth employs,
To fix the soul, and free from toys,
That useful task be thine."
The copy of verses in Latin hexameters, as well as I
remember, which he wrote to Dr. Lawrence, I forgot
to keep a copy of; and he obliged me to resign his
translation of the song beginning, " Busy, curious,
thirsty fly," for him to give Mr. Laugton, with a
promise not to retain a copy. I concluded he knew
why, so never inquired the reason. He had the
greatest possible value for Mr. Langton, of Laugtou
Hall, Lincoln, of whose virtue and learning he de
lighted to talk in very exalted terms; and poor Dr.
Lawrence had long been his friend and confident.
The conversation I saw them hold together in Essex
Street one day, in the year 1781 or 1782, was a melan
choly one, and made a singular impression on my
mind. He was himself exceedingly ill, and I accom
panied him thither for advice. The physician was,
however, in some respects more to be pitied than the
patient. Johnson was panting under an asthma and
dropsy, but Lawrence had been brought home that
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 59
very morning struck with the palsy, from which he
had, two hours before we came, strove to awaken
himself by blisters. They were both deaf, and scarce
able to speak besides : one from difficulty of breathing,
the other from paralytic debility. To give and receive
medical counsel, therefore, they fairly sat down on
each side a table in the doctor's gloomy apartment,
adorned with skeletons, preserved monsters, &c., and
agreed to write Latin billets to each other. Such a
scene did I never see. " You," said Johnson, " are
timide and gelide," finding that his friend had pre
scribed palliative, not drastic, remedies. " It is not
me," replies poor Lawrence, in an interrupted voice,
" 'tis nature that is gelide and timide." In fact, he
lived but few months after, I believe, and retained
his faculties still a shorter time. He was a man of
strict piety and profound learning, but little skilled in
the knowledge of life or manners, and died without
having ever enjoyed the reputation he so justly
deserved.
Mr. Johnson's health had been always extremely
bad since I first knew him, and his over-anxious care
to retain without blemish the perfect sanity of his
mind contributed much to disturb it. He had studied
medicine diligently in all its branches, but had given
particular attention to the diseases of the imagination,
which he watched in himself with a solicitude destruc
tive of his own peace, and intolerable to those he
trusted. Dr. Lawrence told him one day thai if he
would come and beat him once a week he would bear
it, but to hear his complaints was more than man
60 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
could support. 'Twas therefore that he tried, I sup
pose, and in eighteen years contrived to weary the
patience of a woman. When Mr. Johnson felt his
fancy, or fancied he felt it, disordered, his constant
recurrence was to the study of arithmetic, and one day
that he was totally confined to his chamber, and I
inquired what he had been doing to divert himself, he
showed me a calculation which I could scarce be made
to understand, so vast was the plan of it, and so very
intricate were the figures : no other, indeed, than that
the national debt, computing it at one hundred and
eighty millions sterling, would, if converted into silver,
serve to make a meridian of that metal, I forgot how
broad, for the globe of the whole earth, the real globe.
On a similar occasion I asked him, knowing what
subject he would like best to talk upon, how his
opinion stood towards the question between Paschal
and Soame Jennings about number and numeration ?
as the French philosopher observes that infinity,
though on all sides astonishing, appears most so when
the idea is connected with the idea of number ; for the
notion of infinite number and infinite number we
know there is stretches one's capacity still more than
the idea of infinite space. " Such a notion, indeed,"
adds he, " can scarcely find room in the human mind."
Our English author, on the other hand, exclaims, let
no man give himself leave to talk about infinite
number, for infinite number is a contradiction in
terms ; whatever is once numbered, we all see, cannot
be infinite. " I think," said Mr. Johnson, after a
pause, " we must settle the matter thus : numeration is
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 61
certainly infinite, for eternity might be employed in
adding unit to unit; but every number is in itself
finite, as the possibility of doubling it easily proves ;
besides, stop at what point you will, you find yourself
as far from infinitude as ever." These passages I
wrote down as soon as I had heard them, and repent
that I did not take the same method with a disserta
tion he made one other day that he was very ill, con
cerning the peculiar properties of the number sixteen,
which I afterwards tried, but in vain, to make him
repeat.
nv mf
thejsort__pf talk he most. delightficLin, so no kind of
conversation pleased him less, I think, than when the
subject was hisipjricaljCact.pr.gejaejal-^olilgr. " What
shall we learn from that stuff ? " said he. " Let us not
fancy, like Swift, that we are exalting a woman's
character by telling how she
" ' Could name the ancient heroes round,
Explain for what they were renowned,' &c."
I must not, however, lead my readers to suppose
that he meant to reserve such talk for men's company
as a proof of pre-eminence. " He never," as he ex
pressed it, " desired to hear of the Punic War while he
lived ; such conversation was lost time," he said, " and
carried one away from common life, leaving no ideas
behind which could serve living wight as warning or
direction."
" How I should act is not the case,
But how would Brutus in my place."
62 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
" And now," cries Mr. Johnson, laughing with obstre
perous violence, "if these two foolish lines can be
equalled in folly, except by the two succeeding ones
show them me."
I asked him once concerning the conversation powers
of a gentleman with whom I was myself unacquainted.
File talked to me at club one day," replies our Doctor,
" concerning Catiline's conspiracy, so I withdrew my
attention, and thought about Tom Thumb."
Modern pnHtics..fage4 ao-better. I was one time ex
tolling the character of a statesman, and expatiating
on the skill required to direct the different currents,
reconcile the jarring interests, &c. " Thus," replies he,
" a mill is a complicated piece of mechanism enough,
but the water is no part of the workmanship."
another occasion, when some one lamented the weak
ness of a then present minister, and complained that he
was dull and tardy, and knew little of affairs : " You
may as well complain, sir," says Johnson, " that the
accounts of time are kept by the clock ; for he certainly
does stand still upon the stair-head and we all know
that he is no great chronologer." In the year 1777, or
thereabouts, when all the talk was of an invasion, he
said most pathetically one afternoon, " Alas ! alas !
how this unmeaning stuff spoils all my comfort in my
friends' conversation ! Will the people never have
done with it ; and shall I never hear a sentence again
without the French in it ? Here is no invasion coming,
and you know there is none. .Let the vexatious and
frivolous talk alone, or suffer it at least to teach you
one truth ; and learn by this perpetual echo of even
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 63
iinapprehended distress how historians magnify events
expected or calamities endured; when you know they
are at this very moment collecting all the big words
they can find, in which to describe a consternation
never felt, for a misfortune which never happened.
Among all your lamentations, who eats the less
who sleeps the worse, for one general's ill-success,
or another's capitulation ? Oh, pray let us hear no
more of it ! '^7 No man, however, was more zealously
attached to his party; he not only loved a Tory him
self, but he loved a man the better if he heard he hated
a Whig, "Dear Bathurst," said he to me one day,
" was a man to my very heart's content : he hated a
fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig he
was a very good hater"
Some one mentioned a gentleman of that party for
having behaved oddly on an occasion where faction was
not concerned : "Is he not a citizen of London, a
native of North America, and a Whig ? " says Johnson.
" Let him be absurd, I beg you of you ; when a monkey
is too like a man, it shocks one."
Severity towards the poor was, in Dr. Johnson's \
opinion (as is visible in his " Life of Addison " par
ticularly), an undoubted and constant attendant or
I consequence upon Whiggism ; and he was not contented
with giving them relief, he wished to add also indul
gence. He loved the poor as I never yet saw any one 1
else do, with an earnest desire to make them happy. '
" What signifies," says some one, " giving halfpence to
common beggars? they only lay it out in gin or
tobacco." "And why should they be denied such
64 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
sweeteners of their existence ? " says Johnson ; " it is
surely very savage to refuse them every possible
avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own
acceptance V Life is a pill which none of us can bear
to swallow without gilding ; yet for the poor we de
light in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed
to show even visible displeasure if ever the bitter
taste is taken from their mouths." In consequence of
these principles he nursed whole nests of people in his
house, where the lame, the blind, the sick, and the
sorrowful found a sure retreat from all the evils
whence his little income could secure them : and
commonly spending the middle of the week at oiir
house, he kept his numerous family in Fleet Street
upon a settled allowance ; but returned to them every
Saturday, to give them three good dinners, and his
company, before he came back to us on the Monday
night treating them with the same, or perhaps more
ceremonious civility than he would have done by as
many people of fashion making the Holy Scriptures
thus the rule of his conduct, and only expecting salva
tion as he was able to obey its precepts.
While Dr. Johnson possessed, however, the strongest
compassion for poverty or illness, he did not even pre
tend to feel for those who lamented the loss of a child,
a parent, or a friend. " These are the distresses of
sentiment," he would reply, " which a man who is
really to be pitied has no leisure to feel. The sight of
people who want food an^l raiment is so common in
great cities, that a surly fellow like me has no com
passion to spare for wounds given only to vanity or
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 6
softness." No man, therefore, who smarted from the
ingratitude of his friends, found any sympathy from
our philosopher. " Let him do good on higher motives
next time," would be the answer ; " he will then be sure
of his reward." It is easy to observe that the justice
of such sentences made them offensive ; but we must be
careful how we condemn a man for saying what we
know to be true, only because it is so. I hope that the
reason our hearts rebelled a little against his severity
was chiefly because it came from a living mouth.
Books were invented to take off the odium of im
mediate superiority, and soften the rigour of duties
prescribed by the teachers and censors of human kind
setting at least those who are acknowledged wiser
than ourselves at a distance. When we recollect, how
ever, that for this very reason they are seldom consulted
and little obeyed, how much cause shall his contempo
raries have to rejoice that their living Johnson forced
them to feel there proofs due to vice and folly, while
Seneca and Tillotson were no longer able to make im
pressionexcept on our shelves ! Few things, indeed,
which pass well enough with others would do with him :
he had been a great reader of Mandeville, and was ever
on the watch to spy out those stains of original corrup
tion so easily discovered by a penetrating observer
even in the purest minds. I mentioned an event,
which if it had happened would greatly have injured
Mr. Thrale and his family " and then, dear sir," said
1, "how sorry you would have been!" "I hope,"
replied he, after a long pause, " I should have been
very sorry; but remember Bochefoucault's maxim.''
c 105
66 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
" I would rather," answered I, " remember Prior's
verses, and ask
' What need of books these truths to tell,
Which folks perceive that cannot spell ?
And must we spectacles apply,
To see what hurts our naked eye ?'
Will anybody's mind bear this eternal microscope that
you place upon your own so ? " "I never," replied he,
"saw one that would, except that of my dear Miss
Reynolds and hers is very near to purity itself." Of
slighter evils, and friends more distant than our own
household, he spoke less cautiously. An acquaintance
lost the almost certain hope of a good estate that had
been long expected. " Such a one will grieve," said I,
" at her friend's disappointment." " She will suffer as
much, perhaps," said he, "as your horse did when your
cow miscarried." I professed myself sincerely grieved
when accumulated distresses crushed Sir George Cole-
brook's family ; and I was so. " Your own prosperity,"
said he, " may possibly have so far increased the natural
tenderness of your heart, that for aught I know you
may be a lit tie sorry ; but it is sufficient for a plain
man if he does not laugh when he sees a fine new house
tumble down all on a sudden, and a snug cottage stand
by ready to receive the owner, whose birth entitled him
to nothing better, and whose limbs are left him to go
to work again with."
I tried to tell him in jest that his morality was
easily contented, and when I have said something as if
the wickedness of the world gave me concern, he
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. C7
would cry out aloud against canting, and protest that
he thought there was very little gross wickedness in
the world, and still less of extraordinary virtue.
Nothing, indeed, more surely disgusted Dr. Johnson
than hyperbole ; he loved not to be told of sallies of
excellence, which he said were seldom valuable, and
seldom true. "Heroic virtues," said he, "are the
bons mots of life ; they do not appear often, and when
they do appear are too much prized, I think, like the
aloe-tree, which shoots and flowers once in a hundred
years. But life is made up of little things ; and that
character is the best which does little but repeated
acts of beneficence; as that conversation is the best
which consists in elegant and pleasing thoughts ex
pressed in natural and pleasing terms. With regard
to my own notions of moral virtue," continued he, " I
hope I have not lost my sensibility of wrong; but I
hope, likewise, that I have lived long enough in the
world to prevent me from expecting to find any action
of which both the original motive and all the parts
were good."
The piety of Dr. Johnson was exemplary and edify
ing ; he was punctiliously exact to perform every
public duty enjoined by the Church, and his spirit of
devotion had an energy that affected all who ever saw
him pray in private. The coldest and most languid
hearer of the Word must have felt themselves animated
by his manner of reading the Holy Scriptures ; and to
pray by his sick-bed required strength of body as well
as of mind, so vehement were his manners, and his
tones of voice so pathetic. I have many times made
68 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
it my request to Heaven that I might be spared the
sight of his death ; and I was spared it.
Mr. Johnson, though in general a gross feeder, kept
fast in Lent, particularly the Holy Week, with a
rigour very dangerous to his general health ; but
though he had left off wine (for religious motives, as I
always believed, though he did not own it), yet he did
not hold the commutation of offences by voluntary
penance, or encourage others to practise severity upon
themselves. He even once said " that he thought it an
error to endeavour at pleasing God by taking the rod
of reproof out of His hands." And when we talked of
convents, and the hardships suffered in them: "Re
member always," said he, " that a convent is an idle
place, and where there is nothing to be done something
must be endured : mustard has a bad taste per se, you
may observe, but very insipid food cannot be eaten
without it."
His respect, however, for places of religious retire
ment was carried to the greatest degree of earthly
veneration ; the Benedictine convent at Paris paid him
all possible honours in return, and the Prior and he
parted with tears of tenderness. Two of that college
being sent to England on the mission some years after,
spent much of their time with him at Bolt Court, 1
know, and he was ever earnest to retain their friend
ship ; but though beloved by all his Roman Catholic
acquaintance, particularly Dr. Nugent, for whose
esteem he had a singular value, yet was Mr. Johnson a
most unshaken Church of England man ; and I think,
or at least T once did think, that a letter written by
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 69
him to Mr. Barnard, the King's Librarian, when he
was in Italy collecting books, contained some very
particular advice to his friend to be on his guard
against the seductions of the Church of Rome.
The settled aversion Dr. Johnson felt towards an
infidel he expressed to all ranks, and at all times,
without the smallest reserve ; for though on common
occasions he paid great deference to birth or title, yet
his regard for truth and virtue never gave way to
meaner considerations. We talked of a dead wit one
evening, and somebody praised him. " Let us never
praise talents so ill employed, sir ; we foul our mouths
by commending such infidels," said he. " Allow him
the lumieres at least," entreated one of the company.
" I do allow him, sir," replied Johnson, " just enougli
to light him to hell." Of a Jamaica gentleman, then
lately dead : " He will not, whither he is now gone,"
said Johnson, " find much difference, I believe, either
in the climate or the company." The Abbe Reynal
probably remembers that, being at the house of a
common friend in London, the master of it approached
Johnson with that gentleman so much celebrated in
his hand, and this speech in his mouth : " Will you
permit me, sir, to present to you the Abbe Reynal ? "
" No, sir," replied the Doctor very loud, and suddenly
turned away from them both.
Though Mr. Johnson had but little reverence either
for talents or fortune when he found them unsupported
by virtue, yet it was sufficient to tell him a man was
very pious, or very charitable, and he would at least
begin with him on good terms, however the con versa-
70 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
tion might end. He would sometimes, too, good-
naturedly enter into a long chat for the instruction or
entertainment of people he despised. I perfectly re
collect his condescending to delight my daughter's
dancing-master with a long argument about his art,
which the man protested, at the close of the discourse,
the Doctor knew more of than himself, who remained
astonished, enlightened, and amused by the talk of a
person little likely to make a good disquisition upon
dancing. I have sometimes, indeed, been rather pleased
than vexed when Mr. Johnson has given a rough
answer to a man who perhaps deserved one only half
as rough, because I knew he would repent of his hasty
reproof, and make us all amends by some conversation
at once instructive and entertaining, as in the follow
ing cases. A young fellow asked him abruptly one
day, " Pray, sir, what and where is Palmyra ? I heard
somebody talk last night of the ruins of Palmyra."
" "Tis a hill in Ireland," replies Johnson, " with palms
growing on the top, and a bog at the bottom, and so
they call it Palm-mira." Seeing, however, that the
lad thought him serious, and thanked him for the
information, he undeceived him very gently indeed :
told him the history, geography, and chronology of
Tadmor in -the wilderness, with every incident that
literature could furnish, I think, or eloquence express,
from the building of Solomon's palace to the voyage
of Dawkins and Wood.
On another occasion, when he was musing over the
fire in our drawing-room at Streatham, a young gentle
man called to him suddenly, and I suppose he thought
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 71
disrespectfully, in these words : " Mr. Johnson, would
you advise me to marry P " "I would advise no man
to marry, sir," returns for answer in a very angry tone
Dr. Johnson, " who is not likely to propagate under
standing," and so left the room. Our companion
looked confounded, and I believe had scarce recovered
the consciousness of his own existence, when Johnson
came back, and drawing his chair among us, with
altered looks and a softened voice, joined in the general
chat, insensibly led the conversation to the subject of
marriage, where he laid himself out in a dissertation
so useful, so elegant, so founded on the true knowledge
of human life, and so adorned with beauty of senti
ment, that no one ever recollected the offence, except
to rejoice in its consequences. He repented just as
certainly, however, if he had been led to praise any
person or thing by accident more than he thought it
deserved ; and was on such occasions comically earnest
to destroy the praise or pleasure he had unintentionally
given.
Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned some picture as
excellent. "It has often grieved me, sir," said Mr.
Johnson, " to see so much mind as the science of paint
ing requires laid out upon such perishable materials.
Why do not you oftener make use of copper ? I could
wish your superiority in the art you profess to be
preserved in stuff more durable than canvas." Sir
Joshua urged the difficulty of procuring a plate large
enough for historical subjects, and was going to raise
further observations. " What foppish obstacles are
these ! " exclaims on a .sudden Dr. Johnson. " Here is
72 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
Thrale has a thousand tun of copper ; you may paint
it all round if you will, I suppose ; it will serve him to
brew in afterwards. Will it not, sir ? " (to my husband,
who sat by). Indeed, Dr. Johnson's utter scorn of
painting was such that I have heard him say that he
should sit very quietly in a room hung round with the
works of the greatest masters, and never feel the
slightest disposition to turn them if their backs were
outermost, unless it might be for the sake of telling
Sir Joshua that he had turned them. Such speeches
may appear offensive to many, but those who knew he
was too blind to discern the perfections of an art
which applies itself immediately to our eyesight must
acknowledge he was not in the wrong.
He delighted no more in music than in painting ; he
was almost as deaf as he was blind ; travelling with
Dr. Johnson was for these reasons tiresome enough.
Mr. Thrale loved prospects, and was mortified that his
friend could not enjoy the sight of those different
dispositions of wood and water, hill and valley, that
travelling through England and France affords a man.
But when he wished to point them out to his com
panion : " Never heed such nonsense," would be the
reply ; " a blade pf grass is always a blade of grass,
whether in one country or another. Let us, if we do
talk, talk about something ; men and women are my
subjects of inquiry ; let us see how these differ from
those we have left behind."
When we were at Rouen together, he took a great
fancy to the Abbe Roffette, with whom he conversed
about the destruction of the order of Jesuits, and con-
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 73
demned it loudly as a blow to the general power of
the Church, and likely to be followed with many and
dangerous innovations, which might at length become
fatal to religion itself, and shake even the foundation
of Christianity. The gentleman seemed to wonder and
delight in his conversation. The talk was all in Latin,
which both spoke fluently, and Mr. Johnson pronounced
a long eulogium upon Milton with so much ardour,
eloquence, and ingenuity, that the Abbe rose from his
seat and embraced him. My husband, seeing them
apparently so charmed with the company of each other,
politely invited the Abbe to England, intending to
oblige his friend, who, instead of thanking, repri
manded him severely before the man for such a sudden
burst of tenderness towards a person he could know
nothing at all of, and thus put a sudden finish to all
his own and Mr. Thrale's entertainment from the
company of the Abbe Roffette.
When at Versailles the people showed us the
theatre. As we stood on the stage looking at some
machinery for playhouse purposes : " Now we are
here, what shall we act, Mr. Johnson The Englishman
at Paris 1 " " No, no," replied he, " we will try to
act Harry the Fifth." His dislike to the French was
well known to both nations, I believe ; but he ap
plauded the number of their books and the graces of
their style. " They have few sentiments," said he,
" but they express them neatly ; they have little meat,
too, but they dress it well." Johnson's own notions
about eating, however, were nothing less than delicate ;
a leg of pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a
74
ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
veal pie with plums and sugar, or the outside cut of
a salt buttock of beef, were his favourite dainties
With regard to drink, his liking was for the strongest,
as it was not the flavour, but the effect, he sought for,
and professed to desire ; and when I first knew him,
he used to pour capillaire into his port wine. For
the last twelve years, however, he left off all fermented
liquors. To make himself some amends, indeed, he
took his chocolate liberally, pouring in large quantities
of cream, or even melted butter ; and was so fond of
fruit, that though he usually ate seven or eight large
peaches of a morning before breakfast began, and
treated them with proportionate attention after dinner
again, yet I have heard him protest that he never had
quite as much as he wished of wall-fruit, except once
in his life, and that was when we were all together at
Ombersley, the seat of my Lord Sandys. I was
saying to a friend one day, that I did not like goose ;
" one smells it so while it is roasting," said I. " But
you, madam," replies the Doctor, " have been at all
times a fortunate woman, having always had your
hunger so forestalled by indulgence, that you never
experienced the delight of smelling your dinner be
forehand." " "Which pleasure," answered I pertly,
"is to be enjoyed in perfection by such as have the
happiness to pass through Porridge Island of a morn
ing." " Come, come," says he, gravely, " let's have no
sneering at what is serious to so many. Hundreds of
your fellow-creatures, dear lady, turn another way,
that they may not be tempted by the luxuries of
Porridge Island to wish for gratifications they are not
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 75
able to obtain. You are certainly not better than
all of them ; give God thanks that you are happier."
I received on another occasion as just a rebuke
from Mr. Johnson, for an offence of the same nature,
and hope I took care never to provoke a third ; for
after a very long summer, particularly hot and dry, I
was wishing naturally but thoughtlessly for some rain
to lay the dust as we drove along the Surrey roads.
" I cannot bear," replied he, with much asperity and
an altered look, "when I know how many poor
families will perish next winter for want of that bread
which the present drought will deny them, to hear
ladies . sighing for rain, only that their complexions
may not suffer from the heat, or their clothes be
incommoded by the dust. For shame ! leave off such
foppish lamentations, and study to relieve those whose
distresses are real."
With advising others to be charitable, however,
JDr. Johnson did not content himself. He gave away
jail he had, and all he ever had gotten, except the
i two thousand pounds he left behind; and the very
small portion of his income which he spent on himself,
with all our calculation, we never could make more
than seventy, or at most fourscore pounds a year, and
he pretended to allow himself a hundred. He had
numberless dependents out of doors as well as in,
who, as he expressed it, " did not like to see him
latterly unless he brought 'em money." For those
people he used frequently to raise contributions on
his richer friends ; " and this," says he, " is one of the
thousand reasons which ought to restrain a man from
yg ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
drony solitude and useless retirement. Solitude,"
added he one day, " is dangerous to reason, without
being favourable to virtue : pleasures of some sort are
necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health ;
and those who resist gaiety will be likely for the most
part to fall a sacrifice to appetite ; for the solicitations
of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant
and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief.
Remember," concluded he, " that the solitary mortal is
certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly
mad : the mind stagnates for want of employment-,
grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in
foul air." It was on this principle that Johnson
encouraged parents to carry their daughters early and
much into company : " for what harm can be done
before so many witnesses? Solitude is the surest
nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry
of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither in
clination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften
or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the
dangerous places : no, it is the private friend, the
kind consoler, the companion of the easy, vacant hour,
whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her
vanity, and whose conversation can just soothe, without
ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be
feared. He who buzzes in her ear at court or at the
opera must be contented to buzz in vain." These
notions Dr. Johnson carried so very far, that I have
heard him say, "If you shut up any man with any
woman, so as to make them derive their whole
pleasure from each other, they would inevitably fall
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 77
in love, as it is called, with each other; but at six
months' end, if you would throw them both into
public life, where they might change partners at
pleasure, each would soon forget that fondness which
mutual dependence and the paucity of general amuse
ment alone had caused, and each would separately
feel delighted by their release."
In these opinions Rousseau apparently concurs with
him exactly; and Mr. Whitehead's poem, called
" Variety," is written solely to elucidate this simple
proposition. Prior likewise advises the husband to
send his wife abroad, and let her see the world as it
really stands :
" Powder, and pocket-glass, and beau."
Mr. Johnson was indeed unjustly supposed to be a
lover of singularity. Few people had a more settled
reverence for the world than he, or was less captivated
by new modes of behaviour introduced, or innovations
on the long-received customs of common life. He
hated the way of leaving a company without taking
notice to the lady of the house that he was going,
and did not much like any of the contrivances by
which ease had lately been introduced into society
instead of ceremony, which had more of his approba
tion. Cards, dress, and dancing, however, all found
their advocate in Dr. Johnson, who inculcated, upon
principle, the cultivation of those arts which many
a moralist thinks himself bound to reject, and many a
Christian holds unfit to be practised. " No person,"
said he one day, " goes under-dressed till he thinks
78 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
himself of consequence enough to forbear carrying the
badge of his rank upon his back." And in answer to
the arguments urged by Puritans, Quakers, <fcc., against
showy decorations of the human figure, I once heard
him exclaim, " Oh, let us not be found, when our
Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats,
but the spirit of contention from our souls and
tongues! Let us all conform in outward customs,
which are of no consequence, to the manners of those
whom we live among, and despise such paltry distinc
tions. Alas, sir ! " continued he, " a man who cannot
get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way
thither sooner in a grey one." On an occasion of
less consequence, when he turned his back on Lord
Bolingbroke in the rooms at Brighthelmstone, he
made this excuse, " I am not obliged, sir," said he to
Mr. Thrale, who stood fretting, " to find reasons for
respecting the rank of him who will not condescend to
declare it by his dress or some other visible mark.
"What are stars and other signs of superiority made
for?"
The next evening, however, he made us comical
amends, by sitting by the same nobleman, and
haranguing very loudly about the nature and use and
abuse of divorces. Many people gathered round them
to hear what was said, and when my husband called
him away, and told him to whom he had been talking,
received an answer which I will not write down.
Though no man, perhaps, made such rough replies as
Dr. Johnson, yet nobody had a more just aversion to
general satire ; he always hated and censured Swift for
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 79
his unprovoked bitterness against the professors of
medicine, and used to challenge his friends, when they
lamented the exorbitancy of physicians' fees, to produce
him one instance of an estate raised by physic in
England. When an acquaintance, too, was one day
exclaiming against the tediousness of the law and its
partiality : " Let us hear, sir," said Johnson, " no
general abuse ; the law is the last result of human
wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit
of the public."
As the mind of Dr. Johnson was greatly expanded,
so his first care was for general, not particular or petty
morality ; and those teachers had more of his blame
than praise, I think, who seek to oppress life with
unnecessary scruples. "Scruples would," as he ob
served, " certainly make men miserable, and seldom
make them good. Let us ever," he said, " studiously
fly from those instructors against whom our Saviour
denounces heavy judgments, for having bound up
burdens grievous to be borne, and laid them on the
shoulders of mortal men." No one had, however,
higher notions of the hard task of true Christianity
than Johnson, whose daily terror lest he had not done
enough, originated in piety, but ended in little less thau
disease. Reasonable with regard to others, he had
formed vain hopes of performing impossibilities him
self ; and finding his good works ever below his desires
and intent, filled his imagination with fears that he
should never obtain forgiveness for omissions of duty
and criminal waste of time. These ideas kept him in
constant anxiety concerning his salvation; and the
80 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
vehement petitions he perpetually made for a longer
continuance on earth, were doubtless the cause of his
so prolonged existence : for when I carried Dr. Pepys
to him in the year 1782, it appeared wholly impossible
for any skill of the physician or any strength of the
patient to save him. He was saved that time, however,
by Sir Lucas's prescriptions ; and less skill on one side,
or less strength on the other, I am morally certain,
would not have been enough. He had, however,
possessed an athletic constitution, as he said the man
who dipped people in the sea at Brighthelmstone ac
knowledged ; for seeing Mr. Johnson swim, in the year
1766, " Why, sir," says the dipper, " you must have
been a stout-hearted gentleman forty years ago."
Mr. Thrale and he used to laugh about that story
very often : but Garrick told a better, for he said that
in their young days, when some strolling players came
to Lichfield, our friend had fixed his place upon the
stage, and got himself a chair accordingly; which
leaving for a few minutes, he found a man in it at his
return, who refused to give it back at the first entreaty.
Mr. Johnson, however, who did not think it worth his
while to make a second, took chair and man and all
together, and threw them all at once into the pit. I
asked the Doctor if this was a fact. " Garrick has not
spoiled it in the telling," said he, "it is very near true,
to be sure."
Mr. Beauclerc, too, related one day how on some
occasion he ordered two large mastiffs into his parlour,
to show a friend who was conversant in canine beauty
and excellence how the dogs quarrelled, and fastening on
DR. SAMTJEL JOHNSON. 81
each other, alarmed all the company except Johnson,
who seizing one in one hand by the cuff of the neck,
the other in the other hand, said gravely, " Come,
gentlemen ! where's your difficulty ? put one dog out
at the door, and I will show this fierce gentleman the
way out of the window : " which, lifting up the mastiff
and the sash,|he contrived to do very expeditiously, and
much to the satisfaction of the affrighted company.
We inquired as to the truth of this curious recital.
" The dogs have been somewhat magnified, I believe,
sir," was the reply : " they were, as I remember, two
stout young pointers; but the story has gained but
little."
One reason why Mr. Johnson's memory was so
particularly exact, might be derived from his rigid
attention to veracity ; being always resolved to relate
every fact as it stood, he looked even on the smaller
parts of life with minute attention, and remembered
such passages as escape cursory and common observers.
" A story," says he, " is a specimen of human manners,
and derives its sole value from its truth. When Foote
has told me something, I dismiss it from my mind like
a passing shadow : when Reynolds tells me something,
I consider myself as possessed of an idea the more."
Mr. Johnson liked a frolic or a jest well enough,
though he had strange serious rules about it too : and
very angry was he if anybody offered to be merry
when he was disposed to be grave. " You have an ill-
founded notion," said he, " that it is clever to turn
matters off with a joke (as the phrase is) ; whereas
nothing produces enmity so certain as one person's
82 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
showing a disposition to be merry when another is in
clined to be either serious or displeased."
One may gather from this how he felt when his Irish
friend Grierson, hearing him enumerate the qualities
necessary to the formation of a poet, began a comical
parody upon his ornamented harangue in praise of a
cook, concluding with this observation, that he who
dressed a good dinner was a more excellent and a more
useful member of society than he who wrote a good
poem. "And in this opinion," said Mr. Johnson in
reply, " all the dogs in the town will join you."
Of this Mr. Grierson I have heard him relate many
droll stories, much to his advantage as a wit, together
with some facts more difficult to be accounted for ; as
avarice never was reckoned among the* vices of the
laughing world. But Johnson's various life, and spirit
of vigilance to learn and treasure up every peculiarity
of manner, sentiment, or general conduct, made his
company, when he chose to relate anecdotes of people
he had formerly known, exquisitely amusing and
comical. It is indeed inconceivable what strange
occurrences he had seen, and what surprising things he
could tell when in a communicative humour. It is by
no means my business to relate memoirs of his acquain
tance ; but it will serve to show the character of John
son himself, when I inform those who never knew him
that no man told a story with so good a grace, or knew
so well what would make an effect upon his auditors.
When he raised contributions for some distressed
author, or wit in want, he often made us all more than
amends by diverting descriptions of the lives they were
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 83
then passing in corners unseen by anybody but himself;
and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house
to tend the out-pensioners, and of whom he said most
truly and sublimely that
" In misery's darkest caverns known,
His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless anguish pours her groan,
And lonely want retires to die. "
~""l have forgotten the year, but it could scarcely I/
think be later than 1765 or 1766, that he was called f
abruptly from our house after dinner, and returning in '
about three hours, said he had been with an enraged
author, whose landlady pressed him for payment within
doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he
was drinking himself drunk with Madeira to drown
care, and fretting over a novel which, when finished,
was to be his whole fortune ; but he could not get it
done for distraction, nor could he step out of doors to
offer it to sale. Mr. Johnson therefore set away the
bottle, and went to the bookseller, recommending the
performance, and desiring some immediate relief;
which when he brought back to the writer, he called
the woman of the house directly to partake of punch,
and pass their time in merriment.
It was not till ten years after, I dare say, that some
thing in Dr. Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with an
idea that he was the very man, and then Johnson con
fessed it was so ; the novel was the charming " Yicar
There was a Mr. Boyce, too, who wrote some very
84 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
elegant verses printed in the magazines of five-and-
twenty years ago, of whose ingenuity and distress I
have heard Dr. Johnson tell some curious anecdotes,
particularly that when he was almost perishing with
hunger, and some money was produced to purchase
him a dinner, he got a piece of roast beef, but could
not eat it without ketchup, and laid out the last half -
guinea he possessed in truffles and mushrooms, eating
them in bed, too, for want of clothes, or even a shirt to
ait up in.
Another man, for whom he often begged, made as
wild use of his friend's beneficence as these, spending
in punch the solitary guinea which had been brought
him one morning; when resolving to add another
claimant to a share of the bowl, besides a woman who
always lived with him, and a footman who used to
carry out petitions for charity, he borrowed a chair
man's watch, and pawning it for half-a-crown, paid a
clergyman to marry him to a fellow-lodger in the
wretched house they all inhabited, and got so drunk
over the guinea bowl of punch the evening of his
wedding-day, that having many years lost the use of
one leg, he now contrived to fall from the top of the
stairs to the bottom, and break his arm, in which con
dition his companions left him to call Mr. Johnson,
who, relating the series of his tragi-comical distresses
obtained from the Literary Club a seasonable relief.
Of that respectable society I have heard him speak in
the highest terms, and with a magnificent panegyric
on each member, when it consisted only of a dozen or
fourteen friends ; but as soon as the necessity of en-
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 85
larging it brought in new faces, and took off from his
confidence in the company, he grew less fond of the
meeting, and loudly proclaimed his carelessness who
might be admitted, when it was become a mere dinner
club. I think the original names, when I first heard
him talk with fervour of every member's peculiar
powers of instructing or delighting mankind, were Sir
John Hawkins, Mr. Burke, Mr. Langton, Mr. Beau-
clerc, Dr. Percy, Dr. Nugent, Dr. Goldsmith, Sir
Robert Chambers, Mr. Dyer, and Sir Joshua Reynolds,
whom he called their Romulus, or said somebody else of
the company called him so, which was more likely : but
this was, I believ , in the year 1775 or 1776. It was a
supper meeting then, and I fancy Dr. Nugent ordered
an omelet sometimes on a Friday or Saturday night ;
for I remember Mr. Johnson felt very painful sen Ca
tions at the sight of that dish soon after his death, and
cried, "Ah, my poor dear friend! I shall never eat
omelet with thee again ! " quite in an agony. The
truth is, nobody suffered more from pungent sorrow at a
friend's death than Johnson, though he would suffer no
one else to complain of their losses in the same way ;
" for," says he, " we must either outlive our friends,
you know, or our friends must outlive us ; and I see no
man that would hesitate about the choice."
Mr. Johnson loved late hours extremely, or more
properly hated early ones. Nothing was more terrify
ing to him than the idea of retiring to bed, which he
never would call going to rest, or suffer another to call
so. " I lie down," said he, " that my acquaintance
may sleep; but I lie down to endure oppressive
86 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
misery, and soon rise again to pass the night in
anxiety and pain." By this pathetic manner, which
no one ever possessed in so eminent a degree, he used
to shock me from quitting his company, till I hurt my
own health not a little by sitting up with him when I
was myself far from well ; nor was it an easy matter
to oblige him even by compliance, for he always main
tained that no one forbore their own gratifications for
the sake of pleasing another, and if one did sit up it
was probably to amuse oneself. Some right, how
ever, he certainly had to say so, as he made his
company exceedingly entertaining when he had once
forced one, by his vehement lamentations and piercing
reproofs, not to quit the room, but to sit quietly and
make tea for him, as I often did in London till four
o'clock in the morning. At Streatham, indeed, I
managed better, having always some friend who was
kind enough to engage him in talk, and favour my
retreat.
The first time I ever saw this extraordinary man
was in the year 1764, when Mr. Murphy, who had been
long the friend and confidential intimate of Mr.
Thrale, persuaded him to wish for Johnson's conversa
tion, extolling it in terms which that of no other
person could have deserved, till we were only in doubt
how to obtain his company, and find an excuse for the
invitation. The celebrity of Mr. Woodhouse, a shoe
maker, whose verses were at that time the subject of
common discourse, soon afforded a pretence, and Mr.
Murphy brought Johnson to meet him, giving me
general cautions not to be surprised at his figure,
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 87
dress, or behaviour. "What I recollect best of the day's
talk was his earnestly recommending Addison's works
to Mr. "Woodhouse as a model for imitation. " Give
nights and days, sir," said he, " to the study of
Addison, if you mean either to be a good writer, or
what is more worth, an honest man." When I saw
something like the same expression in his criticism on
that author, lately published, I put him in mind of
his past injunctions to the young poet, to which he
replied, " that he wished the shoemaker might have
remembered them as well." Mr. Johnson liked his
new acquaintance so much, however, that from that
time he dined with us every Thursday through the
winter, and in the autumn of the next year he followed
us to Brighthelmstone, whence we were gone before
his arrival ; so he was disappointed and enraged, and
wrote us a letter expressive of anger, which we were
very desirous to pacify, and to obtain his company
again, if possible. Mr. Murphy brought him back to
us again very kindly, and from that time his visits
grew more frequent, till in the year 1766 his health,
which he had always complained of, grew so exceed
ingly bad, that he could not stir out of his room in the
court he inhabited for many weeks together I think
months.
Mr. Thrale's attentions and my own now became so
acceptable to him, that he often lamented to us the
horrible condition of his mind, which he said was
nearly distracted ; and though he charged us to make
him odd solemn promises of secrecy on so strange a
subject, yet when we waited on him one morning, and
88 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
heard him, in the most pathetic terms, beg the prayers
of Dr. Delap, who had left him as we came in, I felt
excessively affected with grief, and well remember my
husband involuntarily lifted up one hand to shut his
mouth, from provocation at hearing a man so wildly
proclaim what he could at last persuade no one to
believe, and what, if true, would have been so very
unfit to reveal.
Mr. Thrale went away soon after, leaving me with
him, and bidding me prevail on him to quit his close
habitation in the court and come with us to Streatham,
where I undertook the care of his health, and had the
honour and happiness of contributing to its restora
tion. This task, though distressing enough sometimes,
would have been less so had not my mother and he
disliked one 'another extremely, and teased me often
with perverse opposition, petty contentions, and mutual
complaints. Her superfluous attention to such accounts
of the foreign politics as are transmitted to us by the
daily prints, and her willingness to talk on subjects he
could not endure, began the aversion ; and when, by
the peculiarity of his style, she found out that he teased
her by writing in the newspapers concerning battles
and plots which had no existence, only to feed her with
new accounts of the division of Poland, perhaps, or the
disputes between the States of Russia and Turkey, she
was exceedingly angry, to be sure, and scarcely, I think,
forgave the offence till the domestic distresses of the
year 1772 reconciled them to and taught them the
true value of each other, excellent as they both were,
far beyond the excellence of any other man and woman
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
I ever yet saw. As her conduct, too, extorted his
truest esteem, her cruel illness excited all his tender
ness, nor was the sight of beauty, scarce to be subdued
by disease, and wit, flashing through the apprehension
of evil, a scene which Dr. Johnson could see without
sensibility. He acknowledged himself improved by
her piety, and astonished at her fortitude, and hung
over her bed with the affection of a parent, and the
reverence of a son. Nor did it give me less pleasure
to see her sweet mind cleared of all its latent pre
judices, and left at liberty to admire and applaud that
force of thought and versatility of genius, that
comprehensive soul and benevolent heart, which at
tracted and commanded veneration from all, but
inspired peculiar sensations of delight mixed with
reverence in those who, like her, had the opportunity to
observe these qualities stimulated by gratitude, and
actuated by friendship. "When Mr. Thrale's perplexi
ties disturbed his peace, dear Dr. Johnson left him
scarce a moment, and tried every artifice to amuse as
well as every argument to console him : nor is it more
possible to describe than to forget his prudent, his pious
attentions towards the man who had some years before
certainly saved his valuable life, perhaps his reason,
by half obliging him to change the foul air of Fleet
Street for the wholesome breezes of the Sussex Downs.
The epitaph engraved on my mother's monument
shows how deserving she was of general applause. I
asked Johnson why he named her person before her
mind. He said it was " because everybody could judge
of the one, and but few of the other."
90 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
Juxta sepulta est HESTEBA MARIA
ThomcB Cotton de Combermere baronetti Cestriensis filia,
Johannis Salusbury armigeri Flintiensis uxor.
Forma felix, felix ingenio :
Omnibus jucunda, suorum amantissima.
Linguis artibusque ita exculta
Ut loquenti nunquam deessent
Sermonis nitor, sententiarum flosculi,
SapienticB gravitas, leporum gratia :
Modum servandi adeo perita,
Ut domestica inter negotia literis oblectaretur.
lAterarum inter delicias, rem familiarem sedulo curaret,
Multis illi multos annos precantibus
diri carcinomatis veneno contabuit,
nexibusque vitce paulatim resolutis,
$ terris meliora sperans emigravit.
Nata 1707. Nupta 1739. Obiit 1773.
Mr. Murphy, who admired her talents and delighted
in her company, did me the favour to paraphrase this
elegant inscription in verses which I fancy have never
yet been published. His fame has long been out of
my power to increase as a poet : as a man of sensibility
perhaps these lines may set him higher than he now
stands. I remember with gratitude the friendly tears
which prevented him from speaking as he put them
into my hand. ,;* ^
Near this place
Are deposited the remains of
HESTER MARIA,
The daughter of Sir Thomas Cotton of Combermere,
in the county of Cheshire, Bart., the wife of
John Salusbury,
of the county of Flint, Esquire. She was
born in the year 1707, married in 1739, and died in 1773.
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 91
A pleasing form, where eveiy grace combined,
With genius blest, a pure enlightened mind ;
Benevolence on all that smiles bestowed,
A heart that for her friends with love o'erflowed :
In language skilled, by science formed to please,
Her mirth was wit, her gravity was ease.
Graceful in all, the happy mien she knew,
Which even to virtue gives the limits due ;
Whate'er employed her, that she seemed to choose,
Her house, her friends, her business, or the muse.
Admired and loved, the theme of general praise,
All to such virtue wished a length of days <
But sad reverse ! with slow-consuming pains,
Th' envenomed cancer revelled in her veins ;
Preyed on her spirits stole each power away ;
Gradual she sank, yet smiling in decay ;
She smiled in hope, by sore affliction tried,
And in that hope the pious Christian died.
The following epitaph on Mr. Thrale, who has now
a monument close by hers in Streatham Church, I
have seen printed and commended in Maty's Review
for April, 1784 ; and a friend has favoured me with the
translation :
Hie conditur quod reliquum est
HENBICI THRALE,
Qui res sen civiles, seu domesticas, ita egit,
Ut vitam illl lonyiorem multi optarent ;
ltd sacras,
Ut quam brevem esset habiturus prcescire videretur :
Simplex, apertus, sibique semper similis,
Nihil ostentavit aut artefictum ant cura
Elaboratum.
In senatu, regi patricvque
Fideliter studuit ;
Vvlgi obstrepenti( contemptor animosus.
92 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
Domi inter mille mercaturce negotia
Literarum elegantiam minimb neglexit.
Amicis quocunque modo laborantibus,
Conciliis, auctoritate, muneribus adfuit.
Inter familiares, comites, convivas, hospital,
Tarn facili fuit morum suavitate
Ut omnium animos ad se aUiceret ;
Tarn felici sermonis libertate
Ut nulli adulatus, omnibus pfaceret.
Natus 1724. Ob. 1781.
Consortes tumuli habet Hodolphum patrem, strenuu.n
fortemque virum, et ffenricum filium unicum,
quern spei parentum mors inopina decenntm,
prceripuit.
Ita
Domusfdix et opulenta, quam erexit
Amu, auxitque pater, cum nepote decitiit.
Abi viator !
Et vicibus rerum humanarum perpectis,
jEternitatem cogita I
Here are deposited the remains of
HENRY THRALE,
Who managed all his concerns in the present
world, public and private, in such a manner
as to leave many wishing he had continued
longer in it ;
And all that related to a future world,
as if he had been sensible how short a time he
was to continue in this.
Simple, open, and uniform in his manners,
his conduct was without either art or affectation.
In the senate steadily attentive to the true interests
of his king and country,
He looked down with contempt on the clamours
of the multitude :
Though engaged in a very extensive business,
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 93
He found some time to apply to polite literature :
And was ever ready to assist his friends
labouring under any difficulties,
with his advice, his influence, and his purse.
To his friends, acquaintance, and guests,
he behaved with such sweetness of manners
as to attach them all to his person :
So happy in his conversation with them,
as to please all, though he flattered none.
He was born in the year 1724, and died in 1781.
In the same tomb lie interred his father,
Ralph Thrale, a man of vigour and activity,
And his only son Henry, who died before his father,.
Aged ten years.
Thus a happy and opulent family,
Raised by the grandfather, and augmented by the
father, became extinguished with the grandson.
Go, Header !
And reflecting on the vicissitudes of
all human affairs,
Meditate on eternity.
I never recollect to have heard that Dr. Johnson
wrote inscriptions for any sepulchral stones except
Dr. Goldsmith's, in Westminster Abbey, and these two
in Streatham Church. He made four lines once on the
death of poor Hogarth, which were equally true and
pleasing. I know not why Grarrick's were preferred to
them.
" The hand of him here torpid lies,
That drew th' essential form of grace ;
Here clos'd in death th' attentive eyes,
That saw the manners in the face."
Mr. Hogarth, among the variety of kindnesses shown
to me when I was too young to have a proper sense of
94 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
them, was used to be very earnest that I should obtain
the acquaintance, and if possible the friendship, of Dr.
Johnson, whose conversation was, to the talk of other
men, ''like Titian's painting compared to Hudson's,"
he said : " but don't you tell people, now, that I say
so," continued he, '" for the connoisseurs and I are at
war, you know ; and because I hate them, they think 1
hate Titian and let them ! " Many were indeed the
lectures I used to have in my very early days from
dear Mr. Hogarth, whose regard for my father in-
duced him, perhaps, to take notice of his little girl, and
give her some odd particular directions about dress,
dancing, and many other matters, interesting now
only because they were his. As he made all his
talents, however, subservient to the great purposes of
morality, and the earnest desire he had to mend man
kind, his discourse commonly ended in an ethical dis
sertation, and a serious charge to me, never to forget
his picture of the "Lady's last Stake." Of Dr.
Johnson, when my father and he were talking together
about him one day, " That man," says Hogarth, " is
not contented with believing the Bible, but he fairly
resolves, I think, to believe nothing but the Bible.
Johnson," added he, " though so wise a fellow, is more
like King David than King Solomon ; for he says in
his haste that ' all men are liars.' " This charge, as I
afterwards came to know, was but too well founded.
Mr. Johnson's incredulity amounted almost to disease,
and I have seen it mortify his companions exceedingly.
But the truth is, Mr. Thrale had a very powerful
influence over the Doctor, and could make him suppress
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 95
many rough answers. He could likewise prevail on
him to change his shirt, his coat, or his plate, almost
before it came indispensably necessary to the comfort
of his friends. But as I never had any ascendency at
all over Mr. Johnson, except just in the things that
concerned his health, it grew extremely perplexing
and difficult to live in the house with him when the
master of it was no more ; the worse, indeed, because
his dislikes grew capricious ; and he could scarce bear
to have anybody come to the house whom it was abso
lutely necessary for me to seeX Two gentlemen, I
perfectly well remember, dining with us at Streatham
in the summer, 1782, when Elliot's brave defence of
Gibraltar was a subject of common discourse, one of
these men naturally enough began some talk about
red-hot balls thrown with surprising dexterity and
effect, which Dr. Johnson having listened some time to,
" I would advise you, sir," said he, with a cold sneer,
" never to relate this story again ; you really can scarce
imagine how very poor a figure you make in the telling
of it.' v Our guest being bred a Quaker, and, I believe,
a man of an extremely gentle disposition, needed no
more reproofs for the same folly ; so if he ever did
speak again, it was in a low voice to the friend who
came with him. The check was given before dinner,
and after coffee I left the room. When in the even
ing, however, our companions were returned to London,
and Mr. Johnson and myself were left alone, with only
our usual family about us, " I did not quarrel with
those Quaker fellows," said he, very seriously. " You
did perfectly right," replied I, " for they gave you no
96 AKECDOTE8 OF THE LATE
cause of offence." " No offence ! " returned he, with
an altered voice ; " and is it nothing, then, to sit
whispering together when I am present, without ever
directing their discourse towards me, or offering me a
share in the conversation ? " " That was because you
frighted him who spoke first about those hot balls.' 1
" Why, madam, if a creature is neither capable of
giving dignity to falsehood, nor willing to remain
contented with the truth, he deserves no better treat
ment."
Mr. Johnson's fixed incredulity of everything he
heard, and his little care to conceal that incredulity,
was teasing enough, to be sure ; and I saw Mr. Sharp
was pained exceedingly when relating the history of a
hurricane that happened about that time in the West
Indies, where, for aught I know, he had himself lost
some friends too, he observed Dr. Johnson believed
not a syllable of the account. " For 'tis so easy," says
he, " for a man to fill his mouth with a wonder, and
run about telling the lie before it can be detected, that
I have no heart to believe hurricanes easily raised by
the first inventor, and blown forwards by thousands
more." I asked him once if he believed the story of
the destruction of Lisbon by an earthquake when it
first happened. " Oh ! not for six months," said he,
" at least. I did think that story too dreadful to be
credited, and can hardly yet persuade myself that it
was true to the full extent we all of us have heard."
Among the numberless people, however, whom I
heard him grossly and flatly contradict, I never yet
saw any one who did not take it patiently excepting
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 97
Dr. Burney, from whose habitual softness of manners I
little expected such an exertion of spirit ; the event
was as little to be expected. Mr. Johnson asked his
pardon generously and genteelly, and when he left the
room, rose up to shake hands with him, that they
might part in peace. On another occasion, when he
had violently provoked Mr. Pepys, in a different but
perhaps not a less offensive manner, till something
much too like a quarrel was grown up between them,
the moment he was gone, " Now," says Dr. Johnson.
" is Pepys gone home hating me, who love him better
than I did before. He spoke in defence of his dead
friend ; but though I hope I spoke better who spoke
against him, yet all my eloquence will gain me nothing
but an honest man for my enemy ! " He did not, how
ever, cordially love Mr. Pepys, though he respected
his abilities. " I knew the dog was a scholar," said
he when they had been disputing about the classics
for three hours together one morning at Streatham,
" but that he had so much taste and so much knowledge
I did not believe. I might have taken Barnard's
word though, for Barnard would not lie."
We had got a little French print among us at
Brighthelmstone, in November, 1782, of some people
skating, with these lines written under :<
" Sur un mince chrystal Vhyver conduit leurs pas,
Le precipice est sous la glace ;
Telle est de nos plaisirs la legere surface,
Glissez mortels ; n'appayez pas."
And I begged translation from everybody. Dr. John
son gave me this :
D 105
ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
"O'er ice the rapid skater flies,
With sport above and death below ;
Where mischief lurks in gay disguise,
Thus lightly touch and quickly go."
He was, however, most exceedingly enraged when he
knew that in the course of the season I had asked
half-a-dozen acquaintance to do the same thing ; and
said " it was a piece of treachery, and done to make
everybody else look little when compared to my
favourite friends the Pepyses, whose translations
were unquestionably the best." I will insert them,
because he did say so. This is the distich given me
by Sir Lucas, to whom I owe more solid obligations,
no less than the power of thanking him for the life he
saved, and whose least valuable praise is the correct
ness of his taste :
" O'er the ice as o'er pleasure you lightly should glide,
Both have gulfs which their flattering surfaces hide."
This other more serious one was written by his
brother :
" Swift o'er the level how the skaters slide,
And skim the glitt'ring surface as they go :
Thus o'er life's specious pleasures lightly glide,
But pause not, press not on the gulf below."
Dr. Johnson seeing this last, and thinking a moment,
repeated :
" O'er crackling ice, o'er gulfs profound,
With nimble glide the skaters play ;
O'er treacherous pleasure's flow'ry ground
Thus lightly skim, and haste away."
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 99
Though thus uncommonly ready both to give and take
offence, Mr. Johnson had many rigid maxims con
cerning the necessity of continued softness and com
pliance of disposition : and when I once mentioned
Shenstone's idea that some little quarrel among lovers,
relations, and friends was useful, and contributed to
their general happiness upon the whole, by making
the soul feel her elastic force, and return to the
beloved object with renewed delight : " Why, what a
pernicious maxim is this now," cries Johnson, " all
quarrels ought to be avoided studiously, particularly
conjugal ones, as no one can possibly tell where they
may end ; besides that lasting dislike is often the con
sequence of occasional disgust, and that the cup of
life is surely bitter enough without squeezing in the
hateful rind of resentment." It was upon something
like the same principle, and from his general hatred of
refinement, that when I told him how Dr. Collier, in
order to keep the servants in humour with his
favourite dog, by seeming rough with the animal him
self on many occasions, and crying out, "Why will
nobody knock this cur's brains out ? " meant to con
ciliate their tenderness towards Pompey ; he returned
me for answer, " that the maxim was evidently false,
and founded on ignorance of human life : that the
servants would kick the dog sooner for having
obtained such a sanction to their severity. And I
once," added he, " chid my wife for beating the cat
before the maid, who will now," said I, " treat puss
with cruelty, perhaps, and plead her mistress's ex
ample."
100 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
I asked him upon this if he ever disputed with his
wife ? (I had heard that he loved her passionately.)
"Perpetually," said he: "my wife had a particular
reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of
neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do,
till they become troublesome to their best friends,
slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour
of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt
and useless lumber. ' A clean floor is so comfortable,'
she would say sometimes, by way of twitting ; till at
last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough
about the floor, we would now have a touch at the
ceiling."
On another occasion I have heard him blame her
for a fault many people have, of setting the miseries
of their neighbours half unintentionally, half wantonly
before their eyes, showing them the bad side of
their profession, situation, &c. He said, " She would
lament the dependence of pupilage to a young heir, &c.,
and once told a waterman who rowed her along the
Thames in a wherry, that he was no happier than a
galley-slave, one being chained to the oar by authority,
the other by want. I had, however," said he,
laughing, "the wit to get her daughter on my side
always before we began the dispute. She read comedy
better than anybody he ever heard," he said; "in
tragedy she mouthed too much."
Garrick told Mr. Thrale, however, that she was a
little painted puppet, of no value at all, and quite
disguised with affectation, full of odd airs of rural
elegance; and he made out some comical scenes, by
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 101
mimicking her in a dialogue he pretended to have
overheard. I do not know whether he meant such
stuff to be believed or no, it was so comical ; nor did I
indeed ever see him represent her ridiculously, though
my husband did. The intelligence I gained of her
from old Levett was only perpetual illness and per
petual opium. The picture I found of her at Lichfield
was very pretty, and her daughter, Mrs. Lucy Porter,
said it was like. Mr. Johnson has told me that her
hair was eminently beautiful, quite blonde, like that of
a baby ; but that she fretted about the colour, and was
always desirous to dye it black, which he very judi
ciously hindered her from doing. His account of their
wedding we used to think ludicrous enough. " I was
riding to church," says Johnson, " and she following
on another single horse. She hung back, however, and
I turned about to see whether she could get her steed
along, or what was the matter. I had, however, soon
occasion to see it was only coquetry, and that I de
spised, so quickening my pace a little, she mended
hers ; but I believe there was a tear or two pretty
dear creature ! "
Johnson loved his dinner exceedingly, and has often
said in my hearing, perhaps for my edification, " that
wherever the dinner is ill got there is poverty, or there
is avarice, or there is stupidity ; in short, the family is
somehow grossly wrong : for," continued he, " a man
seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than
he does of his dinner, and if he cannot get that well
dressed, he should be suspected of inaccuracy in other
things." One day, when he was speaking upon the
102 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
subject, I asked him if he ever huffed his wife about
his dinner ? " So often," replied he, " that at last she
called to me, and said, ' Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do
not make a farce of thanking God for a dinner which
in a few minutes you will protest not eatable.' "
When any disputes arose between our married ac
quaintance, however, Mr. Johnson always sided with
the husband, '' whom," he said, " the woman had pro
bably provoked so often, she scarce knew when or how
she had disobliged him first. Women," says Dr. John
son, " give great offence by a contemptuous spirit of
non-compliance on petty occasions. The man calls his
wife to walk with him in the shade, and she feels a
strange desire just at that moment to sit in the sun :
he offers to read her a play, or sing her a song, and
she calls the children in to disturb them, or advises
him to seize that opportunity of settling the family
accounts. Twenty such tricks will the faithfullest
wife in the world not refuse to play, and then look
astonished when the fellow fetches in a mistress.
Boarding-schools were established," continued he, "for
the conjugal quiet of the parents. The two partners
cannot agree which child to fondle, nor how to fondle
them, so they put the young ones to school, and remove
the cause of contention. The little girl pokes her head,
the mother reproves her sharply. ' Do not mind your
mamma,' says the father, ' my dear, but do your own
way.' The mother complains to me of this. ' Madam,'
said I, ' your husband is right all the while ; he is with
you but two hours of the day, perhaps, and then you
tease him by making the child cry. Are not ten hours
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 103
enough for tuition ? and are the hours of pleasure so
frequent in life, that when a man gets a couple of quiet
ones to spend in familiar chat with his wife, they must
be poisoned by petty mortifications? Put missy to
school ; she will learn to hold her head like her neigh
bours, and you will no longer torment your family for
want of other talk.' "
The vacuity of life had at some early period of his
life struck so forcibly on the mind of Mr. Johnson, that
it became by repeated impression his favourite hypo
thesis, and the general tenor of his reasonings commonly
ended there, wherever they might begin. Such things,
therefore, as other philosophers often attribute tc
various and contradictory causes, appeared to him uni
form enough ; all: was done to fill up the time, upon his
principle. I used to tell him that it was like the
clown's answer in As You Like It, of " Oh, lord, sir ! "
for that it suited every occasion. One man, for ex
ample, was profligate and wild, as we call it, followed
the girls, or sat still at the gaming-table. " Why, life
must be filled up," says Johnson, " and the man who is
not capable of intellectual pleasures must content him
self with such as his senses can afford." Another was
a hoarder. "Why, a fellow must do something; and
what so easy to a narrow mind as hoarding halfpence
till they turn into sixpences." Avarice was a vice
against which, however, I never much heard Mr. John
son declaim, till one represented it to him connected
with cruelty, or some such disgraceful companion.
" Do not," said he, " discourage your children from
hoarding if they have a taste to it : whoever lays up
104 ANECDOTES OF THE LATB
his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least
is not the slave of gross appetite, and shows besides a
preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the
present moment. Such a mind may be made a good
one ; but the natural spendthrift, who grasps his
pleasures greedily and coarsely, and cares for nothing
but immediate indulgence, is very little to be valued
above a negro." We talked of Lady Tavistock, who
grieved herself to death for the loss of her husband
* She was rich, and wanted employment," says Johnson,
" so she cried till she lost all power of restraining her
tears : other women are forced to outlive their husbands,
who were just as much beloved, depend on it; but
they have no time for grief : and I doubt not, if we
had put my Lady Tavistock into a small chandler's
shop, and given her a nurse-child to tend, her life
would have been saved. The poor and the busy have
no leisure for sentimental sorrow." We were speaking
of a gentleman who loved his friend " Make him Prime
Minister," says Johnson, " and see how long his friend
will be remembered." But he had a rougher answer
for me, when I commended a sermon preached by an
intimate acquaintance of our own at the trading end of
the town. " What was the subject, madam ? " says Dr.
Johnson. " Friendship, sir," replied I. " Why, now,
is it not strange that a wise man, like our dear little
Evans, should take it in his head to preach on such a
subject, in a place where no one can be thinking of it ? "
" Why, what are they thinking upon, sir ? " said I.
" Why, the men are thinking on their money, I suppose,
and the women are thinking of their mops."
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 105
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 of the world. Sir Joshua Reynolds said one
day, that nobody wore laced coats now ; and that once
everybody wore them. "See, now," says Johnson,
" how absurd that is ; as if the bulk of mankind con
sisted 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 P " 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 gentle
man : 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 gentle
man 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 whicli had been the happiest period of his past
106 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
life ? he replied, " It was that year in which he spent
one whole evening with M y As n. That, in
deed," 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-ci-tete, but in a select company, of which the pre
sent 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 vdim, 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 ! "
" 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
iu 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 ! "
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 107
It was, I believe, long after the currents of life liad
driven him to a great distance from this lady, that he
spent much of his time with Mrs. F zh 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 de
sire 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 in some
way, in any 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 hus
band'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 before you. 7 " 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 para
dise 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 t!.e
108 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
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 en
thusiasm, that she somewhat disqualified herself for
the duties of this life, by her perpetual aspirations
after the next. 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 last ing animosity. " Tou may see," said he to
me, when the Poets' "Lives" were printed, " that dear
B thby is at my heart still. She would delight 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
v-aa 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
Fraucis 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, how
ever, 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 109
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 rupes
Saxeas miscet nebulis ruinas,
Torva ubi rident steriles coloni
Euro, laborer.
" Pervagor gentes, hominum ferorum
Vita ubi nullo decorata cultu,
Squallet informis, tigurique fumis
Foeda lateadt.
" Inter erroris salebrosa longi,
Inter ignotce strepitus loquela;,
Quot modis mecum, quid agat require
Thraliadulcis?
41 Sen viri euros pia nupta mulcet,
Sen fovei mater sobolem benigna,
Sive cum libris novitate pascit
Sedula men tern :
110 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
' Sit mcmor nostri, fideique merces,
Stct fides constans, meritoque blandum,
Thralice discant resonare nomen
Littora Skia."
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 contrive
Life to stop at thirty-five,
Time his hours should never drive
O'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 thrive
Must begin by thirty-five ;
And all who wisely wish to wive
Must look on Thrale at thirty-five."
" And now," said he, as I was writing them down,
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. Ill
"you may see what it is to come for poetry to a dic
tionary-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."
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,
Lascict i sospetti tuoi,
Non mi turbar conquesto
Molesto dubitar :
Chi ciecamente cride,
Impegna a serbar fede : .'.- J
Chi sempre inganno aspetla,
Alletta ad ingannar."
" Should you like it in English," said he, " thus P "
112 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
" Would you hope to gain my heart,
Bid your teasing doubts depart ;
He who blindly trusts, will find
Faith from every generous mind :
He who still expects deceit,
Only teaches how to cheat."
Mr. Barotti coaxed him likewise one day at Streat-
luim 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.
" A h ! tu in corte invecchiasti, e giurerei
Chefra i pochi non sei tenace ancora
DelV antica onestd : quando bisogna,
Saprai sereno in volto
Vezzeggiare un nemico : acrid vi coda,
Aprirgli innanzi un precipizio, e poi
Piangerne la caduta. Offrirti a tutti
E non esser che tuo ; di false lodi
Vestir le accuse, ed aggravar le colpe
Nd fame la difesa, ognor dal trono
I buoni attontanar ; d'ogni castigo
Lasciar Vodio allo scettro, e d'ogni dono
II mcrito usurpar : tener nascosto
Sotto un zelo apparente un empio fine,
Nefabbricar che suUe altrui rouine."
" Grown old in courts, thou art not surely one
Who 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,
DB. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 113
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 de
light in reading, or in hearing of : he always main
tained 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. Bicker-
staff'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 com
plained of the rain, the sun, or the dust. " How," said
he, "do other people bear them?" As for general
114 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
uneasiness, or complaints of long 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 perfec
tions 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 but creepers at 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 de
nunciation. " 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 115
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 jc or Scotchmen, and com
parisons 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 told you, 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. His stories were truly like those
116 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
of Biron in Love's Labour's Lost, so very attrac
tive ;i;
' 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 confi
dence between them ; they conversed merely about
general topics, religion and learning, of which both
were undoubtedly stupendous examples ; and, with re
gard 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 117
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 pro
bably 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 so very difficult," 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? "Beady 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,
118 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
was he none : lie 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 to think of their neighbours' distresses, however
they may delight their tongues with talking of 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 man
kind, 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-
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 119
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, how
ever, because he knew not how to be merry. Wo man
loved laughing better, and his vein of humour was
rich and apparently inexhaustible ; though Dr. Gold
smith said once to him, " We should change companions
oftener, we exhaust one another, and snail 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 for him, 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
" H pover uomo eke non sen' bra 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,
120 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
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, &c., 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 non
sense ? and how is a man the worse, I wonder, in his
health, purse, or character, for being called Holo-
f ernes?" "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, <fcc., " 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 121
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 dictionory 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 men
tioned 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 choked him
122 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
with it." A few more winters passed in the talking
world showed him the value of that friend's commen
dations, however ; and he was very sorry for the dis
gusting speech he made her.
I used to think Mr. Johnson's determined prefer
ence 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 affecta
tion 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 without
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 con
trary, 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, how
ever, 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
123
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 vrhere, 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
124 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
departure last week." Though Mr. Johnson was com
monly 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 his
inside, " do not be like the spider, man, and spin con
versation 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 Jady 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 argu
ments, or recitals of such facts as I had heard, would
persuade Mr. Johnson of his danger. He had pre
possessed 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
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 125
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.' ''
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 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. " 1
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 posses-
126 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
sion ; 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 pre
cursor 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 posses
sion, 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 a lion ! "
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 oppor
tunity 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 storv.
sir," said I ? " None in the world," replied he, and
suddenly changed the conversation. Now, as Mr.
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 127
Johnson had a most unshaken faith, without any
mixture of credulity, this story must either have been
slrictly 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
ciiriosity.
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 assist
ance 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 pre
vented, 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.
128 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
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 mird " 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 ac
quaintance, 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 12
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 the rooks
about him."
" And all that prey in vice or folly
Joy to see their quarry fly ;
Here the gamester light and jolly,
There the lender grave and sly."
These improvise 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 sur
prising 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 r
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 per
fection suddenly and vigorously, not like the alembi
cated productions of artificial fire, which always betray
E 105
]30 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
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
tm 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 beforethee 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 two last, but the two first
volumes 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 con
tented with the husk." It was not King Lear
cursing his daughters, or deprecating the storm, that
I remember his commendations of ; but lago's in
genious 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 Addisou's
prose was the same in conversation as we read it in the
printed strictures, and many of the expressions used
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 131
-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 off
plate. 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 ! but forgive 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 irse, Dies ilia," 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
132 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
of poetry was magnificent indeed, and very fully was
lie 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 John
son two or three times petulantly enough, the master
of the house began to feel uneasy, and expect disagree
able consequences ; to avoid which he said, loud enough
for the Doctor to hear, " Our friend hero 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 himself honour" "No, upon my
word," replied the other, " I see no honour in it, what-
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 133
ever you may do." " Well, sir ! " returned Mr. John
son, sternly, " if you do not see the honour, I am sure
I feel the disgrace"
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 John
son, " 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
134 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
effect upou the company, than any man. I can re
collect 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 pronoimced 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. Johnjson 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 incom
parable 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 an 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 135
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." *J
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 any
thing 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 v X'
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 was Richard."
With a contempt not inferior he received the praises of
a pretty lady's face and behaviour. " She says nothing,
136 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 137
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, how
ever, 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 Sep
tember, 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' amuse
ments (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
138 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
him. " What is the matter, child," says Dr. Johnson,
" that you leave Streatham to-day. Art sick 1 " " He
is jealous," whispered I. " Are !you jealous of your
wife, you stupid blockhead P " cries out his master in
another tone. The fellow hesitated, and, " To be
sure, sir, I don't quite approve, sir," was the stammer
ing reply. " Why, what do they do to her, man ? Do
the footmen kiss her P " " No, sir, no ! Kiss my wife,
sir I I hope not, sir." " Why, what do they 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 representa
tive 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 dis
putes arose in his household among the many odd in
habitants 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 dissen
sions those people chose to live constantly in distressed
and mortified him exceedingly. He really was often
times 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 139
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.
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 about hats." " 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 )
140 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
in men who considered themselves to be company for
the 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 the dog; 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 dis
grace 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 phle
botomised Romulvs. This fellow's dulness is elastic,"
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 141
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 per
petually 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 indis
pensably necessary : there is svirely no need that every
body 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 peo
ple 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. John
son, " though I do not quite agree with the proverb,
that Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia, yet we may
142 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
very well say, that Nullum numen adest ni sit pru
dential
We had been visiting at a lady's house, whom as we
returned some of the company ridiculed for her igno
rance. " She is not ignorant," said he, " I believe, of
anything she has been taught, or of anything she is de
sirous to know : and I suppose if one wanted a little run
tea, she might be a proper person enough to apply to."
When I relate these various instances of contemp
tuous 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
e^ery Christian perfection, save humility alone, says a
critic, but that I think must be 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 143
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 per
haps 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 con
veying 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 sin
cerely 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 us
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 ex
tensive and surprising. He knew every adventure of
every book you could name almost, and was exceed
ingly pleased with the opportunity which writing the
Poets' " Lives" gave him to display it. He loved to be
144 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
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 per
haps lessen my power of doing well the first, and pro
bably the last work I should ever have thought of pre
senting 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 particu
lar traits of, that those who read should emulate hi,s
goodness; but feeling the necessity of making even
virtue and learning such as his agreeable, that all
should be warned against such coarseness of manners,
as drove even from him those 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 unaccount
able ' confessions of silly conduct, which one would
think they would scarcely have had inclination to
DR. SA.MUEL JOHNSON. 145
reveal even to their tenderest and most intimate com
panions ; and it was from these unaccountable volun
teers 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 imagina
tions, he informed me, " That a young lady once told
him in confidence that she could never persuade her
self 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 cer
tainly made from time to time towards Mr. Johnson,
who by that means had an inexhaustible fund of anec
dote, 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 profes
sion.
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
146 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
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 acquaint
ance that five hours of the four-and-twenty unem
ployed 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 less muddy,
and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours
about paper and packthread, while we all live together
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 147
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 gentle
man with his packthread very often, in ridicule of a
friend who, looking out on Streatham Common from
our windows, one day, lamented the enormous wicked
ness 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 ? Who
ever loads life with unnecessary scruples, sir," con
tinued 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 P. "
" Yes. sir." " We have a wager depending on your
reply. Pray, sir, is it irreparable or irrepairable that
one should say ? " " The last, 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
148 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
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 the author, 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, wiih facility ?" "I read it a little, to
be sure, sir." " But do you read it with 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
DK. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 149
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 com
pany : 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 said Jesus Christ I
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 with
out contradicting, has every public mark, I think,
of real and genuine authenticity. I made, one day,
very minute inquiries about the tale of his knock-
150 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
ing 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 multi
tudes 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 ;
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 151
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 un
provoked. 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 satis
faction 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. John
son, of the first time they met, 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 some
thing more correct. He therefore took up a French
Journal Litteraire that lay about the room, and trans
lating something he liked from it, sent it away with
out 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
152 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
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
4 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
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 153
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 1 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 JDw, Heb Dym,
Dw o' diggon."
And though of no very difficult construction, the
gentleman seemed wholly confounded, and unable to
explain them ; till Mr. Johnson, having picked out the
meaning by little and little, said to the man, " Heb is a
preposition, I believe, sir, is it not ? " My countryman
recovering some spirits upon the sudden question, cried
out, " So I humbly presume, sir," very comically.
Stories of humour do not tell well in books; and
154 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
what made impression on the friends who heard a jest
will seldom much delight the distant acquaintance or
sullen critic who reads it. The cork model of Paris is
not more despicable as a resemblance of a great city,
than this book, levior cortice, as a specimen of Johnson's
character. Yet everybody naturally likes to gather
little specimens of the rarities found in a great country ;
and could I carry home from Italy square pieces of all
the curious marbles which are the just glory of this
surprising part of the world, I could scarcely contrive,
perhaps, to arrange them so meanly as not to gain some
attention from the respect due to the places they once
belonged to. Siich a piece of motley Mosaic work will
these anecdotes inevitably make. But let the reader
remember that he was promised nothing better, and so
be as contented as he can.
An Irish trader at our house one day heard Dr.
Johnson launch out into very great and greatly
deserved praises of Mr. Edmund Burke. Delighted to
find his countryman stood so high in the opinion of a
man he had been told so much of, " Sir," said. he ?
" give me leave to tell something of Mr. Burke now.'
We were all silent, and the honest Hibernian began to
relate how Mr. Burke went to see the collieries in a
distant province ; and he would go down into the
bowels of the earth (in a bag), and he would examine
everything. " He went in a bag, sir, and ventured his
health and his life for knowledge : but he took care of
his clothes, that they should not be spoiled, for he
went down in a bag." " Well, sir," says Mr. Johnson,
good-lmmouredly, " if our friend Mund should die in
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 155
any of these hazardous exploits, you and I would write
his life and panegyric together ; and your chapter of it
should be entitled thus : ' Burke in a Bag.' "
He had always a very great personal regard and
particular affection for Mr. Edmund Burke, as well as
an esteem difficult for me to repeat, though for him
only easy to express. And when at the end of the year
1774 the General Election called us all different ways,
and broke up the delightful society in which we had
spent some time at Beaconsfield, Dr. Johnson shook the
hospitable master of the house kindly by the hand, and
said, " Farewell, my dear sir, and remember that I wish
you all the success which ought to be wished you,
which can possibly be wished you, indeed by an
honest man."
I must here take leave to observe, that in giving
little memoirs of Mr. Johnson's behaviour and con
versation, such as I saw and heard it, my book lies
under manifest disadvantages, compared with theirs,
who having seen him in various situations, and
observed his conduct in numberless cases, are able to
throw stronger and more brilliant lights upon his
character. Virtues are like shrubs, which yield their
sweets in different manners according to the circum
stances which surround them ; and while generosity of
soul scatters its fragrance like the honeysuckle, and
delights the senses of many occasional passengers, who
feel the pleasure, and half wonder how the breeze has
blown it from so far, the more sullen but not less
valuable myrtle waits like fortitude to discover its
excellence, till the hand arrives that will crush it, and
156 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
force out that perfume whose durability well com
pensates the difficulty of production.
I saw Mr. Johnson in none but a tranquil, uniform
state, passing the evening of his life among friends,
who loved, honoured, and admired him. I saw none of
the things he did, except such acts of charity as have
been often mentioned in this book, and such writings
as are universally known. What he said is all I can
relate; and from what he said, those who think it
worth while to read these anecdotes must be contented
to gather his character. Mine is a mere candle-light
picture of his latter days, where everything falls in
dark shadow except the face, the index of the mind ;
but even that is seen unfavourably, and with a paleness
beyond what nature gave it.
When I have told how many follies Dr. Johnson
knew of others, I must not omit to mention with how
much fidelity he would always have kept them con
cealed, could they of whom he knew the absurdities
have been contented, in the common phrase, to keep
their own counsel. But returning home one day from
dining at the chaplain's table, he told me that Dr.
Goldsmith had given a very comical and unnecessarily
exact recital there of his own feelings when his play
was hhsed : telling the company how he went, indeed,
to the Literary Club at night, and chatted gaily among
his friends, as if nothing had happened amiss ; that to
impress them still more forcibly with an idea of his
magnanimity, he even sung his favourite song about
an old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen times as
high as the moon ; " but all this while I was suffering
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 157
horrid tortures," said he, " and verily believe that if I
had put a bit in my mouth it would have strangled me
on the spot, I was so excessively ill. But I made more
noise than usual to cover all that, and so they never
perceived my not eating, nor I believe at all imaged to
themselves the anguish of my heart ; but when all
were gone except Johnson here, I burst out a-crying,
and even swore by that I would never write
again." " All which, Doctor," says Mr. Johnson,
amazed at his odd frankness, " I thought had been a
secret between you and me; and I am sure I would
not have said anything about it for the world. Now
see," repeated he, when he told the story, "what a
figure a man makes who thus unaccountably chooses to
be the frigid narrator of his own disgrace. II volto
sciolto, ed i pensieri stretti, was a proverb made on
purpose for such mortals, to keep people, if possible,
from being thus the heralds of their own shame ; for
what compassion can they gain by such silly narratives ?
No man should be expected to sympathise with the
sorrows of vanity. If, then, you are mortified by any
ill-usage, whether real or supposed, keep at least the
account of such mortifications to yourself, and forbear
to proclaim how meanly you are thought on by others,
unless you desire to be meanly thought of by all."
The little history of another friend's superfluous
ingenuity will contribute to introduce a similar
remark. He had a daughter of about fourteen years
old, as I remember, fat and clumsy ; and though the
father adored, and desired others to adore her, yet
being aware, perhaps, that she was not what tha
158 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
French call paitrie des graces, and thinking, I suppose,
that the old maxim of beginning to laugh at yourself
first when you have anything ridiculous about you
was a good one, he comically enough called his girl
Trundle when he spoke of her ; and many who bore
neither of them any ill-will felt disposed to laugh at
the happiness of the appellation. "See, now," says
Dr. Johnson, " what haste people are in to be hooted.
Nobody ever thought of this fellow nor of his
daughter, could he but have been quiet himself, and
forborne to call the eyes of the world on his dowdy
and her deformity. But it teaches one to see at least
that if nobody else will nickname one's children, the
parents will e'en do it themselves."
All this held true in matters to Mr. Johnson of
more serious consequence. When Sir Joshua Reynolds
had painted his portrait looking into the slit of
his pen, and holding it almost close to his eye, as
was his general custom, he felt displeased, and told
me " he would not be known by posterity for his
defects only, let Sir Joshua do his worst." I said in
reply that Reynolds had no such difficulties about
himself, and that he might observe the picture which
hung up in the room where we were talking repre
sented Sir Joshua holding his ear in his hand to catch
the sound. " He may paint himself as deaf if he
chooses," replied Johnson, " but I will not be blinking
It is chiefly for the sake of evincing the regularity
and steadiness of Mr. Johnson's mind that I have
given these trifling memoirs, to show that his soul
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. J5P
was not different from that of another person, but,
as it was, greater; and to give those who did not
know him a just idea of his acquiescence in what we
call vulgar prejudices, and of his extreme distance
from those notions which the world has agreed, I
know not very well why, to call romantic. It is
indeed observable in his preface to Shakespeare, that
while other critics expatiate on the creative powers arid
vivid imagination of that matchless poet, Dr. Johnson
commends him for giving so just a representation of
human manners, " that from his scenes a hermit might
estimate the value of society, and a confessor predict
the progress of the passions." I have not the book
with me here, but am pretty sure that such is his
expression.
The general and constant advice he gave, too, when
consulted about the choice of a wife, a profession,
or whatever influences a man's particular and imme
diate happiness, was always to reject no positive good
from fears of its contrary consequences. " Do not,"
said he, " forbear to marry a beautiful woman if yon
can find such, out of a fancy that she will be less
constant than an ugly 1 one ; or condemn yourself to
the society of coarseness and vulgarity for fear of the
expenses or other dangers of elegance and personal
charms, which have been always acknowledged as a
positive good, and for the want of which there should
be always given some weighty compensation. I have,
however," continued Mr. Johnson, " seen some pru
dent fellows who forbore to connect themselves with
beauty lest coquetry should be near, and with wit or
160 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
birth lest insolence should lurk behind them, till they
have been forced by their discretion to linger life
away in tasteless stupidity, and choose to count the
moments by remembrance of pain instead of enjoyment
of pleasure."
When professions were talked of, " Scorn," said Mr.
Johnson, " to put your behaviour under the dominion of
canters ; never think it clever to call physic a mean
study, or law a dry one ; or ask 'a baby of seven years
old which way his genius leads him, when we all know
that a boy of seven years old has no genius for any
thing except a pegtop and an apple-pie; but fix on
some business where much money may be got, and
little virtue risked : follow that business steadily, and
do not live as Roger Ascham says the wits do, ' men
know not how ; and at last die obscurely, men mark
not where.' "
Dr. Johnson had indeed a veneration for the voice
of mankind beyond what most people will own ; and
as he liberally confessed that all his own disappoint
ments proceeded from himself, he hated to hear
others complain of general injustice. I remember
when lamentation was made of the neglect showed to
Jeremiah Markland, a great philologist, as some
one ventured to call him. " He is a scholar, un
doubtedly, sir," replied Dr. Johnson, " but remember
that he would run from the world, and that it is not
the world's business to run after him. I hate a fellow
whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a
corner, and does nothing when he is there but sit and
growl; let him come out as I do, and bark. The
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 161
?vorld," added he, " is chiefly unjust and ungenerous
in this, that all are ready to encourage a man who
once talks of leaving it, and few things do really
orovoke me more than to hear people prate of retire
ment, when they have neither skill to discern their
own motives, or penetration to estimate the conse
quences. But while a fellow is active to gain either
power or wealth," continued he, " everybody produces
some hindrance to his advancement, some sage remark,
or some unfavourable prediction ; but let him once say
slightly, I have had enough of this troublesome,
Dustling world, 'tis time to leave it now : ' Ah, dear
rir ! ' cries the first old acquaintance he meets, ' I am
glad to find you in this happy disposition : yes, dear
friend ! do retire and think of nothing but your own
jase. There's Mr. William will find it a pleasure to
settle all your accounts and relieve you from the
fatigue ; Miss Dolly makes the charmingest chicken-
broth in the world, and the cheesecakes we ate of hers
once, how good they were. I will be coming every
bwo or three days myself to chat with you in a quiet
way ; so snug ! and tell you how matters go upon
'Change, or in the House, or according to the block-
bead's first pursuits, whether lucrative or politic,
which thus he leaves; and lays himself down a
voluntary prey to his own sensuality and sloth, while
the ambition and avarice of the nephews and nieces,
with their rascally adherents and coadjutors, reap the
advantage, while they fatten their fool.' "
As the votaries of retirement had little of Mr. John
son's applause, unless that he knew that the motives
p 105
162 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
were merely devotional, and unless he was convinced
that their rituals were accompanied by a mortified
state of the body, the sole proof of their sincerity
which he would admit, as a compensation for such
fatigue as a worldly life of care and activity requires ;
so of the various states and conditions of humanity, he
despised none more, I think, than the man who marries
for a maintenance. And of a friend who made his
illiance on no higher principles, he said once, " Now
has that fellow (it was a nobleman of whom we were
speaking) at length obtained a certainty of three meals
a day, and for that certainty, like his brother dog in
the fable, he will get his neck galled for life with a
collar."
That poverty was an evil to be avoided by all honest
means, however, no man was more ready to avow : con
cealed poverty particularly, which he said was the
general corrosive that destroyed the peace of almost
every family; to which no evening perhaps ever re
turned without some new project for hiding the sorrows
and dangers of the next day. " Want of money," says
Dr. Johnson, " is sometimes concealed under pretended
avarice, and sly hints of aversion to part with it; some
times under stormy anger, and affectation of boundless
rage, but oftener still under a show of thoughtless
extravagance and gay neglect, while to a penetrating
eye none of these wretched veils suffice to keep the
cruel truth from being seen. Poverty is hie et ubique,''
says he, " and if you do shut the jade out of the door,
she will always contrive in some manner to poke her
pale, lean face in at the window."
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 163
I have mentioned before that old age had very little
of Mr. Johnson's reverence. " A man commonly grew
wickeder as he grew older," he said, " at least he but
changed the vices of youth ; headstrong passion and
wild temerity, for treacherous caution, and desire to
circumvent. I am always," said he, " on the young
people's side, when there is a dispute between them
and the old ones, for you have at least a chance for
virtue till age has withered its very root." While we
were talking, my mother's spaniel, whom he never
loved, stole our toast and butter; "Fie, Belle!" said I,
" you used to be upon honour." " Yes, madam," replies
Johnson, "but Belle grows old." His reason for
hating the dog was, "because she was a professed
favourite," he said, " and because her lady ordered her
from time to time to be washed and combed, a foolish
trick," said he, " and an assumption of superiority that
every one's nature revolts at ; so because one must not
wish ill to the lady in such cases," continued he, " one
curses the cur." The truth is, Belle was not well be
haved, and being a large spaniel, was troublesome
enough at dinner with frequent solicitations to be fed.
" This animal," said Dr. Johnson one day, " would
have been of extraordinary merit and value in the state
of Lycurgus ; for she condemns one to the exertion of
perpetual vigilance."
He had, indeed, that strong aversion felt by all the
lower ranks of people towards four-footed companions
very completely, notwithstanding he had for many
years a cat which he called Hodge, that kept always in
his room at Fleet Street ; but so exact was he not to
164 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
offend the human species by superfluous attention to
brutes, that when the creature was grown sick and old,
and could eat nothing but oysters, Mr. Johnson always
went out himself to buy Hodge's dinner, that Francis
the black's delicacy might not be hurt, at seeing him
self employed for the convenience of a quadruped.
No one was, indeed, so attentive not to offend in all
such sort of things as Dr. Johnson ; nor so careful to
maintain the ceremonies of life : and though he told
Mr. Thrale once that he had never sought to please
till past thirty years old, considering the matter as hope
less, he had been always studious not to make enemies
by apparent preference of himself. It happened very
comically that the moment this curious conversation
passed, of which I was a silent auditress, was in the coach,
in some distant province, either Shropshire or Derby
shire, I believe ; and as soon as it was over, Mr. John
son took out of his pocket a little book and read, while
a gentleman of no small distinction for his birth and
elegance suddenly rode up to the carriage, and paying us
all his proper compliments, was desirous not to neglect
Dr. Johnson ; but observing that he did not see him,
tapped him gently on the shoulder. " "Tis Mr. Ch 1m-
ley," says my husband. " Well, sir ! and what if it
is Mr. Ch 1m ley ! " says the other, sternly, just lift
ing his eyes a moment from his book, and returning to
it again with renewed avidity.
He had sometimes fits of reading very violent ; and
when he was in earnest about getting through some
particular pages, for I have heard him say he never read
bat one book, which he did not consider as obligatory,
DB. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 165
through in his whole life (and " Lady Mary Wortley's
Letters," was the book) ; he would be quite lost to the
company, and withdraw all his attention to what he
was reading, without the smallest knowledge or care
about the noise made round him. His deafness made
such conduct less odd and less difficult to him than it
would have been to another man: but his advising
others to take the same method, and pull a little book
out when they were not entertained with what was
going forward in society, seemed more likely to ad
vance the growth of science than of polished manners,
for which he always pretended extreme veneration.
Mr. Johnson, indeed, always measured other people's
notions of everything by his own, and nothing could
persuade him to believe that the books which he dis
liked were agreeable to thousands, or that air and ex
ercise which he despised were beneficial to the health
of other mortals. When poor Smart, so well known
for his wit and misfortunes, was first obliged to be put
in private lodgings, a common friend of both lamented
in tender terms the necessity which had torn so pleas
ing a companion from their acquaintance. "A mad
man must be confined, sir," replies Dr. Johnson.
" But," says the other, " I am now apprehensive for
his general health, he will lose the benefit of exercise."
" Exercise ! " returns the Doctor, " I never heard
that he used any : he might, for aught I know, walk to
the alehouse ; but I believe he was always carried home
again."
It was, however, unlucky for those who delighted to
echo Johnson's sentiments, that he would not endure
166 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
from them to-day what perhaps he had yesterday, by
his own manner of treating the subject, made them
fond of repeating; and I fancy Mr. B has not
forgotten that though his friend one evening in a gay
humour talked in praise of wine as one of the blessings
permitted by heaven, when used with moderation, to
lighten the load of life, and give men strength to
endure it; yet, when in consequence of such talk lie
thought fit to make a Bacchanalian discourse in its
favour, Mr. Johnson contradicted him somewhat
roughly, as I remember ; and when, to assure himself
of conquest, he added these words : " You must allow
me, sir, at least that it produces truth ; in vino veritas,
you know, sir." "That," replied Mr. Johnson,
" would be useless to a man who knew he was not a
liar when he was sober."
When one talks of giving and taking the lie
familiarly, it is impossible to forbear recollecting the
transactions between the editor of " Ossian," and the
author of the " Journey to the Hebrides." It was
most observable to me, however, that Mr. Johnson
never bore his antagonist the slightest degree of ill-
will. He always kept those quarrels which belonged
to him as a writer separate from those which he had
to do with as a man ; but I never did hear him say in
private one malicious word of a public enemy ; and of
Mr. Macpherson I once heard him speak respectfully,
though his reply to the friend who asked him if any
man living could have written such a book, is well
known, and has been often repeated " Tes, sir, many
men, many women, and many children "
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 167
I- inquired of him myself if this story was authentic,
and he said it was. I made the same inquiry con
cerning his account of the state of literature in Scot
land, which was repeated up and down at one time by
everybody" How knowledge was divided among the
Scots, like bread in a besieged town, to every man a
mouthful, to no man a bellyful." This story he like
wise acknowledged, and said, besides, "that some
officious friend had carried it to Lord Bute, who only
answered, ' Well, well ! never mind what he says, he
will have the pension all one.' "
Another famous reply to a Scotsman who commended
the beauty and dignity of Glasgow, till Mr. Johnson
stopped him by observing, " that he probably had
never yet seen Brentford," was one of the jokes he
owned ; and said himself " that when a gentleman
of that country once mentioned the lovely prospects
common in his nation, he could not help telling h'm
that the view of the London road was the prospect in
which every Scotsman most naturally and most
rationally delighted."
Mrs. Brooke received an answer not unlike this,
when expatiating on the accumulation of sublime and
beautiful objects, which form the fine prospect up the
River St. Lawrence, in North America. " Conie,
madam," says Dr. Johnson, " confess that nothing
ever equalled your pleasure in seeing that sight re
versed; and finding yourself looking at the happy
prospect down the River St. Lawrence." The truth is,
he hated to hear about prospects and views, and laying
out ground and taste in gardening. " That was- the
168 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
best garden," he said, "which produced most roots
and fruits ; and that water was most to be prized which
contained most fish." He used to laugh at Shenstone
most unmercifully for not caring whether there was
anything good to eat in the streams he was so fond
of, ''as if," says Johnson, "one could fill one's belly
with hearing soft murmurs, or looking at rough
cascades ! "
He loved the sight of fine forest trees, however, and
detested Brighthelmstone Downs, "because it was a
country so truly desolate," he said, " that if one had
a mind to hang one's self for desperation at being
obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree
on which to fasten the rope." Walking in a wood
when it rained was, I think, the only rural image he
pleased his fancy with ; "for," says he, " after one has
gathered the apples in an orchard, one wishes them
well baked, and removed to a London eating-house for
enjoyment."
With such notions, who can wonder he passed his
time uncomfortably enough with us, who he often com
plained of for living so much in the country, " feeding
the chickens/' as he said I did, " till I starved my own
understanding. Get, however," said he, "a book about
gardening, and study it hard, since you will pass your
life with birds and flowers, and learn to raise the
largest turnips, and to breed the biggest fowls." It
was vain to assure him that the goodness of such
dishes did not depend upon their size. He laughed at
the people who covered their canals with foreign
fowls, " when," says he, " our own geese and ganders
DB. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 169
are twice as large. If we fetched better animals from
distant nations, there might be some sense in the pre
ference; but to get cows from Alderney, or water
fowl from China, only to see nature degenerating
round one, is a poor ambition indeed."
Nor was Mr. Johnson more merciful with regard to
the amusements people are contented to call such.
" You hunt in the morning," says he, " and crowd to
the public rooms at night, and call it diversion, when
your heart knows it is perishing with poverty of plea
sures, and your wits get blunted for want of some
other mind to sharpen them upon. There is in this
world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality),'
but exchange of ideas in conversation; and whoever
has once experienced the full flow of London talk,
when he retires to country friendships, and rural
sports, must either be contented to turn baby again
and play with the rattle, or he will pine away like a
great fish in a little pond, and die for want of his usual
food." " Books without the knowledge of life are use
less," I have heard him say ; " for what should books ,
teach but the art of living ? To study manners, how
ever, only in coffee-houses, is more than equally im
perfect; the minds of men who acquire no solid
learning, and only exist on the daily forage that they
pick up by running about, and snatching what drops
from their neighbours as ignorant as themselves, will
never ferment into any knowledge valuable or durable ;
but like the light wines we drink in hot countries,
please for the moment, though incapable of keeping.
In the study of mankind much will be found to swim
170 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
as froth, and much must sink as feculence, before the
wine can have its effect, and become that noblest
liquor which rejoices the heart, and gives vigour to
the imagination."
I am well aware that I do not and cannot give each
expression of Dr. Johnson with all its force or all its
neatness ; but I have done my best to record such of
his maxims, and repeat such of his sentiments, as may
give to those who knew him not a just idea of his
character and manner of thinking. To endeavour at
adorning, or adding, or softening, or meliorating such
anecdotes, by any tricks my inexperienced pen could
play, would be weakness indeed ; worse than the
Frenchman who presides over the porcelain manufactory
at Seve, to whom, when some Greek vases were given
him as models, he lamented la tristesse de telles formes ;
and endeavoured to assist them by clusters of flowers,
while flying Cupids served for the handles of urns
originally intended to contain the ashes of the dead.
The misery is, that I can recollect so few anecdotes,
and that I have recorded no more axioms of a man
whose every word merited attention, and wliose every
sentiment did honour to human nature. Remote from
affectation as from error or falsehood, the comfort a
reader has in looking over these papers is the
certainty that those were really the opinions of Johnson,
which are related as such.
Fear of what others may think is the great cause of
affectation ; and he was not likely to disguise his
notions out of cowardice. He hated disguise, and
nobody penetrated it so readily. 1 showed him a
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 171
letter written to a common friend, who was at some
loss for the explanation of it. "Whoever wrote it,"
says our doctor, " could, if he chose it, make himself
understood ; but 'tis the letter of an embarrassed man
sir ; " and so the event proved it to be.
Mysteriousness in trifles offended him on every
side. " It commonly ended in guilt," he said ; " for
those who begin by concealment of innocent things
will soon have something to hide which they dare not
bring to light." He therefore encouraged an openness
of conduct, in women particularly, " who," he observed,
" were often led away when children, by their delight
and power of surprising." He recommended, on some
thing like the same principle, that when one person
meant to serve another, he should not go about it
slily, or as we say, underhand, out of a false idea of
delicacy, to surprise one's friend with an unexpected
favour, " which, ten to one," says he, " fails to oblige
your acquaintance, who had some reasons against such
a mode of obligation, which you might have known
but for that superfluous cunning which you think an
elegance. Oh ! never be seduced by such silly pre
tences," continued he ; " if a wench wants a good gown,
do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is
more delicate : as I once knew a lady lend the key of
her library to a poor scribbling dependant, as if she
took the woman for an ostrich that could digest iron."
He said, indeed, " that women were very difficult to be
taught the proper manner of conferring pecuniary
favours; that they always gave too much money or
too little; for that they had an idea of delicacy
172 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
accompanying their gifts, so that they generally rendered
them either useless or ridiculous."
He did, indeed, say very contemptuous things of
our sex, but was exceedingly angry when I told Miss
Reynolds that he said, " It was well managed of some
one to leave his affairs in the hands of his wife,
because, in matters of business," said he, "no woman
stops at integrity." This was, I think, the only
sentence I ever observed him solicitous to explain
away after he had uttered it. He was not at all
displeased at the recollection of a sarcasm thrown on a
whole profession at once ; when a gentleman leaving
the company, somebody who sat next Dr. Johnson
asked him, who he was ? "I cannot exactly tell you,
sir," replied he, " and I would be loth to speak ill of
any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am
afraid he is an attorney.'' He did not, however,
encourage general satire, and for the most part pro-
fessed himself to feel directly contrary to Dr. Swift ;
"who," says he, "hates the world, though he loves
John and Robert, and certain individuals."
Johnson said always, " that the world was well
constructed, but that the particular people disgraced
the elegance and beauty of the general fabric." In the
same manner I was relating once to him how Dr.
Collier observed that the love one bore to children
was from the anticipation one's mind made while one
contemplated them. " We hope," says he, " that they
will sometime make wise men or amiable women ; and
we suffer 'em to take up our affection beforehand.
One cannot love lumps of flesh, and little infants are
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 173
nothing more." "On the contrary," says Johnson,
" one can scarcely help wishing, while one fondles a
baby, that it may never live to become a man ; for it is
so probable that when he becomes a man, he should be
sure to end in a scoundrel." Girls were less dis
pleasing to him; "for as their temptations were
fewer," he said, " their virtue in this life, and happi
ness in the next, were less improbable ; and he loved,"
he said, " to see a knot of little misses dearly."
Needlework had a strenuous approver in Dr.
Johnson, who said " that one of the great felicities of
female life was the general consent of the world that
they might amuse themselves with petty occupations,
which contributed to the lengthening their lives, and
preserving their minds in a state of sanity." " A man
cannot hem a pocket-handkerchief," said a lady of
quality to him one day, " and so he runs mad, and
torments his family and friends." The expression
struck him exceedingly, and when one acquaintance
grew troublesome, and another unhealthy, he used to
quote Lady Frances's observation, "That a man cannot
hem a pocket-handkerchief."
The nice people found no mercy from Mr. Johnson ;
such, I mean, as can only dine at four o'clock, who
cannot bear to be waked at an unusual hour, or miss a
stated meal without inconvenience. He had no such
prejudices himself, and with difficulty forgave them in
another. " Delicacy does not surely consist," says he,
"in impossibility to be pleased, and that is false
dignity indeed which is content to depend upon
others."
174 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
The saying of the old philosopher who observes,
" That he who wants least is most like the gods, who
want nothing," was a favourite sentence with Dr. John
son, who on his own part required less attendance, sick
or well, than ever I saw any human creature. Conver
sation was all he required to make him happy ; and
when he would have tea made at two o'clock in the
morning, it was only that there might bo a certainty
of detaining his companions round him. On that
principle it was that he preferred winter to summer,
when the heat of the weather gave people an excuse to
stroll about and walk for pleasure in the shade, while
he wished to sit still on a chair and chat day after day,
till somebody proposed a drive in the coach, and that
was the most delicious moment of his life. " But the
carriage must stop some time," he said, "and the
people would come home at last," so his pleasure was
of short duration.
I asked him why he doated on a coach so ? and
received for answer, " That in the first place the com
pany were shut in with him there, and could not escape,
as out of a room. In the next place, he heard all that
was said in a carriage, where it was my turn to be
deaf," and very impatient was he at my occasional
difficulty of hearing. On this account he wished to
travel all over the world, for the very act of going
forward was delightful to him, and he gave himself no
concern about accidents, which he said never happened.
Nor did the running away of the horses on the edge of
a precipice between Yernon and St. Denis, in France,
convince him to the contrary, "for nothing caine of
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
175
it," he said, " except that Mr. Thrale leaped out of the
carriage into a chalk-pit, and then came up again
looking as white / " When the truth was, all their
lives were saved by the greatest Providence ever
exerted in favour of three human creatures ; and the
part Mr. Thrale took from desperation was the likeliest
thing in the world to produce broken limbs and death.
Fear was indeed a sensation to which Mr. Johnson
was an utter stranger, excepting when some sudden
apprehensions seized him that he was going to die, and
even then he kept all his wits about him to express the
most humble and pathetic petitions to the Almighty.
And when the first paralytic stroke took his speech
from him, he instantly set about composing a prayer
in Latin, at once to deprecate God's mercy, to satisfy
himself that his mental powers remained unimpaired,
and to keep them in exercise, that they might not perish
by permitted stagnation. This was after we parted ;
but he wrote me an account of it, and I intend to
publish that letter, with many more.
When one day he had at my house taken tincture of
antimony instead of emetic wine, for a vomit, he was
himself the person to direct us what to do for him, and
managed with as much coolness and deliberation as if
he had been prescribing for an indifferent person.
Though on another occasion, when he had lamented
in the most piercing terms his approaching dissolu
tion, and conjured me solemnly to tell him what I
thought, while Sir Richard Jebb was perpetually on
the road to Streatham, and Mr. Johnson seemed to
think himself neglected if the physician left him for
176 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
an hour only, I made him a steady, but as I thought a
very gentle harangue, in which I confirmed all that
the doctor had been saying ; how no present danger
could be expected, but that his age and continued ill-
health must naturally accelerate the arrival of that
hour which can be escaped by none. " And this," says
Johnson, rising in great anger, " is the voice of female
friendship, I suppose, when the hand of the hangman
would be softer."
Another day, when he was ill, and exceedingly low-
spirited, and persuaded that death was not far distant,
I appeared before him in a dark-coloured gown, which
his bad sight, and worse apprehensions, made him mis
take for an iron-grey. " Why do you delight," said
he, "thus to thicken the gloom of misery that sur
rounds me? Is not here sufficient accumulation of
horror without anticipated mourning ? " " This is not
mourning, sir," said I, drawing the curtain, that
the light might fall upon the silk, and show it was a
purple mixed with green. "Well, well," replied he,
changing his voice, " you little creatures should never
wear those sort of clothes, however ; they are unsuitable
in every way. What! have not all insects gay
colours ? " I relate these instances chiefly to show
that the fears of death itself could not suppress his
wit, his sagacity, or his temptation to sudden resent
ment.
Mr. Johnson did not like that his friends should
bring their manuscripts for him to read, and he liked
still less to read them when they were brought. Some
times, however, when he could not refuse, he would
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 177
take the play or poem, or whatever it was, and give
the people his opinion from some one page he had
peeped into. A gentleman carried him his tragedy,
which, because he loved the author, Johnson took, and
it lay about our rooms some time. " What answer did
you give your friend, sir ? " said I, after the book had
been called for. "I told him," replied he, " that there
was too much Tig and Tirry in it." Seeing me laugh
most violently, "Why, what would'st have, child?"
said he. "I looked at the dramatis, and there was
Cranes and Tmdates, or Teribazus, or such stuff. A
man can tell but what he knows, and I never got any
farther than the first page. Alas, madam ! " con
tinued he, "how few books are there of which one
ever can possibly arrive at the last page. Was there
ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished
longer by its readers, excepting " Don Quixote,"
" Robinson Crusoe," and the " Pilgrim's Progress ? "
After Homer's Iliad, Mr. Johnson confessed that the
work of Cervantes was the greatest in the world,
speaking of it I mean as a book of entertainment. And
when .we consider that every other author's admirers
are confined to his countrymen, and perhaps to the
literary classes among them, while " Don Quixote " is
a sort of common property, an universal classic, equally
tasted by the court and the cottage, equally applauded
in France and England as in Spain, quoted by every
servant, the amusement of every age from infancy to
decrepitude ; the first book you see on every shelf, in
every shop, where books are sold, through all the states
of Italy ; who can refuse his consent to an avowal of
178 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
the superiority of Cervantes to all other modern
writers? Shakespeare himself has, till lately, been
worshipped only at home, though his plays are now
the favourite amusements of Vienna ; and when I was
at Padua some months ago, Romeo and Juliet was
acted there under the name ef Tragedia Veronese ;
while engravers and translators live by the hero of
La Mancha in every nation, and the sides of miserable
inns all over England and France, and I have heard
Germany too, are adorned with the exploits of Don
Quixote. May his celebrity procure my pardon for a
digression in praise of a writer who, through four
volumes of the most exquisite pleasantry and genuine
humour, has never been seduced to overstep the limits
of propriety, has never called in the wretched auxiliaries
of obscenity or prof aneness ; who trusts to nature and
sentiment alone, and never misses of that applause
which Yoltaire and Sterne labour to produce, while
honest merriment bestows her unfading crowii upon
Cervantes.
Dr. Johnson was a great reader of French literature,
and delighted exceedingly in Boileau's works. Moliere,
I think, he had hardly sufficient taste of, and he used
to condemn me for preferring La Bruyere to\the Due
de Rochef oucault, who, he said, was the only gentleman
writer who wrote like a professed author. The asperity
of his harsh sentences, each of them a sentence^
condemnation, used to disgust me, however ; though it
must be owned that, among the necessaries of human
life, a rasp is reckoned one as well as a razor.
Mr. Johnson did not like any one who said they were
DK. SAMTJEL JOHNSON. 179
happy, or who said any one else was so. "It is all
cant" he would cry; "the dog knows he is miserable
all the time." A friend whom he loved exceedingly,
told him on some occasion, notwithstanding, that his
wife's sister was really happy, and called upon the
lady to confirm his assertion, which she did somewhat
roundly, as we say, and with an accent and manner
capable of offending Mr. Johnson, if her position had
not been sufficient, without anything more, to put him
in very ill-humour. " If your sister-in-law is really
the contented being she professes herself, sir," said he,
" her life gives the lie to every research of humanity;
for she is happy without health, without beauty, with
out money, and without understanding." This story
he told me himself, and when I expressed something
of the horror I felt, " The same stupidity," said he,
" which prompted her to extol felicity she never felt,
hindered her from feeling what shocks you on
repetition. I tell you, the woman is ugly and sickly
and foolish and poor ; and would it not make a man
hang himself to hear such a creature say it was
happy ?
" The life of a sailor was also a continual scene of
danger and exertion," he said ; " and the manner in
which time was spent shipboard would make all who
saw a cabin envy a gaol." The roughness of the
language used on board a man-of-war, where he passed
a week on a visit to Captain Knight, disgusted him
terribly. He asked an officer what some place was
called, and received for answer, that it was where the
loplolly man kept his loplolly, a reply he considered,
180 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
not unjustly, as disrespectful, gross, and ignorant;
for though in the course of these memoirs I have been
led to mention Dr. Johnson's tenderness towards poor
people, I do not wish to mislead my readers, and make
them think he had any delight in mean manners or
coarse expressions. Even dress itself, when it re
sembled that of the vulgar, offended him exceedingly ;
and when he had condemned me many times for not
adorning my children with more show than I thought-
useful or elegant, I presented a little girl to him who
came o'visiting one evening covered with shining orna
ments, to see if he would approve of the appearance
she made. When they were gone home, " Well, sir,"
said I, " how did you like little miss P I hope she was
-fine enough." " It was the finery of a beggar," said
he, " and you know it was ; she looked like a native of
Cow Lane dressed up to be carried to Bartholomew
Fair."
His reprimand to another lady for crossing her
little child's handkerchief before, and by that operation
dragging down its head oddly and unintentionally,
was on the same principle. " It is the beggar's fear of
cold," said he, " that prevails over such parents, and
so they pull the poor thing's head down, and give it
the look of a baby that plays about "Westminster
Bridge, while the mother sits shivering in a niche"
I commended a young lady for her beauty and
pretty behaviour one day, however, to whom I thought
no objection could have been made. " I saw her,"
says Dr. Johnson, " take a pair of scissors in her left
hand, though ; and for all her father is now become a
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 181
nobleman, and as you say, excessively rich, I should,
were I a youth of quality ten years hence, hesitate
between a girl so neglected, and a negro"
It was indeed astonishing how he could remark such
minutenesses with a sight so miserably imperfect ; but
no accidental position of a ribband escaped him, so nice
was his observation, and so rigorous his demands of
propriety. When I went with him to Lichfield and
came downstairs to breakfast at the inn, my dress did
not please him, and he made me alter it entirely before
he would stir a step with us about the town, saying
most satirical things concerning the appearance I
made in a riding-habit, and adding, " 'Tis very strange
that such eyes as yours cannot discern propriety of
dress. If I had a sight only half as good, I think I
should see to the centre."
My compliances, however, were of little worth.
What really surprised me was the victory he gained
over a lady little accustomed to contradiction, who
had dressed herself for church at Streatham one
Sunday morning in a manner he did not approve, and
to whom he said such sharp and pungent things con
cerning her hat, her gown, &c., that she hastened to
change them, and returning quite another figure re
ceived his applause, and thanked him for his reproofs,
much to the amazement of her husband, who could
scarcely believe his own ears.
Another lady, whose accomplishments he never
denied, came to our house one day covered with
diamonds, feathers, &c., and he did not seem inclined
to chat with her as usual. I asked him why, when the
182 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
company was gone. " Why, her head looked so like
that of a woman who shows puppets," said he, " and
her voice so confirmed the fancy, that I could not bear
her to-day. When she wears a large cap I can talk to
her."
When the ladies wore lace trimmings to their clothes
he expressed his contempt of the reigning fashion in
ihese terms : " A Brussels trimming is like bread
sauce," said he, " it takes away the glow of colour
from the gown, and gives you nothing instead of it.
But sauce was invented to heighten the flavour of our
food, and trimming is an ornament to the man^oau or
it is nothing. Learn," said he, "that there is pro
priety or impropriety in everything how slight soever,
and get at the general principles of dress and of
behaviour; if you then transgress them you will at
least know that they are not observed."
All these exactnesses in a man who was nothing less
than exact himself made him extremely impracticable
as an inmate, though most instructive as a companion
and useful as a friend. Mr. Thrale, too, could some
times overrule his rigidity by saying coldly, " There,
there, now we have had enough for one lecture, Dr.
Johnson. We will not be upon education any more
till after dinner, if you please," or some such speech.
But when there was nobody to restrain his dislikes it
was extremely difficult to find anybody with whom he
could converse without living always on the verge of a
quarrel, or of something too like a quarrel to be pleas
ing. I came into the room, for example, one evening
where he and a gentleman, whose abilities we all
DE. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 183
respect exceedingly, were sitting. A lady who walked
in two minutes before me had blown 'em both into a
flame by whispering something to Mr. S d, which
he endeavoured to explain away so as not to affront the
Doctor, whose suspicions were all alive. " And have
a care, sir," said he, just as I came in, " the Old Lion
will not bear to be tickled." The other was pale with
rage, the lady wept at the confusion she had caused,
and I could only say with Lady Macbeth
"Soli ! you've displac'd the mirth, broke the good meeting
With most admir'd disorder."
Such accidents, however, occurred too often, and I
was forced to take advantage of my lost lawsuit and
plead inability of purse to remain longer in London
or its vicinage. I had been crossed in my intentions
of going abroad, and found it convenient, for every
reason of health, peace, and pecuniary circumstances,
to retire to Bath, where I knew Mr. Johnson would
not follow me, and where I could for that reason com
mand some little portion of time for my own use, a
thing impossible while I remained at Streatham or at
London, as my hours, carriage, and servants had long
been at his command, who would not rise in the morn
ing till twelve o'clock, perhaps, and oblige me to make
breakfast for him till the bell rung for dinner, though
much displeased if the toilet was neglected, and though
much of the time we passed together was spent in
blaming or deriding, very justly, my neglect of economy
and waste of that money which might make many
families happy. The original reason of our connection,
184 ANECDOTES OP THE LATE
his particularly disordered health and spirits, had
been long at an end, and he had no other ailments than
old age and general infirmity, which every professor of
medicine was ardently zealous and generally attentive
to palliate, and to contribute all in their power for the
prolongation of a life so valuable. Yeneration for his
virtue, reverence for his talents, delight in his conver
sation, and habitual endurance of a yoke my husband
first put upon me, and of which he contentedly bore his
share for sixteen or seventeen years, made me go on so
long with Mr. Johnson ; but the perpetual confinement
I will own to have been terrifying in the first years of
our friendship and irksome in the last. Nor could I
pretend to support it without help, when my coadjutor
was no more. To the assistance we gave him, the
shelter our house afforded to his uneasy fancies, and
to the pains we took to soothe or repress them, the
world perhaps is indebted for the three political
pamphlets, the new edition and correction of hig
" Dictionary," and for the " Poets' Lives," which he
would scarce have lived, I think, and kept his faculties
entire to have written, had not incessant care been
exerted at the time of his first coming to be our con
stant guest in the country, and several times after that.
when he found himself particularly oppressed with
diseases incident to the most vivid and fervent imagi
nations. I shall for ever consider it as the greatest
honour which could be conferred on any one to have
been the confidential friend of Dr. Johnson's health,
and to have in some measure, with Mr. Thrale's assist
ance, saved from distress at least, if not worse, a
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 185
mind great beyond the comprehension of common
mortals, and good beyond all hope of imitation from
perishable beings.
Many of our friends were earnest that he should
write the lives of our famous prose authors; but
he never made any answer that I can recollect to the
proposal, excepting when Sir Richard Musgrave once
was singularly warm about it, getting up and en
treating him to set about the work immediately, he
coldly replied, " Sit down, sir ! "
"When Mr. Thrale built the new library at Streatham,
and hung up over the books the portraits of his
favourite friends, that of Dr. Johnson was [last
finished, and closed the number. It was almost
impossible not to make verses on such an accidental
combination of circumstances, so I made the following
ones. But as a character written in verse will for
the most part be found imperfect as a character, I
have therefore written a prose one, with which I mean,
not to complete, but to conclude these "Anecdotes"
of the best and wisest man that ever came within
the reach of my personal acquaintance, and I think I
might venture to add, that of all or any of my
readers :
Gigantic in knowledge, in virtue, in strength,
Our company closes with JOHNSON at length ;
So the Greeks from the cavern of rolypheme past,
When wisest, and greatest, Ulysses came last.
To his comrades contemptuous we see him look down,
On their wit and their worth with a general frown.
Since from Science' proud tree the rich fruit he receives,
186 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
Who could shake the whole trunk while they turned a few
leaves.
His piety pure, his morality nice
Protector of virtue, and terror of vice ;
In these features Religion's firm champion displayed,
Shall make infidels fear for a modern crusade.
While th' inflammable temper, the positive tongue,
Too conscious of right for endurance of wrong :
We suffer from JOHNSON, contented to find,
That some notice we gain from so noble a mind ;
And pardon our hurts, since so often we've found
The balm of instruction poured into the woxwid.
'Tis thus for its virtues the chemists extol
Pure rectified spirit, sublime alcohol ;
From noxious putrescence, preservative pure,
A cordial in health, and in sickness a cure ;
But exposed to the sun, taking fire at his rays,
Burns bright to the bottom, and ends in a blaze.
It is usual, I know not why, when a character is
given, to begin with a description of the person. That
which contained the soul of Mr. Johnson deserves to
be particularly described. His stature was remark
ably high, and his limbs exceedingly large. His
strength was more than common, I believe, and his
activity had been greater, I have heard, than such a
form gave one reason to expect. His features were
strongly marked, and his countenance particularly
rugged ; though the original complexion had certainly
been fair, a circumstance somewhat unusual. His sight
was near, and otherwise imperfect ; yet his eyes,
though of a light grey colour, were so wild, so piercing,
and at times so fierce, that fear was, I believe, the first
emotion in the hearts of all his beholders. His miud
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 187
was so comprehensive, that no language but that he
used could have expressed its contents; and so pon
derous was his language, that sentiments less lofty
and less solid than his were would have been encum
bered, not adorned by it.
Mr. Johnson was not intentionally, however, a
pompous converser; and though he was accused of
using big words, as they are called, it was only when
little ones would not express his meaning as clearly,
or when, perhaps, the elevation of the thought would
have been disgraced by a dress less superb. He used
to say, " that the size of a man's understanding might
always be justly measured by his mirth," and his
own was never contemptible. He would laugh at a
stroke of genuine humour, or sudden sally of odd
absurdity, as heartily and freely as I ever yet saw any
man ; and though the jest was often such as few felt
besides himself, yet his laugh was irresistible, and
was observed immediately to produce that of the
company, not merely from the notion that it was
proper to laugh when he did, but purely out of want
of power to forbear it. He was no enemy to splendour
of apparel or pomp of equipage. " Life," he would
say, " is barren enough surely with all her trappings ;
let us therefore be cautious how we strip her." In
matters of still higher moment he once observed,
when speaking on the subject of sudden innovation,
" He who plants a forest may doubtless cut down a
hedge ; yet I could wish, methinks, that even he would
wait till he sees his young plants grow."
With regard to common occurrences, Mr. Johnson
1831 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
had, when I first knew him, looked on the still- shifting
scenes of life till he was weary ; for as a mind slow in
its own nature, or unenlivened by information, will
contentedly read in the same book for twenty times,
perhaps, the very act of reading it being more than
half the business, and every period being at every
reading better understood ; while a mind more active
or more skilful to comprehend its meaning is made
sincerely sick at the second perusal ; so a soul like his,
acute to discern the truth, vigorous to embrace, and
powerful to retain it, soon sees enough of the world's
dull prospect, which at first, like that of the sea,
pleases by its extent, but soon, like that, too, fatigues
from its uniformity; a calm and a storm being the
only variations that the nature of either will admit.
Of Mr. Johnson's erudition the world has been the
judge, and we who produce each a score of his sayings,
as proofs of that wit which in him was inexhaustible,
resemble travellers who, having visited Delhi or
Golconda, bring home each a handful of Oriental pearl
to evince the riches of the Great Mogul. May the
public condescend to accept my ill-strung selection
with patience at least, remembering only that they
are relics of him who was great on all occasions, and,,
like a cube in architecture, you beheld him on each
side, and his size still appeared undiminished.
As his purse was ever open to almsgiving, so was
his heart tender to those who wanted relief, and his
soul susceptible of gratitude, and of every kind
impression : yet though he had refined his sensibility
he had not endangered his quiet, by encouraging in
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 189
himself a solicitude about trifles, which he treated with
the contempt they deserve.
It was well enough known before these sheets were
published, that Mr. Johnson had a roughness in his
manner which subdued the saucy, and terrified the
meek ; this was, when I knew him, the prominent part
of a character which few durst venture to approach so
nearly ; and which was for that reason in many
respects grossly and frequently mistaken, and it was
perhaps peculiar to him, that the lofty consciousness
of his own superiority which animated his looks, and
raised his voice in conversation, cast likewise an im
penetrable veil over him when he said nothing. His
talk, therefore, had commonly the complexion of arro
gance, his silence of superciliousness. He was, how
ever, seldom inclined to be silent when any moral or
literary question was started; and it was on such
occasions that, like the sage in " Basselas," he spoke,
and attention watched his lips ; he reasoned, and con
viction closed his periods ; if poetry was talked of, his
quotations were the readiest; and had he not been
eminent for more solid and brilliant qualities, mankind
would have united to extol his extraordinary memory.
His manner of repeating deserves to be described,
though at the same time it defeats all power of de
scription ; bi't whoever once heard him repeat an ode
of Horace would be long before they could endure to
hear it repeated by another.
His equity in giving the character of living acquain
tance ought not undoubtedly to be omitted in his own,
190 ANECDOTES OF THE LATE
whence partiality and prejudice were totally excluded,
and truth alone presided in his tongue, a steadiness of
conduct the more to be commended, as no man had
stronger likings or aversions. His veracity was,
indeed, from the most trivial to the most solemn occa
sions, strict, even to severity ; he scorned to embellish
a story with fictitious circumstances, which, he used to
say, took off from its real value. "A story," says
Johnson, " should be a specimen of life and manners ;
but if the surrounding circumstances are false, as it is
no more a representation of reality, it is no longer
worthy our attention."
For the rest that beneficence which during his
life increased the comforts of so many may after his
death be, perhaps, ungratefully forgotten; but that
piety which dictated the serious papers in the " Ram
bler " will be for ever remembered ; for ever, I think,
revered. That ample repository of religious truth,
moral wisdom, and accurate criticism, breathes, indeed,
the genuine emanations of its great author's mind, ex
pressed, too, in a style so natural to him, and so
much like his common mode of conversing, that I was
myself but little astonished when he told me that he
had scarcely read over one of those inimitable essays
before they went to the press.
I will add one or two peculiarities more before I lay
down my pen. Though at an immeasurable distance
from content in the contemplation of his own uncouth
form and figure, he did not like another man much the
less for being a coxcomb. I mentioned two friends
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 191
who were particularly fond of looking at themselves
in a glass. " They do not surprise me at all by so
doing," said Johnson ; " they see, reflected in that
glass, men who have risen from almost the lowest
situations in life ; one to enormous riches, the other to
verything this world can give rank, fame, and for-
ne. They see, likewise, men who have merited their
vancement by the exertion and improvement of those
lents which God had given them ; and I see not why
'iey should avoid the mirror."
The other singularity I promised to record is this :
'?hat though a man of obscure birth himself, his
>artiality to people of family was visible on every
occasion; his zeal for subordination warm even to
bigotry ; his hatred to innovation, and reverence for
the old feudal times, apparent, whenever any possible
manner of showing them occurred. I have spoken of
his piety, his charity, and his truth, the enlargement
of his heart, and the delicacy of his sentiments ; and
when I search for shadow to my portrait, none can I
and but what was formed by pride, differently modi
fied as different occasions showed it ; yet never was
pride so purified as Johnson's, at once from meanness
and from vanity. The mind of this man was, indeed,
expanded beyond the common limits of human nature,
and stored with such variety of knowledge, that I used
to think it resembled a royal pleasure-ground, where
every plant, of every name and nation, flourished in the
full perfection of their powers, and where, though
lofty woods and falling cataracts first caught the eye,
192 ANECDOTES OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
and fixed the earliest attention of beholders, yet
neither the trim parterre nor the pleasing shrubbery,
nor even the antiquated evergreens, were denied a
place in some fit corner of the happy valley.
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Anecdotes of the late
Samuel Johnson
