Life of Johnson

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'SAM. JOHNSON.'


He now refreshed himself by an excursion to Oxford, of which the
following short characteristical notice, in his own words, is preserved

'* * * is now making tea for me. I have been in my gown ever since I
came here. It was, at my first coming, quite new and handsome. I have
swum thrice, which I had disused for many years. I have proposed to
Vansittart, climbing over the wall, but he has refused me. And I have
clapped my hands till they are sore, at Dr. King's speech.'

His negro servant, Francis Barber, having left him, and been some time
at sea, not pressed as has been supposed, but with his own consent, it
appears from a letter to John Wilkes, Esq., from Dr. Smollet, that his
master kindly interested himself in procuring his release from a state
of life of which Johnson always expressed the utmost abhorrence. He
said, 'No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself
into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance
of being drowned.' And at another time, 'A man in a jail has more room,
better food, and commonly better company.' The letter was as follows:--


'Chelsea, March 16, 1759.

'DEAR SIR, I am again your petitioner, in behalf of that great CHAM of
literature, Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose name is Francis
Barber, has been pressed on board the Stag Frigate, Captain Angel, and
our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad,
of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat,
which renders him very unfit for his Majesty's service. You know what
manner of animosity the said Johnson has against you; and I dare say
you desire no other opportunity of resenting it than that of laying him
under an obligation. He was humble enough to desire my assistance on
this occasion, though he and I were never cater-cousins; and I gave him
to understand that I would make application to my friend Mr. Wilkes,
who, perhaps, by his interest with Dr. Hay and Mr. Elliot, might be able
to procure the discharge of his lacquey. It would be superfluous to
say more on the subject, which I leave to your own consideration; but I
cannot let slip this opportunity of declaring that I am, with the most
inviolable esteem and attachment, dear Sir, your affectionate, obliged,
humble servant,

'T. SMOLLET.'


Mr. Wilkes, who upon all occasions has acted, as a private gentleman,
with most polite liberality, applied to his friend Sir George Hay, then
one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty; and Francis Barber was
discharged, as he has told me, without any wish of his own. He found his
old master in Chambers in the Inner Temple, and returned to his service.

1760: AETAT. 51.]--I take this opportunity to relate the manner in which
an acquaintance first commenced between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Murphy.
During the publication of The Gray's-Inn Journal, a periodical paper
which was successfully carried on by Mr. Murphy alone, when a very
young man, he happened to be in the country with Mr. Foote; and having
mentioned that he was obliged to go to London in order to get ready for
the press one of the numbers of that Journal, Foote said to him, 'You
need not go on that account. Here is a French magazine, in which you
will find a very pretty oriental tale; translate that, and send it to
your printer.' Mr. Murphy having read the tale, was highly pleased with
it, and followed Foote's advice. When he returned to town, this tale was
pointed out to him in The Rambler, from whence it had been translated
into the French magazine. Mr. Murphy then waited upon Johnson,
to explain this curious incident. His talents, literature, and
gentleman-like manners, were soon perceived by Johnson, and a friendship
was formed which was never broken.

1762: AETAT. 53.]--A lady having at this time solicited him to obtain
the Archbishop of Canterbury's patronage to have her son sent to the
University, one of those solicitations which are too frequent, where
people, anxious for a particular object, do not consider propriety, or
the opportunity which the persons whom they solicit have to assist them,
he wrote to her the following answer, with a copy of which I am favoured
by the Reverend Dr. Farmer, Master of Emanuel College, Cambridge.


'MADAM,--I hope you will believe that my delay in answering your letter
could proceed only from my unwillingness to destroy any hope that you
had formed. Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the
chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures
immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and
expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it
be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to
indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as
is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by
the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an
expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and
the general rules of action to be broken.

'When you made your request to me, you should have considered, Madam,
what you were asking. You ask me to solicit a great man, to whom I never
spoke, for a young person whom I had never seen, upon a supposition
which I had no means of knowing to be true. There is no reason why,
amongst all the great, I should chuse to supplicate the Archbishop, nor
why, among all the possible objects of his bounty, the Archbishop should
chuse your son. I know, Madam, how unwillingly conviction is admitted,
when interest opposes it; but surely, Madam, you must allow, that there
is no reason why that should be done by me, which every other man may
do with equal reason, and which, indeed no man can do properly, without
some very particular relation both to the Archbishop and to you. If I
could help you in this exigence by any proper means, it would give me
pleasure; but this proposal is so very remote from all usual methods,
that I cannot comply with it, but at the risk of such answer and
suspicions as I believe you do not wish me to undergo.

'I have seen your son this morning; he seems a pretty youth, and will,
perhaps, find some better friend than I can procure him; but, though he
should at last miss the University, he may still be wise, useful, and
happy. I am, Madam, your most humble servant,

'June 8, 1762.'

'SAM. JOHNSON.'


'TO MR. JOSEPH BARETTI, AT MILAN.

'London, July 20, 1762.

'SIR, However justly you may accuse me for want of punctuality in
correspondence, I am not so far lost in negligence as to omit the
opportunity of writing to you, which Mr. Beauclerk's passage through
Milan affords me.

'I suppose you received the Idlers, and I intend that you shall soon
receive Shakspeare, that you may explain his works to the ladies of
Italy, and tell them the story of the editor, among the other strange
narratives with which your long residence in this unknown region has
supplied you.

'As you have now been long away, I suppose your curiosity may pant for
some news of your old friends. Miss Williams and I live much as we did.
Miss Cotterel still continues to cling to Mrs. Porter, and Charlotte
is now big of the fourth child. Mr. Reynolds gets six thousands a year.
Levet is lately married, not without much suspicion that he has been
wretchedly cheated in his match. Mr. Chambers is gone this day, for the
first time, the circuit with the Judges. Mr. Richardson is dead of an
apoplexy, and his second daughter has married a merchant.

'My vanity, or my kindness, makes me flatter myself, that you would
rather hear of me than of those whom I have mentioned; but of myself
I have very little which I care to tell. Last winter I went down to my
native town, where I found the streets much narrower and shorter than
I thought I had left them, inhabited by a new race of people, to whom I
was very little known. My play-fellows were grown old, and forced me to
suspect that I was no longer young. My only remaining friend has changed
his principles, and was become the tool of the predominant faction. My
daughter-in-law, from whom I expected most, and whom I met with sincere
benevolence, has lost the beauty and gaiety of youth, without having
gained much of the wisdom of age. I wandered about for five days, and
took the first convenient opportunity of returning to a place, where,
if there is not much happiness, there is, at least, such a diversity of
good and evil, that slight vexations do not fix upon the heart. . . .

'May you, my Baretti, be very happy at Milan, or some other place nearer
to, Sir, your most affectionate humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'


The accession of George the Third to the throne of these kingdoms,
opened a new and brighter prospect to men of literary merit, who had
been honoured with no mark of royal favour in the preceding reign. His
present Majesty's education in this country, as well as his taste and
beneficence, prompted him to be the patron of science and the arts;
and early this year Johnson, having been represented to him as a very
learned and good man, without any certain provision, his Majesty was
pleased to grant him a pension of three hundred pounds a year. The Earl
of Bute, who was then Prime Minister, had the honour to announce this
instance of his Sovereign's bounty, concerning which, many and various
stories, all equally erroneous, have been propagated: maliciously
representing it as a political bribe to Johnson, to desert his avowed
principles, and become the tool of a government which he held to be
founded in usurpation. I have taken care to have it in my power to
refute them from the most authentick information. Lord Bute told me,
that Mr. Wedderburne, now Lord Loughborough, was the person who first
mentioned this subject to him. Lord Loughborough told me, that the
pension was granted to Johnson solely as the reward of his literary
merit, without any stipulation whatever, or even tacit understanding
that he should write for administration. His Lordship added, that he was
confident the political tracts which Johnson afterwards did write, as
they were entirely consonant with his own opinions, would have been
written by him though no pension had been granted to him.

Mr. Thomas Sheridan and Mr. Murphy, who then lived a good deal both
with him and Mr. Wedderburne, told me, that they previously talked with
Johnson upon this matter, and that it was perfectly understood by all
parties that the pension was merely honorary. Sir Joshua Reynolds told
me, that Johnson called on him after his majesty's intention had been
notified to him, and said he wished to consult his friends as to the
propriety of his accepting this mark of the royal favour, after
the definitions which he had given in his Dictionary of pension and
pensioners. He said he would not have Sir Joshua's answer till next day,
when he would call again, and desired he might think of it. Sir Joshua
answered that he was clear to give his opinion then, that there could be
no objection to his receiving from the King a reward for literary merit;
and that certainly the definitions in his Dictionary were not applicable
to him. Johnson, it should seem, was satisfied, for he did not call
again till he had accepted the pension, and had waited on Lord Bute to
thank him. He then told Sir Joshua that Lord Bute said to him expressly,
'It is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have
done.' His Lordship, he said, behaved in the handsomest manner, he
repeated the words twice, that he might be sure Johnson heard them,
and thus set his mind perfectly at ease. This nobleman, who has been
so virulently abused, acted with great honour in this instance and
displayed a mind truly liberal. A minister of a more narrow and selfish
disposition would have availed himself of such an opportunity to fix an
implied obligation on a man of Johnson's powerful talents to give him
his support.

Mr. Murphy and the late Mr. Sheridan severally contended for the
distinction of having been the first who mentioned to Mr. Wedderburne
that Johnson ought to have a pension. When I spoke of this to Lord
Loughborough, wishing to know if he recollected the prime mover in the
business, he said, 'All his friends assisted:' and when I told him that
Mr. Sheridan strenuously asserted his claim to it, his Lordship said,
'He rang the bell.' And it is but just to add, that Mr. Sheridan told
me, that when he communicated to Dr. Johnson that a pension was to be
granted him, he replied in a fervour of gratitude, 'The English language
does not afford me terms adequate to my feelings on this occasion.
I must have recourse to the French. I am penetre with his Majesty's
goodness.' When I repeated this to Dr. Johnson, he did not contradict
it.

This year his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds paid a visit of some weeks to
his native country, Devonshire, in which he was accompanied by Johnson,
who was much pleased with this jaunt, and declared he had derived from
it a great accession of new ideas. He was entertained at the seats of
several noblemen and gentlemen in the West of England; but the greatest
part of the time was passed at Plymouth, where the magnificence of the
navy, the ship-building and all its circumstances, afforded him a grand
subject of contemplation. The Commissioner of the Dock-yard paid him
the compliment of ordering the yacht to convey him and his friend to
the Eddystone, to which they accordingly sailed. But the weather was so
tempestuous that they could not land.

Reynolds and he were at this time the guests of Dr. Mudge, the
celebrated surgeon, and now physician of that place, not more
distinguished for quickness of parts and variety of knowledge, than
loved and esteemed for his amiable manners; and here Johnson formed
an acquaintance with Dr. Mudge's father, that very eminent divine, the
Reverend Zachariah Mudge, Prebendary of Exeter, who was idolised in
the west, both for his excellence as a preacher and the uniform perfect
propriety of his private conduct. He preached a sermon purposely
that Johnson might hear him; and we shall see afterwards that Johnson
honoured his memory by drawing his character. While Johnson was at
Plymouth, he saw a great many of its inhabitants, and was not sparing of
his very entertaining conversation. It was here that he made that frank
and truly original confession, that 'ignorance, pure ignorance,' was the
cause of a wrong definition in his Dictionary of the word pastern,
to the no small surprise of the Lady who put the question to him; who
having the most profound reverence for his character, so as almost to
suppose him endowed with infallibility, expected to hear an explanation
(of what, to be sure, seemed strange to a common reader,) drawn from
some deep-learned source with which she was unacquainted.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom I was obliged for my information concerning
this excursion, mentions a very characteristical anecdote of Johnson
while at Plymouth. Having observed that in consequence of the Dock-yard
a new town had arisen about two miles off as a rival to the old; and
knowing from his sagacity, and just observation of human nature, that
it is certain if a man hates at all, he will hate his next neighbour;
he concluded that this new and rising town could not but excite the envy
and jealousy of the old, in which conjecture he was very soon confirmed;
he therefore set himself resolutely on the side of the old town, the
established town, in which his lot was cast, considering it as a kind of
duty to stand by it. He accordingly entered warmly into its interests,
and upon every occasion talked of the dockers, as the inhabitants of
the new town were called, as upstarts and aliens. Plymouth is very
plentifully supplied with water by a river brought into it from a great
distance, which is so abundant that it runs to waste in the town. The
Dock, or New-town, being totally destitute of water, petitioned Plymouth
that a small portion of the conduit might be permitted to go to them,
and this was now under consideration. Johnson, affecting to entertain
the passions of the place, was violent in opposition; and, half-laughing
at himself for his pretended zeal where he had no concern, exclaimed,
'No, no! I am against the dockers; I am a Plymouth man. Rogues! let them
die of thirst. They shall not have a drop!'

1763: AETAT. 54.]--This is to me a memorable year; for in it I had the
happiness to obtain the acquaintance of that extraordinary man whose
memoirs I am now writing; an acquaintance which I shall ever esteem
as one of the most fortunate circumstances in my life. Though then but
two-and-twenty, I had for several years read his works with delight and
instruction, and had the highest reverence for their authour, which had
grown up in my fancy into a kind of mysterious veneration, by figuring
to myself a state of solemn elevated abstraction, in which I supposed
him to live in the immense metropolis of London. Mr. Gentleman, a native
of Ireland, who passed some years in Scotland as a player, and as an
instructor in the English language, a man whose talents and worth were
depressed by misfortunes, had given me a representation of the figure
and manner of DICTIONARY JOHNSON! as he was then generally called; and
during my first visit to London, which was for three months in 1760, Mr.
Derrick the poet, who was Gentleman's friend and countryman, flattered
me with hopes that he would introduce me to Johnson, an honour of which
I was very ambitious. But he never found an opportunity; which made me
doubt that he had promised to do what was not in his power; till Johnson
some years afterwards told me, 'Derrick, Sir, might very well have
introduced you. I had a kindness for Derrick, and am sorry he is dead.'

In the summer of 1761 Mr. Thomas Sheridan was at Edinburgh, and
delivered lectures upon the English Language and Publick Speaking to
large and respectable audiences. I was often in his company, and
heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson's extraordinary knowledge,
talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed sayings, describe his
particularities, and boast of his being his guest sometimes till two or
three in the morning. At his house I hoped to have many opportunities of
seeing the sage, as Mr. Sheridan obligingly assured me I should not be
disappointed.

When I returned to London in the end of 1762, to my surprise and regret
I found an irreconcilable difference had taken place between Johnson
and Sheridan. A pension of two hundred pounds a year had been given
to Sheridan. Johnson, who, as has been already mentioned, thought
slightingly of Sheridan's art, upon hearing that he was also pensioned,
exclaimed, 'What! have they given HIM a pension? Then it is time for me
to give up mine.'

Johnson complained that a man who disliked him repeated his sarcasm to
Mr. Sheridan, without telling him what followed, which was, that after a
pause he added, 'However, I am glad that Mr. Sheridan has a pension,
for he is a very good man.' Sheridan could never forgive this hasty
contemptuous expression. It rankled in his mind; and though I informed
him of all that Johnson said, and that he would be very glad to meet him
amicably, he positively declined repeated offers which I made, and once
went off abruptly from a house where he and I were engaged to dine,
because he was told that Dr. Johnson was to be there.

This rupture with Sheridan deprived Johnson of one of his most
agreeable resources for amusement in his lonely evenings; for Sheridan's
well-informed, animated, and bustling mind never suffered conversation
to stagnate; and Mrs. Sheridan was a most agreeable companion to
an intellectual man. She was sensible, ingenious, unassuming, yet
communicative. I recollect, with satisfaction, many pleasing hours which
I passed with her under the hospitable roof of her husband, who was
to me a very kind friend. Her novel, entitled Memoirs of Miss Sydney
Biddulph, contains an excellent moral while it inculcates a future state
of retribution; and what it teaches is impressed upon the mind by a
series of as deep distress as can affect humanity, in the amiable and
pious heroine who goes to her grave unrelieved, but resigned, and full
of hope of 'heaven's mercy.' Johnson paid her this high compliment upon
it: 'I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to
make your readers suffer so much.'

Mr. Thomas Davies the actor, who then kept a bookseller's shop in
Russel-street, Covent-garden, told me that Johnson was very much his
friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once
invited me to meet him; but by some unlucky accident or other he was
prevented from coming to us.

Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and talents, with the
advantage of a liberal education. Though somewhat pompous, he was
an entertaining companion; and his literary performances have no
inconsiderable share of merit. He was a friendly and very hospitable
man. Both he and his wife, (who has been celebrated for her beauty,)
though upon the stage for many years, maintained an uniform decency of
character; and Johnson esteemed them, and lived in as easy an intimacy
with them, as with any family which he used to visit. Mr. Davies
recollected several of Johnson's remarkable sayings, and was one of the
best of the many imitators of his voice and manner, while relating them.
He increased my impatience more and more to see the extraordinary man
whose works I highly valued, and whose conversation was reported to be
so peculiarly excellent.

At last, on Monday the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's
back-parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson
unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies having perceived him
through the glass-door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing
towards us,--he announced his aweful approach to me, somewhat in the
manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on
the appearance of his father's ghost, 'Look, my Lord, it comes.' I found
that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from the portrait
of him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published
his Dictionary, in the attitude of sitting in his easy chair in deep
meditation, which was the first picture his friend did for him, which
Sir Joshua very kindly presented to me, and from which an engraving has
been made for this work. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully
introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his
prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to
Davies, 'Don't tell where I come from.'--'From Scotland,' cried Davies
roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but
I cannot help it.' I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as
light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating
abasement at the expence of my country. But however that might be, this
speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he
was so remarkable, he seized the expression 'come from Scotland,' which
I used in the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had said that
I had come away from it, or left it, retorted, 'That, Sir, I find, is
what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.' This stroke
stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a
little embarrassed, and apprehensive of what might come next. He then
addressed himself to Davies: 'What do you think of Garrick? He has
refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he knows the
house will be full, and that an order would be worth three shillings.'
Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I ventured
to say, 'O, Sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a trifle
to you.' 'Sir, (said he, with a stern look,) I have known David Garrick
longer than you have done: and I know no right you have to talk to me
on the subject.' Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather
presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the
justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil.* I now
felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope which I had
long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted. And, in truth,
had not my ardour been uncommonly strong, and my resolution uncommonly
persevering, so rough a reception might have deterred me for ever from
making any further attempts. Fortunately, however, I remained upon the
field not wholly discomfited.

* That this was a momentary sally against Garrick there can
be no doubt; for at Johnson's desire he had, some years
before, given a benefit-night at his theatre to this very
person, by which she had got two hundred pounds. Johnson,
indeed, upon all other occasions, when I was in his company
praised the very liberal charity of Garrick. I once
mentioned to him, 'It is observed, Sir, that you attack
Garrick yourself, but will suffer nobody else to do it.'
Johnson, (smiling) 'Why, Sir, that is true.'--BOSWELL.