Life of Johnson Volume I Part 72

[696] Irene, Act i. sc. 1.

[697] See _post_, Nov. 16, 1784, note.

[698] The Anderdon MSS. contain an importunate letter, dated July 3, 1751, from one Mitch.e.l.l, a tradesman in Chandos-street, pressing Johnson to pay 2, due by his wife ever since August, 1749, and threatening legal proceedings to enforce payment. This letter Mr. Boswell had endorsed, 'Proof of Dr. Johnson's wretched circ.u.mstances in 1751.' CROKER.

[699] In the _Gent. Mag_. for February, 1794, (p. 100,) was printed a letter pretending to be that written by Johnson on the death of his wife. But it is merely a transcript of the 41st number of _The Idler_. A fict.i.tious date (March 17, 1751, O. S.) was added by some person previous to this paper being sent to the publisher of that miscellany, to give a colour to this deception. MALONE.

[700] Francis Barber was born in Jamaica, and was brought to England in 1750 by Colonel Bathurst, father of Johnson's very intimate friend, Dr.

Bathurst. He was sent, for some time, to the Reverend Mr. Jackson's school, at Barton, in Yorks.h.i.+re. The Colonel by his will left him his freedom, and Dr. Bathurst was willing that he should enter into Johnson's service, in which he continued from 1752 till Johnson's death, with the exception of two intervals; in one of which, upon some difference with his master, he went and served an apothecary in Cheapside, but still visited Dr. Johnson occasionally; in another, he took a fancy to go to sea. Part of the time, indeed, he was, by the kindness of his master, at a school in Northamptons.h.i.+re, that he might have the advantage of some learning. So early and so lasting a connection was there between Dr. Johnson and this humble friend.

BOSWELL. 'I believe that Francis was scarcely as much the object of Mr.

Johnson's personal kindness as the representative of Dr. Bathurst, for whose sake he would have loved anybody or anything.' Piozzi's _Anec_.

p. 212.

[701] 'I asked him,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. pp. 146-150), 'if he ever disputed with his wife. "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." 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 G.o.d for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest not eatable."'

[702] 'When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed; and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive, as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood.' _Rambler_, No. 54.

[703] _Pr. and Med_. p. 19. BOSWELL.

[704] Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, p. 316. BOSWELL.

[705] See _post_, Oct. 26, 1769, where the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory or 'a middle state,' as Johnson calls it is discussed, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 25, 1773.

[706] In the original, 'lawful _for_ me.' Much the same prayer Johnson made for his mother. _Pr. and Med_. p. 38. On Easter Day, 1764, he records:--'After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me.' _Ib_. p. 54. On the death of Mr.

Thrale he wrote, 'May G.o.d that delighteth in mercy _have had_ mercy on thee.' _Ib_. p. 191; and later on, 'for Henry Thrale, so far as is lawful, I humbly implore thy mercy in his present state.' _Ib_. p. 197.

[707] _Pr. and Med_., p. 20. BOSWELL.

[708] Shortly before his death (see _post,_ July 12, 1784) Johnson had a stone placed over her grave with the following inscription:--

Hic conduntur reliquiae ELIZABETHae Antiqua Jarvisiorum Leicestrienses, ortae; Formosae, cultae, ingeniosae, piae; Uxoris, primis nuptiis, Henrici Porter, Secundis Samuelis Johnson: Qui multum amatam, diuque defletam Hoc lapide contexit.

Obiit Londini Mense Mart.

A.D. MDCCLIII

As Mrs. Johnson died in 1752, the date is wrong.

[709] See _post_, Sept. 21. 1777.

[710] He described her as a woman 'whom none, who were capable of distinguis.h.i.+ng either moral or intellectual excellence, could know without esteem or tenderness. She was extensively charitable in her judgements and opinions, grateful for every kindness that she received, and willing to impart a.s.sistance of every kind to all whom her little power enabled her to benefit. She pa.s.sed through many months of languor, weakness, and decay without a single murmur of impatience, and often expressed her adoration of that mercy which granted her so long time for recollection and penitence.' Johnson's _Works,_ ix. 523.

[711] See _ante_, p. 187.

[712] Dr. Bathurst, though a Physician of no inconsiderable merit, had not the good fortune to get much practice in London. He was, therefore willing to accept of employment abroad, and, to the regret of all who knew him, fell a sacrifice to the destructive climate, in the expedition against the Havannah. Mr. Langton recollects the following pa.s.sage in a letter from Dr. Johnson to Mr. Beauclerk: 'The Havannah is taken;--a conquest too dearly obtained; for, Bathurst died before it. "_Vix Priamus tanti totaque Troja fuit_."' BOSWELL.

The quotation is from Ovid, _Heroides_, i. 4. Johnson (_post_, Dec. 21, 1762) wrote to Baretti, 'Bathurst went physician to the army, and died at the Havannah.' Mr. Harwood in his _History of Lichfield_, p. 451, gives two letters from Bathurst to Johnson dated 1757. In the postscript to one he says:--'I know you will call me a lazy dog, and in truth I deserve it; but I am afraid I shall never mend. I have indeed long known that I can love my friends without being able to tell them so.... Adieu my dearest friend.' He calls Johnson 'the best of friends, to whom I stand indebted for all the little virtue and knowledge that I have.'

'Nothing,' he continues, 'I think, but absolute want can force me to continue where I am.' Jamaica he calls 'this execrable region.' Hawkins (_Life_, p. 235) says that 'Bathurst, before leaving England, confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years' exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.' Johnson perhaps had Bathurst in mind when, many years later, he wrote:--'A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual; they that employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience.

By any acute observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a century, a very curious book might be written on the _Fortune of Physicians_.' _Works_, viii. 471.

[713] Mr. Ryland was one of the members of the old club in Ivy Lane who met to dine in 1783. Mr. Payne was another, (_post_, end of 1783).

[714] Johnson revised her volumes: _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783.

[715] Catherine Sawbridge, sister of Mrs. [? Mr.] Alderman Sawbridge, was born in 1733; but it was not till 1760 that she was married to Dr.

Macaulay, a physician; so that Barber's account was incorrect either in date or name. CROKER. For Alderman Sawbridge see _post_, May 17, 1778, note.

[716] See _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783. Johnson bequeathed to her a book to keep as a token of remembrance (_post_, Dec. 9, 1784). I find her name in the year 1765 in the list of subscribers to the edition of Swift's _Works_, in 17 vols., so that perhaps she was more 'in the learned way' than Barber thought.

[717] Reynolds did not return to England from Italy till the October of this year, seven months after Mrs. Johnson's death. Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 87. He writes of his 'thirty years' intimacy with Dr. Johnson.' He must have known him therefore at least as early as 1754. _Ib_. ii. 454.

[718] See _ante_, p. 185.

[719] 'Lord Southwell,' said Johnson, 'was the most _qualitied_ man I ever saw.' _Post_, March 23, 1783.

[720] The account given of Levet in _Gent. Mag_. lv. 101, shews that he was a man out of the common run. He would not otherwise have attracted the notice of the French surgeons. The writer says:--'Mr. Levet, though an Englishman by birth, became early in life a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris. The surgeons who frequented it, finding him of an inquisitive turn and attentive to their conversation, made a purse for him, and gave him some instructions in their art. They afterwards furnished him with the means of further knowledge, by procuring him free admission to such lectures in pharmacy and anatomy as were read by the ablest professors of that period.' When he lived with Johnson, 'much of the day was employed in attendance on his patients, who were chiefly of the lowest rank of tradesmen. The remainder of his hours he dedicated to Hunter's lectures, and to as many different opportunities of improvement as he could meet with on the same gratuitous conditions.' 'All his medical knowledge,' said Johnson, 'and it is not inconsiderable, was obtained through the ear. Though he buys books, he seldom looks into them, or discovers any power by which he can be supposed to judge of an author's merit.' 'Dr. Johnson has frequently observed that Levet was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny-loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday. His character was rendered valuable by repeated proof of honesty, tenderness, and grat.i.tude to his benefactor, as well as by an unwearied diligence in his profession. His single failing was an occasional departure from sobriety. Johnson would observe, "he was perhaps the only man who ever became intoxicated through motives of prudence. He reflected that, if he refused the gin or brandy offered him by some of his patients, he could have been no gainer by their cure, as they might have had nothing else to bestow on him. This habit of taking a fee, in whatever shape it was exhibited, could not be put off by advice. He would swallow what he did not like, nay what he knew would injure him, rather than go home with an idea that his skill had been exerted without recompense. Though he took all that was offered him, he demanded nothing from the poor."' The writer adds that 'Johnson never wished him to be regarded as an inferior, or treated him like a dependent.' Mrs. Piozzi says:--'When Johnson 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 then pa.s.sing in corners unseen by anybody but himself, and that odd old surgeon whom he kept in his house to tend the outpensioners, and of whom he said most truly and sublimely, that

"In misery's darkest caverns known,"' etc. Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 118.

'Levet, madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not in his mind.' Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_, i. 115. 'Whoever called in on Johnson at about midday found him and Levet at breakfast, Johnson, in deshabille, as just risen from bed, and Levet filling out tea for himself and his patron alternately, no conversation pa.s.sing between them. All that visited him at these hours were welcome. A night's rest and breakfast seldom failed to refresh and fit him for discourse, and whoever withdrew went too soon.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 435.

How much he valued his poor friend he showed at his death, _post_, Jan.

20, 1782.

[721]

'O et praesidium et dulce decus meum.'

'My joy, my guard, and sweetest good.'

CREECH. Horace, _Odes_, i. I. 2.

[722] It was in 1738 that Johnson was living in Castle Street. At the time of Reynolds's arrival in London in 1752 he had been living for some years in Gough Square. Boswell, I suppose, only means to say that Johnson's acquaintance with the Cotterells was formed when he lived in their neighbourhood. Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 69) says that the Cotterells lived 'opposite to Reynolds's,' but his account seems based on a misunderstanding of Boswell.

[723] _Ante_, p. 165.

[724] 'We are both of Dr. Johnson's school,' wrote Reynolds to some friend. 'For my own part, I acknowledge the highest obligations to him.

He may be said to have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a great deal of rubbish. Those very persons whom he has brought to think rightly will occasionally criticise the opinions of their master when he nods. But we should always recollect that it is he himself who taught us and enabled us to do it.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 461. Burke, writing to Malone, said:--'You state very properly how much Reynolds owed to the writings and conversation of Johnson; and nothing shews more the greatness of Sir Joshua's parts than his taking advantage of both, and making some application of them to his profession, when Johnson neither understood nor desired to understand anything of painting.' _Ib_. p.

638. Reynolds, there can be little question, is thinking of Johnson in the following pa.s.sage in his _Seventh Discourse_:--'What partial and desultory reading cannot afford may be supplied by the conversation of learned and ingenious men, which is the best of all subst.i.tutes for those who have not the means or opportunities of deep study. There are many such men in this age: and they will be pleased with communicating their ideas to artists, when they see them curious and docile, if they are treated with that respect and deference which is so justly their due. Into such society young artists, if they make it the point of their ambition, will by degrees be admitted. There, without formal teaching, they will insensibly come to feel and reason like those they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste imperceptibly formed in their minds, which they will know how to reduce to a standard, by applying general truth to their own purposes, better perhaps than those to whom they owned [?owed] the original sentiment.' Reynolds's _Works_, edit.

1824, i. 149. 'Another thing remarkable to shew how little Sir Joshua crouched to the great is, that he never gave them their proper t.i.tles. I never heard the words "your lords.h.i.+p" or "your ladys.h.i.+p" come from his mouth; nor did he ever say "Sir" in speaking to any one but Dr. Johnson; and when he did not hear distinctly what the latter said (which often happened) he would then say "Sir?" that he might repeat it.' Northcote's _Conversations_, p. 289. Gibbon called Johnson 'Reynolds's oracle.'

Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 149. See also _post_, under Dec. 29, 1778.

[725] The thought may have been suggested to Reynolds by Johnson's writings. In _The Rambler_, No. 87, he had said:--'There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their grat.i.tude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.' In No. 166, he says:--'To be obliged is to be in some respect inferior to another.'

[726] Northcote tells the following story on the authority of Miss Reynolds. It is to be noticed, however, that in her _Recollections_ (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 832) the story is told somewhat differently.

Johnson, Reynolds and Miss Reynolds one day called on the Miss Cotterells. 'Johnson was the last of the three that came in; when the maid, seeing this uncouth and dirty figure of a man, and not conceiving he could be one of the company, laid hold of his coat, just as he was going up-stairs, and pulled him back again, saying, "You fellow, what is your business here? I suppose you intended to rob the house." This most unlucky accident threw him into such a fit of shame and anger that he roared out like a bull, "What have I done? What have I done?"'

Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 73.

[727] Johnson writing to Langton on January 9, 1759, describes him as 'towering in the confidence of twenty-one.' The conclusion of _The Rambler_ was in March 1752, when Langton must have been only fourteen or just fifteen at most; Johnson's first letter to him dated May 6, 1755, shews that at that time their acquaintance had been but short. Langton's subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles in the Register of the University of Oxford was on July 7, 1757. Johnson's first letter to him at Oxford is dated June 28, 1757.

[728] See _post_, March 20, 1782.