[Transcriber's Note: Printers' errors have been marked with the notation
** . There are a few special characters in the section on Erasmus Darwin;
macrons (a straight line over a letter) are denoted [=x] and breves
(the bottom half of a circle over a letter) are denoted [)x].]
* * * * *
_By the same Author_,
THE
EARLY FRENCH POETS,
A SERIES OF NOTICES AND TRANSLATIONS:
WITH AN
_Introductory Sketch of the History of French Poetry._
BY THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.
MDCCCXLVI.
* * * * *
_Shortly will be published_,
THE ODES OF PINDAR,
IN ENGLISH VERSE.
SECOND EDITION, WITH NOTES,
EDITED BY THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.
* * * * *
_Preparing for the Press_,
THE
LITERARY JOURNAL AND LETTERS
OF THE
REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY.
_WITH A MEMOIR_.
BY HIS SON, THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.
* * * * *
LIVES
OF
ENGLISH POETS,
FROM
JOHNSON TO KIRKE WHITE,
DESIGNED AS A CONTINUATION OF JOHNSON'S LIVES.
BY THE LATE
REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY, M.A.
TRANSLATOR OF DANTE.
MDCCCXLVI.
* * * * *
EDITOR'S PREFACE.
The papers of which this volume is composed originally appeared in the
London Magazine, between the years 1821 and 1824. It was the author's
intention to continue the series of Lives to a later period, but a
change in the proprietorship of the Magazine prevented the completion of
his plan. They are now for the first time published in a separate form,
and under their author's name.
In seeing the work through the press, the Editor has had occasion only
to alter one or two particulars in the Life of Goldsmith, which the
labours of that Poet's more recent biographer, Mr. Prior, have
subsequently elucidated.
HENRY CARY.
WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD. _Dec_. 1, 1845.
CONTENTS.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
JOHN ARMSTRONG
RICHARD JAGO
RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE
TOBIAS SMOLLETT
THOMAS WARTON
JOSEPH WARTON
CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY
WILLIAM MASON
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
ERASMUS DARWIN
WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE
JAMES BEATTIE
WILLIAM HAYLEY
SIR WILLIAM JONES
THOMAS CHATTERTON
HENRY KIRKE WHITE
LIVES OF ENGLISH POETS.
* * * * *
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
There is, perhaps, no one among our English writers, who for so great a
part of his life has been an object of curiosity to his contemporaries
as Johnson. Almost every thing he said or did was thought worthy of
being recorded by some one or other of his associates; and the public
were for a time willing to listen to all they had to say of him. A mass
of information has thus been accumulated, from which it will be my task
to select such a portion as shall seem sufficient to give a faithful
representation of his fortunes and character, without wearying the
attention of the reader. That any important addition should be made to
what has been already told of him, will scarcely be expected.
Samuel Johnson, the elder of two sons of Michael Johnson, who was of an
obscure family, and kept a bookseller's shop at Lichfield, was born in
that city on the 18th of September, 1709. His mother, Sarah Ford, was
sprung of a respectable race of yeomanry in Worcestershire; and, being a
woman of great piety, early instilled into the mind of her son those
principles of devotion for which he was afterwards so eminently
distinguished. At the end of ten months from his birth, he was taken
from his nurse, according to his own account of himself, a poor diseased
infant, almost blind; and, when two years and a half old, was carried to
London to be touched by Queen Anne for the evil. Being asked many years
after if he had any remembrance of the Queen, he said that he had a
confused but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds
and a long black hood. So predominant was this superstition relating to
the king's evil, that there was a form of service for the occasion
inserted in the Book of Common Prayer, and Bishop Bull,[1] in one of his
Sermons, calls it a relique and remainder of the primitive gift of
healing. The morbidness of constitution natural to him, and the defect
in his eye-sight, hindered him from partaking in the sports of other
children, and probably induced him to seek for distinction in
intellectual superiority. Dame Oliver, who kept a school for little
children, in Lichfield, first taught him to read; and, as he delighted
to tell, when he was going to the University, brought him a present of
gingerbread, in token of his being the best scholar her academy had ever
produced. His next instructor in his own language was a man whom he used
to call Tom Browne; and who, he said, published a Spelling Book, and
dedicated it to the universe. He was then placed with Mr. Hunter the
head master of the grammar school in his native city, but, for two years
before he came under his immediate tuition, was taught Latin by Mr.
Hawkins, the usher. It is just that one, who, in writing the lives of
men less eminent than himself, was always careful to record the names of
their instructors, should obtain a tribute of similar respect for his
own. By Mr. Price, who was afterwards head master of the same school,
and whose name I cannot mention without reverence and affection, I have
been told that Johnson, when late in life he visited the place of his
education, shewed him a nook in the school-room, where it was usual for
the boys to secrete the translations of the books they were reading;
and, at the same time, speaking of his old master, Hunter, said to him,
"He was not severe, Sir. A master ought to be severe. Sir, he was
cruel." Johnson, however, was always ready to acknowledge how much he
was indebted to Hunter for his classical proficiency. At the age of
fifteen, by the advice of his mother's nephew, Cornelius Ford, a
clergyman of considerable abilities, but disgraced by the licentiousness
of his life, and who is spoken of in the Life of Fenton, he was removed
to the grammar-school of Stourbridge, of which Mr. Wentworth was master.
Here he did not remain much more than a twelvemonth, and, as he told Dr.
Percy, learned much in the school, but little from the master; whereas,
with Hunter, he had learned much from the master, and little in the
school. The progress he made was, perhaps, gained in teaching the other
boys, for Wentworth is said to have employed him as an assistant. His
compositions in English verse indicate that command of language which he
afterwards attained. The two following years he accuses himself of
wasting in idleness at home; but we must doubt whether he had much
occasion for self-reproach, when we learn that Hesiod, Anacreon, the
Latin works of Petrarch, and "a great many other books not commonly
known in the Universities," were among his studies.
His father, though a man of strong understanding, and much respected in
his line of life, was not successful in business. He must, therefore,
have had a firm reliance on the capacity of his son; for while he chided
him for his want of steady application, he resolved on making so great
an effort as to send him to the University; and, accompanying him
thither, placed him, on the 31st of October, 1728, a commoner at
Pembroke College, Oxford. Some assistance was, indeed, promised him from
other quarters, but this assistance was never given; nor was his
industry quickened by his necessities. He was sometimes to be seen
lingering about the gates of his college; and, at others, sought for
relief from the oppression of his mind in affected mirth and turbulent
gaiety. So extreme was his poverty, that he was prevented by the want of
shoes from resorting to the rooms of his schoolfellow, Taylor, at the
neighbouring college of Christ Church; and such was his pride, that he
flung away with indignation a new pair that he found left at his door.
His scholarship was attested by a translation into Latin verse of Pope's
Messiah; which is said to have gained the approbation of that poet. But
his independent spirit, and his irregular habits, were both likely to
obstruct his interest in the University; and, at the end of three years,
increasing debts, together with the failure of remittances, occasioned
by his father's insolvency, forced him to leave it without a degree. Of
Pembroke College, in his Life of Shenstone, and of Sir Thomas Browne, he
has spoken with filial gratitude. From his tutor, Mr. Jorden, whom he
described as a "worthy man, but a heavy one," he did not learn much.
What he read solidly, he said, was Greek; and that Greek, Homer and
Euripides; but his favourite study was metaphysics, which we must
suppose him to have investigated by the light of his own meditation, for
he did not read much in it. With Dr. Adams, then a junior fellow, and
afterwards master of the College, his friendship continued till his
death.
Soon after his return to Lichfield, his father died; and the following
memorandum, extracted from the little register which he kept in Latin,
of the more remarkable occurrences that befel him, proves at once the
small pittance that was left him, and the integrity of his mind: "1732,
Julii 15. Undecim aureos deposui: quo die quicquid ante matris funus
(quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperare licet, viginti
scilicet libras accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. Interea ne
paupertate vires animi languescant nec in flagitium egestas abigat,
cavendum.--1732, July 15. I laid down eleven guineas. On which day, I
received the whole of what it is allowed me to expect from my father's
property, before the decease of my mother (which I pray may be yet far
distant) namely, twenty pounds. My fortune therefore must be of my own
making. Meanwhile, let me beware lest the powers of my mind grow languid
through poverty, or want drive me to evil." On the following day we find
him setting out on foot for Market Bosworth, in Leicestershire, where he
had engaged himself as an usher to the school of which Mr. Crompton was
master. Here he described to his old school-fellow, Hector, the dull
sameness of his life, in the words of the poet: Vitam continct una dies:
that it was as unvaried as the note of the cuckoo, and that he did not
know whether it were more disagreeable for him to teach, or for the boys
to learn the grammar rules. To add to his misery, he had to endure the
petty despotism of Sir Wolstan Dixie, one of the patrons of the school.
The trial of a few months disgusted him so much with his employment,
that he relinquished it, and, removing to Birmingham, became the guest
of his friend Mr. Hector, who was a chirurgeon in that town, and lodged
in the house of a bookseller; having remained with him about six months,
he hired lodgings for himself. By Mr. Hector he was stimulated, not
without some difficulty, to make a translation from the French, of
Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, for which he received no more than five
guineas from the bookseller, who, by an artifice not uncommon, printed
it at Birmingham, with the date of London in the title-page. To Mr.
Hector, therefore, is due the impulse which first made Johnson an
author. The motion being once given did not cease; for, having returned
to Lichfield in 1735, he sent forth in August proposals for printing by
subscription Politian's Latin Poems, with a Life of the Author, Notes,
and a History of Latin Poetry, from the age of Petrarch to that of
Politian. His reason for fixing on this era it is not easy to determine.
Mussato preceded Petrarch, the interval between Petrarch and Politian is
not particularly illustrated by excellence in Latin poetry; and Politian
was much surpassed in correctness and elegance, if not in genius, by
those who came after him--by Flaminio, Navagero, and Fracastorio. Yet in
the hands of Johnson, such a subject would not have been wanting in
instruction or entertainment. Such as were willing to subscribe, were
referred to his brother, Nathaniel Johnson, who had succeeded to his
father's business in Lichfield; but the design was dropped, for want of
a sufficient number of names to encourage it, a deficiency not much to
be wondered at, unless the inhabitants of provincial towns were more
learned in those days than at present.
In this year, he made another effort to obtain the means of subsistence
by an offer of his pen to Cave, the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine;
but the immediate result of the application is not known; nor in what
manner he supported himself till July 1736, when he married Elizabeth
Porter, the widow of a mercer at Birmingham, and daughter of William
Jervis, Esq. of Great Peatling, in Leicestershire. This woman, who was
twenty years older than himself, and to whose daughter he had been an
unsuccessful suitor, brought him eight hundred pounds; but, according to
Garrick's report of her, was neither amiable nor handsome, though that
she was both in Johnson's estimation appears from the epithets
"formosae, cultae, ingeniosae," which he inscribed on her tombstone.
Their nuptials were celebrated at Derby, and to that town they went
together on horseback from Birmingham; but the bride assuming some airs
of caprice on the road, like another Petruchio he gave her such
effectual proofs of resolution, as reduced her to the abjectness of
shedding tears. His first project after his marriage was to set up a
school; and, with this intention, he hired a very commodious house, at
the distance of about two miles from Lichfield, called Edial Hall, which
has lately been taken down, and of which a representation is to be seen
in the History of Lichfield, by Mr. Harwood. One of my friends, who
inhabited it for the same purpose, has told me that an old countryman
who lived near it, and remembered Johnson and his pupil Garrick, said to
him, "that Johnson was not much of a scholar to look at, but that master
Garrick was a strange one for leaping over a stile." It is amusing to
observe the impressions which such men make on common minds.
Unfortunately the prejudice occasioned by Johnson's unsightly exterior
was not confined to the vulgar, insomuch that it has been thought to be
the reason why so few parents committed their children to his care, for
he had only three pupils. This unscholarlike appearance it must have
been that made the bookseller in the Strand, to whom he applied for
literary employment, eye him archly, and recommend it to him rather to
purchase a porter's knot. But, as an old philosopher has said, every
thing has two handles. It was, perhaps, the contrast between the body
and the mind, between the incultum corpus, and the ingenium, which
afterwards was one cause of his being received so willingly in those
circles of what is called high life, where any thing that is exceedingly
strange and unusual is apt to carry its own recommendation with it.
Failing in his attempt at Edial, he was disposed once more to engage in
the drudgery of an usher, and offered himself in that capacity to the
Rev. William Budworth, master of the grammar-school at Brewood, in
Staffordshire, celebrated for having been the place in which Bishop Hurd
received his education, under that master. But here again nature stood
in his way; for Budworth was fearful lest a strange motion with the
head, the effect probably of disease, to which Johnson was habitually
subject, might excite the derision of his scholars, and for that reason
declined employing him. He now resolved on trying his fortune in the
capital.
Among the many respectable families in Lichfield, into whose society
Johnson had been admitted, none afforded so great encouragement to his
literary talents as that of Mr. Walmsley, who lived in the Bishop's
palace, and was registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court, and whom he has
so eloquently commemorated in his Lives of the Poets. By this gentleman
he was introduced in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Colson, Lucasian Professor
of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, and the master of an
academy, "as a very good scholar, and one who he had great hopes would
turn out a fine dramatic writer, who intended to try his fate with a
tragedy, and to get himself employed in some translation, either from
the Latin or the French." The tragedy on which Mr. Walmsley founded his
expectations of Johnson's future eminence as a dramatic poet, was the
Irene. A shrewd sally of humour, to which the reading of this piece gave
rise, evinces the terms of familiarity on which he was with his patron;
for, on Walmsley's observing, when some part of it had been read, that
the poet had already involved his heroine in such distress, that he did
not see what further he could do to excite the commiseration of the
audience, Johnson replied, "that he could put her into the
Ecclesiastical Court." Garrick, who was to be placed at Colson's
academy, accompanied his former instructor on this expedition to London,
at the beginning of March, 1737. It does not appear that Mr. Walmsley's
recommendation of him to Colson, whom he has described under the
character of Gelidus[2], in the twenty-fourth paper of the Rambler, was
of much use. He first took lodgings in Exeter-street in the Strand, but
soon retired to Greenwich, for the sake of completing his tragedy, which
he used to compose, walking in the Park.
From Greenwich, he addressed another letter to Cave, with proposals for
translating Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent, with the notes
of Le Courayer. Before the summer was expired, he returned for Mrs.
Johnson, whom he had left at Lichfield, and remaining there three
months, at length finished Irene. On his second visit to London, his
lodgings were first in Woodstock-street, near Hanover Square, and then
in Castle-street, near Cavendish Square. His tragedy, which was brought
on the stage twelve years after by Garrick, having been at this time
rejected by the manager of the playhouse, he was forced to relinquish
his hopes of becoming a dramatic writer, and engaged himself to write
for the Gentleman's Magazine. The debates in Parliament were not then
allowed to be given to the public with the same unrestricted and
generous freedom with which it is now permitted to report them. To elude
this prohibition, and gratify the just curiosity of the country, the
several members were designated by fictitious names, under which they
were easily discoverable; and their speeches in both Houses of
Parliament, which was entitled the Senate of Lilliput, were in this
manner imparted to the nation in the periodical work above-mentioned. At
first, Johnson only revised these reports; but he became so dexterous in
the execution of his task, that he required only to be told the names of
the speakers, and the side of the question to be espoused, in order to
frame the speeches himself; an artifice not wholly excusable, which
afterwards occasioned him some self-reproach, and even at the time
pleased him so little, that he did not consent to continue it. The whole
extent of his assistance to Cave is not known. The Lives of Paul Sarpi,
Boerhaave, Admirals Drake and Blake, Barretier, Burman, Sydenham, and
Roscommon, with the Essay on Epitaphs, and an Essay on the Account of
the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough, were certainly contributed to
his Miscellany by Johnson. Two tracts, the one a Vindication of the
Licenser of the Stage from the Aspersions of Brooke, Author of Gustavus
Vasa; the other, Marmor Norfolciense, a pamphlet levelled against Sir
Robert Walpole and the Hanoverian succession, were published by him,
separately, in 1739.
For his version of Sarpi's History, he had received from Cave, before
the 21st of April in this year, fifty pounds, and some sheets of it had
been committed to the press, when, unfortunately, the design was
stopped, in consequence of proposals appearing for a translation of the
same book, by another person of the same name as our author, who was
curate of St. Martin's in the Fields, and patronized by Dr. Pearce, the
editor of Longinus. Warburton [3] afterwards expressed a wish that
Johnson would give the original on one side, and his translation on the
other. His next engagement was to draw up an account of the printed
books in the Earl of Oxford's library, for Osborne, the bookseller, who
had purchased them for thirteen thousand pounds. Such was the petulant
impatience of Osborne, during the progress of this irksome task, that
Johnson was once irritated so far as to beat him.
In May, 1738, appeared his "London," imitated from the Third Satire of
Juvenal, for which he got ten guineas from Dodsley. The excellence of
this poem was so immediately perceived, that it reached a second edition
in the course of a week. Pope having made some ineffectual inquiries
concerning the author, from Mr. Richardson, the son of the painter,
observed that he would soon be _deterre_. In the August of 1739, we find
him so far known to Pope, that at his intercession, Earl Gower applied
to a friend of Swift to assist in procuring from the University the
degree of Master of Arts, that he might be enabled to become a candidate
for the mastership of a school then vacant; the application was without
success.
His own wants, however pressing, did not hinder him from assisting his
mother, who had lost her other son. A letter to Mr. Levett, of
Lichfield, on the subject of a debt, for which he makes himself
responsible on her account, affords so striking a proof of filial
tenderness, that I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of transcribing it.
_December_, 1, 1743.
Sir,--I am extremely sorry that we have encroached so much upon your
forbearance with respect to the interest, which a great perplexity of
affairs hindered me from thinking of with that attention that I ought,
and which I am not immediately able to remit to you, but will pay it
(I think twelve pounds) in two months. I look upon this, and on the
future interest of that mortgage, as my own debt; and beg that you
will be pleased to give me directions how to pay it, and not mention
it to my dear mother. If it be necessary to pay this in less time, I
believe I can do it; but I take two months for certainty, and beg an
answer whether you can allow me so much time. I think myself very much
obliged for your forbearance, and shall esteem it a great happiness to
be able to serve you. I have great opportunities of dispersing any
thing that you may think it proper to make public. I will give a note
for the money payable at the time mentioned, to any one here that you
shall appoint.
I am, Sir, your most obedient,
and most humble servant,
SAM. JOHNSON.
_At Mr. Osborne's, Bookseller, in Gray's Inn_.
In the following year (1744) he produced his Life of Savage, a work that
gives the charm of a romance to a narrative of real [**re in original]
events; and which, bearing the stamp of that eagerness [**ea ness in
original] and rapidity with which it was thrown off the mind of the
writer, exhibits rather the fervour of an eloquent advocate, than the
laboriousness of a minute biographer. The forty-eight octavo pages, as
he told Mr. Nichols [4], were written in one day and night. At its first
appearance it was warmly praised, in the Champion, probably either by
Fielding, or by Ralph, who succeeded to him in a share of that paper;
and Sir Joshua Reynolds, when it came into his hand, found his attention
so powerfully arrested, that he read it through without changing his
posture, as he perceived by the torpidness of one of his arms that had
rested on a chimney-piece by which he was standing. For the Life of
Savage [5], he received fifteen guineas from Cave. About this time he
fell into the company of Collins, with whom, as he tells us in his life
of that poet, he delighted to converse.
His next publication (in 1745) was a pamphlet, called "Miscellaneous
Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir T.H. (Sir
Thomas Hanmer's) Edition of Shakspeare," to which were subjoined,
proposals for a new edition of his plays. These observations were
favourably mentioned by Warburton, in the preface to his edition; and
Johnson's gratitude for praise bestowed at a time when praise was of
value to him, was fervent and lasting. Yet Warburton, with his usual
intolerance of any dissent from his opinions, afterwards complained in a
private letter [6] to Hurd, that Johnson's remarks on his commentaries
were full of insolence and malignant reflections, which, had they not in
them "as much folly as malignity," he should have had reason to be
offended with.
In 1747, he furnished Garrick, who had become joint-patentee and manager
of Drury Lane, with a Prologue on the opening of the house. This address
has been commended quite as much as it deserves. The characters of
Shakspeare and Ben Jonson are, indeed, discriminated with much skill;
but surely something might have been said, if not of Massinger and
Beaumont and Fletcher, yet at least of Congreve and Otway, who are
involved in the sweeping censure passed on "the wits of Charles."
Of all his various literary undertakings, that in which he now engaged
was the most arduous, a Dictionary of the English language. His plan of
this work was, at the desire of Dodsley, inscribed to the Earl of
Chesterfield, then one of the Secretaries of State; Dodsley, in
conjunction with six other book-sellers, stipulated fifteen hundred and
seventy-five pounds as the price of his labour; a sum, from which, when
the expenses of paper and transcription were deducted, a small portion
only remained for the compiler. In other countries, this national
desideratum has been supplied by the united exertions of the learned.
Had the project for such a combination in Queen Anne's reign been
carried into execution, the result might have been fewer defects and
less excellence: the explanation of technical terms would probably have
been more exact, the derivations more copious, and a greater number of
significant words now omitted [7], have been collected from our earliest
writers; but the citations would often have been made with less
judgment, and the definitions laid down with less acuteness of
discrimination.
From his new patron, whom he courted without the aid of those graces so
devoutly worshipped by that nobleman, he reaped but small advantage;
and, being much exasperated at his neglect, Johnson addressed to him a
very cutting, but, it must be owned, an intemperate letter, renouncing
his protection, though, when the Dictionary was completed, Chesterfield
had ushered its appearance before the public in two complimentary papers
in the World; but the homage of the client was not to be recalled, or
even his resentment to be appeased. His great work is thus spoken of at
its first appearance, in a letter from Thomas Warton to his brother [8].
"The Dictionary is arrived; the preface is noble. There is a grammar
prefixed, and the history of the language is pretty full; but you may
plainly perceive strokes of laxity and indolence. They are two most
unwieldy volumes. I have written to him an invitation. I fear his
preface will disgust, by the expressions of his consciousness of
superiority, and of his contempt of patronage." In 1773, when he gave a
second edition, with additions and corrections, he announced in a few
prefatory lines that he had expunged some superfluities, and corrected
some faults, and here and there had scattered a remark; but that the
main fabric continued the same. "I have looked into it," he observes, in
a letter to Boswell, "very little since I wrote it, and, I think, I
found it full as often better as worse than I expected."
To trace in order of time the various changes in Johnson's place of
residence in the metropolis, if it were worth the trouble, would not be
possible. A list of them, which he gave to Boswell, amounting to
seventeen, but without the correspondent dates, is preserved by that
writer. For the sake of being near his printer, while the Dictionary was
on the anvil, he took a convenient house in Gough Square, near
Fleet-street, and fitted up one room in it as an office, where six
amanuenses were employed in transcribing for him, of whom Boswell
recounts in triumph that five were Scotchmen. In 1748, he wrote, for
Dodsley's Preceptor, the Preface, and the Vision of Theodore the Hermit,
to which Johnson has been heard to give the preference over all his other
writings. In the January of the ensuing year, appeared the Vanity of
Human Wishes, being the Tenth Satire of Juvenal imitated, which he sold
for fifteen guineas; and, in the next month, his Irene was brought on
the stage, not without a previous altercation between the poet and his
former pupil, concerning some changes which Garrick's superior knowledge
of the stage made him consider to be necessary, but which Johnson said
the fellow desired only that they might afford him more opportunity of
tossing his hands and kicking his heels. He always treated the art of a
player with illiberal contempt; but was at length, by the intervention
of Dr. Taylor, prevailed on to give way to the suggestions of Garrick.
Yet Garrick had not made him alter all that needed altering; for the
first exhibition of Irene shocked the spectators with the novel sight of
a heroine who was to utter two verses with the bow-string about her
neck. This horror was removed from a second representation; but, after
the usual course of ten nights, the tragedy was no longer in request.
Johnson thought it requisite, on this occasion, to depart from the usual
homeliness of his habit, and to appear behind the scenes, and in the
side boxes, with the decoration of a gold-laced hat and waistcoat. He
observed, that he found himself unable to behave with the same ease in
his finery, as when dressed in his plain clothes. In the winter of this
year, he established a weekly club, at the King's Head, in Ivy Lane,
near St. Paul's, of which the other members were Dr. Salter, a Cambridge
divine; Hawkesworth; Mr. Ryland, a merchant; Mr. John Payne, the
bookseller; Mr. John Dyer, a man of considerable erudition, and a friend
of Burke's; Doctors Macghie, Baker, and Bathurst, three physicians; and
Sir John Hawkins.
He next became a candidate for public favour, as the writer of a
periodical work, in the manner of the Spectator; and, in March, 1750,
published the first number of the Rambler, which was continued for
nearly two years; but, wanting variety of matter, and familiarity of
style, failed to attract many readers, so that the largest number of
copies that were sold of any one paper did not exceed five hundred. The
topics were selected without sufficient regard to the popular taste. The
grievances and distresses of authors particularly were dwelt on to
satiety; and the tone of eloquence was more swelling and stately than he
had hitherto adopted. The papers allotted to criticism are marked by his
usual acumen; but the justice of his opinions is often questionable. In
the humourous pieces, when our laughter is excited, I doubt the author
himself, who is always discoverable under the masque of whatever
character he assumes, is as much the object as the cause of our
merriment; and, however moral and devout his more serious views of life,
they are often defective in that most engaging feature of sound
religion, a cheerful spirit. The only assistance he received was from
Richardson, Mrs. Chapone, Miss Talbot, and Mrs. Carter, the first of
whom contributed the 97th number; the second, four billets in the 10th;
the next, the 30th; and the last, the 44th and 100th numbers.
Three days after the completion of the Rambler (March 17, 1752), he was
deprived of his wife, whom, notwithstanding the disparity in their age,
and some occasional bickerings, he had tenderly loved. Those who are
disposed to scrutinize narrowly and severely into the human heart, may
question the sincerity of his sorrow, because he was collected enough to
write her funeral sermon. But the shapes which grief puts on in
different minds are as dissimilar as the constitution of those minds.
Milton, in whom the power of imagination was predominant, soothed his
anguish for the loss of his youthful friend, in an irregular, but most
beautiful assemblage of those poetic objects which presented themselves
to his thoughts, and consecrated them to the memory of the deceased; and
Johnson, who loved to act the moralizer and the rhetorician, alleviated
his sufferings by declaiming on the instability of human happiness.
During this interval he also wrote the Prologue to Comus, spoken by
Garrick, for the benefit of Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, grand-daughter to
Milton; the Prologue and Postscript to Lander's impudent forgeries
concerning that poet, by which Johnson was imposed on, as well as the
rest of the world; a letter to Dr. Douglas, for the same impostor, after
he had been detected, acknowledging and expressing contrition for the
fraud; and the Life of Cheynel, in the Student.
Soon after his wife's death, he became intimate with Beauclerk and
Langton, two young men of family and distinction, who were fellow
collegians at Oxford, and much attached to each other; and the latter of
whom admiration of the Rambler had brought to London with the express
view of being introduced to the author. Their society was very agreeable
to him; and he was, perhaps, glad to forget himself by joining at times
in their sallies of juvenile gaiety. One night, when he had lodgings in
the Temple, he was roused by their knocking at his door; and appearing
in his shirt and nightcap, he found they had come together from the
tavern where they had supped, to prevail on him to accompany them in a
nocturnal ramble. He readily entered into their proposal; and, having
indulged themselves till morning in such frolics as came in their way,
Johnson and Beauclerk were so well pleased with their diversion, that
they continued it through the rest of the day; while their less
sprightly companion left them, to keep an engagement with some ladies at
breakfast, not without reproaches from Johnson for deserting his friends
"for a set of unidea'd girls."
In 1753, he gave to Dr. Bathurst, the physician, whom he regarded with
much affection, and whose practice was very limited, several essays for
the Adventurer, which Hawkesworth was then publishing; and wrote for
Mrs. Lenox a Dedication to the Earl of Orrery, of her Shakspeare
illustrated; and, in the following year, inserted in the Gentleman's
Magazine a Life of Cave, its former editor.
Previously to the publication of his Dictionary, it was thought
advisable by his friends that the degree of Master of Arts should be
obtained for him, in order that his name might appear in the title page
with that addition; and it was accordingly, through their intercession,
conferred on him by the University of Oxford. The work was presented by
the Earl of Orrery, one of his friends then at Florence, to the Delia
Crusca Academy, who, in return, sent their Dictionary to the author. The
French Academy paid him the same compliment. But these honours were not
accompanied by that indispensable requisite, "provision for the day that
was passing over him." He was arrested for debt, and liberated by the
kindness of Richardson, the writer of Clarissa, who became his surety.
To prevent such humiliation, the efforts of his own industry were not
wanting. In 1756, he published an Abridgement of his Dictionary, and an
Edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Christian Morals, to which he prefixed a
Life of that writer; he contributed to a periodical miscellany, called
the Universal Visitor, by Christopher Smart,[9] and yet more largely to
another work of the same kind, entitled, the Literary Magazine; and
wrote a dedication and preface for Payne's Introduction to the Game of
Draughts, and an Introduction to the newspaper called the London
Chronicle, for the last of which he received a single guinea. Yet either
conscientious scruples, or his unwillingness to relinquish a London
life, induced him to decline the offer of a valuable benefice in
Lincolnshire, which was made him by the father of his friend, Langton,
provided he could prevail on himself to take holy orders, a measure that
would have delivered him from literary toil for the remainder of his
days. But literary toil was the occupation for which nature had designed
him. In the April of 1758, he commenced the Idler, and continued to
publish it for two years in the Universal Chronicle. Of these Essays, he
was supplied with Nos. 33, 93, and 96, by Thomas Warton; with No. 67 by
Langton, and with Nos. 76, 79, and 82 by Reynolds. Boswell mentions
twelve papers being given by his friends, but does not say who were the
contributors of the remaining five. The Essay on Epitaphs, the
Dissertation on Pope's Epitaphs, and an Essay on the Bravery of the
English common Soldiers, were subjoined to this paper, when it was
collected into volumes. It does not differ from the Rambler, otherwise
than as the essays are shorter, and somewhat less grave and elaborate.
Another wound was inflicted on him by the death of his mother, who had
however reached her ninetieth year. His affection and his regret will
best appear from the following letter to the daughter of his deceased
wife.
_To Miss Porter, in Lichfield_.
You will conceive my sorrow for the loss of my mother, of the best
mother. If she were to live again, surely I should behave better to
her.
But she is happy, and what is past is nothing to her: and, for me,
since I cannot repair my faults to her, I hope repentance will efface
them. I return you, and all those that have been good to her, my
sincerest thanks, and pray God to repay you all with infinite
advantage. Write to me, and comfort me, dear child. I shall be glad
likewise, if Kitty will write to me. I shall send a bill of twenty
pounds in a few days, which I thought to have brought to my mother,
but God suffered it not. I have not power nor composure to say much
more. God bless you, and bless us all.
I am, dear Miss,
Your affectionate humble servant,
SAM. JOHNSON.
Her attention to his mother, as it is reported in the following words,
by Miss Seward, ensured to Johnson the sympathy of Lucy Porter.
From the age of twenty till her fortieth year, when affluence came to
her by the death of her eldest brother, she had boarded in Lichfield
with Dr. Johnson's mother, who still kept that little bookseller's shop,
by which her husband had supplied the scanty means of existence.
Meanwhile, Lucy Porter kept the best company of our little city, but
would make no engagement on market-days, lest Granny, as she called Mrs.
Johnson, should catch cold by serving in the shop. There Lucy Porter
took her place, standing behind the counter, nor thought it a disgrace
to thank a poor person who purchased from her a penny battledore [10].
To defray the expenses of his mother's funeral, he had recourse to his
pen; and, in the evenings of one week produced the Rasselas, for which
he received one hundred pounds, and was presented by the purchasers with
twenty-five more on its reaching a second edition. Rasselas is a noble
monument of the genius of its author. Reflections so profound, and so
forcible a draught of some of the great outlines of the human intellect
and passions, are to be found in few writers of any age or country. The
mind is seldom presented with any thing so marvellous as the character
of the philosopher, who has persuaded himself that he is entrusted with
the management of the elements. Johnson's dread of insanity was,
perhaps, relieved by embodying this mighty conception. He had seen the
shadowy form in the twilight, and might have dissipated or eased his
apprehensions by coming up to it more closely, and examining into the
occasion of his fears. In this tale, the censure which he has elsewhere
passed on Milton, that he is a lion who has no skill in dandling the
kid, recoils upon himself. His delineation of the female character is
wanting in delicacy.
In this year he supplied Mr. Newbery with an Introduction to the World
Displayed, a Collection of Voyages and Travels: till the publication of
his Shakspeare, in 1765, the only writings acknowledged by himself were
a Review of Tytler's Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, in the
Gentleman's Magazine; an Introduction to the Proceedings of the
Committee for Clothing the French Prisoners; the Preface to Bolt's
Dictionary of Trade and Commerce; a Dedication to the King, of Kennedy's
Complete System of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures;
and a Dedication to the Queen, of Hoole's Tasso.
In the course of this period, he made a short visit to Lichfield, and
thus communicates his feelings on the occasion, in a letter dated July
20, 1762, to Baretti, his Italian friend, who was then at Milan.
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 am no longer young. My
only remaining friend had 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, had 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.
I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end?
Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to
your own country; whether time has made any alteration for the better,
and, whether, when the first rapture of salutation was over, you did
not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment.
Henceforward Johnson had no longer to struggle with the evils of
extreme poverty. A pension of £300 was granted to him, in 1762, by His
Majesty. Before his acceptance of it, in answer to a question put by him
to the Earl of Bute, in these words, "Pray, my Lord, what am I to do for
the pension?" he was assured by that nobleman that it was not given him
for any thing he was to do, but for what he had done. The definition he
had given of the word pension, in his dictionary, that in England it was
generally understood to mean pay, given to a state hireling, for treason
to his country, raised some further scruples whether he ought himself to
become a pensioner; but they were removed by the arguments, or the
persuasion of Mr. Reynolds, to whom he had recourse for advice in this
dilemma. What advice Reynolds would give him he must have known pretty
well before-hand; but this was one of the many instances in which men,
having first determined how to act, are willing to imagine that they are
going for clearer information, where they in truth expect nothing but a
confirmation of their own resolve. The liberality of the nation could
not have been extended to one who had better deserved it. But he had a
calamity yet more dreadful than poverty to encounter. The depression of
his spirits was now become almost intolerable. "I would have a limb
amputated," said he to Dr. Adams, "to recover my spirits." He was
constantly tormented by harassing reflections on his inability to keep
the many resolutions he had formed of leading a better life; and
complained that a kind of strange oblivion had overspread him, so that
he did not know what was become of the past year, and that incidents and
intelligence passed over him without leaving any impression.
Neither change of place nor the society of friends availed to prevent or
to dissipate this melancholy. In 1762, he made an excursion into
Devonshire, with Sir Joshua Reynolds; the next year he went to Harwich,
with Boswell; in the following, when his malady was most troublesome,
the meeting which acquired the name of the Literary Club was instituted,
and he passed a considerable time in Lincolnshire, with the father of
Langton; and, in the year after, visited Cambridge, in the company of
Beauclerk. Of the Literary Club, first proposed by Reynolds, the other
members at its first establishment were Burke, Dr. Nugent, Beauclerk,
Langton, Goldsmith, Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins. They met at the
Turk's Head, in Gerrard-street, Soho, one evening in the week, and
usually remained together till a late hour. The society was afterwards
extended, so as to comprise a large number of those who were most
eminent, either for their learning or their station in life, and the
place of meeting has been since at different times changed to other
parts of the town, nearer to the Parliament House, or to the usual
resorts of gaiety. A club was the delight of Johnson. We lose some of
our awe for him, when we contemplate him as mimicked by his old scholar
Garrick, in the act of squeezing a lemon into the punch-bowl, and
asking, as he looks round the company, in his provincial accent, of
which he never got entirely rid, "Who's for _poonch_?" If there was any
thing likely to gratify him more than a new club, it was the public
testimony of respect from a learned body; and this he received from
Trinity College, Dublin, in a diploma for the degree of Doctor of Laws,
an honour the more flattering, as it came without solicitation.