When we got to Dr. Johnson’s house, and were seated in his library, the dialogue went on admirably. EDWARDS. ‘Sir, I remember you would not let us say prodigious at College. For even then, Sir, (turning to me,) he was delicate in language, and we all feared him.’a JOHNSON. (to Edwards,) ‘From your having practised the law long, Sir, I presume you must be rich.’ EDWARDS. ‘No, Sir; I got a good deal of money; but I had a number of poor relations to whom I gave a great part of it.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, you have been rich in the most valuable sense of the word.’ EDWARDS. ‘But I shall not die rich.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, sure, Sir, it is better to live rich than to die rich.’ EDWARDS. ‘I wish I had continued at College.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why do you wish that, Sir?’ EDWARDS. ‘Because I think I should have had a much easier life than mine has been. I should have been a parson, and had a good living, like Bloxam and several others, and lived comfortably.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, the life of a parson, of a conscientious clergyman, is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. No, Sir, I do not envy a clergyman’s life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.’ Here taking himself up all of a sudden, he exclaimed, ‘O! Mr. Edwards! I’ll convince you that I recollect you. Do you remember our drinking together at an alehouse near Pembroke gate? At that time, you told me of the Eton boy, who, when verses on our Saviour’s turning water into wine were prescribed as an exercise, brought up a single line, which was highly admired, –
vidit et erubuit lympha puaica DEUM,a
and I told you of another fine line in Camden’s Remains, an eulogy upon one of our Kings, who was succeeded by his son, a prince of equal merit: –
“Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla secuta est.”’819
EDWARDS. ‘You are a philosopher, Dr. JOHNSON. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.’ – Mr. Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Courtenay, Mr. Malone, and, indeed, all the eminent men to whom I have mentioned this, have thought it an exquisite trait of character. The truth is, that philosophy, like religion, is too generally supposed to be hard and severe, at least so grave as to exclude all gaiety.
EDWARDS. ‘I have been twice married, Doctor. You, I suppose, have never known what it was to have a wife.’ JOHNSON. ‘Sir, I have known what it was to have a wife, and (in a solemn, tender, faultering tone) I have known what it was to lose a wife. – It had almost broke my heart.’
EDWARDS. ‘How do you live, Sir? For my part, I must have my regular meals, and a glass of good wine. I find I require it.’ JOHNSON. ‘I now drink no wine, Sir. Early in life I drank wine: for many years I drank none. I then for some years drank a great deal.’ EDWARDS. ‘Some hogsheads, I warrant you.’ JOHNSON. ‘I then had a severe illness, and left it off, and I have never begun it again. I never felt any difference upon myself from eating one thing rather than another, nor from one kind of weather rather than another. There are people, I believe, who feel a difference; but I am not one of them. And as to regular meals, I have fasted from the Sunday’s dinner to the Tuesday’s dinner, without any inconvenience. I believe it is best to eat just as one is hungry: but a man who is in business, or a man who has a family, must have stated meals. I am a straggler. I may leave this town and go to Grand Cairo, without being missed here or observed there.’ EDWARDS. ‘Don’t you eat supper, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir.’ Edwards. ‘For my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must pass, in order to get to bed.’a
JOHNSON. ‘You are a lawyer, Mr. Edwards. Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with. They have what he wants.’ EDWARDS. ‘I am grown old: I am sixty-five.’ JOHNSON. ‘I shall be sixty-eight next birth-day. Come, Sir, drink water, and put in for a hundred.’
Mr. Edwards mentioned a gentleman820 who had left his whole fortune to Pembroke College. JOHNSON. ‘Whether to leave one’s whole fortune to a College be right, must depend upon circumstances. I would leave the interest of the fortune I bequeathed to a College to my relations or my friends, for their lives. It is the same thing to a College, which is a permanent society, whether it gets the money now or twenty years hence; and I would wish to make my relations or friends feel the benefit of it.’
This interview confirmed my opinion of Johnson’s most humane and benevolent heart. His cordial and placid behaviour to an old fellow-collegian, a man so different from himself; and his telling him that he would go down to his farm and visit him, showed a kindliness of disposition very rare at an advanced age. He observed, ‘how wonderful it was that they had both been in London forty years, without having ever once met, and both walkers in the street too!’ Mr. Edwards, when going away, again recurred to his consciousness of senility, and looking full in Johnson’s face, said to him, ‘You’ll find in Dr. Young,
“O my coevals! remnants of yourselves!”’821
Johnson did not relish this at all; but shook his head with impatience. Edwards walked off, seemingly highly pleased with the honour of having been thus noticed by Dr. JOHNSON. When he was gone, I said to Johnson, I thought him but a weak man. JOHNSON. ‘Why, yes, Sir. Here is a man who has passed through life without experience: yet I would rather have him with me than a more sensible man who will not talk readily. This man is always willing to say what he has to say.’ Yet Dr. Johnson had himself by no means that willingness which he praised so much, and I think so justly; for who has not felt the painful effect of the dreary void, when there is a total silence in a company, for any length of time; or, which is as bad, or perhaps worse, when the conversation is with difficulty kept up by a perpetual effort?
Johnson once observed to me, ‘Tom Tyers described me the best: “Sir, (said he,) you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to.”’
The gentleman whom he thus familiarly mentioned was Mr. Thomas Tyers, son of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the founder of that excellent place of publick amusement, Vauxhall Gardens, which must ever be an estate to its proprietor, as it is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show, – gay exhibition, musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear; – for all which only a shilling is paid;a and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale. Mr. Thomas Tyers was bred to the law; but having a handsome fortune, vivacity of temper, and eccentricity of mind, he could not confine himself to the regularity of practice. He therefore ran about the world with a pleasant carelessness, amusing everybody by his desultory conversation. He abounded in anecdote, but was not sufficiently attentive to accuracy. I therefore cannot venture to avail myself much of a biographical sketch of Johnson which he published, being one among the various persons ambitious of appending their names to that of my illustrious friend. That sketch is, however, an entertaining little collection of fragments. Those which he published of Pope and Addison are of higher merit; but his fame must chiefly rest upon his Political Conferences, in which he introduces several eminent persons delivering their sentiments in the way of dialogue, and discovers a considerable share of learning, various knowledge, and discernment of character. This much may I be allowed to say of a man who was exceedingly obliging to me, and who lived with Dr. Johnson in as easy a manner as almost any of his very numerous acquaintance.
Mr. Edwards had said to me aside, that Dr. Johnson should have been of a profession. I repeated the remark to Johnson that I might have his own thoughts on the subject. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, it would have been better that I had been of a profession. I ought to have been a lawyer.’ BOSWELL. ‘I do not think, Sir, it would have been better, for we should not have had the English Dictionary.’ JOHNSON. ‘But you would have had Reports.’ BOSWELL. ‘Ay; but there would not have been another, who could have written the Dictionary. There have been many very good Judges. Suppose you had been Lord Chancellor; you would have delive
red opinions with more extent of mind, and in a more ornamented manner, than perhaps any Chancellor ever did, or ever will do. But, I believe, causes have been as judiciously decided as you could have done.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir. Property has been as well settled.’
Johnson, however, had a noble ambition floating in his mind, and had, undoubtedly, often speculated on the possibility of his supereminent powers being rewarded in this great and liberal country by the highest honours of the state. Sir William Scott informs me, that upon the death of the late Lord Lichfield, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford, he said to Johnson, ‘What a pity it is, Sir, that you did not follow the profession of the law. You might have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, and attained to the dignity of the peerage; and now that the title of Lichfield, your native city, is extinct, you might have had it.’ Johnson, upon this, seemed much agitated; and, in an angry tone, exclaimed, ‘Why will you vex me by suggesting this, when it is too late?’
But he did not repine at the prosperity of others. The late Dr. Thomas Leland told Mr. Courtenay, that when Mr. Edmund Burke shewed Johnson his fine house and lands near Beaconsfield, Johnson coolly said, ‘Non equidem invideo; miror magis.’822a
Yet no man had a higher notion of the dignity of literature than Johnson, or was more determined in maintaining the respect which he justly considered as due to it. Of this, besides the general tenor of his conduct in society, some characteristical instances may be mentioned.
He told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that once when he dined in a numerous company of booksellers, where the room being small, the head of the table, at which he sat, was almost close to the fire, he persevered in suffering a great deal of inconvenience from the heat, rather than quit his place, and let one of them sit above him.
Goldsmith, in his diverting simplicity, complained one day, in a mixed company, of Lord Camden. ‘I met him (said he,) at Lord Clare’s house in the country, and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an ordinary man.’ The company having laughed heartily, Johnson stood forth in defence of his friend. ‘Nay, Gentlemen, (said he,) Dr. Goldsmith is in the right. A nobleman ought to have made up to such a man as Goldsmith; and I think it is much against Lord Camden that he neglected him.’
Nor could he patiently endure to hear that such respect as he thought due only to higher intellectual qualities, should be bestowed on men of slighter, though perhaps more amusing talents. I told him, that one morning, when I went to breakfast with Garrick, who was very vain of his intimacy with Lord Camden, he accosted me thus: – ‘Pray now, did you –did you meet a little lawyer turning the corner, eh?’ – ‘No, Sir, (said I.) Pray what do you mean by the question?’ – ‘Why, (replied Garrick, with an affected indifference, yet as if standing on tip-toe,) Lord Camden has this moment left me. We have had a long walk together.’ JOHNSON. ‘Well, Sir, Garrick talked very properly. Lord Camden was a little lawyer to be associating so familiarly with a player.’
Sir Joshua Reynolds observed, with great truth, that Johnson considered Garrick to be as it were his property. He would allow no man either to blame or to praise Garrick in his presence, without contradicting him.
Having fallen into a very serious frame of mind, in which mutual expressions of kindness passed between us, such as would be thought too vain in me to repeat, I talked with regret of the sad inevitable certainty that one of us must survive the other. JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, that is an affecting consideration. I remember Swift, in one of his letters to Pope, says, “I intend to come over, that we may meet once more; and when we must part, it is what happens to all human beings.” ‘ BOSWELL. ‘The hope that we shall see our departed friends again must support the mind.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why yes, Sir.’ BOSWELL. ‘There is a strange unwillingness to part with life, independent of serious fears as to futurity. A reverend friend of ours823 (naming him) tells me, that he feels an uneasiness at the thoughts of leaving his house, his study, his books.’ JOHNSON. ‘This is foolish in ∗∗∗∗∗. a man need not be uneasy on these grounds; for, as he will retain his consciousness, he may say with the philosopher, Omnia mea mecum porto.’824 BOSWELL. ‘True, Sir: we may carry our books in our heads; but still there is something painful in the thought of leaving for ever what has given us pleasure. I remember, many years ago, when my imagination was warm, and I happened to be in a melancholy mood, it distressed me to think of going into a state of being in which Shakspeare’s poetry did not exist. A lady whom I then much admired, a very amiable woman, humoured my fancy, and relieved me by saying, “The first thing you will meet in the other world, will be an elegant copy of Shakspeare’s works presented to you.”’ Dr. Johnson smiled benignantly at this, and did not appear to disapprove of the notion.
We went to St. Clement’s church again in the afternoon, and then returned and drank tea and coffee in Mrs. Williams’s room; Mrs. Desmoulins doing the honours of the tea-table. I observed that he would not even look at a proof-sheet of his Life of Waller on Good-Friday.
Mr. Allen, the printer, brought a book on agriculture, which was printed, and was soon to be published. It was a very strange performance, the authour825 having mixed in it his own thoughts upon various topicks, along with his remarks on ploughing, sowing, and other farming operations. He seemed to be an absurd profane fellow, and had introduced in his book many sneers at religion, with equal ignorance and conceit. Dr. Johnson permitted me to read some passages aloud. One was, that he resolved to work on Sunday, and did work, but he owned he felt some weak compunction; and he had this very curious reflection: – ‘I was born in the wilds of Christianity, and the briars and thorns still hang about me.’ Dr. Johnson could not help laughing at this ridiculous image, yet was very angry at the fellow’s impiety. ‘However, (said he,) the Reviewers will make him hang himself.’ He, however, observed, ‘that formerly there might have been a dispensation obtained for working on Sunday in the time of harvest.’ Indeed in ritual observances, were all the ministers of religion what they should be, and what many of them are, such a power might be wisely and safely lodged with the Church.
On Saturday, April 14,826I drank tea with him. He praised the late Mr. Duncombe,a of Canterbury, as a pleasing man. ‘He used to come to me: I did not seek much after him. Indeed I never sought much after any body.’ BOSWELL. ‘Lord Orrery, I suppose.’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; I never went to him but when he sent for me.’ BOSWELL. ‘Richardson?’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir. But I sought after George Psalmanazar the most. I used to go and sit with him at an alehouse in the city.’
I am happy to mention another instance which I discovered of his seeking after a man of merit. Soon after the Honourable Daines Barrington had published his excellent Observations on the Statutes, Johnson waited on that worthy and learned gentleman; and, having told him his name, courteously said, ‘I have read your book, Sir, with great pleasure, and wish to be better known to you.’ Thus began an acquaintance, which was continued with mutual regard as long as Johnson lived.
Talking of a recent seditious delinquent,827 he said, ‘They should set him in the pillory, that he may be punished in a way that would disgrace him.’ I observed, that the pillory does not always disgrace. And I mentioned an instance of a gentleman828 who I thought was not dishonoured by it. JOHNSON. ‘Ay, but he was, Sir. He could not mouth and strut as he used to do, after having been there. People are not very willing to ask a man to their tables who has stood in the pillory.’
The Gentleman829 who had dined with us at Dr. Percy’s came in. Johnson attacked the Americans with intemperate vehemence of abuse. I said something in their favour; and added, that I was always sorry when he talked on that subject. This, it seems, exasperated him; though he said nothing at the time. The cloud was charged with sulphureous vapour, which was afterwards to burst in thunder. – We talked of a gentleman830 who was running out his fortune in London; and I said, ‘We must get him out of it. All his friends must quarrel with him, and that will soon drive him away.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, Sir; we’ll send you to him. If your company
does not drive a man out of his house, nothing will.’ This was a horrible shock, for which there was no visible cause. I afterwards asked him why he had said so harsh a thing. JOHNSON. ‘Because, Sir, you made me angry about the Americans.’ BOSWELL. ‘But why did you not take your revenge directly?’ JOHNSON. (smiling,) ‘Because, Sir, I had nothing ready. A man cannot strike till he has his weapons.’ This was a candid and pleasant confession.
He shewed me to-night his drawing-room, very genteelly fitted up; and said, ‘Mrs. Thrale sneered when I talked of my having asked you and your lady to live at my house. I was obliged to tell her, that you would be in as respectable a situation in my house as in hers. Sir, the insolence of wealth will creep out.’ Bo swell. ‘She has a little both of the insolence of wealth, and the conceit of parts.’ JOHNSON. ‘The insolence of wealth is a wretched thing; but the conceit of parts has some foundation. To be sure it should not be. But who is without it?’ BOSWELL. ‘Yourself, Sir.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, I play no tricks: I lay no traps.’ BOSWELL. ‘No, Sir. You are six feet high, and you only do not stoop.’
We talked of the numbers of people that sometimes have composed the household of great families. I mentioned that there were a hundred in the family of the present Earl of Eglintoune’s father. Dr. Johnson seeming to doubt it, I began to enumerate. ‘Let us see: my Lord and my Lady two.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, Sir, if you are to count by twos, you may be long enough.’ BOSWELL. ‘Well, but now I add two sons and seven daughters, and a servant for each, that will make twenty; so we have the fifth part already.’ JOHNSON. ‘Very true. You get at twenty pretty readily; but you will not so easily get further on. We grow to five feet pretty readily; but it is not so easy to grow to seven.’
The Life of Samuel Johnson Page 106
