lege." 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 pudica Deum;" and I told you of another fine line in Camden's Remains ;' and 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.'" 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 gene 1 Mathew Bloxam entered at Pembroke College, March 25, 1729; M.A., July, 1735.— HALL. 2 This line has frequently been attributed to Dryden, when at Westminster. But neither Eton nor Westminster have in truth any claim to it, the line being borrowed from an epigram by Crashaw. The original is much more elegant than the copy, the water being personified, and the word on which the point of the epigram turns, being reserved to the close of the line: "Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphis? rally supposed to be hard and severe, at least so grave as to ex clude 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, faltering tone) I have known what it was to lose a wife. It had almost broke my heart." For my part, I must have wine. I find I require it." Early in life I drank wine; EDWARDS. "How do you live, Sir? my regular meals, and a glass of good JOHNSON. "I now drink no wine, Sir. 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." 1 I 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 : am sixty-five." JOHNSON. "I shall be sixty-eight next birth-day. Come, Sir, drink water, and put in for a hundred." 2 Mr. Edwards mentioned a gentleman 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 am not absolutely sure but that this was my own suggestion, though it is truly in the character of Edwards. 2 This must have been the Rev. James Phipps, who had been a scholar of Pembroke, and who, in 1773, left his estates to the college to purchase livings for a particular foundation, and for other purposes.-HALL. 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 kindness 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.' 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 public 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, music, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear; for all which only a shilling is paid;' 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 rest chiefly 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 writ 1 In summer, 1792, additional and more expensive decorations having been introduced, the price of admission was raised to two shillings. I cannot approve of this. The company may be more select, but a number of the honest commonalty are, I fear, excluded from sharing in elegant and innocent entertainments. An attempt to abolish the one-shilling gallery at the playhouse has been very properly counteracted.-B. That accurate judge of human life, Dr. Johnson, has often been heard by me to observe, that it was the greatest misfortune which could befal a man to have been bred to no profession, and pathetically to regret that this misfortune was his own."—More's Practical Piety, p. 313.-MARKLAND. ten the Dictionary. There have been many very good judges. Suppose you had been lord chancellor ; you would have delivered 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 showed Johnson his fine house and lands near Beaconsfield, Johnson coolly said, "Non equidem invideo; miror magis." 1 Yet no man had a higher notion of the dignity of literature than Johnson, or was more determined in maintaining the respect which he 1 I am not entirely without suspicion that Johnson may have felt a little momentary envy ; for no man loved the good things of this life better than he did; and he could not but be conscious that he deserved a much larger share of them than he ever had. I attempted in a newspaper to comment on the above passage in the manner of Warburton, who must be allowed to have shown uncommon ingenuity, in giving to any author's text whatever meaning he chose it should carry. As this imitation may amuse my readers, I shall here introduce it: "No saying of DR. JOHNSON's has been more misunderstood than his applying to MR. BURKE, when he first saw him at his fine place at Beaconsfield, Non equidem invideo; miror magis. These two celebrated men had been friends for many years before Mr. Burke entered on his parliamentary career. They were both writers, both members of THE LITERARY CLUB; when, therefore, Dr. Johnson saw Mr. Burke in a situation so much more splendid than that to which he himself had attained, he did not mean to express that he thought it a disproportionate prosperity; but while he, as a philsopher, asserted an exemption from envy, non equidem invideo, he went on in the words of the poet, miror magis; thereby signifying, either that he was occupied in admiring what he was glad to see, or, perhaps, that, considering the general lot of men of superior abilities, he wondered that Fortune, who is represented as blind, should, in this instance, have been so just." |