Her wedding-ring, when she became his wife, was, after her death, preserved by him, as long as he lived, with an affectionate care, in a little round wooden box, in the inside of which he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as follows: "Eheu ! "Eliz. Johnson, "Mart. 17° 1752.” (1) After his death, Mr. Francis Barber, his faithful servant, and residuary legatee, offered this memorial of tenderness to Mrs. Lucy Porter, Mrs. Johnson's it is that Mr. Boswell could have made any such confession. Dr. Johnson thought charitably of the Roman Catholics, and defended their religion from the coarse language of our political tests, which call it impious and idolatrous (post, Oct. 26. 1769); but he strenuously disclaimed all participation in the doctrines of that church (see post, May 3. 1773; April 5. 1776; Oct. 10. 1779; June 3. 1784). Mrs. Piozzi says, "Though beloved by all his Roman Catholic acquaintance, yet was Mr. Johnson a most unshaken Church-of-England man; and I think, or at least I once did think, that a letter written by him to Mr. Barnard, the king's librarian, when he was in Italy collecting books, contained some very particular advice to his friend to be on his guard against the seductions of the Church of Rome." And finally-which may perhaps be thought more likely to express his real sentiments than even a more formal assertion-when it was proposed (see post, April 30. 1773), that monuments of eminent men should in future be erected in St. Paul's, and when some one in conversation suggested to begin with Pope, Johnson observed, "Why, sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholic, I would not have his to be first."-CROKer. (1) It seems as if Dr. Johnson had been a little ashamed of the disproportion between his age and that of his wife, for neither in this inscription nor that over her grave, written thirty years later, does he mention her age, which was at her death sixty three. CROKER. daughter; but she having declined (1) to accept of it, he had it enamelled as a mourning ring for his old master, and presented it to his wife, Mrs. Barber, who now has it. The state of mind in which a man must be upon the death of a woman whom he sincerely loves, had been in his contemplation many years before. In his IRENE, we find the following fervent and tender speech of Demetrius, addressed to his Aspasia :— "From those bright regions of eternal day, Where now thou shin'st amongst thy fellow saints, Array'd in purer light, look down on me! In pleasing visions and assuasive dreams, O! sooth my soul, and teach me how to lose thee." I have, indeed, been told by Mrs. Desmoulins, who, before her marriage, lived for some time with Mrs. Johnson at Hampstead, that she indulged herself in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expense, while her husband was drudging in the smoke of London, and that she by no means treated him with that complacency which is the most engaging quality in a wife. (2) But all this is perfectly (1) Offended perhaps, and not unreasonably, that she was not mentioned in Johnson's will.-CROKER. (2) I asked him, if he ever disputed with his wife (I had heard that he loved her passionately). "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 compatible with his fondness for her, especially when it is remembered that he had a high opinion of her understanding, and that the impressions which her beauty, real or imaginary, had originally made upon his fancy, being continued by habit, had not been effaced, though she herself was doubtless much altered for the worse. (1) The dreadful shock of separation took place in the night; and he immediately despatched a letter to his friend, the Reverend Dr. Taylor, which, as Taylor told me, expressed grief in the strongest manner he had ever read; so that it is much to be regretted it has not been preserved. (2) The letter was brought to ceiling." On another occasion I have heard him blame her for a fault many people have, of setting the miseries of their neighbours, half unintentionally, half wantonly, before their eyes, showing them the bad side of their profession, situation, &c. He said, "She would lament the dependence of pupilage to a young heir, &c. and once told a waterman who rowed her along the Thames in a wherry, that he was no happier than a galleyslave, one being chained to the oar by authority, the other by want. I had, however (said he, laughing), the wit to get her daughter on my side always before we began the dispute." She read comedy better than any body he ever heard (he said); in tragedy she mouthed too much. - PIOZZI. (1) Garrick told Mr. Thrale, however, that she was a little painted puppet, of no value at all, and quite disguised with affectation, full of odd airs of rural elegance; and he made out some comical scenes, by mimicking her in a dialogue he pretended to have overheard. Mr. Johnson has told me that her hair was eminently beautiful, quite blonde like that of a baby; but that she fretted about the colour, and was always desirous to dye it black, which he very judiciously hindered her from doing. The picture I found of her at Lichfield was very pretty, and her daughter, Mrs. Lucy Porter, said it was like. The intelligence I gained of her from old Levett, was only perpetual illness and perpetual opium. — PIOZZI. (2) In the Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1794, p. 100., was printed a letter pretending to be that written by Johnson on Dr. Taylor, at his house in the Cloisters, Westminster, about three in the morning; and as it signified an earnest desire to see him, he got up, and went to Johnson as soon as he was dressed, and found him in tears and in extreme agitation. After being a little while together, Johnson requested him to join with him in prayer. He then prayed extempore, as did Dr. Taylor; and thus by means of that piety which was ever his primary object, his troubled mind was, in some degree, soothed and composed. The next day he wrote as follows: LETTER 21. TO THE REV. DR. TAYLOR. "March 18. 1752. "DEAR SIR, Let me have your company and instruction. Do not live away from me. is great. 66 My distress Pray desire Mrs. Taylor to inform me what mourning I should buy for my mother and Miss Porter, and bring a note in writing with you. "Remember me in your prayers, for vain is the help of man. I am, dear Sir, &c. "SAM. JOHNSON." That his sufferings upon the death of his wife were severe, beyond what are commonly endured, I have no doubt, from the information of many who were then about him, to none of whom I give more credit than to Mr. Francis Barber, his faithful negro the death of his wife: but it is merely a transcript of the 41st number of "The Idler," on the death of a friend. A fictitious date, March 17. 1751, O. S., was added, to give a colour to this deception. - MALONE. servant (1), who came into his family about a fortnight after the dismal event. These sufferings were aggravated by the melancholy inherent in his constitution; and although he probably was not oftener in the wrong than she was, in the little disagreements which sometimes troubled his married state, during which, he owned to me, that the gloomy irritability of his existence was more painful to him than ever, he might very naturally, after her death, be tenderly disposed to charge himself with slight omissions and offences, the sense of which would give him much uneasiness. (2) Accordingly we find, about a year after her decease, that he thus addressed the Supreme Being: "O LORD, who givest the 66 (1) 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 Yorkshire. 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 Northamptonshire, 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. The uses for which Francis was intended to serve Johnson were not very apparent, for Diogenes himself never wanted a servant less than he seemed to do. The great bushy wig which, throughout his life, he affected to wear, by that closeness of texture which it had contracted and been suffered to retain, was ever nearly as impenetrable by a comb as a quickset hedge; and little of the dust that had once settled on his outer garments was ever known to have been disturbed by the brush. HAWKINS. (2) See his beautiful and affecting Rambler, No. 54. MALONE. |