be reputable to my work, and suitable to your professorship, to have something of yours in the notes. As you have given no directions about your name, I shall therefore put it. I wish your brother would take the same trouble. A commentary must arise from the fortuitous discoveries of many men in devious walks of literature. Some of your remarks are on plays already printed; but I purpose to add an Appendix of Notes, so that nothing comes too late. "You give yourself too much uneasiness, dear Sir, about the loss of the papers. The loss is nothing, if nobody has found them; nor even then, perhaps, if the numbers be known. You are not the only friend that has had the same mischance. You may repair your want out of a stock, which is deposited with Mr. Allen, of Magdalen-Hall; or out of a parcel which I have just sent to Mr. Chambers, for the use of anybody that will be so kind as to want them. Mr. Langtons are well; and Miss Roberts, whom I have at last brought to speak, upon the information which you gave me, that she had something to say. b "I am, &c. "[London,] April 14, 1758." To the same. "SAM. JOHNSON. "DEAR SIR,-You will receive this by Mr. Baretti, a gentleman particularly entitled to the notice and kindness of the professor of poesy. He has time but for a short stay, and will be glad to have it filled up with as much as he can hear and see. Have "In recommending another to your favour, I ought not to omit thanks for the kindness which you have shewn to myself. you any more notes on Shakspeare? I shall be glad of them. "I see your pupil sometimes; his mind is as exalted as his stature. I am half afraid of him; but he is no less amiable than formidable. He will, if the forwardness of his spring be not blasted, be a credit to you, and to the University. He brings some of my plays with him, which he has my permission to shew you, on condition you will hide them from every body else. d "[London,] June 1, 1758." a" Receipts for Shakspeare." "I am, dear Sir, &c. "SAM. JOHNSON. b" Then of Lincoln College. Now Sir Robert Chambers, one of the Judges in India." "Mr. Langton." d" Part of the impression of the Shakspeare, which Dr. Johnson conducted alone, and published by subscription. This edition came out in 1765." Cor. et Ad.-After line 35 read : "" TO BENNET LANGTON, ESQ. OF TRINITY COLLEGE, oxford. "DEAR SIR,-Though I might have expected to hear from you, upon your entrance into a new state of life at a new place, yet recollecting (not without some degree of letter to Dr. Huddesford; and shall be glad if you will introduce him, and shew him any thing in Oxford. "I am printing my new edition of Shakspeare. "I long to see you all, but cannot conveniently come yet. You might write to me now and then, if you were good for any thing. But honores mutant mores. Professors forget their friends." I shall certainly complain to Miss Jones. I am, "[London,] June 21, 1754.” "Yours, &c. "Please to make my compliments to Mr. Wise." "SAM JOHNSON. Mr. Burney having enclosed to him an extract from the review of his Dictionary in the Bibliotheque des Savans, and a list of subscribers to his Shakspeare, which Mr. Burney had procured in Norfolk, he wrote the following answer: To Mr. BURNEY, in Lynne, Norfolk. "SIR, That I may show myself sensible of your favours, and not commit the same fault a second time, I make haste to answer the letter which I received this morning. The truth is, the other likewise was received, and I wrote an answer; but being desirous to transmit you some proposals and receipts, I waited till I could find a convenient conveyance, and day was passed after day, till other things drove it from my thoughts, yet not so, but that I remember with great pleasure your commendation of my Dictionary. Your praise was welcome, not only because I believe it was sincere, but because praise has been very scarce. A man of your candour will be surprised when I tell you, that among all my acquaintance there were only two, who upon the publication of my book did not endeavour to depress me with threats of censure from the publick, or with objections learned from those who had learned them from my own Preface. Yours is the only letter of good-will that I have "Now, or late, Vice-Chancellor." b"Mr. Warton was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in the preceding year.' "Miss Jones lived at Oxford, and was often of our parties. She was a very ingenious poetess, and published a volume of poems; and, on the whole, was a most sensible, agreeable, and amiable woman. She was sister of the Reverend River Jones, Chanter of Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford, and Johnson used to call her the Chantress. I have heard him often address her in this passage from IL PENSEROSO: ' received, though, indeed I am promised something of that sort from Sweden. "How my new edition will be received I know not; the subscription has not been very successful. I shall publish about March. "If you can direct me how to send proposals, I should wish that they were in such hands. "I remember, Sir, in some of the first letters with which you favoured me, you mentioned your lady. May I enquire after her? In return for the favours which you have shewn me, it is not much to tell you, that I wish you and her all that can conduce to your happiness. I am, Sir, "Your most obliged "And most humble servant, “Gough-square, Dec. 24, 1757.” "SAM. JOHNSON. In 1758 we find him, it should seem, in as easy and pleasant a state of existence, as constitutional unhappiness ever permitted him to enjoy. "TO BENNET langton, esq. AT LANGTON, LINCOLNSHIRE. "DEAREST SIR,—I must have indeed slept very fast, not to have been awakened by your letter. None of your suspicions are true; I am not much richer than when you left me; and, what is worse, my omission of an answer to your first letter, will prove that I am not much wiser. But I go on as I formerly did, designing to be some time or other both rich and wise; and yet cultivate neither mind nor fortune. Do you take notice of my example, and learn the danger of delay. When I was as you are now, towering in confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am. "But you do not seem to need my admonition. You are busy in acquiring and in communicating knowledge, and while you are studying, enjoy the end of study, by making others wiser and happier. I was much pleased with the tale that you told me of being tutour to your sisters. I, who have no sisters nor brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends; and cannot see, without wonder, how rarely that native union is afterwards regarded. It sometimes, indeed, happens, that some supervenient cause of discord may overpower this original amity; but it seems to me more frequently thrown away with levity, or lost by negligence, than destroyed by injury or violence. We tell the ladies that good wives make good husbands; I believe it is a more certain position that good brothers make good sisters. "I am satisfied with your stay at home, as Juvenal with his friend's retirement to Cumæ: I know that your absence is best, though it be not best for me. 'Quamvis digressu veteris confusus amici, "Langton is a good Cuma, but who must be Sibylla? Mrs. Langton is as wise as Sibyl, and as good; and will live, if my wishes can prolong life, till she shall in time be as old. But she differs in this, that she has not scattered her precepts in the wind, at least not those which she bestowed upon you. In 1759, in the month of January, his mother died, at the great age of ninety, an event which deeply affected him, not that his mind had acquired no firmness by the contemplation of mortality," but that his reverential affection for her was not abated by years, as indeed he retained all his tender feelings even to the latest period of his life. I have been told that he regretted much his not having shame), that I owe you a letter upon an old account, I think it my part to write first. This, indeed, I do not only from complaisance but from interest; for living on in the old way, I am very glad of a correspondent so capable as yourself, to diversify the hours. You have, at present, too many novelties about you to need any help from me to drive along your time. "I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed. You, who are very capable of anticipating futurity, and raising phantoms before your own eyes, must often have imagined to yourself an academical life, and have conceived what would be the manners, the views, and the conversation, of men devoted to letters; how they would choose their companions, how they would direct their studies, and how they would regulate their lives. Let me know what you expected, and what you have found. At least record it to yourself before custom has reconciled you to the scenes before you, and the disparity of your discoveries to your hopes has vanished from your mind. It is a rule never to be forgotten, that whatever strikes strongly, should be described while the first impression remains fresh upon the mind. "I love, dear Sir, to think on you, and therefore, should willingly write more to you, but that the post will not now give me leave to do more than send my compliments to Mr. Warton, and tell you that I am, dear Sir, most affectionately, "Your very humble servant, “June 28, 1758."1 "SAM. JOHNSON. "TO BENNET Langton, Esq. at langton, nEAR SPILSBY, LINCOLNSHIRE. "DEAR SIR,-I should be sorry to think that what engrosses the attention of my friend, should have no part of mine. Your mind is now full of the fate of Dury; but his fate is past, and nothing remains but to try what reflection will suggest to mitigate the terrours of a violent death, which is more formidable at the first glance, than on a nearer and more steady view. A violent death is never very painful; the only danger is, lest it should be unprovided. But if a man can be supposed to make no provision for death in war, what can be the state that would have awakened him to the care of futurity? When would that man have prepared himself to die, who went to seek death without preparation? What then can be the reason why we a Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 365. b Major-General Alexander Dury, of the first regiment of footguards, who fell in the gallant discharge of his duty, near St. Cas, in the well-known unfortunate expedition against France, in 1758. His lady and Mr. Langton's mother were sisters. He left an only son, Lieutenant-Colonel Dury, who has a company in the same regiment. 1 Mr. Croker has changed the date of this letter to January 28, 1758, on the ground that it refers to Langton's entry on college life, which was in July, 1757. He adds, that the letter of June 1, 1758 (ante, p. 203), shews that Langton "had been Warton's pupil for some time." Though the matter is not quite clear, the existing arrangement is consistent. The letter to Langton, of June 28, seems to follow quite naturally the one to Warton, in which Johnson speaks of Langton as being about to leave him, while Langton, who seems to have been very little at the university, may not have gone to reside until June, 1752. gone to visit his mother for several years previous to her death.1 But he was constantly engaged in literary labours, which confined him to London; and though he had not the comfort of seeing his aged parent, he contributed liberally to her support. Soon after this event, he wrote his "RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA;" concerning the publication of which Sir John Hawkins guesses vaguely and idly, instead of having taken the Not to trouble trouble to inform himself with authentick precision. my readers with a repetition of the Knight's reveries, I have to mention, that the late Mr. Strachan the printer told me, that lament more him that dies of a wound, than him that dies of fever? A man that languishes with disease, ends his life with more pain, but with less virtue: he leaves no example to his friends, nor bequeaths any honour to his descendants. The only reason why we lament a Soldier's death, is, that we think he might have lived longer; yet this cause of grief is common to many other kinds of death, which are not so passionately bewailed. The truth is, that every death is violent which is the effect of accident; every death, which is not gradually brought on by the miseries of age, or when life is extinguished for any other reason than that it is burnt out. He that dies before sixty, of a cold or consumption, dies, in reality, by a violent death; yet his death is borne with patience, only because the cause of his untimely end is. silent and invisible. Let us endeavour to see things as they are, and then enquire whether we ought to complain. Whether to see life as it is, will give us much consolation, I know not; but the consolation which is drawn from truth, if any there be, is solid and durable: that which may be derived from errour, must be, like its original, fallacious and fugitive. 66 "I am, 1 Johnson's affecting letters on his mother's illness and death do not belong to Boswell's text. He tried to obtain them, but Miss Seward wrote to him: 'Lucy Porter is now too ill to be accessible to any of her friends except Mr. Pearson, and were it otherwise I do not believe that a kneeling world would obtain from her the letter that you wish for." Malone, however, obtained them for the fourth edition from Dr. Vyse. dear, dear Sir, "SAM. JOHNSON. infusion of the bark would do you good. Do, dear mother, try it. "Pray, send me your blessing, and forgive all that I have done amiss to you. And whatever you would have done, and what debts you would have paid first, or any thing else that you would direct, let Miss put it down; I shall endeavour to obey you. "I have got twelve guineas to send you, but unhappily am at a loss how to send it to-night. If I cannot send it tonight, it will come by the next post. Pray, do not omit any thing mentioned in this letter. God bless you for ever and ever. |
