is painful to me. I wish you, my dear, many happy years. Give my respects to Kitty. I am, dear madam, your most affectionate humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." (1)

I returned to London in February, and found Dr. Johnson in a good house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, in which he had accommodated Miss Williams with an apartment on the ground floor, while Mr. Levett occupied his post in the garret: his faithful Francis was still attending upon him. He received me with much kindness. The fragments of our first conversation, which I have preserved, are these: I told him that Voltaire, in a conversation with me, had distinguished Pope and Dryden thus :-"Pope drives a handsome chariot, with a couple of neat trim nags; Dryden a coach, and six stately horses." (2)

(1) In the Memoirs of Dr. Warton, p. 312., we find a letter (dated Jan. 22. 1766) from him to his brother, giving_some account of Johnson and his society at this period: "I only dined with Johnson, who seemed cold and indifferent, and scarce said any thing to me; perhaps he has heard what I said of his Shakspeare, or rather was offended at what I wrote to him— as he pleases. Of all solemn coxcombs, Goldsmith is the first; yet sensible- but affects to use Johnson's hard words in conversation. We had a Mr. Dyer, who is a scholar and a gentleman. Garrick is entirely off from Johnson, and cannot, he says, forgive him his insinuating that he withheld his old editions, which always were open to him, nor I suppose his never mentioning him in all his works."-C.

(2) It is remarkable that Mr. Gray has employed somewhat the same image to characterise Dryden. He, indeed, furnishes his car with but two horses; but they are of "ethereal race:

"Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear

Two coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder clothed, and long resounding pace."

JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, the truth is, they both drive coaches and six ; but Dryden's horses are either galloping or stumbling: Pope's go at a steady even trot." (') He said of Goldsmith's "Traveller,” which had been published in my absence, “There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time."

And here it is proper to settle, with authentic precision, what has long floated in public report, as to Johnson's being himself the author of a considerable part of that poem. Much, no doubt, both of the sentiments and expression, were derived from conversation with him; and it was certainly submitted to his friendly revision: but, in the year 1783, he, at my request, marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are only line 420th::

"To stop too fearful, and too faint to go;'

and the concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one, which I distinguish by the Italic character:

"How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,

Our own felicity we make or find:

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,

Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel,

To men remote from power, but rarely known,

Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.”

(1) ["The style of Dryden is capacious and varied; that of Fope is cautious and uniform: Dryden observes the motions of rus own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition," &c. &c.—JOHNSON, Life of Pope.]

He added, "These are all of which I can be sure." They bear a small proportion to the whole, which consists of four hundred and thirty-eight verses. Goldsmith, in the couplet which he inserted, mentions Luke as a person well known, and superficial readers have passed it over quite smoothly; while those of more attention have been as much perplexed by Luke, as by Lydiat, in "The Vanity of Humal. Wishes." The truth is, that Goldsmith himself was in a mistake. In the " Respublica Hungarica," there is an account of a desperate rebellion in the year 1514, headed by two brothers, of the name of Zeck, George and Luke. When it was quelled, George, not Luke, was punished, by his head being encircled with a redhot iron crown; "coronâ candescente ferreâ coronatur." The same severity of torture was exercised on the Earl of Athol, one of the murderers of King James I. of Scotland! (1)

Dr. Johnson at the same time favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," which are only the last four: — "That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away : While self-dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the billows and the sky."

Talking of education, "People have now a-days," said he, "got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see

(1) On the iron crown, see Mr. Steevens's note 7. on Act iv. sc. 1. of Richard III. It seems to be alluded to in Macbeth, act iv. sc. 1.: " Thy crown does sear," &c. See also Gough' Camden, vol. iii. p. 396.

BLAKEWAY.

that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures: - you might teach making of shoes by lectures !"

At night I supped with him at the Mitre tavern, that we might renew our social intimacy at the original place of meeting. But there was now a considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain from it, and drank only water, or lemonade.

I told him that a foreign friend of his (1), whom I had met with abroad, was so wretchedly perverted to infidelity, that he treated the hopes of immortality with brutal levity; and said, "As man dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog." JOHNSON. “ If he dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog." I added, that this man said to me, "I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am." JOHNSON. "Sir, he must be very singular in his opinion, if he thinks himself one of the best of men; for none of his friends think him so.' - He said, "No honest man could be a Deist; for no man could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity." I named Hume. JOHNSON. "No, Sir; Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishopric of Durham, that he had never read the New Testament with attention." — I mentioned

(1) Probably Baretti.-C.

ÆTAT. 57.

SATISFACTION AND HAPPINESS.

311

Hume's notion, that all who are happy are equally happy; a little miss with a new gown at a dancingschool ball, a general at the head of a victorious army, and an orator after having made an eloquent speech in a great assembly. JOHNSON. "Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher." I remember this very question very happily illustrated, in opposition to Hume, by the Rev. Mr. Robert Brown, at Utrecht. small drinking-glass and a large one," said he, "may be equally full; but the large one holds more than the small." (1)

"A

Dr. Johnson was very kind this evening, and said to me, "You have now lived five-and-twenty years, and you have employed them well." "Alas, Sir,"

(1) Bishop Hall, in discussing this subject, has the same image: "Yet so conceive of these heavenly degrees, that the least is glorious. So do these vessels differ, that all are full."Epistles, Dec. iii. cap. 6. This most learned and ingenious writer, however, was not the first who suggested this image; for it is found also in "A Work worth the Reading," by Charles Gibbon, 4to. 1591. In the fifth dialogue of this work, in which the question debated is, "whether there be degrees of glorie in heaven, or difference of paines in hell," one of the speakers observes, that "no doubt in the world to come (where the least pleasure is unspeakable), it cannot be but that he which hath bin most afflicted here shall conceive and receive more exceeding joy than he which hath bin touched with lesse tribulation; and yet the joyes of heaven are fitlie compared to vessels filled with licour, of all quantities; for everie man shall have his full measure there." By "all quantities," this writer (who seems to refer to a still more ancient author than himself,) I suppose, means different quantities. - Malone.